I Have Held Back No Water In Its Season

As anyone who follows this account has probably noticed, it hasn’t been upgraded in rather a while.  This is because my activity has shifted, fairly completely, over to Dreamwidth.  It’s turning out to be a lovely place, and I’m very happy with it.

(And if anyone wants an invite code, I’ve got a bunch, just say the word.)

So, having read 33 and 34, I think I have a better handle on Ruru.

( Spoilers, of course )

I finally got around to finishing up my watching of the Kuroshitsuji anime.

( Eh. )

So, in general, I thought the anime was fun in places and not dreadful, but I definitely won’t be re-watching it.

Want another manga issue now, please.

So the latest wave of Racefail, centering around Wrede’s new novel and currently being documented by naraht, has led one of my favorite authors to leave the virtual house without her pants. I am appalled that Bujold has let herself do this. To be sure, racial issues have never been one of her strengths. Ethnic and national issues, yes, but everyone in her books tends to be white. Except when they’re heretical invaders who are especially repressive of women and queer people, which, um… yeah, not a shining moment given the isolation in which it stands.

Contemplating this, however, made me think about a few white authors who did manage to get something right and keep their awareness live. And I wanted to document them as examples and possibly useful starting points for authors who wish to likewise learn to keep their pants up. I am in no way suggesting that any of them Got It Right, since I don’t think any author ever manages that on any issue, but these are a few who got something right.

( Hambly, Weber and Clayton, oh my )

So what about you? Are there any authors you would point to who get something right?

I’ve just finished mainlining Monochrome Factor. (This is all Vathara’s fault.) I suspect I may actually get this one in the domestic release, to have them for rereads. I’m mildly agonized that the manga is progressing so slowly (only six volumes in several years), but it’s still worth the read.

Spoilers follow.

The plot is fairly standard “save the world by fighting monsters and the Other Side who is sending them” fare. Hung on the plot, however, are some very tasty character dynamics. We have the hero (kind of), Akira, who’s a pretty-boy slacker thug, kind of like Ichigo redrawn as a gen-x cliche, and the reincarnation of a high spiritual entity. Only he doesn’t remember a lick of it. We have his dippy boy sidekick, Kengo, who can get a bit annoying but is probably the nicest person in the whole cast. We have the amazingly non-token-like girl, Aya, a prefect, disciplinary committee, kendo club (I think Hibari would like her) who smacks sense into Akira because she’s the one who actually gets how important this all is and what fighting spirit is all about. We have Akira and Kengo’s older buddy Kou, the hentai who tries to grope Aya and gets righteously beaten up for it and who is, incidentally, the otherworldly liege man of Akira’s past self. We have our anti-hero (kind of) Shirogane, the counterpart high spiritual entity who drags Akira into all this, most likely has an agenda of his own, and really, really demonstrates the adage “it’s always the nice ones you have to watch out for”. Also with long, long silver hair, just to round off the tastiness.

While there are some bobbles starting out, as the characters are settling into their narrative relationships to one another, they develop very nicely. Akira and Kengo are unspeakably teenage boy like and have fist fights to show their affection. Aya is clearly not a romantic interest of anyone yet, which makes my heart sing even when she isn’t very competently slicing up the landscape with a sword. The tension between Akira and Shirogane, made up of the secrets Shirogane keeps, the way he cares for Akira, the almost-student-mentor bond they develop, and the yet unknown relationship Shirogane had with Ryuuko, Akira’s past self, is simply delicious. It’s garnished delightfully with the tension between Shirogane and Kou, neither of them trusting the other with Akira but both bound to a sort of alliance through Akira.

And there’s a totally psychotic villain and at least one character on his side whose allegiance and actions are shrouded in mystery, which always makes things interesting.

The anime, alas is utter trash. I say this with great woe, because Suwabe Junichi voices Shirogane, and I was hoping for better. But no, not only does it devolve into total crack (I mean, overtops tenipuri level crack), not only does it make Shirogane into a wuss and Aya into a wimp (unforgivable), it entirely reorganizes the storyline into dreadfully cliche sentai shenanigans and thereby surgically removes all the dramatic tension. It cranks up Akira and Shirogane’s relationship to bona fide BL, though without any real emotional or even eyecandy payoff, but after the delicate tension between them that the manga sustains it’s way too slapstick to do anything but roll one’s eye s over.

So read the manga, don’t touch the anime.

