February 23, 2016
Hello, blog readers, this is Neil again. This week's assignment was to do something similar to last week's, which was defending a band or musical artist I like from hypothetical haters. This time, it's defending a movie I like from hypothetical haters. The term "movie", however, is somewhat hard to define nowadays. Most people that desire high-quality writing and storytelling in this day and age go for television (the most consistently cited TV channels for high-quality work are AMC, BBC America, FX, HBO, Cinemax, IFC, Showtime, Netflix, and Amazon Prime Instant Video, and many say that Adult Swim, Comedy Central, USA Network, Cartoon Network, Disney XD, and Hulu are beginning to reach similar levels with their programming), and thanks to the advent of binge-watching, TV seasons are often organized like longer movies now. Plenty of my favorite things nowadays (The Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit trilogies, The Lego Movie, the Jurassic Park series, the original Back to the Future and Ghostbusters films, The Wizard of Oz, the Disney Animated Canon, Pixar, DreamWorks Animation) are movie franchises, so those could all serve as traditional "movies". The TV shows I like (The WB/CW's Smallville; BBC's Doctor Who; Adult Swim's Moral Orel, Rick and Morty, and The Venture Bros.; Cartoon Network's Ben 10, Scooby-Doo: Mystery Incorporated, Steven Universe, and We Bare Bears; Comedy Central's South Park; Disney Television Animation's Gravity Falls, Kim Possible, and Star vs. the Forces of Evil; Fox's American Dad, Family Guy, Futurama, and The Simpsons; FX's Archer; Netflix's BoJack Horseman and F is For Family; Nickelodeon's Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Danny Phantom, and Invader Zim; and most of the anime I watch) could all be seen like movies when viewing certain episodes in a certain way at a certain time, and thanks to both people editing clips together on YouTube to make them appear to be movies and the popularity of Let's Play videos, the video game franchises that I like (Portal, Mortal Kombat, Okami, games in the Super Mario Bros. franchise in which his brother Luigi has a major role) can be consumed in a similar manner to movies. I remember in one of last year's assignments, the one in which I had to describe the five movies I would want on a deserted island with me, I decided to make one of them a 10-hour Let's Play, which is not a movie in the slightest and would need to be on a computer with internet access to work at all, something that is unlikely to be available on a deserted island, and justified it by a fellow classmate playing fast and loose with the assignment by turning it into a very odd story before describing the films, and none of the movies were even movies she liked; she only included all of them because they all had character actor Adrien Brody in them and it added to the paper's "humor". Now I realize just how ridiculous I was being and shall choose a genuine movie for the subject of this blog post. Perhaps, rather than do a blog post on one of the films or film-like products above, I shall write about a film I saw recently and liked a lot- Deadpool.
Deadpool is my favorite Marvel Comics character, and a movie for the character has been desired by many fans for a very long time now. The first time didn't end very well, with a bizarre in-name-only character appearing in X-Men Origins: Wolverine played by Ryan Reynolds. He was a fan of the character and knew that this take on him wasn't very good, so he set out to make a more faithful adaptation of the character, which finally came to fruition a little over a week ago. The movie was, for the most part, critically acclaimed due to Reynolds' performance and the meta-humor, though a handful of critics criticized the film for the exact same reasons. People's opinions varied, with the most common negative one being that some felt that the movie was over-reliant on juvenile humor that would only be found funny by teenage boys too young to see the movie, and some even going so far as to say that it is disgustingly bad, uses terms it doesn't truly understand to feel narcissistically smart and self-serving, and will set up a wave of other bad films trying to emulate its style. Something that often happens to movie critics is that they believe that their opinion is the only one that matters, and that they are the end-all-be-all of consumer media quality and the ethical, intellectual, logical, and philosophical ideas that come with it. Maybe I'm wrong in how I view movies. Maybe I am wrong for not seeing what these people see as problems as such. And yet, I suppose that the only people who truly know whether it's "correct" to find humor in lowbrow jokes are all dead. I didn't find the film to rely too much on them, and think it had a perfect balance between Deadpool's man-child behaviors, meta-jokes about the superhero film genre, gun-and-sword slapstick violence, and a surprise sense of heart buried under all of the rest, but maybe that's because I'm not as enlightened as those who go into journalism. Is a critic's job to simply provide opinions or to protect the public from poor-quality media and ensure that they see the high-quality media?
Regardless, the point is simple- Deadpool is awesome and expressing dislike of it on grounds of juvenile humor while acting like all educated people that hear you say that will agree with you is digging yourself in a very deep hole of pretentiousness. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.
Sunday, February 21, 2016
Monday, February 15, 2016
Neil Rush CMT Blog- February 16, 2016- A Musician I Like
February 16, 2016
Hello, blog readers, this is Neil again. This week's assignment is to defend a musician or band I like from hypothetical haters, or just talk about a musician or band that I like and why I like them. Someone that I've recently become interested in is an internet comedy musician named Allie Goertz. Her music is usually quiet and understated acoustic rock, which actually compliments the humorous nature of her lyrics surprisingly well. The YouTube channel that all of her videos are on is called Cosbysweater (it first started a few years before October 2014, so this was just an innocent mistake). Some of the subjects of her songs have included the infamous so-bad-it's-good cult classic romantic drama that was later re-billed as a black comedy made by Tommy Wiseau called The Room, Milhouse from The Simpsons, and Dungeons and Dragons.
What really drew me to her was how she made a five-track EP of songs all about my favorite TV show, Rick and Morty. On the EP, called Sad Dance Songs, she mixes up her usual style of music to work with, in addition to acoustic and alternative rock sounds, both electronic dance music and rap. The lyrics, while usually humorous, all reflect some of the deeper dramatic and even existentialist themes that Rick and Morty has, unlike most other adult animated comedies before it. Some of the songs include "Look At Me", a song about the bizarre race of characters named Mr. Meeseeks and how they only exist to fulfill specific tasks, are immune to all forms of bodily harm and can only die once their task is completed, are driven insane by their very narrow reason for existing, and will become more dangerous and psychotic the longer they are left alive without their assigned task being completed; "Jeez Rick", a song sung from Morty's perspective about his frequent frustration with Rick taking him on all of the adventures through space and the multiverse that he does and constantly putting him in deadly situations throughout them; and my personal favorite on the album "All I Wanted", a song that could be interpreted as being about any of the five members of the Sanchez-Smith family- Rick, Morty, Jerry, Summer, or Beth- and how they feel about any other members of the family- specifically how even though they are unhappy with each other, they would most likely be more unhappy without each other, and how it's best to just live with what you do have rather than dwell on what you don't.
