Storm Front, chapters five, six, and seven, in which Will tries to ban the author from writing women

Someone brilliant on tumblr pointed out that "I can't even" is basically the modern redux of "Well I never".

I cannot even with Dresden, folks.

Storm Front

Chapter Five: Men Are From Mars And Frankly Sometimes I Think We Should Just Be Sent Back*

Dresden has had a long day of being near naked corpses, staring into the soul of a powerful man who knows how to get what he wants, and silently judging a woman for having the temerity to not be a stupendous man-wizard badass, so he decides to unwind by going to his favourite pub, McAnally's.  I... I will--deep breaths, Wildman, deep breaths--I... will... take the high--oh my god I know it's a real name but how do you just--keep it together, man!--Iwilltakethehighroad and not make any of the extremely obvious jokes because I am a writer with some sense of decorum and maturity.

Dresden spends a full page rhapsodising the old-timey glory of the basement pub, with thirteen of all of its fixtures and wooden pillars that break up the flows of magic from all the "broody, grumpy wizards" that hang about there.  No electronics more complicated than a lightswitch, only homebrewed ale and a bar where you pick your food up yourself, LIKE A MAN, instead of having some waitress do it for you like these fancy types all expect these days.  I'm wondering how many other actual 'grumpy wizards' we're going to see, since it seems like even one more is immediately going to make it obvious how boring Dresden himself actually is.  He recognises (but doesn't name) two guys playing chess in the corner, and orders a steak sandwich and ale from Mac, who hardly ever talks but only says things that are wise.  UNLIKE A WOMAN, OBVIOUSLY.

Worldbuilding!  Harry grabs a wizard newspaper and reads to us about a story in which some kids got high on 'ThreeEye', which supposedly gives you precognition, and blew up a convenience store which they believed was somehow destined to explode anyway.  Harry doesn't buy it: "If it was serious stuff, the department would have already called me by now."  What department?  The police?  The wizard police?  Is Dresden also a wizard cop?  (Why aren't there wizard cops?  Why aren't there wizards already insinuated into the police force to handle magical crimes instead of forcing them to grab consultants like Dresden?)

Mac observes that someone followed Dresden in, and Dresden identifies "Miss Rodriguez" by her perfume, but of course, being a woman, "She probably wouldn't think about her perfume giving her identity away when she could assign my mysterious, blind identification of her to my mystical powers."

• Characters who are unnerved by Dresden's mysterious powers: Murphy, Monica, Rodriguez. 
• Characters who are unimpressed by Harry's supposed potency: Carmichael, Marcone, unnamed chapter-one mailman.

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's something that distinctly categorises these two groups.

In case we didn't already suspect from the surname Rodriguez, Susan is Latina, helpfully hinted at in her paragraph of description which separately includes references to her "dark beauty", "dark, straight hair", "dark skin of her forehead", and "dark eyes".  So, there's those things.  Let's just bask in the discomfort of exotification and the immediate sexualisation of the only woman of colour.  Dresden made have mulled Murphy's legs and had uncomfortable highschool-cheerleader fantasies about Monica, but Susan Rodriguez shows up and suddenly we're one misstep away from this becoming the swimsuit issue.

Rodriguez is a reporter for the Chicago Arcane, a tabloid magazine that occasionally catches the real thing (like the Unseelie Incursion of 1994, when Milwaukee quietly disappeared for two hours), and she's figured out he's a real wizard.

She was the one who had fainted after we'd soulgazed.

Her feminine vulnerability thus established, she immediately sets about using her spicy Latina sex appeal to try to drag a comment out of Dresden on the murders.

"Just a hint," she pressed. "A word of comment. Something shared between two people who are very attracted to one another."

Dresden is of course too cool to be so easily swayed, at least on the outside, but regardless of how hot she is, Dresden knows that the hottest thing about her is the way society has ingrained her with the conviction that she can and will never be pretty enough:

One of the things that appealed to me about her was that even though she used her charm and femininity relentlessly in pursuit of her stories, she had no concept of just how attractive she really was--I had seen that when I looked within her last year. 

"Harry Dresden," she said, "you are a thoroughly maddening man." Her eyes narrowed a bit further. "You didn't look down my blouse even once, did you," she accused.

Dresden remarks sarcastically on his incorruptible purity, She laughs, and he takes the opportunity to check out her awesome boobs, because HE IS A MAN AFTER ALL.

This scene is stupid and I'm not going to provide more details on it than I have to.  Dresden refuses to answer her questions even when she turns it into a cute 'yes or no' game and then uses that to 'trick' him into agreeing to get dinner with her Saturday night at a nice restaurant.

I kinda loved Ender's Game and Shadow the first times I read them, even if I brim with scorn now.  Eye of the World had a few charms, sort of like a clueless old man telling mostly-harmless stories of his youth but unable to stop calling women 'skirts'.  I already hate Dresden so much I'm honestly not sure I can get all the way through this book this time.  Already I look back fondly on a mere month ago, when I thought things were actually going to happen in this book and I hadn't gotten to know our insufferable protagonist yet.  Updates as the hatred evolves.

Dresden bemoans the ease with which she 'tricked' him into this date.  (Just not going is apparently not an issue.  Why?  Is a wizard's word literally his bond?  Did she enthrall him while he wasn't paying attention?  DOES SHE HAVE A MIND-CONTROL SIGIL IN HER CLEAVAGE?!)

"Why did I say yes?" 

Mac shrugged. 

"She's pretty," I said. "Smart. Sexy." 

"Ungh." 

"Any red-blooded man would have done the same thing." 

"Hngh," Mac snorted. 

"Well. Maybe not you." 

Mac smiled a bit, mollified.

