keireland

It's based off an older anime, but I think it's a new release of it.
And only the first season. I don't know yet whether there's going to be a second season, but I hope there is. Because that wasn't an ending...

Their fight scenes are kind of amusing for all the wrong reasons. They block stuff with their faces a lot, and much of it is flashy lights going off, and them swinging punches from a standing position in rapid succession, just... punching the air at each other.

That's my only real complaint about the series.

Otherwise, the plot has been interesting and I find myself feeling very sympathetic towards Alone/Hades. And Tenma is such an idiot. It's endearing. :3 I wish they'd put in more of Sasha though, since everything's about protecting her. Instead, it's all about Tenma the Pegasus and Whashisface the pretty Unicorn.

The amount of Guy Love is a little bit wearing after a while too. Everyone admires everyone else so highly for being so manly and amazing and oh poor Saint So-N-So! They're so alone and dedicated themselves to protecting Athena and becoming the strongest, to the point that the main 12 seem to only know each other's names! And then the Saints keep allowing themselves to be separated and keep working alone instead of working together. As a result, in the face of Hades's concentrated forces, the Saints keep failing. You'd think the good guys would be all about TEAMWORK instead of "I'm so angsty and alone!" etc. Every last one of the Saints who've died so far died because they were trying to be badass and heroic and instead they just threw themselves into the spike pit one after another like lemmings. GRR.

And then... It ended.
And I was displeased. Because that wasn't an ending at all! ):
Rating 4/5.

Aie!! Alone/Hades is so pretty! I kinda don't want them to kick his face in! *cry* ilovehisrobes.... *blush*

Legend of Legendary Heroes was kind of a bait and switch. My first thoughts on episode 1 were "Hey! There's a female Gourry now named Ferris. She's even got the silly thigh-guard things and long blonde hair and is interested in eating and swords!" And "I guess the dude, Ryner, is the sorcerer instead of Lina. And he's some kind of pervert, interested in tits. Okay. Shallow main characters, but I can dig it." Further into episode 1, the anime didn't disappoint on it being a comedy, as they awoke a demon beast in some ruins and the episode ended with them running like hell, leaving a crater and the thing rampaging across the land. Hello Ending of Episode 1 of Slayers! DRAGON SLAVE!

Then episode 2 came and it was like a complete genre shift! Hawtie emperor Sion is like Supah Angst, and the nutcase pervert sorcerer from Ep1 is completely gone. Ryner is instead only interested in being King of Afternoon Napland, not even interested in saving his own skin from some girl who has the hots for him hard. Further in, the anime surprised me with an even darker turn with people chopped into bits and shown just flopped around. And then there's this assassin guy whom I'm assuming is blind, because he walks around with his eyes closed like Rezo and moves like wind, tearing heads off with his bare hands. And there's a Xelloss rehash. Only he's less jokingly the Mysterious Priest and more the evil Mazoku Xelloss pretends Not to be, using shadows and evil intention to leave corpses in his wake. He CLAIMS he's working for Sion, and reports to Sion that he's killed conspirators who're looking to dethrone Sion, but it's hard for me to accept that when all I've got to choose from is HIS word and that of the corpse at his feet.

So in short, what I thought was going to be a lighthearted anime of swords and sorcery turned into a political drama with a complete dichotomy between Ryner and Ferris and the people they deal with and Sion and his Party of Angst. Not that Sion is evil. I'm not sure what's going on with him. It almost seems like Ryner's adventure has nothing to do with Sion's plot line, except that Sion's Angst Party keeps bleeding over into Ryner's fun.

I'm still not sure what to think, as this complete opposites theme IS possible to be pulled off entertainingly, such as with High School of the Dead, in which the heavy theme of Zombie Apocalypse was lightened with lots of panty shots and boob jibbles. (Lots of fun!)

Over all, I'm liking the anime, but I'm not sure I'd buy it. I give it 3 of 5. For now. I may change my mind if it gets epic sometime soon. In which case, I'll post another review of it. (Sion's hawtness is reason enough to watch. Although I'm scratching my head wondering how exactly his outfit is put together. I hope there's some easy way to go to the bathroom in that. Because man, that's a lot of layers.)

I watched the Tales of the Abyss anime the other day.
Omg. wow! :3

Not only was it pretty, but the action was fantastic. People had fingernails and detailed eyes and it wasn't just because it was a bunch of still shots with someone's mouth moving as the only action, it was because they paid attention to the detail in EVERY frame.

