[witty title]

Every so often I think about posting something on Facebook, or Twitter. Sometimes I go so far as drafting it. I almost always change my mind and abandon it before posting. The drafts sit around in my notes app and gather dust, forgotten.

Let me tell you a story, one that I couldn't forget.

Around 10:30ish PM on Friday March 13th, I was walking along Boylston Street to Copley Station after my closing shift. There was a woman, probably intoxicated, wandering around talking and laughing loudly to herself on the sidewalk. Something about having found her phone after she thought she lost it? I shrugged and kept walking, because she was obviously harmless.

I had crossed the street at the intersection and almost gotten to the station when I noticed her shouting again, "Get off me." She was by the fancy glass-fronted Bank of America/Tuberculosis-12/AT&T stores, and there were several cops around her, grabbing her and patting her down. They forced her to the ground and six (6) big dudes bodily pinned her. She wasn't even really struggling, just yelling about it.

As I watched, more police vehicles with sirens and flashing lights kept pulling up. I counted nine (9) in total, each with at least two cops inside, all of which ran over and...stood around. Talking or something. While this poor woman was sat on by six people, then dragged up to her feet and restrained. I could barely see her through all the cops milling around her.

I am not exaggerating these numbers. The BPD sent almost two dozen officers, in enough vehicles to block off half the lanes of a major street, to tackle and hold down one (1) single unarmed drunk and/or mentally ill woman.

(You may have guessed it by now, knowing Boston and American policing in general, but she was Black.)

I think about her sometimes, about how confusing and horrible that experience must have been. I think about the police, wondering what the hell they thought they were doing. There's no way they could honestly have thought that situation needed so many officers, for one person who couldn't even fight back. Most of them ran over and then just casually stood around in a crowd, not even looking at her.

I wish I'd had a camera on me at the time. Not that it would have done her any good, but. Maybe having a video of it would have given me the confidence to go ahead and post that draft, instead of sitting on the memories for five and a half months.

"GOODBYE" is the title track of advantage Lucy's third single, released in 1999; it appears (in a slightly different version?) on their first album FANFARE (ファンファーレ, 1999) & their 2001 compilation album Have a Good Journey.

I'm not the first person to romanize these lyrics, but I prefer my version. (For the purpose of being comprehensive there's also an...interesting interpretation on jpopasia complete with unedited google translation, which I'm not going to link here because that person was trying in good faith & I don't want to be rude.)

( so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen )

* Some edits have been made to the kanji version of the lyrics, primarily in terms of line breaks; also, in the last few lines, every lyric source I can find has "鮮やかにね" (azayaka ni ne), but every audio source I can find has "軽やかにね" (karoyaka ni ne). I'm not a translator so I have no idea how much impact swapping "brightly/vividly" for "lightly/easily" has on the lyrics, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Heyyy so I went into the bathroom a couple nights ago & my dad had left the radio on HRB & they were playing something that sounded Japanese & it was catchy enough so I tried to google the lyrics but apparently no one bothered to romanize them yet so...uh...yeah this is definitely a series.

(I dunno why the lyrics available online differ from the vocalist's actual words. I stared at their discography for awhile & there's only one version of the song, released first in 1997 on their debut minialbum/LP in Harmony, then included on the 2001 best-of compilation album Have a Good Journey. I've modified the lyrics to reflect the discrepancies, replacing "me wo fuseru" (目を伏せる) with "me wo fusagu" (目を塞ぐ) (a similar word) & replacing "tooi hizashi wo" (遠い日差しを) with "tsuyoi hizashi wo" (強い日差しを) (a completely different word but it matches the beginning of the other chorus verse so maybe it's like Yuki's flub at 02:49 in the PV for JAM's mottö?). Also I added in all the "lalala"s because reasons)

Some basic info on the band, gathered primarily from their Japanese-only wiki page & some English-language music site reviews:
( on name changes & unforeseen health problems )

( nine million 'lailailaa's )


(I'm definitely going to look up "so" bc while the lyrics are nothing impressive the song itself is pretty compelling; still poking through what I can find of theirs on YouTube to see if there's anything else in Japanese I'd want to romanize.)

