kaigou: pino does not approve of where the script is going. (2 pino does not approve)
[Edited/consolidated to reduce where I rambled. Wow, those cold meds are something.]

For a little background, read [personal profile] phoebe_zeitgeist's A perhaps-obvious point about shipping and voice work, and don't skip the comments, which are equally insightful.

The TL;DR version is that voicework can completely alter our impression of a work, which is (as Phoebe says), probably completely obvious. I think there's a side-issue at work, though, which is that the voicework can also tell us how the voice-actors, themselves, approached the work—and our impression of the work, therefore, is informed by the actors' interpretation. That is, interpretation as the output (the voice recordings) and interpretation as the input (their own view of a character, a story, the conflict, and so on). I'll refrain from quoting too much of the original post & replies, since you can read it there, but I do want to call out this example, from [personal profile] aquila_black:
...my first introduction to Naruto was one of the movies, dubbed into English and shown once at our local theater... The movie had interviews with several of the American voice actors, the Japanese voice actors, and the manga-ka himself. The middle-aged American lady voicing Naruto was embarrassingly informal and unprofessional, and had nothing interesting to say about her character. The Japanese voice actress gave the camera a serious, well-thought out response about the responsibility she felt, at portraying the emotional complexities of an orphan who projects a relentlessly cheerful exterior, while often feeling desperately alienated and alone. Needless to say, it was a night and day difference. The Japanese actress convinced me that her character was worth my time.

In short, I see the output-interpretation as hampered or stifled by the lack of input-interpretation. Or, in the instance of the Japanese voice actress, the output is significantly enhanced by the amount of input she gave it.

This is not that unusual for Japanese seiyuu, from the interviews I've seen. It's the English-speaking VA who spends considerable time watching the original, thinking about the character, that's the unusual one (and they do exist, but there's plenty more who don't know of the original or seem to care). A similar case in point, for me, was watching the VA interviews that came with the US release of the Cowboy Bebop movie. Spike's VA (from the series) didn't do the movie-Spike [See comments in re this statement.] Faye's VA... well, I recall the question was something about playing Faye, and the answer was mostly about how awesome it was to hang out with the gang, and we all get along well, and blah blah blah.

(Not saying VAs are the only ones who do this; I've seen many actors/actresses asked about their character and answer with how hard the filming was, or doing their own stunts, or how close the entire cast got to be. Okay, some actors/actresses just don't like to analyze a character, and insist it should be left to the audience. Except I'm not asking for the definitive meaning; I just want to know the actor/actress or VA actually gave characterization as much thought as I'm going to give it while ripping it apart.)

The reason the other VA non-responses stood out was because Edward's VA spent no little time explaining how much thought she'd put into trying to communicate Edward's utterly-Japanese wacky dialogue into an English equivalent (IIRC, the VA doesn't know Japanese). She put time and effort not just into understanding Edward, but into crafting the translated dialogue with the director and scriptwriter, to "find" Edward's English voice. That's a lot of extra work, though, for a job where you're probably only making a pittance, anyway. Not everyone can, or will, or even is allowed to, go beyond like that.

But criticisms like mine do put a lot of weight on VA shoulders, and I think we need to shift some of that to where it belongs: the director. If you're in a play, and you don't know or haven't yet seen where the story's going, it's the director who says, "read the line like this," or "the character is actually feeling like ___ but showing an expression of ____ because s/he is thinking ___." There's a reason for the old joke about the actor asking, "what's my motivation!?" When all else fails, the one who can best answer that is the director... and I think we may have a substantial lack of directors in US VA work, from the results I'm seeing. Either that, or the English-speaking VAs are so incredibly bad that no amount of directing would save 'em. Hard to tell from the final product.

Now that's out of the way, time for the main course: Kuroshitsuji, and some side-by-side comparisons. )

This took all day on benedryl, so I think I'll turn the mic over to the rest of you, now.

ETA: forgot to mention this, but at least one member of the English Kuroshitsuji cast does deserve some mention: the VA for Meiran did a remarkable job of matching the Japanese VA's peculiarly hoarse-raspy-funny delivery. It's not a total match-up, but the VA gets points from me for not only mimicking the Japanese Meiran-style, but doing it with a low-class Brit accent as well. Well done, that.
kaigou: (5 flowers on brick)
There were several issues with Paper Butterfly (Diane Wei Liang), one being that the voice was rather dry and distant, the other being that it couldn't seem to keep my attention. The reason for losing my attention, though, wasn't from the book but from my reaction, and I'm still trying to put my finger on it.

A few weeks ago or so, I recall linking to this essay [thx to [personal profile] soukup!] that discussed -- well, lots of things but this was one of the sub-themes -- the issue of works written for the insider group and works written for an outsider group. A significant point was that of the texts mentioned, some of them (which had been highly lauded in the West) were stuffed to the brim with a certain kind of sell-out, catering, mindset. The intended audience was clearly Western, and that audience's viewpoint was valorized over the insider/non-Western view.

