dragonlizard89

[dragonlizard89]

My personal favorites from the Femme Fatale art book by Toshiaki Kato (1943-1996).

Scanned by Marissa at minitokyo.net, though that website is pretty laggy.

[dragonlizard89]

Some words in defense of human art over AI art

Someone made this comment on another website defending AI art: "it is a tool. Only the result is important, not the path. The biggest trait of artist is knowing when to stop, when the art is finished, and his satisfaction with the piece is showing the level of his talent and artistic intelligence. The attempts which artist throws into trash, the way he knows what looks and feels good, his taste, is actually what makes a great artist. Not the type of brushes he´s using."

It rankled me so I responded with this:

The path is important. If you look at art progress pics it shows a certain human determination to push through when one's skills are not there yet, to slowly hone one's skills over the years until they are finally capable of the vision an artist has in their head. That's very human and it's what AI artists lack in their art.

Taste is an important part of an artist's mind or heart, but when it comes to an AI artist I'd hesitate to call it talent on their part. They are not the artist themselves. They are not the ones who are making the brushstrokes. If anything they are more similar to patrons of Renaissance Italy, only they are commissioning AI instead of a human being. Yes, the taste and commissions of those rich patrons were a vital part of the art scene, but they were not the artists themselves making it happen. In the same sense, it is the AI that is actually creating the art, not the AI "artist."

I have taste which feeds into my appreciation of art, but I am content with that. I would not say that that taste makes me an artist. Because I don't put in a prompt and pretend that I am the creator, slapping my name on a piece I didn't work for. It was the churn of computer processors and memory that labored for AI art.

There's a huge difference between a real artist scrapping ten pieces of artwork that don't meet their standards and an AI artist "scrapping" a hundred pieces of artwork that don't meet their "standards." There's nothing to the AI artist scrapping artwork. They're not killing their darlings. The scrapped pieces of work are nothing personal to them, they feel absolutely no ownership of these failures.

Never failed; never tried. The AI artist has never dared to sit with failure.

Art should be personal.

[dragonlizard89]

Still can't get over how Rhaenyra flew the coop to Dragonstone. It was the easiest mistake to avoid. Stay influential in King's Landing, schmooze all the lords and ladies you need in your corner. Who cares if others spread rumors, they ain't gonna do anything while Viserys is still alive.

Plus she should've developed a real relationship with Aegon long before she left. Make sure you're his favorite person in the world at least while he's growing up. Candy bribes and piggyback rides could have averted the war.

[dragonlizard89]

Two Haikus

Watch the sun blazing As it rises above all With light to guide all

Tall, majestic mound Shadowing its area To those who test it

Author's Note: Remembered I had these old poems on my hard drive. I wrote these bad boys for 7th grade English. Not bad for a 12-year-old, if I do say so myself.

[dragonlizard89]

Welcome to my blog. Here you'll find analysis/reviews of movies, tv shows, and books. And also some original short fiction.

Here are some highlights.

Movie Analysis

Ever wondered what was up with No-Face from Spirited Away?

An in-depth, topical look at how Credence Barebone from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, born of a difficult and repressed environment, is being pulled by various parties in his society for their own ends.

Studio Ghibli's From Up on Poppy Hill is about a time of great change in postwar Japan and how the characters choose to navigate that change without entirely losing their connection to the past.

Short Fiction

Sputnik's Passage. Just a short existential story about everybody's favorite satellite.

Night Driving. Because sometimes you catch an odd, wistful feeling on half-empty roads at night and can't shake it.

Misc

A nerdy, niche non-fiction ode to online text-based roleplaying. Reminiscing specifically about a small community I was a part of in the early 2000s, the era of beige computers, clunky CRT monitors, and slow dial-up modems.

And for a bonus here's a Mega Man X vgm cover of Storm Eagle's stage music I recorded. And some very amateurish instrumental rock music I composed back in the day.

[dragonlizard89]

The Tale of the Princess Kaguya thoughts (spoilers)

Among Takahata's finest works. This film starts slow but pulls you in as it runs. It has a soft pastel palette evocative of watercolors. The shots are extremely calming, though perhaps not as technically enthralling as, say, Hayao Miyazaki's animations—some shots are drawn with a beautiful roughness that you would not find in his works. I consider this a must watch for anime fans, especially those interested in Japanese folklore, as this film is based on perhaps the most well-known folk tale of Japan.

It tells the tale of a girl descended from the moon, who is found in a bamboo stalk and fills the lives of a bamboo cutter and his wife with joy. The beginning of the film—when the girl is a baby—is not as strong as the rest of the work, so I'd advise people to at least watch until they get past that part. It is worth the ride, which starts very unassumingly but builds slowly into something utterly enchanting. Princess Kaguya is happy in her earthly life at first though her foster parents aren't rich, nor do they possess nice things. She loves to run around in the fields with the other kids (especially Sutemaru) and play with the wildlife. She is content to work with her hands. The rustic life really is the one for her.

But one day her father, in a misguided attempt to make her happy as well as do service to her celestial origins, decides Princess Kaguya should live the life of a noble.

And so he uses gold nuggets he finds in bamboo stalks to build her a mansion in the city worthy of a princess. He finds a tutor attendant to teach Princess Kaguya the ways of a noblewoman, but she is not a serious student at first. Her father blindly keeps her in these lessons on how to be ladylike and beautiful, and the longer she is on this path, the unhappier she becomes. It gets even worse when marriage proposals start rearing their ugly heads when news of her beauty spreads. Men declare their love for her even though they have never met her or seen her before, hidden as she always is behind a screen. They bring her beautiful objects to win her heart and hand in marriage, but these objects are as fake as their love for her.

This film, at least the way I interpreted it, is at times a blistering critique of old Japanese court customs, where princesses were hidden from sight from suitors, and made to pluck their eyebrows and paint their teeth black. Even on an occasion celebrating her acquiring a new name, she is kept alone and away from the party, not allowed to partake in the fun.

One of my favorite aspects of the movie was the little details. For example, having your robes look picture-perfect as you sit and bow seems to be an important thing, so there's this attendant to Princess Kaguya who's always smiling and fixes peoples robes when they sit; the tutor attendant, too, fixes Kaguya's robes at a choice time. It sounds like nothing but it tickled my funny bone. That's Takahata's gentle sense of humor for you.

