tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29465347734072763392024-03-21T05:17:09.638-04:00Something Short and SnappyA blog that is neither particularly short nor snappy.Erika The Over Queenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03649072707709302370noreply@blogger.comBlogger290125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-16053002065510280802019-06-12T16:01:00.000-04:002019-06-12T16:01:27.360-04:00What about straight pride? And other fun factsThe first "Pride
Parade" was celebrating a police riot started by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marsha_P._Johnson">trans women of colour</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stonewall_riots">Stonewall</a> was a riot
against the police. This is part of why so many people are uncomfortable
with police at Pride. There's a long history and in most cities there still is a lot of police hostility and aggression toward queer people all of the rest of the year.<br />
<br />
Pride is not for everyone! That's ok! The
goal is not and never has been to be for everyone, or about "loving and
accepting everyone!" It is a highly political celebration of defiance
for continuing to exist even when people keep trying to murder you. K<span class="text_exposed_show">ind of like Hanukah.</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><br /></span>
<br />
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It is for queer/rainbow/lgbt+/umbrella-term-of-your-choice people. This
does not include cis het kinksters, allies, or people who just really like
rainbows! This <i>does</i> include asexuals, aromantics, anyone who falls
even partially under the trans umbrella, bisexuals, pansexuals, and anyone who considers themselves queer! Even
if they're in what appears to be a "heterosexual relationship". The
gender of their partner does not define their sexuality or gender.<br />
<br />
"What, so you're saying because I'm cis and heterosexual that I
can't/shouldn't go to pride?" No! Not at all! I'm saying that you need
to understand that you are not the target demographic. You are not the
person it is <i>for</i>. If you go just be mindful of that fact, and don't
center it on you. Think of it like going to a friend's wedding of a
different culture than your own. It isn't about you, you are there as a
guest to participate and enjoy another culture's traditions, and you're
going to defer to the members of that culture while there.<br />
<br />
"What
about Straight Pride?" No one has tried to kill heterosexuals for being
heterosexuals. There have not been mass shootings or legislation
against them existing, or getting married. People recognize their
personhood! That's good! Also, Straight Pride is being organized by Nazis. I find a really helpful litmus test of "Is this something I want nothing to do with and should be actively against?" to be "Are nazis for it?"<br />
<br />
"Ok so what does wearing glitter booty
shorts and a feather boa on a float have to do with survival?" Pride is a
celebration of life, and presence. Sometimes that involves nipples.<br />
<br />
"So, what should I do to celebrate Pride?" FIGHT THE SYSTEM. No,
really. Call your reps about systematic injustice. When people make
shitty bigoted jokes, don't laugh along. Call it out, and if you can't
do that, a flat cringe and "wow, so, anyways" can do wonders. Don't go to businesses that are bigoted. Support
queer artists and creators. Buy their stuff, promote their stuff, not the corporations wearing rainbows. When
queer people talk about their experiences, listen. Donate to queer
organizations! Punch nazis! Brush up on <a href="https://www.ihollaback.org/resources/bystander-resources/">bystander intervention</a> so if you see someone getting harassed, you can use your privilege to help!<br />
<br />
Have a happy (and political!) Pride!<br />
<br />
<i>(This is an edit of a Facebook post I wrote ages ago.)</i></div>
Erika The Over Queenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03649072707709302370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-74069547238785372632019-06-02T14:36:00.001-04:002019-06-02T14:36:12.699-04:00Things to Keep In Mind Going Into Pride Time for Another Educational Post for Pride! Here's some things to keep in mind going into Pride Month<br />
<br />Pride started with Stonewall, which was a riot against t<span class="text_exposed_show">he police by poor trans WOC. <br /> Because of this, Pride is inherently political. <br />
This is also a big part of the reason people don't want police at Pride
(it gets more complicated, but that's a post for another day).</span><br />
<br />
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"Why are people half naked at Pride? How is that political?" Pride is a
lot of things to a lot of people. One of those is a celebration of
resilience. People have and continue to try to kill us, and failed.
We're still here. Sometimes celebrating life involves having a picnic
with loved ones. Sometimes it involves standing on a float in a rainbow
g-string throwing condoms and glitter out to a crowd.<br />
<br />
People who
are not cis gay/cis lesbians belong at Pride. Anyone under the queer
umbrella belongs there. That includes aro/ace folks, that includes
heterosexual trans folks, that includes bi/pan/any other sexuality and
gender that is not hetero/cis.<br />
<br />
If you are cis het and want to go
to Pride, remember that it Isn't About You. That's a good thing! It means no one has been trying to murder or systematically deprive you for your sexuality or gender! Go, enjoy, support your
queer friends! Resist the urge to center it on yourself. <br /> If you are
cis/het and go to Pride a good way to be supportive is putting yourself
between bigots and the people they would harass. Look into by-standard
intervention. Film cops that are giving people a hard time (DOUBLY SO IF
THEY ARE A POC).<br />
<br /> A lot of people set up shop at Pride events, try to support queer artists/shops with your money rather than hetero "allies" and corporations.<br />
<br />
Remember to be safe, have fun, and punch nazis!</div>
Erika The Over Queenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03649072707709302370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-5229829631811681592019-05-31T16:14:00.000-04:002019-05-31T16:22:26.367-04:00Queer Words<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
With Pride starting tomorrow, I'm going to do a string of Educational
Posts. Today, we're doing some vocabulary for orientations and
gender! Suggestions and requests for future topics are welcome. I am not most of the things on this list, so if you see one
that applies to you that I didn’t get Quite Right, please tell me
and I’ll edit in corrections. Please feel free to share this, just don't remove credit. </div>
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<b>Heterosexual
</b>(<i>hetero</i>) - Base word hetero, based on the Greek word for different.
Attraction to different genders.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Cisgender </b>(<i>cis</i>) -
Base word, cis, is Latin for "same side". People who
identify with their gender as assigned as birth. So, if you popped
out and they said "Congrats, it's a girl!" and you're like
"Yeah ok" you're cis!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Cis Het</b> – A
combination of the two above, and as almost all umbrella terms refer
to “not these things” I wanted to be very clear on this one.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Homosexual </b>(<i>homo</i>) -
Base word homo, meaning same. People attracted to the same gender.
</div>
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Subcategories</div>
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<b>Gay </b>(so many other
terms) - Means "happy" and usually refers to men attracted
to other men. It is also often used as an umbrella term for not cis
het folks (EX: Gay rights, gay marriage) to keep things nice and
confusing!</div>
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<b>Lesbian </b>– “From
the island of Lesbos” aka where Sappho, a poet known for writing
love poetry about other women is from. Despite being known as “the
biggest lesbian to ever lesbian” Sappho was actually bi, fun fact!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Queer </b>– Means
strange, and is an umbrella term for “not cis het” with a lot of
baggage. Historically it’s been a slur, but has been reclaimed
since. However due to said history a lot of people have mixed and
complicated feelings about it. Some people like it because it’s
provocative and has history, other’s dislike it for those same
reasons.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Bisexual </b>(<i>bi</i>) –
Base word meaning “two”, the Official Definition By Bis is “two
or more” or “same and different”. This does NOT mean “man and
woman” because those are not the only genders, and it is possible
for a bisexual to be attracted to women and non-binary folks but not
men and they are still bi. I’ll do a longer form post on bisexuals
and pansexuals later.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Pansexual </b>(<i>pan</i>) –
Base word meaning “all”. Meaning just that, they are attracted to
all genders. Many folks will use bi and pan as SELF IDENTIFIERS for
themselves interchangeably, but not everyone does, so be aware and
respectful about that.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Asexual </b>(<i>Ace</i>) –
Little to no sexual attraction or desire. That does not mean they
however that they don’t have ROMANTIC attraction (there will be
another more in depth post on the difference between sexual and
romantic attraction later)
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aromantic </b>(<i>aro</i>) –
Little to no romantic attraction or desire. They don’t want to date
anyone.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Aro ace</b> –
Aromantic asexuals, they have no use for tinder and sound like
fighter pilots.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Demisexual </b>(<i>demi</i>) –
Root word is half, or less. These folks are on the ace spectrum and
do not experience sexual attraction before having some sort of mental
or emotional connection. You will often see things like “demisexual
biromantic” which roughly translates to “I am open to dating
multiple genders but we’re gonna go slow kay?”</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Gray asexual</b> (<i>gray
ace</i>) – Some but not much sexual attraction.
</div>
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Transgender – Root
word for “across”, someone who does not agree with their assigned
at birth gender. So when they popped out the doctor was like “It’s
a girl!” and they’re like “Nah”. Also used as an umbrella
term for “not cis”</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Trans man/Trans
woman</b> – Men and women who are trans. Two words. “Isn’t
transgender one word?” yeah I know English is fake. Also the
consensus was compounding it distanced them from other people of
their gender so, two words.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Non binary</b> (<i>NB</i>) –
Someone who does not fall within one of the binary (male/female)
genders. Often used as a smaller umbrella within the trans umbrella.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Agender</b> – A lack
of gender. Genderless. They reject your concept of gender and are
using that space to store snacks.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b>Gender fluid</b> –
Gender is inherently fluid, but for these people it flows more
quickly and to wider extremes than most folks. So, depends on the
day, you should ask.
</div>
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<br />
<b>Gender
nonconforming</b> (<i>GNC</i>) – These people do not subscribe to a binary
gender.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>Demiboy/Demigirl</b> –
Almost but not QUITE whatever the second part is. If gender is a
scale of 1-10, with 1 and 2 being men, and 9 and 10 being women, with
4-7 being most non-binary genders, demigenders would be the 3 and 8.
</div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-spirit">Two Spirit</a></b> –
A term used to describe Native gender concepts that don’t map to
European binary gender concepts. Wiki page below.
</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
<b>LGBTQA2</b>s –
Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans, Queer (and/or questioning), Asexual
(NOT ALLY), and Two Spirit</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0cm;">
If there are any
terms you’ve seen floating around that I don’t go over here that
you think I should cover, let me know and I’ll try to add them in!</div>
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<br /></div>
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<br /></div>
Erika The Over Queenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03649072707709302370noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-64142232690139035002017-11-02T23:01:00.001-04:002017-11-02T23:01:38.827-04:00Death Note: Rules, principles, and the purpose of a remakeOh, hello friends. I didn't see you there. Please, come in. At the time of writing, I just finished watching the Death Note remake on Netflix and it proved to be the perfect material to break the ice on this long-forgotten snark platform of ours.<br />
<br />
(I wish I could say this is the start of regular blogging here again, but that tragically seems unlikely. <a href="https://twitter.com/TavWild" target="_blank">I do have a twitter now</a>, and of course <a href="https://twitter.com/SnappyErika" target="_blank">the blogqueen has been tweeting prolifically</a> for years. We'll see if I can follow in her illustrious keysteps.)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Death Note (The American One, Mostly)</b></div>
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<b><br /></b></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
(<i>Content: death, murder, sexual assault, misogyny. Fun content: that depends on how much you missed me</i>.)</div>
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I feel like any adaptation--whether it's book to film, or a series reboot or reimagining, whatever--has two extra criteria for judgment that original creations can ignore: </div>
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</div>
<ol>
<li>Does this story stand on its own, without already knowing the source material? </li>
<li>What value did the adapters get by changing whatever they changed?</li>
</ol>
And I feel like, regardless of one's opinions on the original story, the American Death Note fails completely on both of these points. Its protagonist, Light, is changed in bizarre ways that sabotage the thesis of the original, while the supporting leads Mia and L are burdened with new rubbish flaws all too typical for the treatment of women and black men in US cinema.<br />
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Death Note (as in 'notebook') started out as a hit manga, which got turned into a hit anime, which got turned into a bunch of other supplementary materials and movies and such, all of which were Japanese and all telling the same core story of high school student Light Yagami, who gains magical murder powers and gets into a years-long battle of wits with law enforcement as he slaughters hundreds of criminals for the supposedly greater good. It was far from perfect, but it was compelling and creative, telling a story of a seeming paragon of his community who didn't need to be corrupted--he just needed the <i>opportunity</i> to be evil and he'd drag himself down without a blink. In the name of saving the world from dangerous criminals, he'd kill innocent people to cover his trail, to protect himself, or just to make a point. He'd manipulate people's emotions, twist and control them, sure of his own perfection and his justified ends.</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Light Yagami is a model student, a star athlete, an Encyclopedia Brown-grade genius who helps his cop father solve crimes, and gorgeous heartthrob with legions of girls swooning over him. He might have gone on to become a brilliant lawyer or miracle doctor or follow his dad's path and be a legendary detective, but he finds a magic book that can kill people and he thinks <i>why not be a god?</i> Death Note is a story about how someone who's basically modern nobility might actually be the worst kind of monster. (Before it meant anything else, 'aristocracy' meant 'rule by the best people'. Sometimes we have to remind ourselves not to trust that idea.)</div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Light <i>Turner</i>, the protagonist of the Netflix movie, is not this*. Instead of the outwardly perfect superman, he's a standard American teen protagonist: a nerdy outcast, smarter than bullies but still getting into trouble, with a recently-dead mother and a crush on a cheerleader. Where the original story makes the Yagamis a magazine-perfect family with mom, dad, and 2.3 kids, Light Turner lives with his dad in a tiny house next to a freight rail line for no apparent reason. Class politics aren't part of this story, it's just a truth universally acknowledged that a sympathetic teenage protagonist comes from a working-class family.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Where Light Yagami showed vulcan-ish logic and emotional control, Light Turner is every inch the awkward teen, ineffectively confronting bullies and stuttering when pretty girls acknowledge his existence. Where Light Yagami started experimenting with the killing book of his own accord and didn't hesitate to start offing detectives getting too close to his trail, Light Turner has to be pushed into using it for the first time (to rescue another student), and ultimately goes through the whole movie without killing anyone who hasn't already committed some ghastly crime. (His second kill is the mafia goon who killed his mom in a traffic accident, who apparently went free because the mob bribed the jury.)</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
I spent most of the movie trying to figure out if the adaptation writers had intentionally chosen to make their protagonist nothing like the original, or if they thought we were <i>supposed</i> to sympathise with Light. I think it was intentional, but good lord, at what cost? Let's talk about the women of Death Note.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Light's mom is not significant in the original story, and she's already been killed for plot fodder in this one. Other women were mostly extras or quickly killed. His sister got left out of this version entirely. The only major female character in the original is Misa Amane, a model who hero-worships Light for killing her parents' murderer and becomes his willing accomplice and nominal girlfriend. She's clever by normal standards but, <i>of course</i>, foolish compared to proper geniuses like Light, and thus spends most of the story being his willing plaything, killing as he directs and absorbing whatever casual cruelty he shows because she just wants to be useful to him. It's awful, and the audience is meant to condemn Light for his treatment of her, even if she is also a killer.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In this version, Misa becomes Mia Sutton, and she is the Real Villain of the story. Mia is the one who pushes Light to kill more people, more publicly, to kill anyone who dares challenge him, and possibly manipulates <i>his</i> emotions to keep him on her side. I'm sort of impressed that the adapters managed to substantially increase female agency while also keeping the misogyny, and even bumping it from 'evil people mistreat women' to 'the only woman is pure evil'.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Mia is introduced early in the story as the cheerleader that Light watches from the sidelines like an earnest shy creeper. He's shocked that she knows his name (as American movie tradition demands), and the minute she shows any interest in the book he's reading, he tells her everything about it. He even declares that she "<i>of all people</i>" should understand the potential of the book, indicating she has some important backstory that got cut from the final version of the movie. They talk about being able to bring peace to those who have been let down by cops and politicians, and inventing a god of justice to make people too scared to commit crimes. And then they have sex, because (again) American movie tradition demands it.</div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<i>[Light and Mia sneak past his dad, sleeping in front of the TV, and up to his room. Light leans toward her, then hesitates.]</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<i>LIGHT: Can I kiss you?</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<i>MIA: You're not supposed to ask.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq" style="text-align: left;">
<i>ME: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA</i></blockquote>
<div style="text-align: left;">
We actually have scenes where they are actively making out or undressing each other <i>while googling war criminals to kill off</i>. This is just apparently their fetish. (<i>ERIKA NOTE: Just saying, Drawn Together picked "murder and wreckage" as a fetish for one of their episodes and probably handled it better. That is not a high bar.</i>) They also decide their murdersona needs a name--where the Japanese public just started referring to the force murdering all these criminals as Kira ("killer") in the original, Light intentionally chooses the name in this version, with the justification that it means 'light' in Celtic and Russian, and then tries to use the Japanese connection to throw off suspicion. It doesn't work, and that's when we meet L.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
In all versions of this story, L is the counterpart to Light. Light appears normal, trustworthy, and pretty, and he is an utterly amoral murderer-protagonist. L is weird, no one trusts him, he looks creepy, and he's the virtuous antagonist. He's Light's only intellectual equal, tracking down an untraceable killer just as fast as Light can cover his tracks.</div>
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<br /></div>
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Like everything else in this story, the adapters appear to have missed or ignored the point. Even just consider the following:</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnT89Epg-iGcqA_qyZ5z77trvtr0Gf7X7mBy9b-ysyaH_GriDkInNaOwlc4XwC4d3Q9a0AJr6UxvCw10BfMoWdPLQXVoHSbYTH4yi9XZhqoVNbs0OGeqHKdhnge7CfYM_k00cZRO28gS0/s1600/nat-wolff-light-yagami-death-note.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="359" data-original-width="717" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnT89Epg-iGcqA_qyZ5z77trvtr0Gf7X7mBy9b-ysyaH_GriDkInNaOwlc4XwC4d3Q9a0AJr6UxvCw10BfMoWdPLQXVoHSbYTH4yi9XZhqoVNbs0OGeqHKdhnge7CfYM_k00cZRO28gS0/s320/nat-wolff-light-yagami-death-note.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Pictured: the live-action American Light played by Nat Wolff, an archetypal gawky Movie Teen, next to the cool and precisely styled anime version of Light.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv6SWTcKWpRpf_O8UG_OyNI1eGNXYQtq5LH1wTc7Gz29MgZj3UW_Xjesi1S3vA-far7zqn_NVGQ8CSlpVe6-guNl1aiA-bxZrYCbwMYQcohAgvDw9-YoBB8M_hb7ty3HRSP-8xgnU0HeU/s1600/ckwcrdvxaaalh-a_6qzn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="394" data-original-width="702" height="179" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv6SWTcKWpRpf_O8UG_OyNI1eGNXYQtq5LH1wTc7Gz29MgZj3UW_Xjesi1S3vA-far7zqn_NVGQ8CSlpVe6-guNl1aiA-bxZrYCbwMYQcohAgvDw9-YoBB8M_hb7ty3HRSP-8xgnU0HeU/s320/ckwcrdvxaaalh-a_6qzn.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Pictured: the anime L, an unkempt man with an unsettling stare, and his American live-action counterpart, Lakeith Stanfield, who is more attractive than any human really needs to be.</i></div>
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Granted, apart from making L hot, the adaptation's initial depiction of him is pretty solid. He's still eccentric, still obsessed with sweets, and they even cast a black actor in this heroic role (I'm generally for this!). We find him inspecting a Japanese crime scene (cameo by producer Masi Oka) and then boarding a jet with his assistant, the elderly Watari, the only character who stayed Japanese through this adaptation. L is a Sherlock-esque consulting detective, smart enough to have already narrowed down Kira's true location to Seattle.</div>
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(While the original story spends immense time on the details of Light and L's battles of wits, this movie glosses over most of them for the sake of time. I will summarise because I have a question. L realised that, before the Kira name started going around, a guy in Seattle in a standoff with police suddenly set his hostages free and then died in a convenient traffic accident, inexplicable events typical of Kira's murders. To confirm his theories, L started seeding older criminal files into police databases in the Seattle region, and Light apparently used one of those to kill off gangsters in Japan. When we first see L, he's examining a club where said gangsters appear to have killed each other, but the staff working the club are also dead. Light wouldn't have been writing the names of the club dancers or waiters unless they were also violent criminals. Was that just literally a Villains-Only club, or did a bunch of innocent people get killed as well? That's not supposed to be how the Death Note works. It has rules. It has <i>so many</i> rules.**)</div>
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Once L arrives, the hunt for Kira amps up, and Light realises he's being tailed by an FBI agent (on the grounds that Light may have access to the police database, which they know Kira does). Light, as our sympathetic protagonist, gets scared and wants to stop using the Death Note entirely, even though public faith in the justice of Lord Kira is taking off. Mia says they just have to find out who all of the agents on the team are and kill them simultaneously, to scare off further investigation without implicating Light specifically. Light is shocked, <i>shocked</i> to hear Mia suggest they use murder to solve their problems. He's a sympathetic protagonist, after all! All he's done is kill a few hundred bad guys. That's what American heroes are <i>supposed</i> to do! But Mia isn't an obedient girlfriend in this one--she steals a page from the book and kills the FBI agents herself, while Light just thinks it was the work of Ryuk.</div>
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(I haven't mentioned Ryuk until now because, in this version of the story, he's basically irrelevant. Ryuk is the death god who originally owned the book, and he pushed Light to initially use it to kill the school bully who was at that moment threatening to rape another student. In the original story, of course, Light needs no tempting, and Ryuk mostly exists so Light has an audience surrogate to explain his schemes to. In this version, he has Mia to help with plot exposition, and she handles the corruption for him too.)</div>
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In the aftermath of the agents' mass "suicide", Light's cop father makes a public challenge to Kira, and when he doesn't die for it, L immediately concludes that Light is the killer. (They have a showdown which is actually pretty good, because Lakeith Stanfield is a top-notch actor.) To save himself, Light uses the book to compel Watari to go find L's real name. (The book can "influence" someone's actions for up to two days before killing them, but One Time Only you can burn a page from the book to spare someone's life even after condemning them, so Light is planning to save Watari once he's got the information he needs. Light's a protagonist, after all, and therefore a good guy!)</div>
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I said at the start that adaptations need to stand on their own without knowing the original version***, and this is once of the places where Death Note faceplants. In the original story, L and some of his colleagues have a complicated and mysterious backstory that is only occasionally hinted at over the course of many chapters. In this version, the compelled Watari phones up Light and hypnotically explains that L is an orphan raised in a special program that conditions its subjects from childhood to become ultimate detectives. L was only initiated into the program when, at the age of six, he was able to endure the requisite seven months in solitary confinement without a complete mental breakdown.</div>
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That's...</div>
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Uh...</div>
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Look, in a fifty-episode anime or a hundred-volume comic book, okay, I guess you can spread out the heavy lifting that it takes to introduce those sorts of concepts organically, but in a robotic monologue from a hypnotised butler in the middle of this movie about the corrupting influence of power, <i>that's fuckin' weird</i>. (Not to mention also being much more backstory than Mia ever gets!)</div>
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The conclusion of this is that L's name can only be found in the abandoned orphanage's records, which the writers could have done without the bizarre Ender's Game For Detectives exposition slam. Watari goes off to hunt for the name, and his disappearance immediately causes L to crack. Now, far be it from me to object to rational characters acting irrationally when people they care about are in danger, but for the rest of the movie L becomes an increasingly loose cannon, starting with storming the Turner house to accuse and threaten Light's life face-to-face. That's not something the original L would ever do, and it's at best <i>uncomfortable</i> that they've decided to add this uncharacteristic emotional unhinging after making him the only significant black character. (It only ramps up after the plan fails, Watari dies, and L, who hates guns, grabs a gun and steals a cop car to chase down Light. But I'm getting ahead of myself; there's more feminine evil to discuss first.)</div>
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Lest we forget just how incredibly American this version is, the climactic events all occur on the night of the homecoming dance at Light and Mia's school. There's some very weak misdirection involving a top hat that's supposed to let Light slip away from the dance, get L's name from Watari by phone, and then burn the page to save him, but Light discovers that page has already been taken from his book by Mia. This knocks Light into realising that Mia, not Ryuk, was behind the deaths of the FBI agents--as she explains, she was "protecting" him, both from the cops and from his own cowardice. She doesn't want to ever stop meting out death in judgment, so she demands that he make her the official owner of the book. As insurance, she's written his death into it, but since she stopped him from saving Watari, the One-Time-Only Takeback can still be used to spare him.</div>
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(Side note: like a lot of the schemes in this movie, this doesn't actually make sense. Light knows where the book is; Mia does not. To save himself, he doesn't have to give the book to her, he just has to go burn his own page. Mia does have one page that she stole, but that's not the one with Light's name on it. There's no reason for him to give her the book now.)</div>
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A prolonged chase scene across the city ensues. L manages to corner Light at one point, and Light starts to spill everything, but a random bystander shows up on the scene. L makes the mistake of saying that he's caught Kira, and rando knocks L out with a plank because he is a true believer in Lord Kira. Light and Mia have their final confrontation on a Ferris wheel. Light asks her to Choose Love and give up on the book, but as soon as he's distracted she grabs for it and they both fall from the wheel. She dramatically lands on a flower stall and dies amidst petals, while Light falls into the harbour and gets rescued. The page with his name on it 'coincidentally' lands in a literal trash fire.</div>
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(There's then an <i>incredibly uncomfortable</i> scene in which a bunch of old white cops tell L that Light, currently hospitalised, is clearly not Kira and that, while L might not get jailed for his false accusation, he should know that he ain't welcome in their town anymore. In a better movie, that kind of implicit threat would be an intentional reflection of police racism.)</div>
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Light wakes up from a two-day coma. He's alive because everything that just happened was according to his last-ditch plan. He used the book to compel a couple of sex offenders to rescue him from the water and hide the book while he was in his medically-induced coma, then kill themselves when their job was done. He wrote his own survival into the book as part of their deaths, which... should not work according to any rule we've seen. It's a book that kills, not saves.</div>
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He also wrote Mia's death in, which he admitted to her during their confrontation, but he insisted that it was a conditional thing that would only happen if she tried to steal the book. This is presented as if it's something we should believe, but according to the rules as presented to us, the fact that he wrote 'she dies after taking the book' means she was magically <i>compelled</i> to steal the book, even if she really did want to Choose Love instead. Was that what the writers intended? Was this supposed to be a tragic mistake or a cover for a sinister plan?</div>
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Finally, Light's dad arrives and declares that he's realised Light really was the killer--no one else would have caught the connection, but the mafia goon who killed Mom Turner died right before the Kira business started. Neither of them seems to know what to do now. Meanwhile, L continues on his Emotionally And Morally Compromised Quest and searches Mia's home (she seems to have lived alone in an apartment, <i>what was her backstory?!</i>) until he finds the page of the Death Note she stole. He twitches and cries and laughs as he stares at the page and at the nearby photo of Mia and Light together, obviously trying to decide whether to kill Light or not****. Ryuk pops up to remark to Light that humans are "<i>so interesting!</i>"--and roll credits.</div>
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In summary, the white male protagonist gets rewritten as a misled but principled antihero, the white female lead gets powered up from amoral accomplice to ruthless evil mastermind temptress, and the black hero actually on the side of peace and justice goes on a rampage for revenge because he can't control his emotions. Nothing remains of the original story of an apparent paragon of humanity becoming an unfathomable supervillain just because someone gave him the chance to act without accountability.</div>
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So what exactly <i>was</i> the point of this remake?</div>
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*When people first heard there was going to be an American remake of Death Note, many people pointed out the worst implications due to cultural differences (like American school mass murders, and the overfilling of US jails with black prisoners). At least they avoided some of that in this script? Which isn't to say there isn't still plenty of racism and xenophobia to go around: when we see Kira execute a military commander who's been torturing prisoners, they make sure it's an officer in some east Asian military, not American. Acknowledging evil within the US army is going too far even for this Super Edgy movie.</div>
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**The rules of the Death Note are a central part of the original story, and we get every single one of them in detail over dozens of chapters. This is a good choice for a battle of wits, because the audience understands exactly what the terms of the game are, and it helps us not feel like conflicts are just being resolved by someone pulling a new superpower out of their ear. Here in this movie, we get a half-dozen rules and the rest are just blurred past with various exclamations of "<i>Why does this thing have so many rules?</i>" I can see why they would do that to save time, but it does sort of undercut the characters' supposed cleverness, and Light Turner writes various things that the original rules would never have allowed.<br />
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***My personal go-to for failure on this is <i>Star Trek Into Darkness</i>, which wants the audience to be shocked and terrified by the revelation of the name Khan, a character who hadn't been featured anywhere in 30 years, let alone in this storyline.</div>
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****They obviously wanted to be able to pick it back up for a sequel if they could. I'm guessing if they did that, L would in fact kill Light's <i>dad</i> to cause Light to suffer as L has, and then it's back to one-on-one cat-and-mouse between them because no one trusts L or believes Light is Kira. I would protest the loss of the original conclusion as well ("teamwork > loner geniuses"), if it weren't so obvious that they're hoping to continue this story.</div>
Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-40615034637229730982017-01-25T22:43:00.000-05:002017-01-25T22:43:39.305-05:00Prognostication and obfuscationHello everyone! This blogpost serves several purposes. First, I can assure everyone that Erika and I are alive and well--okay, we're alive, she's still got CFS and I'm currently coughing so hard that pain ripples through my back and all the way to my thumbs. But we're doing okay. Erika sends best wishes in particular to Erin Jeffreys Hodges. Also, today we finally got around to watching Jupiter Ascending as well, which is DEFINITELY getting a post because I went into that expecting a beautiful mess and it was Everything. We both have much to say. With any luck, other posts will follow; it's been A Time lately for everyone.<br />
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We would also like you to know about this sugar glider that gets excellent reception:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTXOM4Qmt7N1QsclZnmJr50QUFE0-d1g-DTjlZJUi4LulxDwDTfvITDWezmnYagCL4QdEoy8tbkwvXIstFjDEJ3nBdQ54J4erGRcGcFsd-dIFT2QxhUgn5HWBk8SQcHQ2fLEUQ8is8sw8/s1600/Glider+cone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="254" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTXOM4Qmt7N1QsclZnmJr50QUFE0-d1g-DTjlZJUi4LulxDwDTfvITDWezmnYagCL4QdEoy8tbkwvXIstFjDEJ3nBdQ54J4erGRcGcFsd-dIFT2QxhUgn5HWBk8SQcHQ2fLEUQ8is8sw8/s320/Glider+cone.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Pictured: a sugar glider wearing a cone around its neck in typical cone-of-shame style.</i></div>
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On a more concrete bit of good news, I saw flyers posted in my neighbourhood last week that specifically called upon "fellow white people" to reject any fascist organisations in the area (naming various, some of which I'd never heard of before) and be on the look out for their activities. The fight's going to get even more intense for the next few years, I guess, but personally I'm feeling punchier than I have in a long while. Hope everyone's staying safe out there.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-51444166874029821312016-10-29T18:01:00.004-04:002016-10-29T18:01:49.934-04:00Hallowthon 2016 Anthology: What even is fearIt's the most wonderful time of the year again, friends and readers. Like I said <a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2015/10/hallowthon-2015-anthology-for-final.html">last October</a>: "There are a hell of a lot of horror movies out there and a lot of the same things to be said about most of them: exploitation cliches with sexualised violence against women, weak women predated upon or protected by strong men, and people of colour treated as expendable for shock value. Racist stereotypes as a source of villainy. Sex corrupts the young and then they get murdered while the pure girls maybe survive. We could do a hundred posts and they would all look basically the same."<br />
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So once again it's time for the <b>Something Short And Snappy Hallowthon 2016 Anthology</b>, in which the blogqueen and I provide you with quick notes on a dozen horror movies to swiftly judge them and help you find something worth watching on these cold dark nights. This year's selection leans a bit towards the surreal and unusual, because that's just the tone 2016 has set for us all.<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1701990/">Detention</a><br />
(CN: gore, murder, body horror)<br />
<b>Will</b>: Blurbs for this movie describe it like a typical slasher, and the first few minutes make it look like it's going to be an <i>unwatchable</i> slasher--the blogqueen and I both considered whether we just wanted to switch it off. We did not, and we were rewarded. This movie is not a slasher. This movie is a sci-fi Freaky-Friday-swap human-animal-hybrid alien-abduction time-travelling-space-bear reading-ahead-in-the-script-for-your-own-movie carnival of WTF. I've never been high, but I'm 80% sure Detention makes equal amounts of sense regardless of your level of intoxication. 'Good' and 'bad' cease to be useful descriptors for this movie. It is an experience that I do not regret including in my life. That's not a recommendation, exactly. (It does definitely have a share of jump scares and gore, but they're not the main feature by far.)<br />
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<b>Erika</b>: This movie is absurd, and I think I mean that in a good way? I struggle to find words for it, mostly just emphatic hand gestures while I make a series of vaguely confused squeaky noises, but that doesn't translate well to text. If you plan to actually sit down and watch a movie, this one could be a good call.<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5022702/">Hush</a><br />
(CN: blood, murder)<br />
<b>Will</b>: (Merciful spoiler: the cat is not harmed. I actually liked most of this movie, so the fear that something would happen to the cat was a major damper.) A deaf author moves out to a remote country home to work on her second novel, and a masked killer decides to hunt her. While he's got various advantages, she's smarter and incredibly brave, so the battle of wits that makes up the bulk of the film is actually interesting, rather than just having a lot of a woman screaming as she runs uselessly from an implacable monster. Most of the fear comes by ambiance and anxiety rather than jump scares. The third act unfortunately trends back towards typical bloody slasher, and it felt like the writers couldn't decide between three different climactic fights so they just decided to use all of them in sequence. On the other hand, having a deaf hero means that 90% of the dialogue is signed (if that's something you're looking for in a movie) and while Maddie explicitly views her deafness as a flaw for much of the story, she also--minor spoiler--ends up using the killer's hearing against him in the end, so I would tend to give the movie overall a good score on ability/ableism?<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0093177/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Hellraiser</a><br />
(CN: Sexual violence, misogyny, gore, torture, murder, dragon) <br />
<b>Erika</b>: I've seen Hellraiser twice now. I tried to talk Will through it, touching on villainous female sexuality, weird fetishes, and at one point a dragon if I remember correctly? I struggle to form a cohesive image of it in my mind. Largely because despite having seen it twice, it doesn't stick that vividly for me. Despite having a female protagonist, the movie is steeped in toxic masculinity. The one male character I actually liked was supposed to be laughed at for not being masculine enough and letting his wife be so awful to him. Because his wife mistreating him is a character flaw for <i>him</i>? It's got the usual sexist nonsense that many horror movies do, and I'm struggling to find anything interesting to say about it. It does have some really cool practical effects, and really gross gore stuff. If you're just in it for the grossness, sure, watch Hellraiser, but like a lot of Classics, you're not really missing anything.<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105121/?ref_=nv_sr_1">The People Under The Stairs</a><br />
(CN: Racist language, mutilation, torture, sexual violence, animal abuse. Just--everything. CN for All Of It)<br />
<b>Erika</b>: Okay, so we were watching this movie while playing Sushi-Go, and I sort of only half saw the first half? This is important because I think there were a lot of black ghetto stereotypes in there but I'm not positive. It starts with a little black boy (unfortunately only ever called Fool, because that's what came up when his sister did a tarot reading for him) wrangled into helping case a joint to get money for his mother's surgery. The house they're casing has people who basically own the town and have been gentrifying the poorer neighborhoods. They've chosen it because apparently they have gold in the basement, and not because they're just going to Robin Hood that shit. What is supposed to be a simple robbery goes very, very wrong when the two adults get killed by the owners of the house, and Fool finds out there is a hoard of pasty teenage boys in the basement. Not a subreddit--they're mutilated by the owners of the house, stolen by the couple (who are actually siblings because this wasn't gross enough already) but deemed "impure".<br />
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It's tense, it's gross, and a lot of the actually scary parts come from how deeply fucked up the people in it are. Actual distressed noises were made as I watched it. It does have some troubling issues with racism, but it also seems to be trying and do some interesting things with it? As I said, I missed chunks of the movie so I can't speak with confidence on the topic, but Fool is clever and tenacious and likable. SPOILER: the evil dog does die.<br />
