Yep, that there is the trailer for season 3 of The Legend of Korra. I’m honestly too caught up in the fan mindset to be capable of assessing this trailer. Based on previous seasons, I’ll probably be bitching and moaning about how the pacing of the story either compresses or elides too much of the narrative, but also based on previous seasons I will be watching every episode and feverishly arguing about it on the Internet the next day. On that note, it appears we finally, finally see Old Man Zuko.
Two great tastes
You know, I like Orphan Black and I like Avatar: The Last Airbender, but I don’t really see why both series should be featured in the same fanfic. Also, good holy crap but there are already thirty-one pages of Orphan Black fanfics on Archive of Our Own when the show is only a bit over a year old. I’ve forgotten what it was like to be in an active fandom.
Alias: Jessica Jones
Announcement: the Alias Omnibus is being reprinted in November! You don’t have to feel stupid for not buying it eight years ago! I suppose Marvel wants to prime the pump for the upcoming Netflix TV show.
Well done, thou good and faithful servant
In future centuries, the day this video was created will be remembered as the apex of human accomplishment:
50 Cent’s music dubbed over a Jehovah’s Witness video made to convince the deaf not to masturbate (original link, now defunct)
KISS discovers anime
Via Crunchyroll, it seems that Gene Simmons of the obscure indie band KISS has discovered anime. Specifically, he discovered LoveLive!, which seems to be about high school girls forming a pop group to save their school from dissolution. The particular screenshot which piqued Monsieur Simmons’ curiosity was from an episode where the characters dress up as a certain group of white-faced leather queens.
Of the anime I have nothing to say, as I’ve never seen it and I’m getting moe* vibes from the summary. I do find it hilarious that when Simmons asked Twitter where a screenshot of the anime was from, one smartass gave him the name of a pornographic direct to video series about underage male crossdressers.
We now return to your regularly scheduled program.
*Moe: slang term for a subgenre of anime and manga. I would define it as the fetishization of female helplessness, which is exactly as off-putting as it sounds.
Fighting evil by moonlight
Did you ever watch Sailor Moon and wondered what the series would have been like if the main character had been a communist? Neither did I, and in fact I’ve never watched an episode, but certain enterprising sorts have answered the question no one was asking.
I bring you Red Moon:
Reaching Naru’s mother’s jewellery store in record time, Sailor Moon charged inside to see her best friend being strangled by something that looked like a reject from the late, late horror movie show. All around the grey skinned woman customers lay drained of their energy, unconscious on the floor.
“Halt! The people of this city require that energy to be able to work, and until the means of production are in the hands of the workers, society shall never be equal! I am Sailor Moon, and in the name of the working class, I shall punish you!”
Forgiveness, please
Language Log discusses an article about the president of the Philippines’ refusal to apologize to Hong Kong over the death of a group of Hong Kong tourists when they were holidaying in the Philippines. The post is about a particular claim that part of the problem is that Tagalog has no word for “sorry”. The claim is of course complete crap.
However, one of the comments on the post gives a very old-fashioned way to apologize in Tagalog: “Ipagpaumanhin po ninyo ang aking pagkakamali.” This sounds seriously formal to me. If I were to translate this into English with approximately the same connotations I would render it as “I humbly beseech you for your forgiveness for the grievous wrong I have committed”. Somehow I can’t imagine saying it in any other position besides kneeling in abject supplication on the ground, clothes perhaps rent in anguish.
My admittedly poor translation sounds kind of hokey, or it can if not intoned with the proper gravitas. However, saying the Tagalog sentence with anything less than utter sincerity somehow seems wrong and even faintly immoral. I honestly can’t think of any situation where I would need to deploy this linguistic equivalent of the nuclear option. Perhaps if I’d accidentally killed my neighbour’s child or something like that.
Anyway, now you know how to apologize in Tagalog if you ever commit manslaughter.
Other than a man
It seems that a handful of Swedish movie theatres have introduced a ratings system based on the Bechdel test. It’s just four movie theatres and they’re known for being purveyors of independent cinema, so it’s not like this is a massive revision of the current age-based ratings system. In fact, this is just a voluntary addition to the existing ratings mandated by the Swedish government. And let us not forget that the Bechdel test was originally created in service of a joke in a comic strip.
The test by itself tells you rather little in exactly how well a movie addresses gender. For example, I think Sucker Punch passes the test, and that movie was so very problematic in how it treated its mostly female cast of characters. But hey, it’s something.
The resurrection of Jessica Jones
I posted quite a while back about the Alias comic book series being developed for TV. The series is about a superhero washout lurchingly eking out a living as a private detective in New York. The comic book was actually heavily influenced by Sex and the City, of all things, what with its foul-mouthed protagonist living the single life in The Big Apple.
Anyway, the news about TV show was all the way back in 2010 so I was afraid that deal fell through like so many things in the entertainment world. But guess what? Netflix is producing the Jessica Jones series along with TV shows for Daredevil, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.
I’d been wondering why the street level superheroes were absent from Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD (and may I remark that I greatly dislike the unnecessary reminder of which company owns the franchise in the title of the show?). It seems like a no-brainer to have low-ranked costumed vigilantes in a TV show. The kind of superheroes who fight bank robbers and purse snatchers instead of alien menaces or vast armies of evil minions are also the kind of superheroes who don’t have flashy powers that would be expensive to fake decently on a TV show’s budget.
So it turns out Marvel was saving Stilt Man and The White Tiger for these TV shows. I’m just hoping they’ll be able to do something like what Arrow did for DC’s street level characters, because then I might die of a massive nerdic superhero overload.
Or the shows might turn out to be like House of Cards but with superheroes. Which would still be pretty entertaining.
Reboot Rebooted
Remember Reboot? Remember that it was set inside a computer, like Tron? It was the first fully CGI cartoon ever produced? It took forever for new episodes to appear? Not ringing a bell?
Well, just take my word for it that it existed. But guess what? Some company or other is remaking it.
Granted, that link is just to a press release and any number of things could happen between now and when funding is cut for the series. But hey, it’s potentially more Reboot. What’s to hate, besides the possibility of the remake being complete shit?
Also, apparently next year is going to be the 20th anniversary of the series. Boo to the inevitable passage of time pushing all of us closer to our eventual deaths.