When I was really sick a couple weeks ago, I finally watched Dragon Ball Z Abridged.
Not even sure why I did it. I can't remember how I landed on it. And you know what? It was really good.
I don't have a lot of experience with these abridged series. I've only seen clips here and there, and usually what I've seen is a bunch of chaos, memes, and non-sequiturs. And yes, while there was some of that, what surprised me was how the series really kept to the core story, only making modifications when it would speed things along , or to make a critical point about the original series. (I mean let's face it, DBZ takes forever. Even DBZ knows that DBZ takes forever, which is why they made Kai.)
What surprised me more than anything was the emotional weight it had. They understood the important beats of the storyline and made me manage to feel things about what was going on, even though it was a parody, even though I already knew what was going to to happen in the story. It had its own internal consistency, it's own modified world building, it's own characterizations. Maybe they weren't fully three-dimensional characters, but they were at least 2.5.
In some ways I almost feel like it was ahead of its time. Some of the same fourth wall bending humor and the characters not taking themselves very seriously reminds me of the current MCU style.
In any case, it was a pleasant surprise.
At the same time I was finishing up Dragon Ball Z Abridged, I also started subscribing to a service called Blinkist. Blinkist is a service that takes nonfiction books and podcasts and condense them down to their core ideas. It's like reading those non-fiction books, but they cut out all of the inspirational fluff and meandering stories. Which honestly, I don't really mind that part of it sometimes, but the frustrating thing I find about books like that is that I can never find points when I need to go back to them. I'm sure it's intentionally designed that way, to make sure you read the whole book, but Blinkist keeps everything organized.
I've even gone through some Blinks (that's what they call them) of books that I have already read and found them to be pretty accurate and useful. It's nice, because I'm always trying to get new ideas, new perspectives, new techniques on how to improve myself as a person and as a creative individual. But I definitely don't have time to read all of those books, and I definitely don't have a budget to purchase them all in audio form.
I'm not sure what lesson there is to gain out of any of us. It is interesting though that I seem to be surrounded in cutting ideas down to their bare essentials.