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I’ve been watching Dr. Stone and Sucession in parallel, and let me tell you, it is a head trip.
( the shows )
But okay, past the tropey shonen stuff, there’s moments of real feeling, here—
( Dr Stone spoilers, if you care about spoilers )
Thought-trains from this:
1) Why does Dr. Stone work for me where so much of so-called “golden-age” scifi fails? When I go back and read Heinlein (or, for a more modern example, when I tried to read The Three-Body Problem), I always want to fall asleep; I just don’t care about anyone involved and everything they shout makes me feel like I’m in a physics class. I wonder if it’s not two-dimensional characters that people hate in golden-age scifi, so much as, just not super-likeable characters? Because Senku, like. Senku is not a complex character, but he’s fun and likeable as hell. Side-thought: is this something that’s easier to get away with in a visual medium than a literary one? You can communicate a lot of likeability via character design, visual tics, etc, after all.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a total snob; I loved The Martian as much as any other basic bitch. Maybe Heinlein just sucks most the time. Who knows!)
2) When people talk about “comfort food” shows, they often seem to be referring to stuff like... I dunno, slice-of-life anime? Stephen Universe? I dunno, stuff which just doesn’t do anything to me. You hear adjectives like “soft” and “comfy.”
Dr. Stone isn’t soft. It’s hype! a hype train! There’s no need for comfort when everything’s as suffused with joy as this show is. I love it more than any slice-of-life show; it’s way more comforting than anything I’ve ever heard described as “soft.”
And—okay, brief aside. I got into computers as a kid because I thought it was just fucking magical that you could store the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in something you hold in the palm of your hand, I thought it was magical that I could send messages to friends 800 miles or 8,000 miles away and they’d be able to respond almost instantaneously, and I thought it was incredible that people did this.
And look, the reality’s more complicated than that. My job involves a lot of hard thinking about policy, and materialistic concerns, and gloomy fighting against larger systems or cruft that I can’t change on my own. I can’t just invent gunpowder or the transistor or whatever and save my village from certain doom.
But... okay, yeah, in this respect the show’s absolutely escapist. In Dr. Stone science just rules, it’s a fully humanistic endeavor, and honestly it was kind of nice to feel “maybe computers aren’t the literal worst” for a few hours, haha. I guess this is my kind of comfort food :P
( navel gazing )
4) I want to do a breakdown of The Shonen Formula TM sometime, how it works on a technical level and all that, mostly so that I can ape elements of it in my own fiction when I feel like it. I actually have a pile of meta-essays on writing that I’d like to hash out at some point (again, mostly for my own learning/edification). I guess watch this space, or, let me know if you’re interested in any of these topics:
( writerly topics )
disclaimer for all of the above: i have had wine tonight, my friends
( the shows )
But okay, past the tropey shonen stuff, there’s moments of real feeling, here—
( Dr Stone spoilers, if you care about spoilers )
Thought-trains from this:
1) Why does Dr. Stone work for me where so much of so-called “golden-age” scifi fails? When I go back and read Heinlein (or, for a more modern example, when I tried to read The Three-Body Problem), I always want to fall asleep; I just don’t care about anyone involved and everything they shout makes me feel like I’m in a physics class. I wonder if it’s not two-dimensional characters that people hate in golden-age scifi, so much as, just not super-likeable characters? Because Senku, like. Senku is not a complex character, but he’s fun and likeable as hell. Side-thought: is this something that’s easier to get away with in a visual medium than a literary one? You can communicate a lot of likeability via character design, visual tics, etc, after all.
(Disclaimer: I’m not a total snob; I loved The Martian as much as any other basic bitch. Maybe Heinlein just sucks most the time. Who knows!)
2) When people talk about “comfort food” shows, they often seem to be referring to stuff like... I dunno, slice-of-life anime? Stephen Universe? I dunno, stuff which just doesn’t do anything to me. You hear adjectives like “soft” and “comfy.”
Dr. Stone isn’t soft. It’s hype! a hype train! There’s no need for comfort when everything’s as suffused with joy as this show is. I love it more than any slice-of-life show; it’s way more comforting than anything I’ve ever heard described as “soft.”
And—okay, brief aside. I got into computers as a kid because I thought it was just fucking magical that you could store the equivalent of the Library of Alexandria in something you hold in the palm of your hand, I thought it was magical that I could send messages to friends 800 miles or 8,000 miles away and they’d be able to respond almost instantaneously, and I thought it was incredible that people did this.
And look, the reality’s more complicated than that. My job involves a lot of hard thinking about policy, and materialistic concerns, and gloomy fighting against larger systems or cruft that I can’t change on my own. I can’t just invent gunpowder or the transistor or whatever and save my village from certain doom.
But... okay, yeah, in this respect the show’s absolutely escapist. In Dr. Stone science just rules, it’s a fully humanistic endeavor, and honestly it was kind of nice to feel “maybe computers aren’t the literal worst” for a few hours, haha. I guess this is my kind of comfort food :P
( navel gazing )
4) I want to do a breakdown of The Shonen Formula TM sometime, how it works on a technical level and all that, mostly so that I can ape elements of it in my own fiction when I feel like it. I actually have a pile of meta-essays on writing that I’d like to hash out at some point (again, mostly for my own learning/edification). I guess watch this space, or, let me know if you’re interested in any of these topics:
( writerly topics )
disclaimer for all of the above: i have had wine tonight, my friends
