Detritus of the Mind

Okay, so I've been putting this one off for a bunch of reasons (90% of them personal), but there's a big one - Maho Girls Precure was boring. It was DULL. And it's not because it followed in the wake of a really strong season - the fights were lackluster, the villains were rather bland, the stakes never felt dramatic in any way, and the universe didn't feel very fun (it really felt like someone had recently read the Harry Potter books & wanted to make them more cutesy). It just didn't have the humor or character pieces that even Precure's weaker seasons have managed, and it actively made me wonder if I still liked Precure at all because it was just so... blah. Somehow, blah is worse than bad, since with bad, you can at least see things that could have been executed well; with blah, there isn't even that squandered potential or that urge to rage-watch & see how much worse things get. I liked the designs a lot (especially the deliberate ridiculousness...

So of course, after I say I can't think of anything to say, I have something to say. And it needs to be said. You are not entitled to information leaks about a TV show and/or movie. Again, you are not entitled to leaks. You are not entitled to leaks. As much as December info leaks are seen as a sort of Pretty Cure tradition at this point, they are not something the staff of the show actually wants to happen.  They want you to be surprised & interested in the show because of the information they offer, not because someone found an early design in a detail-reduced form on a candy wrapper.  They want you to enjoy the plot twists, not have them spoiled months in advance by copyright registrations being trolled for info.  Have a bit of basic respect for the creators wanting to give you the best experience they can. Toei has, on the whole, gotten pretty good at thwarting the leak-makers.  After the aforementioned copyright searchers spoiled the reveal of Cure...

Huh.  It's been since June that I've had time to update this?  Yikes.  How do Gentlemen of Leisure do it? My life has been its usual mix of mundane craziness that leaves little free time, so now I'm going to make some time for a brief to-do list. I am still continuing my Legionnaires Omnicommentaries.  I wish I had a scanner I could trust to show you why the next few issues are going to be a slog, but they are (I'll do my best the next time I get actual non-pseudo-emergency time to myself, which is rarer than any commodity).  I plan to do Legionnaires through the Zero Issues (a.k.a. the start of the Archie Legion), along with a few annuals.  Then it's on to something that's at least fun-bad - Howard Mackie's Mutant X!  So many missed opportunities, so much bizarre dialogue... Unlike the waning days of Legionnaires, this one might actually be fun. I've been trying to get some original stuff written, but my brain keeps going back to something I had...

So I recently happened across the Legion Abstract, where author Matthew E had this exchange with a commenter named Jip: JIP: An optimistic far future is what the Legion was originally founded on. Since that vision is no longer in style, it has been a MAJOR [his emphasis]  challenge to plot and write stories. MATTHEW E: It can still be done, though. Nothing wrong with swimming against the tide. This begs a question that's been on my mind lately, for a long list of reasons both pop cultural & personal: Since when is optimism considered "tricky"?  Since when is a story with an overall optimistic tone considered a hard sell?  And why are you considered naïve at best if you don't subscribe to that attitude? This is something that extends to everything from movies to comics to what amounts to an expected worldview.  Apparently, if you aren't horribly cynical, there's something wrong with you; you cannot be savvy and optimistic at the same time.  I make a...

Everyone who's a pop culture nerd should at least know of TV Tropes by now, right?  How they've created a handy-dandy guide to different archetypes, stock plots, and storytelling devices that is both informative and entertaining?  As a would-be writer, sometimes reviewing it can help with a story point or character beat that you're having a hard time defining, or it can help you avoid a potentially awful turn.  But not every trope has a name.  In fact, several of my personal pet peeves go nameless when they occur a lot and really need to be called on the floor for how awful they are.  So here is my first Bottom Five, unofficial tropes that drive me absolutely nuts. 5. All Aliens Are Invaders:  In every single movie or TV show built around aliens on right now, they are usually faceless, personality-free, unknowable destroyers & invaders.  Even when they try to give them a motive, it's usually no more than "they're taking our jobs stuff".  I...

I love the Muppets.  Ever since I was a spoiled child whose parents got cheap HBO and got to see the Down at Fraggle Rock behind-the-scenes special, Jim Henson has been one of my heroes.  As I get older, I appreciate his creations more & more not just out of nostalgia but out of an ability to see more than just silly felt & foam creatures doing silly things.  So it pains me to admit that, well, as much as I love the Muppets, I didn't really enjoy The Muppets .  And I kind of dread The Muppets... Again! to a degree. Any movie that requires you to watch the deleted scenes for the basic plot & character beats to make sense is a movie that has failed.  There were three key flaws to it: Its main thematic driving element was an appeal to nostalgia without anything to really back up the feeling presented, it focused too much on a new creation at the expense of the existing well-loved characters, and it focused too much on the roles played by the human g...

There's a lot of stuff I want to write about: resuming the Omnicommentaries, some X-Nonsense stuff including an epic takedown of my personal least favorite X-run, and God knows what else.  But for now, I wanna do something immediate. I wanna talk about the Amethyst shorts that became the only thing worth watching most mornings on DC Nation (lone exception being the Thunder & Lightning shorts). These shorts were perfect - they told a set story, they managed to have likable characters with realistic growth, they made excellent use of their game theme, and they had an ending that doesn't preclude visiting this world again.  The designs were lovely, the writing sharp, the acting as well.  I watched each one and wished it was a series so I could see more of Amethyst & her world. But then I remembered this was Cartoon Network we're talking about and got mad again. Unless I hear that (a) this will have a sequel or (b) some of the other shorts will continue or sho...

