I enjoyed a bit of a holiday weekend. I still worked on Monday, but I didn’t keep to my normal schedule or expectations. But today it’s on and all-in. I’m still on an earlier schedule, which means that today I’m more or less on my usual “ideal” routine, except I fit in a half-hour walk and am still slightly ahead of where I typically would hope to be at this time of the morning. Supposedly, exercise makes you more creative. We shall see how that goes this afternoon. Yesterday I got the first two chapters of that novel revised. There’s some tweaking to be done, but otherwise I think it’s going well.
Tonight is the finale of that Victorian Slum House show on PBS, and it turns out that they did address the issues of alcohol and sanitation in the 1890s episode. They kind of skimmed past alcohol, just mentioning that there were some people who spent up to a fifth of their family income on alcohol and that there were a lot of temperance movements, but they didn’t make any of the participants spend their rent money on gin to show the effects on the family, and they didn’t get into the fact that a lot of the temperance movements weren’t so much about sobriety and morality as they were a movement against domestic violence. That’s why these movements were driven by women — women and children were getting abused when men came home drunk or when men wanted more money for alcohol and their wives hid it so they could pay the rent or buy food.
They addressed sanitation when they got into the various reform movements that came along in the 1890s and how there were efforts to inspect the slums for cleanliness. Some of the participants got to visit a public bath house — what’s now a public swimming pool. From some of the other research I’ve done, those public pools weren’t really about cleanliness — you had to wash before getting in, and that was where the “bathing” part came in — but rather about health. There was a belief that there were health benefits to soaking in water. Then they figured out that it was also fun, and that’s where we got swimming pools. These participants talked about this being the first time in weeks they really felt clean, so I guess they weren’t getting modern showers offscreen.
Tonight, they’ll be moving into the turn of the century and the end of the Victorian era and see how our various families ended up.
And, no, this isn’t research for the Rebels series, though it’s interesting to compare London to New York of that timeframe. I have something else in mind that’s more Dickensian, but secondary world, so it is London-like but not actually London.
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TV. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 30, 2017
Friday, May 26, 2017
Victorian Slum Life
I feel like I’m really back in the swing of things, after doing two full days of work-related stuff. Yesterday I finished a draft of a novella that’s going to need a bit more work, but at least I reached an end point. I also figured out the problem I was having with a short story I wrote a couple of years ago. I like the voice in the story, and there’s some good stuff there, but it seems to jump too abruptly to its ending, and I have now figured out what to add to make the ending fit better. Then I can start submitting it and see what I can do with it.
I spent most of the evening doing research for a future project. There’s been an educational reality series on PBS that fits with something I’ve been researching — Victorian Slum House. They re-created an East End slum tenement and have a group of people living there to experience life in that era. Most of them are participating because they had ancestors who lived in that area in that time, and they wanted to learn what their ancestors experienced. It’s really sweet that there’s one family in which it was the grandmother who wanted to see how her grandfather grew up, and her granddaughters eagerly participated because they knew it was important to their Gran. One man in the group is a tailor in real life, making bespoke suits in London, so he’s the resident skilled laborer, and the rest have to kind of make do. Each family is assigned a room or rooms in the house and a profession/backstory, and then they have to figure out how to make enough money to pay the rent and buy food. They’ve converted the prices from that era to modern money, so that we have more of a perspective (and that helps when the people who have to sell things go into the market to sell to modern Londoners). Each episode covers a particular decade, and the producers change the circumstances each week to show how the world changed — technology, the economic conditions, laws, mix of newcomers, etc.
They start in the 1860s and go to the 1890s, and I just have one more episode to go. I’ve been reading on life in that era, so seeing it play out and affect real people is fascinating. The attitude toward the poor in that time was absolutely horrendous, especially since it supposedly came out of their interpretation of Christianity (some of it is eerily familiar for our time). There was so little opportunity, and there was so much exploitation of vulnerable people.
It is rather sanitized. They show that there’s a communal privy in the courtyard, but otherwise they don’t even mention bathrooms or sanitation, so you have to wonder if the participants really had to use that privy or if they had a regular bathroom anywhere nearby. There are likely health and safety rules governing that sort of thing. Everyone looks pretty clean, and some of the women are obviously wearing makeup (and not just “being on TV” makeup), but they don’t address the issue of bathing. The issue of alcohol hasn’t come up at all, and that was a major problem in slums. They haven’t diverted a man on his way home from a day’s work and made him spend all his wages in the pub on gin. So, it doesn’t quite work as true research other than getting a generalized feel for re-creating a similar world in a fantasy novel.
What I have found interesting is the dynamics among these people. Those teenaged granddaughters are so enthusiastic even though it’s their grandmother’s deal. They dive right into all the work, whether it’s hauling baskets of watercress to the market to sell, making paper flowers, or even telling jokes to people in the street in hopes of earning a penny or two. The ones who had ancestors living that life are in awe of how strong they had to be, and there’s a touching scene of a woman finding the graves of her great aunt and uncle who died in infancy. The whole group has come together as a community, trying to help each other even though they have the tough dilemma of trying to make it, themselves. The shopkeepers don’t want the children to starve, but they won’t be able to pay their own rent if their customers don’t pay their debts. There was one family, a single mother and her kids, who really weren’t coping well, and the others did their best to help them, bringing them in on their piecework enterprises so they’d have some money, but they still didn’t quite get into the spirit of it. The others were all working hard, getting up early and staying up late to work, and this family would sleep late before finally joining in on the work, and then would go to bed early. They ended up leaving, sneaking out during the night — they were used as an example of what some people did when they couldn’t pay the rent and were in debt to the shopkeeper, but they didn’t show up in the following episodes, so I’m guessing that family just left the show.
The whole series is available to watch online at the PBS website. I’m not normally a fan of reality TV and the “let’s watch ordinary people try to do this thing” sort of show, but this is cooperative and educational rather than competitive. They bring in historians to talk to the participants about what the era was like and what was happening.
I spent most of the evening doing research for a future project. There’s been an educational reality series on PBS that fits with something I’ve been researching — Victorian Slum House. They re-created an East End slum tenement and have a group of people living there to experience life in that era. Most of them are participating because they had ancestors who lived in that area in that time, and they wanted to learn what their ancestors experienced. It’s really sweet that there’s one family in which it was the grandmother who wanted to see how her grandfather grew up, and her granddaughters eagerly participated because they knew it was important to their Gran. One man in the group is a tailor in real life, making bespoke suits in London, so he’s the resident skilled laborer, and the rest have to kind of make do. Each family is assigned a room or rooms in the house and a profession/backstory, and then they have to figure out how to make enough money to pay the rent and buy food. They’ve converted the prices from that era to modern money, so that we have more of a perspective (and that helps when the people who have to sell things go into the market to sell to modern Londoners). Each episode covers a particular decade, and the producers change the circumstances each week to show how the world changed — technology, the economic conditions, laws, mix of newcomers, etc.
They start in the 1860s and go to the 1890s, and I just have one more episode to go. I’ve been reading on life in that era, so seeing it play out and affect real people is fascinating. The attitude toward the poor in that time was absolutely horrendous, especially since it supposedly came out of their interpretation of Christianity (some of it is eerily familiar for our time). There was so little opportunity, and there was so much exploitation of vulnerable people.
It is rather sanitized. They show that there’s a communal privy in the courtyard, but otherwise they don’t even mention bathrooms or sanitation, so you have to wonder if the participants really had to use that privy or if they had a regular bathroom anywhere nearby. There are likely health and safety rules governing that sort of thing. Everyone looks pretty clean, and some of the women are obviously wearing makeup (and not just “being on TV” makeup), but they don’t address the issue of bathing. The issue of alcohol hasn’t come up at all, and that was a major problem in slums. They haven’t diverted a man on his way home from a day’s work and made him spend all his wages in the pub on gin. So, it doesn’t quite work as true research other than getting a generalized feel for re-creating a similar world in a fantasy novel.
What I have found interesting is the dynamics among these people. Those teenaged granddaughters are so enthusiastic even though it’s their grandmother’s deal. They dive right into all the work, whether it’s hauling baskets of watercress to the market to sell, making paper flowers, or even telling jokes to people in the street in hopes of earning a penny or two. The ones who had ancestors living that life are in awe of how strong they had to be, and there’s a touching scene of a woman finding the graves of her great aunt and uncle who died in infancy. The whole group has come together as a community, trying to help each other even though they have the tough dilemma of trying to make it, themselves. The shopkeepers don’t want the children to starve, but they won’t be able to pay their own rent if their customers don’t pay their debts. There was one family, a single mother and her kids, who really weren’t coping well, and the others did their best to help them, bringing them in on their piecework enterprises so they’d have some money, but they still didn’t quite get into the spirit of it. The others were all working hard, getting up early and staying up late to work, and this family would sleep late before finally joining in on the work, and then would go to bed early. They ended up leaving, sneaking out during the night — they were used as an example of what some people did when they couldn’t pay the rent and were in debt to the shopkeeper, but they didn’t show up in the following episodes, so I’m guessing that family just left the show.
The whole series is available to watch online at the PBS website. I’m not normally a fan of reality TV and the “let’s watch ordinary people try to do this thing” sort of show, but this is cooperative and educational rather than competitive. They bring in historians to talk to the participants about what the era was like and what was happening.
Monday, May 15, 2017
Rewriting History
It’s off to the Nebula conference week, and I have a hefty to-do list. I was supposed to do more of it over the weekend, but I got wild and crazy and decided to have a weekend. Plus, there was this knitting problem I had to fix. But now I have a ton to get done in the next couple of days. Eeep!
Anyway, since I posted about the cancellation of Timeless on Friday, the network changed its mind and there will be a season two. It will be a shorter season and will likely run during the summer. Not this summer, but the next one. They had fun with the way they announced this, framing it like the Time Team had gone back in time to change the network’s mind and rewrite history. There was even a video one of the cast members did in character, in which he acted like they’d just come back from the mission and were reporting their success. There’s been some talk about treating this like a family show (with somewhat educational content). They put the first season on in the late slot, but it’s pretty squeaky clean and involves the characters meeting with interesting historical figures. It’s perfect for an early evening, watch with the whole family thing (Mark Hamill even mentioned that his family has been watching it together in an interview that was in Parade this weekend).
Meanwhile, the season finale of Once Upon a Time falls into the “don’t get me started” category because they set up some potentially cool stuff, and then didn’t use any of it. Red herrings are one thing, but devoting most of an hour to characters going after a goal and then that goal not actually meaning anything is another thing entirely. I think the main problem with these writers is that the only story element they really value is surprise. If you see something coming enough to anticipate it, they think they can’t do that thing because it has to be a surprise. So they go off in another direction with no setup, but then they don’t even come up with a good reason behind what they did set up. And I spend a lot of time yelling at the TV and stress knitting. But I learn a lot about how not to write.
And now I have a busy day of doing laundry, going to the library, writing a presentation, and cleaning house ahead of me.
Anyway, since I posted about the cancellation of Timeless on Friday, the network changed its mind and there will be a season two. It will be a shorter season and will likely run during the summer. Not this summer, but the next one. They had fun with the way they announced this, framing it like the Time Team had gone back in time to change the network’s mind and rewrite history. There was even a video one of the cast members did in character, in which he acted like they’d just come back from the mission and were reporting their success. There’s been some talk about treating this like a family show (with somewhat educational content). They put the first season on in the late slot, but it’s pretty squeaky clean and involves the characters meeting with interesting historical figures. It’s perfect for an early evening, watch with the whole family thing (Mark Hamill even mentioned that his family has been watching it together in an interview that was in Parade this weekend).
Meanwhile, the season finale of Once Upon a Time falls into the “don’t get me started” category because they set up some potentially cool stuff, and then didn’t use any of it. Red herrings are one thing, but devoting most of an hour to characters going after a goal and then that goal not actually meaning anything is another thing entirely. I think the main problem with these writers is that the only story element they really value is surprise. If you see something coming enough to anticipate it, they think they can’t do that thing because it has to be a surprise. So they go off in another direction with no setup, but then they don’t even come up with a good reason behind what they did set up. And I spend a lot of time yelling at the TV and stress knitting. But I learn a lot about how not to write.
And now I have a busy day of doing laundry, going to the library, writing a presentation, and cleaning house ahead of me.
Friday, May 12, 2017
The Network Reading Conspiracy
The network renewals and cancellations are starting to come out, and it looks like the networks want me to have more time to read and write.
I wasn’t so sad about Emerald City being canceled. I liked the concept, and it had beautiful imagery, but by the end of the first/only season, I pretty much loathed most of the characters, had no clue what was going on (in spite of having watched it all), and kind of wanted everyone but the dog to die. The dog could come live with me. Everyone else, I was ready to see go. But I have to admit, that if it had been picked up for another season, I was curious as to where they’d go with it.
But they also killed Timeless, which was my favorite new series last year. It was fun and a bit silly, and I loved all the characters. Even the villain had his sympathetic moments because he wasn’t entirely wrong. He was just going about the entirely wrong way of dealing with things. There were time travel twists and turns and great costumes. So, of course, it had to go because we aren’t allowed to have nice things and probably the world needs more reality shows.
I have very mixed feelings about Once Upon a Time getting renewed. This show seldom lives up to its potential, and the writing in the past two seasons has been utterly terrible. Like, it comes across like an ugly first draft when you’re just throwing out ideas without giving them any thought or looking back at what you’ve already written for continuity purposes. The characters aren’t allowed to act like any actual people, plot threads are set up but not really resolved or resolved with a handwave, and resolutions come out of nowhere. Right now, they’re setting up for what’s supposed to be the Final Battle between good and evil, but the “evil” side is a character we only just met, and there’s absolutely no motivation for this battle to take place, other than Because Evil. ARRGGGGGHHHH.
The musical episode was cute, with good music and mostly excellent performances, but the writing for it made absolutely no sense. I liked the framework of why these characters were suddenly singing, but most of the musical scenes didn’t actually fit the framework, and I wanted to bang my head against the wall because it was yet another wasted opportunity, given the talent they were working with.
