Cumulus Dreams

I just finished a reread of CJ Cherryh's Cyteen.  That is an impressively large novel, over 800 pages in my SF Book Club hardback and I still think it is one of the strongest entries in Cherryh's expansive catalogue.  I believe that this is my third time through Cyteen in the last 10 years or so, and I've done hardly any rereading of Cherryh's other work.  I think that the primary reason I revisit this more than most is probably because I can identify with Ari 2 a lot, and Justin and Grant a bit less.  Ariane Emory is a fascinating character, we get a much better sense of who she is in her second incarnation, but the older Ari is also fascinating.  I find her recorded advice to her successor to be especially interesting, and I'll also admit that I find the problems she is concerned with to be challenging and engaging.  I don't have the right background to really evaluate her approaches (and of course it is a fictional universe), but I still think they are worth pondering. 

( The rest is behind the cut )


Another round of miscellaneous media blogging.  The first part is from a week or so back and I didn't get around to posting it.  The rest is from this evening.   

Warning:  Lots of Spoilers

The rest is behind the cut( here . . . )

I thought I'd try a bit of less focused posting here.

Ramblings below the ( cut. . .  )

I snagged this meme from dreiser  because it looked like fun.  Also, since I don't know when, if ever, I'll manage to finish most of these stories it seemed only fair to share part of them this way.

"Post a single sentence from each WIP you have (or as many as you want to pick). No context, no explanations. No more than one sentence!"


( Continue to the meme . . .  )

Another meme stolen from wizened_cynic .  I'm going to blame her for spending good fraction of my morning looking for the most meaningful pics on my computer.

Post Ten of any pictures currently on your hard drive that you think are self-expressive.

NO CAPTIONS!!! It must be like we're speaking with images and we have to interpret your visual language just like we have to interpret your words.

They must ALREADY be on your hard drive - no googling or flickr! They have to have been saved to your folders sometime in the past. They must be something you've saved there because it resonated with you for some reason.

You do NOT have to answer any questions about any of your pictures if you don't want to. You can make them as mysterious as you like. Or you can explain them away as much as you like.

( Pics behind the cut. . . )

I stole this one from wizened_cynic and tweaked it a little bit.
1. Anyone who looks at this entry has to post this meme and their current wallpaper on their Livejournal/Dreamwidth. [If they want to.]
2. Explain in five sentences on(ly) why you're using that wallpaper!
3. Don't change your wallpaper before doing this! The point is to see what you had on!

I had to tweak 3 because I have mine set to cycle through my current wallpaper folder of ~4100 pictures randomly changing once a minute.  I didn't catch that one in time, but I did get another Alyson Hannigan one later:


This is one of my favorite Alyson pics and its always nice when it comes up in the rotation.  The composition is good, and she's being adorable, plus I like the dandelions.  Not too much else to say about that one as distinct from other Alyson pics.

As a bonus, I'm going to include a composite of a number of the screenshots I took while I was waiting for the rotation behind the ( Cut: )

This is an idea I stole from curiousally , and is necessarily only an approximation.

TV

Angel - Cordelia/Angel, Cordelia/Kate, Fred/Willow, Cordelia/Faith, Cordelia/Fred, Lilah/Fred, Darla/Drusilla, Lilah/Drusilla, Lilah/Kate, Lilah/Faith, Drusilla/Fred, Illyria/Buffy
Bones - Angela/Bones, Booth/Brennan
Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Buffy/Willow, Willow/Tara, Buffy/Tara, Buffy/Willow/Tara, Willow/Dawn, Buffy/Faith, Faith/Dawn, Buffy/Cordelia, Cordelia/Marcy (the invisible girl)- a crack pairing that just popped into my head.
Dollhouse - Echo/Sierra, Echo/Claire, Echo/Adelle,
Firefly - Kaylee/Inara, Kaylee/River, River/Inara, River/Saffron, Kaylee/Saffron
Gilmore Girls - Rory/Paris, Madeline/Paris, Rory/Lane, Lorelei/Rachel, Lorelei/Sookie, Lorelei/Joyce (BtVS)
Popular - Sam/Brooke
Stargate SG-1 - Sam/Janet, Osiris/Nirrti,
Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles - Sarah/Cameron,
Veronica Mars - Veronica/Mac, Veronica/Meg, Veronica/Lilly, Veronica/Buffy, Mac/Willow
Voyager - Janeway/Seven
Weeds - Nancy/Cecelia
Xena - Xena/Gabrielle

