Free Write: Resistance

We had to do free writes on resistance for 7 days. Here they are.

Free Write 1 - Sept 19

Resistance. I’m not entirely sure what I am resisting right now. I suppose I am going to resist to changing my medium, that’s for sure. I need to either do an animation or an illustrated book. Full stop. Because those are the fields that I am interested in pursuing after college and I need to have something to show for it. I need to be able to prove that I can actually do the thing, so that I can get a job to do the thing. I mean, publishing something I make here would be super rad. But yeah. I also refuse to do something that does not make me personally happy. Because I am tired of things being dark, I want a fun thing. I don’t want it to be political, or some bullshit. I mean, I guess if I do a gay thing or just something inclusive that is also technically political even though it goddamn shouldn’t be. Wow, inclusivity as a political concept. God I hate this facist regime we are under right now. Anyways, wow, off topic. I wouldn’t want these things to be political in the sense of having the characters argue that they should indeed be gay/inclusive, I just want it to be done, without questioning, like it’s just a normal thing it the world of my stories. God I am personally right not resisting to scratch my hive-covered legs and arms, I mean that is a personal issue that does not relate to IP, but it does relate to my personal comfort at the moment but like. I don’t know. I think something that will be hard to do is actually write a good story for whatever work that I create. Because I want it to be great, and fully express my creative capabilities.

Free Write 2 - Sept 20

I still don’t really know much about resistance. I haven’t resisted much in my life, honestly. The first definition that comes up on google is “the refusal to accept or comply with something.” I don’t really know what I have refused to accept or comply with. I haven’t really been too resistant to anything that was personally affecting me. I barely try to resist urges to do things; I act very much so on whatever whims of the moment that I am feeling. If my brain thinks, hey, I want to sneak a smoothie into the lecture series today, I’m like, ok, you’ve had a rough week, being covered in hives and all, get that smoothie, put it in your backpack. I’ve decided to be nice to myself in life recently, and to let myself have the things that I want, within reason. The only resisting I’ve been doing recently in my personal life would be resisting bad habits, like drinking the depression away, or frantically scratching literally every part of my body. I had a problem with alcohol while I was studying abroad in Italy, and I don’t want to fall back into that hole. And I’ve been resisting letting myself fall back into old habits that cause the depression to come back, like isolating myself and not eating. Sometimes resisting things is good, I guess.

Free Write 3 - Sept 21

I feel like the theme of this being resistance is honestly a little limiting. I mean there are only so many things I can write about in resistance. Can I resist the resistance? I don’t know. Probably not. I know that the point of it is that it is supposed to be limiting; I suppose “free write on anything” is really too broad for us. But “free write on your project” may have been better? I know for a fact that I generally do better with prompts and such if I do have a few odd limitations, either that I set for myself or are given to me. Like the time I had to make an animation to a song, but only use two colors. I still think that Ooh is one of the best animations I have done, since I knew exactly what I wanted to do for that project and I was able to execute it as I wanted. Giving me this much free reign is actually way too much pressure. I mean, though I also don’t really like where I am seemingly being pushed right now either. Can’t really win, huh? Right now I’m thinking maybe If I take the mermaid plot and turn it into an animation, I would really like to make that. That’s where I’m at. That’s a combination of two of my ideas, I suppose. But the idea generator is being left out. I suppose I could use that for color palettes or something. Just feed it a ton of colors, have it spit some out. I don’t know. I lost track of this free write somewhere, sorry about that.

Free Write 4 - Sept 22

Right now, I am resisting scratching my arms and legs and literally every part of my body, since I am very much so still covered in hives. I even signed the animation club email as the Official MAC Bee Keeper, because I am still covered in hives. Resisting scratching is… difficult. I seem to keep forgetting that I am not allowed to scratch anything, even though it is very obvious to remember, since I am visibly covered in spots. I guess this was a case of resisting something. I don’t really know how this relates to my project, I’m sorry. I don’t want to make an animation about this. Or a children’s book. Cuz that just really sucks as a topic. I think I’m moving back towards wanting to make an animation but I’m not even really sure. This whole ideation process is kind of making me less motivated. And I’m not really enjoying this. Oh well.

