(no subject)
Day 04 - Your favorite show ever
Farscape is and will always be the show of my heart. It was ambitious and challenging, and when it failed, it failed hard ("Jeremiah Crichton," "The Locket," and "Mental as Anything," I'm looking at you!). But it never failed because it just wasn't good; it always failed because it was trying for something that could have been wonderful, and that something just didn't come together (or had had a legendarily godawful fake beard glued to its face, as the case may be). The characters all had loves and sorrows, hopes and hatreds, and sometimes those things brought them up against each other; their friendships and loves were hard-earned, and later, hard-fought-for. The universe was out to get them, and Farscape did not flinch away from showing what happens to people as the losses mount and the choices get more and more impossible. In the end, there was a method to the Moya crew's madness, but there was also a fair amount of madness.
It was The Wizard of Oz crossed with The Odyssey, a story of home and family as what you make it, and of people who were defined not just by the choices they made but by the way they dealt with the consequences of those choices. It was an 88-hour-and-miniseries-long continuitygasm, and an amazing piece of storytelling, sometimes despite its flaws and sometimes because of them. I hope there is another show I will love, and love to think about, as much as Farscape in my future, but I am not at all sure that it's possible.
It doesn't hurt that Farscape also introduced me to some actors I love and some friends I treasure.
Previous days.
* * * * *
Book report through September (?) 2009. I'm catching up!
Two Girls, Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill--The story of an unlikely acquaintanceship between two survivors of sexual abuse. Dorothy eats for comfort, but has managed, ironically, to carve out an identity for herself apart from her experience after becoming an (exploited, the reader understands, though Dorothy never does) acolyte of a thinly disguised Ayn Rand-type writer. Justine, the thin and more superficially successful journalist who interviews Dorothy about the writer, is in reality more self-destructive. I felt like I wanted something more for the characters at the end--not a happy ending, but some more definitive sign that both of them had broken out of some old patterns, or developed the inkling that they needed better coping mechanisms.
Regenesis by CJ Cherryh--It was quite obvious to me that quite a bit of time had passed between the writing of Cyteen and its sequel, Regenesis, because the focus is completely different:Cyteen was heavily character-driven, while Regenesis is entirely plot-driven. Ari II is no longer ambiguous, and possibly dangerous; Justin and Grant are more settled, more sure; the sides of the conflict are more sharply drawn, and more overtly good and evil. Cherryh seems to have settled in her own mind the issues she grappled with in Cyteen--of the constituents of identity, of the interaction of nature and nurture--and moved on to new concerns, which is understandable given the time gap, but a little jarring when you read the novels more or less back-to-back. I didn't hate it, but it didn't grab me the way Cyteen did.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson--This was another one I ended up being glad I borrowed from the library. Stephenson is never a boring writer, but Anathem felt like several different novels that had been awkwardly munged together--the mystery of a long-gone civilization whose remaining knowledge was preserved in a set of monastery-like institutions; a coming-of-age story; and an alien invasion; and some tacked on what-ifs about spaceship design and space travel. I didn't hate it, but it made me long for the relatively tight storytelling of Snow Crash, or even The Baroque Cycle.
The Felix Castor mysteries (The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle, Dead Men's Boots, Thicker Than Water, and The Naming of the Beasts) by Mike Carey--Although there is some genderfail in the first few books (notably, most of the victims are women, among other things), I nevertheless ended up really liking this series of supernatural urban mysteries about a London exorcist. The worldbuilding is fairly narrow--the spirits of the dead are, in various manifestations, coming back to haunt the living--so the focus is on ghosts and spirits and demons, and on what might be causing them to suddenly appear. Carey sets the novels in London, and the city and its history become a natural part of a world in which the past, both recent and ancient, is always rearing up in unexpected ways. The writing is deft and often darkly funny, and Felix Castor is a sympathetic protagonist, someone who's made some terrible mistakes, and most definitely doesn't have it all figured out. The obvious comparison is between this series and Butcher's Dresden Files books; I think the Felix Castor mysteries are darker and more sophisticated, much more deftly written; they're also obviously English in their sensibilities, and although each of the books is a self-contained mystery, there is a strong multi-novel arc that requires fairly careful attention, which may explain why they haven't caught on as well as the Dresden books.
* * * * *
Drunk and Depressed at Harry Potter's Wizarding World, about how one travel writer's escapist immersion in the world of the Harry Potter books did not survive being flattened by the reality of the Harry Potter commercial juggernaut. (Via Bookslut) I think that's why I avoid so many movie adaptations.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/148350.html (
comments). Comment at either site.
