I’m not joking. I’m not exaggerating. The new My Little Pony show is simply sublime.
Let me explain.
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Lauren Faust. She grew up giving all of her My Little Pony and Strawberry Shortcake toys different personalities and making them go out and save the world in her imagination.
When she grew up, she started working on cartoons. You may have heard of some of these: Powerpuff Girls and Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends.
Now she has her own show. It’s called My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.
BEFORE WE CONTINUE ANY FURTHER, ALLOW ME TO POINT OUT THAT THIS IS THE SHOW IN A NUTSHELL:
Courtesy http://anowia.deviantart.com/
Okay, has that kept you here instead of scared you off? Good. Allow me to continue.
On its surface, I can see why the gentle reader might be somewhat skeptical. It’s called “My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic.” Seriously. The ponies are all pink or purple and have names like “Twilight Sparkle” and they have discussions about pretty frilly dresses. Okay. Yes. I know.
BUT.
The aforementioned pony named Twilight Sparkle is a supernerd who puts reading and learning on a high pedestal and runs scientific experiments any time she comes across some sort of problem or unexplainable phenomenon.
The aforementioned pink pony, named Pinkie Pie, is utterly insane.
And the aforementioned pony who likes dresses, Rarity, is a haute boutique fashion designer who does things like lament about her career and slowly lose her mind when she attempts to balance the desires of her clients with her own artistic sensibilities. (And which of us, my fellow creative friends, has not been there?)
The characters are all female and cutesy and have big eyelashes. And have personalities. And have actual problems. And work those problems out. And grow.
And I can see a little bit of myself in each of the ponies. I’m a huge science nerd like Twilight Sparkle. But I’m also a giant ditzy derp like Pinkie Pie. And I’m also shy and quiet like Fluttershy. And I’m also a tomboy like Rainbow Dash. And I’m also an obsessive artist like Rarity. And I also don’t give a crap about my looks, like Applejack.
Now maybe it’s just me, but I have never seen a “little girls’ show” that was so very… human. Erm. Pony.
I’m writing this post because I want everyone to know about PONIES and how great it is. Have I finally snapped and lost my mind? Maybe. But it’s okay, because this morning when I was watching the show on YouTube I laughed so hard at one point that I had to pause for like five minutes before I could actually stop laughing and begin watching the show again.
And I don’t care WHAT the show is about, if it makes me do that, I’m a fan.
TL;DR: Ponies are awesome and everyone should watch them, regardless of age or gender. PROTIP: Watch at least three or four episodes before passing judgment.
Hating on steampunk seems to be the cool thing to do lately. It seems like I can’t turn around without my invisible fluffy bunny tail brushing up against some author or blogger somewhere who found a cogwheel in his or her soup and isn’t happy with the waiter, and wants the entire Interwebs to know about it.
Art by http://thatoddowl.deviantart.com/
So obviously I’m going to step in here and address a few of the issues that seem to be cropping up the most. As a disclaimer before I begin: I obviously do not speak for all steampunks, just the clockwork rabbit variety.
1.) Steampunk is Overdone
I’ll actually concede the point on this one although I also don’t think it’s the end of the world. Steampunk is getting a lot of press and attention right now and I think it’s primarily because of a few reasons: One, it’s attractive to a lot of different pre-existing groups and subcultures (goths, punks, geeks, makers, etc.), two, it’s so different than traditional fantasy or sci-fi, and three, it just plain looks cool if you need a spiffy wedding or Halloween party in a pinch.
There seems to be a concern that a lot of people are jumping onto the steampunk bandwagon, and a lot of non-steampunks are ranting about it. Guess what, though, a lot of bona fide steampunks are ranting about it as well. (Trust me, “Steampunk is going mainstream, everyone run for cover” is basically the most repeated thread subject on the steampunk forums I frequent.)
My overall opinion is that the exposure is good because yeah, you’re going to get the bandwagoners, but you’re also going to get the people who finally realize “This is it! This is the term for what I have loved all this time!” and in the end the wheat will separate itself from the chaff and it’s not a huge deal. I’ve seen it happen in other fandoms and it’ll happen again here.
