WED READING MEME.........
Nov. 25th, 2015 10:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatPosting from beautiful Hilton Head, South Carolina. Although it could be a heck of a lot warmer. Was supposed to be in the 60s and 70s this week, but it's actually in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. Oh well, NYC is colder. And guess what? It will drift up into the 70s again once I'm gone.
1. What I just finished reading?
Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran -- too much navel gazing on the part of both characters, admittedly a flaw of the romance genre. It did start out well though, loved the first half, was incredibly bored during the second. Yes, yes, I know you love each other but don't think you can be together but can't keep your hands off one another - confront the villain already.
X-Men: Prelude to Schism - This is basically a series of issues with our heroes worrying over a big crisis event and putting all the pressure on their leader of the moment, Cyclops, to figure out how to make it work. If he does the right thing - he'll be their hero and the greatest man ever. If he fails, then they'll abandon him. It's not clear what the crisis event is - and each of the head male leaders discusses it with Cyclops, along with revealing a bit about their own back story or Cyclops back story in the process. The series is meant to shed light on Cyclops, Magneto, Xavier, and Wolverine's motivations.
Unfortunately, it is highly male-centric, neither Storm nor Emma Frost appear to have much say in the matter. Which is actually the biggest flaw in the X-men post Grant Morrison/Josh Whedon's reign, the focus is on the male characters, with the female characters as supporting or second string. I'm not sure if Keiron Gillian, Bendeis, Fraction, Aaron, and Brubacker just aren't comfortable putting women front and center in the main arc (they do have a somewhat cheesy secondary title - the X-women), or if the writers just aren't interested in those characters?
Also, as nice as it is to know these characters motivations -- it doesn't really go anywhere, worse, it contradicts the story that follows it -- making Wolverine's actions seem insanely out of character and hypocritical in all of the comics that follow. In Prelude - Wolverine insists they stay on the island no matter what, not run away, and everyone engage in the fight. Xavier states that he will be supporting Scott through each crisis, and take the burden from him if it gets to be too much. Magneto warns Scott not to bring children into it, and not go down the road he did or Charles did. Which to be fair, Charles warns this as well. In the limited five issue miniseries that follows, which is outside the main titles but affects them all, splitting Uncanny X-men into two new titles as a result, all these characters do the exact opposite of what they say they are going to do in Prelude. I'm guessing the writers were trying for some sort of dramatic irony...except it's not clear what crisis if any Prelude was about. Was it "Fear Itself"? If so, Cyclops was successful. Or is it "Avengers vs. X-men", in which most of the characters weren't supporting Cyclops and he was on his own. Neat comic, but doesn't seem to fit within the arc.
The problem with long-running serial writers - is 1) too many changes in writers, 2) the writers don't read the back story and contradict themselves, and 3) due in part to 1&2 they suck at plotting. (In other words, B doesn't always follow A, sometimes it follows Q, by way of Z.)
X-Men: Schism --The cataclysmic event that changes the X-men forever. (Sigh). Interesting comic, with some interesting themes. Doesn't quite work, but interesting all the same.
The children of various nefarious and insanely wealthy humans band together to take down their parents, and the X-men (or anyone with power) in order to become powerful themselves. They are basically between the ages of 10-14. The story starts with Kildar, the son of an arms dealer, shooting his father and throwing him out of a flying car, in order to take over the company and take his father's place at the Hellfire Club. He recruits three other nasty kids to his cause, a sociopathic junior beauty queen who has an affinity for martial arts, a young Dr. Frankenstein, who likes weird experiments, and a junior slave dealer - who sold his family to an alien planet of flesh eating trolls. These kids thrive on violence. Meanwhile, back on Utopia, where the X-men reside, Wolverine has just gotten back from being beaten up again. He's covered in various arrows and gun-shot wounds. The kids on Utopia have been waiting for him to teach their combat training class, which he keeps blowing off. Instead, he wants them to play like children. These kids are between the ages of 14-18, although it's hard to tell with the X-Men artists. In addition, they have massive superpowers, all without exception has had people repeatedly try to kill them, their families are either dead (murdered) or abandoned them. He gets one little girl a doll - the girl is 14. She tells him when she was ten, she was trying to survive not worried about dolls. And when he passes Kitty Pryde, who had gotten the doll for him, Kitty reminds him that he was teaching her how to become a ninja at that age.
