Que soy muy flojo, ¿Vale?
Unfortunately, I don't really have a whole lot to write about. Life, The Universe and Everything, a speculative fiction-based symposium is coming up in a few weeks. I am the head of the games track, so it's getting a little bit hectic for me. Heh, it not nearly as bad as it could be though. Games track is actually apretty small job comparitively. Oh well.
Let's see, what's new? What's new? I'm finally getting caught up with my classes. I was taking 17 credits but that was just too much, so I dropped a class and am only taking 14 right now. I should have been caught up by now, but I'm very lazy. *sigh* Oh well, recognizing you've got a problem is the first step to recovery, no?
I've been finding in the past few months that I am a far more cynical and critical person than I ever thought I was. I'm not usually mean to people's faces, but I find myself making cynical remarks inside my head all the time. I mean, MAN... if people could read my mind, I doubt anyone would even want to know me, even if none of my remarks were ever directed at them specifically. I think that this is a recent development though. I hope so. I mean, I can't remember being so critical before, (not of other people at least,) but it could just be that I was so critical, but I'm only now just realizing it. Sure, some people need critisizm, but it should be constructive critisizm, otherwise it's just being a jerk, and I don't want to be a jerk. I know far too many of them and don't want to be associated with them.
I've always been more or less into anime. Not a ton, but I've never been adverse to it, and have seen some of the more popular stuff and the occasional obscure, late-night/budget VHS anime movie. I also had some knowledge of some of the more well-known stuff. But compared to most anime-geeks, I was essencially anime-illiterate. Since I've come here at college and joined Quark (the local campus nerd club) it's like having been on an accelerated course. I've even started buying some manga. I'm finding that it's actually a pretty good medium for storytelling. I am always surprised at how far ahead of America Japan is in so many categories. Japanese anime is just way ahead of most (read: not all) American animation, and some of the manga I've read just plain does a far better job at telling stories than most U.S. comic books. There are exceptions, of course, and not all manga/anime is good. Some of it is downright awful. Remember, I'm talking in generalities here.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. Oh well... Anyway... Yeah, them Japanese is good storytellers when it comes to visual mediums. I know that anime and manga are really just niche markets still, but they are getting more mainstream, and if America wants to compete in the cartoon/animation storytelling business, we need more studios like Pixar and Kanbar (who just did a great job with Hoodwinked, I'm looking foreward to their next project); more animaters like Craig McCraken and Genndy Tartakovsky (Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and more); and more comic books like, well... Okay, so there's plenty of good comic books out there, but there's a lot more that's just either just dumb or pure garbage.
But these people and series tell stories and tell them well. They don't just have stories, which is a different thing. I mean, most of the stuff out there is fine enough. They have stories. But anymore it seems that no one pays attention to them unless you get really outlandish story arcs and every single one is a matter of saving the world. Which is okay, if done well, but it's becoming increasingly hard to do that since rescuing the world has become so cliché. I mean, we're up against stuff like Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist. Not to mention just about anything by Studio Ghibli. Most of these aren't about saving the world. They're about people. They tell the stories of these people in an amazing and captivating way. To me, THAT is what books and movies (be it animated or live-action, printed word or sequential art) is all about: Telling a story in a way that people care about it.
Maybe it's just because I'm an idealist, but we really need to wake up as a society and start caring about the story we are trying to tell. Explosions and fight scenes are all well and good, but if they don't help the story out any, they're useless and have no purpose.
It's like with video games. Sure it's nice to have a graphics engine that so pretty no one will be able to even appreciate the fact until more powerful hardware comes out next year. But if the game is no good, what's the point? They made games back in the day with pixels for graphics that are still better than 90% of the games released today. There are games out there today, Like Urban Dead, which essentially have no graphics but are still more fun and addictive than junk like WoW. (Which I admit is addictive, but not very fun.)
Yet there are still morons out there who wont even look at a game unless it's graphics are top-notch. They award "fun points" based on the amount of heavy ordinance weapons you can hold, rather than level-design and mental challenge. Point in case: Oni. A great, if not perfect game by Bungie. Fun as heck. I was talking about it to some kids I used to baby-sit when they were younger. They wouldn't even consider playing it because "you can only carry one weapon at a time."
Well... DUH! That's part of the genious of the game: It forces you to choose your weapons wisely. Do you go with a plasma that has more ammo but does less damage, or a sniper rifle with only two shots? Do you trust your skill at hand-to-hand, or do you want to soften them up a bit before engaging? That game was the PERFECT blend of a shooter and a fighting game (No game I know of has ever come even close to doing as good a job as Oni did), but they didn't want to try it out since you could only carry one weapon at a time, [sarcasm]and how many weapons you can carry is OBVIOUSLY an indicator of how fun a game is.[/sarcasm]
Anyway... I've got homework to do. If I let myself, I'd be at this rant all day. Maybe I'll go on a bit more later.
