About Writing

08/21/2016

Kubo and the Stories We Tell

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Here’s how it is: the Earth got used up, so Rebel spies managed to steal secret plans to the Empire’s ultimate weapon, the DEATH STAR. Those who possess it no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. Their mission, to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to stand against the vampires, the demons, and the forces of darkness. But everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked. The people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups– psychopaths and mystery writers. I’m the kind that pays better. Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? A dimension not only of sight and sound, but of mind. There is nothing wrong with your television set.

If you must blink, do it now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4-6qJzeb3A

 

(Try and guess all of them in the comments, I’ll tell you if you’re right!)

So I saw Kubo and the Two Strings this weekend and it was good. Like, really good. On the scale of Shark Tale to PIXAR, it’s a solid The Little Mermaid.  The animation is gorgeous– LAIKA has really outdone themselves this time, especially with all of the origami scattered throughout the film. The characters are wonderful too, from the design, to the animation (again), to the actors (though they sort-of oversold Takei’s role, it’s basically a cameo), to the dialogue. The fight sequences were great as well, extremely well choreographed with very fluid motion and interesting to look at. Plus the fact that the movie used proper lighting so you could actually see all the action. And the story… um… Well, the story is…

Okay, time to get meta.

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07/11/2016

Breaking Genre: Star Wars

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I’ve often said that Star Wars is not Science Fiction. And while I would generally use the term “Space Fantasy” as a substitution, that’s not exactly a layman’s term. Sci-Fi and Fantasy have sub-genres upon sub-genres, from as broad as “Hard Science Fiction” to as specific as “Young Adult Urban Fantasy Paranormal Vampire Romance”. Some sub-genres overlap between two main genres; where does Steampunk bridge the gap? Or Space Opera? What about Magical Realism– literary fiction, or authors refusing to say they write Fantasy? There are so many to choose from, but these sub-genres are distinguished by various elements of story all of which make up the whole. Some deal more with aesthetics (the main reason that High Fantasy and Urban Fantasy are different sub-genres), while others deal with content (the reason the Foglios are insistent that Girl Genius is Gaslamp Fantasy). To find these elements, there are five questions you must ask– Who? What? Where? Why? How?

Who? — characters, or, more importantly, the archetypes they conform to. There are genre specific character archetypes– there’s a reason you wouldn’t see a Scotty or Geordi in Middle Earth.

What? — Plot. This is actually very important when determining genre. Shakespeare set at least 13 of his plays in Italy, but that doesn’t make Romeo and Juliet the same kind of story as Much Ado About Nothing.

Where? — as alluded in the past question, setting. Keep in mind, setting is not just place, but time as well, which is why there’s no “When?” question.

Why? — Themes or messages. This is also incredibly important, partially because of its intertwining with the plot, but also because it can help determine sub-genre, especially within Sci-Fi.

How? — This is a part of genre that has recently come into prominence with the rise of the “dramedy”, as it partially deals with tone, but it’s asking how the story is told and that runs through all of the technical aspects of the story-making process. This is what most academics mean when they say “genre” — painting is a “genre”, poetry is a “genre”, prose is a “genre”. For the purposes of this blog, those are mediums, genres are genres.

With that in mind, let’s see how Star Wars stacks up.

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05/14/2016

Harry Potter and the Wrath of Khan

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No, this is not fanfiction.

First, an update: posting has been a bit light due to the clusterscrew of finals and coming home and such. Not sure how this is going to work over the summer, but I’ll try to have a decent output regardless of where I end up.

I’ve been thinking about Harry Potter (big shock), and particularly Dumbledore in Deathly Hallows. This has mostly come from a recent final that I’ve taken, in a line of thought that I want to continue beyond the scope of the exam. Partially because of the musing on Ethics and Nietzsche and Kant. Mostly because of the Star Trek.

Spoilers ahead for a 34-year-old movie and a 9-year-old book.

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04/28/2016

Are We All Bat-People?

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According to Twitter, today is International Superheroes day! So let’s talk about a guy who doesn’t actually have powers, has even less self-esteem, claims not to be the family type despite having 5+ kids running around, and probably could use a hug.

In this video, the vlogbrothers duo Hank and John Green argue about Batman in one of the best songs to dance to that also has the lyric “Crime is caused by systemic disenfranchisement”. It’s an auto-tuned mash up of two videos that they each did– one where John asserts that he “kind-of hates Batman” and one where Hank asserts that “we are all Bat-People”. They both have very interesting points (which I’ll get to in a second), but first, we must air our biases. I’ll admit, I’m a bit of a DCAU (that’s DC Animated Universe) stan– my first real introduction to some of DC’s characters was through the 2003 Teen Titans tv show, Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill are my favorite iterations of Batman and the Joker, and I find that the DCAU does generally good work in terms of their writing and character development– not to mention the animation and everything else that goes into making a cartoon show, but I’m really talking about the writing here. The DCAU gave us such iconic lines as “I am vengeance, I am the night, I! AM! BATMAN!” and “I feel like I live in a world made of cardboard…” just to name a few. The DCAU gets down to the essence of its characters and even manages to make Superman and Martian Manhunter, two of the most powerful beings in the DC universe, relatable and interesting.

