I'm still giggling a bit. It sounds like such glowing praise, and then.

Tea in my sinuses could actually clean them once and for all.

Try ginger tea!

I don't actually like tea.

Perfect. Ginger tea isn't much like tea at all.

> In those days, authors were forced to write extremely long novels, if not, chances are, the novel would have not been printed.

Well. That certainly explains Barney the Vampire.

I did love Wuthering Heights though, personally

it was full of characters who just hated each other

and maybe also thought they loved someone for some reason

> It is simply a 19th century British version of the Jerry Springer show.

myabe so

I actually found it entertaining

@trogdor I actually like that general concept, but... I have just never been able to sit through an Austen book, even in the days I'd read about anything you put into my hands.

but I never even attempted to read Pride and Predjudice

The style and I do not get along, it seems.

@Pixie it isn't written by Austen

it is Emily Brontes

You know, one of those 17th-century authors.

ehh

it is hard to differentiate them in some ways

also, I freaking hate Moby Dick

@trogdor Ooh, you are correct.

yes I am

no biggie

Moby Dick couldn't even manage to hold my attention for a dozen pages

that is a new record for me

the main character/narrator couldn't manage to look at any tiny object without then deciding he had to talk about it for at least a whole page before moving on to something else

Maybe I should try to read Wuthering Heights, then. xD

worth a shot at least

I don't think I've read anything by Emily Bronte. I know I have tried several things (actually) by Austen.

@Pixie I believe Emily actually only wrote the one thing?

and then her sister wrote at least one thing too

yes, she had a sister who was a writer, personally I find that slightly confusing sometimes

XD

I had an English teacher in High School who was way into that era of writers

not to say I am an expert on it, but any time I get something right about it you can probably blame her XD

There were Emily, Anne, and Charlotte Bronte. I'm not sure who wrote what (or if they all wrote anything), but yeah, several authors.

yeah

hence the potential for confusion

especially since people like to shorten a person's name to the last name when possible

lol

myself included

Haha, yes.

Ah, Charlotte wrote Jane Eyre. I tried to read that and didn't care for it, either.

same

it was actually assigned to us in class, but no one wanted to read it so we got something else

I think it was in fact Wuthering Heights, and almost everyone in the class liked it to some degree

though I can't say that most of the class was as into reading at the time as I was just in general

That is a good sign. I will try it.

it is a sort of recommendation I suppose, just keep in mind the choice word as like, not love

though they were teenagers at the time so

they just liked to not like things as much as they necessarily could because it was cool ,so who knows XD

I was probably 10 or 11 the first time I tried to read Austen's Emma. I thought it may have just been the age, so I tried again later. No, it was not. xD

yeah true

Yeah, I much prefer The Eyre Affair to Jane Eyre.

just saying, I can see you maybe not liking it as much as I did, but it definitely seemed more readable than many of our alternatives

But if Wuthering Heights was generally liked vs. outright rejection of Jane Eyre, that at least communicates some kind of difference. xD

it does

it was a small sample group though

probably at most 8-10 students

can't remember the exact numbers

I was in a pretty small school, which suited me just fine

@trogdor there's a very excellent comic series called Bone. The protagonist's favourite book is Moby Dick. Whenever he tries to talk to anyone about it or read it to them they tend to fall asleep pretty rapidly.

@doppelgreener I can certainly see why they would

that book is my least favorite book

not least because some people seem to think it deserves to be a "classic"

I have been going back and reading many classics, and Moby Dick is like, the only one so far I have run into that I just cannot stand in any way

actually not true, if you count the Iliad and the Odyssey

those also had,... large segments of "can't get to the point" itis

@AshleyNunn I see nothing wrong with this

any book written closer to the modern day most likely has a better chance of suiting you better

nothing wrong with that

@AshleyNunn Yes... xD Many a classic have I slogged through.