2.) Steampunk is just a bunch of plastic gears glued onto nerf guns and top hats.
This stereotype is perpetuated by what you see so often on Regretsy and truthfully some steampunks themselves. To which, in response, I invite you to really dig into the culture and spend some time on the “maker” sections of steampunk websites. Not only will you figure out within five minutes that “glued-on gears” is largely (though not universally) frowned upon within the culture itself, but the steampunk subculture has an inordinately high percentage of members with backgrounds in engineering, mechanics, and other related fields. These are people who value items with function. Things that are beautiful and that work. “Post pictures of your workshop” threads are pages and pages long. These aren’t just people who are sticking old clock pieces on random items and calling it steampunk, these are people with garages filled with lathes and power tools.
You know, like this thing.
3.) Steampunk is silly and is about stuff that doesn’t work in the real world.
This is a criticism that is frequently leveled against steampunk literature by the serious hard sci-fi folks. While there is some truth in this generalization, that’s frequently the nature of the genre. It’s fun! That’s why we’re here.
That said, do refer to my previous answer. Most steampunks are well aware of the fact that their imaginary tech bends the rules of physics. Several of us, myself included, work hard to make sure that said fantastical objects are at least almost real. I have seen several multi-page forum threads that delve into the detailed minutiae of mechanics problems presented by various sorts of imaginary airships or automatons and said threads always impress me with the vast amount of knowledge in this area that many involved in steampunk possess.
4.) Steampunk fans want to bask in the glory days of upper-class Anglo-Saxon masculinity as embodied by the Victorian Era, or some such.
No, seriously, I see this a lot, and it always cracks me up. These people apparently don’t know that the possibilities offered by non-European steampunk are a frequent topic of discussion, enough that there are entire blogs and websites dedicated solely to said concept, oh, and that most steampunk is less about the upper-class and more about the middle and (especially) lower classes. That’s where the “punk” comes in to play. Sure, there are the dandies among us, and items such as top hats and monocles are fun to play with, but it’s not like we’re part of some vast steampunk conspiracy (although I like the sound of that) to return the world to 19th century imperialism. We are all aware of the fact that the 19th century had major problems. We think the 21st century has some pretty big problems, too, and that’s the connection and that’s the point.
Once we invent our time machine the Global Steampunk Conspiracy will travel to the Cretaceous period in the name of science.
5.) It’s not a “real” subculture/genre/etc., it’s just a fad, et al.
I’ll be the first to admit that the definition of steampunk as both a “subculture” and a “genre” still seems to be rather tenuous. Most steampunks, being a largely intelligent lot, will admit the same. “What is steampunk?” discussions inevitably derail into long, complicated, rambling essays and no one ever comes to a conclusion. Perhaps the one conclusion that most people make is that right now it’s a bit of a jumble. Art and literature that defines itself as steampunk or steampunk-inspired runs the gamut from retro-styled science fiction to relatively accurate historical fiction to pulpy action novels to fantasy/alternate universe stuff to post-apocalyptic stories, and that’s just the surface.
Likewise, if you identify as a steampunk, you could be one of many people that fall under that umbrella: literature fans, art fans, writers, artists, musicians, people who dress up, people who don’t dress up, makers, people who view it as nothing more than a fashion style, and people who take it very seriously as a sort of political/social statement. When you throw all of those people into a room and they all choose to identify as one label, things get a little muddled, and you know what? That’s completely understandable.
Ultimately, I see the steampunk movement as one that is about camaraderie, imagination, beauty, science, and above all, optimism all mixed up in a blender and topped with a shiny pair of goggles that you modded yourself. It’s about figuring out why something works the way it does, making it better, and making it stylish while you’re at it. Some of us think we could to do that to society. Nothing wrong with that, right?
Plus, did I mention the airships? Because the airships are awesome.
Admit it: you wouldn't complain if this was the preferred transportation method of the future.