That being said, I heavily dislike Man of Steel and Dawn of Justice (though the latter less than the former). I am also not looking forward to Suicide Squad, and think Jared Leto needs to stop. Though Viola Davis is a great choice for Amanda Waller. So there’s that. The comics are on their way to a brand-new “not-a-reboot-but-totally-a-reboot-because-everyone-hated-the-New-52”, and some of the choices they’ve made in their books are just baffling (the Superman/Wonder Woman ship, that Harley Quinn contest, the entirety of Red Hood and the Outlaws). They are doing some good stuff– what I’ve seen of Arrow, The Flash, and Supergirl is great– but overall, I feel like DC needs an enema to get rid of all that Miller left over from the 80’s.  It won’t solve everything, but it’s a start.

That being said, let’s talk about Batman.

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04/23/2016

400 Years Later

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I’m constantly torn between the concept of “Words have meanings” and “Words are meaningless”. Because on the one hand you shouldn’t use the word “emaciated” when you mean “emancipated”, but then there’s this tweet:

Which is also very true. What humans have done with language is an interesting quirk of our species, but I want to take a look at one particular word in honor of today:

“Shakespearean”

The OED has two definitions for “Shakespearean” (though they use “Shakespearian” because England). We’ll get to those in a second, but first let’s discuss what it doesn’t mean. Shakespearean does not mean “Elizabethan”. Queen Elizabeth was great, and she defined a very important era in English history, but she was not the only reigning monarch while Shakespeare was writing. The Romance Plays (Pericles, Cymbeline, The Winter’s Tale, and The Tempest) are all speculated to have been written and performed while under the reign of King Jacob. Shakespearean is also not a form of the English language, it’s just early modern English, guys. Aside from a few choice words, we still talk like this– hell, if your Bible is KJV, you can still read like this.

So, with that out of the way, what does it mean?

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02/12/2016

The Poem that Wasn’t There

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So, I have a poetry analysis due on Monday, and one of the things that I’ve been trying to do is find the poem that I’m supposed to analyse. It’s not that I don’t have it– the Prof. printed it out for us and gave us each a copy– but other than the physical copy, it doesn’t seem to be anywhere. It’s been suggested to me that because there is no name attached to the work (it was found on a casualty of the Falaise pocket) that it would be hard to find. It’s not that I can’t do an analysis on the poem based on his prompt, but that didn’t stop me from emailing the Library of Congress. I should hear back from them by next week.

When we were discussing the poem in class, I mentioned that the poem seemed (to me) to be constructed, because of the juxtaposition of the surroundings. It is dated 6-6-44, or D-Day to the Allies, and the caption says that it was found on the body of the soldier that (presumably) wrote it on 19 Aug. 1944. That’s a simple narrative, the soldier was on the beaches on D-Day and killed towards the end of Operation Overlord.  But, being human, my thought process seemed to reject that simplicity. Life is rarely so organized.

And that’s so weird, because it’s totally plausible that that happened! And it’s also bizarre because my mind basically invented a narrative that it then summarily rejected. And why did I even invent that narrative anyways, the Author is Dead! (In this case, quite literally.) Why should it matter who this person is or was?

Well… because I like to think I matter? I mean, I have enough of a problem with my Cartesian demons telling me I don’t matter, I don’t need anyone else to say it. And if something I writes goes all Zardoz on a society, I’d maybe like the credit? Or maybe not, that movie was weird… In any case, even if I’m reduced to an author function a la Foucault, at least my name is still attached to it. Maybe I just feel sorry for the guy– I’m reading something he wrote almost 75 years after the fact and I don’t even know his name.

Maybe wanting to know that says something about what I want out of writing.

02/08/2016

Why I Want to Write

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“We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race.”

–Robin Williams, Dead Poets Society

Now, I would hardly call myself a Poet. I have written poetry, but that doesn’t make me a Poet. For one, I have very little chance of dying of TB any time soon, nor is my father obsessed with bees. I am not a disillusioned veteran of a world war, and there are no rumors that I am a vampire. I do shut myself into my room probably more often than I should, but I actually use commas– probably too much.

I am a writer though, and I have been a writer for longer than I have called myself that. And art has always come naturally to me, I can play a few instruments (mostly percussion), I draw, I paint, I sing. My obsession has always been in the creation and discovery of the new. So yes, I write– poetry, prose, music, etc. It is the natural extension of myself and my thoughts. But it is not a “want”, not really. It is something I love, and something I love doing, but it is something that comes not from a place of desire but a place of urgency. I can no more want to breathe than I want to write.

And I suppose that’s part of the problem I have with explaining why I “chose” to do this, which is what the prompt is really asking. I didn’t chose this, I was going to be a chemist. I was going to wear lab coats and wash test tubes. Not that science isn’t a path to creation and discovery (I’ll link to a post here where I talk about how art and science are really the same thing once I get the chance to write one), but it’s generally considered the far more sensible option. I’m still trying to be sensible, working on adding a Technical Writing major and applying for internships. But the creative impulse is far from sensible. It overwhelms and envelops– it’s kind of like the Force.  And unlike most people, artists can’t turn it off. At least I can’t.

At Orientation, I was given some advice that I thought I was following– “Do what you’re good at, not what you’re passionate about.” I had thought I was lucky– I’m decent at science, and I am certainly passionate about it. And yet here I am. Because of changing majors, I was thrown into a crisis of identity that I am still trying to overcome. All I know now is that I am a writer, I always have been, and I don’t think I could be anything else.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2e_M06YDyY

 

video by melodysheep

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