Training Montage

(I don’t actually like the concept of theme songs for text-based media, but if this song doesn’t cross your mind, you’re missing out on the best Daniel Radcliffe film. This isn’t at all related the rest of the post, I just wanted to share)

We’ve had a lot of new hires recently in the workplace. Which is good, probably. I mean, corporate-speak would have me say plenty of people are getting their first hours of work experience in general and an introduction to the food service industry in particular. Which is good in a capitalist sort of way. But it also means that a portion of the people working, sometimes up to a quarter, are almost completely unable to function by themselves in a kitchen. Which means they need training.

Which means I’ve had to train them.

I’ve been vocal in person about how much I don’t want to end up teaching. A lot of that is my (personally) perceived inability to deal with more than, like, two or three people at a time, but I also worry a lot about having to explain my (or really any specific) thought process more than once or twice. Basically, I abhor repetition.

Training is a little different, of course. It happens seldomly enough and I’ve taught enough different positions that it never gets old or repetitive per se, but that only exacerbates the other problem I alluded to: explaining my mindset as I’m training.

When I’m working in the kitchen, I have a million things going on. I have two screens to keep track of, four appliances each with their own timers to be aware of, and five areas that each need to be individually stocked. Not to mention I also have to keep my area clean and get it as ready as possible for my closing routine which is a whole additional can of metaphorical worms. And it’s difficult, I’ve found, to properly relay all that to whoever is shadowing me for a day.

Most recently, I wanted to start the training session with a quick rundown of what and where everything was, but the dinner rush came early, and I was stuck explaining my thought process behind chickens and pasta cooking, while also rushing around my eight-by-eight foot area trying to get everyone’s food out in a timely manner. When things calmed down and I was able to ask, “Do you have any questions so far?” I got the “No” that probably meant “Yes, but I don’t have the right words to ask any of them.”

Or maybe that’s just my own insecurities. They did have questions later, and as far as I can tell they’re doing a good enough job with further training as far as I can tell. Although maybe that’s simply because after that day, they started training with somebody else.

-F

Weird Nostalgia

This was going to be a Raindrops on Roses post, but I decided against that for a couple reasons. First, I knew what theme I wanted for my movie/game/book set to be, and I knew that what I wanted to talk about here didn’t mesh with that at all. And second, I’m not actually sure I remember a lot of what I want to talk about at all. Which is kind of fitting, given that what I want to talk about is Neal Shusterman’s The Schwa was Here.

Like, I remember these moments, the set pieces as it were. There’s a kid who is functionally invisible, you see. Your brain can see and hear him, it just tends not to. And I remember the montage of moments as the people who do start noticing him test the limits of his power (for example, he gets through 2006-era airport security until he also tries taking a metal bar with him). But I don’t remember the actual characters at all. The summaries I could find online say this kid’s friends start taking advantage of him, and I have no idea how true that is.

But I also remember liking it despite knowing nothing about the plot. I remember really appreciating the third act especially as everyone learns valuable life lessons and our main characters find friends they never thought they would (if you’re offended at spoilers for a twelve-year-old book feel free to not write anything in the comments). So I’m in this weird position of having fond memories of no memories at all.

I had a similar reaction recently to the movie Annihilation (2018). I mentioned being a little low on the movie, but when asked why, I struggled to remember my initial reaction. When I did respond, it was mostly remembering what I had said before than actually remembering examples from the movie.

The common thread between these two examples, I think, is frequency and distance in time. I’ve only ever read The Schwa was Here once about eleven years ago. I only saw Annihilation once back in February. By comparison, I remember a lot about Madeline’s Madeline or The War of the Worlds because of how recently I’ve seen them, and I remember a lot about Upstream Color or The Phantom Tollbooth because of how often I rewatched or reread them. Which I imagine is not a new development in terms of understanding how memory works, but it seemed interesting in this context with how much media I consume.

-F

Raindrops on Roses (Part Twelve) -- 2001: A Space Odyssey

There are a number of science-fiction films with post-release novelizations. I myself remember reading through the Star Wars books, though I never dipped into the expanded universe outside of a few series that I barely remember (all I remember are the force-sensitive power crystals used in lightsabers). The point is, they exist. They’re a known quantity. So what’s different about this one?

It’s semi-well-known that Stanley Kubrick and Sir Arthur C. Clarke collaborated on the story, which means for the purposes of this post each of their respective creations is an adaptation of the other. While they both tell the same story (or, perhaps, the same, three stories), the way they go about them is significantly different.

Some of that is the medium. One wouldn’t expect a book to do a movie’s job in the same way one doesn’t expect a psychiatrist to do a brain surgeon’s job. The movie, for example, doesn’t use narration, instead relying largely on cinematography and audio cues to make the same points. But some would say that’s to the movie’s detriment. The first and third acts of the movie aren’t exactly viewer-friendly, often drawing out shots probably longer than necessary (especially the third act, I mean, have you seen that montage?). The book, of course, has to rely on it’s narration, which means that one can finally learn what that third-act acid trip actually meant, the alien intent behind the monoliths, and so on.

