Mouretsu Pirates #5: Poetry Battle Exchange

Too bad Kirk and Uhura never got to play the poetry reference game….

I think all the poetry references are from the medieval poetry collection Ogura Hyakunin Isshu, as far as I can tell.

“White robes….” = the change from spring to summer, and no more tears. Also, “Surrender!” A nice way to demand surrender, but Captain Doolittle is showing that she’s wide awake and smart, and that they’re stupid old farts.

“You say you’ll love me forever….” I think is a sarcastic comment about how the Lightning II is sad that the high school girls mean to leave so soon, along with more sarcasm about being ooh, so confused. But mostly it’s saying that the schoolgirls are lying and bluffing. It’s a veiled threat.

“….pushes forward….” I think is a poem about a boat traveling over the deeps of love, but don’t quote me on it. I’m not certain about this one; it may even be newly composed for the occasion. Anyway, the girl is saying, “You can’t stop us.”

“Mountain cherries….” is about how the girls are all alone with the Lightning II, and nobody knows its identity or what’s going on. Another veiled threat in the terms of a love poem, but probably also a veiled warning that the girls don’t know what their opponent is about to do next.

These poems have been translated lots of different ways, since they are both brief and involve ambiguous wordplay. I find the Crunchyroll translator’s speedy job amazing.

Linking to Steven Den Beste’s post asking for such an analysis, since I’m not a commenter at his site.

This Is Your Celtic Christian Brain on Drugs.

Harry Potter meets early medieval scriptoria. Animation meets the illuminated Word of God. Irish trippiness of the highest degree, aided and abetted by Belgians and French folks.

Yes, children, it’s a movie that’s already come out in Europe, apparently:

The Secret of Kells.

You can listen to the band that played the soundtrack at their website. You can download mp3s from the album from amazon.com. Mwahahaha! “Aisling Song” appears to be in Irish, which is a nice touch.

Here’s the movie blog.

Btw, St. Cellach is a character, so yay! Unfortunately he’s the semi-parental heavy, which is why it’s bad in cartoons to be a historical authority figure. Pangur Ban is also a character. This makes his second or third role in a fantasy story that I know of, which is why it’s good to be an anonymous poet-monk’s cat.

It’s amusing that this art-heavy animation is from the makers of Skunk Fu, which is also pretty trippy. It’s being distributed by Buena Vista, so there’s a ghost of a chance we might see it sometime in the US.

According to this interview from the Irish Times, the irony of the story is that it takes place in a completely Christian context and is the story of making a copy of a book of the Gospels despite danger, yet doesn’t really mention these little facts in the story. Do we live in a strange world or what?

Btw, the Book of Kells contains mostly complete copies of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, but the monks only made it as far as John 17:13 in the pages we have. A lot of pages appear to have been stolen over the years, so that’s where the rest of John may have gone. Not all of the art was completed, however.

Also, if you’d like your own copy of the Book of Kells, Trinity College in Dublin will gladly sell you a DVD-ROM of the whole thing, and with additional features and info, for $41.95. A lot cheaper than a facsimile book edition, although of course it’s also not likely to last for centuries. You have to admit that it would jazz up your Bible study.

(The weird thing is that apparently there’s no text file of the Vulgate/Old Roman verbiage used in the Book of Kells. I mean, yeah, the art’s amazing, but it was intended to have semantic meaning too.)

Animator Tomm Moore’s next project will be Song of the Sea, a selkie story.

Anime Review: Ristorante Paradiso

I’m a big fan of quiet slice-of-life animes. I like cooking shows, and there’s a fair amount of cooking manga and anime that hasn’t made it to this country. And this anime is set in Rome! Who doesn’t like helping anime companies write off trips to Europe!

So I thought the new anime Ristorante Paradiso, currently being simulcast on Crunchyroll, sounded like a definite winner. Unfortunately, no. It’s not all bad, but it’s not all that good. So far, anyway.

