Tag: writing

Miscellaneous Thoughts

TiberiusLeave a comment

A GAP! THERE’S A GAP!! NURSE!!!

Yeah, I intended for this week’s post to be about the Fate franchise, but that behemoth requires attention that I can’t split from a bunch of other things work and non-work related. The dedication necessary to commit to it exists, but it’s going to be broken off from several other things I either need to do or am viewing first. Something something undivided attention, something something divided like a math problem, something something… yeah, I can definitely do it, but whether I remember to knock it out before Christmas this year is up in the air with all the moving parts laid out and getting ready to be laid out so instead, I’ll knock out some thoughts and opinions for once about things I care about.

Let’s go straight for the bollocks on this and say that my relationship with Chainsaw Man is one of forced tolerance. Not hatred, not love, not appreciation, a bit of admiration, but I’ve chosen to accept that it’s a cultural animanga force that has redefined narrative by way of shock value. I will always remind people that a different series has done it before and not too long before Fujimoto debuted his magnum opus, but my point has always been that it played with similar story beats as another series I’m really looking forward to sometime in the future: Black Torch.

I had fallen behind on some of the chapters, but the most recent ones I’d caught up to have a world in disarray, the wild animals let loose and unleashed and feasting on mystery flesh, the devils all out and playing with what’s left, an unsanctioned, unauthorized rapture of the innocent and the center of attention is Denji and Asa Mitaka/Yoru. Between my opinions on Motor Blade Monster and Do-Over of a Rapist, an accurate statement to make of me is that shock needs to feel earned and the latter half of Tree-Choppers for Arms and the entirety of C[bawk]k-Sleeve Playthings is majority or purely shock. These people are evil, they eat children, invade countries, molest competitively, force children to become monsters, milk the innocent of all they have and keep milking the corpses until–look, I’m not against grotesque imagery or metaphors or dark stories. I play Max Payne, which can double as a horror game 40% of the time. I played all but two God of War games due to hardware limitations. I’ve eyed up the lore and details of the original 3D GTA games and looked at the contemporary references. But Redo of Healer is shock value alone, and that may as well be serving some anemic chicken and only four bites of rice.

I’d been banging my head over the wall trying to figure why this appeals to women viewers the most and this video by Ken LaCorte has some of my answers:

Channel: Elephants in Rooms – Ken LaCorte

The crux of the video being that in a prehistoric time when women were vulnerable and at risk even when not pregnant the man who was violent to all of their (namely, her) attackers but comforting to her is a treasure to be cherished, far above any other diamond. Yeah, I can see the romance there, but the sexual aspect might just be a kink and knowing what I’m into and what I’ve reviewed on this blog, I’m not one to judge… but do I need to be a winged beast from the depths of the underworld with an insatiable sex drive? Can’t we cuddle and watch comedies and procedurals and crude British programmes on Tubi? I’m actually with the Brits on this one, all that time hunting for spice, you grow numb and start to hate it. I don’t give a fat f[kyaaa!]k if vanilla is boring, I’m gonna defend it til the end of days. I refuse to let darker tastes corrupt me! Bring it on, you freaks!!

But to circle back around to Chainsaw Man’s Reze movie, I need to be honest about my opinions on anime movies. They’re a f[nikcu]g letdown. Let me explain. When I was growing up, anime movies were a side piece for worldbuilding. The adaptation and source material already did that well, but the movies were something of a self-contained slice of life arc of sorts consistent with what we knew of the world and its characters. Even if there weren’t any further callbacks outside of future light novels or some obscure Japan-only video game, they didn’t disrupt the plot. Then Demon Slayer broke tradition by putting the Mugen Train first into a movie (boo) and then chop it up into serialized episodes (yay).

