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Romantic comedy review: “27 Dresses”

January 10, 2016

Hey, everyone!  Did you think I was joking? Because I was not joking even a little when I said I would start a series reviewing romantic comedies.  I’m more than happy to take requests, and I’m starting with one of my favorites.

27 Dresses (2008)

Twenty_seven_dresses

Rating: 8/10

Couple: James Marsden and Katherine Heigl

Best scene: Singing Benny and the Jets at the bar

Best line: “oh, do you also go around telling small children that Santa Claus doesn’t exist?  Because someone needs to blow that shit wide open.”

Romcom tropes: Judy Greer as the sassy best friend, gorgeous girl who is somehow alone, weddings

You wanna go, on this?  Let’s go.  This is a great movie and I will fight you on it.  Not joking even a tiny bit.

For those of you who aren’t In The Know, this movie is about Jane (Katherine Heigl), a woman who has been a bridesmaid in 27 weddings so far and pretty much takes care of everybody’s life.  She is crazy in love with her boss (Edward Burns) who has no idea, and the drama begins when her younger sister Tess (Malin Ackerman) comes to town and they of course start dating and then of course get engaged and of course Jane is maid of honor of COURSE.  James Marsden plays Kevin, the journalist covering Tess’ wedding.

There are a couple slight missteps in this movie, I’ll admit that.  When Jane finds out that Kevin is, in fact, her favorite wedding columnist, her response is “I feel like I just found out that my favorite love song was written about a sandwich.”  First of all: no. No, you don’t.  That’s a very specific emotion and I doubt you’ve had it before.  Secondly: no, that’s not how people talk.  Like what, you had that line prepared, in case…that happened?  Noooope.  It’s kind of a shame, because the rest of Jane’s lines are totally reasonable (she shoots down Kevin early on with a “oh, how refreshing! A man who doesn’t believe in marriage!” which like HELL YES good job lady).  Also, Judy Greer is a great Sassy Best Friend (SBF) but ugh I feel like this girl has a reasonable negligent infliction of emotional distress claim on all of Hollywood.  Let her be something else.  In addition, this is a White People Movie, and there are some actual racist jokes in this movie, including Jewish and Indian stereotypes in the opening scenes, and a moment in a Japanese wedding where lol Katherine Heigl has to lol kneel because she’s so tall and Asian women are lol short lol um no can u not.

Finally, can someone please explain to me the appeal of Edward Burns please and thank you.  I just Do Not Understand.  He is so generic that I regularly forget his name (I have called him “the dude who isn’t Matt Damon or the translator who inexplicably lives through Saving Private Ryan”), and every line he delivers makes me want to yell CAN YOU SPEAK UP PLEASE.  Like he could be “you know that guy Todd, from work” at every single workplace.  idk, sorry if he’s your thing, but he’s like every generic above-average white dude in a bar to me.  Wear those khakis, Ed.  BE the khakis.  You ARE the khakis.

ON TO THE GOOD STUFF

  • James Marsden

I will admit, part of this is because when I saw this movie, I was straight off the high that was Disney’s “Enchanted” where he plays the most perfect prince to ever prince so he could have phoned this in entirely and I still would have loved him.  HOWEVER HE DID NOT AND IT’S AMAZING.  He is a perfect romantic comedy lead: he has the good timing lines, he’s freaking adorable, and he’s like honestly not too much of a dick?  Yes yes yes I agree the newspaper column was some bullSHIT (homie you knew she was gonna publish that, you KNEW) and frankly do not write in a woman’s planner ever or she will justifiably murder you but STILL.  His divorce backstory is believable and delivered well by Marsden.  And finally, can I just…

  • Benny and the Jets

This scene is everything, my heartttttt.  I appreciate that the film recognizes that this song is a great way to get a bunch of strangers to sing together, and that no one has any idea what the fuck the lyrics are.  Heigl and Marsden are too adorable to function in this scene and I start giggling every time I hear this song and THIS SCENE IS THE FEEL-GOOD MOVIE OF THE YEAR OKAY FIGHT ME I LOVE IT

  • Katherine Heigl is likable in this movie

So many people walked out of the theater like “I do not like this woman but…ah, shit, she’s delightful here.”  Like, we buy that she looks like Katherine Heigl but is somehow the long-suffering uncool sister/friend.  Like HOW DID YOU PULL THAT OFF.  There were people ready to straight-up murder you for something related to Grey’s Anatomy (I don’t watch the show I’m assuming it was mafia-related) and you just showed up and SWING AND A HIT.  Not since Jaime Lannister have we had a redemption arc this impressive and then probably fucked up by some writers DID YOU MISS ME, GUYS

  • The dresses

I don’t know the team responsible but God bless you all.  They are beautifully over-the-top, the scene where she tries them on is a ridiculous and delightful montage, the shiny-ness of some formal fabrics is demonstrated To Great Effect, and man, weddings can be weird.  I have not been in a wedding or at a wedding where I was like “wut happened this bad” but man you get stories and pictures and weddings are WEIRD, yo.  Also has anyone actually been to a Gone With the Wind wedding because TELL ME EVERYTHING PLEASE I MUST KNOW.

  • The vague job

This is a silly thing for me to appreciate but this movie goes H.A.M. on the “what the fuck do they even do at this workplace” front and it’s just AMAZING.  I love it when romantic comedies give the heroine the vaguest job possible and this movie is just A+ and it makes me laugh every time I see it.  Like she could work for Subaru’s ad department or a trendy dentist I have no idea and it will never ever not be funny.

  • This movie is not terrible to women

You know the weird cattiness that surrounds a lot of these movies?  Like someone cooked down The Bachelor and Bride Wars meth-style and injected it into every female character and then yelled ACTION?  Could have been SO easy here, and it didn’t happen.  Jane saves all of her bridesmaid dresses, and when questioned by Kevin why she would do that, she says “I have a lot of friends and I like to keep them” and “I’ve had a lot of really good times in those dresses.”  Like, awwww.  Good job boo.

Additionally, Jane is Stressed Out because of her sister dating her crush, but she is genuinely not angry at her until her sister pulls the big no-no of both lying to the dude and cutting up their mom’s wedding dress for her dress.  The movie doesn’t treat Tess that well, but you know what? Jane actually does, and when Jane’s SBF says “you cannot plan your sister’s wedding to the man you are in love with, it’s sick,” Jane responds with “to be fair, she didn’t know I was in love with him when they got together.”  Oh my goodness, movie, you did good.  Jane struggles with her jealousy but isn’t like “bitch I saw him first” at ANY POINT and I’m just SO IMPRESSED.

Her giant moment of selling Tess out and calling her on all her lies is soooo uncomfortable that I have muted it and/or skipped past it while watching (I cannot cannot watch people embarrass themselves in front of other people not even in movies I cannot), and the movie actually lets you feel complicated emotion towards it.  On one hand you’re like OOOOH BURN GO JANE but when the SBF comes out and is like “if that were the right thing to do, wouldn’t you feel better about it?” Because yes, she probably did need to say something, but at a party in front of everyone who matters with a slideshow is not the time or place or fashion.

They also make Tess a Real Person with Real Stuff to deal with and you’re supposed to hate her a little bit but not a lot!  Which is remarkable!  She’s a gorgeous woman in fashion and she’s allowed to be a human!  With flaws!  Who is still worth loving!  Holy SHIT, movie!

I just appreciate in movies when women are nice to each other and do things for each other and while this is not a perfect representation and I could have done without the “lol she made them all wear their dresses at the end” bit it’s still really really adorable and she has her friends and she’s got her SBF and she’s got her sister and awwww.  I love it.  I love it I love it it was great and I will watch it at any time or place.

B-B-B-BENNY AND THE JETS

 

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It’s 2016 and I’m back

January 3, 2016

Hey there everyone!  Welcome to my new online home.

A significant number of my old posts have been transferred over here, so if you’re looking to reread my Game of Thrones episode reviews from the beginning, go ahead and start here.

I’m hoping to wrap up some reviews of Season 5, possibly review Season 6, and start up a couple new projects.