Some of this is simply a difference in style between the two creators. Clarke had a dry, technical style, obsessed with detail and trying to make everything fit after his sci-fi conceits were made. Rendezvous with Rama had an ambassador from Mercury, for example, but otherwise was able to fully explore an alien ship without a single thing in it seeming human. On the other hand, Stanley Kubrick was very visual (he started his career as a photographer, this should be expected), that’s part of the reason a bunch of these shots hold for so long. It also gives a sense of normalcy that Clarke’s adaptation couldn’t quite match. In the film, all the characters are used to the technology, so we believe this world is lived-in. The book, partly because of the writing style used, isn’t able to provide this, instead giving the reader a Rama-like experience.

But all this ignores the premise of this series. Why do I like this book and this movie? Well, some of it is because of those technical details, guiding the reader/viewer through a world that (at the time) was only forty years away. But I also enjoy it because of how the two compliment each other, each one adding (sometimes necessary) context that the other one would otherwise lack.

I’m reminded of how David Lynch reportedly passed out pamphlets describing the plot of Dune before his adaptation premiered. In that instance, there was a belief that the supplementary material was required for the piece to be comprehensible. These works defy that necessity. Even in the film’s more incomprehensible moments, even as the book runs dryly through unnecessary technical detail, they still present a complete vision of the world of tomorrow.

-F

Next time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTgFtxHhCQ0

Great Artists Steal (Part Two)

I know that everything good has been done before. I know that. But just like how internet advertisements seemingly know what you’ve been thinking about buying before you even search for it, it seems like when I’ve been sitting on a writing idea for too long someone else just sweeps it away and means that if I do end up using it, it looks like I’m inspired by something I probably wasn’t at best and plagiarizing at worst.

For example, I’ve been interested in Prospero’s final monolog in The Tempest since I saw it performed. I wasn’t sure where I was going to use it (I don’t generally write about plays from the inside (a “don’t write what you don’t know about situation)), but I did keep it around as something to consider. Though now that Lady Bird’s out, with Lucas Hedges’ interpretation appearing as a turning point in the movie, that enthusiasm has died a little.

Similarly, I had at least a semblance of an outline involving a film about the creation of a film (because I like meta stuff like that (I know what I said last week and I meant it)), but it turns out a film called Madeline’s Madeline just premiered at Sundance this year that in interviews the director describes as an interpretation of her own process of filmmaking. So it’s a bit more subtle, but it’s definitely there. And if that doesn’t count, there’s also Synecdoche, New York.

I wouldn’t be as upset (to be clear, I’m not that upset) if they weren’t all really good movies. Which means these ideas haven’t just been done, they’ve been done well. I can’t even justify keeping these ideas trying to do better. I mean, I can, but it feels like I’m lying to myself when I say that.

But on the other hand, I feel like I’m selling myself short a little too. Like, this sort of thinking surely isn’t the sort of confident thinking that gets ideas onto paper, right? Because the alternative is looking at these movies and thinking “I totally could have done that” and not doing anything about it. And that’s a stagnant style of living that I’ve been trying to avoid by, for example, starting this blog. Or writing regularly, at least. What I should be doing is treating these as inspiration. Maybe it will be better, maybe it won’t. But it’ll definitely still be my idea.

-F

Here's an interesting blog about Japan: https://ohiomiyazaki.blogspot.com/

I Am A Cruel God

There’s this meta-trope in media (“meta-” in that it relates to the creation of media rather than the media itself. Adding the prefix “meta” to things doesn’t automatically make it super cool, kids) called Creator Backlash, which basically describes the process in which the maker of a thing comes to despise it, sometimes going out of their way to destroy it. For example, Herge, the creator of the Tintin comics, felt he could never surpass Tintin in Tibet, and so the remaining stories either take a silly (and, frankly, unforeshadowed) dive into science-fiction (Flight 714), or were written to deliberately change nothing about the world or its characters (The Castafiore Emerald, Tintin and the Land of the Picaros).

As I’ve started taking writing more seriously, I’ve noticed this trend in certain genres (it’s always the “nerdier” genres, though that’s its own discussion) that’s perhaps a creator’s hatred of their own work starts even earlier than that. I have to wonder what Alan Moore thought of Barbara Gordon before he had The Joker shoot her (though I don’t have to wonder too hard; he wrote DC Comics asking if it was okay to paralyze Batgirl and editorial’s response was apparently “cripple the bitch”). I have to wonder how George R.R. Martin felt when he killed off your favorite character (this one’s a little trickier to find).

I think this is starting to affect me as well. Way back at the beginning of the year, I wrote about Naviim, the continent-and-a-half fantasy setting that I toyed around with from time to time. And in the second of those three posts (“The Video Game that Never Was”), I wrote about the saga of Daniel and Joan.

I hate both of them. I think it has to do with the fact that they make decisions that make sense for them, from their perspective, but as the omniscient god of their universe, I know the longer-term consequences of their actions, and because I’m not as compassionate as, say the Abrahamic God, I hate that they can’t see how this’ll all end.

