beccaelizabeth's dreamwidth journal

I finished rereading The Black Unicorn by Terry Brooks.
It took a while because it mostly isn't very interesting. The point of view guy has to realise the power was always within him and tada all sorted. It's the same as the previous book. I've read five in a row now and the later written books have marginally more reread value but they all depend on a twist revelation at the end that seems incredibly obvious by now and the characters aren't deeply drawn enough in these ones to make interesting company.

Also, he has a weird idea of who the hero of the story is. Willow is the one who gets a quest, figures it out, accomplishes it, and save her world. But we are following around the guy who thinks of her as the love interest. She's the one the story is actually happening to while all the men are squabbling. So why aren't we with her? Weird.

Old book. Does not tempt me to read the next one. Does tempt me to get the shelf space back next time I run out.

I bought a bunch of these audios based on the book New Adventures because I liked the first one I heard with these companions. But they feel a bit sideways of what I'm used to in Doctor Who.

This one was written by a much younger Russell T Davies, and it indeed sounds like it is written by a much younger RTD. Sort of concentrate of RTD, like later it gets smoothed out.

... okay now I'm staring at the posting form it turns out that's all I've got to say about it.

It's not quite to my tastes and it is very much itself.

I am rereading (slowly) some fantasy books I haven't read in a while (decade or two?)
and what it just made me think about is
how many of them invent
TREE
but better.

Like, there is a Tree, and it can feed you!
and yes, that is indeed one thing a tree can do.
so what is the But Better?
well if it was simply not being seasonal that is a handy one, food but all year, everyone likes that.
but then it's like
tree but more supermarket.
what if fantasy landscape had a corner store, and no human needed to tend it.
let us just make labor even more invisible, and have Tree available to any and everyone just by walking past and grabbing a bit, that is obviously But Better, apparently.
And don't get me wrong, a lunch pail tree is obviously pretty cool, it makes you think about lunch pails and the way they do not in fact just grow that way and draws attention to the whole work goes in aspect of it, but
Tree But Better, These Guys Never Went Camping Edition,
is just
you can eat the tree!

And they do indeed eat every part of the tree.
you don't even need to know which part.
you eat all the tree and can live on it.

they never connect this up to the trees being ill
even though they have to avoid several ill trees to find a well one to eat.

they never get into the ecology of it all.

why are Trees But Better just sitting around for humans to eat?
why do they not have epic numbers of herbivores eating all the things?
why are they tree shaped if it doesn't get the edible bits away from the eaters?
every bit of the tree is edible.
that thing has no roots in logic land, something ate them already.

But nope, because it is Fantasy Land, so everything exists only for human adventurers.
Specifically ones that have no Survival skills, don't feel the need to Learn Plants, and just want to shove a food in their mouth.

And these miraculous items are somehow not part of the agricultural economy?
poor people might eat them if they wanted to badly.
otherwise they just sit there being trees
while people do farming
of unnamed crops
for nebulous reasons.

You know what does not happen when plentiful trees are literally a complete surviveable food?
the exact kind of feudal farming with thralls that is designed to grow you enough plant and animal to live on.
because you can already live on the sodding trees
which are everywhere
and nobody needs to tend them
and if you in fact don't have enough of them to feed all the humans
you would
Grow Trees On Purpose
because that is a complete meal
and a sheep is not.



But that isn't the point of the story so the whole world is vaguely medieval
because that's how it works.



Same thing with
Tree But Better:
You Can Shelter Under It.

And to be fair there are entire woodland societies that do indeed grow Trees But Better to live in.

It's just once that is simple, effective, and available everywhere you can walk to
you have to wonder why anyone else *isn't* doing it
or why every time they look for somewhere to shelter
there is a convenient
unoccupied
tree
with no beasties in it whatsoever.



Tree But Better exists solely so the narrative can stop thinking about survival and ecology and labour and make it so you don't need an inn to survive overnight in the middle of sodding nowhere.



It's like this character who went hiking in his running shoes to go find a portal, and the narrative has him still wearing them a year later after all the adventures, and that never turns out to be a bad idea.

You know how many times you have shopped for shoes?

You know how you have to check really carefully to get the right shoes for the job or you end up squelching around in foot ruining agony?

Terry Pratchett certainly thought about boots, and where they come from, and the socio economic implications of different sorts of them, and what boots dragon riders would wear,
but I can't think of a second example.

It's not even that they wouldn't make story mileage. Of such things is civilisation made.

But not if you're doing ye olde fantasy novel apparently.

Fantasy and magic makes everything But Better, so you can just ignore where things come from and who might be making them and the vague possibility that people might need other people even for basic goods and services and that that maybe might be why civilisation in all its varieties occurs
and just get on with the hard job of intimidating the natives with your clearly superior inherent worth
etc.


