Farewell 2021

I keep forgetting that today is New Year's Eve.Probably because I've spent the last 48 hours trying not to move.

I woke up yesterday with my neck hurting like crazy. I switched my pillow a few years ago. I thought that would mean I wouldn't sleep on my neck badly anymore. This has happened a couple times before, and it sucks. I can't turn my head. Can't stand or sit without it hurting. Even sitting in a chair where I can't support my head hurts. And it can last a couple weeks or more before it's fully better.

I wish the new year would magically heal my neck. It sucks to end one year and start another not being able to move.

Catching the Beginning

Whenever I start a new book, I often miss stuff at the beginning. I guess it takes me a while to feel absorbed enough that I can take everything in. 

It's even worse for audio books. Especially when I listen to them in the car, because I'll stop listening if I'm paying attention to the road. But it's also easier to let your mind wander when you're listening to an audio book.  

For example, I don't remember any of the beginning of Name of the Wind. I have a recollection that there was a part before they got to the inn, but I remember nothing about it. I need to read those books again. But I've been waiting for the 3rd book XD

Clouded Leopard

I don't think I ever mentioned this here! 

Fern's animal is the clouded leopard. It's my favorite animal. But I'd never seen one before. At least not until recently. Then I discovered that there was a young one at an education facility. It wasn't super close, but I planned out a day trip. And I got to see this adorable little girl!

She's still got her big fluffy baby paws. Cutest thing ever!

Thinking in Languages

I was just listening to a lecture. The person was talking about traveling through Europe.  While they were in one country, a traveling companion asked them questions about the language of the country they were about to visit. He said not to ask him yet. He was still thinking in the language of the current country. Once they got to the new country, he'd be able to think in that language.

I've noticed that for me too. I have to be in the right mindset, or I start mixing up words and grammar from Spanish and Japanese @_@

Wolfwalkers Deep Dive

Wolfwalkers is the only new movie I've really liked in over a year XD The more I watch it, the more I love it. It's definitely my favorite movie from their studio, and it may be one of my favorite movies. So I'm analyzing it.

I'll start with the ecology part. Then I'll dive into the plot and characters. 

This studio is always gorgeous. And I love how their movies are set at real points in history, even though there are also fantasy elements.  In this case, the setting is Ireland while the English are taking over. The people and land of Ireland were another victim to colonists. It's happened all over the world, caused by many different countries. And Wolfwalkers shows how much an English father and daughter suffered, in a different way than the Irish people did. It may not be as obvious, but suffocating societies can do a lot of damage to their own people. It's all around us today, although in a different form.

A large part of that is our disconnect from nature. The villain of the film, the Lord Protector, says: "What cannot be tamed must be destroyed." That line of thought has lead to the destruction of most of the planet. But when we destroy the wild places in nature, we destroy ourselves. And not just because of the depth it gives life. We literally rely on forests for air, rain, medicine, and so many other things.

The opening to Wolfwalkers is beautiful, with the pristine, dark, mysterious forests. Then a couple minutes later,  the forests are cut down and the animals no longer have a home.  

Throughout the movie, more and more of the forest is gone. By the end, even the tree where Mebh and Robyn sit has been cut. You can see when the destruction is right at the edge of the little clearing. And less than a hundred years after this movie takes place, all the wolves have been hunted out of Ireland.Today, no one thinks of Ireland as being covered in forest. People only think of green grassy hills. Though some people are trying to bring the forests back. That's a long process, and new forests won't have the diversity of old growth forests.

Humans often have an irrational hatred of wolves. People target wolves with a viciousness rarely seen against other animals. For example, when Europeans first arrived in America, there were about a million wolves in the central 48 states. By 1930, only 5% were left. People killed off all of the wolves prey, poisoned them, shot them, and more. In contrast, free wolves have killed humans in North America twice on record. Twice. And those were probably sick wolves. Wolves sometimes go after livestock because humans have moved in and kicked out all of the natural prey. There's nothing else for them to eat. 

Wolves are very much like humans, in a lot of ways. For example, they're the only animal besides us where the males help gather food, feed babies, raise young over several years, and protect their families. Wolves help care for sick and injured pack mates. They'll care for cubs that belong to other pack mates. They'll even go around and visit members of the family that have moved away. And they mourn their losses.

This hatred of wolves continues, even today. Wolves are still very rare in the 48 states. You can't say they're recovered by any means, except maybe in a couple pockets. And yet they were taken off the endangered species list yet again. Humans could kill all the wolves they wanted.

 

And now onto plot and characters. 

I love Mebh's animation.  It's similar to Aisling's, with the way their hair flows and moves, almost with a life of its own. (The Irish names aren't often pronounced like you'd expect - Mebh is "Maev" the wolf girl. Aisling as "Ashling" from Secret of Kells) Mebh is so bouncy, like when she's leaping around on the fences or climbing walls. And her face is simple, yet so expressive. You can really feel her rage and her sorrow. And even when she rubs her face the simple lines show the movement of her nose and cheeks (she's always rubbing snot off with her hands XD  little wild child. Also, when Robin brushes her hair, a mouse comes out).

Merlyn is adorable. 

 

The animation of the wolves is so fluid. They look frightening when they're aggressive, but then they can be friendly and obliging. And the two adult wolfwalkers are so beautiful. I love them. 

The studio does amazing stuff with perspective, scene changes, and lighting. They'll have scenes meld into each other, or several scenes in one frame. The shadows are so telling. Wolfwalkers has such simple, yet powerful lighting for the fires with stark reds and whites, instead of the usual warm yellows. 

That Running with the Wolves scene is breathtaking. So beautiful, in both music and animation. 

