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Ta-metru_defender

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  1. Ta-metru_defender

    Whimsy!

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 174: Whimsy!
     
    I finally picked up Ni no Kuni: Wrath of The White Witch during a PlayStation Network flash sale last month. I started playing it this week (I also got Borderlands 2 during the sale and summarily compared it to Ulysses) and, man, I should have gotten this game ages ago.
     
    Ni no Kuni is a Japanese RPG with all the trappings of the genre: young kid leaves our world to a fantasy world where he’s gotta save that world from evil. He is, after all, the chosen one. Gifted with a book of spells and aided by Mr Drippy the Scottish-accented Lord High Lord of The Fairies (yes), Oliver’s out to restore people’s hearts and defeat evil (and save his mom). It’s JRPG melodrama at its finest (see also: Kingdom Hearts, Metal Gear Solid, basically any anime ever).
     
    But that’s what’s so great about it. Granted, I grew up on a great deal of Japanese melodrama, but there’s something great to seeing such fairy tale-esque concepts played so earnestly. But unlike some other JRPG’s, Ni no Kuni is filled with pure, unabashed whimsy. It may be in part because Oliver’s a child in the same vague age group as a main character from Studio Ghibli (which, incidentally, animated cutscenes for the game and inspired the graphics), meaning the game isn’t going to get real gloomy. But there are other bits here and there that keep it feeling, well, like a fairy tale — in the best possible way. Oliver fights adorable monsters that wouldn’t look out of place as plush toys. He explores places like Ding Dong Dell where he must rescue King Tom XIV (a cat) from Hickory Dock XVII (a rat). It’s wonderful, and so darn happy.
     
    It’s incredibly refreshing to see a story like this. I find that in entertainment these days there’s a huge distinction between ‘serious’ and ‘fun.’ You’ve got the divide in literature between the commercial and literature, where a book must be about Important Subjects for it to be considered truly great and fantasy is straight out unless it’s as Serious as A Song of Ice and Fire. More in the light is the different ways Marvel and DC are handling the adaptions of their comics into respective shared universes. DC’s Suicide Squad and Batman vs Superman (both trailers of which dropped last weekend) feels like an answer to the Marvel Cinematic Universe: where Marvel has been embracing the pulp, DC has been advocating for the dark, gritty, and serious.
     
    Which isn’t necessarily bad. The Dark Knight took a very serious tone and was all the better for it. But what set Dark Knight apart from Man of Steel and how Batman versus Superman and Suicide Squad are looking is the undercurrent of heroism. The central theme was that, yes, there was evil, but there also was good. The tone served a purpose. Man of Steel felt unnecessarily gloomy, as does the early marketing for Fantastic Four. It seems we’re at a point where we can’t take things seriously unless they’re Serious. Even the MCU, considered far more light-hearted and humorous than DC’s offerings, still keeps its enthusiasm in check for the most part.
     
    I think that’s what I find so darn appealing about Ni no Kuni. There’s no attempt to try and dress up its cosmic themes; it’s pure good versus evil, light against darkness. It’s got an unbridled enthusiasm for telling this sort of story as it is.
     
    There’s a time and a place for grit. I love Game of Thrones and am more excited for Suicide Squad than I thought I’d be. But after a while every shade of gray starts to look the same, and that’s when the pure, gleeful whimsy of Ni no Kuni is so appreciated.
  2. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 251: Who Is The Everyman?
     
    I talk a lot about the concept of the everyman on this blog, though mostly about how they don't have to be white guys. And there's a reason it's such an important thing. Spider-Man shows you don't have to be rich and smart like Iron Man or an alien like Superman to be a superhero, you can just be a nebbish kid from Queens. It's the whole point of the everyman: anyone can be a hero. Especially you, because, after all, the everyman is meant to be you.
     
    Star Wars, with Luke and Rey, takes full advantage of the everyman. The totally mundane farmboy and scavenger turn out to really be special heroes who help save the galaxy. The characters' motivations are built to be universal, certainly more so than the other characters around them. Han's a smuggler who wants to get a bounty off his head and Leia wants to save her planet and the galaxy – Luke just wants to get off of Tatooine. Finn wants to escape from the First Order he used to be a part of, Poe is on an important mission for the Resistance – Rey just wants to belong. They're universal wants, ones more translatable to ordinary life than paying off a crime lord. Again, Luke and Rey could be anyone, including you. And anyone, including you, could be the chosen one.
     
    This is why it's so darn important for there to be diversity in the everyman. Rey is important because she shows that you don't have to be a dude to be a chosen one, to be special. Same with Ms. Marvel, where the superhero of New Jersey is Kamala Khan, saying that, hey, a Muslim girl can be an all-American superhero.
     
    And that's what makes the cast make up of Rogue One so important. Unlike Luke and Rey, these folks aren't particularly special. No one's a Jedi or super skilled smuggler. Jyn, Cassian, Chîrrut, and the others are, in the vein of Peter Parker and Kamala Khan, fairly ordinary people who suddenly find themselves in the right place at the right time and step up. They’re meant to be normal people, like you and me. So they look like normal people, like you or me.
     
    There’s the rub. What do normal people look like? What do we look like? For me, that’s half-Asian/half-White, and based on the majority of (western) media out there, one of those halves is what heroes look like. The other half is usually a villain or, if not a token, then usually a stoic wise, old master. Not a swashbuckling hero or a kickbutt mercenary. That’s the other half.
     
    (In case you haven’t realized, it’s the white half that’s portrayed heroically and the Asian less so).
     
    The diversity in Rogue One, however, flips that on its head – and in frickin’ Star Wars, one of my favorite stories! The heroes of the film come from all sorts of (real world) backgrounds, with a white woman as the lead and a Latino guy as deuteragonist. The others on the core team are a couple Chinese guys, a Pakistani-British guy, and Alan Tudyk as a droid. None of these characters are meant to be particularly special, not even the sense of being super well-trained or anything.
     
    They’re normal people.
     
    Who step up to be heroes.
     
    And some of them happen to look like me.
     
    Of course you don’t have to look like someone to emphasize with them. It’s why I see myself in the crew of Serenity in Firefly or wanna be Rey because she’s the best. It’s why I’m sure you can still wanna be Cassian Andor even though he's Latino and you might not be. But who we see as heroes affect our perception of reality. If the only time we see Asian characters are as wise, old master, then that’s all we see them as. If the everyman is universal, then everyone should get to see themselves as the everyman.
  3. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 046: Why Abrams Is The Man For Star Wars
     
    A little more than a week ago it was officially announced that JJ Abrams would be directing the new Star Wars. Some people met this news with a measure of caution.
     
    Myself? I think Abrams is the person to direct it.
     
    L
ook at Mission: Impossible III. Abrams made his directorial debut with the sequel to this established series. He kept strongly to the themes and style of the original TV show (so I’m told). Not only was it considered the best Mission: Impossible film until Ghost Protocol came along, but it elevated the series from being simple action movies to intelligent, developed thrillers. JJ Abrams entered into a franchise, captured the themes, and made it better.
     
    
But let’s move on to his next film, shall we? 2009’s Star Trek made Star Trek cool. Really cool, lens flare cool. Sure, it felt different thematically from the TV series, but it kept the characters’ personalities and dynamics. It’s not just the old names applied to new people: they’re the same! More than that, he crafted a well made adventure that, like Mission: Impossible III, took an established franchise, made it his own, and made it good. We didn’t get a half-baked sorta-Trek, we got a movie that took the idea of a cool and wonderful future and made it work. It was a sheer wide-eyed adventure of a farmboy saving the world, like the original Star Wars.
     
    His most recent film is Super 8. If you wanted an 80’s adventure film in the spirit of E.T. or The Goonies, you loved this movie. You might be sensing a bit of a trend here: Abrams captured the spirit of movies from that decade but also infused it with a feeling of something new. He wasn’t just rehashing old stories, he told a new one. Furthermore, in Super 8 he balanced adventure and fun with some very quiet, very poignant scenes. As the world around them swirls in a mess and the film reaches its end, characters share these quiet beautiful moments. In the midst of action and visuals, Abrams still captures the emotion. Like in, y’know, Empire Strikes Back.
     
    And through it all, Abrams has this feeling of mythology. He helped lay the groundwork for Lost, he gave us the enigmatic Rabbit’s Foot in Mission: Impossible III and the alien in Super 8. Unlike George Lucas and the prequels, Abrams doesn’t feel the need to explain away every detail. He gives his work a feeling of mystery and myth. Again, this is something the Holy Trilogy was built on (the Force is a mystical energy field, not some, well, whatever midichlorians do).
     
