Well, not really.
I've yet another day off work tomorrow and Monday is one of the UK's few Bank Holidays so I've got a mega four-day weekend.
I'm not sure whether to put together a mega-plan or just play it by ear. There's quite a few things I want to do, but also I could do with just sitting down and chilling, tbh. One thing I definitely need to do is get a haircut and I need to pick some dry-cleaning up, so I will do those on Friday and I could turn it into something of a proper shopping trip--I need some new trainers, for example. Hmm.
Trouble is, after my whole going a bit nuts buying animu the other day I've now gone a bit nuts buying manga so I don't want to spend too much money. At least I had an excuse with the animu (ADV and Geneon going tits up). Here I really haven't, as the series I've ordered aren't old or going out of print or anything.
Speaking of Geneon--Black Lagoon disk1 turned up last night. I got the special edition with the steelcase book (as I did for the 1st Barrage) and guess what--it's got Geneon's name plastered all over it. Even though it's now being released by Funimation.
I'm guessing I had the wrong end of the stick a little. Basically, what I think has happened is that Funimation have simply taken over the distribution rights for the series that Geneon had on the go. Newer licences I guess may be treated differently, but at least it means good continuity of releases. I'd also guess that the ADV shows they picked up may be a little different as ADV properly lost the rights to those shows.
Oh, and also, the cover of the steelcase features photos of a model dressed as Revy, and man is it hawt.
Thursday, 21 August 2008
Wednesday, 20 August 2008
making breakthrough
Watched me some more Gurren Lagann last night. The show just gets better and better is about all I can really say. Where I thought Godannar was like mecha anime given a massive dose of viagra, Gurren Lagann is like mecha anime given a massive does of testosterone.
Since I decided a while ago to tweak how my novel, MitL, is structured, I've been doing some work on it. What I've decided is to have the more traditional sci-fi elements regarding the "brain in the box" be contained in a prologue and epilogue. The main story then will be the two strands and the prologue and epilogue act to give those stories the other level.
That all sounds more complicated than it is, but basically I've been working on the prologue and it's all proving a bit of a 'mare. I've been trying to "workshop" the piece to some degree using urbis. I've been putting it up, getting crit and then reworking it.
The problem is that what I was really aiming at when I started was a stark, narrative style to the piece. Also, I wanted it to be quite short and to the point--the idea is that it's a mysterious little taster that is only really made clear in the prologue. The problem is that that's not really how you're supposed to write fiction nowadays.
What you're supposed to do is "show don't tell". Which is to say instead of having "He lost his brother at an early age--cancer, the big C. It coloured the rest of his formative years." You instead have proper scenes showing these things.
But it's a novel--if you expand everything up into scenes, you get an immense tome that documents every minutiae of your character lives. So there has to be compromise. If the brother's death is important to the story (and it sounds like it is) then it should be expanded on. If not, then telling is more okay, though obviously still not great.
This is especially true for sci-fi, where you get lots of "accoutrements". If I simply want there to be something that has anti-gravity capability jerry-rigged to it in my story then do I need to have an entire set of scenes devoted to its construction? Or do I just tell you that the something has "jerry-rigged small anti-gravity pods strapped to the sides"?
Well, unless it's key to the story, it's the latter, obviously--because really the above is more like description for sci-fi. It's more like me describing the surroundings than it is me 'telling' you the story. It's not really violating show don't tell.
Since I decided a while ago to tweak how my novel, MitL, is structured, I've been doing some work on it. What I've decided is to have the more traditional sci-fi elements regarding the "brain in the box" be contained in a prologue and epilogue. The main story then will be the two strands and the prologue and epilogue act to give those stories the other level.
That all sounds more complicated than it is, but basically I've been working on the prologue and it's all proving a bit of a 'mare. I've been trying to "workshop" the piece to some degree using urbis. I've been putting it up, getting crit and then reworking it.
The problem is that what I was really aiming at when I started was a stark, narrative style to the piece. Also, I wanted it to be quite short and to the point--the idea is that it's a mysterious little taster that is only really made clear in the prologue. The problem is that that's not really how you're supposed to write fiction nowadays.
What you're supposed to do is "show don't tell". Which is to say instead of having "He lost his brother at an early age--cancer, the big C. It coloured the rest of his formative years." You instead have proper scenes showing these things.
But it's a novel--if you expand everything up into scenes, you get an immense tome that documents every minutiae of your character lives. So there has to be compromise. If the brother's death is important to the story (and it sounds like it is) then it should be expanded on. If not, then telling is more okay, though obviously still not great.
