Cookie Monster by dreamtrove

Subtle and obscure humor, tasty.

Lemme throw you another reccommendation, but if you think ElfenLied was spirit-wrenching, this one's worse.

Gunslinger Girl.

Also worthy of note is Black Lagoon, one of the extremely rare pieces where the north american release has a *better* dub and voice acting than the japanese.

Black Lagoon.
http://www.funimation.com/blacklagoon/

One thing I especially like is that Revy, the resident shooter is realistically depicted, folks don't just wind up like that for no reason, usually they're *very* broken people, and it shows.

I consider a lot of "Anime" not much better in quality than Tom&Jerry cartoons, and the fact is usually compounded by lazy and hideous translations along with needlessly convoluted plots that in the end make no sense.

Oh, yeah, add one more to that list of Anime folk I hold up as good examples.

Relena Peacecraft.
(STOP laughing!)

Seriously though, even Heero believes in her dream enough to die for it, although in spirit I am far more partial to Miliardo, one of his lines is bonechillingly similar to what drives me - his absolute hatred of the events and dynamics that made him what he is, and his desire to crush it so that it cannot be inflicted on others.

"There must never BE another Miliardo Peacecraft!"

The moment he said that, I understood his motives and intentions so completely and utterly words just don't cover it.

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 2:23 PM

I coulda gone with Lampyridae, but I thought there were enough people who wouldn't know what a spider was already. But, honestly, didn't search on any of those things, they were just text sensitive snatched up from here. (pauses, and thinks about other spider cookie recommendations that might come up):

Philadelphia Cream Cheese
Prince Edward in a Can
And, of course lizard care:

On anime, I was just reading about the anime adaptation. There are 12 books of 107 chapters that lead to a different conclusion in the Manga. The director who made the Anime decided to re-set it in a real place with historic and romantic feel, so he could make it all parasols and sakura. Which is what I really loved, personally. Sex and violence is always good, but I'm a flavor junkie, so give me something nationalist any day, doesn't matter what nation. It's part of my core problem with globalism, it's so much headed towards the paved planet. I love the variety, and richness of culture.

Sure, I enjoy mutants battling machines, but the romantic cultural japanese quality just cuts so deep. Esp. if you've been. Anyway, there's apparently an episode 10.5, which was made later to go in between 10 and 11.

Same friend who gave me the elfen lied also gave me "dears" to watch, which he recommended. (Though jewish, he is not a knight of the british empire) "Elfen Lied has been described as similar to, or borrowing elements from Chobits, 3x3 Eyes[11] and Gunslinger Girl.[10]" - wikipedia.

I'm going to be roaming this web for a while. I've always been on again off again with anime, because it's sometimes excellent, and other times just silly kids stuff. Naruto is kind of on the borderline there between the two.

Everyone told me the dubbing on Bebop was better than the subtitles. (I'm sure that Keanu can wrecktify this) I've watched it only with the dub. I've watch lain with both, but it filters into my head to the point where I don't even notice which one it is.

Quote:

I consider a lot of "Anime" not much better in quality than Tom&Jerry cartoons, and the fact is usually compounded by lazy and hideous translations along with needlessly convoluted plots that in the end make no sense.

Sometimes the convolutions are good though. I like twisted. I get bored when mechs keep bopping each other over the head. Often the plot is just a framework for setting up the next battle sequence, like a kind of ninjaporn.

Myself, I have some shadows in my past, but I'm a very far forward looking person. Many say "too far." I'm working hard to find the missing skipping stones to be there. This also is a very Japanese characteristic, and going to Japan as a kid, I saw such a clash of cultures, that one, the west, tied to its past (the UK even worse than the US, Israel anyone?) and another just with their sites on the future. Always a danger to not lose sight of the past. I kind of cling to it, but not in a negative way. And I've been screwed over in over the top ways that I'm not about to mention here. As I said, things don't tend to hit me, they usually slide on by. That thing with yin yang post just hit me, because I saw it blocking my future conversations. But baggage, I tend to check it at the door. There are some people here that could use some reflection, but no, I won't mention it... moving on...

Nah, if I met Bush today, I'd buy him a cheeseburger, he likes cheeseburgers.