I'm curious about the sketch lines, especially around the ending. I wonder if they were pressed for time and didn't get to clean up some of it. But either way, the animation doesn't suffer. It kind of works, actually. 

(Also, there's a little cameo of the crystal from Secret of Kells, while Mebh is riffling through Robyn's stuff. Plus Robyn mentions selkies, which is a reference to Song of the Sea).  

 

The scenes after Robyn first meets Moll (the mother Wolfwalker) are so heartbreaking. Robyn's trying not to fall asleep, because she's afraid her own father will try to kill her. Mebh breaks down and starts crying because her mother's missing. 

From there Robyn gets dragged off to the scullery, her dad gets dragged off to build a stage, and Mebh is stuck waiting and waiting, after having so much hope about finding her mom.

That poor guy that ends up in the stocks (his name is Sean) is more important than he seems at first. He introduces Robyn to wolfwalkers. And he cheers as Robyn rides out of the city on a giant wolf. He's the only person who isn't terrified. He also encourages the townspeople at the end, telling them the howling of the wolves is lovely music.

The Lord Protector is the epitome of the evils of colonization, and how people can twist religion in such destructive ways. No matter how much a belief encourages people to show love and peace, some people find a way to misread it. History is full of examples.

I've saved this topic for last because it's the most fascinating to me. The dad. Goodfellowe (Okay, I just looked up his name and started laughing. Bill Goodfellowe. I would not have pegged him as a "Bill," but I'll refer to him that way to help me get used to it) If the Lord Protector is the evils of conquering, Bill is the perfect example of all the people who get swept along, not realizing that what they're doing is awful. He's the character that changes the most (oh my god, between Hector Rivera, Lio Oak, and Bill Goodfellowe, dads are tortured so much in recent movies! Even in Song of the Sea)

Goodfellowe loves his daughter so much, and all he wants is to keep her safe. 

 

But he's gotten all this dangerous weight from society. He says several times, "do as you're told. It's for your own good. I'm just trying to keep you safe." And he also does as he's told by his superiors. And when Robyn tries to get rid of Mebh, she uses the same words her dad had been using with her: "It's for your own good. I'm just trying to keep you safe." 

At the beginning, Bill is a confident hunter. But as the movie wears on, he can't catch anything. He gets more and more frustrated, fraying to the breaking point. When they have Moll on stage, he starts to crack. Mebh is running circles around him, everyone's laughing at him, and he has the threat of losing his position, and possibly his daughter. He tries to chain up a little girl which he probably wouldn't have done at any other time. 

Then once again Bill does as he's ordered, getting ready to shoot Moll in the cage. When Robyn tries to stop him, he terrifies her and she nearly retreats Then she finally stands up to her father. (As it says in Harry Potter, it's easy to stand up to enemies. It's a lot harder to stand up to people you care about) Robyn tells him that the man he's following is wrong. He shouldn't be following orders from him. 

 

All four of the main characters get locked up at some point, and they all break free on their own, and sometimes with a little help. Moll is locked up for most of the movie. She breaks out of her muzzle to protect her daughter. Then Robyn releases her from the rest of her chains. Mebh breaks a cage to help her mother. Robyn herself locked Mebh in that cage, trying to keep her safe. Just as her father was keeping her in a symbolic cage, to keep her safe. When Robyn takes down her hair, it's the symbol of her breaking free from the rules and restrictions of society. And when her father still tries to hold her back, she escapes as a wolf. Bill gets chained up too. His wolf form breaks free to save his daughter. So in the end, all of them break free to protect those they care about. (Even Merlyn spends time in a cage, but then Robyn sets him free too).

The scene on the stage, and just after, break Bill down in a lot of ways. Shortly after Moll escapes, he finds out that he's tried to kill his daughter several times. Then she leaves him to try to fix the problems he helped create. He's utterly crushed, probably fearing he's lost her forever (let's not forget that the Lord Protector rides up and sees him on the ground, holding his daughter who looks kind of dead. And the first thing he does is to chain him up. He chains up a father holding his dead-looking daughter. What a monster). 

As Moll's spirit passes through the wall of vines, the vines shrivel up and die. Then the soldiers have no trouble finding the den. 

That final battle brings Bill closer and closer to becoming a wolf. His transformation is a lot faster than Robyn's, since Mebh had partially healed Robyn. When the cannon explodes, Bill uses himself to shield Robyn from the blast. But he can't protect her wolf half. When he can't pull free of his chains, he becomes a wolf and finally turns against the man who had been causing them so much pain. 

It's hard to tell if he was actually trying to kill the Lord Protector, but he's certainly not bothered when it happens 

(Heheh. When Robyn hugs him, I can just picture her saying, "Dad, don't lick me!")

Once Moll is healed, it hits Bill all over again about what he's done. He hurt all of them. He tried to chain up Mebh, he almost killed Moll, and he never listened to Robyn when she tried to tell him about the wolfwalkers. Plus he nearly killed Robyn several times. 

Jeez, poor guy. 

Luckily Moll is forgiving, Just as Mebh forgave Robyn. 

It looks like despite everything, they get along well. They earned a peaceful home. And it looks like they even take the Lord Protector's horse with them!

Playing On Words

I recently watched a pretty ridiculous movie called Osmosis Jones. Oddly enough, we watched that movie in my AP biology class. Except I missed most of it. I think I had a music event, or something. So, a very very long time later I thought I'd try watching it again. 

And yeah. It was ridiculous. But it was also ridiculously clever. All the ways they play on words and themes of anatomy and biology. I've only seen a couple other things that such a good job at that. 

