I have held back no water in its season

Shounen Onmyouji

2008-08-18T18:14:10Z

I just recently watched this, having heard of it here and there for a while, and it’s delightful. I heartily recommend it. It has good ink and good music and a charming story which sometimes rips out your heart and stomps on it.

SO is the tale of a boy and his demon shikigami. Masahiro, the boy in question, is the grandson of Abe no Seimei, the greatest onmyouji of all time, so a major theme is, of course, his attempt to make his way out of his grandfather’s shadow and stand on his own merits. It helps that he’s a gutsy kid who has what it takes. Once he steps up to his destiny, though, he immediately has to deal with all sorts of Things That Go Bump In The Night, and the (very Heian) history and politics surrounding that make up the major plot. In doing so he has the occasional help of his grandfather’s twelve shikigami, and the constant help of one, in particular.

This one is a total angst-bunny with a Dark Past, and he’s a grumpy woobie to boot. Also darn hot and very devoted to Masahiro. Slashers rejoice, because this almost doesn’t qualify as sub-text. I mean, seriously, during the intro they reach out to each other and lace fingers. (For those who do not follow these things, laced fingers = sex. It’s one of the most unmistakable visual metaphors there is, right up there, for recognizability, with pinky fingers connected by a red thread.) His interactions with Masahiro are the cutest thing in the history of cute.

Het shippers should also rejoice, however, because Masahiro has a het love interest, who is also young and gutsy, if not always sensible. She is, in her person, a locus of politics, which adds interest, because normally Masahiro would be too low in rank to ever marry her. This does not stop them from being amazingly cute, too. She has her own independent interactions with family and shikigami and is actually her own character, which is refreshing.

Seiyuu spotters will also enjoy an all-star cast. Masahiro is voiced by Kaida Yuki, and his pet demon shiki by Konishi Katsuyuki. The young Seimei is done by Ishida Akira. The shikigami seiyuu include Minagawa Junko and Morikawa Toshiyuki. Suwabe Junichi voices one of the villains, and Seki Toshihiko one of the frequent side characters.

The original story is told in a series of light novels, eighteen to date. The anime covers the first two major arcs, which is the first handful of novels. Radio dramas have carried on to cover later arcs, and we can, perhaps, hope for those to be animated eventually.

There were licensing issues with this show, early on, since Genon took it and then tanked, and the conscientious subbers and fans who stopped for the license were left dangling for months and months. In the end, the subbers chose to finish the series, and all twenty-six episodes are available now. I suggest going to isohunt.com and getting the Yoroshiku torrent while we wait to find out whether Funimation will really take over the license and release it officially as has been rumored.

Hanging Upside Down

2008-08-14T17:44:23Z

Fic post from my archive.

Hanging Upside Down

Ban is having a bad evening dealing with his ghosts. Shido chooses to help. Angsty Porn with Characterization, I-4

He remembered things he'd never experienced.

Things he had experienced, he couldn't forget.

There were days he thought that was the curse.

The twelve heavenly generals in anime

2008-08-12T20:15:20Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

This will make more sense later, after I post an actual review of Shounen Onmyouji, which everyone, incidentally, should go watch. Right now.

For now, though, research results and links (which may help for YnM, too).

The Juuni Shinshou (Twelve Heavenly Generals) are Buddhist and come to Japan from India via China. They are, variously, known as yaksha (nature spirits), devas (warrior spirits/gods-of-a-minor-sort), and tenbu (Japanese take on Devas). They are initially associated with Yakushi Nyorai, the Medicine Buddha, and healing.

However, twelve being a popular number in Buddhism, they have become associated and overlapped with the twelve cycles of time (hours of the day, years in a cycle, etc.) and the twelve animals associated therewith. These are the animals commonly known in the West as the Chinese zodiac (see also Fruits Basket). (Maybe. See eta.)

Because the animals have elemental associations from the Taoist system (which is different from the Buddhist elements but quite similar to Shinto, oh god don’t get me started on the elements), the twelve generals have picked up elemental associations to go with their animal associations.

Important! These associations are variable! There are several variations on which animals go with which generals. Which elements go with which animals varies on a larger cycle of years as well as each having a fixed element and a base association with yin or yang, and, when filtered through the creative license of anime/manga, the whole thing gets… complicated.

In any case, it appears that the zodiac filter is how the yaksha Sanchira, for example, becomes the Serpent of Destructive Fire. Certainly the personalities given to the characters in both SO and YnM have some good matches with the zodiac personality readings.