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<b>The 2016 American Presidential debate trilogy</b><br />
(CN: Misogyny, racism, Trump)<br />
<b>Erika</b>: Ok, so I didn't catch the first installment in this terrifying series, but I did see the second two. The whole premise seems laughable at first. A highly qualified woman is running to be president of the US against a bigoted angry cheeto. And they really amp up how absurd the Cheeto is. The viewer is often left wondering: how could anyone take this character seriously? But viral marketing aspect really helps with that, showing support outside of the actual debates on twitter and the like. I think the writers realized that and toned him down in the third installment, but the character still seems entirely unreasonable to me. That said, the meta stuff they've put out with it is what makes it truly horrifying. Have you seen some of those news articles on The Cheeto's actions? And the reactions to it? Pure horror because it starts to just feel so real. I feel and hope their conclusion will be obvious, but those of you able to vote in the US on which of these wins should go out and do so! If only because I'm not convinced the writers realized that The Cheeto isn't a legitimate option and need to understand that he isn't. Make them understand. Vote him out of existence.<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107387/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Leprechaun</a><br />
(CN: Comedic gore and violence, ableism) <br />
<b>Erika</b>: If you want a movie to put on in the background at your Halloween party that people might occasionally catch half a scene of and go "Wait <i>what</i>?" I highly recommend this one. It is campy and cheesy and absurd and the acting is about on par with porn. At one point they throw shoes at the leprechaun while running away so it has to stop to clean them to buy them time. It doesn't take itself too seriously, which personally I enjoy. I was too sober when I watched it, so I noticed there is one character who the writers wrote as "slow". There are a lot of unfortunate 'fat stupid comedic relief' tropes around him, and I don't think the writers knew they were coding him as autistic. With that in mind, there is some interesting dynamics around how other characters treat and react to him (mostly with kindness and affection). If someone else wants to sit down and actually pay attention to it (I do not recommend that; I was rooting for everyone to die so hard) I'd urge you to consider the accidental layers there as you do. <br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0419706/?ref_=nv_sr_4">Doom</a><br />
(CN: Gore, violence, misogyny, gross monsters) <br />
<b>Erika</b>: If you follow me on twitter, you probably saw me tweeting through this. I'm bitter at the husbeast and the Alexs for making me sit through this when I can't drink and they all can. It opens with MANLY MEN BEING MANLY AND BY THE WAY DID YOU KNOW THEY WERE MEN WITH GUNS AND PENISES WHO ONLY THINK ABOUT PUTTING SAID PENISES AND GUNS IN WOMEN? No, really, that's 90% of the character development. This movie was unsure how seriously it was taking itself, but it was still too seriously. If they had just given up and gone full camp it could have been fun, but they didn't, so it's just kind of a sexist mess. The only named female character who is a doctor is called a "dumb woman" because she believed the people she was working for weren't evil. The Rock is Lawful Evil in deeply unbelievable ways. Karl Urban wins a fight against The Rock which, even having been weakened by CGI, is just not believable. Also Good and Evil are genetic? There is one scene where it goes into first person shooter mode that's absurd and kind of fun, but I'd give this one a pass.<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1227789/">Rites of Spring</a><br />
(CN: gore, torture, murder)<br />
<b>Will</b>: This is not a story. This is one third each of two separate stories mashed together, which by my math still leaves us one third short. One plot starts strong with a Bechdel-passing scene of two women in a bar discussing corporate politics, one trying to decide whether or not to admit that she was responsible for a recent failure after someone else has taken the blame. They immediately get kidnapped by a gruff old man whose motivations are never fully explained. I mean, it's not hard to piece together from incidental information: every spring, this small town sacrifices several people to some kind of monstrous entity to magically ensure good farming. But I suggest a general rule: if your story is such a cliche that you just pull an Avril ("Can I make it any more obvious?") maybe it's such a cliche that you should <i>do better</i>. The other plot, tangentially related, concerns a small conspiracy of people planning to ransom a rich guy's daughter. Dunno about y'all, but I don't watch horror movies for disturbingly mundane and realistic murder scenes. These two plots collide by chance and provide our unexplained monstrous entity with a crew of criminals to kill in the final act. There's supposed to be something clever going on, because the well-meaning desperate dude in the ransom gang <i>is</i> the guy who took the fall for the captured heroine's mistake at work, so maybe they were going for some kind of weird reap-what-you-sow thing (that <i>coincidentally</i> suggests that our Final Girl brought all this horror on herself)? There is a distinct lack of ending as well, although not as grievously as our next entry:<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3504824/">The Midnight After</a><br />
(CN: blood, death, rape)<br />
<b>Will</b>: A Hong Kong horror movie that I didn't realise was supposed to be satirical until I read its wiki page. To again spare you my pain, let me say first that this movie literally has no ending and none of the weirdness is explained, which makes it all weird for weirdness' sake, and I don't know if I don't get it because I'm not from Hong Kong or what. Which is too bad, because it's mostly pretty good weirdness: seventeen people riding a bus together at 2:30am find themselves abruptly alone in the world and desperately try to figure out what's going on. Time travel? Ghosts? Some kind of magic disease? A nuclear disaster? David Bowie? The answer appears to be 'yes to all' (especially Bowie), except that the movie ends as the survivors finally get on the road to finding possible answers, so we don't actually know.<br />
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There is a plotline that definitely requires some further discussion, because amongst all the other mystery and death, one woman is found dead and apparently raped, and we then later see that scene play out in flashbacks as the rapist is revealed by his accomplice. I'm not sure why the writer thought this was an important thing to have, but the treatment of it is at least decent? The actual scenes are played for revulsion rather than titillation, the victim isn't stripped for the camera or anything. To my particular surprise, while some of the other men briefly argue for "rape is bad but what are we going to do about it now, kill him?", the women respond with "yeah, I have a knife right here" and everyone agrees this is as close to a court of law as they can manage when they're the only people in the world. The actual execution is variously played for pathos and grim humour as each person stabs him once, some more enthusiastically than others. The whole thing still feels rather unnecessary (fewer pointless rape plotlines in anything, please) but ultimately I can only complain so much about characters agreeing that rapists get no mercy.<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3235888/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">It Follows</a><br />
(CN: blood, death, sexualised violence)<br />
<b>Erika</b>: There was so much hype about this movie, and it really didn't live up to it. I feel there was a lot of symbolism and depth this movie thought it had that I just wasn't getting. Like, I know the pools/water imagery was supposed to mean SOMETHING, but I'm not 100% sure what. Is that supposed to represent the main character's relationship with her sexuality? Peace of mind? There were some aspects I loved: the main character, upon becoming an assault victim, is rallied around by everyone rather than dismissed and questioned. Although people do at first question if she is literally being followed by a demon or something, they don't try to talk her out of her fear, they just try to make her feel safe, which is refreshing. It would be more refreshing if consensual sex didn't lead to murder demons, but you know, take wins where we can. I also liked how the women were often shown in typical horror movie girl poses/outfits (the opening scene has a woman in a sheet tank top, shorts, and heels running around) but rarely are they filmed as <i>sexy</i>. We see Jay in underpants or a swimsuit often, but she's shown in granny panties and a one piece. The girls aren't wearing loads of make up that were supposed to believe is just what they look like. Their clothes aren't skintight and played off as comfortable and casual. It's weird, and worth a watch, but I wouldn't put it at the top of my list.<br />
<br />
<b>Will</b>: The premise of 'what if the Terminator was an STI' is certainly horrifying, and the movie is pretty visually effective, but like the blogqueen I also spent a lot of time trying to figure out why the writers made various choices. Was there a ton of symbolism I was missing? If the monster takes the shape of 'whatever it thinks will get it close to you', why does it keep picking such bizarre and creepy forms instead of something compelling and comforting? It does sort of do that eventually, appearing as the protagonist's father, but it has previously appeared as completely naked people (first female, then male), or as apparent murder victims, or various other disturbing forms. Mostly I feel like this movie suffers because the problem becomes a sort of logic puzzle, like "Couldn't you make a deal with someone in Asia where you fly there every year or so to have sex, passing the curse back and forth, so that every time the monster finally climbs out of the Marianas Trench it suddenly realises it has to change direction again?" And the characters never really try to get clever with the solution like that, so I'm just left with more thought experiments that I can't see in action.<br />
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2290739">The Devil's Hand</a><br />
(CN: blood, nudity, brief sexual assault)<br />
<b>Will</b>: Both better and worse than I expected. The setting is an Amish commune in the modern day, where they have a prophecy about 'the Drommelkind' (devil child?) that seems to start coming true when six girls are all born on the same night. There is much muttering and grumbling about whether they can be redeemed or should be killed for everyone else's protection. So, there's the pretty swift Bechdel pass when most of our main characters are women, and it's at least sort of interesting to have Amish characters not presented as inherently backwards and wrong--but there are also the tiresome standbys like the Evil Stepmother, and the horror sequences mostly consist of the girls dying one by one at the hands of a hooded figure. The primary antagonist is the leading elder of the town, who we also quickly and clearly see is a creeper and probably repeat molester, and there was some potential for interesting dynamics when one of the girls insists they rally people against him while others cling to excuses and veneers of religious purity. Overall, I was hoping this was going to be a movie that argued 'the devil' is unnecessary when we're capable of justifying evil to ourselves in the name of righteousness, and maybe a self-fulfilling prophecy where it's the moral panic and vicious response that causes disaster after all... but that is not what we get. The final scenes of the movie don't make a lot of sense (the killer's identity is easy to spot on a meta level, but comes out of nowhere plotwise) and, like Ender's Game, we're sort of left wondering whether the story is claiming the 'bad guys' were right after all or what.<br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2507280/">Mr Jones</a><br />
(I'm not sure any particular warnings apply, but I'm open to suggestions)<br />
<b>Will</b>: This is that rarest of creatures: the bloodless horror movie. Our protagonists are a young couple whose marriage is a bit rocky, who decide to move out to the middle of nowhere for a year to film the Greatest Nature Documentary Of All Time and discover that their closest neighbour is a famously reclusive anonymous artist dubbed "Mr Jones". Of course, Mr Jones isn't actually an artist; he's some kind of supernatural sculptor with ulterior motives involving the world of dreams and nightmares. I really don't know why the writers decided this needed to be done in 'found footage' style, especially since they abandon it repeatedly, but I still enjoyed several aspects of the movie. Rather than being a stock Nagging Wife, Penny actually gets to have some depth and agency, and she's at least as important to the investigation as Scott. The aesthetics are satisfyingly creepy without falling back on blood, and after spending the first act shouting "Your neighbour is clearly a killer warlock" at the protagonists, I was gratified by the slow realisation that the expected cliches didn't apply. It's not as striking and artistic as it wants to be, but overall I approve.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
That's all we were able to get our hands on this month, but as a supplement the blogqueen also suggested <a href="https://intosurvival.blogspot.ca/2012/10/some-good-trigger-free-horror-movies.html?m=1">this list (by quality individual Joey Comeau) of horror movies without sexual violence</a>. And at some point we really will post something in regards to Scream Queens, the comedy/horror/satire slasher series that occasionally does interesting things with terrible people. It'll be surprisingly deep for something that is intentionally super shallow.</div>
Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-82484581652377446132016-08-28T17:06:00.001-04:002016-08-28T17:10:09.101-04:00My Queer Queue, August 2016: Objectification for allI don't watch as much stuff off Netflix's "Gay and Lesbian" section as you might expect. Someone (I can't find the source, but I know I first saw it on tumblr) coined the phrase "If it's not sad, it's bad" to describe the conflict of LGBT cinema--we have a lot of tragedy and bittersweetness in our stories, and the cheerful ones are often terrible. And, since the LGBT community is actually an agglomeration of several communities (what I heard one person name the Alphabet Soup Suffering Coalition), it's tragically common to see one identity celebrated at the cost of another. Certain topics are also much more common, like sex work, which could be interesting if it weren't an excuse to sexualise and fetishise the characters. There are seriously so many movies about the Troubled Chemistry between a Normal Person and Some Kind Of Sex Worker, Probably A Stripper Because That's Not Going TOO Far. Ugh.<br />
<br />
While we're on the subject, <b>content warning</b> for death and coercive sex work.<br />
<br />
Anyway, despite my trepidation, I do venture in there once in a while, usually when I get tired of screaming to just let Captain America and the Falcon go on a goddamn date already. And I probably don't have enough to say about most of the things I watch to make an actual full post about any of them, but if we go for a bunch at once we start looking at commonalities and exceptions and themes, so let's try that and maybe it'll become a regular thing.<br />
<br />
This month's selection leans towards dude stuff (more ladies if/when the blogqueen gets in on this):<br />
<ul>
<li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4370256/">How To Win At Checkers (Every Time)</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714210/?ref_=nv_sr_4">Weekend</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1625150/?ref_=nv_sr_1">North Sea Texas</a></li>
<li><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4427060/?ref_=nv_sr_1">Seashore</a></li>
</ul>
These were all movies that I picked out because they looked like they were about guys falling in love and not suffering horribly. Which they... mostly... were. "Mostly" in this case meaning, like, 55%? We'll start from maximum tragedy and climb upwards from there.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<b>How To Win At Checkers (Every Time)</b> was kind of fascinating, even if it immediately dashed my hopes of "happy". It's a Thai movie about a boy named Oat (oh-at), who lives with his aunt and idolises his older brother Ek. Ek's deeply in love with his boyfriend Jai, and their best friend Missy is trans, and probably the thing that threw me the most about this movie was that it avoided any explicit homophobia or transphobia 98% of the time. The rich bully in the neighbourhood never throws slurs at anyone, even while he's being a jerk. The overbearing aunt tells Ek "You can date any boy you like, but dating across class lines is going to cause trouble". Missy is characterised as a gorgeous badass, unabashedly trans, and the hot girl all the high school boys want to get with. No one questions her gender at all. (Oat does snap something transphobic at her in a heated moment, but he's 11, he's upset and lashing out, and he immediately gets told off for it.)<br />
<br />
That said, literally the first scene of the movie is 20-year-old Oat flashing back to watching his brother die horribly. It both is and is not a spoiler to say that we eventually see this dream didn't really happen, because Ek still died horribly, just in a different way, later on and out of sight.<br />
<br />
With homophobia off the table for conflict, the plot instead focuses on class divides, because Oat's family is just getting by, while Jai is sarcastically described as "taller, richer, and whiter" as we watch him blow out candles on a birthday cake in a stereotypical suburban home. Ek and Jai are old enough for the annual military draft lottery, but Jai's parents are rich enough to bribe the local black market boss into ensuring their son won't get chosen. Oat tries to do the same for his brother, but he's 11 and not good at subterfuge, so his plan backfires and Ek ends up on the boss's bad side.<br />
<br />
Upon realising that this movie wasn't going to feature Evil Bigots, I began to wonder why they had so many queer characters--not because I disapproved, but because you and I both know that the rarest of all LGBT cinema is "totally normal storytelling except not heteronormative". I didn't have to wait long for the answer, because in the aftermath of the draft (Jai was not chosen, Ek was, and Ek is disgusted that Jai would use his class privilege to dodge his duty as a citizen) we also see that the black market boss owns the queer club where Ek works, and has reassigned him from bartending to sex work. I kid you not. So we get an uncomfortable scene of no one stopping Oat from walking upstairs to find his brother in bed with an unpleasant man twice his age, and then the local bully drags Jai up there to see as well, everything falls apart, Ek and Jai break up, Ek goes off on military service and gets randomly murdered by someone targeting soldiers on patrol.<br />
<br />
When discussing <a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2016/07/life-is-strange-choices-we-are-not.html">Life Is Strange</a> and the rarity of a non-customised bisexual protagonist, I mentioned to Erika that I didn't think the game would have been made with the genders swapped, because (even when otherwise pretty good!) there was still objectification going on, and our culture is a lot more comfortable with objectifying women than men. The programmers wouldn't have been so on board writing and modelling a flirtatious scene of a male Max and Warren going skinny-dipping in the school pool. No voyeuristic fun to be had there. By a similar token, someone writing about a desperate guy getting forced into sex work isn't going to write about a straight dude.<br />
<br />
And there are some good reasons for that--for sure, the relationship between sexuality and isolation and taboo and survival sex work is a complicated and important one. But this isn't a nuanced exploration; this is a single scene about a hot guy getting fucked to illustrate his powerlessness, desperation, and humiliation. That's about as artistically deep as an exploitation film.<br />
<br />
So, even in this film with zero evil homophobes, the primary arc is still about a gay man being stripped of his agency, powerless to protect himself, and finally die a cruel and pointless death. This is the inescapability of queer tragedy in film that we have to deal with.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<b>Weekend</b> is a film that desperately wants to be artistic, and is a good study in how "indie" is itself a film genre even though it conceptually shouldn't be. Archetypal techniques include group scenes with no sound filtering (to really get that "unintelligible home video of Christmas with the family" feel), montages of main characters trudging soulfully through urban landscapes, and smash cuts to totally silent tableaus. It takes place over the course of a weekend, when a couple of guys randomly hook up at a bar, spend a couple of days realising that they would actually really like to try a relationship together rather than a casual fling, and then part ways because one of them is going to an art school thousands of miles across the sea. The bulk of the movie comprises odd conversations they have along the way, like Glen's explanation of his current art project (audio interviews/monologues with all of his casual sex partners), with breaks for mundanity (a montage of Russell's day job as a lifeguard), <b>very specific</b> sex scenes (like, you do not ever have to wonder what precise acts they enjoy), and a frankly hilarious quantity of drugs. So many drugs. I don't know what's up with the drugs in this movie. Forget pot. They will literally pause a conversation to snort three lines of cocaine and then go back to talking, with minimal indication that this might somehow affect a human brain. It is so weird.<br />
<br />
They do part ways in the end, in a very sweet and anguished and MAXIMUM INDIE scene, with a goodbye kiss at the train station and parting words that we can't hear because, again, no sound filtering, that's how you know it's artistic. I can't say the movie doesn't have a plot, because it's very much about how much these guys affect each other over the course of a weekend, with Glen losing some of his affected casualness and hipstery detachment, and Russell (the less-out one) overcoming some of his internalised homophobia. And at least it's not outright tragedy. If you want a movie that is about The Generic (white cis male) Gay Experience and common issues around affection and masculinity, I guess I might recommend it?<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<b>North Sea Texas</b> is of the same ilk, but it's about teenage boys in Belgium and features more homophobia. (The name has nothing to do with the US Texas and everything to do with the local bar.) It covers the teenage years of a boy named Pim who lives with his mom and befriends neighbour boy Gino. Pim and Gino grow closer in increasingly sexual and romantic ways before Gino breaks things off, gets a girlfriend, and starts saying that the "playing around" they did was something people grow out of.<br />
<br />
Now, <i>obvs</i>, this is not my favourite way for potentially-bisexual characters to be presented, and it's irritatingly common. Like, yes, experimentation is pretty normal and doesn't always mean someone's not straight, but the fewer Treacherous Flipfloppers in media the better. But we'll come back to Gino.<br />
<br />
Marcela, Gino's sister, clearly has a crush on Pim, and when she realises he's into her brother (by prying through Pim's room and finding his Shirtless Gino Sketchbook) starts trying to cause trouble. Their mother refuses to believe it anyway. (Aside: one of my relatives once asked about my dating life in a way that vaguely allowed for the possibility I wasn't straight. My mother <i>immediately </i>leapt in to talk about the last girl I dated, four years earlier, though I haven't dated anyone since. I'm sure she meant well.) Pim's own mother (who regularly talks about what a free spirit she is), happily rents a room to Zoltan, twentysomething vagabond and hottest man in Belgium. He's around and shirtless just long enough for Pim to start getting his hopes up before Pim walks in on Zoltan and his mother in bed, and they run away together the next day, literally abandoning Pim. Gino and Marcela's mother dies as well, but on her deathbed brings together Pim and Gino's hands, and in the aftermath they are passionately reconciled. (Whether Gino's really bi or was just temporarily trying to convince himself he was into girls is not addressed.)<br />
<br />
Apart from being a slow indie movie with lots of silent scenes and withdrawn characters, North Sea Texas stands out as a movie in which the central couple of queer teens end up together (I think?) and yet <i>still</i> manages to be impressively cruel to its heroes, with parents dying and abandoning them left and right. So it's not exactly feel-good, but it's still the first one on this list that isn't apparently aiming for a sad ending.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Finally, we have <b>Seashore</b>, which is arguably the most upbeat on this list, but also the least that's actually like a movie. By which I mean a lot of these indie movies seem like they started filming with an idea rather than a story, and forgot to fill in all of the blanks. Seashore is set in Brazil (I wouldn't have guessed; everyone is white) and focuses on Martin, sent by his parents on family business that is never explained at all. He's got to deliver a message to someone on the coast and get a response? Or something? The script knows that this is 100% an excuse plot and doesn't pretend to flesh it out. The point is that, for moral support, he is accompanied on this trip by his BFF Tomaz, who spends much of the movie trying to decide whether or not to come out to Martin. It gets increasingly awkward, not least since Martin ends up having the great idea that they should pick up hot chicks and take them back to the cottage for (non-group) sexytimes. Tomaz dodges it by being all "<i>Whoops</i>, I got way too drunk, can't have sex with you but you seem like a super nice lady, thanks" and eventually finally takes the Plunge of Truth the next day. Martin, professional good role model, is just "Oh, really? Hah, I can't believe I tried to set you up with a girl yesterday" and all is well. When his family mission ultimately fails and his family back home is loudly disappointed with him over the phone, Tomaz remains his best moral support, and their banter quickly progresses from "No one gets to be your boyfriend unless I approve of him, lol" to "So what is it like to kiss a dude anyway" to "Gosh, where did all of our pants go".<br />
<br />
(The sex scene was a little uncomfortable, maybe because I'm used to actors of this age playing 15-year-olds rather than their actual ages, and while it's not porn, it's--like Weekend--very clear and specific about what's going on. I understand the script was vaguely-autobiographical, but I also definitely wondered how much of this was just about titillating the creators.)<br />
<br />
I thought for a moment that it was going to go for Maximum Artistic Angst and Martin would end up drowning himself in the sea the next morning, but then I remembered that the ocean is literally textbook 'rebirth' imagery and this film is all about people finding themselves. So while the pacing of this film is ssssssssoooo sssslllllowwwwww that multiple reviewers wondered if it had a script or just really awkward improvisors, it actually gets the highest score here on Queer Boys Being Sweet And Affectionate And Not Suffering. Which is apparently the niche-iest of all niche genres.<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
Since this is a new post idea, I'm more interested than usual in feedback: is this a thing people would like to see as a monthly series? Are there specific movies that y'all think I should check out? Do you want more investigation of specific themes and cliches in the field? Sound off, my friends.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-10753818494269391442016-08-22T23:14:00.001-04:002016-08-22T23:14:23.750-04:00The Name of the Wind, chapters 2 and 3, in which people pretend not to be main charactersThis post is late for a variety of very good reasons, including helping friends move and going to the local Pride parade and being too tired to move. Regardless, I will consider whether Sundays are actually the best day to aim for posting. Sorry for the erratic schedule.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>The Name of the Wind: p. 19--34</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Two: A Beautiful Day</i></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It was one of those perfect autumn days so common in stories and so rare in the real world.</i></blockquote>
I think the first time I read a line in a book about how "this is real life, not some book" I thought it was really clever. That was, I'm going to estimate, minimum eighteen years ago. At this point, every reference to the same (this isn't a movie/TV show/cartoon/daguerreotype) at best gets an arched eyebrow from me, but in the case of this book, it's more the slightly-cracked chortle and shrug of a surrendered man. Of course this is that kind of book. How did I ever imagine otherwise?<br />
<br />
This chapter introduces our second (third?) protagonist, Chronicler (I wonder if he's important to <i>the Kingkiller Chronicle</i>), who is busy observing all of the lovely scenery when "<i>a half dozen ex-soldiers with hunting bows</i>" very politely rob him. He doesn't particularly put up a fight: "<i>he had been robbed before and knew when there was nothing to be gained by discussion</i>". There's very little actual tension, which is presumably intentional, and the commander is a very fair-minded thief, ordering his lackeys not to take too much, or to at least leave their old cloak if they're taking his, that kind of thing.<br />
<br />
It's a weird scene, and I would argue vastly more memorable than anything that happened last chapter (competing with the monster science), but I'm not sure what to take away exactly. It doesn't do a lot of worldbuilding--the thieves mention that they're going to sell his horse to the army, but we don't know why these people are <i>ex</i> soldiers (and recently enough that they still call their leader 'sir'), or why they're so polite about it. We do get Chronicler characterised as a wise dude who is always prepared--as soon as they're gone with his stuff, he gets more cash out of his secret boot stash and partly refills his purse in case he gets held up again, since he knows a thief hates to not find anything at first glance. The narrative informs us of an additional bank deposit baked into his ultra-stale bread and in his ink bottle.<br />
<br />
Finally there is a weird sort of fake-out-fakeout when he's thinking about what a nice peaceful day it is and gets startled by a "<i>dark shape</i>" coming at him out of the trees, but it's just a crow after all and he goes merrily on his way. This chapter is so meta that it's making a joke out of pretending it's going to do something violent after pretending that it was pretending not to all along. Which is, to me, the kind of cleverness that isn't actually interesting? And I make puns without shame.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Three: Wood and Word</i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
<i><br /></i></div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
Back to Kote at his tavern, surprised by the arrival of Graham the wood-carver with the mounting board Kote apparently commissioned from him four months ago, delayed by the precise rare wood he'd had to acquire. Graham notes that Kote "<i>has begun to wilt</i>", presumably again a reference to 'cut flowers' as so purposefully described last time:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The innkeeper's gestures weren't as extravagant. His voice wasn't as deep. Even his eyes weren't as bright as they had been a month ago. [....] And his hair had been bright before, the color of flame. Now it seemed--red. Just red-hair color, really.</i></blockquote>
Is... is Kote losing his protagonism? I'm imagining the secondary characters gossiping at a nearby corner: 'And the last time he came into my shop, I could barely hear his leitmotif for more than a couple of seconds!' (Also, side-pedantry, but why do authors insist fire is red? Most fires I've ever seen have been very intensely yellow with edges of blue and orange. Embers might be red, but it's always 'flame-red'. This is like the non-racist counterpart to 'almond-shaped eyes'.)<br />
<br />
Graham talks about how difficult it was to work with the wood, and even harder to burn the name "<i>Folly</i>" in as requested. Kote overpays him for the work and doesn't offer any further explanation for his weird purchase. Graham leaves and Bast arrives to ask vague and portentous questions:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"What were you thinking?" Bast said with an odd mixture of confusion and concern.</i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Kote was a long while in answering. "I tend to think too much, Bast. My greatest successes came from decisions I made when I stopped thinking and simply did what felt right. Even if there was no good explanation for what I did." He smiled wistfully. "Even if there were very good reasons for me <b>not</b> to do what I did."</i></blockquote>
How long am I going to have to wait for them to stop talking <i>about</i> talking about 'what he did' and actually tell us what it is? I know it's only chapter three, but if I have limited tolerance for 'as you know' exposition, I have even less for 'I think we need to discuss That Thing We're Keeping From The Reader in vague terms'.<br />
<br />
Kote says he plans to hang the sword (of course it's a sword) out in the open, to Bast's horror, but Bast fetches it from under his own bed (aww) and Kote finds a spot over the bar. When he sees Bast's careless grip on the scabbard, he gives us this gem:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Careful, Bast! You're carrying a lady there, not swinging some wench at a barn dance."</i></blockquote>
Dude. Of all the ways to tell your apprentice to be careful with your favourite weapon, you chose 'feminise an inanimate object and draw parallels to the types of women you should or should not be respectful of'? (Running tally of female or feminine characters: a dead horse and a sword named Folly.)<br />
<br />
Before he hands it, Kote, draws the blade, which, like its owner, is both old and young at once:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It was not notched or rusted. There were no bright scratches skittering along its dull grey side. But though it was unmarred, it was old. And while it was obviously a sword, it was not a familiar shape. At least no one in this town would have found it familiar. It looked as if an alchemist had distilled a dozen swords, and when the crucible had cooled this was lying in the bottom: a sword in its pure form. It was slender and graceful. It was deadly as a sharp stone beneath swift water.</i></blockquote>
I have no gorram clue what this sword is supposed to look like.<br />
<br />
I mean, to be honest, I will be happy if it's anything other than a katana, but I don't know how to reconcile something being the purest distillation of all swordiness with being something bizarre to the entire village's basic expectations of what swords look like. What I'm saying is that until I am absolutely forced to reconsider, I'm going to assume it's one of these:<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdxd_9esm21SX6Q-oAC7yghSH7euIstZle1TzrNlrjrMBaVi9Dg8qJHGM42M_BOCu7jyFfm-yudUC6qSAR9Mqhgl8O6MZbJOU96sFMEGoejjpx-GyAGiQnyw0ZuoEZD2KlpIGmlXdqF0/s1600/Sanegue+sword.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjdxd_9esm21SX6Q-oAC7yghSH7euIstZle1TzrNlrjrMBaVi9Dg8qJHGM42M_BOCu7jyFfm-yudUC6qSAR9Mqhgl8O6MZbJOU96sFMEGoejjpx-GyAGiQnyw0ZuoEZD2KlpIGmlXdqF0/s320/Sanegue+sword.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
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<i>Pictured: a <a href="http://art-of-swords.tumblr.com/post/144244502423/san%C3%A9gu%C3%A9-sword-geography-burkina-faso-ivory-coast">s</a></i><span style="text-align: left;"><i><a href="http://art-of-swords.tumblr.com/post/144244502423/san%C3%A9gu%C3%A9-sword-geography-burkina-faso-ivory-coast">anégué sword</a> from Burkina Faso, incontrovertible proof that the human spirit defies all deterministic projections.</i></span></div>
<br />
Kote's all cheerful about finally having Folly on display, while Bast is super awkward, but they have to get ready for the lunch rush and there's a rather romcom remark about how they discuss minor things as they work: "<i>it was obvious they were reluctant to finish whatever task they were close to completing, as if they both dreaded the moment when the work would end and the silence would fill the room again</i>." Isn't that basically one of the subplots in <i>Love, Actually</i>?<br />
<br />
They are spared the onslaught of awkward silence by the arrival of a small caravan of customers: wagoneers, guards, a tinker, and a couple of young rich travellers obviously seeking safety in numbers. Two of the wagoneers are specifically noted to be women, making them the first female humans we've seen on page. They are not named.<br />
<br />
When everyone's fed and supplied and they've agreed on rooming arrangements, the tinker takes a quick roll through town to judge business, and attracts the attention of a group of children who respond to his indifference by playing a game that includes a cheerful rhyme about running and hiding if the fire turns blue, referencing the Chandrian again. This isn't bad worldbuilding, but it does feel kind of shoehorned? The tinker responds with his own song rhyming all the goods he has for sale, specifically beckoning the women of the village to come buy "<i>small cloth and rose water</i>". Nothing is specifically recommended to the men, and certainly not for the sake of making themselves more attractive. Basically this portion is straight out of Eye of the World.<br />
<br />
Keeping in that theme, Kote spends the next scene basking in being around actual travellers again, but the sounds they make specifically include "<i>men laughing</i>" while "<i>the women flirted</i>". Option one is that flirting is a romantic activity and therefore inherently womanly, not something a man would do; option two is that the women are strictly flirting with each other. I know which option I'm going to pretend Rothfuss meant. But then, later in the evening when folks are getting inebriated, someone somehow--<i>le gasp</i>--strikes upon Kote's super secret backstory.<br />
<br />
One of the richer dudes identifies Kote as "<i>Kvothe the Bloodless</i>", based partly on his appearance but mostly on his voice:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I heard you in Imre once. Cried my eyes out afterward. I never heard anything like that before or since. Broke my heart. [....] I saw the place in Imre where you killed him. By the fountain. The cobblestones are all [...] shattered. They say no one can mend them.</i></blockquote>
So, I know that 'this was broken so hard that no magic can undo the harm' is a fantasy staple, but when it comes to cobblestones, not to be That Guy, but couldn't you just... replace them? Dig up the broken ones and put down new ones? Maybe I'm missing key information here.<br />
<br />
Kote laughs the idea off, pretends it's a compliment, and then pretends to be a huge klutz for a second just to dispel any notions that he could be some kind of legendary poet-warrior. Bast helps him limp away and Kote gives him instructions to give the man some sleeping meds and then casually drop Kote's backstory into conversation, involving an arrow to the knee and a generous merchant. He only says it once, but he and Bast use a sort of ritualistic 'listen three times'/'I hear you three times' phrasing to make it clear that this is Serious Business. Kote spends the rest of the night brooding heroically in his room, and we're told as he undresses for bed that the fire highlights all of his many, many scars, all smooth and silver "<i>except one</i>". Plot significance meters are overloading, captain!<br />
<br />
(Given how much nothing has happened at this point in the book, I'm reflecting back on the first chapter and wondering how Kote knew so much about scraelings but had never apparently dissected one before. That's an odd level of familiarity, no?)<br />
<br />
The next morning the caravan leaves without incident and Kote appears to busy himself with deeply mundane concerns again, but he does go to the blacksmith to buy an iron rod (like everyone else in town already did) and also a leather apron and gloves, which he claims are for gardening. There's more semi-poetic stuff about how things are ready to die in autumn, basically the same pensive morbidity as the last two times Kote has closed a chapter for us. The only difference here is that the narrative eye settles on Bast, obviously troubled and looking for an opportunity to do something about it. Regardless, this basically feels like Rothfuss had two distinct ideas for his first chapter and decided to use both of them in sequence.<br />
<br />
Next time: Kote and Chronicler meet. Will sparks fly? Will Bast be jealous? Will there be a named female character any time soon? Only time will tell.</div>
Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-46745440349084129832016-08-14T15:22:00.003-04:002016-08-14T15:22:24.931-04:00Good movies for people who like bad movies(Sorry this isn't the second Name of the Wind post, but my brain has been frazzled and this post has been waiting in drafts for far too long. I also suspect it's going to be topical as we continue to dig into Kvothe's adventures in the coming weeks.)<br />
<br />
Most people who aren't Ayn Rand are willing to acknowledge a difference between things they <i>like</i> and things that are "good", a distinction that is at once counterintuitive and perfectly natural. It is with that distinction in mind that I watched two movies recently: <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082198/">Conan the Barbarian</a> (the 1982 original) and <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1686821/">Vampire Academy</a> (based on books of the same name). These movies aren't good, but they are bad in specific ways that call into question what exactly we mean by "good" to begin with.<br />
<br />
I'll start with Conan, because I have less to say about it: it's the incredibly straightforward story of a Proud Warrior Tribe kid whose village is destroyed by an evil man, who gets taken as a gladiator slave, runs away to freedom, slays monsters, has gratuitous sex with dubious consent, and finally kills the evil black wizard who slaughtered his people. He has a love interest and a couple of comic relief sidekicks of indistinct ethnicity and fundamentally racist conventions, he gets some unexpected and inexplicable Christ imagery, and assures us all that a true hero is an independent burly man who single-handedly decapitates bad guys. Throughout the adventure, he is narrated in epic saga style.<br />
<br />
This is a bad movie, let there be no question. Even the heroic POC tend to be cowardly and animalistic, and for all that James Earl Jones does some spectacular work as the villain, the climax of the movie is a white man setting a bunch of impressionable kids free by murdering a black man. The love interest dies literally fifteen minutes after our heroes performed a magic ritual to bring Conan back from the dead, and yet no one asks whether maybe they should just <i>do that again</i>. There's a thoroughly unexpected scene when Conan steals an evil priest's robes by using the man's predatory gay tendencies against him. All bigoted writing--literally every word of it--is also <i>lazy</i> writing.<br />
<br />
But lord how I wish we could have <i>good</i> movies that take their absurd epic fantasy setting this seriously. It's the problem of the 1950s: love the aesthetic, hate the politics. Where are my stories about people who aren't cis-white-hetero-men-with-arms-like-bags-of-footballs, adventuring across untamed lands to fight animated statues and free vulnerable people from charismatic dictators while a wizened wizard narrates their quest with the kind of absolute severity that would make Adam West proud? Where victory isn't always murder, where strength is community and not a weird frappuccino of the philosophy of Nietzsche and incredibly unlikely Genghis Khan attributions?<br />
<br />
Conan the Barbarian is not a good movie, but how I wish it were.<br />
<br />
With that, we come to Vampire Academy, the bizarre Twilight/Harry Potter hybrid that I didn't know I was waiting for. This movie is absurd and cliched, with its convenient telepathic bonds and its magic princess on the run and a vampire queen who lives in the school and calls assemblies specifically to chastise her probable successor in public (for no personal benefit). Few of the actors seem comfortable being filmed, and the mandatory hetero love interests are a blatant discount bin Edward Cullen and some kind of Star-Trek-transporter-accident fusion of Jack Black and David Bowie.<br />
<br />
