Surpassing the sunset brighter than midday, somewhere becoming rain

melengro — Fri, 04 Dec 2015 07:23:36 GMT

I'm still alive. Mostly on tumblr, and using the Mamiina icon because my tumblr now has a Mamiina url. In grad school.

melengro — Sat, 25 Aug 2012 15:11:10 GMT

I've come to realise that as of a couple of days ago I've been Officially On The Internet for five years.

Hum.

melengro — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 07:14:25 GMT

I have to say, it's really hard to write a hard-boiled cop who's been wrongfully imprisoned without using profanity. It's two grown women, a preverbal infant, and sometimes a guard or two, but it still just feels weird to have swearing in a fic for this show, so I've been avoiding it as hard as I can.

Okay so I know I've been gone a while. Again. Sorry.

melengro — Mon, 25 Jun 2012 18:41:04 GMT

Should I write Lin and Pema fic set between episode 10 and the finale, involving the opening sentence 'What possessed you to try to come back for me?'

Related question, now that I have the idea, do any of you seriously think I won’t even if you say no?

'Can I have it all...?'

melengro — Mon, 28 May 2012 04:54:07 GMT

Does anybody else like Kate Bush? I've kind of been falling in love recently.

Simoun fic: 'Endless'

melengro — Mon, 21 May 2012 05:12:35 GMT

Title: Endless
Fandom: Simoun
Wordcount: 3,544
Characters/pairings: Yun, Plumbish Military Governor, postmortem Rodoreamon/Mamiina, mentions of the rest of the cast.
Summary: Through more wars and more crafts and assaults, the Keeper of the Spring remains as she is. But even that which never changes must react, sometimes, to that which does.
Warnings: Mentions of massacre and children as collateral damage, implied suicidal ideation. Religion. Lots of angst. Spoilers for the whole series.
Notes: A few references to the OP and ED titles, and to Nazuka Kaori's written thoughts on the series, at the end. Thanks to the tracks for being called what they're called and to Nazuka for being Nazuka.

ENDLESS

When the announcement goes up that the Argentine government will be recalling its contingent of the occupation force from the capital she is twenty-one years and eleven months old, and looks the same as she did at sixteen and nine. She was too busy, too wrapped up in the world of the dead and living light, too eternally there (as opposed to anywhere, and not elsewhere, as she had once thought), to have done much to prevent it; it had happened before and by Tempus Spatium it would happen again.

Some measure of respect afforded to her as titular Chief of State of that which was now a Plumbish military frontier, which had before filled that role for Argentum also, did not give her the mercies and peace that they might have expected. Even Rodoreamon could understand only imperfectly how it was. At the least, that respect might be helpful in trying to convince them not to once again defile the holy chariots. Efforts at reverse-engineering them had met with decidedly mixed success, mixed in a way that had shaken even the Spring with the horrors of the richoceting revelations.

And so there was an announcement from the Spring that the Simouns were to be used only for defensive formations and against unmanned portions of supply lines. In swift response, they were used for the first time against the bridges connecting Yurcace and Messeraine, annexed to the Archipelago outright, to the rest of Simulacrum, in the hopes that peace might yet reign again north of the River Bentrasan. That was not how the seventeen thousand Argentine troops already on the ground in the remnant Simulacrum perceived it, and the outer waters ran red in the ensuing ground battles, while the sacred waters remained pure.

When the Argentines accept the offered peace, in response to parades of chors above their capital island indicating the firmness of the Plumbish occupation of the surrounding reefs and banks, she is twenty-four years and five months old, and looks the same as she did at sixteen and nine. She was too busy here, again, in the wandering fluttering of that existence, that existence in the saved space shepherding the dead through the upper sunlit door and the living through the lower caverns to be truly together when their fates are bound and entwined—the choice that they had to make, to justify the position and the power of she who had not, would not, could not.

She was pleased that the Consul of Plumbum had accepted her desire and the Plumbish priestesses’ request that the Simouns not be used to kill, with one exception, when twenty-eight hundred ‘Argies’, as they called them, had died screaming at the Forks of Belial, which had quickly been made right by a mutiny of intransigence on the part of sacred girls. It reminded her of those days, of course, and the beautiful world that only the dead could now really carry inside them. So living and dead both she tried to bear that to them out of the water and light. If they couldn’t hear it then that was only because their logic was constrained, by their sensibilities of opposition and exchange.

She was asked to make a speech. Consul Aamesí was indulgent enough to treat her as an equal for this purpose. She made a speech, with Rodoreamon the Home Secretary standing beside her ranged with the Ecclesiastical Minister and the new Defence Minister and the rest of the wartime cabinet, but it was a day for Military Governor Belcquí, really. It had been he who, knowing full well what he was doing righteous and what he was doing sinful, had used the Holy Land as so helpful and successful an airstrip.

