EVERYONE ELSE IS DOIN' IT

[frannyan]

So. Yeah. There's that 30 questions meme thing. Optimistic considering my posting derpitide, but here we go. :D

Day 01 - Introduce yourself

Hi! I'm Fran!

...

oh wait I have to actually do more than that don't I? Erm..

See, I always have trouble with this sort of thing. I am, in my opinion, a boring person. I never quite know what to say when there's introductions because I'm just a homebody dork. I'm not even a spectacular dork. I don't really have any major fandoms [anymore. I used to be a big Depeche Mode fangirl and be very embarrassing, and then there's the Yuugiou thing with Kokoro no Naka and people insisting I was a big name in fandom and phht, yeah right. I just had a popular page. Not the same. And I tend to like Anime and Japanese language and culture but I'm not really much of an otaku either cause I just watch random things] or too many things I really think I'm passionate about. I'm kinda... low key. Jack of all trades, master of none. There's really nothing about me that sticks out. Except my hat, but you all can't see that. And I'm serious about that, I am a freaking ninja without that hat. Got to hear my boss leaving me a voice mail to come up to her room WHILE I WAS IN IT *siiiigh* I'm that person who's always kinda hanging back, observing things. I video tape and take photos but don't really take part.

Gary put it pretty well today when we were doing intros at the theater thingi. I'm the glue of things. I hold them together and if I'm doing it well, noone even notices. And I'm pretty cool with that, I think (as long as someone thanks me. Not getting any sort of appreciation just... I get bitter and exhausted.) I like organizing and statistics and managing things.

I am socially awkward and sometimes prone to massive social anxiety. Most of the time it's minimal of the "oh god I said that wrong. Fuck, they're going to think I'm an idiot. Fuuuuck what do I do?!" and of the "... noone's talking to me/replying to what I said. Oh god, what did I do? FML!" variety. I second guess myself a lot and will often feel irrationally like people are ignoring me when they probably aren't. I was one of those kids who eeeeveryone picked on in elementary school (even the teacher in 4th grade. Mom still tells stories of that teacher @_@) so, yeah. I think most everyone knows how that goes.

I'm an inch away from being ADHD. To where I was tested and the doctor was all "You sure as heck have an attention problem all right! But you just baaaaarely past that test there so you aren't ADHD. You just want to respond to all stimulus." I have a pretty bad reading disorder. You may have noticed my wonderful spelling -_- This is why. My brain does not connect words to their meanings or their spellings or pronunciations. I also have a 10th grade reading level and have since middle school. Go figure how that works :D I do far better in Japanese than English.

So. Yeah. I probably would do this far better in question and answer format, only I suck at that too. I'm just not especially good at talking about myself unless I'm just rambling on about nothing like a ninny. I can do the vital stats thing [I'm 30, born April 29th, 1980 not long after midnight] but that's just a day and a tally of years and I still feel like a freaking teenager in that awkward stage of still trying to figure themselves out and teetering on that cusp of being a responsible adult thing,

I also have managed it so almost no one knows my last name. Or my full name even. Even at work it's just "Fran." This kinda amuses me.

So, TL;DR, I'm Fran and I am a derp. Yep.






Day 01 - Introduce yourself
Day 02 – Your first love
Day 03 – Your parents
Day 04 – What you ate today
Day 05 – Your definition of love
Day 06 – Your day
Day 07 – Your best friend
Day 08 – A moment
Day 09 – Your beliefs
Day 10 – What you wore today
Day 11 – Your siblings
Day 12 – What’s in your bag
Day 13 – This week
Day 14 – What you wore today
Day 15 – Your dreams
Day 16 – Your first kiss
Day 17 – Your favorite memory
Day 18 – Your favorite birthday
Day 19 – Something you regret
Day 20 – This month
Day 21 – Another moment
Day 22 – Something that upsets you
Day 23 – Something that makes you feel better
Day 24 – Something that makes you cry
Day 25 – A first
Day 26 – Your fears
Day 27 – Your favorite place
Day 28 – Something that you miss
Day 29 – Your aspirations
Day 30 – One last moment

