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shadowkat1. Day 18 – A book that disappointed you
Ah, what to pick? The last five books that I read disappointed me. There aren't that many good novels out there at the moment, or I'm not reading them - most likely the latter.
The Elizabet Naughton novel Wait for Me disappointed me. It had a great idea, hit all my story kinks, but was so poorly executed. It was about woman living in Texas who was in a car accident and lost her memory. Two months later, her husband, a doctor who is involved in creating pharmeceuticals - dies in a plane crash. Overwhelmed with grief and guilt, because she doesn't remember her husband or her life with him to really feel much of anything, she rifles through some of his things, and discovers a picture of a little girl that looks like her - she also discovers a file that indicates she spent two years in nursing home in California. It gets better, apparently her husband was her attending physician at the the nursing home. So hunting answers she flies to California, takes a job with a publishing company - she's a science journalist specializing in geology, and tries to investigate. Hits dead ends. So her editor suggests she hire an attorney. She by-passes the editor's suggestion and hires a woman she finds on the net - whose name jumps out at her. Turns out the woman new her before. Even weirder - turns out she was somebody else entirely, had a different life, different husband, and has a teenage daughter...
The novel dealt with memory loss and being reunited with someone you thought was dead.
But the execution is so bad...that the ideas never get flushed out or dealt with. We spent 95% of the novel with the male and female leads either lusting after each other, or worrying about what the other thought of them. This has been a problem with 95% of the romance novels I've read to date. The writer just isn't talented enough to flush out the ideas. Or they focus too much on the UST or sex, and not enough on character and flushing out the story.
What's always frustrated me about the following genres is this:
* Romance novels - focus too much on getting the two characters horizontal or in the sack, then don't seem to know what to do with them once they got them there? Okay, we reached our main goal...now what? Also often the sex is anti-climatic. Too much UST or sex, not enough banter, story, character development.
* Sci-Fi novels and Fantasy novels: focus too much on the setting, world-building, hardware or software as the case may be, mythology, or theme (ie...this is a morality tale about (fill in the blank) - and not enough time on character development, character relationships, plot, and building those characters. Yes, yes, it's nice to have the schematics of how to build your very own space ship or how ley line magic works - but seriously, if I wanted to read about that - I'd check out a book on building my very own space ship not be reading it here. Give me more story, less world-building. This is also true with theme/moral/philosophy based sci-fi - less moralizing/philosophizing - more story.
* Mystery novels - too much time spent on the plot mechanics or how we are going to solve the murder of the week, with all the procedurals bits and pieces, not enough on characters or actual plot.
* Literary novels - too much time spent on writing beautiful moody descriptive passages that while philosophically moving, take us nowhere. Too little plot, too little character development, too much realism and prose.
Another specific book that disappointed me was Mockinjay - book three of The Hunger Games. I still think this book would have worked better in third person. In first - it's sort of sluggish. Katniss doesn't do much in the first half of it, except worry about things and try to figure out how she feels towards people. Also if it had been in third person they'd have been able to develop Finnick and Joanna better, along with Gale and Pris. First person narratives can often become slightly whiny. Particularly with female heroines, for some reason. Male not so much. Kim Harrison's Ever After had the same problem. I think the book would have been better if it had been in 3rd person - because we could have been in on the action, instead of hearing about it after the fact because our pov person isn't there.
* Speaking of books? If you live in NYC, or Brooklyn, or have family who is? Please sign this petition to save the New York Public Libaries from demolition by the Bloomberg Economic Developer Act.
http://signon.org/sign/save-new-york-city-libraries/?source=search
Day 19 – Favorite book turned into a movie
Day 20 – Favorite romance book
Day 21 – Favorite book from your childhood
Day 22 – Favorite book you own
Day 23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t
Day 24 – A book that you wish more people have read
Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 – Favorite title
Day 29 – A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 – Your favorite book of all time
2.Day 21 - Favorite ship
You know this can be interpreted more than one way, right?
