subdee

Zines

Wed, 09 Mar 2022 01:59:37 GMT

Just a quick note to say that I have NOT been drifting back out of fandom stuff, in fact I've been doing zines recently, which is like... the most intensive way you can do fandom... seriously so much work... aha.

The first zine was more of a friend project I chipped in on, so I don't wanna take too much credit for it, but it came out amazing - seriously incredible. There are essays from published academics in there.

The second one I'm gonna take FULL credit for, lol, because I wore like every hat on that project. (Communications mod, writing mod, and production mod... not alone, but still. A lot of work!)

Here's the two zines:

whitemateria.net/ff7ogzine/

https://hxhladieszine.carrd.co/

We did the first one for the 25th Anniversary of the original Final Fantasy VII, and the second one for International Women's Day <3

Both are free to read/download, but we're trying to do a small print run too, so you're interested, leave your email on the form there! The more people we get, the less it will cost per copy and the more feasible it will be the print.

Also, while I'm here sharing my accomplishments, the robotics team I coach went to the State Championships this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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beach wedding

Tue, 16 Feb 2021 16:04:35 GMT

I'm getting married on Saturday!

...hopefully, we just booked the ceremony but the licensing to make it official is separate. (Edit: all good! It's a zoom meeting these days, you don't even have to travel... The ultimate in marriage convenience :D)

To quote something I saw on twitter, "Well that escalated suddenly for four years."

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Books in 2020

Wed, 06 Jan 2021 21:51:44 GMT

I haven't done this since 2011, but why not?

This probably isn't all of them, but all the ones I remembered to log:

Fiction:
Douglas Copeland, Microserfs (Review)
Lucia Berlin, A Manual For Cleaning Women (Review)
Muriel Barbery, The Elegance of the Hedgehog (Review)
Mark Lindquist, Never Mind Nirvana (Review)
Liu Cixin, The Dark Forrest
Liu Cixin, Death's End (Review)
Amor Towles, A Gentleman in Moscow
Paul La Farge, The Night Ocean (Review)
Ken Liu, The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Ken Liu, The Grace of Kings
Yoon Ha Lee, Ninefox Gambit (Review)
Yoon Ha Lee, Raven Strategem (Review)
Yoon Ha Lee, Revenant Gun (Review)
Yoon Ha Lee, Glass Canon and Other Stories
Neal Stephenson, Anathem (no review, but I did steal from it for this fic)
Tamsyn Muir, Giddeon the Ninth (Review)

Nonfiction:
Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy (Review)
Jacob Silverman, Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection (Review)
Daiyun Yue, To The Storm: The Odyssey of a Revolutionary Chinese Woman
Jeffrey Rosen, The Unwanted Gaze: The Destruction of Privacy in America (Review)
David Harvey, Marx, Capital and the Madness of Economic Reason
Isiah Lavender III (Editor), Black and Brown Planets: The Politics of Race in Science Fiction
Robert Roberts, A Ragged Schooling: Growing Up in the Classic Slum (Review)
Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (Review)
Jacob S. Hacker & Paul Pierson, Let Them Eat Tweets: How the Right Rules in an Age of Extreme Inequality
Masha Gessen, Surving Autocracy (Review)
Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing
Jessica Bruder, Nomadland: Surviving America in the Twenty-First Century

Plus two books about Frederick The Great for yuletide: this one and this one (mainly just the first volume).

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I posted on tumblr about the fic I wrote this year. My official ao3 wordcount (though it's not accurate) was over 100k, far and away the most words I've ever written in a year. File under: things you can do when you don't leave your house.

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Yuletide 2020

Mon, 04 Jan 2021 05:35:44 GMT

I was matched with mildred_of_midgard on Cryptonomicon, a book I haven't read in 15 years, and I definitely paid the price for my hubris ahaha.

Through this extremely lucky match (Mildred is awesome :D) I found rheinsberg, a community for the small but extremely active Frederick the Great fandom on DW, so rather than re-read Cryptonomicon... I decided to learn some history instead. :P I read this book and also parts of this one, as well as some of the summarized primary sources research on rheinsberg to write my Yuletide fic:

Frederician Space AU

It's Frederick II of Prussia and "three of his more serious boyfriends" in a character study told backwards from the perspective of the boyfriends:

Katte - Hans Hermann von Katte - the Kircheis to Frederick's Reinhard; the one who's supposed to have said death, for such a charming prince, is indeed sweet while being paraded past Frederick's prison window at the fortress where they were both imprisoned for plotting to flee the country together. Crown Prince Frederick was 18 and Katte was 26 at the time of the execution.

^^Katte in real life was supposed to have been tall (like Kircheis), but not that handsome, because his face was scarred from childhood smallpox. Frederick was also, supposedly, not that handsome; but he was blonde and blue-eyed, and won (or at least didn't lose) a bunch of military battles, which is why the Nazis liked him (obviously they just ignored all the gay parts).

Fredersdorf - Michael Gabriel Fredersdorf - Frederick's longtime valet, spymaster, probable lover, "first prime minister of Prussia" (unofficially), in charge of programming for the opera, etc. Wikipedia says "The two young men met when the future Frederick II was still in prison for having attempted to run off with his former companion, Hans Hermann von Katte. At the time, Fredersdorf was four years older than the heir to the throne and served in the army, being the son of a peasant." There's a romantic story that Frederick hated and avoided speaking German, which he associated with his abusive father, the king Frederick Wilheim, preferring to speak French and also signing his letters with the French spelling of his name as Federic; but Fredersdorf only spoke German, so just for Fredersdorf he'd speak the hated language <3 <3 <3 (on reinsberg they researched this, the truth is more complicated but still a nice story).