I'm going to act like this is confirmation that Mac is ace or gay, although I presume it's actually supposed to mean that he just makes better decisions because he's too smart to get tangled up with those tricksy girlfolk.  Dresden mulls how he's going to fit this date into his schedule, and whether he should account for the possibility of naked fun times afterwards.  He is seriously concerned.  After all, he's never done well with dating:

I mean, a lot of teenage guys fail in their first relationships. 

Not many of them murder the girl involved.

Faith and fucking begorrah.  Not only is Butcher giving us a dead woman in Dresden's past to make him sad, not only did she die violently, but he is the one who killed her and you know that means that it was a tragic accident for which he blames himself and it will be the responsibility of other people to explain that Dresden shouldn't feel guilty for killing his girlfriend.

I have been induced to read these words with my own eyes and for that there can be no forgiveness.

The chapter mercifully ends not long after that and I'm going to have to read ahead a bit to see if I can survive this or if I'm just going to get angrier and angrier every chapter until I challenge the book to mortal combat and one or both of us dies amidst rain and fire.

Chapter Six: How to Pick Up

Blessedly, this chapter contains almost none of Harry's thoughts on women, and focuses on the essential premise of the book: a wizard who is also a detective.  Harry gathers up some materials from his apartment and goes on a long drive out to the Sells' lakeside home for some investigating.  After scoping a bit in normal terms (he grabs a tube for camera film under the stairs and notices the suspicious state of the garbage bins) he sets a faery trap and monologues at us about magic for a while: true names and magic circles, how they work, how you bait a faery, that kind of thing.  It's not bad, apart from my grievances with Dresden's tone, which is 60% made of the author winking at the reader (the faery disappears in a twinkle like Santa, not that Dresden would dare try to trap Santa because he's far too powerful, don't cross Saint Nick, ha ha).  Said faery, whose true name is a beautiful cadence but goes by Toot most of the time, falls into the trap and agrees to ask around on Dresden's behalf, reporting that there were people at the house last night having sex and they ordered a pizza.

That done, the author realises he's hit a lull and so falls back on Raymond Chandler's famous axiom, 'a man bursts into the room with a gun', although that's not nearly magical enough, so instead a man bursts out of the woods with a sword.

Chapter Seven: How Not To Worldbuild

The man in question turns out to be Morgan the Warden, White Council agent in charge of making sure Dresden never does anything fun at all.  He has concluded that Dresden is the murderer, on the basis that Dresden once before killed someone with magic and Morgan has just been itching to get his justifiable homicide on ever since then.  Like all the characters in this story who don't want to have sex with Dresden, Morgan is not supposed to be smart.

Dresden points out that he's done nothing illegal (apparently trapping and extorting faeries is completely legit as long as you don't actually mind-control them) and that if Morgan wants to try to prosecute him for it they'll have to convene the entire very busy and ill-tempered White Council, so he should drop it.  Morgan relents and puts away his enchanted sword, but then demands to talk to Dresden unofficially and grabs him by the arm.

I didn't dare mess around with Morgan when he was acting in his role as a Warden of the White Council. But he wasn't wearing that hat, now. Once he'd put the sword away, he was acting on his own, without any more official authority than any other man--or at least, that was the technical truth. Morgan was big on technicalities. He had scared the heck out of me and annoyed the heck out of me, in rapid succession. Now he was trying to bully me. I hate bullies. 

So I took a calculated risk, used my free hand, and hit him as hard as I could in the mouth.

Like any classic Manly Hero, Dresden has four emotions: Lust, Condescension, Wounded Pride, and Punching.  Some have theorised about the existence of umami, the so-called 'fifth emotion', but no research has yet found any conclusive evidence.  Morgan starts to threaten him, but Dresden counters that he legally doesn't "have to put up with it" unless Morgan is on official business.  Morgan can find no legal grounds to "come after" Dresden, and so lets him go.

(Good news, everyone: if you punch a cop while they're not in uniform, they're legally required to just stand there and take it, apparently.)

To my everlasting delight, Dresden thinks Morgan is too stupid to realise that there's no law against punching back, and he eventually does so, flooring Dresden in one hit.  Ten points to the old guy with the really inadvisable ponytail!  (He has a terrible ponytail, we're told.)  Having finally expressed their true feelings to each other, Morgan and Dresden part ways, and Dresden fills us in on his backstory.  To my immense shock, the magic-kill that Dresden was convicted for was not his first girlfriend like he implied, but his original magic teacher, an as-yet-unnamed dude who "tried to seduce me into Black wizardry".

Before we go any further on that subject I'm just going to give the floor to Martin Luther King for a minute:

"Somebody told a lie one day. They couched it in language. They made everything Black ugly and evil. Look in your dictionaries and see the synonyms of the word Black. It’s always something degrading and low and sinister. Look at the word White, it’s always something pure, high and clean."

White Council and Black wizardry.  Awesome.  Top marks again, Butcher.  Also,  Dresden, your male teacher tried to "seduce" you while you were young and impressionable.  Not in any way a statement with homophobic connotations.  Nothing.  [irony] Pure as the driven snow. [/irony]

So, it is legal to defend yourself or helpless people with lethal force, giving Dresden a pass on getting executed, except that apparently there's no protocol for judgment when the defender successfully kills their attacker.  I... what.  Shouldn't that come up all the time?  Obviously, whether lying or telling the truth, any wizard who kills another wizard is going to claim it was self-defence.  That is why we in the muggle world have detectives and stuff.  Why is Dresden talking like his case was such a weird aberration?

(Also, I would like to know more about necromancy in this world and whether there aren't a lot of cases that could be solved quite easily by talking to ghosts.  Can they talk to ghosts?  Is that why most wizards try not to kill other wizards?  Or is it illegal to summon the dead?  Too Black?)

So Dresden was let go from that case on super-probation, and can now be executed for breaking any Law of Magic, apparently?  He wonders if some members of the White Council don't want him dead for daring to practice wizardry openly.  I wonder why they don't have a law against that.

