Well, I guess these are getting a little ridiculous in length, but everything I have to say in this one has meaning to it. If you're looking for actual updates in art from me, wait until November the 4th when I finish all my exams. Yes, I have my first exam in less than a week. Hurrah.

Ok, first of all, recently I’ve been rereading The Host (Stephenie Meyer, I know) just to (probably) stop from reading manga or watching anime (fail, probably). You might see some art later, not that I haven’t done any before, but they haven’t been particularly awe-inspiring, really.

First things first. I have a bone to pick with The Host. Pg 139
You DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT treat a burn with ICE. Mrs Meyer, please do not have to learn this the hard way (like I did). Last time I burned myself, it was not common practice to use ICE, unless I’ve gotten implanted memories since then. Or something. You especially do not use ice if you have just burned your whole hand, because you’ll probably want to lop it off afterwards (wow, really makes me feel for burns victims). Ok, so I didn’t get burned that much when I was burned (totally a minor case where burns victims are concerned), but this should be a bit of basic first aid everyone knows.

Want a quote?
“Clothing saturated with caustic chemicals or hot substances should be removed at once, and the affected skin area placed in cold water (but not ice). If done within the first minute or so, cold water emersion for up to 30 minutes can reduce both the total area involved and the depth of the burn.” [[link]

Ok, Example. Eh… about 4 years ago, I decided to do a … ‘Melanie Stryder’ for the purposes of this … journal. I grabbed a falling hot thing (you could call it a pan…, but it wasn’t really), either because I didn’t realize it had been sitting there dry frying (i.e. on and probably at 50 degrees Celsius cooking absolutely nothing but air), or because I thought I was Wonder woman, I made a grab for it before it hit the floor. Absolutely futile effort in which I got one and half burned fingers and the ‘thing’ crashed to the floor anyway.

So I went and asked the teacher for some ice ‘cos it hurt like heck and nothin’ numbs like ice. So much for her being the Head Teacher of the department, she happily wraps up three ice cubes and I hold onto them. But by lunchtime, the ice was all gone (oh my gosh? Ice melts?) and I went back to the office to ask the office lady … for who knows what. Probably a bandaid. Solves everything. (If I sound sarcastic, and I know I do, blame it on TvTropes. Lovely stuff. <3 )

They realize I’ve actually burned those fingers which are now absolutely burning again (nothing to pity still, I guess) and realize I’ve been a idiot. You’re meant to run your hand UNDER A TAP for … well, a long while, shall we say (ah, right, well, it says 30 minutes, but about 5 will do depending on area), and then it can be a good idea to keep it wet, ie, either soak something and wrap it around or I guess find a bag of water and tape it around the burned area. It has the dual purpose of 1. Keeping the thing from sticking to the wound (if it’s a pretty bad burn) and 2. Keeping the area cool. It would get warm? No problems. You won’t notice it. Seriously. Then treat with whatever ointment you want (as long as it fulfills the purpose, ok?)

Treating it with ice makes it worse. (More intense feeling of burning)

Also, just so y’all know – do not stick your hands (or any other body part) into a bucket of plaster of paris. Not only will the slowly solidifying chunk of rock be impossible to remove through normal means (bring out the power tools) your hands will cook (heat generation). You may have heard this. Reinforcement in process. Lesson 2: listen to the teacher when she says ‘clay’. Clay <> Plaster of Paris.

I’m not saying that the girl who did that was an idiot and she deserved it, I’m treating it as a lesson to us all so we don’t have to go through the same tragedy. I can’t even imagine what I would do without my fingers, and I would probably not be as determined (for lack of a better word at this minute … stal… stalwart? Something) as she is today. (If anything, I’m someone who loves convenience. Any pain, well, I’d just try to stop it or something….)

Oh yeah, while I’m on it. Another point – do not EVER jump into concrete. It may seem cool, but it’s not. Sure you might know this Grey’s Anatomy episode (Uh, yeah) but it’s valid… to an extent. Not only is concrete a lot harder than you think it may be when it sets, I think it shrink some when it sets (well, it certainly shrinks over time anyway [link]), which means it’s slowly crushing you…to death. Not only that, the extended period you can’t move along with the squishing really kills your bloodflow. The more it does that, well, I think its called yuu huut but I don’t know what it’s called in English. In short – not pretty. Do not try this at home, kids (or not kids, whichever it may be).
So I dunno. If you knew that, I guess that’s great and I’m relieved. If not, learn it now. So many things can be avoided… like pain. And amputations in the more extreme cases….

*Needs to actually learn first aid one day though, soon *

Back to The Host for no reason other than ramble now: it contains a few things that just really… annoy me.

I guess there’s a little lampshading with the lack of any sort of science in a supposedly kind of ‘sci-fi’ novel. It’s all explained with a ‘I understood it when I was a Spider, I don’t understand it now.’ Surely it’s not that hard? Magic is a little over the top, but even a little sort of thinking on it would have helped? (Not that the processes themselves are not described magically, with infection bubbling off under Clean.) Not only that, many other things are lampshaded with an ‘I don’t want to think about it’ or ‘I don’t have time to think about it, these people are going to kill me’ as though you’re just saying that as an excuse to not have to fully think out any local reasoning.