Keith - Peter Karl Christoph von Keith - the other lover in the escape attempt, who had previously been banished to Wesel (a border fortress) for an earlier plot to escape the country. He doesn't even have an entry on English wikipedia, so I have linked to the entry on German wikipedia instead. Unlike Katte and Frederick who were caught, he actually got away to England and from there, Dublin and Portugal, where he lived an apparently highly eventful but sparsely documented life, eventually finding his way back to Prussia to serve as the head of the Academy of Sciences under Frederick II (now King). I personally think he was a spy! XD But he's only one year older than Frederick, they hooked up when he was 17 and Frederick, 16.

My space AU is more or less just a character study that retells the historical events but uhhhhhh In Space. XD. I had a lot of fun doing the worldbuilding on this one, and trying to find science fictional reasons for why The Future might still resemble The Age of Letters (spoilers: it's an AI-enabled and post-encryption future, where no electronic transmissions can be trusted... so it requires people to meet in person again).

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I've been writing about yuletide on my tumblr under the "yuletide" tag, so here's a few quick crossposts:

*18th Century CE Frederician RPF recs - which yeah, it's pretty much every single story submitted this year. They are all great.

*Knives Out recs - Knives Out fic on ao3 was uhhhh not what I expected it to be, but I enjoyed these two.

*Machineries of Empire (Yoon Ha Lee) recs - yhlee himself was my match for yuletide and wrote a story for me :D :D :D I'm still reading through the other stories in the tag.

*Palm Springs (2020)and Booksmart (2019) recs - convinced to watch Palm Springs (2020) after reading this brilliant fic.

Back to work tomorrow. Boooo.

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Some fanfic, why not

Fri, 31 Jul 2020 22:38:23 GMT

Poking my head out of the sand to promote some recent things I wrote...

Nevermind the Bollocks - Here's the Phantom Troupe
Gen / Hunter x Hunter / Rated T / Band AU

AKA my hxh Big Bang fic. This has art!

https://violana-d.tumblr.com/post/622488359621836800/this-year-i-was-able-to-participate-in

Pro Hunters
Gen / Hunter x Hunter / Rated G / Missing Scene

AKA my zine piece for Milestones Zine, which is a Gon x Killua zine.

Dungeon x Hunter
Gen / Hunter x Hunter / Rated G / Dungeons and Dragons AU

AKA the longest multichapter thing I've ever written (and finished) and based on that joke we used to make about Kurapika being the ultimate D&D rules lawyer

Freecs Adventure Travel Co.
Gen / Hunter x Hunter / Rated G / Post Canon fic

AKA the one about Gon's career after the end of the series, that's an unfinish slow burn I am updating every time I go on vacation...

Paper Ties
Gen / Hunter x Hunter / Rated T / Backstory & Character Study

AKA the one from Kalluto's POV.

There's a Light That Never Goes Out
Killugon / Hunter x Hunter / Rated T / Reunion Fic

AKA the most popular one, also the only one where Gon and Killua actually end up together hahaha.

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Actually the main reason I came here though... I started playing FFVII! And I'm like, obsessed now XD. Anyway, I joined this discord for purist fans of the original game, everyone is mid-twenties or older it is wonderful. I now completely see the appeal of a private space for pointing and laughing at the bad takes of other fans.

I think the main reason I'm so into this now, though, honestly, is just because the revolutionary themes are relevant. So here's my revolutionary backstory for AVALANCHE:

AVALANCHE: Theoretically Relective Action
Tifa POV / Final Fantasy 7 / Gen Backstory with some vaguely Cloti parts

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In IRL news, still no news from the Superintendent about how we are handling the reopening, but it's looking more an more like it will be mostly online instruction next year, at least at the high school level. The county where I work has the 9th highest COVID death rate in the entire country and just from speaking to other teachers, it looks like a lot of people are planning to retire, change districts or sit out next year.

It's a shitty situation, kids deserve teachers but those of us who are planning to return, besides the health risks are also dealing with uncertainty and, probably, increased workload from all the teachers who are leaving and whatever complicated schedule is ultimately put in place.

So, basically, since there's nothing I can do about any of that, and my proposal to teach a virtual programming camp at Chrissie's library is in limbo at the moment, right now I'm trying to not think about it at all. XD In August I want to do something called AU-gust, it's a fic or drabble a day! I've never, once, in my entire life been disciplined enough to do a daily writing challenge, so we'll see how it goes. Here's the theme list.

Should be fun, should be fun. Unless I give up 2 days in. XD.

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How's things with you guys?

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I'm in a hunter x hunter zine

Fri, 07 Feb 2020 00:01:08 GMT

Yes... Seven years after I drifted away from fandom, working way too hard as a long term sub and then new teacher at various urban schools to have the energy for anything besides going home and watching YouTube bullet planner videos and maybe commenting on omonatheydidnt.. I'm officially back in fandom, *and* involved enough to be a moderator on a fandom exchange!

The zine I'm in is an all-ratings Killugon (Killua/Gon from Hunter x Hunter) zine, so we are right in the eye of the fandom culture wars, haha. I liked a bunch of the contributors from AO3 and figured it would be a good way to make fandom friends on tumblr, and it worked :D It's actually my first zine in 15 years in fandom, unless you count the Death Note doujinshi telophase drew based on a script we wrote together back in 2005, so that's exciting too.

Anyway, I know you guys being from the old school of nonjudgmental fandom will not give me grief for this. If you have a little extra cash, you can show support by buying a copy at https://gumroad.com/milestoneszine.

Speaking of old, nostalgic fandoms though... did you guys realize that in this Year of our Lord 2020, there's a new chapter of Death Note out???

