Days of Shades

Erik and I had a date, with real going-to-the-movies and everything!

I really, really enjoyed this movie.

I mean, naturally it has the ever-so-much-more-so fast paced action scenes with all the ridiculously long falls that I'm growing weary of*, but it's a super hero movie. It had all the excitement and explosions and action fast enough that sometimes I don't even bother trying to follow it I expect from a super hero movie. And of course there's Tony Snark.

( Spoilahs! )

I just got back from the Hobbit. E took me, after I'd had a long and mostly-marvelous day out at the coast spying on snowy owls, and returned exhausted to discover my washing machine is broken (the new tenant has been in two weeks, and first his heater broke and the washer... I'm afraid he'll think I lied about the state of my house). Given all that, have a bulleted things-as-I-thought-them list instead of any kind of proper review!
( I'm never quite sure whether something based on a decades old book should merit spoiler alerts. )

The things I shouted either at the screen, my housemate madalchemist, or twitter while playing ME3 (only up to the first tour round the Normandy, so not far).

( Spoilers for tiny stuff; nothing major )

Okay, off to work on star edits so I can play again.

So, I realized I was pretty uncomfortable writing a mostly negative review, and tried to figure out why. I think in this case it's mostly that I know people who know the author.

The easiest and often most interesting things to review are media where there are moments of both excellence and total failure. They put each other in sharp contrast; you can really see how the thing works by examining where it breaks (That's why I think Dragon Age 2 is such an interesting video game to discuss -- it has wonderful aspects, awful aspects, and moments of "Oh, that was SO close!", without even touching on low-hanging fruit like reused environments).

So, in the interests of picking the machine apart to see how it works... I just finished Jay Lake's Mainspring.

It is a book that went almost entirely downhill.

First off, his actual writing, the way he strings words together, is fantastic. If it wasn't, I would never have kept reading. Through-out the first half of the book he nails the sweet-spot of description, where there's enough to provide color and immersion without bogging down. I know that particular spot varies from reader to reader -- some people like Dickens, for fishes' sakes -- but Lake's balance worked for me. I saw his world in full color*, and it was interesting.

Unfortunately, despite lots of interesting teasers into the world, we never get to sink our teeth into it. There isn't any payoff, any "Oh, that's what's going on!" moments. Everything that was a mystery at the beginning is still a mystery at the end, including how the hero got to the end, why he's a hero, and how/why he had his fantastic revelation. Some of this is because of a huge reliance on "God did it", which is very much not my cup of tea. I'm trying to leave my personal dislike of the religiosity out of the equation when reviewing the story, but it's difficult, as miracles seem to provide all the plot advancement.

It's basically the Hero's Journey -- developing from the lost youth to the world-saving hero -- managed without much character development. I cared about the protagonist more on page five than I did on page 100. Hethor never does anything -- at least, he doesn't do anything until he gets magical-divine powers. He gets dumped out of the frying pan and into the fire so often through the course of the book that by the time he reached the airship I was just waiting for the next catastrophe to befall him. And they do befall him; he's not proactive in the least. Members of a never-explained shadow organization rescue/kidnap him; members of a never explained species rescue/kidnap him; a never-explained enemy-wizard rescues/kidnaps him, etc.

I also feel very sorry for the fifty or so "young male" correct people, who seemed to exist only to be killed off as a cheap way of showing that the journey was dangerous. None of them ever got to have personalities or identities of their own. They were like the protagonist's whipping boy -- can't have the hero die to emphasize the severity of the situation, so kill off some of his nameless entourage.

I have no desire to read the next in the series, but some of the failures of Mainspring actually make me interested in reading his short stories, especially since I find his writing to be very readable.

*Books come across to me in a variety of visual ways. Some are vague watercolor (McKillip, de Lint), some realism (G. R. R. Martin). Some use the big crayola 64 pack and some haven't gotten beyond primary and secondary colors (The Wheel of Time series was only colored in 8-crayon-pack vivids for me, and it hurt).

My parents scored three months of HBO because my Dad is good at being angry without shouting, so E and I trotted over to watch the GoT premier Sunday.

It's funny; you can love something in book form, fully aware of how gritty and awful it is at times, and still be totally discomfitted when watching it in TV form with your Japanese former room-mate who can't follow most of the words and oh shit, what will she think of me for being so excited about this?

