(Note: if you like Dinklage and have not seen The Station Agent, go see it now.)
It's hard to see exactly where it goes wrong. It looks great at first glance -- beautiful and richly textured. But there's a cheapness to the design, a lack of attention to detail. We see the interior of two palaces, but they don't look much different from each other. Similarly, the clothing and hairstyles and jewelry don't do much to distinguish between different classes and functions of people. I feel like I ought to be able to tell at a glance who is a member of the King's party, and who is a Winterfell resident, and I can't. I ought to be able to instantly tell Lord Stark's bastard son from his eldest legitimate son, and I can't. The dragon eggs should look gorgeous and ominous, and they don't.
The amount of story chosen for each episode seemed good, but I still thought the scripts were weak. Or maybe it was the direction. Or the casting. Or the acting (of everyone except Peter Dinklage). Whatever it was, I didn't get a strong sense of character or emotion at any point. Everything just seems very serious and slow and heavy with Medieval solemnity. And yet the sense of mystical foreboding from the book doesn't really come across, and several scenes that should be suspenseful or exciting simply aren't.
Probably my biggest disappointment is the queen and her non-dwarf brother, because they are the villains and they are awful and I should hate them with all my soul. Instead… they seem kinda like everyone else. Very serious and dreary and Medieval.
So, I''ll probably keep watching, but I'm not running out to rent disk 2 right this second. To those of you who've seen the whole series, does it get better? Or is this pretty much it, and if it's not really working for me now, it never will?
- Me: Oh, KEXP is playing Queen because it's Bike to Work day.
- Paul: I'm not biking to work.
- Me: No, biking all the way to West Seattle would be pretty hardcore. And with the broken elbow you're not even up to softcore right now.
(long pause)
You know, "hardcore" can mean a lot of things but "softcore" pretty much only refers to porn, doesn't it? - Paul: Cheesecake is another one -- it can mean a lot of different things, but "beefcake" only means one thing.
- Me: I want to start a restaurant chain called The Beefcake Factory.
( More stuff )
A lot of traditional conservative/liberal dichotomies can be seen in this way. Environmental protections tend liberal, because they are about acknowledging the inherent limitations of the cave (choking on your own waste is one of many ways the safe little cave becomes a hideous death trap). Military hawkishness tends conservative, because !!!TIGERS!!!
Now, I think that most people as individuals are a swirling dynamic mixture of liberal and conservative impulses. We're certain about some things and not others, cautious in some areas and not others, afraid of tigers in some areas and not others. Some tigers will terrify us, while others will merely inspire a feeling of mild apprehension. And, when it comes to those areas, our level of comfort changes over time.
Some people tend very liberal, or have a strong personal stake in the matter at hand, and will therefore be the first ones out of the cave. Others -- maybe most -- will hang back a bit, and wait for that first group to get eaten by tigers or not. And when they don't, the rest of the group will start to venture out there too. Gay rights is a perfect illustration of this, as what was once an extremely liberal position (pro same-sex marriage) has become a moderate mainstream position.
Sometimes, after this has happened to them often enough, people will actually start thinking of themselves as liberals -- when they realize that it has never really been the right choice to stay in the cave, and the tigers never turned out to be as fierce or numerous as they were made out to be.
At this point in history, though, the political right has been radicalized to the point where it no longer seems accurate to call them conservative. Not only are they extra-resistant to change in certain predictable areas, but they passionately advocate for undoing changes that have already occurred.
It’s as if, venturing out of the cave and finding it quite nice and remarkably tiger-free, they were nevertheless hit with a crippling attack of agoraphobia and went rushing back into the stinking embrace of the cave.
