Legend of Korra finale

Tomorrow is the last movie weekend for Toonami with both Evangelion movies, but that can wait because last week I went ahead and posted before the release of the Legend of Korra finale and grossly underestimated the significance, so we gotta talk about this.

Okay, so the conflict was pretty standard fare, Kuvira showed up with a giant robot and everybody worked together to stop it. Sorry, but this just isn't all that new, though it was fun to watch anyway. However it was sad to see Asami reconnect with her father only to watch him die to save her and everybody else. It was also almost sad to see how Mako almost sacrificed himself, but Bolin saved him, thank god, I was actually scared there for a minute, who know they don't need anybody to survie a series finale anybody can die. But the coolest part was that Varrick and Zhu Li did the thing! What thing you ask? All of the things! They got engaged, they set off an electromagnetic pulse to stop an army of robots, they helped save the world and they got married. The best part for me was when Varrick asked her to "do the thing" and she simply replied "there are no things left to do."

Or at least Varrick and Zhu Li doing the thing would have been the highlight if not for the "F**k it all take this s**t! It's a series finale you can't fire us, HAHA!" ending where Kora walked off with...Asami! Korra is a lesbian!

Okay, folks, this happened, get over it. I never thought about Korrasami before Asami came to talk to Korra at the party at the end of the episode. Suddenly I got a lesbian vibe. Asami said "I don't know what I would do if I lost my father and you in the same day." What about Mako? He risked his life too...unless Korra means something more than that...Asami, Korra is there somethign you want to tell us? Back a season or two ago when Mako was feeling awkward around you two and you just laughed at him, is that because you guys already had your own little secret? They agree to go on a vaction to the spirit world and hold hands as they go out in the final scene.

I rushed to the forums and sure enough, Korrasami was everywhere, Facebook, Twitter, Gaia Online. Eventually the prducers came out and confirmed that it was what it appeared to be. And yet, still some people had to give us shit about the ending, and surprisingly it wasn't necessarily homophobes, but primarily Makorra shippers. All right, if we're drawing battle lines, I am on team Korrasami. That's how the writers went, and that's how it works sometimes. As a writer, I have found my characters kind of veer off in their own direction. In 7th Moon, Aka was supposed to be a minor character and yet he overwhelmed Seichei who was supposed to be the primary antagonist. Korra turned out to be a lesbian. Makorra fans, seriously, Mako cheated on Asami when he first hooked up with Korra and nobody seems to care that Bolin made the first move when they first met so he also broke bro code "though shalt not mack on chicks thy bro has called dibs on". My point is, Mako may be a good guy, but Asami is equally suitable, you just want to go for the obvious heterosexual pairing of the male and female leads. Things went a bit different, and I say that's okay. My view on other people's sexual orientation is simple, the only time it matters is if it's a girl I want to be with and fictional women n alternate universes, especially animated ones are far enough off that scale I don't care that she is a lesbian. I am happy for the gay community as a whole that finally a cartoon aimed at kids has the guts to reveal a gay lead. At least, it's new for America anyway, anime fans are quite familiar with animated gays and lesbians, from Sailor Neptune and Sailor Uranus, to Big Cheese from Samurai Pizza Cats, to Freddy Luo in Outlaw Star, Leeron in Gurren Lagann, and that one chick in Bleach who is openly lezzing for Orohime and doesn't care who knows that her life's goal is to get to second base with her busty classmate. Gay happens, and with all the kids being raised by gay parents, or having friends in that situation, most are aware that it happens and it's not traumatic for them to be exposed to it. The really disturbing part is that we are still so wary of it that even when somebody does dare to go there, it's done with limits. There is a fan gif of Korra and Asami kissing after the last frame of Legend of Korra and I say consider it canon; we never saw Aang have sex with Katara but they had three kids, so it must have happened. Korra is a lesbian, Asami is her girlfriend, and they lived happily ever after. THE END!

And with that, folks, I bring to an end my first year of my blog. I hope you've all enjoyed the ride, I look forward to next year. See you in the future and stay gold!

Sacred Star of Milos and Legendary Super Saiyan

This weekend on Toonami they will be showing the two most awesome movies in all of anime, DBZ:Broly the Legendary Super Saiyan, and Akira. Since I already went over Akira in a previous entry, I'd suggest you go to the archives and look it up and watch on Saturday because it's just the most awesome ever. Instead I'll be focusing on Broly and reviewing last weekend's Sacred Star of Milos.

Full Metal Alchemist has been known to have fillers, but mercifully, they always seem to fit in with the canon storyline, unlike some other franchises. In Sacred Star of milos, it's all about Milos, a valley on the border between Amestris, the country where FMA takes place, and Krata, one of it's neighbors. It all starts when a dangerous prisoner reveals he can use alchemy and escapes just before he was to be released from prison. Ed and Al get involved and try to capture him, following leads to Krata where they become involved in a war with Milos. It seems Milos was a very proud and distinguished city that was taken over by Krata and the native population was driven into a valley where they live in squalor, although for some reason they are able to build flying suits with bat wings that look to be of professional quality despite their utter lack of any resources whatsoever. There is one important alchemist named Julia who mostly just uses her alchemy to heal, she learned from her parents about the Star of Milos, which the Elrics deduce is actually a Philosopher's Stone. Julia is being sought after by the fugitive alchemist who it seems is her brother, and he has inherited fromtheir parents two alchemy circles that he has painted on his hands in blood, his right hand controls ice, the left lightning/electricity(considering Square Enix makes the anime, I can't help but think this is a nod to FF7&8 where these two elements are the starting magic for both Cloud and Squall who's names are both weather related as is their magic). There's also some wolf chimera that function as werewolves hunting down Julia's brother. Of course, in FMA tradition it is revealed that the entire city is designed to be a transmutation circle meant to turn the entire population into a Philosopher's Stone. Ed and Al have to try to stop this because they do not condone killing an entire city for one stone that can grant the power of a god. Unfortunately, they fail and it becmes a battle over the stone. Things get weird as it is revealed that Julia's brother is actually General tlas of Krata who stole her brother's face after killing their parents and her real brother used another Philosopher's Stone to save himself and has actually been using the wolf chimera to protect her from Atlas. Eventually everything gets straightened out and with order restored the Elrics return to Amestris. I know that sounds vague, but really it's actually typical FMA fare, but it is a treat to see the bros back in action.

Now, as for Broly, this movie, like all other DBZ movies is non-canon and doesn't actually fit in the timeline. Because of the characters involved and the fact that Gohan can go Super Saiyan and Goku is alive, the only time that works is right before the Cell Games, but they'd be permanent Super Saiyans and nobody would be as relaxed at the beginning of the movie. Anyway, ignoring all of that, the story is that Broly was born the same day as Goku and was right next to him in the nursery. Goku was actually the weakest of Saiyans, so as a baby he cried and annoyed Broly who powered up and revealed he was the most powerful Saiyan ever even at only tw days old. King Vegeta felt threatened and tried to exile/dispose of both Broly and his father Paragus. However, as many know, this was bout the same time Frieza decided to blow up the planet Vegeta and wipe out all Saiyans, so Broly's exile actually saved him and he was free to rampage around te galaxy and become ridiculously powerful. Now, Saiyans are avid fighters and have this crazy habit of seeking out new challenges, so when Goku learns of another Super Saiyan he can't wait to meet him. Vegeta has a different perspective because he only gets invited by Paragus to be the King of the surviving Saiyans. It seems all great until Broly shows up, restrained by Paragus and seemingly harmless, until he recognizes Goku and utters that infamous complaint that puts Vegeta to shame, "KAKAROT!" Broly's hatred of Goku eventually causes him to go out of control and he reveals himself as the legendary Super Saiyan. This leads into an all out fight that invloves all four of the canon Super Saiyans(Future Trunks is along for this one) plus Broly who sees to be as strong as all four combined, and probably even stronger because Piccolo is also there and it doesn't help much. Oh and Broly kills his dad too, because he has gone mad at this point, all because he gets ticked off by Goku's voice. Did I mention that Broly also gets bigger when he goes Super Saiyan, so this is Super Saiyan on steroids? We're talking the kid of guy that would make Arnold Scwarzenegger in his prime look like a puny ninety-eight pound weakling. broly is jacked, but of course, Goku still wins, butit is epic. I will not tell you how or even show you a clip you have to tune in Saturday night to see what happens. If you haven't already, you'd better be watching and stick around for Akira!

