Spoilers for Encanto which is a movie I’m still obsessed with.
[screencaps from animation screencaps dot com]
A disorganized list of things that make Encanto so great:
All the dancing, including Antonio’s new room dancing with most of the family, Dolores’s Bruno verse dance, Isabella rocking out with the flower mic, and obviously Félix and Pepa’s dance while not talking about Bruno
Every single character, including but not limited to Coffee Child, Overly Excited Child, Guy Who Can’t Stop Talking Tactlessly, Guy Yelling About Donkeys, and Antonio
Antonio (has to be included twice)
The donkeys (especially the donkeys in the band on the Madrigal Titanic)
Comedy toucan
Comedy capybara
“Helpful” coatis
Helpful rats. Does affinity for animals run in the Madrigal genes? It certainly seems to. When the rats grab the shards of Bruno’s vision, I guess at his request, that’s pretty impressive
The soup at the disastrous dinner, where there’s either half a corn cob or a whole corn cob in each bowl. I want to find a vegan recipe of that soup, it looks so good
Men and boys being affectionate and supportive. I mean, Augustín? Félix? Camilo? Antonio? The adults show romantic affection for their wives which is nice, but then there’s also familial affection and general supportiveness all around. Augustín especially is a nice change of pace for a Disney dad, managing to be accident-prone but not useless, and even stands up to Abuela on behalf of Mirabel. Bruno, too, as soon as he comes back to the family, immediately goes into affectionate and supportive mode
Compassionate examination of intergenerational trauma
How is it so easy to ache for Mirabel, but remain understanding of Abuela, even at her worst? Ahh, nuance and no villains, I love you
Connection within Pepa’s family: Félix barges into Mirabel’s hushed conversation with Pepa having overheard them through a closed door, and before that, Pepa comes into the room already upset because she overheard Mirabel muttering to herself about Bruno. These are the parents of Dolores, and that makes perfect sense. Dolores for her part can hear rats talking in the walls worrying about the house – so either that’s Bruno, or she also can understand animals, just like her brother. Camilo shifting into Mirabel and Bruno when he hears that Mirabel is in Bruno’s vision, shifting through all of the adults in his life after being zapped by lightning, and shifting into someone with a baby head reminds me of Pepa not being able to keep her feelings to herself, always with the weather overhead. Antonio being the cutest, most empathetic cousin and nephew reminds me of Félix always looking out for and pacifying Pepa
Connection within Julieta’s family: All three sisters are being crushed under the weight of familial pressure, each according to her gift (or non-gift). Luisa is struggling to do all the heavy lifting and feels like she’d be nothing if she couldn’t keep up with the work. Isabella is struggling to remain perfect and pretty, which is an identity she’s been forced into, and to fulfil a vision of a perfect future she doesn’t even want. I think it’s deliberate that out of the grandkids, Isabella looks the most like young Alma, and Mariano looks a lot like Abuelo Pedro. Mirabel has to keep pretending that she’s fine even though she is NOT. When the sisters have brief but honest conversations, these things start unraveling almost right away. Mirabel is the key, a lot like Julieta, being a healing presence. Julieta is concerned about Mirabel the whole time, always knowing when something is wrong even when Mirabel insists she’s fine. Mirabel, after talking to Luisa, worries about her throughout the rest of the film, taking note whenever she sees her struggling. Once she tells Augustín about it, he does the same thing. Both Julieta and Augustín stand up to Abuela the way Mirabel eventually does, but, like, more
The part where Antonio tells the jaguar not to eat the rats
In the past, we’ve made posts about how when you screencap certain goofy moves (Hercules only), the results are goofy. Looking at still images from Encanto featuring Bruno is a little different though. Some insights:
Bruno’s a Frozen fan
So there’s a bit of goofiness here. I do wonder why he’s still wearing the bucket, but then, he’s been in the walls for a while. Coping mechanisms become habitual. But there are more interesting insights to be gleaned than occasional goofiness.
This scene where Bruno revisits his vision goes by pretty quickly but when you slow it down, you can see some clear enthusiasm here, uncharacteristic for Bruno (or at least for what we’ve seen of him so far). His perpetual sadness makes a lot more sense when you consider that he might truly enjoy having visions, but the way everyone always reacts in such negative ways eventually ruins his enjoyment of his own power.
Eeeevery time.
He was so happy to come up with a clear and “easy” solution for once: hug your sister! “That’s great!” But Mirabel is furious with that result. Poor Bruno.
It adds a layer to the general sadness of Bruno, who lives in the walls where he can sort of sit with his family for meals but not really.
Lay it on thick, Encanto.
But there’s also reunited-with-family Bruno:
All right, enough, we don’t talk about him for a reason and the reason is that IT’S TOO EMOTIONAL.
That’s it. Will try to blog about something else next time.
Last time on Owlmachine, I’d barely started watching Encanto at the theatre before the power went out. Today I saw the whole thing and jsfdnojawiouwnqfjncsjdk njgkrwdfjjfvnsjdfnvk. So.
will be dancing to this for weeks, thanks LMM and Carlos Vives
I’m of the Disney musical proclivity anyway, so obviously I was going to love it. Apart from being typically great animated fare, Encanto is special because, to me, it seems like out of all the Disney musicals, this is the one that would make the most sense on stage. I know The Lion King killed it, and I’ve never seen any of the others but I’ve heard good things, and some “meh” things, about all of them. I’m not sure how Frozen’s stage version was received generally, but that one likely ended up on stage more because it was a guaranteed money-maker than its material being well suited for live stage production. I’d still have gone to see it if it came here because I’m exactly that sucker, and also who wouldn’t want to see Frozen performed live?
But with Encanto, the way a larger cast participates in multiple numbers, and how Mirabel’s two sisters get songs of their own, and how the most popular song features a healthy chunk of the family singing about another family member, it just feels like this was meant to go on stage eventually. “Dos Oruguitas” could easily be sung by one or more of the children or grandchildren, the way Angelica sings “It’s Quiet Uptown” in Hamilton. (DO NOT listen to “Dos Oruguitas” in advance if you plan to watch the movie ever. Hear and see it first in its proper context.) And “Colombia, Mi Encanto” could easily fit in anywhere sung by anyone or, better yet, everyone.
Animation is probably my favourite medium for visual story-telling though, so as much as I would see Encanto on stage 36 times in a row and then some (if the funds for me doing that existed somehow) if the stage version existed this animated version would always be superior. As much fun as “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” would clearly be performed live, in the animation it was transporting as only animation can be.
It’s good, music is obviously amazing, the animation is amazing, the characters are instantly adorable, parts of it are REALLY sad and the resolution hits the spot. It has a fantastic message. Also the intergenerational trauma raccoon short that plays before it made me ugly cry, twice. The first time I saw it I ugly cried just because it was raccoons. I CAN’T DEAL with raccoons. The second time it was because the actual story that’s being told is very moving, and also again just because it was raccoons.
Just popping out of the floor to look for a lord or a warrior to help her escape. But there’s just an assistant pig-keeper, oh well.
If you’ve never seen it but want to, you should just do that and ignore this post. Initially intended as a quick discussion about Eilonwy, it’s instead full of spoilers. All you need to know about Eilonwy is that she is great. She’s great. Better in the book, but then what isn’t?
The Black Cauldron is a bizarre movie. Is it too dark for its intended child-audience? Maybe. It was and is too dark for me – just one part, though. Despite this coming out a few years before my birth and even with the saturation of Disney movies in my childhood, I first saw The Black Cauldron when I was maybe 16. The scene where Hen-Wen is chased and captured by the fell beasts was too much for my poor animal-loving heart. It’s still pretty much unwatchable for me today, to be honest.
One day my friend was telling me enthusiastically about this movie I’d never heard of, saying things like “most depressing Disney movie ever” and “there’s this little thing and he’s kind of like Smeagol, and then he dies after making a speech about having no friends.” So obviously I went out and bought the DVD so I could watch it immediately. When it got to the part where the three witches give Taran Gurgi’s body back, I fully believed Gurgi was staying dead, and that they’d just lobbed his corpse at Taran because they’re witches. I thought the next scene would be a funeral, and I was quite shocked at how morbid it all was. And then he came back to life and I breathed a sigh of relief. To be fair, if any Disney movie was going to skip the magical resurrection, it would be this one. But they still managed a happy ending.
I think the fact that Gurgi is resurrected and they all get home safe (except some henchmen, but who cares) means that it’s generally not too dark for kids, but it’s definitely not for all kids. If I’d seen the Hen-Wen chase/capture scene as a small child I would have been traumatized. It’s all about scenes as building-blocks, I think, when you’re dealing with children’s films. That scene ends with Hen-Wen shrieking as she’s being carried away, and you’re left unsure of how things will turn out for her. Taran is reunited with her soon but she’s still in danger, and her return to safety is quite drawn out. In contrast, other Disney horror scenes are compact and self-contained, like Snow White in the scary forest. All of those terrifying eyes turn into cute woodland critters as she sobs, overwhelmed, and that makes it endurable. Pink elephants on parade settle into clouds. Big, tense confrontations with villains begin and end at the climax. Horror is resolved, and resolved as quickly as it began. The cauldron-born sequence that was chopped up because it terrified children in the test screen is very grisly and was much grislier before the hack job, but at least it ended shortly after it began, frankly.
On a re-watch just today, I tried to figure out what might have made this a better film purely from my own perspective. I remembered Eilonwy’s pluck and unfailing kindness (apart from understandable moments of irritation directed at Taran) as a bright spot, but what surprised me was that really, all the characters are pretty good. Taran’s hero journey is all present and accounted for. Fflewdurr is a decent guy and he even has a gimmick in his lie-detecting harp. My favourite moment of his is when, finally, annoyed at some ongoing sexual harassment, he snaps, “Oh, pull yourself together, madam.” A lesser film (a MUCH lesser film) would have him be into the over-the-top sexual advances because he’s a man and obviously man=horndog-at-all-times (</sarcasm>), so well done all, there. Gurgi is a little bit too pathetic but he’s still lovable. The Horned King is scary, Creeper is… like. Get a better job, bud. The three witches are kind of funny, but really they walked so that Ursula could run. The fairies who annoyed me so much the first time I watched it have grown on me (constant complaining is much more relatable in my old age). I still love Hen-Wen and the other guy.
She’s in good company, then. I think the main problem is that it’s too short. A few years ago I read a few of the books in this series, and, unsurprisingly, I think the story and characters work much better in novel-form, where they have room to breath and actually flesh everything out. But the movie’s not half-bad, really, it’s just freaking weird.
There are obvious reasons, such as the financial loss as well as the lack of cultural recognition that the film and its characters have compared to the most other Disney movies, for Eilonwy to not be on the official princess roster. But I do wonder whether how young she is factors in as well. Vanellope isn’t on there either, and her movie got a sequel. Eilonwy is maybe 12? She’d probably seem out of place with the other princesses.
It’s too bad, though. Before there was Queen Elsa and her formidable ice magic, the only Disney princess (unofficial) who could do magic was Eilonwy (do I have that right, because it seems wrong, somehow?). Maybe if the movie had been longer, there would have been more time to show some of it.
It’s been forever since I watched Meeeerlin, so let’s finish season 2.
Sweet Dreams
In this episode a fire-breathing jester servant sorcerer does a love spell on Arthur so that he will fall in love with a rude princess and this will start a war. Hijinks ensue. Merlin/Arthur snark abounds, as does Arthur x Gwen stuff (it’s an Arthur x Gwen episode).
The misunderstandings and miscommunications are all well done, funny, cringey, and so on, as they’re supposed to be. There’s even a point where today’s villain, King Something-or-another, complains because the rude princess isn’t interested in Arthur and this somehow ruins his war plans. He says, “every woman everywhere is attracted to him, I’m almost attracted to him.” And then that fire-breathing jester laughs but the evil king shoots him a glare so you know what, the evil king is attracted to Arthur, full stop.
I do think it’s refreshing that the love spell is being used to start a war. Usually it’s to take over Camelot or some such.
Anyway Merlin/Arthur anything is always good and the Arthur/Gwen romance is strong, so this is a quality episode.
The Witch’s Quickening
A lot happens in this one, so here’s a list:
Morgana is mean to Gwen for, I think, the first time
Then she’s nice to her again but gives her evil looks while she’s not looking – this came out of nowhere, I think
Arthur is pretty mean to Merlin too, throughout
Morgana disowns Uther for the millionth time but seems to mean it
Merlin trips Mordred and he’s like “I’ll never forget or forgive!” Kid you just tripped on a stick, get over it
Merlin sees a vision of himself freeing the dragon and the dragon burning Camelot, and he’s sad about it
Also Merlin helps Arthur and co destroy a sorcerer’s camp and kill a bunch of people on Uther’s orders. Are we ever really going to deal with how bizarre it is that Merlin is on this side of the conflict?
Morgana gets seduced by an insufferable liar named Alvarr, but I think he’s also Tristan of Tristan and Isolde. Either that or he looks a lot like him and his girlfriend looks sort of like her. Or my memory is flawed. However, they’re annoying, and whether these two are the same people or not, I know Tristan and Isolde were also annoying, so I’m kind of right even if I turn out to be wrong.
Morgana helps Alvarr escape even though it would have been nice if he died (but also he’s technically in the right in this stupid conflict; he’s just annoying)
How does Uther not realize it’s Morgana betraying him? What a thick skull he has.
The dragon is VERY insistent.
The Fires of Idirsholas
Morgause is back!
This episode is similarly dark as the last one, and is about the same things. I like this one better because it places Morgana close to Arthur and Merlin, and she has to face what her betrayal is doing to them (as in, she’s watching them slowly die of a sleep plague caused by her). She’s still conflicted, despite declaring to Morgause that she isn’t. Merlin is also close to Morgana when he decides, after a lot of angsting, to kill (or almost kill) Morgana. Morgause saves her because unlike Alvarr, Morgause actually cares about Morgana.
