Counting Down to PAX Prime....

Nerdy Yaoi Game Girl peeked out earlier this week, when she realised it's time for PAX prime...

Not that I expect any yaoi games (this year either) but rather more source material for my very own fan fiction. I hope for more gameplay footage of Assassin's Creed 3, Lost Planet 3, DmC: Devil May Cry, Okami (which I have and love, but cant play as my PS2 is shot and my Wii has 1st gen controller.... besides, want to see it in HD), Fable the Journey, and that game that blew me away at this years E3, but I can't, for the love of a God I don't even belive in, remember its title. Yes, Im quirky like that.

Also at PAX Prime, BioWare will show up, but if there will be any game news from them, I don't know. But my biggest frustration in not living in Seattle is that Square Enix will put on a big show over their 25th anniversary of Final Fantasy. Just think about this for a moment.... 25 years that game series has existed... that's almost as long as me. That's just as long as my ototo. And yeah.... I confess..... FF nerd....

I've always wanted to go to a gaming convention, but they're kinda scarce here. There is one on November, I think, maybe I'll go. This year's Science Fiction convention, though, is booked and payed for (or at least, marked in my calendar and saved for) as I've missed it so many times, and the last 3 times, I was supposed to go with Onee-chan, but..... didn't happen.....

Why is it one lives somewhere where nothing happens?


I was thinking about doing a collage of all the emo boys in Final Fantasy, but... there's just so may of them, I got a short-out in my brain. My own avatar, Vincent Valentine, is such an emo. And my first Final Fantasy crush! YAY me.... Cloud is really emo, but I have dubbed Squall from Final Fantasy 8 THE emo of Final Fantasy. I ran around that game for like 50 hours when I was  kid with that fricking emo. (and yes, I spelled that word wrong on purpose.) When it comes to Final Fantasy characters, I tend to "fall in love" with side characters, or even sidekick villains. Jut because, here's a list, Final Fantasy 1-6 not covered, just because I'm lazy.... and 11 and 14 because they are MMO's and.. i don't really do that. And Final Fantasy 7 Dirge of Cerberus, because that would be cheating....

Final Fantasy 7: Vincent. Any day. Probably the coolest guy EVER to sleep in a coffin.... I can't dub him the most emo guy to ever sleep in a coffin, because i think Louis already nicked that prize.









Final Fantasy 7 Crisis Core: Ok, I have a huuuuge soft spot for Zack, and Genesis.... But a kind-of kind Sephiroth, just touches my heart. It's basically the Sephiroth out of my Fanfiction, which totally messes with both timeline and character relations, ad sometimes aren't even set in the Final Fantasy universe.









Final Fantasy 7 Advent Children: Yazoo. He's just so deliciously crazy. He almost seems happy to be crazy, like Alex in A Clockwork Orange.





Final Fantasy 8: Irvine. Upbeat like Yazoo, but not as crazy. I almost went with Laguna, but I have a soft spot for the sharp-shooter in the cowboy hat.

Final Fantasy 9: I can't go off main characters here: Kuja. My god, he's villain-y. And vain. And he probably has an eating disorder.... I mean, just look at those hips....











Final Fantasy X: Auron. I know, he's old. Maybe I have issues. But I cant help to love that guy, all cool and suave... and just look at that stare... he totally doesn't like anyone....





Final Fantasy X-2: Nooj. Maaaybe because he's a little mini Auron.... Otherwise, I'm partial to Paine, but, let's take the girls some other day.











Final Fantasy 12: Balthier. The leading man.... He's so goddamn arrogant and suave and that VOICE! I have a thing for voices. Please, Gideon, never stop with the voice acting...






Final Fantasy 13: Cid Raines. Oh, the drama, oh, the tragedy, oh the yaoi fanfiction..... probably the hottest Cid in any Final Fantasy game. Was there a Cid in Final Fantasy 13-2? I don't remember....







Final fantasy 13-2: Hope! OMFG, Hope you grew to be a fine young man. Once, you were a little kid with trouble up over your ears and a very embarrassing speech in the Pulse Arch, but now.... you sure you're the same Hope I once knew?










Anyway, there they are. My favorite Final Fantasy guys. I should do a list of girls and actually rank my favorite villains, but not today.....

So, PAX Prime this weekend, and next after that Tokyo Game Show on September 20th. Ok, so, time to win that jackpot that's been staring me in the face for 5 years, so i can afford to go to Japan...

(Pictures belong to the respective artists, i take no credit for them)

I love Fridays

The summer is officially over. I LOVE IT! I hate summer, and even more than that, I hate spring! But that's because I'm allergic. As I look out the bedroom window (live on the 6th floor of an apartment building), the top of the elm tree (at least, i think it's an elm tree) is bright red. It's just the top though, the rest is green. Most of the rest of the trees are still green, though, but that elm(?) is the tallest tree here. I was out with my dog earlier this evening, it had just rained and the air was all crisp and clear and there were the smell of garden fruits..... Yeah, this is my time. Although, early autumn often means crap winter..... I hope not, I love winter. 3 dm of snow and -15 degrees, and I'm home.

Coming inside again after our walk, i had a great urge for some hot chocolate and a piece of cake or a cinnamon bun or something. Buuut, I had none of those....

Seeing as it being Friday, I thought I'd talk a little about food. Everybody eats, right? Swedes like to make a thing out of food, and we seem to love it. Especially coffee and breads and buns and treats, we even made it a whole movement. Or close to. The concept of "fika" intrigues me just as much as it intrigues many foreigners I've met. Maybe because I don't drink coffee. It goes like this: Your busy working and minding your own business, and suddenly, a co-worker shows up by the door or your cubicle or whatever system you have to get some kind of privacy for your phone calls..... whatever, you know what i mean.... S/He asks if you're not going to come and have some fika. This usually happens around 10 in the morning, and again at about 2 in the afternoon. And it doesn't matter how many times you say no, they keep asking til you say yes or quit because you can't stand the question anymore. To try to understand just how important this is, a cup of coffee at least, but probably also a sweet bun or piece of cake or shortbread, here are some statistics:

Swedes ate 78,1 kg of breads, buns, shortbreads, cakes, pizza bread and pirogi per capita (person) 2010. They also drank 161 liters of Coffee. That is 8,6 kg of coffee beans. To put this in perspective, Italians had 5,9 kg of coffee beans per capita, US had 4,3 kg and Japan 3,3 kg. So, yeah, that's a LOT of coffee.

