Like a boss.

Teacher: "So, Leez, why don't you pitch your screenplay to the class?"

So I pitched it.

And she was like, "Nice, did you practice that before hand?"

And I was like, "No."

And she was like, "It was really good."

LIKE A BOSS.

Why I love learning the history of Anthropology

"If we were to select the most intelligent, imaginative, energetic, and emotionally stable third of mankind, all races would be present." -Franz Boas

Early Anthropology tends to get this bad rap of being a bunch of racist white guys touting White Man's Burden and Social Darwinism. And while that kind of nasty colonial thinking was partially the result of E. Tylor, Tylor himself was radically forward-thinking. He campaigned for a monogenic theory of human origins and what he called the "psychic unification of mankind." Which sounds really new agey, but doesn't actually mean what it sounds like.

Basically, Tylor/Evolutionism/Et all says that all humans are descended from one parent population and have the same mental capability. This was RADICAL at a time when most scientists were saying that the Chinese were descended directly from H. Erectus and therefore "less evolved" and "less intelligent."

Basically, the more you recognize the similarities between yourself and the bush tribe from Papua New Guinea, the closer you are to understanding the differences. And they're not, for the most part, going to be found in your DNA.

And if Boas, one of the founding fathers of anthropology, could say this around the start of the 20th century, then why are people still having trouble with the idea of all "races" (race being an inaccurate term to describe ethnicities and cultures, really) being, on some primary level, equal?

In other news the Anthropology Major Fox meme is my life and I am slowly evolving into a pretentiousosaurus.

A post about anime

I got really excited when I saw this trailer:

Whenever conversation turns to who inspires me as a filmmaker, the first person who comes to mind is Makoto Shinkai. He's an up-and-coming anime director who has been called, in various circles, "The Next Miyazaki." I think this title is well deserved, because he's brilliant, but also faintly bullshit, because Miyazaki-sensei is still alive and released a movie as recently as two years ago and is still heading up Ghibli so it would be kind of premature to start labeling people as "the next _____." Like what, do you want him to hurry up and die? He's only 70, and the life expectancy in Japan is up to like 89 or some ridiculous number, so I'd hazard to say he'll probably be with us a while yet.

Granted, they do have some things in common. Both are very conscious of animation as a medium for storytelling, rather than as a genre of filmmaking. Both create very human characters with very human mannerisms. Both are fascinated with flight. (Miyazaki is noted for his obsession with aircraft. Shinkai is more interested in space travel, but The Place Promised in our Early Days had an awesome plane.)

Shinkai tends to veer more science fiction, where Miyazaki's interests are more fantasy. That said, there's a lot in Hoshi o Kodomo (I have no idea where he's getting his word salad english title "Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below - Hoshi o Kodomo is roughly "Children who Chase Stars") that looks very Ghibli-esque, there's a scene that I'm pretty sure is invoking Castle in the Sky, and checking the website reveals a supporting character who is clearly designed after Teto from Nausicaa. So way to undermine my argument, Shinkai-sensei. But if one of the main critiques of your work is that all three of your movies are really similar, then I guess this is a branching out for you.

What I like about Shinkai's films is that he presents a world that is somehow removed from our own, but not so far removed that it's hard to grasp, and then within these gorgeous science fiction settings, he boils his story down to tight human dramas about isolation and struggling to connect. Voices of a Distant Star is beautiful, and I've embedded a segment of Five Centimeters Per Second, which is a collection of three short films using all kinds of travel metaphors for growing up, not knowing where you're going but going anyways, even if it seems like you're getting there incredibly slowly. (This section uses rockets, and it's beautiful.)

*There's some bad science in this dub. When he says "center of the solar system," he means "center of the galaxy."

Rewarding myself with movies...

So yesterday, after biting two pages out of my anthropology midterm paper (finished it today, thank you very much), and reconstructing most of my screenplay after the file corrupted itself (for really expensive software, Final Draft suicides surprisingly often), I decided I deserved a break. Now, when I'm writing I tend to be on Wikipedia and TVTropes researching facts and pop-culture, because I'm the kind of person who aspires to show her research and do it in a brilliant way. I'm not quite there, but who's counting?

Anyways, there are a bunch of tropes relating to cavemen/neanderthals and while skimming the pages, I became aware of a movie called The Man from Earth. It looked really interesting, so I looked it up on Netflix, and lo and behold, it was there and it was interesting! So I made a note to go back to it later and kept working on my paper.

Later came, I watched the movie, it was relevant to ALL of my interests.

Some things:

• In terms of film-style storytelling, this isn't really a film sort of film? To me it felt like a novel or a play that had been shot in order to reach the widest possible audience.
• ACTUALLY I think this would be an amazing play and I wonder if the screenwriter is aware of the fact?
• The trailer spoils one of the big twists, but it's such a part of the premise that it doesn't even matter. Like, I don't think the twist is so much that he's a caveman so much as what he's been doing for 14,000 years.
• IT GETS WEIRD.

