Round Peg, Square Hole

First thing's first. Earlier this week, my friend's grandfather died. I honestly bring this up just so that when I'm digging through the archives years from now I see that this was a good month AFTER I wrote this. Hey, maybe I should just start dating my updates or something.

Now then, on to the rant!

If you have a TV show, and it isn't prematurely cancelled, sooner or later, someone is going to make a movie of it. Barring some miracle, this movie will totally suck. Why? Well, part of it is that annoying habit of making such movies accessible to people who never saw the show, which is pointless anyway since such movies are almost exclusively watched by fans of the shows. A bigger part of it though is this little concept most people never seem to get.

Any given medium has strengths, weaknesses, and certain conventions which must be followed. Therefore, any given story can only be properly presented in one, maybe two mediums. Now, if you're an aspiring writer, or some sort of producer, then you are almost definitely not reading this. I seldom let little things like probability interfere with my plans though, so on with the list of things for those people who probably aren't reading this to consider.

Movies

Pros: Officially recognized as an art form, sky's the limit budget, huge screen allows for eye popping visuals and copious visual subtext.

Cons: Everything must be introduced, explored, and resolved, in the span of 90 minutes.

Conventions: The focus of a movie must be presented as the most significant even in history, true love within an hour, and then there's that whole stupid "three act" deal.

Best Suited For: Simple easily explored stories backed with rich subtle imagery.

TV Series

Pros: No limit on length, cliffhangers.

Cons: Very limited budget, episodic format, chance of cancellation part way through.

Conventions: A romantic relationship that builds slowly over the course of three years, each episode must end with nothing different from when it started.

Best Suited For: Long, slow building, character driven stories, comedies.

Books

Pros: Ability to easily show character thoughts, experimental storytelling methods can be used, setting can be ignored, officially recognized as an art form.

Cons: Visual subtext impossible, limited audience, everything must be verbally described.

Conventions: Deep metaphors, confusing story twists left and right.

Best Suited For: Deep philosophical stories, in depth character studies.

Comic Books

Pros: Ability to easily show character thoughts and still provide visual subtext.

Cons: Least respected artistic medium in the country, requires static images to convey action.

Conventions: Excessive violence and language.

Best Suited For: Gritty edgy stories that are too controversial to portray in mediums the mainstream pays attention to.

I could continue this list but, eh, I don't really feel like it right now. Plus I have more things to talk about!

People have been telling me Farscape is cancelled all weekend. I'm not believing a word of it though until I see some official confirmation of this. The best anyone has mustered so far is a log of a chat posted on a fan site. Something official would be more like www.scifi.com/pressreleases/farscapecancellation.html or something like that. My reasons for this grim skepticism are a combination of knowing that far easier to believe and back up rumors float around out there based on squat, and that the Sci-Fi channel has always seemed fully aware it's the only worthwhile thing they have, and use it as the basis for all their scheduling. Kinda like how every new show Fox premieres is right after The Simpsons, and Comedy Central after South Park. I suppose it could also be argued I'm still on denial while these people asking me to help with letter writing campaigns are on bargaining already, but either way I require hard evidence before I freak out.

Couple more notes here too...

A decent number of people reading this are hoping to meet me some time at Anime Central this coming May. Up until about... 2 days ago, this had a snowball's chance in hell of happening. However, I know someone who was bereaved of his senses long enough to actually buy me a plane ticket in exchange for my making a fool of myself in a painful manner. Not bad. Now all I have to do is talk someone into paying my way to E3 if I spend the whole event dressed as a Pikmin, get a ticket to Japan by making a decent Pilot costume, and getting a ticket to NonCon by finding out there's a web page up for it since there wasn't the last time I checked. HEY! Now there is! It even links back most prominently to my account of last year's! See? So I guess the only real barriers on that one would be finding a ride, and a place to sleep once there. Last year I didn't have to worry about that since one of the people running the con gave me a lift and well, sleeping just plain didn't happen. I assume now though that the giver of that generous ride has come to his senses enough not to drive like 4 hours out of his way again though, and ideally I'd like some means of getting there earlier somehow if at all possible, particularly if I end up on the guest panel again, or running a Tyranny game or something like that.

Ahem. Anyway though, the point is, I will definitely be hitting ACen this year, and nothing's gonna stop me... unless maybe I get some sort of job where I can't get off of work that weekend, but I don't plan to, since what's the point of having a job when you can't spend the money you're making on what you got the job to save up for?

Speaking of money, holding up my part of the bargain, thanks to money people threw at me last month, I now present the first of four mandatory updates to other chunks of my page. A new format for this anime page, a new review of Hellsing, and a rewritten one of Trigun. Enjoy.