Of course I waited too long to write this post and now I can't remember any examples TT^TT

Accidental Depth

 I was watching an audio commentary, I think on Atlantis. The two guys were talking about a scene that foreshadowed a later part of the film. The other guy said he hadn't noticed that foreshadowing before. And they started wondering if the foreshadowing scene had actually been planned, or if it slipped in unknown, saying, "are we smart, or was that an accident?" 

 It's amazing when that happens. I'm sure I've done stuff accidentally that ended up being telling. I wonder if it's subconscious, or just totally random. It occurs to me that Bob Ross would call it a happy accident.

Anyway, sometimes viewers or readers notice things that the creators never noticed. Like those things that are accidentally clever. They do say that any interpretation is valid. And while I don't actually agree with that, this could explain part of that statement XD

Invited to Write

My friend's mom recently lent me a book called Deep Creek: Finding hope in the high country, by Houston.

The writer does some nature writing. In this book, she talked about how she got invited on a boat going north. They were hoping she'd write about her experiences so that other people would understand more about the environmental problems. 

Wouldn't that be awesome? Get invited on trips to learn and write about your experiences XD I feel like that's motivation enough to write more about my travel experiences.

While on the boat they saw something that few others have ever seen - a huge migration of narwhals. Whoo. That must have been magical. It was amazing enough for me to see a few humpback whales and a pair of orcas. Let along hundreds of narwhals.

Cartoon Therapy

Recently I've noticed that analyzing cartoons is like a form of therapy XD  It helps to get lost in the worlds and emotions of other characters, instead of freaking out about things that you can't fix in that moment. Coco helped me with the overly long process of getting trashed by a friend. Steven Universe did some too. 

Then Kipo helped distract me from Covid. A great example of a huge problem that one person can't do anything to fix.

Now at work, just when I'm hoping I fixed that one problem, another people problem erupts. So now I'm analyzing another movie. I'm almost done so you should be seeing it soon.

The main danger is getting too caught up in the negative emotions of the characters, instead of moving beyond them @_@ That was a problem I had with Steven Universe, though I think I'm better at avoiding that kind of thing now.

 Might as well finish the story. At least I think it's finished?

There was no reply. Not directly, but there was an email to the group addressing one of my concerns. 

I asked about it today, and got a sort of "yeah, yeah" answer. I guess he heard my problems, is acting on (at least some of) them, but doesn't want to discuss them. 

I guess that works. We'll see if it's actually over.

 In Steven Universe, when one character's having a problem with another, eventually they manage to work it out. For example, when Ruby and Sapphire are having a fight. Steven's afraid that he did something wrong that made them mad at him. And Sapphire starts crying when she realizes how they were affecting him. 

Unfortunately in my experience, a lot of the time if person A says that person B hurt them in some was, B just gets angry and defensive.

I've been avoiding my emails all day because I wanted to enjoy my day off as much as I could. But I'm almost out of day, so I guess now I have to check my emails... If they're professional and mature about it, everything should be fine. I just don't know what to expect anymore. I wonder how likely it is that I'll get a nice reply. Maybe there won't be anything. Maybe we'll talk about it tomorrow instead, which I think would be better. It's easier to communicate some things face to face. 

Anyway, the moral is try to communicate. Try to do so with cool heads. If you're having a problem with someone, you should tell them. And if someone tells you that they have a problem with you, try to figure it out.

And now I drag myself off to deal with my problem.

 Maybe I've had no ideas for blog posts this month because I've been stressed at work XD  

I've never had so few ideas for my blog. I've got one day left to write four posts, which I doubt will happen. I've already stretched the posts out, using some of them to vent. Although I do feel better after shouting out to the randomness of the internet.

Address the Stress

 Jeez, I feel like I just threw down the glove at someone. I've mentioned being stressed two posts in a row (sorry XD ) and I've been trying for a while now to figure out the best way to address it without doing so in anger. I have no idea if it came out as just an angry response, but it was something that had to be said. Whether or not I wrote it in anger, people will read what they want into it. I've already learned that.

Thinking of what to say is stressful on top of the stress of the problem. Now that I've said it, there's a little less stress. I just have to wait and see what happens.

I guess I have more reason than most to be stressed. The last time I sent an email telling someone about something I wanted them to change (for example, asking a best friend of 15 years to be a little less fierce while analyzing my stories) the person receiving the email suddenly seemed to decide that she hated me (It's hard to imagine one person treating another that way unless they hated them).

Maybe a professional setting will lead to a less dramatic response. 

This post was supposed to be about how to face stressful problems with someone at work. It's turned into a vent, which probably isn't surprising. Either way, I've said what I had to say and now I just have to wait. 

Without letting the wait mess up my weekend. @_@

Pokémon Masters

There's a spin-off Pokémon game called Pokémon Masters that I've been playing. You can team up with characters from all of the proceeding games - gym leaders, elite four, and other notable characters. 

You can talk to your team members and they have all this sappy sweet stuff to say to you. But work has been really stressing me out the last few weeks. And I find that these sappy words from computer characters are cheering me up a little. It's feels bizarre. But they have done studies where people can be cheered up by inanimate objects, so it's not unusual.

You can team up with the villains too. Like Giovanni. Why are Giovanni and Mewtwo a team? Mewtwo would never form a bond with Giovanni! But the pair is so strong that I use them regularly. And I also feel weird leveling them up. Because making Giovanni stronger just feels like it's asking for trouble XD

Lysandre is the villain from the X and Y games. He owns a cafe. It blew my mind when Lysandre offered to make me a cup of coffee. That seems like it would get a super awkward response like "I don't drink coffee (but I'd be too scared to drink it anyway)." 

