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I turned on the big computer so I could back it up.
Then I got distracted by a Norton update and two restarts.
I only just remembered why I was on there.
In the meantime, I played FATE some more and listened to Spaceport Fear.
I can't think of much to say about it. It was a Doctor Who adventure. Business is nasty and authority is evil and young people save the day. Which, given the current demographic of the average Doctor Who audio listener, seems odd, but is the usual way it goes.
I think I'm just a bit flat today, the adventure had all the right parts, except for any particular reason for it to be 6 and Mel dealing with it. I didn't dislike it. It passed the time fine.
... now my upstairs neighbours are listening to their music. that's not an improvement.
Other things read recently: I spent a really very long time reading Mickey Zucker Reichert's Renshai books. It took ages because I was never interested enough to read more than a chapter or two at once. I had them next to the bed as go to sleep books. Last night though that backfired because I was so epic bored with them I decided to just finish reading, even if it did take until 0400. ... this is logic. yes.
They look like they've got the right ingredients. Female characters in a gods and magic fantasy world where skill and swords still save the day. It's just that they've also got a whole lot of sexual violence,
( Read more... )
The bits of the books I remembered was how the hero is a true neutral fighting to balance good and evil, order and chaos, in a world where gods and wizards mostly champion extremes. Balance is of the good and I like the perspective. I'd just scrubbed from my mind how much of the rest of it is garbage.
Also the author relies on the characters being epically stupid, especially about sex. To excuse this they're always teenagers. Until they have babies, then they skip to the babies being teenagers.
I have had enough of teenagers.
Also, if your plot only works because idiot, it is no good.
Also also ( Read more... )
And yet I read until the end of the books because... I don't even know.
I'm thinking of getting rid of them.
except I very seldom successfully get rid of books.
But really, having re-read them, I'm not sure what teenage me was thinking when I vaguely remembered liking them.
I'm not saying that books with women in should never have boyfriends and babies. It's just that there should be characters that are women without being there to have boyfriends and babies, and the ones with babies etc should have story arc that isn't solely about that. And they should continue to exist as a focus character after podding out the sprog.
( Read more... )
So those Mickey Zucker Reichert books, the more I think about them, the more I'm very annoyed at them, because they're kind of layers of awful. Swords and magic are not enough to cancel out the anti feminism.
And that's without even mentioning the racism, which is all of the East is dark and born evil variety that fantasy suffers from. Even attempting to ignore that, there was one paragraph where a guy is looking at his baby and just hoping he inherits his looks from his (blonde, blue eyed, northern) mother and not from his father because of the dark skin and hair and so forth. Even the dark skin people think they look worse. It's creepy and wrong.
But after typing all that I'm back to liking Doctor Who rather a lot. Because there are plenty of female characters who exist to do many things that are not dating or having babies. Mel reprogrammed computers, for instance. Yaay companions. I know Doctor Who has its flaws, but whenever I venture out into other series, I keep finding so much worse.
Then I got distracted by a Norton update and two restarts.
I only just remembered why I was on there.
In the meantime, I played FATE some more and listened to Spaceport Fear.
I can't think of much to say about it. It was a Doctor Who adventure. Business is nasty and authority is evil and young people save the day. Which, given the current demographic of the average Doctor Who audio listener, seems odd, but is the usual way it goes.
I think I'm just a bit flat today, the adventure had all the right parts, except for any particular reason for it to be 6 and Mel dealing with it. I didn't dislike it. It passed the time fine.
... now my upstairs neighbours are listening to their music. that's not an improvement.
Other things read recently: I spent a really very long time reading Mickey Zucker Reichert's Renshai books. It took ages because I was never interested enough to read more than a chapter or two at once. I had them next to the bed as go to sleep books. Last night though that backfired because I was so epic bored with them I decided to just finish reading, even if it did take until 0400. ... this is logic. yes.
They look like they've got the right ingredients. Female characters in a gods and magic fantasy world where skill and swords still save the day. It's just that they've also got a whole lot of sexual violence,
( Read more... )
The bits of the books I remembered was how the hero is a true neutral fighting to balance good and evil, order and chaos, in a world where gods and wizards mostly champion extremes. Balance is of the good and I like the perspective. I'd just scrubbed from my mind how much of the rest of it is garbage.
Also the author relies on the characters being epically stupid, especially about sex. To excuse this they're always teenagers. Until they have babies, then they skip to the babies being teenagers.
I have had enough of teenagers.
Also, if your plot only works because idiot, it is no good.
Also also ( Read more... )
And yet I read until the end of the books because... I don't even know.
I'm thinking of getting rid of them.
except I very seldom successfully get rid of books.
But really, having re-read them, I'm not sure what teenage me was thinking when I vaguely remembered liking them.
I'm not saying that books with women in should never have boyfriends and babies. It's just that there should be characters that are women without being there to have boyfriends and babies, and the ones with babies etc should have story arc that isn't solely about that. And they should continue to exist as a focus character after podding out the sprog.
( Read more... )
So those Mickey Zucker Reichert books, the more I think about them, the more I'm very annoyed at them, because they're kind of layers of awful. Swords and magic are not enough to cancel out the anti feminism.
And that's without even mentioning the racism, which is all of the East is dark and born evil variety that fantasy suffers from. Even attempting to ignore that, there was one paragraph where a guy is looking at his baby and just hoping he inherits his looks from his (blonde, blue eyed, northern) mother and not from his father because of the dark skin and hair and so forth. Even the dark skin people think they look worse. It's creepy and wrong.
But after typing all that I'm back to liking Doctor Who rather a lot. Because there are plenty of female characters who exist to do many things that are not dating or having babies. Mel reprogrammed computers, for instance. Yaay companions. I know Doctor Who has its flaws, but whenever I venture out into other series, I keep finding so much worse.