ADD Theater

Bad Pearl is My Aesthetic

2015-09-10T12:54:00.000-07:00

From Keuang's blog.

Bad!Pearl is probably my favorite fandom Pearl so far. I love how bad!Pearl is a conversation between the show and us. The first(?) drawing of bad!Pearl was by a storyboarder Lauren Zuke (see below) and it grew all over the fandom.

Why? Because it's the sort of thing that seems obvious in retrospect. Some of the best fanworks grow from things that are in the text, slightly hidden. Someone who always is on the straight and narrow has little room to deviate without falling off the path. Bad!Pearl isn't the opposite of Good!Pearl. History doesn't repeat, but it rhymes, and that's what this fan rendition is. A rhyme. Good!Pearl is strict, precise, and always wants to do the right thing. Bad!Pearl is rebellion on tricycle wheels- she wants to do the wrong thing...correctly. Roll up your mom jeans and smoke, Bad!Pearl, this is gonna be a bumpy ride.

A Dumb Korra Card I Made

2014-02-06T11:53:00.001-08:00

I don't have a tumbl, so here's a dumb card I made.

Miyazaki Explains it all

2014-02-01T20:27:00.001-08:00

Miyazaki says it all Some defenders of moe think moe haters merely hate cute character designs, but that's not true at all. Miyzaki has cute girls in almost all of his works, but the line between Kiki's Delivery Service and I'm Creepily Obsessed With My Little Sister is Miyazaki's ability to reach people who aren't already fans. One can watch Ponyo in a theater with grandmothers and little kids. Guns That Are Girls Now With All Panties All the Time can only be watched with a small subset of other fans.
The problem with moe, and with today's superhero comics, is that het male fetishes have taken over and are overpowering what makes normal people fans of art- plot and characters. If every female character is interchangeable except for their hair color, and the plot is replaced with debates about pastry, what is the entry way to non fans?
This is why superhero movies are popular and superhero comics are not. In the movies, the fact that this is a commercial media is remembered. Superhero comics started as a commercial medium- a cheap way to entertain young people. Instead of in text debates about how many superheroes could dance on the head of a pin, the movies have a simple understandable plot with distinct characters.
Moe anime takes away what appealed to me at first about anime. I want action and adventure. I want characters to care about. I understand that old men may be wanking to my faves, but I don't need to hear them while I'm watching.

Frozen: Or Not Every Movie Has To Be For Everybody

2014-01-04T12:39:00.000-08:00

Frozen is a movie that had so much potential to be a classic, but just fell short. The first few songs were forgettable, and the deaths of their parents was overly predictable, and glossed over. The animation was to notch- the solidity of the ice blocks, the beauty of the snow, and how their dresses moved was show stopping. Then we have....a dumb snowman.
Which was pretty disappointing. I wish they had trusted the audience more. If they needed marketable characters for dolls, they should have used the trolls: cute characters with different "personalities".

I wanted to just sit with Anna being rejected by Elsa without laugh lines. But no, here's the snowman. This movie is PG rated. That means that this movie is not aimed at three year olds. Children who are in elementary school are able to take in a scene for five minutes without jokes, even if Disney doesn't understand this.
Luckily, the dumb snowman only really wastes 15 minutes of runtime, and we did get that amazing Let It Go number and snow statute Anna. I paid $8 to see this, but it was worth about $6.

Unpopular Opinion: I Hate Cards Against Humanity

2013-12-28T12:24:00.000-08:00

    As a big meanie fun hater, I can't stand Cards Against Humanity. There's nothing I enjoy less than sitting at a table while people snicker about sassy black women and big black cocks. The idea that folks need a game to give themselves permission to act like dickbags decades after white boy backlash shows like Famly Guy and South Park have given us way too many "edgy" retreads of the same old sterotypes sickens me. People think they are really pushing the envelope by being offensive, but it's just the same old overchewed gum spit into our mouths.
    Other than being boring and tired, like Apples to Apples for the kids who yell the n word on Xbox Live, it's passive aggressive oppression. People can vent their unoriginal racism and sexism in a "safe" "joking" manner. You aren't supposed to call people on the content of "jokes". This is why we ended up with the onion calling a 9 year old girl a c---. They felt free to unleash their misogynoir because being offensive is automatically considered funny. It's a good smoke screen for unexamined douchebaggery. And I admit that I don't want to know that about people.
   Part of the reason I love games and gaming is that it doesn't matter who you are. Cards ruins that by reasserting the power structure. White men get to "win" by not being offended by "petty" concerns like ableism and sexism. The rest of us "lose" by being disquieted or uncomfortable. There's pressure for us to be "fun" by cosigning soft bigotry. I don't want to be fun. I want to have it.

