Much Ado About Nothing
2012
Directed by: Joss Whedon
Starring: Amy Acker, Alexis Denisof, Clark Gregg, Reed Diamond, Jillian Morgese, Fran Kranz, Nathan Fillion, Sean Maher
This review will include spoilers. Because, it's Shakespeare.
Yes, you read those credits correctly This film was directed by Joss Whedon. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, Dollhouse, The Avengers - that Joss Whedon. What is Joss Whedon doing filming an adaptation of Shakespeare starring a bunch of people from his previous tv shows? What does he think he's doing writing the screenplay?
According to IMDb, it was a labor of love for him, filmed in only twelve days during a break from filming The Avengers, using his own home as the sets and locations. How awesome is that?
But how does it stand up as an adaptation of The Bard? My verdict: It won't supplant Kenneth Branagh's 1993 adaptation in my favorite film list, but it's not bad. The actors all managed to say their dialogue comfortably, which I think is the biggest challenge in making a film of Shakespeare, and an even bigger challenge if you're going to set the story in the present day as Whedon chose to do. None of the modern elements seem too awkward paired with the archaic theatrical dialogue. Horses and carriages are replaced by cars, the noblemen returning from the war carry firearms instead of swords, the constables watch the grounds of Leonato's estate on closed-circuit tv. But none of that detracts from the story.
In fact, the modern setting probably works better for this play because it's a comedy. We all laughed when, just after arriving at Leonato's estate, Benedick and Claudio are put up in what is clearly a little girl's bedroom complete with Barbie Dream House in the corner. The scene in which Don John tries to convince a disguised Claudio that Don Pedro is wooing Hero himself takes place in a swimming pool, with Claudio wearing a snorkel. After Don Pedro and Claudio convince Benedick that Beatrice is in love with him, Benedick's next scene with Beatrice is performed with Benedick doing exercises. At one point Benedick gives a soliloquy while jogging up and down a flight of stairs (Whedon really gives Alexis Denisof a workout in this movie). All of this emphasizes the comedy.
Another aspect that I think was a good creative choice: the film is in black-and-white. I suspect the modern sets in color would have been too distracting. This way the audience is able to concentrate on the glorious dialogue and the entertaining action, instead of being overawed by Joss Whedon's gorgeous house.
While it isn't the best ever adaptation of the play, it's a fun adaptation, cleverly done. And who wouldn't love Nathan Fillion reciting Constable Dogberry's immortal "I, sir, am an ass" speech?
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Despicable Me 2
2013
Starring the voice of Steve Carrell
Despicable Me was a surprisingly charming movie. I didn't expect to enjoy it as much as I did. The sequel manages to do something that's always hard: It's just as good as the first film. In fact, it's so much fun I might have to pay to see it a second time.
The premise of the film is that since adding his three adopted daughters to his life, former supervillain Gru has retired from villainy and started working on just being a good dad. Of course, that would make for a dull film, so some trouble must come to Gru's life to create conflict, trouble that provides him with an opportunity to exercise some of his villainous muscles. It also provides ample opportunity for the adorable minions to do cute and humorous things. I have to admit, 80% of the reason I like these movies is the minions.
But aside from the cute factor, this move is gorgeously animated. The colors and textures are fabulous. I was dazzled by how good it was to look at. It's also very funny. I spent a lot of my time during the movie laughing heartily or smiling. I left the theater feeling satisfied and happy. I can't ask for much more out of a movie than that. I don't usually go to see films to be edified or enlightened; I go to be entertained. This film entertained me very well.
Monday, July 15, 2013
Saturday, July 13, 2013
When I Grow Up
What follows is my To-Do list for when I grow up. I don't plan to ever grow up, but I will get older, hopefully, so I guess it's really for that.
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When I grow up I will...
Embrace change
Try new tastes, new styles and new experiences
Make new friends
Visit new places
Learn to use new technologies
Keep only things I really need or love
Exercise my body
Exercise my mind
Keep an open mind
Remember that my generation was not better than today's generation
When I grow up, I will not...
Wear 'granny pants'
Keep things 'for a rainy day'
Watch television all day
Be afraid of my neighbors
Constantly complain about my aches and pains
Regret the things I never got to do
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When I grow up I will...
Embrace change
Try new tastes, new styles and new experiences
Make new friends
Visit new places
Learn to use new technologies
Keep only things I really need or love
Exercise my body
Exercise my mind
Keep an open mind
Remember that my generation was not better than today's generation
When I grow up, I will not...
