11.24.09
Posted in Writing tagged Mulan at 9:28 pm by kyrias
I was browsing through Amazon’s suggestions for me and I saw that an author I liked did a re-telling of Hua Mulan.
My first reaction was to wince: After all, the disaster that was the Disney reinterpretation is still fresh in my mind despite the years.
But then I thought that perhaps Cameron Dokey, being a better writer than some, might have done something worth reading.
A quick perusal of the reviews persuades me otherwise:
- A prince makes an appearance
- Romance! Love!
- Family dynamic where she didn’t grow up with her father around and he re-marries
- Mulan is once again portrayed as not very feminine
- Making a huge splash in the army
I realise that this is a re-telling and so there has to be artistic license taken with the original story. For some background reading, here’s a translation of the original ballad that inspired numerous re-tellings of Mulan’s story. Here’s another person’s compilation of the various versions of Mulan.
What bothers me is the insistence of writers that a woman who can fight cannot be feminine. In the original ballad, she’s weaving when at the begining. Later on, when she returns home, she turns back to her old clothing and puts on makeup.
I have my own issues with the kick-ass heroines who do it in *gasp* high heels. Or the internal monologue of a certain main character which never quite leaves fashion behind. However, I don’t think it’s particularly hard to imagine that a woman supposedly as intelligent and talented as Mulan is portrayed to be would also be just as good at the more feminine skills. I also don’t find it hard to imagine a woman, weary from war and of acting the part of a man with all the machismo that entails, finding some measure of comfort and joy in returning to her old clothing and feeling pretty again. What I don’t understand is why so many people have a hard time with that idea.
Then there’s the whole concept of Mulan drawing attention to herself. Really, just think about it. You’re a girl trying to fit in with all the guys in the army. The last thing that you want to do is to draw scrutiny to yourself: ergo no showing off and no hobnobbing with all the glamorous sort. So far as I think is reasonable is that she did a good job, enough to be awarded merits, but not enough that she would have particularly stood out. The fact that she was allowed back home is somewhat indicative of that. If she really was a superstar in the army, there would have been no way the emperor would have allowed her to leave. They just didn’t operate that way back then.
Then there’s the romance. *sigh* Alright, I can understand the desire for romance in everything. After all, who doesn’t like a good love story? However, first off, I can’t see her being great buddies with the boys. Secondly, I can’t really see how you can get a love story when the other men see her as a man. Thirdly, they’re in the middle of a war that goes on for at least 12 years according to the ballad. Really — I think survival trumps soft fuzzy feelings at that point. I’ll bet the men would have had more love for a bed and warm meal than their comrade in arms. On top of all that, I just don’t see the men of that era falling for another man. Just saying. But I can put all that aside because you never know.
What really gets my goat is the prince. Why does she have to fall in love with the prince? Who, by the way, never showed up during the original ballad. Right. Artistic license. Where did that prince come from? The princes of old didn’t lead armies themselves that frequently and when they did it’s unlikely that all three of them would have been in the same clump of men. More likely they would have each been a general and wouldn’t have been gadding about together. I think it would have made much more sense for Mulan to have fallen in love with a fellow soldier, if she absolutely had to. The possibility of getting in major trouble for lying to royalty back then probably would have held any warm fuzzy feelings at bay. You know, the type of trouble where everyone you know gets beheaded? It’s called lying to your emperor. Who usually takes a really dim view of such things.
Last but not least: Why have her father be estranged from her for that long? Why was that necessary? Yes. Artistic license again. I just thought that it would have been more true to the spirit of the story for her to have been on good terms with her parents. Personal preference. Right. I’ll shut up about that part then.
I might still pick this book up just to see how Dokey does. She is one of the authors I like, so I’m really willing to give her a sporting try. Maybe she’ll surprise me. I don’t want to buy it though — so we’ll see if the local library can get it. Then I’ll probably post a real review rather than just a rant. 
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11.22.09
Posted in life at 1:05 am by kyrias
Yes. I’m giving up my usual attempt at proper journalism and not titling this post anything relevant to what’s in it. Part of me sneers at it and part of me revels in the utter freedom of having a title that really doesn’t say anything and is violently sarcastic to boot.
Anyways.
It’s near midnight of 11-21-2009. Which means that in a few it will be 8 more days until the end of NaNoWriMo. Part of me wants to jump up and just write feverishly for the next 8 days and see where I get. The more rational part of me thinks of that 10 page research paper that I haven’t really touched yet because I’ve been totally out of it for a good number of reasons and knows that I need to go to sleep now so I can be more functional tomorrow.
I have been feeling rather chipper these past few days. I will not say it’s the Bupropion, because honestly it may just be the placebo effect and I’m only taking 150mg a day anyways. I will not, however, rule out the possibility that it may be helping. I’ve been keeping a log of when I’ve been taking the meds and noting how I feel each day so I can check for unhappy side effects.