And yet this is a movie that does an astonishing number of things <i>right</i>. Our heroic bonded duo of vampire princess Lissa and mostly-human bodyguard Rose are complex characters with multiple conflicting motivations and flaws, going overboard in their petty revenge or overprotectiveness and then regretting it, trying to make things right. The movie starts <i>in medias res</i> to a degree that reminded me of the original Star Wars, with our heroes on the run, immediately provoking questions about how they got there, why they left the eponymous academy, and why they're being dragged back. (And, if you're me, whether the romantic/sexual subtext between the girls is going to remain subtextual. It is. Obvs. Sigh.) They remain, throughout the movie, likeable but imperfect, with Rose in particular (as the action hero) getting to maintain a swagger and punchiness that is usually restricted to male roles. When her platonic bro starts to make some kind of I'm A Nice Guy rant at her, Rose dismisses him instantly to focus on more important issues. When Discount Edward hangs around Lissa in awkward and potentially creepy ways, Rose bluffs to get rid of him, but later accepts that she doesn't get to pick her friend's friends and apologises for lying--while still making it clear that she thinks his behaviour was creepy.<br />
<br />
(In one reversal that the blogqueen particularly liked, Discount Edward spends most of the movie being markedly useless and then gets exactly one dramatic effective moment during the climax, a fate that usually befalls the token female action hero.)<br />
<br />
To my utter lack of surprise, internet investigation told me that this movie was a colossal failure commercially, and its Rotten Tomatoes page (aggregate score of 11%) is full of blurbs from grey-haired white men declaiming the film for being impossible to follow and trying to lure in silly teenager girls by mashing up all the modern trends of magic school and hot vampire boys.<br />
<br />
We are left with the question: would this movie have done better with male leads? Rose would certainly have been a more typical male character, though being younger than his hypothetical female love interest would have been a switch. More likely that Lissa would become the love interest in need of protection (unless she was a dude too, in which case I suspect there would have been way more No Homo being thrown around and all of the leads' emotions would have to be replaced with sex or punching). This is a movie with a strong focus on social status--characters care about how they're perceived and might prefer a battle to the death over public embarrassment--which is obviously such a <i>girl</i> thing, innit? And yet my mind drifts back to a little English underdog hero called <a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2015/11/kingsman-its-okay-to-be-poor-as-long-as.html">Eggsy</a> who who just wanted to prove his worth compared to his condescending upper-class peers...<br />
<br />
Over on the page for <a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2015/11/kingsman-its-okay-to-be-poor-as-long-as.html">Kingsman</a> (aggregate score of 74% and my unfathomable scorn) a veritable flood of enraptured white men cheer for its "stylish" "subversiveness", wit, charm, and "devil-may-care exuberance". May I remind you that this is a film in which a lisping media tycoon decides to save the environment by inventing a machine that makes everyone turn into murderous berserkers for only as long as he holds down the button. But "vampires want to kidnap a princess to use her healing magic for themselves" is too convoluted and weird.<br />
<br />
And I mean: I'm not trying to argue that Vampire Academy is a Good Movie, in the sense of technical expertise or top-quality performances (apart from Rose, who was honestly delightful in every moment that she wasn't being forced into a weird romantic subplot). But I enjoyed it a hell of a lot more than plenty of other movies that are supposedly its superior, and so I start to wonder how we're defining Good Movies. Because when you get into institutions like that--film theory and literary criticism and the like--one of the first things that becomes apparent is that a lot of our metrics and expectations have been designed by aging white dudes who scorn everything that doesn't pander directly to them. How exactly do we decide which is more important: that a tertiary villain's actress has a natural style of delivery, or that the script acknowledges that women can have more than one personality trait? How do we weight fluid cinematography against the 'artistic choice' to only give speaking roles to white people?<br />
<br />
There's some kind of idea out there, never quite stated (but clearly believed by people who consider themselves 'the default'), that you can tell an apolitical story. Like if a person just writes, lets the words flow freely without <i>intending</i> to make a statement about the world, they will necessarily <i>not</i> make a statement about the world. If they just want to tell a story about being a hero, and they coincidentally make the climax of that story a white guy brutally murdering a black guy, there is no way the story might be racist, because they weren't <i>thinking</i> about racism while they wrote it. It's only once other people come in and start <i>overthinking </i>things that we run into trouble, somehow introducing problems to the story just by observing what's in there.<br />
<br />
If this blog had, like, a heraldic motto, it'd probably be something like what I wrote above there: all bigoted writing is lazy writing. It replaces truth and originality with lies that uphold privilege and comfort oppressors. I hope that we can, as a civilisation, move away from "X is okay if you don't mind all the bigotry" and towards "X could have been good if not for all the bigotry". A story that hates Muslims isn't 'controversial' or 'daringly un-PC', it's <i>a bad story</i> pushing a bad agenda.<br />
<br />
And if we're going to recognise that bigotry is an artistic flaw, I think it's important to give artistic value to fighting bigotry. There's a new Ghostbusters out (it was great), and the choice to cast four lead women is considered a gimmick while the original's four leading men are apolitical. Nah, bruh. The original Ghostbusters has two significant women (the secretary and the damsel) and everyone else who matters is a man, and it's like that because it was written by men for themselves.* The new Ghostbusters has a quartet of proven comic ladies because the people involved in making it agreed that it's important that there are stories about women like this.<br />
<br />
Which isn't to say that, say, casting women is always politically progressive and creative and meritorious. Joss "Female Characters Who Are Strong And Vulnerable In Exactly The Ways I Find Sexually Exciting" Whedon has taught us all that lessons several times over. Heralded for years as the great geek feminist, Whedon once imagined a conversation in which a hypothetical journalist asked him why he wrote so many female characters, setting himself up for the dazzling rejoinder "Because you're still asking that question". And yet he keeps producing exactly the same kind of character over and over again (all bigoted writing is lazy writing) because the story isn't about the representation of women, it's about that one particular kind of woman that Whedon likes best. The entire concept that launched Buffy was 'wouldn't it be <i>weird</i> to see a girl do this?' He was counting on women-as-gimmick to draw attention, but then circled back around to approximately-mainstream acceptance by slathering them in male gaze, and he has never stopped repeating this pattern. (And always tearing them down, showing them broken and abused and in need of saving anyway.)<br />
<br />
I tragically can't close this by outlining the true rules for objectively determining what a good movie is. That is beyond even my power as an amateur blogger. But I think there's a lot more to be investigated in how we perceive movies aimed at or led by women. These movies can be flawed (oh, is Vampire Academy flawed) and it's easy to brush off a cheesy movie, but is it actually the cheese and the production values that people hate, or are those just the things we let a person target when they want to destroy something because it's For Girls?<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*There will likely be at least one Ghostbusters post coming soon, possibly one about the original and one about the reboot, in case you are hungry for more of the blogqueen's vitriol for Peter Venkman.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-58787188437493307702016-08-07T14:15:00.002-04:002016-08-07T14:15:19.621-04:00The Name of the Wind, chapter one, in which Will is charmed by a Science HeroHowdy folks. Sunday updates are back! The long drought is once again over and we have a new project, decided by my need to resolve an apparent contradiction. On the one hand, I have heard that <i>The Name of the Wind</i> is the most archetypal of male wish-fulfillment fantasy; on the other hand, I've seen women recently talking about how much they love Rothfuss, in the comments of a video of him talking at a con about proper diversity of representation in fiction. <br />
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He also posted this, presumably on July 5th:<br />
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<i>Pictured: a status update about letting his young son wear eyeshadow and lipstick on a night out, because, quote, "Fuck it" and "Freedom".</i></div>
<br />
So already I feel like I'm dealing with a much higher calibre of human being than the aw-shucks misogynist Butcher or the frothing hatemonger Card. Male wish fulfillment and a philosophy of inclusion and free expression--these things don't <i>have</i> to conflict, but they are definitely an unusual combination. Let's see if we can figure out what's going on.<br />
<br />
No further delays. Are you excited? I'm excited.<br />
<br />
(<i>Content: referenced animal death. Fun content: chimney history, Viola Davis' poker face.</i>)<br />
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<b>The Name of the Wind: p. 1--</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Prologue: A Silence of Three Parts</i></div>
<br />
The title page informs me that this book is "<i>The Kingkiller Chronicle: Day One</i>", which is even more amazing than your typical 'Book One of the Interminability Cycle'. A single <i>day</i>. I assume this due to flashbacks, but suddenly I wonder why no one's tried to do the dragons-and-wizards version of <i>24</i> yet.<br />
<br />
There is of course a map, labelled "<i>The Four Corners of Civilization</i>" which conveniently ends all along the right edge of the page with the practically-vertical Stormwall Mountains. Nothing civilised anywhere else, I guess? These people are terrible explorers or huge narcissists, but--to be clear--I am fully expecting this book to be unabashedly pretentious stereotypical fantasy, and I will not hold that against it any more than I condemned Wheel of Time for being a by-the-numbers Tolkien ripoff. (Bad example?) Until and unless Rothfuss earns my ire with offensive handling of actual characters, my exclamations will probably all translate to 'that is terrible <i>I love it</i>'.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It was night again. The Waystone Inn lay in silence, and it was a silence of three parts.</i></blockquote>
SEE PREVIOUS STATEMENT.<br />
<br />
The first part of the silence is absence: no wind, no drinking crowd, no music. There are a couple of guys drinking intently, whose lack of conversation "<i>added a small, sullen silence to the larger, hollow one</i>". The third silence is an excuse to describe the scenery:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>If you listened for an hour, you might begin to feel it in the wooden floor underfoot and in the rough, splintering barrels behind the bar [....] in the weight of the black stone hearth that held the heat of a long dead fire [....] in the hands of the man who stood there, polishing a stretch of mahogany that already gleamed in the lamplight.</i></blockquote>
He has "<i>true-red</i>" hair, so I assume he's a main character. He owns the bar, and the poetic third silence: "<i>It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die.</i>" That's the entire prologue. I have no idea what it means but, again, it is shamelessly over-the-top and I love it.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter One: A Place for Demons</i></div>
<br />
Same inn, different night? A stock character named Old Cob is telling a quartet of young men a story of wandering hero Taborlin the Great, disarmed and imprisoned in a tower where the flames had turned blue, which the smith's apprentice correctly identifies as a sign of the Chandrian (bad guys of some type, clearly). They pause for Medieval Fantasy Dinner, "<i>five bowls of stew and two warm, round loaves of bread</i>", which is some nice baking service--and then back to the story, where Taborlin turns out to be Superman levels of overpowered, because he "<i>knew the names of all things, and so all things were to his command</i>". He commands the stone wall of his cell to fall apart, jumps out the hole, and "<i>he knew the name of the wind</i>" [DRINK!] so it caught him on his way down. He doesn't even have the stab wound from his captors, thanks to his new magic amulet that they somehow failed to take from him.<br />
<br />
The men start arguing over the precise rhyming scheme about being kind to tinkers (such as the one who gifted Taborlin this Amulet of Gamebreaking), and the innkeeper, Kote, interrupts for basically the first time since he moved to town a year ago:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>A tinker's debt is always paid:/</i><i>Once for any simple trade./Twice for freely given aid./Thrice for any insult made.</i></blockquote>
I had been thinking that the innkeeper was the protagonist, but he's got a name now, whereas the narrative has paused twice now to tell us that the smith's teenage apprentice is still always called "<i>boy</i>", which I find Suspicious. Old Cob specifies that the amulet would protect Taborlin from evil, "<i>demons and such</i>", causing Shep to grumble about needing it himself. Implications follow that Shep's farm may have been hit by demons last week and everyone is too polite to ask about it while sober. I hope it was demons. I would give a lot to see a fantasy novel written from the perspective of ordinary villagers just trying to get on with life in a world where apocalyptic devil-gods and prophesied heroes and monster hordes are as common as rainy days.<br />
<br />
Another disagreement arises about whether the Chandrian are demons or, as Jake insists, "<i>They were the first six people to refuse Tehlu's choice of the path</i>", et cetera. On the plus side, rather than everyone having a weirdly encyclopedic knowledge of their mytho-history, they seem to have various competing stories and can't agree what's what. Already we're doing better than Wheel of Time.<br />
<br />
No dark night in a tavern is complete without someone stumbling in on death's door, so here comes Carter, smeared with blood. (Aside: the surname 'Walker' and the locative name 'Rannish' suggest to me that we're in an era in which surnames are relatively new, but apparently the occupational name 'Carter' has already made the jump to forename. Reminds me of a couple of weeks ago when I asked my GM about an NPC named Christopher in a fantasy setting without Christianity. He politely ignored my musings, which is probably for the best. This is why I have trouble connecting with people.) Carter is clutching a blanket that looks "<i>as if it were wrapped around a tangle of kindling sticks</i>" and, a paragraph later, clunks onto a table "<i>as if it were full of stones</i>". I'm sure it's nothing creepy like a bunch of bones. Carter is "<i>crisscrossed with long, straight cuts</i>" but insists that he's fine, although his horse didn't make it. He is reprimanded for travelling alone when there are brigands around, until he dramatically tugs open the blanket roll to reveal a giant dead spider.<br />
<br />
Kote casually identifies it as a scrael, then quickly insists he's never seen one before but only heard about them from travelling merchants. He quickly sets to sciencing it as best he can--its body is stone, feet razor-sharp, no eyes, no mouth, and when he finally manages to snap it open, it's full of homogenous grey sponge "<i>like a mushroom</i>". Kote is terrible at being an undercover hero, but after Dresden's tremendous disinterest in learning anything more about anything than he has to, I am <i>all over</i> a character whose response to monsters is to start making notes and running tests.<br />
<br />
Everyone is deeply upset and confused by the prospect of an actual demon corpse in the bar--they don't doubt demons <i>exist</i>, but they're supposed to be far-off mythical things, like kings and gods. Kote just shrugs and says they can test with iron or fire. Graham, in the audience, helpfully specifies that demons "<i>fear three things: cold iron, clean fire, and the holy name of God.</i>"<br />
<br />
Kote gives him this face...<br />
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<i>Pictured: Viola Davis, unimpressed.</i></div>
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...and moves on to finding iron--pure iron, not alloyed steel. He eventually locates an appropriately pure penny (a shim--we get names for all the coin types, which is pretty good flavour without breaking our stride too much) and presses it to the scrael's stone body. A moment later, it burns through to the table underneath. Kote wipes his hands on his apron and asks what they should do now. SCIENCE HERO!<br />
<br />
Another silent scene, this time of Kote alone in his bar, cleaning everything. It's super clean. So clean to begin with that even after cleaning for an hour, his cleaning bucket water is still clean enough "<i>for a lady to wash her hands</i>". I'm not sure if this is characterisation or what. Is Kote obsessive or does he not sleep ever? The narrative notes that 'Kote' is a chosen name for him, one of many (his student calls him Reshi), and implies that he's actually much older than the twentysomething he looks. When he finally does return to his room, he's greeted by a new character, Bast, who makes me vaguely uncomfortable given that he's the first dark-skinned person we've met and is seemingly a servant, bringing food. At least, he's described as "<i>dark and charming, with a quick smile and cunning eyes</i>". 'Dark' in these cases sometimes just means hair, but overall it sounds to me like a stock description of a Mildly Foreign Person whom we're meant to like but also not be sure whether to trust. We're also in Jacob-and-Carter country, so Bast is probably meant to sound exotic (though it's a decent abbreviation of Sebastian, and apparently also a German surname). I'm going to go ahead and picture him as mixed north African/west Asian.<br />
<br />
But he's not just a servant, at least. He's Kote's apprentice, by the sound of it studying magic or alchemy. Buuuut he's also super promiscuous, as they banter and Bast admits that he didn't get any reading done today because he took his book outside and immediately got entangled with a pretty girl. Again. He's a big fan of all the women under thirty in this place, apparently. So, our first POC is vaguely subservient, scholastically under-motivated, and extra sexual. This is all discussed jovially and without any chastising from Kote, so we're probably not supposed to think less of him for this, but I become immediately suspicious when these sorts of traits line up. (Also, we've had half a dozen named men and one Significantly Unnamed boy and the only named female character thus far is the dead horse. Don't think I'm not noticing these things just because I am pleased with Kote's I-wonder-what-happens-if-I-do-<i>this</i> curiosity.)<br />
<br />
Kote explains about the scrael, to Bast's immediate concern, but Kote reassures him that it was properly dead and he subtly made sure they disposed of it properly, with a rowan wood fire and a sufficiently deep hole and such arcane precautions. He also mentions giving Carter about fifty stitches, and instructs Bast to tell anyone gossipy a specific backstory about learning from his father the a caravan guard. They have further Significant Conversation that we don't fully understand, about how "<i>they thought it was a demon</i>" that that was probably for the best (but nothing about what it <i>really </i>is, ominous chord), and everyone's going to be stocking up on pure iron to fight demons and Kote wouldn't blame Bast if he wanted to leave now. Is this implying that Bast is also not human? I have a suspicious eye on you, Rothfuss. (Bast says he would never leave, since Kote's his only possible teacher.) The Bast-is-a-demon-or-something theory intensifies when the banter proceeds to Kote jokingly trying to banish him with various incantations in ancient language, to which Bast laughs through fake scowls.<br />
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Kote is left to eat in silence, and I contemplate why I enjoy the return to pretentious pseudo-poetry in the narrative here, even as it tries to quietly inform me of how special Kote is. He reflects on his slight pride in engineering a fireplace into the middle of the room--<br />
<br />
(I did some quick research here to try to figure out if/when this was a new creation, and discovered a book that argues that <a href="https://books.google.ca/books?id=quCh9tAW1jcC&lpg=PA271&ots=FZi5HSyFCl&dq=old%20central%20fireplace&pg=PA271#v=onepage&q=old%20central%20fireplace&f=false">the invention of the chimney was the single greatest factor in the development of class segregation</a> in Europe. The world is a font of endless wonders and this sustains me through times of trouble.)<br />
<br />
--and then spends a lot of time looking everywhere in the room <i>except</i> towards a particular wooden chest, "<i>the same way you avoid meeting the eye of an old lover at a formal dinner, or that of an old enemy sitting across the room in a crowded alehouse late at night</i>". (I note that Rothfuss is pretty good about not gendering his hypotheticals; I feel confident Dresden would have made it very clear that the 'old lover' was a white woman as beautiful as she was cold, et cetera.)<br />
<br />
The chest is made of roah, fantasy wood worth its weight in gold: "<i>a chest made of it went far beyond extravagance</i>". I had enough of this with Trillionaire Ender Wiggin to last me a lifetime, thanks. The chest has three locks: one iron, one copper, "<i>and a lock that could not be seen</i>". DO YOU REALISE YET HOW IMPORTANT THIS BOX IS? I'm mostly expecting it to have a weapon inside, e.g., the sword that he Swore He Would Never Wield Again, but I'm hopeful that I'll be wrong there. He eventually locks eyes with the box, looks all weary again, and goes to bed.<br />
<br />
Next day, the bar crowd is nervous, although not too nervous to throw us some more worldbuilding tidbits: the Penitent King is trying to suppress a rebellion in far-off Resavek, and everyone's expecting a third round of taxes this year, which will be bearable for most of the farmers except those already struggling, and "<i>Crazy Martin</i>", who planted barley instead of the beans that armies live on. Travelling merchants have fewer and fewer luxuries as well. I actually kinda like this sequence, far more than a Wheel-of-Time-y scenario where everyone's chipper but there are Grim Rumours in The East that they Foolishly Dismiss. Not least because it only takes a couple of paragraphs for Rothfuss to sketch us a sense of village life and how they adapt to the times and economics of their world, and we aren't subject to a deluge of vaguely-rustic down-home slang. The village is also full of gossip, since Carter is half made of stitches now, although no one really takes the claims of demonic invasion seriously. <br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Trying to convince folk would only make them a laughingstock, like Crazy Martin, who had been trying to dig a well inside his own house for years now.</i></blockquote>
A brief investigation has not provided me with any insight as to why people wouldn't want an indoor well. I mean, I know wells run dry, but if you're building a house and you have a private well, is there any particular reason not to build the house around the well? (These are the questions I ask that, four years later, cause someone to look at me bug-eyed and say 'Why do you <i>know</i> that?' Funsies, my friends. Funsies.) Still, as Kote predicted, everyone in town finds time to drop by the blacksmith and buy a length of iron, just in case some hellspawn needs smiting.<br />
<br />
By the end of the chapter, it has begun to drag a bit, particularly once it gets around to how "<i>they reminisced that three years ago no one would have even thought of locking their doors at night, let alone barring them</i>". Pepperridge Farm remembers. The evening's drinking stumbles to end at a slow and low point, ending the chapter, which if nothing else tells us how confident Rothfuss is that we are firmly in the grip of his narrative tension.<br />
<br />
Still not one named human woman, but also a lack of outright misogyny or even 'benign' sexism, so this is one of those times where a score of zero is actually an <i>improvement</i> over most of the books you've had the joy to experience with me. I confess I hold actual hope for this story yet. (I can't tell if Kote and Bast are close enough in age for me to ship them yet, but I assume you're all prepared for that to start happening soon.)<br />
<br />
Next week: a secondary protagonist <i>named Chronicler</i> (amazing) gets politely robbed and Kote starts to reveal his Seeeeecret Paaaast!Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-77960247383179137922016-07-06T00:30:00.000-04:002016-07-06T00:30:26.132-04:00Life Is Strange: The choices we are not allowed to makeIt's kind of hard to know how to talk about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Life_Is_Strange" style="font-style: italic;">Life Is Strange</a>, the 2015 episodic/serial choice-based time-travel RPG. It's one story in five parts, and each episode tackles drastically different concepts and subject matter, sometimes in radically different ways. The blogqueen and I played through the first four episodes saying "Okay, on the <i>next</i> run (which we must obviously play) we'll do this the <i>other</i> way" and then found that when the final credits rolled neither of us had any real desire to pick it up again.<br />
<br />
How exactly do I talk about a story where the phrase 'that was always going to never have happened eventually' is grammatically reasonable? I'm going to try going roughly by episode and see how that goes. Spoilers will be progressively spoilerier as we go. Also, this game gets into some serious and potentially very triggering material, so if that's not something you want to deal with today, I have also posted a full index of the Ender's Game posts for your re-enjoyment.<br />
<br />
(<i>Content: murder, suicide, terminal illness, sexual assault, loss of agency.</i>)<br />
<br />
Our heroine, Max(ine) Caulfield, is a waifish photography nerd at a tiny well-respected private high school somewhere in Oregon. It's her hometown, but she's been away for five years, so it's both familiar and confusing, and she still hasn't tried to reconnect with her childhood BFFFFF, Chloe Price. One school day she witnesses an accidental murder in the school bathroom and spontaneously develops the ability to rewind time (if only by a few minutes). She prevents the murder and thus saves someone who turns out to be Chloe, and together they begin searching for Chloe's missing friend, Rachel Amber. The core mechanic of the game is Max's ability to essentially <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saved_game#Autosave">save scum</a> her own life, thus letting her decide which version of a conversation she wants to be the 'real' one, or to see how a situation goes badly, reload the past, and take steps to prevent it again. Very meta. I approve.<br />
<br />
Despite this supernatural power, the game is mostly about mundane choices--who do you want to befriend, whose secrets will you keep, whose side will you take? The one exception to this is Max's recurring dream/vision of a hurricane coming in to obliterate the town in five days' time. Who's behind that? Could there be--<i>could there BE</i>-- something <i>sinister</i> about the rich kids' Vortex Club and their End of the World party in only four days' time? Other weird phenomena also start popping up: unreasonable snow and unscheduled eclipses and beaching whales.<br />
<br />
While the game reminds you regularly that it's all about consequences, it doesn't severely drop the hammer until episode two, when Max shorts out her time powers just when she needs to talk down her suicidal friend Kate. The situation is as wrenchingly plausible as they can make it--Kate was drunk at a party, there's a viral video going around shaming her, no one in authority cares that she says she was drugged and assaulted afterwards, and even those who believe her are going heavy on the victim-blaming. Refreshingly, the writers behind the game make it pretty clear that we're supposed to sympathise fully with Kate and the victim-blamers are a bunch of jackasses. It's also not as exploitative as one might expect; there is never an opportunity to watch the video, for example. Depending on the choices you have made up to that point and while you're on the roof, Kate can be rescued. It's a harrowing story, but very compelling. (On our playthrough we failed to stop her at the very end, but this is a game about time travel and anything can be undone.)<br />
<br />
Episode three gives us a new twist when Max discovers that she can use photographs to alter moments of her more distant past, and retroactively prevents the car crash that killed Chloe's father, thus drastically rewriting the entire world. The most drastic obvious change is that Chloe has instead been in an accident herself in the last year and is now completely paralysed with progressive organ failure. The blogqueen and I were massively apprehensive about this, since media about disabled people tends to be awkward at best and eugenicist at worst. To our pleasant surprise, this game avoids a lot of that. This alternate Chloe is arguably happier than her able-bodied self, and her parents have managed to equip their home with a bunch of adaptive technology that still lets her live her life. No one ever declares that they'd rather be dead than disabled, or implies that a disabled child is an unwanted burden on their family or friends. The game <i>does</i> make it clear that being disabled is horrendously expensive, but the Price parents are resolute that they'll do anything they can to improve her life.<br />
<br />
That said, Max can also find a letter from Chloe's doctor (which Chloe apparently hasn't been told about) saying that she probably has only a few months to live no matter what they do, and ultimately Chloe asks Max to give her a morphine overdose because she'd rather not suffer through that decline (and bankrupt her family). The player can choose to assist or refuse, and then, either way, immediately use the photograph to restore the original timeline. So, while it's carefully set up to make it clear that this is Chloe's choice and she specifically wants to skip her own terminal case, we nevertheless get the selfless disabled person trying to spare their loved ones the burden. Compared to the usual depiction of disability in media, I feel this lands solidly in 'better, yet not good' territory.<br />
<br />
Episode four brings us nearly to the end of the investigation, as our reunited heroes find a well-equipped storm bunker, "the Dark Room", that someone is apparently using as their hideout to kidnap, drug, and photograph teenage girls. (The game implies that most of the victims were not physically raped, but some probably were, and the violation is inexcusable in either case.) Max and Chloe finally locate the body of Rachel Amber, but it's a trap and the villain ambushes them, killing Chloe (again) and kidnapping Max.<br />
<br />
<b>★Interlude by Erika★</b><br />
I want to take a moment to talk about Rachel Amber. She is everywhere. From one of the first scenes we see graffiti about her, we see missing posters about her, people talk about her. The early episodes hit you over the head with "wonder who is Rachel, and what happened to her!" She's the reason Chloe was at the school to start with when we run into her (she was putting up missing person posters). A large majority of the plot is driven by investigating what happened to her. She is a mystery, and she is <i>supposed</i> to be. From how other characters talk about her, you're never sure how you're supposed to see her. There are implications that she is, in her own way, even guiding Max, which is what made it so... anti-climactic to get the one-two punch of "she was drugged, maybe sexually abused, and definitely photographed in horrific ways" with "yep, there's her body". I never really expected to find her alive, but I had expected more from this game than what thematically amounts to "raped and murdered". While there is little room for the game to continue exploring Rachel after this point, she only comes up once more and is largely forgotten now that the mystery is solved and she is found.<br />
<b><br /></b>
<b>★Back to Will★</b><br />
Even up to this point, I was pretty well on-board with this game. Its treatment of harsh subject matter was at least considered if not perfect, its characters are generally complicated and interesting, it has serious and impactful choices, and it's so queer.<br />
<br />
It is <i>so</i> queer, y'all.<br />
<br />
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<a href="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U7pUbiBlf4w/maxresdefault.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="180" src="https://i.ytimg.com/vi/U7pUbiBlf4w/maxresdefault.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Pictured: Max kissing Chloe. Chloe's hair is dyed in the approximate colours of the bi pride flag.</i></div>
<br />
Max is bi, unquestionably. Her close past friendship with Chloe takes on romantic overtones almost immediately after they meet again, they flirt constantly, and your first opportunity to kiss is in the middle of the game. You can choose not to, of course, but <a href="http://life-is-strange.wikia.com/wiki/Game_Statistics#Major_Choices_3">80% of players went for it</a>, as is right and good. If you do, the flirting only ramps up afterwards. Chloe really only expresses interest in other girls, primarily Rachel, and it's hard to tell if she's just teasing you when she talks about how hot Mr Jefferson the photography <strike>goatee</strike> teacher is. And while they have some obviously sexualised scenes (playing in the pool at night, nearly naked) it's mostly not objectifying camerawork. (Being male, I'm probably not a good source on whether the male gaze applies.)<br />
<br />
Max's other potential love interest is Warren, a nerdy boy who defies the vast majority of expected nerd boy cliches. He's super excited about what a geek Max is and wants to trade classic SFF movies with her, but he never becomes the entitled and resentful Nice Guy, even if you reject him, even after he puts himself in physical harm to protect you. <b>IN FACT</b>, if you turn down his date and he then learns you're spending all your time with Chloe, his response is basically "Oh, wow, yeah, if I were you I would also date her, good call". (<b>Erika:</b> I remain conflicted on if I would pick him or not if Chloe wasn't the other option. He's kind of endearing, but also so thirsty.) No biphobia! Not even a second of "wait, are you <i>gay</i> or something?" Normalised bisexuality. Truly this is a world unlike our own. (Villains don't mind throwing in some homophobia now and then, generally by calling Chloe a dyke, which is kind of unnecessary but in line with the rest of the writers' choices.)<br />
<br />
Most of the other characters very clearly have their virtues and flaws as well. Victoria, alpha girl of the school, is snobbish and judgmental, but can also be kind and loyal, and is clearly motivated more by insecurity than malice. Chloe's stepfather David is an ex-soldier, pushy, prying, secretive, and short-tempered, but genuinely cares about his family and is just very bad at simultaneously protecting and respecting people.<br />
<br />
Nathan Prescott is worth talking about as well--he's the rich kid who never faces consequences for anything and (almost) kills Chloe in the first episode. There's a lot of ableist talk about how he's "insane" and on a ton of prescription medications (in addition to illegal narcotics), but ultimately we're corrected: his mental problems didn't make him evil, they made him vulnerable, and while he's done inexcusable things, he's in turn a victim and pawn of bad people who are entirely sane. Like Chloe's alternate timeline (and this time speaking as someone who does depend on medication for his mental health), I felt again like this ended up in better territory than usual, if not necessarily great.<br />
<br />
With all that said, let's talk about how much I hated episode five.<br />
<br />
Okay, 'hated' is a strong word; I was less uncomfortable than Erika was while we played through it (<b>Erika</b>: I spent most of this sequence clutching a pillow yelling "NO" and making upset noises at the TV), but in the aftermath I became more and more dissatisfied with the writers' choices, the wasted opportunities, and the confluence of really tired cliches in a situation that desperately needed the originality and unpredictability of the rest of the game.<br />
<br />
It starts out bad: Chloe is dead, Max is captured, and the real villain has been revealed as Mr Jefferson, the hipster teacher Max has idolised for years. It turns out that his favourite subject for photography is the destruction of innocence, so he likes to kidnap girls and photograph them as they are slowly overwhelmed by fear and despair. Bound to a chair in his secret bunker, the player is mostly just forced to watch scenes play out, which is the first problem. Episode five is less a game than an interactive movie--rather than making choices, you're pushed through a pretty linear sequence of events, trying desperately to find anything you can do that will make a difference. The writers were clearly trying to evoke a sense of helplessness in the player (after four episodes of causality being your plaything), and I don't disagree that they succeeded. What I dislike about this is that after four episodes of focusing on the agency and power and courage of this teenage girl, they decided that what we really needed to bring things home was a painfully long sequence in which our heroine is helplessly victimised by a violent man and we can do nothing but watch. The game up to now had--usually--avoided being very voyeuristic, and that goes right out the window. Prolonged camera shots of an underage, drugged girl.<br />
<br />
This is not something I was looking for in my game.<br />
<br />
After what feels like about nineteen weeks of pointless struggling, Max manages to find one of her photographs that she can use to tweak the very first scene of the game, rewriting the entire week. Kate is alive, Chloe is alive, Mr Jefferson has been arrested, and Max is declared the winner of the photo competition, which means she's out of town at a gala when she receives word that the mysterious hurricane is nevertheless destroying the town. She goes back to rewrite time again to make sure she's home to protect people, and consequences spill out of control such that she ends up back in Jefferson's evil lair with no photos. Ex-soldier David comes to the rescue this time, because what we really needed was for her to get rescued by a strong man again (Max does help, but still, seriously?), and off Max goes to find the one remaining photo that will let her travel back to warn Chloe and save the day.<br />
<br />
It works, though apparently the developers felt they needed padding or just hadn't shown off enough graphical tricks yet, because first there's an extended nightmare dungeon sequence that is pretty much exactly what I'd like to see in a horror movie, except that <i>since when is this game a horror movie</i>. It was cool, and it's certainly a powerful scene when Mirror Max berates Player Max for using her time-warp powers to make people like her. I just wish they had given us more reason for any of those scenes to be in the game, apart from 'it was cool and we had a half hour of runtime to fill'. (<b>Erika:</b> However it would have made for a <i>great</i> horror game.)<br />
<br />
The final choice of the game comes in the same place the story starts, on a cliff, watching the hurricane bear down on Arcadia Bay. At this point, our heroes have 'realised' that all of these bizarre phenomena are somehow caused by Max's time-warping, including this very storm. <i>How</i> they've realised this remains unclear to me; it seems like a pretty strong application of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post_hoc_ergo_propter_hoc">post hoc ergo propter hoc</a>. (It would have been just as reasonable to conclude that some other force had fractured reality, causing various disasters but also somehow allowing Max to hop between possible timelines, near as I can tell.) Regardless, Chloe realises that Max only developed her powers to prevent Chloe's death, and so offers Max a photograph that will let her travel back to day one, allow Chloe to get shot, never gain her time powers, and thus prevent any of the catastrophes that follow.<br />
<br />
Yeah.<br />
<br />
A brief list of things I am provisionally okay with:<br />
<ul>
<li>moral conundrums where you have to choose between one person you value most or a bunch of other people</li>
<li>diabolus ex machina in which some kind of force majeure threat out of nowhere requires you to choose between two flawed results</li>
<li>villains being characterised as creepy hipster misogynists who literally see women as objects, even and especially if it's not blatantly sexual</li>
<li>gameplay sequences specifically designed to evoke a feeling of helplessness</li>
</ul>
But when you combine all of these things to tell a story about a heroine getting tied up, drugged, threatened in various physical and psychological ways, punished for every choice she makes, and ultimately told that the will of the universe is that she either allows her girlfriend to be murdered or she will personally be responsible for a random town-destroying disaster...<br />
<br />
Again, this is not what I was looking for in this game.<br />
<br />
On the plus side, you can choose not to sacrifice Chloe, so it doesn't <i>have</i> to be a story about the Tragic Lesbian who dies selflessly to save the straights. Yet the writers obviously felt that was the stronger story, and put substantially more time into that ending than they did into the one where you let the storm run its course and then drive off into the sunrise. (You also only kiss Chloe again if it's right before you rewind to let her die; otherwise it's hugs only.) In both cases, I'm not sure I've ever seen a game that so desperately needed a 'where are they now' ending for its various side characters, which would have fit in perfectly as, for example, a photo album that you could flip through during the end credits. (From what I've read, the lack of detail was intentional, especially in the ending where the storm hits, as the writers wanted to leave players in suspense about who survived the disaster.) Instead, Erika and I agreed, the supposed consequences of all of your many other decisions throughout the game are seriously undermined, since you don't get to see any impact in the end from anything but your final choice.<br />
<br />
<b>★Erika★</b><br />
I would go as far as to say that none of your choices matter expect the final one. You either reset, and none of it happens, or you just leave them to die. (If Max retains her memory during the days she must now relive, they could matter more, but it is unclear if she does or not, and given the previous mechanics, implied she doesn't.) The survivors aren't going to care whether you were nice to them or not after getting a bucket of paint dumped on them, they're going to be a little preoccupied with how their lives have been destroyed by a hurricane. For a game that let you think that its choices were so important, real lunchbox letdown.<br />
<br />
★<b>Will again★</b><br />
I can see ways they could have spun the hurricane ending more effectively, and even the reset ending, but in both cases they'd have to have actually wanted to do so, and set up for it. In the reset ending, a sequence (even a montage) of Max using whatever knowledge she still has in order to help people (supporting Kate, befriending the rest of the 'unsympathetic' students and stopping bullies, reconnecting with Chloe's mom and helping her through what follows) would have added a lot. In the hurricane ending, obviously, how you've interacted with other characters could also influence the choices they're going to make, and 'former enemies come together to protect the community in a crisis' is a way better cliche than anything else we were getting in this episode. Victoria and Frank the drug dealer come to mind as examples of people who are hostile by default but can have a conscience installed. Give me Victoria mass-texting people to come to her family's storm bunker; give me Frank and David driving around town grabbing anybody stuck on foot on the street.<br />
<br />
One last thing that I expected to mean more but never did was the nature of the big photo competition: "Everyday Heroes". Max's winning picture is a shot <i>of herself</i> and her wall of photos, yet her heroism is not really evident to anyone else most of the time (the main exception coming to mind is her rescue of Kate). Her heroism in the reset ending consists of choosing <i>not</i> to act. Maybe the takeaway there is that 'everyday heroes' aren't often noticed or recognised, but it's kind of lacklustre, and there isn't much that can connect an act like that to the real world. Conversely, there's a giant missed opportunity for plausible 'everyday heroism' if Max's little actions over the course of the week are allowed to add up to something significant in the end, like the townspeople being more ready and willing to protect each other. Be good to people throughout the week, bring them closer together, make them more ready to weather the storm, and maybe they can save each other so you aren't pushed to let your girlfriend die.<br />
