When the gestalt entity Grant Naylor decided to bring their hit BBC series Red Dwarf to America, they found the transition to be a good deal less smooth than they had anticipated. Grant and Naylor were brought into a room with several writers for the American version - among them Linwood Boomer who would go on to create Malcom in the Middle - and the two quickly became known as "The Wave of Negativity."
Why, you ask? Because instead of doing what everybody else in the room was doing - just throwing out as many greasy one-liners as they could in hopes that something would stick - they desired to fix inherent problems with the story. Because, the two British gents knew well, no matter how many one-liners you covered a bad story with, it could not fix the problem.
This event, singular though it may be, is exemplary of what would be to come of Malcolm in the Middle. Though this show lasted an unfortunate seven seasons, it never once bothered to address its inherent issues. Why bother when you can have success by covering up your inherent issues with one-liners?
Well because this show may have been successful while it was running its first several seasons, but it has no lasting power. By the time the show came to an end, who really cared any more?
Because it may be easy enough to watch a handful of episodes and laugh at the silly jokes and the ridiculous situations, but watching a show like this must get incredibly tiresome. The characters are two-dimensional, one-word personalities. They exist for no purpose but to make a specific type of joke every time they appear. If something were to happen to these characters that might be considered "drama," who the hell is going to care? Who has any kind of emotional attachment to a character that literally exists just to make jokes? And perhaps the most amazing aspect of the 7 seasons that the show got was the fact that there was absolutely no character development whatsoever between the beginning and the end of the show.
There wasn't a single character in the show that wasn't entirely annoying by the end of an episode, yet somehow people still sat down week after week to watch this show.
Just goes to show you that people don't pay any attention when they watch shows on TV. They want to laugh at some stupid one liner without having to devote too much of their attention to what's going on.
Fuck you, T.V. And fuck you, Malcolm in the Middle.
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
Knocked Up on the Pineapple Express
Pineapple Express hits theaters today, and I can express a certain amount of hope for it: hope that it won't be too much like other Judd Apatow films.
Knocked Up has received some of the highest credit for an Apatow film yet. I can't help but wonder why.
Humor is incredibly subjective. I can't claim to know "funny" better than Mr. Judd, so I won't bother. But there remains plenty of reasons as to why Knocked Up is a bad film.
There's not really a character in the film that is "relatable." Every single character in the movie - with no exception - is a total asshole. I guess if you're a total asshole, than this is the comedy for you. If you're not, well, then there's nothing.
The biggest problem with this is that Knocked Up, amidst all the pathetic attempts at humor usually contrived through another incredibly forced geek reference (oh God, another bad Star War reference? Why Gog, WHY?) the film actually tries to take itself seriously. So all these characters introduced to you as the butt end of a bad joke you're suddenly supposed to care about. Only how are you supposed to care about a one word personality? It's pretty hard.
There's a whole portion of the film dealing with a married couple, where the wife is a total bitch and the husband is spending all his time away from the family in some vain attempt to not be completely forced to leave due to how much of a bitch his wife is. He's supposedly cheating on her, but then it turns out he's just playing fantasy football. But apparently, that's even worse! Not only is he faithful to a wife we have no reason to like, but he's honestly trying to not break everything apart. But that doesn't matter. Instead, we're apparently supposed to take the side of the total bitch wife, who so far has done nothing but nag and accuse him of cheating on her (which, as we've learned, he isn't), and cheer her on. So much so that when our "hero" Seth Rogan calls the husband out for being an asshole, we're apparently supposed to take Rogan's side.
But here's a guy who is the ONLY person in the ENTIRE FUCKING FILM who hasn't been an ass to Seth Rogan so much as once, and all of the sudden he's chewing the guy out? What the fuck is that?
The humor in this film is lousy, but even if you enjoy its desperate attempts of begging for your laughter, the problem with this film is its drama. It spends the entire film trying to build the drama, but all the characters you're supposed to cheer for just come off looking like asshole and idiots. And, I don't know, maybe that's a good thing in Apatow's book. But if that's the kind of character that's considered positive these days then man, the world truly is fucked.
So I won't hold my breath on the Pineapple Express. When this train comes to a stop, I don't doubt it'll be just as disappointing an exit as everything before.
Knocked Up has received some of the highest credit for an Apatow film yet. I can't help but wonder why.
Humor is incredibly subjective. I can't claim to know "funny" better than Mr. Judd, so I won't bother. But there remains plenty of reasons as to why Knocked Up is a bad film.
There's not really a character in the film that is "relatable." Every single character in the movie - with no exception - is a total asshole. I guess if you're a total asshole, than this is the comedy for you. If you're not, well, then there's nothing.
The biggest problem with this is that Knocked Up, amidst all the pathetic attempts at humor usually contrived through another incredibly forced geek reference (oh God, another bad Star War reference? Why Gog, WHY?) the film actually tries to take itself seriously. So all these characters introduced to you as the butt end of a bad joke you're suddenly supposed to care about. Only how are you supposed to care about a one word personality? It's pretty hard.
There's a whole portion of the film dealing with a married couple, where the wife is a total bitch and the husband is spending all his time away from the family in some vain attempt to not be completely forced to leave due to how much of a bitch his wife is. He's supposedly cheating on her, but then it turns out he's just playing fantasy football. But apparently, that's even worse! Not only is he faithful to a wife we have no reason to like, but he's honestly trying to not break everything apart. But that doesn't matter. Instead, we're apparently supposed to take the side of the total bitch wife, who so far has done nothing but nag and accuse him of cheating on her (which, as we've learned, he isn't), and cheer her on. So much so that when our "hero" Seth Rogan calls the husband out for being an asshole, we're apparently supposed to take Rogan's side.
But here's a guy who is the ONLY person in the ENTIRE FUCKING FILM who hasn't been an ass to Seth Rogan so much as once, and all of the sudden he's chewing the guy out? What the fuck is that?
The humor in this film is lousy, but even if you enjoy its desperate attempts of begging for your laughter, the problem with this film is its drama. It spends the entire film trying to build the drama, but all the characters you're supposed to cheer for just come off looking like asshole and idiots. And, I don't know, maybe that's a good thing in Apatow's book. But if that's the kind of character that's considered positive these days then man, the world truly is fucked.
So I won't hold my breath on the Pineapple Express. When this train comes to a stop, I don't doubt it'll be just as disappointing an exit as everything before.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Anim(e)-tion Station
In 1963, Astro Boy - under it's original Japanese title of Tetsuwan Atomu - hit television screens all across Japan and embodied the elements that would come to be known as "Anime." It enjoyed mild success in America, but anime would really come into it's own in the states thanks more to shows such as Speed Racer, Battle of the Planets, Sailor Moon, and especially Dragon Ball Z.
Whatever qualities these shows may have had, and I'm sure they are (not) many, they all contained one vast problem: They were cheap productions.
This isn't really surprising. A look through much of the anime that has come out over the decades shows a vast number of animes that wouldn't constitute much more than "B" productions. Though occasionally one of these shows might have a relatively good story, they all consisted of the problems hardly reticent throughout all of anime.
The main problem of low-budget animation projects is the art. In order to save effort, anime studios created - or borrowed - simple cheats to bypass the budget problem. This included things like drawing the nose as a single line connected to the chin, so the mouth could flap about on the side of the face without anything else on the body needing to be animated. Or drawing characters in specific poses so that a single cell of them could be dragged across the screen to give the appearance of action. Or giving characters incredibly ridiculous, very over-the-top facial expressions.
The last of these leads us into another inherent problem with these productions. The studios did not feel that they could convincingly pull off subtlety on a tight budget. The over-the-top facial expressions helped solve part of this dilemma. Anime explanations came about intended to solve the rest.
Anime is notorious for these explanations. If you've watched anime in your life time, you know what I'm talking about. Watch any episode of Dragon Ball Z - or any number of its spiritual successors such as Inuyasha, Naruto, or Bleach - and more likely than not a character will do something, and then everything will stop for the next 5-10 minutes so that a character can explain in excruciating detail exactly what it is that's occurring.
