Links and memery

[oyceter]

telophase has created a Cool Bits story generator. She explains the concept and shares some of the best.

I decided that there should be a Cracktastic Bits generator as well, and rachelmanija is soliciting suggestions. (Although I honestly have no idea when I will code it, if ever. But it is too fun to read! And the best thing is, all of the examples have actually been published in some way, shape or form!)

And now, that three-interests-three-icons meme, from jonquil:

• Heads in jars - I feel this is self-explanatory. Hrm, possibly not for the good portion of my flist who does not actually read manga and fears that I actually attempt to collect heads in jars. Heads in jars (or, in one occasion, a box) seem to be one of those strange, reoccuring images in manga and anime. Variations include: decapitated heads being lovingly cradled in grief (provoking unintentional hilarity), decapitated heads preserved in jars being lovingly cradled in grief, heads in jars being preserved solely so they can be sewn back onto a reanimated body and either a) resurrected and loved or b) resurrected and killed. Every time I get to one in manga or anime, I start laughing hysterically and yelling, "Heads in jars for the win!" because I am insane like that.
  
  Also, I am totally amused that I am not the only person with "heads in jars" listed as an interest.
  
  rachelmanija has a post on The Decapitated Head in Narrative. It is a very serious and scholary work.



• Tang Dynasty - This is actually not cracktastic. I've always had a vague notion of what the Tang Dynasty was; in Chinese school in America and in class in Taiwan, I always had to memorize poems out of The Three Hundred Poems of the Tang Dynasty (Tang shi san bai shou). Oddly, this made me adore Tang poetry as opposed to hating it, though I would not recommend using this method on your kids, as the potential for backfiring seems huge. I love the strictness of Tang poetry -- the pronunciation-accent pattern in the forms, the parallelism, the rhyme, the language of images -- and how the poets must work within these strictures to produce absolute brilliance.
  
  I probably learned about Tang Dynasty history back in my Chinese history classes in Taiwan, but as they were all conducted in Chinese, I remember next to nothing. Just to give you some idea: it took me years to realize that "xi la" meant the Greeks. Prior to that, I had assumed it was the name of a random Mongolian tribe that got its name from either making sausages or candles.
  
  My favorite class in college was intro. to Chinese lit. because of the enthusiasm of the professor. And I finally learned about Tang history, about how cosmopolitan and multi-ethnic its capital Chang'an was (for the 700s and probably for much later), the gridlike architecture of Chang'an that Kyoto eventually emulated, the cultural renaissance, the contact with India and the Middle East*, and finally, about the betrayal and fall of the High Tang in 755, the legendary concubine Yang Guifei, the fatal mistake of the battle that should have been in a pass, and the devastation of war and how Du Fu immortalized it in poetry.
  
  * I am forever irked at textbooks and people who claim that China and Japan and all of Asia were isolationist and didn't make contact with the outside. Didn't make contact with Europe and America, yes. But that completely ignores the trade (monetary and cultural) going on for centuries in Asia, including Southeast Asia, India and parts of the Middle East.



• Hsinchu - I grew up here! It is the Silicon Valley of Taiwan!

This is my Joan of Arcadia icon, back when I was still watching. Aww, Luke and Grace are so cute! Strangely, I always forget I have this and never use it even when I am squeeing.



I usually make my own icons, but rilina made this as a present and it is too awesome to pass up!

Parakeet of DOOM! From an episode in Bleach, in which the possessed parakeet is supposed to be very tragic but is instead completely hilarious. Also, as many people have noted (ETA: *ahem*jinian*ahem*), it is actually a cockatiel of DOOM, but the translation in both the subs and the manga have it as a parakeet. Someday I must make one that says "Parakeet Cockatiel Cockakeet of DOOM!"



My icon of general woe, albeit not too serious woe. This is Fuu from Samurai Champloo, who is very pink and very foodie and very funny. I like her a lot, possibly because I am egotistic and rachelmanija once said Fuu reminded her of me.

Feel free to jump in and ask me to pick three of your icons and interests!

Comments

[telophase.livejournal.com]

The coding is easy-peasy if you use dragonscholar's script. :) The hardest part is the categorization - working out what categories you want, and where all the terms fit. After that, it's all plugging the bits into the right spots.

And totally randomly, have you watched the cracktastic Kyou Kara Maoh? I ask merely because I remembered that one of the bishounen - Grendel, the tall, dark, stern type - knits to relieve stress. And in at least one episode, when he's not anywhere near knitting needles or yarn, when he's getting seriously irritated with someone, his hands make knitting gestures. XD I'm really going to have to continue that, but I've forgotten where I left off.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* er, Gwendal, not Grendal. Although that brings some interesting imagery to mind.

