Ebay auctions. Selling:

Ouran Host Club
Fool's Gold
Lovely Complex
Otomen
Genshiken
The Wallflower

Having just finished Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, I needed to draw some father-daughter tenderness. Spoiler free. It's not the greatest; but eh, I like it.

( I Need Love )

doorwindowwall
A stunning collection of images sure to delight anyone with a penchant for architectural elements, this talented community, largely from New York, is hoping to attract new members from around the world. Featuring an eclectic variety of photos depicting doors, windows, and walls, there's an interesting balance of interior and exterior shots, many from urban streets, some from ramshackle rural farmhouses. Wonderful!

I'm surprised no one else has posted this yet, so here you go:
http://kotaku.com/5422255/silent-hill-the-stage-play

What do you think of Shattered Memories so far?

I'll keep this spoiler-free, so this is going to be a little generic.

It's amazing. My hopes of a horror game using the wiimote as a flashlight have been fulfilled. I'm not very far, but they did an amazing job. The controls are good, the wiimote speaker gets a lot of use, I love the small touches that are based on your profile.

As far as everyone screaming MY CANON, it really is a reimagining, and a great one at that.

edit: Oh and the ice/snow motif is pretty boss, and lack of combat makes this game even more insane.

**FINAL EDIT Thu Dec 10 02:15:47 UTC 2009**

So there is the final update... Over the past day we have processed around 11 million jobs out of the 12 million that were in queue at that time. Please bear in mind that over this past day, more jobs for notifications are also created. So while the queue has been dropping, we are still not fully caught up at this point, due to backlog and new jobs. We have roughly 3 million jobs still pending that involve the notification system in some manner. We had hoped we could have fully cleared the queue in a day, but unfortunately we can't clear it too quickly, since we need the rest of the site to operate normally. From our current perspective on the amount of jobs that are left in queue, and how many it has processed thus far, we believe it will take around another 8 - 12 hours to process everything.

And finally some answers to some questions:

( Read More and Get Some Answers... )

freeskiers
While some of us long to escape the cold, dark stretch of winter for hot tropical beaches, for others, there's nothing quite like whoooooshing down those shimmering sugar alps. If you're fond of freestyle skiing, get ready to slide down the slippery slopes in good company. This passionate, international community shares travel/gear tips, anecdotes, photos, and videos for those who can't get enough of the sweet stuff.

seasonal_icons
Need some extra twinkle to decorate your place? Check out these dazzling holiday-themed icons. If you're an artist, you can post your own creations, provided you abide by the simple rules (which is to say, all cheer and no politicking). Be sure to comment and give credit if you wish to borrow a little spirit (no direct links, please). If you're feeling a touch of humbug this season, this is an instant shot of festivity.

handmade_gifts
High on creativity, but low on cash? You'll find tons of brilliant suggestions for do-it-yourself crafts sure to please everyone on your holiday gift list. Offering detailed instructions, photos, budgets, timelines, and active support, you'll soon turn spare remnants of fabric and time into cherished keepsakes. Be sure to search entries and read user guidelines before you post for help!

Mirrors or paintings as reflections or doubles of the soul are a fairly obvious idea in horror. The Picture of Dorian Gray is the obvious example, and Poe used it as well. Angela Carter wrote a very clever story called Reflections.

Do you have any favourite exampes of original or striking uses of this idea in horror literature?

After hearing the buzz surrounding the novice British horror author Allyson Bird, I recently ordered a copy of her collection Bull Running For Girls. This book won the British Fantasy Society's award for Best Collection this year, fending off some stiff competition from established authors writing at the peak of their powers. So, does Bull Running... live up to the hype?

( A Bird in the Hand, haw haw )

Of course, her publisher, Screaming Dreams, is a small business, and Bird is a fledgling writer (as Gary McMahon acknowledges in the Introduction), and there are definitely signs of great potential here. And it's hardly fair to give Bird a hard time for winning that award - it wasn't her decision, after all. I do however think that Bull Running For Girls would've been more of a contender for some kind of 'new writers' award (if the British Fantasy Society have one!) She would certainly deserve that hands-down. But Would I recommend buying this book? Well, priced at around £10, with decent typography and jacket art and plenty of material, it's a (relatively) cheap and cheerful affair, which I think would be a fitting addition to the bookshelves of any serious fan of modern horror fiction. In any case, it's always good to support budding talent, and Bird is definitely a refreshing new presence in a genre where world-weary, cynical, male-oriented "voices" abound. I might well buy her second collection, if she writes one, as she's definitely one to watch!

Has anyone else noticed the increasing incidence of mainstream, 'literary' novels with supernatural content in the nation's bookshops? I failed to find a single decent book to buy in Sheffield Waterstone's Horror section the other week, but to my surprise a grumpy shuffle through the much larger Literature section turned up an embarrassment of ghostly or occult novels! As I didn't have an unlimited budget I decided to plump for The Little Stranger, the weighty new novel by Sarah Waters. I thought some of her earlier novels were quite good (especially Affinity) and I was attracted by the slightly silly jacket art, which is done to look like a battered old book of urbane, thrilling ghost stories from the 50s or 60s (something by A M Burrage or Wakefield perhaps).

As it turned out, the book and the cover are two very different things. ( Love is a Stranger... )

Oh well. Maybe in a few years' time, if respected authors keep plugging away at it, the ghost story will finally begin to be treated with the respect it deserves. In the meantime, if you like a doorstop novel and don't mind Waters' forsaking the whole prancing lesbian bit in favour of some more subtle human interaction, then you should probably pick up a copy of this. Possibly second-hand though, as I'm not sure it was worth the £12 I paid (and that was with £4 off!)

This might be old news, but here it is anyway. It's pretty awesome.