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countess_caine
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Interests: Musicals, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, The Dalemark Quartet, Jane Austen, The Tortall Series, Fanfiction, Manga, Acting
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Member Since:
11/24/2005
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| Ever had one of those days when you just don't feel like doing anything?
I've been having a whole week of this. I just can't seem to get the energy to really do any school work. Yes. It is Spring Break, and yes, I am supposed to be relaxing. But I just don't seem to be doing anything. It kind of worries me how I've been doubting myself a lot recently. I really have no clue what I want to do with my life, and I can't help but feel depressed. I feel confused and lonely. What is out there waiting for me? What can I do?
I've recently become interested in editing. And by editing, I mean reading something and helping somebody to work out ideas. Who knows, maybe I should check out if I can somehow get work at a Manga company or something. I think that they could use somebody like me on the team. I'm very good at catching things that don't make sense. I actually think that that would be a lot of fun. But I'm still interested in acting. I'm at a crossroads right now. I don't know where I want to go. I know that when I step on stage, I become a different person, I'm at home there. But I really want to continue studying English, and the Acting program at UVic is not only hard to get into, but also very time consuming. And there are other subjects that I am interested in taking, like Physicology. I like figuring out how people's heads work.
Argh. I just want to scream at the top of my lungs. I feel so lost right now. I don't know which way I'm supposed to go, or anything . . . well, that sandwich in the fridge looks rather tasty right now.
Remember Countess . . . one foot in front of the other. | | |
| I came to realization this week that I only have two more weeks of school left, and four papers due. Needless to say, I had a panic attack in my English class. It was kind of cool. Anyway, I spent all yesterday writing an eight page paper, and I still feel exhausted. But I must push myself to finish another one today. Sigh. I just feel so tired and I don't want to do anything. I know that I just have to keep pushing myself through all the work, but I just feel so exhausted, and I really have to draw up a lot of energy just to do the tasks set before me. I don't even have a lot of energy for cooking, and I need to cook to keep myself alive and what all. Oh well, I shall relax during Christmas, and that shall keep me happy.
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| So, after a nice relaxing (?) reading break, in which I read my many mangas, I discovered something very interesting. Now, I am a shoujo manga fan, always have been, and likely always will be as long as I can find good stories that I'm comfortable with. And something that all these series deal with is love. Love. A beautiful, yet deadly emotion. A lot of the time when reading Shoujo manga, one of my biggest concerns about whether I will continue to collect a series or not is whether or not a relationship is depicated as realistic, or should I say believeable? Now, I will admit that I am a sucker for happy endings, but I'm fine with the bittersweet endings as well (although I often find that I have to console myself with chocolate afterwards) what really matters to me, is that while I'm reading I'm not filled with disgust at the behavior of one of the characters because of their love for another character. A prime example of this is the behavior of Nana/Hachi from the hit series Nana. I have a lot of trouble sympathizing with her character, as it seems to me that it isn't so much that she wants someone to love, but she wants to be in love - like she's craving the emotion, rather than the actual person and responsibilites that come along with that emotion. Now, this is just my own opinion, I am not trying to bash "Nana", I actually quite like the other Nana, I'm just saying that I have a lot of problems with Nana/Hachi, and her mindset about love. Anyway, enough about Nana, what I would like to talk about is some of the best studies of love that I have seen in my reading experience.
Fruits Basket: Now love can take many different types of forms. There is the love you bear to your friends, your family, and to your lover. There is requited love and there is unrequited love. Fruits Basket explores them all. The story centers around a young girl named Tohru Honda, who has recently been orphaned after her mother dies in a car crash, and the Sohma family, or rather fourteen members of the Sohma family - the cursed ones. Basically, the curse is that each of these fourteen members of the Sohma family represents a member of the Japenese Zodiac animals, and if they are embraced by a member of the opposite sex, they turn into that animal. This makes relationships - of any kind - very hard to have. This manga explores the many different types of love: the love between parents and children is explored, as well as the love between friends. And don't forget lovers. And it also explores the negative affects that love can have. We have one woman who becomes mentally ill after the death of her husband. We have children who grow up feeling that they can never be good enough to please their parents. We have unrequited love. And it is all these different relationships that are explored that makes this manga the success that it is. It's not just about the romance, it's about lengths that people will go to in order to bring about the happiness of those that they love. Reading it is a really good experience, as not only does it have wonderful characters, but it is also a wonderful character study.
