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Ta-metru_defender

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Blog Entries posted by Ta-metru_defender

  2. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 245: But What About The Men???
     
    I write a lot about women in fiction on this blog, to the point where I’ve had friends term it a feminist blog. But if you’ve ever wondered “jeez, Josh, you keep talking about women this and feminism that, what about the men!?”, well, this rant essay is for you.
     
    One of the many things I like about (500) Days of Summer, is Tom. Not that he’s a particularly great guy or anything like that, but that with Tom we have a male protagonist who is allowed to be emotionally vulnerable. Misguided as he is, he's afforded the latitude to be ecstatic and heartbroken with everything in the middle bearing shades of another. Put colloquially, Tom gets to feel the feels, and the movie doesn't punish him for it.
     
    See, fiction typically doesn't give male characters emotional breadth. Think of just about any other romcom; sure, Matthew McConaughey and Patrick Dempsey get sad and have their epiphanies, but do the films explore those feelings to the extent that (500) Days of Summer does?
     
    There's a tendency in fiction (and it's a tendency reflected from reality) for being emotional to be seen as feminine, and thus unsightly in a male character. There's a a reason "man-up" is said to guys who are scared or weepy, and not when someone's winning. After all, we all know real men don't cry. There are of course the occasions for manly tears: sacrifice, like the titular soldier crying over what others sacrificed for him at the end of Saving Private Ryan; brotherhood, like Channing Tatum crying at his partner's funeral in End of Watch; or good old dead loved ones, like Maximus’ breakdown in Gladiator. These are the moments when manly men, pushed over by grief and patriotic duty, cry manly tears. But heartbreak over a breakup? That usually gets us a scene like in That 70s Show, with Eric Foreman lying in bed after breaking up with Donna, his sorrow played for laughs. It’s funny because Eric’s not the manliest of men and here he is trying to enact a form of masculine sadness but is really just pathetic.
     
    Compare that portrayal to (500) Days of Summer when we’re allowed to wallow with Tom while he deals with his breakup. We see the repeated dullness of Tom’s life and how life seems to have lost meaning. There are still some great gags, but we're laughing with Tom out of commiseration, rather than laughing at him as we do Eric. The film's commitment to exploring Tom's feelings, oft accentuated by its stylized editing and use of voice over, means that we are firmly with him here. It's not ‘manly’ – and it doesn't have to be – but he's far from pathetic.
     
    It's important here to clarify that unmanly tears do not mean emotional breadth. Cooper in Interstellar breaks down and weeps while going through the archived messages from his daughter, but it doesn't affect him as a character. Cooper's still gonna do what Cooper is gonna do: space stuff. Interstellar never explores his emotional state, he remains a stalwart explorer.
     
    I cite as many examples as I can because it's so prevalent else-wise. This is one of those things where the exception proves the rule. Scott Pilgrim is such an offbeat romantic lead, what without his conviction and confidence and all that. Instead Scott Pilgrim vs The World devotes much of its runtime to dealing with Scott's issues and baggage, affirming that those are important things, even if you're a guy. But Scott Pilgrim is in many ways a deconstruction, as is (500) Days of Summer. These movies take the romantic comedy and play with it, in the process giving us male characters who are allowed to feel the feels. Starting to see how atypical this is?
     
     
    Men, of course, feel (Duh). But it goes against typical societal norms to explore or display those feelings, especially if they're really feel-y. Why? Cuz gender roles and the patriarchy cut both ways. The same force that prescribes women to be passive supporters also insists that men be unfeeling bastions. Aaaand yep, here's my twist: this is actually another rant essay on feminism. The same criticism that asks “Hey, why can’t we let a woman be the everyman?” is the same one that says “Hey, why do men always have to be unfeeling?”. So yeah, let’s see more Tom Hansens in fiction, though preferably ones who are less awful humans. And that’s what’s about the men.
  4. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 243: Of Hope in Stories
     
    I've never been a huge fan of tragedies. Don't get me wrong, I love stories like Othello, Whiplash, and Sicario; but those aren't the ones I count my favorite stories.
     
    I sometimes joke that I tell hopeful stories because if I want stories of injustice and despair, I can just read the news. I skim headlines and it’s not hard to see Othello and Chinatown being reenacted in current events. There is, of course, a greatness to using tragedy to comment on the human condition and all that. But sometimes, you need more. As a kid bullied at school for being different, I would find solace in fantastical worlds where, well, things were different.
     
     
    That’s how I opened my rationale (a thesis of sorts wherein I describe the focus of my four years of study at NYU Gallatin). Which, if you read my blog, recounting a scene from The Lord of The Rings in the first paragraph of my thesis really shouldn’t surprise you. I then go on to yammer on for the next several pages about the importance of stories as a means to define identity and convey truths. And something that stories can convey like no other is hope. They're where we get to watch good triumph over evil and see hope win. It's the total catharsis that Aristotle talks about in Poetics, or the ultimate boon of John Campbell. It’s that win, that “we did it!”
     
    So why do those moments work? Why is Frodo and Sam preserving – and eventually overcoming Sauron – so powerful?
     
    We know things by their opposite. Joy means nothing if we don’t know despair. In fiction, the bleaker things seem, the greater the catharsis of victory will be. Heck, Sam says it right there in his monologue, “when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer.” The plot of The Lord of The Rings is a literal journey into darkness, with Frodo and Sam trekking into Mordor while Aragorn and the others face off an overwhelming army. Things couldn’t really look bleaker. There’s a reason Luke Skywalker only destroys the Death Star when it’s about to blow up Yavin IV: it’s the bleakest moment. The Return of The Jedi illustrates it even better; Luke’s decision to throw away his lightsaber and turn down the dark side doesn’t come when Palpatine is taunting him, it comes after he attempted to attack the Emperor and went on to give into his anger during his fight against Darth Vader. Luke’s rejection of evil only comes after we’ve seen him travel down that path, making it all the more powerful.
     