Wear 'granny pants'
Keep things 'for a rainy day'
Watch television all day
Be afraid of my neighbors
Constantly complain about my aches and pains
Regret the things I never got to do
Tuesday, July 2, 2013
An Afternoon With Neil Himself
I read this tumblr post today and it inspired me to write my own post about my experience seeing Neil Gaiman. I saw the first of the two kisses the young lady describes, and while my experience wasn't as memorable as hers, it was a very special day for which I am very grateful.
Let me start at the beginning. Neil Gaiman is currently on what is meant to be his last book signing tour. He has wearied of the stresses of traveling from city to city and spending hours signing his books while hordes of people wait in long queues to have them signed. This does not mean he will never tour again, nor that he will never again sign any copies of his books. It only means that he will not tour for that exclusive purpose.
Despite being tired of the whole process, having signed past midnight the previous night, and having traveled from San Francisco to Portland that day in a tour bus, Neil Gaiman was kind and generous when he appeared at McMenamin's Crystal Ballroom on Saturday June 29th, 2013. He arrived during an unusual heat wave in Portland, with temperatures approaching 90 F. The Crystal Ballroom is an old building, and it does not have air conditioning. I overheard one of the bartenders explaining to another customer how difficult it would be to retrofit the structure for central air. Once 900 people were packed into the space, it became even warmer. Neil (if I may be so familiar as to use his first name) commented several times on how warm it was and that he didn't want to make us suffer in the heat any longer than necessary. I appreciated that he put up with the heat, even though he was initially wearing a jacket when he appeared on stage. He removed it for the actual book signing, though he had large fans pointing at him.
Those fans didn't do much good to those of us who'd chosen to sit in the balcony, but we didn't mind too much. Neil read to us first from Chapter 3 of his newest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which had just been released a few days earlier. He asked us if we wanted to hear him read more, and we almost unanimously voted Yes. So he then read to us from his upcoming book Fortunately the Milk, which is ostensibly a children's book, to be released this coming September. I will add it to my library when it is available, even though I have no children to read it to.
He is a very good reader. Some writers are not very good at reading their own work. Why should they be? They are not actors; they are writers. But Neil Gaiman is a good reader, an enjoyable reader. I wanted him to keep reading, to read me both books in their entirety, even though I'm not particularly a fan of audiobooks. I usually prefer the way I hear the story in my own head to the way the voice performer reads it. But now as I am reading Ocean - which I started yesterday on the bus to work and have nearly finished, consumed in 15 or 20 minute chunks while commuting or eating dinner - I hear Neil reading it to me as he read it on Saturday.
He took a small number of question from the audience, which were written on index cards and read to him by musical guest Jason Webley. My friend Janet had her question read: "What was your favorite book when you were a child?". Then the young lady in the tumblr post asked for a kiss, and Neil graciously granted her request.
Not only did he kiss her on the stage, and again later when she queued to have her copy of the book signed (we all received a copy of Ocean as part of the admission price), he also granted a similar request from my friend's daughter. She ordinarily would have been working on a Saturday, and hadn't purchased an advance ticket - the tickets sold out on the first day. But one of her coworkers couldn't go, and she was allowed to take time off and to purchase her coworker's ticket for a nominal price. So she went and joined the rest of our group of friends in the balcony. And when she went downstairs to have her copy of Ocean signed, she asked if she could have a hug, and Neil again graciously obliged.
As we went through the signing line, we gave our names to staff members from Powells' City of Books to assure accurate spelling if we wanted our books personalized. Neil wrote a short message in each book, just a word or two. A few days prior to the event, my husband and I had disagreed over whether we had ever seen Neil at an appearance previous to this one. My husband insisted we had, while I recalled no such occasion. During the Q & A, someone had asked whose fans were odder, Neil's or Clive Barker's. When my husband heard this he realized it was actually Clive Barker we had seen previously. As he waited to have his copy of the book signed, he told this story to Neil, and Neil laughed and in return drew a little monster on the frontispiece instead of writing a message, which made my husband very happy. The rest of our friends and I all had the message "Dream" written in our books, but my husband had a little doodle of a monster.
Now as I'm reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I imagine that the unnamed protagonist has tousled dark hair that won't lie flat, and that when he is grown he mostly wears dark clothes and perhaps has a white Alsatian dog at home. And is kind, and generous, and sometimes doodles monsters. And just possibly is a writer of very good books that make people laugh and cry.
Let me start at the beginning. Neil Gaiman is currently on what is meant to be his last book signing tour. He has wearied of the stresses of traveling from city to city and spending hours signing his books while hordes of people wait in long queues to have them signed. This does not mean he will never tour again, nor that he will never again sign any copies of his books. It only means that he will not tour for that exclusive purpose.