Where the particular names come from, apart from the elemental constellation names given to the strongest animal in each element (Dragon becomes Seiryuu, Horse becomes Suzaku, etc.), I’m still trying to figure out. Similarly how the notion was arrived at that Abe no Seimei’s generic plethora of shikigami should correlate with the Juuni Shinshou in particular. I have, as yet, found no source explaining that that is not clearly contaminated.

ETA: I have also come across some indications that the twelve guardians of the Medicine Buddha and the twelve elemental/time figures are, in fact, separate groups that have been confused because of the similar translation of their titles: 神 in the first place and 天 in the second, so that it might be more precise to say the Twelve Divine Generals and the Twelve Heavenly Generals, respectively. Results of this line of inquiry will appear in a later post, if it comes to anything.

Hollow culture

2008-08-08T19:16:22Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

So, what I’ve been wondering, as we move through the Hueca Mundo arc in Bleach, is: did Aizen create the current culture we see among the arrancar, or did he just take it over?

(Spoilers ahead, of course.)

The fact that Hollows right up to Menos Grande are instinct and hunger driven has meant that the lower levels don’t have much in the way of organized culture or society. Even the adjuchas seem to organize or group only in small bands, according to what we’ve seen of Grimmjow’s past. But the arrancar are shown to have organization. They are still driven by hunger, but they have regained enough mind and individuality to create as well as consume, at least by the witness of Las Noches.

So, is that something they have generated and constructed themselves, over however many thousands of years? Or is that construction and organization something Aizen imposed? The question doesn’t seem to me to have been answered one way or another, yet. If Aizen has been in contact with them for the whole hundred or so years, then the progression we see among the Espada, the ex-Espada and elaborate ranking and numbering, could have been his instigation. But perhaps not. It’s Aizen who adopts their manner of dress, and those things generally mean something in KT’s writing.

I’m really hoping we get some kind of indication one way or another, somewhere along the storyline.

Information Wants to Be Free

2008-08-07T16:49:06Z

Fic post from my archive.

Information Wants to Be Free

Ginji and Ban have sex on a sunny afternoon. Porn Without Plot, I-4

Ginji moaned, head tipped back, hair darkened with sweat, and tightened his hands on Ban's hips.

Echizen’s real tennis

2008-08-06T16:31:02Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

I was probably asking for trouble, when I started considering all the ways in which Echizen does not, as initially indicated by the early story, seem to find a tennis that is not a copy of Nanjirou’s. Now my Echizen-muse is insisting that I figure out what his own tennis would look like and write it.

Incidentally, spoilers ahead.

So let us meditate on this. The last reference point we have in the original “become not-Nanjirou” trajectory is the Regional finals. There we see a move of Echizen’s own invention, Cool Drive. It’s a move born of necessity, of needing to get up high enough to smash back a ball with the right spin and of figuring out exactly how to do that, however it takes–by climbing the referee, in the event. This move comes after Echizen has already pretty much burned himself out of muga no kyouchi, and it is, as Sanada notes after, a gamble. Using it gives Echizen an even chance of returning a shot he has no other way of getting, and he takes it without hesitation.

And then, of course, the story shears off into Nationals and the internal AU and focuses on muga’s “three doors”. And Echizen achieves the third, which no one but Nanjirou previously had, and thereby alters the progression of his skill from “finding himself” to “finding True Tennis is his father’s footsteps”.

Bah, I say; that isn’t nearly as interesting. Let us, therefore, take muga in its initial, less fantasy-esque, application, as a state of heightened awareness or response and leave it at that. What interests me more are the implications of Cool Drive.

For one, developing it shows that Echizen has started thinking in terms of evolving his own game. That’s a major hurdle right there, and indicates to me that he’s already reached beyond simply perfecting and reflecting back everything Nanjirou does to actively striving to find new ways to do things for himself. The alphabet drives in general show that, and the way we see him working on Cool Drive shows the importance he’s started to give the project (before Konomi lost his mind, anyway).

For another, the shape of the move shows something about Echizen’s approach. He doesn’t bother with conventional wisdom, which might be to work on strengthening his legs enough to jump for the height required. He also doesn’t choose to cultivate the strengths of his own body type, which might result in working on his ground speed to catch high shots when they come down and apply a different spin on return. Instead he takes all shots head on, and finds a way to meet and return them directly. And then he takes that way despite it being a risk and a gamble.

From this I take the conclusion that Echizen’s tennis doesn’t have a reverse gear. It doesn’t even really have brakes. He will just keep moving forward, believing that the skill and strength he has will find a way, and taking whatever way presents itself.

Really, it’s no wonder he does so well at Seigaku.