Gaius tells Merlin that he made the right choice in killing/almost killing Morgana because Morgana didn’t choose to use her gift for good, which is apparently what Merlin is doing.
So. Merlin choosing not to kill Uther or to not let Uther die, letting the more just and less bigoted Arthur take over is good, and so killing/almost killing magical women in service to that is also good. Cool.
This episode features a “I think I’m about to die” Arthur joking with Merlin about needing a servant in the next life.
Also. The dragon is freed. So the stupidity of the ethics in this show can slide this time around. I had a good time.
The Last Dragonlord
The dragon is PISSED.
Merlin’s father is in this episode. He doesn’t know he is Merlin’s father. Merlin tells him, they bond, then that guy dies.
Then Merlin inherits his dragon-entrapment abilities and Merlin is merciful. The dragon flies away and Arthur is told he killed it. Before that, they do a “I think I’m about to die” Arthur and Merlin banter again which I like.
Morgause shows up and taunts Arthur into leaving Camelot to do some challenge or another. Haven’t we done this already? I recall a similar set of circumstance with Nimueh in season 1. I assume Morgause will end up dead at some point and I really hope her death is less stupid than Nimueh’s.
This is one of those episodes that shows just how much this show has to work with – a good setup with the Camelot mythos, good characters, enough mystery and “sins of the father” for a really cool redemption (or something) arc like Zuko’s or the one in The Dragon Prince. The problem is, they’d have to deviate a lot from the source material to do something like that.
But I mean, really! Imagine a Merlin in which Prince/King Arthur starts out as enemies with all of these dangerous ladies but ends up as their ally. It’s not that out there anyway, considering the very bizarre relationship Morgan/Morgana/Morgan Le Fay/whatever has with Arthur in a couple of olde takes on this story and she ends up accompanying him to heaven or whatever that was. I’m still extremely fuzzy on this legend. All I know is, in Merlin at least, I think Arthur AND Merlin are aligned much more naturally with these dangerous ladies than with Uther so, what gives?
Ygraine says, once Arthur has learned that his father sacrificed her life to bring Arthur into the world, “Do not let this knowledge change you.” But like, why not?
Merlin gets mad too, because of the hypocrisy.
And yet… don’t let this knowledge change you.
The episode presents “let[ting] this knowledge change [Arthur]” as Arthur killing his own father, as though there are no other options. There are a whole bunch of nonviolent ways to do things differently than Uther, to cut him out, etc. Instead, Merlin lies and says that Morgause was the one lying to get Arthur to stop. Which, frankly, makes Merlin kind of a bad guy.
This show, man. Why didn’t they just… ugh.
Anyway. Apart from the stupidity of that, this is a really good episode for all of the male characters and also Morgause.
The Lady of the Lake
Why is this called this? Well Merlin falls in love with a druid girl who is also a were-winged jaguar. And she dies at the end. So he puts her in a boat a la Elaine and sets her sailing.
(please excuse the title, i can’t and won’t attempt to explain myself, just place me under a rock and ignore everything i ever say ever again)
I watched Sinbad recently. I had a lot of thoughts about the titular character and how irritating it is that he doesn’t really ever grow up.
That probably requires explaining, because in this movie Sinbad actually gets down on his knees and puts his head on an executioner’s block, fully, legitimately, intending to die for a crime he didn’t commit, to spare his friend.
He’s still a baby man, though, and I would like to go into it. But it’s going to have to wait, because before I can focus on Sinbad, I want to discuss this movie broadly.
And by “discuss this movie broadly” – I of course mean “write gibberish about Eris.”
Eris. Is ALL. That matters.
Eriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiis.
(eris)
Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas has one of the best animated villains… ever.
Showing a still image of Eris is egregious. She has to be seen in motion to be truly appreciated, but this movie is one of the hardest to find clips of on Youtube (at least, it was when I stared writing this. Now there are a bunch! Go watch them).
Whoever animated her should have been given Oscars. They should simply have been handed Oscars. All of them – if The Academy actually cared or understood anything about animation, they would have done so, I say.
She’s also voiced by Michelle Pfeiffer, which is great because Michelle Pfieffer may actually be the best.
Well voiced, well animated, and, completing the trifecta: she’s well written. Somehow, miraculously, they got this character right.
Eris is the goddess of discord, and she has big plans to throw the world into chaos by getting the new heir to Syracuse wrongfully executed through a little manipulation of the flawed status quo. She flirts and whooshes around while she’s doing it all. She changes her size like Alice does in Wonderland – but she does it on purpose, to great effect. She’s murderous and sneaky and spiteful and extremely feminine, and the hero she’s up against who eventually gets the better of her is one of those *adorable* sexists, and yet, somehow, Eris works.
So Disney women villains.
Disney women villians, yes.
YES.
LET US COMPARE.
(the isolation delirium has set in, I believe)
The Powerful
I’m pretty sure Eris is more powerful than any Disney villain. Ursula is quite formidable once she has the trident and is not to be messed with even without it, but she’s a demoted goddess if anything, and she can be killed with a boat. Maleficent is scary and effective, but she’s no goddess. Those are the only two I’d say come anywhere close.
But Eris is the literal goddess of discord.
The Calculating
Nobody is more calculating than Lady Tremaine. The Evil Queen is a bit calculating for sure, but Lady Tremaine is maybe the only real match for Eris.
But Eris’s schemes are on a whole other level – Tremaine wants her grandson to be king, but Eris wants to topple whole governments, and her plan is way more sound than Lady T’s is.
The Sneaky
So… hold on to your hat, I have a bit of a revelation for you: all of the Disney canonical women villains are sneaks. I think we’ve found the answer to the “how does the culture view women” question.
The Evil Queen masquerades as a harmless beggar woman with a harmless basket of apples to appeal to Snow White’s kind heart.
Lady Tremaine does a lot of little subtle things that neither Cinderella nor any onlooker who isn’t a mouse can call out as unfair or straight up abuse without sounding at least a little bit paranoid.
Cruella sidles up to Anita and Roger trying to buy the puppies, and when rebuffed, hires people to steal them.
Madame Mim cheats in her wizard duel.
Maleficent, in the scene that is only not the standout scene because of the cake scene, pretty much seduces Aurora into touching a spinning wheel from the shadows.
Ursula disguises herself as Vanessa, but also, her entire deal is emotionally manipulating people into selling their souls to her so that she can put them in a garden for seemingly no other purpose than to be extremely fracking scary.
Yzma invites Kuzco to dinner to show there are no hard feelings – fully intending to murder him and take his place on the throne.
Mother Gothel steals a baby and raises her to be obedient because she needs her magic to stay young. She also very cleverly manipulates the Stabbington Twins.
And Assistant Mayor Bellweather! You know what she does.
There are plenty of male villains who are also sneaky. But there are also a lot of male villains whose sneakiness is 10000% bad-dad specific. They are just pretending to be a better person than they really are, to the complete and utter disappointment of whoever the hero of the day is (Pixar likes this one: Up, Monsters Inc, Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3, Coco, etc). Their de-maskings are often kind of devoid of flair, like Ernesto’s kind of was in Coco.
Some male villains are just evil, but with less lofty evil goals than the likes of Maleficent or even Mim (such as Ratcliffe, or Frollo). Now, those ones lie, and they emotionally manipulate, but it’s to serve their larger purpose of… genocide. So. And they really don’t sneak the way other villains sneak. They believe they are in the right and most of the bad things they do are them trumpeting all about how right they think they are.
Then there are just those who are not sneaky at all: Shan Yu, Callaghan (wearing a mask is just not fabulous enough to count as sneaky), The Horned King, and Gaston (“elaborate” plan aside. I don’t think he’s smart enough to truly be sneaky).
Some sneaky male villains include Jafar, Scar, King Candy/Turbo, Edgar, and Hans. Leaving Hans aside, what we have here are four rather effeminate male characters.
I’d love to go into great detail with all the Disney (and Pixar!) villains and discuss which ones are maybe feminine and which ones are maybe queer-coded, but for now, I’m going to leave it at this: the sneakier you are, generally, the more feminine you are, as well.
And that one holds for Eris.
What I like specifically about Eris’s sneakiness is that she delights in it. Playing Sinbad, she has this grin on her face that does the job of convincing the witness that she really is the devil-may-care thief, but she’s really just smiling because she LOVES PLAYING PRETEND.
The joyous female villain who has fun while she does villainy! So necessary. And I don’t think we’ve seen her since Snow White’s step mom laughed for forty years while she prepared a poisoned apple, in 1930.
The Sexy Ones
???
So………….
OK.
Disney likes to do a thing with their female villains, and that thing is that they desexualize them.
This can be a lot of fun, sometimes. Sexy female villains are often kind of upsetting to watch and/or read because as we have said so many times before, they are bad and badly written because sometimes you can’t help but pay some attention to the misogynist male writer behind the curtain who writes them as a weird kind of revenge porn, so, at least Disney doesn’t tend to do that. And throwing up a towering image of a powerful woman who is at the top on her own, without any sickly sweet romance, without some man – barking out orders, actually, at men – wielding awe-inspiring amounts of power – yeah, that’s fun to watch. That they all fail is less fun. That sometimes the desexualizing is done in the form of jokes about their appearances is also less fun. That their evil and their power is tied, inextricably, to their being sexless is not fun.
Of course, there’s Ursula*. Ursula is sexy. I don’t know that the movie knows that she’s sexy, but, she is.
But Ursula is unconventionally sexy. She’s fat, and wants to be fatter, and in 198whatever when this movie came out right through to 20whatever year this is now, “fat” and “sexy” – especially for women – only go together if you’re working against the overarching cultural narrative that there is one body type alone that can be considered sexy and attractive.
There are two women villains that are could be considered sexy in theory. There’s Madame Mim** in “beautiful” mode. She does a little dance and everything. I don’t think this counts because the point of it is that she turns back immediately into a shorter, fatter version of herself that we are meant to understand is the True Mim. Vanessa is another take on exactly this, but I kind of think everything Vanessa does is way less sexy than anything Ursula does, which is kind of cool.
There’s also Mother Gothel***. She’s like the Evil Queen in that she’s conventionally attractive, but the True Mother Gothel is old and aged. This is like how the “True” Evil Queen is sort of the form she both takes the most joy in and dies in, which is also aged and old.
Also I don’t know that Mother Gothel is animated in a sexy way at all. Her voice is certainly there, but she seems pretty asexual to me, and I’m using that term not as in that’s what I think her sexual orientation is (but, yeah, I do think that, sorry), but that she just isn’t doing anything sexual, at all, ever, on the screen. Even though she’s in love with her reflection.
*Ursula: unconventionally sexy and the movie either doesn’t think she’s sexy or is deliberately like, “yeah, she’s sexy, but unconventionally, OK.”
**Mim: she’s only doing an act; she pretty much states herself that it doesn’t count
***Gothel: she has time for one thing and one thing only: chasing, imprisoning, and keeping eternal youth even though she’s barely satisfied, and also her “true” form is old which, according to Disney and a lot of other jerks, can never be sexy
Eris is sexy in a way that doesn’t require an asterisk, because she’s got a conventionally attractive body type and she has a conventionally attractive face with conventionally attractive amazingly animated fluid lustrous beautiful hair AND Michelle Pfeiffer’s voice SO.
Ahem.
She might as well be in charge. We have basically arrived here as a society anyway.
Eris in her own right
OK so.
Eris’s elaborate scheme is ruined by Sinbad being simultaneously stupid and noble. His nobility: he decides to go and die for a crime he didn’t commit so that his friend, the heir to a throne, won’t. His stupidity: he never realizes that in doing so, he’s conning Eris into keeping her word and giving back the book of peace.
“…………… I didn’t lie!” No shit, Sherlock. Isn’t this man a cynical con artist thief type dude?
Anyway he had to be such a dummy, because if he had known that Eris was never going to let him die, so long as he went back and pretended to be willing to die, then he’d still be lying and she would have been well within her rights to keep the Book of Peace. In order for everyone to live happily ever after, the main character has to do a stupid, basically.
I’ll return to Eris’s palpable, beautiful frustration in this scene in a moment. First, I want to talk about her amazing plan before it was ruined.
Peace in Syracuse + Syracuse’s friends and allies is dependent on a magical Book. As soon as that Book gets stolen, everyone loses their minds. The criminal must be brought to justice so they can get their Book back.
Let’s see if I have this straight:
1. Accost the likely thief
2. Behead him when he won’t give up the booty
3. ?????????
4. Peace restored
It gets more hilarious, though. Eris’s true plan isn’t even about the Book. She knows that Proteus, noble heir apparent, was Sinbad’s childhood friend, and will believe him when he says, truthfully, actually, that he didn’t steal the book. He’ll step in, and the stupid laws of Syracuse will state that if the true criminal doesn’t return WITH the stolen object, the stand-in gets beheaded.
1. Imprison the heir to the throne as a stand-in for the likely real criminal who has refused to give up the booty
2. Execute the heir when the guy who already wouldn’t give up the booty WHEN HE WAS IMPRISONED AND HIS OWN LIFE WAS AT STAKE doesn’t show up with the booty
3. ?????????????????????
4. Peace restored
I’m not doing a CinemaSins thing. Yes, this makes no sense, but I think the movie is so much better because of it.
Sinbad’s whole deal is “the freedom of the sea” (and also “the freedom of a life of crime and casual misogyny” but we won’t talk about that), directly compared to Proteus’s life of noble duty and sacrifice. Proteus even discusses this with Marina, the principled and antagonistic love interest. The conflict is more pronounced in Marina – she loves the sea (and for some reason, Sinbad) but she also feels that she has a responsibility to stay on land and be a politician. In the end, boringly, she chooses Sinbad and the sea, while Proteus is happy for them from his life on land as a public servant monarch.
And before this, everyone, including the king, is super frustrated with the confines of the silly law that have them needing to execute their heir, who is a principled, good politician, even though it will right zero wrongs. But they still go along with it, because it’s “the right thing to do??????????!”
