intertribal: (kid a 2)
and then I remember that our school doesn't exactly have classes in the kind of history I would like to study. 

Anyway, you know how everyone (especially American observers) dislikes that organized religion, when portrayed by the Japanese, always turns out bad, cultish, worse than the "villain" if not the "villain", sexually deviant, etc.?  As quoted from the New York Times...
As the Lovecraft scholar Robert M. Price argues in an insightful introduction, the original Cthulhu stories resonate uniquely in Japan, a nation that has not only a documented affinity for giant green, scaly monsters, but also a longstanding fear of any organized activity that smacks of cultism — a land where Christianity was alternately banned and bastardized for centuries.
Americans, by contrast, don't have the history of Aum Shinrikyo.  We actually don't have that many cults anymore, and we're more likely to associate "religious cult" with Tom Cruise and Scientology than with sarin gas and subway attacks. 

See, it makes sense, and I don't even know any Japanese history.  I sort of wonder if this may be the reason that I always portray organized religion badly too, because Indonesian religion is rarely all that organized, and is much more of a personal choice, how much you worship, how you worship, no matter what the scholars would want, and the kind of mass integration of worship that exists in America just doesn't exist there. 

I also realized that I like Shaun of the Dead for very similar reasons that I like other post-apocalyptic movies, even if it is funny, because it too shows the stripped down version and values of each character.  Mild-mannered, unambitious Shaun is actually a leader.  Ed and David, by contrast, are actually not, and both are self-obsessed, though David is self-obsessed and spiteful, whereas Ed is just self-obsessed. 

Oh yeah.  Kurt Vonnegut is dead.  I unfortunately said "yay" when Kim told me this before I could stop myself, because Slaughterhouse Five is my third least favorite novel.  I know, I know.  Bad karma galore.  Kim asked me why I disliked Slaughterhouse Five so much, and I couldn't come up with a very good reason other than that the book just didn't sit well with me - I just disliked it.  Then again, if his was the philosophy of the '60s and '70s, maybe that explains some of it too.  I have not been known to agree with that generation.  And yes, my parents were there, but they also weren't.  It was different in Indonesia.  Slaughterhouse Five, you see, is a purely American novel, full of American presumptions, but it parades itself as one of the whole world.  You can tell from Mr. Vonnegut's own writing, however, how very un-universal he really was:
“The firebombing of Dresden,” Mr. Vonnegut wrote, “was a work of art.” It was, he added, “a tower of smoke and flame to commemorate the rage and heartbreak of so many who had had their lives warped or ruined by the indescribable greed and vanity and cruelty of Germany.”
This event (that Billy Pilgrim witnesses in the book as a prisoner of war, just like Mr. Vonnegut did in real life, proving that the self-satisfied, pathetic Pilgrim is a stand-in for himself) was the saddest point of the book for me, the only part that resonated, and it didn't resonate for that reason.  It resonated because so many people were dying, and to me, it didn't matter that they were Germans or Nazis or how bad they had been.  They were still dying.  I identify with Indonesia, but that doesn't mean that I'm happy to know that the Japanese - the nation that as colonizer has treated Indonesia the worst - had to endure the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I don't crow and say, "Yeah, that's what you get for enslaving us."  I also have big problems with the phrase "so it goes".  To me it screams - or rather, shrugs - of apathy, which I can't stand.  Yes, it's all a charade, isn't it, life.  We're all going to die anyway.  We're brought here just to suffer through stupidity and a lackluster society, and for what?  For nothing.  Yes, and you must accept that.  I come to the conclusion that our goal is to survive - not only that, but to help as many other people survive too.  Not because you'll be rewarded in the afterlife or in this one.  Just because I do think we can alleviate pain, little by little, and if we can, even for a moment, why wouldn't we?

However, I do like the poem that he used to close his final novel, called "Requiem".
When the last living thing
has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be
if Earth could say,
in a voice floating up
perhaps
from the floor
of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here.
intertribal: (Default)
I realized while watching that beautiful proposal by the Boise State tailback to his cheerleader girlfriend that my favorite couples are the ones who stay together through terrible hardship - love that survives in a very un-romantic situation.  When it's romance in a romance movie, it's overload for me, and I get nauseous (like, with the notebook).  But when love is found despite situations that would not usually allow for it, I'm very appreciative.  It's those couples who can actually make it, who are actually real couples, who actually have true love.  The ones who live in soap opera worlds that are totally conducive to romantic attachments are boring, cheesy, and aren't actually going to survive when the going gets rough.  The couples that just sort of randomly get together in the middle of a war, however, might just be match-ups of convenience.  It's the couples that survive the entirety of an ordeal together that get my props... and thus I present my favorite couples of fiction (and fact).