    I think that may be one reason why The Empire Strikes Back stands as arguably the best Star Wars film. We end the movie with Han in carbonite, Luke missing a hand, and the revelation that Vader is Luke’s father. But then Luke gets a new hand, a reformed Lando flies off with Chewbacca to find Han, and we see Luke and Leia standing in the medical bay of a Nebulon-B Frigate that’s just one ship in the Rebel fleet. As bleak as an ending is, there’s hope. We know that this isn’t the end for them, we know they’ll keep going because they’re holding on to something.
     
    I love stories. I really do. I love how they make Sam’s beautiful monologue in The Two Towers feel perfectly natural and earned. I love how these other worlds — because every piece of fiction, no matter how realistic, takes place in another world — show us things about our own. I yearn for stories imbued with hope because, against it all, that’s how I want to see the world: one where hope and love will triumph. There is a time and place for tragedy, but there are days when you need to be reminded that there is good in this world, and it’s worth fighting for.
  6. 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.
  7. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 241: *General Internet Frustration*
     
    Y'know, I had plenty of ideas about what this blog post was gonna be about. The casting choices in Dr. Strange verses Kubo and The Two Strings (with some Uncharted 4 thrown in) or maybe one about how Silk, a comic about an Asian woman with Spider-Man powers, is not a story about race but still tells a uniquely Asian story.
     
    But then internet people had to be spoiled and cruel to Chelsea Cain because she dared write a feminist comic, to the point where she decided she’d rather leave Twitter than deal with that noise.
     
    So this blog post is about those idiots.
     
    Here's the quick and dirty recap: the last issue of writer Chelsea Cain’s (and artist Kate Niemczyk) wonderful Mockingbird series (which I love) features Mockingbird herself, Bobbi Morse, on its cover proudly sporting a t-shirt that reads "Ask Me About My Feminist Agenda." It's a great cover, adding a nice exclamation point to a book with an already decidedly feminist bent. Over the past week since the book's release, however, The Internet hasn't been too happy about it, and subsequently people on Twitter actively have been harassing her for it.
     
    The sad truth is, this isn't new, neither for comics nor nerd culture at large. Marvel as a whole gets a lot of crud for them "pushing social justice down readers' throats" (that is, promoting diversity in their recent titles), and there was the horrible attacks on Leslie Jones for her role int he new Ghostbusters over the summer. Ultimately, it keeps coming down to the same thing: more people (especially women and minorities) want a more active, representative role in nerd culture and folks (especially straight white guys) don't wanna share.
     
    And look, I get it.
     
    I really do.
     
    I'm a lifelong nerd, well before it became cool to be one. I got picked on in real life for reading Star Wars books (and reading in general), being good at schoolwork, and spending my weekends playing video games. Online forums were my social sphere. It's jarring to see a title and its hallmarks go from peripheral to mainstream. In recent years there’s been a steady merging of nerd culture into popular culture.
     
    And I'll admit, I bristle at it sometimes; I get protective of these stories: they’re mine! These newcomers just getting into Star Wars and superheroes didn't have to deal with being weird; why do they get to choose to be called nerds? They're your toys and you don't like the neighbors coming over and making Darth Vader team up with the Power Rangers to fight the Decepticons. They’re our stories, we’ve claimed them as our own.
     
    But they’re stories in contention are stories we like (hopefully) because they affected us deeply, why shouldn’t I want someone else to have that experience? Star Wars was for me a galaxy of possibility, where, y’know, things were great even if high school wasn’t. If making Rey and Finn the new face of the franchise opens the door for others to have that experience, I’m down. Mockingbird is a book where a woman can be the kickbutt scientist-super-spy without being objectified (and instead the men are!). This summer’s Ghostbusters let women see themselves as the funny unhinged ghost hunters, like how the original let you do the same, my proverbial straight, white, male straw man.
     
    But when every story used to cater to you, my straw man, it seems like you’re being alienated from the fandoms you sustained when more and more stories don’t. When Ms. Marvel is a Muslim, Pakistani immigrant and Iron Man is a black woman, it’s weird, as a longtime fan, to not see yourself reflected as the main character. But the point is, no one group has a monopoly on wanting to connect with stories — not everyone feeling ostracized is a straight white guy. As someone who is an immigrant, it’s exciting to see elements of my own story pop up in a comic book like Ms. Marvel. There has to be space for stories for everyone.
     
    We need diversity. And I love Marvel for pushing it (and, y’know, reflecting the real world).
     
    What we don’t need is this bullying bs that crops up over and over again. White guys aren’t the center of the world anymore; creators like Chelsea Cain can take a character who’s always been a supporting player and spin her into a hero in her own, feminist right. The stories, all of them, never belonged exclusively to any particular person or group of people, they’ve been ours this whole time. It’s time to share.
     
    ---
     
    I wish I could end this post here.
     
    But there’s the fact that Chelsea Cain is targeted because she’s a woman writing in the comics industry, an industry whose fans will protest and harass at any provocation. There’s no ignoring the repulsive sexism at work here (and, in Leslie Jones’ case, the racism too). It’s abhorrent and disgusting; things shouldn’t be this way. Harassing and attacking a woman just because she enters into a sphere usually dominated by straight white guys is childish. It’s stupid. It’s mean.
     
    I don’t rant about feminism as much as I used to (haven’t you heard? This is the year of diversity at Essays, Not Rants!), but this is why feminism is important. It’s ‘cuz of cowpoop like this.
     
     
     
    When they announced the cover of Mockingbird #8 a few months ago, I quickly bought my own feminist agenda t-shirt (which I love). And my feminist agenda isn’t just putting more strong, well-written women in my stories and supporting others (and women) who do; it’s not putting up with this cyprinidae.
     