When the news comes from the Highland Capital of the governance decisions that had just been taken there she is twenty-four years and ten months old, and looks the same as she did at sixteen and nine, excepting those parts of her flesh which are beginning at last to very faintly glow. She was too busy with one particular spirit, this time, a spirit around whom and by whom new and exciting ways of doing and being belief could occur if need be, a new martyr for a new age, whom she would not be thinking of this way had this spirit not been her first genuine encounter with the holy that before that time she had believed in without perceiving and trusted without apprehending.

The People’s Church of Plumbum had for the first time in almost a century come to the decision that a wartime Consul’s position did not suit itself to peacetime, and Aamesí was gracious in accepting this despite the procedure’s antiquity. And then it had become clear that they intended the new Consul to be Belcquí, and things had become a bit more complicated. Since the Highlands were now occupying the capitals of two other countries and since Belcquí’s most recent (and current) experience was as Military Governor in one of these capitals, it had to be decided what to do with Simulacrum. Rodoreamon, Interim Vice-Chairman and Head of Government, was able to convince him on this point, and if all went absolutely perfectly, always something of a fool’s proposition (but what was this faith of theirs, what was this world of theirs, if not foolish proposition?), little girls of Simulacrum may be able to soar through the skies once again, training in the Highlands, as allies.

Newly free of all foreign occupation and strong to dispute the position of Yurcace and Messeraine, yet their religion was still changing, having been stripped from them roughly and roughly and only partially restored. Rodoreamon might be able to help with that, with her fierce but unpractised and unexercised spiritual brilliance; theological brilliance might be there also. Yet that wouldn’t change the fact of the blood that stained, now more than ever, the groves where the children of Tempus Spatium had walked in the beforetime, any more than would the fact that they were developing partial helical motors. These things, built in the Highlands, spinning but not sacred, by the simple fact that they were possible to reverse-engineer without the madness attendant to opening the Simouns, had a clear shape and form in the world’s hands. They could power with neither filth nor desecration.

When the proclamations and promises of free alliance go out to two peoples in two nations she is twenty-five years and five months old, and looks still mostly the same as she did at sixteen and nine, with more patches glowing now or becoming transparent in that profoundest unused axis mundi. She was too busy with sweet and soulful thoughts, finally bringing herself back to those, trusting in Rodoreamon, trusting in the dead to whom she was now so close because she had distanced herself, just as in the past she had been far away from them because she tried to seize them with that violent cognition that had made her so baleful a chooser of the slain.

Even Belcquí, ensconced in the Highland Capital, was worthy of some measure of trust in these times. Rodoreamon certainly thought so; she was close now, too, close to the love that had blossomed in the pathless skies, not letting it go even as it drifted further away in time and memory. Yun was still baleful, even now, even though it was now a good and sweet and seemly balefulness of peace and glory and perhaps even of hope, because their world was still warped, and Rodoreamon was clear evidence of that. It was not that there was anything wrong with her; quite otherwise, it was that this was where she was, and that was where Rodoreamon was, even though, putting it simply, Rodoreamon was simply, in every way that mattered any more, more blessed and holier than she was, holy in that kindness and in that absolution and in that love.

After next week she would not hold any formal rank but Lady Kyabyu-Mofas, as Rodoreamon IV, and Member of the House of Counsel, as the Honourable Lady from Belial East. She heard tell that Rodoreamon had taken to spending all night up listening to music on the radio, and that made sense, since she would be trying to relax her spirit, diffident as ever, even as in that former time. To leave the work of government to Altif now—no relation, Rodoreamon assured her—was surely not as onerous as it could have been. It had been the work up until now that was onerous. And now the night was surely starting but it was surely starting without them, because they would become busier, the three of them, three of whom only two were formally with presence. They would be busy with ferocious purpose and joy and togetherness and love in moving forward to where something called real life could be waiting for them, perhaps, and that real life would also be real death in the real world. Rodoreamon, relative to her, already had one foot in the grave, after all, as did Paraietta, and Alti, and Kaimu, and Morinas, and Wapourif, and Floef, and Vyuraf, and everybody except those who had both feet in the grave and no feet, absolutely and forever.

When the news comes in of the coup d’état in the Plumbish capital in which the irredentist army battalions are taking the capital from the hands of Consul and Senate and Church she is twenty-six years old and not yet reached a month, and still has the aspect that she had at sixteen and nine. She was too busy in spanning the worlds in this space that was two spaces and all spaces and no spaces and spanning centuries and hearts between the living in the world of the dead and the dead in the world of the living, and she is ashamed that it does not surprise her in retrospect that it took so short a time.

