cleolinda: (black ribbon)
cleolinda ([personal profile] cleolinda) wrote2006-09-25 05:51 pm

An entry with almost nothing but cheerful things in it

For fun, I pulled out a couple of old tarot-reading books--I collect tarot decks for the artwork--and played a little game I've done with another project once before: try to fit all the characters in a story, and some events if you have to, into the Major Arcana. If you have a lot of characters and/or want to get really fancy, you can start in on the Minor Arcana as well (which are actually more suited to events than the Major).

The fun part is trying to go by the meanings of the cards, not just the imagery, although I immediately went to "The Empress" on my list and wrote in Queen Victoria. The World is the British empire; the Chariot is the steam locomotive (with two tracks instead of two horses, because I are smart), and so on. I was overly excited to realize that I had an actual magician character who fit the Magician, who is traditionally pictured with roses and lilies, and who in my series actually is friends with... a Rose and a Lilly. Hand to God, I'm not making this up. I am struggling with the High Priestess a bit, although I think I know who it might be, and I have way too many possibilities for the Moon. The really exciting thing, though, was figuring out the Star, because it helped me clarify the role of a certain character (one you haven't met yet) in the two series. Which, ideally, is the purpose of the tarot-for-writers game in the first place.

Interestingly, Rose Hannah turned out to fit Strength the best--in part for a reason I can't reveal yet, but will turn up in the second volume, the one with a side trip to the Paris catacombs. And West was so completely Justice that it was almost funny: “When this card appears it ask us to identify what we did wrong and to claim our own mistakes - and perhaps to apologize for something we have done.”

Headlines you don't see every day: Pa. farm discovers a 4-legged chicken; court says $32,000 is too much to fondle bosom. To be fair, they did charge for ten separate fondling occasions.

[livejournal.com profile] anoneknewmoose: "A site called Bitacle.org is reposting LJ posts from the RSS feeds including, in my case, f-locked posts, and there have been cases of other LJ uses reposting peoples' writing found on Bitacle." Uh. That's not good. Does Livejournal know about this? Maybe there's some kind of crawler they can block.

Oprah: My lawyers overreacted.

Dolphin may get prosthetic tail. Awwww.

Acrobat Panda.

New images from Order of the Phoenix. Okay, now Harry's hair isn't shaggy enough.

Find 50 Dark Movies on the M&Ms site. AHHHHHHHH. This is deeply embarrassing if you fancy yourself a movie buff. Apparently in my universe, there are movies called The Juggler, Death in a Fence, Killer Butterflies, Crazy Apes, A Bunch of Losers Fighting Over Who Gets to Be Zero, The Child Snatcher, Tied-Up Guy in a Bear Hat, When Planets Collide, Dancing in Blood, I Told You to Stop for Directions, and Bastard Fish. Clues: if there are a number of things, count them; it might help. Try to think of "dark" movie titles and then go look for those--there were a couple of movies I knew automatically would be in the picture, because they're 1) well-known and 2) easy to draw. Burton, Shyamalan, Lynch, Hitchcock and Gilliam are all represented at least once. Some recent Japanese horror remakes are in there as well as some classics from the '70s. Sling Blade and Big Fish are not correct answers. They're not all horror movies; some of them I would term thrillers, and loosely at that. (Here's a wallpaper version of the full painting, if you'd like to study it. You have to open the flash site to get the fill-in blanks.) I managed to solve it in about nineteen minutes, but only with Google-fu cheating on three answers ("OH, WHATEVER, MOVIE GAME").


ETA: Okay, I was bored. I made icons.







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[identity profile] t4-flirt.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 11:55 pm (UTC)(link)
yay. HP news. Too bad my server's being an asshat and not letting me view the link :(

oh well, I need to pay attn to the tv anyway...U2 is perfroming @ the Superdome on Monday Night Football & the hubby has requested I tape it cuz he's at work.

[identity profile] tabbyclaw.livejournal.com 2006-09-25 11:56 pm (UTC)(link)
Your potential "dark" movie titles made me laugh way, way too much. I so wanna see Death in a Fence now.

[identity profile] danisse.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:04 am (UTC)(link)
Everyone's hair looks off in OoP. Neville looks like Hitler.
fishsanwitt: (Default)

[personal profile] fishsanwitt 2006-09-26 12:08 am (UTC)(link)
That Bitacle thing is scaring me. Does anyone know what it is?

