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I love to get my hands on a genuinely good addition to a series- as you were saying about Batman: The Animated Series. The other day I found the sequel to Howl's Moving Castle. At first I was just estatic because I had no idea there was a sequel, and then I was excited to read a continuation of a favorite show (yes, I've only seen the anime- never read the book, although I mean to sometime).
I didn't actually pick it up yet- the movie ended so well, I'm not sure I want that ending messed up, especially not if the 'new' ending isn't at satisfying.
Sequels scare me like that- there's a long-standing habit of screwing them up, so my advice is to not mess with a good thing.
I am not a fan of Tim Burton, nor The Nightmare Before Christmas... But hopefully the sequel will go over okay with you.
But, like you said- TNBC is kind of a classic- its almost like it will lose some of its 'glow' with an addition.
I would hate it if a sequel was ever made to The Phantom of the Opera. There are too many chances that things will go wrong...
The movie industry needs to slow down- they're running out of ideas, and they're ruining all the good ones by rehashing them.

Haha- dance mode! Geez, I want to play Dance Dance Revolution now. XD I'm pretty sure that movie/game creators think that making music a semi-big part of anything they're doing will automatically make it good. Yay for corny musicals and dance-offs in my MMORPGs.

When I was little, I was interested in seeing NMBC- even when I saw the part where the kid pulls the severed head out of the box. And I had a NMBC coloring book once... don't know why my mom ever got that for me because she is really not that kind of person.
Ever since I read 'Scary Stories' in fifth grade, I've hated freaky, horror, anything. Phantom is what I watch when I'm in the mood for scary thriller. And I'm only talking about the one with Gerald Butler. XD I always thought Raul was pretty handsome too.

As far as books being made into movies... I'm not going to lie: I would like that. I don't just write because I love to- I want some real money out of it. And if they have to sever a few plot-points, they can, as long as the battle scenes are epic.
The Harry Potter movies turned out really good to me- I would be very satisfied if my books turned out as such.
(I know these are big goals. Just dreaming here, is all).

I'm not sure which version of scary stories I read- it was a while ago, and I've never had a desire to go back a check. However, there is a likely chance it is Alvin Schwartz, because the pictures were much worse than any of the stories themselves.

I always thought the same about Raoul. He's really serious about her- spends the night outside her door to keep her safe, fights against Erik in the graveyard, and repeatedly risks his life trying to get her back when she's kidnapped, among other things. I personally think he proved himself very well. And you know what else? I also like his personality. He seems like a fun, light-hearted guy. But at the same time, he's focused.
I know fan girls love a brooding character with a dark past now, but that just doesn't cut it for me. I like Raoul.

I also think if Gerald Butler hadn't been Erik, the Phantom wouldn't have half the fan-base he does now.

The differences between a movie and the book its based off has rarely bothered me. I view them as two separate things. As a stand alone, the movie is usually pretty entertaining.

The most difference I have ever seen between movie and book would have to be with Ella Enchanted- if I didn't know titles, I would have never guessed them to be the same, or even knock-offs. Even though I would hightly disapprove of that for my books, Ella Enchanted is still a great movie. I also love Anne Hathaway, and it all started there.

What bothers me is when the movie, as a stand-alone, is not only remarkably different from the book, but also terrible. If they're going to so carelessly throw away the author's original ideas, they need to at least be worthwhile. Spiderwick struck me as such.
Lenient as I am, none others come to mind at the time.


You didn't like the third Harry Potter? It went right along with the rest of the movies, I thought. Then again, you know I'm not picky with the details.

So. What has N been up to in the last month?

For one, she got to go to the Colorado Alliance of Illustrators as a panelist for Photoshop tips. I have free membership for the next year because of it.

I also applied for numerous jobs. So far, nothing. -_- I even went to a job placement agency, and they have yet to give me anything. I have to make some more phone calls today.

Sunday, I turned twenty-three. I celebrated the day before, as it was on the Sabbath. I went out for lunch with my best friend, saw Tangled (which I thought was okay, but felt the ending was a cop-out. I will say nothing else due to spoilers), and got the last book in the second arc of the Goosebumps: HorrorLand series, along with the next bit in Gotahm City Sirens, which is a comic that stars Harley Quinn, Poison Ivy, and Catowman. I also got an Arkham Asylum Scarecrow figure from one of my e-friends (I still need to paly that game...), a manga called Hollow Fields from another, and a Jack and Sally pin from my dad. <3 Mom is going to buy me a Wacom tablet when she gets money again. YAY! I can make pretty colored art again soon! <3

I was a bit disappointed with the Goosebumps book. The arc in question involves a shop owner named Jonathan Chiller who gives souvenirs to children, telling them to pay him "next time." The first six books were, in typical Goosebumps fashion, varying in quality (I never thought Stine could write a worse Slappy book than Bride of the Living Dummy, but he proved me wrong with Slappy New Year, though I liked When the Ghost Dog Howls and Weirdo Halloween), the ongoing storyline was promising.