@AshleyNunn lol

I have not even been going for an English degree

I just freaking love reading

and I had a stint of not having readily availabel books, other than mostly classics

then I decided to try out every classic I could get a hold of that seemed interesting

I have specifically steered clear of some of course

I like certain classics. It's a pretty broad category. I might read Frankenstein for the fourth time or so as I recently got the original iteration, or rather before Percy's editing, with used book credit at the local store. xD

but there are plenty of books out there that more closely fit my interests and are considered classics to at least some degree

I especially still love Dracula it was actually quite riveting for me

Frankenstein is a little hard to get through, but it was generally worth it, and having to analyze it several times somehow did not ruin it for me.

@Pixie yes, it was all these things

I agree with that

(Well, not that it normally does. I enjoy analyzing things. I do it kind of automatically. However... the sorts of papers I had to write... xD)

Frankenstein is interesting in the context of epistolary novels.

@AshleyNunn you probably would not like Dracula then I believe it fits that description if I am right about what it means

I actually loved it for the same reason that you might not like it in that case

@trogdor It does.

no big deal

if everyone liked all the same books the world would be a boring place

I just happen to have a strange weakness for really liking getting a story out of characters from their own notes or diaries

rather than straight narration, though there is nothing wrong with that per se

Hmmm. Now I can't remember the title of a really weird book that had an unusual take on epistolaries.

The book was presented as a communal diary/log shared by a group of friends, documenting their vacation.

So you got commentary and revision as well as accounts and reflections and multiple points of view.

That does sound pretty interesting.

We actually did that in high school (albeit year round).

And since the friends were kids of different ages, you got different maturities of insight, and sometimes you'd get play-pretend accounts of real events...

interesting

(I don't really know what happened to the original book, which was more truly a diary format, as it was not mine. Afterward, I always kept a notebook deemed The Quote Book, used mainly to record quotes and notes and doodles.)

Kinda Rashomon does diaries.

If you remember it, let me know!

@BESW I recall someone once being indignant at Tolkien stealing the whole troll and goblin thing from Harry Potter for his own movies, the HP books came out years before those thieving LotR movies.

lol

@Pixie Wow... I might have to hunt down the Japanese version and watch it. I enjoyed CCS a lot as a kid.

@doppelgreener I enjoyed it too! But I can assure you, the Japanese version is highly, highly superior.

\o/ Hooray!

That is sort of only scratching the surface of the things they did to it. xD

Though I think in AU you all at least got decent theme songs.

I also know that in the manga they do far more with Madison's feelings toward Sakura than I ever saw on TV (and I am pretty sure they showed precisely none of it). Is that a matter of the American adaption too, or was that actually not in the Japanese version originally?

@doppelgreener The manga is a tiny bit more explicit, but yeah, the dub majorly toned that down. Also, the anime does more with the relationship between Touya (Tori) and Yukito (Julian) in some ways. That had to go. So did a lot of even the straight relationships, because only Action is allowed.

To give you an idea... I started watching CCS with my aunt (who is a few years younger than me), and upon watching Tomoyo (Madison) for a moment, her immediate response was, "Oh, so she's like the lesbian best friend."

boooo

@Pixie LOL!

Your aunt caught on pretty quick.

Also, your aunt being younger than you is still tripping my thought processes up.

By CCS you mean also the original Japanese?

I specify this because it's occasionally relevant. But yeah. It's easier to call her my cousin, but she's not, so I'm always just like "my aunt!" automatically. xD

@doppelgreener Yes. I'll say Cardcaptors if I mean the dub. They are quite distinct. xD

Here are the remains of Cardcaptors Uncensored, a site which takes you through the series changes. Also one of my first webhomes. :D But, notice the episode order there.