I’m going to suggest that it’s not.
The charm and romance of Sinbad’s pirate life is enriched by the restrictions apparent in civilized society, which is one great thing about this movie. Then at the extreme end of the spectrum, there’s Eris, in all of her chaotic glory.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I can’t help sympathizing A LOT with her. She sees some silly rules and restrictions, sees how incredibly easy they’d be to shatter, and goes for it. She’s like a cat, spying a battable object close to an edge. Of course she’s going to swat it off and ruin everyone’s day.
Here’s a statement that I’ll apparently make: Eris’s attempt to bring down Syracuse is more fun, clear, engaging, and has way more to say than the Joker’s similar attempt at Gotham in The Dark Knight. (In my opinion. But I’m correct.)
If I’m only correct for one small detail, it’s this: Eris would absolutely have succeeded if not for the change of heart of one itty bitty man. The Joker is proven wrong by whole groups of people (some do try to prove him right, granted, but ultimately they cooperate and prove him wrong). If Sinbad hadn’t felt all his pesky feelings (and he tried really hard to not feel all his pesky feelings – EVEN MARINA, who is likely the reason he’s feeling all his pesky feelings, tried to convince him to not go back) Eris would have succeeded. Everyone else, all the principled political class of Syracuse and surrounding, were apparently fine to let the good prince die, because them’s the rules. They were apparently giddy to play right into Eris’s hands.
And this is why when Eris is fuming, sneering, scowling, and then, eventually, gracefully disappointed but moving on to new projects, it’s so easy to sympathize. You were so close, lady. I feel your pain.
BECAUSE NOBODY LEARNED ANYTHING.
Is it not, then, that it is you, Syracuse, and not Eris, who are the real agent of chaos????????
At least at the end of Aladdin, another story where some rando exploits the silliness of the ruling class for his own gains, the Sultan is like “Oh wait I can just change the law.”
There’s none of that here. I guess it wasn’t important.
That of course means that if Eris ever tried again, this time knowing not to rely on someone like Sinbad to stay selfish, she’d DEFINITELY succeed.
Non-spoilers: I liked it. It was not as goofy as I thought it would be. I liked the raccoon-unicorns.
In fact, I really liked the raccoon-unicorns. Here is an example of an animal in a Disney-adjacent animated movie acting like a different animal, but instead of the equation being x=y where x is any animal under the sun and y is a dog, x=unicorns, and y=raccoons. How fresh and exciting! And also very weird. A very strange choice, overall.
OK spoilers underneath.
It’s typical Pixar – a detailed alternate universe/dimension world used to tell a poignant story about people’s insecurities and flaws. Specifically I’m thinking of Monsters University, where the alternate dimension was telling the story of Mike and Sully and their respective insecurities more than the ethics and energy story from the original. In Monsters U we see a slug guy being late for the entire semester. The librarian is very tall and the most terrifying person in existence, next to the Dean. Frazzled students build doors all semester and react exactly how you’d expect them to when they get destroyed.
I’m pretty sure The Good Dinosaur is that same thing but gosh golly me I can’t get through that one, which is, perhaps, my flaw. And insecurity. Toy Story is another one (that I don’t like) (but we don’t talk about that because I’m in the very small minority). Toys going through existential crises, cut in with clever explorations of how a toy society would even work. Onward does the same thing, sporting elves, centaurs, cyclopses, pixies, dragons, and so on, but it’s just a story about an anxious kid and his risk-taking DND enthusiast older brother trying to spawn the top half of their dead father before sunset. You know. As you do.
It reminded me of Wall-E with one very minor subplot. The modern day Onward universe has forsaken a lot of its magical heritage. The pixies not knowing how to fly and The Manticore turning into a frazzled businesswoman who only uses her flight power after a car crash forces her to reminded me of that “you may have experienced some bone loss” line from the Buy n Large propaganda/return-to-earth video. I don’t know how I felt about it – only that I’m glad it was minor.
I liked that the mom got to participate. She participated even more than Squishy’s mom and was similarly cute.
And then there’s the poignancy. All I can say about it is that I’m glad this movie exists. It’s doing good work. A lot of Disney/Disney-adjacent movies have dead parent(s), but this one, since it’s set in a modern-if-alternate universe, probably has more relatable things to say to actual kids who are missing a parent. And as a Frozen and Lilo and Stitch fan, I’m definitely not going to say no to brother love, which was happily the main point. More, animators. More.
I mean. I just watched it today. I’m sure my thoughts will evolve. But for now, it did my favourite thing that an animated movie can do: it surprised me by surpassing my expectations.
So thank you to all the creators out there, whatever it is you create. Someone somewhere is having an easier time because of you. Even when we’re not in a pandemic.
EXCEPT you, radio show hosts who do prank calls that I am forced to listen to at work. You can get furloughed. Forever.
Morgana and Gwen go off on a pilgrimage and immediately get attacked and kidnapped by bandits. There is some gross leering. Morgana escapes, but Gwen gets injured and can’t escape with her. The bandits decide to pass Gwen off as Morgana, and Uther is not interested at all in using Camelot soldiers to save Gwen, because she’s just a servant.
It’s OK though, because Arthur and Merlin go after her. Perhaps my favourite part is when Morgana is yelling at Arthur about what a horrible person he is and that he should go save Gwen, and Arthur is sighing and packing for his rescue mission and he’s eventually like, “Morgana, can you not see that I’m packing?” Just like that part with Sokka while Katara yells at him about saving Aang, also a favourite of mine.
Merlin teases Arthur the whole way there for being in love with Gwen. Arthur actually admits it too, which is unexpected and kind of nice.
BUT! Lancelot is there with Gwen, literally in the next cell. He is depressed and doesn’t think his life matters because his ideals have led to nothing, but Gwen telling him she has feelings for him makes him be like “Oh never mind then,” which is stupid. Later, he gets her out of her cell, tells her to run and he’ll buy her time, she’s like “I’m not leaving you here to die” and he says “I would die for you 100 times over” so I guess he still doesn’t think his life has enough value to try to preserve it. He just wanted a valiant purpose to die. This is potentially fine – it’s the chivalrous ideal that the King Arthur mythos is all about, but maybe it needed to be a two-parter or something, to flesh out the chivalrous ideal and all their tangled romantic feelings and Merlin’s messy gossip-houndness and such.
Anyway Arthur and Merlin save them both. Then Arthur is JELLY. He doesn’t handle it well. But Lancelot is like “I gotta give up on this dream for the good of the realm” and he fades into the night, leaving poor Gwen brokenhearted. K.
Annoyingly, there is another giant animal antagonist in this episode, but at least they look cool. Also none of them die, which is good.
Beauty and the Beast – Part 1
I vividly remember this two parter – I believe this may be a highlight of the series. It is so funny. It has it all: Uther being humiliated, Uther being humiliated, and Uther being humiliated.
There’s probably something to unpack about… conventional… attractiveness… but I’m not even sure. Mostly, I’m just happy that a lovely, regal actress gets to do double duty as a lovely, regal charade, and also the troll. It is SO FUN to watch. The only time women get to act even halfway like this on screen is if they’re fat, and even especially then, it’s not nearly this much fun.
The premise is that a highborn acquaintance of Uther’s is actually dead, but a random troll uses magic to take on her image and seduce and marry Uther so that she can have all his money. Sarah Parish is a lot of fun in these episodes, but to be fully immersed in the delight. you do need to know how terrible Uther is, so you have to watch everything else first. Them’s just the rules.
Beauty and the Beast – Part 2
The best part of this very, very good two parter is that Uther and the troll have sex.
So.
That happens here.
That’s the episode.
Also later Uther and Arthur have an awkward conversation about it, LMFAO.
In all seriousness, Merlin, Arthur, and Gaius all have to work together to save Camelot, and Arthur’s stomping around going “the people are poor, they can’t afford higher taxes, give them their money back” while Gwen smiles, and Uther is a dope the whole time and gets punched in the face by the troll, and Merlin tries to hug Arthur, so this is excellent content.
The Witchfinder
Merlin does a nifty trick, alerting the kingdom to there being sorcery within. Uther sends for the title of this episode and Gaius yells at Merlin for being stupid.
It’s Charles Dance! Instantly, I am scared. He does tend to play (mostly) competent evil dudes.
Here is no exception. He figures out Merlin is a sorcerer 10 minutes into the episode. But Gaius takes the heat, and it turns out Aredian (that’s the Witchfinder’s name) is just a grifter. Merlin has to prove this and as usual does so by sneaking around other peoples’ bedchambers.
Merlin sneaks around people’s bedchambers A LOT on this show. It’s kind of bizarre, but I suppose it’s a good way to both build tension and fill time.
Refreshingly, in this episode, Gwen helps Merlin solve the crime. Also, was Arthur really going to stand there and watch Gaius get burnt at the stake if Gwen didn’t yell at him?
Uther barely apologizes to Gaius for almost burning him at the stake and Gaius throws him a lot of shade before and after he finally gets to it. Gaius is the man.
One: If you’re trying to make an anti-war movie, it probably helps if it isn’t very fun to watch the title character straight up kill people with magic.
Two: Remember the rule of Shakespeare: a marriage only solves everything if “everything” has been harmless shenanigans*, not if it’s been a tragedy up until this point – family deceit and betrayal and massacre of the innocent included.
*except for the multiple instances of slut-shaming that end in pretend or real death, or both, but, “exception that proves the rule” or whatever.
Half of this episode is Ragetti’s overly elaborate plan to ruin Merlin’s career for a day so that he can steal a key to grave rob. Arthur pretends not to enjoy the two men fighting over him.
Then Merlin makes a deal with the dragon reluctantly and saves Camelot. Arthur and Gwen share a few awkward moments.
Morgana has sweet moments with Gwen and Gaius, except I’m pretty sure that for all his good intentions, Gaius is legit gaslighting Morgana, which is not great.
It’s action-packed and character driven. Both at once. Difficult to explain. I liked it.
The Once and Future Queen
This is the episode I am most familiar with. Arthur is sad because his knights are letting him win. Gwen has to sleep on sacks of what I imagine are potatoes. Arthur is a terrible house guest. Those two previous statements are related. There is some comedy with a dead chicken which I do not appreciate.
Also, there’s an assassin after Arthur. But Gwen is the real Arthur-murderer in this episode, when she finally snaps and tells him how rude he is, and he listens to her.
Perhaps this is a major turning point in his character. I can’t remember if at least some of his arrogance really does dissipate from this point on, but if so, I’ll catch it, and will be highly impressed.
I also like when Merlin snaps.
The Nightmare Begins
This is an apt title for the nonsense of Morgana’s turning to evil subplot, which supposedly begins in this episode.
There are giant scorpions in the woods for some reason. Mordred saves Morgana. Well gee, aren’t we glad we saved him from a child-executioner and general tyrant a little while ago?
Merlin and Gaius acknowledge that being a sorcerer with zero guidance in an intolerant house and community is extremely difficult, and then seem to commit to continuing to allow Morgana to be a sorcerer without any support. At least, it isn’t brought up again. Cool, guys.
She gets support with the Druids. She tries to abscond with them but is captured while Mordred escapes again.
For a show that’s all about how Uther needs to stop being a bigot because it’s causing a lot of strife, there are a heckuva lotta sorcerer villains.
In this episode, the sorcerer is gunning for Gaius’s job, and also has a disfigurement. I don’t know what to make of the disfigurement – it isn’t my lane – but will note that I can’t remember good and neutral characters with disfigurements on this show, so that sucks. The disfigurement is also part of why he’s even here to do villainy, so, that also sucks.
The Gates of Avalon
Arthur has a crush on a girl who is here to kill him. Morgana knows this is going to happen and is angsty about it. Merlin watches a guy do lake magic and sees fairies. It’s really cool; the best magic has been so far on this show.
Morgana tries to be self-sacrificing but Gaius intervenes. Merlin ends up in the pillory once again, then finds out that Morgana has the gift, possibly. And here begins Morgana’s nonsensical descent to being a villain, for reasons.
The Beginning of the End
It’s called that because this is the first appearance of Mordred.
Here’s the first real instance of this show depicting that what Uther is doing is actually bad. That said, my question is: why is it that Morgana’s tender heart – here leading her to continue to be skeptical of the way Uther treats magic and magic-doers, and to help hide an innocent child from execution – eventually leads her to the tedious character progression of “going too far” for “justice” that never even looks anything remotely like justice? Why does she have to become a villain?
Also, this doesn’t have to happen to Merlin? He just gets to be sad about Uther, and later Arthur, being bigots of varying degrees, and doesn’t ever have to become a villain?
I do think that this story, where two people are compassionate and see injustice, and then one becomes a terrorist and the other doesn’t (and does… something else? I also seem to recall Merlin doesn’t accomplish a whole lot) could be very compelling. But I don’t think this is that. I think Morgana meets a girl who sways her into villainy (and that’s also potentially compelling, but again, from what I remember, it wasn’t all that compelling) – and this just doesn’t adequately or sensitively or thoughtfully depict whatever “too far” is supposed to be, and doesn’t explain how we get there.
Currently I can’t think of a decent depiction of activism or seeking justice (actual, radical justice, not just “reluctantly stopping a killer/killer army”) that isn’t a biopic. I like biopics, but can we please have a fantasy girl whose justice isn’t written badly so that it actually turns into terrorism and genocide? Or at least, a fantasy girl who goes bad but it’s done well, is grounded in something real/historical even, and therefore makes sense and contributes to a broader cultural conversation? Bad girls need motivation, please.
Anyway, I’m trying not to watch these early episodes through the lens of “But where did they go with any of this?” So.
There are moments here that are great. This episode is more interesting and engaging than some of the others so far with just random sorcerer bad guys. There’s a part where Merlin snaps at Gaius, “Oh, so it’s wrong to harbour a young magician?” And it really works.