(Yeah, this is a day late. Sorreh. Was having site issues most of yesterday and then had to work all day. Anyways, let’s cut to the chase:)
You’d think that a repetitive game with even more repetitive music (the Ghostbusters theme song on loop) wouldn’t be very exciting, but then, you’ve probably never played Ghostbusters.
And honestly, if you’ve never heard the theme song belted out in glorious SID, then you’re missing out on some Serious Awesomeality. (Awesomeality is now a word.)
And you gotta admit: getting those voices to come out of a Commodore 64 is impressive.
So let’s talk about the gameplay. You start out by building your own ghostbusting car pretty much from scratch– if you’ve beaten the game enough times you have enough virtual dough to get shinier cars, giving this game a very early form of replay value– and then you are plunked onto a map of the city:
Where your new goal is to drive around to the blinking buildings and trap ghosts. (Don’t cross the streams!) Every so often your ghost traps fill up and you have to go back to Headquarters to clear ’em out, but other than that… it’s blinking buildings for you, buddy.
This is basically how the game goes for quite some time. It starts out fairly tame, but gets more difficult as time goes on and you have to juggle more and more blinking buildings. Things REALLY get exciting when the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man decides to stomp all over everything. He can be stopped if you’re really quick– like, “jam the correct key on your keyboard within a half second when you realize what’s going on” quick– and this is enough to set you on MASSIVE TWITCH MODE for the entire second half of the game because the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man could show up ANY SECOND NOW.
And you don't want that.
The game gets more and more fastpaced and frenzied as a key and lock start chasing each other around the map. Eventually they get to Zuul, and you have to run your guys to safety underneath the bouncing Marshmallow Man. Have fun with this, because the hit detection is basically random and if you don’t get at least two of three guys through then you go directly to Game Over, do not pass Go, do not collect $200.
So earlier this week I was thinking, man, I am a Writing-Idea Machine. I have so much to write about. So many ideas. I came up with this crazy plot to participate in NaNoWriMo every year for the rest of my life, because I obviously have 65 books inside of me just waiting to get out. No problem. Right?
So then of course I spend all morning trying to figure out what to blog about.
Face, meet palm.
Anyways, then I thought, I should tell you about some of the crazy crap I used to write about when I was a kid. Cause I wrote a lot back then, too.
1.) Cute Cartoon Bunnies Get Stabbed. I have no idea where this one came from. I made little picture books in spiral bound notebooks, and I had these two recurring rabbit characters named Billy and Mookie. They actually lived in a pretty clever little house filled with cute monsters that provided most of their “technology”. For example, they had a little monster that sat on their windowsill and held up a screen to block out the sun, and when they wanted to open the window they’d pull on his tail and he’d set the screen down.
So obviously one of the picture books involved one bunny coming home to find the other bunny laying on the floor with a dagger in his heart.
Yeah I dunno where I was going with that one.
2.) Cute Cartoon Bunnies Go to Jail: Another time they went to jail. They were innocent, but I guess the justice system in their world isn’t exactly all its cracked up to be.
3.) “The Friendly Candidates”: Back in the days of Clinton/Bush/Perot the TV was nothing but an endless stream of smear tactics. Leave it to me to write a book where U.S. presidential candidates actually liked each other and gave each other encouragement. Ahh, cute lil’ optimistic me.
4.) “Gerbil Adventures”: Gerbils go on crazy adventures throughout the house. These stories actually weren’t too bad.
5.) “My Life”: When I was about eight or ten years old I wrote a fictional autobiography for school. Apparently when I was 8 I thought I was going to grow up to be a vet and also have like, 10 kids. (Mostly because I had fun giving them all interesting names.)
6.) Thomas the Tank Engine Fan Fiction: Yup.
7.) Anthropomorphic Toys: Guys, you have no idea how much I wrote about my toys. See, I managed to convince myself that my toys would come to life when I left the room, Toy Story style (although this was years before Toy Story… I blame the Muppets’ “The Christmas Toy”.) So I gave them all sorts of adventures. First in short stories, and later in two full length novels. Did I mention that I was like… 18 by that point? Who me, Peter Pan?