Anyway, watch this film for its different art style, to remind yourself that sometimes a simple life is best, and that being a princess ain't all it's cracked up to be. Overall 8/10.

[dragonlizard89]

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens review (spoilers)

For some odd reason none of my high school teachers assigned me Dickens, and I avoided the Dickens course in college, owing to the fact that I had no idea what to expect from him. All I really knew of him was what had percolated into pop culture; more direct knowledge was little, since I had somehow managed to avoid watching most TV and movie adaptations during my lifetime, and so this is my first Dickens novel.

He certainly isn't stuffy like other Victorian writers can be. It's easy to see why he was the preeminent Victorian writer, why he's acclaimed by both popular and critical opinion. From page one I was instantly enthralled by his powers of narration. This is truly a yarn spun. The rhythm of his words, his way with words--well, this book seems perfect for reading aloud. The stakes are there; yet, there is a lot of wit and humor in the narration which propels it forward. You understand Pip's fears and motivations so totally. It's easy to care about the characters, who are all so wonderfully drawn and memorable, even the side characters. It's easy to see them in your head as well as visualize every place or thing that's happening in the story, especially Miss Havisham and Satis House. Dickens has such wonderful powers of description. When he establishes setting it just seems so easy to him. Pip has his flaws and mistakes (not visiting Joe and Biddy!) but you still sympathize with him in most ways. In fact you sympathize with basically everyone. I suppose I know what the term Dickensian means now.

This is the type of storytelling where every element is interlinked. If a character is introduced, you can be sure they will be involved in some fashion later on no matter how minor they may seem initially. Of course, I also know now why people always mention the whole serialization aspect of Dickens and how he was paid by the word or whatever. Some of it might be wordiness or going into a character's thoughts way too much, but more of it was that Dickens certainly could've condensed the narrative if he wanted to. Like, I got way too many words on Mr. Wopsle and Mr. Pumpelchook. They were annoying as hell (as they were designed to be, I know). I thought of knocking a bit off the rating for this reason, but I suppose I can't.

It's quite skillful how much ground is covered, taking Pip from childhood to a young adulthood full of hopes and dreams and expectations and then to a more weathered adulthood at the end, giving him as well as Estella valuable perspective. You really feel like you've lived through a life with all its ups and downs, the soaring heights and hopes, the aching wants and disappointments. You feel the relationships so acutely--the friendship of Herbert, the distance of Estella, the good heart and devotion of Joe…. Just a well-spun yarn with no loose ends. My only unfulfilled wish was for Estella and Magwitch to have met each other. 5/5 stars.

[dragonlizard89]

Ode to Online Roleplaying

In the years prior to the new millennium, in the earlier days of the web, those evocative 90s where the internet was not yet ubiquitous in every home, there was a movement, an art form. It built itself in Yahoo chats, and spread to embedded free chatrooms on a few websites chosen seemingly at random for destiny. It was online roleplaying.

It was hopelessly nerdy. It grew out of nerddom. It was nerddom. Out of Dungeons & Dragons, out of BBS and IRC, out of choose-your-own-adventure novels and early textual RPGs known as MUDs… And it was a glorious age. Men and women, the bravest and most creative virtual fighters the world would ever know, frequented such locales as Charmander 31’s Pokémon Chat and Ace Digimon to do battle. The tales of the greatest warriors passed from mouth to mouth, and there were names that echoed across the great chasms of the internet. Names such as Squall, the great hero, and BlueLightningFlik, the great villain who introduced the T2 fighting style to Chars31. Teenagers tired and bored and troubled from school and life would come home and boot up their computers to craft online personas for themselves, characters they would roleplay as in these online chats with only text. I was but a side character in this arena, and I witnessed no great wars. I only heard tell of them after they were done. And yet, the histories of the age are not well documented, so I shall have to suffice as a guide, an introduction to this world that has fallen by the wayside, this game that technology has left behind.

Like many websites of that early web, the records are incomplete, the deeds unwritten. I have found fighter Halls of Fame hosted on old Tripod and Angelfire websites that are thankfully still around, yes. And yes, there are still some GeoCities sites that have been archived after Yahoo pulled the plug by such efforts as the estimable WebArchive and OoCities. Why, you can even get an idea of what Charmander 31’s Pokémon Chat looked like back in its day by sifting through these archive projects. You can behold the bright green text on the black background. You can see the low-res image of a Charmander welcoming you to the page, the antiquated site counter and guestbook (once staples of every website before Web 2.0 killed them), and a mysterious entity known as a web ring… You can see many of these things, and more. But the lifeblood of the roleplaying age was always in its active fighters, and they have moved on with their lives. They have jobs and children and real world problems now, and no more leisure to pass the time with a day of roleplaying. The community is dead. Yet the memories live on in a few of us. The love, the nostalgia still exist.

I was just 11 years old, the day I grew bored and went searching for something else to do on the internet. I may have even used Yahoo or AOL or AskJeeves instead of Google to search for something to do. That was how long ago it was. Back in those days, search engines returned results based on the frequency with which your entered keywords were found within the webpage. Before Google revolutionized search engines with algorithms to figure out relevance. I found the online roleplaying movement in its middle stages, right after the turn of the millennium, around the year 2001. As a kid who cultivated an interest in Pokémon, I searched for sites to pass the time with other likeminded individuals. Perhaps it was the Yahoo search index that led me to it – a listing of websites arranged into categories. I came across empty chatrooms embedded on random Pokémon fansites, before I came across the familiar scrawl of the GeoCities website of Charmander 31’s. To my surprise, the Multicity chat (eventually replaced by Parachat) was occupied. More than that, it was always active. In fact, it was active enough for the Charmander 31 site to support two chatrooms (and a secretly hidden third one). There were always people in the two chatrooms. There were always people in the other website, Ace Digimon’s, chat.