Echizen throws himself into the breach. Translated into actual martial arts, I might say that his style is purely aggressive, moving straight in and directly blocking rather than diverting or avoiding counterstrikes. He’s a stubborn little cuss.

So, for all his penchant for adopting everyone else’s moves, I don’t think he will ever use things like the Tezuka Zone or Fuji’s Triple (and counting) Counters very much. They’re not his own style. And, as he moves away from copying his father, I think the modality of copying in general may become a secondary rather than a primary tool for him. I don’t doubt he’ll use whatever move he knows that will do the job to win whatever game he’s in. But his own game, the moves he develops on his own, those I think will mostly be drives.

So I think what I would expect to see, in the future that is not a cracked canon-AU, is Echizen working to develop more such moves and using them with determination and forward momentum. Damn the torpedos and full steam ahead.

How to get a categories widget with include and exclude

2008-08-05T18:03:42Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

So, as things stand, the WordPress Categories widget supports altering sort order, post count and dropdown vs. hierarchical display. But it does not support including or excluding categories.

There is a way around this, though, while we wait for it to show up in the core code! (Everyone thank Bricksmith for suggesting this work-around.)

First, you need to download, upload and activate the php-exec plugin. This plugin allows admins to put php code in an entry or widget and have WordPress recognize it as php and execute it instead of just treating it as plain text.

Next, you go to Design > Widgets and put the Text widget where you want the Categories to appear.

Into the Text widget you paste some variation on the following code:

<li id=”categories-1″ class=”widget-categories”>
<h2 class=”widgettitle”>Categories</h2>
<ul>
<?php wp_list_categories(’orderby=name&hierarchical=true&title_li=&exclude=76,77,78,79′); ?>
</ul>
</li>

Save that and voila, you have a pseudo Categories widget!

In my own case, I wanted to have two Categories widgets, the second one including all the categories that the first one excluded, so I pasted another copy into Text right under the first, with the ID “categories-2″ and the ‘exclude’ changed to ‘include’, and edited my CSS to add #categories-2 everywhere there was a #categories-1.

Caveats: 1) I do not know if it is possible to use this for a dropdown Categories, because that requires some Javascript and I have no idea whether that can be parsed inside a Text widget. 2) What you have is actually a widget inside a widget, codewise. The Categories widget is enclosed inside the li and div of the Text widget. This may cause problems with your CSS styling, depending on how it’s written. If your nested lists look like li li { rules }, this will probably cause problems. On the bright side, if you change it to ul ul { rules } that should fix the problem.

For a full list of the variables you can adjust in wp_list_categories, see the WP documentation.

Brittle Edge

2008-08-01T21:02:15Z

Fic post from my archive.

Brittle Edge

An outsider samurai visits, looking for a challenge. Echizen gives it to him and comes a little closer to figuring things out. Drama with Action and Blood, I-4

They met in the training yard.

"The kid again, hm?" Akutsu looked down at Ryouma with cold eyes.

Ryouma shrugged. "We didn't finish, last time."

Inventing swear words

2008-07-31T18:46:09Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

Whenever an author goes to create a world, soon or late they have to deal with the issue of swearing. Even if the decision is “not used in this language” it has to be dealt with.

One of the common options, especially in fantasy, is to invent gods to swear by, but this can sometimes come off as contrived. I therefore offer this small compilation of swearing patterns to assist those starting out.

A lot of swearing is some corruption of an expression of respect, when you think about it, the original form having been someone calling on their deity to witness their sincerity or truthfulness or, alternatively, the severity of the situation–possibly in hopes that, having noticed, the deity in question will fork over some assistance. This, of course, quickly devolves from deliberate calling upon to simple expression of exasperation, anger or other strong emotion. So the first question is: how for down this progression is the swearing in question?

If it’s still early days, some reliable formulae are “by deity-name!”, “by deity-name’s identifying-object!” or “deity-name significant-activity!”

A bit further on, you can start loosening the association with the actual deity. For example, if you take a body part associated with the significant activity, you can use “deity-name’s descriptive-adjective body-part!”. If the identifying object seems like a better bet, “deity-name’s descriptive-adjective identifying-object!” is also pretty standard. The degree of respect or facetiousness in the descriptive adjective should be matched to the manner of the character doing the swearing.

Eventually this can progress into the downright silly, at which point it may well start expanding also. For example: “deity-name on/in/with a strange-descriptive-adjective totally-unassociated-object”.

Now, if you decide you want to avoid deities entirely, you can always use animals instead. Some common variations on that are “domesticated-animal undesirable-byproduct!” or “domesticated-animal troublesome-behavior!”.

