(no subject)

[shadowkat]

OW! OW! OW! I dropped my laptop on my foot. The lap-top is fine. The foot not so much. I have ice on it. And yes, it is the same foot that had the stress fracture in 2010, and got a sprained ankle in 2009.

Also have the oddest craving for grapefruit juice. One of the things I loved about Buffy is the character preferred grapefruit juice mixed with orange juice - which for years was the only way I could drink oj. OJ is more acidic than grapefruit juice for some reason.

Everytime I read Mark Watches, I find myself thinking: no, yes, no, no, no, yes...to his predictions.

Mark: I like Riley, he'll probably die by the end of the season.
Me: No...he never dies, unfortunately.
Mark: OZ has lived too long, he'll be dead soon...
Me: No, he just leaves like Riley does. But I think he dies in the comics? The jury is still out on that. Riley unfortunately is still alive. But OZ...there's nothing definite either way. [Anyone reading the S9 comics know if OZ is definitely alive?]
Mark: I love Professor Walsh. She's probably dead by mid-season.
Me: True. But you won't love her any more.
Mark: There will bees in S4.
Me: Well not unless you count the magical bees in Fear Itself. But they felt more like evil fireflies to me.

Comments

[local-max.livejournal.com]

COMIC SPOILERS Oz is definitely (probably) alive. At least, I can't think of any indication why he'd be dead -- he was still around after the big Retreat battle. So were his wife and child.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

But was he around after the big Twilight battle?
That's what I can't figure out. And did Bay die during the big Retreat battle, or was she just injured?

By the way - there's a book you should read, it's called The Fault in Our Stars by John Green - it's sort of the young adult version of William S Gibson's Pattern Recognition but more on target regarding the fandom experience.

[local-max.livejournal.com]

Oh, right -- but the Twilight battle only involved a few key players (the Scooby gang, Warren, Amy, the General) in Tibet before moving, along with the slayers, to Sunnydale. Oz and his wife -- who survived! -- stayed behind in Tibet. It was not overly clear. :)

Is that the book that green-maia was recommending? I am pretty interested! I have been intermittently reading The Brothers Karamazov, which I like but isn't an easy read.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's the same book that green-mai was recommending. And it is amazing. You'll love it. It's also a lot easier to read than the Brother's Karamozov.

I've fallen in love with the characters.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

A lot of times I feel like Mark has taken the philosophy from GRRM's books (anyone can die, and most of them do) and applied it to everything else he reads/watches. With Whedon the pessimism isn't entirely unwarranted, but Mark doesn't seem to realize that GRRM is known for that because he's the exception. Most stories tend to keep their main cast alive, or have only one or two characters die.

This is especially odd to see applied to things like Tolkien. I'll grant that a lot of LotR is fairly grim and the characters think it's hopeless, but in context... Tolkien was writing about the triumph of good over evil. With that in mind, it's not all that surprising that nearly everyone makes it out alive and most of them get a happily ever after.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I'd agree. Most TV series and fantasy novels don't kill off lead characters. Or if they do? They bring them back again.

Tolkien didn't really kill them off so much as send them off to a happier place.

Whedon? Well, depends on how you interpret the final episodes of Dollhouse - Epitaph 2 and Angel S5 Not Fade Away. Depending on your interpretation there's a high death count.

Buffy really didn't have that high a death count. All the characters were either supporting or recurring, none of the leads were killed. And even amongst the supporting...there were only two who were killed off permanently. ... (and okay five, if you count the three J's: Joyce, Jenny and Jonathan - but they felt like recurring to me, which don't really count - I mean come on, it's a horror series - you have to have a few non-red shirts get killed - otherwise the audience won't believe anyone important is ever really in deadly peril. Supporting = anyone who isn't a lead but appeared in the front credits at least once (ie. Cordelia, Giles, Tara, Anya, OZ, Riley, Angel, Dawn, and Spike are all supporting.)

*Sorry for all the edits...work has made me anal again.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Exactly. Sometimes you'll get one major character dead, but that's always something meant to really affect the audience.

True, Tolkien chronicles the extent of most of the characters' lives, so everyone dies eventually, but if we're looking at the main story and not the appendices, the only real casualty is Theoden and a few very minor characters. Obviously there are many, many unnamed deaths during the big battles, but in terms of emotional impact, Tolkien has lots of near-death suspense but few actual deaths.

Whedon likes to torture his characters emotionally, but as you say, he doesn't kill off many of them. I can't comment on Angel as I haven't seen it all yet, but in Dollhouse, I think it's only maybe four main cast members who die? There's an inferred death of millions or billions in the epitaphs, but most of the main cast makes it out okay. All emotionally traumatized, but alive.

I agree about Buffy-- in a horror series, there have to be some deaths. For the most part it's red shirts, but if there weren't a few main (or main-ish) characters killed (like Jenny) there wouldn't be any suspense.

I think for fantasy especially, Mark has only read The Hunger Games, Song of Ice and Fire, and The Golden Compass series... all of which tend to be darker and defy the standards of the genre (which is usually more like 'something evil threatens the land, stuff happens, the hero defeats it, yay!') Now he's reading Tolkien, and I think he still doesn't realize that expectations from later works just don't apply to Tolkien, because he was originating ideas, not trying to subvert ideas used dozens of times already. And obviously Tolkien was working off older mythology archetypes, but you know what I mean. The fantasy genre mostly takes its cues from LotR.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

If he's struggling with Tolkien...what will he think of Chronicles of Narnia?
LOL!

He's sort of starting backwards. With the one's that subverted the trope, as opposed to the one's that originated many of the tropes that the later writers are subverting - Tolkien, CS Lewis, McCaffrey, Stoker, Anne Rice,
Terry Brooks....(although he's actually recent), Piers Anthony, etc.

And you're right the whole D&D roleplaying game bit was right off of Tolkien.

[flameraven.livejournal.com]

Exactly. And I realized after I posted that he's read Harry Potter too-- but again, that's a story that got much darker and more serious than most boarding school fantasies do, and wasn't afraid to kill off characters.

D&D has gotten a little less blatant about its basis in LotR in recent versions, but the core is still there, and the core is aaaaall Tolkien. Most fantasy writers seem to have either been inspired by LotR directly, or by D&D, or by both, which leads to a lot of derivative writing. Now the trend seems to be pushing back; people either seem to use the high fantasy setting but subvert it as much as possible, or they're writing in subgenres like urban fantasy and steampunk.

Working backwards like Mark has just makes things more difficult. I know it's often hard for me to read the older fantasy just because things that were probably groundbreaking when they were published don't seem as interesting to me. Both outdated/overused tropes and the older writing styles are too distracting and I end up not being able to focus on the story. Mark doesn't seem to worry much about writing styles, but I do think he ends up misinterpreting things or getting offended by things because he's looking at older works through a modern context.