<br />
And I figure that's exactly what the writers did not want to allow. Either of these things--the reset ending where you see Max still finding ways to help people, or the hurricane ending where she's helped them become people who leap to protect each other--distracts from the focus of the ending right now, which is "are you going to kill your girlfriend and suffer like a hero or spare her like a selfish coward". That is the extent of what the writers wanted you to be thinking about and left with, and all other possible consequences of your many, many choices are removed by fiat. If anything, the message seems like it's supposed to be "life is strange (<b>WINK</b>) and therefore nothing is truly in your control and your choices and desires don't really matter". Helplessness is in keeping with the themes of the final episode, but "you can't really have any agency" is again a thing I was not looking for in my bisexual SFF mystery game, especially as the 'twist' ending of a game that claims it's all about choices.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-47536827580575234132016-07-06T00:00:00.000-04:002016-07-11T17:56:14.960-04:00Ender's Game: The IndexFor ease of navigation and in case anyone felt like reliving the nostalgic days when I was just wading into the realm of literary analysis, herein is presented the complete list of <i>Ender's Game</i> posts in chronological order. Further indices for other books will form in time. Feel free to make suggestions or requests on the formatting of this or future index posts.<br />
<ol>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/03/enders-game-chapter-1-part-1-in-which.html">Chapter one, part one, in which Will inexplicably follows in the style of the terrible decisions that have gone before</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/03/enders-game-chapter-1-part-2-in-which.html">Chapter one, part two, in which we immediately give up on all reasoned morality</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/04/enders-game-chapter-2-in-which.html">Chapter two, in which the villainous Peter Wiggin fails to be as horrifying as our hero</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/04/enders-game-chapter-three-which-is-much.html">Chapter three, which is much less terrible than previous chapters, or maybe I'm just getting inured to it all</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2013/05/enders-game-chapter-four-in-which-ender.html">Chapter four, in which Ender Wiggin becomes the blatant reader-fantasy-insert</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/05/enders-game-chapter-five-in-which-ender.html">Chapter five, in which Ender SHOWS THEM ALL and Will says 'whatever' a lot</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/06/enders-game-chapter-six-part-one-in.html">Chapter six, in which ZERO GRAVITY RACISM saves the day</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/06/enders-game-chapter-seven-part-one-in.html">Chapter seven, part one, in which we just don't understand Ender's FEELINGS</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/07/enders-game-chapter-seven-part-two-in.html">Chapter seven, part two, in which everyone gets naked</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/07/enders-game-chapter-seven-part-three-in.html">Chapter seven, part three, in which middle schoolers are just too old to keep up with the young folks</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/08/enders-game-chapter-eight-part-one-in.html">Chapter eight, part one, in which Jjjjeeeewwwwwws</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/08/enders-game-chapter-eight-part-two-in.html">Chapter eight, part two, in which things are very briefly not awful</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/08/enders-game-chapter-nine-part-one-in.html">Chapter nine, part one, in which blogs are taken seriously</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/08/enders-game-chapter-nine-part-two-in.html">Chapter nine, part two, in which alternative interpretations abound</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/09/enders-game-chapter-ten-in-which-ender.html">Chapter ten, in which Ender rejects redemption and loses his boyfriend</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/09/enders-game-chapter-eleven-in-which-we.html">Chapter eleven, in which we get down to the WINNING</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/09/enders-game-chapter-twelve-in-which-our.html">Chapter twelve, in which Our Hero gets his second kill</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/09/enders-game-chapter-thirteen-part-one.html">Chapter thirteen, part one, in which Ender tells the truth</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/10/enders-game-chapter-thirteen-part-two.html">Chapter thirteen, part two, in which Graff ruins everything again</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/10/enders-game-chapter-fourteen-part-one.html">Chapter fourteen, part one, in which Mazer Rackham doesn't replace Graff soon enough</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/10/enders-game-chapter-fourteen-part-two.html">Chapter fourteen, part two, in which the plan works perfectly</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/11/enders-game-chapter-fifteen-in-which.html">Chapter fifteen, in which the victims blame themselves</a></li>
<li><a href="http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.ca/2013/11/enders-game-introduction-in-which-we.html">Introduction, in which we contemplate empathy</a></li>
</ol>
Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-78466145995413690702016-06-15T00:30:00.000-04:002016-06-15T00:30:49.408-04:00Storm Front, chapters 26 and 27, in which Dresden repudiates his authorThe long journey ends. As venomously as I dislike Dresden, I won't rule out getting into another Dresden book at some point--probably the vaunted Book Seven, which legend says was designed to lure in new readers--but obviously I'm not subjecting myself to that right now. I have confirmed that I own <i>The Name of the Wind</i> by Patrick Rothfuss, which I understand is a contender with WOT for most unnecessarily long fantasy nonsense, but I also have <i>The Way of Kings</i> by Brandon Sanderson, a brick of a book (part one of ten!) by an author who definitely has his issues but, as near as I can tell, is actually educating himself over time. (He's spoken of having to teach new aspiring authors that having one token lady character is deeply inadequate and admitted to making the same mistake in his past writing, for example.) So Sanderson is a bit of a mildly-problematic fave for me, which could make his book better or worse as material for our purposes. These two are my current leanings, but I could always be convinced in a different direction; please feel free to continue suggesting. In the meantime, let's wrap this sucker up.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty-Six: A Truly Shocking Twist</i></div>
<br />
We rejoin Dresden listing off for us at length the reasons that his current situation is bad (evil wizard, gun-toting zealots, perpetual motion scorpions), which he literally did one page ago, so this is like that moment when a show comes back from commercial and decides to replay the last twenty seconds. That always vexed me. Wevs. Dresden suddenly snaps out of his doom-moping and realises that <i>he has a broom</i>, and therefore a fighting chance. He quickly enchants the broom and commands it (<i>"Pulitas!"</i>) to clean the kitchen, which includes sweeping out the swarm of not-yet-giant scorpions.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I'm pretty sure it got all the dirt on the way, too. When I do a spell, I do it right.</i></blockquote>
I mean. Some authors would take the opportunity to have their hero note that their salvation broom didn't quite manage to sweep all the way out to the edges of the linoleum, self-deprecating shrug, at least it got the job done. But Dresden, we are told, just has to be so awesome that his scorpion-fighting broom <i>also</i> flawlessly cleans the kitchen.<br />
<br />
Aside: this is also the first time we've seen magically-animated objects put into play. Now, I'm generally pretty happy to see things like 'hey, that old cleaning cantrip I was forced to learn at age 14 will actually buy me the time I need', but I am also kinda stuck asking now <i>why</i> this is the first time we've seen such a thing at play. If it takes only a few seconds to pour enough magic into a broom that it can not only fly but outmaneuver evil scorpions, is there an actual reason Dresden doesn't have, like, a hand towel in his pocket that he can enchant to try to wrap itself around Victor's face? Or, more simply and brutally, a paperweight that will do its damndest to tackle Victor in the back of the head over and over? I'm sure there are ways these things can be explained (e.g., the Pulitas spell is only easy because it's a traditional and very useful spell that's been practiced and refined for centuries until it's got a form that can be done in five seconds, but free-form animation magic is really hard) but it's kind of exhausting to be forced to do all that justification work <i>for</i> the story. (Expect to hear the same thing repeated in our upcoming post about indie timewarp game <i>Life Is Strange</i>.)<br />
<br />
The broom successfully sweeps all the scorpions off the ledge before Victor grabs it and breaks the spell. The Beckitts have swapped to revolvers, which are immune to techbane because <i>look over there</i>, but while they're reloading, Victor tries to tell Dresden he can surrender and walk away or wait for the fire to spread and kill him, but Dresden calls this bluff with the knowledge that if Victor waits, all his drugs will burn as well. This leads to a truly bizarre hero-villain dialogue that would fit easily into a hundred formulaic adventures and tremendously <i>not</i> this one.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Fire's the simplest thing you can do. All the real wizards learn that in the first couple of weeks and move on up from there." [....]</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Shut up!" Victor snarled. "Who's the real wizard here, huh? Who's the one with all the cards and who's the one bleeding on the kitchen floor? You're nothing, Dresden, <b>nothing</b>. You're a <b>loser</b>. And do you know why?"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Gee," I said. "Let me think."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>He laughed, harshly. "Because you're an idiot. You're an idealist. Open your eyes, man. You're in the jungle, now."</i></blockquote>
Idealist.<br />
<br />
Harry Dresden is being told that his critical flaw is that he is an <i>idealist</i>.<br />
<br />
I don't... I am barely able to comprehend this assertion, let alone respond to it. Dresden is a cynic who can't be bothered to comfort people he has personally terrorised, who keeps an immortal sex offender in his basement for his knowledge of recipes, who cheerfully carries on telling people about magic in a setting where they might be killed for knowing too much, and that's just in this book. We haven't even gotten to him nonchalantly accepting the enslavement of a teenage girl by a parasitic monster because it fits his incredibly precise definition of true love.<br />
<br />
Dresden doesn't believe in the effectiveness of law, doesn't believe in helping his fellows or his community, doesn't particularly care about the well-being of his clients (look at his scorn for Monica when he thinks her husband 'only' ran out on her), and gets <i>confused</i> when he feels <i>empathy for other people's suffering</i>.<br />
<br />
The only ideal this man can be accused of believing in is 'fuck you, I got mine'.<br />
<br />
Faith and begorrah.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I was in the mood to tell a white lie. "The police know all about you, Vic. I told them myself. And I told the White Council, too. You've never even heard of them, have you, Vic? They're like the Superfriends and the Inquisition all rolled up into one."</i></blockquote>
I mean, that does sound like an excellent description of the council, overflowing with power and zero recognisable morality beyond their personal definition of personal purity, but why <i>hasn't</i> Dresden done this, again? He's had time in cabs when he could have at least written a letter for Murphy. He could have told Mac 'I need your car so I can go fight the murderer Victor Sells, here's his address'. But nope.<br />
<br />
Victor insists that Dresden is lying, but demands to know who gave him away to start with. In a shocking twist I did not see coming, Dresden decides <i>not</i> to give up Monica's name, on the basis that Victor might conceivably survive this fight and go exact vengeance. Totally thought he was going to say it on the off chance that it would provoke Victor into a rage-mistake. Victor just tells the Beckitts to go (apparently they're going to march out to the car naked; very subtle) and then sets about re-summoning his toad-demon, whose name turns out to be Kalshazzak.<br />
<br />
Dresden scoffs at Victor making the rookie mistake of letting him hear the demon's name, chants it back in the thing's face, mind-wrestles with it for a second, draws heroic inspiration from the mental images of Jenny Sells, Karrin Murphy, and Susan Rodriguez (so, the actual child and two grown women Dresden just personally infantilises), and it begins to writhe on the floor. Victor turns to run, Dresden casts a final wind spell to tackle him off his feet, and then it's What Have You Done time.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"The Fourth Law of Magic forbids the binding of any being against its will," I grated out. Pain was tight around my throat, making me fight to speak the words. "So I stepped in and cut your control over it. And didn't establish any of my own."</i></blockquote>
The toad begins stumbling toward them as Dresden makes it clear that he's okay with dying as long as Sells dies too, they wrestle at the edge of the indoor balcony and of course <i>both</i> throw each other over, so on top of all the other cliches we also get the hero and villain simultaneously dangling from a ledge. Ahead, the incoming demon. Below them, a sea of black smoke (the burning potions, I think?) with a half-dozen giant scorpion stingers sticking up like periscopes. Victor's got a better grip and Dresden fears he'll manage to ward off the demon, so--who called it?!--blurts out that Monica was the one to betray him. This indeed throws Victor off just long enough for the demon to sink its fangs into his throat. Dresden is sure that he is soon to fall and die as well, but realises that he still has the handcuffs dangling from his wrist and manages to anchor himself while yanking Victor and the demon to their doom.<br />
<br />
All y'all take a gander at this for me:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>With my right [hand], I flicked the free end of the handcuffs around one of the bars of the guardrail. The ring of metal cycled around on its hinge and locked into place.</i></blockquote>
I'm preeeetty sure that this is supposed to indicate the other cuff was not merely empty but open, as in 'not locked'? Even though the reason he needed to force the cuff off Murphy's wrist and leave it attached to his own was that he couldn't open them. Is there something I'm missing here, or did Dresden subconsciously unlock the handcuff with magic while none of us were looking?<br />
<br />
The scorpions kill Victor and tear the demon apart (apparently demons aren't all that after all?) and Dresden hangs painfully by one wrist, mulling his imminent death in a way that Butcher presumably wanted to be deathly stereotypical and absolutely succeeded at. He insists for a full paragraph that he's just hallucinating as he sees Morgan burst in, carve through one of the giant scorpions (<i>"snickersnack"</i>, which I will fully admit I would enjoy from a different author), and begin to swing his sword in Dresden's general direction when Dresden finally blacks out. His last thoughts are of how <i>typical</i> it is that he would survive the villain only to get killed <i>"by the people for whose cause I had been fighting"</i>. Uh, Dresden, I know your 'allies' seem to turn on you a lot, but has it occurred to you that's because you constantly lie to them and have physically assaulted Morgan <i>twice</i> this week?<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty-Seven: Making Out In The Rain</i></div>
<br />
Dresden awakens outside and immediately reminds us that HE'S NOT GAY.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Rain was falling on my face, and it was the greatest feeling I'd ever known. Morgan's face was over mine, and I realized he'd been giving me CPR. Eww.</i></blockquote>
NOT THAT THERE'S ANYTHING WRONG WITH THAT<br /><br />JUST<br />
<br />
I HAVE SURVIVED A LITERAL HELLHOLE BECAUSE MY PERENNIAL NEMESIS RUSHED IN TO SAVE MY LIFE AND IMMEDIATELY ATTEMPTED TO RESUSCITATE ME REGARDLESS OF ANY PERSONAL DISCOMFORT<br />
<br />
AND I WANT YOU TO KNOW I'M NOT INTO THAT<br />
<br />
I get that it's supposed to be a tension-breaking joke, but consider this: fuck you, Jim Butcher. Get your cheap laughs out of a different bargain bin.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I saw you risk your life to stop the Shadowman. Without breaking any of the Laws. You weren't the killer."</i></blockquote>
Wait, why does Morgan call Victor 'Shadowman'? That's a nickname that Dresden has only used inside his own head. Again, in a better book, that would be the kind of slip-up that would cause our hero to realise that there was another layer to this mystery and Morgan was hiding something. But not here.<br />
<br />
Here, we can't even have character development. Despite agreeing that Dresden isn't the killer, and in fact worked to stop the killer at personal risk while still following the council's code of conduct, within a page Morgan is declaring that <i>"We will watch you day and night, we will <b>prove</b> that you are a danger who must be stopped"</i>. Dude can't even be allowed a little tsundere 'well, I guess you might not be a lurking serial killer after all, but don't think this means we're friends or anything'. They could have formed a tenuous trust that would still allow Morgan to leap to conclusions next time something implicates Dresden's guilt, compounded with 'I can't believe I even began to trust you'. Morgan might as well wear a sign around his neck reading I'm Not A Real Character.<br />
<br />
At his accusation, of course, Dresden just collapses laughing. When asked if he's all right, he responds <strike>NO HOMO</strike> <i>"Give me about a gallon of Listerine [...] and I'll be fine"</i>, because that joke isn't played out yet. Also, Dresden, I'm pretty sure you're bleeding from some important leg veins? But Morgan just says the police will arrive soon and wanders off into the woods, like he do.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The police arrived in time to catch the Beckitts trying to leave and arrested them for, of all things, being naked. Later, they were implicated in the ThreeEye drug ring, and prosecuted on distribution charges.</i></blockquote>
Did... uh, did the drugs survive the fire? How were the Beckitts connected to ThreeEye? Did the <i>scorpions</i> survive the fire? They were clearly still running around after Victor was proper dead. Seems like that's the kind of problem Morgan might have wanted to clean up before he left. I assume he didn't wade into the flames to finish them all off before he went back to breathe in Dresden's mouth. (Side note: modern CPR actually doesn't call for the breathing thing, only chest compressions, but real CPR also isn't expected to resuscitate a person on its own, so whatever).<br />
<br />
Thanks to Morgan's testimony, the council removes the Doom of Damocles (<i>"which I had always thought a rather pretentious name in any case"</i> uuuuugh) from Dresden's head.<br />
<br />
Dresden ends up in the hospital, and his techbane inexplicably doesn't burn the whole place out, although they do have trouble with the x-ray machine every time they try to scan his spine, har har. His room is just down the hall from Murphy (who survived after three days in critical care).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I sent flowers to her hospital room, along with the surviving ring of her handcuffs. I told her, in a note, not to ask how the chain between the rings had been so neatly severed. I didn't think she'd buy that someone cut it with a magic sword.</i></blockquote>
...Why not? Murphy believes in magic, remember? That's why she hired you? And tried to arrest you? You just have a fetish for withholding information, Dresden; at least admit it.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The flowers must have helped. The first time she got out of bed was to totter down the hall to my room, throw them in my face, and leave without saying a word.</i></blockquote>
Oh, those irascible womenfolk. (I was going to say that you know a male cop wouldn't have been written expressing their anger in such an impotent way as throwing flowers in Dresden's face, but then I remembered Dresden wouldn't have sent flowers to a male cop in the first place.) Murphy nevertheless makes sure Dresden gets paid well for his consulting, and rescinds his arrest order, and calls him in again for advice the day after she gets back to work.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But we don't joke anymore. Some wounds don't heal very quickly.</i></blockquote>
Dresden, I'm still busy being shocked that she didn't drag you into an interrogation room after all. If nothing else, you can be sure in her place I would demand some very clear guidelines about what information is Super Secret Wizard Knowledge and what information she can actually trust out of you so she doesn't waste her time shaking you down for things you've already admitted next time.<br />
<br />
Monica and the kids get into mundane Witness Protection, which strikes me as odd given that they had no real part in Victor's business and he's dead now. Who are they being protected from? Marcone's lone claim to non-super-villainy is that he wouldn't murder people if there wasn't any profit in it. (The Beckitts, we're told, ended up in Michigan prison, apparently outside Marcone's reach. Um.)<br />
<br />
Susan's article headlines the next issue of the Arcane, and she drops by to flirt with Dresden in the hospital and talk about how unfortunate it is that his hips are in a cast, because, again, she's the Spicy Latina and exists entirely to be fuckable.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I used the sympathy factor to badger another date out of her, and she didn't seem to mind too much. That time, we were <b>not</b> interrupted by a demon. And I didn't need any of Bob's love potions or advice, thank you very much.</i></blockquote>
HAVE I TOLD YOU I AM HETEROSEXUAL TODAY<br />
<br />
Speaking of Bob, he returns home amongst rumours of <i>"a particularly wild party at the University of Chicago"</i> that Dresden ignores. I'd really like to think that 'wild party' just means that Bob used his undefined magical powers just to throw a really sweet rave with bodacious laser shows and fonts of endless champagne and non-alcoholic beverages of choice, but this is Butcher writing and I just can't quite make myself believe that.<br />
<br />
The final page is Dresden's navel-gazing, with timeless prose like <i>"What did I get out of it? I'm not really sure. I escaped from something that had been following me for a long time. I'm just not sure what."</i> Uh. What? Does he mean the Doom? (I think he knows what that is.) Does he mean the temptation of evil magic? He didn't escape that, and he goes on to say as much at length: <i>"The power is there. The temptation is there. That's just the way it's going to be."</i> This whole temptation thing would have worked much better if it had been a running theme of the book and not just shoehorned in at the last minute. Like if back in chapter six Bob had been all 'Hey, you realise we could solve this whole problem in five minutes if we harnessed an abyssal hound' and Dresden was like 'Awesome, how do we do that' and Bob was like 'Okay, first we need the blood of three different children' and Dresden was just 'Okay, gonna stop you there'. Temptations should be real and constant--<b>you can stop this killer right now if you'll just pay this one little price, just compromise once</b>--if they're going to be meaningful. Otherwise you get, well, this slapdash mess.<br />
<br />
Dresden continues to monologue for a bit about how the world is getting weirder and darker and heading for rough times and he's just going to try to keep his corner as safe as he can, so if you are in trouble, who ya gonna call, et cetera. Curtain.<br />
<br />
Well.<br />
<br />
If it's true that Butcher wrote this as a backhanded homage to Anita Blake, intentionally working in every cliche he could possibly think of, then he absolutely succeeded. And clearly when his teacher told him that it was publishable, she was right.<br />
<br />
But gracious, at what cost?<br />
<br />
I mean, that is the closest this book gets to having a moral, right? That there are things not worth doing for success. That even if it means you stay stuck in a rubbish little office getting laughed at by the guy who delivers your mail, it's better to be honorable than powerful, better to be good than prosperous, better to be honest than rich. That the temptation to do something cruel for the sake of personal gain is omnipresent and it is worth resisting every time.<br />
<br />
That if the cost of becoming a best-selling author is hammering out misogynistic, incidentally racist, casually homophobic dreck in which sex workers die messily for the reader's titillation, if the cost is writing something that you personally believe is composed of reprehensible nonsense and telling people to spend their money on it, that cost is <i>too high</i>.<br />
<br />
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<i>Pictured: DJ Khaled's memetic "congratulations, you played yourself".</i></div>
<br />
So that's it for our time with Dresden. Next week will probably be a post on Life Is Strange or some other one-off thing, and we'll get into our next book after that. Feel free to get out any remaining vitriol for Dresden in the comments below, or construct your own outline for an alternate version of this book. Maybe one that doesn't feel like it was slapped together over the course of an afternoon.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-39726919549982538062016-06-08T13:17:00.001-04:002016-06-08T13:17:41.670-04:00Storm Front, chapters 24 and 25, in which the race against time pauses for exposition<i>(Content: violence, implied animal abuse. Fun content: Douglas Adams' style of magic, linguistic history, and benevolent moss.)</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty-Four: So Spooky You Don't Even Know*</i></div>
<br />
Dresden speeds away in an '89 TransAm, and I wonder again briefly about the supposed rules of his techbane (we could have had a line anywhere about how Mac's car never breaks on wizards and no one's figured out why, and even that would have done something for me) as he tells us about the eldritch dusk approaching, oversaturating the greens and muting yellows and such. Dresden's pushing over 130mph, he tells us, but <i>"I must also have been driving during the watch rotation for the highway patrol, because not one of them tried to pull me over"</i>. Given how little Butcher cares about the implications of his worldbuilding at this point, I'm surprised he doesn't have Dresden weave <a href="http://hitchhikers.wikia.com/wiki/Somebody_Else's_Problem_field">an SEP field</a> or something around the car. Recommendation: if you're going to "luckily" have an obvious problem not be a problem, maybe don't draw attention to it for the reader?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I hit the brakes to slow for the turn onto the lakefront road that led to the Sells house, started hydroplaning, turned into the slide with more composure and ability than I really should have had, and got the vehicle back under control in time to slide onto the correct road.</i></blockquote>
Dresden the car-slayer is nevertheless a preternaturally talented driver. Such shock.<br />
<br />
Dresden limps quickly up the half-flooded driveway to the house, stops, reminds us all that there are unknown numbers of mystical dangers and traps and suchlike ahead, and so Goes Loud:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>So I opened my Third Eye.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>How can I explain what a wizard sees? It isn't something that lends itself readily to description. Describing something helps to define it, to give it limits, to set guardrails of understanding around it. Wizards have had the Sight since time began, and they still don't understand how it works, why it does what it does.</i></blockquote>
This is not something I'm against, in principal, because I am all for magic being a concept too vast for us to adequately understand. Terry Pratchett wrote 'it's very hard to talk quantum in a language originally designed to tell other monkeys where the ripe fruit is' and I don't need to understand Dresden's magic sight as long as I understand the rules he personally uses to interact with it. Let's see how that goes.<br />
<br />
All of his normal senses are heightened (<i>"I could abruptly smell the mud and fish odor of the lake, the trees around the house, the fresh scent of the coming rain"</i>) and into the past (he sees the house across all seasons, and each part resonates its origins, windows made from far-off sand and timbers from distant forests) and future (he sees that there are a number of possible timelines in which the house will be a giant bonfire within an hour). Not bad for a start.<br />
<br />
Then we get into the weirdly subjective?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The house itself was a place of power. Dark emotions--greed, lust, hatred--all hung over it as visible things, molds and slimes that were strewn over it like Spanish moss with malevolent eyes. Ghostly things [...] moved around the place, drawn to the sense of fear, despair, and anger [...] like rats in granaries.</i></blockquote>
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<i>Pictured: an oak draped with Spanish moss that bears no one ill will.</i></div>
<br />
We've already picked up on Butcher's choice that, in this world, 'lust' is the mindless desire for sex with no other concern for anything and is Objectively Bad (so why was that thing called a love potion and not a lust potion?) but my actual question here is: why do greed and lust look like mold? Transitivity of grossness? All uncomfortable things are equally interchangeable? I mean, we had some interesting visual representations in the potion-brewing scene, with 'fiery passion' represented by ashes of a love letter and all that jazz. Wouldn't it be more interesting if greed were represented by--I don't know, swarms of parasites, or chains wrapped around the house to protect it--<i>MINE</i>--from anyone else who might take it? But no, we are not to befriend Mr Subtlety here:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Skulls were everywhere, wherever I looked, just as the edge of my vision, silent and still and bleach white, as solid and real as though a fetishist had scattered them around in anticipation of some bizarre holiday. Death.</i></blockquote>
TL;DR--every time a wizard looks at a suburban house where the family just cleared out the Halloween aisle at Wal-Mart, they are stricken with fear that this might be the home of the most evil wizard they have ever met, who is soon to kill again.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Death lay in the house's future, tangible, solid, unavoidable. [....] the future was always mutable, always something that could be changed. No one had to die tonight.</i></blockquote>
Definitely except maybe not but probably? 'This event is completely unpreventable except that it is' is a personal peeve, I guess. Don't get me started on Doctor Who series 6.<br />
<br />
Anyway, it's time for the Temptation of Harry Dresden, as the old flavour of evil magic calls out to him and reminds him that rejecting it once before had only earned him the suspicion and ire of wizard-kind.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>This was the sort of strength that could reach out and change the world to my will, bend it and shape it to my desiring [....] I could kill the Shadowman, now, before he knew I was here. I could call down fury and flame on the house and kill everyone in it, not leave one stone upon another.</i></blockquote>
I admit I was wondering why Harry didn't do that. I'm not generally in favour of killing, but I don't necessarily condemn it in the name of protecting oneself or others. If Harry had at least left word with Morgan (maybe a sticky note on his unconscious chest) that the real killer is Victor Sells, then he would only at this point be risking his own life by going in and trying to talk Sells down nonviolently. That could be admirable. (Though, again, Sells is like a triple murderer at least by now, so I'm pretty sure the Council is going to confiscate his head?) But it's not quite that, either:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The energy was all there, gleeful within my anger, ready to reach out and reduce to ashes all that I hated and feared.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The silver pentacle that had been my mother's burned cold on my chest. [....] Another hand took mine. The hand was slim, the fingers long and delicate. Feminine. The hand gently covered mine, and lifted it, like a small child's, until I held my mother's pentacle in my grasp.</i></blockquote>
There is apparently not a woman in this world who doesn't have dainty little doll hands.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Magic came from life itself, from the interaction nature and the elements, from the energy of all living beings, and especially of people. There is no truer gauge of a man's character than the way in which he employs his strength, his power.</i></blockquote>
(Wow, I have some terrible news for you, Dresden.)<br />
<br />
We have here the first clear declaration of something that's been implied previously: magic has its own morality in Dresden's world that does not directly relate to our world or indeed to mundane morality in his. Dresden doesn't want to magically nuke Sells' house because that would be Bad Wizardry, perverse and corrupted. Dresden does declare <i>"I was not a murderer"</i> but everything else he says is about not killing with <i>magic</i> specifically, so it's not clear to me what the repercussions would be if he, say, brought a gun or a knife and used magic only to shield himself until he could finish Sells the old-fashioned way. Would his magic abandon him? I have to assume not, because Morgan ostensibly has a few magic skills in his toolbox and a sword specifically designed to kill wizards, so beheading people clearly doesn't bar him from wizardry forevermore. And Victor has literally been magic-murdering people and his power has only grown, so clearly the power itself doesn't care how it's used. So why is any of this about killing with magic as opposed to mundane weapons? That seems to be a value system overlaid onto it by wizards themselves. There could, plausibly, be some way in which using magic to kill people literally corrupts the magician, but that's not the concern at hand.<br />
<br />
Dresden is making a solid moral choice here--I won't blow up the house because I don't want to be the kind of person who blows up houses--but he frames it in this weird paradigm that is all about magic and being different and special, rather than framing it as 'no one should murder, no exceptions for wizards'. It's not even the Spider-Man principle that great power brings great responsibility, because Dresden clearly doesn't feel all that responsible to use his magic to benefit people. He won't fleece them, we know this, but he'll also sit around his office for weeks at a time doing nothing, rather than (all groan as I get back on my hobby horse) asking Murphy for bits of evidence so he can track down missing persons for her. He doesn't particularly try to educate people (except the people who come directly to his office and are easily convinced by pamphlets) on the existence or dangers of magic. He just puts an "I'm A Wizard" ad in the phonebook and assumes this is the greatest good he can do in the world?<br />
<br />
Anyway, with the pentacle reminding him of all the goodness of White Magic that he believes in (ew), the temptation passes, he reminds us all again how alone he is, and he walks into the skull-strewn hypno-scape.<br />
<br />
(Maybe-final complaint: did Dresden actually learn anything from using his Third Sight here, apart from confirming that This Place Is Spooky? I guess he confirmed there <i>aren't</i> any traps outside?)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty-Five: I Don't Love Money, I Just Say That To Get It Into Bed</i></div>
<br />
Dresden tells us more about how the capital-S Sight of the house will haunt him forever: <i>"It seethed with negative energy, anger and pride and lust. Especially lust. Lust for wealth, lust for power, more than physical desire."</i> I'm no longer sure what lust is, if it's distinct from greed or envy or avarice or hunger or indulgence. I mean, you can probably have sex with money, but if Victor Sells has a plan to get it on with power itself, I want to at least hear his weird scheme before they take him down. Why is <i>wanting</i> an inherently negative emotion? (Is there such a thing as lust for justice? Truth? Can you, in fact, lust for love?)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I limped up the front steps. My Sight revealed no alarms, no sorcerous trip wires. I might be giving Victor Shadowman too much credit. He was as powerful as a full-blown wizard, but he didn't have the education. Muscle, not brains, that was Victor Shadowman.</i></blockquote>
Why does Dresden keep calling him Victor Shadowman? His name is Sells. He gets this supervillain epithet purely because he once appeared to Dresden as an obscured figure in the rain, no one else has used it, and yet Dresden repeats it almost obsessively in his head. It feels like he's trying to build up his opponent here into a more mythic figure, like a little kid narrating his daydream struggles against the Dark Lord of Clavaldorf (his step-dad, who means well).<br />
<br />
The front door is unlocked. The inside of the house is also slathered with spectral slimes-with-eyes feeding on the residual magic and slithering away when they touch Dresden's aura. I guess he has already completely purified himself of all the power/justice-lust he was feeling a minute ago.<br />
<br />
Dresden creeps through the completely-undefended house and catches the sound of the same music that was playing at the first murder scene with Tommy and Jennifer. The system is in a living room at the back, connected to an upper-level kitchen/dining room that is apparently Victor's preferred ritual space. (Maybe linoleum is easy to hose down.) Dresden's Sight shows more of the evil slime creatures all over the speakers, feeding on the music, causing me to wonder if this is supposed to be, like, inherently evil music, or if the music itself objectively contains emotional energy, or what. Because he needs to get some more exposition in right now, apparently, Dresden easily sneaks through to the space under the upper room, where Victor's crates of ThreeEye are just lying around, along with their raw materials. In case we hadn't guessed, ThreeEye is a potion of Victor's own creation, starting with absinthe and then adding everything from peyote to glitter.<br />
<br />
(Nitpick: if it weren't for Dresden outright insisting so, we would have no evidence that potion strength depends on whether the ingredients are tailored to the drinker. Susan got full effects from Dresden's love and wind potions, and Victor's drugs apparently work fine even when mass-produced. Aren't these things only good for a day or two? Who's coming to pick up and immediately deliver all of this stuff? Or is he selling this batch to other local bored rich people? Time is money, bro.)<br />
<br />
Dresden explains that the potions are basically inert until they're inside someone, thus he wouldn't notice their magic without full Sight, but now he's overwhelmed by all the potential suffering they radiate.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Thunder came again, more sharply, and above me, Victor's voice rose in pitch, to something audible. He was chanting in an ancient language. Egyptian? Babylonian? It didn't really matter.</i></blockquote>
Just as long as we know that it's something <i>super </i>exotic. (Unless Victor also invented a potion of <a href="https://www.duolingo.com/">Duolingo</a>, becoming fluent in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_language">ancient Coptic</a> just to murder people seems like a lot of effort.) He can also hear <i>"soft sighs of pleasure from a woman"</i>, as the Beckitts are apparently providing the fornication fuel for this particular kill-spell. Victor's chant becomes a scream just as Mrs Beckitt <strike>fakes an orgasm because this is seriously the least sexy ambience ever</strike> rises <i>"to a fevered pitch"</i> and Dresden (paralysed with fear for the last couple of paragraphs) leaps into action at the last second and fireballs the stereo.<br />
<br />
Not quite as good as if he'd switched tracks over to Blinded By The Light, but I guess that'll do?<br />
<br />
He then calls up wind to carry him to the upper level (<i>"making my duster billow like Batman's cloak"</i> oh my god) and sees the ritual scene, where it looks like Victor is about to kill a rabbit with Dresden's hair tied to its head. Rude. Shocked by Dresden's appearance, Victor moves to finish the spell, but Dresden tosses the empty film canister through his magic circle.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>As a weapon, it wasn't much. But it was real, and it had been hurled by a real person, a mortal. It could shatter the integrity of a magic circle.</i></blockquote>
Okay, forget murder, how does Dresden not carry a gun just for the sake of being able to break someone's magic circle at will from a block away? The circle bursts and hurls magical chaos in all directions; Victor tries to flamethrower Dresden but Dresden grabs fistfuls of overflowing power and conjures a shield in time. Dresden then (reminding us again how clever he is to not get <i>completely</i> focused on magic like <i>most</i> wizards do) bodily tackles Victor to the ground and begins kicking the hell out of him, but catches a bullet in the leg from a semiautomatic gun that Mr Beckitt had on hand and has to scramble for safety in the kitchen. The gun immediately jams, because techbane, but Victor now has enough time to let loose a tube full of his little scorpion minions and animate them. The chapter ends with Dresden huddled behind the counter as Victor, the <i>"naked, lean and savage-looking"</i> Beckitts with useless guns, and a horde of expanding scorpions bearing down on him. But Butcher very specifically mentions a broom falling into Dresden's lap, so I'm pretty sure he's going to be fine. As usual, the action sequences in which no one says anything about human nature are the best part.<br />
<br />
Next week: the gripping conclusion of my suffering. Feel free to also make suggestions on what we should start in on next. (As much as I love everyone telling me 'Will, maybe think about <i>not</i> torturing yourself with this stuff for a while', my personal feeling is that dissecting why a story <i>works</i> is usually a lot less intricate and interesting than talking about why one doesn't, so I'm skeptical how much blogworthy material I could get out of analysing my favourite books.)<br />
<br />
---<br />
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*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-22407342299920297662016-06-01T14:25:00.000-04:002016-06-01T14:25:29.378-04:00Storm Front, chapters 22 and 23, in which Harry Dresden is just the best ever<i>(Content: misogyny. Fun content: all the salt you could ever need, plus bespoke character deconstructions.)</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty-Two: Introduction to Applied Balderdash</i></div>
<br />
Dresden arrives back at his office and sprints up five floors with much aching and wheezing. He finds his office door ajar, and conveniently hears only two sounds: a pained gasp from Murphy and the scuttling of the scorpion.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I clenched my jaw in sudden anger. Victor Sells's little beastie, whatever it was, had hurt my friend. Like hell I was going to stand out here and give it the run of my office.</i></blockquote>
These points where Dresden stops to inform us of his completely normal reactions to things really confuse me. Last time it was his bafflement at experiencing sympathy for Monica; this time it's dashing frantically across the city to rescue Murphy just to stop outside to suddenly feel anger and reject any possibility that he might just, like, close the door and walk away now? I feel like going grocery shopping with him would be an ordeal. 'Next item on the list: Cheerios. I crumpled the paper in my hand, feeling the dry crackle of its pale fibers slide between my thumb and palm. There was no way I would get this close to the Cheerios and just let them go now. No way in hell.'<br />
<br />
He storms into his office, rod and staff in hand, ready to do battle, and then stops to tell us about the table of free explanatory pamphlets at the door <i>"with titles like <u>Real Witches Don't Float So Good</u>, and <u>Magic in the Twenty-first Century</u>"</i>. Yes, the White Council is absolutely willing to murder people who learn about the truth of magic behind the masquerade, but why should that stop Dresden from handing out badly-xeroxed flyers to people who don't know any better? I mean, PSA flyers would make some sense, like 'Running Away and Running Water: How to Survive a Demon Attack' or 'So You Think You Might be Dating a Vampire'. Victor could have benefited from 'The Goggles Do Nothing: Why You Should Never Pursue the Third Sight Unsupervised'. Things that normal people could actually have a use for. I mean, maybe that information is in Dresden's pamphlets, but they sound more like heritage minutes about how wizards are actually way cooler and more practical than you silly commoners think.<br />