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We bought a house

Sun, 23 Jun 2019 15:00:11 GMT

Two bed one bath, 15 year fixed rate mortgage with 20% down, the whole adult package :) Not something I ever thought I'd be saying...

Some pictures behind the cut because it just looks so awesome and I'm proud that we got such a sweet deal, can you believe this house was on the market for two months with no offers? People have no taste, it's not new build but IMO it's even better because it's mid-century modern and eclecticly finished so everything looks good.... like apart from the couches we didn't buy a single new piece of furniture. It's all stuff we either already had, or stuff we picked up for free on the streets of New Brunswick.

Also, I wanna ask everyone's advice about flowers to plant in the front yard!

( Biggish Photos Behind Cut )

You can see the images full size if you cut and paste the URLs btw, I'm just too lazy to set a click-through link for each one. If you know the name of the last flower, please let me know... I think I like that one the best.

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My 2012 In Review

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 23:28:36 GMT

I didn't write much this year - or not much fiction anyway. I wrote my masters thesis, and though it could have been much better I am content with the way it came out.

In nonfiction land, I signed on as a contributor to The Hooded Utilitarian. Though I don't have access to the site stats, it's pretty clear my Homestuck article was the biggest hit - linked on reddit and tweeted by Bryan Lee O'Malley, who later interviewed Andrew Hussie! - followed by my Jojo overview, which was linked on 4chan. I think my Gangnam Style article makes a couple good points, too, although they are hard to pick out from the mess. Hatsephut, meanwhile, is the kind of bonkers manga that reviews itself.

Fiction-wise, my only work this year was first-flush-of-fandom stuff about Big Bang that I now kind of regret writing (or at least posting publically), although it helped me work out my thoughts at the time. I also got some pretty good responses/discussions/mileage out of Big Bang meta on tumblr and metafilter. Roz and I are currently keeping up an email exchange as well as camping out in this ILX thread.

Imaginary Beasts had a not-stellar year for which I take full responsibility as the zine's laziest editor. Some very solid issues and individual stories though - the music issue, spring issue and historical asia issue are my favorites, though I can't really take credit for them.

The main thing I did this year was make playlists. Since I *do* have access to number of plays on youtube, I can tell you which ones were the most popular: Summer Pop 2, a Kpop & dancehall mix, was the clear winner, followed by Desatured Kpop, an experimental-RnB with high-concept music videos mix, and then Kpop hearts the 80s, made up of equal parts disco and insanity. My other three summer playlists were played a decent number of times, but not a spectacular number considering the massive popularity of the individual songs they contain. I'm holding out hope for my Mainly-Jpop Indie 80s mix to eventually catch up, but can admit the "Christmas" playlist is not very good.

I'm feeling a bit justified, actually, because the order of popularity for these Youtube playlists pretty much exactly mirrors the amount of work I put into them. Although what this could mean is that the majority of plays are my own, haha.

Happy 2013, everyone!

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Big Bang @ Prudential Center, 12/9/12

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:32:41 GMT

As promised on tumblr. This is very long, so I apologize in advance. ^^ BTW, I'm sitting in a cafe in New Brunswick next to someone using "Fantastic Baby" as a ringtone, and it turns out she was also at the show on Friday. Small world! The New York Times also reviewed the concert, and they were pretty complimentary.

Anyway, like I said on tumblr, we really did luck out with our seats: one section over, and we'd have stayed up on the mezzanine. Instead we were moved to new seats really close to the stage - and more than that, really close to the *side* of the stage, where the stage lights spilled over onto the audience, so the performers could see us almost as well as we could see them. Maybe that's why the guys in Big Bang seemed to spend so much time directly in front of us?? Or did I imagine that??? Considering Prudential Center holds 14,000 people, I really wasn't expecting to feel like I was seen by Big Bang, but it really did feel that way. Crazy!

( Read more... )

In other news, I'm now an official columnist at The Hooded Utilitarian - you can find my stuff under "Subdee" in the Contributors->Columnists pull down menu. It's making me a little bit nervous since the level of the writing on that site is really high. So far I don't have a theme for my column - anyone want to suggest things to write about? I thought about continuing to write about "zeitgeist" things but I'd run out of topics I actually know something about pretty quickly, lolz. Speaking of the zeitgeist, though, I have an article up on Gangnam Style, also two on Jojo's Bizarre Adventure and one on Homestuck - and now I am working on one about Saiunkoku Monotagari. It's like a disease, this urge to write about alternative-mainstream things with huge cult followings. >_> I might do Five Star Stories next, not sure - I'd, um, have to read it first...

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Recently

Thu, 13 Sep 2012 01:41:22 GMT

I turned in my master's thesis. It's kinda weak - I wrote the conclusion in 24 hours including searching for supporting references - but it's a personal milestone for me since it's the longest thing I have ever finished, more-or-less on time. It's 50 pages without references or appendixes (but including graphs). Before this year, I don't think I ever finished anything I couldn't write in a single sitting! So I am happy about that at least.

If I could do it over again, I'd try setting more deadlines in the middle. Because no matter what, I'm always going to be rushing at the last minute, right. ^^ I'd also go somewhere with more sun in the summertime.

And I'd put in more crazy stuff! Pierre Bourdieu's The Field of Cultural Production and Barabara Ehrenreich's Bright-Sided are in there, but I also wanted to include Reality is Broken and this Berardi book Sabina linked me to about blue-collar-style quotas creeping into white-collar work. Well, I might still include those things, because the plan right now is to revise so I have something decent to show employers. I'm setting a personal goal to have all the extra references in by the first of November.

