:: Wednesday, April 30, 2003
From our office calendar of daily George Bushisms:
Interviewer: "So, tell me again why Crawford is such a great vacation spot?"
Schuldig: "Yeah, so why *are* you such a great vacation spot?"
Crawford: "Don't touch me, Schuldig."
Okay, so I'm more amused than I should be that Bush's ranch is located in Crawford, Texas....
- 09:37 AM EST
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:: Tuesday, April 29, 2003
I think the staff at the Virgin Megastore up by Union Square are having way too much fun. I went in there today, and they'd hung up posters for Lisa Marie Presley's new album and Spirited Away right next to each other, so that there's Lisa Marie and Chihiro standing back to back, heads turned to look outward at the viewer with rather similar expressions, though Chihiro seems more determined and Lisa Marie more world-weary. Chihiro's even about the right height proportionally. Now my brain is melty. (Of course, the store is all over Spirited Away stuff. Posters, DVDs, random soundtrack CD stuck in the rock/pop section, and the video playing on the big screen too. *Must get.*)
Oh, yes, and did get your story, liked much, and hopefully will have some useful comments before too much longer. I second (or third?) the suggestion to go for print publication unless there actually is an ezine out there that you love and worship and devoutly desire to be in for its own sake. So SageWoman doesn't take fiction (and I don't think the story's really their kind of thing anyway), but maybe PanGaia? I know they do; there's a piece in their latest issue, which has just come in. The story's too fictiony (and too sexy) for us, alas....
RE Yesterday's post, it got me to wondering who the smartest of my characters is. I actually don't really know. Their minds tend to work in rather different ways, which makes quantifying difficult. I'm pretty sure that Rin is the smartest of my PSME characters, though I think he gets beat out overall by Nokoru and certain of my late-continuity, somewhat modified versions of Omi.
Okay, that's enough procrastinating (again). Back to work. ^^
- 02:36 PM EST
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:: Monday, April 28, 2003
Miaaaow...somehow work has gotten really boring recently. I need to get off my butt and find something useful I can do, other than reading fanfics and weblogs--which actually doesn't even count as useful, come to think of it. Bleh.
At least the writing is picking up again. I love writing Youji--even when I'm not actually in his PoV I love writing Youji because he's so insanely perceptive. He *gets* things. Granted, he can't fix his own life, but aside from that he's really sharp about figuring things out. And so far in the current story he's gotten the best zingers on Schwarz of any of Weiss. Hmm. I've actually been trying to figure out if there are any characters I write who are dumb, and I can't really think of one. Some are less clueful or perceptive than others. Jinpachi, for instance, is a big dork, but he's not actively stupid; once he gets hit by the clue-by-four, he pretty much always gets the idea. Issei was a lovely, alert, sensitive narrator, though the telepathy certainly helped there, and of course Rin was scary-brilliant. The Wing boys are all very bright. Nobody in Weiss is dumb--not even Ken, although sometimes he seems to think he is, but really he's perfectly well intelligent and capable. Farf is insane, not stupid, and Schuldig has to have a lot upstairs or he would've never been able to deal with his power as well as he has. Crawford, the manipulator--'nuff said. Seishirou's not nearly as smart as he thinks he is, but he's still not dumb either, while Subaru does dumb things, but he's usually quite aware that they're dumb. (Is it stupid to know you're doing something stupid and still to do it?) Kamui, for a hyper-powered squeeb with wings, is actually very normal, neither ingenious nor a mouth-breather, and of course Sorata is a helluva lot smarter than he often appears. Of course, I guess it's not that surprising after all that I tend to write for at least reasonably bright characters--the more intelligent and/or perceptive characters make it easier to convey information to the reader, not to mention they tend to be psychologically more interesting.
I have this strange feeling that I posted something on this subject to my weblog a long time ago. Have I? I can't remember.
Oh, and I finally realized that my Pitas archives link actually led to the Greymatter archive. Duh. Fixed that.
Okay, now it's time to do some actual work.