That's fuzzy, but it's a jumping-off point into a critique of Paper Butterfly, and why I stopped reading. )
kaigou: this is what I do, darling (1 nobuta smiles)
Of the last round of library books, I finished Faust's (more like tore through it) and then decided the only other one that held my attention was Nina Revoyr's Southland. Short review behind cut. )

Returned those books, and now I have the next set to read:

The hell screens — Lu, Alvin
Mama rocks the empty cradle — DeLoach, Nora.
The mistress of spices — Divakaruni, Chitra Banerjee
The Midnight Palace — Ruiz Zafón, Carlos
The Dervish House — McDonald, Ian

...a few early impressions of the first two in the list. )

More on the rest later, when I'm done with these. (I suspect Lu's is going to be a slower read, because the book's voice doesn't really give you the room for speed. DeLoach does, though.)
kaigou: this is what I do, darling (5 bookstack)
Paper Butterfly — Diane Wei Liang
...trying to, at least. It's slow going, and the protagonist (a private eye in Beijing) is a little too reticent or introverted to get a handle on her. Cautious, as well, and the third-person POV is a little distant, and all of it's creating distance where I think I'm supposed to find sympathy. But I want to like the story, so I may keep trying.

Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad — Minister Faust
This is a book I can't review with any kind of distance. It was just that good, and caught me that much. Tore through it in an evening, because I simply could not stop. Now I want his next books. Like, fifteen minutes ago.

Chinatown Beat — Henry Chang
Not sure if I'll keep with this one. Decent writing, solid, but there are starting to be hints of misogyny. Not sexism (where women are less capable/able than men) but outright don't-like-women-that-much. Haven't read enough to pinpoint whether this is the narration/author or the character in particular. Problem is, not sure I want to keep reading to find out.

Southland — Nina Revoyr
I'm four or five chapters into this one, and I'm starting to get that feeling, the same one I got at this stage of The Hero's Walk, that something marvelous is unfolding in front of me. Stay tuned, will report in later.
kaigou: this is what I do, darling (1 Edward armor)
Current status:

Done Wrong — Eleanor Taylor Bland (mystery)
Dropped. Not really where my brain is at, right now, and this title is fourth in the series, I think it is. Going to try and find the one with the summary/case that was more interesting.

The Steel Remains — Richard K Morgan (fantasy)
Dropped... for now. Just not doing it for me. Story is okay, characters have potential, but it wasn't holding me.

Havemercy — Jaida Jones & Danielle Bennett (fantasy/steampunk)
Dropped. See this exchange for an uncharacteristically (for me) succinct review.

The Hero's Walk — Anita Rau Badami (literary)

GET THIS BOOK. READ IT. It's not slow, it's dense, but it's rich. Emotional without being melodramatic; introspective without drowning in navel-gazing. It's a story of mourning, grief, loss, and how even inside a family, we can still be strangers.

It's about an upper-caste (but hardly wealthy) man who disowned his daughter for marrying a Westerner and ditching her arranged marriage, who after nine years of distance learns his daughter and her husband have died in a car accident -- and his is the only family able and willing to take in the orphaned grand-child. It's about an eight-year-old girl who's lost her parents, her voice, her culture, and her moorings, in that order. It's about a grown woman who's lost repeated chances at marriage thanks to her mother's selfishness, but might not have lost her chance at love. It's about a life-long obedient daughter-then-wife who realizes she's had it up to here and it's time to start declaring, and chasing, what she wants. It's about a younger son, shadowed by his older sister and desperately wanting to make the world better but getting nowhere. It's a lot of people getting nowhere, but that's to be expected when you're not sure how to get there, or if you even have the courage to try. It's a gorgeous, thoughtful story, sometimes-sad, sometimes-wryly-humorous, always human and respectful and ambiguous towards its characters.

This is not a story to swallow whole, or even to chew up in large bites. It's a story to be savored, and a story that lets you in to be the observer in complex and burdened personal histories that make up this strange new land for an orphaned child. It is also not, I should note, saccharine, in any way at all: the grand-daughter is not some bubbly Westernized child who shows up and delights, charms, and changes everyone. The grand-daughter is suffering and struggling with her own grief for her lost parents that's just as deep as her grandparents' grief for their lost daughter.

Honestly, I can't speak highly enough of this story. The plot is simple, though the story gets right into it very quickly -- and then backs up, circles around, to give you a bigger picture to understand each character's reactions and fears -- so it's both slow and quick-moving at the same time. It's written without overly-purple pretensions at poetry; it's just deft and assured writing that carries you along, giving enough description to create the place and time. The craftsmanship in the writing is just that good, that you never stop to say, oh, how the author must have labored over this description! -- which is what I mean by 'pretentious'. The author trusts the power of her story and has the confidence in her own voice to give you the story as it needs to be given, at the pace that works, with the details that belong.

Really. Find a copy, read, and enjoy.

The Devil in the Dust — Chaz Brenchley
Currently reading. Figure it'll kill some time while I wait for the interlibrary loan books to come in, even if I'm less than crazy about the alternate-history/reality version of the Crusades. (The mention of 'Catari' in the first few pages as one of the heretical groups was slight giveaway; the next four pages' details confirmed it.)

Also: commentary on Water Touching Stone, Companion to Wolves, and The Hero's Walk. )
kaigou: first I'm going to have a little drinkie, then I'm going to execute the whole bally lot of you. (2 execute all of you)
Yesterday I read Warchild, then Burndive, and quit a chapter or so into Cagebird, and then read reviews to see if I was the only one feeling the lack. (Far as I can tell, I am.)

When I was a teenager, I read Majipoor Chronicles, which was a collection of short stories within a framework (honestly, the only kind of short stories I'll tolerate; entirely unconnected short stories just aren't my thing). Several of the stories in that book dealt with, or implied, things like child prostitution, rape, and/or abuse -- as have other SFF books I've read over the years. While I've rarely read full-on-id all-the-details page-time in mainstream SFF, I've also rarely read truly oblique glossing. A good writer can let you know that two characters had sex (consensual or not) without wallowing in it.

