fishpatrol

1. I keep writing up LJ entries in my head, but I guess they are of very little use if I don't post them. ;;; postingwhore kindly nudged me to remind me that I haven't posted in over three weeks. I want to post more regularly, but I keep getting distracted by other things! Also, school is still kicking my ass, big time. If I posted more regularly, I suspect my entries would be filled with things like: "And today, I tried reading fifty million articles and write up a paper in one go and I realized that it was a Very Bad Idea."

I did my Presentation of Doom back in April and I thought that was going to be the major hurdle. It was a pretty massive hurdle, but now I'm inundated with all the work I've neglected and I have supervisors and collaborators emailing me with stuff like, "Where is the data/write-up/analysis/study design" and I'm all, "D: D: D: *hides and procrastinates more*" My way of dealing with stress is to read fic and let me tell you, that is a terrible coping method.

2. MEME!

1) Comment to this and (if you want) I will give you 3 (fictional) people.
2) Post this meme to your LJ with your answers.
3) Provide pictures/text descriptions and the names of the 3 people.
4) Label whom you would shag, marry and (push off a) cliff.

postingwhore gave me: Dean Winchester (SPN), John Sheppard (SGA), Atobe Keigo (PoT)

These were tough choices! But it did give me an excuse to go through my SPN/SGA/PoT picture folders and ogle at all the pretty. I also realized that I have very few pictures of Dean (if Jensen were on this list instead of Dean, I suspect my answers to this meme may be very different...).

( ...and onwards! )

3. The keynote speaker at last week's conference talked about some really interesting research about the psychology of scarcity and how people can be "money poor" or "time poor". ( ... )

4. The topic of marriage comes up more frequently now that I'm often with people who are several years older than me. One of the fifth year students expressed her surprise when I told her than I'm not particularly invested in the idea of marriage for myself. ( ... )

5. So, despite my antisocial mannerisms, I had a lovely, brisk walk with cantarina1 around the neighbourhood. That was a particularly efficient and healthy way of "hanging out" (as opposed to huddling together in front of a computer screen, as we often do ;)). If we make this a regular thing, perhaps I'll be able to shed a layer of padding around my middle that I've picked up during my semester of thinking-about-going-to-the-gym-but-never-actually-going.

6. Now for something completely different: so, the other day, I came across a discussion about the importance of technical quality in stories posted online. Some of the people involved in this discussion were appalled that some readers would completely skip over stories that had grammatical mistakes and other errors. "The authors are writing these stories for fun!" they said. "They're even posting the stories for free, you entitled readers!"

As for myself, I have three general rules that I use to decide whether or not I will read any particular story (I would've sworn I'd written about this at some point in time, but maybe it's one of those in-my-mind!entries that I'd never gotten around to writing out and posting). I developed these three rules-of-thumb back in high school, during my Harry Potter days, when I realized that there was more fic being posted than I had time to read.

( cut for length. i haz ~opinions )

Tell me about what makes you click the "back" button!

7. I should post more often so that I don't end up spending 40 minutes trying to write up an LJ post.

8. Is Firefox 4 actually faster or does it just look Chrome-like, with no actual redeeming qualities?

eta: Adding more Lj-cuts because long entry is long. ;;;; [/spamming your flists]

It seems that I may have offended at least one person in my last entry, so I want to clarify a few things:

1. I don't find it surprising, disrespectful, or inappropriate for fans to feel sad/upset/general negative affect over J&J's respective marriages. The CWRPS fandom is entirely based on the close relationship of Jared and Jensen. Now that something has changed this relationship, of course fans (okay, fine, including myself) feel sad/etc. It's like the Harry/Hermione fans feeling sad over Ron/Hermione becoming canon or the McKay/Sheppard fans feeling frustrated over the McKay/Keller relationship.

The thing with RPS is that there isn't a whole lot of canon to work with (which is kind of nice, because, yay, AUs!) and there aren't always a lot of traits and personality characteristics to work with either. Jared isn't always the happy-go-lucky one, Jensen is sometimes a sweetheart and sometimes a total douche -- heck, sometimes their ages are even flipped. There isn't a single feature that is consistent across fan-depictions of Jared and Jensen, except one thing: there is an expectation that J&J are MFEO. Whether they're actors or astronauts or ass-kicking ninjas, the only constant is that Jared and Jensen are meant-to-be. So, yeah, the whole marriage thing? Does kind of mess with the foundation of the fandom.

