#theres various interpretations of the characters that would all land pretty well

[mejomonster]

ok so idk if this will make sense but. 

to me, bai yu IS how i picture Zhao Yunlan. Like hands down, the exact image in my head whenever I read the novel. 

whereas, while i absolutely LOVE zhu yilong’s version of Shen Wei, and think it perfectly matches the vibe i get in the book for shen wei - he isn’t the ‘only’ Shen Wei i can imagine. If that makes sense. (although i don’t think i could imagine any actor doing Shen Wei better)

when i read, Shen Wei as a character is just like? I can picture him in a handful of various ways that are all roughly the same ‘impression.’ But it can vary. Like, I could see Shen Wei calmer or wilder or just ‘slightly varied’ from what Zhu Yilong ended up doing for his performance. I love his performance, and its probably what i’d want if i had the choice over any other way to depict shen wei. But i do think the book leaves more room for variation in what i could picture? if that makes sense.

Yet whenever I read Zhao Yunlan, every single pov moment, every single character near him interacting, every piece we get of him - it just absolutely screams and resonates with the version of him bai yu performed. Like, the depiction in the book is just So Specific to me, so vivid to me, and in my mind only bai yu’s version can really like ‘perfectly’ match what i can picture. Even if i could imagine zhao yunlan looking different, i can only imagine him the same way bai yu did the mannerisms and behavior and tone of the character. it just matches so well with the depiction in the book as i interpret it. He completely embodies what Zhao Yunlan is in my head. I deeply appreciate however the fuck bai yu managed that. I’m not entirely sure if its on the actor, or the writing for zhao yunlan in the book is just Very Distinct to me. But because the writing is so distinct to me, it was critically important that the show Zhao Yunlan could manage to land right - if he was depicted less on-point the whole character would’ve felt thrown/different. Whereas, I do think Zhu Yilong could have approached Shen Wei in a few varying ways, and they all would have probably felt satisfying (maybe because to me, the book leaves more unknowns in what Shen Wei is like at first). 

And now, if anyone’s ever read Silent Reading by Priest? I kind of notice layers of ‘distinctness’ for those characters in the writing too. To me, Luo Wenzhou is just this INTENSELY specific character vibe, and its really hard for me to describe or nail down. As in - I can’t even PICTURE an actor who could maybe play him in my head. He is very specifically depicted the way I read him and interpreted him. I’ve seen the donghua trailers... and I think Fei Du feels right, but Luo Wenzhou I have a LOT of reservations about already based on design alone. (But good voice acting might make that up). While I think Fei Du is a very well defined character as well - his specific personality I think is easier for me to picture many-an-actor managing to depict in a satisfying way. I could see Zhu Zanjin easily handling Fei Du and his layers, Zhu Yilong (except not being young enough lol) could easily handle his traits and range. Liu Chang could probably handle it fine. As long as an actor can grasp the character, its relatively straightforward as long as the characters nuance is remembered.

But with Luo Wenzhou? Damn is it hard for me to figure out how a real person could Nail his character. He’s described as “captain china” as a joke like Captain America. He also has a shitty car and rides his bike to work, often picking up food for his team on the way into work. This man is 30s and aging, but still casual - living in a small apartment with his stubborn cat. He’s out as gay, he has a long time best friend and they both helped half-raise/look after a kid who was a side effect of one of the early ‘death’ cases they handled in their career. He’s both a team leader and a best friend - unlike Zhao Yunlan, Luo Wenzhou is NOT someone who pretends. He’s very forward, he acts like a mentor, like a protective friend, is very nurturing, and grounded about the failings of what can be possible although he wants to be helpful, he isn’t shy about his position as both authority and a more regular person than mr super-rich-Fei Du. I picture someone who looks kind of rough and ‘everyday’ like maybe Wolverine/Logan without quite so much muscles and anger (like Wolverine when he’s fucking off in the countryside). I picture someone who looks relatively heroic, but he can easily blend into the background ESPECIALLY next to Perfect-Hero-TM-vibe Tao Ran or pretty-shady-superrich-playboy Fei Du. 