Today it is irritating me.

I started rereading Terry Brooks
Magic Kingdom For Sale Sold
and immediately discovered I have retained very little of this and am now finding it *very* annoying.

I think the only women with words so far are receptionists, and I am over 150 pages in.

I keep stopping and staring into space for a bit thinking
okay but if even one woman was in the room right now and able to speak
this would be a very different story.

Also: I am not buying this guy as a lawyer, corporate or otherwise. ( Read more... )

Basically he's a lawyer as an alignment, to go with the Paladin.

I and my tiny legal knowledge want to throw a collective of lawyers at this setup just to see how MANY spanners could be hiding in the works that this story has no interest in.



The story as written is being very boring so far. I can only buy the idea this man thinks he can buy a Kingdom and save it if I also think he's a really annoying kind of a person. It's not ideal.



But it is reminding me why I have a collection of books where the appeal is
a woman is in this book and she gets to talk and everything.
Their reread value is less than their first read value at the time, but I am recalling why they were an improvement.




ETA: page 167, there is now a woman in this story.
this is not an improvement.
she arrives naked and announces she belongs to the protagonist.

Honestly at this point I'm only going to finish reading it because I know I've read the whole series before. It has to get better than that.

I had been reserving judgement on the Buffy reboot until it actually existed because before that all is rumour
but apparently it is back to Not Existing
so apparently now I have thoughts.

The thing with Buffy is:

We need a theme.
- It has to be a socially conscious theme.
One that reflects the students' growing awareness of...
...and involvement in the world around them.

That's the movie talking about naming the school dance, but compare any given season of Buffy.
We grow up, we notice new and stabbier problems, we realise we are the ones meant to deal with this, however unfair that seems.

And you get that pretty smoothly in the high school seasons, culminating with the theme and practice of Graduation Day.

But there are people who are less impressed with the development of the characters after that.

I read in a screenwriting book that you have to bear in mind that the vast majority of your viewers went to school, but only a majority of the writers room went to college.

The way society is set up for the past few generations we have this unifying experience of sitting in rooms where everyone has to be, being told a bunch of stuff that's meant to get us ready for the world outside school, with varying degrees of success.

But after that everyone's experience fragments, and the viewers reactions cannot be relied upon to come from a similar point of view.

Which, yeah but no but. A, could they ever? And B, Buffy did not spend overly much time in a classroom.

The core shared experience of the characters was
we have all this compulsory stuff to deal with that we're being told endlessly is Super Important
but now there are Things
which are actual life and death important
yet must be dealt with after and around school.

You can build out a lot of experiences from there. Like season six and the quest for more money. There is compulsory stuff, and now, also, Trauma. You somehow have to juggle both.

But part of what makes that heavy is the way even the closest support systems of the main characters simply do not acknowledge the life and death stuff. The trivial and transitory is compulsory, the being attacked by vampires is somehow not a problem anyone needed to prepare you for or admit is happening.

Relatable!

... no really, there is a very light metaphor skin on so much that is super relatable there.

And a lot of that is being prepared for the wrong things the wrong way. There's so much pressure on You, Yes You, Personally, Alone, doing things perfectly right first time Or Else End Of The World.
... exams must lead to the perfect start or life is wrecked forever, etc.

And this is all wrapped up in Patriarchy and how the Important tasks are *somehow* not the ones that Someone needs to do every single day or everyone dies. Home Ec is not a high status set of lessons despite the fact they're actual baseline essentials. You are not expected to make bank by doing the things that keep other people alive. Someone has to clean, cook, care, patrol every night, and hey, look who it is again.

Watchers get paid, Slayers get Called. Patriarchy at its finest, core to the metaphor.

(Making it Patrol, defense safety violence and therefore traditionally gendered and valued differently, is part of the defamiliarisation that makes Buffy work.)

And who can you go to for help?
Actually varies by season, and to some extent having the help crumble out from under you and growing to replace it is a core mechanic.
Parents, teachers, Watchers, government, all the support systems and institutions do what they can, demonstrate why they left the world the way the youngers find it, and crumble out of the way, while the protagonists grow to fill their roles.

Change that and you change the genre significantly.
Horror believes in the injury but not the hospital, in crime but not policing, in the threats but not defenses.
Coming of age stories see all that and say, our turn now.



So you put together all these constraints and you get the framework that the actual plots and characters build out on. You get Giles being slightly useless because he's an older in a story about growing up, you get schools that purport to help but become the source of threat, you get youngers that have to push back and take over.



So what do you do with all that
twenty years later
when you still have *Buffy* the vampire slayer?


It's easy enough to posit a world that still has vampires, but what does that say about *Buffy*? Yes, that the task is never ending, but also, why is someone still in school being Chosen to step up and help with it?