Ristorante Paradiso starts with the story of Nicoletta. She was born in Rome, but first her parents divorced and then her mother dumped Nicoletta (then 5) on her grandmother to raise. So that the mother (Olga) could remarry without having any uncomfortable talks with her intended, Lorenzo, who had mentioned at some point that he didn’t think he could ever marry a divorcee. (Whether this is chauvinistic personal preference or him trying to be a good Catholic boy is never mentioned. Since the guy is nice, we’ll assume religious conviction.)

Nicoletta is now 21, and tired of letting Olga live a lie. She comes to Rome to confront her and get her to talk. But Olga is wily as well as exceedingly needy, and manages to slither out, setting her daughter up in a Roman apartment and paying her summer’s expenses in order to buy Nicoletta off.

(I would love to say that this is entirely unrealistic, but given how many beautiful, capable women I know who turn into needy, grasping, unstraightforward puddles when it comes to Their Man, it’s not as unrealistic a soap opera as I wish it were. But yeah, accepting blackmail from even an unloving mother? Creepy.)

Olga tells Lorenzo that Nicoletta is the daughter of an old friend, and Lorenzo welcomes her. He owns a very successful gourmet restaurant, the Casetta dell’Orso. It’s portrayed as a happy place, and Nicoletta is drawn into its homey working life, eventually hiring on as an apprentice chef. (Her nonna taught her to cook.) The cuisine is great, but the true fame of the place comes from its exceptional customer service. Most of its patrons are women, who come to bask in the attentions of its attractive and gentlemanly waitstaff of middle-aged men wearing their trademark glasses.

Yes, you read that right.

Why? I regret to inform the uninitiated that there are a lot of Japanese men who like maid stories, and that this has transferred to butler and waiter stories in anime aimed toward Japanese women. I don’t really care to tease out what part is attraction to formal behavior and dress, what’s loving a guy in uniform, and what is some kind of sick tie-in to submissiveness and service. Likewise, a lot of Japanese men and women have a thing for cute people wearing cute glasses. Likewise, for older middle-aged men. Some shows treat this sort of thing as just an interesting background, but Ristorante Paradiso insists that the women in this show do indeed have middle-aged, waiter, and glasses fetishes. Nicoletta regards this rather harshly at first, especially since it was Olga’s idea to make the staff dress that way; but soon Nicoletta has also drunk the Kool-Aid.

She falls for Claudio, who’s old enough to be her father. (And I have dark suspicions that maybe he is, as Olga seems a tad possessive of him, and we haven’t heard much about Nicoletta’s father.) In the second episode, Nicoletta finds out that he’s really not married anymore and only wears a ring on his finger to keep away predatory customers. Nicoletta takes no hints from this, but basically attacks the poor guy without warning and with obvious intention to have sex with him before she even gives him a first kiss. (In order, she says, to figure out if she really has feelings for him.) (Yup, that’s what she said.)

It’s portrayed as pretty shocking, but what’s more shocking is that Nicoletta doesn’t Learn Better even after her mother breaks up the assault by walking in on it. She tells Claudio that she intends to continue to pursue him, which if I were Claudio would make my blood run cold. (Though to her credit, she does promise not to bug him at work. But that’s not really enough. Me, I’d be asking my boss to fire the crazy sexual assault stalker chick.)

(Again, I wish I could say that this is totally unrealistic, but one does run into young women with some serious boundary problems. This is maybe an exaggeration, but only an exaggeration.)

I have no idea where this series is going. It’s certainly not a cute relaxing feel-good show about Italian cooking, despite the way it’s being sold. It’s more like a wrenching soap opera with a few fun bits included. In retrospect, I suspect the raw-looking style of the art was intended as a warning of this. There seems to be a lot of people treating other people as objects to be manipulated without consulting them; but this does seem to be condemned. Still, it’s definitely for mature audiences. This show is messed up.

