The last entry was number 1000, according to the count. Yay?



Tsubasa and 'holic, not cutting and not spoiling:
- I've said it before and I'll say it again: I think much of my joy in life comes from the fact that I just can't stop believing in Sakura-chan's invincible spell. And this one was the first time Tsubasa has made me feel anything except sad things since all the infighting started. Even though little!Touya and Yukito were good.
- But not even Sakura-chan can deny that they've written themselves into a corner and then some. I can't read anything else out of it than that some Sakura and Syaroan will have to live life without each other for everybody else to be happy. Yeah, what greater sacrifice is there than letting go of your childhood sweetheart, and I want to see it happen. MAKE IT BITTERSWEET, CLAMP. I MIGHT EVEN START CARING ABOUT THEM IF YOU DO.
- Maru and Moro: still providing all the cute that Holic!Mokona never really did.
- Look at that Doumeki having a facial expression other than B|
- The above vid plus those like this makes my heart ache for the days when Tsubasa was fun. Fay and late nineties Scandinavian bubblegum pop are such an OTP.

( I suddenly realized that I want Funimation to dub Hetalia after all )

I also saw the latest episode, and finally got around to sitting through the entire drama CD that got subbed.
- I love Austria. He was my first love and he remains there, even as he *gasps, and other noises of shock* smiled at Liechtenstein because nobody can not love her. But it all grew so much stronger because of the drama CD and the squid. And the eggs. And the Grand Piano-less introduction. And all the places he never had seen before (and how clearly, everyone else must be early). And America's birthday. And how I love that thing for putting him into scenes were he wasn't originally. I'm not sure what I think about the wheelchair, though.
- In fact, it makes up for the blasphemous censorship of Poland in everything that isn't he webcomic. A little bit.
- To which we all say: Oh Jesus Lithuania. And Russia is so... clearly more adorably deranged than what comes across in the anime.
- Prussia is Prussia. Do you want more? I think he's less boring than Germany, but I'm not sure why because it really isn't like Germany is boring at all. I just can't stop thinking that he is for whatever reason; probably the fact that the rest of the cast is what they are. And Prussia was better than I had thought he would be in the anime.
- I'm not sure what to think about the absolute disregard of narrative structure the anime is displaying, and I'm using these words because I had a two-hour class on hypertext novels today. People who love books enough to devote their academical career to them are not adept to clicking links to read stories, that would be the conclusion. And even though fanfic never is primarily preoccupied with using an experimental format, it does have that whole reader participation thing going much stronger than any pretentious "hey look, I'm using the computer to revolutionize~ the art of storytelling" webauthors could ever dream of. When there exists fanfic of fanfic? Oh yeah, that is an interactive reading experience.
- Uh, what I meant was: how long have they've been stuck on that island, again? And is this all taking place during WWII? Even the part with the DVDs? And what about Switzerland and Austria shopping at a supermarket, much less the same one? That's not postmodern, it's just laziness.

I need a tag for those posts when I go babbling about crap I have classes about and use big words that make me look like a twat *facepalm*

Today, I paid nine euro for a bottle of rose syrup, and twenty euro for having the battery of my watch changed. I halfway suspect the latter to be because I refused to buy a new chain for said watch, in a bizarro replay of every cliche "the native does not take the tourist's 'no' for an answer" - only here, it was the native who could communicate properly, but kept on insisting the same thing over and over. Even after the third time I told him that I fasten it to the belt loop above the pocket and didn't fucking need a chain twice as long. That battery better last three years, minimum.

Other Fun German Stuff: a radio show discussing the Swedish celebration of midsummer because of the horrible, horrible snowy and cold and dark dark DARK and very long Nordic winters. As their correspondent could witness from his prolonged exposure to such. In Stockholm.

( Waltz With Bashir and Chaplin's The Great Dictator )

I notoriously never finish anything I start doing, and this, by all means, is only meant to be a prologue of sorts. Except that I'll probably never write the rest.

( In which England is ronery and I haven't actually done enough homework )

( Cut because there might be one person on my flist who actually cares for theoretical politics. Today: Honduras. )