Dresden concludes that the only way he can clear his own name is by researching the eeeevil magic that was used to murder those two, and his best lead for that is Bianca the Vampire Madam, so off he goes, wondering if Morgan will kill him in the belief that he was the murderer, or for doing illegal research into the murder, or if Murphy will kill him for edging in on the police side of the investigation.  He is surrounded by troubles on all sides.

You know, sometimes I think Someone up there really hates me.

Me, Dresden.  It's me.

Next time: We meet Dresden's cat (charming) and haunted skull named Bob who loves to get up to zany antics like sexual assault.  If you listen to the wind, you can hear me screaming.

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*I suppose 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.

Hallowthon 2015 Anthology: For the Final Girl in all of us

Will here: Happy All Hallow's Eve-eve-eve-eve, gentle readers. 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.  To save everyone time, here we present the SS&S Hallowthon 2015 Anthology, with myself and the blogqueen offering you some brief thoughts on a score of better- and lesser-known horror films, in case you seek assistance picking something to watch this weekend.

Erika here: Also a warning, a lot of these are movies I saw more than five years ago, so I may have not noticed or forgotten some of the more messed-up aspects of some.

(Content: misogyny, racism, gory violence, and sexual violence.  Fun content: the greatest documentary of our time, and VAGINA DENTATA.)

Ghostbusters
Erika - As we all know, the greatest documentary of our time. That aside, I think Peter Venkman should get slimer'd. Not that he would notice as he is made of slime. Seriously. Fuck that guy.

Will - Oh my god Erika this isn't a documentary MOVING ALONG

Evil Dead
Will - Not the original with Bruce Campbell, but the remake from a couple of years ago.  Much less terrible than I expected.  Don't know if I could call it 'good'.  Teens isolate themselves at a cabin in the woods--not for a weekend of drinking and sex, but as an intervention to get their addict friend clean.  Everything goes horribly wrong because one guy decides to read aloud from a book that literally has 'don't say these words' written in the margins in blood.  Gory as hell, a huge amount of bodily mutilation, and a literal rain of blood in the last scene.  Not as inherently misogynistic as I would have expected--the original Evil Dead is famous for the 'tree rape' scene, which was exactly as gratuitous and voyeuristic as it sounds (the tree even ripped open the woman's shirt for the audience's benefit).  In this version, the victim does get bound by an animated tree, and some kind of monstrosity spews out a demon eel that slithers up her skirt, but the whole thing is incredibly gross and violating (and a key plot moment) rather than played to arouse.

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter
Erika - When I first saw this movie, I went in expecting it to be awful. I was very very wrong. It was magical. It's campy and cheesy and Abraham Lincoln kills vampires with an ax. Horses are thrown. Love yourself. Watch this movie.

Will - The only caveat I'd add is that this is a very White Savior kind of historical revisionism along with the vampire revisionism.  Abraham inherits his mother's sense of equality ("As long as any of us are slaves, none of us are free", which...) and stands up for it his whole life.  Vampires are responsible for the transatlantic slave trade and they throw in a line specifically to note that Africans were getting 'sold' to white people by other Africans, in that way that really defensive white people always want to make sure that we all know that we're all culpable, really, and I mean I don't even see race so why do you have to make such a big deal about it--et cetera.  So there's that.  On the other hand, Anthony Mackie plays Lincoln's best friend Will Johnson and, upon learning that they're going to fight vampires, jumps right in with deadly efficiency.  Lincoln required an extensive training montage, but Johnson is just like "Oh, are we doing superhero stuff now?" and goes into bullet time.

Teeth
Erika - My old roommate, Devin and I got back from the bar late one night and weren't ready to crash yet, so we booted up Netflix and found this. It's about a Good Christian Girl who is attacked by reams of sexual predators and defends herself with her vagina teeth. She doesn't escape the non-stop sexual assault, but her teeth give her agency to fight back. Either way, it features a doctor, horrified, shrieking "VAGINA DENTATA" and I don't know what else you want from a movie.

Repo! The Genetic Opera
Erika - It's more an aesthetic than a movie, and not a great one. The music is tragically lacking, but has Anthony Head who is a surprisingly decent singer and makes up for a multitude of sins. Strangely, he isn't even in the best number of the movie. Also Paris Hilton's face falls off.

Will - Worth seeing if you don't mind some gore.  I guess it's supposed to be an indictment of the modern American healthcare system and the encroaching forces of capitalism?  But if I get into dissecting that for analysis, we'll be here all day.  Sarah Brightman as Blind Mag is magnificent and probably a wizard.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers
Erika - I thought I was buying the first one when I bought it, not the (older) re-make. It's the first time I have bought the wrong movie and gotten a better one than I hoped for. This movie terrified me. It manages to be high tension and super creepy without using jump scares or gore. It's just, it's just a really well written and done. If you like getting your pants creeped off you, but like, not in a sexy way, check it.

Practical Magic
Erika - When scrolling through Netflix with Will trying to figure out what to put on this list I suggested this one. I hadn't seen the movie in like, ten years, but I remembered enough to think there was something to write about. I was right. Not that that should surprise anyone. This is a movie that is about women, and women loving and trusting each other to overcome anything. They also kill the same abusive boyfriend twice.

Will - Also there are two love spells used in this movie and I have a variety of questions as relating to consent and mind control whenever that sort of thing happens.  But I'd say the movie leans toward the idea, not that the targets are compelled to adore each other, but magically made intensely aware of all the things they could love about each other and lets things flow from there?  That's not textual at all, I admit.  Great scenes with women coming together to support each other in dire circumstances, even when they otherwise don't get along.  Like most things in life, needed more not-straight people.

Rosemary's Baby
Erika - Which is scarier? Being impregnated with the literal spawn of Satan (without fun Devil sex but with the extra challenges breast feeding) or having everyone in your life teaming up to gaslight you about it? Well, in this movie, you don't have to choose!

