[witty title]

Heyyy so I went into the bathroom a couple nights ago & my dad had left the radio on HRB & they were playing something that sounded Japanese & it was catchy enough so I tried to google the lyrics but apparently no one bothered to romanize them yet so...uh...yeah this is definitely a series.

(I dunno why the lyrics available online differ from the vocalist's actual words. I stared at their discography for awhile & there's only one version of the song, released first in 1997 on their debut minialbum/LP in Harmony, then included on the 2001 best-of compilation album Have a Good Journey. I've modified the lyrics to reflect the discrepancies, replacing "me wo fuseru" (目を伏せる) with "me wo fusagu" (目を塞ぐ) (a similar word) & replacing "tooi hizashi wo" (遠い日差しを) with "tsuyoi hizashi wo" (強い日差しを) (a completely different word but it matches the beginning of the other chorus verse so maybe it's like Yuki's flub at 02:49 in the PV for JAM's mottö?). Also I added in all the "lalala"s because reasons)

Some basic info on the band, gathered primarily from their Japanese-only wiki page & some English-language music site reviews:
( on name changes & unforeseen health problems )

( nine million 'lailailaa's )


(I'm definitely going to look up "so" bc while the lyrics are nothing impressive the song itself is pretty compelling; still poking through what I can find of theirs on YouTube to see if there's anything else in Japanese I'd want to romanize.)

(♥)

EDIT: I started adding links to the editors' amv.org pages and, uh, LJ yelled at me about the post being too long? So this is now split into 2006-2008, 2009-2012, and 2013-2016, because. Reasons.


Lo and behold!  A sort-of comprehensive list of the 2013-2016 Anime Boston AMV Contest Finalists and Winners!*

* = DISCLAIMER OF DISCLAIMING:  In no particular order in some cases, because I don't remember the original order and/or I lost my original notes and had to look up the information again.  And if there's more than two or three sources of video or audio, I get lazy and put (various)!  Except if the sources are all in the same canon--then I just list the most obvious.  For instance, I'm not going to list every single Kingdom Hearts game used in a video.  (Actually, anything in parentheses below the title that's not in quotation marks is probably a note that I'm not totally sure about something.)

...Okay, so maybe 'comprehensive' was a poor choice of words.  There's a pretty good chance I fucked up somewhere, like on the AMV maker / AMV studio thing, so uh.  Don't quote me on this?


KEY:
Title of AMV -- AWARD(S) WON (TECHNICAL OR AUDIENCE)
"Title of Song" by Artist Name
Title of Source Anime
Name of AMV editor


( AB '13 )


( AB '14 )


( AB '15 )

( AB '16 )

[07] = (...I'm...really not sure how this one made it to the finals?  It's...not really an AMV.  :/ )
[08] = (Giant robots...wearing high-top sneakers...playing magic basketball...IN SPACE. I--I didn't even know I needed this in my life. ♥)
[09] = (Yes, this song won Best Romance again. It was a really good AMV though!)
[10] = ("Fun" switched categories this year for no discernable reason)
[11] = (New category!  About time, too.  And the total number of finalists actually went up to 35! Possibly because 30 splits neatly into 5 and 6, but 7 not so much...)
[12] = (There were four One Punch Man vids this year. Four. Literally every other category had one.  I'm guessing people liked the anime, then?)
[13] = (Upbeat and Fun/Comedy switched places this year for no discernable reason)
[14] = (The same song, twice in one contest!  That might be a first for AB.)

because reasons.

disclaimer:  since this is my best guess of what she sings based on a single live youtube video, this is probably at least 20% bullshit; italics are for serious wobblies--'yo' versus 'wo', however the fuck she's conjugating/declining the verb at the end of the chorus, etc.  I did srs research with my ears, Denshi Jisho, and Google Translate!  you have been warned.

ELIZAVETA - 夢みる
(Yumemiru: the Japanese version/adaptation of her song "Dreamer," a single on the Beatrix Runs album)
( 夢みる )


the lyrics of the original english-language version for comparison:
( Dreamer )

Woo, it's been a while. I have a lot to do WRT updating this blog, if I do keep it updated--D.Gray-chapters, that other d_t convo, the AB AMV post...not to mention all the cross-concepting I've been doing. Oh well, one thing at a time.

