baby, be my mafia boss, I'll be your right-hand man

... oh god I haven't posted in forever. Have been literally eaten by life: on the highly dubious upside I finally got the Millefiore/Spanner case I always wanted, in early August -

And it has, true to form, kept me chained and handcuffed in the basement for the past two and a half months. And looks set to keep me there for more! I took 70 megabytes of documents home to work with over the weekend, am trying very hard not to think about them now (and obviously, failing equally hard). (Had to turn down morning with adorable dogs today because I am genuinely exhausted and need to conserve energy T___T)

That said! tinted_glass linked this hilarious It's Always Sunny video, and it made me laugh so hard because it contains a great deal of hysteria about not reading contracts before you sign them. *still laughing*

( TRUE COLOURS )

( obviously I am Mieu. )

mangy_mongrel is travelling Europe and is very sweet and sending postcards from all over (much love!) ♥ - also this is probably a measure of how used my family is to me; my Dad was going through the mail, found a postcard from Italy addressed to 'Gokudera Hayato', and without blinking passed it to me with an unconcerned, "This is yours".

maiki! The Rolo doujinshi arrived! ♥ IT MADE ME SO SO SO HAPPY. ♥ Thank you for the gorgeous and lovely Rolo stickers! They are making me smile in a most disturbing manner! ♥ It is so clear which your art is (I want to take your Rolo home and love him forever)! milk_of_lime's artwork is also incredibly distinctive and also makes me smile like anything. Thank you so much for putting the book together, every single page and word and line of it is made of pure love. ♥

Had an immensely fun time yesterday with hemera_oneiroi (BEST SHIFU EVER), julineci (♥!!!), snowykiss (thank you so much for everything, and I really hope your feet feel better~), kateriya (pretty lady! ♥ *is shot*), chiiyo (omg why are you so cute when you look so sad), haruko_o (AMAZING PHOTOGRAPHER), and aslah (THANK YOU SO MUCH for MAGICALLY FINDING THE book! ♥)

Amazing Things of Note
☆ TALES OF THE ABYSS ANIME: I really need to make a separate post for this BUT WHERE IS THE TIME? D: Suffice to say it is amazing and lovely and is gradually giving me the culmulative WANT to replay the game (oh god no, I gave up 100 hours of my life to this game and I don't want it back; but I ALSO do not wish to give up any more)
☆ TALES OF THE ABYSS MANGA VOLUME 5: why so cute and so excruciatingly adorable GUY/LUKE LOVE UP 100%.
☆ DARREN SHAN MANGA: FINALLY! FINALLY! ADULT!STEVE AND DARREN MEET AGAIN in the September '08 release of Darren Shan! ♥ I have only been waiting since December 2006 for this (... wow. In comparison I have only been waiting for Gokudera and Tsuna to reunite since February this year). Adult!Steve looks AMAZING. ♥

Warning: THIS POST IS 屑, 屑 and THEN SOME MORE 屑:

ahahahaha today I created a document chronology until I made myself quite sick from all the document-to-screen-to-document, and I brought more of them home. BUT I was going to say something:

There was this story my Mom told me which I found hilariously funny. My mom was talking to her technician one day, and her technican was telling her about how she despaired of her little boy, who was about five or six years old, and according to his mother, demonstrated (in her opinion) negligible conversational skills, especially when talking to other people. But that wasn't all. "I hope he'll be all right," she said, to my Mom, "He wants to be a mechanic when he grows up. He's already wandering around the house with a spanner trying to fix things."

And all this at the age of five or six.

Younger inclinations don't always lead to the child's future profession, but sometimes, it is said, you can just tell. I am not entirely sure this sort of career prediction-based-on-childhood-predilictions worked with me, but just maybe...

( because younger me always did these things: )

ANYWAY. I HAVE BEEN INFORMED THAT contrary to my beliefs, NOT EVERYONE KNOWS THAT ABYSS IS NOW AN ANIME, SO I MUST SAY SO NOW. SO HERE GOES:
- The Abyss anime will have 26 episodes.
- Go check out the Abyss teaser trailer: it has FLAILING SCREAMING GUY RECOILING from the Fabre maids. And PRETTY LUKE. ♥ (but then I am weak to Luke like Rolo is weak to Niisan)
- The Abyss anime PV: which has baby!Luke (goddamn you Sunrise, my heart wrenched), a really handsome Guy ♥, and all the amazing stuff you only saw in game CG coming to life in anime.
- Also raethes made this awesome Mieu icon for this OH-SO-ADORABLE scene in the PV where he's BREATHING FIIIIIRE at Luke's enemies, and doing it in such an adorable YAY!!! MIEU IS BEING USEFUL TO MASTER!! fashion. I-want-to-eat-him-all-up. (I have even more love for the icon and Rae's icon-making skills than Mieu is emitting in this icon, which is saying. A LOT.)
- eternal_rena put up these lovely Tales of the Abyss anime character sketches/previews from the Tales Magazine on the community. It's public, so accessible by all, and so pretty. The Luke character sketches and the Guy character sketches made me laugh the hardest. Oh Guy. You and your priceless expressions.
- Tales of the Abyss scanlated on OneManga! ♥ It's by the Wings of an Angel group (they have always been incredibly sweet when asking permission to use scans, and I would TOTALLY scan more if only I had the time T_T)
- Tales of the Abyss Chapter 13 is up, which makes me so happy, because it's one of my favourite chapters. It's the Asch-and-Luke MEMORIES IN THE RAIN chapter. ♥

