Book List

1. One book that changed your life – "Clutter's Last Stand" by Don Aslet. This book is about throwing away your possessions that own you instead of you owning them - so chuck 'em.
2. One book that you’ve read more than once – "The Blue Castle" by L.M. Montgomery. This is my favourite book of all time.
3. One book you’d want on a desert island - My journal. I'd go batty if I couldn't write.
4. One book that made you laugh – "Life with Father" by Clarence Day. I like reading entertaining biographies about people who are not movie stars.
5. One book that made you cry – "The Tale of the Dawntreader" by C.S. Lewis. I bawl like a kitten every time I read it.
6. One book that you wish had been written – "Ghost Mist" - then I wouldn't have to write it.
7. One book you wish had never been written – There are whole genres of books that I wish had never been written.
8. One book you’re currently reading – "Which Witch" by Eva Ibbotson. Hehe!
9. One book you’ve been meaning to read – "Deeper than the Sky" by Jomiel. I'm always behind on stuff I should read on fanfiction.net.

I'm going to tag Nightfaux for her list. Cheers!

Popularity Poll

Okay everyone gather around. I'm going to do an opinion poll. I have been tossing a problem around in my head and I want to pose it to everyone who reads my stories. You see, once I'm finished 'Mark of a Goddess' then I have no idea what project I'm going to do in its place. I have two stories that I have had on the brain for awhile, but I'm not sure which one I want to do. I want to hear which one would be most interesting to you girls. So, in order to do this, I'm going to list the personal stats of the main male character and a brief synopsis for each story. So, tell me what you want girls! Here we go!

Ghost Mist

In the land of Ribbonsphere, no one knows what happens to your soul when you die. Would it be okay to sell your soul to a demon in exchange for the demon's power? It would be all right if there wasn't an afterlife, right? But making a deal with a demon is dangerous. You might get caught up in their plots or in their politics and end up in far more trouble than you bargained for.

Tesai Tigrid

Is the first rider of the Demon Goddess Lyla. He's a demon and a literal dark angel who works for a goddess. His hair is white and long. He ties it in a low ponytail at the back of his neck like a French courtisan. His eyes are reptile green. He wears a charcoal grey tailored coat the hits him about mid-calf, heavy black boots that go up to his knee, a white pointed collared shirt, and he always wears gloves. He's a flirtacious, bratty, self-indulgent, warped young man who takes pride in his trickery and his cunning.

Half the Moon

There is a moon that obits the purple planet Raktara called Bellanz. It was always a prison planet, but it seems that the government of Raktara has lost control of what's been happening there. Their guards have been massacred and communication has ceased. Now Bellanz has become a place where a synicate comprised of prisioners has taken over the distibution of resources, but even they can't help what happens on the side of Bellanz that is always dark.

Valin Trithart

Is a Commander in the army of the Universal Cabinet (the U.C.). He's got dark brown hair and witch hazel eyes. He wears his formal navy uniform like he's made of metal. He's built well and looks great in his uniform, even if it is plain. He's a man of high principles and unrelenting standards. He makes people want to fight for him, want to believe in him, and not just because of his good looks. When he walks through a crowd of officers, they part for him, but what on earth did he do to earn that kind of respect?

Okay girls - PLEASE VOTE!

Hence the Title

I love shoujo manga. I don't know why I do, but I really love it with all my heart. It's quite sad, but I really really really do. So, I'm going to do a list of all the manga I like and advise everyone to go read it.

P.S. I really want this book. I think I'd make an excellent shoujo author since I write such good dialogue and could skip out on having to describe the scene - I could draw it instead.

Okay, so here's the grand list. Most of these are free scantilations, so you can find them on irc for free. I love those guys. They rock my world. Okay, here's the list:

1. Rurouni Kenshin - Not really shoujo. Incredible anyway. Honestly, nothing touches Kenshin ... not even Kenshin. And I'm still pissed that the anime sucked as much as it did. It was such a great loss for Kenshin fans. 10/10.
   