And then the actress playing the main character announced she was leaving after this season. She got her happy ending with a big wedding (with an inexplicable musical number — fortunately, she married a tenor who could pick up a song and go along with it when she started singing during the ceremony for NO REASON WHATSOEVER!), although there’s still the finale with the Final Battle to go, which seemed like a natural ending point, and I was okay with the series being canceled. But now it’s renewed with a drastically reduced cast, but that cast includes a character who just got married whose wife won’t be on the show anymore. I’m worried we’ve got an Aliens thing going on here, where we spent all this time leading up to an outcome that’s now going to be undone between seasons.
Really, my issue with this show isn’t just the terrible writing. It’s that they keep talking about it being about hope, while it’s actually a non-ending black cloud of doom and gloom. In the past few seasons, our heroine spent a story arc knowing that the villain was trying to turn her dark, then got turned into the Dark One when she took on the free-floating Darkness to save everyone else, then spent half a season being psychologically tortured by having this darkness within her, then her boyfriend got mortally wounded and she used her power to try to save him, turning him into a Dark One, and when he was able to fight that off, she still had to kill him to try to end the Darkness for good, only it didn’t because it got hijacked, so she then spent half a season in the Underworld trying to save her boyfriend, only to fail, and then when he managed to get a second chance at life and they were going to get to be together, she got a prophecy that she was doomed to die. But the writers talk non-stop about how this is a show about hope. I can see why the actress wanted out. She must want to slit her wrists after spending the last few years that way.
So, whether or not I come back with the show will depend on what the concept for the reboot will be. I like one of the confirmed returning characters, loathe the other two. I don’t know who else will be involved.
Otherwise, I’m mostly down to PBS and limited-run series (the half-season series, like The Magicians, Game of Thrones, etc.). I have to say, it’s kind of liberating. I am reading a lot more, which is good for me.
I wasn’t so sad about Emerald City being canceled. I liked the concept, and it had beautiful imagery, but by the end of the first/only season, I pretty much loathed most of the characters, had no clue what was going on (in spite of having watched it all), and kind of wanted everyone but the dog to die. The dog could come live with me. Everyone else, I was ready to see go. But I have to admit, that if it had been picked up for another season, I was curious as to where they’d go with it.
But they also killed Timeless, which was my favorite new series last year. It was fun and a bit silly, and I loved all the characters. Even the villain had his sympathetic moments because he wasn’t entirely wrong. He was just going about the entirely wrong way of dealing with things. There were time travel twists and turns and great costumes. So, of course, it had to go because we aren’t allowed to have nice things and probably the world needs more reality shows.
I have very mixed feelings about Once Upon a Time getting renewed. This show seldom lives up to its potential, and the writing in the past two seasons has been utterly terrible. Like, it comes across like an ugly first draft when you’re just throwing out ideas without giving them any thought or looking back at what you’ve already written for continuity purposes. The characters aren’t allowed to act like any actual people, plot threads are set up but not really resolved or resolved with a handwave, and resolutions come out of nowhere. Right now, they’re setting up for what’s supposed to be the Final Battle between good and evil, but the “evil” side is a character we only just met, and there’s absolutely no motivation for this battle to take place, other than Because Evil. ARRGGGGGHHHH.
The musical episode was cute, with good music and mostly excellent performances, but the writing for it made absolutely no sense. I liked the framework of why these characters were suddenly singing, but most of the musical scenes didn’t actually fit the framework, and I wanted to bang my head against the wall because it was yet another wasted opportunity, given the talent they were working with.
And then the actress playing the main character announced she was leaving after this season. She got her happy ending with a big wedding (with an inexplicable musical number — fortunately, she married a tenor who could pick up a song and go along with it when she started singing during the ceremony for NO REASON WHATSOEVER!), although there’s still the finale with the Final Battle to go, which seemed like a natural ending point, and I was okay with the series being canceled. But now it’s renewed with a drastically reduced cast, but that cast includes a character who just got married whose wife won’t be on the show anymore. I’m worried we’ve got an Aliens thing going on here, where we spent all this time leading up to an outcome that’s now going to be undone between seasons.
Really, my issue with this show isn’t just the terrible writing. It’s that they keep talking about it being about hope, while it’s actually a non-ending black cloud of doom and gloom. In the past few seasons, our heroine spent a story arc knowing that the villain was trying to turn her dark, then got turned into the Dark One when she took on the free-floating Darkness to save everyone else, then spent half a season being psychologically tortured by having this darkness within her, then her boyfriend got mortally wounded and she used her power to try to save him, turning him into a Dark One, and when he was able to fight that off, she still had to kill him to try to end the Darkness for good, only it didn’t because it got hijacked, so she then spent half a season in the Underworld trying to save her boyfriend, only to fail, and then when he managed to get a second chance at life and they were going to get to be together, she got a prophecy that she was doomed to die. But the writers talk non-stop about how this is a show about hope. I can see why the actress wanted out. She must want to slit her wrists after spending the last few years that way.
So, whether or not I come back with the show will depend on what the concept for the reboot will be. I like one of the confirmed returning characters, loathe the other two. I don’t know who else will be involved.
Otherwise, I’m mostly down to PBS and limited-run series (the half-season series, like The Magicians, Game of Thrones, etc.). I have to say, it’s kind of liberating. I am reading a lot more, which is good for me.
Friday, April 21, 2017
Non-Fiction TV
I’ve mentioned how my television viewing has waned, but I’ve noticed another trend: a lot of what I’m watching now is non-fiction. Most of what’s on my DVR is documentaries. Some of them are work-related, tied to a book I’m writing, plan to write, or might write something along those lines someday. I have a couple of documentaries about being a ballet dancer saved that I’ll watch/re-watch before I work on the next Fairy Tale book. I’ve saved a documentary on the Dust Bowl that’s part of the worldbuilding for a book I have in mind. But then there was a series on the art of the gothic in the Victorian era and how the Gothic Revival was about the reaction to industrialization that I recorded more than a year ago because it looked interesting, and it turned out to be the basis for my worldbuilding in the book I’m working on now that wasn’t even a gleam in my eye at the time I recorded it.
My recent viewing seems to have been focused on World War I, with a three-part American Experience documentary that was really eye-opening. I knew some about that war, but there were a lot of things that weren’t really covered in school, like how the politics worked, both in Europe to set it off and in the US to decide how/when we would get involved. Then there were the things going on in the country at that time, like some really virulent racism and an extreme curtailment on civil liberties. There was also a film related to the war, done in dance, but I wasn’t that impressed by it. The choreography was kind of blah, that contemporary pseudo-ballet that mostly involves a lot of writhing on the floor and making pained expressions.
I also finally got around to watching an Independent Lens piece from a few months ago about the tower shooting at UT. Having gone to the University of Texas, I was pretty familiar with the incident. The bullet holes are still there on the buildings and statues, and I had a habit of looking for the ones I knew about as I walked around campus. They became like landmarks for me. This film portrays the incident in a rotoscope animation, with voiceovers by the people being depicted. That made it very intense and personal, and the shock was seeing some of my familiar bullet holes being made. I’d planned to watch it so I could delete it, but I’m going to have to watch it again to take notes because it was an excellent study on people under stress — the victims, the heroes, and the bystanders. They really got into the physical and emotional sensations and their thought processes, and it’s the kind of stuff that I think I could use for characters to make their reactions more authentic.
The other thing I found a little shocking was just how familiar that version of the university and the area around it was to me — a lot more familiar than my more recent visits. Then I realized that there was less time between that incident and my time at the university than there has been between the time I graduated and now. This film was made in commemoration of the 50th anniversary, and I made my pre-registration visit to do some paperwork, set up a local bank account, and generally scope things out on campus on the day of the 20th anniversary (I got to watch a lot of national news crews at work on campus). The explosive growth of Austin didn’t start happening until late in my time there, so the campus and the area around it hadn’t changed that much between the time depicted in the film and my time there, but a lot has changed since then. It made me feel very old and weirdly nostalgic. I don’t even really like going around the campus now because too much around it has changed.
Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago it must have been “programming for fantasy writers” day on the National Geographic channel because there was a documentary on finding the “real” Atlantis and one on Stonehenge.
And on the fictional side of programming, with the season finale of The Magicians, there’s even less TV to watch. So maybe I’ll get this book done. And then another.
My recent viewing seems to have been focused on World War I, with a three-part American Experience documentary that was really eye-opening. I knew some about that war, but there were a lot of things that weren’t really covered in school, like how the politics worked, both in Europe to set it off and in the US to decide how/when we would get involved. Then there were the things going on in the country at that time, like some really virulent racism and an extreme curtailment on civil liberties. There was also a film related to the war, done in dance, but I wasn’t that impressed by it. The choreography was kind of blah, that contemporary pseudo-ballet that mostly involves a lot of writhing on the floor and making pained expressions.
I also finally got around to watching an Independent Lens piece from a few months ago about the tower shooting at UT. Having gone to the University of Texas, I was pretty familiar with the incident. The bullet holes are still there on the buildings and statues, and I had a habit of looking for the ones I knew about as I walked around campus. They became like landmarks for me. This film portrays the incident in a rotoscope animation, with voiceovers by the people being depicted. That made it very intense and personal, and the shock was seeing some of my familiar bullet holes being made. I’d planned to watch it so I could delete it, but I’m going to have to watch it again to take notes because it was an excellent study on people under stress — the victims, the heroes, and the bystanders. They really got into the physical and emotional sensations and their thought processes, and it’s the kind of stuff that I think I could use for characters to make their reactions more authentic.
The other thing I found a little shocking was just how familiar that version of the university and the area around it was to me — a lot more familiar than my more recent visits. Then I realized that there was less time between that incident and my time at the university than there has been between the time I graduated and now. This film was made in commemoration of the 50th anniversary, and I made my pre-registration visit to do some paperwork, set up a local bank account, and generally scope things out on campus on the day of the 20th anniversary (I got to watch a lot of national news crews at work on campus). The explosive growth of Austin didn’t start happening until late in my time there, so the campus and the area around it hadn’t changed that much between the time depicted in the film and my time there, but a lot has changed since then. It made me feel very old and weirdly nostalgic. I don’t even really like going around the campus now because too much around it has changed.
Meanwhile, a couple of weeks ago it must have been “programming for fantasy writers” day on the National Geographic channel because there was a documentary on finding the “real” Atlantis and one on Stonehenge.
And on the fictional side of programming, with the season finale of The Magicians, there’s even less TV to watch. So maybe I’ll get this book done. And then another.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
Shocking Twists
Getting back to the topic of what makes me give up on a series — either books or TV … While curiosity and caring are important, there’s one big reason that will make me give up on something, and that’s when it no longer resembles the thing I first loved. I guess that still comes in on the caring side of things, but it’s a big reason why my caring factor changes.
On TV, sometimes it’s cast changes — the actor playing the character I most identified with or loved leaves, a new character I loathe joins the show and takes it over, sidelining the characters I liked. Sometimes the focus of a series changes — a supporting character gets a lot of buzz and starts taking over, sidelining the original main character, a previously non-romantic or just subplot romantic series goes full-on soap opera so that it’s all about who’s with whom, a more procedural series gets bogged down in story arcs, the overall tone gets darker.
The darkness thing is a huge issue in series. There are very few long-running series in books, TV, or movies that don’t get progressively darker as they go on. I think some of it comes down to the overall attitude that dark automatically=good, and writers who crave critical acclaim will go darker in an attempt to be taken seriously. There’s also the issue of raising stakes. When a series has been running for a long time, it’s hard for the characters to face bigger challenges without going a lot darker and more serious, especially if the characters have been allowed to grow and change and learn from their experiences. On TV, there’s the issue that actors tend to prefer playing dark. That gives them a lot more to work with. Many actors got into acting because they wanted to play with being someone different than themselves, and playing dark is a way to do that. Being a nice person doesn’t feel enough like acting. And there’s that credibility thing. You don’t win as many awards in dramas for playing good, hero-like characters. I’ve dropped a few series when my fun, quirky romps turned into slogs through misery. Or, if I’m still really invested and curious, I may skim to find out what happens or watch as background noise without paying too much attention.
Another issue I’m seeing a lot of lately is the attempt to go for the shock factor. Writers have become so terrified of spoilers that they start to consider it to be a spoiler if audiences figure something out on their own, so the writers try to throw in shocking twists that no one could have predicted, even if they’re discussing online and swapping theories with other fans. The problem is that it’s really, really hard to have a shocking twist that’s both shocking and that makes sense, so that after the shocking twist you can look back and see how it’s set up and how the seeds were there all along. Most of the time, in order to get shocking, the writers just pull random things out of thin air, making the characters act out of character with no explanation for why they were driven to do something that drastic. It’s a popular writing exercise to think of something your character would never do and find the motivation that might make them do it, but the trick there is to find that motivation, and that’s usually what’s lacking in these twists. Writers are writing to get Twitter reaction, not for story logic or to create something that’s satisfying viewing. I think a lot of my “um, no” giving upon series has had to do with this shocking twist trend.
I believe that’s what killed Grimm (along with trying to do story arcs and not doing them very well). They did some things that were, in fact, shocking, but they were so far from what had been established for these characters and so far from anything you’d expect any person to do that the audience reaction seems to have been a big “NOPE,” the ratings tanked, and the show got canceled. They’ve reverted to form in the last season and the episodes have been much better (though still stuck with the situations created by the shocking twists), but it’s too late to recover.
There was another one of those shocking twists recently, one that wasn’t that shocking just because those writers keep repeating themselves and it was obvious what the shocking twist was going to be from the moment that plot thread came up. For a moment, I thought they were going to shock us and not do it, but yeah, they did it, and all I could do was groan and roll my eyes.
So, my books may never really surprise anyone in a big way. I’m pleased if you manage to put together the clues and figure it out for yourself. I just hope I never make anyone hurl a book against a wall.