My dad read it, and his major complaints were that I didn't spend enough time on the analysis, and that I used "FYROM" and not "Macedonia" when referring to the country of our people. Which, you know, is fair. ^^ Won't know my grade for a while, am just chilling at the moment, watching Youtube videos and making travel plans.

Apart from that, I'm reading The Game of Kings, watching Dance Academy, and writing an article for thehoodedutilitarian about a comic I hate. Which means I had to go back, like, five years because I don't really read comics I "hate" anymore. I decided to write about Bakuman, the manga by the Death Note artist-writer team about being a Shonen Jump artist-writer team / how pretty girls are stuck up but ugly girls aren't worth your time. It's a sort of "I would love this if it weren't for this one thing I hate" article.

I am also (casually) seeing someone. She's awesome. Thumbs up!

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Olympics, etc.

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 16:35:55 GMT

I am so totally out of the Olympic loop - though I heard there's a top-secret (not really: it's just not listed on their website) plan by the Museum Gardens in York to do public screenings of Olympic events, so I might go to one of those. If it's not raining, which it is EVERY SINGLE DAY OH MY GOD okay I am done now. I missed the torch when it passed through a few weeks ago. So far the biggest impact the Olympics has had on my life is to make train travel between here and the south much, much more expensive. Also the mishandling of this event gives British people something to whinge about, which of course they love to do.

(In fairness to them, the way the Olympic committee has been handling security and public transport reroutes in London is fairly horrific. Some overground stops are closed and entire lanes are being reserved for "athletes and VIPs only", making it actually impossible for some people to commute to work. Also, the committee is going nuts with copyright enforcement, leading Waterstones in London to refer to "the big sporting event" as "Voldesport. That which cannot be named!" What is this, 2007? Furthermore, how can the Olympic committee claim that this is a public celebration of amateurism when there are 300 people whose sole job is to look for unauthorized use of the Olympic brand by non-sponsors? etc etc etc. (I'm getting all this info from metafilter, by the way. The same way I get all my news!))

Since I'm into Kpop now, I'll mention that Korea loves this event more than England. Here's some arena-ready pop songs that came out recently: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLunOf5QsYQ&feature=bf_next&list=PL260E01B49C1B1BA2

In other news, Blur is performing at the Olympics, and also have a new single out. <3!

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6-years-too-late review of disposable teen comedy, John Tucker Must Die

Mon, 16 Jul 2012 00:57:17 GMT

Saw this with M. It's really not too bad... if you ignore the ending, aha. Especially the casting for John Tucker is good: at first you are like, what do any of these girls see in this guy? But by the end you are like, hmm, well he is a pretty smooth operator, and he actually likes it when (pretty) girls use him to enhance their own status, for instance by shooting him down. As M said, he is "good in situations." (I like that they cast a biracial-looking guy in this role.)

The casting for Kate, on the other hand, while not terrible, is also not great. A real-life Kate would have much more avoidant and non-confident body language, I think, even if she was pretty (like her mom). Screenwriters decided to show her "superficial/popular" side versus her "natural" side by showing her with straight or curly hair, which is fair enough, but also a lazy substitute for better writing/acting...right?

The ending to this movie is flubbed, though. Here's how it should have ended (behind a cut in case anyone cares about spoilers for a six-year-old teen comedy):

( Read more... )

Sorry for that bit of armchair-writing, I just had to get it off my chest XD.

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Teen Wolf: What is and what Could Have Been

Wed, 11 Jul 2012 18:22:06 GMT

Convinced by this GIF set to watch Teen Wolf. The first eight episodes are really, really good and make you feel good about the state of cable television. The second season drops most of what was good about the first season in favor of being more generic. ;_; Still, at least I have the memories.

Let's start with the positives. Here’s what’s great about the first season:

1. When he doesn’t have that overly-intense, borderline-psycho look in his eyes, Scott (the Teen Wolf) is one of those dreamy and unfocused guys whose main charm is that he actually listens to women (sometimes even including his great single mom). Apart from actively pursuing the girl, he is a passive character who can generally be counted on to prioritize his love life over whatever very sensible and intelligent (or alternately crazy and dangerous) thing his best friend is currently pushing him to do. The gif maker didn’t like this version of Scott, but I loved it because it left more space for the girlfriend and best friend characters to really shine (and they are great). Also the fact that Scott's regular and full-moon selves are distinctly different allows the writers to explore "becoming a werewolf" as a metaphor for mania (e.g. starting about 25 minutes into this episode).

2. Stiles!!! Stiles is the best character. He’s like this hyperactive nerd, but with a huge attraction to danger and dangerous situations, and an ability to fill in Scott’s awkward silences with constant (entertaining) chatter. Although he's passionately nerdy about helping Scott figure out the werewolf thing and is generally a supportive friend, he also pursues his own goals, or in other words isn't just a sidekick. Actually I am kind of disappointed that "he and Derrick are boyfriends" from the GIF set didn’t turn out to be really true, since that would have given the character more screentime.**

3. Not as impressed by the way the show handles Alison - it almost feels like they make her physically strong (e.g. good with a bow, good at gymnastics) because it’s an easier way to signal "strength" than mental toughness - but she is a very sympathetic character, not just because of her bad family situation, but also because she is nice on top of being pretty and smart. Also, the chemistry between her and Scott is real, yo.

4. OTOH, the other main female character in Teen Wolf, Lydia, is mentally tough and a good contrast to Alison. The show was doing something really interesting with her and Jackson, the seemingly dominant guy (captain of the lacrosse team etc) who is actually deeply insecure. Actually they are sort of an insecure-narcissistic pair, pretty well suited to each other, until Jackson decides he'd rather use Alison to figure out Scott's secrets and Lydia never recovers from the breakup. Too bad they had to make her CRAZY in season 2 >_>.

