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The neighbors unforunately rented an apartment in an active volcano. This is very sad. From time to time the floor of their apartment fills with lava, as one would expect, and this induces the appropriate amount of screaming from their children.

As things go, that isn’t bad.

Edit: Jokes aside, I actually really like this kind of noise. It’s nice; it means things are okay.

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Love
OTS

Zelazny wanted to be a poet and when he gave up on that became a short fiction author and later novelist. Tolkien likewise spent a lot of time in verse but achieved fame for prose.

I’ve been thinking about situations where there is no shelter. Conflict that cannot be avoided is one. They range from serious to trivial, and for fear of being melodramatic, I’m including getting out of bed to shower on an especially cold day. Laundry. The struggle never ends, unless I do laundry naked, and my building only has one laundry room for all the apartments. It’s also snowing.

I’m not saying I wouldn’t do it. I’m just saying there’s no shelter, because the outdoor walk between my door and the laundry room would be brutal. And I’d just wind up making more laundry anyway.

But situations with no shelter. Where an ordeal comes and cannot be avoided. We tend to think that our suffering could be avoided if only, but that is often not the case. The Romanian mythic cycle has an interesting take on the afterlife. It’s misery and unavoidable. Not much of that is passed on.

Never watch movies based on books or comics you loved as a kid. You may not be able to judge whether or not the movie is bad because you’re judging how closely it resembles the stories you told yourself as a kid, reading at night.

On an extremely related note, I watched the Battle Angel movie. Spoilers abound.

Let’s start off with the anime eyes, because they didn’t bother me as much as I expected. Alita was alien, a robot, but an accessible robot. I got her cybernetic nature and the sharp distinction between hardbodies and humans. The eyes as a part of that worked. Her whole character might have been animated via CGI, but as a result, the eyes didn’t stick out. Part of this was the fundamental nature of the character. She was a cyborg. As such, the fact that she was kinda creepy worked, and as did the machine nudity. At a couple of points she walks around naked, but it’s like seeing your phone out of its case. One doesn’t think, “boobs!” One thinks, “That there is a contraption.” I really expected to take issue with the eyes and didn’t.

The movie stretched for bloat like a fat man reaches for cupcakes. It went out of its way to add more material that didn’t need to be there. In the books, the first book is about Alita waking up, learning about the Scrapyard (Iron City in the movie; I’m going to get to that), and doing some bounty hunting. To this the movie added some bits, but not the good bits, of Motorball. It also added Evangeline Lily Jennifer Connelly. These additions did not work. JC didn’t need to be there. Her character didn’t work. Motorball really didn’t need to be there. It didn’t work. There’s one serious race and that race is absurd, makes no sense. The movie goes off the rails figuratively as the scene exits the arena. Why did any of this happen? No idea. The movie Hobbitted hard.

In addition the movie can’t seem to figure out which naming convention it follows, and this is where my lead-in really dominates. Alita is named Alita, not Gally. But Tiphares is Zalem and the Scrapyard is Iron City (but not Scrap Iron City). This was part of the fundamental lack of confidence that marred the movie, muddling the plot and characters. I got the feeling the writers either fought this out between them and stuck compromises that we, as viewers, did not understand nor agree with, or that it had been revised until the inherent soul of the movie was lost long ago.

But there were good parts there. The largely allegorical story of a girl learning who she is was there. She starts out as a head given form by Ido, a parent. Then she’s in a cute body her father dresses up. He refuses to give her an adult body but gives in, and the character learns who she is through herself, and that she has powers. It’s simple and moderately didactic, but the metaphor plays out in the background, so it works. Much like the eyes, the parts of it I thought I’d hate I didn’t.

Ultimately a fantastic manga became a good movie. It’s not great. It needs chainsaw editing. But it’s not bad. On two hands, one thumb up.

You can do it! Ideas fall out of moving cursors like twigs from fast moving streams. Don’t wait for the idea to come. Type, and get yourself going. Ideas will come on their own.

Geese are basically evil, murdering snow chickens. They are worthless animals.

Everyone read Akira.

Working hard

Drove to British Colombia. It’s ~1200 miles (multiply by 1.6 for km, you have a calculator in your hand), and snowing in Wyoming and Montana.

First of all, Montana is awesome. Wyoming might be, but it was snowing like crazy and I couldn’t tell. But MT was awesome. I use that word correctly. I would drive along and see thousands of feet of mountain rising in the distance, topping out in clouds. But above the cloud layer would be holes, and you could see peaks! So mountain, cloud, mountain. Delightful.

Been reading Prince of Traitors at Tapas. It’s good. Well written with coherent story and a decent world. Only downside is it’s written in the present tense. Recommended.

I’m looking at writing competitions.

I had a plot for Herostratus, but it was just nihilism. There’s enough of that. We don’t need more.

Discord isn’t bad, but I’m not sure what the point of it is.

Oh, according to Jetpack LC has 56 lifetime views. It has 283 subscribers. Something’s a little fishy.