For those of you who have any interest at all in talk about beauty standards/fashion/Korean culture/kpop, this video is worth checking out. A British model heads to Seoul to look into fashion week there for Vice and talks to a bunch of random people about fashion in Seoul. Featuring the world's shortest and most bizarre interview with Infinite, the most polite punk you'll ever meet, a rockabilly barber, and couples' matching underwear. Plus some really sad stuff about beauty standards and plastic surgery.

It's a mishmash of interesting things, and what I particularly liked was the people she talks to who aren't in the entertainment industry. Mostly because everything I know about Korean culture has been filtered through kdramas/kpop, so getting to hear from normal people in a nice change.

There's some stuff I learned and some stuff that broke my heart, and did I mention that the Infinite interview is really strange? It was clearly filmed at the time they were filming the bts stuff for the Second Invasion DVD so the styling is very familiar, and it's so strange to try to look at them through the eyes of someone who has no idea who they are.

There's some quite uncomfortably graphic plastic surgery stuff starting at about 25 minutes in, so you might want to avert your eyes if you're sensitive to that sort of thing.

Anyway: check it out.

It suddenly occurred to me that some of you may not have seen this video, and I needed to fix that IMMEDIATELY because it is the greatest thing in the world.




Man, I really love kpop.

that fandom's continued love affair with Siken is a source of amusement for me. Way to have good taste, fandom.

Hellooooo, children. I think I’m back? I feel pretty okay; I think I needed a hiatus, it’d been a while since I’d taken one. So I’ve mostly been watching reality shows about kpop idols and reblogging pictures of pretty people on tumblr, but now I’m writing ALL the things and I feel up to wading through my flist again. I’m not going to try to go back and catch all the things I missed, so I’ll repeat: if you have anything you’d like me to check out, let me know.


+ It’s been well over 100 degrees this week (and will likely continue to be), but it hasn’t been too awful because the humidity has been reasonable, which is not something I ever thought I would say about Middle Tennessee. It’s drydrydry here right now and all the grass is dead so it isn’t as pretty of a green as it usually is here this time of year, so I’m praying for rain because we need it. But I have to admit that the lack of humidity is nice.


+ In book-related news, I am finally reading Bitterblue and it’s fantastic. I think it’s Cashore’s best book yet, though I’m only halfway through. Little Queen Bitterblue! So lovely!


+ Also re: books, I learned the other day that Eloise Jarvis McGraw, writer of one of my all-time favorite YA novels Mara: Daughter of the Nile (perhaps the book I’ve most often re-read in my life? I’ve memorized sections of it and my copy is falling apart) wrote an adult novel about Hatshepsut. Obviously as soon as I heard this I hied myself to the internet and looked for a copy. But this isn’t just out of print, it’s out of print. The only copy on Abebooks was $350. I found a copy on Amazon that was substantially less but still way, way more than I’d usually pay for a book but I splurged anyway because A) I live very frugally and I feel it’s okay for me to do something like that once in a while, B) I have always been obsessed with ancient Egypt and this is totally Relevant to My Interests, and C) did I mention she wrote one of my favorite books? I will definitely let y’all know if it’s good. I can’t wait for it to arrive! *happy dance*


+ Here’s something you never thought you’d hear me say: I’m writing smutty slashfic. Who even am I anymore? I don’t know, but just writing it makes me blush. I’ve gotten to the point over my years (and years) of fandom that I can read porn straight-faced (though you know me: I mostly skim to get to the actual emotions because who cares about the physical stuff?) but writing it myself is a whole different story. Obviously since this is me we're talking about, the physical smut is just an excuse for emotional porn, by which I mean everyone has too many feelings and they're all incapable of expressing any of them but the ugliest ones.


+ I only have like 10,000 more words to write in my novel. But I keep getting distracted by my shiny new fandoms and running off to write fanfic. I need to buckle down and finish because finishing was the whole point of this thing. I don’t think I’m going to clean this one up for publication; I’m going to set it to the side for a while. But finishing it was the goal, and I need to make it happen.


+ Is it okay for me to admit that I have now seen Brave and that I found it disappointing? ( cut for length but no real spoilers )

+ Something that I watched that wasn’t at all disappointing was Appropriate Adult, a BBC two-part series about a woman who was the appropriate adult (via wikipedia: “a parent or guardian or social worker who must be present if a young person or vulnerable adult is to be searched or questioned in police custody”) to Fred West, the serial killer who with his wife killed at least 13 women in Gloucester during the 70s/80s. It starred Emily Watson, always extremely good, who was very convincing as a quiet sort of housewife-type and Dominic West from The Hour. I liked the contrast between his character on the hour—charming, rich, educated—and his portrayal of West—working class, manipulative, rough-edged and a psychopath. He was excellent, and I hear he won a BAFTA for it, which was well-deserved.