The problem is that, yes, Point A over here is good enough (minus the infernal destiny thing). I’m engaged. But it ends, somehow, at Point B, in which Morgana and Mordred (who is a little kid) are capital E Evil, which is capital S Stupid.
Arthur saves Mordred today. And later… Mordred kills him. So are we supposed to think they should have executed a child? That is literally what the dragon says. This whole “destiny” thing is, therefore, limiting for the entire story. Even Gwen argues in favour of letting a child be executed, and there you go. Gwen, at least as I know her, would never advocate letting a child die, but the “destiny” theme and the plot demands it. The characters are helpless, acting in ways that don’t make sense just because the plot gods demand it, like in that Joss Whedon movie with the killer unicorn and mermen.
They could have written a different ending, is all. One that doesn’t have otherwise kind people being all like “yeah, maybe we should kill baby Hitler.” And even if the law demanded that in stories we only ever do this stupid thought experiment that believes in the possibility of time travel but not in the possibility of anything else, such as going to an even earlier time to stop WWI or, like, socialization, apparently, Mordred’s not even remotely comparable to Hitler. This isn’t compelling, it’s just frustrating.
I’m still living for the animosity between Arthur and everyone else.
Excalibur
The Black Knight/Zombie Mountain shows up and bites his thumb at the Camelot court. It’s really unsettling to watch him them kill two boys in succession, trying to be brave and valiant knights but fighting a knight that is actually a zombie and is therefore cheating in this “combat to the death.” Because of this, this is the darkest episode so far in this show. Honestly, the very fact that they don’t put the deaths or the blood onscreen makes it worse.
Then Arthur’s upset and accepts the third challenge, so a few interesting things happen. Merlin seeks to create Lightbringer out of a Valyrian steel sword Gwen’s dad made, turning it into a weapon imbued with dragon fire, so that it can kill the dead. Then Mirri Maz Duur shows up in Uther’s chambers and tells him off for starting a whole persecution war on sorcerers just because he asked her to make his “barren” wife bear a child, which caused his wife’s death, because “Only death can pay for life.”
I know the Game of Thrones references are tedious but I’m fine with my choices.
But this version is less Mirri Maz Duur anyway, because Nimueh didn’t realize that Uther’s wife would die. And Uther blaming her, and all other sorcerers, for something he is more than complicit in? Super intriguing. Also, he says he wishes he had never done it, and she asks if that means he wishes he didn’t have a son. This is obviously not true, but Uther’s feelings about Arthur are conflicted at least.
There is a cute moment where Arthur teases his dad later, which humanizes Uther, like the rest of this episode does. Still, Uther being humanized doesn’t take away from what we know watching this unfold: dude is wrong, and lashing out for bad reasons, and causing a lot of damage. Nuance, I have well and truly missed thee.
This makes “Excalibur” my favourite episode so far, even though Merlin and Arthur don’t really snark at each other.
WELL supposedly it’s spring now. Let’s have a list of what I read up until this moment in the year 2019.
Birdie by Tracey Lindberg
I actually read this last summer/fall, and kept forgetting to add it to my lists. This is a very good book about Indigenous women (and I guess there’s one white woman) of every age sticking up for and protecting each other, killing for each other if need by, and helping each other stay alive. I’d be cautious with this because it delves into childhood sexual abuse as well as domestic abuse in general and it’s awful, but if you can stomach it, I highly recommend.
Hunger by Roxanne Gay
This is another one that, if you think you can stomach it, is really, really worth it. It’s a memoir, and I’d call it a collection of short essays about bodies, her own body specifically, and the world we live in that refuses to make room for them. There is also, informing everything, an instance of horrible childhood sexual assault. This is an important read because it says the opposite of what we hear all the time, over and over again, about fatness and fat people, and that is that there isn’t anything wrong with fatness, and that fat people are human and they deserve dignity and the same consideration that thin/non-fat people get.
Crush by Svetlana Chmakova
IT’S SO CUTE I RECOMMEND. Especially if you have kids (middle-school age, whatever the hell that is) in your life, give this entire series to them.
Brave by Svetlana Chmakova
I had to immediately reread this once I finished Crush. It’s fabulous. I wish my elementary school existence was so woke.
Now a Major Motion Picture by Cori McCarthy
Aw, this was also very cute. It’s a lot of fun to read if you like feminism and fantasy literature especially, because it ends up being very validating and empowering. Yey this book.
IN PROGRESS:
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden
I’m still not done but this is fascinating.
Puddin’ by Julie Murphy
I am devouring this currently, likely to be done soon. It’s the sequel to Dumplin’ and it’s everything I could ever have wanted in a Dumplin’ sequel.
Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado
I am astounded by this book. The very first story in this collection, called “The Husband Stitch,” is a retelling of the girl with the ribbon around her neck story and I have never in my life read something so true and so real and so… sad? It was like my own head fell off and stayed off for days after finishing it, and I had to set the entire book aside for a while to recollect myself. It may not work the same, or maybe not as intensely, for others, but so much of what I’ve read so far is working for me. It’s keeping me awake at night; it’s leaving shrapnel like nothing else ever has. I’m a huge fan of Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber, as well as Emma Donoghue’s Kissing the Witch, and this fees like a modern version of The Bloody Chamber and a grown-up, slightly more melancholy version of Kissing the Witch. Anyway I’m in love, read this.
I asked Three if she’d read any so that I could plump this post up but she has not, so, it is what it is!
I have no idea what I read during the fall. I know I didn’t get through that much, though, so, go me.
This is not in order and probably incomplete.
The Countess Conspiracy by Courtney Milan
Well, it’s Courtney Milan, so, obviously, I really liked it.
It also has maybe my favourite thing from any Courtney Milan and also any romance I’ve read so far:
“‘I know you, Sebastian,’ she said. ‘You like sex, and for me, it’s a complete disaster.’
He simply raised an eyebrow. ‘Let me tell you more about rakus perfectus,’ he said. ‘The whole point of raking is to make sure that everyone is satisfied and safe. There was one night when the woman I was with changed her mind after she came up to the hotel room I had taken for the evening. We spent the night playing vingt-et-un for pennies.’
‘Is that a euphemism?’
He considered this. ‘Yes. By “pennies,” I meant “half-pennies.” It just flows better when you say “vingt-et-un for pennies.”‘
‘Weren’t you furious with her?’
‘Should I have been?’ He shrugged. ‘I won three shillings.’
….
‘When a woman bursts into tears in the bedroom because she’s realized she doesn’t want to go through with it, you’ll make her very happy when you pull out a pack of cards.'”
[Milan, Courtney. The Countess Conspiracy (The Brothers Sinister Book 3) (p. 222). Courtney Milan. Kindle Edition.]
So yeah. That right there is a romance hero.
I’m still annoyed that the costumes on the covers aren’t historically accurate or that the ladies don’t look the way the heroines are supposed to.
I get why it’s like this, obviously. But the reason is stupid, and I’m still annoyed.
Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett
Sigh. I did like it for the most part. There are several laugh-out-loud moments, but overall, I’m still chasing the feeling I got while readying The Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents.
Um…
That’s it?
I think there was at least one more, but I have no idea what it was.
I’ll finish up by talking about what I’m still currently reading.
How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don’t by Lane Moore
I’m almost done this. I highly recommend it. Moore’s is a story about a neglectful and abusive family, which wasn’t my experience growing up and isn’t my reality now, but this is still so easy for me to relate to, and I suspect it’s probably essential for our times.
Now a Major Motion Picture by Cori McCarthy
I really like this. It’s a good premise with good characters and I’m halfway through and I have no idea how it’s going to end.
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherin Adren
I was going to give up on this after one chapter. I gave it until chapter two… and then three… and did a 180. Now I think I may also finish the series, if I ever get around to finishing anything ever again.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
Read it last year, and it was my favourite, so I’m re-reading it. Apart from it being my favourite, Lane Moore’s book kept reminding me of it so I had to pick it up again.
Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy
Same as above. I think these two were my favourites from 2017. And while I liked the movie (on Netflix) and have watched it numerous times already, I do prefer the book.
I’m in the middle of some non-fiction as well, but I’ll talk about those later.
And that’s all for this year! Get some cozy winter reading in for me… or get some more cozy winter reading in for me, if you’re already doing that.
(I know Coraline takes place in the early spring but it may as well take place in the fall because it is the ONLY Halloween movie)
…
I’m willing to admit that this was a weird summer. I must, anyway, because my reading list is here and it’s… here.
Kill the Boyband by Goldy Moldavsky
I have a lot of thoughts about this one. First of all, excellent premise and title.
Things like this, when they emerge every rare and wonderful so often, remind me of Jane Austen’s early work, called the Juvenalia, in which women behave badly. So rarely are women allowed to behave badly in media, at least, rarely are women allowed to behave badly in ways that aren’t designed by and intended for consumption by straight men.
I am a HUGE advocate of things like this. It’s why I eventually gave The Female of the Species a chance, and also why I loved it. Gone Girl is amazing, I’ll hear no argument against it.
This is YA Gone Girl. Instead of depicting a crumbling, toxic marriage, it’s about young women responding in toxic ways to their frustrations with the men at the center of their lives (in this case it’s a boy band). Toxic fandom is described realistically. Familiarly. Kind of frighteningly so. Also the girls in this book are all awful people.
They have mitigating circumstances (well… maybe one of them does). Still.
But as much as I want to be 100% positive, there are certain things I really didn’t like about this book. Let’s do a spoilery list.
Fat shaming? I put a question mark because there’s… um… absolutely no reason for it as it shows up in this book. Apple, one of the girls, the most emotional, the most devoted one, is also fat, and it’s treated really poorly. The protagonist at one point thinks that maybe Apple is self-loathing because of her weight and that’s why she’s so fervently in love with the least popular boy in the band, because he’s more attainable and less likely to reject her and also that’s all she thinks she’s worth. But there’s no actual evidence of Apple’s supposed self-loathing, so, if we’re supposed to take the protagonist at her word, that’s stupid. What’s also stupid is that Apple is always eating for comedic effect and also always climbing all over the one boy they kidnap (sexual assault, she commits sexual assault… and I’m not really sure the book is aware of that) and it’s funny because not only is she… uh… sexually assaulting the guy, she’s also fat, so, you know. Every time this came up I rolled my eyes. There’s just no reason. There’s never a reason, really, but this may have been the most egregious example of fat shaming I’ve read, and I’m a huge JK Rowling fan, so. Yikes.
… sexualassault. Apple gropes/licks/does other obnoxious things to Rupert P, tied up and helpless. As I’ve already said, partly it’s supposed to be funny because she’s fat, and also it’s supposed to be funny because he’s secretly gay. But… neither of those things actually makes the sexual assault funny. Now, one of the other girls was gray area raped by one of the other boys (this is a mid-late book reveal), and that’s treated fairly seriously, though I don’t think we’re ever supposed to sympathize with her fully, even after the reveal. This isn’t because of the gray area (she took all her clothes off in his dressing room and was otherwise clearly game for it… but she’s a teenager and he’s a grown man, and he took pictures of her and otherwise humiliated her afterwards, so, rape with a side of awful), but instead because she’s taking her revenge waaaay too far. I was really happy with that, but seeing as this book treats that rape thoughtfully, presenting the victim as a victim but also as the actor in her own story in a way that would make the rape-enthusiasts in the Game of Thrones writing room tremble in awe and shame (doesn’t take much, though. To be clear, what I’m saying is, the Game of Thrones writers are horrible), the “funny” sexual assault that Rupert P endures is just. Why?
The gay thing. So Rupert P ends up murdered. We’re unsure of which girl did it. They all have motive and are all also horrible people. First thing’s first: he’s one of two gay characters present. The other is his secret boyfriend, whose lover is now murdered. That’s a trope fulfilled, isn’t it. Also, the murderer is his fake girlfriend. At this point I actually can’t remember whether she knew he was gay and was being helpful or if she really didn’t know, but I lean toward the former. Anyway, her motivation for murdering him is that he’s also a horrible person, very inconsiderate of her and her needs. I felt for her right up until it’s revealed that she murdered the gay man she’s been pretending to date to revenge herself of his inconsiderateness. Also, Rupert P is the most hated band member, hated by at least one of the other Ruperts, enduring occasional blackmail and frequent upfront homophobia from him. My thoughts as this story unfolded are basically summarized by this question: Why choose this band member to have as a punching bag and end up murdered?
These are all conversations, and in general I try to remember that everything is problematic. A story where girls get to be gleefully, horrifyingly awful without any meaningful redemption is welcome and necessary…
… but that stuff is… well. It’s certainly there.
The Astonishing Color of After by Emily XR Pan
Sad. Cute. Very sad, very cute, in that order forever and ever.
I wish I had something more to say but here’s maybe all that’s necessary: if you like YA, magical realism, and are prepared for musings on depression and suicide, you will really like this book.
Dread Nation by Justina Ireland
Why aren’t more dystopian novels like this? Why aren’t more historical fiction/fantasy novels like this?
(I know the answer and it is that most things that get published are by white people)
The setting is Alternate Universe America, where zombies attacked and though slavery is sort of over, it’s not really, because white people have set up this establishment where black and first nations children are taken to a special school where they learn to be zombie fighters. Specifically the ones the book focuses on are girls taken to learn to be body guards for young white girls and women.
If you like zombies and would enjoy a refreshing dystopian book where racism is actually depicted and discussed intelligently, this is it. I also really liked Katherine. Katherine was good.
Throne of the Crescent Moon by Saladin Ahmed
I finally read this, by one of my favourite twitterers. I was pleased to see characters featured in his short stories collection, which I read last year, were the mains here. Adoulla Makhslood and Raseed bas Raseed are extremely entertaining, and sometimes endearing, with their banter and very different opinion set on the way of the world. And there’s also Zamia, who can turn into a lioness.
Sometimes the violence/references to horrors in the past are stomach turning, at least for me, but not A Song of Ice and Fire levels of horror and our female voices are not in constant fear of rape. So there’s that.
