AIKBA! A day spent navigating up and down one cramped, crazy multisensory, multifloor store after another. Akiba, the venerable Mecca of otaku the world over, was a long street filled with tall skinny buildings all trying to outshout each other as throngs of geeks made their way down it, occasionally vanishing into one of the shining, gaping maws that awaited them. Was it an eye-opener? Most certainly. Would I want to go again? I'd say yes, but my wallet is sitting in a corner screaming "No! No! NO!" You figure it out.

We spent the day there, going in succession from Kotobukiya, K-Books, Gamers, Asobit Chara City, the @thome maid cafe, Toranoana, and Animate. Each of the shops was overflowing, absolutely overflowing, with varying portions of CDs, DVDs, games, manga, doujinshi, hobby kits and character goods. The madness didn't end where the merch did: the walls, the stairs, the gantries, even the interior of the damn lifts were literally plastered over with posters, ads, prices, and more anime than the eyes could stand. I didn't take many pictures of the places we went: where the hell would I start? Akihabara is not a place, it's an experience.

The absolute best part of our day was the time we spent in the maid cafe. We weren't actually planning on going, but we needed to find a place to sit down and sort through the stuff we'd bought, and we had been given directions to the place by my sister's otaku guy friend, so we decided to give it a try. What we found inside was a delight: the maids were cheerful and friendly, who held a rock-paper-scissors game for all the patrons, taught us to do a little "MOE, MOE, KYUNN~" handsign-and-chant thing before tucking into our sweets, and talked to us despite our general failure in speaking Japanese. One of the maids serving us saw us sorting through the b00bies doujin we'd bought and told us she was a fan of the series too (she liked Lockon and Patrick). When she saw the Tieria-centric ecchi doujin menelvir had bought for me, she said "Banshi ni attai suru!" Which was the title of the doujin, but left us all in a fit of senseless giggles anyway. menelvir asked another of the maids about the ring she was wearing which was this little thing with a faux macaroon on it, because she wanted to see if she could buy one like it. But it turned out that the girl had made it herself, and then she insisted on giving it to menelvir. Oh man! We left the cafe feeling slightly guilty about it, but also completely bubbly and giggly-- it gets infectious. I highly recommend visiting this cafe if you're ever in Akiba, it takes up several floors on a building on the left of the first big cross junction after coming out of the station. (@thome cafe's website)

The worst part of the day, if I had to say, was probably our time in K-books while we were browsing through the used CD section, which was also in the doujin and character good section. That place just gave off... weird vibes, from the body pillows on sale to the shelves of hentai stuff all over, and the men there who were giving us all sorts of strange looks. We three were the only girls in that entire half of the store, and it felt really skeezy in a way that the normal, non-yaoi hentai doujin part of Toranoana didn't (even though the latter had ginormous nipples on display everywhere you looked. Everywhere, I assure you). Maybe guys would have been comfortable hanging up, but we certainly weren't.

What else can I say about Akiba? By the end of the day we had bags filled with anime merch of all sorts, gotten entirely sick of the theme songs to K-on (they were playing in every shop we went into. EVERY shop), and spent more money than we had capacity to not feel guilty for. I'm just thoroughly glad that I'm not a huge fan of any of the anime series that have come out this year, or I would be much, much poorer.

( Pictures of the shops, and my swag! )

And finally, a catalogue of the stuff that I couldn't take out and photograph in public. I have no idea why I thought making a video of it would be a good idea, since I hate my voice and how dumb I sound when I talk, but there you go.




Today's flickr stream: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jyyang/sets/72157618685353139/

Tomorrow: Ikebukuro, and a butler cafe!

PinkDot! My Very First GLBT Event was a blast, I ran into people I knew, I met a whole bunch of people I hadn't known. I met up and had dinner with an old secondary school classmate whom I hadn't caught up with in years, and whom I just found out was gay today. That was awesome. Hung out or met up with ataraxistence, forochel, renovak, htenywg, glazzal, malyntine, the usual #awaresg folks (@missbossy, @ctham, @bruincoffee, @bionic_creative, @Wolfgang_, @wynlim, etc.), plus a whole lot of other friends-of-friends and assorted folks, including someone I'd hooked up with on OkCupid (hi Kai Er!)

In other words, it was awesome. A great day spent in the company of many like-minded, open-minded and/or openly gay folks. I can't really put the scope of it into words, so I will let my photos (and videos!) do the talking.



( PHOTOS, 20+ OF THEM )


And now, I will leave you with this. Due to my abominable videography skills, and the fact that I tried shooting all my videos by waving my camera above my head and hoping I would get something good, all the videos I took turned out disjointed, random, and worthy of Blair Witch-eqsue motion sickness fits. So I tried to salvage the scraps by snipping them together and pasting music over them. At 1AM. On iMovie. A program that I actually have no idea how to use.

I was tempted to use "Free" by the Lighthouse Family as a backing track, but the Glambert won out in the end.

My Flickr set for this event (with larger versions of all the photos here)
ETA!: The actual Pink Dot! Via Twitter
Son of ETA! Official PinkDot video! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9gDazG4cC0 I'm in it @ 00:28 -- check out the stupid face I made!

Alright, for a change, here's something completely unrelated to the ongoing Aware saga. A photoshoot of my Pinky St. girls!

I have 7 of them at the moment: the first two whose photos I've already posted, then the three that I adopted from shinrei_24, and then finally the two who arrived last week. I'm thinking of getting two more: the one of the kid from The Sky Crawlers and this one named Caine.

Yes, I am rather obsessed with collecting these, it is clear.


