All posts by mhuffman

Anime, Otaku

Ace and Whitebeard are Dead!

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For those of you who watched One Piece, this news isn’t really a surprise. The episode of their death aired back in 2011, so I’m a little behind. As part of the 2020 pandemic, I started watching One Piece with my wife on Netflix, and despite it’s quirkiness, when episodes ran out on Netflix, I kept going… I think my wife wanting to stop watching about half way into the first season — the cussing and silliness was too much for her. It looks like I’m nearing the half-way mark in the series (ep. 487)… it’s still running, with 959 episodes in total as I type this.

The heaviness of the story arch is still weighing on me emotionally. Luffy has rejoined his crew and has continued on to mermaid island, 2 years after the loss of Ace. Up until then, several episodes were dedicated to bonds of brotherhood and the loss of a family member, and the impact it had on the friends/family around them… Surprisingly, it’s very touching. So much that it makes me wonder about the series’ writer and if they’ve experience similar grief to draw upon… From a few blog posts I’ve read, sound it was more of a deliberate decision to kill of Ace to help Luffy go onto the next level — I get that — and I’m feeling a tad bit emotionally manipulated.

That’s the funny thing about American story tellers, you can generally tell when the writers are trying to manipulate the audience to feel a certain way — it’s almost like they’re hitting you over the head with it… the sappy music… pull the camera in close to the actor as they’re starting to tear up… it’s to the point where it’s cliche… But this One Piece story arch felt different. Maybe it’s the length — 100 episodes for this season, 30 of them covered the war ending in Ace & Whitebeard’s death — to spread it out over, however the build-up was just unbearable — I felt like Luffy was covering the same 30 ft, of ground every episode for 10 episodes straight… Maybe it’s the source material (although I haven’t lost a brother, so hard to connect on that level)… Maybe it’s just refreshingly different… Not formulaic in the western short story telling sense… however, it could be formulaic in the eastern epic melodrama sense…

Meh. This wasn’t the reason I started this post — to rabbit-hole into comparing/contrasting different story telling techniques. More to explore how I was feeling and the impact it’s having on me…

Personal

Happy Craptastic New Year!

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Happy New Year! 2020 was a craptastic year; this one doesn’t seem to be much better.

When I started this post, I was going to be optimistic or thoughtful about the previous year. There’s been enough negativity about last year on FB — between the pandemic… friends being put on furlough at work.. having to cancel all and any vacation plans… a very blurred line between the work/life balance, with no clear break… then going into this year, expecting a peaceful transition of power — instead we get a pouty ex-girlfriend that just wont accept that it’s over…

The pandemic has claimed many lives and business victims. I don’t understand how the stock market can do so well…

Personal, Travel

Update: Japanese

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I am on day 259 in the Duolingo app; meaning I have used the app for 259 straight days to learn Japanese, but my progress isn’t very far… I’ve mostly been doing my 2 lessons a day, and for the most part, it’s been maintaining my progress…

Recently, they’ve added a “dark mode”, and about a month back, they expanded the Hiragana/Katakana section. I did make the leader board a few time while I finished those off! But now it’s taking effort to learn more/improve. And you’d think with self-isolation and the crap going on, I’d fine more time it… Just need to prioritize it.

I started my journey by listening to a podcast about learning Japanese prior to starting Duoling… It started with the basics, and led me to downloading apps to help learn Hiragana/Katakana — that helped a lot! I have downloaded one for Kanji, but haven’t been working on it as hard… After that, I realized the need to start a vocabulary spreadsheet (seen above)… I’ve spent a few hours here and there to curate the list, but haven’t created flashcards or spent hours of memorization on it yet… And I’ve avoided tackling verbs… something I know I just need to buckle down and do!