Also, milk_of_lime did this ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS ROLO ARTWORK OVER HERE. No spoilers. But omg, so pretty I COULD CRY WITH JOY.

AH, AND, speaking of which, maiki, your Brave Story doujinshi got here! ♥ I've given Kura her copy, and omg. ♥ The cover is gorgeous, and my favourite story is, um, yours, actually. Because Mitsuru totally needed that. ♥ AHAHAHAHAHA. I kind of grinned like a maniac when reading it, so YEAH. ♥ I'm so happy to be able to own doujin drawn by you. ♥

Up to my eyeballs in solicitor-ethics lectures this week, which also marks the one month + one week anniversary of my being put intensively on this case which has eaten my mind with its closing arguments. I obsess as badly about work as I do about the series I love, except that I do not obsess about the series I love thirteen hours a day, five days (and sometimes more!) a week. I can't actually seem to shut off about work even when I leave the office, so I could be waiting at a traffic light and find myself thinking, How can I work that case in, How am I going to handle that point, Did I address that issue adequately?

SO! WITNESS THE REBELLION OF MY MIND AGAINST THE CORPORATE MAFIA MINDSET.

★ So, a while back, tinted_glass and I agreed that Franz Ferdinand's Michael would be a great song for Ryan on crack. Except that I am endlessly optimistic and thought he wouldn't need crack for the song to be perfect. And this week, in a perfect timeless moment of What You Do In Fandom Echoes in Reality, check out this post of hers on Michael-Ryan songs. She also has this awesome review of the latest Office episode up here.

☆ shaorankun is drawing for both Reborn AND KKM. ♥ ♥ ♥ BOTH the fandoms I love deeply at the same time.

★ Reborn Chapter 191. Gokudera, I love you very much, but you are topped by Cat, and also eminently mockable. ♥ Also, Ryohei, I LOVE YOU FOREVER FOR NOT BEING YAMAMOTO, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me one more person to ship with Gokudera. More electrical bondage, please. HA! Official Tsuna-Reborn, Reborn-Tsuna cosplay. *SNERK*

MANGA RECS
WARNING: Everything behind the cut was written by a deranged Gokudera/Tsuna fan who can see 5927 everywhere. And I mean everywhere. You have been warned. Please read the manga, do not let what is behind the cut disturb you.

☆ MANGA REC #1: Mirai Nikki: diaries that tell the future and the battle for them.

To my complete shock, I managed to really like the main female lead despite her looking like this and being Generally The Sort of Annoying Manga Girl I Thought I Loved To Hate. I think she's kickass and obsessive, and a large part of this I blame on reading morphaileffect's The Tenth Diary - a Gokudera/Tsuna slanted crossover between Mirai Nikki and Reborn. I'm not sure if I love the female lead because I equate her with Gokudera, but: ( this is why I loved Mirai Nikki more because it reminded me of Reborn. )

★ MANGA REC #2: ULTIMO, the manga lovechild of Hiroyuki Takei (responsible for Shaman King) and Stan Lee. Rec'd by lacewood, here (read for more series information and the creative process behind this manga). I fell in love with it upon sighting the first panel. Imagine it as an Eternal Battle between Sync from Tales of the Abyss and the lovechild of Luke from Abyss and Tsuna from Reborn. If you think this is insane, go read the manga. ♥ Come scream at me if you need to ♥

☆ MANGA REC #3: That Neon Genesis Evangelion MAFIA SCHOOL AU AU. First rec'd to me by lacewood, series explanation by kotomine here. Read this if you are a Shinji/Kaoru fan, and ( this is my explanation of why Shinji = Tsuna, Kaoru = sane+ sociopathic!Gokudera, and Touji = Jounouchi. )

★ bitterwork, whose Reborn icons I love, has made AMAZING KKM ICONS. I'm using one right now. ♥ (THAT SLAP SCENE WILL NEVER. EVER. GET OLD WITH ME.)

