Writers' Workshop General Chat Thread

[Lugion]

I'm very sorry if any of you only experienced Dragon Ball Z through Funimation's first dub of the anime. The manga and Kai are both entirely different experiences, with far better pacing and dialogue (and most especially voice acting in the case of DBZ Kai).

And if Battle of Gods is anything to go by, the new series will strike a pretty good balance between Dragon Ball's fun storytelling and Dragon Ball Z's epic battles

 

[Kelleo]

I've seen a good deal of DBZ Kai. I do like the voices better than the ones in the original DBZ. I only watched Kai because as I said before, I like Krillin and Vegeta.

 

[BinkVallen]

I've never seen Dragonball Z so maybe my two cents aren't worth much (or maybe they're worth even more, if the average person hasn't seen DBZ), but I can't fathom the show ever reaching anywhere near Shakespeare levels. All the general non-anime-watching public seems to know about it is that the people in it have big spiky yellow hair and scream a lot while their power levels go over 9000. I honestly don't even know which one is Goku. The show is mainstream enough to be part of popular culture and I suppose it's significant for the reasons Pavell mentioned, but when you compare it to something like Harry Potter where almost everyone is familiar with the basic plot and characters, it doesn't look like it will have much lasting power. Will it be remembered in 100 years? There's a good chance, at least in the historical record and in some social circles. Will it be taught in high school, constantly referenced in future pop culture and remade/adapted a million times? I highly doubt it.

 

[Lugion]

As for Dragon Ball vs. Shakespeare: Yeah, that's a bit ridiculous. Goku might seem more influential to some, but it's a niche thing. He's super popular among a certain demographic, but Shakespeare is still Shakespeare.

 

[Misfit Angel]

Can I play devil's advocate and say that I don't understand the appeal of Shakespeare? Outside of Hamlet, none of his works that I've read have been particularly interesting or gripping. I won't say he was a bad writer, but I don't see where he was a god amongst men in the field, either.

 

[Beth Pavell]

Can I play devil's advocate and say that I don't understand the appeal of Shakespeare? Outside of Hamlet, none of his works that I've read have been particularly interesting or gripping. I won't say he was a bad writer, but I don't see where he was a god amongst men in the field, either.

Hard to say, though personally I find that the best Shakespeare plays tend to be the best adaptations. Which says more for the actors and directors than the source material

 

[AceTrainer14]

I have to agree with you there, KP. I have never been a big fan of his works I have read (not that many, only R&J, Hamlet, Othello and maybe MacBeth). Some of the stories and ideas are quite good, and he certainly is talented, but I am just not a fan.

 

[Kelleo]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of his stuff either. The only Shakespeare work I've liked is his Julius Caesar play.

 

[Beth Pavell]

This is half the problem - everybody always reads Shakespeare. You watch a play, and to my mind that is how Shakespeare should be enjoyed.

 

[Flaze]

My favorite shakespeare adaptation is...the Lion King :O

 

[Persephone]

He's good because he basically invented half of English storytelling. While understandably some of the cultural references and social norms are lost and the English is a bit harder to understand, that's what live performance and adaptations are for. And boy do they get performed and adapted long after every other English writer of the era save Milton has faded into obscurity. Half of the classics of English literature have titles, plots, or some other element borrowed from the bard and I'm really not sure that, with the possible exception of Joyce, you can find any author who changed English storytelling quite so much.

And seconding Pavell. Saying you never understood the appeal of Shakespeare while reading his work is like saying that you don't understand why people think Spielberg films are good after only reading his scripts.

 

[Flaze]

I'm going to assume your point here is that it's up to the performers and directors and such to make sure if it ends up being good or not? since shakespeare's stories were meant to be plays after al.

 

[Beth Pavell]

He's good because he basically invented half of English storytelling. While understandably some of the cultural references and social norms are lost and the English is a bit harder to understand, that's what live performance and adaptations are for. And boy do they get performed and adapted long after every other English writer of the era save Milton has faded into obscurity. Half of the classics of English literature have titles, plots, or some other element borrowed from the bard and I'm really not sure that, with the possible exception of Joyce, you can find any author who changed English storytelling quite so much.

And seconding Pavell. Saying you never understood the appeal of Shakespeare while reading his work is like saying that you don't understand why people think Spielberg films are good after only reading his scripts.

I don't know about invented ... he made classic plots and tropes work well for him, reinventing stories that were often familiar to his audience, perhaps. Which is still the mark of a good storyteller, don't get me wrong. I do think it's fair to say that his influence on English literature is nevertheless huge.

In fairness, the way Shakespeare is taught in schools doesn't help, where the plays are more often than not read. You need to see it to really get the point of what's going on. But the director and the actors do make a big difference. Compare David Tennant as Hamlet (Forget who directed that one) to the groaningly bad performance of Kenneth Branagh directing himself as Hamlet. There's really not a lot in the plays that determines things like costume, props, intonation of the words ... so there can be a huge difference in how that gets interpreted on stage

 

[Tophat Dragoneye]

The closest I've come to "see" a Shakespeare play would be the movie, Shakespeare in Love, which my class in gymnasium watched as part of our English lessons. Whether or not it was a good representation of Shakespeare in general is up to debate though.

Bu I do agree, the best way to experience a Shakespeare play and others is to watch it, not read it.

 

[Vivillon]

I agree completely that a Shakespear play must be seen rather than just read. After my class finished reading Romeo and Juliet, we were fortunate enough to have a show going on nearby that we could all go and see. Although it wasn't of the best of performances, it was most certainly more enjoyable than just reading it. Reading any sort of live production simply will never do it justice.

 

[Misfit Angel]

I've seen plenty of adaptations of Hamlet (a couple of movies, a couple of theatrical performances), Macbeth (two theatrical performances), Romeo and Juliet (too much to remember), Othello (a school play), Julius Caesar (I believe I saw a movie based on his works rather than a historical account). While they were all great, they didn't really add to the 'magic' of Shakespeare, Hamlet excluded. Every Hamlet adaptation I've seen thus far has been great and made for an interesting reread of the source.

I think I'm just disenfranchised with classical literature in general. I very much enjoyed every book my English/writing classes would read if they were written after 1945. They tend to seem more... applicable, I guess.

 

[Dorothy]

And seconding Pavell. Saying you never understood the appeal of Shakespeare while reading his work is like saying that you don't understand why people think Spielberg films are good after only reading his scripts.

The analogy falls apart a bit when you realize that Spielberg has only written, to my knowledge, two scripts.

 

[BinkVallen]

My high school was always pretty good about teaching Shakespeare. There was a traveling Shakespearean troupe that came to my high school every year to perform Romeo and Juliet for the freshmen. When we learned about The Tempest we didn't even read it all the way through. We were split up into groups and each given a part of the play to perform to the whole class, and then afterwards we watched a movie of it to fill in the blanks. It was way better and easier to understand than straight reading the plays like we did in junior high.

My favorite Shakespeare thing I've seen was a performance of The Tempest where the guy playing the sorcerer dude was also a stage magician, so there were all sorts of cool magic tricks involved. That was pretty amazing.

 

[LightningTopaz]

His name is Prospero, for the record.

::has a Complete Works of Shakespeare, which I affectionately call "the brick"::

My favorite Shakespearian memory was watching a movie version of The Tempest with a good friend of mine, complete with popcorn

 

[Lord Kyuubi]

I'm not a particular fan of Shakespeare, but one quote I always like to remember from Romeo and Juliet is Mercutio's dying line: "Ask for me tomorrow, and you shall find me a grave man."