A problem with Harley /or/ How I learned to love the nurse outfit.

The original cartoon design

Harley Quinn, the crazy and playful henchgirl/ally/girlfriend of the Joker is probably the most succesful character who has it's origins in the Batman cartoon adaptation and not the official comic continuity. She became a permanent and popular figure in almost all of Batman-related media (excluding, unfortunantely, any movie adaptations) thanks to the incredible positive fan response and support.
Her classical jester costume design has stayed largely unchanged both in the comics and cartoons, being a simply good, simple, effective design.

Yet, when the videogame Batman: Arkham Asylum came out, the practically inevitable happened: the design got changed. A lot.

Though firstly, it would be more correct to say that it's a new outfit than a redesign of the original- the mostly unchanged version of the jester costume is seen in the character info files and her pointy hat is seen in her abandoned office. Yet, she still is wearing that instead of the original costume.

My reaction was probably something that is expected from most female fans- I disliked it greatly. I mean, it's a costume that includes a miniskirt, fishnets and a biiiig cleavage. Also, the nurse theme didn't have any appeal to me at first.

But, after playing through the game twice and reading up on the design process, I kinda changed my view on the "sexy nurse'' outfit- I mean, one of the things that define this character is the obsession with the Joker and desire to impress him by any means possible (including the means that require a big cleavage :D), she is in a hospital and has a doctor's degree AND she is the one "taking care" of the more important hostiges during the game. Also, apparently, innitially the Joker was meant to be dressed up as a sort of a mad scientist, making her nurse outfit a partial leftover from that idea. Also, she still looks playful, in a morbid way, perfect for her and her boyfriend. And I still have to face the fact, that as always, sex sells. Oh well.


So, yeah, at the end, I kinda approved of the nurse outfit.
And I DEFINETLY approved of the gorgeous art direction and brilliant redesigns of the characters in the game in general. The dark and morbid mood of Batman was captured perfectly, and, while looking different, the villains and heroes still felt themselves.

Since Batman: Arkham Asylum was a hit, a sequel is being worked on as I write. In the teaser trailer Harley Quinn appears in her nurse outfit. At first, I got a bit annoyed that she is not going back to something closer to her original garb. Yet it still made even more sense this time, since in the trailer we also see the Joker who was left in a really bad shape after the events in the first game being nursed by Harley.

But, when I saw the screenshots of the new game, I came to a conclusion that the nurse outfit was perfectly okay and that it should stay. Because they are replacing it with something that I find awful.

A BLAND GOTH OUTFIT THAT MAKES HER LOOK LIKE AVRIL LAVIGNE. Bad dye job included.


Oh my, where do I start... Her face looks boring, it seems to have been tottaly remodeled and made into a generic dollface. Atleast the last model had some character in the face.

The outfit not only is blander- it's the blander version of the previous outfit, with all the cheeky and comic nurse parts replaced with leather pants and a skimpyer top. The rest is the same- the gloves, the shoes, the belt and he corset are all from the old model, which might have been an interesting way to show continuity, make it more realistic (to show that she herself just modified the previous outfit), but all that is destroyed by the fact that all the parts of the oufit that were purple are now black, making the design choices make no sense.

And, when looked at closely, one can see that she has tattoos now, all featuring her boyfriend. Ok thats... kinda interesting. She is the Joker's biggest fan after all, though I never saw her as the tattoo type... They would've been okay, if they weren't messing up the whole design. They throw off the whole composition, you have to squint your eyes to see what they are and what is drawn in them.

This is not good character design. She looks like a common 12 year old goth kid with messy tattoos. And Harley Quinn originally was far from that.

I am only left to hope that she is decently voiced and that she will atleast act like the character in the upcoming game.


...or maybe there's still time to get her redesigned? I heard I'm not the only one to be displeased with her new outfit.

Violence and reality

So, violence.... Violence in media, that is. While it has a huge potential to be an interesting subject of analysis, it is always crippled by the fact that it's still for some reason controversial or atleast controversial-ish, even know it has been portrayed in various kinds of media and entertainment since I don't know when.

And yes, I personally don't mind and even to some extent enjoy the violence in media. I play lots of FPS and action games and I am a big fan of them, not to mention the fact that I would prefer a good scifi/actiony/horror/psychological movie to a romantic comedy any day, same goes for cartoons, comics and even books.

BUT, I know, along with many other people, that violence- in real life- is wrong. Very wrong. It's bad, it hurts, it's disgraceful, HEY IT KILLS PEOPLE etc.
Yes, it's bad. In real life.