What I do find kind of ridiculous are the conspiracy theories and the D&G-must-be-beards-and-this-whole-thing-is-an-elaborate-hoax-because-of-so-and-so-reason. I'm not going to present the photos as evidence that "J&G = tru wuv -- look at their shiny eyes!" or "J&J are totally devastated! Look at the angsty, man-pain gazes they are exchanging!" A picture is worth thousand words, and hey, it's probably worth a thousand interpretations as well. Yes, I did target the tinhatters in my previous post -- but I use the term "tinhatter" to encompass all fans who hold extreme views and bizarre theories (I am to understand that the opinion of "hets" are also not to be believed).

Sorry if the events of J&J's real lives are harshing your squee -- but like any canon facts, they can easily be ignored/altered/assimilated/incorporated into/by fandom. A ship is hard to keep afloat when canon is against you, but I think there's plenty of mileage left in the J2 ship.

Addressing the issue of what we, as fans, know of J&J:
I am of the opinion that what fans know about any celebrity is more likely to be inaccurate than not. Celebrities filter the information that is transmitted to the media, they create stage personae to present to their audience. In addition, fans often do not accept the given information at face value -- there are multitudes of interpretations associated with any action or behaviour. In a fandom like CWRPS, where the actors' characterization changes from writer to writer (and from reader to reader!), the image that we each have of J&J are different from each other and are most certainly different from the real J&J. It may be a true fact that Jared likes Gummi Worms, but it's highly doubtful that Jensen is a soggy-kitten on the inside. At least to me, J&J are, essentially, fictional characters. I have a fuzzy impression of them, that change from context to context. I am probably more interested in their real lives than I should be, but I don't assume I know anything about them as real people.

...and that is all I really have to say on this issue. Feel free to share your thoughts.

2. Also, just to be overly cautious: I don't hate babies (I just don't like them) and I don't hate people who like babies (obvs). I was mostly reacting to all the wedding-squee posts that have whole slews of "OMG, NOW THAT THEY'RE MARRIED, THEY CAN HAVE A BAJILLION BEAUTIFUL BABIES" comments.

3. I am so not firing on all cylinders anymore. I need my sleep. Especially since tomorrow is going to be an RL-heavy day...!

So, here's the thing: what does it mean to "be yourself" or to "stay true to yourself"?

I'm working on a project relating to self-concept and negative mood and I think I'm being supraliminally primed to think about the self all the time now (and I also blame my causeless negative mood from this week on supraliminal priming).

Anyway, back on track. The problem with the whole "be yourself" thing is that the self is made of multiple components. In particular, I'm thinking of the self-discrepancy theory, where there is an ideal-self (which consists of your dreams and aspirations), an ought-self (duties, obligations, what others expect of you), and your actual self. I've currently found myself in a bit of a conundrum: my ideal-self and my ought-self agree on the course of action I should take, while my actual self would prefer (based on past experience and general behavioural tendencies) to take an entirely different path.

Sitcoms usually aren't full of life-lessons, but I thought Jeff Winger's line from yesterday's episode of Community -- "Do you try to evolve or do you try to know what you are?" -- was somewhat profound (and highly relevant as he was attempting to make a choice between being someone he aspires to be or being who he actually is -- haha, well, that's an awkwardly phrased sentence. I'm sure you get the gist of it).

In less thinky-thought news:
-I got a haircut (you know who else needs a haircut? Sam Winchester. I hope for the return of floppy bangs in S6!) and new glasses
-I have no idea where May went (what the heck have I been doing for the past few weeks?)
-I really want to take a vacation (and everyone in my program says I should get away while I can!). My ideal vacation would involve a private island --or even a deserted island would do, as long as there's wi-fi-- with Rodney, Rella, and maybe Shel. The Macbook, iPod, and Kindle, respectively. ;)
-I'm half way through Burn Notice (if any of you watch White Collar, Psych, and Burn Notice, you have to watch these crossover ads -- Fiona hiding her weapons from Peter! Neal flirting with Gus! \o/)
-I have the first two episodes of Fringe and Castle downloaded, just waiting to be watched. Oh, TV♥

I should be working right now, so this is just a quickie drive-by post...

Given the nature of several posts I've come across today, I got curious and wondered just how many male vs female characters have been killed off.

