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The dating sim and Dragon Age fanart is in the previous post.


Four Elements: Coloured

I am very proud of this but nobody will care: the uncoloured linework is a challenging colouring in puzzle that demonstrates the four colour theorem.
( Original art, Venom, Avatar The Last Airbender, Russian Doll, Doctor Who, Princess Tutu, The Grandmaster of Demonic Cultivation )

While I wait for Guild Wars to finish updating...

Doctor Who: Became increasingly irritated with this latest season, may give it another go if I get sufficiently bored.

The Flash: Mostly an ok if bland superhero show about a regular Dude Who Gets Powers, but without giving spoilers...despite one of the major secondary characters being in a wheelchair this is not the background-depiction-of-disability I was hoping for :/ :/

Yuki Yuna Is A Hero: Moe magical girl show where one of the girls is in a wheelchair. Started off GREAT, the chair wasn't even mentioned she was just one of a group of friends. But once the first monster arrived it was all "plucky able bodied girl loyally defends sad useless disabled girl" and "leave me to die, I will just slow you down". Apparently she gets powers in episode 2 that allow her to fight without removing her paraplegia, which is great, but I haven't had the heart to try it.

Sakura Trick: So I made it to the end and did actually enjoy this, god help me. It is solid male-gaze moe f/f fluff, but there's no rape, underage sex, or incest, and only a small amount of sexual harassment! And the girls friendships are genuinely pretty sweet and the f/f relationships are taken seriously rather than being a cute phase they're expected to outgrow. And it was mildly funny sometimes! IT IS ALSO EXPLOITATIVE AS HELL. It depresses me that this is apprently the best I can hope for :( :(

Books:

Still just working through "Steampowered 2". But I've reserved the first "Circle of Magic" book from the library.

TV:

ELEMENTARYYYYY :D :D

Dr Who is over until my birthday. Stephen Moffat definitely has a shtick but since that shtick involves complicated time travel plots I'm still enjoying it well enough. This season hasn't wowed me but I like the characters (Jenny, Vastra and Strax are adorable) and I'm curious to see what's going to happen next.

Chihayafuru has been becoming exponentially slower as they catch up to the manga, so I'm not quite as smitten as I was, but slowness aside it's still fun.

Movies:

Victor Victoria: Julie Andrews plays an unemployed singer whose new gay bff persuades her to pretend to be a drag queen. She gains success but falls for a straight guy. Hiijinks ensue! Very silly and not exactly free of Issues but it was still fun and the core message is about the Power Of Love In All It's Forms which was nice. The central romance didn't convince me but there's an actual happy m/m couple at the end omg. The commentary was Julie Andrews and her husband, the writer director Blake Edwards. It was adorable if self indulgent, they spent several minutes in raptures about the acting ability of their son who has one line as a gay guy checking out the main character (played by his mother, lol)

Games:

Tomb Raider: Tried it out and as expected it is very good but really, really not my sort of game. I don't do running and jumping.

Dragon Age: Origins again! I am enjoying it very much. Here is my pretty pretty Dalish elf.
After several years of playing Bioware games the combat has gone from "so hard I gave up and used cheats early on" to "so easy I have yet to die" (on "easy" of course ;)) and I'm even EXPERIMENTING WITH THE TACTICS OMG. I was so proud of myself for not even having the console enabled...and then in Soldier's Peak the final battle refused to spawn and I had to kill Avernus with a cheat *hmmph*. Naturally my Mahariel's first major quest is going to be the Brecilian Forest, it's amusing how much friendlier all the elves are than on all my previous playthroughs. Anyway, not being in a hurry and just playing to enjoy it rather than hit any specific story buttons is fun. The combat is more fun than I remembered (even aside from being easier) and it's been long enough since I last played that the emotional buttons are fairly effective. Also it's fun seeing Flemeth etc and knowing the Part They Will Later Play.

Local harvest: tells you about local growers, organic suppliers etc. Australia only.

I finished Season One of Fringe and quite liked it, I eagerly await Quickflix sending me Season 2. It's not deep and the scifi doesn't bear much thinking about, but I like the characters and emotional tone and am enjoying the plot arcs despite various logic holes. Apparently I should stop before season 3?

I am about halfway through Bodacious Space Pirates (subtitles give me headaches if I watch too much) and so far I very much agree with Ember's review. An example of the pacing problems: we know from the opening credits that the main character ends up a pirate captain, yet it takes 5 of the 26 episodes for her decide to do it...then suddenly she's on the bridge knowing everyone's names. I initially assumed I must have missed a crew-and-ship introduction scene, but no. Then they have a gratuitous "introduce the crew's names and roles to a visitor" scene several episodes later, once I've figured it out from context. WHY. But other than the pacing I really like it.

I quite liked the most recent episode of Doctor Who. It had some issues (eg plot holes, though I didn't find them as distracting as some), and I wasn't as overwhelmed by FEELINGS as a lot of my friends, but it was sweet and affecting and did was it was aiming for. I am overall enjoying this season much more than last season, and look forward to seeing what happens next.

Look at my awesome new coat and somewhat less awesome new haircut. I thought the local hairdresser should be able to manage a "approximately replicate the last haircut" trim. I WAS WRONG.

