If I didn't have to go to lab tomorrow, I would totally drive back down to JoAnn's and make this costume. Right. The. Fuck. Now.
(Or maybe one of the long-sleeved variants thereof.)
But I have to go to lab, I have to get experiments and revisions done before grad student camp on Monday (yay!), and I'm also lazy.
Say, for those of you who know fabrics more than me...what fabrics are those outfits made out of? Chiffon and...?
I've had horrible luck this year with anime convention badges-by-mail. ACen was supposed to mail me the registration badge. Results? Got it about a week after the con. Thankfully Mikhail was there and saved the day by helping me butt in line. Thanks man, I owe you one.
Anime Expo? I see no badge. I better not have to wait for X hours in line, or I am going to have to choke a bitch. Way to be on top of things, AX. Lazyass fuckers.
The only people this year who seemed to be keep their hands on the ball? Star Wars Celebration IV, and even then I heard that GenCon was having issues with badges and the mailing of them (thankfully, I was spared the pain).
Hey SfN, don't fail me come November this year.
Oh, and before I forget...
If you see this post and are going to Anime Expo, give a holler. I want to make sure I have all y'all's contact info.
Captain Usopp has a shiny new radiator to place the old radiator, which was literally clogged up with mud. D: Who's been slinging mud at the Captain?
Oh Captain, my Captain, if I had enough money I'd give you a shiny new turbo engine and a manual transmission but alas, I'm po'. D:
So, AX in a couple of days. 8O Not cosplaying this year, too fat to be vinyl!Sol (*sniffles,* that wig I commissioned is never getting used, I swear), so I think since I'm lazy and I like to be comfortable I might break out Luffy again and just sit around and chill. And hang out with the friends. And chill. X3 Maybe since some karaoke. And then drive off down to Irvine for grad student camp.
So I've finally gotten around to taking Captain Usopp into getting his radiator replaced. The problem with Captain Usopp and all Z31s is that taking out the radiator is a big pain in the ass. It's hugely buried, and taking it out basically requires disassembling most of his front end. D: While you're down there, there are also a bunch of hoses and belts that you get access to...and yeah. Captain Usopp needs some fixing up. It's about time I did it, I've had him for about a year, and having the peace of mind of Usopp not overheating on my ass on the drive down to Irvine is kind of important if I want him to stick around until I graduate.
In other words...I am going to be massively poor this summer (not to mention what the trip to Europe is going to cost me, plus the cost of hopefully getting a new computer sometime in the fall). Hopefully being at Irvine for the class for a couple of weeks is going to save me money (at least in terms of not having to pay for food or kung-fu), so I won't have to go running back to the parents immediately to whine about the poorness and the needing of the funds. :/
But yeah...I think I'm poor. *whimper*
Dismay at the end of the week.
1) They're making Chen-style Taichi twice a week. That adds another $40. I just can't afford that anymore, so I think I'm going to have to drop my weapons form class. That's a real pity, because straight sword is my favorite weapon.
2) No sleeping in this weekend. Getting my car inspected at 8am on Saturday, private taichi lesson Sunday at 7am. BLURBLE.
3) Anime Expo in a week. D: HOLY SHIT.
Raise your hand if you're one of those people who thinks one of the funniest things in the world is people shitting themselves.
D: My diet just got shot to hell by a single trip to Manna, one of the many all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ places.
The good thing about being in LA is that you're never short of good eats. :3
There's a line under the "Other Information" box on the back of my kiwi-apple flavored Halls mentho-lyptus cough drops that says:
Excess consumption may have a laxative effect.
I feel that this would be better summed up with:
Eat too much and you'll shit yourself.
I know I'm giving into the horrible corporate mind, but iGoogle is quite possibly the best thing ever.
EDIT: If I had a real iPod, I'd get myself one of these.
For those of you who have heard of ILOVEBEES and are interested in Alternate Reality Games, I've got some information for you:
- Halo 3
- Society of the Ancients
- The countdown
- The Wiki
Thanks to Avatrix for the heads up.
The day does not start out right when you've been bitten by your rat. TWICE. Crazy fucking rat bitch, Jesus.
I hope the In-n-Out today makes up for it. >( I am fucking pissed off.