Human Centipede
Erika - I did not want to see this movie when I saw it. I didn't really know what I was getting into, which added to the glee of those with me as they cackled at my unprepared horror. Devin and his twin Doug decided this was what they wanted to do for their birthday, so my gift to them both was having to explain to my father what it was. Neither of us have forgiven them for this. The movie actually isn't as gross as you think it will be. It's gross, and it's fucked up, but the worst of it happens off screen. If you were thinking of seeing this movie but afraid of explicit gore, it's not that bad?

Will - I have literally cut people off midsentence to keep them from explaining the premise of this movie to innocent bystanders who didn't know better.  Thus do I earn my place in the Elysian Fields.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show
Erika - I do not remember being introduced to the soundtrack of this movie. I just... always knew it. I have fond memories of my Father dancing around the kitchen in his underpants, making breakfast, singing "Sweet Transvestite" with all he's got (and my Dad is a very enthusiastic singer). The only copy of the soundtrack we had was on a tape, so after switching to CD there were a few years where I kind of forgot about it until my Discman died and I went digging through my old tapes. I was walking across the street when I realized what, exactly, most of these songs were about. I didn't get hit by a car, but not be as wide a margin as I would like to claim. The soundtrack alone is worth the watch if you've somehow not already seen this campy, sexy(?), parade of absurdity.

Will - The blogqueen tried to make me watch this a couple of years ago, but I was exhausted and she made me go home halfway through because sleeping through Rocky Horror is on her list of forbidden acts, along with wearing socks (Erika- Only to bed) and giving her husband ideas.  So when I did actually see it all the way through this summer, it was at a local theater with a shadowplay cast and a lot of call-and-response from the audience.  I'm not convinced that actually made it any harder to understand what was going on.  This is a weird movie and the terms 'transvestite' and 'transsexual' are both waaay out of fashion now, and while I'm all for more LGBT characters in cinema, there's a lot of coercion and dubious consent here.  I get why it's an iconic film (and apparently they're remaking it with Laverne Cox as Dr Frank-N-Furter) but I was not as enchanted as I hoped.

The Loved Ones
Erika - I don't even know where to start with this movie. I'm not squeamish but yikes. Gore, psychological horror, sexual horror, incest, I just--if you are looking for a movie that you will sit back and say "Wow, that was super fucked up in more ways than I have seen any one movie be fucked up in" then this is the deeply fucked up movie for you.

Garden State
Erika - What's more horrifying than a whiny entitled privileged white dude and his fantasies of a manic pixie dream girl who will fix all of his problems? Great aesthetic and soundtrack too.

Will - The most subtle psychological thriller of our generation.

All The Boys Love Mandy Lane
Erika - This should be called "Mandy Lane needs some better fucking friends" because every single one of them is awful. (Okay, the lone black guy (Bird) doesn't totally suck.) Also: unnecessary sexualized violence. I am not saying sexual violence, but the first girl is killed after giving a blow job by getting a shotgun rammed in her mouth as if she were giving a blow up before having her head smashed through. It's a slasher flick that fancies itself clever. I will give it credit that I didn't see the whole twist coming, and it makes some interesting visual choices.

Will - It's a very aware movie that becomes less cliche as it goes, both in narrative and cinematic styles.  Could have done with a little more character exposition, since the motivations driving the whole murder spree are never given very clearly, and unlike most slashers that actually matters.  There are enough hints given that you can piece something together, but a lot left up to interpretation, and I'm never sure if that's intentional or if the filmmakers just thought they were so clever that they didn't need to say more.

Shaun of the Dead
Erika - Since the saturation of the zombie market, Shaun of the Dead is an especially nice reprieve. It's clever and genre savvy without feeling "wink wink nudge nudge tee hee this is a zombie movie" with actually developed characters. Could stand to have more women and POC and fewer white dudes, but it's at least sort of a horror movie so I guess I can only hope for so much.

Will - Probably the best we're going to get in terms of 'ordinary people face the zombie apocalypse'.

Orphan
Erika - A movie that started off so strong and then went so wrong. It starts off with some psychological horror and cat-and-mouse type stuff between a grown woman and her adopted 9 year old daughter, with the 9 year old being the villain. Because if horror movies have taught me anything it's that children are creepy as fuck (and people wonder why I don't want any). Like many disappointing horror movies, it starts off clever and then takes a sharp turn into standard slasher horror right at the end.

The Witches of Zugarramurdi (English title: Witching & Bitching)
Erika - This is a weird movie. Weird in a good way, but weird. A group of robbers are trying to get away after their first heist but they get grabbed by a coven of cannibal witches who are trying to bring about the apocalypse. The basic theme and morals of the story are that women are evil and unstable, while men are immature and useless, but mostly well-meaning.

Will - I'm generally not one for gross-out humour, 'battle of the sexes' plots, or MRA talking points.  Especially screw that one guy in the first seen who's like "the judges always favour women in custody cases" because that's not even slightly true.  On the other hand, this has canonically bisexual secondary characters who become a happy couple, which probably makes it more progressive overall than 90% of Supernatural episodes, or Steven Moffat's portfolio.

Rubber
Erika - Almost all of the weird-ass movies on this list that I saw in theaters I saw at the same weird local theater and I hope everyone has one of those. This was a movie that I actually regretted seeing there though. Again, one that is best described as "weird" but I wouldn't say "good weird". If it had been a half hour long, I probably would have loved it but it was just so long. Still, if the premise of "A homicidal car tire with psionic powers goes on a rampage and also acts as its own framing device" catches your attention, it's probably worth checking out.  Just maybe be willing to skip through a bit.