Despite being tired of the whole process, having signed past midnight the previous night, and having traveled from San Francisco to Portland that day in a tour bus, Neil Gaiman was kind and generous when he appeared at McMenamin's Crystal Ballroom on Saturday June 29th, 2013. He arrived during an unusual heat wave in Portland, with temperatures approaching 90 F. The Crystal Ballroom is an old building, and it does not have air conditioning. I overheard one of the bartenders explaining to another customer how difficult it would be to retrofit the structure for central air. Once 900 people were packed into the space, it became even warmer. Neil (if I may be so familiar as to use his first name) commented several times on how warm it was and that he didn't want to make us suffer in the heat any longer than necessary. I appreciated that he put up with the heat, even though he was initially wearing a jacket when he appeared on stage. He removed it for the actual book signing, though he had large fans pointing at him.
Those fans didn't do much good to those of us who'd chosen to sit in the balcony, but we didn't mind too much. Neil read to us first from Chapter 3 of his newest novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which had just been released a few days earlier. He asked us if we wanted to hear him read more, and we almost unanimously voted Yes. So he then read to us from his upcoming book Fortunately the Milk, which is ostensibly a children's book, to be released this coming September. I will add it to my library when it is available, even though I have no children to read it to.
He is a very good reader. Some writers are not very good at reading their own work. Why should they be? They are not actors; they are writers. But Neil Gaiman is a good reader, an enjoyable reader. I wanted him to keep reading, to read me both books in their entirety, even though I'm not particularly a fan of audiobooks. I usually prefer the way I hear the story in my own head to the way the voice performer reads it. But now as I am reading Ocean - which I started yesterday on the bus to work and have nearly finished, consumed in 15 or 20 minute chunks while commuting or eating dinner - I hear Neil reading it to me as he read it on Saturday.
He took a small number of question from the audience, which were written on index cards and read to him by musical guest Jason Webley. My friend Janet had her question read: "What was your favorite book when you were a child?". Then the young lady in the tumblr post asked for a kiss, and Neil graciously granted her request.
Not only did he kiss her on the stage, and again later when she queued to have her copy of the book signed (we all received a copy of Ocean as part of the admission price), he also granted a similar request from my friend's daughter. She ordinarily would have been working on a Saturday, and hadn't purchased an advance ticket - the tickets sold out on the first day. But one of her coworkers couldn't go, and she was allowed to take time off and to purchase her coworker's ticket for a nominal price. So she went and joined the rest of our group of friends in the balcony. And when she went downstairs to have her copy of Ocean signed, she asked if she could have a hug, and Neil again graciously obliged.
As we went through the signing line, we gave our names to staff members from Powells' City of Books to assure accurate spelling if we wanted our books personalized. Neil wrote a short message in each book, just a word or two. A few days prior to the event, my husband and I had disagreed over whether we had ever seen Neil at an appearance previous to this one. My husband insisted we had, while I recalled no such occasion. During the Q & A, someone had asked whose fans were odder, Neil's or Clive Barker's. When my husband heard this he realized it was actually Clive Barker we had seen previously. As he waited to have his copy of the book signed, he told this story to Neil, and Neil laughed and in return drew a little monster on the frontispiece instead of writing a message, which made my husband very happy. The rest of our friends and I all had the message "Dream" written in our books, but my husband had a little doodle of a monster.
Now as I'm reading The Ocean at the End of the Lane, I imagine that the unnamed protagonist has tousled dark hair that won't lie flat, and that when he is grown he mostly wears dark clothes and perhaps has a white Alsatian dog at home. And is kind, and generous, and sometimes doodles monsters. And just possibly is a writer of very good books that make people laugh and cry.
Saturday, June 8, 2013
I'd Like More Fantastic in My Fantasy, Please
Right now I'm watching 'Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger'. Aside from Patrick Wayne's disappointing performance it's a pretty good fantasy film. I like the boat rowed by a giant bronze minotaur, and the evil queen's transformative potion leaving her with the foot of a seagull when she runs out of potion. It reminds me of the things I really love about fantasy.
I like a lot of other B-grade fantasy movies for similar reasons. Arnold Schwarzenegger has never been a fantastic actor, and at the beginning of his career he was even less so, but 'Conan the Barbarian' is a favorite of mine for its fantastic elements, like Thulsa Doom transforming into a giant serpent and the magic ceremony the wizard performs to prevent Conan from dying. I like 'Conan the Destroyer' and 'Red Sonja' and 'The Beastmaster' and 'The Golden Voyage of Sinbad' and other films, because they too have moments of the fantastic that appeal to me. Each fantastic thing seems to be unique in its world. Not everyone can transform into a giant snake, not every statue of a god will become a raging monster if you replace a missing part, no one else knows the same magic as the evil queen.
