subdee

I hope everyone had a very happy retail holiday!

Christmas post @ the RL journal.

The books I got this year were:

Death of a Writer by Michael Collins. Does Collins realize that it is possible to introduce a new character or piece of scenery, etc, without immediately launching into that thing's entire history?
The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips. I'm amused by how transparently clue-like the narration is.
The Complete Works of Lewis Caroll !!! <3<3<3.

I also got Pokemon Diamond from my brother (the story is more complicated than this. Ask in comments if you're interested) and to my everlasting shame, I have actually been playing it. I'll post my friend code here I soon as I figure out how to get one. (Do I need to do anything special to our wireless connection?)

I also read some. Finished in the last few weeks:

The Alienist by Caleb Carr
The Pinhoe Egg and Howl's Moving Castle (re-read) by Diana Wynne Jones
Murder Must Advertise and Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie (currently reading).

Except for the DWJ, it's been a Month of Mystery. ^^; (That reminds me that I really have to write a Theme Discussion post for bibliophages.) I think the last time I read this much mystery was fifth grade, when the month is over I might have to lie down.

***

Staring down pages and pages of yuletide recs. It's actually kind of horrifying. And bb_shousetsu is out! All hail the bounty of the season. Guess I know what I'll be doing with the rest of my time off.

I want to recommend Chrissie's yuletide story but I'm not sure she's prepared to have her name associated with it. XD Here are a few others instead:

Everything Changes (Except Oz). L Frank Baum's Oz series. The other one written this year is actually probably objectively better, but shippiness is beating backstory tonight.

The World's Fair. The Amzing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Post-book, resolves some things without actually resolving them.

Equilibrium. Mirage of Blaze. Snapshots of Naoe and Kagetora's relationship at various points. If I have any complaint it's that the author reaches "obsessed" too quickly, and that's hardly a complaint, is it. XD Very creative interpretation of the prompt "romance".

A-Typical. Nobuta wo Produce. Finished this series, btw. All of the episodes in the middle felt like penultimate episodes -- like a major break from the status quo was just around the corner. It never happens, of course. ^^; The actual final episode was ridiculous, I laughed. Also: had high hopes for Nobuta, but was ultimately disappointed -- she never changes, just gets made into a commercial product. Overall, very sharp and observant, but nothing revolutionary. (And yet I am reading for it. XD)

Several Competent Wizards. Mairelon/Enchanted Forest/Sorcery and Cecelia crossover. NOW I CAN DIE HAPPY.

Duplicity. The Prestige. Absolutely brilliant, if you've seen the movie you should drop what you're doing and go read it right now.

Christingle. His Dark Materials. Will at Oxford, dealing. Very quiet and domestic and happy, it reminded me of another children's fantasy series starring another Will. (Susan Cooper's Dark is Rising.)

Nobuta wo Produce 01: ( Read more... )

Finished Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner: Raidou Kunozoha vs the Souless Army: ( Read more... )

Gonna give up on The Lions of Al-Rassan for now. I dunno, it's not horrible, but I'm also not really enjoying it, and there more books on my "to read" pile than there are hours in a day.

Loveless latest chapters: Bringing suspense back. RUN AWAY, RITSUKA, RUN AWAY. ...Actually I was talking about the latest chapters with Chrissie ( and I think )

EDIT Linkblogging:

1. I mentioned amei's Raidou porn and forgot to mention wredwrat's High School AU doujinshi! Check it out, it's awesome.

2. harumi linked to a very cool Mononoke fanvid here (download here). The show isn't really my thing since it's too, uh, flat. (Seriously, the fact that you can't make spatial sense out of the scenery upsets me.) Also the visuals and storytelling are both really complicated and so in order for the audience to follow the story, the plot has to be simple, and I'm more of a "simple storytelling, complicated plot" person. But the video really is extremely cool.

3. Translation of the first volume of Kyou Kara Maou by the same person who's been translating the Mirage of Blaze novels. Dude, these are hilarious.

aishuu and ninjatrauma are running recology, a sort of crash course in Methods of Reccing. I haven't joined because uhhhh I dunno. Long recs bore me, I'd much rather see a one-sentence summary and skim the story myself. But hypocritically, I wish more people had joined, because the comments in the introduction post are full of great rec websites. In particular,

This one. YESSSS OBSCURE YA LIT FANDOMS COME TO MEEEEE. And- good taste! And- a variety of authors! The problem with livejournal-based recs, of course, is that they tend to center around flists, and sometimes the reccer's friendship with (or admiration of) the author eclipses the quality of the story.