* Actual literal Ship? Simple. No contest. The Tardis. While Moya on Farscape had her charms, the Tardis is just plain innovative and wonky. It's the only ship in the history of sci-fi that I know of that defies physics completely, and can go back and forward in time and space, without following any rules. Or maybe that's just its drivers?
* Relationship or "Ship" defined by fan terms as a romantic fictional character relationship. Not sure if can be platonic. I'm guessing not - because people don't tend to, ahem, go bat-shit crazy over platonic relationships. Romantic ones, yes. Platonic ones, not so much. I mean have you seen any shipper wars over Buffy and Willow's friendship? I didn't think so. You can more than one friend after all. But being a relatively monogamous based society - you can't have more than one "TRue Love" or "romantic relationship" - well not at the same time and without being vilified at any rate.
This becomes a rather boring meme if we did "ship" literally - because that's not controversial. I really can't see many fans fighting over whether the Starship Enterprise or the Tardis is the better ship. Okay, maybe they would, but the Enterprise fans would lose - the Tardis is a)bigger than the Enterprise, b) can go an unlimited number of places, c)can land anywhere and hide in plain sight - either by looking exactly like a British police phone booth, or just being invisible, d)can go back and forth in time, e)can deliver people places without teleportation malfunctions.
It should be noted, prior to 2002, I always defined "ship" as well an actual ship either a sea-going vessel or flying one. Like the Tardis, Moya, Starship Enterprise, Galatica...Millenium Falcon and Firefly. There's a limited number of ships in fiction and I can't remember most of them.
Anyhow...favorite RELATIONShip? Eh...this is a difficult question. I have about five or six. And it's mainly based on how interesting they were.
* Most Torturous and the worst nickname? Spuffy or Spike/Buffy - this ship's torturous for two reasons, 1)the bat-shit crazy fandom. I don't know what it is about this particular pairing that drives normal, law-abiding, fairly sane folks bat-shit crazy? Doesn't matter if they like it or not. Actually some of the people who hate it - have reacted far crazier than the one's who loved it. Nothing derails a public discussion forum faster than the Spuffy ship. 2) the way the writers handled it, and every other professional writer who has written about it has - which is basically to relentlessly tease the audience to death. Their writing style reminds me of a magician's sleight of hand...where's the card? Oh there's the card, no wait, it's not there, it's over here.
Both of these factors make this ship sort of difficult to enjoy. It's just too bloody painful. I finally gave up on it and on the writers, sadistic bastards. I'm not that masochistic, thank you. I require some sense of closure.
* Most romantically satisfying and resolved, not to mention subversive? Aeryn Sun/John Crichton -This ship reminded me a great deal of Spuffy, except minus the bat-shit crazy fandom (possibly helped by the fact that I began watching it two years after the show had been cancelled and the fandom dispersed.) and the indecisive writing. Crichton/Aeryn is better written than Spuffy was and more rewarding. It had the gender reversals. Aeryn is the tough fighter pilot or rogue pilot, Crichton the weaker, more feminine scientist/explorer.
Crichton is often the girl in their relationship - he admits his feelings but never is quite certain of hers. In the 4th season this flipped around a bit, but Aeryn still felt more masculain - a protector, to Crichton's nurturer/compassion.
It was resolved well - they got married, they had a kid, they saved the universe, and had a happy ever after. It also has comic books - but I wisely ignored them or rather just couldn't locate them. (actually the latter).
* Fun romantic ships or ships that were the most fun and entertaining? Doctor Song/Doctor Who, a marriage of equals more or less. I was admittedly less than satisfied with certain aspects of Song's arc and felt Moffat like a lot of male writers out there has some unresolved Mommy issues, but other than that? It was gleefully fun. And I loved it to pieces. The other one is Doctor Who/Tardis
* Best family ships? My favorite ship of the entire Buffy and Angel series isn't what you'd think. Spike/Angel/Connor/Darla/Dru - yes, the fanged family, and it's a shame I can't do that ship as a circle. That was my favorite ship. I thought they were fun. And loved the chemistry between them. It also helped that the fandom didn't go batshit crazy over them, and the writers dealt with them fairly consistently and not either overtly moralistically or teasingly.