Goertz's musical style has been compared to comedy musician Bo Burnham, though it's rarely as dark as Burnham's music. This prompt is about defending your choice musician from haters, which is made fairly ironic by the fact that one of her songs is about haters. The song is called "An Open Letter To Myself", which is about not being elitist with your tastes, a problem she admits to having. Whether it's people liking something she doesn't like or not liking something she does, Allie has often tried to overcome her instinctive behavior of taking entertainment tastes personally. Of course, she ends the song on a deliberately and facetiously hypocritical note, saying that if someone doesn't laugh when watching Seinfeld, then "say something hurtful and never take it back". Occasionally, she does go into more serious songs, such as in her song called "To Mom", which is about how she still cares about her mother despite the fact that she bore the brunt of Allie's bad attitude as a teenager, a song I'm sure many people can relate to.
So will Allie Goertz gain more success from here? Sad Dance Songs seems to suggest yes, though only time will tell. Bo Burnham has had multiple stand-up comedy specials/concerts and briefly starred on his own MTV show called Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous, a mockumentary comedy-drama starring Burnham as the title character, a recent high school graduate who spends the series chasing internet fame. Despite only lasting one season, it was critically acclaimed by most news sources for deconstructing the formulas of similar shows on MTV and showing how the blind pursuit of fame is often just a cover for strong emotional insecurity. Could Allie end up doing something like this? Maybe somewhere down the line, if she got a few Netflix comedy specials first. I expect a guest appearance on Rick and Morty Season 3 as a personal thank-you from series creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon for paying tribute to their show with the album before anything else, however. Go look her up on YouTube to hear some of her songs, or buy them for yourself on iTunes or Google Play Music. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.
Hello, blog readers, this is Neil again. This week's assignment is to defend a musician or band I like from hypothetical haters, or just talk about a musician or band that I like and why I like them. Someone that I've recently become interested in is an internet comedy musician named Allie Goertz. Her music is usually quiet and understated acoustic rock, which actually compliments the humorous nature of her lyrics surprisingly well. The YouTube channel that all of her videos are on is called Cosbysweater (it first started a few years before October 2014, so this was just an innocent mistake). Some of the subjects of her songs have included the infamous so-bad-it's-good cult classic romantic drama that was later re-billed as a black comedy made by Tommy Wiseau called The Room, Milhouse from The Simpsons, and Dungeons and Dragons.
What really drew me to her was how she made a five-track EP of songs all about my favorite TV show, Rick and Morty. On the EP, called Sad Dance Songs, she mixes up her usual style of music to work with, in addition to acoustic and alternative rock sounds, both electronic dance music and rap. The lyrics, while usually humorous, all reflect some of the deeper dramatic and even existentialist themes that Rick and Morty has, unlike most other adult animated comedies before it. Some of the songs include "Look At Me", a song about the bizarre race of characters named Mr. Meeseeks and how they only exist to fulfill specific tasks, are immune to all forms of bodily harm and can only die once their task is completed, are driven insane by their very narrow reason for existing, and will become more dangerous and psychotic the longer they are left alive without their assigned task being completed; "Jeez Rick", a song sung from Morty's perspective about his frequent frustration with Rick taking him on all of the adventures through space and the multiverse that he does and constantly putting him in deadly situations throughout them; and my personal favorite on the album "All I Wanted", a song that could be interpreted as being about any of the five members of the Sanchez-Smith family- Rick, Morty, Jerry, Summer, or Beth- and how they feel about any other members of the family- specifically how even though they are unhappy with each other, they would most likely be more unhappy without each other, and how it's best to just live with what you do have rather than dwell on what you don't.
Goertz's musical style has been compared to comedy musician Bo Burnham, though it's rarely as dark as Burnham's music. This prompt is about defending your choice musician from haters, which is made fairly ironic by the fact that one of her songs is about haters. The song is called "An Open Letter To Myself", which is about not being elitist with your tastes, a problem she admits to having. Whether it's people liking something she doesn't like or not liking something she does, Allie has often tried to overcome her instinctive behavior of taking entertainment tastes personally. Of course, she ends the song on a deliberately and facetiously hypocritical note, saying that if someone doesn't laugh when watching Seinfeld, then "say something hurtful and never take it back". Occasionally, she does go into more serious songs, such as in her song called "To Mom", which is about how she still cares about her mother despite the fact that she bore the brunt of Allie's bad attitude as a teenager, a song I'm sure many people can relate to.
So will Allie Goertz gain more success from here? Sad Dance Songs seems to suggest yes, though only time will tell. Bo Burnham has had multiple stand-up comedy specials/concerts and briefly starred on his own MTV show called Zach Stone Is Gonna Be Famous, a mockumentary comedy-drama starring Burnham as the title character, a recent high school graduate who spends the series chasing internet fame. Despite only lasting one season, it was critically acclaimed by most news sources for deconstructing the formulas of similar shows on MTV and showing how the blind pursuit of fame is often just a cover for strong emotional insecurity. Could Allie end up doing something like this? Maybe somewhere down the line, if she got a few Netflix comedy specials first. I expect a guest appearance on Rick and Morty Season 3 as a personal thank-you from series creators Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon for paying tribute to their show with the album before anything else, however. Go look her up on YouTube to hear some of her songs, or buy them for yourself on iTunes or Google Play Music. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.
Monday, February 8, 2016
Neil Rush CMT Blog- February 9, 2016- Liking Something The Media Does
February 9, 2016
Hey blog, it's Neil. This week, I'm supposed to write about something that I think the media does well. I don't think that they do much well, to be honest. This is the media we're talking about here, known for doing things that sensationalize and humiliate. And yet, if I had to find anything that they do well, I guess it giving something that deserves it a chance every once in a while. Do studio heads count as a subcategory of "the media"? They sure act like it- we always hear stories of them doing controversial things that keep people from seeing the movies that the American people want to see in favor of the international markets. This is why sequels keep getting pumped out- movie-going Americans may be sick of colorful-costumed white-man superheroes, but plenty of international markets, particularly China, still flock to them, and create both licensing deals and alternate versions of movies for these markets. Some movies, such as the 2013 R-rated college comedy "21 And Over", even have their entire premises altered for Chinese releases. While the American version is about an Asian-American college student who celebrates his 21st birthday the night before a medical school interview, the Chinese version is apparently about a young Chinese man who briefly goes to an American college, is temporarily corrupted by hedonistic Western society, and goes back to China a better person. It's amazing how editing and dubbing can make a movie appear entirely different when released in another country. This is usually done for image reasons. If a non-Asian person were seen engaging in wild partying in a Hollywood movie in China, they wouldn't care and would probably enjoy it. Because of the high regard superheroes are held in in China, the new super-anti-hero soft science fiction action black comedy Deadpool, an highly irreverent, over-the-top, and adult-oriented parody of superhero movies, has even been banned from China, despite plenty of similar violent movies already being allowed and often made in China as well. Deadpool is particularly what I wanted to talk about.