D.Gray-stuck! (not to be confused with D.Troll-man)

DISCLAIMER
-- I haven't actually caught up with the canon DGM chapters from 204 onward...I keep intending to, and not doing it
-- and the last thing I remember keeping up with re: Homestuck was John waking up from his tantrum-induced dreambubble convo with Vriska and Tavros
-- and of course I read through the first few thousand pages of HS on a device that refused to view the Flash pages, which was super confusing and it's only the recaps that helped me understand anything at all; I'm trying to finish remedying that now, and also catch up, but it's pretty time-consuming

So, the Fab Four as the Kids, the Noah as the Trolls, the Earl and the 14th as the Cherubs, and I'm too lazy to put much thought into ectobiological shenanigans right now.  Not really interested in the game mechanics e.g. denizens and consorts and carapaces and exiles etc., but the titles and lands and locations and themes etc. will be addressed.

( setting )

So!  I've mostly been working with the Fab Four/Kids angle.  Here's what I've got so far:

( Allen, Knight of Hope )

( Kanda, Prince of Life )

( Lenalee, Maid of Space )

( Lavi, Mage of Time )


*I'm assuming someone's made this joke about Caliborn/Lord English already

(it's been pissing me off that I can't find an accurate version of this anywhere, so I'm transcribing the lyrics my own damn self)



ARTIST:   Emily Loizeau
ALBUM:   Pays Sauvage
RELEASED:   2009.02.03 and/or 2009.10.20  *tears hair out*
TRACK:   #11, "In Our Dreams"
COMPOSER:   Emily Loizeau

( sometimes they remain in silence / sometimes they provoke the violence / of our dreams... )

The album track is supposedly five minutes and ten seconds long; the only reliable source for streaming I can find is a YouTube video of somebody's baby girl rolling around and being cute, and that's 05:15, and it cuts off at an odd place.  (Well, there's also the stop-motion one with Legos and traffic noises, which is awesome, but alas only 03:52; damn but I miss IMEEM.)  Ugh, and then the live performances, each of which is a completely different version of the song...  *headdesk*

[[ EDIT:  Mr. Jean-Claude Courbon was kind enough to scan the CD booklet pages containing the official lyrics!  Awesome~ ]]

I, like many a starving college student/otaku/anyone on a budget or unwilling to wait more than 3 minutes (plus boiling water) to make food, have eaten a lot of cup ramen.  I'm a Maruchan brand loyalist, mostly because Top Ramen tastes fucking bizarre, and am most fond of their popular neon-orange-packaged Chicken flavor (although I did have a brief fling with the neon pink Shrimp flavor...those tiny freeze-dried crustaceans kind of creeped me out).  I also have been known to make a decent stir-fry with packaged ramen (using half a flavor packet to a whole package of noodles, draining the water before adding the flavoring, and including a healthy chunk of 100% real motherfucking butter, bitches).  You might say that I'm almost an instant ramen aficionado.

This, however, I did not see coming.

( lol cheese ramen )

Of course, the ingredients list explains everything:

( lookit me, I'm a table! )

Basically, they took regular 'chicken ramen' broth powder and added cheese sauce powder.  Not very original, but, being lazy myself, I give this one an 'E' for the '(Total Lack of) Effort'.  Probably would not buy again, but if I had to eat it again, I wouldn't bitch about it too much.

( ask the internet: )


(Also, I am twenty-one as of yesterday at 02:36 AM.  Woo.

^o.o^

vo.ov

>o.o>

<o.o<

Okay, enough old-school text!emoticon dancing, my attention span can't handle much more.)

I've been meaning to do this for quite a while.  ^^;

( *fine print* )

First, the main pages!  Heavy-hitters are sections with at least 10,000 stories.

SITE-WIDE RANKINGS:

REIGNING CHAMPIONS
01.)  Harry Potter (466.5K)
02.)  Naruto (244.7)
03.)  Twilight (156.5)
04.)  Inuyasha (94.7)

( apple-flavored Big League Chew is delicious. )

( I was in love with that gum during freshman year of HS... )

( I wonder what Little League Chew would taste like? )

( would it come in a smaller pack? )

( nostalgia aside, lookit the tiny~ )


PER CATEGORY:

( blame it on the japanese )

( booksbooksbooks )

( saturday morning )

( comix )

( arcade )

( miscellaneous )

( film )

( stage )

( television )

Next, the first-ever Heavy Hitter assessment for the Crossover pages!  So, apparently this part of the site measures by how many different canons one fandom crosses with; heavy-hitters in this case are crossover sections with at least 1,000 intersections.  Each of these intersections has its own section of stories about two different canons.  *head hurt yet? mine does*

SITE -WIDE RANKINGS:

TOP OF THE HEAP
01.)  Harry Potter (9.0K)
02.)  Naruto (6.7)
03.)  Twilight (6.3)
(...sound familiar?)