( warnings: spoilers for the entire series )

Also: I hope Death looks like this!
(I don't read Sandman, but I like Gaiman's depiction of Death :))

So I totally wasted time today by bumming around in my office (I was going to do my article readings, I swear!) and taking advantage of the Wi-fi by downloading useless iPod apps. \o/ What are your favourite (useless or otherwise) apps?

Speaking of electronic toys, I ordered a Kindle the other day, and bweee, I can't wait to get my hands on it. Hurrah for wasting my scholarship on time-wasting toys~ \o/

On a completely different note, I was reading this article on why women give up their last names when entering a marriage. I've always found that practise a bit peculiar. I can understand why children acquire their father's last name (paternity confidence, as the article mentions), but what reason do women have to change their name, especially in modern society? If it's merely an issue of convenience for both partners to have the same last name or a symbolic gesture to say, "Hey, we're part of the same family", then we should also see the occurrence of some men giving up their last names (which is pretty darn rare). I'm not judging women who do change their last names (because, hey, long-standing tradition entangled with societal norms -- who am I to challenge that, yeah?), but some of the comments to the article irked me. Each individual has her own reason to change or retain her last name (following tradition, switching out her difficult-to-pronounce maiden name for something better sounding...whatever); the problem is the underlying societal expectation that if anyone's going to be giving up a part of their identity (as teeny and inconsequential as it may be) it will always be the woman because she's the one leaving her family to join her partner's. In cultures that don't have this last-name-changing practise -- China, for example -- other practises with the same underlying message exist. I'm by no means saying that women who take on their husband's last name are obstructing the progression towards gender equality or anything remotely as radical as that, but I do wonder what the prevailing reason is for continuing this practise, if it's simply people continuing a long-standing tradition where women expect to give up their last names upon entering a marriage and men expect their wives to take their last name without questioning the rationale behind this practise.

In other news, Kurt Fuller guest starred on last week's Psych and Glee and I was all, "Omg, Zachariah is invading my shows! \o\" Speaking of teevee, so how awesome was last night's episode of SPN? :>:>:>

Beijing Welcomes You is an awfully catchy song (I guess that's the point, huh? ;)). I sent the video to my parents just for kicks and because I was curious how many artists they could recognize. I'm ashamed to admit that I only recognized two of them: Jackie Chan and Han Geng. My mom named about half of them, including Jay Chou. I have over 300MB of Jay Chou songs, but I can't recognize him by face. *epic fail* Same goes for singers like Jang Nara, Wang Lee Hom, Lin Jun Jie...I like their music, but I have no idea what they look like. ;;;

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The latest update about the Spider Issue:
My housemate is terribly good at finding spiders -- I could hear her banging on the wall with the sponge mop and occasionally shrieking. Somehow, within ten minutes of arriving at home, she located five spiders, and then I joined her in the shrieking and whacking and the "you kill it"/"no, YOU kill it!" -- we managed to kill three out of the five. 60% success rate: not bad for two bug-o-phobics, right? After I got back to my room and was comfortably seated in front of my computer, I saw a creepy crawly thing scurry across my desk. I immediately smushed it with some Kleenex and mentally congratulated myself for being brave. And then the revulsion hit and I was all, "aldjfadjOMG UGH...! *shiver shudder twitch*" Maybe I should consider exposure therapy. .__.

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I signed up for Korean lessons a few weeks ago, and now I have three weeks of Korean experience. :D [/Horio moment] And by three weeks I actually mean five hours. This is the first time in a very long while that I've wanted to learn something just for myself and not for school, CV-boosting, etc. Aside from learning the language itself, I also want to see how I learn (pick my own brain, or so to speak XD). With both English and Chinese, I'm fairly good with learning and memorizing new vocab. However, when it comes to memorizing a strung-together sentence, I falter. I'm awful with reciting poetry and I have a hard time memorizing lyrics as well as melodies. In other words, I am good at remembering (and making use of the) parts, but not the whole -- I wonder how this will effect the way I learn a foreign language.

Some of the people in the class are able to look at a Korean character and read it aloud immediately. I have to look at the character, decipher the parts, and translate it into a romanized version in my head, before I can pronounce the word/syllable. I'm probably faster at writing than I am at reading. >__O;; The thing that's slowing me down the most is the fact that I'm still thinking in romanized form, rather than instinctively recognizing the vowel or consonant (which will come with practise, I hope). When I think of Chinese words, I come up with vague images of what the character might look like -- the character might not be accurate at all, or I might be thinking of the semantic meaning of the character, but I would not be thinking of pinyin. With both Japanese and Korean, I always think in terms of romanization, which makes sense since the English alphabet is the most familiar to me, and thus my brain's default setting.