The irredentists were unable to hold any of the countryside, where the Church commanded its most immense influence and the Army its most paltry, but the Highland Capital remained in their hands for long enough that Belcquí and the People’s Church realised the necessity of a more densely populated base of support. The train carrying the Consul came across the border six weeks after the Highland Capital had fallen, followed two days later by an airship carrying Church leaders and prominent Senators, and the day after that by the two dozen Simouns currently in existence, pending further excavation. Altif was there to greet Belcquí in the Great Temple and to tell her that she might want to give some consideration to appearing from the Spring, which she did in due course for the first time in a span that she did not remember but which she was told was eighteen months. Even her predecessor of her memories and her love and her painful history and salvation had moved about more than this; but then, her predecessor had not been quite such a quietist or a mystic, which after all had been her tragedy.

The name of the face of the junta was General Aaeruí, a cruel fate, somewhat, she thought. Rodoreamon thought so too, and also thought this of her new and former role as Home Secretary when it became clear that Simulacrum ran the risk of being home at least to border skirmishes again. The Sibylla Academies were to be reopened in the Holy Land under the Ecclesiastical Minister’s jurisdiction, and the Ecclesiastical Minister was once again she whom it had been ten years ago, although she was not this time Home Secretary as well. She and Belcquí would seem to have resolved such disputes as had led to that madness a decade ago, and that arrest; of course she the Keeper was one of the privileged few who knew how little it had been madness. It was in any case in Rodoreamon’s hands. This was going to be terrible but hopefully should not take too long.

When the Holy Capital formally becomes host to the Consul of the Highlands as he bombs the Highland Capital from exile she is twenty-six years and four months old, and still has the aspect that she did at sixteen and nine. She deliberately busied herself too much to see, listening to the words of the now at last beatified dead ironic as always, making sure the riots of the world could not reach the hallow that she was trying to construct as best she could though not allowed by some of these assaults of the world and its shaking disasters.

This was not expected to take too long and the use of the Simouns for any aspect of this war had been completely banned. After a short demonstration above the Argentine capital island so that it did not become too restive before it became clear which side the Military Governor of the Archipelago would side with, they were given over to the Ecclesiastical Ministry and the People’s Church of Plumbum for joint flights above international waters, thankfully not a part of this war as they had been of certain other wars one could mention, to pray together for peace. Therefore the objective of the side which she was expected to be supporting by virtue of her unenviable station was to bombard the Highland Capital until the junta leaders surrendered, while the objective of the so-called enemy was to march its forces from the capital through the hostile countryside to the border and conduct raids into Simulacrum until she, she the Keeper, gave up. She would no more give up than she would give more than token to support to her own side, and Rodoreamon seemed likelier and likelier to join her sometime soon.

She wondered, as did the spirit of the dead, what that joining might mean. There would not be two Keepers or Eternal Maidens at the Spring; but Rodoreamon was a sibylla even now, as was that spirit. And there were others out there, too, weren’t there, who had been with them, who had sworn themselves sibyllae still? Rodoreamon was not a conservative political figure, she had been told, yet of course she was, of course she was; they were all extremely so, because they were trying to keep together something precious that if left to the hot winds of history would rapidly cease to be. That was their new ordination.

When it is made obvious to everybody that the air war is going to win out over the ground war and Belcquí will sooner or later, probably within some six months or so, be able to return home, she is twenty-seven years and ten months old, and still has most of the aspect that she did at sixteen and nine. She had become able to keep herself busy even in horrid times like this; even though Simulacrum was not getting bombed the horrid cries of the Plumbish children, who were having the most horrible reprisals done against them, and those maidens who wanted to go to their Oracle for their sex but could not because of the fighting around that place, had reached her and saddened and chastened her prayers.

Belcquí had been as respectful to Simulacrum and its people since the end of that first few days after the end of the war that started the whole dirty business as he had been disrespectful during those few days. He was treated as an allied leader being given a temporary home in Simulacrum because his own home was currently unavailable to him, nothing more, nothing less, and had no complaints or requests for any other kind of treatment. The People’s Church of Plumbum had sent priestesses to her here a few times to talk about Tempus Spatium—Animus—God, the singular and double and in a few vague whispers perhaps even triple God, and she wanted desperately to continue the conversations, but she did not know how. Rodoreamon thought she might have an idea.

The war was over quickly enough after that. Yet the fact remained that even quickly enough was not actually ‘quick enough’ for a war to be over. It never had been, nor had there been any war before which things were not, in some sense, even vague or general, better than things after. She would be surprised if there ever was.

