#I'm referencing some completely unrelated books

[chaoticfroggo]

I love finding connections between completely unrelated things in content I consume. I was just listening to Bowie's Space Oddity (thanks to my interest in the Marauders) and for some reason it clicked now, even though I've heard the song a couple of times before, that the Major Tom, who the song is about, is also referenced in the book/movie "Wonder". For anyone who isn't familiar with Wonder, it's about a young boy with a facial deformity who has undergone many surgeries in his lifetime to look more normal, but still has lots of scars on his face and isn't completely free of deformities. His older sister's best friend gets him this astronaut helmet for Christmas one year so he can hide his face when he feels overwhelmed, and her nickname for him is Major Tom. I was always confused by the nickname but never really questioned it. It all makes sense now.

Another thing from a while ago that also fits with the topic is when I was learning Latin a while ago (I had to put it on pause due to too many other commitments), I learnt that the Latin word for bread is Panem. This is also the name of the country in the Hunger Games. I did some research and sparknotes has a really interesting explanation as to why it was named that. Here is the explanation from sparknotes:

The word panem is Latin for “bread,” and given the similarity of the Hunger Games to the gladiatorial Games of Ancient Rome, it recalls panem et circenses, or “bread and circuses.” The phrase refers to the Roman Caesars’ strategy of quelling public discontent by providing the people with plenty of food and entertainment. The entertainment, of course, was largely provided by gladiatorial Games. In the novel, these gladiatorial Games are crossed with reality television to create the Hunger Games. Setting Panem in the location of the present-day United States, and retaining parts of U.S. culture like the mining industry of Appalachia that we see in District 12, draws a link between the two. But the metaphor gets more complicated because of the Ancient Roman influences of Panem. The result is a triple metaphor that uses Panem to draw connections between Ancient Rome and the modern United States, and it suggests that the modern United States has something like its own panem et circenses strategy in place, with reality television taking on the role of the gladiatorial Games.

I just find it really interesting when I can make little connections between things I'm interested in that are seemingly unrelated. I think it's cool to get a glimpse into an author's mind like this.

#literature #reading #i've connected the dots #latin #panem #hunger games #the hunger games #wonder #space oddity #the hunger games trilogy #david bowie #bowie

[usaghinanami99]

how are you into devilman

Fine, thanks, how about you? Kidding, kidding. I know what you're asking (and I know I'm late answering...): I don't seem like the type of person that would post about something like Devilman, right? Well, the reason behind my getting into it is actually the simplest you can think of: as the most cursory glance at my blog can show, I am an animanga nerd (and for many other things too, but that's a story for another day). I've also been a literary nerd since my dad taught me to read, and now I'm a Literarure student, to boot. My burning passion for literary creation and, crucially, for acquiring knowledge about it (through reading it first-hand, of course) thus plays an enormous part in the way I read and/or watch non-literary texts, which I never choose to engage with any less seriously than I'd do with anything else. And, well, you know how there are some books that you can't not read if you want to understand the literary history of a particular country and/or language? When the medium we're concerning ourselves with is manga, then we can't not read Devilman the same way we can't not read Astro Boy, Attack no. 1, The roses of Versailles or dozens other milestones in the history of Japanese comic that I can't list here and now. I've known that Devilman was among these required readings for a long time, because its immense importance was always referenced in all the books and magazines about the history of manga that I devoured as a Gymnasium student. And my curiosity only grew with the years, because the comic book shop I was a regular at couldn't obviously sell me a series with such a high age rating before I turned 18. You can add to that the fact that I thought I was already well-acquainted with Gō Nagai, when in fact I was only familiar with family-friendly animated adaptations of his most famous works. This is because since around the age of 7 I had watched and rewatched the Robotic Trilogy anime (which consists of Mazinger Z, Great Mazinger and UFO Robot Grendizer), as well as the unrelated Jeeg Robot, be it via some of the very frequent TV reruns or via videotapes that my mum had recorded at the end of the last century. Grendizer, in particular, is very dear to my mum because she grew up on it during the late 70's, so to put is shortly she made it so it could become a part of my childhood too. (Off-topic side note: she was very excited when news of the upcoming Grendizer U reboot aired on TV, but I fear she'll be disappointed due to it being written by the same Ichirō Ōkōchi who's brought us Devilman Crybaby...) Putting it simply: I knew I liked these anime series so I thought I liked Gō Nagai, which fostered my desire to read this all-important but forbidden Gō Nagai manga that I kept on reading about. How things have changed... It may be repeated too much, but it's just because it's true: no one respects Gō Nagai more than those who only known him cursorily through Tōē Dōga's classic adaptations of his giant robot stories, but no one hates Gō Nagai more than those who have actually endured reading his manga.