Sure it’s a nice story and all, but so much for the science fiction. If that was it easy, I’d just chuck in a few aliens into a story and call it so. Oh yeah, ‘the sequel is nearly done’. Please don’t. Unless you completely dive off the beaten track for a while, I’ll be happy about it. It’s like Twilight in descending levels of idiocy, I will… probably be here commenting again…

I’m sure it’s also not ‘the first love triangle involving only two bodies’ as quoted from the back cover, although they have been smart enough to explicitly put ‘what MAY BE the first…. Etc’. Problem is that most love triangles like that become love dodecahedrons (or squares, pentagons, blah, if you like) so technically don’t count as ‘triangles’, not that the one in The Host does either (oh it could just VERY slightly) if you’re forgetting about Ian (poor guy). If you’re asking for a triangle involving two personalities in the one body, there are heaps out there.

SPOILERS

1. Ranma (1987)
This is going to be troublesome. First of all, Ranma can be female Ranma or male Ranma. Ranma is actually male but can turn into a female if cold water is splashed on him and changes back if hot water is slashed on him. Ok, so male Ranma and Akane are engaged, but Kuno likes/loves Akane (because of her viciousness and purity?) as well as female Ranma (who he just can’t seem to recognize as male Ranma) but Ryoga also likes Akane, but Akane thinks Ryoga is a pig (more of the body switch-change-thing) who she calls Pi-chan, who get snatched by some-girl-whose-name-I-don’t-remember who calls him Charlotte (they fight), but Shampoo also likes male Ranma because he defeated her (as a male) and therefore she has to marry him, but she wants (wanted) to kill female Ranma (who also defeated her), and Cologne, Shampoo’s grandmother wants Ranma to marry Shampoo while Akane tries to fight Shampoo as well as misunderstanding half the time and pummeling Ranma… BLAH.. oh I don’t know anymore. There’s a moment of strangeness and male Ranma and female Ranma in love, etc

2. Double Exposure (Brian Caswell) (2005)
Cain and Chris are twin brothers but Cain has (sort of amnesia) and forgotten that his family all died in a crash except for himself and keeps his family alive in his head. Therefore he is posing as his brother half the time and himself as half the time (when does he ever find the time to sleep?) so no one ever sees them together, just comments on how alike they are (duh, twins). Cain is in love with (girl-whose-name-I-forgot-too), but Chris is in love with Amy (ok, not important, really). That was written before The Host came out. If you’re going to play with ‘one of the first’ however, that’s really your problem. Jeez. Stop trying to claim the top prize.

So that’s two examples already. Split persona isn’t really new, even if two people in the one body isn’t quite the same. (Whatever anyway. That just gives it the chance to have a happy ending, whereas the two above just have to deal with it. You can’t both be happy because we’re Newtonian, yah? And the best male will always get the best female. At least, that’s what Austen says. But Meyer is so into the happy endings that she can’t let either side lose their happiness. Gosh, I actually thought Wanda had died. Sorry, but honestly. I thought it might be a break in a pattern for once. Disappointed. Somewhat.)

Oh yeah. You once could have categorized me as a Twilight Fan, now I’m a critique (to the best of my non-ability). I will not stand for it anymore. It’s not the greatest novel and it doesn’t have the greatest characters, in fact submissive Bella just makes me want to pummel her if Edward wouldn’t have killed me first. It’s true what the ‘article’/satirical piece ‘If Twilight were 10 times shorter and 100 times more truthful’. Bella is just a personality-less character for people to project themselves into so they can fawn over Edward, who I have said once, is a fictional character which makes it meaningless to fall in love with him anyway as he has no actual ‘appearance’ other than that of your fantasy. Film? Ok. Animation? Fine. Novel? Why are you falling in love with your mental image? Find something with more substance.

If there are Twilight fangirls who happen to read this. Sorry. But don’t flame. You can choose to ignore it because we as humans (yeah, not vampires) have a right to voice our opinions (unlike humans under the thumb of certain vampires) without people to stop us. Maybe I should care more about people’s feelings but this is not like it’s something that people can ignore. There’s truth in that you should not fall in love with fantastical characters in books which are actually figments of your own imagination. The same hot guy will be the same hot guy no matter which book you read, no matter if they have bronze hair and gold eyes (or black, whatever) or if they have green hair and purple eyes (unless you have a really wild imagination. Or something.). The point is, if you feel attraction to an actor (Rob if you want, not criticizing there, but many Twilight fans I point out did not see him fulfilling the role. I still don’t think he does) or a drawn character, this is not created by your imagination and there appears in some way to be some sort of justifiable basis for this attraction. For example, I like the look of Edward in the Japanese illustrations. This is better than just reading a book and falling in love with your own idealized image of this vampire boyfriend, who in the end is actually just ‘abusive and controlling’ (Check out a Gaia thread). Yeah, I finally reached my point. Check out the word idealized if you’re not getting what I’m saying. I’m not saying ‘Imagination is not a substitute for reality’, because I’m clearly saying it’s not so bad with created characters with actors or animations, or drawings (screw grammar), because they are not FACELESS. The whole projection thing happens again in a novel. Noone will be able to live up to the ideal, and you’re just going to be disappointed. (It’s All For Your Own Good. You know that.)

Ok. Enough ramble and enough lessons for today.

(… Ayama.