...but Kari Byron's wardrobe on the present season of Mythbusters has included a distinctive cowl-necked, side-buttoned gray trenchcoat; it strikes me as a dashing garment that would lend itself to a number of retrofantastic looks.

(One commenter on Redheaded Goddess Forums, where I found the image, sneered that it looked like "a costume from a 80's sci-fi series"--but not everyone would regard that as a bad thing.)

Does anyone out there have any idea where she might have gotten it?

ETA: braisinhussy has identified the coat as All Saints' (unfortunately discontinued) Nahara Trenchcoat.

For reasons that don't need exploring at this juncture, I find myself in need of a good romance novel, and I don't really know what to look for. Can someone recommend something? I'm not really looking for anything in particular, just nothing too outlandish or, you know, vampire-y or secret millionaire-y; I need characters I can identify with.

(I'm inclined to get one of Nora Roberts's books, because I like to give money to intelligent and sarcastic people, but other suggestions are most welcome as well.)

Thanks!

EDIT: Thanks all! I got a couple that looks like they'll do the trick, and one was in fact Bet Me.

Ok, I'm looking for anime-centric LiveJournal communities to join and participate in. Not ones for specific series, but ones that discuss anime in general.

Preferably ones that welcome someone that likes K-On and Gundam. Ones that don't deride something because it's "moe" or champion one just because it's "grimdark." Ones that welcome everyone who likes anime.

I'm asking here because frankly sorting through all anime tags at LJ is intimidating. All the forums I've been participating to this point are either a.) taken over by a cliche of near-trolls due to the creator/maintainer not giving a damn; b.) spend all their time RPing (nothing wrong with it in itself, but there's zero discussion in anything else); c.) fixated more on fan-fiction than what inspired it; or d.) series specific.

So, somehow I landed a small gig at my old comic art school - they want me to teach a "how to draw manga" course. (It's a very small, community-run school, so I guess they had no problem overlooking my mediocre artistic prowess in favor of the fact that I'm the only one on staff that actually knows anything about manga.) The only problem is that, while my style is graphically very similar to manga, and I follow the Japanese pop culture market a lot, I don't actually *read* a lot of manga myself (in case anyone cares, I'm not hot about the way the production process impacts the storytelling and I find that a lot of stories suffer in terms of pacing and closure because of that. /thoughtsaboutyaoi.).

Ok, so here's the beef: one of my two classes is entirely composed of 11-12 year olds, and I don't know many good manga that fall into that demographic (the stuff I usually read - Urasawa, the Utena opus, and a few seinen - is definitely not suitable). I'm planning to invite the kids to bring their favorite books to class so we can discuss them together, but I'd like to bring myself up to speed and have something to propose to them. So fandom_lounge, throw at me your ideas about cool manga aimed at preteens: the more unusual, creative, and non-formulaic the better! I have some artists like Tezuka and Yoshihiro Togashi on my mind, but I wonder if the kids would find them dated. I'm also very interested about western artists that incorporate elements of the manga style, always falling in the same demographic (Alessandro Barbucci's stuff and graphic novels like Chew and I Kill Giants being among my favorites, but still not something I'd rec to a young'un).

Sorry about the wall of text, and thanks in advance for any suggestions!

Hello!

Me and snacky are working on a story idea, a version of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen set in the 30s-40s (with some slight fudging of timelines to let some people be old enough like Susan Pevensie) or young enough, we're having trouble finalizing the cast.

Me and Snacky are well-read, but unfortunately if asked to name characters from that time period off the top of the head all we list are white women.

So if you could name literary characters of colour (hopefully public domain) from this time period. So far we have... Mowgli and we know we've read more. Also, if you could name lbtq follk (we have our Theories about the bisexuality of Anne of Anne of Green Gables) that would be neat too!

Thanks to anyone who helps us! This fic may never happen, but it'll be fun to work on it.

Starting the most unspeakably, abysmally BORING new job in the history of the world (call centre sales) seems to have kick-started my ability to write fan fiction: I've written five fics in under a month. The problem is, having mostly lurked on the fringes of fandom I have no idea of where to post them. So, I turn to you guys: where are the best places in Harry Potter, James Bond, Disney, Doctor Whoniverse, DC/Sandman and Marvel movieverse fandoms to post fic on LJ and Dreamwidth? The fic in question is gen, mostly female-character focused, if that makes any difference.

And just for fun: what are you guys working on right now and/or plotting for NaNoWriMo? Yesterday I finished a fic about Professor McGonagall from Harry Potter taking tea with Judi Dench's M from James Bond, and I've just got started on one about Time Lady!Mary Poppins. I'm also researching and plotting out my NaNo, which is going to be an update of the 'Five Find-Outers' books by Enid Blyton with the kids as adults in the 1950s.

Post excerpts if you feel like it! I'd love to find some new authors to read.

My eight-year-old has discovered Pokemon. We've been playing the trading card game (a lot), but now she's interested in finding a video game she can play. The problem is that we don't have any kind of gaming system (well, okay, I have a Sega Genesis, but I don't think that will be helpful for this). I Googled "Pokemon game for pc" and twenty minutes later realized I was way, way over my head. So, fandom_lounge, I come to you in my hour of need.