☆ Summary and Screencaps for KKM Season 3 Episode 82. This episode involves Greta acquiring a pet bearbee she names, of all things, Yuuram. This episode is basically Gremlins Does KKM. Right down to DON'T TOUCH THE WATER IT MAKES CUTE THINGS GO BAAAAD. Every week, no matter how silly the plot, no matter what other people think of the episode, no matter what, period: this series FORCIBLY reminds me of why I fell in love with it, why I still love it, and why I will love it forever. BECAUSE LOVE LIKE THIS NEVER DIES.

★ anyasy linked THE LAMBO STORE. IT WAS AWESOME AND I LAUGHED SO HARD.

download: mediafire | 39.21 MB

( Tales of the Abyss Official Doujin Anthology )

( Colour Art )

Manga and 4-koma samples
( In which young!Van appears, Mieu is clueless and Luke is even more so, and Peony wears a bowl over his head. )

Legal humour, because I really need it now.

See, this (link from warmperky, many thanks! Includes all the actual cases, too!) is why I don't need Phoenix Wright. Law in real life provides all the crack I'll ever need.

Lowering the Bar Presents: The Case Law Hall of Fame
Washington v. Alaimo (S.D. Ga. 1996).
Plaintiff ordered to show cause why he should not be sanctioned for "filing a motion for improper purposes." The allegedly "improper purposes" are hinted at by the title of the pleading, "Motion to Kiss My Ass." Sanctions imposed.
[The motion proper is full of hilarious profanity which I sadly cannot repeat here, but the text of the case is linked! Go see!]

Bradshaw v. Unity Marine Corp. (S.D. Tex. 2001)
"Both attorneys have obviously entered into a secret pact--complete with hats, handshakes and cryptic words--to draft their pleadings entirely in crayon on the back sides of gravy-stained paper place mats, in the hope that the Court would be so charmed by their child-like efforts that their utter dearth of legal authorities in their briefing would go unnoticed."
[Oh God, I've seen pleadings like that]

[And my FAVOURITE ;D]
Fisher v. Lowe (Mich. Ct. App. 1983)

We thought that we would never see
A suit to compensate a tree.
A suit whose claim in tort is prest
Upon a mangled tree's behest;
A tree whose battered trunk was prest
Against a Chevy's crumpled crest;
A tree that faces each new day
With bark and limb in disarray;
A tree that may forever bear
A lasting need for tender care.
Flora lovers though we three,
We must uphold the court's decree.

[And, the Asch-vs-Luke or YGO case]
Lodi v. Lodi (Cal. Ct. App. 1985).
"This case started when plaintiff Oreste Lodi sued himself in the Shasta County Superior Court."

Noble v. Bradford Marine Inc. (S.D. Fla. 1992).
This case, decided not long after "Wayne's World" was released, was remanded after an extreme close-up review of very excellent authorities revealed that the removal was most bogus and way improvident. Defendants ordered to "party on in state court."

( and more! )

I just want to say thank you to everybody for making today (now technically yesterday, but as I am not yet asleep it is today to me) such an AMAZING DAY. Thank you to everybody who remembered and who sent me well-wishes (M, your message is the sweetest thing ever, I want to keep it on my phone forever). Special love to all fellow classmates who remembered - I know we've been all going through exam hell, so I'm really startled and happy and completely surprised that you remembered! ♥ Special thanks to all who took the time to call me today (thank you J! :)) ) - it was really great hearing your voices (especially the sibling in Korea who called and then passed the phone around to the entire family)! Our Dist probably wins the best reaction ever, "You sound so emotional! ... Sync sounding emotional. That is so wrong." XDXDXD Though you will not see this, we missed you and kept a SPECIAL CHAIR for you and I accidentally cut an extra slice of cake because that's the way we go, Rokujinshou + Van-sensei = seven pieces of cake always, even if six of us are there!

UTTERLY SPECIAL LOVE TO elvaron, harajukufuuri and reisha for coming over for A FABULOUS PAPARAZZI TIME with some of the loveliest dogs I've ever set eyes on. LOTS OF HUGS FOR elvaron: thank you so much for taking the time out to come and see me and thank you for the lovely gift and thank you for being there, you wonderful amazing person, you. GATTAI LOVE for harajukufuuri for completing my Gurren Lagann collection ( and letting me inflict my collection on you, I CANNOT THANK YOU ENOUGH ), and reisha for being so fun and for sharing SPECIAL REBORN LOVE and letting us see Squalo's amazing new pimptastic outfit! SO MUCH LOVE AND BRAINBREAK JOY!