I love playing D&D. I love playing fantasy RPGs. But one of the problems I find in playing such games where the elements of fantasy have been codified and standardized is that those elements are no longer fantastic. Wizards go to schools to learn wizardry, and everyone knows about it. No one marvels when a wizard summons fire from nothing or starts to fly without wings.
If my character has the required skill and makes a successful dice roll, I can know what that weird-looking monster is, even if the character has never seen one before - and what's more, I can know what it does and what it's vulnerable to. Of course, if I roll poorly I might not get any information, but I can't help but know that in a book somewhere that creature's abilities and just how much damage it can withstand before it dies are all written down in a template. It's hard to set aside that metagame knowledge and pretend that the thing is strange to me. Even if my character hasn't seen it before, I still know it's probably not unique in the game world. My character isn't the first person ever to see such a monster.
Of course I realize that if I and my fellow players are going to enjoy our shared gaming experience without getting into disagreements about how the shared world operates, we have to have rules that standardize things. Otherwise we'd end up like a couple of six-year-olds on the playground arguing over whether "Bang bang, I shot you" really means that the victim is dead. But I can't help feeling sometimes that all that standardization and designing of rules for every situation makes things seem a bit too ordinary. When you can go into any town and buy magic wands, the world has lost some of its sense of wonder.
Some of that, I know, is a function of the kind of games we play. Our group tends toward "high magic" campaigns, where magic is fairly commonplace. I don't necessarily want to play in a "low magic" game, where magic is incredibly rare. I wouldn't enjoy that. But I wouldn't mind a game where things seem a little more fantastic. Sometimes it seems that magic and monsters in fantasy RPGs have become as commonplace as televisions and automobiles in the real world. I'd like those classic elements of fantasy to be a little more like computers were when I was a child - only huge corporations and governments had them, and while the average person had heard of them, most people didn't know anything about how they worked or even what they looked like.
I want to play a wizard and have people stare in amazement at even my simplest spells, or be able to scare off bandits just by displaying some magical power. I want to encounter monsters that none of the characters have ever seen before, that haven't been described in any book in any library in the game world. I want to see a world where the player characters really are special, and there aren't other adventuring groups like them around every corner. I don't want to make it too difficult for us to have fun playing. I just want to have a little more "fantastic" in my fantasy.
I like a lot of other B-grade fantasy movies for similar reasons. Arnold Schwarzenegger has never been a fantastic actor, and at the beginning of his career he was even less so, but 'Conan the Barbarian' is a favorite of mine for its fantastic elements, like Thulsa Doom transforming into a giant serpent and the magic ceremony the wizard performs to prevent Conan from dying. I like 'Conan the Destroyer' and 'Red Sonja' and 'The Beastmaster' and 'The Golden Voyage of Sinbad' and other films, because they too have moments of the fantastic that appeal to me. Each fantastic thing seems to be unique in its world. Not everyone can transform into a giant snake, not every statue of a god will become a raging monster if you replace a missing part, no one else knows the same magic as the evil queen.
I love playing D&D. I love playing fantasy RPGs. But one of the problems I find in playing such games where the elements of fantasy have been codified and standardized is that those elements are no longer fantastic. Wizards go to schools to learn wizardry, and everyone knows about it. No one marvels when a wizard summons fire from nothing or starts to fly without wings.
If my character has the required skill and makes a successful dice roll, I can know what that weird-looking monster is, even if the character has never seen one before - and what's more, I can know what it does and what it's vulnerable to. Of course, if I roll poorly I might not get any information, but I can't help but know that in a book somewhere that creature's abilities and just how much damage it can withstand before it dies are all written down in a template. It's hard to set aside that metagame knowledge and pretend that the thing is strange to me. Even if my character hasn't seen it before, I still know it's probably not unique in the game world. My character isn't the first person ever to see such a monster.
Of course I realize that if I and my fellow players are going to enjoy our shared gaming experience without getting into disagreements about how the shared world operates, we have to have rules that standardize things. Otherwise we'd end up like a couple of six-year-olds on the playground arguing over whether "Bang bang, I shot you" really means that the victim is dead. But I can't help feeling sometimes that all that standardization and designing of rules for every situation makes things seem a bit too ordinary. When you can go into any town and buy magic wands, the world has lost some of its sense of wonder.
Some of that, I know, is a function of the kind of games we play. Our group tends toward "high magic" campaigns, where magic is fairly commonplace. I don't necessarily want to play in a "low magic" game, where magic is incredibly rare. I wouldn't enjoy that. But I wouldn't mind a game where things seem a little more fantastic. Sometimes it seems that magic and monsters in fantasy RPGs have become as commonplace as televisions and automobiles in the real world. I'd like those classic elements of fantasy to be a little more like computers were when I was a child - only huge corporations and governments had them, and while the average person had heard of them, most people didn't know anything about how they worked or even what they looked like.