And what are we talking about here is not real life. It's movies, cartoons, comics, books, etc.
These mediums are known to portray many things differently from the real world, also things that don't exist in the real world. That's one of the reasons people love this stuff. And not all things that are portrayed in media are essentially good, or seen as good in real life: madness gets glorified, indecent realationships get romanticised etc. And not always the real-world wrongness of the subject is seen through the veil of fiction that covers it.

And, let's face it, violence has gained many shapes in media too, most of which are as unrealistic as it comes. Still, people seem to care mostly only about the typical action movie stuff, the brutal one dimensional violence only meant to impress the common menfolk. And then every movie that has violence in it, for one reason or another, seems to be met with prejudice by some people just because of the violence.

But let's think about it- I've already mentioned that violence, along with many subjects portrayed in media, has gained more shapes than the usual Rambo routine. How about epic and breathtaking sword battles between two honourable armies? How about the incredibly beautiful duels in the air in those asian movies? Hah, what about slapstic violence? Not to mention all the cases where the portrayed violent acts have a meaning and are well integrated into a story...

Are those things really that bad?

Also, let's not forget one of the essential things in media that makes us forget the world and enjoy them instead- excitement. And this seems to be the reason why violence is used quite a bit- it's movement, it's action, it's a duel, friction it's exciting. Along with many other things we don't do everyday, because we can't and are not allowed to.

 Also, those many forms of violence in media are the consequences of the main thing that creates a story- confict. Violence is physical conflict. 

While conflict can be shown and be played out by different means than violence and  it might be overused sometimes and sometimes definetly misused, I really don't think that violence in media is unecessary or entirely replacable. 

........................***..........................

When talking about this subject it's also inevitable that I have to say something about it's impact on society. Many people claim that violence in movies, etc. makes kids violent, that this is the reason of the school shootings, etc.

Many of them refer to that school shooting that had a connection with the videogame Doom. But, as it was shown in the lectures, the kid that was obsessed with Doom was already not all right in the head. Normal sane people don't think of themselves as gods and don't connect a video game with reality to the extent that kid connected it. The thing is, in my opinion, he was already insane, he already wasn't all right and he didn't see the difference between the game or reality.

I think that that game, that work of fiction, acted as his object of obsession and he crossed the line that shouldn't be crossed with any work of fiction- started seeing it as reality. And it applies not only to violent games and such, but even to the "harmless stuff" such as soap operas or anime. There have been cases of ladies doing crazy things in name of their soap heroes, and anime fans marrying fictional characters and dangerously harrasing and endangering anime voice actors and the such, even killing or trying to kill people who endanger their anime collections or while imagining to be samurai demons.

As works of fiction, these things are harmless, and are only meant to bring joy, excitement, food for thought for the reader. Yet people cross the line between fiction and reality, and I really doubt the roots are in these works themselves. Could it be parenting? Society? Someting in the water? Probably, these seem to be more likely causes for that, in my opinion.

Also, many cases of the "usual" real-world attacs on people don't have any connections, atleast don't seem to have any obvious connections to any works of fiction (not possibly counting religion driven attacks, but this is not the subject I want to discuss).

Of course, media plays a role in forming a person and his/hers life, but it shouldn't teach us about such essential things as "don't hurt people", "don't kill". Would you find a person who was taught all the life's lessons by the TV set normal? No. People's views on things of such importance, in my opinion, should be formed by real people and the real world, with fiction acting only as a supplement to the person's experiences.



Violence in fiction is fiction too. And fiction should never be seen as reality.

A comparison of sorts.

During the lecture about science fiction the most interesting point made, atleast for me, was that a lot of science fiction stories are about control and people freeing from it and so on. It really rings true to me- the hi-tech future that is most often seen in sci-fi media is the result of people wanting to control the enviroment, and very, very often that control is seen going over the hedge, or representing the antagonists of the story.

Essentially, fantasy seems to follow a similar path, except in technology's place we see magic. While I am definetly a bigger fan of sci-fi than of fantasy, I think I have a grasp of the most basic fantasy elements. And I often find that fantasy has a more strict framework: the classic fantasy story has to have elves, dwarves, dragons, magicians, a medieval setting and so on, while sci-fi doesn't have any specific types of aliens it should have or anything like that. Actually, a 'typical' sci-fi story can even do without any aliens at all, unlike fantasy.

The way these different creatures are classified and how they act in relation to each other also seems to differ to me- in sci-fi, more often than not, all or most alien races are regarded as citizens of one big space society or whatever and mix among themselves a lot, while in fantasy creatures seem to be a lot more divided, caring about their own territories, often having some negative historical baggage among themselves whitch is often brought up. Also, in sci-fi, the space, the territory all these creatures spread out to is the outer space, whitch we all know to be a BIG, BIG place with multiple planets the aliens can live in and strive without bothering anyone else (unless the story commands it so). In fantasy we get one planet at the most, so these creatures have to share a lot less space in comparison, resulting in much more bitterness when wars for territory happen etc.