Why don’t I like this? It disrupts the flow. Manga or light novel or s[boobs!]t even novel to anime and a side movie to include all the ancillary silliness is all well and good, but putting a canon arc into a movie that won’t be made available for home release for another few months or simul-streaming until months later when the next season is up is a kick in the knee caps that I’m far too young to experience. Which is funny considering I’m talking about an era when Johnny Bravo, Ed, Edd ‘n Eddy, and Courage the Cowardly Dog were on the same network as Outlaw Star, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and Zatch Bell!.

Yeah, this is a bygone era, but in 2005, anime and cartoons were put on the same networks at the time, and this is one of several contributing factors to why anime dubs have had a dubious reputation ever since. Granted I was there in the beginning, and I didn’t realize anime was a Japanese medium until I tried looking for dubbed episodes of Naruto: Shippuden circa 2012. Disney XD at the time had picked up Shippuden for serial television and seeing the orange knucklehead in his glory outside of just the video games at the time was as glorious as the first episode of Shippuden.

This was his best look, no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

What else? Ah, right. The AI bubble. Elsewhere on the internet, I’ve been speaking ill of AI and generative chats influencing the internet, but I have to confess to a sin: I’ve been using AI in private for a bunch of different things, mostly to test history, common knowledge, and even its own art skills.

This one was brought to you by ChatGPT.

Originally, my kneejerk reaction was largely motivated by the internet’s kneejerk reaction which in turn was partly motivated by everything Trunks has ever said of Androids, short of the modern usage of humorous slurs like “clanker” and “wireback.” But I’m simply one man and while I can recognize screw ups in AI generation, visually or knowledgeably, for the most part, I haven’t been as gung-ho about the entire thing as most other folks have been. Technologically, what makes me unique about all this is my insistence on early 2000s kaomojis when emojis are a thing now and come with every mobile phone, but more than that, there’s the appeal to PCs, cell phones, a lost nostalgia for payphones I never got to use seriously, pre-social media internet when constant connection wasn’t a necessity and a luxury for only the wealthiest of us all.

Why? Well, I’ve gone on record to blame modern internet discourse on different things like social media and the controversies erupting that have given rise to bulls[cattle]t artists like this:

Arguments abound over the depictions of XYZ group, country, hot-button issue, etc. all around and arguments I have no problem entertaining, but like a Jedi, I don’t do absolutes because to let the nuance get buried and degrade meaningful conversation into “I’m right, you’re wrong” is a danger to everyone and has been for ages. Misunderstanding and purposely misconstruing your enemy’s argument out of sheer spite is sadly a time-honored tradition. America did it during the world wars, its own civil war, and the revolution; Britain did it also during the world wars, but also against the French, continental Europe, and the Britannic tribes against the Romans; Greek city-states did it in the face of the Achaemenids; Alexander’s Macedon did it pre-, mid-, and post-world conquest; the Mongols did it, and the fertile crescent city-states did it on cuneiform-inscribed tablets that now bring visitors to museums.

This blog launched in January 2023 to ignite firestorms and spark controversial opinions on media and entertainment where our modern discourse happens, but I haven’t really done that all that much because I unsurprisingly like writing about things I like and hate writing about things I hate. I’d be naive to not dip a toe and go for a swim, but there’s a difference between navigating a freshwater river with only a few annoying fish is always preferable to piranha-infested waters or god forbid f[flames]king Phlegethon.

I firmly believe there’s a space for everyone, even the disruptors. How else are they gonna get that energy out? History teaches us that trouble can brew when too unalike groups merge, and that can happen bloodily and viscously, but it doesn’t always have to. Two unalike things can create something amazing, and that’s the aspect I gun for with rocket-propelled determination!!

You probably wouldn’t believe it, but this is one of the few times I didn’t write with a script or plans. I’ll come back next week armed with knowledge on something I know more of.

I’ve yapped about their repertoire, but looking at what was guzzling under the hood is worth talking up.