Big Hero 6 and Feast

Well tomorrow on Toonami we have what I believe will be the finale of Hellsing followed by a Full Metal Alchemist movie. I don't really care about Hellsing, and as much as I love Full Metal Alchemist, I've already posted on the series and I haven't seen the movie yet. For now, i'd liek to talk about another movie, Big Hero 6, which I finally got to see last weekend.

Before I get to Big Hero 6, I want to talk abou the short that comes before it, sure to win the Oscar, "Feast". The entire short focuses on a dog named Winston and how his life basically revolves around table scraps. But, in a style we've come to expect from Pixar, it tells so much more. First a puppy finds a french fry on the ground and is adopted by the man who dropped it. The dog is named Winston as we can see on his dog dish and he eats like a king. He even gets to sit at the table like one time at a cafe where a vey nice waitress patsWinston on the head and says "Let me know if you need anything." Then Winston's owner starts dating her and she wants him to eat healthier and replaces all the fun tasty food with vegetables. Winston is not happy, he does not like this woman or her vegetables at all. Then the woman leaves(we don't know exactly why) and the man starts eating junk food again immediately, which makes Winston happy. This is a rather dark turn for the story, as while the focus seems to remain on Winston who loves the junk food his master is eating, we can see in the background that the owner is clealrly depressed. This leads to the turning point of the story, the man opens a take-out carton of pasta and there's a sprig of parsley garnish on top. Winston growls at the parsley, remembering how the woman put that on food and made it yucky. The man picks up the parsley and stares at it longingly remembering his girlfriend. Winston realizes his master is sad and wants to make him happy again, so he grabs the parsley and runs out the door down to the cafe to find the waitress again. His owner follows him and meets the waitress, and they get together and get married. Winston s back to just eating kibble, but at least his master is happy, so he is too. Then a meatball rolls across the floor, Winston looks up to see a baby in a high chair, the child of his master and his wife. The baby drops another meatball, and then finally we flash to a birthday party where Winston gets cupcakes. Clearly, the dog lives happily ever after.

Big Hero 6 isn't nearly as nuanced as Feast, but still a must see for anime fans...and Marvel fans, and pretty much everybody else. The movie focuses on Hiro Hamada, a boy genius who is very good with robots and uses them in street fights to hustle money. His brother Tadashi tries to convince him to put his talents to better use at the university where he goes by taking him to the lab to see his recently completed project. Along the way they meet Tadashi's friends, Go Go Tamago who is working on magnetic wheels to reduce friction and enhance speed, Wasabi who is working with lasers and plasma to perfect precision cutting technology, Honey Lemon who is experimenting with chemistry to figure out just how many chemical reactions she can synthesize, and Fred, the mascot who gives everybody else nicknames and dreams of somebody figuring out how to turn him into a fire-breathing monster(yes, Fred is wierd, but he makes sense later). Tadashi's big project is Baymax, a medical robot that does manage to impress Hiro. Hiro takes on the challenge of trying to get into the science program and develops micro-bots, which any sci-fi fan will recognize as nanotechnology, but whatever, the point is it's good enough to get Hiro in. Unfortunately, there's a fire in the lab after Hiro's big presentation, Tadashi's mentor is stuck inside and Tadashi goes back in after him, only for an explosion to end his life. Hiro is depressed and does nothing but sit in his room for days. Then when he's finally forced to actually do something, he stubs his to and says "Ow!" which activates Baymax. While trying to put Baymax away, Hiro falls down and notices that his last microbot is moving around in his jacket pocket. Baymax offers to figure out what is going on which Hiro dismisses at firs, but when Baymax fails to understand Hiro's sarcasm, he begins to wander around town, following the microbot until he reaches a warehouse where he and Hiro discover someone has been mass producing the microbots. Hiro tries to report the situation to the police, but it seems so implausible the police officer doesn't take him seriously, so Hiro decides to upgrade Baymax into a combat robot so they can take care of this situation themselves. Despite programming Baymax with karate moves and fitting him with armor, he is still no match for the microbots. Fortunately, Bymax had also called Tadashi's friends in an attempt to form a support group to help with Hiro's depression, and they show up in time to drive the getaway car to escape from danger. In a rather convenient turn of events, Fred turns out to be rich and has a mansion where everybody can crash while they figure out their next move. Fred's obsession wiht comics inspires Hiro to make gear for everyone to become superheroes so they can fight the microbot thief and thus becme the team Big Hero 6. Everybody uses some variety of their own technology and they even come up with a monster suit for Fred that allows him to jump and breathe fire. They practice to make sure they can use all of this stuff without hurting themselves. They go after the bad guy, searching for him with Baymax's upgraded medical scan, and find him on an island off shore. At first they believe it's the Mr. Krei, owner of Krei industries who wanted Hiro's microbots, however it turns out to be Dr. Callaghan, Tadashi's mentor who was believed to have died in the explosion with Tadashi. Enraged, Hiro commands Baymax to destroy Callaghan which Baymax refuses as it is against his prgramming and Hiro removes his medical chip leaving him with only his combat programming and baymax goes berserk. The others stuggle to stop him beleiveing their mentor deserves better than this execution, and manage to reinsert the chip that stops him, giving Callaghan a chance to escape. We then find out that Callagahn's daughter died during one of Krei's experiments with a teleportation portal and he's out for revenge. The team goes after him again, this time with the plan to neutralize whatever damage he's gong to do, which turns out to be opening the portal to swallow up the entire Krei corporate compound. After stopping Callaghan and saving Krei, Baymax discovers signs of life within the portal and finds Callaghan's dauther inside. Hiro and Baymax go and rescue her, but Baymax is lost in the process. In the end, Hiro finds that baymax had given him Tadashi's chip and he was able to rebuild Baymax, reforming the team which continues to help people. The biggest surprise though is the truth about Fred, which you have to stay untl after the credits to see...

Summer Wars and NaNoWriMo Red Ellen conlcusion

First of all, not much to say about Red Ellen that I haven't already except that I did finish writing it, and now to the editing phase. Short but sweet, I won, yay!

Now, next up i'm goign to talk about Summer Wars, and anime that will be on tommorrow night on Toonami. It was on last year and it was awesome and I wanted to make sure that anyoen who missd it knows they havea chance to catch it now. Summer Wars is a slightly comlicated movie that spans two worlds, the real world and the digital world. Frankly it's not terribly unrealistic at all, and the premise sounds to me liek it could happen any day now. The movie opens with a description of OZ, acomputer network that makes Facebook look like AOL circa 1995. Everybody is on OZ and they do everything on OZ. The story very quickly transitions to a young man named Kenji who works as a maintainence coder for OZ. Kenji is invited by a girl named Natsuki to join her for the weekend. She says it's a job but it's not until after he agrees that she tells him that the nature of the job is to pretend to be her boyfriend for her great grandmother's nintieth birthday, which includes the entire family, and what a huge family it is. Very suddenly Kenji is overwhelmed by the huge family gathering and to calm himself he sneaks off to check his e-mail and finds a math problem that he tries to solve, which succeeds in helping him relax(because he's a nerd) but ends up creatign more problems. When he wakes up the next day, OZ has been hacked and it turns out the math problem was actually the security code, his response allowed a hacker to take his account and start messing with the network. Kenji tries to fix the problem and is assisted by OZ celebrity King Kazuma, an anthropomorphic rabbit who is known for winning action games, especially martial arts fighting tournaments online. King Kazuma challenges the hacker to buy time for Kenji and kenji discovers that the greatest fighter in Oz is actually Natsuki's cousin Kazuma, a teenage web addict. Kazuma's actually a good kid, he started fighting online to bond with his grandfather, and it's a good thing because his skills are need to fight the hacker. Eventually the truth comes out that the hacker is actually an artificial intelligence known as Love Machine and it was programmed by Wabisuke, who was adopted by great grandma and has appeared for the first time in ten years at the birthday party/family reunion. The rest of the movie follows a bizzarre sequence of events in which the family tries to focus on grandma's birthday despite the fact that Love Machine is causing chaos throught out the world, which the family mostly ignores because they are in a rural mountainside house that is centuries old and they get by pretty well without technology affecting too much of their lives. Then great grandma dies, apparently her heart monitor failed due to Love Machine's interference. Now shit just got real and everybody is focused on beating Love Machine. The ending is so epic, no description can do it justice, so I'll just post a clip below and you can either watch it now, or see the whole thing tommorrow night.

