It rained a lot here in the first half of November

[tiggymalvern]

This is a .pdf link to a bunch of pictures of what's happened in Mount Rainier National Park.

This is Highway 123, one of the roads into the northern side of the park. And there are a number of other roads looking very much like it.


I suspect the hiking season might be starting late next spring 0_0

Comments

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

I find Vash/Meryl a problem because so much of it's written from an anime perspective (understandably, given the lack of evidence for it in the manga) and I just... can't love anime Vash. I can like him sometimes, feel sorry for him sometimes, but he also gets right up my nose too, because he stinks so much of an evangelical preacher, holding to every word of the Religion of Rem and insisting that everyone who thinks otherwise has to be wrong.

WORD. I prefer manga Vash for that reason (much more well-developed as a character) but I absolutely agree with you there. Though something interesting if you look at the anime through those lenses is to see him AS a pathetic hypocrite, holding desperately to a belief simply because of his Issues and Oedipus complex. That's what eventually made anime!Vash somewhat tolerable to me (before that, my favorite anime characters were Legato and Milly)

I think that's what you mean by Saint!Vash, but for me, that guy's so far from a saint it's not freaking funny.

And we agree AGAIN. Wow. ^_^ Seriously, I DON'T see Vash as a saint: I see him as someone who desperately wants to see himself as better than he is, who's got a boatload of psychological issues and hang-ups and even possibly an addiction, someone who is fatally flawed but tragically can't even admit it to himself.

Unfortunately, so MANY writers in the fandom anymore don't get that and instead write Vash as this pure-hearted true saint of love and peace who only wants a girl and some baybees. *gags*

The only Vash I could imagine befriending, wanting to spend time with, is manga Vash, with his doubts and his flexibility and his shades of grey, his willingness to put real living people before ideology. That Vash is human in a way the man in the anime can never be.

Oh, so absolutely agreed there.

But any manga Vash/Meryl would have to come after Wolfwood's death, and take Wolfwood's influence into account, and there's very little of that out there.

Yeah.

wants to see Vash/Livio myself. Two hot, really messed up guys finding peace with each other, could it ever be? Possibly. . . *hits self with a spoiler slap* *hopes Livio doesn't get killed next*

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

Though something interesting if you look at the anime through those lenses is to see him AS a pathetic hypocrite, holding desperately to a belief simply because of his Issues

I don't see anime Vash as pathetic. Just very, very wrong. Both Vash versions have confidence issues, yes, whether he's strong enough to control himself, to beat Knives. But manga Vash grows into himself rather better, and I put a fair bit of that down to Wolfwood's influence. Because Wolfwood can accept Vash, knowing exactly what he is, and not be scared of him, and Wolfwood feeds him a good deal of common sense when Vash is being an idiot :-) Anime Vash doesn't get to spend as much time with Wolfwood, and finds it harder to take advice from people who aren't Rem, because that would be like amending the Bible.

I don't think I could buy Vash/Livio. Vash can forgive Livio, and work with him, because he knows none of it was Livio's fault, and he can trust him because Wolfwood did. But I'm not so certain he could get the images of Livio killing Wolfwood out of his head enough to love him, to have sex with him.

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

I don't see anime Vash as pathetic. Just very, very wrong. Both Vash versions have confidence issues, yes, whether he's strong enough to control himself, to beat Knives. But manga Vash grows into himself rather better, and I put a fair bit of that down to Wolfwood's influence.

I agree with you there. ^_^

Because Wolfwood can accept Vash, knowing exactly what he is, and not be scared of him, and Wolfwood feeds him a good deal of common sense when Vash is being an idiot :-)

WORD.

Anime Vash doesn't get to spend as much time with Wolfwood, and finds it harder to take advice from people who aren't Rem, because that would be like amending the Bible.

Yeah. And I've always had this idea that usually, book versions of things are better than TV/movie, simply because they're done completely by the original writer and have enough time to fully develop the characters. The anime totally reeked of rushed job to me when I read the manga: so many things left out, so many characters not even fully developed, the pasted-on het at the end, a lot of flaws and plotholes.

I don't think I could buy Vash/Livio. Vash can forgive Livio, and work with him, because he knows none of it was Livio's fault, and he can trust him because Wolfwood did. But I'm not so certain he could get the images of Livio killing Wolfwood out of his head enough to love him, to have sex with him.

That would be a really big complication, yes, but I personally think a good enough writer could make it work if it wasn't rushed and it was a slow, slow process of Vash being able to understand. Though we all know few writers would be good enough to do that. I prefer Livio/Brad myself

[pretentioustfu.livejournal.com]

oops, that was supposed to be a strike tag.

[tiggymalvern.livejournal.com]

The anime totally reeked of rushed job to me when I read the manga

It's really not surprising, when you consider it was a rush and shoehorn job - the main manga plot had barely got started when the anime was made, and they had to invent a quick, wrapped up ending for the story while Nightow's spent nearly another decade working on his!

What I'll never understand is why the anime writers put so many silly filler eps into the first half of the series and then rushed the ending as much as they did. The anime was never going to be perfect, given its constraints, but it could have been considerably better than what we got if they'd planned it out and paced it a little more evenly.