Here's a couple from an older shoot of Ana-Marie and Collette, when they were the only two I had. Yes, they are a couple.


(The rest of the girls are just friends. ;))

Now this one is specially for pigtail78:

And poor Matt's all, "I guess I'm not getting any..." Bawwww.

OMG WHY AM I SLASHING AI CONTESTANTS NAO WTF JUNE WTFF

The Aware saga continues with MORE shenanigans. Fantastique!

First, earlier this week members got an email announcing that the venue for the Extraordinary General Meeting had been changed from the First Choice Auditorium in Toa Payoh to Hall 2 for the Singapore Expo. Fair enough, a crazy number of people have signed up in the past couple of weeks, and they need a big fat venue. Not much of a bigger fatter venue than a hall at the Singapore Expo, except maybe the National Stadium, and that's under construction.

But then it turns out that the new EGM venue is right smack beside a giant Christian convention comprising of 40+ churches, co-organized by Church Of Our Savior. The COOS have been actively encouraging their flock to sign up for this convention AND join Aware.

It doesn't take a genius to add two and two together, just saying.

If you think your blood pressure isn't high enough by this point, here's a PDF being circulated by the new exco detailing the pro-gay agenda of the old Aware, and how they're all OMG EVIL and doing all these EVIL, HORRIBLE THINGS. Somewhere perhaps, Karl Rove is sitting in a high-backed chair, his fingers steepled, as he intones "you have learned well, my disciples".

You know what I honestly think? The COOS' strongarm tactics are going to backfire against them. Even if they survive the vote of no confidence by sheer minion numbers overwhelming that of the concerned public (which is looking more and more likely by the day), I think they have ultimately doomed themselves.

It's no secret that the S'porean Govt has a very vested interest in keeping Singapore secular to all appearances (*cough* couldn't be a thorn in the side of our big and racially/culturally different neighbors now could we *cough*). If they won't even let non-religious opposition parties gain power in the country, what do you think they would think of ambitious, politically-powerful church groups? They are, without a doubt, monitoring this coup of a secular rights advocacy group very, very closely. And say what you want about our establishment, but dumb they are not. I think the COOS is starting to tread on thin ice.

For one, it's clear that the new exco are not gaining favor with the establishment here. Although the official statement from The Govt. was "Private matter, we will not interfere", and the real big-wigs have remained mum on their opinions, there have been encouraging signs: Minister of Community Development, Youth & Sport  Dr Vivian Balakrishnan urged for inclusiveness and a "rainbow coalition", Senior Minister of State for Education S. Iswaran defended the school sex-ed programmes that have come under fire from the new exco, and the Ministry of Education put out a glorious, glorious letter that was essentially a huge "fuck you" to Dr. Thio, insinuating that she was making shit up and would you please pony up with some fact to support the bullshit. (Seriously, verbatim: "MOE has contacted Dr Thio Su Mien to seek clarifications and facts to substantiate her claims." BURRRRRN)

Not exactly glowing endorsements.

Singapore, I think, is becoming increasingly less traditionally conservative, especially as the rest of the world progresses towards acceptance of gay rights. While it may be 20, 30 years before we even think about legalizing gay marriage, homophobia is pretty much falling out of vogue, especially with the establishment. Organizations such as the COOS will be finding their radical views less and less accepted by the man on the street, particularly as the current generation of Web 2.0, information-saavy kids grow up and come into their own. Which is something that gives me hope, despite all the gloom and doom.

It'll be interesting to see how this develops. Definitely interesting.

(Also, I am LOLing heartily over Dr Vivian B's co-opting of "rainbow coalition", as I approve of anything that reminds me of NOM and their ridiculous, blatantly fake "OMG THE GAY STORM IS COMING" ads. Particularly Stephen Colbert's winning parody.)

One more before I go. A lovely video from the old guard:


Love that they've gotten people from all races to participate in this one. Sign up. Turn up. And vote. ♥

ETA: EGM venue changed yet again! Now in Suntec! My inner skeptic and egotist? Is telling me that this was done after WayangParty's exposé blew the new exco's cover open all over Twitter and the blogosphere. How will this affect events? I have no idea, man. I shall consult my Magic 8 ball... "cannot say now"? BAH, FLAKER.

This is a continuation of my post from yesterday, about the ongoing power struggle in Aware, which has very quickly turned into a raging Christian-fundies-versus-sane-people movement online. I spent a large part of yesterday reading links, posting to Facebook/Twitter and talking to people about this subject. Here's a quick summary of online-things I found yesterday which I think an important read.

A bunch of spotlights on the shenanigans of the new guard: stir thy outrage!

• An excellent post by dogemperor, on the truth behind the Church Of Our Savior: Steeplejack of AWARE (women's org) in Singapore by Joel's Army church
• Particularly rage-inducing email also linked in above post, in which a pastor from CooS urges his flock to join Aware: COOS Pastor Shawn Tay rallying troops to support new exco at EGM in the name of “Singapore” (this email made me gag in particular. "Responsible females"? Could you use language that is any more offensive?)
• New exco attempts to lock old guard out of Aware office: Showdown at AWARE office over lock change by new exco
• Aware's centre managed fired for "insubordination", replaced by CooS member: Aware's public education officer quits ("quits"? She was FIRED, there wasn't any choice in it)

In interviews with the Straits Times (Singaporean context: largest, oldest and most respected English daily paper), the new exco have denied that their power grab was planned beforehand, and vehemently denied that their church had got anything to do with it at all. Yes, I'll believe that. Nope, no significance to the fact that six of the new exco are all members of the same church, none at all. After all, they didn't know each other from before! And the fact that new center manager they appointed is also a member of the church? Nyet, also must be coincidink. Next thing we know, they'll be selling us title deeds to the Benjamin Sheares bridge for fundraising!

