tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-30717492669053098632024-02-18T19:29:26.702-07:00The Lair of the PterobatNerdy things that I have knownPterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.comBlogger193125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-52611132715438102392013-11-24T19:03:00.002-07:002013-11-24T19:03:48.931-07:00Not An End<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-6f0a2b61-8cf9-3c15-2028-150ee575df88" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I know I’ve addressed most of this before, but I wanted to say it again.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For the past couple years, my blogging output has shrunk to almost nothing. Which I felt a wee bit self-conscious about, and made note of, but not enough to change it or go on hiatus. Now, these days, while I still have all these geeky thoughts, I don't feel motivated to put 'em down on paper, at even the slow rate I've been doing it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It's part of my larger, unconscious shift away from fannish activities. I've never been a powerhouse in that department, but now it's slowing down even more. Maybe it's because I'm turning thirty next year, maybe it's the inevitable result of never being able to embrace a current franchise and as a whole thing, meaning my small, obscure interests run out of steam much quicker. In that light, I consider my time in Transformers fandom to have been the best, since I had the widest range of stuff to do, and I kept up with current and popular stuff.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Maybe it's that I'm thinking seriously about a writing career, and no magazine wants to take a nostalgic ode to discovering Rodimus Prime in 1999. I have to focus on what I could sell, what I could build something on. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All of those explanations don't quite work, but here we are. I'm not about to turn, snarling, on fandom as a self-absorbed waste of time or a fundamental sign of immaturity. I don’t think getting rid of fandom is a necessity for growing up as an artist or a person, even if you mean “fandom” in the sense of engaging with others or in speculation, and not simply consuming the work itself. It’s all in how you handle it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I enjoyed the time I've spent in fandom, mulling over whatever it is I do. I've got a lot of good memories, and was also extremely lucky for a woman in fandom (you know what I mean). I also never became a fanatic or a jackass.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I still have fannish instincts, towards fanfiction, meta, and certain eccentricities. Which means that I'm still not done-done, it's just that things will be even slower from now on. I have many things I would like to get around to, but don't know when I will. I’ll keep the nerdery confined to a few places, but don’t know how much energy I’ll have to keep up with it.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-67355875963570565362013-10-29T22:51:00.000-06:002013-10-29T22:51:11.658-06:00Gegege no Kitaro<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t keep finding old anime: it finds me. I manage to stumble into things, really, and don’t place value in media solely because of age or obscurity. In this case, I heard the name “Shigeru Mizuki” dropped in Princess Jellyfish and ended up finding Gegege no Kitaro, Mizuki’s most popular manga, and the one that started a vast multimedia franchise and re-started Japanese interest in yokai (a broad definition for supernatural creatures that can be anything from lake monsters to living household objects).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kitaro started life as a character from Japanese folklore, portrayed in the kamishibai picture plays. The manga started out as the slightly darker “Graveyard Kitaro” before being changed to the friendlier title, with some of the early manga stories recycled into later tales. The interjection “Ge!” has been said to be everything from an exclamation of disgust, to the sound of spooky laughter, or the sound of frogs (each anime opening includes a chorus of frogs). All of these things can apply to Kitaro.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kitaro is the last member of the Ghost Tribe, born from the grave of his mother and accompanied by his father, manifested as an eyeball with a tiny humanoid body attached. He hangs out with various yokai, usually helping save humans from the bad ones, but the earlier versions of the manga, Kitaro was more like one of the fair folk, apt to give deadly or at least frightening reprisals if you crossed or offended him in some way.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The later volumes of the manga, and the anime, did soften Kitaro into a generic do-gooder. That’s not a bad thing, since the appeal of the franchise is how strange it is. The plots and characterizations are always extremely simple, and I enjoy what I’ve managed to find because it’s weird.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t call the Gegege no Kitaro weird because it deals in unfamiliar legends from a foreign culture--I already have some grounding in Japanese mythology, and found the newer information easy to digest. Calling something “weird” because it’s from another culture always feels sketchy to me, and Gegege no Kitaro is “weird” because it’s got a strangeness that seems to come from Mizuki himself, and not just because it’s Japanese.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Stories include Kitaro being injected with cryptid blood and becoming a giant hairy kaiju; a vampire and an ox yokai attacking the same prey and winding up a dead ball of hair; Kitaro letting himself be cooked and eaten as part of an ultimate gambit; souls fried in tempura batter, rescued faces that are going to be excreted...things that make you buck backwards and laugh in surprise at how bizarre they are.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Kitaro himself is possessed of a host of odd abilities as the plot demands. Some are portrayed more than once, but he is akin to Silver Age Superman, who had new powers at every turn. Kitaro can fire off his fingers like a giant robot, keeps a snake in his stomach that becomes handcuffs, can detach his hand, fold into various geometric shapes, fire his hair like quills, and generate electricity from this flesh.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">These strange things are the real appeal of the franchise. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Besides Kitaro, the major recurring characters are his father Medama Oyaji, and their friend Nezumi Otoko. Medama Oyaji, as I’ve said, is an eyeball atop a tiny humanoid body, which crawled from his original dead form to protect his son. In the manga, he sometimes rides in Kitaro’s empty eye socket, popping out and startling people to provoke the running gag, “Oh, that’s just my father”. Kitaro himself is one-eyed because he was thrown into a gravestone as a baby, though this and the rest of his gruesome origin is left out of most adaptations.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nezumi Otoko probably has the most personality. A liar, cheater, and swindler, he’s always looking to make a quick buck and doesn’t care if he’ll run over Kitaro in the process. Nezumi Otoko also ends up the brainwashed minion of assorted powerful enemies, but can also be consciously treacherous. Why Kitaro keeps the whiskered bastard around is a mystery to everybody, I’m sure.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The anime versions often took minor manga characters and made them into recurring cast members. The best known are Neko Musume, a little girl who sports catlike features when angry; Sunakake Baba, a sand-throwing witch; Konaki Jiji, a childike old man who can turn to stone; Nurakabe, a walking wall; Ittanmomen, a living strip of cotton. They’re all derived from Japanese folklore, though Neko Musume is closer to the anime “cat girl”, if not as ridiculous-looking. In the original manga art, she’s downright scary in feline mode.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even though there must be people out there who prefer the earlier Kitaro stories, I don’t mind the sanitized versions, because there is still weirdness, and because, well, the characters are adorable. Kitaro is just a cute little bugger, and so was Neko Musume before she was prettied up and turned into a clothes horse, probably in the name of appealing to older male audiences (don’t think about it too hard, it’s an ugly thing).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As near as I can see, Gegege no Kitaro is as popular and venerable a franchise in Japan as Scooby-Doo. There’s been an anime series each decade until 2007, as well as the “Graveyard Kitaro” series in 2008, along with films and merchandise and public decorations, including statues and decorated train cars in Mizuki’s hometown. However, only one piece of official material has been released in the West, and fan translations are also scarce and fragmented.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Drawn and Quarterly recently released a compilation of Kitaro stories from the post-Graveyard era, along with information about the author and the folklore. The sheer size of the franchise, its advanced age, and maybe its fundamentally Japanese nature, might have all been reasons that Gegege no Kitaro was never touched during the anime boom. And now, it likely never will be.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There are scanlations and fansubs take some digging to find, and are fragments, a few episodes here and there of the various anime series, whose full runs are always long. From what I’ve been able to see, these series frequently retread the same manga stories for a new decade, but are always charming in their way. The series never loses its fun strangeness, no matter the form it takes.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-28281907750412596972013-10-11T13:46:00.002-06:002013-10-11T13:48:18.101-06:00 Was the Zentradi Alliance Self-Destructive?: Part 2<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All right, the flip side: if Zentradi aren’t inherently dangerous to humans, what about the other way around? After all, the Zentradi are often described as being "defeated" by humanity. It's possible to view the Zentradi story as one of forced assimilation, akin to what real cultures have experienced, and therefore the Zentradi as victims. Or their story can be seen as one of emasculation of powerful warriors, domesticated by humankind. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But while the Zentradi story can be compared to such real assimilation in order to study where Macross stands in relation to the culture of 1980s Japan, the specifics of the event are not analogous to any kind of human-human cultural assimilation. In the case of the Zentradi, unlike real human civilizations, they had nothing to lose and everything to gain.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While "warrior races" are common in science fiction, the Zentradi are different from that norm. Fictional warrior cultures tend to have developed societies alongside their war-making, as well as codes of glory and honour. Zentradi, in contrast, have nothing but their military.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Again from Aaron Sketchley:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The entire society of the Zentraadi, who were originally Protoculture weapons, was a military organization that was controlled by strict military regulations. From the time that they were born, they were brainwashed and psychologically manipulated by the Protoculture in order to not take productive actions or do cultural things. Even after being separated from Protoculture control, only the uppermost individual of a main fleet knew of culture only as recorded knowledge, and the system didn't change. However, the Zentraadi who met mankind each awoke to culture due to the culture shock of such things as songs.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However, the Zentraadi weren't a completely uncultured race. The Zentraadi were created by the Protoculture as a combat race, and as such, they must be able to have a strong mutual understanding of each other in combat, so the Protocultures arranged a language and letters for them and gave it to the Zentraadi. As language and letters are things that establish the foundation of culture, one could say that the Zentraadi language and letters existed as the groundwork that received Earth's culture.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However, their language and culture is specialized in simplification, or military affairs, as the Zentraadi didn't create an advanced culture themselves (the language and letters are assumed to have been based on the Protoculture language and culture).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In reality, words that aren't directly related to military affairs don't exist in the Zentraadi language, such as "love", "marriage", or "mother". This is thought to have been caused by male and female Zentraadi living separately, and new Zentraadi being produced by cloning technology. (http://sketchleystats.webatu.com/Trans/MCRworldguide/10BZentraadi.php)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">While Exsedol once said there was a Zentradi proverb that combat was life, later events of the series suggest these words were meant to be hollow ones, since the ideal of combat is soon discarded or shifted by the sympathetic Zentradi--those that remain in the military make a choice to serve the human military instead. This is presented as a positive thing, and Exsedol himself shows an interest in the human world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The statements from Macross Chronicle paint a bleak picture of the Zentradi life, and these, along with the content of the TV series, makes it easy to define the Zentradi alliance as a net positive for their race, and something completely different from the assimilation of existing cultures.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Zentradi knew nothing of love or sex, and their only rewards are a boost in rank or the thrill of killing; this is a life they have not chosen, but were simply slotted into. These characters were, in short, lacking many of the fundamental experiences that make life wonderful. They were slaves, some of whom make that choice to rebel because they have seen something genuinely better.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">If a lot of Macross material refers to the Zentradi as being “defeated” by humanity, that’s only because it’s technically true: the Zentradi do abandon their goals due to a challenge by their enemies. It also sounds more dramatic than “defected”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But the Zentradi never chose to support the cause they were born for, so it’s no loss for them to abandon it. And while the two sides fought, the engineer of this “defeat” was actually song, and it did this by accident and was also wilfully accepted by the enemy. It’s not an ordinary defeat, and so the use of the word “defeat” can’t be used to show why the alliance wasn’t meant to be a positive ending for the Zentradi.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There are also enemy Zentradi who get vanquished in the more traditional sense; the definition “‘Zentradi” includes both friends and enemies. “The Zentradi were defeated” doesn’t demean the alliance. For some of the Zentradi, it really is true. For others, it's technically true, but the details are more complex and it’s ultimately a good choice for them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Furthermore, some view the pre-human contact Zentradi as embodying a machismo that gets destroyed when they fall for Minmay and are no longer badass warriors unbound by pansy interests like love and song. It's similar to the view of the character Kamjin Kravshera, who eventually finds himself concerned with the Zentradi's reputation despite being a hedonist himself. But whether it’s coming from a character or a real person, it’s untrue: Zentradi are strengthened, not emasculated, by human contact.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As has been said above, the Zentradi led a deprived, repressed existence. Yes, their armies had great physical and mechanical strength, but it’s hollow because there’s no glory in slavery. Physical strength is not enough to make a group of characters worth cheering on. They have to be "into" it, be dealing with something they chose, to become idealized figures.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Because of that, the Zentradi who allied with humanity are the real badasses. Even if they did so just in pursuit of pleasure, they were strong enough to resist Bodolza, and to stick with their new lives. It sounds trite, but the courage to resist a system is more laudable than just being able to blow shit up because one’s absent creators told you to.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To some, "self-destruction" refers not to the disassembly of any Zentradi defeat or emasculation, but to the deaths of many Zentradi soldiers at the hands of humanity and the allied Zentradi. It's the trope of making peace with the enemy, but the climax of the story still involving fighting those of the enemy that peace can’t be made with. It’s often considered a contradictory or hypocritical trope.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the case of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, the allied Zentradi and humans respond immediately and violently to Bodolza’s forces coming to destroy all of them. One could argue that this was justified because of the swiftness of Bodolza’s retaliation. The alliance has no choice but to respond equally swiftly. On the other hand, humanity could be condemned for not even trying to open negotiations.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet if Macross isn’t a totally sunny series, humanity might have had no time to do anything else but defend themselves. It might be the consequence of telling a story where nothing is totally perfect. But again, that lack of perfection doesn’t mean the positive aspects are invalid.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As long as some portion of the Zentradi benefitted from the alliance, the moral contradictions of Space War 1 don’t meant that the Zentradi/human alliance was meant to be self-destructive. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is also true when you bring up the fact of Macross’s background, where it’s said that most contact between spacefaring humans and new Zentradi after the first war usually did not end in a Zentradi awakening. Circumstances could be better, but it is not all bad.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To view the Zentradi/human alliance as dangerous and self-destructive is to only look at the story in the most simplistic way. It is to assume that the presence of conflict automatically means the entire event was worthless. It is to believe that a series would squander all its time establishing sympathy for characters, and then yanking it away in the most clumsy manner possible.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At this point, I want to mention the Robotech universe, including the non-canon material published in the 1990s. This was where my interest in the Zentradi started, and so I’ve always got to mention it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The novels and comics present a much more downbeat view of the Zentradi than the Macross universe does, though without the guts to mess with the canon Zentradi. Instead, they create numerous original characters to advance their cynical viewpoint. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The friendly Zentradi are whittled down into a small faction that settles into a nice space colony on the planet Fantoma after a life fraught with post-war infighting--they are also mostly unable to reproduce with humans, a fact that contradicts previous material.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The most shocking conceit was that after the internal wars died down, the last of the Zentradi who live on Earth retire to the decrepit Factory Satellite and wait around to die off, refusing aid or contact from Earth: the best they can do is fight the incoming Invid invasion by sacrificing the satellite and themselves. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">These things happen in the novels </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Malcontent Uprisings,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Master’s Gambit</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Before the Invid Storm,</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> three midquel novels which are much more nihilistic and violent than the rest of the book series, and not only in regards to the Zentradi.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The novels were penned by two authors, Brian Daley and James Luceno, under the psuedonym Jack McKinney. Brian Daley died before the series finished, and James Luceno penned the three midquel novels alone, and larger portions of the books near the end of the original run. I’ve often wondered if the most extreme pessimism in the collaborative novels is due to Luceno, and this interview with him (http://www.megascifi.com/Q_A_WITH_JAMES_LUCENO.html) seems to confirm it:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">JIM: The appeal for me, at any rate, was that the Zentraedi were an engineered, “vat-grown” race, created not only for exploration and, ultimately, warfare, but also one deprived of the ability to access a full range of emotions. As against, say, STAR TREK Vulcans, who had trained themselves to suppress or sublimate emotions, the Zentraedi were closer to cyborgs; until, of course, contact with humanity both provided at least some of them with a sense of what they might have been and doomed them as a race. This facet, more than the Imperative, is what made them interesting as characters, coming slowly unglued by music, interpersonal contact, and love. If only every “villain” was so easily seduced and redeemed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In my original notes about the Zentraedi—jotted down sometime while I was working on the Malcontent Uprisings—I found the following quote, lifted from Orson Scott Card’s Ender’s Game:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"If one of us [one race or another] has to be destroyed, let’s make damn sure we’re the ones alive at the end. Our genes won’t let us decide any other way. Nature [emphasis, mine] can’t evolve a species that hasn’t a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist.”</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Say what one will about the dubbing quality of Robotech, there is nothing in it that changes the ultimate story of the Zentradi or undermines its benefit for both sides. Describing the Zentradi as “becoming unglued” and “doomed as a race” is a complete reversal of what actually happened. He seems to view the Zentradi alliance with Earth as another stage in their race’s defeat, and not their freedom. That the Zentradi only “might have been” a full people.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Since there are Robotech creations, they involve other authors interpreting Macross, and have little more authority than fan interpretations. But it doesn’t mean that Robotech initially presented the Zentradi story on pessimistic terms. The dub of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, whatever its other issues, presented the Zentradi story as positively as the original did. It was only later authors that twisted things.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Those Zentradi characters lucky enough to ally with humanity became a real people with human contact. Others, sadly, were only shown the initial shock of human emotions because they were approaching enemies, but that shock was only a pathway to a new life.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Overall, as long as the human/Zentradi alliance remains a part of future Macross series, and as long as we have good Zentradi and part-Zentradi characters on the side of humanity, the alliance can’t be something that should have been avoided. Not only because the earth would have been otherwise destroyed, but because the Zentradi would also have never been able to experience their own humanity.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That’s what makes the Zentradi one of my all-time favourite fictional races (though that doesn’t mean I like all the individual characters equally). It’s a feel-good story without falling into simplistic sappiness, with the value of art and freedom being paramount, but also a bit of comic relief.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-77067522822053968062013-10-08T22:14:00.001-06:002013-10-08T22:14:50.653-06:00The Legend of Korra Continued: Potential Dripping Away<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’m terribly, terribly disappointed with “The Legend of Korra”.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Anger would be too strong a word, but apathy doesn’t cover it, either. It’s the sad knowledge that the series could be so much better than it is, that it has so many unconventional elements for cartoons and for fantasy but it keeps squandering most of them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A series with political complexity, modernized technology, a female lead, and then exploring how the role of magic might change with modern times sounded delicious. I am a fantasy fan, but don’t consider the genre inherently conservative, or inherently about anachronistic grandeur. I wanted to see what could be done with a less common fantasy setting.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I maintain that the problems with Legend of Korra are not the plot elements or setting, but what has been done with them. Execution is often lazy, taking the most simple and predictable path, and then not making us care about where it leads. And it is just heartbreaking.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Korra is likely intended to be the “young hothead who learns better”, which is fine. It’s been done a lot, but can be made to work. But Korra never seems to learn anything, and never seems to change. I don’t hate her, I just wish there would be some character development, because she’s getting dull. But she remains stubborn, petty, and naive.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Her relationship with Mako is also dull. Mako is still a colossal prick for leaving Asami, and it wasn’t until last week’s episode that season two Mako actually did anything as a character, or he and Korra did anything meaningful as a couple--and that involved breaking up. There’s just no spark between them, making their love and their anger both hard to get invested in.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And the series keeps shifting its focus away from things that would actually require Korra to be the Avatar. A lot of noise is made about the role of the Avatar in this world, but Korra is frequently swept up in circumstances and never does much that an ordinary Bender could not. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The result is that there doesn’t seem to be much of a reason for the series to star an Avatar. I know it must be hard to re-interpret the Chosen One narrative for a modernized fantasy setting, but again, the writers don’t seem to be trying to decide how an Avatar would fit into a complex new world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Like with Amon from season one, Unalaq looked like a villain cast in a different mould. He seemed to have compelling, sympathetic motivation, but handling things in all the wrong ways. Since the premiere, however, Unalaq has been steadily revealed to be power-hungry and deceptive. It’s still not clear if he was right about the spirits, or if he even believes in his previous words, but I’m preparing for him to become completely dull. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I would not be surprised if the barrel bottom were scraped further, and Unalaq was shown to not care at all about angry spirits or cultural degeneration, be manufacturing the whole thing, or trying to take advantage of circumstances so that he can gain power.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s so frustrating because the potential to tell an interesting story was right there: the writers just had to reach out and grab it. Not take the easy way out by making him a simplistic villain. What makes it worse is that if Unalaq had stuck to his originally motivations, he would also be a conservative (small c) villain, which goes against the stereotype of the fantasy genre wanting to preserve the past.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now that Unalaq’s daughter Eska is pursuing Korra and her friends, I’m wondering if the writers are unconsciously mimicking the Ozai and Azula dynamics. That’s very bad form, since it’s lazy and the results here don’t measure up to their predecessors. I don’t believe the fan theory that Korra/Mako was meant to throw a bone to the Katara/Zuko shippers, but if the writers are trying to save themselves by calling on their previous success, the efforts are already doomed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Which is a shame because I liked Desna and Eska, but no one can seem to think of anything interesting to do with them. Torturing Bolin isn’t interesting, nor is being their father’s attack dogs. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Bolin is how not to do a comic relief character. The first season Bolin wasn’t so bad, but here, he is full-tilt stupid, contributing nothing to the plot or the characters except for screaming pratfalls. Because of this, I can’t get upset at the irreverent treatment of Eska’s abuse of him.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Everyone is going to say that Sokka was done better, and that’s true, but there are so many other examples, including Varrick, who is right in the same cast, is comical, but also smart and useful. Putting him right beside Bolin makes it all worse: if the writers can handle one comic character decently, then why not?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As many have said, Tenzin’s nuclear family make for great characters. I love the idea of a main character being a family man, when parents are so often assumed to make uninteresting characters just because they are parents. Also, the mentor figure is usually assumed to have no life outside of his protegee, and here it’s obviously untrue.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And even the goofy-faced and fartbending Meelo got some subdued moments to himself in last week’s episode, making Bolin look like an even bigger failure of characterization.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But Tenzin and his own siblings...while I like the idea of Aang as an imperfect parent, and the personalities of Bumi and Kya (though I had assumed Kya was the firstborn, due to her grey hair; I sort of wish she was, given how heroes seldom have daughters first), to throw it at us after Aang has died, and offering nothing to contrast it except a swift wrap-up with a family photo, is too pessimistic for the series. The scenes didn’t even need it: a teasing but loving sibling relationship would have served the same purpose and not left dirty footprints behind.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">At this point it almost seems like, set free from the more conventional plot of ATLA, the showrunners and writers can’t handle something different, and lose all the prowess that made the first series so brilliant. From that I hear about the comic interquels, this is also true for them.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another way to describe it is that this series is starting to feel like a first draft: it’s a writer’s aphorism that first drafts suck. First drafts suck because things are just starting, because you’re throwing things at the wall trying to figure out what will stick; true direction is found later. Legend of Korra just feels like a first draft, the writers spewing out material that could be refined into something more--but this is the final product.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet laziness also fits perfectly. Legend of Korra could be so much better if only people tried.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s a shame because while I liked ATLA just fine, the setting and premise of Korra got me excited on an individual level. It sounded like it would deal with settings and plots that I preferred as a thing distinct from artistic quality. But it keeps doing the least it can.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I am still determined to finish the entire series, and right now that’s not a hard promise to keep. The series is still mildly entertaining on the surface, and still at least is visually impressive. But my hopes were much higher.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-37625544087688421792013-10-07T22:07:00.003-06:002013-10-07T22:07:44.389-06:00Here's Johnny (Again)<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-7593083f-963e-27de-f095-133c3c77ed4b" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline;">http://www.salon.com/2013/10/01/what_stanley_kubrick_got_wrong_about_the_shining/</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The novel "Doctor Sleep" has been published: it's Stephen King's sequel to "The Shining". That’s the reason that Salon has asked him again about Stanely Kubrick’s film adaptation of the book, an adaptation which King still dislikes, mostly because he disagrees with its interpretation of the characters.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There's nothing here that King hasn't said before. Going over old ground is irritating for us nerds who know that, but I don’t blame anyone involved with this. The public at large probably doesn’t remember what King said about Kubrick’s adaptation, and reminding them helps stir up interest in “Doctor Sleep”. A little mercenary, but hey, who’s counting?</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The real irritations are both the claim that Stanley Kubrick “got wrong” anything, and the claim that his film’s quality and popularity means that King has relinquished his right to complain about it.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Firstly, a director, whether they are as strong as Kubrick or not, can’t “get wrong” something in an adaptation simply by changing it. Even if they alter the core of the story (which King argues that Kubrick has, especially in casting Jack Nicholson as someone who already looks about to go crazy, instead of a broken man who is the unexpected victim of the hotel), they are not “wrong”, but only putting their own spin on things, because they are a separate person from the original writer and must retell the story as they see fit.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">That is not to say one can’t dislike adaptations, just that “wrongness” really doesn’t factor into such dislike. It’s all about a personal reaction, not the absolute that “wrongness” suggests. But this also means making room for those who continue to dislike an adaptation, even when the culture at large loves it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Just because Kubrick’s version of “The Shining” is an excellent film, might be better-remembered than the book, and the TV miniseries can’t surpass it for quality, doesn’t mean that Stephen King can’t say it misrepresents his work. There is no adaptation so good, or so well-known over the original, that it can make an original author’s negative reaction “wrong”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even if it’s instinct to pit adaptations against the original work, one version can’t actually “win” over the other. The only complaint might be that King is still airing his grievances after so many years, but he was asked to do it, and so the act can only be met with a shrug, not replying that Kubrick’s version has “won” over his novel and so he should be quiet.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-28417424583392795102013-10-05T19:49:00.000-06:002013-10-05T19:49:03.279-06:00Geek Culture Isn't Mainstream<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-7593083f-8b73-f1ea-564b-e044e8b83ccc" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When people describe geek culture as now being “mainstream” because certain evergreen science fiction and fantasy properties make gobs of cash at the box office and are marketed to every new generation...I disagree.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fretting over whether something is mainstream or not isn’t the issue: I don’t care if geekdom is mainstream or not. But I still see a partial division between the popularity of genre entertainment, and the “geek culture”. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s because of one of the ways people are geeks. It’s not the only way to be a geek, certainly not the “right” way to be a geek, but it’s a way. A distinct way of dealing with media.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Some geeks, you see, they dig deeper. They engage with media that the culture at large has forgotten. They fall in love with minor characters (literally or not). They pick apart every tiny little detail, and then dig up more. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Not every geek does this, but enough do that I feel like, even if Star Wars and Spider-Man are explosively popular, there are these practices common to “geek culture” that the public as a whole doesn’t engage in, and therefore it’s not accurate to say the entire thing has gone mainstream just because certain things geeks like have become popular.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-82868564299235617002013-09-21T15:43:00.001-06:002013-09-21T15:43:56.506-06:00Was the Zentradi Alliance Self-Destructive?: Part 1<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In the anime </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Super Dimension Fortress Macross</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, Zentradi are a race of giant alien warriors, genetically identical to humans and capable of being reduced to human size. They function as proxy forces for the unseen and extinct “Protoculture” race; there are no civilians and the sexes work separately for the same military goals.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">They attack Earth, but some find that exposure to Earth’s culture, (especially to the music / persona of pop star Lynn Minmay), awakens repressed desires and causes them to question their system. A portion of Zentradi ally with humanity to gain these freedoms, and to save themselves from the authorities that now consider them contaminated. Following these events are a franchise of Macross series, in which internal unrest from allied Zentradi is a recurring plot point, due to a tension between the Zentradi past and their future.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Some fans have looked at these events and decided that humanity allying with the Zentradi was meant to be a fundamentally self-destructive move. “Self-destruction” can be defined in two ways.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">1. The rebellions of allied Zentradi become intense and enough that the alliance becomes philosophically invalid.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2. Zentradi were emasculated by their choice of human contact, sacrificing their power and gaining nothing in return; other factions of Zentradi are even killed. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Either way, it suggests that the ultimate goal of the Macross plot was to undermine the alliance it set up, a cynical universe in which allies might destroy each other.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet the case for the this is not strong enough. The internal conflicts never lead to the destruction of the entire alliance, and there are positive Zentradi characters to counter them, not to mention the idealistic tone of the entire franchise.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Viewers confuse the presence of conflict with the rejection of previous ideals. Most stories don’t actually build sympathy for characters and then suddenly change their intentions without warning. The meme of the spiteful creator is largely false: with a decently-written story, any dark turns are foreshadowed to a degree.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In SDFM, the allied Zentradi the most prominent and sympathetic, with the antagonist Zentradi being the ones opposed to the values of the series. There is nothing which suggests conventional storytelling is not in play: the characters that we see the most of, and who enjoy the things the audience is taught to value, are the ones who represent the views of the series. In this case, the allied Zentradi are meant to be “right”.