I've learned to ping on when a work is ex-fanfic (or the author is). The id gets page-time (often deep emotional)... and then it's wiped with no warning. It's like the story's voice/flow was suddenly truncated by an embarrassed author, censoring lest the story show its idtastic origins or influences. The narration loses its honesty; it becomes evasive. The author doesn't just require me to read between the lines; I'm being forced to insert lines that aren't there, before I can even read between those deleted lines.

Unreliable narrators, storytelling pattern-breaks, Barbara Cartland, word of god is not my canon, aliens vs Asia, and geisha as the final straw. )

Now I'm reading Eleanor Taylor Bland's Done Wrong. It's not the first book in the series, but I already have five books reserved on interlibrary loan and I really wanted to read Bland's series, so I picked the earliest in the series that was actually on the shelf. It's another genre-jump, as Bland writes present-day Chicago homicide investigator mysteries, but already I'm sucked in. Will report back, next time I come up for air.

(After this, it's onto Anita Rau Badami's The Hero's Walk.)
kaigou: (2 start drinking heavily)
1. We went back again last night, and I finally had bibimbap. Omg, so gooooooood. I think this is what they meant in high school when they said IT ONLY TAKES ONCE AND YOU'RE AN ADDICT.

2. Book-searches last night, taking the recs from all ya'll, and [personal profile] firecat's suggestion to read up on [community profile] 50books_poc and then went browsing through Amazon on top of that. Apparently, if you're going to set a book in Asia, especially the Far East, then you have to have "dragon" in the title. It's like naming a Chinese restaurant: two from column A, one from column B: lion, golden, palace, peking, etc. Except in this case it's dragon + generic verb or noun that'd be used in any other thriller/suspense. Add a "The" and you're set. Strangely, this also appears to apply to espionage/thriller works set in Indonesia, Indochina, Malaysia, and Singapore, but not works set in Japan (which get "sword" and "chrysanthemum" and "samurai" instead). I haven't found any Western-written espionage/thriller works set in Korea, though, so no idea whether the pattern, or what pattern, holds there. Still, it got pretty annoying after the twelfth title. Sheesh.

3. Now reading The Skull Mantra, which is well-written but so freaking bleak. (Not to mention awfully, ahem, pointed -- not critical per se, just plain pointed -- about China's role in Tibet and PRC politics in general, enough that I started to feel a little uncomfortable. Yes, I know it's a totalitarian system, but it just feels... something feels off to know such criticism is coming from an outsider, if that makes sense.) I figured get the depressing one out of the way, and then start on the rest. Maybe I should go ahead & reserve the next batch now, so it'll be ready by the time I finish this batch in the next day or so.

4. Local friend, invaluable resource for finding good spoons. Yay.
kaigou: (1 buddha ipod)
my local librarians are either going to hate me, or just stare at me with blank expressions. also, this numbering is in order of addition to the wish list, not in order of preference. ETA: bold = interlibrary/local; italic = not available; # = local library; underline = author avail but not that title; neither = read/reading.

1. The Hell Screens — Alvin Lu
2. Death of a Red Heroine — Xiaolong Qiu
3. The Eye of Jade: A Mei Wang Mystery — Diane Wei Liang #
4. The Midnight Palace — Carlos Ruiz Zafón
5. The Age of Dreaming — Nina Revoyr
6. Southland — Nina Revoyr
7. Feng Shui Detective — Nury Vittachi
8. Moonrise, Sunset — Gopal Baratham
9. Shadow Theatre — Fiona Cheong
10. White Teeth: A Novel — Zadie Smith
11. Life and Death are Wearing Me Out: A Novel — Yen Mo
12. Nervous Conditions — Tsitsi Dangarembga
13. Wizard of the Crow — Ngugi wa Thiongo
14. The Heart of Redness: A Novel — Zakes Mda
15. Running in the Family — Michael Ondaatje
16. My Name Is Red — Orhan Pamuk
17. Salt and Saffron — Kamila Shamsie
18. Burnt Shadows: A Novel — Kamila Shamsie
19. The Skull Mantra — Eliot Pattison
20. The Calcutta Chromosome: A Novel of Fevers, Delirium & Discovery — Amitav Ghosh
21. Kalpa Imperial: The Greatest Empire That Never Was — Angélica Gorodischer
22. The Dervish House — Ian McDonald
23. The Coyote Kings of the Space-Age Bachelor Pad — Minister Faust
24. The Alchemists of Kush — Minister Faust
25. The Devil's Whisper — Miyuki Miyabe
26. Chinatown Beat — Henry Chang
27. Babel-17/Empire Star — Samuel R. Delany
28. The Day Lasts More than a Hundred Years — Chingiz Aitmatov
29. The Mistress of Spices: A Novel — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni
30. My Soul to Keep — Tananarive Due
31. Brown Girl in the Ring — Nalo Hopkinson
32. Cast in Shadow — Michelle Sagara
33. Racing the Dark — Alaya Dawn Johnson
34. Salt Fish Girl — Larissa Lai
35. Fatal Remains — Eleanor Taylor Bland #
36. Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress: A Novel — Sijie Dai
37. Mama Rocks the Empty Cradle — Nora DeLoach
38. The Walking Boy: A Novel — Lydia Kwa
39. When Fox is a Thousand — Larissa Lai
49. Warchild — Karin Lowachee
50. The Hero's Walk — Anita Rau Badami #
51. Miss Chopsticks — Xinran
52. The Corpse Walker: Real Life Stories: China from the Bottom Up — Yiwu Liao

I have no idea whether 'Minister Faust' is a real name or pen name, but it's a freaking brilliant name any way you look at it. It's a name that demands you do great, if kinda crazy, things.