    But the script must count too, yes? Doesn’t matter how good your director is if your script sucks. The writer for Episode VII is Michael Arndt. He’s the guy that did Little Miss Sunshine, a movie that balanced comedy with a lot of heart. A lot. He also did this little film called Toy Story 3 which you’ll probably recall as a sequel that effortlessly slipped into the established continuity and trumped all prior. What do we know from these two films? This man can give a screenplay heart without it feeling shoehorned in and capture the voices of characters who aren’t his own. Furthermore, the script is being supervised by Lawrence Kasdan (who wrote Empire Strikes Back).
     
    As it stands now, Star Wars Episode VII is shaping up to be the Star Wars movie we’ve wanted for a very long time. Did we need a new Star Wars? Not really, but now that we are getting one, and now that we know who’s behind it… We have the perfect storm for a new Star Wars. Yeah, I know, it’s at least two years away… but c’mon man, I’m excited.
  4. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 275: Why Am I Reading This?
     
    There aren’t a lot of books that take place in Singapore. Wikipedia’s category page for Novels Set in Singapore lists only twenty-six. Now, there are books missing from that list (I added one to the list while writing this), but let’s take this as a sample group. A cursory glance shows that many of these books are not set in contemporary Singapore, but rather around the second World War or before the country was established as it is now. None of them are books you’re probably gonna happen upon, and a few are long out of print.
     
    Point is, not a lot of books about modern Singapore.
     
    Which is why, upon finding it on display in a bookstore in the Village, I added Crazy Rich Asians to my reading list. The blurb sounded interesting enough; a Singaporean-living-in-New-York (Nick) brings his ABC girlfriend (Rachel) to Singapore for a friend’s wedding and to meet his parents (who are crazy rich). Should be fun.
     
    Of course, the main reason I picked up the book and read it was because it was a book by a Singaporean about Singapore. I haven’t read a book that would fall into either category since… well, I can’t remember.
     
    And for most of the book, it’s why I kept reading. The prose of Crazy Rich Asians, is passable at its best, perfectly perfunctory and rife with massive chunks of exposition. Most frustrating of all, it is bereft of a voice. It could almost be excused as just lackluster writing, except that we catch glimmers of one in the footnotes used to translate bits of Singlish or explain a reference to a Singaporean institution (but, for some reason, not to excise the paragraphs of stilted exposition that exist in the text). Writer Kevin Kwan does shine through in parts, particular when capturing the idiosyncratic speech pattern of Singaporeans, or small details about the food (and importance thereof) in Singapore. But it is, for the most part, a bit of a dull read.
     
    But I can forgive lackluster prose. Michael A. Stackpole is not the most deft writer, but his X-Wing books are well-plotted and offer a fun, pulpy read with distinct, memorable characters. Crazy Rich Asians, however, has only the barest bones of a plot. Rachel gets a chunk of culture shock when she realizes how rich Nick’s family is, meanwhile Nick’s mother tries to break them up, seeing as Rachel doesn’t come from an established family. There’s also Nick’s cousin who suspects her husband of infidelity. There’s nothing inherently wrong with these plots, except that they’re all stretched out over the book’s five hundred-odd pages, with little development for whole swaths of the book and interspersed with small subplots that offer little insight into characters or the bigger, overacting plots. It’s like an open-world video game with too many sidequests in book form. The big issue, besides the whole pacing thing, is that so much of the conflict is contrived. Which, again, wouldn’t be an issue were the characters interesting; but Nick, Rachel, et al. feel more like ciphers than characters, hollow shells who act and react however best to move the plot along or, more often add to The Drama. When the book finally resolves with the most overdone trope ever, it’s more an eventuality than a culmination. Characters don’t make choices, character’s don’t have inner conflict, characters don’t have character.
     
    So why the heck did I keep reading? Besides, y’know, my aversion to complaining and criticizing material I don’t watch/read/play. Simple answer: Singapore. I’ve spent around half my life in that country at various points and have a complex relationship with the place. There’s a thrill to seeing it in fiction and recognizing places and foods. I suppose for people without a connection to the country would find the book intriguing for the, well, exoticness of Singapore and it’s super-rich elite. It leaves a weird feeling in my gut. To me, Singapore isn’t exotic; it’s pretty normal, so exoticizing someplace like Singapore is odd in and of itself, and downright bizarre when the book’s appeal seems to hang on that hook. We get it, Singapore is a unique place, but you’ve gotta do something with it. Tolkien didn’t just create an encyclopedia of Middle-Earth, he sets epic stories in it to flesh it out. Kwan’s characters never become more interesting than Singapore, and a location, no matter how exotic, shouldn’t be what drives a story.
     
    There are two more books in this series, and I’m mildly curious about whether they improve. But as it stands, Crazy Rich Asians is an immensely frustrating book. I want to see Singapore and all its idiosyncrasies in fiction, I just want to see it done well. I guess I kept reading with the hopes that hey, it’d finish well, but so much for that.
  5. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 191: Why Easy A Is An Excellent Example of Storytelling
     
    I saw Easy A when it first came out a few years ago. Wanted to because Emma Stone (of Zombieland fame), Will Gluck (who did Fired Up!), and The Scarlet Letter (which I, being a dutiful student in 11th grade English, read). I liked it a bunch and so when it was on sale recently I picked it up.
     
    And I finally re-watched it. And I think I like it even more.
     
    Because Easy-A is an excellent piece of storytelling. There’s a lot to like about it, of course. It’s fabulously witty, with the script’s jokes coming fast and punchy. Then there’s the great family dynamic that comes all to seldom to high school comedies. Olive’s parents aren’t the losers or the antagonists, instead they’re, well, her parents. The movie’s one of all too few (Super 8 comes to mind) that doesn’t write out the parents completely but rather makes them interesting in their own right. Of course, that may be partially to blame on Stanley Tucci, but all the same. Where Easy A really shines, though, is in its excellent plotting and commitment to theme. Seriously. The movie doesn’t waste anything.
     
    Clocking in at around and hour and a half, Easy A fittingly moves along at a brisk pace. It takes barely five minutes in to reach the inciting incident (the rumor about Olive spreads) and the movie ends shortly after that plot line ends (Olive comes clean about the truth). There’s no Return of the King style ending where we get a half hour’s worth of resolution, nor is there an age spent establishing characters and dressing up their normal world; Easy A skips right to the punch. Heck, the inciting incident happens before we’ve been introduced to all the major players.
     
    This quickness reveals one of Easy A’s greatest strengths. Each character, from Todd to Olive’s parents, are established with an expediency that would make Joss Whedon jealous. Granted, Olive’s voiceover helps speed it along, but here it isn’t a lazy storytelling device. See, the voice over is worked into the narrative itself: it’s Olive’s confession and retelling of all the events. So not only does it help us, as the audience, get up to speed with everything really quickly. But it also serves the story in that it’s Olive saying what really happened. It’s not lazily doing nothing; her voice over emphasizes the central theme of the film.
     
    That’s the other thing Easy A does so well: stick to its theme. As Olive says, there are two sides to every story. The film is about the truth and rumors and every conflict within the narrative is born of it. The central tension rises out of Olive’s story being overheard; it escalates when she makes a business of lying to spread ‘positive’ rumors. Lastly, it’s the truth — and Olive spreading it — that brings about the story’s resolution. Everything in the film is about it. But because everything adheres to this central tension (truth versus rumors), the plot feels incredibly focused.
     
    So not only does Easy A know the story it’s telling, but it is firmly committed to telling that story. Everything is built around it; Olive’s relationships are built around honesty and who believes her. Who knows the rumors versus the truth. Who believes the rumors versus the truth. Here’s the biggest thing to learn from Easy A: if you know what your story’s about and develop everything around it, nothing gets wasted.
     
    So yeah, Easy A is an excellent example of a story well told. And I’d got more into it but t’s almost midnight and I’ve gotta get this posted. Long story short, it’s fantastically paced and handles its theme in a great way.
  6. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 123: Why Guardians of the Galaxy Will Be Awesome
     
    Guardians of the Galaxy is not a Marvel movie I expected to ever happen. Not because they’re so, well, out there, but because prior to the announcement of the film I had no idea who they were. Unlike Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America, these guys had missed the general cultural osmosis that many superheroes enjoy.
     
    So I read the comics; with the ‘new’ lineup from 2008, not from 1969. Simply put, the comics were weird. There’s a telepathic dog, time travel, a space warlock, a talking tree, and a gun-toting raccoon. Even by comic book standards it’s bizarre.
     
