A Book of Tongues: THUD

[handful_ofdust]

Words added: 1,042.
Where you at?: Chapter Two, section two...still. I hope to get through this conversation my characters are having sometime before the end of the week.
Words overall: 14,261.
Victories: I don't think I'm going to need to do much more research to get to the end of this sequence, which is a form of ecstasy in itself.
Challenges: Given all the discussion of cultural appropriation going on recently, I have to admit that much of what I just wrote will seem horribly racist at first glance--not in terms of content, hopefully, but definitely in terms of how my characters are behaving. Unfortunately, it's also historically accurate, and I don't know how to get around that except to keep doing what I've been doing: Making the non-white characters hopefully just as awesome and threatening, and trying to soothe the sting with small jokes like having one guy insist on speaking pidgin Cantonese to people who obviously only speak Mandarin.

Also: 500 more words on "Strange Weight", which takes me almost past the reef of action this chapter keeps snagging on. Can I hook this up before Friday? Stay tuned.

P.S.: I was also maybe thinking of doing that first lines of open files thing, cf. cristalia. Anyone interested?

P.P.S.: Hey, you know what else really reeks, in Hot New TV? The Mentalist. Oh my good God: I could sort of take the pilot, especially since Jane was revealed to have already been bitch-slapped at least once for his heinous behavior--not that I'm in favor of wives and kids dying, of course--but the hilarious part is, it doesn't really seem to have changed him much beyond making him harass a completely different set of people for purposes of justice as opposed to purposes of making lots of dough. Then I was watching last night's episode and realized that it hit two particular notes kelpqueen had recently pointed out to me as being completely unbearable: Its main character consistently acts in a way no other human being would ever let him get away with for long, and whenever he comes onscreen, the soundtrack suddenly turns into a herky-jerky mishmash of ooh, oh HEY! something FUNNY! something FUNNY GONNA HAPPEN! any fuckin' time now, NO DON'T GO, FUUUUNNNNYYYY!...

Yeah, not so much. Eat a dick, Mentalist.

Comments

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I was also maybe thinking of doing that first lines of open files thing, cf. cristalia. Anyone interested?

*raises hand*

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Okee-doke! Probably not 'til later tonight, though.

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

Woo!

[benet.livejournal.com]

making him harass a completely different set of people for purposes of justice as opposed to purposes of making lots of dough

This is similar to why I have yet to overcome my unwillingness to watch Dexter. You know, people pimping it to me with a pitch like: "Well, he's a serial killer - but he only kills bad people!" Well that makes it hunky-dory then, I always want to say. Maybe after that I can watch a show whose serial-rapist hero kills child molesters.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Dude, I'm totally with you there, and I like Dexter. this is actually the worst way to pitch it ever, because right from the start you can see how shaky this "moral" foundation he's constructed for himself is...and it's the process of watching it wobble and crack that's the most interesting part, aside from the wonderful net of secondary characters and B-plots.

[benet.livejournal.com]

Well, see, yeah. That makes me want to watch it.

Dexter

[kelpqueen.livejournal.com]

I would read the Dexter books first, if you think the show is not for you. I loved them. They are very very darkly funny. Which is why you have to keep reminding yourself, "Hey. This is a FUCKING SERIAL KILLER." The show is good, largely because of the cast, though I found season 1 difficult to watch because of its many deviations from the book. i.e. the book is funnier and also darker. The character of Dexter's sister suffers most--in the books she's a total hardass who just happens to look like a Playboy centrefold. But she's not someone you'd EVER fuck with, and I think by the end of the first book, she knows EXACTLY what Dexter is, but she continues to let him operate, partly because he's her (foster) brother, probably partly in deference to their dead father, who, after all, gave Dexter his "coping skills," and probably partly because Dexter, in his own demented psycho way, is doing the world more good in it, than out of it. In the show, Dexter's sister is one of those adorable-twitchy-neurotic basket cases that you'd want to slap the shit out of if you ever encountered them in real life. She's been added to my list of Repeat Offenders in this category, along with Ally McBeal and every fucking cast member of Desperate Housewives, except for Edie, who's just a bitch. Is this really, REALLY all we can do with women on TV in this millennium? Really? But I digress. Back to the Dexter books--he's also a much more, ah, shall we say, discerning serial killer in the books. He'd never stoop to killing bad people who are merely smuggling in illegal immigrants under horrible conditions and killing some of them. That would never interest him. He looks for VERY specific kinds of targets...anyone else would be sort of beneath his notice. Like I said--much grimmer than the series. And also more morally ambiguous. Though the last Dexter book was sort of...weird. It strayed into this odd science fictional territory that left me wondering whether I'd enjoyed the book or not. I felt like the social compact between reader & writer had been broken...i.e. Dexter is set in the "real" world, and now you have aliens...sort of...??? What??