On TV, sometimes it’s cast changes — the actor playing the character I most identified with or loved leaves, a new character I loathe joins the show and takes it over, sidelining the characters I liked. Sometimes the focus of a series changes — a supporting character gets a lot of buzz and starts taking over, sidelining the original main character, a previously non-romantic or just subplot romantic series goes full-on soap opera so that it’s all about who’s with whom, a more procedural series gets bogged down in story arcs, the overall tone gets darker.
The darkness thing is a huge issue in series. There are very few long-running series in books, TV, or movies that don’t get progressively darker as they go on. I think some of it comes down to the overall attitude that dark automatically=good, and writers who crave critical acclaim will go darker in an attempt to be taken seriously. There’s also the issue of raising stakes. When a series has been running for a long time, it’s hard for the characters to face bigger challenges without going a lot darker and more serious, especially if the characters have been allowed to grow and change and learn from their experiences. On TV, there’s the issue that actors tend to prefer playing dark. That gives them a lot more to work with. Many actors got into acting because they wanted to play with being someone different than themselves, and playing dark is a way to do that. Being a nice person doesn’t feel enough like acting. And there’s that credibility thing. You don’t win as many awards in dramas for playing good, hero-like characters. I’ve dropped a few series when my fun, quirky romps turned into slogs through misery. Or, if I’m still really invested and curious, I may skim to find out what happens or watch as background noise without paying too much attention.
Another issue I’m seeing a lot of lately is the attempt to go for the shock factor. Writers have become so terrified of spoilers that they start to consider it to be a spoiler if audiences figure something out on their own, so the writers try to throw in shocking twists that no one could have predicted, even if they’re discussing online and swapping theories with other fans. The problem is that it’s really, really hard to have a shocking twist that’s both shocking and that makes sense, so that after the shocking twist you can look back and see how it’s set up and how the seeds were there all along. Most of the time, in order to get shocking, the writers just pull random things out of thin air, making the characters act out of character with no explanation for why they were driven to do something that drastic. It’s a popular writing exercise to think of something your character would never do and find the motivation that might make them do it, but the trick there is to find that motivation, and that’s usually what’s lacking in these twists. Writers are writing to get Twitter reaction, not for story logic or to create something that’s satisfying viewing. I think a lot of my “um, no” giving upon series has had to do with this shocking twist trend.
I believe that’s what killed Grimm (along with trying to do story arcs and not doing them very well). They did some things that were, in fact, shocking, but they were so far from what had been established for these characters and so far from anything you’d expect any person to do that the audience reaction seems to have been a big “NOPE,” the ratings tanked, and the show got canceled. They’ve reverted to form in the last season and the episodes have been much better (though still stuck with the situations created by the shocking twists), but it’s too late to recover.
There was another one of those shocking twists recently, one that wasn’t that shocking just because those writers keep repeating themselves and it was obvious what the shocking twist was going to be from the moment that plot thread came up. For a moment, I thought they were going to shock us and not do it, but yeah, they did it, and all I could do was groan and roll my eyes.
So, my books may never really surprise anyone in a big way. I’m pleased if you manage to put together the clues and figure it out for yourself. I just hope I never make anyone hurl a book against a wall.
Friday, March 10, 2017
Misunderstood?
The book I’m working on went in an unexpected direction yesterday. I’m rewriting a proposal I wrote last fall, but at a turning point it did something different, so now I’m in uncharted territory. This is going to affect the pacing, so it’s probably a good thing that I decided to write the whole book before submitting it instead of just a proposal. I think in the first go-round, I was too worried about getting all the major story stuff into the proposal, so I made things a little too easy for the characters. They were able to just find or figure out everything they needed. Now they’re having to work for it a little more. I had new scenes playing out in my head last night, which made getting to sleep a challenge, but that’s a good problem to have.
I’m going to have to give my new working structure a few more weeks to shake out. So far, moving most of my business/life stuff to Wednesdays has resulted in me spending more time working overall (about 2-3 hours per week more than when I tried to work on Wednesdays and tried to fit non-writing work in on every other day), but I’m not producing more output, somehow. I think part of that is that I’m revising and editing the previous day’s work before moving on, usually because I’ve thought of something that needs to be fixed or because of the rewrite thing, where I need to remind myself of what’s in this version vs. the previous version, to make sure I’m continuing the right story. Maybe once I’m past the rewrite part and am doing all new stuff, it’ll pick up. You’d think it would go faster to rewrite what I’ve already done, but that seems to be more challenging because I have to remember what I did before, decide what to keep and what to scrap, and sometimes there are a couple of false starts before I can make myself separate from what I did before and move on with something different. That takes more time (and drafts) than just writing something new, when I only have to figure out what happens rather than getting over what did happen.
In other news, I had a bit of a rant on my Facebook page yesterday, but it’s worth repeating here. I mentioned watching the new Time After Time series. But I think I’m not going to go forward with it after seeing an interview in which an actor and one of the creators of the series referred to the Jack the Ripper character as “misunderstood.”
Now, I know that every villain generally thinks of himself as the hero of his own story. Few go around doing evil just as evil because they think it’s evil and evil is fun. There’s some reason that may or may not make sense to anyone else, and it’s generally not justified at all on an objective scale. There’s also a bad tendency in current popular culture to try to make villains sympathetic. We’re supposed to take into account the things that happened to them that excuse or justify the way they turned out. As one show is very fond of saying, evil isn’t born, it’s made. And there’s a tendency to think of good as boring and evil as sexy and kind of hot.
But “misunderstood” is for someone who’s a jerk — the bully, the person with a hot temper, the person who’s overly sensitive and flies off the handle at the slightest offense, the person who’s a bit greedy or stingy. These are all things that can be affected by someone’s experiences and circumstances and may require a little compassion for dealing with these people. It’s really hard to get to “misunderstood” when it comes to mass murder. There’s very little chance of there being a good reason for gutting women, and since this show opened with a scene of this guy committing the murder, it’s not like he’s an innocent person being falsely accused. So it looks like what they’re doing is, as one of my friends put it, making Jack the Ripper “Hot Guy who’s a little stabby.” It’s worse when it involves a real-world killer. Real women died at the hands of whoever the Ripper really was, so it seems to me to be disrespectful to depict this guy as sexy, charismatic, and sympathetic and to claim that he’s not so bad, just misunderstood.
So, if that’s the approach they’re taking, I won’t be watching further. That’s more time for reading, or I could watch movies.
At the rate I’m being turned off TV, I may become one of those “oh, I don’t watch TV other than the news and PBS” people. I guess that’ll save me a lot of money if I ever move and don’t get cable through my HOA.
I’m going to have to give my new working structure a few more weeks to shake out. So far, moving most of my business/life stuff to Wednesdays has resulted in me spending more time working overall (about 2-3 hours per week more than when I tried to work on Wednesdays and tried to fit non-writing work in on every other day), but I’m not producing more output, somehow. I think part of that is that I’m revising and editing the previous day’s work before moving on, usually because I’ve thought of something that needs to be fixed or because of the rewrite thing, where I need to remind myself of what’s in this version vs. the previous version, to make sure I’m continuing the right story. Maybe once I’m past the rewrite part and am doing all new stuff, it’ll pick up. You’d think it would go faster to rewrite what I’ve already done, but that seems to be more challenging because I have to remember what I did before, decide what to keep and what to scrap, and sometimes there are a couple of false starts before I can make myself separate from what I did before and move on with something different. That takes more time (and drafts) than just writing something new, when I only have to figure out what happens rather than getting over what did happen.
In other news, I had a bit of a rant on my Facebook page yesterday, but it’s worth repeating here. I mentioned watching the new Time After Time series. But I think I’m not going to go forward with it after seeing an interview in which an actor and one of the creators of the series referred to the Jack the Ripper character as “misunderstood.”
Now, I know that every villain generally thinks of himself as the hero of his own story. Few go around doing evil just as evil because they think it’s evil and evil is fun. There’s some reason that may or may not make sense to anyone else, and it’s generally not justified at all on an objective scale. There’s also a bad tendency in current popular culture to try to make villains sympathetic. We’re supposed to take into account the things that happened to them that excuse or justify the way they turned out. As one show is very fond of saying, evil isn’t born, it’s made. And there’s a tendency to think of good as boring and evil as sexy and kind of hot.
But “misunderstood” is for someone who’s a jerk — the bully, the person with a hot temper, the person who’s overly sensitive and flies off the handle at the slightest offense, the person who’s a bit greedy or stingy. These are all things that can be affected by someone’s experiences and circumstances and may require a little compassion for dealing with these people. It’s really hard to get to “misunderstood” when it comes to mass murder. There’s very little chance of there being a good reason for gutting women, and since this show opened with a scene of this guy committing the murder, it’s not like he’s an innocent person being falsely accused. So it looks like what they’re doing is, as one of my friends put it, making Jack the Ripper “Hot Guy who’s a little stabby.” It’s worse when it involves a real-world killer. Real women died at the hands of whoever the Ripper really was, so it seems to me to be disrespectful to depict this guy as sexy, charismatic, and sympathetic and to claim that he’s not so bad, just misunderstood.
So, if that’s the approach they’re taking, I won’t be watching further. That’s more time for reading, or I could watch movies.
At the rate I’m being turned off TV, I may become one of those “oh, I don’t watch TV other than the news and PBS” people. I guess that’ll save me a lot of money if I ever move and don’t get cable through my HOA.
Monday, March 06, 2017
The Television Conspiracy
I got the first two chapters done and more or less fixed, with some work on Saturday to finish the process. Now I need to get to the next chapter, and more. I’m still finding my way with this book, not just with the characters and world, but with the working method. Each book/series seems to have its own needs. Is this an afternoon book or a night book — or, rarest of all things for me, a morning book? Is it a sit at my desk book, a patio book, a sofa book, a loft book, or a bedroom book? So far, I seem to have made more progress on my bed. Sitting on the patio was a total wash, but I don’t know if that was just that day or if the book is going to be that way. For me, most books are “silence” books, for which I can’t have any background noise, but I’ve had a few that required music. Some of those have been soundtrack books (scores from movies), some have been classical books, and the Fairy Tale series has required Celtic-ish music in the background. For that one, I can even have songs with lyrics, something I can’t have with anything else I’ve tried writing (I get sidetracked by singing along, but I guess if it’s mostly in Gaelic, it doesn’t register like lyrics).
I may try some music this afternoon and see if it helps or hurts.
In other news …
We had the finale of Emerald City this weekend, and I don’t think it ever really lived up to its promise. It’s like the writers were so afraid of spoiling their own show that they didn’t clue the viewers in on what was happening. By the end, I’d had that “I don’t like any of these people, and I hope they all kill each other” reaction, so even if it does get renewed, I’m not sure I’ll be back.
Then there was the premiere of the series version of Time After Time. I’m kind of so-so on this one. The first hour was too close to the movie, so I zoned out because I’ve seen it before with a different setting and time period. Then I could barely follow the second half because it didn’t make a lot of sense. I like the cast, but I have a feeling they’re going to do that “he’s so sexy because he’s evil, and he’s evil because he’s a poor, sad woobie” thing with the Jack the Ripper character. Their HG Wells is cute, but he looks like he’s about 18, so he’s hard to take seriously. We’ll see how it shapes up as a series. The series promo/preview at the end made it look a lot like Timeless, where they’re going to be chasing this guy around time and visiting various historical periods, and I like the cast of Timeless a lot better.
Meanwhile, Once Upon a Time is digging its own grave by being boring and not making much sense, and not really drawing well upon its potential.
I think the television industry is conspiring to give me more writing and reading time. I did do a lot of reading over the weekend, so I’ll have a big book report tomorrow.
I may try some music this afternoon and see if it helps or hurts.
In other news …
We had the finale of Emerald City this weekend, and I don’t think it ever really lived up to its promise. It’s like the writers were so afraid of spoiling their own show that they didn’t clue the viewers in on what was happening. By the end, I’d had that “I don’t like any of these people, and I hope they all kill each other” reaction, so even if it does get renewed, I’m not sure I’ll be back.
Then there was the premiere of the series version of Time After Time. I’m kind of so-so on this one. The first hour was too close to the movie, so I zoned out because I’ve seen it before with a different setting and time period. Then I could barely follow the second half because it didn’t make a lot of sense. I like the cast, but I have a feeling they’re going to do that “he’s so sexy because he’s evil, and he’s evil because he’s a poor, sad woobie” thing with the Jack the Ripper character. Their HG Wells is cute, but he looks like he’s about 18, so he’s hard to take seriously. We’ll see how it shapes up as a series. The series promo/preview at the end made it look a lot like Timeless, where they’re going to be chasing this guy around time and visiting various historical periods, and I like the cast of Timeless a lot better.
Meanwhile, Once Upon a Time is digging its own grave by being boring and not making much sense, and not really drawing well upon its potential.
I think the television industry is conspiring to give me more writing and reading time. I did do a lot of reading over the weekend, so I’ll have a big book report tomorrow.
Tuesday, February 14, 2017
What's Romantic?
I may have recovered from the convention weekend. A day of rest and a good night’s sleep, and I feel more or less back to normal.
I suppose I should wish a happy Valentine’s Day, but I’m really not a fan of the holiday. And no, it’s not a bitter single woman thing. I’m just opposed to the idea of romance on demand, that you’ve somehow failed in your relationship if you don’t do something big on this particular day, or that you’ve failed at life if you don’t have someone doing something for you. Or that you have to do something special for yourself. Or that you have to do something to make someone else feel better about not having someone. Basically, it all boils down to “buy something today!” and that makes me cynical.
But I’m not opposed to the idea of romance. I’m happily single at the moment and content if I remain this way. I guess I’d be open to romance if I met someone who made my heart flutter, but it’s been a very long time since that happened (I guess I’m very picky, and I seem to be getting pickier with age). I do love fictional love stories, though. And now I’m about to say something rather controversial:
I don’t think The Princess Bride is the best fantasy romance movie. I don’t even think it’s a very good fantasy romance movie. I do think it’s a brilliant film, and is one of my all-time favorites. I just don’t think it’s very romantic. And I’m not sure it’s meant to be. It’s a satire. The book is rather cynical about the romance aspect, even suggesting at the end that the relationship isn’t likely to last. Really, Westley and Buttercup hardly spend any time together during the movie, and we have zero sense of what their relationship is like. The actual “love story” part of the movie happens during that prologue montage of “as you wish,” which obviously leaves a lot of it out. The bulk of the movie is about Westley trying to get back to her while she sits around passively. That gives you the sense that they probably aren’t very suited to each other. Once he starts spending time with her, he’s probably going to be very bored with her. He could do so much better.