Now they are deep in denial, pretending that the cave is perfect, of course, and will always be perfect, and a veritable army of tigers prowls outside, ready to swallow us all. Worse, in order to foster the illusion that they must stay in the cave, they can’t let the rest of us leave either.
| Thursday April 5 | 8:00pm – 9:00pm |
Anthropology in World Building
- Cascade 3&4
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| Fri Apr 6 | |||
| 3:00pm – 4:00pm |
Escaping the Little White Room
- Cascade 11
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| 4:00pm – 5:00pm |
Alternative Medicine
- Cascade 6
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| 8:00pm – 9:00pm |
Deconstructing the Superhero
- Cascade 5
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| 9:00pm – 10:00pm |
Into the Pits of Despair
- Cascade 6
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| Sat Apr 7 | 2:00pm – 3:00pm |
Autograph Session 1
- Grand 2
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| 4:00pm – 5:00pm |
Gore and the Paranormal in Horror
- Cascade 5
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| 10:00pm – 11:00pm | The Horror of Sexuality - Cascade 7 |
I was pretty sure it wasn't about Satan, but I thought it might be about Lord of the Rings ("all that glitters is gold", "There's a feeling I get when I look to the west") and maybe English folklore and mythology (references to the piper and the May queen). But yesterday, when Paul and I listened to it in the car, because we are cheesy old farts who like classic rock, I realized it's probably about nothing.
The strong musical development and the thematic repetition make it seem like it must be about something, maybe something profound and epic -- but only if you're not paying too much attention.
So, we start with a "lady who's sure all that glitters is gold and she's buying a stairway to heaven." This implies considerable shallowness on the part of the lady, as a figure trying to purchase salvation, a highly privileged person who can "get what she came for" "with a word" even if "the stores are all closed."
Where is "there"? Heaven? It seems likely. And heaven is often depicted as having streets, and perhaps stairways, paved with gold. But heaven is almost never depicted as having an assortment of stores which might be closed. So, could "Heaven" be the ironic name of a ritzy shopping mall? Or are the "stores" symbolic? And, in this case, symbolic of what?
No clarity is supplied by the next line, "There's a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure 'Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings." Is "she" still the lady buying a stairway to heaven, which might be a shopping mall? Are we supposed to be able to guess what the sign on the wall says? "Open," perhaps? Or "Closed"? Or "Major credit cards accepted"?
So, what does she do, given that she wants to be sure about this sign? Well, nothing. The lady who might be in a shopping mall disappears entirely, and the very next line is, "In a tree by the brook, there's a songbird who sings." (Ooo, good one! A songbird who sings!) So is heaven, which might be a shopping mall, also a passageway to the countryside? As the singer says, "Ooh, it makes me wonder."
The next verse could be entirely a Lord of the Rings reference, with images of looking to the west as the singer's "spirit is crying for leaving," seeing "rings of smoke through the trees," and "the voices of those who stand looking." (Ents?) Of course, the construction suggests that he *sees* these voices, so it makes me wonder too. Lazy writing or a deliberate reference to synaesthesia? I know, I know, it's too easy to assume that something written in 1971 makes sense if you regard it as a hallucinogenic drug trip.
The next verse could be a reference to social or political activism -- "it's whispered that soon if we all call the tune then the piper will lead us to reason." But it doesn't seem to follow on the previous verse. If the whole song is meant to be about activism, why do we start with a materialistic lady in a shopping mall? Is she a villain figure? It doesn't seem that way. And, if the piper led us somewhere other than reason, I would assume he was a slightly sinister Pied Piper figure, leading us to the fairy realms. But, maybe, being led to reason is part of the overall pagan message?
And now we get to the verse that supposedly invokes Satan if you play it backwards! Forward, it says, "If there's a bustle in your hedgerow, don't be alarmed now, it's just a spring clean for the May queen." Well, I guess that could be about Satan -- or, more specifically, about the pagan gods or figures that made up the imagery that we now associate with Satan. But I can't make any literal sense of it. If there are things rustling in my hedges, I should assume they're fairies and not be alarmed? Why not? Fairies are terrifying.
The second thought of this verse, "Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run, there's still time to change the road you're on" might be considered anti-Christian if you're of a particularly Calvinist sect, but other Christian sub-groups might embrace it. What it has to do with May queens I don't know. Are the two paths good and evil, paganism and Christianity, hippies and materialists? War and peace? Or is it a Robert Frost reference?
As the singer says, "it makes me wonder."
The next verse references the piper again, "calling you to join him." The lady buying stairways seems to figure again, with "Dear lady, can you hear the wind blow, and did you know your stairway lies on the whispering wind." So, is the singer attempting to talk her into the path of -- traditional English paganism -- instead of modern materialism?
But the lady shows up again in the final verse, as "a lady we all know who shines white light and wants to show how everything still turns to gold." So, does that mean the glittery stairway-buying materialistic princess has secretly been a figure of enlightenment all along?
WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN?
The next line calls back the piper -- "if you listen very hard the tune will come to you at last." Remember, if we ALL call the tune -- suggesting that we all have to be united in our tune -- the piper will lead us to reason. So this callback actually makes sense, taken on its own.
The next line, "When all are one and one is all" could be a religious reference. But the penultimate line, "to be a rock and not to roll" is just an unfortunate stab at wordplay, unless it's meant to suggest that we should all stay put when we reach final enlightenment? Is that good advice? Is the idea that the piper going to lead us to reason and then we stay put?
The song ends with a reprise: "And she's buying a stairway to heaven." But this suggests that the lady hasn't learned a thing.
The pattern is, intense Twilight love in the south and midwest, shading gradually to "meh" on the coasts. The red/blue split looks a lot like red/blue voting results, which is kind of interesting. It could be driven by the same demographic -- people from more concentrated urban areas are less thrilled about Twilight.
I'd like to see a more detailed zip code map, where you could see if there's an isolated pocket of Twilove in Forks.
I realized that this aesthetic scale, with the Chekhovian (restrained, thoughtful, subtle, naturalistic) at one end and the Shakespearean (larger-than-life pulpy exuberance) at the other, applies to books and movies and television as well. And I realized that several things that have always puzzled me about the academic anti-genre bias become much clearer if I regard the equation not as lit vs genre, but as Chekhov vs Shakespeare.
For example, there is a common anti-genre attitude where the mere fact of a strong plot or a fantastical premise is treated as an artistic detriment. "Oh," they sniff haughtily, "It's about *vampires*."
The elements of storytelling are treated as a zero sum game, where obviously you can't have profound insight into the human condition and badass heroes in the same novel. (As in this essay, with the mysterious "curtailment in other areas" which is supposed to happen, as if by magic, whenever a writer churns out a genre novel instead of something lit-ier.)
Even people who like genre can be dismissive of it or apologetic on its behalf. It's "just" a genre work, as if a completely different standard of artistic evaluation applies. But what exactly prevents a story about vampires from being just as well-written or profound as a story not about vampires? Why should the lack of vampires or badass heroes be counted a literary virtue? Why should something without a plot be considered superior to something with a plot? What exactly do anti-genre literary critics think fiction is supposed to do, anyway?
It all kind of makes sense when you realize the answer is: they expect it to be Chekhovian.
( cut for length and general lit nerd wonkiness )
Aspiring writers’ hearts are notoriously brittle. Why else would anyone query only once, or twice, or a small handful of times, then give up altogether, assuming (wrongly) that if his book were really meant to get published, it would have been snapped up instantly?
Quoted for truth.
I'm doing Nanosellmo instead. That is where I put approximately the effort of 1,666 words/day into selling the novel and other fiction. By sheer luck, I stumbled on this blog: http://www.annemini.com/ which is right in the middle of "queryfest!" She has lots and lots and lots of advice about pitching and querying and synposis-ing and what-have you. Almost too much info, actually. I'm a bit dizzy.
Jesus Ween is not, as you might suspect, an indication that Jesus has joined the band, or that the band has found Jesus. Nope, it's one guy's new push for a Jesusy alternative to Halloween. I still can't get over the fact that he's the one who's calling it that, because "Jesus Ween" sounds so utterly moronic that it's what I wish I'd thought to call "Christian" alternatives to Halloween years ago, to mock them.
Mockery aside, I do have to thank the religious right for doing their part to keep Halloween spooky.
We went to a haunted house attraction called the Haunted Hotel. Very well done, including things like a fake subway car that actually moves around when you step on it. It's been ages since I've been to a haunted house, but the last one I remember being really impressed by is one I went to when I was twelve, with my church youth group.
(While we were in line some of the kids were joking that we should go to The Rocky Horror Picture Show after this. At the time I didn't know what that was.)
Anyway, that was in the LA area, so I had developed this theory that the proximity of Hollywood tends to increase production values on things like haunted house installations.