     
    .
  8. Ta-metru_defender

    Ghost Ship

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Another RPG session tomorrow!
     
    Unlike last time, this time I've got a detailed plan moving forward (I'm currently writing Page 4). The party finds an abandoned Old Republic military ship in the middle of nowhere. There's gonna be battle droids, droidekas, and a fight on foot against a vulture droid all while taking part in an old fashioned dungeon crawl through an Acclamator. Which, it turns out, due to a hyperdrive malfunction kinda time travelled!
     
    So Clone Troopers! Who were recently given Order 66! Which may make them less than happy with a certain almost-Jedi in the party!
     
    What do they find on the ship? Proof of Palpatine's machinations to become Emperor by controlling both the Separatists and the Republic!
     
    But wait, there's more! On the way out they run into an Emperor's Hand named... GERALD MARCION. With Death Troopers. Oh, and maybe an Imperial Officer or two who wants them dead.
     
    I can't wait to see how these guys take the adventure off the rails.
  9. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 240: Bang for A Buck
     
    Movie tickets here in New York short you around $15 a pop. Which is a lot for a movie, but we go anyway because, y'know, movies. So it's worth it, price of admission and all that for those two hours.
     
    Conversely, your typical new video game costs $60 at base, ignoring deluxe editions, special editions, and inevitable DLC. Which makes it come up to around a lot; Star Wars Battlefront totals out $110 if you buy the bundle for all the expansions, which I haven't though I really enjoy the game and would appreciate the depth those expansions offer. $50 seems too steep, y'know?
     
    The same goes for Destiny's newest expansion, Rise of Iron; it's a hearty forty quid and even though I've already bought all the other expansions, I'm not quite ready to invest more cash. I don't know if it's worth it.
     
    Then I check my playtime in the game. I've invested over 210 hours into Destiny. Holy cyprinidae (I didn't check the number until just now). For how much I've paid, that's better than 2 hours for each dollar I've spent. Or, in perspective, $1,575 worth of movie tickets. By that metric, Destiny has so far proven almost $1,500 cheaper. So picking up Rise of Iron seems like a steal.
     
    So that's it then; entertaining-hour per dollar is the way of measuring whether something is a good deal. Buy more games, go to the cinema less often. Easy.
     
    But what about theatre?
     
    Plays don't come cheap, Full-price tickets for Hamilton will short you around a $100 (roughly Battlefront+expansions, if you're keeping track) for a single viewing of a two-and-a-half hour musical. Discounted tickets to shows like Fun Home and Vietgone, plays I've raved about, are $30 a piece. If we go back to our entertaining-hour per dollar metric, then plays are crazy expensive, far more than a movie and definitely a video game.
     
    That is, of course, if you take things at a mathematical face value.
     
    Was Fun Home worth those thirty dollars? Oh man, yes. Seeing something live has a different aura than watching something on a screen. With a play, I figure you’re not paying your money for the story, but to have an experience. Hamilton tickets fetch such a high price because it’s such an experience to watch it live. Similarly, the wonder of watching Fun Home done in the round, with the stage playing the role it does and being in a room full of other people is part of the ticket. And my own experience of Vietgone wouldn’t be the same without a particularly great piece of live feedback from an elderly woman during the introduction.
     
    The whole entertaining-hour per dollar metric really falls apart as soon as you realize that entertainment isn’t just a blanket term. Of the over two-hundred hours I’ve spent playing Destiny, I can point to the experience of spending six hours venturing into the Vault of Glass with a six-person fireteam of strangers online and beating Atheon as being a highlight worth my purchase. That was an experience, of retries, strategizing, and, eventually, victory. It’s hard to capture that lightning in a bottle again, and that might be why I”m holding off on Rise of Iron.
     
    When I buy a game, I’m after an experience. I want to be thrilled by Uncharted 4 or haunted by The Last of Us; if I get that, the money was worth it. Same goes for the stage; I want to see something that I could only have seen on stage, something made special by how and where it’s done. I’ll shell out a hundred bucks on a LEGO set because I love the process of putting it together (with a record playing and a nice glass of whiskey).
     
    It’s why when Rogue One tickets go on sale I’m spending the extra money to see it in IMAX 3D: I want the experience, I wanna be there. And at the end of the day, that’s what you’re really paying for.
  10. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 239: Am I Making Sense?
     
    Sometimes I wonder about the accessibility of this blog. Not literally, I mean “Essay Snot Rants dot net” is really easy to remember. I’m talking about the content here.
     
    Sure, I talk about movies a lot. And a lot of the times those movies are blockbusters. You’ve got your discussions on why Rey is the best in The Force Awakens, your discussions on how Age of Ultron portrayed masculinity, and the close reading of an epic monologue from Pacific Rim. Popular movies being discussed deeply! But then you’ve got my oddly well thought-out in-depth analyses of dumb, underperforming
    . So it balances out, there. 
    But then I’ve talked about comics like Mockingbird, which, alright, comics are kinda mainstream, but not as much as movies or tv, but probably more so than Don Quixote or trying to find the middle of the venn diagram between Borderlands 2 players and those who have read Jacques the Fatalist. And then last week I prattled on about an off-Broadway play that had just started previews in New York.
     
    Now, that last one is where things get tricky. Most everything I talk about on this blog is readily available. Streaming services like Netflix or old-fashioned piracy makes movies and tv easily watchable; video games are sold everywhere, as are comics and books to an extent. But something like Vietgone is trickier; it’s a far more exclusive experience of a story. So if I wanna talk about it and how it uses language to personalize the immigrant experience, I gotta use more words to introduce the work and describe what I’m talking about before I can actually jump in to discussing why what I’m talking about is relevant.
     