    But it’s fun. There’s a cool dynamic to the changing team and their big struggle against Thanos is certainly exciting. The film is drawing on some great source material. Each of the six characters in the film are all rich within the series, which makes sense given that they’ve all been showing up in comics well before they teemed up. There’s history there.
     
    History that the movie doesn’t need to adhere to. It’s an adaption, and as such needs to get at the heart of the idea. One of the cores of Guardians is a ragtag team who have no right to be saving the galaxy having to save the galaxy. There’s a team dynamic there that has to be maintained no matter the adaption.
     
    Which, for all intents and purposes, the film seems to be doing. Based on trailers and such, the characters are all there. Rocket Raccoon is as sarcastic and trigger happy as he should be. Groot has heart. Drax is no-nonsense and hellbent on destroying. Gamora seems to be Drax’s distaff counterpart and properly deadly. Star Lord is roguish but trying to be heroic. The core characterization is there.And that’s quite exciting.
     
    But what of everything else? The plot seems to be the next step of Marvel’s plans. Introducing the cosmic side of the universe allows for bigger stories later on. For the characters, meanwhile, it’s got a lot of what made The Avengers so great: it’s about a team coming together, figuring out how to be a team, and then working as a team. It’s a great personal plot structure and it works. Keeping the central conflict personal allows director James Gunn to go big and out there while we’re rooted with the characters.
     
    That the characters seem to be the focus of it (rather than the world itself) brings to mind the original Star Wars trilogy. Like them it’s about characters in a world going on a big adventure. It’s got a very Star Wars-ian feel to it and may just out Star Wars the prequels. It has that bright, optimistic feel of adventure in a rich sprawling world. Which, adaption or not, is always a wonderful thing to have in a film.
     
    For an idea of the fun nature of the film, look at a recently released clip which manages to balance the funny and the drama within a single scene. There’s an element of threat there, from Drax to Gamora, but there’s a wealth of humor to be found in Star Lord’s attempts at calming them down. Alongside all that we have world building going on too: Star Lord mentioning Kree and other aliens enlarges the world and gives it texture. Even from the scene alone, Rocket’s response to Star Lord’s intervention hints at their friendship. It’s a great scene, and we’re set if the rest of the film lives up to it.
     
    I am excited for this movie, though fully aware there are things that could throw it off. But the trailers and clips thus far, as well as the 100% it has on Rotten Tomatoes while I write this are very reassuring. So yes, I am convinced Guardians of the Galaxy is gonna be awesome. Here’s to Friday. Or, y’know, Thursday night if you’re like me.
  7. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 089: Why I (seldom) Write About Ships
     
    I grew up on a ship. I also like writing.
     
    Now, these two should go hand-in-hand. Write about living on a ship, it’s what you know! But then, who lives on a ship. No one would believe that. So I write science fiction. Because it’s easier to believe folks living on a spaceship than on a real ship. Less time explaining stuff. Also, I really like science fiction.
     
    But, and I do get asked this, why don’t I write about a real ship instead? After all, then I can reap the prestige literary fiction. Why do I waste my talents/history on science fiction?
     
    Because, surprisingly, living on a ship is actually quite boring. Yes, you travel, but that’s hardly unique (you could do the same in a bus or plane). The actual parts of living on a ship are terribly routine. You wake up, go to school (or work, but I went to school), come home, read, homework, video games, eat, whatever, sleep. Whether we were in Sierra Leone or Barbados, that’s what we did. Life is life.
     
    So what is it then that makes living on a ship special? Relationships. Bonds. The sense of a weird sort of family formed by virtue of having no one else.
     
    Like in Firefly. I’ve found that show to be the most honest take on life on a ship. Sure, my ship was lacking in the fugitive doctors and smuggling part, but there was certainly that sense of community. On the show Jayne may antagonize Kaylee, but when the chips are down he’s as ready to protect her as the captain. Serenity’s crew has a decided “we’re in this together no matter what” mentality. Sometimes it touches on the idea of family, but, as cemented by Mal’s speech at the end of Serenity, it’s about making a home. You want a story about life on a ship? About what makes life on the ship special? Look at Firefly and Serenity.
     
    But that feels pretty obvious, y’know, Serenity is a ship, of course it’s going to have parallels. What about when there’s no ship?
    Well, this might explain one of the many reasons why I love Chuck. Over the series, Team Bartowski and the other characters slowly come together to form, well, a crew of sorts. Even though the lot of them don’t always get along, they’ve formed a sort of family. Yeah, it’s very similar to my example from Firefly above, but it’s that idea again. For much of the series Casey doesn’t even like Chuck, but again, will come through for him when it counts; as will the others for him. Everyone has this forged bond with each other. That’s the essence of life on a ship.
     
    Sure, there’s the incredible sublime feeling of being in the middle of the ocean at night, the ship’s running lights extended less than a stone’s throw away; but it’s nothing that can’t be transported elsewhere or substituted. Because that’s just setting, it’s not the interesting part.
     
    I suppose that’s one reason I love writing science fiction; it gives me liberty. If I want to explore the idea of home I can add a plot device that threatens it. Could be, say, a mysterious box that shows an alternate world. Wanna stress the bond between the Captain and his Bosun? Arrest one of them. There’s a great freedom in a world where you get to make the rules.
    Not to say I don’t put everything in science fiction. One of my short stories I’m the most proud of is set in a small town (though there’s a ship in a character’s past) and the screenplay I’m working on with my brother is set in the real world, though on a boat. But the former is about coming home and the latter is about an adventure. Writing about a ship in and of itself is boring. It’d like be writing about everyday life in the suburbs or a city or anywhere.
     
    But writing about home, about family, about leaving? That’s interesting. So I seldom set my writing aboard an actual ship; but I always write about life on a ship.
     
     
    Writer’s Note: Yeah, did something this week. Something almost...bloggy. Stuff in this vein may show up again.
  8. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 176: Why I Take Issue With Johnny Storm Being Black
     
    So y’know that new Fantastic Four movie coming out next week? It caused a bit of uproar when casting was announced since Michael B. Jordan’s playing Johnny Storm, a character who, in the comics, has been white. This is further complicated by the fact that his sister, Susan Storm, is being played by Kate Mara, who is rather obviously white.
     
    This ‘race lift’ given to Johnny Storm has caused quite the hullabaloo. In an apparent case of trying provide a quick and superficial overcorrection a lack of diversity in super hero films they went and changed Johnny’s race, rather than having a different superhero join up. Making things even more convoluted is that his sister’s white, meaning either one’s adopted, their parents remarried, or are a very rare quirk of mixed-race parents.
     
    Which, y’know, is fine. Representation is a big deal; it’s always great to see different sorts of people on screen. Marvel’s comics have been taking great strides to diversify their heroes, Ms. Marvel’s a Pakistani-American teenager, we’ve Spider-People of all a variety of race and genders, Sam Wilson took over as Captain America; it’s cool for the movies to follow suit (even if Fantastic Four isn’t part of the MCU).
     
    The issue is that it’s just Johnny who got his race changed. And it has to be Johnny; not Reed ‘cuz he’s the main character, not Ben because he spends most of the movie rocky, and especially not Sue because she’s the love interest. Johnny being black — and only Johnny — belies a much more systemic problem in pop-culture in general. And it’s not the tendency for casts to have a token minority (though that is an issue too).
     
    There are a few things central to the Fantastic Four’s mythos: they get their powers from a scientific project, Doctor Doom is their greatest foe, Ben and Jonny are somewhere between rivals and friends, and Reed and Susan are lovers.
     
    And that last one is where things would get hairy if the siblings were both now black.
     
    There’s going to be a romance between Reed and Sue, because of course there will be. But a mixed race couple simply isn’t something that you usually have in a movie; especially if it’s between a white man and a black woman. Fantastic Four wanted to make someone a minority but also keep the romance subplot.
     
    Which really bugs me. Because the whole Johnny-is-black-but-not-his-sister-Sue thing smacks of a fear of having a mixed couple in a major movie. It’s something I find really frustrating. Look, I’m biased; I’m the son of a couple who got married when interracial marriages had less public approval than same-sex marriage did in 2011. It’s one of those things that I want to be more present in pop-culture because it’s something very present in my life. It’s 2015; c’mon, let’s get with the times already. The President of the United States is the product of a mixed-race relationship!
     