Stepping back, I think I’ve got a lot of good resources, including the internet. Between the quizzes and flashcards in the apps, the repetition, the spoken lessons, the spreadsheet, etc. some things are sinking in. I catch myself picking up words spoken in some Anime… feel like I’ve gone from a 0.1 – 1% word recognition to about a 3 – 5% word recognition. Sounding out words in Hiragana/Katakana is still slow, and I still doubt myself, but some small improvement…

What still freaks me out, when I watch a really good art-detailed Anime, with lots of street signs, train/bus time tables, or close-up views of things you’d use for navigation, I’m still like, WTH? Just watched a scene in Love Hina where two of the main characters buy a high-speed train ticket to Osaka — there was a few shots of the tickets used to find their seats… very quick scenes, but I’m wondering if (when we travel) will I be able to understand enough to find our car/row/seat to find our seats? We screwed this up once in France, figure need to make a better effort next time we travel anywhere by train…

One of the things I know I’m going to fail on is pronunciation… I should probably be repeating the spoken Japanese. But a lot of times, I find myself parsing the spoken Japanese for context, and find myself tripping up on spoken contractions… I’ll catch the first few words, then something that doesn’t sound quite right, then ends with a verb… Just like English with contractions and spoken shortcuts, I’ve noticed that in the app with some of the spoken sentences… and slowing it down doesn’t all ways clear it up. it’s taken a little more time to recognize the contractions, especially around how the particles flow from/into the next word… something I think I’d pick up a little better with learning from an actual teacher.

Plots

Flying Whales

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When I was younger, I had the idea of a world populated with whales like creatures that captured Hydrogen or Helium in internal sacks and lived their full life in the air… Of course, I’ve read Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but these creatures didn’t spontaneously appear than came crashing to the ground after becoming self-realizing.

Now following this “what if…” thought process, other creatures (built on this same principle) also ruled the air, like flying manatees, flying sting rays, etc. What would life for us simple barely smarter than primates be like?

… trying to find the sketch I did of a flying whale, it’s buried in a notebook somewhere…

Comics, Nightmoor, Plots

Nightmoor: The Lady de’Kay

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Lady de’Kay is a combination of the old lady (Miss Havisham) in “Great Expectations” and the Lady de’Winter of “The Three Musketeers”. She’s a crafty old lady who looked beautiful at one time, but time has taken her toll.

The Lady is a widow. Her husband was the first Mayor of Night-Moor. She lives alone in a big old Victorian house, except for her one servant. The grounds and the house are unkept, and she lives a very reclusive lifestyle. She still shows up to big political events, but for the most part she avoids people. Everything she does is in the memory of her husband.

Most contact with the Lady is through her lawyer (name still to be decided). He carries out the Lady’s wishes in the world of people & creatures. In some respects, she has her own political agenda, that she uses her vast wealth to carry out.

Towards the end of Lord de’Kay’s career, he was surrounded by political scandal — so much that he took his own life shortly after he stepped down from office (to this day, the Lady strongly doesn’t believe the “rumors” surrounding her husband, but holds firmly to the belief that he was a saint & saviour of Night-Moor). He was a drunkard & did beat her, but she’s willing to forget about such things in light of his death (or some twisted, illogical love/hate she has for him). Overall, he really wasn’t a good man, but she tolerated/loved/respected/hated/despised/etc. him.

She has the classic victim mentality. She to be both pitied & feared, sympathize for, yet repulsed by. She’s a classic tragedy figure. …probably the most complex character in Night-Moor.

In the early days, the Lady was a social climber — she married for wealth & prestige. She has a lot of ‘old money’ & all psychological make-up that ‘old money’ implies — snobbishness, servants, dreams of the good-old-days, life-was-simplier-back-then, she was the head of many social events, she founded many of the social activities & the arts in Night-Moor, one of the leading pioneers of Night-Moor, she knew her place as a lady & didn’t question it, brought up in (& surrounded by) tradition, etc.

Plots

An Asgard Romance!

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Sci-fi Plot:

10 Word Sci-fi Plot: Boy-meets-girl in mining camp on Callisto. An Asgard romance!

I started uploading some of the old plots I came up with, that I posted on other blog sites to here. One of the exercises was to do a 10 word plot, then expound upon it. It’s a bit of a writing exercise and a mental one. To challenge oneself… but it’s not to be taken too seriously… throw away plots, to get the creative juices flowing.

I started to envision this as a Japanese mining company on some moon, where a boy meets a girl… and some of the cliché foibles seen in most common anime between boys/girls, are still experienced hundreds of years in the future… Europa has been done in Sci-Fi… Landed on Callisto… via wikipedia learned that it was voted as a good place to start colonization and about of it’s few surface features, like the Asgard, a impact multi-ring basin, the 2nd largest on that moon.

