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Jack Atlas' personal handler ;: 3
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| dun dun dun |
[15 Jul 2009|05:04pm] |
Voice mail message #1: "hi Luka, this is dr. X calling to give you the results of your blood test earlier this week and talk about where to go from here. Please give me a call at...."
Voice mail message #2: "hello Luka, this is Dr. Y from Dr. X's office. I have some open appointments with the rheumatologist for a consult. Please call me so we can set one up and discuss our options. Thanks!"
Called back. Results are not conclusive. Two of the tests show I have inflammation markers in my blood, which could be from non-blood-testable RA. With my symptoms and family history, they want to look closer. They can take me as early as August 26.
In the meantime, looks like I'm going to occupational therapy for yet another limb.
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[15 Jul 2009|09:23am] |
I realised two things last night:
One is that I hate driving at 3 A.M.--it is much easier to speed, then.
The other is that my town is extremely ghetto and can't handle nice things.
Those aside, I had a pretty nice evening: I got to see Harry Potter early. /o/ Now, I don't particularly care for the movies of the series, but something like this is so cool, especially if it was free and so last minute like this. My sister got invited to go with a friend, and I got invited, too, since I could drive her in place of my mom.
The lady who invited us also brought Swedish Fish and licorice, and that made me very happy. Dear lord, I am such a Nordic fag--I smiled, of course, and couldn't help but take a few.
The one other thing, though, that really kind of put a damper on the night was my sister and her friend. The former was particularly loud, so whenever she had commentary the whole theatre heard; they talked and giggled throughout the whole movie; they both have mouths like little sailors, so there was some colourful language coming from their little tittering, sardonic corner. Oi, no shame, I swear. I almost cried at the Dumbledore death!scene (orz, again)
And, and, I totally realised that I know nothing about pre!WWIILiechtenstein and Switzerland other than the little bits from Hetalia. This will not do, however, since they need to be in a piece I will write. Or else. But I have some hopes for it, since I've made a connection--the parallels of the relationships between Liechtenstein and Switzerland and Iceland and Norway--I really haven't seen explored anywhere else. So. Time to research, I suppose. May as well run to the library since I need to return Animal Farm anyway, ahaha.
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[15 Jul 2009|10:05am] |
( 5Ds 67, or: this would have been WAY better if it wasn't Yusei dueling.... AGAIN )
On the front of other shit I've been watching lately. I keep hearing about Hetalia, so I downloaded what I could find of it and watched it this morning and......... holy shit that series is just retarded. In a terribly amusing "WTF" sort of way. And I think I ship "massive worldwide orgy" because everyone is gay for everyone in a hatesex sort of way (and we all know how I feel about hatesex ships). Needs moar invisible!Canada though. XD (is there a manga or something too? Because all I could find are these five minute shorts and as such I feel like I'm missing....... a lot. XD)
Also: season 2 of Haruhi. Which, I believe I'm up to episode 5 on and started out adorable and then it got into this "Endless Eight" set of episodes which have gone on for at least one episode too many now and god only knows how much longer they're going to drag it out. It's really quite aggravating because I do find that show strangely adorable but it needs to move on to something different.
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| SDFM Episodes 1-4 |
[15 Jul 2009|08:49am] |
I told myself that I would stop being bitter, and remind myself just why I loved Macross material. To that end, I ordered the first and last volumes of ADV’s release of Super Dimension Fortress Macross. I had the rest, bought during a visit to a series of London Drugs locations last summer, where they all went for $15 CAD a pop.
I didn’t feel that my review when I watched these volumes was worth posting, but now I’m going to start over from the beginning, and try to look at it from a broader perspective.
My opinion still stands that Macross feels more low-key than the Robotech dub. You could read a lot into that saying, but for me it basically means that SDFM is just on an even keel, slower, more restrained, while the Robotech dub somehow feels peppy and bouncy (or it could just be me, getting the first-blush nostalgia all over again). To put it another way, SDFM is a downer, RT: TMS is an upper, and I speak in terms of drugs, not mood.
There is still a narrator for SDFM, and it’s apparently supposed to be Claudia (not the same VA, actually Claudia, though her narration doesn’t read like a journal entry or a character flashing back). Her recaps are less obtrusive than the Robotech narrator, but I would have discarded a narration altogether.
And yes, Minmay is a better character in SDFM. Her singing and speaking voices are better, and she actually shows some wit and a little more initiative. But the reason why the Macross fandom and later series elevate her to the status of cultural icon still eludes me. I don’t think any character could ever live up to that hype, and I’m content to view Minmay’s power as more metaphorical and circumstantial--a perspective which doesn’t diminish it. She also still indulges in Stupid Moments. Though it matched the animation, I’m still surprised that the “compass” joke was in the original, too.