    Seeing a movie bend-over-backwards narratively to ensure that the white protagonist’s love interest isn’t black is incredibly frustrating. It’s not director Josh Trank’s fault, or even that of studio Fox: it’s systemic.
     
    At the end of the day, I think I’m disappointed more than anything else. There was a chance here to, even in a small way, shake things up a little bit. ‘cuz I’m cautiously eager to see this movie, and I’m glad that they’ve taken steps to make Susan Storm’s powers more practical/offensive than in the last film. I also really liked Trank’s work on Chronicle. I guess I just wish if they were gonna switch a character’s race, they took the next logical step and did the same thing for his sister.
  9. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 014: Why Science Fiction
     
    Science Fiction is a setting (not a genre) that frequently gets written off and ignored because it’s deemed inept to deal with more serious topics. But science fiction has leave to deal with heavy subjects in a way ‘regular’ fiction only wishes it could. Science fiction - good science fiction - has and will always be about people.
     
    The world will change, but people will always stay the same. People will always want to control, people will always want more, people will always want love, people will always yearn for adventure, and people will always want to find home. It doesn’t matter if it’s the 17th, 21st, or 26th century: people don’t change. The best science fiction examines humanity - consciously or not - in ways that other fiction can not.
     
    Ender’s Game can easily be looked at as just another story about mankind repelling alien invaders. We’ve got the buggers/formics poised to destroy humanity and the only hope lies in the kid named Ender Wiggen. But it goes beyond that: it looks at the idea of empathy (and the lack of it) as a tool and a weapon. It is Ender’s immense capacity for empathy that makes him an excellent leader and brilliant tactician, but it’s his ability to withhold it that makes him a brutal opponent. His empathy endears Bean, Alai, Petra and others to him, his brutality puts a very permanent end to his victimization. It’s this ability of his that allows him to understand his utterly alien enemy and defeat them, but ultimately come to love them. Because he understood them he could love them with all his innocence.
    Ordinary fiction would spend too much time trying to explain how and justifying why child soldiers were being trained the way the International Fleet trains Ender and friends. The concept of an enemy so completely unknown, so plain inhuman would feel terribly contrived in conventional fiction. In Ender’s Game we go with it because it’s the setting. We get the innocence of a child and truly alien enemy. Why? Science fiction.
     
    Everyone dreams. Everyone wants to escape. Inception gives us a world where we can escape into our dreams. Yes, there are practical uses for this (typically of the espionage and thieving variety), but what would we really do with this technology? Would we would run from the world and its problems into our dreams, into dreams where everything is how and as we want? Christopher Nolan examines the concept of being able to escape in this fashion and the questions of reality that ensue. If our dreams are better than life would we not chose to stay in that world? What would reality mean then? What would we do?
    In Inception we see people running from reality and trying to create their own. It’s what we do in our daydreams and it’s what we do when we go to the movies. But in the world of this movie it’s something they can do on a whim. Some people hide in them, some people will use them, and some simply remain unaware. It’s on the humanity within the story that science fiction thrives. We see people act and can’t help but to wonder whether we, like Cobb’s wife, would just want to live in our imaginary world.
     
    Finally; Serenity. The idea presented in Joss Whedon’s film is the question of control. Of course, we’ve heard stories about totalitarian governments clamping down on freedom and forcing them to behave. But it’s in this setting that the Alliance has not only the will but the ability to truly control their population. If free will and the capacity to make choice is taken out of the human equation what then remains?
    Science fiction allows us to explore the idea in a world where it’s possible. Because we’ve agreed to believe that the technology exists we can see the implications. Serenity asks what would people would do if they found a world without choice. Five hundred years in the future we will still aim to misbehave: especially if misbehaving is the right thing to do. Set against a backdrop of spaceships and planets is the story of an artificial family just trying to live their lives and find some semblance of home.
     
    So why science fiction? The setting lets us create worlds where the impossible is just a part of life. This impossible factor lets us ask what people would then do. District 9 asked the question of aliens and segregation, Alien created a unique horror film, Jurassic Park demonstrated the fallacies of playing god. Sure, the setting can be seen as just a vehicle for a parable, but it’s a world where imagination runs wild.
    Good science fiction is about the people in the world. It’s a simple concept: the world will change but people will stay the same.
    Plus, science fiction is just such darn fun.
  10. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 003: Why Science Fiction Is Not A Genre
     
     
    Walk into any book store and you’ll find them sorted into categories. You’ve got your Fiction, Children’s, Military History, Home and Garden, Romance, Young Adult, the odd shelf titled ‘Young Adult Paranormal Romance’, and, of course, Science Fiction and Fantasy. It’s fairly obvious where books go, works of Fiction goes in fiction, kids’ books go in Children’s, non-fiction goes with its topic, and so on.
     
    Now, a work of fiction, whether it’s set in 1950’s New York City, medieval England, or present day Rio De Janeiro, is classified as Fiction. But add a spaceship or another planet and it’s suddenly Science Fiction. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Space Opera or a gritty post-apocalyptic war, they all go on the same shelf. Wanna add an elf to your modern day crime drama? Same problem. Fantasy is fantasy, no matter the subject matter.
     
    Why’s this the case? Dracula features a vampire and yet it’s put in Fiction. Animal Farm has talking animals that run a farm and it’s in Fiction. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World is a weird dystopian novel with tropes straight out of science-fiction but it gets classified along with ‘proper literature’.
     
    I realize my examples up there are all works that have been accepted as classics due to literary significance. So what about The Lord of The Rings? It’s got immense literary significance (reinvented the conventions associated with fantasy) and a truly epic plot with universal themes transcending its own story. So it gets put on the Fantasy shelf, and rightly so, because its setting is the archetypical fantasy world. Yet it’ll never be formally classified as ‘proper literature’.
     
    The same idea extends to film. Super 8 is a movie about a bunch of kids making a movie. Throughout the plot they solidify their relationships with parents and each other; it’s about growing up. There’s also an alien in there, but it’s a plot device, not the point. But there’s an alien so it’s science fiction. Monsters has aliens too but it’s more like Lost in Translation than War of the Worlds. Once again, the titular monsters are a plot device, they exist to move the protagonists’ and the plot along. They’re not antagonists or even characters in the least. You could replace them with another trope and the plot would still work just as fine.
    But because it’s an alien, it’s science fiction and thus not eligible for any ‘real’ awards. Super 8 and Monsters weren’t even considered for an Oscar because they’re science fiction and, ergo, not art.
     
    My point is: the use of certain tropes doesn’t disqualify a work from being art. District 9 deconstructed much of what was accepted of a typical alien inversion. It was different and asked question normally never asked. Ender’s Game took the idea of the young hero and took it apart, adding the grief and trauma one would expect from such an event. They got their accolades from the science fiction community but beyond that, not much at all. Timothy’s Zahn’s work in the Star Wars Expanded Universe justified the movies and codified the universe. But because it could be written off as glorified Star Wars fan-fiction, no one outside the Star Wars fandom cares.
     
    When it comes down to it, science fiction is a setting not a genre. Genres are romances and comedies, tragedies and dramas. A setting is a spaceship or downtown Chicago. The only real difference between science fiction and ‘regular’ fiction is setting. You have humorous science fiction (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), character focused drama (Firefly), and sweeping adventures of pure romance (Star Wars, natch). There are post-apocalyptic adventures and galactic tragedies. To lump all of them together under one category due to similar setting would be like categorizing a Jeffery Archer book, The Great Gatsby, and The Bourne Identity under the same genre because they’re all set in the 20th Century. A story having binary suns should not detract from its merit as a work of fiction. If it still engages and it still carries its themes then it’s literature all the same, right?
     
    In any case, I still like science fiction. I like space. I like adventure.
    And I’m willing to accept the stigma of being a science fiction fan if it means I get spaceships.
     
    Writer’s Note: Granted, science fiction and fantasy have more than their share of shoddiness which unfortunately stereotypes the ‘genre’ as a whole. But within all that there are some brilliant gems. And shine they do.
  11. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 006: Why The Avengers Will Be Awesome
     
    Note: I know I wrote something like this a few weeks ago. Consider this a more in depth take on that.
     
