Avatar: The Last Airbender

I just watched the film The Last Airbender on TV. I think the film came out in 2010. It was badly reviewed everywhere so I wasn't expecting much. Which is just as well, it wasn't very good.

It's a pity. The film was based on Avatar: The Last Airbender which was a really great cartoon, one of my favourites. I watched it on Nickelodeon, all three seasons, something like 60 episodes.

I remember the first time I saw it. I was just flicking through TV stations and the cartoon immediately caught my attention. As it turned out, I'd stumbled onto an all-day Avatar marathon on Nickelodeon so I abandoned all other plans for the day and watched every episode they showed, rushing into the kitchen during the adverts to make tea and biscuits.

After that I followed the show relentlessly, catching up with the episodes I'd missed and watching all the new ones. There were many times, when watching Avatar: The Last Airbender that I'd find myself amazed at something that had just happened, and I'd think 'This is such a good cartoon.'

It was like a mixture of an Anime and an American cartoon and, it was full of good characters, all using their elemental powers for fighting, and traveling between adventures on a flying-bison. I was sad when it all came to an end at the end of the third season, and still sort of hope they might make some more.

So the film was a big disappointment. The cartoon was set in a fictional world that was mostly Asian, and the characters were basically Asian. Avatar Aang was like a young Chinese monk. However in the film, all the main young characters were played by white actors. It was very strange. This caused a lot of adverse comment when the film came out, I can see why. Plenty of people loved these characters as they were, and for the film studio to suddenly make them not Asian but white, seemed weird, and maybe racist as well.

I watched the film thinking 'Who the hell are these characters meant to be? I want to see them like they were in the cartoon' (There was one Asian actor as a main character. Unfortunately, he didn't seem right for his part either.)

This was only one of many problems. There were great characters in the cartoon but they didn't come across as great in the film. The dialogue was hopeless. And it was all so rushed. The film covered the first series of the cartoon, which was twenty episodes, but they crammed it all into 90 minutes. It was all a great disappointment. (I notice the film got awarded some Golden Raspberry awards for being the worst film of the year. To be fair, I'm not sure it was quite that bad. It was bad, but there were some reasonable action sequences and parts of it looked good.)

I saw it on TV so I don't know how the 3-D was. But I'm not interested in 3-D, and hope I never have to watch it.

There were another two series in the cartoon, so I suppose if the film had been a success there would have been two more films, but it doesn't seem like they will happen now. In a way this is a shame, because the film, being based on the first series of the cartoon, didn't even have some of the best characters, who arrive later. Toph, for instance, a young earth-bender. And Princess Azula, who is a really great villain. And is also one of the many cartoon females I fined myself strangely attracted to.

Well, I still recommend the cartoon anyway, it was great. I don't know if its still shown anywhere but if you come across it you should definitely watch it.

Japan World Cup / Intruder Alert

I very much enjoyed watching the women's world cup final between Japan and the USA. It was a really good game, played at a high standard. I didn't mind who won, as both teams were good. It was exciting right to the end, when Japan were the victors in a penalty shoot-out.

I toasted Japan's victory with some warm sake. Well, I was going to drink that anyway. But I pretended it was a toast. I've been able to buy sake more easily recently, as my local supermarket has started stocking it, so I don't have to shop online anymore, and wait for it to be delivered.

About 10.45 pm, not long after the game finished, I had an extremely alarming experience. Someone put a key in my front door and tried to open it! Actually, alarming doesn't quite cover it. I headed towards the front door, shouting loudly and attempting to sound fierce. This had no effect, and the unknown intruder kept trying to open my front door with a key

So I threw open the door, ready to fight for my life. OK, that's not quite accurate. I opened the door with the burglar chain still in place. But if the intruder had broken through that, I was definitely ready to fight for my life.

The intruder turned out to be a young man I recognised, from the next section of this block, so hopelessly drunk that he'd wandered into the wrong entrance. He was fumbling to open what he thought was his own front door. He looked at me quite cheerfully and smiled when I told him he had the wrong flat. Then he shook my hand before stumbling off.

So that was alarming. But for a drunk person, it was quite an easy mistake. There are various entrances to all the flats in this long block, and they all look exactly the same. I have on one occasion found myself wandering into the wrong entrance, though I did realise my mistake before I tried to open someone else's front door.

Afterwards I drank more sake and returned to watching The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, one of many anime I'm watching at the moment.

World Record for Ruining T-shirt

My new Claymore t-shirt arrived from the USA. I ripped open the package, put it on, and went to look in the mirror.

'Hmm' I thought. 'That's strange. Why is it blood-stained?'

I realised I'd cut myself shaving. I hadn't even noticed before. Only a small nick, but enough to get blood on the t-shirt when I put it on. Sigh. I took it off and put it in the washing machine, thinking that, while I am clumsy and never take care of anything properly, I can usually keep something for more than five seconds before destroying it.

T-shirt currently in washing machine, getting blood rinsed out, I hope.