Yen Plus – Manga Anthology Magazine

While I was picking up medicine last night at the grocery store, I also picked up a copy of the manga anthology Yen Plus. Unlike the likeable Shonen Jump and the twist-brained Shojo Beat, it’s not a localized version of an established Japanese monthly. It’s also not dedicated to one single demographic — not purely for the pre-teen/teenage shonen (boys) or shojo (girls) market — although clearly it is aimed at mostly teenagers. It also prints Korean and American comics as well as the Japanese kind, and has a good mix of genre. (Amusingly, the Japanese comics are printed right to left and the others left to right, so when you reach the middle of the mag you have to go to the “back” and start reading inward again.) All in all, it’s a good advertisement for the books put out by its American comics/manga publisher, Yen Press.

I like it pretty well. Most of the comics look nice artistically without being nauseatingly pretty and cute or horrendously blood-spattered and tough. There’s only one comic that really makes me fear for the creators’ issues (a stupid shojo one, of course) and a lot of fun or interesting ones.

And of course, since I’m sick just now, having only 8 pages of story per title is much more to my taste than a longer American title. I can also cough or spill things on the cheap b&w printed pages without activating any bibliophile guilt.

Current comics running in the monthly: Hero Tales, a wu xi martial arts story set in China, from the creator of Full Metal Alchemist. Soul Eater\ — a shinigami fantasy story, because there’s not enough freakin’ grim reaper comics in Japan. Nabari no Ou — kid born with secret power he can’t access is being hunted and aided by modern ninja throughout Japan. Bamboo Blade — underdog girls of the school kendo club try to make good. Sumomomo Momomo — comic relief arranged marriage between martial arts families is fought both by the guy involved and all the people trying to kill him and start a gang war. Time and Again – Ancient Korean ghostbusters of dubious character. Pig Bride – To break an ancient family curse which makes her hide her face, a girl must marry a Korean politician’s son. For him to survive that long, he and his pig-masked fiancee must fight both his father’s terrorist enemies and demonic evil forces that invade his high school. (The first couple chapters were lame, but it seems to have hit its stride now.) Sarasah – girl travels back in time to ancient Korea and dresses like a boy to prevent her true love in the present from getting cursed with bad karma in his past incarnation. (Some moments of funny, but mostly pretty lame and drippy. Not to mention disturbing.) Goong — Preview of a What If story about arranged marriage with a prince if the Korean monarchy were still around. Kinda cute soap opera. One Fine Day — cute little kid story about magical beings. Night School – American manga of horror/drama/comedy/mystery in a New York high school for magical people. Jack Frost — Korean comic about a place called Amityville High School. You know that won’t end well.

As you can tell, the Yen Press folks do like horror elements, so do keep that in mind.

Watching Classic Arts Showcase

A lot of people don’t know about Classic Arts Showcase (ARTS). It’s a free “channel” of short classical arts clips and videos. So one minute you have a subtitled snippet of Der Rosenkavalier from some festival, and the next minute you’re listening to some orchestral tone poem about a storm while watching beautiful footage of lighthouses or looking at paintings. They even include architecture videos. The idea is that if you expose people to the arts and show them what a wide variety of stuff is out there, they’ll get involved in the arts themselves, as an artist and/or a supporter.

Since it’s free, a lot of cable systems show it at some point to fill in the public access schedule, often early in the morning. It’s good stuff.

Takedown or Fakedown?

Warner Music Group recently had a hissy with YouTube, and demanded that all the previously permitted use of their songs in peoples’ video end forthwith, and all the videos be taken down.

However, a close examination of the offending tunes reveals that WMG hasn’t actually checked to see if the songs they want taken down are actually their songs.

For example, they have taken down some Scarlet Pimpernel musical songs that they managed to hunt out. But wait! Only the Broadway musical albums and their progeny were albums produced by Atlantic Records, in the Warner Music Group. The pre-production album by Linda Eder was and is from Angel Records, a subsidiary of the EMI/Virgin group. So those songs, or those versions of them, are none of their business.

So… Maybe other record companies ought to sue WMG for pretending to own their music?