 I haven't been able to find the pen for my drawing tablet. Argh, I'll bet anything that someone was messing with my stuff and moved it. I've looked in every pen area I can think of. I wonder if someone tried it, thinking it was a pen without ink, and threw it away...

There were several digital art projects I wanted to do. And it's an old drawing pad. I don't know if I can get a replacement that's not worth more than the pad itself. And the laptop is old, so I don't know if I can find another tablet that will work on it. I tried a different one, and it messed up the laptop. 

Argh. I hate that photoshop doesn't let you buy the product anymore. I'm not going to pay every month for something that I could have just bought. I hate this trend of getting a different subscription to everything. It's terrible. (I want to buy the movie Wolfwalkers, but there's no way to do that. I'd have to pay for Apple TV over and over every year to watch it, instead of buying one movie. There's nothing else on that subscription that I care about).

Anyway, vent. I'm stressed. @_@

Newspapers

Pacific Grove is this pretty town next to Monterey. I picked up one of their newspapers to look at an article about monarch butterflies. I don't read too many newspapers, but I know what they look like. And Pacific Grove's newspaper felt so much more intimate than any other paper I'd seen. It must be because it wasn't from a big city. 

They had a section for people to submit poems, and discuss trees and stuff.

It was refreshing. I felt happier just looking at it XD

All the Best Nerds

I haven't even started writing yet, and I'm already afraid that this is just going to be me talking about nerdy characters. 

At first I wanted to say that I was glad that there are some great nerd heroes now (me being the nerdy bookworm I've always been). But then I realized that I just have a certain definition of "nerd" in my head. A long time ago, their equivalent of a "nerd" would have been something very different. Maybe bookworms like Anne Shirley (Anne of Green Gables), Belle (Beauty and the Beast), Shizuku (Whisper of the Heart), Bastian (Neverending Story) and Hermione (Harry Potter). 

Of course writers love to write about bookworms. And yet when I think of them, I don't think they're nerds. Maybe a character needs to be a little more quirky? I don't even know! 

These are characters that I do consider nerds. And many of these guys are among my favorite characters! 

Connie (Steven Universe)

Hiro Nakamura (Heroes)

Kipo, Lio, and Song (Kipo and the Age of Wonderbeasts)

Flick (A Bug's Life)

Hiccup (How to Train your Dragon)

Dave (Sorcerer's Apprentice)

Peter Parker (Spiderman - the Toby Maguire Version)

Honeylemon and Wasabi (Big Hero 6)

Twilight Sparkle (My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic)

Tombo (Kiki's Delivery Service)

Onoda (Yowamushi Pedal)

Riley (National Treasure)

Many of these characters are from very popular movies or shows. Disney, Steven Universe, Ghibli, etc. When I was a kid, there weren't really any nerd heroes (at least not the kind I include on my list). I think the oldest character is Flick, who was more of a quirky inventor. It sort of makes sense, since what makes someone a "nerd" would evolve over time, so I'm thinking of the current type. 

I'm just glad that there are so many great nerd heroes now (as I've said before, I relate to Connie more than I have to any other fictional character). 

And this doesn't even count scholars or scientists like Grace Augustine (Avatar), Casey Newton (Tomorrowland), Emmett Brown (Back to the Future) or Edward Elric (Fullmetal Alchemist). Though Dr Alphys (Undertale) and Milo (Atlantis) are pretty nerdy too. 

Family Dress-Up

 I love seeing all the Halloween costumes at work. We had a costume parade this weekend and last weekend (I actually got to be a judge last weekend). 

We had three prize categories: Best costume, best animal costume, and best family costumes. 

I especially love family costumes. People get so creative! Like parents that were Aladdin and Jasmine, and the baby was Abu. A family that dressed as rocket ships. A family where the dad was a dalmatian, the mom was fire, and the little boy was a firefighter. There was a family of mushrooms in amazing home-made costumes. 

And today there was a family with the parents as Hector Imelda, the little boy was Miguel, and the baby was Ernesto de la Cruz.It was adorable. I wonder, of all the characters they could have chosen for the baby, why they chose him. But that made my day.

Effective Teaching

I really liked most of my high school teachers. 

And I was good at math until I hit precalc. I understood all of our lessons and homework assignments. Then when a test came around, nothing made sense. I could never figure out why the tests seemed so alien when everything else made perfect sense. 

Then just a few months ago I was talking to someone about math classes and I mentioned this. And she said,  "Well, she just wasn't a very good teacher then."

And I realized she was right. A teacher isn't supposed to make the tests so incomprehensible that you screw them up no matter how good you are in the rest of class. 

I also loved my English teachers, but I never seemed to be able to write essays to their liking, no matter how much I asked them what I was doing wrong.

And I've already mentioned what I thought about the reading selections we had in high school. Ugh. Yeah, they had some sort of message. But the messages were lost in how dark everything was. I wonder how much we actually discussed the messages or the history behind the books, because I remember very little of that. But that may be because my memories of those classes were very tainted by my loathing for most of the books XD

Practice what you Preach

I finally finished the book of short stories that I've mentioned a couple times. Near the end there was a fierce essay about feminism. I didn't really like it because it was saying stuff like "You need to kill your grandma because she didn't do enough to help women." Yeah, I'm sure it was just for effect, but I still don't like that. Anyway, it was so dramatic that it made me realize something. I went back to check, and sure enough, I was right. 

1/4 of the stories and poems in that collection were by women. Actually, it was probably slightly less than 1/4. 