Best bit: The Other takes off a guy's head in the prologue. Kiyoko gasps! Dad says, reassuringly: "Don't worry, that won't happen again... for at least five minutes."

Luckily, Kiyoko is a fantasy/sci-fi fan and liked it, but I still had this urge to assure her that not all of my entertainment is focused on violent doggy-style sex.

So: I just finished playing Mass Effect 1, because I am a rather behind-the-times RPG fan. As with many bioware games, there are romance options. I found the romance-able characters to be the most unengaging in the game (oh, earnest, bland, and whiny -- is there ever a better personality trifecta?), and quipped to madalchemist that you should be able to romance the pilot, since he's the only human character with a decent personality. His immediate response is that the pilot has brittle bone syndrome and you'd break him.

A brief survey of obsessed forums on the net shows that that's the common response, too, and it's seriously been eating at me.

Healthy Gamers of the Internet: Do you seriously believe that people with severe, chronic health problems never have romantic partners? I'm not even talking about pure, deep love where sex of any kind isn't an option, though it exists.

Face it: The human race is fucking creative, especially about fucking.

People with this medical condition and countless others don't just stop experiencing life as human beings. They do tend to experience body image issues, especially in their teens, out of fear that no one will ever be able to look beyond the illness or be willing to make the compromises necessary for their condition, whatever it is. Whole forums of people who assume that a character with their condition can never have any kind of partner sexual experience whatsoever help that alienation a lot, I'm sure.

There are other issues with the way video game romances are written (romance is the only way to have long conversations; all romances end in sex for an 'achievement' etc), but other people have written about those. To my knowledge, there hasn't even been another character with a severe chronic health problem*, and I haven't seen anyone talking about it with an eye to the fact that REAL PEOPLE ACTUALLY HAVE THESE PROBLEMS.

I applaud Bioware for writing a character with a disability. That's awesome. Now, in ME3, don't ruin it by saying "he's too breakable to love anyone but his ship", okay? Because that takes the "hey, we included a cool character with a disability!" medal and pisses on it.


*Partially understandable. People with severe chronic health issues don't usually end up on the adventuring party or in the marines. The importance of the ship in Mass Effect means the pilot can kick ass and take names while still sitting down all the time.

( book reviews: US founding edition )

I admit, I'm also hoping for a book I can recommend to people who start on the whole 'this was founded as a christian nation' types. Moral Minority is an excellent book, but the title is forthright enough that I doubt people who felt that way would even open it. The goal here isn't to convert anyone to an imagined atheist utopia, either -- just to get 'em to acknowledge that the issue was complex, the world in post-enlightenment pre-great awakening flux, and the founding fathers were distinct people who frequently disagreed with each other.

Speaking of which, who exactly ARE the founding fathers? We all know the key players, but do we count every member of the continental congress? Of the constitutional convention? Are you still a founding father if you only had a chorus role in 1776? I want a paternity test on the nation.

westrider, did you see this? WE HAVE TO GET DRUNK AND WATCH THIS MOVIE.

Watching it sober probably takes years off your life. We're talking something even worse than Endgame here.



STEAM!

One quibble with Harry Potter, and one quibble with the people reviewing it.

1. I have never liked prophecy as a plot device, so it should be no surprise that I nitpick over prophecy. Did it strike anyone else as strange that the HP prophecy "Neither can survive while the other lives" is patently untrue, as there are several years when both Harry and Voldemort are alive? Like, say, the entire span of time covered in the books?

2. A major facet of most 'reputable' reviews of HP7 has been the discussion of adult vs. children's literature. Reviewers are merciless with their criticism and then back off, accusing themselves of applying adult standards to children's literature. Others jump in to argue that such comments underestimate children's literature. Will someone please point out that the discusions almost universally underestimate children? Children are not actually simplified, primary colored adults. They can and do handle a lot more than we wish they'd have to. I stand firmly in the camp that claims that a good kids book MUST also be a good adults' book, not because it has to contain stories on two entirely different levels, but because kids can handle it. Shit happens. People are complex. Kids are capable of dealing with this stuff, and shielding them from it does not make them better aduults.

...know when to fold 'em...know when to walk away, know when to run...

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( BookRant! )

**Limited Time Offer!** I gots Sword of Truth books, including Faith of the Fallen in hardcover, and I might give/trade 'em at you if you catch me before I make it to a used book store.