In Praise of Rip Offs

2013-07-04T05:51:00.002-07:00

One thing I'm sick of hearing is "X is a rip off of ". Lately I heard Pacific Rim was a rip off of Eva because they have people piloting giant robots! And of course, we've all heard about how The Hunger Games is stupid becuse Battle Royale. It's always said with a superior tone as if no one could possibly enjoy stories without a wholly original plot. Of course, there's never an acknowledgement that a story might go further back- that someone would say that Evagelion is a rip off of "Gundam" or that Battle Royale is a rip off of the Running Man. Nope! The world begins and ends with

I love "rip offs" I love to see a story told and retold. For example, the Across the Universe trilogy is set on a "generation ship" where generations of people live and die on a spaceship. A girl from Earth is unthawed and falls in love with a young leader on the ship. The inhabitants of the ship are organized in extreme devotion to their leader. The first time I encountered this story was in an Ursula LeGuin story "Paradises Lost"- another generation ship, with people choosing to live on the ship as part of a new cultic religion, rather than land on the new planet. With the attitude above- I would have dismissed it as "A rip off! With stupid girl love in it!" If I did, I would have missed a story full of power struggles, genetic engineering and pterodactyls eating people alive.

Even if two stories have generation ships or giant robots or teens fighting to the death for the entertainment of all, from that point the story will branch and change. The story of teens fighting to the death branches and we end up in story about the burden of fame and survivors' guilt, and how a revolution can change and warp those who worked for it. The generation ship branches and the story about how a shipborns can lose sight of the original mission of their ancestors and go their own way, becomes a story about revenge and power and struggle. I have no idea what Pacific Rim will be about. I hope to find out.

Spring Eddy and Extraneous Romance: A Case Study

2013-04-27T21:12:00.000-07:00

I saw Spring Eddy today, and what could have been an amazing movie was marred by random romance. The first part of the movie was great. Our dim witted protagonist Eddy gets himself into one wacky fix after another- complete with mobsters, rednecks and people inexplictably wearing cowboy hats.The plot is simple but understandable - Eddy needs money fast and also needs to get out of town fast. However, when he gets put in the slammer and his ex fiance has to get him- the movie hits a huge snag.

They introduce a guy who cleans out septic tanks for a living, his stalking of his ex, and his stalking of Jennie, Eddy's ex fiance. They meet cute during a car crash, blah blah blah. Of course, there's also an additional subplot including the hit man after Eddy and some random Western wear lady. The main plot: this idiot needs to avoid getting killed for crossing the mob has great narrative tension. When we see him interact with a scantly clad hitchhiker - we think "Man, this won't be good", and wonder what happens next. When he tries to stick up a bank (on free gun day) - the result is important to whether he gets away or not

However, whether some septic tank salesman gets laid or not is not. When a movie starts off with life or death stakes, taking time out to worry about whether two random folks will knock boots really is jarring. I see this in YA a lot, actually. Sure, the evil government/aliens/vampires are out to kill a girl, but which guy should she choose? The fact that these are just side characters makes the padding even more apparent. Jennie has a part to play in that we're waiting to see if she can get Eddy out of jail. Her new boothang is irrelvant.

The hitman/random chick is less jarring since it's set up as a (flimsy) excuse to get the writer out of the corner he has written himself into. I wish he'd trust the audience- I could see several ways to get Edie out of there without a paper thin romance.

A movie isn't like a novel where one can convey the love lives of every minor character in detail. A movie is a short story. Every moment must pull its own weight. When we add romance just because it's expected- the movie becomes heavy and bloated.