I can’t say that I exactly recommend it, because it was rough. Not physically graphic at all, because it’s all about the aftermath of his arrest, but the things you learn about what the Wests did will obviously never leave your brain after you hear them. Their actions are the kind that we like to convince ourselves are inhuman, and I can’t emphasize that enough. That said, it was an extremely well-done production, I was very impressed. If you think you can handle it, you might want to check it out.


+ I also saw Snow White and the Huntsman a while back, and I liked it. Visually it was absolutely stunning and exactly the type of thing I love. The characters were a bit underdeveloped, but it was trying to be a fairy tale, and that comes with the territory. There was some weak dialogue, some cheesy moments, and some other weaknesses, but all in all I thought it was a good summer popcorn movie with a nice twist of being A) AMAZING TO LOOK AT and B) about ladies.


+ I have watched 2 and a half episodes of Teen Wolf. I am trying to get into this thing because everyone loves it, but I need a goal: tell me when it’s going to become an obsession, please. You know I'll hold out as long as I know how long I need to.


+ The only kdrama I’m all caught up with at the moment is I Do I Do, which is kind of ridiculous. But it’s very light and adorable and has a noona romance that works for me with a badass hbic leading lady and the world’s sweetest guy as her romantic interest. I am going to catch up on Gaksital soon and also get back into Big, which I hear has gotten really awesome.


+ I am a giant sap (things you already knew if you have been here long), so have a video that actually made me tear up:

+ I have decided that there are three elements you can add to any story to automatically improve it: spies, spaceships, and/or apocalypses (bonus points if you add all three!). This insight brought to you by me currently casting my ridiculous kpop band in a spy au.

+ Flipping channels on the radio on the way to work this morning, I stumbled across a station that was playing a game called (yes, really!) SHADES OF BIEBER. Where they made a very reluctant co-host read aloud passages and then had people call in and guess whether they were quotes from 50 Shades of Grey or Justin Bieber songs. I CAN'T. I guess that book really has gone mainstream, which is a terrifying prospect.

+ I am waaaaay behind on Game of Thrones, but I'm enjoying all the badass Sansa graphics that keep popping up on my tumblr dash. For some reason, I can't work up the desire to actually watch the show at the moment? I'll catch up eventually.

+ I am frankly shocked that Cardiff has not burned to the ground after they let Matt Smith carry the Olympic torch. Shocked.

+ I have fallen down the hole into kpop fandom. I apologize, y'all. I'll try to refrain from spamming the heck out of you. But, y'all, I'm pretty sure the second season of Sesame Player is the greatest thing to ever happen to me. Just sayin'.

+ The internet has such a way of making me feel old. Someone posted a mix of songs from 2004 and labeled it as songs from middle school. I can't wrap my mind around the fact that people who were in middle school in 2004 were on the internet. 2004 was the beginning of my senior year of high school. I feel old on tumblr. And then I come over here to lj and I have much older, insanely wonderful friends and perspective is restored.

+ My daddy and I showed my mama and lil sis Inglourious Basterds on Friday night. I was so pleased that they loved it. Favoritest of movies!

+ One of my baby cousins is getting married this weekend, so FAMILY TIME looms. Good thing I like my family. It's gonna be crazy.

+ It is so hot outside, y'all. I refuse to complain because I complain whenever it gets cold and I do definitely prefer hot to cold. But it's really hot. And May.

+ I have been searching for a dress to wear and have come up with nothing. It's amazing to me: I got to the mall and there are thousands and thousands of dresses (malls make me a little ill, between all the people and the consumerism) and there is nothing that I want to buy. The stuff I like looks bad on me. Everything else is ugh. I hate shopping. Hate it.

+ Sunday was Pentecost, and our sermon was amazing and all about the work of the Holy Spirit in restoring the world, and it inspired me to reread some Madeleine L'Engle and dive into her exploration of the idea of the whole world being a sacrament and expect some quotes to pop up here and there. I love it when church moves me so deeply that I cry.

+ What's going on with y'all?

Y'all, I have so many problems with Catholic theology and the institution of the Catholic church, but monks and nuns are consistently the best (like, seriously, if I was Catholic, I think I would make such a great nun).

