sarea: (stiles faceplant)
HOW can it be November already? How? Why is it that when you're a kid, time seems to last so long, and childhood seems like a lifetime, then once you're out of high school, time zips away in the blink of an eye? It's so weird!! (And scary.)

I used to love YA fiction when I was, you know, a young adult. As I got older, I stopped reading them. Then I got back into them again in my mid-20s, but usually only if they were part of some bigger plotline (and usually involving supernatural or dystopic worlds). However, recently, I've gotten back into reading straight YA that's just about teens going through their regular, non-supernatural lives, and have discovered a new genre, "New Adult," which I am convinced became a genre due to the proliferation of self-published fanfic. New Adult fits right in between YA and Harlequin on the romance level, wherein you have the fun of reading about first loves and teenage drama, but doesn't stop at kissing and hand holding.

I have been reading a lot of these lately. I don't know if it's the time of year, with Seattle gray weather making me feel depressed, or just the inexorable passage of time making me feel nostalgic, but suddenly I've been eating these up like candy. And due to the aforementioned self-published fanfic (with the names changed, of course), there are a ton of them out there, available very cheaply. Unfortunately, many of them very obviously started out as fanfic, with typical fanfic problems of grammar issues, stories that don't stop happening even long past their charm, typos, etc. That said, as we all know, certain kinds of fanfic also have a draw that can't be quantified, that are interesting and emotionally provoking even if not technically perfect, and I've run into those as well.

A lot of them are what I suspect to be ex-Twilight stories. I don't know how broad this knowledge is, but Twilight fic is almost all AU fic wherein the characters do not resemble the book characters at all, other than maybe in looks, with all the supernatural elements stripped out and only the names kept the same. It's a really bizarre phenomenon that I've never understood, and thankfully do not have first-hand knowledge of, but am well versed in, due to a friend totally being into it. Anyway, there are quite a few of these NA stories that make me suspect they started out as Twilight fanfic, and some I know for sure did.

Anyway, onto the list of YA/NA that I've read recently, some of which I rec, some of which I want to save you from if you'll let me.

Just shut up and tell me about the stories. )

So, what have you guys been reading?

Off topic, breaking in my Docs has been going well. I did get a blister on my left heel, but it was my fault for not wearing a double layer of socks when still in the break-in period.
sarea: (troy and annie)
Oh my giddy god have all of you been busy. I swear I checked AO3 and the C/N comm before I left on my trip and approximately 8173298720 stories have posted since then. *head spins* Looks like I will not be doing much writing in the coming days, as I have too much reading to catch up on. >.>

Two more deleted scenes from The Avengers have posted, both involving Clint. One is Clint strategizing with Loki (or rather, Loki is asking Clint how to go about taking over the Earth, because he doesn't have any ideas of his own, and Clint is doing all the strategizing -- I swear, if Loki hadn't brainwashed Clint, he'd still be stomping around without a clue), the other is Nick Fury talking to the World Security Council. Both scenes reference the fact that Clint did not kill Fury when he had the chance, shooting him in the chest rather than the head. It's interesting because I've debated with Jade over whether or not he did that on purpose; it's always kind of bothered me that Selvig retained part of himself while brainwashed (by putting in a failsafe to the Tesseract portal), whereas Clint apparently didn't. These scenes prove (or at least suggest) otherwise, and I'm really annoyed that they were both cut. I'm giving up on embedding/linking to the videos, because they keep getting taken down. Instead, I will share transcripts of both scenes. )

I have been reading some pretty terrible teen lit. Actually it's generally all pretty terrible, which is why it's such a find when things like The Mortal Instruments or The Hunger Games or even Divergent come along. One of the things that's wrong with modern teen lit is that they have cheesy, guilty pleasure premises, but they don't go with it. They try to make them 'realistic,' thereby ruining any chance for pleasure you might've gotten out of it. If I wanted realistic, I wouldn't read teen lit, and certainly not one with such premises. Obviously people like me choose to read teen lit with cheesy summaries because they want the guilty pleasure of it!! Examples. There are spoilers. )

I'm also finally reading The Girl Who Played with Fire. I find the writing -- or maybe it's the translation -- kind of annoying, and Salander and Blomkvist are both such Mary Sue/Gary Stus, but it's just one of those series I've always meant to finish. (Of course, I said that about the Twilight series, and yet I've been on book 4 for like 2 years.)

And then there's Breaking Bad, which is like, the one shining beacon of quality in the media I've recently consumed. Breaking Bad 5x06 'The Buyout' spoilers! )

After I got back from Vancouver, K. wanted to see The Bourne Legacy, so I happily saw it again. I have now seen it FOUR TIMES. Heehee. I don't know if I can get tired of seeing it. They could turn the sound off and I'd still enjoy watching it. >.> Anyway, K. liked it a lot. I'd warned her ahead of time that there was no third act, so that might've helped. She was like, "I don't see what's wrong with the ending." She didn't understand any of the complaints people had, myself included, so maybe she's just easier to please. We also saw the new Spider-man movie, and while I thought Andrew Garfield made a more convincing high school student, and I liked his Spidey personality more than Tobey Maguire's earnest Spidey, I didn't much care for the movie. I didn't think it brought anything original or particularly interesting to the table, the villain was lame, there were too many scenes that lingered too long for no reason, and I wasn't into the romance with Gwen Stacy. I thought Emma Stone and Andrew Garfield had very little chemistry, which might be explained because aren't they involved IRL? Actors who are together IRL have no tension. I learned that from Joey on Friends and IT'S SO TRUE.

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