Pocket Stables

2013-03-01T15:26:00.001-08:00

After the disappointing Pyraplex , Pocket Stables is a return to form for Kairosoft. The graphics appear much improved although still charming and lo fi. The gameplay is a mixture of the two separate Kairosoft genres- the Game Dev story style where the player builds a product and lets it run and the Oh! Edo Towns type 'build em up' where the player tries to create 'combos'. You build your ranch, complete with training facilities, places for your horses and jockeys to live, and visitor facilities. No 'combos' here, but placing facilities correctly and brightening the place up with plants is part of your path to success.

The real star of the game is (of course) the racing. You can choose your tactics, skip past the announcer's blah blah blah and see how your horse does. My only problem is that the course preview doesn't show the curves of the track like Grand Prix Story. The mechanics of training for a race are simple- your horses use your training facilities and you can use special training at the cost of money/medals(the 'research points' for this game) and fatigue. You can also research, equip and upgrade abilities such as 'speed'.

The base horses you can buy are pretty dire, but luckily, due to the breeding mechanic, you can create much better horses. This mechanic really shines as it lets the player tinker around. I noted that Pyraplex was disappointing before, and the reason was that you could get everything on the first playthrough. Pocket Stables much improves on this. I have not won a triple crown yet, but I'm still working on it. I also enjoy the attention to detail- the backwards walking sprites on the observation deck, the odd little indicators of the horse breed(a fro for bouffant, a little top hat for noblesse), and the strange breaks from reality such as the fact that people apparently pay over $10 to take cell phone pictures of your ranch.

Yes, Kairosoft has a formula, and if you like the formula, you'll like most of the games. I enjoy these lo fi sims which allow you to play either for a few minutes or a few hours. I find their games soothing- usually I mute the music on Kairosoft games but for Pocket Stables I like to listen to the soothing music as the visitors, horses and jockeys go about their tiny business.

I find as I get older the games I want to play are more retro in style. Smaller, cheaper, less stimulation. Pocket Stables keeps the faith.

Madoka and the Nature of Sacrifice

2012-04-19T12:58:00.002-07:00

I have now seen Madoka episode 10. While watching episode 9, I thought that Madoka was the princess, the Madonna of the group. Sayaka, Homura, and even Mami to some extent are all protecting Madoka, even to the cost of their lives, or in Homura's case, unimaginable pain.* In the best shoujo series, I feel, there is the princess figure, one that everyone is fighting to protect. In Sailor Moon, Usagi is the princess, and the messiah- the one who sacrifices herself to save the world. In Princess Tutu, our titular hero isn't the princess- the prince Mytho is- he is the one sacrificed for. In the end, Ahiru (aka Duck) gives up her human form for him, as he gave up his heart to defeat the raven. Being a princess does mean you're at the center of the shoujo world, but you're also expected to make the ultimate sacrifice.

I find that the whole series has been about sacrifice thus far. Homura is more typical- someone who promises to protect Madoka no matter what, which is a bit of twist considering that the arc from episodes 5 to 9 has been about the sacrificed- Sayaka. Sayaka, like most girls her age, was not able to face her true feelings, and Kyubey manipulated that. Her desire to protect Madoka, her desire to have the love of her upperclassman, her desire to be important and powerful... Sadly, Sayaka was going to be a hero, but it's not that type of story. The girls can either sacrifice themselves like Kyoko, and Homura or become sacrifices like Mami and Sayaka.

Join me next time for 'The Princess is the Witch!"

*How hard must it be for a girl of that age to see the person most valuable to her and many others as well, die over and over again?

Thanks. grumbles

2012-04-06T08:44:00.002-07:00

The sort of person who complains about Naughty Tenticles could just stop using tvtropes instead of ruining it for everyone. There are thousands of pages that meet their standards. And I know that eddie has to be in the golden mean and be nice, but on the other hand, the not so prudish aren't trying to destroy the wiki. asses.

This Week's Madoka

2012-04-04T16:52:00.002-07:00

is episode 8. Taking some inspiration from Utena, not just visually anymore, we get to see where witches come from, and it's not pretty. In Utena, Anthy says a woman can either be a princess (innocent, naive, needing to be rescued) or a witch (not innocent, powerful, and considered to be evil). As Sayaka's soul twists under the burden of realizing she is no longer human, that her wish did not result in what she secretly hoped for, and the enormity of her sacrifice, Sayaka grows, not into the responsible adulthood of a traditional magical girl show- protecting the weak, and finding expression of their abilities*, but into the cruel brutal adulthood that is reality for so many people. Note that her transformation into a witch reaches its peak when she is listening to disgusting men who use women and toss them away. That's a reality as well.