NaNoWriMo Week 4 the finale!

Okay folks, I really don't have a lot of time, it's the last weekeend of National Novel Writers Month and I have three days to write 9,000 words so I really have to get back to Red Ellen. I made a lot of progress in the last week, a lot has happened, though I can't say a whole lot because it would be a bunch of spoilers. I will say that in the timeline of the story we have gone from St. Patrick's Day to October, the last month of the cycle of the story becaue the big ending will be on Halloween. At the moment I'm in the middle of a big scene where Jade is about to have twins, in case you forgot that's the girlfriend of Jasper, the cousin of the main character Ellen and both Jade and Jasper are dragonkin, descendants of dragon changelings. Sound complicated? That's juat a subplot, imagine what the rest of the book is like. Also Hope, Ellen's nanny is back in town, and on that note I would like to review the supporting cast behind my main characters as mentioned last week.

The parents: Mr. and Mrs. Red, Sarah, Ian, Tom and Uncle Alistair - These characters simply give background to the main characters by saying where they came from. I purposely avoided giving names to Ellen's parents to highlight how unimportant they were. There isn't a whole lot to say what you see is what you get they are functional, one-dimensional background characters, I really don't want them drawing attention away from the main cast.

Amy and Tasha - The secondary antagonists, these are Jason and Ralph's alternate girlfriends, their exes who presumably they would hook up with if Ellen doesn't choose them. These two are, simply put, jealous psycho bitches. We've all met them, we know they are real and in Ellen's world it's no different, they just take it to another level, a supernatural level. I have a very good reason for these two to fill in a hole that I created, and I hope that it will work out as well as I intend.

Ashley and Brittany - The names say it all. They were inspired by the cliques from the cartoon Recess where a group of girls were all named Ashley and in one episode we discovered they all had younger sisters the same age as each other all named Brittany. I couldn't help it but after that all I can think of is that Ashley and Brittany mean something and what that means is the most shallow one dimensional stereotypical girl who is so self-absorbed she doesn't even care that she's nothing but a stereotype, and in fact may go out of her way to be the human Barbie doll everyone seems to think she is. They don't appear a lot in the story, their only purpose is to simply be the normal girls in Ellen's life, a symbol of how simple things used to be.

Rainbow the Unicorn - When I decided to make Ellen a fairy princess in a love triangle with a werewolf and a vampire, I was trying to play into stereotypical girl fantasies and I figured having a unicorn was the one thing I was missing to make the picture complete. I went with the name Rainbow because of the phrase "All rainbows and unicorns" which usually refers to someone being overly optimistic. Although it seems to be a joke, my real point is that Ellen actually has the dream going for her, she actually has the rainbows and unicorns literally. Also, I wanted to throw in another fairy type character because I was kind of light on those.

Orlock - named for the vampire from Nosferatu the first vampire movie, Orlock was the vampire that turned Nate. For the most part he serves the same role as the parents of the other characters, but he's also the scapegoat for Nate that he can blame everything wrong on. Orlock is also arguably the one who originally set everything in motion.

Hope and Morty - I really can't say a whole lot about these two characters, but there is a lot more going on with them than it appears. They appear to be merely servants of Ellen and Nate respectively, but pay attention to how they always seem to be where they are needed just when they are needed...there is a reason...

Okay, that's enough for now, gotta get back to writing, bye!

NaNoWriMo week 3 and VideoGames Live!

SO far behind on my book, gotta make this quick. First things first, last night I took a break from writing to attend Video Games Live at the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra and it was awesome! You can see most of the stuff on YouTube, so there's not much point in going into detail, although one thing you probably won't see was one gamer proposing to his girlfriend on stage who responded "Yes I will be your player 2!" LIKE A BOSS! I was disappointed they didn't do One Winged Angel, but they made up for it with their rendition of the opera sequence from Final Fantasy 6, with vocalist Jilian Aversi in full Celes cosplay and a bouquet of roses she threw out into the audience at just the right time. Seriously once I can find that video posted, I'm so reposting it here. Some other fun stuff included a guy playing space invaders and using tracking technology he actually was the shooter, having to physically run bac and forth across the stage, and also a Guitar Hero champion met Tommy Talarico's challenge of scoring over 450,000 points on expert level on "Pretender" by the Foo Fighters, and at the beginning there was a costume contest where Sub-Zero and Reptile gave a good re-enactment of Mortal Kombat, and little Link almost beheaded Zelda twice, but the winner was the Mario Bros.

Meanwhile, I have had a productive week with Red Ellen. I got to 25,000 words so I got all of my badges on NaNoWriMo except the final win. Ellen has now been on dates with all three of her suitors and she found out she will be an aunt because her cousin Jasper knocked up his girlfriend Jade so we can expect a baby dragonkin by the end(SPOILER: it's twins!). I've finished the expostion and now that we all know about the supernatural world Ellen can go back to normal life...yeah right there is no normal! Okay so she's going to juggle three guys over the next few months and connect with her cousin and the only other significant girl in this story before the final showdown on Halloween..for this year.

I've been adding a lot of characters so I think I should bring the focus on the main six:

Ellen - Obviously she is the main character. I'm basically writing her as if it was me if I had been a popular girl instead of a nerdy boy. In hindsight, I've realized everyone feels awkward during those years, and this is about her dealing with the pressure of being what everyone wants and not being totally sure if she can satisfy everyone, so she's tyring to find her own place. It's all I know, so it's the best I can do for a main character, the amount of what I have to do with her just makes it too damn hard for her to be anything else.

Jasper - This is more of a reflection of me, or rather who I wish I could have been. Jasper just wasn't main character material as I got deeper into development so I pushed him to sidekick status. Jasper's a bit more flavor than practical, he's kind of just there, though he is connected to important characters, so I hope the audience warms up to him inspite of a lack of substance.

Jade - Jasper's girlfriend, she serves two purposes, first, I don't want people thinking there's any chance of Jasper being the fourth suitor for Ellen(they're cousins, but when you consider Ellen was switched at birth and they didn't meet until they were sixteen, this doesn't necessarily mean anything, but I still don't want to go there), so I figure sticking him with a sweet baby mama will make readers less sympathetic to the idea of him going with Ellen and understand that he's platonic towards Ellen. The second reason is, I figured I needed a female friend for Ellen so I can pass the Bechdel test, which is basically a feminist standard measuring a work by whether you can have two female characters talk about something other than a guy. Apparently someon actually took the time to notice that in 99% of literature, there are less than two female characters, and when there are more than two female characters, they inevitably fall into some sort of conflict regarding one of the male characters, so there's been a demand that they be less one-dimensional. I'm tryign to give Ellen and Jade a true friendship so that they do stuff that has nothign to do with the guys. Well, maybe Jasper, but only because that couple is actually young and in love and they are totally a package deal and I feel there's enough conflict in the story without them having drama...at least in this volume.

Jason - the hunk, he represents what evey girl is a suker for in the physical sense. He is Jacob from Twilight multiplied by a factor of Channing Tatum. He is the guy you just want to see with his shirt off, in just his underwear if you're lucky. You don't really need him to say anything, just stand there and look pretty. You know you want this guy even if you're ashamed to admit you're that shallow. Jason actually is a nice guy, but he just happens to come in the perfect package.

Ralph - the exotic gentleman, he has an accent, he's artistic, everything he does is sexy, even when it's lame, just because he's got that foreign refined je ne sais quoi. I even gave him the most pretentious name I could think of. He's another fantasy, but again, he's actually a nice guy who just also happens to come in a perfect package.