Btw, YouTube is not at all interested in hearing about this from the peons. You should just see the maneuvers you have to go through to reach a complaint form, coupled with dark threats about lawyers and penalties. And it’s stupid. People will just get a new account and put the videos up again, or put them up on a different video service. It’s all just one big corporate lawyer kabuki dance, for which the lawyers are paid and by which the non-lawyers have their time wasted.

Of course, I only noticed this because our little Warner friends took down an ancient fanvid of mine. Doesn’t really affect me, of course, except to make me annoyed.

Detective Office 5

Recently, I got to see some episodes of a 2005 live action show from Japan called Detective Office 5. It’s set in Kawasaki, at an old detective agency founded after WWII. This acts as a handy framing device for a mystery anthology series, as there are continuing characters and settings but each story stars a different detective with different skills, and is told in a different style and detective genre. The two-parter pilot features a human interest tale of an old detective teaching an awkward young one. One features a master of disguise meting out psychological punishment to a cad. Yet another is a detective who solves problems almost entirely by beating them up. (And yes, the story is aware that this is a problem.) On the whole, each detective has been interesting enough for a whole series; you regret not seeing them again after their episode and wonder what will happen to them next.

All that seems pretty normal. But all the private detectives at the agency dress alike, wearing identical long men’s raincoats, suits, hats, and black-rimmed glasses, whether male or female. Each is identified solely by their number, which runs from the managers, 500 and 501, on down. The detective agency fills a whole building in which each office is lit with deliberate dimness, the agency’s techs issue masks that cannot be told apart from skin, and the opening credits look like Fritz Lang had decided to shoot The Metropolis Falcon.

It’s a remarkable show. Rarely has style been so integral, interesting, varied, and dreamlike. It careens along on the brink of becoming pure camp, but is rescued by the commitment to telling detective stories and the excellent acting. And since the episodes are only a half hour long, it’s easy to get into it.

You can watch Detective Office 5 (legally and everything) on Crunchyroll.

The Animated Exploits of Arsene Lupin

Once upon a time in Canada, there aired a very cute and stylish little example of French animation. Night Hood, aka Les Exploits de Arsene Lupin, introduced Nineties kids to Arsene Lupin, that most cunning Robin Hood of retired thieves and most unlikely of detectives, in an alternate version of the 1920′s. He is constantly flying back and forth from Paris to New York, developing absurdly advanced devices and vehicles, and showing up in ever more strange disguises.

The animation itself is very uneven, sometimes flowing beautifully and sometimes very static. (The first bit of the opening credit sequence is too gorgeous entirely.) The execution of character designs is uneven, too. But overall, the drawings are really beautiful; you’re ready to move in, and you definitely want to shop for clothes and cars in these cities. The music is also very winning. There’s a lot of use of silhouettes, which apparently harks back to the credits of the 1970′s live action Lupin series, also set in the 1920′s and 30′s.

Lupin’s book nemeses, the French Surete detectives Ganimard (a grizzled veteran) and Folenfant (here a babyfaced sergeant) chase Lupin as much as they can. But Lupin’s true concern is the brilliant industrialist and criminal mastermind, Howard Randolph Karst. (Who, for the benefit of the kiddies, both looks and sounds exactly like Hearst/Citizen Kane, with a helping of Howard Hughes for likeability and tech.) Karst and Lupin are fairly good matches, but Karst generally is too busy with his masterplan of world domination to step out of the office. So Lupin usually faces his underlings: his psychotic crime liaison Steel, thugs Guilla and Diesel (who’s a big Chinese guy who doesn’t wear stereotypical Eastern clothing), and Countess May Hem.

Lupin’s faithful accomplice and wheelman is Grognard, a solid and clever engineer type with a good sense of humor. He’s portrayed very sympathetically in this series and looks quite handsome, which is unusual for a sidekick. Lupin also flirts and acts as a source for transatlantic-traipsing American reporter Kelly Rose Kincaid. Her newspaper, the New York Inquirer, is actually owned by Karst, but it’s fairly obvious she feels no loyalty to him — and not much concern about aiding and abetting! (But hey, she breaks into places herself all the time in pursuit of stories, so maybe this isn’t so strange.) Kincaid has her own Jimmy Olson-type sidekick, a boy named Max Leblanc. (Named after Lupin’s chronicler, Maurice Leblanc, of course!)