When Yun was thirteen years old, she decided to become a sibylla to love and serve and honour Tempus Spatium in the skies, because that was how one loved and served and honoured Tempus Spatium as a member of such rural middle classes as there were. She was very talented, though not quite so much so as Mamiina, and a cadet for a little under two years during the period of sporadic raids. Shortly after her fifteenth birthday upon becoming a sibylla she was assigned to Chor Caput and made a lot of new friends, serious and devoted people, fine comrades all of them. That had gone as was obvious, more or less, and then all of the business had happened with Chor Tempest and the defeat. Since the defeat, there had been two victories, at least victories of sorts. Yurcace and Messeraine were probably gone for good at this point, once Argentum had a transitional government properly in place. The faith was being restored, but the trauma remained. It was not the same faith. Water did not pass twice under the same bridge.

Except her water. She was here, always, and never. Alive and dead, having saved through sacrifice that which it had not been possible to save, because it had been separated from her by her own false and supercilious sense of closeness. She was of that spiritual line of Dominura and Limone the First Maidens, and of Onashia who had tried so very hard to be the Last Maiden. Who and what she was set her apart, but because she had no illusions it drew her back again. And all were drawn together in her, all who had been with her in the beauty and romance and passion of Empty Sky in those days. What wonders they had been able to make.

Empty Sky. That was what they were calling it. The First Ecumenical Meeting and Prayer of the Keeper of the Blue Spring and the Oracle of Hieron Mountain was at hand, at they were talking about the work coming out of the seminaries and the actual experiences of the churches. Yun’s personal story would have to be somehow relevant but she was really more interested in Rodoreamon’s right now. Rodoreamon’s personal story was: That they had to love one another, otherwise who else could? There was nobody who could, because that one Divinity, only one, was also countless. Only one and yet countless. As she had received so much love and so much desire and yet it all bent around only one figure and only one heart. As the withered heaths of autumn by her manor had grown so many flowers but they had been simply one expanse of purple as she gazed at them pensively from her cool study. As she had turned so much into and out of and through her love but it had remained.

The spirit, one of the countless spirits and with and of the one perfect intellect of Empty Sky, was laughing.

If she ended this in a role of a church of two nations, who then should be Chairman? Altif, perhaps? It seemed Anubituf had taken a seat in the Renlas Terrain and had some support in this House as it now was. She should like to see him again, if she could.

The world turned on. The Oracle laughed to greet her at this spot along the mountain paths of the borders, where an old stone ampitheatre had been. The trees speared upwards the pine branches like thousands of cathedrals. The blood of the children of Daikuuriku called out from the bottom of Hell, the place, to the summits of Empty Sky, the placeless place to which the gateless gate might lead. That was their logic because it was their aesthetic, that sacrifice. No matter what happened to the country or the countries or the church or the churches in this ambiguous and shattered and twisted perverted victory there would be, for them, always some hope for warmth, some hope for transfiguration, which even a fading church, as theirs both might after all be destined to be, should carry forward. If it did not, cast off that church and take up a new burden. Let it be a burden of the same love. Let all burdens be of that love. The world was an expanse of gorgeous roses until suddenly from beneath that garden came up again the stench of blood. There was no beauty there, and if it was beautiful was all that mattered. So their songs of prayer drew that line between loved and hated things, drew it and transgressed it; transgressed it and drew it. And on and on and on.

World without end. And a Dandelion Ri Maajon to seal it true.

END

So, Legend of Korra.

melengro — Sat, 19 May 2012 21:34:01 GMT

I really want to make a parody of the original Dirty Harry poster with Lin. But I'm no good at digital art. What do.

Also, Asami is a badass Margaret Burton with electricity and kung fu instead of reality warping (and a father who was not in fact brainwashed). So not really much like Margaret at all. Or she's Margaret and Elenore's daughter. That works too.

Speaking of which, 'Also, Lin's dad is Azula. It's really complicated.' I JUST FOUND OUT ABOUT THIS A COUPLE OF DAYS AGO. lizbee, sorry if it's a silly question, but were you aware of this?

Yikes, sorry! SPRING STUFF

melengro — Sat, 19 May 2012 08:58:14 GMT

Oh Jesus.

First of all, I've obviously been incredibly busy.