So much for that feminist essay. One of the two editors was even a female. Was she overruled in including more female authors? Did she not realize what happened? Maybe the reason goes back farther. Maybe it's because when she was learning about literature, the teachers just left most of the females out, so that's what stuck with her.

There are so many reasons that this could have happened. But if they went through the trouble of including that essay, how could they have not noticed the overwhelmingly male contribution?

None of that

I'm also reading an old book my Grandma got rid of. A book of humorous quotations. Some of them are genuinely funny and even insightful. But there almost no females quoted in the entire book. And on top of that, sometimes there will be a "funny quote" along the lines of, "Hah, that's as unlikely as a woman being smart!" If it wasn't a very old book, I'd get rid of it. I try to pretend like people were stupider back then.

Fiction vs Nonfiction

I've seen this bit of advice several times: When you're writing nonfiction, you should make up some details, or embellish them, to make your writing more vibrant. It's the story, not the facts that matter.

 I can see where they're coming from. I guess that's different than making sure to do good research before you write about a topic. You stretch the facts to make the writing more powerful. But I have to admit, these kinds of advice make me question what I read. How much of it is true?

But so far I try to keep my fiction and nonfiction separate. I want my nonfiction to truly reflect the world around me. I don't think I need to make things up. The world is fascinating enough, as long as I can do it justice in my words. 

(Howl's Moving Castle)

Plus I get plenty of opportunity to make stuff up in my fantasy stories.

Somehow I ended up with a ton of characters in Arith's story. It's funny, since I started out with only a couple.Then I had to start coming up with characters to fill certain roles. Now there are so many that I'm going to probably need to combine some of them. Sigh. I start to get attached to them, and then I have to erase them. 

Whipscorpion

Cardcaptors in Old English (not really)

I just rewatched an anime from my childhood - Cardcaptors. It's one of very few anime I know in English, because back then I had no idea that it was from Japan. 

That was also the time when Americanized anime were... censored quite a bit. Actually, I wouldn't have liked Cardcaptors (or maybe even Pokémon) as much if they hadn't been "made safe" for kids. But that's only because I didn't like lovey-dovey stuff as a kid. For example, Sakura with big hearts in her eyes whenever she sees Yukito (though I always knew him as Julian. I'm going to use the American Cardcaptors names, since I'm used the them, but I'll include the Japanese ones too).

The English Cardcaptors is actually kinda hokey seeing it now, but it's nostalgic. And I always loved the cards.

Actually, I only saw a handful of episodes as a kid. It wasn't until college, I think, that I finally found all of the episodes. I haven't seen either Cardcaptors or Pokémon in Japanese. But I have read the Cardcaptors manga, so I know what happens. It's been a while so I'm fuzzy on some of the details. Bear with me (I definitely want to read it again now that I've rewatched the anime).

But I'm actually really glad that they used to take out some of the creepy pervy stuff. Like men drooling over girls. Ugh, I always hate how that's so popular in anime. It encourages some truly awful behavior by making it seem funny instead of disgusting. There wasn't anything like that in Cardcaptors. But I think there may have been in Pokémon? 

There's one Cardcaptors episode that doesn't make as much sense in America as it might in Japan, and that's Sakura's Grandpa. In Japan, it's safer to go into a stranger's house (I did, actually). But in America, they don't want to encourage kids with that. They made it clear that Sakura was visiting her Grandpa. In the manga, he never told her he was her Grandpa. That always seemed weird to me, even when you factor in family drama. 

Anyway, aside from the pervy stuff, it's mostly hilarious to see what kind of things they changed in the English Cardcaptors. They took out every romance. Like two of Sakura's classmates were cousins instead of boyfriend/girlfriend. One of the students had a crush on a teacher (I forget how much they actually did with that in the manga, but I understand why they took that out for America). It was actually kind of a relief to me as a kid to have a show that wasn't full of romance. I had very little patience about it back then, and I'm still very picky about fictional romances.

But there's one change that makes me sad. Since they took out all of the romances, that included the same-sex couples. They did that quite a bit back then (the first English Sailor Moon, for example). Tori (Touya) and Julian (Yukito) was the main couple. As a kid, I always liked Julian because he was so nice. To the point where I felt betrayed when Yue first appeared and was acting so mean XD But it turned out that he wasn't the same person as Julian, so that was okay. And Yue ended up being nice, so that was okay too. Plus he looks really cool.

Now Julian actually reminds me of a good friend, so I felt super protective of him the last time I watched the show. Heheh. I think I like him more as a character now than I did long ago.

There was one point where Li was walking next to Julian all stiff and clearly flustered. And in the American version, they said that Li was just practicing for his new role in the drill team! Some of those "patch jobs" are so sloppy that I can't help laughing at them. There are so many times where Li or Sakura or someone look all red, and it doesn't make much sense in the American context. And plenty of conversations are switched to a different subject entirely. 

Would I recommend the English Cardcaptors to anyone? Well, I'm mostly attached to it because of the nostalgia. It was one of my first couple anime. I've never seen the Japanese one, so I guess I can't recommend it. I'd probably recommend the manga though. And now they're doing a remake? Clear Card? I'll watch it eventually. I'm just always so skeptical about remakes. (Though I may be totally wrong, and it's a sequel instead of a remake?)

I still have my old set of Clow Cards. I... also bought a set of Sakura Cards a few years ago. I even tried a little bit of a fanfiction. I came up with the idea right before I read the manga. In the English version, they said that Li was a direct descendant of Clow Reed, so I wanted to explore why the cards didn't get passed down through his line. But in the manga, Li wasn't a direct descendant, so that no longer made sense. I stopped the fanfic after a couple chapters. 

