Leilani Kaiser: LMST345

     Uzumaki is honestly one of the greatest mangas I've read yet. It's so compelling to see a town become swallowed by a shape- that being the spiral. It's also interesting to see how Junji Ito incorporates this unusual shape into the lives of the people of Kurouzu-cho, and how it drives them insane. That being said, I think my favorite story of the bunch is The Spiral Obsession, Part 2 .     The human body is a fascinating thing. It feels weird to see diagrams of the stuff inside us and know that all these parts help us function. That being said, in  Uzumaki , Shuichi's mother takes this uneasiness with the human body to the next level, in the form of her fear of spirals. The imagery that Ito includes in this chapter is horrifying. Watching the woman cut off her own fingertips physically made my OWN fingertips tingle, as if something was touching them. What got me even worse, though, was watching her jab the scissors into her ear, because of the spiral that lies withi

     I love the ocean. I love it so much that before I wanted to become an artist, I wanted to be a marine biologist. I wanted to explore the deep sea and discover all the weird and disgusting creatures that lived down there. I even got my scuba diving license at 11 years old- that's how committed I was. Of course, that plan didn't pan out the way I had anticipated when I was younger, but reading Gyo brought me back to that time where I was a wide-eyed girl with a serious passion for the sea.     For many people, this work would absolutely deter them from ever taking another trip to the beach, in fear of some fish scuttling up to them on spindly limbs. But we know that won't happen, since the legs that the fish were using were machines that were made during WWII. Obviously, the Japanese made no such invention during the war in our world. But I think what makes this manga extra scary is how it plays into our innate fear of the unknown.     According to the NOAA, we have expl

  It is ten years from now, the holiday season of 2030.  You are thinking about a present you might be getting for the holidays.  What is it?  Talk about how you did your holiday shopping,  What is your job and how are you doing it?  What is your living situation and what are the major issues of the day?  Please make these questions relevant to any appropriate holidays you celebrate.      In 2030, I'd be 30 years old. That's insane for me to even think about. 20 years has felt long enough, but having to add another 10 in the future feels like it would take an eternity. I'd be out of Ringling by then, comfortably living as a game designer for some indie studio. The triple-A studios would ask me to join them multiple times, but I'd decline every time. Would I be making more money with them? Probably. But the team dynamic of an indie studio feels more close-knit and comfortable. It'd feel like we're making a game to make people happy rather than make a quick buck w

     Oops. After reading a good chunk of Mona Lisa Overdrive  and STILL not understanding the world and the people in it, I eventually relented and googled the book's plot, only to find that it was the LAST BOOK in William Gibson's Sprawl  trilogy. No wonder I was so confused. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one confused, which was why I could fully relate to Kumiko Yanaka and her story in the novel.     Kumiko was basically thrown into the story with zero knowledge of what was going on around her. Her father shipped her off to England while he dealt with some Yakuza business, leaving her all alone and alienated in her new surroundings. Fortunately, she meets Sally Shears (who I read was actually named Molly Millions from the first books... which I SHOULD'VE read...), who drags her around London to meet with people with weird names. Even in her chapters, Kumiko feels like an outsider looking in, with Sally feeling like more of a star, most likely because she's not a n

1. What is your reaction to the text you just read?            Holy crap. This story only took me a few minutes to read, but those were some of the most uncomfortable minutes of my life. Stuff involving pregnancy unnerves me a little bit, so you can imagine that reading about a dude who was pregnant with flesh eating larvae that were slowly killing him sent some chills down my spine. It left me feeling very uneasy, and if that was the intent, then congratulations Octavia Butler! You did it!! 2. What connections did you make with the story? Discuss what elements of the story with which you were able to connect?     I'm happy to say that I don't live on a planet with weird life-forms that have more limbs than normal, so I can't relate to that. However, what I can relate to is being manipulated into thinking that something is right when in reality it's severely detrimental to yourself. In the story, Gan and his sister wholeheartedly believe that being chosen by T'Gat

     ...but words can manipulate you and turn you into a traitor against your own starship crew. In all seriousness though, Babel-17 was a very strange read for me. Reading this novel right after The Martian was a huge change of pace. While in The Martian  I felt that I had a clear picture of Mark Watney's surrounding environment and predicament, I felt like I was walking through a haze while reading Babel-17 . All the stuff about body modifications, and futuristic starships, and the whole concept of a "triple" not registering to me as a form of three-way relationship until I looked it up, it was very confusing. And yet throughout all the haze of world-building exposition, the one thing that stood out to me the most was the concept of using language and words as a weapon.     At first I was surprised at Samuel R. Delany's choice to use a language as the main conflict of the novel. Normally when you think of space adventures, you would picture the main source of confli