Scott/Cyclops interrupts Wolverine's attempt to sleep with a request that he accompany him to an armistice talk at the UN. Scott is attempting to convince the world's leaders to disarm the sentinels which have been attempting to kill him since he was 14. And have slaughtered various children and students under his care. This is a guy who has basically lost most of his family. Had a bomb planted in his chest by the government weapons agents, and every time he turns around is attempting to stop someone from being killed. Wolverine, who at one time was being turned into a weapon to fight mutants and is currently on X-Force ( a murder squad originally set up by Cyclops but disbanded by him as wrong, yet continued by Wolverine), and acts as an Avenger...reluctantly comes along. Wolverine basically is a living weapon. Cyclops needs him as his back-up or one man security team.
The Hellfire club of nasty but powerfully rich kiddies strikes at the conference -- releasing an insanely powerful telepath from Utopia's prisons to play with everyone's heads at the conference.
Much chaos ensues. And the world leaders decide to arm themselves against mutants, except their arms are defective, and Cyclops has to send people around the world to save the humans from the sentinels.
Distracted, all the adults away fighting the good fight, no help from the Avengers on the horizon, the kids launch an attack directly at a museum, where he's sent his heaviest hitters - Magneto, Frost, Namor, Colossus, Magick...and the junior team. The nasty kids with some supernatural space slugs take out the heavy hitters. Who are on the ground, injured. The other kids are also taken out. Wolverine, who is sulking at a bar and sees it all on the news, screams at Indie, who has a lot of power to flee the museum, but she's found a bomb. She can't hear him of course. Scott via the communication link they have, tells her to do whatever is necessary to disarm the bomb and the villains, in order to save everyone inside, since neither Wolverine nor himself will get there in time. She does so - killing ten of the nasty kids nasty henchmen. Wolverine is furious - since now Indie has to deal with their deaths, and has no remorse because she sees herself as a monster. (Okay, in her home country, she had also killed lots of people when her powers first manifested. It's not like this is a new occurrence. And she already saw herself this way. At least this round she was saving lives, not just her own.)
They all head back to Utopia. Everyone is either on the other side of the globe fighting defective sentinels, or incapaciated by nasty slugs. The only adult fighter on the island at this point is Cyclops. Wolverine is sulking somewhere else. The Hellfire club sends a new Sentinel - the worst one ever to the island to destroy it. Generation Hope - the junior team, tells Cyclops they aren't going to let him fight the monster by himself. He initially tells them to evacuate the island. They insist on staying. He pauses and says, okay, you're right - it's your choice. Wolverine shows up and insists they leave. That Cyclops order them to evacuate. Cyclops says it's their choice. Wolverine gets a bomb. He tells Cyclops that he will blow up the island, with everyone on it, including the wounded, if Cyclops doesn't order evacuation. (The only one who won't die is Wolverine, who has a healing factor.) The Sentinel attacks. Cyclops is now fighting Wolverine, who has a detonator, and the Sentinel. And they are losing badly. The kids take action and save both Cyclops and Wolverine's lives, and help defeat the Sentinel. Wolverine is furious and says he's leaving Utopia, going back to their roots. Re-starting Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters - now called The Jean Grey School of Higher Learning. In the bombed out remains of the old one in West Chester - the school that has been destroyed by Sentinels, Purifiers, and basically everyone since Scott was 14.
Meanwhile on a hillside, the nasty billionaire kids are watching the violence and eating popcorn, saying nothing like a bunch of violence for thrills and enjoyment.
