Remember your Marquis of Queensbury rules. Um, just who was the Marquis of Queensbury anyway?
The link is to the most famous scene from John Ford's classic romance film The Quiet Man. Ahhh, every St. Patrick's Day I break out the DVD and watch this film. The romance involved isn't so much Sean Thorton (John Wayne) courting the fiery redhead Mary Kate Danaher (Maureen O'Hara), it's director John Ford being in love with Ireland itself. Ford was the son of Irish immigrants, and the theme of "Those Who Are Irish, and Those Who Wish They Were" pops up a lot in his films. Actually, I kid: Ford's recurrent theme throughout his films was Community, be it an actual town, an outpost of U.S. Calvary, or a band of brothers of some form.
Alert: here on there be SPOILERS, I do give away a lot of the film's plot. Still and all you should see the film, it's near perfect.
Here, the community is Innisfree, an idyllic coastal village two steps removed from Brigadoon or Avalon. Thorton is returning to the home of his parents from the United States, bringing with him wealth but a troubled soul. He wants to find heaven, which Innisfree has become for him, and he just wants to settle in his father's abandoned house and grow roses. Conflict immediately rises up when he repurchases the property from the Widow Tillane, drawing the ire of "Squire" Will Danaher who coveted the land (and the widow). Thorton had also come across Will's sister Mary Kate ("O that red hair of hers is no lie") and becomes smitten with her (and she with him), but being American is unschooled in the then-Irish customs of matchmaking and courtship. Will, as head of his house, refuses to let bygones be and allow his sister to even look at Sean. So the townfolk of Innisfree, coming to think of Thorton as "the best man in Innisfree" (another reason Will Danaher hates him), decide to help out by tricking Will into thinking the Widow Tillane won't marry him until Mary Kate leaves his house. The ruse works well enough to lead to Sean and Mary Kate's wedding... but then Will Danaher finds out he'd been tricked and refuses to pass on Mary Kate's dowry. Sean, having his own small fortune, doesn't see the bother: Mary Kate, knowing the money is her sign of independence from her brother, is infuriated her new husband won't fight for her rights. Their passionate love turns to equally passionate anger, and the Innisfree folk share the doldrums. It's just that, other than the Protestant minister who follows the sport of boxing, no one knows that Thorton had accidentally killed a fellow boxer during a fight ("For what? Lousy stinking money.") and has been guilt-ridden about throwing a punch ever since.
Things come to a head when Mary Kate shames Sean by running away: finally angered up, Thorton chases after her and drags her from the railroad station. Having interrupted a squabble already in progress, the train crew and just as quickly the whole town of Innisfree come arunning to witness the confrontation. Thorton openly calls Will Danaher out for the dowry in front of the whole community, and when he refuses Thorton calls the marriage quits. Now embarrassed that his sister could be shamed by the annulment, Will tosses the money at Sean's feet and curses him.
Sean takes the money and heads straight to a nearby kiln. Mary Kate meets him there and opens the oven, letting her husband toss her dowry into the fire. He's proven he has the backbone to stand up for his love: she's proven she had no interest in the money, just only the integrity of being his wife. All demons are resolved except one, and that leads to the epic donnybrook between Sean Thorton and Will Danaher.
The fight quickly proves to be more comedic than tragic: Will is physically fit enough to trade blows with the more professional Sean, and the two quickly figure out it's not really a fight to the death. What really happens is that the town of Innisfree is rejuvenated: the town elder (played by the director's older brother Francis) literally springs from his deathbed to watch the fight; the local police are more interested in tallying bets from other agencies; the Protestant minister wagers (a bit unfairly as he knew Thorton's rep) with his visiting bishop; and the Widow Tillane finally expresses her love for the bull-headed Will. The film ends with a reaffirmation of the community (and a shot of Will Danaher and the Widow Tillane on the courtship cart), with all the major cast members waving Hello to the audience.
