Metal Dragons! Gay Magicians! Explosions!

I found this on LJ spotlight just now, and it reminded me that I never really reviewed Havermercy after I read it D: so here we go. I don’t have the book with me, but nevermind xD

Anyway, Havemercy is a novel written by one of the authors of Shoebox Project, Jaida Jones, along with her friend Danielle Bennett. While I definitely prefer Shoebox, and it probably would have been better if I wasn’t somehow expecting the characters to all be like the Shoebox ones xD, I still really did enjoy this book. 

Royston and Hal are adorable, full stop. I think it’s actually kind of nice that they stay kind of innocent and sweet, it’d ruin it somewhat if they went any further than they did – it was also good that it all took so long to develop, the suspense is always good, haha. I liked that Hal’s character became stronger towards the end, and I liked the friendship between him and Thom. And Royston is totally Sirius all grown up, lol.

Thom and Rook were good fun. I love Rook, haha, you just can’t beat a total asshole with blue streaks in his hair who won’t stop swearing. I especially loved Thom and Rook’s ending, it was completely unexpected (which is likely just because I’m silly and didn’t see that coming xD), and it really opens up the opportunity for fanfics or sequels about later on. The only thing that actually seemed odd them was, that I thought it was kind of obvious, from the minute Thom was thinking about the brother he didn’t remember, that it would end up being Rook. Why else put in that little detail? It probably would have been better to mention the long lost brother in the beginning, so the reader wouldn’t automatically think of Rook. Before I knew they were brothers, I thought they would actually have shipped really well – there was alot of chemistry there which is kind of odd, thinking of it now xD

I read in the LJ comm somebody saying that they wished Royston and Rook would have communicated more, because omg snarky, and I agree lol. Though I loved the bit at the very end when they do finally meet, after all of Rook’s making fun of Royston for being a cindy, and he just basically goes “yes, and?” ahaha.

All in all, awesome book. Unfortunately, I was reading it on and off over a period of a couple of very busy weeks, so that might have affected the overall picture I got – I really want to sit down and read it again, properly!

Sex. Money. Sex. Cat.

Wow, I haven’t updated this in a while. But I finally went and saw Twilight today!!

It wasn’t brilliant, but I still really liked it. I’d been told by several people that it wasn’t very good, so I guess my expectations weren’t too high, but still. My only question – why didn’t they include the whole “do I dazzle you?” thing? That was a really famous line, and it wouldn’t have taken up any time to throw it in, but they just completely skipped it o_O unless I was talking and missed it?

I’d heard that Kristen Stewart’s Bella was too emotionless, but I actually thought she did a really good job – movie!Bella was a lot more realistic and less annoying than book!Bella, in my opinion. In the book she sometimes comes across as kind of bratty, but in the movie she definitely didn’t.

And Edward was impossibly hot. There were several scenes where you just have to sit back and go “wow”. Haha. Having said that, the sparkling in the light was really dreadfully done – he looked like somebody had spritzed him with water or something – and half the time he had WAY too much makeup on, especially the lipstick. Like, the first time you saw him, when he walked into the lunch room, the first thing that stood out was his ridiculous makeup o_O and it changed from scene to scene, so sometimes he had really red lips and dark eyes, and sometimes he looked almost normal. Pick one and stick with it? Still, you know. Hot. Hot hot hot.

I also heard that the relationship between Edward and Bella was too stilted – but I don’t agree with that. It was incredibly awkward at first, to be sure, but I think that actually worked and made it more realistic. In the book they just kind of fall in love at the drop of a hat, the movie made it look like a slower process that actually matured over time. 

There were two scenes in the film I really liked – the first was the scene where Edward and Bella are walking across the school carpark, with everybody staring at them, and Edward says something like “I’m breaking all the rules now” and puts his arm around her. I don’t know why, it was just cool xD. The other good scene was the one where Edward introduces Bella to his family, and he’s hovering in the background the whole time looking really painfully embarrassed, hahaha, just because it was cute. 

Anyway, all in all I enjoyed it, a whole lot more than I thought I would, and I’d really like to see it again!

Edit: Ooh, I forgot one more thing! I thought the actual Forks school kids were pretty awesome. I’d be so happy if I moved somewhere and the people were like that :S lol. Not because they were fighting for her attention, but because they were all so silly and cute xD little things like Tyler stealing Mike’s chair out from under him or them doing their stupid dances outside while Bella was eating with her dad. Seriously, they were cool! Haha.

Something Wicked This Way Comes.

I just finished watching the movie of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I’ve seen it lots of times, but I only really noticed this time that Shoebox was written after the movie came out, so a lot of the little things about Remus are actually taken from the movie. The way he dresses, the jazz music, the books, the kind of awkwardness of him, they’re all in the movie. I had no idea! I knew the chocolate was from the book and the scars were from the film, but that was all I’d noticed before. Also, if you really concentrate, you can actually picture Shoebox!Sirius growing up to look like that. Interesting!

Except in the movie Moony is spelt ‘Mooney’, which is a bit odd. Surely it’s not spelt that way in the book? It looks silly spelt like that.

