Tag: essays

Marcus Williams on Magical Girls

Over at Honey’s Anime, Marcus Williams has an essay on “What Constitutes a Magical Girl Anime.”

His essay is worth reading because he steers away from the superficial answers that might involve animal familiars or fancy costumes and instead focuses on common themes in the genre, which he lists as companionship, perseverence, and growth. Or to put that altogether, magical-girl stories are generally coming-of-age stories, often but not always with a sentimental tone. So go read his comments.

Speaking of magical girls, we’re just getting started with the news about Jake and the Dynamo and its upcoming sequel Dead 2 Rites. Remember, you can preorder Jake and the Dynamo right now for only 99 cents.

‘Gangsters in Space,’ or, What even Is Science Fiction?

An author among my mutuals recently made a comment on Twitter with which I disagreed, and only too late, after expressing my disagreement, I realized I was diving back into the endless debate over what defines a genre.

So, here is the original comment from Misha Burnett:


And this was my reply:


My further discussion on this subject follows after the break:

Continue reading “‘Gangsters in Space,’ or, What even Is Science Fiction?”

New Book, ‘Pulp on Pulp,’ Available for Preorder

A collection of essays by pulp writers, entitled Pulp on Pulp*, is up for preorder on Amazon Kindle and will release on January 19th. It is currently listed as 99 cents, but it will be free forever when it releases. Last I checked, it was number one in Amazon’s new releases related to authorship.

The collection is edited by the prolific author of military sf, Kit Sun Cheah, and the equally talented Misha Burnett.

Two of the essays in this collection are by me. Since my interests are out of the norm for “PulpRev” authors, so are my essays. I discuss both the writing of harem comedies and what really defines a “strong female character,” with references to magical girls.

*This is an affiliate link but, as already mentioned, the book will be free forever, beginning on its release date.

An Update to My Hate

I recently completed a small project I’ve been meaning to get to for a while: I went through all the posts in my hyperbolic but half-serious series of essays, “Why I hate Cardcaptor Sakura” to make improvements and corrections. I’d like to do this with several of my posts, but that particular series brings in most of the site’s traffic, so it got priority.

If you’ve read those essays already, there’s no reason to re-visit them unless you happen to be a masochist. WordPress has been through some updates since I wrote them, and I’ve learned more about writing for the web, so I went back to improve HTML semantics, add headings, clean out dead links, and insert additional links to make it easier to move from one essay to another. I also corrected typos and grammatical errors when I found them and occasionally rephrased a sentence to remove ambiguity, but the content is still the same.

On my list of things to do is to sit down with the Clear Card Arc, a sequel to Sakura that appeared about the same time I wrote those essays. I haven’t got to it yet because, though I exaggerated in the essays for the sake of entertainment, I mostly meant what I said: I don’t particularly enjoy Cardcaptor Sakura, so I’ve put off the task of slogging through more of it.

I have no timeline for when I might get around to the sequel; I have a bad habit of starting blog projects and then losing track of them when I get interested in other blog projects, so I should probably make fewer promises.

Tropical Pedo Beams, or, The Danger of Roman Polanski

I recently came across a thoughtful and challenging essay entitled “Slippery-slopism and False Gods” by Paul Lucas. I will summarize his thinking in order to make my own comments, but I am unlikely to do him justice, so I invite you to read his own words.

The case he makes is that it is morally wrong to consume the art of morally depraved artists both because this gives the artist further financial support to practice his depravity, and because that depravity is almost certainly injected, perhaps in a subtle fashion, into the artist’s work.

That is an extremely brief summary; if you are inclined to dismiss that out of hand, I again urge you to read the original.

Lucas makes his case well, using Roman Polanski as a concrete example. Polanski committed a variety of vile acts, including drugging and raping a thirteen-year-old girl, before he escaped justice. He also regularly got standing ovations and spirited defenses from Hollywood types—the same Hollywood types who would later, hypocritically, throw Harvey Weinstein under the bus when they realized which way the wind was blowing.

Lucas argues that defending the art of a wicked artist leads inevitably to defending the wickedness of the artist himself, hence the “slippery-slopism” in the title of his essay.