Halloween
Will - I actually like this movie.  Not even as 'I guess among horror movies it's bearable'; I legitimately enjoyed it, which was a huge shock the first time because I have always hated standard-issue slashers.  The thing is that this one came before most others and didn't use their bloody cliches.  The daylight scenes are at least as unsettling as anything that happens in the dark.  The horror has less to do with jump scares and more to do with an emotionless implacable force randomly deciding to kill all your friends.  It also pretty much codified the final girl who faces the monster and lives.  That said, when your villain is 'an escaped murderer from an insane asylum', it's not like we're going to get anything like a thoughtful film.  Pure id.

Splice
Erika - When a husband and wife duo of "too-cool-for-school" scientists are told to stop their research on genetically engineering creatures, they cross lines of ethics, morals, and pretty much everything that gets in their way when they continue in secret and start splicing in human DNA as well. This movie starts off well. It challenges boundaries and ethics and social expectations and largely tries to be high minded about it even when getting into deeply uncomfortable territory. Which is what made it so terribly disappointing when it turned into a monster flick in the last few scenes and gets rapey.

Re-Animator
Erika - I have found the formula for good Lovecraft reading: read his shorter short stories. That's it. Otherwise he spends forever building up and up mundane circumstances to like, a paragraph of weirdness that overall is unsatisfying (I'm looking at you, Rats In The Walls).  But the shorter ones tend to get to the weird stuff sooner, and feel like a bigger payoff without as much puttering around. All that to say, I haven't actually read Re-Animator. The Husbeast has, and he tells me it's super racist, which isn't terribly shocking. The movie is not. It is however incredibly sexist. The treatment of the lone female character is awful, she's stripped of agency, objectified, and assaulted. It does a better job getting to the weirdness more quickly than Lovecraft's writings often do, but the whole movie was a bit of a let down for me. The aesthetics are kind of fun but beyond that I don't have much nice to say about it, and a lot of negative. This is the only one on the list I am straight up telling you to skip.

Byzantium
Will - This is simultaneous not a Vampire Movie and also the best vampire movie I've ever seen.  A couple of two-century-old women are permanently on the run for reasons the mother refuses to explain to her daughter.  There are decapitations and literal waterfalls of blood and a Dangerous Romance between a frail human and the immortal vampire who won't risk hurting an innocent.  There are positive depictions of sex workers and their work, and a sort of thematic crescendo that we should all be able to agree, whether living or undead, that the most important thing to do is defy and destroy the violent institutions of patriarchy.  (On balance, this is an ultra-white movie and there's a fair about of offscreen rape-as-backstory, so it's not all sunshine and murder-daisies.)  Basically the anti-Twilight.  I recommend this movie to anyone who doesn't find the subject matter unwatchably disturbing.

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So that's our selection of judgments for this year--feel free to add your own in the comments if there's something else in this vein that you wish more people knew about.  Also, expect more judgments of creepy stuff in the weeks to come, as Will finally gets around to marshalling his thoughts on the undying saga that is the Supernatural series, and the X-Files revival in January 2016 spurs some talk on the amazing Dana Scully and how weird it is that no one seems to talk about how super racist this sci-fi classic really was.

Erika has written far enough ahead that her posts should run uninterrupted through the next month in spite of NaNoWriMo, so enjoy those.  Will insists that he has got his side covered as well but he is not a reliable source.  Happy Halloween, folks.

This is Totally Outrageous: Erika vs Jem and The Holograms episode 1

Does anyone else have to use the disclaimer "I remember liking this thing, but I watched it a long time ago so who knows?" because I have to do that. A lot. I'm going to be very honest with you. I have a terrible memory. I usually have to get people to jar my memory on movies I've seen more than a year ago. So it should be no shock that I remember very little about Jem and the Holograms, a show I remember watching as a little kid. I remember that they're totally outrageous, I'm pretty sure there's a keytar and some Hanna Montana identity switching going on, and as I kid I freaking loved it. That.... That's about it. I remember questioning why protagonists were always blond women and Jem and the holograms being one that really made me question that, which is strange because I also remember at least one of the Holograms is black.

So let's all go on a journey together to see how the bounty of Netflix may potentially traumatize me. I mean, Netflix thinks I'll love it (5 entire stars!) but their algorithm is questionable at best.

Episode 1. Titled, creatively, The Beginning. It opens with the girls pulling up to some red carpet event with excited fans chanting "Jem" and then one by one introduces us to the girls. First out of the car is Aja, whose name we know instantly because the crowd starts to chant it. She smiles but does nothing exciting, so I assume she's more subdued or shy. Next up Shana, and again, crowd starts to chant her name. She poses and fluffs her magnificent afro (if I am incorrect in calling it an afro someone please correct me) and her pose screams "confidence" to me. She and Aja then pull out Kimber, who does a flip and is met with the same excitement. I'm assuming she's the spunky one? I am pointing this out because it's actually kind of brilliant. Each girl poses in different ways as they get out of the car which tells us a little about them as well as their names, and since they're chanted small kids have a chance at remembering them.

Lastly Jem gets out of the car, the crowd loses their collective shit, microphones of questionable physical possibility hover around the frame as she's pelted with questions about who she really is, is there another album, how does she like being famous. There is then a narrated line of "I remember how it all began. With the unexpected death of my father" and then BAM we're in a cemetery and it's raining and what is going on. This tone change was so sudden and dramatic that I'm kind of losing it over here. This is amazing.

We get about a three second scene of her by her Father's grave where a man named Eric Raymond stops to check with Jerrica (also establishing the dual identity of Jem) to ask if there's anything she needs and to tell her he's there if she needs him. Her--I'm assuming boyfriend? I think Rio is her boyfriend, I don't remember her having a brother--tells him off because she has all the help she needs.

How is that a remotely appropriate response to someone trying to offer your (I'm like 90% sure girlfriend) comfort or help as she is burying her father. There is no mention of her mother, so I can only assume Jerrica was in fact hatched from an egg her Dad found.

