I am a lass who alas loves a lad who alas has a lass loves another lad who once I had in Canterbury

[sovay]

Yesterday I did almost nothing at all, which considering how much interaction my last four to six days involved (my God, it's like a social life) was actually fine. I had a voice lesson. I watched some Caprica (2010). I got paid for a poem. I proofread a book.

Today was also quiet: I met Matthew Timmins in Porter Square and we got lunch in the form of sushi from Miso Market (very tasty, befitting their nice writeup in the Boston Globe) and talked for hours about a variety of things not limited to alternate histories or umbrellas and including his unpublished, terrific novel, which took off the top of my head over the weekend. rushthatspeaks called while we were discussing either family geographies or Paranoia, but I called them back on the bus.

I came home and seem to have celebrated this year's Valentine's Day by watching The Ladykillers (1955) and eating pizza. I can't tell what conclusions to draw from that, except that Criterion should put out a box set of Sandy Mackendrick. Alec Guinness plays a wonderful Alastair Sim.

Comments

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

How are you finding Caprica? I just watched that at a go a couple weeks ago, and would love to discuss.

Criterion should put out a box set of Sandy Mackendrick.

I concur!

[sovay]

How are you finding Caprica? I just watched that at a go a couple weeks ago, and would love to discuss.

I'm a little less than halfway through: Yosef is looking for Tamara in New Cap City and Daniel has just begun to suspect that his daughter's avatar is in in the stolen MCP. I'm really enjoying it. The focus with the Adama brothers on assimilation and cultural identity is not strictly speaking a science fiction plot at all, which I like. (When this trope does appear in science fiction, it's usually because aliens are standing in for some real-world minority group. It's not allegorical here: the Taurons do not map onto any singly identifiable ethnicity and none of the characters are any more or less alien than we are ourselves. That turns out to be a refreshing change.) Ditto the tension between Sam's so far well-balanced life as a Halatha hitman and Yosef's eroding ability to convince himself that he's not really a mob lawyer, he just sounds (and bribes) like one in court—it gives so much more texture to the world than if the only issues of any importance were AI, VR, and other acronyms of the future. The show could use a kind of meta-technological consultant—I'm not sure it really knows as much about the way inventions work in the real world as it does about the conventions of fiction—but on the other hand it's still presenting a version of virtual reality that I don't think is terminally stupid and that hardly ever happens. I like the complexity of the characters, the way that some of the most sympathetic by position are some of the most problematic by personality, and I like that the show is aware of different kinds of privilege and deploys them in both our understanding of the characters and the parameters of their actions. I am less convinced of the characterization of Clarice than I am of the other principals, but I will reserve judgment until the show ends. I'm just hoping it doesn't fall apart.

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

The way they portray the Taurons and the Halatha is one of my favorite parts of the show, both in the cultural context and the assimilation narrative. Part of me thinks that Tauron would make a really good Province, and I want to watch Yosef and Sam's sequences just to see what hints they drop, when that makes Tauron so relatively effectively conveyed.

(I also like Sam's marriage, because the big conflict in that relationship is based on cultural assimilation and the fact that Sam has a husband just is the fact that Sam has a husband).

Eric Stoltzery is on its way for a while, but it gets better.

I also agree on VR not being stupid in Caprica, and how often that does not happen.

Clarice Willow is... Yeah. I don't know if you've gotten to Gemenon with her, but while the Monads and the STO is interesting, and the Mother does something very interesting and subtle the first time, her plan is completely mental, and her STO rival is equally mental and one crazy hand clearly doesn't know what the other crazy hand is doing, which, for me, threw the whole inciting incident into doubt - so why did Ben blow up the train, with his genius girlfriend on it who had something that he gave no indication of not knowing was of tremendous long-term value to his religion and his organization?

I came up with an answer, but it's a weak one.

I'm not sure it really knows as much about the way inventions work in the real world as it does about the conventions of fiction.

True. Technology only becomes more magical, but not as bad as it usually gets. There are a couple of facets of the BSG universe that are just left as magic (head Six and head Baltar in the main series, for example), but it is a little more the exception than the rule.

I like that the show is aware of different kinds of privilege and deploys them in both our understanding of the characters and the parameters of their actions.

I agree, but I wonder what you picked up on.

I didn't think it fell apart as it went on, but some pieces did come off.