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Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in
born to trouble as the sparks fly upward's InsaneJournal:
| Sunday, July 13th, 2008 | |
| 9:09 pm | consider/compare: The HOUSE OF LEAVES. The Houses of Mystery and Secrets, from the eponymous series, SANDMAN, et al. Tartarus, in PERSONA 3, and Yukiko's Castle in PERSONA 4. Danny the Street, the Insect Mesh, more precisely the Pentagon Horror, in Morrison's DOOM PATROL. Mystery Architecture; labyrinths; abysses of human dreams and nightmares and inhuman loves. I keep trying to form thoughts on this but I can never seem to get anywhere with it; all I know is something fits, here, something important, but I just can't find the right words to say it yet. |
| Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 | |
| 8:40 pm | thoughts on WANTED Because I think I'm cute, allow me to mangle Shakespeare: "I come not to bury WANTED, but to defend it." (Before you ask: yes, I know what the line means in context.) For those of you who've read it, I have a single question to ask: Did you, when finished with the comic, have any desire whatsoever to live in a world where people like Wesley Gibson had control? If you, like me, finished the book and answered to the above question, "No, no, hell no, a thousand times no," then (in my opinion; I am not about to seek Millar's words out to find what he thinks was the point) you have discovered the point of the book. WANTED, the comic, as I see it, has two parallel structures running through it at the same time: 1. Stylized hyperactive super 2. A barely-veiled screed filled with contempt for the ground said fanbrats walk on and a scathing portrayal of everything that makes it bad, in Millar's eyes. Does this make the book hypocritical? OH, hell yes. Does this make the book good? Not really. What does it make the book? A middle-finger-squarely-up-the-nose attempt to play so-read "superhero" conceits so straight it comes out the other end and becomes a subversion of those values and concepts instead. It doesn't completely succeed, but from where I'm sitting it was, at least, an interesting effort. And the end result - the cry, from readers aware enough to register what they've just read, of "This world horrifies me and I never want to experience anything like it again" - is, possibly, worth it, if only because - and this is just my interpretation of the book's subtextual intent - The world needs to be a better place, and if it takes someone writing a comic book filled with horrible things to make people galvanized enough to do something about keeping those horrible things from happening, even if the book is shit, maybe it's a little bit worth it. But with WANTED, an additional specter is raised: a large portion of the audience just thinks it's a bunch of action bits and hot chicks, and the comic itself does a pretty poor job of proving their case wrong. And that's why it fucks itself up, in the end. "Man cannot serve two masters"; you can't write a book whose only redeeming social impact is measured in the negative - in that WANTED offers no clues on how to better the world, only a vision of what could fuck the world as a way to say "DON'T DO THIS" - and write it so that the very culture you're critiquing spends the entire story having its dick massaged with pretty explosions and ass-shots. It just doesn't work. It's great as an immature joke, but very little more; and while I can enjoy it on that level, it is still a deeply flawed failure as a story, much less any redeeming kind of entertainment. It is, however, a good book to keep handy when I need a quick refill of seething, incandescent rage at what passes for comics fandom these days: whatever else you can say about WANTED, it portrays a select population's mindset so faithfully it's almost a religious thesis - warts, misguided (stupid!) rage, racism, sexism, immaturity, and sexual inferiority complex and all. I like having a handy reminder of all the things in comics fandom I despise within my grasp at all times. So it's good for that. You could probably poke someone's eye out with the hardcover copy if you swung hard enough, too. The defense rests. I don't want to live in Wesley Gibson's world, and neither should you. |
| Sunday, June 29th, 2008 | |
| 1:42 am | random moment of hot: tenten fight 116 I'm not cutting something this pretty. Besides the filesize is not that bad.  NNNGH. SOUICHIROU. NNNGH. |
| Saturday, May 31st, 2008 | |
