I dream of...sessha?

State of mind: giggly
Current soundtrack: Playlist name - series - song title (artist)

This is the post that finally convinced me to get up offa my tail and find out how to make an, um, LJ cut, if you will. If you weren't convinced I was crazy before, you probably will be at the end of this post. So, if you'd like to keep your impressions of me as a merely SEMI-crazy cynical-cum-romantic fangirl of weird things (phew, quite the mouthful), it might help to stop reading riiiight here. You've been warned.

OK, now that THAT's over with...you know, most women will have their mancrushes. Some people like THIS type and some people like THIS type and some people even go for THIS type. (Personally, I like this one.) Where was I getting to? Oh yeah. So, women. Mancrushes. Some have multiple. One of mine happens to be a noble-hearted martial arts master who's upright in nature and pretty good with children. He pulled himself up out of poverty (...somewhat?) and is sometimes a little silly. But most of the time, he's a deep and serious teacher who cares very much about all his students/disciples.

VERY unfortunately, if you haven't caught on yet, he also happens to be a) 2-dimensional and c) not exactly human.

This is Dyna-shihan (first and one of the last appearances in Ultra Ninja Manual)

YES, I likes me a piece of Dyna-shihan, and it is partly THIS man's fault.

Who, sessha?

Yeah, you. You, Himura Kenshin, with your bleedin' split personality. They think you're all sessha and obliviousness and sweettalk—next thing you know, shit goes down and out comes the ore, Hitokiri Battousai who plays nice no more. Stupid rockin' sexy Rurouni Kenshin. *grumbles half-heartedly*

Thing is, once I got the concepts of sessha and ore down pat, it was pretty hot. I liked the idea of a sweet, kind soul who would turn deadly and prove his true mettle if someone important to him was threatened. The torture and the angst and the bittersweetness preceding that, I didn't enjoy so much, but still. Granted, I didn't watch a lot of said torture and angst; I got that much from a senior of mine, and she'll clout me about the head if I mess this explanation up somehow. XD

And then, around the time I was 15, along comes this nice piece of work called Ultra Ninja Manual: Kotobuki.

Actually this is from UNM Ultra, but you have to admit, those are some mighty hot arms. :3

Ultraman luff: check.
Pre-existing Dyna fannage: check.
Martial arts fannage: check.
Feudal Japan fannage: check.
Mysterious angsty past overcome: check.
Kicks butt with style: check.
Supremely honourable: check.
Soft spot for children: check. (Strange, seeing how I generally don't like kids much.)
Oh my lookit them *arms*: CHECK.
Dual sessha-ore pronoun user: CHECK CHECK CHECKITY *CHECKERENA*. I was sold.

For a few years this went on, with relatively silent squeeage, because I couldn't explain why I adored shihan the way I did. Maybe it was Kenshin-nostalgia. Maybe I wanted a protector. Maybe I just liked the guy. It was kind of hard to explain the delicacies of the sessha-ore archetype because OF COURSE I delve into the definition of this and the connotations of that, and it sputters to a graceless finish. The comparison to Kenshin is not very clear beyond that. RK is like a fine willow tree reaching the peak of its maturity. Shihan is like a great crabbed oak—although, mind you, one places him at being in his late 20s/mid-30s. I just went on fanning shihan and taking inordinate glee in documenting Japanese pronouns, converting a grand total of one person to that club. And then, today, two kindred spirits discovered each other.

Digression time again. There's a fansite out there, Japanese in nature, which does the most fantastic UM art. The webmaster keeps a blog, on which s/he expressed happiness in winkling out the pronouns Ultras ostensibly use (There's an SMS service in Japan that sends off monthly messages and OH GODS, DO WANT.). Anonymously, through webclap, I gush that 'omg, I love shihan and his ore-sessha duality' etc etc etc.

