Wolf's Rain ep.1-10

[petronia]

Watched with Tania, Thursday and tonight, out of order. Then spent the last couple of hours digging through flist archives, going by dim memories of people having ficced for it two years ago... Comment with recs here please if you have any (or have written fic - I could well have missed it), I promised Tania I'd ask, she has no eljay-archive-search-fu. XD It's such a beautiful series. I'm tempted to name the epithyllium upstairs Cheza, but I try not to ascribe too much personality to potted plants. It's only flowered once in the last ten years anyhow; preserves the mystique, but really I suppose it lacks sun.

Tania enjoyed it more than I did, I think. Being that it's a Cyrillic universe and all.

(Translator mindset. Keeping the names is meaning-lossy, but it's like Chinese nomenclature, too silly even if made a point of:

Toboe: Like I said, my name's Howl.
Leara: What, like the Diana Wynne Jones character?

Un, yappari chotto...

Why am I well up on my animal words anyway? XD;; I read an article once re the differences between learning a second language as a child and learning it as an adult: a man who moved with his family to Montreal told an anecdote about taking his elementary-aged son to the park, and realising that he may have been conducting business in fluent French for years, but his son knew words for things like "robin" and he didn't... Of course my Japanese is just as un-business (grownup)-oriented as my Chinese, eheh we knew that.)

Comments

[squidlet.livejournal.com]

Oh, there's no real mystery to Cheza, as in, the plant. I remember eons ago I was ranting about being unable to find her picture. But anyway, she/the plant (the Night-Blooming Cereus) is quite commonly available. Just ask any horticultural hobbyist?

And just for the heck of it, some (http://www.plantoftheweek.org/week174.shtml) pictures (http://www.herbarium.com/images/oldflowers/cereus.jpg), photographs (http://cs.engr.uky.edu/~klapper/cereus/page1.htm) and print (http://rmc.library.cornell.edu/exhibits/nature_garland/cereus800.htm). I think I'm addicted to linking pictures of plants and animals.

[marici.livejournal.com]

I couldn't stand the show anymore when I figured out that we'd get a whole bunch of alpha males and not one solitary alpha female. There was some decent stuff here, if you don't mind that:
http://fallenicons.winter-born.net/wr.html

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, hence the one upstairs next to my sister's piano. XD The lady who gave us the original cutting is quite puzzled that we can't seem to get ours to flower; hers does all the time. Apparently.

But I'm glad I got to smell it once. It makes the series more... solid? More evocative. Something about the idea of a human-shaped flower eats my brain. Human-shaped wolf is more like a stylistic convention, a lot of the time.

(Calling it night-blooming cereus makes me think of Kushiel's Dart, damn that book.)

[corneredangel.livejournal.com]

A) All I'll say about Wolf's Rain is that Quent is basically my grandfather. Or rather. my grandfather, the Soviet Army colonel, that I *wish* I had, rather than the drunkard/failure who realises exactly what he is and where he fucked up...that I do...

B) and realising that he may have been conducting business in fluent French for years, but his son knew words for things like "robin" and he didn't...

Ah, welcome to my world. Especially the *my world* of having to deal with Russian government officials. And frantically hoping that being a military history fanboy will be enough to get me through translating an actual conversation with a higher-up in the Ministry of Atomic Energy x_X

Yeah...

(...one of these days, do ask me how I ended up the official English dub voice of the Minister of Atomic Energy of the Russian Federation. x_X)

[astrael-nyx.livejournal.com]

Oh, so that's what the name of that plant is! I've one in my home in Toronto. The night-blooming cereus has bloomed at night in May once a year quite consistently for the past fifteen years or so. Its scent is one of the most intoxicating and unbelievable perfumes I've ever had the good luck to smell. It's something to look forward to every year.

*laughs* I thought of Carey's Kushiel's series too when I read the name of the plant.

[squidlet.livejournal.com]

Hahaha! There's actually a book that's called "Night Blooming Cereus"

Here (http://www.umsystem.edu/upress/spring2002/longstre.htm).

Unfortunately I've never gotten a chance to smell it or see it open, though I've usually seen it in the daytime, as a kid (the family below mine had this madly blooming cereus).

It doesn't flower? Maybe you should try...potassium supplements. Dagnabbit, I need to reconsult my books, I can't remember what mineral promotes flowering and which one branching.

[iltb.livejournal.com]

It's a great series but so depressing as well, or at least that's how I felt watching it.

There really isn't that may good fics on WR, but here's some links to the places where I've had to look.

WR Slash Archive (http://www.hostultra.com/~wrslasharchive/fics.html)
WR FF LJ Community (http://www.livejournal.com/community/wolfsrain_ff/)
and of course FF.net.

I'm sorry I can't actually link you to any particular fic, though. I really haven't seen/can't remember any that stands out.

[sargraf.livejournal.com]

...he may have been conducting business in fluent French for years, but his son knew words for things like "robin" and he didn't...

That's like my Japanese vs my father's. He knows all the stuff you need to know for business, but not words like 宇宙人... which I only know from watching too much anime growing up. ^^;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Quent did strike me as very much a certain type of old Russian guy. I suppose there's a lot of the American Wild West sheriff archetype to him as well...

I wince in sympathy whenever you refer to these phone calls you have to make in Russian, because my Chinese is the same. Fluent, just... incapable of holding up my end of an adult conversation.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

That didn't strike me at all, actually. I think I was working from the allegoric value of the characters: Red Riding Hood (female), hunter (male), wolf (male)... Either that or because alpha wolves in Seton and Kipling were always male; Seton and Kipling being, of course, Dead White Men. In conclusion I should swot up on the biology.

Thanks for the fic link!

[petronia.livejournal.com]

It is, isn't it? Once you've experienced the way it fills the house you start to find it entirely believable that a wolf could smell it from miles away. XD

Funny thing is when I read Kushiel's Dart I had no idea what it was at all. I think I pictured some sort of white orchid.

[petronia.livejournal.com]

As opposed to me, who know words like 宇宙人 from too much anime watched as an adult... XD;;;

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the links! There's an archive even.

[marici.livejournal.com]

I'm a big fan of the intersections of biology and culture, so I was pretty gagging for a seme personality with breasts as soon as I understood they were making a pack. I mean, there's a reason we picked "bitch" for aggressive females. (Hige and Toboe would roll over at once and Kiba would just space-cadet along after his Flower, but Tsume vs Alpha Female in my head is a pretty spectacular knock-down drag-out where she's the high odds for winning. Can't decide what she'd do to Cheza, though.)

[sargraf.livejournal.com]

Don't worry! One can never outgrow anime. ^^ I think I'm going to be one of those people 90 years old in a nursing home, saying, "Don't change that channel! There's a Doraemon rerun on!" ^^;