insaneneko

Time by Pyjamas, Ouran Koukou Host Club, Kyouya/Tamaki.

Five Domestic Moments by LaFemmeDarla, Howl Series by DWJ, Sophie/Howl.

On Fresh Air: Lucas Looks Back On Movie-Making, talking about his new book George Lucas's Blockbusting: A Decade-by-Decade Survey of Timeless Movies Including Untold Secrets of Their Financial and Cultural Success as well as his early days as a filmmaker. Imagine watching Star Wars with NO SPECIAL EFFECTS? It'd be so hard to see the potential, I'd think.

ETA3: Added TRC figurines and Square Enix The World of Mana (what is this anyhow?) plushies

ETA2: Added a Hikago Sai fan keyholder and xxxHOLIC/TRC stamp set.

ETA: I found another mug cup in a random drawer while cleaning today. T_T It's a Karekano Pero Pero mug cup I already have and use....Why I have two, I don't know. In any case, see below for pics.

While digging through my closet I discovered the mother-lode of goods I'd pretty neatly stuck into a bunch of boxes. They were kind of heavy and took up a good amount of room, so I decided to cull. A lot of it was easy because I had this horrible habit of buying two sets of stationary...So there are lots of letter sets below. I also found things that baffled me. Why the hell would I have bought them? I realized that some of them were given to me, thus explaining their presence without me having to resort to a temporary lapse in judgement. In any case, I did a mad run of picture taking and uploading of stuff I wouldn't mind parting with.

Prices are in US dollars, they don't include shipping. Some of the items (such as the mugs and bowl) are heavier, thus will cost more to ship. I may also have to buy a box or a package to send these things safely. Please don't ask how much postage will be...I won't know until I go to the post office. I don't have a scale, unfortunately. I'd prefer payment in postal money orders for those in the US. If anyone outside of the US wants any of this stuff, I'd prefer international money orders. I'd like Paypal to be a last resort.

Warning: Lots of images under the cuts

( hello kitty phone strap )

( hello kitty/nana fastener )

( wolf's rain t-shirt )

( pot clear cd case, pouch, pencil board, wristband, fan-made goods )

( kkm fastener, letter set )

( ouran fastener, notebooks )

( fma mugs, bowl, figurine, double file, hand towels )

( fushigi yuugi letter set )

( princess princess notepad )

( matsumoto temari minicard cases )

( saiyuki postcard set, letter set )

( morimoto shuw notepad )

( sugiura shiho koori no mamono notepad )

( CLAMP mokona mugs, TRC letter set, gouhou drug postcard, xxxHOLIC/TRC stamp set, TRC figurines in Mokona containers )

( matantei loki ragnarok plushie, minicard set, hand towel, letter set )

( hikago clock, pencil case, cards, sticky notes, plushies, notepads, fan-made stickers, Sai fan keyholder )

( karekano hand towel, mug cup )

( cafe kichijouji de letter set, postcard set, notepad )

( loveless postcard )

( angel sanctuary letter set )

( fruitsbasket )

( dn angel sticker book )

( yami no matsuei minicard set )

( rurouni kenshin letter set )

( genjuu bunshou by narushima yuri letter set )

( oh my goddess! letter set )

( Great Place High School (manga by Koujima Naduki) postcards )

( mirage of blaze fan-made letter set )

( square enix the world of mana plushies )

Sorry the pics are not that great. I tried retaking when they were really bad, but I couldn't get good shots of some of the stuff. :P

Shiny Haru wo daiteita pimp post! With pics! It's funny and makes me want to reread the series...

Eat Your Heart Out by rageprufrock is a terribly fun Doumeki/Watanuki fic. It starts with Doumeki getting a not-very-good pink bento for lunch. Watanuki flails and spazzes, then ends up kind of despondent. There is timely intervention and all ends well.

Only More Stupid by scratchmist is a cute Ouran fic featuring Kyoya and Tamaki. It's a delightful look into Kyoya's head as he first learns to deal with Tamaki. While a bit jerky at times, the shininess far outweighs those minor blips. XDXD

worldserpent linked to a great post about why the OP prefers print media over audiovisual media along with offering her own comments. I can never follow TV shows for long because I can't keep up the effort to follow them week after week. But what really drives me more towards books are a) that I can read at my own pace and b) that I can get into the character's heads more. More on those points:

a) Not only do I often chafe at having to watch shows real time, it's a lot harder to easily skip around. I am told that I read pretty damn fast, so I can get through a lot more story and character in a shorter amount of time through reading. Also, I sometimes like to skip around instead of plowing through from beginning to end. It's a lot easier to flip to the last five pages of a book and read them, go back a chapter and read that, go back to where I had stopped reading and pick up from there, etc. It helps me sustain interest when the material is not engaging me. I've tried with TV shows/movies/anime and always got frustrated at all that I missed (I think it's easier to scan the words even while quickly flipping and catch significant passages than catch the significant moments while fast forwarding) and having to go back anyway. Which causes me to get bogged down at the boring parts...