Links that, at least, give a glimmer of hope:

• Insightful op-ed from Straits Times: Aware Saga: A new militancy emerges (a must-read!)
  
• Sign the petition! Even if you can't go for the EOGM, even if you're not Singaporean, you can show your support for the old guard by joining the 1300+ signatures here: Save AWARE! Gender equality for all!
• Online drive to cancel DBS credit cards in protest against new Aware president Josie Lau, who heads the marketing team for said credit cards: Mr Wang Says So: AWARE - And Why You Should Cancel Your DBS Credit Cards
  Note that I don't condone this: as a form of protest, I think it hits the wrong people (DBS, who had nothing to do with this and in fact protested--first privately, and then very publically-- Josie Lau's intention to head Aware). And I honestly don't think it's right to jeopardize Josie Lau's job just because we don't agree with something she's done. My take on it is that it runs counter to everything this protest is about! OTOH, it's good to know what other people are doing in protest. At the very least, it shows just how passionate folks are about this issue. And that's not entirely a bad thing.
• Fresh from the Internets! No! Don't cancel your DBS credit card! This surfaced on Twitter while I was typing out this post, and agrees that canceling cards is not really the sort of protest we want to go for. Good.
  

So what did I take away from all this? It's not all that easy to sum up. I can say that the bottom line is this: the words and the actions of the new exco, particularly the juicy tidbits that came to light yesterday, have completely destroyed any chance for their redemption in my eyes. It's not even a Christian-fundies-vs-gay-rights issue anymore. At this point, I wouldn't care if these women hailed from the Church Of The Flying Spaghetti Monster or the Communist Party of North Korea: what they have done is sleazy, sleazy, sleazy. I care about the rights of women, and these power-grabbing, lock-changing, despotic closed-door shenanigans are most emphatically not the actions of a group that hold the best interests of all women at heart.

The fight for gender equality is still very much relevant in these supposedly-enlightened days where women can vote and a black man can sit in the White House. In a poll published in the Straits Times today, 48% of respondents said that the Aware issue was "women fighting amongst themselves". Women fighting amongst themselves, is that it? If the situation were different and it were one group of men snatching power from another, would people on the street dismiss it as "men fighting amongst themselves"? Hint: just pick a history book, any history book, and look inside. How many of those male-instigated and male-led conflicts are described as "men fighting amongst themselves"? You got it right, none. I quote, from the ST article, a certain bank consultant Lim Boon Heng (aged 42) who was interviewed: "I think this issue is about women who are overzealous about a certain issue. They are trying to use their existing network to influence the public." Whoah nelly. Psssst Mr Lim, I don't know if anyone's told you yet, but your MCP is showing. You don't have to thank me.

The madness needs to stop. Aware still has a long ways to go in fighting for gender equality here, and the underhanded actions of the new exco have not just thrown suspicion upon their intentions; they have tainted the good name and standing of a 25-year-old organization that has been doing important and excellent work. Allowing them to get away with this would be to the detriment of women all over Singapore.

If you want to find out more, or find out how you can take part in the vote of no confidence against the new exco next Saturday (2nd May!), Save Aware is an excellent resource! A couple of my friends have actually expressed concern over joining Aware--as one of them said, "What happens if the vote fails? I don't want my money supporting the new exco". And I agree that this is an issue (one I didn't even think of!), and it's a veritable large-scale Prisoner's Dilemma: if you join the organization and the vote fails, the money will be in the hands of the new exco. Yet the vote is more likely to fail if like-minded people don't show up in large numbers and vote. So what to do? Ultimately, it's up to the individual to decide. Myself, I'm banking on sanity prevailing, and the vote succeeding. I've already thrown my lot in with Aware, at any rate, and even if the vote doesn't go through I will continue to fight, and rally people to fight, in whatever ways I can.

It was khaosworks who first brought this to my attention via a Facebook link, and I've spent the day being rather upset by it. I've posted it to ontd_political already, but I feel I must post it here as well.

Okay. Let's start with some background, first, for those who are not Singaporeans. About a month ago, the local (Singaporean) chapter of AWARE, an advocacy group for women's rights, had its AGM. A whole slew of new members turned up, overwhelmed the old guard by sheer numbers, and voted an almost-entirely new executive committee into power.

The new exco began by cutting out older and more experienced members from leadership and subcommittee positions. They weren't being open on what their agenda was, and what it was they were planning to do with the organization. Keen-eyed local bloggers noted that the new exco had previously published anti-homosexual opinions in public forums, there was a lot of speculation that the new exco was trying to subvert the purpose of AWARE by turning it into an anti-gay group.

Now? They've come clean with their intentions. In a press conference, the organizer of the coup, senior layer Thio Su Mien, explicitly stated that she was "disturbed by what she saw as signs that [Aware] was promoting lesbianism and homosexuality", and was moved to take action against "Aware's attempts to redefine marriage and families".

First of all, that is such utter BULLSHIT. Aware is a women's rights group, which campaigns for the welfare of all women, including--you guessed it! LESBIAN WOMEN! Just because Aware is accepting of gay women--a group of women who face more discrimination than heterosexual women-- does not mean that they are ...what was it? "Promoting lesbianism". What the fuck does that even mean? Promoting being gay? That's like saying they're promoting being black. Or being Indian. People don't just wake up and decide that they're gay, FFS. Get a clue, we aren't living in the 1950s any longer!