This is especially true for sci-fi, where you get lots of "accoutrements". If I simply want there to be something that has anti-gravity capability jerry-rigged to it in my story then do I need to have an entire set of scenes devoted to its construction? Or do I just tell you that the something has "jerry-rigged small anti-gravity pods strapped to the sides"?
Well, unless it's key to the story, it's the latter, obviously--because really the above is more like description for sci-fi. It's more like me describing the surroundings than it is me 'telling' you the story. It's not really violating show don't tell.
Tuesday, 19 August 2008
various viewings
Watched the rest of Black Lagoon: First Barrage last night.
It really is very good. I can always tell by how quickly I get through it--some shows take me weeks and I can't watch more than a couple of ep's at a time. BL I've watched the whole thing in two evenings of 6 ep's each. One for a review in future I think, though obviously now it's a Funimation release, but one would hope they're essentially just re-releasing, rather than fiddling with it.
The animation is of a very high standard, which does seem to be one of the advantages of going the 12-episode seasons route. I wish the Japanese audio was 5.1, but there's an English 5.1 up-mix. The extras are a little wimpy for a whole separate disk, but I can understand why they went that route--3 releases but the steelcase book has 4 DVD slots.
One of the bizarre things is that just as Geneon packed up they were starting to release some really good stuff. Geneon always used to be stuck in that mode of squeezing as much cash out of the user as possible. 8 disk releases used to be their standard, with no extras and no frills. But just before the end they seemed to be releasing stuff with fewer disks, putting in plenty of extras, doing nice packs like the steelbooks.
I'm not sure if it's ironic or just annoying :/.
Last night I also watched "Britain from Above" which is a new short documentary series presented by Andrew Marr. It's quite entertaining if a little "documentary lite". There also weren't quite as many nice map views with stuff overlayed on them this time. But then it was mainly about agriculture and farm use, so it's not surprising there wasn't so much to show in that fashion.
Over the w/end I watched Pan's Labyrinth. It's a Spanish language film by Guillermo Del Toro. Apparently Del Toro likes to mix it up--he does one big Hollywood film (Hellboy, for example) and then one independent Spanish language film (I think he's actually Mexican, but I'm not sure).
It was good, but unfortunately it was a bit of a hype-victim for me. I'd heard quite a lot that it was amazing and read some good reviews and so it had that difficult job of living up to the hype in my head. Even so it was good--perhaps a smidge too long, but not exhaustingly so.
I'm guessing it was released as a 2-disker (I watched it on rental) as the extras were thin on the ground on this disk--just a commentary by Del Toro. But that's not a bad thing--Del Toro gives good commentary on the films of his I've seen before.
It really is very good. I can always tell by how quickly I get through it--some shows take me weeks and I can't watch more than a couple of ep's at a time. BL I've watched the whole thing in two evenings of 6 ep's each. One for a review in future I think, though obviously now it's a Funimation release, but one would hope they're essentially just re-releasing, rather than fiddling with it.
The animation is of a very high standard, which does seem to be one of the advantages of going the 12-episode seasons route. I wish the Japanese audio was 5.1, but there's an English 5.1 up-mix. The extras are a little wimpy for a whole separate disk, but I can understand why they went that route--3 releases but the steelcase book has 4 DVD slots.
One of the bizarre things is that just as Geneon packed up they were starting to release some really good stuff. Geneon always used to be stuck in that mode of squeezing as much cash out of the user as possible. 8 disk releases used to be their standard, with no extras and no frills. But just before the end they seemed to be releasing stuff with fewer disks, putting in plenty of extras, doing nice packs like the steelbooks.
I'm not sure if it's ironic or just annoying :/.
Last night I also watched "Britain from Above" which is a new short documentary series presented by Andrew Marr. It's quite entertaining if a little "documentary lite". There also weren't quite as many nice map views with stuff overlayed on them this time. But then it was mainly about agriculture and farm use, so it's not surprising there wasn't so much to show in that fashion.
Over the w/end I watched Pan's Labyrinth. It's a Spanish language film by Guillermo Del Toro. Apparently Del Toro likes to mix it up--he does one big Hollywood film (Hellboy, for example) and then one independent Spanish language film (I think he's actually Mexican, but I'm not sure).
It was good, but unfortunately it was a bit of a hype-victim for me. I'd heard quite a lot that it was amazing and read some good reviews and so it had that difficult job of living up to the hype in my head. Even so it was good--perhaps a smidge too long, but not exhaustingly so.
