Intellectual Theft

At what point is an idea theft?  At what point is it borrowing?  At what point is it influence?

Lets take a popular show/movie whatever.  Or better yet, lets take something that hasn't been around in awhile.  I mean, everything old becomes new again, and if I'm the one who is making it new, then that means I'll be on the ... top of the wave thingie.

How about, Japanese animation?  They have tons of stories that used to be popular.  So lets see.... Sailor Moon!

If I were to write a story about an ancient moon princess, who is reincarnated on Earth, and gains super powers by transforming into a skimpy outfit, along with her 4 other friends, all with different personalities, to fight the same evil that destroyed her kingdom eons ago, I'd be stealing the story of Sailor Moon.

What could I remove from that equation, that would still be Sailor Moon (teenage girls with powers fighting evil), and not be Sailor Moon?

We could change the basis of the powers, the number of friends, and get rid of the reincarnation stuff.  In this case we would lose the planet motif, and make 3 girls (the main character with her two best friends), we'd pick our favorite 3 personalities, and completely redo who the main villain is.  Also, set it in the present, or even the slight future.

Now a great deal of what made the Sailor Moon setting is gone, and what we have left is the personalities of the main cast, and how they influenced each other.

If the setting was not modern, but lets say fantasy, we might be in Magic Knight RayEarth.  If there were only the two girls it might be Pretty Cure.   As is, it might be Powerpuff Girls Z.

Are we now so far removed from its origins that we are now writing under the influence of having seen Sailor Moon, or are we still stealing?

I leave you with this interesting link.

Father's Day

Growing up, most of my life, without a father, I tend to seek father figures in my life.

Some failed me completely, and others, surprise and enlighten me.

I look at my son, and I wonder if I'm being a good enough father for him.  I think that too many young people out there undervalue experience and age, which leads to young parents who end up messing their kids up.


So this father's day, I want all the dads out there to re-evaluate how much of a fuck up you really are, and to ask yourself, is it too late to be a better father?

Struggle with writing

I've been struggling with my writing lately.  Two weeks into June and I'm realizing the error of my layout.  My scenes aren't exciting enough.  I'm not saying every scene needs to have a fight, but I have some scenes where I can't seem to find a reason for it to be in there other than as an excuse to show people how things are.

So my current plan is to sit down and figure out how to not only show how things are, but also get something in the story-line moving forward.  This means that the story will be "denser" than it currently is.  I don't know if that will result in less words or what...

Anyways, this also means that my blog posts might slow down a bit, and I apologize for those who just got into the once a week groove of things.  I'll try to empty my brain here once a week still, but I'm not sure how much that content will be, especially since I've been aiming at improving my dialog.

I do have a post half finished, but I'm not sure how to finish it up yet, so that might come up in a bit as well.