5. The way the show is shot, the writing. Teen Wolf really does have the feel of an 80s teen movie, kind of de-saturated and slow(er)-paced. There are more shots of people staring intensely at each other and fewer abrupt scene changes. People talk less, but their individual lines are better and the show will often refer back to things that happened earlier in the episode in a wordless shot, trusting the audience to get it. It's not the same post-Buffy pacing we are used to, but it's very good.

6. The soundtrack, 'cause it's this funny combination of 80s music and 00s music that sounds like 80s music, as if we are in an alternate reality where the 90s never happened.

7. But the characters all have cell phones, use computers, use services like Find My Phone and Skype, etc etc. This show handles technology really well.

8. Horror-movie shots!. Actually this is still true in season 2 and might even be a bit better this season - not everything is downhill. The best shots are the ones where the characters are having vivid horrible nightmares that turn out to have actually happened. Approve.

Things I don’t like about season 2, compared to season 1 (SPOILERS):

( cut for spoilers )

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Avengers Assemble

Tue, 01 May 2012 16:37:46 GMT

Suspect Joss Whedon & cowriter made the first half hour of this movie clunky ON PURPOSE so they could create the effect of all hell breaking loose/the pace getting faster and faster in the second half.

This movie is totally about conceptual team-ups and rivalries - Tony Stark’s out of control ego vs. Bruce Banner’s out of control anger! Thor’s unbeatable sword vs. Capt America’s unbreakable shield! Spy (Black Widow) vs. Spy (Hawkeye)! Etc. etc. Even apart from how much I love conceptual team-ups and rivalries, this is a really efficient way to quickly characterize a large cast. I APPROVE.

Under the cut, some (conceptual) spoilers and criticisms: ( Read more... )

General comments:

Many other things could be said about the politics of this movie, but sticking to just interpersonal politics for now. Anyway, great handling of large cast, great pacing, fun movie. Much smarter than it needed to be! One of those things that is better if you know the actors outside their roles in the film. But it also stands on its own pretty well, I think.

Fight scenes were handled really well as long as you pretend that everyone has rubber skin. There was a lot of collateral damage but I think the movie avoided giving the impression that it’s okay for people to die on screen when they don’t have speaking lines - f’r instance the bus evacuation scene, the guy who was ejected from his plane but (of course) had a parachute, Black Widow’s gravity when she says “he killed 80 people in two days.” Of course, this being a superhero movie, you are still left with the impression that it’s good/right for some people to be more powerful than others and for normal rules to not apply to them; within those bounds, though, this movie is not too bad. (Oops I ended up discussing politics anyway.)

Please, please, though: no more 3D.

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More Big Bang Stuff

Tue, 27 Mar 2012 21:11:54 GMT

I feel like I'm reaching the end of the road with these guys, but it's not going to be a gradual fading away of interest, I'm gonna have to wrench myself away. XD; At least until my end of term work is finished. Writing fanfiction for a group probably the worst thing you can do if you want to stay detached.

Anyway here's some more stuff:
Skinship (Gdragon/Seungri)
Sun and Moon (Gdragon/TOP)

On tumblr:
Big Bang's History of Songs About People Who Don't Pick Up Their Phones and Postscript

The thing about those tumblr posts is, while it's stuff that absolutely can't be proven one way or the other, it's also something that, once you see, is very hard to unsee. >_> I wrote something up with this premise (that Gdragon is, or can be, a bit manipulative and abusive) and put it on yokshim, but then I decided that I couldn't in good conscience ruin other people's enjoyment over something that is basically only exposing my own issues (Or,the "RPF is only marginally acceptable if it's fun and not hurtful" school of thought). I dunno, I still feel kinda ambivalent about the whole thing. But I think writing it out did help me to process certain things I don't really want to talk about, so.

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More on Kpop

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 02:05:14 GMT

Getting back to 2NE1: someone must have realized, while putting together the album To Anyone, that they were making the ULTIMATE EXERCISE CD, right? Surely? I mean, it even sounds like a compilation of hit high-energy songs from 1998. ^^ After a brief-but-intense end-of-semester fling I burnt out on 2NE1, and rarely listen to their music anymore outside of the gym - and definitely never after 8pm - but for this specific purpose it is second to none. Can't Nobody at Seoul Music Festival Tokyo.

After falling for 2NE1 I fell for some other Korean pop acts, joining in on the third year of "girl group mania". That's a really serious description, by the way! Quick run down (these songs can be conveniently spotted at 900 yards by the double word titles): Girls' Generation, Girls'Day, Blady, Sistar, T-ara. You'll notice the underlying theme that they are crazy for you, lol, sometimes in a submissive way, but just as often in a really-not-fucking-around kind of way. Or, as queen-of-Kpop BoA, says, I'll Eat You Up. Making all of these songs actually metaphors for the rise-to-dominance of Kpop in Asia???

(Though speaking of the cute/sexy fantasy: no one exploits this better than e.via aka Happy Evil aka Korea's Best Troll, and no one panders to it more than UI... who I would like to like, because she is talented, but AUGH WHY NO IT'S WRONG.)

Anyhow given how much "crazy" is a part of the fantasy here, and how overused that trope really kind of is (in Kpop), after a while you just kind of roll your eyes. But I sort of like like T-ara and Super Junior - Happy Happy Hurry Hurry Sorry Sorry Cry Cry - because they go just that bit further XD, until it's not so much of a fantasy anymore.

And in that vein, I like Fever's End by Tablo, which is an actual album and not just a singles collection... Well, this is basically American-style conscientious hip hop, right? ^^ Written by the artist singing the lines about his own life, no less! No Tomorrow / Bad / Thank You For Breathing.