Regardless of all the different versions, you can tell that I've always been very attached to this series. Whether or not I recommend it, that doesn't mean you shouldn't; try it :3

(As I was looking for images to include in this post, I found this nice article that discusses some of these points)

Writing for Nature

During college, we read a selection from A Sand County Almanac, by Aldo Leopold. He's one of the famous early writers about protecting the environment. I finally dug out my copy of the book and read through the whole thing. He has a beautiful way of describing the wilderness.

The introduction was by Barbara Kingsolver. I actually had to read one of her books in school too (Animal Dreams). And then I read two more of her books in college (Flight Behavior, and Prodigal Summer) since I needed to read a lot of environmental fiction. Since her writing includes environmental themes, it makes sense that she did the intro for this book.

In her intro, something worked its way into my brain. She said that a lot of what Aldo Leopold wrote would be similar to a blog post today. I'd just gone to Monterey, so my brain started plotting ways to turn my trip into an article. It's not specifically inspired by Aldo Leopold, but more from a number of nature writers including John Muir and Thoreau. 

While I was in Monterey, I wasn't planning on writing anything, like I had done for my Sacramento trip, but I kept thinking of little details that would be fun to include. And when I started writing, I kept getting more and more ideas. Though that usually happens with me. This is a far more thorough and polished account than my other travel stories. Those have always just been little scattered tales of my experiences. But this  is a full-on article/story/thing (Is it an article or a short story? Beats me). 

Now I want to write a lot more stuff like this. It's fun! But that means I need to get out and do meaningful nature experiences. Trudging down a hiking trail is usually too superficial to provide deep writing material. I've been crazy to get out and do stuff. Even small trips are exciting, since I've done so few trips during the pandemic.

Before You Buy Clothes

An important video about clothing and sustainability:

 Wow, it took waay waay longer than I thought, but I finally called Arith "Katani."

Whoo. It must be time for me to go to bed, if I'm too tired to tell the difference.

Tragic Cycles

A friend at work was telling me about some of her favorite novels. I knew she loved Great Expectations. Then she said that Great Gatsby is another of her favorites. 

Here's our conversation (more or less)

Me:"You like the stories where people start from nothing, get a lot of money, and then lose it, huh?" 

Her: "Oh, you're right! I guess I do! I just like that it starts back at the beginning." 

"It's a nice cycle." 

"Yes, I love the cycles!" 

"It's a tragic cycle." 

"I guess I just love the tragic cycles." 

Later I was telling her about the Name of the Wind, and I realized that it's also a tragic cycle (we don't know the ending yet, but we can tell where it's headed).  So now she wants to try it since it fits the tragic cycle she likes. 

Just like I discovered that she likes tragic cycles, long ago I once discovered that Nicole doesn't like flying people with umbrellas. Because she doesn't like Mary Poppins or Totoro. 

Aren't I just so amazing at figuring out people's tastes?

Funny enough (back to the cycles), as a kid I used to like to pretend that some movies were basically the same story happening over and over. The young characters evolved into the older mentor characters and inherited the new problems that came up. I specifically remember that with Fern Gully. The bad guy was trapped in a tree by the old mentor. Then the young student takes over and traps him in the tree again. It can repeat over and over. 

Just a brief update on this post.

 They had a selection of poetry, and a few of those lines I remembered too. I guess it's certain images that stuck with me when I forgot everything else.

Trusting the Facts

When I'm reading or watching something, I have trouble believing their information about history, biology, culture, etc, unless it links up with what I already know. Even this can be dangerous, because just because they get some facts right doesn't mean they get everything right. Plenty of books and films don't bother to be accurate, and some just make up stuff. It's not only novels. Even some documentaries make me suspicious. A lot of facts get updated over time, and things people used to believe are now known to be wrong. Plus are so many common misconceptions, even in otherwise good books. But documentaries usually seem more trustworthy (unless you have something like an oil company making a documentary about how great fossil fuels are).

 But every now and then I discover that a novel I read is really accurate! That's always nice to know. 

Speaking of facts, three banded armadillos have furry bellies!

What Stories Tell Us

Patrick Rothfuss (potentially the author my favorite book) recently posted a Youtube video. I was surprised when he started talking about a couple cartoons I love.

Starting at 34:14 and ending at 51:25

After that it's shenanigans, so be prepared.

When he mentioned Steven Universe, I got very excited. He said "this show will help people in ways that they'll never realize." Because Steven doesn't beat people. He talks with them and makes peace with them. 

He also mentioned She-Ra (I love that he loves Bow)

(He also said he wasn't able to finish Undertale because it started too slow XD I guess I can't argue with that. I was very slow to fall madly in love with the game)

This was all very fun, but it was in a larger context about what stories tell us. He thinks about this a lot, since he's a story teller and  also has kids. He posted another video about how he literally rewrote the end of a children's' book because the message was so messed up.

And he's right! So many shows and stories have really awful characters or messages. For example, cop shows where the main cop tortures a confession out of someone, and that's okay. And even something like the King Arthur legends. Arthur catches his wife and his best friend together, and because of that he ends up destroying his entire kingdom. Instead of actually trying to find a solution with these two people he loved.

As I was watching this, I realized that this was why I hated almost everything we read in high school. Nearly all of the books had really awful characters, or messages. Like Lord of the Flies? Good God, I loathed that book. High school kids are getting flooded with novels that have terrible role models. I've met people who said that some of those books really set them off. How is it affecting teenagers?

Draykia Royalty

I keep wondering what the palaces will look like in Arith's story. His country, Draykia, is based off of North America. The architecture needs to reflect that. But there weren't too many big buildings built by American Indians. Not all of them lived in portable tipis, of course. 