If you’re far enough along the aforementioned progression, you can even combine this with the deity version, for something like “deity-name troublesome-behavior!”.

One thing to remember in all this: don’t get too carried away with sniggering and go overboard. Otherwise you’ll wind up like Steve White, who is clearly a little too personally amused by the literal translation of some earthier Russian figures of speech.

AAAAAAAAAAAAA!

2008-07-29T22:27:02Z

FUCKING BASTARDS, YOU AND YOUR FUCKING DEAD DRIVES, JUST GIVE ME MY FUCKING MONEY BACK SO I CAN SPEND IT WITH SOMEONE ELSE!

*panting* Iomega. Never, ever buy a drive from them. Ever. The first one died in a month and the replacement? Was dead on arrival. And they won't refund because we bought it from Amazon, and Amazon won't refund after 30 days.

So I have to get the drive replaced again, and let me tell you if this one is live I'm going to SELL the fucking thing!

The web and transparency

2008-07-28T16:41:50Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

So, the Hale scandal has gotten me thinking again about privacy and business on the web. Have some random thoughts.

These thoughts aren’t about identity, or issues like outing fans; that was malice and vandalism in order to punish ‘competitors’ and gain traffic. Let us instead talk about privacy and anonymity on the web at large. Hale is trying to take advantage of business opportunities, so let us consider the kinds of information commercial sites can get about you, which has little to do with identity as fandom usually considers it.

It's amazing the things your computer will tell any other computer that asks, and a lot of people seem not to know that. Every site you visit records your IP address, your location, your operating system (Windows, Mac, Linux), your browser (IE, Firefox, etc.), where you came from (unless either your browser or the referring site is particularly set not to answer that one), and any other knick knacks of information the site in question is programmed to ask, like your screen resolution or what other software you have running. To see what your IP alone can tell a site about you, take a look at whatismyipaddress, which also has some notes about how to conceal some of that information should you wish to.

As for cookies, the tag that your own browser stores to tell sites "match me to X information profile, it's me again", well those are handy for a number of programming purposes, but they're not necessary. They're just insurance, and unless you're taking measures to mask your IP address, that will identify you across subsequent visits even if you have a different cookie-profile for every one. If you check the box that says "do not remember me on this site" that just means that you won't have the benefit of the information that site has on who you are. It doesn't necessarily mean the site owners won't.

Most small or personal sites, run via the computers of hosting companies, don't keep the raw data for more than a month at a time, because it does take up storage space. But it's always available for the current month, at least, and can be set up for automatic download if the site owner thinks of it and wants to keep a record. It isn't exactly easy, but it isn't really difficult either.

Most large sites, especially commercial ones, keep their records longer. In some cases, they sell the information; read privacy statements carefully and you often find something along the lines of "we'll never, ever sell your information except to the affiliates we really, really trust." No doubt that "trust" is well paid for. If you have registered with the site, they have your name and email, too, but it's your web browsing patterns that seem to be the valuable information for advertisers; it's the coin of the realm for the commercial web. Consider the Beacon fiasco on Facebook. A whole bunch of businesses agreed to share this information, in order to come up with a comprehensive picture of their users' browsing patterns, the better to sell things to them. Only Blockbuster is facing even the possibility of legal repercussions, so far.

For the most part, laws on this subject don't exist in the US. Individual providers or merchants may have policies about privacy and the sharing or publication of "marketing" information, but that's purely voluntary and subject to change. Most of the (few) privacy laws relate to what the government can and can't access or share, not to commercial enterprise.

Yay capitalism, eh?

The thing is, we do all maintain balance of a sort. A thin thread restrains the merchants in question because they don't want to alienate their customers entirely. And the customers don't like finding out about how little privacy they may have, hence the voluntary policies that at least limit information trading. Even more than that, customers don't approve of dishonesty. When the extent of the Beacon network came out, when it was clear that Facebook had misrepresented it as something to share with friends and lied about the extent and of the information gathered, there was uproar. And Facebook backed down.

So Hale hasn't just been abrogating the mores of fandom. Indeed, she hasn't been acting within fandom at all; that was merely the front. She has also crossed the line for a commercial web-entrepreneur. She has suggested that her site was for fandom and/or historical research purposes, when, in fact, it is a commercial site. This is one of the few triggers just about guaranteed to anger and alienate prospective customers, thus demonstrating that not only is she a dishonest merchant but she's not even good at it.

I'll just be over here, watching the karma drop from a great height.