    In a little less than a week, a movie I’ve been waiting a long time for will finally be released. No, not The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (though that looks like fun), but The Avengers. Understand, I’ve been waiting for this movie since the stinger attached to Iron Man four years ago. I saw each of the ‘prior’ movies (except The Incredible Hulk) opening weekend (or, in the case of Iron Man 2, three times over opening weekend). Essentially, I’ve been really looking forward to this movie. Of course, one of the biggest fears of me and others like me is that the movie’s gonna suck.
    That won’t be the case.
    Why?
    I’m so glad you asked.
    See, right off the bat you have the whole fanboy thing. After Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America each got their own movie they’re being put in one. One film. Together. Not since Alien VS Predator have we had a crossover like this. Unlike AVP, though, this crossover has been intended since the inception (and will actually be good). But people! We’re getting Iron Man, Thor, and Captain America in one friggin’ movie!
    But while it’s great for a movie to run on the Rule of Cool, The Avengers is going to be so much more than that. See, the conflict isn’t just them against the world. It’s internal as much as it’s external. The drama will stem not just from “will they be able to save the world?” but the added question of “can they even get along?” We’re watching not just to watch these guys save the day; we want to see them overcome themselves. Because no matter how big an external threat, if we can’t get invested in the core of the characters it’s not worth it.
    On that note, Scarlett Johansson’s in this movie. Not complaining. In fact, I’m the opposite of complaining.
    Seriously though, the writer and director of the movie is Joss Whedon. If there’s one thing he proved when he did Serenity was that he knows how to balance several characters; developing each of them and giving them their own special moment. In other words: a true ensemble movie. Whedon’s proven himself to be an excellent writer/director more than capable of handling strong characters interacting and conflicting without anyone being sidelined. And this guy can alternate between funny and serious with ease; a vital element of a film like this.
    To carry a good script, though, you need capable actors. This, too, won’t be an issue. In each of their films, Robert Downey Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, and Tom Hiddleston have proven themselves to be able to work that tone of dramatic comedy; being able to deliver gags on cue but also hit the emotional notes. They’ve also proven that the know the characters and we’ve accepted them as them. All clear on that front. Mark Ruffalo’s a bit of a wild card, seeing as this is first time as Banner. Jeremy Renner too, due to his rather small role in Thor. But hey, we’ll see. And, again, we have Scarlett Johansson who also happens to be a great actress. Bases covered, man.
    Characters and all aside, the external conflict’s pretty serious too. We’ve got Loki commanding some army from space/another realm or something threatening to, well, do something terrible to Earth. This really necessitates our main characters coming together to battle this threat. It’s still dire enough that there’s something actually on the line here. We need these heroes, the Avengers, to save the world. No one else can do this but them. Hence, you know, the whole teaming up thing. Duh.
    And hey, Scarlett Johansson’s in it.
    What I’m saying, if I’m saying anything at all, is that The Avengers has all the right ingredients for an amazing movies. Great conflicts, fantastic actors, the right people behind the camera. Barring an unmitigated cinematic disaster, there’s no way this movie can suck. At least, I hope not.
    In any case, at 11:59pm on May 3rd you’ll find me sitting in the cinema waiting to watch what will most definitely be an awesome movie.
    I really can’t wait.
  12. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 103: Why The Last of Us Should and Shouldn’t Be A Movie
     
    Big news broke on Thursday: The Last of Us is becoming a live action movie. Now, you have to understand, I love The Last of Us. I wrote a final paper on it (see notes here), I wrote about its characters and convictions, and I wrote on how it’s a grownup video game.
     
    I’ve said before that The Last of Us is an incredible game that deserves to be seen in a more literary light. And now it is, it’s being made into a movie so more people can experience it.
     
    At least that’s Screen Gems president Clint Culpepper’s idea. Honestly, I have to agree. The Last of Us is a phenomenal piece of storytelling period. Video games remain something of a niche market; one sometimes deemed inaccessible. For good reason too: movies don’t require viewers to buy a $300 piece of equipment to watch them and then force them to complete challenges to see what happens next. A cinematic adaptation of The Last of Us would nullify this and allow anyone to experience Joel and Ellie’s story.
     
    Thing is, The Last of Us is an incredibly visceral story, due in no small part to the fact that you’re playing as Joel. The tension in battles with the Infected and other people and the relief of those long quiet moments in between are all heightened because it’s you fighting the Infected and you initiating conversations with Ellie about football mascots. This is what gaming does best; making you feel truly involved in the action. A film wouldn’t be able to capture the same kind of rush of the battle and emotional bond with the characters.
     
    With that, casting presents another obstacle. Voice actors Troy Baker and Ashley Johnson are intrinsically inseparable from Joel and Ellie. Their performances are incredible, bringing life to fantastic characters. Whoever plays them in the movie would have to be wonderfully cast, else much of their dynamic — that blend of tension and affection — would be lost. And it’s the bond between Joel and Ellie —not the Infected or the American wastes— that makes The Last of Us.
     
    But then, Neil Druckmann, writer and Creative Director of the game, is confirmed to be writing the film. Druckmann has more than proved himself a competent writer with The Last of Us and Left Behind. And who better to write a film adaptation than the original writer? He knows what’s at the heart of the game and how to keep it in a film.
     
    I have hope for this, mostly because Druckmann is writing but also because Bruce Straley, The Last of Us’ Game Director, is producing the film with Naughty Dog’s co-presidents and Sam Raimi. The creative core of the game is on the film too.
     
    There are things they’ll have to do for it to work One would be keeping the extreme violence and consistent swearing that built game’s tone (and thereby earning a hard R-rating). A second would be casting two leads who would be able to match Baker and Johnson’s nuance and chemistry. Most importantly, Druckmann and team will have to adapt The Last of Us not as a game but as a story. We don’t need scenes of Joel crouching down and listening or incessant crafting; what we need are those quiet moments of conversation between the two protagonists.
     
    Do I think The Last of Us needed to be made into a movie? No. It’s one of the best video games of not just its generation but of all times. It used its medium to great effect, telling a story unlike any other.
    But now that it is do I want it to be a good one? Of course. Stripped of the experience of the game it remains a phenomenal story one that, rightly, deserves a wider non-gaming audience.
     
    One thing’s for sure, though, they need Gustavo Santaolalla’s
    .
  13. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 203: Window Dressing
     
    Taxis are in a rush. That’s a known fact (that I thought as I did my usual ritual of staring down a cab driver today). It’s also a vital part of the game Crazy Taxi. The arcade-style driving game has you speeding around a time, picking up customers and dropping them off as quick as you can. It’s fun, and an excellent time and/or quarter sink.
     
    But how vital is the taxi part of Crazy Taxi? Sure, speeding around an ersatz San Francisco and dodging trucks is great, but does it need that taxi-ness — that surrounding narrative — to work? Strip away all the window dressing and the game’s mechanics are quite simple: the player drives around an area getting objectives which, when completed well, nets the player more points and time. Could be in space, could be blocks moving around, you could throw Mario on it and call it a day. Instead, you play as a crazy taxi driver dodging traffic.
     
    So what does the narrative window dressing of a cab driver bring to the story? Why is setting it in contemporary (ca. 1999) America better than setting it in space? Because then it’d be a different thing. I mean, obviously. It’s why The Magnificent Seven and The Seven Samurai can tell a similar story and yet still be completely different movies. Look at The LEGO Movie and The Matrix. Both adhere to Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey with a religious ferocity: a nobody turns out to be really special, goes into a different world, acquires new skills, and saves the day. One’s plastic toys and the other’s a cyberpunk dystopia. They have what’s essentially the same mechanics with different window dressing and thus gives them each different narratives.
     
    Look at The Matrix: it filters the Hero’s Journey through a cyberpunk aesthetic and a decidedly blatant Messiah analogy. All these details — the window dressing — lets The Matrix mix in Plato’s Allegory of The Cave and a critique of consumeristic culture. George Lucas’ rendition of the Hero’s Journey (Star Wars, duh) doesn’t lend itself to that commentary — The Matrix's aesthetic is incredibly important to its narrative.
     
    Because The LEGO Movie is about, er, LEGO, it can play fast and loose with its setting and characters (Batman leaves a pirate ship to join Han and Lando in the Millennium Falcon? Awesome!). It also means the film can tap into the general collective consciousness concerning that plastic toy and what it has to do with being a kid. Imagination is a big part of playing with toys, especially LEGO ‘cuz, y’know, you build stuff. Mix that in with the child-like love of storytelling that lends the film’s live action segment its earnest seriousness and you have a wonderful movie that’s simultaneously similar to The Matrix and yet nothing like it. All because the same structure got given a different coating.
     