What can I say? Lupin is a man of action with a scarf, a monocle, an opera cloak, and a swordstick — not to mention a habit of strewing roses about! I also particularly enjoyed (as a Wimsey fan) seeing a theft occur as a diva sang the Jewel Song from Faust! We also visit the Orient Express, an evil Doc Savage’s Empire State Building, a dirigible, and the Titanic. It is a Golden Age mystery or pulp-lover’s dream.

I apparently missed the height of Night Hood fandom, but here’s a nice little fansite which has survived the years, and another tinier one. Also, a fanfic over on fanfiction.net.

I’ve really enjoyed watching bits of this series, which is not on DVD, alas. Search around for it; it’s worth it.

There Can Be Only One Box Set!

Yes, they will finally be releasing Highlander: The Animated Series on DVD! Mwahahaa!

If you weren’t one of the three other people who watched this show, you probably don’t know this show even existed, much less that it was one of the earlier products of the French animation studios which would eventually bring us Code Lyoko and the like.

You’ll recognize the quirky worldbuilding and odd moments of beauty, though. They invest a fairly cheesy merchandising scheme (a kid’s version of a franchise about whopping guys heads’ off! Yeah, there’s a great idea!) with their own ideas, and turn it into something quite worth watching.

So what’s it about? It’s the future, and Bad Things Have Happened to civilization. The Immortals feel this is a bad thing, and decide to skip whopping each others’ heads off in favor of rebuilding the world. (They call themselves “Jettators”, apparently because they want to help the world leap forward — “jette”.) Later, the McLeod will come around with his memory-sucking sword and collect their knowledge for the world without, like, whopping their heads off. (There’s a prophecy to this effect, of course.) However, there’s always some jerk who won’t go along, and The Bad Guy still likes whopping people’s heads off, as well as torture and kicking puppies. Besides, there’s a prophecy that the McLeod will kill him. So he kills the McLeod — but little did he know that McLeod was the only Immortal able to breed!

So years later, after the opening credits, a Spanish Immortal who looks a lot like a younger Sean Connery comes to find young Quentin McLeod, the last Highlander; train his butt; and then haul him around the world to collect various sciences of interest from the memory-holding Immortals, not to mention fulfill the prophecy. Our Spanish friend is somewhat disconcerted to find that Quintin’s adoptive sister Clyde is also part of the deal, as well as the requisite Cute Animal Who Gets Lost and Causes Trouble. But he resigns himself, and the series begins.

Okay, so I like the odd shows. But honestly, they visit some really weird places and do some really strange things. I used to watch this show on a channel I could barely _see_, it was that interesting.

My Fandom Is Educational!

Eleven-year-old Texan fan of Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century foils criminal.

With some help from his nine-year-old sister as Watson, of course. (Always bring a writer along. She’ll have a Sharpie. Even if it’s pink.)

It just goes to show you — that cartoon wasn’t lying about eyes and brains!

An Alternate Bakumatsu Anime?

If you’ve watched Rurouni Kenshin, you know the Bakumatsu — the period when the shogunate fought various rebellions,  the rebels strove to bring down the shogunate and put in a new “imperial” government, and all while foreigners traded in Japan courtesy of Commodore Perry’s Black Ship “diplomacy” and brought in change after change.

So… an alternate history Bakumatsu anime? With an acting troupe? And geisha? And all sorts of real historical characters tangled up in ahistorical revenge plots, conspiracies, and magic? And all sorts of pretty and cool things?

Yes, that’s right. I’ve been sucked into another intellectual, arty magic kenjutsu anime full of history I don’t know, the way other people are suckers for bishonen or pretty girls with guns. But dang it, at least I’m a highly cultured fangirl sucker for this stuff.