There were lodges such, which could get pretty big. But the only things coming close to a palace might be some of the southern cliff buildings.

It's hard to base cities and royal families off of cultures that didn't have big cities or royal families. I'll need to do a lot more research.

An Actor's Take on Character Development

I recently started watching the audio commentary on a few of my movies. I love seeing how things are made, and commentary stories can be pretty funny. 

I just watched the commentary on an old Disney movie with my Dad (one he loves) called The Apple Dumpling Gang. It's like a cowboy movie/comedy. Dusty is the leading lady, and her actress was giving part of the commentary.

(Dusty's in the middle, holding the little girl)

Now, I haven't watched too many audio commentaries, but they're usually about the movie making process, or stories about what happened. But Dusty was explaining all the character motivations and background for her character. It was cool hearing about character development  from the actor that played her! I don't usually hear it from that perspective.

It's not Easy Being Sustainable

Someone I know is working on a project about sustainability. She needed to conduct some surveys, so I volunteered. She asked what I do to be sustainable. As I was trying to explain, I started realizing how wildly inconvenient it is to be sustainable. Our society is so messed up that people need to put a huge amount of time, effort, and money to choose sustainable options. 

People that don't earn as much money can't afford eco-friendly products (because in our world, you can work a lot more than someone else and get paid a lot less).

The example I gave her was something as simple as a shower scrubber. I used to use those cheap plastic mesh things you can get for $1.50 at a discount store. But they can't be washed, or recycled. Plastic causes so many problems for the environment, so I started looking for compostable shower scrubbers. I could only find ones that were hand-made - no stores I check sell them. I tried a couple different types from Etsy, and neither of them worked as well as the stupid plastic ones. I thought I'd try making one myself, so I started trying to find out what fabric is the most sustainable. Cotton is NOT sustainable. Everything is made out of cotton, but it has caused some massive damage to a lot of ecosystems. Next I looked at bamboo. It may be sustainable to grow, but it's apparently processed with a lot of chemicals when it's made into  fabric. It looks like hemp is the most sustainable fabric. But the only piece of hemp fabric I could find that fit my project was a little strip of hand-made fabric from another country. I can probably make 2 scrubbers out of it, but it will still cost 5 times more, not including my time to make it. 

So that's my sage of the stupid shower scrubbers. I finally made one, and now I have to try it out. 

 Reusable bags were easier to figure out. (Here's a good video about reusable bags) Find a t-shirt that's not worth wearing anymore. Cut out the collar and sleeves and sew (or tie) the bottom shut. And you have a grocery bag with no extra waste!

 

Public transit is the worst though. We're forced to have cars because public transit is useless for traveling to most places. And traffic is only getting worse and worse.

It may be wildly inconvenient. but we need to do everything we can to choose sustainable options. The more we demand it, the more accessible it will become. And we have to force the government and bis businesses to follow.

I think I'm good at making myself look stupid. I babble like an idiot if I'm really excited or nervous. 

Luckily I can use that trait for characters. Heheh.

For some reason whenever I picture myself doing something, I see it from the outside. It's like I'm watching myself instead of experiencing it from the inside. I have to make an effort to imagine something in the first person.

Is that common?

Tangled Mess

Heheh. Arith's story is quite the mess. It started out good! Then things stalled, for several reasons. I didn't help by switching back and forth between writing projects, so I'd totally forget what I was doing. 

But also one chunk of the story is just like something read this summer. I'm afraid to let Arith's story get accidentally influenced by it. 

And I really need to research a bunch of stuff. I've done almost no research yet, so I keep hesitating and skipping forward. That means a lot of the story is still undeveloped, which makes it hard to see how things would progress naturally.

The story randomly cuts scenes because I'll realize something doesn't work and abandon it mid-way through. Then I jump straight into a replacement scene.And some characters randomly switch names or genders.

I just need to get back into the groove of it. When I sit down for a good chunk of time, I can start to write my way out of it. I'm confusing myself too much trying to balance all these excuses. Rough drafts are meant to suck. I can fix all this later. For now, this rough draft will just help me figure out the basics of what happens.

Time to untangle!

 Last night I finally had to develop some of Arith's family. I pulled something out of the air that seemed like it would fit their characters and their culture. And then I realized that this is actually great, because it will give Arith an interesting perspective on some of the stuff that's to happen! Yaay for weird coincidences.

9 banded armadillo

 Guess who stalled on this month's blog posts and is now desperately trying to catch up? 

While I'm supposed to be writing my story...

Maybe I can just dazzle you with some stripey horsies

 

 

Humor from Around the World

 I was just watching a British claymation series, and it got me thinking. I've heard people talk about "British humor" and I could certainly get a strong taste of that here. 

Watching anime or movies from Japan has such a different type of humor. And of course the more you learn about Japan, the more you find the humor. 

 There have also been some old black and white Mexican movies that had me laughing far too hard. And that was different too. 

The funny Korean dramas I watched might have seemed tacky, but instead they were hilarious.

What about American humor? I've grown up in it, so it's hard for me to really picture it as a whole. 

Either way, it's great seeing all these different ways of making people laugh.

Corrupt Characters Should Fit

Some books put crazy people in high positions. 

Now, let me explain. Crazy people get into top positions all the time. Just look at one of our recent presidents. But what bugs me is when a writer puts a greedy, selfish person in charge of something like a temple or school where everyone else is a good person. It makes no sense for a disgusting, nasty person to have climbed their ranks. The writer just did it for extra conflict, I guess. 

