Archive for August, 2009

Five rules of funny molestation

By Pontifus on 10 August 2009 | Anime, Art and Culture, Literature, Manga | 15 Comments

Alright, that's sort of awesome.

In real life, molestation isn’t funny, so don’t think I’m condoning your trip to Japan whereupon you will hit the subways, so to speak. But in anime and manga, sexual molestation is used in service of humor as often as it’s an agent of personal horror, and there seems to exist an unspoken code governing the line between the two.

Don’t think this is all about cultural implications, either. Such narrative machinations as humor can be deliciously structural. Not that the examples I look at here are off the social hook, per se, but we’ll look at that on a case-by-case basis.

(Edit 9/8 — Let this comment serve as a brief addendum in answer to those parts of this post that weren’t thought through as well as perhaps they should’ve been.)

Super Fanitheme 3, presented for your consideration

By Pontifus on 8 August 2009 | SFCentral | 27 Comments

Update 8/9: I’m going live with the new theme now, after making some changes based on the feedback I got here. You’re welcome to keep commenting with suggestions (and bear in mind that I have yet to decide what else to do with the header, so there may be a place for more color up there).

Lest you thought my Twitter comment about revamping the site was an act of impulse, mere offhand rambling, I present to you the basically-finished prototype of Super Fanitheme 3.0, a simplified, cleaned-up affair compared to what we have now. All I need now are thoughts on how it might be made better.

The front page, with image caption formatting

The front page, with image caption formatting

More sections offered for your perusal after the break.

Geographies

By Cuchlann on 6 August 2009 | Anime | 9 Comments
cityscape

The Tick protects. . . The City.

Where does Bakemonogatari take place?  In a city, that’s in Japan, which is a country in a world that has gods and ghosts.  But the city is strange.  Not on its own behalf — it’s not a warped place, like Sunnydale or something.  It’s stranged for the inhabitants by the events that take place within it.  Or really, perhaps it is stranged by the people themselves, making their own surroundings into mystery.

Happy Anniversary!

By Cuchlann on 2 August 2009 | SFCentral | 13 Comments

No, it’s not SF.c’s anniversary, or even the anniversary of my adoption into the SF.c gang; it’s a far more important date.  On this day my beard is one year of age.

Yes, it’s been hard, and like any relationship ours has gone through its share of rough patches, but we’re still together after a year.  It’s remarkable.  A lot of people said it would never work.