About music, with no music

[petronia]

EDIT -- Oh and for the three of you who've missed it, the first issue of imaginarybeasts is up! The publication will have an entirely different "house style" from bb_shousetsu, I suspect. XD

Uploaded that Alec Campion DJ Mix to fst, where... it is enthusiastically received. I'm baffled but gratified. XD (Also, still waiting on that Richard-in-PotS mix, guys. I have a retarded joke planned re: my OTP being The Knife/José Gonzalez.)

DJ mixes aside my best (if not my only) FSTs have always been for novels, or series I experienced primarily as novels: Good Omens, Mirage of Blaze, Yukikaze, The Etched City. This is telling because I find it difficult going on impossible to produce fanfiction for books written in English. I run up against authorial prose. It's not a sense of inadequacy, just that I perceive the task to be reproduction, not translation, and I'm a translator. My entire writing process resides in the metaphor-space delineated by the work of recreating images in prose, or prose in music, or the cadences of Japanese in those of English - I'm always trying to explain something. As I see it dancing about architecture isn't futile, if I were a choreographer I'd take it up as a creative challenge. XD

I pronounce the leaked Arcade Fire album rather good! Not as much with the epic as the first (or maybe just that one sees them coming the second time around - "Intervention" is still brill though), more a low-bitrate Starlight Mints, dusty drinking-hole-for-ghosts vibe. Last Plane to Jakarta distinguishes between albums with "wet" and "dry" landscapes; Neon Bible is so dry it makes me want to sneeze. I hear the backlash is starting, or something, to which I say good since it allows me to continue pretending they're just another middling-successful quirky Montreal musical outfit. XD Which they are, in everything except the middling. I'm not and never have been dedicated enough to swing tickets to one of their small-venue shows, but they sound so local I get cognitive dissonance.

Like "Ocean of Noise", which is sort of like Southern All Stars taped in a barn haunted by the spectre of Martin Hannett. Surf pop album filler is a totally Montreal thing, either by way of French chanson influence or hankering for what we haven't got, or both.

I forgot to mention that last week I went for drinks with some colleagues after work. It was at a bar off Square Victoria I'd only been to once, on the terrasse. It turned out the interior was packed, wall-to-wall standing room, with suits and blond girls in tweed miniskirts from Marketing, swishing glasses of wine and trying to pick each other up. There was a DJ; he played (quite good) progressive house. Nobody danced of course. The whole thing was only funny because it was real, if it had been parody it would've been too heavy-handed.

In other news, I ordered the FFXII Ultimanias Sunday night because sororial unit wanted them, and they arrived Wednesday morning. These things are the size of fantasy novel omnibuses in trade paperback, what the hell, I thought they'd be large and thin like English strategy guides. There's the entire bestiary in Japanese, everything a townsperson might ever say to one's party, how to defeat Yiazmat using a single party member with beginner licenses, no quickenings, and the PS2 controller tied behind one's back, etc. So far I have been baffled by the following:

1) The capital of Rozarria is called "Topaz Valley". Not in katakana or anything, just... it's a valley. Made out of topaz (or was that amber?). Like Silicon Valley is made out of silicon. So if you were, say, a princess of the Second Margrace Dynasty, you would be... a valley girl? I think.

2) That one picture of Ashe and Basch stripped down for the Fun Phon Coast. GEEBUS, WARN ME PEOPLE WILL YOU.

Comments

[one-if-by-land.livejournal.com]

I. I MAY NEED TO TALK TO YOU. should I hit you with an e-mail or are you on MSN or--?

[petronia.livejournal.com]

:0 I'm leaving work now but hit me up with an email and I'll answer later tonight?

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

Do I need to getto Ultimania Y/N. If Y, which one.

RE: Richard-in-PotS mix, VELLY SOLLY, TOO DISTRACTED BY IMPERIAL TIGHTS

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Yes? No? How much do you want/need 500 pages per book of appendix information in tiny print, is the question. XD; Character profiles, staff interviews, world history, stuff about airships and races, area maps and lists of what you can buy in which shop are in the Scenario Ultimania. Most of the Japanese cutscene scripts are in the Omega - mook-style, with analysis - plus original art design, voice actor interviews, the entire bestiary and a list of every single person you can talk to in the game and what they say (in the game you can spend hours wandering around chatting up the townspeople). Oh, and all the sidequest hunts and a fair number of ridiculous gameplay things. I didn't get the Battle one because I figured they would've rejigged the stats in the NAmerican version anyway. XD

There's a lot of redundancy across the books too, I think.

[canis-m.livejournal.com]

I think I would like more grist for the mill, is the thing. It would be edifying to see the Japanese scripts, even at risk of farxing up the character voices I'm still trying to assimilate.

...Was hoping to get by with just Omega but it sounds like I may want Scenario, too, argh.

[celestriad.livejournal.com]

whoa, a single party member for yiazmat? i've been just luring him over near the stairs so i can hit him with long range weapons. since he can't reach you there, all he does is death strike and cyclone. makes life really easy. a bit repetitive, though. :P

what the... do i want to know about that picture on the phon coast? o_O;

[lacewood]

Thanks for the pimp! XD And ahaha, the different house style isn't really intentional - I am, uh, kind of surprised at the relatively? literary leanings of the submissions myself... XD I would've been totally happy with shameless pulp XD Then again I suppose it's best for forming a seperate identity. XD