Also, in many classical fantasy stories (meaning, the ones that are heavily based on LOTR) the need of all or most of the races in the story to come together against the evil forces is highlighted. That is often made hard, because of prejudice and even some sort of passive racism can be felt in the air of the classical fantasy story. In sci-fi, while the 'we must work together' bit is also quite clear, it is not directed towards the specific races working together- actually, sci-fi seems to have a lot less general racism going on, with most societies featured in sci-fi being quite advanced and beyond racism (unless, of course, the story commands it so).

As I mentioned before, fantasy relies on magic the way sci-fi relies on future technology. Both of these factors allow impossible things to happen in the stories, even know their sources are at tottaly differrent ends of the spectrum- magic is nature based and technology is... well, technology and is based on the knowledge of people. Yet in both cases they are still surprisingly similar- both are often the driving force of the societies presented in these stories in some way, often the sole reason for the plot to happen. The presence of these factors is the main reason these two genres are brought together so often, even know both these genres, while sometimes mixing together a lot, still deviate from each other a LOT.

Which leads to a myriad of questions on how we really should and should not classify something as abstract and uncountable as a story.

Is Not Black Or White

A young artist, Tessa Stone has achieved what many other comic obsessed cartoon watching/drawing young folks often dream about: her webcomic, 'Hanna Is Not A Boy's Name', has become a big hit with a big fan following, with printed versions selling like mad and cosplayers of the characters running around in many cons. As a fan myself, I must say that this is well deserved- the comic is very well written, the characters are very likable and the artwork is really beautiful and eye-catching.
All of these factors are the reasons of the comic's success, and yet, I started thinking that there might be also another reason for this, but that might be because I was thinking about binary opposites too much because of the theme I chose for my essay...
Anyway, during the lecture, Ivan pointed out that the characters that fall into the 'anomalous zone' between the various binary opposites  are often found interesting by the public. And, looking at the characters of HiNaBN (even the abbreviation is a mouthful) and even at the story itself I start to think that I'm looking at a living (well, figuratively speaking) example of that. The setting and the plot of the comic is that this young guy called Hanna (whitch is not a boy's name, apparently) calls himself a 'paranormal detective' and apparently can do some magic by drawing runes and stuff. He's also usually escorted by a nameless but wise zombie and we are introduced a crew of other characters among whitch is an irratable vampire 'artfag', a werewolf girl and a shark-like son of a selkie.
Many of these characters fall into the anomalous zone and fit there perfectly, and actually do it in a somehow different way than I've personally seen before.

The zombie or {...} is probably the most obvious case of being in the anomalous zone, since he kinda resembles the Frankenstein monster Ivan was presenting as an example. He is between life and death, past and present, concrete and obscure, memory and oblivion, taking many roles in the story among which is of a narrator. While being nameless and seeing no value in names and not being too bothered by anything, including his obscure origin, he is still an important character with... well, character, who seems to develop more feelings for what is going on around him and what happened to him in the past as the story progresses. In terms of just about everyting about this character, he sits in the anomalous zone very comfortably.

Another interesting case is Conrad Achenleck, a shy, reserved, yet quite irritable and a with a bit of a temper who, after some unfortunante and a bit humorous events gone horribly wrong becomes a vampire. Sure, we have millions of other stories of 'your everyday guys' being vampires, and in most of them, they seem to be perfect prettyboys, especially in the infamous 'Twilight' series. And in those cases we have the prettyboys presented as something both of this world and the other, but that doesn't really convince anyone anymore. Yet Conrad is a person who a lot of people are painfully familliar with, and his ordeal of becoming a vampire isn't presented overly dramatically, yet is sad and obviously painful to the character, and little bits afterwards point to that the fact that he's a (weak fresher) vampire is still not entirely alright with him. While all of this was not explored more in depth after the first chapter, many things point to the story coming back to focusing on him hopefully. So, Conrad is an everyday guy turned vampire that is done right in my opinion and represents the weird limbo of a situation like that quite well, also putting him in the *~magical~* anomalous zone.

Besides them two, a few other characters also fit in the anomalous zone,  mostly because of their supernatural origins, yet they feel natural in the everyday enviroments of the comic. Hanna, the main character himself seems to have some intriguing baggage readers are not yet allowed to know about and in most recent pages, there have been interesting revealations concerning a new, but already popular character. But I digress.