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Review of “Desolation of Smaug”

January 2, 2014

I’ve gotta hand it to Peter Jackson & Co., they are really doing all they possibly can with this 300-ish page kids’ book.  I really did enjoy watching this second film, and I felt it was better than the first.  This may be because I am so ridiculously homesick for epic battles scored by Howard Shore that I’ll take what I can get, but I liked the movie lots.  (Fun fact I still tear up when I hear “Concerning Hobbits” and if you judge me you can go away now) Review contains spoilers for the movie, and for the LoTR movies, but I won’t spoil the end of the book or the third movie.

Normally, I’d break down a book-into-movie by saying what they kept right, changed right, and changed wrong, but there really isn’t a good way to do this here because very little is identical to the book.  So let’s just talk about things based on what I mostly liked and what I mostly didn’t.  I know, this is some highly sophisticated writing here DON’T JUDGE ME IT’S MY BLOG

Mostly positive
Smaug.  Was.  Amazing.  If you disagree, get out of here.  I had been looking forward to seeing and hearing the dragon for about forever because I am an unabashed Benedict Cumberfan, but even if he’s not your thing, the dragon was amazing.  Tolkien gave some great lines in his book for Bilbo’s confrontation with him (I really want to start going by “Greatest of Calamities”), but even the ones they threw in felt right.  Whoever worked on Smaug’s firebreathing needs some kind of award, and I’d also love to hand one out to whoever decided the extended jaunt with the dwarves through the mountain was a good idea.  Seeing what was left of the dwarves’ kingdom was both tragic and beautiful; the audience got to experience both what the dwarves had built and what had been taken from them.  A++++.  (I’ve also been enjoying how American English can’t handle the name.  We seem to insist on rhyming it with “smog” and can’t do it right.)

Mirkwood.  Oh my goodness, spiders.  The voices, the gross webs, the naming of Sting, just…yes.  It was great, Martin Freeman killed it as a slightly-Ring-obsessed Bilbo, and it was all just awesome.  I would say the same for all of Mirkwood: even though the sequence was condensed from the book, the weird confusion and the “sick-looking” forest all felt very on point.

Legolas.  No, he’s not in the book.  But you know what?  It was great to see him again, even with his intense super-creepy-blue eyes. (Ease up on the colored contacts, y’all.)  Throwing in the reference to Gimli was great, and with Thranduil legit being his father, it’s not totally unreasonable for him to be there.  I truly enjoyed watching him come around and shoot things and get off ridiculous trick shots and shooting people at point blank range and beheading orcs.  And yeah, the orcs.  Orlando Bloom is in the movies to look pretty and kill orcs and we can only have SO many shots of him staring prettily off into the distance.  So, orcs?  I’ll allow it.  Again, this might just be my homesickness for Middle Earth, but I’m really okay with his being there and shooting things.  It felt good.  It felt…right.  Everything is okay in the world when elves with long blond hair decapitate orcs through Rube Goldberg-like indirect actions.

Bard.  So, Bard the…bargeman?  We’re calling him that now?  ‘Kay. It took me till after the movie to realize he looks kind of like Will Turner from Pirates of the Caribbean, and with Orlando Bloom already being in the movie my brain was just kind of like “what’s happening who is this.”  I’m enjoying the little extra back story they gave him (yeah, give him two cute kids, sure, why not), and the arrows look hella cool, and the actor playing him is doing a fine job.   

Gandalf and Radagast Go Adventuring, like Legolas showing up, is also totally fine with me.  The book is written as Bilbo’s book, so we don’t see what Gandalf is off doing when he leaves (also the whole “Gandalf disappears and then pops back in at just the right time and is like ‘hey guys what’s up, oh, did you do all the hard stuff already? kewl'” thing is never not funny to me).  Clearly he’s doing something, and Sauron was for sure planning and plotting at this point, so the fact that they’re using these movies as a bit of a prequel to LoTR is A-OK with me.  More Ian McKellan always.

Mostly negative
Beorn felt…weird?  And underused?  The bear animation was great, and I actually don’t mind the way they changed the dwarves’ arrival, because Gandalf’s “That…is our host” got the biggest laugh from the audience out of the whole movie.  I just remember reading Beorn as a sort of weird, well-meaning, jolly giant dude who really likes animals.  Like, a Hagrid-esque character.  Movie Beorn was so serious and almost scary.  If you could encapsulate the feeling of a friends dinner party, in which one of the women brought her cage-fighting boyfriend to meet everyone for the first time, and the host brings out a giant plate of steaks, and the boyfriend quietly growls, “I’m a vegan.”  That discomfort and fear = Movie Beorn.  For me, at least.

Lake-town was…odd.  The overall structure was fine, and I enjoyed Stephen Colbert’s little cameo (don’t blink or you’ll miss it), but the styling seemed to be a bit off.  This is supposed to be a medieval-type era, but once we got into the town, the styling of everything felt very Les Mis.  Including and especially the costuming for the Master.  Like I get the town’s supposed to be in bad shape, but I was waiting for Javert to pop out from behind the Master and sing-arrest someone.  Or the townspeople to burst into “Do You Hear the People Sing” as the dwarves head to the mountain.  “I dreamed a dream of Erebooooooor”

So far all this stuff has been superficial likes/dislikes, but the last part here discusses some pretty shitty handling of both race and gender in this movie.

Race: yep, Middle-Earth is hella white, and better people than me have analyzed this and Tolkien’s treatment of race as a whole, so I’m not going to even attempt to do that here.  However, I can comment on something that was super dumb in this movie.  After two or so hours of literally all white people, the confrontation between Thorin and the Master of Lake-town and Bard happens, and the crowd is scanned by the camera.  Several of the townspeople have dark skin.  They do not speak.  The movie then continues and it is all white people from then on, too.

This is not how you do inclusiveness, people!  If you truly cared about representing everyone, you could have cast a POC for Bilbo or Thorin or (this would be best!) one of the elves.  A black Thranduil would have worked quite nicely, since the elves seem to suffer most from the “good people are pretty and super Caucasian” treatment that happens in Tolkien’s works.  You do not just throw in a scan of their face and give them no lines and pretend like it’s all good.  It’s almost worse to do this, in my opinion, than to keep the movie completely white.  This is because in your way, you show that yes, there are people of color in this world, but they don’t matter at all.  I’m sorry, but two half-second shots of a black woman’s face does not give you accolades for awareness.

And here we come to my fave thing: sexism.  Evangeline Lilly (who is a legit Tolkien fan and went all out in weapons training and learning Elvish, so this is not her fault) was cast as Tauriel, one of the Mirkwood elves, a character who does not appear in the book.  Her existence is not ridiculous, as there is an elf guard whose members are not named, and could very well be female.  I didn’t mind so much her inclusion when I first saw it, and figured they were just trying to throw an Arwen + Eowyn badass lady-fighter into the movie, and thought nothing of it.

THEN, I saw the movie.  Her character has a flirtation with Kili, one of the two youngest dwarves, and it is hinted that others have paired her and Legolas in their minds.  Kili is shot by an orc at one point in the film, and when he and Tauriel are reunited, she heals him with vague elf-magic in the most uncomfortable scene in the movie.  She comments that he is tall, for a dwarf, and he says to her after he’s been healed that she “cannot be here, she is far away, I must be dreaming, wow, such elf, so beauty, much ear point” or something equally idiotic.

“The Hobbit” is a bro-fest, we know.  But again, if you’re trying to be inclusive of women, don’t cast them as a collection of the dumbest, pandering tropes known to the genre and invent an unnecessary romance.  Did you think women wouldn’t see the film if one of the dwarves didn’t get some by the end of the movie?  Did you cast her and give her stupid, weepy lines and decide that you had fully developed the character and called it a day?  Did you write down in your script notes that Tauriel is “Not Like Other Elf-Girls”?  Try harder, or just let Cate Blanchett be in every scene.  Your choice. 

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Taking up the space generally reserved for your ego

December 19, 2013

Three things happened to me today and I wrote about them in this impolite post.  Swearing.  Anger.  Not funny.  I’m sorry, but it was this or light things on fire.

