Near & Mello and That Institute/HP Question
Dude, flour is a magical miracle powder. I had practically no clue before this year that it could be used to make stuff; I knew people kept it in their cupboards, but I wasn't sure for what. I think I might have thought it was used to keep cutting boards floured, or something. Who knows. I might not have thought about it at all. But it turns out flour can make pancakes, brownies, bread, and pizza. I'm kind of in awe. Everything I've eaten today so far started from one packet of flour. This is the coolest thing I've learnt since beginning to try to cook stuff. (I need to make some Yakitate!! Japan icons!)
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Er, in other "Really cool stuff!" news, and I swear I'm not just in a really excitable mood so that everything strikes me as brilliant, I finally read chapter 61 of Death Note, and also read chapter 67. I really missed a lot in not reading 61 before; it goes a long way towards setting up Mello and Near as real characters, as characters one can care about.
(And I'll say here that I'm glad for the existence of those two. I was certain that the tension between L and Light couldn't possibly hold without major changes; my brother and I had predicted the end of the series would come by chapter 60. It really did, too; the series with Mello and Near is not Death Note as we knew it. And, man, was I getting bored of Light/L as we knew it. It got so that I would read any DN fic that sounded interesting unless I suspected it might be Light/L.)
I like Mello and Near a lot. I don't think I like Light as much in the context of this new story as I did in the beginning; he's no longer my favourite character; I actually like Misa a bit more than I like Light, because she's more interesting for me at the moment. I think I like L more than I like Light, actually, although I do like Light more than I like L if I forget about everything after 59. If that makes any sense at all. (It's sort of like the way I like characters in Weiss Kreuz--I wouldn't have liked anyone except Crawford, Manx, and Farfarello in the original series as much as I do if I hadn't watched Glühen first. Seeing them in the light of a different series changes my attitude towards them in the first.)
Mello in 67 is the same amoral kid he has been (and, man, I feel like I've "known him" longer than I have--like Luna Lovegood. He feels like he's been around for more than just a fraction of the series), still trying to get his non-friend's attention, trying to get the better of someone who will always be better than him. Near is coming out so--hm. He's childlike, and blunt, and he seems like he's playing a game as much as Mello is. He's so matter-of-fact about Mello's need for his attention, too; he knows about it, and he thinks that it's natural that Mello would feel that way.
Actually, the two of them don't seem to see the worth of human life, even as much as Light does. That institute screwed up so much more than even Konoha, man, and maybe with more mixed messages, as hard as it is to believe that's possible. I thought so when L was around, but it seems like in trying to recreate L, they forgot about instilling humanity or psychological understanding in their new versions. [It's for this reason that I believe that L was the first 'L': he's eccentric and sees himself a little bit as above the law, maybe, but he does show signs of being raised like an actual human being for a while. Mello and Near, on the other hand, seem to have been raised towards a goal. It makes me think that they made L L because of his talents, and then went looking for other talented kids to continue the line.]
Mello & Near's understanding of human motivation seems to come not from knowing anything about people--which L undoubtably did--but rather from an understanding of causality: they do this, and their subject will respond in that way. L was spoiled and expected people to follow his whims, and he was pretty badly adjusted, socially, but these kids are even more so. They lack any understanding of or feel for justice, even as they're probably more intelligent and ruthless than L was. L got the idea of justice & rule of law (even if he wasn't exactly 100% for it), in its spirit. He got it on a deeper level. But Mello and Near seem to see all of that stuff as a set of rules that maybe should be followed (especially by lesser people) but that are mostly arbitrary. They were raised to be above the law, in some ways. They were never given a deep respect for it.
I can't even feel that Near has internalised L's law-is-justice stance better than Mello; I'm not sure he gets the concept of 'justice'. I think they both decided on rule sets to play by, and Near just chose something closer to what he thinks L might have been playing by than Mello did. He's not outraged that Mello's killed people, or even surprised--he just decides that, the way Mello's playing, he's probably unlikely to help Near find Kira.
I bet they write fanfic about L in their spare time.
They're not as cool as Matsuda, though. (And after 67, I no longer think that Matsuda belongs anywhere but Gryffindor.) Man. <3. I didn't really get the love before, but I do after that stunt.Someone write Sayu/Matsuda/Light/Misa...! It takes a special character to be both brave and self-sacrificing without making me want to gag. :D
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How does finite incantatem work? I mean, do you have to point your wand really accurately? Can the spell read your mind to figure out which other spell you want to stop? Will it stop the last spell your wand cast, or the last spell someone else cast in the area to which it's pointing? Or would it take down all spells (or at least all relatively minor spells) in the immediate vicinity? I imagine that would make for a very dangerous spell in the wizarding world. Even if all spells that were both weak and performed in a specific room in just the past week--and just the ones that lingered in the room in some significant way, too--suddenly uncast, that'd suck.
(I just don't really understand how HP's magic works. Obviously it has some limits, or else no one would ever have to worry about money or about tattered clothing, if he was at all powerful or had powerful friends, but I can't figure out where the limits are.)
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I can't help thinking that that one author who posted the anti-fanfic essay recently must be a bit of a hack, because of one of the things he said: "Fan fiction is a good way to avoid learning how to be a writer. Fan fiction allows the writer to pretend to be creating a story, while using someone else’s world, characters, and plot."
...
I've always thought that there's much more to a story than the content. In fact, I won't read a story if I think that all it has is content. If nonfiction or an essay is written badly, I won't read it. Fiction is not an art because it can communicate a point clearly; it's art because it has style. I mean, my lecture notes very clearly communicate a point. I have several shopping lists that communicate a point. I'm hoping to get more than communication of a point from my reading, man. I'm hoping to get literature.
