Dead Until Dark

To be honestly, I do not like the book at all. I do not know why, it is just hard to read. When I read the book, I have difficulties to understand what is going on. For most of times, I need to go back, re-read the text and to think hard about it. I do not know why, I just do not understand it.

After I read the book, I feel that everything is messed up. I can not pick up their characteristics, and I can not get the details. Confusions is always there and it drives me a little mad. Then, I takes quite time to watch the show, True Blood. It helps me to get a better understanding on the story. I realize that it is a really good story and I like it.

Firstly, I like the characters. Each of them is well developed. For example, Sookie is a very interesting character who can read people's mind. For her, it is a problem which leads her to seek for someone she can not read. Unfortunately, the only one that she cannot read is a vampire. This setting is interesting because most of people want to know what others are thinking about. Even Sookie wants to know what Bill is thinking about sometimes. It is a conflict in Sookie's life. One hand, she wants to get quiet from Bill. On the other hand, she wants to know what Bill thinks. It is a symbolic scense of the real world. People always refuse to accept the negative parts of the reality but they desire to seek the truth.

Another interesting that I find is the character in the show, Tara. Tara is an Africa-American girl who is very sensitive about races. Sometimes, even though others do not mean to disrespect her, she always feel that she is disrespected. For me, I am not sensitive with race problem. It is probably because I have not been through these kind of things. However, I think Tara is the one with the race problem. Since she differ people by race, she assumes that words from people in other race are always have some negative meanings. It is all her problem. She cannot face the race problem right and she lives in the past rather than the future. For example, in the show, Tara is angry about Bill because his parents used to own slaves. It is a history that cannot be changed but Tara cannot take it properly. Therefore, sometimes, we need to find the problems in ourselves. Otherwise, the problems cannot be solved at all.

After all, I real like the story. It exposes too many aspects of the society. The plot surprises me a lot, especially the ending. The story teaches me that we cannot blame mistakes on others. Before we do that, we need to find the mistakes in ourselves. The society will not change to fit each individual so that we need to change to fit in the society.

Anita Blake

To be honest, I do not like this book as much. This is the first time for me to read a American comic, and it is quit different than those that I read before. I do not like it because the way pictures look like but I do like the story plot a lot.

Firstly, I do not like the way pictures are drawn. I was a big fan of comic books when I was in China. I am still a fan of comic books but I do not like American comic books very much. Even though they are all comic books, they look quit different. This is due to the difference of appearance of Western people and Asian people because people draw characters base on their own appearance.

Lets see a picture of Chinese vampire.It is abvious that Chinese use much more bright color for vampire stories. In Asian areas, people like to draw much more positive stories about vampire. There are always a group of good vampire or there are all good vampire. There are also less violent and terrific pictures in the books. Of course, there will never be a shower picture in comic books that can be published.

Let see an iconic vampire comic book in Japan. As we see, pictures in Japanese comic books are more goddess and meticulous.

As comparison, it is easy to see these differences in pictures. Therefore, when I read Anita Blake, it takes a while for me to get used to it.

Another reason that I do not like this book is the narratives boxes. There are just too much of them in the book. For the first time I read it, I read the speech bubbles and narrative boxes only. I like the story. The plot is interesting and characters are well built by the narrative boxes. However, for the second time when I read pictures only, I feel confused and contradictory. From my imagination, Anita is a tough woman. Even though she feels helpless or fearful sometime and look for comfort from penguins. It is really bother me to see her wearing penguins always. It just makes her weak. On the other hand, since this is a comic book, some of the narrative boxes are unnecessary. For example, it is meaningless to say " Luther is overweight, over fifty, chain-smokes, and yet he is never sick." because we can see them easily by the picture.

Since this comic is based on the novel, it is not really successful. From my point of view, both pictures and speech/ narrative boxes are too strong. It is hard for readers to follow either of them. Therefore, contradictions appear.

Fledgling

While I am reading the novel Fledgling, I feel very depressed. From my point of view, loneliness seem to be the thesis of this story. Almost every character is lonely in some way, especially in the first half part of the book when the characters are introduced.