Lo and behold. Today the webmaster's blog was headed by a familiar-looking character. Clicking on the thumbnail with great anticipation, I let out a great whoop of joy when I saw shihan standing tall within the drawing, and a little squeefit on how adorable the character was. Oh help. Oh mercy. He has other fans. He lives. It is a truly great moment, to realise that you're not the only one who loves this silly old crabbed oak, that someone else is watering it with the same fervour that you do. (And again, I said as much through webclap.)

Hi/r shihan happens to be very easy on the eye, too. Mmhm. :D

Himura Kenshin's a sessha. Dyna's a sessha. Hell, SD Gundam 3 Kingdoms' Guan Yu is a sessha. These are all good and upright men, so what's not to like? Keep your ores and bokus, if only for now. In my heart, I will always hope that one day, a good sessha will appear in my little circle.

One can always hope. :) [+/-] Of archaic pronouns, hot aliens and unusual metaphors

私たちはもう 光の国に帰って参れぬ。

State of mind: gleeful
Current soundtrack: redballoon's Yuki no Tsubasa single

I had a dream where I went to a fantastic library. By fantastic, I mean there was a veritable final tome of Ultra information. Canon, noteable manga adaptions, stuff like that. Oddly enough, there was no mention of Ultra Ninja Manual.

The interesting part was that it showed some rather dubious backstory as to how Ultraman and Seven came to protect Earth. Showa canon dictates that Man kind of followed trouble down to our little blue home, and Seven apparently did something of similar ilk. (Why the heck was he poking around mountains, anyway?) On the other hand, we now have Man on the moon, sufficiently googlie-eyed upon beholding this new planet 'so beautiful...it could drop from the sky were one to not hold it up', and Seven heading down to Earth on Man's request. But oh, my friends, this read like a whackjob fanfiction. Man used to be a traffic cop on M78, and Seven was just...drunk a lot. But somehow they met, and gazing at the Earth from the moon, looming large and blue and misty, they thought as one 'Watashi-tachi wa mou...Hikari no Kuni ni kaette mairenu.'

It was sheer beauty. I had to look it up again (although as is wont with dreams, the content changed slightly). There it was, reversed white against the black, black blackness of space: 'We already...cannot return to the Land of Light'. It was not a matter of doing, but a matter of capability; transfixed by this planet, they could not leave more than they would not.

And then I woke up to battle my cold in a slightly dustier reality, sans that book. Goooods, I desire that book. There were several Scandalous Revelations I should have liked to read over.

That night I dreamt my teeth fell out.

In which there is reminiscence.

State of mind: drowsy
Current soundtrack: Ultra Kaijuu Ondo (Ishikawa Susumu)

My prayers, they have been answered! For the moment, I am in charge of the character design for the P.S. The Children internship program. What is is, well, I won't say just yet - but I think you'll find out soon. :) Also, I AM doing something visual with Helvetica for MMP - motion graphics or a short film, most likely, but it does afford me the opportunity to personify the fonts and all. Just imagine Miriam d'Cruz! Helvetica Foong! Arial Wong! Muhammad Zapfino! (While all of these are people I know at college, I doubt that they'd be too chuffed sticking their heads in boxes to act for a short film. Kekekeke.)

I love character design, having a few of my own personal favourites. Pen, for instance, that plucky little turtle which appeared in my first Flash animation project—one I'll be redoing for Graduation Campaign. Ninja Teabags appear quite often nowadays too, in times of randomness. One Arion has a special place in my heart, because he was one of the first really 'different' Ultras I tried my hands at, all green eyes and long limbs. Dark Eye (formerly called Scudwan, do not ask) is one of those I love to hate, along with the stubbly Huang Long general, Ran Seiryuu. There is always Hakugin and Shinku, the bondkeepers watching their charges from a distance. I hope a part of them resides in me somewhere, really. And then there's the more out of the way stuff like Black Colossus, with his evil prosthetics; Tobiron, who now has three origin stories to pick and choose from, depending on who you really wish him to be; Baiyouji, prince of the Western Ocean; Hoshi the Soulmistress/Tamasenshi/Kishu Megami, who was really an extension of what I wanted to become when I was much younger.*