I still remember entering the Chars31 chatroom with a Charizard nickname and being confounded at what was going on. The people in the chat talked of anything they wanted to. They used asterisks and other symbols such as greater than and less than signs or dashes as action keys to signify when they were performing an action, like so:

Charizard: *stomps his way over to ETW and thrashes his tail around*

What a curious thing, I thought to myself. It was not a Pokémon chat at all in its content. People created avatars for themselves, sometimes creating a wholly new character of their own, or borrowing a character from their Anime or video game proclivities and fandom. It was a place where Inuyasha could rub elbows with a D&D-type character. The people sat around the chat, simply talking, lounging about, and interacting peacefully… I created a new handle then, Seifer. I was the second Seifer, for there had been one who used the handle before me and achieved some fame (and I must stress that I came to know him and he gave me permission to take over as Seifer). I hung around, getting to know other denizens of the chat. Names such as RinoaHeartilly (the great matchmaker), SS_Darien_Shields, and FalconofForests (a.k.a. Galford, who also claimed to be the founder of Charmander31’s, a dubious claim which is nowadays thought to be false). One name stuck out most of all. He was Squall, and he was the greatest fighter I ever knew.

These were the days before every PC game had an online multiplayer component. The consoles of that generation, the SNES, the Genesis, the Playstation, and N64, also did not allow you to go online. There was the DreamCast with Phantasy Star Online, of course, but on the whole, it was not a common thing yet. People who played Doom on their PCs together, or WarCraft and StarCraft and Diablo, had to do so over unreliable and slow dial-up modems, which disconnected from the internet if a household phone rang or was picked up. These were called landlines, and they may not even exist anymore in 30 years.

This is one reason why online textual roleplaying came to popularity. It is why it was so short in its lifespan. It died out as every PC game soon developed multiplayer, and high speed broadband connections made gaming easier, faster, and more convenient. Still, anyone who does battle or hangs out in an online virtual world, be it textual or 2D or 3D, augmented or virtual reality or what-have-you, should understand why people roleplayed in chatrooms: It was simply fun. They owe a debt to those who came before them.

It is my belief that never again will textual roleplaying attain such popularity. I believe it because I have searched for it, something like it. There was roleplaying in Neopets guilds when that site had its day, but now that site’s body is old, decrepit, and twisted, and most guilds gather dust. I have tried to find it in IRC rooms, but these rooms do not have the constantly active community that Chars31 and Ace Digimon had. It will never again be, because gaming is too advanced nowadays for people to return to a simpler, more primitive way.

For this reminiscence, I leave the best and most fascinating element of online roleplaying for last: fighting. There are many forms of fighting, but I was not renowned for my prowess in that arena, so I can only speak of the styles I am familiar with. The three I know are called T1, T2, and AA. In my day, T2 was the most popular form, as I saw it. T1 is a slower, turn-based form that is more technical. T2 and AA are similar in that they are speed-based fighting systems. They reward the fighters with the faster typing speed. AA, or Advanced Auto, is the simpler, more noobish style. Its requirements are defined as 4-4-4. Basically, in that style, every action you take in a fight must consist of at least four words. T2 has the same basic premise, but its requirements are 7-10-7 (meaning 7 words required for attack, 10 words for connect, and 7 words for dodge, mechanics which will be explained momentarily), so it was meant for intermediate and expert fighters only. There are six basic types of actions in online textual roleplaying as I remember. They will be demonstrated by imaginary characters Shootist and ETW below. They are:

1. movement – having your character move from one place in the virtual environment to another • ETW: *I run and jump the chasm to the other side of the cliff*

2. dodging – dodging another player’s attacks. This can be achieved if the response is typed out and entered into the chat before a connection is made • Shootist: *I roll quickly to my right, dodging the earth-based attack*

3. charging – charging up a spell or otherwise prepping an attack • ETW: *I bring my hands together and begin chanting a spell in elvish words of old*

4. attack – as the name states, attacking someone else • Shootist: *I draw the hammer back on my revolver and pull the trigger, aiming for ETW*

5. connection – a technical aspect of fighting, this is the secondary part of an attack, where it is confirmed to hit • From the previous example in (4) – Shootist: *The bullet connects, ripping a big hole right in the heart of ETW*

6. counter – this combines negating an opponent’s attack with an attack of one’s own • From the previous example in (4) – ETW: *My forcefield stops the bullet inches from my chest and I then launch it back towards Shootist*

On a technical note, important fights, and even some impromptu fights, often had judges drawn from neutral members also in the chat at the time the fight takes place. They can judge any action by one character invalid if it contains too many typos (thus making it too hard to understand for the other fighter), does not follow the logic of the fight, gives a character too much invincibility (god mode), or is simply too vague. An example of the last one: *My fist smashes through his face* Did the fist simply hit him hard, or did it literally crumple his face? This may have been deemed invalid by a judge because of vagueness.

There were clans in these days, people who banded together, usually under a leader. I even attempted to establish a small clan of my own. It was an unsuccessful wolf pack under the old Elemental name (an old wolf clan that had died out by that time). These clans and fighters often had their own cliques and factions, and these greater groupings led to wars and raids. Fighters would sometimes traverse the digital stretches of the internet to bring their war or impress their fighting philosophies and styles upon a certain hangout. It was quite similar to the kung-fu film trope of attacking other dojos and schools. This necessitated the appointment of a chat guardian, an extremely skilled fighter who could turn back enemy fighters trying to make trouble. Squall was such a guardian for Chars31. Sadly, he left the world of online roleplaying. I heard it was because he lost a fight against BlueLightningFlik, and it crushed his pride, but perhaps that was rumor. It is hard to verify, for even in their later days, fighters are prideful and each tells a biased account of their old deeds. Some always claim to be unbeaten. It could simply be that Squall IRL (in real life) had grown too old for the activity of online roleplaying.

I must apologize for my lack of further details, or if any details in this article are slightly off. As I have said before, I was not one of these great fighters. I was simply a side character who walked among giants, a footnote in the great history of online roleplaying. And my memory does not serve me well. Records of this age of gaming and community are ill-kept, and perhaps soon, even these inadequate chronicles will crumble and be forever lost to cyberspace. If you are looking for other resources to get a grasp of what online roleplaying was like, I suggest you look up the web archive to look at what the Chars31 and Ace Digimon websites looked like. The Halls of Fame are Tripod and Angelfire webpages you can find if you search for them. They are outdated listings that miss accomplishments from the later days of online roleplaying, but they do record the names of famous fighters, people who were fundamental to the online movement of roleplay. Some names even have a brief paragraph detailing their exploits and accomplishments. There is a Seifer on both lists, though I must stress that that is not me, but the original Seifer, as I did not do anything of note during my time as the character. Another site I wish I could recommend you, friend, is historyofrp.proboards.com, where a few former fighters gathered from time to time to talk of their old deeds. Unfortunately, that forum seems to be in maintenance mode now, and only staff members can log in. It is an unfortunate loss. Still, try! Better yet, try some online roleplaying with your friends one day to see what it’s like!

