AMVs, Youtube, Animes, Mangas, Wuxia Novels

Quite a weird title, but I've so many unrelated things I want to say, and this is the only way I can think of to link all of them up together. Of course, I can separate them, but well, I'm Joan Ang, the girl who writes long long blog entries and make all of you read everything, although I know nobody actually does read everything. bah~

Just now I was watching my fix on youtube when I realised something to my big big horror. My Chinese deproved by a lot. I now hereby conclude that I've returned every of my Chinese back to the gutter where it was supposed to be.

I've always prided myself as one of those effectively bilingual people, who can speak, read, and write effectively in both English and Chinese. By now everyone should know that I speak, read and write English. If you don't then I suppose you need to get your eyes checked because you are now staring at cold hard evidence. A lot of people may not realise that my Chinese is better than what I let people realise. Not wanting to speak in Chinese to people is not because I don't speak it well, but because I just don't want to speak it to you.

I know some people share this same habit as me. I don't like to speak in Chinese with people I'm not close with. If I meet someone new, I'd definitely speak to the person in English. But between close friends, the medium of communication is mostly Chinese. Even with the girls (except of course Rozie), I'd sometimes lapse into Chinese because to me, Chinese is more intimate. I'd even sometimes lapse into Chinese with Jasmine. To me, these comes naturally with people I feel comfortable with. With the, I'd feel so comfortable that I don't make an effort to think. In my laziness what comes out is often imperfect English and quite a bit of Chinese.

English to me is a proper language. Although I seldom speak proper English on MSN, I cannot argue anything in Singlish, when I argue, proper English naturally comes out of me. I think it's the processing of my brain. When I think about stuff, my brain processes entirely in English, but when I'm lazily chatting about mundane stuff, my brain shuts down and Singlish and English without grammar comes out of me. Chinese is somewhat the same. I speak in Chinese without the need to think, but that's not pure Chinese, that's just Singapore version of Chinese. If I think and write and process Chinese, I need to use my brain. Most of the time I'm too lazy to do it, so I just treat it that my Chinese sucks.

Okay, I think I'm starting to digress. Anyway, my point today is about me reading mangas in English and Chinese. I'm sure by now after writing so many blog entries about that time I thought Rin was pregnant, you guys should know that I prefer to read English mangas instead of Chinese. But, counting the number of sets of English and Chinese mangas that I own, I actually have more Chinese than English mangas. For one, my entire collection of 52 volumes of Detective Conan are in Chinese. I thought I had no problem understanding it.

I thought.

After watching English subbed animes, I realised that I missed out one very important clue to the identity and motive of Vermouth. All along, I knew Vermouth had a soft spot for Shinichi/Conan, and it's possible that she knows that Conan is Shinichi. And I know that she knows Yukiko personally, and they are very close, and I know of her part in the New York case, but but but I didn't know that she was that Japanese serial killer. dang~ Remember the long silver haired Japanese serial killer in New York, the one Ran and Shinichi faced, and he almost wanted to kill them, but he almost had an accident and they saved him.

Well, after that I thought he died. I thought he was shot by that Shuichi Akai guy. But after watching several episodes of Detective Conan with English subs, I found out that actually Vermouth was that Japanese serial killer. She went undercover to locate Shuichi Akai and wanted to kill him or something, but she failed. That also explains why she let Conan off when she could have killed him. And why she called him "Cool Guy" and Ran "Angel". Because they saved her life!

I don't know what's wrong with my Chinese. Or is it that I only can't read Chinese in manga because I can still read my wuxia novels and understand them totally. yea... I'm a big fan of wuxia novels, especially those by Liang Yusheng. I've a few of those back at home. And I've downloaded a couple of ebooks from the net sometime back. I've read those ebooks straight from my computer screen and I understand them all. So why can't I understand my manga?

Anyway, speaking of downloading wuxia novels, that day I was browsing though my external hard disk drive and spotted a downloaded wuxia novel by Liang Yusheng that I've no recollection of reading it. It was only after I opened it that I remembered why I hadn't read it. hai...

