The Nice Stalker

            I once saw this funny picture of Mario from the classic Nintendo series by the same name. It was a cartoon in which the character Toad told Mario that the princess was in another castle, which of course is the classic line from the original game that you’d be told every time, until you actually rescued Princess Peach in the last castle. The joke of the comic was that Mario told Toad that he was actually looking for him, and not the princess. The two walked off into the sunset, thus eliminating the need for Mario to continue adventuring. It was pretty funny. However, that’s not the point. The point is that Mario would actually go through eight castles to rescue this girl.

            Now, it’s impossible to really tell how much the two of them knew each other. However, we can probably assume that they weren’t married. Still, Mario was one persistent dude. It’s respectable, but incredible when you think of it in the context of a normal human being. I can definitely think of married men off the top of my head that I am certain would leave their wives for dead if asked to raid castles and fight a dinosaur monster. Honestly, even if I went through the trouble of rescuing my wife from such a monster, I’d probably crap my pants right off the bat and die at the first lava pit.

            But what’s most interesting is that it’s totally normal for us to see these guys (and sometimes girls) that go REALLY far out of their way to help or rescue someone that they barely know, or hardly should even care about. Is it because we know that it’s fiction that we can call it romantic rather than insane? It’s somewhat relatable to when we watch action movies and feel that we can assume what we would do in the dire situations that the characters have to face. Most of the time, we glorify the image in our head of what we would do. If in a movie we see someone do what we would probably do during a shooting, which is hide, we get upset at them even though it’s totally understandable. Is rescuing the princess the same? Do we imagine ourselves being these heroes, and expect these heroes in movies, despite the fact that most of us would have no idea what to do. People that would willingly fight through a series of treacherous obstacles in order to save random people probably don’t exist, or they are mentally disturbed.

            If you look at the main character from the (awesome) children’s television show adventure time, Finn the human, the stoic and tenacious hero, we see someone else who is very intense in their pursuit of justice. Finn is a character that lives in a post-apocalyptic world that constantly has him face monsters and the other stereotypical challenges associated with the good guy growing up.

            I recently saw an episode of the show in which Finn was turned down by his love interest; she coincidentally is also a princess that likes to wear pink, like Princess Peach. Anyway, the princess from Adventure Time is 18, and about five years older than the main character. It’s not really a surprise that she’s not really an option for him. It’s totally understandable that she wouldn’t want to lead him on or anything like that. You’d think that Finn would just come to terms with this rejection.

Finn decided not to give up. At the end of the episode I saw, Finn made a quick phone call to his best friend Jake while still at the princess’s castle. Jake gave him a pep talk, as all best friends are prone to do in such situations, telling Finn that he’s a great guy and that he shouldn’t let the rejection bring him down. Finn thanks Jake for the consolation, and then looks at the castle, assuring himself that he won’t give up on the princess.

Is that realistic? Hardly. If someone were to get turned down and refused to give up in real life, we’d probably label that person as a stalker that can’t get a hint. It’s admittedly a difficult situation, because caring enough about someone to not give up on them is endearing, but not giving up on someone that doesn’t want the attention is inconsiderate.

I’m not going to sit here and tell anyone that they should give up on someone their interested in, because sometimes it does work out for the best. I’m also not going to sit here and tell anyone that they should give their stalker a chance, because sometimes that REALLY doesn’t work out for the best. It’s just that sometimes it’s important to try to look at such a situation with an impartial point of view, instead of an obscured kind like television gives us. Don’t trust television. As plausible as main characters can be, they’re hardly ever authentic enough to be someone you’d actually meet.

A Reason to Watch

Wrote another guest article! This time it was for popgive.com. Recently I heard that Keeping Up with the Kardashians was renewed for three more seasons. This article tries to explain why:

A Reason to Watch

Love That 90's Fashion

So this time I wrote a piece about how clothing trends from the 90's have basically become as ridiculous to look at as clothing trends from the 80's. It's pretty entertaining. Check out the author bio too.

Love That 90's Fashion

The Sound of Emotion

I wrote a guest article for this website called Only Instrumental Music. It's about how important scores are in movies. Check it out!

The Sound of Emotion

Does Death Wait?