And then the conclusion failed to deliver the punch it set up. I had the same issue I had with the last Harry Potter book: I felt I was drifting through the first half, and it got faster through the second part to the point where I had to re-read and make sure I understood it correctly. I knew Chiller was bringing the kids back to play a deadly game. It seemed almost like a diet, kid-friendly version of the Riddler (which excited me), where the kids would have to solve puzzles while barely avoiding danger. That happened, but not in a way that felt even remotely threatening.

I also felt that Jonathan Chiller was set up to be an imposing, creepy big bad like Karloff Mennis/The Menace was in the previous arc---and that conclusion delivered the impact, so I was expecting Stine to do something amazing with Chiller too. Sad to say it did not happen, and I cannot really take Chiller seriously with the last book. There were some parts I felt were kind of "what?" and some places where he came off as a loony Mennis (or even Slappy) fill-in. Sorry, leave the "evil for the lulz" villainy to the Menace, and leave the bad jokes to the evil dummy.

And while I am on the subject...as I said, I never thought Stine could top Bride for the worst Slappy book in existence. For context, the issues I had with Bride:

-Ventriloquism was forcibly shoe-horned into the plot. The protagonist wanted to be a party clown, and her mom had her take her sisters to Jimmy O'James's show for ideas. Ventriloquism and clowns = two entirely different comedy mediums.
-The party clown subplot in and of itself. The less I say about this, the better; just trust me. I will just say that the TV show took this out entirely, and the story improved. Significantly.
-I will give that Goosebumps parents are generally ignorant, naive, uncaring, etc. if they are not in on the conspiracy. That said, the mom in this book really took the cake. Only plot convenience can explain why two twelve-year-olds are, by themselves, watching over a dozen crazy six-year olds at a birthday party in a basement filled with power tools, and expected to do everything by themselves.

The only reasons I will even read that book anymore are for Slappy's back story, Jimmy O'James (who, while VERY minor, is neat, especially when we get to Slappy's Nightmare) and for Mary-Ellen (basically a big doll who is a female version of him, but she was awesome for the two chapters she came to life. The fact that she kicked Slappy's a** and got epic revenge on him for spurning her made the awfulness of the book worth getting through).

Now for Slappy New Year.

It is already a given that the NotLD books are more or less formulaic: Dummy comes to life. Dummy causes trouble. Kid discovers he is alive; dummy threatens the kid to be his slave or else. Kid defeats him somehow. Even so, some books do fun things with the formula: Night of the Living Dummy II, Slappy's Nightmare, and Revenge of the Living Dummy have all respectively: beautifully played the story to its best extreme (the third book could never hold a candle to it), reversed the formula (which is why it is my favorite), and set it up to follow the formula, then threw a curveball halfway through.

Note that Revenge kicked off the first HorrorLand arc, and Slappy's cameos in later HorrorLand books were both intriguing and helped add to the first arc's mystery---and the fact that he was EPIC in the first arc's finale (funny how his insults improve when he has to be useful...). Thus, with this in mind, the horrid mess that is Slappy New Year is that much more aggravating.

I will admit that my first read-through, I laughed. A lot. There were some genuinely funny moments, but I was not unaware of the flaws. My issues:

-I felt I could easily swap this book with any of the three original books. It was formulaic to the point where I felt there was next to nothing original. Even Bride did something different with the story line.
-Stine re-used insults and jokes for Slappy. He has NEVER done this in previous books, and to make matters worse, he used the SAME insults he used just six books ago in the first arc's finale. One thing I can always expect is no matter how bad the NotLD books get, Slappy's insults are always new, and that was an appeal (even if most are, admittedly, pretty bad). I no longer have this trust.
-The "someone else is behind the pranks, blames Slappy, and gets caught, and then someone else actually brings Slappy to life" subplot has been done before at least thrice, and a lot better. The fact that this subplot was beautifully executed in Revenge in the last arc made this that much more irritating when it did not hold up as nicely.
-There was a scene where Slappy yanks himself from his owner's hands, runs towards a Christmas tree and knocks it over (and thus breaking a ton of irreplaceable ornaments), with EVERYONE IN THE ROOM in a position to see it, yet the owner still gets the blame for it. Some ignorance in these books is expected, but how could everyone else conveniently NOT see that? This was worse than the basement set-up in Bride! Little six-year-old kids can be unreliable witnesses and dismissed, but this was in front of a crowd where the youngest person was nine.
-If I remember right, a similar incident happened later with a priceless antique bowl. I have to locate and re-read this book again; I cannot remember if the parents were simply in the other room, or if they got home just in time to see it smash.
-The ending.