Having cheerfully spoiled myself for the anime ending of Kuroshitsuji, I’m afraid I will probably be dissatisfied with it.

( Spoilers ensue )

So if those things have been altered in the anime Ciel, I don’t think I’ll find him nearly as fascinating. And if they haven’t been altered, then the ending won’t fit at all, which is always distressing.

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think the second series Yuugi-ou anime is the truest to Takahashi’s eventual intent.

Well, minus the filler arcs that roll back character development.

But reading the latter two thirds of the manga, I’m convinced that Takahashi didn’t actually know where he wanted to go for the first third. That he hadn’t yet decided exactly who or what the puzzle spirit was. It wasn’t until he hit on the card game that he really locked in and started to create a coherent meta-story. That’s the point at which the games stop being so deadly a case of instant karma, the weighing-and-testing aspect of them becomes more a matter of trial by combat, and the whole story becomes less ambiguous-horror and more typical shounen-fight.

It shows in the drawing style, too. Styles always change over time, of course, but the early manga puzzle spirit is drawn scary. He looks like he’s absolutely psychotic. Once past the crossover of Death-T, he becomes far more classically shounen-heroic.

So when the second series anime starts with the cards, reduces the early games (and the grievousness of their results), skips Death-T and re-casts Kaiba’s entry into events in the “trial by combat” pattern that the later manga established, that may actually be the truest interpretation of Takahashi’s project.

I still wish, wistfully, that they had kept Ogata Megumi as the voice of the puzzle spirit, though.

So, here’s the thing. I’m all in favor of having books that are id-candy, brain-fluff, that demand nothing from your intellect and instead go straight on to punch your emoporn joybuttons.

This is, after all, why I own three quarters of everything Mercedes Lackey has ever published.

But, first off, id-candy is a different thing from good writing. The joybuttons don’t care about bad grammar or triteness or slop, they just resonate to the character shapes that hit one’s kinks. Kinks are often trite and cliche, when you think about it. Id-candy is enjoyable exactly because it doesn’t make your brain engage, it doesn’t deal in subtleties, it doesn’t make you do any work. To get enjoyment out of genuinely artful prose, you generally have to think, to ponder even, to put in some work.

Saying that you enjoy your id-candy immensely and saying that your id-candy is great writing are very different statements. Among other things, the first is true and the second generally isn’t. (Unless you’re using a completely Utilitarian definition of “good”, and when people try to compare Rowling and Tolkien it is unfortunately clear that they are not employing such a definition at all.)

There’s absolutely nothing wrong with enjoying the hell out of trite, cliched slop, of course.

Let us consider Misty, for example. She’s the Queen of Exposition, has a tendency to extremely moralistic and preachy narrative, and drives home her morals with a ten pound sledge. She is guilty of the most egregious cultural flattening and caricaturization and the only thing that comforts me even minutely is that she does it to everyone, whitebread, ‘noble savage’ and orientalist alike. (I maintain that Ancient Egypt should take out a restraining order on the woman.) Her characters are flat, their angst is repetitive, and half the time the stories read like SCA handbooks instead of novels.

Nevertheless–three quarters, right there on my shelf, and I reread handfuls of them at fairly regular intervals. This is because they are excellent brain-fluff emoporn.

Also because they are not toxic. Her moralism can get wearing awfully fast, but at least they are morals I can agree with. Mostly.

That’s the second thing. You have to be careful of the id-candy that uses a moral framework that’s harmful to you.

The Twilight books are a prime example of this. The writing is no worse than most id-candy, but the value system those books are hung on is poison. It’s misogynist, racist, deterministic, conflates obsession and stalking with love, and runs the mobius strip of nihilism and femininity myths at full speed with special emphasis on death by/for childbirth. (I would not want to be this woman’s therapist, not without hazard pay). This id-candy has a razor blade in it.

Some people probably bemoan the loss of innocent fun now that we chop up Halloween candy before eating it to make sure there aren’t any evil surprises in it. I expect some people feel the same about their id-candy. But, you know, I’d much rather take the time to chop and evaluate than swallow a needle.

So it looks as though free, official streams is the up and coming anime distribution mode.

Not only do we have the experiment at Crunchyroll.net, the new Fullmetal Alchemist series is being streamed, subbed, a bit less than a week after each episode airs, at Funimation.com. Having watched it, I think it may be worth waiting a few days for. The quality of translation is actually higher than the fansubs that came out more quickly. (And thank goodness the commercial concerns have finally figured out that sub fans tend to prefer minimal ‘cultural translation’.)