2. Gokusen - I talk about this one all the time, so you can look at my previous posts for a synopsis. I follow this manga series diligently. I love it so much. 10/10.
3. Red Lion - This is a Korean one, so it's a little different from the Japanese ones. It is read left to right like ordinary comics. It's about a girl who used to be a street fighter, but her parents make her change schools so she'll keep out of trouble. They want her to find a boyfriend. Oopes - she finds four. I love harem manga. It's really one of the best things in life, but this one isn't finished yet. I follow it religiously. 10/10.
4. Koukou Debut - This is about a girl who was on the softball team in middle school. She was the star player, but now that she's in highschool she wants to try something different. She wants a boyfriend, so she decides to dedicate herself to that, but she's really muscular and awkward and can't seem to attract anyone. That's when she meets Yoh and she decides that he would make a perfect coach for her. It's not finished either and I follow it carefully. 10/10.
5. Milk Crown - There are three in this series 'Milk Crown', 'Milk Crown H', and 'Milk Crown Lovers'. I like this manga artist. Her name is Aqua and all her stuff is pretty good, but 'Milk Crown' is the best. No need for a synopsis. It's just an ordinary high school thing, but very cute. 7/10.
6. Charisma Doll - This one is about a couple of high school students who are also idols, except that she puts on a disguise when she sings and he doesn't, so no one knows she's a superstar. It's SO cute. It's also short. Only two volumes. 10/10.
7. Count Down - This is one about a girl who makes a wish on new year's eve at a magic show. It doesn't work out well at all, and she ends up getting dumped in a pool of water, but ... a guy with one green eye and one black eye fishes her out of the water. And whoopes - he's the hottest thing she's ever seen in her life, so maybe she got a better wish than her own. 8/10.
8. Dice - This one is about a love square. It was two volumes and utterly adorable. 10/10.
9. Honey Bunny - I got about ten pages into this one and realized that I never wanted to read it in my entire life. You'd have to pay me. It's about an evil hot guy who gets possessed by an alien about half the time. 2/10.
10. Honijitsu mo Muteki - It's short and it's not bad. It's about a girl getting over a 'Tom Boy' thing. 5/10.
11. I Wish - This one is about a girl who's entire family dies, so she goes to work for a magician - who looks more like a chick than most chicks. 4/10.
12. I'll - This is basketball shounen. I'm not very far into it, but it seems good so far. 7/10.
13. Kakan no Madonna - This is historical fiction and I was sort of enjoying it ... until something happened. I don't like it when rape is glamourized. It really pisses me off, so I stopped following it. That sort of thing poisens me. 2/10.
14. Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne - The anime for this sucked, but the manga was delightful. I enjoyed it up until the last volume and then I wasn't too thrilled. algelic said that she didn't like it because of the use of Joan of Arc - that it was almost blasphemous. Well, it got sort of blasphemous to me as a religious person towards the end. But at the same time, I can't get too heated. It was written by a person who clearly didn't understand religion the way I do, so I can't get mad at someone's interpretation just because it's different from mine. All the same - I was still sort of offended. I won't ever read the last volume again, but the rest was really great. 7/10.
15. Vanilla Ice - This is about a guy who looks like a chick and a chick who looks like a guy. Yeah, I wasn't too thrilled. 3/10.
16. Sleeping Beauty - I didn't get very far in this one, but it looked like fun even though it obviously wasn't high quality. 7/10.
17. Shishi Doumei Cross - This was recently licenced, so I'll never get to read anymore. This one is by the same author as 'Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne' and 'Full Moon wo Sagashite'. There are parts that are really beautiful. This is this author's first hardcore high school manga. It was like the most beautiful romance novel anyone ever saw, but it still had some ... abuse. Mailman-san was the CUTEST thing I ever saw in my entire life. 8/10.

Okay, that's it. Pretty fun eh? Now I'm tired.

It's a Matter of Style

Okay, so I have learned something important this week. This is what I learned:

I DON'T LIKE THE CULTURE OF AUTHORS!!

I am actually really serious about this. I don't want to associate with those freaks. Fanfiction.net is one thing, but just regular authors who write about ... stuff. Ew! Seriously, do you guys have any idea how many of them write about their childhoods? Ew! Just get a journal and a therapist and get on with it. I don't know about the rest of you, but reading that kind of crap is sooo not interesting to me. I don't necessarily need bombs to explode or neck breaking fight scenes, but do things always have to be from a child's point of view? I don't know, but it seems to me that most author's I meet who don't also love anime, want to talk about real life problems - without the fluff also known as A STORY. They want to talk about eating disorders, people who have really died in their lives, abuse, drug addictions, and all things along these lines. Honestly, I'm okay with this sort of expression as long as it remained detached from my personal life, but I'd rather throw it in with all the fun and romance and running of one of my stories. I couldn't just sit down and talk about all my problems in a medium like storytelling and try to pass it off as 'literature'. Morons! Everytime I go to read something - I get so flaming bored. Don't writers who aren't into fanfiction ever write anything that has a little spunk to it?
MORONS!

P.S. This pic is by my favourite fanart artist - Eugene-chan. I love her!

The thing is that they are not dying to tell a creative, fascinating story - they are looking for a medium of personal expression to lighten their emotional load. GET A THERAPIST!