The first experience occurred in my yoga class.  This class is a beginners’ level vinyasa flow class, which means the teacher is super chill and explains everything we’re doing, but, like every other fitness activity, there is still some skill involved.  This class is very female-heavy (like I imagine many other yoga classes to be), but there are usually at least three men in each class.  Tonight, we had two new guys, who strolled in, grabbed mats, and strode right to the front of the room, where they established themselves.  This was mind-blowing to me, because in every class in which I’m a beginner, I tend to stay near the back so I don’t distract people with any mistakes I will inevitably make.  These two guys were pretty chatty, and called each other “dude” and “man” in each sentence.  Guys, you’re still in fucking yoga.  No amount of “dude,” “bro,” or “man” will magically turn that mat into a dumbbell or a game of pickup basketball or whatever your chosen weekend warrior sport of choice happens to be. 

I’ve been attending this class off and on for about a year now, and have probably made it to at least 30 classes.  The instructor usually tells us to listen to our bodies to figure out how far we need to stretch, if we need to take it easy, if we’re having a strong day.  This was the first time I heard her add “make sure to listen to your body…and not your ego.”  This was after the two guys in the front, despite being complete rookies, decided to try to stretch into every goddamn pose as far as the instructor and much of the class.  It’s just women, right?  It’s just yoga, right?  We can totally do this.  We do deadlifts.  Twenty minutes in, they finally got the fucking hint and one guy just got into child’s pose for a few minutes because he couldn’t do the current pose.  I would not have been surprised if one or both of these guys walked out with an injury because they attempted to do Lady Fitness.  Just to be clear, these guys were in no way disruptive or demeaning to the group, but their egos were running their brainshows.

After class, I went to Chipotle.  I got in line, giving the guy in front of me a good two feet of space.  The guy behind me, however, was close enough the whole time that I could hear the keypad of his smartphone while he was aggressively texting whoever the fuck he was texting that was so important that he didn’t realize or didn’t give a shit that he was touching my purse and the hood of my sweatshirt with his arm.  I was in line for ten minutes, and this only got worse.  I felt myself turning into a pillbug, rolling myself up tighter and tighter in an attempt to take up less space because whatever space I didn’t take up turned into a buffer zone between me and the guy behind me.  This didn’t work, of course, and the guy instead crept closer, eventually brushing my arm.  This isn’t a New York City subway.  This isn’t a concert.  This isn’t any circumstance in which it would be any-fucking-where near acceptable for you to touch me.  It’s somehow fine if you bump into me “accidentally,” though?  The only reason you were able to bump into me is because you were way too fucking close to me in the first place.

 You’re not the first guy to invade my space like this, and I doubt you’ll be the last.  I don’t know if you think you’ll get your burrito faster if you reduce the gap between us, but please let me make this clear: you will get your goddamn food based on when the people working there give it to you.  The do not take out a ruler and decide you only get your barbacoa if there are fewer than four inches between your body and the next body.  You see me curling up?  You see me not smiling?  You hear me not replying when you apologize for bumping into me for the third time in the same number of minutes?  I frankly don’t give a shit if it’s deliberate or just negligence on your part: I deserve to take up this space and you currently do not.  Back the fuck up, and kindly never do this to another person, especially another woman, again.  Of course I didn’t say any of this because that would make me look crazy, so I just paid quickly and left.

On my drive home, I nearly got rear-ended because the guy behind me decided I wasn’t merging into the left turning lane fast enough.  Once we entered the on-ramp, he stayed roughly as close to my bumper as the guy at Chipotle stayed to my arm, close enough that I couldn’t see his headlights.  Once we were able to merge onto the highway, he chose not to wait his turn and passed me on the left, flooring it.  I am 90% sure that his license plate read either “GAINS” or “GAINZ.”  I’m so glad I almost got into an accident so you and your stupid fucking sedan with its vanity license plate could get to the part of the highway you deserve and arrive to your destination twenty seconds faster.  I am not dying because you don’t know how to understand the concept of driving when other people are on the road. 

Bros of the world: Women. Occupy. Space.  Other people occupy spaces that you have no right to invade.  And your ego doesn’t take the place of my comfort.  Get it the fuck together.

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Look! I read things other than fantasy novels, I swear!

December 12, 2013

Don’t believe me, it’s okay.  Totally fair.  But I promise you, I do sometimes wander off and read something without dragons in it.

Below is an incomplete list of non-fantasy books I’ve read and liked in the past 2 years or so, and I’ve got reviews of the bolded ones below.  Some are sci-fi or dystopic, and I consider those non-fantasy, so I am sorry in advance.  If there’s one on the list that I don’t review but you’d like me to, please tell me!  I tried to review a variety so it didn’t turn into “here’s my favorite dystopian fiction,” but perhaps that should be my next set of reviews.

In the order particular to my brain when I ask it, “Brain, what non-fantasy books have we read recently and enjoyed?”, I present…

The Long Walk by Stephen King
Kindred by Octavia Butler
Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Foundation by Isaac Asimov
The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. LeGuin
The Help by Kathryn Stockett
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Born to Run by Christopher McDougall 
 The Last King of Scotland by Giles Foden
The Magicians by Lev Grossman
The Children of Men by PD James
Ubik by Philip K. Dick
Bridget Jones’ Diary  by Helen Fielding
Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding
Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
MaddAddam by Margaret Atwood
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
Atonement by Ian McEwan
Winter of the World by Ken Follett 
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks
Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult
The Storyteller by Jodi Picoult

Born to Run by Christopher McDougall
-Read if: you’re a runner in any definition of the word; you like exercise science
-Don’t read if: you want to punch barefoot runners in the face

On recommendation from another runner, and incredibly fascinating.  Part science, part personal travelogue, part weird history of ultrarunning (peeps who run like 50, 100 mile races across deserts and up and down mountains), the author knows what he’s doing and you never lose interest.  The book revolves around the author’s investigation of the Tarahumara, an indigenous people from Mexico, who seem to be basically built to run, and a race set up between them and the big deal ultrarunners from the States.  McDougall is a crazy good writer, throwing really complicated concepts at you in digestible language, and manages to hold suspense for this race throughout the whole book.

The author is definitely very pro-barefoot running, and I know this is a polarizing topic, so if you really can’t stand the barefoot soapbox, maybe don’t pick this up, or skip the chapter where he’s advocating for it hardcore.  The book also might be harder to get through if you genuinely hate running.  However, I’d recommend this even if you’re not a runner, and if you are, oh my God read it now. Especially read it if you need running motivation, because any time you finish a chapter of this book you’re like I CAN DO ANYTHING LET’S GOOOO.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn
Read if – you like crime/suspense; you like really flawed, unreliable narrators
Don’t read if – you need to have faith in humanity after you’re done; you don’t have a block of 3-4 hours to knock this one out in one sitting

Finally jumped on the bandwagon, and this book was cray-cray.  Crime/literature, the book is about a woman who disappears on the morning of her fifth wedding anniversary and it doesn’t look good for her husband.  Two narrators, the husband and wife, both unreliable.  Flynn is incredible about changing the voices, and I was super impressed at her ability to both flawlessly transition from narrator to narrator, and to give both narrators unique voices.

If you’re in a rough place about the quality of the world and the people in it, maybe don’t pick this up right now.  I say this because I had to put this down every page or so and reread something just so I could say “yep, people are apparently all sociopaths.  Like, all of them.  Literally everyone is the worst.”  With that said, I still very much enjoyed it, and the author has considerable skill keeping the suspense going the whole time, to the extent that it’s very difficult to put this book down.  Block out the time and read it. Worth the time, for sure.   

Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
Read if – you’re a non-sci-fi person who wants to try sci-fi; you enjoy having feelings
Don’t read if – you’re not willing to have your life absolutely ruined by a book

Oh my God, read this book. It takes place in a relatively current England, and is in a sort of parallel world where clones are real, and they exist for the purpose of farming them for organs.  They do not live past young adulthood, and die (or “complete,” as the novel calls it) after a series of “donations.”  The novel is from the point of view of one of the clones, who is currently serving as a “carer,” or a clone whose job it is to calm her fellow clones before they donate.  She covers her life up to the current day.  The science fiction aspect of it is the clones, but it’s just straight literature after that: this is a novel about growing up when you don’t actually get a chance to grow up.