It's a nifty message, but I don't think the plot works. The writers are clearly going for dramatic irony and attempting to make a political statement, but it reminded me too much of some of the issues that I had with Buffy S7 and in particular the episode Empty Spaces. The plot and theme were pulling the characters strings, not the other way around. Theme and Plot should always be driven by character. Otherwise the characters become hollow puppets.
While Cyclops actions made sense, Wolverine is out of character. After all this death and tragedy, Cyclops is basically desperate to save his species from extinction. Wolverine's actions are the sort of thing that I could see young Scott Summers saying and doing back in the day, but Wolverine? Wolverine who has been around since the 1800s and has been fighting his whole life, and training teenage girls to fight, not to mention having one on his suicide squad? Also, Scott's the sort who would order an evacuation, as evidenced by Prelude to Schism, while Wolverine is the sort who insists on staying no matter the cost, again evidenced by Prelude.
I get that the writers are going for a sort of dramatic irony here...but, it chaffs against what we know about the characters and the general story thread. Made worse, by their admission, that they'd been plotting this event for years.
In Buffy, I saw something similar occurring, the writer was commenting on current political events.
(ie. The United States reaction to terrorism was to wage war on Iraq and Afghanistan.) Except, BTVS was about a girl fighting her internal demons, and well vampires. The two aren't analogous. The X-men is about the mutant race's struggle for survival against a race that fears them, admittedly with some justification. I mean, if someone could kill me just by opening up their eyes, I'd fear them too. In the X-men - the story is about people who are genetically different, and are discriminated against because of that.
The main theme of the issue, which gets a bit lost due to the head-scratching out of character moments, is basically the same theme as The Hunger Games. And it's a good one, because what these writers are doing is questioning their own liveliehood. We are making money writing and drawing violent comic books sold to teenagers. What does that say about us? What does that say about our society? The Hunger Games, I thought, said it a bit better.
I think this would have worked better -if it had been Storm who had challenged Cyclops, not Wolverine.
Storm would have made more sense. But perhaps the writer's wanted to do it with Wolverine, for the dramatic irony? And the underlying hypocrisy? When Wolverine approaches Betsy Braddock, Psycholock, to follow him to the school -- she turns him down. And pretty much points out that he's a flaming hypocrite. She says, "I'll stay with X-force and fight to counter threats in secret, and I'll stick with Utopia, so I can show who I am in public as well." Unlike you, you hypocritical bastard. So, the writers are aware of it. They don't really take sides. But if you read the comic closely, it's hard to sympathize with Wolverine or those who go with him. Each and every one has done horrible things, things that make Cyclops actions seem tame. Also, none of their actions were justifiable or to save others.
Felt the same way about Empty Spaces in Buffy, although at least with the X-men, Wolverine didn't try to kick Cyclops out of his own house.
2. What are you reading now?
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - when I state this reminds me a great deal of Joyce's Ulysess - I mean in how the narrative structure changes in each section. And by change, I mean it feels as if you are starting a whole new book. Not just from first to second or third point of view, but writing style.
Joyce would jump from stream of consciousness to a play to ordinary prose to a long epic poem, to phonics...in Ulysesses. People called it Stream of Consciousness, because they didn't have a word for it.
David Mitchell's book, depending on your point of view, is...worse or better. He not only changes styles and points of view, he also changes time zones, decades, characters, etc. It's like reading various short stories written in various experimental styles, across various decades, which all end abruptly or sometimes in mid-sentence. By the time you get into one style or story, it ends, and you thrust head first into the next. Not for the casual reader, more for an academic with way too much time on their hands.
The first section is written in the style of an 18th century ships log. The next in the style of 1930s letters by a music composer. The third in the style of a screenplay by a 1970s screenwriter, without the format. But the language and description feels like a teleplay. It jumps genres, styles, etc. The only connection is the theme of reincarnation and references to the sections previous throughout.
