(no subject)

[issenllo]

Documenting Acceptable Levels of Insanity, Saki-verse (see here), Naruto/Sasuke, ignores much of second arc, Naruto, by aishuu

Non-fic, but hkfoot has posted character notes of some Hikago characters taken from the new issue of Hikago manga. It's excellently cool.

***

After Ai mentioned that she was reading Heyer, I was reminded that I hadn't read Heyer in a while myself, so I picked up one of my favourites,

The Foundling would probably not make most Heyer readers' top five list (which tends towards The Grand Sophy, Cotillion, These Old Shades and the like). For one thing, it doesn't at all focus on romance, though it does start out with the protagonist, the Duke of Sale, proposing marriage to a childhood friend (but not sweetheart).

He's pretty shy and has been cossetted by servants and anxious relatives his whole life, so when the opportunity comes along, he goes on an adventure, ostensibly to extricate his cousin from a scrape. Sounds dull, huh. I mean, the Duke (he is called that throughout the narrative) does have adventures, like meeting a beautiful damsel in distress that he doesn't fall in love with, is accused of kidnapping a schoolboy, gets kidnapped himself, etc., but overall it's nothing that his wealth and rank couldn't have dealt with, and the more cynical would think it's no more than a bildungsroman of a rich young man. (Nearly getting killed by his kidnapper I grant you, and to his credit he gets out of the predicament without help.)

I dunno, I just really enjoy it. The writing's really soothing...? And I like that he's struck down by a headache halfway through his adventures, and realises that he really needs his valet to handle his clothes instead of roughing it. He's not heroic in the way most dashing heroes in Heyer are, but gets things done. And his relationship with his cousin Gideon is slashy. (Read Familarity.) Adorable like whoa. ^_^

Oh, and a rec list of some Heyer fics, in case anyone's interested. And there's Corinthians, specifically for Heyer slash.


Also, when I returned The Foundling to my shelf I belatedly realised that I bought a book of deng mi (lantern riddles) months ago, and it's a scream. Now, most of the time deng mi revolve around seemingly innocent phrases that the guesser is supposed to solve with a (usually) punny Chinese idiom or common expression, such as:

唐僧西行何所求 (Reason Tripaka went to the west)--> 一本正经 (lit. a book of proper/true scripture, but the idiom means "a serious/sober facial expression")

Sounds all right. But what about riddles that are just:

W
: (yes, just the colon)


W 一波三折 (lit. a wave folded into three. Actual meaning: full of tribulations.)
: 有言在先 (lit. speech comes just before--and they do, before a colon! Actual meaning: verbal agreement.)

Fun, yes?