So, what do I think is the best fantasy romance movie? My vote goes for Stardust, the adaptation of the Neil Gaiman novel. It really is a romance, fitting the structure of the genre. We have the couple that starts out with opposing goals and not being very interested in each other, but then as they face danger together and get to know each other, they start developing feelings, and then they grow as people to be able to be in love with each other and realize that it’s love. They spend almost the entire movie with each other, so we see what their relationship looks like. We see their feelings develop. And there are grand moments of romance and adventure along the way, with swashbuckling, flying pirate ships, desperate chases, secret identities, and all that, plus the kind of happy ending that leaves you with a big sigh. I watch this movie over and over again and it makes me happy every time.
I think an honorable mention might be Ladyhawke, though it’s hampered horribly by one of the most ill-fitting soundtracks ever (supposedly, it had a more traditional score in the European release, and I desperately want them to release that on DVD) that makes it really hard to watch, and then there’s Matthew Broderick’s attempt at whatever accent he was attempting. This one also loses some romance points due to the fact that the lovers can never actually share scenes with each other, due to the plot (they’re under a curse that leaves her as a falcon by day and him as a wolf by night, so they can’t be together in human form), but they do find ways of conveying their love.
Hmm, a common thread seems to be Michelle Pfeiffer — she’s the heroine in Ladyhawke and the villain in Stardust.
Otherwise, we kind of have to go into animated films. I’m partial to Tangled for romance purposes because there’s no creepy Stockholm Syndrome going on and the characters actually spend time together before falling in love.
Another honorable mention in its own category might be the season 3 finale of the TV series Once Upon a Time, which sent two of the characters, who’d been flirting a bit but who hadn’t yet become openly romantic, back in time to the fairy tale world, where they had to play Back to the Future and set things right and find a way back home, and doing all that allowed them to grow closer together and admit their feelings. They’ve botched a lot in that show, but that 2-part episode works. Also, someone needs to cast Colin O’Donoghue as a romantic leading man in something, and please let him use his real Irish accent. His “leading man” big-screen role so far was as a Father What a Waste with an American accent, and while he held his own quite well playing opposite Anthony Hopkins, the charm was utterly wasted in a psychological horror movie.
I suppose I should wish a happy Valentine’s Day, but I’m really not a fan of the holiday. And no, it’s not a bitter single woman thing. I’m just opposed to the idea of romance on demand, that you’ve somehow failed in your relationship if you don’t do something big on this particular day, or that you’ve failed at life if you don’t have someone doing something for you. Or that you have to do something special for yourself. Or that you have to do something to make someone else feel better about not having someone. Basically, it all boils down to “buy something today!” and that makes me cynical.
But I’m not opposed to the idea of romance. I’m happily single at the moment and content if I remain this way. I guess I’d be open to romance if I met someone who made my heart flutter, but it’s been a very long time since that happened (I guess I’m very picky, and I seem to be getting pickier with age). I do love fictional love stories, though. And now I’m about to say something rather controversial:
I don’t think The Princess Bride is the best fantasy romance movie. I don’t even think it’s a very good fantasy romance movie. I do think it’s a brilliant film, and is one of my all-time favorites. I just don’t think it’s very romantic. And I’m not sure it’s meant to be. It’s a satire. The book is rather cynical about the romance aspect, even suggesting at the end that the relationship isn’t likely to last. Really, Westley and Buttercup hardly spend any time together during the movie, and we have zero sense of what their relationship is like. The actual “love story” part of the movie happens during that prologue montage of “as you wish,” which obviously leaves a lot of it out. The bulk of the movie is about Westley trying to get back to her while she sits around passively. That gives you the sense that they probably aren’t very suited to each other. Once he starts spending time with her, he’s probably going to be very bored with her. He could do so much better.
So, what do I think is the best fantasy romance movie? My vote goes for Stardust, the adaptation of the Neil Gaiman novel. It really is a romance, fitting the structure of the genre. We have the couple that starts out with opposing goals and not being very interested in each other, but then as they face danger together and get to know each other, they start developing feelings, and then they grow as people to be able to be in love with each other and realize that it’s love. They spend almost the entire movie with each other, so we see what their relationship looks like. We see their feelings develop. And there are grand moments of romance and adventure along the way, with swashbuckling, flying pirate ships, desperate chases, secret identities, and all that, plus the kind of happy ending that leaves you with a big sigh. I watch this movie over and over again and it makes me happy every time.
I think an honorable mention might be Ladyhawke, though it’s hampered horribly by one of the most ill-fitting soundtracks ever (supposedly, it had a more traditional score in the European release, and I desperately want them to release that on DVD) that makes it really hard to watch, and then there’s Matthew Broderick’s attempt at whatever accent he was attempting. This one also loses some romance points due to the fact that the lovers can never actually share scenes with each other, due to the plot (they’re under a curse that leaves her as a falcon by day and him as a wolf by night, so they can’t be together in human form), but they do find ways of conveying their love.
Hmm, a common thread seems to be Michelle Pfeiffer — she’s the heroine in Ladyhawke and the villain in Stardust.
Otherwise, we kind of have to go into animated films. I’m partial to Tangled for romance purposes because there’s no creepy Stockholm Syndrome going on and the characters actually spend time together before falling in love.
Another honorable mention in its own category might be the season 3 finale of the TV series Once Upon a Time, which sent two of the characters, who’d been flirting a bit but who hadn’t yet become openly romantic, back in time to the fairy tale world, where they had to play Back to the Future and set things right and find a way back home, and doing all that allowed them to grow closer together and admit their feelings. They’ve botched a lot in that show, but that 2-part episode works. Also, someone needs to cast Colin O’Donoghue as a romantic leading man in something, and please let him use his real Irish accent. His “leading man” big-screen role so far was as a Father What a Waste with an American accent, and while he held his own quite well playing opposite Anthony Hopkins, the charm was utterly wasted in a psychological horror movie.
Monday, January 09, 2017
Up and Down
We’re having a fairly normal Texas winter. I spent Friday afternoon working in my office while watching snow fall. I will possibly end up working at least a little bit this afternoon sitting on my patio. I’ll probably be patio officing most of the week. Then Saturday is another possible winter weather event, which I hope doesn’t go for worst-case scenario, as I have the Choristers Guild winter workshop this weekend, so I have to actually drive on Friday and Saturday, and I’m the scripture reader in church on Sunday. The up-and-down temperatures can get annoying, but in a way I don’t mind. I can deal with a few days of cold when I know I’ll have a few warm days to look forward to. It just would be nice if we could occasionally find a happy medium. This year we’re either below freezing and well below normal or in the 70s and way above normal. I wouldn’t mind a few days with highs in the 50s and lows in the upper 30s. But at least we’ve had more hard freezes this year than we got last year, which should mean fewer bugs next summer.
Now that Epiphany is over, my house has now been de-Christmased (though I do need to make a couple of trips to the garage now that it’s warm enough). I always dread that because I feel like the house will look naked afterward, but it’s funny how quickly it just feels normal again. Though I do miss having Christmas tree lights in my bedroom. That made for a nice way to bridge between the full light of the lamp and having all the lights off. Maybe I should look for a ficus tree or some kind of artistic ornamental branch I could hang lights on.
I’m going to have to really dig in and write this week. I was hoping to get a draft done before the workshop this weekend, but that seems unlikely. I’m about halfway through, but most of what I wrote Friday will have to be undone, as I realized that it was the big midpoint of the book and all that was happening was people were making speeches. I spent Saturday and Sunday brainstorming and making lists of things that could happen and replotting the book while trying to put myself in my characters’ heads and figuring out what they would do in this situation, and now I think I have a solution. I’ve even started seeing the movie of it in my head.
Meanwhile, I checked out the new series Emerald City, the latest Wizard of Oz telling, last weekend, and it’s rather interesting. They’re taking the basic story elements and updating them, putting the action into a fairly gritty Game of Thrones-type world. Dorothy’s an adult nurse who was left as a baby with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. She’s in a police car when the tornado hits, which gives her some useful supplies and a German shepherd police dog (that’s our Toto). They seem to have done some decent worldbuilding, as there’s some kind of mythology/backstory going on with the Wizard and witches. Our “Scarecrow” is a man found semi-crucified, wounded, and with amnesia (“if I only had a brain …”).
I think that last part may be what sucks me in because I love that “who would you be if you didn’t know who you were?” trope. Clearly, this guy has been through something. He just doesn’t know what it was or why, and since Dorothy knows nothing of him, she has to take him at face value. He doesn’t even know what he looks like until he looks in a mirror, so he will be entirely defined by the actions he takes and the choices he makes.
I need to add this trope to my literary bucket list. I did something similar with Kiss and Spell when everyone had fake identities but still found their true selves, but this is different. I actually have an idea brewing where this might fit. But first I have a few other things that need to be written.
Now that Epiphany is over, my house has now been de-Christmased (though I do need to make a couple of trips to the garage now that it’s warm enough). I always dread that because I feel like the house will look naked afterward, but it’s funny how quickly it just feels normal again. Though I do miss having Christmas tree lights in my bedroom. That made for a nice way to bridge between the full light of the lamp and having all the lights off. Maybe I should look for a ficus tree or some kind of artistic ornamental branch I could hang lights on.
I’m going to have to really dig in and write this week. I was hoping to get a draft done before the workshop this weekend, but that seems unlikely. I’m about halfway through, but most of what I wrote Friday will have to be undone, as I realized that it was the big midpoint of the book and all that was happening was people were making speeches. I spent Saturday and Sunday brainstorming and making lists of things that could happen and replotting the book while trying to put myself in my characters’ heads and figuring out what they would do in this situation, and now I think I have a solution. I’ve even started seeing the movie of it in my head.
Meanwhile, I checked out the new series Emerald City, the latest Wizard of Oz telling, last weekend, and it’s rather interesting. They’re taking the basic story elements and updating them, putting the action into a fairly gritty Game of Thrones-type world. Dorothy’s an adult nurse who was left as a baby with Aunt Em and Uncle Henry. She’s in a police car when the tornado hits, which gives her some useful supplies and a German shepherd police dog (that’s our Toto). They seem to have done some decent worldbuilding, as there’s some kind of mythology/backstory going on with the Wizard and witches. Our “Scarecrow” is a man found semi-crucified, wounded, and with amnesia (“if I only had a brain …”).
I think that last part may be what sucks me in because I love that “who would you be if you didn’t know who you were?” trope. Clearly, this guy has been through something. He just doesn’t know what it was or why, and since Dorothy knows nothing of him, she has to take him at face value. He doesn’t even know what he looks like until he looks in a mirror, so he will be entirely defined by the actions he takes and the choices he makes.
I need to add this trope to my literary bucket list. I did something similar with Kiss and Spell when everyone had fake identities but still found their true selves, but this is different. I actually have an idea brewing where this might fit. But first I have a few other things that need to be written.
Monday, October 10, 2016
Fantasy Adventures
I was going to say I was lazy this morning and skipped yoga, but really, I skipped yoga because I wanted to get more work done. I need to finish proofing that book, and then I have a lot of other things to take care of, like finding an illustrator to do some cover work for something new I have in mind. I have a vivid mental image of the style I want, but haven't been able to find someone who does that, and when I've found a book that has something similar, I can't find info on the artist. I want something kind of cute and semi-cartoony, similar to what's on the Enchanted, Inc. books in tone but a different style of art. Everyone who's been recommended is closer to manga than I want, or else more newspaper comic-style. I think I could probably best describe what I have in mind is the kind of illustrations on the slightly arty humorous greeting cards -- the Hallmark Shoebox Greetings style.
In other news, I watched the first two episodes of Westworld, and it was certainly thought-provoking. It's based on the 1970s Michael Crichton movie about an immersive Old West theme park/live-action game in which there are robot "hosts" that interact with the guests. The hosts can't harm the guests, but the guests can do anything they want to the hosts. It's unfortunately probably rather realistic that a lot of the guests use this as an opportunity to rape and murder, though there do seem to be some guests who just go to play out an adventure, like finding gold with a prospector or joining the sheriff's posse to track down bandits. Things get tricky when the hosts start becoming a little too realistic and become more self-aware, so they're affected by the trauma they keep getting put through. I do hope that the series gets into how a human is affected by committing violence against something that seems very human, even if it isn't human. The series is done by the people who were behind Person of Interest, so I can imagine there will be all kinds of delving into what it is to be human and how humans can go too far.
Anyway, I found myself thinking about what kind of theme park like that I'd want to visit. Since I have no desire to rape or murder anything, I wouldn't really need robots to create the environment, unless it's strictly a case of ensuring that the storylines play out or for purposes of hygiene -- less historical stench and less risk of disease if all the animals and most of the people are robots. Really, I suspect I'd be kind of a wimp about adventures. I don't even like regular theme parks all that much because I don't like being scared, even if it's a "safe" scared. I wouldn't want even the illusion of being in danger, regardless of whether I knew I couldn't actually be hurt. I also like my creature comforts. I'm not into sleeping on the ground, and I don't even like Renaissance festivals that use Port-a-Potties instead of having real bathrooms.
So, if I were going to have a theme park like a Westworld, I decided that I'd want a Narnia experience. You go to an old house, and you open a door to find a magical world where there are fantasy creatures and talking animals, and you can go on quests and adventures, with technology simulating magic. There would also be accommodations built in, so that you'd stop for the night at a place where there's a nice mossy spot on the ground (a concealed mattress) and a secluded pond with a waterfall feeding into it (a camouflaged tub and shower). Toilet facilities would be hidden in a cave. A "magic spell" would result in meals appearing. There might be hints of a potential threat to give your quest a ticking clock, but it would mostly be about puzzles to solve and characters to interact with. Mostly, though, I think I prefer reading about adventures to living them. There are all kinds of things I like reading about that I wouldn't want to experience myself.