Switzerland Rules.

It’s probably an extremely common saying, but it still amuses me that characters in Shoebox, Dexter, and Twilight all claim to be Switzerland during a conflict.

Dexter – 0208 – Blast From The Past
“Hey, I’m Switzerland”
- Dexter Morgan 

Shoebox Project – Part 20
“Remus Lupin is a no-fight zone. Remus Lupin is neutral ground. Remus Lupin is Switzerland.”

Twilight – Eclipse
“I am Switzerland. I refuse to be affected by territorial disputes between mythical creatures.”
- Bella Swan

You Are My Life Now.

New Twilight trailer.

It looks pretty awesome, I must say. I really like the bit of them walking around at school and everybody staring at them oddly haha.

Apparently it will be coming out in Australia on the 11th and in Singapore on the 18th of December, which is good – usually it takes a lot longer than that for movies to reach us lol. Can’t wait!

House of Vampires.

I found this pic of the Cullen’s house in the Twilight movie – it’s exactly the way I pictured it! I mean, I suppose the book must have been fairly specific for me to get the exact right picture in my head lol but still. Usually movie things aren’t that good o_O

A Long Time Ago, We Used To Be Friends.

I accidentally started reading MWPP fics based after they finished school – during the war. I shouldn’t, they’re awful, they make me feel like crap. But they’re so dreadful and ugly and beautiful. I had to force myself to stop. 

It’s funny, though, reading Shoebox it’s so easy to forget everything else that happens. I’m often jealous of the Shoebox crew, fictional though they may be, for having such good friends and such good times, but I suppose they paid for it. I imagine it’s alot worse to have such amazing friends and then lose them all, especially like that.

Shoebox Project.

Okay, I said that at some point I’d write a dedicated entry about Shoebox, and as I’m extremely obsessed at the moment and have nothing else to do, here it is. 

The Shoebox Project is basically a very large scale fanfic about selected memories from the lives of Sirius Black, Remus Lupin, James Potter, and Peter Pettigrew. It is slash, but if that bothers you the first half of the story is so subtle you can ignore it – or, in my case, not notice until something actually happens, at which time you go WAIT, WHAT? and have to read the whole thing again to pick up on all the subtext. Anyway. I feel silly calling it a “fanfic” because it’s so much more than that – it’s more well-written than most published books. Also, it contains alot of little nick-nacks, like photographs, notes, drawings, etc. Hence the name “Shoebox Project” as it is kind of like a metaphorical shoebox full of memories. There are almost ten thousand people following the Shoebox community on Livejournal. It is so much better than the real Harry Potter books that it is almost painful to think that that is where the whole idea originated.

Hmm. As it turns out, I’m really bad at this, I just can’t describe how well done the whole thing is. The style of writing is perfect, and each of the characters is just so well thought out and realistic – they even manage to make Peter likeable, and in later parts you can almost understand why he turned on his best friends so completely. 

The project isn’t updated very often anymore, in fact, it hasn’t been updated since May this year, but this is both a good thing and a bad thing. On the one hand, I want more!, but on the other hand, I really don’t want to get to the inevitable end we all know it’s going to reach. 

“I like to remember everything,” Remus says, very quietly, so as not to wake him. “As it was. Because moments by themselves aren’t enough; they’re just — they’re like photographs. They move a little, they wave, but they aren’t everything. You can look back on a moment and say ‘In that moment I was happy’ or, more often than not, ‘In that moment I was uncomfortable’ or ‘In that moment I was sad’ or ‘In that moment we were all berks’ but you can look back on everything and you think, ‘That was good.’ Because when all the moments come together, when all the songs meet up with one another, you get something whole and complete and wonderful, people you loved and people you hated and a fondness for them you may not be able to recapture but everything you remember about them being somehow more than they really were, because that’s what remembering everything does.”

Snape. Snape. Severus Snape.

I was walking down the street today and I saw a guy that looked exactly like Severus Snape. He had just past shoulder length black, greasy, disgusting hair, pale skin, and a truly epic nose. I wanted to take a photo, but I think that would have been suspicious. Instead I contented myself with going “HAHAHA SNIVELLUS OMG” in my head.

That was a mango? Oh god, Sirius, why is it now a flamingo? Why?

I’m always on the lookout for good Sirius/Remus fics, especially since Shoebox_Project is so rarely updated these days. Which reminds me, I’m going to have to do a really long and involved post dedicated to Shoebox one of these days, but not today. Anyway, it’s hard to find good S/R, because there are lots of squealy fangirls (like, um, me) that aren’t actually very good authors but submit their terrible stories all over the place anyway.

But! 

I just found this today, which is very very good. I’m fairly sure that the author has read Shoebox, as the style is very similar and several of the scenes are almost identical – but it’s different enough to stand very well as it’s own story, while at the same time still has the same quirky “voice” that Shoebox has. There’s lots of sweet, fluffy bits, and it’s not ridiculously smutty like most fanfiction. I don’t think it’s been updated for a few months, though, which is kind of depressing, but it’s still definitely worth a read.