Son Goku and Son Chi-Chi

My original favorite couple, the official (or at least real) couple of DBZ.  The odds they overcome are huge - namely, Goku dies twice, once for seven years.  Earth is constantly being threatened or destroyed, and he constantly has to go save it since the other Z warriors are incompetent (and that's counting Vegeta), and she always gets left behind.  Some say that because there's not a lot of PDA in DBZ this means that they don't love each other, but I strongly disagree with this.  For one, it is shonen anime, and it's not going to show a lot of touchy-feely stuff.  Also, I honestly don't think that Goku leaves to fight evil because he wants to.  He has to, and he may enjoy fighting because he's a Saiyan, but I really doubt that he wants to die.  "Embodiment of Fire" makes it very clear that Goku fights to protect those he loves - chiefly his wife and his son(s).  Watch it if you don't believe me.  Another slight against this ship is that Goku was "tricked" into marrying Chi-Chi and he doesn't even know what love is (let alone sex).  What people don't seem to realize is that marriage is a social construct.  When he meets her, he's lived most of his life outside of human society.  I mean, what societal role models has he had?  Mr. Roshi?  Bulma?  Oolong?  Yamcha?  Or how about Karin?  Kami?  Do you see what I mean?  Ask children raised by wolves if they know what marriage is.  That does not mean that he doesn't understand commitment and sex.  I have total faith that Goku knew what to do on their wedding night ^_- (and further that he doesn't stop there, but that's another post) because that's instinct.  Final slight: Chi-Chi yells, ergo she is mean, ergo this ship sucks.  Chi-Chi yells because she cares.  She's not whining (like some other female characters on that show...).  She's trying to make sure her family doesn't go down the shithole.  It would be worse, I've always thought, if she said, "Yeah, go ahead and fight to your death, I don't care."  When it comes down to it, she always has faith that Goku will win - and she wants him to win his battles too.  People respond to stress in different ways, after all, and Chi-Chi has a hell of a lot of stress in her life.  Still, by the end of DBZ they're still together (I don't count the whole final episode-lead in to GT thing), and Goku explicitly tells Chi-Chi that he's back for good this time and that he loves her, and Chi-Chi is demonstratively very happy about this.  I'll let Goku's wikipedia article speak for itself [italics mine]: "Chi-Chi had always been madly in love with Goku, a sentiment that he clearly reciprocates, but never fully understands. This is probably due to his utter seclusion from society until his adolescence... This certainly does not however (as many fans wrongfully assume) equate to Goku not loving his family."

Aragorn and Arwen Undomiel

I know that J.R.R. Tolkien didn't originally intend for these two to end up together, and didn't even include Arwen until a later draft (which differentiates this couple from the previous), but I for one am glad that he decided not to put Aragorn and Eowyn together, but to add another layer of complexity to the story by having an interspecies romance.  Obviously the concept of a human man and an elvish woman being in love is so cool that it's been copied... 500 million times, including by hideous, hideous "Eragon".  This is the original though, and the best.  They really are the main couple of Lord of the Rings, and are the epitome of love enduring hardship and separation.  Arwen knows that Aragorn is going off to fight Sauron (metaphorically speaking), and even though he's unsure of his chances of victory and of staying true to the path of goodness, being the heir of treacherous Isildur, Arwen reassures him, telling him that he will face the same evil, and defeat it.  She also gives him her Evenstar pendant to symbolize her commitment to him.  Even if he's to die - which she doesn't think will happen - she is willing to give up her immortality for him.  Aragorn, meanwhile, always wears the Evenstar very obviously around his neck, and never does anything with Eowyn even though she is clearly interested in him, and the last he heard, Arwen is sailing off to the undying lands with her father Elrond (or at least, that's what he's been guilted into wanting her to do, because Elrond yelled at him - "she stays for you, she belongs with her people").  He still dreams about Arwen regardless, and she saves him when he falls off the cliff in the battle with the hounds of Isengard by bringing him back to life.  They clearly have a deep psychic connection.  My favorite scene in The Two Towers is when Aragorn arrives, very late, at Helm's Deep, and Legolas hands him the Evenstar, which he lost in the skirmish, and Aragorn thanks him very sincerely.  Oh, this couple is so true.  Arwen represents hope, and Aragorn's love for her exemplifies his maturity - he not only has friends from all over Middle Earth, he also loves a woman who's so far from his "bubble" that she's not even the same species.  His ability to unite people is what makes Aragorn a leader.  No doubt Arwen helped him out with that ability. 

Hector and Andromache

I haven't actually seen the movie Troy, so I base this off the book, even though the picture is from the movie.  I hated The Iliad for what it did to this couple.  I suppose it's supposed to show the horridness of war, and how things don't always work out the way they should, but god if it doesn't really seem to glorify the wrong people (like Achilles... the spawn of Satan!).  Hector is the epitome of the noble hero.  He fights for Troy and for his family, because he knows that the Greeks intend on slaughtering all of Troy as revenge for Helen being taken from them.  Like Goku, he leaves his wife and son to fight because he has to.  He's their best fighter.  If he doesn't, they'll all die.  The scene when Andromache begs him not to leave and presents their baby to him to try to convince him not to go is the saddest scene in the entire book, because you know, from then on, that he's going to die.  And he does.  Achilles kills him and then parades his body around in the most heinous way imaginable.  What the hell goes through Andromache's mind then?  Even more so when the Greeks finally sack Troy and toss her son off a rooftop, and take her into captivity (to be raped, in other words)?  Compared to Paris and Helen, who are in a relationship of convenience, Hector and Andromache are one of the few couples in the whole of ancient Greek mythology that have a pure, true, human love.  It's sad that their relationship ends so awfully, but I'll always commemorate them as one of the earliest examples of true love.  There's a reason that I named my heroine in Ilium Agonistes after Andromache, after all. 

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