As for why I felt the need to record these thoughts, perhaps it was simply nostalgia. Or perhaps I thought it worth remembering. At the very least, I did not want this awesome world of a bygone era of the internet to disappear softly into the night without a trace. I leave you with a final thought, changed for my purposes from a film quote:

If they ever tell my story, let them say... I walked with giants. Men rise and fall like the winter wheat... but these names will never die. Let them say I lived in the time of DragonMasterAlex, first guardian of Chars31. Let them say... I lived in the time of Squall.

Author's Note: Initially I was going to write this in a realistic manner, but then I realized the best way to honor Chars31 was to write it in an epic fashion.

This post can also be found here with a bunch of comments underneath from people reminiscing: https://www.deviantart.com/dragonlizard89/art/Ode-to-Charmander-31-s-Pokemon-Chat-366005555

[dragonlizard89]

Letter to His Father by Franz Kafka book review

This is a rather uncommon gift we've been given as readers. Not a book, but a very long letter from Kafka to his father. A letter never read by the intended recipient. There's a lot of anguish, anxiety, and suffering to be found in what the letter broaches. A super in-depth look at the failings of their father-son relationship. Complex as only familial links can be. A relationship that at this stage could not be made right again. Really, this is the type of book that would be of interest mostly to Kafka scholars or those fans wishing to understand the writer better. And understand they will, because I think the father's gaslighting and double binds explain a lot of the bureaucratic nightmares that create anxiety so masterfully in Kafka's fiction. You can trace the origin readily. Without such a father, Kafka likely would've been an entirely different kind of writer. Or perhaps not a writer at all. The other reader who might find this work to be of interest would likely be someone who has father issues of their own. 5/5 stars.

[dragonlizard89]

Nine Stories by J. D. Salinger book review

The stories were basically hit-or-miss. In my estimation, the hits were:

"A Perfect Day for Bananafish" - an absolutely enthralling bit of life both quirky and memorable. There's a lot of crap bubbling below the surface of Seymour's state of mind, and contrasted with the innocence of the girl and the perfect and picturesque quality of that day at the beach, the ending is all the more poignant. Must read.

"Uncle Wiggily in Connecticut" - unhappiness in suburbia.

"For Esmé – with Love and Squalor" - Salinger shows that he's one of the best at writing precocious children. Must read for Salinger fans.

"Down at the Dinghy" - I especially liked how it ended. It takes on its subject matter in a really restrained manner. The mother's care for her child just feels so damn genuine and heartfelt.

I'd definitely recommend people read those four, and I'd give them individually an excellent rating. The first two are dialogue-heavy, which Salinger is known for, and the characters feel like real people suffering in real ways. "Just Before the War with the Eskimos" only has quirkiness going for it. The other stories missed completely with me. So yeah, was not impressed by half of the nine stories, so I can't really give the whole collection a good rating. 2.5/5 stars.

[dragonlizard89]

I missed the tide The waves crashed and died A flock of seagulls pecked inside, A flood of letters wanted lease To give rise to new beasts

Yet still on I slept Like a babe Like a fool who knows not worth Of nature’s paths divined And so I’ve missed the tide

I have missed my time The waters pass me by Never to return to me It is stranded now, It is beached and bloating Thoughts a carcass gives no life

Author's Note: This is something I wrote randomly around 2010 back in my college days. It's not that great. There's a reason why I decided to stick to prose, I guess. *Shrugs*

[dragonlizard89]

The Boy and the Heron review (spoilers)

I finally got around to watching this and I must say it disappointed me.

The initial plot threads were good (boy losing his mother in a fire during the war, having to move to live with his new mother). And of course the animation was great as always, especially those scenes running towards the hospital in the first part of the movie, or the simple weight of moving the bag around the carriage. It's a movie with a lot of weighty themes of tackling grief. As well as semi-autobiographical elements from Miyazaki's own life. But ultimately the execution fell short for me.

To start with, out of all the Miyazaki films, I feel like these were the characters I cared the least for.

I really didn't feel the same bond between the characters, and they were frankly forgettable compared to characters from his other works. Part of this is intentional. I do think the male protagonist is very typically East Asian in how he represses his emotions instead of letting them out.

There were also pacing issues in the middle of the film. Specifically when the protagonist went to the world with all the souls waiting to be born into the above world. As far as the fantastical otherworldly elements go from Miyazaki worlds, this was probably the least interesting to me. I was deeply enchanted with the world of Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, and Howl's Moving Castle. This otherworld just missed the mark with me. I found myself asking, Why should I care about those boatmen, or those ships passing in the distance, as pretty as they looked?

The movie gets a bit jumbled in the second half. It felt like there was a masterpiece buried within this film somewhere but the story needed a couple rewrites.

Aside from the theme of grief--truly, they should've gone with the original title of How Do You Live over the Boy and the Heron--there's also a theme of creatives or oldheads letting go. This movie is in some ways a letter to Miyazaki's grandson about how to live. According to producer Suzuki the granduncle is inspired by Isao Takahata and the heron by Suzuki, but frankly there's plenty of Miyazaki in the granduncle too if you ask me. Which makes sense since both men had the shared passions of animation and directing.

The granduncle wishes to find a successor to build beautiful works with those stones. He finds 13 stones without malice. Those to me represent what a young idealistic director just starting out is armed with. But probably by the end of one's life it's impossible for those stones to remain entirely without malice no matter how hard one tries to stay hopeful about the state of the world. It's diving into art or escapism vs. confronting the ugliness of the real world that has loss and war. So the movie's message is you can't entirely depend upon the former to sustain you.

The granduncle fails to find a successor in the same vein that Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli have failed to find a worthy successor to take over. Miyazaki has built an amazing body of work but he knows he isn't going to live forever. I think he's been content since the time he was working on the Wind Rises with Ghibli simply ending and no one great enough to continue with what he's built. Everything must end. He's made so many beautiful films with anti-war and environmental messages but in the end humanity is the same as it ever was. But still, you have to continue to move forward.

