JOURNAL: Arigatomina

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  • anime dream 2006-11-11 01:23:23 Just took a nap. Crazy dream. I'm gonna write as much as I remember while it's fresh...

    It was Soul Hunter. Even though none of the characters were from that anime, that's just what I knew it was.

    The main thing that stands out is that there was a princess who was killed right at the start of the dream. She was murdered on her engagement day and there was this big deal made about the dress she was wearing. It had these blue decorations on it and when she was lying dead, there was this pale blue water collecting in little pools along the folds of the dress. The young girl in my party (me? the dream was in 'movie' point of view) knelt beside the princess in pity and made a comment about that liquid. She said it was dew, and that it was a pity because the dress must have been collecting dew for as many years as the princess had lived, all waiting for this special day, and now she was dead. That made sense in the dream because the guy who'd killed her (right in front of us) had made a snide remark about her "moldy" dress - like it had been "growing" rather than having been "made" - or that it had been stored in a damp room waiting for this day. There was a lot of fuss about this girl's dress - it was long and flowing and had details all over it, and when the light shifted (which it did a lot, inexplicably), the damp bits of the skirt glowed white - like the dress was alive and pulsed heartbeats in sweeps of the light - the glowing got slower and further apart before we finally left.

    Eventually we did leave. We didn't bury her, either. We just left her lying there in her beautiful engagement dress. We were leaving the area. There was nothing in the area, but we knew it was dangerous to stay there too long. As we left one of the guys in the group (Kou Hiko?) made a droll comment like a one-liner in a movie - he asked, "Didn't we have two horses a minute ago?" And right on key the second horse came stampeding towards us from the area where we'd left the corpse. The whole ground was shaking in this ominous way. And the guy got this look on his face and said, "Oh, this can't be good..."

    Then the scene shifted, birdview, camera-mode, to show the area where we'd left the princess. She was back. And she brought along a few thousand clones. They were zombie ghosts, all standing in this sick dead sway and making their slow way in our direction. And there was something about the 'ghosts' that reminded me of Legend of Dragoon. About two feet above each shoulder of every "princess-zombie-ghost" was a round blue whil'o'whisp - a pale blue glowing ball of light that was almost transparent. [Swamp gas according to scientists, ghost balls according to FATE magazine readers.]

    We knew we had to go back and destroy them all because they'd formed a veritable army. If you looked down from above, the confrontation was along a line over the ground, with the zombie ghost army on the left side, us on the right. I guess we were with soldiers because as soon as the two sides met there was a lot of arrows being shot from our side. [I think it was Bunchu's army - the Soul Hunter connection was really weak in the dream, there, but not obvious.] My position was on the bottom left of my army's side. I was up in a corner where I could take out the zombie-ghosts without them focusing on me.

    My weapon? I shit you not, it was pockets full of pear knives. I don't know what else to call them. If you've ever seen a tiny fruit knife, imagine taking the blade out. You have a tiny knife blade with a little rectangular dull part that's supposed to stick down in the handle of the knife. There weren't any handles on my blades. I was flinging these tiny little things at the zombie-ghosts and for some reason I was a hell of a shot. As long as they stuck in the head/neck region, the zombie-ghosts fell down and didn't get back up.

    Here's where it gets weird. There were enemies mixed in with the zombie ghosts. At least, there was one directly across from me. A little guy I knew very well. I kinda liked him. As if he were one of those comedic villains you don't want to see killed off because he keeps the "bad team" amusing when you have to face them. I can't remember who he was. I think if you took Fujin and Raijin (FF8) and rolled them into one little person, you'd have this guy.

    Anyway, we were keeping an eye on each other while the armies clashed. Eventually the zombie ghosts started to get beaten and I realized I'd have to take this little guy out - if I let the oportunity slip by, I'd get shit from my comrades later. So I tossed one of my little blades at him.

    It went two feet and bounced on the ground. I swear to god, it was like one second I knew how to fight and the next second it was the "real me" with tiny pear-knife-blades and no throwing skills to save my life. I think I blushed. I know I cursed a little and fumbled for a real "sword" to use. Once I'd tossed that blade he noticed me so I figured we would have to fight close up - he had a real sword. I reached down to wherever I was keeping those little blades and pulled out my "real" weapon.

