YOU GUYS!

CHRISTMAS IS NEARLY HERE!!!!
8DDD

*COUGHS*

BUT THAT ASIDE... I BRING MORE CRAPPY FANART... THREE CHEERS FOR THE CRAPPY FANART! 8D

( BETTER NOT POUT YOU BETTER NOT CRY.... )

The problem here is with assumptions. ( Private conversation is not the same as cyber )

We haven't heard a lot from this production, but it would seem that the first American and Japanese promotional images for Tekken have dropped. There was cautious optimism at the casting and while we don't have any footage yet, the posters (expecially the Japanese one with a better designer working on it) seem pretty good. Maybe going more Mortal Kombat then Dead or Alive.

Via Twitch.



( American promo under the cut )



Japan seems to have an opening month of March 2010. No word yet on American release.

I haven't been able to see the whole thing yet, but from what I have Real Shaolin one of the most fascinating martial arts documentaries I've seen in a long while. It aims to give people a look at Shaolin that peels away movie magic and shows us the art and its training as it really is.

Summery

THE REAL SHAOLIN is a moving, poetic and action-packed documentary feature about two Chinese and two Westerners who journey to the Shaolin Temple in China, inspired by Jet Li’s Kung Fu movie “The Shaolin Temple”. In the course of excruciating martial arts training, their fantasies to become Kung Fu warriors collide with harsh reality, as the Shaolin Temple is the ultimate test for martial artists from all over the world. Will they achieve their goal of living the Shaolin dream?

The people it follows includes 9 year old Yuan Peng who was abandoned at the temple by his parents, 19 year old Zhu who is training to escape a life of poverty, 19 year old American Orion who is following in the path of his idol Bruce Lee and sees Shaolin as a way of life and the French 29 year old Eric who is determined to become the first non Chinese Shaolin monk.



If you can get a chance to see it, do so.

Hi everyone. I've been watching this community for a long time and have always find the discussions about race related to the casting interesting and mind provoking. I noticed that a news report about the MANAA meeting was cross-posted to ontd_political and ohnotheydidnt.

I found a couple of comments very interesting, starting from here:

"Interesting: I have a friend who says that the Last Airbender race fail does not bother him because he does not see it as whitewashing because he does not see the Avatar world as Asian in the first place. To him, the world and its cultures do not code as Asian, but as more in the vein of white Orientalism. It's characters putting on Asian costumes in an exotic Asian world, for white people. Essentially, to cast the characters as white is only fitting.

I may be off in recounting his argument."
.

I doubt the movie executives had this particular argument in mind when they made their casting choices, but still I'd like to know your opinions regarding this interpretation.

Do you agree that A:TLA has a more Orientalist interpretation to it by only managing to implement the physical elements of the Asian culture? If yes, from that perspective, does it justify the casting of white people as the lead characters? .. And I actually have a lot of other questions in mind but I'm not quite sure how to word it so I'll see how it goes.

Apologies if this type of discussion isn't appropriate in this community.

I know your character had an odd upbringing. I also know he's pissed off and hates the world right now and wants revenge on everyone blah blah blah.

But dude.

When you essentially threaten my character and another character with death, ramble about how you nearly got assassinated, and say that your two NPC lackeys took down the assassins bare-handed, all in response to two characters mocking you because you didn't know anything about Christmas and yet were at a Christmas party--

--with other characters around no less, did you really expect someone to take you seriously and quake in their boots about how intimidating and scary you are?

...

You did, it seems, as you told me that my character would be dead in another reality for dismissing your guy as completely fucking insane, rolling his eyes, and walking off before your guy finishes. I mean, really now.

There's trying too hard and then there's this.

---

Edit: Ha, take that, LJ formatting! *shakes fist*

Look. I understand that we all have some problems. And starting a board in the summer is never easy to keep up. So it's not like I really can hold that much of a grudge against either of you. But I asked to help, and you both enthusiastically said that it would be awesome. So I set out to help. Why did no one at all help me? The one board I joined, where I offered to help and I was told that my best help would be as a member - and possibly later on playing a canon character I know and respect - is still going pretty strong.

I just really think it's a royal pain that you can't even be bothered with your own boards.

This is a really weird trend.

I'm sure everyone knows and hates those multi-page purple prose descs that go into great detail about every pore on a character’s skin... But what about the descs that just amount to ‘Character is wearing a black t-shirt, jeans, and shoes’.

...And that’s literally ALL IT SAYS.

Nothing about height, build, hair color, face, NOTHING. 

