Detritus of the Mind

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 ...

A few recent events have gotten me to thinking: When does a network know it's time to throw in the towel on a failed show?  How do they decide to keep pushing something audiences aren't watching versus taking it off the air? First, there's the whole DC Nation debacle.  For those that don't know, the DC Nation block was abruptly dropped last weekend from Cartoon Network's schedule - so abruptly that CN's own Facebook page was telling people to look for new episodes that day.  They quickly responded to the upset fans by letting everyone know that the block is off the air until January, no reasons given.  A few have been bandied around (retooling, rights issues, etc.), but I noticed that they've replaced its main run on Saturdays with the How to Train Your Dragon show, which they've also been hyping for more prime time runs as well.  I haven't heard ANY feedback, good or bad, on this show; when I caught some of it, it struck me as well animated but a...

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,...

The latest Top Five podcast from Major Spoilers covered cartoons you think don't get the love they deserve.   This is, obviously, a topic near & dear to my nerdy little heart, so here's my list.  I'm basing this on size of fandom, staying power, & availability as well as my own love. 5.) Super Robot Monkey Team Hyper Force GO!   A loving tribute to 70s/80s sentai anime, this is the only series on this list that I haven't seen in full.  But what I saw was so impressive that I resent I can't legally see more or own it in a nice set.  It's got giant robots, it's got cute monkeys, it's got a boy hero with an awesome scarf who falls in love with an android girl, it's got freaky-ass set pieces, it's got an art style that seems to have inspired others in its wake... how could this fail?  Maybe, even though it made the full 65-episode run, it was just too unique to succeed. - Following: Small but loyal.  I've never met anyone, but hell, so...

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...