It's like reading sections of various short novellas by a writer with attention deficit disorder at the same time.
1. What I just finished reading?
Fool Me Twice by Meredith Duran -- too much navel gazing on the part of both characters, admittedly a flaw of the romance genre. It did start out well though, loved the first half, was incredibly bored during the second. Yes, yes, I know you love each other but don't think you can be together but can't keep your hands off one another - confront the villain already.
X-Men: Prelude to Schism - This is basically a series of issues with our heroes worrying over a big crisis event and putting all the pressure on their leader of the moment, Cyclops, to figure out how to make it work. If he does the right thing - he'll be their hero and the greatest man ever. If he fails, then they'll abandon him. It's not clear what the crisis event is - and each of the head male leaders discusses it with Cyclops, along with revealing a bit about their own back story or Cyclops back story in the process. The series is meant to shed light on Cyclops, Magneto, Xavier, and Wolverine's motivations.
Unfortunately, it is highly male-centric, neither Storm nor Emma Frost appear to have much say in the matter. Which is actually the biggest flaw in the X-men post Grant Morrison/Josh Whedon's reign, the focus is on the male characters, with the female characters as supporting or second string. I'm not sure if Keiron Gillian, Bendeis, Fraction, Aaron, and Brubacker just aren't comfortable putting women front and center in the main arc (they do have a somewhat cheesy secondary title - the X-women), or if the writers just aren't interested in those characters?
Also, as nice as it is to know these characters motivations -- it doesn't really go anywhere, worse, it contradicts the story that follows it -- making Wolverine's actions seem insanely out of character and hypocritical in all of the comics that follow. In Prelude - Wolverine insists they stay on the island no matter what, not run away, and everyone engage in the fight. Xavier states that he will be supporting Scott through each crisis, and take the burden from him if it gets to be too much. Magneto warns Scott not to bring children into it, and not go down the road he did or Charles did. Which to be fair, Charles warns this as well. In the limited five issue miniseries that follows, which is outside the main titles but affects them all, splitting Uncanny X-men into two new titles as a result, all these characters do the exact opposite of what they say they are going to do in Prelude. I'm guessing the writers were trying for some sort of dramatic irony...except it's not clear what crisis if any Prelude was about. Was it "Fear Itself"? If so, Cyclops was successful. Or is it "Avengers vs. X-men", in which most of the characters weren't supporting Cyclops and he was on his own. Neat comic, but doesn't seem to fit within the arc.
The problem with long-running serial writers - is 1) too many changes in writers, 2) the writers don't read the back story and contradict themselves, and 3) due in part to 1&2 they suck at plotting. (In other words, B doesn't always follow A, sometimes it follows Q, by way of Z.)
X-Men: Schism --The cataclysmic event that changes the X-men forever. (Sigh). Interesting comic, with some interesting themes. Doesn't quite work, but interesting all the same.
The children of various nefarious and insanely wealthy humans band together to take down their parents, and the X-men (or anyone with power) in order to become powerful themselves. They are basically between the ages of 10-14. The story starts with Kildar, the son of an arms dealer, shooting his father and throwing him out of a flying car, in order to take over the company and take his father's place at the Hellfire Club. He recruits three other nasty kids to his cause, a sociopathic junior beauty queen who has an affinity for martial arts, a young Dr. Frankenstein, who likes weird experiments, and a junior slave dealer - who sold his family to an alien planet of flesh eating trolls. These kids thrive on violence. Meanwhile, back on Utopia, where the X-men reside, Wolverine has just gotten back from being beaten up again. He's covered in various arrows and gun-shot wounds. The kids on Utopia have been waiting for him to teach their combat training class, which he keeps blowing off. Instead, he wants them to play like children. These kids are between the ages of 14-18, although it's hard to tell with the X-Men artists. In addition, they have massive superpowers, all without exception has had people repeatedly try to kill them, their families are either dead (murdered) or abandoned them. He gets one little girl a doll - the girl is 14. She tells him when she was ten, she was trying to survive not worried about dolls. And when he passes Kitty Pryde, who had gotten the doll for him, Kitty reminds him that he was teaching her how to become a ninja at that age.