This is definitely for a fantasy reader’s TBR pile.
Elizabeth is Missing by Emma Healey
This was INCREDIBLE. A mystery novel where the sleuth has dementia and is mixing up her memories of her present-day friend, Elizabeth, who has gone missing (but no one will take her seriously), and her memories of her sister Sukey, who went missing when they were both young.
It’s so frustrating. It had me on edge. It made me look up this song on Youtube (but I did not leave a comment saying that’s how I got there). And the ending.
Yeah, I’d recommend this one too.
Twice in a Lifetime by Jodie Griffin
This is a nice, mostly fluffy romance about two women in their fifties. Two things: two women, and also, women in their fifties. Apparently it’s a rare thing in and medium, and as I’ve never encountered one of these before, I guess it’s true.
I liked it a lot, but because I was apparently in a mood all summer, all of the fluffiness got to me a little. Which is stupid because, a) That’s what this book is for, so why am I complaining, and b) It wasgood.
My one note is a note I’ve made before (I remember a similar complaint for When Dimple met Rishi): people doing very sexual things in front of their siblings/parents/children isn’t cute. At least, I don’t think it’s cute. I actually think it’s kind of a lot inconsiderate. In this book, whenever it happens (and it happens at least twice), it’s done so that whoever can remark about how happy his or her mother is now, which is great, but they don’t need explicit evidence of the sex their parents are having to know they’re happy together.
Orrrrrrr is that just me? IDK. There are other moments where the kids say things about her newfound happiness with her girlfriend that are about companionship and don’t involve explicit evidence of sex, though, so, I stand by this complaint. But my complaint about the fluffiness is because I was a dark brooding soul this summer and this is the only exception.
Depression and other Magic Tricks by Sabrina Benaim
I have the unfortunate habit of forgetting large amounts of poetry after I’ve read a collection. But I do remember enjoying this. It was humane and honest and sometimes sad, and I think basically exactly what I wanted when I grabbed it off the shelf.
Read poetry! Start here.
The Witch’s Boy by Kelly Barnhill
I really like Kelly Barnhill. This book is grim, even compared to The Girl who Drank the Moon, though.
Grim and charming, I think, are the two words for a Kelly Barnhill novel. I’m definitely going to read everything else she’s ever written, because the combination works.
I’m Afraid of Men by Vivek Shraya
On the subject of grim…
You really do need to read this. I kind of thought I’d read it and I’d nod along and though it would broaden my perspective a little, mostly it would be things I’ve already thought a lot about (and am currently thinking a lot about, because, current state of the world, and all), but one of the arguments she makes in here caught me by surprise.
She talks about how we need to stop talking about the “good man” because it directly contributes to normalizing abusive behaviours as typical of the “normal man.”
I hadn’t considered that, and she makes her case, and I’m actually not going to do that anymore. But even if she hadn’t made this specific point, this was still essential reading, particularly now, particularly for everyone.
Misery by Stephen King
Woooooooooooooof.
I have a lot of things I’d like to say about this novel, and I think maybe I’ll write a billion-word essay about it one day soon, but for now:
of the Stephen Kings I’ve read, this is one of the best
like all other Kings I’ve read, the problems I have with it are the same: a little bit of the kind of weird, casual racism that you get in something like The Green Mile which is trying to talk about racism but isn’t really, and is actually contributing to a couple of stupid tropes (I do like The Green Mile, though); fat shaming (there is so much fat shaming in King books. I overlook it in It a little because at least Ben is treated as a fully human character in a way Annie never is, but, still); and a weird demonizing thing he does about maternal affection and control, which is sometimes intelligent and sometimes seems just a bit misogynistic
the main character is a biiiiiiiiig woman-hater. Hates that his most successful books are about a woman, that women are his readers and biggest fans. Looks down on them.
he’s at the mercy of a woman who will belittle the work he’s proud of, destroy it, even, force him to make something for her, torture him, kill him, eventually. And that… is extremely interesting.
You Were Made for This by Michelle Sacks
I finished this in the early hours of today (the day I’m writing this, anyway). It broke me.
I just.
I picked it at the store yesterday because it had pretty cherries on the cover AND I AM ONLY NOW REALIZING THAT THEY ARE IN WHAT IS CLEARLY A BROKEN DISH WHAT HAVE I DONE
This is Gone Girl without the thrill – because Gone Girl is thrilling, allowing its enthusiastic readers/viewers to see their most selfish, violent fantasies depicted right in front of them in a way that women generally don’t get, because generally, the most selfish, violent women are either Annie Noakes-types or Elle Driver-types that men like Stephen King draw up. A heterosexual man’s idea of a villainous woman. Some of them, like Annie Noakes, are actually kind of interesting. But when we get to see a woman’s idea of a villainous woman, and when we get just a bit of a secret vicarious thrill, that is a rare treat.
But this isn’t thrilling. It’s still entertaining as hell. It’s awful. Awful things happen. And my favourite part is that the male character, Sam, horrible, misogynistic, awful man Sam, is horrible and he thinks that he has all the women around him fooled but he doesn’t. They know who he is, and the two protagonist women are, actually, worse than he is, and that is literally my only solace now that I’m done reading it.
I recommend this one if you have the stomach for it.
WELL.
Now that it’s fall, maybe I’ll read something cheery. Galbraith has a new one and it’s huge and right next to me, so, I’m looking forward to that.
(Parent Trap is the ultimate movie of summer, according to me. It’s got everything: Lindsay Lohan, Linsday Lohan doing a British accent, Lindsay Lohan doing an imitation of Lindsay Lohan doing a British accent, also it’s actually the best and I don’t think anyone could convince me otherwise)
(I think it’s in Spanish)
I’m late but whatever, let’s do this. Spoiler alert: I liked everything.
I’ve had my complaints about how pretty and poetic McLemore’s prose is when talking about her other two books – because I am boring and have bad taste, maybe. But I really liked this one.
Maybe I was more open to it because of the cover art and the title, but I do think the magical elements in this story are really intriguing, moreso than the magic in the other two.
I liked it.
The Belles by Dhonielle Clayton
I liked this too. People in this world have “teacup” animals as pets – like, people are walking around with teacup crocodiles and lions or whatever they want, and I’m worried that there will be more abuse of them in further installments in what is apparently this series. Other than that I’m looking forward to the sequel because it’s very interesting so far.
Not sure if sci-fi or if everyone is actually telling the truth and it’s fantasy or maybe it’s both! Either way, it’s really cool.
Winter Tide by Ruthanna Emrys
This was really good. I didn’t expect to like it very much because it’s Lovecraft and I don’t have time for that. The only Lovecraft I’ve tangled with is that DEFINITELY NOT A PARODY BOOK Awoken by Sara Elinsen.
But I liked it.
Pulchritude by Ana Mardoll
I liked this too. I was expecting it to be a little more (for lack of a better/existing word) gooshy, like the other Ana Mardoll one I’ve read, but it wasn’t.
It was pretty depressing though, and although the cover insert/blurb/whatever warns the reader not to expect what you’d usually get out of a fairy tale, and although I knew it was going to come to a not very nice end, I was still taken aback by it. But it’s what I wanted, so.
Bad Girls Throughout History by Ann Shen
This was educational. Each woman has a brief little blurb about her, and I did read a few of them with an eyebrow (or two) raised. One specific example I can remember is while I was reading through the inevitable Tudor England portion and the book gushed about Elizabeth (rightfully) but didn’t feature Mary.
And.
OK.
Maybe I’m just Catholic (lapsed) (is there such a thing as a not-lapsed Catholic?), but Mary Tudor has gotten the shaft throughout history.
She’s super problematic but so was Elizabeth, who participated big time in colonialism, if you’d like one example. Mary should have gotten a nod.
Also Jane Grey deserved one too.
And although I got annoyed at that mainly because I’m a Tudor-era nerd, I couldn’t help but wonder what other details were being skipped, and who else maybe should have been included.
Ultimately I still think this is worthwhile, but it’s very Ladies in History 101, which, I think, it’s trying to be.
And I liked it.
Islands of Decolonial Love by Leanne Simpson
I liked it, it was beautiful.
I had a favourite passage I tweeted:
Midnight poetry and big mood always from THIS ACCIDENT OF BEING LOST by Leanne Betasamosake Simpson.
[Insert stock explanation of how much I love Courtney Milan’s romance novels here]
Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo
Yup.
(I do have some concerns about the Nina/Matthias thing but I want to read the sequel, watch the inevitable HBO series/movie/other broadcast series/whatever, force my sister to read it, AND THEN I’ll talk about it.)
(I think every Winnie the Pooh story takes place during spring. Unless it’s the ones during winter. Or if they go to Eeyore’s place, then it’smysteriously fall.)
Instead of doing this monthly like last year, I thought I’d be super pretentious and do them for every change of season. So today, on the day of 2018’s Spring Equinox, here are the books I’ve read so far.
The Fate of the Tearling by Erika Johansen
The way this series ends is BOLD. I’ve never read anything like it. There are a couple of things about the ending that bother me (like if they changed history so drastically I don’t think the same people would all exist hundreds of years later), but I’ll gladly set them aside to have the book end the way it does (because it’s necessary to see everyone we already know living drastically different lives in order for it to have as real an impact as it does, even if it’s silly) because it is so different from and more honest and thoughtful than 100% of the high fantasy I’ve ever read.
Get started on this series if you like fantasy. Here’s three’s review of the first book in the trilogy if you need a push.
Indexing: Reflections by Seanan McGuire
I loved it. The sequel was much easier to get into than the first one, and Sloane gets a bunch of point-of-view chapters which is pretty much all I want out of the year. Sloane is a living embodiment of a Wicked Stepsister archetype constantly fighting the urge to murder everyone around her, in case you needed to be sold on this series.
Let’s Talk About Love by Claire Kahn
Asexual romance where the protagonist is adorable and confused and questioning, and her love interest is the best ever. The one little problem I have is with the conflict resolution with Alice’s BFF, because it ends with Alice apologizing and her friend… not. She says, “You need to tell me if something bothers you,” and that’s what serves as her reciprocating Alice’s apology and I’m not really a fan of that. I did like the version of this in Tash Hearts Tolstoy which I read last year. Tash has an in-your-face female BFF and they have a huge fight, and though Tash is certainly at fault for some of it, it’s not entirely on her to smooth things over in their friendship. But it’s a relatively small problem. More like this, thanks.
Beneath the Sugar Sky by Seanan McGuire
I didn’t like it as much as the two previous books in the series, with Down Among the Sticks and Bones (which was book 2) still being my obvious favourite.
Knit One Girl Two by Shira Glassman
Short, sweet, well-done. There was a cat occasionally.
It’s amazing. Know a kid? Get them this book. And read it yourself.
Suicide Sex Club by C.M. Blackwood
I think this is the first straight smut I’ve ever read. It was a little much (and by “a little” I mean “a lot”) but it’s also surprisingly sweet much of the time, or, maybe not really that surprisingly sweet, because I’ve read a murder mystery/lesbian romance by Blackwood before and it was similarly cute. Though with a lot less sex.
I’d be cautious reading this one if you’re sensitive to self-harm and abusive/disassociation-style sex and rape. There’s also one brief mention of pedophilia. I’d also note that it doesn’t portray sex work in the greatest light – Tory is a sex worker and she’s lovely but the titular “Suicide Sex Club” is an exploitative sex trafficking type place. It also doesn’t portray BDSM in the greatest light, but no one who participates in BDSM acts are doing so conscientiously or not as a way to self-harm, so, by not suggesting that this is the way to do that stuff properly, it’s way less misrepresentative of BDSM than 50 Shades is.
Your Favorite Superhero Sucks by Noah Berlatsky
Admittedly, the latest superhero mega blockbusters are getting to me. I loved Guardians of the Galaxy: Volume 2, Thor: Ragnarok, and Black Panther. Obviously I also loved Wonder Woman. Each of these movies has its flaws, or, in Black Panther’s case, maybe “slight limitations” might be a better term, but they’re still important and more interesting than most of what else Marvel and DC have been serving up lately.
Still, superheroes are kind of a weird thing, and considering how they’re dominating the pop culture scene right now, I think it’s really important to critique them at every available opportunity.
This book is a good place to start. I found a couple of the essays ridiculously funny, especially “Our Batman, Ourselves.” I didn’t agree with absolutely everything, but even where I have differing opinions I think Berlatsky makes a lot of really good points. And really important ones. Pop culture needs scrutiny.
even this page is white by Vivek Shraya
A collection of poems, mainly dealing with racism. Shraya confronts white privilege head on. She spotlights white peoples’ reluctance to confront our own privilege, racism, and racist assumptions in such a searing way that I really think every white person, especially every white person in Canada, should have to read it. I’m not saying it’s the cure to our own special Canadian-brand antipathy, because no, but finding ourselves listening to people saying things that make us uncomfortable more and more often is the only way forward, and this book does its part.
Amatonormativity: the prevailing belief that romantic relationships are universally desired by all people and that they are preferable to other, nonromantic relationships
Sucky for a lot of reasons, but mainly because there are aromantic people in the world. That’s people who don’t feel romantic attraction, or who feel romantic attraction rarely or only in certain contexts.
For a nice, concise, fairly topical, real-life example of amatonormativity in action: did you watch the ice dancing? Did you see Virtue and Moir? Did you see all the ravenous speculation about how even though they’ve always said that they’re not a couple, they must be dating, they must be having sex, how could they not, it’s not like acting is a major component of ice dancing or anything…
I roll my eyes, but I also understand, sort of. I get it, you got swept up in the dances. They’re very good. They make us all feel things. Great. But hey, if it really does turn out that they’ve been telling the truth this whole time and they’re just a man and a woman with a super close, supportive, platonic friendship that can remain a platonic friendship even during occasional three minute stints in which they stare at/touch each other like they really wanna so that they can up their artistic score, well, that’s good. Because When Harry Met Sally was wrong and men and women can and should be friends, close friends, even. Not everything needs to be a romance.