But here's a question for you:

Why do only female characters have a shot at redemption? I notice this in my own writing. My men are usually fixated, goal-oriented, or their passive, leaf in the wind kind, more like myself. My female characters are complicated. I don't think this reflects reality, but it appeals.

Even if we go back, say bladerunner. Pris Stratton is redeemable, and Roy Batty is not. Or if you prefer, Rachael is and Deckard isn't?

You know that Voigt-Kampff test of yours? Did you ever take that test yourself? Deckard?

Accelerated decrepitude. In the book, Pris is a clone of Rachael, but her character is very different, which is exaggerated further in the movie, ultra-curious. Deckard spends no time in either finding out who she is or what she's about. The movie is internally consistent in a way that makes Deckard, if not redeemable, something you can accept, in the way you accept the diclonius. But deckard never has that sympathetic connection that Lucy has. In the book, he's simply an utterly irredeemable human. Dick loved to mix it up though, he changed the story himself. No one changes the story more than the author.

Still. Male redemption. I've been gnawing this over, and also, in light of Twilight and Harry Potter: Audience. The male characters are going to be of interest to the female audience, and really a tween-teen audience, which I think is a reason for the redemption. Males are probably more interested in the redeemable female, and they're more interested in the female character: Nikita, or Mathilda. Leon is potentially redeemable...

But I guess women are largely looking for something else in their bad boys. I think that Lucy is a bad girl, as is Faith, and the above mentioned, and it's a draw to the male viewer. I don't know that the archetype femme fatale is necessarily, outside of the story, but you get drawn into the concepts. Sorry, me thinking out, feel free to comment.

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 2:34 PM

WHOZIT

COOKIE!

I'm going to microwave a bagel and have sex with it - Peter Griffin

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 3:47 PM

Lucy is not redeemable - no more than Gretel from Black Lagoon.

Like Benny says in that story arc "Some stories don't have happy endings, Rock."

And sometimes they do.
Nana is about as redeemed as one can get for a Diclonius, Revy has her moments, hell even Narcissa Malfoy showed the potential in one critical spot, didn't she ?

Do you know what makes the difference ?
Love.

Someone, however powerless to change their situation, loved them, or in Nana's case, appeared to - it's the very lack of that which makes in the end, the true monster, because once the window has passed without the slightest hint of a shine through it, it's closed forever.
http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=41&grp=11

And there's male characters, however dark, who are potentially redeemable if you look closely.
Riddick for example, has a soft spot for kids, and another one, though smaller, for people really truly willing to die for their convictions.

Max Rockatansky aka Mad Max, actually has his story come full circle from his fall to his redemption if you watch all three movies, and borrows quite a bit from Samaurai tales in the doing.

Zechs aka Miliardo also finds redemption in his own way, and inner peace at least.

And hell, that's not even the slightest patch on Raistlin Majere or Warlord Derek Sagan, both of whom do what they do for the very same reasons I do what I do.

So there's plenty if you know where to look.
And then there's those that ain't.
Light Yagami from Death Note, for example, ironically consumed by the *other* end of the moral spectrum, much like Rorschach becoming a kind of twisted knight templar holding people to an impossible ideal.

I find Light unusual in that his fall was triggered by something OTHER than lack of familial affection, but then supernatural events were involved with that.

But back to Lucy, who's only human contact of acceptance and affection is rooted in a childhood promise to kill her - which she very, very much wants to happen, and yet due to Kouta's nature is unlikely.

And Lucy is someone who takes promises, very, very seriously - it's the ONLY reason she lets Kurama live despite having opportunity, motive and damn good reason to kill him at least twice in the Anime.

And Gretel, well, you'll have to see for yourself, that's one *I* would shoot first just on general principles.

Just some thoughts on the matter, is all.

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 4:04 PM

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." -- William Casey, Reagan's presidential campaign manager & CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

Quote:
Leon is potentially redeemable...