For some reason, this dull writing cheat is adored by anime fans. But to those who aren't, particularly to people who are fully grown adults, these explanations just make even the most serious moments of a show seem downright silly and child-oriented.
This is an important factor when it comes to story telling: Don't. Baby. Your audience.
This is a problem through a great many different genre of narratives. It's constant in anime, it's prevalent throughout comic books, and it's the most cherished cheat of fantasy novelists. But it's quite simply silly and incredibly pointless. You don't need to explain absolutely every little detail to your audience. You can assume that they might be smart enough to figure things out for themselves. A truly great story - and this is particularly important in visual arts such as comics, movies, and animations - is one that shows you something and doesn't tell you it's there.
In the movie Citizen Kane, they didn't just constantly tell you that Kane was the richest man alive. They could show you that by depicting an incredibly lavish house containing fireplaces 6 feet tall and 12 feet wide. You get the idea just by seeing the results of his wealth.
Anime has an annoying love for convention, so it's rare to see something that regularly occurs throughout anime suddenly stop being used. To my surprise, a great majority of animes have stopped using the mouth flap cheat, and many of the expressions will now be less over-the-top, but these anime explanations just don't seem to be going away.
There are anime shows and movies out there that actually have good stories, but often they're bogged down under persistant anime conventions and a complete lack of desire to be truly creative, inventive, or artistic. This creates an interesting dilemma between being able to enjoy a good story and a good story being ruined by lazy animation. Often times even when I want to enjoy an anime, it's difficult to find something good under the layers of crap that are these conventions.
Story telling is an art. It's always important to remember that. And if you're not willing to dedicate yourself to telling a good story, no amount of art, or action explanations, or hackneyed conventions are going to save the final product. So many potentially good animes over the past 45 years have fallen by the wayside because the creative team behind them have chosen convention over story.
Maybe, Japan, it's time for a change.
Whatever qualities these shows may have had, and I'm sure they are (not) many, they all contained one vast problem: They were cheap productions.
This isn't really surprising. A look through much of the anime that has come out over the decades shows a vast number of animes that wouldn't constitute much more than "B" productions. Though occasionally one of these shows might have a relatively good story, they all consisted of the problems hardly reticent throughout all of anime.
The main problem of low-budget animation projects is the art. In order to save effort, anime studios created - or borrowed - simple cheats to bypass the budget problem. This included things like drawing the nose as a single line connected to the chin, so the mouth could flap about on the side of the face without anything else on the body needing to be animated. Or drawing characters in specific poses so that a single cell of them could be dragged across the screen to give the appearance of action. Or giving characters incredibly ridiculous, very over-the-top facial expressions.
The last of these leads us into another inherent problem with these productions. The studios did not feel that they could convincingly pull off subtlety on a tight budget. The over-the-top facial expressions helped solve part of this dilemma. Anime explanations came about intended to solve the rest.
Anime is notorious for these explanations. If you've watched anime in your life time, you know what I'm talking about. Watch any episode of Dragon Ball Z - or any number of its spiritual successors such as Inuyasha, Naruto, or Bleach - and more likely than not a character will do something, and then everything will stop for the next 5-10 minutes so that a character can explain in excruciating detail exactly what it is that's occurring.
For some reason, this dull writing cheat is adored by anime fans. But to those who aren't, particularly to people who are fully grown adults, these explanations just make even the most serious moments of a show seem downright silly and child-oriented.
This is an important factor when it comes to story telling: Don't. Baby. Your audience.
This is a problem through a great many different genre of narratives. It's constant in anime, it's prevalent throughout comic books, and it's the most cherished cheat of fantasy novelists. But it's quite simply silly and incredibly pointless. You don't need to explain absolutely every little detail to your audience. You can assume that they might be smart enough to figure things out for themselves. A truly great story - and this is particularly important in visual arts such as comics, movies, and animations - is one that shows you something and doesn't tell you it's there.
In the movie Citizen Kane, they didn't just constantly tell you that Kane was the richest man alive. They could show you that by depicting an incredibly lavish house containing fireplaces 6 feet tall and 12 feet wide. You get the idea just by seeing the results of his wealth.
Anime has an annoying love for convention, so it's rare to see something that regularly occurs throughout anime suddenly stop being used. To my surprise, a great majority of animes have stopped using the mouth flap cheat, and many of the expressions will now be less over-the-top, but these anime explanations just don't seem to be going away.
There are anime shows and movies out there that actually have good stories, but often they're bogged down under persistant anime conventions and a complete lack of desire to be truly creative, inventive, or artistic. This creates an interesting dilemma between being able to enjoy a good story and a good story being ruined by lazy animation. Often times even when I want to enjoy an anime, it's difficult to find something good under the layers of crap that are these conventions.
Story telling is an art. It's always important to remember that. And if you're not willing to dedicate yourself to telling a good story, no amount of art, or action explanations, or hackneyed conventions are going to save the final product. So many potentially good animes over the past 45 years have fallen by the wayside because the creative team behind them have chosen convention over story.
Maybe, Japan, it's time for a change.
Wednesday, July 2, 2008
Time for Some Squidbilly Soup
There is a saying in my country. It was quite popular when I was a child, and even earned a Simpsons episode about it. It goes something along the lines of: "If you looked up (stupid) in the dictionary, it will have a picture of your face by the definition." "Stupid" could be easily interchanged for a bunch of different "insulting" words, such as fat, ugly, moron, idiot, etc.
When it comes to Squidbillies, I can't help but be reminded of this familiar bromide, but it ends up a little different. I think of something more along the lines of: "If you looked up the word 'bad' in the dictionary, the definition could simply say: 'Squidbillies'."
This isn't "bad" like that word meant in the 80s, when it suddenly meant "cool." Don't think you're clever if you responded to that sentence with a thought along those lines.
Squidbillies is an attempt to take the absolute worst about already popular Adult Swim shows - Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force - and make a show consisting only of that.
Sealab and Aqua Teen, and even Space Ghost had some pretty lousy animation. Almost like a bare bones attempt at the South Park style. This could be enjoyable in a quirky kind of way, but only worked because episodes of those show actually managed to have legitimately funny dialogue from time to time. The animation was pretty much the worst part of those shows.
But I guess Williamstreet decided that it was the animation style that brought people to watch those shows. But it wasn't. Despite the reality, Squidbillies is a show that exists to have an extreme version of the lousy animation from those shows. It's even worse, which I guess is one hell of an achievement by itself, but nothing to be proud of.
And apparently this show is supposed to be funny because the animation is just that fucking bad. It's so bad that it somehow makes the show "good." Which is such an utterly idiotic concept that it boggles the mind. This is what they must think however, because the incredibly bad animation is the only thing the show has. That's it. Nothing else. The writing might as well not be existent. I have never in my life seen a more pure example of a completely lack to even just try to write something. It almost seems like the "writers," (it pains me to even call them that) simply sat around a tape recorder and spoke into it while growing progressively drunker throughout the night. Then they took some dice and rolled them, and whatever number it landed on they would go that many sentences through the recording and pick whatever was said and write it down as the next line of the script.
To say it makes no sense would be a compliment to this show. It doesn't even bother to try and make sense. It doesn't bother to tell jokes, it doesn't bother to have character humor, it doesn't bother to make absolutely any aspect of the show whatsoever into anything that is even worth the time it takes to create it.
There are probably plenty of 5-year-olds out there who can make an overall more entertaining and better done television show than Squidbillies. This show is literally bottom of the barrel. There is absolutely nothing here worthwhile, and yet somehow it's on its third season (of 20 episode seasons!?).
My only assumption is that they were literally trying to make the absolutely worst show they possibly could. That is the only logical conclusion I can draw. And they would have succeeded, too, if it wasn't for Tim and Eric.