Kyubey talks about how magical girls grow into witches, and I wonder if this is why he seems to target only young girls to become magical girls. Perhaps that liminal state between childhood and adulthood is where there is power. Maybe I'll find out in episode 9.

*Notice the Magical Idol Singer subgenre.

A Fake Geek Girl

2012-03-28T11:48:00.002-07:00

In reponse to this. I admit I do think there are some fake geek girls. Not anime fans that have only seen Bleach or comics fans who have only read Scott Pilgrim. Those people need a recs list. And you don't need to know every single issue of Batman, either. But I don't like it when just regular ol' models and actors think they need to attract a bigger fanbase by pretending to be geeks. At least the folks who don't know the classics at least LIKE what they say they are geeky about. Maybe in a few years, they'll become deeper geeks. What they won't do is lick a video game console just to get their 15 minutes of fame.

You may say, but aren't you being super mean to the pretties?! No. It's one thing to sew your own awesome outfit, even if your boobs are falling out. It's another to be "What demographic am I today? I guess I'm a geek now. I was a hipster yesterday." Geekiness is PASSION. So show some.

The last person to see Madoka ep 6 or 7.

2012-03-21T16:57:00.007-07:00

Yes, as the last person to see Madoka I was shocked by this week's latest episode. It started out with a nice parallel to the typical metaphor for adolescene the magical girl is, and ended with people getting their souls ripped out of their bodies. I enjoyed the subversion of the genre standard that if a magical girl loses or breaks their transformation trinket, they just detransform. (see sailor moon)

I wondered why Kyoko was shocked that the girl she was trying to kill died, until I realized that she was just thinking 'hey, that could happen to me!'. Then again, in the next episode, she stops trying to kill Sayaka completely, and even tries to save her before she totally snaps and goes ham on the witch.

One day I'll have to figure out why I like angst. I wouldn't like a real story about a girl whose whole family died or who went insane, but in fiction, I guess I feel better because I'm not supposed to do anything about it. I can't change what happened, so enjoy the ride. But in real life, I feel bad because I feel powerless to change anything.

So what happened in Code Geass R2

2012-03-05T19:14:00.003-08:00

Rocks fell. Everyone died. It was a happy ending. As for what happened after Kallen ran to school with toast in her mouth, let's leave it here. Realistically, there would be a horrible bloody battle for world supremacy, and all Lelouch's machniations would be for naught. But realistically, giant robots can't exist, and neither do immortality, magic powers, or girls with boobs as large as their heads. This is my theory about Lelouch and all that: Insanity runs in the family. Notice that his father and mother apparently have had a years long plan to do some mystical gooblygook about Raganorok and connections or whatever. Note that Lelouch's brother who is named after some sort of German food thinks he can create world peace by threatening everyone with magic bombs. Heck, even Nunally gets into the action with the exact same idea as Lelouch.

Also, I think that Lelouch was always emotionally immature. He had some talents, but he can't really connect with people. It's not just the power of the king that isolates Lelouch. So he probably wouldn't be able to think realistically about the geopolitical circumstances. He's a child inside, and his plan is what a child has come up with. He didn't think beyond his death since he still have the egocentricity of a teenager.

Of course I'd like to note that a story arc in which due to hubris, a single man gains the world and loses everything that matters, and then sacrifices himself to save the world, passing his burden unto his best friend is a tried and true one for a reason. Code Geass just hams it up.

Madoka Magica

2012-02-12T19:42:00.000-08:00

As you don't know, I'm the only person on the planet who has not seen Madoka Magica. I have finally seen episodes 1-4. Here's the first episode:

Madoka: I'M A NORMAL 8TH GRADER WHO RUNS OUT OF THE DOOR WITH TOAST IN MY MOUTH! Eh..did I have a trippy dream last night or what? Something about a cat..a girl....and a dangerous magical contract?

Madoka: HEY! THERE'S A MYSTERIOUS TRANSFER STUDENT IN MY CLASS! Do I know her?