    It was a twelve-inch knife. A huge dull-looking thing. I swear, it's like I raided a kitchen for this fight. I think I choked and started ranting about how much that was bullshit that I had such stupid weapons. When I finally remembered the bad guy, he'd gone back to fighting everyone else. I think he snorted and rolled his eyes at me and figured I wasn't worth the effort. Really embarassing.

    Later on we finished the army off and started clean up. There was a lot of talk about that little guy - the "mastermind" behind it. And how cliche it was to keep using dead people for this stuff. All the reincarnation and raising the dead was just an excuse to hide the fact that the villains were cardboard cutouts with no originality.

    I'm sure there was more to it, but I can't remember now. I still don't know if I was that girl I saw petting the pathetic little princess's hair, or if I was an unknown guy on the battlefield. The first part was in 'third person' and then - once the fighting started - I was there myself so I didn't have a mirror to see "who" I was.

    Those little peeling knives were utter bullshit, though. I'm still pissed about that. And all that talk about the princess' dress, moldy dew-collecting, dress. Is that like some Freudian thing because I'm a girl? That video-game bad guy is probably because I've been playing way too much FF8 lately. And the Soul Hunter connection - I have no idea where that came from, but I'm glad Bunchu and Kou Hiko were the only ones I recognized (they're the only ones I really liked from the anime). Plus, they're the only real "normal" fighters when it comes to army conflicts. I was on the best side, for sure.

    Really weird dream. I wish I'd gotten up and started writing it down sooner. I know there's a lot I've forgotten and left out. Something to do with more 'dead females' being "brought back" to serve as cliche super-villains. Weird shit. >.> 
  • article, yaoi in the US 2006-11-09 17:30:21 So I'm browsing a Tsubasa lj community and I notice someone linking to this:

    http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0645,weekly,74919,2.html

    I read it. Now I'm faintly amused, faintly annoyed. According to this article, the yaoi following in the US is comprised of fluffy giggling underage twits and mature overage adults who feel so ashamed of their interest in yaoi that they're still hiding it from their parents. Honestly, that's insulting.

    I always knew I came from an open minded family. I just never realized exactly how unusual my family must be compared to the rest of the US. I never hid my interest in yaoi from anyone. Admittedly, I didn't discover yaoi until I was in college - didn't discover anime till I was 19, but even if I'd been 15 I still wouldn't have felt the need to hide my interest like a dirty little secret. I might have hidden if I were, say, a lesbian, because while I'm sure my mother could handle knowing that, I wouldn't want her to try setting me up with girls. That would be absolutely humiliating. Telling her I like yaoi is the same as admitting I'm straight. Since when is that something horrible and scary for people to share with their families? I thought it was a given. I'm sure my older brother was never ashamed to admit to people that he found hot lesbian couples arrousing to watch when he rented porn from the local movie gallery. Is this just a double standard that comes from the assumption that women aren't sexually curious creatures? I thought we stopped thinking that when our 13yr old daughters were giving blowjobs in school like we used to pass notes to boys and giggle about it to our friends. Girls in this generation are sluts far more often than they are shy and innocent demure little things to be wooed and married off to the highest bidder.

    But back to the idea of yaoi fans as A) underage twits or B) ashamed adults. I was neither. I'm sure there must be some sort of middle group of yaoi fans in the US who are neither. I was never ashamed of liking yaoi. I was embarrassed at first, giggling and blushing as I read fics I'd printed out and taken back to my apartment to shock my roommate during a weekend of intense reading (out loud for comedic effect). It was amazing. More fun than anything I'd seen on the net up to that point. And it was new and fresh and it was porn without females to ruin the mood (breasts kill my arrousal, making me a prudish straight woman, who for some weird reason is turned off by watching naked women have sex). And it was fantasy and romance completely different from anything I'd seen in the het stories populating the net at that time. I was embarrassed and a little shy about announcing the new interest to people, but I was never ashamed.