(If you are, for some bizarre reason, interested in hearing more about said novels, I once rambled about them rather in depth over at my LJ.)
8.) The Tortoise Wins the Race, the Hare Sues Because of Emotional Damage: When I was a freshman in high school one of our assignments was to re-write a fable or fairy tail in a satirical way. I redid the Tortoise and the Hare in a way that I still think was pretty clever, but NO ONE in my class “got it”. Stupid muggles.
9.) Ender’s Game Excerpts Rewritten With the Characters As Furries: I want to say Ender was a squirrel but I can’t remember. P.S. I’m in ur library, ruining ur sci-fi
10.) Yoshi’s Island Novelization: The best part was the super long prologue that went into hilarious unnecessary detail regarding Yoshi culture. (Was possibly influenced by the official “Gremlins” novelization, which went into hilarious unnecessary detail regarding Mogwai culture.)
…ya know, on second thought, maybe we should keep me far away from writing.
Editing was a difficult beast to wrangle with. I’m not sure if it’s because there was no real National Novel Editing Month graph to ride my butt, or if it actually was simply more difficult, but I’ve basically been locking horns with editing for the last six months. (By contrast, the actual writing process took about a month and a half.)
Now that I’m gearing down on editing and getting ready to actually move on to the scariest part of the writing process– publication– I have compiled a list of things I wish I had known, well, six months ago. By popular demand!
1.) Print It Out
Reading your book on the computer is, on the one hand, very handy because it means if something needs to be changed you can do it right away and eliminate the middleman, so to speak. The drawback to this is that if you change something, and then on the next page realize why you did what you originally did, you have to go back and change it back. (And yes, this happened to me a lot.)
But the main villain here, in my opinion, is distraction. If you are at your computer then you have e-mail and Twitter and everything else sitting right there distracting you. So unless you can turn off the internet or have rock solid willpower, print your book out, put it in a binder, and take it somewhere comfy with some pens and post-its. Speaking of post-its…
2.) Post-It Notes are Awesome
During my first editing pass, I just scribbled my notes and changes in the margins of my printed copy. This seemed to be the logical, straight-forward way to do it, and it worked fairly well. I noticed something interesting, though– namely I started to stumble across more and more writing sites that suggested using something like index cards or Post-It notes during the editing process. I wasn’t sure why they were suggesting it, but it seemed like a legit idea, so I tried it out with my latest editing take.
Pretty much immediately I realized why everyone was making Post-Its such a big deal. Aside from giving you more space to write your ideas down on, the real benefit becomes clear during the actual editing process on your computer, allowing you to quickly and easily flip ahead to the next Post-It, do your change, and then pull it out. No more having to wonder if you already performed a change or not, because your Post-It actually isn’t there anymore if you did. I dunno, I thought it was a great idea.
And everyone loves Post-Its, right?
3.) Your Book Does Not Suck
This syndrome seems to afflict a lot of people who write & edit so I am going to warn you all about it right now. What happens is you see all the problems that your book has, so you convince yourself that you are a horrible writer and have accomplished nothing of worth and it’s the end of the world as you know it and you don’t feel fine.
Okay, well, I suppose there is a possibility that all of the above is true, since I don’t know your writing abilities, nebulous readership, but I like to assume the best, so let’s assume it’s not true. Convincing yourself of this is harder than it would seem. This is what I did to pull myself out of a rather pessimistic slump:
I pulled out one of my favorite books of all time and started reading. Because I was still in hardcore editing mode, I hadn’t hit the bottom of the first page before I found stuff I wanted to change and “fix”. At this point I came to the conclusion: You know what, if I want to scribble in red pen all over one of my favorite books, which got published, by the way, then my own stuff can’t be too bad.
Try it out if you hit your own editing slump. You will be surprised how many books are abandoned and not completed.
4.) Test Readers are Valuable but Not Gospel
This one was difficult for me to balance out. See, you’re riding a fine line here by reading test readers’ comments. Some of their comments are actual things that you should probably change, and some of their comments are opinion, and learning to sort out which is which will probably eventually come down to a.) how many other readers shared said thought, and b.) gut instinct.