Farscape is and will always be the show of my heart. It was ambitious and challenging, and when it failed, it failed hard ("Jeremiah Crichton," "The Locket," and "Mental as Anything," I'm looking at you!). But it never failed because it just wasn't good; it always failed because it was trying for something that could have been wonderful, and that something just didn't come together (or had had a legendarily godawful fake beard glued to its face, as the case may be). The characters all had loves and sorrows, hopes and hatreds, and sometimes those things brought them up against each other; their friendships and loves were hard-earned, and later, hard-fought-for. The universe was out to get them, and Farscape did not flinch away from showing what happens to people as the losses mount and the choices get more and more impossible. In the end, there was a method to the Moya crew's madness, but there was also a fair amount of madness.
It was The Wizard of Oz crossed with The Odyssey, a story of home and family as what you make it, and of people who were defined not just by the choices they made but by the way they dealt with the consequences of those choices. It was an 88-hour-and-miniseries-long continuitygasm, and an amazing piece of storytelling, sometimes despite its flaws and sometimes because of them. I hope there is another show I will love, and love to think about, as much as Farscape in my future, but I am not at all sure that it's possible.
It doesn't hurt that Farscape also introduced me to some actors I love and some friends I treasure.
Previous days.
* * * * *
Book report through September (?) 2009. I'm catching up!
Two Girls, Fat and Thin by Mary Gaitskill--The story of an unlikely acquaintanceship between two survivors of sexual abuse. Dorothy eats for comfort, but has managed, ironically, to carve out an identity for herself apart from her experience after becoming an (exploited, the reader understands, though Dorothy never does) acolyte of a thinly disguised Ayn Rand-type writer. Justine, the thin and more superficially successful journalist who interviews Dorothy about the writer, is in reality more self-destructive. I felt like I wanted something more for the characters at the end--not a happy ending, but some more definitive sign that both of them had broken out of some old patterns, or developed the inkling that they needed better coping mechanisms.
Regenesis by CJ Cherryh--It was quite obvious to me that quite a bit of time had passed between the writing of Cyteen and its sequel, Regenesis, because the focus is completely different:Cyteen was heavily character-driven, while Regenesis is entirely plot-driven. Ari II is no longer ambiguous, and possibly dangerous; Justin and Grant are more settled, more sure; the sides of the conflict are more sharply drawn, and more overtly good and evil. Cherryh seems to have settled in her own mind the issues she grappled with in Cyteen--of the constituents of identity, of the interaction of nature and nurture--and moved on to new concerns, which is understandable given the time gap, but a little jarring when you read the novels more or less back-to-back. I didn't hate it, but it didn't grab me the way Cyteen did.
Anathem by Neal Stephenson--This was another one I ended up being glad I borrowed from the library. Stephenson is never a boring writer, but Anathem felt like several different novels that had been awkwardly munged together--the mystery of a long-gone civilization whose remaining knowledge was preserved in a set of monastery-like institutions; a coming-of-age story; and an alien invasion; and some tacked on what-ifs about spaceship design and space travel. I didn't hate it, but it made me long for the relatively tight storytelling of Snow Crash, or even The Baroque Cycle.
The Felix Castor mysteries (The Devil You Know, Vicious Circle, Dead Men's Boots, Thicker Than Water, and The Naming of the Beasts) by Mike Carey--Although there is some genderfail in the first few books (notably, most of the victims are women, among other things), I nevertheless ended up really liking this series of supernatural urban mysteries about a London exorcist. The worldbuilding is fairly narrow--the spirits of the dead are, in various manifestations, coming back to haunt the living--so the focus is on ghosts and spirits and demons, and on what might be causing them to suddenly appear. Carey sets the novels in London, and the city and its history become a natural part of a world in which the past, both recent and ancient, is always rearing up in unexpected ways. The writing is deft and often darkly funny, and Felix Castor is a sympathetic protagonist, someone who's made some terrible mistakes, and most definitely doesn't have it all figured out. The obvious comparison is between this series and Butcher's Dresden Files books; I think the Felix Castor mysteries are darker and more sophisticated, much more deftly written; they're also obviously English in their sensibilities, and although each of the books is a self-contained mystery, there is a strong multi-novel arc that requires fairly careful attention, which may explain why they haven't caught on as well as the Dresden books.
* * * * *
Drunk and Depressed at Harry Potter's Wizarding World, about how one travel writer's escapist immersion in the world of the Harry Potter books did not survive being flattened by the reality of the Harry Potter commercial juggernaut. (Via Bookslut) I think that's why I avoid so many movie adaptations.
This entry was originally posted at http://danceswithwords.dreamwidth.org/148350.html (
comments). Comment at either site.