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<i>Pictured: the secret formula to this blog: salt, salt, and even more salt.</i></div>
<br />
Butcher actually lays out the whole office for us, the relative locations of chairs and filing cabinets and his desk by the corner and the <i>overhead fricking fan</i> before getting around to mentioning Murphy's presence curled up behind the desk, presumably because he has no idea how to maintain tension. Dresden still hasn't seen the scorpion, but he kneels to help her and promises to call an ambulance. By the description, she seems to have been stung in the shoulder? Murphy, of course, groggily insists that Dresden set her up and handcuffs them together as soon as he hangs up the phone.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>She twisted her head around, grimacing in pain, and squinted at me. "You should have talked to me this morning. Got you now, Dresden." She broke off in a panting gasp, and added, "You jerk."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"You stubborn bitch from hell."</i></blockquote>
Quick recap: Dresden isn't actually withholding any information from Murphy, but he's decided for some reason to act like he is, and she in turn believes this (ironic), so she's decided they are Enemies and the only reason he warned her not to look in the drawer is so she would get attacked by his hell scorpion. At which point he rushed over to the office to call for an ambulance, which she apparently thinks is just further evidence of his guilt.<br />
<br />
Y'all know what's really compelling tension? When two characters are fully aware of the facts but have drastically different ideas about the appropriate way to act upon them, and so are torn between their loyalty and their sense of reason. Y'know what's not? One character disregarding all logic and evidence to single-mindedly pursue the virtuous hero who has committed no crime, forcing our hero to insult and demean her even as he rescues her from her own terrible decisions, exampli gratia, <i>fucking THIS</i>. This isn't even a Javert situation where Murphy is Lawful Neutral and intends to make Dresden pay for his crimes regardless of any other factors; he's done nothing illegal, but it lets Butcher drag the book out a little longer if she stands obstinately in his way. See also: Morgan, who ignores all other circumstances and suspects in order to make Dresden's life harder whenever possible. These aren't good guys or bad guys--they're just badly written. Plot obstacles with dialogue, not characters. If you want a reaction from me other than rolling my eyes all the way into the back of my skull, there should be at least some part of me that can see Murphy's side. But no, she's just a <i>"stubborn bitch from hell"</i> and Dresden is a saint for trying to save her anyway.<br />
<br />
(Though on further thought, Dresden is absolutely guilty of breaking/entering and assault at the Sells home, so I guess it's more accurate to say Murphy isn't accusing Dresden of anything he's actually <i>done</i>. Also, why didn't he call the ambulance until now? You'd think it'd be because he doesn't want to expose paramedics to the doom scorpion, but he's just called them in and still doesn't know where it is, so... yeah.)<br />
<br />
The scorpion attacks from under the desk; now that it's been switched on, it's grown to the size of a terrier, blindingly fast and dripping acidic venom from its tail. In his panic, Dresden kicks away his weapons and struggles to scurry after them since he's cuffed to Murphy, so he grabs the open desk drawer, yanks it out, and uses it as a shield/bludgeon, buying a few seconds. Decent action sequence.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Sometimes, Murph," I panted, "you make things just a little harder than they need to be. Anyone ever tell you that?" [....]</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"My ex-husbands."</i></blockquote>
Strong woman too stubborn for keep man in life. Never heard that one before. Murphy's stubbornness is quickly justified by the poison debilitating her mind, because it has been <i>pages</i> since the last time Dresden had to protect a drugged woman from a magical monster while she actively impeded him. (Faith and begorrah, how great would it be if we dropped Dresden entirely and this series was just about Murphy and Susan being pals and trying to figure out what the hell is going on as irresponsible arrogant wizards spread havoc in their city?)<br />
<br />
Murphy announces that she's gone blind, and Dresden informs us that while the common brown spider is about as poisonous as a bumblebee, the sheer dosage could be fatal. (Also, uh, it's magical? Is that not a concern? Dresden knows the relative venom strengths of scorpions and bees, but he also thinks it's normal for venom to burn skin on contact?) Dresden hauls her out of his office and kicks the door shut while the scorpion is still struggling to pull its stinger out of the wooden drawer. The scorpion breaks through while he and Murphy (now unconscious) wait for the elevator, but Dresden knocks it back with his bulletproof forcefield (suddenly much harder to use than it was a couple of chapters ago) and makes it inside.<br />
<br />
Dresden monologues at us about how this monster is obviously not a real live scorpion but a magical construct (you don't say) that will keep growing larger and smarter the longer it's left. And then--miracle of miracles--Dresden's techbane actually kicks in at a <i>bad</i> moment and kills the elevator before it can reach the ground floor. The scorpion breaks into the elevator shaft and begins tearing through the ceiling, and Dresden talks to us for a while about how unfocused his evocation magic is without his rod in his hand, how trying to torch it now would be as indiscriminate as a grenade. This chapter is honestly the best we've seen magic handled in a while, with clear limitations set on everything he does (the shield takes time and concentration to form, fire needs a filter, elevators can't make it five floors with Dresden onboard). Too bad it's tangled up with the ruination of Murphy's character.<br />
<br />
At the last moment, Dresden flips his plans entirely and, rather than throw fire upwards, calls wind from below, forcing the elevator to rocket up the shaft in a gale, finally crushing the scorpion at the top. Then, in the moments before it plummets back down (brakes destroyed too) he wraps himself and Murphy in several layers of shield to cushion their impact again. Again, full marks for magic. For once, we see Butcher treating spells as a toolbox from which solutions can be constructed, rather than a plot-shoving force with no clear rules.<br />
<br />
It's tough to write wizards, I get that. How can you make magic both mysterious and comprehensible, or let your characters use it to solve a problem without letting them laugh off any challenge that comes their way? That's tricky, and there's more than one solution. Brandon Sanderson has spoken at length about his preference, making lots and lots of rules for magic and then sticking to them, which cuts back on the mystery but drastically ramps up the problem-solving. JK Rowling takes a little of both by emphasising that there's a lot of mysterious magic out there and our heroes just aren't informed enough to understand it, so they mostly stick to the simple point-and-click stuff. JRR Tolkien chortles a bit and tells us we're asking the wrong question, but we don't know that's what he said because he is speaking a language he invented himself this morning over tea and toast. So there are lots of solutions. Butcher's approach in this chapter is pretty sustainable (although I'm not sure why he didn't call his wind staff to his hand with wind magic, as is explicitly in his skillset). But the approach we see here--where Dresden actually has a very specific and device-dependent set of skills--is oddly out of tone with the rest of the book, where Dresden casually grabs fistfuls of sunshine and performs binding spells off the cuff with a stick and a slice of bread. Is there a reason that he couldn't have bound the scorpion with a circle, or block the door with one? (Or a reason that he didn't have a circle already in his office to put things like <i>possible magic talismans</i> inside to keep their owners from animating them into acid-venom Terminators?)<br />
<br />
I'm just saying that this book mostly only makes sense when you forget everything that happened more than ten pages ago, which is not a criticism I've ever seen levelled at it. We can rest assured that all of these nitpicks are addressed in Book Twelve--but can you imagine if someone tried to make that kind of case in defence of Twilight?<br />
<br />
Anyway, the paramedics are there and waiting when Dresden and Murphy safely crash back to ground level, and he cackles for a while about how awesome he is (which is irritating and questionable but, I cannot deny, <i>precisely</i> in character) before he steps out into the rain, reminding us that Dresden has now lost the talisman option, his shield bangle has burnt out, and the storm is here to help Victor kill him. Whatever shall our hero do now.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty-Three: Intermediate Methods in Being Better Than Everybody Else</i></div>
<br />
I'm just saying this is the perfect moment for Victor to strike, blowing up Dresden's heart right there on the street, only for Murphy to regain her senses, realise that he wasn't the killer after all, and take on the mantle of protagonist hereafter. It's not too late. (It has always been too late.)<br />
<br />
Dresden's first priority, of course, is getting unshackled from the unconscious Murphy, and the ectoplasm from the spider hasn't dematerialised yet, providing lubrication to slip the cuff off Murphy's wrist.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>My own hands were too broad, but Murphy had delicate little lady's hands, except where practice with her gun and her martial arts staff routines had left calluses. If she had heard me thinking that, and had been conscious, she would have punched me in the mouth for being a chauvinist pig.</i></blockquote>
I include the above garbage not because it's in any way vital to the plot, but because it's such a perfect encapsulation of the book's specific type of misogyny: women may do tough things, but they are still ultimately dainty little creature, buuuut you must never acknowledge this truth publicly because it will enrage their overwhelming emotions and they will respond with animalistic rage. Murphy being a woman isn't a character trait, it's a running gag.<br />
<br />
Dresden quickly informs the EMTs of Murphy's situation (<i>"massive dose of brown scorpion venom [....] don't ask"</i>) and then lambastes himself for a moment for withholding information (no he didn't) that forced her to act against him, and if he'd been more honest this might not have happened (correct).<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I didn't want to walk away from her. I didn't want to turn my back on her again and leave her behind me, alone. But I did.</i></blockquote>
Y'know: we keep getting these moments where Dresden is forced (for a given value of force) to do something that appears heartless on the surface but is arguably necessary (he has to go fight Victor before the storm reaches the lakehouse) and he wallows in self-loathing for it. Which is a functional way of getting some angst into a story with a virtuous hero who doesn't have better flaws to actually angst over. But Dresden <i>does</i> have actual flaws to criticise himself for, and he keeps skating right over those in favour of attacking himself for doing relatively harmless things. Y'all know what'd be more interesting than another 'old-fashioned' sexist hero? A self-aware guy who was raised in sexist environments (his dad who idolised his dead mother and dismissed all other women, his mentor who thought 'women's lib' was a stupid fad, that kind of thing) but has since realised that those lessons were <i>wrong</i>, that women are actually capable people with real skills and talents and <i>value</i>, and works steadily to undo his prejudices even as they undermine him (step one: Monica is the actual crimelord wizard villain and Victor is her dupe).<br />
<br />
Harry spends half a page telling us how tired he is and how much that doesn't matter because he's so angry. I particularly like this paragraph about the pain in his leg, completely removed from context:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>It was like a fire in my thoughts, my concentration, burning ever more brightly, more pure, refining my anger, my hate, into something steel-hard, steel-sharp. I could feel it burning, and reached for it eagerly, shoving the pain inside to fuel my incandescent anger.</i></blockquote>
Because <i>out</i> of context that sounds like something from <a href="http://www.rottenromance.com/">Bad Romance Novel Quotes</a>, but <i>in</i> context it mostly makes me think of Kylo Ren in the final battle from The Force Awakens, punching himself in his bleeding side to draw focus and power from pain and anger. I use the specific example illustratively, but I think in general we should be able to agree that 'refining my hate' is a questionable move for any hero to make. That does hypothetically keep it in line with Harry's much-vaunted Dark Depths, but nothing much else about his characterisation has so far--his earlier quip about being the wizard equivalent of a computer geek seems far more appropriate (especially given the chauvinism and arrogance classic of men in tech).<br />
<br />
Dresden goes to McAnally's again, I pass my saving throw to keep a straight face, and he finds that it's packed. We now get Dresden's breakdown of the pub crowd here:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>They were the have-nots of the magical community. Hedge magi without enough innate talent, motivation, or strength to be true wizards. Innately gifted people who knew what they were and tried to make as little of it as possible. Dabblers, herbalists, holistic healers, kitchen witches, troubled youngsters just touching their abilities and wondering what to do about it.</i></blockquote>
I'm trying to parse the phrase 'make as little of it as possible'. Is it purely descriptive (they don't want to make magic a big part of their life, causing me to wonder why they would hang out at a magic bar), or is Dresden snipping at their lack of motivation and vision? Because I know a literal kitchen witch, and while I don't believe she can perform magic, I do believe that she could drop Dresden and Victor in the time it took her souffle to rise. And 'troubled youngsters', apart from being obvious YA protagonists, sound spectacularly dangerous to me, given that Victor apparently so little innate power that he didn't notice it until middle age but he's now nearly overlord of the city. Surely a scared teenager (in a setting where magic is explicitly <i>fueled by emotion</i>) is a stupendous danger on several levels?<br />
<br />
What even is a dabbler in this situation? Dresden has just said that he's used more magic in the last day than most wizards can in a week, which by my count includes a tracking spell, a single fireball, using his forcefield three times, and a mighty wind (and maybe the couple of times he's intentionally blown out electronics with his techbane aura). If that's the upper limits of a top-tier wizard, could a dabbler only cast one of those spells per week? Say, a single tracking spell that will flawlessly locate a specific individual across any distance? Because I'm pretty sure that alone is an incredibly valuable skill, especially if you're too small-time for the White Council to be permanently up in your business. Hell, that's more tracking magic than Dresden planned to use to find Victor to begin with.<br />
<br />
But the point of this chapter, in case we didn't notice, was that this final showdown is, once again, a thing that Dresden must do Alone Solo By Himself because no one else is awesome enough. These people all know Dresden on sight and avert their gazes as he storms in, because they know that there's magic murder going on in town and they are hiding in a relatively protected location until it's over. Dresden isn't here for their help. He's here to borrow Mac's car.<br />
<br />
Morgan arrives as well, with dramatic timing against the lightning, to declare that he's figured out 'Dresden's' scheme (storm magic to blow people up) and he intends to keep Dresden stuck in the bar at swordpoint until the storm passes. He tries, once, to say that he knows who the real killer is (why does he not say the name; isn't knowing someone's real name also power over them?) but Morgan is plot-mandated to be bad at his job, so Dresden (exhausted, injured, non-athlete Dresden) sighs, grabs the nearest chair, and floors Morgan (rested, ready, experienced mage-killer Morgan) with a one-two combo.<br />
<br />
Why is Morgan a Warden? The character as presented has no qualifications. He's a bad detective, a bad judge of character, he holds vindictive grudges that overwhelm his reasoning, and he's so useless in a fight that he can be taken down by a burnt-out geek with furniture in three seconds. I know the council supposedly likes him because he's so loyal, but surely there are a non-zero number of competent people in the world who would love to be the attack dog for the wizard Illuminati?<br />
<br />
Because everyone in the bar knows who Dresden is and his whole troubled backstory, he acknowledges that he appears to have just confirmed that he is <i>"a rogue wizard fleeing justice"</i>, but embraces his stupid action hero nature and declares aloud <i>"I haven't got time for this"</i>. Mac calmly retrieves his car keys and hands them to Dresden again, because Mac is a designated good guy and thus apparently isn't remotely suspicious of Dresden no matter what happens, ever. Who in blazes is Mac? Why is he so much more certain of Harry's innocence than Murphy or Morgan? I feel like this is the point when a properly suspicious detective (Sam Vimes, say) would wonder who would be so calm when a fugitive beats down a cop in his bar. Might think that a hypothetical accomplice of Victor Sells (an accomplice who knows <i>every</i> wizard in town, who is so unnoticed that he's practically scenery, who hangs around a bad part of town and has an ideal location to do hidden business) would be very happy to see one suspected murderer go chase down the other, because when the dust settles, whoever dies, he knows that everyone will believe the perpetrator has been brought to justice and no one needs to go snooping around any more to find out who else might have profited from the ThreeEye trade.<br />
<br />
This book claims to be noir and yet Our Hero's mysterious and most trusted ally apparently has no ulterior motives whatsoever. I mean, this should be obvious.<br />
<br />
Next time: four chapters to go; the final showdown begins as Harry wrestles with the Dark Side to remind us all that he's actually not such a bad dude after all. Objectively. Shh. <i>Objectively</i>.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-5226015255766462982016-05-22T12:11:00.001-04:002016-05-22T12:11:41.582-04:00A brief lull<a href="http://www.albinoblacksheep.com/flash/end">Hokay</a>, so, I've locked comments on the latest Dresden post as a peace-of-mind thing. I love passionate debate and having our blog chosen as a forum for serious ideas to be discussed, but I'm on, like, chapter twenty of book one of an interminably long series and I don't feel like I can effectively engage with or moderate a discussion that ranges over the entire body of work, so I'm going to request that we keep the references to later books to a minimum in future threads.<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Also, as a general rule, if a rape survivor says 'I feel that you are ignoring and dismissing the views of actual people here regarding sexual assault in our culture' and you come back with 'I guess you just don't like complicated morality in your fiction', you're a colossal jackass and you need to rethink your life choices.</div>
Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-17646665840884752922016-05-19T12:37:00.001-04:002016-05-22T12:02:54.262-04:00Storm Front, chapters 20 and 21, in which Our Hero just can't be blamed for being terrible and uselessThis post would have been done yesterday, but I had to have the 'let's not use homophobic slurs as casual slang' talk with one of my online D&D groups. I think I surprised them by skipping over 'you can't say that' and going directly to 'I can't control what you say, but I will judge you for it, and if you're my friend I appreciate it if you choose your words such that I can easily distinguish between you and the people who want me dead'. At least I have the GM's support this time (and the lone woman in the group, who was immediately apologetic for not calling the dudebro out herself). Anyway, that experience pretty much ruined the day for anything except thinking about the angry rants I couldn't unleash on the guy in question because it would at that point be counter-productive. I got my unimpressive 'I didn't mean anything by it, they're just words to me, but I'll try to cut back' apology and that's the best I could really hope for in this situation.<br />
<br />
Uuuuuuuuuuuuugh.<br />
<br />
(<i>Content: parental abuse, partner abuse, implied rape, murder.</i>)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty: Ebony Black'stone Copperfield Dresden*</i></div>
<br />
Dresden cabs it to Monica Sells' house with zero fanfare or difficulties. She never gave him her address, but presumably he was able to look her up via the phonebook, because she told him their real last name (Sells) even though she was afraid to speak her husband's true name and we don't know if 'Monica' is really hers. Now that Dresden has worked out that she was actually just trying to drag him into this to stop whatever evil her husband is getting up to, he (and we) might wonder why she didn't do a better job of trying to clue him in (like giving him all the personal information she could and saying 'I'm like 40% sure he's gone supervillain') but maybe we'll get some justification for that now.<br />
<br />
Dresden describes what seems like a pretty typical suburb to me--young trees, minivans, lots of 'for sale' signs on properties, not a lot of birdsong or barking dogs--and declares that it feels <i>"blighted, a place where a black wizard had set up shop"</i>. (I want to make a joke here about property values and white flight as soon as one 'black' person shows up in a neighbourhood, but it's hard to formulate one that's clearly only mocking racist people and Butcher's insistent use of 'black' to mean evil. I leave it as an exercise for the reader.)<br />
<br />
Dresden knocks and rings for a few minutes and is about to magic the door off its hinges when Monica finally answers, and we get another paragraph describing her look (jeans, flannel, and #nomakeup, which makes her look <i>"both older and more appealing"</i> because Dresden is That Guy). She tries to send him away, but he bluffs that he'll tell the cops Everything if she does, then forces his way through the door. Monica tries to taze him and I cheer up immensely for a moment, but he dodges once and when she almost gets him in the face the second time he exhales wizardliness all over the taser and it shuts down.<br />
<br />
So, Dresden has managed to avoid burning out any of the phones he's used so far, any of the cars he's travelled in, or any of the police computers he's been near, but now that there's a taser in his face his anti-tech field ramps up to full power. Yes. Truly this is such an inconvenience to his life. Butcher continues to not seem to grasp that in order for something to count as a flaw it has to actually <i>impede</i> the character. It has to have effects they don't want, or that objectively hold them back. This is also why I can't count Dresden's sexism as a legitimate 'character flaw', because while he's incredibly misogynistic, the book would also have us believe that he's right and his terrible decisions (like pushing Murphy away) <i>are</i> the correct and moral calls to make. I'm trying to figure out now whether Dresden has any 'flaws' that are actually bad in Butcher's estimation, or if they're all of the same league as 'I'm so beautiful it's a curse'.<br />
<br />
Anyway: Monica also makes direct eye contact with Dresden for the first time while she's try to electrocute his face, and they sooouuuuulllgaaaaaaze. Dresden finally understands All The Things by reading the intense fear and love motivating her. Monica, being a womanish lady-woman with ladybrain, has the typical soulgaze reaction to Dresden's grimdark man thoughts, freezes in shock, starts shaking, and nearly goes limp.<br />
<br />
(Aside: is there any actual reason that a good soulgazing wouldn't prove without a doubt that Dresden was innocent of these murders and also everything else the council hates him for?)<br />
<br />
Dresden informs us that from the gaze he learned more than he wanted to about her abused childhood and abusive marriage and her desperate desire to protect her children. The kids, both preteens, choose that moment to appear and ask mom if they should call the cops, but Monica has just learned that Linda is dead (apparently they knew each other) and tells them it's fine.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I stepped closer to her. I had to have her help. No matter how much pain she was in, no matter what kind of agony she was going through, I had to have her help. And I thought I knew the names to invoke to get it.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I can be such a bastard sometimes.</i></blockquote>
So here's that question about flaws again, because we're obviously not <i>supposed</i> to think that Dresden is a terrible person for breaking and entering and interrogating here, we're supposed to think that he's been forced into a bad position and he's doing what he must, for JUSTICE. Because of that and many other aspects of his personality, Dresden's self-loathing here doesn't really characterise him as a sweet little woobie who needs a hug. He comes across as another aspect of That Guy, the one who joins a discussion by saying "I know everyone's going to jump on me for saying this, but..." or who vagueblogs about how awful he is as a passive attempt to guilt people into telling him how great he really is.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
DRESDEN: I'm so heartless and closed-off; it's no wonder everyone leaves me in the end. <i>Siiiiiiiigh</i>.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
ME: I know, right? And let's not forget your pointless dramatics and condescension. Like, you never actually stop being awful, you just change the current configuration of awful, like a Rubik's cube constantly rotating into new permutations of overbearing patriarchy.</blockquote>
Dresden rattles off Jennifer, Tommy, and Linda's names again and begs Monica for her help, and she relents, though the chapter ends with her solemn declaration that <i>"There's nothing anyone can do, now."</i> Personally, this is not a type of tension-raising that works for me, because I'm 100% certain that there will in fact be something that can be done. A writer can't scare the audience with something that they know won't happen. A cliffhanger that's meant to actually be scary and not just dramatic won't put the protagonist in danger--it'll have them racing to save a secondary character who legitimately might not make it. (Or, you know, some other consequence that isn't as heavy-handed as character death, but we're taking little steps here.) Of course, in this situation that would probably mean Murphy, and I can do without damselling of our lone Strong Female Character, but casting is Butcher's problem to fix.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twenty-One: Abusers Are Bad People, This Should Not Be A Controversial Statement</i></div>
<br />
In Monica's prototypical kitchen--her sanctuary, Dresden intuits, sparkling clean from all the time she spends being a Good Wife--he confronts her about the vague resemblance that he's mentioned a couple of times, and she admits that she is Jennifer Stanton's older sister. (Rebellious Jennifer <i>"ran away to become an actress"</i>... in Chicago? Is that a thing people do? I thought it was always New York or Los Angeles. Or, like, Vancouver if you're Canadian.) Monica has some pseudo-deep thoughts about her sister becoming a sex worker, but they're not worth repeating here.<br />
<br />
She explains that she was evasive in her first meeting with Dresden out of simple uncertainty--she knew her husband was up to something but that didn't mean she was comfortable setting a stranger to hunt him down.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Who killed your sister?" [....] I knew the answer, already, but I needed to hear it from her. I needed to be sure. I tried to tell myself that it would be good for her to face such a thing, just to say it out loud. I wasn't sure I bought that--like I said, I'm not a very good liar.</i></blockquote>
Dunno what to make of this either. 'I know who the killer is, but I don't <i>actually</i> know who the killer is, so better maximise this woman's trauma anyway even though I totally don't want to'? This reads more like Dresden is vaguely aware that he's a sadist but still trying to downplay it to himself. I generally wouldn't actually put 'sadistic' on Dresden's list of flaws, but it sure sounds like Dresden thinks he is himself. Anyway, totally unforeseeable plot twist: the killer is Victor Sells.<br />
<br />
Dresden accuses her of knowingly sending him to the lake house where he performs his rituals so Victor would see Dresden and pick a fight. She wanted to protect her children from her husband--her husband, she explains, who was a good man who got <i>so angry</i> that he couldn't provide as much for Monica as her wealthy parents could, and <i>"sometimes he would lose his temper"</i>--I feel like I'm reading Speaker for the Dead again--and then five-ish years ago Victor discovered magic. He'd spend all night performing weird rituals in their locked attic and get steadily more magical, burst out shouting or laughing for no reason, set the curtains on fire with collateral anger. Monica didn't confront him, having been raised in an abusive household and thus used to just desperately staying out of the way.<br />
<br />
I'd like to think that we're not supposed to have any sympathy for Victor here, an entitled and narcissistic man who felt inadequate because he didn't make enough money 'to provide for his family' and so abused his family to vent his frustrations. I'd like to think that Monica's remaining loyalty to him is supposed to be the realistic scars of abuse and not some heroic patience hanging onto the goodness that was buried underneath the abuse. I would really like to. But I'm not sure.<br />
<br />
Victor invented ThreeEye and forced Monica to take a drink so she could see the world as he did. Dresden informs us of how horrible this is, how she would have seen the true power-obsessed greed-consumed monster that her husband had become and the memory would never fade. Victor tried to mass-produce ThreeEye but couldn't get enough power for the volume he wanted, no matter how much emotion he tapped into, until he realised he could also siphon emotional power off other people, and that lust was more useful than fear or anger for his purposes. Obvious conclusion: track down investors to hold magic orgies. Monica tries to say that even then, <i>"there were moments that I could almost see him again"</i>, but Dresden is a Man and he has no room to feel compassion for Monica when he's too busy feeling RAAAAAGE at Victor. Monica flinches away, fearing Dresden's anger, because of course she fears anger, so much of her life and her trauma revolves around getting trapped in or avoiding other people's anger. Dresden isn't doing a thing to make this easier for Monica, which <i>ought</i> to count as a flaw, but since it won't actually hold him back at all (send her into a panic attack where she can't exposit plot for him anymore, for instance) it still doesn't count narratively.<br />
<br />
Victor found the Beckitts and got their cooperation by promising vengeance against Marcone; used Monica to get to Jennifer to Linda to Marcone's lackey (Lawrence or Tommy?). That made for enough people that Monica got to stay out of the magic orgies sometimes, but Victor continued power-hungry and she could tell he was starting to think of ways to use the children. Jennifer threatened to go to the cops and Marcone if Victor didn't let Monica and the kids go, and thus the murdering began.<br />
<br />
Dresden tells us that he wants to comfort her, soothing words and arm around her shoulders, et cetera, but he realises that would just make her scream now, so he gets her a glass of cold water and says he's sorry. It's the least terrible thing he's done yet.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I wanted so badly to tell her that everything would be all right. I wanted to dry her tears and tell her that there was still joy in the world, that there was still light and happiness. But I didn't think she would hear me. Where she was, there was nothing but an endless, hopeless darkness full of fear, pain, and defeat.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>So I did the only thing I could. I withdrew in silence and left her to her weeping.</i></blockquote>
Funny, innit, how every time Dresden abandons a person to their fears without trying to give them any solace or hope, it's because he intuitively knows that none of the things he could say would actually help. Forensic scientists want him to explain magic murder--nope, nothing he can say. Monica thinks Victor is invincible and her children are doomed--better just leave without saying anything to her. I mean, dude, since you're not apparently in a pit of despair yourself anymore, you must have some idea what you're going to do next, so why not give her a lifeline, or even some vaguely convincing balderdash? 'Your husband might think no one can escape his death traps, Mrs Sells, but my dad named me after Houdini for a reason--I'll be back when I've saved us all'.<br />
<br />
Tween Jenny (named for her aunt) stops Dresden on the way out to be innocent and precocious at him, saying she recognises him from the Arcane and if he'll help her mom.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"My daddy used to be one of the good guys, Mr Dresden."</i></blockquote>
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<i>Pictured: Five-Tongue Fleming reminds us that abusive fathers are not, in fact, good guys.</i></div>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"But I don't think that he is anymore." Her face looked sad. It was a sweet, unaffected expression. "Are you going to kill him?"</i></blockquote>
(I assume 'unaffected' here has to mean 'sincere, not an affectation' rather than 'dispassionate', but it can be hard to tell after a bit of evocative prose like 'her face looked sad'.) This is of course Dresden's opportunity to tell the audience that he doesn't <i>want</i> to kill Victor but might have to for everyone's sake, and Jenny goes on about hoping Dresden is <i>"one of the good guys [....] we really need a good guy."</i> As per usual, the author fails to grasp levels of mental development among children; eleven-year-olds (or thereabouts) might not be up for a serious debate on the morality of lethal force in the apprehension of violent criminals or the acceptability of the death penalty, but they're also not going to ask in childlike wonder if you're 'a good guy' or breeze past the question of killing their superpowered evil father.<br />
<br />
Dresden returns to the idling cab and asks to be taken to a payphone.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Then I closed my eyes and struggled to think. It was hard, through all the pain I felt. Maybe I'm stupid or something, but I hate to see people like Monica, like little Jenny, hurting like that.</i></blockquote>
Bruh, I don't know what the dealio is, but sometimes, like, I have feelings just because other people are having feelings? Like, someone who isn't even me is in pain, so like, I'm not here for that, bruh, and then <i>I</i> feel bad? What the heck? No one else does that, right? It's just me being stupid and it'll go away? Bruh. <i>Bruh.</i><br />
<br />
Dresden thinks about going to Murphy for police support, but concludes that even if she believes him there's too much bureaucracy trying to get a warrant to raid a house in a different jurisdiction on a Sunday. Going to the Council isn't an option because they're all travelling and thus incommunicado, because apparently there's no wizard version of a text message and despite thousands of years of magical development it's just an inviolable law of nature that people can't be communicated with while moving. (The lesser-known third corollary of the Heisenberg Principle.) Not sure why he can't throw a flare into the air for Morgan and just say 'Hey, I know I have a court date tomorrow, but I am 95% sure I've also tracked down an evil wizard selling wizard meth to mundanes, would you get someone to look into that for me if I accede to literally any conditions you demand?' Like: Dresden's not even taking steps to make sure that someone will go after Victor if Harry fails. No. Dresden must do this By Himself Alone Solo With No One Else.<br />
<br />
His task is to drop Victor (presumed to be at the lake house for some reason; I guess that's his only ritual spot?) without breaking any Laws of Magic. Victor, who was untalented and ignorant and easily banished in shadow form just a few chapters ago, is now <i>"as strong a practitioner as I had ever gone up against"</i>. I dunno, Dresden, I bet he doesn't have a bulletproof forcefield like you do. I feel confident that this is a situation that can be resolved with a smashed window and a blunt instrument. Or you could go for the quick-draw solution, tap the storm before he has the chance and just pour lightning onto his house, then grab him when he runs for cover. Or bluff, phone him up and tell him that the cops are about to hit the house on a drug bust. Victor probably doesn't know how hard you've worked to burn that bridge yet. 'You have until the storm hits to stop this wizard from completing his evil ritual' is the kind of problem that an RPG group could have a field day with. Have you considered hanging out around gaming shops and grabbing some Call of Cthulhu veterans to be your tacticians?<br />
<br />
Dresden realises that he forgot to check the Sells' bathroom for Victor's hair or the like, but <i>"I had the feeling that he wouldn't have been that careless. Anyone who spends time thinking about how to use that sort of thing against people is going to be doubly paranoid that no one have the opportunity to use it against him."</i> Aren't you supposed to be a magic nerd, Dresden? Isn't this literally all you think about? And you can even be bothered to maintain a brushcut?<br />
<br />
But then Dresden remembers Chekov's Scorpion, that evil talisman that Monica brought him way back at the beginning of the book, still in his office desk drawer, which he can use to reflect Victor's power easily. It does finally occur to Dresden to set the cops on Victor as a backup plan, but it turns out that Murphy has already busted into his office with a warrant for his arrest, and she refuses to believe him (over the phone) when he tells her not to go digging in his desk for her own safety. Murphy, <i>obvs</i> just demands to know what he's hiding and opens the scorpion drawer, followed by screaming and gunshots.<br />
<br />
Oh, look. A cliffhanger where Murphy gets damselled after all. Joy.<br />
<br />
Next week: man save woman from scary insect.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-53506565851459137442016-05-11T16:55:00.000-04:002016-05-11T16:55:49.141-04:00Storm Front, chapters 18 and 19, in which repetition masquerades as expositionSo, how was your week? I got a temporary cat (while his usual people are out of the country for a month) and he's very snuggly and he's pretty sure he needs to be fed twenty-nine times a day or society will crumble.<br />
<br />
Here in the Department of Analysing Terrible Books the hate engine keeps chugging on. We're closing in on the final act, with about a quarter of the book to go, and by the looks of it we have nothing to look forward to, so I added a puppy.<br />
<br />
(<i>Content: childbirth, parental death. Fun content: magicians, puppies, and the writer's-block panacea.</i>)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Eighteen: If I Monologue Enough Maybe You Won't Notice These Plot Rails</i></div>
<br />
I could just write MAN ANGST for a couple of lines instead of talking about the actual events that open this chapter. It starts with <i>"Have you ever felt despair?"</i> and continues with <i>"When I'm in turmoil [...] I go for walks. It's just one of those things I do"</i> and eventually Dresden starts spewing backstory, but leave that a moment. What we have here is something I tend to think of as emotional hipsterism, a hallmark of the truly pretentious man. Sometimes he feels despair--but you've probably never heard of it. He, you must understand, has difficult feelings that even he can't just shrug off immediately, despite his manliness, and so he must go for a walk--who can fathom the oddity of this? Admittedly, the wizards in this world would make more sense if they were all solipsists.<br />
<br />
Dresden refers to his wandering around Chicago at night as <i>"pretty stupid, in retrospect"</i>, despite the established fact that he's carrying a heat cannon and a bulletproof shield.<br />
<br />
Anyway, we hear a bit about Dresden's parents. Of course they're both gone now, no points for guessing that, but for the lightning round question, cast your vote: which parent had a formative influence on Dresden? If you guessed "his father, because his mother died in childbirth", you get all the points and Butcher gets none. I looked up some statistics just to see how vanishingly unlikely that is, and <a href="http://www.cityofchicago.org/content/dam/city/depts/cdph/statistics_and_reports/SR_ChgoBOIMrpt07.pdf">the answer is 'very'</a>, especially when noting that mortality is closely related to the mother's socioeconomic factors of health and (spoilers, like you care) Dresden's mother was actually a fantastically powerful wizard. (I don't know if Dresden knows that yet.) I read enough to learn that Dresden's mom was actually killed by a curse, but I'm going to throw out a wild frickin' guess that Butcher decided on that <i>later</i>, as part of Operation: Continuity Is For Suckers.<br />
<br />
So here the death of Dresden's mother is not merely sidelined but actually framed in reference to his father: <i>"He wasn't there when I was born. He wasn't there when she died."</i> We're told that dad showed up a day later, <i>"gave me the names of three magicians"</i> (not Potter, blessedly, but Harry <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini">Houdini</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Blackstone,_Sr.">Blackstone</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Copperfield_(illusionist)">Copperfield</a>) and then took him on the road with his travelling stage magic show.<br />
<br />
(Dresden's dad wasn't an actual wizard, and I have <i>so many questions</i> about his parents' life and marriage and arrangement. Did he know his wife was hella magical? Did he care? Did he choose to stay away because he felt inadequate? Did he ever ask her to teach him? It turns out that Dresden's mom's signature move was portal-hopping, so why wasn't she on the road with him? Why didn't he have any actual enchanted tricks crafted by her? Or friends in the wizard community? Or did she hide all of that from him for undoubtedly <i>super selfless reasons</i> that coincidentally make this plot way simpler?)<br />
<br />
In any case, Dresden's dad then died abruptly of an aneurysm when Dresden was six, and that sense of loneliness and despair is exactly what he feels now, facing certain doom from either his enemy wizard or his court session on Monday. Which... I mean, Dresden has been in a lot of life-or-death situations before, even ones just referenced in his anecdotes, like He Who Walks Behind or his evil magic teacher for starters. I know that if you want to shoehorn in some dead parents, you've got to make your own opportunities, but connecting his current situation to a six-year-old's fear of abandonment just doesn't ring true for me. Others are welcome to make a countercase. (Did neither of Dresden's parents make arrangements for the care of their son? You'd think maybe this would be a moment for a wizard friend to swoop in and explain that he's Dresden's godfather. But I guess Dresden's trying to hammer home DESSSPAAIIRRRRRR and so he leaves the backstory hanging in tension.)<br />
<br />
Dresden finds that he randomly walks back to Linda Randall's apartment, a terrible idea if I ever heard one, exceeded only by his subsequent decision to magically unlock the door, duck the police tape, curl up on her bedroom carpet and fall asleep.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"This is stupid, Harry," I told myself. I guess I wasn't in the mood to listen.</i></blockquote>
The last three chapters have been an amazing parade of contrivance towards set pieces that Butcher clearly decided he wanted to feature but didn't know how to justify. (Maybe I'm unrealistic, but surely you don't leave a fresh murder scene completely unguarded after just a couple of hours? Surely there's some newbie who could stand to spend the early hours of the morning standing by a door and preventing entry or tampering?)<br />
<br />
Dresden awakens when the sun has risen and literally talks to himself for half a page, with line breaks like dialogue, forcing me to picture him now as Smeagol/Gollum snipping at each other.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Get off the floor and get to work."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Don't wanna. Tired. Go away."</i></blockquote>
