Oh. I forgot about the Australian dub of Catch You, Catch Me. That one was... special. But most of the other Australian Cardcaptors themes were pretty good and made me jealous. xD They didn't actually use, like, any of the original music in the American release.
It's actually under a minute. Still fundamentally the same, though. Now, I'm not going to pretend this song isn't fun to sing really loudly. It accomplishes that nicely. But it's... it sounds like it belongs on an 80s pseudo-medieval cartoon? xD
More details: it's a family of kids whose father is an artist (I think sculptor), vacationing in a New England whaling town. They're left largely to themselves and spend a lot of time on the roof of their rented house or shadowing locals they think look suspicious (their imaginations have populated the town with pirates and spies).
"Scrimshaw" is significant--I can't remember if it's in the title, but it's a recurring concept.
I read it in a yellow-covered library-binding edition. I suspect it's from the early 80s at the very latest.
There's this one book I remember checking out from our library when I was a child and all I can remember about it now is that it was blue, it was sci-fi, and a character was named Meilin(g). I will always wonder slightly about that book.
Ooh, the kids gave each other code names to use in the journal, like "The Duchess," and kept scolding each other in the margins for forgetting to use the code names.
It's not especially important as if the book had been memorable, I would probably remember more. I still have this very vivid memory of getting it, though. xD
(the second Ziltoid album also features a badass villainess, the War Princess, who is the tyrannical ruler of a sorta-dumb engineered race of Poozers which she regrets creating. She's called their "mother", but she seems to not be a Poozer, so I don't know if that's in a literal maternal sense but my reading of it is that she is only their mother in a loose sense.)
@Adeptus The one thing about CLAMP is that they have very pervasive "love transcends all" themes and this sometimes gets a little creepy. The only thing that truly bugs me in CCS is the implication of a relationship between Terada and Rika (a teacher and a 10 year old). It is handled pretty innocently, but it is still not that comfortable to me. The anime does it better.
Some of CLAMP's other works are also much darker and more sexually-oriented (see: Tokyo Babylon and X for the former, Chobits for the latter), but CCS is definitely not either of those things. It's got a very innocent worldview, and it was an important part of my childhood.
Heh. My mother tried to read everything I read, before I read it, not to censor but to know what kinds of conversations she might be in for. Around age 10 she settled for just looking at what I was reading, and by age 12 or 13 she couldn't even keep up with that, and figured I was probably able to deal with things, put the book down, and/or initiate conversations on topics.
so, I'm looking at the 3.5e flight rules again -- and trying to figure out how to turn the 45deg/5'-of-movement spec for maximum turn rate that the rules give into a turn radius, assuming the creature is using all its movement to turn (i.e. it is indeed in a max rate turn) -- but I'm not sure if that 5' of movement is as-the-crow-flies, along-track, or 'you need a 2 by 2 box of grid squares to fly a 90deg turn'
@doppelgreener It has a pot leaf on the cover. Why? Who knows, because it isn't about pot, which (especially when I was ~16) is not generally legal anyway. It does, however, have a lot of CLAMP's particular brand of "it's never quite text but we will hoyay these guys to the moon and back." My mother noticed the pot leaf, gave me a half-joking hard time about it, and I was sitting there like, "It's about a pharmacy. A pharmacy. @A@"
@Pixie ... why does it have a pot leaf XD and yeah it seemed like that was what it was about, but didn't seem to have anything about pot at all from a look at it, so I was quite confused
@doppelgreener It's... mm. It's been a while since I've read it (and I need to get the continuation, which took them forever to release!). But it centers on a pharmacy. The main character is rescued from his death by a mysterious dude who takes him to the pharmacy, and he winds up working there. Both the main character and the other guy have supernatural powers, and sometimes the pharmacy owner sends them on strange jobs that capitalize on that.
My mum read through Harry Potter with me, and then part of the Memory, Sorrow and Thorn books, and when I got to Hyperion she decided it wasn't for her. (In the book the pilgrims share their personal histories and what lead them to join the Shrike pilgrimage - the first pilgrim's story can be quite confronting for some people.)
(Speaking as someone who wasn't allowed to watch Sesame Street until I was old enough to have a conversation about how the muppets are really mean and rude to each other.)