Tremors. I’ve been noticing that my chopsticks have been trembling slightly. I don’t know if it’s the meds or not, but I’m going to keep note. I actually didn’t read the list of potential side effects until tonight because I didn’t want there to be any psychosomatism going on. Is psychosomatism a correct word? Anyways. I was talking to Caesura and needed to pull up a list of side effects, and of course I read it myself because it was right there in bigger font than was on the paper bag the pharmacy gave me.
Part of me wonders what taking the full 300mg dose will do to me. I almost want to ask the doc if I could stay on the 150mg for a week longer and see what happens, but then I’ve read elsewhere that anything less than 300mg isn’t really effective. Oh placebo effect, I love thee. Then again, every one is a doctor on the internets.
Another potential side effect of Bupropion is weight loss, possibly because it might cause a decrease in appetite. Hah. Aha. Right. So I can take care of my ADD and my depression and my goal to lose weight to keep my cholestrol down ALL AT ONCE. Wow. Talk about succcessful multi-tasking if this works.
I’m just dripping with sarcasm now, for clarification.
I found out today that I got a 72.5 on the test that I thought I failed. Before people start ragging on me about how I never actually fail a test when I am freaking out that I have, I honestly went through the test with this soundtrack in my head:
I think this is the right answer…
Um, this looks correct.
Hrm, my gut is telling me to go with this one…
The others look more wrong than this one…
I’m not even joking. I literally drew a blank and flipped through the entire test checking off the answers I knew for sure and there was less than 8 out of 40. All I can say is that I’m stupidly lucky. I have to be.
At this rate, I shouldn’t even worry about the GRE. Clearly that will go well.
Mom wants me to move back in with them when classes end in December so I can learn how to drive. Part of me really wants to do it so I can learn how to drive. Part of me wonders if I’ll ever be able to move out again.
The latter fear is mostly because now that the parents have taken in a home-stay student for teh monies, mom really needs help around the house. Another two Chinese kids might be showing up next year, as in, in three months, if all goes well. Then she’ll really need help around the house.
She says she’ll pay me. Hah.
I guess what I want to do is:
- Learn how to drive
- Figure out how to work it so I can help mom with her stuff and still be able to sleep in Somerville. This might involve lots of driving at night and arriving home at 10pm and falling straight into bed exhausted then getting up at the crack of dawn and driving to mom’s again. Guh. Gas prices would be prohibitive and taking the commuter rail would be homicide inducing.
- Figure out how to balance mom’s need for making tasty food with the reality that she can’t afford to spend as much time making the food with that many more people to feed.
- Find a job/internship/volunteer work/something so I can feel slightly less guilty about not helping out more.
Ugh. We’ll see. I guess I’m just going to take each hurdle as it comes. I’m pretty bummed that I haven’t been able to try and strike up a rapport with my psychopharmacology prof — I’ve been falling asleep so much in her class I feel really, really sheepish about doing anything of the currying favor sort. Also, the fact that class ends at noon and I’m starving doesn’t help. Oh well.
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11.18.09
Posted in Depression at 4:23 pm by kyrias
The doc put me on 150mg of Bupropion to be taken twice daily. It’s an antidepressant that supposedly also has the side effect of helping ADD.
Potential side effects: TL;DR
Joking aside, the list is damn long and I don’t feel like typing it all out. I also don’t want to think about the potential side effects.
I believe that many people can be improved by experience a nice, prolonged, severe bout of depression. Certain people who I will not name aside, you know the type, the “pull yourself by your own damn bootstraps” sort who wouldn’t know depression if it hit them between the eyes with a 2×4 — those aside, there’s those who can understand it in theory, but when faced with the reality, have no damn clue.
We were talking about antidepressants in class the other day. One girl asked: “So what would be a deal-breaker for you in terms of side effects when taking anti-depressants?” All of the other women in the class answered the same: “Weight gain.”
My response: “I think how we feel about it is irrevelant — because we’re not depressed. I certainly know that if I were faced with the constant thought of suicide, I would probably have very different thoughts about which side effects were deal breakers.”
No, I’m not bitter, not at all.
What they don’t tell you as a psychology student learning about depression is legion:
- People with depression may not feel like talking about it. This is because there are often no words for the screaming void that is life and when attempts are made to bind it down with words, you just end up sounding like the worst sort of Mary Sue Emo Purple Poetry writer.
- Depression is boring. It bores me to talk incessantly about how miserable I am, about how I want to kill myself every damn day, about how I feel like everything is hopeless and stupid. I know it either bores other people to hear about it when it’s occuring, which is all the time, or they get desensitized after a period of not being able to actually do anything about it and then they either get bored or they don’t want to hear about it anymore because it frustrates them.
- Unless they’re actually doing to carry through with it, no one actually really likes hearing about someone else’s suicide ideation. Many people wonder why people let themselves get to the point where they actually carry it through, and I suspect it’s because there’s no point in talking about it to other people when you’re not actually going to do it because they just get stressed and worried and often take it out on the person who’s feeling down and then when you actually get to that point, you wouldn’t want to talk about it anyways. People like to say if they’d only known. Well…
- Unless you have major chronic depression, you will likely be incapable of truly understanding depression. You may understand it on an intellectual level, but you will likely be incapable of really comprehending just what it means. Lost friendships, lost opportunities, a house that is less than clean, jobs that are less than well-done, and why, just how someone can feel so crappy that the mere idea of going out to socialize sounds like a special form of torment.