Narnia

Okay, before I say anything about the subject I have chosen to write about, I would like to remind everyone that my blog is not a place for religious debate. I respect everyone's right to choose whatever they want to believe in. So, this is a precious (rare) glimpse of a few of my religious beliefs. I do not share them to invite criticism, bashing, or as I said before - debate. This is merely intended to be a pleasant review of something I love. Okay? Now I'll proceed.

I love C.S. Lewis' books. I haven't read all of them, but my two favourite are 'Til we Have Faces' and 'The Great Divorce'. 'Till we Have Faces' is a retelling of the story of Cupid and Psyche, told from Psyche's older sister's perspective, and 'The Great Divorce' is an idea of the afterlife - a bustrip out of hell. Really interesting.

But today, I watched the new version of 'The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe'. I had been putting it off because I knew I would be brutally disappointed. I don't think I was as disappointed as I was expecting. Sometimes I forget that these books are intended for children, even though they have such serious undertones. So, essentially, it was a children's movie ... and that's okay. It's just that when I was a child and my mother explained the religious symbolism involved in the story to me - it rocked me to my very core. Somehow, I always expect to have that same emotional experience when I read or watch a version of this story, but I have to say that I thought the BBC production moved me more than the Disney version (and they had a smaller budget).

I am always sorely worried that the nature and necessity of sacrifice will be removed somehow from the story. If that were to ever happen - the story would be worthless to me. But that depends on an author's point of view. For my own part - it's nice to tell a fun story, but I dream of telling stories that are not only amusing, but also the kind that inspire the human spirit to greatness and virtue. Naturally, I'm really far off that, but I'm going to live for many years and as long as that remains my goal - I can't help but move closer to it.

My favourite of the Narnia books is 'The Voyage of the Dawn Treader'. That book is worth all of the others to me. I LOVE that book so much! I love Eustice and his story is special to me no matter how many times I read it.

C.S. Lewis is also a bit of a hero for me as a writer. Toward the end of his life he used to write his books by writing them, then going over them once with a pencil to make corrections and then sending them to the editor for publication. I love that. I want to be just like that someday.

It's strange too, because even though we're both Christians - we're not the same religion.

You're Standing on my Neck

Just from the title, you should know that this post would be about Daria. I remember reading about it in a teen magazine when it first came out quite a few years ago. It's a spin-off from Bevis and Butthead. Yeah, it's weird for me to admit that I ever watched that show, but truly, I was a teenager and used to hang out late at sleepover parties. We had to have something to do besides daring each other to eat weird things. Thank goodness this was before Fear Factor and SUDSU (gummy bears and skim milk), so nothing truly disgusting ever entered into our little sleep-deprived brains.

Anyway, I recently got the first season of Daria, and I've been watching it. I seriously think it's hilarious, but that probably has something to do with the mood I've been in lately.

Today, it occurred to me that I must be depressed - just a mood swing I'm sure - but depressed nonetheless. Blah ... I know I've been really stressed and busy for the past two weeks, and it has let up a bit this week, but I just feel like everyone sucks - myself included - and that there's no reason to bother with anything. I've become extremely sensitive to noise and my nerves feel tight as wire. I'm moody. Normally, I feel like I live such a small life that it doesn't matter what I do or how fast I do it, but I've been starting to drag other people down by my bad mood - which is inexcuseable. Yeah, I've been ripping into people like there aren't any consequences for acting like an ass. And saying horrible things in public. It's getting quite bad.

So, in the middle of all this, I started watching bitter Daria. I think it made me feel better. At least I'm snapish without thinking first. If I'm snapish after I've done an internal dialogue - that's something else - and that would require more severe action than just quarentining myself in my house until I naturally stop being waspish.

Just remember girls - testosterone is a happy hormone - estrogen isn't.

Worse? Or Better?

Okay, so normally I don't watch cartoons. I don't really consider anime 'cartoons', and it's been a long time since I disconnected my T.V. so I haven't even seen The Simpsons for at around a year. Well, maybe I've seen a minute or something while visiting at someone's house, but other than that - I haven't seen anything that I didn't purposefully bring into my house. However, my brother kept telling me that Invader Zim was way too good to ignore because of my 'anti-T.V.' practices. So I watched some of it and ... it's so weird.

The first episode was so ... unbelievable. I want to be a writer for this series - except that I think they cancelled it. I think. Uh ... I don't know.

Anyway, Zim is an Invader and he goes to Earth to try to prepare the planet so that when all the other Invaders show up - earth will be ripe for the plucking. Except for one thing - the other aliens are never coming. They just sent Zim to Earth to get him out of their hair because he's like the ULTIMATE screw-up.

Zim's character is intensely curious. He's like a combination between Bart from The Simpson's and Calvin from Calvin and Hobbes. So, he's diabolical like Bart and insane and clever like Calvin - except far eviler than either of them.