Fridays also means another phenomenon I have never heard of by any friends world-wide, Fredagsmys. Well, it does exist out there, I guess, keeping your family home, eating good food (here, it seems to be tacos, always), seeing a crap movie you don't really want to see, just to be able to have Fredagsmys. For me, Fridays is good food, good desserts and good movies or TV-series. On DVD, of course, who has the patience to wait for a whole week for the next episode.

To top off the Swedish extravaganza, Swedish kids gets Lördagsgodis, or Saturday sweets. Unless their parents are scared of sugar of course. I must say, my parents weren't. Therefore, I will share with you my family's Saturday treat: Chokladbollar!

Ok, so Chocolate Balls sounds a little..... try not to go there..... but these sweet chocolate-y treats are great. You need no tools other then measuring cups and your own hands. But you could put it in a food processor or use a mixer. And it's kid-friendly, make them roll the balls....

Ingredients:
3 dl (ca 1,2 cups) oatmeal
1 dl (little less than 0,5 cup) sugar
2 Tbs cacao powder, unsweetened
1 tbs vanilla sugar (i don't know if this even exist outside Sweden, otherwise, just a little vanilla extract or      pure vanilla powder will do the trick)
100 g soft butter (please don't use margarine unless you have too.)
1 Tbs water or milk or orange juice or coffee (or rum for an adult version)

Stir the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add the butter and water and stir into a dough, should feel just about as a cookie dough. this should take only 1 or 2 minutes. Put the bowl  in the fridge for 30 minutes or as long as you need to do something else in between. When you are ready, take the dough out of the fridge and call the kids. Make ready a plate or platter to put the balls on, and ask the kids if they want coconut shavings or sprinkles on their balls. Or maybe both. Then get ready to get messy. a way to keep the mess a liiiittle less messy is to rinse your hands in cold water every now and then, and it gets easier to roll the balls. Roll balls from the dough, take about 1 teaspoon to 1 tablespoon of dough, or more, depending on how big you want them. Then roll the balls in sprinkles or what you will, put them on your platter and put them in the fridge. They should keep for about a week, but they'll probably be gone long before that. They can be put in the freezer as well. The recipe make about 25.


So, that was my childhood Saturday treat. Enjoy.


(Statistics for Sweden taken from Swedish Jordbruksverket, for other countries World Resource Institute.)

Let's go to the movies......

I was looking through my movie lists today, and realized that I really have to do something about them. I have a LOT of movies in my lists, and hardly any ratings. and the ratings i have is WAY out of whack. Looking in my Fantasy movie list, I saw i gave Final Fantasy Advent Children a 9/10. I don't know if that is deserving. Now, to be honest, I saw both versions in both English and Japanese, and the English version SUCK! But then I knew that it would, because i have never seen a good Japanese to English dub. (Exception: Howl's moving castle, but that's just because i love Christian Bales voice..... when he's not growling) And in the US, if you want to see it in Japanese, you're out of luck. Not that it doesn't exist, but that if you don't know Japanese all you get is DUBTITLES! Dubtitles is when they take the dub, put it on screen for you to read and pretend that it is a subtitles. There are A LOT of things they say in Japanese that they don't translate correctly, so you have NO IDEA what the hell is going on. For example they translate titles into names. For example, just in the beginning, a young woman says "sempai, hurry" (how the hell do you translate "sempai" into English anyway?) and the translation for the dubtitles goes: "Reno, hurry". It messes the flow up for me when I see things like that. Now, my own Japanese isn't great, not even good, but that's just lame. Even I hear that she says Sempai and not Reno. And look at that, we're only 3 minutes and 33 seconds into the Complete version. This is fun! Wonder what more we can find! Nah, not doing that today. Anywho.

FFAC is probably not a film that would hold up on its own. I cant tell, because I dealt with BC CC and DC as well as FF7, so I know where they are, where they come form and so forth. (And yes, those are the REAL acronyms for the games; Before Crisis, Crisis Core and Dirge of Cerberus) FFACComplete miiight be able to stand alone, as it has more screentime and develops Cloud a little more. Oh, those names! Cloud... No, not Curaudo..... Cloud.... What is it with the english speaking people and wanting to NOT translate Japanese. Calling Cloud Curaudo or, for that matter, Death Note Desu nôto, is, in my humble opinion, DISRESPECTFUL! Clouds name is Cloud even if you can't pronounce it! And a Death Note is a Death Note... So, btw, if you dont find an anime on the big great database, try sounding it out and write what it sounds like i Japanese and not what it actually is named..... Blue Exorcist took me an hour to find.....

Where was i...? Oh, yes.... FFACComplete. This is a fan service orgasm, that's for sure. I'm not really supposed to be reviewing it, at least not today. Let me just say that if you're a fan of the franchise or just of reaaaally good 3d animation, take a look. I love the bike scenes..... and the fighting scenes.

As I said, i gave this a nine, but I'll push it down a notch. As a movie, it has problems standing on it's own. Or maaaybe i should give it a ten, just for Sephiroth. And as my own avatar is Vincent..... *Final Fantasy Fan Girl Mode Activated*