The name of this thing is *take deep breath* Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto.

Watch for it.

UPDATE: Spelling fixed. Also, the meaning of the title is apparently something like “Bakumatsu Machinery of Power Theory: Colorful Flowers Must Fade”. That last bit is all the first line of a poem — a poem which incidentally determines the order of the Japanese syllabary. It probably is using it both in the sense of “The ABCs of the Factions That Made History” and the sense that “all these characters and factions will pass away shortly, due to the new world they’ve made”.

Btw, if all this isn’t enough for you, the manga of Gintama is readily available in American stores and the anime is probably coming soon. Gintama imagines what would have happened if 19th century Japan had been visited by black starships full of aliens instead of US navy ships.  Suddenly Bakumatsu Edo is reimagined with limos and VCRs, basically. And giant monsters are rampaging through Tokyo for a reason — the aliens brought them along as pets.

It’s a pretty funny concept, but for a non-Japanese person, it’s more of a heh. I mean, it’s hard to really get into the game when you keep remembering, “Oh, yeah, they’re comparing us — or our ancestors — to these crazy, incomprehensible alien critters.” OTOH, it is definitely good skiffy entertainment.

Book of Betrayal Becomes Treacherously Marketed Movie

Why would anyone make a movie out of a book which clearly hates its readers?

Why would the trailers suggest that it’s a feel-good fantasy flick, when in reality it’s a book about the sudden suicide senseless accidental death of one of its protagonists?

Yes, my children, it’s time for another generation to be traumatized, betrayed, and thrown into deep suicidal or homicidal depression by Bridge to Terabithia. Now with more special effects to make you feel even worse!

You know, there are truly awful, and truly evil, authors out there who do not deserve one half the opprobrium and public humiliation which Katherine Paterson deserves for inflicting this book upon the defenseless tots of the world. Yes, all in all I think Philip Pullman is probably less damaging to young psyches when he literally kills God than is a writer who spits upon the very idea of having any contract with her readership, and feels no need to provide a rounded storyline instead of a slap in the face.

Now, mind you, it’s not the death of a protagonist that I object to. That happens. (Heck, I love anime and opera, not to mention Shakespeare.)

But it’s a sudden and senseless death, almost entirely unforeshadowed. IIRC (which I may not, as I was trying hard not to beat the borrowed book against the wall or rip out any pages, and my first read was my last), the death was also blamed upon The Evils of Imagination and Role-Playing, as was almost all geek suicide back in the eighties. (Apparently The Evils of Getting Stuffed Into Lockers never caused suicidal thoughts in anyone, but a bit of pleasant musing, friendly socialization, and/or dice rolling did.) So the death of the protagonist is not the writer’s fault — it’s the fault of the other protagonist, and the reader, and any other rotten little kid who dares to have an imagination. (Never buy another fantasy book, kids, or we _real_ writers will kill a puppy!)

If anyone out there takes a child who does not know the story’s ending to see Bridge to Terabithia, he or she is a sadist. (If there is any child out there who, knowing the ending, actually wants to see the movie, he or she is a masochist or a very gothic Goth, but that’s your and the child’s problem.)

My true regret is that Dorothy Parker never lived to skewer Bridge to Terabithia with a mot juste. But surely she would agree that “this is not a novel to be tossed lightly aside. It should be thrown with great force.”

Into the sea. With the film reels (or DVD and player) wrapped around it to keep it from floating.

And a wooden stake piercing them through, just to make sure.

UPDATE: Okay, it seems that IIRC (if I recall correctly) was indeed the qualifier to use. I recalled incorrectly. (And so did other people who’ve discussed this book with me elsewhere.) I could’ve sworn that the implication was that she’d jumped/fallen into the river on purpose, driven by obsessive love of fantasy and excessive attachment to the absent friend. But apparently, this was one ingredient not included in the mix. I apologize.

I am not against surprises and twists. By no means. I watched Babylon 5 largely because I loved the surprises. But a twist should always make sense in retrospect, not seem even more senseless.