Personally I just imagine these characters as being walking coat hangers or something. Just sets of clothing, floating around… Like the invisible man. It's becoming weirdly common at the game I'm at too.

That and a lot of the characters are various fantasy creatures, and they'll just have descs like, "She/He looks just like a <species>. ...In a t-shirt and jeans." (It's always a t-shirt and jeans. I dunno, is that better or worse than long black trenchcoats?)

Wow so basically your character looks and dresses generic as hell? Maybe I'll just imagine him really ugly and deformed with greasy hair, because you aren't telling me otherwise.

I'm really not sure if this is better or worse than the purple prose descs. Really it's just the opposite extreme. Easier on the eyes perhaps, but goddamn, what happened to creativity? What happened to making your character unique?

Edit: For the record, I've asked one or two of these sorts to describe their char in more detail... because they had asked me to draw a picture of them. They then proceeded to act quite confused that I needed more detail, because after all, of course I should know what their character looks like from a single sentence description of their clothing. :\

All I have to say is 'WTF Man.'
Seriously. We were all RPing just fine, laughing as we did because some days, especially times around holidays where we are all stressed to hell, we like to have fun. We warned you before hand that we are not super serious people. That we're all pretty laid back, and enjoy a laugh every now and then.
So what the hell? Out of no where, you decide to try and kill my character? and not even in a 'Lol stabbity stab' way, but in long, drawn out, TL;DR posts about how she did something she never did? You haven't even been RPing with us for 3 weeks yet, and you pull this? And then, to make it worse, when we ask you about it, all of us curious on WHY you would try and pull this, you start drama?
You say you 'Hate me' and I'm the 'Worst thing to ever happen to this group' because I wouldn't let you get with my boy? Because we wouldn't go with your Ego-trip plot?
Hate to break it to you kiddo, but I started this group. It was also really dumb to invite everyone, save me, to a different channel to try and revolt started. These people are my friends, even the person who invited you to our group says you have to go.
I really don't know what brought t this on. I've talked to you twice. It's not just my decision that made you plot a No-go either. We run a democracy. We voted, no one wanted to join in this dick-sucking contest for your low self esteem.

A few months ago, I sent a letter to MANNA regarding my disappointment in the "Last Airbender" casting. I was thrilled when I heard that Guy wanted to feature it in their next newsletter, to be released nation-wide to subscribers!

I would like to also share this letter with you all, too.

Hello,

I am a Chinese-American student who fell in love with Avatar: The Last Airbender the day it premiered on Nickelodeon. This ode to Asian culture made me fall in love with the show even more, and eventually even got my parents to watch the TV show as well. They also became fans.

( the rest... )

It was a deeply personal letter, and I was pleased when Guy actually wrote back to me.

HOWEVER...

When I told my parents of the matter, they were not too happy, to be honest. Yes, they were fans (not as big as I was, they just watched it with me and enjoyed it when they did), but they also told me that they did not want me to "potentially tarnish my reputation" if future employers were to see this letter and assume I was too "left wing" about the matter (I am a business major.) As a result, I asked Guy to only put my first name and the first letter of my last name instead of my full name.

I felt angered, though, and thought: Why should I feel worried about my reputation? Why should I try to hide the fact that I'm doing this? If these "future employers" don't understand what I'm doing and what I'm fighting for, are they really people I'd want to work for?

This anger made me think...do you think that many people, Asians in particular, like my parents (who were born and raised in Hong Kong) just feel too passive or "don't care" about what's going on because they just feel like it's a "silly little movie?" and there are "bigger things in life" to worry about? To me, the casting in this movie is flat-out racism, and that is a "big thing" to me. Which is what I tried to explain, but my dad just told me:

"You, as a Chinese-American, will always encounter racism in America, especially because we live in the South. You must be strong, move past it, and work your way up so you don't have to deal with people who have such a mentality." It felt very unsettling to hear this, and I felt uneasy that my dad felt this way.

My parents were not raised with an activist mentality. As foreigners in this country, they felt like they just had to work hard to make a living in America as best as they could, just ignoring people who were racist towards them and trying to stay "out of trouble" as much as possible. I have tried to explain to them several times why the casting angered me, but they brushed it off and told me I was making a too-big deal out of this. It was the typical mentality we have been fighting, the "I don't care, stop freaking out. There are more important things." It frustrated me even more!

I gave up trying to convince them, but still feel a little sad that they didn't understand.

