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Apr. 24th, 2017 08:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. Cancelled Feud: Bette and Joan from the DVR, it's too heavy-handed in its themes. A difficulty I have with the writing team of Brad Palchuck and Ryan Murphy is their lack of subtly. They feel a need to hammer you over the head with things. I'm either bored or irritated.
2. Co-worker, who had lent me The Witches of Karres, which I still haven't gotten around to reading, suggested another book -- this one is entitle "A Twist in Time" which is the sequel to "A Murder in Time" -- which is about an FBI agent who journeys back to the 1800s or thereabouts, and runs into a murder mystery. The first book involves a serial killer -- who is in the present and past, not sure if it is the same one or not. And the second, which looks more interesting, is about the death of Lady, that the protagonist's lover is framed for. I looked at the reviews on Amazon, and they aren't very promising -- describe it as a decent YA romantic mystery sci-fi novel, with a lead character who is a bit of a "mary sue" and not a lot of good character development. Also it's the time travel trope, which coworker likes, but tends to annoy me.
There's only one or two television series that have utilized time travel that worked for me and they are:
Sarah Connor Chronicles
Doctor Who
Everything else plays loose and fast with the rules, and doesn't seem to have any sense of consistency or consequence. In short they use it as plot device or gimmick, while Doctor Who and Sarah Connor actually explore the science of it in some depth.
Books? I'm similarly picky about. To date the only one's that have done it in a way that I appreciated were Kate Atkinson in Life After Life, and Connie Willis in The Doomsday Book, because both explored it in an interesting way. I preferred Connie Willis to Atkinson, who I found a bit gimmicky -- she's making the same mistakes with The Catch that she did with Life After Life, btw.
I also liked how Ray Bradbury dealt with it in "Sound of Thunder". And, oh, by far my favorite, was Jack Finney in Time After Time. Have you ever read Jack Finney? He wrote the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" -- which I think I still own, somewhere. I have my books secreted in various spots in my apartment. Hidden from view and from myself, making it difficult for me to find them and read them.
I tried to tell co-worker that I don't like serial killer plot lines. And had avoided the television series "Time After Time" because of that. But he didn't listen to me and foisted the book on me anyhow. Although to be fair, he foisted the sequel, which doesn't deal with a serial killer.
2. Co-worker, who had lent me The Witches of Karres, which I still haven't gotten around to reading, suggested another book -- this one is entitle "A Twist in Time" which is the sequel to "A Murder in Time" -- which is about an FBI agent who journeys back to the 1800s or thereabouts, and runs into a murder mystery. The first book involves a serial killer -- who is in the present and past, not sure if it is the same one or not. And the second, which looks more interesting, is about the death of Lady, that the protagonist's lover is framed for. I looked at the reviews on Amazon, and they aren't very promising -- describe it as a decent YA romantic mystery sci-fi novel, with a lead character who is a bit of a "mary sue" and not a lot of good character development. Also it's the time travel trope, which coworker likes, but tends to annoy me.
There's only one or two television series that have utilized time travel that worked for me and they are:
Sarah Connor Chronicles
Doctor Who
Everything else plays loose and fast with the rules, and doesn't seem to have any sense of consistency or consequence. In short they use it as plot device or gimmick, while Doctor Who and Sarah Connor actually explore the science of it in some depth.
Books? I'm similarly picky about. To date the only one's that have done it in a way that I appreciated were Kate Atkinson in Life After Life, and Connie Willis in The Doomsday Book, because both explored it in an interesting way. I preferred Connie Willis to Atkinson, who I found a bit gimmicky -- she's making the same mistakes with The Catch that she did with Life After Life, btw.
I also liked how Ray Bradbury dealt with it in "Sound of Thunder". And, oh, by far my favorite, was Jack Finney in Time After Time. Have you ever read Jack Finney? He wrote the original "Invasion of the Body Snatchers" -- which I think I still own, somewhere. I have my books secreted in various spots in my apartment. Hidden from view and from myself, making it difficult for me to find them and read them.
I tried to tell co-worker that I don't like serial killer plot lines. And had avoided the television series "Time After Time" because of that. But he didn't listen to me and foisted the book on me anyhow. Although to be fair, he foisted the sequel, which doesn't deal with a serial killer.
no subject
Date: 2017-04-26 02:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2017-04-26 02:52 pm (UTC)I happen to enjoy the idea of time travel stories but I am eternally dissatisfied with how they are written
Have the same problems...it's rare that they work for me. The consequences aren't taken into account, or it becomes gimmicky. Or a way of a contemporary character experiencing the past, and the reader through their eyes.
The recent past sometimes works better, because there's a more immediacy to it, and the writer is clearer on the consequences. For example if Buffy traveled back to S2 and stopped herself from sleeping with Angel, that of course changes the whole story. Jenny may live. Etc. But you know, you can track all of it. When you go back to the Victorian Age...it becomes more complicated. I read a bizarre fanfic once that had Buffy and Spike travel back to the Victorian Age...which did weird things to Spike. It was just. weird. But there was another one...that was sort of interesting in how it showed things happening differently. Buffy goes back in time to the Victorian, and comes back, and when she does...it sort of explains why Spike was obsessed with her. So there is some attention to consequence, time period, and how a contemporary could change lives in another time and vice versa. (I actually liked that one...but it was a rarity.)
Too often, I find they are just used as gimmicks in stories...