Wake the Sun

I watched episodes 1 and 2 of Gintama at some point in my Mouretsu Pirates marathon. It was funny and I liked the characters and holy shit, was this scifi? How had I missed this was scifi? I made a note to watch more.

Then pseudo_tsuga linked me to a primer and an episode guide, because she knows an easy mark when she sees one. The primer says the first two episodes suck in comparison to the rest of the series, which I thought was strange - they were pretty good for a shonen show. So I watched another episode. And another, and - look, CrunchyRoll automatically loads the next episode, okay? If you're watching from the couch you have to get up to it stop and why do that when you could watch more Gintama instead?

Turns out the first two episodes do suck in comparison.



Gintama is magical. It's stupid and funny and gross and heartwarming and clever and meta and I love it to pieces. It's shot up as one of my favorite things and there are 200 more episodes to go (and counting!), can we maintain this kind of momentum?

( There is no answer, only picspam. OR Why you should watch this show! )

Gintama's not perfect - there are lots of ladies, but it doesn't pass the Bechdel test very often (though it's been getting better!). There's stalking played as a running gag. There's a kinky character that's played for laughs. There's an episode about trans* and genderqueer people that aims for a positive portrayal and gets about 80% there (trans*/genderqueer people are strong and to be respected, but they can't be attractive). There are no PoC who aren't Japanese (yet. I've seen screencaps with black characters from later episodes, so I'll report back). And in practical terms, you'll miss a lot if you're not familiar with Japanese history and pop-culture.

But on the whole, it's an excellent show. All of the characters are fantastic, the women get to be cool/gross/violent as often as the men, everyone gets character development. There's just enough drama to keep the comedy from getting stale and the drama is really good. It's meta as hell. It pokes fun at its genre. It constantly breaks the fourth wall. It has a canon high school AU. It has amazing voice acting. It has an infinite amount of heart (and dick jokes).

In conclusion:






Whew. Now that's out of the way, I can start spamming you with episode reactions.

* Same-sex marriage ('Or as I like to call it, 'marriage'') passed in New York, HELL YES. Colorlines, Boing Boing, and The Daily Beast all have picspams of the celebrations + Pride. As do most of the queer blogs on the internet, I'm pretty sure.

* I don't know who came up with this ice-cream ad, but bless them.

* On NPR: 'Being Elmo': Covering Raw Talent With Bright Red Fur

* Shelf-Pod is a house made out of bookcases Osaka prefecture, Japan, made to house the owner's collection of Islamic history books. It's beautiful.

* On Boing Boing: Tornadoes, climate change, and real scientific literacy

I've got a bunch of links re: Greece and another set re: podcasts to post, but that'll wait until later this week. Right now, have a puppy update:

( They keep growing, like magic. )

The claims post for scifi_fest is up! I'm pretty excited about the prompts I picked. And about maybe getting some actual writing done.

Now that's out of the way...

( Puppies! )

( And a kitten for the road. )

Because Zan just did it and I *cough* just happened to have the photos sitting around...



My bag! It's from Fossil, a couple years old, and very sturdy. I love it.

( And inside... )

I've got a major project to wrap up this week and won't be online much (not that [cough] I do most of my internet-ing at work or anything...). Internet readalongs, etc, will resume on the 12th.

Before I go, have some photos of cats and donkeys! All taken Sunday at my parent's ranch.



( Tia Rose says HAI. )

ETA: I should add - if you liked these and/or enjoy photos of horses, you should check out redroanchronicles's work. She's amazing.

So Nick Simmons released a statement about his plagiarism charges saying, in effect, that it was a homage, he's sorry we're offended, and all manga looks the same anyway.

And then there were (trolling) comments about how he's right, manga does all look the same, what's the problem and I had some kind of fannish!rage blackout, fired up google images, and started planning a really epic rage!post about how manga is not a genre, you can't lump an entire country's creative sequential-art output together like that, and all manga doesn't look the same, dammit.

That was 24 hours ago. I'm feeling much better.

( But now I've got these nicely edited images so you're still getting the picspam. )

The images are pretty big and my layout doesn't really support that, so here's the format=light version

So this post isn't completely ridiculous, here. Have some links:

The Face of the Other by Mark Thorn

Are Anime Characters Caucasian or Japanese? on Youtube

Naruto 10th Anniversary Tribute Drawn by Other Popular Manga Artists | Holy heck it's been 10 years. I started reading Naruto when I was 15 and the first, like, 20 chapters were all that was up on Toriyama's World. Yikes.

Also, a signal boost: PSA: "Can I talk to you?" troll