If you can think of any other SF/F works, or any of these titles make you do the "if you like that [story description] you may also like" routine, please feel free to rattle off the "also likes" you've got.
kaigou: this is what I do, darling (Default)
Rereading Rain Fall by Barry Eisler, and I'm reminded of one of my favorite nonfiction reading topics (other than architecture, that is): travelogues of places I've been, written by non-natives. Specifically, works like Ciao, America (written by an Italian attache stationed in Washington DC). There's something intriguing to me about what people notice, when they arrive as adults to an unfamiliar culture, things I take for granted as a native.

I don't mean in the sense of romanticizing the locale (although that is a risk), but in the little things. It's part of the tone, but also part of the details noticed. It's gotten to the point that I treasure a writer (of any origin) who can do the same in fiction, and one reason that many SFF books disappoint me, because these details are often left out (or just as bad, read like they could be from anywhere).

My travelogue-books are all hardcopy (and in the library, at that, and I'm too lazy to go digging for them), but this copy of Rain Fall is electronic, so it's handier as example. It's a scene very early in the book, where John Rain is trailing his most recent assignment. Long, but I think worth it as illustration.

The light at the bottom of Dogenzaka was red, and the crowd congealed as we approached the five-street intersection in front of the train station. Garish neon signs and massive video monitors flashed frantically on the buildings around us. A diesel-powered truck ground its gears as it slogged through the intersection, laborious as a barge in a muddy river, its bullhorns blaring distorted right-wing patriotic songs that momentarily drowned out the bells commuters on bicycles were ringing to warn pedestrians out of the way. A street hawker angled a pushcart through the crowds, sweat running down the sides of his face, the smell of steamed fish and rice following in his zigzagging wake. An ageless homeless man, probably a former sarariman who had lost his job and his moorings when the bubble burst in the late eighties, slept propped against the base of a streetlight, inured by alcohol or despair to the tempest around him.

The Dogenzaka intersection is like this night and day, and at rush hour, when the light turns green, over three hundred people step off the curb at the same instant, with another twenty-five thousand waiting in the crush. From here on, it was going to be shoulder to shoulder, chest to back. I would keep close to Kawamura now, no more than five meters, which would put about two hundred people between us. I knew he had a commuter pass and wouldn’t need to go to the ticket machine. Harry and I had purchased our tickets in advance so we would be able to follow him right through the wickets. Not that the attendant would notice one way or the other. At rush hour, they’re practically numbed by the hordes; you could flash anything, a baseball card, probably, and in you’d go.

The light changed, and the crowds swept into one another like a battle scene from some medieval epic. An invisible radar I’m convinced is possessed only by Tokyoites prevented a mass of collisions in the middle of the street. I watched Kawamura as he cut diagonally across to the station, and maneuvered in behind him as he passed. There were five people between us as we surged past the attendant’s booth. I had to stay close now. It would be chaos when the train pulled in: five thousand people pouring out, five thousand people stacked fifteen deep waiting to get on, everyone jockeying for position. Foreigners who think of Japan as a polite society have never ridden the Yamanote at rush hour.

The river of people flowed up the stairs and onto the platform, and the sounds and smells of the station seemed to arouse an extra sense of urgency in the crowd. We were swimming upstream against the people who had just gotten off the train, and as we reached the platform the doors were already closing on handbags and the odd protruding elbow. By the time we had passed the kiosk midway down the platform, the last car had passed us and a moment later it was gone. The next train would arrive in two minutes.
kaigou: Roy Mustang, pondering mid-read. (1 pondering)
Last week (after we got back), I was bored enough and hadn't read a book in awhile, felt like, so thought I'd check out what new ebooks were on offer from the publishers I like (read: who seem to be somewhat consistent in decent quality). One area I almost always check out is "multicultural", but this time I noticed something and I'm not sure whether it's me, or if it's not me.

When I say "multicultural", I mean as in: where the two (or more) main characters come from a variety of cultures. Kinda culture-clash, even if on a superficial level the characters may have a lot in common, visually. Someone from Australia and someone from Britain might look like they have distant-distant-distant kin, possibly, but culturally they're going to have some differences. The lack of a language barrier meaning the differences may be less than, say, Australia and Peru, but still, culturally it's still not quite exactly the same. Still, that's what I'd consider a watered-down multiculturalism, because between language, ethnicity, and culture (on a very broad scale), there's still a lot in common between the two characters, more than there's difference.

When I say, multicultural, I mean, lots of cultures, coming and going and complex and textured. )

If it seems like it's an odd request, it's because I've realized that we can extend that meme about "if you don't like panels with only white guys, as a white guy, don't agree to be on panels with only white guys". If I don't like books with only white characters, stop agreeing to read/purchase books with only white characters -- and to be honest, settings in which the white culture dominates quietly, in the background, as an unquestioned assumption, is part of that refusal.