Jem, rather than asking Rio what the shit, apologizes FOR him as Rio drags her off angrily, and insists he means well to Raymond.

I do not like Rio.

Jerrica then tells us that her Father left her two inheritances: she inherits a foster home for girls and a record company. Both called Starlight. Her Dad either let her name everything as a child, had a strange sense of branding, or just hated thinking up names. Either way, the foster house needs money so Jerrica is off to do what her Dad did, take money from the record company! That... seems like it might have some questionable tax laws. I mean, there are donations, but it sounds kind of like he didn't donate it, just... took it.

She dodges past the security guard (rather than... wait seven seconds for him to call ahead to Raymond, or tell him who she is) because... I have no idea how old Jem is supposed to be. She seems to have a lot of agency, so I'm assuming she's not a teenager, but she's certainly acting like one. I assume all this is to establish "hey, Raymond is probably a villain messing with her dad's company and he replaced the nice security guard with this doody head" but maybe it's to show off Jerrica's infiltration skills and to hint that she might SECRETLY BE A SPY.

Slips past the new secretary, Raymond keeps calling her "darling", tells her she's just a kid (HOW OLD IS SHE WHAT THE WHAT) and insists that this is a business and he shall MAKE IT THE MOST POWERFUL RECORD COMPANY EVAR!!! And introduces his new band, The Mistfits, who ride in on fucking guitar bikes.

Pictured: The three women of the band "The Misfits" on fucking guitar motorcycles.

This is everything I have ever wanted out of life and more. Raymond has no issue with his new weirdly similar-looking girl band having apparently driven their guitar motorcycles into his office building, taken them up the elevator, and now into his office. Jerrica however is deeply offended to see her Father's office misused this way and tells them to stop ripping up the carpets yo. This leads to them laughing at her because NO ONE TELLS THE MISFITS WHAT TO DO (she just told them she owns half the company, so I have questions) before launching into a music video number where they, through a series of carnival games, throw Jerrica all over the place and I have so many questions. How are they summoning these? Do the bikes only fly during musical montages? Can they always fly? Why would you ever go anywhere that wasn't flying if that was an option?

Jerrica is now angry and starts pulling some "How dare you use MY FATHER'S COMPANY to promote this trash?!" which, naturally, the Misfits are unhappy about. I'd be pissed if someone called me trash right after I performed a whole musical number for them, complete with some weird special effects. Raymond just says "Well there's nothing you can do so neener" and she storms off.

Again, I have questions. As has been said repeatedly in this like, two minute scene, Jerrica owns half the company. Couldn't she just...go to a board meeting, get like one person on her side and outvote him? Or if she owns half the company, that means she gets half the profits--if she's so desperate for money for this foster home, why not just... take it out of the presumably huge chunks of cash she's getting from the company? Maybe it's locked and she can't access it until she turns a certain age? HOW OLD IS SHE?

It doesn't matter. Nothing matters. She gets hologram earrings and and AI named Synergy brings her to her Father's secret underground music base to show her all the clothes and car and musical gear he left for her (as well as a super high tech holographic music synth AI). Why did he hide this? Is this all tax evasion? Either way, the girls realize what they must do. Crash the battle of the bands and DEFEAT THE MISFITS. THEY MAY HAVE MAGIC HOVER GUITAR BIKES BUT WE HAVE HOLOGRAMS YO. Holograms that Jerrica's earrings can project from anywhere.

So they crash the battle of the bands. Raymond is OUTRAGED THIS CONTEST IS INVITE ONLY and Jem says "But she invited us" and with the help of her holo-earrings is then Jerrica. A deal is struck. If in six months if Jerrica can make Jem more popular than the Misfits, she gets the company. If the Misfits are more popular, she does. She takes the challenge and then out of nowhere some guy is all "Oh hey, let me get in on this. Winner gets a movie deal AND THIS SWEET MANSION."  No really. He legit offers them a mansion the same way Bob Parker says "A NEW CAR".  It's amazing.

I just--HOW OLD IS JERRICA CAN SHE LEGALLY MAKE THIS SORT OF DEAL WHY IS THERE NO PAPER WORK INVOLVED THIS IS ALL VERY QUESTIONABLE AND I THINK JERRICA NEEDS A LAWYER.

The Misfits then straight up steal their instruments, and rather than press charges, or call the cops, the girls all pile into their car and chase the van. The Misfits see this and their van mysteriously has no back door and is just... open, and start heaving their stuff. This causes the Holograms to swerve and get hung up on a cliff.

The solution? To use Synergy to project Jem to get Rio's attention.

?????

Okay. I mean, flagging for help makes sense, but, how does Rio know who Jem is? He wasn't at the battle of the bands that we saw. Did the girls on their way out stop to introduce them to his own girlfriend in disguise? Either way, it all goes well and there's some media coverage about Rio being a good dude and the girls being a band.

So, they don't call the cops on the Misfits FOR NEARLY KILLING THEM or smashing their instruments. Something Raymond points out when he's annoyed. The Misfits, like well adjusted musicians, respond to this with a song called Winning Is Everything. I'm going to be honest, the three songs we've gotten so far? They're not good. They're super repetitive. I vaguely recall not loving them as a kid either. I will admit that the singers aren't bad (Jem is actually pretty good) but it's not enough to save them.

So Raymond starts to make preparations to win the company. Like using his superior budget and connections to book the Misfits on tours, getting TV and radio play--hah, just kidding, he hires someone to break into Starlight house to scare Jerrica into being non-functional. The girls find him robbing them, he dashes off, knocks a lantern over (they currently have no power) AND OH NO THE HOUSE IS ON FIRE.