Scott/Cyclops interrupts Wolverine's attempt to sleep with a request that he accompany him to an armistice talk at the UN. Scott is attempting to convince the world's leaders to disarm the sentinels which have been attempting to kill him since he was 14. And have slaughtered various children and students under his care. This is a guy who has basically lost most of his family. Had a bomb planted in his chest by the government weapons agents, and every time he turns around is attempting to stop someone from being killed. Wolverine, who at one time was being turned into a weapon to fight mutants and is currently on X-Force ( a murder squad originally set up by Cyclops but disbanded by him as wrong, yet continued by Wolverine), and acts as an Avenger...reluctantly comes along. Wolverine basically is a living weapon. Cyclops needs him as his back-up or one man security team.
The Hellfire club of nasty but powerfully rich kiddies strikes at the conference -- releasing an insanely powerful telepath from Utopia's prisons to play with everyone's heads at the conference.
Much chaos ensues. And the world leaders decide to arm themselves against mutants, except their arms are defective, and Cyclops has to send people around the world to save the humans from the sentinels.
Distracted, all the adults away fighting the good fight, no help from the Avengers on the horizon, the kids launch an attack directly at a museum, where he's sent his heaviest hitters - Magneto, Frost, Namor, Colossus, Magick...and the junior team. The nasty kids with some supernatural space slugs take out the heavy hitters. Who are on the ground, injured. The other kids are also taken out. Wolverine, who is sulking at a bar and sees it all on the news, screams at Indie, who has a lot of power to flee the museum, but she's found a bomb. She can't hear him of course. Scott via the communication link they have, tells her to do whatever is necessary to disarm the bomb and the villains, in order to save everyone inside, since neither Wolverine nor himself will get there in time. She does so - killing ten of the nasty kids nasty henchmen. Wolverine is furious - since now Indie has to deal with their deaths, and has no remorse because she sees herself as a monster. (Okay, in her home country, she had also killed lots of people when her powers first manifested. It's not like this is a new occurrence. And she already saw herself this way. At least this round she was saving lives, not just her own.)
They all head back to Utopia. Everyone is either on the other side of the globe fighting defective sentinels, or incapaciated by nasty slugs. The only adult fighter on the island at this point is Cyclops. Wolverine is sulking somewhere else. The Hellfire club sends a new Sentinel - the worst one ever to the island to destroy it. Generation Hope - the junior team, tells Cyclops they aren't going to let him fight the monster by himself. He initially tells them to evacuate the island. They insist on staying. He pauses and says, okay, you're right - it's your choice. Wolverine shows up and insists they leave. That Cyclops order them to evacuate. Cyclops says it's their choice. Wolverine gets a bomb. He tells Cyclops that he will blow up the island, with everyone on it, including the wounded, if Cyclops doesn't order evacuation. (The only one who won't die is Wolverine, who has a healing factor.) The Sentinel attacks. Cyclops is now fighting Wolverine, who has a detonator, and the Sentinel. And they are losing badly. The kids take action and save both Cyclops and Wolverine's lives, and help defeat the Sentinel. Wolverine is furious and says he's leaving Utopia, going back to their roots. Re-starting Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters - now called The Jean Grey School of Higher Learning. In the bombed out remains of the old one in West Chester - the school that has been destroyed by Sentinels, Purifiers, and basically everyone since Scott was 14.
Meanwhile on a hillside, the nasty billionaire kids are watching the violence and eating popcorn, saying nothing like a bunch of violence for thrills and enjoyment.