Kare Kano follows the journey of a grade ten student as she discovers herself, and comes into her own over the course of 21 novels. Yukino is a complete study-a-holic who is obsessed with perfection, as she believes that this is the path to securing her happiness in life. However, after meeting her first "threat": Arima, Yukino quickly finds out that the way she's been going about is not going to give her happiness. As the series follows, the reader is able to watch as Yukino expands her world by pursuing friendships, and her own romance with Arima (who she adventually winds up marrying). What I really enjoyed here, was how love inspired Yukino to keep trying to expand her world, and push her limits in an effort not only to be worthy of everyone else's love, but also to come to love herself as well. What I also liked was the fact that Yukino's love also helped Arima to grow as well. Later on in the series, he comes into contact with his birth mother, who is a vile woman hoping to cash in on her son's success. It was really nice to see how knowing that Yukino loved him helped Arima during this critical point of his life.
Bleach: This is another great manga. While it is a Shounen manga, it does a great job exploring relationships. The main focus of the series is Ichigo, a fifteen year old high school student, and Rukia, the something year old girl who lives in his closet. Okay, Rukia is actually a Shinigami - a god of death - who in an attempt to save Ichigo and his family's lives gave Ichigo her power to defeat a Hollow (a spirit that had gone crazy and was now hunting other spirits). Unfortunately for the two of them, Ichigo ended up taking all of her power, leaving Rukia almost helpless. So, naturally she moved into his closet without so much as a "by your leave", started going to his school, and forces him to do her job in his place. It's great watching their relationship grow into an unbreakable bond, a bond that would have them racing off to the ends of the world for each other. The pacing of this relationship isn't hurried either, but is taken nice and slow so that we are actually able to see this relationship develop - but as to what type of relationship it is, it appears that not even Rukia or Ichigo know. Although that is not the only type of relationship explored here, like in Fruits Basket, a whole range of relationships are looked at and it makes for a really enjoyable read. However, there is one relationship that I'm kind of unsure of at this point, and that concerns Orihime and her one sided love for Ichigo. A classmate, Orihime has had a crush on Ichigo for the longest time, and while this was rather cute and enduring in the beginning, I have lately found it rather distrubing, as it seems that this crush has now become the focus of Orihime's whole world. While I didn't mind this at first, because this crush also served as a motivator for Orihime to get stronger and work towards being useful to the others, lately it seems to becoming an unhealthy obsession, and in my mind, more like hero worship than actual love. And it appears that Orihime is losing focus on all the other relationships in her life because of this unacted upon crush she has on Ichigo, and I find this to be really unhealthy behavior. I enjoy Orihime from the beginning chapters and also during the Soul Society arc, but recently, I find it rather concerning this new attitude that is emerging from her, and I hope that she will be able to get over Ichigo soon, because this is not healthy behavior. I sympathize with the girl, and I believe that her crush has helped her to grow in a number of ways, but it now appears to be hindering her, and I think that it would be best for her if she gets over this crush soon. It might not make her happy at first, but in the end, I think that it will be good for her. I suppose that I feel so sympathetic to her character right now, because my own little sister is currently trying to get over her own broken heart after finding out that the guy she likes has a girlfriend.
These are just some series, but there are many more, and I find all of these interputations really interesting. Yea for love! | | |
| So, I have finally gotten off of my lazy bum to inform all of my loyal minions that I am alive and well . . . with my latest rant. Woot.