(♥)

EDIT: I started adding links to the editors' amv.org pages and, uh, LJ yelled at me about the post being too long? So this is now split into 2006-2008, 2009-2012, and 2013-2016, because. Reasons.


Lo and behold!  A sort-of comprehensive list of the 2013-2016 Anime Boston AMV Contest Finalists and Winners!*

* = DISCLAIMER OF DISCLAIMING:  In no particular order in some cases, because I don't remember the original order and/or I lost my original notes and had to look up the information again.  And if there's more than two or three sources of video or audio, I get lazy and put (various)!  Except if the sources are all in the same canon--then I just list the most obvious.  For instance, I'm not going to list every single Kingdom Hearts game used in a video.  (Actually, anything in parentheses below the title that's not in quotation marks is probably a note that I'm not totally sure about something.)

...Okay, so maybe 'comprehensive' was a poor choice of words.  There's a pretty good chance I fucked up somewhere, like on the AMV maker / AMV studio thing, so uh.  Don't quote me on this?


KEY:
Title of AMV -- AWARD(S) WON (TECHNICAL OR AUDIENCE)
"Title of Song" by Artist Name
Title of Source Anime
Name of AMV editor


( AB '13 )


( AB '14 )


( AB '15 )

( AB '16 )

[07] = (...I'm...really not sure how this one made it to the finals?  It's...not really an AMV.  :/ )
[08] = (Giant robots...wearing high-top sneakers...playing magic basketball...IN SPACE. I--I didn't even know I needed this in my life. ♥)
[09] = (Yes, this song won Best Romance again. It was a really good AMV though!)
[10] = ("Fun" switched categories this year for no discernable reason)
[11] = (New category!  About time, too.  And the total number of finalists actually went up to 35! Possibly because 30 splits neatly into 5 and 6, but 7 not so much...)
[12] = (There were four One Punch Man vids this year. Four. Literally every other category had one.  I'm guessing people liked the anime, then?)
[13] = (Upbeat and Fun/Comedy switched places this year for no discernable reason)
[14] = (The same song, twice in one contest!  That might be a first for AB.)

For the past two-and-a-half years I've been working in a specialty sweets shop that masquerades as a grocery/deli.  Inevitably, I started trying the cookies and chocolates we carry--and we carry a lot of different kinds of cookies & chocolates, imported & local & megabrands alike.  Here are some of the most memorable:


CADBURY CREME EGG COOKIES(/Biscuits)
( 1/5 )

OREO MEGA STUF Chocolate Sandwich Cookies
( 3/5 )

Chewy CHIPS AHOY! OREO CREME FILLED Soft Cookies
( 0/5 )( 3/5 )( 5/5 )( 4/5 )( 4/5 )( 4/5 )( 4/5 )( 4/5 )( 5/5 )( (footnote) )

[[EDIT: I switched browsers and spent a full hour on an honest, good-faith attempt to crosspost this on Tumblr.  LJ code is incompatible there, so I did a lot of googling and swapping out terms.  I followed the instructions to the letter (in every sense of the phrase), but it still completely rejected the color formatting; after the third time switching between editing modes completely trashed the html and turned line and paragraph breaks upside down, I gave up.  Fuck that noise.]]
[[SON OF EDIT: finally up on tumblr! (sans colors.)]]

So here's something I did a lot of work on last spring, and intended to post about, but obviously that never happened.  (I'm always most creatively driven when I have something else to be procrastinating from...)

This is a version where two teams, from a human world and a troll world, are told that they're going to be competing against aliens to win--I'm too lazy to look at the notes right now, but I think both worlds are threatened with destruction and the winning team gets to save their planet and/or create a new one.  (At least, that's what they're told at first.)  Different home planets, same Medium; yes, that means shared moons.  I'm ignoring any alpha/beta revisionverses in favor of there being one human team and one troll team, each with nine members; I ignored about half the Noah because of characterization reasons (if I only know three things about them, one of those being their name, I can't get into their headspace).  Humans are largely Exorcists, trolls are largely Noah; I didn't feel creative enough to try mixing that up, vice versa or with integrated teams.