    This is, in part, why Crazy Taxi works so well. We know that cabbies are in a rush. That’s a given. So it makes sense that if we’re gonna get to play as a cabbie, we’re gonna be rushing about the place. It’s what gives it an urgency that dressing the mechanics up as, say, a postman or a waiter wouldn’t. It’s because of the whole narrative surrounding speeding cabs that makes the game work.
    That and, y’know, it’s just a whole lot of fun.
  15. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 242: Wise Old Masters
     
    I have a very clear memory of being ten or eleven and watching Cartoon Network. I didn’t have cable growing up, so this was at a hotel or someone else’s place. I’d left Singapore and was in that whole growing-up-on-a-ship phase of my life.
     
    Anyway.
     
    Johnny Bravo was on, and for some reason or other the titular character had to learn some martial art or another. So he goes to a dojo, meets the guy, and asks him to teach him “the secrets of the East.”
     
    This took me aback. That was their takeaway? Not, y’know, the whole modern metropolis thing or the food or anything; the old Asian guy teaching some martial art or another was their view of ‘The East’? Also, the heck is up with calling it ‘the East’?
     
    I suppose it’s kind of special to be able to pinpoint your first conscious encounter with systemic racism (special in the way that it’s special you remember what class you failed in High School), but it is certainly something amusing to be aware of. Because, wouldn’t you know it, that is one of the prevailing images of East Asians in popular culture: the wise old master ready to teach you some oriental martial art.
     
    And I suppose that’s one reason why I wasn’t bothered by Tilda Swinton being cast as The Ancient One in Doctor Strange. It’s not just because it adds another woman to male-heavy cast in a male-heavy franchise, but it’s because it moves away from a particular stereotype.
    Now, would it have been great to have an Asian actor cast as The Ancient One? Sure. But I’m sick of Asians having to be in fir into a few prescribed roles (wise old master, funny foreigner, engineer/doctor/smart person). There are these places where stories tend to default to having an Asian character, not unlike how the default everyman is a white dude. The wise old master is so ingrained into the popular consciousness that one of the funnest turns in Batman Begins is that Ken Watanabe isn’t Ra’s al Ghul, but is actually Liam Neeson (uh, eleven year-old spoiler, I guess).
     
    The problem at hand is only letting people be a certain thing. If the only time/only way we let an Asian character be of importance is by making them a wise old master/funny foreigner/smart person, it perpetuates the idea that that’s all they/we are. It’s the same thing as the whole all-Asians-are-martial-artists thing where that is the only thing worth knowing about Asian countries. It’s why I celebrate Crazy Ex-Girlfriend for making an Asian character idiot bro. There is definitely a discussion to be had here about people and roles, but, again, I’m plenty happy with Tilda Swinton in the role, especially because she does such a great job at it. And hey, how often do we get to see women be the wise old masters?
     
    I’m not so sure I’d call it white-washing either. I’m not terribly familiar with Doctor Strange’s backstory in the comics, but there’s little about The Ancient One that seems Asian outside of the, y’know, old master on a mountain top. His race (or gender, for that matter) isn’t too tied to the material: this isn’t kung-fu or karate (s)he’s teaching, it’s magic. Not Chinese magic; magic magic. I understand the problematic nature of taking a character who’s a minority in the source material and making them white in the adaptation, but there’s also the excision of a particularly frustrating stereotype from a narrative at play here. It’s not a simple one-or-the-other predicament, it’s a nuanced, messy situation. One that requires dialogue, not dogma.
     
    Besides, Doctor Strange does decent in diversity elsewhere, with Benedict Wong’s Wong being a particularly enjoyable one-note supporting character (and the source of some of the best gags). Plus, the other sorcerer-students and doctors in the background are noticeably diverse, and the movie is one of few to feature a villain with henchwomen. It doesn’t mean it’s enough, but a cast photo that looks like this is a step in the right direction.
     
    Now, there is room for discussion here and for me to be wrong – there always is. I suppose I’m just happy to see a wise old master that, well, isn’t an Asian guy with a long beard.
  16. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays Not Rants! 066: With Regards to Capes
     
    In Man Of Steel Superman has lost his usual red underwear. Well, more he never has it in the first place in this adaption. It's no wonder why, no one, not even Batman, wears their underwear outside anymore.
     
    That said, Superman still has his cape, something that's seemingly as much an artifact as the underwear thing. Yes, Thor and Loki both have capes, but they're demigods. Batman's cape is explained away as serving not only the effect he creates but a utilitarian purpose as well. Hardly anyone wears capes these days. In The Incredibles, the first superhero deconstruction you saw if you’re my age, Edna Mode goes to great lengths to explain the impracticality of capes in a morbidly comedic sequence.
     
    So why does Superman still have his bright red cape? It's doesn't make much sense (see Edna Mode's list for reasons), yet it's part of his costume and and he doesn't rip it off. More importantly, why did the filmmakers choose to keep the cape? It's iconic, sure, but nothing is sacred in adaptions. Here's the deal: capes are heroic. There's the image of the kid with the towel tied round his neck pretending to be a superhero. That's Superman. He's the Boy Scout, the Kansas-bred all-American hero.
     
    And his cape is an integral part of that. Look at the use of capes in the film. General Zod, when we first see him, is wearing a cape. It doesn't take long, however, for him to shrug it off and, of course, become the villain he is. When we first see Superman in his outfit we first see his red boots and red cape. When Superman meets the military, we once again focus on his cape. His cape is what sets him apart. Zod doesn't have a cape, nor do any of his followers; but Jor-El, Superman's father, does. It's a beautiful visual cue, one that speaks to the basis of our pop culture mythology: the person wearing the cape is a good guy, a hero.
     
    Such is Superman: he's the archetypical superhero. The cape-wearing, evil-fighting man in tights. Contrast him to Joel, from The Last of Us (because that game is amazing and bears referencing). Joel is not a hero, he's not even a good guy. Joel is a desperate man who's more than willing to do horrible things. Joel is a survivor, he acts solely to survive and protect his own interests. Superman, conversely, simply is good and will protect anyone.
     
    So where do we get a narrative? Joel's comes from challenging his interests and upsetting his status quo to see how he reacts. The narrative/arc is clear from the onset, though Naughty Dog makes several bold choices with where to take it. Superman has no obvious arc. He's invincible and infallible; any impending doom or moral dilemma lacks tension because we know Superman can't be hurt and will always do right. After all, he's wearing a cape. So where does the narrative tension come from? How does Man of Steel craft a story that doesn't undermine his character but still delivers an engaging story?
     
    The movie addresses the question of the cape. The story's primary tension comes not from Superman vs. Zod, but rather within Superman himself. Clark Kent must become Superman... Or must he? The Clark Kent we meet is a Clark Kent divided. He has these powers, but should he use them? How should he use them? There lies the conflict; the tension is the question of should Clark Kent wear the cape or hide in anonymity. Granted, we already know the answer, but it's a far more interesting arc than "will he survive?". Once that question is answered, however, a new one arises: to what lengths will Superman go in pursuit of what the cape means? How far will Superman go to protect someone?
     
    Zack Snyder has described Man of Steel as the least ironic movie he's made. It might be the most honest recent superhero movie besides Captain America, there's no attempt to give Superman the dark and gritty treatment so common in our era of antiheroes. Where The Last of Us gives us an antihero who rings closer to a villain, Man of Steel presents a hero with no doubt of his goodness. So Superman wears a cape.
  17. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 058: With Regards To Motivation

    I have a research paper I should be writing. I also have a stack of books near me ranging from On Free Choice and The Will by Saint Augustine, Iron Man and Philosophy, Campbell’s The Hero with A Thousand Faces, Finding Serenity, The Existential Joss Whedon, my own annotated copy of Life of Pi, The Philosophy of Joss Whedon, and a few others too. These are what people in academia call ‘sources’. I think I know what I’ll be writing about, but I’m not quite sure yet.
     
    So, once again, I’ll be writing an essay (that’s not a rant) to hone in on it.
     
    One of the ‘texts’ (a fancy word for story, apparently) I’ll be looking at is Uncharted 2. Because I love said game and the class is called ‘Adventure Narratives’ so it must be done. I wanna explore the tension of Nathan Drake between the two women: Chloe Frazer and Elena Fisher. No, not the love triangle, but rather how they represent his inner conflict. Chloe, who’ll pursue her goal with a keen sense of self-preservation versus Elena, who’s sense of justice overrides everything else. They represent Nate’s struggle to choose between what’s smart and what’s right. It’s fascinating, really, a layer of depth you wouldn’t expect in a video game. Ultimately, Nate chooses to do what’s right, to follow his duty.
    (Note: Elena and Chloe are far more interesting than just representing Nate’s duality. But that’ll be in an essay for Games 101)
     
    So maybe I’ll write about the duality of man/the hero, how the hero must choose between right and wrong. Interesting, but let’s read further.
     
