The Garden of Discordia

I have reached the weak-but-bored staged of my illness. So it may be a good thing that I don't have any lighters in the house.

( Shiny Youtube embed below the cut )

Or a blender >D

After all, it is a truth universally acknowledged, that a science geek in possession of common household appliances must be in constant temptation to blow them up.

ETA:
( Although I think even McGuyver would wear gloves before he tried this... )

But it's like I always say - you can't stop people from making explosives at home, because it's darn easy to blow shit up. The best you can do is make them unable to buy stable, "aimable" explosives in the supermarket

Ill.

The vague discomfort from yesterday has bloomed out into full cold. Sore throath, pain in the ears and I have no bloody time to be home sick.

Bah!

Today I'll have to send in my paper to my supervisor and on Friday we'll have the last meeting. Then I had better be pretty much done, because by next Tuesday I'll have to hand it in ^_^;

It's going well, but I've only half a page left and haven't done the summary. At all. I've trimmed away a lot of half-finished thoughts that didn't go anywhere (it used to be three pages over and I've added more meat to my main points) and I'll try to do it again, because I really don't know what to cut out completely. There are hopefully a few redundant descriptions and event summaries that take up a lot of place hidden somewhere in those pages...

But it's really fun. Except the computer room is bloody freezing and I forgot my sweater *shivers*

I'd seen some rather lackluster murmurings about this latest episode, but even if some things did feel a bit rehashed, I thought it was an entertaining episode. Not as captivating as the opening, nor as brilliant as The Doctor's Wife, but good. Just right for a late Sunday evening viewing before I go to bed ^^

My univeristy library has a lovely system which sends out mails approx 2 days before you need to return a book (and then you get increasingly stern mails that you should Really Return That Book, NOW PLEASE, once the date has passed). For some reason it's called millenium, so I have a bunch of mails from "millenium". It feels a bit like being in contact with a Dan Brown novel

Anyway! I borrowed a whole bunch of books for my paper and have re-loaned all the ones I'm still working with. However, since there is absolutely no room for anything more in the paper as it is and I have no time at all to read them, I am returning Maria Nikolajeva's books about the structure of childrens literature. I managed to read her first one - Barnbokens byggklossar (The Building Blocks of Children's Books) before the essay writing began, since it was included in the reading suggestion list for the essay course. It was really good! I've also got "Power, Voice and Subjectivity in Literature for Young Readers" here, but I'm gonna return it unread and hope to pick it up later some day.

She uses narrativism to pick apart and analyze the structure in children's literature. It interested me, because it's a much better approach to studing manga than many other lit science entrances I've seen - not as good as actual, y'know, mangastudies but there is still a lack of a good "comic analysiz + story tropes + solid step-by-step analysis - Orientalist exoticism = GOOD FRAME FOR MANGA ANALYSES" book. What I like about using a structure such as Nikolajeva's children's focused narrativism, is that you can get to grips with the text as such, and (I hope) not get tangled up in Western perceptions of Japanese culture. I am, anyway, more interested in How Manga Reads Here than But What Does it Mean There? At least when it comes to trying to do any work of my own, I loved Kinsella's study of the Japanese publishing industry in Adult Manga. But hey, I'm in lit science, not sociology plus I don't speak Japanese - it's not like attempting to update her study will ever be anything that I can or should do :)

Anyway! Nikolajeva: Easy to follow, very structured, I haven't actually tried to apply any of her stuff, but it seemed nice and comprehensible.

This, and the intimatopia idea put forward by Elizabeth Woledge are both tools/theories that really ring true to certain experiences I've had as a fandom-focused reader, writer and all-around participant.

So the illustrated BLYG poster is done and the girls did a really good job. It's the Raison d'être mascot, Rai-chan, and (I think) Geikai's mascot (dunno hir name, unfortunately) locked in a ~blushing embrace~ while the BLYG mascot fangirls them. If that squid is a girl, I have certain doubts ^^;



And now I gotta drink my tea and get back to work...

( Cut for Youtubeness and sexy blue boxes! )

What I don't quite get is if it's official or fanmade? Very neat, anyway ^^

Why am I even awake at the ridiculous hour of 09:43 (and I got up at 08:27 what is wrong with my life). Especially considering that I've slept an average of five hours a night these last days? Right, because stress makes you distracted and you managed to lock yourself out of your apartment and had to go from lanjelin's to the parents. Preferably before they leave for the airport and you can't get in there either...

Moving on!