Did warn you about the SPOILER, but you should still see the movie. As I mentioned earlier, it's John Ford's love letter to his old family's homeland of Ireland, and of the four Directing Oscars he'd garnered over his career I'd wager the one he got for Quiet Man had to be the one he most prided on. If you see enough of Ford's films, you'll notice he works like a canvass painter: scenes staged with almost snapshot-framing precision; vast landscapes in incredible detail (every director loves to film in Monument Valley: Ford's the only one to ever do that place justice); characters posed (sometimes rather stiffly) as for portraits to hang on museum walls. The Quiet Man is Ford at his best. It was filmed almost all on location (a rarity in those days when it was cheaper to film in California and pretend it was Toronto: now it's the other way around), and Ford's eye captures the beauty of the landscape. The cinematographers (Winton C. Hoch and Archie Stout) also won Oscars for their work on this film as well. The location scenery caught in Technicolor was so gorgeous that it actually causes a problem: for certain shots Ford had to film 'outdoor' scenes on a stage, and the switch is so noticeable (especially during a horse race and especially the rousing fight) that it jars the viewers. It's the film's biggest flaw.
You can tell it's a love letter because the film is really an American's dream of an ideal Ireland. People of Innisfree may be improvished but they're happy. Most mentions of the Troubles are practically asides: the local Sinn Fein plotters are more concerned with the next lager than with blowing up buildings. There's an elderly gent in some scenes, upper class gentry, and I think he's meant to be an implanted English lord. There's a running gag of seeing this guy in the background completely oblivious to the going-ons, while the Catholic priest played by Ward Bond and the leprechaun-like matchmaker played by Barry Fitzgerald are the true town leaders. The film ends with the mostly Catholic townfolk cheering on the Protestant minister in order to convince his bishop to let the minister stay: only an Irish-American long separated from the religious divisions that still rack Ireland and Northern Ireland would conceive such a scene back in the 1950s.
What makes this movie near-perfect is also the cast: the biggest problem in a lot of Ford's films is that the actors' performances tend to be a bit stiff, but in the Quiet Man nearly everyone is relaxed and you can tell the cast are enjoying themselves. The performance that will shock you the most is John Wayne's: while he's usually the hero and 'gets the girl' in a lot of his films, the Quiet Man was the first one (maybe the only film) where he's genuinely a romantic figure first and action hero last. His acting alongside Maureen O'Hara, especially the tender scenes, and the wordless flashback to his boxing accident showed actual acting chops. Usually it's John Wayne starring as John Wayne: here's, it's John Wayne as Sean Thorton. That Wayne didn't even get nominated for an Oscar for this role remains one of the Top 10 Injustices in Hollywood History (it ranks below Edward G. Robinson never getting an acting nomination at all, and above Annie Hall beating out Star Wars for Best Picture).
Maureen O'Hara, by the time of this film, was one of Hollywood's most beautiful leading ladies, probably the most beautiful redhead in film history. Her performance in Quiet Man is all passion, nearly combative with every character but with firm purpose and with genuine desire. Her pairing with Wayne here is considered one of filmdom's greatest romantic performances ever (Speilberg payed homage to the kissing scene in E.T.).
As for the rest of the cast, well. Ford was well-known for working with a standing company of regulars, and for each of them this was a good time for them to dust off their comedic skills. Victor McLaglen is usually a clownish figure in a lot of them: here it's put to good use as the bullying brother who needs a good bop on the nose to put him in his place. He received a Best Supporting nomination here. Equally up to the task were the likes of Ward Bond (who serves as narrator as well as the head priest Father Lonergan) and Barry Fitzgerald (as the matchmaker Michaleen Ole Flynn). You have to watch Fitzgerald's slow burn when he finds the newlywed's bed in shambles. The rest of the cast was pretty much related to everybody else (Maureen's brothers played the young priest and/or one of the Sinn Fein drinkers, uh plotters). As another sign of this being John Ford's love letter, his older brother Francis gets a lot of prime scenery-chewing, and at the end Francis gets the only solo shout-out to the audience.
My film-viewing fare tends towards science fiction and action thrillers. The Quiet Man is one of the few romances I even openly admit to having seen, and one of two I own on DVD. 'Cause there's nothing wrong with that: it's one of the best movies ever. Makes you wanna finish up filing for a passport so you can go visit Innisfree!
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Checking in 02/2009
Still job hunting.
There's not much else to say or do at the moment, other than to say that for all the resumes I've sent out there's a lot of waiting time for any responses...
There's also the US Census jobbers: I had taken the civil service exam, passed it, but now I'm waiting for the call if it ever comes.
Sigh. Tons of.
There's not much else to say or do at the moment, other than to say that for all the resumes I've sent out there's a lot of waiting time for any responses...
