The Doubling

Who exactly is Sophelia Lee, really?

The outside is the dreamer; the inside is the dream. Sometimes the dream transcends its flesh encasing. Mostly it continues to lurk within, hidden from view.

Sophelia Lee is self-assured and secure. She is brilliant, a pro at time management. She does not freak out in pressure situations. When strangers strike a conversation with her, the light joking words roll out with ease. She is a good singer who sings to rock music to vent her stress. When she sits down to write, she never feels like her words have run dry. She always feels as if her creativity is infinite. She is never plagued by her insecurities of not knowing who to trust. Most importantly, she is not afraid to run off the prescribed path of life to chase after her own enormous, unconventional dream.

In other words, this is who the other half is dying to be.

ParaKiss

I don't really have time for this, but for the sake of my sanity and mental health (which has been going down the tubes recently), I'm going to indulge myself and write another frivolous blog post.

So as you may probably already know, I am a huge fan of Ai Yazawa. Yes, I do like her art style, but much of my admiration for her is due to her storytelling. She is exceptional at creating eccentric characters and there is a certain tinge of tragedy and realism in her works that has definitely been a big influence on me.

As much as I remain devoted to Nana, I cannot really say it's my favorite series without knowing how it ends (AI YAZAWA!! HOW CAN YOU LEAVE US HANGING AFTER YOU KILL OFF REN LIKE THAT!!). Another one of her series, Paradise Kiss, is only five volumes long but it is definitely a favorite of mine. I am pretty sure I already mentioned this in a blog post from years ago, but the major reason why this series won me over was because of the ending. Endings are a huge factor when it comes to how much I enjoy a story, and in contrast to the vomit-worthy sappiness of your typical shoujo boy-meets-girl fluff, the ending of Paradise Kiss is real. The relationship between Yukari and George is fiercely passionate, but realistically their relationship would never be able to sustain itself from burning out or exploding in their faces. I'm just going to spoil it for you now, but Yukari ends up not with George but with someone else who is a much better match for her in terms of being a good complement for her.

Oh, but it's not easy to see Yukari and George part ways either. The way Ai Yazawa does it is amazing. I never cry, so obviously I did not shed tears, but there is that one beautiful scene near the end when you realize just how much Yukari meant to George, even if he did treat her pretty poorly from time to time.

So anyways, I was talking to my roommate last week about Ai Yazawa. My roommate brought up the point that we are kind of like a Duke version of Nana and Hachi, which was surprisingly true -- my roommate is the ditzier one who likes dressing up and wearing girly, frilly, things, whereas I have been the biggest Nana O fan forever and seemed to have subconsciously tried to emulate her. In any case, I brought up the topic of Paradise Kiss, to which my roommate informed me that a movie version of the series was in production. So of course, I looked it up on Youtube and found this:




Sophelia's verdict: I don't understand Japanese, so this is entirely based on visual impression. Yukari is pretty on target, but WHAT IS UP WITH GEORGE?? THAT CANNOT BE GEORGE. Besides the fact that George is supposed to have blueish hair, this dude is nowhere near as snarky-looking as George. Maybe it's another example of the problem of how some things just don't translate well in live-action, because this George just looks silly in his fedora and purple blazer. See now, meet George:

Yo. What dy'a want?

Unfortunately, there really are no good color pictures of George from ParaKiss with his trademark blueish hair on Google (he looks kinda stupid in some of the anime screenshots I have seen), but whatever -- you get the point. You can look it up yourself. But anyways, George is definitely no Prince Charming -- and he definitely is not a fruitcake either. Completely different vibe from this guy:

Sorry dude, but you just can't quite pull it off.

Yeah, so I wasn't entirely happy when I first saw this, but it quickly left my head. After all, I have more important things to worry about than some film I probably won't even end up watching. And thus, I forgot all about this whole business...

That is, until this evening, when I saw the latest concept photos for the Extraordinary League of Kickassery's comeback album. It looks like the Badass One has changed the hairstyle again, and though he insists on retaining his white hair, guess who he reminds me of now?? No, not Malfoy...


HOLY POMELO HE KINDA LOOKS LIKE GEORGE!! I mean, look -- there's the light blueish hair and the really eccentric clothing (George, master fashion designer, wears some pretty cuckoo outfits throughout the whole series), and plus, the Badass One would totally be able to act like snarky, no-coddling George. If by some teeny chance Paradise Kiss becomes as popular as Hana Yori Dango aka Boys Over Flowers and South Korea decides to film its own version of the Japanese story, than maybe they'll give the Badass One a call.

... okay, I am so tired. Peace out homies. And wish me luck, because this week is going to be hell.

This is Hell

This past week has been a living hell, and it's not going to get better just yet. Sometimes, I ask myself why I've done this to myself.

Any sort of sleep routine I once had has all but disintegrated. I now live on four hours of sleep a night. Apparently in my last scrape of consciousness tonight, I grabbed my pillow and blanket from my cluttered bed and passed out on the floor. My roommate had to repeatedly shake me awake so I could get up and finish my homework.

When I heard your voice, I wanted to cry.

GTHC

I am dead tired and more irritable than ever. But...