I want to play a wizard and have people stare in amazement at even my simplest spells, or be able to scare off bandits just by displaying some magical power. I want to encounter monsters that none of the characters have ever seen before, that haven't been described in any book in any library in the game world. I want to see a world where the player characters really are special, and there aren't other adventuring groups like them around every corner. I don't want to make it too difficult for us to have fun playing. I just want to have a little more "fantastic" in my fantasy.
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Adventures in Adventureland, part deux
Back in Adventures in Adventureland, I stated my intention to write up our gaming sessions in my blog. Clearly I have fallen down on the job, as we've played quite a few sessions without a single blog post from me chronicling our activities. This post won't completely remedy that, but it's a stab in that direction.
The latest news is that we've added a sixth player. Our party now consists of the following:
Tajah - aasimar oracle
Landon - dwarf alchemist / ranger
San'Kari - elf fighter
Silverleaf - elf cleric (me)
Thim - halfling ranger / rogue
Garrick - human inquisitor / monk
...and Grizzly, a sentient, talking worg.
We had previously discovered that someone called the Stag Lord was leading bands of humanoids to raid local farms and communities. Then our stronghold at Oleg's Trading Post was attacked by lots of undead and some humanoids, and we learned that there was a necromancer named Nerisa (sp?) involved. We've done what we can to get rid of a lot of the Stag Lord's followers, but the necromancer is clearly way out of our league, and we have no idea where she is anyway.
We also managed to clear some cursed bears out of the ruins of an old temple, so that a priest can re-establish it. That has unfortunately made the priest a target for Nerisa's minions, who are trying to bring despair to the area by eliminating anything that could give the locals hope. We managed to infiltrate a gathering of her followers (or at least, Garrick did) and learned of this, so in our last session we ambushed the party she sent to assassinate the priest. Minotaurs are tough.
Unfortunately Nerisa is giving all her minions some kind of potion that mind-controls them, so it's a real challenge to get much information about her since people who are freed of the potion's effects don't remember anything they did while they were under its control. But we have managed to discover (again thanks to Garrick's infiltration of their camp) that the Stag Lord is just a figurehead.
When we have our next session we'll be fifth level. I'm looking forward to that (third level spells, woohoo!), but it won't be until July. Our GM is taking a break, and another GM will be running a sci fi campaign that I've chosen not to participate in. I bowed out originally to have more time for other things and because I don't really like sci fi games. But if someone started up another Pathfinder campaign, or D&D 3.5, or even Fantasy Hero, I'd probably be willing to give up my free time to play. I'm a sucker for a fantasy game.
The latest news is that we've added a sixth player. Our party now consists of the following:
Tajah - aasimar oracle
Landon - dwarf alchemist / ranger
San'Kari - elf fighter
Silverleaf - elf cleric (me)
Thim - halfling ranger / rogue
Garrick - human inquisitor / monk
...and Grizzly, a sentient, talking worg.
We had previously discovered that someone called the Stag Lord was leading bands of humanoids to raid local farms and communities. Then our stronghold at Oleg's Trading Post was attacked by lots of undead and some humanoids, and we learned that there was a necromancer named Nerisa (sp?) involved. We've done what we can to get rid of a lot of the Stag Lord's followers, but the necromancer is clearly way out of our league, and we have no idea where she is anyway.
We also managed to clear some cursed bears out of the ruins of an old temple, so that a priest can re-establish it. That has unfortunately made the priest a target for Nerisa's minions, who are trying to bring despair to the area by eliminating anything that could give the locals hope. We managed to infiltrate a gathering of her followers (or at least, Garrick did) and learned of this, so in our last session we ambushed the party she sent to assassinate the priest. Minotaurs are tough.
Unfortunately Nerisa is giving all her minions some kind of potion that mind-controls them, so it's a real challenge to get much information about her since people who are freed of the potion's effects don't remember anything they did while they were under its control. But we have managed to discover (again thanks to Garrick's infiltration of their camp) that the Stag Lord is just a figurehead.
When we have our next session we'll be fifth level. I'm looking forward to that (third level spells, woohoo!), but it won't be until July. Our GM is taking a break, and another GM will be running a sci fi campaign that I've chosen not to participate in. I bowed out originally to have more time for other things and because I don't really like sci fi games. But if someone started up another Pathfinder campaign, or D&D 3.5, or even Fantasy Hero, I'd probably be willing to give up my free time to play. I'm a sucker for a fantasy game.