The music continuity

2008-07-24T20:35:59Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

Not the musicals, but the music–the characters songs. It’s a totally separate continuity, in tenipuri, it really is. Characters who are presented as (mostly, allegedly) straight sing love duets with each other. Characters known for their reserve and stoicism sing really silly songs. Some of the character songs fit in with either the anime or the manga continuity, especially the Best Riva/Best Player songs, but a lot of them, especially the ones produced for the more popular characters, form a continuity of their own with a whole different set of characterizations that are, by and large, pure fanservice.

This is, to be sure, complicated by the occasional descent of both anime and manga canon into similar fanservice, anime moreso than manga. The continuities have even crossed, as for example the ‘talent night’ thing in the Senbatsu arc. And then there are the music video things, which appear to have some crossover with other parts of the music continuity, especially in the formation and naming of discrete groups.

In short, the whole notion of “continuity” in tenipuri is vastly complicated and a huge mishmash, but I’d still say it’s possible to count the music itself as at least one and quite possibly two or three totally separate continuities.

In case anyone wondered, these reflections are the direct result of Kirihara’s latest single. That seems more a seiyuu character song than a character character song, really.

In need of second opinions

2008-07-22T20:04:52Z

Okay, working on another journal theme. I think I've been changing the colors around and staring at the screen too long.

So what do you think?

I'm a bit concerned that the yellow is too bright. It's the right color balance, but... hm.

ETA: Now with a more subdued orange shade. I think this works rather well, actually.

Taste testing

2008-07-19T18:06:10Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

Continuing on with the What I Like series, I have been reflecting on where my genre fiction tastes intersect with my Literature tastes.

I enjoy a good deal of 19th C lit of all sorts, but the authors I am very especially fond of are Herman Melville and Virginia Woolf. Comparing them to my genre fic favorites and considering just what it is I enjoy, not just about reading them, but about analyzing them, I have concluded that I like authors who turn their brains inside out on the page.

But, and this is an important caveat, I also require a modicum of poetry to really hold my attention. That was my problem with Heinlein–well, one of my problems, to go along with my disgust for his rampant misogyny. His stories read as though he turned his brain inside out, indeed, and then just shook it over the page, squashed the pages together, and sent that off to the publisher like some kind of verbal Rorschach blot.

I require some linguistic artistry to go along with the brain-guts, otherwise I just get bored.

On reflection, this is often my problem with science fiction in general, at least the kind written by actual scientists and science associates, who, as a general rule, cannot write poetry to save their souls. Limericks, yes; poetry, not so much.

On a similar note, not only is brevity the soul of wit, it is the soul of keeping me reading. I have about the same tolerance for reading minute descriptions of machines as I do for reading minute descriptions of buildings and clothing, which is to say, very little. Jane Austin and David Brin both win on this score. Issac Asimov frequently loses and the less said of James Fenimore Cooper the better.

It’s really too bad there isn’t some kind of litmus test I can do on new books, a carefully calibrated metaphorical strip I could dip between the covers to see what colors it turned–whether I’d get that turquoise tinge that means poetry plus brain-guts or the flat indigo of just poetry. Which interests me about as much as just brain-guts, which is to say, yawn. Jacket blurbs are worthless for this purpose.

Oh, well. I guess I’m stuck with standing in the aisle flipping through my prospective books and hoping for a bit of nicely turned gut phrasing to catch my eye.

Unboxable authors

2008-07-16T18:12:04Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

I think I have identified one of the things that leads me to like an author’s writing: when they write in several genres at once.

I knew Bujold did this, and Pratchett. But they’re both the kind of writers it’s easy to think of as simply exceptional. What I just realized, recently, is that some of my other favorites do this too. Barbara Hambly, for example.

Hambly writes science-fiction and fantasy. She writes horror. She writes historicals. She writes romance. And the thing is, she writes all of them at once. While any book of hers may lean toward one more than the rest, you can pretty much count on all those genre threads being in every book.

Of course, this means that she doesn’t usually follow most genre conventions of any of them.

Take the horror, for instance. Hambly’s books have plenty of it, whether gruesome and unknowable creatures from beyond the stars or the depths of human depravity and cruelty. But it’s never the point. It’s just there, and the characters have to deal with it. Which means she can’t be easily categorized as “dark fantasy” either, because the fantasy elements generally contribute to a very optimistic story, overall.

Or take the romance. Her books do generally feature multi-verse spanning, life altering love found at long odds. But her characters deal with it as one would expect people in the middle of deadly crises to do: “Wow, this is incredible! If we live, let’s have a good snog/marriage/deathless bond, okay? Now duck!”