There's also the US Census jobbers: I had taken the civil service exam, passed it, but now I'm waiting for the call if it ever comes.
Sigh. Tons of.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Form of Things Unknown
Pardon for the last post, I was trying to get something aligned between this blog and the Technocrati site. Don't think it worked...
Currently, I'm still job-hunting, checking out every opening in the state of Florida for librarian spots, and kinda keeping an eye open on the other states as well. Otherwise, not much else to report other than pleading with God about my hair... double crowns, YOU had to give me double crowns...
Currently, I'm still job-hunting, checking out every opening in the state of Florida for librarian spots, and kinda keeping an eye open on the other states as well. Otherwise, not much else to report other than pleading with God about my hair... double crowns, YOU had to give me double crowns...
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
LibraryThing
I added the LibraryThing gadget to this blog, as you may note to the right of the screen here. :)
This is still an incomplete list, as there's still about 3-4 shelves of books I need to cart to my computer so I can plug in the ISBN numbers to insert the records. But now I've got something to do in between emailing resumes everywhere...
This is still an incomplete list, as there's still about 3-4 shelves of books I need to cart to my computer so I can plug in the ISBN numbers to insert the records. But now I've got something to do in between emailing resumes everywhere...
Thursday, January 1, 2009
New Year's Resolutions 2009
1) Aw, gee, pondering for a moment... oh yeah, GET A JOB
2) I hereby resolve to get my weight back down to 275 lbs. I was there briefly and need to get back there again.
3) I hereby resolve to work on one short story or one book chapter per week. Get something good finished, maybe published.
44) I hereby resolve to actually finish a NaNoWriMo. I finished a 3-Day Novel contest to some satisfaction, now I gotta finish the other challenge.
555555) I hereby resolve to, you know, actually get my resolutions resolved. Ayup.
2) I hereby resolve to get my weight back down to 275 lbs. I was there briefly and need to get back there again.
3) I hereby resolve to work on one short story or one book chapter per week. Get something good finished, maybe published.
44) I hereby resolve to actually finish a NaNoWriMo. I finished a 3-Day Novel contest to some satisfaction, now I gotta finish the other challenge.
555555) I hereby resolve to, you know, actually get my resolutions resolved. Ayup.
Wednesday, December 24, 2008
Witty's Year End Book Review 2008
So what if I'm not a librarian anymore! I still read dammit!
Just as a reminder, this isn't a list of new books that came out from 2008 or 2007, these are simply the best books I've read this year.
Best Fiction Book
Every so often I go back and read a title I've passed by before, which is where Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett comes in. Part of his expansive Discworld series, it's a bit of a stand-alone book as it's not fully part of any sub-series like the Weird Sisters or the tales set in Anhk Morpork (although cameos abound). A relatively serious work (okay, there's still jokes and puns aplenty), the novel details the struggles of a young man selected by a Large God of Discworld (one of many) named Om whose followers are losing so much faith in Him that he's been reduced to the form of a turtle. Struggling to re-establish true faith across the land, the boy and his Turtle-god discover that Om's religion has become oppressive and more obsessed with ritual and routine, and the land ripe for war. Serious questions - admist the wordplay - about faith abound, especially when Pratchett reveals at the end the fate of believers - true and fake - in the Discworld afterlife. It's a more serious work than others in Pratchett's 'Verse, but I consider it a good introduction to the place moreso than any of the serial novels. It also contains a fave quote: One day a tortoise will learn how to fly...
Best Non-Fiction Book
No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty.
I grabbed this off the Pasco library shelves more than once. Mostly because it's a survival guide for NaNoWriMo. Not that it helped me much this year... 9k word count, sigh... bummer, and damn... but still it's a good motivation and how-to book on writing. Sincerely suggest all would-be writers take a glance.
Best Graphic Novel
Empowered Volume 4, by Adam Warren.
Just a warning, this is a graphic novel not meant for kids. There's still a few people out there who think comic books are all for 13-under preteens. Sorry, there's a market for adult-level comics. And Empowered fits that market to a T. There's no outright nudity, but there's enough exposed flesh shown to hint at what's what. We do see couples getting intimate, and there are elements of sexual roleplaying and yes bondage (which I'll get into later in this review). A bigger issue would be the profanity the characters drop nearly every other word, although most of those are bleeped out (savvy cursing enthusiasts can tell which f-word and s-word is which). If there's an appropriate age level for reading this, I'd say 16-up.