Then there's the Big Bang spinoff stuff... I already talked about in the last entry but I'm going to talk about it some more, so please, bear with me!

( Here's a cut though, just in case! )

***

BTW, here are some older kpop acts I found trawling Ytube:
OneTwo: Shake Your Booty / Starry Night / Very Good
Ibadi: Chococat / Never Ending Story / Yearning

Ahhhh, that's relaxing. I'll stop there. :D

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Kpop Fanfiction

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 03:53:03 GMT

Yes, it's true, I'm a kpop fan now, two years after R first showed me Haru Haru with the comment, isn't this kind of gay?

(Well yeah, but it's also kind of contrieved and boybandy, and I had other things on my plate! And then, two years passed... but we're here now, and we're 'bout to set the roof on Fire! /lame joke)

Here's my stuff so far:

Disordered (2NE1, Park Bom)
Stealing Members (Big Bang & 2NE1, everyone)
The Best Part of Waking Up (Big Bang, GD-Seungri-TOP)
Skinship (Big Bang, GD-Seungri)
Sun and Moon (Big Bang, GD-TOP)

Some videos, for (mostly my own) reference:

( Big Bang )

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Back!

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 02:57:53 GMT

Back from vacation! I have Things to say, about Amsterdam, about Seville. Now that I have promised this, though, I will probably never get around to saying them. :p Maybe I'll put the pictures up as an album on G+ at some point.

Short version: Amsterdam was cold and wet and expensive, but the museums were excellent and I got pretty alarmingly high on whatever it was Mike was sharing, lol, at which point I 1) became really fascinated by lights that were International Klein Blue, 2) realized that everything in Amsterdam that was not-fun and shitty, like the chain fast food restaurants and gaudy Christmas lights, specifically appeals to people who are high, 3) wondered if this was why we have so many chain restaurants in the USA, 4) wondered why pot is not legal in the USA, because it allows you to be okay with terrible shitty boring things, since even getting to the end of a thought brings that "I did a something awesome!" feeling of accomplishment, 5) became convinced that whenever I'd seen Mike around the campus in a strange mood, he'd been high ("No, but I was probably drunk"), 6) became convinced that many famous US celebrities are often high in their TV appearances, 7) felt good about everything, despite also feeling like I was being ignored like in middle school.

That was the first time (psychedelic/paranoid). The second time, I thought I could read everyone's minds, that I had a glow around my head making me especially charismatic and attractive, and (after I realized I'd been so busy thinking about how awesome I was that the conversation had moved on without me) thought I had a special insight into how various historical figures and members of bands must feel.

What I take away from this is that my worst fear is apparently to be socially snubbed, and my greatest desire is apparently to know what other people are thinking. >_> Oh, and I also felt a bit guilty - even at the time! - because Mike and his friend were at peace with universe, and meanwhile I was thinking about how much better I was than them. Ahaha...

I will say, before this starts to look like a reefer madness advert: none of the regular stuff in the cafes, or the brownies, or anything I might or might not have smoked before, made me feel this way. Just the colors thing, that was all. You hear that in Amsterdam it is stronger, and I guess that is right!

***

The Anne Frank House in Amsterdam was very moving, by the way: you know, you think that compared to others they didn't have it so bad, because they had an entire two floors to themselves and Anne even (almost) had her own bedroom, but then you go up there and you see the windows boarded up, and you realize that this sixteen year old girl lived without seeing the sunlight for two years. Not to mention the stuff that happened afterward. It was really, very sad, and I left feeling a bit calmer

...because I'd left my bag with a my passport in it in a shop, and had been walking around for hours trying to find the shop again, only to eventually end up right back where I started at the museum, at which point I said fuck it, paid my fee and went in. Afterwards I felt like my petty problems weren't so bad. ^^ And after that I was able to find the shop where they still had my bag, so all's well that ends well. (It wouldn't be a Sonya-vacation story if there wasn't a narrowly-averted disaster, naturally!)

Here's a video from Seville, Spain: this really was, honestly, the best Christmas of my life.

In Seville there is also a big Cathedral that looks, no joke, exactly like the Castle in Ico. That picture isn't retouched! Same light and everything. I am convinced there is a direct link. :p I took a lot of pictures of this place to prove that it is a direct inspiration, so look for those later.

Next up: Kpop!

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Zygmunt Bauman

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 22:46:09 GMT

Or, books I have been reading for class, Part 2. Skipping The Century and Postmodernism and Discipline and Punish to post this, since I have it typed up already:

Bauman is awesome because he speaks directly to young people – he talks about "searching out ways of being" and "looking for job skills to be employable" – and because he gets all his metaphors from physics (time/space, heavy/light, solid/liquid), so that I can understand them. I found his books the easiest to read of all of the books we've been assigned so far, with Foucault a close second (because his references are historical and he includes novelistic descriptions of them within the text, so you don't need to read anything else to understand him).

To bring in contemporary events: Bauman is a true 99%er, because his enemies are those in the ruling class who are absolutely free to flit from place to place, and who never have to worry about the consequences of their choices. These are the people who can afford unlimited instantaneous travel (being able to afford an internet connection counts for Bauman – it was 1999). Moreover, they can "afford" travel because their assets are liquid, in the form of stocks and property investments, so that they don't have to live where they work, or can change where they work to match where they live. Or maybe they just don't have to work at all, XD.

The 1% (my phrase not Bauman's) are, additionally, the people best served by our modern consumer society. This is because being a good consumer means being able to make good choices, and these people have so many resources that they can't make a truly bad choice - if they buy something they don't like, they can discard it and buy something else. They therefore don't suffer the choice paralysis suffered by the people who have to worry about choosing wrongly.