Hello, everyone.  I'm just putting a quick note to discuss soem of the semi-regular stuff that's being cycled in & out of Detritus before I get to an end-of-year summary.  First, though, let me wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Belated Hanukkah, Happy New Years, and Happy Anything Else I Missed.  Here's hoping 2013 isn't too painful. Anyway, I'd like to update everyone on a column being bumped and another being started.  I won't give up on them permanently, but I've decided to put the Omnicommentaries on the shelf for a while.  I find myself tending too much towards the negative; reading these with adult eyes is making me see stuff that flew right over my younger self's head but now drives me bonkers.  I don't want to be mean, but I feel like some of the elements in those early Legionnaires issues (Saturn Girl & Live Wire's Lifetime-tastic romance, a "beach" issue with a gruesome mood-killing plot hole, Chris Gardner...

I bowed out of NaNoWriMo this year.   There’s two reasons – one is the usual “there is no such thing as downtime” problem that my household has had to deal with for the past year (and, sadly, the foreseeable future).   The second is a bit odd, and I don’t know if I can put it into words.   Basically, I find myself writing not so much novel narratives as I do video game narratives.   There’s an intangible element that begs to be put into 16-bit RPG form, and it just doesn’t carry over to the standard prose of a novel in a satisfying manner.   I’ve tried, but the stories I want to tell need audience participation and run on that unique video game logic.   I bring this up because I recently revisited a planned project, and while I can’t really justify it as I had it planned, it did resonate with this problem.   It also is a cautionary tale of what happens when you try to take a video game narrative and apply it to another medium.   I speak, of ...

I'm home sick, which is when my mind goes to strange places.  Recently, I've been thinking about Precure again. I like the Precure franchise.  It's a magical girl series where there's still some kinetic physical action, it emphasizes familial love & friendship over romantic love for a change, and while it has a basic formula, it is still broad enough to allow for a LOT of variety.  Until fairly recently, it also did a good job focusing on the girls' lives as normal people and not just as superheroes, and it could keep a sense of stakes even during the lighter-hearted filler episodes without slipping into grimdark territory. The last two seasons, however, have left me cold.  Suite could've been much better than it was; the side characters were more interesting than the main pair, and the main conflict playing out how it did should've been epic.  But by focusing on the annoying Hibiki (easily the worst character in the franchise's history), basica...

I think I've said it before, but here it is again - if you're a fan of the magical girl genre and live in North America, you are largely screwed.  The good stuff rarely ever comes here, when it does it's either online only or hyper-overpriced if you like to watch TV shows on an actual TV (*coughMadokacough*), or only experienced via illegal, malware laden avenues.  And what you usually get is... not that good.  The leading example of this problem is the Italian-made genre entry, Winx Club . I've watched this show every season it's come out.  I like it, like so many other series, for the potential to be much better than it actually is that its owners are more than happy to leave unfulfilled.  4Kids brought it over, and while it was okay, it was never a stand-out.  People tried to blame their notorious editing practices on the plot-hole-tastic nature of the final season they aired (the third one).  But then Nick picked it up after a few years in limbo,...

Because I've been thinking about a few things and hey, there's been a few of these already, so what's one more? Let's start with a traditional list of pros and cons, shall we? PROS of the New 52 The Commitment to Genre Diversity: Even when DC ends a title in a given genre, they try to replace it with a title in the same genre that will hopefully find an audience more than the earlier one.  As a fan of All-Star Western , I appreciate this conscious decision not to concentrate solely on the capes & tights. Using Earth-2 As Something Other Than an Acquired Properties Dumping Ground: Seriously, two of the books that I look forward to the most are World's Finest & Earth-2 .  This world, rebuilding & reclaiming heroism after being devastated by Darkseid, is compelling and answers questions that many modern readers might have (especially in the treatment of Terry Sloane, who I always thought was a narcissistic creep at his core).  Meanwhile, we see jus...

(Welcome to a new sub-column, Terrible TV Time.  If you have cable, you know that there is a LOT of crap out there, and like everyone else, I have an opinion on some of it.  Please note that I draw the line at reviewing actively ANYTHING on TLC; my sanity is fragile enough as it is, and their decision to somehow reach so low that the bottom of the barrel is a distant ideal is too much for anyone who is still capable of thought.) So if you read my year-end review for 2011, you'd know that I was disappointed in the new track that the History Channel has opted to pursue.  Its sister channel H2, formerly known as History International & easily recognized as a back library dumping ground, began to live up to its name by taking on some of the aspects that used to define the mother network.  Modern Marvels , formerly the signature series of History Channel before it decayed, has become H2's signature show; it has expanded on successful specials like How the Stat...

As anyone who's ever listened to me whine on the internet knows, I have a sort of abused girlfriend-y relationship with the Ben 10 franchise.  I keep going back, expecting it to live up to its potential, and it keeps slapping me across the face with a fish.  Seriously, it's a good concept (no, I don't care if it's a redux of Dial H for Hero ), it's a solid cast, it's had a history of hiring strong creators, and I absolutely LOVE the voice cast.  But I swear it goes out of its way to personally infuriorate me for the fun of it. Yes, I have some choice complaints about the "preview" that CN showed last night.  I feel absolutely terrible airing them - this might be the last project that the McDuffies got to write together before the Maestro died - but until I air them, they will drive me even more batshit than normal. Mistake #1: Hiring a designer who does amazing aliens but ridiculously ugly humans.  Seriously, did Grandpa Max catch Brock's Dise...