He could be the minor, she could be a recent scientist sent to the station. They might have grown up in neighboring rural towns in Japan, that they discover in a company mixer. Maybe she’s a robotics expert, sent to help out with a problem… they further cross paths dealing with robotic anomalies. Maybe one goes missing, and his big heart gets in the way and he risks his life to recover it, and she chases after him. Maybe they get trapped in a collapsed mine shaft, where they bond… fighting for survival, they come to respect each other’s experience/education, eliminating one of the barriers between them.

Something life-affirming, heart warming on a icy rock.

Plots

A Tale of Love and Romance, but Mostly about Harold and Steve

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I thought about writing a gay romance story… Something that’s a bit modern, interspliced with some day-dreaming/fantasy scenes, and references to fictional Asian gay folk-lores. Fictional in that they’re made up for this story, but not based on any real traditional folk-lores.

Two characters, something like Harold and Steve.. Haven’t decided on actual name, but one needs to be “sexy” and one to be unusual, but ordinary… but in terms of characters, the names don’t reflect the characters… The “sexy” name is given to the ordinary person, with low-self esteem, insecurities about their looks (the main character in the romance), but the one with a rich day-dreaming/fantasy life. The other lead is drop dead sexy, but hides it well… a coffee shop barista… out-going, self-confident, the total opposite, but you don’t know he’s gay until act 3… for act 1, he’s a background character… there’s no magical moment, just the guy making the coffee.

For act 1, the main character, we’ll call Steve, we learn about who he is; his insecurities…his social circles… his love of literature and Yaoi comics… we’ll even walk into one of his day-dreams — he briefly meets some god-like Adonis at a comic-book convention (in cos-play of course), that turns into superhero/sidekick fighting crime sequence that ends in… well, it ends. Unable to day-dream about the act of sex because of his low self-esteem, guilt, or some inner-turmoil. He does this maybe a 2nd time, with a different person, with a different fantasy, but ends short like before… At the end of act 1, he discovers a support group, where he realizes he’s not alone, or the only person with these hang-ups. Maybe a on-line group, or Reddit… or a fairy-drag-mother.

In act 2, Steve starts to explore Asian folk-lores and stumbles upon 2 tales that speak to him. The first is a tale of love between two men of nobility in China. The first family finds out and hires someone to kill their son’s lover to not bring disgrace upon the family. The lover finds out about the plot and runs away… Through some trials and tribulations, the first family becomes indebted to the shunned lover, through some turn of events. The two lovers are reunited and live happily ever after… There should be a hook between the tale and Steve’s life…

The other folk-lore is Japanese between two boys that grew up together, wrestling together, bathing together, and fell in love… Another tale of how the families shunned their love, but in the end, their love for each other was so strong, that the gods turned them into birds… or monkeys.. or some type of animal or flowers that becomes symbolic of pure love without bias.

As viewers in act 2, we become immersed in the tales. We have breaks, when Steve attends class or visits the coffee shop…. or has an argument with Harold over the who was the better writer, some Russian dude, or Dickens. The two folk-lores frame up Steve’s inner growth, in his otherwise mundane life. Maybe at some point, he discusses the tales with his fairy-drag-mother to understand the deeper meaning, that’s not right there on the surface…Points that hit home for Steve.

In act 3, Steve comes to terms with himself and who he is. Growing in self-confidence, find his voice… And for the first time, really meets Harold, by realizing the share the same love for Yaoi comics… what started out with the two bantering back and forth with each other over different literature, there didn’t seem to be any common ground between them… Steve ends up catching Harold reading his “dirty little secret” one day behind the coffee shop.

….it’s trite and stupid, I know.

Comics, Nightmoor, Plots

Nightmoor: An Alphabet

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A is for apple, that grows on the trees,
B is for bats, that fly on the breeze,
C is for cat, that is black as night,
D is for demon, that hide out of sight,
E is for eels, that go in a witch’s brew,
F is for frogs, that go with it too,
G is for ghost, that moan and wail,
H is for haunt, something they do very well,
I is for ink, that gets spilled on the page,
J is for Jack, who hangs in a cage,
K is for kids, that play with a mouse,
L is for Lady de’Kay, who hides in her house,
M is for moon, that shines like silver,
N is for night, so cold, you shiver,
O is for owl, his feathers are brown
P is for Peter, the mayor of our town,
Q is for questions, we ask before we sleep,
R is for rats, that go “squeak, squeak, squeak”,
S is for skeleton, who has a big grin,
T is for town, that Peter lives in,
U is for umbrella, the winds blow from the west,
V is for velvet, used to make a pretty dress,
W is for witch, who turns frogs into stones,
X is for xylophone, make of skeleton bones,
Y is for yell! A scream of delight.
Z is for … well… ‘Z’. My darlings, let’s call it a night.