I finished my junior year of college (three semesters left because my major's requirements are more stringent than those of the university). I got Dean's List honours this term as well as last and a 3.65 GPA, which, I should point out, is considered remarkable in my major. Just finishing the UMass Japanese programme, assuming I do, is considered a minor feat of strength; I was surprised to learn how highly we're apparently regarded in my field. Anyway, more importantly, I firmed up some friendships this semester too. I had a fight with a friend on the weekend of Easter, which was also my birthday and Anime Boston, but that seems to have, finally, been resolved. I've been on various reading and watching binges. As one would expect I'm neck-deep in Korra right now and have outstanding commitments for various reasons to Heartcatch Precure, The Twelve Kingdoms, and Natsume Yuujin-chou.

I have an entirely unreasonable if not outright alarming degree of FEELINGS about The Prague Cemetery, mostly because it's genuinely terrifying. I had a perhaps more to be expected set about Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, which made me absolutely bawl.

I was also elected to public office! I'm a member of the Town Meeting of Amherst, Massachusetts, a quaint form of local government used in New England. I'm one of 246 members and I was pretty involved in some controversial zoning votes (our side won in that the terrible development ideas that we were being presented with won't go through this year; we won only by a few votes!). I can talk more about what these controversies were and what the experience in general has been like in the comments if anybody is interested.

A week ago from the day that it now technically is on my side of the International Date Line I was finally officially confirmed in the Episcopal Church. It was the last set of confirmations for Bishop Scruton, whom I'm going to miss a lot. I'm not sure what I think of his potential successors, on whom we have not yet voted.

This summer I'm going to spend some time in Amherst with my friends and also at home with my family, doing a lot of gardening actually. A few weeks ago I finished, at long, long last, the writing project I'd been working on for two and a half years, and I've got something new going on! I've also been working on translating from a Noir artbook that I got at Anime Boston.

I also have a tumblr now!

I'm so sorry about my prolonged absence! How has everybody been?

melengro — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 10:08:16 GMT

Everything is Korra and nothing hurts, except homework which I have a lot of because classes resume in about twenty-eight hours.

More thoughts forthcoming at some point.

(I LOVE LIN. AND TENZIN'S ENTIRE FAMILY.)

Hi, it's been a while.

melengro — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 06:10:33 GMT

I'm sorry I haven't really been saying or doing much on here of late! I'm extremely busy.

In other news, I have no idea how to finish a question when none of the examples had a remotely similar sentence structure, film at eleven.

I'm really burnt out tonight. As long as I finish everything I'll do just fine, but that doesn't really help when the problem is that I'm being assigned some of the most unbelievably time-consuming language work imaginable to pound into my head things like the fact that 'koto ni natteiru' indicates a socially imposed demand but 'koto ni natta' indicates a necessity imposed by some specified or unspecified outside force. I'm grateful for it, but I'm getting deep muscle pain and have no idea why even though I have no other symptoms of illness and I'm starting to find it hard to confine my thoughts to one language.

Taitei, watakushi no kangae between English and Japanese wo ukimasu kara, chotto taihen na language usage wo tsukai, tomodachi ni confused saserareteshimaimasu. And yes that is a reasonable example of how my thoughts sound these days.

There's a lot of so-bad-it's-amazing yuri in the winter anime season, and I've been falling ever deeper in love with the church I've been going to the past year and a half or so as I move towards confirmation and possibly even postulancy (!).

What's been going on with you guys?

melengro — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 03:41:49 GMT

I am back at my university!

On Tuesday, I start Japanese Popular Culture, Spiritual Autobiography, and Introduction to LGBTQ Affairs! (I start Intensive Intermediate Japanese II to-morrow but that's a given.) I'm sorry I've not been much in evidence of late.

Despite some trepidation about my new Japanese textbook and the fact that the LGBTQ class will very probably end up quite tendentious and argumentative, I have to say I am looking forward to this semester.

Hit me with LGBTQ-studies stuff. I want to get into this~

Possible reading/watching material for 2012, part I of ?

melengro — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 08:26:02 GMT

What are our thoughts on Magic Knight Rayearth?

End-of-year meme, slightly late.

melengro — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 07:05:17 GMT

What did you do in 2011 that you'd never done before?
Improved my Japanese; went to a French-speaking country; went to the Deep South; volunteered to be a Lay Eucharistic Visitor (but wasn't needed to do it).

Did you keep your New Year's resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't think I made any resolutions last year. My resolution for this year is for 2012 to be substantively similar to the last five months or so of 2011.

Did anyone close to you give birth?
No.

Did anyone close to you die?
No.

What places did you visit?
New York, Boston, Alabama, Quebec, and Cape Cod (i.e. my family), in that order! On the way to Quebec I also passed through Vermont, where I grew up. Quebec was brilliant and I would love to go back.

What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
More travel, and maybe ideally a girlfriend, but I'm not holding my breath on either, since I need to save up for a planned family trip to Japan in 2013.