I still think that if you’re going to make a book all about dealing with death, you kill the person off in the first chapter or so. It works for mysteries, after all. You don’t write a story where the moral is, “Life stinks and bad things happen! Here, let me punish you for reading my book!”

Most kids have a firm grasp on the concept that bad things happen for absolutely no reason, that people and the world can’t be trusted. Childhood is all about random acts of violence and cruelty from your fellow child, and the law of gravity continually smacking you in the face. As a child, I read books to be reassured that there was in fact order beyond the chaos, and hope beyond the hatred.
While this book may in fact have been intended (consciously, anyway) to bring logos into children’s lives, it did so by subverting the basic logos of the writer’s contract with readers. It’s like advocating peace by running around slashing random throats to create a message in big blood letters — it’s wrong and it’s bad art.

It struck me even back then as a writer using her power over her defenseless young readers to work off her anger at the world (or her anger at her child being affected by senseless death, apparently). I resent being so used, and I resent the fact that this movie is being marketed with deliberate deception about its point. Thus this long post of condemnation. If sub-creation is one of the most important human tasks, then misuse of that power is one of the worst crimes humans can commit. I don’t think it’s silly to get worked up about that.

UPDATE: Can I get a witness? Yes! Kevin Carr at 7M Pictures says:

I was in fifth grade when I read the book “Bridge to Terabithia.” I figured that it had to be pretty decent. After all, it won the Newbery Award. (This was, of course, before I realized that the Newbery Award is the grade-school equivalent of the Oprah Book Club which librarians force on children out of guild or curriculum requirements.)

My mother read it first, and when I was finished, she asked me if I liked it. What resulted from me was a tirade of venom that continues to this day.

I loathed the book. I hated it with a passion. I cannot remember reading anything else in my youth that I hated more, and I read a lot when I was a kid.

I hated the book “Bridge to Terabithia” for the same reason that I fear many kids might hate the movie. I was, quite simply, misled. With a name like this, it sounded like high adventure. It sounded like another Narnia story. The trailers to the film are much the same.

A word of warning to everyone out there: “Bridge to Terabithia” is about as far as you can get from a Narnia movie…

Perhaps I would have liked the book better if I knew what I was getting myself into. Now, as an adult, I know that a modern story of high adventure would never win a Newbery. Case in point — the Harry Potter books….

Sarah Jane Smith’s Current Personality

Let’s face it — Sarah Jane Smith always had a touch of melancholy. One minute she’d be up and perky and positive; then she’d wait too long to eat lunch and feel depressed about all of life. So my retcon is that her “I haven’t done anything with my life since the Doctor left” is just a tad bit… dramatized. Or forgetful of anything not corresponding with the lonely mood.

I mean, we get this all the time at work when it’s self-evaluation time. Maybe it’s a female thing.

“I haven’t done anything to show leadership ability!”

“What about X, Y, and Z? Especially Z! That was incredible!”

“Oh, yeah. Well, I guess I should put that down.”

“Yes. Unlike me. Sigh. I really haven’t done anything at all for presentations this year.”

“What! Of course you did. You did six different presentations at least! Don’t you think they count?”

“Well, maybe… if _you_ think they’re good enough….”

Sigh. It’s like the resume version of “You’re not fat, girl, you’re skinny! I’m the one who’s fat!”

So yes, despite the crudcar, I have no doubt that Sarah Jane Smith has been (at work anyway) a sweet, positive, hardworking, well-paid, and well-respected (or possibly feared) journalist. At home, she has probably spent the vast majority of her life feeling happy, busy, and in no particular need of a significant other. Occasionally she thought about her lack thereof, and at these times she thought about the vanished Doctor and felt depressed. Occasionally she thought about her biological clock and lack of kids, and felt depressed. But mostly, she was just happy and busy. (And the BigFinish audios are just fanfic I don’t have to believe, to my mind.)