When it comes to Squidbillies, I can't help but be reminded of this familiar bromide, but it ends up a little different. I think of something more along the lines of: "If you looked up the word 'bad' in the dictionary, the definition could simply say: 'Squidbillies'."
This isn't "bad" like that word meant in the 80s, when it suddenly meant "cool." Don't think you're clever if you responded to that sentence with a thought along those lines.
Squidbillies is an attempt to take the absolute worst about already popular Adult Swim shows - Space Ghost: Coast to Coast, Sealab 2021, and Aqua Teen Hunger Force - and make a show consisting only of that.
Sealab and Aqua Teen, and even Space Ghost had some pretty lousy animation. Almost like a bare bones attempt at the South Park style. This could be enjoyable in a quirky kind of way, but only worked because episodes of those show actually managed to have legitimately funny dialogue from time to time. The animation was pretty much the worst part of those shows.
But I guess Williamstreet decided that it was the animation style that brought people to watch those shows. But it wasn't. Despite the reality, Squidbillies is a show that exists to have an extreme version of the lousy animation from those shows. It's even worse, which I guess is one hell of an achievement by itself, but nothing to be proud of.
And apparently this show is supposed to be funny because the animation is just that fucking bad. It's so bad that it somehow makes the show "good." Which is such an utterly idiotic concept that it boggles the mind. This is what they must think however, because the incredibly bad animation is the only thing the show has. That's it. Nothing else. The writing might as well not be existent. I have never in my life seen a more pure example of a completely lack to even just try to write something. It almost seems like the "writers," (it pains me to even call them that) simply sat around a tape recorder and spoke into it while growing progressively drunker throughout the night. Then they took some dice and rolled them, and whatever number it landed on they would go that many sentences through the recording and pick whatever was said and write it down as the next line of the script.
To say it makes no sense would be a compliment to this show. It doesn't even bother to try and make sense. It doesn't bother to tell jokes, it doesn't bother to have character humor, it doesn't bother to make absolutely any aspect of the show whatsoever into anything that is even worth the time it takes to create it.
There are probably plenty of 5-year-olds out there who can make an overall more entertaining and better done television show than Squidbillies. This show is literally bottom of the barrel. There is absolutely nothing here worthwhile, and yet somehow it's on its third season (of 20 episode seasons!?).
My only assumption is that they were literally trying to make the absolutely worst show they possibly could. That is the only logical conclusion I can draw. And they would have succeeded, too, if it wasn't for Tim and Eric.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
Rhapsody's 7 Deadly Sins Continue
So I'm ready to round this out now I think. Here we go.
4) Be more creative with your setting.
Fantasy books are all, typically, set in a poorly disguised romanticized version of Europe during the middle ages. Or possibly Europe during the Renaissance. Usually an author setting a fantasy in a more Renaissance-type time period will get heaps of praise from idiots like the guy from the New York Times book review for being "incredibly inventive" or some such other totally ignorant phrase.
Rhapsody is especially guilty of this. There's the same kind of lord-peasant relationship going on (though it's a highly romanticized version, of course), and by the point of The Assassin King the "goodly" people of the British, French, and Italian styled countries are going to war with - can you guess it? - the people of the desert countries to the east of them! Where have we seen this before? I don't know.
This. Is. Boring.
Please, Fantasy writers. I'm begging you. Set a fantasy novel somewhere that's not a poorly disguised version of Europe during the middle ages. Please God, don't just emulate the same conflicts of the time period. That means nothing that too closely resembles The Crusades, Elizabeth Haydon, and no incredibly bad attempts to copycat The Black Death, R. A. Salvatore.
But why do I even bother ask? This is fantasy authors we're talking about. Having them actually be inventive for once? Now there's a laugh.
5)There is no pure "Good" vs. "Evil".
Yet again, we find we have Tolkien to thank for this. His books were interesting in their own way, sure, and his bad guys certainly seemed pretty bad, and even kinda scary at times. However, if you sit back and look at it, you can draw only one motivation for them: They're evil for the sake of being evil.
But you know something? Tolkien did that for a reason. Because the evil characters of Tolkien's book were humans, or ruled by humans, and they were motivated by one primal factor: Greed. The message is there, even if it's simple. Humans are bad and they do bad things for the simple fact that they're human.
Other fantasy writers don't make the "mistake" of giving their stories any special kind of message or meaning. And by mistake I mean they're not good enough to give it meaning.
No, instead we find that there are races that are purely "good," which includes but is not necessarily limited to: Humans. Many try to add the Tolkien list of goodly races: Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings, but any of those races could easily be on the evil list. And the Evil list almost always includes: Orcs, Goblins, and pretty much anything that isn't human. Demons will often appear, and some people even invented gods that are pure evil just so we can keep from having humans being evil.
Because if humans are evil, it's not because they're actually evil themselves. Oh no, humans are always members of the goodly races who can never do anything wrong (Wow, no wonder these people write fantasy. They're already living in a fantasy world). If they're evil, it's because they're being led on by a Demon, or Spirit, or Goblin/Orc/Creature, or even a purely evil "god" or demigod just to make sure that there's no real stain on the clean, pure slate of man.
This conflict may be slightly interesting for children's books, but for those of us over the age of 10 it's such a hackneyed, played-out, overused, trite story set-up that it's almost impossible to care about anymore. Why are the evil races always purely evil? Why are the good races always purely good (unless possessed by an evil...thing)? Why can't every race be somewhere in between good and evil, just like it would most likely be in real life?
Here's just a little food for thought: Just because something, say, a dragon, prays on a farmer's sheep, doesn't mean that the dragon absolutely has to be evil. We tend to demonize anything that preys on smaller, weaker creatures than it, but this isn't the way of reality. Because if it was, than humans are the biggest demons to have ever walked the Earth. No other creature, and I mean none, has ever preyed on more species of plant or animal - even bacteria! - than humans. So if we always end up as this "absolutely" goodly race in every fantasy novel, well, what does that make everything else?
And when you start thinking about this, you start seeing fantasy novels in a whole new light. All of the sudden all the "evil atrocities" that you read that some goblin supposedly committed began to sound like desperate attempts for it to save it's own race against the self-righteous, evil, endlessly destructive humans. You read a fantasy novel in this light where you are supposed to sympathize with the humans, but by the end the only ones you're feeling sorry for are the "evil" races, who within the book likely didn't do anything wrong but were nearly wiped off the face of the Earth anyway.
Looking at things this way, it's hard to find any fantasy authors who don't just seem like a total joke.
6) Interspecies sex actually isn't cool.
I know there's those of you out there that actually have a thing for "interspecies erotica", but that doesn't really mean it needs to boil over into endless fantasy novels.
Rhapsody treads a very thin line on this. She has characters that are essentially part human, part dragon. And while I'm not sure that at any point in the series it actually describes any of the liaisons between the dragons and humans that created these offspring, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. And Elizabeth Haydon seems pretty damn adamant about reminding you over and over about this mixed blood. I guess this is a means to tickle your inner, taboo for humans having sex with things that aren't human without blatantly throwing it in your face.
To be fair, for the majority of fantasy, this isn't really a problem. It mostly only occurs in vampire hunting novels, and those have only relatively recently been bundled into the Fantasy section of store shelves.
Despite this fact, however, this little hinting at such interspecies affairs is still danced around quite a bit in fantasy novels. Typically, fantasy novels attempt to be more "romantic" about such things. And by romantic I mean more of the thinking, not romance novel trash - that's what vampire hunting books are. So by being "romantic" they're attempting to only mention these things, rather than straight up describe them. And as "cool" as the theoretical idea of someone being half human and half dragon may seem to you, its just disturbing to be reading a book from an author that actually seems to think it would be really awesome if a human stuck their naughty bits in a dragon and something came out.
I guess the best thing about this, if their has to be a best thing, is that it's not a Tolkien emulation. Instead, we go much further back in time to the mythological tales (that inspired Tolkien), and to ancient Greek myths about Zeus and other such people who would frequently mate with non-humans to produce hideous offspring. You want to know the important difference? In ancient Greece, these stories were a lesson that, you know, it's really not all right to have sex with non-human animals (actually a frequent lesson in many ancient religions) because the results can be atrocious. In fantasy novels, these stories are latent, disturbing sexual desires.
