new experience

Today I got to say to sovay "I'm sorry, I missed your call because of the earthquake". Although it was an interesting experience to be able to say that, I hope never to do it again.

I was outside at the time, on the phone with Ruth, and initially thought it was construction until I saw how the trees were shaking, at which point I think I lapsed into swearing for a while until it stopped and I decided it must have been construction. Then Sei texted and said it was a quake and I had a minor freakout centered around having second-guessed myself out of thinking it was. Then the phone said sovay'd called during the shaking and nothing had registered; I've heard other people had reception problems for a while too.

Nothing fell down in the apartment but I heard a lot of sirens going so was wondering about the water and gas lines; I think it ended up being emergency services getting to places they might have been needed. Went over to the library and they were Business As Usual so I decided to go and have the dinner with my father that was scheduled.

Whoa-boy was that a mistake. Note to self: in situations of this kind check the damn internet. From Reston, VA to Navy Yard via bus and Metro: three hours forty-five minutes. (Usually about one and a half.) Also there was a Nationals game so Navy Yard was a zoo. Dad had given up expecting me. Honestly, so had I. The Metro is at 15 MPH until further notice and the Orange Line announcers were talking about a sinkhole somewhere near New Carrollton. Dad had been evac'd from his work and then evac'd from his apartment building and had to stand in the street for about an hour because there wasn't anywhere to go. (I feel sorry for the people in his office-- the elevators jumped their tracks and stuck, with people in, and then the evac siren went, and for people working in a government building near downtown D.C. that... is literally nightmarish, especially with the phones not behaving.) Fortunately he drove me back after dinner or I would probably still be on the subway.

The cat has been cussing things out at random ever since. I don't blame her, really. I mean, that was basically my reaction too.

Those of you who felt it: fill out the 'I felt it' form at the U.S. Geological Survey and contribute to science! (Heard about the form via redbird; thanks.)

new experience

Today I got to say to sovay "I'm sorry, I missed your call because of the earthquake". Although it was an interesting experience to be able to say that, I hope never to do it again.

I was outside at the time, on the phone with Ruth, and initially thought it was construction until I saw how the trees were shaking, at which point I think I lapsed into swearing for a while until it stopped and I decided it must have been construction. Then Sei texted and said it was a quake and I had a minor freakout centered around having second-guessed myself out of thinking it was. Then the phone said sovay'd called during the shaking and nothing had registered; I've heard other people had reception problems for a while too.

Nothing fell down in the apartment but I heard a lot of sirens going so was wondering about the water and gas lines; I think it ended up being emergency services getting to places they might have been needed. Went over to the library and they were Business As Usual so I decided to go and have the dinner with my father that was scheduled.

Whoa-boy was that a mistake. Note to self: in situations of this kind check the damn internet. From Reston, VA to Navy Yard via bus and Metro: three hours forty-five minutes. (Usually about one and a half.) Also there was a Nationals game so Navy Yard was a zoo. Dad had given up expecting me. Honestly, so had I. The Metro is at 15 MPH until further notice and the Orange Line announcers were talking about a sinkhole somewhere near New Carrollton. Dad had been evac'd from his work and then evac'd from his apartment building and had to stand in the street for about an hour because there wasn't anywhere to go. (I feel sorry for the people in his office-- the elevators jumped their tracks and stuck, with people in, and then the evac siren went, and for people working in a government building near downtown D.C. that... is literally nightmarish, especially with the phones not behaving.) Fortunately he drove me back after dinner or I would probably still be on the subway.

The cat has been cussing things out at random ever since. I don't blame her, really. I mean, that was basically my reaction too.

Those of you who felt it: fill out the 'I felt it' form at the U.S. Geological Survey and contribute to science! (Heard about the form via redbird; thanks.)

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.

12 Days, June Kim (365 Books, Day 358)

Yesterday's review.

This is an originally-English-language Tokyopop-produced graphic novel, which means that the publisher thought of it as similar enough to manga or manwha to be sold to the same audiences. The interesting thing is that, unlike a lot of the OEL work Tokyopop did, this is aimed squarely at adults and is trying to hit a market which reads serious, thoughtful slice-of-life stories; it's more josei than shoujo. It also has a distinct air of indie American serious-thoughtful-slice-of-life comics, but I definitely see why Tokyopop thought it could be their type of thing.

