flemmings | Random

Entry tags:

Random

I love to sneer at other translators' idiocies because it makes me feel better about my own gaffes.

Three days off! I have three days off! In a row! Maybe now I can kick this cold that's taken away my hearing, my smelling and my sense of taste.

Reflects that even if I was tempted to read Bleach the fact that everyone and their sister-in-law is reading Bleach and nattering about it would put me off. It's like swimming pools- too many people in it means you can't do anything yourself. Except maybe chain-step laps where you have to keep your pace the same as everyone else's.

There's also the problem of the reverse-recommendation: If So-and-so likes this it must suck. And even if it doesn't suck there's still the problem of liking something So-and-so does. I occasionally feel most put out that someone like So-and-so has the nerve to like something good and thus cast doubts on whether it's as good as I think it is. Ohh la vache.

I started to do that guilt meme from

mikeneko but ran into problems. The first one is that I just don't feel guilty about stuff I like. Must be one of those things that happens with age. I used to, but I don't any more. Yes, I like Neil Diamond. No, I don't feel guilty about that. *Now*.

Also I'm not-a-watcher. There goes the celebrities and A/V section. Also I read slowly and time's winged chariot is drawing near. There's a good reason why I read whatever I do, though at one point I vaguely recall I spent my time rereading kids' books I'd read a million times vefore.

Thus my guilty pleasures are mostly confined to double crostics- absolute indefensible time wasters- and Second Cup sugar cookies.

Second cup, the Canuck chain of coffee shops that Starbucks always builds its outlets across the street from- yes, OK, got it?- has seasonal sugar cookies with hard frosting. I can't resist them. Well, I can resist when the cookies are hard but when they're soft and the frosting *cracks* as you bite into it... ahh. Hallowe'en, autumn leaves, Christmas, Valentine's, St Patricks, easter bunnies, spring flowers: and then they just have sun cookies or whatever. Soccer balls in World Cup years. It's like the seasonal markers I knew in Japan: plum blossoms, cherry, wisteria, iris, hydrangea, and then it was rainy season. I mark the year's passing in Second Cup sugar cookies.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Reflects that even if I was tempted to read Bleach the fact that everyone and their sister-in-law is reading Bleach and nattering about it would put me off.

I can understand this (I had the same problem with FMA) even if I regret it, because I'd be interested to hear what you made of it. Ah well.

The thing about Japanese series is that they aren't aimed at the kind of people who watch them over here, and certainly aren't intended to afford much intellectual analysis and whatever. (With the usual honourable exceptions- Utena, Sen to Chihiro, Monster.) The extent of Japanese discussion seems to be Oh isn't Whatsisname cool! Character analysis and psychological dissection, not so much.

There's a certain depth to the best anime but, I feel, not enough to bear the full weight of western fannish inspection. The more people are inspecting and speculating, the more I get the feeling of 'Less here than meets the eye.' IOW, a nice series if people would just leave it alone.

You have a point. However, I note that I have so far found the plotting of Bleach extremely satisfying, and the character motivations richly coloured, if not desperately deep.

Reflects that even if I was tempted to read Bleach the fact that everyone and their sister-in-law is reading Bleach and nattering about it would put me off. It's like swimming pools- too many people in it means you can't do anything yourself. Except maybe chain-step laps where you have to keep your pace the same as everyone else's.

;_; You'd really like it! Seriously! FMA too. And it's easy to ignore Bleach fandom, relatively speaking. (I have the same problem with Death Note too though, so I shouldn't comment.)

I know FMA from the manga. It... doesn't grab me as much as I thought it would. The anime sounds just a bit WTF, though it's pretty enough, and possibly easier to remember than the manga. Just, the FMA ficrants I read make it sound like something better avoided.

FMA fandom is a gigantic trainwreck. I just ignore it, the same way I do for Bleach. It took me a long time to get into the FMA anime. There's an extended flashback at the start that just drags. But episode 13 got me hooked. (The fact that Rufus and Roy share the same voice doesn't hurt either. :D)

I have the same problem with Death Note too.

And that whole pesky thing that happened in the middle that was a little upsetting. ;) I haven't been able to get back into it since.

Since "It" happened, I haven't been able to read DN. There just doesn't seem to be much of a point without that key test of minds driving the action. A cat and mouse game without the cat. (Or the mouse, depending on your point of view.) Everything up to "It" was entertaining though.