First I shall have to cut for ( incoherent and Doctor Who spoilerish squee )

Then Eurovision, which we just caught the tail-end of. Third place, go us!* Victory for Azerbadjan, most heartfelt congratulations <3 I really know nothing of that country, so I hope I'll learn a bit (even if it's bound to be very fluffy) when the media spotlight goes to them next year. And the winning artists looked so damn happy that was very sweet.
But I thought the male commenter for SVT made a rather grumpy comment just at the end (can't recall the exact wording now). "Ogin" is the word in Swedish I think of which I just felt was uncalled for. They won, look at them being all teary with joy, and at least little ego-boy Sade brought us a third place (so please stop sending pale blond slips of women without scene presence it won't work. And, as good as our opera singer could sing, a Eurovision winner needs a refrain you can hum along with which her song did not contain)

* In Sweden, Eurovision is very srz bznz

We also had an epic planning, scheduling and brainstorming session for BLYG yesterday, that might deserve a post of its own. We've got a pretty packed con, if I may say so myself and there's like 2 areas which we haven't added any info on yet *_*

Oh, right, and I fixed stuff for the apartment with my future tenants. And also got some much-needed cleaning done, yayness

In conclusion: The intense and lovely SPX weekend was followed by a most dismal and week I wish wouldn't have existed - on all levels, really. Fails heaping up with organizing stuff, lack of time and energy to study, family drama and even work sucked in more ways than one. And now, spiffy weekend again. Since it's a bit more low-key than last week, that makes me hope that if the pattern holds, any potential suck of the comming work week will also be less intense. Please?

Written 7 pages today for the paper. Most of it is very, very rough and the footnotes are a bit of a mess. But it's still a lot and I got in the bulk of the girl/shôjo background I wanted plus the first draft of the series summary. Which leaves the big bulk of the hero background and the analysiz, but I'm trying to be positive here.

I also found a good scan of the gorgeous transformation sequence image that Takeuchi drew in the first artbook, which I'll use on the front page. So no need for me to scan my artbook, yayness!

Also had great use of an article unjapanologist linked me to, Young Females as Super Heroes: Superheroines in the Animated Sailor Moon because it defines a bunch of things so that I don't have to. It is, however, riddled with fact errors about the Sailor Moon canon. For instance, even with all the cutting up that the NA edition of the anime received, I am fairly certain that Haruka and Michiru turn up in the third season, not the second. I'm also sceptical to the claim that Usagi is called Serena Moon in the dub, can't recall that.... Oh well. Another of my sources, Hourihan's "Deconstructing the hero" is also full of a bunch of small, weird things. Like calling the Doctor "Dr Who" in one place, and claiming that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a good example of a non-patriarchal hero for children (wtf??). And yes, I will try to make note of this somewhere in my footnotes >_>

The title pretty much sums up this exhausting and wonderful weekend. For The Win - spring has come with wonderfully sunny days and it's like the entire city woke up bubbling with creative glee

Yesterday, after SPX, I was at a dinner with Lisa, alitna, Stef and a bunch of other people - several of whom I have heard for years, but never actually met. Ah, the famous and elusive artists ;) We went to Pong, which was really epically tasty I have to go back there because I ate until I thought I'd explode

This morning I draaa~aagged myself out of bed to go visit the build site for Citybanan. This will be the new solution for Stockholm's commuter trains, which today have to pass a spot with only two rails (!) which, incidentally, every train from the Southern part of the country has to cross to enter Stockholm. Yeeeah, when there's a delay on our commuter trains, they have to hold stuff in Malmö, it's insane.

But! With Citybanan the commuter trains get their own rails in their own tunnel. And it's a big one, 6 km underground passing beneath one of the city's oldest churches and lake Mälaren. It was interesting to go down in the tunnels and watch the huge machines. They explain how they remove the mountain without disturbing the buildings on the surface, showed where how the explosivs are placed and where the tunnel segments that will go under the lake will connect.

The only process is that it won't be finished until 2017 and we kind of needed more tracks ten years ago...

Then I went back for a last round at SPX - which frankly deserves a post of its own when I'm less dead. Now I have no moniez :o

Also got some really, REALLY good news for BLYG: The ticket system is finally ready to go! Tickets will go on sale in a few days and we also got a confirmation from one of the bands: The Swedish Shortsnouts will play at the con! This'll be the first time a wizrock band plays at an anime convention in Sweden afaik and I think and hope that it'll be a pleasant experience for everyone ^^