So this anorexia thing? Not working out. It's kind of hard to stop from eating when eating is your #2 favorite thing to do (#1 is sleep). The obvious solution here is to just sleep for about a week straight, but even with my awesome sleeping superpower I don't think I can do that. I remember that one IAP where I was sick and delirious with fever and sleeping 18 hours a day. Man, I was so sick of sleeping by the third day. The problem with me is that when I'm awake, I'm always thinking of eating. In fact, I think I think about pecking at something at least as much as I think about yaoi, which is pretty impressive.
So if you guys want to see a Sol Badguy cosplayer with a nice set of muffin tops, come visit Anime Expo. D:
Also, Anna Tsuchiya is a guest of honor this year. Fuckin' awesome. I just got premier tickets to her concert (thankfully at noon on Saturday, just the perfect time), which means that I guess I can claim I'll have seen both BLAST and TRAPNEST in concert in SoCal. D: Huzzah?
Blog Like it's the End of the World
THE GOOD
I am currently armed with:
- Sephiroth's Masamune
- A Chinese-style broadsword
- A kinda crappy katana
- A wooden staff of asskicking
THE BAD
I live right across from a giant veteran's graveyard. Occupancy: 85,825
THE UGLY
THE ZOMBIES ARE HERE. And my street is basically the first line of defense. Fall back? Gayley Ave.
LET'S KICK SOME ZOMBIE ASS, FOLKS. Bring your own music.
EDIT: They destroyed my boombox. It's dark outside, and I can't groove without some beat. We've fallen back all the way to Westwood, but it's going to be hard holding the fort down here without daylight. I don't think they've reached as far as my lab, if need be, I think I can spend the night there. Being stuck on campus sucks, the 405 is at a standstill from all the abandoned cars, I don't think I can leave. There's not much to eat here in lab, so I don't expect to be here for long. The zombies in the graveyard have probably made their way all the way down to Santa Monica now, if not as far as Olympic or Pico. All I've got left is the Masamune, and I've been saving that 'till last.
Well folks, it's been good.
So, I just tried on my Sol Badguy costume again. You know, the one all in vinyl.
I probably shouldn't have done that right after dinner.
Now's a great time to become anorexic, I think.
I think I knew this, filed it away for future reference, and then forgot about it until now.
Sol Badguy is left-handed.
Looking through my Guilty Gear fanart folder, about a third of fanartists have yet to realize this. In fact, one of my favorite SolxKy pr0n doujinshi circles has yet to realize this.
Looking back on all the RP and fic I've written over the years...boy, do I hope I've been ambiguous about which hands Sol's been using to...do stuff. :x
And why did I remember this suddenly? Because I was thinking, "If Sol Badguy is double-wielding the Fuuenken and the Furaiken..."
This is what I do in my free time. How sad. :(
"Over the Hills and Far Away" was the only Nightwish song I respected until a labmate told me it was actually a cover of a Gary Moore song. Now what little respect I had for Nightwish is completely gone.
Ugh, I can't believe it's about two weeks until Anime Expo. Holy crap. Good thing I have most of my Sol costume already done from previous cons. =_= I think my will to cosplay has almost completely gone, if only I had the money to pay other people to make costumes for me, then I'd never have to worry about it ever again.
I was really planning on doing some amalgamation of Sol's gear form from the ridiculous super from Slash and his Holy Orders costume, but I think I'm just going to be lazy. Even though I have muffin tops in the costume at the moment.
Ugh.
Maybe I'll just go as myself this year. (grrr, but must not let $150 Sol wig I commissioned last fall go to waste! ;___;)
At BrewCo, drunk off ass.
Marcus: Well, I gotta go now. Draco's waiting for me at home.
Skuld: You slut! I'm gonna tell Harry.
Marcus: Harry's taping it.
Skuld: ...okay, I want a copy.
HALP!
I'm going to Europe (Switzerland and probably Germany) this summer at the end of August/beginning of September. Unfortunately I think I'm going to be alone, and if I don't find a friend to go with me, my mother's coming along. (UGH.)
Help a sister out here. Who wants to go to Europe with me? :D
BevMo has no oyster stout. D: This is a travesty. Actually, I've only had an oyster stout once in my life. DOUBLE TRAVESTY!