Anime, Geek, Otaku

Oh! My Goddess

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So during this Covid-19 pandemic, I’ve resorted to watching a lot of Oh! My Goddess episodes in between catching up on Westworld and spring season anime… I remember watching the movie a long time ago, and maybe a few episodes, but I couldn’t tell if it which season… I also remember reading the manga series when Dark Horse released it in the US… But I can’t actually pinpoint when I fell in love with the series… Maybe after college?

As someone put it on reddit, Belldandy was the original waifu, before goddesses became insane in anime…

I’ve avoided rewatching if for awhile, thinking in the back of my head that I don’t have all the seasons… or I’m missing a special. And there’s a certain nostalgia about the series when you compare it to modern anime… the pacing is a little slower. And it’s 50 episodes with specials and a movie — it’s a lot to sit through.

I watched season 1 in English, which made it go faster… As I write this, I discovered on my self I have a S.A.V.E. copy of season 2, in both English and Japanese… So I’ve been ripping those and watching through them in English. I remember having a VCD copy of season 1 somewhere, that I got off eBay.

As I’m watching through the series, I’m releasing the season 1 & 2 were released in 2005/6… Hard to believe it’s only been 15 years. But I’m also realizing that the very first OVAs were released 1993/4… I’m thinking this is when I fell in love with the series & became aware of it. The OVAs covered a few things that were drawn out into a few episodes in season 1… I can’t which did a better job… The nuance about causing trouble for others is there… Belldandy meeting Keiichi during childhood (which was talked about in season 2) was very different from the OVA… since the Batman story has been told and retold many different times, with different ways, I’m not so much hung up on cannon…

For an anime that’s saccharin sweet, there is a pervy vibe that runs through it… Even from the beginning, in the original OVAs, there’s a drag race competition between the Nekomi Institute of Technology Auto Club and a rival club. In between races, girls in skimpy swimsuit-like outfits hold up signs, either as cheer-leaders, crowd motivators, or announcing the next race… there’s a few cut screens where all viewers see are butts, crotch-shots, or boob-shots… there should almost be a eechi-index (and there might be), of how many sexualized visualizations there are within a title…

Anime, Comics, Geek

Interesting Stories

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Today as I was driving into work, I started thinking about what stories do I like the most. What has captivated my attention to keep watching (in anime and TV series) or reading in comics…

From the masterful story teller, Alan Moore, I learned about framing/book-ends — start with one story, show how it leads into another story, then close it out with the original story; tying the two stories together with reference to similar subject matters, a play on words within the exposition, or visuals leading from the first story to the next (ie. zooming into the eye of an character in the first story, switching in the next frame, then zooming out from a different character in the next story). Alan’s background details not only foreshadow things to come, but added atmosphere, depth. His ability to tell multiple stories, where one story thread feed into the other kept me engage.

Alan’s villains also had dimension. Time was given not only to create depth in his heroes, but the bad guys were more thoughtful, twisted.

Switching to anime and a little bit, TV, there are certain stories that I really love. Most of them tend to be Isekai (異世界, “different world”), but with the overall story, the characters are very likable, you want them to succeed, you become invested in them quickly — then something happens and you as the audience despair. The first few seasons of Game of Thrones was like that — you wanted the Starks to win, but then the father is killed. Or for Rob to be happy in love on the battle field, but then the red wedding. But with GoT, after awhile, it became cliche to kill off a characters you became emotionally attached to.

In anime it’s a little different. There tends to be a villain that seem over-powered at first, that comes into the story punching you in the gut. Or the villains are arrogant, weaselly, no more than high-school bullies, but then they pray on some the weaker, timid, shy. You see it coming like a freight train down the tracks, but can’t stop it… In many cases, it’s a change of atmosphere, the visuals are darker, the music switches and you get that sinking feeling in your stomach, that whatever happens, it’s not going to end well.