Quoran Answer Transplant: What do you think of Asians playing different Asians?

 What do you think of Disney casting a Korean woman to play Mulan in the upcoming Live-Action Mulan movie?

Question details: To be honest, I'm a little annoyed that they did that. I have nothing against Korean people; I just wanted a Chinese woman to play Mulan. Maybe I'm just making a big deal out of it because I'm Chinese myself…

Quoran Answer Transplant: ScarJo's Personal Responsibility?

Is Scarlett Johansson equally responsible as the production company for whitewashing Ghost in the Shell by accepting the role?

Question details: Considering she doesn't need the role, she has the money, the fame, and the respect. She's not a struggling actor desperate for her breakout role who can't afford to lose this opportunity. She can pick whatever role she wants. Shouldn't the blackfaced actor be held as responsible as the showrunner? 

The answer is an unequivocal NO, she is certainly not EQUALLY responsible as the production company, that's ridiculous. People are inclined to put actors and actresses up on pedestals but remember, they are employees NOT bosses. All those things you mention in the question details: doesn't need more money, more fame, more respect, etc. is technically true, but so what? Who says she must rest on her laurels or even be discerning about what scripts she accepts? Those decisions are hers alone.

On the other hand, is she absolved of any and all wrongdoing? Unequivocally NO yet again. As an A-list actress she has some influence at the very least insofar as she can draw attention to any issue simply by pointing a finger. If she cared to she could have turned down the role and publicly spoken about the subject of whitewashed casting in Hollywood. I'd believe that she's never heard of the Ghost in the Shell franchise but that's irrelevant. When she saw the name of the character she'd be playing, Motoko Kusanagi, it should have raised an eyebrow. But apparently it didn't, at least not high enough to prompt a reply of "I, um, I think I'd be miscast for this role".

Quoran Answer Transplant: Japanese Fan Reaction to Johansson as Kusanagi

How do fans in Japan react to Scarlett Johansson playing Motoko Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell?

While this is a fair question to ask and I don't wish to marginalize the reactions of the very people from whose nation the Ghost in the Shell franchise came from, I'm afraid their answers are being taken the wrong way and used to prop up some of the wrong-minded reasons some people support Scarlet Johansson's casting.

Quoran Answer Transplant: Scarlett Johansson as Major Motoko Kusanagi?

How do Ghost in the Shell fans feel about Scarlett Johansson as Major Motoko Kusanagi?

I'm angry and disappointed.

Again and again and again we see roles that could/should go to Asian actors/actresses get passed on to beautiful whites. If there was ever a AAA Hollywood movie where the monstrous gamble of casting an Asian American woman to play the lead might have good odds, it's a fucking adaptation of a popular anime franchise. There is a fan base already built in!

One of the arguments I see supporting Johansson's casting is, "Motoko Kusanagi doesn't HAVE to be played by a Japanese or even an Asian looking person because the character has an artificial body that also doesn't even look Asian". 

This is irrelevant and the reasoning is specious.

This isn't about Johansson's acting ability (she has it, that isn't under contention). This isn't about "looking like the character from the manga or the anime". 

"Anime characters never really look Asian any way, ya know?" 

Sure, but they don't really look like white people, or even real humans either. This is a drawn medium, the characters you see are representations of human beings, and usually not photo-realistic ones, either.

Tell me this looks like an actual white person you've ever met.

 If you actually want to argue that Lisa Simpson's ethnicity isn't white, you can stop reading now and go fuck yourself. In the Simpsons universe, this art style of human represents a white person.

This represents an Asian person.

 If you really don't think Asian-ness has anything at all to do with the character of Motoko Kusanagi then what was that whole CGI facial alteration thing about? It amazes me, the lengths to which Hollywood will go to avoid having to ACTUALLY use an Asian. They were seriously about to give Johansson the Sergeant Lincoln Osiris treatment. Do the guys in Hollywood even realize that the movie Tropic Thunder [2008] was a satirical piece aimed at them?

"They had one good part in here for a black man and they gave it to Crocodile Dundee."

Quoran Answer Transplant: Hotness - Good or Bad?

I'm still alive, everyone.

I'm sorry I haven't been very loyal to Blogger as a platform. All of my recent writing has been spent on answering questions on Quora instead. If it makes you feel better, I'm not all that prolific there either so you haven't missed out on too much. Nevertheless, in the interest of synchronization, from now on I'll endeavour to post any answers I write there to my personal blog here as well. To catch up this will begin a series of transplanted posts from Quora to Blogger.

Anime Again

In 2008 I realized that I'd lost contact with the anime world in the time between graduating high school and entering university. I attended Otakon that year and as I looked around I noticed large posters (and plenty of cosplay) for a show called Code Geass I'd never heard of. I had totally missed out on it.

2015 now, I am currently sorting my music collection, cleaning up ID3 tags and such and I started watching some YouTube videos of Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. I ended up on this video here:


It's from a show currently airing called "Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso". Once again, in a single moment of clarity, I am rocked with the sensation that I've let anime drift away from me. Maybe this doesn't seem like a big deal to you but anime is one of my favorite mediums of entertainment. What I'm feeling right now is akin to a guy (or girl, maybe) who considered him/herself to be an avid football fan who has woken up one day and discovered that all the players s/he used to know have retired and all the current players and up-and-coming stars are people s/he doesn't recognize.

Father & Son

Real summer weather has finally started to come around this past week. In the face of the ominous approaching heat I've taken it upon myself to clean out the dust in all the family computers currently in use (3). And these things haven't been dusted... ever.