- Even if you have depression or have had depression or have SAD or have been suicidal — that doesn’t mean you understand another person’s depression. This seems to be a difficult concept to grasp for most. All I can say is don’t assume and don’t be an ass.
On other notes, I do have cysts on my ovaries. So PCOS is pretty much diagnosed and all that.
I’m thinking I need to write a nice long letter to my parents about why I don’t want to move back in and explain to them just how much they, with the best of intentions, screwed me up. I’m really, really not looking forward to that, but I feel it needs to be done. Currently they can’t understand why I have depression and why I have ADD and why I can’t just see how there’s still hope in my life.
Suffice it to say that nothing depresses me more than someone trying to convince me that I really have no reason to be depressed.
What’s going to be great is that it’s likely going to be in English because using Chinese would just be too close and I don’t know if I can. They’ll likely hate that. Fun times.
At this point in my life, I think there’s little more devastating than hurting people you love by telling them they’ve totally ruined parts of your life.
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11.10.09
Posted in Uncategorized at 9:42 pm by kyrias
For closure purposes, I guess I’m going to announce that I’m no longer writing for National Novel Writing Month.
I thought about putting it off and trying to work through it regardless without saying anything “official”, but I’m feeling stressed out about not doing something that I want to do and told people I’d be doing. I figure at this point I really don’t need the stress and so I should get some closure and just try my best to get that 50k words. I’ll probably still be inputting my word count at the end of the month to see how far I get. Maybe I’ll hit 50k anyways — one can always hope, right?
Reasons:
My PCP suspects that I have polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). I’m using “suspects” really loosely. She pretty much thinks I do and just wants to make sure. I’m not currently dealing well with that news — because being diagonosed with chronic major depression and ADD isn’t enough, I apparently need yet another chronic disease to work with. Currently I’m going in for more blood work tomorrow and an ultrasound, but I have at least 7 out of the 15 symptoms listed here, on top of having an elevated testosterone level. I’ll know about the pre-diabetic part and if I have cysts after the tests tomorrow. I honestly don’t know if I’m ovulating or not, so I can’t rule out the infertile bit yet either. Considering that my period skips out for more than a year at times, I’m not ready to take it off the list.
I realise it’s not a huge medical issue and it’s eminently treatable and not fatal and all that jazz. I just feel somewhat betrayed by my body and so am not dealing well with that diagnoses. At least she ruled out premature uterine failure. Thank god.
I’ve finally gone to see a psychologist in Boston. I had my first psych intake last Thursday — which was a trip, I assure you — and I’ll be getting my psychopharm intake this coming Tuesday. It was really not at all fun, and I’m not looking forward to rehashing my problems in front of yet another person, but I guess it has to be done. All I can say regarding that psych intake is that I felt so lousy afterwards that I decided to skip class because I seriously thought I’d jump off the platform in Sullivan Square if I had to go take the train.
On top of all this glorious loveliness, I have a test next Monday and a ten page research paper that I really need to get started on.
I feel like crap because I bought Dragon Age: Origins when it came out on the 3rd and so to a certain extent I feel like I’m sabotaging myself because of the amount of time I’ve spent playing that game. On the other hand, my rational brain is telling me that there’s no way I can write properly with the amount of stuff that’s currently going on.
Also, my mother just moved and she’s taking in a student to board — I’m expected to move back in with the parents to help out with this after I finish my classes unless I get a job or get into grad school. Not fun.
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11.03.09
Posted in Cooking, Money tagged penny wise, pound foolish at 12:34 am by kyrias
I recently discovered a love for cream of wheat.
Really quick to cook, a whole grain, and something that can be gulped down in minutes… what’s not to love?
My only real problem is that it is kind of pricey. At $3.79 a box — I both wanted to find cheaper alternatives and wanted to know if I could make it at home.
The short answer is yes.
What really amused and frustrated me was the number of bloggers who were boasting of “Cream of wheat for just pennies!”
Yes. Assuming I can buy a pound of wheat berries at my food co-op for, say,$ 2.99.
My box of whole grain Cream of Wheat was $3.79 for 18 ounces — so to be entirely unscientific here and just assuming it’s a pound for easy math, that means I’d be saving $0.8 per pound.
Very nice. Not amazing, but pretty nice savings after a while, yes?
Except a Nutrimill costs upwards of $260 new. I’d have to eat 325 pounds of Cream of Wheat (CoW) before I’d make back my initial investment.
Being generous with my calculations and saying that we go through a pound of CoW in a week — I’d have to wait 6 years or so before I recoup my money.
…wonder if Caesura would be up for that idea.
Not that I’m deriving enjoyment from being snarky, really, but I think that it’s hardly fair to advertise something as a way to be frugal when the way to be frugal involves a rather pricey machine that the average household probably would not have.
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