(no subject)

[oyceter]

The interests meme:

gakked from Aliera

Pick an interest from my interests page that either 1) you know nothing about but sounds intriguing, or 2) you know something about but can't fathom why yours truly would be interested in it, and request an explanation.

Comments

[penmage.livejournal.com]

hsinchu, irish punk, and expatriates. Clue me in!

[oyceter]

Hsinchu's the city in Taiwan I'm from, lived there for about 8 years or so. It's Taiwan's silicon valley type thing, with lots of tech companies.

Irish punk, hee ^_^. Got interested in that when I heard Flogging Molly at a club in college, and then went on to the Pogues. They have fiddles and it's punk! I like strange music.

Expatriates because I always feel like one -- in Taiwan, I'm too American, in America, I'm too Chinese. Never quite fit ;).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Meiji: you mean the Meiji Period?

Shojo manga: I like it too. What are your favorites, and what got you hooked?

[oyceter]

Very much the Meiji period ^_^. I love the Meiji period -- it's got that whole thing with the changing eras, like turn-of-the-century Europe, and I just love the idea of getting the nation modernized in twenty-five years.

I wrote my thesis on shojo manga! My favorite author by far is Yazawa Ai, and my favorite of hers right now is Nana, although I also really like Tenshi Nanka Ja Nai. I was also really into Mars a while back, but thinking back, I think it's a bit overdramatic. I got a friend of mine hooked on Gundam Wing back in high school, and she started reading them when I got into college and hooked me. I think the first one I ever read was Good Morning Call. What are your favs?

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I only recently got into manga (after I'd been watching anime for a while) so I haven't read any of your favorites. In fact Mars and Gundam Wing (is that shojo?!) are the only ones I've even heard of. But now I'm going to look for them. I confess, I _like_ the overdramatic quality of some manga, so that shouldn't bother me.

My favorites so far are Fushigi Yugi and Revolutionary Girl Utena, though I've been enjoying some shonen ai lately. Like I said, I'm a beginner. And I can only read them in English-- I can read hiragana but I don't really speak Japanese, so an entire manga would be beyond my capability.

What was the thesis of your thesis?

It's great to discover a whole new genre. I can't just trip over undiscovered wonderful authors in American fantasy any more, but only wait for my favorites to write something new or a new writer to appear on the scene. I know that scene too well.

[oyceter]

Yeah, I'm not sure if Yazawa Ai's been translated here either =(. I know her Paradise Kiss has, so that should be available, but I've only read book one of that and didn't like it quite as much as her others. But it's worth picking up if you like her drawing style, which is very atypical of shojo and very fun. Mars is translated here too I think. GWing isn't so much shojo ;). It's more that shonen mecha type anime, except it has so many bishonen that it's sort of been hijacked.

I haven't read Fushigi Yuugi! I keep hearing about it but it's so loooong ;).

I actually wrote my thesis on Utena! I started out freshman year thinking it was going to be on shonen ai in shojo (you know, the typical slash question, blah blah), only to find out after a little research that everyone and their mother in that field wrote about that. Plus, after four years of reading things on it, I got a bit tired of their explanations. So what I ended up doing was a critique of the existing scholarship on anime and manga (too little on manga alone), which lead to the realization that much of it was based on anime/manga as a sort of national literature.

I took exception to that -- a lot of the explanations of shonen ai particularly fell in that vein. Ex. there is something wrong or special about Japanese girls that make them like this stuff. So I got to throw in some fandom stuff too ^_^. And in general, people were looking at manga and anime as some sort of foreign thing, and I thought (as a reader and viewer) that that was kind of exclusionary and essentialist to boot. So I had that, and then I went on to do a reading on Utena with a non-national or gendered slant just to show it really wasn't that hard and could be done.

Hee, I can blab on and on about my thesis.

I love finding new genres ^_^. I'm kind of in that stage now with romance, despite having read it forever. The sci-fi/fantasy reading has slacked off quite a bit right now because I feel like I've read so much there already (even though I haven't).

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

frogs?

[oyceter]

Er. Not an interest so much as a fascination with them. For some really weird reason I think they're extremely cute and have started sort of collecting stuffed frogs and stickers and etc.

[ebonbird.livejournal.com]

endicott studio?

I know nothing about it. What is it, and how does it hold your interest?

[oyceter]

Endicott Studio

It's a group of writers/artists/essayists/art-type people who are interested in fairy tales and mythology, I think brought together by Terri Windling. She was an editor at Tor (I think) for a while and shaped them and edited the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror anthologies with Ellen Datlow, along with a six-book series of fairy tale for adults books. Some frequent contributors are Charles De Lint, Emma Bull, Jane Yolen, Midori Snyder, the Frouds, etc.

I think I found it sometime in high school just digging around fairy tale sites, because I've loved fairy tales and myths since I can remember. And I picked up one of the fairy tale anthologies sometime, started glomming the recs listed there (what I could find, given being in Taiwan). I love it because it's got the mythic structures and archetypes that I love, and it's a welcome relief from the often glutted epic fantasy market.

Plus, I've found tons of great fantasy books through them and essays and art.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

Augh, Endicott. I love them so much. My "if I had three wishes" dream is to be part of Endicott. Terri Windling is totally one part of the three women I want to be combined.

[oyceter]

I adore Endicott. Endicott's what got me started into the entire sort of fairy tale based fantasy thing.

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Ooh, must check that out. Not that i'm obsessively interested in fairy tales or anything :)

[oyceter]

Oo you have to get over there then! ^_^

They have some great stuff.

[anodyna.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued by the mysterious "utena." It sounds pretty, or possibly dangerous. Maybe both?

[oyceter]

It's actually Shojo Kakumei Utena (Revolutionary Girl Utena) -- it's in manga and anime form.

The manga and anime are pretty different -- but in general, they're both about a girl named Utena who has longed to be a prince her entire life. She ends up in a very messed up school where she has to duel with the people in the student council to win the Rose Bride. It sounds absolutely silly (and complicated).

The anime is very surreal and gets very, very weird, while the manga is a much more traditional shojo manga (though still on the weird side). I wrote my thesis on it, so it was in my head for a pretty long time.

Doh. And the site I used to rely on is down now, so I don't even have a good link.

[mamculuna.livejournal.com]

Honey. I know it's that sweet stuff in combs that bees make--but exactly what's your concern with it? Or is it a person, or something else?

[oyceter]

Hee! I'd completely forgotten I stuck that in there!

No real concern or anything... I just love it. I used to eat it by the spoonful when I was sick because my roommate said it was soothing to the throat.