Okay, I went to wiki Liang Yusheng, so I'll start my story from what I've found out. Apparently Liang Yusheng said that his favourite novels are 《萍踪侠影录》, 《女帝奇英传》 and 《云海玉弓缘》. Coincidentally, I own all three of these books~ As in I have the hard copy books lying on my bookshelf back at home, not the pirated kinds nor the downloaded ones. I bought the books with cold hard cash in a bookshop. And granted, my all time favourite novel is none other than his favourite of the three, 《萍踪侠影录》. I did like 《女帝奇英传》 but I didn't like the ending. I can't remember much about the story now though. Damn... I must go back home and read them once again, but I do remember that that is the first part of a series of four novels, following that are 《大唐游侠传》, 《龙凤宝钗缘》 and 《慧剑心魔》 in that order. The problem with these sort of novels is that the characters are repeated in another novel and they well, aren't that appealling becase there are other more appealling characters.

Take for example 《萍踪侠影录》, follows that is 《散花女侠》, well, the female protagonist sort of became a not so important character, and there was one more that follwed where the female protagonist just sort of disappeared from the male protagonist's life even though she's supposed to be his wife. But anyway, I still like 《萍踪侠影录》 by itself~

But then, even though I like the story of 《云海玉弓缘》, I cannot bring myself to like too much because of the other novels that follows. The main character in 《云海玉弓缘》 is this guy called Jin Shiyi. He's recurrent in many other other novels, and some not in a very favourable light. He appears also in 《冰川天女传》 where he acts at the antagonist as he tries to spilt the two very much in love leading characters. I first read that book, and didn't have a very good impression of him. But of course, my mind totally changed when I read 《云海玉弓缘》 and read the story of Jin Shiyi and Li Shengnan. But there're a few more stories that follow, and I've read one of them before this, and hence I know the ending of this story even before I read it.

I've written about this before. You can read the full posting here. But if you are too lazy to click that link (it doesn't matter anyway, that's a mostly picture blog entry), I'll say it simply here. Jin Shiyi was torn between Li Shengnan and Gu Zhihua. I don't like Gu Zhihua, but from a later story, I know that the son of Jin Shiyi calls Gu Zhihua his mother, so obviously Jin Shiyi didn't end up with Li Shengnan. In the end of 《云海玉弓缘》, Li Shengnan sacrificed herself, and Jin Shiyi realised that he did loved her and left Gu Zhihua. If the story ended there, I'd now proudly say that 《云海玉弓缘》 would be my most favourite novel ever ever.

But But But.

Five paragraphs up, I said that I downloaded a book but never read it, yea... That book chronicles the love story of Gu Zhihua and Jin Shiyi after the death of Li Shengnan, and twenty years after her death, the both of them got married. Fuck~ With him ending up with Gu Zhihua, how can I like him? And to factor in that he once liked Bingchuan Tiannü from 《冰川天女传》 and had even tried to cause a rift between her and Tang Jingtian, how can I still like him??? But I still do, only when in 《云海玉弓缘》 though. Maybe it's because I really like Li Shengnan...

I like tragic characters, and love that is not meant to be. That's why I like yaoi, because it's not meant to be. Speaking of yaoi, I'm now hooked onto xxxholic and I strongly suspect that there might be more to Watanuki and Domeki's relationship. Hints of Shonen-ai, I hope.

I've been following youtube for latest episodes of xxxholic, and also Tsubasa Chronicles. Youtube is really one amazing portal~ But right now I can't watch the latest episodes of both. Tsubasa Chronicles 32 is a RAW version, meaning it's not subbed while xxxholic 11 is Chinese subbed. I'm wondering if I should just go ahead and watch it RAW or Chinese subbed or should I wait. hai... Every day I log onto youtube and check if there are new episodes that it's fast becoming a habit already. I'm really addicted to these sort of things, and the thing is that the latest episodes aren't even out yet in Japan. bah~

Actually, I can read Chinese, so what is it that is preventing me from wanting to watch xxxholic 11 Chinese subbed? I don't know... I guess I'm afraid ba... Afraid that I might read something wrong. Or maybe I just prefer to read English subbed. For one thing, I prefer to hear and read the names of Japanese characters in Japanese, so in this respect I don't like reading Chinese, since I tend to pronounce the names in Chinese rather than in Japanese when doing so. hai... But I'm really itching to watch. sucks~ I'm hoping that after I finish with this blog entry I'd be too shagged to watch anything. So this entry shall be a long long one to wear me out if not for anything else.