Nathaniel - the bad boy, Nathaniel is a bad boy, he is the guy you absolutely should never ever be with and yet in spite of that, or maybe, on some sick twisted level, because of it, you want him anyway. I once liked the idea of redeeming a vampire, but it got done to death and now everyone seems to think vampires are tortured souls, they've lost their horror edge. In this book, I'm trying to make vampires evil again, and Nathaniel is just a total dick. So far I've actually written him as a sympathetic character, but he's also a liar and when the truth comes out you will probably hate him for playing with Ellen's heart. Basically his part of the story is drawn from my experience with guys who are total dicks and yet still get girls while I am a gentleman and get friend-zoned by the same girls who call me to ask why this guy broke her heart. I totally expect that no matter how much of dick I make Nathaniel, there will be a sizable fan base rootign for Ellen to end up with him anyway. I'm just going to say right now, that is not going to happen, not in my story(SPOILER:at the end of the series, Nathaniel will DIE, Ellen will not be with him EVER). The moral of Red Ellen is that bad boys are no good and you should defintely explore better options.

Well, I need to get back to writing, so see you next week!

NaNoWriMo week 2

Again I have to make this quick because I'm really behind on writing Red Ellen for National Novel Writer's Month. All I'm going to say is that so far I'm up to chapter 6. Ellen has learned about her fairy origins and she's gotten her unicorn Rainbow who, ironically is actually pure white. She has met the major characters, Jason the werewolf, Ralph the wizard, Nathaniel the vampire, and Jade and Jasper the dragonkin. She is still getting to know the dragonkin, including her cousin Jasper who doesn't get along well with Ellen's father. She also went on her first date with Jason and is preparing for Ralph. Along the way she's getting a crash course in the supernatural world.

I came up with the idea for the world Red Ellen takes place in because I read a lot of stories that involve the supernatural and watch a lot of shows, and everyone seems to vary the rules slightly, so I decided to try my own take. Unfortunately I didn't really have a story for this all to take place in, until I realized there was a market for Paranormal Romance, so that's what I decided to make my story. I'm explainign the rules as I go along, leading up to a major history lesson coming up in this chapter.The basic gist is that the mortal world lies between two other worlds, the fairy world and the Netherworld. The other two worlds can't interact directly because they are diametrically opposed. Firies don't die and the dead don't dream, so they aren't connected, but they do both connect to this world, so they are kind of at war and this is the battlefield. The fairies leave changelings, the Netherworld is represented by the undead, but our world has it's own native supernaturals, including werewolves and weretigers who are the last of the animal shape shifters that got otherwise hunted to extinction and the magi, a catch-all term for every other mortal who has magical powers of any kind. The most powerful magi are wizards who have focused so much on their craft that they can do just about anything, but most magi merely dabble and have limited powers, usually just basic charms and rituals, maybe a few spells, whatever is practical. Magi and the werebeasts are neutral in the greater conflict between changelings and undead, but they can be swayed, and in Red Ellen, the region has only a few changelings left, so Ellen, as the princess, must sway the mortals to her side or the undead takeover. Of course, if the undead sway her, then all is lost, which is why her relationship to the devious Nathaniel is so critical.

As for the particular place, Red Ellen takes place in my hometown of Rochester, NY, because if you look at where stories usually take place, it would seem America consists entirely of New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Miami. It's particularly annoying to live in upstate New York, because if you don't live here, you just can not possibly understand what it's like to live in a state which includes the most famous city in the world, and half of us live a day's drive away and almost never actually go there. I have been in the big city about twice ever, and I really don't care that much if I ever go back. In fact I actually would rather New York City would separate from the rest of the state and form a new state with east New Jersey and however much of Connecticut that actually seems to matter more to them than we do, and they can call that "Tri-State", because that's how they think down there anyway. My passionate hatred of New York City comes from meeting city folks when I was in college. They think they are better than rest of us, they have better pizza, better bagels, better public transportation, better buildings, better everything. Rochester is actually a pretty bustling city, you can see a part of it in the opening chase scene of Amazing Spider Man 2, they filmed here, I went down to the set and saw it. We are the inspiration for the soap opera General Hospital. We are an awesome city. If you ask someone from New York City, they just think we're a quaint little burg. They don't mind taking our tax money, but other than that, it's either move in or crawl back under your rock. Okay, maybe it's not that bad, but my point is, Rochester needs some press, so I'm representing!

NaNoWriMo Week 1: Red Ellen and the future of 7th Moon

Hello all, it's National Novel Writer's Month and I'm working on a new novel titled Red Ellen, so I am going to try to keep my blog short so I can get back to it and meet my deadline. Before I get to that though I want to talk about 7th Moon. I have said that I wanted to continue the series and I do, and I am working on volume 2 of 5 and I'm in the third chapter. Two years ago I started it for NaNoWriMo but choked and never finished. I did pick it up again later, but it will still take time and I can't use it for NaNoWriMo again because I already went on record saying I tried it before, which is why I need to try a new novel. I do still think about where 7th Moon is heading and as long as I am a writer there will be a complete set of five. This next book will focus on mecha and what's going on outside of Japan in he rest of the world, think Gundam Wing, Code Geass:Llouche of the Rebellion or Gurren Lagann. It starts one year after the end of the first book and war is on the horizon, China is repeating the Three Kingdoms war, the Middle East is in a holy war, vampires with steampunk mechs are all over Europe, and the USA is now only five cities, and Hidariude and the other espers get dragged into all of these conflicts. In the third book, the truth about the multiple moons comes out as they fall out of orbit and crash to Earth, and while the immediate and obvious disaster is avoided, it does bring the kaiju, the mutants that resulted from the genetic experiments that destroyed the colonies. Hidariude and company will have to fight through the monsters icluding the six giant masters a la Power Rangers. Then we'll do Guardians of Paradise which will tell the story of the samurai, the monk, and the ninja who served Shinryuu 800 years ago. This will involve demons and mirror 7th Moon-only in feudal era Japan! Finally there will be one last book that will send off our characters in a thinly veiled tribute to Final Fantasy. I should note that not all of the characters will survive to be in the final book, but I'm gonna make you wait to find out who.

Now, back to Red Ellen, the story of a girl who finds out that she is a changeling, specifically a fairy princess, and she is now responsible for all the supernatural beings in her city. These supernatural beings include werewolves, magi, and undead, and each group has presented a young suitor to win Ellen's heart and her favor for their faction. Now she must choose between hunky Jason the werewolf, exotic Ralph the wizard, and bad boy Nate the vampire. It's similar to Twilight except that the vampire is the bad guy. No he's not a tormented soul in need of understanding, he's the sort of guy you warn your friend not to date and she dates him anyway, only he's even worse than that. My intent is to turn the paranormal romance genre on its head by making vampires evil again. We've been sympathizing with them for too long, sparkling was taking it too far, it's time for vampires to be the villains they were always supposed to be. this story started out as an idea I had for my own take on the supernatural world, but I didn't really ahve a story to use it with, and then I thought I could try the paranormal romance genre and use my world as a setting for the anti-Twilight. I hope it's similar enough to attract the existing audience while being different enough to win over people who would otherwise disdain the genre. I plan for this to be a trilogy, with each book covering a critical year in her life from her birthday which happens to be St. Patrick's Day until Halloween when the undead are at their stongest. The first book is 16, followed by 18, and then finally 21. The big twist, I'm going to let the readers help me decide whether she ends up with the wizard or the werewolf, or neither, or both, I'm open to polyamory.

So far I'm in my third chapter, Ellen has discovered what she is and met the key players, including her three potential boyfriends and her cousin Jasper and his girlfriend Jade, who are both dragonkin, one-eighth dragon and great-grandchildren of changelings themselves. I haven't really gotten past introductions so i need to get back to the book, so see you for my next update next week!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! Soul Eater and Kakurenbo!