Co-created by comic writer Fabian Nicieza and comic artist Rob Liefeld, Deadpool was initially a side character in the Marvel Comics series The New Mutants and became something of a comedic partner to the antihero Cable. He was a parody of the DC Comics villain Deathstroke, with all of the same abilities and then some- near-immortal regenerative abilities, skill with guns and swords, processing information at thirty times the rate of the average human (once believed to be able to use up to thirty percent of their brains at a time before the ten percent brain myth was disproved), and various others. Their personalities are greatly different, however. While Deathstroke is usually cruel, cold, and calculating rarely involved in humor, Deadpool is almost always talking, completely filterless, and acts like a mixture of a hyperactive child and cartoon character given too much weaponry. His origin takes a potentially tragic story and turns it on its head by allowing it to happen to someone with his personality. As a pun on the real name of Deathstroke, Slade Wilson, Deadpool's real name is Wade Wilson. He was a man diagnosed with terminal cancer who volunteered for the Weapon X program in order to be cured of it, but the things they injected him with there, rather than cure it, simply froze it, giving him immortality allowing him to regenerate limbs from essentially any injury, but also giving him always-wrinkly skin. Being experimented on also drove him insane, giving him the ability to break the fourth wall and be aware of his status as a fictional comic book character, talk to the reader, and reference past issues in a way that no other characters can understand. Other mental issues he has had have included having him constantly talk with two other yellow and white thought boxes meant to represent the rest of his brain, though I don't think that these are meant to be his conscience and anti-conscience, because they both, at different times, try to convince Deadpool to do or not do the bad and/or dumb things he really wants to do. Deadpool thinks he's a superhero and often tries to be friends with other superheroes but is prevented by his own psychotic nature from being a true superhero admired by the in-universe public or respected by his idols.
A botched attempt at getting him into a movie happened in 2009. Ryan Reynolds played him as a supporting character in X-Men Origins: Wolverine, but he didn't have Deadpool's iconic costume and, at the movie's climax, appeared as a bald man with his mouth sewn shut (as a response to an earlier line said by the founder of Weapon X, William Stryker, "If you didn't have that mouth of yours, Wilson, you'd be the perfect soldier."), with the powers of other mutants, such as laser vision, teleportation, and swords coming out of his hands like Wolverine's claws, "pooled" into him. While the real Deadpool does have a remote for teleportation in the comics, it's not an actual power of his, and the rest of the powers are just ridiculous. No one thought that Deadpool could manage his own solo film, especially if it were as an R-rated, hyper-violent, and highly crass superhero movie. Sometimes, however, the studio takes a risk and pulls through. After noticing his popularity in video games such as the 2010 installment of Marvel vs. Capcom and the 2013 Deadpool video game, along with his appearances on various internet memes, people could tell that it was time for Deadpool to have his movie. Ryan Reynolds wanted to play the character again, but actually do him justice, and seems to have delivered. I guess that the media deserves props for taking a chance on Deadpool, and I think that their risk will pay off. Thank you for reading, and see you next week.
Monday, February 1, 2016
Neil Rush CMT Blog- February 2, 2016- Something To Upset Me
February 2, 2016
Hello, blog, it's Neil. I was assigned to write about something that angers me this week. The thing that angers me the most, I guess, is something that many others would probably be angry with me for being angry about- and many other others would probably be proud of me for being angry with in a way that would make me a different kind of angry. It is something that is most commonly known as "political correctness". The overuse of this phrase by various parties has caused it to lose its meaning, as is what happens when buzzwords are used widely enough or in a potentially contentious context, so I wish there was another term I could use that still depicted it as more bad than good, unlike all of the other terms for it, but I suppose I'm stuck using a hollow term.
Look, I do believe that all people deserve equal human rights and opportunity in every facet of life that it is beneficial. What I don't believe in is using it as another form of oppression, which is basically what is happening, or if it isn't, it's on its way to. The way many people, particularly on internet magazines on news, politics, and culture; on blog websites such as Tumblr, and in college safe space culture, treat these issues oftentimes betrays the overall intended purpose of social justice activism. They have a tendency to talk about issues in such a way that they express the belief that those without power are fundamentally, morally, and logically better than those with it. This is one of the most counter-productive ways of going about the issues, and seems to express the belief that they would be happy if the tables were turned and straight white men became the oppressed ones. The issue at the heart of it all isn't that people of color are oppressed, or that women are oppressed, or that LGBTETC (the etc. meant ecetera, because of all of the possible sexual and gender identities that are being acknowledged nowadays) people are being oppressed, but rather that people overall are being oppressed. I feel that political correctness only creates more cultural barriers rather than tearing them down, as it wants people to take an alleged moral standard in seeing differences in people and use those to treat them not like people, but like expensive glass sculptures- fragile in constant need of praise and admiration, and held up on a pedestal for the world to see that it exists and that you need to find it just as good as those who put it there. That last aspect, of course, is referencing politically correct casting.
While I do believe that nothing as arbitrary as race, gender, sexuality, gender identity, body ability, political belief, or religious belief should affect casting or hiring for writing or directing in a media work, I do not believe in affirmative action or anything that says that there "needs" to be a certain amount of people of color or women employed on a work in order to be seen as a properly progressive creative workspace. This turns those people into statistics to be met rather than creative voices to be valued. Take what happened with some of the people on my favorite TV show and the TV show I have lofty, if not questionable, goals to work on if it is still airing in the 2020s, Adult Swim's Rick and Morty. At some of the conventions that the series co-creators, showrunners, occasional writers and directors (the creators of TV shows rarely become writers), and stars of the show, Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, have gone to, the two of them tried to field questions about the fact that, at least for the first two seasons, all of the show's writers were men. This might not be as big of an issue if it weren't for the fact that, being a generally politically incorrect animated series on Adult Swim, it has a handful of scenes that could be seen as sexist, particularly plenty of comments made by Rick (which I find justified in that he's openly cruel to everyone more often than not) and the manner in which Morty fantasizes about his crush, a girl at his high school named Jessica (which I also find justified in that Morty is a fourteen-year-old boy, and nearly every heterosexual fourteen-year-old boy is going to have at least one inappropriate thought about a girl). Also, despite its target demographic of men ages 18-34, it has gained sizable attention from other audiences, particularly teenagers due to its teenaged-life-centric plots involving Morty and his older sister Summer and its slightly-more-mainstream-friendly nature than most of Adult Swim's other programming; women ages 15-45 due to its strong characterization of Beth, Morty's mom and Rick's daughter, and Summer, and the rise of geek girls in general (underground comedy musician Allie Goertz recorded a five-track digital-distribution-exclusive concept album called Sad Dance Songs, an EP with songs all relating to Rick and Morty); and older people due to its darkly realistic portrayal of getting older and more melancholic mood than any other comedy on Adult Swim (its fan slogan is the line from the show "Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's going to die. Come watch TV?"). All of those unexpected audiences would make it seem like it might be a good idea to have more women on the writing team, right? Except it's not that simple. Roiland and Harmon have hired a few females to the writing staff for Season 3, which is expected to air in spring 2017 due to the very long production process of the show, but when this was first announced, Roiland stressed that all of the women that were hired were hired on merit because they had wrote good scripts and were not just hired as tokens, and Harmon, who was slightly less cynical about the whole ordeal, but not much, stressed that he wants the ratio of men and women writing to be 50:50 and not any more in favor of the women, as much as some more radical feminists might like. In an ideal world, they wouldn't even have to say this. No one would care, positively or negatively, about girls writing a TV show. And even with its unexpected demographics, Roiland and Harmon know that Rick and Morty is still a boys' show at heart. This leads into a greater social issue.