I seem to have developed an obsession with buying manga t-shirts. Possibly some sort of mid-life crisis effect. While other men are buying sports cars, I'm buying manga t-shirts. Hmm. Well, I am a big fan of Claymore anyway. I'll be pleased with the t-shirt when it's stain-free.

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Here is an interview with me, and a good review of Lonely Werewolf Girl, on Jalisa Blackman's blog.

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Fetish Story and Fairy Story

Following my last blog, I decided to put the fetish story I wrote for Skin Two magazine on a separate blog, with an adult content warning. There's a link to it from the stories page of my website.

I also put another new story on my site, Rainith the Red. This is a tale about a fairy in London. It's quite a long story. I was commissioned to write it for an anthology, Wicked Pretty Things. However, this anthology proved to be rather ill-fated, and ended up not being published. So I've just decided to put the story on my site.

I used to have more stories on my website but I became bored with them long ago. I'll leave these two stories on there for a while.

I'm currently writing a third book about Kalix, troubled werewolf, which is coming along quite slowly.

Help Me With My Household problems. And Story Problems.

Current problems - Old TV - Sex story needing a home.

1) My television. This works perfectly well. But it's an old wide-screen TV, which means it is really huge and unwieldy. Not that I would generally be wielding it, I suppose. But it looks so old-fashioned compared to modern flat-screen TVs. Everyone else's TV is more modern than mine. People might be laughing at me behind my back.

Should I buy a new one? Or wait till mine goes wrong? If some old household appliance is working well, should you replace it just because you'd like a newer one? I've been puzzling about this for some time.

2) Sex story. I was looking at two stories I wrote for Skin Two, a fetish magazine. (Which closed for a while but has re-launched) I thought I like these stories but not many people had the chance to read them.

I used to have stories on my website, before I got bored with them all and removed them. So I thought I could just put these Skin Two stories on my website for people to read. Well, one of them anyway, which is better than the other. However, they were written for a fetish magazine and they're quite explicit. It was my intention, after receiving the commission for Skin Two, to write something that didn't avoid the subject of fetish and BDSM, but was quite cheerful. As opposed to gothic, gloomy or horrible. I thought I succeeded quite well. For stories which contain a lot of spanking, whipping and fucking, they're both rather cheerful. (to be fair to Skin Two, it also contained other good fiction, which wasn't gothic, gloomy or horrible.)

But I'm not sure about putting these stories on my website because having written Lonely Werewolf Girl and Curse of the Wolf Girl I seem to have become a teen or young adult author - which I never meant to do, it just happened by accident, though I'm not complaining because it's worked out well - and if young teenagers are visiting my website, maybe I shouldn't be putting explicit sex stories there. Might get complaints from outraged parents. I suppose I could post them somewhere else, but I have a low opinion of sites I've seen with sex stories on them. And who's going to read them there anyway?

Perhaps I'm worrying about nothing. There is so much pornography easily available on the internet, maybe no one would care at all about my cheerful fetish stories. But I'm not sure about that.

Comments and suggestions welcome.

Evelyn Waugh / K-On

I just finished re-reading Evelyn Waugh's Decline and Fall and Vile Bodies, his first two novels, published in 1928 and 1930. I read these a long time ago and wondered if they were as good as I remembered them. They were, particularly Vile Bodies, Waugh's account of the bright young things who occupied the pages of London gossip columnists in the aftermath of the First World War.

I enjoyed reading this again. It's funny, quite cutting in places and it moves along rapidly in a series of short scenes. I like the lack of emotion shown by the central character when his life threatens to fall apart. Soon after it was published, the book became well-known for the language used by the bright young things; Agatha describing something as 'too, too sick-making' being the most obvious example.

I must have read Vile Bodies before I wrote my first book, so I wonder why I didn't steal from it, which is the sort of thing I would expect myself to do. But I didn't, as far as I remember.

I like this paragraph, at the heart of the novel -

…Masked parties, Savage parties, Victorian parties, Greek parties, Wild West parties, Russian parties, Circus parties, parties where one had to dress as somebody else, almost naked parties in St John’s Wood, parties in flats and studios and houses and ships and hotels and night clubs, in windmills and swimming-baths, tea parties at school where one ate muffins and meringues and tinned crab, parties at Oxford where one drank brown sherry and smoked Turkish cigarettes, dull dances in London and comic dances in Scotland and disgusting dances in Paris - all that succession and repetition of massed humanity… Those vile bodies…

My own piece of Evelyn Waugh trivia - A character in Lost in Translation uses Evelyn Waugh as her pseudonym for checking in anonymously at a hotel, not realising that Evelyn Waugh was male. The incongruity is pointed out by the character played by Scarlet Johansson. Then Scarlet's husband derides her for being smart. The cad.

K-On

However, the effort of reading two actual novels did take it out of me. I was fatigued afterwards, and could only slump in front of the TV for several days. I recovered gradually with anime, and watched many episodes of K-On. (Target Demographic - Japanese Schoolchildren age 8 - 14, and Scottish authors unable to rise from the couch.)