I Owe My Soul to the Company Store
"You load sixteen tons, what do you get
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"
("Sixteen Tons", Tennessee Ernie Ford)
This morning I had a conversation with one of my coworkers about various social and economic issues affecting the US currently, and it dawned on me: Our capitalist society is the equivalent of the truck system era, where employees of factories and mines bought their necessities from the company, using company scrip that they were given in lieu of wages, and lived in company-owned housing. That was a form of debt bondage - the workers could never leave because they could never save any money.
Likewise many of us today can never stop working for the banks that hold our debts. We're all slaves trying to buy our way to freedom, because we've bought into this American capitalism: Own a house, own a car, send your kids to college.
How did we get here? What happened in America that made us think we have to have all this stuff - and go into debt to get it? In other parts of the world most of the population doesn't own homes. Many countries have no mortgages. If you don't save enough money to buy a house, you don't own a house. If you live in an urban area you rent a flat. You don't have a bathroom for every member of the family, and the kids might have to share a bedroom. Your flat isn't big enough to host a party of 40 people, you don't have a backyard or a garage or even any built-in closets. And people presumably don't sit around feeling like their lives are incomplete because they don't have granite countertops in the kitchen..
There are some European countries where higher education is free. That's right, you don't have to pay $30,000 a year to go to college, let alone have student loan debt for the rest of your life. I don't know what kind of limits those countries set on who can get a university education, but I do know that not everyone goes to university or is expected to go. Somehow in the US we've reached a situation where we think a university degree is a requirement to get a job, any job. My own opinion is that a lot of the current emphasis on getting a degree is encouraged by banks that give student loans, because those are guaranteed sources of income for them. It was determined by the financial institutions that not paying off your student loan is a high crime, because there's not much you can do to escape it besides die - and I'm not sure even that will free you.
Of course, the biggest difficulty of all is the way our political system has responded to this situation by giving up our modified representative democracy in favor of treating corporations as people. As long as politicians pay more attention to what the corporations want than they do to what their constituents want, we won't see any improvement in our debt bondage.
Another day older and deeper in debt
Saint Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go
I owe my soul to the company store"
("Sixteen Tons", Tennessee Ernie Ford)
This morning I had a conversation with one of my coworkers about various social and economic issues affecting the US currently, and it dawned on me: Our capitalist society is the equivalent of the truck system era, where employees of factories and mines bought their necessities from the company, using company scrip that they were given in lieu of wages, and lived in company-owned housing. That was a form of debt bondage - the workers could never leave because they could never save any money.
Likewise many of us today can never stop working for the banks that hold our debts. We're all slaves trying to buy our way to freedom, because we've bought into this American capitalism: Own a house, own a car, send your kids to college.
How did we get here? What happened in America that made us think we have to have all this stuff - and go into debt to get it? In other parts of the world most of the population doesn't own homes. Many countries have no mortgages. If you don't save enough money to buy a house, you don't own a house. If you live in an urban area you rent a flat. You don't have a bathroom for every member of the family, and the kids might have to share a bedroom. Your flat isn't big enough to host a party of 40 people, you don't have a backyard or a garage or even any built-in closets. And people presumably don't sit around feeling like their lives are incomplete because they don't have granite countertops in the kitchen..
There are some European countries where higher education is free. That's right, you don't have to pay $30,000 a year to go to college, let alone have student loan debt for the rest of your life. I don't know what kind of limits those countries set on who can get a university education, but I do know that not everyone goes to university or is expected to go. Somehow in the US we've reached a situation where we think a university degree is a requirement to get a job, any job. My own opinion is that a lot of the current emphasis on getting a degree is encouraged by banks that give student loans, because those are guaranteed sources of income for them. It was determined by the financial institutions that not paying off your student loan is a high crime, because there's not much you can do to escape it besides die - and I'm not sure even that will free you.
Of course, the biggest difficulty of all is the way our political system has responded to this situation by giving up our modified representative democracy in favor of treating corporations as people. As long as politicians pay more attention to what the corporations want than they do to what their constituents want, we won't see any improvement in our debt bondage.
Saturday, May 4, 2013
What I'm Writing
I'm a writer. I write all kinds of things, including this blog. I'd like to be a fiction novel writer, too. But most of the fiction I've written in recent years has been journals of roleplaying games. I used to keep copious notes of all of the campaigns I participated in, and frequently I would convert them into the form of letters from my characters to their families back home, or private journals kept by the characters. I published these in the form of emails or on an RPG forum site for the entertainment of my fellow players and others. Originally I didn't think of this as "real writing", or as fiction. I've come to realize it doesn't really matter what I'm writing, as long as I'm writing.