Plus the whole "why should I get attached to any of these characters because you might just do it again, you bastard!" Not that I'm bitter or anything. *^_^*

I'm sort of torn. I don't mind "It"-like events in general, but not for something like DN, where the chase is The Point and the replacement is so inadequate (or is it replacements? I haven't cared enough to read further). Anyone besides the original character just can't measure up.

I kept reading the updates for a while after that. But in the end I admitted to myself that I'd obviously only been in it for all that BL potential. And the thrill was gone. So I stopped reading them.

(I'm shallow that way, yay.)

I never really got into the BL potential as much as the "if I know, that he knows, that I know" maneuvering. It was fun trying to figure out who would win in the end. But when "it" happened, the effect was sort of like a chess player leaving the match in mid-game. I just couldn't get into it after that. :/

*nods* I thought it was really abrupt, myself, and I agree with you about the maneuvering.

I usually like "it" events too, but I do like when they're forshadowed a little. This struck me as "Oops, I wrote myself into a corner. Do-over!"

Double crostics? *inquiring look*

A form of crossword. You have a list of clues. When entered into the boxes the letters of the answers form a quote from some book. (Obviously the words read horizontally only, not down like an ordinary crossword.) The first letters of the clues, read downwards, gives you the author and title of the book.

Teaches you a lot about the phonic structure of English words, and even more about the deadly sameness of modern prose style. The only time I'm badly thrown is when the quote is from an 18th century writer or a poem.

XD Well, everyone writes het in Bleach, you know. If you don't the field is wide open.

OTOH one of the major attractions is the likeability of the female characters. In a lot of ways it reminds me of Buffy, or what I've seen of Buffy.

(I think the Bleach manga is superior to the anime. What endeared the series to me in the first place was a quirky quality in the mangaka's drawing style and framing, and the anime is something of a pedestrian reading direction-wise.)

quirky quality in the mangaka's drawing style

Having just bought vol 1 of the English translation ("All shounen reads easier in translation, nor does it matter what language it's translated into"- discuss) I can only say that's a neat euphemism for 'ugly as sin.' I'm sorry Death Note seems to have problems. The art style is so much easier on the eye.

XD;; Actually Bleach is one of my favorite manga art-wise! It's sort of like the opposite of GetBackers, all angular and effective use of blank space. I think it's gorgeous. (Granted I never could read Rurouni Kenshin or Houshin Engi because I couldn't stand the manga art style, so who knows what it means.)

Frankly I can't imagine that you wouldn't just hate everyone in Death Note, with the exception of maybe two people. ^^; I stopped reading it because the characters were unsympathetic, that's saying a lot.

Yes, I like Neil Diamond. No, I don't feel guilty about that.

*choke* Je m'excuse.

But I had much the same problem with it. Twenty years ago, I seemed to be vaguely ashamed of most everything I liked. Now, it's "Whee, lookie! Cute anime icons!" Shrug.

As for the other, I don't know if you caught this post (http://thete1.livejournal.com/526170.html) a while back. It's bit on the long-winded side, but I think she's got a good point. "Fannish" isn't the same as "fandom." I've no problem being fannish over something while taking great pains to avoid the fandom that has grown/is growing around it.

Re: Bleach. I do like the series. I quietly ship Orihime/Tatsuki. But I don't feel any desire to wade into the fandom. Or want to any of the fanfic. (I also have trouble remembering the names of the Cast of Thousands. Life goes on.)

Re: FMA. Can't seem to get any handle on the anime, but I'm growing a scary love for the manga. Most of the fanfiction and fandom is for the anime; as with Bleach, I avoid.

But I guess if fandom is a requirement, you could pick material that has none, then grow one to your own specifications. Like tomatoes?

*choke* Je m'excuse

I'm not ashamed of what I like except when it comes to fandom and people of questionable taste who like the same things as I. *Then* I begin to wonder if maybe I'm wrong.

"Fannish" isn't the same as "fandom."

In the best of all possible worlds the series is all. The series is mother, father, sister, brother, best friend and family dog. The series is the red red sun in your heart. One needs no fellow squee-ers. You and the series commune in perfect sympathy with each other.

We do not live in the best of all possible worlds, or not often. Series generally fall into the 'much admired but not entirely satisfactory' category. Usually I want company in my fandoms, and always I want the company of intelligent people of good will. Like my FL. Well, like my filtered FL. You know what I mean.