For those who don't know, Tales of the Abyss was originally a PS2 game by Namco/Bandai, in which a whiny boy has to save the world and grows into a man in the process. In fact, if you've played Tales of Vesperia, you've pretty much played Tales of the Abyss, except the characters are different. Now, I think this is a good and bad thing that the plot was so similar. It's good because, obviously, the plot is working. It's bad, because ... never mind. I enjoyed both games! :D There's nothing bad at all about reusing the plot!

Anyway. Back to TotA anime.

Essentially, the anime followed the game by each plot point with a few minor variations. Mostly it was condensing some stuff and relocating certain scenes, but it didn't matter really because it still successfully told the story in 26 episodes without Luke getting TOO whiny. Although they did keep my favorite line of "But there's MUD! I might get my shoes dirty!" Ohhh Luke. So special. And the line "Its the arrival of The Amazing Guy!" Ohh Guy. You're special too. And I wanted to Yaoi Slash you and Luke so bad because you were asking for it.

My only complaints were that in a truncated form (of 26 episodes as opposed to 100+ hrs of game play) some of the reasoning behind things got kinda flimsy. Luke and Asch's battle, while by the time it came about in the game, I was all like "YEAH! That boy needs a whoopin!" in the anime, it was like... "why are they fighting? Because Asch is being pissy. oh. Okay." But I think that may have been due to the animators leaving some of Luke's lines out and them adding a few scenes that extended the interaction between Luke and Asch. Thus negating LUKE's need to fight Asch by the time they got to that scene, even though Asch obviously hadn't gotten the closure he wanted between the two of them. However, they did succeed in explaining a few things better that had been unclear in the game. Such as why Asch was sick/dying. Something along the lines of "Two exact copies of living things can't exist in the same world so one of you is going to spontaneously combust, and it's usually the original." D:

Also, the truncated version of the game made the various plot twists of the various characters seem more like a soap opera instead of exciting. And that made me sad, because everyone had an awesome tragic past and they deserved to have awesome tragic pasts because they were otherwise functional DESPITE their awesome tragic pasts (Except Guy and his gynophobia, but that was a character quirk rather than a flaw). I could tell that the animator's favorite party consisted of Luke, Tear, and Jade, with an alternating 4th who was usually NOT Anise. And they skimmed on the battles, some, but if you'd played the game, you already knew "OH GOD NOT LARGO! Ugh I hated his battle!" and so they made it mercifully short, with a couple of action shots of the characters getting kicked around and doing some of their named attacks. Now I can't tell if the subtitle people put this in, or if the animators put it in, but when one of the characters did a named attack, their attack+portrait would appear at the top of the screen, just like in the game, and I thought that was fracking AWESOME! Whoever did it, seriously got me to LOL and applaud. I'm thinking the animators did it though, since the subtitles didn't always match what the attack name was (and this is only available in fansub, sorry English speakers who hate reading). So, added bonus to those who've played the game before.

Overall, I think they did a really good job of making an anime that referenced a game and made it GOOD ENOUGH that people who haven't played the game can watch it and understand what's going on. I'd still recommend playing the game too, because it's an awesome game and there's a WHOLE like 100+ card skits that the anime left out that even I haven't found all of. But if PS2 isn't your cup of tea, watch the anime. :3

The world has gotten lazy.

Socially lazy that is. I just finished reading an article (Here, if you want to read it too) about how the world is going to hell and it's because no one is actually working on the problems, and that all we're doing is yelling at each other.

I have to agree.

Over the last few months I've noticed that people are getting more and more selfish. We see that we're unhappy but instead of actually doing what needs to be done about it, we turn to external things; like makeup, or surgery, or blaming others for us not having what we think we want or need to be happy. We get mad because someone said this or that, and it didn't match up with what we believe. Or we're getting mad because someone said some uncharitable thing about some minority group we're not a part of, but we want to be MAD about something, so we'll find any fucking reason to be pissed, if not for ourselves then for someone else who probably doesn't CARE that someone made a joke at their expense.

But the PROBLEM is that we're not diagnosing WHY we're not happy.

The PROBLEM, at it's root, is that we've thoroughly LIED to ourselves. We're all supposed to be rich and famous without having to work for it. We're supposed to have the bodies of gods by following 1 weird rule. We're supposed to be PERFECT.

The PROBLEM is that we're not perfect. And everyone's pissed about it.