I'm thinking it's time to paraphrase the Dalai Lama: read the change you want to see in the world. I'm ready to read. Throw some titles at me!
kaigou: this is what I do, darling (1 dimples that kill)
This past week, we headed back home for my sister's... shindig... and I mentioned to my step-father about the massively disappointing Korean meal I'd had. Well, this would never do. (Says a man who buys homemade kimchi by the huge bottle-full from his "source" -- the mother of the woman who does my mother's nails, because "it's not the same when it's store-bought".) Friday we all piled into the car and headed off to the best Korean place inside an hour's drive, and my Mom and I shared pork bulgogi while CP and the SF had some kind of noodle-beef-spice dish (didn't catch the name). After we demolished all of the awesome little dishes that came first, of course.

We get home today, and it's blistering hot and the A/C is still broken (but due to be fixed tomorrow, yay). Naturally this means we might as well eat out -- anything for non-104F temps, basically -- and we decide we want more Korean. Ah, new place getting good reviews in our local Asian shopping center (represents of Taiwan, PRC, Korea, and Vietnam), so off we head.

Even more little dishes ahead of time, plus (our eyes being bigger than our stomachs after spending most of the day on various planes) seafood pancakes -- oh so good -- and then a kind of four-bulgogi sampler called SsamBob. Whomever told me on the last post that Korean food is somewhat hot, sometimes (spicy-wise), but always complex, spicy-wise, totally spoke the truth. So spicy, so incredibly yummy.

Except I had this one question... When the proprietor came over to check on us, she'd been so helpful with what-to-get recommendations that I figured, maybe she could answer this question. I explained I'd watched a Korean show with Moon Geum-Young, in which the actress was making kimchi. I saw the sliced cabbages and some other chunks of vegetables, and then this HUGE BAG (like 2lbs worth HUGE) that was nothing but red powder. Was that, uhm, entirely chili powder she was dumping by the double-handfuls into the vegetables?

First, the proprietor said, yes, it was. And then she said, "you know Moon Geum-Young? You watch her television shows?" I said, of course, she's adorable, and I've done my best to see everything she's in. (Excepting Tale of Two Sisters, which I have but haven't watched yet because it may be over my creep limit in re horror, but anyway, I did see Innocent Steps and Painter of the Wind, and most of MSOAN, so, yeah.) But, she wanted to know, was that all I watched? I said, "no, I've also--" right as CP goes, "My Girlfriend is a Gumiho!" and the proprietor just cracked up (while managing to look surprised that CP had also watched the show, and unsurprised he thought Shin Min-ah is gorgeously charming with dimples that kill). ...and then she asked what else I'd watched. I said, "I'm watching Lie to Me, because it's got Kang Ji-hwan," and she put her hand to her heart and looked like she was going to swoon.

Next thing you know, I'm rattling off all the pretty boys: Lee Min-ki (Dalja's Spring), and Lee Jun-ki (Time Between Dog and Wolf), and Lee Min-ho (City Hunter) -- except I hadn't even gotten out what LMH is in right now, just his name, and the proprietor says, "City Hunter? Are you watching City Hunter?"

Me: OF COURSE. It's got a pretty boy in it!

Then I told her what the American-language fandom calls most of these young actors: noona killers (as in, "older sister killers"). She cracked up all over again, and said that fit perfectly. Clearly a woman after my own heart, and we totally bonded over Hong Gil Dong and Chuno and Greatest Love and Civil Servant Grade 7 and so on. Although notably, neither of us were all that about Yon-sama (or whatever his Korean name is, I can never remember) who was in Legend. We'd trade him in for Lee Min-ho any day. Or Kang Ji-hwan. Though clearly we'd have to get in line.

ETA: Almost forgot, the universal symbol for a particular hot leading man (who, incidentally, is actually older than me, so not really a noona killer). She mentioned Greatest Love, and I tried to say the actor's name. Cha Seung-won, I think his name is spelled? She didn't react, so I knew I said it wrong, so instead I ran my fingers over my face to make the "cow" symbol -- the way the guy's beard is trimmed, it looks like the Chinese character for "cow". Immediately she did the same, and knew exactly who I meant. Bwah.

I am totally going back to try the rest of the dishes (and next time, bringing friends, because that's a lot of food for two people, even if we did come home with leftovers). Besides, the proprietor was willing to patiently explain the parts of the usually-slurred-so-fast-on-TV way to say hello: anaunhah-seoh. Hmm. Maybe I should stick to trying to slur it.

Nice to know I'm not the only noona in this town, getting killed twice weekly.
kaigou: (5 flowers on brick)
One of my biggest issues with application development is when any driver in the development (whether programmers, designers, or the corporate decision-makers) declare that "users can just get used to this". I end up arguing the opposite, every single time. Like arguing that users do need a halfway button that says "save and continue" on a really long form, or that we can't drop the red asterisk for colorblind users who won't see the red outline on a text-box, or that a series of steps aren't obvious or intuitive. I don't believe you can force users -- or that you even should -- into changing their own perceptions and patterns just because you think it's easier to not include that second button, or because you believe asterisks will "mess up" your pretty styles.

Since an application's purpose is to help someone work more efficiently (whether at a new task or just redoing an old task in a new format, like in-browser), making the users slow down to learn a new pattern-language seems counterproductive. You have to fit the application to the users, and any changes must be slow and subtle. We're all old dogs, really, when it comes to how we interact with patterns.

I see the same argument in fiction, where users (readers) argue for things like "pronounceable names" or dislike settings or conflicts that don't mesh with their expectations. Things like female characters who are androgynous enough that an unfamiliar character might, at first, not be sure of the female character's sex/gender. Or hierarchies that don't work in the same way as those the reader knows. Or even just value systems that aren't in-culture for the reader: different priorities, like setting one's family/parents above one's personal ambitions. Those kinds of stories are the opposite of the application-design style above, because they don't bend to the user's conventions, but expect the reader to bend to mesh with the story.

