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liri
Apparently, I can easily outwit myself by putting things in cabinets and then closing the doors. Whatever I have thus cleverly concealed is pretty much lost to me forever, or at least for a couple of weeks. God, I'm brilliant. On the other hand, now I've learned that I have food! Non-grilled-cheese-sandwich food, that is. (The eggsicles don't count. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't come out right once thawed.)
Anyway - politics. I've been cranky about the Electoral College for a while, but now at least I've got some links to add to the griping. The Slate article is only moderately interesting, but it has some links... this one will probably give you more of the good kind of righteous indignation if you're (a) a liberal, and (b) from, say, New York or California. If you're socially conservative... go read it and then you'll know how I feel all the damn time. I'm not socially conservative, but for some reason it still kind of rubbed me the wrong way - I can't even pin down why. Maybe because I feel lumped in with all those horrible, ignorant people from the big square states that good liberals have never even seen, the ones they must come up with some way to overrule at all costs. As I see it, the problem isn't that "those states" are too powerful - it's that if you're not in the majority party in those states you're powerless, and that goes for conservatives in liberal states, too.
I much preferred this one - ". . . an archaic system of representation that includes a winner-take-all selection of electors and eschews proportionate representation at the local level is denying a voice to political minorities. Are you perchance one of the 2.4 million hardy Democrats living in Texas? You might as well hang up your political spurs. Since the Reagan era, Texas has become solidly Republican." YES. EXACTLY. I'd just like my vote to count for something other than a point about the problems with the Electoral College - it sure as hell doesn't count as a VOTE.
Uch. I need to think about something else. Like heavily-armed twelve-year-olds.
Aww. The Zabuza/Haku thing was sweet, in a completely fucked-up way. Sweet because of the indications that Zabuza, in his totally fucked-up way, actually cared about Haku; fucked-up because it's like Shishio/Soujiro, if Soujiro were thirteen and their relationship appeared to be romantic. (Shishio's and Soujiro's relationship is not romantic. Soujiro has plenty of trauma without that.) Or, alternately, like Shishio/Yumi if Yumi were a lot more ladylike and deadly, and also an underage boy.
Even though I knew Sasuke wasn't dead (he's in too much of the merchandise to have died that early) I still got kind of misty when Sakura thought he was. It's the way those kids cry, all scrunched-up faces and dripping noses - it's a weird favorite thing to have about someone's art, but it looks real, and it is one of my favorite things about his art. I tend to accept that anime characters stay all pretty when they cry, but on the rare occasions that they don't I like it much better. I don't think they're a love for the ages (Naruto and Sasuke might be, though.... :P) but she was sad, and it made me kind of sad, and his return to life ("your arm's heavy") was pretty cool too. I liked the Zabuza/Kakashi "okay, my boss sold me out, I have no further reason to fight you" / "works for me" exchange, and, later, Sasuke acknowledging Sakura's ability to see through illusions (apparently, her only strength... at least she has one, though.)
The chapter titles might kind of piss me off if I were following a serialized version - the chapter will be titled "Iruka vs. Kakashi!" apparently so you'll have hopes of seeing them fight, and then, in the chapter, they have a vehement but completely civil difference of opinion! OMG!
The fourth volume sets up the chuunin thing, which I gather will be epic going by the number of characters they've introduced with distinctive designs and in some cases names. It's the manga equivalent of Suikoden characters with portraits. Good thing, really - it'd stretch all credibility for kids this age to be out fighting yet more superpowered ninja gods right away, but you can't just show them doing kiddie missions again. The other two teams from the same village appear for the first time in this volume, while in the anime, they were introduced in, I think, the third episode? Of course, they then disappear, but it means they don't just pop up out of the blue the way they did in the manga, and it sets up a few details about each - Ino and Sakura's rivalry, that one girl's crush on Naruto (Hinata?) and the fact Ino also likes Sasuke, so, again, it won't just come out of the blue. The anime does have the advantage of not being made up as they go along, I guess. I like that about it, plus the simple fact it's animated - Naruto's spazz attacks are much funnier in motion, though for some reason Inner Sakura is funnier in the manga, and I like Kakashi's voice, and that laugh of Naruto's when he's just done something to piss off an authority figure and he's proud. I find myself noticing the voices more than I otherwise do in subtitled anime - probably because I can't count on the subtitles to tell me more than the incoherent gist of the line, so I tend to listen more closely to the voices to figure out tone and meaning.