I'm so tired of seeing gorgeous people walk around with their shoulders slumped and heads down, DEFEATED before they even put up a fight and realized how lovely they are. I'm tired of hearing people say crap about "I suck at x, y, and z, because I tried it once." and "Oh, I could never do that even though I've never tried it! You're so much more talented than I am!"

And I'm so tired of the HATE!

It's so EASY to hate. It takes no mental power at all to hate someone. We can all find reasons to hate something, from the color it is, to how it tastes, or smells, or speaks, or dresses. Or to just be careless in what we say and drag someone down just because we feel like shit and it doesn't matter who we hurt because obviously the world should know we're unhappy. Because if we don't make everyone else around us as unhappy as we are then no one will know we're unhappy. And that's selfish.

But it takes observational powers to LIKE someone. Or (of all the crazy things) LOVE someone you don't know. It takes time and attention away from minding our own woes to tell some random person that their dress is pretty, or that it matches the color of their eyes. Which is why I said that the world has gotten socially LAZY and selfish. Now, I'm sure people are thinking I'm talking out my butt with this, but I've hugged complete strangers before, because they looked like they needed it. I tell people I don't know that they look lovely. I SMILE at people I don't know, and hold doors, and help if someone needs it. And it amazes me the change that happens when someone receives positive attention. They smile, and show the world how beautiful they are.

This Christmas season, give the gift of your ATTENTION to someone.

Especially a child. It may be annoying, but they're the future and teaching them to pay attention to others is the first step in stopping the hate.

Let's teach our children that they aren't perfect and that's OKAY. Own up to your mistakes, but don't let it consume you that you messed up. Accept that there ARE winners and losers, and at the same time, not EVERYTHING is a competition. But most of all, teach children to love. Both themselves and others. No matter what they believe, yelling and arguing doesn't fix problems. Yelling doesn't make us feel ANY better about ourselves.

Because this man said it far more coherently than I ever could...


"I'm Christian, Unless You're Gay"


I've said this kind of thing for years.
I've had this conversation with my own father for years - WHY hate on someone when you don't know them? Why throw a blanket hatred over a group of people that doesn't deserve your accusations?

My most recent discussion with Dad boiled down to:

Dad: Gay people are obsessed with sex and disease ridden.
Me: Straight people are obsessed with sex and disease ridden too. So what?
Dad: But gay people will rape you on the street.
Me: So will straight people. How many gays do YOU know?
Dad: None...
Me: I have several friends who're gay. They're some of the most wonderful, kindest people I know. You remember Ura, right? She's dating someone biologically female. Did you think SHE was sex crazed and evil and going to rape me? Or you? or anyone for that matter?
Dad: well, no...
Me: Then you can't generalize that ALL gays are evil disease ridden sex crazed rapists. Especially when multitudes of straights have done much worse.

I'm not sure if I changed his mind, or if I gave him anything to think about. But I tried. Not because I'm gay or straight or Ace. But because it's cruel to hate someone you don't know on principle.

(Please note this was not the actual conversation, but paraphrased from it. My father is a wonderful man, and will stop and help someone who just ran him off the road in the rain, but he has his flaws, most of them exaggerated by the stress of a situation a friend of his is going through. I still love him, which is why I tried to help him see through his hatred. Because hating someone or something doesn't make life any better for anyone.)



Today, find someone who looks down and complement them.
The greatest gift you can give someone is a smile or hug. It costs you nothing but a moment of time.

"Thanks for placing up this article. I'm unquestionably frustrated with struggling to research out pertinent and rational commentary on this matter. everyone now goes in the direction of the amazingly much extremes to possibly generate home their viewpoint that either: everyone else within earth is wrong, or two that everyone but them does not genuinely recognize the situation. pretty numerous many thanks for the concise, pertinent insight...."

What makes this hilarious is that they posted it on one of my journals in which I talked about Nanowrimo and had an excerpt of my story!
And then SpamBot forgot to post it's spam link. FAIL.

I've discovered over the years that I am my most productive when facing west. Writing, Editing, Drawing. Doesn't seem to matter what creative pursuit I'm doing, but I do it best when facing west.

Friend of mine said it gave me a quirk. I just think its weird. Not going to make me move my desk, but its still weird.

I need a real cover to Essence of Luck. I'm either going to have to draw a new one or commission someone for one. Considering that I hate my own artwork shortly after I complete it, I will probably end up paying someone.