I don't think that subtlety is really this movie's strong point, but that's not the point - it's good because it's a thought experiment and an exploration of a high-concept piece of Sci-Fi without any special effects, taking place entirely in more or less one location. And that's what's so interesting to me - it's a huge, epic science fiction story boiled down to like eight people in a room, reacting. And the story is as much about their reactions as it is to the story being told, so I don't even mind that you could say this is a major breach of "Show, don't tell." In fact, if there were flashbacks in John's story, I daresay they would have ruined the movie.

(Huge, epic science fiction stories boiled down to tight human dramas are one of my favorite things. It's part of what appeals to me so much about Makoto Shinkai's work.)

Anyways, have a trailer, and check this movie out, because it's really, really interesting.

Oh, and I made a tumblr.

This is a painting of dinosaurs from 1897.

1897!!!

This is awesome!!!

Looking for a way in...

Beginnings are hard. Let's just face it - if you don't hook your reader in your first two pages, you don't have them. I imagine it's hard when you're not writing a genre piece, and once you compound the words "alternate history" and "political allegory" (not to mention "my heroine is a Neanderthal"), it gets even trickier.

I need a way into this world, and I think that's what's been giving me so much trouble on getting this started is that I've sort of lost mine. I mean, I had a good one three drafts ago, but I'm starting somewhere completely different now and it seems like my fastest way in is through the eyes of a sort of peripheral child character.

Kids are really great for exposition because they'll ask a lot of questions with near-total disregard as to whether what they're asking is appropriate or not. Th problem with child characters, I think, is that they also tend to become really precocious really fast, which translates to obnoxious. Child characters in science fiction get a really bad rap - see: Abigail Breslin in Signs, or Dakota Fanning playing what is basically the same character in War of the Worlds. Or even Jake Lloyd in Star Wars: Episode I. After a while, everyone just starts hating the kid.

Not that I'm actually planning to have this child character stick around - it's a major plot point that he doesn't. But I'm nervous to use him as my "in" into the world, which would explain why I'm writing a blog entry about not being sure about where to start the screenplay as opposed to sitting down and just writing the damn thing.

But as it were, he looks like my best bet right now. So here we go.

Were you looking for me?

Don't think I can't see it when you start googling my blog with weirdly specific search terms, guys. I think that the most recent round of weirdness must have come from my family (You searched the URL of the blog plus a really specific phrase... what are you up to?), but it's still sort of weird...

If you guys are weirding out over whether or not there's personal information in this... well, this is a personal blog? If there's ever anything on here that concerns you, though, please feel free to, you know,

USE THE COMMENT BOX

instead of just lurking like the creepers I think you might be?

And miles to go before I sleep

I got my cuts and revisions done and sent off my entries for Blank YPF '11. (Post for another day: Young Playwrights Competitions and You, a handbook.) So that's one massive thing off my to-do list for break, meaning... I still have to write a 6-page anthropology paper by next tuesday, and a 30-page screenplay by... when? I have no idea, seriously. Maybe I should look this up. Yeah? Yeah.

I feel like I should reward myself for finishing my Blank stuff, but so far all I've managed to do is play ten minutes of pokemon. :/ Maybe I'll play the Sims for the rest of the night before trying to start the screenplay tomorrow? Or not, because it's a full-screen game and I don't feel like locking myself out of the option for doing anything else. (Also it takes for-fucking-ever to load, and it runs kind of slow on my computer? It didn't use to. :|)

Alright. Going to go start my screenplay. Yeah? Yeah.

Because the world always needs more memes.

I think "Smug Gagarin" needs to be a thing. Sort of like Fuck Yeah Anthropology Major Fox. (Which, by the way, posted my submission!!!)

Anyway, this is inspired by my friend S. trying to argue space history with me. He lost the argument, btw. ;)

I've been typing my facebook statuses in memespeak lately... they seem to be a hit. ;) Frantically rewriting Like a Dog in Space from 78 pages to 45-ish. It's hard but should be rewarding!!

Meanwhile, listening to a lot of Chameleon Circuit. They call themselves Trock, which is like Wrock, but substitute Wizard for Time lord. anyways it's hilarious. Here's the website with everything else on it.

Five books I have read more than once:

1. A book you loved as a child that has lost its magic.

Let's go with Ender's Game for this one. While I can respect it as a science fiction classic and as a book that had a huge influence on me, I don't enjoy rereading this anymore. Maybe it's because I read the sequels and realized they sucked. Maybe it's because I found out that Orson Scott Card is a misogynist and a homophobe and a religious fundamentalist. When I first read Ender's Game, I was about the same age as the characters and I thought that their interactions were totally believable, so maybe it's hypocritical that now, looking back on it, I cringe and think, "No kids talk like that." (Of course, Jessi Slaughter may well prove me wrong on this one.) Anyway, I'll always have a fondness for this book, and my copy of it has been read at least ten or fifteen times, but it doesn't hold the same appeal to me that it once did.