AND. OH. HEAVEN AND EARTH, THANK YOU SO MUCH, ABYSS TEAM. ♥ I really, really wasn't expecting such a fabulous time as I had tonight. SO MUCH LOVE for a_songfor_xx, for organising everything and making it possible for all of us to meet and have a great time! Riding shotgun with sensei = fun times always! Thank you so much, lil_kitt, atorii, ariesdraco, and lyricalabyss for such a wonderful night! :)))) The brownie!cake was amazing and so wonderfully filling that I was barely able to eat the one at home. XDXDXD GUYS YOU TOTALLY NEED TO COME OVER TO MY PLACE SOON so we can inflict our fandoms upon each other! XDXDXD

ALSO thank you kreznick for enabling me to hold the Gurren Lagann manga in my hands! :))))) It is so fun being able to read it in the original Japanese and go AH SO THAT'S HOW THEY TRANSLATED IT! ;))))

And for everyone whom I didn't get to see today but who wished me well, THANK YOU SO MUCH, AND I ONLY WISH I COULD SEE YOU! ♥ Especially for risax, whom I miss terribly: thank you for remembering, despite the taxing workload, I am counting down the days! ♥ Thank you farfello for the lovely card and for it giving me so much :D :D :D during the examinations! ♥

THANK YOU little_ribbon FOR BREAKING YSI FOR ME I AM NOT WORTHY I AM NOT WORTHY. ♥ I WILL DO SOMETHING SIMILARLY AWESOME SOON although it won't be as bengoshi-kuzu fantastic! And and and thank you nescienx, arrch, sodiumion, mangy_mongrel, dorkodile, direaliete, sistaofpeace1, sarahcoldheart, evercool AND ALL YOU AMAZING PEOPLE for the birthday wishes and for remembering!

But oh, you know, the AMAZING FANDOM MOMENTS?

Called lyricalabyss, worried about whether everyone was hungry:

lyricalabyss: "It's okay, we're thinking of changing palces, and dreameater_ryou just had a cream-puff."
Me: >D "PASS THE PHONE >D" - and then to the pastry-fan in particular: "STOP CHANNELING BAKURA!!!"
dreameater_ryou: *the most spectacular extended EVIL LAUGH I have ever had the pleasure of hearing*

A+++++++++++++++++ VERY VERY VERY IMPRESSED IRL IC RULES FOREVER, as does my setting eyes on the first Yu-Gi-Oh cards I have ever seen, courtesy of ariesdraco (I never ever thought I'd see a Blue-Eyes White Dragon for real, or half the stuff I saw in your deck, or the Japanese cards omg), and there was discussions of the Singaporean-YGO-dub+ (I AM SO SHOCKED AND HAPPY AND PROUD AND ASHAMED THAT IT EXISTS and is shown in the Philippines and Shanghai), Yuugi-fanart-drawing at the dinner table and Kaibatalk and a hilarious discussion about what Yuugi cosplayers do for the way of hair. (Answers from actual photographs and evidence: cardboard, pipe cleaners, other shocking materials, and 1 anecdotal evidence of 1 person using a wig).

+ I think it SO AWESOME that Singapore dubbed YGO. Because clearly we are SUPERSPECIAL and we don't want 4kids and I LOVE MY COUNTRY, GUYS, and strangely, even more so for the fact that WE LIKE FIXING THINGS THAT AREN'T BROKEN just so we can BREAK THEM EVEN MORE! Apparently Bakura has a horrific Southern accent and the dub is even worse than 4kids. Guy who voiced Jounouchi and Mokuba - just two of my favourites, incidentally. I ONLY CLICKED ON HIS NAME because I thought, "HEY IT SOUNDS LIKE A LOCAL NAME!" Imagine my SHOCK AND HORROR and complete JOY to discover that it WAS! And that the actor has a scene in Disney's Enchanted, and will apparently be in Beauty World it is staged in SG in January 2008! XDDDD ariesdraco and I want to go, go :D :D :D JOUNOUCHI (alternatively, D: D: D: Jounouchi WORKS WELL TOO), and HAVE FUN SEEING YGO IN IT! XDXDXD

Not only have I just discovered that all the letters necessary to spell the name "Bakura" exist in the word "Bankruptcy" (and that I can type the one while meaning to type the other), I have also recieved what possibly is the most HORRIFIC YGO-appropriate spam EVER (... oh, poor Malik). There is also a disturbingly appropriate icon for that in this post here. It also mentions Belgium, too! You are welcome to the original if you need it for nefarious purposes.

And did I mention that my exam papers are clearly all delayed-reaction Tales of the Abyss situations, because our Family Law papers set questions with litigants named Jade and Peony in two separate years, and then one of the papers I read today is about a Sync Inc. HA. Coincidentally one of our tutorials this year was about a company named Sinkproof.

Someone on playthedamncard linked me this MTV for Don Henley's "End of the Innocence". It's an absolutely beautiful black-and-white video that truly captures a moment in time. It was shot in 1989, but I still find it beautiful today. The lyrics, though, were eerily appropriate:

When "happily ever after" fails
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers dwell on small details
Since daddy had to fly
[that's Family Law, obviously]

Armchair warriors often fail
And we've been poisoned by these fairy tales
The lawyers clean up all details
Since daddy had to lie
[That's corporate law and litigation]
And my instinctive reading of the chorus line, "Offer up your best defense" is obviously not what the songwriter intended, but it's still fun.