| 5:23 pm | sukebandeka 3x01 picspam And now, a brief summary of SUKEBAN DEKA III's first episode. With pictures. ( not dialup friendly in the slightest. a whole lot of 640x480 .jpgs behind the cut. ) NEXT TIME: Kidnapping for Great Justice! |
| Thursday, May 29th, 2008 | |
| 12:30 pm | gip This is technically my first "fights like a girl" icon. I figured it would have to be justifiably awesome, considering I have made several of these for other people that I then didn't use for myself; also, I have so many icons of girls kicking ass already, the one I was blatant about it with ought to be something special. So yes. Meet Kazama Yui, the third Sukeban Deka. SUKEBAN DEKA is a title given to a female juvenile delinquent (the "sukeban" of the name) by a shadowy Japanese agency - the kind with plausible deniability and sekrit etc. - who gets hired to work for them and ferret out threats to the Japanese government before they can strike (the "deka" - detective - of the name) . . . . . . using a compound-metal yo-yo of DESTRUCTION. So you have a Japanese schoolgirl taking on yakuza (and worse) with a shiny yo-yo of doom. There's no way this isn't a recipe for awesome, even if most SDs simply beat down on yakuza and corrupt government officials and violent, abusive teachers. But no, that's not enough for Yui. Yui, you see, gets to fight the Shadow Emperor, an intergalactic force of evil, and his organization of shadow ninja, one of whom happens to be HER FATHER, who she thought was dead of a terrorist bombing, turned to the dark side, and - oh, you thought that was the end of it, didn't you - and, also, the Shadow Emperor's chosen physical representative on Earth is Yui's twin sister who she never knew existed. On top of this there are doppelgangers, there are monsters, there are lots of the aforementioned shadow ninja, and also, did I mention that the series openly cribs from the original Star Wars trilogy? (Not that you would know this unless it spelled it out for you in the promotional material, because uh. The Star Wars trilogy ain't exactly "unique" in its plot.) Of course, Yui - with the help of her two older sisters Yuka and Yuma (notice a theme?) - wins. And then she goes on to help the second Sukeban Deka, Yoko Godai, fight off an attempted coup of the government by a former terrorist who now runs a private academy of terror on an island off the Japanese coast. In the process, she WRESTLES A HELICOPTER. Attempts to, anyway, since the helicopter just kind of drags her along instead of her actually doing anything effective with this. But you know, it's a special sort of person who thinks helicopter-wrestling is a logical course of action in a fight. (Then again, this is also the girl who fired a homemade bazooka made of bamboo at a bunch of hooligans chasing her and thought it was the best idea she'd ever come up with in the first episode, so she's kind of got a reputation for this kind of thing.) This isn't even counting the second movie she stars in, where she takes on the de facto Japanese government to clear the name of a group of homeless people - and wins. So, yeah. Yui. She fights like a girl. She's fucking amazing at it. And she does it all dressed like a schoolgirl duplicate of Sonny Chiba from STREET FIGHTER. I dare you to tell me that's not the most amazing thing you've heard today. |
| Wednesday, May 28th, 2008 | |
| 5:58 pm | these words are not my own. So if you want a bunch of lyrics to read that have been rattling around in my head of late, then click past - otherwise, disregard. First person to guess the throughline gets a cookie. ( Matt & Kim, '5k' ) ( Islands, 'Kids Don't Know Shit' ) ( Asobi Seksu, 'Thursday' ) ( The National, 'Apartment Story' ) ( TV on the Radio, 'Province' ) |
| Sunday, May 18th, 2008 | |
| 1:31 pm | Someone convince me not to do this. Look, it's NOT MY FAULT that the Harkers are tailor-made for gothic-vampire-romance melodrama ......... okay, it kind of IS, but that doesn't mean I don't want to do a story where Sam Harker falls in love with a pretty vampire boy in high school and is torn between his family's quest to rid the world of all vampires, his new boyfriend's inability to control his bloodlust, and his own inability to say that all vampires are good or evil. It would, logically, end in heartache - literal, on the part of the boyfriend, and figurative, on the part of Sam. Because he would tearfully stake his love to save his BEAUTIFUL SOUL from further damnation, in the end. And then there would be a family hug. And pancakes. But Sam would never forget his first boyfriend, who made him see such pretty things in the world. :( (And meanwhile, his irritating little sister Eliza would keep popping up and trying to kill his boyfriend FIRST, right in the middle of makeouts. Terribly inconvenient timing. TERRIBLY.) |