Presumably this is supposed to pay for itself via advertising, kind of like network television, and also provide a market draw for the permanent media (download and dvd) sales. I hope it works out, because this seems to me to be a very positive direction for anime distribution to take. Certainly the approach of licensing for permanent media distributed months or years after the series airs and is fansubbed has signally, and predictably, failed. A prompt, high quality, free release in a medium not easily recordable, certainly not at anything approaching original quality, followed by reasonably prompt sale of individual episodes alongside dvd collections has certainly worked for domestic television shows. I see no reason it shouldn’t work as well for anime.

For those who want to watch these versions, bookmark the show page.

There are times when I really wonder about Amano, and this issue was one of them.

Spoilers ahead, of course.

She had an opportunity to do some really good character interaction and development, here, and she made it about halfway. Bianchi, as the voice of older experience, provides a frame for the idiocy the boys have recently been displaying; through her eyes we see all the younger characters in perspective, with sympathy for their emotional dilemmas and uncertainties but also a clear understanding that they are acting foolishly and immaturely. Through Bianchi’s prodding, Tsuna actually gets his head out of his ass and realizes that he’s been very selfish in his attempts to ’shelter’ the girls, and tells Kyouko what’s going on. Kyouko, in her turn, provides some much needed insight into the relation between Tsuna and his box. This is all lovely, and pretty sophisticated narrative.

Unfortunately, it’s undercut by the other things going on this issue.

The most bizarre one is the juxtaposition of explicit fanservice, in The Bath Scene, with Bianchi’s mature-person explanation. The combination of the wound over Chrome’s back and the shot of her bare ass was especially peculiar. Through the whole thing, over against the emotional and psychological complications, we have the kind of deliberate full-body nudity shots one expects to find at the start of an ecchi manga. The text-subtext clash was weird and distracting, and I have to wonder why Amano chose that particular setting and emphasis. Bathing scenes can be done in a non-fanservice way easily enough. Why did this moment of wisdom and insight need to be so explicitly sexualized, hm?

Then there’s the girls’ reaction to Bianchi’s explanation, which boils down to “Yes, the boys are being selfish and immature, but they’re manly to do so; let’s not try to hold them accountable any more and instead continue to enable their domestic helplessness”. Once again, the girls’ actions get used as comedy and not to actually spur significant action or development. Bianchi has to lie about what’s really happening to spark Tsuna’s realizations, which has the structural effect of emphasizing only his emotional growth. This badly undercut Kyouko’s display of insight regarding the Vongola box; I was very disappointed, because her character deserves better than to be a two dimensional yamato nadeshiko.

I didn’t find the aforementioned domestic helplessness particularly amusing, either. The reinforcement of exclusive gendered spheres makes me gag. The events of this issue would make a perfect set-up for allowing both the boys and the girls to learn and contribute a little something across those lines, but I do not, for one instant, believe Amano will take the opportunity. The way she handled this issue indicates nothing but a desire to wear the main characters even deeper into their gendered segregation.

Amano, get a grip on your Issues, please.

My response to TRC/Holic is pretty steady these days, and consists of something along the lines of: WTF Clamp?! I mean, the mother named the same thing as the soulmate was bad enough, but now we’re way into the weird spiritual incest and/or masturbation realm. And still no ending in sight. *sighs*

Naruto, on the other hand, is looking interesting, despite the continuing obliteration of the moral and psychological dynamics from the first two-thirds (ie teamwork). It looks like we may be shaping up for a round of “You use that word a lot…”. I am still wondering where the hell Sasuke et al are and how exactly he and/or Madara are going to play into this. I mean, the most emotionally satisfying thing would be for the current trio to break the pattern of the past trios and actually redeem the poor guy, but I’m becoming increasingly unconvinced of Kishimoto’s dedication to satisfying endings.

Bleach… well, now, I have mixed feelings this week. The Ulquiorra-Inoue dynamic got some halfway decent continuation, but little closure. He remains rather a mystery. I don’t actually object to that, but the way that dynamic crossed with the Ulquiorra-Ichigo was… distracting. There’s a lot of development happening, but it all seems to be subterranean. I’m hoping that soon we will get some greater in-action explication.

*contemplative* I am unsure quite what I think.

The visual style is very similar but more… flexible? It definitely partakes more of the manga Arakawa-version superdeformed style, which I’m not really partial to. I’ll have to see if the animated style really takes with me or not. The detail of the motion is definitely a plus, though.