It's a superhero series set in its own universe (it's not Marvel or DC with their own multiverse problems), where nearly everyone we meet are spandex-bound metahumans with overly sized muscles for the guys and overly sized... ah, "tracks of land" for the ladies. But in Warren's world, everyone's got emotional issues: the guy heroes are all confused poseurs more worried about their battle cries than doing a good job; the women heroines have emotional issues stemming from high school traumas. In Warren's most cutting idea, nearly everyone in his universe gets their superpowers from sexually transmitted diseases (one superhero group forms from a STD support group).
In to this world comes Empowered, a young lass and rookie heroine who somehow inherited a powersuit that grants her strength and energy blasts. Unfortunately, the suit is hyperthin and prone to tearing up, meaning one scratch makes her powerless. And in her world, all the thugs and supervillains are adept at hog-tying people: while they won't kill her (cape-killing is akin to cop-killing), they do the more humiliating thing of tying her up and leaving her bound and helpless and half-naked for the world to see. She wants to do good, but she ends up an embarrassment and mocked - sometime openly by her supposed teammates the Superhomeys - by all, leaving her prone to massive emotional issues of her own (as the series progresses, readers learn that the suit is still powerful when torn: it's really powered by Emp's emotional state, which is as fragile as the suit).
Warren started off this series as a set of one-off panels and artwork, mostly from requests he'd get at comic cons from guys desperate for good-girl (and bad-girl) art of bound women. Yeah, some guys are into that. From that, he starts off with a series of witty, sadly brutal stories about a heroine in constant bondage, and the surprising thing is that he actually brings up troubling questions about just what it is that's making us watch her get bound and gagged in the first place.
Because Warren provides depth to his characters, especially Emp. We watch not only her getting bound and gagged, but we also watch the emotional turmoil afterwards when she's back home trying to cope. As she gathers a small circle of friends - a boyfriend called Thugboy, a former ex-thug who was the first to say nice things to her; a female friend and New Jersey ninja (!) Ninjette; and a captured dimensional wolfdemon trapped in a powerbelt and left on her coffee table constantly demanding the latest DVD series to watch - she gains an audience to hear her gripes and provide emotional support. And with her friends' emotional issues - Thugboy's backstory of crossing other Heroes and Villains keeps popping up; Ninjette's fleeing from an abusive family home that's slowly catching up with her - thrown into the mix, we get to compare/contrast all the trauma everyone's going through. Wait, what was my point?
The point is, this isn't all titillation for us. Warren throws out ideas about bondage and what it actually means: is it really fun to watch someone get bound and gagged and humiliated? How much of this is really about sex, or even about fun? In Volume 4, Warren takes us right to the edge of 'Uncomfortable' when he has Empowered show up for a Make-A-Wish event for a cancer-sick preteen boy... only to find the boy's wish is to be a supervillain and roleplay 'capturing' a heroine like her. At what point to we readers worry about the pedo aspects of this questionable roleplay...? Bondage and empowerment (there's that word) issues come up when her best friend Ninjette is hunted and captured by a rival ninja clan at the climax of Volume 3, one of the more violent and unsettling stories in the series (yet).
Volume 4 picks up where 3 left off, with Ninjette suffering the psychological trauma of her near-mutilation by the ninja bounty hunters. But while she's dealing with that, Empowered gets word that she's up for an award (the Capeys, the Oscars of superheroing and as equally self-serving) that ups her self-esteem to new heights... only to find out from her teammates the Superhomeys that the award is a joke, comparing her to an earlier pathetic hero who was devastated by the prank years earlier and seemingly disappeared...
This volume is when we see where Warren is going with this series: it's not about sexual empowerment (regarding the bondage and sex-roleplay issues) as it is about emotional empowerment, the struggle against other people's torments upon our heroes. The plotline of the prank award is the latest and largest blow yet: an open mockery of Emp's attempts to be a real heroine and save others. The conclusion of the plotline - where the awards ceremony turns into a deathtrap - is completely satisfying, and hints that Empowered may have finally proved her worth (slight SPOILER there: that Empowered defeats the bad guy even with her suit in tatters suggests she's learning that she's still powerful even when it's torn).