I'm guessing it was released as a 2-disker (I watched it on rental) as the extras were thin on the ground on this disk--just a commentary by Del Toro. But that's not a bad thing--Del Toro gives good commentary on the films of his I've seen before.
Monday, 18 August 2008
didn't quite do it
Bit of a weird weekend--had lots planned, but didn't quite do those specific things, but did closely related stuff instead.
I was planning to scan all the new mags, but haven't scanned any of them. But I did do some scanning--I scanned the DVD covers for Genshiken, Ai Yori Aoshi and GUNxSWORD, which I'll use for reviews and stuff. Also, I went through all my artbooks and unglued them so that I can scan them, which is a very tedious and time consuming process (you heat the spines with an iron to melt the glue and then pull out the pages).
I'd planned to phone my Dad, which I did, but due to circumstances I had to cut the call short and didn't quite get to talk to him about everything I'd wanted. Plus he had some questions about my freeview box, so that took most of the time up.
I'd also planned to go out to a particular pub for a few beers, and I did go out, but ended up around a friends place and was driving so didn't have any beers.
I'd planned to get a haircut, but due to needing to collect a parcel from Farnham Post Office and also wanting to send a couple of e-bay parcels I didn't get the chance. Plus it occurred to me I've got next Friday off, so I can just do it then.
The parcel I picked up had Gurren Lagann set 2 in it, but also had Aika R-16: Virgin Missions in it. As I'd mentioned before I'd planned to watch Black Lagoon this w/end. I was actually planning to cane it and watch the whole 1st season, but instead I watched the original Aika that I remembered I had still to watch as well as R-16.
Surprisingly, both shows turned out to be pretty good. The original is pretty old, so the animation is not the greatest, but what it does have--action, comedy and fan-service are there in spades. R-16 is meant to be a prequal, but it actually kinda doesn't quite make sense with the continuity, but it's no biggy as the show is also more of the same--action, comedy and fan-service.
I did also get stuck into Black Lagoon as well, though, and am now half way through. It's very good, though I've a feeling I still prefer the manga, but there's not much in it.
Dunno--I know I did stuff, but because I'm a list-oriented person because the stuff I didn't wasn't quite to plan it makes it feel like I've not achieved anything.
It's like, I put a load of stuff on e-bay too (I've been doing so much e-baying recently I'm almost out of stuff to sell :/) but because I put it all on in one day and (I now realise) a bit early in the day for my usual target audience, it doesn't quite feel like I've done it properly.
I was planning to scan all the new mags, but haven't scanned any of them. But I did do some scanning--I scanned the DVD covers for Genshiken, Ai Yori Aoshi and GUNxSWORD, which I'll use for reviews and stuff. Also, I went through all my artbooks and unglued them so that I can scan them, which is a very tedious and time consuming process (you heat the spines with an iron to melt the glue and then pull out the pages).
I'd planned to phone my Dad, which I did, but due to circumstances I had to cut the call short and didn't quite get to talk to him about everything I'd wanted. Plus he had some questions about my freeview box, so that took most of the time up.
I'd also planned to go out to a particular pub for a few beers, and I did go out, but ended up around a friends place and was driving so didn't have any beers.
I'd planned to get a haircut, but due to needing to collect a parcel from Farnham Post Office and also wanting to send a couple of e-bay parcels I didn't get the chance. Plus it occurred to me I've got next Friday off, so I can just do it then.
The parcel I picked up had Gurren Lagann set 2 in it, but also had Aika R-16: Virgin Missions in it. As I'd mentioned before I'd planned to watch Black Lagoon this w/end. I was actually planning to cane it and watch the whole 1st season, but instead I watched the original Aika that I remembered I had still to watch as well as R-16.
Surprisingly, both shows turned out to be pretty good. The original is pretty old, so the animation is not the greatest, but what it does have--action, comedy and fan-service are there in spades. R-16 is meant to be a prequal, but it actually kinda doesn't quite make sense with the continuity, but it's no biggy as the show is also more of the same--action, comedy and fan-service.
I did also get stuck into Black Lagoon as well, though, and am now half way through. It's very good, though I've a feeling I still prefer the manga, but there's not much in it.
Dunno--I know I did stuff, but because I'm a list-oriented person because the stuff I didn't wasn't quite to plan it makes it feel like I've not achieved anything.
It's like, I put a load of stuff on e-bay too (I've been doing so much e-baying recently I'm almost out of stuff to sell :/) but because I put it all on in one day and (I now realise) a bit early in the day for my usual target audience, it doesn't quite feel like I've done it properly.
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