- 12:27 PM EST
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:: Saturday, April 19, 2003
So I spent much of last week turning Omi into this superhuman godlike catperson...thing. Help! Somebody take the bad science away from me. Right now I know I should be writing something, but I've got that gritty-eyed, brain-dead feeling and I can't figure out what I should be working on. Maybe some Vanilla Coke would help.
So what *does* that line mean? (For us continuing to be Japanese-illiterates. ^^) Amusingly enough, that was the line, in its subtitled rendition, that made me a Subaru/Seishirou fan in the first place. Heh. (Like the snip, btw. Will comment when I have enough brain for email.) My version of the TB DVD doesn't have the Big Apple Anime extra; am currently trying to decide if it's worth getting the new release just for that. Ordinarily I'd say no, but--Tokyo Babylon DVD! Me being on the Tokyo Babylon DVD! It's almost as good as CLAMP mentioning the Seeing Eye Dog Headquarters that's twenty miles from my house. ...Okay, I'm a majorly lame fangirl dork.
What the hell *are* these previews on my TB DVD? I recognize at least one of them as an old computer game I got years ago but never finished playing. Kinda Dragon's Lairy type stuff. Actually, I think it *is* by the creator of Dragon's Lair. Oh, god, it's got a theme song. Mercifully it's over now.
I'd better get that Vanilla Coke.
(PS: Double-date fic! Yay! *eg*)
- 08:06 PM EST
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:: Monday, April 7, 2003
Right. So, as hinted in my previous entry, I had to put the Gluhen down for a bit, but I made it through episode 6. Very brief, hopefully not very spoilerish comments:
*Crap. That was a perfectly good bishounen.
*The CCD/Gluhen parallels continue with the Woman Whose Eyes We Do Not See. The school has a clock tower, too. And a gazebo. (Somebody stop me. *Please.*)
*Aya/Sena. Hmm.
*Omi turning the photograph: PULL OUT MY SPLEEN THROUGH MY EARS, WHY DON'T YOU!? *collapses in a sobbing heap* I am already sensing the hurting. And Ken...Ken...uwaaaa....
*Grandpa is spindlier than I'd expected. I mean, even with him being ancient and ill, I'd expected him to be somewhat more heavy-set, as Reiji and Shuuichi are both fairly solid. (I've always assumed that Omi took after his mother.)
*The fansubbers continue to call Aya "Miss Fujimiya." Most disconcerting is when Youji finally turns up and says "Nice to meet you, Miss Fujimiya!" And Aya's all smiling and friendly. *shudders*
*I should not find kicking a soccer ball quite so heart-wrenching.
I had to go back to the original series to fortify myself after that. Luckily the angst of Ken's episodes (4-5) managed not to mess me up further, since this was not-a-psychokiller-Ken, so it was okay, more or less. Whew. And it was definitely worth my time to see the outtakes on the DVD, even if it meant being exposed to the dub voices. (Whoever it was at Technomancy had it right--Omi does sound like a monkey from Brooklyn. And Aya--gah. Ken's not too bad, though.)
Writing was frustrating this weekend, as I went in with high, blindingly optimistic hopes that I'd get no less than three different fic goals accomplished, and I spent all my time on one, which still isn't done. Grr.
I'm trying to decide if there's any good to be gotten out of this somewhat scary mental space that I'm currently in, or whether I need to get out of the house, metaphorically speaking, and take a nice long walk.
And I spent my birthday planting pansies, and now it's snowing.
- 11:53 AM EST
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:: Friday, April 4, 2003
...itai yo. I'm not so sure I want to watch Gluhen by myself.
I want the happiness of people who don't exist in this world. Hen desu ka?