The beauty of the series is with the characters: no one is two-dimensional and everyone adds value to the storyline. Best of all is the development for Empowered's nemesis, Sistah Spooky, the one Superhomey literally working hard to make Emp's life as miserable as possible. It's Spooky who, after a heart-to-heart with an ex-lover warning her of her phobia against attractive blondes (Sistah Spooky's origin from Volume 1 is hilariously twisted in its own right), reveals to Emp that her Capey nomination is a prank. And Spooky's horrendous love life and the poor decisions she's made there provide an arc of sympathy that might allow our heroine Empowered a better career in future issues.
Nah, that won't happen. Warren's gonna figure other more devious ways to get Empowered tied up again. Maybe with Canadian-grade hemp...?
Best (not really) Unavoidable Book of Ultimate Destiny
Anything by Stephenie Meyer, but especially Breaking Dawn, the fourth volume of her Sparkly Vampire series. I swear, SPARKLY VAMPIRES. This is, actually, something I avoided at all costs. Everything I heard from the summaries - emo teen girl meets broody vampire boy 'neath a silvery moonwhich then explodes for no good reason actually the only thing exploding are the moody werewolves yeah that does happen - made me just sit back and think: "Wait. Wasn't this from the Roswell High series???"
This whole series is basically an overripe Harlequin romance novel with extra teen angst thrown in for good measure. Not for guys, this is definitely for teen girls... and their moms. Oy.
There is a book recently out by Meyer however, that's not part of that vampire series and by all reports is actually pretty good: The Host. It's an alien invasion story, where humans are possessed by space-wandering parasites. Uninfected humans are in the minority and try to hide and fight back against the takeover, and one rebel girl is captured and merged with a parasite that ends up sympathetic to her cause, joining with her even as separate personalities in the fight to end the invasion. Of course, there's still a cute boy or two motivating the heroine(s)... This wasn't a book of Ultimate Destiny (which means a book of hyped expectations, much like Harry Potter's series finale last year), so it didn't fully fit this category the way Breaking Dawn did. I didn't read The Host: I did give it as a birthday present to my friends' teenage daughter, and she liked it. It will be a series of its' own, so keep an eye out.
Best Book by Someone I Know and Corresponded with via Email on an Occasional Basis
This breaks down to basically two people: Stefan Petrucha and Sheryl Nantus. Since I did Sheryl last year I'll see about reviewing one of Stefan's work.
Petrucha I know from the old old days of the Topps X-Files comic book series, when I did online reviews of the comic, and Petrucha went out of his way to gripe about my speeling errors. Ah, fun times. ;)
He's in constant production by the look of things, mostly with working on Nancy Drew paperbacks (!) and Mickey Mouse comics (!!! dude? Well, hey I guess work is work...) but of higher literary value is a recent work The Rule of Won. Meant for young adult audiences, there's enough bite here for adults to enjoy. The Rule of Won is about a teen slacker drawn in to an overactive high school social club obsessing over a self-help book similar to that Secret book. Only this time, the motivationals seem to be working all too well, and people are getting what they want... with painful consequences. Eventually the slacker has to rise up and get a part-time job at the mall... um, fight back against the evil teen overlords. While it falls into the familiar teen novel realm of standing against peer pressure and groupthink, the snarky ripping into self-help thinking is what caught my eye and fit my reading mood.
So with that, Io Saturnalia and Happy New Year. Now, back to job-hunting...
Just as a reminder, this isn't a list of new books that came out from 2008 or 2007, these are simply the best books I've read this year.
Best Fiction Book
Every so often I go back and read a title I've passed by before, which is where Small Gods, by Terry Pratchett comes in. Part of his expansive Discworld series, it's a bit of a stand-alone book as it's not fully part of any sub-series like the Weird Sisters or the tales set in Anhk Morpork (although cameos abound). A relatively serious work (okay, there's still jokes and puns aplenty), the novel details the struggles of a young man selected by a Large God of Discworld (one of many) named Om whose followers are losing so much faith in Him that he's been reduced to the form of a turtle. Struggling to re-establish true faith across the land, the boy and his Turtle-god discover that Om's religion has become oppressive and more obsessed with ritual and routine, and the land ripe for war. Serious questions - admist the wordplay - about faith abound, especially when Pratchett reveals at the end the fate of believers - true and fake - in the Discworld afterlife. It's a more serious work than others in Pratchett's 'Verse, but I consider it a good introduction to the place moreso than any of the serial novels. It also contains a fave quote: One day a tortoise will learn how to fly...