I actually have a semi-fleshed-out storyline for this 'verse, where two-thirds of the characters (including all time/space players) die horribly for one reason or another and the remaining six have to team up for survival, regardless of species (and regardless of who may have murdered whom in the past).  I'll go over some of that in a later post, maybe?  Same for lands, sprites, backstories, etc.  (wrt titles: I spent a looooong time angsting over classes and aspects, based on my understanding/headcanon from something like a few years ago.  At some point I intend to research more recent developments in canon for that.  I still haven't read beyond D.Gray-chapter 203, and the last page of HS I read had Jade meeting Calliope in a dream.  It's been awhile.)

FORMAT:
> Full Name (Nicknames if they have any)
> [Handle if known]
> Title
> [Symbol if known]
> Typing Quirk
> Strife Specibus
> Dreamself Notes

EARTHLING HUMAN PLAYERS:
( some black-order folks )

ALTERNIAN TROLL PLAYERS:
( some anti-order folks )

[archive post of finalists past]

The AMV Contest is quickly shaping up to be my favorite part of the con.

(Apparently this year a record-breaking number of videos were entered: forms sent for 210, 194 uploaded, and 172 managed to qualify--and somehow Programming has managed to cram all of the overflow into the three days of the con.  (Perhaps this is connected to AB's expansion into the fifth floor of the Sheraton...)  Also apparently this year's is their biggest Best of Show trophy yet offered--it did look pretty hefty.  Also also the guy in charge of the AMV Contest (since 2005) is leaving(!!); fortunately, his successor managed to hook us up with neat little cards with a tear-off ballot, leaving us the listing to take home.  Sadly it doesn't leave much room for notes; I tend to scribble all over mine, and it can be difficult trying to decipher my own handwriting.)

This year I feel like putting the ballot up Friday night, instead of waiting until Saturday or Sunday or Monday when the winners have been announced.  Why the hell not.

First, the exhibition pieces!  After the last two years, I'm actually a little surprised there wasn't a My Little Pony remake of one of the previous year's winning AMVs.  (I think it was Bashar who did it? a version of Shin's 2012 Extraball vid, and a version of Ileia's 2013 Radioakshun vid.)  Largely kaiju-themed vids instead.
~ "Totoro Meets Godzilla" (Vlad G Pohnert), a loving homage to the classic "Bambi Meets Godzilla" (came as a bit of a surprise to those who haven't heard of the original; I do so love horrified audience reactions)
~ "Go Go Tohoscope!" (drewaconclusion), what seems like an actual music video--or at least a retrospective of live-action Godzilla films set to an extremely topical song.
~ "Otaku Paradise" (BecauseImBored1), a mashup/juxtaposition of anime clips and video of cosplayers at anime cons.  Gotta be honest with you, I had a bit of an attack of the feels during this vid.

(Before the exhibitions there was also a truly adorable paper-puppet video demonstrating proper emergency procedure.  I love this con.)

( DRAMA (1 win) )

( ACTION (3 wins!) )

( ROMANCE (2 wins!) )

( UPBEAT (2 wins) )

( OTHER (1 win) )

( FUN/COMEDY (2 wins) )

ROUNDUP: Ileia & Shin cleaned house this year!  And a Romance vid won Best of Show for the first time in...uh...ever at this con, to my knowledge.  (To be fair, it's far from classic romance.)
At the con feedback panel, AB staff mentioned that only six of the eleven awards were handed out in person this year (two to one person); the other five awards have to be shipped to the winners (two to one person), two of whom are in Seattle, one in Michigan, and one apparently busy running Anime Conji in San Diego.  As Anime Conji has a maddening website apparently lacking a staff listing, I have no idea which AMV belonged to that person.


* DISCLAIMER:  I don't know shit about AMV editing; I've never made one in my life.  I do really enjoy watching them every year, though!

