It’s not revolutionary to point out that Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 is about what really matters in life, as compared with what we take too seriously, but I thought I might spend a few moments doing so anyway (i.e. I finally got around to the first episode, which I’ve had since it dropped).
Or Exploding Canons
If you don’t get the pun, really, there’s not a lot of hope for you.
At any rate, I’ve been considering the question of canons. Of course I have, I’m a member of a literary group considered to be “fringe” according to the establishment (or possibly, the Establishment, i.e. The Man). What else would I be doing with my time?
No. Really, I’m just closing the poll from a few days ago. If you’d been putting off voting, it’s too late now. You can see the results under the cut.
I thought I’d run this by you, as I am incapable of living my life without public approval. I am a day or two away from finishing Banner of the Stars II, my latest anime viewing “project.” I thought I should check out what everyone thought my next such project should be.
Once I catch up with all the other stuff I need to do, I wanna start some classic SF stuff. Catch up on what I’ve missed. Thus, I have a poll for you. Answer it. Answer it good.
You may find the poll here. I make no guarantee of blitzing through anything. If you suggest, say, Turn-A Gundam, I may finish that and then move on to LoGH, or K-On, for all I know. But there you go. I’m fickle. I will do whatever tops this chart, though. I’ll close polling and publish results, uh… sometime. Probably when I catch up with all my other shit to do.
If I do this every time I see something outstanding in a book, I might be writing “addendums” forever, but I thought those of you who appreciated the original post, on the reasonings behind privileging certain forms of fiction, might like this, from Brian W. Aldiss’s Billion-Year Spree:
[H. G. Wells] speaks of ‘the supreme importance of individualities, in other words of ‘character’ in the fiction of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Throughout that pierod character-interest did its best to take the place of adustment-interest in fiction . . . It was a consequence of the prevalent sense of social stability . . . Throughout the broad smooth flow of Nineteenth-century life in Great Britain, the art of fiction floated on this same assumption of social fixity. The Novel in English was produced in an atmosphere of security for the entertainment of secure people who liked to feel established and safe for good. Its standards were established within that apparently permanent frame and the criticism of it began to be irritated and perplexed when, through a new instability, the splintering fram began to get in the picture.” (127-8)
The general rule of thumb is that the “reader” of a mystery should be able to figure out the culprit before it is revealed. Mysteries are considered puzzles for the reader as well as the characters.
This actually puts them at odds with detective fiction, where the point is to watch a genius of some sort figure out things we couldn’t possibly. Think Sherlock Holmes, or his illustrious antecedent, Auguste Dupin. There are all sorts of examples, but the most profuse is the mystery. Agatha Christie, Dorothy Sayers, so on. The television mystery/detective drama adds a wrinkle, as it’s impossible to give the reader the clues without making it obvious. Thus the police procedural, such as Dragnet, CSI, Law & Order, even, to some extent, Bones (which I love, by the way). It’s a mix of the mystery and the detective, emphasizing the procedure rather than the intuitive leap.
These can get tiring, at least for me. However, there is a delight that is almost unfaltering for watching the genius at work. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read every single Sherlock Holmes story (though I usually skip the middle section of A Study in Scarlet — I pointedly re-read the entire novel last year in Leslie Klinger’s delicious annotated edition). Thus comes our Monk and our Psych.
This is all due to a late-night episode of The Mentalist, which, when it is on-stride, is excellent, but can fall flat sometimes. Eventually these people would accept that Jane (the main character) can, indeed, do what he does.
I only know of two Japanese forms of all this: Detective Conan and Daughter of Twenty Faces (which, of course, calls to mind the writings of Edogawa Ranpo). Does more than this make it to Japanese television? The mystery, in all its guises, is and almost always has been a mainstay on American TV. Any other anime examples I should know about?
My mom’s watching what looks to be a terrible horror movie, and it got me thinking about genres — it doesn’t take much, as you’re probably already aware. While usually I don’t formally deal with the glass ceiling in the writing world, trying to keep “genre” fiction out of the highest echelons of literary acclaim, that’s basically what this post is about. Hrm.
The emotional story of these two episodes, featuring Huang and his past, are epic and high quality; and, predictably, not what I’m inspired to talk about.
The leader of the crazy Gate church claims Contractors have evolved to get away from the human paradigm of power. The idea of a strange and new evolutionary step for humans is an old and tasty SF trope. 2001: A Space Odyssey and X-Men are just two examples of the trope. Darker Than Black is a great place for the idea to show up. The way in which Contractors are initiated into society — that is, through the heavy exploitation of their powers by others without — highlights a possible alteration in social evolution. Theoretically, as Magneto would claim, the Contractors are “higher” than humans. But our modern social constructs maintain that even better people are equal people. Then, of course, in traditional fashion, they drop down even lower, in a hegemonical attempt to restrain their powers. Society, interested in maintaining the status quo, lowers the status of the Contractor. It’s not even, necessarily, a conspiracy, it’s just the typical mechanics of the social world.
In fact, one of the few real differences in humans and Contractors — assuming as good, for a moment, the crazy magic Gate-Pope’s argument of a Contractor’s power as being analogous to human weaponry — is the price each has to pay for using their particular skills. Humans have to frontload their “obeisance,” learning how to fire a gun, or handle a sword properly. Afterwards no effort is required. Contractors make no effort to learn their skills — they were “gifts” from the alteration of the world. But they must make obeisance afterwards, compulsively doing something, often, but not always, unpleasant. However, no matter how much what’s-her-name likes chugging a beer, the fact remains that she has to do it. A guy could go up in a plane and seed the clouds for rain and do whatever the hell he wants afterwards. But he would have had to learn how to fly a plane and seed the crystals properly.
Could part of the revulsion of society to the Contractor be the public admission the Contractor must make of the cost of his or her power? We train and learn and study and practice, but with few exceptions that’s not shown off or discussed as part of the mature process. Like sex, we assume it happened before the thing we’re concerned with (firing the gun, having the baby).
I suppose it’s time to enter into the lists concerning the new episode of Haruhi. I just watched the Tanabata episode over lunch. Yeah, I’m behind, but one thing and another have kept me from watching anime these two weeks gone, so I’m catching up as best I can.
Really it was just the good bit, but I did indeed just re-watch the climactic scenes of Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann 11 a few minutes ago. I’ve covered my history with the show as a pep-up pill before, and with a growing earache and the glumness with comes with thekittymeister being gone after staying over a week, I needed the shot of awesome. It’s appropriate, as Pontifus is studying the show right now: here and here. He’s becoming the source (at least, in tandem with otouto-kun) for sibling themes in the show. Predictably, my interest lies elsewhere. I’ve tackled the myth-elements of TTGL before, but this time I was thinking about the show as SF.
