Cheers to the Best Guy Friend

January 31, 2009 at 2:32 pm (Books, Random)

This post was prompted by the fact that the  last two books I’ve read both coincidentially have the best guy friend winning the girl…something that doesn’t usually happen. (Well, not in the books I read, anyway.)

Now, in most books, the best guy friend is usually the dude who LOSES the girl to the hot, sexy BOYFRIEND. The best guy friend is the one that the girl always complains about her boyfriend and makes him feel so totally miserable because she has no idea that he’s been crushing on her since…what, fifth grade? LOL.

But no, these two guys in these two books won the girl…which I totally did NOT expect because I’d already marked these guys down as losers and was actually rooting for the boyfriend. (Like I did with Jacob in Twilight)

1.) City of Bones:

Now this is Jace.

(Yeah. They put the “boyfriend” on the cover. HAHA without a shirt on! Although, I don’t recall there ever being a scene where he’s shirtless…mmm maybe when he’s, like, injured and recuperating, maybe? I think they just put him half-naked to show the tattoos though., which ARE a significant part of the book…and very eye catching.)

He was totally winning against the guy best friend, Simon Lewis, who was like a total nerd and whose role for most of the book only consisted of doing favors (and creating awkward moments) for the main character, Clary.

Clary was totally all out for Jace…but then….SHE FINDS OUT IN THE LAST PAGES OF THE BOOK THAT JACE IS ACTUALLY HER LONG LOST OLDER BROTHER!!!!!!!

And of course, Simon is very happy about this. Because the top contender has been disqualified in terms of incest.

I dk. I personally thought it was a cruel thing to do to the characters. I mean, it’d be like Bella finding out that Edward is really her great-great grandpa. D: Clary and Jace were like: uh…-blush- -walks away from each other-

But congrats to Simon, all the same.

2.) Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac

Will is basically the same as Simon. But before the book actually begins, Will is more ahead of the game than Simon. He’d just kissed Naomi the night before.

Too bad Naomi trips on the top of the stairs, hurts her head, and totally forgets everything about him and later on just thinks he’s nothing but a best friend/co-editor of the school’s yearbook.

Naomi is sort of, kind of confused. (Who can blame her, she is an amnesiac, after all) First, she tries hanging out with her OLD boyfriend, a total, body-obsessed jock named Ace…but finds out that she doesn’t like him anymore and has no idea why she went out with him in the first place.

Enter James. Who actually called 911 after seeing Naomi fall off the stairs and is one of the classic dark, sexy, and brooding types.

How Will wins Naomi in the end: James, who has throughout the story shown some signs of mental instability, goes back to a temporary asylum type facility and later on graduates from high school, “drifting apart” from Naomi.  The lonely Naomi has no one to talk to than Will and by means of thoughtful presents (he actually compiled all the videos and photos of the four years she forgot when she fell off the stairs and gave it to her on her birthday…aw…) he wins her back. Yay.

I personally think that being the best guy friend/best girl friend is the hardest place to be when it comes to romantic relationships. I mean, you have to watch the girl/guy you love obsess over this other guy/girl and cry on your shoulder, complain, etc. when things don’t go well. How totally awkward and sucky.

SO, although the two guys’ victories  were technically prompted by weird plot devices thrown out by the author, congrats to both characters and for winning the girl after persistently staying by her side. :D

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When will it end? Um. I DK. Ask me later.

January 24, 2009 at 8:47 pm (Books, Random, Writing)

As the title of this post pretty much says, I have no idea how long V. Fia is going to be. It’s currently 73,800 words long…(equivalent to about 280 pages, Times New Roman, pt 12) To give you a perspective on how long that is; it’s about (a few thousand words shorter, but heck, I can write 1,000 words in 1-2 hours) as long as the first Harry Potter book…and half as long as Eclipse. This is the longest WIP I’ve ever worked on so far, so honestly, I am so freakin scared yet strangely enthralled.