Shori, as the main character of the book, wakes up in a cave with no knowledge of almost everything. She even has no idea what she is. At those days in the cave, her actions are based on these living instincts, for example, like hunting for food and hiding from sun burn. Later Shori runs down the ruin and looks carefully for the familiar smells. What is she trying to do? I believe she is doing everything to try to get back her memory. She is trying to figure out something or someone that she can belong to. Shori does not want to be alone, or to be one of kind.

Theodora, one of Shori's symbionts, is a lonely lady since her husband's death. Even though she has house, child, and poetry to work on. She is still feel lonely and she even smells lonely. Theodora's daughter has grown up and does not need Theodora to help with everything, therefore, Theodora can not feel need for daughter. I feel that the reason Theodora wants to be with Shori is that she want to be needed, to be wanted.

Celia, Shori's new symbiont, desires to be needed. As Celia said, she lost her parents when she was young. ( I can not remember which parent did she lost, I think was the mother) Celia once tells Shori she feels to be needed only after meet Stefan. Celia wants to be with Ina because she does not want be left alone again. To me, that is the fear of loneliness and abandonce.


Preston, an Ina who has lived decades, also feel lonely. When he recalls one of his symbiont ( Jeol's mother), he seems so lonely to me. After all those years, he has lost many symbionts. How terrible it is to watch people that you care die? Since he cares about them, it will hurt much more when they die. Even after all these years, Preston still miss them. He tells Shori to try to protect symbionts while they watch out during the day. From this small detail, I can feel that Preston does not want to lose any of them. He wants to keep them with him so that he can have a family to belong to.

From all these examples, loneliness is one feeling that both Ina and symbionts shares. All of them want to be wanted and needed. Actually, anyone wants. I try to put myself into the position of each of them, and try to catch their feelings. It is awful. No matter the vampires or the Ina, they see to be cool since they can live forever. However, the forever life also means to lose anyone else that you care, you love, and you want. While, the death comes, vampires or Ina can do nothing to hold on people. The helpless feeling hurt too much. Also in their later lives, the memory of losing is another suffer for them.

After all, I enjoy the book. I may be too sensitive with the feeling things. I am just used to try to put myself into the story to understand it more.

lusting for freedom

“I never felt any great loss of innocence, only great rushes of the kind of power that comes with self-knowledge and shared intimacy.”

I really like this quote because of my culture. In my culture, sex is a private thing that nobody talks with friends or talks in public. At least up to my parents’ generation, they will never feel comfortable to hear others talking about sex. Especially for females, sex is a shame and embarrassing. It is always a kind of humiliation for them when people talking them on the topic of sex. It is a stereotype that females should not be pleasant from sex. Their role in sex is to pleasure men and to be pregnant which are not true.

“Sex can look like love if you don't know what love looks like. It gives you someone to hold on to when you can't feel yourself. It is heat on your body when the coldness is inside of you. It is trying out trusting and being trusted.”

Having sex is always a good way to reduce the loneliness. Everyone feels empty inside sometime but sex is just a temporary way to reduce this feeling. It does no good on helping people get better. They feel much more lonely when they are back to their lives.

“Not at all in control of each affair, but very much in control of the mask I put on for each man, I tried on a dozen personas, played out a dozen roles, decided not to be a dozen people.”

Everyone wants to be different. Living in different life, and being a different person. However, playing different roles in sex with different people is not a proper way to achieve the difference. It sounds like a game to me, a dangerous game. Not all girls can have the strong self-control as the writer does. People get hurt in this game, both females and males.

