![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I'm smiling.
The last couple of months have just been hard. Tired, and anxious, and to where the good things kind of bounce off and the bad things leave a mark. I won't say that's all gone and vanished -- I let myself get unreasonably upset yesterday because the security guard in Kinokuniya told me not to take pictures, and I have been coming there for three years spending way too much money, most of the cashiers know my face, and I know not to take pictures, I was just checking my e-mail on my phone! -- But, seriously, I was like, "My mouth feels weird. What's going on?" and then -- "Oh. Right. Smiling."
So, things that are making me happy:
I have been watching Otome Youkai Zakuro. I tried out a few episodes, and loved the 1920s aesthetics (SO MUCH!) but found the humor slightly too broad for my tastes at first. I feel like as it goes on it's getting better at integrating the silliness and the seriousness, and the gender dynamics are interesting. I mean, it's typical for a magical girl show that the women are the powerful ones -- that's kind of what a magical girl show means -- but this one seems to go to a particular effort to underline how it's the 1920s and the men are in the army and the women wear kimonos and yet it's the women who are capable of doing anything about big giant gory monsters.
I thought that I should finish reading Marginal in case I get put on a particular panel at WisCon, and I think I'm wrong about that -- but, nevertheless, I haven't finished Marginal! Here is why: when Hagio Moto writes science fiction, it's science fiction. This is not space opera, this is mad scientists discoursing on genetic memory and the adrenal medulla. My Japanese isn't particularly better than it was when I bought the manga, but it's a little better, thank goodness.
There's something almost Tiptree-esque about it -- the pessimism about humanity's flaws being written into our biology, and the horror around sex and reproduction, and the ways those things intersect. I also kind of want to compare it to Oooku, since they both depict worlds with a severe gender imbalance, but they're doing very different things.
I find 70s shoujo manga to be incredibly wordy and dense compared to modern ones. I don't want to make any overgeneralizations like older manga being more interested in telling intricately plotted stories, or newer manga shifting the focus from storytelling-in-dialogue to visual storytelling. I just find it interesting. It does make Hagio's manga kind of hard to read, though.
Finally, a piano cover of Blitzkrieg Bop.
The last couple of months have just been hard. Tired, and anxious, and to where the good things kind of bounce off and the bad things leave a mark. I won't say that's all gone and vanished -- I let myself get unreasonably upset yesterday because the security guard in Kinokuniya told me not to take pictures, and I have been coming there for three years spending way too much money, most of the cashiers know my face, and I know not to take pictures, I was just checking my e-mail on my phone! -- But, seriously, I was like, "My mouth feels weird. What's going on?" and then -- "Oh. Right. Smiling."
So, things that are making me happy:
I have been watching Otome Youkai Zakuro. I tried out a few episodes, and loved the 1920s aesthetics (SO MUCH!) but found the humor slightly too broad for my tastes at first. I feel like as it goes on it's getting better at integrating the silliness and the seriousness, and the gender dynamics are interesting. I mean, it's typical for a magical girl show that the women are the powerful ones -- that's kind of what a magical girl show means -- but this one seems to go to a particular effort to underline how it's the 1920s and the men are in the army and the women wear kimonos and yet it's the women who are capable of doing anything about big giant gory monsters.
I thought that I should finish reading Marginal in case I get put on a particular panel at WisCon, and I think I'm wrong about that -- but, nevertheless, I haven't finished Marginal! Here is why: when Hagio Moto writes science fiction, it's science fiction. This is not space opera, this is mad scientists discoursing on genetic memory and the adrenal medulla. My Japanese isn't particularly better than it was when I bought the manga, but it's a little better, thank goodness.
There's something almost Tiptree-esque about it -- the pessimism about humanity's flaws being written into our biology, and the horror around sex and reproduction, and the ways those things intersect. I also kind of want to compare it to Oooku, since they both depict worlds with a severe gender imbalance, but they're doing very different things.
I find 70s shoujo manga to be incredibly wordy and dense compared to modern ones. I don't want to make any overgeneralizations like older manga being more interested in telling intricately plotted stories, or newer manga shifting the focus from storytelling-in-dialogue to visual storytelling. I just find it interesting. It does make Hagio's manga kind of hard to read, though.
Finally, a piano cover of Blitzkrieg Bop.