Maybe I could picture Huang Xiao Ming handle him??? But only if he got scruffed up to be less ‘ideal standout’ and only if he can handle ‘straightforward honest open’ characters as well as he can handle ‘putting up constant acts’ characters. I could picture maybe Xiao Zhao manage the vibe of the characters personality - but he’s not quite old enough, and i don’t think he’s quite buff enough to portray Luo Wenzhou’s sort of beefy-random-guy look. The main Prince in Nirvana in Fire’s actor could maybeee do this role, if he can be messy/more casual in his screen presence. Maybe the kind general in Goodbye My Princess’s actor? The issue with nailing down Luo Wenzhou’s character is - he absolutely steals the scenes he’s in. And Fei Du is interesting Because his chemistry allows him to get equal-presence when he’s interacting with Luo Wenzhou - a testimony to how much they really are close, that Fei Du is both permitted more presence/power around Luo Wenzhuo and also Luo Wehzhou can’t help but start paying attention to him when he’s nearby - dragging the whole story’s attention to Fei Du as a result.  But even though he has a big presence - he is NOT particularly ‘standout handsome hero tm’ type and he’s not brashly-ostentacious like Zhao Yunlan (if anything, Fei Du is). Luo Wenzhou is described as incredibly attractive, and he’s certainly the clear leader to get help from when he arrives on scene. But he also has the ability to blend in more easily to where he’s at - he is at core, a person who feels very regular. He can sneak into bad guy clubs in part Because he can blend into the background a LITTLE better than hero-tm-looking Tao Ran, and draws less attention than people like Fei Du. He has a LOT of that standard police-chief side character in tv dramas (if that chief was sort of handsome but not the main character). He feels much more like Holt from Brooklyn 99 than he feels like Zhao Yunlan (and even Holt isn’t a close match).

Actually... maybe Chu Shuzhi’s actor from Guardian could manage this kind of vibe? The handsome, powerful and somewhat leading, but also able to blend into the background as desired? Beefy and strong a little, but not in the drags-all-attention way (that Zhu Yilong is lol). But Chu Shuzhi in some plain clothes, his hair a little grown out, let him be a bit friendlier and outgoing and in the position of leader, his nurturing tendencies much more outwardly and frequently embraced? THAT might be the closest approximation to how I picture Luo Wenzhou. (Maybe Luo Wenzhuo is a weird mesh of Lao Chu and Xiao Guo’s traits, idk, like i said Luo Wenzhuo feels SO hard for me to nail down as a person trying to embody the personality he has in the book).

[wallkickswillwork]

signal jamming

incoherency is comforting because of the narrative weve been fed our whole entire lives that in order to be palatable media must in some way be complete and have beveled, well-defined edges rather than being a mess of finger paints, bright colors, strange dialogues and verbiage, build trees of moods.

thoughts on: -futuristic anime, 90s anime and the unique sense of mood in toonami shows. they are a very good series of shows for people who are coming of age and who must slowly be forced to reckon with the industrialization and mercenary nature of adult life, as it is increasingly held captive by capitalism. there is also something essentially spiritual about it, especially shows like precure and dbz, where an interior or exterior-made-interior force is responsible for the protagonists' success in the face of an oppressive world-system. under capitalism, it frequently is the case that the entire world or entirety-of-world is against us. heroes must overcome overwhelming odds to leave their mark on a gauntlet of greats. -cowboy bebop, final fantasy 7, metroid as meditations on loss, urbanization, dating back to blade runner. this is a type of meditation that is present in much of cyberpunk, but its also not exclusively cyberpunk, and can extend in nature to non-cyberpunk works.

thinking about necrobarista and how its attempting to "resuscitate" anime, while this approach doesnt really examine what contemporary anime like jojos, precure, and slightly more dated anime like hidaske and nichijou do well. if we get all this tunnel vision for gurren lagann and flcl we can never look forward. i think a lot of the visual work that needs to be done is probably in movies. i think maybe there could be work done to marry cinema proper with its animated counterpart. steven universe seems like it gets it, and there are some anime that really seemed like they got it. i dont think were beyond salvation.