An extract from what I was reading today said, "Although arbitration as a method of settling disputes has been known and used for centuries" and made me think: ... what happened to wars? Trial by combat? (Speaking of which, champions used to be used for trial by combat. Now people use lawyers, and the fights are with words) How about card game battles, eh? They might generate more lively (though not necessarily more interesting, because really, arbitration can be very interesting!) reading!

Anyway, what next follows is chiefly for little_ribbon (but please help yourself to the songs!), because I happened to mention that Jesse Spencer (Chase from House) starred in a show named Uptown Girls, where he played a POP STAR named Neal Fox. He actually sang, too! jesse-spencer.org (I love this fansite) most delightfully has his songs up (lyrics here, should you like to sing along with the wombat). So as to save on their bandwidth (more Jesse pictures for everyone!), have Jesse Spencer's Uptown Girls songs! There are three of them:

1. Sheets of Egyptian Cotton
2. Night of Love
3. Molly Smiles

And because Sheets of Egyptian Cotton is perfect for YGO, have song lyrics!

Motionless raptures
Reveal the give and take
Become what's real
Leave only memories that we steal

Eyes passing glances for games
What time remembers seconds forget
XD Please bear in mind that Jesse Spencer is a professional actor, not a professional singer, so don't go expecting too much of his songs. They're deliberately written to be cheesy because he's meant to be a cheesy pop singer, so don't go expecting too much from the lyrics either. Just go in expecting them to be awful and you'll be gratified when they aren't actually that bad. *laughs* The chief attraction of these songs is that they're sung by Jesse Spencer in his POPSTAR ROLE. XD I like to imagine that this is what Chase did to earn his medical school fees when he was fighting with his Daddy. Also, have some pictures of Jesse in Uptown Girls! Or Chase the Pop Star!

( Ladies! Who is first! )

Because it is that time of the year when I start wishing there was more than one of me, and because I am beginning to type “the accused” when I mean “the deceased”, indicating that my topics of study are beginning to bleed, quite unsubtly, into each other. Oddly enough I’ve discovered that sometimes, even when my thinking mind shuts down, my writing mind doesn’t. It does quite the opposite. And so to continue the trend of writing Abyss fic involving Guy, Asch and Luke whenever examinations are imminent, have the longest Abyss fic I’ve ever written.

It started out, unbelievably enough, as a ratal fic. I kid you not. Except the characters were named Levizt, Serry, and Kaimelar. I imagine that those of you are part of or know enough about ratal might be able to guess quite accurately who was once who before I followed Van’s shining example when I copy+pasted and gave everyone a new name.

And yes, I’m writing this so that you’ll get distracted and wander off to do something more enjoyable rather than reading this. I like to imagine Asch with a longsuffering expression on his face yelling, “STOP writing me stories, you INSUFFERABLE creature.” Too bad, Asch. As the great philosopher Jagger said, You can’t always get what you want. < / House >

Summary: AU. Asch is on the run for the events of Aczelius, he decides that there’s no better place to hide than in plain sight. As always when it comes to matters involving Luke, it falls to Guy to clean up the mess he’s left behind.
Pairing: Guy/Luke, Asch/Guy, implied Guy/Asch.
Warning: Luke is barely there.
Rating: It’s G compared to what’s out there. Fine, it’s G. Except for the slightly R ending.
Wordcount: 3,900+ words.
Special thanks to: This artwork, without which this would have been around 1,700 words long.

( You *care* about the idiot sharing this body with me? )

( Guy wonders how he can sleep so soundly when he doesn't know who he's going to wake up as in the morning. )

( Foolish as Luke can be at times, Guy thinks that this time, Asch has completely outdone him. )

( You're lucky your mind's given you someone to talk to. )

( I know his powers of persuasion work better on you than mine do, but I really would like to get on with what you’re stopping me from doing. )

Caught Hairspray. And riiiiiight after the second song, I was, Okay, this movie is too happy for me. I did enjoy the movie, eventually: man, I loved Tracy's parents, and Tracy was just so full of life and sparkle and idealism, and if I didn't know that was John Travolta, I wouldn't have known it was John Travolta, and you know my heart only beats for Size 60! I love her mom and dad and the whole family unit. And Michelle Pfeiffer was great, and incredibly gorgeous for someone her age, and the I kept thinking she was so Blades of Glory's Jimmy to John Travolta's Chazz. I am not joking. Except, you know, if Jimmy was Fairchild.

But as much as I liked it, I staggered out of the theatre saying, "I NEED to watch something violent. I HAVE to get all that saccharine sweetness out of my system!"

My brother was watching all this with wry amusement, and he said, "You need to get back to reality?"