Actually what killed Bangle for me as a viewer, besides that IWRY, was Darla and Angel. I was over Bangle long before Spike entered the scene. As were the writers. Once I saw that pairing, I knew Buffy wasn't Angel's true love or first love, that was Darla. He had a deeper bond than Spike did with Dru. Darla and Angel got each other. They were, as Darla states at one point, soul-mates. And Connor was their result. I also adored Angel/Spike. I was disappointed that the writers didn't explore the Spike/Connor relationship more on the series - this may explain why I liked Bryan Lynch's comics - he actually did address it and play with it.
Currently my favorite ship on tv is Cora/Regina/Charming/Snow/Emma/Henry/Neal/Bae/Rumplestilskin/Hook on Once Upon a Time - it's also a lot of fun and sort of needs to be done in a circle for you to get it, with lots of interacting lines. I could very easily get obsessed over this ship. I love complicated ships that are not just about romance, but have all sorts of other subtexts. You can do more. Romantic ships are frustrating, because it's like what I stated above regarding the genre, the writers spend all this time trying to get them to have sex, and then, once they do - it's...okay, now what? But with non-romantic relationships or relationships that about more than well sex, you don't have that problem.
There's no dead-end.
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death.
Ah, what to pick? The last five books that I read disappointed me. There aren't that many good novels out there at the moment, or I'm not reading them - most likely the latter.
The Elizabet Naughton novel Wait for Me disappointed me. It had a great idea, hit all my story kinks, but was so poorly executed. It was about woman living in Texas who was in a car accident and lost her memory. Two months later, her husband, a doctor who is involved in creating pharmeceuticals - dies in a plane crash. Overwhelmed with grief and guilt, because she doesn't remember her husband or her life with him to really feel much of anything, she rifles through some of his things, and discovers a picture of a little girl that looks like her - she also discovers a file that indicates she spent two years in nursing home in California. It gets better, apparently her husband was her attending physician at the the nursing home. So hunting answers she flies to California, takes a job with a publishing company - she's a science journalist specializing in geology, and tries to investigate. Hits dead ends. So her editor suggests she hire an attorney. She by-passes the editor's suggestion and hires a woman she finds on the net - whose name jumps out at her. Turns out the woman new her before. Even weirder - turns out she was somebody else entirely, had a different life, different husband, and has a teenage daughter...
The novel dealt with memory loss and being reunited with someone you thought was dead.
But the execution is so bad...that the ideas never get flushed out or dealt with. We spent 95% of the novel with the male and female leads either lusting after each other, or worrying about what the other thought of them. This has been a problem with 95% of the romance novels I've read to date. The writer just isn't talented enough to flush out the ideas. Or they focus too much on the UST or sex, and not enough on character and flushing out the story.
What's always frustrated me about the following genres is this:
* Romance novels - focus too much on getting the two characters horizontal or in the sack, then don't seem to know what to do with them once they got them there? Okay, we reached our main goal...now what? Also often the sex is anti-climatic. Too much UST or sex, not enough banter, story, character development.
* Sci-Fi novels and Fantasy novels: focus too much on the setting, world-building, hardware or software as the case may be, mythology, or theme (ie...this is a morality tale about (fill in the blank) - and not enough time on character development, character relationships, plot, and building those characters. Yes, yes, it's nice to have the schematics of how to build your very own space ship or how ley line magic works - but seriously, if I wanted to read about that - I'd check out a book on building my very own space ship not be reading it here. Give me more story, less world-building. This is also true with theme/moral/philosophy based sci-fi - less moralizing/philosophizing - more story.
* Mystery novels - too much time spent on the plot mechanics or how we are going to solve the murder of the week, with all the procedurals bits and pieces, not enough on characters or actual plot.