b) Lately I read a lot of trashy BL novels, which are full of cliches and kinks and stupid plots/characters. What keeps me from truly getting disgusted at the whole genre? In novels I can get into the character's head, which lets me become more sympathetic to his actions/reactions. Yes, often the internal narrative is exasperating as well, but it provides a context that can explain the stupidity of what occurs next. I know I wouldn't give half the BL novels I read a chance if it was an anime or a manga that was skimpy on the thoughts. In any case, I love bonding with the characters (particularly the main character). That is made so much easier when I can get into their heads.

Some fics of note:

Doumeki/Watanuki drabble from drabble_trade--Short and tasty.

House of a Hundred Regrets by Shiyo is a Doumeki/Watanuki fic I wanted to like, and do like portions of. Great premise, nice conclusion. The execution...made me pause every so often. Nice use of details to create the setting...except when the detail threw me out of the fic...

May the Best Man Lose by aishuu is Tamaki/Kyouya/Haruhi about what happens when two from a triangle chose each other.

The Earl's Folly by Compass Rose is a Count Cain/Godchild Riff/Cain rather explicit fic that...Frankly, I tend to think of Riff/Cain as one of those not sexual but totally romantic devoted bondings type of relationships. In other words, with no sex at all. So I never had much of a reason to go looking for the smexing...But if they were going to get it on, I can imagine it being something like this.

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Stuff that interested me in an old issue of Pafu:

Seeing an article and interview of Teikoku Kyoudai by Kaji Eiri made me curious about it again. It's a Tosuisha manga that looks like something that I may like, but...I never did bother to actually check it out. Unfortunately, aarianfantasy only has the Chinese scans so I can't preview before committing to buying to even see. Oh well.

Two manga reviews:

Katana 1 by Kamata Kimiko is a shojo title about the heir of a swordsmithing family (his grandfather is a Living National Treasure) who isn't interested in swordsmithing because being a swordsmith is not normal and made it hard for him to make good friends. He is actually good at it, plus he has the ability to see manifestations of the "personalities" of swords. Doesn't it sound interesting?

Renzu-goshi no binetsu (A Slight Fever Through Lenses) by Kaiya Tatsumi is about a hetare megane otaku who's loved his childhood friend (whom he calls "Fumi-chan"!) forever. That alone...makes me very interested. I love hetare megane types who have those kind of hetare unrequited loves...It's only because of an external factor that things start to change...

An advertisement:

Empress of Sirius had an interesting blurb and illustrations by Zaou Taishi, but one of the Amazon reviewers mentioning that the author isn't a very good writer makes me back away from it...

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I was flipping through a magazine not associated with celebrities or media much and laughed at the photo spread on some guy named Matsumoto Jun, whom I swear I've read squeeing over on LJ somewhere...I laughed because the pictures are so...not pornographic per se, but...so oozing the "I am hot young thing wearing lip gloss (it really looks that way!), aka jailbait" thing.

( they are pretty large (if crappy) scans )

Andante Grazioso (Portrait of a Pianist #1) by petronia is a lovely little Ouran fic. I'm not even sure how to describe it (besides "lovely" and "little"), but it did make me want an outstanding recording of the Sonata in A Major...

Damn Cool Pics is a blog that features pictures around some theme. Pimped Japanese Trucks was particularly...interesting...

bookshop pimps Hikago. Anytime someone passionately pimps Hikago I can't help but grin like mad. I haven't watched/read it in ages...perhaps it's time to rectify that...

prillalar tunablogs. I have a terrible urge to get tuna NOW.

erinslashslut pimps the cutest sounding children's book featuring a cat. Too bad it's #@!$^^^& out of print!!!

leviosa8 pimps the PoT Christmas bromide collection. Thanks to her persuasive (and really funny) pimp, I went to the trouble of joining tenipuri to see the gay glory of it all. I thought I was prepared for the gay, but I was wrong. It was far, faaar gayer than I could have ever imagined. I think my favs were Oshitari and Atobe on horse. Tezuka's disturbed me. minkyleigh posted one that wasn't in the tenipuri post, as well as the figures that came with it.