What date from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory?
Pretty much every date between 13 August and 1 September, an amazingly fun if occasionally harrowing or frightening span of intensive road travel; 15 July, for one of the more surreal and humbling (not in the good way, unless you're a fan of me suffering in deserved-in-substance but questionable-in-form ways) experiences that I've had.

What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Amazingly good GPA in fall semester, finally got some priorities straight that had been fairly crooked for a long time, got a better sense of who I am in terms of gender or whatever else we want to be calling it.

What was your biggest failure?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHA no. It's embarrassing, in that it's my fault but my fault on an incredibly petty and asinine level that I really don't want to reopen.

Did you suffer illness or injury?
I got colds in the spring and autumn as per usual.

What was the best thing you bought?
Books, clothes, music, and some of the souvenirs that I got in Quebec, many of which are made of driftwood.

Whose behavior merited celebration?
My mother's, Maya's, Inoguchi-sensei's to an extent, and Koyama-sensei's and Bargen-sensei's to an in many ways much greater extent. Koyama-sensei is a true badass.

Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Mostly people who it was somewhat foolish of me to ascribe a huge amount of cultural capital to anyway.

Where did most of your money go?
Clothes, books, and music; some DVDs; some food.

What did you get really, really, really excited about?
Travel and holidays.

What song(s) will always remind you of 2010?
I don't know. I associate songs with place more than with time, and with feeling more than with place. 'Kouya Ruten' will forever remind me of driving north through Bas-Saint-Laurent at night now.

Compared to this time last year, are you:
Happier or sadder? Happier, by more than one might expect on paper.
Thinner or fatter? About the same, maybe thinner by a few pounds, but I put on weight in the winter anyway.
Richer or poorer? I can't even really tell.

What do you wish you'd done more of?
Study, in the first half of the year. I might have an incrementally higher GPA now.

What do you wish you'd done less of?
The things I did when I should have been studying.

How will you be spending New Year's?
I spent it at Maya's house and then travelling home by train.

Did you fall in love in 2011?
We don't talk about that.

How many one-night stands?
One-night stands mean having sex.

What was your favorite TV program?
Puella Magi Madoka Magica, Mawaru-Penguindrum, and Moff/Smiff Tiem, though that was less good than it was last year.

Do you hate anyone now that you didn't hate this time last year?
Hate would be a useless emotion given the circumstances.

Do you like anyone now that you didn't like this time last year?
Koyama-sensei, who I didn't know last year, and Fruzzetti-san, who I didn't know well.

What was the best book you read?
I fell head-over-heels for Flannery O'Connor and Margery Kempe this year.

What was your greatest musical discovery?
Shikata Akiko and Vienna Teng.

What did you want and get?
Somewhat better grades.

What did you want and not get?
I don't really want it any more.

What was your favorite film this year?
I saw scandalously little film this year.

What did you do on your birthday?
I scarcely even remember but I'm pretty sure it involved a trip to the Montague Book Mill and possibly a recap of Madoka as it existed at that point (my birthday was during the Long Hiatus).

What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Punching Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in the face.

How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
Mostly thrift-store Victorian and genderfuckingly high-femme.

What kept you sane?
Sane?

Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
KAJIURA FUCKING YUKI.

What political issue stirred you the most?
Gay rights, and the world's finally successful attempts to get Silvio Berlusconi the fuck out of the global power system. Arab Spring. Republican union-busting attempts.

Who did you miss?
Shimamoto. Either you already know this story or I'm not explaining it in the comments.

I still think it's hilarious that Hanyuu is one of my default 'religion' icons.

melengro — Tue, 27 Dec 2011 02:44:54 GMT

Everybody.

THERE IS AN EDITION OF THE BIBLE ILLUSTRATED BY SALVADOR DALI.

I now know what my life has been lacking all this time. Hint 1: It's not sex. Hint 2: I mention it in this very post.

melengro — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:06:43 GMT

Merry Christmas!

Since I'm in a somewhat pensive and thoughtful mood I'll link to this Umberto Eco essay about Christmas (it's unfortunate that the essay is in a right-wing British rag like the Telegraph, especially considering that Eco is firmly in the mainline [culturally-]Christian-Socialist centre-left of Italian politics himself). I'm having A Very Postmodern Christmas anyway, since I got AN AUTOGRAPHED COPY OF THE PRAGUE CEMETERY, a Vienna Teng album, a Warren Zevon album, and a book of bloodbath-y lesbian historical stories by Yoshiya Nobuko (among other things), as well as playing with my young cousins and their new kittens and tending my aunt and uncle's fireplace.