Bauman's really popular, and I think this focus on the very wealthiest is part of the reason for his popularity (although he includes academics in the ranks of the elite). Apart from all the other reasons (brilliant writer, sympathetic to those on the very bottom, good at naming things, etc), I mean.

Specific books under the cut: mostly just a summary without a critique. The blanket critique would be that these books are full of broad, sweeping statements not backed up by empirical evidence, I guess.

( Globalization: The Human Consequences )

( Liquid Modernity )

Liquid is the more popular book, maybe because of the points it makes about the erosion of public discourse (OK no it's probably because people love a novel metaphor), but I liked Globalization better, partly for its focus on the very poorest and very richest (kind of rare in sociology?), and partly for the way it directly links the fortunes of the two groups. I just worry that I can't really evaluate the stuff he says about the experiences of the poorest and most marginalized, since they are outside of my direct experience (except through daytime chat shows etc).

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Ubiquitous Surveillance

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 23:26:43 GMT

This is an awesome academic paper. It's like reading Japanese science fiction.

To wit!

"If the relational databases are the brains of the system, RFID tags are the legs. As RFID moves into the environment and become pervasive, it will in my view pose unprecedented challenges and opportunities to humans because they will be moving within an intelligent and context-aware environment, especially when RFID technology is linked with embedded sensors and actuators as the Japanese government is already doing."

...reminds me of Loups Garous, where the characters all carry around portable "monitors" that collect data on everything they do (and later in the paper the author talks about how the "brain" databases could be linked together into one, all-seeing Big Brother-ish database, which is the plot of Loups Garous);

"as Neil Gershenfeld says we are in the midst of creating an Internet of things. Most of the communication will be automated between intelligent devices. Humans will intervene only in a tiny fraction of that flow of communication. Most of it will go on unsensed and really unknown by humans."

...reminds me of Yukikaze which is about a war between alien AI and human AI, with humans themselves increasingly relegated to the background;

"Most RFIDs are encoded with a 10-digit number hardcoded onto the chip; if you do the maths with the permutations, a 96-bit chip has enough permutations uniquely to identify every manufactured object on the planet, about 80,000 trillion (or 2 to the exponent 96). So that means that we can now give an individual identity to everything in the world that is built as opposed to being natural."

...reminds me of how every physical object has a unique code in Homestuck;

AND FINALLY:

"What has happened is that the RFID tags themselves are very simple. They are much simpler than any AI system that I know about. That’s their beauty. They can now be manufactured as cheaply as 2 cents per tag. Many passive tags are about the size of a grain of rice. Hitachi is working on tags that are much smaller. And because the brains are separate from the legs, these tags are cheap and pervasive, and can be embedded in everything...

"Absolutely, because these tags can be embedded in shoes, and readers can be in the environment. So you put your shoes on and enter a store and now a reader knows who you are and what your purchasing record is – it knows if you are a cheapskate or a big spender."

...is cheaper than the biometric eye scanners in Minority Report.

I know we're not really there yet, but I enjoy this kind of SF stuff XD.

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Sum More Links

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 01:43:48 GMT

Japan's Railway Bazaar:

"And it is this very framework of male fraternization that pushes sex towards being a voyeuristic activity. Heterosexual sex for male bonding must be rebuilt and reconfigured — from its original conception as a private act between individuals — for the purposes of group male entertainment. Hence violence and sadism are likely to become core thematic principles, as alternatives like romance, love, and tenderness directly project man’s private bonds to women — thus creating a conflict with its new context."

Reasons to Teach What We Teach:

"Where a topic appears on this list affects the way it should be taught and tested. Memorizing algorithms is an entirely appropriate approach to problems that fall primarily under number one... If, however, a problem falls primarily under four, this same approach is disastrous."

Why Conservatives Can't Get People to Work Hard:

"So there are tons of reasons why simply smashing the welfare state doesn't instill poor people (or anyone at all) with good values. The beatings may continue, but morale will not improve. To conservatives, I say: If you really want people to value hard work and discipline, you've got to come up with a real, workable plan for achieving that goal."

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Alain Badiou, Ethics

Fri, 11 Nov 2011 04:48:03 GMT

Or, books I have been reading for class, Part 1.

Ethics: I think I should probably have read this after Postmodernism, Or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism by Fredric Jameson, because it is a stab at a solution to a problem I hadn't known existed. XD Namely, the problem of the paralysis felt by philosophers in a world in which philosophy can only be used to critique, all attempts to claim universal relevance by philosophers are savagely torn apart, and no one can think of a way to put philosophy to use for the purpose of imagining and then creating a better world for us all.

Lurking behind this is the idea that the best time to be alive was during the modernist era, particularly the 60s, when there was a sense of wide-open-possibility, that the world could be a better place, that collectively we could accomplish something. To not have this sense of possibility is "nihilist".

Badiou's solution to these problems, at least in Ethics, is to invent a philosophy that is actionable for individuals, that is "universal" because it will lead to the creation of new truths with universal relevance, but that avoids (he hopes) the pitfalls of 20th century totalizing philosophies that had huge human costs, like Nazism, Stalinism, and Maoism.

I returned the book to the library -- also it was tricky reading for me because it referenced a lot of philosophers I wasn't familiar with and used mathematical terms I didn't know (as a physics major!) -- so I might be misrepresenting some of the author's arguments. But I think the basic idea was:

--Truth is found in lack (see: Lacan), meaning at times when you recognize that your existing philosophy is inadequate.
--These times are "truth-events".
--ethics (small "e") consists of devotion to a truth-event. And by devotion, Badiou means lifelong devotion.
--Through devotion to a truth-event, you instigate a "truth-process" whose goal is the creation of new "truths".
--A bunch of qualifications to keep this philosophy from having unforeseen bad consequences.
--Something about 'subtraction', which is a concept I found very hazy. I think it means that instead of trying to demolish the current order so that you can build a new one in the flaming wreckage, you find the smallest change that can be made which will still completely change the whole.

