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Ugh, I think I'm getting sick. But on the plus side, one of my favorite sites just linked to a very cute Hikago fanart site called Fish Moon. It also has cute Digimon fanart (tho I have no clue who the people are). ^_^ Pretty pics always makes the day a little better.

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I voted before going to work today. It amazes me how unchanged things are each election in my precinct, where we vote by filling in bubbles on a scantron with a black pen. I felt like I was back in school, a feeling that was only reinforced by the fact that I was in a school. I knew the state had gotten some of those electronic voting machines, but they weren't in my precinct. The only high-tech thing in the entire place was the machine that you stuck the scantron into, which was rather cool-looking. I wonder if the old people had problems filling in the little bubbles? Speaking of old people, I didn't see a single person under 40 besides me. Every time I've gone to vote I've never seen another person under 40. I hope it's that they are voting at different times from me or using absentee ballots rather than that they are not voting...

I read another angst-filled Gundam Seed fic. Ah, that fandom is just so much fun, it's so OOC and AU. It just blows my mind how melodramatic these fics get. And they all like to dwell on the same types of AU premise, and some go really over-the-top. The one I read last night was of the silly variety where Kira is being abused on his ship, but can't leave it due to his convictions or whatever, and wants to die. Does he go and put himself out of misery? NO. He wants Athrun to kill him in battle. But what always happens is he's captured instead of killed, and Athrun is desperate to see if he's safe, and he always resists. He demands to know why they aren't shooting at him since he's a captive with a gun. My question is always why he doesn't use the gun to shoot himself when he realizes he's captured? But then you can't have the tender and angsty moments with Athrun later on. They must be like a soap opera, with passion and pain, love and hate, joy and despair! I think an interesting variation would be if Kira does shoot himself and Athrun goes MAD. Then he can (in grand Gundam fashion) go out and DESTROY THE WORLD. Or at least PLANT.

I visited one of my bookmarked PoT fanfic sites, and found out it had been closed. *sigh* And of course I didn't save the fics. I don't even remember if I bookmarked it because it was really good or because it was just interesting in some way. This reminds me again to go and save everything I think is cool online, because you never know when things will just disappear.

At least I can be consoled when my amazon japan order comes in this week. I am really looking forward to that box. ^_^

108 painful, dark and erotic topics

One of the sites I visit has put up the "108 painful, dark and erotic topics" on her under page. It amused me since 108 is 801 (which can be read "ya-o-i") backwards. Some of the topics are very standard and to be expected, but some of the topics are interesting. I did a translation as a short exercise for my brain since I was not translating at all for the last week or so. It was fun to try to chose a single word or short phrase to appropriately convey the Japanese meaning for this particular theme. Still not quite satisfied but...

( 108 painful, dark and erotic topics )

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I noticed I still had the manga I borrowed from my friend like almost a year ago, the two volumes of 17 Murder by Nanase Kai. I know this artist mainly as one with pretty good art who does mostly cute stories like Bara no Kaitou. Sweet Lunacy supposedly is doing the scanlation for this one. It reminds me a bit of Sono Toki Heart wa Nusumareta with the Phantom Thief seme and attractive uke, but with less appealing characters. It's still a light, fun read tho. In any case, 17 Murder is a very different manga for her. It's serious, angsty, with violence and a good amount of sex--Aestheticism has a review of it. Surprisingly, I couldn't find anyone doing a scanlation. I should really return the manga to my friend, since I've had it for a while and I'll eventually pick up my own copy. It's a pretty ludicrous story but fun to read. ^_^

Speaking of ludicrous, I read a Hikago AU that described itself as a AkiHika Harlequin Romance. Since I have never read one, I can only assume they are silly, overwrought and contrived stories because this fic was like that. The climax of the story was Akira breaking into the bad guy's house to challenge him to a duel with bamboo swords to save Hikaru's honor. It was a short, silly thing, and I don't really know why I read it.

Well...actually, I do. It's because I read a WIP AU that was actually interesting good on the same site, but because it wasn't finished I was searching around for something else to read in the meantime. I didn't want to read the two long Hikako fics (Hikako fic=a fic where Hikaru is a girl), so I was stuck with the Harlequin romance. I hope the author finishes the pretty interesting AU soon. She made Hikaru's family into a rich and established family. Due to his family's wealth he is isolated (since his family is too busy to be with him, he has bodyguards with him always and the teachers at school treat him differently). So when Hikaru meets Sai he's like a godsend for his loneliness. He does not go to the go salon and play Akira, so they don't meet till much later. In fact, they don't meet face to face until their first game as pros, after Sai had disappeared. This is supposed to be a romance, but so far there isn't any romance so I'm looking forward to finding out what happens. This author isn't very good, in that she seems to do too much telling and not enough showing, and tends to hurry along the narrative too much without letting it unfold, but I want to know where she takes the story.