Mysterious Transfer Student: *glares* If you know what's good for you, you won't sign any DANGEROUS MAGICAL CONTRACTS!

Madoka: Uh..thanks?

Madoka and Sayaka: We're normal teenage girls! Yay!

Madoka: I'm hearing a voice in my head...let's wander off alone!

*She enters a trippy scene full of butterflies and mothballs with mustaches and shit*

Me: NOT THE BUTTERFLIES OF DEATH AND REBIRTH!!!

Mami: IT'S COOL TO SIGN A DANGEROUS MAGICAL CONTRACT! LIKE ME!

No, Loli is not the same as the n word.

2012-01-16T06:36:00.001-08:00

Really? The reason why we don't use racial slurs is because they reinforce a system of racial discrimination, and thus are hurtful. Who is hurt by saying loli? Yes, it's descriptive of something icky, but the wiki is descriptive of fiction, and fiction often does have icky things in it. Should we cut out tropes about violence against children? That is worse than saying "Hey, why is this little kid in this space adventure? OH...." Really folks!

Viz Manga

2011-07-23T07:15:00.000-07:00

I tried Viz Manga. The manga viewing is pretty much like the sigikki site, although I think sigikki is easier to learn, and there's no paid component.(Viz makes up for that by taking older chapters off the site) You pay with paypal, and then you can view the manga in a flash based website. You have your own 'my manga' tab, so you can reread as much as possible. The manga is also the right price for digital. With print books, they will try to make a book cost $10, despite the fact that you can't resell it, and the fact that you're dependent on the company to keep supporting the product. But $5 is good for a digital 'rental'.

Due to its website based design, Viz Manga isn't 'portable' for that, you need to actually buy a book. But I think it's a good way to read those manga which you don't want to reread or have cluttering up your home. I'm pleased with this. I hope that in the future, companies will use digital manga as a way of releasing titles that are more niche.

Fantagraphics and Manga

2011-04-24T07:11:00.000-07:00

An aside here from this great essay on Tokyopop and the page rate. Someone mentioned that Fantagraphics manga would be inaccessible to the youth. I think that Fantagraphics' manga line will echo it's American comics line. They have a lot of classics of the cartoon age, quirky indie comics, and the like. You probably won't see Samurai Harem from them, and their presentation will echo the content. It's the same as Vertical, which publishes a lot of art manga- Twin Spica has its original covers and Black Jack has a lovely artsy design.

I think there's plenty of places for manga to grow. The youth market is fairly well covered with everything from One Piece to Card Captor Sakura. Art manga is also growing with books like A Druken Dream and Ayako. Of course, I think we need more josei and yuri manga, but that may just be my personal preference. However, I am the sort of person who supports manga with my dollars instead of merely complaining, so...

For god's sake

2011-04-19T06:31:00.000-07:00

Liscence the series that the Fruits Basket mangaka did after Fruits Basket. Even if they don't achieve mega best seller status, I think they'd have respectable sales.

Okazu's comments are interesting as Erika implores fans to think deeply about the market.

Tokyopop Falls

2011-04-16T07:24:00.000-07:00

As they say the end of an era. I will post deeper thoughts later, but for now, I'm sad that just when Gakuen Alice was getting a plot(vol 16 was almost all plot, a very rare occurrence!), Tokyopop has to close down.

Gatcha Gatcha 1-4

2011-04-11T09:39:00.000-07:00

Yuri is a cheerful girl who believes the best of everyone, and especially in love. So obviously, she's taken advantage of by tons of losers from drug addicts to domestic abusers. Motoko is a tall, beauty, the Madonna of the school. So obviously, she eats squid jerky, beats the crap out of half of the guys she encounters, and is involved in an incestous lesbian love triangle.

OK, maybe not obviously. But that's what makes Gatcha Gatcha so fun. Rounding out the cast is Yabe, Yuri's object de drool of the day, who has a connection to Motoko, Hirao, a nice guy in the internet sense, and Sekine,a 'maidenly boy' who Motoko says "is MY bitch". This is the sort of ensemble in which you don't need a deep plot, jut let them bounce off of each other, but there is a plot here- mostly involving Motoko's soap operaesque past.

It's good fun with many twists, turns, and stabbings, but I'd like to know more about Yuri. Why is she almost suicidally devoted to love? Is it just her lack of visible parents or is there some horror in her past that we don't know about yet?