And I do hope I'm not alone in not wanting to read that.
7) Turning your table-top D&D games into books is actually not interesting at all.
For this last one, I go to a sin Rhapsody has actually not committed. It's the one sin on this list I can pretty positively say Elizabeth Haydon is not guilty of. I'm pretty sure she's guilty of all the rest.
But since I'm doing the 7 Deadly Sins of Fantasy, I'll come to this one too.
Sure, for many of us, when we first picked up a Forgotten Realms or Dragon Lance book, it was pretty cool. The response probably went something along the lines of: "Woah! It's like a game of D&D only without all the rolling of dice and in book form!" But when you step back and think about that for a moment, it becomes instead: "Oh, wow, this is like a game of D&D only without the dice and in book form. How sad."
Not only are these books that are intended as purely entertainment with no specific message (though as I pointed out earlier you're left with the message that humans are purely good and such forth and so on), these are books that are actually intended as masturbatory entertainment to people who are just that in love with dungeons and dragons.
So most of the time not only is the writing bad, the characterization terrible (if existant), the dialogue flat, the action dull, and the events nonsensical, but you generally don't even have an actual story going on. Just some tale someone who thinks they're actually a really clever dungeon master composed on their mother's kitchen table and may have been interesting at that one point when you rolled a 2 so it didn't kill the dragon and you nearly died but then your friend rolled a 20 and saved the day, but isn't interesting to anybody else.
Yet despite this, these books have at various times elevated to the most popular form of fantasy available on the market.
The world is a frightening place.
CONCLUSION: The end of Sin
I would love to say that by not committing these 7 heinous acts that I have outlined for you here you are going to be hailed as the greatest fantasy writer of all time, but I can't guarantee that. What I can guarantee is that if you manage to commit all 7 sins in a single novel then you could be the worst writer on the planet Earth and your book will still soar to the top of best-seller lists across the nation.
So I leave the choice to you: Join Elizabeth Haydon, Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Ed Greenwood, R.A. Salvatore, Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, and an endless stream of others and write incredibly bad fiction that still somehow manages to sell disturbingly well, or Attempt to save us from this seemingly endless stream of tired crap they keep hurling at us and risk falling flat on your face by writing something new, different, and original.
There's at least one person who will have respect for you. He's sitting right here.
4) Be more creative with your setting.
Fantasy books are all, typically, set in a poorly disguised romanticized version of Europe during the middle ages. Or possibly Europe during the Renaissance. Usually an author setting a fantasy in a more Renaissance-type time period will get heaps of praise from idiots like the guy from the New York Times book review for being "incredibly inventive" or some such other totally ignorant phrase.
Rhapsody is especially guilty of this. There's the same kind of lord-peasant relationship going on (though it's a highly romanticized version, of course), and by the point of The Assassin King the "goodly" people of the British, French, and Italian styled countries are going to war with - can you guess it? - the people of the desert countries to the east of them! Where have we seen this before? I don't know.
This. Is. Boring.
Please, Fantasy writers. I'm begging you. Set a fantasy novel somewhere that's not a poorly disguised version of Europe during the middle ages. Please God, don't just emulate the same conflicts of the time period. That means nothing that too closely resembles The Crusades, Elizabeth Haydon, and no incredibly bad attempts to copycat The Black Death, R. A. Salvatore.
But why do I even bother ask? This is fantasy authors we're talking about. Having them actually be inventive for once? Now there's a laugh.
5)There is no pure "Good" vs. "Evil".
Yet again, we find we have Tolkien to thank for this. His books were interesting in their own way, sure, and his bad guys certainly seemed pretty bad, and even kinda scary at times. However, if you sit back and look at it, you can draw only one motivation for them: They're evil for the sake of being evil.
But you know something? Tolkien did that for a reason. Because the evil characters of Tolkien's book were humans, or ruled by humans, and they were motivated by one primal factor: Greed. The message is there, even if it's simple. Humans are bad and they do bad things for the simple fact that they're human.
Other fantasy writers don't make the "mistake" of giving their stories any special kind of message or meaning. And by mistake I mean they're not good enough to give it meaning.
No, instead we find that there are races that are purely "good," which includes but is not necessarily limited to: Humans. Many try to add the Tolkien list of goodly races: Elves, Dwarves, and Halflings, but any of those races could easily be on the evil list. And the Evil list almost always includes: Orcs, Goblins, and pretty much anything that isn't human. Demons will often appear, and some people even invented gods that are pure evil just so we can keep from having humans being evil.
Because if humans are evil, it's not because they're actually evil themselves. Oh no, humans are always members of the goodly races who can never do anything wrong (Wow, no wonder these people write fantasy. They're already living in a fantasy world). If they're evil, it's because they're being led on by a Demon, or Spirit, or Goblin/Orc/Creature, or even a purely evil "god" or demigod just to make sure that there's no real stain on the clean, pure slate of man.
This conflict may be slightly interesting for children's books, but for those of us over the age of 10 it's such a hackneyed, played-out, overused, trite story set-up that it's almost impossible to care about anymore. Why are the evil races always purely evil? Why are the good races always purely good (unless possessed by an evil...thing)? Why can't every race be somewhere in between good and evil, just like it would most likely be in real life?
Here's just a little food for thought: Just because something, say, a dragon, prays on a farmer's sheep, doesn't mean that the dragon absolutely has to be evil. We tend to demonize anything that preys on smaller, weaker creatures than it, but this isn't the way of reality. Because if it was, than humans are the biggest demons to have ever walked the Earth. No other creature, and I mean none, has ever preyed on more species of plant or animal - even bacteria! - than humans. So if we always end up as this "absolutely" goodly race in every fantasy novel, well, what does that make everything else?
And when you start thinking about this, you start seeing fantasy novels in a whole new light. All of the sudden all the "evil atrocities" that you read that some goblin supposedly committed began to sound like desperate attempts for it to save it's own race against the self-righteous, evil, endlessly destructive humans. You read a fantasy novel in this light where you are supposed to sympathize with the humans, but by the end the only ones you're feeling sorry for are the "evil" races, who within the book likely didn't do anything wrong but were nearly wiped off the face of the Earth anyway.
Looking at things this way, it's hard to find any fantasy authors who don't just seem like a total joke.
6) Interspecies sex actually isn't cool.
I know there's those of you out there that actually have a thing for "interspecies erotica", but that doesn't really mean it needs to boil over into endless fantasy novels.
Rhapsody treads a very thin line on this. She has characters that are essentially part human, part dragon. And while I'm not sure that at any point in the series it actually describes any of the liaisons between the dragons and humans that created these offspring, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. And Elizabeth Haydon seems pretty damn adamant about reminding you over and over about this mixed blood. I guess this is a means to tickle your inner, taboo for humans having sex with things that aren't human without blatantly throwing it in your face.
To be fair, for the majority of fantasy, this isn't really a problem. It mostly only occurs in vampire hunting novels, and those have only relatively recently been bundled into the Fantasy section of store shelves.
Despite this fact, however, this little hinting at such interspecies affairs is still danced around quite a bit in fantasy novels. Typically, fantasy novels attempt to be more "romantic" about such things. And by romantic I mean more of the thinking, not romance novel trash - that's what vampire hunting books are. So by being "romantic" they're attempting to only mention these things, rather than straight up describe them. And as "cool" as the theoretical idea of someone being half human and half dragon may seem to you, its just disturbing to be reading a book from an author that actually seems to think it would be really awesome if a human stuck their naughty bits in a dragon and something came out.