    As soon as I started participating - fanfiction, always been a writer - I was eager to share it with my mother. Not the porn, mind you, the fandom itself, the genre, the subculture, and the writing. She thought it was hilarious. She bragged to family members about how many readers I had reviewing my stories and spamming my site. She still does that. She talked so much about it that I ended up letting my grandfather read one of my stories (an old man who *is* still stuck in the "women don't think about sex unless they're making babies with their husbands" era). And he wouldn't be satisfied with a fluffy boyxboy fic. No, he wanted the porn. So I gave him my most explicit Point-What-Point sex fic and watched him read all 17 printed single-spaced pages of it. He was a little uncomfortable afterward, but I grinned the entire time. I had warned him it was explicit. After that he believed my warnings and didn't press me to share.

    Does that make me shameless? Am I really such an unusual yaoi fan when it comes to people in the US? I can't imagine being an active member of the hobby and hiding it from everyone I know for years on end. I might not shove it in people's faces - don't mention it unless they ask - but I'd never fly halfway across the country (twice) and not mention to anyone where I was going because they might hate me for liking yaoi. As if. My mom paid for my first trip, a gift to show her support. She paid the hotel fees this time, too, full price since the convention was sold out, because she didn't want me relying on strangers and sharing a room. You always hear about parents buying their anime-fan kids computers and dvds and everything else. My mom never did that for me, but she paid for my trips, which to me is the same as those parents spoiling their little boys. Is that really so unusual? Just because what I want her to buy me involves imaginary homosexual males instead of bigbreasted anime girls and bloody video games?

    I'm starting to wonder now if my mother is even better than I already thought. If it's that rare to have parents who are open minded and supportive, then god save this country because every new generation is going to get progressively worse. What kind of parents look the other way while their teenage daughters have kids at random, but get up in arms over the same aged girls reading websites with stories about fictional gay men? Skewed priorities. And my mom's a saint. Pft.

    I don't know. I found the entire article annoying. I'm glad I didn't go to the bishonen auction at yaoi-con, now. I wasn't interested, so that means I'm not one of those sex-deprived little girls spending a fortune for a cute guy in coysplay to talk to them for a few hours. The auction is fun for a good cause (the convention), but put into that sort of context it's degrading.

    Then there was the talk about yaoi and shonen ai manga in the US. Clearly the writer of the article knows nothing about Loveless or she wouldn't have put it in the "harmless shounen ai safe" category before talking about how shota child porn could kill the genre. There's no explicite sex, sure, but Loveless is nothing *but* a shota series. What did the author of that article think the cat ears and tails represented? Innocence vs sexually active adults. It's shota through and through. [Hence one of the reasons I prefer Sukisho - they're still young but they're the same age.]

    And the scare about websites being shut down. So what? The sites mentioned in the article were distributing doujinshi scans. That can get a site shut down whether it features yaoi fanfiction or nothing but episode descriptions. It's like trying to scare people that the org might be shut down for hosting shonen ai videos when, actually, the org would be shut down for hosting videos, period. Parents whining and getting fansites shut down won't kill the genre. It'll just lead to bittorrent-style underground sharing of the exact same materials. Look at mp3s. It's the internet. Put up roadblocks on the main road and the surrounding country side is suddenly teaming with backroads and detours. Until they can police the entire thing (or require proof of age for people wishing to get online), nothing will die or be crushed entirely.

    As for open yaoi fans, such as those who attend the one convention in the US dedicated to the genre, I don't see how US laws regarding manga will hurt the fans. The author admits the genre was huge when we were relying entirely on scanlations. If they can't sell the books legally here, that just means fans get to save more money to spend on the convention while reading scanlations for their yaoi-fix. If prudes in the US decide to target yaoi and shonen ai, it'll just make the fans go underground. And everyone who was around a few years ago knows we're stronger when we're banding together out of the public eye. Hurt the genre? No way. Kill it? Hardly. We're like cockroaches. All they'll do is bomb the their own backyard. We'll be the ones thriving in the aftermath. ;p 
  • ooh... 2006-11-07 04:31:32 Donated. I'm a contributor now. Well, not for the year, but overall accumulative that's where I land. And according to the donation levels, there are only 8 other donators at that level or higher. I'm kinda shocked by that. I don't give that much a year, and there are so many really active members who've been here as long as if not a few years longer than me. But that means I'm giving back, right? More than a lot of people. Maybe that'll help make up for having so many *vids* compared to a lot of people.