I'm not sure Leon needs redeeming, or that he hasn't redeemed himself already. "No women, no kids" - a simple creed that he adheres to religiously. He'll kill whomever he's tasked to kill, and it's kind of implied that they're being killed because they deserve it, but he's very strict in the "no women, no kids" tenet of his belief. And he gives everything he is and has to redeem Mathilda - and it works; she's been given a shiny new shot at a real life.

Personally, I'd love to see a sequel, but they'd probably manage to screw it up. I'd love to see Mathilda grown up, leading a normal life, and get sucked back into Leon's world and ways.

Redemption. What about Angel? He was the worst in all of us, but still trying to do the best, in order to pay debts for old sins that could never be paid off. How's that for male redemption?

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:21 PM

GEEZER

Keep the Shiny side up

May be old school, but I confess a fondness for Project A-Ko. Cute little schoolgirls who wreak massive distruction in their social spats while at the same time dealing with alien invasions etc.

Dominion - Tank Police is also good old 'break the city to get the bad guy' fun.

"Keep the Shiny side up"

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:39 PM

Frem

I haven't read the Manga, and so, taking the anime as its own story arc, then there is resolution.

Redemption is a western concept, which I think requires a belief in good and evil, so it's my fault for using the term. There's acceptance and sympathy. I think I mentioned this on the last conversation.

Lucy changes, I think the story is thus ultimately about her. Who hurts the most, who suffers the most, who changes the most, who has the most to lose. That's the simple line from characters and viewpoint. But Card is right, that's who the story is about, which means, here, Lucy.

Lucy with the demonic gothic subtitles takes over, and is stronger than the weak Lucy that way, only to be subverted by Nyu. But in the end, Lucy is capable of not killing Yuka, which is her own promise. Her turn starts somewhere before that, but she is pulled back from the edge. She almost kills Nana, once attacked, but then spares her. Later, she doesn't kill her again. To me, part of the brilliance is that the character of Lucy comes back to earth.

To say that I am not fond of the Angel/Angelus flipswitch good/evil is an understatement. Of all the evils I'm not fond of, this one is way up there. Lucy is a hybrid of two creatures, one which takes over, and is later suppressed, but the emergence of a character capable of dealing is the end result. Lucy's final battle is a suicide attempt, but my suspicion is that suicide is impossible for Lucy, because if her human is defeated, her demon takes over and wins the battle. So, she is forced to reconcile.

I guess I disagree with the analysis. I think of Nana as naive, broken in a different way, broken like a trained animal. She's resistant to the idea of killing, but she trusts papa, and that's her mistake. Lucy is willing to let it slide at first, but Nana decides to punish her, and can, and that brings out the dark side.

Lucy is barely in control of Lucy, her ability to accept who she is, and others, is sort of the ultimate story arc conclusion, at least, in the anime. I think in the Manga she just continues off the deep end. I'll try to find it later.

Lucy is a sympathetic character, who comes full circle, I don't know what your criteria for redemption are. Nana is not someone who was ever off course, except for her attempt to kill Lucy, after her resounding defeat in their earlier battle. Still, it's not a long journey of redemption, it's a fact of life she is very uneasy with, that she now has to deal with Lucy, Nyu, and Lucy again.

Faith is a far more interesting character than Angel, but to some extent, Joss is drawn to the good evil switch. Firefly is his real departure from that. Spike <7 is a complex character, not on a mission of redemption, but sympathetic. Season 7 is just a pretty awful story arc, and later spike is pathetic, not sympathetic.

I guess what I'm saying is that characters achieve balance, in a world of grey between light and dark, whereas they achieve redemption in a world of good and evil. Lucy achieves balance, and this completes her character arc, and the best part is that she does so without flipping over a card that says "you are now good."

I don't know some of these other characters, Hansel-Gretel seem to be a merged minor character, I'm going to guess after spot reading their concept and history on wiki that they don't have a real intended character arc as much as a background to explain their existance and motives. I'll reserve judgment for now, but stick to principles who I know have a character arc.

Does that mean mad max, that's a good question. I'm not sure. I think of him as a lone ranger, not really a character with a complex journey, but I guess he does undergo changes. The story is certainly about him.