Happy Halloween everybody! For this special day I have chosen not one but two appropriate anime, the first being Soul Eater. Soul Eater is a very weird anime to be sure, it really doesn't make very much sense at all until about maybe halfway through, and yet, it is still very enjoyable, you just have to be patient and stick with it. The main premise of the story centers around living weapons and their wielders, or meisters. Living weapon is no some mere metaphor, every weapon is a person who can transform into an inanimate object that can be used as a weapon. Of course, weapons can wield themselves, so they are paired with a meister, a person who does not have the ability to transform but does practice wielding the weapon until their souls resonate and become even mre powerful together than either could ever be alone. The premise comes from a concept that comes up a lot in anime and Japanese folklore, the idea that a warrior's soul resides in their weapon, or that the weapon has a soul of it's own, and that a true warrior must learn to be at one with this weapon. Soul Eater simply takes it a step further by claiming that the weapon actually is a person entirely unto himself. In the first episode all we get to know about this is that weapon/meister teams work together to fight kishin so the weapons can consume their souls and after consuming ninety-nine kishin souls, they pursue a witch for an even hundred souls and then the weapon becomes a Death Scythe, a weapon worthy of Lord Death himself, capable of actually operating solo with partial transformations so that they can serve their master who is unfortunately anchored in one place and can not travel to fight kishin and witches abroad. The Title character is an actual scythe who is teamed with Maka Albarn, the daughter of the currently reigning Death Scythe, Spirit Albarn. They are good friends with Black Star and Tsubaki, a ninja and his versatile weapon who is uniquely capable of taking multiple forms including a chained pair of sickles, a knife, a shuriken, and eventually the legendary katana Masamune. They also become friends with Death the Kid, the son of Lord Death, and his weapons Liz and Patty Thompson who are a pair of identical guns, an important detail for Kid who is obsessive compulsive and chose these weapons because of symmetry. Kid is potentially the most powerful character, but he is held back by his own neurosis which plays off as hilarious. Similarly, Black Star is funny because, as a ninja, he is supposed to be a master of stealth, and yet his pride causes him to constantly announce his presence with so much flare that he loses his element of surprise. By comparison, Soul and Maka are the most efficient team out of the three, simply because they never let anything get in the way of their objectives. The story eventually reveals why weapons exist, 800 years ago a witch named Arachne bound souls of other witches to weapons, forcing the weapons to come alive as magiacal weapons. The sacrifice of witches that she made to create these weapons made her an enemy of witches and she was made an outcast among her own kind, making her easy pickings for Lord Death who elected to ue her own weapons against her, preferring a scythe. Arachne shattered her soul into a swarm of spiders and dispersed around the world waiting for a time when she would have the upper hand. Meanwhile, one of Lord Death's underlings, Asura, went mad and swallowed his weapon partner so they could forever be one, and thus Asura became a kishin, a human so corrupt they feed on the sous of others and become inhuman monsters. The only way for Lord Death to defeat Asura was to seal him underground and bnd him with his own soul, building a city around the site where he was stuck and never able to leave because he must constantly attend to the prison lest Asura escape. The weapons eventually had children with mortals producing offspring that inherited the ability to transform into weapons who were in turn paired with meisters for generation after generation leading to the current situation. Several subplots and minor characters come up, but the most worthy of mention are Crona and Excalibur. Crona is the androgynous child of Medusa, the younger sister of Arachne, and she has used Crona as an experiment in black blood to create a demon sword, a weapon that is one with its meister, literally. Crona is interesting because he starts out as a villain,but is redeemed thanks to Maka. Exaclibur on the other hand is just plain ridiculous and stupid, but manages to make a strong enough impression that even though he is largely irrelevant ot the plot, he still demands attention. Excalibur is the legendary sowrd of King Arthur, though unlike other living weapons, he does not have a human form, but rather takes on the odd shape of...well I don't know what, a walking banana in a tuxedo and tophat I guess. "Fool!" is his catchphrase, as he calls out anyone and everyone he considers lesser, which is everybody. Excalibur is supposed to be the most powerful weapon of all, but because he is so annoyingly arrogant, nobody can stand to be partnered with him so shortly after being discovered he is promptly placed back in the fairy cave for the next unfortunate soul to dare to accquire him. In the series, there is exactly one time someone other than King Arthur is able to partner with Excalibur,  but he ends up displeased with a minor quirk in spite of everything and puts him back like everybody else. As for the rest of the series, obviously it comes down to an epic showdown between the protagonists and Arachne, Asura and Medusa, but what makes the showdown intersting is who pairs off for the final matches and exactly what the aftermath entails. Check out the series at Funimation to see how it all unfolds.

Now for the bonus anime, Kakurenbo. This one shot short film was significant in airing on Halloween night one year, and although I did not watch it then because I mistakenly thought it was a series and didn't want to get involved in another one at the time, I did get to se it eventually on YouTube, and let me tell you it seriously one of the most creepy things you'll ever watch. Kakurenbo follows a game of "otokoyo", hide and seek played between a group of children who for no apparent reason are playing in an otherwise abandoned town and are all wearing disintctive kitsune masks. One of the children is Hikora who is looking for his sister Sorincha who has been missing since the last game of Otokoyo. The kids all seem to think it's just a game, but very soon, four demons appear and capture the children one by one, removing them from the game until Hikora is deemed the winner as the last one standing. He finds his sister and the shockign truth behind Otokoyo. I know that's a short synopsis that doesn't seem to tell much, but it's only a half-hour and much of it is simply a visually impressive detailing of the story leading up to a conclusion that will keep you up all night.

Don't forget, there's only a few more weeks left for the 7th Moon anime Kickstarter, please contribute here.

Blood+, the story of Saya and the Chiropterans

I figured this close to Halloween I needed to do some Halloween themed posts and what works better than a series about vampires? Blood+ is part of the Blood Franchise including Blood:the last Vampire and Blood C, but since I haven't watched either but know that niether of them relate to this series oher than the main character being a sword wielding vampire slayer named Saya, we'll ust ignore them for now. Saya is at the center of the series, a seemingly normal sixteen year old girl-until she realizes she's been sixteen for two hundred years and is humanity's greatest weapon against vampires because she is one herself. The nature of vampires, or as they are referred to here, chiropterans, is so complicated I will have to dedicate about half of this post just to trying to decipher what exactly they are. Chiropterans, like ants and bees, are separated into different castes biologically, but they are even more complicated in how they form. The only true natural chiropteran is a queen, and every queen is born as one of a set of twins with opposing blood types, meaning that if either sister ever has contact with her sister's blood, she will die, specifically she will petrify and crystallize. A queen will reach maturity around age sixteen at which point her body will cease to age, instead she will undergo hibernation in a cocoon for a period of about thirty years, then awaken and remain active for an indeterminate amount of time before resuming hibernation, the cycle only ending when she becomes pregnant and then apparently she becomes mortal and her blood loses all its potency as it passes into the next generation. But there is more, particularly regarding how she becomes pregnant in the first place, in order for a queen to become pregnant, she must mate with a chevalier, which is a male human that has consumed the blood of a queen. Once a man consumes the blood of a queen, usually offered freely by the queen specifically totrigger the transformation, the chevalier stops aging. The chevalier also inherits the blood type and weakness of his queen meaning that if he comes in contact with his queen's sister's blood he will petrify. In addition he also develops the ability to transform into a monstrous creature with enhanced strength, claws, wings, sometimes tentacles, practically whatever is necessary to protect his queen, which is exaclty what the chevalier does for the rest of his life, which lasts exactly until he is killed in the way described earlier, as he is otherwise immortal, not only does he not age, he regenerates like all chiropterans and never hibernates so he watches over his queen while she sleeps. Chevalier are important to the life cycle because they must mate with the sister of the queen that created him in order to recombine the blood types and produce the next generation of chiropterans. In addition to queens and chevalier, there is also a third type of chiropteran that does not remain human in appearance but rather reveals the reason why they are referred to as chiropterans, they appear to be giant vampire bats. It is never explicitly explained how they happen other than the fact theat they make more of their own kind by biting humans like vampires traditionally do. My hypothesis is that they are the result of queens giving blood to females or chevalier trying to give their blood to anyone and ultimately resulting in an abomination. In the series, this last type are the shock troops that Saya cuts down on a regular basis. There's also a fourth type that is created artificially called Schiff, only a few appear, they retain human form and have superhuman speed with limited shapeshifting (never more than their hands turning blue and revealing claws) and they suffer from a weakness they call the Thorn which is that they slowly petrify and it gets worse with any exposure to the sun, and direct full exposure to the sun will cause them to ignite in flames and die in minutes.