    In Christopher Robichaud’s essay “Can Iron Man Atone For Tony Stark’s Wrongs” he explores the duality of Tony Stark and Iron Man. Tony Stark was the one who screwed up his life and put weapons in the hands of criminals. Iron Man is the one fighting to make things right. Iron Man is an atoner; he does the hero thing to try and redeem who he was as Tony Stark. There’s his motivation, and that’s why he does what he does.
     
    Wait. So maybe instead of looking at the tension, let’s ask why an adventure hero does what they do.
     
    In Life of Pi (which is a book I read for this class, and I must include one from the reading list), Pi tries his best to stay a moral man adrift in the lifeboat because he’s a religious man three times over. His motivation is to please God, to serve him even when things look bleak.
     
    Swell. Now let’s look at Firefly, because this is my research paper and if I want to write about Firefly for class then I darn well will. K. Dale Koontz wrote the book Faith and Choice in the Works of Joss Whedon which is proving to be a fascinating read that I’d like to give a proper look at when I’m not hunting for sources. In it he explores Mal’s faith and morality, exploring why he does what he does. In becomes apparent that after Mal’s loss of faith at Serenity Valley, the man chooses to rely only on himself and his crew. Threaten them, you threaten him (see Ariel, 1.09). But why? Koontz believes that underneath his calloused shell, Mal has a wealth of love for his ship and crew. It’s love that makes Mal take action, it’s love that drives him. This is driven home at the end of Serenity, when Mal tells River what the first rule of flying is: “Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.” (Whedon) Love is at the core of Mal.
     
    But does this motivation of love apply to the others too? Pi’s religious reverence is certainly fueled by a love for God, so love is there too. That’s an easy one.
     
    Nathan Drake chooses to do what’s right perhaps out of a love for Elena and her sense of justice. We see this echoed in Drake’s Deception when he apologizes for letting her down. His love for her means he wants to do what’s right by her. Hence his going after Lazarevic and being the hero, like what she would do.
     
    It’s with Tony Stark that things get hairy. Or does it? In the film Iron Man, he saves the day at last when he stops caring solely about himself and is willing to love his fellow man.
     
    So I guess it’s love, love of something more than onself that motivates heroes to, well, be heroes.
     
    Now let’s write this paper.
  18. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 017: Worlds Need Rules
     
    I like writing. No, not just my weekly essay (which is certainly not a rant), but fiction. Sometimes I write stuff grounded firmly in this world, but I really enjoy building worlds of fantasy or science fiction. I’ve got a science fiction side project I like to fiddle with here and there and I run a fantasy RPG with some friends. For both of these I’ve made intricate worlds with some semblance of a history and culture. But just as important as the setting of a story is the exact nature of the world. Any ‘magical’ force, be it mystical or scientific, needs rules to go with it.
     
    Mass Effect is set several centuries in the future, after humanity has made contact with not only the technology of an ancient race that came before but with the various alien species that populate the world today. How does this work? The titular mass effect fields that can increase or decrease the mass of a volume of space time. This technology allows usual science fiction tropes like shields, faster-than-light travel, and artificial gravity; or provides mundane justifications like how buildings can be so tall or preventing spaceships from being hit by space debris.
    What makes this so wonderful isn’t just the encyclopedia’s worth of pseudo-science, it’s that everything within the universe adheres to this rules. Because of this we can’t have, say, a ship the size of the Normandy obliterating a planet. No matter how much you’d want to chalk it up to a mass effect field, the rules of the universe prevent it. The writers have their rules to limit the extent of their technology in the world. So long as they don’t supersede these rules, the universe works.
     
    Harry Potter is about magic. Simple. You say a spell (or do it silently if you’re good enough) and magic happens. Feeling lazy? Accio remote!* Someone’s making you really mad? Avada Kadavra. Of course, that means you really do mean it and have created a very permanent solution to what was probably a very minor problem, you overreacting overreactor. But want to make yourself immortal, or make someone love you? No can do. That’s the rules of the universe.
    Prior to writing the books, J.K. Rowling spent years detailing exactly how magic would work in her world. She had to set limits and rules on just how it worked. Something couldn’t come from nothing, for example. The world still has to function, magic or not.
     
    *Yes, I know wizards don’t use remotes. Relax.
     
    The ‘physics’ of bending are established fairly early in Avatar: The Last Airbender. Like how benders need the element to control it (except for firebenders who channel their own chi into fire). That’s the main rule and anything that the characters do follows that paradigm. Were Katara to suddenly conjure up a burst of water in a desert our suspension of disbelief would be broken. Not because she can control water, but because the show broke their own rules.
     
    We like to get lost in other worlds. But we need these worlds to be believable. This doesn’t mean whatever phlebotinum or plot device you have must be ‘realistic’ or particularly grounded in reality, it means that if you say something is a certain way, than that is the way it must be. We, the audience, will willing suspend our disbelief so long as the fantastical element remains internally consistent. Call it Aristotle’s Law Of Identity or Magic A is magic A, it’s the foundation of a believable world.
     
    And if we can’t believe it then we won’t be invested.
  20. Ta-metru_defender
    So for gins and griggles (but actually for practice) I'm working on a full length screenplay. Because I figured it'd be easier to start from something I decided to write a Captain Marvel movie, because she's the best (this was back before they announced that they were actually make one). Much procrastinating later and I finished a beat sheet a couple weeks ago and am going to script.
     
    This is the first script I've written since "Ghosts That We Knew" last August and kinda the first bit of fiction I've really worked on properly all year (been busy, okay?).
     
    As such there's a lot running through my mind:

    How do people talk?
    Why do people not talk during some conversations?
    What's a good snack to get from a bodega?
    How do people leave conversations?
    What does a nine-year-old sound like?
    What is the proper use of CONTINUOUS in a slugline?
    How do people say goodbye?
    No, no, keep direction out of your action.
    What is a conversation?
    Oh god I'm taking forever to get to the inciting incident.
    Hey look, this character's actually developing a voice!
    Holy fish it's taking forever to write ten pages.
    Is that a natural way to say someone's name?
    How much description should I give of a location?
    Man, I gotta read more scripts.

  21. Ta-metru_defender
    So I need to write a short story for my Creative Writing class. It's due by mid-October.
     
    What to write? Well, I could write another episode/chapter of my science fiction serial. Thing is, I will for my science fiction class anyway (and yes, that is a thing. I'm studying science fiction for college credit. Current reading assignment is Ender's Game.).
     
    Alternately, I could brush off this old story about a couple running away that I never finished and actually finish it. Probably rewrite it. It's got a good idea, just requires polishing, fleshing out and, y'know, finishing.
     
    Then there's this other idea I have. Writing it will be like digging out my heart with a wooden spoon and baking it. It won't be an easy story to write (and will probably require a beer or two) but it's one that I guess has to be written. I don't really want to write it (and I will hate it) but it's one that I suppose I need to write.
     
    ...
    I guess the wooden spoon it is then.
  22. Ta-metru_defender

    Writing On Writing

    By Ta-metru_defender,


    blogging?
    I mentioned last entry that I was doing NaNo. I'm a glutton for punishment and seem to only be able to really put words on the page when threatened by an arbitrary deadline that hangs over my head like a blunted Sword of Damocles. I'm rewriting a novel into something that should hopefully be fit for consumption by some dear friends who've offered to give it a read.
    But in the meantime.
    Over the summer a short story I wrote got sold! It found a home at Khoreo Magazine, a lovely press that also produced an audiobook edition. You can read it on their website here, though fair warning, it's not quite BZP safe, so ask your parents' permission before going online and all that. And yeah, that's my ~real name~ on it since the internet is now a place where you reveal who you are and anonymity is an illusion that doesn't sell ad money.
    I also got a really cool key image:

    Still wigs me out that I'm technically a paid and published author (and a member of the SFWA now!). It's been a long journey since those days spent writing comedies here on BZP nearly nineteen years ago. On that note, what until you see where my days making cartoons here got me.
  23. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 254: Xenophobia, Science Fiction, and, eventually, Hope
     
    I didn’t learn the term ‘xenophobia’ from the news, the radio, or a textbook. Didn’t come up in class or any place you’d expect. Rather, I learnt the word ‘xenophobia’ from the old Star Wars Expanded Universe books.
     