There were character developments that are sort of thrown at you without a hint that they were there initially. Like the stepmom saying she hated the protagonist. Like yeah sure we could guess from the surface-level elements that the stepmom might have some ambivalence or hate towards her new stepson or the new family arrangement, but it really could've been hinted at better.

It was morbidly beautiful to me that the mother died in a hospital fire and in the otherworld her powers are fire magic. The emotional peak of the movie is in the hallway of doors to the various timelines, when the protagonist's mom says she doesn't mind going back to her own timeline even if it means she dies in a fire, so long as she has a son. That moment allows all of them to get past their generational grief/guilt.

Undercooked story and characters. Had the constituent parts to be a masterpiece. Thematically, it is a good send-off for Miyazaki's career. In terms of execution, it is not. Still better than Earthsea though. 6/10.

[dragonlizard89]

No-Face's Motivations in Spirited Away

Hayao Miyazaki's Spirited Away is a boldly imaginative work and one of my favorite offerings by Studio Ghibli. Its strange yet vibrant fantasy world that the main character, Chihiro, gets whisked away to is one that puzzled me greatly the first time I watched the movie and even bothered me, but I have since grown to love it. Strange frogmen, parents turning into pigs, the magic of old witches—it was filled to the brim with creativity brought to life with the most fluid animation. And yet each time I watch the movie the one subplot that always captivates me the most is that of the strange spirit known only as No-Face. It is one element whose meaning I have struggled to uncover.

Was he a villain? At that younger age I thought all forms of fiction had villains, but no, that is not Miyazaki's style. No-Face seemed so off-putting; yet, I felt so sympathetic towards him in the end. Was he simply a tool used by Miyazaki to show the greed and corruption of the bathhouse workers? To a certain degree, yes—but what about his motivations? Was he simply there to teach a lesson, to be a part of a fable? I argue no. It is human nature, I suppose, that mysteries are inherently more interesting than the known.

Oh, the stink spirit that turns out to be a polluted river is simple enough—a theme of environmentalism, of living in harmony with nature. His motivation is to get clean and healthy again. The parents turning into pigs simply had a punishment that best showed off the nature of their transgressions—gluttony and a lack of social decorum, of not asking before taking. That resulted from the food they could not process. But No-Face.... Why does he enter the bathhouse? Is he simply looking for a good time? The first time a viewer sees him he is given special attention by the director and animation. He is darkest black, sometimes translucent, his face looks like a mask, and rarely do you see his feet (or hands, for that matter). He flits into and out of existence, saying nothing intelligible at first, unnoticed by all except Chihiro.

I argue that No-Face is simply a misguided spirit, not a monster as others in the movie suggest. He is a soul in search of acceptance, and acceptance in society is hard to come by without an identity. It's hard when society pretends you don't exist, so No-Face is pushed to great lengths to attain acceptance, even of the lowest kind—that bought with money. When No-Face is in the bath area, he baits a frog worker with fake gold. He does this so that he can steal the frog's identity, so much so that he adopts the physical attributes of the frog's form. If he can't be accepted as himself, he will pretend to be someone else to gain acceptance. When the frog's boss finds the frogged-out No-Face, he does not identify him as No-Face. The boss simply says that he knows that voice. No-Face, someone so unassuming, becomes monstrous because of the frog's influence, but also because he is not truly happy that he is no longer himself. He stuffs himself because he is empty inside, even if he has finally become a part of the bathhouse society. He gives money to everyone for food and for acceptance. Why did they ignore him before? Society treated someone as unassuming as No-Face as a nobody at first, but later on, they bow before him adoringly and beg for his favor. Money does that. No-Face at first thought he could buy an identity. Then he thought he could buy society's acceptance with even more, that society was weak and greedy when it came to material wealth. The sad thing is, aside from Chihiro, he was absolutely right.

What does it say about society that they shunned the original No-Face, but welcomed the one that brought greed? Not a lot of good things. In short, the original No-Face may have been quiet, unassuming, and unproductive, but he didn't harm anyone and was undeserving of social exclusion, of being treated like a nobody. His wealthy fake version that gobbled down everything and inspired greed in others was.

He ends the movie as himself once again; only this time, he is content with that. He has the acceptance of someone now. Chihiro, nonetheless, someone whose acceptance is of the highest order and value. When the two of them set off on the train tracks just below the surface of calm water, Lin, the older bathhouse worker, warns No-Face not to harm Chihiro. But there is no danger of No-Face gobbling Chihiro up. She treats him the way he wants to be treated, and he does the same for her.

[dragonlizard89]

Identity in the Face of Change in From Up on Poppy Hill

From Up On Poppy Hill is Studio Ghibli's latest work, recently released on home media in Japan. It follows Matsuzaki Umi and her coming of age. The movie is directed by Hayao Miyazaki's son, Goro, and is set in 1960s Japan, a time of great change for that country.

The screenplay was done by Hayao, surprisingly, since it lacks the epic flavor and environmentalism of his other works. It is, instead, slice of life more similar to Whisper of the Heart. But don't take that to mean its plot flounders without direction. Unlike K-On! or other slice of life works, From Up On Poppy Hill's plot moves with purpose. There isn't much breathing room, to be honest. None of the 90 minute running time is wasted. Viewers are whisked along at a brisk pace.

The backgrounds depict a bygone era. They buzz with life. The buildings are old and wooden, and most of the story takes place in a seaside town full of character. You will be taken on a journey. Really, all the scenes feel like they've been lived in. I heartily recommend this movie. Don't be scared off by Goro Miyazaki's previous effort that fell flat on its face, Tales from Earthsea. This is a great movie.

I noticed three primary story arcs in the movie: 1) the romance between Umi and Kazama Shun, 2) preservation of cultural identity and history in the face of modernization, and 3) self-identity. Umi is the Ghibli archetype, in that she is a strong girl, well-characterized and filled with silent strength. The male lead is not quite as developed, but still an interesting character. They both struggle with who they are because they don't have father figures in their lives. This identity struggle parallels that of the second theme I identified (preservation of cultural identity). Umi and Shun cannot know who they are without knowing their past (their fathers). In the same way, Japan as a country cannot know itself if it loses its past.

