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No one is ever always fortunate
1. I want particle physics knitwear.
2. I do not want to see The Imitation Game (2014) if these reviews are accurate. Historical infidelities aside, it really isn't helping that my mental casting for Turing now is Russell Tovey, so every time I see a picture of Cumberbatch, there's just an extra automatic nope.
3. In 2012, I wanted to see more of Sheila Vand. Apparently she is now starring in an Iranian vampire film. So I'd watch that.
4. I don't think I am capable of re-reading David Eddings' Belgariad (1982–1984) and Mallorean (1987–1991), because everything I can remember about those books suggests that Eddings' guiding principle was worldbuilding through ethnic stereotypes, but I encountered them in late elementary/middle school and every now and then—as last night, when it suddenly crashed into my head how much about the terrible worldbuilding I remember—I think about re-reading to see if the weirder parts hold up, before I think better of it. I have fond memories of Beldin and Vella. I should probably leave them that way.
5. Giulio Aristide Sartorio. I'd never heard of him. That siren. That blog, by the way, is a timesink.
A curious side effect of seeing Theatre@First's devastatingly beautiful production of Euripides' The Trojan Women with my mother on Friday night: I saw it with a grandmother. My niece was born eleven months ago. We were sitting at J.P. Licks afterward when my mother commented thoughtfully that she could not see herself handing over her grandchild to be killed, thrown down from the walls of her city, even if it was the end of the world and all her children were dead and there was nothing left: she would have held Charlotte tight to her breast and told her not to be afraid and leaped down from the walls herself. And I believed her.
2. I do not want to see The Imitation Game (2014) if these reviews are accurate. Historical infidelities aside, it really isn't helping that my mental casting for Turing now is Russell Tovey, so every time I see a picture of Cumberbatch, there's just an extra automatic nope.
3. In 2012, I wanted to see more of Sheila Vand. Apparently she is now starring in an Iranian vampire film. So I'd watch that.
4. I don't think I am capable of re-reading David Eddings' Belgariad (1982–1984) and Mallorean (1987–1991), because everything I can remember about those books suggests that Eddings' guiding principle was worldbuilding through ethnic stereotypes, but I encountered them in late elementary/middle school and every now and then—as last night, when it suddenly crashed into my head how much about the terrible worldbuilding I remember—I think about re-reading to see if the weirder parts hold up, before I think better of it. I have fond memories of Beldin and Vella. I should probably leave them that way.
5. Giulio Aristide Sartorio. I'd never heard of him. That siren. That blog, by the way, is a timesink.
A curious side effect of seeing Theatre@First's devastatingly beautiful production of Euripides' The Trojan Women with my mother on Friday night: I saw it with a grandmother. My niece was born eleven months ago. We were sitting at J.P. Licks afterward when my mother commented thoughtfully that she could not see herself handing over her grandchild to be killed, thrown down from the walls of her city, even if it was the end of the world and all her children were dead and there was nothing left: she would have held Charlotte tight to her breast and told her not to be afraid and leaped down from the walls herself. And I believed her.
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Thank you. I did suspect that was the case.
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On the other hand: I would (and did) happily read thousands of pages wherein the characters ride across the landscape being snarky at one another. I will put up with a lot for snarky characters I enjoy, apparently.