On to my Cartoon TVseries list, I find that I DON'T HAVE A SINGLE RATING! What's wrong with me, am I too busy, or......? Now, I separated Cartoons, meaning mostly Disney toons, and animé, or this list would have been HUGE. One exception; The Moomin animé from 1990. I think the reason it ended up among the "Cartoons" instead of the "Animé" is simply that it was aired on Swedish and Finish television when i was a kid and there was a total of 4 tv channels in sweden. Ok, not strictly true, if you had a satellite disc you had like a gazillion. but no one in my neighborhood had that. So when i was i kid we had 2 channels public service + Finnish YLE and, a bit later Swedish TV4. Ranting again..... *deep breath*. So Moomin was actually an animé, and i don't think ANYONE is aware of this. Simply because we never thought of it as kids, or rather, weren't aware that such a concept existed. The general understanding in Sweden was either it's 2d animation, or it's live action. That was all knowledge of movie making we had. Exception., of course, the movie buffs. Now, I've always loved Moomin, I grew up with the books and the animé and that scary Christmas Calendar. Not scary for any other reason than it was live action, big people in big costumes and for some reason it scared the sh!t out of me. Maybe because they had to make the people wear big costumes as well... I mean, if humans have to wear human costumes, something is just wrong. Anywho, one thing I don't like about the cartoon is that in Japan it's 1 SEASON LONGER! What happened, guys? Why didn't you dub that last season and air it in Sweden? Well, too late now, and I have still to find it in Japanese. Giving this series a score is kinda hard, and almost unfair. I haven't seen the whole series, partly because of that last season, partly because i haven't seen all episodes that actually aired. And i don't want to buy the Swedish DVD releases, because they're totally out of order. you know, it's the kind of release where they throw a few episodes on a DVD that are not cohesive and one of the episodes are actually a two-parter, but only the last part is on the DVD..... or worse, the FIRST.... and its like episode 1 29 37 and 40 or something... I hate it when they do that. And they will never ever ever release a whole season in a box, because then they wouldn't make any money or something. RCP sounds like a good idea on this point....


Ok, third and last for today, or this will drag on forever, my animé TV-series list..... And the first thing i see is: Vanpaja naito.... gah, it sounds like a cartoon about some scary circus clowns. Scary pretty like the jigsaw puzzle i have waiting for me, Misty Circus Carousell. No, the animé, and the manga it's based on is called VAMPIRE KNIGHT! See, much cooler, you get an idea what it is about, it doesn't sound like a two year old translated it. Moving on... I notice that this list has no ratings either. I could rate Vampire knight, but.... I think I want to see it again before I do. So I don't mix it up with other vampire things I've been watching. And ANYONE saying the word TWILIGHT out loud gets shot by Zero. There! Looking down this list, I realize there are no yaoi on it, but it turns out i'm just forgetful. I have a YAOI LIST. Yay me. Wonder how long it took me to get all that on a list. Crosschecking, most of the titles on the yaoi list miiiight have been able to go on the animé list, as the titles i apparently found was rather tame, on the shounen-ai end of the yaoi scale, but still yaoi. I don't really know what else to say about my animé list, mainly because there were a lot of titles i haven't finished watching. I mean, ok, i got sailor moon, i got Vampire Knight and Black Butler and Death Note and hack.//SIGN, but I'm watching a bunch of others, so it's hard to keep things apart sometimes in my messy brain.

Ok, as usual a long-ass rant about things no one knows, and now i'm tired. I'll go through three more lists in a week....


(Pictures belong to the respective artists, i take no credit for them)

Wednesday is library day.... part 2....

Ok, so, I know i was supposed to write this last Thursday, buuut.... well, mostly I didn't do it because I had no inspiration whatsoever, but i blame my tooth... anywho, seeing its technically thursday a week later (writing this at 00:48 night between Wednesday and Thursday) I thought I'd push myself into doing it. So, favorite books in categories kids through yaoi, here i come.

Kids (that is not written by Astrid Lindgren): Oh, this is SO DAMN HARD! Should i Pick Harry Potter? Well, funny story about that one; I got it when i was a kid from my mom, birthday present. Guess what? I REFUSED TO READ IT! I was very anti-everything everyone else did, so reading Harry Potter..... nah. Didn't actually start reading until the Prisoner of Azkaban. We were vacationing on Crete and I was bored, so I bought it in the reception at the hotel. My favorite of the books, but the least favorite film. But that's all a side note. I think I will actually go with Momo by Michael Ende. He also wrote The Neverending Story. Momo, the title character, is an outsider looking in at a society where she, as a lonely little girl living poor and alone in an amphitheater, isn't really liked by the adults, but loved by the kids. She and the kids play and enjoy the time spent together, and the town where they live is peaceful and quiet. But then the Gray Men appear and time seems to disappear..... it's a good read, and it made me think. It's just as much for kids as for adults.

Manga: Oh.... I hardly remember all the manga I've read. All is not in the bookshelves, so i pick from there..... and my pick is: Black Butler (黒執事 :Kuroshitsuji) Kind of generic, I know.... Everyone knows what this is, at least if they know anything about manga. About a boy (Earl Ciel Phantomhive) and his butler (Sebastian Michaelis) and their antics in Victorian London's shadow world of crooks and murderers and.... and GRELL! Grell, you weird, red, crazy Shinigami, you! You totally deserved it when Will landed on your head! (I think it was Will.... Might have been Sebastian..... or both....) But then, I think you liked it. And that was the scariest version on the Cheshire cat EVER! Anywho, one of my favorites!



Fairy Tales: Ok, this is not what you think! I used the Swedish word "Sagor", witch is a much wider concept than fairy tales. Fables fit in here, as well as Harry Potter, The Golden Compass and Pippi Longstocking. So this may seem really random. Talking strict classic fairy tale, my favorite is Sleeping Beauty. Not the Disney version. This is totally bias on a book I had when I was a kid. I think I have it somewhere. It had beautiful full-page pictures on every other page. I think I like the paintings more than the story. From the book shelf: The Moomin books. Hard to choose which. Sent i November (Late in November, literally, but i don't know if this is the actual English title) puts me in that quiet, almost sorrowful state that I like from books, especially in November. And that song Tove Jansson, the author, wrote gives me chills for some reason.It's called Höstvisa, look it up, check for an old clip from the 60's, a man is singing in that version. 

Science Fiction: I'm gonna go all Star Wars here, and say The Jedi's Apprentice. It's a young teen series about Obi-Wan Kenobi as a teenager. It's a really good book series, and I just love Qui-Gon Jinn.... I started reading this before I saw The Phantom Menace, and I had Liam Neeson's voice in my head whenever Qui-Gon spoke.... and lo.... Liam Neeson as Qui-Gon Jinn.... The SW universe has spawned fanfic, but not this specifically.






Shounen-ai: I had surprisingly little in this bookshelf. Only three books. But it seems I'm lacking books here. I'll go with Betrayal Knows My Name (裏切りは僕の名前を知っている Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Sitteiru) (Yay me, I remembered the whole thing by myself!) The only thing that bothers me is that Yuki was once a girl.... Is it really shounen-ai, then? Don't know. I just know that Yuki is sweet, Luka has the good old devil's stare and Takashiro is totally hot. A LOT of yaoi fanfic has come out of this occult series, and there is more to come....