It just makes me feel conflicted...I feel like I am fighting for what I feel is right, but it saddens me that it feels almost impossible to convince others around me to see eye-to-eye with me, and just open their ears and listen. There is a deeper issue on hand...it may be disguised in a form of entertainment, but underneath it all it's raw, real, and very much still here in our society.

Dear close friend,

We're playing in a nifty little RP. There's no real plot other than my most annoying character and the one person he'll listen to getting magically dropped into your world to mess with your characters (and fight for humanity's freedom, but that's secondary.)

Now, my character (the annoying one) isn't human or sane. In fact, he says he's insane and is pretty heavily medicated. You want to call him a monster, an animal, batshit, or anything similar? Cool! I love when people insult him, because it gets him angry, which makes him more annoying and more fun. Him being annoying is kind of the point of this game. Gives me more to work with.

What's not cool is getting angry at me when my character responds. If your character gets angry at my character? Fine! More drama which is fun. But you're getting pissed at me for my character getting angry over being insulted and beat down (and threatened with dog kennels.) OOC =/= IC and in game actions lead to in game consequences. Your character makes threats, my character makes threats. Your character makes offensive jokes toward my character; my character isn't going to be a happy little obedient soldier.

TL;DR: Stop getting angry when my character responds to threats and insults!

Sincerely,
That friend with the annoying, psycho werewolf.

P.S., So you've got the new, fleshy Cylons androids with identical and attractive bodies. The first one my character ran into tried to kill him and succeeded in leaving him with a huge wound. It was, understandably, traumatic. Don't be surprised when he doesn't trust the next android he meets with that face, even if I know that she's on the 'good' side. My character has no way of knowing this, and I even scaled down his reaction. In my personal writing of him, he would have shot her instead of telling her to "Leave. Now. Or I shoot." Stop getting angry at me!

( Post examples behind the cut )
This is why my character keeps dropping subjects and why my posts take three times longer to write than yours. I have to figure out how to respond in a natural way to all of the action and dialog, without introducing any new subjects otherwise you will continue on and divide up the conversation even further. He is not going to just sit there and stare dumbfounded while you leave the room, come back, elbow him, etc. Real life and in-character conversations are not Livejournal posts, people do not actually respond point-by-point! I am pretty sure you have spoken to another human being before so I am unsure why you seem to think this is the case, but it isn't.

I'm verbose but my posts could be shorter and faster and more fun if I didn't have to sit here and struggle with timing and action. I wish this was only one person doing it, but I see it a lot, even from awesome rp'ers, and I don't understand. All it takes is one person doing it to fuck up a thread where the rest of the characters either have to drop subjects or deal with actions and its just so incredibly annoying. Its incredibly difficult when there are three or more characters and they are all doing this and then A is responding to C's comment while B is talking to C as well and CLUSTERFUCK.

PS please place dialog on the end or beginning of a paragraph, not split up throughout, thank you.


(Sorry if the example is confusing, its even more confusing to try and roleplay)
(Edited to add an LJ-cut, sorry, told you I was verbose)

It took a while for us to get permission to finally post this, but here it is: The scoop from the Asian American Coalition's meeting with Paramount Pictures.

APA Meeting with Paramount

In response to the protest over the portrayal of Asian Americans and the race jokes in The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, Asian American community leaders were invited to meet with high level Paramount executives in November. At the meeting, the Media Action Network for Asian Americans brought up the casting controversy over The Last Airbender.

You can visit Racebending.com to read the full report. Suffice to say, now Paramount can't pretend they aren't aware of the problems people have with the casting.

The President of Paramount Pictures told MANAA that in all his years in the business, he has never seen such outcry over the casting of a character, and that "diversity is paramount to Paramount."

"Diversity is Paramount to Paramount"?

Racebending.com decided to investigate that claim, so if you haven't seen it yet, also take a look at the research we did on the history of Asian American actors and Paramount Pictures. We learned that years ago, Paramount offered Asian American actors opportunities they no longer offer today.

Over fifty years ago, Paramount was more progressive in hiring Asian actors than any other studio, launching the careers of some of the biggest Asian American stars of all time--including Sessue Hayakawa, Anna Mae Wong, Nancy Kwan, and George Takei.

The modern day Paramount won't even cast Asian American actors, going so far as to casting white actors to play characters of color. Today their most famous Asian "star" is Po the Kung Fu Panda.

If you're interested in taking action, here are some things you can do.

1. Send a quick email to MANAA and thank them for bringing up TLA at the meeting at letters@manaa.org. Encourage them to continuing pressuring Paramount never to cast this way again.