IN ADDITION. The way she says it, it's like helping out lesbian women is the only thing Aware does. WRONG, TRY AGAIN. Aware is a secular group that aims to help all women--whether in school, the workplace or at home. I wasn't even a member until last week and I know this. That these people have decided to co-opt a women's rights group to push their decided bigoted agenda is both horrifying and infuriating.

Yeah, I haven't hit the bottom of the barrel of stupidity yet. I'll let the soundbites speak for themselves. Presenting: the opinions of Dr. Thio:


ON AWARE'S SEXUALITY PROGRAMME



AN ENTIRE GENERATION OF LESBIANS?


REFOCUSING ON ORIGINAL PURPOSE OF AWARE



There are so many things that are wrong with her statements that I don't even know where to begin. Her comments are such a black hole of close-minded bigotry and "I DO NOT THINK YOU KNOW WHAT THAT WORD MEANS", approaching them with any semblance of logic will cause instant collapse. Bad analogy, I know, but I'm so angry I don't quite care.

Here, have some links!

The Original Source
Sidebar (speech nuggets of WTFery!)
More background on the entire incident
Post I made to ONTD_P, full of incoherent rage!
It's been Boinged too! Interesting take on it from an outsider's perspective



The existing members of Aware, however, are not just sitting by and idly doing nothing. There's going to be an extraordinary General Meeting on the 2nd of May where there will be a petition for a vote of no confidence in the new exco. All female members, old or new, are welcome! Membership for Aware is SG$40 for a year, $25 if you're a student. You can sign up at their website or at their offices.

I joined Aware last week and I will definitely be going for the EOGM. So, Singaporean sisters! If equality for all women matters to you, and you have the time and money to spare, do consider joining Aware and making your voice heard at the EOGM! I'll be there, at the very least. Join me!

So this is how I spent my Valentine's Day evening. Getting drunk with a bunch of kids at my sister's 21st birthday chalet party.

In short: it was good eatings, and good fun. The chalet we rented, at Pasir Ris, was large and well maintained (except for the walls, which badly needed a fresh paint job), came with a functional kitchen and its own BBQ pit, and was all in all good value for money. My sister invited some dozen-odd friends, a small core of which--mostly the crazy anime-watching otaku geek gang-- stayed over and somehow managed not to burn things down.

Came back yesterday, spent the day alternatively uploading photos and videos to Flickr, napping to make up to the lack of sleep the night before, and prepping this post. (And catching The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button at the cinema, but that's a whole other story.)

Saturday evening to Sunday morning. The essence of madness distilled and bottled, to go with chips and cake. Good things come with age.

Here's the formula.

1. You take a bunch of otaku kids for whom default mode is preset to "crazy".


2. You add copious amount of this.
   


3. Shenanigans result.

Here are pictures of the mayhem, numbering 30-odd, handpicked out of the literal hundreds that were taken that night.

( The BBQ )

( THE CAKE WAS A LIE )

( CHOCOLATE HULK SMASH!!! )

( Games, games, games )

( The Crystal Apple Puzzle )


We also sat around telling ghost stories in the dark, which didn't work out because my sister had somehow expected the army boys she'd invited to not tell the scary army ghost stories that every army boy hears of during the two years he's serving his National Service. Then we progressed to sitting in a circle and telling lame jokes, dirty jokes, or lame and dirty jokes.

That went down a lot better.

(Unfortunately, no pictures or video of either event exists because everything I took with my camera during that period turned out pitch black, with huge red splotches all over. And there was this mysterious little girl in white hanging in the background....)

PRESENTS!
I feel obliged to share this, the most epic of gifts that my sister's BFF got for her. While I'm glad that I managed to capture down her LOLWUT OMFG!!!! DDDDDD: reaction for posterity, I am quite dismayed that after several months I still haven't figured out that flipping my camera horizontally while filming will result in video that will be irreversibly rotated.


I took photos of the inside as thurisaz83 flipped through it in utter bemusement. NSFW, unless pictures of two guys having buttsex while the bottom grinds against a third gagged & bound guy on the bed are par for the course for your office (in which case, where the hell do you work, and are you guys looking to hire a writer by any chance?)

( And from your lips he drew the Hallelujah... )

Other presents included a giant calculator you could kill a kitten with, phrasebooks for making out in Japanese, fluffy Mokona slippers, a SD Gundam00 doujin and A Brief History Of Time. Yes. Of the whole pile of presents, the only one that approached any semblance of normality was a book about quantum mechanics written by Stephen Hawking.

Also, we had a surprise frog invasion.

And now, I provide the concluding statements for my Alcohol + Geeks == MAYHEM thesis.

( Alcohol + Geeks == Mayhem )


My sister invited one of our cousins, who brought along a friend. They were the only normal people at the party, the poor things.

Their reactions for most of the night looked something like this.


Poor normals.

So yesterday I picked up the August Animedia that came with the Meister beach poster that made the combined ovaries of the b00bies fandom explode when pictures were leaked to the Internet.

I scanned it.

The thing about it is that it's a thin, giant poster that was folded into eighths in order to fit the magazine. So not only did the poster come covered in creases, refuse to lie flat on the scanner, and crinkle itself to death everytime I tried to move it, it also had to be scanned in eight separate sections because the damn thing is big enough to use as gift wrap for my scanner should I ever decide to part it.

If I told you how long Deathscythe (shiny black new Wacom tablet) and I spent copy-pasting, joining & then liberally abusing the clone stamp tool on Photoshop to get rid of all the creases, shadows and crumple marks, you'd laugh at me. So I'm just going to give it to you guys in all its flawed, disrupted dot-matrix glory.