Lucy's character arc is the entirety of the story in Elfen Lied though, it's a special case, far from unique. I guess going back to bladerunner, Deckard is the character who this story is about, book or movie. And does he redeem, no I don't think he does. I don't think he changes. I'm not sure. If he's a human, then his failure to kill Rachael is an evolution, if he's nexus seven, then it's not. It's just evolution in itself. In the book, his failure to kill Rachael is a weakness. He has all the appeal of a serial killer, and he brings the logic of the serial killer right up as his chosen lifestyle. I don't think Deckard is a character in balance at any point in either one, he's out of his depth, and possibly unaware of who he is, or why he does the things he does. He's probably not sympathetic.

I don't think Love is the issue. I think all journeys are internal. The presence or lack of it merely helps guide where you go on your journey. My short guess, the torture kids who become soulless killers do so not because of a lack of love, but for the reasons implied in the neurology articles you sent: They have become so desensitized to pain and suffering, and they cannot empathize with it in others. The real life cases here that are the most strong exemplars of the case are the RUF. The RUF are so low on the humanity scale that my brain actually hit a shock point when I first read them, because I needed to adjust to the concept "worse than nazis." Sure, there's an ultimate level of inhumanity, but what the RUF does to their own people and their own children, is easily as bad as what the nazis did to other people they considered "inhuman."

Sure, out of species, animals kill, without empathy, most don't have empathy that can reach that far, if they do, they become vegetarians. But the RUF stories, Oh, screw it, I'll just use the spoiler:

Select to view spoiler:

This is real life, right now, a broad based culture that has spread from sierre leone to liberia, and now throughout africa, and has shown up in zimbabwe, and even through the colonial connections of the "colonists" of S.L. & Lib. (the RUF are "colonists" as in descended from freed slaves.) Colonists keep close ties with the black population in the US, particularly with the Bloods and the Crips, who supply them with drugs and arms in exchange for diamonds. Diamonds are the main currency of the RUF, and they fight and die for them, but they also gamble. Here are some stories snippets.

A man pulls his one of his own wives on the table, cuts her open. The wager? Boy or Girl. The winner gets to have the diamonds, and eat the baby.

Children are trained through torture and dismemberment. They are trained to fight and kill one another. These will be the future soldiers. Those not fighting are cut open, and drugs poured into their wounds until they either die, or fly into a berzerker range, and fight. No one who has not killed children, and killed their own kind, will ever be allowed in the army. No one is ever dismissed. They are simply tortured to death and eaten, not necessarily in that order.

Here's a recent one: The wife of the opposition in Zimbabwe (I think it was the party chair and not tsvangirai himself,) was at home, when the RUF came to the door. They had been hired by Mugabe to find this man, the husband, who was not at home. They asked the wife about his whereabouts, when he'd be back, etc. and then they left. For a short time, then, on their way our, they decided to turn around. They came back, and cut off her hands and feet, tied her to a stake and set fire to her. For no reason. She had given the information they wanted.

There was another one just today, inner city kids, children, robbing someone, then coming back to kill her, for no reason. Can I guarantee that these kids didn't have loving parents? No, but I can guarantee that they didn't have a normal upbringing

Okay, what was the point of that violent diversion? I don't know. I just think the issue is more complex. Immune to the suffering, deaf to the will of others, just pieces of the puzzle towards making a psychopath. Loss of connection of cause and effect, consequences, you're on the road to a monster.

But sure, children of parents who didn't love them are just one step down that road. I think it took a whole lot of abuse to make Manson. Most of it institutional. His mother didn't love him, she sold him for a pitcher of beer at the age of 4. He ran away and joined a street gang, and was constantly on the inside. He learned to not get beat, how to beat, how to rape and kill his fellow inmates. And no one cared. Authorities even less than he did. He told them that he was a dangerous psychopath who would be liable to kill again if released. They released him anyway.

Back to Lucy

This is a different story, it's complex, and it's interesting. She's two beings, not just a human reflection of the unloved child. The temper of the monster inside is in part inherent to its nature. She lets it take over because she is weak. Bringing her two halves into balance is, imho, the conclusion that the story is seeking. What she really needs is Kouta's forgiveness. She has to know that he can't kill her, character aside, he's unable to physically, and if he had the power, the diclonius would simply prevent it, and possibly kill him, which would make life simpler for her. What she really seeks is his forgiveness, which in the anime, she gets, and in the manga she does not. That was the principle story change.