The rest of the things he said were opinions I didn't agree with (and some of them made him seem a little delusional and full of himself), but they didn't necessarily point to any illogic that'd make for bad art. I'm a reader, not amoralist writer; I don't care what goes into a work, as long as what comes out of it is good. The one quote I pointed out does seem to lead to bad art. Someone who thinks that all writers have to do is come up with a world, characters, and a plot is not someone I want to be reading--or at least, the chances that that person would write something I'd not only enjoy but respect as art are very, very low.
---
Er, in other "Really cool stuff!" news, and I swear I'm not just in a really excitable mood so that everything strikes me as brilliant, I finally read chapter 61 of Death Note, and also read chapter 67. I really missed a lot in not reading 61 before; it goes a long way towards setting up Mello and Near as real characters, as characters one can care about.
(And I'll say here that I'm glad for the existence of those two. I was certain that the tension between L and Light couldn't possibly hold without major changes; my brother and I had predicted the end of the series would come by chapter 60. It really did, too; the series with Mello and Near is not Death Note as we knew it. And, man, was I getting bored of Light/L as we knew it. It got so that I would read any DN fic that sounded interesting unless I suspected it might be Light/L.)
I like Mello and Near a lot. I don't think I like Light as much in the context of this new story as I did in the beginning; he's no longer my favourite character; I actually like Misa a bit more than I like Light, because she's more interesting for me at the moment. I think I like L more than I like Light, actually, although I do like Light more than I like L if I forget about everything after 59. If that makes any sense at all. (It's sort of like the way I like characters in Weiss Kreuz--I wouldn't have liked anyone except Crawford, Manx, and Farfarello in the original series as much as I do if I hadn't watched Glühen first. Seeing them in the light of a different series changes my attitude towards them in the first.)
Mello in 67 is the same amoral kid he has been (and, man, I feel like I've "known him" longer than I have--like Luna Lovegood. He feels like he's been around for more than just a fraction of the series), still trying to get his non-friend's attention, trying to get the better of someone who will always be better than him. Near is coming out so--hm. He's childlike, and blunt, and he seems like he's playing a game as much as Mello is. He's so matter-of-fact about Mello's need for his attention, too; he knows about it, and he thinks that it's natural that Mello would feel that way.
Actually, the two of them don't seem to see the worth of human life, even as much as Light does. That institute screwed up so much more than even Konoha, man, and maybe with more mixed messages, as hard as it is to believe that's possible. I thought so when L was around, but it seems like in trying to recreate L, they forgot about instilling humanity or psychological understanding in their new versions. [It's for this reason that I believe that L was the first 'L': he's eccentric and sees himself a little bit as above the law, maybe, but he does show signs of being raised like an actual human being for a while. Mello and Near, on the other hand, seem to have been raised towards a goal. It makes me think that they made L L because of his talents, and then went looking for other talented kids to continue the line.]
Mello & Near's understanding of human motivation seems to come not from knowing anything about people--which L undoubtably did--but rather from an understanding of causality: they do this, and their subject will respond in that way. L was spoiled and expected people to follow his whims, and he was pretty badly adjusted, socially, but these kids are even more so. They lack any understanding of or feel for justice, even as they're probably more intelligent and ruthless than L was. L got the idea of justice & rule of law (even if he wasn't exactly 100% for it), in its spirit. He got it on a deeper level. But Mello and Near seem to see all of that stuff as a set of rules that maybe should be followed (especially by lesser people) but that are mostly arbitrary. They were raised to be above the law, in some ways. They were never given a deep respect for it.
I can't even feel that Near has internalised L's law-is-justice stance better than Mello; I'm not sure he gets the concept of 'justice'. I think they both decided on rule sets to play by, and Near just chose something closer to what he thinks L might have been playing by than Mello did. He's not outraged that Mello's killed people, or even surprised--he just decides that, the way Mello's playing, he's probably unlikely to help Near find Kira.
I bet they write fanfic about L in their spare time.
They're not as cool as Matsuda, though. (And after 67, I no longer think that Matsuda belongs anywhere but Gryffindor.) Man. <3. I didn't really get the love before, but I do after that stunt.
---
How does finite incantatem work? I mean, do you have to point your wand really accurately? Can the spell read your mind to figure out which other spell you want to stop? Will it stop the last spell your wand cast, or the last spell someone else cast in the area to which it's pointing? Or would it take down all spells (or at least all relatively minor spells) in the immediate vicinity? I imagine that would make for a very dangerous spell in the wizarding world. Even if all spells that were both weak and performed in a specific room in just the past week--and just the ones that lingered in the room in some significant way, too--suddenly uncast, that'd suck.
(I just don't really understand how HP's magic works. Obviously it has some limits, or else no one would ever have to worry about money or about tattered clothing, if he was at all powerful or had powerful friends, but I can't figure out where the limits are.)
---
I can't help thinking that that one author who posted the anti-fanfic essay recently must be a bit of a hack, because of one of the things he said: "Fan fiction is a good way to avoid learning how to be a writer. Fan fiction allows the writer to pretend to be creating a story, while using someone else’s world, characters, and plot."
...
I've always thought that there's much more to a story than the content. In fact, I won't read a story if I think that all it has is content. If nonfiction or an essay is written badly, I won't read it. Fiction is not an art because it can communicate a point clearly; it's art because it has style. I mean, my lecture notes very clearly communicate a point. I have several shopping lists that communicate a point. I'm hoping to get more than communication of a point from my reading, man. I'm hoping to get literature.
The rest of the things he said were opinions I didn't agree with (and some of them made him seem a little delusional and full of himself), but they didn't necessarily point to any illogic that'd make for bad art. I'm a reader, not a