DOWNLOADS:
[300dpi (5.6MB)] [150dpi (1.1MB)][1280x960][1024x768][1280x780 (widescreen)]
(On YSI because MF was refusing to cooperate with me. Let me know if the links break)

This time around, I want to move away from the whole "thank me if you're snagging these" shindig. Let's try something way more interesting!

According togundam00, this illustration depicts Tieria, clad in Lockon's shirt, playing out scenes in his head as he reads a steamy BL book somehow involving the other Meisters beach-bound and bare-bodied. (Look closely. You'll see it.) Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to round-robin write the crappy, cliche-soaked, purple-prosed bodice(speedo?)-ripper that Tieria is reading.

As many variations as we can. Many different beginnings. Many different ways of playing out. Have fun with it, and each other! Could Tieria be reading a Choose Your Own PORN Adventure book?



ETA!
Summer Rendezvous On Meister Beach, ver 1, parts 1-21
Summer Rendezvous On Meister Beach, ver 1, parts 22-32+++
Summer Rendezvous On Meister Beach, ver 2 (with bonus Halle/Aeolia)


YOU GUYS ARE F'IN AWESOME, PLEASE DON'T STOP WRITING \o/

Hello, dearest readers.

Today's LJ post will consist of two parts. Please take part in the INTERACTIVE SECTION before proceeding to THE STORY. Thank you!

The Management



Poll #1186578 INTERACTIVE SECTION!
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All

The character with the blue hair is a:

( Now, proceed to THE STORY )

So in the office today we discovered that one of the producers had brought back a couple of boxes of chocolate from Taiwan. A couple of very... strange boxes of chocolate. With rather... interesting packaging. Named... PLAYCHOCO.



"Oh no, they didn't," you think.

Oh yes, they did.



To be honest we were actually disappointed that you couldn't unroll it to eat it like the genuine article. It was delicious, though. Pity that I've been spoilt by Hershey's dark chocolate Kisses so this came across as a tad too... creamy for me.

*is shot*

not with Irish cream

unfortunately

I made a couple more sketches in my Moleskine for the b00bies doujin anthology. I was trying to move on to incidentals & stuff, because where I fail in comicking it is at the backgrounds and prop details. VERDICT: I still fail at backgrounds and prop details.

An exercise in I HAVE NO FUCKING IDEA WHAT I AM DOING. Can't you tell I've never designed any mech in my life, ever? And then, all of a sudden, I realize I need long shots of a flying research institute and I don't know how to draw one. I grabbed a reference book on futuristic cars and spaceships from the office, but all the designs were so sleek and globular and totally at odds with the sharp, blocky designs in b00bies. In the end I gave up and drew a compromise of both. Which looks utterly fucking retarded. I was supposed to draw front/back and top views as well but by the time I finished this was so sick of it that I went I KNOW WHAT IT LOOKS LIKE IN MY HEAD AND I CAN DRAW IT FROM ANY ANGLE SO THERE. OTL



I was trying to practise drawing the interior of the spaceship because Kira knows I cannot draw backgrounds to save my life (the one time I tried to draw a 2-page DN doujin, I spent more time on the background of 1 panel than I did the rest of the comic). After this I have decided to cop out and make it all look futuristic and spacey by having every bulkhead look like it was stolen from the set of Star Trek, i.e. Spartan and bland. YOSH.

...and no, I'm not actually writing shotacon for the anthology. You only wish.

Perverts.




Now, anybody want to write me AlleTie shotacon involving the use of chocolate condoms? Anybody? Anybody? ....no? ...........er, what?

I am certain that this is terribly flawed, as has been told to me, but I have other things planned for the weekend so I wanted to get this out of the barn as quickly as possible. It's pointless, cracky smut, anyway. How wrong can you go with something which is meant to be pointless, nonsensical and intrisincally intellectually-deficit?

So please, douzo, have at it, and enjoy!


Title: 5 Tracks Of An Orchestral Arrangement Of Handel’s Messiah Chorus
Pigeonholing: Gundam b00bies, NC-17
Pairings: Allelujah/Tieria, Lockon/Tieria, hints of Setsuna/Exia, Hallelujah/Allelujah, Hallelujah/Tieria, Haro/Tieria, Haro/Lockon. (No, seriously.)
Warnings: Tieria has girlparts.
Disclaimer: Sunrise/Bandai own all. No, seriously, THEY. OWN. ALL.
Death Notes: Tieria gets a set of balls! Except that they're Ben Wa balls, courtesy of Allelujah Haptism. I wanted to write a fun, silly porny fic of absolutely no consequence, where all the Meisters have sex... without actually having sex. Dedicated to the lovely ali_chama, who helped me develop the, ahem, unfolding of events. Thanks to pigtail78 for looking it over!

( I: Percussion )
( II: Strings )
( III: Woodwind )
( IV: Solo Violin )
( V: The Brass )

For no good reason at all, I was catching up on the new season of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei, until I innocently got to the third episode. And. [insert copious keymashing here]

Screencaps.


...what. WHAT.

 
El oh el. PASH! is written by people who have been sampling of the good crack. There's never been a PASH! b00bies article that has failed to provide hours and hours of entertainment to my sister and myself. And this despite the fact that between the two of us we really only understand six words of Japanese (baka, hentai, yaoi, suteki, zetsubou, NANI?!). I mean, they made the Lockon x Haro pairing practically canon, goddamit.


No blood? She had Copic markers on her table but her gashapon figurines have NO BLOOD? Oh, fail.