But I'd still like to write a novel, or several. I have multiple novel plots in mind, though I haven't finished any of them and have written very little of a couple of them. I've decided to take the risk of telling people about them and see if I get any kind of feedback.
The novel I was most invested in finishing - and have the most written for - is a wuxia novel, a genre I'd like to introduce to a broader Western audience. I am having a lot of problems with the development of this one. I can't decide if I want to set the story in historical China, an alternate history version of China, or a fictional setting that resembles China. I can't decide if I want to introduce elements of magical fantasy into the story. I've been watching a lot of wuxia films and tv series, and I find that I start trying to incorporate what I watch into my story, which is making it a derivative muddle. So I've decided I will set that story aside for a while, until I can make some final decisions about the setting and the plot elements I want to retain. I'm also going to read more wuxia fiction. Not a lot of it has been published in English, but what I've read has all been by the same author and I hope reading some material by other authors will give me a broader perspective on what constitutes a wuxia story.
The second most developed novel in my collection is a traditional fantasy. As in many a fantasy novel, the invented world setting of the story is threatened by a Great Evil, and the protagonist is the Chosen One who can vanquish the evil. I ran my hero through The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test to ensure that I'm not creating a Mary Sue. I've tried to differentiate the character from other Chosen Ones in fantasy as much as I can. The Great Evil isn't a person but an entity that isn't really evil in the sense that it's made a choice to do bad things; the things it does that are bad are part of its very essence and it couldn't change if it wanted to. So the hero's task isn't to kill it or make it surrender or take away the McGuffin that gives it its power. He has to lock it away on the other side of an interplanar barrier so it can't get back into the world where he lives.
He's done this before, or rather helped to do so, centuries ago when this entity first slipped through a crack between worlds. At that time he was one of a whole army of people who fought to help their mother goddess hold the entity on the other side of the door. The goddess has been holding the door shut all this time. But when the entity manages to slip part of itself past her, she has to use a little bit of her power to send just one of her long-ago worshippers into the realm of the living to warn the inhabitants of the world and recruit help to block up the opening for good. My protagonist is a man out of his time, unable to even speak the same language as the people he meets (I've got a plan to get around the language barrier). He has to convince strangers to listen to him and help him. He also has to deal with some personal issues created by the method the goddess uses to send him into the world of the living. I hope this doesn't end up being too much like every other 'Chosen One defeats the Great Evil' story out there. I have no intention of making it a trilogy/quadralogy/endless series. It's one book, and when it's over it's over.
Novel Number Three is also a traditional fantasy. The premise of this one is pretty simple: It's basically a traditional D&D adventuring party. A group of characters get together - though not at an inn - and set off to achieve a goal. The world setting is inspired by Hyborea, and my intention is to avoid using anything that is too obviously D&D-derived. I'm trying to imagine how to take the tropes of D&D and other fantasy roleplaying games and make them seem rational and realistic. There will not be any elves or dwarves in this story, though there will be beings that somewhat resemble those common fantasy fiction races. There will be wizards and priests and monstrous creatures, but I hope I'll be able to devise things that, while recognizable as traditional fantasy elements, aren't too obviously derivative of D&D rules. I don't want to get in trouble with the publishers of any roleplaying game or roleplaying fiction. I am not basing the story on any RPG campaign I've been involved in. I just wanted to write a story about the kinds of things that happen in the roleplaying campaigns I've participated in, without being tied to the events of an actual campaign or characters that were created by my friends. I admire my friends characters, but I don't want to write a novel about them. I wouldn't do them justice.
Novel Number Four currently exists only in my head. This is the first time I've actually written something down about it. It's an urban fantasy. The premise is that magic and the fey have been cut off from the material world for centuries, but somehow the fey were able to reach into our world and kidnap a person. After several years of mortal time, they release him, but he has no memory of his time in the fey realm. At the same time he returns to the mortal world, the fey re-emerge into the world as well, in a cataclysmic magical event. What does the kidnapping of the protagonist have to do with this re-emergence? What did he experience during his time with the fey, and why can't he remember anything? These are the questions that I hope to answer eventually.
You may have noticed that all of the protagonists I mentioned are male. When I think of a story it emerges from my imagination pre-populated with a protagonist of a specific gender, and all of these have emerged with masculine heroes. I don't know why that is, but I find that if I try to force a change of gender it doesn't make me feel comfortable with the change. I may be able to change the gender of the character in Novel #4 because I haven't actually written any of it yet, but the protagonists of the other three novels will all continue to be male.
Well, there they are, the offspring of my imagination, all still in a fetal state. Perhaps if I talk about them a little here, it will help them to grow and develop into something that you can read someday.