D: I just opened the dishwasher and found my Sol Badguy glass is broken.
Goddammit. That's what I get for putting it on the bottom rack. I bought it in Japan too, found it after a lot of digging around at Comic City Osaka.
Now there's just Ky left, and he's lonely.
If any of you guys find a Sol glass around somewhere, pick one up for me. ;_;
This is a wuxia info dump of epic proportions. Having rewatched and newly watched some remakes recently (it all started with Jade Empire, which gave me a hankering for more grandiose Chinese historical fantasy), I'm back on a wuxia kick. It happens once every couple of years. It's been killing me for years that I haven't been able to share my love of wuxia series with the rest of my non-Chinese speaking friends. Omi and I used to watch Shen Diao Xia Lu/Return of the Condor Heroes together downstairs in my basement, and I used to have to explain what was going on to him. Well, no more! People have subbed the most recent remakes into English. Hooray for the subbers, who've made this giant linkdump possible.
What is wuxia? Wuxia is the Chinese cross of historical fiction and swords-and-sorcery fantasy. It originated first in the Ming Dynasty with novelized forms of "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" and "The Water Margin/Outlaws of the Marsh" with a heavier focus on history, politics, and war (and less of the fantasy aspect), and emerged in its modern and most popularized form in the 1960's with novels by authors Jin Yong and Gu Long. For some good summaries of the genre, please see the Wuxiapedia and Wikipedia articles.
Why does Skuld care about wuxia? I grew up on this stuff. If it weren't for the fact that my parents realized that I had a preference for asskicking, I'd be yet another one of those American-born Chinese kids who can't speak or understand the tongue of the Motherland. For as long as I can remember, my parents have sat me down in front of the television, and told me to learn some Chinese from badass mofos killing people with swords or even their bare hands. I used to love every minute of it. Now I'm trying to pass that love on.
Since the late 1970's, it's been fairly commonplace to shoot live-action versions of modern wuxia novels as television mini-series, the most popular of which are derivatives of the novels of Jin Yong.
Jin Yong's most famous and popular novels are The Condor Trilogy which encompasses: The Legend of the Condor Heroes (LoCH), The Return of the Condor Heroes (RoCH), and The Heavenly Sword and the Dragon Saber (HSDS). Two other notable popular Jin Yong novels are The Smiling Proud Wanderer (aka. Xiao Ao Jiang Hu) and Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (aka. Tian Long Ba Bu). All of the aforementioned novels have been made into multiple television mini-series by various powers that be (Hong Kong, Mainland China, Taiwan, Singapore) spanning roughly 30 years.
Anyways, without furtherdo, onto the dump!
NOVELS
Wuxiapedia has some complete translations of some of Jin Yong's and Gu Long's novels. The greatest disservice I have ever done to my ancestors (besides slashing them) was to fail at being able to read Chinese. Well, to remedy that, some nice people have translated my favorite wuxia pieces in English, so I don't have to learn literacy anymore. Hooray! Now I just need the time to actually sit down and do the reading.
- Legend of the Condor Heroes (LoCH: She Diao Ying Xiong Zhuan)
- Return of the Condor Heroes (RoCH: Shen Diao Xia Lu)
- Heavenly Sword and Dragon Sabre (HSDS: Yi Tian Tu Long Ji)
- Xiao Ao Jiang Hu
- Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils (Tian Long Ba Bu)
- complete list of Wuxiapedia translated novels
TELEVISION
LoCH:
- HK TVB 1982 version (DVD, Eng Sub, Cantonese and Mandarin), starring Felix Wong and Barbara Yung. The classic.
- CCTV 2003 version (streaming, Eng Sub, Mandarin), starring Li Ya Peng and Zhou Xun. Not the first one that Skuld saw, but probably the best. It gives the 1982 version a real run for its money. Great cast, great cinematography.
RoCH:
- HK TVB 1983 version (DVD, Eng Sub, Cantonese and Mandarin), starring Andy Lau and Idy Chan. People consider this a classic as well, but I'm more fond of the version the Louis Koo version. I will admit, seeing Andy Lau as Yang Guo was pretty cool.