I guess the best thing about this, if their has to be a best thing, is that it's not a Tolkien emulation. Instead, we go much further back in time to the mythological tales (that inspired Tolkien), and to ancient Greek myths about Zeus and other such people who would frequently mate with non-humans to produce hideous offspring. You want to know the important difference? In ancient Greece, these stories were a lesson that, you know, it's really not all right to have sex with non-human animals (actually a frequent lesson in many ancient religions) because the results can be atrocious. In fantasy novels, these stories are latent, disturbing sexual desires.
And I do hope I'm not alone in not wanting to read that.
7) Turning your table-top D&D games into books is actually not interesting at all.
For this last one, I go to a sin Rhapsody has actually not committed. It's the one sin on this list I can pretty positively say Elizabeth Haydon is not guilty of. I'm pretty sure she's guilty of all the rest.
But since I'm doing the 7 Deadly Sins of Fantasy, I'll come to this one too.
Sure, for many of us, when we first picked up a Forgotten Realms or Dragon Lance book, it was pretty cool. The response probably went something along the lines of: "Woah! It's like a game of D&D only without all the rolling of dice and in book form!" But when you step back and think about that for a moment, it becomes instead: "Oh, wow, this is like a game of D&D only without the dice and in book form. How sad."
Not only are these books that are intended as purely entertainment with no specific message (though as I pointed out earlier you're left with the message that humans are purely good and such forth and so on), these are books that are actually intended as masturbatory entertainment to people who are just that in love with dungeons and dragons.
So most of the time not only is the writing bad, the characterization terrible (if existant), the dialogue flat, the action dull, and the events nonsensical, but you generally don't even have an actual story going on. Just some tale someone who thinks they're actually a really clever dungeon master composed on their mother's kitchen table and may have been interesting at that one point when you rolled a 2 so it didn't kill the dragon and you nearly died but then your friend rolled a 20 and saved the day, but isn't interesting to anybody else.
Yet despite this, these books have at various times elevated to the most popular form of fantasy available on the market.
The world is a frightening place.
CONCLUSION: The end of Sin
I would love to say that by not committing these 7 heinous acts that I have outlined for you here you are going to be hailed as the greatest fantasy writer of all time, but I can't guarantee that. What I can guarantee is that if you manage to commit all 7 sins in a single novel then you could be the worst writer on the planet Earth and your book will still soar to the top of best-seller lists across the nation.
So I leave the choice to you: Join Elizabeth Haydon, Laurell K. Hamilton, Kim Harrison, Ed Greenwood, R.A. Salvatore, Terry Goodkind, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, and an endless stream of others and write incredibly bad fiction that still somehow manages to sell disturbingly well, or Attempt to save us from this seemingly endless stream of tired crap they keep hurling at us and risk falling flat on your face by writing something new, different, and original.
There's at least one person who will have respect for you. He's sitting right here.
Friday, June 27, 2008
Rhapsody: 7 Deadly Sins of Fantasy
I'll admit ahead of time: I haven't actually read Rhapsody by Elizabeth Haydon. But I have read most of The Assassin King, which is in the same series and by the same author, so let's take that as good enough (if you don't understand why, read the last post). I also don't know if I actually have 7 sins to list off, or even if I did if I would bother to, but let's run with that title anyway.
My problem with this book isn't exactly specific to it. I am merely using it as an example of what is wrong with almost every fantasy book written in the past 30 years. Rhapsody, and its subsequent series, just make the point very easy to illustrate. And they're apparently incredibly successful now, so it'll be such a joy to tear these books down.
The problem with this series is just that: it's a series. This is the sixth book in the series, and essentially closes out the second "trilogy" (note the trilogy aspect. It's important later on).
Let's start with the fact that this book is long. 384 pages type long. And not long in a "good" way long, as in there's so much action/story/plot that you just can't get enough of it. And not long in a passable Robert Ludlum style long where there's so much excruciating detail on every single fucking little thing that it seems like the book is going to go on forever.
No, it's long like a Tolkien book. It's long in the sense that nothing happens for 300 fucking pages, and then there's a little bit that happens for the next 40 or so pages, and then the book mocks its way through a "conclusion" (that doesn't really conclude anything) that leaves it quite obviously open for a sequel and then it's over.
This leads us into our first SIN of fantasy novels:
1)It is not okay to imitate J.R.R. Tolkien.
Everybody does it. Essentially everyone who writes a fantasy novel is attempting to not really just imitate, or even emulate, but to flat out be the man who started it all. This series, in particular, is just sick with Tolkien envy. Just open the book. In true Tolkien Fantasy, it starts out with a map, drawn and labeled exactly like the maps of Middle Earth you'll find in any Tolkien book. Going just a few more pages in, you find the Rhapsody version of the poem of the Rings. That's right. Elizabeth Haydon thought she could write a "poem." And may I add, it's an incredibly bad poem. I mean, it reads like something a fifth grader wrote who was forced to write some stupid poem by their teacher and really didn't want to. It's terrible. But as if that wasn't bad enough, there's three more poems there! And they're equally terrible!
But thankfully, the writing in the actual story flows a little more smoothly than Tolkien's detached, text-book wordplay. Which is really impressive for a bad fantasy writer. Hell, if she wasn't just another derivative writer, she might actually be kind of good. But if she wasn't just another derivative writer, she probably wouldn't be writing fantasy novels. It's sad, but it's the truth.
2)Do not make up new languages.
Again, this is part of the Tolkien envy, but everybody tries to do it because they actually think they can. Here's a little need to know information people: Tolkien was a linguist. But he wasn't just a linguist. He was a fucking professor of languages. He fucking studied languages for decades before inventing Elvish, and he spent a very, very long time working out all the different rules and reasons for how the language worked. Because he could do that. It would be like a historian who studied ancient Mesopotamia all his life building a (modern) Sumerian City. He would probably know how because he'd studied the stuff his whole life. And he probably wouldn't just dump a bunch of wood down and go "Yeah, there we go, that looks kinda like a city." He'd take his time with it, paying attention to every little detail, because he'd want to get it right.
But you, Mr. (or Mz.) Fantasy-Writer-Off-The-Fucking-Streets, you don't have that background. You don't have that experience. And no matter what you think, YOU CANNOT FUCKING MAKE A NEW LANGUAGE. Because what you're going to be doing is you're going to be sitting there, typing your story, and then you come to a spot where you want them to say something in some bizarre language so it sounds more "fantastical," and then just slam your pudgy little fingers down on some random keys until you get something that may (though some even prefer it if it's not) be pronounceable. This does not make it a "new" language. This makes it random gibberish that means nothing and it's flat out annoying. It's like talking to a baby. Only, instead of the person creating it being two years old, they're probably mid-30s or older. It's just plain pathetic. Oh, and if you're one of those that thinks it's better to write words in your "language" that aren't pronounceable, do us all a favor and shoot yourself now. Because I can guarantee your fantasy novel isn't good enough to bother stumbling over such a poorly written foreign language. A little insiders tip: When you translate even the most bizarre of written languages (such as Japanese, Chinese dialects, or Russian) into an anglicized version (which is what you're doing essentially when you write your new words in your stupid little book), it generally follows rules you might expect from English words. So you're never going to see things like "Xyxzberaxzizas" or "nhwyvar."
I don't actually remember if Rhapsody is guilty of this. Well, it probably is.
3)NEVER write a series.
Every book becomes a trilogy in fantasy. There's pretty much no avoiding it. You write one fantasy book, it means you're writing two more, so you can round it off as a trilogy. It's annoying, it's more Tolkien envy, but I can deal with that. If we can leave things at trilogies, that's okay. Star Wars was a trilogy. It was a good trilogy. Then it turned into a series. Well, look what fucking happened.