- 08:53 PM EST
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A couple of other things I wanted to natter on about yesterday and forgot:
This was a very interesting take on Kamui in X. I have to say that I was one of the fangirls who got annoyed with post-change Kamui, and I think I've said someplace that I found him much more interesting when he wasn't quite so limp and passive--when there was an edge to him, when he was angry and breaking stuff up and pushing everybody away from himself all the time. This person made me think about that in a new way--the idea that Kamui has lost a shallow, solely outer-directed image of strength in favor of a more true inner strength is something I'll have to chew on for a while. Because hey, I'm all about the sublimity of the power of self-sacrifice. I think that working from a different paradigm of what power is and is all about could be explored very fruitfully. But I still have to say that I'm frustrated with Meek!Kamui, not because he's no longer a badass who blows things up, but because his realization and the power of his Wish have not yet been translated into action. Love and conviction are wonderful things to be sure, but to really mean anything I feel that they have to take on a concrete form in this world. Jesus wasn't just about loving people and letting himself be killed for them--he kicked the moneychangers out of the temple, remember. He said hard truths to people, pulling back the curtains of their complacency, their illusions about what it means to truly live a godly life. My issue with Kamui as he has been recently is that he (along with most of the other Seals, really) has been ineffectual for so long. He murmurs about his wish, but other than that it seems that he's just waiting for something to happen to him from outside, because he can't make the leap himself and generate some creative attempt at making his Wish a reality. Obviously that's easier said than done, and a certain amount of stalling is inevitable, but it feels like it's just gone on for way too long. (Perhaps my issue is more with CLAMP's pacing than with the character.) In any case, I'm not so sure that Kamui has gotten to a stronger place yet. I think he's still in an unborn state, on the threshold between what he used to be and what he may eventually become, and somebody has to kick him out through the eggshell before he'll really achieve his true potential. At least things *seem* to be tending in that direction with the most recent issue. We'll have to see.
But then I tend to get off on the moment of crisis and transcendence. Thinking about it, I might have liked Kamui best when he was right at the cusp of the last change--being with Kotori just before Seishirou attacked them, or with Fuuma at the shrine after that, or when he was coming to grips with himself when Subaru went into his heart. When he was both engaged with the people around him and struggling with the implications of that engagement, unfolding in wistfulness while not yet having lost the boundaries of himself.
(I want very much to read this person's earlier entry about the end of Gluhen, but I haven't decided if I want to be that badly spoilered. I think I'm going to have to wait. *gnaws fingers*)
RE: not posting snips of unfinished drafts: yeah, I'm kind of like that too. Often I try not even to talk about them too much in public; hence the occasional uninformatively vague mutterings that appear in this weblog when I feel like I should give people some idea of what I've been working on, but I don't really know what to say without giving the game away. Recently I've been going through phases of wondering whether the completely sealed off alchemic crucible of silence is really so much better than striking sparks off other interested parties, getting back reactions and generating more excitment by the exchange, or whether that would just end up dispersing the energy too much. So I'm experimenting with feeding one of my Weiss fics to a reader (hi, K-chan) in pieces as I write it. Although frankly the pieces are still nearly chapter-length, so it's probably not really much different than sending out a completed chapter. It's just a bit less polished, since I haven't really done any editing.
Oh, and by way of writing, I never did end up writing anything at Lunacon, because on the first day AppleWorks (staid, hardworking AppleWorks!) died in a most spectacular fashion, and I decided that this was a message that I should get out and actually socialize with people. Which I did. Last weekend saw the completion of that Schuldig PoV section and the end of the chapter--*finally!* Geez, the frickin' thing was huge. (12,500+ words. Maybe I *should* go out for NaNoWriMo this year.) The Weiss thing I'm currently trying to get to a certain point on is a completely different Weiss thing from that one; this weekend's projects, in addition to hopefully making a stab at "Sakura," include yet *another* Weiss piece.
Gah. Maybe I need to get into specifics after all....
(Can y'all tell that today is really dead at work?)
- 12:35 PM EST
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:: Thursday, April 3, 2003
Note to brain: do not attempt to choreograph a Weiss Gluhen music video to "Hazy Shade of Winter" when you haven't even *seen* any Gluhen. Oy. Although I've now managed to watch the first couple of episodes finally--and I have to say, the first thing to cross my mind was "It's CLAMP School Detectives gone horribly, horribly wrong!" And the thought of a CCD/WK Gluhen crossover niggles evilly at the back of my brain. (High school age or adult Nokoru & Co., probably.) Not that I'd ever actually write it, because it would then have to tie into the X universe, and I've already daydreamed out and discarded my X/WK crossover. I'm only doing *one* immense end of the world fanfic, thank you very much. And Weiss are *not* in it.