It's a nifty message, but I don't think the plot works. The writers are clearly going for dramatic irony and attempting to make a political statement, but it reminded me too much of some of the issues that I had with Buffy S7 and in particular the episode Empty Spaces. The plot and theme were pulling the characters strings, not the other way around. Theme and Plot should always be driven by character. Otherwise the characters become hollow puppets.
While Cyclops actions made sense, Wolverine is out of character. After all this death and tragedy, Cyclops is basically desperate to save his species from extinction. Wolverine's actions are the sort of thing that I could see young Scott Summers saying and doing back in the day, but Wolverine? Wolverine who has been around since the 1800s and has been fighting his whole life, and training teenage girls to fight, not to mention having one on his suicide squad? Also, Scott's the sort who would order an evacuation, as evidenced by Prelude to Schism, while Wolverine is the sort who insists on staying no matter the cost, again evidenced by Prelude.
I get that the writers are going for a sort of dramatic irony here...but, it chaffs against what we know about the characters and the general story thread. Made worse, by their admission, that they'd been plotting this event for years.
In Buffy, I saw something similar occurring, the writer was commenting on current political events.
(ie. The United States reaction to terrorism was to wage war on Iraq and Afghanistan.) Except, BTVS was about a girl fighting her internal demons, and well vampires. The two aren't analogous. The X-men is about the mutant race's struggle for survival against a race that fears them, admittedly with some justification. I mean, if someone could kill me just by opening up their eyes, I'd fear them too. In the X-men - the story is about people who are genetically different, and are discriminated against because of that.
The main theme of the issue, which gets a bit lost due to the head-scratching out of character moments, is basically the same theme as The Hunger Games. And it's a good one, because what these writers are doing is questioning their own liveliehood. We are making money writing and drawing violent comic books sold to teenagers. What does that say about us? What does that say about our society? The Hunger Games, I thought, said it a bit better.
I think this would have worked better -if it had been Storm who had challenged Cyclops, not Wolverine.
Storm would have made more sense. But perhaps the writer's wanted to do it with Wolverine, for the dramatic irony? And the underlying hypocrisy? When Wolverine approaches Betsy Braddock, Psycholock, to follow him to the school -- she turns him down. And pretty much points out that he's a flaming hypocrite. She says, "I'll stay with X-force and fight to counter threats in secret, and I'll stick with Utopia, so I can show who I am in public as well." Unlike you, you hypocritical bastard. So, the writers are aware of it. They don't really take sides. But if you read the comic closely, it's hard to sympathize with Wolverine or those who go with him. Each and every one has done horrible things, things that make Cyclops actions seem tame. Also, none of their actions were justifiable or to save others.
Felt the same way about Empty Spaces in Buffy, although at least with the X-men, Wolverine didn't try to kick Cyclops out of his own house.
2. What are you reading now?
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell - when I state this reminds me a great deal of Joyce's Ulysess - I mean in how the narrative structure changes in each section. And by change, I mean it feels as if you are starting a whole new book. Not just from first to second or third point of view, but writing style.
Joyce would jump from stream of consciousness to a play to ordinary prose to a long epic poem, to phonics...in Ulysesses. People called it Stream of Consciousness, because they didn't have a word for it.
David Mitchell's book, depending on your point of view, is...worse or better. He not only changes styles and points of view, he also changes time zones, decades, characters, etc. It's like reading various short stories written in various experimental styles, across various decades, which all end abruptly or sometimes in mid-sentence. By the time you get into one style or story, it ends, and you thrust head first into the next. Not for the casual reader, more for an academic with way too much time on their hands.
The first section is written in the style of an 18th century ships log. The next in the style of 1930s letters by a music composer. The third in the style of a screenplay by a 1970s screenwriter, without the format. But the language and description feels like a teleplay. It jumps genres, styles, etc. The only connection is the theme of reincarnation and references to the sections previous throughout.
It's like reading sections of various short novellas by a writer with attention deficit disorder at the same time.