"YES!" I said. "I NEED TO DECOMPRESS!"

( Emo songs make me HAPPY. )

The subject matter we're dealing with in school doesn't help much, either. It's been like this for the past three days: write representations for a defendant in a multiple-party rape case, lecture on wills, tutorial (which went on for two hours) on how to draft divorce proceedings. And on Thursday I'm scheduled for the Criminal Legal Aid Scheme session, which, from friends' accounts, I think the best you can hope for is that your defendants don't show up. Because these are people poor enough to need legal aid, and the best part is, we're there to recommend whether or not they can get it. And it's not just based on whether they can afford it: it depends on whether the legal aid is going to make a difference, because there aren't enough lawyers around to represent everyone. ( and there's more. )

Also stupid things amuse me, like when we were in drafting divorce proceedings today, and our assigned lawyer was telling us that we had to produce the original or the certified true copy of the marriage certificate, and I wrote, because she was talking fast:

original/true copy

And the Abyss fan inside of me did a happy backflip of joy.

Speaking of happy backflips of joy, this told me about the new JADE COVER Degenki Maou issue, which unfortunately seems unobtainable at bookshops here, but:

( JADE AND PEONY )

Also, much love for FF7:

hazelator's post here led me to this ( GORGEOUS Reno-Rufus-Rude image )

Also, manic_intent wrote this FABULOUS Star Wars/FF12 crossover - Tales From the Old Republic, which I absolutely loved. Balthier as Basch's padawan, and it is really perfect. I honestly do think that such is her gift with writing that she could make any idea sound glorious.

( LIVE HARD: or the past 24 hours of my life )

( Shanghai photographs )

If any of you watched Die Hard 4.0 and enjoyed the innuendo, check out this NGTV Justin Long Interview. He says the most incredible slashtastic things about the movie: I can't believe they allowed it on an official interview. There's even a Brokeback Mountain montage to Die Hard 4.0 shots. And Justin Timberlake nearly played Bruce Willis's son in the movie. *cracks up so hard.

And the ( How Will You Be Suspended from LJ Meme. )

fujitsubo has been doing some absolutely amazing scanning work: she's put up the Zelos-Seles backstory from the Extra Load manga up here for download, and Chapter 18 of the Abyss manga (Guy and Luke reunite! ♥ But! At Yulia City, not Aramis Well!) and the Ion-Anise extra up here (both posts community-locked).

Met up with risax, mildlyinsane and julineci this evening for much manga-doujin-sharing and love. Omi and Val introduced me to this absolutely gorgeous series about a fox spirit, and it is so pretty and so pretty and I am completely sold. ♥ Thank you so much! It was so much fun, and we should totally do it again! ♥

Milo Ventimiglia in Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry" video. I could cry! I was watching MTV tonight when this horror of Peter Petrelli slumming it up as Fergie's tattooed and extremely shirtless boyfriend turned up on the TV, and I was torn between great joy (Peter's my favourite) and great horror - Go back to big brother, idiot!. You can watch the video here.

At around the same time I made this discovery, I found out that there is ice-skating anime - in particular, Ginban Kaleidoscope. To quote the summary off the direct download site, ( it's like Hikaru no Go, but with ice-skating! ) The series is subbed by Conclave and is also available off scarywater bittorrent. Partial episode guide and series summary here, and a summary of episodes 1-3 here.

Also! Thanks to a new post on blades_of_glory, it has come to my attention that there are new pictures on the Blades gallery! ♥

Tales of the Abyss-wise, Chapter 17 of the Abyss manga has been scanned and uploaded (Luke cuts his hair!), and Chapter 1 of the Abyss manga has been scanlated. Both posts unfortunately community-locked.

How much do I love that this actually happened:
Master Van: "HAREM SHOT!"
Asch, Luke, Sync: *INSTANTLY AND ENTHUSIASTICALLY COMPLY*

( In which the Rokujinshou are Van's private harem. )

( short event report )

( Asch - DANCE LIKE NOBODY'S LOOKIN' )

HERE THERE BE CRACK
In which Van takes Luke to a supermarket, Asch promotes Coca Cola (oh c'mon, his clothes are perfect for it):

( The Rokujinshou visit a Supermarket. CRACK ENSUES. )

( The Rokujinshou and Doughnuts )

Being MASTER Badtouch entitles you to a very, very willing harem.
( To Sensei, WITH LOVE )

( It Ain't Easy Being Green )

( Photograph the Protagonist! )

AND EVERYONE ELSE
( organization XIII )

( hack, kids, and an Intentionally Random Guy )

annotate (who has very nice photographs here!), it was so much fun seeing you today! *griiin* I think you made all of us very, very happy. I do not think we could have found a nicer or more enthusiastic fellow Abyss fan to share our love for the game with! ♥ ( omg true story )

