More blatherings about stuff I've read/watched

[sabotabby]

Things that maintain my sanity during the school year: trashy books, trashy TV. Or, well, I'll take good books and good TV, but sometimes you want mindless.

Well-written mindless, though.

So, the season premiere of Castle. Not very good. Not the abominable clusterfuck that the finale was, but seriously lacking in the sort of genre savvy and, well, comedy that got me into the show.


It's still "how many cop show clichés can we fit into one episode" mode. Again, not as bad as the end of the last season, but Drama! Misunderstandings! Last minute suspects proving the main suspect innocent with absolutely no lead-up! The "strong" lady cop needing to be protected from the truth, lest she go in guns blazing and get herself killed.

Sigh. I don't really like cop shows. I liked Castle because it deconstructed all kinds of cop show tropes, and also has Nathan Fillion being goofy in it. Now they've decided that what's required is Nathan Fillion being serious and brooding and all of the cop show tropes being played straight.

They've also apparently decided to go with a very Hollywood depiction of recovery and PTSD for poor, character-assassinated Kate. Given that a realistic resolution to her being shot would have been death or, at best, permanent desk work, which certainly would have killed the show, I guess I can tolerate the break from realism. What irritated me most is a small thing—the fact that she was obviously wearing eyeliner in the hospital. I mean, I just finished watching a miniseries where, one of the most powerful things for me was that with each episode, the lead looked more and more genuinely haggard. Is it too much to ask for a TV show to let its major female character look genuinely awful for a few scenes?

I think I will keep watching for a bit, as they cast Kassidy Yates from DS9 as the new boss lady. I have no opinions on her character in this show but Kassiday Yates was all kinds of awesome so I like that actor.

I've been reading a novel every two days or so. The last book I finished was Hell and Earth by Elizabeth Bear, which is the sequel to Ink and Steel. It was quite enjoyable, mostly because Bear, for all of her flaws as a writer and as a human being, writes some genuinely gorgeous prose and completely plays to my narrative kinks.

This said, she probably shouldn't do sequels. Practically every time she writes a sequel, I get annoyed with it. I think it's that she doesn't write particularly great endings, and knows it, and then the sequel contains the proper ending and then some other stuff.



Hell and Earth also felt, more, uh, indulgent. Ink and Steel is basically about Marlowe and Shakespeare boning each other while being spies for Queen Elizabeth. Which. Do I want to read about this? I can read about this forever. This is why we have such a thing as the public domain, so excellent fanfiction can get published and turn a profit.

What I like to read about less is eroticized rape scenes. Possibly, dear author, if everyone up to and including Satan is really into the idea of raping your formerly badass, now yaoified main character, it may be time to add more plot that does not rely on rape. And I say this in the kindest possible way, because I actually did really enjoy the book.

What I'm reading now is the opposite of trash and fluff, and is probably more well-written than I can stand. I'm only about halfway through and will likely finish it tomorrow, and then I can let you know if it is, as I suspect, the most chilling and horrifying book I have ever read.

I always read on the subway and bus. I'm so used to it that lying in bed and reading a book feels weird to me now. I'm so used to being on transit with my headphones in and my face in a book.

Here's a song I listen to a lot.

---

ETA: Conversely, Community can do no wrong, apparently. Inspector Timespace! And John Goodman! It's like I'm the target demographic for this show.

Comments

[curgoth]

Have you read all four of the Promethean Age books? Combined, I think they're possibly among my all time favourites ever. But I have a known pro-Bear bias.

And for Castle - we spent the entire episode looking at each other and saying "Uh, so, new writers? Yeah." It was Not Fun. And Castle is supposed to be Fun.

[sabotabby]

No. I'm inclined to read the others as well, though. I love the setting and the idea of poetry as magic like a loving thing, and her writing, even when it pisses me off, always seems to draw me in until the end. (Save the bits where the magic/science that resolves the plot is an asspull, which bothered me about Hell on Earth and Chill, but not the first books in those series.)

I have a premonition that there will be a consensus among my friends about Castle, which makes me slightly sad that I watched it alone. I imagine we all got into it for the same reason, and they abandoned that thing very early on in season 3.

[sabotabby]

I loved Dust. Chill left me cold.

...sorry!

[nellorat.livejournal.com]

Do tell about the book you're on now when you finish it.

Of course your superlatives got me thinking.

I'd have to say that various nonfic about Bernard and Karla Homolka was the most horrifying in an ooh ick, makes me feel filthy and wonder about the fate of humanity kind of way.

Hard to identify the most frightening/suspenseful/scary--maybe something by Ramsey Campbell.

[sabotabby]

Weirdly enough, I was in St. Catherines shortly after they were arrested for murder. I actually saw the boarded-up house and the lake. I was maybe 12 years old and completely fascinated.

[sabotabby]

The whole (SPOILER) thing, to me, was stupid in the first place. Though this might also be a personal thing where I strongly dislike two personalities sharing the same body and being able to converse. But I think it was mostly all the rape.

[sabotabby]

I thought so too, except a) that would have sucked, and b) there would be no point to writing the two books if he was just going to die.

It's actually the same problem I had with how Harry Potter ended and quite a few finales of Nu Who. Like, if you're going to set it up so that it's inevitable that a character dies, either go through with it or have them evade death somehow due to their own cleverness. A literal deux ex machina is not cool anymore.

[sabotabby]

I don't mind asspulls for Extreme Peril, just Inevitable Death. If I'm told that the only way out is for a character to sacrifice herself, I don't want her to suddenly not die because the fine print said that the sacrifice need not be fatal as long as there was love in her heart, or some such.

I don't claim to be half the writer Bear is, but how hard is it to find another option? Like living with the SPOILER for all eternity, never being at peace. Or have the price for SPOILER be something other than Certain Death, thus not putting yourself in the writerly trap to begin with.

[ginny-t.livejournal.com]

Oh, Castle. I actually forgot over the summer just how bad the finale was (hooray for defence mechanisms!). The premiere was so bad that I'm seriously considering being done with the show. I'll give it a couple more weeks, probably, but it has to shape back up and soon. *grumble*

[sabotabby]

Same. I'm ready to drop it the second something more exciting comes along, and Fringe and Community are both starting up this week.

[maeve66.livejournal.com]

I know nothing about any of those shows or books, and am not likely to. But oh, I like the Fleet Foxes. What's weird is that I played yr. video and was like, oh, wow, that's the new album. And went to iTunes (I'm such a fucking spineless person; unless someone gives me music electronically, I buy it from my corporate masters, every time)... and I own that one track. Well, now I own the rest, too. Ha.

[sabotabby]

I think that's the only song of theirs that I know. But man, I listen to it over and over again.