Part of this is probably me rebelling against real-life disgusting people stumbling into power/wealth.

Or maybe the poor character development just irritates me. Anyway, I guess I mention it because I just quit a book for doing this in a very abrasive way. It was a book meant for middle school students, I guess, but still. It just feels like it's giving kids a bad message.

Coco Tales

First of all, I'm a total nerd, and have a Coco lunchbox that I bring to work every day. 

 

I was helping at the zoo summer  camp again this year. In one of my camp groups, the kids were 5 years old. One day a couple of them asked about my lunchbox. So I pointed to the characters and introduced them (I gave them some major spoilers, which I felt guilty about XD ). Then more kids began to gather, until I was surrounded by a circle of six or seven kids, all listening to me talk about Coco and Dia de los Muertos. A couple of them had seen the movie, but most hadn't. I showed them pictures of real Dia de los Muertos celebrations, as well as pictures of the movie characters. I also played them the video of Poco Loco. I talked about the movie without using words like "this is where dead people live," but instead "this is where your ancestors live.Trying to make it a kid-friendly talk about ghosts XD 

 It was adorable. I wish I had a video of it. A couple of the girls kept returning and asking me to tell them about the movie.

(Also, I overheard one of the teachers telling the movie "Frozen" as if it were a storybook. I was impressed. Maybe she'd practiced it before, but the kids were entranced.) 

Also, this is hilarious. When I was with this same group of kids - the youngest - they would beg to hold my hand. To the point were I would sometimes be holding 2 hands in one of mine. Then my next group was the older kids - about 9 years old. And I had to "threaten" a couple of them by saying I'd hold their hand if they didn't behave. So, holding my hand went from being a reward to a punishment. Heheh.

Reading Update

 Tortall: A Spy's Guide, by Pierce

A guide book to the Tortall world. As usual, I'm fascinated reading these sorts of fantasy guides. It tells me what kinds of stuff I need to think about for my own worlds. And it brought back memories of so many books I read as a kid! I should re-read my favorites. I've forgotten so much.

Powersat, by Bova

A story of terrorists hijacking technology that should have been used for good. I'm not quite sure how to take it. I think it's meant to be in favor of clean energy? Also, the bad guys seem to be bad not just because they're terrorists, but because they're middle eastern. Probably because this came out soon after 9-11. But it still made me angry.

 

The Water Margin: Outlaws of the Marsh, by Naian

This one took me so long to finish XD It's so huge that I had to read it a bit at a time.It's an old classic from China. I understand how old it is, and how different that culture must have been. But I still got so upset about how little value life had. "Oh, we killed your wife and child. Sorry about that. We'll get you a new wife."

Voyage of the Frog, by Paulsen

I've read some of his books, like the Hatchet series and a couple others. I thought this one would be kinda bland because it was such a small book. But it was good! (Never judge a book by its cover!) It also helps that I read his biography, and I now know that he has experienced a lot of this crazy stuff himself!

Gorillas in the Mist, by Fossey

About studying gorillas in the wild. There's even a movie about her. I haven't seen it in a while, but I wonder if she was as strange as they made her out. 

The Hidden Half of Nature, by Montgomery and Bikle

All about the microorganisms that help life exist. It's easy to forget that people only learned about these tiny creatures pretty recently.

Robots and Empire, by Asimov

 I finished the series. Some parts of it I liked. But Bailey never seemed very good at interrogating. His technique is to badger the witnesses until they got pissed and tried to hurt him. Huh. 

I get that this was written in a different time, but some stuff still drives me crazy. And not just his views on women. But the fact that their ultimate goal is to fill up all parts of the galaxy with humans. Ugh, as if humans aren't invasive enough as it is.

The Plague Dogs, byAdams

I knew this book would be depressing, because I'd seen the movie. But the book had a very... different ending. It felt more like a gag ending. Or something from a fanfiction.  It did not fit the rest of the story. Though it left a much better taste in your mouth, I guess. 

The Maine Woods, by Thoreau

Maaan, this book makes me desperate to get out in the woods. I wish I still had a place I could explore without fear of getting in trouble for trespassing or something. TT^TT

Kokinshu

Finally finished! A book of Japanese poetry. A lot of them were really beautiful. I love how so much image can fit into so few words. 

The Big Rock Candy Mountain, by Stegner

This book... stressed me out. I probably wouldn't have finished  it if I hadn't quit a different book directly before.

Innocent Killers, by Jane Goodall

I love Jane Goodall's books! She's a great writer and has done so much for our world. This book was mostly about animals that a lot of people hate - hyenas, jackals, and painted dogs.  She wants us to appreciate them for their amazing qualities - not for their bad reputations. 

Actually, half of it was written by her then husband. It sounded like they were going to work on another similar book, but I guess it never came to be.

Mistborn: The Final Empire, by Sanderson

Oooh, this is the first really good fantasy I've read in a while. I pray the rest of the series stays good! I'm half way through the second book right now.  And so far it does not disappoint! The author has built such a real-feeling world. And he does an amazing job of making you think that all is lost, and then they somehow find a way of snatching victory despite that.

Reason for Hope, by Jane Goodall

Yet another amazing Jane Goodall book. It had so many amazing tales and ideas - definitely recommend. 

Seven Years in Tibet, by Harrer

This was way different from the movie. And it was very good. It's amazing to learn about how Tibet was before it was invaded.

Animals make us Human, by Grandin

Her animal books are amazing. She does a great job explaining why animals do things that seem strange to us.

The Future is Japanese, by Mamatas and Washington

Short scifi stories from Japan. I've read some other stories translated from Japanese, and this translation felt a lot more fluid that most.