-listening to the whos "tommy" and thinking about how trauma and the humanity of that trauma is experienced and lived-through by the main character in socratic fashion. these stories are discussed by people whose actual, authentic experience of trauma irl is doubtful at best. they are great successes on stage who dont struggle in the sense that an actual victim would struggle. calls to mind how a lot of freuds patients would fabricate csa in order to fulfill the expectations of the therapist. but in other cases, actual patients with csa would repress their experiences or not feel comfortable discussing. so thats how i feel about gurus like meher baba or i guess alan watts. less trustworthy and more like scam artists. i do believe in what they teach, however. i think that a guru can teach the truth even if that guru is a liar. maybe its the truth, but the guru doesnt know it to be true, or else, the way the guru teaches it is untrue.

-for a while i imagined my own autism to be the result of childhood trauma that was repressed, but later emerged that those memories were fabricated, to my knowledge, and was left wondering.

-learning to regard the world with a sense of wonder from media like cowboy bebop and ff7. these worlds are jaded and decaying realities but there is a sense of awe at the vast, uncompromising reality. truly vast, sprawling and yawning cities and vast starry skies up above. beholding these things and beholding the starry skies and huge cities of our own planet surely stirs something in me.

-fantasy anime tends to go the joke route like slayers or else the route of "we are all kids, bro, stuck in an mmo" and i think this is mostly due to the admittedly antiquated setting of high fantasy in european trochets and history which to japanese people probably feel like white person set dressing and as they should, i mean. there are more high fantasy themes in something like inuyasha and japans history can be feudal, edo, the meiji restoration, primordial like princess mononoke, etc, so theres more wiggle room for historical works there. slayers et al is usually reduced to "characters moving around the forest" which is almost like this grand slice of the collective anime consciousness as it stands overlapping with, say, pokemon, to the extent where its one of the cliche anime things everyone thinks about, alongside high school, robots, nurses, etc.

-another thing to which we could probably ascribe the success of something like slayers to is wizardry and by proxy dragon quest. small graph paper monster garden games. the appeal is entirely mathematical so there are only a few directions that anime directors tend to run with it (goofy gag comedy if youre making a show or cut and dried authentic dungeon crawlers with moe characters instead of the usual dbz ones). going off what you definitely learn in japanese history class if youre a japanese student, for starters, there are thousands of years of chinese history, so you have romance of 3 kingdoms type stuff. or you have high school romances accounting for the various fire emblems where the appeal becomes game of thronesy "which of my characters in dragon quest land can i make kiss each other and myself", very good ground to cover as we start asking the important questions. theres samurai stuff as we already know, drawing on years of samurai media, kurosawas films and zen spirituality, art of the blade type stuff, jeet kune do in some instances and reaching so far afield as to probably raise some interesting and important questions about pan-asiatic cultural identity which this author (white) is ill-advised to answer. but reeling it back in, the question mostly being of history, and how a lot of fantasy media draws more from History proper as a codified cultural body than histories being individuated familial experiences. its true that when a work does something unique with history (earthbounds hippy dippy approach to the 1960s, undertales handling of furry culture, yume nikkis south american murals) its tended to be seen as that works "thing" as if because hulk hogan was an all american wrestler that precluded john cena from being same, or at least, embodying a similar if slightly modified niche. nobody can make a hippy dippy rpg now or something because itd just be called an earthbound ripoff rather than a loving homage. and i think thats wrong headed and how genres become stillborn rather than invented and developed upon. we have this vast morass of stuff from the 20th century and we could be developing various 60s, 70s, 80s fantasies. hindsight is 20/20 i guess. who knows, we could see bluff city become something in 50 years time.

