Beth Winter

I've decided that all in all, a passive usage of Twitter may be not that bad. Has anyone got suggestions of interesting people to follow, in the fandom/musicals/writers sense? I've already got @NeilHimself.

As fyrie is fond of reminding me, even though I mainlined Merlin last autumn (I believe it took me less than a week to catch up all 11 episodes then aired), I never mentioned it in my journal. So unless you're icon-stalking and caught my Lancelot icon, there's no notice of how much I adore the show.

The thing is, I know my Arthurian legends. Intimately so: I've read Morte d'Arthur cover to cover, attempted Chretien de Troyes in the original old French, browsed through large sections of the Vulgate cycle, and read far too many critical essays. In my childhood, I read both Arthurian stories and the Welsh legends that they referenced. When I was preparing for the exams for Interdisciplinary Human Sciences, my presentation was to be on the evoluton of the Grail.

And yes, Merlin takes all this and puts it through a meat grinder. But they get it, they get the spirit of the idealism of power and the grounding of strength in old myth.

Also, they have some damn good writers for the dialogue and characterisation. I'm a sucker for character-driven shows, and between the script and the wonderful (and crazy, natch) actors, this show presents a compelling cast. I think it's telling that AU is so present in the Merlin fanfiction: with the dynamics they have, these people can work in any setting and remain themselves.

I can't really name a favourite. Merlin has the snark and the goofiness and the ability to make you want to both hug him and box his ears. Arthur's prattiness and idealism mesh seamlessly, he is that much larger than life. Morgana is the type I adore - so very female and so very much not yielding (though nurturing when she wants to be). Gwen - I can't wait to see what they do with her. Uther is another box-his-ears type, but also falls in the category of people you'd love to have dinner with just to argue with him. And Gaius is Gaius, and awesome enough in himself.

But yeah. Icon. Okay, it's a little because it's Santiago Cabrera, and a little because I love Lancelot and his foibles in all incarnations, but the combination of Idealism and Determination and Tousled was irresistible. I was overjoyed to hear he's returning to the show :D

( Now for reactions to the first episode of series two )

Continuing my baking experiments, I declare the updated, healthified and Europeanised edition of the Huguenot Torte a success :> Apples, walnuts and brown sugar are never a bad combination

( Recipe for a comfort cake )

In other cooking news, on Friday I'm making okonomiyaki for a large group. I've already successfuly Europeanised the recipe by substituting potato starch for taro root. And a new Korean restaurant/grocery near my work has tonkatsu sauce - score one for semi-authentic toppings.

I wonder if I should practice flipping them again. I tend to end up with very small okonomiyaki ;)

1st of September is the day school begins. Twenty years ago I first put on a navy skirt and white shirt, with my hair in braids for the first day in school. (The principal mispronounced my family name and I stood up in a crowd of over a hundred first-years to correct him. He still says hi to me when we meet in the street.)

Seventy years ago, at 4.45 AM, shots were fired that meant school wouldn't begin that day. Something else was beginning.

There had been fighting in Asia already, but these were the shots that began the war that swept the world. At the end, 15% of my country's people were dead. Often the best of them - the ones that fought, the ones that were a danger. Anielewicz and Baczynski and Fieldorf. It took us half a century to dig our way back to freedom.

Memo to world powers: this is what warmongering leads to.

Attention! Attention! It passed by!
Comma three!
Somebody runs on the stairs,
Door slammed somewhere,
One sound of the tumult and uproar
Bursts out, timidly rolls, grows,
Sound of sirens - in octave
Subsides - and rises the moan:
"Announcing alarm for the city of Warsaw!"

And silence.
Somewhere from above
Buzzes, buzzes, hums and quivers
And bursts
Deafly in the deeps.
One, two three,
Series of bombs.
It's somewhere farther. No fear.
Possibly Praga.
But now closer, still closer.
Close by, close by.
Shout like a bloody rag.
And silence, silence, which grows stronger
"Attention! Attention!
Recalling the alarm for the city of Warsaw!"

No. This alarm nobody can recall.
This alarm lasts.
Wail, sirens!
Beat, drums!
Cry, the church bells!
Let the orchestra play march
From Wagram, From Jena.
Grab this moan, regiments,
Battalions, guns, tanks,
Let it burst forth,
Let it persist
In fiery, sacred "Marseillaise!"

When people leave the church at noon,
When in the sky wind the clouds is chasing,
When a dark sleep on Paris falls,
Who makes me continually listen?
Who is that wakes and calls me?
I hear the hum of the night air raids
Floating over the city. Not the planes these are.
Demolished churches are floating,
The gardens changed into graveyards,
The ruins, the rubble, the wreckage,
From the childhood known streets and houses,
Trauguta and Swietokrzyska
Niecala and Nowy Swiat.
And the city floats on the wings of glory
And falls like a rock to the bottom of the heart.
"Announcing alarm for the city of Warsaw!"
Let it last!

(Alarm, Antoni Slonimski, translated by Stefan Golston

Just because I continue to squee on Saryan, have some fanart from the talented Yumeya Ohagi:

Damduk and Kiha finding out that having a BFF and a bodyguard can be a barrier against romance

The Saryan is much more stylish than an Igor

Damduk the dreamy

Aforementioned BFFs

And extra Elisabeth:

Hungarian rebel inna box!

Chibi!Death!

No idea what they're saying here, but I think Death has a fangirl

(And ♥ to erukun for the link to that site!)

We got toujitsuken (same-day tickets) to see this show, and I was surprised to find them still available when we arrived at the Tokyo Takarazuka Theater at 10 AM, since it was only a few days before the end of the run and the joint graduation/retirement of both Top Stars and eight other performers. The same-day tickets are the very back row of the balcony, and I can confirm that even from there, the view is stellar - binoculars helped, of course.

( And here I thought it wasn't possible for me to be impressed by a Cosmos show )

Out of all we saw during our stay in Japan, this was the show for which I had the least expectations. I'm happy to report I was very pleasantly surprised.

Arrived home without falling over, which I think counts as a win. Saying goodbye was hard (to Osaka, ladyoz, and finally to fyrie in Helsinki, wah!), but oh, it's been a good trip.

(Also, my purchases from just two shops - guess which ones - fill a whole box. Oops?)

Cirque for the second time was fantastic, even if the most intense of acrobats switched acts, leaving the Duelling Seesaws of Death a little less tense.

Also, I sincerely want to kick Yuu. I do not need another troupe to follow, nor another DVD to buy, but I think I may break for Me and My Girl. Mainly because I can't get the songs out of my head. Or her drunken squeals, for that matter. She spent half the show in soprano ~_~

I think I would have come away with a different impression of kabuki theatre if I hadn't seen a show with costumes designed by Yoshitaka Amano, starring Bando Tamasaburo and Ichikawa Ebizo (both of whom Google identifies as the definite dream cast). There were sparkles and capes and dragons and Shiny Things (TM). And heels.

So many little things made it from Kabuki into Takarazuka as well. The hand gestures, the steps, even the fawning manner of the female-players. Someone should write a thesis on this.

(For the record, the show was Kaijin Besso, The Sea God's Villa.)

And before, there was Taka-An, and a CD by my girl that was never officially released, recorded in 1991 during her nibante days. I now have a recording of Maki Ichiro singing Memory ♥