Ci vediamo.
Let's see, what's new? What's new? I'm finally getting caught up with my classes. I was taking 17 credits but that was just too much, so I dropped a class and am only taking 14 right now. I should have been caught up by now, but I'm very lazy. *sigh* Oh well, recognizing you've got a problem is the first step to recovery, no?
I've been finding in the past few months that I am a far more cynical and critical person than I ever thought I was. I'm not usually mean to people's faces, but I find myself making cynical remarks inside my head all the time. I mean, MAN... if people could read my mind, I doubt anyone would even want to know me, even if none of my remarks were ever directed at them specifically. I think that this is a recent development though. I hope so. I mean, I can't remember being so critical before, (not of other people at least,) but it could just be that I was so critical, but I'm only now just realizing it. Sure, some people need critisizm, but it should be constructive critisizm, otherwise it's just being a jerk, and I don't want to be a jerk. I know far too many of them and don't want to be associated with them.
I've always been more or less into anime. Not a ton, but I've never been adverse to it, and have seen some of the more popular stuff and the occasional obscure, late-night/budget VHS anime movie. I also had some knowledge of some of the more well-known stuff. But compared to most anime-geeks, I was essencially anime-illiterate. Since I've come here at college and joined Quark (the local campus nerd club) it's like having been on an accelerated course. I've even started buying some manga. I'm finding that it's actually a pretty good medium for storytelling. I am always surprised at how far ahead of America Japan is in so many categories. Japanese anime is just way ahead of most (read: not all) American animation, and some of the manga I've read just plain does a far better job at telling stories than most U.S. comic books. There are exceptions, of course, and not all manga/anime is good. Some of it is downright awful. Remember, I'm talking in generalities here.
I'm not really sure where I'm going with this. Oh well... Anyway... Yeah, them Japanese is good storytellers when it comes to visual mediums. I know that anime and manga are really just niche markets still, but they are getting more mainstream, and if America wants to compete in the cartoon/animation storytelling business, we need more studios like Pixar and Kanbar (who just did a great job with Hoodwinked, I'm looking foreward to their next project); more animaters like Craig McCraken and Genndy Tartakovsky (Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and more); and more comic books like, well... Okay, so there's plenty of good comic books out there, but there's a lot more that's just either just dumb or pure garbage.
But these people and series tell stories and tell them well. They don't just have stories, which is a different thing. I mean, most of the stuff out there is fine enough. They have stories. But anymore it seems that no one pays attention to them unless you get really outlandish story arcs and every single one is a matter of saving the world. Which is okay, if done well, but it's becoming increasingly hard to do that since rescuing the world has become so cliché. I mean, we're up against stuff like Escaflowne, Cowboy Bebop and Fullmetal Alchemist. Not to mention just about anything by Studio Ghibli. Most of these aren't about saving the world. They're about people. They tell the stories of these people in an amazing and captivating way. To me, THAT is what books and movies (be it animated or live-action, printed word or sequential art) is all about: Telling a story in a way that people care about it.
Maybe it's just because I'm an idealist, but we really need to wake up as a society and start caring about the story we are trying to tell. Explosions and fight scenes are all well and good, but if they don't help the story out any, they're useless and have no purpose.
It's like with video games. Sure it's nice to have a graphics engine that so pretty no one will be able to even appreciate the fact until more powerful hardware comes out next year. But if the game is no good, what's the point? They made games back in the day with pixels for graphics that are still better than 90% of the games released today. There are games out there today, Like Urban Dead, which essentially have no graphics but are still more fun and addictive than junk like WoW. (Which I admit is addictive, but not very fun.)
Yet there are still morons out there who wont even look at a game unless it's graphics are top-notch. They award "fun points" based on the amount of heavy ordinance weapons you can hold, rather than level-design and mental challenge. Point in case: Oni. A great, if not perfect game by Bungie. Fun as heck. I was talking about it to some kids I used to baby-sit when they were younger. They wouldn't even consider playing it because "you can only carry one weapon at a time."
Well... DUH! That's part of the genious of the game: It forces you to choose your weapons wisely. Do you go with a plasma that has more ammo but does less damage, or a sniper rifle with only two shots? Do you trust your skill at hand-to-hand, or do you want to soften them up a bit before engaging? That game was the PERFECT blend of a shooter and a fighting game (No game I know of has ever come even close to doing as good a job as Oni did), but they didn't want to try it out since you could only carry one weapon at a time, [sarcasm]and how many weapons you can carry is OBVIOUSLY an indicator of how fun a game is.[/sarcasm]
Anyway... I've got homework to do. If I let myself, I'd be at this rant all day. Maybe I'll go on a bit more later.
Ci vediamo.
posted by Cpt. Sqweky at
3:17 PM
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