I honestly believe that, contrary to what the media presents, progressives have won America since 2012. There will always be bigotry, but aside from a few voices, people have generally accepted that racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and ableism are bad things. While most of the productions showing minorities and once-marginalized groups doing things once done by only straights, whites, and males will not be released for another few years, the fact that there is strong market demand for these things I find to be proof enough that this is a truly idealistic and progressive age and that things are always getting better... as long as you know how to suck up to the left. Discrimination is in human nature, and even without thinking, people try to provide more for those that match their biases than those who don't. Some even use political correctness as a backhanded way to mention someone's flaws to their face. I think that fifty years down the line, the patriarchal society will become a matriarchal society, and nearly every story of oppressed minorities and white saviors will be retold somewhere along the line in real-life but with the roles switched. A man in a position of law enforcement who is of color will shoot an unarmed white teenager and the same fallout as all of the white-man-black-kid shootings will happen, and "progressive" internet journalists will disregard all of the potential gray areas involved in the incident in order to make the white teenager look like nothing but a victim of an institutionalized racist society. And then, some time later, they'll realize that they're just restarting a cycle they thought had ended years ago. And without thinking, after "justified" discrimination against straight white males ends, people will find a new arbitrary reason to discriminate against other people, say, the shape of someone's nose, and the issue of accepting people with pointy noses will become as harrowing as the issues of race, gender, and sexuality have been for years. The faces may change, but the situation stays the same- people will always think of a reason to keep those different from themselves down. This is one of the central themes of one of the things I want to make.
"Fanz", the TV series I want to make, will be set in a progressive-utopia version of my hometown of Wyomissing. In this fictionalized version of the town, people of every race, gender identity, and sexual identity are out and proud across the whole town, and they are all in strong and respectful roles. And yet, it is clearly starting to become a dystopia. Plenty of people are using their "victim" status to get away with bullying and worse, and some kids are even being driven to suicide because it is being set in their mind that, since you can't say "all lives matter" as an all-inclusive alternative to "black lives matter", they genuinely believe that "white lives don't matter." This is what happens to the childhood best friend of the protagonist, Nelly Rushberg. She is a Samoan-American Jewish fourteen-year-old trans girl who underwent intensive hormone exposure and gender reassignment surgery at age six after a neurological study that resulted in the young boy turning out to have the instincts of a girl. Due to what happened to her friend and much of what she has experienced, she takes more right-leaning views on issues most directly affecting African-Americans, Jews, and transgendered people, and more left-leaning views on everything else. She is largely disgusted by politically correct culture, even when it wants to help her, and doesn't want to be defined by anything other than her love of anime and anime-influenced animation and how she treats other people. Her love interest for the first half of the series, a girl named Tahvah Bakaar, a bisexual Lebanese-American girl, likewise takes more right-leaning views on issues affecting bisexuals, females, and Muslim-Americans, and herself is even an atheist, though she doesn't outright detest religion, she just doesn't want political correctness to give cover for either Islamic terrorism nor the less-than-admirable aspects of Islamic and Middle Eastern culture. All of the six main youth characters, for a bit of ironic satire, take right-leaning views on the issues that most directly affect them and left-leaning views on those that don't. Nelly's best friend, Giles Bolton, is a half-Caucasian, half-Japanese trans boy; Carrie Christela, Giles' love interest, is a half-Puerto Rican, half-New Jersey Italian pansexual girl raised by a member of the San Francisco Bear Brotherhood; Jin Waz, Nelly's friend and surrogate older brother, is a Korean-American inter-sexual young man with first stage palsy; and Alex Pekin, Nelly's younger cousin, is a Samoan-American gender-fluid female that seems to identify heavily with Middle Eastern culture. And yet, this is all supposed to be unimportant compared to their respective fandoms of anime, auto racing, trading card games, iPhone gaming, Broadway musicals, and documentary filmmaking. Their direct mentors, who are the main administrative staff of the school and all based on myself and some of my childhood friends, try to teach them to follow their own path and not just support what liberal media outlet supports simply because they tout their moral superiority. They take their jobs the least seriously of any staff members at the school district, and will even criticize the politically correct and pseudo-idealist beliefs of many of their students other than the main six to their faces if it is clear that they're ignorant about various societal factors and are clearly making it more about themselves than the core issues at hand. With any luck, if my show manages to get out in the manner I want it to, it will make people think that whatever point of view people may take about both fandom and social justice issues, they're wrong.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you might think about how this applies to your life in America and the world today.
Hello, blog, it's Neil. I was assigned to write about something that angers me this week. The thing that angers me the most, I guess, is something that many others would probably be angry with me for being angry about- and many other others would probably be proud of me for being angry with in a way that would make me a different kind of angry. It is something that is most commonly known as "political correctness". The overuse of this phrase by various parties has caused it to lose its meaning, as is what happens when buzzwords are used widely enough or in a potentially contentious context, so I wish there was another term I could use that still depicted it as more bad than good, unlike all of the other terms for it, but I suppose I'm stuck using a hollow term.