| Wednesday, May 14th, 2008 | |
| 9:09 pm | on a less aggravating note: REDBELT This trailer is a lie. Watch it, then put it out of your mind immediately. It gives away all the wrong things. REDBELT is an absolutely stunning movie, meticulous and thoughtful and ultimately made more of the gaps where understanding fails and simple action prevails than one would necessarily think David Mamet capable of, given his pedigree and reputation; it is a martial arts movie that is not a martial arts movie at the same time, and I defy anyone to watch the climactic fight and not realize that this - this - is a movie not very interested in the pasts or futures of its characters, but intimately present in their breath and in their beat. This is a movie that ultimately makes itself useless in the most beautiful way imaginable: its final climax is so perfectly executed that even if the rest of the movie had failed to make the central intent clear, by the time it is over the motive force of the film is nakedly apparent to the audience. Chiwetel Ejiofor and co. are in top form, though it is not a stretch to say that Mike Terry's footsteps pick up almost impatiently where the Operative of SERENITY's left off, completing the journey Ejiofor started in that movie - was he even aware, when he finished SERENITY, that the Operative's searching would lead him, inexorably, into Mike Terry's conclusion? The main character lives the point of the movie - it isn't about the glitz of it, or the extravaganza, or the adrenaline rush/release - it's about the art of combat. This is a cinematic treatment of why and how this is an art - it is an analysis of what creates "martial arts", not a simple bodily appreciation of it; there are fewer fight sequences than there would be in most movies of REDBELT's ilk, and they are quick, efficient, and smooth, in keeping with the movie's emphasis on Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as its driving metaphor. The trailer above, if watched carefully, gives away a great deal of the actual viscera of the fight while sacrificing much of the flow that makes them work on screen. I did say that it gives away all the wrong things, and I meant it. The only real surprise in the plot and characters is in the method of their execution; if you've seen THE KARATE KID or any of the movies that it stole its plot from, you know how this is going to play out, and you don't need anyone insulting you by pretending the plot is even half original. The what is known; all that the movie does uniquely, really, is the how and why. In that REDBELT is also far from unique, as the recent trend of arthouse/grindhouse mashups seems to show no signs of slowing; Mamet's vision of the kung-fu flick takes its place beside THE BRAVE ONE, CLOVERFIELD, and several others coming in the not-too-distant future as just a small part of what modern genre cinema is remaking [sic] of itself. It's taken modern genre cinema twenty years to understand the gift of the grindhouse when married to an actual point: it zeros out all the superfluity of the what, leaving the point of the movie in the details, the hows and whys of its execution. Every angle begins to tell a story; every shift in method foretells a mood. By eliminating flashy angles and visceral takes, by confining much of the action to long takes and slow, deliberate camerawork, the whole tone of the piece becomes something utterly spellbinding and entrancing, like a delicate, brutal wave of motion that continually ebbs and flows to its own rhythm. It is a lesson in Zen, both in its abstracted, almost footnoted conclusion and its almost-ephemeral camera direction. I could give you a list of martial arts movies that capture the adrenaline of watching two people beat the crap out of each other better than REDBELT, and you'd be perfectly satisfied with every one; what makes REDBELT unique among them is that it is one of the few that makes even an attempt to accurately portray what it's like to perform the act of combat. And just as that lightning bolt of enlightenment strikes, it smiles, breathes, and is done, its lesson complete. |