All of us agreed that the diesel reek in the final room, which was a byproduct of the chainsaw, was very effective. It made me think they could have done more with smell and temperature and such. At the end of it, my neck was feeling kind of sore from all the ducking and tensing up. It made me think that I've never really seen a horror/thriller type movie use that, the physical toll of running and ducking, especially if you're not used to it. Just like I've never seen anything, not even Buffy, really make use of the fact that people are going to be sweaty after fighting or running around. So if you're, say, dressed up for the prom, and then go out to kill a few vampires, you might come back with pit stains.
The entire Gaslamp area was completely stuffed with people roughly between the ages of 21 and 30, a large portion of them in costume. Halloween is one of very few occasions when I might find myself partying with a mainstream (that is, non-nerd) 20s hook-up crowd, and it always ends up feeling a little alienating.
It seems to involve 1. Dressing really provocatively (if female) 2. Listening to canned music 3. Getting sprayed with Jaegermeister 4. By bartenders who are dancing on the top of the bar. It always feels like people pretending they're having a good time in the hope that it becomes true. And maybe it does. Maybe if you punch your fist in the air and say "woooo!" often enough, you start to believe it.
The quality of the costumes was relatively disappointing, given how many people we saw in costume. Except for two people dressed as Harlequins, I didn't see a lot of craftsmanship. I didn't see a lot of good jokes. And I don't expect every single costume to be scary, but the scary costume percentage was ridiculously low, especially since the balance seemed to be made up by "sexy Alice in Wonderland" stuff.
All right, and can I complain about that for a minute? I HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE HATE the "sexy [X]" costume style. It's all my least favorite things about Halloween costumes rolled into one. They are cheap pre-made costumes. They are not scary. They are not clever. They all look the same as each other. And they smack of an unbcoming desperation. Good lord, you're already 25 and perfect, you have to dress like a slut too? What exactly do you think that'll get you? The extra male attention will be mostly from guys you don't wanna talk to anyway. Sheesh.
Anyway, by the end of the night I was mocking the distinctive shuffling, pigeon-toed zombie gait of women wearing those too-high platform shoes that are inexplicably popular right now.
(I say inexplicable, but you could turn it into an economic metaphor: as women continue to teeter on artificial towers of denial, lurching awkwardly into an uncertain future that is sure to end with a twisted ankle and a face plant into the squelchy mud of reality, but for now, they feel above it all...)
Anyway, my disdain for "sexy [X]" costumes does not mean that I object to sexy vampire girls or anything like that -- it's specifically a disdain for the phenomenon of taking a completely different costume, like Dorothy or Snow White, and sexing it up by giving it a short foofy skirt and a low neckline.
I saw exactly one costume that was effectively creepy: a guy dressed as Michael Myers walking slowly and deliberately along a dark side street, alone, carrying a knife. It was all in the presentation.
Really, I do have these things -- a novel, a pitch, a synopsis -- what I don't have is confidence in any of them. Of the three, I am probably happiest with the novel itself. That's the art form that I feel like I understand. I have been reading novels my whole life, I only started reading pitches and synopses... about a year ago. Years ago I made a short-lived and half-hearted attempt to start this process for my first completed novel, then quickly gave up when I decided that queries and synopses were stupid and I couldn't write them and the novel was stupid anyway so who cares.
My head is swimming now with contradictory and useless advice. I think I like pitches slightly more than synopses, maybe because I'm more familiar with them, because they are similar to book jacket copy. Synopses aren't really like anything. Based on the samples I've read, every novel ever written starts to sound ridiculous when presented in that manner.
I've been toying with the idea of doing NaNoWriMo and starting with the pitch. Just to see how it turns out.
You just wrote a novel? What is it about?
A werewolf.
And...?
There's a serial killer. And she's worried it might be her.
Sure. Then what happens?
She stops the serial killer. But she has to defy her newfound wolf pack to do it.
So who is the serial killer?
Spoilers! It's somebody close to her though.
Okay. Why does she want to stop the serial killer? Is she a cop?
No, she has to stop the killer because she's worried it might be her. She feels connected to the deaths. And she has werewolfy superpowers like the ability to track people by scent, which she can put to use.
What else is going on?
She’s trying to land a programming job in a gaming software company except that she finds she’s kind of lousy at it, she’s trying to help her best friend overcome alcoholism, there’s a cop who thinks she’s suspect number 1 in the murders, another werewolf who’s trying to kill her, and a heavily armed anti-wolf vigilante group roaming the neighborhood.