Continue reading “Tropical Pedo Beams, or, The Danger of Roman Polanski”

‘Alien’ vs. ‘Bloodchild,’ Part 1

A couple of months ago, I sat down and rewatched Ridley Scott’s classic 1979 science-fiction horror film, Alien, a movie that was influential and unusual in cinema in large part because its sequels and spinoffs seemed bent on refuting it: Its well-received sequel Aliens, from James Cameron, deliberately went in a different direction, and the decidedly less well-received Alien 3 went in a different direction from that.

I recently saw a few of my mutuals on Twitter dissing the original film, calling it the product of a nihilistic era of cinema and accusing it of having few if any redeeming features. I am of a different opinion, so though I am ready to admit it has flaws, I am also happy to defend Alien as a great movie. But I think that greatness is at times despite, rather than because of, the film’s creators: There was a lot of pretentiousness behind Alien, but most of it either failed to make it to screen or was subtle enough that the average viewer could easily ignore it.

I wish to compare and contrast Alien with a short story by the late Octavia Butler, who in spite of her tragically short career and small corpus has over the last decade become something of a darling amongst the more vocally politically left wing of the science-fiction community. I read her story “Bloodchild” years ago, and it quickly became one of my favorites. It is in concept so similar to Alien that I convinced myself she meant it as a sort of answer to, or subversion of, the movie’s themes—which is not impossible, since she published the story in 1985, well after Alien made its appearance.

Perhaps I haven’t looked hard enough, but I have not seen anyone else discuss the parallels between these works. Although the subdued but sexually charged imagery of Alien has been interpreted (and over-interpreted) time and again thanks in large part to the unique creature design by the always-creepy H. R. Giger, most who discuss Butler are too busy obsessing over her black skin or her womanhood to grant her the place she deserves in the larger field of science fiction.

What characterizes both of these works, the horror film and the short story, is that they depict humans—vulnerable and mostly unwitting—coming into contact with an extraterrestrial species with endoparasitoid reproduction: That’s a two-bit way of saying these aliens spend their early life growing inside a host, which they then kill. In the real world, this kind of parasitism is known mostly from insects, but it’s creepy and disconcerting enough to make good fodder for sci-fi.

In both stories, the parasitically reproducing aliens are huge, powerful, and at times violent. Thematically, both Alien and “Bloodchild” use their basic concept for similar ends, presenting a sort of monstrous sexual menace involving a reversal of the usual roles, with men becoming “impregnated” and giving a gruesome kind of birth.

In this aspect, however, “Bloodchild” is the more successful of the two. The alien in Alien is simply a monster running on instinct. Although the screenwriter, Dan O’Bannon, described the action of the “facehugger”—an intermediate creature that implants the alien’s embryo—as performing “oral, homosexual rape,” this probably doesn’t come across to most casual viewers: The thing is an animal and acts like one. It’s a parasite, and what it does cannot, strictly speaking, be called either homosexual or rape.

By contrast, “Bloodchild” depicts the endoparasitic aliens (called “Tlic,” unfortunately) as intelligent and reasonably civilized, so the relationship between the Tlic and the humans who bear their young becomes a mutual one that is nonetheless fraught with tension. Butler herself described “Bloodchild” as a love story, and though that is likely to raise the average reader’s eyebrows as much as O’Bannon’s talk of homosexual rape does, she has more justification for that description.

By coincidence, O’Bannon originally planned something remotely similar for Alien: His original concept had the alien growing out of a ravenous adolescence into a calm and enlightened adulthood, and he envisioned an advanced alien civilization with an entire religion based around its inhabitants’ peculiar reproductive methods.

This of course never came to fruition, as the final version of the creature is simply a movie monster. Nonetheless, O’Bannon’s muse apparently grabbed Butler later to tease out the ideas he had left undeveloped.

Tomorrow, we’ll begin diving more deeply into the origins, plot lines, and themes of these works. Stay tuned.

The Missing Cuteness of ‘Doom Eternal’

Featured image: “Drinks, Blood, and Vacation!” by WMDiscovery93.

(Spoilers.)

The highly anticipated Doom Eternal, which treads some of the same ground as Doom II: Hell on Earth, released today, and some mad lads have already played through the whole damn thing.

I’ve long been intrigued by Doom and have often wished for a respectable interpretation in another medium such as movie or novel, though most such attempts have been flubs. There was the series of Doom novels by Daffyd ab Hugh and Brad Linaweaver, which reinterpreted the demonic invasion as an invasion of space aliens, thereby entirely missing the point, and there was also the widely panned movie starring Dwayne Johnson, which reimagined the demons as genetic mutations.