... last night's epic victory against the Tar Heels reminded me of why I'm glad to be where I am. Above is a picture I found online of the bonfire in the quad last night, after we came back from a 16-point deficit to win against our biggest rival. I never had this in high school -- there was no unity, no real sense of school spirit then.

I didn't realize until I came to college that people love to hate on Duke; when the whole powerpoint scandal broke out last semester, columnists and bloggers were still beating around that dead horse lacrosse scandal and using us as the scapegoat for what is essentially a problem on campuses all across the nation -- the alcohol-fueled hook-up culture.

Haters gonna hate, but the ones looking in from the outside are never going to understand what the school spirit is really like here. Sure, I don't drink much and I don't hook-up. But that doesn't mean I don't feel like I belong here. I watched the NCAA basketball championship game in Cameron Stadium last spring, when our team took down Butler 61-59 in Indiana to win the 2010 national title. The stadium was packed. As the buzzer went off, people were storming the court, laughing, cheering, hugging, and crying. It was unlike anything I had ever felt in my life.

There were remnants of that even last night. My friends and I were sitting on one of the couches in our common room with other students from the dorm. Most of us had books and laptops on our laps as we attempted to finish our homework while watching the game. Though the first half was ugly, things started going crazy once Seth Curry stepped up his game. Nobody was even trying to work anymore. We suddenly became this one, monstrous entity that was spread out across the campus, either packed in the student section of Cameron or crowded around common room televisions, cheering in unison. It's one thing to experience a small, personal joy; it's quite another to have that little piece of joy amplified into a collective swell of pride and exuberance.

Mood Swings

I can't remember when in my life have I ever been so on-and-off downright irritable.

I am so vain.

I am so judgmental.

I just hide it exceptionally well.

Take the problem of S -- if you had asked me a semester ago, I would have said she was my closest friend here. Ask me now, and if I'm being honest with you, I'll tell you that I'm getting more and more annoyed at her every day. There are just some days when I just want to avoid her.

And this scares me, because this isn't the first time it's happened. There have been a couple people in my life -- all of a sudden, I find myself getting gradually more and more repelled by them, despite the fact that I had been fairly close to them before.

There are a lot of things I just want to vomit out in one go, but I can't. I don't know for sure who I can trust here, and my friends elsewhere are busy with their own lives.

I was happy at one point today, when I had a good conversation with Mouse -- one of the best conversations I've had in a long time, with whom I'm starting to believe I can confide in without worrying that my words are going to be spread. (I learned about S the hard way.) Then my mood suddenly took a downturn for the worst at dinner, for reasons I cannot quite say on here.

Sigh. Somebody cure me. Maybe I need some psychoanalysis.

Dilemma by David Budbill

Lunar New Year

Off to a frazzled start, but please let this be a good year.

Mind if I Slytherin?

I'm starting to think my issue wasn't the silver hair color -- it was the Colonel Quaritch/Chip Hazard hairstyle.

Because I just watched the music video for "Baby Good Night," and for all the flak I gave about the Badass One's hair since his promotion cycle with GD began, I must confess that I actually liked his hair this time. A lot.

You see, hair is a pretty weighty thing to consider. Hair is like the college application essay -- it's not going to determine by itself whether or not you're admitted to Sophelia's biased pantheon of good-looking people, but hair can easily tip the scale in your favor. You might be one of those people I see from afar, and I might think, "Wow, that guy has a good hairstyle." True, maybe then I get close and see your face and reconsider my interest in you, but hey -- at least you make people want to have a second look.

My mother actually once showed me a picture of her and my maternal grandparents from when she was probably a five-year-old. The first thing I noticed was, "Holy crap, I looked exactly like my mother when I was a toddler." But the second thing I noticed was the hairstyle that my grandfather, who passed away when I was a high school freshman, had at the time the photograph was taken. I liked it -- it was clean and unfussy, but stylish in its own way. It actually looked a lot like the hairstyle the Badass One has in the music video. There's a certain "age" to it that seems nostalgic of the past -- I'm thinking of the 1910s, like the hairstyles of Dimitri from Anastasia and Jack Dawson from Titanic.

As for the music video, I don't need to understand Korean to grasp the utter sensuality that is dripping through all 3:33 minutes of the video. The Badass One eating a strawberry (sexxxxx)? The snake crawling in the bed (sexxxx)? The spoken French (with a legit accent) at the very end (sexxxxx)? I'm actually not sure how to feel about it -- while I applaud them for not overtly sexualizing the video (they could have easily stuck either GD or T.O.P. in bed with the girl, to the wrath and dismay of millions of fans around the globe), but that snake in the bed was OVERKILL.

But you know what? That's okay, because I couldn't help but think when I was watching the video that the Badass One and I are somehow telepathically connected, and after all my stabs at how he resembled Draco Malfoy or a lovechild birthed from a torrid affair between Lucius Malfoy and Cruella DeVil, he said, "Psssh, I'll show you how to be a Malfoy." And voila -- in his next video, he has a silvery hairstyle that looks better than the ones Tom Felton had in all of the Harry Potter movies. PLUS he's got a badass snake wrapped around his shoulder as he's rapping!

sa-WOON.