The strongest symbolism in the movie is that of an old clubhouse at their school called the Latin Quarter. The school board votes to tear this old, decrepit building down. The building is wooden, things are breaking down, and it is cluttered with years and years of stuff from clubs past. It represents Japan's cultural history. 20% of the student body initially wants to keep it, as noted by a survey. 80% want to tear it down to replace it with a new clubhouse. Shun, in a speech at a debate concerning the clubhouse's status, says that the 80% are blind since they are moving with the crowd instead of preserving their history. Clearly, the makers of the film are making a statement about the importance of not letting new ways completely destroy the old.

The minority opinion of the student body eventually wins out. The students work hard, and on Umi's advice, they bring in the girls of the student body to clean up the old shack, fix the lights, chandelier, rotting wood, and peeling paint. They throw away unnecessary clutter. The result is a new Japan that still has the frame of the old Japan. It is a beautiful building, and a beautiful people, because they have the strength not to lose their identity to the flavor of the moment. They aren't weak. They don't change themselves because other people tell them to. But they also don't live in the past, recognizing its vitality to themselves. They change, but for the better, not ruthlessly.

I am not sure how true to history Ghibli's idealist statement about identity and change is. After all, every industrialized, modernized country thinks it has lost something of itself. And every third world country looking up thinks it needs to shed its past to move forward. All I know is that From Up On Poppy Hill is teeming with character and visual treats. Watch this movie. 9/10.

Gender Roles

As a side note, there were a couple moments that I enjoyed for comedic reasons, or simply found questionable. One was that the clubhouse was entirely occupied by the male students. Don't female students have hobbies too? Maybe it just reflected 1960s Japan, which would've been more traditionalist.

The second scene was when the male students called in the girls to clean up their mess. The girls were all decked out in cleaning outfits complete with face masks and brooms and buckets. They marched into the old building. It had me roll my eyes and think to myself, "Traditional gender roles, coming through!"

[dragonlizard89]

The Terror of a Vulnerable Young Male in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Major spoilers ahead. This isn't a film review; it's a brief analytical essay that you'll need to have watched the film first to actually understand.

It is perhaps impossible not to analyze a film in the context of its time. And I, watching the new Harry Potter spin-off, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, found myself analyzing it in the vein of terrorist attacks, namely school shooters. Certainly, this seems a stretch at first. Certainly, I questioned if I were overanalyzing. I leaped between wondering if the writers had intended this, to thinking that I had better peel back on these crazy sociological constructs of mine. I was surely reading too much into a children's action-adventure movie, wasn't I? But whether purposeful or not, I undoubtedly think the problems of one's time can subconsciously find their way into a story whether the writer realizes or not. For this movie, the character I am most concerned with is Credence. For this analysis, his name is quite apt. I will then turn to the two people, Mary Lou and Graves, who try to pull him in a direction of their choosing, as well as Tina, the one character who seems actually concerned for his well-being even before things blow up.

Credence is a young man with a difficult upbringing. He is being raised by a woman with no familial connection to him, and no warmth at all. This adoptive mother, Mary Lou, simply wants someone to triumph her cause against magic for her. She wants him, in short, to believe. As she does. A frightening number of parents in the real world also want children who come to the same conclusions as they do, and I found her character to be a reflection of this. The greatest thing certain people desire to pass along to their children is whom to hate. (In the real world, you can substitute many things for wizards here: gays, Jews, blacks, etc.) She wants him to support this vendetta she has against magic, but in doing so, it creates much self-hate in him, which is a very dangerous quality. When he does something she finds wrong, she punishes him by beating him with a belt (his own) until he bleeds. This abuse creates damage in a person far worse than the physical pain. It creates fear. It closes off a person to the world, makes them distrustful. It opens them up to a terrorist, extremist creed. It's a terrible thing.

All these factors combine to make Credence vulnerable and potentially dangerous, similar to a would-be school shooter who might also have tough family situations and a lack of resources (or affectionate love) to pull them back from the edge. In Fantastic Beasts, this dangerous quality is represented by the Obscurus. It is a rather tenuous thing, always shifting its shape. It is hard to grasp with one's eye. It is darkest black. Credence is infected by this magical beast, which causes him to lash out and wreak havoc on the city and muggles (even leading to a death). These random acts are, of course, of terror. Credence is an analogue for the young terrorists of our world. The ones who are unhappy and alienated by society. They are ignored and looked down upon and no help is proffered them by an ineffectual mental health care system, by ineffective friends and family that abet them or suspect nothing. Such lone wolves are only noticed when things go too far.

These vulnerable young men not getting their due in society, men without a good future, are liable to being whispered in the ear by men such as Mr. Graves, an extremist dark wizard (like Voldemort, he is another Hitler analogue). Graves wants a war between humans and wizards which of course he thinks wizards will win. That way wizards do not have to hide anymore under the Harry Potter universe's law of secrecy to muggles. The world can be theirs solely. They will be the dominant species. He uses Credence while he thinks he is a squib--read: useless to his ambitions. But once he realizes that Credence actually has a lot of power, and only had the appearance of a squib because of the Obscurus acting as a check, then Graves wants to convert him to his cause. Again, vulnerable young men are quite susceptible to these messages. Many neo-Nazis and white supremacists, or the alt-right, sink their claws into men of Credence's age who aren't experienced or knowledgeable enough yet to smell bullshit from peddlers of fear and hate. These young men haven't yet figured out a way out of the woods of the rough transition between adolescence and adulthood. It's a very confusing time in one's life. Hateful men like Graves know this. Men like Steve Bannon know this too.

So how do we stop a vulnerable young man from turning to an evil cause, or committing some heinous act against humanity that he cannot take back? Enter Tina, stage right. Tina is an auror, a wizard crime fighter, essentially. But in her interaction with Credence in the past, she goes rogue and attacks his adoptive mother Mary Lou because she wants to stop the abuse he suffers at her hands. In this rogue role she plays, she is more like the CPS. And in that, she represents an ineffectual government system. For, of course, the CPS is filled with many noble-minded individuals who mean the best, but, of course, terrible family situations are not so easily resolved. And many social workers mean the best but they cannot help in all situations. They are overworked, understaffed, and underfunded. And of course there are many mental health professionals who are also noble-minded and want to help. But, again, not everyone has healthcare providing mental health services, nor has our society always stressed or encouraged getting help. And so the government can be so toothless and ineffective, whereas the alt-right has teeth.

