Now Is The Winter Of Our Link Spam ('15 Edition)

Been a while since I've done one of these, yeah? I'll keep it short.

• The Comics Journal covers alternative manga as they talk about the Fukui Ei'ichi incident and the prehistory of Komaga-Gekiga. It's about Osamu Tezuka! Who, naturally, is a complicated man and manga-ka.
• For fans of cult/classic TV and film, Shout! Factory now has a free streaming service for the shows and movies it has licensed, including MST3K, The Saint, and some Roger Corman films (via Comics Worth Reading).
• A delightful read from the poetry Dreamwidth community: If Dr Seuss Were A Technical Writer by Gene Ziegler.
• For the ladies of Star Trek fandom, this 'A Woman's Place Is On The Bridge' t-shirt seems like a must have.
• Snack food has a fandom? Apparently so! Stumbled across snack food review site Taquitos, which reviews snacks from across the globe, albeit with a North American bias.
• Lastly, did someone say Space Dandy deck-building tabletop card game? Because Seven Seas and Funimation are saying just that and it looks awesome.
  
  

Micro Review: Redshirts Chapters 1-4

Redshirts: Chapters 1-4
Author: John Scalzi
Tor Books
32 pages (E-book edition)

They were expendable . . . until they started comparing notes.

I'm tagging this as Star Trek because gosh darn it, it's the closest thing you can get to a Star Trek novel without actually being one. There might not be any characters named Spock or Kirk or McCoy, but you can tell who their counterparts are by the end of the prologue. If anything, Redshirts is a perfect pastiche of the Star Trek uniform, a love letter to the poor red shirt wearing security details who never survived the end of the episode.

Ensign Andrew Dahl is the latest arrival on the star ship Intrepid, and he is only starting to get settled into his new position when he realizes that life on the ship isn't as wonderful as it first seemed. Their captain is an arrogant blowhard with a melodramatic street, his lieutenant a cold-hearted non-human who is not as smart as he thinks he is. Naturally, when the shit hits the fan, it is Dahl and his fellow redshirts that get turned into cannon fodder for the sake of their superiors' well being. Sound familiar?

In four chapters, John Scalzi has already done some tremendous world-building, albeit on the back of a world meant to mirror the Trek!verse, created a diverse cast of characters, and set up the main conflict on which the rest of the novel will hang. There's a Narrative to be followed and those who don't adhere to it end up losing their lives in the process. How will Dahl escape the fate of so many redshirts before him? I'm looking forward to finding out.

The best thing about the first four chapters of Redshirts is that it is available for free, without DRM, on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and the Tor website. So most of y'all don't have any excuse not to check this one out!

Kyary Pamyu Pamyu Treks Into Darkness

The PV for Kyary Pamyu Pamyu's song for the Japanese release of Star Trek: Into Darkness has been released! The song "Into Darkness" actually features her and Yasutaka Nakata, best known as the genius behind the Japanese electro-pop group CAPSULE. You can watch the PV for Kyary's song below:

As some YouTube comments point out, it sounds very much like a CAPSULE song; Kyary's vocals seem more restrained than usual, less genki girl and more electropop princess. I wouldn't be terribly upset if Kyary and Nakata dropped an EP together! I'm still interested as to how this song sounds in full and how it plays into the latest Star Trek film.

Bizarre Music Post Of The Day

Major hat tip to the Livejournal community contemode for sharing this story!

Via Japan Today: Kyary Pamyu Pamyu to sing theme song for Japanese release of 'Star Trek Into Darkness'. The latest Star Trek film by Fringe director J.J. Abrams will hit Japanese theater screens on August 23rd., during which film-goers will hear a Japan exclusive track by Kyary.

From the article: "[J.J. Abrams] said he chose Kyary Pamyu Pamyu because she perfectly fits the song’s image, Sankei Shimbun reported."

I'd really like to hear this song, half out of morbid curiosity and half because she might actually do a good job. Kyary is an artist whose music is very hyper sugar-fed pop with a psychotic twist, which doesn't really fit into the foreboding tone of the film or its score - although her bizarre PV outfits would fit in nicely in an episode of the original series!

Open Thread: Star Trek Into Darkness

Spoiler warning: Post and comment section will have spoilers for the new Star Trek film.

Yesterday morning (I do love me a morning movie!), me and my best friends had the honor of seeing the latest in the JJ Abrams/Bad Robot reboot of the Star Trek franchise, Star Trek Into Darkness (a movie made a hundred times better when sitting next to a Trekkie more seasoned than myself). If Star Trek was an introduction to the newly rebooted Enterprise crew, STID is their official entry into Trekdom, five year mission and all. It was shiny - oh, the lens flare! - and full of action and explosions and old school Trek references but it also had heart and was thoroughly entertaining. Perfect? No, but it is a worthy follow-up to the 2009 film.

Here are a couple things about Star Trek Into Darkness worth talking about, to get the ball rolling:

- The evolution of James T. Kirk as he turns into the starship captain TOS fans know and love. Although I wished we saw more of the nerdy genius side of Kirk.
- Benedict Cumberbatch as - well - you know. 
- The Spock/Uhura relationship, which has become canon and, IMHO, is great but could do without so much forced squabbling for drama's sake.
- All the TOS references! Anyone else catch the minuscule reference to "Mudd's Women"? That's not the only reference Abrams threw in there...
- KLINGONS. And Uhura speaking Klingon! Be still, my fangirl heart!

Feel free to expand on anything else in the comment section! I'm personally still starry-eyed over my Enterprise faves, Bones (who is really tapping into his Georgia boy accent this time round) and Chekov (who should probably stay on the bridge from now on!).