NEWS RANT

Oh mannnn. There is rumour that Kusano might come back to join NEWS. The wonderful 6-membered group dynamic will be disrupted! :( NOOOO. I AM SAD. Please don't disturb the wonderful balance anymore, Johnny! NEWS is at a good place now: Yamapi has always had Ryo, TegoMass forever and KoyaShige best friends for life. You add Kusano in and then... what? Please please please don't. I think the six that have stayed together have achieved a level of camaraderie that is separate from what NEWS used to be. D: Please don't destroy this. Okay fine, I learnt to love NEWS without Uchi and Kusano, so I'm a little biased. But my argument is still sound.

Thinking about the Mumbai attacks can cause severe depression, I think. I just. DDDDD: am utterly sad. And disappointed. And angry. And just D: x 100000. I think the rest of us need to be told, "Ganbatte!" That we can survive this somehow. That it'll be better someday.

Database exam was okay. But I realise I still don't really really get the point of relational calculus and relational algebra. :s It muddles me. I really want to try learning mySQL, apache and PHP by myself this break. Just cause. It'd be cool to be able to create my own database system. And yes, I suppose it'd be handy for honours project, if it crops up or stg.

On happier things: Tego and Maki are apparently really really going to appear together in a movie!!! XD Yaayyyy. Source here. The movie is an adaptation of the English novel, "Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac" by Gabrielle Zevin and directed by Hollywood filmmaker Hans Canosa. News were all rife about Matsuyama Kenichi (L from Death Note) and Horikita Maki co-starring again... but how could they not mention Tegoshi earlier??? Wouldn't he just bring more anticipation for the movie? Haha. Tegoshi is apparently going to play the nerdy best friend? Not sure. This movie has now become a must-see for me. Think I might go get the book too! :D YAY. BORDERS shopping spree, Eunice? I already have three books on my reading list this break! -- The Fire Kimono, Tales of Beedle the Bard (!!!) and this one.

Maki's JE infiltration continues. Haha. Oh GOD. You know what we would love??? A TegoMaki photoshoot! Then we can perhaps confirm the wholeTego-looks-like-Maki-and-vice-versa issue. gosh. A field-day for fandom. XD I would so buy the mag even if I dont understand a word of it.

Computing Paper (on Database Systems) tomorrow. It is amazing that I'm actually hoping for my computing module to save me this semester. Another of the ironies of life. Need to just study a little bit more on the relational calculus and relational algebra... and how to decompose relational schema into BCNF. :S Oh please please let me do well enough in this one to compensate for what sucks in the rest.

Also, I am infinitely glad that there are only a few days or so left in this week of cooped-up-in-the-house-cause-of-exams business. Because the number of distractions are just piling up! Nyeeah. For one, I'm realizing that it's only about two weeks left to my holiday trip and I haven't done the shopping and hair-cutting that I've been meaning to get done before I leave! And of course, NEW SHOES. Cause right now, the only usable shoes I have are a pair of golden-coloured heels and my tattered sandals.

Not to mention, my typical list of things-I-want-to-do-after-exams-end have been sitting on my desktop, tempting me like crazy. Can't wait!

And have I mentioned my brother's new PS3 plugged into our TV??? DISTRACTION x 1000, thanks. We can connect to the net and play streaming sites on it! Sis tested youtube and veoh and even mysoju already!!! XD oh the wonders of technology.

Been watching Innocent Love and Scrap Teacher slowly. I'm leaving Ryuusei out for the moment because I know that one will want to make me keep watching non-stop or stg. Innocent Love is slow but not uninteresting. Scrap Teacher is, I think, actually a rather ridiculous story with a very unrealistic premise -- a school on the verge on shutdown gets saved from the inside by three mysterious transfer students. But I watch anyway because it has laugh-out-loud funny moments that make it worth it somehow. And of course, I watch cause of HSJ and Yamada and Yuto. XD

WHY IS YAMADA ONLY 15?!?!?! I AM IN DENIAL. My brother and sister were like, "Can you please stop! You will go to jail. No, to hell." XD But seriously. How can he only be 15 and look so... like that!!! TOO MUCH PRETTY. GROW UP FASTER, PLEASE. So it would actually be legal and normal for me to spaz about you.

I don't know where my brain was today. I must be seriously lacking rest, which is why I shouldn't be online but sleeping instead. But I am stubborn like that. I sort of blundered through the later half of today. Coupled with the fact that I was fasting, I became rather cranky and extra blur. Such that I spoiled Afidah's stack of film because I switched on the white light in the dark room before sealing the box. So the top bit of each film is black. :( KARUT. And on the way home, I was dozing off really badly in the train. Really lah, so embarassing! Usually, I think I sleep rather decently and manage to sit straight but I was so damn sleepy this time. I was like leaning almost 45 degrees into the next person's personal space. Then at Simei, I groggily woke up and thought it was Tampines and rushed off the train. BODOH. Actually, I realised just before I stepped out the train doors, but I thought I'd already embarrassed myself enough and pretended my house was at Simei. Nyaha.

