laceblade

Nightschool, vol. 1 and 2 by Svetlana Chmavoka
Volume 1 was a reread for me. It held up well, and I look forward to reading more of this series.

Her Majesty's Dog, vol. 2 and 3 by Mick Takeuchi
Not as good as volume 1, but still good.

20th Century Boys, vol. 3 and 4 by Naoki Urasawa
I continue to have so much love for this series.

Greenwitch by Susan Cooper (3 of 5 in The Dark is Rising)
I like this book the least out of the three I've read so far, but I'm still looking forward to reading the rest of it.

Why Buffy Matters by Rhonda Wilcox
Great academic analysis of Buffy, I ate this up. I didn't care for the introduction much, but I'm glad I kept reading.
Massive spoilers through the end of the series, so I would not read this book unless you've seen it all, or don't care about spoilers.

Critiques: For a book that had the goal of explaining why Buffy as a whole is important to society, the author focused mainly on analyzing it in order to prove that the show is "art." A lot of the things she chose to focus on were references in events to episodes that are repeated throughout different essays, to the point that the repetition became annoying.
Also, the author focused on the most artistic episodes in the entire series, aside from "Surprise"/"Innocence" (which are good episodes, but not stylistically different from the rest of the series), she wrote about "The Zeppo," "Restless," "The Body," and "Once More, With Feeling." I guess if my goal was to argue that an entire TV show is artistic (and I'm not sure why the argument needs to be made in the first place), I would use "mundane" episodes to prove my point.

Despite my critiques, I liked the things that Wilcox analyzed and expanded on. Visual cues/framing devices have to be extremely blatant for me to pick up on them (ie, Revolutionary Girl Utena), so now there will be things for me to look for. I am really eager to continue my re-watch of Buffy (I left off after finishing Season 3 a couple of months ago).

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Baccano! ep. 1-3 (of 16)
This is a re-watch for me, first-time viewing for the Boyfriend. Boyfriend finds the show a little pretentious [We're telling the plot in a non-linear fashion, Audience! We're so clever!], and I'd say I'm inclined to agree with him. It's a fun show, and I still love Isaac/Miria, but I think I've decided it's one that I don't want to own.

CLAMP School Detectives, ep. 1-5 (of 26)
A ridiculous opening sequence! CLAMP School Detectives is like Burn Notice, except that instead of an ex-spy, they're three fourth graders who try to help women in trouble. I don't think I'll finish this show, as there's not a lot of emotional growth/etc. Still, I liked the manga (my write-up is here), and it was nice to see the anime version.

Burn Notice, 3.1-3.2
It seems like these seasons start out a little slow for me? I like this season's antagonist more than I liked season two's, I think.

Robotech, ep. 1-4
I'm not really sure how to describe this show. It's so cheesy, and I hate all of the characters thus far. BUT post-apocalyptic futures IN SPACE will carry me far. I'm in it for the long haul, as the DVDs I have are from the middle part of the series. As I said, I dislike all of the characters for far, but the one I dislike the most is Minmei.

"High Society"
Didn't like this movie much, aside from Louis Armstrong. Lots of awful dialogue, especially the misogyny of Grace Kelly's love interests.

"The Girl Who Leapt Through Time"
The subtitles didn't work on the DVD we rented from the library, so thank God this movie had a good English dub. I kind of loved this movie, aside from a couple of needlessly long crying / running/panting scenes. It's about what a high school girl would do if she had the ability to leap through time. I thought that the protagonist was maturing emotionally, but that turned out to not be the case.
I was kind of hoping for a Donnie Darko ending, but I loved this anyway.

"Freedom Writers"
My mom wanted me to watch this movie. I know that it's all "nice white lady blows the minds of kids of color with uplifting and simple phrases," but I did like the fact that the kids told their stories in their own voices throughout the movie, and that it showed the outright racism of teachers/administrators in schools. Better than I expected, but not great.

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Google Wave
I unexpectedly received an invite from my friend nylorac15. I'm a little wary about Google Wave - I think that for simple chatting, I'd much prefer Google Chat. I don't want people to watch me type as a type! In most cases, that would be very bad. I self-censor, but I need a little bit of time before I hit "Enter." Wave seems to remove this safety net.

What kinds of things might Google Wave be used for? I can only think of fannish-related activities: epic writing of fanfic between multiple parties, collaborative real-time WisCon panel write-ups, etc. Outside of fandom, I really can't come up with any uses for the technology. Let me know, Internet. Wikipedia is vague, and I'm not watching Google's hour-long video. I've got shit to do.