Yaoi: Hard, hard, hard..... I think I'll go with Junjou Romantica. Slice of life yaoi about Misaki who comes to live with his big brothers best friend Usagi-san. Usagi-san pursues Misaki, Misaki resists.... we all know the drill. Don't really know what to write about this, other than I really like it, and it's kinda cute. And it has spawned some yaoi fanfic....








Well, that was that, all categories in my bookshelf. Not the most sophisticated reader perhaps, but it's all good and fun. Tonight I'm reading Assassin's Creed Renaissance.

Everything is yaoi....

It's true. Everything is yaoi. And if it isn't, you can make it so. I have made yaoi out of just about everything. So, let me tell you about that thing I promised before. Treasure island yaoi. It is one of those stories that I started when I was a kid, and since then it has gone through a hell of an evolution. It all started when I was 10 and our fourth grade teacher said we had to read at least one book per month. Well, I though, I read one book per day, so... MOM, I NEED A CHALLENGE! She dumped Treasure Island in my lap. How that was a challenge, I don't know. Maybe because I didn't really like pirates back then.

Anywho, I read it, and little girl feminism kicked in, just like with Lord of the Rings. I immediately decided to split the main role between Jim Hawkins and a girl. The girl was Jim's sister, runaway girl, I don't know if she ever got a girls name. But off she was, and she came to Bristol and was found by Alexander Smollett. He thought she was a boy and he took her in. She said she didn't remember her name, so he gave her the name Ismael. Ismael is a name I fell in love with after having seen Fanny och Alexander, mainly because that Ismael was really cool and a bit scary.

Little girl Ismael didn't survive very long. She turned into little boy Ismael. The boy Ismael didn't take long to detach himself from the source material, made clones for himself and sometimes changes his name. One of him stayed in the Treasure island world, grew up, got hitched to a woman and got himself a boyfriend, named Horatio Hornblower. Sound Familiar? It's another book (series) about a sailor in the 18th century. One of the Ismael clones moved to France and joined the musketeers (this has several stories, one in an alternate future where France is ruled by king Louis XXVI), one changed his name to Isaac and moved to 21st century London, another also changed his name to Isaac, but misspelled it Isacc, he is for now sitting rather still in a boat somewhere in the space-time continuum. Isacc has once met the original Ismael, buut.... i don't know. I promise to one day post some of those stories.

Just to give you a hint of what else I'm writing about, here's a little summary of 5 people/couples:

Zidane Karone + Charles "Kuja" Shunte: Zidane is the riches-to-rags-to-riches guy who ran away from home when he was 12. Kuja is the guy from the suburbs that ended up on the streets when his parents died. Apparently, foster care didn't exist in this universe. These two hasn't changed much since i started writing about them when I was, maybe, 12. Their names has changed, I think Kuja was actually "Charlie" in the beginning. Then came Final Fantasy IX. Name stealing 200%. After that I made a gag out of the name Charles. Zidane's father's name became Carlo, his mothers brother Carlos, and his and Kuja's oldest son Charlie. So Zidane use to say he's surrounded by Charlie's. Once upon a time, to solve the "how to have kids" dilemma, Zidane and Kuja actually had wives. But then i went all sci-fi on them. Anywho, a little slice of life story that seem to be never-ending.

Alexander Gabriels: This young lad lives in 10'000 AD, in a society with no culture. Or, at least no fun kind. All movies are educational, there is music, but there are no words. Not no singing, but the singing is gibberish without meaning. But they have games, like World of Warcraft and the likes. Alex is an avid player, he even have a neural input, allowing him to immerse himself completely in the games. Coming from a broken home, he moved to his aunt and uncle when he was 10, his cousin is as close to him as any brother. His cousin Nathan recruits him into his band, (not dissimilar to boy bands of today), Alex spirals almost out of control, but is more or less rescued by his then-on boyfriend Kevin. Alex's net skills lead him to THE LIBRARY, containing all movies, music and books from our time.

Uron Raccall: My very own Jedi Master. Kidnapping the Star Wars Universe entirely, Uron Raccall wasn't just my Revan in the game Knights of the Old Republic, buuuut he also united the Old Republic before is was a republic, single-handed started the Jedi Order and stopped Anakin from going all rogue. Yes, this Jedi Master is old as the stars. He's a bit of a mystery, even to me. When he's not keeping a shroud of mystery around himself he says he is the Force itself, and most people who has met him is rather unsure as to where his allegiance lie.

Kana + Sora + Aito: One of my three threesomes. These guys hail from a post-apocalyptic Japan, ruled by the Eastboard Alliance and their alien allies. Kana, the oldest of them, saw the fall of the world 400 years ago, when the aliens attacked. He is a vampire, and he is the Dragon of the Void, a leader of the resistance. The other four dragons don't know he is a vampire. Kana had been a vampire for 200 years when he fell in love with Sora, who was fatally ill. Turning him was, in Kana's opinion, the best thing Kana ever did. It was Sora who made them a threesome. 200 years after his becoming a vampire, he fell in love with Aito and Kana didn't disapprove. Now they're fighting together.

Kato + Sora: My favourite gender-bender. I totally nicked this idea from the Yaoi manga Sex Pistols. (Some releases of this in the west is called Love Pistols, as to not confuse it with the band of the same name.) Kato and Sora are descendants of dragons in a shadow society. The call normal humans Monkeys, three guesses why, while they, and all others who are not evolved from the human/ape ancestor, madararui. I still don't really got the hang of what that means, but the important thing is they are not really human. The Madararui have means to make the males pregnant just as the females, and most of their marriages are arranged as there are rather few of them. Getting to fall in love and be with the one you love is rare. But Kato and Sora are lucky. They found each other and were allowed to marry. And now.... Kato is pregnant. Sora's childhood friend Ichiro and his husband Toya are also pregnant after having lost their first child.

I don't know how much that said about anything, other than, yes, i like yaoi. I'll write more about my 100+ stories, in due time. Tomorrow is Monday.......

Happy birthday, mom!