Naturally I wound up with three separate scenarios, none of which really apply to the D.Gray-stuck I talked about last post.  I'll do these in ascending order of how much time they took me to work out:

( 'Noah Zodiac' (cheap reorientation of sequences) )

( 'Noahcestors' (reincarnation considered, including Allen) )

( 'Noahspectrum' (agonizing cross-comparisons completely ignoring the new guys) )

The latter two of the scenarios is applicable to an alternate Kids/Game thing that I've been trying to work out ectobiology for and just succeeding in confusing myself further, and I'm pretty sure this sentence is an abomination unto the English language but whatever:

( if the Kids didn't include Allen, and I actually considered ectobiology: )

Part II of "I can't find the lyrics to this moderately obscure song and it's pissing me off"!  Today's edition: Linda Yamamoto, 1974, "Kirikirimai".  I ran across this song back in '06 or '07 while looking for Orange Range's "Kirikirimai"; the contrast alone is hilarious, but the song itself is catchy, and Linda is adorable, and I needed someone to supplement The Peanuts in my pitiful repertoire of old-school J-pop.

( [/disclaimed] )

( totsuzen warui sasayaki kikoe... )

Uh.  So yeah.  This is just lyrics, not a translation; Google Translate is inconsistent at best, and I'm functionally incompetent.  (See, I've technically been studying Japanese for seven years now, only I'm really lazy and kind of an otaku, so it's all been through anime/manga and Japanese popular music.  It would be so easy to find one of those online tutorials in conjugation and grammar and syntax and verbs and adjectives and so on and so forth, but...well, let's just say that my default setting is Nara Shikamaru.)

EDIT: I started adding links to the editors' amv.org pages and, uh, LJ yelled at me about the post being too long? So this is now split into 2006-2008, 2009-2012, and 2013-2016, because. Reasons.


I've been compiling lists of the winners and finalists in AB's Music Video Contest that I've seen at the conventions (just the winners from '06, '07, and '08, and all of the finalists from '09-present; in 2005 I didn't see any of them at all and therefore did not get the visceral effect of a video and audio system larger than my laptop, so I do not care, and '09 was the first year I actually went to the Contest showing instead of just watching the winners in Closing Ceremonies and/or the Masquerade).  I've been keeping it all in draft(s) on my Gmail account, which is where I keep all of my notes these days because (a) dude, it's searchable (b) my computer haets word processors with all the passion its battered little electronic soul can muster up (c) you can google your notes, how freaking awesome is that.  (Even if that means that I now have to find a backup for my cloud backup, and I'm not sure how...  *headdesk*)

Anyway!  I figure the draft is getting a little long for Gmail (on my computer, at least) to deal with without slowing down a little, so I'm putting it up here.

Lo and behold!  A sort-of comprehensive list of the 2006-2016 Anime Boston AMV Contest Winners and 2009-2016 AMV Contest Finalists!*

* = DISCLAIMER OF DISCLAIMING:  In no particular order in some cases, because I don't remember the original order and/or I lost my original notes and had to look up the information again.  And if there's more than two or three sources of video or audio, I get lazy and put (various)!  Except if the sources are all in the same canon--then I just list the most obvious.  For instance, I'm not going to list every single Kingdom Hearts game used in a video.  (Actually, anything in parentheses below the title that's not in quotation marks is probably a note that I'm not totally sure about something.)

...Okay, so maybe 'comprehensive' was a poor choice of words.  There's a pretty good chance I fucked up somewhere, like on the AMV maker / AMV studio thing, so uh.  Don't quote me on this?


KEY:
Title of AMV -- AWARD(S) WON (TECHNICAL OR AUDIENCE)
"Title of Song" by Artist Name
Title of Source Anime
Name of AMV editor



( AB '06 )


( AB '07 )


( AB '08 )


[1] = (The listing of this only mentioned Das Omen, but the beginning part, with that woman praying--Misato, from Evangelion?--is Lauf der Zeit.)
[2] = ("Genkaiten (subeta wa watashi no bankai wo shiranai)", or...well, I don't remember the translation of the first word, but the gist of the subtitle is basically "whatchu know 'bout me!?" ...or something.)
[3] = (I have no idea who this person is, BUT I LOVE THEM FOREVER.  I just.  First the one that finally made it worth it that Boston was the only city in America that felt the need to call the bomb squad on a frigging Light Bright, and then the one that totally justified my finding Totoro creepy as a child, while simultaneously violating the childhoods of several thousand people.  In the same contest, no less.  That takes talent.)