The only justification I can see for this next one is to consider the HorrorLand books an AU. Which pisses me off, because the original series and the Goosebumps 2000 books, while different series, still meshed beautifully together in terms of character arcs and story. To the point where two friends and I were able to use our theories to make an eighty-page RP and STILL have more to explore and it makes me sad that both friends have net trouble, and it pretty much died.

Getting to the point, I was irked that Slappy's Fear File (basically character bios) had two mistakes: one, his "greatest hits" (aka worst insults) had a quote that was not even his---it was from Mr. Wood, the villain in the very first book (and I will not even touch on how the insults chosen were the worst in the sense that they were the most groan-inducing as opposed to actually insulting), and two, it mentioned that his weakness was re-reading the words that brought him back to life.

Back up, rewind. Night of the Living Dummy III tried this. Slappy put on a "dying" show, then laughed in the kids' faces because it was stupid, and they had to find another way to get rid of him (and while III was the worst of the originals, the ending made sense, at least). And the one book that made the claim that re-reading the words was true (Revenge) never gave a chance to test it out, and again, took Slappy out in a different way. I was hoping, praying, begging that whoever wrote the Fear File was just an idiot who cannot do proper research.

Nope. Turns out Slappy went right back to sleep when the words were read aloud again.

This comes a few chapters after the kids supposedly got rid of him by tossing him in a garbage truck. Which, based on previous books, looked likely to actually work, and I was commending Stine for a decent way to do it, and figured that okay, so the story was formulaic, the jokes and insults were terrible, but the twist ending, at least, has to be good with that kind of set-up.

Nope. He comes back, nearly kills a bunch of kids (in which he has now officially topped Mr. Wood for violence. Slapping, hitting, and biting? On-par for both of them, but Mr. Wood got the closest to killing something---he almost killed his owners' dog, and only barely were his hands pulled away in time. But lobbing full paint cans at kids and barely missing them, while filling an enclosed and locked basement with noxious fumes while kids are struggling to get out? Yeah, I think Slappy just de-throned him), and it seems the end is near. So here I am, waiting for Stine to think of a good way to take him out. The card got covered in paint! Yes! They cannot use this! What are they going to do?

Next chapter, it turns out the kid can read the words just fine by looking at them from the back of the card, which was paint-free. And it worked.

Cop. Out.

Cue N's little enjoyment of this book deflating before her eyes with the kind of disappointment that the laughs she got earlier could not salvage her crushed expectations, and does her best to not lob it straight at the wall.

Needless to say, I am not going to go out of my way for the books in the third arc. When I get a job again, they can wait until they go on sale.

In any case, I promised an epic tale regarding the next chapter of my fic. So here it is.

I actually have it finished, and intend to transcribe it later today. Getting to this point, however...

I got really into doing art again. Fanart, OC's---last week, I drew a TON of costumes for my characters, with notes and adjustments on why they are the way they are, proportions, decorations, etc. So, art took up a lot of time I could have been writing.

And on writing, I have really been getting ideas for my original stories. Naturally, "Family Ties" took a back seat to this when I was having so much fun getting down ideas that had been blocked for so long.

But the real story is my notebook containing the fic so far.

I thought I lost it twice. The first time, nothing special. I set it down, forgot where I had it last, found it again. The second time...

I carry my notebooks everywhere with me. I have them on hand for misc. doodles, notes, and pieces of stories. This one, I thought it got left at a friend's house. Nope. And I remembered we went to the movies that week. Nothing in the lost and found, and nothing in my friend's car.

Panic mode starts. I check my bed (It is big; the part against the wall hold books, a few boxes, my Slappy doll, and some other misc. items I have no other place for), my "office," the dining room table and the hutch in there.

And then I realize that it could have slipped out of my backpack on one of my trips out of the house. I was despaired, thinking about how I was going to reconstruct that chapter, and even more about the character profiles and doodles for my original work.

And when I have accepted it is gone, finished, never coming back, and the fates hate me---I find it.

On my bed.

In plain sight.

Because N is an idiot, she was looking for it as it would be closed---red cover, brown back. It was on the bed open and folded over to the chapter I had been working on. I had ignored it because I mistook it for a different notebook.

So, I have it. And I will finish transcribing it today, hopefully. <3

There. Caught up after a month with life, love, and rants.

I have a lot of stupid moments like that. And I have them often enough that I can tell my friends, "N is just being N," and they know what I mean. XP

Photoshop = fun when you harness its power. It is intimidating to a beginner, and I only recently found enjoyment in using it.

And thank you. I am calling someone from church later today to see if he found anything. Hooray for knowing people who know people?

