Asphodel has started a thread at the Mirage forum for volume 10 discussion, and I thought I'd crosspost my random thoughts here too, as I reread this volume for the first time in years. Asphodel is currently doing an amazing job re-translating it, but I'm a little ahead of her translation and rereading the earlier version by Tasha Poisonous, who ( Read more... )

(Light spoilers for Banana Fish)

I love a lot of things about the manga Banana Fish, and one of them is the fact that it's set in the USA. I particularly enjoy that the character of Ash, like me, is white American. The reason is basically this: a character like Ash helps me spring free of imaginative false dichotomy between American Exceptionalist ( Read more... )

This is ramble (okay, rant) about why I may be responding as I am to Wonder Woman: 1984 (liked it okay) and Discovery, especially S3 (kind of hate it). I am socially on the left but increasingly find my responses to pop culture out of step with some of the more prominent left-leaning responses. To wit, Wonder Woman is being panned and most of the ( Read more... )

Though I am not overall a fan of Discovery, I do wholeheartedly give S2 credit for reintroducing Pike's Enterprise into the ST universe and ultimately getting it greenlighted for its own spinoff. Thanks to COVID, Strange New Worlds is progressing slowly, so I may be jumping the gun by a few years, but I find myself hoping that the end of that ( Read more... )

For my July author newsletter, I've given up trying to be cool and am embracing the voices in my head, which means-what else?-I'm going to write about Blake's 7 and why it's finally time for a reboot! [Newsletter essay posted here.] For the uninitiated, Blake's 7 is a 1970s BBC space opera about a band of freedom fighters striving to overthrow the ( Read more... )

I saw Joker the other day and have to offer some scattered thoughts on it. The bottom line: I loved it and think it is probably the best DC movie ever-but many have a very different view, which I want to haphazardly unpack ( Read more... )

Behind the cut is a response to the very interesting reviews and discussion thread on the new Banana Fish anime at Anime Feminist ( Read more... )

My thinky thoughts inspired by the first two Mirage of Blaze stage plays continue, and in this post I want to talk principally about the construction of Kagetora's emotional-sexual needs as informed by the context of the plays. More general thoughts/review are here.

Mirage SPOILERS follow:( Read more... )

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It's interesting to read different responses to The Force Awaken's discourse on the Light and Dark Sides of the Force.* Many voice sympathy for the Dark Side, sometimes critiquing the Jedi for being too rigid and dogmatic. But while the Jedi are not perfect, I agree with them that the Dark Side as a bad option. Being Force sensitive is dangerous ( Read more... )