♥


♥ ♥ ♥

I'll have to rewatch the whole thing again just for the (COMPLETELY UNRELATED AUDIO STORY) because I was paying too much attention to all the random series homages in the visuals to listen to the story they were narrating over the radio. Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei has been really rocking my socks this season. I think they're getting better at it.

Fujioshi-san reminds me of me so much, it's not even funny. FINE, RUB IT IN, I'M A TYPICAL YAOI FANGIRL (which I have just proven, perhaps, by staying up past midnight to watch anime). SHUT UP. I'M GOING BACK TO WRITE AND DRAW MY BOYPORN NOW, THANKS.

At least she stuck to her guns and wrote what she wanted, instead of writing what was popular. It's a credo that I, as a writer myself, aspire towards. Fuck paying the bills, eh?

Also, Momoiro Kakaricho Itoshiki-sensei needs to rail at at least one student this season and tell them that THEY ARE NOT FIT TO BE TAUGHT BY HIM. And then run off to commit sartorial suicide by dying his hair purple and putting on an unfashionable ladies' cardigan. The End.

One problem with reading a title called Good Scripts, Bad Scripts on the commute to and fro from work is that it has taken hostage of my fanbrain and forced me to think of scenes in terms of character, motivation, dialogue. I spent the whole of last night frantically scribbling down a sudden b00bies spec-fic as it occurred to me, then trying to flesh the beats into something resembling a fic. You might see the results sometime today.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share something I wrote about a month ago, anonymously, for the Gundam b00bies kinkmeme, the first b00bies fic I actually managed to complete (and within a day too, no less). Apparently, I'm the kind of writer who can only produce when a set of constraints are plonked on me.

I like this fic very much, and the people I've shown it to have liked it as well, so I just thought I'd share it generally. HAVE AT IT!

Title: Signal To Noise
Pigeonholing: Gundam 00, NC-17
Pairings: Lockon/Setsuna, Lockon/Allelujah, Allelujah/Tieria, (cos I'm a pairing whore)
Word Count: 3,000
Summary: Originally written for the Gundam 00 kinkmeme. The prompt lay along the lines of "Tieria gets off spying on the other Meisters having sex" and I delivered it done cyberpunk-style with servings of angst and Meister-whoring on the side. Come on, the whole thing is set inside a giant computer core, what else did you expect me to do but Gibson it up?

( 'He climbs into the womb and the world shifts.' )

It really sucks that just four days before our office moves into a jungled nothingness in the middle of the island, kingbitch and I realized on MSN that we work ten minutes away from each other. He said, "How about lunch right now?" and I jumped up, grabbed my purse, and headed for the door-- or something to that effect, in any case.

We had lunch in a cafe run by friends of his, which happened to be in the row of shophouses right next to my office. I'd wondered about it too, as I'd come back most days from lunch, since it had an interesting name: The Global Music Cafe. And would you know it, it was opened by friends of a friend from college. SMALL WORLD IS SMALL.

It was a great place to have lunch--a combination of good food, an intimate atmosphere, and reasonable pricing. Plus, they had musical instruments littered all over the place, including a miniature guitar that I messed around with (in better shape than my own classical, which hasn't seen a tuning fork in this side of two years). We talked about all the usual things: work, life, love, marine engineers. It' been about two years since we last met, I believe.

He told me that he'd mistaken me for a Japanese tourist from afar. ほんとに？そうですね。。。

I'm good.

The boss liked the program concept I submitted on Friday, which I've been working on for a bit. Boss said, execution stayed for another day! Yeah, things are shiny on the workfront. For now. We're probably moving from Chinatown to the heart of Nowhere sometime in the next week, after which I will get to enjoy a delightful four hours' worth of rush-hour commuting on a daily basis. Lack of time for the WIN.

I got the insurance agent over yesterday to sign up for a new policy. Nothing better than knowing that my sister will now get $100,000 in cash should she hire assassins to do me in. Mmmm, security.

This is the best show ever.

And now, since I haven't done this in a while, Japanese class sketch! I forgot to bring my usual DEATH NOTE to class, so I bought a thin, tiny sketchbook from Kinokuniya to take notes with. Sensei asked what I was drawing, I said, "...er, yaoi." Sensei looked quite alarmed.


Wolfram: Issho ni nemasen ka? (Shall we sleep together?)
Yuuri: Chotto.... (Errrr....)

June's mini-essay for Japanese class:
私は昨日の朝六時半に起きました。朝ごはんを食べました。それからMRTで会社へ行きました。仕事は九時から七時まで。午後一時半昼ごはんを食べました。昨日の晩どこも行きませんでした、家へ帰りました。餃子を食べました。それからテレビを見ました、それから寝ました。

We were supposed to give an account of how we spent our Friday, but I didn't know what "insurance agent" was in Japanese so I left that entire bit out. It looks impressive if you don't understand any Japanese. A six year old could write better than this.

After an agonizing wait of more than a week, the US$150 worth of doujinshi[1] I bought on an insane (and hopefully, one-time-only) spending spree arrived yesterday. All. At. Once.

US$150 of merchandise, by-the-by, looks something like this.


EPIC STACK OF DOUJINSHI DESU.

Want to know exactly what they are?

( 8 doujinshi and short reviews thereof. Which ones should I scan for deathnote_djs? )


...Speaking of doujinshi, just as I had resolved to stop with the buying, as my wallet could not withstand any more stress, people on my friendslist discover that somebody made a Supernatural doujinshi. I.E. Sam/Dean shounen-ai. With pretty manga art. IN JAPANESE.