I need to figure out a way to have the contacts list not contain everyone I've ever Gmailed in my entire life. :[ It seems like the only way to delete people from the list is to delete them from my Gmail contacts list FOREVER, and that sucks. How come there isn't more control, as there is with Google Chat?

wisteria_ with a picspam titled Kara Thrace, in adjectives.

Via coffeeandink, Joss Whedon's original Dollhouse pilot script! I haven't had time to read it yet, but word on the Internet is that it's a lot better (SURPRISE!).

meganbmoore on Dollhouse, 1.2, and entil2001 on the same.

ladyjax "PSA: Images of Blackness".

This is for all my peeps who need a little ammunition when confronted by anyone who thinks that watermelons and Black folks go together like, I don't know - rice and butter or who immediately tries to roll with, "But it was just a joke? Don't you have a sense of humor?"

smuu on Naoki Urasawa's Pluto and 20th Century Boys. I loved Monster! I'm afraid to start reading this other stuff and having to wait so long between new volumes!

I'm keeping my eye on reread_no_jutsu because it's been a while since I read what I read of the Naruto manga. meganbmoore has already voiced most of how I feel about the series in this post, here. IT IS SO GOOD THAT I AM REPOSTING MOST OF IT HERE!

All shounen has some serious problems going on regarding gender. Even Claymore and Fullmetal Alchemist, the two series that seem to have largely ruined me for any shounen that I wasn't already attached to, have problems. But I am, in general, more lenient with shounen than I am shoujo. The target audience for most shounen is 13-15 year old boys. Their main interest in plopping down their allowance every week for Shounen Jump is reading about a couple guys going "And now...I will show you my TRUE power/SECRET move/etc!!" "Writing for the target audience" doesn't absolve a series of any problems it has, but it is an important consideration, and it's why I can get past things that would normally (and sometimes still do) irritate me in Samurai Deeper Kyo, Kekkaishi, Black Cat, Bleach (sometimes) and various other shounen I read/have read but aren't jumping to the front of my head at the moment. And though the line between them can be difficult to see, there is a difference between focusing on your main character and sidelining a character, and when you pick up a shounen action series, you're most likely getting a series where most of the attention will be on variations of certain, primarily male, character sets. It's pretty much an inherent part of the genre, and one that, if it doesn't work for you, largely guarantees that the series will just irritate you.

Naruto, though, always bugged me more than other series when it came to female characters, and I think it's because of this: Is there something in the DNA of every ninja tribe in that world that results EXACTLY one girl for every two boys born every year, stretching back at least 50-60 years? Is there some sort of law in every tribe that says each and every team (though there might have been teams introduced later, or that weren't around long enough for me to remember them that upset the formula) must have exactly 2 boys and 1 girl? Why are there no teams with 2 girls and 1 boy? All boy teams? All girl teams?

In theory, the numbers themselves should put Naruto a step ahead of other shounen simply because having 1/3 of your cast be female in the typical "cast of thousands" makes you female character outnumber those in other series about 5:1, proportionately. And yet, it's so exact, so deliberate, that "one girl for every two boys" can't be anything but a conscious decision. And when it's so conscious, it makes the treatment of gender stand out all the more. And then there's the fact that, in this world, almost every character the same age has near identical levels of training and experience. There's no variety. In personality and individual specialty, yes. But as presented, every character of the same age (with the exception of characters like Sasuke and Gaara) should be on equal footing, with some allowances made for personal strengths and weaknesses. In another shounen, you'll have a character with little or no training or powers, one who is new but who has enormous training, and two who are experienced fighters. That the only girl of the four is the one with no powers or training is a problem, and not one that should be dismissed, but it is a textual reason for the girl to not be in the middle of the fight with that arc Big Boss. With Naruto, however, that isn't there. The girl in question has as much training and experience as the three boys. Yet she's still the one sitting it out or fighting a lesser opponent while the boys are fighting the arc's Big Boss. So while I get grumpy that Yuya/Okuni/Mahiro/Orihime/Tatsuki/Tokine/etc. isn't on a par with the boys in terms of getting to fight and win fights, and can at least follow along with the why of it as presented by the manga. But with Sakura/Hinata/Ino/etc., I'm left with the feeling that Kishimoto is standing there going "look, I gave you exactly one girl for every two boys...do you really expect me to actually give them something to do in addition to existing?" (Plus, other shounen tends to at least let them have goals and motivations and backgrounds and lives separate from the guys, and the only female character I can think of in Naruto that that applies to is Tsunade.)

An example post....Introducing Team 7!