I will say that Tangled, despite my opinion of the ending, was a step up from what Disney has been dishing out in the last decade or so. And Megamind was the first non-Pixar 3D animated movie since Igor that I genuinely enjoyed. <3

The thing that irks me most about my disappointment with the HorrorLand series is that the first arc was amazing. Yes, there were some of the typical Goosebumps flaws and tropes (like the apathetic parents, at least one plot point that kids would give a free pass to, but an older audience goes, "What?" and a cliffhanger on every chapter, some more forced than others), but it looked like Stine actually learned from his mistakes from the original series. The fact that it was also more or less a monster mash/villain team-up helped. >>

In the first arc, the books were split into three parts: the main story which reads like a regular Goosebumps book, about six-ten additional chapters that tie the separate main story to HorrorLand and ties the books together, and then a Fear File, which has a park map piece, a hint to something in the next book, a character profile, and an ad for a ride in HorrorLand. The HorrorLand sections, you could cut them out of the books, put them together, and read it like its own book (but the main stories were needed for context, hence the format).

It did not matter how good or bad the main stories were to me. The main HorrorLand story line was what kept me hooked: why are there no mirrors in HorrorLand? Are the kids really safe there? How are all the villains coming back? Who is the Keeper, and who is this Menace person? Is Baron (a Horror. They are basically big horned, furry monsters that run HorrorLand) really trying to help the kids get to safety, or is he leading them into more danger? What is Panic Park, and is it really safer than HorrorLand?

Questions, questions, and more questions, and each answered in time, and each time, the reveal was satisfying, building up to an awesome climax that forced the kids and the villains to work together to take out the Menace.

Enter the second arc. The format goes: Small five-eight chapter segment with the kid in HorrorLand, having a scary time, and ending up in Jonathan Chiller's shop, where he gives them a creepy souvenir that comes with a little Horror doll. "Take a little Horror home with you," and they can pay him "next time." Next section reads like a regular Goosebumps book, where the object in question causes the inevitable disasters in the book. The third section is about one-three chapters long, and the Horror figure transports the kids back to the shop where they have to pay up.

Even though I can rant and rave about Slappy New Year until the sun explodes and Hell freezes over, I enjoyed the other books (minus Little Shop of Hamsters), and I loved the mini-plot with Jonathan Chiller, which, like the first arc, had a continuity with them. And Stine had set up Chiller to be, true to his name, a chilling, cold character with a dark secret. Last book? Turns out he was a strange child---brilliant, even---but was kept locked away to study and enrich his mind. Literally, his only friends were his toys. His father took him out hunting once to try to make him a "real man," and when the trip ended with Chiller being injured, he went back to his forced isolation.

The plot was basically he was sending the kids around HorrorLand to find the chests specifically to hunt them down and prove himself to his father. It had the potential to be scary, and in the beginning, I was excited for it, and as mentioned, it seemed to be a sort of Riddler-esque kind of plot. I like puzzle-solving, and it had the makings of a good mystery.

Instead, it came off as goofy and ridiculous, because while it was hinted at (and proven) that Chiller was...not right in the head, Stine really went overboard with it, taking away a villain who could have been calm, quiet, calculating, and still very much an overgrown child, and more or less forcing him to be the kind of over-the-top cackling villain that the Menace was. With the Menace, it worked. Panic Park in and of itself is over-the-top, so it made sense for its creator to be. With Chiller, it failed horribly, because he is set up to be a different kind of villain...then forced into one the audience had seen before.

Were the editors asleep, or something? Because if the next big bad is going to be like this, I may not want the third arc at all.

And I got my books from storage and re-read Slappy New Year. Turns out the parents came home just in time to see the bowl crash, and Slappy was already out of sight. So, that instance was forgivable. The Christmas tree incident, however, was not. Most of the people in the room were adults, and as mentioned, the youngest person was nine. Considering it was two families spending the holidays together, I still do not believe that not even ONE person saw Slappy running on his own to knock over the tree...since their eyes were on him and his owner to begin with, seeing as Ray (the kid) was trying to do a ventriloquist act...

It is either plot convenience or author favoritism (Stine has mentioned that Slappy is his favorite character to write). Maybe a bit of both.

The mandatory twist ending also provided an outlet for Slappy to come back later (Ray's mother found the paper and read the words, and just before the return trip to Chiller's shop, Ray was looking for him, and he was gone). I suspect the third arc might do this. And for the first time ever, I hope Stine either leaves him alone and does the third arc without him, or only has him come back for a cameo appearance. I do not want to be disappointed again. Unless another book with him is utterly amazing like the ones in the first arc, but I am not getting my hopes up.

In any case...Blogger Beware considers Be Careful What You Wish For to be the one book that defines the series. It is good. It is simultaneously bad (I guessed the twist halfway through it, and it had quite a few flaws). It has its scary moments, its humor, and its cheesy plot twists. But most importantly, it is so-bad-it's-good, and that is what makes it enjoyable.

And having read the book recently myself, I have to agree.