He's telling <i>himself</i> to go away. I could perhaps let this go as internal monologue, but literally speaking aloud to himself? I feel like I'm reading fanfiction.<br />
<br />
A shocking break from tradition follows: Dresden looks around the room and sees evidence that Linda was an actual person: <i>"a high-school yearbook [...] several photographs serving as bookmarks"</i> and a framed photo of herself at graduation between her smiling parents. It's not much, especially since it's used to imply how happy she <i>used</i> to be before she got into sex work and everything was terrible forever, but it's the first hint we've had that she had any depth of character.<br />
<br />
But that's just a preamble, because this whole weird walk and break-and-enter and murder-scene nap was all a prolonged version of that cliche where our hero is searching desperately for something, can't find it, gives up, lets his gaze fall in a random direction, and there it is, the next plot token--a little plastic film canister exactly like the one he found at the Sells' beach house. It has a full an undeveloped roll of film inside.<br />
<br />
Just how atrociously bad are these cops?<br />
<br />
I mean, okay, you know there's magic involved and you can't explain what's going on and maybe there is no mundane evidence that could help, but of all the things in the room to overlook, a <i>full roll of film</i> didn't strike anyone as potentially important evidence? It could be anything! It could be blackmail material she was going to use against someone powerful! It could be secret government documents! It could be the first non-blurry sasquatch photos! What kind of hard-driven murder investigator sweeps a crime scene and misses a roll of film because it's <i>slightly under the bed?!</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
It's not like there was much else in the room for it to get lost in, given the total lack of character-building possessions.<br />
<br />
Dresden immediately grabs his rod and sets forth to find <i>"this photographer"</i>, implicitly dismissing any possibility that Linda might have taken the pictures herself. Why would she have the pictures if she didn't take them? Is there something I forget about her alibi, or does Dresden just assume she couldn't possibly have any skills or interests outside of sex work? Whatever. The chapter ends as somebody else unlocks the apartment door and bursts in.<br />
<br />
Old noir master Raymond Chandler gave us the one-size-fits-all solution to any stuck plot--<a href="http://quoteinvestigator.com/2014/03/31/gun-hand/">a man bursts into the room with a gun</a>**--but Butcher has already given us alternatives such as toad demon attack, the spontaneous existence of tracking spells, and various meddling <strike>sex objects</strike> women, so I'm not sure if this is a nod to the classics or just running out of ideas.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Nineteen: The Latest Findings From The Faculty Of The Screamingly Obvious At We-Already-Knew-That University</i></div>
<br />
Dresden hides behind the opening door and the stranger who enters doesn't notice him, despite his eyes sweeping the room in a panic. (Dresden informs us that it's exactly this panic that causes him to miss Dresden in his peripheral vision, which doesn't really jive with human instincts, but sure, whatever.)<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>His hair, a listless shade of brown, was drawn back into a ponytail. [....] He was a good-looking man, or so it seemed, with strong lines to his jaw and cheekbones.</i></blockquote>
I went searching on variants of the phrase 'listless brown' to see if maybe this was just a kind of hue adjective I've never heard before, but all I found was this (you are welcome):<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://adogbreeds.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Parvovirus-Listless.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://adogbreeds.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Parvovirus-Listless.jpg" height="205" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<i>Pictured: an excellent but fatigued puppy.</i></div>
<br />
Personally I feel like the listless ponytail is going to seriously detract from any dude's attractiveness, but who am I to tell our hero which men he should ogle? More importantly, Hot Stranger Man makes <i>"a strange, cawing little sound"</i> when he sees the bloody bed and immediately dives to search underneath it. Dresden immediately concludes that this man is the photographer in question, again for no reason I can perceive.<br />
<br />
Dresden kicks the door shut, flashes his badge, and startles the man with a solid bluff check: <i>"I knew we'd catch you if I just waited"</i>. (Again, why <i>aren't</i> the cops watching this place? Isn't returning to the scene of the crime an actual thing killers are known to do? Google suggests it's not purely a TV tradition.) The man defends himself as an innocent newspaper photographer, but Dresden produces the film roll and keeps pressing.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I tried to think of what Murphy would sound like, if I was downtown with her right now, waiting for her to ask me questions.</i></blockquote>
Or... like, maybe what a private detective would sound like if he was questioning someone connected to <i>both</i> of his current cases? I mean. This is literally your job, Dresden. You should not be improvising this. These are actual skills that you are supposed to have been trained in by actual people. You are not an everyman hero swept up in circumstance. You are on <i>billable hours</i>.<br />
<br />
Their exchanges remain stupid (<i>"Am I in some kind of trouble?" "We'll see about that."</i> Of course he's in trouble! He broke into a cordoned-off murder scene! You don't need to bluff on this, man!) but the guy identifies himself as Donny Wise before realising that Dresden isn't an actual cop. He tries to run, Dresden slams the door shut with magic, and Wise freaks out that he's <i>"one of them"</i> and begs for mercy. When Dresden says he's trying to catch the killer, Wise demands to know why he'd risk death if he wasn't even sleeping with Linda. Dresden, never one to miss a humblebrag, just says <i>"Who else is going to?"</i>, thus ignoring a much smoother opportunity to think about his motivations, instead of the pages upon pages of unprovoked navel-gazing we've had up to now.<br />
<br />
Wise demands the film in exchange for telling Dresden all he knows, and insists the film itself is useless <i>"if you don't know what you're looking at"</i>. Then why is it so important to steal it back?<br />
<br />
Wise says that he knew Linda because he sometimes does magazine photoshoots with sex workers around town, and she called him in to photograph her through the window at the beach house Wednesday night. He saw the thunderstorm sorcerer orgy inside, took all the shots as requested, and delivered the film to Linda the next day. He didn't recognise anyone else inside.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I wasn't looking. But they wasn't being too particular, if you take my meaning. Turned my stomach."</i></blockquote>
I don't think I do take his meaning. 'Not particular' doesn't sound like weird kinky stuff. Was it gay stuff? Was that the stomach-turning part? Fuck you too, Donny. Anyway: Dresden intuits that Wise actually wants the film back so he can blackmail people, though he claims he'll destroy it. Dresden, genius of the year, instead says "<i>Fuego</i>" and incinerates the film on the spot without actually checking whether Wise is telling the truth. Also, if that was really Wise's only involvement in this incident, why does he react to demonstrations of magic with 'you're one of them'? He saw naked things happening, not telekinesis. Was it magic sex? (Create your own most disturbing 'was <i>this</i> your card?' joke.)<br />
<br />
Dresden lets Wise go, despite not actually getting any information out of him that we didn't already know or at least mightily suspect, and still with no reason that Wise should know wizards are real, let alone involved in this case. Dresden finally takes the unfathomable leap of induction that <i>it wasn't chance</i> that he was sent to the Sells' house before knowing it was important in this case, concludes that <i>perhaps</i> Monica knows <i>more than she is letting on</i>, and sets out to find her.<br />
<br />
I'm 90% sure that Monica never gave Dresden her address and we have no proof that 'Sells' is even her last name, so I'm not sure how he plans to do that, but it doesn't matter because the next chapter opens with him arriving at her suburban home, no questions asked.<br />
<br />
I just don't know, y'all.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.<br />
<br />
**The blogqueen also suggested the alternative "a gun bursts into the room with a man", which I hope to work into my own writing someday.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-58874385029359045652016-05-04T13:49:00.001-04:002016-05-04T13:49:31.923-04:00Storm Front, chapters 16 and 17, in which true rules of power and exchange are demonstratedGracious, but it has been <i>so long</i> since a Dresden post. There's a very simple reason for that, which is that every time I opened this file up to try to write something, I felt immediately exhausted and queasy and started asking myself serious questions about how I wanted to spend what limited time I have in this world. But I'm feeling more fortitudinal today, ready to go a couple rounds with with this nonsense while I keep sorting out my own next writing project.<br />
<br />
(Personal aside: I think my newest prescription is actually working? A lot of things are still a struggle but I hate myself so much less than usual, most days. It's nice. I recommend it to everyone. Except people like Harry Dresden.)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Sixteen: Quick, Look Over There*</i></div>
<br />
I was a big fan of magic tricks for a few years when I was little; I performed for my grade three class and would test out card-forces on family members at random and keep books of tricks by my bed to read before sleep, fantasising about the glorious shows I could put on if only I could house and care for enough rabbits. (We had two. I never actually tried to conjure them.) The main lesson I got out of magic was that you can do damn near anything if you can just convince people to not pay attention at the right moments. Nothing is more versatile or powerful than misdirection.<br />
<br />
Appropriately enough, I feel like misdirection is exactly what Butcher is trying to pull on us as this chapter begins with Dresden moping about his confrontation with Murphy.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I had lost Murphy's trust. It didn't matter that I had done what I had to protect both her and myself. Noble intentions meant nothing. It was the results that counted. And the results of my actions had been telling a bald-faced lie to one of the only people I could come close to calling a friend. And I wasn't sure that, even if I found the person or persons responsible, even if I worked out how to bring them down, even if I did Murphy's job for her, that what had happened between us could ever be smoothed over.</i></blockquote>
(Setting aside for the moment that Murphy obviously does her job because she <i>wants</i> to do her job and thus has no reason to be grateful that some rando sorcerer stole it from her...)<br />
<br />
It's been a while since the last post, so let's recap the details that Butcher glosses over here: what <i>is</i> the lie that Dresden told Murphy, and how did that lie protect her?<br />
<br />
According to Harry's own internal monologue, the information he's holding back is that "<i>Linda Randall had called me earlier that evening. She had planned on coming to me, to talk to me. She was going to give me some information and someone had shut her up before she could</i>". He's implicitly admitted that he disobeyed Murphy to talk to Linda, so that's not part of it. And Linda was literally murdered while on the phone with 911 announcing that she knew who the murderer was, so Murphy already knows that too. The question I'm left asking is why Linda would make a call to Harry, take a bath, and then call 911 to give them information that guarantees they'll want to grab her first. That sounds to me like Linda changed her plans (or that one of the calls was faked). Either way, the fact that she was killed before she could talk to Harry seems like it could be incidental to the fact that she was killed <i>while</i> talking to the cops. The only information Harry is "keeping" from Murphy is that he met with Linda, which he essentially acknowledged via fake premonition to Murphy anyway. Everything else he mentions is obvious: Linda knew something and the killer silenced her.<br />
<br />
So Dresden literally is not keeping information from Murphy, but he <i>is</i> leaving her <i>believing</i> that he's keeping information from her. Which could, in its own way, be a tactical choice, offering himself up as a red herring in order to convince the killer that Murphy isn't a threat, <i>exceeeeeeept</i> that in the next paragraph Dresden also claimed that he's 'withholding' this information (which he isn't actually withholding) partly because he <i>doesn't</i> want Murphy to start thinking Dresden might be, say, Linda's jealous/spurned lover on a rampage.<br />
<br />
But by talking <i>about</i> what they're talking about, instead of actually laying it out like this, Butcher allows himself to write Tragic Dresden In The Rain, forced to lie to his bestie to save her, hoping that the reader will forget that Dresden has literally created a problem out of nothing, which does not benefit anyone except the killer (who doesn't have to fear a combined wizard/cop team coming at him). That's actually some decent misdirection performed on the author's part; whether it's for the audience's benefit depends on whether you want more man-angst or coherent narrative in your life.<br />
<br />
Well done, Dresden. You played yourself.<br />
<br />
In an inadequate response from the universe, no sooner has Dresden called a cab** than he gets jumped by one of Marcone's lackeys. From the specific tang of his <i>"sweat and cologne"</i> Dresden identifies this as the same guy who roughed him up the first time, even as he is pummeled into submission, and lies aching on the ground hoping that here in this well-lit parking lot "<i>Surely, God, he didn't plan on killing me. Though at the moment, I was too tired and achy to care.</i>" Instead, the attacker produces scissors and clips a lock of Dresden's hair, which is immediately cause for panic, because a wizard could use Dresden's hair to cast an unpreventable death spell.<br />
<br />
I just don't get the way Dresden feels about magic. Murder is bad, but <i>magic</i> murder is The Ultimate Worst. Getting killed by a lackey in a parking lot is the type of thing that you can just be too tired to care about, but getting killed by a wizard is a harrowing nightmare scenario.<br />
<br />
The lackey flees, but Dresden tackles his legs and begins a prolonged deadly struggle with the mighty man's fist, in which we are repeatedly told that Dresden is very weak but still slowly winning. The fight gets interrupted by a couple of bystanding dudes, and the lackey flees immediately, still with most of the hair in his hand. He gets into his car and peels away, leaving Dresden wheezing in the rain.<br />
<br />
One of the traditional rules of magic is that the Evil arts will give you great power at the cost of surrendering your virtues. This applies to the real world as well, which we see among, for example, CEOs who take huge income for themselves by depriving their workers. Or, less criminally, to writing, where you can write yourself out of a corner by introducing a new aspect of the plot that makes an earlier portion of the story nonsensical. That's what Butcher decides to do now.<br />
<br />
(Well, after Dresden spends a couple of pages giving us a pep rally about how he's angry and not going to take this sitting down anymore and this shadow wizard might have power but Dresden has <i>savvy</i> et cetera et cetera dear lord.)<br />
<br />
But <i>then</i> we get to the breakthrough, when Dresden is trying to imagine how, without Bob, he can reverse-track his own hairs to find where the lackey has taken them, when he suddenly realises that he got some of the lackey's skin and blood under his fingernails during their fight, and that is all he needs to perform his own tracking magic. Because tracking magic is absolutely a thing that exists in Dresden's world, and all you need is a bit of someone's body in order to know exactly where they are.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<u>INTERLUDE: PHRASES THAT DO NOT APPEAR IN THIS NOVEL</u></blockquote>
<ul>
<li>"Mrs Sells, please bring your husband's comb, pillowcase, or an item of unwashed laundry when you visit my office, so that I can cast a single spell that will instantly solve your case."</li>
<li>"Hey, Murphy, I have another list of a dozen missing persons that I was able to track down for you this week, so feel free to send me the next bag of objects borrowed from the families. I'm glad I can help with these murder cases, but I prefer saving people who are still alive, and some months I really depend on that steady income as a special consultant."</li>
<li>"Morgan, I know this looks bad, but we both know that the White Council has a permanent trace on me and would have been instantly alerted if I performed magic powerful enough to murder someone across town."</li>
</ul>
Anyway.<br />
<br />
Dresden chalks out a circle on the sidewalk and performs a ten-second ritual that instantly imbues him with the power to sense the direction of the escaped lackey by smelling for that distinctive cologne. Dresden's cab arrives and he tells the driver they'll be making two stops, first to his apartment (to arm himself) and then (he does not say aloud) to confront the city's biggest gangsters.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Seventeen: This Is What We Have Sacrificed For</i></div>
<br />
The hideout is a club called the Varsity, owned by Marcone. The cab driver calls Dresden <i>"Loony"</i> before driving away. I am not at all clear why it's so absurd that Dresden would ask a cab to take him to a still-busy club late on a Saturday night. (Dresden specifies 1:30am, meaning that it's been at least an hour and a half since the events of the last chapter, <i>"just before midnight"</i>. Hell of a long drive, I guess?)<br />
<br />
Dresden confirms that he can see Marcone and crew at a table in the back before marching up to the door, magically ripping it off its hinges, and blasting the jukebox with melting force. Dresden specifically mentions that he doesn't want to <i>"injure a bunch of innocent diners"</i> when he blasts the door off, thus the outward ripping, but he apparently thinks nothing of then walking inside and casually blowing up every lightbulb with a wave of his hand, showering everyone with <i>"powdered glass"</i>. Not dangerous at all, clearly.<br />
<br />
At Dresden's request, Marcone calmly dismisses everyone in the club, but when Dresden then demands his hair back, Marcone is honestly baffled. It quickly comes out that the lackey (actual name Lawrence; Dresden only calls him 'Gimpy') has actually been working for the evil ThreeEye-peddling wizard on the side. Things then immediately devolve into a gunfight, which Dresden survives unscathed by activating his forcefield bracelet, and Lawrence dies to three shots from bodyguard Hendricks.<br />
<br />
Dresden tells us he's immediately nauseous, as he had hoped to win the night through macho bravado and no deaths at all. Entering the building with explosive violence was <i>definitely</i> the way to minimise escalation, Dresden, you useless, useless man. He very nearly apologises to Marcone for thinking that the mob boss might have been behind those brutal murders, since he realises that Marcone would never do something so pointlessly unsubtle and cost-ineffective. Pretty sure that intimidation tactics are absolutely part of the mob boss toolkit, but whatever. <br />
<br />
Lawrence the dead lackey doesn't have Dresden's hair on him anymore, having apparently delivered it before he got to the club. While his remaining lackeys start preparing for the club to have an accidental fire, Marcone says he knows nothing else about their common wizard-foe, but he'll let Dresden go in spite of this show of defiance, in exchange for being able to <i>"let it be known"</i> that if Dresden does take the villain down, he did so at Marcone's bidding. Dresden leaves, back to zero leads. So the sudden introduction of tracking magic is at least not vital to the plot, but that does mean that we've had this whole violent episode at the cost of coherent worldbuilding and it wasn't even necessary. (Wasn't he planning to reverse-track his <i>own</i> hair? What happened to that idea?)<br />
<br />
I'll say this much for the last couple of chapters: by only featuring a bunch of white dudes, Butcher has coincidentally gone for <i>pages</i> without making his hero say anything particularly misogynistic, which makes for a much more palatable story. Dresden might be a useless, terrible person, but his adventures alone, the action scenes and standoffs and mystery-unraveling, those are entertaining in a slapdash kind of way. Wonder how much longer that'll last.<br />
<br />
Next time: Weird plot contrivances continue to do Dresden's job for him. For those of you who have felt bereft after my long absence, know and rejoice that I'll be aiming for a weekly posting schedule until further notice.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.<br />
<br />
**How does he not have better backup methods for travel? Why does Dresden not have an enchanted bike for those times when his car fails him? Taxis are expensive and he risks burning them out by sheer proximity. Surely a magic-accelerated bike and a bespelled raincoat aren't beyond the capacity of a guy who can tame storms and brew potions that turn a person to wind?Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-10074719611901419812016-03-23T11:39:00.001-04:002016-03-23T11:39:28.989-04:00Storm Front, chapters 14 and 15, in which having lots of women in your book is no protection against rampant misogynyI worry sometimes that these posts are too negative, and that there's only so much benefit that can possibly come from what amounts to a couple thousand words of vitriol. (I'm not Jewish, but I think about the concept of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikkun_olam">tikkun olam</a> often. It's good stuff, in the modern interpretation.) And then I read another paragraph and I remember that this book fucking deserves my ire and we all deserve to be armed with the knowledge to defend ourselves against this kind of garbage.<br />
<br />
(<i>Content: misogyny, sexual assault, murder. Fun content: watch me stumble around trying to make sense of this world's logic, like a drunk man escaping a labyrinth in a centrifuge.</i>)<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Fourteen: Fucking Magic, How Does It Work*</i></div>
<br />
Oh good, we get to start this week with further examination of how unfathomably stupid love potions are (and all defences of them). To recap, Dresden and Rodriguez are standing in a three-foot-diameter copper circle that is their only defence against some kind of acid toad demon, and she wants to get down on the floor and bang, even though this would lead to their immediate violent deaths. It takes Dresden a full minute to pull away from the kiss she initiates, though he assures us that he felt self-conscious and hesitant the whole time.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>The potion had taken hold of her hard. No wonder she had recovered from her terror enough to come back up the stairs and fire my gun at the demon. It had lowered her inhibitions to a sufficient degree that it must also have dulled her fears.</i></blockquote>
OF DEATH?! To be clear here, actually having sex isn't an option on the table for them right now, because they would die <i>immediately</i> upon breaking the circle. So we have to ask again what it means for this potion to have 'lowered her inhibitions'. That's a phrasing that implies that the drinker will do what they <i>really</i> want to do, behind their fears and anxieties and all those things that, apparently, aren't the 'real' person. But obviously that's not the only thing a 'love' potion does, or else people would take them before job interviews and public speaking and the like, to suppress their stressors and just get on with the task at hand. Stage fright is an inhibition. 'Not dying' seems to me more like one of those things we <i>want</i>, which an anti-inhibition potion would only intensify. There's also the specificity of trying to jump Dresden: is that because Rodriguez really <i>wants</i> to jump him, or because he made the potion and therefore he's induced her to want <i>him</i>, or because she really wants to jump <i>someone </i>and the only other option is a toad demon?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Susan's fingers wandered, and her eyes sparkled. "Your mouth says no," she purred, "but <b>this</b> says yes."</i></blockquote>
Dresden is of course still naked and somewhat sudsy from his shower, so clearly this particular fantasy wouldn't be complete without Rodriguez grabbing his junk. But for extra fun, we have here Rodriguez using a classic anti-consent line to justify her continued advances, which means this 'love' potion has not only obliterated her self-preservation instincts (and probably her entire identity outside of her role in this book as the literally-hypersexual Latina) but also any concern she might have for consent <i>from</i> the object of her chemical lust. Again: not an indicator of love. This potion is a terrifying mind-warping poison that turns the drinker <i>into</i> a potential rapist. What in the actual entire fuck. Good thing Dresden is a mighty Man and able to easily fend Rodriguez off when she literally tries to judo him to the floor, or this scene might have been uncomfortable for the male readers. (See also: good thing she's hot, good thing they aren't related, good thing she's a woman... Butcher had a lot of ways that he could have made this scene something other than a 'cheeky' patriarchal wank fantasy, and he made sure to avoid all of them.)<br />
<br />
Anyway. Bob the Skull can see the escape potion and offers to throw it to Dresden in exchange for twenty-four hours of freedom from his skull. Dresden refuses, on the grounds that he is responsible for Bob's actions while free (he says this like it's some kind of legal quirk, and not a moral concern), but Bob is a terrible person and insists. Can't wait to find out what kind of sexual assault he gets up to. Dresden gets Rodriguez to drink half the potion by implying it's an aphrodisiac or something, and they get a few seconds of magic wind travel before it drops them outside in the rain. Dresden says they'll be safe if they can get to Reading Road, which always floods in the rain and will count as enough running water to kill the demon if it follows. Combining potions leaves Rodriguez nauseous and thus still useless, but it seems like it may have at least neutralised the 'love' potion, so we're spared any more of that garbage.<br />
<br />
Halfway to the flooded road, a shadowy avatar appears under a broken streetlight to villain-talk at Dresden: how they didn't think he'd survive this long, do you really think I'd give you my name, soon my demon will kill you, et cetera. Dresden is "stunned" that they summoned the demon, as if he isn't well-versed in the risk-reward ratio of doing so and this isn't a pretty standard thing in his world and life. The shadow is in turn startled when Dresden mind-slaps it, demanding to know how he is capable of such a thing, as if they don't all know he's a wizard. The shadow calls for the demon and for some reason Dresden watches it walk out and casually toss a car aside, instead of <i>running more</i>.<br />
<br />
Maybe it's a pet peeve, but there are few narrative decisions I detest more than characters stopping to watch a threat be dangerous rather than running. Especially if they end up just barely missing a closing door or something by one second later on. Dresden compounds this by taking the time to "<i>thrust [his] staff</i>" at the shadow and dispel it, which apparently causes the caster on the far side some pain but otherwise does nothing to improve his situation. (He gets a one-liner out of the experience, which is presumably good enough.) <i>Then</i> he tries to haul Rodriguez to her feet and does the whole angsty 'if I run I can still make it to the river but she'll die'. But no, he is too Good and Pure to do such a thing, so he faces off against the demon, and then finally strikes upon the Million-To-One Chance that he could tap into the storm himself to draw enough power to kill it. (There is much talk of channeling power to the tip of his staff.)<br />
<br />
It works, leaving him exhausted but completely unharmed. What a twist.<br />
<br />
Naturally, Morgan the Warden arrived just in time to see the demon but not the avatar of the person who summoned it, so he declares that Dresden is a blight and he's convened the Council to come to Chicago in two days and sentence Dresden to death. He disappears immediately, and within minutes a cop car has arrived to grab them both. ...What? Okay, sure. Rodriguez declares this to have been the worst night of her life:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>She glanced aside at me, and her eyes glittered darkly for a moment. She almost smiled, and there was a sort of vindictive satisfaction to her tone when she spoke. "But it's going to make a <b>fantastic </b>story."</i></blockquote>
Damn right it is, Susan Rodriguez. I'm sure we're supposed to think ill of you for daring to profit off this, but you have been drugged, mind-controlled, and nearly abandoned to die, and you are the only person we know who's trying to crack the masquerade on the parade of magical horrors running unchecked across the world, so as far as your journalistic career goes, you have my goddamn sword.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Fifteen: Somewhere Alison Bechdel's Scar Is Burning</i></div>
<br />
It turns out that the cop car was sent there by Murphy to pick Dresden up, and that's because she wants him to check out the scene of Linda Randall's murder that night. So that's both our sex workers dead now. Butcher knows when he wants to be consistent (kill the sex women) and when he doesn't (worldbuilding). The cops let naked Dresden grab some clean clothes (sweatpants and a t-shirt that says "<i>Easter has been canceled--they found the body</i>", perfect for a murder scene) and drive him over there. The banter starts up immediately and I am trying to imagine a person who wouldn't wish harm on Dresden after thirty seconds listening to him talk.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Dresden," she said. She peered up at me. "You planning on having King Kong climb your hair?" </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I tried to smile at her. "We still need to cast our screaming damsel. Interested?" </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Murphy snorted. She snorts really well for someone with such a cute nose.</i></blockquote>
I don't know what any of this means. I actually miss Wheel of Time and its compulsive capitalisation and 'here are the sixteen different names we have for this thing'.<br />
<br />
In another weird quirk, Murphy explains that Linda was killed in the same manner as "<i>Tommy Tomm and the Stanton woman</i>". Was that actually easier or more natural to say than 'Jennifer'? Really? Would anyone call Tommy 'the Tomm man'? No. That's a reference reserved only for women to make them sound less like people. Just put on your fedora and admit you'd rather call them all 'females', Butcher.<br />
<br />
After actually being pretty consistent about not being able to guess at his wizard enemy's gender last chapter, Dresden immediately starts defaulting to 'he' and calling them "<i>the Shadowman</i>" as he explains his new storm-magic theory to Murphy. Quite reasonably, Murphy wants to know how he failed to consider this option before now. I know we readers are new to magic and so these ideas aren't going to leap to mind, but if tapping storms is an adequate replacement for things like getting twelve other people to perform a ritual with you that requires absolute trust and unity, I feel like maybe it would be a more commonly considered method. Like, if you talk to an engineer about possible engines for a doomsday machine, they're not going to say 'I don't understand, it's <i>impossible</i> to get this kind of power from coal... unless... unless they somehow managed to tap the power of the atom!' They're going to say 'Well, it's stupidly dangerous, but I guess this thing has a fission reactor'. Dresden has acted throughout this sequence like he and his enemy are inventing storm magic as they go along, but he's talked about it like established fact.<br />
<br />
I pause here to note again that I would probably be less petty about this if Dresden weren't an awful person navigating a world that hates women and people of colour. I guess my point is that this book is not only socially reprehensible, but I don't think there's any case to be made that the 50s-era patriarchal morality is something that's worth suffering through for the sake of the great magical story.<br />
<br />
Dresden scopes out Linda's apartment (he's pretending he never met her, because Murphy would have questions) and it looks about the way you'd figure a thirtysomething white guy likes to imagine a sex worker's apartment looks: lingerie everywhere, half-burnt candles on every flat surface around the giant bed, an open drawer full of sex toys, unused kitchenette full of pizza boxes.<br />
<br />
Distinctly absent from the description: literally anything that would suggest Linda was an actual person. No books or movies or half-finished knitting lying around, no photographs of friends or family or holiday memories, no gecko in a terrarium. Not even a terrible manuscript about a sex worker, a dashing foreign prince, and the tumult of their courtship. Butcher actively dismisses the idea that Linda's life could not be summed up with 'fucks people for money'.<br />
<br />
He nevertheless makes an effort to tag her as sympathetic anyway: Dresden feels "<i>a sudden pang of understanding and empathy for Linda</i>", since the emptiness of the apartment has much in common with his own (but even he has a cat and a blasphemous t-shirt, which is more depth than she's been granted). Seeing her body (murdered in the same heart-ripping manner as the others), he thinks about her personality, <i>"a quick wit [...] sly sensuality [...] a little hint of insecurity"</i>, which is still more a sex fantasy than a person, but I'm willing to give Butcher a D for effort. Dresden is still particularly hung up on someone murdering with magic, which I get is a cultural taboo for him but remains weird to me.<br />
<br />
(Before I forget: Linda is also naked, because she just got out of the bath. Dresden notes her tan lines. Help me. Someone.)<br />
<br />
The forensics team falls silent at his approach, and Dresden sees in their faces the deep fear of scientists faced with <i>"bloody evidence that three hundred years of science and research was no match for the things that were still, even after all this time, lurking in the dark."</i> Perhaps it's fitting for Dresden's arrogance that he wouldn't realise the only reason 'science' can't explain magic is that it hasn't had a chance. Magic still has observable, reproducible rules. That's all you need in order to do science. Though it pains me to say it, Dresden <i>is</i> a scientist of magic. Dresden even knows exactly what happened here (murder-wizard tapped the storm to kill Linda) but he insists he doesn't have the answers they're looking for and walks away.<br />
<br />
Murphy gives us the timeline: Linda called 911 to say she knew who killed Jennifer and Tommy, then the phone cut off as the spell hit her. She's also done the digging to know that Linda's employers, the Beckitts, had a daughter who was killed three years earlier in a gunfight between Marcone's mob and <i>"some of the Jamaican gang that was trying to muscle in on the territory back then"</i>. (Is this the first mention we've had that black people exist in this universe?) Dresden immediately concludes that Mrs Beckitt's <i>"numb face and dead eyes"</i> are fully explained by this loss. Marcone, of course, dodged any legal case the Beckitts took at him.<br />
<br />
Murphy reveals that she found Dresden's card (he gave one to Linda) but hasn't yet added it to evidence, and demands to know what he knows. He roundabout admits to having spoken to her, that she said she knew nothing, and she used to work for Bianca. Murphy, at long last, loses her fucking chill, slams Dresden against the door, and points out that if he'd told her this right away, not only might the police have gotten information from her, but she might not have been murdered.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>She stared up at my face, and she didn't look at all like a cutesy cheerleader, now. She looked like a mother wolf standing over the body of one of her cubs and getting ready to make someone pay for it.</i></blockquote>
As much as I think physical intimidation is not admirable, I'll take a million of this Murphy over forehead-kisses nurse-mother-girlfriend Murphy. (Also, points to Murphy for properly valuing even the one-dimensional Linda the author has given us. Dresden is morose about how all of this relates to him and his Feelings; Murphy is just furious that another of her citizens is dead.)<br />
<br />
Dresden considers what limited information he's still withholding from Murphy (that Linda had said she was coming to see him tonight) and decides to keep on withholding it, for fear that she'll either decide he is the killer (a vengeful boyfriend jealously taking out Linda's other lovers first) or that she'll draw Shadowman's attention and end up murdered next. I cannot fathom how telling Murphy that Linda had called him before 911 would somehow raise her profile (she's already leading the investigation), but Dresden seems pretty convinced that it will, and that's good enough for him.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Then, too, there was the White Council. Men like Morgan and his superiors, secure in their own power, arrogant and considering themselves above the authority of any laws but their own, wouldn't hesitate to remove one police lieutenant who had discovered the secret world of the White Council.</i></blockquote>
Wait, what.<br />
<br />
WhAT<br />
<br />
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<br />
Okay, we've been operating this far on the induction that there isn't strictly speaking a Masquerade in this world. That there's no wizarding law against mundane people knowing that magic and demons re real, but it's mostly dismissed as fairy tales. So Dresden lists himself in the phone book as a wizard, so that people specifically looking for magic solutions know who to call, and we can presume that over the next few decades the social trends that Dresden listed for us earlier will lead to a rediscovery of the supernatural sides of the world.<br />
<br />
And now here's Dresden saying that the Masquerade is actually to be protected at any cost, up to and including the death of any mundane person who learns too much of the truth. The White Council might literally murder a cop for successfully tracking down a killer wizard. Dresden is in fact putting people in mortal danger every time he tells them he can perform a cantrip to find their missing shed key.<br />
<br />
I've talked a lot about inconsistency in this book, but holy fuck.<br />
<br />
Dresden doesn't look at Murphy as he says again that he knows nothing more, so he can only <i>"sense [...] the little lines of hurt and anger around her eyes"</i> and he's not certain if she wipes away a tear before passing Dresden's card over to Carmichael for tagging. She asks Dresden to come to the station to make a statement (he refuses) and says she'll get a warrant if he's not home to be questioned in the morning. And, of course, declares that if he is behind this she'll take him down, magic or not.<br />
<br />
It occurs to me that her sudden flare of aggression earlier was perhaps less 'Murphy finally stops coddling Dresden' and more 'Murphy is a woman brimful with chaotic emotions and cannot be dispassionate like Dresdenman'.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I understood the pressure she was under, her frustration, her anger, and her determination to stop the killing from happening again. If I was some kind of hero from a romance novel, I'd have said something brief and eloquent and heartrending. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But I'm just me, so I said, "I do understand, Karrin."</i></blockquote>
I assume we're supposed to think that <i>is</i> eloquent and heartrending under the circumstances, but Dresden is too humble to realise what a romantic hero he is.<br />
<br />
That is roughly the end of the chapter, but one more question about the total lack of worldbuilding in this book: who <i>is</i> supposed to investigate magic killings here? The White Council knows that there have been murders, but apart from Morgan's pet theory that Dresden is evil incarnate, they don't seem to care much. There are apparently no wizard cops checking out the scene or following leads (if there were, Dresden would hopefully contact them), but the council is apparently also happy to kill any mundane cop who digs too deep into wizard business, including murder. If Dresden weren't around, who would actually be there to identify and stop the killer? It's tempting to say they don't care unless the killer is targeting other wizards, but Dresden also seems pretty sure that <i>any</i> magical murder is the worst taboo possible, so... yeah, I'm really lost.<br />
<br />
Next time: tracking magic absolutely exists and this whole plot is nonsensical.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-252999722522454122016-03-09T18:51:00.000-05:002016-03-09T18:51:57.807-05:00Storm Front, chapters twelve and thirteen, in which Dresden must endure women throwing themselves at himI keep taking weeks off between Dresden posts, because I just cannot with him, but the downside is that it can feel like I'm taking forever to get anywhere in this book, and every page is more of the same: Dresden is insufferable and the people around him talk smack about him while making it glass-clear that he is Amazing and Dangerous and they don't <i>really</i> mind how terrible he is after all.<br />
<br />
For fun reading, I'm currently halfway through the second <i>Alloy of Law</i> book by Brandon Sanderson, and while I have my issues with his philosophies and I think the protagonist is some kind of Boredom Singularity, at least Sanderson has the courtesy to <i>surround</i> his grim tough protagonist with a cast of vastly more entertaining people, even including multilayered nonsexualised women, people of colour, and--<i><b>le gasp</b></i>--people who might not be straight or cis. And they criticise the hero for good reason, and he takes those criticisms to heart and tries to change his behaviour (slowly). I could probably stomach Dresden more easily if this book included, for example, a scene where the Lord God Himself calls Dresden out for being such a misogynist tool.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Twelve: Tsundere and Lightning*</i></div>
<br />
Let's just... get through this together.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
Dresden awakens twenty minutes later in Murphy's office; she's cushioned his head and feet and is busily holding cold compresses on his forehead and throat but tragically not his mouth. Dresden immediately takes the opportunity to 'joke' about his secret fantasy of Murphy in a nurse outfit.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"A pervert like you would. Who hit your head?" she demanded.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>[....] Her hands were no less gentle with the cool cloth, though.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>[....] "If you didn't already have a concussion, I'd tie your heels to my car and drive through traffic."</i></blockquote>
The above three lines basically summarise all of Dresden's interactions with Murphy here: she makes it clear verbally that she has nothing but disdain, scorn, and animosity for Dresden, while also taking the utmost care to personally ensure his wellbeing. Giving him first aid herself, okay, that makes some sense for a practical person like Murphy. Then he tries to get up and hurls all over her office floor, so--without a word--she cleans off his face, gives him another cool cloth on the neck, and personally drives him back to his apartment.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But mostly I remember the way her hand felt on mine--cold with a little bit of nervousness to the soft fingers, small beneath my great gawking digits, and strong. She scolded and threatened me the entire way back to the apartment.</i></blockquote>
The picture of Murphy this gives us is less 'complicated' than 'someone's very specific kink'. She's tiny and soft and feminine and nervous, but cares for him like a nurse and scolds him like a mother. I'm pretty sure there are women who get paid a very good hourly rate to deliver this precise fantasy of denigration/adoration to men, but do we need one of them in a cop outfit to be our ostensible female lead here?<br />
<br />
Murphy hauls Dresden into his dark apartment (all the lightbulbs burnt out last week) and declares that she's putting him in bed after she lights some candles. The phone rings, next to Dresden:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Mister Dresden, this is Linda. Linda Randall. Do you remember me?"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Heh. Do men remember the scene in the movie with Marilyn standing over the subway grating? I found myself remembering Linda Randall's eyes and wondering things a gentleman shouldn't.</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Are you naked?" I said. It took me a minute to register what I'd said. Whoops.</i></blockquote>
