Image by Raymond Solar.
UPDATE: I’ve changed my praxis a bit.
Yesterday, I made a post stating that I won’t talk about big media franchises on this blog anymore, calling it “Brand Zero.” The aim of it is to promote works that will never gain visibility on large geek culture blogs for one reason or another rather than posting about some major brand that doesn’t need any help getting the word out.
Today, I will clarify how I will practice Brand Zero.
Recently, friend of the blog Jon Del Arroz mentioned that the common practice of trashing famous media franchises on Youtube and other places online does nothing to change the state of pop culture (archive here.) In fact, it makes things worse because we act as unpaid marketers for big media by doing this. Such conversations give the large brands more clout and reach — and thus more market share. The brands know this, too; they and their employees produce inflammatory content specifically to get complainers talking. The complainers then cooperate, thinking that they’re making a difference when they’re really just making Big Media richer.
Therefore there is only one solution: Cease this madness at once. I call it Brand Zero.
NOTE: In an earlier post, I mentioned that I wanted to do a Combat Frame Xseed/Shining Tomorrow crossover. I’m sorry to say that it won’t be happening any time soon since Brian Niemeier rejected the idea. I respect his decision; please do not harass Brian over this.
Within the space of a few minutes, I saw two different posts outlining two different philosophies.
One was friend of the blog JD Cowan’s review of Bradford C. Walker’s Reavers of the Void. The other was a Twitter thread explaining why the recent Joker film is relevant to today.
They could not be more different; in fact, the post and the tweet show worldviews that directly clash.
The post — and the novel it reviews — asserts that good and evil are real, and that with great struggle, good can overcome evil. The novel in particular asserts that the Christian God is the source of this good, and that through Him, all things are possible.
On the other hand, the tweet decries those who find the Joker film to be too nihilistic. Its writer asserts that the movie did well because heroism is dead. According to him, no one wants heroes anymore because society is corrupt and collapsing, with nothing to look forward to. In this social climate, trying to tell a heroic story is absurd and embarrassing. One must wait for society to collapse and a new one to take its place before heroes become relevant again.
My sympathies lie with the blog post, and not only because I’m mentioned in it.
Folks, I have some bad news to share: I haven’t been working on Shining Tomorrow Volume 2 as hard as I should have. Make no mistake — I’ll still complete it, it’s just that I’ve been taking longer than I wanted.
The good news is why it’s taking so long: because finally, at long last, I have made real progress in my study of the Japanese language.
Last weekend, I wrote a shameful post talking about how I was going to cancel Shining Tomorrow. I thought I was making a hard-edged business decision — “killing your darlings” and all that jazz — but the truth was that I was just feeling down.
But my readers weren’t having it. They saw my cowardice for what it was and told me to get back in the fight. At first, I dismissed them, but then I thought about what I was doing.
And then it hit me. And once it did, I got back in the saddle with a renewed fire. Thus, the full Shining Tomorrow quadrilogy is on the slate once again.
But how will I aporoach it?
Effective today, Shining Tomorrow, what I hoped would be an epic giant robot quadrilogy full of daring battles and unanticipated twists, is hereby canceled due to low sales, though the book will remain available for purchase. I cannot justify spending time and money on something that isn’t working, and I won’t waste hours of every day writing a sequel no one will read.
But that was just one way I was proven wrong. There’s another, very important way as well.
UPDATE: Screw that defeatist nonsense. Shining Tomorrow is back on. But I was still proven wrong in an important way; read on to find out.
We often hear about how video games are an art form and about how its revenues exceed Hollywood’s, yet film and television remain the undisputed king and queen of the entertainment landscape. Video games get attention, but not the kind of broad mainstream attention that films get. “Making a video game about something” does not have the same cultural shine as “making a film about something.”
There’s a simple reason for this: Film and television remain the most accessible mediums by far.
“Someday, I’ll write that book.”
“Someday, I’ll learn an instrument.”
“Someday, I’ll make a film.”
We all want to do something someday. Some of us even know that someday is today.
But what we don’t realize is that we should work with what we have.
In matters of love, men are attracted to looks while women are attracted to status and personality. This is a fact borne out by innumerable psychological studies and by many frustrated suitors. This fact is the reason women accuse men of being shallow and men accuse women of only wanting bad boys. This is also the reason men rate women’s attractiveness on a bell curve while women rate most men as unattractive (not saying it’s unfair, just stating facts.)
However, this applies just as much to entertainment as it does to romance.
Yesterday at noon Eastern time, I released the old version of my short film Defeat the Witch! on Youtube. As my first-ever film, I’m proud of it and I encourage all of you to watch if you haven’t already.
UPDATE: The post refers to the earlier cut of the film. The revised cut can be seen at the end.
That being said, I’ve received a couple of major critiques about the film. I don’t consider them insults at all, for I know that I have a lot to learn about the art of visual storytelling.