2. A book you loved as a child that has kept its magic.

This one's going to have to be Dogsbody. Ironically, Orson Scott Card loves it, too! You've probably heard of some of Diana Wynne Jones's other works (Howl's Moving Castle, The Dalemark Quartet...) even if you've never heard of this one, but believe me, it's beautiful and as you read it and grow into it, you understand it on so many different levels. While the main plot is engaging and original, I think that the way that DWJ weaves politics and Celtic mythology into the background of the novel that keeps it fresh - the older I get, the more I understand about what's going on behind the scenes of this vibrant and creative world.

3. A book that made you feel like an adult.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay is the first grown-up novel I distinctly remember reading. I don't just mean that this was the first book I read that wasn't explicitly targeted at elementary or middle schoolers, because I read a lot of those, but I distinctly remember sitting in the back of the car on a long trip with my parents in ninth grade reading this book and feeling like I was sending out telepathic signals to everyone else there that there was DIRTY STUFF in here. (Although, in retrospect, I reread it last year and was not nearly as scandalized as I was in ninth grade, and there was nothing nearly as explicit as I seemed to think there was at the time.) This book actually has a lot in common with Dogsbody, although it's not immediately apparent - I love the way the different historical and mythological influences are woven together, although here it's the history of the comic book industry and the Golem legend. Which is awesome.

4. A book that has influenced your writing.

American Gods, hands down. I don't think it's any coincidence that a lot of the books on this list are also by authors who I admire in general. I love American Gods for the amount of detail that's crammed into it, for the vivid characters, for the imaginative plot... That, and it's just a fun read. I've read it at least a dozen times and it never gets boring. A lot of the universe of Like a Dog in Space was partially inspired by the universe implied in American Gods, particularly once Mister Papers got involved, although Ivan and the Sisters could exist independently. Not to say that I go out of my way to rip Neil Gaiman off, but... there are worse people to rip off! I think what really gets me about this book is that it's basically set in the real world. It's not alternate universe or some fancy future-that-never-was. It's just fantastic beings trying to get by and live their lives among us humans. I love that it's kind of a grab bag of myths, yet all of them are pretty well researched. I love all of the interesting, larger than life characters who get involved. I love this book.

5. A book that gives you something to aspire to.

Oh, my god, Oryx and Crake. Oryx and Crake, Oryx and Crake, Oryx and Crake. I think my favorite part of this is that it's an alternate future, but it feels so immensely believable based on current trends. Say what you will about the Dystopian genre, this series is Margaret Atwood's masterpiece. I am in awe of the way she connects frame story and narrative, explaining the world we're in without hand-holding us too much. The exposition feels effortless and the results are a breathtaking vision of a future that she convinces you very well could be. I wish I could create spec fic settings like this! (I'm going to try!)

Some runners-up:

Alas, Babylon

Brave New World

Daughter of Fortune

New Jedi Order: Traitor (With the caveat that it is great by itself but shit within the context of the series, for continuity and character reasons.)

Contact

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

A Separate Peace

Clearly, I need to read more classic lit, right?

I have terrible taste in movies.

So, the universe seems to agree that the 2010 Jude Law/Forest Whitaker vehicle Repo Men is terrible. I disagree. I think that it was more fun than a barrel of monkeys, had this hilarious/amazing dark humor to it, and doesn't try to take itself too seriously. It is a bit over-long, but it's so much fun that I don't care.

The scene with the nine-year-old in the frilly dress performing invasive surgery, and the bizarre/beautiful violence-as-sex scene at the film's climax make the whole thing worth it. I know that the trope is interplay of sex and violence, but this was basically the most amazing idea ever. Kind of difficult to watch, but an amazing metaphor, basically about sex as a deconstruction/exploration of the self by the partner. I mean I guess it's not really sex, but it's things going into things and there was blood and guts and it was filmed really suggestively and at one point I turned to my friend and was like, "I can't tell if they're actually having sex or not right now, in addition to all that other stuff," but we decided they probably weren't because that... wouldn't really make sense. I guess other people don't think that much about this kind of stuff? It takes a dramatic writing major.

ANYWAY I'm kind of glad this movie got NO press coverage because it made watching it all that much better. SO I WILL NOT SPOIL YOU. :)

I THOUGHT IT WAS REALLY GOOD, I DON'T CARE THAT IT'S GOT LIKE A 14% OR WHATEVER ON ROTTEN TOMATOES. SOME MOVIES ARE JUST FUN, AND THIS IS A FUN MOVIE.

Also, Repo the Genetic Opera is one of my least favorite movies ever and I don't understand everyone's obsession with it, it is quite honestly overhyped and bad. Like, not even Rocky Horror So Bad It's Good. Just bad.

Also Jude Law might be one of the most gorgeous men on the planet. Even if his hairline is receding. That accent! I melt.