And I’m pretty sure that IF my book ever gets published, it will get banned in at least one library/school in the world. :D Yeah. It’s pretty crazy and out of control now. I’m probably gonna have to edit it a lot…@.@

Btw, here are some of the books I’d recently finished reading. All of them exceeded my expectations.

      

I’m still mad at Garth Nix and DJ MacHale for the totally unfair cliff-hanger endings though. D: Now I have to wait for the LAST BOOK OF BOTH the Keys to the Kingdom and Pendragon series! I hate the second-to-last books…they always have the most suspense.

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Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials Trilogy

January 17, 2009 at 12:08 pm (Books)

Wow. Uh. That’s something, right there. I would call it a classic for children…but….a small part of me wouldn’t want MY children (not that I have children, but I’m saying if I had children) to read it. The trilogy is like LOTR/Harry Potter/erotica/Paradise Lost for CHILDREN.

Not that the children will be old enough to, like, tell. Heck, when I was a kid (2-4th grade?) I read all this without as much as a blink of an eye. Of course, back then, I wasn’t old enough to understand all the suggestiveness that subtly pervade throughout the book.

But partially because of the “Golden Compass” movie I saw back in 2007 (?) I’ve been keeping the three books in my piles of “Must-Read” books and have finally got around to read it. (I stayed up until, like, 12ish finishing the third book yesterday)

And this is what I, with my not-so-innocent mind, found in the book:
1.) In “The Golden Compass”…um….very…sensual scene at the end when Lord Asriel and Ms. Coulter reunite before going back to their “I hate you-you hate me-so deal with it” routine. The two characters are Lyra (the protagonist)’s parents that AREN’T MARRIED. -cough- So, as you’d probably expect, there was a lot of…unbridled passion in that scene. I am SO glad they cut that from the movie, because then, instead of being banned by the churches, it would have been banned by all the parents in the world who actually knew what was going on between those two. (I imagine that children wouldn’t have the faintest idea what was going on except: “Huh. They’re kissing. BOOORRRIIINNG -moves on to the adventure part- ….which is what I probably was thinking back then)

2.) In “The Subtle Knife”…VERY GORY SCENES. I mean, fine, not as gory as 300 or Beowulf or any of those movies. But for a children’s book?!!! First off, Will (the other main character that gets introduced in this book) gets his pinkie and ring finger of his left hand CUT OFF! And there’s a lot of stabbing and killing going on too. (Although, I only remember thinking “eew….-skip-” in my youth) Torture, too, thanks to Ms. Coulter.

3.) In “The Amber Spyglass”…the loss of innocence….I mean, before this book, Will and Lyra went progressively from “I HATE YOUR GUTS” to “YOU”RE MY BFF!” which is fairly innocent. But in TAS…(which is like 2-3 years later) they….sort of realize their true feelings and make out a lot towards the end of the book. Like, intense kissing all day and night, lying with another under the trees/stars when taking a break for kissing, and then going back to it again when they see each other. Whoa…I, like, read that stuff in erotica, man. Although in erotica, much more happened then “kissing”. (And don’t ask me why I read erotica. IT WAS AN ACCIDENT. I didn’t know/realize it was erotica until it was too late and I was hooked because of the awesome plot line. Because the book, besides the rather sexual scenes, WAS freakin’ awesome.) And not to mention the fact that unless I haven’t been keeping track of their ages correctly, those kids are probably 14-15 or max. 15-16…. D:

4.) …gay…angels? Contrary to most Angel-lore, Philip Pullman’s angels have genders. Like some are male and some are female. Although the two main angels, Balthamos and Baruch seem…confused. For those of you who are into manga and what not, I think you’d find the relationship between these two very much similar to…yaoi…without the inappropriate things. Baruch would be the seme (“top”) and Balthamos would be the uke (“bottom”)….D: Cuz Balthamos seems more girly.

