Today I Discovered This Writer’s Tactic To Face Her Fear Of Rejection And Failure, And It’s Honestly

Can I talk for a moment about visual storytelling, cause, I feel like it’s something that a lot of adaptations forget about in lieu of trying to replicate their source material.

It’s a problem you see most often in anime derived from manga or light novels, but it’s also present in movies based on YA novels, and you gotta know what I’m talking about, start on black, opening narration, fade in as the main character explains the world and environment. This works in a book since the reader can’t see anything, they need the specifics of the world explained, but it feels like the movies are just like “well it worked for the book, it’ll work for us right?

I’d say it’s worse in anime, where characters will go on long internal soliloquies trying to explain their thought processes and complex emotions, which again, works for the manga, in a manga movement is very expensive, every single motion requires it’s own panel, which takes up the artist’s time, printed space, and a moment in the narrative, so it’s important to only show what absolutely needs to be shown. But animation is different, it’s all movement and the details are what sells it more than the dialogue.

The reason I wanted to make this post is because of one scene in One Punch Man that perfectly exemplifies how to translate a written thought process into visual storytelling. After getting punched to the moon (err, spoilers), Saitama has this thought process

and it’d be easy to translate that entirely literally in the anime, Saitama crouches, has an internal monologue as he tries to figure out how much force he needs to put into his jump, and then he launches. Instead though, the scene is done completely silently, to sell the fact that he’s in space, but the thought process isn’t removed, it’s just show visually.

He throws a bit of moon rock to gauge the moon’s gravity, then launches, it’s a much more thoughtful approach to the scene and the audience’s ability to interpret visual information.

I just, really wish more adaptations realized the inherent strength of the visual medium instead of relying entirely on the source material’s structure and reliance on its own medium.

*asexual laughter*

Donations pour in for Ida B. Wells monument in Chicago, but $180K still needed

The investigative journalist and civil rights activist could be one of the first women memorialized with a public monument in Chicago

There’s a push to crowdfund an Ida B. Wells monument in Chicago. They’re around halfway there. Let’s give them a boost.

Nida Khan is a 15-year-old Pakistani girl who drives motorcycles, rickshaws, and garbage trucks to help earn money for her family. She is also a medal-winning boxer and a teacher.

Holy crap - why, YES, Luke Cage, yes I do!

Nanny of the Maroons, as the show goes on to say, was a leader of a city of formerly-enslaved Africans in Jamaica. They regularly raided plantations to liberate others. Rumors swirled that she was royalty, but her origins are a bit unclear - the show says she was Asante, but I think that’s still uncertain?

She beat the hell out of the British for years, and was reputed to have magic powers. She fed her people with quick-growing pumpkins, made the British ill with her herbalism, and camouflaged warriors so well, British soldiers would hang their coats on them, thinking them trees. Said soldiers would then decapitate the British and vanish into the forest. She could supposedly catch bullets with her bare hands.

To this day, the site of old Nanny Town is a place where unwelcome visitors reputedly go missing. 

And yes, I cover her in my first book. 

(she’s so cool! so glad her story is suffusing its way into pop culture! she fits in perfectly with the storyline they have going in Luke Cage.) 

Marie Equi died on this day in 1952.

When I wrote that initial tweetstorm, I hadn’t finished all my research into her. It’s important to not leave out: Marie Equi was physically abusive and she almost certainly either cheated on her wife or went outside the bounds of their non-monogamous agreements. She was a deeply difficult, very flawed, very human person and one shouldn’t lose sight of that when talking about her.

And yes, I cover her in my second book.

DNA proves fearsome Viking warrior was a woman

High-ranking fighter was long assumed to be male

In case you missed it: DNA testing recently provided more evidence that the tomb of a high-rank viking warrior – replete with war horses, weapons, and strategy games – was that of a woman.

The Marathon World Record Holder the World Forgot

Two weeks after Kathrine Switzer made headlines at Boston in 1967, 13-year-old Maureen Mancuso quietly shattered the women's world record. Few people noticed.

Without training, this 13-year-old shattered world records for running in 1967 – unfortunately, it happened shortly after Kathrine Switzer’s headline-making Boston marathon entry. Maureen Mancuso’s feat was all but forgotten.