Look, I do believe that all people deserve equal human rights and opportunity in every facet of life that it is beneficial. What I don't believe in is using it as another form of oppression, which is basically what is happening, or if it isn't, it's on its way to. The way many people, particularly on internet magazines on news, politics, and culture; on blog websites such as Tumblr, and in college safe space culture, treat these issues oftentimes betrays the overall intended purpose of social justice activism. They have a tendency to talk about issues in such a way that they express the belief that those without power are fundamentally, morally, and logically better than those with it. This is one of the most counter-productive ways of going about the issues, and seems to express the belief that they would be happy if the tables were turned and straight white men became the oppressed ones. The issue at the heart of it all isn't that people of color are oppressed, or that women are oppressed, or that LGBTETC (the etc. meant ecetera, because of all of the possible sexual and gender identities that are being acknowledged nowadays) people are being oppressed, but rather that people overall are being oppressed. I feel that political correctness only creates more cultural barriers rather than tearing them down, as it wants people to take an alleged moral standard in seeing differences in people and use those to treat them not like people, but like expensive glass sculptures- fragile in constant need of praise and admiration, and held up on a pedestal for the world to see that it exists and that you need to find it just as good as those who put it there. That last aspect, of course, is referencing politically correct casting.
While I do believe that nothing as arbitrary as race, gender, sexuality, gender identity, body ability, political belief, or religious belief should affect casting or hiring for writing or directing in a media work, I do not believe in affirmative action or anything that says that there "needs" to be a certain amount of people of color or women employed on a work in order to be seen as a properly progressive creative workspace. This turns those people into statistics to be met rather than creative voices to be valued. Take what happened with some of the people on my favorite TV show and the TV show I have lofty, if not questionable, goals to work on if it is still airing in the 2020s, Adult Swim's Rick and Morty. At some of the conventions that the series co-creators, showrunners, occasional writers and directors (the creators of TV shows rarely become writers), and stars of the show, Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon, have gone to, the two of them tried to field questions about the fact that, at least for the first two seasons, all of the show's writers were men. This might not be as big of an issue if it weren't for the fact that, being a generally politically incorrect animated series on Adult Swim, it has a handful of scenes that could be seen as sexist, particularly plenty of comments made by Rick (which I find justified in that he's openly cruel to everyone more often than not) and the manner in which Morty fantasizes about his crush, a girl at his high school named Jessica (which I also find justified in that Morty is a fourteen-year-old boy, and nearly every heterosexual fourteen-year-old boy is going to have at least one inappropriate thought about a girl). Also, despite its target demographic of men ages 18-34, it has gained sizable attention from other audiences, particularly teenagers due to its teenaged-life-centric plots involving Morty and his older sister Summer and its slightly-more-mainstream-friendly nature than most of Adult Swim's other programming; women ages 15-45 due to its strong characterization of Beth, Morty's mom and Rick's daughter, and Summer, and the rise of geek girls in general (underground comedy musician Allie Goertz recorded a five-track digital-distribution-exclusive concept album called Sad Dance Songs, an EP with songs all relating to Rick and Morty); and older people due to its darkly realistic portrayal of getting older and more melancholic mood than any other comedy on Adult Swim (its fan slogan is the line from the show "Nobody exists on purpose, nobody belongs anywhere, everybody's going to die. Come watch TV?"). All of those unexpected audiences would make it seem like it might be a good idea to have more women on the writing team, right? Except it's not that simple. Roiland and Harmon have hired a few females to the writing staff for Season 3, which is expected to air in spring 2017 due to the very long production process of the show, but when this was first announced, Roiland stressed that all of the women that were hired were hired on merit because they had wrote good scripts and were not just hired as tokens, and Harmon, who was slightly less cynical about the whole ordeal, but not much, stressed that he wants the ratio of men and women writing to be 50:50 and not any more in favor of the women, as much as some more radical feminists might like. In an ideal world, they wouldn't even have to say this. No one would care, positively or negatively, about girls writing a TV show. And even with its unexpected demographics, Roiland and Harmon know that Rick and Morty is still a boys' show at heart. This leads into a greater social issue.
I honestly believe that, contrary to what the media presents, progressives have won America since 2012. There will always be bigotry, but aside from a few voices, people have generally accepted that racism, sexism, misogyny, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, and ableism are bad things. While most of the productions showing minorities and once-marginalized groups doing things once done by only straights, whites, and males will not be released for another few years, the fact that there is strong market demand for these things I find to be proof enough that this is a truly idealistic and progressive age and that things are always getting better... as long as you know how to suck up to the left. Discrimination is in human nature, and even without thinking, people try to provide more for those that match their biases than those who don't. Some even use political correctness as a backhanded way to mention someone's flaws to their face. I think that fifty years down the line, the patriarchal society will become a matriarchal society, and nearly every story of oppressed minorities and white saviors will be retold somewhere along the line in real-life but with the roles switched. A man in a position of law enforcement who is of color will shoot an unarmed white teenager and the same fallout as all of the white-man-black-kid shootings will happen, and "progressive" internet journalists will disregard all of the potential gray areas involved in the incident in order to make the white teenager look like nothing but a victim of an institutionalized racist society. And then, some time later, they'll realize that they're just restarting a cycle they thought had ended years ago. And without thinking, after "justified" discrimination against straight white males ends, people will find a new arbitrary reason to discriminate against other people, say, the shape of someone's nose, and the issue of accepting people with pointy noses will become as harrowing as the issues of race, gender, and sexuality have been for years. The faces may change, but the situation stays the same- people will always think of a reason to keep those different from themselves down. This is one of the central themes of one of the things I want to make.