Hmm. I wish I had a job writing this anime. It's all about a band called Ho-kago Tea Time, which translates to After School Tea Time. Despite this being set in a present-day Japanese School, there's one scene where, to sort of signify great rock music, they show a picture of Led Zeppelin. Ah, their appeal is eternal.

Small Bird Unhappiness.

I was walking home around eight-o-clock when I passed a small bird on the pavement, a baby sparrow I think. It was hopping around awkwardly. So I was concerned about this, but not sure what to do.

There didn't seem to be any trees around, or gardens, I wasn't sure where it could have come from. It was cowering on the pavement, looking unhappy.

I didn't want to pick it up, for two reasons. One, I had an idea that picking up a young bird is not a good thing to do, for the health of the bird. Two, I was nervous it might peck me and give me some incurable bird disease.

So after a few minutes dithering I phoned up the RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) but this wasn't so easy because I had to call directory enquiries and then I knew I didn't have much credit on my phone. I got through to the RSPCA helpline, but this again was quite complicated. It was all 'press button one for this, and button two for that, and button three…' Finally there was an option for wild animals in distress and the automated helpline said if you found a young bird you should leave it alone, because it was probably a fledgling which had hopped out the nest, and it's parents were still looking after it. It would be able to fly in a day or two.

I wasn't very convinced about this - I could't see any sort of place it might have come from so I wasn't sure how its parents would find it. But I wandered home anyway, feeling quite gloomy about the bird, and thinking I should have been able to do something better. (This is all in the context that I am a hopelessly disorganised and inefficient person at everything.)

Once home I looked at the RSPCA website, which again told me that fledgling birds should be left alone. But it did also say that they might need help if they were injured. And if they were in an exposed position, like not in a garden, for instance, they might need put up on a ledge, out of the way of cats.

Well, by now I was confused. This bird did seem like a fledgling, fresh out the nest, but it had also seemed a bit injured. Or maybe it wasn't injured, maybe it was just distressed because it was on the pavement. I had no idea, really.

The advice line was just an endless stream of number options, giving pre-recorded advice. So I decided to phone the other line, which is the animal cruelty line (Though this didn't seem quite right, as I wasn't actually reporting any cruelty). This line gave more options, which included a message saying that they get many calls about young birds that have left their nests but are fine really. So I was a bit put off, and thought I'd probably be wasting everyone's time with my phone call. But I persevered anyway, because by now I was feeling very gloomy about the little bird on the pavement.

Finally I got to a place on the phone where I could report a wild animal in distress, and the RSPCA will send out an inspector to look. But among the myriad of phone options, it tells you that you can't report this unless you can actually see the distressed animal at that moment. Because, said the phone line automated service, they waste lots of time sending inspectors to check on distressed wild animals that turn out not to be there any more.

Well, I can understand this. The RSPCA is a charity, they don't have endless resources, in fact I imagine they are hard-pressed to do their job at all.

So I could only report this bird in trouble if I could actually see it. I took a note of the number, ate a biscuit because I was hungry, and walked back up the road, thinking that if I saw the bird again, I could phone the RSPCA back and report it.

However, when I arrived there, which was about half an hour since I'd first been there, the little bird was gone. I had a good look round but there was no sign of it.

There was a wooden fence above where the bird had been, and above that a sort of concealed hedge, from the garden beyond. I wondered if the parent birds might have rescued the fledgling. But I didn't see how, I don't think parent birds could pick up one of their offspring when it's grown that much. There were also some gaps in the fence I hadn't noticed before. Maybe it had gone through one of them, and was safe in a garden.

Hmm. I sort of doubt it. I think it's more likely a cat ate it, or maybe one of the many urban foxes there are around here.

So I walked home feeling very gloomy about all this, and am still quite depressed. Had I been more organised, and not for instance the sort of person who is worried about catching diseases from wild animals - and in fact is quite nervous about animals when it comes right down to it - I'm sure I could have done more. I could have picked the bird up, and looked after it till I took it to a vet or something. So I'm feeling rather a failure about all this at the moment.

Portal, general malaise, t-shirt

Arsenal's disastrous end-of-season form - and some angst about the difficulty of life - but mainly Arsenal's poor form - cast me into deep gloom, a malaise so profound that even if top model Rosie Huntington Whiteley had knocked on my door to announce that A) She had a secret crush on me, B) She'd been a naughty girl, and C) She'd brought along some agent provocateur lingerie she'd just been modelling, I'd still have been gloomy.

This is obviously some serious gloom. What if she'd brought a bag of manga? Well, I suppose that might have helped. But I'll need some beer as well.

I look forward to the day I can just disappear into some giant virtual reality computer where that sort of thing can happen. I'd never come back.

My gloom did lift somewhat when my new Portal 2 t-shirt arrived in the post. Did I mention how I can become completely obsessed with video games? Here I am wearing my Portal t-shirt, a willing victim of their marketing department. And you can see how happy I look. Actually I was quite cheerful when that photo was taken.

Other things in picture - my kitchen wall - corner of elderly fridge - sock hanging over radiator. There were other socks, but they're out of shot.