So that being a fan while avoiding the fandom is a dicey proposition. While looking for the soul mates you encounter the featherheads, the whiners, the quarrelsome, the butterflies, the rude, the entitled, the dogmatic and the humourless-- the whole Dante's Inferno of fannish types. And you wonder, Do I really want to be here?

There are several reasons to stick with Minekura, and the general reasonableness of her fandom is one of them. Fannish odiousness here never goes much past the level of irritation. I compare that with the 'batshit crazy' of HP and CLAMP and am grateful. But still. Batshit crazy is out there and waiting to happen.

And you're probably right. The best series is the one other people haven't discovered.

I have the first volume of five or six currently popular series. I just can't bring myself to read any of them. It's too much effort and other fans are too horrifying, so instead, I'm reading about lesbian pirates and... actually... other pirates. You find the weirdest things in the "other" section at Bookoff. One of these appears to be a historical manga about Anne Boney and Mary Reed, while the other is about a floating restaurant in Tokyo and the violent maniacs who run it.

It's too much effort and other fans are too horrifying

I think I must have been cloned somewhere along the way. ^^;;

Ahh, Bookoff. I should start on that pile of manga from last fall, and that odd one about Shakespeare. The only Japanese I've looked at lately is vol 1 of Twelve Kingdoms, and in such a desultory fashion that I could swear Youko's been saying Iya da take me *home* for twenty pages when in fact it's only three.

I haven't seen much of Bleach, not past 14. It's okay. I hear the anime follows the manga very closely. I do like the mangaka's style though ever since his work on Zombie Powder. Since it is shounen (and a fighting one), it probably would work best to marathon through.

Personally, I loved the FMA anime, although it took me a while to get into. It's very complicated though and layered, which was a nice change.

I would think Fandom Wank would be a big online guilty pleasure. ^_- It is for me sometimes.

Have a great three days off!

Having read vol 1 of both Bleach and Death Note last night, I'll say the style of the first isn't quite as KAPOW ZAM!! as it looked in the store. It's partly the fault of the American graphic quality: both comics look to my eye like Taiwanese pirates. I know shounen isn't subtle but it isn't as crudely high-contrast as that. Am tempted to pick up vols 2 at Highway Robbery North to see for myself. Then I tell myself that reading shounen in Japanese is a waste of rapidly diminishing eyesight that should be saved for quality, like impenetrable Ima Ichikos.

Agreed- wank communities are a guilty pleasure when I'm into reading them. Right now I'm in a surfeited phase where it seems that the F_W community itself is the wankiest thing about F_W. And it's all cheap smartass wank, as opposed to meta_fandom's high class wank of the exquisitely intellectual variety.

I hope to enjoy my holiday but I keep thinking about my poor teething bunnies and their poor sleep-deprived mother. Minder's guilt. ^_^

I do wonder if that was the fault of the translator - surely if someone is fluent enough to translate FFVII, they'd recognise katakana kotoba when they saw it. My guess is that an editor went in and readjusted for something more exotic sounding - like the Japanese scenario writers who presumably chose nousupouru over hokkyoku. (Which in no way decreases the amusement value of the link, but may help explain the huh? factor.)

Bleach isn't the deepest of manga, but it is sincere and entertaining, which is nice when I want entertainment but not necessarily Deep Thoughts. And it is entirely possible to read it without having to tell anyone else. ^.^

Now that's rational, though translators' ability is sometimes a surprising problem. I remember (vividly) when the Japanese magazine a friend worked for sent an article to a professional translation company and got back three pages of gobbledegook. Friend and I pulled an all-nighter doing our own translation. I grant you the article was vague and woolly and we often had no idea what the writer meant; but no one was paying /us/ to be translators.

I did wonder myself if it wasn't a Japanese who did the FFVII translation. This was back in the days, wasn't it? It just seems odd that an English speaking editor would alter 'North Pole' to a phonetic equivalent. Native speakers generally don't think like that: unless it was a joke on his part. Which I can believe.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Random

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Death Note Spoilers

Re: Death Note Spoilers

Re: Death Note Spoilers

Re: Death Note Spoilers

Re: Death Note Spoilers

Re: Death Note Spoilers

Re: Death Note Spoilers

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject