Hellsing Yummy

I'm on a Hellsing kick. I'm sure it has more to do with me about to start a story with vampires and nearly nothing to do with my wanting a nearly seven-foot-tall, bad-boy-sexy vampire who could scary the bejesus out of anyone I ordered him to. You believe me, right? Of course, there's a health dose of escaping the damn ethnography. I doubt you can get much further than Alucard fighting un-dead Nazis.

So I've been gathering AMVs, which has a bonus that I'm getting introduced to new songs and bands to inspire the Strix stuff. This one is currently one of my favorites.



I've been comparing the anime (which I have the whole box set) to the OVAs (which I only have volumes I and II). I've been coveting getting the complete manga set (it's not finished yet, and I only have volume 8). I've been lapping up And Shine Heaven Now (Erin Ptah keeps the characters very in character but gives them funny. And her crossovers are the bomb). And I've been reading fanfiction.

Here's another vid before the ranting part of the post. Warning: it's a gory cut.


I do have one issue with the canon that sort of bleeds into what I have issues with in the fanfiction. It's not bad enough to spoil my enjoyment and it may be a translation issue. I can cut slack on translation issues. But my brain picks at it.

The setting is 1999. Sir Integra Hellsing is 22 years old, so that means she was born in 1977. Her father Arthur dies and she wakes up Alucard in 1989. Alucard was imprisoned 20 years before in 1969. Arthur was leading Hellsing in 1944 in his twenties, so that means he would have been born in the 1920s.

Integra Hellsing is the last descendant of Abraham Van Helsing, who is often enough called her grandfather to make me gnaw. The math doesn't work, and my brain will seize upon it and not let go.

The setting for Dracula is commonly pinpointed to 1887. Abraham Van Helsing is described physically:

"a man of medium weight, strongly built, with his shoulders set back over a broad, deep chest and a neck well balanced on the trunk as the head is on the neck. The poise of the head strikes me at once as indicative of thought and power. The head is noble, well-sized, broad, and large behind the ears. The face, clean-shaven, shows a hard, square chin, a large resolute, mobile mouth, a good-sized nose, rather straight, but with quick, sensitive nostrils, that seem to broaden as the big bushy brows come down and the mouth tightens. The forehead is broad and fine, rising at first almost straight and then sloping back above two bumps or ridges wide apart, such a forehead that the reddish hair cannot possibly tumble over it, but falls naturally back and to the sides. Big, dark blue eyes are set widely apart, and are quick and tender or stern with the man's moods."

He is a medical doctor, and a doctor of philosophy and literature. He taught Dr. Seward. We're not talking about a wunderkid here; he is a paternal figure for the rest of the crew of vampire hunters, and even says Arthur Holmwood reminds him of his dead son.

I always want to cast him in his sixties, but it could be the fifties. Even if Abraham is 50 in 1887, that means he would be 83 in 1920, which would be the earliest for Arthur to be born. DOES NOT COMPUTE! There must be a missing generation between Abraham and Arthur. Maybe the Japanese term for male ancestor translates to "grandfather" no matter where on the actual family tree the guy falls.

And this is enough of a break in suspension of disbelief that whenever I see Abraham is grandfather, I get the DOES NOT COMPUTE! and have to remind myself of the missing generation. Cause either it's a missing generation, or Abraham had a slew of sons and control of the Hellsing Organization bounced around brothers for a while. I'm glad it doesn't come up THAT often.

But other than having to deal with the DOES NOT COMPUTE! message, it doesn't bother me when I see it in fanfiction. After all, they are only copying what has been said in the manga (I think the anime and OVA are a little more murky with the family tree). No what drives me batty in the fanfics are when they haven't bothered to read Dracula at all! Kouta Hirano doesn't follow it slavishly, but he uses enough of it that if you fanfic writer are going to use the characters, you should go see the source material. None of the film adaptations even get you close, NONE.