Best Non-Fiction Book
No Plot? No Problem! by Chris Baty.
I grabbed this off the Pasco library shelves more than once. Mostly because it's a survival guide for NaNoWriMo. Not that it helped me much this year... 9k word count, sigh... bummer, and damn... but still it's a good motivation and how-to book on writing. Sincerely suggest all would-be writers take a glance.
Best Graphic Novel
Empowered Volume 4, by Adam Warren.
Just a warning, this is a graphic novel not meant for kids. There's still a few people out there who think comic books are all for 13-under preteens. Sorry, there's a market for adult-level comics. And Empowered fits that market to a T. There's no outright nudity, but there's enough exposed flesh shown to hint at what's what. We do see couples getting intimate, and there are elements of sexual roleplaying and yes bondage (which I'll get into later in this review). A bigger issue would be the profanity the characters drop nearly every other word, although most of those are bleeped out (savvy cursing enthusiasts can tell which f-word and s-word is which). If there's an appropriate age level for reading this, I'd say 16-up.
It's a superhero series set in its own universe (it's not Marvel or DC with their own multiverse problems), where nearly everyone we meet are spandex-bound metahumans with overly sized muscles for the guys and overly sized... ah, "tracks of land" for the ladies. But in Warren's world, everyone's got emotional issues: the guy heroes are all confused poseurs more worried about their battle cries than doing a good job; the women heroines have emotional issues stemming from high school traumas. In Warren's most cutting idea, nearly everyone in his universe gets their superpowers from sexually transmitted diseases (one superhero group forms from a STD support group).
In to this world comes Empowered, a young lass and rookie heroine who somehow inherited a powersuit that grants her strength and energy blasts. Unfortunately, the suit is hyperthin and prone to tearing up, meaning one scratch makes her powerless. And in her world, all the thugs and supervillains are adept at hog-tying people: while they won't kill her (cape-killing is akin to cop-killing), they do the more humiliating thing of tying her up and leaving her bound and helpless and half-naked for the world to see. She wants to do good, but she ends up an embarrassment and mocked - sometime openly by her supposed teammates the Superhomeys - by all, leaving her prone to massive emotional issues of her own (as the series progresses, readers learn that the suit is still powerful when torn: it's really powered by Emp's emotional state, which is as fragile as the suit).
Warren started off this series as a set of one-off panels and artwork, mostly from requests he'd get at comic cons from guys desperate for good-girl (and bad-girl) art of bound women. Yeah, some guys are into that. From that, he starts off with a series of witty, sadly brutal stories about a heroine in constant bondage, and the surprising thing is that he actually brings up troubling questions about just what it is that's making us watch her get bound and gagged in the first place.
Because Warren provides depth to his characters, especially Emp. We watch not only her getting bound and gagged, but we also watch the emotional turmoil afterwards when she's back home trying to cope. As she gathers a small circle of friends - a boyfriend called Thugboy, a former ex-thug who was the first to say nice things to her; a female friend and New Jersey ninja (!) Ninjette; and a captured dimensional wolfdemon trapped in a powerbelt and left on her coffee table constantly demanding the latest DVD series to watch - she gains an audience to hear her gripes and provide emotional support. And with her friends' emotional issues - Thugboy's backstory of crossing other Heroes and Villains keeps popping up; Ninjette's fleeing from an abusive family home that's slowly catching up with her - thrown into the mix, we get to compare/contrast all the trauma everyone's going through. Wait, what was my point?
The point is, this isn't all titillation for us. Warren throws out ideas about bondage and what it actually means: is it really fun to watch someone get bound and gagged and humiliated? How much of this is really about sex, or even about fun? In Volume 4, Warren takes us right to the edge of 'Uncomfortable' when he has Empowered show up for a Make-A-Wish event for a cancer-sick preteen boy... only to find the boy's wish is to be a supervillain and roleplay 'capturing' a heroine like her. At what point to we readers worry about the pedo aspects of this questionable roleplay...? Bondage and empowerment (there's that word) issues come up when her best friend Ninjette is hunted and captured by a rival ninja clan at the climax of Volume 3, one of the more violent and unsettling stories in the series (yet).