Ten Years of Writing

TiberiusLeave a comment

The origins of my passion

A personal anniversary is on the horizon, so to get ready I thought I’d commemorate the occasion by reminiscing on how I went from “struggling to hold a pencil” bad to “Shakespeare School of Literacy” decent at writing. Bear with me folks, because the path is a long and winding road with unpredictable twists and turns that won’t make sense unless you’re paying attention. So do pay attention; there’s a test at the end.

Before we begin let’s get confusing. Although I acknowledge the general start of this writing journey as October 2013, the closest I ever got to writing would be in July 2012, and my familiarity with programs like Microsoft Word precede that even by a few years as schooling in the 2000s saw the potential of computers in class and wanted to start us early on those Mac desktops.

These things were everywhere when I was 8.

Writing falls under the umbrella of creativity, so something needed to inspire the writing journey, right? Right! And where was the inspiration? Lego bricks. The building blocks made about 40% of my childhood, with the others being video games and the playground. During one summer a friend and I were playing with the Legos I had set up on the coffee table. At the same time, I was a big consumer of stop-motion videos on YouTube and was momentarily part of that brickfilming community myself.

For those unaware brickfilming is a subset of stop-motion that in any capacity makes use of Lego bricks for set pieces, actions, scenes or what not. There have been several over the years, but a pioneer in the concept is Australian filmmaker Lindsay Fleay who between 1985 and 1989 made one of the first brickfilms: The Magic Portal.

Channel: Keshen8

Despite the huge production time, it still only clocked in at around 16 minutes, with subsequent brickfilmers over the years making longer films in even less time assuming no technical difficulties are around to ruin anything. A quick Google search and the Wikipedia page for brickfilming will tell you that Lego had long seen this potential and are said to have started this themselves as early as the 1960s, though feature length films made entirely or partly through stop-motion.

For the connection to my writing, it was my intense viewership of brickfilmers on YouTube, some of which included custom-made Brick Arms (some of which I had myself), or plastic molded to the shape of any given gun or sword that can be made that gave me an idea to try animation in June 2012. I saw a moderate amount of success for a beginning YouTuber at the time, though other responsibilities kept me away from my makeshift film sets. After Christmas Eve 2012, I tried to keep it going but with New Years’ Day 2013 walking away and high school proving more important, there was just no way.

Still, the interest in animation, tedious and meticulous as it was, was there. Most importantly, the storytelling element was what I remembered the most. I had made a minifigure, or Lego figure, that I’d gotten somewhat (read: quite) attached to. I made it with one of the blue leg pieces, a trench torso piece, a black scruffy hair piece, and one of the heads with the angry-looking face, but wearing orange-tinted shades. If I were to draw him again today, he’d be drawn with blue jeans, a light blue dress shirt under a blue overcoat, messy black hair and the same light orange-tinted shades. If that description makes you think of an underlying symbolism of any kind, try not to overthink it. Keep in mind that, this character was designed when I was around 13 or 14 between middle school and high school, so there might not have even been a real meaning other than, “it looked cool.”

Not this intense or exaggerated, but around a halfway point of sorts. When it came to developing him further, writing was amateurish and my taste for the craft was underdeveloped at the time. Being inexperienced here, I dove headfirst by putting it all in a notebook that I wasn’t using for anything important. I’ve gone through many of those, occasionally scribbling in the blank pages and whatnot. The earliest form of this story I have in print isn’t exactly the earliest form of the story as a concept.

As time went on, and I started to write more for my English and history classes (projects, reports, and essays, etc.), I’d begun to learn more about themes and motifs and other terms to help craft better versions of the story about the man in the orange-tinted shades. Between 2014 and around 2019, I’d written and rewritten this manuscript, with each successive manuscript getting longer and more complex than the last, developing a more mature tone over time.

Through all of that, I’m glad to say that the latest version of the story is arguably the best version I have of it. Subsequent manuscripts of mine would also go through rewrites and edits of their own, although not as many as the first one, not for so long, and partly due to technical issues with aging computers and/or computer components.