Now that you know what they are, it's time to hear who they are. Saya and her sister were found by a man named Joel Goldsmith when he extracted them from the womb of their dying mother who was herself in a state of stasis and fully transformed as a chiropteran(an ability we never see the current queens ever exhibit themseleves). Joel raised Saya as his daughter and adopted a boy named Haji to be her companion, at first acting like it would be her brother but secretly hoping they would mate and he could study their offspring. Although Joel seemed to be a loving father he was actually running an elaborate experiment and allowed his assitant Amshel to care for the sister to study her more in depth. The sister was isolated and abused in the name of science. Eventually Saya discovered her and noticed her one defining trait, a surprisingly beutiful singing voice for which she was named Diva. Saya allowed her sister to be free, not knowing the consequences. One day, while she was out with Haji, he fell off a cliff. Saya had needed a lot of blood transfusions, and although she did not understand the importance of blood for her (all chiropterans feed on blood) she instinctively gave her blood to Haji turning him into her chevalier. When they returned home the Goldsmith estate had been burned to the ground, the only survivors were Diva and her chevalier Amshel and his brother Solomon who had also been made a chevalier. Saya realized her sister was a destructive force that had to be stopped and pursued her with vengance. In time, Saya joined forces with Joel Goldsmith jr. who formed a group called Red Shield, consisting of anyone who lost someone to the chiropterans and sought vengance. Saya became the key to their objectives when it was determined that Saya's blood is the only thing that can destroy Diva and her brood. Diva manages to stay out of harm's way along with her chevalier which grows to include Nathan, Carl, and James. Nathan in particular is strange because nobody remembers Diva converting him and he may in fact be a chevalier from a previous generation who has outlived his queen. Amshel assumes leadership and proceeds to use the chiropterans as an army to try to take over the world, though the unintelligent masses get cut down quickly by Saya, prompting him to experiment to create better versions, leading to the Schiff and later the Corpse Corps, a refined form of schiff that have no Thorn but are also mindlessly obedient to the chevalier. Meanwhile Saya uses a special sword that is shaped so that she can easily cut her finger to draw her own blood which then runs through the blade and can cut down any chiropteran. At one point during the Vietnam War, Saya flies ito such a blind rage she cuts off Haji's hand, which regenerates but is forever disfigured in the shape of a third class chiropteran's claw. All of this occurs over a period of about two hundred years leading to Saya awakening from hibernation with no memory of her past. She is found by a man who adopts her and tries to convince her that she is part of his family along with his sons Kai and Riku. The series actually starts at this point with Saya believing she's normal. Then the chiropteans come for her and Haji helps her by giving her the sword which she reflexively uses to kill a few chiropterans. Eventually the truth comes out, her "father" is actually a member of Red Shield and he has been trying to protect her, but now she must finish what she's started. Kai and Riku attempt to follow Saya, resulting in Riku being killed by Diva, and Kai joining Red Shield to help stop Diva once and for all. They also ally with the Schiff, although the Schiff are murdered in a test run of the Corpse Corps and only one remains, a girl named Lulu who joins Red Shield as well to avenge her brethren. The whole thing ends up in a dramatic showdown where everybody-and I mean everybody who was inroduced in the series and didn't already die yet-fights for the fate of the world.

Blood + is a pretty good anime, I mean, vampires and sword-wielding slayers, it's the horror action genre at its best. The only weakness is that you will need to take notes on the bizzare biology of chiropterans to figure out just what the hell is going on. Other than that, enjoy!

Revolution, why the show failed

I know I'm a bit late on this one since the show ended months ago, but I feel I just have to discuss why it ended for the benefit of sci-fi writers who should avoid this mistake. The problem is, like many other sci-fi before it, it got way too complicated, but in this case I can narrow down the complications to the fact that the second and final season diverged into two vastly different stories, either of which would have made  agood show, but trying to do them both at once just left me feeling like, "why do we care about both of these conflicts when obviously only one matters?"

Let's start at the beginning with season one. The power goes out across the world, nobody knows why, chaos ensues, fast forward fifteen years, just long enough for a new generation to grow up and know the world in a completely different way. The story focuses on the citizens of the Monroe Republic, a new nation formed in what used to be the Northeast US that stretches as far west as at lest Chicago. In particular the story focuses on Charlie Matheson who lost both of her parents and her brother was kidnapped by Monroe who wanted their father and uncle Miles, but since their father was killed, Charlie's brother is being held in ransom for Miles. Charlie sets off with the help of her stepmom and Aaron, a former computer nerd who went from millionaire to nobody instantly and seems to be lacking in survival skills, but he has been entrusted with a pendant that allows electricity to work again. Aaron does not seem to be important at first and really seems to be dead weight, but we'll get back to him later..like next season, until then he's an albatross. Any way, Charlie finds Miles and hey prepare to rescue Charlie's brother. Note that I didn't bother to check the names of her stepmom or her brother, because like Charlie's dad, they die just to prove how fragile life is in this post-apocalyptic world. Miles does end up being very important because it turns out Sebastian Monroe was his best friend and they built the Republic together after anarchy broke out after the blackout, but after Monroe turned out to be a megalomaniacal tyrant, Miles went into hiding and only some primal urge to protect his family brings him out to fight again, and of course he is the only one who can do it. In season one, the story was standard post-apocalyptic fare, which was good enough because no network television series had touched this in years, and I personally feel that certai genres need at least one representative on the air at any given time, and if nobody else is doing it, whatever does get on the air is better than nothing. Revlution followed the formula of destorying civilization and making our heroes fight among the rubble, and it's goodif you like that sort of thing, and I do.

Season two is where things went wrong by explaining the blackout. Now, understand writers, it does make perfect sense to explain your apocalypse, in fact it is strongly encouraged, especially making it relevant. However, Revolution decided to do something wierd that I have never seen before and hope never to see again, they followed the origin of the apocalypse and created an entirely spearate story, making the orginal plot largely irrelevant, and yet still tried to follow the original plot as if it still mattered anyway. It turns out Aaron was actually one of three computer programmers who wrote the code used to operate nanotechnology that is/are currently draining electricity from everything on Earth and shutting down all electronics. Charlie's parents actually developed the nanotechnology, which explains the relevance of the Matheson family, as they were the ones who started the blackout and presumably they are the only ones who can stop it. However, the nanites recognize the coders as their parents and begin communicating with Aaron. Aaron is consequently separated from the rest of the cast as he goes on his own journey to figure out what the nanites want. Meanwhile, after a brief break from the blackout allowed two nuclear warheads to destory the capitals of the warring nations of the Monroe Republic and Georgia, POTUS and the former US govenrnment come out of self-imposed exile to try to reclaim the country. Monroe was chasing after Miles and was consequently nowhere near home when Philadelphia got nuked, so he survived but now he has nothing and wants to rebuild, but first he has to stop the US government. Why would we root for the US government to be undermined? Because they hired the Mathesons to make the blackout happen and set all of these events in motion. In fact, that the nanotechnology could cause a blackout was an accident, they were actually trying to create medical tech that could save their son from asthma and possibly create an energy supply, but there was a glitch and when the government found out they forced them to weaponize technology that was otherwise beneficial, because that's what governments do. But as awesome as the whole revolution is and all of the many people who are dragged into the web of political deciet and war and other post-apocalyptic action I usually love, it's all rendered moot by Aaron discovering that the nanotechnology is now basically God. The nanites are capable of anything and for some reason, presumably the recoding in the season one finale, they have become sentient and now have free will. I'm sorry, but if Aaron is now in a battle with an artificial god, why do I care about the petty squabbles of people that could be crushed in an instnat by omnipotent tech? I don't have an answer, but for some reson the showrunners decided to focus on the plot of Charlie, Miles, and Monroe fighting the president old school. Now, in my rather vast experience with post-apocalyptic fiction with god-like antagonists(Final Fantasy, etc.) once you realize who the biggest threat is, the main cast unites against that threat. Never does one guy go off on his own, fight god single-handedly, and then come back to gather his allies after failing miserabl while they fight a futile and comparably irrelevant war that takes center stage, and yet that's exactly what happened here.

In conclusion, if you are going to make a post-apocalyptic series, well any story I guess, decide on one threat and put everyone on the same team to fight it. If you have people going in too many directions, it's too complicated and never works. Unless you're George R. R. Martin, but that's another story.