| 9:04 pm | ... wait just a fucking second. DC/Time Warner object to the use of their copyrighted characters in a fundraising auction, issue takedown notice. Auctioneer complies, however reluctantly, because ....... ............... auctioneer was running said fundraiser so he could make enough money to treat his son's cancer. Way to go, Warner Bros.! I haven't seen a major company fuck themselves so hard in the anus since .... well, ever, to my knowledge, but there must be something I'm not thinking of. |
| Tuesday, April 29th, 2008 | |
| 2:53 pm | a link that may be of interest to some of you. From the recent Pitchfork interview with the band Boris, discussing the making of their new album SMILE (which I haven't heard yet, shush): Pitchfork: With all that touring you've spent plenty of time abroad, is Tokyo still important for the band?I think this whole block of text I'm posting is interesting, really, but I've highlighted the part I expect most of you to notice first. :3 It's an interesting (and probably correct) conclusion to say that yaoi damages homosexual culture in Japan in a very specific and very neutralizing way; I'm not sure that damage translates 100% to the way American audiences process the stuff, but all the same the effect it has on its native audience is something I'd be worried about too. I don't think they're really discussing the American slash phenomenon/culture, here, though the initial lead-in may provoke slashfen into thinking they are; the cultures share similarities of method, but I think the impulse, at least among the slashfen I know, comes from a very different place - and this is an important distinction - and doesn't share the same cultural subtext that yaoi does in Japan. This could change - may, in fact, given the wide swath of yaoi titles making their way into bookstores, be well on its way to shifting already - but as it stands now, the two cultures haven't quite crossed streams completely. (A side discussion to this: Pitchfork clearly knows nothing about the doujin economy of Japan, and Atsuo here does a pretty shit job of discussing it, despite being pretty obviously aware of how it works in more than just the economic sense; there's two different levels of outsider awareness at work in this part of the conversation working only intermittently at a unified purpose - the first, Pitchfork's, being one of complete ignorance either feigned or genuine, and the second, Boris', being one inside the originating culture and aware of the internal machinations of the actual subculture but uninvolved in it themselves and in some ways frightened by it - and I wonder how much of that the audience for this interview will really pick up on.) Everyone in America that I know who listens to Boris loves Boris, too, so it's an interesting look at the unease the band seems to have in its relations with its home audience and vice versa as well; the stuff about visual kei bands makes me wonder how much of Boris' output is a direct relational response to their own distaste and/or fear at the idea of being mistaken for fitting in any of the same slots as vk bands (many of whom, I should note, I like, so I'm hardly biased towards Boris' POV here). This interview is quite honestly one of maybe two or three pieces of journalism done about Boris that's in English or been translated into English, I think? So think about that, too: this will be for a large portion of Boris' international audience their first time knowing something about the band other than what they sound like and what they look like. There are a lot of ideas and myths that audiences can create about a band, knowing nothing about them but their music. And then there are the myths the band likes to propagate about themselves. As always, context is important, especially in translated media. Most of the rest of the interview is process stuff that I find interesting but that you, yourself, might not, depending on how much you know about or care to know about Boris the band. Boris' preceding full-length album, PINK, is available in streaming audio for free at Deezer.com. Current Music: "Ash Like Snow", The Brilliant Green |
| 3:16 am | belatedly, birthday todd can has: -THE MALLOREAN by David Eddings fucking finally d;salsk -JUNO aka my hearrrrt -THE DARJEELING LIMITED aka my mother thinks this is a family film, lulz -a working CD player, just what I really needed (no, actually, I did) -THE GALAXY RAILWAYS leiji matsumotooooo -a PS2 for cheap! -PERSONA 3 FES there goes most of my free time! -FFIX and the rest of it! -$135 refund from the US government! (sure it arrived a day late, who's counting?) -and a bookmark, which is treacly and I will likely never use it, because I have a billion of them and I always forget. DAN DAN DANNNN! |