I do understand there is a novelization of Doom III, which I only learned of recently, but aside from it, interpretations of Doom into other media have shied away from the core concept of an invasion from hell—which is to say that they’ve missed the entire point.

Doom Eternal made some waves because of its promise that you might fight angels as well as demons, though the final product, if the cutscene movie posted above is any indication, suggests that the designers ultimately moved away from that idea. In place of God is some being called Khan Maykr, and in place of angels are the Maykr’s servants, who don’t do much except shoot beams of energy out of their heads. The story, too, seems sketchy, suggesting either that this cutscene movie is incomplete or that the game’s creators failed to flesh out all their ideas.

Trying to piece things together (I may have some of this wrong), it appears that Khan Maykr is doing what the UAC did in the first game, using “Argent Energy” to power her world, which would die without it. Argent Energy is created in hell from damned souls, so Khan Maykr lets demons destroy other worlds so she can preserve her own, though the demons cannot enter her own world, and she cannot enter theirs. The world of Argent D’nur formerly worshipped her as a goddess or prophetess, and she ultimately betrayed them, turning three Argentians into “hell priests” who assist her in the invasion of Earth, which is intended to gather more souls to provide her with energy.

Perhaps most interesting to longtime Doom fans, Doom Eternal makes it explicit that the “Slayer” who first appeared in Doom 2016 is in fact the same as the “Doomguy” of the original games. Somehow or other, the Sentinels of Argent found him and made him one of their own, and some continue to oppose him even after the Khan Maykr betrayed them. Doom Eternal not only refers to him as the “Doomguy,” but also uses some of his dialogue from the goofy “Doom comic.”

Perhaps most interesting, at least to me, is that Doom Eternal contains some Easter eggs referencing an obscure bit of lore from the franchise. The original Doom game ended with an image of a rabbit’s head on a stake; this image was meant to indicate that the demons had invaded Earth and therefore set up for Doom II. However, fans quickly got the idea that this was the Doomguy’s pet rabbit, and that he was slaying demons to avenge the rabbit’s death.

Rabbit head on a stake.

This got (semi?)canonical affirmation in the expansion Thy Flesh Consumed, which ended with a brief scene indicating that the dead rabbit was indeed the Doomguy’s pet, and that its name was Daisy.

There were a few small gags making reference to Daisy in Doom 2016, and she apparently appears in some gags in the new Doom Eternal as well.

Everything I’ve heard about the gameplay on this game indicates that it’s superb, but I’m not a gamer myself; I’m a story guy, and from what I’ve seen so far, I do think the story should have been fleshed out in parts. I started exploring Doom Eternal with the question, “What is the Khan Maykr?” and having sat through a cut-scene video of the game, I find I’m still asking the same question.

The game’s ending, too, seems anticlimactic to me. Although it looks like an epic boss fight, that’s pretty much it: The Slayer himself has personally gained nothing from all this hardship despite warnings and promises from other characters. It almost makes me think the Slayer should have had a love interest—but since that isn’t right for the character, it makes me think he should have had something else to to care about, maybe a pet or mascot character.

interestingly, because of a delay, Doom Eternal ended up releasing on the same day as Animal Crossing: New Horizons. This coincidence led to a lot of fan art depicting the Doomslayer with Isabelle, a fan-favorite character from Animal Crossing.

The Doomslayer carries Isabelle on his shoulder.

To me, images like this just look right, as if this is what Doom is missing. The protagonist of Doom needs something personal to fight for, perhaps something to protect or avenge. Daisy could have served this purpose, and that may be why the brief image of a rabbit so captured fans’ imaginations in the first place.

There is, I understand, a “hidden” bunny in each level of Doom Eternal, a nod to the fan-created lore, but of course that isn’t anything quite like a fully developed character.

This isn’t a serious criticism of the game, but I think the Doom reboot may have missed an opportunity by failing to make Daisy the rabbit the cute mascot sidekick of this franchise.

