Waiting for (the Plumber)

[handful_ofdust]

Man, I am so ready to not have this fucking cold anymore. Sooooo ready. As I sit here all congested, eyes still gummy from seven o'fucking clock A.M., coughing and feeling it rip right down my throat to my esophagus...

So: The trailer for X-Men: First Class just dropped, and it looks promising, but naturally, all this is prompting is a whole lot of "oh well, but I don't trust the Powers That Be anymore because X3 was so scarring, so I don't want to get too invested..." And OTOH, we have people rushing to get caught up on A Game of Thrones before the miniseries starts, thus cueing a whole lot of "oh my GOD, WTF, how can George R.R. Martin be so meeeeeeean!!!!!" Which...man, this really is a triggery goddamn world we live in these days, isn't it? Full of very easily triggered people. I kind of wonder how some of them get out of bed in the morning, frankly.

I don't know about you, but when I pick up a book, I want the author to shock and awe me. To make me care about the characters, then break my heart and run me through the ringer--so long, of course, as they stay true to their own internal logic. Which is why I never think of Game of Thrones as ending on a world-wrecking note, because [spoiler] is so closely followed by [other spoiler]--a twist that elevates through horror, opening up the playing-field once again in a way that changes the world forever. You can see [spoiler] as a sad story, yet not a new one--it's simply human badness, human error, human politicking and bastardry brought to fruition, the triumph of demon practicality over honor and hope. But [other spoiler] is something else entirely, the transformation of a person from one sort of archetype to a completely different one, the karma that everyone responsible for [spoiler] has sown and is now doomed to reap. It's fuckin' opera, man: Someone has to die.

But maybe that's what we're talking about, in the end...that fanfictioneer mindset which wants things static and infinitely reproducible, for nothing to ever grow or change. What amazes me is that they're so intensely conservative--that for people who trumpet the rise of Remix Culture, they often seem incapable of filtering out what they don't like in a narrative, picking and choosing and spackling it back together in a more palatable form. These are the same people who complain about 3:10 to Yuma's ending, and expect sympathy: Oh my God, things didn't go the way I hoped they would! No, they went the way you knew they were likely to, instead, and you see that as a betrayal--so much so, it makes you apparently so bitter you don't want to play anymore. Which is...disappointing, to say the least.

I guess, in the end, I really am like Chess Pargeter, in that I not only expect things to hurt, but firmly believe that that's the sort of contrast which makes the pleasure pop all the better. That that's what makes it good. Or maybe, as Alex Dunkleman tells Bug in My Soul to Take, you have to be a condor and eat death for breakfast, because the trick is to keep on telling them thanks a lot, that felt fucking great, even when it doesn't. Especially when it doesn't.

I mean, really: why would you ever be content to just give your power away like that? No one's got a gun to your head; no one's making you do anything. They're giving you a gift, raw clay with prompts attached, and you're acting like you've been slapped. You're the subversive, revolutionary one here, right? So nut up, or shut up.

Comments

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

In a way, I think that the miniseries is going to bridge the gap for a lot of people, in that it comes with the "same" characters and plot, but without a billion words' worth of prose attached. I also think A Song of Ice and Fire generally would've made a better graphic novel series in a lot of ways, because that would've reduced the narrative to bite-sized chunks. But then you have to wait for the art, so...tomato, toMAHto, in terms of time-lag.

One way or the other, I admire these books immensely, and I trust in their creator's sensibility. Which is more than almost anyone else seems to do, these days.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Daniel Abraham is writing a graphic novel adaptation, actually, check his blog for details. I may well be able to read that-- I love Martin, but something about the way he thinks makes him incredibly difficult for me to read, so whereas I can usually read a book in maybe two hours Dying of the Light took me nearly ten and it's like two hundred pages long. I am hoping that after there is a graphic novel and a miniseries I will know what happens in the book well enough to summon the energy to read it.

[sovay]

I also think A Song of Ice and Fire generally would've made a better graphic novel series in a lot of ways, because that would've reduced the narrative to bite-sized chunks.

And solved the problem where George R.R. Martin has a terrific prose style except when he's writing Westeros.

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I've really loved his "Dunk and Egg" supplemental material--the Hedge Knight graphic novels. Even more so in retrospect, when I learned that Ser Duncan the Tall might have been an ancestor of Brienne of Tairth.