I’m going to warn you now that this is not a happy book.  I was a mess for about three days after reading it.  However, if you are willing to invest your time and emotions, it will tear your heart out in the best way, and you will be left thinking about the book for weeks after you put it down.  Honestly, it’s really NOT science fiction, it’s not science-y in the least, it is about love and people and how we value both.  Read it.

World War Z by Max Brooks
Read if: you like the concept of a collected oral history; you’re a zombie fan
Don’t read if: you really can’t get past the whole zombie thing; you can’t handle unfinished stories; you’re expecting it to be like the movie

Guys, I hate zombies.  Hate hate hate, will not watch things.  They terrify me enormously, and I don’t understand how people think they are cool (they’re your friends and family and they’re dead but also alive and they’re gross and they make scary noises and AHHH).

Keep that in mind when I say: I LOVED this book.  I’ve reread it twice.  It’s simply fascinating.  The author goes around interviewing survivors of the Zombie War from all walks of life and all parts of the world: doctors, soldiers, housewives who became soldiers, government representatives, even an astronaut.  He’s very good at crafting each person as an individual with a backstory and a unique voice, and he covers basically the entire world: China, Russia, India, Israel, South Africa and the States definitely get prominence, but he goes almost everywhere.  This feels at all times in the book like an event that really happened, and the author is fantastic about keeping his facts straight while also telling individual stories.  Yes, I was scared at times reading it, but it’s just SO GOOD that I kept going.

If you watched the movie and think you might want to pick this book up: they’re not the same at all.  I mean, still do it, but there’s no Brad Pitt and the zombies aren’t fast.  The one hangup critics have of this book is that each person gets like 10-15 pages max to tell their story, and for some of them, you really, really want more, but that’s it.  The book also states in its intro that “you can go to any library and read a comprehensive study of the Zombie War,” but obviously you can’t, and I really wish it existed because I got so curious about everything!  Oh well.  Read this anyway it’s the bestest and you know that’s the truth because I am a Wimpy McWimperson NoThankYouZombies-type person.

The MaddAddam books (3) by Margaret Atwood
Read if: you loved The Handmaid’s Tale, you like dystopias that feel like they could happen, you’re really into environmental advocacy versions of Catholic hymns (stick with me here)
Don’t read if: you need to not be sad at the end of these, you need to like all the male characters

Guys.  These books, I caaaaan’t.  So good.  There are three: Oryx and Crake, The Year of the Flood, and MaddAddam.  The first book starts off after some terrible event has left Snowman, our narrator, alone with some human-like creatures, thinking he’s the last of his kind.  He narrates his life up to that point, with a specific emphasis on his friend Crake.  Book two has two new narrators covering the same period of time while in an environmental religious fringe group, and book three uses one of those narrators to continue the story.

If you’ve read The Handmaid’s Tale, you know how good Atwood is at dystopias, or what she calls “speculative fiction.”  There’s a bit of sci-fi here, but her craft is to make this feel like it might/could/will happen.  For example, there are lots of weirdly named products and companies in this world (AnooYoo [“a new you”] is the name of a spa, for example), and at first I thought they were ridiculous and unrealistic…until I realized I order Frappuccinos and don’t think anything of it.  This stuff is real.  She does a good job giving her different characters unique voices, and even plays around with first and third person narration.

In case you haven’t noticed, I seem to like “cry forever after you finish this” as a book genre, and this is no exception: these are not happy books, but they make you think so hard you almost forget you’re sad.  I’d have to say I enjoyed the second and third books more than the first, and I think this is because Atwood (like many authors) writes characters of her own gender better, so you end up vaguely disgusted with Snowman at points.  If you can get past this, the series is just so well crafted I can’t recommend it highly enough.  The third book recently came out so go start and finish now and then talk to me when you do.

Winter of the World by Ken Follett
Read if: you like well-researched historical fiction; someone recommended Pillars of the Earth to you but you just didn’t care about that stupid church
Don’t read if: thousand-page monster books are not your deal; you need POCs in your history books; you don’t like switching narrators

This book is the second of a yet-uncompleted trilogy called The Century Trilogy, and it is written by the author of both Pillars of the Earth and World Without End.  All of these books are similar in structure: sprawling epics that cover real history through the eyes of some of the little people.  The first book in this trilogy is called Fall of Giants, and it starts, understandably, just at the turn of the 20th century.  The book has characters in Wales, England, Russia, Germany, and the United States, and the series has covered both world wars thus far.

I really, really like these books.  I truly enjoyed Follett’s Middle Ages historical fiction, and if you did as well, you will love these books.  For me, the medieval stuff was freaking fascinating, but I am a weird loser who liked hearing about the sinking of the White Ship and learning about the Black Death: in case you haven’t noticed I have a pattern of loving sad things with swords and poor hygiene. There are plenty of people who couldn’t get into it.  If you’re at all interested in the time periods he covers, and want to learn about the causes of wars outside of the acronyms we’re taught in high school history classes, get at these two: they’re SO good.  His descriptions of the Russian revolution and the Spanish Civil War are particularly heart-wrenching and great.

I will acknowledge that these are white people books, for sure.  There are certainly some people of color, especially in the second book, but none of his narrators are non-white.  Other than that, he does do an excellent job of allowing those without privilege (especially in their time periods) to tell their stories, including poor women, the disabled, single mothers, victims of abuse, gay men, and Jews.  This is not some “oh my gosh everything back then was just cuter and happier and better”: this is some serious, heavy, things-were-awful stuff.  He does switch narrators frequently, so you can get confused if you’re not keeping track of the characters, but to Follett’s credit, he doesn’t usually end on cliffhangers when he switches: it feels like the right time.  Just read these: they’ll make you learn and feel all the feelings at the same time.

If you have recommendations for me, do it up in the comments!

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I love “Love Actually,” but it does have its problems.

November 22, 2013

On this tenth anniversary of its release, let me say this: I unapologetically love “Love Actually.”  I watch it every year around Christmas, and usually hit some kind of weird patch in April or July where I must watch it and that happens.  I’m not proud of myself.  Joking aside, this movie is fabulous.  There’s a whole host of relationships that are discussed, it happens in the wonderful month leading up to Christmas, and everyone in this movie is attractive and if you disagree with me you’re wrong. Plus that little girl Joanna singing “All I Want for Christmas Is You” is literally everything I’ve ever wanted.

Much of the criticism you’ll see of this movie has to do with its more ridiculous elements, and there are certainly things that happen in this film that are more than a bit unbelievable.  No, the Prime Minister doesn’t look like that.  No, Colin Firth is not going to learn Portuguese and propose to you.  No, a kid can’t just run through an airport.  But you know what?  That stuff is GREAT.  It makes you feel warm inside!

Let Hugh Grant be the prime minister and dance to “Jump.”  Let Colin Firth somehow make Portuguese sound kind of attractive. Let a band pop up at the end of the wedding ceremony to play “All You Need Is Love.”  Let tiny Jojen Reed (sorry kid, I don’t actually know your name) run through the airport to his gorgeous girl without somehow getting tased and arrested.  I am 100% behind all of this ridiculousness.

What I’m not behind are the elements that are actually completely realistic, but hugely problematic.  Let’s break those down.

1. This movie fat-shames
This took me a long time to realize (i.e. I only figured it out like a year ago, and I’m mad at myself for taking that long), but there are two plot points that fat-shame characters in this film. Emma Thompson also at one point describes herself as “feeling fat” and “only fitting into clothes once worn by Pavarotti,” which is unfortunate, and could be one of the reasons Alan Rickman later cheats on her, but that moment is left out of this analysis, because she is the only person who comments on her weight.

The first is the most blatant, and involves the Portuguese maid Aurelia’s sister.  Aurelia hints at her sister’s size earlier in the film, refusing food and saying in subtitles “if you saw my sister you’d know why.”  THANKS CHICA. However, this is nothing compared to what happens when Colin Firth shows up (admittedly adorably) to propose to Aurelia.  When he asks Aurelia’s father for her hand, her sister is there instead, and her entire appearance is meant as a joke, as she is significantly larger than Aurelia is.  Their father even goes as far as to say she should marry Colin Firth even though she’s never met him (because OBVIOUSLY she won’t get a man otherwise!), and he rudely dismisses her later with “shut up, Miss Dunkin’ Donut 2003.”  The audience is meant to laugh here as well, and that is just all kinds of bullshit.  This scene might not be put into the film were it made now, ten years later, because I like to think that we’ve come a bit farther in our “not being giant assholes to people who look different from us,” but who knows, really.  Regardless, it’s not okay, and Aurelia’s sister has just as much a right to be respected and Firth’ed as Aurelia does.

