No Comic Day
Feb. 6th, 2008 05:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Mostly due to Runaways' delay again. Work was annoying. Timeframe wasn't bad, but due to all the snow and relatively mild temperatures, there was slush everywhere, and my shoes have a bit of holes in them, so often I was walking in ice cold water.
Since I had no comics, I didn't do the longish walk, and stopped at a new used bookstore on the way home. The bad news, there isn't much of a SF section, and the owner was extremely chatty, going on and on about things I had no idea about, until finally I got a chance to duck out. Nice enough seeming guy, but I'm not good at social interaction at the best of times. I might go back when he's set up more and has more books but hopefully he'll have some employees by then.
Since no comics, I'll talk a bit about TV of recent...
Stargate Atlantis - minor spoilers, not big ones though, for The Outcast Fairly enjoyable episode, although a bit predictable at times. I saw certain things coming pretty quickly. But on the other hand, lots of returning guest stars, which was cool. Also, as I mentioned in comments on someone else's journal, it's interesting to note some of the differences between Ronan and Teal'C... in that Teal'C, when he's out among humans, still seems very much the foreigner. Ronan, on the other hand, seems almost indistinguishable from a normal American citizen. He might get in trouble due to not knowing something he should if he was from Earth, but until that moment he blends in very well. I suspect it's a bit due to their backgrounds: Teal'C comes from a very rigid culture with traditions (and even leaders, until recently) going back milennia. Ronan is from a more modern, probably more varied, society, and, as a Runner, likely had to learn to be extremely adaptable, and so that carries on to when he visits other planets, he soaks up the mannerisms. It would be interesting to see this explored.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Very minor spoilers. Okay episode, but probably the weakest of the ones we've seen so far. Still enjoyable though. One thing that has been bothering me about the series a bit, is that I kind of want Sarah to be harder, more cold-blooded at times. Here, there's a scene where she's interrogating someone, and it looks like she might resort to torture, but then she doesn't (and instead turns him over to Summernator). I'm sorry, but this is the woman who tried to kill Miles Dyson for innocently creating Skynet. The woman who held a syringe full of drain cleaner to her psychiatrists neck, using the phrase "You're already dead, everybody's dead, you know I believe it!" when he suggested she wouldn't kill him. I can see her being a little softer since then, not wanting to kill innocents, but this is the Worst Case Scenario - John is gone, in danger, and this guy, working for the badguys, knows something about where they're going he's not telling. At this point, she should be the freaking female Jack Bauer and go right to torture. Sure it was a cute scene to have Summer frighten him off panel, but I think this should have been Sarah's job. (Incidentally since I saw the other two recently, I.. acquired a copy of T2 and will have to rewatch that soon too. Though probably not too soon, as there's a writing cycle coming up).
Supernatural, last Thursday's episode, just saw it yesterday. Moderate to significant spoilers. So, that's Ruby's origin, huh? I was expecting a little more, but it does kind of nicely counterpoint to Dean, especially with the confession that she really can't save him. I suppose the strike means that the next season (if it comes at all) will have to take place at the other half of this year. I wonder if maybe that means that Season 4 might end with Dean _actually_ going to hell as per his deal, and Season 5 will pick up with a "One Year Gap" to catch up, with Sam having been on his own and looking for a way to get him out. That might be kind of a cool way to handle it.
And, finally, some book foo.
Finished: Superluminal, by Vonda McIntyre
Started: Woken Furies, By Richard K. Morgan
Minor, spoiler-free thoughts behind the cut.
I actually enjoyed this a bit more than I thought I would. I think I may have read parts of it before, as some of it seemed familiar and they said that parts had been previously published as short stories. Still, the basic plot was interesting, and the conditions set up for FTL travel kind of cool, and there were some interesting characters. It did kind of feel like the story didn't completely finish, almost like it was book one of a series, but it apparently isn't. The ending is an ending of sorts, but with so much left unexplored that I wanted more.