In Fiction
So, there’s this article talking about how Voldemort, with his infamous lack of interest or perhaps even lack of ability to love, is pretty much the aromantic character in Harry Potter and he’s also the guy who wants to murder a baby so that he can adequately chop up his own soul.
I don’t really agree with the thesis here, because I’ve always read Harry Potter as centering, first and foremost, friendship. Harry’s survival is thanks to his mother’s love for him, and after his parents are gone it is Ron and Hermione, neither of whom he is attracted to, who are most important to him. He has a special bond with Molly Weasley as well, who treats him like he’s her own son.
When Harry finally reveals himself to Voldemort in their final battle, it’s to stand in front of Molly when Voldemort turns to kill her. He’s saving Molly, not Ginny. After the battle, Harry sees Ginny but lets her be for the moment, choosing to seek Ron and Hermione out instead. Friendship and the love between a parent and child. That’s they key thing Voldemort doesn’t have time for – or, actually, that’s the stuff he devalues so completely that he thinks it’s a good idea to spend much of his time killing peoples’ friends, children, and parents – and why, according to Dumbledore, he is ultimately defeated.
People asked JK Rowling throughout the years whether Voldemort ever dated, and her answer was always, “Um, no. He totes wouldn’t even ever have been interested.” The thing is, people who do evil things in real life often do form romantic and sexual attachments and relationships, but in literature it always seems strange to have the evilest of the evil date someone. And that is probably absolutely entirely because of amatonormativity. If romantic relationships are the best thing ever, even, maybe, the only thing that really matters, why would evil people take part in them? Surely they would be too evil to understand how great they are, and, if evil people did get into a romantic relationship how could they remain evil?
So. Even though I think every time Dumbledore said, “Harry it’s cool, you’ll beat him because you can love and he can’t,” he wasn’t talking about romantic love, yes, Voldemort being so very clearly aromantic is kind of a buzzkill.
Buuuuut I love Harry Potter for its depiction of friendship. It’s top notch on the topic of friendship, and bless JKR for that. Harry Potter, It, and Avatar: The Last Airbender/Legend of Korraare stellar for friendship. Sure, there’s romance and sometime sex, sometimes even eleven-year-olds having sex, but it’s mostly about how great and important and life-saving and world-saving friendship is and I’m giving them all props for that.
(also I think Charles Weasleton and Sirius Black are aroace and awesome, but only Charlie’s ID was *sort of* confirmed, in an interview, post the Deathly Hallows release, so I guess they don’t count)
(but they’re totally aroace and awesome I don’t care)
The Night Circus: Sales Pitch
Hi.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern is one of the best fantasy/magical realism books I’ve read in a long time. It’s stylish, in it’s chic third person present tense, with the occasional chapter in second person present tense. When I read third person present in other books, and so far the only other books I’ve read in third person present are the Sidekick Squad books by C.B. Lee, it drives me up the wall. But not here.
It has beautiful, mystical, magical, romantic prose. When I read super stylish, super romantic prose, and mainly I’m thinking of anything by Anna-Marie McLemore, it drives me up the wall. But not here.
(C.B. Lee and Anna-Marie McLemore are still very good though, I’m just a little picky. I like Rowling prose, OK? Sweet and super simple. Leave me alone.)
The prose is… it’s… it’s just flawless. Reading this book is like eating a giant piece of this cake. Or this cake. Or – oh. Oh wow. OK so it’s like all of those, I can’t decide. Just all of them. It’s very decadent, and very good, is the point I’m trying to make.
I want to go to the Night Circus. I want to live there. It feels real, it feels beautiful and magical and just a little bit dangerous, and it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve fallen so hard for a fictional, magical world.
The Night Circus: Alas.
Here’s the thing, though.
The entire circus itself is created in order for the two protagonists, Marco and Celia, to have an arena in which to compete. The competition is deliberately vague: they basically just have to create magic things, different tents, different showcases, and they have to keep all of the people they’ve roped into the endeavour relatively safe and happy while they battle it out. Both are set on this journey by overpowerful completely cold-hearted ancient father figures when they are powerless children. They grow up, learn their different styles of magic from their different mentors, and then they start battling it out.
But, wouldn’t you know it, they’re both super hot young adults and they fall for each other. He falls first, she’s sort of resistant until she just can’t ignore how intensely he burns for her, you know, typical stuff. And because of this, the fairly vague competition turns into basically just them writing love letters to each other in the form of circus exhibitions and being completely impressed by each other’s magical prowess. Mostly he’s impressed. Typical stuff.
I’m not aromantic, and, more importantly, I’m usually a sucker for this sort of thing. I’m pretty sure, even not being aromantic myself, that you can be a huge fan of cutesy but still extremely intense romance stuff even if you don’t feel romantic attraction or if you only feel it sometimes. Anyway, what I wanted to get at is this: this is fine. It’s fine. It’s great. I’d normally love it. I did quite like it, I guess, as it is.
But, I’d read the “Voldemort as aromantic is super problematic” article first.
And.
So.
Here’s the thing.
There isn’t… really… like… any friendship in this.
There are two sets of twins, I’ll grant.
Here’s the thing about that: in the older twins’ case, they’re two fabulous ladies, two members of the really awesome group of people who found the Night Circus. One of the other members, some guy, is trying to determine which one of them he’s more in love with. Happily for all three of them, one of them dies. She goes to that some guy and asks why none of them have aged in the ten years since the circus began, and he sends her to Marco’s mentor, who compels her to accidentally walk in front of a train. And then the second twin and some guy start dating.
I make it sound sort of suspicious, like some guy wanted one of them to die to make his choice simple. I’m pretty sure he didn’t. But it’s just rather weird to me that, well, this is what happens to one set of twins. Like. Some guy is in love with both of them, trying to choose. And then. One of them dies. Like. What?
The younger twins are a boy and a girl. Widget, the boy, says and does normal, overly precocious literary child things that no real child would say or do. Poppet, the girl, says and does normal, overly precocious literary child things that no real child would say or do, and she also falls in love with some other boy who shows up to save the day at the end.
I’ll be honest: I’d be a little less annoyed if it had been Widget falling in love and Poppet just got to do her own thing in the end. But I’d still be slightly annoyed. There are a handful of scenes with the brother and sister being together, but their relationship isn’t as real as I’d like, and most of their scenes include Bailey, the boy Poppet falls in love with. And there isn’t a reason for her to fall in love with him. From Bailey’s perspective, she’s an exotic circus girl who is super nice to him, so of course he falls in love with her. I’m not saying he needs to be the most interesting manboy in the world for her to fall in love with him but there’s no exploration of how she feels about him at all. It’s just supposed to be a given, I guess, that she’d like him.
The only other relationship that has any sort of significance and that isn’t a romance is the one between the enigmatic contortionist Tsukiko and Isobel, the woman who is in love with Marco and who Marco is not in love with but he doesn’t tell her that until near the end (of course). But we only see glimpses.
And then the villains. Mr. A H- and Prospero the Enchanter, who both enjoy teaching children how to do magic so that they can compete with the rival’s student until one of them eventually dies. Prospero is Celia’s father. After she and Marco have sex, Prospero follows her around and calls her a whore a bunch of times, telling her she’s weak, she’s better than all of that, he’s extremely disappointed in her, he’s probably manipulating her girlish heart and of course doesn’t feel anything real for her, those feelings are for lesser people to indulge in, etc.
Tsukiko is a former winner and student of Mr. A H-‘s. Her opponent was another woman, and the competition between the two of them was also basically just a giant magical romance sexytimes fest. She says something along the lines of, “It’s been great being here, it’s the only thing that comes close to reminding me of the bliss I felt when I was magically intertwined with my long lost love, etc.”
Eventually Tsukiko’s magical girlfriend killed herself to end the game because she couldn’t bear to go on living if she’d have to live without Tsukiko. And Celia and Marco do the same thing sort of. It ends with Bailey saving them somehow. I’m still very confused about how that works, because to me, Bailey seems like a competely boring blank slate moderately enthusiastic fan of the circus, so why he’s ultimately the key to saving the circus and preserving Celia and Marco in eternal ghostly love is sort of beyond my capacity to understand. But boring rando saviours are not my topic today. And if they were, I’d much rather talk about the complete and utter bullshit that was Bard the Bowman being the guy to take down Smaug randomly near the end of The Hobbit. WTF forever, Tolkein, that sucked. But the Luke Evans version of events is fine.
MORE IMPORTANTLY is that even though reading this book was freaking delightful, by the end of it I was more than a little bit tired of how central and all-encompassing all of the sickening romance of it all was. I’d have liked there to have been just a little tweaking; just give Celia maybe one friend (one that doesn’t want to bone her because she does in fact have a friend and we never see her side of that friendship, which was platonic, we only see his, and he mostly wants to bone her) (sigh); give Marco a friend instead of a poor hopelessly devoted woman he continues to lead on despite being thoroughly uninterested in her; highlight Poppet and Widget and their sibling fights and mischief, things that would be more realistic than just having two precocious literary children being sagely and dull. There’s a super old glamorous lady who is (of course) entirely desexualized along for the ride too; give her something to do other than making knowing comments to Celia about how much Marco wants to bone her.
There is one conversation between Celia and the surviving fabulous lady twin in which surviving twin has figured it out and knows that Celia is somewhat responsible for her sister’s death, and she calls her out on it magnificently. That conversation was one of the highlights of the book and left me in awe. That’s the sort of thing that’s sorely missing from the rest of it: evidence of love that exists beyond and outside of romance and sex.
Regarding the Tsukiko revelation, also, at first, I thought, “Oh good, finally, a queer romance on top of all of these straight ones,” but then I thought, “Naaaah, we don’t see it at all, and one of them is tragically dead and the other one is tragically stuck living forever without the love of her life. Typical.”
I think it’s unfortunate that the book centers the romance in such a way as to basically overshadow even the possibility of other kinds of love being worthy of mention. I’m not trying to say that romance shouldn’t be the focus; rather, if the characters had been allowed to have other relationships that made them happy, other relationships that fulfilled them in other ways, the exploration of their romance would have been enhanced.
My evidence for this is the two and a half Courtney Milan books I’ve read. And Harry Potter. Courtney Milan writes straight-up romance, and there are always friendships and family relationships while the super sexy romance stuff is the main focus, and the other relationships always complement the romance nicely.
In Harry Potter, it’s much easier to feel the pain of loss when characters die even if they aren’t, like, Harry’s lovers. It’s easier because it has been established, thoroughly established, that friendships and family bonds matter and losing people you love, even if you don’t love them romantically, is excruciating.
Adding friendships and family relationships enhances everything. It makes everything deeper, and ultimately it makes it more real, because our lives are enriched by all of the people who matter the most to us, and many of those people aren’t romantic partners.
I was reading up until midnight. And past midnight. But I count anything I finished by 1:15 a.m. on January 1st as something I read in December because, come on.
I’ve also been counting anything I finished in early hours of first days of any month as being from the previous month, so at the very least I’m consistent.
I read 17 books this month. Really it’s 16, which makes this an even 100 (I’m almost sure and I’m afraid to go back and do the math and find out I’m short). But there was one horrible extra book that counts on a technicality and so I’m including it to complain about its existence.
Here are some notes from the end of this journey:
As December wound down someone on our Twitter timeline was talking about having finished *365* books this year. *365* BOOKS. And she finished before the month was over, so that’s MORE THAN ONE BOOK PER DAY. HOW. But despite a little bit of jealousy, mostly I feel very proud of that person. I hope one day if we happen to be in the same vicinity I’ll just spontaneously be struck with the desire to shake her hand and congratulate her and then we’ll both be really confused. But anyway.
Reading 100 books in a year was a little much. I think now that I’ve proven to myself that it can be done, I’ll read more books than I so far have been reading per year, but the deadlines make it hard to enjoy things. I have a bad habit of skimming that I picked up while studying English Lit in university, and also from being a Harry Potter fan and needing to know everything that was going to happen as quickly as possible but still understanding what was going on in the story, and that habit reared its very practical and useful head here. I want to slow down and enjoy things that I read from now on, though.
Kids’ graphic novels are good.
I have some favourites. And I’ll probably blog about them at a later date.
For now, here are the last 17 books of my 101 books read in 2017, a not good year, but an OK year. With books.
Lumberjanes: Volume 5
CTRL C CTRL V: It’s good it’s Lumberjanes so it’s very Lumberjanes and good.
Lumberjanes #21 & Lumberjanes #33
Same as above, but here I read two chapters that will eventually be added to their own volumes. I prefer reading it as a whole thing, and also I missed a chunk between the end of Volume 5 (I think) and the beginning of #21, and obviously there are several chapters missing in between the two I picked to read. But anyway. When they’re added into their own volumes I’m sure I’ll reread them and be just as happy with them as I was reading them separately.
A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
It’s basically the Jim Carrey mocap movie adaptation, but obviously it’s just a book and it doesn’t have the overdramatized chase scenes and screaming, so, I loved it, but I also missed the overdramatized chase scenes and the screaming. I know why this is a classic but of course I already knew why it was a classic. Despite the fact that there are thousands of movie adaptations out there to choose, even if you don’t like the mocap one, I still recommend it because it’s nice, short, seasonal reading and all it asks is that you be a generous person if you’re totally capable of being a generous person, both in money and in simple kindness to the people around you.
You Can’t Punch Every Nazi by Mike Isaacson
This is a 30-some odd page zine that contains information on modern fascists and some strategies on how to talk to them. I personally don’t know any people who have been completely seduced by fascism but we’ve all seen the slow slide into rather harsh far-rightism, and most otherwise good, decent people do harbour slivers of white nationalist opinions. I decided a while ago that I would try to speak up when someone I know espouses harmful opinions, and I figured this would help.
