Paper Moon

Elementary
So this is officially the best version of Sherlock anything that I've ever seen, ever. Not hyberbole. It's that awesome. And that's not just because it has probably the best Watson of all time, either. I love this Sherlock, I love the complex relationship he has with his Watson, I love the mysteries, and I love everything about this show.

Hannibal
Damn, what can I say about this show that hasn't been said already? The casting is fucking amazing, the horror elements are incredibly disturbing and incredibly well-executed, the characters and their interactions are deliciously complex and complicated, and the atmosphere and cinematography oh my god. I don't care how many times I've seen it every episode, that shot of the swiftly-moving grey clouds on top of EVERY BUILDING that the characters ever step foot in never gets old. What I'm actually torn about, however, is whether this show is treating its viewers like they're smart... or like they're really, really stupid. Honestly, I think the answer is that it does both. On the one hand, it's a show that very deliberately broadcasts the fact that it wants its audience to feel like they're smarter than the average television viewer. Between the subtle acting, the dense visual symbolism, the refusal to neatly tie up subplots or character arcs in single episodes and let them simply percolate in the background until they show up again several episodes later, and the constant references to classical music and food porn (admit it, you've Googled some of those episode titles because you didn't know what they were, I know you have), it's a show that's meant to make you think as you watch it, and it's meant to make you feel clever and sophisticated if you really appreciate all of its layers, its nuances, its refusals to conform to the usual storytelling rules of serial television. BUT, on the other hand... It really is a show that you have to turn off part of your brain to enjoy. Half of this show wants you the viewer to know that it thinks you're smart and you should feel smart for watching it, but the other half of the show is also trying desperately not to reveal the fact that it also thinks that you, the viewer, are very stupid. Stupid enough to believe that Hannibal Lecter can teleport himself from Maryland to Minnesota faster than a speeding airplane (HOW????), stupid enough to believe that a teenage girl can sneak out of a mental hospital in Maryland and dig up a body in Minnesota and then be back in said mental hospital in Maryland in one night (again, HOW?????), and just in general stupid enough to believe that Hannibal Lecter can get away with his crimes for so long despite the fact that the show is set in contemporary times and that we constantly see the FBI applying modern forensic science to the murders. There's a LOT of suspension of disbelief required to really enjoy this show. And that's kind of disappointing considering that the show seems so invested in making you feel like you're a clever, smart, sophisticated television viewer when you watch it.

The Wind in the Keyhole
It's been a long, long time since I sat down with a Stephen King novel that was anywhere near as engrossing as this one. I know that Stephen King loves his high fantasy, but so rarely does he actually pull it off as beautifully as he does in this book. Plus there's actually a lot of interesting gender and sexuality things woven into the subplots of both of the meta-stories, and thankfully these themes are approached with a lot more maturity and sophistication than King usually exhibits, even despite the medieval setting. But really this is my favorite thing that King has written in a while just because it's everything that makes the best of King's writing great: great characters, creepy buildups, epic payoffs, and of course, interwoven stories that echo and mirror each other in very, very intriguing ways. I'd easily rank this one up there with Hearts in Atlantis as my favorite of King's novels, with the happy caveat that Keyhole is actually far better in the way that it handles sexism in its setting than Atlantis is.

Ava's Demon
I started reading this because friends were raving about it, and I love it. The artwork is gorgeous, the characters are intriguing, and the setting is pretty interesting so far, even if not terribly coherent. Yes, some of the writing is amateurish and some of the info-dumps are awkward. But I really do feel like the writing is showing signs of improving already. So this one is definitely a series that I'll be keeping up with.

Gunnerkrigg Court
Just to put things in perspective, this is a comic in which a non-sequitor gag about an octopus jumping off a cliff is presented as a visual metaphor for one of the two main characters finally becoming comfortable with embracing her homosexuality, and it's STILL by far and away the best comic that I'm reading right now, hands-down.