Today is my mothers birthday. She would have turned 56 today. I'm not gonna do the sad thing, but rather remember her life. It's so easy to get into remembering how a person died and everything around that, people seem to forget how their loved once lived. Shame. My mother had her flaws, she was human, not a goddess  and judging by mythologies from around the world, being a goddess is really not a free pass on perfection anyway. Anywho... remembering my mothers birthdays from when i was a kid, they come with a tiiiiny bit of jealousy. Fact is, not just my mother, but THE WHOLE REST OF MY FAMILY has their birthday in August. Being a kid, this was totally unfair to me. I don't really know why....

Mothers birthday meant cray-fish party when I was a kid. My parents birthdays and the cray-fish premiere coincided quiet well back then. But just as Christmas starts almost BEFORE All Saints Day nowadays, the cray-fish seems to show up earlier and earlier. I remember the cray-fish parties at my parents house to be rather fun. A couple of families getting together in our home, having good food and, i must admit, quite a lot of alcohol. But i can't remember getting traumatized by that, even though nowadays, the opinion on the matter here in Sweden seems to be that alcohol on a part with kids = big nono, while alcohol alone at home while the kids are asleep = ok. I don't get that...

My mom was a reader. she loved reading. she worked at a library, so she read a lot for the job. She even took books home for ME to read for her job. I should have gotten a salary. She read bedtime stories for us kids till i was.... old.... waaay to old.... can one get to old for that? I mean, here, at least in my school, we had one hour a week where the teacher would read a book out loud from some book or another. All the way up to 6th grade. I don't know what moms favorite book was, i never thought to ask her. But i do know one thing: She never liked Lord of the Rings. She never got through it. She was like most of my friends in High School; she started to read it when she was a teenager, but got so bored after having read almost a hundred pages where nothing happened. And I can understand that, nothing happens in the first hundred pages.

My mother was very active. she loved dragging me along on outings and to museums and stuff. Concerts and plays and musicals. I HATED it. And i loved it at the same time. On one hand, i was a shy girl and hated crowds and loud noises and rides. OH, MY GOD, RIDES! I hated it. Which is probably why i have only gone to Gröna Lund (old amusement park) 5 times in my whole life. On the other hand, I got to spend time with my mom. Going to small quiet museums or a day out on some island, that was fun. And the theater. We weren't avid theater visitors, seeing plays in this country is and has always been expensive. My mom, of course, went more with friends than with me, to see more "adult" plays. Theater envy set in when i was 10, I think, and she went to see The Phantom of the Opera. Without me! But the she took me to London to see The Phantom of the Opera! At their 15th year of playing. When I was 15. What a coincident.

Thinking about my mother, I think of what i think everyone thinks of when they think about their mothers: food. Cooking. Weather your mother was a brilliant cook or couldn't boil an egg without burning it, we all remember our mothers cooking. My mother was a good cook. Objectively, she wasn't brilliant or anything, she was probably quite average. But I loved her cooking. Being fair, she usually involved me in it. Which is good, its another of those things i think you should team up with you kids in. My favorite meal my mom did from scratch was that divine Hungarian Gulasch. Or maybe the Hungarian pancakes. Or, Swedish meatballs. or Italian lasagna or..... hard to choose. Both my mother and her mother, my grandmother, spent a lot of time in the kitchen. Ofte enough together. They made pancakes and meatballs and stews and roasts and soups and sweets and cakes and buns and breads and..... Especially during the summer, my grandmother practically lived in our kitchen. I think it was the farm girl in her wanting to make sure the bounty of summer wasn't spoiled. Rhubarbs and apples and pears and strawberries and raspberries and currants and cherries and gooseberries and plums became saft (juice, i don't know the difference), and pies and jam and preserves and... I wish i could do that now, too...

Well, I don't know what to say about my mother. I think mostly because it gets too close to heart. I'm bad at writing about things like that. But at least I have never been ashamed of saying: Mamma, I love you!

Wednesday is library day....

Books, books, books, books, books, books, books....... yes, I love books. My mother worked at a library, so, I blame her. In a loving, cutesy way of course. I have read a loot of books in my day, mostly ones targeted at kids and young adults. What can i say, I'm young. I have a kind of odd relationship to books though, as most of my dearest book memories are those i didn't read myself, but listened to. Audio books I've always listened to, and that made my book choices a bit odd when i was a kid. My mother used to play her books on the living room stereo, so here are my favorite Audio books when i was 5-12, in the order i heard them:  The Swedish crime series about Martin Beck, Mio in the Land of Far away by Astrid Lindgren, Lord of the Flies, some books about Inspector Morse, Edgar Allan Poe's most famous, Winnie the Pooh, The Chronicles of Narnia, the sweet little kid books about Eddie (by one of the more known Swedish authors), Mina drömmars stad (famous book about Stockholm and its history), Utvandrarna + Invandrarna, Shakespeare "12th night" and..... of course all the other books by Astrid Lindgren. Hey, I was a kid! All kids in Sweden read Astrid Lindgren! Eclectic? For sure. I still love reading Audio Books. (And YES! People do READ audio books. Only people who can read with their eyes listens to audio books. My father was blind, so in my family we READ audio books.) I cant really explain the appeal of reading an audio book, i think it has to do with who is reading. Both the actual person you listen to and who you are as a listener/reader. For example there is an old time reader of audio books here, which you seem to either love or hate. No middle ground at all for that poor soul. Well, I sure love him, and that I say, loud and proud. Without naming names..... One Sweden can't seem to hate to listen too, however, is Astrid Lindgren. She read just about all her children's books as audio books. That's good. Too bad she died, dead people don't write books, but the old woman was like 90 for heavens sake. I think she was even older still. So may she rest in peace.