BTW, leon also has his no women no kids thing. It doesn't make him not a monster. He's just a monster with a limit. He's not viewed by the story as redeemable, or ever headed anywhere but down, and there is no attempt to save him. The question is whether or not Mathilda is redeemable, and we assume so, and that redemption of some sort is a theme because it's a western story.

But even Faith flips over the good card. What I feel the story fails to deal with is how Buffy goes so far off the deep end. Not only is Buffy not really a redeemable character, she makes no move to make things good with Faith. In Buffyverse, redemption is a commodity to be bought or sold like a soul, it's one of the show's greatest weaknesses. Spike is irredeemable as well by the end, and the writers don't seem to notice. But I might point out, they also seem to wistfully forget that Buffy went to kill Faith for the purpose of murdering her to feed her to Angel, a vampire, because of her own personal softspot for what was essentially a monster, only bound to humanity by a spell. The scene is brilliant, as is the season arc, terrific. Somehow, the writers fail to see the darkness in Buffy as strongly as they see it in Faith.

Going over to the dark side was something Joss wanted a slayer to do, and he didn't want to do it to Buffy, so he contrived another slayer. Kendra didn't work out, so he created Faith. He says all this in one of the featurettes.

Okay, I'm ranting and off topic. A little.

I find Lucy complete as a story arc. It's very eastern, like the whole show, and not about good and evil. I thought the whole thing was perfect.

The really disturbing moments were where he was yelling I hate you to his sister, in the train, and the scene where Nana fights Lucy for the first time.

Hollywood, and television, for me, is trapped in a western good and evil dynamic, where good, usually a small group, must defeat evil, a mindless mass, so that the will of good can be forced upon the rest of the world of the story.

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:46 PM

Mike

Quote:
I'm not sure Leon needs redeeming

Sorry, while typing a long pointless rant I missed your post, and in its absence, I flipflopped on Leon. I agree, Leon is a goner.

Quote:
Personally, I'd love to see a sequel, but they'd probably manage to screw it up. I'd love to see Mathilda grown up, leading a normal life, and get sucked back into Leon's world and ways.

A sequel would have to do this, otherwise there would be no point. That would undo the redemption. I'd like to see her as a real piece of work. After "Closer" it's going to be hard for me to watch her again.

Quote:
Redemption. What about Angel?

Cardboard cutouts don't count if they just flip over the card that says you are now good/you are now evil. Even if they're Joss Whedon's characters. Cutting him some slack, it was early on, long before he created River and Simon.

Quote:
How's that for male redemption?

Okay. But alas, I gave up on redemption. I think Spike is a better stab at it. I suspect Mal is about redemption in some way. So are most of the characters on Firefly. Hell, even Jayne seeks redemption.

Hmm. Still gnawing

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:48 PM

Quote:

Redemption is a western concept, which I think requires a belief in good and evil, so it's my fault for using the term. There's acceptance and sympathy. I think I mentioned this on the last conversation.

Just one quick note. Personally, for me, redemption isn't about religion, or really even good and evil. It's about how I learn to deal with my failings and conquer them. It's about forgiving the past, even though you can't. You can only learn from it and live a better life. As such, "redemption" in the classic sense (I was bad, now I'm good, so all is forgiven) isn't really possible. But that's not to say it isn't worth striving for. If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 5:55 PM

Good points, all of you, thanks. I want to keep gnawing this over. It's far more interesting than politics ;)

Geezer, yes, this is the benefit of something like T:TSCC, girls throwing cops through walls. It's just fun.

Re: Sarah Connor

Select to view spoiler:

I actually want to contact the writers and tell them that they have made a serious mistake. There's a really nice Cameron episode in the library. We're left with the ambiguous conclusion that Cameron led the handicapped guy to suicide. This is suicide for the show.

Disabled people are painfully aware of the disabled guy is always either evil, dies, or both. For no other reason, but that it upholds a hollywood stereotype which is inherently fascist in nature, I think the guy should live.