So, recently I've started reading a new manga series called Bleach. It is the most wonderful thing ever with a great story filled with just the right amount of humour, drama, action, and romance. It's such a nice change from a lot of the Shoujo manga out there recently. Not that I don't love a lot of the Shoujo titles out there, but a lot of the time I find that I can't stomach a series where the plot seems to focus solely on the romance. A good example of this is Nana, one of the more popular Shoujo titles right now. Now, I'm not saying that Nana isn't a good story - it is very well written, and there are some characters that I really like - but, at times it seems too much like a soap opera to me, and one of the main characters really bothers me. Nana, or Hacchi (her nickname) is completely obsessed with finding a boyfriend, and when I say obsessed - I mean obsessed. And to her, it really doesn't matter who the guy is, as long as she ends up in a relationship. I was rather disgusted when I finished reading the latest chapter, in which Nana determines that her one crush is no longer in her reach, and immediately ponders pursuing a relationship with another guy, only in the end, to start pursuing another guy entirely. I was rather shocked at how flighty Nana was presented, and just how overall horrified that she believed that all of her problems would be solved if she was in a romantic relationship. Which leads me to the point of my rant. What the hell is up with these female characters who NEED to have a boyfriend in order to be happy? It's really disconcerting how many of these characters I've managed to find recently in different media. Percy, you probably remember that time that we ranted about Rogue from the X men movie canon, and about how she got rid of her powers in order to keep the boy; and we were both baffled. What had happened to the kickass woman from the comics and Evo, who accepted that her powers were a part of her, and refused to let them stop her from pursuing a romantic relationship? And who was this new person, who would throw everything away in order to keep a guy, who for all accounts and purposes, was not faithful to her. It's a very scary message that is being convied here, and one I definitely would not want my little sister and her friends to take seriously.
Where are all the strong female characters that girls should be able to turn to? Now, normally, I would have no problem with saying: "X men, hands down.", however, recently the X men comics have been really relationship based. For example, the dreaded "Fox Saga", I still haven't finished bleaching my brain of that one. And it wasn't only because of the whole "Mystique decides to seduce her daughter's boyfriend" thing, but rather, I really did not like how Rogue was written in this arc, and in the following ones. Her powers, which had never been a problem before, were suddenly even worse than Apocalsype. I had a lot of trouble matching this image of Rogue with the strong woman that I have followed through earlier comics. I thank the Lord Above that in the really recent comics that they have now brought in writers who are able to show Rogue as I have always seen her - a woman who can stand up on her own, and kick ass.
But finding such female characters seem harder and harder to do these days, and instead, we seem to be getting more characters like Nana, who can't survive if they don't have a big strong male taking care of them. | | |
| So, I had a pretty weird and rotten day today. I didn't get much sleep last night, because I was plagued down by nightmare after nightmare (and I didn't even eat any pickles with ice cream before going to bed), so I woke up at 6am, and went to school, where during my first class my eyelids snapped shut and refused to open again for about the rest of that class. Of course than I went to my theatre history class which was a lot of fun seeing as how I got to play a harpy. And then I went to go study for a test that I had later on, and I feel a sleep on my textbook, and it was only by an extreme force of will that I managed to wake up. I managed to get through the rest of the day without killing myself. But as soon as I got home, I woke up, and now I can't get to sleep. Oh well, I'll just sleep in for some of tomorrow, before writing my essay. Bah! I also have to go grocery shopping too.
In other news though, I plan to publish the next part of my hot guys series, except that this time it will be Hot Boys in Comics, and I can think of a number of them. *Purrs* Oh Summers brothers, you are indeed hot. I wish that you all weren't taken. It would make me so happy.
Also, I was randomly flipping through channels and I came across this one where this girl was showing off her manga collection. And she had the biggest damn manga collection that I have ever seen. And all I could think was: "Lucky. I wish I had that kind of money, and a really good comic book store." Alas, I shall keep reaching for that unreachable star, and maybe someday I too will have a library filled with manga that will go right next to my library of literary novels. Hey, a girl can dream. | | |
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