Wis[s]e Words – Page 56 – Ceci N'est pas Un Blog

Globalhead — Bruce Sterling

Published on June 9, 2021Leave a comment

Cover of Globalhead

Globalhead
Bruce Sterling
339 pages
published in 1992

Good science fiction doesn’t predict the future; it allows the future to recognise itself in it. Globalhead is drenched in the zeitgeist of Post-Reagan America, yet occasionally there’s a glimpse of the far flung future of 2021 to be recognised. AIDS virus based RNA wonder drugs as the gimmick in its very first story, foreshadowing the very real mRNA Covid-19 vaccine I got just weeks ago. A character called Sayyid Qutb in “We See Things Differently” provides another mild shock. These glimpses of a still to be born future are jarring considering the stories in here are barely if at all science fiction, more slipstream perhaps, a term Sterling popularised at the time these stories were written. The most recognisable sfnal story here is “The Unthinkable”, a Chtuthlu Mythos inspired Cold War riff on Poul Anderson’s Operation Chaos, itself an inspiration for Charlie Stross’ “A Colder War”.

What to make of the Bruce Sterling as seen in this collection? Best known at this time as the second half of “William Gibson andd…”, one of the “fathers of Cyberpunk”. As an editor he had created the anthology that would pin down and solidify the genre, as well as its main propaganda zine. As a writer, his version of cyberpunk took a very different road from the post-Gibson consensus he himself had helped establish. As a non-fiction author, his cyberpunk interests would lead him to write a book — published the same year as this collection — about the early hacker movement(s), the development of the early internet and how the law responded to it. But little is visible of this cyberpunk guru in this collection. No jamming with console cowboys in cyberspace; a bit of low tech phone phreaking for quarters is as cyber as it gets.

How to change the oil on your Super Cub: an anime tutorial

Published on April 28, 2021Leave a comment

“So what was episode four of Super Cub about?”

“Well, Komagu got herself a part time job couriering documents between her school and another one in a different town and we spent most of the episode watching her ride her Super Cub between the two. At one point she got caught in the rain and had to buy a raincoat that cost her a day and a half of salary, roughly. Oh, and she learned to change the oil on her bike”:

Gods I love this series. Twentytwo minutes of the most mundane shit possible, sold entirely through body acting and animation. It’s not even particularly spectacular animation that’s on display here, just solid craft. Nothing that makes your eyes go pop if you’d watch it on a monitor at an anime con, but when you give it a chance an episode is over before you notice. If you like Yuru Camp, you’ll love this.

Your Happening World (Too many anime tabs open)

Published on April 23, 2021Leave a comment

Ever have too many tabs open with interesting links you “want to do something with” but never get around to? No, me neither.

Maxy Bee vibe checks manga magazines
What follows is a thread vaguely defining as many manga magazines as I can, for reasons. This is not scientific, just a “putting names to faces” thing.
The Old Soul of Tsukikage Ran, or how to review an older, not very memorable series
Thing is that Tsukikage Ran, while good, isn’t particularly good. In fact, it’s one of the most average shows I’ve seen in long while. There are definitely aspects of it I like, such as the series following two independent women of varying degrees of goofy, but looking at it as a whole, I have a few issues, and the biggest is that this is a show clearly made from an Old Japanese Man perspective.
Yuri made me human, an interview with Iori Miyazawa, author of Otherside Picnic
The author lowers her arm into the water tank, the octopus approaches her. The author’s monologue goes on top of it, but the octopus can taste her with her suction pads, and since female octopuses, like humans, possess estrogen, she says “It is possible that this octopus, in fact, knows I am a female”. She then adds, “her embrace is an experience unlike any contact with a human”, and so on — her immense feelings are flowing onto the pages.
Yuri made me human part 2, featuring Gengen Kusano mentioned in part 1
That’s right. Like when you read a sentence in a book and logically assume that “there must be a feeling of sadness here”, you see someone’s facial expression and logically interpret it as “there must be a feeling of sadness here”. In “Weak Yuri” taken to the utmost extreme, in “Radical Weak Yuri”, even the relationships between real people become imaginary. Basically, the extremes of both “Strong Yuri” and “Weak Yuri” places real beings and fictional beings on the same ontological level. The Ouroboros comes full circle.
Red Hair in a Global World: Michael B. Pass looks at the Japanese fascination with Anne of Green Gables
Today, Japan’s fascination with Anne and the Island is an unremarkable and long-accepted fact; rarely does a tourist season go by without at least one Canadian newspaper commenting on and seeking to explain the now ubiquitous phenomenon.
40 Seasons in 40 Weeks
Veteran anime blogger Scamps did a forty post decade overview of the 2010s in 2019, which means I got this tab open for over two years now.

Also, some new (to me) blogs I’ve added to the blogroll:

Full Frontal
Full Frontal is a temple devoted to passion. Created by a team of devoted fans we want to share our love for animation, manga and other subcultures and reach people’s hearts. You will be able to find chronics, analysis, interviews, and translations striving to understand the big picture of otaku culture as a social phenomenon.
Animétudes
This blog came out of my need, as a fan, to talk about anime, and to understand it better. I hope that my writing can relay at least some of this understanding and love for the medium of animation that I love so much.

Risu: “I’m still okay” knock knock “I’m not okay” — Hololive showcase

Published on April 22, 2021Leave a comment

Posted because I fell from my chair, laughing when I watched this earlier today. What happened when squirrel girl Risu stole mamah Moona’s piggy bank to count the coins in it:

It’s fairly normal for popular media franchise to be exported from Japan to other Asian countries, establishing branches there. And while Hololive’s foray into China wasn’t succesful, it was a logical move considering the potential size of the vtuber market there. Much more unexdpected was the establishment of an Indonesian branch, rather than say a Korean one. Ayunda Risu is one of the three first generation Indonesian Hololivers and she’s just as she appears here, a mischievous squirrel. Her generation mates are Moona Hoshinova, whose piggy bank she stole and Airani Iofifteen, heard late in the video offering seasoning to Moona to make squirrel satah. The first generation of Indonesian Hololivers all live together you see, with Moona being the mother and Iofi the father and Risu as their unruly child. A setup that works well, producing hilarious videos like this. What also makes HoloID stand is that before the English language branch of Hololive was established, these three were the sole Hololivers regularly streaming in English, often doing trilingual streams even, using Japanese, English and Bahasa Indonesia.

Clip created by Holoclip.

He’s only shit and soil now like anybody else

Published on April 10, 2021Leave a comment

It turns out disgust at enforced mourning is something of a British tradition:

If the mass hysteria about the death of the nation’s racist grandpa is this bad already, imagine what happens when Beth pops her clogs. Eight days of mourning, BBC with wall to wall coverage on both BBC One and Two, the shutting down of BBC Four yesterday, all the pious assholes who couldn’t say anything as covid racked up 150,000 deaths due to Tory complacency now scolding anyone not in the mood to mourn… All the things that the British public was accused of after Diana died, now enforced by the government, the media and an army of finger wagging neighbour watch types on Twitter and Facebook.

But in the end nobody cares but the sort of royalist simp who thinks it’s understandable to be worried about the colour your grandchild will be born with.