I just made an AMV of Tsubasa Chronicles. I think I'm becoming an otaku already. wahaha~


This is my first AMV, and my second/third time using Windows Movie Maker.

My first time using Windows Movie Maker is to make this thing.


And this thing...


They both seem like they are essentially thing same thing that I don't know if I'm supposed to see them as my first and second effort or just my first effort. Either way, A Song of Storm and Fire is still my first AMV. I'm thinking of making a second AMV, of xxxholic. Still conceptualising my theme, hopefully I can turn my concept into reality~ And slowly join the youtube league of AMV makers~ wahaha...

But the thing about me making AMVs is that I don't have anime clips that I can work on. The only anime I have is Full Metal Alchemist, which I don't think I'd ever make any AMV with it since the whole thing is about brotherly love. hai... Even in the movie, Edward made the decision to leave Winry for Alphonse. Like that how to make AMV? Okay, it's still possible to make lots, and if you run a search in youtube you'd still find a lot, but the thing is that Joan is a sucker for love stories, so she can't make AMVs talking about brotherhood, unless she turns it into a incest-shonen-ai thingie and scare everyone away with it.

Posting stuff on youtube, I've always still been quite low key, but recently one of my videos attracted a few comments and bashings. I think I've been totally misunderstood.

It's this video...

The one where I was imitating Goebbels.

You can watch the video here and read the comments too.

I don't know what are some people thinking. I've already said that it's Joan being stupid, yet they still comment that the video's stupid. Then some people think I'm neo-Nazi or something. Nazism is still quite a taboo topic, but that doesn't mean we cannot talk about it at all. The point of my speech when I did that imitation is that I wanted to try and recreate that kind of atmosphere in which Goebbels made his speech so that people can understand why the nazi party was so popular. It was because of the oratorical capabilities of the Nazis, especially Goebbels. But of course, the video turned out stupid.

Another thing I never understood and those people who commented I think they never even thought of it is the reason behind Goebbels pledging total loyalty to Hitler. This is turning pretty heavy from here... woohoo~ Goebbels started out as someone who greatly opposed Hitler. The early nazi party was factionalised into the north and south, Hitler was from the south, the then party leader and Goebbels were from the north. People always associate Hitler with the Nazi party that most don't know that Hitler didn't found that party. yea... The founder of the party was the persom whom Goebbels aligned himself with. But at that time, Hitler rose in popularity that the northern faction felt threatened, especially the party leader.

After some event, which I think I shall skip describing, Goebbels swore loyalty to Hitler. The question now is why. The official answer is that during a speech, Hitler amazed Goebbels with his rhetoric. But is it only so? Goebbels is a doctorate, a person of higher education and higher social status, as compared to Hitler, the person who was rejected from all the art schools he applied for and didn't even have an Arbitur, an A level equivelent. So why was Goebbels willing to be the servant of Hitler?

Oh well, I don't have all my reference books with me now, so I can go on and write paper about this over here, I can only give my own personal view without any basis, and say that it is most probably because of Hitler's oratorical capabilities. But then again, Goebbels seems to educated to be taken in by pure rhetoric, and he's just a capable as Hitler in rhetorics, so then this might not be a valid reason after all. sigh~

The mysteries of history, I guess~

I'm effectively tired now, but I still have some more stuff to do. I think maybe I shall sleep first then continue my stuff later tomorrow, or should I now? hmm... I promise, I promise I'd do up my travels pretty soon. I've got like pictures from 8 towns lor Konstanz, Singen, Triberg, Luxembourg, Brussels, Utrecht, Amsterdam, Kinderdijk. hai... But right now I'm fixing up my travel journal, so my photoshop's tied up. I've created a photo album in that travel journal portal and am uploading ALL my photos, the only problem is that I have to resize all my photos, so it's very tedious.

I'll post the link of that travel journal here sometime soon. As soon as I get a decent journal up first.

Until then~