So how is this different from... say... Carrie Vaughn's Kitty series?
The character is older -- thirty -- and she's got a lot more emotional baggage going into the story. She's a recent widow with survivor guilt issues and she grew up in an abusive religious cult. The werewolves are different, mostly hereditary, with a long history of isolation and a distinct culture. Also, it's not set in a world with a lot of other supernatural monsters. You don't have vampires and zombies and other shape-shifters and so on.
Wait, it's hereditary? She's been a werewolf her whole life?
Potentially. She doesn't start changing until the start of the book. It takes a violent incident to prompt the first change.
It sounds okay, but... tell me something to really get me interested.
It's set in Seattle and the werewolves are from Louisiana and based partly on Cajun legends of the Loup-Garou.
Keep going.
She's an extremely committed vegetarian and really hates it when the wolf eats small animals. Or, you know, people.
The wolf eats people?
Just their guts. It's a symbolic thing, a way of expressing dominance over an enemy.
But she's not the serial killer?
No, the wolf kills in defense of others. Or when people try to kill her. That really pisses her off.
I can imagine.
You sold yet?
I don't know. Tell me what's at stake?
The life of the serial killer's latest potential victim. Her own life. And her identity. She knows the wolf is a killer, but can she morally justify the people the wolf kills? And how much guilt does she bear for what the wolf does?
Another thing at stake is the survival of her -- people, I guess. The Loup-Garou are very powerful as individuals but there aren't many of them. They count on secrecy to keep them safe. They think her tendency to change shape whenever badly hurt is the kind of thing likely to attract attention unless she can learn to control it. So they have good reasons to try to restrict her activities, even though she ends up going against their wishes. She also has good reasons not to fully trust them, even though she likes them.
What will I see in this book that I have never seen before?
A werewolf in a corset.
Seriously?
She slips right out of most of her clothes but the corset is kind of stuck there. So the wolf wriggles around trying to get it off.
Are you sure I've never seen that?
Well, I've never seen that.
Why is she wearing a corset?
She's dressed up like a video game character when she goes wolf-shaped.
What else have you got?
Somebody wearing a hat in the shape of a duck wearing a hat. Karaoke. Taxidermy. YouTube videos. Pumpkin mochas. A garbage bag worn as a dress. A werewolf lobotomy. Fake psychic abilities. A sex toy shop. Brutalist architecture. Barefoot jogging. Utilikilts. Banana schnapps.
I don’t know. I don’t hate it but I’m still not loving it.
*sigh* Why are you such a hard sell?
Don’t blame me, I’m just embodying the relentless logic of the marketplace.
LOOK IT’S JUST A WEREWOLF NOVEL OKAY? AFTER YOU HAVE READ ALL THE ONES WRITTEN BY CARRIE VAUGHN THEN YOU CAN READ THIS ONE.
Maybe.
*double sigh*
( Spoiler time! )Before I bugged any more agents, I decided to do a rewrite in which I fix this problem. That rewrite is now mostly complete. So, if you guys aren't too sick of me yet, check out the new query:
( Read more... )
Wait a second. Is it possible that those old games didn't do anything magical with their programming to create "immersion," and that, like my kids with GTA, I "immersed" myself in those games because I was playing them at a time before I was dead inside?
Ha ha. Dead inside. But really, this is what I've been trying to say all along: the narrative in a video game isn't really there, it's an illusion created by the player's interest in what's going on. The game has a suggestive narrative framework, but it's not telling a story. The player is telling herself the story.
I can play a zombie game now, and I just see a bunch of boring, repetitive enemies.
This is a guy who likes video games and (I guess) used to see something else when he looked at a zombie game. I have never seen anything else when I look at a zombie game.
The older you get, the less elastic your imagination becomes, and the less able you are to fill in whatever gaps the game leaves in the narrative.
I am inclined to dispute the "less elastic imagination" hypothesis. Partly, because this fails to explain why some of us have never gotten narrative out of video games, and partly because it seems to be letting the entertainment in question entirely off the hook, as if it's my flaw that I want a story to have a level of narrative cohesion and character development that just isn't feasible in video games.
Also, not everyone who sees "story" in video games is a kid.