Yes, I got thrown out of a okay fanfic describing Abraham and Alucard's relationship by the author having Dr. Seward call Van Helsing "boy." Ignoring the appalling lack of knowledge on Victorian manners, Seward would not call his old friend and former master "boy." And you would know this if you read the bloody book.

I know I need to leave in the review to the actual guilty author. But I've been wanting to rant about the bad math for a while now, so you get to have both. Sorry. Here's another vid if you made it this far. I like this one, combining the anime footage with the music video footage.


Read Free!
The BookWorm

Alien Nation

I killed my DVD player. It no longer recognized when you put a disc in. Which means I can treat myself to a DVD Recorder as soon as I can afford it. I don't know how much longer the TV set has either. After you turn it on and go to the channel for the DVD player (usually after the electricity was forced off by a storm), it turns itself back to what I call the power-was-disrupted channel (#53) for some reason. It usually only does it once and I already made sure nothing is messing with the remote in my house.

But in the mean time, I had a three-day weekend and DVDs to watch. I borrowed an extra DVD player at my parents house that they got from one of my sisters. GE Digital no longer made by GE, and the remote has disappeared. (Which is why my sister left it with my parents). There is no way to navigate the DVD menus with the controls on the box. You can play the movie, and maybe play the first special feature if that menu comes up after the movie. But for TV episodes on DVD, you could only watch one episode a disc--no matter how many episodes were on the disc.

I'm not going into the saga of trying to make the universal remote work. The one code that would register, but using the arrows was not allowed. I happened to hit the numbers by accident and figured out that I can count the menu items and punch the number in to get to it.

So I could finally watch all the episodes in Alien Nation the series (Top 10 Movie-to-TV Adaptations).

The movie came out in 1988. I didn't see it then, being introduced later in college by a roommate with a crush on Mandy Patinkin. I forget when I picked it up on VHS, but I upgraded to DVD this year. The series ran for 1989 - 1990 season, which I did watch in bits and pieces. I saw the heart-stopping cliffhanger that turned into cardiac arrest with the news the series wasn't coming back in the next season.* Fans eventually won, having bought enough of the books and comic books continuing the story to get 5 made-for-TV movies to really finish the series (which are supposed to be out on DVD this month). I picked up the series last year, and decided to start watching this past weekend.

Like most of the shows of my childhood, I remember loving it with only bits and pieces. I think my viewing schedule must have gotten preempted by everyone else in the house until my senior year in high school, when I could watch around my sisters' schedules. So I was honestly surprised by how much the show picked up from the movie. No, I was shocked and pulled the movie out to confirm my gut feelings right after watching the pilot.

Most of the adaptations on the list don't acknowledge the movie that spawned it. Typically, you have a new cast and I think the makers want you to forget about the movie cast they can't afford. I remember being mildly surprised that Buffy mentioned it in the first episode--changing things to her freshman year rather than senior. Changes you do expect. Alien Nation the series changed a lot with George and Matt's kids from the movie. I picked up on that as soon as I watched the movie.

What I didn't expect was that the pilot episode used movie footage and wove in the death of Matt's first partner into the plot. They even pulled out an extra from the movie for the resolution (and if it wasn't the same actor, he looked close enough for the part). I think I gibbered at the TV. And I already told you I pulled the movie out next to confirm what I thought. I like being right.

And you can probably trace my cross-genre love straight back to this show. Like much good science fiction, Alien Nation holds a mirror up to us and make us confront our fear of the Other and the bigotry it creates. But every episode had a crime to solve, and Matt and George solved them. I took Zy the human to outer space instead, but the same principle applies.

*1990 was not a good summer. This was also the third season cliffhanger for Star Trek: the Next Generation. Picard is Borg-ized and it ends with Riker saying "Fire!" And pre-Internet for my family. I kept watching the entertainment news waiting for them to tell me Star Trek was cancelled now too. And people wonder why I don't trust Hollywood.

Read Free!
The BookWorm

There is a new renaissance festival in Louisiana! Check out the Acadiana Medieval Faire at: http://www.acadianafaire.org/