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The Drasnians always read to me as weirdly Russian-inflected, although the Nadraks got a lot of that, too—the whole heavily forested northern steppe thing, plus all the hunting, trapping, and trading. But the Drasnians are Alorn and have a world-class intelligence system and the Nadraks are Angarak and are mostly just sharp-dealing and canny. I agree that the Mallorean tries to complicate the binary between West on the side of Light and East on the side of Dark, but I'm not actually sure how much it succeeds when the benchmark for rationality is still the West. Human sacrifice is strictly Angarak. Demon-worshipping is an Eastern practice as well. And the thing where national character is an immutable determiner of personality remains offputting for me, especially since it consigns at least one culture—the Thulls—to being one hundred percent dumb-as-rocks cannon fodder. Like, all the main characters agree that the Mimbrates have idiotic rules of honor where their brains should be, but at least they have an elaborately chivalric, vaguely Norman civilization to channel their belligerent literal-mindedness into. Even when there isn't an identifiable one-for-one with real-world cultures or ethnic groups, there is a lot of random exoticism. The Nyissans' entire culture is based around languorous swamps, drugs and poisons, sensuality, snake-worship, shifting loyalties, and sexual ambiguity (at least, they're the only ethnic group to have eunuchs that I recall, and Salmissra prior to her transformation kept a string of pretty, vapid, subordinate male consorts). What frustrates me about the books as I remember them is these tiny, evocative fragments of worldbuilding scattered among the stereotypes, like the god Mara and the destruction of Maragor. I was fascinated by the concept of a god driven mad with grief after the loss of his people to genocide, so that his territory becomes a scarred, haunted place through which travelers cannot pass safely without risking their own sanity, surrounded by the ghosts of the atrocities committed upon the Marags—the manifestation of Mara's grief, because gods have that effect on reality—endlessly mourning and accusing. And it's just another travelogue chapter. There's an entire book in that idea and I'd like someone else to have written it.
(This is what I meant about way too much of the worldbuilding remaining in my head. I can't honestly remember that much about the plot, except that it canonically repeats across the two series because the pattern is fixed until broken by Eriond assuming his rightful place as the god the Angaraks should have had instead of the one-eyed megalomaniac who instituted human sacrifice, but I can still tell you that the first king of the Sendars was a democratically elected cabbage farmer. And that I still find the ritual gesture of a Nadrak woman laying aside her daggers for someone she loves deeply moving, because it is a powerful and resonant gesture of trust—with you, I can lay down my weapons; I will never need to defend myself against you—but that the socio-sexual structure it's embedded in is . . . not as thought out as it could have been.)
On the other hand: I would (and did) happily read thousands of pages wherein the characters ride across the landscape being snarky at one another. I will put up with a lot for snarky characters I enjoy, apparently.
You are totally allowed to enjoy thousands of pages of snarky conversation! I just don't think it outweighed, for me, all the racial/gender stuff I remember feeling weird-to-actively-argumentative about.
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My cabbages!
I read the entirety of the Malloreon as well as the two "biographies" afterwards (Belgarath and Polgara) just to hopefully get more world building in. To the best of my recollection Belgarath's biography contained more of it - as you got some of his perspective before the cataclysm (whatever it was called).
I too have fond memories of Beldin and generally wanted more of the world and far, far less Belgarion and Ce'Nedra.
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I shall now consider that canonical until proven otherwise, and David and Leigh Eddings are dead and can't disprove it, so we're good.
To the best of my recollection Belgarath's biography contained more of it - as you got some of his perspective before the cataclysm (whatever it was called).
I read Belgarath the Sorcerer (1995); it was given me as a holiday present in high school, I think.
I too have fond memories of Beldin and generally wanted more of the world and far, far less Belgarion and Ce'Nedra.
I wanted far less of relationships built around battle-of-the-sexes tropes where women are essentially bewildering and always secretly micromanage their men. And the narrative's attitudes toward sex aren't as bad as Piers Anthony's, because probably nothing is, but the thing where grown adults are constantly behaving like awkward high school crushes? Could have done without.
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I do not know if I want to write that poem for her with Hecuba, but the image stayed with me.
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Ah ha ha ha ouch yeah sigh.
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Yes! It's the most nicely worded damning review I've ever read.
As Guillermo del Toro pointed out at The Devils last night
. . . Does this mean you saw a theatrical showing of The Devils introduced by Guillermo del Toro?
(I agree with the point he's making; I just also want to know if I should be jealous of you.)
so long as everybody involved gets an Oscar clip moment.
Rrrrrgh.
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That's pretty awesome. The last film I saw in theaters that melted and needed to be put back together was My Favorite Year (1982), which the Brattle was showing in memory of Peter O'Toole; I thought it was appropriate.
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