* Literary novels - too much time spent on writing beautiful moody descriptive passages that while philosophically moving, take us nowhere. Too little plot, too little character development, too much realism and prose.
Another specific book that disappointed me was Mockinjay - book three of The Hunger Games. I still think this book would have worked better in third person. In first - it's sort of sluggish. Katniss doesn't do much in the first half of it, except worry about things and try to figure out how she feels towards people. Also if it had been in third person they'd have been able to develop Finnick and Joanna better, along with Gale and Pris. First person narratives can often become slightly whiny. Particularly with female heroines, for some reason. Male not so much. Kim Harrison's Ever After had the same problem. I think the book would have been better if it had been in 3rd person - because we could have been in on the action, instead of hearing about it after the fact because our pov person isn't there.
* Speaking of books? If you live in NYC, or Brooklyn, or have family who is? Please sign this petition to save the New York Public Libaries from demolition by the Bloomberg Economic Developer Act.
http://signon.org/sign/save-new-york-city-libraries/?source=search
Day 19 – Favorite book turned into a movie
Day 20 – Favorite romance book
Day 21 – Favorite book from your childhood
Day 22 – Favorite book you own
Day 23 – A book you wanted to read for a long time but still haven’t
Day 24 – A book that you wish more people have read
Day 25 – A character who you can relate to the most
Day 26 – A book that changed your opinion about something
Day 27 – The most surprising plot twist or ending
Day 28 – Favorite title
Day 29 – A book everyone hated but you liked
Day 30 – Your favorite book of all time
2.Day 21 - Favorite ship
You know this can be interpreted more than one way, right?
* Actual literal Ship? Simple. No contest. The Tardis. While Moya on Farscape had her charms, the Tardis is just plain innovative and wonky. It's the only ship in the history of sci-fi that I know of that defies physics completely, and can go back and forward in time and space, without following any rules. Or maybe that's just its drivers?
* Relationship or "Ship" defined by fan terms as a romantic fictional character relationship. Not sure if can be platonic. I'm guessing not - because people don't tend to, ahem, go bat-shit crazy over platonic relationships. Romantic ones, yes. Platonic ones, not so much. I mean have you seen any shipper wars over Buffy and Willow's friendship? I didn't think so. You can more than one friend after all. But being a relatively monogamous based society - you can't have more than one "TRue Love" or "romantic relationship" - well not at the same time and without being vilified at any rate.
This becomes a rather boring meme if we did "ship" literally - because that's not controversial. I really can't see many fans fighting over whether the Starship Enterprise or the Tardis is the better ship. Okay, maybe they would, but the Enterprise fans would lose - the Tardis is a)bigger than the Enterprise, b) can go an unlimited number of places, c)can land anywhere and hide in plain sight - either by looking exactly like a British police phone booth, or just being invisible, d)can go back and forth in time, e)can deliver people places without teleportation malfunctions.
It should be noted, prior to 2002, I always defined "ship" as well an actual ship either a sea-going vessel or flying one. Like the Tardis, Moya, Starship Enterprise, Galatica...Millenium Falcon and Firefly. There's a limited number of ships in fiction and I can't remember most of them.
Anyhow...favorite RELATIONShip? Eh...this is a difficult question. I have about five or six. And it's mainly based on how interesting they were.
* Most Torturous and the worst nickname? Spuffy or Spike/Buffy - this ship's torturous for two reasons, 1)the bat-shit crazy fandom. I don't know what it is about this particular pairing that drives normal, law-abiding, fairly sane folks bat-shit crazy? Doesn't matter if they like it or not. Actually some of the people who hate it - have reacted far crazier than the one's who loved it. Nothing derails a public discussion forum faster than the Spuffy ship. 2) the way the writers handled it, and every other professional writer who has written about it has - which is basically to relentlessly tease the audience to death. Their writing style reminds me of a magician's sleight of hand...where's the card? Oh there's the card, no wait, it's not there, it's over here.
