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.