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Dilemma
Dou shiyou, dou shiyou?
My feet have been like rising breadloaves all week and my knee screams in sympathy, so I promised me a weekend lying on the sofa with my leg up doing nothing until things shrank. Even got anime and wuxia to watch if I didn't feel like reading: which I don't, in my dark living room that needs a 200 watt lightbulb to render text remotely legible. But it's stupid to be sitting inside reading under a lightbulb- or even watching Samurai Deeper Kyo with the lights off- on a warm sunny day when I want to be out on a patio somewhere drinking iced coffee and reading by the reflected sunlight. Alas, sitting is the one thing my knee does *not* want me to do. As I know because, if I must be indoors, the thing I want to do -and do do, alas- is play Addiction Solitaire here at the computer. A very little of that and I can't even stand up afterwards.
Now if only it were grey and typhoony (though I'm glad it's not because Caribana gets hit with bad weather far too often) I'd be happy to sit on the sofa. I was doing that until 1 am Thursday night, going through my FMA eps from last October on. I could have read all night- I could have read all night- and still have begged for more.
As I grow old I become less a fan of both tankoubon- text too small- and phonebook episodes- not enough action. Happiness then becomes having about half a year's worth of phonebook eps: nice big type and the satisfaction of a tank's worth of chapters. You understand that this isn't the easiest trick to pull off. But thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
shiny_monkey Thursday I was able to go through The Stunning Secret of King Bradley!!! and The Stunning Transformation of Ling Yao!!! (and I, spoilered for that some time ago, was pleased to see I was spoilered incorrectly.) Very nice. I left off where there's a lacuna in my collection- Februaryish, and since there's a Papuwa ep missing around there too I fancy that package got eaten by Gunma Post along with my last Gaiden ep.
Returned to them last night only to find myself in the middle of the Ishbal War. Um. I do not wish to be in the middle of the Ishbal War. It's not a nice place to be. Possibly the reason I never got bitten by FMA is the sense that This Cannot End Well: though the other reason is an absence of Teh Pretteh combined with Teh Archetypically Resonant, which is what shallow me needs to be truly grabbed.
Or as simple as other people's reasons for not liking Utena or 12 Kingdoms: no one character grabs me sufficiently in the right ways. No one character has my number, and something in a work has to have your number for it to grab. (It can be landscape for me: it often is: why Olivier's Hamlet is different from all other Hamlets is that castle, and the appeal of Sen to Chihirou is the landscape and skies far more than any of the main characters.)
Mhh- now there's a question. What has my number in the series I like? Saiyuuki: Hakkai and Gojou probably, even now. Gaiden: Goujun. WA: Koh. Papuwa (the new one): the family and its past; Kinchan and Gunma; the island and Takamatsu still. 12 Kingdom: Rakushun and the kirin. DN: the uneasy-making and obsessed L. SamCham: Rin, though the tattoos around Mugen's ankles hit little notes.
How nice if lopsided a series is when it possesses characters of special interest and how rational and dispassionate one feels about series that lack them. Unless they substitute an overwhelming something else, like Utena's surrealism or Otogi Zoushi's Tokyo setting or even Kosugi Jirouta's voice (or Shiozawa Kaneto's or Patrick Stewart's, for that matter.)
My feet have been like rising breadloaves all week and my knee screams in sympathy, so I promised me a weekend lying on the sofa with my leg up doing nothing until things shrank. Even got anime and wuxia to watch if I didn't feel like reading: which I don't, in my dark living room that needs a 200 watt lightbulb to render text remotely legible. But it's stupid to be sitting inside reading under a lightbulb- or even watching Samurai Deeper Kyo with the lights off- on a warm sunny day when I want to be out on a patio somewhere drinking iced coffee and reading by the reflected sunlight. Alas, sitting is the one thing my knee does *not* want me to do. As I know because, if I must be indoors, the thing I want to do -and do do, alas- is play Addiction Solitaire here at the computer. A very little of that and I can't even stand up afterwards.
Now if only it were grey and typhoony (though I'm glad it's not because Caribana gets hit with bad weather far too often) I'd be happy to sit on the sofa. I was doing that until 1 am Thursday night, going through my FMA eps from last October on. I could have read all night- I could have read all night- and still have begged for more.
As I grow old I become less a fan of both tankoubon- text too small- and phonebook episodes- not enough action. Happiness then becomes having about half a year's worth of phonebook eps: nice big type and the satisfaction of a tank's worth of chapters. You understand that this isn't the easiest trick to pull off. But thanks to
shiny_monkey Thursday I was able to go through The Stunning Secret of King Bradley!!! and The Stunning Transformation of Ling Yao!!! (and I, spoilered for that some time ago, was pleased to see I was spoilered incorrectly.) Very nice. I left off where there's a lacuna in my collection- Februaryish, and since there's a Papuwa ep missing around there too I fancy that package got eaten by Gunma Post along with my last Gaiden ep.Returned to them last night only to find myself in the middle of the Ishbal War. Um. I do not wish to be in the middle of the Ishbal War. It's not a nice place to be. Possibly the reason I never got bitten by FMA is the sense that This Cannot End Well: though the other reason is an absence of Teh Pretteh combined with Teh Archetypically Resonant, which is what shallow me needs to be truly grabbed.
Or as simple as other people's reasons for not liking Utena or 12 Kingdoms: no one character grabs me sufficiently in the right ways. No one character has my number, and something in a work has to have your number for it to grab. (It can be landscape for me: it often is: why Olivier's Hamlet is different from all other Hamlets is that castle, and the appeal of Sen to Chihirou is the landscape and skies far more than any of the main characters.)
Mhh- now there's a question. What has my number in the series I like? Saiyuuki: Hakkai and Gojou probably, even now. Gaiden: Goujun. WA: Koh. Papuwa (the new one): the family and its past; Kinchan and Gunma; the island and Takamatsu still. 12 Kingdom: Rakushun and the kirin. DN: the uneasy-making and obsessed L. SamCham: Rin, though the tattoos around Mugen's ankles hit little notes.
How nice if lopsided a series is when it possesses characters of special interest and how rational and dispassionate one feels about series that lack them. Unless they substitute an overwhelming something else, like Utena's surrealism or Otogi Zoushi's Tokyo setting or even Kosugi Jirouta's voice (or Shiozawa Kaneto's or Patrick Stewart's, for that matter.)
no subject
(I'm enjoying FMA as well, but it's not the two brothers I'm reading it for, tolerable as they are. It's everything else, the plot and complexity and cosmology and back history. Back history that drives the plot and that's waiting to be revealed will frequently have me going through broken glass to get more.)
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Pity there are no unsolved murders in the back story. Some quirk of my own will always make me go through broken glass to find whodunnit.
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(Incidentally, has a parcel arrived at your end? I sent it towards the end of last week.)
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(No. Parcels /from/ GB take a good two weeks. It'll show up shortly and I shall be looking forward to it.)
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(Excellent.)
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Yeah, baby.