It’s the beginning of 2018 and somehow, I think it’s pretty useful, and also, it’s available here for free.
The Invasion of the Tearling by Erica Johansen
My Christmas gift to me was waiting until December to read this. It mixed it’s high fantasy main story with a modern(ish) day dystopia kind of like early-stage Handmaid’s Tale, which was very surprising and also very surprisingly well done. Kelsea is a teenager on her way to very young adulthood and she acts like one, and so far, I love everything about it.
It was especially good to read this book now that I’m completely disenchanted with Game of Thrones and even A Song of Ice and Fire. My sister said in her review of the first book in this series that it’s like if A Song of Ice and Fire was only about Danaerys. That was how she sold me on the book, too. And I agree, that’s pretty much what the Tear universe is so far. After watching the seventh season of the show, I’m going to go so far as to say that the Tearling series is like if Game of Thrones had any reason for existing whatsoever. (I’m sorry but I’m so done. I wish I wasn’t.)
Because Tearling is grappling with how to be a good leader, how to be idealistic, how to create a just society in ways that Game of Thrones is certainly not. Not at all. Maybe the books. Not the show. The show is a pile of rancid cynicism with good acting, music, and CGI.
OK, so, positivity: this series so far is gold. It’s not without it’s uncomfortable faults, but it’s good stuff.
Reasons to Vote for Democrats by Michael J. Knowles
I realized as I was writing this post about some really good books that I could technically include this incredible waste of paper because the joke is that it’s blank.
Like.
There are chapter headers and then just blank pages.
It’s.
Look I think all books need to be printed on recycled paper but I think this book especially is an incredible waste of forest.
In some ways I understand that it’s kind of funny but the joke is actually on you if you pay your hard-earned money for a blank book that took a bunch of jerks pretty much no effort to create.
Saw it while shopping for our cousin.
I’m one of those people who thinks there’s no halfway understandable reason to vote Conservative apart from racism and hatred of air but I’m going to say this too: a book called “Reasons to vote for Republicans” or “Conservatives” or “Donald Trump” that’s completely blank would ALSO be bad. Just as bad, actually, because surely at least our side can come up with some arguments and counter-arguments like reasonable people who don’t want to cheat people out of money and trees in exchange for negligible artistry.
Anyway. We bought Humans of New York for our cousin and maybe he’ll glance at it twice. Whatever. That one actually took effort to create.
Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
I don’t think there’s praise enough for this book.
This book is all over the place here – and I don’t mean huge eye-catching displays at Chapters, because no, but it’s everywhere else. It’s in big box grocery stores. Usually, to me, because I’m still a bit of a snob (but I’m working on it), if there’re two solid shelves of a book at Walmart or a substantial stack of them at Costco it’s maybe not the best book, or it’s a blockbuster book like Harry Potter or Twilight or A Thousand Splendid Suns.
I’m not sure if Eleanor is a blockbuster but I hope it is. It was exactly what I needed, in any case, and I’m sure lots of other people could get something they might need out of it. I picked it up because I liked the cover and the summary sounded OK, but it exceeded all of my expectations enormously. Eleanor is instantly likably unlikable. I love her, and I love that she’s sometimes a little bit difficult to love. Pretty early on there are hints that all is not well and the more you learn on that front the more lovable she becomes. It doesn’t hurt that as we learn more about her she learns more about sensitivity, which is excellent.
It’s worth pointing out, mainly because of how much I loved this book, that it deals quite a lot with child abuse, depression, suicidal thoughts, and domestic violence. I think it handled these various topics really well, but obviously your mileage may vary.
There are two big reasons that caused me to decide that this is probably my favourite book this year.
The climax/”conflict is now at peak levels of intensity” moment. I was waiting from the first few pages for the conflict to blow up and be ridiculously dramatic. But, no. It’s handled with a lot of maturity. Eleanor figures out what she needs to figure out without making a huge scene the way she would have in a different book, or maybe in a quirky rom-com version of this same story. It’s not that she faces her problems squarely and with heretofore unseen inner strength, because she doesn’t. But neither does she act like many of the lovely teenagers in all of the lovely YA I’ve read this year would have, bless them. I was torn because while I felt bad for Eleanor, I was also thrilled at how calm everything was. The fallout is also handled really well, I think. There’s just enough drama, it’s nicely paced and rather cathartic and it’s everything.
I like how the one potential maybe romance thing ended – small. And potentially… not romantic. Although it’s clearly implied that it’s romantic and I’m all for it being romantic but I think it’s exactly the right way for that subplot to have ended. Again, maybe it’s just that I’ve read loads of YA but I’m comparing this really quite beautiful slow progression into romance (that maybe is going to stay friendship, who knows) to a climax in which two characters make out furiously in a tree in front of all of their family members, and, yeah, this is more my speed. Also, it’s so important that “romance” is not a thing that fixes everything. I know there’s a place for that, but I prefer when it doesn’t happen.
I didn’t want it to end. And when I did finish it I wanted to just reread it, since that was my only realistic option. But I had more to do before the year’s end so I COULDN’T.
Underwater Dogs by Seth Casteel
I learned that labs are terrifying and that dogs are ridiculous.
Binti by Nnedi Okorafor
This short novel/novelette is really cool. It’s science fiction, which is not close to being my favourite thing in the world, but it does what science fiction is supposed to do, as far as I’m concerned, anyway: it challenges things. This is a challenging story that has pretty much all of the characters reevaluate their initial feelings and biases and work together. I kind of think this shouldn’t work (I can’t give away why). But it does.
There are a few sequels to this and I’m definitely interested in reading them. Sci-fi so rarely captures my attention but this one was really really cool.
Spirit Hunters by Ellen Oh
We bought this for our youngest cousin. It’s a ghost/possession/haunting story for children and it’s super creepy.
I read it quickly before wrapping it (I usually try to, because sometimes a book will seem like a good idea on the shelf and then you bring it home and it’s full of unfunny rape and animal cruelty jokes for literally no reason and then you have to go back out shopping again because this trash is not worthy of our baby cousin) and I’m a little worried that it’s going to give him nightmares.
On the other hand, I kind of hope it gives him nightmares. When I was a kid I loved scary stories and getting spooked. Well. It was a love-hate relationship, maybe, because I never loved the part where falling asleep at night was impossible. But in the end it’s always worth it. I recommend it for the kid in your life who wants to get scared but because horror movies usually have unnecessary sex/gore/etc. they aren’t allowed to watch most of them yet and they therefore need to resort to scary books. This one will do.
Insane Clown President by Matt Tiabbi
We bought this one for another cousin! Mostly we think he’ll like the cover art. There are also illustrations along those lines for each and every chapter, which, unfortunately, is the best part of the book.
That’s not to say it’s not good, because it is pretty good. It’s just that the subject matter is so bleak and ultimately not funny.
Notably, Tiabbi’s discussion of Bernie Sanders/the young progressive vote/Hilary Clinton was by far the most palatable pro-Bernie thing I’ve read. Usually pro-Bernie stuff is condescending because it kind of has to sneer at the Democratic base for choosing “an establishment candidate who isn’t really that progressive personally” while ignoring that the Dem base probably went for Clinton because she was the more realistic choice, and they wanted the more realistic choice. For reasons. That need to not ever be dismissed.
HOWEVER. My reading, and other pro-Hilary readings, can often be condescending the other way, towards the young progressives who rejected Clinton. I’m still sure some of them are ridiculous and would never have voted anyway, even if Bernie had won the nomination, but the reality is, it really really is a good sign that a candidate like Bernie Sanders, no matter how tiresome hearing his name has kind of become, did so well, especially with young people. Their reasons for picking him were good ones. Tiabbi’s stuff made that clear without being awful and unnuanced and broish.
Anyway. Let that be the last I hear about the 2016 primaries and the 2016 election. It’s 2018 now and all I want to hear about is the impeachment.
Sisters by Raina Telgemeier
This was kind of wrenching. I really liked it, except for the part that involved dead/dying pets. One more time: the 2017 lesson is that graphic novels for kids are awesome.
Antifa: The Antifascist Handbook by Mark Bray
HHHHHHHOMG. So.
I have a lot of thoughts, but they don’t really matter. Basically, if you’re interested in antifa at all, and, I said this earlier when I talked about reading the book about terrorism but I’m saying it again now, if you’re living in today’s reality then you probably are at least somewhat interested in the topic, I highly recommend this one. It places current antifa tactics and groups in their historical contexts, which is really unnerving when this book demonstrates all of the similarities between what’s going on now and what went on right before WWII. I don’t think the book is scaremongering – in fact I just think it’s being honest. I took away some fairly hard-hitting points from it, the most important of which is, if we’re serious about “never again,” we need to understand all of the different facets of how we actually make “never again” the reality… and this book suggests that antifascist action, some of which is violent, is a crucial part of it.
Radio Silence by Alice Oseman
We intended this book for our little cousin but thankfully I read it first. It’s just a touch too old, but we’re lending it to her in a year or so because it’s so good.
First of all, I think it’s the most accurate and realistic depiction of being a high school student I’ve ever read or watched or encountered anywhere. And while that means it was delightful to read – the feeling of “so someone else felt like that once too!” is always so beautiful to stumble upon – that also means it goes to some very dark places.
This and Tash Hearts Tolstoy are high on my list of books I wish I’d been able to read when I was a teenager, but no matter. I’ve read them now.
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral by Phillis Wheatley
It’s available online to read freely, like, right now. I suggest you check it out, even just one or two poems, because the backstory on this one is intense.
I can’t really say anything about it except “how did I take two American lit courses and we never were assigned even one of these poems,” but here’s a thing you should definitely read about it.
Assholes: a Theory by Aaron James
I don’t really know what the theory is, but this was a fun read. It will actually make you feel a little bit better about having to put up with a certain type of person you might often have to put up with.
Also there’s reference to Donald Trump, but he wasn’t even running for president when this was published (do you remember those glorious days), so it was kind of sad.
Arrival (but really, Stories of Your Life and Others) by Ted Chiang
Science fiction! Not my favourite.
I hadn’t realized that this is a collection of short stories, only one of which is the basis for the movie Arrival which I really like. The story is good – it’s probably my favourite in the collection – but I prefer the way the movie handled the alien aspect of things.
However. Amy Adams’ storyline in that movie kind of bugged me. In this version the character makes a similar personal life choice, but you get to see her thoughts and nightmares about it, and everything makes more sense. There’s a significant change in the adaptation as well that makes me frown a bit. SPOILERS FOR BOTH VERSIONS: In the movie, her daughter is fairly young, maybe a teenager, when she dies of an illness she was always going to contract and suffer through. In the story, she’s 25 – still young but an adult at least – and she dies rock climbing. Maybe the movie makers thought the rock climbing thing would make audiences go “Wait why couldn’t she go with her to the cliff or tell her not to go on that particular day” and sure, those would be fair questions. The illness makes it clear that there really isn’t anything she can do to prevent it.
Buuuuut the point is she can’t? The way we perceive time, when someone dies suddenly, we don’t see it coming and couldn’t have prevented it. The way Amy Adams’ character sees time, she can see a thing coming and yet she still can’t change it. She just knows it’s going to happen.
This bugs us because we can’t understand how a person could be able to see bad things coming and not be able to prevent them, what’s the point etc. etc. but the point here is that aliens will have vastly different ways of existing in this universe than we will, so. Shut up.
Ultimately I like this story, I like what it says about us and our one way of living in the world, but I think it’s fundamentally flawed because we can’t just magically escape our narrow understanding of the world to write or to read a story, not fully.
Also I wrote a bit about the heptapods and how I think they look like squid, but I forgot to talk about how they also look unnervingly and I think purposefully like human hands, but with one extra digit.
Anyway. The other stories were all a lot like this too, where I liked them but they were challenging and, I think, sometimes kind of too bold for their own good. But I definitely think this collection is a worthwhile read. Again, as with Binti, I think any sci-fi that properly challenges me is worth my time.
(I know Jane is sketching in a sketch book but I needed to use her at least once because anyone with this much enthusiasm for gorillas living in family groups is required to show up in a header image so whatever)
Frankly, I’m impressed by how well I’ve staved off the temptation to just reread It. The temptation is HUGE. And yet, all I’ve done is go looking for this section, where Richie takes Ben and Bev to a double horror show:
“Howdy, Haystack!” he said. “Thought you went chicken on me. These movies goan scare ten pounds off your pudgy body. Ah say, ah say they goan turn your hair white, boy. When you come out of the theater, you goan need an usher to help you up the aisle, you goan be shakin so bad.”
Richie started for the box-office and Ben touched his arm. Ben started to speak, glanced at Bev, who was smiling at him, and had to start over again. “I was here,” he said, “but I went up the street and around the corner when those guys came along.”
“What guys?” Richie asked, but he thought he already knew.
“Henry Bowers. Victor Criss. Belch Huggins. Some other guys, too.”
Richie whistled. “They must have already gone inside the theater. I don’t see em buying candy.”
“Yeah. I guess so.”
“If I was them, I wouldn’t bother paying to see a couple of horror movies,” Richie said. “I’d just stay home and look in a mirror. Save some bread.”
I’m sad that they didn’t go to a movie in the new version. In the 90s one, Richie actually screams that last part at Henry and co. and then dumps his pop on them, which makes it probably the best part of the whole movie. In the book, Richie of course isn’t that stupid but even though they’re cautious, the three get cornered by the goons in an alley and somehow manage to win a little scuffle and escape mostly unharmed, which is also pretty great.
Anyway all this proves is that, a) It 2017 needed to be at least six hours long. Honestly. What were the filmmakers thinking, making it only two and a half? and b) Books are very good, very detailed things. The evolution of how shy Ben and outrageous Richie talk to and relate to each other over the summer of ’58 is one of the many little gems that you can’t do in a movie adaptation because apparently people don’t want to sit for ten hours straight in a very uncomfortable theatre chair – not even to see the part where Richie negotiates lawn mowing with his dad so that he can earn two bucks to go to the show in the first place. That is crucial, I tell you. CRUCIAL. (It was actually really funny.) But seriously, the Ben/Richie dynamic shifts pretty much unremarked on as time passes, but Ben starts out completely overwhelmed by Richie and ends up being perfectly comfortable beeping him like the rest of the losers do. It’s a tiny detail, but one I really liked as someone who takes a long time to open up to others, especially people of the Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier persuasion.