The second is more subtle but no less awful.  Natalie, the assistant to Hugh Grant’s character of the Prime Minister, tells him that her boyfriend dumped her because “he said I was getting fat.” (It doesn’t matter, but this girl is of average size and I want her entire work wardrobe from the film like yesterday because she can WORK that pencil skirt. Unf.) Later, after several totally cute scenes of the two of them being cute, Hugh Grant mentions Natalie to his PR woman, and she responds “the chubby girl?”  Grant is awkward, and instead of being like “I’m the Prime Minister can u not with that shit” is all “oooooh wouldwecallherchubby?”  To which the woman responds “I think there’s a sizable ass there, yes, sir.  HUGE thighs.”  I hate everything.  Natalie’s fat-shaming bothers me more, actually, because it isn’t even a case of woman-on-woman competition for Grant’s affections, it’s just someone being subtly terrible and cruel in their descriptions.  Again, this is played for laughs.  Hugh Grant, you drove your country into a potential war with Bush-era ‘Murica by doing the most British speech ever on live TV and calling Billy Bob Thornton a bully and you can’t tell your staff to not fat-shame?

2. The cheating is all the women’s fault
This has three specific instances that I can think of.

The first plot point involves Alan Rickman and his secretary.  He’s clearly been married to Emma Thompson for a long time, and they have kids together, but his secretary makes it clear that she wants him.  This is obviously not okay, but the extent to which this movie makes her into a homewrecker is super over-the-top.  She dresses as a devil for their office’s holiday party complete with horns (really? really?).  Her flirting is over -the-top, with her spreading her legs at her desk and saying that the venue she found for the party is “full of dark corners for doing dark deeds.”  Alan Rickman, on the other hand, is portrayed as somehow like, tripping and falling into her bed, or something?  He just gets awkward when she flirts with him (instead of stating his discomfort, chastising her as is his right as her boss, or filing a complaint with HR), and keeps all of his communication innocent on the surface (asking her if she wants staplers or stationary for Christmas). We’re even shown that he gets Emma Thompson a Joni Mitchell CD because “see look, he still loves her, he’s still a good husband” and we’re treated to a view of Rickman’s secretary dressed all in red putting on a necklace he got for her. When called on it, he’s just like “I was a fool,” and looks sad, so we should feel bad?

Nope.  Nope nope nope.  It’s not okay that the secretary is going after someone who is attached, but what Alan Rickman does is like a jillion times worse.  Stop trying to make Devil Secretary Homewrecker happen.  It’s not going to happen. Both people deserve scorn here, but Rickman’s character deserves more.

The second plot point is Colin Firth’s character Jamie’s relationship at the beginning of the film.  His girlfriend cheats on him with his brother, and he comes back to check on her while she’s sick and he went to a wedding.  He discovers them, and her lines of dialogue are all sexually charged, while his brother’s are more like “derp derp heh heh sorry bro.”  This event is significantly less blatant than the first, and it is in fact the woman in the relationship who cheats this time, but still, we don’t ever address that Jamie’s brother cheated with his girlfriend and how that’s a huge betrayal.  It’s again portrayed as a woman being conniving and inherently ~*evil*~, while Jamie’s brother just derped his way into his brother’s girlfriend.  It reads very much like “lol, men are sooo dumb, right ladies?!” Gross.  They’re both terrible, because they’re both willingly ruining a relationship with Jamie.   

The third plot point is minor, but just as unacceptable.  At one point in the film, Billy Bob Thorton, whose character is literally every terrible American stereotype, has commented on Natalie’s appearance and hit on her (despite his being married).  Hugh Grant later leaves the room with Thornton and Natalie, and when he returns, it’s implied that Thornton has attempted to kiss her.  Grant later asks for Natalie to be transferred from her position, and while part of it is his attraction to her, he only does this after what is essentially her attempted assault, implying it’s somehow her fault.  Natalie’s Christmas card to him later apologizes “for the thing that happened,” and she apologizes in person as well.

Um, what??? None of this is her fault.  Grant treats her like she had cheated on him, which is ridiculous, since you have to both state your intentions and then get into a relationship before you can get cheated on.  You didn’t call “dibs,” Grant.  She’s a person, not a dinner roll.  Additionally, Thorton is a slimeball who clearly took advantage of “I’m the President I do what I want” to get closer to Natalie, and this is somehow her fault.  She was probably scared that she’d start a nuclear war if she hit him.  Stop being a punk, Hugh Grant.  

3. There’s one instance of truly unhealthy relationships and it’s treated as romantic

Guys, I have to say it: that sign thing with “to me, you are perfect” is actually the worst.

Let’s back up. Peter and Juliet, played by Chiwetel Ejiofor and Keira Knightley, have just gotten married, and Mark, Peter’s best friend, has apparently been distant and borderline rude to Juliet forever, in order to hide the fact that he’s in love with her.  Juliet has recently discovered this fact, because she requests to see his video of their wedding, which is exclusively shots of her, without Peter.  She responds that Mark “never talks to [her],” and he says “it’s a self-preservation thing, you see.”  This alone rubs me the wrong way: he was willing to be a complete douchebag to Juliet apparently forever to protect himself.  Yes, unrequited love is hard, but he’s never made his intentions clear!  This girl has clearly gone crazy trying to get Mark to like her, with no response.  Not cool, bro.

So, now that she knows, he shows up and basically proclaims his love to her in the form of cards, hiding all this information from his best friend.  She is complicit in this deception, telling her husband that Mark is carol singers.  After he explains his undying love and leaves, she runs down the street, stops him, and kisses him.  He walks away saying, “Enough. Enough now.”

Y’all, I’m sorry, but this is bullshit.  This is how affairs get started.  All aspects of this are incredibly selfish, and poor Peter is sitting up in his apartment with no idea that his wife and his best friend just kissed.  It’s not adorable, it’s cheating, and seeing as Mark goes with Peter and Juliet to the airport in the “one month from now” scene, it’s clearly not improved.  One of the cards Mark holds up states “without hope or agenda,” and I totally don’t buy that.  Of course he has an agenda.  I feel for him, really, I do, but he is being a terrible friend, and Juliet is being a terrible wife.  Yes, everyone wishes someone would show up to their door at Christmas and tell them they’re wonderful, but you should not hope it’s your husband’s best friend.  Ugh.

If you can get past all of these things (meaning registering that they’re terrible and moving on), this is still a sweet, lovely, feel-good movie.  I’ve been able to do that, and I still love this movie; I may go watch it right now. Let’s go get the shit kicked out of us by love.

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The enemy’s gate is down – review of Ender’s Game

November 11, 2013

It unfortunately took me a full week after it was released to see Ender’s Game.  I originally debated bringing a notebook (not joking) so I could write down everything, but I forgot, so if I mess up a line or two, I apologize.  And for the record, yes, I know Orson Scott Card is terrible, no I don’t excuse his behavior, yes I realize I’m supporting him by attending his movie, yes I am conflicted about it.  I chose to go see it to support the others who worked on the film, to be able to accurately criticize the film, and because the film itself shows none of the prejudices Card holds.  I agree, it’s still not okay, but I went.

The breakdown for me was things they did like the book and correctly, things they changed but I’m okay with, and things they changed that I’m NOT okay with.  Spoilers for the movie, the book, and minor ones for the whole series, plus mentions of Ender’s Shadow.  I mean…don’t read this if you haven’t seen the movie or read the books?  Cool.  Let’s do this.

Things they did like the book/correctly

1. The Battle Room
Oh my goodness, it looked SO GOOD.  I don’t know how exactly they filmed it, but the zero gravity was incredibly realistic.  It wasn’t exactly what I had pictured while reading the books, but it was visually stunning.  I’d also say the set development, from Battle School to the Formics’ ships to the screens on which the Command School battles took place, all looked amazing, and those who created them should be commended.