So as I was dusting the interior my dad walked past and came over to give me some unsolicited and (in my opinion) unnecessary cautionary advice about static electricity. He was an electrical engineer so he knows what he's talking about on this topic but this ain't my first rodeo for something so simple as dusting electronic components, I'll have you know. In addition, I'm more than familiar with the evils of static electricity. The main thing though: I think that was the first time we ever had what I imagine to be "normal" father/son conversation, complete with banter and laughter. I've never been close with my father and I don't believe we ever will be but I caught a glimpse of what might be in another universe, perhaps.

Farewell to Another Old Chum

It's been a little over a year since last time and I've just retired the second Gmail account I ever made. This should be the last major event of this type as I don't intend to do another open-one/close-one email account renovation.

The address was darkrahnoehk@gmail.com. Yes, the [rahnoehk] naming convention was a trio of Gmail accounts. As you know, regular rahnoehk retired in March 2014. I used that account for business matters like job and education-related material. I used dark rahnoehk for... everything else. If I needed an email address for something, anything at all, that didn't fit into "job stuff" or "school stuff" darkrahnoehk rolled out. Unfortunately, dark has gotten old and riddled with spammy disease because of its promiscuous ways. It was young. It was foolish. It didn't know about disposable email addresses back then. Gmail filters out all spam with ease but I think it's time to just start fresh. (Besides, it doesn't fit the new naming convention I use.)

(￣___￣)7

P.S. Check out the dead link to Grooveshark in that other post, eh? Damn, I mean, I'm not super surprised they shut down because of copyright difficulties, but they'd been around for a couple of years so I figured they'd somehow slipped notice successfully. Guess not.

P.P.S. You might be saying, "Hey, if there was a regular rahnoehk and a dark rahnoehk then where was/is light rahnoehk?" Well, good on you for paying attention. That's the address/account I use for this blog/Google+ profile. I've looked into migrating this entire blog over to another account but it turns out it would break all the images in all past posts. That's a lot of damage so it's a good thing I'm not completely OCD for conceptual uniformity with my Google account names.

Do That In Your Own Bathtub, Kid

So I saved a kid at my pool today.

Great Success

Before I started writing this post I went looking through my own blog for a previous piece (I thought) I'd published about how knowledge of another language conveyed Bonus Points to your Google-fu when looking for stuff on the internet. Then I realized I haven't made any such post here, it was an answer I'd submitted on Quora.

A decade ago I watched a trailer for an anime called "Dai-guard: Terrestrial Defense Corp.". I never got around to watching the anime itself, still haven't, but I instantly loved the music in the trailer. Turns out they just used the opening sequence for the trailer, so this song is actually the opening theme song as well.



Well, I'd never been able to find a high quality version of the full song. I could only find either good TV sized ones or crappy quality full length ones. Until now. With my post-uni Japanese experience I tried again today and found it forthwith. And my Japanese is admittedly rudimentary, too.

I'll upload it to YouTube eventually, but for now here's a high quality full length mp3 file of the song I'll share with you. Enjoy the fruits of my labour.

Quest Completed!

It's done. It's all done.

It took a whole damn month to sort out some things on their end but it's all cleared now.

Review: Thief 2014 a.k.a. Thief 4

This is my review of the PC game Thief that developer Eidos-Montreal released in 2014. It's been a long time since I've written a review for anything, hasn't it? So brace yourself for a really long post the likes of which you haven't seen around here since 2013! I've mentioned the Thief video game franchise in passing twice before. I'll reiterate: I consider the first two entries to be masterpieces of the stealth video game genre. The third one was a'ight. Therefore, of course I have a lot to say about this latest addition to the franchise.

American Sniper [2015]

I took the movie as a work of fiction. As such I liked it because of it's portrayal of the detrimental psychological effects that war has on soldiers. I'd put it on par with The Hurt Locker for depicting war in such a way that it did not glorify the violence and for its focus on soldiers coming back with PTSD.

On the other hand, from what I've heard about the real Chris Kyle, if this movie had been based on his book and told from his perspective it really would have been a jingoistic propoganda piece with none of the conscience and self-reflection that Bradley Cooper gives the character.

BANG

OH NOES

The final bullet... and now I'm having some technical difficulties with the site. The bullet's ready to go, I've got it chambered, finger is on the trigger! And it just won't fire.
 

The Enkindling

Also got the official Amazon leather case, blue.

I got a Kindle Paperwhite (2nd generation) and I'm going to use it to read picture books, ha-HAA!! Stickin' it to The Man, yeah...

Dream 2014/12/4

I have a pretty good inkling on where my subconscious drew inspiration for those strange weapon names. Firstly, I believe the spark came from a repeated phrase in "A Song of Ice and Fire":

All the best swords have names.

Going further back, the best swords from "The Lord of the Rings" also had names, e.g. Glamdring, Orcrist, Sting. Finally, let's not forget just how badass names can be in the Halo universe.

Truth and Reconciliation

Prequel Dream to Dream 2014/12/4

So first, the prequel dream. No date on it because I can't remember when I had it. I am amazed I didn't write it down and/or post it the day after. And now I'm paying for that mistake. I have forgotten some major details by now, I tell you. Actually the forgetting was a bit useful in a way because that's what made me think about it again, which in turn prompted me to have a related dream that night and to make this post now. Silver linings, I 'spose?

Battlestation Components (5)

Got the SSD. Black Friday 2014 was NOT, I repeat, was NOT DiGiorno because it delivered. Sandisk Ultra II 240GB for $75. That's ~31¢/GB. Noice! Apologies for delaying the report on this, it's been a week since this all went down. Of course, I used Amazon Prime so I've also had the package for a few days now, too. With this, I have all the components ready.

Just One More

DIE, STUDENT LOANS, DIE!!