Redwall

I get a lot of flack for how unoriginal and formulaic my book, 7th Moon, is, so I feel it's time to point out a very successful book series that, in my opinion, defines formulaic unoriginality, Redwall by Brian Jacques. Now, don't get me wrong fans, I don't hate the book series, I just realized after reading a few that they are all the same story. It's a good story the first time, but seriously, it's amazing it went on for so long considering how by your third book, you should be able to predict the outcome because everything happens the same way everytime.

First of all, every book takes place in Mossflower Country and features some key characters, including Skipper, the leader of the otters, Foremole, leader of the moles, and Log-a-log, leader of the GUOSIM, or Guerilla Union Of Shrews In Mossflower. I would suppose these are titles rather than names as they are not truly the same character, but they might as well be because they act the same in every story, and if they have other names, they are never revealed. In fact, that's part of the problem, the variety of species is offset by the fact that each species seems to embody an archetype that they fit so uniformly that as soon as the species is mentioned, you know exactly what this character will do for the rest of the story. The two most hardcore typecast species are badgers and foxes, both of which are usually only represented by two individuals in all of Mossflower. The badgers have the Badger Mother and the Badger Lord, the former staying at Redwall Abbey and watching over everybody, the latter staying at Salamandastron and leading the Long Patrol, composed entirely of hares, to protect the west coast of Mossflower. The Badger Lord is uniformly stoic, the Badger Mother tends to be a bit more laid back, but their roles as guardians come before anything else. The foxes are always the same, mytics, often gypsy like, they are fortune tellers and healers, they are sneaky, but their roles are so pronounced that only one or two is ever needed in a story because, like the Sith, they can't stand being in large numbers because they invariably kill each other until only the most powerful is left standing.

This is also a driving factor in many stories, to stretch the story out and develop the villains as bad guys, there is almost always a mutiny among the vermin in which the leader is threatened and either gets usurped by the next wiliest creature or proves his own wickedness by killing his rival first.This stretches the story because not only is the villain dealing with a new problem bfore getting to Redwall, but this also leaves time for the protagonists to complete their quest, usually involving the sword of Martin the Warrior. The vermin themselves are a mix of sea rats and corsairs, usually stoats, ferrets, and weasels, all three of with are related species of the mustilidae family. The leader varies by species, but the personality is always the same, a ruthless tyrant, bent on conquering Redwall simply because it's there and mistakes their kindness for weakness.

The basic story starts out with a prologue during which an elder tells a child about some battle that happened when they were the age of the child they are speaking to.  Afte the prologue the story begins in earnest, often with a name day celebration. In Mossflower, time is measured by the season which gets named rather than a number of years as we measure time. The day the season gets named, there is a great feast, the one moment of enticing creativity when Jacques makes up a mouthwatering menu of different foods and cordials, to this day I still want to eat a honeymole(a raspberry and a  blackberry arapped in a pastry chell and glazed with honey, the mole part comes from the fact that moles invented it but the pastry itself bears no resmeblance). There is such a variety of food that the only item that gets repeated from one book to the next is the otter's signature shrimp and hot root soup, which, if you ask the otters, is the only food worth repeating. Meanwhile, there is a group of vermin that approaches Redwall, knowing the legacy of how it has remained unconquered and each vermin leader believes he will be the first to succeed where others have failed because he is more ruthless than the others. Somehow or another, some quest comes up for young members of Redwall Abbey to go looking for something which invariably leads to the revealing the warriorbeast, the one who wields the sword of Martin the Warrior. The warrior beast doesn't formally discover his or her identity as such until the end of the story, but in an abbey of pacifists, be assured that whoever is doing most of the fighting is the one who will take this particular honor. The quest usually involves the warrior beast and immediate friends to become accquainted with the Badger Lord and the Long Patrol a well as the Guosim and unite them for a triple battle cry"Redwall! Eulailia! Logalog!" respectively which is importnat when they all storm the enemy, the well-armed hares coming from the west, the shrew berserkers coming from the east, and Redwallers proving that you don't mess with mice who are friends with sling wielding otters, squirrel archers, hedgehogs with spikes and moles that can dig strategic tunnels under enemy lines. All of this leads to the showdown between the warriorbeast and the leader of the vermin, which is hyped up but invariably, the warrior beast wins. There, you now know the plot of every novel of Redwall, you don't actually have to read any of them.

Another common element  is accents, particularly hares and moles. Hares have a slight cockney and frequently refer to others as "sah" which is clearly "sir" in dialect and finish sentences with "wot wot" so that it feels like Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Still, the hares are refined compared with the moles who have such a thick accent that not only can I not imagine what it's supposed to sound like, even Jacques provides translations knowing that readers can't understand them. The mole dialect is somewhere between the Swedish Chef from the muppets and a drunk scotsman. Otters have a bit of a salty sailor dialect hich makes them the most similar to vermin in speech patterns. Occasionally, other species pop up and have even stranger dialects, sparrows speak in pidgin english and reptiles and amphibians seems to have their own languages and speak the more common tongue as a second langauge, though this is more extrapolated from their thick accents rather than actually having any lengthy dialogue in other languages. The dialects can break up the monotony, but it also helps cement the characters in their roles because you never hear anyone break the mold.

In fact, the main reason why I'm writing this post this way is because of two books that held hopes of breaking th mold and failed, and these are Outcast of Redwall and Taggerung. Each one presents an individual who is raised by the opposite group of animals, the former a ferret raised in Redwall, the latter an otter raised among vermin. Sadly, the nature vs nurture debate lands squarely on nature as the ferret, despite being raised from infancy with love, becomes a brat and then begins poisoning good beasts, while the otter, despite being raised from infancy among the worst vermin, still feels noble enough to wield the sword of Martin the Warrior in defense of the Redwallers who he never met until the day battle is upon them. Jacques stayed too true to his rules and roles for his characters and it made the books sorely lack any kind of depth.

Despite my complaints, the story Jacques spins is good enough for at least one go around, and I recommend Mossflower. I know Redwall was the first and namesake, but all of the books revolve around the legacy of Martin the Warrior, founder of Redwall Abbey, and Mossflower is that story, so reading that story will give you the necessary background to fully embrace every other book in the series. I did like this book and I hope one day it will be made into a movie, and I believe it has great otential as an action movie for all ages.

Space Dandy

He's a dandy guy...in space! He combs the galaxy like his pompadour searching for aliens both friendly and not with his space crew... in space!

Just last week, Space Dandy concluded its run on Toonami, notably one of the few anime to air in Amaerica before it airs in Japan due to some crazy marketing scheme. That is probably the one redeeming quality of this ridiculous show that makes little to no sense.  There are a few standout episodes that are good like when he helps a little girl find her grandfather, when he dates Scarlet, and when we meet Honey's half-brother Gentle the Cloudian. Mostly though, this series is just ridiculous and appears to have no continuity whatsoever. It's the anime version of Red Dwarf, an idiot travels space with a robot and a feline and tests the limits of physics. However, the finale makes sense of it all. The reality is, every episode takes place at the same time, but in different alternate universes. The common point of divergence is the moment Dandy meets Meow the Betlegeusian at Boobies. The meeting is only shown in the first episode when Dandy, desperate to collect the reward for registering a rare alien attempts to pass off Meow as a new mutant subspecies, only for his plan to be foiled when the alleged mutation turns out to be merely a promotional sticker. After Scarlet rejects Meow, he tries to make it up to Dandy by directing him to an unexplored planet. This is the point of divergence, in the first episode Dandy goes to the planet and everybody dies. It isn't explicitly stated, but every subsequent episode is actually just this same day, except that instead of going to the planet that Meow suggests in the first episode, Dandy, Meow and Dandy's vaccuum robot QT go off and do somethign else, which varies significantly from simply finding a rare alien on a planet where some relatively mundane hijinks ensue, to crossing dimensions and going so far off the rails the audience is completely lost. Some episodes have happy endings, many end up with the main cast dying, one actually starts with Dandy dying and being resurrected, and the last two episodes explain that while all episodes feature the converging fates of Dandy, QT, Meow, Scarlet, Honey(a waitress at Boobies, Dandy's favorite breastaurant), Dr. Gel, and Bea(members of the Gogol Empire who are tasked with locating Dandy for reasons unclear through most of the series but tend to be obliterated in some ridiculous way that is never-the-less integral to the plot of the episode), Dandy alone is the only one who is actually a constant being from one episode to the next, the only one who is the same individual in all of the universes. Somehow, Dandy is actually able to simultaneously exist in every world. No it doesn't make any sense, especially when Dandy refuses the opportunity to become God simply because he'd rather feel up Honey and the other waitresses and omnipotence just isn't worth giving up a physical form. Yes, that happened, and so did everything else. Yes, everything, including the entire universe turning zombie, and a bizarre convergence of universes in which e meet all of the ways Dandy, QT and Meow could possibly manifest, with the bizarre twist that every single universe they visit, no matter how different they are, always features these three forming some sort of crew.
My favorite is the one where Meow is a Schoedingerian, a cat who exists in a box and may be living or dead, but you can never be sure until you open the box and look inside. You really only need to watch the first episode and the last two because they are the only ones that are actually connected in any way. The rest of the episodes are optional, but the real draw was the fact that Toonami got them before anyone else, so if you haven't seen it already, you're way behind, but it was clearly a wild ride, and if you're into that sort of thing, go back and check it out on AdultSwim.com.