My brain likes crossovers. (Well, thinking about them, not always reading them.) It likes crossing a series with other series, and it likes crossing a series with other versions of the same series--daydream AUs, fanfic continuities, etc.--in weird cross-dimensional and cross-temporal interweavings. Something about rediscovering the characters in new ways by looking at them through the points of view of other characters, or tracing the changes in the characters by contrasting them with what they were or might have been. It's funny, because one of the unique quirks of fanfiction as a genre is that it's generally preferable not to spend time introducing the characters to the reader, since the reader presumably is already familiar with them. Yet a crossover inevitably has some element of introduction to it, as the characters from one world and/or time discover what the others are all about. Maybe crossovers are popular to write and read because it's like being introduced to your favorite characters all over again, meeting them for the first time, or like introducing your friends to a new series obsession. Unfortunately, that might also be one of the reasons why they're hard to write well--avoiding a tedious retread of an information dump is tricky. (There's also the "What the heck are these people all doing together?!" problem, but that's been well-ranted about.)
Anyhow, Gluhen. I can't say too much about it, having only seen those two episodes, but--Aya. Braid. *meeeeooow* Although god help me, my first impression was that he'd turned into some weird mixture of himself and Duo Maxwell. All those crosses don't help. And wow, he actually talks. (Although I seem to recall that canon-Aya talks and on occasion smiles a bit more than the fanon usually credits him with.) Sena's madly cute. Kyou I haven't really seen enough of to form an opinion yet, though in one respect I've already seen quite a bit of him. (Gee, fanservice much?) Toudou is interesting. Pretty golden eyes. Overall quality seems a bit better than the original series, although I'm delighted to see that the implausibility factor remains high. (Disturbed brain waves? Okay....) I mean, c'mon, that's one of the charms of WK--I can *write* a story where Omi gets exposed to a mutagenic gas and turns into a catboy and it's perfectly fine because the series was even dorkier. (Two words: Monster D.N.A. Or one word and an acronym. Whatever.)
Speaking of the original series, I started rewatching that again as well. (Research, you know.) Dear god...I always tell myself that I'm misremembering and that the first episode can't possibly be that bad. And then I watch it again and it is. Hurgh. But it's such sweet torture, after all. Entirely worth it for the moments of pure bishounenness.
Earthian! Eee! I had no idea that the manga was being rereleased with an ending. How did the shrieks of a million fangirls escape me? Fortuitously, I was going to be heading out to the Mitsuwa this weekend anyhow for birthday sushi, so I can pick up my own copy of the new version. And now I'll have a translation to read it with! *huggles* I just have to find translations of the earlier bits somewhere....
Writing continues apace, more or less. I seem to be back in obsessive mode, which is both a good and bad thing. I'm kinda hoping to clear the next segment of the Weiss thing I'm currently working on (one of the several ^^;;;) by this weekend so that I can put in some quality time with "Sakura."
Note: I was originally going to post this from work, but our T-1 decided to gack and make any sort of web browser work impossibly slow, so I ended up having to mail this to myself and post from home. On the plus side, I've now seen the next two eps of Gluhen. Toudou, you megalomaniac little squeeb. I like you better and better. Too bad an evil brain is apparently about to make you sad and unhappy at the same time. I continue to want to huggle Sena. And, um, Aya, do you think you're visible enough in that white coat? Very scenic, though, I must admit. What cracks me up the most, though, is that the fansub of 3 and 4 that I watched insists on translating "Fujimiya-sensei" as "Miss Fujimiya." Augh! Rex is also apparently "Lakers."
Oh, well. It's still better than the Worst Gravitation Fansub Ever....
- 11:34 PM EST
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