I also thought the show made a lot of deviations from Dexter's character, in order to make him more sympathetic, which, to be honest, I found to be kind of a cop out, though I understand why they did it. Mind you, once we got to Season 2 and onward, the deviations from the books bothered me less as the show had set on its own part. I still hate Dexter's sister on the show though. But last season it was great fun to watch Jimmy Smits and Michael C. Hall play cat and mouse together, with Hall's understated "Who me?" face and Jimmy Smits over-the-top posturing, which totally worked for his character.

God, could I rant more? Sorry. : )

Re: Dexter

[benet.livejournal.com]

I recognize that I'm being unfair to the show, which I really ought to give a chance to independently of the books (which I should also check out, natch). It's really just that people's recommendation of it put it squarely into the "hey vigilantism is awesome!" bin in my head.

Re: Dexter

[kelpqueen.livejournal.com]

Don't think of it as vigilantism. Think of it, as I said, the most nutso-psycho set of coping skills taught by a parent to a child, ever. Except maybe in Genghis Khan's family? : )

Mentalist

[kelpqueen.livejournal.com]

See, there's something about The Mentalist that I really love, but I think it's just Simon Baker in the role. He IS terribly annoying, but it's like the rest of the show just disappears around him. Which, actually, isn't good. The ensemble cast needs to step it up. I know Baker's the focus, but still. I just love the premise so much--maybe it's because I would LOVE to be able to read people so easily. Maybe that's why it enthralls me. And yeah, I'm totally the one who gets annoyed with all that "ooh something funny's gonna happen" bullshit music, and stupid behaviour from characters that would get them slapped in real life. And I want Robin whatshernose (the lieutenant or whatever rank she is) to stop just being a fawning wide-eyed sycophant at the feet of Patrick Jane and actually BE A FUCKING COP. Argh. And some of the plots are asinine--I want there to be mysteries that are difficult to solve. And for them to deal with the moral implications of Jane's constant manipulations of people. And unfortunately, to me the most interesting thing is of course Jane's wackadoo connection/ relationship with Red John the serial killer. Now THAT'S the interesting part of the show. And it's unfortunate how little they deal with it, making almost every episode self-contained, when it would be much more interesting to have it crop up in every episode, if only in small ways. Has the success of almost every single fucking HBO serialized show not taught network TV anything? Christ on a cracker! But I'm still (shamefully) mesmerized for some reason...maybe the mentalist is hypnotizing me? Really looking forward to Tim Roth in Lie to Me, which has almost exactly the same premise, and has its season premiere tonight.

Re: Mentalist

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I kind of think he MUST be hypnotizing you, because you've just named ten other reasons I hate the show. In a row!;) And yet this is, apparently, the only breakout hit of last season. I blame God.

[sgiron.livejournal.com]

The Mentalist

Derek and I turned it on a couple of nights ago for the first time and lasted about ten minutes before switching to "My Name Is Earl." We thought we'd give The Mentalist a try because we had seen it win valuable prizes at the People's Choice Awards. Boy...we looked at each other after ten minutes and said,"Switch."

The acting? The story that night? I don't know, it didn't hook us and hell, we've watched "My Name Is Earl" more than once.

I was already annoyed with stuff and The Mentalist really rubbed me wrong that day.

Bring on a giant Exploding pusy giant toe full of flesh eating disease that manifested from a hottub recently installed in a trailer park. Earl stole the hottub for his ex-wife because he set her face and hair on fire by smoking while she was hairsrpaying her beehive and lost out on winning a hottub in the beuaty paegent. A bum with the disease had been sleeping in the hottub on the side of the road before Earl stole it! God it was disgusting and stupidly funny.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

All I can think is that it appeals to people who don't want to work too hard. Which, to me, is a shitty recommendation for any way to essentially waste your time--it's like saying: "The really great part is, you can be folding your laundry at the same time, and feel like you haven't missed a thing!"