Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahh! I don't believe this! Harlequin has a manga branch. Harlequin as in "the publishing house devoted entirely to romance." And they do manga. Unbelievable.

Ehehehe. Don't tick Kyoko off. In here she's dressed (and made) up as Hongo Mio, a character in the drama Dark Moon.

Drat. Can't see it that well, can ya?
Just finished school! And it's nearly three o'clock....Hmmm.....Maybe I shouldn't have taken that nap after devotions; it appears to have put me behind. Oh, well.

Strange. MangaFox seems to be down.

Skip Beat!

Skip Beat currently dominates my fantasy world. Ren and Sho's competition is pretty close, but I think Ren is ahead--with Kyoko, I mean. Of course he's still ahead as an idol.

Sho--been with her until she was fifteen.
Ren--with her for awhile when she was six, and she still doesn't know that was him.
Sho--knows everything about her.
Ren--knows her very well, and knows stuff Sho doesn't. Also he cares.
Sho--considers her his exclusisve property.
Ren--is working on it, and is progressively evicting Sho from her mind.

She knows Sho much better than she knows Ren, but she's also on the way to knowing Ren better than anyone in Japan, as far as we know. She and Yashiro should pool their notes.

Kyoko: Beware the gentlemanly smile.
Yashiro: Yes. Don't make him mad.
Kyoko: Have you ever seen him mad? It's terrifying.
Yashiro: No, I don't think so.
Kyoko: And then there are the alternate personalities.
Yashiro: Eh?
K: Emperor of the Night and Demon King.
Y: Emperor of the Night? When was this?
K: You know when he asked me to help him figure Katsuki out?
Y: *instantly goes into suspicious matchmaker mode, complete with squeals* Congratulations!!!
K: About what? -.-
Y: Never mind. I'd only figured out that he was a really wild kid. He used to smoke, and he was really familiar with guns.
K: Real guns? Not just models?
Y: I don't know.
K: Cuz for them to be real, he'd really have to have begun in the States or somewhere like that, and I don't think he did.
Y: Why not?
K: If I'd been right, he would have Smiled and said something like, "Are you stupid?" Instead he shrugged like an American and pretended I was right--really sarcastically.
Y: Maybe he knew you'd think that.
K: That guy gives me headaches.
Y: Me too.

Monday, January 28, 2008

The last couple of days have been really warm. Much of the snow has melted, and there's mud everywhere. On a day like today last year, we would have taken the lambs and kids on a trip around the property. We'd have gotten muddy hoofprints on our clothes, and the babies probably would have been tired out, depending on how old they were.

Steve Wenz told Dad that he went to the sale barn, and bred ewes are going for fifty bucks a head. Dad would have sent me with B and Darrel to buy a ewe, except Mom nixed it on the grounds of having no hay money. *cries*

Peter and Owen are both reading Skip Beat. Peter is a huge victory, possibly assisted by Owen trying to dissuade him. I always kinda thought he might like it, but if I tried to feed it to him he'd have spat it out. So I refrained from shoving it in his face, and he picked it up. *is victorious* This would never have worked if I hadn't gotten the volumes from the library, and Peter weren't desperate for something to do between turns.

If I don't go upstairs now I won't wake up tomorrow. Eh.

Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Right now I'm reading Appare Jipangu! by Yuu Watase. It's pretty good, possibly because she's going for comedy. I have a pretty good idea of what's going to happen: we're going to bounce around helping people, looking for her parents, and getting into amusing situations; he is already in love with her and knows it, while she likes him but has no clue and is going to exhibit astounding density up until at least chapter five. Yes, I know what'll happen, but I like the characters, Watase, whatever her faults, can be funny, and I want to watch. And Yuu Watase does have faults. Her heroines are frequently unpopular, and this is harped upon so much that I can't even think of anything else she gets wrong. Yusuru, however, has characteristics beyond being nice, willing to help people at her own risk, and able to get into scary and embarrassing situations for the hero to rescue her from. Yusuru, in fact, is loud, often mistaken for a boy*, and much better at getting out of trouble than her samurai boyfriend, who keeps losing his glasses. She can fight, too. Well, Samon can too, but not without his glasses. She isn't even very pitiable. I mean, yeah, she was abandoned as a child, but she loves her foster family** and is searching for her parents merely to ask why. She's not mad,*** she's not sad, she has no self-esteem problems. Okay, I want to read some more before bedtime. And Robin's right: footnotes can be addictive. Very.


*Her foster brother was shocked when the ninja^ got it right first time.

^From the Koka village and Kola clan. Yuu really was goofing around here. It's supposed to be set in the Edo period, which I think is the 1600's or so.

**Her father is a mad inventor and her brother tends to play with two ventriloquist's dummies with skull faces. This is a comedy. Not subtle.

***A possible reaction, with this girl.