As for the historical aspect, well even without her biographical blurb I’d have guessed she had either an advanced degree or an advanced hobby in history. Her narratives are chock full of little details that unmistakably set the stories in place and time. But it’s still the characters who are the point, not the details, and a lot of the books are set in places and times that didn’t actually exist, which makes it hard to call them historical fiction.

She writes against the genre grain, which I find charming. Also something I should probably keep in mind when next browsing the library or bookstore shelves.

Help beta test a new journal style?

2008-07-14T19:11:50Z

Hey, anyone want to kick the tires of my new journal style? It should be loaded up sometime this week or next, but I figure some advance beta-testing never hurts.

You need to have a paid account, so that you can make new layers, but if you're interested, here are the instructions:

First open a site page, like your user info. Click on Customize Journal, in the Journal menu section.

Click on the Advanced tab, furthest to the right.

Under Advanced Options, at the bottom, click on Your Layers.

Scroll down to the bottom, to Create Layer. Under Create Top Level Layer, select the type Layout from the dropdown. Click Create.

You now have an unnamed layer up at the top of your table that is under the heading "Child of layer 1: LiveJournal S2 Core, v1". Click on the Edit button.

Note: When you go to edit this or a theme layer, you may get a screen message saying you can't edit the layer because it belongs to another user. This is a glitch; ignore it and reload the page and it will go away.

You now have a weird looking screen with three windows and a bar at the top with a Save & Compile button. Paste this code code into the biggest window (the one on the right, top). Click on the Save & Compile button.

The screen should reload, with a message at the bottom telling you it has compiled with no errors.

Hit the back button to get back to the Your Layers Page. If you reload the page you should see your new layer now titled Simple Style.

Hit the back button again to get to the Advanced tab. Now go to the Basics tab and make sure you have selected S2, at the bottom.

Click on the Look and Feel tab and, under Layout, select Simple Style on the dropdown. It will be all the way at the bottom.

Now you should have the default (green) theme running on your journal! You can go to the Custom Options tab to play around with the sidebars and text and sticky note and so on.

If you want to play with more of the themes, you will need to create and copy the theme layers for those.

Creating theme layers:

Back to Customize Journal and click on the Advanced tab. Down at the bottom, click on Your Layers.

Once again, scroll down to the Create Layers section, only this time go to the Create Layout Specific Layer option.

In the type dropdown, select Theme, and in the layout dropdown, select Simple Style. Once again, it will be all the way at the bottom. Click Create.

This time your new, unnamed layer will be at the bottom of the table, probably underneath one that says "Auto-generated Customizations". Click on the Edit button for your new layer.

You will see the weird three-pane page again. This time, you will need to paste in this code. Short and sweet. Hit Save & Compile.

Back button past Your Layers to the Advanced tab. Click on the Look and Feel tab. Now you will have two options under Themes: Default and Botanical.

To load more themes just repeat these steps, pasting in any of the following theme code for each theme layer.

Seaside
Travel Dark
Travel Light
Winter Red
Basic Blue
Basic Black and White
Basic Orange

Ice Is Also Great and Would Suffice

2008-06-30T18:18:07Z

Fic post from my archive.

Ice Is Also Great and Would Suffice

Post Soul Society arc, Rukia has to deal with lingering injuries and Byakuya finds old habits of care returning. Fluff with Angst, I-4, mild spoilers

It had been coming for days; she'd felt it like a presence standing behind her shoulder, stepping closer and closer again until it merged with her backbone and unstrung her. She didn't know why it was now, why this hadn't happened when she was locked away or about to die or at some other time that made sense. She just knew she couldn't hold it back any more, and a few hot tears spilled over as her breath rasped harshly in her lungs.

Let’s get the requirements issue out in the open, then

2008-06-30T17:42:55Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

Following up my earlier post about how some fans deploy ratings.

The comments were an interesting study in themselves. My first observation was that a good half did not respond to the post itself, but rather were personal position statements on ratings qua ratings. From this I draw the conclusion that there is an issue-iceberg floating under this comment-water.

The largest subset within this segment appears to group around the fairly incontestable argument that the MPAA is an appalling body of prodnose prudes, whose rating system reflects their disgustingly skewed priorities. Far be it from me to argue with this premise; indeed, I might well state it more strongly.

The curious thing I observed was that none of this group really seemed to want to argue directly with my actual post hypothesis, which is that many in my own corner of fandom and possibly others have subverted the MPAA scale for our own wonderfully non-prudish ends. The impression I have from those comments is that those particular fans do not feel their own usage of the scale is a subversion, and therefore that fora and communities that require MPAA ratings to be used are forcing the official, un-subverted MPAA system, and concomitant attitudes, upon them. The general feeling of those responses seems to be that, far from a self-applied advertisement of sexy content, the required use of the MPAA scale calls on them to be complicit in the MPAA agenda of censorship, anti-sexuality, misogyny and homophobia

This was not stated in so many words, so this reading of the comments makes some assumptions; I may be wrong. But I can certainly appreciate why this would be deeply objectionable, if I’m reading the subtext correctly.