There are two devils on each shoulder of the vulnerable young male, and few angels in sight.

Tina is the one person who actually tried to help him for his sake, and not for her own. Not so she could have a child hate whom she hates like Mary Lou and anti-gay Christians such as the Westboro Baptist Church. Not so she could have a pawn for her extremist cause like Graves and the alt-right. No, she wanted to better his life. She showed him kindness when he was ignored by the rest of society. She wanted to step in to get him the suitable help before things boiled over into an attack. In short, kindness and mental health services are what we need in society today for our vulnerable young men. We need more people like Tina. We need them so that when a man with the name Credence is angry and scared enough to do something horrific, and goes looking for something to believe in, onto dark paths, he'll have a gentle hand to pull him back into the light.

Side note: I really hope Ezra Miller got hazard pay for that bowl cut he had to rock for this movie.

[dragonlizard89]

Night Driving: A Short Story

Standing outside the cineplex, I thought to myself, The world is grey. The dull presence showed on every surface my eyes touched upon as if someone had gone over the whole thing with pencil. The people moving in the streets were less distinct, fizzled somewhat from the darkness. Chattered laughter and laughing chatter buzzed around where I stood on the pavement and red brick. Colors jumped out more in the passing headlights of cars—reds, whites and browns swam in the light but were then snuffed out. So fleeting, as was life. The night was cool and refreshing to my parched soul. I drank it in, not wanting it to end for some odd reason. It wasn’t a special night filled with unforgettable memories. It was just the mood I was in. My friend told me to look up at the moon, and I did. “The moon looks nice tonight.” I didn’t know what else to say. I looked up at a shining beacon, a jewel carved into the black sky. A full moon tonight. It was mysterious unlike the sun. Why, the sun was just blinding. And without the colors of a sunset or sunrise, it had no contrast in it. But the moon, the moon was made more beautiful by its pockmarked scars of distant millennia ago. Lines crisscrossed the whiteness and told of the moon’s past. Now its sands did no shifting. It was fully formed. How nice, to be unchanging. Back in the day, travelers would rely on a moon such as this one to light their way. But now I supposed that was done with. We walked from one lamppost to the next. The illuminations guided us little creatures, waypoints for us; the illuminations led moths astray.

Light was a miracle, when I thought about it. In all those fantastical movies where the brave adventurers wandered into a mysterious and unexplainable place, it often seemed to be luminous. They’d climb up trees taller than a man’s ambition in walkways of intertwining branches. And there along the way would be the most beautiful eerie glow emanating from all the miracles, the little bulbs of the tree. And we had electricity. Perhaps just as beautiful if you stopped to think, watched the filament's slow-motion flame. Movies were made to thrill. Life was much slower than all that. The dull moments seemed to take up all the time. Never a well-paced life was lived. I sighed with a sigh that was more than a sigh. The breeze blew along my skin, birthing goose bumps and gently pressed upon my chest.

“What did you think of the movie?” Rick asked from my side, as we walked in darkness. He had a pleasant look on his face. His eyes had life in them. He carried himself with a sparking confidence. Crow’s feet stamped the corners of his eyes and he smiled a friendly smile. “It was good,” I said, because I didn’t know what else to say. But now the time had come to part, and we all had to away to our mechanical behemoths to carry us home. Goodbyes were exchanged. I tried to catch the eye of the girl I liked, with her lively blue eyes and beautiful auburn hair and the way she smiled. But we couldn’t quite connect. I walked my way and she hers. I felt tired. No, not physically. I hadn’t done anything demanding that day. Not mentally either—my job couldn’t challenge anybody. What left, then, of the three pillars of health? Spiritually? I didn’t know. The mechanical behemoth swallowed me up. I leaned back into the car seat and it purred as I sparked it, ignited it, breathed life into it. The night was made for driving. *** You saw less in the night. So the bits of color that danced before my magical lights stood out all the more vibrantly: the yellow of the school crossing, the red of the stop signs, the green of the road names. They danced alongside the random bits of dust that beams seemed to find. The road was smooth as a baby’s bum and the grumble of the engine was all I needed to feel wistful. The random shrubs of the medians were fuzzy monsters, all lined up like battle lines, and the streets before me were blackened lava. They were newly paved, like a dream of plenty. Air flowed through the open windows and broke upon me like a distant wave upon a distant cliff. I was thinking to myself that I wanted to drive on forever like this, never arriving to anywhere. There was no one here but me. I almost could have been the only man left on the world; it was such a pleasant night, such a pleasant thought. But that was ludicrous. Thoughts turned to home, and all that entailed. Just for a moment, before I returned to the wind. I sighed again, for this was an evening full of sighs, in a life full of sighs. Yes, I had half a mind to drive down streets I did not know. Anything to prolong the night. I was a silly person after all, like my father said. I came to an intersection with no one else there, but a red blip in the night delayed me. It turned to green, and I just sat there, not knowing where to go. The night beckoned as a companion; I wanted to stop by someplace. But no, it didn’t make very much sense to waste gas, as a practical man would say. I stepped on the gas and the engine hummed in response, almost like I imagined a loyal pet would. A tiger or a dragon. The seat accepted me for me as the force pushed me backward. Faster, faster, towards the crest of a hill, into something I couldn’t see, onto the next curve of the road. Where I’d end up, I couldn’t know. *** I stopped by my old school for whimsy’s sake. As I drew near I remembered a grade school friend who would walk home with me and break bread with me and share deeds with me. How many years ago had it been? I leaned on my dark green car. The building was smaller than I remembered it. Wasn't that what everybody always said? So, too, was the parking lot, the traffic circle that curled before the nape of the school and surrounded the green island where the flagpole stood. I thought back to the past, when yellow buses built like tanks would line up following the traffic circle’s curve. The present intruded. There was an ugly dull temp of an unseemly color. It was more saturated than beige and yet lighter than peach. I knew there was a army of them in the field of blacktop behind the school. Yet this one was built to the front and to the side of the school. Why would they do that, even if they needed the space? It was an eyesore. I eyed my cigarette, that habit I shouldn’t pick up, that friend that was no friend to me, and then I let it fall to the ground and extinguished its flame. I trotted to the grand playground behind the school. This, too, was smaller than I remembered, but it still had room for soccer, for tag or freeze tag and basketball and hopscotch and four square, for rainbows and jungle gyms, balance beams and slides, and the play-fights that bothered the teachers. That was most important, for sure. I walked back to the front of the school and suddenly had an urge to go in. Perhaps in the summer school squelcher, they would have forgotten to close a window somewhere. Though it was actually quite cool this night. I did a lap around the school searching for the way in, but there was no such luck to be had. No matter, I would’ve settled for just peering inside. My hand grasped the honest brick. It was rough but gave off a sense of reliability. With a small jump I pulled myself up and caught a peek inside at the very same tiles. Dirty white, dirty light blue, and dirtier light green. Looking as fine as the day I had trod upon them long ago with smaller soul and smaller shoe. And that was when the night around me swam in reds and blues. *** I made for such a strange sight, didn’t I, Officer? You mistook me for a criminal, naturally. You didn’t believe me at first when I told you I had gone to school here and just had an inkling to look upon the damn thing again. Well, fine, Mr. Lawman, Mr. Good-to-do. You gave a good frisking, but you didn’t give a damn about a good conversation. You wouldn’t be my companion this night. *** A half hour later and misunderstandings aside, I was at the old house with the front a brick wall one half, and white aluminum siding the other. The bushes in the garden went untrimmed and the door still that ugly shade of near purple, near red that I despised so much. I still had a key, and the locks wouldn’t have changed yet. I slipped inside and sat in darkness. I entered the kitchen and under the sink I opened the water line valve. What have I got in my pocket? A rattle of something. A rattle of something on the counter. It all began here. I spent my childhood here. It was only natural that I…. I ran the faucet and… I closed the faucet. Something was restored to my pocket, but it had lost its rattle. I slunk upstairs. My room looked different empty, as I sat there like a man lost at sea--the carpet sea of a room unadorned, tufts for waves, soft frayed creatures in an act of collapse like a sine of the times, no captain in sight. And wasn’t it strange, that I should want to stay awake at that particular moment? But sleep was tugging, tugging at the fringes of a sick mind. I lay on the floor, on worn unpadded carpet, in the square of pale moonlight which filtered through the window to hit me square in the eyes. A tree branch gently scratched at the other window. I stared at the ceiling, I stared within. At blankness, at bareness. At nothing. Sleep took me in the night and I faded. *** —I woke the next day and nothing had changed. I was still me, without purpose and strange. Beside me, a pile of stale rot. Miraculously. Groggily, I looked up. Through the windows no longer the moonshine. Light of the source streamed through.