After reading the essay “ Lusting for Freedom ”, by Rebecca Walker, I find that it has many similarities with the novel Fledgling. Both of them talk about finding oneself through sex. It is a common sense that people feel lonely, weak and lost through life. They need to find someone there to be with, to keep them away from loneliness. It is also true for vampires. However, it is not health to fill up self by having sex with somebody and then walk away. To feel in this way may be due to my culture. As people known, China used to be a feudal society. In the past, couples may not ever meet each other until the day they married. All the decisions are made by parents. This type of marriage makes virginity problem serious. Groom's mother will put a white silk on their bed at the first night of marriage so that virgin bride can blood on it. For women who lose their virginity, people used to call them slant no matter how they lose it. From this action, you can see how important virginity is for the unmarried women. Even though we, Chinese, are much open than before, I am still not uncomfortable with the ideas of either group sex, or under age sex. This not mean I disrespect them or try to judge them, it is just hard for me to image. I may understand their motives but I can never do these things. In our culture, both females and males are supposed to be loyal with their partners since the day they get married. It is a kind of shame to have affairs because the society is not allow this kind of action. Even though everyone knows how hard it is to be loyal with only one person in the long-time life, we still judge people's affair as a shame. There is less forgiveness and understanding for affairs in my culture.

Jiang-Shi

I am really enjoying our class discussions. However, it is feel weird for me to be the only second language speaker who discusses all these western culture things with all native speakers. I mean I am still trying to associate with the culture. Anyway, I just do not feel comfortable with speaking in class.

In today's wiki, it is really interesting to see different vampire images through cultures. I do learn a lot, but I still want to add some more information on Chinese Vampires so that people can know more about it. I believe, as a native, I can tell more actual stories about it.

Firstly, in Chinese, we call them Jiang-Shi. It basic means hard corpses. They cannot bend their arms and legs. This means their arms are always pointing straight forward and they jump instead of walking. Also, they are not able to open either their arms or legs. Other parts of their bodies are also rigid. They cannot move their heads and they cannot look at anywhere instead of straight forward. As the image, Jiang-Shi look more like human. This is not strange at all because they are human who come to live after they die. They feed on human as vampires do but in different way. Vampires take human blood as food, while Jiang Shi take human vitality, a kind of spirit that keeps people alive. I am sure it seem to be confused, but I can not get more close translation than vitality. Most of Jiang Shi are unable to think, or to feel like vampires. They more like animals that simply looking for food. They do not attract people in the way vampires do because they look so different than human. They can smell human breath and chase this smell. Therefore, some people believe if they hold breath when Jiang-Shi come, Jiang Shi are not able to find them.

After the appearance, let me introduce some history about Jiang Shi. Jiang Shi have existed for long time but they are brought on TV much later. There are two different catalogs of Jiang Shi. One is those who can back to life soon after death. Another is those who have be died and buried for year but they did not decompose. Under these two catalogs, there are eight different kinds of Jiang Shi. There are purple, white, green, hairy, flying, swimming, creeping and un-died Jiang Shi. I know this sound like ridiculous, but it is one way that Chinese use to differ them by their appearance and behavior.

Then, I am going to tell how they become Jiang Shi. This is really hard to explain; however, I am going to try. Unfortunately, people cannot choose to be a Jiang Shi by their owning choices. Died people become Jiang-Shi in the three situations; one is that they have great grievance before they died. Second one is that the died bodies are infected after they are buried. Lastly, died people become Jiang-Shi when they are buried at the some special places. It is sound complicated, is not it? I am going to explain one by one. For the first way, it is easy to understand that people who are murdered or have unfinished wishes are going to become Jiang-Shi after their death. For the second way, you may ask that how died bodies can be infected after they are buried. It is long stories. According to Chinese culture, people used to build huge graves for their after lives. The inside of these graves will look like their houses that they live during lives. In addition, people will put expensive things or their favorite things into the graves after they die so that they can keep enjoy of having them. Some of them may place among the coffins and some of them may inside of coffins. This is why there are grave robbers in China. They make a living on robbing graves. When they open the coffins, their vitalities have big chance to make corpses into Jiang-Shi. For the last way, it is a kind of object effect. When the bury places are not balancing in PH value, corpses which are buried in there will not decompose for years. Therefore, they become Jiang-Shi. Ok now, I hope these explanations makes some sense for you.

Lastly, I am going to talk a little about how to kill Jiang-Shi. It is similar to vampires. Jiang-Shi can be burned, or killed by Myrtus. They are also afraid of yellow paper with curses on. These paper can stop their movements. There are also some other things like sticky rice, and dog blood can scare them away.