    I had this rude awakening like a year ago where I was told I was taking up more file space than anyone on the org. Naturally I freaked and got as many local vids deleted as I could. And I replaced my 'good' vids with really small 240x480 versions to take up less space (that sucked big time, let me tell you). But I kept making vids, so I'm probably back up at the high end of overuser/abuser again. Being at the high end of donators should help balance things out, right? At least until they figure out the *benefits* of letting people like me delete old videos without making us lie about the reasons. I have too many vids, I can't afford to donate enough to make up for so many, I want to delete the old ones and host them on indirect or direct links so I'm not obligated to the org, they want to use their money for the 400mb multi-editor vids that get more downloads than all my vids combined, so they should let me take my collective weight off the org so they'll have more room for the heavyweights.

    Yeah, I don't think I'll be able to delete vids without lying any time soon. But I'm not going to feel as guilty about it for a few months. The way Phade was talking, the org doesn't even have a future, so all my vids will be removed from local eventually. I'm really kinda curious to have that happen. Rotating vids on my own server, maintaining indirect links on the free file hosting sites - it sounds a lot more active/entertaining than tossing a vid here and never being alowed to do anything to/with it ever again because it's now the 'local server's property'. Plus I'll get to use more bandwidth on my site. I know, don't want to max it out, but I'd like to use at least 1/5th of the montly bandwidth I'm paying for. >.< 
  • not fair 2006-11-05 13:35:05 My mom's computer is better than mine. Except it's not. >.<

    Mine cost more, has a lot more extras, and a ton more memory. But hers has the 'correct' color settings so amvs look prettier on hers. That's not fair. And I think her sound card might be better than mine. o.O How is that possible? I know nothing about sound cards, or audio in general, but even *I* can tell a difference between watching on my comp and watching on hers. Everything is just so much louder and cleaner sounding. Even with headphones.

    At least I don't have to disconnect my internet to play vids. Ha. Her comp has that same interference mine gets once in a while, except hers gets it with any amvs. Mine only gets that problem when it's sick, or when I'm playing something annoying like mp4 or huffyuv. I bet her computer would die if I tried to watch a 4minute 720x480 video in huffyuv. So, yeah, my computer is better as far as memory goes. Heck, even with other amv-editors I hear most people can't play huffyuv in 'real time' without problems. I know my computer is a good one when it comes to playback (normally).

    Still, I really want to start messing with my color/saturation settings when I get my comp back. Seeing my own vids (and other familiar vids) at "true color" makes me want to grit my teeth and bash my head on something. Jealousy does not sit well with me. I don't think I'll do it, though. I ended up spending days last time and all I managed to do was make everything look even worse before I set things back to the "too-dark" way they were originally. It's not that I don't know how (theoretically) you're supposed to match things up using gradation pictures (there are websites for just this sort of problem). It's that I can't seem to put theory into action without making things worse. Story of my life? Nah, I'm just jealous of my mom's computer. ^^;

    /other note

    Finally finished my exchange ops. Like a week+ late. I swear, never do an op exchange with me unless you wait until I op your vid first. If I'd just forgone sleep for a few hours before I left, I'd have gotten them all done instead of letting it sit till I got back (and getting sidetracked by my mom's intrusion into my apartment during my absence and the subsequent downfall of my computer upon my return). But, whatever. It's not like I can do anything about it after the fact. I want to do 10 free ops next week. That will put me up to 530, I think. If I can do an op a day, it would be classic. I really need to donate again before that, though. Until then I'll just work with vids I've already downloaded. Those advertisements still make my stomach churn. 
  • made me smirk, re: Yeihweh 2006-11-04 17:47:05 Browsing journals and feeling broody. Then I noticed this-

    Yeihweh wrote:
    "Or maybe I should just make something purely for the fun of it and not to impress anyone."

    Funny thing. The last time I did that, recently, too, it got a rash of downloads, early unsolicited ops, and remains the highest star-scored vid in my profile. And it's the editing that's getting the kudos rather than just the fans liking the theme of the vid. Wtf, right? ;p

    Toss something together and it gets praise like it's difficult and unique. Kill yourself and you're told it's average and forgettable. Whatever. I don't think "they" can make up their minds, so I figure do what you like - at least you'll be sure someone likes it. No way to predict how "they" will take it, so there's no sense worrying too much about "them". 
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