5.) Daemon…touching…This is probably the more subtle of the suggestive things, because I remember not thinking that much about it a few years ago. You see, a Daemon is like an outer personification of your soul. Like, people in Lyra’s world have Daemons in the form of animals that, sort of, symbolize them and also are their BFFS. (And literally BFFS, because the Daemons only disappear when you die.) For example, the servants in her world (Lyra’s is more of a LOTR type of world), mostly have dogs as Daemons, which show their submissive nature.

Anyway, the interesting thing is that your Daemon is the opposite gender of you. Like Will’s Daemon (which comes to him later on because he was previously from our world but, like, eventually got one because of this one event that’s besides my point here) is a SHE, while Lyra’s daemon is a HE.

Andit seems that whenever two people with Daemons feel unbridled passion towards each other…they touch each other’s Daemons. I mean, the action is innocent enough. All they do is PET each other’s Daemons. But the way touching each other’s Daemons is socially forbidden in Lyra’s world and makes the two youngsters blush…(and the way Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coutlerwere doing it)….it kind of reminds us older kids of something else, doesn’t it….?

And to top it all of, the Daemons of children can change into many different animals until they reach a certain age and they “settle”, meaning they become permanently that particular animal. This is fine and all, and it might have as well been a “growing-to-maturity” thing if it weren’t for the scene where the two Daemons “settle” while Lyra and Will are touching each other’s Daemons. Andthe way it was worded…it kind of sounded like something in erotica…like losing your…virginity…. D:

Then again, it just might be me. Mind you, I didn’t make any of these connections in 2nd-4th grade and was just innocently thinking: “I wish I had a Daemon…D: I wonder what mine might be…I KNOW AN AWESOME WOLF! :D ” For all I know, this might be the reason why Philip Pullman made the trilogy a children’s trilogy, anyway, because the children wouldn’t know what exactly that they were reading. Like a “what they don’t know won’t hurt them” approach.

Now, as I mentioned this before, this trilogy has been banned a whole lot, especially by Christians who say that this is against the faith. Although I am a Christian and I did notice (yet another thing I overlooked years ago) some references to people losing their faith and becoming more or less an atheist, I think people should realize that banning those books isn’t going to do any good. I mean, this trilogy has won awards almost as much as it’s been banned, because it IS a must-read classic like LOTR.

Also, I think it’s stupid to ban fiction. I mean, it’s FICTION. It’s not like Mr. Pullman or J.K. Rowling is going around saying: MAGIC EXISTS! WITCHES ARE AWESOME! (There are witches in Lyra’s world in the trilogy, as well) etc. etc!
Mr. Pullman and Rowling have both said that they were merely telling a good story, and you can’t blame them for that!

So in conclusion: In the future, IF I do happen to have kids and do become a mom. I’d just let my kids read whatever they want, like my parents did. I believe that’s the only way you can let kids fall in love with reading and become very open/creative. Although, I WILL probably stop my kids and (while wiggling my eyebrows suggestively) ask them if THEY’RE SURE they want to read this trilogy when they bring these books to check out in the library. And talk to them about the books afterwards to see just how innocent my kids still are. :P

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Still Not Finished… D:

January 7, 2009 at 7:42 am (Writing)

Okay, guys, I am so sorry for,like, not finishing V. Fia over the winter break. I tried. Yeah, I really tried. But like, the first week of break I went to San Fran (as mentioned in my previous entries)and on the second week I got randomly sick D; so my parents, like, basically forbid me from spending too much time on the computer (I usually take 1-2 hours on the comp to write every day)…telling me to go to sleep early. D:

But the good news is that I did reach my goal of 75,000 words. It’s currently, like, 270 pages…which would be about 300 pages with formatting.

And I’m still not done.

A lot of scenes that I thought would only take like a paragraph are turning out to be longer than a page or so…which is probably why it’s taking so long. And I still have about five or so of those scenes to write.
Also, I have a bad habit of tending to look back on what I wrote on the day before, sometimes spending 30 min or so on just pre-revising.

Well, sorry again, and I’ll try to finish ASAP.

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