    Which kinda of begs the question: how important is it for stories to be accessible? And I don’t just mean plays here, I’m also thinking of video games.
     
    Hear me out.
     
    To watch a play there either has to be a recording of it available (of which there isn’t for, say, Fun-Home or Vietgone) or you have to be somewhere where it’s showing (like New York) and be able to afford the price of admission.
     
    To play a video game there either has to be a recording of it available (which is, but then there’s a lot of gameplay you’re watching, not playing) or you have to have a system capable of playing that game (so, a PS4 for Uncharted 4) and, in addition, be able to beat said game.
     
    But the inaccessibility of a story doesn’t necessarily make it less important. I’ve heard Ulysses jokingly referred to as the final boss of literature, but it’s also one of my favorite books for the beauty it lends to the everyday. It is a shame that I can’t refer to it as casually as I do Iron Man, but it doesn’t make the story any less worthwhile.
     
    So am I making sense? Or is this just me prattling on about where stories get told? To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. There are so many stories out there, so many that I love but can’t share with someone due to importance of being there. Fun-Home closed on Broadway, so if you see it you won’t see the one I saw, and watching a video is different than being present. Similarly, a video playthrough of Uncharted 4 won't do justice to the experience of being able to explore Nathan Drake’s house.
     
    Maybe this is related to what I wrote a couple weeks ago about how books are a conversation with the reader that creates a personal experience. Maybe it’s just about how stories are so related to who and where you are. I’ll never heard the stories your family told you the way they were told, but does that make them any less? Sure, that bedtime story isn’t The Princess Bride, and it’s nowhere near as accessible as that movie, but that doesn’t make it less important.
     
    Because those stories matter and make sense to you, and I guess that’s enough.
     
    Writer’s Note: Woah. This one turned out ramble-er than I expected. Might be because I’m tired from a six day work week and finishing up post on The Conduits (remember that?). In any case, this rant (definitely a rant), is getting the bloggish tag.
  13. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 237: The Give And Take of Books
     
    When I was 13 I visited a slave castle in Takoradi, Ghana. Which is a weird sentence to type, but kinda standard given the whole grew-up-on-a-ship-thing. It was sobering, seeing something you’d read about in history in person. But at the same time, for me, something firmly in the past. What had happened there was firmly in the was.
     
    Now, I recently finished Yaa Gyasi’s exceptional Homegoing. Early on, a slave castle on Africa’s coast plays an important role, setting-wise. Naturally, this conjured up my memories of that old castle. Books have a way of doing that, where the prose merges with the reader’s imagination to create a world in between. Written stores, more so than a more visual medium, rely on a dialogue between the reader and the text. Where film or tv show the viewer what something is, a writer can only describe it and hopes the reader meets them halfway. In a weird way, written stories are a lot like video games: both require the consumer to be an active participant. In video games, if you can’t beat that one boss, you won’t get to continue on with the story (as my years long quest as a child to find out how Mega Man X4 ended proves). Similarly, if you can’t parse a book’s prose, you won’t get through it. It’s very easy for Ulysses to not make sense, given how friggin’ dense it is. The impetus is on the reader to bring what they know to the table, and put the work in to help the writer create the effect.
     
    So Homegoing progresses in a beautiful, heartbreaking fashion, creating a narrative from a series of generational short stories; each story complete in and of itself but stronger from what came before and strengthening what comes after. Gyasi’s prose flows like poetry, making West Africa and Harlem soar. As the book progresses, it catches up in time, eventually arriving in contemporary times. Asanteland is revealed (within the book) to be modern-day Ghana and the slave castle is located in, you guessed it, Takoradi.
     
    I found myself wondering, as the pages ran out and I neared the end, was that castle the same one I’d been to twelve years ago? I finished the book and a quick google search revealed that, yeah, it was.
     
    Woah.
     
    Remember what I said a couple paragraphs ago about written narratives being a dialogue? The thing about dialogues is that they go both ways. For all the information my memories bring to Yaa Gyasi’s words, her words bring their own set of information to my memories.
     
    As such, the ending of the book had a unique effect on me. When I’d visited the slave castle, I’d known the history of the place, but I’d never realized it. Because I brought something — my own memories of the place — what I got out of the book was different than someone else. Likewise, someone who’s spent years studying the ramifications of the transatlantic slave trade would pick up on bits and subtext of the book I totally missed.
     
    Maybe this is a reason why a favorite book feels a lot more personal than a favorite movie, because what you bring to the story deeply affects what you take out of it. The way you feel about The Catcher in The Rye is different if you read it for the first time in your teens or in your twenties, just as someone who sneaks through all of Metal Gear Solid 3 will have a very different experience from someone who just shoots their way through. But it’s books, and their heavy reliance on the reader’s imagination and foreknowledge, that really benefit from that give and take, that dialogue. What you get out of it is all dependent on what you bring going in.
  14. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 236: Letting People Be Different
     
    One of the many (many, many) things I love about Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is that the hunky guy Rebecca is pining for is an Asian guy (named Josh, but that parts not important right now). It’s incredibly refreshing — when was the last time you saw an Asian male as a romantic lead, let alone an object of sexual desire by a white woman in fiction? But that leads me to another one of the things I love about the show: it’s not a big deal. No one cares that Josh’s Asian. Even when Rebecca has Thanksgiving with him and his Filipino family, there’s none of that usual other-ing that happens when you see character entering into a space that’s foreign to them. That’s also great.
     
    But part-and-parcel of Josh’s Asian-ness being a non-issue is that he gets to take on a character archetype Asians never get to have — he’s a bro! He’s an idiot. A lovable idiot, yes, but an idiot still. Why’s this matter? ‘cuz when you have an Asian guy in fiction, chances on he’s going to be the smart guy or the dork or, y’know, both. There’s a very specific space in fiction that Asian characters are allowed to inhabit, and Crazy Ex-Girlfriend throws that to the wind. It goes on: a middle-aged man is bisexual, the professional psychiatrist is a black woman, the underachieving stoner next door is a brown girl.
     