Comments

[tomoyoichijouji.livejournal.com]

Heroman, which I've only watched one episode of, had a scientist who was giddy about the fact that he contacted an alien race and proceeded to brag about it to anyone who'd listen -- turns out he contacted a race that was looking for a planet to invade. Oops. The scientist isn't evil, but he's definitely portrayed as ignorant and a bit silly. (Arguably the fact that a giant robot is what saves the day in the episode is a point FOR technology, but I think maybe it has to do with the fact that it's a mecha show anyway, so they wouldn't be dissing their own genre. XP )

Shugo Chara, the bad guys are scientists (as well as corporate greedypeople, like you mentioned) looking into exploiting the Shugo Eggs for their personal gain. There are no 'good' people researching the Eggs, just 'reformed' ones that aren't doing bad things anymore.

Interesting telling thing, I searched for the phrase "scientists in anime" and about half the results had the word "mad" before it. Seems that mad scientists are the norm when it comes to having a scientist in an anime. They're not all that way, and they're not all bad, but again that's the exception rather than the norm. (E.g., Icchan from Angelic Layer is a mentor for the protagonist, and in fact the story behind the whole game itself is as funding for research on how to create artificial limbs that responded directly to people's brains. Again, Angelic Layer is another favorite of mine. =P )

Alright, lemee see if I can think of Western stuff fitting this bill...

The classic dystopian novels are a no brainer; they're always a technologically advanced society rather than the other way around.
Frankenstein is not just a classic, it's a trope.
The Terminator movies are very much on this.
Most zombie movies have the scenario of science gone wrong, and it's usually not science that makes it right (I Am Legend the movie I think does this though? The main character actually WAS a scientist, which stuck out to me because I usually didn't see an action hero that was one). The Swan Princess, the villain of the second movie's secret lair was a laboratory, and indeed he was a scientist of sorts, and the movie's whole message was that dark magic should never be looked into to be able to harness for good, because nothing good can come of it; it's kind of hard to relate it here because white/dark magic doesn't exist, but it's not just the power of destruction; it can also create and change, and that's lumped in with the forbidden arts. Spiderman (or did I get the hero wrong? =/ ) had Dr. Octopus; he meant well, but of course it messes up and he goes crazy and turns into a villain, and it's only after he destroys his technology that everything's OK again. The Golden Compass, the antagonists include researchers into nature of the connection between daemons and their owners; and of COURSE they're doing it for selfish gain and are oblivious to other people's suffering. No good scientists to contrast this either.

...Basically, I can see it in a good number of the stuff that's fairly popular, even stuff that I really like XD;;

[frannyan.livejournal.com]

See... most of this doesn't come off as "science is bad" as it does "society is bad" and it's individuals misusing science. It's kinda hard for an individual to misuse nature cause Nature it hard to control.

The Dystopia comes when man totally discards nature and allows itself to be run by machine. Most of them are more about conformity and human nature being suppressed. And it's not always a tech. advanced society in a dystopic, but most of them are set in the future because it hasn't happened yet. It's not the tech level that causes it, it's that the tech level shows that it's the future or is abused to create the situation.

[tomoyoichijouji.livejournal.com]

That's still my point though -- we see so much misuse of the scientific pursuit of knowledge and so little proper, 'heroic' usage. =(

[frannyan.livejournal.com]

because heroic usage is background. Healing people and fixing things rarely gets on screen attention unless it's done uniquely. Science is a way of life. Day to day things don't sell many movies.

And there are plenty of movies/media that do use science in a positive way, just not often in a blockbuster way since the guy working the computer is in the background as someone else is blasting aliens or something.