One Piece

And that video above is about the best you can expect of One Piece. Yes, it is finally time for me to speak my piece on the last of the Big Three, and I have been putting this off because t is one of the worst I have ever seen. I still watch it so I can keep up with the fans who insist it's great, but it is insanely ridiculous. It startedout somewhat promising, the problem is that every time you think you have a handle on the wierd, the show introduces some new even weirder thing that makes you want to throw your TV out the window. Then you calm down, wrap your head around it, and then just when you think it all makes sense, something even wierder comes up and it starts all over again.

One Piece is about pirates, specifically the Straw Hat pirates, led by Monkey D. Luffy. Luffy grew up admiring a pirate named Red Shanks and told him that one day he would find the legendary treasure of Gol D. Roger and become King of the Pirates. Red Shanks admired the Luffy's ambition even though he was young and gave him his straw hat telling him to give it back when he was King of the Pirates. Luffy is commited to this dream, but he has one significant obstacle, he has eaten the cursed Gum Gum Fruit that makes his body like rubber but also means he can't swim. This is silly yet inspirational in the beginning, and I will explain the significance of the cursed Devil Fruit later because it is that big of a deal that it warrants it's own section. However, the silliness builds up and becomes overwhelming despite Luffy's serious attempt to become King of the Pirates, in fact, the whole idea of his search for the legendary One Piece seems to be overshadowed by other problems that come up. First of all, Luffy finds Roronoa Zorro, a bounty hunter who fights with three swords, one in each hand and the third in his mouth, which is easily the most ridiculous fighting style ever, but he makes it bad ass. Zorro manages to get himself into enough trouble for a death sentence, but Luffy offers to save him if he will be his first mate. Zorro agrees not knowing two things, one that Luffy's determination and rubber powers will allow him to actually succeed, and two, that Luffy has neither a boat nor a crew aside from the two of them. A girl named Nami is impressed enough to join their crew as a navigator and help them along, though we later find out she has ulterior motives. After a few adventures they pick up Usopp, son of Yasopp, one of Red Shanks crew and a friend of Luffy's along with a new boat named the Merry Go, and also Sanji, a chef who aspires to cook the grandest seafood feast ever and has learned to fight using only his feet so he can save his hands for cooking. Usopp is a great marksman, but he also has a tendency to exaggerate his stories wildly. Sanji is a ladies man with a big crush on Nami, but most peculiar is how his hair always hangs in front of one eye, which I was willing to let go until one episode he was upside down and some how the hair still hung of his face in complete defiance of the laws of physics, but even physics is arbitrary in the world of One Piece. Then we find out the truth about Nami, she is actually working for the Fishmen and trying to collect enough money to buy freedom for her hometown. When Luffy finds out how Nami is being manipulated he leads the crew to fight the Fishmen because he is always looking out for his crew and wants to help Nami. Then things get really weird. The next crew member is Tony Tony Chopper, a reindeer who ate the Human Human fruit, the only fruit that will turn an animal into a human. He is now a short anthropomorphic reindeer who wears shorts and a top hat and is actually a vey competent doctor, but will forever be alone, until of course Luffy recruits him. From there they begin travelling through a series of islands, each one stranger than the last, including Skypeia, the island that floats in the sky and is populated by winged people. Wait there's more, but your head will explode if I go any further.

Going back to the Gum Gum Fruit, it is one of many Devil Fruits. The Devil Fruits are supposedly very rare, and yet everywhere they go it seems at least one person has Devil Fruit powers. The Devil Fruits are believed to be possessed by the Sea Devil, or rather, each one is possessed by a different devil that gives it it's power. The fruit in itself doesn't really do anything except look unique and weird. But once someone takes a bite of it, the devil transfers into the person and that person now has the power of the devil, which varies by fruit, but all share the same weakness, whenver submerged in water above the knee the person is paralyzed and can not use their powers. This is a problem for pirates living on the open sea, and yet many pirates have Devil Fruit powers, so Luffy's situation is not so unique or special anymore. The fruits come in three varieties. The first is animal types which allow the individual to transform into an animal, as well as a third hybrid form. Tony Tony Chopper is the only one known to prefer his hybrid form, for it to be his weakest form, and to figure out how to access four or five additional forms, although they require special pills and training to unlock. Then there's elemental tupes which simply give the user to turn their bodies into an element such as fire, smoke, or ice, and to control that element. Finally there's the Logia fruit, which is simply any other power that doesn't fall into the other two categories, which includes the Gum Gum Fruit.

If the Devil Fruits had been the only weird thing defining all the weirdness on the show I think it would be great, but instead they introduce giants, three-headed people, the Long Islanders that are exceptionally long, a guy stuck in a chest and cyborgs, although that last one actually is pretty cool except everything else has gotten so convoluted that nobody really knows what's going on anymore. Oh and the most annoying thing is that Luffy is constantly screaming about everything because he is hyperactive. I just wish I could share his enthusiasm, I just really hope they find the damn tresure soon.

Roc Con 2014

Just ad the best weekend ever! I had a table at Roc Con, bad news, I didn't sell a lot of books, only four out of twenty five that I brought, good news, I did get people interested in the new Kickstarter to make 7th Moon the Ultimate Anime! Yes folks, starting Friday, we have a Kickstarter to make 7th Moon into an anime. I have a pilot script written, but for animation and voiceovers I need to raise money to pay two companies to do all of that work for me. An animation studio quoted me $250,000 for the six episodes I wanted, but that doesn't count voiceovers, so I'm going to aim for $250,000 and split it between the two for one episode, if we have enough for more, I'll come up with more scripts for more episodes and adapt them. Anyone who contributes at least $30 gets a DVD of the episodes I manage to make signed by me and everyone else involved in making the project. IT WILL BE AWESOME! I got a lot of people's attention with my trailer(shown in a previous post) when I finally got it running. Also I got to run my own panel on self-publishing which was basically an abridged form of my blog, but it became a Q&A session that ended up awesome, or at least I thought it was anyway.

Of course everything paled in comparison to the main event, Vic Mignogna's panel. Vic was screening "Star Trek Continues" Episode 3 "Fairest of them All". This episode is a companion to "Mirror Mirror" the original episode that sent Kirk and his team to a parallel universe where the Federation is the Empire and basically good and evil have reversed. Kirk had left the Spock in that universe with the challenge to make the world a better place and Vic's episode explores how this challenge is handled in the other universe. I'm sure it's somewhere on the web, so look it up. Highlights include Vic as Kirk getting it on with some random chick while his real life fiance Michelle Specht gets it on with Sulu, but the best of all is when Kirk gets exiled and screams 'SPOCK!" because he says it just like the famous line "KAHN!" Yes Vic had his moment. Leading up to that was a Q&A session that included someone asking "What's you're guilty pleasure song?" which led to a sing along of...wait for it..."Let it go" from Frozen. Yes, Vic Mignogna, a grown man, sang "Let it go".  It was AWESOME!

I will leave you now with some pics of cosplayers.