![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Weird internet stuff and a book rec
Apr. 5th, 2014 06:50 pmThree unrelated items make a post!
1) These pictures from a dog grooming competition, wherein people trim, sculpt, and dye their dogs' fur into elaborate designs, are right on the boundary between hilarious and disturbing. I have so many questions: How do they make the dogs stand still for all this? Who does this to their animal? Why don't they just take up crafting (with nonliving materials)? How can I cleanse my brain of the image of the dog with the Yoda head and an Ewok on its butt? Which of these dogs is most likely to murder its owners in their sleep for what they did to it?
2) I just finished reading Cold Magic by Kate Elliott, which I highly recommend. Firstly, because the worldbuilding is really cool and inventive. It takes place in 1837 in a world with the bones of our world, but radically different in ways both magical (magic is undeniably real here), physical (the Ice Age never really ended, so sea levels are lower and ice sheets cover northern Europe), and historical (the Roman Empire persisted for centuries longer and seemingly without Christianity ever becoming a big thing, and a disaster drove large numbers of people from the wealthy Mali empire into Europe a few hundred years ago, resulting in fusions of European and African cultures and bloodlines). The world is so different that I'm not sure whether this book can really be called an alternate history fantasy or if it's more of a high fantasy. Either way, very cool stuff. Secondly, it's a rare treat to have fantasy, especially historical fantasy, with a racially diverse cast, and this book has diversity in spades. Characters of color outnumber the white ones by a fair amount. (Incidentally, the cover of the edition I own whitewashes the protagonist. WTF, publisher? Why those blue eyes?) Thirdly, I found it a very entertaining read. There were a few sections that were kind of a series of minimally related events happening, but overall I found it gripping.
3) I'm excited about the new season of Game of Thrones coming up soon. In honor of that, here is a video proving that using Autotune to make characters sing doesn't have to be exclusively the realm of ridiculous "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" sorts of things. This vid gives me lots of feels, although that is partially because it is a lot of Daenerys and Jon Snow's faces. I just have a lot of emotions about their faces. (The vid spoils only S1.)
1) These pictures from a dog grooming competition, wherein people trim, sculpt, and dye their dogs' fur into elaborate designs, are right on the boundary between hilarious and disturbing. I have so many questions: How do they make the dogs stand still for all this? Who does this to their animal? Why don't they just take up crafting (with nonliving materials)? How can I cleanse my brain of the image of the dog with the Yoda head and an Ewok on its butt? Which of these dogs is most likely to murder its owners in their sleep for what they did to it?
2) I just finished reading Cold Magic by Kate Elliott, which I highly recommend. Firstly, because the worldbuilding is really cool and inventive. It takes place in 1837 in a world with the bones of our world, but radically different in ways both magical (magic is undeniably real here), physical (the Ice Age never really ended, so sea levels are lower and ice sheets cover northern Europe), and historical (the Roman Empire persisted for centuries longer and seemingly without Christianity ever becoming a big thing, and a disaster drove large numbers of people from the wealthy Mali empire into Europe a few hundred years ago, resulting in fusions of European and African cultures and bloodlines). The world is so different that I'm not sure whether this book can really be called an alternate history fantasy or if it's more of a high fantasy. Either way, very cool stuff. Secondly, it's a rare treat to have fantasy, especially historical fantasy, with a racially diverse cast, and this book has diversity in spades. Characters of color outnumber the white ones by a fair amount. (Incidentally, the cover of the edition I own whitewashes the protagonist. WTF, publisher? Why those blue eyes?) Thirdly, I found it a very entertaining read. There were a few sections that were kind of a series of minimally related events happening, but overall I found it gripping.
3) I'm excited about the new season of Game of Thrones coming up soon. In honor of that, here is a video proving that using Autotune to make characters sing doesn't have to be exclusively the realm of ridiculous "They're Taking the Hobbits to Isengard" sorts of things. This vid gives me lots of feels, although that is partially because it is a lot of Daenerys and Jon Snow's faces. I just have a lot of emotions about their faces. (The vid spoils only S1.)