Though if I were going to write that story, it would involve someone who thinks that's what they're getting, but there's a glitch, and they get transported to a real fantasy world.
Not that I need more story ideas.
In other news, I watched the first two episodes of Westworld, and it was certainly thought-provoking. It's based on the 1970s Michael Crichton movie about an immersive Old West theme park/live-action game in which there are robot "hosts" that interact with the guests. The hosts can't harm the guests, but the guests can do anything they want to the hosts. It's unfortunately probably rather realistic that a lot of the guests use this as an opportunity to rape and murder, though there do seem to be some guests who just go to play out an adventure, like finding gold with a prospector or joining the sheriff's posse to track down bandits. Things get tricky when the hosts start becoming a little too realistic and become more self-aware, so they're affected by the trauma they keep getting put through. I do hope that the series gets into how a human is affected by committing violence against something that seems very human, even if it isn't human. The series is done by the people who were behind Person of Interest, so I can imagine there will be all kinds of delving into what it is to be human and how humans can go too far.
Anyway, I found myself thinking about what kind of theme park like that I'd want to visit. Since I have no desire to rape or murder anything, I wouldn't really need robots to create the environment, unless it's strictly a case of ensuring that the storylines play out or for purposes of hygiene -- less historical stench and less risk of disease if all the animals and most of the people are robots. Really, I suspect I'd be kind of a wimp about adventures. I don't even like regular theme parks all that much because I don't like being scared, even if it's a "safe" scared. I wouldn't want even the illusion of being in danger, regardless of whether I knew I couldn't actually be hurt. I also like my creature comforts. I'm not into sleeping on the ground, and I don't even like Renaissance festivals that use Port-a-Potties instead of having real bathrooms.
So, if I were going to have a theme park like a Westworld, I decided that I'd want a Narnia experience. You go to an old house, and you open a door to find a magical world where there are fantasy creatures and talking animals, and you can go on quests and adventures, with technology simulating magic. There would also be accommodations built in, so that you'd stop for the night at a place where there's a nice mossy spot on the ground (a concealed mattress) and a secluded pond with a waterfall feeding into it (a camouflaged tub and shower). Toilet facilities would be hidden in a cave. A "magic spell" would result in meals appearing. There might be hints of a potential threat to give your quest a ticking clock, but it would mostly be about puzzles to solve and characters to interact with. Mostly, though, I think I prefer reading about adventures to living them. There are all kinds of things I like reading about that I wouldn't want to experience myself.
Though if I were going to write that story, it would involve someone who thinks that's what they're getting, but there's a glitch, and they get transported to a real fantasy world.
Not that I need more story ideas.
Friday, October 07, 2016
New Fall TV
I ended up with two days off from posting because the new Internet/phone service installation took all morning, during which time I was offline, and then I had to run errands, and then I was catching up on what I should have done in the morning, and then I realized the day was over. The new service requires a few changes, in that my wiring doesn't support both phone and Internet with the kind of service they're offering now, so my phone jacks no longer work. My phone has to be plugged into the Internet router, which meant I had to get a cordless phone with multiple handsets, which was one of my errands. I'd have wanted new phones anyway because the new service comes with Caller ID, and my old phones didn't support that. I ended up getting a system that will pair with my cell phone, so I can use the home phone handset to make/receive cell calls. That should mean less running around the house when my cell rings. The other cool thing is that because I now have voice over IP phone service, I can use the NoMoRobo feature and block robocallers. That should block most of the scams, as well as many of the political calls. Just in time for the election!
The school visit on Wednesday went really well. The kids seemed to be at least moderately interested. The 8th graders may have been a little too cool for it, but the 6th graders were enthusiastic. I got good feedback from the teachers and principal, and I've seen some nice things posted by parents who are friends of my friend who helped set it up about what their kids said. It turned out that one of the teachers in this school was a high school classmate, so we had a mini reunion there. Meanwhile, my friend who helped set this up has roused the power of the PTA moms and is determined to get me speaking all over the area.
Now I guess I need to write more YA books if kids are starting to catch on.
In other news, the fall TV season has begun. I've started with three new shows so far. I wasn't planning to watch the TV version of Lethal Weapon, but I read surprisingly good reviews for it, so I gave it a shot, and it's better than I expected. It's still essentially a brainless 80s action movie that's more about the characters than the action, but it does that pretty well. Though I must say I was less impressed by the third episode, so I don't know how long they'll be able to sustain it. How much havoc can they really create in the city before something gets done?
I also liked the pilot for Timeless, the one about time travel. A terrorist (maybe?) has stolen a time machine and seems to be going back in time to change things, for a reason that remains unknown. They still have the prototype time machine that's paired with that one, so they send a team of a historian, a soldier, and a scientist from the project back to try to stop him. The thing that possibly elevates or differentiates this series from others with a similar premise is the suggestion that there's something more going on. Also, there are ramifications in the present from things that they do while time traveling. So, there's a lot of potential there, and they're using the time travel premise for more than just a way to get to a different time and place to have adventures in history.
There's also a new animated show on Disney XD from the same people who did Phineas & Ferb called Milo Murphy's Law, about a kid who pretty much embodies Murphy's Law. He's a big-time jinx. If something can go wrong for him, it will. But instead of him being a Charlie Brown kind of guy and moping about his bad luck, he's developed impressive coping and survival skills, and he goes around prepared for just about anything. As he says, he's found that screaming doesn't help and all it does is damage the larynx. If you're with him, disaster is likely to occur, but he'll also know exactly how to get out of it. The kids who avoid him because he's a jinx end up having much less interesting lives than the kids who are friends with him. It looks like it could be pretty cute.
I haven't yet had a chance to watch Westworld on HBO. That may be for tonight. Otherwise, there isn't much new this season that interests me, and I like not spending so much time watching TV. Not that I've been spending that time on writing this week, but now that all the life upheavals are over for the week, I'm going to get back to proofreading today.
The school visit on Wednesday went really well. The kids seemed to be at least moderately interested. The 8th graders may have been a little too cool for it, but the 6th graders were enthusiastic. I got good feedback from the teachers and principal, and I've seen some nice things posted by parents who are friends of my friend who helped set it up about what their kids said. It turned out that one of the teachers in this school was a high school classmate, so we had a mini reunion there. Meanwhile, my friend who helped set this up has roused the power of the PTA moms and is determined to get me speaking all over the area.
Now I guess I need to write more YA books if kids are starting to catch on.
In other news, the fall TV season has begun. I've started with three new shows so far. I wasn't planning to watch the TV version of Lethal Weapon, but I read surprisingly good reviews for it, so I gave it a shot, and it's better than I expected. It's still essentially a brainless 80s action movie that's more about the characters than the action, but it does that pretty well. Though I must say I was less impressed by the third episode, so I don't know how long they'll be able to sustain it. How much havoc can they really create in the city before something gets done?
I also liked the pilot for Timeless, the one about time travel. A terrorist (maybe?) has stolen a time machine and seems to be going back in time to change things, for a reason that remains unknown. They still have the prototype time machine that's paired with that one, so they send a team of a historian, a soldier, and a scientist from the project back to try to stop him. The thing that possibly elevates or differentiates this series from others with a similar premise is the suggestion that there's something more going on. Also, there are ramifications in the present from things that they do while time traveling. So, there's a lot of potential there, and they're using the time travel premise for more than just a way to get to a different time and place to have adventures in history.
There's also a new animated show on Disney XD from the same people who did Phineas & Ferb called Milo Murphy's Law, about a kid who pretty much embodies Murphy's Law. He's a big-time jinx. If something can go wrong for him, it will. But instead of him being a Charlie Brown kind of guy and moping about his bad luck, he's developed impressive coping and survival skills, and he goes around prepared for just about anything. As he says, he's found that screaming doesn't help and all it does is damage the larynx. If you're with him, disaster is likely to occur, but he'll also know exactly how to get out of it. The kids who avoid him because he's a jinx end up having much less interesting lives than the kids who are friends with him. It looks like it could be pretty cute.
I haven't yet had a chance to watch Westworld on HBO. That may be for tonight. Otherwise, there isn't much new this season that interests me, and I like not spending so much time watching TV. Not that I've been spending that time on writing this week, but now that all the life upheavals are over for the week, I'm going to get back to proofreading today.
Thursday, September 08, 2016
Boldly Going
Apparently, today is the 50th anniversary of Star Trek. I knew it was this year, given that I was on the 50 Years of Star Trek panel at WorldCon, but this was the day the first episode aired. I wasn't around for that, but according to my mother, I was at least exposed to some episodes of what was probably the last season during its original run, since she said she watched it while she fed me when I was a newborn. So I guess I was a geek from birth.
I have vague memories of seeing occasional episodes of both the original and the animated series when I was a child. When the movies came out, my dad took me to the first two, and I went with my high school friends to the third. That outing was a pretty big deal for me, since it was one of the first times when I really felt like a "teenager." My best friends were older, and when one of them got a car and a license, it meant we could do stuff on our own, without relying on parents. We lived in a small town -- actually, all of us lived in the country outside that small town -- so seeing a movie meant going to the nearby city. When Star Trek III came out, we went out for pizza and then to the movie, and I felt very grown-up and independent.
But I really became a big Trek fan in my senior year of high school. We got a new TV station in our local area, and they started showing Star Trek reruns at 4 p.m. on weekdays. Both of my parents worked at the school, so that meant all of us were home from school to watch in the afternoons. It became a family bonding thing, our way of unwinding after school/work, and we got a lot of family inside jokes out of it. This was when I really got a sense for who those characters I'd seen in the movies were, and I started reading the novels, as well.
Star Trek was a big factor in developing my college social life. Early in my freshman year, I'd made some close friends I hung out with a lot, but I barely knew the rest of the people on my floor in the dorm. On the Friday afternoon before Halloween, I was supposed to go shopping with my friends to get Halloween costumes and party supplies, but then I discovered that my purse had been stolen from my dorm room. It turned out that the same thief had hit a lot of rooms (and was caught later that day), so the police were already set up in the lobby, taking reports. I was there, talking tearfully to the police, when my friends went by on their way to go shopping. I was stunned when their reaction was along the lines of "oh, that's why you didn't meet up with us, well, bye," so it was a case of adding insult to injury that they'd just abandoned me without showing any concern. On my way back to my room, one of the guys on the floor passed me in the hall (co-ed dorm) and noticed that I looked really down. He said the gang was about to watch Star Trek in his room and invited me to join them. It turned out that one of the local stations did that same 4 p.m. run my local station had done, and the whole gang from the floor gathered in the room of the guy with a TV to watch every afternoon. After Star Trek, they all trooped down to the cafeteria together for dinner. That got me involved with a whole new set of friends, some of whom I'm still in touch with.
Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered during my sophomore year, and I think we got 32 people crammed into a Jester Center dorm room (If you went to the University of Texas, you'll know what an achievement that was) to watch the premiere. We had to leave the door open and set up a fan in the hallway. The regular time slot for that series was 6 p.m. on Saturdays, so we added to our Trek viewing ritual. We'd go to dinner at 5 on Saturdays, then troop back upstairs to watch ST:TNG, and then we'd usually end up watching movies. I can honestly say that my college experience would have been radically different if it hadn't been for Star Trek and the way it helped form bonds with people who had common interests.
The other series came during my adulthood. I loved Deep Space Nine, and it was by far my favorite series of the bunch. I liked the more serialized storytelling and how "real" and three-dimensional the characters were. They were allowed to have flaws and conflict, something that hadn't been allowed as much in TNG. I was less enthralled with Voyager and bailed midway through the run, though I came back for the finale. I just lost interest in Enterprise somewhere along the way.
The movies have been a mixed bag. I loved First Contact, but most of the rest of the Next Generation movies were pretty weak. The last one of those, I didn't even see at the theater, and when I finally saw it on TV, I was glad I hadn't spent the money. I have very mixed feelings about the reboot movies. I kind of enjoy them while I'm watching them, though there was a great deal of in-theater snark about Into Darkness. The latest was the first of that bunch that really felt like Trek.
At any rate, it may just have been a TV show, but I think my life would have been different without it. Because of that show, I've met people and had experiences. I've been inspired. And, of course, I've been entertained. Not bad for a three-season show that began before I was born.
I have vague memories of seeing occasional episodes of both the original and the animated series when I was a child. When the movies came out, my dad took me to the first two, and I went with my high school friends to the third. That outing was a pretty big deal for me, since it was one of the first times when I really felt like a "teenager." My best friends were older, and when one of them got a car and a license, it meant we could do stuff on our own, without relying on parents. We lived in a small town -- actually, all of us lived in the country outside that small town -- so seeing a movie meant going to the nearby city. When Star Trek III came out, we went out for pizza and then to the movie, and I felt very grown-up and independent.
But I really became a big Trek fan in my senior year of high school. We got a new TV station in our local area, and they started showing Star Trek reruns at 4 p.m. on weekdays. Both of my parents worked at the school, so that meant all of us were home from school to watch in the afternoons. It became a family bonding thing, our way of unwinding after school/work, and we got a lot of family inside jokes out of it. This was when I really got a sense for who those characters I'd seen in the movies were, and I started reading the novels, as well.
Star Trek was a big factor in developing my college social life. Early in my freshman year, I'd made some close friends I hung out with a lot, but I barely knew the rest of the people on my floor in the dorm. On the Friday afternoon before Halloween, I was supposed to go shopping with my friends to get Halloween costumes and party supplies, but then I discovered that my purse had been stolen from my dorm room. It turned out that the same thief had hit a lot of rooms (and was caught later that day), so the police were already set up in the lobby, taking reports. I was there, talking tearfully to the police, when my friends went by on their way to go shopping. I was stunned when their reaction was along the lines of "oh, that's why you didn't meet up with us, well, bye," so it was a case of adding insult to injury that they'd just abandoned me without showing any concern. On my way back to my room, one of the guys on the floor passed me in the hall (co-ed dorm) and noticed that I looked really down. He said the gang was about to watch Star Trek in his room and invited me to join them. It turned out that one of the local stations did that same 4 p.m. run my local station had done, and the whole gang from the floor gathered in the room of the guy with a TV to watch every afternoon. After Star Trek, they all trooped down to the cafeteria together for dinner. That got me involved with a whole new set of friends, some of whom I'm still in touch with.