Buffy ended the show by sharing her power, so everyone that can stand up will stand up. Slayers all.
Equals, and within the framework of the show, as grown up as they are getting.

She went from the new kid in school to the general of an army.

What institutions did she set up after that?

How did they fail?

If they didn't fail, why do we have a plot?



And I think this is a fascinating set of questions, if Gen Z ask Gen X about them.
... I just had to look up the likely generation age ranges and apparently Gen Z are the ones who got born after Buffy started saving the world and are at youngest 14 now, so quite the age range there.

What world did they get born into, how did Buffy fail to fix it, who has she become in response to that, who can the youngers go to for help and Why does that fail in such a way we get plot?


Seems like we could look at the world and mine a rich seam for all of that, even if we focus primarily on gender.
If the text looks in the eye the race problems of the original we start getting proper interesting.


And I personally would start with the core concept of Slayer and the assumption that the ability to stake your problems will ever make them go away, but that's because I look at the genres I prefer to read watch listen to and tend to go But What If Completely A Different Thing.

... diplomatic solutions with non humans would change the baseline metaphor so much. but. So many years of BtVS and Angel presenting vampires and demons as basically people? The stabbing gets problematic.



The problem is all this either shifts Buffy into a different character with a non protagonist status, or leaves you running parallel coming of age and middle age stories. Which would be tricky! But the thing Giles had to reckon with in the background where the institution he gave his life to was... kind of sucktastic, and the person he thought he wanted to be in his early twenties turned out to just leave problems for the next generation, well, that's a start.


I think Buffy restarted right now could be fascinating.

But it could not be the same story. Writing the same story already makes it a different story. You would have to grapple with the differences.

Unexpected update: tumblr unbroke itself.
Staff undid the update.
Unusual wisdom.

I am rereading Terry Brooks Running with the demon and Kinght of the word, will read third part next, but
so far it is just deeply weird that the argument of the story is you literally need to give up on all social connections and Do More Violence
or you are abandoning god.

Like the main Knight took time off to deal with his PTSD by working for a homelessness charity
and it was literally a plot by the Void.

Someone has Issues and it is not on this occasion me.

Only one load of laundry today, but I also refilled the dishwasher chemistry, ran it with the cleaner bottle, and the loaded it ready to wash when it gets full. Also did regular Cleaner Day.

And made myself feel spinny bad trying to get stuff from the cupboard under the sink. I remember why I gave up on the low cupboards but I keep thinking I'll Just Be A Minute and then I have to have a sit down in the middle of whatever task required Sink Things.

It is a mystery under there. I don't know the half of what is stashed. I mean today I found half a dozen empty plastic bags from laundry tabs and I have no idea when I last was buying that sort.

Still, threw out several things and sorted out others, so, progress was made.



Other than that I didn't read listen watch stuff today. Listen seemed Loud and reading seemed like I wanted to read A Book But Not That One. And I didn't want to write the one I wanted either. So that isn't entirely helpful. But I do have Several book so I shall find A Book eventually.

My laundry is down to only filling the smaller basket, which is grand, but is still filling what I would until recently have considered The Laundry. There's at least two more loads in there, possibly three. This was Maximum Laundry.

I think it's because of all the drill and screw noises lately. It's nice that they've fixed stuff but it's not nice that this is week four of making a bunch of random interval noises about it. Still much quieter than the first two weeks but. I miss quiet quiet.

Quiet quiet theoretically gets more done.


But logically they have to complete the work eventually so.


Not a fascinating day really.

I shall go stare at bookshelves again.

I have rearranged my bookshelves on the principle of
things I actually read go where I can reach
and things I inherited can go behind everything in the back corner.

McGuire, Huff, Bujold, Cherryh and Duane are now on the nice visible shelves next to me.
Other stuff got sort of stirred around and I am not especially confident of finding it again later, so this is a work in progress.

But somehow the book stirring process has made a space on the shelves suitable for putting plural books in.
Which basically never happens.
I am puzzled yet pleased.

After I got so tired yesterday I scheduled today to be Just Resting
but it is still not fun to be tiredness level feelings weeble wobble.

I listened to some more of Big Finish's Dalek Universe. Is okay. I think the ingredients, 10 getting drawn back before the Time War and meeting another Time Lord, are pretty good stuff, but I also think I Am Tired today so Is Okay.

I have been contemplating how to rearrange my bookshelves. There are shelves below bed level that simply never get read, and a lot of authors shelved in weird inaccessible places simply due to alphabetical order. I have forgotten who is down there really. The ideal solution is to move somewhere with enough horizontal space I can get at both sides of the room, or indeed to be a person who doesn't fall out of a single bed so the bed gets thinner, but since neither of those are doable, I contemplate which books to banish below read level.