There is this debate in Sweden, not unlike the debate about kids and video games, and that's the debate about kids and books. Now, I know I was kind of extreme when I was a kid and read a lot of stuff kids don't and shouldn't read. When reading actual, written books (a.k.a not audio books) I was just as wierd as with the audio books. I read Lord of the Rings when i was 7, and Utvandrareposet (big 4-parter about Karl-Oscar and Kristina moving from Sweden to the US in the 1800s, that in the 1990s even became a musical) when i was 9. So, yeah, I shouldn't talk, right? If I can read heavy-hitters, why cant other children? THAT'S JUST IT! why can't other children? Ok, maybe not let them read what I read, but they BARELY get to read Astrid Lindgren anymore! Ok, she has a free pass, but still. There was a debate a year or so back on TV, where one of the authors of children's books that were published before the Millennium said that if she had come with her scripts today, she would have NEVER gotten published. A publisher that was there for the debate agreed and said that IF she had come with her scripts today, ASTRID LINDGREN would never have gotten published. Why? Because of thing like Pippi Longstocking not having any parents, or the fact that there are drunk people at the auction where Emil i Lönneberga went, or the Brothers Lionheart DYING! We cant have that in children's literature! Maaaybe if they were animals they could be allowed to die.... but not people! I mean, it's reality. Children must be protected at all cost! Or not.... I think there are lessons to learn in all literature, as long as you dare touch the subject. And as with the video games: TALK TALK TALK! with the kids. When will people learn?

So, what were my favorite books when i was a kid? I have NO idea, i read to much, and I tend to read good books over and over and over, so I don't really know when i read some books. But now, and "genre"-wise? I will tap into my bookshelves at my favorite book site. And they go like this:

Adventure: Wow... this is hard..... maybe because most of the books goes in more category than one. But going with a classic "adventure" story, I'd have to say Treasure Island. My first encounter with pirates. I love the book, I love the movie from 1990, and for some reason, I fell in love with Captain Smollett. Whose first name is Alexander, by the way, not Abraham like in the puppet movie. This has spawned a few good fanfic ideas, first one i can find writen by my own hand is in a school notebook saying 4th grade on it. I was 10! Dear me, I have been at the fanfic thing for a while. There was also a fanfic scrap about batman in that notebook, buuuut..... no, not going there.Treasure Island also spawned my first yaoi fanfic. I promise to tell the story about that one on Saturday.

Classics: Well, I read a lot of classics, I guess, and Treasure Island might as well have ended up here. But I'll go for Shakespeare's 12th night, simply because it is one of the oldest. I was leaning towards The Three Musketeers, but it's too close to Treasure Island. Why is it The Three Musketeers always seem pirate-y to people? Anywho, the 12th night was my first Shakespeare play, I actually saw it on Swedish public service before reading it, and I fell in love... humor, gender-confusion, hot guys in tights, some of the Swedish acting elite of the day (this was, maybe, mid 90s)...... what's not to like. This never spawned any real fanfic efforts, but I did steal the name of the main character for one of my heavier yaois. (Heavy in more than one way.)

Comics: Yes, I think comics is reading. Just as Manga is reading. A lot of kids learn to read by reading comics. So don't put shame on them. Uncle Scrooge! Actually, The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck, by Don Rosa. I've always loved Uncle Scrooge, he is so greedy and sinister and... well, greedy. He could almost be a bad guy. Which makes him an exceptional good guy. It's a problem a lot of books and movies, especially movies, have. The good guys are less interesting than the bad guys. You care more for them. But not this time! Uncle Scrooge is the greatest duck on earth. The Ducks of Duckburg never spawned any fan fiction. And no yaoi. That would just be weird.


Crime/Mystery/Murder: But mostly Crime and Murder. This is one of those genres I have a problem with knowing how to categorize. Mystery doesn't really fit in here, but then, almost all crime and murder novels are mysteries. My favorite? The series about Martin Beck by Sjööwall&Wahlöö. Especially the last one, Terroristerna. Maybe this is all nostalgia on my part, growing up with them in the speakers at home, but to me, this is as close to perfection you come in a murder mystery cop series. So there! In my younger days, this did spawn some fan fiction but not much, and I don't think any of it survived.



Fantasy: This one is easy: Lord of the Rings. Oh, Frodo... you have been my constant companion since i was 7. I swear, honest to a god i don't even believe in, I NEVER put this one down. I come to the end of the appendices and I swear, I just flip right back to the first page. First page of The Hobbit, that is, cause I think you should read that first. I do on occasion read the Silmarillion, Book of Lost Tales, Unfinished tales, Children of Hurin and Tales from a perilous Realm as well. About once a year. This has spawned A LOT of fanfic from me, and even yaoi. And NO, not about Sam and Frodo. Not even about the rest of the fellowship. No, one of my favourite yaoi stories is about a character that is in like 2 pages of the Fellowship, and has like 3 lines. Oh, and Elronds little brother. Not Elros, though. One that I made up. That's fan fiction for you, making up characters that don't exist in the original. My first Fan fiction, thought was not yaoi, but feminist. I cast myself, at age 9, as the leading lady, that actually went with the fellowship on their journey. Back then, I thought there were not enough women in this book series. Now.... I think there are to many. (Yaoi fangirl mode activated.)

Girls books: Why are there girls books and no boys books? Or is it that all books are for boy because girls shouldn't read, so when a book for girls pop up you have to point it out? Or is it the other way around, boys shouldn't read girls books? Anywho, I guess this is the category for books like Nancy Drew and the Sweet Valley twins. So I choose Anne of Green Gables. I and Anne have a lot in common. We're both girls, we're both redheads, (at least i was a redhead when i was younger), we're both dreamers. She talks more than i do of course. I'm kind of a quiet girl. And i never got in trouble the way she did. Anne in some ways was like my brave, stand-up alter ego when I was a kid. I dreamed and wished I could be like her.


History: Not classics, but set in times past. I think my own arbitrary rule for a book to qualify as history in my head is that it has to take place before the 1950s. And I'm going for Havets djup, a book series about two Jewish sisters from Vienna who come to Sweden during the second world war. The real focus is the older girl, who sees her younger sister loose the connection to Austria and their language, and becomes more and more Swedish, while she herself tries to stay true to her heritage. And will they ever see their parents again? Will they make it out of Austria? And should they move form the people who took them in in Sweden and go to relatives in America? It's a good read about the predicaments of leaving one thing behind and be confronted with another on a level older children can understand. It is a book for younger teens. And it resonates with me on a special level, because i have relatives who went through that hell and came out the other side.