Star Trek: The Next Generation premiered during my sophomore year, and I think we got 32 people crammed into a Jester Center dorm room (If you went to the University of Texas, you'll know what an achievement that was) to watch the premiere. We had to leave the door open and set up a fan in the hallway. The regular time slot for that series was 6 p.m. on Saturdays, so we added to our Trek viewing ritual. We'd go to dinner at 5 on Saturdays, then troop back upstairs to watch ST:TNG, and then we'd usually end up watching movies. I can honestly say that my college experience would have been radically different if it hadn't been for Star Trek and the way it helped form bonds with people who had common interests.
The other series came during my adulthood. I loved Deep Space Nine, and it was by far my favorite series of the bunch. I liked the more serialized storytelling and how "real" and three-dimensional the characters were. They were allowed to have flaws and conflict, something that hadn't been allowed as much in TNG. I was less enthralled with Voyager and bailed midway through the run, though I came back for the finale. I just lost interest in Enterprise somewhere along the way.
The movies have been a mixed bag. I loved First Contact, but most of the rest of the Next Generation movies were pretty weak. The last one of those, I didn't even see at the theater, and when I finally saw it on TV, I was glad I hadn't spent the money. I have very mixed feelings about the reboot movies. I kind of enjoy them while I'm watching them, though there was a great deal of in-theater snark about Into Darkness. The latest was the first of that bunch that really felt like Trek.
At any rate, it may just have been a TV show, but I think my life would have been different without it. Because of that show, I've met people and had experiences. I've been inspired. And, of course, I've been entertained. Not bad for a three-season show that began before I was born.
Monday, August 29, 2016
Ranting About Romance
After ranting about good guys, I got my fix over the weekend by watching Hallmark movies. Yeah, they're sappy and obviously done on the cheap, but they don't seem to be making romantic comedies for the big screen these days, so this is the only way to get my fix. Bonus: the characters are usually adults. The heroes are men, not overgrown manchild fratboys, as we've been seeing too much of in the few "romantic" comedies that have been made recently. That means the heroines can be adults without being depicted as humorless shrews who are forcing these men to grow up. Also, the heroes are almost always the "good guys," rather than jerks who need to be healed with love. The jerks are usually "Mr. Wrong," while the nice guy prevails in the end.
Ironically, this seems to be where the actors who play the good guys on science fiction shows tend to end up (probably because of the Canada filming connection). In fact, the actor who played the character I was ranting about Friday showed up as the leading man recently in one of these movies.
However, these movies don't entirely scratch the romantic comedy itch because they kind of fail in the romance part. It's sort of there, but for the most part, they forget to write the actual relationship. I don't think it's just because of how chaste these movies tend to be because you can write the romance and relationship even without the physical stuff being front and center (just look at how juicy some of the movies made during the height of the strict production code could be). There's just something missing.
In two recent movies I watched, part of the problem is that the focus for the heroine is generally on something else. That's fine if you're making a movie about finding yourself, building a career, or female empowerment. It just doesn't work when you tack on an ending in which she resolves a romantic relationship that wasn't really there. It's even weirder when the story given to the man is the romance, and he's shown as being really into the woman while she's missing all the signals. She's treating him the way I treat a man I'm not interested in when he's trying to make moves and I don't want to have to outright reject him -- right up to the happy ending when suddenly they're kissing. The standard romantic plot seems to go like:
Meet cute! Sparks seem to fly!
HERO: Wow, you're like a breath of fresh air. I find you fascinating.
HEROINE: I'm really concerned about my career. This could be my big break, and I need to make it work.
Cue lots of scenes of them together, showing obvious connections, like them having the same dreams for their lives.
HERO: You're the most amazing person I've ever met. We should pursue our dreams together.
HEROINE: Oops, gotta go. I've got this big career thing I need to take care of. I'm really busy right now.
Career-related crisis ensues, heroine gets her act together and prevails.
HEROINE: Hey, let's get together and pursue our dreams! (Throws her arms around him and kisses him. There may be an epilogue showing their wedding.)
It's like there's no emotion whatsoever on her part until the end. She's not interested but torn. She's not agonizing over having to choose love or her career. She's happily pursuing her career and oblivious about the guy until she abruptly is all over the guy. It's like "Friendzone, friendzone, friendzone, LOVE!" (And, really, that's not helping by sending the signal that when we're constantly talking about being too busy or focused on other things to get together, we're eventually going to come around. Though I guess the odds are slim that the men who don't get the message in real life are watching Hallmark movies.) We don't even see the moment of realization that she does love him, after all, no fear of losing him. I don't necessarily want to see the RomCom Dash -- that last-second frantic chase across town to reach him before he sails away forever -- in every movie, but it does help if we get some sense of "hey, the right guy was with me all along, and I might lose him if I don't do something about it" rather than the abrupt switch. There's got to be a happy medium in there somewhere.
I wrote that one script for a TV Christmas movie, but I'm currently attempting to turn it into a novella or short novel because I've realized in watching more of these films that my script probably wouldn't make it. I wrote it more for the Lifetime or ABC Family model, since it had a fantasy element to it, but now Hallmark has taken over the Christmas movie thing, and they don't seem to do much of the fantasy element (aside from the "Santa is real!" stories) and they don't want much in the way of romance, even while doing a romance. With most of these movies, Christmas or otherwise, it would be so easy to fix them without changing the budget, which suggests that they're getting just what they want.
Really, what I want is a good screenwriter/filmmaker to be able to make a good big-screen romantic comedy in which the characters get to be adults. We need something along the lines of a When Harry Met Sally, and it's been a long time since anything on that level was made.
Ironically, this seems to be where the actors who play the good guys on science fiction shows tend to end up (probably because of the Canada filming connection). In fact, the actor who played the character I was ranting about Friday showed up as the leading man recently in one of these movies.
However, these movies don't entirely scratch the romantic comedy itch because they kind of fail in the romance part. It's sort of there, but for the most part, they forget to write the actual relationship. I don't think it's just because of how chaste these movies tend to be because you can write the romance and relationship even without the physical stuff being front and center (just look at how juicy some of the movies made during the height of the strict production code could be). There's just something missing.
In two recent movies I watched, part of the problem is that the focus for the heroine is generally on something else. That's fine if you're making a movie about finding yourself, building a career, or female empowerment. It just doesn't work when you tack on an ending in which she resolves a romantic relationship that wasn't really there. It's even weirder when the story given to the man is the romance, and he's shown as being really into the woman while she's missing all the signals. She's treating him the way I treat a man I'm not interested in when he's trying to make moves and I don't want to have to outright reject him -- right up to the happy ending when suddenly they're kissing. The standard romantic plot seems to go like:
Meet cute! Sparks seem to fly!
HERO: Wow, you're like a breath of fresh air. I find you fascinating.
HEROINE: I'm really concerned about my career. This could be my big break, and I need to make it work.
Cue lots of scenes of them together, showing obvious connections, like them having the same dreams for their lives.
HERO: You're the most amazing person I've ever met. We should pursue our dreams together.
HEROINE: Oops, gotta go. I've got this big career thing I need to take care of. I'm really busy right now.
Career-related crisis ensues, heroine gets her act together and prevails.
HEROINE: Hey, let's get together and pursue our dreams! (Throws her arms around him and kisses him. There may be an epilogue showing their wedding.)
It's like there's no emotion whatsoever on her part until the end. She's not interested but torn. She's not agonizing over having to choose love or her career. She's happily pursuing her career and oblivious about the guy until she abruptly is all over the guy. It's like "Friendzone, friendzone, friendzone, LOVE!" (And, really, that's not helping by sending the signal that when we're constantly talking about being too busy or focused on other things to get together, we're eventually going to come around. Though I guess the odds are slim that the men who don't get the message in real life are watching Hallmark movies.) We don't even see the moment of realization that she does love him, after all, no fear of losing him. I don't necessarily want to see the RomCom Dash -- that last-second frantic chase across town to reach him before he sails away forever -- in every movie, but it does help if we get some sense of "hey, the right guy was with me all along, and I might lose him if I don't do something about it" rather than the abrupt switch. There's got to be a happy medium in there somewhere.
I wrote that one script for a TV Christmas movie, but I'm currently attempting to turn it into a novella or short novel because I've realized in watching more of these films that my script probably wouldn't make it. I wrote it more for the Lifetime or ABC Family model, since it had a fantasy element to it, but now Hallmark has taken over the Christmas movie thing, and they don't seem to do much of the fantasy element (aside from the "Santa is real!" stories) and they don't want much in the way of romance, even while doing a romance. With most of these movies, Christmas or otherwise, it would be so easy to fix them without changing the budget, which suggests that they're getting just what they want.
Really, what I want is a good screenwriter/filmmaker to be able to make a good big-screen romantic comedy in which the characters get to be adults. We need something along the lines of a When Harry Met Sally, and it's been a long time since anything on that level was made.
Friday, August 26, 2016
Good Boys Get No Respect
I'm on record as not being such a big fan of the "bad boy" type and loving the "good boy." That sometimes makes it difficult to find things I like because the good boy gets no respect. He's judged more harshly for any misdeeds, no matter how minor. Sometimes, just the desire to be good is considered a flaw because it's depicted as a sense of superiority or judgment against others who aren't considered to be as good. Frequently, the "good" character is marginalized because the writers fall into the "good is boring" trap and don't know how to write good people who are interesting. Quite often, the good guy will be the one killed off earlier in the story if the writers want to look like they're raising the stakes, want to milk the sympathy, and/or are tired of trying to write that character.
In war stories, it seems like the good guy or boy-next-door type always died first. That's one reason I love Band of Brothers -- it was based on a true story, and the main character was a real person who was a brilliant example of the good guy (see, living proof that the good guy isn't boring. If you think Dick Winters was boring, we need to talk).
And it's happened again. I have a kind of love/frustration relationship with the SyFy series Dark Matter. The premise is rather brilliant -- a group of people on a spaceship wake up from cryosleep with no memories of their identities and have to decide who they want to be, which gets complicated when they learn that they're actually a bunch of criminal mercenaries who've been hired to do some unseemly jobs. The actual execution is somewhat less brilliant. I think during every episode of the first season I found myself thinking that I was going to give up on the show, until they had a really intense twist or cliffhanger at the end of the episode that brought me back for the next one. I've jokingly called it Not!Firefly because the main cast can be mapped very easily to Firefly cast members. There's a Not!Jayne, Not!Simon, Not!Book, etc.
I was intrigued by the Not!Simon character, who all along seemed to be the "one of these things doesn't belong" character. Even when we learned his identity as a killer with an extensive record, it just didn't seem to fit. SPOILERS AHEAD Then we learned out why: he wasn't really that guy, after all. We met that guy, who was mad that his identity had been stolen. Eventually, we learned that Not!Simon was actually a billionaire head of a corporation whose wife had been murdered, and he had believed that the killer was a member of this crew. He had surgery to make himself look like this other guy and stole his identity to get himself hired on the crew. Now, though, he has no memories of any of this. It's just facts. He doesn't remember his wife, and the guy he supposedly believed murdered her has no memory of doing that, if he even did it. He has the chance to kill him and decides against it. Then he starts to learn that there's maybe something shady going on, that the evidence was fake, and maybe it was his own corporation that had been doing things. So, of course, that's when the show decided to kill him, I guess because they weren't sure how to keep him on the ship, because nice guys are boring, or whatever. The killer whose identity he stole has made a few more appearances, so the actor has been around.
A lot of fans have been okay with this because, as usual, the good guy gets no respect and they find the very cliched "bad boy with a heart of gold and a sad backstory" more interesting. I find that I'm not only missing the one character whose current and past story had some serious meat to it, but I'm also missing what the contrast brought out in the other characters. There is one other "nice" character, but she's a teenager, and there's one who also turned out to be a good guy because he was an undercover cop, but he's still a hardened badass. We don't really have the earnest good guy who wants to do the right thing and who is something of a peer to the "bad" characters. That's where the good guys can be valuable. The bad boy is less interesting without someone to bounce off and contrast against. There's less true conflict among the cast, fewer philosophical differences. Maybe the good guy was boring, but without him, all the other characters are less interesting, at least to me.
Since the fact that you can make identical clones has been a plot point, I'm wondering if there's some kind of twist and we'll find out that this character wasn't really the one who died, since it seems weird to set him up with an actual story with a real mystery to it and then kill him in the same episode, but we're running out of season. It is possible that the writers really were that unimaginative and gave up on trying to write this character.
I probably need to learn to write more "bad boys" to give my good guys something to bounce against. This seems to be one of my brand elements, that I write good characters, and that's a big part of my appeal to my readers. The problem is that we seem to be in the minority. Maybe that's why I haven't hit it big yet and maybe never will have mainstream success.
In war stories, it seems like the good guy or boy-next-door type always died first. That's one reason I love Band of Brothers -- it was based on a true story, and the main character was a real person who was a brilliant example of the good guy (see, living proof that the good guy isn't boring. If you think Dick Winters was boring, we need to talk).
And it's happened again. I have a kind of love/frustration relationship with the SyFy series Dark Matter. The premise is rather brilliant -- a group of people on a spaceship wake up from cryosleep with no memories of their identities and have to decide who they want to be, which gets complicated when they learn that they're actually a bunch of criminal mercenaries who've been hired to do some unseemly jobs. The actual execution is somewhat less brilliant. I think during every episode of the first season I found myself thinking that I was going to give up on the show, until they had a really intense twist or cliffhanger at the end of the episode that brought me back for the next one. I've jokingly called it Not!Firefly because the main cast can be mapped very easily to Firefly cast members. There's a Not!Jayne, Not!Simon, Not!Book, etc.