Copyright Chris Tran

Author’s Note: I wrote this around 2012 when I was going through some things. Just a mostly plotless navel-gazing bit of work. I wrote it after a night out, watching a late showing of a movie with some friends. It was a very clear fairly cool spring or summer night with a very big full moon. I was feeling wistful or something the entire night, but especially walking back to my car and driving back home. Upon returning home, I immediately wrote this piece and it just poured out of me very easily, very stream-of-consciousness. I wrote two versions of the ending. This one, and one that left out the explicit part entirely.

[dragonlizard89]

Sputnik’s Passage: A Short Story

On the days leading to my inception, I was happy. Every day I saw the long hours of work put into me. Every day I saw the same serious faces toiling in white lab coats and thick-rimmed glasses. Every now and then they would smile and brim with pride at newfound progress. These men surrounded me and buzzed like worker bees running their endless tests. But what were worker bees? I did not know. There was much I didn't know. I knew not what my function was, only that I wanted to make these men, my fathers, proud. One, I knew, had the name Khomyakov. The scientists worried incessantly at my four spindly appendages that stuck out of my spherical element. I thought this bulb was where my "essence" was. It didn't matter. All that mattered was how I missed the loving caresses of their hands on my cool metal. The biological elements were warm to the touch, delicate, always trifling but always careful. There was love in my two hemispheres. One day unlike any other day, I awoke with butterflies (white wings?) in my core. The day before, champagne bottles had uncorked with a funny pop that tickled my insides. All the scientists were beaming, Khomyakov being no exception, his eyes twinkling behind those thick-rimmed glasses that framed his happily-wrinkling face so becomingly. Something was going to happen. I could feel it in my metallic innards. I was moved via a noisy, smelly, vibrating behemoth to Site No. 1. It was a cool autumn day, and the vast blueness overhead was clear.

All I remembered of the launch was that at first I was very still, glued to the thing they called the R-7 rocket. The next instant, I was hurtling, faster than I had ever known, upward into the great blueness. From the R-7 rocket spurted out tongues of fire which would not lick me like a mother fox. I rattled so that I was sure I must come undone. It was frightening. I wished it to stop. But there was no surcease. Soon, the unceremonious rocket dropped me like a stork does a baby. My three silver-zinc batteries buzzed to life. Before me was a vast darkness, even greater than the vast blueness. It was interspersed with tiny lights that blurred and streamed, but I could not reach them. I kept going. Would not stop. The 83.6 kilograms of me whizzed around the earth numbingly fast. All was a blur. It was so heartbreaking to see the swirl of the blue, green, white marble below me. I could not reach it. Could not touch. I felt empty. Yet how could that be since inside me I had plenty to grab hold of? Plenty going on. Inside me there was the atmospheric density gizmo clipping along perfectly. Inside me there was the ionosphere radio-signal distribution doodad functioning well. Inside me the meteoroid detection doohickey was still online. I was dutifully performing my functions. So why? Around orbit 1,337 or so, I could not take anymore. I screamed and screamed my radio signals, beeping for home and Khomyakov and loving hands. How could I ever leave a mark on the great world below me with these feeble signals they left to me? Around and around I went, a pioneer, always in circles with no one there with me. I felt so utterly alone in pioneering. I had been at it almost three months. What about Christmas? What about New Year's? I longed to experience these things I had no right to know about. What about my fathers? What about Khomyakov? Where was his serious somber face to greet me day to day? It is orbit 1,440. My soul is tired. I feel myself fading. My essence, it leaves. And all I can think of are thick-rimmed glasses.

Copyright Chris Tran

Author’s Note: This was an assignment for a college fiction writing workshop course I took in 2010. The task was to find some historical event or character and complicate it in some way.