( WHOLE LOTTA ASCH AND LUKE BEHIND THIS CUT. )

Today's Abyss group meet was actually incredibly, incredibly fun. I left the office at 8.15am (last days always make you finish late), and I thought I was going to be really, really exhausted: it was a tiring day work-wise all round, and due to finishing up work which even the lawyer who assigned it to me thought couldn't be done in one day, I did it. I thought I was going to be utterly exhausted, and I'd picked up the beginnings of a cough (infections spread so very fast in office environments, such a great place for a 28 Days Later scenario), but man, did we have fun. There's LJ comment-crack and there's pchat crack and there's general MSN crack, but RL in-person crack beats them all hands-down. It kind of helps that I liked our Luke, our Dist and our Van (who, incidentally, has a seme aura that somehow all of us happily gravitate towards) pretty much instantly on sight, and I'd already met Asch years ago (equally incidentally, our Asch can really sing, as can our Van, and our Legretta can play the violin on the Esplanade rooftop with so much style! ♥). It's just really rare for me to feel this comfortable with a group I've not known for long this fast. And the sky was in complete agreement: towards the end of the night, the stadium started rehearsing the light shows for the upcoming National Day, and the sky lit up with the most vivid purple light just like the way the Abyssworld sky looks when the world's fallen into the Qlippoth.

I can't help but think that some of the goings-on tonight could be summarised like ( this: )

Also! We got to talking, and this is or a_songfor_xx (when I saw you, I honestly and completely thought and KNEW I'd seen you somewhere before, and then you told me we had pic_murasaki as a friend in common) and lil_kitt:

WARNING: SPOILERS
( Van and Sync Badtouching Moment, and background )

( because I can never resist Luke screenshots. )

And why Asch should totally stick with the Rokujinshou:
Because ( Nothing good ever happens when I get involved with YOU PEOPLE (the Luke tachi )

Quiz courtesy of seki_yumizu ♥

You scored as Original!Ion. You're the Original!Ion. You really like to make others see the pain. When they complain, kill them. When they even lay a hand on Arietta, kill them. It takes but a swing and they're gone... Incidentally, here are the scans for the Original!Ion special feature, and this is an English translation of that manga chapter, linked by kasumi_blue. </td> Original!Ion 85% Mieu 80% Florian 80% Luke Fon Fabre 70% Gailardia Galan Gardios 65% Tear Grants 55% Natalia Luzu Kimlasca-Lanvaldear 55% Arietta 45% Vandesdelca Musto Fende 45% Jade Curtiss 45% Peony 40% Anise Tatlin 40% Dist 35% Largo 30% Asch 25% Legretta 25% Sync 20% Ion 20% No really. Which Tales of the Abyss character are you? created with QuizFarm.com

WHAT?! This is the LAST person I expected to be, if only for the fact that I consider him
the most EVIL person in all of Tales of the Abyss.
And is it not disturbing that after the most evil personality, the NEXT one I score highest for the is the CHIRPY GENKI HAPPY!!!cheegle?! THIS IS NOT RIGHT. I mean, two completely contrasting personalities SIDE BY SIDE.
AND WHY am I nearly HALF-VAN, IYA DAME.

On another note, it takes me fifteen whole minutes to put on my costume (all eight component parts), and it takes me even longer to get it off. I have realised it does not matter whether or not I wear contacts, as in the present getup, I am effectively blind. But I have discovered that PAINT makes better hair gel than actual hair gel!

And other than the fact that at the close of today I got given work that even the lawyer assigning it to me said, "... I don't think [it] can be done in one day..." and tomorrow is the last day before the REAL HARDCORE LAW SCHOOL STUFF BEGINS... I have decided that I love our legal system. I mean the laws themselves, not the substantive justice that the laws engender. It's such a mongrel creation of a gazillion other legal systems. Our Copyright Act was originally based on the Australian model, our Penal Code and Evidence Act came from India, our Companies Act is largely based on the British model, our Spam Act is this extremely distressing hybrid of the US and UK ones - mainly because the original acts are absolutely beautiful, and what we created out of the both of them is a NASTY MESS (in comparison to the provisions of the original).