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Furthermore, the alliance provided humanity with a means of defense and ensured they were not wiped out. If the series was going to show the audience that everything was pointless, the peace between the races would not produce this huge benefit that was impossible to achieve otherwise.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Viewers’ pessimism probably starts with episodes 28-36, the “aftermath” episodes, in which viewers spend some time hanging around the post-war Earth. During these episodes, allied Zentradi rebel against humanity, Warera, Rori, and Konda have difficulty finding work, Exsedol loses faith in his people’s position, and all of this gets no resolution.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However, these episodes were hastily written, added when the series was suddenly extended after having its planned run whittled down multiple times, and so might not represent a breakdown that was planned from the start. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even if you take the aftermath episodes as in synch with the rest of the story, they still don’t solidly prove that the Zentradi/human alliance is self-destructive, since the alliance still endures. It's just showing that things aren't always perfect. And it’s actually good to tell a story that doesn't have everything end flawlessly, because it means the work is not simplistic.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Aaron Sketchley translated this portion of the Macross Chronicle, a guide to the Macross Universe released as a magazine.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"Combat" is "life" for the Zentraadi, who have had their fighting instinct strengthened, and although they lost their creator, they continued to fight in the direction of their instincts. However, their meeting with the human race became a turning point, and some of the Zentraadi who were members of the Bodol Main Fleet knew of culture and chose the road where they walk together with mankind. The strong thought control by the Protoculture is likely to have been cancelled by the emotional stimulus awakened by "songs".</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The proverb "yesterday's enemy is today's friend" appears to have been communicated at the galactic level, as mankind and the Zentraadi, despite having crossed swords with each other at one time, chose coexistence. For the human race that advanced into the unknown galaxy, there is no partner as reassuring as the Zentraadi, who stood nearby. At any rate, that reassurance is assuredly because the mythical giants are comrades. (http://sketchleytranslation.host-ed.me/MCRworldguide/10AZentraadi.php)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Though the article says that Zentradi have had their “fighting instincts” strengthened, it is also eloquently describes the alliance as a good thing, further supporting the idea that a positive view of the Zentradi/human alliance is the official Macross byline.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">When stories change what they first appear to be, they don’t suddenly crush what seemed like a completely earnest plot. Usually, the seeds of the story’s dissolution are planted early on. If </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Super Dimension Fortress Macross</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> were that deeply cynical a series, it would have shown it long before the aftermath episodes.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Furthermore, good as it is, SDFM is an adventure-romance series designed partly to sell model kits. It's doubtful that it was intended to send audiences through a metal gauntlet, to present them with a sweet story and then violently overturn all their expectations. What we see at first is what we are meant to see. The allied Zentradi are meant to be sympathetic, their actions laudable and helpful, and there is nothing strong enough to invalidate this.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Internal conflict with allied Zentradi remains a common plot point in the Macross franchise, but it tends to be balanced out by positive examples in those same stories. It’s not a matter of a facade of positivity with the ugly truth being constant conflict: examples of positive Zentradi exist on the large and small scales both.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yes, half-Zentradi Guld Goa Bowman of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Macross Plus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> was an aggressive man who assaulted Myung and nearly killed Isamu, and one of his superiors attributes his actions to his heritage. However, the last thing could have been meant to be a discriminatory assumption and not to be taken literally by the audience.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even if it was meant to be taken at face value, Guld is just one man, and the OVA/movie that also involves a celebration of the treaty, a thing to counteract Guld’s individual actions. Otherwise, this is still a world that has still benefitted from such contact. Guld could simply had bad genetic luck, and has the Zentradi equivalent of mental illness. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For the Temujin and his rebels, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Macross Frontier</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> also has the Folmo Mall and its happy Zentradi citizens, as well as Klan Klang (despite the unrelated issues with her character). </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Macross the Musiculture</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> has Zentradi rebels, but things turn out to be more complicated than they first seem.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To have these conflicts constantly pop up without changing the status quo (in a good or bad way), is a little strange, but the writers are probably just repeating a motif as multimedia franchises always do. Macross in general has a problem with repeating motifs even when they might not make sense in context. That some allied Zentradi keep fighting humanity doesn’t seem to mean anything, including a degeneration.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet if the question of self-destruction comes up, the material that viewers get shows that the alliance was an ultimately positive thing. Yes, it hasn’t been completely perfect. But you know what? Good stories are told when freedom doesn’t come easily or without sacrifice. The story of the Zentradi is not perfectly written, but from what we do get, contact with humanity meant to be a net good, and not something that everyone would regret later.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-58591127123380213522013-09-18T22:07:00.001-06:002013-09-18T22:07:57.588-06:00TMNT “Random” Reviews: “Insane in the Membrane”<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Written by Matthew Drdeck, Michael Ryan (story editor)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Supervising Director Roy Burdine</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Once upon a time, I was working through some Baxter Stockman episodes to review for my blog. To try to jumpstart that same blog, it’s time to review the most infamous one: the “banned” 2003 series episode that was completed but never shown in U.S. TV. But it made it to other regions and to DVD, so that hopefully no one will have to miss it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I’m not being sarcastic here. While the episode isn’t important to the serial parts of the TV series’ story, “Insane in the Membrane” is great for what it allowed to be shown on kid’s TV, and what it did for Stockman’s character. The episode helps to enrich him and proves why he is the best version of Baxter Stockman, easily surpassing the Mirage version.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Unlike many characters in the TMNT franchise (and in multimedia franchises in general), Baxter Stockman isn’t tied to one single character archetype. He’s been a different race, been an independent or attached to the Shredder. He’s been transformed voluntarily and involuntarily, into a fly and into...this. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But the cartoons keep establishing a characterization for Baxter with surprising consistency: a character who is prideful and self-destructive, in a way that’s different from your usual supervillain, and also a put-upon henchman who is abused and transformed, but is also not innocent. It’s my favourite image for him, and what drew me to the character.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--There is a subtext of failure in this portrayal, one that’s usually not brought to the surface. But “Insane in the Membrane”, though only for a brief moment, actually makes this subtext overt as Stockman breaks down and admits his life has been wrecked. While the privilege of a viewer is to put emotions in a character that the writers did not intend, it’s still gratifying when your emotions align with the writers’. 4Kids Stockman is from a story where the writers can look at villains sympathetically, and that makes a story better.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But we start with Stockman’s opening monologue, recapping the destruction of his physical form, until he became a brain/spine/eyeball in a tube. But no matter what else he is, 4Kids Stockman maintains his carefully-manicured pride. He refers to The Shredder and Hun as “cruel-minded brutes”, implicitly placing himself as their intellectual superior; Stockman also seems to skip over his own moments of fear in their presence. In part it’s a display of strength, but Stockman also does little to back up that pride, making the same mistakes over and over again.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Yet Stockman also used to be on top of the science community. By giving him some period of success (detailed in the same monologue) before his fall, it makes things all the more painful and easier for the audience to empathize with him.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--There’s not much to say about the opening segments with the Turtles chasing down monsters in the sewers, except that they serve as a reminder that Stockman is far from perfect because these monsters are all a result of his mistakes. There’s also nothing to say about the discover of a new van, but good on the Turtles.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Stockman’s spider-centaur robot body looks cool, but also really awkward, taking up a lot space and sporting many limbs. It seems to have been changed for no reason, when there were no problems with his simpler, humanoid robot form. Perhaps they were intending to get a toy out of it? Or they felt the design would become stale? Or somebody figured Stockman’s body designs just had to keep changing.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Nerds traditionally take glee in creepy shit appearing in children’s cartoons, and that’s another part of the appeal of “Insane in the Membrane”. However, by thinning the boundaries of “child-friendly” entertainment, “Insane in the Membrane”, also makes Stockman’s pain more intense and improves the story. Children’s entertainment shouldn't shy away from that kind of visceral intensity.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--While I consider 4Kids Stockman the best version of Baxter, that doesn't mean he's a strong person in comparison to other characters. He's a weak man and an ultimately ineffective villain, sometimes even comic relief. But as long as he’s an interesting character, that’s what counts.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--As proof of this, the horrible events of "Insane in the Membrane" are partially Stockman's fault. He wanted a human body so badly that he was willing to go through a process that has been proven unstable. It's credible that he'd be this impatient, and it's good for stories to allow characters to make huge mistakes.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--So this doesn't make that a bad episode, but his impatience is both a new, fitting weakness, and shows Stockman's chief weakness: his pride. Stockman thinks he would be immune to whatever complications befell a clone body. Because he's better than everybody.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But he wasn’t always that way. L’il Stockman is adorable, and it’s heavily implied that his mother was a stabilizing influence on him. In the first flashback, Stockman was ready to use his homemade corrosive on a bug he’d captured. After his mother comes home, Stockman lets the bug go outside instead.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--That’s a bit of a worrying cliche, that a woman was needed to give positive influence, and he might have crumbled without his mother, but it also shows how far down Stockman has gone from the child that he used to be.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I didn’t notice this until the second viewing, even though it was obvious: Stockman notes that his clone body has been enhanced, and we can also see that he doesn’t wear glasses and is notably more muscular. Which is noticeable when he’s walking around with nothing but his modesty metal briefs from the cloning tank. But you can’t blame him for not covering up.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--It doesn't go without notice that there's a scary subtext in those certain versions of Baxter Stockman: that he's also got no allies, no ties to anyone, and is completely alone. Up until "Head of State" (which will be my next episode review) that is true of 4Kids Stockman. He works with Bishop, and Bishop isn't as grotesquely abusive as the Shredder, but he’s not Stockman’s friend.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Here, Bishop's warnings are perfunctory, and he leaves Stockman alone through most of his degeneration, except the very start and finish. It is only what you can expect from a business relationship, but it's disturbing all the same. Nobody gives a damn about this guy.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--As the degeneration starts, Stockman puts his glasses back on, as well as his signature lab coat, representing that his body is more vulnerable than he thought. The crude way that he tries to hold his body together (nails! industrial staples!) is a more dramatic show of that loss of control and strength.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--“Why am I a failure? My whole life! Oh, Mama, I started with such promise. Where did it all go wrong?” There we are--there’s the payoff. Stockman’s failure is acknowledged and the character is at the most open and self-aware that we’ve seen him. It’s a punch in the gut every time.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--It’s difficult to put myself in the shoes of the many people who have said they never liked Stockman until this episode. I already thought he was likeable, but if someone finds his failures and arrogance tedious, then I suppose this episode would help make him sympathetic.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But his ultimate conclusion is to shift the blame to April. Eroding sanity plays a part in this, but it seems in-character for Stockman to never blame himself for anything, because of his pride.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--His mother dying is a little cliche, too, but oh goddamn it tugs at the heartstrings.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I don’t expect the Turtles to show any concern for Stockman when they see his state, but their total lack of reaction to the sight is a bit surprising.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I’m not sure what’s the most shocking thing: Stockman’s finger falling off, Stockman nailing himself together, or his damn jaw falling off on strings. Either way, I’m surprised at the moxie that the 4Kids crew had in producing scenes like that.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Once again, Stockman is not an innocent victim. Though insane, though pained, he seems to be enjoying his attack on April a little too much.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--“Can’t you remember when your work helped people? When it was about the science?” Now, April’s quote is interesting. We never really saw this benevolent side to Stockman in the series. It would have been interesting for him to have started out good, to further show that fall.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--There were limits on the time frame, of course, but if there was never any time to show what April meant--I know it’s to set up April and Baxter’s mother both saying, “The sky’s the limit”, and to show that not all might be lost for Stockman, but...it rings a little hollow if we never saw the adult Stockman being a stand-up guy.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--It is unfortunate that the things revealed in this episode don’t actually change much about Stockman. When he’s brought back after this, Stockman is far more melancholy than before, but it gradually fades into his usual arrogance, and he never seems to change otherwise. </span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--To be fair, Stockman doesn’t have much of a role in the 4Kids series after “Insane in the Membrane”, but if we’re going to judge him based on what we’re given, then the repercussions of this episode are lacking.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--That doesn’t mean those flashbacks and realizations are worthless. Stories aren’t simply about The Plot; you need to take time to explore the characters and show us more about them. Simply providing this knowledge is reason enough for such scenes to exist.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--For a while, TMNT co-creator Peter Laird has been posting transcripts of the e-mails he had with the 4Kids production staff, suggesting changes to their scrips. It’s a fascinating look into the production of the 2003 series, and into how much Peter Laird was responsible for whipping it into shape.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Here are the links to his notes on “Insane in the Membrane” (some of which are appropriately dated for October)</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot.ca/2011/12/blast-from-past-342-october-27-2004.html</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot.ca/2011/12/blast-from-past-340-october-16-2004.html</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Insane in the Membrane” was also going to be a Justice Force episode, with nothing to do with Baxter.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot.ca/2011/11/blast-from-past-329-september-16-2004.html</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">http://peterlairdstmntblog.blogspot.ca/2011/11/blast-from-past-328-september-12-2004.html</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One interesting note is that Baxter was originally going to have an abusive father, which Peter Laird pointed out had Unfortunate Implications and this is apparently the reason it was nixed. It didn’t add anything to the story anyway.</span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There were also cut scenes showing Bishop and other members of his agency talking about where Stockman is going, which might have been cut for time. These scenes would have shown that the agency was watching Stockman, but offered no clue as to why they did not intervene. It doesn’t alleviate the bleakness of Stockman’s lack of allies, though.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--This episode is overall excellent. It redeemed the character for a lot of people, but if you’re already on board with Baxter Stockman, “Insane in the Membrane” tells you a lot of new things about him while enforcing what you already know. The infamous goriness is also key to emphasizing Stockman’s hardship, so it’s not there without reason. The episode deserves to be remembered for all of these things.</span></div>
Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-55835123245328257402013-09-16T22:14:00.002-06:002013-09-16T23:14:10.788-06:00The Legend of Korra: Spirits<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdjsOAOhMptJ0MUtpeKjPic3mXgZbtIaLC8H4ZHDtkTIm6Blt53csj3M58mFv9rr-xgm4AOlCRqMCH4Wz1Io2BWf4M5SG8z-20gQyb0Axp2BRitcKQLxHvVtG5YY_R8p31aoyprpxCWhEl/s1600/Korra_Book_2.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdjsOAOhMptJ0MUtpeKjPic3mXgZbtIaLC8H4ZHDtkTIm6Blt53csj3M58mFv9rr-xgm4AOlCRqMCH4Wz1Io2BWf4M5SG8z-20gQyb0Axp2BRitcKQLxHvVtG5YY_R8p31aoyprpxCWhEl/s320/Korra_Book_2.png" width="206" /></a></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I saw the Legend of Korra premiere, and was happy with it. Not pushed into throes of ecstasy, but I'm very interested to see where it goes next.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Starting out with a new direction was inevitable, since the series wrapped up its conflicts in the first season. Parts of that were unsatisfying: I was fine with Korra regaining bending so quickly, and gaining Airbending, but her romance with Mako had no chemistry, and Asami had to be dumped to do it. Furthermore, Amon was a great idea and a great villain, but we never saw exactly *how* Benders were oppressing non-Benders. It's easy to imagine how it could happen, but remember the golden rule is still show, don't tell.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Now we have a story where the plot and the new characters are more interesting than the current characters. I still want to like Korra, but she doesn't seem to have been changed by her experiences. You can see what they're *trying* to do with her character, but it's not fleshed out enough.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Korra's problem (from an in-universe viewpoint) is that she's too concerned with the physical side of her powers and her world. The crux is that she has to learn to be in touch with the spiritual aspects of it, and by association, be less hot-headed. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This looks to be a key point in the upcoming season, but her spiritual experience in the first season finale doesn't seem to have rubbed off on her yet. Her first impulse on meeting hostile spirits even in the sacred forest is to cold-clock 'em, even after everything Unlaq has been telling her. I hope Korra's character development will actually start to happen, instead of being promised.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mako is still bland, Bolin is simplistic comic relief. Being that this is the second season, I'm still hoping Bolin will be more fleshed out, the way that Sokka was. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Asami continues to be dynamite, wasting no time in trying to get the family business back in full swing, and investigating new technologies to do it. This time, we see the beginnings of movies in the Avatar world, which is wonderful because unlike many fantasy worlds, that of AtLA is looking towards the future and embracing progress.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I still enjoy the characters of Tenzin and his nuclear family, though. Too often in children's entertainment, families and parents are regarded as un-fun, not deserving of attention, but LoK fleshes out them into real characters instead of props, proving that a character can be a parent and still have a personality, and also without idealizing what families go through. Tenzin’s kids can still be total brats.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">We meet Tenzin's other siblings, and Bumi and Kya look like fun characters with a lot of potential. The way they play off Tenzin is great, and they are all distinct from each other, which is the best way to create a family of characters. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The expanding on Korra's family, however, makes me wish that the writers knew more about what they were going to get in terms of episodes, so that matters could have flowed better. As it is, it comes off as, "Remember the uncle and cousins you had that we never mentioned before?"</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Other viewers say they called Unalaq as a villain, but he's really more nuanced than most "evil uncles". At this point, he comes off more as a corrupt extremist with a valid point, rather than out-and-out evil. Hopefully he isn't lying about the anger of the spirits or faking something for his own gain, because that would be lazy and predictable.. By having a core of truth to his beliefs, Unalaq would become more credible as a villain.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However, it's also good that in defiance of fantasy conventions, Unalaq, the character who looks to the past, is cast as evil and misguided. It connects nicely with Asami's interest in upcoming technologies, forming a larger contrast to stereotypical fantasy. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite how useful a character Unalaq could be to the plot, the conflict that leads up to Korra deciding to be Unlaq's protege is very stereotypical and insincere, and with a lot of talking heads. A teenage girl shouting at her father and father figures about how she wants something more and to make her own choices is morally correct but also overdone. Compared to how real the relationships among the other characters can feel, including previous interaction between Korra and Tenzin, this is a disappointment.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But I want to see more. I’m still hopeful that the good parts of this series will come to overshadow the issues, that the potential will come out as LoK grows more comfortable in its skin.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> As always for the Avatar series, everything looks gorgeous, with a cinematic quality to it.</span></div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The modernized setting is still one of the best parts of Legend of Korra, and it would be great to see more television fantasy embrace such settings. Some have expressed disappointment with the lack of traditional fantasy grandeur in the Korra </span><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">universe, but it’s not the setting that creates or destroys
grandeur, but the writing. And Korra isn't trying for that traditional
grandeur. It's creating its own sort of world.</span>Anonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06752464110631757300noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-74087605677583674602013-09-13T21:24:00.001-06:002013-09-13T21:24:57.123-06:00True Confessions<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Okay.<br /><br />Deep breath.<br /><br />I know that this blog doesn't have much traffic, which is one reason that I let myself go, and go so long without saying anything. But that's no excuse: I should keep to principles even when nobody's watching. <br /><br />So, this blog isn't dead yet, but I'm struggling with it. I have a lot of ideas for posts, including ones that I've promised since forever, but I've somehow lost the blogging mojo. For some reason, I keep finding other things to do, and the blog posts move to the bottom of the pile and never get touched. The main culprits:<br /><br />1. I'm working on a novel. I have been for a while, but really trying to get the lead out for it, to this time produce something intelligble. Because of this, I have less time for other writing.<br /><br />2. I'm also trying ever harder to find a job. This also takes up some of my time.<br /><br />3. Tumblr. I've done a few blog-worthy posts to Tumblr, and am trying to keep the meta flowing instead of just posting pictures, but the format is easier for me to handle, since ittakes less time. But I also know this wouldn't be a problem if I had the energy for blog posts.<br /><br />4. I'm making tiny steps towards trying to become a professional writer (while searching for a steady job), so my thoughts are turning to articles that might be publishable, instead of minutae that only I care about.<br /><br />I'm not calling this the end, though. I'm still going to give it a try.<br /></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-6333725724736214572013-08-12T00:03:00.001-06:002013-08-12T00:03:58.651-06:00Some Stuff<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Some thoughts on a minor TMNT Nicktoons spoiler, about the character I've been talking about for a while:<br />
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http://pterobat.tumblr.com/post/58036776807/in-which-i-talk-way-too-much-about-a-minor-spoiler</div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-39945792735076255442013-08-02T22:25:00.002-06:002013-08-02T22:25:30.288-06:00Pacific Rim<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I saw </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pacific Rim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> a few weeks ago, and I loved it. Appreciation for the film has also been coming back to me in a weird sort of boomerang effect. I love it even more now than I did at first.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pacific Rim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> tries to be a "blockbuster with heart", which a lot of the best geek media ends up being...a movie with a lot of wondrous visual things but also characters you want to care about and who go through some amount of internal change. It’s good at that. Not mind-blowing, but definitely draws you into the cast’s lives, without leaving you feeling dull and cheated afterwards.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">(The two scientists were a little too goofy for my tastes, and I agree there should be more than two people in the research department: just give speaking roles to a few of them.)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is a movie loaded with cliches, and not just the anime ones everyone keeps pointing out. But </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pacific Rim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> feels, above all else, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">sincere</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and sincerity goes a long way towards making a work appealing, whatever its measurable contents are. While rules are good, art also depends on making something that you </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">want </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">to make, and even the most undiscerning audience can sense when a work is being phony. Likewise, even the most brain-dead trash has someone’s genuine desire behind it (scary as that could sound).</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I love monsters and I love giant robots, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pacific Rim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> hit me in the “Oh my god I want a giant robot NOW!” spot without sacrificing a sense of tension or drama. The special effects just worked, having more of a sense of weight and depth than I expected, and than I usually get from CGI. Everything also looked pretty cool; love the bioluminescent</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">kaiju and the different mecha shapes. I expected something a little more eerie and disturbing with Del Toro and even Wayne Barlowe involved, but wasn’t disappointed with what we did get instead.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I also enjoyed the little glimpses into how the world had adapted to kaiju presence: building up around the skeletons, trading in kaiju parts, marketing the hell out of everything. It seems like a million other types of stories could be told in this world, if only there was the chance to do something that didn’t only follow a blockbuster format.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I also love giant robot anime, but never would have called </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pacific Rim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> a rip-off or a knockoff. It’s a tribute, obviously. I saw a lot of giant robot anime tropes there, but as with other works, it’s difficult to separate elements directly inspired by another culture from elements universal to storytelling from elements from the producers’ home culture. Just like with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Avatar: The Last Airbender</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, I don’t think of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pacific Rim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> as purely anime-inspired, but just using anime as one of its influences.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even so, as I watched it I lost myself at several moments, and could suddenly imagine that a live-action adaptation of anyone’s favourite mecha anime might actually have been cool. However, these likely never would have been made with the sincerity or respect of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Pacific Rim</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, so that dream should quietly disappear.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As for the debate about how progressive the film was or was not, I found it decent. All of it, decent. I couldn’t find anything that really ruffled my feathers, though moments made me go, “Oh, of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">course</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.” Not horrible in this way by any means, but at the same time, one can't just go, "Oh, by the standards of a blockbuster movie it was progressive, and Del Toro and crew had to fight for every bit of diversity they did get, so you can't complain". Because that's a stupid way to talk about media and culture, shutting down a conversation before it starts. </span></div>
<br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So that’s it. A fun movie to see, and one that I’ll probably grab on DVD. I just picked up the novelization, but haven’t read it yet. It’s been a long, long time since I read a film novelization, but this proves I’m interested enough in the film to want to dig up the extra details.</span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-63472140789495101192013-07-24T23:33:00.001-06:002013-07-24T23:33:17.002-06:00The Hunger<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I saw the 1983 movie “The Hunger” over the weekend, and I enjoyed it. The plot was simple and fell apart near the end, but the atmosphere made it good, and more importantly, it got me back in touch with the possibilities that vampires offered.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The Hunger” is about an immortal vampire, Miriam Blaylock (Catherine Deneuve) that takes lovers, lets them live long, but eventually this stops, and the lovers rapidly whither into a mummy-like state and a coma of un-death, to then be stacked up in coffins in her basement. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Blaylock sees it happen to her lover, John (David Bowie), and becomes interested in Dr. Sarah Roberts (Susan Sarandon), the scientist John sought out when his degeneration began. She seduces and turns Roberts, but Roberts eventually kills her.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve never been overly concerned with the romanticization of vampires. First, it’s ridiculous to impose a rigid standard on a stock movie monster that must by necessity exist in different forms to remain viable. Second, a lot of the criticisms of vampire romanticization stink of hating vampires for being feminized, which straints their credibility.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The problem is not when vampires are associated with beauty and decadence and sexual attraction, but when being a vampire is treated as wish fulfillment, something to legitimately desire without any nasty surprises. It’s “cool” to be a vampire: you’re a beautiful immortal with tiny pretty fangs, and end up elegant and stinking rich. Treating vampires this way removes a source of conflict from the story; now being the monster is something to be desired.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“The Hunger” reminded me that the image of the decadent vampire can be used to serve another purpose besides simple titillation: to heighten the “truth” of a vampire, by providing a contrast to it. That despite all their finery and drapery, they are predators without conscience, that must destroy others to live. Sometimes they are alien creatures (Blaylock is implied to be of a different species), other times they are humans who are, in essence, diseased. </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Because we see the elegant Blaylock stack lovers in a crypt like kindling, and drool over a torn body, we understand that there’s actually nothing alluring about a vampire’s true self. When she claims, “I love you all!” we know she is lying.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Perhaps the elegance and beauty of vampires is the same as an anglerfish lure, or the worm-like tongue of a snapping turtle. It’s not meant to have an ultimate substance, any actual thing a viewer would want to be, but simply a way for the vampire to lure more prey.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This is a common view of vampires, but something about “The Hunger”, despite its thin plot, made that cliche “real” to me again, so much that I’m reconsidering whether I really want to write non-sentient vampires or not.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Where the film falls apart is that’s difficult to believe that just falling off a balcony would cause Marianne’s sudden degeneration and decay, though she should have died in some fashion. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span></span><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And the studio ending, depicting Roberts as having survived and begun the sexual cycle all over again, made no sense and felt as tacked-on as it actually was. If there is a climax, you must follow through with it. Roberts wanted her own death, and should have been shown committing suicide.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Despite this, I did enjoy the film. It reminded me that vampires could be figures of horror, and “spoke” to me in a way that a piece of vampire media hasn’t in a long time. Maybe the film lacks substance, but it does have style.</span></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-6067813558085862992013-07-21T00:03:00.000-06:002013-07-21T00:09:05.557-06:00Sym-Bionic Titan Series in Review<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I've finally gotten around to seeing another cartoon series I’ve been meaning to watch for years, and my final verdict is that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is a good show, but no so good I’d desperately campaign for it to be renewed.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is directed by Genndy Tartakovsky, of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Dexter’s Laboratory</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Samurai Jack</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, and the first </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Star Wars: The Clone Wars</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> series. I’ve always admired his directing style, which manages to take stylized, simple designs and give them gravitas. His name, as well as the presence of giant robots, was what drew me to the series.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Watching Tartakovsky’s style in action is doubtless the best part of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">. The greatest scenes feel cinematic, have a grandeur that is unexpected for a flat, “simple”-looking cartoon. The other aspects of the show are not... bad, but they’re usually formulaic and predictable. There are exceptions, there aren’t enough to ensure the series didn’t fade from my mind after I watched it.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is about three heroes fleeing their war-torn (human alien-type) planet for Earth, where they are pursued by a new monster for every episode. The heroes are Ilana (Tara Strong), princess of Galaluna, her bodyguard Lance (Kevin Thoms), and a robot, Octus (Brian Posehn). They take a house in the suburbs and assume the identities of high school students, with Octus acting as their classmate and their father in two different holographic guises. Ilana and Lance can both summon mecha suits from their watches, and merge with Octus to form a gigantic robot, in order to fight enormous monsters sent by a traitor to their kingdom and his alien allies.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is a mostly smooth fusion of anime homage and American high school stories. The “anime” part depends to a large degree on the robot shows of past decades (defining </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">which</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> shows, I’ll leave to the experts), in which giant robots are treated like superheroes, and battle enemy robots and giant monsters. However, Tartakovsky has also cited other anime as his inspirations.