"At least I put the fires out"
"You made them worse!"
"Worse? Or better?"

His side-kick's name is Gr, and he's a really interesting thing. He's a robot. He was built out of alien garbage because they didn't want to give Zim a real robot slave. His head is full of whatever was in one of the Tall's pocket. So, he wears a little puppy costume on Earth to disguise him ... hehehe ... and it squeaks when he walks. Actually, I think Zim is funnier, but all the same if you're goofing around and doing nothing and someone says 'Invader Zim', say 'yes'. Kay?

Goodbye (for now)

So, today, I thought I'd do a post about a song that I thought about including as one of the three songfics for 'Mark of a Goddess', but rejected the idea after some careful thinking.

The pic I've got today is a wallpaper of Noin from 'Kamikaze Kaitou Jeanne'. In the manga I liked his character way more than I did in the anime - they butchered him in the anime.

Anyway, this is a song about death. It's really lovely. Please enjoy it!

Monolithic – Goodbye (for now)

I don't want to say goodbye
But it's time to spread these wings and fly.

I know it's hard to understand
when the hourglass runs out of sand.

Into the sky above, I drift through the darkness and sense what is love passing...
Into the light ahead, my spirit's alive though you see what is dead.

Lift your head and don't you cry,
'Cause we all have to someday die.
Just remember that I'll always care.
Call my name and I'll be there.

Holding you in the night, I know you can't see me but feel this my light, softly...
brushing the dark away, listen and you'll hear the words that I say.

Where my soul flies, I'll be here tonight
Where my soul flies, I pray you'll be alright... you'll be alright

When you're tired and growing old
and your life on Earth begins to fold,
You'll find that it will all begin.
I will see you and hold you again.

Where my soul flies, I'll be here tonight
Where my soul flies, I pray you'll be alright... you'll be alright

Emotinal Deprivation

Okay, so the other day, I was reading Kaytala's new short story called 'Sinful Night' on fictionpress.com. It was really good. It's a vampire piece and it's not so long that you'll be investing a huge part of your life reading it. Go have a look at it and review if you have some time. The point is, it got me thinking about my vampire obsession again. Everyone knows that I want to write a great vampire piece one day, but I'm not sure what it is that I want to say, so I was giving it some serious thought - trying to figure out what I like about vampires so much and frankly - my thoughts surprised me, so I thought I'd record them here. Oh! And isn't this pic beauty? I have no clue what anime it's from. If you know - please comment!


Basically, my thoughts reverted completely back to when I was reading about a sort of social anxiety called 'emotional deprivation'. I will proceed to describe what I view as modern vampirism. Ready?

So, picture - if you will - a beautiful person (for the sake of this analogy, I guess we'll make it a woman). Picture the most beautiful person you can possibly fathom - beautiful hands, beautiful hair, beautiful clothing, beautiful manners, and a personality slightly dark and meloncholy. Now, picture an ordinary guy looking at her - completely enthralled. Now, let's skip the initial meeting of our two characters and get right into the thick of the relationship. They're together and suppoesively in love. Now, she's supposed to be perfect, but she's developed this weird habit of phoning him on his lunch break just to make sure that he's missing her. She's upset when he shows up at her apartment two minutes later than she expected him. She doesn't think that he loves her. Now she's phoning him on his breaks as well as at lunch. After awhile, it's no longer good enough for her to call him and she's got him phoning her during his breaks instead of the other way around. If he's late - she's upset. She doubts his feelings. All this time, he's been swearing up and down that he's crazy about only her. He brings her flowers and presents. He is constantly tied up in knots because no matter what he does, he can't seem to satisfy her. But even though he's never able to make the grade, he still enjoys doing everything he can for her. Being in a relationship with her is like the ultimate drug. There are highs and lows, but for him - the highs are so good that he doesn't want to let go of the relationship even though it's painful for him most of the time. The good times are coming less and less. But then, there's her perspective - even though she's metiphorically drinking him dry because he's putting all his time, energy and heart into their love affair - it's never enough.

Ultimately, she'll end the relationship because she's not satisfied and move on to repeat the process with someone else. But the man in our story will never properly move on from her. For him, she was like a fantasy and he can't completely give up on it.

There's our vampire and our victim. I honestly think there is something interesting about both our characters. I imagine my vampire story would be something like this. I'll probably work it into a story that's not actually supposed to be about vampires.

I do find the whole blood drinking thing a little gross. I used to think it was magical, but that just goes to show how real life experiences crush those kinds of stupid ideals. Now I guess just the mental image of a tortured, beautiful young man walking through a shadow is enough to win me over. Yep - totally.