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<i>Pictured: Agent Scully, praying for our deliverance from this creepy fucker.</i></div>
<br />
Murphy, as part of her new 'service top' designation, goes to <i>make Dresden's bed</i> and give him phone privacy. Linda has decided she does have a lead for Dresden after all, and wants to meet him tonight--Dresden has forgotten about the "date" that Susan Rodriguez "tricked" him into tonight, and agrees anyway.<br />
<br />
Naturally, every sentence Linda speaks just overflows with seduction and implications of imminent nudity. I won't quote them, because they're truly not worth inflicting on you, but it's important that you understand just how dedicated Butcher is to this AU where sex workers are literally compelled to hit on everyone all the time regardless of the subject matter. They're talking about her friend's murder investigation, and she's no longer trying to distract him like she supposedly was last time--this is just who Butcher has decided she is.<br />
<br />
Murphy is of course exasperated that Dresden has apparently made a date for tonight, and in response to his assertion that she's just jealous, snorts back:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Please. I need more of a man than you to keep me happy." She started to get an arm beneath me to help me up. "You'd break like a dry stick, Dresden. You'd better get to bed before you get any more delusions."</i></blockquote>
I understand that we live in a dystopia where romcoms and bad subplots have cemented the notion that any form of woman-rejects-man can and will be used to foreshadow their eventual hookup. From that, it's hard to find any way to legitimately shut that down in the text. However, Murphy here has 1) interpreted <i>"you're just jealous"</i> not to mean "you can't get a date" but rather "you wish you could date me" and 2) rejected him on the basis of his supposed sexual inadequacy, which is the type of thing that gets treated as a flirtatious challenge ("why don't you try me?") that no Red-Blooded American Man like Dresden can truly allow to stand. If there is any reliable way to cancel out sexual tension, it doesn't involve saying 'I've thought about sex with you and decided I am too sexually aggressive for it'. Which is fine if you actually want to flirt, but supposedly Murphy does <i>not</i>, so what the hell.<br />
<br />
She could have avoided all this by passing Dresden over to a police paramedic or getting a rookie constable to drive him home.<br />
<br />
Dresden thinks he remembers what he's forgotten: he said he'd call Monica Sells. Murphy resignedly helps him do so, grumbling about how <i>"my first husband"</i> was just as stubborn. (I figured this meant he was dead, but a quick google informs me that they divorced and he's going to be a minor antagonist later on, because of course.) A little kid answers Monica's phone, screams for mom, and wanders off. Monica herself is in full Stepford mode and discreetly asks to <i>"cancel my order"</i>, which Dresden thinks is weird but apparently not suspicious.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I thought I heard a voice in the background, somewhere, and then the sound went dead except for the static. For a moment, I thought I'd lost the connection entirely. Blasted unreliable phones. Usually, they messed up on my end, not on the receiving end.</i></blockquote>
I will completely break from form here to observe that, artistically speaking, Butcher is good at this: making innocuous statements that solidly imply information to the reader while keeping the character plausibly ignorant. Here, for example, I would bet my own bone marrow that he's indicating that there is wizardry happening at Monica's house, messing with the phone, but Dresden never phones other wizards and he is generically Unwell, so he doesn't realise that this is literally the reverse of his usual problem.<br />
<br />
There, I said something nice about Jim Butcher's writing skills. Let it not be said I cannot be a kind and generous hater.<br />
<br />
Murphy takes Dresden's temperature, checks his eyes with a penlight, and gets him some aspirin, continuing with her nurse deal. I'm really confused about what's supposed to be wrong with him at this point: he's dazed because he got concussed yesterday, that makes sense, and that can mean all sorts of bad things, but why does she keep acting like he's feverish, covering him with cold cloths and such? If you get a fever as a result of a head injury, I'm pretty sure you should see a doctor immediately. Is Murphy taking care of Dresden so she can quietly end him?<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I only remember two more things about that morning. One was Murphy stripping me out of my shirt, boots, and socks, and leaning down to kiss my forehead and ruffle my hair.</i></blockquote>
The rising level of mother subtext for Murphy, in addition to running against everything else about her character, is raising some uncomfortable questions about Dresden's fantasies. ...Well. Some <i>further</i> uncomfortable questions, anyway.<br />
<br />
The second thing Dresden remembers is that the phone rings again, Murphy answers, and tells them they have the wrong number. Not sure what that's about, but at least Dresden falls asleep and the chapter ends.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Thirteen: Title Drop</i></div>
<br />
Dresden awakens that night as a thunderstorm rages outside. Murphy folded his coat and left him some cash with a note that <i>"You will pay me back"</i>--because it's not like she <i>likes</i> him or anything! (I've seen this anime. We've all seen this anime. It's every anime.) Dresden puts his coat on in the dark, still shirtless, so now instead of a generic grim detective, he looks like a rejected model for the generic grim detective calendar.<br />
<br />
Dresden mulls the way he can <i>"feel the storm, in a way that a lot of people can't"</i>, because hearing how special he is hasn't gotten old yet. I would be fine with him observing it, thinking about exactly the same stuff that he says here (how it's a huge knot of energy, all four classical elements in the wind and the rain and the lightning racing down to the earth), if he could maybe just <i>say</i> these things instead of emphasising how he FEELS SO MUCH MORE because he's just better than non-wizards. More plot-relevantly, Dresden realises that a wizard with limited self-preservation instincts could tap into a storm to fuel the murder magic he had theorised about previously, and that there was a storm Wednesday night as well. The mystery begins to unravel maybe!<br />
<br />
But that's enough plot progression for now; time to pour on the filler. Somebody knocks at the door; Dresden expects it to be Linda (silently thankful that, with <i>her</i>, it probably doesn't matter if he's disgustingly unshowered and such, uuuuugh) but of course it's Susan Rodriguez, here for their date. Dresden lets her in and she shows off her form-fitting backless dress for a while before asking if he's working overtime on the magic murder and if he'd make a statement.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I winced. She was still hunting for an angle for the Arcane.</i></blockquote>
Dresden. That's literally her job and you knew from the start that was the point of this. She dates people to get at their secrets. That is the only conceivable reason anyone would date you, because you're terrible. Dresden leaps into the shower and then leaps out again minutes later when he sees through the window that Linda has arrived:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I couldn't let Linda just come to the door and have Susan answer it. That would be the cattiest thing you've ever seen, and I would be the one to get all the scratches and bites, too.</i></blockquote>
Why am I inflicting this on you? Because you have to know. If I have to suffer through this mess, then by Eru Iluvatar you will all leave my blog knowing down to your deep tissues that this character is unequivocally a misogynist catastrophe (and his author's got a lot to answer for too).<br />
<br />
Thankfully we get a break, because it's not really Linda at the door, but a demon that has just barely been holding together an illusion until now. Susan of course screams uselessly as it hocks a shot of acid at Dresden, who dives behind the sofa and tells her to get back in the kitchen.<br />
<br />
Awk.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Susan!" I shouted. "Get back toward the kitchen! Don't get between it and me!" </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"What is it?" she screamed back at me. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"A bad guy." [....] </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Why isn't it coming in?" Susan asked from the far corner, near the door. Her back was pressed to the wall, and her eyes were wide and terrified. My God, I thought, just don't pass out on me, Susan.</i></blockquote>
This is the kind of objective female inferiority that makes it impossible to pass off all of the misogyny as being Dresden's bias creeping into the narration. I mean, yes, Dresden judging her harshly for not handling it well when her lousy date gets interrupted by an acid frog monster, that could just be him. But the decision that Rodriguez, composed investigator and magic-sleuth, should turn into a screaming wreck incapable of even running for safety at the first glance at a short demon, that was Butcher's doing.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Can it get in?" she said. Her voice was thin, reedy. She was asking questions, gathering information, data, falling back on her ingrained career instincts--because, I suspected, her rational brain had short-circuited.</i></blockquote>
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<i>Pictured: Princess Bubblegum cutting someone off and sending them to jail.</i></div>
<br />
No, Dresden, you colossal jackass, that is VITAL FUCKING TACTICAL INFORMATION at this moment. She's not being a stupid drone; she's determining what's safe and not, since that will seriously impact how you two respond to this invasion. Sigh. Dresden shoves her down into the basement (with a brief interlude as Rodriguez notices that his towel has fallen off and he's naked) and then does battle with the demon, hurling a gale-force wind in its face and commanding it dramatically to get out. It's too powerful even for naked Dresden and his mighty staff (which he summoned into his hand and now holds straight out from his body--everyone praise the ancestor of your choice that this book wasn't illustrated), so he tells Rodriguez to drink the escape potion from earlier (oh god, we saw this coming). That fails to spirit her away, but she also finds Dresden's revolver, climbs back up the stairs, and unloads all six rounds, giving them time to... run back downstairs. Well. Classic horror movie mistake, but okay, at least Rodriguez tried.<br />
<br />
And now, of course, it's time for the wacky shenanigans, because Dresden uncovers the copper circle he inlaid in the basement floor, pulls Susan into it with him, and erects an unbreakable anti-demon barrier (also acid-proof, apparently). Demons can't remain summoned during the day, he explains, so they just have to stay in the circle for the next ten hours and they'll be fine.<br />
<br />
It is at this point that Bob the Sex Offending Skull points out what we all realised would inevitably happen back in chapter eight: Susan didn't drink the escape potion; she drank the love potion and she will now disregard their safety in favour of trying to get Dresden to bang her on this concrete floor before they die.<br />
<br />
Hang on a second here.<br />
<br />
We all know love potions are fucked up; overriding someone's mind and consent is not cool under any circumstances. But this isn't even a love potion--this is a fucking potion. Rodriguez isn't suddenly filled with admiration for Dresden's (hypothetical) virtues, she doesn't weep for the family they will never get to make together, she doesn't suddenly ask if she can somehow save him by sacrificing herself. She stops caring about anything (including her own life) except getting that pasty wizard D. I'm all in favour of love and sex in whatever combination makes everyone happy, but there are only two conclusions that we can draw here:<br />
<br />
Option 1: 'love potion' is a euphemism for 'elixir that causes the drinker to stop wanting anything except sex with one particular person'. Evidence in favour: classically, love potions lead to sex in most stories, probably because they're introduced as an excuse to get two people to have sex in an unusual circumstance. Evidence against: the brewing of this potion involved candlelight and love poetry and the sorts of things that are supposed to be associated with high-minded romance, with sex as a possible consequent rather than the entirety of the event.<br />
<br />
Option 2: 'do me here and now' is the specific response of Susan Rodriguez to this love potion, because like most women in this book she is nothing more than a projection of lust and she cannot fathom any way to express affection other than sex. Evidence in favour: look, you've all read as much of this book as I have; you know what it means for her to be pretty and female and brown. Evidence against: ...<br />
<br />
...<br />
<br />
Maybe I'll have something by next time. (Merciful spoiler: they don't have sex.)<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-14864583994339033722016-02-25T14:52:00.000-05:002016-02-25T14:52:08.158-05:00Drizzt Do'Urden and the failure of fantasy racism(<i>Content: discussion of racism and other oppression. Fun content: I hope you like elves.</i>)<br />
<br />
I should preface this with a giant disclaimer (in case there was any question) that I'm white, so this whole post is an extended 'it seems to me...' and I don't want to speak over anyone's experiences. I don't think I've seen anyone address this specific flaw to supposedly progressive fantasy; I'd be happy to link to any such works if y'all know of them. (Also, I think a lot of what I say below can translate to representation of other demographics and types of oppression, like LGBT people and comic book mutants, but it's Black History Month, so that's where we focus.)<br />
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<i>Pictured: either my family tree or a box of assorted entertainment crackers; who can tell?</i></div>
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The best thing that speculative fiction can do is show us a bizarre new world that loops into our real mundane world right now and gets us to see something in a new way. Consider <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_That_Be_Your_Last_Battlefield">classic Star Trek's episode</a> about an alien cop chasing a fugitive, each of them literally half paper-white and half ink-black, divided down their centre line, but the cop is convinced that he's racially superior because he's black on the <i>correct</i> side. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowpiercer">Snowpiercer</a> movie (thankfully nothing like the original comic) is a beautiful, layered, sickening, and ruthless exploration of capitalism and literal class war. And if I start talking about Discworld novels we'll be here all day.<br />
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Countless stories--like Star Trek there, and like Forgotten Realms and Lord of the Rings and X-Men and basically every other serialised speculative story sooner or later--take the opportunity to criticise racism, usually by showing us elves and dwarves scowling at each other or something. The first problem with this kind of scenario is that it extrapolates human 'races' (a nebulous and nonscientific concept) into entirely different <i>species</i>, so that the story is about (white) humans learning to get along with weird other-y pseudo-natural entities (of colour?). We can do better. But, at the same time, there's no reason that identifying with the badass werewolves or dragons or fae should be restricted to white people either, so yes, let's have elves with high tops:<br />
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<i>Pictured: painting of an armored elf with distinctively black features, by <a href="http://nickroblesart.tumblr.com/post/102222613209/elven-knight-paint-sketch-2014digital-still">Nick Robles</a>.</i></div>
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Running with this, writers sometimes give us a paragon of virtue like <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drizzt_Do%27Urden">Drizzt Do'Urden</a>. Drizzt is one of the most iconic characters in modern fantasy: a renegade drow (dark elf, literally black-skinned) from the underground city of Menzoberranzan who grew up disgusted by his people's cruelties and so ran away to the surface, where he roams the land of Faerun slaying monsters and rescuing the helpless. He is, of course, nevertheless hounded at every turn by people who see his black skin and assume he's a monster. I won't speak to authorial intention here, because I haven't read RA Salvatore's mind at any point in the last thirty years, but there's only one common reading of Drizzt's story and what it symbolises for our world. We readers look at these presumptuous bigots, who think the only good dark elf is a dead one, and scorn them for failing to get to know Drizzt before judging him. We know better and we are enlightened.<br />
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Drizzt is a good guy.<br />
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Drizzt isn't like <i>other </i>drow.<br />
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Drizzt is one of the good ones. A credit to his kind.<br />
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#notalldrow<br />
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But the thing about those narrow-minded common peasants who flinch or scream at the sight of Drizzt walking into town is that they're only wrong <i>this time</i>. With literally any other member of his species, they'd be absolutely right to freak out, because a powerful and sadistic murder-specialist would have just said hello. That's not racism; that's basic probability and pattern recognition.<br />
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Fantasy racism like a fear of dark elves is ultimately a terrible allegory for real-world racism because the dark elves have worked long and hard to gain that reputation for monstrosity, whereas in the real world white history is basically a laundry list of the other nations and peoples we've slaughtered and enslaved and oppressed for monetary gain, political power, or occasionally just for sadistic fun. In order for Drizzt the onyx-black elf hero to be an actual metaphor for black people in North America, our continent would have to live in constant fear of invasion from a subterranean army of African-diaspora wizard-ninjas, and I figure there can't be more than five or six million registered voters who actually think that's a concern.<br />
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What I'm getting at when I say #notalldrow is that Drizzt's experience, being a variously privileged individual walking into vulnerable spaces full of people who have been hurt before by people who look like him (and who know that he has the power to hurt them further), is the experience of the oppressing class, not its victims. White people, especially but not exclusively white men: <b>we're the drow</b>. When Drizzt sees someone afraid of him at first glance, it's not because they've been arbitrarily taught that black people are inherently inferior and disgusting. If we read these scenarios and all we think is "Bah, foolish bigots, <strike>we</strike> Drizzt would never be so villainous!" we're only reinforcing the idea that vulnerable people owe us their reflexive trust or they're the <i>real</i> racists.<br />
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To the credit of Drizzt's fictional persona, he sympathises with these people and is patient with the caution strangers take around him. At least, this is a good aspect of his character if it's taken as a model for, say, white people to not go around acting indignant that people of colour aren't always ecstatic about our presence. From the 'surface' reading of his story, where Drizzt is the victim and he is patient with having to work to personally win over every single racist he meets... that's suboptimal to say the least. The tangle that this kind of speculative fiction has made of power dynamics makes it harder to draw any conclusive arguments out of the text beyond a lukewarm 'everyone should be good to each other'. That kind of 'equal opportunity learning' gives us stuff like the unholy mess that was Disney's Pocahontas, in which the indigenous Powhatans are <i>also</i> guilty of prejudice against strangers just because the white people are here to conquer, pillage, and murder. I cannot even.<br />
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Fantasy racism doesn't speak to real-world racism as long as it seeks to justify its existence: as long as those simple innocent farmers are afraid of orcs because orcs are literally and objectively the twisted embodiment of malevolence forged by an evil god to burn the world, fearing orcs isn't racism, it's self-preservation. Fantasy that wants to tell us that racism is bad has to start by admitting that racism isn't a defense mechanism but a weapon--a philosophy that helps the people in power convince everyone else that it's okay to kill and exploit those <i>other</i> people, without provocation, because they just don't deserve any better. Stopping racism is about acknowledging and revealing and destroying that idea, and it's got to be done in us, the privileged, oppressing class.<br />
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I'd love to add some examples here of fantasy racism done properly (purely as propaganda and not based on objectively truth) but... I'm not sure I can think of any. Even in Discworld, the conflicts between trolls and dwarves ultimately come back to 'both sides bear guilt'. In the Warcraft universe, primary example of a setting where orcs are heroic protagonists as often as villains, the orc-human divide stems back to those one or eight times that the orcish horde got cursed into raging berserkers and tried to burn down the planet. In settings like Star Trek (and often Star Wars, depending on the book) aliens often are pretty one-dimensional in ways apparently defined by their species. I think a good case can be made regarding house elves in Harry Potter, but that'd be a book unto itself and there are plenty of people who feel the text ultimately fails to make a proper case distinguishing the racist propaganda from the truth. If any of you readers have encountered a good speculative treatment of how racism functions that doesn't make these kinds of errors, I would love to hear about it.<br />
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Let me end by sharing with you a quote from <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/11/chris-rock-frank-rich-in-conversation.html#">Chris Rock, in an interview from 2014</a> which I was lucky enough to encounter this week:<br />
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<i>So, to say Obama is progress is saying that he’s the first black person that is qualified to be president. That’s not black progress. That’s white progress. There’s been black people qualified to be president for hundreds of years... The question is, you know, my kids are smart, educated, beautiful, polite children. There have been smart, educated, beautiful, polite black children for hundreds of years. The advantage that my children have is that my children are encountering the nicest white people that America has ever produced. Let’s hope America keeps producing nicer white people.</i></blockquote>
Hope everyone's been having a good Black History Month.Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-6755864705168525702016-02-12T12:19:00.001-05:002016-02-12T12:19:48.048-05:00Storm Front, chapters ten and eleven, in which the worst and best of the book are on displaySorry for the delayed post this week, folks. I blame the unfathomable depths of my hatred for this dude. At least a better plot shows up in this part of the story.<br />
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<i>(Content: misogyny with a sex worker zest. Fun content: literal word porn, muppet anguish, Ming-Na Wen being badass.)</i><br />
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<b>Storm Front</b></div>
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<i>Chapter Ten: This Book Is Noir, Dammit, NOIR*</i></div>
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Dresden drives away from Bianca's mansion in a loaner car from the tow trucker, but stops not far away to use a pay phone to call the victim's friend and sex-co-worker, Linda. Forgive the pun, but apparently Linda's voice is like aural sex (I feel shame, if it helps) given the buffet of adjectives Butcher pours all over it:</div>
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<i>The phone rang several times before a quiet, dusky contralto answered. [...] "Mmmm," she answered. She had a furry, velvety voice, something tactile. [...] She laughed, the sound rich enough to roll around naked in.</i></blockquote>
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That's seriously only a sampling of it. More effort is going into convincing us that this unseen woman is totally still worth having sex with than has been spent to explain Dresden's entire living situation (phenomenally rare superpowers and permanently broke). There's one thing here worth a second glance:</div>
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<i>"I'm not occupied. At the moment."</i> </blockquote>
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In <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/occupy">archaic English (1400s or so)</a>, using 'occupy' to mean 'currently having penetrative sex' wasn't wordplay--that became the default meaning. It was considered an obscene term for centuries. People said 'occupy' for sex <i>so much</i> that the word was kicked out of polite conversation. When was the last time we managed that as a society? Sure, no one says 'gay' to mean 'happy' anymore unless they're going for wordplay, but it's not considered <i>obscene</i> exactly.</div>
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I wonder if the current US presidential campaign will make people stop talking about 'trump card' like it's a good thing.</div>
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Anyway, Dresden says he's investigating Jennifer's death, Linda calmly panics and says she has to go and has nothing to say thanks okay bye. Dresden fumes for a moment before deciding that, from Linda's new job as a driver for some rich couple, and the background noises, she's probably at O'Hare airport, so off he goes, luckily finding a <i>"silver baby limo"</i> still waiting at the second concourse he checks. I'd make a wildlife documentary joke (the baby limo has an increased reflective capacity to confuse predators, but its hide will turn matte as it matures, to improve solar uptake) but I've got a million of those and we'd be here all night. Dresden calls her again from another pay phone (did those still exist in 2000? I guess) and uses the Objectively Worst 'flirting' response: <i>"I like women who play hard to get"</i>. She hangs up on him again, so he walks up and knocks on her window.</div>
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Linda gets another paragraph of description, because apparently just giving one to her voice was inadequate. Highlights include: <i>"a little too much eye shadow, [...hair] which hung down close to her eyes in insolent disarray [...] a predatory look to her, harsh sharp"</i>. Dresden repeats his desperate need to talk to her about Jennifer, and she concludes: <i>"And I like a man who just won't stop"</i>.</div>
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<i>Pictured: Kermit screaming as deafeningly as me right now.</i></div>
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Apparently in Butcher's version of reality, sex workers are incapable of not flirting, even when they are being pursued by a strange man who wants to ask them dangerous questions about their murdered friend. At no point does she say 'Fuck off, creep', or 'I'm calling the cops' or just mace him. She's a veteran sex worker and the chauffeur for a rich couple, driving their solid gold limo to the airport--there is exactly zero chance she doesn't have three flavours of pepper spray, a taser that can cook a frozen turkey, and an entire gun show in the glove compartment. No, she's a sex worker, and that means that she is always conjuring boners, all the time in everyone, even her enemies. Faith and fucking begorrah.</div>
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She keeps doing it even while he asks her about her recently murdered friend. Linda admits to knowing Jennifer, having <i>"shared a bed"</i> (more girl-on-girl for the male viewer!), and regular threesomes with Tommy Tomm. After literal pages of how Hard it is for Dresden to focus while talking to her, he realises--LE GASP--that she's trying to <i>confuse him with boners</i> so he won't realise she's hiding something!</div>
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So we're clear on relative badness: go back to literally any part of Eye of the World, no matter how much I hated it at the time. Yeah, even that part. This here is worse. These pages are worse than the <i>entirety</i> of that book.</div>
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Dresden strikes upon the key question (<i>"When was the last time you spoke to Jennifer Stanton"</i>--what an unexpected direction!) and she drops the flirting instantly. Turns out she called on Wednesday, the night of the murder, and she was supposed to have joined Jennifer and Tommy, but she'd had to work. That, she assures us is the extent of her knowledge, so I'd skip the rest of this scene, except it's so bad and if I have to suffer, so do you.</div>
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Linda tells us that Jennifer would never get tangled up in anything dangerous or immoral:</div>
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<i>"She was sweet. A lot of girls get like--They get pretty jaded, Mr Dresden. But it never really touched her. She made people feel better about themselves somehow." She looked away. "I could never do that. All I did was get them off."</i></blockquote>
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<i>Pictured: Kermit's face warped into overwhelming sorrow, like mine.</i></div>
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This tragic sex worker is only capable of selling sex, not actively improving the lives and self-esteem of her clients. Very sorrow, such subsuming of self in the service of men, wow. This also serves to assure us that Jennifer was someone worth mourning--she didn't get <i>jaded</i> like all those <i>other</i> sex workers. She was more like a person, or at least cared about people (men). Is that as bad as this gets? No, it has one more circle of hell for us:</div>
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<i>"Why," I asked her, the words slipping out before I thought about them. "Why the slut act?"</i></blockquote>
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What's this? Has Dresden noticed that he's basically writing a straight-faced parody and revealing some clever--oh, fuck it.<br />
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<i>"Because it's what I do, Mr Dresden. For some people it's drugs. Booze. For me, orgasms. Sex. Passion. Just another addict. City's full of them." She glanced aside. "Next best thing to love. And it keeps me in work. Excuse me."</i></blockquote>
Yup. That's where this ends up. Linda can't stop flirting because she's a sex addict constantly looking for her next lay. Now, look, I'm sure (I hope) that a considerable number of sex workers do actually enjoy their work, but you'll find a lot more addicts among their <i>clients</i>. The idea that your average sex worker just desperately wants to screw all the time is a fantasy as indulgent as Dresden's mighty blasting rod.<br />
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Pro tip for dudes writing sex workers: don't; you're almost definitely atrocious at it.<br />
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Linda's employers, the ultra-professional Beckitts, arrive and demand to know who Dresden is; Linda claims he's an old boyfriend and tells him to take off. Mr Beckitt cops a feel of Linda as he gets into the car, while Dresden notices that Mrs Beckitt's face reminds him of soldiers released from German prisoner-of-war camps after WW2: <i>"Empty. Numb. Dead, and just didn't know it yet."</i> Because if you want precise characterisation, the best direction to leap in is something associated with Nazis. That's definitely ideal for your scenario, and not a howling cliche used every time someone wants to be dramatic. At least pick a different war.<br />
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Dresden heads inside the airport, gets coffee, and considers what to do next--he needs do to paying work, and interrogating Linda doesn't count, so he either does the murder-magic research Murphy wants, or he digs more into Monica's missing husband. The latter is less likely to get him decapitated, so Dresden calls the only pizza place close enough to the lakehouse, and is soon put on the line with the cracking-voiced teenager who delivered to Victor Sells. The kid immediately goes into <i>"I told you I'm not gonna say anything to anyone"</i> sputtering, and Dresden runs with it, getting the terrified kid to drop a few specifics: that he saw an orgy going on inside, and that he ran into a photographer as he left (explaining the unsubtle film canister mentioned some chapters ago). The kid hangs up soon after, being much better at saying 'no' than Linda was.<br />
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Dresden brushes the whole thing off as <i>"an advanced case of male menopause"</i> on Victor's case, because apparently 'midlife crisis' wasn't misogynistic enough. He hasn't yet realised that, as this novel's B-plot, the whole thing is going to turn out to be some kind of giant magic-related conspiracy.<br />
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(Question for the audience: are there psychometric magics in this setting? Like, you can find a person via an object they've touched, or vice-versa? I kind of assume there is, since Dresden apparently specialises in finding lost objects, but finding photographer dude or Victor himself would be way easier if so. Just wondering if that remains consistent later.)<br />
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Dresden returns home and gets jumped by one or more goons just outside his door. Foot on his neck and baseball bat smiting the ground next to his face, Dresden is told to stop snooping or else, and then left. He stumbles inside, but of course as a protagonist, after some aching and groaning, he takes it all as motivational:<br />
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<i>"You are not some poor rabbit, Dresden!" I reminded myself, sternly. "You are the wizard of the old school, a spellslinger of the highest caliber. You're not going to roll over for some schmuck with a baseball bat because he tells you to!"</i></blockquote>
Are you though, Dresden? Highest calibre, I mean? We keep coming back to this: you're either one of the less-than-two-thousand people in the world who can wield magic, and therefore spectacularly powerful by any reasonable measure and have no reason to live in fearful poverty, or you're a low-rung hobbyist whose physics-defying abilities are irrelevant in the magical hierarchy and indeed the societal power structure in general. Any chance you'll make up your mind soon?<br />
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Dresden makes some tea and grabs his gun--sorry, his <i>"Smith & Wesson .38 Chief's Special"</i>, because this is that kind of book--having decided that the goons were almost definitely sent by Marcone, and they would be more put off by a gun than a wand. Then it's time to start reverse-engineering that murder magic after all.<br />
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<i>Chapter Eleven: A Brief Interlude Of Actual Plot</i></div>
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We catch up with Dresden the next morning, sleepless, hextuple-checking his <i>"calculations"</i> on the magic. Apparently the spell is impossible or the killer is godlike. I'm very curious what kind of math goes into murder magic, but we won't hear any of that. Dresden immediately takes off to see Murphy.<br />
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<i>Things were bad. They were very, very bad!</i></blockquote>
Gripping. General guideline: if you're using exclamation points outside of dialogue, they had better be ironic. When they're not, I start reading in the voice of a failing standup comedian--one who doesn't know the difference between loud and funny, but has just realised that the audience does.<br />
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Dresden gets to the police station and is forced to wait (by a <i>"greying matron"</i>, not the usual <i>"mustached old warhorse"</i> who would trust him like he deserves). He can see down the hall to Murphy's office, though, where she stands:<br />
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<i>...with a phone pressed to her ear, wearing a martyred expression. She looked like a teenager having a fight with an out-of-town boyfriend, though she'd tear my head off if she heard me saying any such thing.</i></blockquote>
Shucks, Dresden, I'm just a simple country lawyer, but maybe that's because you reflexively infantilise every woman you meet and Murphy (nominally a mighty cop) knows she has to constantly fight back if she wants you to take her seriously for ten seconds ever again. I suggest we reverse the metaphor, and hereafter a teenage girl having a phone-fight with an out-of-town boyfriend shall be described as 'looking like a detective trying to get the chief to acknowledge that, even if she's a loose cannon, she gets results, dammit'.<br />
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While Dresden's waiting, some kid shows up at full sprint out of the holding cells, freaking out, Dresden tries to tackle him (ineffectively, because he's a squishy wizard) and they collapse into a painful heap, but the kid does stop trying to escape. Instead he screams at Dresden:<br />
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<i>"Wizard! I see you! I see you, wizard! I see the things that follow, those who walk before and He Who Walks Behind! They come! they come for you!"</i></blockquote>
The cops show up to drag the kid away and explain that he's a ThreeEye junkie, sending Dresden off into a spiral of frantic speculation, because <i>"for reasons I don't have time to go into now"</i> he really is marked with the shadow of He Who Walks Behind, a murderous spirit that one of Dresden's enemies once sicced on him. He survived with a scar on his aura, which only wizards should know how to see, but the junkie apparently did as well, meaning--zomg--ThreeEye really does give people the Third Sight.<br />
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(I think I would actually really enjoy the 'oh, btdubs, I'm marked with the shadow of a spectral hitman, long story' aside if it appeared in a book that I didn't already hate. I love a good noodle incident, even if I'm skeptical that Dresden can spare pages talking about how sexy a woman's voice is or how bored he is in the waiting room but not to explain what enemy he made who put a multiplanar contract on his head.)<br />
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Dresden further informs us that Third Sight is overwhelming, either tearjerkingly beautiful or awesomely awful, and that wizards learn to keep it shut most of the time or they go mad. Possibly more dangerously than that, junkies run the risk of seeing through the masquerade and 'forcing' a vampire or other disguised beastie to kill them in pre-emptive self-defence, which he calls <i>"double jeopardy"</i> because he never went to law school.<br />
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Murphy shows up with coffee for him, filled with sugar just the way he likes it, because apparently she's his boss <i>and</i> his assistant. (Spoilers: it's only going to get worse.) She does demand 50 cents for it on the way to her office. Her office does get some description, with its aikido trophies and sleek new PC (she unplugs it before Dresden walks in) and paper nameplate taped to the door as a reminder of how quickly she can be fired. It's better characterisation than any other woman has got in the book so far, I'll give it that much.<br />
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Dresden explains the magic situation: he was right that it was a thaumaturgic ritual, but his math shows that it would take a hilarious amount of energy to do to even one person, let alone two. Murphy suggests the <i>"wizard version of Arnold Schwarzenegger pulled this off"</i> and Dresden explains that being focused with your energy isn't the same as having a lot of it. He provides us with an abruptly racist and bizarre metaphor involving <i>"some ancient little Chinese martial-arts master"</i> who can't <i>"lift a puppy over his head"</i> but can <i>"shatter a tree trunk with his hands"</i>. Yeah, that's not how anatomy works. I mean, here's Ming-Na Wen breaking through concrete with a ruinous spearhand technique:<br />
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<br />
You're all welcome. But: that still involves having muscles. She can probably also slam-dunk an SUV. I remember the last taekwondo master I trained under, and yes, he looked like a kindly grandfather, but there was nothing frail about him. It was like shaking hands with a vise. The magic men made of nothing but skin and bones who can headbutt mountains into valleys are just weird orientalist fantasy.<br />
<br />
Anyway. Dresden goes on with the other possibility, which he says is less likely: a group of wizards, hard limit thirteen, all working together. That requires absolute trust and devotion, so it's mostly only possible with a fanatical cult. Either way, he has also worked out that the point of the murders wasn't to scare Bianca, but to send a message to Marcone, as part of the new secret drug war in Chicago between ThreeEye and conventional narcotics.<br />
<br />
This chapter, in various ways, feels like it's from a much better book. A book that's about wizards getting involved in mafia wars, and not about a parade of varyingly-naked skinny white women who would totally have sex with Dresden if only he weren't so tragically Devoted To Justice. I suppose we're only halfway through. Maybe it's going to get better? Eventually? Oh, who am I kidding, I know we still have Love Potion hijinks coming soon.<br />
<br />
Murphy tells Dresden to give her a list of names of people who could have pulled off the killing spell, Dresden refuses, she threatens to haul him in for obstruction and says it's her job to be a cop, not his (true, and well done Murphy). I would like to ask again about the existence of wizard cops, and whether Dresden (now that he understands the situation and has evidence that he <i>couldn't</i> be the killer) might not do better to inform the White Council of his findings. But Dresden's pounding headache, which has been building momentum for a page, finally decides it's time for a quick end to the chapter, so he passes out on her office floor.<br />
<br />
Next time: Murphy plays Florence Nightingale for no good reason.<br />
<br />
---<br />
<br />
*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.</div>
Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2946534773407276339.post-907916353744562502016-02-03T13:15:00.000-05:002016-02-03T13:15:09.679-05:00Erika vs Burnt offerings, chapters 7 to 11We last left Anita training some puppies to play fetch, after pulling rank to make them come take care of their own injured because he was bad and helped a werepanther (against the interim leader's orders). She might be getting some of these werewolves killed in the process, but, eh, these things, they happen.<br />
<br />
Anita rushes home to change and read over the file on the arsonist, making her late for her super sexy date. Off Anita goes for her hot vampire date, where we are given
fanfiction levels of description about her clothes and makeup. The word "blusher" is used to describe blush, which I don't think I've heard used by people who speak English as a first language under the age of 70. I will
give credit: it is at least at first centered on "how do you stash a gun
in formal wear" and "this is why I'm wearing a dress I am definitely
going to flash in, so I can get to my gun". Because god forbid she
just... flash the gun? She's licensed to carry the thing. People are
already staring at her for all her scars. Just--just embrace your lack of
fucks, Anita. Strap the gun to your fucking face.<br />
<br />
Also, after about three
paragraphs of "it's so hard to hide a gun in a dress which is why I need to dress revealingly", I'm wondering why
she isn't just wearing something with an A-line skirt, or fit and
flare, or with ruching... All of those would work great to hide
a gun in a thigh holster without too much risk of flashing and easy access, but it's
the 90s, I guess. Those styles didn't exist yet. Nor did jackets and shoulder holsters.<br />
<br />
Then we get a
description of her vampire babe boyfriend:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>Jean-Claude's hair is black and
curly, but he'd done something to it so it was straight and fine,
falling past his shoulders, curled under at the ends. His face seemed
even more delicate, like fine porcelain. He was beautiful, not handsome.