The one that sneaks into my drawings most often, however, is Kamiza Maki, the androgynous white wolf shapeshifter from Kumamoto Higo. She started off as 18, which was hoary maturity to me then; she's 21 now, which I don't think is hoary maturity, just blind youth's final years. There's a scar on her neck I drew once and somehow stayed. Her hairstyle changed about five times and will probably change again. She likes Japanese dumplings and pears. She strikes out blindly. She's not tall, but graceful anyway, and deadly with a swastika sai in her hands. She's got a short fuse. She has a fatalistic inferiority complex thing going on. Her fangs and claws are sharp, when bared. There's probably a lot more of me in Maki than I'd care to admit.

...My point? What point? I love character design, drawing them out, giving them personalities and backgrounds, planting a scar here and a dead eye there, making them speak, giving them pronoun-patterns** and motivations and hearts and minds. I love telling their stories and intertwining bits of my own with them.

So thanks for passing down the job, chief! I'll do my best! * ^_^ *

In other news, I bought some makeup the other day, because Body Shop was having a sale. I'm quite pleased, and actually just waiting for an occasion to try some of it out...although I've already started wearing the Spirit of the Moonflower perfume oil, and it's not lasting as long as I thought it would. It DOES smell nice, though. Also, I took more pictures of the greenery outside Sunway Pyramid. While the flowers I last captured are all beginning to wilt, I caught some butterflies makling their rounds. I haven't seen these for a while, the ones with wings speckled and orange-dotted outside and iridescent blue inside.




*A self-insert Mary Sue, to use the technical term. XD Only one thing remains sure: Hoshi gives up her life in one final battle, far, far in the future when her host has lost the will to live. Her other exploits shall go unrecorded.

** Best explained with Rurouni Kenshin - normally uses sessha to refer to himself, resulting in the author's love for ALL sesshas in her fandoms, but as Battousai, refers to himself as ore.

In which one talks of many things.

State of mind: in pain
Current soundtrack: Whatever it is they're playing at the printer's (but bless Mr. William and his wireless connection!)

The world has decided to treat me quite nicely as of late. Ideas and concepts for Motion Graphics and MM Production have been approved without too much fuss and flurry, which is pleasing to say the least! Online Media 3 is still about the same, though. It's a very complicated situation. Suffice it to say the 'client' wants us to sell the product without revealing anything about it and there are two 'managers' who can't seem to agree on what they would like us to do. No wonder my group is 'ResLes'. Yes, I made up that name. I iz smurt.

...I don't think 'real' projects are like this, are they? D:

-

I have a penfriend in Japan, back from my school days. Online she's known as Delilah; she runs/used to run a fansite for Koumyou Sanzo. It's all kinds of cute, but now I can't even remember the URL. Or the site name. *swt* We haven't been keeping in touch for some time — my fault here, as preparing for the scholarship presentations and such last year took up a fair bit of time. I did, however, manage to send her a postcard last month just before the CNY hols, thanking her for her birthday wishes, filling her in on the situation here and apologising for the delay between replies.

Today the post came as I was looking out the upstairs window and I knew she'd written back. Would you believe I could pick her postcard ('tis almost always a postcard) right out from the pile of mail we'd received? Two floors down? In any case she congratulated me on the scholarship offer, included New Year's wishes and went on to reassure me that all was cool and everyone had busy times. She went on to add 'Besides...you and me are and will always be good friends after all.' Oh damn, she got me there. I hadn't written to her for so long and she had every right to think this fandom-based friendship was over, but it was like nothing had changed...except for the fact this time her postcard was really messy. ;) I hope she's doing OK. She's not the type to make so many spelling mistakes per postcard, my surname aside..I really must bring that up with her the next time I write.