The previous post did not, of course, deal at all with the issue of required ratings. However, the issue of required ratings, and the use of the MPAA scale as one of those commonly required, is clearly at the forefront of some fans’ minds. Thus, I would like to offer a post that to address the issue directly. On this topic, I would say that requiring the use of a scale whose non-fandom deployment is so distasteful is not exactly the best way to promote emotional safety and intellectual ease among fandom at large. In an ideal world, I think self-applied ratings should not require the internalization of a puritan censor in the back of every writer’s head.

One of the most common alternatives the commenters suggested was the use of a simple “explicit” versus “non-explicit”, which would serve much the same purpose that any rating system currently does. It isn’t perfect; it still contains a good deal of elasticity in what each poster considers “explicit” to mean, but this is going to be an issue in any rating system that is self-applied. I certainly would not suggest turning to externally applied ratings simply to achieve greater consistency, even were such a thing remotely feasible which it is not. In combination with the usual run of other meta information (genre, warnings, etc.) explicit/non-explicit would seem to address the concerns of those communities that do require the use of ratings. It has the bonus of being something any English-speaking fan can readily understand, which is not the case for any nationally-specific rating system. Nationally-specific interpretations are, as usual, part and parcel of any system’s elasticity.

For myself, to throw my hat in the ring right off the bat, I am inclined against required meta information of any sort. Required ratings or disclaimers or such seem to serve no useful purpose. I doubt many of us deceive ourselves that there is any actual regulatory or legal utility in meta information. Courtesy to one’s readers may come into it, but its definition varies, sometimes wildly, from one forum to another. My personal inclination is to let authors write the meta information as they will, with an awareness of where they are publishing, and then let the readers read as they dare. Fandom has promoted a general tendency to proliferate rather than par labels, after all. Thus, those fans who want no contact with the very notion of the MPAA can avoid it while those fans who want to attract the eye with an NC-17, promising porny pleasures behind the cut tag, can keep on giving the MPAA the virtual finger every time they do so.

Okay. Now you have somewhere to debate ratings qua ratings.

PSA

2008-06-28T03:49:49Z

For those who love Bleach, I would like to note, IJ has a general Bleach comm, bleach_fandom. It has two quite nice mods and a wonderful lack of pairing wars so far.

And, incidentally, a spiffy new layout I have just made.

So come help keep it sane here, yeah?

First, the purpose of the system

2008-06-26T17:17:23Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

So, we as fandom and ficcers have gone around on the question of ratings quite a few times, and for quite a few reasons by now. The most peculiar and widespread round was probably triggered by the MPAA’s pissyness over archives using the NC-17 rating. Plenty of people in US fandoms still use G-PG-R-NC-17, of course, because it’s widely established and generally understood. Others, like ff.net, adopted the slightly altered version of K-T-M. Still others have come up with still more customized variations, and some people have argued that the written word should not have a rating system applied to it at all, and that it certainly isn’t to professional publications.

Ratings are pretty embedded in fandom practice by now, of course, and I doubt we’re getting rid of them. So we struggle on to find a system that says what we want it to say. One of the more recent contributions to the debate got me started thinking, though.

Ratings, as applied to fanfiction, work rather differently than ratings applied to other media, such as movies. For one thing, they’re self-applied and, for another, they don’t actually seem to be regulatory. I am not sure, though, that this fact calls for an alteration in the most commonly used ratings.

Let us start at the beginning. What do we use ratings to indicate?

One of the most common things seems to be sex. Among US fans at least, I believe this is inherited pretty directly from the MPAA, who place a completely disproportionate emphasis on sex as the primary gauge by which to restrict audiences.

This leads me off, though, to one of the major underlying questions: do we use ratings to restrict an audience? Or so we use them for another purpose?

Consider the use of the contested NC-17 rating in fanfiction. My impression in my own fandom sector, anime fandom, is that this rating is used more as advertising than for restriction. When an author wishes to warn off parts of the audience, for disturbing content let us say, such restriction is more often handled through the warning labels rather than the rating. The rating seems most frequently used to advertise the explicitness of the sexual and/or romantic content.