It seems that volume 5 will be dealing with Motoko's past as well, so we may or may not find out.

Yet again, you're not entitled to manga

2011-04-08T06:54:00.000-07:00

You're not entitled to steal the books off the shelves, you're not entitled to have the volumes the instant they get off the press in Japan. (although I wonder about people who always need the newest thing the second it's created- they don't have a backlog at all? I have anime that I haven't watched from Christmas! I have not seen all of Wandering Son, and I love Wandering Son! I've finally gotten through most of my April release manga, but there's tons of stuff I haven't been able to read.)

Alisa Valdes, Chica Lit and Humanity.

2011-03-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

Alisa Valdes went on a long twitter rant yesterday on race, literature, and categorization. Here's a sample tweet
"Dear James Patterson: The white community is so proud of you for writing our white stories. Sound absurd? Quit doing it 2me.

and another:

The idea that Latinos are homogeneous and predictable because of a US-manufactured "ethnicity" is morally repugnant & makes us all subhuman.

And on her facebook, she notes that "I hate all labels. Always have. I find them simplistic and moronic. That's why I tried in my "chica lit" novels to deconstruct the Latino myth"

Now, these tweets aren't the full conversation, read back in her timeline and read her entire update if you want her entire message.

But I think you can get the gist of some of her arguments. I think there's a lot of truth in her discussion of the diversity of Latinos and the artificiality of racial categories.

(although I was reminded of how in this story, they discussed how Latin@s in the second generation tended to identify as 'white' less often- and I think that's because in this country, they aren't 'white' - although to me, 'white' means that there aren't widespread hysterias about how your group is RUINING THE NATION and THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW against whatever your group is supposedly doing whether it's speaking Spanish, being poor and having a kid, or drinking beer*)

However, I think there's a huge hunger for stories of more than just the pale and male, and so when people see those stories, they say "write more! write this new Chica lit I've discovered!" Categories may be invented, but those invented categories structure our lives. We want to see our experiences in literature, and thus the categorization. When we go to the shelf for Latina lit, African American lit, Asian American lit, we go there to finally see ourselves reflected in the pages of books.

I don't think that these categories mean the works aren't universal- I've never set foot in the Caribbean, but the Carribbean influenced stories of Nalo Hopskinson speak to me. I've never been Chinese, but I love Amy Tan. I've even read Valdes' work(I was entertained). Categories don't mean that we aren't all human, and at the heart, we all want safety, warmth and happiness, but they color the ways we get to these human universals.

Categories of stories about who a people are are just as valid as categories about whether a story involves dragons and swords or spaceships. We go to the shelves to learn something deeper about that experience-whether it's ethnic experience or the imagined experience of wacky god sex.

We may be surprised about what we find.

*The Irish and Germans became white when we no longer had to hear about how their beer drinking ways and/or Catholism were breaking the country's fabric apart.

My Eyes Just Rolled So Fucking Hard

2011-03-27T19:46:00.000-07:00

This is a stupid article. Selections are in bold.

My response to his question was that given the cynicism in which much of indie film traffics, the movie is revolutionary in that it's about love and gratitude, and that it's hopeful not bleak. ("Crowd-pleasing" is a curious designation, if you think about it -- shouldn't every movie be "crowd-pleasing?" Who are movies for, after all?) No matter how dark things may get in a story, I feel it's the responsibility of the storyteller to leave the audience with at least a shred of hope.

Uh..a hopeful movie is 'revolutionary'? No, that's pretty common. Everything from Children of Heaven to Kiki's Delivery Service to Daughters of the Dust to Being The Diablo have grace and hope and gratitude in them. Maybe he's just in a particularly bleak scene, but you don't even have to look very hard to see cheery films that aren't playing at every multiplex. And it's not the storyteller's responsibility to have anyone feel hope. It's the storyteller's responsibility to tell the story the best that they are able- whether it's a happy story or a sad one or somewhere in between.