And here I ramble a little about the concept of fandom.

I've been thinking about fan-speak lately. You know, fan jargon the likes of which if you've never fangirl-ed, you'll never know? Words like fanon, fic, canon, AU, PWP, slash, het, BNF, meme, keyboard smash, OTP and all the weird acronyms for pairings depending on which fandom you're talking about - LoVe, HPGW, H/D, Wincest (gah,scary >.<) etc. Nowadays, the name squish for pairings is becoming highly popular, at least in JE fandom: Yamaki, Kamepi, Tegopi, Tomapi, Ryopi, Piyui, Pin and Tegomassuki. Like WTH man. It amuses me greatly.

I think someone should do a study on fandom. Like study how these groups of girls crop up and establish such big communities online that share fan stuff and interact and develop the fan world. I am fascinated. Truly.

Reference:

fandom = whatever book, show, movie, story, actor, personality etc that people are obsessed about.

canon = reality i.e. what actually happens in the real book/show/movie/etc

fanon = NOT canon; creation of fans; e.g. in Harry Potter fandom, for some reason, Draco Malfoy is highly perceived as some gorgeous, rich, misunderstood, witty and highly redeemable dude of Veela ancestry. HAHA. This is very very far from JK Rowling 's version of Draco.

fic = abbreviation for fanfiction, which if you don't know, (I am shocked!), are literary works written by fans about their fandom to satisfy their insatiable thirst for more canon.

AU = alternate universe; meaning that the fan disregards actual canon entirely when doing fanwork. e.g. Harry Potter is a prince of 16th century England and Hermione a princess with whom he is forced to wed. Personally, I think good AU works are hard to come by. Because seriously, who wants to read about Hermione worrying about arranged marriages and fitting into corsets, and nothing about magic?!

PWP = Plot what plot; this is basically fanfiction in which the fan writes crappy pointless stuff like smut or trashy humour.

slash = same-sex situations; nowadays, this is the dominating sexual preference among fans. go figure. -_-

het = male/female pairings; slowly approaching extinction in fandom, in my opinion. scary, I tell you.

BNF = big name fan; e.g. the notorious Cassandra Claire who wrote the Draco Trilogy; they are kind of the 'elite' of the fans whom all other fans 'cling' to; usually BNFs are great writers who produce fantastic reviews, fanfiction or fanart.

meme = I still am not sure what a meme is! HAHA. I thought I knew what it was. I think it might be like a survey done by a fan for fans? not sure.

keyboard smash = fan-squee in keyboard fashion; it's basically being so excited about something that you type incoherently this: lkhfnsydagfbnuasydgfabsuynfksaniuf vyqowygp qhJDKW;,KLMHASGNASDFJCBHN; actually, I think this might not be exclusive to fandoms. Eunice does it quite a lot.

OTP = one true pairing; a fan's favourite pairing

LoVe = Logan Echolls and Veronica Mars; this is one of my favourite name squishes!

HPGW = Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley; sometimes it's so funny to see a slew of capital letters in a fanfic summary, like this: HPGW HGDM RLSB SSMM etc. go figure -_-. But I think this sort of abbreviation has phased out, in place of adorable name squishes?

H/D = Harry/Draco; this is the default manner to write pairings before they come up with more creative ways.

Wincest = Dean/Sam Winchester from Supernatural; called so because they're brothers! incest, yo! >.< Rest assured, I keep absolutely clear of this scary pairing (and in fact of every kind of slash). Homosexuality of any kind still makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand, I'm very sorry.

And a list (not exhaustive one) of JE pairings:

Yamaki = Yamapi + Maki (my OTP <3!)

Tomapi = Ikuta Toma + Yamapi

Kamepi = Kamenashi + Yamapi

Ryopi = Ryo + Yamapi

Piyui = Yamapi + Aragaki Yui

Tegopi = Tegoshi + Yamapi

Pin = Yamapi + Jin

Tegomassuki = Tegoshi + Masuda + Maki

Wahahaha. Yamapi is in almost everything. :P Someone did say he's somewhat like the little black dress of slash-dom. My my. Such crazy fans.

There are many other fandoms, each with their own exclusive language. Like Star Trek fans are called Trekkies and Battlestar Galactica fans called... something else? I can't quite remember now. And this is only like a glimpse into the crazy place that is fandom. And I know only the bare minimum to survive as I read LJ communities. So interesting, I tell you.