Opening Celebrations and Public Service

So, I have filled my invite request list and still have two DW codes free! Anyone want them? Taken!

In other news, it keeps coming to my attention that OpenID intimidates people. It shouldn't. It's exactly like any other log-in, only easier.

To do my bit for a distributed internet, allow me to offer the following extremely simple, step-by-step (there are only two) directions for using OpenID on DW:

1) Go here and enter your LJ/IJ/JF/etc. username (like this: branchandroot.livejournal.com).

2) When the confirmation page comes up, click on "yes, always".

That's it! You're logged in, congratulations. Go comment or make an flist or load a userpic or whatever.

Now, to be really spiffy, you can add a third step.

3) Go here and enter an email address. When you get the confirmation email, click the link to validate.

Now you can receive email notification of replies to comments you make while you're logged in like this.

To log in again, just go back to that first linked page (which is also linked from the log-in form with the handy text "log in via OpenID") and enter username.livejournal.com again. Because you selected "yes, always", you won't even have to deal with the confirmation page again, because it's now automatic. For greatest ease, check the little box on the "welcome back" page that says "remember me".

OpenID is not arcane. It's just another log-in. Only easier.

Fidelity of anime versions

You know, the more I think about it, the more I think the second series Yuugi-ou anime is the truest to Takahashi’s eventual intent.

Well, minus the filler arcs that roll back character development.

But reading the latter two thirds of the manga, I’m convinced that Takahashi didn’t actually know where he wanted to go for the first third. That he hadn’t yet decided exactly who or what the puzzle spirit was. It wasn’t until he hit on the card game that he really locked in and started to create a coherent meta-story. That’s the point at which the games stop being so deadly a case of instant karma, the weighing-and-testing aspect of them becomes more a matter of trial by combat, and the whole story becomes less ambiguous-horror and more typical shounen-fight.

It shows in the drawing style, too. Styles always change over time, of course, but the early manga puzzle spirit is drawn scary. He looks like he’s absolutely psychotic. Once past the crossover of Death-T, he becomes far more classically shounen-heroic.

So when the second series anime starts with the cards, reduces the early games (and the grievousness of their results), skips Death-T and re-casts Kaiba’s entry into events in the “trial by combat” pattern that the later manga established, that may actually be the truest interpretation of Takahashi’s project.

I still wish, wistfully, that they had kept Ogata Megumi as the voice of the puzzle spirit, though.