Fortunately, Microsoft’s good idea fairy had a “lightning in a bottle” idea, and made Microsoft Office available on mobile. So if you trust OneDrive enough to try your clothes on only once, you can craft a chapter or two on your laptop/desktop, and when duties pull you elsewhere, you can add more to the manuscript on a mobile device that allows for it. Personally, I favor phones over tablets, but my experiences writing more than YouTube comments and text messages with my giant hands make it somewhat unbearable. I don’t really like tablets all that much, but if I had one on hand and some time to kill in between other responsibilities, I could edit and add some more to the manuscript and then when it syncs up with what’s on the real computer, it’ll add that and I can continue with no serious issues.

Creativity was often the barrier, which just seems like the typical creative person thing to say for why I do or don’t do X, but it’s true. Those of you who can’t see yourself as an artist or painter or musician, etc. creativity comes whenever. It’s like dealing with a spontaneous cat; you never know when it will greet you, but you’re delighted when it does and you want your time with it to be meaningful before your train of thought derails.

Art doesn’t march to a schedule it comes whenever and goes whenever. Sometimes the sparks start a fire, other times it doesn’t and like a pyromaniac, you want to make use of that fire before it gets put out or burns out. Inspiration also plays a major part in creativity. Find any modern artist and they’ll list off influences, many of those influences, if they’re still around, will list influences of their own and then some.

For me, the tenth grade was a turning point in my writing journey. Part of the inspiration came from some of the books we read and class and had at the time, it was clear that I had a certain preference. Of all the books to introduce me to the coming-of-age genre, I would’ve preferred anything else besides J.D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye. Short rant: Holden Caulfield is a [donkey noises]. Fortunately for me, I got a better showing of the genre in Stephen King’s novella Stand By Me. Matter of fact, this and select others were how King became one of my favorite authors.

At the same time, during a reading of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, my tenth grade English teacher assigned us to write a short snippet in either the point of view of an existing character or we could make one up. I chose the latter, creating and writing from the POV of a performer in Jay Gatsby’s mansion. This was the paper that netted me an A+ in that class and admittedly I didn’t move on from that for a while. I’m tempted to say I never did as of writing this. Although I was never a bad student, my teachers always wanted me to shoot for the stars, but I kept dragging my heels while the more analytic brainiacs in math and science thrived. But this was where I was encouraged to let my creative side go nuts, so I did. As another humblebrag, I did exceptionally well in my art class, hardly ever dipping below a solid A+. The conclusion to draw from that is structured tutorials are a limiter for me, but with a green light and the simple words “The sky’s the limit,” nothing is gonna stop me from channeling my inner Claude Monet.

Honestly, I’m more of a Van Gogh kind of guy.

From around 2015 to the modern day, I just kept on writing and rewriting those manuscripts. For the first one about the orange shades guy, with help from family, I had it copyrighted in 2018. All that was left was to edit and find a publisher. The publisher proved to be quite tricky. In general, you’re not supposed to pay the publisher; that’s a scam. The author gets 7/10 of the royalties and the publisher gets the rest. I do have dreams one day that the manuscripts graduate from file to physical book on a shelf, even now as I draft a potential fourth draft while editing the third one.

This method of mine is probably not unheard of. Stephen King is so prolific, that if he spits it’s a bestseller slated to receive its film adaptation in the next three years or so. And the olden days where books could serve as a writer’s sole source of income probably needed to be written with the speed of Barry Allen. Fame and fortune not guaranteed while the author is still alive, but at least Poe and Lovecraft have their appropriate credits.

Towards the end of college, and even now, I’d been looking at a variety of outlets that have a strong writing market. For the anniversary of this blog, I plan on giving a sneak peek of a blog I had on Blogger from February to December of 2021 with a brief hiatus in between because I was in the Army. As a mild spoiler, it… went off the rails and no one can be bothered to clear the debris.