[paragraph above is badly-phrased, see comments for discussion/elaboration]

Maybe such unfamiliar-named, unfamiliar-setting stories might reach a wider audience if they worked more to meet with reader non/familiarity? Like taking a non-English name and anglicizing it a little differently to make its pronunciation more obvious, more understandable to English-familiar readers? (I am suddenly thinking of Korean names, which seem to be anglicized in any of a variety of ways, and frequently have vowel-combinations that would be one way based on English rules, but are pronounced quite differently.) Another is cultural, where the protagonist notes things that would be taken for granted in the protag's own culture (ie, family over individual or vice versa), but are distinctly different from the reader's culture, and thus are tagged or lampshaded solely for the reader's benefit. (Characters who note the side of the road driven is a huge, if rare, example: who the hell ever stops to think about what side of the road they drive on, if they grew up with that understanding/assumption?)

I recall someone on my dwircle was discussing/reviewing a book set in Japan, I think it was, where the main character noted such cross-culture differences. Those familiar with Japanese culture found it off-putting, it seemed, because these seemed like things a Japanese person would never think to randomly compare. I mean, how often do you go around your native/home culture and say, "I'm getting cucumbers and okra, but you'd never see these in a Russian supermarket"? Those who not quite familiar with Japanese culture seemed to be more forgiving, maybe because they were glad of being given some handle on the differences. It can be hard to assess what's "strange" for a character when the entire setting is strange to you, as the reader.

Bend to the user/reader, or expect the reader/user to bend to the story? What do you think?
kaigou: you live and learn. at any rate, you live. - doug adams (2 live and learn)
[belated realization: this is not a question I'd ask if I met you outside the South and we weren't at my home. This is a question asked by a host of a guest, and I honestly cannot recall ever seeing it the other way around (not counting the host's concurrence after a guest completes the response). As "home" counts as a kind of "Southern turf" regardless of geographic location, that might be why I can recall asking guest-Northerners visiting my home when I lived in RI... but even in the South, it's not a question I'd ask as a guest. It's certainly not something I'd ever ask, or have ever asked, just to make conversation. When I say it's part of the formalities, I'm using "formality" intentionally. Just FYI.]

This is riffing off the previous post re the US Deep South, in that it occurred to me to write something out thanks to [personal profile] taithe's comment -- but it's something I've bandied about mentally, many a time, over the past few years. (This is not to say this kind of question or its message isn't important in other geographic/sociocultural regions. I'm sure it is, although maybe asked/approached differently.) Your Southern mileage may vary, but upon meeting new people (especially in a social/casual situation), this is a question I've seen asked many times in my life, have been asked many times, and have found myself asking many times.

Where's your family from?

Now, I've also read plenty about how people -- whether recent or farther-back immigrants -- who do not look some generic form of "white" or "black" (which both tend to be classed as, "been here awhile") -- will get asked (usually by white USians), "where are you from? Pittsburgh? No, where are you really from?"

This is an annoying, and patronizing, question. Absolutely! So I figured maybe it's time I explained that when a Southerner asks you the question above -- where's your family from? -- that this is NOT the same question. In fact, if the purpose of "where are you from?" is to to prove (if unconsciously) that you are not a 'real' American, the purpose of the Southern version is quite different. It's for you to demonstrate that your family matters to you.

How not to answer, how to answer, and why it matters to me. )
kaigou: when in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand. (3 when in doubt)
(If you're not familiar, "shounen" means "boy", and is used as the genre-name for action/adventure stories geared towards boys, usually aged about 11-16 or so. "Shoujo" is the genre for girls of equivalent age.)

From endersgirrrl's review of Bloody Monday:
The shounen manga Bloody Monday was the brainchild of prolific writer Agi Tadashi (credited as Ryumon Ryou), who also penned the manga Kami no Shizuku [...] And it’s interesting how the shounen vs. shoujo genres play to two fundamentally disparate adolescent yearnings: shounen manga panders to every hormonal teenage boy’s most basic non-sexual fantasy, which is to be a Superhero (but — in disguise!!!), while shoujo manga puts a premium on an adolescent female protagonist realizing!her!relationships! — be they romantic or platonic.

Shounen manga is much more result-oriented, i.e. the teenage Hero with a small but loyal band of like-minded friends saves something or someone close to him, with the highest aspiration really being to SAVE THE WORLD. [...] In shounen manga, character development takes a backseat to plot (and plot is really all about Accomplishing!the!Mission!), while in shoujo manga, character development supersedes plot action as the protagonist/s are more focused on working through their feelings and experiencing inner growth — and all that sappy SweetValleyHigh-ish stuff, lol.

[In Bloody Monday, all] the staples of the quintessential shounen manga are here: a teenage Hero with “special abilities” (in this case, hacking and, uh, looking unbelievably good in hoodies); the Hero’s brainy best bud, who has his own “special-but-not-AS-special-as-the-Hero’s abilities” (in this case, archery skills and spouting random useless trivia — like when Christmas Day is really celebrated in Russia); their loyal friends (usually of the same age bracket — in this case, the Newspaper Club at school); the token Hot Chick on the side of the Baddies; a Mission that only the teenage Hero can accomplish (natch!); the techno-gadgetry and gizmo-geekery galore! galore!; and oodles of HardyBoy-esque action — chase sequences! messy explosions! and rooftop standoffs! (oh my!)