Kids books: Haven't I already done that? Maybe not. Can one be from Sweden and say ones favorite kids book is not written by Astrid Lindgren? Well, i guess... So I'll just pick two, favorite Astrid Lindgren and favorite someone else.Let me just say this before i forget: I HATE PIPPI LONGSTOCKING! I cant stand her. She's so.... obnoxious. She said one good thing and one good thing only: If you're strong , you have to be kind. That's all. My favorite: I have a hard time choosing between the three most "fantastical" in the sense they are mostly fantasy. Mio, min Mio, The Brothers Lionheart and Ronja the robbers daughter. But i go with The Brothers Lionheart. It's just such a heartfelt story, full of adventure and love. The brotherly kind. It seems like you always have to point that out nowadays. What's wrong with people? And, god, there's a f*ing dragon! And, yes, please don't kill me now, but actually, this has spawned a yaoi story out of my messed up brain. This is another of my "shove-another-character-at-them-and-see-what- happens." I do that a lot. It's Jonatan who has a love interest. After growing a few inches. And years. I think the weirdest decision Astrid Lindgren ever made was making that kid a.... kid. I mean, who would entrust an entire war to a 13-year-old? I never believed it as a kid and i don't believe it now.

 



Well, it's become a really long ramble today, actually, it's already tomorrow. so I'll just have to make it a two-parter. or I will sit here for the rest of the night. So, the following categories I will write about tomorrow: Kids Books (the one that's not Astrid Lindgren's), Manga, Fairy Tales, Sci-Fi, Shounen-ai, Thrillers and yaoi. Damn, that means two blog posts tomorrow, or I will get confused.....

Let's play... project: Preamble

So, I'm starting my huge Game Nerd Project today by starting a new local account on my Xbox 360 and planning for my Dragon Age Origins adventure. Not like it's a new adventure or anything, I've played it maybe a.... trillion times? I think... Anywho... Before i do get down and dirty in Ferelden, I thought about saying something about gaming in general. This desire was further fueled when i stumbled upon a forum thread at a Swedish forum targeted at families and all that goes with having one. It's an old discussion, one I have reacted upon in the past. My reaction? GAMES ARE NOT JUST FOR KIDS! Honestly, knowing what it is, especially now-a-days, with the blood and the gore and the maiming of people, and general realism of almost all genres, not only the horror one, would you put your 5-year-old in front of Mortal Kombat? Or Silent Hill, which is really scary? Or Resident Evil? If you would, that's okay. Because if you do, or consider doing that, i take for granted you know WHAT IT IS! Don't come crying to me if  you get shocked, do the research. Don't know a title? CHECK IT UP! Don't just go and buy it and let your kid play without you knowing what it is and what consequences it will have on your kid. I don't know your kid, so i don't know what scares him or her. I'm all for kids playing video games. Handled the right way, it's great that kids play, they learn a lot. Solving puzzles and action-reaction and consequence thinking can really be enhanced. So I'm not against kids playing, i just think parents should be aware of what they let their kids play. And play with them, god knows how many great bonding sessions i had with my mother over some Mario way back when. So get going. Play a video game with your kids. Just know what it is you're playing. And test your limits, and your kids. That last game a delightful kiddies romp through the forests with a cartoon character? Good. Now you have the option of getting more of the same, or trying something darker and heavier. Try it, go ahead. Too much for your kid? YOU CAN ALWAYS GO BACK! Maybe the darker game is for next month, or next year. Or never. As long as you take it slow, do it WITH the kids and take the time to TALK, TALK, TALK with the kids about their experience, you will have some of the best time with them.

So let me talk a little about my own childhood gaming experience. Now, I grew up in a picket fence kind of place, close to the capital yet not really at the rich end of the scale. The Swedish term "Medelsvensson" would probably apply, though I don't like the term. Fact is, sometimes we were poor, sometimes we were "rich", but somehow we could always afford games. My first ever game memory was my ototo's 4th birthday, I was then 6, and he got a Nintendo for birthday. A classic NES, with a Super Mario Bros. 3 along with it. Now, neither console or game was new, per se, they had both been on the market for a few years. Guess what? My brother REFUSED to play. Gaming wasn't really new to either of us, we had older friends that played, and we had both played Mario before. Still, he wouldn't play for months. Mom tried to coax him into playing, but finally gave up. Instead I was allows to put my little hands on the game, me and my mom played in 2-p mode, alternating between Mario and Luigi. Was it every other time, or until one player died, or....? I don't remember, it was so long ago. Must i say my brother eventually came to play too? Of course he did. Since then, I think we've owned every game console easily available on the Swedish market, each giving me memories I treasure. With the exception of Sega, maybe because back then you either had a Nintendo or a Sega. And because my parents decided on what to buy, or I would have had Sega as well.

So, what were my favorite games for each console i owned? Hard to tell. But the ones i remember go something like this:
NES: Super Mario Bros. 3 (Duh!) MetaCritic score: Actually, there doesn't seem to exist one, maybe its to old. Gamespot.com User Score was 9,3/10 anyway.










SNES: ActRaiser! Oh, old gem, how I struggled with you. Took me maybe a month to clear that first level. MetaCritic score: Still, none. I have the theory anything before 2000 is too old. Gamespot.com UserScore: 8,5/10. I played good games in the early 1990's.






GameBoy: We did have a GameBoy, but i don't think I played it all that much. I don't remember playing it.


N64: Super Mario 64! What else? 3D and all. Wow, I tell you! Wow! One of my many "Wow" moments in gaming. MetaCritic Score: 94! I'm impressed, both at the score and the fact it had one. Though it might be on the re-release for the NintendoDS 3D. Honorable mention: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. One of the coolest games ever. Link was one of my first Game Crushes. And now, well, since after playing that game, I too play the Ocarina.


PlayStation: Mmmmm..... Let me think....... FINAL FANTASY VII. The most AWSOME game of the 1990's. And I got it for my birthday. I am my mother ever grateful for this. And yes, a lot of yaoi has come out of that game, from my ever-so-.screwed-up mind. MetaCritic Score: 92.







GameBoy Color: The only memory of GameBoy Color i have is that my ototo played Pokémon on it. I didn't. I wasn't all that impressed with it. It was fun and addictive while you played, but not memorable. And I barely got to play, because he would always monopolize it.


