I Cropped, I Scaled, I Pasted

[jkmoreno]

Resisting the temptation to use the logo again, since I just used it in the last entry, but I feel kinda proud of myself for making it because it's actually the first picture I ever cobbled together with an editor. Usually I just crop and scale, but this time I did some cutting and pasting and adding text. Sure, there are people with way more Photoshop-fu out there, but I don't even -have- Photoshop and I've never been much of an artist, so yay me!

Before I get into the ground rules of this exercise, I want to give a shout out to the ones who inspired it. Obviously (for those of you who might have read his stuff) major inspirational credit goes to Mike Smith ( http://mike-smith.livejournal.com ) and his humorous critiques of the Harry Potter series which have been giving me lots of laughs and perspective since 2005 (warning: not safe for die-hard Harry Potter fans). He also posted a brief critique of the Twilight Saga as a whole back in August 2008 during the frenzy of the impending release of Breaking Dawn based on their plot summaries on Wikipedia at the time. The review was funny and awesome, because of or in spite of the fact that the plot summaries were crap, and it is my hope I can do for the Twilight Saga what he did for Harry Potter. Or at least entertain and gain new readers.

Another major inspiration is one of my closest and dearest friends, Amanda Dalton ( http://amandadalton.com/index.htm ), who is quite possibly the nicest and most encouraging person I know, and certainly one of the most creative. I figured I had a potential winner on my hands when I mentioned this project to her and she got a maniacal gleam in her eyes and said "Do it!". So I am. It's always encouraging to know that what you do will make at least one person smile and laugh.

Credit also goes out to all the friends and acquaintances whom I've discussed the possibility of this project with, in particular Steve ( http://pandoras-closet.livejournal.com ) and Heatherface ( http://www.heatherface.com ). More inspiration also came from the rapid-fire stylings of Zero Punctuation's Ben "Yahtzee" Croshaw ( http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation ), and also from many random women at OkCupid who consider the Twilight Saga to be among their favorite books. If it was under my radar before, it certainly isn't now. Not a bad thing, mind you, because visibility is part of how new fans are born.

All right, without more proving why I'm the Master of tl;dr Disaster ...

In the beginning of May, I came to Dreamwidth with a dream. A dream of trying to recover my blogging roots and telling a story I wanted to tell. Or, to be more accurate, to review all sorts of things. Books, movies, video games, you name it. I was very likely influenced by watching too much Zero Punctuation in one day while hearing Beth ( http://purpleparadox.dreamwidth.org ) and others talk about Dreamwidth the following day, but in time I had my invite code, I was set up, and I was raring to go. I was going to see Star Trek later that week, and I figured that would be a good start.

Then I discovered that my head isn't specced to write good reviews at 2 AM after seeing a movie and hanging out with friends, especially when I had to be up at 10 AM to go to work. By the time I finally had time to give to writing something out, several people had already covered it, from Mike Smith to Movie Bob over at The Escapist. I didn't feel I had anything new to add that my small readership didn't already know, especially since part of that readership had gone to see it by then. The same thing happened with Up and with 9, and work continued to get so busy that I got discouraged and thought "Eh, what's the use, I have no readership and there are people on YouTube who probably do it better." I neglected my blogs, my Twitter, and my Facebook to the chagrin of ... well, nobody really, since the ones who would care either talked to me on a regular basis, or understood that I have times where I go forever without writing. It's nothing new.

Things are different now. My work schedule has lightened somewhat due to focusing more on training than serving. I've been spending more time talking and hanging out with friends than I used to and feeling a little less held down by life and circumstance. Most importantly, I had an idea that, if it already was or currently is being done, wasn't being done by anybody or anything on my radar. At worst, I'd be accused of ripping off Mike Smith, but I like to consider this a form of flattery rather than a ripoff.

It's the fall of 2009, and interest in the Twilight Saga is once again reaching a peak with the upcoming release of the film adaptation of the second book, New Moon. Partially from research done for this project and partially from hearing how so many people talk about it, I know that the Twilight Saga is most often compared to the Harry Potter series. Both are insanely popular with their respective fanbases, both have been heaped with praise that seems to go beyond the standard accolades one would give a New York Times and USA Today best-seller, both seem to be either big hits or big misses with people, and soon, both will have been analyzed and likely mocked by some sarcastic blogger with too much time on their hands.

My curiosity grew until it couldn't any more, so I decided to kill three birds with one stone. I would satisfy my curiosity by reading New Moon, since that's the movie that's coming out. I would document my impressions as I read it because real-time reactions tend to be more amusing than when I've had time to think and dissect and analyze, and because if nothing else reading it at a more relaxed pace and writing about it would serve as a good writing exercise and either provide people with a more or less impartial view, or failing that, some humorous mocking. Lastly and most obviously, I figure I can use the writing exercise to bring my blogs back from the dead, to amuse my current readership and gain new readership. Not to mention after making that logo and promoting this, I'm actually kinda having fun with it for now.

Now that you know the premise of the project, I'm going to cut things off here for now. If this were ever edited for posting on an actual website as opposed to a collection of blog entries, this would probably serve as a good intro page. As I'm going to be doing this on a chapter-by-chapter basis, this obviously will not be crammed into one post, and work has already begun on the first chapter. So check back later today, and witness the beginning of ... well, this project. The new era and the age of Aquarius can keep the breaking of their dawn since this saga uses similar naming conventions.

COMING NEXT SCENE:  A Very Merry Unbirthday To Me!