    I saw The Magnificent Seven this week (#AsianCowboy) and though it’s a flawed movie, it’s still terrifically entertaining and, on another level, absolutely wonderful. The latter of which I’m blaming on how it handles its diverse cast. Race is hardly touched on in the film, which, y’know it doesn’t have to. But instead every member of the titular seven gets to be a rough-and-tumble jerk of a cowboy. Billy Rocks the #AsianCowboy goes toe-to-toe with the Mexican and Chris Pratt, while Red Harvest the Native American makes fun of their food. Every character gets to give as good as they get. There’s no token minority put on a pedestal, everyone has an edge.
     
    Which applies to the action bits too; everyone gets to have their cool bits, with Billy Rocks winning a shootout and throwing knives while saving Ethan Hawke. He’s not the Asian journeyman on a mission, he’s a cowboy (with a knife speciality). Again, this is an Asian character in a role usually off-limits to people that look like him (or, well, me) getting to do things associated with the role that usually doesn’t happen. This doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with, say, Shanghai Noon, where Jackie Chan plays an Imperial Guard on a mission in the old west who’s more martial artist than cowboy. The problem comes when every single narrative about an Asian in that time period is that narrative. So getting to see an Asian character be the quintessential American cowboy — dude, that’s dope.
     
    When Alan Yang won an Emmy for an episode of Master of None, he gave a great speech pointing out how despite there being the same number of Italian- and Asia-Americans in the US. the former group has some of the most celebrated stories in fiction, while Asians have, well, Long Duk Dong of Sixteen Candles. The narrative of Asian-ness is shockingly limited, despite how long they/we’ve been a part of Western culture. In other words: the roles Asians are allowed in fiction is usually one of a handful of archetypes. Diversity and inclusion means changing that, means letting Asians be the dumb bro or the deadly cowboy, means letting the lead of a tv show about being in your 30’s be an Indian guy, it means letting you ragtag band of space rebels have Asian actors, it means making your superhero a first-generation Pakistani immigrant or a half-Asian kid. Let different people be a part of different narratives.
     
    Of course, this is a selfish want — I wanna see more people who look like me in fiction doing everything. But then, don’t you wanna see more people who look like yourself in fiction?
  15. Ta-metru_defender
    So I didn't really sketch out much for the adventure, opting more to go with however the players went. It meant the break was a little too easy. I was also a bit under-nourished as a GM, having only had cereal for breakfast before arriving and having a couple beers. Soooo...
     
    But yeah. Was fun. PC's spent more time at the cantina than I expected. Leesi pickpocketed everyone. Fran found the most emotionally vulnerable person there and charmed him into buying drinks and offering Imperial codes the next morning (Leesi picked his pocket too). Fran then tried to charm the entire cantina into taking off their pants, but she failed the roll.
     
    The parking ticket debacle was a debacle. There was some trying to talk their way out, but Jobi attacked (low willpower and all that). Leesi tried to run, ended up tripping. Ten went to the ship, but it was impounded. Boba just walked away casually. Anyway, they all got tranq'ed and sent to an orbital prison.
     
    After processing, where we got a fun look at their rap sheets (Jobi's was "mercenary activity, tax evasion, resisting arrest, assault on an officer, grievous bodily harm, and arson. In one night. To which Kat/Jobi replied: "And tax evasion was the only one that stuck!"
     
    They immediately started plotting an escape, because these PC's have no chill. While talking at a table a Gungan name Cantin approached them. Before he could say anything, Ten throat-punched him and kinda broke his trachea (Jen/Fran's a biochemist, so she filled us in on the effects). They then found out he was a gang leader.
     
    Ten also made an impassioned speech about the privatization of prisons that riled up the crowd, but no one thought to use that as a diversion.
    When asked about cellmates, I paired up Jobi and Fran, Ten and Leesi (nonstop arguing), and Boba... Well, Boba got Cantin the Gungan. Through a series of events, Cantin inducted Boba into his gang and became the family Boba always wanted. It was truly beautiful.
     
    The next day, Boba found himself torn between his new family and his crew as the latter prepared to enact their plan. Leesi needed a prosthetic leg and so sent Jobi to get one. She brought back the guy's good leg first by mistake before making another trip to get the prosthetic. Leesi used said limb to hack through the doors out as the others caused a diversion.
     
    Which involved Fran trying to charm everyone out of their pants again, only this time she succeeded. So no one was wearing pants.
     
    Once through the door, Boba and Ten went to get their equipment, Leesi and Jobi to unclamp the ship, while Fran kept up the distraction. Boba and Ten almost managed to stealth in past the guards, but failed at the last minute. So Boba (successfully) seduced them while Ten grabbed the stuff. The pilot threw a weapon to Boba, but, uh, Boba didn't catch it. After the guards were taken out, they loaded a gravsled with as many of the other boxes of equipment as they could carry. Gotta loot the room and all that.
     
    ​Meanwhile Jobi just punched the guards in the control room to unconsciousness, as she does.
     
    Anyway, the team reassembled and headed to the hangar bay.
     
    Where Cantin the Gungan and his band of thieves waited. A blistering fight ensued, with Leesi's lightsaber making short work of the henchmen. Jobi got hit with a vibroaxe, but, to everyone's (including my) surprise, it only a third of her HP. Oh, and Fran got a couple kills (#2 and #3) including stabbing Cantin to death.
     
    They then escaped the prison for another adventure.
     
     
    Then we played another boardgame and I, Sash/Leesi, and Kat/Jobi went out for food and a Brooklyn bar crawl.
  16. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 235: Do Spoilers Spoil?
     