But I'd still like to write a novel, or several. I have multiple novel plots in mind, though I haven't finished any of them and have written very little of a couple of them. I've decided to take the risk of telling people about them and see if I get any kind of feedback.
The novel I was most invested in finishing - and have the most written for - is a wuxia novel, a genre I'd like to introduce to a broader Western audience. I am having a lot of problems with the development of this one. I can't decide if I want to set the story in historical China, an alternate history version of China, or a fictional setting that resembles China. I can't decide if I want to introduce elements of magical fantasy into the story. I've been watching a lot of wuxia films and tv series, and I find that I start trying to incorporate what I watch into my story, which is making it a derivative muddle. So I've decided I will set that story aside for a while, until I can make some final decisions about the setting and the plot elements I want to retain. I'm also going to read more wuxia fiction. Not a lot of it has been published in English, but what I've read has all been by the same author and I hope reading some material by other authors will give me a broader perspective on what constitutes a wuxia story.
The second most developed novel in my collection is a traditional fantasy. As in many a fantasy novel, the invented world setting of the story is threatened by a Great Evil, and the protagonist is the Chosen One who can vanquish the evil. I ran my hero through The Universal Mary Sue Litmus Test to ensure that I'm not creating a Mary Sue. I've tried to differentiate the character from other Chosen Ones in fantasy as much as I can. The Great Evil isn't a person but an entity that isn't really evil in the sense that it's made a choice to do bad things; the things it does that are bad are part of its very essence and it couldn't change if it wanted to. So the hero's task isn't to kill it or make it surrender or take away the McGuffin that gives it its power. He has to lock it away on the other side of an interplanar barrier so it can't get back into the world where he lives.
He's done this before, or rather helped to do so, centuries ago when this entity first slipped through a crack between worlds. At that time he was one of a whole army of people who fought to help their mother goddess hold the entity on the other side of the door. The goddess has been holding the door shut all this time. But when the entity manages to slip part of itself past her, she has to use a little bit of her power to send just one of her long-ago worshippers into the realm of the living to warn the inhabitants of the world and recruit help to block up the opening for good. My protagonist is a man out of his time, unable to even speak the same language as the people he meets (I've got a plan to get around the language barrier). He has to convince strangers to listen to him and help him. He also has to deal with some personal issues created by the method the goddess uses to send him into the world of the living. I hope this doesn't end up being too much like every other 'Chosen One defeats the Great Evil' story out there. I have no intention of making it a trilogy/quadralogy/endless series. It's one book, and when it's over it's over.
Novel Number Three is also a traditional fantasy. The premise of this one is pretty simple: It's basically a traditional D&D adventuring party. A group of characters get together - though not at an inn - and set off to achieve a goal. The world setting is inspired by Hyborea, and my intention is to avoid using anything that is too obviously D&D-derived. I'm trying to imagine how to take the tropes of D&D and other fantasy roleplaying games and make them seem rational and realistic. There will not be any elves or dwarves in this story, though there will be beings that somewhat resemble those common fantasy fiction races. There will be wizards and priests and monstrous creatures, but I hope I'll be able to devise things that, while recognizable as traditional fantasy elements, aren't too obviously derivative of D&D rules. I don't want to get in trouble with the publishers of any roleplaying game or roleplaying fiction. I am not basing the story on any RPG campaign I've been involved in. I just wanted to write a story about the kinds of things that happen in the roleplaying campaigns I've participated in, without being tied to the events of an actual campaign or characters that were created by my friends. I admire my friends characters, but I don't want to write a novel about them. I wouldn't do them justice.
Novel Number Four currently exists only in my head. This is the first time I've actually written something down about it. It's an urban fantasy. The premise is that magic and the fey have been cut off from the material world for centuries, but somehow the fey were able to reach into our world and kidnap a person. After several years of mortal time, they release him, but he has no memory of his time in the fey realm. At the same time he returns to the mortal world, the fey re-emerge into the world as well, in a cataclysmic magical event. What does the kidnapping of the protagonist have to do with this re-emergence? What did he experience during his time with the fey, and why can't he remember anything? These are the questions that I hope to answer eventually.
You may have noticed that all of the protagonists I mentioned are male. When I think of a story it emerges from my imagination pre-populated with a protagonist of a specific gender, and all of these have emerged with masculine heroes. I don't know why that is, but I find that if I try to force a change of gender it doesn't make me feel comfortable with the change. I may be able to change the gender of the character in Novel #4 because I haven't actually written any of it yet, but the protagonists of the other three novels will all continue to be male.
Well, there they are, the offspring of my imagination, all still in a fetal state. Perhaps if I talk about them a little here, it will help them to grow and develop into something that you can read someday.
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