2. Send a quick email to the NAACP Hollywood Bureau at hollywoodbureau@naacpnet.org Encourage them to get involved and speak out against The Last Airbender and The Weapon



3. Consider applying for one of the Staff Positions open at Racebending.com We can always use more help!



4. Spread the word! Share links with friends, continue talking about the situation, sign up for our newsletter...

In 2010, we will be ramping up our efforts to bring awareness to the discriminatory casting decisions made in this film. Stay tuned!

You are indeed a king among douchefaces.

You, sir, are a disagreeable, arrogant, closeminded, narcissistic, vulgar, amoral, sexist, predjudiced, and overall loathesome human being. And you can't roleplay for shit.

Oh, you say you can roleplay, but you don't.

You try to stack every odd in your favor, godmode like crazy, ignore the OOC/IC lines, pout like a child if anyone 'makes a challenge against your authority'- which is altogether another rant, insult people left and right if they even try to disagree with you on the most trivial matters, say that anyone actually roleplaying is just being a bad actor.

You don't understand rules. You don't see why you should 'limit' your knowledge IC, so you give your character knowledge of advanced physics that don't exist on this world, and you read the books so you can know what we're fighting and how to beat it without asking if you can make a knowledge roll. You're the kind of butthead who buys the spoiler book for the video game and plays it after memorizing the book. (Seriously. He does this.) You engage in bitchfits about rules that are hours long. And THEN you complain that we got nothing accomplished in our session, because 'the other players go on tangents'. That's right. You take an hour debating the definition of 'shun' when the DM sends a swarm of something against people on phantom steeds, but it's our fault for delaying game. Fuck you.

The only reason that you are even here is because you and the DM have been buddies since forever, and he knows you would take it extremely personally if he booted your ass from this game. You would never last in any game run by people who weren't at the last grasping edge of desperation. So.

When you whine about how few players we have, it kind of makes me want to stab you in the eye.

When you say we need to go out and find 'some intelligent people who can actually strategize,' I want to stab you in both eyes.

You have driven away some of the best RPers I've seen in a while. Why? Because they were overweight and you automatically treat overweight people like shit. Because they disagreed with your idiotic opinions and overinflated sense of self worth.

We have three other players in this game. The guy who has absolutely no friends or social life beyond this game. The DM's girlfriend. And me, friend to both DM and girlfriend. I've stayed so far because the DM is an amazing one as far as storytelling goes, and I've built my character up so much I don't want to end it right now.

Guess what? We won't find any new players because everyone hates your stinking, arrogant guts. And no, that's not because they're stupid or emotional, it's because you're a doucheface, and I wish the DM would stop holding your hand and let you fall on your miserable ass like the social failure that you are.

Say one makes the mistake to start a campaign of D&D 3.5 at level 11 with at least one really inexperienced(as in first game) player. Now say that you invite over three new people who are decidedly seasoned and used to a very different play style than is being implemented. One of said players opts for a Wizard, and is very good at turning the tides of battle with field control, rather than the fireballs our DM hearts so much. One of the following sessions involves no less than ten archers all converging on the wizard with readied actions with almost no regard for the rest of the group. End of a session comes and he promises there's going to be a new challenge.

That challenge? A barbarian, fighter, wizard and cleric four levels higher than anyone in the party with all their spells dedicated to antimagic effects.

Now, I don't know about the rest of the world, but when I hear "challenge," I don't hear "countermeasures against a single player." We did win, but it was a serious struggle for no other reason than him applying the Tim Allen approach to dungeonmastering. More power is not always the solution; if you want to beat the wizard, try using some of his own tactics against him. Also, listen to your players sometimes; we've given some insight as to what you could do, but we are not seeing any consideration(which, I suppose, I can understand if he believes we already have strategies in mind for these things).

Final note: monk, really consider what it takes to become a prestige class. Going from monk to assassin sounds good on paper, but you decided out of the blue you wanted to do it. We're all just glad we talked you out of killing someone for literally no other reason than to become an assassin. What part of that sounded "lawful" to you?

Hey, new RP partner?

I'm really excited about playing with you, too! The idea we had for a scene was awesome. Trust me, I understand wanting to get it played out before we "lose the moment," but if you don't have time to play, please don't bother. You aren't giving me your best, or your full attention, and I know it.

Also, disappearing in the middle of the scene and not coming back for several hours? Not making a very good impression for our future relations.