    Darth Vader has Luke Skywalker on the ropes, cornered, defenseless, and missing a hand. But rather than killing the Rebel, Vader offers for Luke to join him. Luke refuses. Undeterred, Vader throws doubt on those Luke trusts and utters one of the most famous lines in cinema:
     
    “No, I am your father.”
     
    It’s shattering, throwing everything Luke knows into disarray. But Luke doesn’t join Vader, choosing instead to cast himself into the abyss below.
     
    Also, that scene’s a big honking spoiler. It upends everything we, as viewers, have been told thus far, paints Obi Wan as a liar, and Yoda one by omission. It also profoundly effects Luke and colors his motivations throughout all of the next movie. Big twist, big development, so, y’know, spoiler.
     
    But do we call Han getting frozen in carbonite a spoiler too? I mean, he’s basically becoming mostly dead and that plot point necessitates the first act of Jedi and is partially responsible for the downbeat Emprie ends on. So why isn’t that the big spoiler? It’s not as catchy as the Vader quote, no, but isn’t it at least as big?
     
    Which makes me wonder, why do we call spoilers spoilers? Now, I’m not talking about people who go around trying to find everything out about a movie before it happens. I mean more the idea that finding something out ruins a story for good.
     
    ‘cuz I knew a lot of of the big spoilers for Game of Thrones going in. I knew Ned died. I found out about Robb’s death by accident. A friend of mine unintentionally spoiled another couple deaths. But it didn’t make any of the moments any less dramatic. Or even less shocking, since the impact still hits in a big way. Because you’re not really watching Game of Thrones to see who dies, but rather for the how of it. “Ned dies” is uninteresting, but “Ned dies as a show of force by new king Joffrey to prove himself” has kick. The why and how of it is more interesting that the what. If you know Robb’s gonna die, you keep wondering what it is that’s gonna do him in at the end. And when it really comes, that’s the whammy.
     
    Nothing really beats the impact of, say, Han’s death in The Force Awakens when you first see it not knowing it’s coming. But watching it again let’s you appreciate the finesse of it all the more. When you’re less concerned about having to pay attention to every what of the story, you look more for the bits of set up and pay off. But don’t just take my word for it, it’s an actual fact. It doesn’t ruin the story, so to speak. Instead it changes the approach of the narrative.
     
    But for turns like that, even if we know that Vader is Luke's father and Ned dies, the characters don't. It's a beautiful dose of dramatic irony that heightens the tension in its own way because you wanna see how they'll react to it. How is Obi Wan gonna react to Qui Gon's death? One of the reasons "I am your father" is such a magnificent twist is because of the effect it has on Luke as a character. Watching his response – throwing himself into the pits of Cloud City – is a thrill born out of character. The story still has a hold even if you know what's coming.
     
    See, that's the thing: a good story doesn't revolve around That Twist. Empire still works knowing that Vader is Luke's father. You lack the shock, but it's no less compelling; you still want to see how we get to that point. A good story shouldn't rely on one plot point being the big twist. The Prestige still works when you know what's coming because the process of reaching that reveal is so well done. Watching characters make the choices that takes them to the ending you know has an allure itself.
     
    All this said, I don't like being spoiled. I swore off the internet after the Lost finale aired so it wouldn't be spoiled before I could watch it. But watching the series again, it is no less powerful because the catharsis works just as well. Fiction – good fiction – isn't consumed to find things out; it's to feel. If a spoiler really ruins the story completely, than it probably wasn't that good a story in the first place.
     
    If this feels inconclusive, it’s because I’m still thinking about it all. Did knowing that Charlie died in Lost affect how I watched the show? Did knowing Kreia was the villain affect the choices I made while playing Knights of The Old Republic II? There’re more rants here for other days.
     
    That said. Don't tell me how Rogue One ends.
  17. Ta-metru_defender

    #AsianCowboy

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Essays, Not Rants! 234: #AsianCowboy
     
    I was vaguely aware of the casting for the new Magnificent Seven when it was first announced, but more so for the fact that it reminded me that I really needed to watch The Seven Samurai (which I still haven’t…)
     
    Anyway, since then trailers for the new Magnificent Seven have been released and there’s been a little bit of buzz around it and reviews have been coming out. What’s most caught my attention — and what makes me really wanna see it — is actor Byung-hun Lee as one of the seven. Now, this is a Western. Set in the mythical Wild West. Y’know, Americana incarnate. But there’s an Asian cowboy.
     
    Now, of course, this excites me. Like basically everyone I grew up aware of the mythos of the Wild West, with cowboys and train robberies and all that stuff. So it’s exciting to see someone who looks kinda like me (he’s Korean, I’m half-Chinese, I’ll take it) being apart of it is really cool.
    And I’m a sucker for multinational teams so seeing the seven cowboys include Denzel Washington, a Mexican, and a Native American is really cool. That and it makes total sense.
     
    Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that in ‘reality’ cowboys and cattle hands weren’t as white as we’d expect. It’s easy to take the Western as being historical (it’s like a period piece, but with guns and horses!), and historical pieces tend to be very white because not being white in places when/where most historical dramas take place isn’t always a good thing.
     
    But this is fiction.
     
    I think it’s easy to enter into the idea of something being ‘unrealistic’ and it ruining the story. If we’re willing to believe that Tom Cruise is the last samurai, why can’t we believe there was a ragtag multinational team of cowboys? The same rule of “why not?” that applies to science fiction or contemporary stories can also apply to stories that take place before. Sure it was surprising in Season One of Agent Carter to see a black man the owner of a club in 1940s America, but we bought it and the story didn’t suffer for it. Having Zoe Saldana as Anamaria in the first Pirates of The Caribbean worked. Sure, she didn’t get to do too much but she still was a fun character who should’ve shown up in the sequels. These are worlds of cowboys, spies, and pirates; why not throw in some diversity?
     