2. The final battle
Not exactly how I pictured it (I don’t think they needed the dramatic music behind Ender giving orders), but also really, really well done.  The trust the other kids have in Ender even though he’s about to command them to do the unthinkable is pictured very well.  When Graff reveals that it was all real, Ender’s dialogue is not exactly as it was in the book, but the whole spirit of the thing is absolutely perfect: your heart hurts for the kids, and Ender’s line about “it’s HOW we win that’s important” is A+.

3. Mazer Rackham
Ben Kingsley is, as always, perfection.  Relatively minor role but he kills it.  And although it’s sad to say that I need to give credit for NOT whitewashing a character, it is due here: I’m very happy they allowed Rackham to keep the Maori tattoos.
 
Things they changed but I’m okay with it
Sidenote: if you’re mad that they made Anderson a black woman, you’re silly/deal with it.

1. The ages of the kids 
Ender is six when he arrives at Battle School.  Asa Butterfield, the actor who played Ender, was absolutely fantastic and should win all the awards, but he is just so old.  Bean looks old.  Petra looks old.  Bernard, especially, looks old.  However, I know that to cast the film accurately you’d have to find child geniuses who are also actors.  Therefore, I understand changes had to be made, and Asa was 100% the right choice.  My boyfriend has not read the books, and when he heard that the kids are older in the movie than they are in the book, he responded with “that doesn’t make it any better.”  He’s exactly right: the fact that the children are 12-13 as opposed to 8 doesn’t improve the fact that they are soldiers being trained to kill. 

2. Ender’s fight with Bonzo
For those who haven’t read the book, the fight is significantly more awful: Ender strikes upward on Bonzo’s face at nose level, and it is later explained that he fractured Bonzo’s skull and drove it into his brain.  He’s absolutely killed, and Graff attempts to hide this fact from Ender, but he obviously figures it out.  The movie made it look like more of an accident that Ender really hurts this kid, and it’s not clear that he’s killed.  However, this is a PG-13 movie, and I understand that watching a child destroy the face of another child would be a tough sell.  The way it was done in the film was still dramatic enough, and Ender still feels the pain from his actions, so I’m fine with this.

3. The explanations the adults hand to Ender
I’m still not sure if this one belongs in this category or the third one.  Let me explain a bit more.  Some of the things Ender figures out on his own (that Graff is making him a target during the launch, that his Dragon army is made up of misfits) are simply handed to him by Graff rather than Ender figuring them out on his own.  I’m not thrilled with the way that happens, because a huge part of Ender’s skill is his ability to understand just how the adults are trying to screw with him, but since they were using voiceovers so sparingly and you can’t be inside his head like in the novel, I get that they had to feed this info to the audience somehow.  Maybe it could have been done better, but it didn’t wreck anything so it can stay.

Things they changed and I’m not okay with it

1. Leaving out Valentine and Peter’s storyline
This one is my big annoyance.  The way that two teenagers essentially take over the political system of Earth through philosophy and the internet was one of the coolest parts of the book, and it’s totally ignored.  I understand that they had a limited time in which to tell a story, but Valentine was turned into this sad, sobbing Ender-helper instead of the brilliant, sympathetic, and complicated character she is.  Frankly, I hated her scene with Ender on the lake, when in the book, it was my favorite.  Peter is there as well just to hit Ender once and then we basically don’t hear from him.  It’s also implied at the end of the film that Ender is going to travel the universe with the hive queen, but without Valentine.

The part that was most difficult for me with this is seeing Valentine and Peter used in the mind game and barely seeing them otherwise.  Those scenes were very intense for me in the books but barely had an impact in the film, because we know very little about Ender’s siblings. (This is similar to the emotion, or lack thereof, that I feel for Prim in The Hunger Games.) I get that the moviemakers decided this was Ender’s story, but I am really disappointed to see that they decided Peter and especially Valentine were expendable.  They’re straight up not.  

2. Making Bean kind of annoying
No mention of any of the Ender’s Shadow series whatsoever.  Bean makes a “your mom” joke.  Ender and Bean are Launchies at the same time, which throws off the whole power dynamic.  Bean offers up the fact that he grew up on the streets in the first ten seconds of meeting Ender.  This one might just be me, but I didn’t “buy” Bean.  He felt like a whole different character.   The actor playing him did just fine with the awful lines they gave him, but I kind of wanted to drop kick him by the end of the movie.

3. The training leading up to the final battle
Final battle was done exceptionally well, but I’m not thrilled with the way they led the audience in.  First, Ender fails a mission, which for me was like “um you’re joking right.”  I know it’s hard to show “we won but barely” on-screen, but Ender doesn’t fail missions; that’s kind of the point.  Also, at the last battle, all of the kids including Ender looked remarkably…bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, as it were.  They’re supposed to be exhausted.  Petra’s supposed to crash, along with several others on his team.  A three minute montage of their many battles and lack of sleep would have done the trick.

Any other thoughts?  Anyone think it was terrible? Amazing?  I’d love to hear about it!    

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While you’re waiting for The Winds of Winter

October 31, 2013

Alliteration!  Fun times!  I’m distracting you with exclamation points to ignore the sadness that creeps up when you think too hard about the fact that George R R Martin may not be done with book 6 until 2017!  We laugh to keep from crying!

Okay, but seriously, there are other books out there, and while you’re not-so-patiently waiting for the next book, here are some in-genre suggestions for you.

The Mistborn trilogy by Brandon Sanderson
-Read if: you like really cool original magic systems, and you like to fear for your characters
-Don’t read if: you absolutely must have sex scenes in your fantasy novels; you don’t do well with dystopias

I really can’t recommend these books highly enough.  Brandon Sanderson may be most well-known for finishing The Wheel of Time after Robert Jordan’s death (confession time: I’ve only read the first two of that series and that was a while ago, I promise to go back and read them plz don’t kill me), but truly should be more famous for his own original works.  He has a standalone novel called Elantris, and has started his own epic series with The Way of Kings, and a bunch more for younger readers, but this trilogy is about as good as it comes.  In this world, a long way back, there was a hero and a great evil…and the hero lost, leaving a ruined world.  The world has been split into nobles and commoners, and the main character of the first novel is a 16 year old commoner girl named Vin.  The magic, called Allomancy, is metal-based, and characters “burn” different metals to enhance their own abilities (you swallow and “burn” pewter to enhance your physical strength, for example.)  Sanderson’s world-building is so, so good at the magical level, and once you reach the end of the series, you realize just how well he had to plot out the three books.

The relationships, both friendship and romantic, are strong enough to make you cry (I did!), but if you absolutely must have some kind of serious sexual tension; sorry, it’s just not here.  The books are plenty R-rated when it comes to sex (castration, commoners used as sex slaves for nobles, etc.), but no one ever has it. Also the world can get crazy depressing at times (the commoners are basically slaves! wars! sacrifices! parents being the worst! main characters can just die!), which fits because it’s a dystopia, but if you’re not sold on a world where you literally have to every so often shake the ash off of things, and plants are just a dull brown, and your favorite characters can just freaking die, maybe don’t pick these up.  But do it anyway because they’re great and I said so. 

The Kingkiller Chronicle books by Patrick Rothfuss (trilogy, 2 of 3 are published)
-Read if: you like amazing first-person narration and a flawed hero; you like music; you like school stories
-Don’t read if: you’re impatient (author is on Martin’s level at speed), you need a female narrator

Read these books now.  Just do it.  Your life will be enhanced.  They are the story of Kvothe, a man who is known as a hero in his world, but he’s the one telling the story.  A well-known writer finds him hiding away running an inn, and Kvothe decides to tell his story and clear up all the inaccuracies to the legend.  He’s brilliant and flawed, and you totally buy him as a Famous Hero and also as a stupid teenage boy (especially in his interactions with women).  He’s at a university for much of the books, learning languages and science and magic, and the magic is totally believable, mostly because it has so many limits and you need to work at it.  They have final exams.  It’s great.  Additionally, Kvothe is a trouper and plays the lute, and Rothfuss’ descriptions of what music can do are just made of truth and might make you cry.  Rothfuss is simply an amazing writer and storyteller, and…just pick up the first book, The Name of the Wind. Just do it.