I've been on Cape Cod for two days now and I'm remembering how much I love being here and how it was silly of me not to visit my aunt's house for two and a half years. Things are less hectic than they were yesterday, obviously. Some of my cousins have drifted off from then. Over the past few days I've seen the end of Penguindrum and been to a church in South Yarmouth that I hadn't been to before, which were worryingly not-dissimilar experiences. I have a specific, minor-to-moderate problem with Penguindrum, which to people who have seen it and know me well should not be surprising, but given who made the show I'm more than willing to assume a good-faith dropping of the ball; it's definitely up there with Madoka, Eden of the East, and Spice and Wolf among the best television anime of the past few years.

The church was nice. It's St David's, a Cape-style building with mostly unpainted wood architecture and designs. The service was mostly fairly standard, old-ish Christmas fare; it wasn't quite as lovely as Lessons and Carols at Grace in Amherst with its mediaeval and baroque focus was. I guess I'd go again if I find myself again on Cape Cod on a holiday or important Sunday.

My uncle's dog is Galactus, and the new cats in my family are adorable.

How was everybody else's holiday?

Drive-by music/spirituality musing

melengro — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 23:14:09 GMT

I'm enjoying Kajiura Yuki's ongoing years-long musical exploration of her (or someone's close to her, or somebody whose perspective she's trying to compose from) spiritually-violent-seeming inner life. I'm not sure if I'm justified in reading a conversion experience into some of these Kalafina lyrics she's been coming out with the past few years or if she always had these traits and they're just becoming more pronounced artistically. Whatever it is, I like it.

Awww, I feel loved!

melengro — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 06:45:26 GMT

So I have made a thread at the holiday love meme which you should all use to make me happy~

Speaking of things that make me happy, SOMEBODY DID 'PUELLA MAGI AMELIA MAGICA' FANART. 'Puella Magi Amelia Magica', for those of you who don't know or remember it, is a very short Doctor Who/Puella Magi Madoka Magica crossover oneshot that biichan made me write. I forget how long it took me to write but it couldn't have been more than an hour or so, since the elapsed time between 'Dare you to write it.' and 'Fic: Puella Magi Amelia Magica' seems to have been about eighty-two minutes. And somebody did fanart for this. AND CALLED ME TALENTED EVEN THOUGH SHE'S MORE TALENTED THAN I AM AND I WAS A FAN OF HER 'WOMEN OF JAPANESE HORROR' SERIES EVEN BEFORE THIS.

Ahem. Sorry. It's just that I feel appreciated.

Speaking of Madoka and Doctor Who, you all need to watch this:

'I am the Doctor' is the best song ever written. It is the 'Veni, Creator Spiritus' of our generation, you cannot deny.

Also I watched Madoka and Noir with my friends from the Philosophy Club, of all clubs, recently, and they loved them. One of my friends insisted on reading Kyouko's lines out loud in a Brooklyn accent.

melengro — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 01:08:40 GMT

Should I get a tumblr?

I am alive!

melengro — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 05:53:17 GMT

SO MANY FINAL PROJECTS

How is everybody?

elle_white kara MIIMU de gozaimasu~

melengro — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 04:55:19 GMT

Pick a number and I will talk about:

01. My sexual orientation.
02. What I'm really bad at.
03. The one person whose arms I'd like to be in.
04. My best first date.
05. A description of my self-esteem.
06. Who my best friends are.
07. My favourite book.
08. Biggest turn-offs.
09. A description of my best friend.
10. My favourite animal.
11. Someone I miss.
12. The reason behind my last break-up.
13. What I did yesterday.
14. My greatest achievements.
15. My favourite songs right now.
16. A description of my last kiss.
17. What I find attractive.
18. All of the pets I've ever owned.
19. My favourite ice cream flavour.
20. The one place I wish I was right now.
21. The most cruel thing anyone has ever said to me.
22. All of the places I've lived.
23. Qualities that make me more likely to love a person.
24. My future plans.
25. One of my internal conflicts.
26. What I'm doing tomorrow.
27. My life's aspirations.
28. My most embarrassing moment.
29. Two of my insecurities.
30. What I would do if I won the lottery.
31. What I love most about myself.
32. My biggest pet peeves.
33. What musical artists I've seen live.
34. How many kids I would like to have.
35. My idea of a perfect date.
36. What I'm really excellent at.
37. My most traumatic experience.
38. Where I would like to live.
39. The nicest thing anyone's ever said to me.
40. Whether I like where I live now.
41. What I can hear right now.
42. My relationship with my siblings.
43. What's currently worrying me the most.
44. Something I've repeatedly wished for.
45. My relationship with my parents.
46. What I dislike most about myself.