And so it goes with every fantasy series. Rhapsody is no exception, and I laughed reading old reviews of that book when I discovered people actually thought it would be. And even on the incredibly, incredibly rare occasion where the trilogy is bare-able, by the time it's a series it's gone to utter crap. Because the auther only had ideas for one or two books, three at the most, but due to fan and publishing demand, they're forced to keep creating on deadlines, and there's no time for originality or creativity. So as the series gets longer, less and less happens in each book and yet they'll constantly get longer and longer (I call this the "Wheel of Time" syndrome). Think of a fantasy series you like. Any fantasy series. I will tell you exactly what happens in the next book: The characters will walk (they will walk a fucking LOT). They'll discuss, or think about, the events that have occurred to them in the past number of books over, and over, and over again, probably even mention some events more than once, without shedding any new kind of light on the event. There will be some big, serious, probably war-causing event that's kind sorta maybe building up the whole book, there might be a big fight towards the end, someone will probably die or get seriously hurt, or learn something about themself that they probably new before but learn it again anyway, and the book will leave itself open at the end for another sequel, where the exact same thing will happen. And by the, I don't know, 10th book in the series the book will probably be a good 1000 pages long. And why? Well, because we obviously need to have the characters walk for an extra 500 pages. Having them walk for 400 really just isn't enough walking.
You might say, well now, you're being pretty general there. That could describe a lot of books! To you I say: actually, I'm not being general at all. That is literally the extent of what occurs by the fifth or sixth book in a fantasy series. And you'll be lucky to get that. Nothing more. Possibly less.
Yet these books are flying off the shelves. The "Symphony of Ages" series that Rhapsody is a part of is considered to be a national bestseller, according to the cover of The Assassin King. That's just sad. It's sad that people can keep throwing so much at an entire genre of fiction that is all essentially the exact same thing. For the most part, there has been no innovation since Tolkien. And people love it. The more like Tolkien you are, the more your book is going to sell. It makes me want to throw up.
Why can't more people try and imitate Roger Zelazny? His prose could fluctuate freely from simple, straight prose to sweeping and poetic and interesting. Why does that not appeal to more people? I mean seriously.
Of course, then you still have the same derivative crap going on. But at least the writing styles might be more interesting.
So this is really long now. If I have more sins, I'll give them next update.
My problem with this book isn't exactly specific to it. I am merely using it as an example of what is wrong with almost every fantasy book written in the past 30 years. Rhapsody, and its subsequent series, just make the point very easy to illustrate. And they're apparently incredibly successful now, so it'll be such a joy to tear these books down.
The problem with this series is just that: it's a series. This is the sixth book in the series, and essentially closes out the second "trilogy" (note the trilogy aspect. It's important later on).
Let's start with the fact that this book is long. 384 pages type long. And not long in a "good" way long, as in there's so much action/story/plot that you just can't get enough of it. And not long in a passable Robert Ludlum style long where there's so much excruciating detail on every single fucking little thing that it seems like the book is going to go on forever.
No, it's long like a Tolkien book. It's long in the sense that nothing happens for 300 fucking pages, and then there's a little bit that happens for the next 40 or so pages, and then the book mocks its way through a "conclusion" (that doesn't really conclude anything) that leaves it quite obviously open for a sequel and then it's over.
This leads us into our first SIN of fantasy novels:
1)It is not okay to imitate J.R.R. Tolkien.
Everybody does it. Essentially everyone who writes a fantasy novel is attempting to not really just imitate, or even emulate, but to flat out be the man who started it all. This series, in particular, is just sick with Tolkien envy. Just open the book. In true Tolkien Fantasy, it starts out with a map, drawn and labeled exactly like the maps of Middle Earth you'll find in any Tolkien book. Going just a few more pages in, you find the Rhapsody version of the poem of the Rings. That's right. Elizabeth Haydon thought she could write a "poem." And may I add, it's an incredibly bad poem. I mean, it reads like something a fifth grader wrote who was forced to write some stupid poem by their teacher and really didn't want to. It's terrible. But as if that wasn't bad enough, there's three more poems there! And they're equally terrible!
But thankfully, the writing in the actual story flows a little more smoothly than Tolkien's detached, text-book wordplay. Which is really impressive for a bad fantasy writer. Hell, if she wasn't just another derivative writer, she might actually be kind of good. But if she wasn't just another derivative writer, she probably wouldn't be writing fantasy novels. It's sad, but it's the truth.
2)Do not make up new languages.
Again, this is part of the Tolkien envy, but everybody tries to do it because they actually think they can. Here's a little need to know information people: Tolkien was a linguist. But he wasn't just a linguist. He was a fucking professor of languages. He fucking studied languages for decades before inventing Elvish, and he spent a very, very long time working out all the different rules and reasons for how the language worked. Because he could do that. It would be like a historian who studied ancient Mesopotamia all his life building a (modern) Sumerian City. He would probably know how because he'd studied the stuff his whole life. And he probably wouldn't just dump a bunch of wood down and go "Yeah, there we go, that looks kinda like a city." He'd take his time with it, paying attention to every little detail, because he'd want to get it right.
But you, Mr. (or Mz.) Fantasy-Writer-Off-The-Fucking-Streets, you don't have that background. You don't have that experience. And no matter what you think, YOU CANNOT FUCKING MAKE A NEW LANGUAGE. Because what you're going to be doing is you're going to be sitting there, typing your story, and then you come to a spot where you want them to say something in some bizarre language so it sounds more "fantastical," and then just slam your pudgy little fingers down on some random keys until you get something that may (though some even prefer it if it's not) be pronounceable. This does not make it a "new" language. This makes it random gibberish that means nothing and it's flat out annoying. It's like talking to a baby. Only, instead of the person creating it being two years old, they're probably mid-30s or older. It's just plain pathetic. Oh, and if you're one of those that thinks it's better to write words in your "language" that aren't pronounceable, do us all a favor and shoot yourself now. Because I can guarantee your fantasy novel isn't good enough to bother stumbling over such a poorly written foreign language. A little insiders tip: When you translate even the most bizarre of written languages (such as Japanese, Chinese dialects, or Russian) into an anglicized version (which is what you're doing essentially when you write your new words in your stupid little book), it generally follows rules you might expect from English words. So you're never going to see things like "Xyxzberaxzizas" or "nhwyvar."
I don't actually remember if Rhapsody is guilty of this. Well, it probably is.
3)NEVER write a series.
Every book becomes a trilogy in fantasy. There's pretty much no avoiding it. You write one fantasy book, it means you're writing two more, so you can round it off as a trilogy. It's annoying, it's more Tolkien envy, but I can deal with that. If we can leave things at trilogies, that's okay. Star Wars was a trilogy. It was a good trilogy. Then it turned into a series. Well, look what fucking happened.
And so it goes with every fantasy series. Rhapsody is no exception, and I laughed reading old reviews of that book when I discovered people actually thought it would be. And even on the incredibly, incredibly rare occasion where the trilogy is bare-able, by the time it's a series it's gone to utter crap. Because the auther only had ideas for one or two books, three at the most, but due to fan and publishing demand, they're forced to keep creating on deadlines, and there's no time for originality or creativity. So as the series gets longer, less and less happens in each book and yet they'll constantly get longer and longer (I call this the "Wheel of Time" syndrome). Think of a fantasy series you like. Any fantasy series. I will tell you exactly what happens in the next book: The characters will walk (they will walk a fucking LOT). They'll discuss, or think about, the events that have occurred to them in the past number of books over, and over, and over again, probably even mention some events more than once, without shedding any new kind of light on the event. There will be some big, serious, probably war-causing event that's kind sorta maybe building up the whole book, there might be a big fight towards the end, someone will probably die or get seriously hurt, or learn something about themself that they probably new before but learn it again anyway, and the book will leave itself open at the end for another sequel, where the exact same thing will happen. And by the, I don't know, 10th book in the series the book will probably be a good 1000 pages long. And why? Well, because we obviously need to have the characters walk for an extra 500 pages. Having them walk for 400 really just isn't enough walking.
You might say, well now, you're being pretty general there. That could describe a lot of books! To you I say: actually, I'm not being general at all. That is literally the extent of what occurs by the fifth or sixth book in a fantasy series. And you'll be lucky to get that. Nothing more. Possibly less.