All in all, the whole story seems anomalous-zoney to me atleast of what understand about such things. The author herself calls it 'sugar-coated horror' whitch explains the essence of the comic pretty well. It has a perfect balance between opposing poles- horror and suspense and lighthearted comedy - it's not overly dramatic and grim (though it has dramatic moments and is REALLY QUITE dark and grim at some parts of the story) and isn't a total comedy to the point of becoming parody or satire.
So, it seems that balance is one of the keys of creating succesful stories.
And that the anomalous zone contains quite fascinating things.

That weird Powerpuff Girls episode

Now that's intertextuality overload for ya- a whole Powerpuff Girls episode packed full (and I DO mean FULL- it's practically overflowing) of references to the Beatles. Well, it's unsurprising to see some Beatles references in cartoons as a whole, them having the title of the greatest band in the world, and all... But a whole episode?? Wow, Craig McCracken, you really love these guys, huh... Well, to his defense, most other PPG stuff is usually not too hard to understand for the children's public, and this is a pretty cool episode. I think I would love it too if there was a cartoon episode dedicated to MY favourite band, but that's just wishful thinking.
Also, it's interesting to see people play around with such concepts and trying them out to their fullest- doing the sort of 'what if' experiments, a thing not many would do. I'm glad to see that PPG had enough popularity and McCracken had enough courage to do this, a thing he and his crew, and the more mature (and the younger Beatles fans) viewers really enjoyed.

One thing I remembered while listening about semiotics...

When Ian drew us a picture of a face (whitch later turned into Hitler), and started talking about how people recognise faces naturally, genetically, I instantly remebered this site http://facesinplaces.blogspot.com/ It's a whole blog full of photos of faces people saw where they shouldn't have. It's really interesting how things like that are both amusing and strangely thought provoking...
It's also interesting how people take advantage of this while creating some inhuman characters in cartoons and such. Disney too plays around with how people recognise faces in inanimate objects in some of its' cartoons, like the talking flowers in Alice in Wonderland:

While their humanisation is a lot more straightforward, it's still heavily based on how people tend to see faces in flowers, especially in pansies. Also, flowers here get turned into other objects and animals they remind us of as well, such as cats, bells and trumpets. Also, Lewis Carrol shouldn't be left out too, it was his idea to exploit this tendency in the first place.

Overall, Alice in Wonderland is a great example of semiotics and various analogies, since it's basically a dream a young girl has where her imagination and her personal analogies are materialised, under whitch there seems to be a deeper meaning lying, well, as far as I remember.

I watched Batman when I was little....

 I can't remember how exactly old I was, but I was introduced to Batman movies at a very early age- I was still in kindergarten. I think this is the actual reason why I like dark stuff. The goddamn Batman movies. Naturally, the first one I saw was the 1989 version by Tim Burton, and recently I rewatched it again, because I'm going to write the essay specifically about one of the most well known hero/villain pairs.
So, it probably goes without saying that it was an interesting experience to rewatch a movie that was part of my childhood. The most interesting part being actually remembering various details of the move- as in, 'hey, I remember seeing that!'- most of them being not that significant. It's interesting how a child's mind works- I didn't remember such parts as the Joker's parade with the gas-filled baloons or the part where Bruce Wayne confronts Joker himself in Vicky Vale's apartment, or some other rather important scenes, BUT I remember the gift with a colourful gasmask in it, Alicia's broken mask and Joker stating that she commited suicide, parts of the 'Smilex' commercial, Joker's tv announcement with him wearing that skin-toned makeup (but just the sight of it, I did not rememeber a single word he said), the part with the surgeon (though this part is rather important and I bet most people remember that too), that fried guy, and that bad "you wouldn't hit a guy with glasses" joke (but not what follows after).

 So, what made me remember these specific parts? Was it the colours, the mood, was it the schocking and unexpected nature of those scenes? Maybe. Though I see one thing that binds them all- they're short. I've read somewhere once that a child, until a certain age, cannot bind the images they see on tv into one continuous story. I kinda remember the movie as a single story, well, atleast I knew that the scenes were part of one, yet the things I remembered and understood were short bits and scenes. I didn't remember the talks Bruce and Vicky had, I don't remember the long but awesome statements by the Joker, I don't remember the whole fight/dangling over the edge of the church part, yet I remember the darn glasses. And I did not remember ANY part of Harvey Dent, but that's because he was boring :D
I think that it ultimately comes down to this in terms of leaving an impression to a child and making them remember things- short span and visuality. No way I have remembered that surgeon part or the commercial if they weren't strongly visually unsettling, especially for a child.

For the record, I still like Dark Knight more. Sorry Jack.