[identity profile] http://users.livejournal.com/_ravengirl/ 2006-09-26 12:18 am (UTC)(link)
I don't get what the bitacle thing does :S
fiveforsilver: (Default)

[personal profile] fiveforsilver 2006-09-26 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
I am so going to fail at this m&m thing. Of course, I don't watch horror or thriller movies, so it's possibly surprising that I've gotten 15 in about 10 minutes, and without cheating (yet)

[identity profile] anoneknewmoose.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
Re: the Bitacle website--I've realized the now f-locked posts are posts that were public when the feed was published (I recently did an auto f-lock all old posts on my journal). Still, though, there's no way to opt-out or get your posts removed, which is no bueno.

[identity profile] kalliopeia.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
Bastard Fish. ahahahahahaha. There needs to be a movie called Bastard Fish. I need it like I need air.

[identity profile] edda.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
That movie game is EATING MY BRAIN. I've got half of them. AIGH.

[identity profile] elyim.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
Ten minutes and I've found 20 23 24... is there such a film as Pumpkin Head Boy? Most of them I just guessed, not expecting it to be right... and then I overlook the most obvious ones (found a 25th which made me facepalm and go "duh!")...

[identity profile] theonlykow.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:27 am (UTC)(link)
The movie bit is fantastic. I love it.

[identity profile] almostnever.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:53 am (UTC)(link)
That movie game is pulling my hair and making fun of my shoes. What the hell are those planets in the sky if not When Worlds Collide (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0044207/)? There's a guy with a basket over his head but it's not Basketcase? I can't even tell what that fucker in the lower right hand corner is supposed to be!

I lose at movie game. D:

[identity profile] claddagh812.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 12:54 am (UTC)(link)
Somehow, looking at the Bitacle site made me find a snippet of a post I made in [livejournal.com profile] customers_suck a few months ago...in Encyclopedia Dramatica. Umm. Who the hell put that there?

[identity profile] tifaria.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 01:05 am (UTC)(link)
Oh man, that movie thing is too much fun. I completely guessed on some of them and was surprised when I was right. :D

[identity profile] katytowell.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 01:36 am (UTC)(link)
I totally tried "When Planets Collide" when I did this a few days ago.

And "Death in the Middle."

And... this one kind of embarrasses me...

"Jacob's Lantern."

*facepalm*

[identity profile] runbread.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
i totally guessed "when planets collide", too.

i mean, it just makes SENSE, doesn't it?

[identity profile] arielchan.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
The Bitacle thing is wtf. I searched for my username and came up with TWO people I have no connection to at all who have linked to me. WTF? Where did they find me?

[identity profile] lafemmezilla.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 01:55 am (UTC)(link)
Ohhh I am taking the Death in a Fence. Brilliant!

And I'm so embarrassed by my inability to get the guys arguing about zero.

[identity profile] sorchar.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 01:57 am (UTC)(link)
HAHAHA I like your answers better. It took me and Val like, an HOUR to do that thing, and even then we had to cheat.

[identity profile] eofs.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 02:00 am (UTC)(link)
I had terrific fun with the Dark Films thing yesterday. By the time I'd reached fifty (requiring clues with the last dozen or so) I'd still only named 3 films I've actually seen. So I was pretty pleased with myself.

Shame really that it's not going to make me buy dark chocolate M&Ms, even if they are released over here. Because a) dark chocolate is yuck and b) M&Ms are yuck. Alas.

[identity profile] glass-radical.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 02:13 am (UTC)(link)
Uggh that movie game made me crazy-go-nuts.

Some of those were a huge stretch.

[identity profile] metonymy.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 02:31 am (UTC)(link)
What the hell, movie game. Evil monkeys? Juggling pennies? Maybe I'm really dumb or live under a rock, but WHAT.

[identity profile] princessstarr.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 02:44 am (UTC)(link)
I gave up with 15 left and cheated...with some of the obvious ones. *facepalm*

(I got the staircase right off the bat, but the two guys on it? Yeah, not so much.)

[identity profile] deathwatchlove.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 02:45 am (UTC)(link)
Re: dark movies game.

I got all of them in about five minutes. However, it says it can't save my score. Terribly sad, isn't it?

[identity profile] greyduck.livejournal.com 2006-09-26 02:46 am (UTC)(link)
The bitacle thing: They're doing it to pretty much any "blog-like" thing with an RSS feed. Those of us on the WordPress/MovableType side of things who have the ability to use an .htaccess file can do one nifty little thing:
RewriteEngine On
Deny From bitacle.org

It won't get rid of all the "sploggers" out there, but it gets rid of that most-prominent one... at least they can't steal any new content from me or mine.

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