Yet these books are flying off the shelves. The "Symphony of Ages" series that Rhapsody is a part of is considered to be a national bestseller, according to the cover of The Assassin King. That's just sad. It's sad that people can keep throwing so much at an entire genre of fiction that is all essentially the exact same thing. For the most part, there has been no innovation since Tolkien. And people love it. The more like Tolkien you are, the more your book is going to sell. It makes me want to throw up.
Why can't more people try and imitate Roger Zelazny? His prose could fluctuate freely from simple, straight prose to sweeping and poetic and interesting. Why does that not appeal to more people? I mean seriously.
Of course, then you still have the same derivative crap going on. But at least the writing styles might be more interesting.
So this is really long now. If I have more sins, I'll give them next update.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
The Outlaw Demon Wails...and So Do I.
One look at the title of this book is probably enough to identify it to anyone who's been in the Fantasy section of their book store in the past few years as part of the series that includes books with such titles as "For a Few Demons More," "A Fistful of Charms," and "The Good, The Bad, and the Undead." Even ignoring how painful and insulting this is to all the fine people who made (and enjoyed) those actually rather good Clint Eastwood movies the series so blatantly steals its titles from, its obvious these titles are this way to make a point. It wants to give the reader an idea of what kind of story takes place upon those pages. It wants to give you the impression that it's going to be an incredibly stylistic story about an uncouth hero(-ine, in this case), with powers almost supernatural (but wouldn't you know it, in this book, they are!) with a take-no-prisoners, no-holds-barred attitude towards getting the job done.
"Kim Harrison" the cover says next. These letters are big and bold - bigger and bolder, in fact, than anything else on the cover - a slightly lighter shade of grey than the title, and stand out against the background a lot better. This makes the browser go, "Oh, look at that! This Kim Harrison must really be something." But the fact of that matter is: she's not. This is done because when it comes to the realm of fantasy novels, which book in the series it is doesn't matter in the slightest. If you've decided you like one book from a fantasy author, you like all of their books. This is because every book a fantasy author writes is the exact same story, with the exact same characters (mainly because the author can often times only write one character), with the exact same plot twists, developments, and resolutions. If you've read a Kim Harrison book in your lifetime, you've read The Outlaw Demon Wails, even if it wasn't called that at the time.
Next the cover goes on to proclaim that this book is "From the New York Times Bestselling author of For a Few Demons More." Which just goes to show you what an absolute JOKE that list is. I mean, Dr. Phil is on that list for a diet book. A diet book.
...
Well...let's just say he's not exactly in shape himself...
Anyway, done with the front cover, let's go ahead and move inside the book.
It only takes you about a single page in to realize that despite the oh-so-clever title, this book has absolutely no style whatsoever. Actually, given the title you probably won't be surprised to discover that at all. There's none. It's just straight prose with no witticisms, grace, airiness, introspection, anything that might make the words less difficult to actually sit down in read. Despite the action-based plot of the book, the utter lack of style leaves the book more boring than a newspaper. At least the occasional newspaper story will have some sense of poetry to the writing, or some kind of insight into human life.
It also shouldn't take long for you to realize that every single character in the book is written exactly the same. This is an incredibly common problem of bad fantasy. Each character is basically composed of "clever" little mannerisms that greatly amuse the author writing them, but just makes them seem flat and one-dimensional to the reader. And the biggest trouble with this is that each "good" character in the book, then will do things the author considers good - or basically that the author themselves would do. Essentially it's self-insertion fantasy in an almost-as-creepy-as-woody-allen type way. Whereas he wrote movies of him getting to make out and have sex with "le hot chicks" because he's just some creepy ugly dude who wouldn't have gotten any otherwise, Kim Harrison writes books where a character that is quite obviously her makes out and has sex with her idea of what a perfect guy is. And her concept of what a perfect guy is doesn't exist, because the males in her books are just her, only with muscular bodies and convex genitalia.
Oh yes, her character has latent sexual fantasies about her pixie friend that maybe is the height of her hand. A pixie. Height of her hand. Just try and tell me that's not disturbing. Just...just try.
Then, right at the very beginning of Chapter Two, is a Cardinal Sin of writing. In the very first fucking paragraph you find the wonderful line "It hurt enough to."
Despite myself, I'm reminded of the Beavis and Butthead movie, where the guy from the FBI says something along the lines of, "Bork! You're a federal agent! You represent the United States government! I don't ever want to hear you ending a sentence with a preposition again!"
You just don't fucking do it. You just don't fucking do it. The reader expects there to be more to that sentence. But then it just ends. Any good writer, any writer with a fucking modicum of talent is never, ever, going to make that mistake. It would just seem far too unnatural for them. They would only do that if they were intentionally trying to make a character seem like an idiot and have them ending a spoken sentence that way. But this wasn't spoken, and it wasn't from a character that was supposed to look foolish or even dumb. It was the main fucking character's poor excuse for introspection.
I'll admit, I haven't finished this book. Maybe it actually gets better. No. No, that's not even a possibility. So I'm not going to finish this book. I'm gonna toss it where I've left off - the first couple pages of chapter three - and not come back to it ever. It's far too painful.
The back cover contains the typical "praise" for the author, though from just what loony bins they dug up someone fucking insane enough to say anything good about this author, I don't even want to know. "Her work can read like a smoldering combination of Alice Waters and Ozzy Osbourne" says some "connoisseur" from the New York Times Book Review.
WHAT
THE FUCK
IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Ozzy Osbourne? Are you fucking KIDDING me? Where the FUCK did you even come up with that? What, just because her work talks about demons and magic, that means she's just like OZZY FUCKING OSBOURNE?
Look, Mr. Fucking Crazy Pants at the New York Times Book Review, let me lay just one little tidbit of information down for you. At his worst, at his absolute worst, and yes, I'm talking about the early 2000s after his brain had been completely fried from having done just 1 (billion) too many drugs, Ozzy's writing contained a sense of style and poetry that Kim Harrison could only ever fucking DREAM of having. If she had a quarter of the style that Ozzy had, I probably wouldn't be writing this blog right now. I'd have read the book (the whole book), shrugged my shoulders, and put it away. I wouldn't have loved it, but I wouldn't really have complaints. But she doesn't. And she never fucking will. Because the fucked up, super lonely goth loving sycophantic losers who constantly buy this shit every year as if its water from the Holy Grail itself tell her that she's doing fucking great, and not actually writing so painfully bad that it's almost tragic.
Kim Harrison, you're writing is fucking horrendous. You owe every person who ever was forced to spend money on your terrible books some sort of restitution. While no amount of money can ever heal the wounds you have so callously inflicted upon your readers, it can maybe at least ease their suffering a little. I accept cash or check.
"Kim Harrison" the cover says next. These letters are big and bold - bigger and bolder, in fact, than anything else on the cover - a slightly lighter shade of grey than the title, and stand out against the background a lot better. This makes the browser go, "Oh, look at that! This Kim Harrison must really be something." But the fact of that matter is: she's not. This is done because when it comes to the realm of fantasy novels, which book in the series it is doesn't matter in the slightest. If you've decided you like one book from a fantasy author, you like all of their books. This is because every book a fantasy author writes is the exact same story, with the exact same characters (mainly because the author can often times only write one character), with the exact same plot twists, developments, and resolutions. If you've read a Kim Harrison book in your lifetime, you've read The Outlaw Demon Wails, even if it wasn't called that at the time.
Next the cover goes on to proclaim that this book is "From the New York Times Bestselling author of For a Few Demons More." Which just goes to show you what an absolute JOKE that list is. I mean, Dr. Phil is on that list for a diet book. A diet book.
...
Well...let's just say he's not exactly in shape himself...
Anyway, done with the front cover, let's go ahead and move inside the book.
It only takes you about a single page in to realize that despite the oh-so-clever title, this book has absolutely no style whatsoever. Actually, given the title you probably won't be surprised to discover that at all. There's none. It's just straight prose with no witticisms, grace, airiness, introspection, anything that might make the words less difficult to actually sit down in read. Despite the action-based plot of the book, the utter lack of style leaves the book more boring than a newspaper. At least the occasional newspaper story will have some sense of poetry to the writing, or some kind of insight into human life.