So I think it comes down to something else -- motivation, maybe? If there's something about the game that sucks you in, the brain starts to supply narrative, because hey, that's what the brain does. But if you're not sucked in, it's just a bunch of zombies running around.
It might be similar to what happens when I find a movie really boring. Yeah, there's stuff happening on screen, and there may be a story, I guess, but I couldn't explain it to you and anyway I just don't care.
What Killed American Lit By Joseph Epstein
The study of popular culture—courses in movies, science fiction, detective fiction, works at first thought less worthy of study in themselves than for what they said about the life of their times—made the next incursion against the exclusivity of high culture. Multiculturalism, which assigned an equivalence of value to the works of all cultures, irrespective of the quality of those works, finished off the distinction between high and low culture, a distinction whose linchpin was seriousness.
In today's university, no one is any longer in a position to say which books are or aren't fit to teach; no one any longer has the authority to decide what is the best in American writing. Too bad, for even now there is no consensus about who are the best American novelists of the past century.
With the gates once carefully guarded by the centurions of high culture now flung open, the barbarians flooded in, and it is they who are running the joint today.
Hahahahahaha, no, seriously? Literal barbarians at the gate? Wow. That's almost cute. ( Join the barbarian hordes today, ask me how )
As they are driving through a twisty mountain road, the driver suddenly cackles maniacally and aims the bus straight for the cliff, declaring that he is going to drive the bus off the cliff if the POTUS doesn't give him all the money.
The POTUS tries other solutions, and when those don't work, at the last possible minute he tackles the bus driver, seizes control of the bus, and prevents the bus from going over the cliff. But in the process, the crazy bus driver gets away with half the money.
Now people are complaining that the bad guy is still out there ready to make trouble, and that he's got half the money. Some of them seem to be complaining that the POTUS didn't kill the bad guy before taking control of the bus. They are demoralized by the fact that this bad guy's schemes keep being so effective, given that he's crazy and kind of stupid. How did he even get to be in the position of driving that bus anyway? It's ridiculous, everybody knew he was going to do something crazy like that.
But for this particular bad guy, there is only one way to kill him. The 2012 elections.
Two submissions. Two stories. Two thirds victory.
All right, it's time for an update. The second short story is still in edit mode. I still feel like it's just missing something. Okay, tomorrow I must send it somewhere even if I still think it's not all that.
Who knows, maybe I'm not the best judge of these things and I should really be sending off the stuff that I'm not that happy with. Maybe that's the secret to overcoming submitaphobia -- send out only stuff that I already thinks sucks, then it doesn't matter if it gets rejected. Argh, that can't be right. Can it?
To fulfill the terms of my contract I have to finish a third story and send it out, and I have to do this tomorrow, which is looking less likely, but it's not my fault! Because my laptop picked up some kind of virus while it was in New Orleans (poor dear) and I have been dealing with that instead of finishing the third story.
Okay, maybe the virus is my fault. Somehow. I mean, I don't usually do any of the stuff that's likely to get my computer all infected, but who knows, maybe after a few too many cocktails (who knew there would be so many cocktails at a cocktail festival anyway?) I engaged in drunken flagrant unsafe Internetting that I don't even remember.
It's one of those Google redirect viruses. Any tips are appreciated.
So, I looked for Internet tips on overcoming submitaphobia and they all pretty much come down to, "Don't have it." Well, that's helpful.
I also see people recommending that writers who want to get published need something called "a thick skin." Yeah, right. You're trying to do this thing (writing) that sort of involves taking human emotions and flaying them out on a vivisection table and you're supposed to have "a thick skin"? Nice try.
My guess -- based purely on anecdotal observation -- is that some writers are simply more bothered by the submitting and rejection process than others. For whatever reason. Parental approval issues or something, who knows. So it's not that some writers have a thick skin, it's just that some of us are ridiculously sensitive in an area that gets poked repeatedly by the rejection process. An area where you need a callus. A callous? Anyway, having a few calluses seems more realistic than "a thick skin" which sounds more like the kind of armoring you find on an armadillo.
Based on The Brain that Changes Itself, I am pretty sure that the key to all of this is to somehow rewrite the neurological pathways of ultimate despair that kick in whenever I think about the rejection process. Drugs? Acupuncture? Foot rubs? Something from Plunderpuss's store? Really expensive chocolate? The search goes on.
