Serdar Yegulalp's Blog, page 134
October 9, 2016
Label, Label, Label Dept.
Some time ago I said to someone else something to the effect that, "I call myself a science-fiction writer because I don't really have any better label for what I do." I gravitated towards that category to describe what I did because it was the only one that seemed open-ended enough to cover many of the things I was aiming for.
Stranger Things Dept.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children Movie Review (2016) | Roger Ebert
The characters here are supposed to be delightful — or at least interesting — simply because theyre superficially odd, and it just isnt enough anymore.
This to me is an echo, and a distillation, of all the things I come back to in my talks about "weird" (see:here,here).[image error]
October 7, 2016
The Big Shakeup Dept.
Now that I've just barely managed to avoid being clobbered by Hurricane Matthew, a quick note about what will be happening here. Starting over the next couple of weeks, I'll be slowly transitioning this site to my new blog publishing system. I'm still working out the details of how this will happen, but it will most likely involve having visits to the blog homepage redirected to the new blog subdomain, and maybe also have new posts echoed to the old blog for the time being as well.
But the po...
October 1, 2016
Hindsight For Thee But Not For Me Dept.
"Take 'myself'," Akira Kurosawa is reputed to have once said, "subtract 'movies', and the result is 'zero'."
September 29, 2016
Doing Weird Dept.
Another busy week, pardon the silence. Our text for today: On Being Weird.
September 20, 2016
An Appropriate Response Dept.
A busy week; much real life stuff going on, little time for blogging. AONO continues to roll along, and the latest stretch of work brought to mind that old discussion I keep coming back to about how tough it is to be original. This time, a different angle, the one about "write what you know".
September 11, 2016
It'll Be Fun, They Said Dept.
Strange, but true. When I first started working onAlways Outnumbered Never Outgunned, around the end of last year, it was partly a reactionary gesture. I'd been in the middle of trying to plan a project that just wasn't coming together properly — too inert, too stiff, too unadventurous, toosquare — and so I decided to chuck it and do something wild-'n'-crazy, do somethingfun.
Now cut to me around ten or so months later, and I'm neck-deep in this thing, and it's becoming as complex as that beh...
September 1, 2016
To Thine Own Balance Be True Dept.
In conversation with friends this past weekend, the following insight popped out. When we say "be true to yourself", we often do so in ignorance of the way people can be "true to themselves" while at the same time excluding the possibility of any connection with others. A happy medium must be struck, and so I ventured that maybe "be true to yourself" isn't the most complete formula — that it should be more something like, "be true to your balance".
August 30, 2016
Copy Shop Dept.
[Modern voice actors] just watch anime and copy what they hear, so what they do sounds like copy of a copy of a copy. As a result, the depth and breadth of anime voice acting is dwindling rapidly."
August 28, 2016
Pushing Your Own Envelope Dept.
A nasty spate of some upper respiratory illness has kept me away from the keys for a few days. It's mostly cleared up, but there's this annoying fog between my eyes, my fingers, and my brain that hasn't completely lifted yet. Apologies if the blogging seems less coherent than usual.
Always Outnumbered Never Outgunnedkeeps on keepin' on. I suspect this will be one of those projects that changes quite radically across drafts, because I'm going into such unexplored territory with it. The first t...