"Fanz", the TV series I want to make, will be set in a progressive-utopia version of my hometown of Wyomissing. In this fictionalized version of the town, people of every race, gender identity, and sexual identity are out and proud across the whole town, and they are all in strong and respectful roles. And yet, it is clearly starting to become a dystopia. Plenty of people are using their "victim" status to get away with bullying and worse, and some kids are even being driven to suicide because it is being set in their mind that, since you can't say "all lives matter" as an all-inclusive alternative to "black lives matter", they genuinely believe that "white lives don't matter." This is what happens to the childhood best friend of the protagonist, Nelly Rushberg. She is a Samoan-American Jewish fourteen-year-old trans girl who underwent intensive hormone exposure and gender reassignment surgery at age six after a neurological study that resulted in the young boy turning out to have the instincts of a girl. Due to what happened to her friend and much of what she has experienced, she takes more right-leaning views on issues most directly affecting African-Americans, Jews, and transgendered people, and more left-leaning views on everything else. She is largely disgusted by politically correct culture, even when it wants to help her, and doesn't want to be defined by anything other than her love of anime and anime-influenced animation and how she treats other people. Her love interest for the first half of the series, a girl named Tahvah Bakaar, a bisexual Lebanese-American girl, likewise takes more right-leaning views on issues affecting bisexuals, females, and Muslim-Americans, and herself is even an atheist, though she doesn't outright detest religion, she just doesn't want political correctness to give cover for either Islamic terrorism nor the less-than-admirable aspects of Islamic and Middle Eastern culture. All of the six main youth characters, for a bit of ironic satire, take right-leaning views on the issues that most directly affect them and left-leaning views on those that don't. Nelly's best friend, Giles Bolton, is a half-Caucasian, half-Japanese trans boy; Carrie Christela, Giles' love interest, is a half-Puerto Rican, half-New Jersey Italian pansexual girl raised by a member of the San Francisco Bear Brotherhood; Jin Waz, Nelly's friend and surrogate older brother, is a Korean-American inter-sexual young man with first stage palsy; and Alex Pekin, Nelly's younger cousin, is a Samoan-American gender-fluid female that seems to identify heavily with Middle Eastern culture. And yet, this is all supposed to be unimportant compared to their respective fandoms of anime, auto racing, trading card games, iPhone gaming, Broadway musicals, and documentary filmmaking. Their direct mentors, who are the main administrative staff of the school and all based on myself and some of my childhood friends, try to teach them to follow their own path and not just support what liberal media outlet supports simply because they tout their moral superiority. They take their jobs the least seriously of any staff members at the school district, and will even criticize the politically correct and pseudo-idealist beliefs of many of their students other than the main six to their faces if it is clear that they're ignorant about various societal factors and are clearly making it more about themselves than the core issues at hand. With any luck, if my show manages to get out in the manner I want it to, it will make people think that whatever point of view people may take about both fandom and social justice issues, they're wrong.
Thank you for reading this, and I hope you might think about how this applies to your life in America and the world today.
Sunday, January 24, 2016
Neil Rush CMT Blog- January 26, 2016- Technology Over Anonymity
January 26, 2016
Hello blog readers, it's Neil. With the Gravity Falls series finale still a few weeks away and none of the other things I like really strongly relevant in the media, I've decided to find an article on the internet that could potentially be related to Communications Media Technology and write about it instead. I found an article talking about the well-worn belief that internet anonymity is why people are more inclined to say unkind things, engage in dangerous anti-social behavior, and express a desire to break the law on the internet than in person. An article I recently read on eurekalert.org written by the University of Kent entitled "Social media technology rather than anonymity is the problem" says... well, exactly that.
The article states that a new book written by Dr. Vincent Miller entitled The Crisis of Presence in Contemporary Culture: Ethics, Privacy, and Speech in Mediated Social Life intends to argue this point. Dr. Miller uses this book to examine the desire for freedom of speech on the internet versus the desire for civil discourse. He claims that rather than internet anonymity allowing for the worst elements of human nature to come out on internet social media websites and message boards, it is the structure of these very websites that allows for it. Miller stresses that if these issues are to be stopped, then "social media architecture should be organized the same way as physical architecture". The book questions the authenticity of the moral panics that have derived from internet use and abuse and whether or not ethics, privacy, and free speech can truly coexist in the modern world. Miller also recommends trying to add more humanity to social media software, however that can be done, and possibly making internet identity less anonymous, despite that not exactly being the issue.
This article, despite being pretty short, was still a very interesting read. I don't think it's entirely correct, because some message boards already do try to add more humanity to their commenters (and it almost never works as intended), but at least it's well-intentioned. Maybe one day there can be a balance between order and chaos. However, we should also take into account that they may not be as much of opposites as once believed. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you again next week.
Hello blog readers, it's Neil. With the Gravity Falls series finale still a few weeks away and none of the other things I like really strongly relevant in the media, I've decided to find an article on the internet that could potentially be related to Communications Media Technology and write about it instead. I found an article talking about the well-worn belief that internet anonymity is why people are more inclined to say unkind things, engage in dangerous anti-social behavior, and express a desire to break the law on the internet than in person. An article I recently read on eurekalert.org written by the University of Kent entitled "Social media technology rather than anonymity is the problem" says... well, exactly that.
The article states that a new book written by Dr. Vincent Miller entitled The Crisis of Presence in Contemporary Culture: Ethics, Privacy, and Speech in Mediated Social Life intends to argue this point. Dr. Miller uses this book to examine the desire for freedom of speech on the internet versus the desire for civil discourse. He claims that rather than internet anonymity allowing for the worst elements of human nature to come out on internet social media websites and message boards, it is the structure of these very websites that allows for it. Miller stresses that if these issues are to be stopped, then "social media architecture should be organized the same way as physical architecture". The book questions the authenticity of the moral panics that have derived from internet use and abuse and whether or not ethics, privacy, and free speech can truly coexist in the modern world. Miller also recommends trying to add more humanity to social media software, however that can be done, and possibly making internet identity less anonymous, despite that not exactly being the issue.
This article, despite being pretty short, was still a very interesting read. I don't think it's entirely correct, because some message boards already do try to add more humanity to their commenters (and it almost never works as intended), but at least it's well-intentioned. Maybe one day there can be a balance between order and chaos. However, we should also take into account that they may not be as much of opposites as once believed. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you again next week.
Monday, January 18, 2016
Neil Rush CMT Blog- January 19, 2016- Steven Universe Analysis and Review
January 19, 2016
Hello again, blogosphere, this is Neil Rush. There are many different shows I have liked and have gotten into, but with no new Gravity Falls episodes until the series finale in February, I've decided to talk about one of those other shows, a show that has many shared fans with Gravity Falls- a show on Cartoon Network called Steven Universe.
Created by Rebecca Sugar, a woman known for her work on Cartoon Network's Adventure Time shortly before going off to make her own show in a similar style and make Steven Universe the first Cartoon Network Original Animated Series to be created by a woman (but not the first animated series ever to be created, developed, or creatively controlled by one, as many fine cartoons on Cartoon Network and other channels in the past have had women in all of the important creative positions), Steven Universe has a pretty layered story. It follows its title character Steven Quartz Universe (voiced by Zach Callison), a happy, friendly, and somewhat effeminate thirteen-year-old boy loosely based on Steven Sugar, Rebecca Sugar's younger brother, living in the fictional town of Beach City, Maryland with his single dad Greg Universe (voiced by comedian Tom Scharpling), who is a former traveling rock star, and three millennia-old aliens named the Crystal Gems- Garnet (voiced by R&B artist Estelle), Amethyst (voiced by Michaela Dietz), and Pearl (voiced by Deedee Magno Hall). The three of them are old friends of Rose-Quartz (voiced by Susan Egan, known for voicing Megara in Disney's Hercules from 1997), a Gem that was a general of the Homeworld Gems' armies until she and the other three defected due to disagreeing with the rest of the species' desire to reap the Earth of its resources. She later met Greg, and while she initially saw humans as more of a novelty than as her equals, she later grew to fall in love with Greg, and later sacrificed her form into that of a half-human, half-Gem child, that child being Steven. Steven and the Gems use their Gem powers to fight evil around the universe, and while Steven is still developing his powers, he usually knows how to use them effectively.