    Was in the context of various political factions being distinctly anti-alien. Now, the xenophobia usually stemmed from the Empire and their staunch humans-first attitude and view of anyone who wasn’t as being intrinsically lesser, but some players in the New Republic also held xenophobic beliefs which made working together harder. Key thing was, these people were either villains or antagonists and their belief that someone who looked and thought differently was worth less than a person was wrong. The heroes, Luke, Leia, and even Han, weren’t about that; it was Emperor Palpatine and his ilk who pushed a xenophobic agenda. For a kid in his early teens recently immigrated to the US, it was a pretty clear distinction: good guys aren’t afraid of or mean to people because they’re different.
     
    Now we all know that aliens and hyperdrives and Jedi are fictitious. But, xenophobia, as I would find out later, is a real term used by real people to describe real issues. The idea behind it, though — treating different people differently and meanly — was something I knew was unquestionably wrong because, well, Star Wars books. That and I was, y’know, a half-Singaporen cultural immigrant to South Carolina. But you get the idea.
     
    I’m loathe to call Star Wars and science fiction in general ‘morality plays.’ Heck, I’m loathe to call any good fiction a ‘morality play’ because good fiction doesn’t preach at you. What science fiction does particularly well is, well, it says something without saying something. Diego Luna, in an interview with Vanity Fair, said that the wonderful thing about setting Star Wars in a galaxy far, far away was “…whenever you get too personal, you can say, "No, I'm not talking about you. This is a galaxy far, far away." But with this tool, you can actually make the most effective comments on the reality in which you're living.”* Learning that species isn’t a demarcation for the capacity to do good is good practice for knowing that skin color and country of origin don’t have any bearing on whether someone is ‘good.’
     
    And that’s the thing about stories: they’re practice. See, folks smarter than me have been trying to figure out why humanity does this whole storytelling thing. One theory is that stories are practice for interactions, a sort of simulation. When we read, we experience it ourselves. It’s science, since there are studies that “…suggest when we experience fiction are neurons are firing much as they would if we were actually faced with Sophie’s choice or if we were taking a relaxing shower and a killer suddenly tore down the curtain” (pg 63 of The Storytelling Animal by Jonathan Gottschall, if you’re wondering). Stories are practice. They’re parables, where you can learn something by living something in a different way. As Gottschall says, “if you want a message to burrow into a human mind, work it into a story” (118).
     
    Back to science fiction. Reading stories about the real world can be tough, because seeing the awful we know exists in real life existing again isn’t always the funnest thing. Science fiction (and fantasy, etc) are reality adjacent, and so have more leeway. Ursula K. LeGuin can explore classism and sexual identity without pointing a finger at anyone for being a bigot. It becomes a safe space to discuss complex topics and live experiences you wouldn’t ordinarily. Stories can change you, can impact you because, well, the nature of fiction is that it strives to put you in that place. A good book has you working with the writer to empathize and live the narrative first hand. You can’t read a good book and come out entirely unchanged.
     
    And the fantasy of science fiction means that there is a quick gratification to that hope. You don’t have to wait years and years on the edge to know that good will triumph over evil, that diversity beats xenophobia; you just gotta reach the end of the book.
  24. Ta-metru_defender

    Yellow (流星)

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 336: Yellow (流星)
     
    I have A Lot of thoughts about the movie adaption of Crazy Rich Asians. Far more thoughts that I’ve had time to write down. Much of that is wrapped up in the fact that it’s set in Singapore and I have a very complicated relationship with that country, owing to it, well, being where I was born and the odd circumstances with which I’ve found myself returning there for the past decade or so.
     
    So this blog post is not about that.
     
    Rather, it’s about a song that shows up towards the end of the movie, Coldplay’s "Yellow." Except it’s not; it’s a cover the song, in Chinese; "流星" [liú xīng]. Now, I do really like "Yellow," as I do a lot of Coldplay’s music; and I really like it when covers put a spin on things (Run River North’s cover of The Killer’s "
    " is nothing short of incredible). But "流星" is an interesting thing, it’s not just a cover, it’s also been rewritten in another language. A language I happen to kinda sorta speak. 
    Chinese, well, Mandarin Chinese if you wanna get specific, is an odd thing for me. I didn’t speak it at home growing up, owing mostly to having a mother who doesn’t speak it. It’s a language I learnt in school, and mostly used only in class. Chinese was my worst class, at that, one where I thought a C was a good grade and routinely pulled very low grades — grades low enough that I still remember them twenty years later. Elsewise, I’d only use it when ordering food ("Uncle, 一碗鱼丸面加辣椒") or in smattering when talking to my grandmother.
     
    It’s one that I’ve gotten better at in bursts; I can follow along with a conversation to a certain extent and can interject comments into dinner conversations with the extended family, often to their amusement since I’m very much the Caucasian nephew on that side. Working in retail in New York has meant that I’m the go-to Mandarin speaker who gets to answer all the questions Chinese tourists have, which often sees me finding very basic ways to say more complex things ("每年他们做好的房子，这是十年最好的房子.")
     
    Point is, I’m not really good at Chinese, and haven’t really done too much to get better at it. Chinese pop songs fall far outside the usual scope of music I listen to, and most of the Chinese cinema I watch is of the Hong Kong variety and so in Cantonese. Not much impetus to learn.
     
    And then along comes this song, one I’ve added to my iTunes and listened to way more times than I care to admit. I understand parts of it, and reading the lyrics replete with pinyin and a translation helps. I really like it, far more than I thought I would/could. It’s surreal to hear a familiar tune with lyrics in a language I don’t speak near as well as I really should. It’s surreal to want to listen to a song in a language that’s meant so much grief for me, be it through bad grades or the othering that my lack of understanding sometimes creates. It’s surreal to like this.
     
    I’m still processing a response to that movie and the inevitable blog post that’s gonna come along with it. Part of the reason it’s taking a while is because so much of the movie ties in to, well, me as myself. The older I get, the more I feel like much of life is processing stuff, processing what’s happening and what’s happened, processing who you are. I’m mixed, I’m biracial, I’m half Singaporean-Chinese, half Norwegian-American, but my Spanish is better than my Chinese. Identity is a weird thing for me, partially out of my own reckoning with myself, and partially out of my reckoning with others’ interpretations of that self. It’s not something I expect to be resolved anytime soon. But "流星" is a gorgeous song, and I like that I like it.
  25. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 132: Yet To Do it Again
     
    I’ve only played The Last of Us once. Well, only played it through all the way once. I started a New Game+ about a year ago, but still haven’t finished it. It’s odd, I know, considering how much I write about it (plus two final papers and counting). Oh, I play the multiplayer every now and then and I do look up cutscenes for reference, I just haven’t played it through again.
     
    Don’t get me wrong, I want to; it’s just a big commitment. Not time-wise (though there is that), but emotionally. The Last of Us hit me to my core. It was a game that really affected me, one of those experiences that stick with you. Every time I went back to the story I knew what I was in for and, well, I guess I wasn’t sure if I was ready.
     
    Not everything’s like this. I wanna give BioShock: Infinite and Spec Ops: The Line (both plenty dark and intense games) another playthrough if/when I have the time. Halo: Reach I’ve played the story a bunch of times, as with the Uncharted games and several others. So why not The Last of Us? I guess it’s similar to how I feel about Fruitvale Station. Again, loved the movie, not sure if I could watch it again for a good long time. It really stuck with me. Maybe I can’t easily go back to The Last of Us or Fruitvale because of the emotional commitment.
     
    But what about something that’s not gut-wrenchingly sad? I’ve only watched Firefly all the way through three times. I’ve seen some episodes more, watching with friends and such, but only sat down to watch the whole series three times. Which I weird, because I love the show. Firefly, I think, is because it can be deeply personal. It’s the sort of thing that’s treasured and loved.
     
    Which, again, doesn’t make a lot of sense. I’ll watch The Avengers or The Princess Bride on a whim, both movies I love. So why is Firefly this exception? I think this makes Firefly like The Last of Us here. I love both, and I enjoy both (I wouldn’t say watching Fruitvale was enjoyable, but it was still great). The thing is, I’m incredibly attached to both, and very much invested. I guess it’s not something I can take lightly.
     
    So is this good? As you may have noticed, The Last of Us has had incredibly staying power woth me, and I keep up with any news concerning it. Firefly remains one of my favorite shows and I will quote it incessantly in conversation. So yes. They’re incredibly important and special stories to me. In that sense then, they succeed. I don’t have to watch them a lot, but they’re still there.
     
    Apologies for the short and rambley post this week. Been swamped with a lot of pre-production stuff this week. And I’m still trying to find time to play Destiny.
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