The Zentradi material is pretty much the same so far, but I noticed that Britai wishes to spare the ship partially because he’s personally interested in it, which is really cool.
Britai seems actively interested in preserving the ship, almost like, in addition to the expected reasons, he also shows some...curiosity. Surprising, as it goes against my usual interpretation of Britai as one who simply takes things as they come, adapts without further exploration. Let’s see if this amounts to any deeper challenge. So far it doesn’t seem to.
And the Zentradi soldier staggering up to Hikaru’s Valkyrie doesn’t make animal growls, is in fact totally silent, which works better.
The narrative also makes a little deal of the soldier’s physical appearance. In the SDFM voicetrack Roy is surprised that the alien looks like a human, while in the Robotech dub he seemed to take it more for granted. Hikaru screams in terror at the same sight, while in the Robotech dub he seems just a little shocked. It works a lot better, and is another reason I think Do You Remember Love? was misguided in increasing the aliennes/homogenity of the male Zentradi. In addition to making them characters in their own right, from the human perspective, it’s far more shocking that the enemy looks human, especially with individual hairstyles.
(Now I feel really bad. Bad Amanda.)
(And I still stand by my assertion that, head-plate aside, and when the episodes are well-drawn, TV series Britai looks more like a handsome hero than an evil villain, and I like that)
Listening to Ryunosuke Obayashi as Exsedol again, I realize that his voice for the Macross 7 Neo-Exsedol did carry similar inflections as to what he has here, but the two performances still sound radically different for no apparent reason. (I also believe that Neo-Exsedol sounds younger than Classic Exsedol, even if their ages are the opposite)
Exsedol and Britai seem...I dunno, to talk to each other more...directly in certain scenes. “But you’re the Cheif Archivist” and “Out with it!”, being some examples of what Britai says to Exsedol.
And yeah, Roy is louder, more bombastic, and a drunkard. It’s more complex for Hikaru to idolize a guy like that, and Roy to still come off as worth idolizing despite his manner, which he does. And Roy doesn’t say anything nearly as bad as the “You have to get so aggressive, you’re at the point where you can take a woman by force!” line in Do You Remember Love?
(Dammit, I did it again! At least it’s not about the Zentradi this time....)
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| Hatters |
[15 Jul 2009|01:42am] |
They're gonna hat.
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[14 Jul 2009|09:59pm] |
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mood |
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My grandfather is dying.
Yeah, the child molester one.
I was just given the news about.. oh, less than five minutes ago. I'm shaking, and crying, strangely enough. I don't really understand it.
He's currently in renal failure. In order to live, he would need to be placed on dialysis and given a kidney transplant. He's refusing treatment. Which means, yeah, he's going to die. He probably won't last but another week or so.
I'm... shocked, but mostly angry. My mom took me back to my room to tell me and offered to have me go up there to talk with him one last time. I declined almost immediately, as she predicted I would. "I didn't think you would want to, but I wanted to offer you the chance to do so." Which, you know, I appreciate, but I think if I went up there, the only thing I would have left to say to him is something along the lines of, "I hate what you did to those boys, my mother and the rest of our family. Everything I know of you up until the day I found your stash was a lie. I hope you're proud of yourself."
That's just one more person I'm not going to be informing of my hatred towards them, but this time, I'm okay with it. Ramsey sickened me, but not to this level. Considering he wasn't above touching Ian in his sleep, I really don't want to have anything to do with him.
Yeah, the tears were of anger. I'm just enraged that he would refuse treatment and essentially kill himself. He's avoiding prosecution and punishment. Those two kids, the ones that we know of, are not going to get the justice they deserve.
I may mention this again once or twice more. The day he dies and what all is going to encompass what's happening to his stuff, wherever the hell it is.
Other than that? I have more important things to be focusing on right now. And I choose to focus on that.
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| Writer's Block: Le Quatorze Juillet |
[14 Jul 2009|03:02pm] |
Moi préféré Francois chose?
...
Les frites!
Ha Ha. J'aime Paris. C'est une belle ville que je l'espoir de visiter un jour.
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| Re: Galaxy Express 999 Episodes 1-4. |
[14 Jul 2009|10:10am] |
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music |
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Pat Benetar - Love is a Battlefield |
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I didn’t come into this series totally ignorant: I know the basic ending and the basic plot, at at one point, I even used an excerpt from the second manga series in a high school project: basically we were asked to put together various things to show our creative side, and one was to record our reaction to a story, so I picked a short piece from the 2nd manga series that was from an old issue of Animerica, because I’d found that comic striking, in a weird way.
The first set of episodes I watched are a mixed bag to be sure, with some notions that really agitate me, but other things which point to a competent, compelling anime series.