Free Write 5 - Sept 23

You wanna know something I’m resisting? All of these damn live action remakes of these classic animated movies or TV shows. Like, yes, I know graphics are cool and all, but calling it live action is false advertising. Its mot live action, well, some of it may be, but most of it is just you re-animating what you did in 2D to new CGI animations. Sure, this gives them an excuse to try new things and go grimdark, but its honestly such bullshit. By making a ton of live action adaptations of previously 2D animated things, you are discrediting the media and making it seem less good. For example, there’s talks of a live action Avatar: The Last Airbender show being created. This would be the second time a live action has been attempted. Of course, this time its by the original creators but that doesn’t mean it will be better. A:TLA was great on its own, as well as its spinoff Legends of Korra. This show knew its medium and did a great job with it. It looked lovely. It tackled some dark themes for children’s animation without making the parents think that they should turn it off. It was a good show, with good character design. Its finished. There’s no need to go back and recreate it. It seems like studios *cough cough DISNEY cough* can’t think of new properties anymore, hence this endless stream of "live action reboot of *insert title here*" that we have seen in theaters. The one that pisses me off the most is the "live action" lion king. NO! That’s not live action! that is you animating, AGAIN, just really realistic looking lions! There aren’t any people even IN the lion king for you to compare the CGI lions to! You don’t get to call that shit live action unless you are training lions to perform! I don’t really want that, that’s usually inhumane, but still. Or like. Call it live action lion king, but instead of lions its people and oh wait now it’s just Hamlet again. they shouldn’t need to be rebooting. They think it’s a safe investment, and that’s why. They don’t care about providing new stories, just making money. I’ve gotten myself upset now. And in the process, reminded myself of my mission to singlehandedly bring back 2D animation. Right. Okay.

Free Write 6 - Sept 24

This isn’t about resistance per se, I’m just freewriting to figure out a lot of things that I have remembered about things I actually care about. I have to focus on school so much that I’ve forgotten things that I am interested in. I’m going more towards the mermaid idea I had thin the beginning, but I’ve gotten a more personal spin on it. I grew up as a kid on the Saginaw Bay, and mostly as an only child, I mean I have a brother, but I had six and a half years on my own. My house used to be called the Blarney Castle, because it used to be the biggest on the street, and the old man who lived there before us “spoke a lot of blarney.” My parents used to call me the Princess of the Bay, and I was definitely spoiled like it. There weren’t really other kids on the street either, so I mostly played pretend by myself. I have always loved the water. There was a point in time where event though I loved swimming, I was afraid of deep water. I nearly drowned a few times as a young child, and that kind of stuck with me, even now into adulthood. My favorite thing to pretend was that I was a mermaid. Mermaids lived in the water, they weren’t afraid of it. I guess something id like to do is an animation about a girl (or princess) who is scared of the water befriending a mermaid. The scenery and such would specifically be from the Saginaw Bay, and drawing as much on my childhood experiences as I can. I once floated out to the middle of the bay on a raft, because I was too scared to get in the water and swim inwards. I was rescued, but it took a very long time and I was very, very scared. I think the mermaid saving a child from something like that could be good. Or just playing. Idk, I want something happy too. Something about resistance for the end here. Umm. I guess I resisted the resistance free write? Idk, I feel like this was more helpful to type this up then to free write on resistance for another time.

Free Write 7 - Sept 25

Does this still count as Tuesday’s? I haven’t slept yet so please let It count. It’s been a very long day. I went into work at 6:15am, left at 1pm, promptly threw up due to heat anxiety (I got heat exhaustion over the summer on a trip to Arizona and now every time I’m too warm for too long while doing physical activity my body panics like It did then and I get faint and nauseated), called in to work for my later shift because we aren’t supposed to go in for a full 24 hours after vomiting, went to class, had work call me and beg me to come in because I wasn’t actually sick and they really needed the help and they’d let me do the easy shift, and I just got home at 11:30pm. So. I guess I wanted to resist going into work today. I mean I went, but god, it sucked. Right, okay, IP related resistance. I don’t know I think I’m doing less of the resisting now that I’ve found a better project idea, I just have to hammer out the finer details. Like. I kind of want to work in the princess thing somehow, but it doesn’t work with the floating-out-to-sea narrative. It would just be an extra unnecessary thing to a project that will already be hard enough to complete properly in a year (animation is just so damn time consuming). I want this to be nice, and I feel like have it be more of a simple thing that I can make nice would be better than half-assing something complex.