![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
So, there is a novel contest being held by ever-hilarious Agent Reid.
...priceless...
Janet Reid, not Spencer Reid, but anyway, prize is for the Backspace writing conference (airfare, registration, $300 stipend AND lunch with le agent) and you send a query AND full novel to it. I'm going to do it!
Which means, today I write one more scene insert and hope it fixes the novel...
Deadline: March 15
The contest is the Liz Norris Paying It Forward Contest in honor of Liz Norris's debut novel coming out in April, which sounds superexcellent.
Unravelling is described as "If Veronica Mars got one of Scully and Mulder's cases", the book that would ensue.
And I don't have to post about it to qualify for the contest or anything, I just think that sounds wicked fun!
I feel like I'm in a place to cast out a lot of lures, so I'm eager to do stuff like this and just see where it goes!
Mar. 5th, 2012
Gokusen+Nodame Cantabile
Mar. 5th, 2012 02:41 pmIt's been a while since I first meant to blog about these, but they just keep falling by the wayside--mostly because these aren't shows I feel are so brain-exploding awesome everyone MUST WATCH, nor particularly unknown, so I feel the need to alert people to their existence. And yet, they were so much fun!
Gokusen I actually haven't finished. I try not to be this way, but a drama without a love-line tends to take a back-burner, no matter how awesome the actual episodes and plot-arc.
And seeing Oguri Shun play a slightly vicious punk, while Matsumoto Jun plays a heart-of-gold delinquent in tsundere mode is *really* awesome. If you're into that kind of thing.
(ALL THE GAKURAN)
(WHY WOULDN'T YOU BE INTO IT?)
(AND THE BEST AWFUL HAIR IN ALL THE LAAAAND) okay, matsujun, I take it back, your honey tresses are awesome, but in general
But basically, the teacher's the good-girl-nerd hiding a yakuza kick-ass core; a great treatment where you see both sides being true to her, rather than one being real and the other pretend. And so her loving care of the delinquent class of an already rough boys' school sometimes veers into the gangster code-of-conduct. But she's all for the *principled* delinquency, a great transition point for teaching these guys where they go too far.
Adorable boys in a moody pack, with frequent rumble scenes, and a seemingly-hapless young teacher trying to keep them in line, with her own side-dish of yakuza drama? We have a winner.
It was the underdog-sport-triumph of Tumbling that overtook it, because there isn't such an urgent overarching plot on this. Which is great. I feel like with the multiple seasons and movies, I have a favorite to pick up every once in a while without needing to gulp it down.
oh yeah, and Narimiya Hiroki, owner of the curliest mouth in all the land
***
I had to gulp down Nodame Cantabile! It's the kind of screwball comedy that Japan does rather well, and this manga adaptation had the beats just right. You're rooting for the mismatched couple from their first ill-met encounter, by the very improbability of it.
Why is Chiaki-senpai so impassioned by her filthy room and lackadaisical attitude to music?
Why is Nodame able to just say, "Ah, I want to hug your back right now, I think I fell in love...♫"
FATE. OBVIOUSLY.
One of the best elements is that you get the classic set up of a bickering relationship that (at least on one side) is trying to kill the romantic tension, without the guy being an unrelieved jerk (he's Type A. Like, super-uptight-accomplishment-oriented Type A. And then a bit of a jerk) or the girl being an imbecile.
I mean, she's a dumdum. I am tempted to read the manga just because I felt it was overplayed a bit, but she's meant to be so B型, that she's coasted on playing music by ear for years. Not just in her music lessons, but completely neglected any other accomplishment, because she can pretty much play music the first time she hears it.
The way she's openly and unreservedly both in love with Chiaki and unself-conscious of what she likes in any area is kind of fantastic.
Something that I liked about the drama's presentation was the use of classical music as the soundtrack cues--with a certain tongue-in-cheek sensibility that didn't overshadow the actual emotion of the music performances. The fact that the music is integral to character development moments was also great.
I can see why this has become a classic, both the original material and the drama itself (which has been rebroadcast in Korea, and therefore probably elsewhere in Asia). It's tongue-in-cheek and has a cartoonish bent of humor and slapstick, without sacrificing deeply felt character moments and depth.
Gokusen I actually haven't finished. I try not to be this way, but a drama without a love-line tends to take a back-burner, no matter how awesome the actual episodes and plot-arc.
And seeing Oguri Shun play a slightly vicious punk, while Matsumoto Jun plays a heart-of-gold delinquent in tsundere mode is *really* awesome. If you're into that kind of thing.
(ALL THE GAKURAN)
(WHY WOULDN'T YOU BE INTO IT?)
(AND THE BEST AWFUL HAIR IN ALL THE LAAAAND) okay, matsujun, I take it back, your honey tresses are awesome, but in general
But basically, the teacher's the good-girl-nerd hiding a yakuza kick-ass core; a great treatment where you see both sides being true to her, rather than one being real and the other pretend. And so her loving care of the delinquent class of an already rough boys' school sometimes veers into the gangster code-of-conduct. But she's all for the *principled* delinquency, a great transition point for teaching these guys where they go too far.
Adorable boys in a moody pack, with frequent rumble scenes, and a seemingly-hapless young teacher trying to keep them in line, with her own side-dish of yakuza drama? We have a winner.
It was the underdog-sport-triumph of Tumbling that overtook it, because there isn't such an urgent overarching plot on this. Which is great. I feel like with the multiple seasons and movies, I have a favorite to pick up every once in a while without needing to gulp it down.
oh yeah, and Narimiya Hiroki, owner of the curliest mouth in all the land***
I had to gulp down Nodame Cantabile! It's the kind of screwball comedy that Japan does rather well, and this manga adaptation had the beats just right. You're rooting for the mismatched couple from their first ill-met encounter, by the very improbability of it.
Why is Chiaki-senpai so impassioned by her filthy room and lackadaisical attitude to music?
Why is Nodame able to just say, "Ah, I want to hug your back right now, I think I fell in love...♫"
FATE. OBVIOUSLY.
One of the best elements is that you get the classic set up of a bickering relationship that (at least on one side) is trying to kill the romantic tension, without the guy being an unrelieved jerk (he's Type A. Like, super-uptight-accomplishment-oriented Type A. And then a bit of a jerk) or the girl being an imbecile.
I mean, she's a dumdum. I am tempted to read the manga just because I felt it was overplayed a bit, but she's meant to be so B型, that she's coasted on playing music by ear for years. Not just in her music lessons, but completely neglected any other accomplishment, because she can pretty much play music the first time she hears it.
The way she's openly and unreservedly both in love with Chiaki and unself-conscious of what she likes in any area is kind of fantastic.
Something that I liked about the drama's presentation was the use of classical music as the soundtrack cues--with a certain tongue-in-cheek sensibility that didn't overshadow the actual emotion of the music performances. The fact that the music is integral to character development moments was also great.
I can see why this has become a classic, both the original material and the drama itself (which has been rebroadcast in Korea, and therefore probably elsewhere in Asia). It's tongue-in-cheek and has a cartoonish bent of humor and slapstick, without sacrificing deeply felt character moments and depth.
Emerge Ravenous
Mar. 5th, 2012 07:12 pmMy poem has gone up on Polu Texni!
I hardly recognized it--sometimes it's so long before it actually goes up, and it's been even longer since you really reviewed it instead of just sending it out to another magazine...
Do you like it? I'm not sure what I think of it now. X)
I hardly recognized it--sometimes it's so long before it actually goes up, and it's been even longer since you really reviewed it instead of just sending it out to another magazine...
Do you like it? I'm not sure what I think of it now. X)