If you’ve never seen the story: in a world where ordinary humans are often the have-nots, and cyborgs are the haves, fully-human Tetsuro and his mother are on their way to try to board the Galaxy Express, a system of trains (yes, trains like that) which take the passenger around space. Though Tetsuro’s mother is killed by cyborgs who hunt humans for sport, Tetsuro is rescued by the mysterious Maetel, a woman in black furs who looks just like his mother, who offers to take him on one of the Galaxy Express trains, a journey that Tetsuro wanted to take to gain an immortal machine body like so many of those around them.
The good of it was in the basics. It’s got a great atmosphere and a powerful score, and nice pacing. The animation is old, but very pretty. I enjoy that a ludicrous visual (space trains) is pursued with utterly earnest conviction.
But there are buts. So, so many buts.
The female characters in this show, well, I know there’s supposed to be more to Maetel than meets the eye, but she, and the other female characters seen so far, come off more as props for whatever male they happen(ed) to be attached to. They are there to provoke emotions in the male characters and have little in the way of dreams and ambitions of their own, especially ones that they get to venture forward on.
Tetsuro’s mother doesn’t even get a name before she’s shot down by the hunters. Fleme is willing to either wait or to whine in regards to her boyfriend who has his eyes on the stars, rather than seize her own destiny; that changes at the last minute, but she gets shot in a melodramatic accident before this amounts to anything. Maetel appears like a creature from a dream, and is entirely willing to give, give, give, as a mother-substitute: romanize her name a little differently and you get “Mater”, or Latin for “Mother”. Claire sacrifices her life for Tetsuro without ever achieving her own dream, a dream that seems mentioned only to reinforce the primary theme of the series.
I was very much prepared for it, but I still can’t stand the extremes to which the “Leiji Lady” design is taken. There are exceptions, but they appear all too briefly, and basically you walk away with the impression that Matsumoto uses the exact same character model for every young and beautiful woman. If they’re building to something with Maetel and Tetsuro’s mother looking alike, then go for it, but otherwise...if some random chick has the exact same character model again and again...ack.
The male characters have almost the opposite problem, pairing fairly normal anime designs with something goofy and expecting the audience to abosrb it all in stride. Many must, since Matsumoto has a lot of fans, but here it just grates. Tetsuro looks like he comes from a totally different series, and there’s none of Matsumoto’s signature SD oldsters around yet to at least balance Tetsuro out.
I admire stories that praise the human spirit, but SF and fantasy tales which dictate that the soul cannot survive a change in form have, herm, shall we say, unfortunate implications? And it doesn’t help that 999 is so transparent about sending its message that people who take mechanical bodies are soulless:
The cyborg bodies are dorky-looking, with visible joints and bolts and faces that couldn’t possibly pass for human. Then it’s kicked up a notch with Count Mecha, whose face is just a giant hole/screen with a thin line of slots for a “mouth”, and of course if he looks so inhuman, he’s Tetsuro’s mother’s killer.
It reminds me of the fat people in Wall-E (and I’ve heard that 999 does an episode with a similar theme, too) in that it ignores the obvious factor: by designing the characters in such a way as to tell the audience that the paradise is fake, it ignores the fact that the paradise is still considered an ideal from the viewpoint of the characters “trapped” inside it, and a truly ideal body would be part of this. It wouldn’t be a paradise without such a body. Therefore, inhabitants of the “false paradise” should look attractive or at least normal, especially if we want a genuine sense of temptation and tension as 999 does.
But so far, Tetsuro’s encounters hammer down the point that having a natural body is better than having a cyborg one with all the subtlety of Mijolnir. All narratives are designed to manipulate, but this one is being far too transparent about it, with speechifying on the theme coming from every corner.
And I know this is a bit of a stretch, but it seems like so far the story is trying to equate the feminine with being anti-technology. While there are female cyborgs and female characters, less of them indulge in the same speechifying about how good “red blood” and a human body is...perhaps because the narrative thinks that to female characters, such things would be self-evident? Having a character named “Mater” suggests the storyline is very friendly to archetypal images of femininity.
I don’t know...I want to like the series, since it seems very well-made, but it’s been two days and I haven’t gone back to it.
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| 8U |
[14 Jul 2009|02:43am] |
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music |
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DRAGON - Jam Project |
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BORED STARRY IS BORED 8U
And I should sleep too XD
Buut just something to post so I'll have something to look forward to after I get back from work
Ask any of my roleplay muses anything, nothing is off limits 8D♥
Also I've started reading FMA today <3 Im already done with the first volume~
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| Attenshun! |
[13 Jul 2009|09:58pm] |
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music |
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Malchik Gay - t.A.T.u. |
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*Sparkles*
Now that I have your attention, I need to post something important~
Since the majority ruled on having fanfic filter in place, I shall do so. This means all fanfics from here on out will be f-locked. However all of my fanfics will be posted on FF.net
Only comment if you wish not to be on the filter. If you like my fanfics and want to see them, then ignore this. I won't be offended the slightest if you don't want to be on said filter.
