I'm really enjoying the Saturday morning cartoon of Teen Titans.

In case you were unaware, Kids WB broadcasts the anime-influenced Teen Titans cartoon on Saturdays. While the original comic book of TT had teenagers around eighteen or nineteen, this seems to have teenagers around thirteen or fourteen. And it's anime-ish, and tones down the angst slightly. But still, all the characters are recognizable: Beast Boy deals with stress by making stupid jokes, which really gets on Cyborg's nerves; Raven does her best to be emotionless, while Starfire is entirely ruled by emotion; everybody really relies on Robin to keep the team together. That's all there in the comic.

But they do more with the fact that Starfire is an alien. Specifically, they've decided that this means that she has a somewhat different biochemistry than everyone else. . .
At a picnic:
"This yellow beverage is delicious! What is it called?"
"Umm. . . . that's mustard, Starfire."
"Is there any more?"

Arguing about pizza toppings:
"I think we should have a pizza with marshmallows, bananas, and mint frosting."
"Um, Starfire, not everything on the menu is a pizza topping."

After Titans Tower has been trashed in a battle, and cleaned up so that it's actually CLEAN for the first time in a while:
(dismayed) "Oh no! Someone has taken all our blue fuzzy food!"

Jo Walton, Anthony Trollope, dragons, Barchester

So. . . I read papersky's Tooth and Claw. And it was great. And I wanted to read more books like that, so Lis and I picked up The Warden, Trollope's first book in the Barchester novels.

To back up a minute: papersky, aka Jo Walton, likes Victorian novels, but gets annoyed at the stupid conventions of them -- how women are treated, and so forth. So she decided to write a Victorian novel, a pastiche on Anthony Trollope, except all the characters are dragons, and all the annoying conventions of the novels are simply facts of dragon biology.

So I read it, enjoyed it, wanted to read more like it, and went to Trollope. And I'm absolutely loving it.

The Barchester novels are a bunch of novels about a bunch of people who live in this little town in England. It mainly focuses on the clergy, in their role as sorta minor landed gentry. The Warden is nifty, because the primary conflict is between people who like and respect each other, and respect each other for being in conflict. Mr. Harding understands why Dr. Bold is taking him to court, and respects him for it; Dr. Bold understands that Mr. Harding doesn't believe that he's done anything wrong, and respects that position, as well.

If there's a bad guy in the piece -- and there isn't -- it's Charles Dickens. Or, "the author, Mr. Popular Sentiment."

Anyway, I finished that one, and went on to the next book, Barchester Towers, and spoilers for it are beyond the cut.( Read more... )

Totally blanking on class prep

As is often the case, I have absolutely no clue what I want to teach tomorrow.

None.

Totally blank.

If I had bunches of caligraphy pens, I can think of something that would be cool, but I don't. And that would only be good for like a quarter of class time, anyway.