There was a post on tumblr about the names people chose for their Mabari in Dragon Age. I started thinking of the various names I chose for mine, and decided my favourite was Mr Snuggles, belonging to my f!Cousland, named after a character I liked as a kid, Dr Snuggles. (Second favourite: Deathfang)

I looked it up on Wikipedia and discovered that Peter Ustinov did the voice and Douglas Adams wrote for it! Here's one of the episodes he wrote, I was awash in nostalgia during the credits but the episode itself, while entertaining and science fictiony in it's way, wasn't SUPER familiar. I remember owning a picture book of an episode which mum later described as The Most Boring Children's Book Ever (I apparently made her read it to me constantly :D), after investigation it turned out to be The Astounding Treacle Tree. FAR less coherent but SO MUCH NOSTALGIA. Most of the plot points I remember finding confusing turn out to simply not make any sense. But there's slightly more female presence, including a lady robot I remember thinking was super cool. (Plus: clouds! Rainbows! Spaceships! Talking animals! No wonder I loved it)

It's weird noticing how 70s it all is, that sort of style was still fairly current during my early childhood so didn't stand out to me at the time.

Douglas Adams also wrote my favourite childhood Doctor Who episode (in which Romana is very geeky and there are complicated time shenanigans). I'm half expecting him to have somehow written my favourite Astro Boy episode too (the one with the girl robot who can lie. I found her FASCINATING. Youtube is being unhelpful, alas)

Anyway, I hope you are having an enjoyable and possibly slightly less nerdy new year's eve/day :)

I am remarkably bored and have noone to randomly babble at.

I'm currently watching the anime "Black Lagoon". It's superficially a simple darkish drama about a bunch of mercenaries in the Pacific doing various jobs, but I've heard it gains a bit of depth and it's certainly enjoyable enough thus far.

I made avocado, tomato, turkey and coriander on toasted white bun for dinner and it was lovely but I think it's disagreeing with me :/

I'm replaying Dragon Age 2 again, this time with a character loosely inspired by Terezi (or possibly her ancestor Redglare) from Homestuck: she usually takes the sarcastic dialogue options and has a certain disrespect for authority(*) but has a deepseated belief in Justice. Which means she really likes Anders (who is possessed by a spirit of Justice) I've tried to make her be socialist just to see if I can but the dialogue options tend to assume Hawke doesn't care much about poverty. She's in a rivalmance with Isabela the amoral pirate which is lots of fun :D I think if I play again I'll use the console to see the rivalry relationships I haven't seen yet, they're interesting to compare.

The latest episode of Doctor Who is a bit distressing to watch when you feel old and sick and your husband has ABANDONED you to go on a long trip (Cam watched it before he went to bed and messaged me, apparently it made him sad too, d'aww)

lilysea came over (and not just to use my washing machine until hers is fixed :)) which was nice.

(*)It would have been more Redglare-ish to make her a Templar, but my last character had a deep faith in both justice and the Chantry (leading to a love/hate relationship with Anders) and I wanted to do something different.

I've been feeling fairly critical about things recently. So, a post of things that have been making me happy that may make you happy too.

Reading my dreamwidth network without the feeds. The ratio of stuff I want to read to stuff I don't is much more useful.

The Manga Guide to Databases by Mana Takahashi: For anyone who has wanted the fundamentals of Databases and SQL explained to them in the form of a cute manga about a princess and a fairy. No, really, it's adorable. It's not the best textbook ever, I did learn some stuff but a lot of the explanations were very shallow, I think it would work best as introduction in conjunction with a more dense text with lots of in-depth definitions. And the plot is pretty light, I can't see it appealing to anyone who isn't genuinely interested in databases (which I am, having used them at my old job with no theoretical training beyond my second year Computer Science data structures course) But I was the perfect audience, and I enjoyed it :)

The Morishima Akiko tag at daily_yuri (she can also be found at Lililicious), especially "Off Time" and "Happy Picture Diary", which both show the happy lives of adult lesbian Japanese women (as opposed to angsty schoolgirls as in a lot of yuri). Her comics are always so adorable and happy.

Some vids (mostly angsty, because angsty vids make me happy):

• Rolling in the Deep: all the Xmen films. The Charles/Erik vid I've always wanted. (Well, it's more focussed on them rather than the broader themes than I'd like, but that's not really an objective flaw)
  
• Seamstress Nikita: The Nikita&Alex vid I never knew I needed. I've watched very little Nikita but the complex codependent mentor thing hits all my buttons.
  
• Don't Lose Yourself Doctor Who. Donna ;_;
  
• Around Us Avatar the Last Airbender. I had to go back through a few pages of bookmarks to find something genuinely happy :)
  

I suddenly really felt like drawing, thus a bunch of art. Also a photo of the Doctor Who genderswap cosplay we did at Swancon.


Evil Grey Parrot on deviantART and Evil Grey Parrot on Tumblr

For the prompt of "A PARROT" :D
( four more pictures )

(Well, no more spoilery than the trailer)

This is a deft, entertaining retelling of "A Christmas Carol", with all the nuanced and modern gender roles, racial dynamics and social commentary of the original 1843 novel(*).

But my main reaction(**) is: SCREW YOU NORTHERN HEMISPHERE WRITERS SOME PEOPLE "ON EARTH" CELEBRATE CHRISTMAS IN SUMMER. OR HAVE NO WINTER AT ALL. Also midwinter here is a little gloomy but also a period of budding greenery and refreshing rain, while midsummer is an ordeal of sun, scorched earth and broken airconditioners.

(*)Admittedly a step up from many modern adaptations.
(**)Which has also been niggling at me with a lot of the general response to christmas about the place online, but none of it was as smugly annoying as this.

So Sunday was awesome. I had another sudden spoon failure, but not until nearly 4pm, and panels only run until 6 and I'd seen everything I really wanted.
( Read more... )