Oh, My Hand: Complaints Medieval Monks Scribbled in the Margins of Illuminated Manuscripts

New parchment, bad ink; I say nothing more.

[You don't need to, really. A dull pencil is the worst.]

I am very cold.

That's a hard page and a weary work to write it.

Let the reader's voice honor the writer's pen.

[which I choose to read as: APPRECIATE ME, DAMMIT. I PUT A LOT OF WORK INTO THIS.

This page has not been written very slowly.

[translation: forgive me my typos. Either that or it's sarcastic]

The parchment is hairy.

[Gross.]

The ink is thin.

Thank God, it will soon be dark.

Oh, my hand.

[I feel you, bro.]

Now I've written the whole thing: for Christ's sake, get me a drink.

St. Patrick of Armagh, deliver me from writing.

[I will be using that phrase ALL THE TIME.]

While I wrote I froze, and what I could not write by the beams of the sun I finished by candlelight.

[Frankly, that sounds like poetry.]

Writing is excessive drudgery. It crooks your back, it dims your sight, it twists your stomach and your sides.

As the harbor is welcome to the sailor, so is the last line to the scribe.

This is sad! O little book! A day will come in truth when someone over your page will say, ‘The hand that wrote it is no more.’

And upupa_epops, if you would like to talk about LM Montgomery in the comments, I would approve of that most heartily.

+ So apparently last night's TVD pissed everyone off? I haven't seen it yet, but I'm bracing myself for it. Do y'all sometimes wonder why we watch this ridiculous excuse for a show? I often do, and then ever_neutral writes perfect meta and I suddenly have feelings all over the place and I remember.

+ In case you missed it (read: in case you're not on tumblr), Joe Dempsie is perfect, and I want to glomp him:




+ For snickfic's amusement: this thing has informed me that Lauren is made of kitty cats, cherries, and awkwardness. With a dash of porn. WITH A DASH OF PORN. I still need to steal your "I'm bored and your porn is boring" icon.

+ Love Rain continues to be so perfect I could die. This week's episodes were so unrelentingly adorable that I almost couldn't stand it. I expect the angst is coming soon, but I have high hopes of getting a happy ending for Joon and Ha Na, so I'm happy. If you need something to watch, you should high-tail it over to dramafever.com and watch the heck out of this show. These kids have faces and sometimes they put them together.



+ I will probably try to FINALLY watch some of Young Justice this weekend. I have to write my rarewomen fic, but I'm hoping to get into this show because I am overwhelmed with love for y'all's feels. You know how sometimes you love a thing because your friends love it but you really know nothing about it? That is how I feel about this show. I love it though I haven't seen it.

+ I dreamed I was Fox Mulder's assistant last night (I have no clue where Scully was). Which I guess is my subconscious telling me to finish that damn show.

+ All of my GoT feels continue to be about the Stark girls. And Oona Chaplin being flawless. When is The Hour coming back? I need more of it in my life.

+ I can't decide whether I love or hate y'all who have been reblogging quotes from 50 Shades of Grey all over my dash. On the one hand: so incredibly, ridiculously bad that it's hilarious. On the other hand, I can never erase those things from my mind. dollsome has noted (and is indeed correct) that the series seems to exactly reproduce the feel of the Twilight books (not to mention Bella's characterization) only now with 100% more pr0n. It's kind of amazing. AMAZINGLY BAD AND DISGUSTING. I feel sorry for the women who are so into this series because they don't realize there's better porn on the internet for free.

+ 60,000 words on the novel! Only about 20,000 more to go!

+ I realize that some of you might not be nerdfighters (though you totally should), so if you missed this video you should watch it now. I really feel like it's one of the best that Hank has ever made, and it's dripping with truth.



+ It is Friday.

+ That's...it? Feel free, as always, to tell me about your lives, because I am always interested.

You know how in "The Lodger," there's this exchange:

Craig: Listen, Mike and I had an arrangement where if you ever need me out of your hair, just give me a shout. Okay?.
The Doctor: Why would I want that?
Craig: Well, in case you want to bring someone round, a girlfriend or a...boyfriend...
The Doctor: Oh, I will. I'll shout... if that happens. Something like... I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS!

Someone should write a fic where River shows up out of the blue and the Doctor actually has to use his I WAS NOT EXPECTING THIS! shout.

That is a thing that should exist in the world.

+ Okay, so I did this thing where I wrote a scene for my novel before I actually started writing the novel in the proper order (I do this a lot). And I liked it! It was a good scene! So I was kind of writing toward it, if that makes any sense, and I was really looking forward to reaching the point where I could plug it in to the story.

