arbitrary_greay

Not a web this time, it's actually pretty linear!

This post --> this post --> "Bills Bills Bills" (original) --> "Bills Bills Bills" (Glee) --> "When I Get You Alone" (Glee) --> "When I Get You Alone" (original) --> "A Fifth Of Beethoven" --> "Sixth Sense" --> Pondering the difference in effect of adding disco strings on top of Beethoven vs. (apparently) Shostakovich-influence --> "Huh, I wonder why I don't mind the reappropriation of Beethoven here?"

(And a somewhat worrying part of the answer I currently have is that I prefer disco to the faux-hip-hop 90s boyband-chic thing Shinhwa had going on in "TOP" AAAHHH KILL IT WITH FIRE)

Fuck, I'm wiki walking through Tokyo Idol Festival videos...and I like the majority of the song clips I'm hearing. MY MUSIC TASTE IS DEGENERATING RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME.

D: D: D: D: |: :\ :D 8D <(^_^)> <(^_^<) --(^_^\) \(^_^)\ |(^_^)| /(^_^)/ (/^_^)-- (>^_^)> (/^_^)-- /(^_^)/ |(^_^)| \(^_^)\ --(^_^\) <(^_^<) (>^_^<) <(^_^)> (>^_^<) <(^_^)> (>^_^)/ (>^_^)\ \(^_^<) /(^_^<) \(^_^)/ /(-_-)\ <(^_^)>

(And you thought Korea was saturated with idol groups...They have nothing on the J-girlgroup indie scene. Fucking Japan has a fucking indie scene for fucking girlgroups! *goes back to kirby dancing*)

So the 48 franchise election is coming up. (June 6) I thought that in honor of/in preparation for the event, I'd properly give a profile of my thoughts on the girls and which ones I like, as requested by starstreakedd a while ago.
This will be more in depth than my similar post a year ago, which was very much more limited and wasn't attempting to be comprehensive in why I like certain members. This one will be.

To start with, however, I am making a list of how I currently like/am familiar with each member. It'll be a good indication of which girls I'll be writing buckets about and which will be getting cursory lines.

Key
* = I recognize the name
** = I'm sure that I can recognize them by face
*** = I have a good feel for their personality
! = I have some measure of bias for them
!! = I pay attention to them in a group
!!! = homg I love them

( AKB )

( SKE )

( SDN )

( NMB and HKT )

Soooooooo....Legend of the Seeker Season 2.

Good lord, is it so much how to do a show RIGHT, especially a medieval fantasy one.

There's something to be said for having main characters in media be likeable and admirable most of the time. It's one of the reasons I tend towards DC more than Marvel. The big climactic team-up fights especially tend to be huge idealism-fests and nostalgia trips that give me all sorts of warm fuzzies. (They raise their heroes up as opposed to tear them down as Marvel's retcons prefer, crowning moments of awesome to nightmare fuel moments) I LOVE watching ensemble casts congeal into surrogate family, watching distinct personalities bounce off of each other. Legend of the Seeker takes this concept one step further, with relationship dynamics being reflected during fights in fighting styles and choreography.

Even better, the writers are so enamoured of exploring various character dynamics, that often they'll write episodes that come off like well-written crackfic premises, enabling us to see canon instances of "what if ___ and ___ were forced to work together?" Pretty much every lulzy combination under the sun gets an episode.

But as Glee shows, cracktastic writing, a surrogate family premise, and even stellar acting aren't enough. The writing itself has to be good material, and this is what sets Legend of the Seeker apart from the pack. Usually, even with shows I like I have my pet peeves and can make a cynical commentary pointing out things that are wrong with the writing. Seeker's writing is tight, logical, entertaining, and is as perfect as I think I'll ever witness. The writers clearly personally loved the characters, carefully crafting character arcs that were intertwined with the plot arcs, never ignoring previous character developments, and utilizing the actors' full range, but not at the expense of what was believable for the characters. Even through the arcs, they preserved what we love about the characters, and made sure everything was consistent.

The acting, in turn, was also high quality, often conveying subtleties that the plot didn't necessarily call for, elevating the show to greater heights. Also, gotta love all of the Australians and New Zealanders trying to speak an American accent, resulting in a slightly foreign flavor of speech to fit the medieval fantasy setting without resorting to an outright butchering of the British accent, as most historical pieces do.

This is further bolstered by beautiful production that eventually landed the show in the "money troubles" zone that got it cancelled. I weep. Seriously, though, the locations were beautiful, the cinematography was big-screen epic cinematic, and the outfits were often hand-crafted. Fight choreography at first was a little off-putting with the excess of slo-mo, but I quick came to like it, as it's much more preferable to shaky handcam. I can see everything going on during the fights, and the slo-mo often highlighted the most badass or intricate sequences, that on multiple viewings became more and more impressive.