Basically, you don’t have to incorporate every suggested change, but you don’t want to ignore them, either. Let new ideas that your readers suggested percolate in your brain for a while. Play with them and see if you can do anything with them. Learn to ignore your initial defense strategy of “I can’t believe they didn’t like [insert element of book here]” and figure out why they possibly didn’t like it and if it would be worth it for you to change it.
Also, remember your demographic. If you are writing a kids’ book, see if you can get actual kids to read it and then put more stock in their feedback.
Another tip: compile all the positive feedback you get into a text file somewhere and read it when you’re feeling down. Works wonders. (Thanks to Tami for this suggestion!)
5.) Don’t Spend Too Much Time Comparing Yourself to Other People
Millions of people want to write the next Harry Potter. We sit around and dream of movie deals and gigantic online fan communities making wikis for our book universe. And you know, it’s a very nice dream and an admirable (if a bit luck-based) goal. But that doesn’t mean you should try to change your book to make it more Harry Potter-ish. Now you’re probably thinking, “of course I wouldn’t do that!” but lemme tell ya, when you’re tired and you’re knee-deep in editing and your frazzled brain just wants this whole nightmare to be over and that dream of being the next J.K. Rowling dangles itself in front of your eyes again, you will be sorely tempted to change your word count or change your demographic or change something to make it more like [insert dream book here]. Because your subconscious figures it’s your best chance to climb out of the editing hellhole.
It is 100% okay to be influenced by your favorite books. It’s 100% okay to include homages to things that inspired you. I went in to my book wanting something that felt like the “His Dark Materials” series, not in plot or character, but in general feel, for lack of a better word. I wanted something that was science-fiction-ish without being afraid to do a few things that veered more toward the fantastic. As such, one of the greatest moments of reader feedback for me was someone who didn’t know that this was my intent, telling me they got a “His Dark Materials” vibe from my book. Gosh, what a rush when I read that. I knew I had succeeded in at least one of my goals.
It’s okay to have a goal like that. You just want to be careful that your desire to emulate your favorite authors doesn’t consume your own creation. If you think back to a lot of the books you like, I bet a lot of them were different. Being different is scary, because you don’t know if the publisher is going to like “different”. But think about something like “Watership Down”. You can bet the publishers were scared to publish “talking rabbits”, but now it’s one of the most popular books ever. And as an aside, has anyone else noticed the deluge of talking-animals-with-their-own-vocabulary-and-mythology books that mysteriously appeared soon after “Watership Down” did? I read a few. None of them were as popular, though, because they didn’t really do their own thing.
Let your story and characters be who they are. Comparison will come later.
And hopefully your comparison does not involve either of these two things.
Well, that’s it for the “Five Things I Wish I Had Known Before [verb-ing] My Book” posts, at least until I get published, at which point I plan on finishing the series. Might, uh, be a few years… don’t hold your breath for the next installment anytime soon… *cough*
I hear it a lot. The people who say they would install Linux, but they want their stuff to “just work”. All the daily posts on Ubuntu Forums (which I lurk) from people saying they tried Linux, but are leaving it because it doesn’t “just work”. You know, that is a perfectly acceptable and understandable answer. But it’s not one I can relate to.
Stuff that just works is boring.
Stuff that just works makes me complacent.
Stuff that just works doesn’t teach me anything.
Stuff that just works doesn’t let me fix it.
I have a little secret to let you guys in on. I am addicted to fixing things. Broken things are enticing and magnetic. If you dropped some sort of ceramic ornament or vase on the floor and it shattered into a million pieces I would be on the floor picking up those million pieces and attempting to piece them back into place like a puzzle and trying to glue it back together. This has actually happened. More than once. Do I succeed? Maybe, maybe not. It doesn’t stop me from trying.