I should also make a youtube trailer for my books.
Or pay someone to do it for me. MAN I'm so lazy. :D

I need a manager. Someone to handle this publicity stuff for me. I was just thinking that it'd be awesome to make a twitter account for Natan Gannatet. But in order to be in character, I'd have to be on it all the time. I don't have time for that. Not if I want to write stuff too.

I also really need to update my website with something...

I hit 63,000 words in my Nanowrimo. Still not anywhere close to finishing the plot, but it's getting good. I'm happy I chose to write a fantasy this time!

I've been focusing on the romance plot of a side character for the last day. I need to get back to writing Luck and Elaine.

And also need to get more of the plot working! I've got some rather amusing extras hanging around. I need to kill more of them.


Funny excerpt:

Servants pulled chairs out for the guests, and Beltoren took a seat, followed by his journeymen.
The sound of cloth sweeping against itself caught his attention and Beltoren looked towards the door to the front hall. Immediately, he was on his feet, bowing slightly as a young elvin woman swept into the room.
Giving him an appraising look, the woman moved to her seat and dropped into it in a very unladylike slump in the seat across from him. "Oh, sit down, Bel. You're giving mother ideas again."
"Is that you Kriston? I don't think I've ever seen you in a dress!"
The redheaded woman rolled her eyes. "Mother is trying to set me up with someone," she said flatly. "I'd rather die."
"Oh, don't be so melodramatic, dear," Yuphima said, waving her hand across the table at her oldest daughter, then glanced towards Beltoren to judge his expression.
Beltoren was about to sit again when the sound of feet clattering down the stairs was heard. Another redheaded woman, dressed in well worn loose shirt and pants jogged into the room. Again, Beltoren bowed.
"B - Crestilia Beltoren," she said, catching herself before she was impolite and bowed. "I wasn't aware you were here." Her cheeks were nearly as red as her hair. She glanced over her shoulder briefly, as if debating going back upstairs to die or change into something fancier.
"Never mind that, Sherry," Lady Yuphima said, "Come sit so we can eat."

I actually sat through Slayers Revolution and Evolution-R.

This shouldn't have been as tedious a task as it was, seeing as how much of a Slayers anime fan I am. I mean, I find reasons to like Kopii Rezo! However, that's not the point of this post.

I actually want to talk about how disappointed I am. For the record, though, I'm GLAD they did another season, and it had its good points, like the moment of complete TORTURE Rezo put Zelgadis through when Rezo refused to tell Zel how to fix his chimera body. That was pretty damn awesome. Also, most of my complaints are from a technical standpoint, rather than hating the anime for the sake of it.

1) The PRETTY of the anime was up by 200%. I approve of this! However, most of it was still shots with only one or two things moving. Like, this was 90% of the anime, and I found it to be distracting! I may as well have been listening to an audio book, instead of watching an anime, since most of the time I was seeing a still shot of Lina's head with only her mouth moving and I'm thinking "wow. I should take notes on how they colored her eyes, that's mighty pretty. Oh wait, she's saying something..." Okay, so the use of reused footage was decreased considerably too, but I still felt like they cut some serious corners with this.

2) The music was blatantly stolen from all the other seasons of slayers. The only new music was the opening and ending themes. As a fan, of course I have all the OST CDs. And of course I can go "That's the Funny Fishman song!" and "They took that from Try." And "Hey. It's Rezo's theme!" and "Wait - they can't play that song for Pokota! That's Zelgadis's theme from Try!" It was distracting playing Name That Tune inadvertently. Again! I feel cheated! They could have at least REVISED some of the songs to make them new-sounding, instead of just ripping it straight from the OST CDs!

3) For only being 12 episodes long each half-season (24 total), the series had a LOT of filler episodes. For instance, most of the crap that went on with Nama was unnecessary. It didn't advance the plot at all, except at the end when Xelloss showed up and broke that jar. They could have used those episodes to explain stuff - like Zuuma! For being a fairly important badguy, he really didn't get much screen time and certainly didn't explain what his motivations were. Instead, we were forced to sit through several episodes of "HEY IT'S NAGA BUT SHE CAN'T REMEMBER!" and Lina's too stupid to realize that it IS Naga, and Amelia's like "herpaderp, we're just like sisters!" can we talk about beat-the-audience-over-the-head? Yes. We get it. Naga and Amelia are sisters. Let's move on please? How about we explain why Sylphiel was on the wall at Sairuun?