Ugh. You are so annoying, I'm sorry.
First, you join that RP. I'm perfectly fine with it; it looks like a really fun game.
Then the problems begin. You can't have your way, so you start drama.
I'm so sorry that your post was your "best post" that you've "ever written," but you didn't provide what the GM asked for. You started a pointless argument. When the GM asked us to edit our posts, yes we were slightly upset. But we went, and guess what? We all finished editing the posts in a very short time. All I did was add italics, and add a few sentences, making it so that my character was having a sort of flash back.
That is what most of us did, which is what was asked for our first post.
The GM stated it in her first OOC post, and it was our own faults for not seeing that in the beginning.
So, you go on and on with this pointless argument.
Then you have the nerve to Copy+Paste a few conversations you've had with fellow site-members, in which you were clearly pushing them to make you feel better.
Then you basically say "no, I'm not doing what you want, screw you, I'm gone." Those were your words. "I'm gone."
So, I invited a friend to fill up the empty space you created. And then you come back and say "oh pity me, I'm crying, please change it so that I can have my way." Absolutely not.
And then the last thing, that really made my blood boil...You went to a different game that we are both in, and said "Sorry guys, I'm just really depressed because of a different RP."
I then commented with a sigh, & you start up again, saying that you're feeling ganged up upon, wah wah wah. No. You don't do that. I have no problem with RPing with you.
But when you bring needless drama to every game you're in...Ugh. Just no.

tl;dr...Girl whines and creates needless drama because she didn't get her way. Said drama is created in more than one thread, including a RP that has nothing to do with the original problem.

Yes, I am annoyed. Why do you ask?

Every time I want to RP, and you agree, you somehow manage to find a way to get busy. Even when we both say we are bored and have nothing to do. I make a post for us and you post a few times, then go off and RP elsewhere. I don't care about your other RPs, but why would you ask me to RP with you and then go off and ignore me? Taking an hour to tag me back, yet holding a running conversation with someone else kinda hurts.

And then you have the balls to ask what's wrong when I get upset? Dude, it's not like it's rocket science. Why ask me to RP in the first place? Do you feel bad for me?

And sometimes, when I post to your new topics, you still take forever to tag me back. It's never to the extend you post with everyone else. Yet, you always say I'm your favorite RPer. You love to RP with me. Blah, blah, blah. You never show it, anymore. What happened? I've bent over backwards to do stuff for you, and you just brush my things over like it's second rate. If you don't want to RP, then say so.

You the First:
I'm not sure why you insist on linking to TV Tropes in both your IC and OOC posts. OOC, I can understand, but I feel almost like you're trying to show off. While talking about your character, you link her name to the Meaningful Name trope. You mention having to "break" her (in order to make her a 3D character - leaving me wondering how I can possibly be a deep person since I have, thankfully, never had a terrible experience like the many you want to heap on this character) and link to Break the Cutie. When you discuss her powers, you link "magic" to Applied Phlebotinum. The first few times you did this, I chuckled and figured you were just a kid with a new toy. Now I wonder. Especially because it's showing up in IC posts. Um. Why? This world doesn't even their very own version of the internets. Please stop. I thought it was funny the first few times; now it seems almost pretentious.

You the Second: Please stop playing My Dick is Bigger than Your Dick with our characters. No, really. I don't know about you, but I'm not a prepubescent boy in a locker room, and if I was I don't think I'd whip my schlong out, wag it around, and tell everyone how awesome it is. Hell, do boys even do that? I have no idea, but you do, and you do it with roleplay characters. I don't mind when there's a character that's pretty pimped out, especially when he's the villain. I'm playing a character like that right now, and I'm doing it because the leader trusts me not to muck it up terribly, and I know that if I start to, she'll smack me upside the head. He is ridiculously powerful. He has no moral compunctions. But, clearly, your girl is oh so much more powerful even though she's sixteen and mine, who is somewhere around five hundred, has a lot more experience.

Erm.

And then, when I mention he's not interested at all in sex of any kind (someone made a joke about him being secretly gay because he's not banging any of his hot underlings; it started going too far, so I lol'd and said he's just not interested), you have to point out that there's no way he wouldn't be interested in your girl. And, if he wasn't, she could so totally seduce him. Um. Are we talking about the same character? Mine is a megalomaniacal elitist who thinks the best way to fix the world's problems is mass genocide. He's far too involved with his "master plan" to take time out to bang your chick. Who is on the other side. Who is also a member of one of the (many) races he has decided to destroy. Please start using Earth-logic again.


ETA: Sorry about the wall of text, guys. My browser has decided to default to HTML instead of text rich for some reason, and I keep failing to catch it.