The dark and fearful stuff is no less 'true' than its opposite, it just announces itself in a louder, more insistent manner. Joy speaks in more of a whisper and you sometimes have to lean in a bit to hear it. But it's always there for those who can get quiet enough to hear it. I'm not a pollyanna -- I get that the world is rife with horrors. But I also know the world is rife with everything else. There's this great Carlos Castaneda quote: "We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same." I really believe that. Negativity is so reflexive in our society that it takes great vigilance to train yourself anew. But to me it feels worth it.

I really hate it when folks assume that the way it is for them is the way it is for everyone. For me, happiness is a heavy lift. I have to work hard, constantly trying to eat right, exercise right, sleep right, think right. It's a full time job to be 'happy'. And negativity is NOT rife in our society. See this video. Really. You have to work hard to AVOID mandatory cheer.

I've decided that if I'm going to spend years writing, prepping, casting, shooting, editing, sound mixing, color correcting, and publicizing a movie, I'm going to want it to be the kind of movie I would love, where people grow up and get out of their own ways and open up to something bigger than their own egoic needs. Not because this is a truer version of reality, but because it's the reality I wish to grow, the kind of world in which I would most like to live. When so much else is calling attention to the dark and dysfunctional, I just don't feel it's my job to contribute. Too many people are already on the case.

I agree about making the sort of movie you'd want to watch, but on the other hand, to make things less dark and dysfunctional, sometimes you got to know those things are there. So often we pull ourselves into a bubble- don't watch the news, it's got bad news on it, don't be around people who are sad; they are 'toxic', and we end up not knowing what's going on, and then we can't act to make things better if we don't know that things are happening.

And in a story, whether film or other media, sometimes you have to go there- to the bleakness, to the darkness, even if only a minute. I want a fully realized world in your fiction- the brighter the light, the darker the shadow. If I see only light, and no shadow, I start to wonder what I'm not seeing, and I'm out of your story.

Also, happy endings are much happier to me, and satisfy me more if it seems like I can empathize with the characters invovled- and really, I can't emphasize with shiny happy people. I really just feel distant from characters like that. Occasionally, it feels like our characters have gotten a feelingsotomy and never feel sad for more than five seconds. This bothers me if say, their father, who raised them, and they were close to, dies, and they have one scene of sadness and then are happy and fine the rest of the story. This always strikes me as false and throws me out of the story.

I also need the happy ending to be 'earned' by the characters. So The Dark Lord of Baby Stabbing was defeated? I'll like it more if our characters sacrificed something- maybe love or their right leg or the life of their heroic sidekick to defeat him. I also like it when characters who have had their whole life's purpose being defeating the Dark Lord of Baby Stabbing grapple with what that means for them.

I wouldn't like it at all if our hero just won easily, maybe with his Ring of Deux Ex Author, and lost nothing, and everyone is happy. Both of those endings count as 'happy endings', but one seems emotionally real and satisfies me, and the other makes me want to ask for my money back. So it's more than just THOSE NEGATIVE MEANIES HATE HAPPY ENDINGS, and I'm a BOLD REVOLUTIONARY FOR WRITING A MOVIE THAT IS POSITIVE.

No, get off of it. You're not striking a blow for happiness and flowers and whatever, if you make a fricking movie. Especially if it sucks. You're making a movie. Burst your self importance bubble,please.

What I Think About Bunny Drop vol 3

2011-03-15T19:59:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed it. (link because it's $7 at amazon for some reason) At first, I was worried that the plot wouldn't be advanced, since the story goes off into tangents about say, Daikichi's coworker, but luckily, it slips back into place, developing the relationships between Kouki and Rin, Daikichi and Masako. I find the tension between Daikichi and Masako interesting. Daikichi doesn't seem to understand how Masako could leave her child in his grandfather's care, but it seems evident to the reader or at least to me. I'm not sure I could give up my dreams and struggle for the sake of someone else. She was pressured into keeping Rin, and had some resentment over that, but she always saw how grandpa raised her well and faithfully, so she could rest easy that way. She remarked that how Daikichi and grandpa act around Rin was the same. Even if she feels guilt or sadness, she knows her child is well taken care of. She may bury herself in work, but I don't think she deserves the snap judgment Daikichi had of her in volume 2.

Of course, maybe he feels guilty about taking a child from his mother(he mentions this in volume 2) and feels that he has to demonize Masako for now. I'm sure his relationship with Rin will soon be so strong that he can accept her mother as well.