upon crossing the bridge of dreams

Pop culture analysis class is going pretty well. My professors seem good, the reading materials are challenging, which is helping my Japanese skills, and my classmates are not dumb (nor have I been dumb yet, which is always a plus).

Of course, it's a pop culture class, not a gender analysis one (though an encouraging number of people have some background in gender studies), which meant that when the following ads popped up in class, we didn't talk about it nearly as much as I wanted to, and I swallowed half of what I wanted to say anyway because it was more rant than reasoned analysis. So instead you guys get it!

( Not worksafe. Parco uses a lot of half-naked women in its ads. )

I love my recipient's prompt, which is exciting, and I'm immediately hearing bits of characters talking. This lack of a panic reaction is quite refreshing! *grin*

On a non-Yuletidey note, I find the assumptions embedded in language fascinating, and one of the best things about studying Japanese is that people in the community recognize how extensive the assumptions surrounding word usage are and go out of their way to explain them.

Rhetorical questions, for example. The usual answer to a rhetorical question in English is "yes", right? The usual answer to a rhetorical question in Japanese is "no". Of course, it then winds up getting a lot more muddled in the details, so there are ways you can form an English question that inspire a rhetorical no and forms of Japanese rhetorical questions that imply yes. This leads to me being extraordinarily confused by things like Vienna Teng's "Enough to Go By," which is phrased in just the right way to make me assumed that the rhetorical answer is no:

Would it be enough to go by,
If we could sail on the wind in the dark
Cut those chains in the middle of the night
That had you pulled apart
Would it be enough to go by,
If there's moonlight pulling the tide
Would it be enough to live on,
If my love could keep you alive

But then I start second-guessing myself. It is written in English, after all... And I think it's a love song. So maybe the answer is yes? Or maybe it's being deliberately written to inspire both answers? But when I've asked other US English speakers they've immediately said that they assume the answer is yes (granted, I've only asked two, so small sample size; it doesn't come up a lot, really). So the whole thing ends with a very confused Maat, but I think it also makes me like the song even more.

And then sometimes the language stuff is a slap in the face. We also discussed 折り合い, which is a term used in Japanese for the relationship between two people who are supposed to be close. The example used, of course, was spouses. (Spouses who got divorced, actually.) There's also another term that can be used for any relationship, to talk about whether people are close or not getting along (仲がいい、仲が悪い), that doesn't depend on the expectation of closeness. So, guess which one gets used for friendship? If you guessed 仲, twenty points! 折り合い can't be used for friendship because friends can just stop being friends if they stop getting along. *sigh* Gotta love the assumptions embedded in language.

On the bright side, the next few weeks are slated for discussion of what "discrimination" means in Japanese, and while the materials we're reading/critiquing fall short of full-swing modern feminism and anti-racism scholarship, they're all from relatively popular magazines and television shows and are well ahead of general US-based discussion. I'm tempted to use them as examples the next time someone blithely declares Japan an exceptionally sexist society.

While I let my Dear Author letter for Yuletide stew in hopes of finding more of the typos that are inevitably there and developing enough perspective to avoid terrifying my assigned author, have some meta for the Belisarius Saga, by Eric Flint and David Drake (available from the Baltic War Baen CD, on the right).

I spent entirely too much time rereading the series recently. And, okay, I devoured it back in middle school because I adored Shakuntala (the teenage empress of Andhra who leads a rebellion in Southern India against the evil Malwa regime). Then I reread it in high school and fell in love with Rana Sanga (the deeply honorable Rajput king trapped by his oath of allegiance to the Malwa). Then, finally, the sixth and last book of the series came out. I read it and enjoyed having endings and answers, but didn't feel any need to reread the whole thing. So this go-through was the first time that I read Oblique Approach and Dance of Time anywhere close to back-to-back, and I finally figured out what twigged me wrong with that last book. Rana Sanga and Shakuntala are shadows of themselves.

( Spoilers for the entire series, particularly the India and Ethiopia plotlines. )

So, how obvious is it that I'm having a great deal of fun?

Screencap out of Boukenger, from an episode where the entire point of the episode was that Sakura (the one in pink) is an excellent fighter because she doesn't let herself freak out about teammates in danger in the middle of a fight. She sees a group of kids getting kidnapped with a scary mystical artifact, and she has the presence of mind to wait until she has enough information before trying to rescue them, and the episode presents her as right, not heartless.



Super Sentai, right about now, I love you.

I am so, so in love. I just finished episode 19 of Gekiranger, which has Masaki Miki, who is one of the two main Ranger mentors (the other being Master Xia Fu/Shafu, the giant stuffed cat who also trained Miki). She is an executive at SCRTC, head of the special development department that creates Geki gear, and she reads like an exec: she does a heck of a lot of work, is perfectly capable of commanding a room, wears suits, mostly pantsuits, and knows exactly what she is doing almost all the time. She's the one who explains Shafu's cryptic suggestions half the time, but she also figures out herself how to chivy the Gekirangers into getting better.

Miki is introduced transporting a weapon of evil that the big bad wants. He downs her plane and she gets out of it scorched and bruised and proceeds to fight off an entire army of minions one-handed, while the other hand holds the metal briefcase with the weapon. She doesn't get beaten until a higher ranked minion manages to hit her in the arm wounded in the crash. Jan (the future Red Ranger) tries to rescue her and fails. The minion gets away with the weapon, but Miki has the presence of mind to realize who and what Jan is and bring him back to Japan with her. She is apologetic about losing the weapon, and clearly understands exactly how bad it is, but she's moving on and facing forward and not letting it rip her up. First episode, check, amazing.