My plan for this was: 1 week to write a story, 1 week to edit the same story, pick a market, and submit. But I went most of the week before last just not getting anything to take off. I poked at some of my ideas in my idea file, but it was largely a dispiriting and unproductive experience. Then on Saturday of last week I finally managed to kick out something that was more or less a story. It was okay, I thought, but it was missing something. You know, like a sauce that's too bland.
( Cut for length of angst )
I know, this Ginia Bellafonte Game of Thrones review was back in April, but I'm slow to get to these things and I worked on this when none of my short story ideas were going anywhere.
The gist: it's less a review of the actual program, and more of a complaint about how fantasy is stupid and also boy fiction.
She starts out by describing it as a "fantasy epic set in a quasi-medieval somewhereland" and seems to be complaining that it's a waste of money because with its budget "a show like Mad Men might have the financing to continue into the second term of a Malia Obama presidency." Then she complains about the intellectual demands of keeping track of the large cast: "If you can’t count cards, please return to reruns of Sex and the City."
But the target of her mockery here is unclear -- the wording suggests scorn for both Game of Thrones with its excessive number of cast members and scorn for those whose poor little minds are too overtaxed to handle such a thing.
"Embedded in the narrative is a vague global-warming horror story. Rival dynasties vie for control over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros — a territory where summers are measured in years, not months, and where winters can extend for decades."
Um. Global warming horror story? Global warming? Because everyone uses the culturally coded "winter is coming" to describe what sounds like an approaching ice age? There might be a teensy little connection to be made regarding the way societies deal or fail to deal with climate change. But in Game of Thrones (which I have read, although I am not up to date with the series) there is no suggestion that the ice age is anthropogenic or that there is anything that could be done to ameliorate it. If it was ever intended as a global warming metaphor, it wasn't a very good one.
( Read more snark! )Hey, it's Saturday of Clarion West Week 2 and you know what that means!
Fourth of July weekend?
No, you have to submit that story you wrote.
Oh. Right. I... I promised to do that, didn't I?
Yes, and you have to.
But --
But what?
Nothing. Of course I'm going to do that. But first I --
First nothing! Just submit it.
First I have to make and drink coffee. Otherwise I'm likely to misspell my own name.
...all right. Coffee can always come first.
And wait for my vision to clear, I'm kind of bleary-eyed first thing in the morning. Especially during peak allergy season.
Fine, I said you could have coffee first.
I also have to do laundry.
Not before submitting!
Breakfast?
Breakfast and coffee, but NOT LAUNDRY. Sheesh. What the hell is wrong with you? You hate laundry.
I know, but -- I'm not sure the story is ready yet. I think it needs one more editing pass.
One more pass.
Yeah. I'm not sure the voice in the first part completely matches the voice in the second part.
One more pass.
Uh-huh.
ONE MORE PASS. And you've got an hour. No longer! It's only four thousand words long.
Okay. After coffee I'll do it.
Do what?
The editing.
And what are you doing after the editing?
...submitting.
Right, and where are you submitting it to?
Paul said F&FS, but I don't know, that might be --
Is the story fantasy or science fiction?
Well, it kind of might be fantasy or it might be science fiction, it depends on how you --
ARGH! Then why would you not send it to a magazine called fantasy and science fiction?
...I...don't know.
What is the absolute worst thing that can happen?
They won't publish it and I'll have to send it somewhere else.
Okay. What's your problem?
Oh, I think the coffee is done.
I'm serious. What. Is. Your. Problem?
I'm afraid of feeling bad when they don't buy it.
So you won't give them the chance to buy it or not. Okay. You know what that's like?
What?
Not getting a kitten just because you're afraid of how bad you'll feel when it eventually dies.
Uh...
I'm serious, it's a good analogy. Would you think that was a sensible reason for not getting a kitten? Or a pet of any kind? Would you think that was a good reason to, for example, never get to know your grandparents? Do you think it's good to live your life afraid to love anything just because you'll feel really bad when you lose it?
No. Not really.
So get with it. Coffee. Final pass. Submit. End of story.
...okay.
I don't like that look. You're not really going to do it, are you?
...no, I am.
You'd better. I'm watching you.
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