I'm okay with Cameron trying to kill him, he's a loose end. But it would be nice if he's absent simply becuse he had to go to the hospital or something. It would be really nice to see him reappear in a later episode, and to see Cameron surprised, shocked, maybe even consider killing him outright, and finding herself unable to do so because of an internal conflict. It would be less interesting if that was because she had learned that he did something important in the future. It would be interesting if she simply couldn't do it, for what ever reason, because he couldn't possibly pose a threat, etc. Best of all if we're not told the reason.

My sister is disabled, as is her best friend, and I have a few other disabled friends. The number of medical emergencies and conditions they have is very high, because being in a chair doesn't help, but also because disabilities are not usually unique, if there's a birth defect, there's usually other stuff wrong.

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 6:03 PM

Quote:

Good points, all of you, thanks. I want to keep gnawing this over. It's far more interesting than politics ;)

Now that's just crazy talk!

Actually yes, it is more interesting, because existential questions just are.

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 6:14 PM

Quote:

Just one quick note. Personally, for me, redemption isn't about religion, or really even good and evil. It's about how I learn to deal with my failings and conquer them. It's about forgiving the past, even though you can't. You can only learn from it and live a better life. As such, "redemption" in the classic sense (I was bad, now I'm good, so all is forgiven) isn't really possible. But that's not to say it isn't worth striving for. If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.

Mike

Got a take on Lucy then?

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 6:28 PM

Quote:

Now that's just crazy talk!

Actually yes, it is more interesting, because existential questions just are.

Entomology, one of my many hobbies, as I noted earlier, led me to this conclusion. The complexity of termite politics, the ant legals system, etc. have really given me insight onto our political system. It is one of the most base animal instincts playing out, and just like our mating rituals, we've managed to dress it up as a high achievement of civilization, which it's not. It's like a grand feast, or a sushi dish.

Yah just killed a fish, and now you're eating it. Just like the otter in the pond next door to my house does. I sit there and I watch him dive in, bam, and it's good bye fishy. We can dress it up in elaborate ritual, but it's the same thing. Ditto for politics. Now if the otter wants to tell a tale of redemption and existential balance, I'm all ears. Of course, I don't speak otter. Cute little buggers. From a non-fish perspective. There are two of them, actually.

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Wednesday, January 21, 2009 6:38 PM

Nope, no take on Lucy. Don't know a thing about her. Wait - is she the one who's friends with that Ethel chick? Married to some Cuban bandleader?

;)

Sorry, I've missed out on anime...

Mike

"It is complete now; the hands of time are neatly tied."

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Thursday, January 22, 2009 12:56 AM

Re: Sarah Connor

Select to view spoiler:

And sometimes the guy in a wheelchair *IS* an evil bastard.
I spend about 3 days out of a week in one due to age, piled up injuries and deteriorating physical condition.

On a "good" day I can do well enough with prosthetics it would take a keen eye to notice, but on a "bad" one i'm lucky enough to crawl the chair, and some days in between.

Many folk have made the seriously dumbass mistake of underestimating the cranky little guy in the wheelchair with a weird sense of humor, especially since I happen to look even smaller when I'm in it.

I haven't watched TSCC tho, haven't watched anything on TV since F*X boned Firefly, to be honest.

As for "Redemption" the thing is, from another viewpoint - once you've gone so far down certain roads, you ain't coming back, you CAN'T.

Even if somehow you were transmogrified into a happy, well-adjusted person it wouldn't last a week, the mere memories of what you had done would destroy you, either by driving you to suicide, or right back down that road again in the express lane, cause otherwise you could not live with who you had been.

Lucy cannot come back, because she was never "there" in the first place, and at best might find some internal peace, but that isn't quite the same thing cause the world she lives in will not leave her be - and thus in order to achieve that peace her only routes are either destroying humanity or destroying herself, cause she earnestly believes that neither one can tolerate the existence of the other.

A *very* interesting excerpt from the work of Ellis Amdur actually applies to this whole concept at the other end, and is well worth the time to read over.
Satsujin no Ken - Katsujin no Ken
The Sword that Takes Life, the Sword that Gives Life
http://www.vachss.com/guest_dispatches/ellis_amdur.html

It's the questions he asks at the end though, which lead me to eventually reject the standard-issue, westernised ideal of good/evil.