One wishes one had or could make more friends like this, but in life sometimes you take what you get. Thanks Delilah-san, you're really, really something.
-

The ninth day of Chinese New Year (out of 15, for the non-local readers) is said to be the Jade Emperor's birthday. Hokkiens hold this day in highest regard, and on that day we hold certain prayers and rites (Pai Thnee Gong, which is how the papers like to spell it). Marion D'Cruz would have a right good laugh at me, but this is the one day I feel most Hokkien out of the year. The rest of the time I'm the polytheistic Buddhist banana who goes round bending paradigms. At midnight on the ninth day, I may be praying to Thnee Kong in English, but I'm holding those joss-sticks and folding the gold offerings with the rest of the women. It's kind of comforting, and some kind of anchor, if you like. And this year, I have a new phone, so I took some pictures (coming as soon). This I can do. This I can profile. This is my festival.


The preparations start a bit earlier, when the offerings are set up for the altar. Pineapples, plums, pomeloes, oranges and longan Usually my grandmother puts red paper cuttings on top of and below the stuff, but this year we went without. She is 80-something, and those are small scissors...maybe next year I'll take her place. At about 9-10 pm the altar gets prepared for the prayers, and the front is draped (sort of) with this cloth. It's a fairly interesting cloth, what with the lions and the brass studs and the 8 Immortals round the top edge.


This is what the altar looks like after we're all done praying.
Sometimes I forget halfway what I want to ask Thnee Gong and end up with long gaps of silence as I wave the joss-sticks, but it went all right this year. What did I ask for? SECRET.


Now comes the good part. We fold the gold! Every year my gran goes out and buys this special type of hell's money paper, which is stamped with gold leaf and has a stylised picture of the 3 Gods of Prosperity (Fu, Lu, Shou). She prefolds it into these triangles, and after we finish prayers, out comes the paper and the little plastic stools, and all the ladies sit outside in the night air folding up a big pile of gold as an extra, final offering to Thnee Gong. After this there are more sheafs of hell's money on top, folded to look like sheafs, there is a last confirmation of prayers before the altar and the pile of gold is set aflame.


People say that when you see the sparks going up and disappearing into the sky, it's a sign the offering of gold has reached Thnee Gong. Logic tells you it's just little sparks borne up on a hot wind, going out and floating down in the darkness, but then you remember the one year where the sparks did NOT go up properly and your grandmother broke her leg, your mother got stuck in a horrible job and your sports house lost horribly in the school sports. True story, this.


My belief system condones midnight snacking. When the last embers have burned out and everyone's done with flouting the rules against open burning *shifty eyes* some of the cakes come off the altar and go back into the house, where we cut them up and eat them. :D I assume it's kinda like eating birthday cake. All the bright red ones are ang koo or 'red turtles'; the pink one is huat kueh or 'prosperity cake'; the flat white one is bee koh or sweet glutinous rice. I don't know why I like huat kueh — it's bright pink and doesn't really taste of much — but I'll happily cut off chunks and start munching contentedly.

After that everyone goes home and sleeps, hoping that they won't wake up late for classes or work tomorrow. Birthday or no birthday, Thnee Gong's people gotta EARN!

-

Circumstances come together in long and convoluted chains (particularly when I try to relate them) and suffice it to say I read a manga called Star of Happiness: Haghall. It's about an alien from the moon who's trying to prove to God-the-balding-disembodied-head that humans need not be destroyed just yet and there are good people still among them. It's part alien comedy, part existential drama and occasionally rather heartwarming.

I had a rather disturbing dream a few days back where there was an animated version of Haghall - possibly a movie. They found him guilty of killing a whole bunch of babies by strangulation, and the way he put it he said he prevented them from becoming the 'flaws' they would have grown up to be. It was a bit disturbing, but it DID fit in creepily with the tone of the actual manga. And I could actually see him doing this, trying to save the Earth from being ruled by pillbugs and telling God see, there are good people, you need not kill everybody off yet.

What I don't understand is how nobody has yet screamed at Haghall "WHY ARE YOU LIGHT GREEN!?" even if he's 'supposed' to be some Mexican masked wrestler on an exchange program. :/