I can get used to Miki doing Musting. He and Ohkawa both have that flex to their voicing of Mustang, so there’s a reasonable continuity. The one major difference touches on the one thing I’m very unsure of, though.

The characters aren’t as sharp. At least in this pilot episode, neither Ed nor Roy have the edge that the first series provided. A big part of that is the script; there’s just more slapstick going on. And I loved that edge, it was probably the thing that topped the list of “why I totally love this show”.

So, while I think it will be absolutely fascinating to see the manga storyline animated (supposing that is the goal), I don’t know if I will be as wildly in love with this second series as I was the first. I will hope otherwise, but we shall just have to see.

One of the benefits of being a friend of the author is: sometimes you get free books.

And this was quite a good free book, so I’m reviewing it. Not in hopes of getting a copy of the next one at all, of course. I’m much too high-minded for that kind of thing. *looks suitably virtuous*

( So let us consider The Stepsister Scheme, by Jim Hines. )

I keep contemplating how the younger KHR characters got to their TYL selves, and what they are at that age and I think I want to jot this down.

Gokudera: Gokudera calms down as time goes on. This does not mean he becomes any less heart-bound to Tsuna, but as he becomes more confident of and secure in his place in the Family he stops needing to yell about it. The point at which Tsuna confirms that Gokudera is his right hand is the true turning point for this. As he calms, Gokudera becomes more efficient, his edge shows more clearly, and he starts to solidify a reputation quite separate from his old one of ‘feral punk’, one of absolute loyalty to Tsuna and his wishes and of complete incorruptibility–the Vongola’s feared right hand, as Gamma says. Given the ruthlessness we see in, for example, 61, I suspect that Gokudera becomes extremely dangerous as he becomes cooler and more effective, and that it is, in large part, only Tsuna’s kindness that restrains him.

( This ran rather long )

So, xie_xie_xie made a rather entertaining post about how to lure straying muses back, and solicited her flist for their own tactics. I thought this sounded fun, and why not spread it around?

I have to admit, my own best results seem to fall along the ‘challenge’ line too. My muses and I generally share a very strong “I could do that better” reflex, so one thing that often produces results is to hit the biggest comm for a given fandom and look for trends that outrage me. If I haven’t written anything lately to reverse the ukefication of some character, that’s usually a pretty good bet (see: Ed, Yukimura, Tsuna).

Chatting with a likeminded writer often works, too, sometimes beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. Prime examples: Tennis Sanctuary, The Bond Between the Land and Sea. Once the rhythm of “would’t it be cool” and “yeah, and then…” gets going, the positive feedback resonance tends to boot things right along.

So what about other people?

So, a bunch of would-be allies have protested getting “flamed” or “piled on” or basically told to sit down and shut up, in Racefail 09, because they tried to join the discussion by contributing their own experience.

Well what did they expect?

In any discussion of privilege, stereotypes, oppression, agency, if you are on the plus side of the particular issue, do not try to join in with comments about your experience. It may seem like a gesture of sympathy and solidarity, but it isn’t. It’s you taking the focus away from the injured party. Don’t do that. It’s not about you.

Do not try to say that you are not privileged because, while you may be plus in this particular area, you are minus in others. For one thing, that’s flat wrong. If you are plus in this area, then you have privilege in this area. Trying to deny that by waving all the other areas in which you are minus just makes you part of the fail and ensures that the people who have to deal with a minus in the current discussion will have zero reason to respect your minus when that’s under discussion. For another thing, it’s beside the point. Because right now, it’s not about you.

Do not suggest that, yes, this is awful, and shouldn’t we all try to be colorblind (religion-blind, gender-blind, etc.). The only way anyone could imagine such a thing is a) possible or b) a good idea is by being plus in the area in question, and therefore not having to worry about it, not having to be aware of it constantly, not having to deal with how it makes you invisible or second class every day. Such a statement comes only out of a plus experience. Don’t make it. Because it’s not about you.

Do not, for the love of little pixels, try to tell anyone to calm down or be less angry. Do not try to join in by offering your own solution to the problem of being angry. Being angry isn’t the problem, it’s a reaction to the problem. More importantly, that isn’t your anger, so you don’t have any right to say what gets done with it. If it makes you uncomfortable, too bad. It isn’t about you.