So yeah, leaving It alone now, on to the books I read for the first time this month.
Twelve. So. Three short of the goal. Yeah.
Cuckoo Song by Francis Hardinge
I actually finished this one sometime in September but forgot to add it to that post. It’s more of an October book anyway. Just look at that cover. I brought it around with me sometimes and everyone who saw it was like, “What is WRONG with you??”
The book is exactly as creepy as the cover would suggest. It’s also one of the best depictions of little girls, and sisters especially, that I think I’ve ever encountered. Ever. In all of media. Mainly because it focused on all of the venom and the spite that exists in those relationships, alongside actual love, and it doesn’t make any sense and yet that’s how they are. How is it possible to sympathize with multiple characters who loathe each other and occasionally try to sabotage the other’s existence? Look, I don’t know, you’d just have to read it to understand. It’s amazing, and such a good story as well.
Of course, my favourite part was when they kidnapped a rooster because they needed his protection and I was SO SURE that bird was going to die but he didn’t, and it was awesome. But the rest of it is amazing too – I seriously can’t overstate how good this book is. Read it. I know Halloween is over but hey, if the Mayor of Halloween Town is already preparing for next year with Jack then you can read this creepy, amazing book right now.
The Girl from Everywhere by Heidi Heilig
YA fantasy where the premise is if you have a good map and an imaginative navigator, you can sail a ship to any place, any time. So pretty cool, in other words. The characters were really likable, there was dad-daughter angst, overarching theme of not being sure of belonging, a love triangle that was only a little bit irritating, so all good stuff. There is a sequel/conclusion to this and I am beyond excited to read it. I hope the dog survives (she’s a beagle).
I’d say more but I think I need to see how it ends before I can gather my thoughts. It’s really good, though.
The Shadow Queen by C.J. Redwine
I’m mixed on this one. It’s a retelling of Snow White but with an action girl protagonist and a hard fantasy backdrop, so it’s both something I should like a lot and also something I’m pretty tired of.
What stands out to me about it is the love story (please guess who the love interest is) (yes, it’s the huntsman, go you) (OK it’s actually a foreign king who has come to beg for help from the evil queen and he’s also a shapeshifter but the only thing he can shape shift into is a dragon and the queen turns him into a hunter by removing his human heart but forcing him not to shift into a dragon so he’s basically a human dragon ACTING like the huntsman) (spoiler alert). We like a story about an evil woman who sends a dude to kill a girl and then he tries to but then because she’s so pretty and scared he just can’t bring himself to do it, don’t we. Why? I won’t attempt to answer, it’ll just get too “Feminism 101” in here.
Anyway, this version of that story is different. Snow White Lorelai is not afraid of the HuntsmanDragon Dude Kol. Pretty much immediately she figures out a way to temporarily help him remember that he doesn’t actually want to kill anyone. While I liked this change, and liked how it added to the romance/conflict/whatever, I do still have to go all “Feminism 101” and point out that it’s kind of weird that we like stories like this where nefarious forces/vampirism are compelling the dude to kill the girl he likes but because he’s such a great dude/through the power of true love/because the protagonist is a magic action girl, he doesn’t kill her. Although in this one he (SPOILER!!!!!! Highlight if you don’t care and you just want to read a complete sentence.)sort of does. And in Twilight he turns her into a vampire which is almost the same as dying. It’s just as gruesome as dying, anyway.
I’m not saying this was a horrible depiction of romance because it was waaaaaay better than Twilight and it was also pretty enjoyable, but, it was something I kept in mind. I’ve done too many feminist readings to ignore stuff like this. It is my curse. Except, no. Critical thought is always better than the alternative.
Caraval by Stephanie Garber
Girl goes to magical five-night circus that is also a game and everything is just a little more dangerous than she thought it would be and also she has to find and potentially rescue her sister.
This had a cool, threatening, magical atmosphere with a lot of twists and turns but I have my issues with it. The big twist at the end, I think, makes a lot of the long, drawn out conversations and internal monologues that Scarlet deliberates over that happen throughout the book and especially right near the end seem a little far-fetched. Even still, the twist worked on me. It even made me tear up a little.
Theeeeee romaaaaaaance was the bigger thing that made me frown. Midway to the end of the book it was nice, but my dude starts out being a total dickface. And I mean a TOTAL dickface. He is awful. I think his cockiness is supposed to be thrilling and sexy, like Christian Grey or something, but, spoiler alert, Christian Grey sucks and so does first-half-of-this-book Julian. I hate to be so inflexible on this point, but also I don’t find jerkwad guys who go out of their way to make the women they like uncomfortable attractive, so bite me.
But thankfully he turned around, and also the sister plot took over as the main event near the end, as it should, so all was well. I’ll be looking out for the sequel.
Asexual Perspectives by Sandra Bellamy
This is a nonfiction in which a whole whack of asexual people answer the biggest questions pertaining to being asexual, like: what do you think about sex, sexual attraction, relationships, relationships between allos and aces, the sexualized world we live in, your greatest ace-related fears, etc.
I wrote a whole long thing about it and just made it it’s own post, here.
The Duchess War by Courtney Milan
CAN COURTNEY MILAN TEACH A CLASS TO YA AND FANTASY WRITERS ABOUT WRITING MALE LOVE INTERESTS. PLEASE.
There’s a part where she’s wearing a pretty dress to an event she’ll see him at and when he finds her he’s like, “I know who you’re wearing that for.”
And she’s like, “…”
And he’s like, “For you. You’re wearing it for you. Do more things for you. You go, Glen Coco.”
(LMAO so I was going to use a picture of someone looking lovestruck but as I was scrolling through to find one I came across this and I couldn’t stop laughing at the absurdity so)
Anyway. Suffice to say you should probably read Courtney Milan. Start with this one, it is very good.
My minor complaint is the cover. All of her covers are pretty and all, and I understand why they have to be the way they are, but I kind of wish this woman on the cover looked like Minnie is supposed to actually look, and was wearing what Minnie is supposed to actually wear. Because I think these dresses are all the wrong era. Because I think this series is set in the Victorian one. So. Why are all of their necks showing, and why so shiny?
Again, I get it, it’s marketing. Still.
Emily’s Best Christmas Ever by Krista and Amanda
oh my goodness
Yeah. This is also getting its own post.
Not Your Villain by C.B. Lee
I read Not Your Sidekick (the first in this series) earlier this year and liked it despite its third person present tense, which drove me up the wall. This time around, I also liked it, but seriously, I am not a fan of that tense. It’s such a personal preference, but then, third person present isn’t a particularly popular tense, at least, not in the fiction that I read, and maybe there’s a reason for that.
Anyway. There is a really nice flashback scene near the beginning that is in third person past tense and it was the easiest part of this book to read for me, and I wish the whole thing was in that tense.
Moving on from tense issues now. The featured character is a trans boy and he’s in love with his BFF who, as it turns out, (SPOILERS)is questioning/somewhere on the asexual and/or aromantic spectrums, and the part where she comes out to him is perfect and I love it. But man I wish it was written in third person past.
The Hollow Girl by Hillary Monahan
I LOVED this book. Earlier in the year I read something else of Monahan’s, The Awesome, (she wrote that one as Eve Darrows) and I said I liked it but with caveats, and I detailed the caveats, but really, when I say I liked it, it was more that I liked the idea of it. In execution I thought it was too quirky by half and the sex stuff, which should have been good, was, according to me, the expert, kind of offensive.
But I follow the author on Twitter and she’s great. I’ve been following the build-up for The Hollow Girl‘s October release and it’s clear this book means a lot to her. Finally reading it was amazing, because it’s easily one of my favourites this year, and it’s so nice to see something someone is passionate about having made be really good. It should always be that way.
It’s really dark, quite upsetting at times, but I couldn’t look away and the characters were instantly lovable. It highlights a Romani community, showing customs and cultural attitudes that are different than typical Western things, but doesn’t get expositiony. Instead, it makes the world easier to disappear into, and the characters fascinating. In many ways it reminded me of The Female of the Species, just because of how women taking back power and wielding it in response to male violence is depicted.
Bearly a Lady by Cassandra Khaw
This was a fun little novella, kind of like Some Assistance Required in that it was one of those supernatural romances in which there are fairies and vampires and werewolves walking around as if it’s all good. It’s kind of weird, but also kind of hard not to find immediately engaging. Also, werebears are a good idea always.
Lumberjanes Volume 3
All right, real talk, Lumberjanes continues to be the light of my life. This series is perfect. PERFECT. Also it doesn’t hurt that they’re quick and so much fun to read and I am definitely in need of more of that as this year comes to an end.
An early November horror story for you, courtesy of Jen:
I LOVE JEN SO MUCH.
When there are a gazillion volumes out, I think it requires an animated TV adaptation.
Unforgivable by Joanna Chambers
It isn’t Courtney Milan, but I liked this one a lot. I didn’t like that the conflict that kept the couple apart could have easily been solved as early as the half point of the book, but then it would be short and brooding and hurt feelings and overdramatic declarations of love wouldn’t happen.
Actually, the declarations of love are never dramatic. It’s more that it takes so long to get there, and whereas with Duchess War I was totally fine with how long everything was taking, here I did get a little impatient.
Still, it’s good. It was a nice look at a guy lashing out and being mean and feeling instantly bad about it and working to be a better person throughout, because the main character made a few bad choices here and there and seeing it from his perspective keeps him likable. Honestly, it works, somehow. And again, all non-Romance genres that include hetero romance subplots need to learn some stuff from the Romance genre because. Seriously.
So I am apparently slowing down, due, I think, to the encroachment of old age. I turned 28 this month.
I’ve read all of 54 books which leaves a grand total of 46 books left to reach my very reasonable goal. And that means 15 per month from now on. It’s happening, I tell you. By the power of honey crisp apples and being able to watch holiday and fall/Halloween/cozy type movies again, I will surely pull it off.
Down Among the Sticks and Bones by Seanan McGuire
I can’t believe how much I loved this. It’s a companion to Every Heart a Doorway, which I read later this month because I loved this one so much. I prefer this one, but both are really good. Where are the movies, I ask?
I would highly recommend these to anyone who likes kids falling into magical realms. Read Every Heart a Doorway first though, and then BE ABSOLUTELY SURE to read this one too.
Lumberjanes Volume 2
I’m only on Volume 2 but these are killer. I love them so much. They’re so much fun, so easy to disappear into, and I wish they were longer (except then I’d have a harder time finishing my 100 this year so not really, they’re the perfect length for a kids’ graphic novel anyway).
So I discovered in this volume that camp counselor Jen is me.
I’ve legitimately considered what might happen if I had to suddenly leap into danger to help someone and every time I’ve considered it I’ve been pretty cynically sure that this exact thing is what would happen, so this is by far my favourite moment of any of the books I’ve read this year.
Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire
What I said earlier.
And also, the main character is asexual and I wasn’t expecting that. Her version of ace isn’t mine (I mean, there was a lot about aesthetic attraction, which, yes, I latched onto that like a lifeline to perform for my friends with Leo DiCaprio and Orlando Bloom, so, it’s a thing for me too, but she didn’t go into the confusing romantic attraction the character seemed – to me – to be feeling at times, and kind of implied that blushing while being around Kade was all down to aesthetic attraction. I’m sure that’s the way it is for some people, but, not me), but still, I could relate to some of it which was nice.
Of Fire and Stars by Audrey Coulthurst
Fantasy and political intrigue and irritating family members. Two princesses, and they slowly (really, really slowly) fall in love. I really liked this romance, because more than any other I’ve read this year (and maybe ever), it took soooooo long. It’s hard to explain but I really liked it. I liked how they have complicated and mixed feelings about each other at first, and they shift slowly, and, eventually, it’s romance. It’s also why I like Courtney Milan’s romance plotlines. It takes FOREVER.
I also love that Mare (Princess 1) is bi and Denna (Princess 2) is… maybe… possibly… homoromantic demisexual? I read her like that because, a) that’s typical of me to assume everyone is some sort of ace before being proven wrong, and b) much is made of how she’s never felt the way she feels about Mare before. She could have just been surrounded with heteronormativity, of course, or, really, she just never had an opportunity to meet lots of women to be attracted to. Either way, I liked how their romantic histories and present-day romantic realities were so different.
Also it’s all about bigotry and scapegoating and terrorism, so that was interesting.
She-Wolf and Cub by Lilith Saintcrow
I’m not usually one for sci-fi but this was pretty cool.
A woman who is mostly robot and also an assassin is assigned to kill a child (who… is a vampire… made by science…), and instead she takes the child and runs. And that’s the story.
I LOVED this protagonist. Abby. Abbymom. Mom. Jess. Whatever her name is. She’s tough as nails but super caring and sometimes shows it and often doesn’t. I also liked the weird, almost-not-there-at-all romance between her and Sam (… another robot person).
OK I didn’t love the graphic animal cruelty – one scene in particular grossed me out a lot. But if animals were dying it was usually quick.
Crash Override by Zoë Quinn
Are you on the internet? Well, you must be, if you’re reading this. So. Now you need to read this book.
Seriously.
It’s… yeah.
I’d planned on picking this up as soon as I heard it was coming out, but I recently saw a recommendation to buy it as an audiobook because Quinn narrates it herself and does a good job. So, that’s what I did, and that’s what I recommend you do. She had her life torn apart by the internet hate machine, wants desperately to find solutions that don’t ruin everything, and wants to prevent it from happening to anyone else, and hearing her read it aloud herself definitely drives the point all the way home.
owl machine 