Then Sarah Jane’s biological clock goes off, she gets caught up in the immense fun of menopause, and finally the Doctor comes back — just in time to catch some of the post-menopausal hormone mood swings. In a simultaneous moment of midlife re-evaluation, she decides that she’s been ignoring her previous life with the Doctor and reclaims her old skillz and nifty souvenirs from storage. Also, she broods about all the time she has “wasted”.

She starts a cool new project, however, and once again becomes happy and busy (especially with that house, where apparently all the crudcar payments were going, and the sweet little mint-green Figaro car). She gets a bit lonely with K9 away, and a bit overtired with all the work and staying up all night talking to alien artistes. This comes out when she talks to the kids, who unknowingly are pressing her mother buttons as well as getting the low blood sugar/mood swing/tired and lonely buttons. But it’s not the average day, one hopes, or her hobby is really making her overworked.

So I’m not saying it wouldn’t be nice if the Doctor’s final regeneration had showed up at the front door. But I bet most of Sarah Jane’s almost-weepies in “School Reunion” and the Sarah Jane Adventures pilot would have been cured by eating and sleeping more regularly, buying a parrot, and drinking lots of soy.

Now, of course, Sarah does have someone to provide her with a daily dose of empathic contact with another human being, as well as several someones to Look After. This will definitely keep her happy and busy.

I really do have trouble retconning the “madwoman” thing, though. Even if Sarah were really becoming some kind of paranoid nutcase (a la audios), she’d be a polite, positive, and widely liked paranoid nutcase. (As if Mulder had sired a child on Jo.) The only thing I can figure is that she must have some kind of telepathic or empathic or wireless communications distracting her from what’s going on around her… or she _really_ doesn’t get much sleep because of her additional hobby. (I’ve been known to get so sleepy I forget basic politeness, mostly because the short term memory forgets that anybody is standing there. But that’s after getting only a couple hours of sleep for days and days.)

I did notice the potential “alternate love interest” thing going on. Which cracked me up, because I predicted it to one of my friends. Largely based on my experience with reading Sarah fic by guys. (Not that there’s anything wrong with original character love interests!) I don’t think it’s impossible that Sarah should decide she can love someone else. Maria’s dad seems nice, he’s not bad looking, and he’s in Sarah’s preferred range of “loomingly tall”. But right now, his biggest advantage is Maria.

And being named Alan Jackson, if Sarah listens to country.

(Amusingly, no English fan has yet noticed this. It cracks me up no end.)

Sarah Jane Adventures: Initial Thoughts

The Society of Guys Who Quite Like Sarah Jane obviously is behind this series.

1. Better car.

2. Huge house (high payments or property tax) explains why she used crud car on previous episode.

3. Sarah Jane wears two cute outfits within the first ten minutes or so.

4. We get to see Luminous Sarah Jane Smile within that time as well. (And the ever-popular “Sarah Jane the Empath”  theory gets a big boost.)

5. Cute yet manly guy with daughter and marital problems shows obvious interest in Sarah within the first ten minutes, thus setting up the inevitable “and then my original character who’s just like me dates and marries Sarah Jane, making her happy at last” fanfic plot.

OTOH, I do rather think the producers go a little bit Harry Potter on this ep. (I can just see Joanne Rowling fighting off the crossovers up in her castle in Scotland. “But Mum, obviously Grindelwald killed Sarah Jane’s parents, and she’s a Squib but….” “No! Let me finish Book 7!”)

Seriously, though, I think the episode underestimates Sarah’s powers of preparation and discretion. The woman signed the Official Secrets Act over thirty years ago, and she’s not naive about the sorts of baddies who might come looking for friends of the Doctor. Also, she protects her sources. If she were Up To Something, she would be doing it in some straightforwardly but effectively discreet way, and all the neighborhood rumors which might circulate would be entirely wrong. She’s also the kind of woman who, if she had fairies at the bottom of her garden, would most likely be having them in for tea and fairycakes — no, she’d avoid the ethnic reference — scones and sticky buns, then.