The fandom I will never escape
I should really finish this essay, if for no other reason so that I can write for holmesian with a clear conscience. January 5th is a Friday, thank God. I have two scenarios in mind but I'll probably just write the easy one.
worldserpent asked if you have to be smart to write a character who is smart, or a poet to write a character who is a great poet. No more than you have to be a detective to write a character who is a great detective, I think. In the case of holmesian I am starting with the Key -- the one (semi-obscure) fact the detective will use to solve the crime -- and building a mystery around it. I'm not as smart as the detective, but because I'm working in reverse, I can fake it. Probably.
As an author, you have a huge advantage over the characters, because you get to dictate the circumstances of the story -- create a world in which the actions of other characters reinforce the gennnnnius of a resident artist, or the set-up itself does, or where the focus is elsewhere and you can cheat or shortcut your way around showing anything explicitly. It's the Bill and Ted effect. XD Bill and Ted are the ones with the Time Machine, so they're the ones who can, after everything is over, go back in time one week ago to rig the metal cage that will fall from the rafters to trap the bad guy.
The other main factor to this is how smart -- or poetry-enabled -- your readers are. I think it's safe to say that an author can generally fool readers who are at the same "level" or lower, plus as many other readers as don't mind being fooled. After all there are plenty of people, even critical people, who are willing to play along.
This is old news but ties in so neatly that I can't resist linking: Ohba/Obata dialogue from Death Note 13. Note, spoilers!
Ohba and Obata didn't meet during serialization, there were no "deeper meanings" intended, and the plot was decided only up to three chapters in advance. In retrospect, it's easy to see how this must have been the case (orz), but the fact that Ohba lists Teru as a favorite character also makes me a bit suspicious. Teru, and this is no offense to his fans (waves to nakatani_yuushi), isn't really a person. I mean, he's not a fully realized character. He's an abstract, a personality type, a tendency, taken to extremes. Possibly Ohba isn't weighing in on one side or another of any morality debate, but issues and consequences clearly interest her.
Ooba: The dining scene with Takada and Misa in page.92...I put in because I thought it'd be amusing.
This scene really wasn't funny. orz Dunno how many of you read that far, but Light is cheating on Misa (his fiance) with Takada, although really he's just using both of them. Anyway, the two meet, each thinking she is Light's most important person, and there's a verbal catfight. Misa is crude and Takada is a snob; the scene reflects so badly on both of them that rather than being amusing, it was painful to read. Well, but maybe I'm too serious for my own good. (There's a maybe here?!)
Ooba: That's true, but still. Basically, everything hinged on cornering Light first, then thinking of a specific strategy to get him out of it. So when I got stuck, I got really stuck.
Ahahahaha. Though it seems to me that the real trouble came in the later half of the manga, when Ohba -- by her own admission -- started relying on the art to carry to the story, rather than beating out a story that would carry the art. Obata was good enough, and the fanbase invested enough, for her to get away with this -- sort of -- but the quality suffered.
Obata: Before, I heard from the manager that "Ooba-sensei's workroom is amazing"...
Ooba: Oh, I can't work in a messy room, so I just changed the interior design a bit to a Western fairy-tale style. Also hung up some paintings.
Obata: Ah, that's nice.
Ooba: So I tend to stay there a lot, since it feels so comfortable.
^^; Besides being a clean freak, she is also claustrophic, and says she can't read novels ("Whenever I try to read, my mind starts wandering, or I poke fun at every little thing [in the novel]... and wind up completely losing track of the plot"). The impression I get is very smart and very manic. Meanwhile, Obata is superstitious, and can't follow the plots of movies because he's too focused on the camera angle XD.
I also caught the first 10 episodes of the Death Note anime. It's really good. ^^; The anime is almost exactly the same as the manga -- I even recognize specific panels -- but tighter, somehow. The author had a vision for the manga but didn't always succeed with it, whereas the people making the anime know where the story is headed, and have more experience and more time, and they're fixing it up. I think? Anyway, the production values are really high, and the fan translators doing the subs are better than the fan translators who did the scanlations.
It's so weird, when I was reading the manga Light was my favorite character even though I considered him the villain. ^^; I mean he was obviously wrong, an egomaniac with an overly simplistic world vision, but I sort of enjoyed watching him ego-trip. Also when L said he was childish and hated to lose, I sort of took his word for it and considered the two of them to be similar...watching the anime, it's a lot clearer that L has the broader perspective, and I find myself liking him a whole lot more than Light.
It's weird because the anime is EXACTLY LIKE the manga. Since the story is no different I suppose it must be me who's changed. ^^; or else it makes a difference when the people doing the translations aren't all Light fangirls.
Changes:
1. No more shot of Light huddling under the covers after killing two people. (See icon.) Now you get a reaction that is less about remorse, and more obviously the kind of shock any law-abiding citizen would experience upon discovering that they have broken with society in a spectacular fashion.
2. Raye Penbar doesn't email his boss asking for the names and faces of the other agents, instead he writes his boss's name in the Death Note and the Note does the rest. It's smarter and makes more sense than what happened in the manga.
3. Ukita dies early. Another good move, the manga didn't give him much to do.
Basically I think the anime is just cleaner, though beyond a few specific instances it's hard to say what's different. For now the similarity is a good thing, though I worry about later chapters. ^^; So far I've been impressed by the producers' improvements, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Whatever happens, it can't be any worse than the movies (SO BAD OMG).