There’s definitely quite a bit of downtime in between books, so if you don’t do well starting in on unfinished series, this one may kill you.  I’ve been dying for several years now; I named one of my online accounts “Kvothe” in a fit of sadness and couldn’t remember that I had done so when I was trying to log back in.  Additionally, there is a decent number of women in these books (varied, real women), but it is for sure about the men.  It can also be frustrating when it seems like literally every woman in these books wants a piece of Kvothe, even when he’s a 15-year-old ginger punk.  I am still trying to figure out if the author is doing this on purpose (in a “teenage boys are sometimes dumb and don’t know how to Woman” way), and it can get very eye-roll-inducing, but the ladies are still really cool.  Just…please read.  The writing is literally the best I’ve seen in this genre, and I need more people to talk to about these books.

Literally everything in the Tortall universe by Tamora Pierce (three quartets, one duology, one diary-form trilogy)
-Read if: you are or ever were a teenage girl; you love animals
-Don’t read if: you absolutely can’t stand a female narrator (AKA you’re a chump), you hate shorter books

Duuuuude.  Read her stuff.  I don’t care that it’s technically young adult fiction, just do it.  This lady is the coolest and has been writing forever, and her world-building is crazy good.  Each quartet has a different main character/narrator, and all of them are awesome in different ways.  (Kel’s my favorite, if you were wondering.)  Pierce is also a huge animal lover, and it comes across in her books.  All her heroines have super awesome animals (dogs, cats, sparrows, a baby dragon!) that are part pet, part friend, and part kickass warrior.

Her books are on the shorter side: no thousand-page epics here, as they’re written for teens.  And I really wish there were more guys reading these books: Pierce suffers from the whole “books about boys are for boys and girls, but books about girls are ONLY for girls” thing.  But seriously, if you’re going to make the argument that you “can’t relate” to a young woman’s story about becoming a knight simply because she is a girl, I will hunt you down and force-feed you these books.  There’s no excuse, bros.  Do it now.

The Sword of Truth books by Terry Goodkind (finished series of 11 books with a couple more written after with the same characters)
-Read if: you like high fantasy epic tropes with some serious bad guys
-Don’t read if: you can’t handle a healthy dose of Objectivism with your high fantasy; you want to actually fear for the main character

All the tropes are here: common hero told he’s special, wizard advisor, cool sword, learns things along the journey.  Richard Cypher is our hero here, and he’s fighting against a world that is falling apart due to the actions of a ton of really, really bad dudes.  He’s collects helpers along the way, who are actually all pretty interesting and diverse characters, including lots of women (and a dragon, of course).  The magic and history of the world is pretty cool, and for the bloodthirsty among you, there’s plenty of battles to keep you busy.  And possibly grossed out.  Goodkind does not skimp on the blood and pain, and the baddies are real bad.  Other than the hero and the baddies, the other characters serve as pretty decent companions and foils to our hero: some bad guys are redeemed, and good guys are allowed to disagree with our hero.

That being said: these are for fun.  Don’t think too hard.  The author is a big-time libertarian/Objectivist, but 9 times out of 10 the references don’t show up too obviously and you won’t notice it. The 10th time, it’s so heavy-handed that it’s funny.  However, if it’s gonna bug you, maybe don’t pick up this series (or skip Faith of the Fallen, which is the most blatant by far).  And if you’re neck-deep in GRRM-style death where NO ONE IS SAFE, this series may bug you, because your faves are special and safe because they’re the faves.  You can have a drinking game for every time someone said “you’re a special person, Richard Cypher” and its variations.  If 11 seems too daunting, read the first four and the last three, and Pillars of Creation: the first four are solid, plot-wise, the last three are one story set at breakneck, fascinating pace, and Pillars gives you a new main character (Richard’s barely in this one).      

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms or probably anything else by N.K. Jemesin (trilogy, others)
-Read if: you like reading books both about and by women of color; fallen gods are fascinating
-Don’t read if: you need me to tell you how they end because I haven’t read the third one yet (I’m sorry), you thrive on descriptive detail and need a world to be mapped out completely

This first book is so, so good I can’t even…I just…yeah.  Please read it.  The world that’s created has three gods in it, but they had a war many many years ago, and one was victorious, one died…and one is imprisoned by the ruling family and used as sort of a pet.  Conflict ready, set, go! The books have different narrators (I almost don’t want to tell you that they’re all women but they are), but they all deal with the concept of gods who are no longer as powerful as they are.  The second book’s main character, Oree, is also blind, and while I can’t speak to how well the author described what it is like to be blind, the fact that she made a female POC with a disability her main character while not letting those things BE the plot speaks to just how cool this author is.  Her prose is outstanding; I don’t know how she does it, but every paragraph feels like good poetry.

I’ve only just finished book two of the three, and apparently the plotting is not as great as in the first two, which makes me sad, but even if you’re not going to finish the series, please read book one.  Additionally, while the author does build a substantial history for her characters’ current status, you’re left feeling that there’s so much more to explore in this world (it is called the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms, after all).  You’ll have a vague fuzzy feeling in your head while reading because the author will sometimes leave sensory descriptions out in favor of describing feelings. This does not detract from the story and is simply a stylistic choice, but if you really like to hear about all the details (or you’re on a Martin hook and need names for literally. every. person. ever.) it may bother you.  Just support this lady.  We need another Octavia Butler; we need like a million of them.

If you have any suggestions for ME in-genre, please leave them!  I’m always looking for new fantasy to pick up.

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Why?! : sexy Halloween costumes, part 2

October 27, 2013

Did this one a few years back, but of course, they still exist, and they are sillier than ever.  Also, friendly reminder to my fellow white people: don’t dress up as a person of color this Halloween or ever.  No geishas, no Gandhis, no blackface.  Got it? Sweet. Moving on.

Here’s the first one: “sexy Katniss.”

Seriously not even all that offensive, but what’s with the pose?  “Oh, I always pose seductively when trying to kill other teenagers and carry medicine to cure blood poisoning.”  Fun fact SHE’S 16.  Also note the flip flops.  Very Katniss.

Next, we have “sexy Mario,” which the company names “Heroic Maria.”

Go home, Spirit Halloween, you’re drunk.

Complete with mustache necklace and guarantee that only the shittiest of pick-up lines with be thrown at you all night.

Oh, look, Sexy Avatar!  Neytiri, or whatever, those blue people.

“Oh, what are you supposed to be?”
“Culturally insignificant as of at least 2 years ago.  How about you?”

Now, we’ve got a few that are basically like “sexually immature characters?  What? Big words hurt no unnerstan give us moniez cuz be sexxi”

That, ladies and gents, is a sexy Care Bear.  I can’t.

Next, sexy Jessie from Toy Story, who originally did not wear a skirt.

Excuse me while I paraphrase Woody, but “SHE. IS. A. TOY.”  In a trilogy of movies made for CHILDREN.  LEAVE BRITNEY ALOOOONE

Here’s “Sassy” (no, really, that’s what they called it) Pink Ranger.

I don’t remember the Pink Ranger looking like a disco ball and the cover of Fifty Shades Darker had a baby.

Sexy lawn gnome.  No, that’s cool and relevant and totally hot, keep it up.

And I’m just gonna leave this one here, mostly because I can’t stop laughing. (It’s sexy Darth Vader.)

I’d like to round up the last of the sexy Halloween costumes with the ones that make me think “what on Earth happened in the marketing meeting where costumes got picked?”

Here we have “Sexy A Clockwork Orange.”

No, I’m sure this was on Kubrick’s drawing board for the film.  A+, keep it up, droog.

And for your nightmare-having pleasure, “Sexy Silence of the Lambs.”

That’s supposed to be a straight-jacket-esque dress.  I am all kinds of offended and disgusted.