Miki's also a mother, and her daughter is actually interesting and quite self-sufficient for an elementary schooler, but she also obviously respects and loves her mother, so there's none of the usual 'bad mother for her focus on work' vibe. Relatively early on, armed with nothing but her hands, Miki protects her daughter (who reacts with intelligent composure, too, and gets behind her mother) from a horde of bad guys that swamped the Rangers at the start of the episode. She's eventually overwhelmed and has to get rescued by the Gekirangers, but, frankly, she does better than any of them alone, and she's the one who teaches them how to beat the bad guys together.

Finally, episode 19 is a crowning moment of awesome that makes me clap my hands with sheerest glee. The Rangers are all lying on the ground after being beaten by the big bad, who took Shafu hostage to force them to learn the greatest technique of their school so that he can beat them again. (It's also raining, because we can't have a proper despair scene without pouring rain.) Miki comes in, tells them to. Stand. up. When they refuse, saying it's impossible, she throws away her umbrella, kneels on the group beside the Red Ranger, hauls him up by his shirt and slap him. She them proceeds to do the same to Yellow and Blue (using exactly the same force, I might add, on the female Yellow as on the male Blue). Then she tells them to stand up because as long as they're on the ground, the only thing they'll feel is despair. She asks them--demands an answer, really--if they're going to learn the greatest technique. Or not. The actress does an awesome job with it, too, so that you can tell that Miki has just lost her mentor, too, and she has no fucking patience for this. I can't think of anything that would have kept me from standing up for that. The Rangers stand up, too.

She is beyond awesome.

So this lovely piece of news popped up on my flist. I agree that it is, in fact, disturbing that I'd seen nothing about it in any of my non-fannish news sources, though frankly I think that a "Personhood Amendment" (Mississipi wants to declare fertilized eggs people, to summarize) done by a state is probably less of a threat to Roe v. Wade than the more typical creeping encroachments of both state and federal anti-abortion laws. Roe v. Wade itself is kind of dead, because Planned Parenthood v. Casey wiped out the trimester test, along with much of the legal logic of the RvW decision, in exchange for the much less clean idea of balancing women's interests with fetuses' and the government's. (But Roe v. Wade is so much snappier a name!) This has since allowed quite a lot of chipping away at what rights women get. Thus, my skepticism about the particulars of a Personhood Amendment as an in-one-stroke legal strategy, since I think it's totally doomed as unconstitutional. Of course, it'll still make life hell on women in Mississipi in the meantime, which is an excellent reason to stop it.

But mostly I'm writing this because I am sometimes a contrary bitch and the Daily Kos article linked in the post managed to piss me off with this "counterargument": (yes, it earns the scare quotes)

2. What about pregnant illegal immigrants? The right wing is pretty hot on getting them out of the country as fast as possible. Well, this is going to be a big problem when the pregnant immigrant is actually two people...one who is legal (the fertilized egg) and the other who is not (the living, breathing woman). I guess at this point most folks trying to avoid deportation should get pregnant and move to Mississippi and have their "legal" zygote/fetus/child apply for welfare and medicaid.

( This? This makes me want to throttle something. )

Hi Author!

You're writing a story about characters whom I love, in a tiny little fandom that I adore. This means, of course, that I love you. Everything that I've asked for is vanishingly rare, so I'm excited that you're writing it at all. I'm going to be gleeful about seeing your story! :D

On that note, please believe me when I say my prompts are just to get you thinking. I'm the kind of person who loves to read other people's ideas, so I babble at you a lot, but if you have a plot bunny you'd love to write, I'll love to read it.

If you still feel like reading...

( General About Me )

And now, on to fandom-specific babble.

( Bloody Monday )

( Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes )

( Maou )

( Gangjeok-deul | Powerful Opponents )

My mother told me again last night that she "feels like such a failure" because I have no interest in having sex with men.

( The first time she said this was eight years ago. )

There are a lot of things that my mother doesn't understand about me: she doesn't understand fanfiction, she doesn't understand why I prefer to study the premodern world over the modern one, she doesn't understand why most of my strongest relationships are with women, she doesn't understand why I generally prefer TV shows over movies. But the only place that she has ever outright said she's disappointed in me is over my sexuality. Sometimes, it hurts.

Why does it feel like everything involving women is happening right now? It's tempting me to sign up for many, many things for which I have no business signing up.

Examples:
thelittlebang: signups until June 6, deadline Oct. 17
femgenficathon: signups until June 7, final deadline Sept. 8
femslash11: signups until June 16, final deadline Aug. 16
ladiesbigbang: signups until June 30, final deadline Oct. 1

There are probably ones I'm missing, too.

( Nattering about signing up. )

And then there are the rare-fandom fests, one for Asian media and one for general chromatic. I'm planning to participate in both, but again with the timing.

parallelsfic: signups June 25 - July 3, final deadline Aug. 1
dark_agenda's Kaleidoscope: signups July 30 - Aug. 13, deadline Sept. 26

Embarrassment of riches. Oh, yes.

Three bits of awesome from Porn Battle XI, though I've only looked up to about midway through page 10 on the Dreamwidth section.

Blue Sea Waves by glitterburn
Genji/To no Chujo after the rehearsal dance in Momiji no Ga/Beneath the Autumn Leaves. Genji is playful and charismatic, To no Chujo is smart and jealous, and glitterburn once again strikes perfectly the difficult balance between Genji monogatari-style and fic style. (She wrote my Yuletide Treat, too.)

"We Don't Bleed When We Don't Fight" by piecesofalice
Park Chul Young/Kim Sun Hwa from IRIS in snippets that go up through the series. I still need to finish IRIS, so I know I'm not getting everything out of it, but this was gorgeous and heart-wrenching.

Russandol by innin
Maedhros/Fingon drawn mostly in black and white, with brilliant color for Maedhros' hair. Also, it's Porn Battle, so none of this is really worksafe, but this one's especially not worksafe.