Nintendo GameCube: For me an odd choice, because i was never a sports fan: 1080* Avalanche Snowboard game. I love snowboarding... GameCube kind of came and went. Except for the Mario Party games and LoZ: Wind Waker, I don't remember having ANY games for this console. MetaCritic Score for 1080* Avalanche: 73







PlayStation 2: Hmmm.... tough choice. I think I will go with Kingdom Hearts. The first one. Mixnig Disney and Final Fantasy sounds like a recipe for disaster, but it really wasn't. MetaCritic Score: 85 Honorary Mentions: Final Fantasy X and XII (yes, I do like them, sry), Yakuza 1 and 2, and a bunch of others...







Xbox: Oh, my.... let's see..... all of the BioWare games... Actually, that's it! All of the BioWare Games.... all like... 2 of them. I swear, time goes by so fast, I had to check so the games I thought was on Xbox wasn't for 360. Was the original Mass Effect for Xbox? No! It was for 360! Is it that the 360 is that old? I think so. Anywho, my favorite game for the Xbox was Star Wars The Knights of the Old Republic. Star Wars + pre-movie story (really, really pre-movie story) + BioWare.... What can go wrong? MetaCritic Score: 94 Honorary Mention: Lord of the Rings The Third Age. It was a really good fun little adventure through Middle Earth, with the fellowship in the background and another fellowship in the foreground. It's weird no one dares touch that mythology and make something of it. Or maybe they only remember the Lord of the Rings books....


Anyway, that was my extremely long ramble on one of my favorite topics. Later I will post my first session of playing Dragon Age Origins..... now, all i gotta do is decide how to play it...

Confessions of a Female Otaku....

Yeah, yeah, yeah..... I confess....

1: I'm not a blogger. I hate blogging. Ok, HATE is such a strong word, but still. I'm just not good at it. Which is probably why this blog hasn't had any update in like a month. I mean, what do people blog about anyway? To me, it seems like the blog topics, at least for women, are clothes and feelings and clothes and family and clothes and children and clothes and food and clothes and the occasional movie review and clothes.... ok, fashion....Me, I hate clothes, uh, I mean, fashion, clothing stores, even on the internet, gives me panic attacks. I cant blog about children and family, cause I have none of those, all I really have is my ototo and  onee-chan (honorary family member), and a very small number of friends that are busy with lives of their own. And feelings, well.... I've never kept a diary, EVER! I hate writing about my own feelings, maybe because all I ever dealt with was my parents feelings about my mother getting breast cancer when I was eight. Don't take me wrong, I love my mother. She died waaaay to young. Food.... well, everyone needs food... so, maybe some food blogging... yaoi-related, of course. Is it just me, or are people in manga always eating? Or talking about food, or cooking? Movies.... ok, I'm not a movie critic.... usually, I like movies others hate, or at least dislike. For example, take a look at the movies that got a 10 from me at the big great database... (In no perticular order):  Fanny och Alexander, The Fellowship of the Ring, Schindler's List, Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi, The Lion King, The Return of the King, The Green Mile, Beauty and the Beast, Rosemary's baby.  Inconsistent? Very. Good movies? Very. All deserving a ten? According to the sites rating, no.... closest we get is Schindler's List and  The Return of the King with an 8,9 tie, Closely followed by the Fellowship at 8.8. Honorary big fail mention: Queen of the Damned which I gave a 3.... and the audience:  4,9. My rating movies seems to be in the 6-10 span rather than 1-10.... I gave Bambi 2 an 8 for heavens sake... something is wrong with me.... Also, I have a hard time focusing on the movie itself, as I am one to Loooove source material and side material. and for that reason, i actually happen to kinda like the Star Wars Episode 1 movie. So, shoot me! I see where they're coming from and what they're going for, because i read all the books around the move. I even read the book The Phantom Menace. Sure, it was written with screen play in hand, but in my humble opinion, Terry Brooks did a good job with it.Ok, ok, ranting movies.... moving on....

2: This is supposed to be a fan fiction yaoi blog, but you know what? Well see what happens with that. Fact is, I write by HAND in a NOTEBOOK..... ok, like 20 notebooks, but whatever. I simply think better when lying in bed at two in the morning, wonder what time it is and why I'm not sleeping yet. Same way i take my books, thank you very much. So having too write things twice.... meh! Maybe, well see... But I'm always thinking about doing it. Yeah, I hear you! "Why not just write on the computer, you obviously have one." Well, the reason for that is that IT'S NOT A LAPTOP! I cant have my stationary computer in bed with me, too cumbersome. I am thinking about buying a laptop for the soul purpose of writing on it, but that seems like an unnecessary cost, especially when one's not as rich as one wishes.

3: I'm a nerd... Ok, that we already knew.... let's see.... Oh, yes! I AM NOT A BLOGGER! And on top of that, I have no sense of aesthetics. This will never be a pretty blog, unless someone takes pity on me and helps me out. And that's not likely to happen. EVER! *Cries a little.* Anywho, I guess it is what it is. I don't really care anymore. I've surrendered to the fact that i can barely draw a stick figure, but that's it. That's where my skills in the fine arts end. I can write and I can sing *she confessed reluctantly*, but that's it.I FAILED art class when I was in school (Swedish equivalent to junior high). I mean... who FAILS art? Honestly? Ok, there was this whole other thing going on in my life making me not care, but WTF, if you excuse the language. So, now you know why this blog looks like it does.... and yea, I also have no camera, not even on my cell phone, cause that phone is from the last millennium. I'm not kidding. It's from 1999.... or 2003, but still!

Now I'm done ranting. I'm going to kick of my two big new projects that are probably going to last for a year or so, IF I really do it. I'm going to do my very own "Let's play..." series with the crap video games others has already done... but through the eyes of a girly yaoi otaku of course. First out: Dragon Age! All of them....  Secondly, and this I have been on a while, making VERY slow process: I'm going to read EVERY SINGLE book I own. Even the once I inherited from my grand-mom. Even the once I inherited from my grand-mom that are in Hungarian! Nah, skip those, it's mostly tourist book over museums that don't exist anymore anyway. The 1960's come and gone loooong ago.... I wasn't even born then. First out among those? I have NO IDEA, we'll see once I've blogged about the once I've already read.


And in the immortal words of Pippi Longstocking: Please leave now. If you don't go home today, you can't come back tomorrow.