( cont'd )

( categorically )

In conclusion:

( blah blah blah )



(I'll most likely come back to this later, do more analysis and whatnot.)

"...A certain sort of inevitability brought about not by some all-encompassing spider-woven tapestry of destiny but by the sort of simultaneous independent coincidences of ideological breakthrough along the lines of the separate developments of agriculture by early peoples, Darwin's and Wallace's formulations of evolution by natural selection, the invention of the telephone and other such examples, exacerbated by the accelerated dissemination of ideas enabled by broad and frequent cross-cultural contact, communication and trade."

(cliology would call them memes)

The above is what happens when I write things down as they form in my head.  Perhaps a bit wordy and confusing, but smoothly (for me) conveying the concept I'm trying to get across.  Unfortunately, I do not often enough get or take advantage of these opportunities, which becomes one of the sources of my difficulties in writing--when I remember what I want to say, but not how I can say it.  It's kind of...maddening.  *headdesk*

(Also, this icon is kind of really...pixelated.  It's almost painful.  I need to do something about that...)

*flails*  It's Sarah Rees Brennan's birthday, and I'm late again.  >.<;;;;;

Sarah Rees Brennan --> Maya --> mistful  is (a) the reason why I'm willing to walk into a bookstore again and look into new books (b) a wealth of bookish knowledge and expertise I've been desperately waiting to tap into my whole life (c) a fanfic writer so skilled and witty I will actually read copious fic for a fandom I usually don't patron of a pairing I normally avoid because of my personal opinion of its likelihood (if you're interested, it's "slim to none") (d) a new author coming out with the first of her debut YA SFF trilogy in Germany in March of 2009 (because US and UK take longer, apparently) for which I will happily learn German and find a way to purchase it online just for the chance to read it earlier (is that too much italicising? my "melodrama" instincts are perking again) (e) ALL OF THE ABOVE.

Hence, the flailing.  About a year ago I ran across her work Drop Dead Gorgeous (reasonable use of italics, hurray) while halfway through infiltrating the lovely FastForward Sarge's pro-SasuNaru RYFG Yahoo!group (incidentally, curiosity killed the cat and nothing Eugene O'Neill says can change that), fell on the floor laughing (can you keep track of my manic ADD parenthetic-interjection-infested narrative? I know I can't), looked up the author, discovered a personality overwhelmingly worthy of stalkage, read all her public LJ posts, friended her, and started a cult.  Okay, maybe not the last part, but I should have!  Because somewhere around--oh, was it November?  It might have been November--she landed an amazing multi-figure book deal that splashed her fame all over the internet and beyond.  That's an awful lot of cult members; we might even weigh out Scientology and Dahn Yoga if we recruit hard enough.  Shortly after, she Came Out on LJ, gave her name as Brennan, Sarah Rees, and collected several hundred more rabid fans (If not several thousand).  Even more exciting, despite having been a BNF (Big Name Fan for those who, like me, are constantly out of the loop) for like forever and rapidly becoming an actual celebrity, she actually responds thoughtfully to comments on her journal.  (And let me tell you, those italics were quite merited (those too!).)

Have I said hence-the-flailing yet?  I have?  Good.

So, it's her birthday, and I don't know quite what to do (seeing as I'm a bit of a no-name, after all, and that's most certainly the way I like it) besides spontaneously (and impotently) declaring today (September 21--at least I think it's not midnight yet...Lord, but I do suck at this birthday thing) an international book-loving holiday; I don't know her personally, she doesn't know me personally, I highly doubt she reads my elljay, and have I mentioned the flailing yet?

I don't know what to do.  This is pretty much what it's like for me all the time, so I guess I'll do what I always do: something rather stupid with a lot of big words thrown on top to make it seem like the appropriate thing to do.  (Hey, it's gotten me this far...)  I copied D_T's idea of birthday posts earlier, and though I'd thought to limit that to friends/people who actually read my journal, the flailing won out.  And look, it's not even f-locked (at least, I think it isn't; this technology claptrap-whippersnappers-etc. tends to confound me, and then deliver a swift kick in the ovaries).  Yay?

So, celebrating how cool I think Sarah Rees Brennan/Maya is, this post is born.  And it took less than an hour, holy crap.  That's a first...

(Merited italics!--oh wait, the joke's over?  Sorry about that...)

...

(See?  Even thinking about her makes me more verbose!  She chafes the rust off my vocabulary despite years in inner-city Boston--which is quite the achievement, let me tell you [vague approximation of audience/friends/my mother/my cat--oh, who am I kidding, my cat hates me].)

*shuts up*