It’s kind of funny how much finality there is to both scripted television and reality television. Many people suspect that reality television is heavily scripted, and I’m really not going to deny that; it probably is. But the thing is that something that’s consistently added to most reality shows is the proper ending. You see it in virtually all sitcoms, and in most popular films, but interestingly not very often in indie (or artsy) films. A similar trend exists in literature. Tons of novels, especially the popular ones, have a firm or obvious conclusion. The exceptions are usually the really artsy ones. Still, the more obvious examples are in film/television, and this is a pop culture blog, so lets look at those.

I have always been a fan of those cheesy 90’s sitcoms even after the 90’s finished. Boy Meets World; Sister, Sister; and Saved By The Bell were all just fantastically cheesy. They had a lot of heart when they came out, and they still do. At this point their charm has morphed from being witty depictions of growing up into a clear view of a different past (and still with a lot of wit). One of the funny things about those shows is that everything always worked out in the end. Most of the time the situations were somewhat ridiculous. If the situations were actually likely to ever happen, they definitely wouldn’t happen on the weekly basis that they did in the shows. Unless I’m remembering high school wrong, it wasn’t consecutive weekends that we’d crash our parents’ cars, throw huge parties, and then beat our rivals in the talent show.

Everything usually did work out though. However, there was rarely an obvious lesson learned. Things just don’t really work that way in real life, though I probably don’t have to tell that to whoever is reading this. Still, we watch these shows and shows like them regardless of how implausible they can be.

Movies take it an extra step further as they often take advantage of their budgets and the time given to tell their stories to create something really special. Again, the chances of most plots from most movies actually happening are slim to none, but they’re still somewhat relatable. Most of the time we can still imagine what it would be like to be cast into these situations and speculate what we would do, and that makes us feel more involved. Plus, like in television shows, we often are presented with an ending that we know for sure was meant to leave you with a certain feeling. Even if it’s incredibly vague, and maybe unnecessary, like the ending of Inception, we feel settled because we’re given a true conclusion.

Indie films don’t do that. They tend to avoid situations that would never happen to a regular person, and when they end, they tend to just end without making a big culmination obvious. The most recent indie film I’ve seen is Terri, which according to Rotten Tomatoes got an 86% from the critics and a 60% from viewers. Getting a better score from critics than from casual fans is pretty common from not only indie films, but also almost any film nowadays that requires a commitment to paying attention. However, another thing that probably impedes them from achieving really high ratings is, as I mentioned, they have a tendency to lack really concrete endings.

When an indie film ends, it just sort of ends. In Terri, the main character had a good heart to heart conversation with another character, and then not that long after, the movie just ends kind of suddenly. If you’re interested in seeing the movie, do it. It’s really good and I didn’t spoil anything.

ANYWAY, the ending was significant. There was more left to the story. Terri copied real life storytelling in that most stories we tell are only a glimpse into a person’s complete life. That is pretty realistic, almost more than reality television in fact. A lot of times the stories we tell don’t even have proper endings either. Yet for some reason, stories having definite endings are very comforting. I certainly like them.

There are a lot of times where I have the choice to watch an absorbing movie like The Kids Are All Right (another indie film that just sort of ends), or a movie like Zombieland (you can just jump right into at any point after someone explains it to you in about fifteen seconds), and I chose the latter. Not just because I didn’t feel like starting from the beginning, but because I know movies that are known for being easy to like will have a satisfying ending. It’s just comforting to know that events will transpire, and then something will wrap everything up nicely and signal that a conflict is over.

It’s the same premise as people saying, “I’m too young to die.” Admittedly, I myself have said so when I thought my home was being broken into. We all want conflicts to be resolved before the ending comes, and we want clear endings to give us the assurance that conflicts are over.

However, it’s not realistic. Young people who could have had bright futures die all the time without their problems being resolved. I’m not saying this to be depressing, or to make anyone cynics. I’m just saying that we can’t always expect for everything to work itself out before we die because a lot of times things just won’t without active influence, and we can die at any moment. Death isn’t going to wait for you to find the person of your dreams, or finish getting your degree, or finding inner peace, or anything else that you may hope comes with time. I’m not saying go wild every night, but I am saying people should try to live well enough to die content tomorrow.