Comments are screened btw.
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| GLORY TO THE MOTHERLAND! |
[13 Jul 2009|09:15pm] |
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mood |
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 tired |
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I was having a hard time deciding between a layout with lots of dark side of the moonspeak, or one with exalted jesus trueman.
So I decided to go the highroad and go with LOTS OF BLUE.
Also, brb uploading 15 moar icons that I'll never use, which is the sole reason why I am currently whoring myself out to intel for two months. The bastards.
I HOPE THEY ENJOY ALL THE PORNOGRAPHY AND GENERAL LOLWUT THAT THEY ARE SPONSORING<3 8D
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| The Day Of Reckoning |
[13 Jul 2009|04:52pm] |
Went to the doctor for the wrist. Was given X-Rays, but until the radiologist looks at them nothing stands out about the bones. No erosion at least, which is a good indicator that it's not osteo-arthritis.
Then she sent me out for a blood test because my mother had rheumatoid arthritis and my symptoms are suspicious. Whenever I think of how shitty Mom's life was and try to imagine the constant pain she lived in, I cringe. I don't want that to be me.
If the test comes back positive, though, we'll have a good chance to keep it at bay with an arsenal of modern treatments and exercise, and at least I'll finally know why my joints are trying to destroy my life.
If it's negative, she's going to send me to occupational rehab for the wrist, and we'll just have to dig deeper to find out what's so messed up in there.
If that still doesn't work, we start considering sharp objects.
And now I begin the 2 or 3 day wait for test results. Plenty of time to stew in angst because OH GOD WHAT IF I'M TURNING INTO MY MOTHERRRRRRRRRR
On balance, it's an excellent chance to practice mindfulness.
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| Geyuh. |
[13 Jul 2009|04:30pm] |
I first heard about Crystal Dreams when Captain JLS’ old Robotech comics blog noted that Exedore had appeared in something by that name, prior to his appearance in the first Sentinels comic.
JLS was talking about the promotional comic for Crystal Dreams, a canceled Robotech video game for the N64, in which Exedore as a non-playable character. Information and examples were surprisingly easy to track down, thanks to the discovery of a website that archived Crystal Dreams material, run by one of the people who worked on it.
Here’s Exedore’s only appearance in the promotional comic. On top of how bad the general everything in this comic is, the artist just traced Exedore’s character model and stuck it onto the Micronian bridge, nevermind that that character model represents his giant form instead.
But his in-game model is even worse. The most hideous rendering of his character design that I have ever seen.
MY EYES
And yep, still sporting the cowl even though he’s supposed to be Micronized.
(I know Exedore is supposed to be “hideous”, but his canonical model should be ugly in a cute, weird way, not...that)
Poor Breetai doesn’t fare much better:
Samples of other character models, which fare no better.
(Max looks like a MONKEY)
At this page you can also find a video of Exedore during the game, whose link surprisingly still works. He’s not voiced by Ted Layman, though. This I can excuse, even if the replacement voice isn’t that great.
So there’s your piece of Exedore minutiae for the day.
Though I have to say, I’m surprised that this game used the same concept that I hit on early in my fandom development: the idea of Zentraedi last names indicating the presence of “clone lines” of Zentraedi (including, in this game, a Kravshera “brother” of Khyron...who is not purple-skinned, for some reason), and two characters with the name “Norri”, from the Malcontent Uprisings. Both Norri sisters have the exact same character model, one that looks suspiciously like Rook Bartley with different hair colours.
ETA: Looking at Exedore and especially Breetai's depictions again, they look a lot like the artwork for Palladium's old Zentraedi RPG book
Also, between the main character being named Bartley, and his girlfriend looking like Rook Bartley, I wonder if the game designers were hinting at something. (Yes, I know Rook's family in the EU is different from that, but...)
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| this means waaaar |
[13 Jul 2009|02:58pm] |
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Ok, am over the shock and now I juat feel determined instead. I will earn some moolahs for real through hard work and arty goodness. I am furthermore gonna chew through the War on Aisle 8 comic like never before. I WILL TRIUMPH TRIUMPHANTLY IN THE DEAD TREE FORMAT DEPARTMENT OR THE WORLD WILL BE DESTROYED BY THE WAILING AND BITCHING NOISES.
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| Once More, With Feeling! |
[13 Jul 2009|01:31pm] |
Oh fuck. My gym membership came off hold this month instead of August, and I didn't budget for it.
Hi again, negative account balance!
*Goes off to smack head into wall several dozen times*
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