So the Yutaro storyline ends - someone explain to me what they accomplished by removing his dad in the anime version? Is it actually a good idea to remove a chunk of a character's motivation for no obvious reason? - and then the Katsu story begins, which is... different. In the manga, it's not entirely clear that Sano was committed to the plot with Katsu - I suspect he wasn't, entirely, despite the reasoning he gave Katsu at the end. That also means the Sano/Kenshin fight isn't in there. Which really, really gives the impression Sano just wasn't that committed. Granted, Sano and Kenshin fighting then and there is completely illogical, but that never stops anything in RK, and besides, the fight scene was nifty. Wasn't that one of the ones that made it into The OVA Of Which We Do Not Speak? It's also one of the only times I've even distantly understood that whole "They're trying to kill each other! It's TRUE LOVE!" thing (which isn't actually a selling point of the fight - we all know how I get about Kenshin x Kaoru 4EVA! It's just an observation.) Also, in the manga, they had Tae and Tsubame over for the party, not Megumi, which meant no catfight between Megumi and Kaoru, just Kaoru and Kenshin getting all happy-drunk, and just makes more sense all around. There's a really cute moment with Tae getting hearts in her eyes because Katsu drew a picture of her, too... yeah, I like the manga more. Even if it doesn't have the riceball scene, and has Kaoru staying behind to draw baths for the guys while Yahiko goes along to rescue Megumi.
And YAY Saito next time YAY YAY YAY! ^_^ They're claiming it'll be out in September, though. Liars.
At the moment, I'm still reading Cecilia. Over halfway through! It's not actually a slog, it's just... really, really long. I think her love interest's kind of a twit, really. My favorite character is a cousin of his, Lady Honoria; she's always being chided by authorially-sanctioned characters for being too flighty and frivolous and not taking things seriously enough, which means she's entertaining and makes fun of the people who take themselves seriously. And I love the names. Honoria, Cecilia, Mortimer - I'm pretty sure they sounded romance-novel-y then, too. Jane Austen's characters are always named things like Elizabeth and Jane and Anne, which from what I know of the time is a lot closer to realistic. People would use the same half-dozen names or so, over and over and over - one clergyman's family that we studied recycled the names from children who'd died. Like, you lose your daughter Emily so when the next girl's born, five years later, you name her Emily. Creepy as all hell if you ask me.
I'm also reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which I hadn't intended to start but then brought on the plane because it'd be easier to read than Cecilia, and Galveston which is good but which is making me want to hit all the main characters at once right now.
The only thing I've finished since my last post about books is The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri. It did not crush my soul, which was a relief, and also didn't pull any Stupid Narrative Tricks. It was told in present tense, but that doesn't bother me. I liked it, which was a relief. I was growing a bit concerned because the only non-Western writers I seemed to like were Japanese, and I don't want to become, or just appear to be, some... er, like an Anglophile but for Japan. It's not blind infatuation with all things Japanese that leads me to walk out of Borders with a volume of Fruits Basket and a Haruki Murakami novel; it's selection of two separate things I like that just happen to have originally been written in the same language. There's also my general ignorance of recent literary fiction, which I'm trying to remedy. It seemed like just recently the big publishing trend was writers of Indian descent who write in English, so by checking out a few of those, I killed two birds with one stone. The first book I tried was Arranged Marriage, a collection of short stories by Chitra Divakaruni. It pretty much sucked. So I decided to pull out all the stops and read the one that won the Booker Prize. That was The God of Small Things. While I was still in the middle of it and annoyed with it, I picked up The Namesake, grimly determined to keep trying Indian authors until I decided I liked them, dammit. It wasn't as ambitious, but it was also much easier to get along with.
Most recently, despite the list of books in progress, I picked up The Tale of Genji from the library. The first novel ever written, and it can also be used as a weapon! The version I have is 1300 pages. I guess I get to find out how many times I can renew a book. ::shrug:: I was curious. All I've read so far is the introduction, with a lot of info from her diary. It makes the Japanese court sound like Fanfiction.net - she trashes Sei Shonagon and a few other courtiers who also write, gets picked on by others, compares men she knows unfavorably to her main character, and apparently Mary Sues herself into the novel later on. Hey, if it turns out I don't like it as reading material, at least I can make fun of it...