This whole "thinking in certain languages" thing has always been of interest to me. In high school, I used to go around to my bilingual friends and ask them what language their dreams were in, and then try to figure out whether their thoughts featured more of one language than the other. Upon occasion, when my thoughts wander, my brain switches between English and broken Chinese with random bits of French, Japanese, and, recently, Korean mixed in.

Speaking of French, I wonder if I will end up with better Korean than French at the end of the ten-week lessons. French was a mandatory class for six years -- I dropped it as soon as I reached grade 10. XD 20-hours versus six years...well, perhaps personal interest matters too since that does determines the amount of practise and use outside of class, so, who knows.

And speaking of Korean, the k/g sound is too subtle for me to figure out under which circumstances the consonant is pronounced "k" and when it's pronounced "g". Also, all the different writings for the "eh" and "weh" sounds drive me nuts. HOW DO YOU KNOW WHEN TO USE. D: "ch" and "j" sound the same, and I don't understand the difference between "k/g" (kee-yuhk), "k" (khey-euk), and "double k/g" (ssang kee-yuhk -- and alksdfjl; at the double letters D:). It would probably be easier if I could type out the actual characters. But I can't figure out the Korean keyboard either (I know how to turn the function on...but each key stands for something different and if you press them in the wrong combination something funny comes out D:).

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eta: I originally uploaded this for dear_whimsy, but in case some of you guys are interested, here are a bunch of songs (12, to be exact :D) by 12 Girls Band. Find out more about them at Wikipedia and sample some of their songs on Youtube. (I'm too sleepy to write anything coherent nrrrgh)

What does it mean to "be in a fandom"? To my BFF who does not read fanfic, look at fanart, slash (she does do the whole het-shipping though), to be in a fandom means trawling through communities and forums for photos and video clips and the newest songs by her favourite bands. Being in a particular fandom simply means to be a fan of that particular something. To me, an avid reader of fanfic, an ardent slasher (of the boy-on-boy variety and none of that saw and hacking stuff), and a dabbler of fanart, being involved in a fandom means going above and beyond the available canon. The way I see it, while being a fan and being a fandomer are not mutually exclusive concepts, they are also not the same thing.

The non-fandom fan squees over the latest episode of an anime, the newest album of a band, the last Harry Potter book. The fan-fandomer squees over the latest episode, and then proceeds to trawl through the Internet, searching for fanfic that depicts their favourite characters or pairing interacting based on the most recent canon development. The non-fan fandomer disregards the latest episode, and probably the whole of the latest arc, and thinks that "sometimes life is pretty awesome" when stumbling upon fanart that shows two characters who may have exchanged all of two lines throughout the anime in a compromising position.

Even using these categories, it's still hard to pinpoint what being in a fandom is all about. The fanficcer is a participant of the fandom. But what about the fanartist that only draws portraits based on the pre-existing photographs? What about the icon makers and the layout makers and the people who keep everyone else on top of the latest news?

Perhaps my BFF has the better definition of fandom: being in a fandom means being a fan of a certain source who interacts with other fans of the same source. That explanation doesn't quite sit well with me though. Several years ago, back in my Harry Potter days, I wondered, as a fan, what was the difference between me and my friends who could not care less about the multitude of fan-created works, but would jumping with glee at the announcement of the release of the next HP book. I loved the books, I loved the world and the characters that JK Rowling had created. But what I loved more were the fanfics and the different possibilities that fandom and fanon made available. HP fans who talked to other HP fans about the books and analyzed them to the last detail -- are these people participating in the wider HP fandom? What about the people who read only half the books, watched half the movies, and read/write a disgusting amount of Mary Sue-in-Hogwarts fic -- are they in the fandom?

(Now I've taken myself in a full circle and can no longer conceptualize what I was trying to argue in the first place. Whoops.)

