When fandoms collide

[taotrooper]

Man, a stupid unit in class reminded me of fandoms. We saw today something called greedy algorhythms.

For the love of... *headdesks* Fate, stop rubbing it in!

Interestingly enough, the original name was translated in Spanish as "algoritmos voraces" (voracious algorhythms). Which reminds me, of course, of Gluttony.

Homunculi? Stop showing up everywhere, please.

And now for something different.

I just saw on my flist that Studio Ghibli is adapting yet another fantasy book into a movie. The name of the movie? Gedo Senki: Tales of Earthsea.

...yeah, Miyazaki's son is adapting Earthsea to anime. Which is awesome and scary at the same time. Awesome because it's going to be first-class eyecandy. Scary because they butchered HMC so much. That, and the fact Ged seems... *squints at pre-production poster* you know, too white. Again. Or maybe he's Asian? Adapters can't get his skin right, can they?

Comments

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

...yeah, Miyazaki's son is adapting Earthsea to anime
Holy fuck !

That, and the fact Ged seems... *squints at pre-production poster* you know, too white
ARGGHHHH GRRRRRR

I should've kept my Howl WTF icon

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Geesh, I know! I have to wonder if Ghibli's character designers even get to glance at the books they adapt, they just read summaries with no descriptions at the Internet, or it's the producers who just change the character's looks so it's more appealing to Japanese children (ie, Michael in Howl... yeah, cute kid, but he's missing at least 7 years more and a personality.) Really. What's wrong with dark-skin!canon!Ged?!

Also, it frightens me a bit the poster (http://www.ghibli.jp/) has the dragon. And Ged looks too small to be eighteen, so it's probable they messed the plot badly.

I wonder if LeGuin will wank again when she finds out yet another adaptation whitened her characters again. And I also wonder if Ged would've been reddish brown if Hayao-san had participated in the project. At least Howl looked like Howl in the movie...

I still want to see it, though. Ghibli are such brainwashers.

likewise icons

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

so gorgeous

I can't hate Ghibli studio. For HMC I watched the movie first, so it's not as much painful for me... but yeah, they did do... weird stuff with it.
I guess it's a case of needing to appreciate both work separately and forget one is the adaptation of the other...

But still.... I wanked on my journal about the TV serie adaptation's lack of black people XD now I'm going to feel like a hypocrite if I like the Ghibli version despite it.

Re: likewise icons

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Same here, I watched the movie first as well. But I couldn't understand a thing, really, and bird!Howl disturbed me so much. At least it made me appreciate the book better.

And it happened to me with The Neverending Story, also. I adored the first movie when I was a kid, so I was never bothered because Bastian is thin and Atreyu is lacking the olive green in all adaptations. Then again, I read the book like 15 years later, so I never knew.

Nah, just think you hated the TV miniseries because it sucked and not because of the lack of black. That way you can be a hypocrit with an excuse =D

I still know I'm going to like it because it's Ghibli, and it's going to rock as long as you forget the white jailbait bishie is supposed to be a black guy with a scarred face. No matter what they do to the plot. but if they change the shadow plot, or if they give him a Sue love interest, they'll be maimed

And the dragon looks cool, I must admit. I hope they keep the otak and sell cute plushies of it.

Re: likewise icons

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

I want an otak plushie! :o

Re: likewise icons

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

So do I!

Even if I can't afford it!

Re: likewise icons

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

But I couldn't understand a thing, really, and bird!Howl disturbed me so much. At least it made me appreciate the book better.
*giggles* yeah, the plot was pasteded on yay.

(<- look ! look ! I used a F_W!phrase(TM) I never do that !)


I still liked the movie but that's mostly because it made me fall hopelessly in love with Howl.

And it happened to me with The Neverending Story, also. I adored the first movie when I was a kid, so I was never bothered because Bastian is thin and Atreyu is lacking the olive green in all adaptations. Then again, I read the book like 15 years later, so I never knew.
OH ! I never even read those books so I didn't know it was otherwise !

Nah, just think you hated the TV miniseries because it sucked and not because of the lack of black.

Given that i didn't even see the miniserie, nah... I have no such excuse. I'm judging purely based on the lack of black.

It's more that i've always though that fantasy had a racist problem, and that when they had the occasion to go against it, they didn't. And it's a shame.

the dragon is almost as hot as Haku ^^ *needs to stop wanting to molest Ghibli's gorgeous critters*

Re: likewise icons

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Haku: making fangirls feel zoophilic AND pedophilic since 2001

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

...aaaargh, mixed feelings! T_T I don't want white Ged again, but it can't be worse than the TV series (that one sucked so much that the whitening of characters was what bothered me the least). On the other hand, I haven't watched or read HMC yet, so I don't know how good/bad is Ghibli adapting books.

Side note, because it might be just my edition, but... is Ged supposed to be actually black? I always thought that the people from Gont were more like Native Americans, and people from Estarriol's country were the black ones.

But still, not white. Gaaah.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

I never saw him as BLACK BLACK. It's the whole American/European way to see things. Basically, any tone of brown = black for the average Western now, but I was raised in a South American country.

I mean, Venezuelan's main population is mixed (I wouldn't say mestizos or mulatos or something like that, because it's generations and generations of mixed marriages). Someone with with brown skin is brown for me, period. I only call black people to the ones who are really, really dark, like pure African.

I've had friends and classmates with different shades of brown, like it happens in the School at Earthsea. I never considered them black. They were "morenos" (dark/brown-skinned).

Actually, most of the things Americans call black are "morenos" to me. Actually, I also see Native Americans and Hindi as "morenos". I hate that there's no equivalent in English of that word.