Needless to say, RESOLUTION NOT ACHEIVED. My wallet hates me even more now.

And, speaking of Supernatural in Japanese, I must pimp out shibbyfangirl's new community for us folks both interested in SPN and Japanese culture: spn_japan!

Why Supernatural and Japanese stuff, you may ask? Because of the existence of things like these.


Sam & Dean. Speaking Japanese. My brain died; it was glorious. The community is friends-only so I encourage y'all to join and partake of the fun that is to come. I know that there are people who are into SPN and Japanese stuff on my friendslist, so-- JOIN US AND WE WILL RULE THE GALAXY TOGETHER!


~~June


[1] Doujinshi: You know how fangirls write fanfic? Japanese fangirls do the same thing. Except with pictures. In comic form. Which they publish. In book form. Other than that it's completely the same: the angstfic, the AU fic, the crack!pairing!fic, the deathfic, the WHAT-THE-HELL-WERE-YOU-SMOKING-WHEN-YOU-THOUGHT-THAT-UPfic. All gloriously familiar to anyone who's been in fandom for any length of time.

A couple of days ago, I was feeling emo and slightly Internet-sorry for myself, as several Supernatural fen had defriended me, presumably because I don't talk much about our show any more, and instead spend 90% of my time posting shit about anime and related sundries. I thought to myself, "I need to make more friends in my new fandoms, so that my journal will be interesting to people again!"

Lo and behold, five minutes after I had thought that thought: DN friending meme turns up on my flist! Apparently, the LJ fairy is looking out for me, which touches me very much.

So, hello shiny new friends, WELCOMESHIMASU to my humble and oftentimes chaotic LJ. I post verbosely, lurk a lot, dislike LJ-cuts and swear like a motherfucking sailor. Insanity swings by my place, lovingly and repeatedly.

THROW ME YOUR IM CONTACTS. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. I have been out of touch with too many people on my flist for too long. AIM, MSN, ICQ or YIM: I have this wonderful program named Trillian that supports them all.

For an introduction, I refer you to this post.

For a random poll, I refer you to this post.

For reasons as to why English football is making me sad at the moment, I refer you to this article. I'm not even a Blues supporter and I'm unhappy. I entered the multitudinous EPL-following ranks only last season and Jose Mourinho was, to me, a pillar holding up one of the four corners of the English Premier League, like a god, like an unassailable bastion. (Oh, the naivete of the n00b!) I liked him for being a) brilliant b) easy on the eyes, and c) a spouter of the certifiably BATSHIT INSANE. He was somewhat the Light Yagami of English football ("I AM THE SPECIAL ONE"), or maybe the Mello to Sir Alex Furguson's Near, and the game will be poorer without his nutcase soundbites to entertain us all.

As a side note, no power in the 'verse can stop me from cross-contaminating my fandoms.

If long periods of Internet-silence are forthcoming from me, it will be because I have a ever-increasing list of art WIPs that have piled up on my computer, and I'm getting around the coloring, grayscaling or otherwise processing them. They include

-a one-shot doujin for forochel
-Chibi River for groovy
-a new LJ header for myself
-2 L/Light-ish drawings inspired by Gackt's Vanilla

And other stuff. As a preview of stuff-to-come, here's the lineart of my favorite of the lot, as the rest are crap:

Has A Flavr/Vanilla PT II:


BUT WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON YAOI?

Supernatural fen, do not despair! I'm sure I'll get back to talking about our show. Once it actually, you know, starts airing again. I, at the moment, am spoiler-avoiding.

~~June

Do you remember this LxLight art piece I put up a few posts ago?

What I didn't mention was that it was my submission for a L/Light competition on DeviantArt. The results of the judged round were released today-- and I placed fourth! Which, considering that I am both a contest virgin and a no-name nobody on DeviantArt, pleased me very much. After all, there were more than a hundred entries. I could have placed fourth from bottom.

Of course, I don't expect to end up anywhere except near the bottom on the public voting round, but that doesn't matter. The judges liked me! All the frustration I've been experiencing over the past week at my art muse has been (temporarily) alleviated!

In celebration, I share with you my collection of Death Note yaoi sketches done over the course of my Japanese classes. It's like a highway crash involving two passenger buses and Optimus Prime: you know you want to.

( I beg you to click me )

Speaking of Japanese class, incidentally, we finally learnt to start conjugating verbs yesterday, and now I have the irresistable urge to add -shimasu to the end of every sentence containing a verb. I blame this on my sensei, who does it on the regular, saying things like CHECKSHIMASU and suchlike. I feel an Annoying Verbal Tic coming on, along the lines of saying "nani?" and "nan desu ka?" to everything.

Also, it amuses us to no end that the kanji for "to study", benkyou(shimasu), is written as 勉強. Which, in Mandarin, translates to mian qiang, meaning "to force yourself to do something, usually unpleasant". Which, to me, is a perfect description of what studying is.

DO NOT WANT SHIMASU.

~~June

DEAREST JUNE,

STOP BUYING YAOI DOUJINSHI OFF eBAY. NOW. It's not funny and I don't appreciate having a hole burnt right through me for the sake of you getting off to dubious boy-on-boy cartoon porn. I will take this opportunity to warn you that I shan't bat an eyelid when you starve to death clutching those epitomies of filth and decadence. Yes, you've heard me. Go on then! Buy them all! Starve! See if I care!

No love,
YOUR WALLET

---

I took Duckling to meet the Sister over lunch today. The reasons being: the annual Anime Bazaar was being held in the Science Faculty, Sister studies in Science Faculty, Duckling is a big animehead who would have gone anyway.