Well, I just reached that point only…I realize that I wrote it from the perspective of Boy Character when the rest of the novel has been from the POV of Girl Character. SO I HAVE TO REWRITE IT. Even though it’s really good as it is! *sigh*

+ I have (at least) two big climactic scenes in the novel (because my novel is a lady, not a man), and I’m getting very close to the first one and FREAKING OUT. What if it doesn’t have the right emotional resonance? AAAAAH! I can’t figure out why this is so much harder for me than fic is. Is it a psychological thing? Was fic this hard for me when I first started writing it? (That was over 10 years ago! I don’t remember!)

+ Even if you have no interest in Kdramas, you should probably get on Hulu or Dramafever and watch City Hunter. It is so damn accessible. And Korean Batman >>>>>>>> American Batman. Plus: best heroine EVER! She hella competent and strong and has taken care of herself for years but she’s also incredibly emotionally open and adorable, which is a combination I don’t feel like you see a lot of? She’s the best. And check out these boyfriends (unless you're a spoiler-phobe. But I feel like it's only vaguely spoiler-y?).

+ Also, Lee Min Ho is rather attractive.



So there’s that.

+ The kdramas I've been watching lately (specifically Mawang and City Hunter) have these fantastic, complex relationships between guys, especially guys who are very different (think, like Spike and Angel level complex). And I love them. If I was going to be a big slasher, I would slash the heck out of kdrama guys. BUT. It makes me sad that there are no complex relationships between ladies. They're either A) good friends but usually not on a complex or plot-related level or B) competitors/enemies. And hey--this is a problem with Western TV, too, I just happen to be watching more Korean TV at the moment. And it makes me wistful. Why is it that guys get all the nuances of relationships and ladies never do? It makes me pout.

+ You know what was a good show? Recess. I was probably a little too old to be watching it, but I enjoyed it so much with the King of the Playground and the Mean Girl clique of all the girls named Ashley (and then that one random girl who WASN’T named Ashley, and they had a whole episode where the truth came out that one of the Ashleys wasn’t really an Ashley and it was THE DRAMA) and kickball being the Most Important Thing in the World. I was thinking of the episode the other day where the big guy (whose name I can’t remember) sings in the bathroom (and I feel like he was singing “Nobody Knows the Trouble I’ve Seen” or something like that) and he sounds fantastic but then when he sings outside the bathroom he can’t sing at all? And for some reason the other characters need him to sing outside of the bathroom so they, like, put toilets or something in the place where they need him to sing so that he can pretend it’s the bathroom? LULZ.

Anyway, that was a good show.

+ Vampire Diaries meta all over my flist all the time. How does this show that started out so silly inspire so much awesome meta? Damon Salvatore's self-awareness, I love you.

+ And, as expected:





+ Let us not talk about Sansa beating Buffy. I love Sansa loads, but BUFFY ♥♥♥♥♥


+ I actually cannot choose between Scully and Donna. I ended up going with Scully but only barely. HOW CAN YOU POSSIBLY MAKE ME CHOOOOOSE? Caroline vs. Veronica was also evil. EVIL EVIL EVIL.

+ Tami hasn’t got a chance in hell, but you should vote for anyway. *wistful sigh*

From fannish5:

Five characters who are annoying, but that you love anyway

1. Andrew Wells. He's whiny and has little social skills and is totally ridiculous and never seems to realize how serious things are, and I should hate him. Instead, I love him madly. I also may relate to him sometimes. Geek solidarity!
2. Dawn Summers. Actually, yes, I do think she's annoying in S5 at times. That's kind of the point seeing as she's the little sister (sorry, little sisters of the world, but us big sisters know that you can be hella annoying. We still love you anyway).
3. Tom Haverford. He would drive me craaaaazy in real life, but somehow Aziz Ansari just imbues him with this essence that just reminds you of the joy in the universe. (See also: Jean-Ralphio).
4. Nathan Young Ugh. I should hate this kid so much. He's totally obnoxious and way, way too over-the-top and the things that come out of his mouth are completely unacceptable at least 87% of the time. But I'm fond of him anyway and I do not know why.
5. Buddy Garrity. I don't know that I love him, but he's so incredibly well-constructed and I understand him. He's so, so human: he's a fantastic character. But the faces Eric pulls whenever Buddy shows up CRACK ME UP because he annoys Eric so much and Eric, babe, I totally understand.

[eta] Y'all, what is this?



Is this a thing that actually happened in real life or is this from a movie or something? What is going ooooon?