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">High school settings in anime are also extremely common, but the high school side of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is very American, with dumb jocks, moody goths, nasal nerds, and bitchy cheerleaders (though we find out that one isn’t so bad). The high school stuff is serviceable, competently produced but not groundbreaking.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There is a little continuity between episodes. G3, a mysterious government organization, as well as a trigger-happy general are both hungry to find out more about this Titan, but episodes can go by without seeing them. Octus, as the teenage “Newton” (who looks shockingly like Peter Griffin) gets into a romantic relationship with Kimmy the cheerleader, and his apparent death forms the major conflict for the final episodes. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A lot of the episode plots are conventional for TV cartoons, such as the cute but dangerous creature, the transformation/assimilation of one of the heroes, the whole-episode flashback to the past, the monster that can regrow from a single fragment, etc. It puts a few interesting twists on these formulas, like the grotesqueness of the possession episode, but again, it’s not rocking my world.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The series does play with conventions in a few places. While Lance is normally quiet and intense, he has moments of genuine joy and enthusiasm. Octus acts very human, but is blase about it. Ilana is proactive and enthusiastic about aiding people, and feels like a true figure of authority rather than a generic “princess”, one who suffers because she cannot help her citizens. (And her mecha suit Corus even has some offensive capability, which is more than I was expecting). The Titan crew also ends up working with G3, despite how sinister the organization first seemed. But these breaks aren’t common, and usually you can follow the beats of the series easily.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Octus and Kimmy’s romance is, at this point in popular culture, completely conventional. It’s not badly written, just predictable. And yes, it’s also the source of the infamous “booty dance” scene, where Kimmy turns up the radio and shakes it, trying to convince Octus to do her homework rather than be her tutor. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> does manage to push the envelope at times, and is good for that.</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">For the most part</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> is an earnest show, putting forth everything straight as an arrow without irony or parody. The assumption that current popular culture has lost earnestness is a load of noise, but it’s still engaging to see a series being approached with such heart. It can get quite dark and serious, but like Tartakovsky’s other action series, there are moments of light comedy. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Thankfully, the typical Tarakovsky-show designs are fused with homages to the stereotypical Super Robot style, giving the series a distinct rather than imitative look. The robot and monster designs are all very cool, and combined with the Tartakovsky touch, it’s clear that this is a series that uses anime as just one of its many influences, in the same way that Avatar: TLA does, rather than slavishly trying to imitate anime and coming off as artificial.</span></div>
<br />
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Overall, I enjoyed </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sym-Bionic Titan</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, but I was just expecting it to be </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">better</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> than it was. I was hoping, at least, for its visual quality to be able to transcend how by-the-numbers it was. Instead, the directing quality helped spice up the series, but didn’t make it as mind-blowing as I hoped. Cliches produced with loving conviction are still cliches, and sometimes that particular hurdle can’t be overcome for a viewer. I liked the series, but I wanted to like it more.</span></div>
</div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-33225857103015073192013-06-23T00:22:00.003-06:002013-06-23T00:27:52.581-06:00Rubbertack is Back<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://myfantasyart.com/2013/06/20/robotech-trailer-unveils-brand-new-film-love-live-alive/">http://myfantasyart.com/2013/06/20/robotech-trailer-unveils-brand-new-film-love-live-alive/</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-6fb2-9573-bbc1-a9017465e47b" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">One
thing that’s been lost on my current blog and Tumblr is that my
Zentradi obsession started with seeing the Robotech dub in 2008, and
that a couple years ago, I spent my time tearing way through every old,
forgotten Robotech novel and comic I could find. I still like some parts
of those, hate others (especially the lack of good original characters
and the suggestion that the Zentradi/human alliance was
self-destructive), and overall would say that I don’t hate Robotech as a
concept and a franchise.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However,
I quickly understood that continuing Robotech past the 1990s wasn’t
going to go anywhere storywise. The legal restrictions were much
tighter, with the new sequel comics killing off every old character they
could, and releases of new material getting more and more sporadic. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The Shadow Chronicles</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,
the animated film from that era, apparently took forever to make but
was still boring crap, and the long-questioned sequel failed to
materialize.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Recently,
it’s been said that Robotech will finally...uh...be...moving ahead with
“Love, Live Alive”. The original “Love, Live, Alive” was a sequel OVA
to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Genesis Climber Mospeda</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">,
the anime that was dubbed into the third part of Robotech. It mostly
consisted of animated music videos, with a tiny amount of original
footage.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet
the trailer shows new footage from the “Shadows” universe that is the
new Robotech, which is probably exciting to the small core of die-hard
fans that have been waiting to see the Shadows universe continued, and
this will probably supplement the short animation from the original LLA.
Hey, guys, knock yourselves out. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But
I just couldn’t keep going with this, and I can’t get back into that
fold. I know that nothing will really change with this franchise. It’ll
always keep scrabbling in its current rut.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Part
of me thinks that modern Robotech would be inherently doomed no matter
what talent was behind it, since a good story usually would tie up all
its loose ends, deal decently with all its characters and its plot
points, and Robotech can’t even manage that because it doesn’t have
access to these things. Dancing around the characters or setting the
story in the far-flung future wouldn’t be solving this problem, but
avoiding the issue. It’s a trap.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet
I don’t want to let the writers off the hook that easily. It still
might have been possible to create something decent and fulfilling
despite the legal restraints, but it looked like Tommy Yune and everyone
else didn’t even try. The minds behind Robotech in the 21st century
just keep promoting the same junk over and over again, going to cons
with all the other active companies to pretend they are actually doing
something.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Meanwhile,
Harmony Gold spends money and makes empty promises, with the only
things to show for it being some sporadic toy and RPG manual releases, a
few comics, and one extremely boring movie. All of it sucks, can’t even
be enjoyed on an emotional level. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It
was painful and pathetic to watch, and after a while I stopped feeling
hurt by it. I also stopped feeling sorry for the fans who still believed
Robotech would make something of itself. After all that had happened,
anyone should have been able to see the writing on the wall. The
franchise is dead, but somebody’s still dangling its corpse on
marionette strings.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">As
to the prospect of a live-action Robotech movie, well, that’s also a
nigh-impossibility. Asking it to be one forgets that, unlike other
popular eighties cartoons, Robotech wasn’t made as a single work by a
single company, but three separate anime redubbed to be one series. That
makes it harder to adapt than, say, Transformers. I wish people would
remember that.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-20231194006301486342013-06-13T19:15:00.004-06:002013-06-23T00:28:17.338-06:00Some Words About Jim Woodring<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/brHZ69DsfQI?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-403c-6568-9eda-84cb6f659c56" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-403c-6568-9eda-84cb6f659c56" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-403c-6568-9eda-84cb6f659c56" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
can’t remember when I first heard about Jim Woodring; it must have been
on one of my many tries to Understand the History of All Mediums that
Involve Writing. I always meant to read his comics, but because there’s
so much out there, it takes something distinctive to remind you to read
someone’s work.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In
this case, it was hearing about the time Jim Woodring made a <a href="http://www.blogger.com/%E2%80%9Dhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEbf0tN_f1w%E2%80%9D">giant fountain
pen</a> and tried to use it. Good enough.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So
far, what I’ve read of Jim Woodring are his Frank stories, but not even
all of those. The Frank stories are a series of silent (mis)adventures
with a small cast of creatures and some walk-ons, set in a place of
minarets and rolling hills called the Unifactor. The usual protagonist
is Frank, an old-school cartoon creature of deliberately undefined
species. Often by his side is Pupshaw, a pyramidal ring-tailed creature
who serves as Frank’s “dog” but is far more powerful than he, and who
has a boyfriend of similar make named Pushpaw.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Manhog
is a disturbing man-pig-thing who is hurt in gory and pathetic ways but
also might be the victim of karma. Sometimes there is a devilish
critter named Whim, and vajra-like creatures called Jivas come through
the sky. There are others like Quacky, Faux Pa, Lucky, Real Pa, Cart
Blanche, and the Jerry Chickens. Also, lots and lots of frogs and
frog-like beings.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
Unifactor stories are soundless, told in pantomime, and are short and
simple in the compilation book I have, called (yeah) “The Frank Book”,
though longer stories exist in other graphic novels. There is no doubt a
deeply personal unspoken language in these tales, but they can be
enjoyed on a surface level. I know that I liked them very much, since I
love surreal settings and weird creatures. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
just love the people who can think and write like this. When faced with
a bizarre, dreamlike, or stream-of-conscious mode of storytelling, I
nearly always believe that it was what the author naturally desired and
sought. They weren’t trying to swindle anyone with fake “depth”, but
simply told the story they wanted. Sometimes earnestness produces
weirdness and not simplicity.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Of
course, for Woodring it all hasn’t been wonderful. Profiles of him tell
the story of a childhood plagued with hallucinations, sickness, and
paranoia. It’d be dangerous to believe this is what made him the great
artist that he is today. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But I look forward to reading more of his books.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I’ve
posted it before, but the video above is a collection of excerpts from
Visions of Frank, a 2007 DVD that contained animated Frank shorts by
independent Japanese animators. The DVD itself seems to be vanished,
which is a shame.</span></span></div>
</div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-6253581177379429922013-06-11T23:02:00.000-06:002013-06-23T00:32:46.256-06:00TMNT "Random" Reviews: "Son of Return of the Fly II"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/3CDRlDvpCiY?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-36c1-76d2-3f41-1627b5369975" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fred Wolf Episode #79</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Written by David Wise</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Directed by Bill Wolf</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Original Air Date: September 8th, 1990</span></span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-36c1-082a-146c-c95d0a2cc0d4" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--According
to Wikipedia, this is the first of the episodes that aired after the
series moved to CBS, but not the first episode of season four. I've got
no idea either way, since I never kept track of the series’ change from
syndication to network when I was young. I also can't say I notice any
radical changes in tone or presentation from the earlier episodes, but I
tend to be slow on the uptake when it comes to things like this. Only
the very radical changes to a TV series’ tone and format do I notice.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But
this is officially my favourite Baxterfly episode, surpassing "Enter:
The Fly" if we're talking about qualities besides "what came first"
(with “Landlord of the Flies” being the worst). "Son of Return of the
Fly II" is just so goddamn hilarious, one of those episodes of the
original cartoon that hits the mark of being so ridiculous it's great,
episodes that are too few in number. It’s also fairly well-plotted with
some expressive animation.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
can't look at the title "Son of Return of the Fly II" without thinking
of the joke that "The Venture Brothers" made with "Return to the House
of Mummies: Part 2", in which there deliberately never was a part one,
just to make it more surreal and confusing. This episode’s title,
however, is simply mashing up common B-movie titles like always. I enjoy
that about most Baxterfly episodes: it’s cute.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--However,
the early parts with Mr. Mellish and the Solid Energy Generator are
dull, and there’s not much to say about them. A little payoff comes at
the end, but otherwise, we’ll skip it.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--And does Baxter quote the Wicked Witch of the West when he says, "What a world!"?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Crying
Baxterfly might make you soft towards him, but you also realize that
the reason he's crying is that he can't go back to Earth and get his
all-important revenge. Still, it's an unusual thing for this series to
show a villain doing, and I’m a little bit sorry for Baxter, of course.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
crying also demonstrates how much more childlike Baxter’s new
characterization is, though Baxter doesn’t act as infantile in his later
episodes. And he’s hardly ever a bastion of maturity anyway, but in
this episode his immaturity really sticks out.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Of
course, it's never explained how the ship's computer transformed into a
desktop PC, or how Baxter got out of the inter-dimensional spider's
web, which was the peril they were in at the end of the previous
Baxterfly episode. But it doesn't matter that much, really, except to
make me wonder if the ending of "Bye Bye Fly" was originally intended to
serve as Baxter's gruesome offscreen fate. Whew.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--To
add to the disconnect between this episode and the previous one, the
computer's mannerisms seem different. He seems more mature, with a
deeper voice and a leadership role, as well as now constantly calling
Baxter “pal” and “buddy”.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
enjoyed the previous episodes where Baxter acts largely on his own, him
not being quite so reliant on the computer in "Bye, Bye Fly", but the
whole thing with the computer is just wonderfully strange: Seth Brundle
and HAL 9000 in a weird co-dependent relationship. The more I rewatch
these episodes, the funnier that gets. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Part
of the humour comes from the possibility that the computer would betray
Baxter if the need arose, meaning that Baxter's life would get even
more hilariously terrible when his only ally betrays him. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">----The relationship also sort of adorable, in a twisted way. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Because
it’s so much fun, I really wish the computer had a damn name. The fan
name "Zee" or "Z" is used often, but nobody knows where it came from,
and I'm reluctant to use it because it's fanon.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--(Also, when the computer gets that energy body, it looks like he's naked. There; now you can’t unsee that)</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Baxter
going after the sugar makes me giggle. It also reminds me of the scene
in Cronenberg's "The Fly" when one of the first clues that Seth is
changing is how much sugar and cream he puts in his coffee. This
connection is probably unintentional, given that there's a lot of
evidence that the writers only drew on the original "The Fly".</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
computer's constant complement-feeding comes off as incredibly smarmy,
especially since he can obviously can see how dumb Baxter is. But the
fact that this is kept up without Baxter being sold out is interesting,
since one character secretly manipulating another long-term is subtle by
FW standards. And by those same low standards, the relationship is
refreshingly ambiguous. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Baxter's
side of it seems to be genuine, though, as he seems to chase the main
villains back to Channel 6 because he knows they're going after the
computer, and joins in the tug-of-war over the computer man. He calls
the computer "My friend" and says, "Thank you," to him.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Which
is always funny to me because I remember the human Baxter hating
artificial intelligence for some inexplicable reason in "The Mean
Machines", and being unusually pissy about it. The writers probably
don't remember the difference, but I like it.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
funniest parts are by far how incredibly addled Baxter is. He's asked
to kidnap April, and instead kidnaps Vernon, *twice* (“That’s not even a
woman”), can't remember her name for more than a second, and keeps
walking through walls. I know it's not the good way to write a villain,
but I laugh so hard.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--At
the same time, it's a tiny bit sad that a former scientist, even one as
nebbish and evil as Baxter was, keeps losing his faculties, is unable
to perform the simplest tasks, and doing things like thinking a portal
or a plot device are food.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
fuss made over Baxter's footprint has always struck me as weird, if for
no reason other than Baxter's feet look almost the same as the Turtles'
and nobody seems to notice. But naturally, Splinter is the first one to
figure stuff out.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--As
I said above, I think Baxter's computer is a parody of Hal 9000, and
his taking over the station could be another homage to the film.