Unfortunately, it's also not very good, which makes me sad, because there are a lot of things about it which could have been pretty awesome. A lot of the problem comes from being compressed into one volume, although not all of it.

Jackie, depressed after her ex-lover Noah's death, gets Noah's brother to bring her some of Noah's ashes and drinks them over the twelve days of Christmas. Her hope is to forget Noah by assimilating part of her lover into herself. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work very well and makes her sick. Also, Noah's brother, who is of course also grief-stricken, keeps coming around to find out how this crazy project is going.

The story is told in elliptical side-shots, flashbacks, bits of Noah's family situation; Noah's lesbianism was never accepted by her family, and she left Jackie very abruptly to marry a man. The dialogue is occasionally snappy, and the art is cleanly drawn and interesting, with a style that merges realism and outline nicely.

The difficulty is that despite the obvious huge issues (life, death, sexual orientation, grief, the disposition of the bodies of the dead, secrets, lies) nothing much happens, and nothing much happens in a way where it's pretty clear that it wasn't the author's intent for nothing much to happen. This isn't a book about grief as an anticlimax, though it is somewhat one about the way it stops time. There's not room for anything to happen; we get told who these people are and what their situations are, but it doesn't build, or pointedly fail to build. It ends. It's very frustrating, because we do get to know these people, and know them pretty well, and become interested, and with another few hundred pages this could have been something moving and precise and extraordinary. It's not subject matter I often see in comics, the aftermath of an interracial lesbian romance where everyone is still picking up the shrapnel and the death is only an amplifier of the pattern of the way things were going already. I wanted more from this material and I wanted more of this material.

Ah well. At least it doesn't do the predictable things, the things one might expect of the story-pattern. I suppose I am happier with a story that goes nowhere with good materials than I would be with one that uses the same materials for cliches. It's just aggravating when something is so close to being interesting.

12 Days, June Kim (365 Books, Day 358)

Yesterday's review.

This is an originally-English-language Tokyopop-produced graphic novel, which means that the publisher thought of it as similar enough to manga or manwha to be sold to the same audiences. The interesting thing is that, unlike a lot of the OEL work Tokyopop did, this is aimed squarely at adults and is trying to hit a market which reads serious, thoughtful slice-of-life stories; it's more josei than shoujo. It also has a distinct air of indie American serious-thoughtful-slice-of-life comics, but I definitely see why Tokyopop thought it could be their type of thing.

Unfortunately, it's also not very good, which makes me sad, because there are a lot of things about it which could have been pretty awesome. A lot of the problem comes from being compressed into one volume, although not all of it.

Jackie, depressed after her ex-lover Noah's death, gets Noah's brother to bring her some of Noah's ashes and drinks them over the twelve days of Christmas. Her hope is to forget Noah by assimilating part of her lover into herself. Unsurprisingly, it doesn't work very well and makes her sick. Also, Noah's brother, who is of course also grief-stricken, keeps coming around to find out how this crazy project is going.

The story is told in elliptical side-shots, flashbacks, bits of Noah's family situation; Noah's lesbianism was never accepted by her family, and she left Jackie very abruptly to marry a man. The dialogue is occasionally snappy, and the art is cleanly drawn and interesting, with a style that merges realism and outline nicely.

The difficulty is that despite the obvious huge issues (life, death, sexual orientation, grief, the disposition of the bodies of the dead, secrets, lies) nothing much happens, and nothing much happens in a way where it's pretty clear that it wasn't the author's intent for nothing much to happen. This isn't a book about grief as an anticlimax, though it is somewhat one about the way it stops time. There's not room for anything to happen; we get told who these people are and what their situations are, but it doesn't build, or pointedly fail to build. It ends. It's very frustrating, because we do get to know these people, and know them pretty well, and become interested, and with another few hundred pages this could have been something moving and precise and extraordinary. It's not subject matter I often see in comics, the aftermath of an interracial lesbian romance where everyone is still picking up the shrapnel and the death is only an amplifier of the pattern of the way things were going already. I wanted more from this material and I wanted more of this material.

Ah well. At least it doesn't do the predictable things, the things one might expect of the story-pattern. I suppose I am happier with a story that goes nowhere with good materials than I would be with one that uses the same materials for cliches. It's just aggravating when something is so close to being interesting.

You can comment here or at the Dreamwidth crosspost. There are comments over there.