I was clearing my tabs when I came across a Japanese Ouran fic I had read a while back and had saved. I figured I'd post about it and ended up going around looking for more fanfic and fanart sites. Found a whole bunch which I'm posting in this jumbled up mess of a post. ^^;

First, the fanart:

courante has some cute retarded Tamaki pics. First, I love the eyes on ma (welcome to the world of dreams), the mushrooms on kinoko (jimejimetamaki go!), and the happiness of otousandamon (I'm the daad!!).

iridescence jewel has pics of various characters. My favorites are a really cute Tamaki/Haruhi pic (Tamaki's "This is a French style way of greeting" with a side of "Is that for real?!!") and a cool progression of a Kyouya/Tamaki pic from sketch to coloring to shading to the really cute "dialogue" at the end (Kyouya: Why don't you close your eyes during a kiss at least? Tamaki: K...Kyouya...Should you be doing this on the index page...ahhh...)

spica has some great Kyouya/Tamaki illustrations and manga. My favs:

Ringo no uta (the apple's song)

Tamaki: Do you know? It feels like getting gooseflesh.
Tamaki: And then it gets all hot behind your eyes
Tamaki: And you don't know how to breathe
Tamaki: Yes! And as though there are stars flashing at the back of your eyes, like...
Kyouya: "Exactly like that?"
sfx: ka (flush)

"I'm only looking at you. Come here right now and kiss me." *

(*The line is from Shiina Ringo's song "Koko de kiss shite." I went on a major tangent because I adore this song very very much, found out I don't have this song on my computer or elsewhere (;_;), found the PV on youtube, looked for Japanese lyrics, hated the English translations I came across and did my own quick and direct and not so literal version: ( romaji and translation intermixed )

BTW, the title page is also a line from the song: "everything, your long eyelashes and your delicate and large hands" XD

...I need this song so, so much.)

Wechseltransfusion is a Kyouya/Tamaki vampire AU:

( translation lacking much of the sfx (sorry!) )

Love love love priest Kyouya and vampire Tamaki! XD

And last but not least, a very nicely colored pic of Mori!

桧笠屋 (Higasa-ya) has some cute pics. My favorite is actually a PoT pic called Megane. Love Atobe explaining: He's the megane of Hyoutei! Don't need more than one megane at one school. Aaan? to a data taking Inui and a dumbfounded looking Tezuka. XD I also like the Saiyuki Sa Gojyou birthday one.

And onto the fics (all Japanese and all Kyouya/Tamaki):

Cherry & Cherry has a very languid feel to the writing. Sometimes it works really well, sometimes it feels slow and pointless. It worked in 西瓜 in which there is a really funny shiritori game that really showcases Tamaki's retardnesses, 赤 which made me laugh out loud while marveling at how well the details bring out and amplify the atmosphere of the simple scene, ブラック in which Kyouya complains internally about the crap that is instant coffee among other things, and 夢の境界 in which dreams and reality are mixed up in the best possible manner EVAR.

Boogie Back has this one really great fic, 真夏の夜の夢. Tamaki wins by virtue of being Tamaki. Also, I adore references to him missing his mom, especially done very sweetly and simply.

I've only read one fic at MP so far, but it was very very interesting. 病床パブリック has the very overused kidnapping and assault premise, but its dry tone and very Tamaki-like Tamaki and Kyouya-like Kyouya made it a compelling read for me.

Helpless Flower only has a couple of stories. Unfortunately, the author's endings need some work (they aren't bad, but they just aren't....good...if that makes any sense) but several of the stories were worth reading regardless: Ｘ＞O2 is Kyouya and Tamaki hanging out. I love the moment when during a kiss Kyouya notices Tamaki trembling, ends the kiss and tells Tamaki to breathe. Exasperated at Tamaki's akwardness, he thinks that all he'd have to do to kill Tamaki is to kiss him to death. 浸染願望 has the twins, bored, choosing to play with Tamaki. They trick him into thinking he has to dye his hair "for the club." I love the color it ends up as and his and Kyouya's reactions.

jkm has two stories, one a friendship and one an unrequited love. The friendship one, 休日, is rather adorable. It has Tamaki bumming over Kyouya's house and falling asleep on Kyouya's bed. Kyouya, rather put out, doesn't want to sleep on a guest futon in his own room, so sleeps in the bed as well. He groggily wakes up to a very awake Tamaki who greets him with a cheery "I have no idea why I'm sleeping in the same bed as you, but good morning!" Kyouya, grumpy, decides he isn't going to deal with Tamaki and tries to go back to sleep. Tamaki gently strokes him a, a lullaby of touch, and tells him "good night." (...okay, it was waaay sweeter reading it than summarizing it. *sighs*)

In my fruitless search for the evil-Pafu-issue-that-has-decided-to-hide-from-me that resulted in the previous best rankings post, I came across an issue from 2004 with Ouran running smack down the middle of the cover in very large text. I put it aside for further browsing at a later point. When I did finally take a look the feature was not all that interesting. It was (in my mind) an intro type of thing with a one page interview that didn't say much. Though...the character intros were interesting because they did an analysis of each character based on horoscopes and blood types. Typical Japanese obsession with those types of things. XD BUT the interview mentioned a previous interview from the 2003 rankings issue. I had that one in a separate pile already so I whipped it out.