I, of course, specifically mentioned Season 2. Any Seeker fans will know what that means: Cara! No good character dynamics-based action/adventure piece is ever complete without a good Lancer personality, and Cara was that missing piece for Seeker. Even the cast members themselves acknowledged that Cara made everything more interesting, even the other characters, as the way they could bounce off of each other when Cara was involved was so much more exciting. Season 1 had little in the way of real character evolution, being more of a "good and pure people get together to fight evil, OTP gets together." And I'm sorry, but BuffyxAngel is kind of boring. Cara not only had the most dramatic character arc in season 2, but she also forced the other characters to actually have character arcs and confront situations differently than they would have in Season 1.

Yes, I like Cara/Kahlan. XD But it's so good! And might as well be canon!
(Tangent: LOL at how much femmeslash people are reading into ABC's "Once Upon A Time" in the Emma-Regina dynamic. Awesome, and so many levels of crack I don't even.)
And the best part of Cara/Kahlan is that the rest of the characters are so well written, with no main/recurring character being annoying, (even Darken and Nicci) and the writers never do any love triangle tropes, (except for humorous purposes in one super-crack-y episode where the OOC was magic induced, ROFL) that actually, I prefer Richard/Kahlan/Cara OT3 even more. XDD Yeah, I always do wince at the moments in Cara/Kahlan fics when they have to break it to Richard, because Kahlan/Richard was written so well in canon and comes off not so easily brushed off to me. The fics that character-assasinate Richard and make him a bad guy to Cara/Kahlan are out right ruined for me. (Thank goodness that's only happened in one fic so far.)

Oh, and daaaaayummmmm Dahlia was pretty. Like, Taeyeon levels of ethereal pale skin pretty.(She came off pretty-doll-like when put in contrast to Cara, which I think was the point) And I really liked her voice, too.

And one last thing: WHAT THE FUCK "KAHLAN" IS THE WORST SPELLING EVER WHO THE FUCK PRONOUNCES "AH" AS A LONG "AE" SOUND TERRY GOODKIND YOU ASSHOLE.

Title: Truth in Television (1/1)
Fandom: SKE48
Characters: Furukawa Airi, Yuasa Hiroshi(SKE48's manager) Mention of Churi
Rating: G
Summary: Airi would never tell anyone, especially not Akane, but management had called her into the office a couple of days before KII's debut.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, nothing is real, this is not for profit.
Series index in Links sidebar.

( Read more... )

Some high school/middle school group was on campus today, and perhaps I'm contributing to the problem by being aware of it, but some observations on their sitting/standing clusters during lunch:

1. Girls segregated by race/culture. The Asians were grouped, the black girls were grouped, and the one white girl hung out with the group of black girls with the white teacher.
2. Boys seemed to segregate by geek/jock divisions of personality, with a mix of races in both groups, but in general the boys were less clustered than the girls, and the group divisions seemed pretty casual.
3. The kid with earbuds in was in his own little world.

The brilliance of J-variety

Tabloids exist because of our thirst to learn about celebrity lives, to learn how a celebrity is different or the same as the rest of us, unconsciously looking for what sets celebrities apart. We hope to discover some inherent quality of stardom, in order to check if we possess that quality. Or if a celebrity's life is a mess, we derive self-satisfaction in knowing how we would react better in that situation. Ultimately, though, it's all about being entertained by the celebrity, albeit being entertained by who the celebrity is, rather than what the celebrity does for their job.

However, the US also holds a a strong perception that there exists a gap between the work and private persona, and that only the latter contains who the celebrity is. Therefore, US tabloid culture necessarily depends on celebrities' private lives rather than their work products. As that perception became stronger, variety shows died and reality shows took their place, with the audience not trusting variety appearances to show us "real" personalities of celebrities, and instead going to reality shows with non-celebrity contestants who would lack the polish to build convincing false personas.

( Read more... )

See it here!

Parody of Showtime TV show "The Tudors," ft. Mariko, Mayu, Churi, and Airi.

There's actually quite a bit of symbolism in the poses for each girl reflecting their personalities and dynamics with each other. Mayu's headdress is from one of her Synchro Tokimeki outfits, and Rena's outfit is combination of her Ame No Pianist dress, the dress from the cover of her photobook Kingyo, and Tudor period dresses. Rena's hairpiece is from the gold 1, 2, 3, 4 Yoroshiku! outfit. Everything else is based off of Tudor period clothing.

Words cannot describe how much of a pain doing all of the clothing folds, wrinkles, and shading was. Blegh.

Wow. Just....wow. These past few days have been an absolute roller coaster, fandom-wise.