i feel this is because of extreme stringent expectations of intellectual property laws and their dissemination into everyday discourse online. i dont really like or agree with monolithic cultural expectations like intellectual property or *shudder* advertising, but only to the extent where i can acknowledge that whether or not i agree with them is irrelevant to their all-consuming scope and the need for marxists to actively combat them. its one thing to say "x is bad" and another to clamor for urgency of fighting x, which is, if you believe what we read every day about global warming, too late, so its not important. nevertheless there are a multiplicity of settings that could be developed into genres and identities and ideologues that rarely are if only because it would be seen as "oh yeah like that other thing". people are fickle and develop dwarflike strange moods when it comes to defining what constitutes original versus hackneyed and derivative. i think its mostly dictated by star signs and the weather.

so lately if you follow me on twitter youve probably noticed im doing sort of a tweet concrete kind of thing where i post plaintext quotes from various media taken out of context. i decided to do this for a while, maybe a few weeks, because aesthetic blogs and the aesthetic style of blogging allow me to pool and channel my energies towards larger and more ambitious styles of writing. i usually get loaded on caffeine during this process and frequently watch large amounts of anime and meditate some. its definitely a process and its geared toward something hazily, vaguely spiritual but with pretentions toward being authentically publishable as theory. the idea also being i would like to make some money to support my livelihood, and i like to write, and am somewhat skilled at it, or at least experienced in kind of a ramshackle homespun sort of way. so if my social media presence is pretty boring and kind of weirdly nostalgic or else contrariwise if you feel it has improved lately thats the reason why that happened.

ive been getting very hazy and foggy mentally lately. i feel like it has to do with caffeination and lack of sleep. its important to get everything flowing properly, and sometimes depression and anxiety make that difficult to do. theres anxiety over unemployment, something im trying to remedy, and theres anxiety over theory and where to proceed next via theory. for years i was a devout buddhist in some ways, and meditated a lot, almost every day. i prayed to the bodhisattvas and copped to buddhist metaphysics, something which, based around personal life experience, i had every reason to believe was true. lately and in my own, strange way, ive begun to question this ideology and interpret it as part of a patchwork of ideologies, each one which attempts to describe a totality, a totality which is rarely if ever described properly by any ideology. grasping at straws in a structural sense, and feeling nonplussed but with no ground to run to, and im back on the boss level in super mario 64 where bowser smashes the ground to make it fall away. attempts at restructuring as this dissolution transpires only serve to create new protocols equal in scope to pre-existing paradigms. and there are plenty of people who dont struggle this much with religion and probably still go to heaven, or think theyre going to heaven, or something. hows marge and the kids. did jerry get that new promotion. mom just got back from vacation in cancun. smalltalk style concerns arising in every day transitionary speech feel distinct and very distant from these kind of hazy, pie in the sky questions. plato never wrote about the kind of stuff you see in a cheers episode. there are philosophy books that try to merge the two, but they usually get shelved in the comedy section.

so its mostly a matter of trying to absorb and contain new information, which abides in abundance, and trying to corral it into sort of a pointing arrow to direct me where to go, in my hewing, a feat not easily done. probably the endgame is in the crafting and solution of art, but what kind of art, and whether i have the tools at my disposal to even create it, is less easily answered. so for now, i guess, im absorbing, waiting, asking questions, and who knows, and who can say.

earliest memories of religion are of the greco roman religion and not knowing about the mystery religious rites but knowing about an abstract concept of wisdom and the ocean and extrapolating the existence of athena and poseidon in that way. later i have memories of exposure to christianity and buddhism and bahai but none of these things feel particularly useful to me at this time in my life. i can more readily receive a picture, a kind of enlarged image, of a broad religious landscape and some of the questions it attempts to provide answers for, or at least, a way of thinking about. the greco roman religion, for instance, is a presentation of a deleuzian multiplicity, and the monotheistic religions are a monad, but i also dont think either of these things can say the other is inherently undesireable. tolerance seems to be the best method, but also, and likewise, not dwelling specifically in any of them. acknowledging they all exist, but not being any of them. enjoying in surfeit the tension between multiplicity and monad. that there can be many things and one thing. like the album cover of dark side of the moon.