![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lunasarielYesterday, Mom, Anna, and I wen to to SanFran for a day of ballet, really good food, books, and (for Mom) a complete neural breakdown. God, she gets snappy in crowds.
Anyway, we went for our annual viewing of The Nutcracker which we haven't seen for a few years. Honestly, I was disappointed. Everything grand and gothic and mysterious was replaced with bright colors and jokes. Out with Godfather Drosselmeyer crouching, batlike, eyes aglow, on top of the clock. Out with the Dickensian opening scene. Out with the Nutcracker Prince's shining, jewel-like court. Out with FREAKIN' RUSSIA!!! Now, it hits you over the head again and again with the idea that it takes place in San Francisco. Whoop-de-friggin'-do. And instead of Clara bravely and hopelessly throwing her slipper at the Mouse King in an attempt to distract him and substitute her own life for that of her beloved Nutcracker, she comes up with a battalion of toy soldiers and a giant mousetrap. Grrr. The sets were minimalistic and farcical in general. Overall analysis: great dancing, as always, but whoever was in charge of set design needs a good kick in the pants.
Before the Nutcracker, we went to Max's, that awesome café we went to for my 16th birthday. The food was a good as I remember it. We were a tad late, so we only had time for their famous desserts ;)
Afterwords, we had a series of hilarious misadventures searching for Japantown, but once we got there, it got better. *The* bookstore, Kinokuniya, has reorganized itself to put book-books on the upper floor, and manga and comics on the bottom. Anna and Mom went for dinner and possibly to find some shoes for Anna, since hers were hurting her feet, and I just browsed. I was disappointed to find that CLAMP only did the illustrations for CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators which is a novel. I didn't buy it, but I might someday. I also found the elusive Viewfinder, but it was in Japanese! Arrgh. I find that only the most widely appealing and pablum manga gets translated, which is a real tragedy, especially concerning yaoi. I really am getting bolder buying my boyluff. Yesterday I got The Lily and the Rose, and hardly twinged at all. I guess it was just that first hurdle that needed getting over.
Re: L&R: I try to be really selective when buying yaoi, even more so than usual. Let it never be said that Lunasariel only buys that with the highest cheesecake (what is the male equivalent of cheesecake, anyway? beefcake?) content. I stick strictly with fantasy and hi-fi. This one took place in Revolution-era France, and I rather liked it. The villain was slimy and a hornball in the worst sense of the word, the villainess was as beautiful as she was conniving, there were a couple of engaging side characters (a buxom and sweet maid, a kind and wise teacher, a cruel and bigoted teacher, and the villainess'es wrongfully righteous son, etc.), and of course our boys: a painfully shy priest who lives for his books and his God, and his roguishly charming ex-lover who lives for vengeance on the unknown man who killed his mother. Plenty of ups and downs, some underhanded dealings, a couple of deaths, vive la Revolution!, and finally a happily ever after. The last scene took place on a boat, and I had a moment of hope to see Sir Percy, seeing as how they were two noblemen fleeing lunatics who wanted to kill them for no good reason, but then they mentioned the "new world," so I guess they must have scarpered for America after all.
I really like Christophe, the uke. He is obviously deeply devoted to this Father Colbert, who raised him with kindness and understanding, who made him want to become a priest to carry on his good work, but I was afraid that all that would go out the window the second he decided that he really did love Alain. But as far as I can tell, he's still as holy as ever, only now more at peace with himself. I also liked how he took a more proactive role in his own life than I would have expected. The whole idea here is that the evil Cardinal Ducos tries to canoodle Christophe, fails, and then takes more drastic measures... anyway, the chips were down and it looked like the Cardinal was about to have his way with our hero (one of them, anyway). I was afraid that Alain, the dashing seme, would burst in at the last second, gun raised and murder in his eyes, a lá FAKE Vol. 2 (only without the motorcycle), but Christophe stabs the slimy old bastard, just the way we all wanted him to. And Alain's story was much more complex than I thought it would be. His mother (apparently a prostitute, but I thought she looked no more or less tawdry than any of the other ladies) hid him just in time for him to witness her murder and the killer identify himself as the Faun. He was being trained as a priest alongside Christophe, but they are caught kissing and Alain runs away. He asks Christophe to go with him, but the priest-to-be's devotion to Father Colbert is too strong, and the young lovers part ways. Years later, Alain has taken on the identity of a debonair young nobleman, and is sleeping with a comtesse because she claims to know who the Faun is, and it has become something of an obsession for Alain to kill him. At the end, the Comtesse sics him on an innocent man, then reveals that the Faun was her late husband, who died a year ago of syphilis, shortly before Alain arrived as Marquis Maximilian de Saint-Germain. And that's just the bare bones of the story...
So overall, a pretty good read. Yaoi Press' stuff seems consistently OK, if they do tend to lean towards uber-prettiness. Better than those marshmallow-headed harpies at June or DMP.