This was just the needlessly long story behind why, as you can see, I had the moral duty to read Devilman. Flash forward to early 2017, I turn 18, I go to the comic book shop, I buy Devilman, I return home, I read Devilman, I am traumatised, I begrudgingly recognise its genius, I am still disgusted, I develop a (probably unhealthy) love-hate relationship with this manga. Not with Gō Nagai though, that one is a pure hate relationship. BTW, you can imagine how shocked I was when I discovered that my childhood fave Tōkyō Mew Mew was secretly a Devilman retelling; I am just glad I hadn't yet watched stuff like, say, Neon genesis Evangelion before reading Devilman, but this just proved how right I was about there being some manga that should be required reading before passing on to... well, everything else.

I unfortunately suffer from a terminal form of completism syndrome, which is how I ended up searching Japanese blogs for info about those silly pachinko cutscenes that have sparked your question. But in fact, Devilman may very well be what is slowly curing me, since I was so horrified from some of the later official material I've read, not even mitigated by the redeeming virtues of the original manga, that more and more I'm starting to reconsider my stance about having to read and watch *everything* about any particular franchise I get into. I wish I didn't have to learn this the hard way, though... and that I had some brain bleach handy, sigh. Yes, I hate Gō Nagai. Yes, I hate almost all the non-70's Devilman stuff that I've read or watched so far (to the point that I don't know whether to go on or not). Yes, sometimes I wish I could warn my younger self. But historical knowledge is one of the things I value most and, if I hadn't read this foundational title, what sort of pseudo manga fan would I be today? And I love Ryō Asuka to death - don't we all? - along with many future characters and stories by different authors that he paved the way for. These are the two things that I reckon make it worth it to be into something as infuriating and terrifying as Devilman.

#ask #personal

[rjalker]

okay time to go cut my hair and maybe when I’m done I’ll finish this Adrien pepper prompt which is just named <>< 

or maybe I’ll finish the Fallout au. It needs like,,,,,three more key scenes and then it’s done.

Little Johnny should have died in the tornado.

We should have seen that coming, but it’s not our fault we’re good people. It’s not our fault we’re generous and kind.

#I'm referencing some completely unrelated books #if you know you know

[delusion-of-negation]

Bruh, tracing is literally, as in literally literally one of the most used drawing-support techniques in history. Old painters did it. Throughout the history of animation it's been done. People are just sad sacks of shit who wanna be "Purists". Same with references, people are just pretending that "you must do it all from your mind" is the only way to be a good artist. Well listen up, even if it's from memory it's referencing. Drawing a skeletal structure and drawing on top is "tracing." 🙄

re this post

IKR!? I'm so sick of it. and how even half of the responses I see shutting down purists on the references are still like "as long as you don't trace uwu". ma'am there are drawing books that'll tell you to trace this figure then draw something on top of it. there's post after post and drama after drama about this and it's so awful, and so unfair on new artists. genuinely making out like tracing is somehow doing something morally wrong.

tbh my stance in an ideal world would be even more lax than the one I put forward in the post - as you may have guessed from my opinions re writing, when I go off on my rants about just how much of literary history is just rewrites (see: greek and roman epic poets) and fanfic (see: pretty much everything), and how copyright law is a plague. my stance in an ideal world would be "as long as it's not a literal replica that you're passing off as your own, you can trace some parts and then leave references like it's an essay and you're citing your sources". in an ideal world I'd be able to rewrite Harry Potter with the only change being that I added or altered every colour to be absolutely ridiculous, then called it "Harry Potter and The Colour Correction" and cited the original book.

we don't live in an ideal world, so my stance is still that you should cite/not pass off as your own entirely, but also that you shouldn't sell anything traced at all, but other than that go wild. especially in your own room learning to draw - in fact I'd go as far as to say you should trace sometimes then, it's a great way to get used to knowing how to move your hand to make certain shapes you want to be able to draw. contrary to popular belief, nobody is born with the ability to just know exactly how this shape is made with a pencil, you have to learn.

also purists are so dumb, there's some great wheezywaiter videos (can't remember links to any others but you get the idea) on how literally nothing is original, and it's one of the most important things I think new writers/artists should come to terms with. there is absolutely nothing original, everything you have ever done, said, thought, or created was inspired by something and will have similarities to so many things, completely unrelated and loosely related alike.

the more I think about tracing, the more I think it's a direct comparison to what I've said about writing, Ovid is considered a great yet... he literally rewrote other people's stuff. like, you know his work if you know the version of the Medusa myth where she started human - he did that, that was him, Medusa existed prior and he just changed her backstory. THAT may not have even been original, as we don't know if the artists depicting her as beautiful were what inspired him or visa versa, or if they were both inspired by a third source. he did the literary equivalent of tracing and then adding his own flare (albeit I think his flare made it worse, but that's just me), and that's fine. it's a really new thing that we give a shit.

old painters learnt to paint when they were apprentices by copying and tracing the work of the person teaching them. you don't learn to draw or write or create in a vacuum, you just copy what others do. and copying just from replicating a movement, rather than following a line, is a harder place to start, and there's literally no reason to force yourself to dive into the deep end right away.