One more very interesting thing I want to talk about is that there are a group of people who can walk Jiang-Shi. These Jiang-Shi walkers will walk Jiang-Shi back to hometowns. Walkers put several Jiang-Shi on a rope and walk them during night. Walkers will paste yellow paper on the foreheads of Jiang-Shi so that they will not hurt other people. Walkers also ring bells when they walk Jiang-Shi to warn human to stay inside houses. Is that interesting?

Well, I am going to stop here. All these information above is some basic back ground knowledge about Jiang-Shi. I hope I do not make you more confusing. There are much more interesting information about Jiang-Shi, both in novels and movies. Hope you enjoy.

twilight

I like vampire movies and novels a lot. Twilight may be one of my favorite. I watch the movies many times and this is the first time I read the actually book on it. After I reading the book, I feel that is quite different than the movie. Maybe it is because I think more deeply on it comparing to watching the movies.

A first question jump out in my head is that is Bella really an empty character. During the class discussion, many of people point out that Bella is like an empty character and she does not have the life of her own. However, I do not think so. To start with, I do not believe that any people can have an empty life. From my point of view, some of people like to be surrounded by crown and do things with others. On the other hand, there are people who prefer to stay alone, and do everything by themselves, like Bella. She feels uncomfortable of being surrounded by people, she does not like to be the center of the attention and also her interests are not so similar with her friends. This is why she feels bored with friends sometimes. It is just because they have different styles of lives.

I feel a kind of attachment with Bella because we share lots of commons in living. We both do not like sports, have no much interest over fashion, and not feel comfortable with many people around. Therefore, I know how it looks when her life is concentrated with people in her lives. It seems like she is living for others, or in other words, she is an accessory of others. What people see is Bella's life with Edward which is kind of public life of her. Her own life is not noticeable comparing to this prefect romantic love. If people dig deeper, they will find that Bella is a very soft girl who care of others' feelings, try to do no harm on everyone and judge no body by the appearance. This is Bella's most outstanding characteristic, her kindness. How many people can do what she does? To forgive a person who almost kill you. To move away from the closest person, her mother, to make sure mom does not need to choose between Phil and her. To keep others' secrets like she does. All of them are not easy for any people, but Bella has done all of them. She is not nobody.

Another question that keeps bothering me is that is Meyer really fail to build Bella's character. As many people mentioned, Bella is seem to be too normal. She has nothing special, she is passive and she never asks for things. Every amazing thing just happens to her. It is not makes sense to most of readers. However, if you look in the other way, you will find why Bella is so normal. Firstly, I do not think to build Bella as a special girl is hard for Meyer since she can spend chapters to describe smelling, dialogs or thoughts of characters. Then, I start to wonder does Meyer do all of these in purposes. Why will she do this? To relate this question with the huge amount of twilight fans today, it will make sense. How many girls dream to be another Bella? How many girls believe that they can have their own Edward after they see the twilight? Here is the point. Because Bella is as normal as every girl can be, Meyer just catches readers' fantasy about love and boys. From this point of view, Meyer really builds a wonderful character for this love story which can easily get people emotionally involved with it.

After all, once again, I like twilight. It proves me a love story that I can dream for myself. As people always said, it is always nice to dream and it is better to have something to dream for.

Welcome

Hi, everyone. This is Wenjing here. This is my first blog because I do not realy like this computer thing. I am still in the old school that I trust notebooks much more than the computer. Anyway, I gusee I should start with an introduction of myself.

I am a kind of science person. I took chemistry, physics and calculus through my high school years, and I am majoring in the Applied Mathematics now. Obviously, Math grabs most of my interest. I like to work on Math problems even some of them may take hours. I like the feelings that I get when I work on them. They are like puzzles, I need to be careful and sensible in order to figure them out. And also, patience is another important element. Works can be done well only is you do them step by step. I like all these things that can push my brain to work.

My other major interest is the Psychology. I like to learn on how people behaviour in the way they do and also why. It is really interesting.

While, after all these interests, I probably need to introduce something about who I am. I am not a socialized person, actually I am terrible on socialization. I do not talk much, and I am passive.

However, I like to make friends and I have many close friends. I just do not know how to start it. Anyway, I am glad to meet you people.