Saying that the willingness to write bad things happening to well-intentioned people is the mark of good storytelling (or, to be more direct, that I am a good storyteller), is probably too prideful (it’s not Impostor Syndrome if you literally haven’t published anything). But I do find myself taking a sort of sadistic glee in it, in looking at how miserable my characters have become and justifying it to myself by saying, “You did this to yourself.”

-F

The Only Eyes That Matter

I have this fear in me, a fear that I’m sure I share with a bunch of other creative-types, on the nature of “completeness”. Even when I don’t have an outline for a piece, I still find myself making a list of things I want to mention in my head, a mental checklist of everything -- sometimes in order, sometimes not -- that I want to talk about. Another thing about me is that I am terrified of killing my darlings (though, to be fair, the phrase isn’t something easy like, “You have to sweep away your crap”). This means that whenever I put something out into the public eye, whether that be for assignments or this blog or anything else, I’m generally not thinking about how good the piece is as it stands, I’m too busy thinking about what content didn’t make it.

I remember at the beginning of one of my more recent workshops, I was asked: “Is there anything you want us to talk specifically about your piece?” I didn’t really have an answer to that. I remember saying, “No, I’m still in the ‘I hate this’ phase of editing,” but that wasn’t really true. I was thinking about how I didn’t really end the piece, it kind of just drifted off as soon as the main character ran out of people to talk to.

The workshop didn’t notice or at least didn’t say it during the workshop itself. Some people wanted to “know more” in a general sense, but they only really noted that in response letters I read later. They liked it. They really did.

What I forgot was that I was looking at the negative space of the piece, the parts that I had left out thinking everybody else would see them. But the audience never gets to see that part of the piece, just whatever’s on the page in front of them.

There was a time where I would be gently reminded to write more details, to make sure that everything in my head was written down so that the audience could see it. I think this fear comes from that, that feeling of not being able to translate those imaginary images into physical sentences.

I don’t know where I’m going with this, really. Just trying to put words to the knot in my stomach whenever I let other people see what I’m working on. I’ve definitely had to cut anecdotes from this post. I just hope you won’t be able to see where.

-F

Raindrops on Roses (Part Eleven) -- Telltale's The Walking Dead

(trailer)
(purchase link)

The Walking Dead is a comic series that started in 2003 and has continued its singular story for the past fifteen years, chronicling the adventures of Rick Grimes as he wakes up from a coma and has to deal with a zombie apocalypse. Author Robert Kirkman has stated that he never was interested in how zombie media at the time demonstrated its endings. After all, even if the protagonists make it on a boat to some uninhabited island, there’s still a zombie apocalypse going on. Kirkman’s solution was, in essence, to not end the comic, at least until civilization was restored.

Video games don’t really have that luxury. There’s just too much downtime in between releases to hold people’s attention for more than one or two years, and that’s being generous. For a while, though, there was an attempt to match the episodic nature of serials by releasing a bunch of shorter games one after the other. The proven formula still has downtime between seasons (for examples of a failed formula, see this video about Half-Life Two: Episode Three), but it did a decent enough job at mimicking the serial format before the pressure to deliver forced the genre to collapse under its own weight.

But when it was in vogue, the pinnacle of this format was Telltale Game’s adaptation of The Walking Dead. Like Adaptation. from last week, we see an attention to deliver the themes of the piece rather than retell the story (a mistake Telltale themselves performed for their two adaptations of Jeff Smith’s Bone comic series) in its entirety. Instead of retelling Rick Grimes' story, Telltale instead decided to tell the story of Lee Everett.

Lee’s down on his luck. Once a history professor, he discovered his wife sleeping with a state senator and killed the senator for it. But while riding in a police car to his fate, the zombie apocalypse happens, and he gets a new lease on life.

In the comic, the focus is more on the relationships Rick develops with his group (the more cynical among the fanbase would say this is so it hurts more when they die (no that’s not a spoiler, it’s a zombie comic)), and the game takes a similar tack. It’s a point-and-click adventure game, sure, but more often than not the pointing and clicking is used to select dialog choices -- or other ways of responding (do you crush a man’s head with a cinder block or nah?) -- than solving obtuse puzzles. In fact, the most difficult puzzle is probably “use axe on zombie” so there’s a little hint for you.

More specifically than developing relationships with a group, though, is developing Lee’s relationship with Clementine. Clementine is an eight-year-old girl separated from her parents, and Lee takes it upon himself to find them. Now, conventional wisdom would say that child characters in video games are useless and terrible (in fact another character, Duck, is whiny and useless and generally very hateable), but strong writing and vocal performances from both Dave Fennoy and Melissa Hutchison make their relationship throughout the five episodes quite possibly the best thing to come out of video gaming’s trend of “Dad escapism” (see The Last of Us, God of War 4, and Bioshock Infinite for more examples of this trend).

The problem these dialog driven style though is that the replayability is terrible in the same way that Choose Your Own Adventure books are exciting. Playing The Walking Dead more than once reveals the cracks in the system; the places where your choices don’t really matter even if you think they did at the time. But for that one first, perfect playthrough, it’s all worth it.

-F

Next time: Possibly the space book.

Also if you didn’t know already my brother blog, Secret Asian Man has migrated over to Wordpress. You can now find him here.