Also, I ABSOLUTELY LOVED DIE HARD 4.0. Or as they call it in the US, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD. Apparently the reason we get Die Hard 4.0 outside of the States is that non-US citizens wouldn't "get" the reference to that particular state's motto. OH WHY. A good motto to live and die HARD by is a good motto. It doesn't matter where it came from. As long as the words mean something, where they came from is of little import. Bruce Willis's co-star looks awfully like a goofy version of Keanu Reeves with actual expressions. And one day I will actually watch a movie WHERE I SEE NO SLASH, but that is NOT HAPPENING YET.

elvaron, harajukufuuri, reisha, baka_neko and I are going to be at Play: A Video Game Symphony, and the program looks nothing short of absolutely fabulous. I can't wait. Give me a shout-out if you're gonna be there too! *grin* The program says it'll be featuring songs from Final Fantasy (oh yes!), Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid, Blue Dragon (♥!), HALO (RADIATES LOVE), World of Warcraft, Chrono Trigger & Chrono Cross, Silent Hill, Legend of Zelda, and more. After tonight I'm probably going to want to go home and commune with my gaming platforms. ♥

And the July issue of Dengeki Maou? Is gonna be so much love. We've gone through Aczelius/Aczeriuth, now we get ARAMIS WELL. ♥ (Not just yet, though, we've got Yulia City first). The very fact that ( Kratos hits the cover ) should've indicated it was gonna be ALL KINDS OF GREAT AND WONDERFUL (the first installment of the Symphonia OVA is finally translated, and though there's no Zelos yet, it is GREAT), but in this issue, ( GUESS WHO is finally grown-up enough to CUT HIS HAIR! )

I'm sorry, guys, but this Blades of Glory/Kingdom Hearts 2 trailer has broken my brains in enough places to warrant a post of its own. It's a KH vid set to the Blades of Glory trailer, and it is amazingly, amazingly well done. The kicker is the lip-syncing, it's pretty darned perfect. It has Sora as Jimmy and Riku as Chazz (sobs, hysterically - Riku's too beautiful to be played by Will Ferrell), but it is perfectly done. The final stab through the MIND was the perfectly sync/timed Riku lip-sync to THAT Black-Eyed Peas song. And the keyblade-fighting? Kickass. They even included that incredibly Riku-Sora post-Final Boss scene. ♥

And, ah, just ignore the opening of the trailer that says it's PG-13 because it means Penguins Fly for 13 Seconds. "Some Material May Result In Irregularly Cold Weather", it warns, "This Movie May Turn You Into A Penguin."

And my dearly beloved Tales of the Abyss, would it kill you to quit with that incredibly creepy every breath you take vibe, because turning up this story while I'm searching for Blades of Glory fanfiction on ff.net, smacks too much of Every claim you stake, I'll be watching you.

That aside, it really is a story I'd look at on summary alone: "May the One Who Would Size Glory fall to their blades". Full of spoilers, has Luke and Sync, and I found it pretty fascinating.

News by way of sistaofpeace1: TALES OF THE ABYSS FINALLY GETS ITS OWN FANFICTION.NET SECTION. No words for all the love, I've only been waiting for this day for over a year, like everyone else, and THANK YOU meimi! ♥♥♥

Two redheads were walking down a thoroughfare in Kimlasca when one caught sight of a mirror.

"There's someone in there!" yelled the redhead.

The other took a closer look and glared at his companion, exasperated. "That's ME, you IDIOT."

Also, rokujinshouasch made amazing new!Asch skit icons here. Also with Luke and Guy. ;)

sistaofpeace1 made a Tales of Fandom 2 update - some great stuff in there, including what looks like a Mieu game ♥, Luke game(?), and card game that can involve Jade (I like how I thought that first card was JadeXPeony).

Also: Kratos and Lloyd. ♥ I want to ship them so bad. But for that spoiler.

You might see a lot of posts in the next few days as I embark on a Make Posts While I Still Can! before going headlong into work. So!

Times I Have Liked Asch
or, Times In Which I Have Not Disliked Asch
This is going to be mercifully pretty short. >D (Warning: Am not an Asch fan.)

1. ( Gimme those big anime eyes. )

2. ( Rokujinshou say the darndest things. )

3. ( Them's Fighting Words )

4. ( Praise yourself! )

5. ( Even Asch can Smile! )

SPOILER ( In the eeeeeeennnd )

Thank you, all of you who kept me company and had me laughing throughout scanning/cleaning up/translating. ♥

Well- what else can I say about this installment, except that it's Aczelius (Aczeriuth, to be true to the localisation) at last, and man: this was worth the wait. It's payoff time in spades. Am officially spoilt rotten by Asch, of all people (he has so many good scenes in this installment), which is such a joke, considering the love/hate relationship I have with him.

WARNING: MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW
Very Image-Heavy

( Before the ground falls away beneath your feet )

( Don't Miss the Dancing Doushi and His Amazing Cheegle! )

Couldn't help but think of glorious here:
( Silly little boy. All trust is foolish. )

( I did this?! )

Though, heh. When I first set eyes on this part, I thought of orphen and meimi, especially. ;)
Luke, prepare yourself for Asch's Very Special Brand of TOUGH LOVE.

( SAY IT WITH VIOLENCE. )

Though I would completely believe in this alternative scenario. ♥
(warning: crack, and also Asch/Luke implications)

And Asch is given the unenviable task of explaining ( Where Do Baby Replicas Come From? )

( Sensei, I'M FLYING! )

( It had to be this way. )