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Mar. 4th, 2006 09:58 amThe good news is that I figured out last night exactly what the core of my current story is, and that helps me frame the entire story. I went from "here is a series of events in Kismet's life that describes how he became a pirate Captain, lost his ship, and then joined the Iktome" to "here are scenes where we deal with the central conflict in Kismet's life, which is why he refuses to return to his village ever again", for which he had a lot of different reasons, to last night where I realized, Oh, THIS is the real reason why he won't return.
The bad news is that at 1:30 am, just as I sat back to read what I'd written and was thinking that it was a good point to stop and go watch the final half of the second and last Card Captor Sakura movie -- the power went out.
It was very very dark, almost pitch-black. I sat there for several minutes waiting for my eyes to adjust but there really wasn't any light of any kind in the apartment to adjust to. I made my way to the kitchen where i had matches and a candle on the counter. After lighting that, I got a second candle from the hall closet, then remember my little keychain flashlight, and with that I hunted around the house until I found my big flashlight. It was on the dresser in the bedroom -- I really had no idea where it was, or I would have gone to get it first thing.
After determining that all of the power was out in the apartment complex, and that there wasn't much else I could do anyway, I went to bed. Just after I drifted off to sleep, the power came back, I know this because of course, the lights in my bedroom were on, so they woke me up.
Now I have one computer up, but apparently my story was saved on my bedroom computer. Sometimes I don't even realize where my files are being saved, since I have about four different computers all networked, but the main files are on the bedroom computer. I have to boot up that computer to see how much of what I wrote last night got saved. I know I saved at a few points.
The Card Captor Sakura 2nd movie is interesting. There are two variants on the tv series -- "Card Captor Sakura" which is the Japanese-language version sold in the US with English subtitles, thanks probably to Pioneer because I doubt Nelvana cared about the anime dvd market much at all, and "Cardcaptors", which is the Nelvana made-to-fit-American-television version, in which they cut out more than a half dozen early episodes simply because Shoran Li, the male character of the series, hadn't appeared yet, and they wanted a male character right away in the series. Never mind that he's clearly a supporting character and Sakura is the main character. This, of course, is why they removed Sakura's name from the series title as well. They made other changes that I didn't like -- renaming characters, for example (Tomoyo becomes "Madison", never mind that she's still clearly a Japanese girl). They picked horrible voices for all of the characters. From what I understand, they also made further cuts to remove as much of the same-sex love interest as they could. There's quite a bit of this in the series, actually -- for an extended part of the series, Shaoran is attracted to Yukito, who Sakura also loves. Tomoyo is clearly in love with Sakura although she has already decided to never do anything about it. And later, it turns out that Yukito is in love with someone else -- and as they are both adults, this is more than the childhood infatuation that most of the series deals with, so an actual homosexual relationship is very strongly suggested. Not that you ever see anyone kiss in a children's series, of course. ^_^ But even the slight hint of such relationships was too much for American television, I guess.
So what I have is the Japanese version, but for the movies they have English-dubbed tracks as well as Japanese language tracks with subtitles. I was shocked when I watched the first movie and the characters opened their mouths and out came badly-acted English by people who were clearly not suited for the roles -- Sakura and Shaoran sound like adults, not like 10 year old children. I immediately stopped the film and switched to the Japanese language soundtrack with English subtitles.
However for the 2nd movie Nelvana did a curious thing. They hired a new cast of actors and actresses to dub in the English voices, and this time they were careful to find voices that matched the original Japanese voices much more closely. Why they waited until the final chapter of the series to do this is a mystery, and I read several reviews on Amazon where people who were used to the Cardcaptor series voices were shocked or confused by the sudden change. But for me, these new voices were actually pretty tolerable. ^_^ I still cringed when Sakura called Tomoyo "Madison", but overall it seems as if, by the time they reached the movie (which, really, takes place after the series was over -- both the television and the manga series apparently end at the same point, with Eirol going back to England, Shaoran going back to Hong Kong, and Sakura having never given Shaoran an answer to the very important question he'd posed to her. The movie resolves all of this in a much more pleasing finale)... so by the time they reached the 2nd movie, it appears that Nelvana somehow finally "got it" and decided to try and dub that final movie the way they really should have dubbed the whole series.