So my Ged is moreno. Brown skin, reddish according to the book. I just said black now for habit, so they could understand me. Estarriol (what's his English name, anyway?) IS blackish, though.

Actually, the only white people are in the South, so it's safe to imagine anyone in the first book as brown or black.

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

Which is exactly the same way I interpreted it, then. Good, I was afraid that my translation had screwed up.

South America is pretty mixed as a whole, I think, and that's why it bothers me when people throw around "Hispanic" for everyone from Mexico to Argentina. There is absolutely *everything* and in any combination. Heck, I have German/Arab cousins!

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

I don't think it is, because I read two translations of the first book (the library one and the home one), and he's still red-brown. And LeGuin said it herself in her SciFi channel wank, that she was inspired in indians Native Americans.

Yeah, I know. I hate it when we're just thrown in a sack. I had a classmate who was white with blue eyes, and she was half Arab half Portuguese. Myself, I don't even know what race am I. Physically speaking, I'm white, and my parents are white. But while my mother's family is Spanish -and that doesn't even make me racially safe, as my grandfather could have moor blood as far as I know-, my father's family is Venezuelan. That means I could easily have black and indígena in my gene pool. Actually, I bet I do. That explains the hair.

But really. I think a pure black or a pure indian doesn't exist in Venezuela. So I can't call an apparently black person black or an apparently indian person indian. We had waaaay more "mestizage" in upper South America than in Argentina or Chile.

Hell, even my stepfather is borderline white. A biiiiit more brown, and he'd be considered a cliche brown-skinned Latino. But he's too pale for that.

Why am I rambling about races so much? Must be because our mentality is so weird.

[laurus-nobilis.livejournal.com]

Because it's interesting! *goes into Ravenclaw mode* I love learning about different cultures, especially the ones that are supposed to be similar like South American countries, but have these subtle and sometimes not-so-subtle differences. But I rarely talk about race unless I'm sure the other person(s) is(are) comfortable with it, because I know that Argentinians have a reputation of being all "OMG! How DARE you call us LATIN! We're EUROPEAN!!!11!!" *sigh*

That said, most people here are mixed too, except for the families that only arrived here very recently or that stayed in neighbourhoods were people from the same country sticked together. My dad's family is entirely Italian, for example. It's from my mum's side that I get the mix, and it's still mostly from European countries (I'm the kind of white that never even gets tanned, only pink and then your skin peels off). Only one of my great-grandmothers was Hispanic, and judging from her looks she probably had some moor and/or native blood too. So we don't really know what we are, either. (Except for the German side, because my great-grandfather's family had to get their genealogic tree during the 30s to prove they were "pure Arian" - it goes back to the 1600s. That is exceedingly creepy, and it's no wonder that my great-grandfather decided to run the hell away from there. And he's the one who married an Hispanic woman, go figure.)

...um, now I'm rambling too.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

I don't know much about Argentina's history, but I'm assuming you guys didn't have as much slavery from Africa as the more tropical Latin countries. I have yet to see the first black/brown Argentinian in my life, but sadly my RL interaction with Argentinians was in Miami Beach so... Then again, you guys have/had much more European immigration than us. We only got Spanish, Portuguese and Italian. We have Germans, but they built a whole town in the mountains and stayed there sucking money from tourists. I liked that town, actually. It was pretty, it had nice food.

I guess our Europeans are more open-minded. We stick together, but we also blend. Two of my high school friends were Italian.

(XDDD at the great-grandfather)

[rayechu.livejournal.com]

I am thinking they went with a white Ged simply because it would be easier to do from a visual standpoint. I would think the animators would have a bit more color choice with peachy skin tones over a brown and green background, making more of a "pop" while a reddish/brown skin would blend into the background more easily. Especially because they do complicated backgrounds.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Perhaps. That makes sense.

I think I can't recall any dark-skinned (as in, not white or Asian) Ghibli character.

Then again, almost all of A Wizard of Earthsea happens either at the sea or inside school indoors. There are some settings where the dark characters wouldn't blend so much. But I'm thinking book canon again.

[paper-seagulls.livejournal.com]

I didn't even remember that stuff about the differences in ethnicity going on in Earthsea. Maybe I should hit up the library and read the thing again. Force back the negitive feelings from english class.... ugh, that'd be tough.

Looking at the movie poster though, (They've been working on this for awhile apparently. Summer release?) it looks like 'generic miyazaki style' which means... everyone's white. Or asian, whatever. Not surprised. (As for the Sci-Fi mini-series, that's one reason I'm glad I don't have cable.)

I personally shocked I posted anything relevent to my blog for once.

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

I saw the news first in your journal, actually ^^u

But yeah. They mention Ged as red-brown skinned a couple of times, in the first book all of them are non-white, except for the invaders at the beginning of the book.

[goodchristina.livejournal.com]

I know how you feel! I saw a game at a store today called seven deadly sins and thought of the humonculi. Oh and HMC? I was so glad to see it and then I read the book, I couldn't believe how off it was! Where did he get the bird from? And the witch just is suddenly ok at the end? And WALES!? The plot (other than Sophie being old) was entirely different. It made me mad, I liked the book a lot better (and got it for Christmas ^^) Anyways, i'll stop the ranting for now ^^;

[rainmage.livejournal.com]

Ghibli screenwriters like their selective reading. Read the two or three first chapters, read the last one, and then invent anything in the middle XDDDD

Man, I miss the Wales subplot! I think that's the real reason movie!Howl never dyed his hair again. He buys his L'Oreal "dye potions" at a drugstore in Wales. And he can't so there anymore and be blond again because Ghibli substituted his Welsh black dimensional door of doom with a stupid battlefield.

He turns into a bird and attacks around so he can go through that crap and find his L'Oreal the real door back home because he's worth it.