wJul 13, 2009


The theme is French

Gankutsuou continues to be a fabulous anime. At the moment, I believe my favorite character to be Eugenie.

A brooding, vampiric count! A naive character whose best man-friend is totally in love with him even though he's too stupid to notice! Adults in unhappy marriages made for money! Gothic exteriors! People living on the moon, and in France! Horses with computer-chip eyeballs! Music by Tchaichovsky and Debussy and other people I don't recognize with my ears! A REFERENCE TO LUCREZIA BORGIA!

Here, have a trailer.



Also, for those who are already fans, go look at 's Gankutsuou fanart!


My "normal" book club read Abundance by Sena Jeter Naslund. Ever since watching most of the anime Rose of Versailles, I've found myself drawn to the story of Marie Antoinette. I really loved Sofia Coppola's movie.

Anyway, the author made an effort to write pretty prose, but I'm not sure that's what I would call it. Our book club did agree that she certainly did a good job capturing her tone, as evidenced by the actual letters that appeared in the pages.

I'm not usually a fan of reading books written in the first-person present tense; this is especially true of historical fiction. This book definitely didn't win me over.

Anyway, I appreciate that this book actually followed Marie Antoinette to the end of her life. Mostly, though, while reading it, I just wanted to go off and read Antonia Fraser's biography instead.

At book club, suggested that it might be fascinating to read historical fiction set in the same period, perhaps even in the same building, from a different perspective. Because from Marie Antoinette's perspective it's like, "Holy shit, people are mad at me!" with no pretense. Our book club especially disliked that the author made it seem like Marie Antoinette was wholly uninterested in politics, which wasn't really the case.

There is a working-class woman who shows up creepily in Antoinette's bedroom early-ish in the book to give her a prophetic warning about revolution. She was described as having cropped hair, "like Joan of Arc's." That'd be a cool point of view!

So far, my favorite "observe the life of Marie Antoinette" point of view is that of Oscar de Jarjayes, protagonist of the manga/anime series Rose of Versailles. Oscar is a woman who dresses like a man, and becomes Marie Antoinette's personal bodyguard. Women and men alike swoon for her, as she kicks ass and sticks to her own moral code! Also, the artwork is heinously shojo!




HOLY SHIT, I did not know that there was an English version of Placebo's "Protege Moi." I guess it was in English first. It's totally better in French!

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scribbled mystickeeper at 9:32 PM
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