    Granted, it gets trickier with more serious, more properly historical stories. It’s hard to tell a factual story about the American Revolution with a diverse cast. But, then again, that’s what Hamilton did, so, y’know, there’s that.
     
    Really, it all comes down to telling different stories, and telling more. By including people usually underrepresented in these narratives, The Magnificent Seven is offering a space at the table to more people. Like how The Force Awakens and Rogue One change the criteria for who gets to be a hero in Star Wars, so does this, in however a small way, for westerns.
     
    So, yeah, at the end of the day I’m gonna go see The Magnificent Seven. Because there’s an Asian cowboy.
  18. Ta-metru_defender
    So my RPG group (Well, Sasha/Leesi) wanna do a prison break. So tomorrow we're doing a prison break. And I'm working on the adventure now 'cuz I've had a busy week.
     
    First things first, they gotta get in prison. So during a brief stint on Cato Nemodia, they'll be given a parking ticket. Knowing the group this should spiral nicely out of control.
     
    Now I'm working on a prison. I figure I gotta find weak points for them to exploit, but really, these guys are creative. I think I'll throw in a guy with a prosthetic leg for good measure.
     
    I'm open to ideas/curveballs to throw at my players, btw. I'll let you know how it goes.
  19. Ta-metru_defender
    Warning: More Grownup Cyprinidae Coming:
     
    It's not that being an artist assistant is bad, it's just that it's kinda taxing, and the pay-by-hours isn't enough. But if I get this other gig, do I want that even though the pay is less, it's harder work, but maybe more hours? Do I want to do both? Hold out for something better? Can I hold out for something better? Am I selling myself short? But I need work.
  20. Ta-metru_defender

    Budgeting Apps

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    Warning: Grown Up Rant/Tirade/Ramble Approaching
     
    I've been keeping a budget via spreadsheet for the last couple years. A basic one where I've money set aside for various categories (food, transport, entertainment, misc, alcohol, bills), note down how much I get in paychecks and put in savings (then categorize what I'm saving up for).
     
    Now, I'm in the market for a good app to do it for me, because I can be lazy with this budget thing. And there are a lot of great budget apps out there, but they're weird. Like some work great, but don't have a spot for you to categorize your spending. Or doesn't have a spot for savings (or categorized savings).
     
    I mean, I suppose I could make it work if I made savings into an expense... But I wanna track over weeks.
     
    Most frustrating thing is, a lot of these expect you to have some sort of stable salary. Which, y'know, I get paid hourly and find gigs where I can. I don't have one of those. So those don't work so well for me.
     
    Pending I find anything, back to the spreadsheets it is. Gotta save up for those Rogue One Legos somehow.
     
     
    tl;dr: Josh finds budgeting apps woefully inadequate.
  21. Ta-metru_defender

    Picture Lock

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    After a busy summer doing almost anything but (and a madly busy second-half of a spring semester), I've picture locked on The Conduits. Now it's off to music and sound and color correction and vfx for all that fun stuff.
     
    Can't wait until it's done.
     
     



  22. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 231: You Should Be Reading Mockingbird
     
    There’s a lot to like about the new Mockingbird ongoing title from Marvel. For starters, it’s the next step in a really spiffy new direction Marvel’s been taking with their comics lately: diversity. In the past year-or-so, Marvel’s really stepped up their game with who’s in their comics. You’ve got Asian characters headlining their own series (Totally Awesome Hulk, and the fantastic-and-severely-under-appreciated Silk), and Spider-Man and Captain America are black. Spider-Woman and Spider-Gwen have their own books, along with Black Widow, Squirrel Girl, and Moon Girl. Then there’s the new-mainstays of Captain Marvel and Ms Marvel… Point is, Marvel’s got a pretty diverse character lineup for their books.
     
    It also helps that that diversity extends behind the books too. Ms Marvel is written by G. Willow Wilson, herself a Muslim, and so is lent an extra couple layers of delightful texture. Ta-Nehisi Coates lends a special sense of identity not only to T’challa in Black Panther but to all of Wakanda, one that’s science-fictiony and fantastical, but doesn’t necessarily subscribe to a Western/white image of the future. It’s wonderfully different, and, in a word, dope. There are a few titles, Patsy Walker, AKA Hellcat! and Mockingbird being two, that have all-women creative teams working on them.
     
    Which brings me to Mockingbird.
     
    Like I said in the first sentence (before I got distracted by diversity), there’s a lot to like about the comic. First off, is the character of Mockingbird herself. The first issue is light on actual plot (rather, it tantalizes what’s to come) and instead focuses on setting up who exactly Bobbi Morse is. It helps that the comic is very much told from Bobbi’s point of view, with little boxes of narration peppering the action. From that, we’re afforded a window into Bobbi’s inner life and how she filters the world she sees through her identity. It doesn’t take long for us to get a handle on who she is: super-spy scientist who knows what she’s doing and has little patience for those who don’t.
     
    Also, her background as a scientist affects her decisions and thought processes. She isn’t just a by-the-way scientist, it’s part of who she is. This is actually something Mockingbird does really well: Bobbi’s various identities (woman, scientist, spy, Hawkeye’s ex-wife) are all worked intrinsically into her. Bobbi feels fully formed and fully herself, a rounded character with a shaded personality that can go different ways. Which is really cool, guys!
     