Have you seen worse?  Any self-made ones?  Please share!  Happy Halloweeeeeeeen

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Sexism in Game of Thrones

October 4, 2013

Let me start: yes, I’m a huge fan of both the books and the show.  I’m not sure there’s anything that would make me stop watching (obviously killing everyone doesn’t stop me!), and consuming the story in both forms has been super awesome in general thus far.  But I wish to make this clear: you can be a fan of something and still want to criticize its problems.

I titled this post with “Game of Thrones” because I’ll be addressing the show specifically, and not really A Song of Ice and Fire.  George R. R. Martin has done a pretty awesome job at including real, diverse women in his books.  They get to narrate their own chapters.  They are not stereotypes.  They get to fight their battles different ways, both stabby and sneaky.  They get to have feelings.  Martin was once asked why he writes women so well, and replied, “you know, I’ve always considered women to be people.”  This man pretty much gets it as much as you can.  Yes, he’s writing in a sexist world, but he doesn’t act like it’s okay, at all.  The only thing I can fault him for is sometimes making his female characters SUPER aware of their own body parts, particularly breasts, but…eh.  He’s a dude.  Maybe he doesn’t know, and I really can’t be like “ahhh how dare you” over something so minor, especially when it’s kind of funny to notice those moments.  Any real injuries women suffer in his books are the result of the world they are in, and not because he’s a sexist jerk.

David Benioff and Ben Weiss, the show’s co-creators probably are.  Or if they’re not, they’re playing sexist jerks quite well with their show’s decision making.

Let’s do this.  Spoiler alert for everything that’s been in the show thus far: if you’ve watched through Season 3 you are safe.

1. Sexposition
Just…seriously.  They made up a word due to the gratuitous nudity in this show.  To summarize: much of the first season had significant plot points discussed while characters (nearly always women, frequently unnamed) were naked and/or simulating sex acts in the background.  The creators of the show have defended the practice, stating that there is plenty of sex in the books, but this is a weak defense that barely gets to the heart of the problem.  [I’ll be using the word “whores” here because it’s what’s used in the show, but I am fully aware that it’s not the preferred term for anyone who does sex work!]  The background whores are rarely given a name, and the one character who is, Ros, is killed horribly in season three simply to show the viewers, again, that Joffrey is awful.  (Also she shares some traits with two other brothel workers who happen to be women of color, but a racism analysis would need a whole post…not today).  Nearly all of these scenes are not, in fact, in the books: sex scenes in the books are between named characters.

This concept not only insults the women characters within the story, but the audience as well.  There is very little sexualized male nudity, contributing to the idea that only straight men watch this show.  It insults the female viewers, and also insults anyone who is trying to pay attention: David Benioff has said he pays less attention to plot when there’s background nudity , so why put it in?  You don’t get a pass for throwing in tons of naked whores by shouting “but there’s sex IN THE BOOKS!”  Women are not decoration in these novels, but the show has allowed them to be.

2. “Yara” Greyjoy
Tiny point, but still: someone on the executive ladder made the decision that Asha Greyjoy, the daughter of Balon Greyjoy and all-around pirate-y killer, needed to be known as “Yara” in the show, because there was already a female character named Osha.  Again, insulting the audience, and again, sexist as hell: we don’t care about the different women enough to remember they have different names.  We can have Robb Stark and Robert Baratheon, Tywin and Tyrion Lannister, Jory (Ned’s man) and Jorah Mormont, but they’re men and therefore important, so we’ll remember them.

3. Talisa Maegyr
(Seriously spoilers here, don’t read if you haven’t watched all of Season 3)
Robb’s wife in the show is different enough a character from his wife in the books that they needed to rename her.  Jeyne Westerling is her name in the books, and she’s barely seen; young girl, very minor noble family, nice enough.  The show decided since everyone LOVES Robb, he deserves a legit love story…?  Anyway, Talisa is a compilation of every terrible “I’m not like other girls!” trope there is.  She’s a nurse, and scolds Robb the first time they meet for causing pain and suffering, because she’s…sassy?  (For those of you paying attention, Robb is a king who could easily have her killed.)  She talks about coming from Volantis, a slave-holding nation, and magically managed to arrive in Westeros to treat battlefield victims, despite giving no clear way to have traveled on her own.  Traveling on your own as a woman is deadly in this world, and acting like Talisa’s so awesome she got here safely is some super bullshit.  Also if there are slaves in your home country clearly there’s some stuff you can fix there.   She becomes pregnant with Robb’s child, and then is one of the first killed in the Red Wedding by being stabbed in the stomach, right after she says the baby is gonna be “little Ned Stark.”  (Robb’s book wife gets to live through the Red Wedding because book Robb is smart enough to leave her at home when going to meet with the family with which he broke a pretty crucial alliance.  TV Robb is like #yolo.)

The show basically set up this awful stereotype as a support to a male character, got her pregnant, and then killed her terribly in a way that is really sad only because there was almost a baby Ned Stark.  You don’t get to subvert all the carefully crafted world-building and stereotype avoiding Martin did the whole time simply because you decide that a well-liked male character (who isn’t even a POV character in the books) deserves a better love story.

4. Hating on the ladies who don’t fight
This particularly applies to Sansa and Cersei, who are contrasted to their “cooler” siblings Arya and Jaime all. the. time.  Arya’s the best, clearly, and the writers decided to make that obvious by giving her the line “most girls are idiots” in the second season.  She’s clearly much cooler than her sister because she does male things like stabbing people.  Sansa is apparently SUPER LAAAAME in contrast because she tries to not get killed by people who hate her by being super polite and careful and hiding her fear.  She’s 13 years old and was sheltered and groomed to be a nobleman’s wife, but because she’s not stabbing people in the neck like her cooler little sister, she sucks.  This one’s partially on the show’s fandom, but it’s interesting that the book fans don’t show this opinion nearly as much.

Cersei and Jaime, on the other hand (heh-heh, hand, sorry Jaimes), are contrasted in that “ugh I hate Cersei she’s evil and ewww she had kids with her brother” while Jaime is **sooo cOmpLIcATeD** or something.  Remember those incest kids?  Jaime helped.  Also Jaime pushed Bran out a window, remember?  But Jaime gets his (honestly totally amazing) detailed speech to Brienne on how he killed the Mad King and arguably saved King’s Landing, while Cersei gets snarky one-liners to Margaery about strangling her and like a thousand scenes of her drinking wine. (Tyrion’s supposed to be the drunk one in this family.) They are equally difficult and complicated characters and the show has portrayed them as “oh poor Jaime” and “let’s all call Cersei a c***.” Just because a Game of Thrones lady doesn’t hold a sharp edge doesn’t mean she’s not worthwhile.

5. Catelyn
Which leads me to Catelyn, of course.  Of all the women in the books thus far, the show has done the most damage to Catelyn.  She’s a POV character, and the show takes that and gives it to Robb.  She had 40-something lines in Season 3, most of which were a ridiculous speech about “if I had only loved Jon Snow all of this would not have happened.” (Robb, a non-POV book character, gets 92 lines.)  The show gives Robb a line about putting her in a “cell” after she releases Jaime in an attempt to save her daughters.  The entirety of the third season is basically Robb being like “Mooom just let me do what I WANT JEEZ” and Catelyn either not talking or brushed to the side as meddling and irrelevant.  Throughout the whole series, she’s basically right all the time: Ned going to King’s Landing is bad, Robb betraying the Freys is bad, a Lannister tried to have Bran killed, chopping off Rickard Karstark’s head is probs a bad call, etc. etc.  She’s powerful without swinging a sword, and once again, the show steals all of that power because she’s annoying their precious and all-mighty Robb.  Her chapters leading up to the Red Wedding are legit like “ROBB GET GUEST RIGHT DO IT” because she knows he screwed up big time.  She is a smart lady who gets how the game is played (much better than her husband did, for the record), and they take that away from her by losing all her narration and motivation and making her this overbearing mother.  Instead of observing her thoughts as we get to in the book, we get to watch her make judgey faces at Talisa and weave a prayer wheel(?) 

I realize a show can’t be a book series, and I will love these books forever, I really hope next season allows women to break out of the three categories of “nameless whore,” “annoying girl,” and “cool chick with sword.”  Martin has made sure none of his women are stereotypes, but the show, at this point, seems dedicated to keeping them running.