Especially since "Invasion of the Turtle Snatchers" already had a
reference to </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">2001: A Space Odyssey</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--"Because I'm a big fly!" Impeccable logic, there, Baxter.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
love the clock tower trap: very Adam West Batman. Though I also can't
help but think of the Edgar Allan Poe story, "A Predicament", when a
woman gets her head cut off by the hand of a clock.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Raphael seems to be quoting Joan Rivers when he asks, "Baxter, can we talk?"</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Another
indication of Baxter’s childishness is when he yells to the absent
Shredder: "You come here now! Or else you'll never have revenge against
Turtles! Never, ever, ever!"</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--"By Ninja Law…." I can believe the Shredder made that up.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I love Baxter smacking Shredder and Rocksteady's heads together using both sets of arms.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--"Only the most highly-skilled ninja master could get out of these ropes." [</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Leo cuts Donnie free</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">] "Hi, Leonardo." Love that exchange.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
--Veteran fans of the Fred Wolf cartoon like to point out that certain
episodes had a more fluid, cartoony art style, and I’m pretty sure “Son
of Return of the Fly II” fits into the slot. It suits the comedy in the
episode, and is actually all-around nice and expressive, including rare
background movement.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I love the computer's facial expressions, too. He looks very smug and evil. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Oh, hey, you can see Bebop's eyes near the end for a few seconds.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
"Destruction of other people's property...." running joke is great
here. Raphael being annoyed with Donatello over it also cracks me up
every time.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
twist that Mr. Mellish is a mercenary, money-hungry bastard and could
have blown up that chip at any time but didn't because of the potential
profit is also great. It's a little sharper than the show's normal
humour, but that's also the style of cartoon humour that I prefer, and
one I wish the old show dipped into more often.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--And
there goes Baxter, stuck between dimensions. This is why I can't get so
broken up over "Revenge of the Fly", when several Baxter episodes had
already ended like that. It's just that his episodes stopped, not that
there was real finality. And this encourages emotional attachments to
have only the lightest touch, which also means it’s hard to get upset.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Why
the heck is Vernon shaving in the office, and just after a major
incident? It's a really bad set-up for that final joke this show often
makes, when it looks like the enemy of the episode might be back, but it
turns out to be something harmless.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But
overall, this was the kind of hilarious, insane episode that makes the
OT memorable. It's also well-plotted and executed enough to stand out on
a different level. And again, my favourite Baxterfly episode.</span></span></div>
</div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-84087586734822246392013-06-10T20:51:00.000-06:002013-06-23T00:33:02.036-06:00Animation Appreciation: Haibane Renmei<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c234/Incisivis/aa_haibane_zps0cb746f8.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c234/Incisivis/aa_haibane_zps0cb746f8.jpg" /></a></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes,
earnestness and elegance can make you take an absurd imagine completely
seriously; ditto for the story that’s built around it. Haibane Renmei’s
(High-bah-NAY Ren-MAY’s) main visual, that of otherwise ordinary people
sporting halos and tiny angel wings, might look ridiculous by itself,
but the thirteen-episode anime transforms it into something wondrous and
moving.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
viewpoint character is Rakka, the newest Haibane, and through her
viewers understand the rules of her world. Haibane are “born” from
cocoons in the city of Glie, and named for the dream they had before
“birth”; Rakka is named for a dream of falling. She is provided with a
halo, wings break from her back, and she must find her place at the
Haibane nest of “Old Home”, an abandoned school. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Haibane
live a mostly idyllic existence, but must take jobs in the town, and
must only use discarded goods, except for their food. A wall also
surrounds the town of Glie, which must never be touched and can never be
crossed, since no one in town has any flying machines, and the Haibane
themselves cannot fly. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Each
Haibane is aware that they had a past life in the world outside, but
that they cannot remember who they were. They all await their “Day of
Flight”, in which a Haibane disappears for parts unknown. Rakka must
overcome her own shock at a friend’s “Day of Flight”, and find it in
herself to help Reki, a troubled older Haibane who has never taken the
Day.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Although
it is only thirteen episodes long, Haibane Renmei proceeds at a slow,
leisurely pace. Nothing is loud or bombastic, and many things go
unexplained. When the emotions cut deep, they are still subdued. It’s a
sweet and intriguing experience, and weirdly soothing.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The exact nature of the Haibane is never explained, save that it’s likely they are not explicitly </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Christian
creations, since anime tends to use Christian imagery for special
flavour instead of religious expression. However, that doesn’t mean that
the Haibane cannot be tied to more general notions of sin and release.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A
common theory is that the Haibane represent suicides and/or premature
death, since suicide is likely not applicable to the “Young Feathers”,
the gaggle of tiny toddler Haibane that also live in Old Home. It is
thought that their new names have something to do with how they died.
The “Day of Flight” is read as their ascent to heaven, perhaps after
overcoming the “sin” of dying before their time, and the rules that
Haibane live under are “punishment”. Or it is a morally neutral
condition, and is simply the restoration of the natural order.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
soft nature of the series might make it hard to notice, but Haibane
Renmei teaches some harsh lessons about grieving. That no matter how sad
you are, you must accept that people are gone. Both Rakka and Reki
struggle with the notion of the Day of Flight, but must learn to accept
that it has happened, and will keep happening..</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">These
theories still leave unanswered questions (such as why Haibane age),
but that is one of the popular theories. However, Haibane Renmei is one
of those works that leaves a viewer content to accept that some things
will remain mysteries.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nothing
of what has been said makes Haibane Renmei a bleak series, but simply
gives it an extra distinction. Just because a series says some pragmatic
things does not mean that it’s bleak.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another
interesting thing about Haibane Renmei is that nearly all of the
characters are female, including all of the main characters. Each of
them are distinct and memorable, with very different personalities. </span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Old
Home only houses women women and small children, but the Haibane of
Abandoned Factory are co-ed, which means it’s not one of those weird
things where only women can be Haibane.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Nor is it one of those</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> other</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
weird things, where a primarily female cast are really a set of “types”
for the male audience to choose from, something that has become popular
in recent years. Rakka and her friends exist “for themselves” and not
for emotional titillation. The distinction is difficult to define, and
ultimately relies on intuiting it.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Haibane
Renmei is a good series. It’s got an interesting premise, a soothing
atmosphere, and quickly became one of my favourite anime. I’ve heard
it’s recently been re-released, so go check it out.</span></span></div>
</div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-64591317611641190642013-06-06T22:24:00.000-06:002013-06-23T00:33:38.883-06:00TMNT "Random" Reviews: "Enter: the Fly"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-1cdf-d841-4bca-5d4261a44792" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/R_Qcdtsyo_E" width="420"></iframe></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fred Wolf Episode #12</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Written by Michael Reaves and Brynn Stephens</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Directed by Bill Wolf</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Original Air Date: November 12, 1988.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
--So, I picked out a couple Baxterfly episodes for myself to review, to
round out a small and incomplete batch of FW Baxter Stockman episodes. I
might pick out a few Splinter-centric episodes to do, since both are my
favourite characters in the show, but Splinter is much harder to write
about, since his episodes often involve things happening</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> with</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
him, and not to him, and Splinter is almost never not on top of things.
That makes him an easy character for a child to admire, a hard
character for an adult to write about</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--And
at the moment any review of my other favourite episodes of the old
cartoon would involve a series of “wasn’t it funny when...” posts which
just aren't that interesting. It’s sometimes hard for me to write about
the old cartoon, which is in a weird zone between childhood and now.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Anyway,
turning into a fly seems to be considered the most interesting and
memorable thing Baxter Stockman has ever done. Everybody keeps
speculating on when new versions of the character are going to go Gregor
Samsa (only to be disappointed), and fanart of the character largely
consists of Baxterfly and nothing else.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But
to me, turning into a fly doesn't define Baxter Stockman. The character
has been portrayed in different ways in different media, with only his
profession and the Mousers being totally consistent. This particular
transformation is confined to a single era of TMNT, and so is hardly
defining when it’s a number’s game.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Of
course, I know Baxterfly became paramount because of how
nostalgia-driven the TMNT fandom can be. Anything from the era of the
initial media blitz is defined by childhood, where the old cartoon and
original toyline were the only things one knew, and when mutants were
always more interesting than human characters. Naturally, everyone is
going to remember him as a fly first. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Baxter's new personality also probably makes him a more appealing character, which I'll discuss below.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Even
so, I don’t think of ol' Cracker Stockman as a fly. The first reason is
because, while I do like Baxterfly, he's the nadir, the absolute
endpoint of the character's failure, with so much built up before that.
He started out as a human character, and had an equal amount of screen
time in both forms.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
--Furthermore, I love broken, fucked-up characters, and it’s easier to
get that vibe off human Baxter, that sense of failure beyond just being
the "bad guy" and therefore doomed to lose. Baxterfly can also be seen
this way, but is more your comical B-Movie villain swearing “Rrrevenge!”
on those that wronged him, than that type of nebbish little wreck that I
often enjoy in fiction.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Okay, on with the real episode:</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
always liked that despite his goofiness, Baxter's inventions usually
worked, because it's an engaging contrast. That the ray thingy doesn't
work is for plot convenience, to directly motivate the Shredder throwing
out Baxter. But it fits him, because Baxter is a failure.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--"[...]
reverse the polarity"--David Wise didn't write this episode, but
there's his standard Dr. Who reference. I wish I'd gotten into that
franchise....</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Why
does Splinter have a microwave in his meditation room, with a
convenient pizza right next to his tatami mat? Not to mention that he is
meditating in a different room than his usual one, but that is a
standard cartoon inconsistency.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Splinter
looks perpetually sad for a good part of this episode, even before
April’s collapse, which is interesting. I'm supposing it's to show that
he's worried about the Shredder's scheme, even if said scheme is now
relegated to the status of "decoy" plot. If that's true, points for
consistency.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
love Shredder's line while on the garbage barge, explaining why there
are there: "Becasue this is the site [Krang] chose for the
trans-dimensional convergence. I think he did it just to annoy me!" The
writers really struck comedy gold with the Krang / Shredder dynamic.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
know a lot of other viewers believe Baxter's fate was written by his
actions in "Curse of the Evil Eye", but if it were, the Shredder would
have had no reason to wait to act, especially not with "The Case of the
Killer Pizzas" happening between these two episodes. The writers just
didn’t care about following up on Baxter’s punishment.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I'm
not too agitated though: I’m very aware of the principle that even
goofy cartoon villains should be held to standards, but I can make an
exception just this once. I'd rather have Baxter around for a bit more
rather than have FW Shredder actually do something proactive.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Given
the crazy science in this series, I also don't really care how little
sense the convenient "fragile" inter-dimensional energy balance makes.
Sure, whatever. It’s all SCIENCE!</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Shredder is very good at the henchman shot put.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
understand why Baxter was mutated, I understand why Bebop and
Rocksteady were kept around longer, and why the latter were brought back
into the spotlight and might always have intended to be: mutant
characters, and "manly" (speaking relatively) mutants, especially, would
be more interesting to the target audience.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
way the Shredder refers to April as the Turtles' "weakest point" means
the writers aren't even trying to hide the fact that April is put down
because of her gender. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But
the plan is sort of clever. It's like the Shredder knows the stupidity
of everyone in this universe, so that April would not be at all
suspicious of a mysterious package even though she's been a target of
supervillains before.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Not that fans ever need the fuel, but I wonder if the flower trap didn't endear at least some to the idea of Shredder x April.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Splinter still looks sad when April opens the door. Then he has something else to be sad about.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
actually like that April establishes herself as uninterested in a
potential love affair with any of the Turtles, which is what she thinks
the flowers represent. You so rarely see fantasy fiction consider the
idea that hey, maybe a human woman wouldn't' be interested in the
affections of a being that wasn't human. Which ties into lots of issues
about double standards that I won't get into here.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--And
hey, while I don't take back anything I've ever said against FW April,
at least she is not relegated to the role of "love interest" because of
this, which is also sadly rare.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Also, "doku" is Japanese for "poison". How literal-minded. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
don't take FW Baxter's life and fate 100% earnestly as something sad
and terrible, but in this happy little cartoon universe, Krang was going
to kill him in cold blood. That’s pretty fucked up.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--(And then part of me finds that incongruity hilarious)</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">---I
always think it a little ridiculous when Shredder and Krang refer to
themselves as "scientists" at various points. They never show much
evidence of these skills, and it's overkill to think they would have
these specializations on top of being supervillain leaders.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--While
I love David Cronenberg's "The Fly" preceding and independent of any
interest in Baxter Stockman, I’m certain Baxterfly draws more on the
original 1958 "The Fly". It’s the TMNT cartoon's parodies of older
monster movies, the running gag of Baxter squealing "Help me!", the
classic Fly having human clothing, and that the teleportation device in
the original film was called the "disintegrator-integrator" which is
probably reflected in the name of the Technodrome's disintegrator unit.