That's the end of the episode. It ends with TO BE CONTINUED

I did not realize how much I miss 90s cartoons until today. I'm kind of loving how over the top this is and hoping the song writing gets better. I've got nothing critical or insightful to say here. The group of girls is diverse (even if they all have the same body shape) and seem to have agency? Rio is around to help a lot but generally the girls seem to be doing as much or more than he is, as well as being the ones to parent the younger girls in Starlight House. It's hard to think of anything in depth to say when all you can think is "THOSE ARE FUCKING GUITAR BIKES OH MY GOD THIS IS AMAZING".

I do have some questions though. Are there no police in this world? Are they just really ineffective? How did no one ever accidentally lean on that wall to find out it was fake and find Jerrica's dad's secret holo-base? Why did her dad keep Synergy a secret from his business partner and Jerrica, but arrange for it to hunt her down after he died? Will we ever find out about the secret spy training she has, or will it just be alluded to over and over again? Where are all the lawyers in this world? What was this house made of that it caught fire so quickly? If Jerrica can project holograms, can she send Jem to go call for help? Why do we park in driveways and drive on parkways?

TUNE IN NEXT TIME FOR ALL THESE ANSWERS AND MORE!*

*I make no promises to answer any of these questions but come back next time anyways because it makes me feel loved.

The Eye of the World, chapters 26 and 27, in which there is a shocking and unpredictable death

We come at last to the end of the beginning: this book is 782 pages long, which means the middle is page 391.  To recap for those who fell asleep sometime in the late 1990s when I'm pretty sure I started these posts: Rand al'Thor is a Simple Farmboy (adopted by a master swordsman) who was born at the right time for a prophecy, so he and his besties and his not-girlfriend Egwene (the real protagonist) and his neighbourhood witch have run away from home, under guidance of a wizard and her bodyguard, to escape the hordes of the devil and take refuge in Wizardopolis.  They are also accompanied by a crotchety old bard who has been helpful but formed no close personal bonds with any of our cast members, so I'm sure he'll live to see the end of the book.  Everyone has magic powers and the devil haunts the three boys' dreams.  Girls are scary but okay as long as they know their place.  Our Heroes got split up but are making their separate ways toward the same city.  Ballads are cool, and so are apostrophes.

Is there anything of real substance in the last 400 pages that I actually missed out on, there?  Things that a reader would be confused not knowing if they jumped in now?  I suppose I could detail more prophecies, or the specifics of their magic, or speculate on exactly what 'the sundering' was, but honestly we've only been told fragments of those things already, and they're mostly easily intuited stuff that would take the average reader about four sentences to pick up on.  'The dark lord was fought once before and sealed away but some of his power leaks through and that's how he's able to have armies of minions'--well, fricking obviously.  In terms of Epic Fantasy, that's like saying 'gold can be exchanged for goods and services' or 'none of the protagonists are black'.  There are certain things a reader learns to take as given.

The Eye of theWorld: p. 378--413

Chapter Twenty-Six: Whitebridge

On the boat still, Thom the gleeman and Mat have exactly the same conversation they had last chapter, about Thom taking his 'pretend the kids are your apprentices' story too seriously.  Rand is shocked to hear Mat speak matter-of-factly about the possibility the rest of their party is dead, but then a voice pops into his head asking if he thinks this is all a cheerful fireside story:

The heroes find the treasure and defeat the villain and live happily ever after? Some of his stories don'tend that way. Sometimes even heroes die. Are you a hero, Rand al'Thor? Are you a hero, sheepherder?

FORESHADOW FORESHADOW.  They turn a bend in the river and finally see the White Bridge, a huge smooth white-stone bridge with implausibly thin supports and no seams, and one end in the town of Whitebridge.  We're told it looks like glass but it's never slippery, and it's apparently indestructible, a remnant of the Age of Legends,when apparently Aes Sedai just did this kind of thing regularly.

There's a lot of generic ship-crew-work described, the captain fires the token sailor we hate (who kept trying to get rid of Rand and company), and gives them back the money they paid for fares, plus some, because of all the morale-boosting work Thom did.  (Silver coins from Moiraine: recovered.  Oh no, our heroes almost actually lost something.)  The captain wants them to keep sailing with him, down to some bard competition in Illian, but Rand insists they have friends to meet nearby.  Thom warns them all to be stealthy and cautious, and then completely forgets that his patchwork cloak marks him as a gleeman, the most exciting thing to ever happen to any of these peasants in their whole lives.  (I'm not clear on why gleemen are such a big deal.  Storytelling is important stuff, but folks in this book act like Thom is one in a million.  It played much better in Backwoodston back in chapter two than it does here at a major shipping junction.)

Times are hard in fantasyland:

Hawkers [...] tried to interest the passersby in their skimpy trays of fruit or vegetables, but none was getting much interest. Shops selling food had the same pitiful displays of produce Rand remembered from Baerlon. Even the fishmongers displayed only small piles of small fish, for all the boats on the river.

I... no, that's the opposite of how famine works.  If the best anyone can get is 'hardly anything' then even really unimpressive cabbages are going for heaps of cash and no one can keep them in stock.  People are desperate for any fish at all--meat; real meat!  The only reason for people to ignore the food for sale is if they already have enough themselves, which they can't if the grocers can't get any better than this.  What are these people eating?  (Please say it's tourists.  It's time for something proper scary; let's have a town full of desperate folks eating adventurers.)

Thom leads them to an inn where they can decide on a course of action.

Rand wondered idly if all innkeepers were fat and losing their hair.

It take some chutzpah to write interchangeable self-parodying stereotypes and then have your characters comment on how These People Are All The Same.  After some more meandering, Thom shakes news out of the innkeeper that Logain, the guy who said he was the Dragon Reborn, has been captured by Aes Sedai and they're taking him to Tar Valon via Caemlyn, where the Queen lives.  (These people have a queen?  But--wait, is this feudal?  Are they serfs?  Do they pay taxes?  Are they granted military protection?  Who governs the territory around Two Rivers?  I thought every town was an independent body in a semi-anarchic city-state sort of model.  You can't just stick a queen on top of that and just act like it makes sense!  Why was the first concern of Two Rivers not to inform their marquess or baron or something?  HOW DOES THIS WORLD FUNCTION.)