The other Crystal Gems manage to have their own distinct personalities, all meant to serve as motherly figures to Steven. Garnet is calm and collected, but also noble and courageous, blending traits from the two other Gems she is made from, Ruby (voiced by Charlene Yi) and Sapphire (voiced by Erica Luttrell). Gems have the ability to fuse with one another as long as they trust each other to form larger Gems featuring characteristics of both and/or all of the Gems that fused to make them yet still identifying as their own Gem. Ruby and Sapphire are two Gems that are madly in love with one another and spend most of their time fused as Garnet as a result. Amethyst is more of a big sister figure than a motherly figure to Steven because despite being a few thousand years old like Garnet and Pearl, she is the youngest of the Gems, and was born in a cave network on Earth referred to as the Kindergarten rather than on the Gem Homeworld. This also explains her more naturally crass personality than Garnet and Pearl, though she also feels insecure about herself at times due to her "messier" upbringing than the other Gems. Pearl is probably the most confusing of the main characters. She is the most motherly of the three Gems, often reprimanding Steven when he acts careless while also trying to show up to almost everything he does around town, protect him from anything she can, and convey that she loves him as a mother does, yet also has a tendency to describe humans as lesser to Gems in nearly every way and act extremely awkward at times and highly self-centered at other times. Much of this is because of how, while this will never be stated outright in the show yet the creators have said as much on social media, Pearl was in love with Rose, but to a somewhat possessive level, and believed that she was inferior to Rose in every way and could only be something useful when Rose was by her side. This may extend from the fact that other members of the Pearl Gem sub-race were designed to be servants to other Gems, and while Rose never treated Pearl like one, it was in Pearl's instincts to act as a servant, even if that meant being an emotional slave. She resented Greg for the longest time for his relationship with Rose, and to an extent resents Steven for being the very reason Rose is no longer alive. Because Rose is gone, Pearl doesn't understand her purpose, which is the crux of her character development arc- outgrowing her crush on Rose and becoming her own Gem-person.
The show has received significant praise for its animation style, largely inspired by anime and 80s/90s video games; its music, with many episodes featuring musical numbers that expand on certain characters' emotions, with the most iconic example being the song sung by Garnet in the episode "Jail Break", the song being called "Stronger Than You" which is what she sings while fighting the Homeworld Gem Jasper as the other Crystal Gems take control of a Homeworld Gem Prison Spaceship; its mature characterization; and its willingness to play with gender roles. Its protagonist is a boy with many traits more commonly associated with female characters, such as strongly showing his emotions and having more defensive abilities than offensive ones, yet is still meant to be a clear boy. Connie Maheswaren (voiced by Grace Rolek), Steven's best human friend and almost-love-interest (despite enjoying snuggling and dancing with one another, the terms they use when talking with each other seem to keep them in the friend-zone), despite being a girl, has a few more masculine traits than Steven, such as being skilled with sword-fighting thanks to Pearl, and is the bigger bookworm than Steven, yet also has her fair share of feminine traits, such as usually wearing dresses. The Gem species is meant to be genderless yet predominantly consist of beings with female characteristics and use female pronouns. Ruby and Sapphire, for example, are a unique way of zigzagging with a chaste depiction of an LGBT relationship in a work meant for a shared audience of kids and adults. Despite both using female pronouns and being voiced by women, the fact that the two of them are technically genderless brings it simply to the realm of "two beings in love", with gender not being a part of it, and Ruby's androgynous appearance also adds another layer to the storytelling. Sometimes, the writing isn't as strong as I would like it to be, often falling into traps of being too hammy and/or sentimental. The general concept and themes discussed keep me from disliking the show, however. Greg and Ruby are probably my two favorite characters, and some of Steven and Connie's interactions fall into guilty pleasure territory. I'm even inspired to write my own fan fiction series called Steven Multiverse, in which Steven, Greg, Connie, and the Gems team up with both versions of them from a gender-bender universe of their own universe (a gender-bender universe, or Rule 63 universe, is a universe in which all characters from one work of fiction are reimagined as the opposite gender of what they are in their main in-canon universe) and versions of them from a partial gender-bender universe, in which some but not all characters have their gender swapped from what it is in the canon universe (basically something resembling what I would do if I had thought of something like Steven Universe) and try to stop a threat to different versions of the Universe family across the multiverse.
The most recent developments in the story occurred in a week of new episodes at the beginning of January, with episodes such as one in which Garnet tells Steven the story of how Ruby and Sapphire met and, by proxy, how she came into being; one in which Steven turns fourteen years old; and a few showing how Peridot (voiced by Shelby Rabara), a former enemy of the Crystal Gems, became a member of them after growing to trust them while in what was supposed to be a temporary alliance. These developments have made the show more interesting than ever before, and I hope that the show finds a positive new direction from here on out. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.
Monday, January 4, 2016
Neil Rush CMT Blog- January 5, 2016- Settling On An Interest
January 5, 2016
Happy new year, blog readers, this is Neil Rush. I finally managed to sort out that "interest identity crisis" I mentioned in the last post. After adding something I forgot to include in the original list made last summer and another thing to even the list out, I looked through all of the wikis for things on that old list to see which ones people had responded to me on, which ones needed an update, and which ones were on the new version of the pattern I made after adding two more to the old list. After cycling through the new list with my pattern, I managed to choose Lego, the company of building toys I had fondly grown up on. I may try to buy old Lego sets in order to try my hand at stop-motion filmmaking. I think I'll have my films primarily center around the Lego theme from 2007-2008 known as Mars Mission. This was a theme involving astronauts going to Mars to mine for crystals while fighting aliens for the ability to have them. Contrary to what you may expect, the aliens are not Martians, but rather coming from another planet. This may be because the theme is implied to be a sequel theme to a Lego theme from 2001 known as Life On Mars, in which the Martians were not antagonists. My stop-motion film would try to make the story deeper than how it was presented when the sets were in production, yet also make fun of some of the things Lego does when they make themes for kids. I will also try to cross it over with other themes like what was done in the Lego video game Lego Battles. That would also try to mix in other Lego Space themes, such as Space Police, Exo-Force (which isn't exactly a space theme, but the evil robots from it are included on Mars in Lego Battles), Blacktron: Future Generation, Exploriens, and Ice Planet 2002. The films may also joke about why humans are almost always the heroes and aliens are almost always the villains in Lego's Space themes. For humorous purposes, I may also try to have some of my films cross over with Lego Castle and Lego Pirates by having the astronauts and aliens manage to travel through time.