Which is why you shouldn't pay any attention to the Death Note fic rec list I wrote up for aishuu. *g*

EDIT: Now in website form.

...you will be manipulated into obsessing over Kingdom Hearts just like everyone else! (I know, I know. Another one bites the dust. But you can watch the gameboy advanced game as a movie and it only takes three hours! Three hours, might I add, of not having to write exposition.)

As diversions go, Chain of Memories was pretty entertaining. XD but you sort of have to care about the issues, or it just becomes tedious. Since I happen to care about memory I lot, I liked it. The story is divided between Sora and Riku: Sora is looking for Riku, but the further into Castle Oblivion he goes the more he forgets what he's looking for; meanwhile, Riku must struggle with his inner darkness.

I described the plot to my mother as a "movie" and she immediately asked whether I really meant to say "anime". ^^; it is an anime-ish plot. But structured progressive memory loss (and with it, loss or corruption of purpose) isn't a phenomenon confined to anime. Did anyone else see Neverending Story II? The main character in that movie is sucked into the Neverland world because he's trying to escape from his fear of the high-dive (LAME). He is given a quest and also, an object that allows him to wish for things -- spray cans, swords, whatever he thinks will be useful -- but in return, he loses one memory every time he makes a wish. Eventually he forgets why he's even on this quest in the first place, and then the evil woman who gave him the object...but anyway, Sora's story is like that. He's tricked into entering the castle and lied to to keep him there, and as he progresses his real memories are replaced with fake ones that draw him deeper into the castle, until he's forgotten nearly everything except for the fake memories. It is really arresting because you know what's going on, but Sora doesn't.

What kept me amused, though ('cause I'm not fooling myself thinking this stuff is deep or anything: it was about as deep as Riku's half of the story, which bored me silly what with all of the "you belong to the darkness" "no, the light will never abandon you!" "no, darkness!" "no, light!" talk (ALTHOUGH OMG THE ENDING, that is so cool, I want to be Sora so I can have a pet Riku of my very own!)) was thinking about all this memory stuff in a larger context. Although I have blocked out most of that class on modern intellectualism that nearly killed my soul, I do remember that towards the end there was a section on memory, which the professor claimed was one of the "dominating forces of current intellectual discourse". As I matter of fact, I still have about half of the reading we were assigned that day:

Patrick H. Hutton - The Art of Memory Reconceived: From Rhetoric to Psychoanalysis
Pierre Nora - Between Memory and History: Les Lieux de Memoire
Kerwin Klein - On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse

This one has no bearing on KH, but is referred to by the other three and was also assigned that day: Collective Memory and Cultural Identity. (Actually, I saved most of the reading for that class to my webspace if you want to take a look. Distributing it like this is illegal, but whatever!)

( Summary of articles, for those who are interested )

...what I learned from all this is that squishy is too an academic word.

To get somewhat back on track, memory is a Big Thing, and it is particularly big in Japan, where is currently being expressed as a desire to face up to Japan's WWII atrocities, or at least to consider how fifty years of whitewashed textbooks may have harmed the national character. (So my professor said, anyway. I will note that our Japanese exchange student wrote her final paper on memory and WWII (I wrote mine on Intellectual Identity Crises, OH GOD IT WAS AWFUL.))

The best way to express how Kingdom Hearts figures in all this is with screenshots.



( SPOILERS for Chain of Memories (Sora's story) )
( SPOILERS for Riku's story )
( Not-really spoilers for something with Axel )

Hmm, I appear to have spent many hours on this post. OH WELL, IT'S EASIER THAN WRITING ANYWAY. Note to all, I played about halfway through the first Kingdom Hearts and I haven't played the second at all, but I've been willingly spoiled to hell and back so I don't mind spoilers in comments. Overall I feel that the game is a lot of pretentious nonsense, but it's topical, and certainly TRIES to be more than what you'd expect from a title like this.

EDIT EDIT EDIT Fic rec:
Imaginary Friends by rabbitprint. Axel and Roxas pre-Chain of Memories. Gen. I dunno, sometimes you just want to read something where the characters are together, but not in that way.

from harukami:

Rec-Go-Round: Rec me one story you've written that you're proud of, any genre, here on my LJ.

Then go forth and ask the same in yours.

All comers welcome! Even completely unknown persons!

(Speaking of recs, worldserpent talks about what works and what doesn't, and wants to know what are some good liscensed anime series to rent, netflix-style?)