Christopher Kinsey: ‘Magical Girls and What to Do about Them’

Anime Outsiders is an interesting website; I first discovered them on Twitter, where they claimed (and whether they were being honest or merely puffing themselves, I have no idea) that they had members who were disaffected former employees of Crunchyroll. Garrulous and highly opinionated, they’re worth keeping an eye on simply because they offer exactly what their name implies—an alternate opinion that’s outside the mainstream groupthink.

Christopher Kinsey has an article up over there entitled, “Magical Girls and What to Do about Them.” Like every author who discusses magical girls, Kinsey feels a strange need to give a history of the genre, but unlike most, he mercifully keeps it brief and gets into the real point he wants to discuss—how the genre has become darker, edgier, and more adult thanks largely to Puella Magi Madoka Magica. In doing so, he also points out a connection between Madoka and Lyrical Nanoha that I had not picked up on (mostly because I admittedly have a hard time remembering Japanese names).

For those among us who know our production houses, Seven Arcs began its life producing adult themed animation, the most notorious of which is known as Night Shift Nurses and the less said about THAT the better. But this was all to build the capitol to make a really honest to goodness TV anime series. As it turns out, they produced Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha which, as mentioned above, was a magical girl anime primarily designed to draw in a male audience.

Kinsey makes the case that the genre, in its recent developments, has ended up excluding the audience it was originally intended for—young girls.

I’ve repeatedly complained on here about the excess darkness in the genre today, with many series like Magical Girl Site trying to duplicate the grimness of Madoka without understanding why Madoka works.

Although I think Kinsey makes the common mistake of interpreting Madoka in light of Gen Urobuchi’s previous work (even though Urobuchi himself has said he was trying to write against his usual tendencies with Madoka), he ultimately turns to the Netflix adaptation of Smile Pretty Cure into Glitter Force and makes what I believe to be a great point:

Could it be translated better and still sold to young girls? Probably, but this is just the thing to remind the anime community that we have to cater to more than just young men with disposable incomes. Everyone deserves a chance at the table, and if Glitter Force can be a gateway to a new fan just as Sailor Moon scooped up many young ladies to the fandom back when I was young, then I think we need to have more series just like it.

A Thorny Problem: The ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ Rewatch, Part 17

The bird is fighting its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Whoever wishes to be born must destroy a world. The bird is flying to God. The god is named Abraxas.

Herman Hesse, Demian

Revolutionary Girl Utena, episode 17: “The Thorns of Death.” Directed by Kunihiko Ikuhara. Character designs by Chiho Saito. Be-Papas, 1997 (Nozomi Entertainment, 2011). Approx. 24 minutes. Rated “16+.”

Watch for free.

|

After one of the worst filler episodes in the show’s entire run, Revolutionary Girl Utena is now back on track.

This episode finally introduces Shiori, the nameless purple-haired girl we had earlier encountered in flashbacks as the unrequited love of Juri. Shiori stole the man she thought Juri was in love with.

Shiori smiles as she sits near the open window in her room
Shiori.

Shiori has enrolled again at Ohtori Academy after having attended another institution through middle school. The unnamed boy she though she had swiped from Juri is now out of her life for reasons we never learn.

Continue reading “A Thorny Problem: The ‘Revolutionary Girl Utena’ Rewatch, Part 17”

Laughing through Sorrow: A Meditation on the Magical Girl Aesthetic

I have a theory that I have a hard time explaining, one I have held for years and have constantly struggled both to articulate in essays and to encapsulate in my fiction writing. A recent Amazon reviewer of my novel Jake and the Dynamo has, I think, captured it well:

There are times when the laugh lines come so fast you can’t catch your breath and other times when the insight is so deep you can feel it all the way inside you. The author is very familiar with his source material and understands the consequences of its tropes far more than the creators that develop it. Jake is very identifiable and you really feel for him. The central magical girls—Pretty Dynamo, Card Collector Kasumi, and Grease Pencil Marionette—are deep and well-drawn. You feel their triumphs and their pain. Things you took for granted are exposed from entirely new angles. But it is also rip-roaringly funny.

I am still grasping at the proper words, but what I think I want to say is that the grandest or saddest stories should begin with comedy. I take my influence largely from comics, so if I were to name the comics that best capture how I believe stories should be written, I would point first to Bone by Jeff Smith and Amelia Rules! by Jimmy Gownley. Continue reading “Laughing through Sorrow: A Meditation on the Magical Girl Aesthetic”