Anyway, we went for our annual viewing of The Nutcracker which we haven't seen for a few years. Honestly, I was disappointed. Everything grand and gothic and mysterious was replaced with bright colors and jokes. Out with Godfather Drosselmeyer crouching, batlike, eyes aglow, on top of the clock. Out with the Dickensian opening scene. Out with the Nutcracker Prince's shining, jewel-like court. Out with FREAKIN' RUSSIA!!! Now, it hits you over the head again and again with the idea that it takes place in San Francisco. Whoop-de-friggin'-do. And instead of Clara bravely and hopelessly throwing her slipper at the Mouse King in an attempt to distract him and substitute her own life for that of her beloved Nutcracker, she comes up with a battalion of toy soldiers and a giant mousetrap. Grrr. The sets were minimalistic and farcical in general. Overall analysis: great dancing, as always, but whoever was in charge of set design needs a good kick in the pants.
Before the Nutcracker, we went to Max's, that awesome café we went to for my 16th birthday. The food was a good as I remember it. We were a tad late, so we only had time for their famous desserts ;)
Afterwords, we had a series of hilarious misadventures searching for Japantown, but once we got there, it got better. *The* bookstore, Kinokuniya, has reorganized itself to put book-books on the upper floor, and manga and comics on the bottom. Anna and Mom went for dinner and possibly to find some shoes for Anna, since hers were hurting her feet, and I just browsed. I was disappointed to find that CLAMP only did the illustrations for CLAMP School Paranormal Investigators which is a novel. I didn't buy it, but I might someday. I also found the elusive Viewfinder, but it was in Japanese! Arrgh. I find that only the most widely appealing and pablum manga gets translated, which is a real tragedy, especially concerning yaoi. I really am getting bolder buying my boyluff. Yesterday I got The Lily and the Rose, and hardly twinged at all. I guess it was just that first hurdle that needed getting over.
Re: L&R: I try to be really selective when buying yaoi, even more so than usual. Let it never be said that Lunasariel only buys that with the highest cheesecake (what is the male equivalent of cheesecake, anyway? beefcake?) content. I stick strictly with fantasy and hi-fi. This one took place in Revolution-era France, and I rather liked it. The villain was slimy and a hornball in the worst sense of the word, the villainess was as beautiful as she was conniving, there were a couple of engaging side characters (a buxom and sweet maid, a kind and wise teacher, a cruel and bigoted teacher, and the villainess'es wrongfully righteous son, etc.), and of course our boys: a painfully shy priest who lives for his books and his God, and his roguishly charming ex-lover who lives for vengeance on the unknown man who killed his mother. Plenty of ups and downs, some underhanded dealings, a couple of deaths, vive la Revolution!, and finally a happily ever after. The last scene took place on a boat, and I had a moment of hope to see Sir Percy, seeing as how they were two noblemen fleeing lunatics who wanted to kill them for no good reason, but then they mentioned the "new world," so I guess they must have scarpered for America after all.
I really like Christophe, the uke. He is obviously deeply devoted to this Father Colbert, who raised him with kindness and understanding, who made him want to become a priest to carry on his good work, but I was afraid that all that would go out the window the second he decided that he really did love Alain. But as far as I can tell, he's still as holy as ever, only now more at peace with himself. I also liked how he took a more proactive role in his own life than I would have expected. The whole idea here is that the evil Cardinal Ducos tries to canoodle Christophe, fails, and then takes more drastic measures... anyway, the chips were down and it looked like the Cardinal was about to have his way with our hero (one of them, anyway). I was afraid that Alain, the dashing seme, would burst in at the last second, gun raised and murder in his eyes, a lá FAKE Vol. 2 (only without the motorcycle), but Christophe stabs the slimy old bastard, just the way we all wanted him to. And Alain's story was much more complex than I thought it would be. His mother (apparently a prostitute, but I thought she looked no more or less tawdry than any of the other ladies) hid him just in time for him to witness her murder and the killer identify himself as the Faun. He was being trained as a priest alongside Christophe, but they are caught kissing and Alain runs away. He asks Christophe to go with him, but the priest-to-be's devotion to Father Colbert is too strong, and the young lovers part ways. Years later, Alain has taken on the identity of a debonair young nobleman, and is sleeping with a comtesse because she claims to know who the Faun is, and it has become something of an obsession for Alain to kill him. At the end, the Comtesse sics him on an innocent man, then reveals that the Faun was her late husband, who died a year ago of syphilis, shortly before Alain arrived as Marquis Maximilian de Saint-Germain. And that's just the bare bones of the story...
So overall, a pretty good read. Yaoi Press' stuff seems consistently OK, if they do tend to lean towards uber-prettiness. Better than those marshmallow-headed harpies at June or DMP.