Annnnd this entry is long enough. Next time: Earthsea, Island, The Good Shepard, Kazuo Ishiguro and other holiday book and movie purchases.
worldserpent asked if you have to be smart to write a character who is smart, or a poet to write a character who is a great poet. No more than you have to be a detective to write a character who is a great detective, I think. In the case of holmesian I am starting with the Key -- the one (semi-obscure) fact the detective will use to solve the crime -- and building a mystery around it. I'm not as smart as the detective, but because I'm working in reverse, I can fake it. Probably.
As an author, you have a huge advantage over the characters, because you get to dictate the circumstances of the story -- create a world in which the actions of other characters reinforce the gennnnnius of a resident artist, or the set-up itself does, or where the focus is elsewhere and you can cheat or shortcut your way around showing anything explicitly. It's the Bill and Ted effect. XD Bill and Ted are the ones with the Time Machine, so they're the ones who can, after everything is over, go back in time one week ago to rig the metal cage that will fall from the rafters to trap the bad guy.
The other main factor to this is how smart -- or poetry-enabled -- your readers are. I think it's safe to say that an author can generally fool readers who are at the same "level" or lower, plus as many other readers as don't mind being fooled. After all there are plenty of people, even critical people, who are willing to play along.
This is old news but ties in so neatly that I can't resist linking: Ohba/Obata dialogue from Death Note 13. Note, spoilers!
Ohba and Obata didn't meet during serialization, there were no "deeper meanings" intended, and the plot was decided only up to three chapters in advance. In retrospect, it's easy to see how this must have been the case (orz), but the fact that Ohba lists Teru as a favorite character also makes me a bit suspicious. Teru, and this is no offense to his fans (waves to nakatani_yuushi), isn't really a person. I mean, he's not a fully realized character. He's an abstract, a personality type, a tendency, taken to extremes. Possibly Ohba isn't weighing in on one side or another of any morality debate, but issues and consequences clearly interest her.
Ooba: The dining scene with Takada and Misa in page.92...I put in because I thought it'd be amusing.
This scene really wasn't funny. orz Dunno how many of you read that far, but Light is cheating on Misa (his fiance) with Takada, although really he's just using both of them. Anyway, the two meet, each thinking she is Light's most important person, and there's a verbal catfight. Misa is crude and Takada is a snob; the scene reflects so badly on both of them that rather than being amusing, it was painful to read. Well, but maybe I'm too serious for my own good. (There's a maybe here?!)
Ooba: That's true, but still. Basically, everything hinged on cornering Light first, then thinking of a specific strategy to get him out of it. So when I got stuck, I got really stuck.
Ahahahaha. Though it seems to me that the real trouble came in the later half of the manga, when Ohba -- by her own admission -- started relying on the art to carry to the story, rather than beating out a story that would carry the art. Obata was good enough, and the fanbase invested enough, for her to get away with this -- sort of -- but the quality suffered.
Obata: Before, I heard from the manager that "Ooba-sensei's workroom is amazing"...
Ooba: Oh, I can't work in a messy room, so I just changed the interior design a bit to a Western fairy-tale style. Also hung up some paintings.
Obata: Ah, that's nice.
Ooba: So I tend to stay there a lot, since it feels so comfortable.
^^; Besides being a clean freak, she is also claustrophic, and says she can't read novels ("Whenever I try to read, my mind starts wandering, or I poke fun at every little thing [in the novel]... and wind up completely losing track of the plot"). The impression I get is very smart and very manic. Meanwhile, Obata is superstitious, and can't follow the plots of movies because he's too focused on the camera angle XD.
I also caught the first 10 episodes of the Death Note anime. It's really good. ^^; The anime is almost exactly the same as the manga -- I even recognize specific panels -- but tighter, somehow. The author had a vision for the manga but didn't always succeed with it, whereas the people making the anime know where the story is headed, and have more experience and more time, and they're fixing it up. I think? Anyway, the production values are really high, and the fan translators doing the subs are better than the fan translators who did the scanlations.
It's so weird, when I was reading the manga Light was my favorite character even though I considered him the villain. ^^; I mean he was obviously wrong, an egomaniac with an overly simplistic world vision, but I sort of enjoyed watching him ego-trip. Also when L said he was childish and hated to lose, I sort of took his word for it and considered the two of them to be similar...watching the anime, it's a lot clearer that L has the broader perspective, and I find myself liking him a whole lot more than Light.
It's weird because the anime is EXACTLY LIKE the manga. Since the story is no different I suppose it must be me who's changed. ^^; or else it makes a difference when the people doing the translations aren't all Light fangirls.
Changes:
1. No more shot of Light huddling under the covers after killing two people. (See icon.) Now you get a reaction that is less about remorse, and more obviously the kind of shock any law-abiding citizen would experience upon discovering that they have broken with society in a spectacular fashion.
2. Raye Penbar doesn't email his boss asking for the names and faces of the other agents, instead he writes his boss's name in the Death Note and the Note does the rest. It's smarter and makes more sense than what happened in the manga.
3. Ukita dies early. Another good move, the manga didn't give him much to do.
Basically I think the anime is just cleaner, though beyond a few specific instances it's hard to say what's different. For now the similarity is a good thing, though I worry about later chapters. ^^; So far I've been impressed by the producers' improvements, so I'm cautiously optimistic. Whatever happens, it can't be any worse than the movies (SO BAD OMG).
Annnnd this entry is long enough. Next time: Earthsea, Island, The Good Shepard, Kazuo Ishiguro and other holiday book and movie purchases.