    That alone would make Mockingbird a perfectly enjoyable book, but it doesn’t stop there. As becomes steadily more and more obvious as the series progresses, Mockingbird had a decidedly feminist bent. Take issue two, which has Bobbi Morse going undercover in the London filterably named Club to rescue Lance Hunter. Now, this Club is the sorta place that necessitates a scantily-clad outfit to blend in. But, but but but, the art never ogles Bobbi, or makes her out to be anything except in a position of power, fishnets and spiked leather boots be darned. Lance, on the other hand, is distinctly made out to be both hopeless and an object of desire. Also: He’s wearing much less than she is. It’s this sort of wonderful subversion of what’s become accepted as normal in comic books that gives Mockingbird such a strong sense of voice and personality. That Bobbi-saving-a-male-hero is something of a trope for the book at this point (in #4 she rescues a swimsuit-clad Hawkeye) is icing on the cake.
     
    But! Mockingbird isn’t content to just subvert and usual and call it a day. It goes further. The third issue finds Bobbi acting as hostage negotiator to a sixth-grade girl with superpowers she doesn’t understand. It’s a neat little story in and of itself, but the conceit of scary superpowers is used as a cipher for not being understood as a girl growing up. Oh, it’s made perfectly clear within the text, what with Bobbi’s narration asking “How can we have a meaningful dialogue with adolescent girls when we live in a culture that still can’t talk about tampons?” and tv news tickers describing the powered girl as “hysterical” and an “attention-seeking tween.” Here’s a mainstream, Marvel comic book — a medium usually associated with young males — talking about and trying to understand what it’s like growing up as a girl. It’s delightful and validating in a way that you don’t usually see in comics. Or a lot of movies, for that matter.
     
    I really like comics in general (I had one on my thesis/rationale at college!), both for pulpy fun and for some plain good storytelling. But every now and then something like Mockingbird comes along, which not only tells a great story but says something as well — and merges the two together effortlessly. It’s a fantastic series and, without question, my favorite book Marvel’s putting out right now.
  23. Ta-metru_defender

    Untitled

    By Ta-metru_defender,

    I was gonna write a post lamenting pending (f)unemployment and the frustrating nature of job hunting, but I will instead talk about the PC's in an Edge of The Empire RPG session I've been running most of the summer.
     
    This whole time I've been expecting them to pull an Avengers and come together for the greater good, but really, they're more like the Guardians of The Galaxy who'll screw up and spend more time talking about money (and not being paid by the Rebel Alliance) than doing the right thing.
     
    Unless the get XP for doing the right thing. Nothing helps players be heroic like getting XP for it (you guys chose not to loose the Nexu on the innocent townsfolk — 10 XP!).
     
    It also helps that some of the players are fellow writers/creative types so spinning things out of control is always fun. And/or spending half an hour being mad at a character for not revealing she was related to an NPC. Not for betraying their trust, mind you, but for not cutting the other PCs in on the friends-and-family discount.
  25. Ta-metru_defender
    Essays, Not Rants! 229: Meaning Upon Meaning
     
    Every movie monster in the book has some sort of sociocultural commentary associated with it. Zombies are the embodiment of a fear of conformist consumer culture, vampires are the elite rich who drain the life of the poor, werewolves are your neighbor’s double life, Godzilla is nuclear terror made real. A lot of fun can be found in figuring out what these all mean. Is Zombieland about the isolation that comes as a result of being the only people special in a world of copies? Or is it a celebration of life in a post-consumer society?
     
    That’s one thing I love about fiction is that there are as many meanings of it as there are people watching. You see this particularly science fiction and fantasy which, by virtue, often deal with some embodiment of the unknown/other, and thus can really explore the parable-ness of stories. But like I said, meanings. I see The Force Awakens as a story about identity and finding belonging (which makes it different from the original Star Wars despite hitting many of the same plot beats), Firefly is a story fundamentally about family, and Iron Man 2 is about embracing mortality. You could disagree and you’re more than welcome to because, again, the joy of fiction.
     
    A good story has enough substance that you can watch/read/hear/play it multiple times and get different things from it over time. While discussing children’s books, CS Lewis wrote in Of Other Worlds: “No book is really worth reading at the age of ten which is not equally (and often far more) worth reading at the age of fifty(…).” It’s how you can enjoy Prisoner of Azkaban as a kid for its magic and scary monsters, then years later love it for its wonderful take on depression; or how Justice League remains intriguing if you’re twelve or twenty-five.
     
    (500) Days of Summer is perfectly enjoyable as a romcom where the male character is afforded the same amount of emotional intimacy and depth the female lead usually gets. Then you can also read it as a deconstruction of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope that was alive and well in 2009. Or as an exploration of how being selfish and only looking for what you want dooms a relationship. Are any of those wrong? Not necessarily (though if you see Tom or Summer as being an ideal, dreamy, romantic partner… you’re misreading it). Do any of those interpretations discount the other? Unless you’re googley over Tom or Summer, again, no. If I watch this movie again in five years will I find something new (and maybe stop using rhetorical questions)? Yeah, probably. I still love (500) Days of Summer, as much (or more) than I did when I first saw it seven(!) years ago, but the reasons I love it now are really different from when I watched it then.
     
    I mentioned briefly that there could be a wrong reading (Tom and Summer are deeply flawed, deeply selfish characters, not dream lovers), which is true in a way. The LEGO Movie is the hero’s journey retold with LEGO bricks. But is it also anti-capitalism with its overthrow/redemption of an evil businessman? I’d argue not, because, really? But wrong doesn’t necessarily mean invalid, and if you read Tom as being a dream guy even though the writers have outright said he’s not meant to be one, fine, more power to you, you’re still wrong.
     
    Stories are fluid and for a lot, the authors are decidedly dead. So it doesn’t really matter so much what the exact intention was exactly, so much as you connected. This doesn’t mean you can go around saying Gojira isn’t about the Japanese terror of nuclear weapons (because look at the context and everything), but it does allow for a range of interpretations of that. I know the The Force Awakens has belonging as a theme, because Maz mentions it to Rey, but the importance I place on it is all, well, me.
     
    And at the end of the story, that’s the important bit.
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