Anyway - politics. I've been cranky about the Electoral College for a while, but now at least I've got some links to add to the griping. The Slate article is only moderately interesting, but it has some links... this one will probably give you more of the good kind of righteous indignation if you're (a) a liberal, and (b) from, say, New York or California. If you're socially conservative... go read it and then you'll know how I feel all the damn time. I'm not socially conservative, but for some reason it still kind of rubbed me the wrong way - I can't even pin down why. Maybe because I feel lumped in with all those horrible, ignorant people from the big square states that good liberals have never even seen, the ones they must come up with some way to overrule at all costs. As I see it, the problem isn't that "those states" are too powerful - it's that if you're not in the majority party in those states you're powerless, and that goes for conservatives in liberal states, too.
I much preferred this one - ". . . an archaic system of representation that includes a winner-take-all selection of electors and eschews proportionate representation at the local level is denying a voice to political minorities. Are you perchance one of the 2.4 million hardy Democrats living in Texas? You might as well hang up your political spurs. Since the Reagan era, Texas has become solidly Republican." YES. EXACTLY. I'd just like my vote to count for something other than a point about the problems with the Electoral College - it sure as hell doesn't count as a VOTE.
Uch. I need to think about something else. Like heavily-armed twelve-year-olds.
Aww. The Zabuza/Haku thing was sweet, in a completely fucked-up way. Sweet because of the indications that Zabuza, in his totally fucked-up way, actually cared about Haku; fucked-up because it's like Shishio/Soujiro, if Soujiro were thirteen and their relationship appeared to be romantic. (Shishio's and Soujiro's relationship is not romantic. Soujiro has plenty of trauma without that.) Or, alternately, like Shishio/Yumi if Yumi were a lot more ladylike and deadly, and also an underage boy.
Even though I knew Sasuke wasn't dead (he's in too much of the merchandise to have died that early) I still got kind of misty when Sakura thought he was. It's the way those kids cry, all scrunched-up faces and dripping noses - it's a weird favorite thing to have about someone's art, but it looks real, and it is one of my favorite things about his art. I tend to accept that anime characters stay all pretty when they cry, but on the rare occasions that they don't I like it much better. I don't think they're a love for the ages (Naruto and Sasuke might be, though.... :P) but she was sad, and it made me kind of sad, and his return to life ("your arm's heavy") was pretty cool too. I liked the Zabuza/Kakashi "okay, my boss sold me out, I have no further reason to fight you" / "works for me" exchange, and, later, Sasuke acknowledging Sakura's ability to see through illusions (apparently, her only strength... at least she has one, though.)
The chapter titles might kind of piss me off if I were following a serialized version - the chapter will be titled "Iruka vs. Kakashi!" apparently so you'll have hopes of seeing them fight, and then, in the chapter, they have a vehement but completely civil difference of opinion! OMG!
The fourth volume sets up the chuunin thing, which I gather will be epic going by the number of characters they've introduced with distinctive designs and in some cases names. It's the manga equivalent of Suikoden characters with portraits. Good thing, really - it'd stretch all credibility for kids this age to be out fighting yet more superpowered ninja gods right away, but you can't just show them doing kiddie missions again. The other two teams from the same village appear for the first time in this volume, while in the anime, they were introduced in, I think, the third episode? Of course, they then disappear, but it means they don't just pop up out of the blue the way they did in the manga, and it sets up a few details about each - Ino and Sakura's rivalry, that one girl's crush on Naruto (Hinata?) and the fact Ino also likes Sasuke, so, again, it won't just come out of the blue. The anime does have the advantage of not being made up as they go along, I guess. I like that about it, plus the simple fact it's animated - Naruto's spazz attacks are much funnier in motion, though for some reason Inner Sakura is funnier in the manga, and I like Kakashi's voice, and that laugh of Naruto's when he's just done something to piss off an authority figure and he's proud. I find myself noticing the voices more than I otherwise do in subtitled anime - probably because I can't count on the subtitles to tell me more than the incoherent gist of the line, so I tend to listen more closely to the voices to figure out tone and meaning.
So the Yutaro storyline ends - someone explain to me what they accomplished by removing his dad in the anime version? Is it actually a good idea to remove a chunk of a character's motivation for no obvious reason? - and then the Katsu story begins, which is... different. In the manga, it's not entirely clear that Sano was committed to the plot with Katsu - I suspect he wasn't, entirely, despite the reasoning he gave Katsu at the end. That also means the Sano/Kenshin fight isn't in there. Which really, really gives the impression Sano just wasn't that committed. Granted, Sano and Kenshin fighting then and there is completely illogical, but that never stops anything in RK, and besides, the fight scene was nifty. Wasn't that one of the ones that made it into The OVA Of Which We Do Not Speak? It's also one of the only times I've even distantly understood that whole "They're trying to kill each other! It's TRUE LOVE!" thing (which isn't actually a selling point of the fight - we all know how I get about Kenshin x Kaoru 4EVA! It's just an observation.) Also, in the manga, they had Tae and Tsubame over for the party, not Megumi, which meant no catfight between Megumi and Kaoru, just Kaoru and Kenshin getting all happy-drunk, and just makes more sense all around. There's a really cute moment with Tae getting hearts in her eyes because Katsu drew a picture of her, too... yeah, I like the manga more. Even if it doesn't have the riceball scene, and has Kaoru staying behind to draw baths for the guys while Yahiko goes along to rescue Megumi.