4) The characters weren't in character for what they were the rest of the series. And while this is my last point, it was actually the FIRST point at which I stopped watching the season to begin with. ZELGADIS RAN AWAY CRYING BECAUSE SOMEONE CALLED HIM A MONSTER! That's just so wrong. Can we go back to Try real quick? That part where someone calls him a Dark Hearted Sorcerer-Swordsman and Zel LIKED it! Slayers Next, he's running around without a mask, in a dress, hitting on cute girls. Slayers first season, Amelia POINTS AT HIM and says "you look weird!" and he gives her a nasty look and tells her it's rude to point. At none of these moments does Zelgadis EVER run away crying. Although he was seriously depressed/pissed/angsting in Slayers Next when the group went into the Puppet Tower and he got christened with the name Zelgabunny and turned into a doll while wearing the tiger-print "ogre pants"... but that was just embarrassing, and he didn't run away because he was insulted. And the only other time he blushed was when he had apparently drowned in the Dragon Cuisine episode in Next and Amelia was suggesting CPR on him (and he was looking forward to HER trying it, not Ashford). But back on the subject of characters not being in character; the others were just as guilty of this blatant OOC'ness as Zel. They knew some people, and didn't know others that they should have, and why the hell didn't they say a thing about Kopii Rezo in Sairaag and his resurrecting Zanafaar the first time? And why didn't anyone mention "Hey! What if we got the Bless Blade and tried beating Zanafaar with it?" instead of going, "Oh, I conveniently have a Sword of Light knockoff in my zipper."

5) Pokota. I just got the feeling that the creators of this series said "We hurd u liek pokemons so we put pokemons in ur slayrs!" and the marketing people said "YES! He'd make a great bag for all the little girls at anime cons to buy because he already has that zipper pocket in his front!" And then I found myself wondering "If Pokota is in a stuffed animal body, why does he need to eat?" And then I'm wondering, "If Pokota's soul could be transferred to a stuffed animal, doesn't that completely destroy the premise of the last 3 episodes in which Rezo explains the Hellmaster jars?" ohhh the plot holes, they've totally messed up my suspension of disbelief! Although, I should mention that the original 3 series did have plot holes too, but they weren't so slap-in-the-face. While it didn't completely ruin the anime, it made it rather disappointing.


Overall, I give Slayers Revolution and Evolution-R a 3 of 5. It did make me laugh. It was entertaining. But as a hardcore fan, I am disappointed, and I'm not sure that they really hit the mark on being accessible enough to new viewers either. I'm left wishing they'd either done a 4th season for real, or done an ACTUAL reboot of season one instead of trying to walk the line between the two.

I am devastated.

My world crumbled yesterday when I heard the news. I feel as if a beloved grandmother has died. And even if I didn't know her personally, she still helped raise me. So I mourn, with all my soul for Anne McCaffery.

I was 12 when I was introduced to Pern, and Crystal Dreams, and the Ship Who series by my mother, and from then on, I was changed. Anne McCaffery helped shape my view of reading; changing it from some onerous task that my teachers required me to do to something you had to steal the book from my hands to make me stop and pay attention to you... She influenced the way I think of dragons, and psychic powers, and space travel. She inspired me to imagine myself into her worlds and take part in what she created through role play. She inspired me to become a writer with her stories the stepping stones from which I flung myself into the deep end of the river of imagination.

She didn't just tell interesting stories. Anne pushed the boundaries of what people expected in a sci-fi or fantasy story. She didn't settle for telling the same story over and over. She didn't accept that the way certain characters or types of characters or settings were depicted by everyone else was how it HAD to be, and she wrote stories that boldly blended genres, to hell with what everyone else was writing at the time. She boldly used her distinctly female name, and made it known that women were writing, and women weren't going to be ashamed that they were writing, or ashamed of WHAT they were writing, even if science fiction wasn't thought to be a subject women should have been writing.

To me, Anne was one of the Greats, and with her passing, the world has lost something dear. But she will always be remembered, and her books will be read by generations to come. In our hearts and minds, I know she is immortal. It's a mark of how amazing she was that she could reduce someone she didn't even know existed to tears for an entire day.

So I will continue to write, and I'll write what I want to write, whether it's what's IN or not and whether some publisher says it'll sell or not. Because she taught me to dream, and to dream that others would want to share my dreams.

I wish I'd gotten the chance to thank her for being my role model, and a wonderful story teller.