I was intrigued by the Not!Simon character, who all along seemed to be the "one of these things doesn't belong" character. Even when we learned his identity as a killer with an extensive record, it just didn't seem to fit. SPOILERS AHEAD Then we learned out why: he wasn't really that guy, after all. We met that guy, who was mad that his identity had been stolen. Eventually, we learned that Not!Simon was actually a billionaire head of a corporation whose wife had been murdered, and he had believed that the killer was a member of this crew. He had surgery to make himself look like this other guy and stole his identity to get himself hired on the crew. Now, though, he has no memories of any of this. It's just facts. He doesn't remember his wife, and the guy he supposedly believed murdered her has no memory of doing that, if he even did it. He has the chance to kill him and decides against it. Then he starts to learn that there's maybe something shady going on, that the evidence was fake, and maybe it was his own corporation that had been doing things. So, of course, that's when the show decided to kill him, I guess because they weren't sure how to keep him on the ship, because nice guys are boring, or whatever. The killer whose identity he stole has made a few more appearances, so the actor has been around.
A lot of fans have been okay with this because, as usual, the good guy gets no respect and they find the very cliched "bad boy with a heart of gold and a sad backstory" more interesting. I find that I'm not only missing the one character whose current and past story had some serious meat to it, but I'm also missing what the contrast brought out in the other characters. There is one other "nice" character, but she's a teenager, and there's one who also turned out to be a good guy because he was an undercover cop, but he's still a hardened badass. We don't really have the earnest good guy who wants to do the right thing and who is something of a peer to the "bad" characters. That's where the good guys can be valuable. The bad boy is less interesting without someone to bounce off and contrast against. There's less true conflict among the cast, fewer philosophical differences. Maybe the good guy was boring, but without him, all the other characters are less interesting, at least to me.
Since the fact that you can make identical clones has been a plot point, I'm wondering if there's some kind of twist and we'll find out that this character wasn't really the one who died, since it seems weird to set him up with an actual story with a real mystery to it and then kill him in the same episode, but we're running out of season. It is possible that the writers really were that unimaginative and gave up on trying to write this character.
I probably need to learn to write more "bad boys" to give my good guys something to bounce against. This seems to be one of my brand elements, that I write good characters, and that's a big part of my appeal to my readers. The problem is that we seem to be in the minority. Maybe that's why I haven't hit it big yet and maybe never will have mainstream success.
Friday, July 01, 2016
Summer TV
I guess I could call this week the beginning of the summer TV season, with the spring TV season having just ended, with the season finale of Game of Thrones on Sunday. Tonight, Killjoys and Dark Matter return to SyFy.
I liked both of these Not!Firefly shows last year. In terms of story and watchability, I think I ended up liking Killjoys more. That one was more Firefly-like in terms of tone and look. You could imagine it almost being the same universe. I guess you could say the main character was kind of like if Inara became a ninja-like assassin-turned bounty hunter, but otherwise the similarity was in tone, look, style, and maybe theme. Like Firefly, that universe seems to have worlds for the ultra-rich and then colony worlds that are more marginalized. I hope they do a good "previously on" segment before tonight's season premiere because I'm blurry on exactly how the season ended, and I don't have time to rewatch the last episode.
Dark Matter turned out to be iffier. I like the concept a lot more than the execution. I'm a total sucker for stories that get into "what would you be if you didn't know who you were?" and that's the basic premise of the series -- a group of people wakes up from hypersleep on a spaceship with no memories of who they are or how they got there. Unfortunately, the actual show isn't nearly that good. I'm hooked on the big story question of who these people are and how they came to be there, and they do really good cliffhangers at the end of each episode that have me wanting to know more, but I have to admit that I haven't really enjoyed the episodes themselves. I put this one into the Not!Firefly class because you can map the main characters pretty easily onto Firefly characters, with one character being a blend of Kaylee and River. The structure of the universe also seems somewhat similar.
Now I really want to come up with a story about someone with no memories who has to figure out who he or she really is and the kind of person he or she wants to be.
I won't say much about Game of Thrones to avoid spoilers, though it has been interesting seeing how they're going ahead of the books. They've confirmed a few big fan theories from the books, and these things have been big enough that I can't imagine those plot points diverging from the books. I think most of the things that have bothered me in the show have been areas where they went off on huge tangents from the books, so it's nice to know that there's (well, maybe someday) an alternate universe in which things will go a different way. The cinematography of the last couple episodes was absolutely amazing.
We also got the end of Person of Interest last week, which really may have been one of the best science fiction shows on TV, although it was kind of a stealth SF show disguised as a procedural. By the end, it was getting into issues of artificial intelligence and the possible ramifications of that. Again, no spoilers, but I thought the ending was apt and meaningful and just a beautiful work of TV.
Unless there's something absolutely amazing on the schedule next season, my TV viewing is going to be really down next year, which is probably good for me. A lot of things I liked have been cancelled or ended, and some things I used to like have taken turns that make me less interested. I'm down to a couple of regular series that are must-watch (and even they've taken turns for the worst, but I like the characters, so I'm hanging on), a couple that now fall into the "watch OnDemand when I feel like it) category, and then possibly some of the PBS offerings and some mid-season SyFy shows. I'm kind of trying to avoid getting hooked on anything else, unless there's something really stellar, because it's rather liberating not having anything to watch. This week, I've been finding some great movies on TCM, and then there are all those documentaries on the various non-fiction channels. I'm liking the documentaries for background noise for exercise. Talk about multi-tasking -- I'm working out my body and my brain at the same time.
I liked both of these Not!Firefly shows last year. In terms of story and watchability, I think I ended up liking Killjoys more. That one was more Firefly-like in terms of tone and look. You could imagine it almost being the same universe. I guess you could say the main character was kind of like if Inara became a ninja-like assassin-turned bounty hunter, but otherwise the similarity was in tone, look, style, and maybe theme. Like Firefly, that universe seems to have worlds for the ultra-rich and then colony worlds that are more marginalized. I hope they do a good "previously on" segment before tonight's season premiere because I'm blurry on exactly how the season ended, and I don't have time to rewatch the last episode.
Dark Matter turned out to be iffier. I like the concept a lot more than the execution. I'm a total sucker for stories that get into "what would you be if you didn't know who you were?" and that's the basic premise of the series -- a group of people wakes up from hypersleep on a spaceship with no memories of who they are or how they got there. Unfortunately, the actual show isn't nearly that good. I'm hooked on the big story question of who these people are and how they came to be there, and they do really good cliffhangers at the end of each episode that have me wanting to know more, but I have to admit that I haven't really enjoyed the episodes themselves. I put this one into the Not!Firefly class because you can map the main characters pretty easily onto Firefly characters, with one character being a blend of Kaylee and River. The structure of the universe also seems somewhat similar.
Now I really want to come up with a story about someone with no memories who has to figure out who he or she really is and the kind of person he or she wants to be.
I won't say much about Game of Thrones to avoid spoilers, though it has been interesting seeing how they're going ahead of the books. They've confirmed a few big fan theories from the books, and these things have been big enough that I can't imagine those plot points diverging from the books. I think most of the things that have bothered me in the show have been areas where they went off on huge tangents from the books, so it's nice to know that there's (well, maybe someday) an alternate universe in which things will go a different way. The cinematography of the last couple episodes was absolutely amazing.
We also got the end of Person of Interest last week, which really may have been one of the best science fiction shows on TV, although it was kind of a stealth SF show disguised as a procedural. By the end, it was getting into issues of artificial intelligence and the possible ramifications of that. Again, no spoilers, but I thought the ending was apt and meaningful and just a beautiful work of TV.
Unless there's something absolutely amazing on the schedule next season, my TV viewing is going to be really down next year, which is probably good for me. A lot of things I liked have been cancelled or ended, and some things I used to like have taken turns that make me less interested. I'm down to a couple of regular series that are must-watch (and even they've taken turns for the worst, but I like the characters, so I'm hanging on), a couple that now fall into the "watch OnDemand when I feel like it) category, and then possibly some of the PBS offerings and some mid-season SyFy shows. I'm kind of trying to avoid getting hooked on anything else, unless there's something really stellar, because it's rather liberating not having anything to watch. This week, I've been finding some great movies on TCM, and then there are all those documentaries on the various non-fiction channels. I'm liking the documentaries for background noise for exercise. Talk about multi-tasking -- I'm working out my body and my brain at the same time.
Friday, March 18, 2016
Writers I Know
Now I'm down to revising the part of the book that really needs rewriting. I feel pretty good about the rest of the book up to this point. It needs fine tuning, but I think the story works. I hope to finish the rewrites tonight or tomorrow, and then I'm giving myself a kind of spring break next week. I'll visit my parents, catch up on business stuff (like finishing my taxes and doing massive amounts of filing), muck out the house, and maybe even get some fun in, though that may be tricky to arrange, as it's Easter week and being in the choir means that's busy time. And then after Easter, I'll do a serious editing pass, when I dig into each scene to make sure I'm conveying everything that needs to be there, touch up the descriptions, and tighten the wording.
I gave myself a little time off from the rewriting last night (since my brain needed a break) to watch my recording of the recent production of And Then There Were None that aired on Lifetime this week. They seem to be picking up what A&E did in the 90s in airing the big British productions that PBS doesn't get. Earlier this year they did a good War and Peace miniseries. This was a two-parter that was very well done, if a bit grim (it follows the book rather than the stage play, so if you're familiar with Agatha Christie, you know what that means). The cast was excellent (though it took some getting used to seeing "Poldark" clean-shaven and with short hair), and it was very atmospheric. I love those "there's a house party in a remote place, and people start dying" stories.
Sunday night is going to be a night of "writers I know on TV." Jane Espenson wrote this week's Once Upon a Time episode, and while I haven't met her in person, I've interviewed her via e-mail and wrote an essay for a book she edited, so she's at least aware of my existence. Then my friend Paul Cornell (who's written for Doctor Who) wrote the episode of Elementary that's on Sunday night, which is a new schedule for that series. Paul's one of my convention buddies, and he's even ridden in my car, which led to something of a slapstick routine. My car doesn't have automatic anything, so I find that the easiest way to unlock the door for a passenger is to go to the passenger side with my key and unlock it. Due to a combination of Britishness (since they drive on the opposite side) and gentlemanly manners (not being used to a lady going to open the door for a gentleman), when I went to unlock the passenger side, Paul then went around and tried to get in the driver's side. I'm not sure how we did it, but we went around on that a couple of times until I finally told him that if he really wanted to drive, maybe I'd let him, but he had to be able to do a stick shift with what would be the wrong hand for him. In his defense, this was at the end of a convention, and he was very tired. So Sunday night, I'll get to applaud his credit appearing on the screen.
Now the skies are getting darker, which means it should be good writing weather for me, as long as we don't get the kind of hail they got elsewhere in the area yesterday morning.
I gave myself a little time off from the rewriting last night (since my brain needed a break) to watch my recording of the recent production of And Then There Were None that aired on Lifetime this week. They seem to be picking up what A&E did in the 90s in airing the big British productions that PBS doesn't get. Earlier this year they did a good War and Peace miniseries. This was a two-parter that was very well done, if a bit grim (it follows the book rather than the stage play, so if you're familiar with Agatha Christie, you know what that means). The cast was excellent (though it took some getting used to seeing "Poldark" clean-shaven and with short hair), and it was very atmospheric. I love those "there's a house party in a remote place, and people start dying" stories.
Sunday night is going to be a night of "writers I know on TV." Jane Espenson wrote this week's Once Upon a Time episode, and while I haven't met her in person, I've interviewed her via e-mail and wrote an essay for a book she edited, so she's at least aware of my existence. Then my friend Paul Cornell (who's written for Doctor Who) wrote the episode of Elementary that's on Sunday night, which is a new schedule for that series. Paul's one of my convention buddies, and he's even ridden in my car, which led to something of a slapstick routine. My car doesn't have automatic anything, so I find that the easiest way to unlock the door for a passenger is to go to the passenger side with my key and unlock it. Due to a combination of Britishness (since they drive on the opposite side) and gentlemanly manners (not being used to a lady going to open the door for a gentleman), when I went to unlock the passenger side, Paul then went around and tried to get in the driver's side. I'm not sure how we did it, but we went around on that a couple of times until I finally told him that if he really wanted to drive, maybe I'd let him, but he had to be able to do a stick shift with what would be the wrong hand for him. In his defense, this was at the end of a convention, and he was very tired. So Sunday night, I'll get to applaud his credit appearing on the screen.
Now the skies are getting darker, which means it should be good writing weather for me, as long as we don't get the kind of hail they got elsewhere in the area yesterday morning.
Monday, March 07, 2016
Resisting the Nap Urge
I suspect it will take an act of will and a lot of tea to get much work done today. There's a triple whammy of several early mornings in a row, plus a yoga class this morning that wore me out, plus a rainy day. Even as I sit upstairs in my office, I can feel the pull of my bed from downstairs. Just a teensy nap won't hurt, will it?
I'm heading into another busy stretch of programmed weekends. Most of it is fun stuff, but it's still stuff on the calendar. It's that time of year when choir kicks into high gear. I've got the solo in the choir anthem this Sunday, then next Sunday the children's choir sings, and then there's the Good Friday service and three Easter services. The weekend after Easter may be collapse time.
But with Downton Abbey over, that frees up some TV time. I found the ending satisfying, though I had minor issues with the outcome. In too many cases, the romantic relationships were more "tell" than "show." In the first couple of seasons, Matthew and Mary had enough interaction for us to see how well they fit. One of the interim guys also seemed to generate some real sparks, and she even lowered her guard with him. With the final guy, while their relationship seemed okay in the finale, in all the lead up to it we barely saw them interact. There were more scenes of other characters talking about how perfect they were for each other than there were of them being perfect together.
Then they may have gone a wee bit overboard with pairing off just about everyone, or at least hinting at who they'd be paired off with. The world isn't Noah's Ark. You can end a story without everyone having the perfect mate. I actually was kind of pulling for Mary to remain single. She'd never been overly enthused about the idea of marriage. She loved Matthew, and she had the much-needed heir, and after that I could have imagined her being happily "married" to the estate.
