Icon meme + five worst books ever

[oyceter]

This is my Taiwan icon! I made it from this picture, which I took when rachelmanija and I visited the Long Shan temple in Taipei with my family last year. I just love how the old temple is now right next to a shiny office building, and in the original picture, you can see reflections of ugly Taipei buildings. All the same, I love the ugly buildings and their bathroom-tiled exteriors!


One of my absolute favorite scenes from the anime Honey & Clover, in which artist Hagu thinks about art as an infinite number of boxes, all filled with ideas, stretching out to the horizon, simultaneously excited and saddened by the fact that she will never be able to open all of them in the space of a life time. Oh Hagu, I love you.


It's Fuu from Samurai Champloo being all woeful! Except she's still in a happy pink kimono, so she's not too woeful. This is my "woe" icon, obviously, but for woeful things that aren't too dire. I think the shot is from Fuu, Mugen and Jin mutually moping because they don't have enough money for food. Also, I secretly love this icon because rachelmanija said once that Fuu reminded her of me.


Goku from Saiyuki! rilina made this icon, and it is an icon of joy! I really should use it more often -- it captures what I love most about Goku, his enthusiasm for life. Unsurprisingly, like Fuu, he is a big food appreciator. I think Goku is the anime/manga character I most want to be like right now. Except for the whole berserk killer thing...


One of the first icons I ever made! The picture is actually of the ex's desk; I think you can see a corner of calligraphy reading "Nihon" on the wall, a set of sake cups, a speaker (the giant black blob), and the top of a Chinese-esque box. Mostly I just applied a billion filters to the thing and then had fun with squares, as that was back when I was first learning how to use Photoshop.

And since Rachel asked, my five worst books ever!

In no particular order:

RL Stine - I can't remember which book this is, since there are so many with increasingly implausible and silly deaths. But the book had a character dying via a piece of dough placed in his/her mouth. The dough rose and miraculously acquired enough force to suffocate the person or to cause death via dough in the brain. I swear, I am not making this up.

Barbara Hambly, the Dragonsbane sequels - I think I may have blocked out how truly terrible these were from my mind. This is particularly sad, because I love Dragonsbane, but the sequels reverse a key decision in the original book (I think) and then begin to incorporate incoherent dimension- and/or time-travel. Other elements that I may or may not be remembering correctly: squalid details about homeless, addicted people in an alternate dystopic earth and how John either saves them or becomes one of them. Mely notes that there is also demonic mother-son incest, which I managed to scrub out of my memory.

Emma Donoghue, Slammerkin - So, there's the "rocks fall, everyone dies" ending, and then there's Slammerkin, in which rocks (metaphorically) fall, everyone dies; you sell your virginity for a red ribbon, get gang raped, then thrown out of the house; you abort your misbegotten gang rape child with a stick; and your best prostitute friend freezes to death on the street and you briefly think of burying her and instead pry a bottle of gin from her cold, dead fingers. The best thing? This is just the first hundred pages! It gets worse (spoilers)!

Robin Schone, Awaken, My Love - I cannot believe I actually finished this. Here's the original post. First, there is the gratuitous detailing of historical squalor. If two people are going to have sex later, I really do not want to know about how unclean they are when they pee, nor do I want details about bad breath, bad teeth, greasy hair, and dirty clothing. I do not mind these things, but when paired with descriptions of bulging tumescences and yonis and chakras and other nonsense blindly taken from the Kama Sutra, they are ridiculously funny. Also, the heroine's husband has apparently never heard of sex, masturbation, or orgasms, and he is supposedly a perfectly normal guy.

The hero's wife is frigid, so he rapes her into submission! We get entirely too detailed descriptions on dryness and tearing, zero remorse from the hero, and no sympathy from the author. Clearly, the hero's wife deserved it for being frigid, for having one leg be shorter than the other, and for being raped by her uncle when she was a child.

I still cannot believe I finished this. All I have to say is that it was before I started throwing books at walls.

And now, I can't think of a fifth, as they were either so bad that I never finished them, or mind-numbingly mediocre. Instead, I list: Piers Anthony, especially the Adept series and its gratuitous virtual sex (IIRC); Robert Jordan, with his notions of how women act; Anne McCaffrey's Freedom series; Anne Bishop's penis-shaped breadsticks; and the Beatrice Small book I started and never finished because it was just that bad in every possible aspect.

Comments

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Wow...you actually finished the Schone? After about 30 pages, I just started skimming it because I worked in the bookstore at the time and was expected to be familiar with the "big" romance novels because I read them.

Bertrice Small is...it's historical Mary Sue fanfic where the heroine is always the most beautiful and sensual woman alive(and often thinks of herself as such) all female historical figures are evil jealous hags who hate the heroine because she's prettier, and throughout the book, the heroine will at one point be involved with virtually every type of "romantic hero" popular tothat time period. Do not ask me how I know this. It is a secret shame. (What? The sexual stuations are so ridiculous at times that I feel compelled to see what ridiculous thing she'll come up with next.)

[oyceter]

Yeeaaaah... that was back in the day when I finished everything.

The only thing I remember about the Small I read was the petite, red-headed, perfectly-formed heroine (they are always "perfectly formed"), who is FIFTEEN. There was skanky villain sex in chapter 1, involving her uncle, who is in lust with her and has skanky villainous incestous thoughts all the time.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think the Schone was when I stopped finishing everything. Naturally, it was amazingly popular.

*thinks*

Yes.

I believe that one went through about 3 shieks and the king lusted after her so much that he agreed to pardon her treasonous True Love for a night of por-uhm, passion.

Or I could be thinking of another. But I remember the description and the uncle. Then again, both appear in other books.

I think I had the best giggle at the one where her True Love had amnesia and was the sex slave of an evil sorceress and she became the sex slave of the sorceress's brother to save him, and the sorceress and her brother decided that, since neither of them could have kids, the OTP would bear them a child, but sorceress's brother lurved her sssssoooooooooooooo much that he couldn't bear for another man to touch her without him there, so there was a threesome with her and the two guys with lots of prayers and aphrodesiacs involved, and True Love regained his memories at a *cough* "moment." After that, a Convenient Plot Device caused True Love to stop having sex with the sorceress, so the heroine was both sex slave and sneaking off to have sex with True Love when she could.

I make none of this up.

And people devour this stuff(I love skim for giggling when they're free.)

[oyceter]

O_o

WOW!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

And the only thing out of the ordinary about that as far as her books go is that there were only the two guys. I think her "most beloved heroine," Skye O'Malley(the one who regularly refers to herself as the most sensual women in the world) went through about twenty(she also had a few bouts of convenient amnesia so that she wouldn't REALLY be cheating on the current love of her life.) OH!!! She also became a sex slave in a harem(and yes, that's how it's portrayed) to save her husband from a villainess(who once raped Skye) who had him as a sex slave...his love for Skye was so pure that he could not perform for her without a lot of "help."

[chomiji]

> reaches for mind bleach <

meganb, how can you read this stuff? I'm too squeamish to even touch the covers ... I'm embarrassed that I even just looked up Ms. Small on Google ... .