I value my sleep– I value my sleep very much. But if my computer is broken I don’t sleep until it is fixed. Period. Abandoning some broken project at home because I have to go to work or something is sheer torture. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished calling in “because something is broken” was as valid an excuse as “calling in sick”, because heaven knows I’m certainly in no mental state to actually do any work when my entire mind is preoccupied with my project.
Fixing things is mind-clearing and you learn from the experience. If you fix something, you come out of it knowing how to recognize and fix that problem in the future. You feel rejuvenated and useful.
…and you’re telling me you want an operating system that you don’t have to rip apart and completely fix every six months?
I would die of boredom.
I respect you, Millions of People With That Opinion. But I don’t understand you. No hard feelings. <3
Remember NaNoWriMo? Yeah, you know, the thing that spawned the book I’m still working on six months later?
There’s a version of it in April as well. It’s called Script Frenzy and it’s basically like NaNo, except you write a script/screenplay/graphic novel instead of a book.
So am I planning on participating?
…did you really expect me not to?
This is up my alley like you would not believe. Writing scripts and screenplays is my favorite creative thing in the world. I say this as someone who draws, coughs up electronic music, and writes novels. I am soooo stoked for this.
Unfortunately April is looking like it’s going to be a terribly busy month, filled with things like editing the aforementioned novel (I know, I know, I keep saying I’m going to leave it alone and I keep failing at that…) and also puttering around with some silly Real Life things that need to get done. But there was no way I was going to miss out on this. So I decided to compromise. In November I had a little more time on my hands and was able to get away with inventing a novel on-the-spot (I’m serious, I made the darn thing up as I went), which was thrilling and terrifying at the same time. I don’t know if I’ll be able to do that this time around, considering how much busier I am, so I’m going to go back to a ready-to-go idea that has been kicking around my head for years.
Remember my Chemistry Post on Aspect of the Hare? And remember those anthropomorphic atoms that I mentioned?
Oh yeah.
This is a story I’ve been working on, on-and-off, since AP Chemistry in 2001/2002. The storyline has gone through several iterations but it has been nothing but fun the entire time and I’m excited to make yet another attempt beginning tomorrow.
My mind’s eye sees this as being a computer-animated movie: doing for chemistry what “Shrek” did for fairy tales. Something that can make science fun and silly and “new”. Hey, I never said I was sane.
I think this will be much more relaxing than NaNo was: really, I’m very visual when it comes to my stories and I’ve always felt that I take to scriptwriting like a fish to water. Plus, there’s no real self-pressure to “OMG GET PUBLISHED!” so I can just post up the finished result for everyone to see at the end of the month!
I have been informed that today is unofficially Ada Lovelace Day. Clearly I have to blog about my fangirling for Lovelace.
Augusta Ada King, Countess of Lovelace (for that is her proper name), child of the rather infamous poet Lord Byron, was born in 1815 and is widely regarded as the world’s first computer programmer.
In the 1800s. Yes, you heard that right.
Cause around this time a brilliant guy named Charles Babbage (who I also fangirl over– his autobiography? Read it. Yeah. He had a hilarious childhood. But I digress) took a pile of draft paper and whipped up a bunch of sketches for mechanical computers. He had one called a Difference Engine, which was designed to calculate polynomial functions, and one called an Analytical Engine, which was much more complex and designed to be programmable via punch cards. Babbage’s ultimate plans called for it to be, essentially, a modern computer, except powered by gears and steam. Thus sayeth the Wikipedia:
There was to be a store (that is, a memory) capable of holding 1,000 numbers of 50 decimal digits each (ca. 20.7kB). An arithmetical unit (the “mill”) would be able to perform all four arithmetic operations, plus comparisons and optionally square roots. Initially it was conceived as a difference engine curved back upon itself, in a generally circular layout, with the long store exiting off to one side. (Later drawings depict a regularized grid layout.) Like the central processing unit (CPU) in a modern computer, the mill would rely upon its own internal procedures, to be stored in the form of pegs inserted into rotating drums called “barrels,” to carry out some of the more complex instructions the user’s program might specify. (See microcode for the modern equivalent.)
