CONTORTED PASTA

My parents very kindly gave me a subscription to Cricket magazine when I was young ... it filled my mind with wonderful stories and illustrations, taught me vocabulary, exposed me to ideas and characters and poetry that I never would have found on my own, and also set me up for maddening frustration as an adult. Every so often I'll get a brainwave or be reminded of something and think 'There was a story about this! It had a cat and there was a pastel illustration of the moon and in the end it turned out they were twins!' but thanks to a lack of specific keywords and no memory for titles or authors' names it's impossible to find that story again.

The most recent of these involved one of my favourite stories from the whole time I was getting the magazine. A man goes to another planet and, though clearly told not to touch anything, touches a rock with interesting colours on it. He loses the use (or at least conscious control) of his hand and comes to realize that an alien life form has posessed it in some way. Late one night he wakes up to find his hand sort of having an argument with the thing, and it draws a cage which traps the thing in it. Years later he discovers the drawing of the cage but IT IS EMPTY ... it was really good. The title might have had a number in it (the number of the planet? might have included a 4?) but was not something clear like 'The Hand Parasite from Outer Space' because I always had a hard time finding the story by title when looking through my old magazines. The author may have been Japanese. Anyone have any ideas?

It occurred to me while visiting California Adventure (soon to be Pixarland*) that despite Pixar's modus operandi of 'creating worlds,' my imagination is never tempted to explore them outside the confines of the film, whereas I often find myself mentally wandering the possibilities of Disney worlds. The only explanation I could come up with is that Pixar movies are more self-contained ... everything in them was created for them; nothing exists that does not relate to the plot or characters; everything is explained and there are no loose ends. It's a very tidy way to make a movie but it doesn't give much room to play – it feels like the movie is shot on a sound stage rather than on location, that if you wandered past the end of the street that is visible in the establishing shot, you'd either meet a blank concrete wall or ... nothing. I don't wonder about the rest of the characters' lives, or 'what would happen if...', or how their society works or anything, because everything I need to know is spelled out for me and nothing further is hinted at, which squashes all curiosity I might have. And for all that the world is painstakingly created I never wish I could just go there to hang out – it's a closed-off room that exists for the purpose of the movie and the movie alone; it doesn't have any doors.** So I wondered: am I the only one? Is your imagination piqued by Pixar movies as much as Disney? I did a brief and extremely unscientific survey of fanfiction.net and the fic tallies for Disney and Pixar movies seem to prove that I am speaking out of my butt, but I cannot recall one Pixar character that, for example, has a squeeing fangirl following. Have you experienced Pixar fandom online? Is it as fruitful or pervasive as the Disney fandoms I followed for a while before running away screaming? What are your thoughts/observations/comments/suggestions/snarkings? Is it better to make a beautiful, clean, perfectly-wrapped up origami of a movie, or leave some loose ends and cracks that the imagination can crawl into?

ETA: I ought to set Incredibles a little bit aside from the Pixar pantheon – it's really much more of a Brad Bird movie than a Pixar movie, and he's the only one to my knowledge who can stand up to Lasseter and get away with it. He directed Ratatouille too, but it was someone else's project that he took over.

ETA2: This seems as good a time as any to point out one of my favourite Daily Show clips ever ... Forks!

*Not officially. But basically ... yeah.
**with the exception of Monsters, Inc which has a lot of doors (literally) ... but none of them open into my head (figuratively)

I've been meaning to post this since last summer, when a comment thread fed a pebble into the rock-tumbler of my brain, but there was always something more important to do ... Well, I have a lump of unexpected free time so I am carpeing the diem.

WARNING: I do go on rather.

( I. Pass Me the Science Ingredient! ) ( II. The Vanishing Trickster ) ( III. You either die a hero or live to see yourself become the villain. )