I have no real plans for the weekend. I don't get paid until Tuesday, and I only have one check left in my checkbook until the new checks arrive anyway. (Which could happen today, but I'm not holding my breath). My biggest goal is to try to pound my Kismet story into shape, now that I know where it has to start and where it has to end.
The bad news is that at 1:30 am, just as I sat back to read what I'd written and was thinking that it was a good point to stop and go watch the final half of the second and last Card Captor Sakura movie -- the power went out.
It was very very dark, almost pitch-black. I sat there for several minutes waiting for my eyes to adjust but there really wasn't any light of any kind in the apartment to adjust to. I made my way to the kitchen where i had matches and a candle on the counter. After lighting that, I got a second candle from the hall closet, then remember my little keychain flashlight, and with that I hunted around the house until I found my big flashlight. It was on the dresser in the bedroom -- I really had no idea where it was, or I would have gone to get it first thing.
After determining that all of the power was out in the apartment complex, and that there wasn't much else I could do anyway, I went to bed. Just after I drifted off to sleep, the power came back, I know this because of course, the lights in my bedroom were on, so they woke me up.
Now I have one computer up, but apparently my story was saved on my bedroom computer. Sometimes I don't even realize where my files are being saved, since I have about four different computers all networked, but the main files are on the bedroom computer. I have to boot up that computer to see how much of what I wrote last night got saved. I know I saved at a few points.
The Card Captor Sakura 2nd movie is interesting. There are two variants on the tv series -- "Card Captor Sakura" which is the Japanese-language version sold in the US with English subtitles, thanks probably to Pioneer because I doubt Nelvana cared about the anime dvd market much at all, and "Cardcaptors", which is the Nelvana made-to-fit-American-television version, in which they cut out more than a half dozen early episodes simply because Shoran Li, the male character of the series, hadn't appeared yet, and they wanted a male character right away in the series. Never mind that he's clearly a supporting character and Sakura is the main character. This, of course, is why they removed Sakura's name from the series title as well. They made other changes that I didn't like -- renaming characters, for example (Tomoyo becomes "Madison", never mind that she's still clearly a Japanese girl). They picked horrible voices for all of the characters. From what I understand, they also made further cuts to remove as much of the same-sex love interest as they could. There's quite a bit of this in the series, actually -- for an extended part of the series, Shaoran is attracted to Yukito, who Sakura also loves. Tomoyo is clearly in love with Sakura although she has already decided to never do anything about it. And later, it turns out that Yukito is in love with someone else -- and as they are both adults, this is more than the childhood infatuation that most of the series deals with, so an actual homosexual relationship is very strongly suggested. Not that you ever see anyone kiss in a children's series, of course. ^_^ But even the slight hint of such relationships was too much for American television, I guess.
So what I have is the Japanese version, but for the movies they have English-dubbed tracks as well as Japanese language tracks with subtitles. I was shocked when I watched the first movie and the characters opened their mouths and out came badly-acted English by people who were clearly not suited for the roles -- Sakura and Shaoran sound like adults, not like 10 year old children. I immediately stopped the film and switched to the Japanese language soundtrack with English subtitles.
However for the 2nd movie Nelvana did a curious thing. They hired a new cast of actors and actresses to dub in the English voices, and this time they were careful to find voices that matched the original Japanese voices much more closely. Why they waited until the final chapter of the series to do this is a mystery, and I read several reviews on Amazon where people who were used to the Cardcaptor series voices were shocked or confused by the sudden change. But for me, these new voices were actually pretty tolerable. ^_^ I still cringed when Sakura called Tomoyo "Madison", but overall it seems as if, by the time they reached the movie (which, really, takes place after the series was over -- both the television and the manga series apparently end at the same point, with Eirol going back to England, Shaoran going back to Hong Kong, and Sakura having never given Shaoran an answer to the very important question he'd posed to her. The movie resolves all of this in a much more pleasing finale)... so by the time they reached the 2nd movie, it appears that Nelvana somehow finally "got it" and decided to try and dub that final movie the way they really should have dubbed the whole series.
I have no real plans for the weekend. I don't get paid until Tuesday, and I only have one check left in my checkbook until the new checks arrive anyway. (Which could happen today, but I'm not holding my breath). My biggest goal is to try to pound my Kismet story into shape, now that I know where it has to start and where it has to end.