Another big Lego thing I am interested in is the video game Lego Dimensions. It is Lego and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's attempt at a toys-to-life video game in the same style as Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and Nintendo's Amiibos, but is most likely better than all three due to the involvement of Lego and some of the themes seen in the game. It manages to cross over DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, The Lego Movie (the movie that uses Legos and a character going through the hero's journey as a metaphor for father-son issues), The Wizard of Oz, The Simpsons, Lego Ninjago (Lego's theme centered around ninjas that can turn into miniature elemental tornadoes, yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds), Doctor Who (the iconic British mostly-family-oriented science fiction adventure comedy-drama TV-series-based franchise about a two-hearted millenium-old alien taking on the form of a well-dressed British man and traveling through time and space with different young women as companions in a time machine that looks like a blue British police box that uses space technology and the fact that it's technically alive as well to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and saving people from various creepy villains), Back to the Future, Portal (a darkly humorous first-person puzzle game set in an empty laboratory and guided by a psychotic artificial intelligence unit named GLaDOS), Ghostbusters, classic arcade games created by Midway Games (because Time Warner bought them out in 2009), Scooby-Doo, Lego Legends of Chima (a Lego franchise involving warring tribes of anthropomorphic animals), and Jurassic Park. More franchises are expected to join in the future. I don't have the game yet because of my decision to wait to get anymore PlayStation 3 games or replace the system with a PlayStation 4 until I know more about the release of the next South Park video game on the PlayStation 4. Until then, I hope to try and cross over some of the themes from the game that already have existing sets and aren't just in the game with the other older themes I wanted to make Lego stop-motion films with.
While these are not my primary interests, I also still have a desire to make original stories based on Rick and Morty, Steven Universe, South Park, Gravity Falls, American Dad, BoJack Horseman, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Toy Story, How to Train Your Dragon, Okami, and Super Mario Bros. I also want to make my original stories, such as an attempt at a genre crossover between outer-space science fiction and supernatural horror, a musical horror-comedy, various forms of socio-political satire, and of course, Fanz. I actually hope to become a writer and storyboarder on Rick and Morty for a few years before making some of my original projects, so I may try to write Rick and Morty stories that go above mere fan fiction and are actually supposed to be a part of the show. With any luck, I'll be given the time and opportunities necessary to make all of the things that I want to make to the best of my ability. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.
Happy new year, blog readers, this is Neil Rush. I finally managed to sort out that "interest identity crisis" I mentioned in the last post. After adding something I forgot to include in the original list made last summer and another thing to even the list out, I looked through all of the wikis for things on that old list to see which ones people had responded to me on, which ones needed an update, and which ones were on the new version of the pattern I made after adding two more to the old list. After cycling through the new list with my pattern, I managed to choose Lego, the company of building toys I had fondly grown up on. I may try to buy old Lego sets in order to try my hand at stop-motion filmmaking. I think I'll have my films primarily center around the Lego theme from 2007-2008 known as Mars Mission. This was a theme involving astronauts going to Mars to mine for crystals while fighting aliens for the ability to have them. Contrary to what you may expect, the aliens are not Martians, but rather coming from another planet. This may be because the theme is implied to be a sequel theme to a Lego theme from 2001 known as Life On Mars, in which the Martians were not antagonists. My stop-motion film would try to make the story deeper than how it was presented when the sets were in production, yet also make fun of some of the things Lego does when they make themes for kids. I will also try to cross it over with other themes like what was done in the Lego video game Lego Battles. That would also try to mix in other Lego Space themes, such as Space Police, Exo-Force (which isn't exactly a space theme, but the evil robots from it are included on Mars in Lego Battles), Blacktron: Future Generation, Exploriens, and Ice Planet 2002. The films may also joke about why humans are almost always the heroes and aliens are almost always the villains in Lego's Space themes. For humorous purposes, I may also try to have some of my films cross over with Lego Castle and Lego Pirates by having the astronauts and aliens manage to travel through time.
Another big Lego thing I am interested in is the video game Lego Dimensions. It is Lego and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment's attempt at a toys-to-life video game in the same style as Skylanders, Disney Infinity, and Nintendo's Amiibos, but is most likely better than all three due to the involvement of Lego and some of the themes seen in the game. It manages to cross over DC Comics, The Lord of the Rings, The Lego Movie (the movie that uses Legos and a character going through the hero's journey as a metaphor for father-son issues), The Wizard of Oz, The Simpsons, Lego Ninjago (Lego's theme centered around ninjas that can turn into miniature elemental tornadoes, yes, it's as ridiculous as it sounds), Doctor Who (the iconic British mostly-family-oriented science fiction adventure comedy-drama TV-series-based franchise about a two-hearted millenium-old alien taking on the form of a well-dressed British man and traveling through time and space with different young women as companions in a time machine that looks like a blue British police box that uses space technology and the fact that it's technically alive as well to be bigger on the inside than it is on the outside and saving people from various creepy villains), Back to the Future, Portal (a darkly humorous first-person puzzle game set in an empty laboratory and guided by a psychotic artificial intelligence unit named GLaDOS), Ghostbusters, classic arcade games created by Midway Games (because Time Warner bought them out in 2009), Scooby-Doo, Lego Legends of Chima (a Lego franchise involving warring tribes of anthropomorphic animals), and Jurassic Park. More franchises are expected to join in the future. I don't have the game yet because of my decision to wait to get anymore PlayStation 3 games or replace the system with a PlayStation 4 until I know more about the release of the next South Park video game on the PlayStation 4. Until then, I hope to try and cross over some of the themes from the game that already have existing sets and aren't just in the game with the other older themes I wanted to make Lego stop-motion films with.
While these are not my primary interests, I also still have a desire to make original stories based on Rick and Morty, Steven Universe, South Park, Gravity Falls, American Dad, BoJack Horseman, Avatar: The Last Airbender/The Legend of Korra, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Toy Story, How to Train Your Dragon, Okami, and Super Mario Bros. I also want to make my original stories, such as an attempt at a genre crossover between outer-space science fiction and supernatural horror, a musical horror-comedy, various forms of socio-political satire, and of course, Fanz. I actually hope to become a writer and storyboarder on Rick and Morty for a few years before making some of my original projects, so I may try to write Rick and Morty stories that go above mere fan fiction and are actually supposed to be a part of the show. With any luck, I'll be given the time and opportunities necessary to make all of the things that I want to make to the best of my ability. Thank you for reading, and I'll see you next week.
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