Steven Universe
YES YES CARTOON NETWORK THIS IS GREAT MORE OF THIS PLEASE PLEASE PLEAAAAAAAASE

Aku no Hana/The Flowers of Evil
I'm sticking with exactly four shows from the spring anime season: Attack on Titan, Hataraki Maou-sama, Precure, and Aku no Hana. Of the four, Aku no Hana is by far and away the best of the lot, even accounting for the difficulty of comparing apples to oranges. It's not just good. It's fucking great. I already wrote out my opinions about the animation style, the sexual politics, and the overall themes of the show on tumblr and I don't feel like repeating myself here, but I will say that the animation gets more and more gorgeous (and the actual message of the series harder and harder to ignore) with every episode.

Soul Eater
So we are now two chapters from the end and DAMN, this month's chapter is fucking finally doing what a big series-finale climatic battle chapter SHOULD be doing. Main character gets a badass powerup, supporting characters get their chance to shine with individual Crowning Moments of Awesome (even Gopher!!!), there's significantly less dumbass screaming about order and chaos than we've had to suffer through in previous chapters (man Ohkubo you actually used to be interesting in your treatment of those themes what happened?!), and wow some of those panels of Maka building up toward her finishing move are just fucking spectacular. My threshold requirements for What Would Make a Great Soul Eater Finale were basically "Maka should be awesome" and "it shouldn't drag on forever to the point where it gets boring," which are admittedly low expectations given how great Soul Eater was at its peak a few years ago, but hey so far the finale is delivering so I'm happy.

So obviously I'm not going to be recapping these chapters anymore - not for lack of interest, but lack of time, especially now that Attack on Titan has exploded all over the internet and I can barely keep up with that one fandom. I WOULD like to say that I really want to take time to recap the final chapter in August, but to be honest that's not terribly likely to happen considering that August 12th will be right smack in the middle of my last few vacation days of the year and I'm already making plans to spend that week visiting friends out-of-state. Plus I think that maybe like five people have actually been reading my recaps for the past few months, and although I appreciate the support, let's be honest, writing a recap post is a LOT of effort for little reward, and frankly I'm having more fun spending free time that I would previously have devoted to recapping Soul Eater to catching up my summer reading pile and to-watch list. So for those of you who enjoyed the recaps, thanks for sticking with me for all these years, and I'm sorry that I don't have time to see it through to the end!

But by far the most important thing here is that the Soul Eater ending is actually REALLY FUCKING AWESOME so far, so here's hoping for two more months of this level of FUCK YEAH from Ohkubo.

Oh hey look, another Kurogane/Fay cameo. Thank God. Now let's hope this becomes a pattern.

( More drawn-out filler crap. )

Kalinara said:

Okay, is it just me or would a comic starring Johnny Smith, Carrie White, the kid from the Shining, and Drew Barrymore's character from Firestarter as a League of Extraordinary Gentleman by way of X-Men style superteam be awesome?

Yes, that would be awesome. Ridiculously awesome.

And once that idea was planted in my head, naturally, being the Kingphile that I am, my brain took it and ran with it. Not so much a team in the style of the X-Men or the Avengers, mind you, but something more in line with the Exiles. To me, the idea of an Exiles-like superteam makes perfect sense in the King multiverse. After all, that was kind of the point of the Dark Tower books: A small band of unlikely heroes on an epic quest across alternative universes, trying to preserve the balance between worlds and prevent the multiverse from tearing itself apart in a chaotic storm of catastrophic paradoxes. So I can very easily imagine a scenario where The Timebroker The Turtle plucks various King characters out of their own worlds (thereby possibly rescuing them from the horrible fates that King's characters often meet), and conscripts them to join a team of dimension-hopping superheroes, charged with repairing the damage to various realities that the Crimson King and his crew like to inflict.

So if I could make up a superteam like that, who would I put on it?

( My picks. )

Why doesn't she leave?

Scroll down to the comment by bbrugger (the third one). Read it.