| Monday, April 28th, 2008 | |
| 4:02 pm | thoughts on BSG, short version I like what they've done with Cally, I like where they're going with Tory, I love love love Roslin, Kara, Kendra, Kat, Helena, Sharon (both of them), Caprica, Dualla, and most of what they've done with D'anna. I have issues with the threesome in s3, so many issues, but that doesn't change that I still think Caprica was awesome throughout. Personally I'm hard-pressed to think of a show as unwilling to pull its punches in showing fragility and strength in equal measure with its female protagonists, and I love that every last one of them spits in life's face when life hands them crap deals. You can't find female characters as intentionally knotted and complex anywhere else on primetime American TV (ETA: For a while there you could, it was called CRIMINAL MINDS, but that show is no longer the show it once was, and it's not something really worth watching anymore in the sense that it's just boring now, IMHO); they're all human, for better or worse. I don't like that in spite of this, it's the female characters who get handed the really crap deals more often than the male characters, that it's the female characters who get destroyed by them more often than the male characters, I don't like that Starbuck's frakups get shoved in our face a lot more often than Lee's do, I don't like that Tigh and Baltar are the only two men on the show so far to experience the same level of shitkicking that the female characters do and suffer the consequences for it, I don't appreciate that Baltar usually gets rewarded for it (I do love him to bits but really), I don't like that it's taken till season four for any other male character (Tyrol) to reach that same level of fucked up and openly selfdestruct, I don't like that the male Adamas are almost always right. I want someone to acknowledge that Helo has issues. I'm irritated that the show always pulls its punches with the Adamas, but I'm hopeful that will change, now that continuing the story is no longer an issue. I want Dee back; it's not fair to her for her to just vanish, after all s3 put her through. I don't like that the only openly gay and/or bisexual characters we have come in the form of a male-gaze-centered threesome and a retcon, and all the rest is just our best guess. I just want one fucking main or supporting character to come out blatantly. I firmly believe if it'll be anyone saying it outright, it'll be Lee or Gaeta; if it's not them, it'll likely be a Cylon. It might still be them anyway. BSG feeds something in me that's probably not healthy, but I love it anyway, and I want it to end how it has to end; all the same, there's no denying that it will end carrying these problems with it. I still love it. I still love the women from it. I'll watch it to the end, because ultimately my problems with it aren't enough to dampen my fondness and adoration for the things I love about it, for the addiction it feeds. But it's still got problems. |
| Sunday, April 27th, 2008 | |
| 1:36 pm | oh for fuck's sake, today's my BIRTHDAY, I should not be filled with rage Someone link me to squeeble I might find enjoyable in the comments - or, uh, just squee at me about whatever your latest bit of squee is, I'll take that too. I know I enjoyed the hell out of the last couple episodes of CODE GEASS, I found GUNDAM 00 actually emotionally affecting, something a Gundam series hasn't really done for me since the original Gundam novels, and I can't get enough of SHE & HIM VOL. 1 or Melt Banana's BAMBI'S DILEMMA right now. Also, I was kind of startled to realize how solid and respectful a film TOKYO GODFATHERS turned out to be; more on that later. Anyway, distract me with squee, oh flist. Please? |
| 1:30 pm | the problem The problem is not that these so-called "crackpots" are psychopathic "feminists"-in-name-but-not-action. The problem is not that they have co-opted a movement. The problem is that they helped start the current iteration of the movement, they have written that movement's history, and that history is writing out the presence of WOC as if they were never a part of it. Calling them "isolated incidents" or "crazy" or "harmless" whitewashes the issue, neuters it, makes it look like less of a problem than it is. It discounts and disenfranchises the multiple experiences WOC have had with the feminist movement almost since its inception. You're essentially telling me - and by extension, the WOC who have seen fit to inform me of these incidents - that it isn't a problem, so why are you worried about it? We've had this discussion many, many times before, internets. Must we do it again? |