There's black, and then there's white - but oh so many glorious shades of grey.

My definition of redemption is actually quite simple, to have peace with yourself - cause that's the ONLY true road to making peace with others.

Lucy's never going to achieve that, for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which is her inability to forgive herself for what she has become.

Gretel has it, but lacks empathy with any other living thing besides Hansel, and considering their Hobby, wellll.....

Seriously, there's a moment in Episode 15 "Swan Song at Dawn" that hit ME badly - I happen to be rather stupidly brave person, we're talkin downright Einherjar at times, and it made MY knees quiver a bit, no knockin, but definately a twitch.

Eda asks Gretel why - and Gretel TELLS her!
You'd have to see it to understand just how flaming creepy it is, triple points if like me, you recognize the voice actor as one of the Care Bears.
*twitch*

Shades of grey or not, there's some folk who puttin a bullet in right off, provocation or not, is a damn smart idea.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, January 22, 2009 6:16 AM

I'll hold of on the other until I read/watch.

But on the two
1. I guess I'm a hopeless romantic. Lucy didn't come back, she found herself. I think this is some balance between diclonius and human. I think she's more adjusted than Nana, who has a brief time as a diclonius, but is mostly just faking human.

I found a couple things curious. How these older men became diclonius, or pseudo, they're too old to have been born that way, and have no vectors.

Also, the natural "highlander" quality of diclonius. Not only do they lack kinship, but they are at some sort of instinctive odds with one another.

If this is the nature, than the ultimate resolution would be that these species could co-exist, like cats and mice. In a natural world, cats are rare, and have animosity towards cats, who represent competition for food, which is scarce. Mice are particularly pro-mouse, and so are numerous. The dent that being eaten by cats puts on their population is nominal.

Even if 1/2 of all children were to be born diclonius, they would kill each other, like tiger sharks. Reducing the population until it reaches subsistence. In fact, a mother tiger shark has a litter of foetuses in her uteri. These develop into baby sharks, and then eat each other before birth, the half dozen to dozen sharks result in always exactly two births, one from the left, one from the right.

Evolution would find the cat-mouse balance. The diclonius have nothing to fear by the diclonius. Humanity is ultimately just in the way. Humans would continually breed like rabbits, and diclonius have yet to breed. It would result in a species split.

There is an interesting video out there somewhere of a very clever mouse defeating a cat in battle. Actually causing the cat to run away. He is out foraging, and the cat has been stalking him, and gets in between the mouse and his home. The mouse charges the cat, stopping just short, causing the cat to jump back. Now, the mouse's hole is in a direct line, about equidistant from the cat and mouse. The cat eyes the hole, eyes the mouse, it's obvious the scenario that the cat is envisioning will play out now. The mouse caught him by surprise, but now he'll make a dash for home, and the cat can pounce, and either miss, or try again next time.

The mouse instead, turns, charges the cat, and this time, does not stop, he goes for the full on collision. The cat leaps back again, now being on the far side. The mouse now has a very clear shot at the hole, and the cat has no chance of catching him if he makes a dash for it.

The cat looks warily at the mouse, steps forward. The mouse doesn't run, but makes a start at the cat. The mouse has also figured this one out. If he fled, he's let the cat know his bluff, and the cat would be back to eat his family another day.

The cat at this point, turns and runs. He's not certain, but he's past the point of willing to take chances. He came into this scenario with a fix set of rules for the world: cat eats mouse. But how certain is he of those rules? Poisonous mouse is not an absurd possibility. The cat, after all, is not chasing snakes.

Whatever the situation, the cat has surmised that the mouse knows something that he himself doesn't, and that things might not turn out as he planned. In fact, they could go disastrously wrong. The cat may even consider that the mouse may be bluffing, but the mouse has already staked his life on his position, and the cat isn't ready to do the same. It's not worth risking his life for this meal.

The victory for the mouse here is that the cat will not try again. If he had taken the opportunity to flee, he'd tip his hand, err. paw, to the cat, and the jig would be up, the cat would try again, with more confidence.