We also hear that a proclamation has gone out asking everyone to sign up for book two--I mean, swear their lives to the Great Hunt for the Horn of Valere,which must be found before the final battle with the devil.  At last, Thom carefully describes the rest of Our Heroes to the innkeeper, asking if anyone has seen them, and the innkeeper does a full about-face and tells him to literally get out of town.  Apparently first a locally-known 'madman' asked about them, and then a Fade started appearing out of nowhere to ask people about the three farmboys, although by cleverly keeping its hood up all the time it prevented anyone from noticing that it was an eyeless hellspawn brimming with evil powers.  Our Heroes disagree further about whether they should go to Caemlyn as planned or continue to Illian, which Thom would have us believe is the Greatest City Ever, and Mat is near to shanking him with his Evil Knife when that one sailor we hate arrives in the inn and they have to book it quickly.

Thom swiftly exposits to the boys that the reason he's trying to keep them away from Tar Valon is because he was too slow (busy with work) to save his nephew Owyn, who "got in trouble" and within a few years "you could say Aes Sedai killed him", which Rand figures means Owyn had Illegal Boy Magic.  Thom, who is no Abed Nadir, doesn't seem to realise that giving us his poignant backstory is like turning both keys simultaneously on his personal doomsday device, but he disappears briefly and returns in a black cloak that freaks Rand and Mat right out.  They make their way out of town, and half a page later the actual Fade shows up in the middle of a marketplace.  Thom rushes it, daggers out, and yells for them to run, then screams a lot in blue light while everyone everywhere runs away.  Outside town, Rand and Mat agree to follow Thom's instructions (go to a Caemlyn inn called the Queen's Blessing), and off they go, harrowed by the series' first Named Character Death.

Today's aesop: If you have to shoehorn in a character's sad backstory in the last two pages before their death in order to give it any kind of emotional impact, you should probably workshop that character a bit more.

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Shelter from the Storm

Back to Perrin, Egwene, Wolfbrother the Brother of Wolves, and the Irish Rovers Travellers.  Because carelessness and laziness are not in any way problematically coded for Travellers and Romani (I'm not clear if Jordan knew the difference) we are told that they make slow time, never getting moving until mid-morning and sometimes stopping mid-afternoon if they find a nice spot.  Le sigh.

There's actually a huge amount of exoticism going on with the Travellers, who are one and all "joyful on their feet", constantly dancing or singing or otherwise making music.  Sweet Non-Allegorical Lion-Jesus, I just caught sight of a paragraph two pages later where it's still talking about how every last one of them "went about a myriad domestic chores as if they had not a care in the world".  The kindest guess at authorial intent here is that the Travellers are analogous to Tolkien's elves, who were much the same in their song and dance, except that with the elves it was supposed to highlight how otherworldly and implausible they were, so here, applied to a particular human culture, it serves more to Other them as shallow flights of fancy with none of the serious thoughts or concerns that weigh down Our Heroes.  And Aram, with whom Egwene spends much of her time dancing, is thus the most sexualised man we've encountered so far, if only because it's the first time a named girl has been blatantly attracted to anyone.  (Egwene's belligerent sexual tension with Rand does not count, since we've seen exactly zero forms of healthy human affection pass between them.)  Oh, joy, and then on the next page Perrin sees some Traveller women dancing for the first time and he gets the most turgid boner of his entire life.  Othered, exoticised, and sexualised.  I'm like a goddamn prophet.

Perrin tries to talk Egwene out of enjoying herself (and at least nominally Perrin is worried about bringing trollocs down on a pack of pacifists) but she counters that this might be their last chance to do so before Wizardopolis.  There is much distress about pacifism and Perrin insistently carrying his axe, and he's increasingly aware of the thoughts of their wolf entourage as well, et cetera et cetera no plot development.

Perrin hasn't had any devil dreams for some days, but at last he does again, and in it Ba'alzamon incinerates his wolf guardian and throws a raven into his head, declaring "I mark you mine".  He wakes, screaming (as are the wolves), and Elyas finally declares it's time for them to leave.

We're more than halfway through this book and pretty much every plot arc has been 'our heroes arrive somewhere comfy, our heroes try to settle in, the devil Does A Thing, our heroes decide they must run faster'.  Please, for the love of sugar gliders and slow lorises, let them get to Tar Valon soon.

They have a rushed but extended farewell with literally everyone in camp, Perrin gets more boners from hugs from every girl (twice), Egwene refuses to stay with Aram, and when Raen gives them their formal farewell, Elyas replies formally as well, swearing that someone will find the song and it will be sung soon: "As it once was, so shall it be again, world without end."  That... is a really weird choice of moment to toss in a King James Bible reference.  The Travellers echo it back, and off they go, with Elyas gruffly explaining he was just being polite about the ceremony.

The wolves bring Elyas up to speed on Perrin's dream (they call the devil Heartfang, pretty badass) and they try to explain to Perrin that he'll only be safe when he accepts them, but Perrin makes bad decisions and forces the wolves out of his brain fully.  There's a final gender joke, when Perrin asks Egwene what she was always talking to Aram's grandmother about ('advice on how to be a woman', she says, which I assume in context means flirting and maybe some HJ pointers), and he says no one needs advice on how to be a man, which Egwene says is why they're so bad at it.

Ahah.

Instead, I share with you an exchange related to me via ye olde tumblre, between a girl and her mother, bemoaning menstruation.

Mother: You're not really a woman until you've got blood on every pair of pants you own. 

Girl: What about women who don't have periods? 

Mother: I didn't say it had to be your own.

Next week: More Nynaeve, no Rand.  Still some Perrin, but I'll take what I can get.