@BESW Mom is a bit... she really did not want us encountering anything suggestive, and I don't think she was at all comfortable about talking about those sorts of things. I am trying to recall when I was allowed to read Anne Rice, which my mother always had in the house but would not allow me to read. xD
On the other hand, she barely monitored me at all, so.
Some of Anne Rice's stuff gets fairly sexual. I recall she really did not want us reading the ones with Lestat and the witches, even at the point I had started on the vampires. xD
I am still at that point where I read word-by-word, and unless I force it, I read at internal monologue pace. I'm still not sure how fast readers read faster.
(The main story was really about the totally-not-gay bromance-turned-hateful between the older vampire you mentioned --who is the vampire being interviwed-- and the vampire who sired him.)
I know that I can step up a gear and read faster than my internal monologue can keep up, which sends it silent, which means I can breeze through word by word - but it's still a lot to cope with and I find myself going back on words I missed.
@BESW Do you say totally-not-gay with massive sarcasm quotes?
@Pixie I am surrounded by people who have pored through countless novels though, and like... I've read Harry Potter, and Memory Sorrow and Thorn, and I took two or three years to complete the Hyperion series. I read a few short-ish books during high school when it was a class assignment. I've recently also completed three books on finance. But I want to read more, and be able to get through these books faster.
Do you have different inner-monologue voices for different characters/authors? Sometimes I hear the writer's voice, especially with Stephen Fry or James Marsters (in his Spike accent)
@doppelgreener They're gay for each other. Absolutely, totally, 100% cuddle-in-the-coffin gay. I'm not sure Anne Rice knows it, but everyone else sure does.
really annoying, because from the turn radius, I can determine max load factor, and with a bit more crunching, determine the entire flight envelope of a flying creature, basically
@BESW -- decided to self-answer my own question -- I'm sure that there are other folks who were wondering about those descriptions -- the Draconomicon is probably not exactly the first place that comes to everyone's mind
Not that The Vampyre wasn't at least as homoerotic as any other story of that period, what with being about the bromance between a vampire and his clueless victim as they travelled across Europe.
A non-issue here, but I'm sure others will appreciate the notice before googling. (I'm trying to get in better practice of warning for such things myself.)
Weird and Slow and Artsy shouldn't be a problem, either. My boyfriend described a film to me yesterday as "Gay art-house zombies. That's the only way I can explain it." and my immediate response was "That's exactly the kind of description that makes me want to watch a thing." xD
My most recommended silent films are probably Lang's Die Nibelungen and Mizoguchi's The Life of Oharu. Two very different styles, but both are enthralling.
I can also say I sat through all of Gance's Napoleon. I enjoyed it too! But I do not know that I can recommend it, per se. :P
It is very long, very experimental, very... NAPOLEON IS AWESOME, and meant to be viewed on three screens simultaneously.
@doppelgreener the character going back to his dimension loves singing, and only dancing, not singing, exists in his home dimension
his relatives are disgusted by singing, and he hates their dancing
it is a hilarious episode just for his interaction with his family
the rest of it you could give or take really
it is also at least slightly funny because at least most of his friends are having varying degrees of fun in his dimension (some of them are certainly facing issues of their own of course) but he is just waiting till he can leave
anyway, that dance itself is practically/actually it's own meme
one of the more hilarious and memorable moments of the series
Oh! Here is my last one: back in high school when I was 14 or something, for a month or so I thought I might be a vampire because someone pointed out I had something that resembled fang marks on my neck. I genuinely don't know why. I bullied a kid a couple of times who I didn't like around the same time and who didn't deserve it - we thought he was a bit of a dick at the time, he was just really poorly adjusted.
I've never really been that way toward anyone in my life and I don't like that it happened.
The person I am now is not however the same person that did that.
The only time I bullied someone was I think first grade. I was bullied by other girls that I thought were my friends, who bullied a specific kid, so at points I joined in. I still feel pretty terrible about it, even with the circumstances (being like 6, being pressured by others). But I spent pretty much my whole young life being bullied, so I know the kind of scars even well-meaning things can leave. Luckily though, I quit before too long, and the kid and I were on good terms after that.
@trogdor I have forcibly erased a lot of these from my memory, or otherwise spent work to remove my feelings around it, so thankfully that moment where I just stop and remember something horrible for a few seconds then get on with my day is rare