The programming language to be employed by users was akin to modern day assembly languages. Loops and conditional branching were possible, and so the language as conceived would have been Turing-complete long before Alan Turing’s concept.
First of all, does that not blow your mind? This guy was a century ahead of his time. Completed versions of these machines were never actually built in Babbage’s lifetime, due to a lack of funding, but some one hundred years later a group of people built one of his machines according to his plans. It worked. And to make things better, it was absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous in action. Look at this thing move.
So anyways, Ada Lovelace, who happened to be an amazing mathematician, was doing documentation for Babbage’s machines and just started coming up with examples for how one might “program” the analytical engine. You know what else she said? She wrote about the possibility that “the engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of music of any degree of complexity or extent”. She foresaw electronic music. In the mid 19th century. Ever sat down and dinked around with FruityLoops or a similar program? Yeah. Ada Lovelace totally called it 170 years ago. Just sayin’.
Now from what I can gather, the point of Ada Lovelace Day is to talk about women (or a specific woman) in computing/science/etc. Which is a pretty great idea, because I know from experience that contrary to the video-game-osphere (and WoW-o-sphere especially), where there are a lot of women involved, something like, say, the open source movement is considerably more guy-centric, and the idea of how one should approach this topic is actually something I’ve thought about a lot. So, I fully support the Ada Lovelace Day idea.
But honestly if you told me to pick a woman in computing/science to admire, I would’ve picked Ada Lovelace to begin with, anyway, because I am just That Much of a A Fangirl.
Plus, bonus points for anything involving Difference Engines/Analytical Engines.
As most of you all know by now, I majored in film. This gave me two valid career options: fast food and retail. (I opted for the latter.)
Really, “What are you going to do with that degree?” is a question that will probably haunt me for the rest of my life. The reason I went was because I was hoping it would be an outlet for the stories in my head. See, I’m very visual; when I was writing my NaNo, for example, I had to keep stopping to draw pictures or make storyboards or what-have-you. I still can’t listen to most music without little “mental movies” springing unbidden to my mind.
There was a problem with film school, though; namely, there was sort of a… conflict of interest, I guess.
Professor: “So, what sort of movies do you guys want to make?” Everyone Else: “Memento” / “Fight Club” / “Some black and white indie art film”. Me: “THE LION KING!” *Everyone turns to stare at me* Me: “…what?”
…on top of that, take a wild guess on what’s cheaper to make on a shoestring college kid budget: “The Lion King”, or “some black and white art film”? Yeah. So as you can see the “outlet” I was hoping for turned into tagging around on everyone else’s art films while I daydreamed that I was making cartoons instead (although the senior film I ultimately worked on was trying to be “Buffy”, so I guess that was a decent compromise.)
Still, I look back on my time at film school rather fondly. I had fun and learned a lot of interesting things. Among them…
TOP TEN THINGS I LEARNED IN FILM SCHOOL:
10. “Apocalypse Now” is the answer to every test question.
Sound design question? Apocalypse Now. Editing question? Apocalypse Now. Directing question? Apocalypse Now. Seriously. Even if it wasn’t the original answer, you can usually convince the professor that it works somehow.
9. Everyone Gets to do Everything.
The professors hated when you did this and tried to lay down rules. “Everyone in your group needs to specialize in something! I don’t want to see you as an extra in your own movie!”
Yeah. Um. Not happening. In the senior film I ultimately worked on I was producer, co-executive producer, location manager, assistant camera/clapslate, boom operator, and yes, an extra. Good times.
(Oh, the shower scene from “Psycho” is your backup Answer-to-Every-Test-Question should “Apocalypse Now” fail for some reason.)
7. What the Difference Between a “Grip” and a “Gaffer” Is.
…but I’ve since forgotten.
6. 95% of foreign movies will inject insanity directly into your brain.
Exceptions are made for Kurosawa (’cause dude, SAMURAI), and Bollywood. Bollywood (aka Indian cinema) is basically big-budget Disney films except live-action instead of animated. And thus awesome.