[oyceter]

I haven't seen that! That's awesome! Knitting!

I figure the categorization will be nigh impossible, just looking at my own insane contributions... but... must find spare time.

Also, now every time I hear "Grendel," I think of the tragically lost Anglo-Saxon classic, "Grendel's Aunt." It's got to exist somewhere...

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I think we both need Grendel's Aunt as a user interest.

[oyceter]

Just added it! Yay.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

I ended up with five categories:

// 1 - Element
// 2 - Item
// 4 - Meta
// 8 - Person
// 16 - Setting

(er, the script counts by doubling, for some odd reason)

Item - things that I can fit into a "[person] has [item]" construction.
Meta - things that describe the story itself, ranging from "has good dialogue" to "is about the end of an era."
Person - any particular character. No plurals.
Setting - anything that could fit into a "in [setting]" construction, so I've got things from "the Black Forest" to "a gondola" there.
Element - everything else. The grammar is the hardest on this, since it needs to be a noun or noun phrase, in the way I use it.

Patterns are how you fit the elements above into sentences, and they tend to be a bit stilted, because of the capitalization problem - all my elements start with lower case. It could be hacked to fix that, but it's tedious and not really worth it.

They used to be more stilted because I couldn't use commas in the elements or patterns since commas are used in the coding itself, and then I remembered that I could use the HTML special character code for commas in those places - & # 4 4 ; minus the spaces.

So the pattern looks like this for each one (with the break tag not mangled, of course):

16,8,8,1,1
It starts in ,& #44 ; with ,. The antagonist is , and the plot involves elements like , and ,.< br/ >

The numbers are the elements and the order in which they go into the pattern, and the script just picks a random word or phrase from the first category and sticks it into the sentence at the first comma, then goes to the second category and the second comma, etc. You can see where the (minged) comma HTML code is in the sentence.

It starts in [setting], with [person]. The antagonist is [person] and the plot involves elements like [element] and [element].

It probably will help to come up with the kind of sentences you want to use first, and generate categories from that.

[telophase.livejournal.com]

* In my schema, lots of things could fit into more than one category, but there's so many in Elements that I tend to stick new terms into other categories if they fit. "A gondola" could fit into Element or Setting, but I picked Setting since it has way fewer entries that Element. Same with people terms - I could choose to put "barons" into Elements or make it singular and put it into Person, so I did that.

[oyceter]

Nice! Thanks for the info! If I ever get around to doing this, would it be ok if I stole some of your sentence structures?

[telophase.livejournal.com]

Go right ahead! And the best part about short, choppy sentences is that you can mix-n-match fairly well, too. XD I think I've got 14 patterns made of about 8 different sentences.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Uryuu Ishida also knits for fun and stress relief. He made his own cape!

[oyceter]

Yes! I bet there is fic out there about Uryuu Ishida and his deep connection with the fiber arts.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I am using my annoyance icon not because I am annoyed, but because it is appropriate.

Ishida! Squee!

[telophase.livejournal.com]

There you go, another cracktastic bit: a stoic hero who knits.

[sophia-helix.livejournal.com]

You're making me wish I could devote this summer to studying random Chinese history on my own. Huh. Maybe I could.

And meme me! I like talking about myself my icons and interests.

[oyceter]

Doooo iiiiiitttt... I bet you could find something on MIT's OpenCourse, which would be easier than buying lots of scholarly books and pretending that you will get around to reading them one day (a la me).

Interests: lesbonic secks, the abcs of awesome, pseudo-vegetarianism
Icons: OFFICE: melora writes, OTHER: he'll kick you apart, OTHER: water is gasping for your mouth

[gwyneira.livejournal.com]

I wondered where your Woe icon was from. It's so expressive!

Meme me, please?

[oyceter]

I love Fuu!

Interests: elswyth thane, rumer godden, d&d
Icons: maiden's blush, clock, fish slapping

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Meme me!

[oyceter]

Here you go!

Interests: arnis, latex (I am guessing you mean the computer one, not latex gloves latex), equitation
Icons: Raven (I've always been curious as to why you picked it), Fractal, Maratai

[jinian.livejournal.com]

as many people have noted

Mostly me (http://jinian.livejournal.com/272777.html). Or at least I did it best.

I totally thought of you today when I saw a poster on campus. (Fuu would have liked it too!) Not only was the poster for the >a href="http://students.washington.edu/tsauw/TSA05/tsa.htm">Taiwanese Student Association's Night Market, it said things like EAT and FOOD in large yet low-contrast (subliminal) letters. Alas, it is not until the 12th.

[oyceter]

Definitely you!

EEEE Night Market! I missed the one around here, so sad.