8, 12, 17, 13, 9, 20, 25, 26, 30...

it is sad when people feel they have to prune a story just to be politically correct in a different culture

not that I know even the first thing about Card Captors itself

They also did it in a way that I'm sure made it an editing nightmare for them, and looking back on it, the show really was kind of incomprehensible at times. I seriously thought I was missing so many episodes.

but I do personally feel like if you have to remove so much from a story and twist it around, why are you even bothering to take it on?

you basically don't have the original thing anymore

That's why I say they're quite distinct. xD

you might as well have written something yourself XD

@Pixie [stares in horror, cries internally]

@Pixie I DID TOO.

4kids tried to do this with both Tokyo Mew Mew and Ojamajo Doremi, but they discarded them pretty early.

@Pixie also, that chronology by itself would kill it for me

@Pixie Oh man, we touched on 4kids earlier during the animation discussion.

I suspect I have some chronological OCD

4kids was going to do Pretty Cure too, but they didn't even release a single episode.

Did you know 4kids no longer does dubs?

@Pixie a cure for being pretty? who wants that?

I learned that earlier.

@doppelgreener Yes, thankfully.

(The CEO of 4kids also described the characters in Doremi as something like "sexy, so boys like them.")

If I lost my amazing good looks I would practically be a whole different person XD

because I am so vain and pretty

oh so pretty XD lol

@trogdor They're pretty and they cure. The theme song even says so. :P

@Pixie "so we must edit this out in production," he continued. "when we release the show, the protagonists will be cucumbers."

is it supposed to be that they cure stuff? or that someone missed that they are actually supposed to be cute as well as pretty?

Precure as it's usually called is a huuuuge magical girl franchise, the most popular hands down. It's eclipsed Sailor Moon, honestly, and they will keep making Precures until the end of time. It's shocking to me that it never did come out in the US, but not really, as US networks have little to no interest in shows targeted at girls and fail horrendously everytime someone tries to adapt a magical girl show for one. xD

@trogdor No, Ojamajo Doremi is another show that 4kids released briefly as Magical Doremi. It apparently wasn't the worst dub (by their standards), but they discarded it really quickly.

magical girl shows do seem like the kind of thing American networks could never go for

well, not never per se

It's less a matter of couldn't and more a matter of won't. I could talk about that for a long time, though, so I will probably avoid getting into it. xD

but for any foreseeable future

@Pixie that is what I meant

could just happened to be the word I used

won't is certainly a better word

SO many precures. That's not even all of them.

@Pixie a lot of those characters practically look the same if you disregard size and age differences

I gotta say

From what I watched of the original, it's pretty straightforward, toy-focused magical warrior stuff, but it was cute.

and hairstyle differences too

This might be all of them. Maybe. But who even knows. Like I said, they will make these until the end of time. xD

yeah, that kind of franchise does not interest me

in order to be fully creative, you need to take a break every once in a while

Yeah. I might, at some point, go back and finish the original, Futari wa Pretty Cure. It wasn't bad, and I liked the characters. On the other hand, I have a million other shows to finish, and it doesn't top the list.

yeah, not to say there can't be good Pretty Cures

@trogdor a bit of a common problem in anime <_<

I just seriously suspect that there will be more uncreative ones than good ones

The theme is pretty catchy, though.

@doppelgreener yes, I was going to cite an example

but then I realized there are plenty of people here who have watched more anime than me

Silouhettes: the Silent Killer

and they could fill in the blanks there before I could even type out a single sentence

There is also Figures: they speak for themselves (mildly NSFW, contains some nakedness)

Partway through he goes on to mention that peoples' heads should be distinguishable by more than hair alone. You should be able to shave their head and still tell who it is:

..... many animes and manga have not caught on to this.

mm

true enough

(costume also counts. see: the naked test, found later on that page. that is the NSFW bit, because it is the naked test.)

yes

Some have caught onto this very well, like Ghost in the Shell.

I can see why that would be the case

You'll see even less of it in a series like Precure, which is extremely commercial by nature. xD

Franchise, I should say.

yeah, that is a part of what I mean when I say I don't like francises like that

Yeah.

more generally, they don't feel like innovating anything at all if they can just change things around minimally and start again