- HK TVB 1995 version (streaming, Chinese Sub, Cantonese), starring Louis Koo and Carmen Lee. Skuld's favorite version, maybe because it was the version she watched first, maybe because Louis Koo looks so goddamn hot when you're 14 years old, maybe because Carmen Lee is perfect and has such good chemistry with Louis Koo. Wrongly billed on the page as LoCH, it's actually RoCH. Skuld never lies.
One of these days, Skuld is going to encode and sub this entire version. Okay, maybe none of these days. Still, if you're of a mind, all her favorite scenes have been uploaded to YouTube by some cool dude. And they're in Mandarin, which means she can understand them! How great is that? WARNING: SPOILERS! Not that you'd really understand unless you can understand Chinese.
- CCTV 2006 version (streaming, Eng Sub, Mandarin), starring Huang Xiao Ming and Crystal Liu. The newest version. Great cinematography and music. Acting leaves something to be desired, and Skuld isn't fond of Crystal Liu as Xiao Long Nu. Still, well worth watching. (Also: torrent here)
HSDS
- HK TVB 1986 version (DVD, Eng Sub, Cantonese and Mandarin), starring Tony Leung, Sheren Teng, Kitty Lai, and Maggie Siu. Skuld's favorite of all the HSDS versions she's seen. It might be the Tony Leung factor.
- TCS 2003 version (streaming, Eng Sub, Mandarin), starring Alec Su, Alyssa Chia, and Gao Yuan Yuan. Not the best version Skuld's seen. Graphics kind of over-the-top, casting is only so-so, and boring-ass fight scenes. Better cinematography than the old Tony Leung version, and I guess to the people reading this entry, the English subs are a draw.
Tian Long Ba Bu
- HK TVB 1982 version (DVD, Eng Sub, Cantonese and Mandarin), starring Kent Tong, Felix Wong, Patrick Tse, Idy Chan, and whole shitload of other people. Again, a classic. Less martial arts action than the Condor Trilogy, so Skuld hasn't actually sat through all of it.
- CCTV 2003 version (streaming, Eng Sub, Mandarin), starring Jimmy Lin, Hu Jun, Crystal Liu, and a whole shitload of other people. Skuld hasn't seen it, it's on her list. Given the show's producer (Zhang Jizhong), who is known for his good Jin Yong adaptations, this one's probably pretty good.
Xiao Ao Jiang Hu
- CCTV 2001 version (streaming, Eng Sub, Mandarin), starring Li Ya Peng and Xu Qing. Haven't seen the other versions (HK TVB '84 and '96, Taiwan and Singapore 2000), so this one will have to do. Great casting, great cinematography and fight scenes despite some serious changes in the story. Definitely worth watching.
Chinese Paladin
- Xian Jian Qi Xia Zhuan (streaming, Eng Sub, Mandarin) starring Hu Ge and Crystal Liu. Based off a popular RPG first made in the 1990's, with character designs by the famous Ping Fan and Chen Shu Fen. Skuld hasn't seen this, but it's on her list. (Also: torrent here)
MUSIC
Skuld has uploaded all her wuxia music (mostly opening/ending themes) from various series here, at MegaUpload (file is roughly 130MB). Some files in this folder are from back when Napster was still alive, so you can tell how long she's been trying to collect. Included are OP/ED themes from the old HK 1980's versions of the Condor Trilogy, up to the most recent OP/EDs.
RANDOM SHIT
And before I forget...one of the weirdest things about all the three remakes of Tian Long Ba Bu (Demi-Gods and Semi-Devils) is that the actresses (Idy Chan, Carmen Lee, and Crystal Liu) who have played the main female lead character, Wang Yu Yan, have also played the lead in Return of the Condor Heroes, Xiao Long Nu. WTF is up with that?
Notice: this entry will probably be updated every once a while. Suggest things for me to link to. Suggest series for me to add. I'll put them up.
Stephen Colbert is so full of truth, I don't think I'll ever need another man to fill me again.
Get your Harry Potter Book 7 Spoilers here because Stephen Colbert NEVER LIES!
Warning: spoilers.
Last night, after reading aloud a part of some pornish_pixies smut to my roommates:
"That sounds like "The Eye of Argon" by way of Ulysses. Only it's porn."
~ Q10
I quickly realized that that's quite likely the worst possible review you can ever give a piece of textual smut.