It also shouldn't take long for you to realize that every single character in the book is written exactly the same. This is an incredibly common problem of bad fantasy. Each character is basically composed of "clever" little mannerisms that greatly amuse the author writing them, but just makes them seem flat and one-dimensional to the reader. And the biggest trouble with this is that each "good" character in the book, then will do things the author considers good - or basically that the author themselves would do. Essentially it's self-insertion fantasy in an almost-as-creepy-as-woody-allen type way. Whereas he wrote movies of him getting to make out and have sex with "le hot chicks" because he's just some creepy ugly dude who wouldn't have gotten any otherwise, Kim Harrison writes books where a character that is quite obviously her makes out and has sex with her idea of what a perfect guy is. And her concept of what a perfect guy is doesn't exist, because the males in her books are just her, only with muscular bodies and convex genitalia.
Oh yes, her character has latent sexual fantasies about her pixie friend that maybe is the height of her hand. A pixie. Height of her hand. Just try and tell me that's not disturbing. Just...just try.
Then, right at the very beginning of Chapter Two, is a Cardinal Sin of writing. In the very first fucking paragraph you find the wonderful line "It hurt enough to."
Despite myself, I'm reminded of the Beavis and Butthead movie, where the guy from the FBI says something along the lines of, "Bork! You're a federal agent! You represent the United States government! I don't ever want to hear you ending a sentence with a preposition again!"
You just don't fucking do it. You just don't fucking do it. The reader expects there to be more to that sentence. But then it just ends. Any good writer, any writer with a fucking modicum of talent is never, ever, going to make that mistake. It would just seem far too unnatural for them. They would only do that if they were intentionally trying to make a character seem like an idiot and have them ending a spoken sentence that way. But this wasn't spoken, and it wasn't from a character that was supposed to look foolish or even dumb. It was the main fucking character's poor excuse for introspection.
I'll admit, I haven't finished this book. Maybe it actually gets better. No. No, that's not even a possibility. So I'm not going to finish this book. I'm gonna toss it where I've left off - the first couple pages of chapter three - and not come back to it ever. It's far too painful.
The back cover contains the typical "praise" for the author, though from just what loony bins they dug up someone fucking insane enough to say anything good about this author, I don't even want to know. "Her work can read like a smoldering combination of Alice Waters and Ozzy Osbourne" says some "connoisseur" from the New York Times Book Review.
WHAT
THE FUCK
IS WRONG WITH YOU?
Ozzy Osbourne? Are you fucking KIDDING me? Where the FUCK did you even come up with that? What, just because her work talks about demons and magic, that means she's just like OZZY FUCKING OSBOURNE?
Look, Mr. Fucking Crazy Pants at the New York Times Book Review, let me lay just one little tidbit of information down for you. At his worst, at his absolute worst, and yes, I'm talking about the early 2000s after his brain had been completely fried from having done just 1 (billion) too many drugs, Ozzy's writing contained a sense of style and poetry that Kim Harrison could only ever fucking DREAM of having. If she had a quarter of the style that Ozzy had, I probably wouldn't be writing this blog right now. I'd have read the book (the whole book), shrugged my shoulders, and put it away. I wouldn't have loved it, but I wouldn't really have complaints. But she doesn't. And she never fucking will. Because the fucked up, super lonely goth loving sycophantic losers who constantly buy this shit every year as if its water from the Holy Grail itself tell her that she's doing fucking great, and not actually writing so painfully bad that it's almost tragic.
Kim Harrison, you're writing is fucking horrendous. You owe every person who ever was forced to spend money on your terrible books some sort of restitution. While no amount of money can ever heal the wounds you have so callously inflicted upon your readers, it can maybe at least ease their suffering a little. I accept cash or check.
Wednesday, June 11, 2008
Dark Tragedies: Sex in the City
Hidden deep within a dark trench, miles below the surface of the Earth, an evil sorcerer sits around a table with the Dark Lord himself, and Uwe Boll. Maniacally he cackles as he remembers the day's date, tapping the tips of his fingers together in that generic poise of wickedness. Even his two companions must admit that he has truly outdone himself in evil deeds this time. For he has conceived the concept of a Sex in the City movie. And a terrible darkness befalls all of humanity.
Just what, you may ask, is wrong with Sex in the City? Well, if you do ask that, I feel sorry for you. Because it means you have become so deeply ensnared by this malignant spell that you can't even tell good from such a blatantly iniquitous sin.
Lets start with the fact that the show is called Sex in the City, and yet stars television's most hideously ugly woman to ever helm such a (sadly) successful show. Well, that may not be true anymore, what with Kyra Sedgwick on the scene (and The Closer, all and all, might actually have managed to be an actually worse show, which is flat-out inconceivable). I'd post a picture to prove just how ugly Sarah Jessica Parker is, but doing so would be similar to opening the arc of the covenant. And my livejournal may be bad, but that's no excuse to start melting the faces of my innocent readers.
I realize that in the end, anything that absolutely any male says about this show is going to be written off as misogynistic, sexist, idiotic bullshit, but I'll ignore you people who think you can argue by resorting to abstract ideas you once heard about in school and think you can sling onto anyone who disagrees with you.
Because using the argument that something is "made for [specific demographic]" is such a tired, hackneyed, overused excuse for allowing something to be, particularly in this case, incredibly bad. Yeah, I get it. Women like the show because it appeals to something primal inside of them, much the way that most men like shows/movies/games/etc. with plenty of violence, carnage, and big boobs because it appeals to something primal in them.
But goddammit, that doesn't make it good.
Just because the show is "for [specific demographic]" is no reason to over look the abysmal writing, the complete lack of characterization, the utter lack of originality, the acting strategy of not even bothering to fucking act, or the millions of other things that are wrong with the show. Yet people do. Constantly. Because complaining about these things makes you a misogynistic pig. Because that makes fucking sense.
I thought Miley Cyrus represented the darkest stain, the biggest tragedy, the lowest point of human wreckage that our culture has reached, but I was wrong. I was fucking wrong.
Just what, you may ask, is wrong with Sex in the City? Well, if you do ask that, I feel sorry for you. Because it means you have become so deeply ensnared by this malignant spell that you can't even tell good from such a blatantly iniquitous sin.
Lets start with the fact that the show is called Sex in the City, and yet stars television's most hideously ugly woman to ever helm such a (sadly) successful show. Well, that may not be true anymore, what with Kyra Sedgwick on the scene (and The Closer, all and all, might actually have managed to be an actually worse show, which is flat-out inconceivable). I'd post a picture to prove just how ugly Sarah Jessica Parker is, but doing so would be similar to opening the arc of the covenant. And my livejournal may be bad, but that's no excuse to start melting the faces of my innocent readers.
I realize that in the end, anything that absolutely any male says about this show is going to be written off as misogynistic, sexist, idiotic bullshit, but I'll ignore you people who think you can argue by resorting to abstract ideas you once heard about in school and think you can sling onto anyone who disagrees with you.
Because using the argument that something is "made for [specific demographic]" is such a tired, hackneyed, overused excuse for allowing something to be, particularly in this case, incredibly bad. Yeah, I get it. Women like the show because it appeals to something primal inside of them, much the way that most men like shows/movies/games/etc. with plenty of violence, carnage, and big boobs because it appeals to something primal in them.
But goddammit, that doesn't make it good.
Just because the show is "for [specific demographic]" is no reason to over look the abysmal writing, the complete lack of characterization, the utter lack of originality, the acting strategy of not even bothering to fucking act, or the millions of other things that are wrong with the show. Yet people do. Constantly. Because complaining about these things makes you a misogynistic pig. Because that makes fucking sense.
I thought Miley Cyrus represented the darkest stain, the biggest tragedy, the lowest point of human wreckage that our culture has reached, but I was wrong. I was fucking wrong.
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