On Sarah Connor it's not the evil, though that is a stereo type. Watch Jon Stewart on the inauguration and cheney and the white cat. But stereotypes are still damaging. If Michael Moore hadn't made such a point of "the black guy always dies" in Canadian Bacon, which IMHO, and I don't have a lot of respect for Moore, led a lot of hollywood producers to think "huh, he's right, we're doing this, and we don't know we're doing it." Because the black guy was just never the main character. Like in Jurassic Park. Yeah, all the secondary characters get eaten, and the black guy was just about always a secondary character. If this had continued, would Barack Obama be president of the United States?

In American films and shows, there's a critical damage level, past which, no character can survive, according to MSM behavior, not any written rule. Nana certainly is an automatic write-off in a hollywood film, as of course is Lucy. There's a point of no return write-off as well. So, it's important not to uphold that stereotype.

T:TSCC spoilers

Select to view spoiler:

It's perfectly okay, as I said, for Cameron to try to kill him, storywise. But I'm sure you get the dehumanization of the handicapped implied by the disposable status of handicapped characters.

But note that Cameron could kill him, and chooses not to. I think it's her intent, and something prevents her from doing it. This isn't a blatant error like the one in which she mistakenly kills a human Faith-style (to me, that T:TSCC episode was a story error. Cameron is not a human, she has sensors, she's going to be able to identify a terminator vs. human. Even if we take the leap of suspension of disbelief to say that her ultrafast computer brain does not make the identification in time, she still fails to make it after he is dead. It's just a story error, unless they want to retcon and say something is wrong with her chip.)

But in the library ep. she makes the conscious decision, not to kill him directly. She just leads him towards suicide, but she could easily fake his suicide, or even death of apparent natural causes. But something stops her from going that far. This, characterwise, is interesting.

However, Cameron is a step ahead of the writers here, in sympathetic evolution. The standard standby of the handicapped being disposable is upheld. The re-appearance of the character would break this ritual sacrifice by hollywood, and make an interesting dilemma for Cameron.

It might force her binary categorization of risk vs non-risk to a more complex degree of risk.

Derek and his girl represent a risk, and Riley represents a real risk, but because they're part of the resistance, they get a free pass. In a more complex analysis of risk analysis, they might not. This sort of thing is a setback for most movies and shows.

Buffy never really makes the cross over on risk. It toys with it. Angel is a risk, but spellbound, and perhaps a lapse in judgment "I say I slay." But Spike is just a total lapse in judgment. I'm not using spoilers because I honestly don't think there's anyone on the board who hasn't seen the show, but we all know late in the show there's a point at which spike should just be staked, and no one takes Buffy to task for it.

Faith, season seven, comes back and is very disappointingly not at all the same character. I knew we were in trouble when she completely fails to say "5x5." But when she goes down and trades war stories with spike, what is this? violence junkies in rehab? Now, if she did that to snuggle up with spike and then say, "oh, btw, suprise!" and stakes him, that would rule. I'm a fan of Spike, as a character, but I also like a good story. Spike's a goner anyway at this point, you know he is, and if he's going to die, that would have been a much cooler way for him to go then the redemption sacrifice.

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Thursday, January 22, 2009 2:05 PM

Ok, when we got to talkin about Elfen Lied, I went looking for the original trailer that convinced me to watch it - which was fan made cause the official trailer for it completely sucked.

Took a while, and had to sort through endless ripoffs of it by folks who just threw in a few edits and claimed it as their own work, usually reducing the quality in the process.

But I did finally find a copy - fair warning, contains nudity and what you'd call some serious bloodshed, violence and all that rot.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1607984/elfen_lied_trailer/

I especially wanted to find a link so Mikey could get a general idea of what we're discussin here.

Might wanna turn your sound up a bit when you roll it, trust me.

Whoever originally made that did one holy hell of a job, IMHO.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, January 22, 2009 3:23 PM

Let me know if you find the full 10.5, aka 14, an episode made after the fact to fill in some events in between episodes 10 and 11.

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Friday, January 23, 2009 2:26 AM