Balm of Renunciation; or, Why Yun is My Role Model

melengro — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 20:28:02 GMT

Watching Simoun, one of the characters one will come across is Yun, who among most people who have seen the show seems to engender a tremendous amount of affection and respect. It's interesting that this should be the case for a character who was created essentially to plug a gap in a minor aspect of the plot of an early episode and ended up with a storyline most of which was intended for somebody else (which is lucky, since if Rodoreamon had in fact ended up with what became Yun's storyline as well as what became her own she probably would have to an extent dominated the show). It's especially interesting for a person whose decision-making process, one of the things that people seem to admire the most about her, is so removed from normal modern Western secular sane-person standards.

People have referred to Yun as deontologically inclined, which makes a certain degree of sense; she definitely believes in absolute moral laws and attempts to act accordingly, and spends a lot of the show in the classic deontological despair of conflicting absolutes (pacifism versus remembrance of and respect for the dead). The problem is that while it may correlate closely to this, formal deontological conceptions are almost certainly not why Yun cares. If one asked Yun (and Yun is smart, probably the smartest character in the show other than Dominura and maybe Limone when she's older) she would probably articulate some form of Divine-command morality and describe her watchword as whatever equivalent her religion has of the Christian concept of 'grace' (and there is very obviously an equivalent there that informs what she does).

This becomes deontological in practise, because Yun unlike many of the other characters is entirely willing and indeed eager to take her faith's strictures seriously and follow them to their end points, regardless of convenience. It is meet and right to pay respects to those who died in the service of God, so she opposes what she sees as the desecration of the corpse of a religious suicide bomber from an enemy country. Even so, even if one can forgive and pay respects to the people involved, violence, battle, and murder are always wrong, so her ideal end for the war in which she is fighting in order to pay respects to her dead friends does not involve her own happiness--indeed, it involves her death, which she sees as the only natural or acceptable outcome. She believes so strongly in her religion's eschatological concept, the Eternal Maiden, that when she happens upon a person who has tried to embody the Eternal Maiden, failed, and undergone severe punishment for it, she completely accepts her, completely forgives her, and tells her that she is beautiful before taking on that role for herself. Not even the existing fact that this eschaton has fallen and pursuing it in this particular way (other characters pursue the same ideal with greater success) leads to theoretically endless suffering will prevent Yun from admiring, loving, and wanting to save and forgive and free a person who has striven for what she believes is the right end to the world.

To an extent there are elements of conscious performance in Yun's behaviour: It's more than possible that she sees herself not so much as an agent as an instrument by which an Agent works in the world. Divine commands for her work on a partially reciprocal basis: Yearning for death as the natural end of remembering the already-dead, taking on the liminal role of the failed, 'stuck' Eternal Maiden as appropriation of her predecessor's failure, accepting the proprietorship of the relics of a transcendent martyr to symbolise the incompleteness and loneliness of her own martyrhood and to accept a role as a bridge between the world or the real (Rodoreamon, who is still alive and takes a position of what seems to be political power--interestingly, this is technically under Yun, though I cannot imagine Yun being particularly active as a temporal theocrat) and the otherworld or the superreal (Mamiina, and the braid that seems to dissolve into or fuse with the sacred water and light of the Blue Spring). It is undeniable that to an extent, in some ways a very great one, Yun is a fanatic and, indeed, a fundamentalist--but she knows exactly what faith, horrific and necessary, demands of her, in her complete lack of complacency with herself. She tries for quite some time to put up a complete cordon sanitaire between herself and the world, which she is most comfortable dealing with in the abstract. Even her grammar is deliberately rough and shocking. In the end this falls. Since she is able to do the will of her God and change the world even if only in small ways (see icon keyword), she finally finds a place where she can be.

For the truly faithful, for the truly fanatical in the sense of carrying Divine love into the world regardless of the cost or situation, that's balm of Gilead enough for a renewed eternity of aching.

Question for those of you who have seen Simoun

melengro — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 01:17:51 GMT

Should I do Yun meta?

melengro — Sat, 12 Nov 2011 21:33:16 GMT

Here is a meme!

Give me the most inaccurate description of me you can think of

melengro — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:26:50 GMT

In honour of All Hallow's Eve, I'm inviting trick-or-treaters to my 'door.' Comment "trick-or-treat" to this post and...well, you know the drill. Treats can be anything that strikes my fancy (pics of fave actors or pairings, one sentence fics, graphics, a few words why I'm glad to have you on my flist, etc. etc.). The more "houses" to visit the more fun it'll be, so go ahead, open your journal and help spread the fun!

FIRST SNOW

melengro — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 00:25:32 GMT

I love living here.