Turns out Ouran started off as a one-shot, with the possibility for serialization if the reception was good enough. It won the one-shot award in 2002, which is why the Hatori-sensei was interviewed that year. Now that was a good interview with lots of those back-of-house type tidbits I enjoy learning about. When Hatori-sensei was first formulating the story/characters, Haruhi was supposed to be a guy. She (Hatori Bisco is a woman, right?) wanted to do an all-guy type of thing, and thought that having one girl would be a difficult proposition. Her editor had also brought that idea up but at that point she was adamantly against it. She felt that a female character in such a situation would have to be quite a character to be loved by readers. But the moment she thought of Haruhi's father and Haruhi's personality she was sold on having a female character. I'm glad she held out against her editor and went with her instincts. If Haruhi wasn't Haruhi I wonder if I'd like the series...

Ouran came into being when Hatori-sensei's editor asked if she wouldn't want to do a work that featured lots of boys. Hatori-sensei confesses that she had secretly wanted to a school club with a silly flavor to it ever since seeing the movie "Waterboys." I've never seen the movie, but from what I've heard about it I couldn't help but laugh that she was sort of inspired by it. XD

The characters were created in this order: Haruhi --> Tamaki --> the twins --> Honey --> Mori --> Kyouya. She didn't come up with any other characters as possible substitutes for the original seven.

I love how perfunctory the naming of the characters was/is. She had that commoner's perception that a rich person's last name was either long or noble sounding. She claims that Tamaki just looked like "Suoh Tamaki" when she sketched him. "Hitachiin" came from the place name "Hitachi." She wanted to use the nickname "Honey" so came up with "Haninozuka," same with "Mori" and "Morinozuka." Ohtori she pulled from a dictionary. Guest character names are pulled from the dictionary and/or place names.

One aspect of portraying a rich kids' school was that even as she wanted to draw rich people and their lives in such a way that made people vehemently deny such things were possible, she had to keep some sort of feeling of reality to ground it.

Hatori-sensei has a vague idea for the end of the series (or did at the time of the interview), but added that it might change because she wanted to respond to reader wishes and comments.

After that the interview got into more personal topics that frankly don't interest me at all. I wonder if she did more interviews after the two I discovered? I'd think so, especially since it has been animated. Hmmm....While having tons of back issues can be bad in regards to storage space, it's also really nice to be able to dig through and find stuff that didn't interest me at the time but now I want to know more about. XD

Speaking of the anime, I have episodes 25 and 26 on my computer but have been hesitating to watch them. I can't believe it's ending. I can't say for certain since I haven't seen to the end, but what an amazingly well done adaptation this has been. ^^

Listened to the Loveless vocal album and the second Ouran vocal album and soundtrack (former downloaded from here) coming into work today. My impressions:

( Loveless )

( Ouran )

Things that made me happy and/or amused:

• Pretty art by Minami Haruka


• (English) TezuRyo fics:
  
  Two Princes by Poi, in which the two are princes. Snarky and fun.
  
  Forte fic by Kish, in which they are pianists. Subtle and gorgeous.
  
  Waiting Is by cimorene is just incredibly good. *_*
  
  Fool's Paradise by Ria is full of dream sequences, the confusion of reality and fantasy, and truelove.
  
  for thine eyes are glass, and this my shattered heart by Ria has a old married couple-ish TezuRyo, and a Tezuka that talks to Karupin. How is that not love?


• The idea that people are reading fics through regender, which will change pronouns and names (say John to Joyce or Elizabeth to Elias).


• The Once and Future Warning ( everyone who reads/writes fanfics should read this)


• Tampon ranting


• Japanese Ouran fics. I seem to have become a Kyoya/Tamaki fan before I realized it. XD Most of the sites sucked, but I did find several very squee-worthy ones:
  
  White Butterfly
  The site just opened, so it only has two fics. But they both have a lovely dry Kyoya POV.
  
  LEMONed　I　Scream
  I really like Together. Digustingly shojo, but so so pretty.
  
  skiss
  Joues roses. - 薔薇色の頬: That sweet, awkward time afterwards.