Generally I found this book to be really invigorating reading, which I am sure is the entire point of the philosophy in the first place! My specific reservations with it were:

( Numbered for your convenience )

The section of this book I enjoyed the most, and thought was the most illuminating, was Badiou's discussion of the difference between opinion and truth. Briefly:

There is something called disinterested-interest -- the pursuit of truth for its own sake -- and something called brute interest -- the harnessing of invention toward concrete aims. All disinterested-interest eventually turns toward brute interest, at which point, new "knowledges" will come into being on the backs of a few truths. "At the end of which the human animal has become the absolute master of his environment – which is, after all, nothing but a fairly mediocre planet", sez Badiou.

Knowledge, therefore, is a byproduct of the pursuit of truth. Opinion, on the other hand, "is the necessary language of the everyday. Truths should not attempt to do away with the space for opinion" lest evil 4c, the unnameable, result -- the example here is the May 1968 riots in central Europe, which were riots not against Communism, but for a public space free of the meddlesome interference of the Party. "Truths have the power to change the language of opinion, and this is the power that, when abused, results in an evil."

Well, anyway, that's a short and probably very inscrutable summary, but if anyone is interested I will try to excerpt the whole thing in a comment later. Good stuff. The basic point is that we shouldn't always try to make every conversation about Big Ideas, chit chat is very important as well, but Big Ideas are still important because they define the scope of what the chit chat can be about. The more stuff like this I read, the more I kind of want to meet Alain Badiou, he seems like a passionate guy. One more thing I will point out about Ethics is that it was written in two weeks - two weeks! - over the summer. You learn stuff like this and you wonder.

***

Still to come: Badiou's The Century (which I enjoyed more than this), Zizek (briefly, because he's still very difficult for me to read), Jameson's Postmodernism (the source of many opinions I have seen floating around the net! :D), Foucault, and Zygmunt Bauman.

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In other news

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:51:33 GMT

I had laryngitis for just over a week, and in my society-deprived state did all kinds of useless but productive-feeling things, like change the layout of my Wordpress blog and make a profile on OKCupid. Where, as it turns out, one of my classmates also has a profile, although she claims never to have heard of the site. (Maybe I shouldn't have sprung it on her while we were waiting on line at the canteen, without messaging/warning her on OKC first? What's the protocol for this, anyway.)

I also signed on to G+ for the first time in months, specifically to complain about the changes to Google Reader. I see what you did there, Google! You won't get me so easily. I'm using custom CSS to change the GReader look until an alternate feed aggregation site with social sharing features is created. Right now I have my eye on http://percolate.com/ and http://hivemined.org. GReader friends, anyone want to switch with me?

Here are some articles spelling out why the changes to GReader are awful: one, two.

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Homestuck

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 01:22:01 GMT

This is a webcomic I started reading thanks to persistent fanart bombing by vikki. It's 4,107 pages and 326,796 words long (so far). That's half as long as Atlas Shrugged, only counting page titles and captions.

So yeah, don't start this one unless you want to read the War and Peace of webcomics.

Granted, the majority of those words show up in chat logs, which are how the characters talk to each other because duh. How else would they communicate while playing a computer game with their geographically dispersed friends, each of whom will eventually (spoiler)preside over a separate, custom-built planet?

Though there is some gimmickry involved, let me just say that the fact that every player has a unique and distinguishable chat-writing style is really pretty impressive. Also, it makes sense to me that (spoiler)the trolls speak the way they type, because trolls - at least the high-caste ones - are raised with a lot of physical space separating them due to their passionately destructive natures, and so the primary way they communicate with each other is through text over the internet. (Well, and also the trolls in the story are the equivalent of troll nerds.)

If I had to sum up the comic, I'd say it is about creation and destruction. The reality-altering computer game the characters are playing revolves around building - building up another player's physical space and building up your own stats - but with greater power comes greater ability to break stuff, and that's without counting all the meteors and falling rocks and ticking time bombs and insane homicidal maniacs who now and again will randomly - except that nothing is random in a comic which revolves around prophecies (of doom), time travel (proving you are already doomed), alternate universes (which are doomed), and (spoiler)malevolent omniscient aliens who reside outside the flow of time - destroy all the stuff you just built with your awesome godlike powers. At which point, the cycle repeats...

BTW if you are reading this comic, the end of Act 4 is a good resting point as Act 5 is twice again as long as all of the proceeding acts put together. It's also the point where the comic becomes much darker, following the pacing of the Harry Potter books (or, if you like, ICP's Dark Carnival).

Speaking of dark themes, it was always clear that this comic was gonna deal in some way with depression, but I really wasn't expecting (spoiler) to read in-comic chat logs about it! Pretty brave of the author, I think.

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Meanwhile, In the Cold and Rainy North...

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 23:33:45 GMT

(I decided to move this post here from tumblr after discussing (okay okay, "explaining without having been asked") what I use the two blog platforms for. It is probably a ridiculous distinction only I care about, but anyway...)

This follows: http://subdee.tumblr.com/post/10966340645/things-about-england

( Notes about - what else! - the weather )

Shoutout to berthardy, up in Glasgow! Did you know that it is actually *less dark* in Glasgow in the winter than it is in York? I think it’s because the big cities in Scotland are on high plateaus, whereas most of the Northern English cities are in valleys.

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