[...]

If [the show/manga plot] sounds vaguely familiar, you may recall the Aum Shinrikyo (now Aleph) terrorist cult that perpetrated the well-documented sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway in 1995, killing 12 commuters and injuring hundreds. [... Given] that the real-life Baddies’ shenanigans are obviously no child’s play, you understand why the manga writer would want to dull the edge of their depravity by sketching up these cartoonized (read = shounen-friendly) versions.

And the best way to dumb down all the crazymonkeybaddies? Is to make the TRUE ringleader… well, just like our teenage Hero. No I mean, literally just like our teenage Hero. So in the end, the Uber-Villain is revealed to be not a 50-year-old barefoot mystic, or a twentysomething math genius, but… oh, just another kid. [...] It’s stupid as sh*t, but you kind of understand how it also reveals the true heart of a 12-year-old manga-wanking fanboy: by vicariously channeling the story’s Hero, he can ONLY save the world IF the villain is just like him – in age, stature and abilities. This really is the ultimate shounen-manga satisfaction: by leveling the playing field, the inherent absurdity of a hormonal teenager saving the world becomes much, much easier to stomach. Whoopeeee. Long live the 12-year-old fanboy, may his precious manga collection never get eaten by termites, may mummy never catch him – uh, doing funny sh*t inside his closet with a stash of ecchi comics, and may he never turn into a sociopathic whack job later in life, lol.

I adore Ender's Girl's reviews, partly for often having some crucial insights I missed while watching, and always for having a completely torqued and spastic sense of humor that clearly loves the shows while skewering them mercilessly. (Even if you haven't seen the show, thus, EG's review is worth the five-minute read if you need a bit of levity in your day.)

Beyond that, though, I was thinking about something I was told when first writing urban fantasy... )



In a semi-related vein, I want to save this somewhere more reliable than just my email inbox, just because it's important to remember. From a thread on femslash, another Branchian piece of brilliant observation:
We can step around the boys, the same way slash steps around the girls, but we have to step wider because they’re taking up more space.
kaigou: this is what I do, darling (1 iguana)
I recall that when Sita Sings the Blues came out, there were some rumblings (might've been louder, but I only noticed rumblings) about the issue of appropriation. The story retells Sita's story, contrasting it with a Westerner/American's story of heartbreak, and mixes it up with songs from a now-less-known blues singer. The story doesn't entirely cast Sita as a feminist -- I don't think you can do that without really butchering the original -- but it does call out the assumptions that Rama is such a great guy, seeing the way he treats the alleged love of his life (and the mother of his children). To me, what saves the story from being complete appropriation is that the bulk of the narration is provided by three Indian expats discussing the legend, the characters, the stories around them, colored by their own take on things, sort of like a gentle critique within a critique.

cross-cultural critique: Sita Sings the Blues, and (yes, really) D.Gray-man )
kaigou: Edward, losing it. (1 Edward conniption)
So the word is that Gaiman is adapting Journey to the West. Now, I will give the man props for doing a beautiful treatment for the subtitles of Spirited Away that really kept the poetry and meaning of the original, and I'll set aside for now the issue of Cameron's involvement, which I do consider so many kinds of wrong I don't even know where to begin.

It's this bit in the linked article that's got me coming back, and twigging again each time:
Additional pressure may come from the Chinese government itself, which has been known to censor creative works. Speaking to that, Gaiman said, “Monkey is irrepressible. The moment that you try to censor Monkey, he’s not Monkey anymore.”

First of all, I'm dubious as to what the Chinese government would censor in terms of Monkey. I mean, haven't there already been like sixty-something various treatments of Journey to the West already, just in China -- radio, television, movies, books, comics, and so on? It's not like we're talking about current events here.

Second, if the Chinese government were to insist on changes (because to film, you must submit a script for review), is that automatically censorship?

I've been trying to think of a Western tradition/story that's as well-known and loved as Monkey. Hmm, maybe Robin Hood (because here I'd say the Arthurian Legends are a little too, uhm, formal -- in the sense that Robin Hood's semi-satirical characters, like Friar Tuck, are impertinent in the same way that one might see Sanzo's party as mildly impertinent). What happens if I consider the shoes on the other feet?

Let's say someone in China decides to do a film adaptation of Robin Hood and the British government were to insist on an approval process to, say, film at certain locations. And let's say there's something in the script that contradicts the understanding of the British review board when it comes to their own legends. Like, I don't know, the idea that Robin Hood kept a lot of the loot for himself. Or that he was abusive towards Maid Marian. Or that Friar Tuck was a double agent. I think if I were on that review board, I'd express my dissatisfaction with the script. If I had the power, I might even say, "you're filming something, but it's not the story of Robin Hood. Go ahead and film it, but I'm not putting my stamp of approval -- or permission to use historical locations -- on your not-our-Robin-Hood story."

I don't consider that censorship. I consider that a natural human self-interest when it comes to stories we consider "ours". If Robin Hood is a story I "own" in some sense due to family background and language and other socio-cultural factors, then I'm going to have -- whether or not I realize it, most of the time -- some kind of cultural possessiveness about it. It'd take someone doing Robin Hood really really wrong (and I won't mention the times that's happened), but that's when I'd stop and say, hey, that's not Robin Hood. It could be a good story, but it's not the Robin Hood.

As much as the West sometimes likes to paint China with the broad brush of a totalitarian system, it's still a system comprised of humans... and we're talking about a story that probably every single one of those humans (in any government review board) probably grew up with. I would expect each of them to feel, whether or not they've ever been made consciously aware of it, somewhat protective of Monkey.

