Okay…should I be worried that I had a dream last night where the TV networks were actually broadcasting anime at 3:30 in the afternoon?  Not regular old action shows like Dragon Ball and Sailor Moon, but shows geared toward older audiences, like Monster and Death Note.  I could just imagine all of the strange hoops that they’d have to jump through to get those on air at any time other than midnight.  All violence? Nerfed.  References to death? No, sir.  Strangely, they’d keep all the explosions, because Stuff Blowing Up is always cool.  Then again, if they did decide to do all of that, a typical Death Note episode would last all of five minutes.  Have you ever seen that skit on Mad TV that parodies The Sopranos where they cut out all of the sex, violence and cursing from to make it fit on PBS?  Yeah, it’d be something like that.

On a somewhat related note, I’m three out of five volumes into the My-HiME (Mai-HiME for those of you who prefer the Japanese title) manga, and it’s about damn time I gave in and bought the DVDs already (nothing earlier than Vol. 3 seems to be available in stores…is that a problem?). I saw this on my dream TV Guide channel and thought “Damn! Shouldn’t a show like this be on Adult Swim or something?”  Ditto stuff like Gunslinger Girl and Noir.  For some reason, I’m drawn to shows (live and animated) with female protagonists.  I blame Sailor Moon.

I guess that’s it for 2007.  Have a happy New Year, y’all!

Category: Anime/Manga, Television
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: anime, censorship, death note, dragon ball, dreams, gunslinger girl, mai-hime, manga, monster, noir, obsession, sailor moon

After the mild success of my first partial original fiction story, The Mystic and the Red Specter (which I don’t think I’ll work on anymore), I think I have a better plan as to how I’m going to write my stories from now on. I’ll probably apply this to any fan fiction stories I write in the future, regardless of length.

1. Outline. Figure out some plot points, and write them in a numeric list format as they come to me. Each bullet point will be no more than two sentences long.
2. Excerpts. For each bullet point, I’ll type up a few lines of dialogue, in script format, so that I know how my characters are supposed to react to the situation. If anything becomes inconsistent or out-of-character, I’ll simply have to rewrite it until it makes sense.
3. Prose. Turn that script dialogue into something more organic, so that it reads like an actual story instead of a stage direction. Probably the toughest part of writing.
4. Separation. If the story is going to be a multiple chapter one, I’ll write the whole thing down first, and then break it into chapters later as necessary. The one thing I realize when I abandoned The Mystic is that a few of the later chapters could easily have been condensed or pared down little by little to make things flow more easily. I’ll try not to make that same mistake again with my next piece.
5. Proofread. Use all of the basics – spell check, grammar check, my own judgment – until everything is workable and ready to publish. But just in case…
6. Beta. I’ll have to search for someone else who can catch any editing mistakes I may have made in my search. At the most, I’ll send a fic out for beta reading for up to 30 days after I’ve finished writing it. If no response is made until then, I’ll just publish the story anyway and see what happens.

This is just the why I think I should do things. Your mileage may vary, obviously.

Category: Literature
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: original fiction, outline, plot points, prose, writing

I’m sitting here, thinking of something to write for my next piece, but as I got sidetracked, I got the middle verse of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” stuck in my head. When I started thinking about that, I also started to think about the anime series Tokyo Mew Mew (What? You say it’s called Mew Mew Power? Never heard of it.) When I combined them in my head, I came up with a mini-parody song based on some of the characters from the series. Again, only the middle verse was used, as it’s the one most people recognize. I’m nowhere to being on the level of “Weird Al” Yankovic, but I thought I’d throw this out there. What do you think? (Lyrics after the jump.) Click to read more…

Category: Anime/Manga, Music
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: bohemian rhapsody, ichigo momomiya, masaya aoyama, parody, queen, tokyo mew mew, too much time on my hands

Here’s to having a happy holiday for all of you Intertubes surfers celebrating Christmas today. May your day be filled with joy, and free of people trying to piss you off.

Naturally, my day started at seven o’clock this morning, as I struggled to breathe through my nose, thanks to a surprise cold attack (boo-hoo!) I don’t feel so good in my head right now, but I think having The Simpsons Movie, both Ghostbusters movies, and the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy in my DVD collection should sort of make up for my crappy mood. So, yeah…it’s been a good Christmas for me so far. What about youse guys and dolls?

Category: Life, Movies
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: christmas, ghostbusters, happy, holiday, lord of the rings trilogy, simpsons movie

Can you believe it? Christmas and Kwanzaa are almost here. I didn’t bother making a Christmas list this year, because I couldn’t figure out anything big to request. I got a few good gifts for my family for this holiday season, but I can’t say what they are, because they might be reading this blog right now (yeah, right).

Also, I think I’m going to add a literature section to this website to post some of the stuff I write. I won’t open it up until the start of the new year, when I actually have things to post.  My HTML skills are getting rusty, so I might as well put them to good use and use up a lot of the spare web space here.  What do you think?

Category: Life, Literature
Author: WillyFourEyes
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Tags: christmas, fanfiction, holiday, kwanzaa