You’re plus in a given debate and you still want to contribute? Listen. Don’t talk. Listen. Don’t tell about your own experience. Listen to someone else’s. Don’t deny the anger and don’t try to fix it. Listen to it. When you see another plus person failing in one of the above manners, step up and point out that it isn’t about them, and now is not the time for defensiveness or guilt. Now is the time for listening. Because the sad truth is that a lot of us listen better to people who are like us than to the people who actually have the experience under discussion. If you can redirect attention to where it currently should be, do it. That’s a bare first step, but it’s one that truly astonishing numbers of people seem unable to manage.

Also? Do not comment to this and prove the point in spades by talking about how your intrusion of your own experience into this or any similar discussion wasn’t like that. Because (all together now) it isn’t about you.

I finally went and hunted up those last five uncollected chapters of X. Dear me, it really does end on a cliff-hanger, doesn’t it?

It also, however, prompted me to come back around to my occasional speculation about how X might end and what, exactly, Kamui’s true wish is supposed to be. After all, in the last panel he seems right on the edge of maybe, finally, articulating it, though in all likelihood this is just another CLAMP tease.

Spoilers ahead, obviously, supposing you can say that of something that’s six years old and no new material in sight.

The last few issues emphasize, repeatedly, Fuuma’s words to Karen: if it’s wrong to kill people because of the pain it causes, why do people so easily forget the most important thing? He even thinks that the Seals themselves have forgotten it. Now, using CLAMP-logic, which is always a dicey proposition but still, and taking into account what Fuuma says to Kamui about his belief being his truth, it seems that we should turn this around. The question is the answer. If life is precious, then the most important thing should be… life. The life that no one seems to be paying much attention to. One’s own life. If life is precious, and the pain of those left behind is critical, then it is everyone’s first duty to guard their own lives.

This would certainly march with the statement that Kamui can never defeat Fuuma until he realizes what his true wish is: not to save Fuuma, but to live, to save himself. You notice that, even just before the major battle, Kamui is still hesitant to fight for his own wishes, on his own behalf. It’s belabored over and over. If Fuuma is trying to make Kamui realize this, it also makes sense of why Fuuma constantly threatens Kamui’s life but never actually kills him.

This does not actually clarify the ending in any way. It suggests that Kamui will realize his wish, and that Fuuma will grant it, because that’s what he does. But it leaves Fuuma’s own wish up in the air, and we still don’t know what form granting Kamui’s wish may take in a world where the apocalypse is merrily under way. In particular, it still leaves up in the air the question of exactly what the “icy cold” influence on Fuuma is. Kakyou speaks of doubled selves and the Dragon of Earth being undefeatable and eternal for as long as there is a Dragon of Heaven, and this may hint that the influence is, in fact, Kamui’s shadow self. If so, then part of the ending will almost certainly be Kamui reclaiming that part of himself. It also seems possible that he will, maybe even as part of his true wish, repudiate his role as “kamui”, thereby freeing Fuuma also. This might even be the one thing that will alter the foretold future. It does seem likely, given the various statements about the killing sorrow of the one who loves left after a death, that Fuuma’s wish is for Kamui to bloody well wake up and want to live so Fuuma can let him, which would point them toward breaking out of the foreordained Heaven-Earth dichotomy.

Given that the series is on hold due to fears that the direness of the ending will, in the current climate, affect readers badly, I suspect there is no reset button to be had, here, either way. I expect they will, however, stop short of actual apocalypse, while leaving ruins and lots of dead people; it’s the CLAMP thing to do. For similar reasons I also suspect the responsibility for actually fixing or destroying the world will fall to all of humanity, rather than the single savior/destroyer.

For some further ruminations, which I pretty much agree with, visit As You Wish.

I just recently read a post to one of the comms I browse, from someone who was a ways into the Fruits Basket manga and wanted to know whether Yuki ever gets to be less of an asshole (translating fairly freely) and whether the angst ever lets up. This reminded me of all my Issues with FB, and rather than burden the poor woman’s post with extraneous stuff, I went to write up a proper post of my own.

Spoilers ahead, of course.

Having finally slogged through to the end of the manga, I find that, yes, there really is a reason I left off two thirds of the way through, the first time around.

It isn’t the characters, who I quite like, by and large. It isn’t even the plot per se, though I do think that Yuki’s romantic plot was done a severe disservice. If his new romantic interest had received the same development as his new boy buddy I might well feel differently, but she didn’t.