German day on Hetalia:
- I have no subs and I need no subs to know that I loved this week's episode. And also that Romi's Switzerland + that expression on his face when Liechtenstein professes that she cut her hair because she wanted to be like him (and oh God oh God I ship it so hard) means that I love him. Even is the only thing I particularly liked about him before was that he has ski jumpers (and Lipton).
- Skipping to the preview: Austria has such a special place in my heart. I love him for the part where he took off his pants on his own, and not because of whatever business the fandom makes out of having him bottom to Hungary/Prussia/Germany/Latvia; in short, he's all lulz for me but rarely for anybody else. Since there were flashbacks in the preview, that might change and I kind of want it to, a little. I'm hoping that the lunch session will have Prussia; mostly because I want to see more of him, but also because the Swiss backfire of his insults was comedy gold.
- And the nightshirts, too. And the handholding. And why are they so cute.
- Oh Romano, such violence~ even though they missed out on the entire joke. But Romano, who I love. Who doesn't? ("Poor Germany" goes without saying, really).
- And there was a Gymnopedie no. something; not 1, I think, and the only reason I know this is because my mahjong game that plays midis in the background. Including the Gymnopedies. Which seem to be recurring in Hetalia, and I approve of that.
- As for last week's Chibitalia, I guess it would have been better if I hadn't already seen it before, and been expecting panties. It was cute, but since when was Chibitalia anything but? Uh. HRE is just the right kind of ridiculously cute for me, and -- the anime either missed out on the bittersweet ending of the manga, or the manga planned to do something we never knew about. Which I can't quite get to make sense, with how much of Chibitalia relies on Italy's gender confusion being limited to a period in his life when it didn't matter much that they're ~both boys~.

Since Jackson's death was enough to make the collective international media forget about the demonstrations in Iran, I suppose I might as well come out and say it in my vague annoyance: I was either too young or too shielded, and my only relationship to the man was that he got his skin replaced with that of a dead man because he wanted to be white (as confessed the Very Christian girl next door, who I in retrospect guess heard it from her brother).

And enough celebrity gossip to appreciate the below.



--->Unrelated, NDB demands at least two Hetalia crossovers that I can't believe do not exist already.

You know, I did think it was funny that the fandom would deliver fic in which Russia was the brutal agressor in a war that I distinctly remember that he they did not start.

For the sake of that little thing called "balanced news", the English-language links here should be read.

I'm doing an oral presentation on "beginnings in film" next week, which basically means that I'm going to be talking about film narration and adaptions. As part of that, I decided to cheat and use a couple of pages out of everyone's favourite comic to illustrate camera focalization and the near lack of such the moment things go from serious business to gag. Working on the assumption that people taking MA level classes on literature are not comic aficionadoes, I flipped it. And promptly discovered details that I had completely overlooked, realized that I could follow motion much better than before, and that the page itself simply was more comfortable to look at.

And I've been reading manga since the days when flipping was part of the practice.

What conclusions can we draw from this? Firstly, that I wish comics had been taken seriously a while before "Neil Gaimon" (as my source article calls him) so that there was easily available literature on the workings of comic narration. Secondly, that reading direction is deeper ingrained in us than we think - as said, I've been reading manga for a few years now. The fact that I saw the whole page in a new light just by turning it the other way says something about something, and I'm suspecting that that something is my brain.

If you want to test it, I'm posting both my sample pages in original and flipped format.

( First original, then the flipped version )

So let me blaspheme on a level beyond the whole dubbing business: I wish they'd start flipping manga again. Because if the Japanese creators feel that their work "lose something" when it is flipped - which is the argument that either Tokyopop or Viz used on their "this is why you have to read it all the wrong way" explanations - then I, a western reader, sure as hell gained a lot from it.

I feel that I should say more about this, but it's not like I learned something I didn't already know, except the reason why tax havens are bad. Another thing that was bad was the speakers, so I only caught about half of what was spoken in languages I am known to understand (listening to English and having to read German subtitles was a pretty fucked up experience, let me tell you). Ultimately, it was kind of boring, but probably, probably, the sort of film the kids should be watching on youtube instead of those trying to explain why Bush Junior plotted 9/11. In conclusion, globalization sucks and I'm probably not going to be voting conservative this year either. Neither would you after the part about three million empty houses in Spain and how they came to be.

Voted today, too, in elections for the university senate and faculty council. Since those kinds of elections tend to focus on spesific cases rather than political leanings, my vote went to those who wanted to work against the planned cementing of the Square of the Old Synagogue and had a rose in their logo (really, I had to; the Christian Democrats were campaigning under the slogan that "you don't do uni with the left". They probably meant the other left, but I have issues with politicians who rather talk about others than themselves).

( Because you don't really want to know about me assing around on limewire trying to download La Marseillaise )

Tsubasa: ( For spoilers, I suppose. But it's a shame to put them under a cut. )

You know the schpiel by now:
- Oh Sealand, you were cuter in the drama CD (and as of recent scanlashuns, I know now what the hell that Santa sequence was about). And unnervingly little deluded here, perhaps for lack of Latvia or some real interaction with England.
- I give up. I don't know what it is with Lithuania and his being a nice guy, but his continued presence in the anime makes me happy.
- Oh Japan.
- ...and what is it with "An der schönen blauen Donau"?
- But the real question is: WILL THERE BE PANTIES NEXT WEEK?