I guess that's what's got me twigging -- the sense of entitlement and arrogance in saying that any assertion by a Chinese government board is (implied automatically) censorship. I can't believe someone who didn't grow up hearing stories of Monkey all over the place could possibly ascertain what is, or is not, Monkey... better than those for whom Monkey is a continuing, constantly-entertaining, story-force. Or maybe I should say: I have a bubbling sense of disgust for the implied argument that if someone -- whose culture effectively 'owns' a large chunk of the legend -- corrects for doing it wrong that this is immediately the error of the correcting culture.

Actually, the other analogy that popped into my head when I first read that short article was of drinking alcohol. If in my home country, drinking wine comes with loud cheers and extra rounds and raised voices, let's say then I travel to the country where that wine was originally made. If that country is one where wine is drunk with reverence and only at solemn occasions, but I'm in the back whooping it up -- if I get shunned, or even thrown out, can I really claim that wine-drinking is irrepressible, and that attempts to make me adjust my behavior to what's considered proper were a sign of a totalitarian system that wanted to censor me?

There's a phrase for that -- gaijin smash -- though I guess in this case it'd be weiguoren smash.

ETA: I think maybe what's bugging me is the hidden antagonism in the proclamation. I mean, try inserting some other government/country/culture, and it feels more blatant. Does it seem acceptable to [the speaker] to state such assertions because the government in question is presumed to be hostile?
kaigou: (1 Toph)
Plenty of spoilers in this one, so if you haven't seen Love Fight and plan to, or just prefer to avoid spoilers just in case, then skip. Otherwise, read on.

About Aki, and a handful of pictures. )
kaigou: this is what I do, darling (Default)
Continuing with shots from Love Fight, but still minimal spoilers. (Basically, you won't see anything here that isn't covered or implied in the synopsis.)

Lotsa more images behind the cut. )

...and that's where I'll leave it. The rest is for you to watch, unless you already have (or will and don't care about spoilers), in which case read the next post, at http://kaigou.dreamwidth.org/417316.html. If you'd rather avoid spoilers, stop here.
kaigou: (2 earned my way out)


If you weren't crazy about Fly Daddy Fly (or were just as ambivalent about it as I was), here's another one to sink your teeth into: a little Japanese coming-of-age movie called Love Fight.
Minoru (Kento Hayashi) has spent most of his life being protected by his spunky female best friend Aki (Kie Kitano). Fed up, he decides to take up boxing. However, just as he manages to get stronger than Aki she becomes obsessed with boxing herself.

Image-heavy behind the cut; minimal spoilers. )

Second part in next post.
kaigou: sometimes it's better to light a flamethrower than curse the darkness. (2 flamethrowers)
I don't even know why I snagged a copy of this movie in the first place (except that I snagged the Korean version because the J-version has no English subtitles), but in some ways, it worked well, because I'm still thinking about it, a few weeks later.

The film, Fly Daddy Fly, is ostensibly about a middle-aged salaryman's attempt to find justice for his daughter. When the story starts, we get a litany of the salaryman's life: he still smokes (despite promising his wife and daughter he'd quit, repeatedly), he has seven years left until his condo is paid off, and he's middle-management. A rather fuddy-duddy, if good-natured, existence, but hardly anything to write home about. Anyway, the salaryman introduces himself as once having the nickname "Jjang," which I seem to recall is also a mafia term adopted by high schoolers to indicate who's basically Big Man on Campus (but with gang/boss overtones). No one calls him that now, though, he admits.

Then he's called to the emergency room: his daughter has been beaten brutally.

It shouldn't be a surprise that of course the explanation becomes -- in the mouth of the school principal who attends in lieu of the "too busy, highly-ranked state-related parents" -- something along the lines of what kind of girl would go for karaoke with a guy she'd just met? What eventually comes out, though, is that the high school senior in question, Kang Tae Shik, is also a boxing champion, and he apparently had no qualms using her as a punching bag. Because, as the principal implies with a shrug, she probably caused a fuss, and, well, things got out of hand.

Too subtle for a wink, but the nod is there: of course the boy would get angry. No mention is made of the fact that as a trained fighter, he'd have weight and muscle to spare, yet he took it all out on a girl who couldn't possibly defend herself. Jjang is just plain in shock; the principal is only marginally apologetic, and most of his apologies seem to amount to, "I'm sorry you had to discover you have such a bad daughter."

When you finally get to see the girl... well, they didn't cut any corners on showing that a lot of the damage she took was to the face. (Also a quiet visual implication that the anger was very personal, too.) What the k-version doesn't say was whether there was sexual assault, but I'm not sure whether this is because the Korean film industry is too squeamish to mention such explicitly, or if culturally it's supposed to be obvious whether "things were done", or if lack of explicit mention really means she was only beaten. Or maybe it's to side-step audience members who might judge the daughter unfairly (as in, "she deserved it") too quickly, if the explanation was too concrete.

...and when Jjang makes a mistake that costs him his daughter's respect, he realizes he can't just accept the hush money and do nothing, and so begins the story. )

Any way I look at it, though, the race against the bus in the third-quarter of the film is still an awesome thing.

whois

kaigou: this is what I do, darling (Default)
锴 angry fishtrap 狗

to remember

"When you make the finding yourself— even if you're the last person on Earth to see the light— you'll never forget it." —Carl Sagan

October 2016

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