Get this. Duckling is far, far better versed in Japanimation than yours truly is, and I know for sure that she is going to drag me deep, deep into its murky depths. By my navel. Willingly or not. So far, she has already promised to bombard me, and I use that word with full contextual meaning, with Ouran Host Club which I must apparently get into because there is cake! And twincest! CAKE AND TWINCEST! OMG!

I retailation I've given her Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei and the first half of the DEATH NOTE anime (which she hasn't watched); however, my gut instincts tell me that cake and twincest will completely pwn my ass. Folks, I am completely outgunned here. Please take pity on me.

We met up with another of the Sister's friends, who is an avid cosplayer, and over lunch we terrified each other over a variety of topics, ranging from GACKT SCREAMING IS NOT AN ACCEPTABLE SMS ALERT TONE, to FUJIWARA TATSUYA IS UGLY UNCLE DESU YO, to SAYU MUST BE A LESBIAN THEN, THIS FANDOM NEEDS MORE GIRLPR0N (because YAGAMI is an anagram for I AM LORD VOLDEMORT I AM GAY, didn't you know that).

Far too much awesomeness, and far too much insanity, for four people meeting each other for the first time.

This, my friends, is the power of the anime fandom. It has a crack side, a second crack side, and it binds the fangirls together. In sisterhood and lunacy.

The anime bazaar itself was rather tame, disappointingly. We did see some shiny stuff, which we did buy, but the bazaar was rather quiet and not very big. It did, however, have a table spread out with mahjong paper, boldly labelled "GRAFFITI CORNER". And people had scribbled their little doodles on it. Some of them were quite hilarious.

None of them, however, were yaoi.

I said, "There's an anime bazaar, an open invitation to draw, and no boypr0n? That's blasphemy."

I grabbed the Sister's pencilcase, and five minutes later:



In a public setting. In a public setting.

I win at Textual/Punaninmical Inappropriativity.


Duckling and I managed to get a couple of experiments successfully run today too. I am vey pleased with this. I am on leave tomorrow, settling some important (and exciting) stuff I have to do, but Duckling is smart and competent so I feel no fear in letting her run experiments on her own.

Oh yes, Duckling and I are getting along famously.

---

Speaking of heads, put yours up, scienceheads! On the way home from work we spied a strange patch of rainbow colors in the sky, which utterly baffled us, and as Dad pulled over to get gas I pulled Chase out to get photos.



What is the cause of this phenomenon? Anybody know? It started as a oblong-ish patch of color which started spreading outward like an oilspill. More patches later started appearing from behind the cloud, framed brightly by the setting sun.

One of the pump attendants suggested "rainbow". Dad suggested, "It's the setting sun reflecting off the clouds in a special way." I suggested, "Maybe they're seeding strange chemicals in the atmosphere causing the diffraction?"

Mom suggested, "Maybe there's water in the clouds?"

...okay, Mom, I'll just pretend I never heard that.

My personal favorite explanation is that it's an alien spaceship invasion. Vorlon planet killers! RUUUUUNNNN!

Anybody know the actual answer?


~~June

Links of CRACK!
Afganisu-tan: I found this clicking on links from the capslock_dn community. Bascially, it's a series of manga strips with the anthropomorphic chibization of Afghanistan as its main character.

I'll repeat. An anthropomorphic chibization of Afghanistan as its main character.

Is it as cracked up as it sounds? Let's see, it also stars Afuganisu-tan's friends Pakisu-tan, Tajikisu-tan, and Kurujikisu-tan, amongst others. In other words, yes.

Each strip comes with a side commentary that explains a portion of Afghanistan's history, so I actually learned more about the country from reading those strips than I ever did following BBC feeds. The links are worth clicking through just to see Osama bin Laden turn up as a fuzzy cat with a turban and a beard. Who then bites Merika on the arm and Merika is all ADHAFGHSKJDG RAGE. KILL!! and goes to beat up poor 'lil Afuganisu-tan black and blue. MANGA CHIBIS R SRS BZNS I SWEAR.

Les Miserables: You've plowed through the novel. You've memorized every note of the musical. Now watch the story of Victor Hugo's masterpiece brought to life... as an anime. It's the French Revolution... in Japanese! Sacre merde! By way of bethfrish, whose Internet-searchfu knows no bounds.

---

Video of CRACK!
During my Interests meme, thurisaz83 asked me about "atsushi sakurai is snape".

Now, Atsushi Sakurai is the lead vocalist of BUCK-TICK. He is, by now, in his mid-forties, fond of dressing head-to-toe in black, and is unreasonably old for someone almost as old as my dad.

Why do I say he's Snape? Well, あの...



My dad walked into my room one day when I had this music video paused on my computer screen. He took one look and said, "What's that guy Snape doing there?"

My dad? Is not a Harry Potter fan. At all. In fact, he would have never watched the movies if we hadn't dragged him along with us.

The title of the song is "Gensou no hana", which, according to the kanji, means something along the lines of "flower of fantasies". Which goes to say that this is Snape's moping-about-Lily song, ne?

Don't believe me? Download it for yourself and see.

BUCK-TICK: Gensou no hana (MF, 85MB, mpreg)

---

Meme of CRACK!

---

Art of CRACK!
Someone on capslock_dn requested fanart in which one Death Note character got to use the other's shiny butt as a mirror. Copic marker-fu ensued.

LJ-cut, because everytime I took it out in public yesterday thurisaz83 and trilled would yell, "Put it AWAY! Right now!"


( Mello no Kagami )

~~June