All of it adds up, but I can’t help associating him with Cronenberg’s
version anyway. “Baxterfly” is a play on “Brundlefly”, after all.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
--I also like Baxterfly's cartoon design, because it's accidentally
adorable/goofy-looking, and bright and colourful. I prefer it over the
visual experiments to create a "darker" Baxterfly, or even the look of
the toy. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--In the scene where the Turtles enter and first see April in the sickbed, Splinter is drawn with very strange, deer-like ears.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--"And
you let [Baxter] escape through the portal? Brilliant!" / "I didn't
have to warn you, you know." More great stuff from Shredder and Krang.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Now,
as to why viewers might prefer Baxtefly beyond "mutants are cool",
well, the contrast between the weak and passive Baxter and the angry and
active Baxterfly is amusing, and could also get viewers' attention. He
blows away two Rock Soldiers, and zips right towards his former
employers, ready to attack. Even later, when the computer is the one
leading him, Baxter still finds time to be an active threat. That
probably makes him a more "worthwhile" villain to viewers.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--However,
we can already see the other ways Baxter's personality will alter, as
he's easily duped by the Shredder, and points out, "You always liked
these mutants better!". He gets even dumber, acts more like a child,
etc. But other viewers might actually like it more when Baxter becomes
even sillier, but without being as whiny as before. Together, this makes
the character more interesting.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--But
I always go back to the 4Kids Stockman, who is the best version of
Baxter Stockman and who has a lot of traits in common with FW Baxter.
Stockman’s personality was kept consistent with his transformation, and
that's the personal ideal for me, because it builds a stronger character
arc.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--However,
it’s still good to pre-establish a human character before he mutates so
that his transformation can have some impact on the character if not
the plot. I understand why that's usually not feasible for a TMNT
show--gotta get those toys on the shelves!--but I'm glad it happened
here.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Insect eyes don't see in individual facets.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Lest we forget, "the bughouse" is also slang for an insane asylum.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--"Enter
the Fly" is one of the old cartoon's better attempts to pull off having
an A and B plot, but despite that, and despite the need to be strapped
for time, the fact that the plant is right where they thought it would
be is a little annoying.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--The
Knucklehead's controls look like an adding machine, which is pretty
funny, though maybe whoever desiged the props was just lazy. Because
Shredder also has a laser-shooting device that looks like a camera.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--There
are some nice fight sequences scattered through this episode, though it
starts to get less interesting near the end, when it’s just a bunch of
fight scenes.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Shredder
makes a slight "^_^" face when he realizes he still has the gazai
plant. Actually, he makes that face several times in this episode.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Splinter
establishes a message of perseverance, and the Turtles vow to leave no
stone unturned in their search, but Shredder conveniently shows up to
give them a way to go. Uhmm...the principle is still valuable?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I
love what a cynical bastard Fred Wolf Raphael is. If Raphael’s sarcasm
and sassiness wasn't just a Fred Wolf invention, he might have had a
chance at becoming my favourite Turtle. As it is, I still don't have
one, and it's not for lack of trying.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Yes,
I suppose Shredder doesn't have to sacrifice all his strategic thinking
in the name of goofiness, but I'm not all that invested in seeing this
balance kept. Lord knows I didn't come here </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Splinter
showing up in the Turtle Van is great. Like I said, I love it when the
secondary characters and "sidekicks" show up to help the main heroes
instead of passively sitting around. Also, my inner child loves seeing
Splinter get into the fray.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--And
Splinter blushing is super-adorable. I can guess that Mirage purists
probably at one point screamed at seeing Splinter described as "someone
who doesn't believe in violence". Cry more!</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Ah
jeez, another episode that ends with the apparent return of a threat,
only for it to be something completely harmless. Somebody, somewhere,
must have a tally of how many times the Fred Wolf show did this.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--I know some would have preferred Baxter remain one of the Shredder's minions, but I disagree for a bunch of reasons. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--First,
it’s pointless to change a character’s form and personality but not his
role. I know it was all predestined for marketing purposes, but even
so....</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Second,
some fun stories are told with Baxter as a wild card, working against
both the heroes and the villains. I especially love his relationship
with the alien computer, because of how bizarre and ambiguous (by this
series' standards) it is. That’s better than his just being a henchman.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--It
might also have been awkward for Baxter to keep hanging around the
people who kicked his ass on a daily basis and then tried to kill him,
but it’s easy to imagine Baxter being permanently lured into service
with the promise of becoming human again, episode after episode, since
he constantly gets fooled already.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--Not
that a few more episodes with Baxter Stockman wouldn’t have been
welcome, but he’s better as a recurring character than a regular.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--(And I never expected true closure for him, by the way. Or a return to human form.)</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">--So,
while I like White Baxter a little more as a human, Baxterfly is still
fun, and this is a good episode. It uses an A and B plot to mostly good
effect, has some nice pacing and action sequences, and yeah, it’s pretty
fun.</span></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-27596442422845639662013-06-06T20:50:00.000-06:002013-06-23T00:35:05.261-06:00Animation Appreciation: FLCL / Fooly Cooly<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-1c7d-2d79-d4a5-ec75f6cc0950" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-1c8a-1105-f4cf-8cc56aa6996d" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
<img src="http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c234/Incisivis/aa_flcl_zps55adcdcd.png" /></span></span></center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-1c8a-1105-f4cf-8cc56aa6996d" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">
</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">“Anime
is weird” is a stereotype I consider shed. With it might go a lot of
the sense that anime is an inherently “cool” thing, but at the same
time, now you or I can’t consider anime as this foreign, impenetrable
thing. When there is a weird anime, it’s weird on an individual level.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And boy, is FLCL (read as “Fooly Cooly” or “Furi Kuri”) weird. But I mean that in a good way (when </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">don’t</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> I, really?) because it’s tremendous fun to watch and there is a story to be told.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Naota
Nandaba is a very serious junior high student, trying so hard to be
mature for his age, especially when the adults around him are so
immature. Unfortunately, he has to contend with the inappropriate
affections of Mamimi Sameji, his absent brother’s (ex) girlfriend (?),
and the fact that a pink-haired, yellow-eyed woman on a Vespa has
smacked him with a guitar and now robots come out of his head sometimes.
And just what IS Medical Mechanica, the mysterious organization that’s
set up shop in town with giant steam iron-shaped headquarters?</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yeah.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
message of FLCL isn’t profound: learn to act your age, or you’ll end up
a wreck of a human being like Commander Amaro, a guy who thinks he’s
grown-up but really isn’t. Naota should be a kid now, so that he’ll grow
up later. But the series is stuffed with so much vivid imagination and
bizarre innuendo that many can walk away happy.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There
are many things I love about FLCL: its strangeness and the way it all
manages to hang together despite that, the distinctive look and feel of
the animation and art, the soundtrack by Japanese band The Pillows
(“Ride on Shooting Star...”), and of course the robots. But the best
thing is Haruko Haruhara, aka Raharu, that alleged alien who blindsided
Naota in more ways than one.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">After
whacking Naota, Haruko comes to live with the Nandaba family, claiming
to be a wandering maid. In some other anime, this would be a dream, but
FLCL makes it that much MORE awkward because of Naota’s younger age and
Haruko’s clear self-interest. She flirts with Naota outrageously, but
her true purpose is far more mercenary.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All
of this is disturbing, and doesn’t come off as entirely ironic, but
parts of it are funny. Yet what truly saves Haruko is what her agenda
is, and the fact that she is so delightfully uncouth. She picks her
nose, wriggles her toes, and scratches herself...when she’s not involved
in a frenzy of destruction or sexuality. A female character with this
bearing is sadly rare, but Haruko manages to pull it off. Even when
she’s obviously fetishized, Haruko comes off as totally in charge and
totally hilarious.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Haruko’s
entrance into Naota’s life ironically reveals his need to be a child,
and she seems to have some genuine affection for Naota, but she also
likes messing with him. I’m glad that she wasn’t just a special “alien
girlfriend”, or purely evil, but was a complex character.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">FLCL
is only six episodes long, but it tells you..not everything, but enough
to follow the story once you realize what’s happening. There is a
beginning, middle, and end, and the entire thing is a damn joyful ride.
Haruko is the best thing about FLCL, but everything else hardly lags.
There’s nothing else like it, and that’s why it’s impossible to forget.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-61533646846838498012013-05-25T21:20:00.003-06:002013-06-23T00:35:22.188-06:00Why Do I Write Fanfiction?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes,
I write fanfiction. Off and on. I’ll go through a dry spell of months
or even years, and then the urge hits me again. It might go away when I
go pro, it might not. I don’t hate myself for doing it at all, though
for me it’s become a more private activity since the early 2000s.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It's
very difficult for a casual insider to distill fanfiction, and other
creative fannish activities, into purely objective terms so that others
can understand why they do them. I'm not very deeply absorbed into the
creative aspects of fannish culture, but I'm inside it enough that on
some level, creative fannish activities (fanfiction, fanart, cosplay,
and whatever) are hard to put into concrete terms, and especially to
imagine as something bizarre or strange. They simply </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">are</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">, such an accepted part of my landscape that I can’t imagine them not existing.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So
I'm not going to try to define a universal motive behind writing
fanfiction or other creative fannish activities; I just want to talk
about my own experiences with fanfiction (since my involvement with
other fannish creative projects is almost nil), and what I think drives
me to indulge in it.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My
involvement with fannish creativity probably reached its peak in the
Transformers fandom, which was my first entry into “fan culture”. During
that time, I would actually read fanfiction, think of my own original
characters and settings, and discuss fanfiction with others.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However,
my interests in these things whittled away, until I only wanted to deal
with offical materials and characters, wrote fanfiction only sparingly,
and never read any other fanfiction unless a friend wrote it. I lost
touch with the community around fanfiction, too. I don’t regret what I
did in the past, but that simply isn’t where my interests are anymore.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet
when I look back, I understand that my motivations behind these fannish
activites have largely gone unchanged. I try to keep a leash on things,
to not totally disregard what I think are the rules of "good" writing,
but fanfiction is still a self-indulgent activity regardless of how prim
and proper I try to make myself, and I’m comfortable with that.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
quote "write what you want to write" is still a useful rule for
writers, but writing fanfiction lets you put all this into overdrive.
When you write fanfiction, you are writing a version of other peoples'
stories that </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">you</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> want to see. You privately paste your own preferences and desires over somebody else’s work, which is a big self-indulgence.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">My
major reason for writing fanfiction is one of the best examples of
fanfic's self-indulgent nature: I’ll end up preferring a minor
character and want to write a story exploring them further. I prefer to
do this with "side stories", pieces that don't actually upset the
canonical character hierarchy but simply tell stories that happen while
the main characters are off doing something else. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
thought of actually treating my favourite secondary characters like the
protagonists makes me cringe. I still feel like I should respect those
canon hierarchies, even if it seems contradictory to want to, when I
write stories about the characters I like, rather than the ones the
narrative intends me to focus the most on. I don’t only prefer minor
characters, and don’t want to write stories about every minor character I
enjoy, but it just happens sometimes</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">A
good springboard for a story can be the desire to "fix" things in a
character's life. If I feel they got an unfinished arc or a bad ending, I
sometimes want to write a story to see what else could have happened,
what else could be done. Or I may simply want to see what lies ahead for
them in life.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">However,
something like this is risky. Original fiction writers are taught, and
rightly, to not play favourites with their characters, or to spoil any
one of them. There's just something so saccharine about the idea of
giving your favourite character all they want, like eating too much
sugar at once. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Furthermore,
perfect stories make for boring stories, and boring characters. So,
whenever I realize I want to write a story about giving a character more
than what they've gotten, I feel like I'm juggling a flask of
nitroglycerine. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">To
assure myself, I try to give the characters what we're told to give our
original creations: make them suffer, make their mistakes, and don't
give them everything. I try to know what these characters' weaknesses
are, and extrapolate on them. Pragmatism makes a good artist, and too
much sugar can spoil the sweetness of the story. To treat my favourite
characters as if they were innocent makes me wince. I won’t even use the
term “woobie” to describe a pathetic character that I feel for, since
they are not innocent even if they are sympathetic.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Doing
these things are a way to work out small frustrations, rather than
create viable replacements. This doesn’t erase the issue I had with the
official story. I am totally baffled when I see fanfiction considered
equivalent to canon, or “better than canon”. Canon is always better,
simply because it’s canon.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Another
reason why fanfic is self-indulgent is that I can go hog-wild with
sequels and story lengths. I don't have to worry about whether I’m
writing a novel, novella, or short story. I don't have to worry about
whether I’m wearing out characters, or if my new story "really" needs to
be told. I've declared myself finished with a storyline, only to want
to go back to it again and again because I can’t stop myself; fanfiction
is just addictive. While this all can make for crappy writing, it’s
also liberating. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Original
writing is certainly more fulfilling and satisfying for me, but I also
get the fanfiction bug because fanfiction allows for a mental break.