5. Script Breakdowns Will Destroy You.
“Script Breakdown” is a nice way to word the following: taking a script and going through it line by line and making a note of every character, every prop, every location, every sound and every special effect in the entire movie, and then organizing them into various lists and charts. It will give you nightmares and it will be a good six months before you can watch a movie again without wincing because “uuuugggh that scene would be so expensive and such a pain and augh.”
4. Animated Movies Will Help You Learn2Story.
See, maybe I was on to something with this “Lion King” thing I was talking about earlier. We watched “The ChubbChubbs” in my screenwriting class as an example of setting up a premise and then delivering a solid story. And I have a very distinct memory of some Hollywood professional who had worked on several films coming into our class and showing us clips from “Finding Nemo” as examples for how to make a good story. I don’t remember anything else he said, except for his high praise of “Finding Nemo”.
3. “Don’t Be Afraid to Kill Your Babies”.
…rather less gruesome than it sounds, I promise. My editing teacher said it, and it was to prepare us for a moment that he knew would come in each of our little film-student-lives at some point where we’d have to leave some beautiful scene on the cutting room floor because it didn’t advance the story.
I still mutter this phrase to myself sometimes when working on my fiction writing.
2. Film Professors Say the Darndest Things.
“This must be a leftist VCR”, “Remember: Actors are sheep”, and “Fidel Castro was starting to get on my nerves, so I told him to stop it” come to mind.
and finally…
1. When You Give Your Story to the World, It Isn’t Yours Anymore.
Another thing my editing teacher said. At first, this sort of miffed me. It was my story, afterall, it meant what I wanted it to mean. But I’ve thought about it a lot since then and I’ve come to agree with him. Sure, my story means one thing to me, but to someone else it may mean something else entirely. And you know what… I think I like it that way.
(This may or may not have added fuel to what would become the Open Source Fangirl Fire.)
—
Ah, film school. Good times.
Maybe someday, I will get to make my “Lion King”. In the meantime, I daydream and doodle… and ramble on blogs…
Pikestaff the character was born when I was about 13 or 14 years old and the Internet, as we know it, was juuuust starting to catch on.
Back then the interwebs horizon was filled with names like Altavista and Hotbot, and one of the very first things I did was go searching for “Redwall“.
See, back then I was super in to the Redwall series, a set of books that was about anthropomorphic animals in a sword & sorcery fantasy world who spent their time solving riddles and fighting bad guys. Pretty much every single book had the exact same plot (just with different names) and I just ate it up.
Apparently so did a lot of other kids my age because I stumbled across a very living world of Redwall roleplaying message boards.
Obviously I had to join in, so I invented a character named Pikestaff– a hare (my favorite species from the books) who was a big goofball and possessed a voracious appetite.
Now I have a confession to make. It make shock some of you who didn’t know this before.
Ready?
…
I was baaaasically a cross between a troll and the living personification of Goldshire. To me, the funniest thing in the world was showing up in the middle of someone’s super serious RP and attempting to subtly turn it into Pokemon or the Matrix. At least I was classy about my trolling, I guess, because it wasn’t a game to bother other people with as much as it was a game to see how much I could get away with. I invented other characters who served similar purposes, such as the SCV of Death or a dragon named Windshifter who would become rather prominent in my life later, but I digress.
Whether because of or despite of my notoriety, Pikestaff the hare became a rather well-known character across the Redwall forum-o-sphere in the late 90s, and occasionally I’d even set aside the humor and actually do some “real RP”. Occasionally.
I didn’t get to spend as much time on the Internet as I would have liked to, and eventually the “InsideTheWeb” software powering some 95% of Redwall message boards went kaput, so Pikestaff didn’t stay in the psuedo-RP realm for very long. I incorporated her into stories (mostly satire), and sort of turned her into a general all-purpose alter-ego, signing up for things as Pikestaff or Pike.
That’s where the name came from.
The persona remained a hare for a long time, although it never felt quiiiite right. Anytime I drew a “self-portrait” of myself, for years, it was usually some sort of cartoon android or robot, not a hare. But then when I sat down to actually come up with a robot character for myself, that never felt quite right either.