Volume 4 picks up where 3 left off, with Ninjette suffering the psychological trauma of her near-mutilation by the ninja bounty hunters. But while she's dealing with that, Empowered gets word that she's up for an award (the Capeys, the Oscars of superheroing and as equally self-serving) that ups her self-esteem to new heights... only to find out from her teammates the Superhomeys that the award is a joke, comparing her to an earlier pathetic hero who was devastated by the prank years earlier and seemingly disappeared...
This volume is when we see where Warren is going with this series: it's not about sexual empowerment (regarding the bondage and sex-roleplay issues) as it is about emotional empowerment, the struggle against other people's torments upon our heroes. The plotline of the prank award is the latest and largest blow yet: an open mockery of Emp's attempts to be a real heroine and save others. The conclusion of the plotline - where the awards ceremony turns into a deathtrap - is completely satisfying, and hints that Empowered may have finally proved her worth (slight SPOILER there: that Empowered defeats the bad guy even with her suit in tatters suggests she's learning that she's still powerful even when it's torn).
The beauty of the series is with the characters: no one is two-dimensional and everyone adds value to the storyline. Best of all is the development for Empowered's nemesis, Sistah Spooky, the one Superhomey literally working hard to make Emp's life as miserable as possible. It's Spooky who, after a heart-to-heart with an ex-lover warning her of her phobia against attractive blondes (Sistah Spooky's origin from Volume 1 is hilariously twisted in its own right), reveals to Emp that her Capey nomination is a prank. And Spooky's horrendous love life and the poor decisions she's made there provide an arc of sympathy that might allow our heroine Empowered a better career in future issues.
Nah, that won't happen. Warren's gonna figure other more devious ways to get Empowered tied up again. Maybe with Canadian-grade hemp...?
Best (not really) Unavoidable Book of Ultimate Destiny
Anything by Stephenie Meyer, but especially Breaking Dawn, the fourth volume of her Sparkly Vampire series. I swear, SPARKLY VAMPIRES. This is, actually, something I avoided at all costs. Everything I heard from the summaries - emo teen girl meets broody vampire boy 'neath a silvery moon
This whole series is basically an overripe Harlequin romance novel with extra teen angst thrown in for good measure. Not for guys, this is definitely for teen girls... and their moms. Oy.
There is a book recently out by Meyer however, that's not part of that vampire series and by all reports is actually pretty good: The Host. It's an alien invasion story, where humans are possessed by space-wandering parasites. Uninfected humans are in the minority and try to hide and fight back against the takeover, and one rebel girl is captured and merged with a parasite that ends up sympathetic to her cause, joining with her even as separate personalities in the fight to end the invasion. Of course, there's still a cute boy or two motivating the heroine(s)... This wasn't a book of Ultimate Destiny (which means a book of hyped expectations, much like Harry Potter's series finale last year), so it didn't fully fit this category the way Breaking Dawn did. I didn't read The Host: I did give it as a birthday present to my friends' teenage daughter, and she liked it. It will be a series of its' own, so keep an eye out.
Best Book by Someone I Know and Corresponded with via Email on an Occasional Basis
This breaks down to basically two people: Stefan Petrucha and Sheryl Nantus. Since I did Sheryl last year I'll see about reviewing one of Stefan's work.
Petrucha I know from the old old days of the Topps X-Files comic book series, when I did online reviews of the comic, and Petrucha went out of his way to gripe about my speeling errors. Ah, fun times. ;)
He's in constant production by the look of things, mostly with working on Nancy Drew paperbacks (!) and Mickey Mouse comics (!!! dude? Well, hey I guess work is work...) but of higher literary value is a recent work The Rule of Won. Meant for young adult audiences, there's enough bite here for adults to enjoy. The Rule of Won is about a teen slacker drawn in to an overactive high school social club obsessing over a self-help book similar to that Secret book. Only this time, the motivationals seem to be working all too well, and people are getting what they want... with painful consequences. Eventually the slacker has to rise up and get a part-time job at the mall... um, fight back against the evil teen overlords. While it falls into the familiar teen novel realm of standing against peer pressure and groupthink, the snarky ripping into self-help thinking is what caught my eye and fit my reading mood.
So with that, Io Saturnalia and Happy New Year. Now, back to job-hunting...
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)