| Friday, April 25th, 2008 | |
| 1:45 pm | it needs to be said dep't., entry # 2782967: If feminism can't handle the existence of black people, it is ideologically maimed. Useless. Out of date. Fossilized. Privileged. Fortunately, I think it can. Unfortunately, it seems a lot of the people presenting themselves as the public face of the concept on the internet can't. And - since those faces are still the primary source of information and ideology for most of the movement - that's what, in a lot of ways, feminism has become: rich, white, privileged in status and education. That's not what it needs to be. That's not what it should be. I can't wake up tomorrow and label myself not a feminist; there's too much of me wrapped up in that symbol to separate myself from it, and all too easy for me to see such a statement reinforcing the mentality that still prevents people from even admitting they believe the basic principles of feminism (you know, "I'm no feminist, but ..."). I can, however, say that if this is what feminism wants to become, I'll be a feminist elsewhere. These aren't the faces of the movement I want to have representing me. |
| Monday, April 21st, 2008 | |
| 9:04 am | public service announcement I have a major incest squick in live-action fandoms. I can't read Petrellis gettin' it on, Winchesters going beyond the excessively-devoted-but-stoic stage makes me seize up, and the thought of the Way brothers doing it gives me a headache. (I'm not sure why I don't have this problem in animated/illustrated fandoms - there's a topic for another day, when I've got the chance to work through it.) There's a lot of good writers who write it, though, and nobody's forcing me to read it. It's my choice and my responsibility for freaking myself out when/if I do. The scroll option, the back button, and the close tab option get used a lot when I do. It's not rocket science. If I can do that, so can you. |
| Monday, April 14th, 2008 | |
| 8:43 am | fma 82; raw OH MY GOD OH MY GOD LING, YOU FUCKING AMAZING MORON YOU FUCKING oh my god ._. |
| Saturday, April 12th, 2008 | |
| 3:22 pm | torchwood 2x13 slightly more spoilery reaction That was the bravest fucking season-ender I've seen since the finale of BSG s2. Damn fine writing, sharp, taut, painful in just the right ways and uplifting in all the right ways. People who want to know how to write dark science-fiction TV well could do worse than looking at the start and end of TW s2. I am up for spoilery discussion in comments, if anyone cares to have it. |
| Wednesday, April 9th, 2008 | |
| 11:59 pm | A good rule is never, ever to get me started on characters I play ANYWHERE . . . and here's why. ( re: coherency in Oh!Great's body of work ) ( re: the sora reveal as a contextual shift, cf. ringo noyamano ) ( re: the sora reveal as a storytelling shift, cf. whitewolf ) ( On Simca: Who She Is and How She Came to Be - or rather, FUCK YOU, SHE'S AWESOME and here's why! ) burst into light: . . . just so you know, I'm going to post this to LJ in lieu of any content now. arushindoll: ZOMG! YOU BETTER NOT! arushindoll: Or, more seriously, go for it. burst into light: hahahahahaha burst into light: *does so* |
| Sunday, April 6th, 2008 | |
| 9:47 pm | shows wot i am watching, 4/6/08 ver. I do this periodically to keep track of how much televised media I absorb and how fast I absorb it; once every two to three months seems to be about the average time between posts, leaning more to the three-month mark because that's usually when network seasons/quarters start a fresh cycle. (My viewing habits don't always match up to this one-to-one; shows coming out on DVD or becoming available online can shift the scale a fair bit.) It also doesn't hurt that sometimes, by making a post like this, I can get other people into the stuff I'm into out of curiosity. ( Youtube abuse behind [fake] cut ) Dial-up links: 30 ROCK (s1) BABYLON 5 (s3) BACCANO! BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (s4) (no video) CODE GEASS: LELOUCH OF THE REBELLION - R2 ENGINE SENTAI GO-ONGER GHOST HOUND INVISIBLE MAN (s1) KAMEN RIDER KIVA KING OF BRAVES GAOGAIGAR KOUSETSU HYAKU MONOGATARI MNEMOSYNE [NO MUSUMETACHI] PRINCESS NINE ROMEO X JULIET STEAM DETECTIVES UNINHABITED PLANET SURVIVE ZOKU SAYONARA ZETSUBO SENSEI |