like, this is a weird example, but do you remember how many old trends on youtube were started by people like AmazingPhil, and he'd just be like "yeah, it's fine, you can do this idea, I don't own it", because they'd made their own video bouncing off his idea, they hadn't just reuploaded it. people treated it like he was owed something for what they'd done, and he was like "no, seriously I don't mind, I guess a shout out would be nice though". I remember hearing that he was "such a saint" for it, and given the climate that's true, but his stance should really be the norm. he was correct. everyone else just wants to be angry about things and has had their brains poisoned by omnipresent overzealous copyright laws.

this is one of those things where you think it's a massive deal because the whole of society acts like there's some moral sin committed, and then one day something just clicks and you go "wait, this is actually fine? in fact it's good? in fact it's what humans have always done? what the fuck?" and then you don't know how to turn that lightbulb on for others as they screech about how the tiniest infringement on the sanctity of "nuh uh this is mine and it's original and you're only permitted to look" is pure evil.

nothing is original, everything you make will always be retold in weird ways, even if those ways stay in someone's brain. when I went to an event once, I was talking to some other writers, and I said I don't think your story is finished when you stop writing it, it's just words on a page, it isn't finished until it gets read by someone and made into some unique visualisation in their mind, and then it gets finished in slightly different ways every time anyone reads it, and even then it's not really finished because anyone may dream up their own additions, and you have no control over that. you got inspired by others, you built on that and made something, others bring that to life and build on it - you didn't create and finish a piece in the void, you're one part of an everlasting process. and I had a mix of responses, ranging from strong agreement to "well duh" and beyond, but some people acted like that was totally stupid - like, nope the finished book is my book and it's how I want it and it's finished and that's that. idk how to tell you that you live in a society, buddy.

[writingquestionsanswered]

I'm working on a novel that juggles many POVs. I have the general plot figured out, but many of the plots are disconnected, happening in different places at different times, so they don't all crash into each other. I'm not always sure when to put which POV where. Do you have any suggestions for how I could decide when to place which chapters where, especially to juggle multiple plot lines, or how many chapters you can go before you need to go back to another plotline? Any guidance would be nice.

Juggling Multiple Plot Lines

When you’re writing an epic, something like the Game of Thrones books, you sometimes have multiple plots that seem disconnected, but it’s super important that these plots are connected by a common thread. In Game of Thrones, for example, all of the plots were connected by one of two common threads: the fight for the throne and the fight beyond the wall, and in both cases, each thread was impacted (at least in some small way) by the goings on in the other thread. Eventually, everything did all come together.

If you have a story with multiple, completely disconnected plots, with no common threads between them, and no merging of the threads toward the end, you need to consider why these plots belong together in one novel in the first place. If all they share is a universe, you might just have a series of unrelated novels that all take place in the same universe.

However, if your plots are all connected by common threads and all merge back into the main plot at some point, there are a few different ways you can decide what chapters go where. 

1. Chronological

The most common way would be to write out a timeline for each separate plot line, then create a master timeline combining the events from all of them. You can even go a step further and note over each event who the POV character is. Then, you let the chapters unfold accordingly. 

2. Referential Transition

Sometimes in one plot line’s chapter, you end up referencing an event, character, or location from another plot line. When that happens, this can sometimes serve as a natural transition into that plot line in the next chapter. It doesn’t matter if the reference comes at or near the end of the chapter, even. Just it being there somewhere within the chapter is enough to have it in your reader’s mind so that it feels natural to go there next. This is especially true when the reference creates a sense of curiosity in the mind of the reader so that they’re anxious to get to that character/event/place to see for themselves what’s going on there.

3. Thematic Transition

Quite often, you can play off a chapter’s theme when transitioning to the next POV. So, let’s say in plot line #1, you have a character who’s dying. And let’s say in plot line #3, you have a character who has just given birth. If you leave off Chapter 7 at the bedside of the dying character, then open Chapter 8 as the new mother character is cradling and admiring her newborn while the other characters look on, you create a sense of cohesion along the lines of life and death, sunrise sunset, circle of life, etc. that can feel very natural.

4. Visual Transition

Another thing that can work is to look for a like visual reference that can create a transition. This is more common in TV and movies, but it can work in books, too. Especially in the absence of anything else to indicate what POV character’s chapter should come next. So, for example, let’s say Character D’s chapter ends with them waking up in some sort of prison cell, and they’re watching the light of the sunrise crawl across the dirt floor. Then, maybe Character B is on a battlefield early in the morning that same day--that would be a great chapter to go into next, especially if Character B is watching the sun as it rises over the battlefield. 

Ultimately, the chronological method generally works best, but these other methods can work in a pinch. If it truly doesn’t matter what goes where, just follow your gut and find the natural flow.

As far as how many chapters you can have in each plot line before switching, I probably wouldn’t go more than two or three if you can help it. Also, I have a feeling you know this already but for anyone else who might not: with multi-POV character stories, you don’t have to switch back and forth in a regular pattern. So, for example, you don’t have to go A, B, C, A, B, C, A, B, C. Switch around as necessary. :)

Best of luck with your story!

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