fannishness in aggregate
Thoughts on rewatching Death Note:
1. I think the reason why L as a character works so well for me is the opacity of him. It's incredibly hard to write a genius character, especially one who's supposed to be pretty much the most prodigiously intelligent young man in the world; if you're going to write a character more intelligent than you are, you have to rely on cheats and tricks and cues. Far more often than not, though, this just ends up ringing hollow and unsatisfying for me; 9 characters out of 10, I just don't believe they're as clever as I'm being told they are. I like Death Note's approach very much, however. Trying to script L's supposedly formidable intelligence would have been pretty much doomed to failure; instead, the show gives him those huge, flat, ineloquent eyes, and that even, oddly inflected voice, and makes his thinking inaccessible behind them - but even more than that, it introduces him with an action that is neat, unexpected, intelligent, cool, and most importantly, comprehensively outsmarts and outmanoeuvres his rival, so you're willing to fill in his silences and interpret his stares with the most impressive thinking you can conceive of.
2. For a show that's so often so histrionic and wtf-inducing, the visual rhetoric of it can have quite a light touch; it certainly makes stillness and lingering do a surprising amount of (very effective) character work. I also love the weirdly fetishistic nature of its "camera", its fixations with L's feet and mouth, with Light's neck and collarbones - partly because it's an unusual gaze that makes an appealing change, and partly because the physicality of it makes such an interesting counterpoint to a plot, and characters, that are so very detached from the bodily.
Thoughts on watching Last Exile, @ about halfway through:
1. It is the most videogame-y thing I have ever seen that isn't actually a videogame. Fortunately, were it a videogame I would very much want to play it, so I'm enjoying it a lot (also, yay intermedial cross-pollination; you make me and my thesis happy).
2. It's really exposing for me the degree of genre competence you acquire by growing up exposed to and immersed in a culture's general rhetoric of fiction, and how much fiction relies on that - because I don't have anywhere close to that level of genre competence when it comes to anime, and as a result there are bits of Last Exile where I feel like I'm missing basic tools of reading. Dio as a character, for example, is completely opaque to me; I can't orient myself with respect to his representation at all.
3. Does fandom love Alex as much as I do?
Thoughts on playing Opoona, @ about 4 hours in:
1. OMG SO CUTE. SO UNBEARABLY CUTE. I COULD LOOK AT OPOONA'S LITTLE DETERMINED RUNNING FACE ALL DAY.
2. The gameworld is one of the creepiest fictional worlds I have ever inhabited (why can't I see my sister? where are my parents? why is it that every time you tell me I have to fulfil my obligations as a good citizen I feel like I will be Erased if I don't?), and I have no idea if that's intentional or not. To me, it feels like one of those creepo "utopias" where Everything is Fine As Long As You Comply.
3. I fucking love the controls and the combat. There is something immensely satisfying about releasing charged attacks (pull analogue stick back, hold, let fly!) - which is making me think about the current gen move towards motion controls and other forms of supposedly immersive, intuitive control; that's not necessarily what I want when I'm gaming - I like interfaces; I like having my interactions with a gameworld mediated by a controller. No idea why, but I do.
Yesterday's cooking win:
Cashew-cardamom cupcakes, with orange-cardamom-chocolate ganache, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is pretty much single-handedly revising my deeply-held scepticism about vegan baking. Nom.
1. I think the reason why L as a character works so well for me is the opacity of him. It's incredibly hard to write a genius character, especially one who's supposed to be pretty much the most prodigiously intelligent young man in the world; if you're going to write a character more intelligent than you are, you have to rely on cheats and tricks and cues. Far more often than not, though, this just ends up ringing hollow and unsatisfying for me; 9 characters out of 10, I just don't believe they're as clever as I'm being told they are. I like Death Note's approach very much, however. Trying to script L's supposedly formidable intelligence would have been pretty much doomed to failure; instead, the show gives him those huge, flat, ineloquent eyes, and that even, oddly inflected voice, and makes his thinking inaccessible behind them - but even more than that, it introduces him with an action that is neat, unexpected, intelligent, cool, and most importantly, comprehensively outsmarts and outmanoeuvres his rival, so you're willing to fill in his silences and interpret his stares with the most impressive thinking you can conceive of.
2. For a show that's so often so histrionic and wtf-inducing, the visual rhetoric of it can have quite a light touch; it certainly makes stillness and lingering do a surprising amount of (very effective) character work. I also love the weirdly fetishistic nature of its "camera", its fixations with L's feet and mouth, with Light's neck and collarbones - partly because it's an unusual gaze that makes an appealing change, and partly because the physicality of it makes such an interesting counterpoint to a plot, and characters, that are so very detached from the bodily.
Thoughts on watching Last Exile, @ about halfway through:
1. It is the most videogame-y thing I have ever seen that isn't actually a videogame. Fortunately, were it a videogame I would very much want to play it, so I'm enjoying it a lot (also, yay intermedial cross-pollination; you make me and my thesis happy).
2. It's really exposing for me the degree of genre competence you acquire by growing up exposed to and immersed in a culture's general rhetoric of fiction, and how much fiction relies on that - because I don't have anywhere close to that level of genre competence when it comes to anime, and as a result there are bits of Last Exile where I feel like I'm missing basic tools of reading. Dio as a character, for example, is completely opaque to me; I can't orient myself with respect to his representation at all.
3. Does fandom love Alex as much as I do?
Thoughts on playing Opoona, @ about 4 hours in:
1. OMG SO CUTE. SO UNBEARABLY CUTE. I COULD LOOK AT OPOONA'S LITTLE DETERMINED RUNNING FACE ALL DAY.
2. The gameworld is one of the creepiest fictional worlds I have ever inhabited (why can't I see my sister? where are my parents? why is it that every time you tell me I have to fulfil my obligations as a good citizen I feel like I will be Erased if I don't?), and I have no idea if that's intentional or not. To me, it feels like one of those creepo "utopias" where Everything is Fine As Long As You Comply.
3. I fucking love the controls and the combat. There is something immensely satisfying about releasing charged attacks (pull analogue stick back, hold, let fly!) - which is making me think about the current gen move towards motion controls and other forms of supposedly immersive, intuitive control; that's not necessarily what I want when I'm gaming - I like interfaces; I like having my interactions with a gameworld mediated by a controller. No idea why, but I do.
Yesterday's cooking win:
Cashew-cardamom cupcakes, with orange-cardamom-chocolate ganache, from Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, which is pretty much single-handedly revising my deeply-held scepticism about vegan baking. Nom.