Both of these factors make this ship sort of difficult to enjoy. It's just too bloody painful. I finally gave up on it and on the writers, sadistic bastards. I'm not that masochistic, thank you. I require some sense of closure.
* Most romantically satisfying and resolved, not to mention subversive? Aeryn Sun/John Crichton -This ship reminded me a great deal of Spuffy, except minus the bat-shit crazy fandom (possibly helped by the fact that I began watching it two years after the show had been cancelled and the fandom dispersed.) and the indecisive writing. Crichton/Aeryn is better written than Spuffy was and more rewarding. It had the gender reversals. Aeryn is the tough fighter pilot or rogue pilot, Crichton the weaker, more feminine scientist/explorer.
Crichton is often the girl in their relationship - he admits his feelings but never is quite certain of hers. In the 4th season this flipped around a bit, but Aeryn still felt more masculain - a protector, to Crichton's nurturer/compassion.
It was resolved well - they got married, they had a kid, they saved the universe, and had a happy ever after. It also has comic books - but I wisely ignored them or rather just couldn't locate them. (actually the latter).
* Fun romantic ships or ships that were the most fun and entertaining? Doctor Song/Doctor Who, a marriage of equals more or less. I was admittedly less than satisfied with certain aspects of Song's arc and felt Moffat like a lot of male writers out there has some unresolved Mommy issues, but other than that? It was gleefully fun. And I loved it to pieces. The other one is Doctor Who/Tardis
* Best family ships? My favorite ship of the entire Buffy and Angel series isn't what you'd think. Spike/Angel/Connor/Darla/Dru - yes, the fanged family, and it's a shame I can't do that ship as a circle. That was my favorite ship. I thought they were fun. And loved the chemistry between them. It also helped that the fandom didn't go batshit crazy over them, and the writers dealt with them fairly consistently and not either overtly moralistically or teasingly.
Actually what killed Bangle for me as a viewer, besides that IWRY, was Darla and Angel. I was over Bangle long before Spike entered the scene. As were the writers. Once I saw that pairing, I knew Buffy wasn't Angel's true love or first love, that was Darla. He had a deeper bond than Spike did with Dru. Darla and Angel got each other. They were, as Darla states at one point, soul-mates. And Connor was their result. I also adored Angel/Spike. I was disappointed that the writers didn't explore the Spike/Connor relationship more on the series - this may explain why I liked Bryan Lynch's comics - he actually did address it and play with it.
Currently my favorite ship on tv is Cora/Regina/Charming/Snow/Emma/Henry/Neal/Bae/Rumplestilskin/Hook on Once Upon a Time - it's also a lot of fun and sort of needs to be done in a circle for you to get it, with lots of interacting lines. I could very easily get obsessed over this ship. I love complicated ships that are not just about romance, but have all sorts of other subtexts. You can do more. Romantic ships are frustrating, because it's like what I stated above regarding the genre, the writers spend all this time trying to get them to have sex, and then, once they do - it's...okay, now what? But with non-romantic relationships or relationships that about more than well sex, you don't have that problem.
There's no dead-end.
Day 22 - Favorite series finale
Day 23 - Most annoying character
Day 24 - Best quote
Day 25 - A show you plan on watching (old or new)
Day 26 - OMG WTF? Season finale
Day 27 - Best pilot episode
Day 28 - First TV show obsession
Day 29 - Current TV show obsession
Day 30 - Saddest character death.
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Date: 2013-03-03 02:27 pm (UTC)Took me a while to puzzle out who SG was - Scooby Gang, right? And not quite the same thing. I was really just talking about friendships like Buffy/Willow, or Riley/Xander ...not group relationships. Groups are different in my head. I guess a group dynamic is Angle/Darla/Connor/Dru/Spike. But that's more family than friendship. I never really considered Spike part of the Scooby Gang or a member of that group.
Also those fights only were in S6 and S7, so not too general. At any rate that never occurred to me and I completely forgot about it.