( Details of what I'm looking for )

ETA: Thanks so much for all the advice! I've got some really good options for how to play, and good starting recs on what to play (and what not to play). Thanks again. You're the best. :)

downforeveryoneorjustme says it's up, but I can't for the life of me get the pages to load. I was sure it was my internet crapping out on me but, all my other pages load, albeit slow. Anyone else?

Hello, everyone. I just finished watching Moshidora a few days ago and went looking for fan fiction. I was sure I could find some. Imagine my surprise when I turned up nothing. Now, granted, my search skills are somewhat rusty, but there was nothing I could find on ff.net, LJ, or AO3. So I'm here asking if anyone knows of fic for this anime. Specifically shipping fics between Minami and any of the main guys, but gen works too. I'm not a slash fan, though friendship fic between Minami and Yuki that slightly blurs the line is okay.

If you haven't heard of Moshidora, it's about a girl who takes over as manager of her high school baseball team while her friend is in the hospital and uses Peter Drucker's Management, a book about corporate management, to bring change to the team. It's cute, focusing more on character development than sports, and it's a nice short series clocking in at ten episodes. Worth watching.

I could've sworn ages ago I read a JF post about the controversy surrounding the Kaavya Viswanathan plagiarism scandal, but for the life of me don't know where it is. I searched OTF and Clairvoyant for the time period the book was printed but no dice. So was it in another comm altogether or is my brain turning to Swiss cheese?

Hey all,

I have a request! I'm looking for some good shojo or actually josei as well to read. I'll try to narrow down my interests...I mean, I like X1999 type stuff, urban fantasy, action-y, adventury. Obviously, since it's shojo it'll have that romance element, so it's okay if it has that, but it's okay if it doesn't. I've read Vampire Knight but...yeah. I dunno. It's not that great.

Actually I almost wish Clamp would just hurry up and finish X!! But that probably won't happen any time soon ;___;

Anyway, if anyone has any recs, I'd really appreciate it!! ALSO: random, but is it too late to sign up for this pottermore thing?

So, I've finally managed to see the last Harry Potter film and, to put it briefly, I am full of feelings. Mostly, those feelings are about how much I bloody love those characters, and the ladies of Hogwarts and the Order in particular (oh, McGonagall, you are still my favourite-ever BAMF).

So my request is this: does anyone know of any particularly good HP fanvids celebrating the various characters of Harry Potter/in tribute to the end of the series? (Yes, I've seen dazzleme7's Marchin' On. It made me cry.) What I'd really, really like, though, is a vid or twelve celebrating the women.

So a long while back some people recommended Party Down to me, back in the days it was airing and I was like, "uh, okay, I'll check it" which of course meant "I'll wait a year until it's summer again and everything in the world is a downer so I'll need something comedic to watch".

And lo and behold, I watched it and loved it! It took two episodes for me to warm to it but after that I began to adore it: loved all the characters, cast (Lizzy Caplan! Martin Starr! Jane mf'ing Lynch!) and the brilliance of the script.

So, questions..

1) Is there any sort of an active fandom? I'm guessing no, this thing seems so underappreciated.. I saw some fics but I could count them with fingers of one hand, and there was barely any babble on LJ that I saw of. Of course, comedy shows rarely sport active fandoms regardless of quality, apart from like, Community & The Office, so I guess it's not that rare.

2) Are there Region 2 DVD's? I'd love to purchase them but neither my laptop nor my DVD player are all-Region. (Google-fu says no but I remain hopeful..)

3) Is the Party Down movie destined to become the new Arrested Development movie (awaited but never shows signs of actually getting made)? :D

4) Your favourite quote/character/scene?


PS. If you're a Netflixer in the US, I hear it's available on Netflix Instant so if you're a fan of comedy, check it out! :)

First Choice/Superchannel in Canada in the 1980s? It's been bugging me for a few years now and I have no idea how to search for this if it's even on Youtube.

Okay, so in between (commercial-free!) feature-length movies there'd be short intermission-y things and one I seem to vaguely remember was a... I dunno, Meep the Puppet kinda thing? It was basically a little musical short that maybe lasted three minutes and was probably aimed at kids, since the tune was simple and repetitive. I also remember lots of yellow lights.

It sounded like it was being played on a recorder and the basic tune was something like dootdooDOT dootdooDOT dootdooDOT DOT DOT.

Shot in the dark, people, but if it's on Youtube I can watch it and finally remember this thing! :P

I kind of want to relive the flamewar that was the Internet's reaction to Endless Eight. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find any reference to it whatsoever in the archives (at least where it belongs). Did anyone ever report on it, or is that fiasco truly lost to the forces of bitrot?

I'm looking to get my kid sister into some good easy-to-read fantasy. She's twelve, a non-native English speaker and she can understand most TV dialogue, but doesn't have the patience to read English for too long in one sitting. I've tried books for younger readers, but she gets bored easily by too-simple books.

So, I'm thinking of getting her some Terry Pratchett YA books, like Amazing Maurice (she loves cats!), the illustrated Wee Free Men and the Bromeliad trilogy, but I'm stuck there.

Otherwise she likes cats and lots and lots of romance and icky gender stereotypes, but that's something else entirely. And, uh, that's kinda about it. I'm pretty much out of ideas because we read different genres. I'm really just trying it as a means to improve her English, so any help is appreciated!

ETA: I forgot to add that that my sister scares quite easily, is very squeamish and can't tolerate too many heads on one body. So nothing too nightmare-fuel-y.