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[personal profile] steepholm
I was going to write a fascinating account of getting my ears pierced for the first time this week, but the experience was so exactly like what I'd imagined that I somehow stymied myself. At any rate, I'm happy to report that, pace the ear-piercing scream in Among Others, my magical powers stand much where they did.

(Contrariwise, I feel very sorry for the mother in this year's John Lewis Xmas advert, who tragically loses the ability to see her young son's pet penguin as anything other than a stuffed toy. Made me sniff.)

Other signs of Christmas: the stencil they use at Costa for dusting chocolate onto cappuccinos now resembles a reindeer head. And the German market has appeared in the centre of Bristol. I was in town on Tuesday night with my friend Maryam (to watch Gone Girl), and saw the wooden stalls being swiftly and efficiently erected under floodlights by - yes, the adverbs are a giveaway - real Germans, working out of a real German lorry. It had never occurred to either of us that it was a German German market, rather than being stored eleven months of the year in a trading estate in Solihull. This somehow feels much more festive.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 08:17 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] wellinghall.livejournal.com
Christmas cups appeared at our work Costa this week - before, in fact, the navy and army came in to sell us poppies

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:12 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
When you see special Christmas poppies, that's when you have to worry. Oops, too late.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-08 07:03 am (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
I don't think the mother loses the ability to see the penguin as other than a toy. First we see the penguin from the boy's POV (real) and then at the end from the mother's (toy). That the penguin is shown as real when others are around doesn't negate this, so long as they're not looking at the penguin. It's exactly the same principle on which Hobbes the tiger in Calvin and Hobbes was done.

I note that the penguin is an Adélie: these, like Emperors, live in Antarctica itself, and consequently require sufficient cold that they're rarely if ever seen in zoos. But as they are the species of penguin in the illustrations to Mr. Popper's Penguins, they have ever since been, in my eyes and I guess many others', the default penguin.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:10 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
My first thought was of Calvin and Hobbes, too.

I just wanted to push back against the interpretation that would privilege the adult's perspective as the true one (i.e. as a "reveal"), by noting that the reverse is equally workable. But you're right of course that it's not necessary to privilege either.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-08 12:02 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] kalimac.livejournal.com
I suspect that the "reveal" was intended as the true interpretation, because the toy version only came at the end as a surprise. Calvin and Hobbes was never written that way.

However, it can work as an ad by that interpretation. It's a combination of:
1) (intrigued) "Why does that boy have a penguin? Oh, it's his toy that he's imagining real."
and
2) (the sales pitch) "That boy loves his toy penguin so much, he thinks of it as real. Why not make him happier still by buying his penguin a mate?"

That happens in Mr. Popper's Penguins too. The male penguin becomes sad and molting. So Mr. Popper gets him a mate. The two immediately perk up, and soon there is a flock of little penguins. Then they all form a circus act.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:16 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shewhomust.livejournal.com
Synchronicity!

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:15 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shewhomust.livejournal.com
That's a very strange ad: I find the penguin's reaction to human couples rather disturbing. Likewise the child's alertness to it...

The switch between live animal and stuffed toy is something I always associate with 'Calvin and Hobbes'.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
I did worry rather whether the child would find himself increasingly de trop...

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:32 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sartorias.livejournal.com
Finished watching Madoka Magica last night. Still thinking about it.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
I'll be extremely interested hear your thoughts as and when they've settled.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:44 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sartorias.livejournal.com
One quick thing, when was Madoka called a kami? It wasn't in any of the subtitles, I'd swear.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:57 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
That was misleading of me: that portmanteau is a name she's been fondly given by fans. However, just before her wish at the start of Ep. 12, Kyubey says (quote inexact), with reference to the potential for that wish to remake the laws of the universe: "Do you intend to become a god [kami]?" To which she replies, "I don't care what I become." And then explains that she just wants those who have become MGs not to have to succumb to despair, and that if any law stands in the way of that, she will rewrite it. In other words, if becoming a god is what it takes, she'll do it.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 10:59 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sartorias.livejournal.com
Yes, that I remember. I missed Kyubuy saying the word 'kami'--my Japanese vocabulary is so minuscule that while I could pick out a word here and there, most of it whizzed by.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 11:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
I just listened to the exchange again, and the line translated as "I don't care what I become" actually begins "Kami-sama", I think, though I didn't follow the rest. I suspect a more accurate translation would be "I don't care if I become a god."
Edited Date: 2014-11-07 11:02 pm (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 11:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] sartorias.livejournal.com
Ah. That is a crucial bit, there. Interesting that they backpedaled the English translation--and wasn't that scene around the time that the background flashed a watercolor version of Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel bit where God's hand reaches for man's?

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 11:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Pretty close. That's in Episode 11, in the bar where Madoka's mother and teacher are consoling each other.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-07 11:08 pm (UTC)

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-08 01:34 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] papersky.livejournal.com
People come up to me in cons and peer at my ears.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-08 03:08 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
:) Somehow that doesn't surprise me.

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-09 07:07 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] karinmollberg.livejournal.com
A German German market; not stored in Solihull? That made me smile. In Stockholm there were always similar kind of X-mas markets one finds in Germany only with more glögg and pepparkakor (spiced, hot wine on raisins and almonds and ginger shortbread) plus they are related to the much more important than X-mas http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Lucy%27s_Day

(no subject)

Date: 2014-11-09 08:15 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] steepholm.livejournal.com
Glögg and pepparkakor sound good! (St Lucy's day always makes me think of this poem first and foremost.)

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