On a similar topic, I find with non-story based sources, it's trickier to define canon. With TV shows and anime and books, there is a clear-cut story: these events happened, these events did not. This character hates this one, but loves another. With real people, it's hard to say what precisely is canon; people's behaviours are fluid, and it's harder to predict what a real person would do in any given situation. The easiest way for me to conceptualize canon and fanon is simply: canon is the way I interpret the original source; fanon is everyone else's interpretation. XD

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And for the obligatory Suju part of this entry:

I've noticed a general tendency that the LJ Suju fans and the Soompi Suju fans have opposing views on the issue of E.L.F. Many comments I see on the LJ comms seem to portray "elves" as rabid fangirls whom you would not want to approach with a ten-footmetre pole. Given some of their actions (and reactions), I can see why this claim is widely spread among non-"elves". Now, on Soompi, every Suju fan is an E.L.F. "Elves" are wonderful fans who will support the boys (but only13) to the end of the world and will protect them from everything and anything (but who will protect the boys when the rabid fangirls attack?). I was going to make a comment comparing the intelligence the level of rabidness LJ fans and Soompi fans, but I shall refrain because this is a public entry. ^0^; (I suspect that I have something against fan-bases on forums)

Note, though, that I'm not entirely familiar with the ELF vs non-ELF issue and may be making an over-generalizing statement; I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by my comments.

Now that I've bashed a certain subsection of the Suju fans, I'd like to point out some very pretty awesome fanworks done by some pretty awesome fans:
Chinese fans perform Happiness -- The clothes, the hairstyles, the actions, the backdrops, the camera slices and angles! *__* The whole thing is an amazing imitation of the original Happiness MV. *boggles*
Korean fans perform U -- Again, fantastic imitation of the original U MV. I think this was meant to be more of a parody than a pure imitation...? But either way, the dancing and the clothes? PRETTY AWESOME.

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I totally just ate nine fried spring rolls in one afternoon/night. I'm sure they are awful for my health, but damn, those things are yummy. :9

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eta: Is it really awful of me to be looking forward to AST1's debut? :D;; I thought the strategy for their promotional video wasn't such a bad one. It certainly garnered them plenty of publicity (though, admittedly, a good chunk of it was negative publicity -- but hey, isn't it also true that any publicity is good publicity?). When I saw this I thought of all the potential AST1+Suju crossovers, haha, oh, self. *facepalm*

I find the experience of drawing fanart for a book-based fandom (e.g. Harry Potter) is distinctively different from an animated fandom (e.g. Prince of Tennis), and both are different from drawing for a 3-D fandom (e.g. Super Junior). To make things easier, I will refer to book-based fandoms as 1-D fandoms and animated ones as 2-D fandoms.

You can take the most liberties with 1-D fandoms. There is no set image for the characters; there may be certain physical traits that are commonly associated with the character, but they're hardly set in stone. I could draw a circle with glasses, a lightning bolt, and scribbly black hair. Most people would say, "Hey, it's a really crappy picture of Harry Potter!" If I drew another circle with a slanted smile and light hair and a heart around the two floating heads, people would say, "Hey, it's a really crappy H/D picture!" But I could also draw Draco with streaks in his hair and piercings everywhere and call it "Draco Gone Punk" and most people would think I'm on crack, but they'd still nod and say, "Yeah, the artist is on crack, but we suppose that Draco could look like this if he, y'know, went punk." And any style of drawing goes! Realism, anime/manga, cartoon...

With 2-D fandoms, it's even easier to draw recognizable characters because animators are lazy people at heart and will dress the characters the same way for as many frames as possible and have them maintain the exact same gravity-defying hairstyle throughout the entire series. Again, any style of drawing would be suitable as long as one preserves the defining physical features of the character.

Now, 3-D fandoms (including bandoms, movie fandoms, TV fandoms, etc) I find a whole lot trickier. Characters/group members/etc change their clothes, change their hair, and generally have less defining physical features. I find that it's more difficult to establish a style of drawing that renders the character recognizable (other than portrait/realism or caricatures -- both of which are awfully difficult to do well without extensive practise). No longer can I draw a circle, slap on some hair and expect people to recognize the character, even if I provide the fandom to limit the number of possible characters.
In conclusion: trying to draw fanart of the Suju members is tricky business.

What do you guys think? Do you find that drawing/looking at fanart for different types of fandom-sources a different experience?

I also find that 2-D fandoms tend to have the most fanart, which is not surprising since they are equally art-based as they are story/plot-based and characters are more easily translated into fanart, while 3-D fandoms rarely have any (this may be an over-generalization -- Lord of the Rings, for example, would be an exception -- LotR could be categorized under 1-D fandoms, but I believe the slew of fanart came after the release of the movies). 1-D fandoms are probably not overabundant with fanart either, but the ever-so-prolific HP fandom kind of skews things.