[tomoyoichijouji.livejournal.com]

That's not true that a science person cannot be the action hero, and in fact that's what the trope of the Science Hero is. I indicate How to Train Your Dragon as a counterpoint -- the scientist IS the action hero, and it certainly was more than just a day-to-day thing. Though there was a montage in there, lol -- but that set up dramatic, epic scenes that certainly were attention grabbing. Sweeping discoveries like that he uncovered can really be dramatic and definitely worth watching a movie of. Unfortunately, by that statement it demonstrates that the general public isn't really used to seeing movies like that, and thus think they can't exist. XP

[frannyan.livejournal.com]

[and a friend points out that almost all crime dramas use science to catch criminals so there's at least one proexample in an action type setting. There's actually quite a lot of that in that genre of TV I think.]

80% of all movies are cookie cutter stuff based on what made the most money last season and repeating previous successes. Children's films are a slight deviation but...

Actually, now that I think of it, kids films have far more science = hijinks and result in James Bond/Batman type scenarios. But adult perception of science as hard [due to schooling] probably dulls that interest, as does the fact that most movies are designed for decompression rather than thinking. Science movies require more active thinking or techobable, and most writers are not very science versed, but an audience going to see a science based movie would be so they can't just bullshit it like they used to be unless it's SciFi and thus a gazillion years in the future so they can make stuff up again.

[tomoyoichijouji.livejournal.com]

[it's true, I am nigh unfamiliar with crime and detective stories; I hear from people sometimes that people like me might find them very interesting, though somehow I never caught on to it -- maybe it's just the stereotypical 20's setting it's associated with or something like that? =P Detective stories are a niche genre like sci-fi, come to think of it; so yep you're right, it's a positive for the concept, but it also further outlines the mainstream view outside that]

LOL, and I end up more often than not liking films targeted for kids: some are intended for kids but really actually valuable for older, more mature audiences too; and then there are some that parents & babysitters have to reaaaaally suffer during. XD Though I think when I was a kid I tended not to like stuff that was unbearably kiddy anyway.

That leads into -- what you're hitting on, about entertainment as decompression vs. thinking, definitely it's also about taste, and I'm not going to pretend that my tastes are at all identical to the mainstream. Movies that I go, "OMG that was soooo amazing and cool!! Don't you think so??" while everyone else like my parents go, "...That made my brain hurt o_o;;" Harhar. =P

Though, this doesn't mean I like most movies that seem 'intellectual' or 'meaningful'; if anything those often piss me off more than a mainstream movie because they're so pretentious, without real substance behind the airs it throws around. I mean, I ADORE movies like PotC and Speed Racer and Transformers (the first one) -- they have good, satisfying, fun entertainment value. However, they don't insult your intelligence either like most hardcore comedy movies that I normally really don't like.

And also (lol and those three movies I mentioned are also targeted to specifically include younger audiences, but definitely adults as well), there's a sincerity and idealism in them that I think somehow is kin to the path of curiosity. In fact, maybe that's why 'kids' films more often have that sort of stuff like you noticed -- curiosity is something we associate with children, their desire to learn more about the world around them. People who are drawn to that way of perceiving the world retain that curiosity, and others who had it once lose it when they grow up to focus on more 'practical' things.

I don't deny that intellectual curiosity is not something that's going to be a trait of the general public anytime soon, in fact a very knowledgeable mentor of mine noted to me how rare it is to find someone with it. But, I guess then it comes back to my goal, especially since it's in short supply right now, to bring more of it out into the world, in hopes that I could create something uplifting for the others like me out there.

[tomoyoichijouji.livejournal.com]

And an addendum to the previous paragraph, that if I can, it would not only be uplifting to the curious intellectuals out there, but also can be enjoyed on a different level by even the mainstream -- and in fact, it can even let the mainstream understand and feel that way of seeing the world on their terms, and perhaps enable them to value that way of thinking more. If I could do that in some stories of mine...*starry eyes*