Sure, there are unique challenges that come with writing fanfiction, but
I nonetheless find myself able to write it with ease, to automatically
extend less effort but still be satisfied with the results.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Even
though I try for reasonable plotting, and loyalty to the character's
voices, writing fanfiction is still easier than original fiction, and
doing it lets me recharge mental batteries. Writing fanfiction is
coloured with this sense of unbridled passion plus laziness. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I've
also been a shipper. I try to approach that like I do everything else: I
create conflict, I don't spoil my characters, and don't give them
everything. In this case, I also don't expect the stuff I come up with
to be shown in canon, or put too much energy into defending the pairing
to others, not that I've ever had to.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But
shipping can be a rich source of character development. I try to set up
little challenges for myself as a fanfic writer, to create something
that stretches the narrow boundaries I've set up for myself and try to
make it work, and sometimes shipping can be just what I need.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
want my final product to feel like it's "just enough", close enough to
canon that I can feel satisfied in my own subjective way. Of course, no
fanfic can be exactly the same as canon, but I still seek out that sense
of “just enough”, that these characters still sound and act just
familiar enough that I still feel I've done them a decent, if strange,
tribute.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All
of this adds up to a writing sensibility that is very vanilla. I know
that accuracy and fidelity is subjective, and so are obscenity levels,
but my stuff probably doesn't match up with the mistaken perception of
fanfiction as outrageous in terms of content rather than concept. I play
it "safe", I suppose, but you can’t call it “playing” when it’s what
you want to do.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Such
a state doesn’t make me better than anybody else. All fanfic writers
are freaks, all of us are self-indulgent and screwing around. Sometimes I
see some character interpretations that I disagree with on various
terms, or things that do personally disturb me, but I don't want to see
people stop writing these things, and I don’t want to form an angry mob.
This is just how fandom goes. It’s better to assume that fandom will
write anything, before you find out. It’s just a way of life.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
have written fanfiction for few properties, while having no urge to
write fanfiction for others. Despite being comfortable with writing
fanfiction, I view it on some levels as a matter of respect, and if I
respect a piece of fiction deeply, I'm less likely to write fanfiction
for it, because I feel like it’d be like a peon trying to be a noble.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It
also happens because a well-written work has less gaps to fill, and
less unexplored angles, so fanfiction would be harder, if not
impossible, especially those small, out-of-the-way stories I prefer. If a
character has a complete story, with an ending that was powerful or
conclusive, I see no need to tell more about them.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This
all means I can usually predict with some regularity which canons will
inspire me to write fanfic and which will not, but exceptions could be
waiting in the future.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Fanfiction
isn’t anything bad. It’s harmless to the original work., because
fanfiction automatically is a smaller thing than canon. Legally it may
be in a grey area, but ethically, I don't find fanfiction problematic.
The argument that a bad adaptation doesn't hurt the original is equally,
or even more, applicable to fanfiction. It’s just amateurs having some
fun. If it helps us as writers, great. If it doesn’t, also great.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
do make a personal distinction between professionally written and
guided licensed stories and fanfiction written by casual amateurs,
though I know they come from the same wellspring. The guiding hand of
the licensor or a professional sensibility can make a lot of difference
since, when it's written for personal reasons, fanfiction can be
tremendously, wonderfully self-indulgent.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">So,
I see fanfiction as a way to pay tribute to a thing I enjoy, and to
give my writing-brain a rest. I try to do good work, but know it’s
fundamentally decadent. And whenever I see a piece of professional media
described as "like fanfiction", that's what I picture: a work that
charges forward with something just because "it's cool", and restraint
be damned.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes, I need a little bit of that.</span></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-19365669398272622232013-05-25T19:54:00.003-06:002013-06-23T00:35:45.545-06:00Quick Thoughts on IDW’s Baxter Stockman Micro-Series (One-Shot) <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
am so, so lazy. I told myself I’d get caught up on the IDW Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles series before this thing came out, but I never got
around to that. I still know some plot details of the IDW comic, and
will, *will* get around to reading the whole thing eventually, but I
went in anyway. Not completely cold, but I won’t pretend I’ve actually
read the preceding comics.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s
a good little story, telling a complete tale and setting up a future.
It’s a present-day tale of IDW Stockman being deceptive with his mad
science run amok, interspersed with flashbacks of Stockman playing chess
with his father at different times in his life. In the end Stockman
seems to outwit Krang and gather important data in preparation for
usurping his master, because Stockman wants control of the impending
Technodrome. Not to rule the world, but to control and distribute the
technology for his own purposes.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Well-played, Stockman.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">There’s
always a “but” and my problem is that, though the storytelling is
competent and it whets the appetite for more, there’s something about
the comic that feels cold and detached. I don’t know what it is, but it
doesn’t make me want to run out and buy all the IDW comics yet.
Something’s missing, and I don’t know what.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
used to think that Baxter Stockman was one of the recurring TMNT
characters that wasn’t bound into a strict archetype--he started out as a
simple (but likely tongue-in-cheek) portrayal of a mad scientist, but
his animated versions pretty consistently embody failure beyond just
“curses foiled again”, and an arrogance beyond typical villainy.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">But
IDW Baxter seems to embody that particular arrogance mentioned above,
and he could be headed for failure, so perhaps Stockman’s other media
portrayals have simply become the archetype, leaving the original Mirage
incarnation to be more the exception than the rule..</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Yet
IDW Stockman is also distinct because his moments of fear and
henchmanly submission are an apparent ruse, AND he has larger villainous
ambitions that seem to have survived for a long time, instead of
degenerating into simply surviving and getting revenge on things. I
support this only as a means of making different versions of the
character distinct; I don’t think Baxter Stockman “needs” to have more
villainous oomph, because I don’t mind if he fails at supervillainy as
long as he’s an entertaining character. But Stockman shouldn’t be the
same every time, and for this I praise IDW.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
liked that his father isn’t simply the harsh dad cliche: he seemed
strict and sometimes contradictory, but believed he was doing good.
Though Baxter, being the lovable asshole that he is, repays in kind by
booting Mr. Stockman out of his own company in the final flashback.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">And
yes, we get the “flyborg”, the experiment that Baxter uses to stage a
rampage / diversion as part of his plan, with a potential army waiting
in green tanks. I’m not saying I’m “too cool” for Easter Eggs, but
something about this one made me cringe. I’m in favour of using
transformation to represent Baxter Stockman’s failure, but I don’t think
it *needs* to happen to him all the time. I didn’t even need a homage.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It’s
also so obviously an Easter Egg it hurts. If you want to fuse an insect
with a robot for offensive purposes, why choose a common housefly? Why
not something stronger, more armoured? </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Also,
while I wouldn’t bet the whole farm on it, I assume this means that
Baxter Stockman will remain human in the IDW-verse, which I’d prefer. I
love Baxterfly and Baxterborg, but there’s a world of possibilities out
there for the character, even if you want to keep him embodying failure
and self-destruction. Baxter Stockman still isn’t as set in stone as
some other TMNT characters, and writers should take advantage of that.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Besides
not clamouring for Stockman to be transformed, I find it a
little...silly to see the IDW comic continuously bringing elements
exclusive to the old cartoon into a more serious universe. I giggle
every time I see a picture of the gritty gun-toting Neutrinos, or that
steampunk-ish homage to Krang’s android body. Believe me, I know
concepts can be remade into anything, but I can’t help it. It’s a side
effect of being tired of the TMNT fandom’s urge to deny or bypass the
original cartoon’s wonderful / painful silliness. It just makes me think
of dopey fanboys who are secretly insecure about the things they like,
and want to prove these things are “gritty and adult”.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Mea culpa.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Also,
I still love the main cover for this issue. The variant cover, with
Baxter playing “chess” with figures of the characters, is pretty trite
compared to the excellent play on M.C. Escher’s “Hand with Reflecting
Sphere.”</span></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-74010151572298955012013-05-25T19:26:00.000-06:002013-06-23T00:36:00.721-06:00About Heroines<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<div dir="ltr" id="docs-internal-guid-66ecf1e0-de71-d73f-bb0d-cc98c7eacae3" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Whenever
I see it being said that we need less bitchy heroines, less heroines
who reject traditional femininity, so that we can uplift the reputation
of femininity (not femaleness) in western culture, it stinks like gender
essentialism. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Apparently
it's not enough to want society to value the feminine: the feminine
must also be the strict concern of female characters, even though female
and feminine are not the same thing. Nobody ever asks whether male
heroes should be more feminine, whether they should be more than just
"badass" and have their soft side. We only ask this in relation to
female characters.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">This
ignores the heavy prices still paid in stepping out of one's gendered
role, and the fact that femininity is still the norm, still an
obligation for women. To disparage a female character for not being
"womanly" enough, we forget that everyone else does that to real people,
real women, every day.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It's
similar to the way discussions of female stereotypes in media are
derailed by posters asking, "but why do you hate feminine things?" They
miss the point, maybe to troll, maybe deliberately. It’s not that
femininity is hated, just that it’s not a choice for many women. When a
way of being and acting is not framed as a choice but a duty, then it's
touchier to defend, and you can't act like it's all a choice.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">All
of this wouldn't be an issue if the strict equation wasn't between
feminine and female. If we asked to value feminine traits in male and
female characters, it would sound less like fandom is trying to push
women back into the box that society made.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Calling
a heroine a "bitch" or a "man with breasts" is still about the idea
that there is a way to be a "good woman", or an essential femaleness
that can be overridden by a female character acting "wrong" way. It's
policing female characters as much as calling them "weak" for being
feminine is.</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I've
also never really seen a female character as totally masculine as
everyone seems to be describing. They always have some feminine traits,
though one's view of what makes a character feminine or masculine
changes with the person. </span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">In
a world where merely being assertive is still enough to get women
called a "bitch", I'm suspicious of any claim that abrasive, unpleasant
heroines are some kind of epidemic. Are they, or are our standards for
female behaviour in characters still too high?</span></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 10pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
am not comfortable with hating heroines for not being feminine enough,
or considering positive and feminine female characters the only way to
help femininity. Gender is not sex, and if calls for positive
representations of femininity are restricted to female characters, I
won't get behind any of this.</span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-29062044628119535972013-05-10T21:21:00.000-06:002013-06-23T00:36:22.419-06:00That Happened.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Since my friend Greg brought <a href="http://gregxb.tumblr.com/post/50068857800/monzo12782-so-heres-a-snapshot-of-an-unusual">this post</a> about turning Yellow Peril villains green in modern cartoon adaptations to erase their racism in a very strange fashion, and I figured I'd make a few additions.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The first is something I noted when this first appeared on Tumblr, but now I've added some pictures:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">We all know Mentok from the oldschool Adult Swim show Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law (and if you don't, you ought). Like nearly all of the characters he was originally from Hanna-Barberra's more obscure stable, specifically one of the original Birdman's many supervillains. But, uh, original Birdman cartoon footage was used to make the cartoon "Turner Classic Birdman" and I can't help but see some Yellow Peril influence in Mentok's design.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><img src="http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c234/Incisivis/mentok_old_zpsab18a911.jpg" width="400" /></span></center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The At Law version looks like this:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><img src="http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c234/Incisivis/mentok_zps8347af56.gif" width="400" /></span></center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I can't help but think, you know, somebody participated in this tradition. Maybe by accident.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The original entry also mentioned "Lizard" Ming, and I immediately recognized that. Why? Because he was part of a rebooted "hip" Flash Gordon cartoon that I used to watch religiously in 1996. I caught re-runs a few years later, and realized it was terrible. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This realization didn't come from any loyalty to the original Flash Gordon strips: I still know only the vaguest things about Flash Gordon, and could never get worked up over Dale and Flash being belly-shirted teenagers and probably a lot of other Radical-isms I'm forgetting.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I perfectly understand why I liked it as a younger kid: it was full of bright colours and crazy monsters, and Thundra and Sulfa were two great characters, likely the product of the series trying to be progressive in other ways (Dale Adren was more active than I hear she used to be, Thundra used to be a male character, and the Hawkmen were made black). But time goes on.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Anyway, Lizard Ming:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><img src="http://i28.photobucket.com/albums/c234/Incisivis/lizard_ming_zps7f72eb68.jpg" /></span></center>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Yeah, check that out.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I apologize for the quality, but the series seems to have almost no presence online, and I quickly snapped that from a YouTube movie of the opening. Here's the entire opening (with French credits, but the theme itself is an instrumental, and is actually kinda rockin'):</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/2O2QPgMSV40" width="420"></iframe><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Nothing else to say, really. The "greenwashing" works better when the character is technically an alien, but it still leaves a bad taste.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /></span></div>
Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3071749266905309863.post-89985493580535123942013-05-08T20:36:00.004-06:002013-06-23T00:36:34.553-06:00Gay Purr-ee<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I was flipping through channels and caught the majority
of "Gay Purr-ee", an animated film that seems to be almost forgotten.
I was vaguely aware of its existence, but never sought it out.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">It's good: predictable and a little unintentionally disturbing,
but a good way to kill an hour and some. It's surprising to see that there was
a non-Disney American cartoon film made in the sixties (this time by UPA and
Warner Brothers), even if it's very close to the Disney stereotype. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The plot hinges on a certain chain of scummy storytelling
conventions: the kitty heroine who first thinks herself too good for her humble
home, and too good and for the romantic attentions of the protagonist, only to
be swindled and hurt in the big city, and realize the country boy was right for
her after all. I didn't like the film enough to feel guilty about this, nor
hate it enough to be really angry.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The style of the artwork and animation is fun, and makes
it distinct from Disney at least on that level. Abstracted backgrounds and
minimalistic art makes it fun to look at. The character animation is of course
similar to the Warner Brother's shorts, and so not as distinct, but I still like
it.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">And yes, this is a musical. The song, "The Money Cat",
which is used to seduce the Judy Garland-voiced Mewsette into following the villain
Meowrice to alleged fame and sophistication, has been in my head all day. It's
insanely catchy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">But furthermore, I love, love the animation on Meowirce's
minions. I'd normally be bored with minions being literally faceless, interchangeable
characters, but their antics are so entertaining that I love 'em. Their
silhouetted designs are also charming, and probably the most distinct-looking
characters in the film.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">So no, I don't think it's a "forgotten gem",
besides the novelty factor and a few great visuals, but "Gay Purr-ee"
is pretty good.</span></div>
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Pterobathttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03393946931686052526noreply@blogger.com0