The Fat (Rodney Dangerfield Edition)

I have held many jobs in my time. My career path has been bizarre and wandering. I have never gotten less respect than I do as a writer, and since I'm feeling 'bemused' rather than 'angry' about that right now, I'mma gonna write about it.

When I say 'respect' I don't mean personally, like 'You're no good at this'. I mean professionally. I got more professional courtesy in my time working fast food than I have as a writer.

This comes to mind because recently I was approached for a writing job. A friend of mine and seven of his friends are making a game, and my friend (who I will call Tiny) asked me if I'd be interested in doing the writing. Hey, a relaxing side project. Sure, sounded like fun. Then a couple of weeks ago I found out that no, they're serious, and they offered me money. 500e is not huge in the scheme of things, but it means they're serious. So I got seriously to work, and after checking every step along the way if they liked the ideas, I was told to scrap everything because I had misunderstood the project. So I got into contact with the project lead, who seems to have not actually gotten any of my messages or had any of hers passed to me. I'm not sure, because when I ask her questions she lectures me about writing instead of answering them. And now she hasn't answered my email in a week. I'm hoping THAT is just the holidays, but damn.

That project still may work out, it may just be communications problems, but I'm less than hopeful because it's not exactly new.

See, early in the year I got contacted by an animation studio. Honest to Celestia animation studio in India, established and at least moderately successful - I checked. They wanted to produce a cartoon for the American market, and needed a writer. They professed to love every idea I gave them. Then they got slow answering my emails. I was told the marketing department wanted to develop a certain character idea. I thew a pitch at them. They told me they liked it and wanted more development. I threw a more developed version at them. It's been about six months, and they never answered my email. The person I know personally in the company told me that they weren't upset with me, but to forget about them until and unless they got back to me. Probably marketing canceled the whole project - that's really common in animation. But damn, the professional discourtesy in being unwilling to tell me, right?

Or I could go back to when I tried to submit for freelance to Klasky-Csupo, carefully following their submission instructions and providing the proper waivers, only to be told that they no longer accepted submissions. See, they'd changed their policy to only working with a set of preapproved agents, but they hadn't bothered to change the phone line that explained how to submit. PROFESSIONAL COURTESY.

And the 'Next issue!' magazine debacle...

Whew! That was fun to get off my chest. Am I just unlucky, or do all writers get treated like they're expendable?

Ponies and Dolls

I'm finished through chapter 4 of Quite Contrary, and trying to decide if there are good ways to link to the chapters in this blog. This puts me again in the mysterious Between Space before my inspiration revs up and I launch into the next writing spree. The covers for The Doll House are ready, so I'm hoping they'll be ready to publish in the next few days. Meanwhile, I... guess I blog about myself! I dunno. That's supposed to happen, right?

I will take a cue from Keri's blog there. She likes live action television serieses. I like cartoons. I like cartoons a lot. For those watching the internet explode in pastel pink glory, it can be taken for granted that I am a My Little Pony fan. But I'm not here to talk about ponies!

Since I'm off visiting The Old Man, I brought a selection of videos on my flash drive, and I'm rewatching Rozen Maiden. Anime, American animation, European animation, all I care is that it's a good cartoon, and Rozen Maiden is my favorite cartoon series ever, which means it's my favorite TV show ever. I can't believe I'm rewatching it for the 4th time. I'm not a big rewatcher, but there's just so much to see.

Since I just started rewatching I'm fascinated by the way the show pretends to be your standard 'magical sidekicks tournament fight' at the beginning. Admittedly that pretense doesn't last long, but I'm seeing this pattern in the particularly good dramatic animes, like Rozen Maiden and Puella Magi Madoka Magica and Kodomo no Jikan, where they start out as if they were a cheap trope series so they can subvert all of the expectations and everything can fall into madness and Hell. The earliest example I can think of using that approach was Evangelion, and of course at the time I felt it was the best around.

But Rozen Maiden does it better than all of them. Now that I've seen the entire series and I know the characters, the cliche'd trope beginnings have extra meaning. They're displays of how truly, truly broken everyone on the show is. Suigintou's assassin doll really IS as halfhearted and ridiculous an attack as it seems, because Suigintou doesn't want Shinku dead. Shinku's jaded detachment isn't confidence, she's just so tired of fighting her sisters and being hurt by her owners and doesn't want to do it anymore. Then she bullies Jun into kissing the ring under her terms, and if you aren't watching for it you'd completely miss the expression of helplessly falling in love that transforms her face while they're connecting.

And in Episode 2 anybody can see Hina Ichigo completely lose it and nearly murder her owner, but now I have the perspective of seeing just how close all the dolls were to immolation at the start of the series. Shinku has become cold and withdrawn and isn't sure she's willing to fight even to save her own life anymore. Hina Ichigo can't endure abandonment and entombment again, and her personality is crumbling around her in her desperation to stop it. And Shinku could tell at a glance and while pretending to be the arrogant bully manipulates Hina Ichigo into moving in with her where she'll be safe and taken care of while she recovers. I'll never know for sure, but it was almost certainly on her mind already. After all, Suigintou was awake and just crazy enough to kill, and poor Hina Ichigo would have trouble fighting her way out of a paper bag.

I like these shows, the ones where you're justified putting this kind of thought into them. And Rozen Maiden is amazing.