I think it'll probably be mostly inherited ones. It's not that the classics of science fiction are bad, it's just that I don't think I've read them all even once, and the ones I have read I don't spend much time thinking about. Keeping Huff and Duane and McGuire and Bujold and Cherryh up where I can read them is key, I've reread all of those recently and I still buy their new work. Asimov may just have to deal with the floor height view. But then I feel like that's unfair and I should really reread things I'm sending Below? Just to be sure? But there are so many.

I also moved a bunch of things to make room for the work and that means noticing they exist again, and in some cases wondering why I still have those. But doing anything to not have items is More Work. So at the moment they're all stacked up in unusual places.

I wonder if anywhere still wants VHS tapes.

I'm sorry I'm not very interactive, just, got tired.

With any luck the work with the power tools and testing the fire alarms multiple times a day will be Over and I can sleeps whenever. That'll be nice.

I spent the day waiting for someone to do a small communicate
and then they did not.

Also Cleaning happened, so that part is nice.

And I played more of Wrath of the Righteous on Hard. It has been going pretty okay but I am running out of healing potions so it is about to go Bad instead. I should go back to Defenders Heart to get more potions but the clock ticks onwards so I may try getting Daeran and hoping.

I think I built my character poorly and that isn't something you get away with on higher difficulty levels.

But I hate the builds you find on websites and the philosophy behind them. So I shall attempt a different way and maybe discover why not to do that.

I continue to want to have different conversations than the game makes available.

But also to doubt that I am interactive enough for an actual game group.

... that leaves fic, obviously. but words.



Not my most fascinating day ever and the rest of the week remains up in the air. Lovely.

I have been reading fanfic this week between the Noisy bits.
... there are a Lot of Noisy Bits.

I keep reading fic where they didn't do it the way I would and this has an obvious solution.
At some point writing could happen.

But's it's stuff like crossovers that keep one half as a guest star who doesn't say much, when it was his fandom tag I was working through. I don't know what I would have Constantine say about Dresden Files but it would be something from his own point of view. We would know where in his canon he was. It would be distinctly relevant, given all the everything.

... also the argument you shouldn't tell a guy he is stories in your universe because he'll get mad at the writers
(which the fic made due to Dresden having read all of Hellblazer but just not dealing with that out loud)
doesn't really hold up because multiverse
(too many canons for one version to live, writers clearly not to blame for the existence of infinite possibility)
and also
https://screenrant.com/constantine-real-life-alan-moore-dc-comics/
https://www.vulture.com/2014/10/secret-history-of-john-constantine.html
of all people, he *knows*.

... I am aware of the logical reasons for the writers seeing a bloke in a trenchcoat, and yet.


I read some Labyrinth fic as well that was going well until it seemed to believe Jareth about Jareth.
*do as I say* / and I will be your slave
is not an offer.

So I would write that whole thing very much a different way up.

But then what is the attraction of it? If I'd only go there to change one character.
Tricky to then make it what anyone in the tag is even looking for.



Constantine and Jareth and Dresden are making me have a think about characters attitudes to women.
And what makes them interesting despite them.

Constantine is left the least problematic these days, pretty much because his canon is most recent (that I have read, I gave up on Dresden with Side Jobs apparently, and stalled on a reread lately on Fool Moon because that was not a point of view I was having fun in)(also I have the TV series but remember it not. Hmm, shouldn't have opinions on Dresden then.).

Reading one Hellblazer writer's attitude to John using up his friends and throwing them away... I mean apart from wondering why he wrote him that way if he didn't like it, I'd say that isn't what the Constantine TV show did, even when it was. They kept him more knife edge, so you could interpret him either way, like he was trying his best or like he was tricking his nearest into things. The ambiguity is part of what makes him compelling I feel. If he lands all good or all bad then he's not really Conjob any more, you know?
But the further away from original cultural context you get then the more it'll land different.
The balance tips without the story changing.

Also, fanfic is written by a different demographic than the original comics, mostly.

Things get spun different or rolled out in a new direction.



I do keep wanting to write the man but I also don't want to color inside the lines, so I have in fact got a new trenchcoat in mind and should give him a name.

Making Constantine a timeline sliding archetype is a big change. You can't get the specificity that way. I have complained before. It leaves problems as individual personal ones because the details of the politics and social conditions get stripped out. But that makes the politics slide in somewhat unexamined instead.

The 2014 TV show did not do well with race. I do not know where I would need to start to do well with race. But it needs doing carefully and consciously or all the horror cliches drag the old racisms along with them.



I have no conclusions yet, to thus post or otherwise.

But I am actually reading, and something that isn't Doctor Who or DC, so thoughts are being generated.

ish.