In some ways, then, it seems to me that we have taken in the MPAA focus on sex and subverted it. MPAA ratings are about restriction, and focus on the presence or absence of explicit sexual content disproportionate to the wide variety of other things that might justifiably restrict the audience. Fan use of those ratings is about audience selection and enlargement; we often use them to appeal to the audience that is looking for sexual content (at least in my corner and I think in others from what little I’ve seen of book/media/etc. practice).

There is, of course, another segment of fans that is interested specifically in restriction, or, as it’s most commonly expressed, keeping youngsters away from ideas they should not yet be exposed to. The actual content of those ideas, again, varies, but some of the frequently cited ones are sexuality, cruelty and/or violence, and bad language. Ratings, however, do not seem to come up in these discussions as much as mechanical restrictions, such as registration requirements for sites that contain variously defined mature material. This may be because this segment understands perfectly well that a rating never stopped any kid, especially from doing something as simple as clicking on a link.

So the actual utility of ratings for fandom texts seems to have very little to do with audience restriction. Rather, ratings seem to serve as a special-purpose label, one that can generally be counted on to address the sexual content unless the rest of the meta information specifically points in a different direction

The meta information can be reworked as a whole, so that the rating addresses something else and the sexual content is addressed in some other way. I do this in my own archive. But if a writer or reader desires greater precision or specificity, it is unlikely that a different rating system alone will deliver it. Ratings, by their nature, are very general and not comprehensive. Verbal labels seem far more likely to deliver, on that score.

Then, too, the MPAA scale has gained jargon meaning, among US fans. When I post to fandom forums and comms, I find myself swinging back to the MPAA scale in order to communicate with my potential audience in a way the community consensus understands. Considering this, it seems to me that, at least in my parts of fandom, our subversion of MPAA is already sufficient to its task. If the rating were the only meta information available, then it would not be, but meta information has become a form of composition all its own, and, looking at it, I think this may be a good thing after all. We are not making movies; we are not publishing novels; we are writing fic, and that is a medium of its own that calls for and evolves its own framework.

We might, in fact, think of our use of the G-PG-R-NC-17 scale as fic of MPAA, a notion that rather appeals to me.

Weekly Manga Roundup (a bit late)

2008-06-24T21:27:21Z

[Posted from my other fandom journal.]

Bleach: *fans self* Oh my. Aizen has met his match for top contender in the “badness is hot like fire” sweepstakes. Who knew Urahara could be sexy as hell?

Naruto: *slaps desk* There, now that is a fine issue! Why can’t you write like that more often, Kishimoto? Just the right balance of heart-rending and hopeful, with good, stark shading to complement it. Ditch all these fights with characters who take ten freaking issues to die after being gut-stabbed and write like this more.

Eyeshiled 21: … InaMura, you want to kill us, don’t you? What was that? Three reverses in one issue? My heart won’t take another three months of this!

All in all, a darn good week.

Moving Down the Streams of My Lifetime

2008-06-19T20:32:16Z

Fic post from my archive.

Moving Down the Streams of My Lifetime

Sohryu frets over Tsuzuki's safety and does what he can to protect him. Written for Porn Battle, with the prompt: Souryuu/Tsuzuki, protecting what's most precious. Drama with Porn, I-3

He was a fool, Sohryu decided as he swept Tsuzuki up, folding his master in strong arms and soft layers of cloth, safe the way he always should be.

Softer than Velvet

2008-06-19T20:31:53Z

Fic post from my archive.

Softer than Velvet

Tatsumi likes to see Watari all tied up. Written for Porn Battle, with the prompt: Tatsumi/Watari, shadow-bondage. Sheer Porn, I-4

Watari moaned as shadows pulled his legs wider apart, coiling around them to hold them there. "Tatsumi..."

Full to Overflowing

2008-06-19T20:30:18Z

Fic post from my archive.

Full to Overflowing

Arriving in high school, Kirihara gets a nice welcome back from Sanada. Written for Porn Battle, with the prompt: Sanada/Kirihara, size queen. Pure Smut, I-4

The day couldn't get much better than this. It was a new year; he was a Regular on the high school team; everyone else had gone home and Sanada-san was fucking him, hard and big, stretching Akaya open perfectly.

Reach and Grasp

2008-06-19T19:42:00Z

Fic post from my archive.

Reach and Grasp

Shin and Sena have a roll in the grass, both literally and figuratively. Written for Porn Battle, with the prompts: Shin/Sena - the smell of fresh grass and Shin/Sena, size differences. Porn with Fluff, I-4

Shin-san paused. "Sena?" His hand stopped and spread out against Sena's stomach. "Do you want me to?"

Sena blushed hotly. Shin-san just out and said things like that! Sena cleared his throat and murmured, "Um. Yes?"