No, the part that really gets my goat is twofold. One is the whirlwind of heteronormativity at the ned, foreclosing any possibility of expressing the homoeroticism that is waved in our faces all the way through, or even just continuing to dangle the possibility. Two is the lack of consequences.

One is made most obvious in the person of Akito, who is insane the whole way through until the very last moment but is miraculously restored to sanity by having one person offer friendship. Okay, that’s actually kind of par for the course, because Tohru is Kwan Yin. Squared. But as soon as she’s sane she is, well, she. All of her insane actions are paired with her male guise, and all of her sane ones are paired with a ‘return’ to femininity. Indeed, when she comes to apologize to the Juunishi, she is in a formal girl’s kimono, and they seem equally and equivalently stunned by both those things, which I find narratively significant. She isn’t the only representative, though. Every single ambiguously sexualized male is firmly paired off at the very end, one after another: Ayame with Mine, Shigure with feminized Akito, Hatori with Mayuko, Hatsuharu with Rin, Yuki with Machi, Ritsu with Mitsuru. Indeed, every single major character is paired off, sometimes resulting in bizarrely random happily-ever-afters such as Hanajima and Kazuma. It’s a downright heteronormative panic.

I find two more pernicious, actually, and two is the deeper reason I just can’t read Fruits Basket with pleasure. These characters do absolutely horrible things to each other, most especially Akito, but also others, notably Shigure and Yuki. And there are no consequences to this. The manga does make it clear that, in most cases, the characters are passing the buck, acting out of pain that they have endured previously. But they don’t act toward the authors of that pain, or even take constructive flight from its source; no, they take it out on the defenseless. Akito tortures Yuki. Yuki beats up and taunts Kyou. Shigure ‘teases’ anyone around him who isn’t fast enough to guard themselves, notably Ritsu, Tohru and his editor, and has absolutely zero care for the genuine distress he causes.

This might be very realistic, but frankly I find such realism exceedingly emotionally and ethically unsatisfying.

The theme is carried right through to the end, where we find that the Cat has been cursed for centuries on end for the dire sin of… being right. Being the only one with its head screwed on straight, the only one who has the wisdom to not want the co-dependent reincarnation cycle that the God offers.

And in the end, no one calls anyone on any of these actions. The God et al flit off into the spiritual beyond and we never even find whether they learned better. Yuki never gets a boot to the head over Kyou (or, more significantly, never has anyone whose opinion he cares for tell him that what he did was wrong). Akito winds up with Shigure, and while I admit they probably deserve each other, they are presented at the very end as a suddenly, miraculously happy couple. No one even apologizes for the wrong they do, aside from Akito’s blanket and somewhat token apology, but Poof! the magic wand of All Better descends anyway.

And I don’t believe it. I can’t. The narrative work hasn’t been done to convince me, to satisfy me. So it leaves a very nasty aftertaste instead.

Wherefore, I suppose my response to the initial post that got me thinking could be summed up as : not so much. Give me Utena and  Sailor Moon any day, or even Fushigi Yuugi and CLAMP for pity’s sake. Tohru in particular and FB in general are a classic example of the reactionary as it emerges from Japanese culture and I never get on well with that.

As I go through old entries, cleaning up my tags and filters, I find some interesting things about my own writing habits.

One is that I’m very prone to sequential mono-focus, fits of enthusiasm for some particular topic lasting days or months. Sometimes this is simply a reflection of the particular project I’m working on, sometimes of a new source I’ve found to fan.

During these fits I may post reactions, triumphs, moments of anguish, etc. to a general filter or no filter, but the technical details often go in a filter for that particular thing (gardening, teaching, site design) populated only by the people I have some cause to think might be interested.

Psychological details and interior landscape reports, on the other hand, go in varying privacy-oriented filters depending completely on my mood that particular day.

In and around such topic-specific posts, are scattered my daily life posts, which category is a total grab-bag, including things like what my cats are doing, my latest battle with home improvement, and the weather.

As I go through these, I find myself retuning and refining my whole concept of what filters and tags, respectively, are useful for. My tags are getting vast and increasingly nested while my filters are dividing into two sets: privacy and interest oriented. It makes me think of what a useful thing it would be if people could select among those filters marked public for what they do and don’t wish to read on their flist, instead of only being able to select one public filter at a time to read on someone’s individual journal.

Like most useful things, I imagine that would be a fairly heavy database hit, though.

Sounds like it should be the title of a children’s book.

At any rate, I’ve become increasingly convinced that Uni is the same person as her mother.

( The account of why contains spoilers, of course )