![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Frivolous Post
Jan. 14th, 2010 10:57 amI'm about half way through the Avatar post I mentioned in "Things I'm going to talk about", and stuff has (of course) kept happening, so I figured I'd do a frivolous post.
1) I'm cleaning my room! Considering there are boxes unpacked from when I moved in a year and a half ago, this is definitely going to be some project. (It's also taking away from my typing and writing time, sigh.)
2) Speaking of typing and writing! Not only am I unstuck on my NaNo (which is now more of a Solo Novel Writing Time-period - SoNoWriTi?), but I'm working on Communications again! I am sure exactly five of you at my LJ/DW care about this fic at this point ^^a Still, you five can rest assured - an update is coming! Hopefully by next Lurker Day. Hopefully. (Mmmmm, long deadline.)
3) Dear Economy,
Please get better really soon. These going-out-of-business sales are really hard on my wallet!
Oh, and all that other, non-selfish stuff related to economy health, too.
Yours,
Me
I just dropped about sixty bucks each at two different stores, half on manga (local Waldenbooks), half on anime and video games (local For Your Entertainment). Granted, I got nice stuff out of it, but still.
4) It's bald eagle season again! It's currently proving that last year's uncannily high number of eagles was probably less of a fluke, and more of the start of a pattern. As my roommate C put it, "Yay, successful reintroduction programs!"
5) Something that's occurred to me recently: I know there's a lot of fannish love and preference for subs over dubs, for various reasons on a scale of legitimacy, but there is some ablism tied in there. Subs are pretty much useless to a real portion of our population: people with dyslexia, and people with severe vision impairment come to mind, though I'm sure there's plenty of others.
It's all well and good for those of us who don't have trouble reading subtitles to tell them to "just learn Japanese, then!", but if it were that easy, 99% of us would have done it by now. After all, if you can watch anime raw, why wait until the fansubs come out? Dubs are important to the anime and manga fandoms, because they allow accessibility that subs do not - and not just to 'n00b' fans (disproportionate n00b-hate being another troubling fannish tendency).
Anyway, something to think about.
Edit: Edit for clarity! I don't mean to say that subs are bad. There are lots of good reasons to have them, and that includes ability-related reasons (hearing impairment, for example). But there are people in the world who bash dubs and would prefer subs-only, to whom it hasn't occurred to think of everyone. They're actually a fairly large and loud subsection of the anime fan community, to the point where sometimes the anime companies listen to them. There are also people the other way around, but I am of the impression that they are a smaller/less vocal group.
Case in point: Last night, I purchased a complete set of the anime Simoun. (FTR, I am aware that it has trans* exploitation issues, and will be watching it with that in mind.) When idly checking out the back, I noticed that it only had one audio option: Japanese, with or without English subtitles. This is really fantastic for people who love subs, or people who rely on them to understand what's going on. It's probably pretty okay for the company as well, since they'll have saved money by not hiring voice actors or dub adapters. But it's not great for everyone.
I have friends who can't read things unless their faces are just a few centimeters from the words. I was thinking of them as I originally typed this entry, though I realize now that I should have been thinking more broadly. For them, if an anime is licensed and there is no dub track, watching becomes much more ...involved. It's an effort that not everyone will want to spend the needed spoons on. I'm also fairly certain that it's easier to find bootleg subs of anime that is legitimately available dub-only than it is to find things the other way around; fan-dubs are not, to the best of my knowledge, common, particularly of the non-parody variety.
In my ideal world, every DVD would have both fantastic subtitles and an amazingly well adapted dub track, with an aside that had notes on the culture and concepts that don't translate directly into English or "Western" culture. Then again, in my ideal world, half a season of an anime wouldn't cost fifty dollars, so I guess I know which one we live in.
If there's anything else I'm overlooking in my privilege, or being less than clear about, please feel free to speak up and let me know; in return, I'll do my best to keep from eating my feet, and clarify whenever I can.
1) I'm cleaning my room! Considering there are boxes unpacked from when I moved in a year and a half ago, this is definitely going to be some project. (It's also taking away from my typing and writing time, sigh.)
2) Speaking of typing and writing! Not only am I unstuck on my NaNo (which is now more of a Solo Novel Writing Time-period - SoNoWriTi?), but I'm working on Communications again! I am sure exactly five of you at my LJ/DW care about this fic at this point ^^a Still, you five can rest assured - an update is coming! Hopefully by next Lurker Day. Hopefully. (Mmmmm, long deadline.)
3) Dear Economy,
Please get better really soon. These going-out-of-business sales are really hard on my wallet!
Oh, and all that other, non-selfish stuff related to economy health, too.
Yours,
Me
I just dropped about sixty bucks each at two different stores, half on manga (local Waldenbooks), half on anime and video games (local For Your Entertainment). Granted, I got nice stuff out of it, but still.
4) It's bald eagle season again! It's currently proving that last year's uncannily high number of eagles was probably less of a fluke, and more of the start of a pattern. As my roommate C put it, "Yay, successful reintroduction programs!"
5) Something that's occurred to me recently: I know there's a lot of fannish love and preference for subs over dubs, for various reasons on a scale of legitimacy, but there is some ablism tied in there. Subs are pretty much useless to a real portion of our population: people with dyslexia, and people with severe vision impairment come to mind, though I'm sure there's plenty of others.
It's all well and good for those of us who don't have trouble reading subtitles to tell them to "just learn Japanese, then!", but if it were that easy, 99% of us would have done it by now. After all, if you can watch anime raw, why wait until the fansubs come out? Dubs are important to the anime and manga fandoms, because they allow accessibility that subs do not - and not just to 'n00b' fans (disproportionate n00b-hate being another troubling fannish tendency).
Anyway, something to think about.
Edit: Edit for clarity! I don't mean to say that subs are bad. There are lots of good reasons to have them, and that includes ability-related reasons (hearing impairment, for example). But there are people in the world who bash dubs and would prefer subs-only, to whom it hasn't occurred to think of everyone. They're actually a fairly large and loud subsection of the anime fan community, to the point where sometimes the anime companies listen to them. There are also people the other way around, but I am of the impression that they are a smaller/less vocal group.
Case in point: Last night, I purchased a complete set of the anime Simoun. (FTR, I am aware that it has trans* exploitation issues, and will be watching it with that in mind.) When idly checking out the back, I noticed that it only had one audio option: Japanese, with or without English subtitles. This is really fantastic for people who love subs, or people who rely on them to understand what's going on. It's probably pretty okay for the company as well, since they'll have saved money by not hiring voice actors or dub adapters. But it's not great for everyone.
I have friends who can't read things unless their faces are just a few centimeters from the words. I was thinking of them as I originally typed this entry, though I realize now that I should have been thinking more broadly. For them, if an anime is licensed and there is no dub track, watching becomes much more ...involved. It's an effort that not everyone will want to spend the needed spoons on. I'm also fairly certain that it's easier to find bootleg subs of anime that is legitimately available dub-only than it is to find things the other way around; fan-dubs are not, to the best of my knowledge, common, particularly of the non-parody variety.
In my ideal world, every DVD would have both fantastic subtitles and an amazingly well adapted dub track, with an aside that had notes on the culture and concepts that don't translate directly into English or "Western" culture. Then again, in my ideal world, half a season of an anime wouldn't cost fifty dollars, so I guess I know which one we live in.
If there's anything else I'm overlooking in my privilege, or being less than clear about, please feel free to speak up and let me know; in return, I'll do my best to keep from eating my feet, and clarify whenever I can.