And YAY Saito next time YAY YAY YAY! ^_^ They're claiming it'll be out in September, though. Liars.
At the moment, I'm still reading Cecilia. Over halfway through! It's not actually a slog, it's just... really, really long. I think her love interest's kind of a twit, really. My favorite character is a cousin of his, Lady Honoria; she's always being chided by authorially-sanctioned characters for being too flighty and frivolous and not taking things seriously enough, which means she's entertaining and makes fun of the people who take themselves seriously. And I love the names. Honoria, Cecilia, Mortimer - I'm pretty sure they sounded romance-novel-y then, too. Jane Austen's characters are always named things like Elizabeth and Jane and Anne, which from what I know of the time is a lot closer to realistic. People would use the same half-dozen names or so, over and over and over - one clergyman's family that we studied recycled the names from children who'd died. Like, you lose your daughter Emily so when the next girl's born, five years later, you name her Emily. Creepy as all hell if you ask me.
I'm also reading The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, which I hadn't intended to start but then brought on the plane because it'd be easier to read than Cecilia, and Galveston which is good but which is making me want to hit all the main characters at once right now.
The only thing I've finished since my last post about books is The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri. It did not crush my soul, which was a relief, and also didn't pull any Stupid Narrative Tricks. It was told in present tense, but that doesn't bother me. I liked it, which was a relief. I was growing a bit concerned because the only non-Western writers I seemed to like were Japanese, and I don't want to become, or just appear to be, some... er, like an Anglophile but for Japan. It's not blind infatuation with all things Japanese that leads me to walk out of Borders with a volume of Fruits Basket and a Haruki Murakami novel; it's selection of two separate things I like that just happen to have originally been written in the same language. There's also my general ignorance of recent literary fiction, which I'm trying to remedy. It seemed like just recently the big publishing trend was writers of Indian descent who write in English, so by checking out a few of those, I killed two birds with one stone. The first book I tried was Arranged Marriage, a collection of short stories by Chitra Divakaruni. It pretty much sucked. So I decided to pull out all the stops and read the one that won the Booker Prize. That was The God of Small Things. While I was still in the middle of it and annoyed with it, I picked up The Namesake, grimly determined to keep trying Indian authors until I decided I liked them, dammit. It wasn't as ambitious, but it was also much easier to get along with.
Most recently, despite the list of books in progress, I picked up The Tale of Genji from the library. The first novel ever written, and it can also be used as a weapon! The version I have is 1300 pages. I guess I get to find out how many times I can renew a book. ::shrug:: I was curious. All I've read so far is the introduction, with a lot of info from her diary. It makes the Japanese court sound like Fanfiction.net - she trashes Sei Shonagon and a few other courtiers who also write, gets picked on by others, compares men she knows unfavorably to her main character, and apparently Mary Sues herself into the novel later on. Hey, if it turns out I don't like it as reading material, at least I can make fun of it...
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-12 11:13 pm (UTC)Also, taking out Yutaro's father changes his entire character motivation, so why bother?
The manga is just yummy goodness isn't it? But, oh my god, Aoshi looks TERRIBLE in the beginning.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 10:11 am (UTC)What, you didn't think Aoshi's early hairstyle was pretty? I don't know how anyone took him seriously at all. He must have swiped a mirror midway through or something.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 07:38 pm (UTC)That made me burst out laughing. Not just his hairstyle, his eyeliner and his elongated face, his entire Meiji goth look just wasn't doing it for me. But... if he felt pretty, who am I to judge?
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 01:23 am (UTC)Very yes. I think it goes on for half of the currently released Japanese Naruto volumes. There are 25. If I have one complaint about Naruto, it's that the battles seem to reach DBZ length. Well, also that the girls rarely get to do anything.
(no subject)
Date: 2004-08-13 10:14 am (UTC)