I may rewatch the first couple of seasons someday. That seems like a good rainy weekend activity.
Meanwhile, I was kind of meh on the Once Upon a Time midseason premiere/100th episode. In case you hadn't figured it out by now, Regina apparently really didn't like Snow White in the past. But she's a hero now (and yet, we've never seen her say she was wrong to keep trying to kill Snow White, and she's never apologized for any of that). Maybe it'll pick up again next week. This week, I got a lot of knitting done.
Now, to will myself to work rather than crawling into bed.
I'm heading into another busy stretch of programmed weekends. Most of it is fun stuff, but it's still stuff on the calendar. It's that time of year when choir kicks into high gear. I've got the solo in the choir anthem this Sunday, then next Sunday the children's choir sings, and then there's the Good Friday service and three Easter services. The weekend after Easter may be collapse time.
But with Downton Abbey over, that frees up some TV time. I found the ending satisfying, though I had minor issues with the outcome. In too many cases, the romantic relationships were more "tell" than "show." In the first couple of seasons, Matthew and Mary had enough interaction for us to see how well they fit. One of the interim guys also seemed to generate some real sparks, and she even lowered her guard with him. With the final guy, while their relationship seemed okay in the finale, in all the lead up to it we barely saw them interact. There were more scenes of other characters talking about how perfect they were for each other than there were of them being perfect together.
Then they may have gone a wee bit overboard with pairing off just about everyone, or at least hinting at who they'd be paired off with. The world isn't Noah's Ark. You can end a story without everyone having the perfect mate. I actually was kind of pulling for Mary to remain single. She'd never been overly enthused about the idea of marriage. She loved Matthew, and she had the much-needed heir, and after that I could have imagined her being happily "married" to the estate.
I may rewatch the first couple of seasons someday. That seems like a good rainy weekend activity.
Meanwhile, I was kind of meh on the Once Upon a Time midseason premiere/100th episode. In case you hadn't figured it out by now, Regina apparently really didn't like Snow White in the past. But she's a hero now (and yet, we've never seen her say she was wrong to keep trying to kill Snow White, and she's never apologized for any of that). Maybe it'll pick up again next week. This week, I got a lot of knitting done.
Now, to will myself to work rather than crawling into bed.
Friday, March 04, 2016
Farewell to an Era
I managed to write yesterday. It was very exciting. I seem to have finally emerged from my haze. Now I might start to make actual progress again. But first, I have adult-type stuff to do, like get my car safety inspected so I can renew my registration. It's still early in the month, so I have time, but I have to get new license plates this time around, which means that I can either do the inspection early and then renew by mail or online, or I can wait until later in the month and go stand in line at the tax office. I suppose I could still do it sometime next week, but I have some other errands, and it's a reasonably nice day, so I may as well take care of it today and get it out of the way.
This weekend marks the end of an era, with the final episode of Downton Abbey Sunday night. I can't believe I wasn't initially planning to watch it, but the review in the newspaper was so glowing that I thought I'd give it a shot, and I loved it. Alas, the first season was really the high point. They made some questionable decisions after that, skipping through most of the war, the terrible romantic triangle, the "miracle" cure. Then they started losing actors left and right, and I'm not sure the show ever recovered from Matthew's death -- all that buildup to his relationship with Mary, and then he was gone. I bought the first two seasons on DVD, but I haven't bought the rest because it was no longer something I could imagine rewatching, and once they were into the 20s, the fashion was no longer quite so much to swoon over. This season has become kind of lackluster, and they have a really bad habit of making the interesting stuff take place offscreen. But I love the characters, and I might find myself missing them, even while I'm ready for the show to end before it becomes even more of a parody of itself.
So, Sunday night I may put on a nice hat or maybe a tiara and settle down with a glass of champagne to say farewell to an era. I suspect there was a lot of Downton Abbey influence in the world of Rebel Mechanics, just with the dealings with household staff and the divide between the upstairs world and the downstairs world. I wasn't doing it on purpose, but I'm sure I couldn't help but be influenced by something I was enjoying. I did once quote the dowager countess in responding to a question posed by an editor (they wondered about a ball being held on a weeknight, to which I replied "what is a weekend?" -- people who don't have jobs don't have to worry about scheduling things around weekends).
This is also the return of Once Upon a Time for the spring season, but advance reviews are saying this is mostly a Regina episode, with token appearances by other cast members, so that's nothing to get excited about. It's their 100th episode, and it says something about where the writers stand that they center a milestone episode around a single character, and that single character in particular. If ever there was a cause to do a true ensemble episode, you'd think #100 would be it.
This weekend marks the end of an era, with the final episode of Downton Abbey Sunday night. I can't believe I wasn't initially planning to watch it, but the review in the newspaper was so glowing that I thought I'd give it a shot, and I loved it. Alas, the first season was really the high point. They made some questionable decisions after that, skipping through most of the war, the terrible romantic triangle, the "miracle" cure. Then they started losing actors left and right, and I'm not sure the show ever recovered from Matthew's death -- all that buildup to his relationship with Mary, and then he was gone. I bought the first two seasons on DVD, but I haven't bought the rest because it was no longer something I could imagine rewatching, and once they were into the 20s, the fashion was no longer quite so much to swoon over. This season has become kind of lackluster, and they have a really bad habit of making the interesting stuff take place offscreen. But I love the characters, and I might find myself missing them, even while I'm ready for the show to end before it becomes even more of a parody of itself.
So, Sunday night I may put on a nice hat or maybe a tiara and settle down with a glass of champagne to say farewell to an era. I suspect there was a lot of Downton Abbey influence in the world of Rebel Mechanics, just with the dealings with household staff and the divide between the upstairs world and the downstairs world. I wasn't doing it on purpose, but I'm sure I couldn't help but be influenced by something I was enjoying. I did once quote the dowager countess in responding to a question posed by an editor (they wondered about a ball being held on a weeknight, to which I replied "what is a weekend?" -- people who don't have jobs don't have to worry about scheduling things around weekends).
This is also the return of Once Upon a Time for the spring season, but advance reviews are saying this is mostly a Regina episode, with token appearances by other cast members, so that's nothing to get excited about. It's their 100th episode, and it says something about where the writers stand that they center a milestone episode around a single character, and that single character in particular. If ever there was a cause to do a true ensemble episode, you'd think #100 would be it.
Friday, February 26, 2016
Medicinal Television
I'm getting better -- managed to sleep last night without any cold medicine! -- but still not 100 percent. Most of the sniffles and stuffiness are gone. I just have a slight "throat" cough (as opposed to chest cough). I'm still rather weak, but I hope that will be improving as my appetite seems to have returned. I never had any stomach-related symptoms. I just wasn't interested in food at all, and so I concentrated on fluids with nutrients. I suspect that plus the fever have something to do with the weakness. I got hungry last night just before I went to bed, and then I ate a real breakfast this morning. So maybe my strength will start coming back.
I'm still really iffy on being able to sing tomorrow. I get a bit lightheaded from sitting up for too long at a stretch, so I couldn't stand all the way through an hour-long concert, and I don't have a lot of breath or breath control. If I take a deep enough breath to sing, I cough. I'll have to see if I have any contact information for this group to let them know. Given the way the director was treating me, he may take it as a relief that I'm not there. I think if I'd felt a little more welcomed or valued, I'd push myself to make it, but this isn't worth killing myself over.
I've always said that when I'm sick, what I want to do is watch fluffy romantic comedies. Oddly, though, I'm finding myself watching documentaries. I don't really have the focus for reading right now -- I read a page, then find myself wondering what that was all about -- so I've been watching TV, and I suppose history documentaries don't require you to follow a plot. I know the general gist of events for most of the things I've been watching, so these shows are just filling in details or providing new visuals.
Here's a rundown of my sick week viewing:
On the Travel Channel, I've recently become hooked on a series called Mysteries at the Castle. They discuss and dramatize anecdotes related to various castles, manors, mansions, and other buildings that might roughly fit the description of "castle." Sometimes, it's a bit of a stretch, as the story might take place somewhere else entirely and involve someone who once lived in this place. The stories are fascinating, but for a show on the Travel Channel, there's disappointingly little actual travel content. I'd like a little more info on the place as it is today and what you can see there. If there's something in the show that makes you want to visit the place, the show doesn't help you know even whether it's a place you can visit.
Yesterday, they were marathoning what appears to be a sister series, Mysteries at the Hotel, which does the same thing, but about events relating to hotels. Again, it seems a little lacking in actual travel content. For the hotels still in operation, they might make a passing mention of what the hotel is like now, but if the show intrigues you, there's not much to show you what you'd see if you stayed there. I love interesting hotels that aren't obvious cookie-cutter chains, so this intrigued me while frustrating me. If I'd felt better, I might have made a list and then googled.
I'd recorded a series from BBC World News about the Art of Gothic, getting into the rise of industrialization and how that contributed to the Gothic Revival movement in art during the Victorian era. I think that has a lot to do with the Steampunk movement, so I figured that counted as work-related research.
There was a show I found on demand from Military History (which I don't seem to have as an actual channel, just an on demand setting) about the architecture of Ivan the Terrible -- they were examining the surviving buildings constructed during his reign and looking at how they were made, as well as talking about the context of their construction. And there was a show on Smithsonian about Hitler's will and what his assets/estate really were -- his last will claimed that he had very little, but he had to have had millions in book royalties alone, since he'd passed a law that every newlywed couple was given a copy of his book, so the state was buying millions of copies a year and he was getting the royalties, and that's not counting all the other copies that were sold when having a copy was just about mandatory.
There was something about a search for sunken pirate ships near an island off the coast of Madagascar. And there was another show I found on demand, I think on the Travel Channel, called something like Expedition Extreme, in which a guy tracks down the possible truths behind various legends, looking for archaeological evidence. In the ones I watched, on Robin Hood and King Arthur, it mostly amounts to him talking to local experts and getting excited about ground-penetrating radar showing that something exists underground, but ends up with no actual conclusions. Still, there's pretty scenery.
Today, I'm pondering either a Galavant marathon or Doctor Zhivago on TCM on demand. I've seen that movie multiple times, including on the big screen, have read the book, and have also seen the PBS/BBC miniseries (that's closer to the book), so if I fall asleep, I won't miss anything. I miss reading, but even just a little while ago, I re-read the same page three times because when I turned the page, I was baffled by what was going on and had to turn back to refresh my memory. So, maybe "good for me" TV is the best thing for my brain right now.
I'm still really iffy on being able to sing tomorrow. I get a bit lightheaded from sitting up for too long at a stretch, so I couldn't stand all the way through an hour-long concert, and I don't have a lot of breath or breath control. If I take a deep enough breath to sing, I cough. I'll have to see if I have any contact information for this group to let them know. Given the way the director was treating me, he may take it as a relief that I'm not there. I think if I'd felt a little more welcomed or valued, I'd push myself to make it, but this isn't worth killing myself over.
I've always said that when I'm sick, what I want to do is watch fluffy romantic comedies. Oddly, though, I'm finding myself watching documentaries. I don't really have the focus for reading right now -- I read a page, then find myself wondering what that was all about -- so I've been watching TV, and I suppose history documentaries don't require you to follow a plot. I know the general gist of events for most of the things I've been watching, so these shows are just filling in details or providing new visuals.
Here's a rundown of my sick week viewing:
On the Travel Channel, I've recently become hooked on a series called Mysteries at the Castle. They discuss and dramatize anecdotes related to various castles, manors, mansions, and other buildings that might roughly fit the description of "castle." Sometimes, it's a bit of a stretch, as the story might take place somewhere else entirely and involve someone who once lived in this place. The stories are fascinating, but for a show on the Travel Channel, there's disappointingly little actual travel content. I'd like a little more info on the place as it is today and what you can see there. If there's something in the show that makes you want to visit the place, the show doesn't help you know even whether it's a place you can visit.
Yesterday, they were marathoning what appears to be a sister series, Mysteries at the Hotel, which does the same thing, but about events relating to hotels. Again, it seems a little lacking in actual travel content. For the hotels still in operation, they might make a passing mention of what the hotel is like now, but if the show intrigues you, there's not much to show you what you'd see if you stayed there. I love interesting hotels that aren't obvious cookie-cutter chains, so this intrigued me while frustrating me. If I'd felt better, I might have made a list and then googled.
I'd recorded a series from BBC World News about the Art of Gothic, getting into the rise of industrialization and how that contributed to the Gothic Revival movement in art during the Victorian era. I think that has a lot to do with the Steampunk movement, so I figured that counted as work-related research.
There was a show I found on demand from Military History (which I don't seem to have as an actual channel, just an on demand setting) about the architecture of Ivan the Terrible -- they were examining the surviving buildings constructed during his reign and looking at how they were made, as well as talking about the context of their construction. And there was a show on Smithsonian about Hitler's will and what his assets/estate really were -- his last will claimed that he had very little, but he had to have had millions in book royalties alone, since he'd passed a law that every newlywed couple was given a copy of his book, so the state was buying millions of copies a year and he was getting the royalties, and that's not counting all the other copies that were sold when having a copy was just about mandatory.
There was something about a search for sunken pirate ships near an island off the coast of Madagascar. And there was another show I found on demand, I think on the Travel Channel, called something like Expedition Extreme, in which a guy tracks down the possible truths behind various legends, looking for archaeological evidence. In the ones I watched, on Robin Hood and King Arthur, it mostly amounts to him talking to local experts and getting excited about ground-penetrating radar showing that something exists underground, but ends up with no actual conclusions. Still, there's pretty scenery.
Today, I'm pondering either a Galavant marathon or Doctor Zhivago on TCM on demand. I've seen that movie multiple times, including on the big screen, have read the book, and have also seen the PBS/BBC miniseries (that's closer to the book), so if I fall asleep, I won't miss anything. I miss reading, but even just a little while ago, I re-read the same page three times because when I turned the page, I was baffled by what was going on and had to turn back to refresh my memory. So, maybe "good for me" TV is the best thing for my brain right now.
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