I wasn't sure what saved his face from being feminine. Some line of his
cheek, bend of his jaw, something. You would never mistake him for
anything other than male. He was dressed in royal blue, a color I'd
never seen him in. A short jacket of a shining, almost metallic cloth
was overlaid with black lace in a pattern of flowers. The shirt was his
typical frilled, a la 1600's shirt, but it was a rich, vibrant blue,
down to the mound of ruffles that climbed up his neck to frame his face
and spill out the sleeves of the jacket to cover the upper half of his
slender white hands.</i></blockquote>
I don't know about you, but I'm positively <i>dripping</i>.<br />
<br />
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<a href="http://g01.a.alicdn.com/kf/HTB1UROmKFXXXXciXXXXq6xXFXXX9/Free-shipping-golden-font-b-ruffled-b-font-bowtie-scuffs-decoration-blue-font-b-mens-b.jpg"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/proxy/AVvXsEhoPuf4Q9PGzpl3RHxPspu5tCVRoSDnvRifUdTDjLRMVP-vBsR4dRJiVx-v9InOYFiksyYmAsXFnHPl_LBJ3qHXOF9Y8-a3EW6cyizRLAUXEr1wRhey_RsFyZ3rGrC7cmbiX4ay8JhuQshkLoBJTc0FA5zwoMvUPtgUHwz9AJN-wFHxv1jIZEDh_9lHSDAs3duz2oks59KhsSwcW6vMjFTG_zUzjUhYRytLxQ978eaPKFb_Q6fQ0iA0emaFizCFVYu4d4hNGddiEZ5PNjk5X1y4p8aWkIg=" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Pictured: A hilariously ugly royal blue metallic lacy shirt.</i></div>
<br />
The blue matches his eyes.<br />
<br />
We're
told like, two paragraphs later he's not wearing underwear. This has
swerved wildly from "lots of action, even if some of it is hamfisted"
to "time to fist some ham".<br />
<br />
He keeps calling her <i>ma
petite</i> and slipping in occasional French words. My French is bad. Like,
super bad. I'm basically illiterate in French. Also the French I <i>do</i> speak is Canadian French which is a strange and
different beast onto itself. It's like the equivalent of Cockney to
the rest of the English language. Hilarious and sometimes indecipherable
to people who don't speak the dialect and often made fun of. Despite that, I bet I speak
better french than Laurel K Hamilton. For instance, he just keeps
calling her "my little". To me, this stuck out. I assume it's supposed to be "ma petite cheri" but he's been calling her that since like, book two. So I did what any reasonable adult with a question does. I called my Mommy.<br />
<br />
My mother is Very French. But again, Canadian French (I can not spell the slang name for the dialect my family speaks, but it roughly translates to "mutt" according to her). I asked her if calling someone "ma petite" was weird. She informed me it was super old fashioned, and is generally something you would call a child. If the person in question was super little it was... ok. Yeah, she could see it. It made sense, she guessed? She also proceeded to tell me some more local versions of the term. "Ma petit crotte or". Rough translation? My little golden turd. Or simply "my petit crotte" and drop the golden entirely. I know what I'm assuming Anita is a little of.<br />
<br />
This is why the rest of the world makes fun of Canadian French.<br />
<br />
There is also one other factor I feel the need to mention. All my sources? Canadian. Canadian French is known for (besides being hilarious and the ugliest sounding version of French in existence) being very informal. Parisian French, which is what Jean-Claude would be speaking, is <i>very</i> formal. So (and if someone who speaks "proper" French wants to correct me please do) him calling her this is overly familiar (when he started) <i>and </i>makes him sound like a grandpa. Sexy.<br />
<br />
They
banter; it's actually not awful, aside from the fact that she is so incredibly
turned on by his mere presence that they had to get her a fresh chair
twice now. As part of being Jean-Claude's human servant, he can
now taste food through her, and he hasn't been able to taste food for
ages, so, this is great for him. He missed food. Strangely, we are told
very specifically that this isn't a fetish, but it leads to this exchange:<br />
<blockquote>
<i>"No, no more of this tasting shit. I've gained weight. I never gain weight."<br /><br />"You have gained four pounds, so I am told. Though I have searched diligently for this phantom four pounds and cannot find them. It brings your weight up to a grand total of one hundred and ten pounds, correct?"<br /><br />"That's right."<br /><br />"Oh, ma petite, you are growing gargantuan."<br /><br />I looked at him, and it was not a friendly look. "Never tease a woman about her weight, Jean-Claude. At least not an American twentieth-century one."</i></blockquote>
I'm not sure if this is "my body doesn't <i>do</i> this, so no, it means I'm doing something wrong" or "but I'm getting faaaaat" followed up with her actual weight to reassure us she's not. Anita is about 5'01, 5'02. Same height range as me. At my smallest adult size, I was about 115 lbs, and that wasn't healthy. I mean, she could have a super slender delicate frame, but given the fact that she goes around punching vampires and I think her tits are waxed poetic about, I don't think she'd be <i>that</i> delicate. I am now curious how she was going around staking vampires <i>before</i> getting super powers, like, at that size wouldn't she get dizzy halfway through? Presumably she's mostly muscle, which is actually heavier than fat, so, where are her organs? Does she have hollow bones?!<br />
<br />
Ahem. Anyways.<br />
<br />
They spend 20 minutes "negotiating" what to get for dinner--which: really? How large was that menu? They started off agreeing on the entree, so it was what? "I want an appetizer." "I don't." "Fiiiine. Soup or salad? I want soup." "Well I want salad."<br />
<br />
Like..? How did that take 20 minutes? It's implied this whole time was negotiation over it. That sounds tedious. However, unlike in 50 Shades, we don't have to actually see said negotiation, so, not so bad I guess.<br />
<br />
We then get this:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Would you like wine with dinner, then, sir?" </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>He never missed a beat. "I do not drink wine." </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I coughed Coke all over the tablecloth. The waiter did everything but give me the Heimlich. Jean-Claude laughed until tears trailed from the corners of his eyes. You couldn't really tell it in this light, but I knew that the tears were tinged red. Knew that there would be pinkish stains on the linen napkin when he was done dabbing his eyes. The waiter fled without having gotten the joke. Staring across the table at the smiling vampire, I wondered if I got the joke or was the butt of the joke. There were nights when I wasn't sure which way the grave dirt crumbled. </i></blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>But when he put his hand out to me across the table, I took it. Definitely, the butt of the joke.</i></blockquote>
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<i>Pictured: A very unimpressed puppy</i></div>
<br />
Wat. I don't even know. That waiter better be getting such a good tip. Jean-Claude was drinking wine <i>when Anita got there,</i> and now he has to deal with these two laughing like jackals. Jean-Claude now isn't ordering anything, so the bill will be smaller, and therefore his anticipated tip. Anita was rude, and has probably flashed him when he had to get her a new chair because she soaked the last one, and they took forever to order. Unnamed waiter dude, you are not being paid enough to deal with this shit.<br />
<br />
Also yeah. Vampires cry bloody tears in this world. Which he is dabbing away with the table linen. I mean, blood happens, but this seems like it could be a potential biohazard. The blood tears, not him using the napkin specifically. What if a vampire goes to a sad movie? These are questions I will never get answers to. <br />
<br />
They order dessert, continue eye fucking and antagonizing each other before Van Damme notices some vampires walk in. Well, one vampire and one human servant (not her own), dressed all fancy in white. Because Anita and JC are in black/dark colors. <i><b>Subtlety</b></i>. They vaguely menace at Van Damme and Anita, who nearly shoots the human in the middle of a fancy restaurant, because that's how she do, and go off. They were sent by members of the vampire council, there about a vampire they killed a book or two ago who was hella old something something be scared of them for reasons. Anita and JC are In Danger because they killed a former council member and now anyone and everyone that they care about is also maybe in danger. OH NO ANITA JUST ADOPTED A BUNCH MORE DOGS AND SOME CATS!<br />
<br />
They go out to Anita's car, and Jean-Claude's ex is there. Asher, super hot vampire dude with horrible scars over half his face. He and Jean-Claude used to have a threesome going with Asher's human servant before she got inquisition'd. He wanted to murder Anita as revenge, because he blames JC for... reasons? Either way, he's there to drag them to the council and has been promised revenge. It's all very overwrought and melodramatic.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"You've finally given me what I need to hurt you, Jean-Claude. You love someone else at last. Love is never free, Jean-Claude. It is the most expensive emotion we have, and I am going to see that you pay in full." He stood in front of Jean-Claude, hands in fists by his side. He was trembling with the effort not to strike out. Jean-Claude had stopped crying, but I wasn't sure he'd fight back. In that moment I realized he didn't want to hurt Asher.</span> </i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">Guilt is a many splendored thing. Problem was, Asher wanted to hurt him.<br />I stepped between them. I took a step forward. Asher was either going to have to step back or we'd be touching. He stepped back, staring down at me as if I'd just appeared. He'd forgotten me for just a second.</span> </i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Love isn't the most expensive emotion, Asher." I said. I took another step forward, and he retreated another step. "Hate is. Because hate will eat you up inside and destroy you, long before it kills you."</span> </i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<i><span style="font-family: inherit;">"Very philosophical," he said.</span> </i></blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<blockquote>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i>"Philosophy's great," I said. "But remember this: don't ever threaten us again. Because if you do, I'll kill you. Because I don't give a fuck about your tortured past. Now, shall we go?"</i></span></blockquote>
</blockquote>
See what I mean by overwrought? Although I will give credit to Anita. I enjoy how few fucks she gives. She will murder you if she thinks she has to, and she won't lose too much sleep over it. It's one of her main character traits, and it's consistent so far. Although she is going to start losing sleep because she's not <i>more </i>bothered, and that will become a weird and vicious cycle.<br />
<br />
We find out in the car that the vampire council members that have popped up have taken over JC's stomping ground and wrangled his people. So all their people and toys are hostages which really leaves them with their hands tied. The vampire council think since he killed the other guy and didn't take his place he's trying to start a new council. A cooler one. One where they have smoothies. The reason he didn't join the council is because he knew he wasn't strong enough to not get his ass murdered. Asher believes him, and alternates between angsting and trying to be coy with Anita in the back seat. It's like he's a surly teenager hitting on his dad's new girlfriend.<br />
<br />
This is all naturally a test of the two: they don't want them dead, because they're afraid they'll be seen as martyrs. They just want them, you know, physically and emotionally scarred into submission. Because that can't be turned into anything sympathetic either. Still, today, probably not going to do anything too horrible, they want to see what they've got. Because the ruling group of vampires can't start a smear campaign and kill him when he's disgraced and they brought no one here to see what the hell they're going to do to these two. <br />
<br />
Before going into the Circus of the Damned--oh, yeah, that's the name of the place. JC also owns a strip club called Guilty Pleasures. Anita takes a moment to marvel at how pretty JC and Asher are, and wonder how one vampire found both of them at the same time and place when they're not related.<br />
<br />
Asher, horribly scarred, stretches out his scars trying to make himself more gross and asks "DO YOU THINK I'M SEXY NOW ANITA? HUH? DO YOU?"<br />
<br />
And Anita just kinda shrugs. "I dunno, I'm into hair and eyes, and your hair looks like some spun gold fairytale shit, and you have very pretty eyes."<br />
<br />
Asher rips his shirt open to show his torso and scars off: "STILL THINK I'M BANGABLE?"<br />
<br />
"Yeah. I'd still tap it."<br />
<br />
"IT GOES DOWN TO MY PENIS, ANITA."<br />
<br />
"Listen, I already said I would hypothetically ride that shit, why are you trying to sell me harder on it?"<br />
<br />
Asher, confused because everyone has looked at him like he was disgusting and scary since this happened (holy water wounds, man, they are the worst) and vampire skingrafts aren't an option, is confused and distressed. He manages to get Anita a bit spooked at one point, but that was because he was So Angry, which also confuses him.<br />
<br />
So he screams "NOBODY UNDERSTANDS ME" and flies away.<br />
<br />
You might think I'm exaggerating the scene in my rewriting it here, and I am, but barely. He literally tells Anita his dick is scarred too and flies away in rage because she isn't bothered by his scars.<br />
<br />
I'm 69 (heh) pages into this book, and I have lost track of how many people Anita Blake has threatened to harm or kill. It's been like, maybe 8 hours so far. There are also the werecritters, the whole fire thing, and vampire murders going on too. After 50 Shades and Wheel of Time I don't know what to do with all these things happening in less than 800 pages.<br />
<br />
Tune in next time to see who Anita shoots first!
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<br />
But I figured I should at least finish reading the book so I could do a quick wrap-up post, and about halfway through (a few posts from now) I hit a line of narrative so strikingly wretched that the heavens rent asunder and a sidereal entity appeared before me to declare: <b>No: the people must know your suffering in its every exacting detail.</b> Thus bidden by them who turn the wheels of the stars, I opened a new Chrome tab and began to blog.<br />
<br />
<i>(Content: misogyny, death, invasion of privacy, discussion of rape. Fun content: Fred Clark, womanpires, and nitpicking alchemy.)</i><br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Storm Front</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Eight: Boners (It's A Pun) (Get It?)*</i></div>
<br />
Dresden stumbles home late from his investigation of the lake house (where he was accosted by White Council enforcer Morgan) and decides to unwind by brewing potions. He's got a two-floor basement apartment, a giant cat named Mister, and no hobbies apart from magic. He describes himself as <i>"the arcane equivalent of a classic computer geek"</i>, doing magic and nothing else, but I struggle to see how that fits with the rest of what we know about him: that he's broke and most people don't take him very seriously. If he's starving for work, he's not doing magic professionally, and if he's doing magic for himself, how is he affording it (we're about to see that it's pricey) and why doesn't he seem to have anything to show for it? His apartment is candle-lit and wood-fired; no enchanted lamps or heated floor or an ensorcelled compass that detects when people lose their keys within a three-block radius.<br />
<br />
Dresden occupies an interesting sort of place here, metatextually. He's sort of like a level 1 character in an RPG, who is supposedly the hero/survivor of a hundred life-or-death struggles, but also has a single Potion of Lesser Cure Wounds in his inventory and is legitimately threatened by a random encounter with two Tiny Bats. I have no idea where he fits into his world. Do most wizards live like this? If other wizards aren't broke, why? Do wizards normally just run big corporations (meddling with stocks via thaumaturgy, obviously) and funnel their bonuses into building sweet arcane artifacts? In basically every facet of his life, I can't tell if he's ordinary or exceptional by the book's standards.<br />
<br />
Anyway. Dresden heads down into his basement's basement, where he keeps his lab, and wakes up the air spirit named Bob that lives in a skull on his shelf. Bob is Dresden's magical database, since he's got unnumbered years of experience assisting various wizards. Unfortunately, Bob is also an even bigger skeeze than Dresden, requiring us all to recalibrate our skeezometers by an order of magnitude in order to take proper measurements:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Let me out for a ride, and I'll tell you how to get out of it."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>That made me wary. "Bob, I let you out once. Remember?"</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>He nodded dreamily, scraping bone on wood. "The sorority house. I remember." [....]</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Save it. I don't want to hear it."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>He grunted. "You're trivializing what getting out for a bit means to me, Harry. You're insulting my masculinity."</i></blockquote>
Their debate on who's more masculine goes on until Dresden trumps Bob with his upcoming date with Susan (<i>"Dark skin [...] dark hair, dark eyes. Legs to die for. Smart, sexy as hell."</i> Three repetitions of the word 'dark', one unspecified use of 'smart'. Is there any louder way to scream 'I'm not racist or sexist because I threw in a single word about her that isn't about her body'?) Dresden moves on to demanding they make an <i>"escape potion"</i> without actually specifying the type of escape (Bob later says it'll temporarily turn him into wind), but Bob refuses unless they also brew a love potion. Harry makes various threats and refusals back, but ultimately realises Bob has the upper hand and relents.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>And, I thought, if Susan should ask me for some kind of demonstration of magic (as she always did), I could always--No. That would be too much. That would be like admitting I couldn't get a woman to like me on my own, and it would be unfair, taking advantage of the woman.</i></blockquote>
He doesn't quite call it what it would actually be (hint: <b>rape</b>) but at least consent eventually came into his calculations somewhere. After his own manly pride. (I hate Dresden so much.) So they brew the potions, which are interesting enough (Harry at one point pours a jar of mouse scampers into the escape potion, and a sigh into the love potion). Other ingredients for the love potion include tequila (<i>"Champagne, tequila, what's the difference, so long as it'll lower her inhibitions?"</i>--I also hate Bob), chocolate (<i>"Chicks are into chocolate, Harry"</i>), perfume, lace, candlelight, a love letter (torn from a smutty novel:<i> "women eat these things up"</i>), and powdered diamond (Dresden substitutes a fifty-dollar bill after being assured <i>"Money [...] very sexy"</i>).<br />
<br />
Predictably, I have Questions.<br />
<br />
We're told that the ingredients for any potion vary with the person making it, and Bob's ability to deduce the right ingredients from knowledge of a person is what makes him so valuable, so the above isn't just a love potion, it is a Harry Dresden Love Potion, for use only by Harry Dresden to make a woman fall in love with Harry Dresden. So... why is it so generic? Why is it full of stereotypical Chick Stuff instead of items that might actually relate to the kind of person who <i>would</i> love Harry? Why isn't the liquid base black coffee with a ton of sugar (the way Harry likes it, to keep him working at all hours)? Why a <i>"passionate love letter"</i> that he could and would never write, and not something that might actually represent his affections for someone, like sharing a personal secret or wish? Why <i>perfume</i> and not cologne or aftershave or something? Lace and not a scrap of leather jacket? Chocolate and not blood shed doing the right thing regardless of cost?<br />
<br />
There are societal-level reasons that a Harry Dresden Love Potion reads like a Wal-Mart Valentine's Day Bargain Gift Bag, and they are the same reasons that Wrath personified is always a muscular dude who murders people but Lust personified is always a curvy white woman that <i>causes</i> other people to get aroused. Love and romance are <i>girl things</i> that are not related to male identities, but are simply catered to for the sake of naked sex times. And, apart from Exceptional Girls like Murphy, we assume that The Women have largely interchangeable tastes, as if we don't all know women who hate chocolate or never read a romance novel or wouldn't prefer the smell of sawdust and solder to the most expensive perfumed diamonds in the world. (I assume that a Harry Dresden Love Potion wouldn't work on a man, but would it? What would go into a manly love potion? Beer, gunpowder, beards, and Neil Patrick Harris' voice saying the word 'turgid'?")<br />
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I'm vexed by this in particular because a lot of things in this book can ultimately (maybe) be brushed off as Dresden's own foolishness (his dismissive attitude towards Monica, his interpretations of world politics and wizard history) but this is worldbuilding on an objective level. This is, we are told, Expert Magicking, and thus the universal power of candlelight and purple prose to make a woman tear off her own undergarments are fundamental Fact.<br />
<br />
Anyway. Harry pours the potions into a couple of clearly-labelled old Gatorade bottles (this chapter is full of noodle incidents like <i>"that diet potion** you tried", "the antigravity potion, remember that",</i> and <i>"ever since the invisibility/hair tonic incident"</i>) and goes to bed, head full of the deadly tasks still to face, like talking to a <strike>vampire</strike> <strike>woman</strike> <b>vampire woman</b>.<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;">
<i>Chapter Nine: WOMANPIRE </i></div>
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Dresden awakes the following afternoon to Murphy on the phone, and says he's got no leads yet but he'll have something by the end of the weekend. Apparently Murphy is currently being hounded by the commissioner, who likes to use her as his scapegoat for unsolvable crimes. It's not clear what makes her a good scapegoat, unless he likes to tell people 'My best detective believes in magic but I can't fire her because somethingorother (female privilege, probably) so I am bound'. Harry suggests that he would have more luck talking to Bianca than Murphy has had, but she forbids it:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"If you get your ass laid out in the hospital or the morgue, it'll be me that suffers for it."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"Murph, I'm touched."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"I'll touch your head to a brick wall a few times if you cross me on this, Harry."</i></blockquote>
The endless heaping of Murphy's tough-talk without actually seeing her <i>do</i> anything but beg Harry for help does not make for a compellingly deep, plausibly strong, or even vaguely interesting character. Y'all know how I do--getting attached to the underloved female characters is like my signature move in these posts--but Murphy needs to actually be involved in something before I can particularly care.<br />
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After lunch, Dresden monologues at us for a while about how wizards aren't innately special people, but they're very good at preparations, so if they know what they're facing, they'll have a solution. In the case of going to face a vampire madam, Dresden polishes his cane--I see you snickering there in the back--secretly holsters a silver knife, pockets his escape potion and pentacle (his mother's, given to him by his father, the first indication we have that Dresden had parents), and puts <i>"a small, folded piece of white cloth into my pocket"</i>. Apparently he also wishes he could bring <i>"my blasting rod or my staff, but that would be like showing up at Bianca's door in a tank"</i>.<br />
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Dresden drives down to the Velvet Room on the lakeside, a 1920s mansion, and his car sputters out just as he arrives, leading to a not-particularly-interesting battle of bluffs between him and the predictably stupid muscly doorman, who ultimately buzzes up to Bianca and lets him in, though the guard takes the cane off him. (What's the difference between a cane and a staff and a blasting rod? Is there some reason he couldn't make a staff that looked like a cane? I have many issues with the Penny Arcade dudes, but all I can think about is <a href="https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2003/09/17">this classic comic</a>.) Dresden gets to keep his pentacle, though, and in this setting vampires are vulnerable to faith, not symbols themselves, so Dresden's faith in magic makes it a good shield. (On this subject, I look to Fred Clark and his thoroughly alternative take on <a href="http://www.patheos.com/blogs/slacktivist/2009/09/10/vampires-crosses/">what kinds of crosses confound vampires</a>--in his philosophy, I'm not sure whether that pentacle would work or not.)<br />
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Dresden enters the big old house, passes <i>"a well-groomed young woman with a short, straight haircut"</i> and waits in the library for half an hour before Bianca appears. A sampling of the descriptions I'm having to read right now:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Her hair was a burnished shade of auburn that was too dark to cast back any ruddy highlights, but did anyway. [....] She approached me and extended her hand, a motion oozing feminine grace.</i></blockquote>
I have trouble imagining any kind of feminine oozing that could be described as 'graceful', but correct me if I'm wrong that these are words best not put in close proximity to each other.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"A gentleman, they said. I see that they were correct. It is a charmingly passe thing to be a gentleman in this country."</i> </blockquote>
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>"You and I are of another world," I said.</i></blockquote>
Et cetera et cetera Bianca is the most fuckable thing he's ever seen and he draws her chair out for her and she crosses her legs <i>"and made it look good"</i>, which is just baffling me. Anyway, he says he's here to ask about Jennifer Stanton's murder and Bianca instantly leaps over the table to tear out his throat, so Dresden hurls the handkerchief full of sunshine at her and blasts her across the room, shredding bits off her.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>I had never seen a real vampire before. [....] It had a batlike face, horrid and ugly, the head too big for its body. Gaping, hungry jaws. Its shoulders were hunched and powerful. Membranous wings stretched between the joints of its almost skeletal arms. Flabby black breasts hung before it, spilling out of the black dress that no longer looked feminine. [....] Its clawed feet were still wearing the three-hundred-dollar black pumps.</i></blockquote>
Do I even need to explain all the things that bother me here? Bianca has become 'it' instead of 'she' now that she doesn't look human, but unless Butcher is trying to do something clever here with gender assignment, it seems likely to me that the <i>"flabby black breasts"</i> (wild guess: some humans have those) indicate that Bianca is also a female vampire (not a genderless vampire in a female role), so what does it say that she gets her pronouns revoked for not being sexy enough? Is there any particular reason that a key element of her hideous transformation is that her flawless white skin has turned black? I feel these things should speak for themselves.<br />
<br />
Dresden pulls out the pentacle and pours enough magic into it to ward her off, creating a standoff situation. Bianca reveals that she thinks Dresden killed Jennifer, and so there's a lot of 'why should I trust you not to try to kill me if I lower my weapons' haggling. Dresden swears <i>"by fire and wind"</i> (these are phrases that I want to mean more than 'it sounds cool') that he had nothing to with the murder, and they cautiously sit down again. Bianca transforms back: <i>"The flabby black breasts swelled into softly rounded, rosy-tipped perfection once more."</i><br />
<i><br /></i>
I don't know what to make of the obsession with breasts in this chapter (and others). Is Butcher <i>trying</i> to go for 'scared but erect' in the reader, or can he just not help himself? Dresden says that she looks perfectly beautiful again, but he can't forget what she 'really' looks like.<br />
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After pages of staring, they get back to the plot, but Bianca tells him <i>"You're the only one in the city with the kind of skill required to cast that sort of spell."</i> Chicago proper has a population of 2.7 million, with about 10 million in the whole metropolitan area. I don't know what percentage of those people are wizards, but 'best spellcaster in a city of ten million' seems like a pretty good superlative. Are you a superhero or just clinging to the last rung, man?<br />
<br />
Turns out Bianca and Tommy Tomm were old friends and she knew he was always kind to his escorts, so she feels actual remorse at whatever's going on. Dresden can tell she's hiding something, so he locks eyes with her and they ★SOULGAZE★.<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>More than anything else, Bianca wanted to be beautiful. And tonight, I had destroyed her illusion. I had rattled her gilded little world. She sure as hell wasn't going to let me forget that.</i></blockquote>
Not luxury, not power, not control, not secrets or influence or independence or knowledge or any of those classic immortal vampire desires. Nope. Bianca, ancient deathless lady of manners, desperately wants everyone to think she's hot. By human standards. If I understand the worldbuilding so far, vampires aren't even <i>from</i> Earth; they're immigrants from some spirit world. What kind of womanpire's most desperate wish is to make human men tumescent? Ugh. This is something that could be sold with a sufficiently developed backstory, but we're just supposed to take it as an obviously sensible desire at first glance.<br />
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She says she'd kill him now if she hadn't given her word, and he says he'd use his death curse to drag her to hell with him. Bianca turns her head away, too slow to keep Dresden from seeing her shed a single tear.<br />
<br />
What am I even reading.<br />
<br />
Bianca reluctantly offers Dresden the name and number of Jennifer's friend (and threesome partner) Linda Randall, and they prepare to say belligerent goodbyes when Bianca notices that Dresden has started bleeding from the scratch she gave him earlier, and she starts getting overpoweringly thirsty. She croakingly tells him to leave, but Dresden of course lingers by the door to watch her suffering as she tries <i>not</i> to murder him by instinct. You're a tool, Dresden. She tells him she'll make him regret the night, and the woman from earlier shows up. I assume at this point the classic porn saxophone starts playing:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i>Paula murmured something too soft to hear, gently brushing Bianca's hair back from her face with one hand [...] and pressed her wrist to Bianca's mouth. [....] Bianca's tongue flashed out, long and pink and sticky, smearing Paula's wrist with shining saliva. Paula shuddered at the touch, her breath coming quicker. Her nipples stiffened beneath the thin fabric of the blouse [...]</i></blockquote>
Harry Dresden can see a woman's nipples stiffen under her shirt from across a dark room.<br />
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Again, I feel that is a thing that speaks for itself.<br />
<br />
The saliva apparently gets Paula wasted, and Bianca bites her wrist open to start feeding as Paula collapses into some kind of sexual epileptic fit. Dresden finally leaves: <i>"The scene with Paula might have aroused me, if I hadn't seen what was underneath Bianca's mask. [....] The woman had given herself to that thing, as quickly and as willingly as any woman to her lover."</i> Dresden thinks a bunch about the implications of addiction to vampire saliva and the possible enslavement of wizard thralls, watches the tow truck guy work on his car for a while, and finally the doorman delivers Linda's phone number. Dresden had been told Paula would bring it down, but realises that she isn't coming. Dun dun DUNNN. I assume we are to conclude that Bianca couldn't stop feeding and has killed Paula, just in case we weren't sure whether we were supposed to find her sympathetic or not. (She's in the sex industry and she's a secretly-ugly woman; of course we weren't.)<br />
<br />
Lest you think our suffering has ended, let me warn you that we haven't even met the sex-addicted sex worker who's sad that she can never make her clients 'feel better about themselves'. For some reason, I didn't go into this book expecting it to be full of painfully misogynistic sex workers (the sexy corpse, the evil madam, the tragic hooker) but apparently that's what we signed up for. See you all next time!<br />
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---<br />
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*I <i>suppose </i>I should make a consistent note that these books don't have chapter titles and I'm just making them up for funsies, lest new readers be confused that the titles are so much more entertaining and thoughtful than the text.<br />
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**We are also informed at some point that Dresden is that most curious kind of individual: the tall skinny man who eats constantly but mysteriously never gains any weight, also known as Every Goddamn Protagonist Ever, Sweet Buttered Jehoshaphat. So why was he trying a diet potion, if he has no body image issues?Will Wildmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05354391573137330483noreply@blogger.com0