Film

8 Women - Gaby/Pierrette
All about my mother - Maneula/Huma, Huma/Nina
D.E.B.S. - Amy/Lucy, Scud/Janet
The Devil Wears Prada - Andy/Miranda
The Double Life of Veronique - Veronique/Weronika (total crack pairing)
Ghost World - Enid/Rebecca
Heavenly Creatures - Pauline/Juliet
The Hunger - Miriam/Sarah
Imagine Me & You - Luce/Rachel
Three Colors: Blue - Julie/Sandrine


Books

Anne of Green Gables - Anne/Diana
Discworld - Susan/Agnes
Harry Potter - Luna/Pansy, Hermione/Ginny, Luna/Hermione, Ginny/Pansy, Luna/Ginny, Luna/Tonks
The Hollows - Rachel/Ivy
Lord of the Rings - Arwen/Eowyn, Galadriel/Melian
Memory & Dream (deLint) - Izzy/Kathy
Wasteland of Flint - Gretchen/Maggie
Wicked - Galinda/Elphababa
Star Wars (expanded universe) - Leia Organa/Mara Jade

Sequential Art (comics)

El Goonish Shive - Ellen/Nanase


RPF

Kate Winslet/Melanie Lynskey
Kristen Stewart/Nikki Reed

I just spent an hour or so working on this meme which I stole fromnike_ravus , who stole it from wizened_cynic. It was a lot of fun and gave me even more ideas for fics, not that I needed more, as my plot bunny file currently has at least 20 different bunnies in it and they seem to be multiplying all the time.  Here's the meme.
.
First, write down the names of 12 characters. Then read and answer the questions.
You can't look at the questions (or click on the cut) until you write down the 12 characters you're going to use.

1. Willow Rosenberg (Btvs)

2.  Buffy Summers (Btvs)

3.  Tara Maclay (Btvs)

4.  Dawn Summers (Btvs)

5.  Cameron (Ttscc)

6.  Catherine Weaver (Ttscc)

7.  Echo (Dollhouse)

8.  Adelle DeWitt (Dollhouse)

9.  Paris Gellar (GG)

10.  Lorelei Gilmore (GG)

11.  Rory Gilmore (GG)

12.  Elle Woods (Legally Blonde)

The Questions (and my answers) are behind the cut

( Here. )

For the last few days I've been reading (and savoring) Ashinano Hitoshi's gorgeous manga Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou.  I'm only up to chapter 25 or so of 142, but its such a treat that I'm reluctant to read it too quickly.  Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, literally "Yokohama shopping trip", is a slice of life tale about an android girl living in a future Japan after an unspecified environmental disaster has raised sea level and flooded many of the coastal towns.  The story is meditative and is so far concerned mostly with Alpha's days at the coffeeshop she runs for her owner who is away travelling and the people that she encounters.  Most of those people are nieghbors, but she also meets another android girl named Kokone with whom there are hints of romance.  While I am enjoying the story, the biggest draw for me is the gorgeous art, almost every page features something that impresses me with its beauty.
         
Two typically evocative pages from the manga. 

Sadly, YKK hasn't been published in English at present and there are apparently no current plans to change that.  As I don't read Japanese, I'm indebted to the people who've posted scans and translations of the original manga which you can find here at www.onemanga.com/Yokohama_Kaidashi_Kikou/.

Enjoy!

A Literature meme snagged from cmayumit , apparently the average adult has only read six titles on this list.  I like literature memes because they give me a chance to comment on the standards by which books are selected, etc. I have to wonder where this list came from because it seems to be ~75% books that literature teachers would select and the rest are modern big names which seems awfully arbitrary. And even with that there are some clear outliers, Harry Potter?, The Wasp Factory?, The Da Vinci Code?  Regardless, by their standards I seem to be moderately well read as I've read 39 of them.

( Go here for the list . . . )