This is the reason why I am so, so glad that I officially removed myself from the LD debate circuit before the November/December 2006 topic. I can't imagine how horrible it must have been to judge or participate in those debates, particularly for anyone who (god forbid) had ever actually experienced domestic abuse. Because I can imagine what all the negative cases must have sounded like. Or at least a good chunk of them. (*cough*)

It's also a little bit sad that Stephen King's Rose Madder is still one of the best fictional treatments of a woman leaving an abusive relationship that I've ever read. And I'm saying that it's "sad" not as a slam against King, because he's a fantastic writer, but because I would have expected that by now we'd have more fictional novels able to deal with the subject matter in a realistic fashion. I mean, this isn't exactly an experience alien to a good chunk of humanity. Then why is it still so taboo? (Outside of romance novels, that is, which tend to involve either a time-traveling viking in shining armor who rescues the heroine from her abusive pirate Arabian shiek boyfriend, or will glorify the rape and abuse as sexually liberating.) Anyway, I've read very few books that accurately portray what it's like to leave an abusive relationship - the psychological terror, the practical financial difficulties, the constant threat of retribution - in a realistic fashion. Rose Madder is definitely the most realistic among what I've read. And here I'm using "realistic" to describe a book that involves magical moving paintings and bull-demons and travel across alternate universes. Yeah.

Sorry for the depressing post. I actually have some more fun linkspam backed up in my harddrive. Maybe I can get around to posting that soon.

I have to admit, Virgin Comics has this marketing thing down pretty well. This month, every single title in their line wrapped up a major story arc and "ended" nicely. Next month, every single title in their line will either feature a special stand-alone to draw in new readers, or relaunch a new story arc with much fanfare. That's kind of fun. So here's what I'm looking forward to:

( Rama and Ganesha and Devi, oh my! )

In other news, I'm now three issues into The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger Born, and my head is already spinning. I mean, the thing is partially written by Robin Furth, the awesome lady who wrote the Dark Tower Concordance guidebooks... Which is both good and bad. It's good because she is the ultimate fan, and she knows every little detail of the Stephen King Multiverse so intimately, that it makes the geek-wang of the rest of us mere mortals shrivel in comparison. This is bad because, well, I shouldn't have to be thinking about the inadequacies of my geek-wang while I'm trying to enjoy a rip-roaring adventure starring Roland Deschain. In short: This comic is difficult to follow. It doesn't feel like it was written for people new to the Stephen King Multiverse, or even for casual fans of the Stephen King Multiverse. This comic feels like it was written for hardcore Stephen King fans, and I need both volumes of the Concordance as well as an annotated copy of Wizard and Glass to follow along.

The thing about Stephen King's actual books was that they worked on multiple levels. A reader could enjoy Hearts in Atlantis or "The Little Sisters of Eluria" *without* understanding how those stories fit into the Dark Tower quest. King's books, even the clearly labeled Dark Tower books, stood on their own. Yes, they were a part of something larger, and yes, because of that, they were probably more enjoyable to well-versed Stephen King fans than not. But those books did not, however, actually exclude casual fans from enjoying them.

I'll admit, it's pretty cool seeing John Farson visualized in the comics. But other than that... Meh? This series is leaving me cold. Confused, befuddled, and cold.

morchades is made of awesome because thanks to her I now have a whole bucketload of Virgin Comics shipping to me. (Unfortunately, Virgincomicsstore.com was sold out of Ramayana #2, so I will have to hunt that down somewhere.)

ETA: I finally found Ramayana 3392 #2 at Thecomicguru.co.uk. They had only one copy left in stock. Score!

The other thing that I used my credit card for yesterday... I bought a cheap used Japanese PS2. The white one. Because the Ah! My Goddess game drops today (and my copy should be on my doorstep by tomorrow morning), so yeah. In other gaming news... Remember Fate/Stay Night Realta Nua? Likely the most hyped game in Japan short of anything with the words Final Fantasy in the title? Yeah, it was supposed to have been released on January 31st. And that's after the initial release date (Christmas 2006) was pushed back a month. And here it is, February 22nd, and no copies of the game are anywhere in sight. I logged onto my Amazon.co.jp account to see what was up. Realta Nua is still listed among my "not yet shipped" orders, even though the "estimated delivery date" is still listed as "February 2nd". Sure.

But Virgin Comics are coming to me, and that makes me happy. ( More Virgin Comics blabbing: End of Story, Asura Analouges, and Nicolas Cage. )

And now, ganked from morchades: Below is the ALA's list of most frequently challenged books (1990-2000), with a strike through the ones that I have read.

( Behind the cut. )