Anyway, all ramblings aside, I believe that Sungmin ought to win the Most Adorable award and he looks awfully cute in pink (I realize there are thirteen guys in this picture. Just look for the bright pink).
And lookit him play with this kitty alkjdafl;jdsULTIMATECUTENESS♥♥

( Balloon, kitten, and pinkness galore~~ )

I finished HP&tDH last night, a week after everyone else. XD I was going to drag it out even longer, but after I got up to around chapter 25, I couldn't stop anymore. So I finished the rest of the book in one go and also finished a box of Kleenex in one go (though, granted, the Kleenex box was almost empty anyway. I just sped up the process a bit.) And now I feel that it's my duty, after being an HP fan for eight years (though the amount of fannish activity varied throughout the years), to at least throw out some Omg This Is The Last HP Book Ever comments (I was originally planning to, y'know, let the hype pass, but now that I've finished reading, I am positively itching to say something).

( It's been a week! Are spoiler cuts still necessary? )

I fell out of the fandom about three years ago and never regained interest, not even with the release of HBP. But now, I have this huge craving for fanfics and fanart. X3 *attempts to resist*

And for those of you who have finished reading DH, you simply must read these Post-DH fics. They will pull at your heartstrings (unless you have no heart, in which case you may feel a slight pain where a heart should have been) and make you want to laugh and cry all at once. ♥
End of the Line and Mischief Managed by googlebrat.

Whenever I read shoujo manga, I have this irritating, but mostly involuntary, habit of comparing myself with the female protagonist. The problem is when the character acts in such a way that I start thinking: omg, I would never in a million years do that, what is wrong with you, woman -- I have to remind myself to stop waving my fist at the computer screen because it makes me look like a lunatic. There's something about shoujo that repels me yet attracts me at the same time (though with many titles, it's mostly, *repelrepelrepel*).

I was reading Lovely Complex yesterday (I went through all of the scanlated manga in one go -- I had an awful headache afterwards XD;) -- it was a really fun and cute manga. The issues I had with it were the same as the issues I have with most other shoujo titles: at first the main character acts against the traditional female role (in the case of LoveCom, Risa is taller than most girls, she's loud and generally unfeminine in terms of her actions), but when she realizes she's in love, she immediately reverts to tradition (again, with LoveCom, Risa starts mooning after the guy, she cries all the time, she wishes she were "cute and quiet").

( cut for length )
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Some other random things I have been thinking about include the following (they cannot be considered to be full rants intellectual discussions because I have run out of gas. Need to work on that stamina, Meemo.)

-If there's one thing that all those sociology classes have pounded into my head it is the notion that just about everything is socially constructed. If such is the case, human nature is neither fundamentally good nor evil because these are socially constructed concepts and the meanings of such terms are thus susceptible to the change of time and space.

-On the subject of human nature...it occurs in predictable ways at times. In a given situation, not everyone will act in the same way, but the same pattern of interaction will occur each time. There are several recent incidents (confined to my little corner of Livejournal) that come to mind. Let's take that anonymous (a.k.a. "honesty") PoT meme thing for example. I don't remember how many times variations of that have cropped up, but if you look at the comments from each one of them, they're really along the same vein. Fics, characters, people...anything bash-able gets bashed. I think this illustrates a certain side of human nature: when the opportunity to vent without the risk of having one's identity revealed arises, many people will take that opportunity. I'm a big advocate of the yin-yang concept (y'know, a bit of light in every darkness, and all that). In this case, in every group of ass-kickers there will be ass-lickers. You can probably come up with a list of categories that you'd place each commenter in these honesty memes, and this list would be consistent for every meme. In other words, it's just one big cycle (that can rival the Energizer Bunny in its "goes on and on"-ness).

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Okay, my fuel meter is pointing to empty now. *ran out of coherence* Perhaps it's time to get off my soap-box and rejuvenate through sleeping.

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One last note though: in the case of both rants (I will admit it! They were simply rants and not much else ;__;), I cannot stop myself from reading shoujo manga or stop myself from skimming those damn honesty memes (sometimes I agree with the hate -- it's just another weakness, don't judge me!) -- the same way that I can't stop my teeth from grinding from seeing traditional gender roles in all its glory and feeling disgust at some people's behaviour. Maybe it's analogous to car crashes -- in all reason, they're awful things, but as a spectacle, they're quite spectacular.