As for writing... writing cycle starts tomorrow, have tentative idea what I'm going to be working on, at least part of the time. It also occured to me today, that somehow since I started writing again, Toronto's become kind of my default setting for Earth based stories. I don't know how that happened, because usually I avoided Toronto before.. I think if I had any default setting, it was New York (due to all the exposure from comics). But now I usually write stories as though they're set in Toronto, and sometimes change it after the fact or if it doesn't fit. I kind of like the idea of giving my city a little more exposure in SF.. but on the other hand, most of my exposure to culture has been from US TV shows, so it's possible I might make some mistake with something that may or may not be different in the US than it is in Canada (like, say, for the sake of illustration, how police are structured... I don't know if they roughly follow the model of the US, or if they're different in some way I can't easily determine).
Anyway, that's about it for today.
Since I had no comics, I didn't do the longish walk, and stopped at a new used bookstore on the way home. The bad news, there isn't much of a SF section, and the owner was extremely chatty, going on and on about things I had no idea about, until finally I got a chance to duck out. Nice enough seeming guy, but I'm not good at social interaction at the best of times. I might go back when he's set up more and has more books but hopefully he'll have some employees by then.
Since no comics, I'll talk a bit about TV of recent...
Stargate Atlantis - minor spoilers, not big ones though, for The Outcast Fairly enjoyable episode, although a bit predictable at times. I saw certain things coming pretty quickly. But on the other hand, lots of returning guest stars, which was cool. Also, as I mentioned in comments on someone else's journal, it's interesting to note some of the differences between Ronan and Teal'C... in that Teal'C, when he's out among humans, still seems very much the foreigner. Ronan, on the other hand, seems almost indistinguishable from a normal American citizen. He might get in trouble due to not knowing something he should if he was from Earth, but until that moment he blends in very well. I suspect it's a bit due to their backgrounds: Teal'C comes from a very rigid culture with traditions (and even leaders, until recently) going back milennia. Ronan is from a more modern, probably more varied, society, and, as a Runner, likely had to learn to be extremely adaptable, and so that carries on to when he visits other planets, he soaks up the mannerisms. It would be interesting to see this explored.
Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles. Very minor spoilers. Okay episode, but probably the weakest of the ones we've seen so far. Still enjoyable though. One thing that has been bothering me about the series a bit, is that I kind of want Sarah to be harder, more cold-blooded at times. Here, there's a scene where she's interrogating someone, and it looks like she might resort to torture, but then she doesn't (and instead turns him over to Summernator). I'm sorry, but this is the woman who tried to kill Miles Dyson for innocently creating Skynet. The woman who held a syringe full of drain cleaner to her psychiatrists neck, using the phrase "You're already dead, everybody's dead, you know I believe it!" when he suggested she wouldn't kill him. I can see her being a little softer since then, not wanting to kill innocents, but this is the Worst Case Scenario - John is gone, in danger, and this guy, working for the badguys, knows something about where they're going he's not telling. At this point, she should be the freaking female Jack Bauer and go right to torture. Sure it was a cute scene to have Summer frighten him off panel, but I think this should have been Sarah's job. (Incidentally since I saw the other two recently, I.. acquired a copy of T2 and will have to rewatch that soon too. Though probably not too soon, as there's a writing cycle coming up).
Supernatural, last Thursday's episode, just saw it yesterday. Moderate to significant spoilers. So, that's Ruby's origin, huh? I was expecting a little more, but it does kind of nicely counterpoint to Dean, especially with the confession that she really can't save him. I suppose the strike means that the next season (if it comes at all) will have to take place at the other half of this year. I wonder if maybe that means that Season 4 might end with Dean _actually_ going to hell as per his deal, and Season 5 will pick up with a "One Year Gap" to catch up, with Sam having been on his own and looking for a way to get him out. That might be kind of a cool way to handle it.
And, finally, some book foo.
Finished: Superluminal, by Vonda McIntyre
Started: Woken Furies, By Richard K. Morgan
Minor, spoiler-free thoughts behind the cut.
I actually enjoyed this a bit more than I thought I would. I think I may have read parts of it before, as some of it seemed familiar and they said that parts had been previously published as short stories. Still, the basic plot was interesting, and the conditions set up for FTL travel kind of cool, and there were some interesting characters. It did kind of feel like the story didn't completely finish, almost like it was book one of a series, but it apparently isn't. The ending is an ending of sorts, but with so much left unexplored that I wanted more.
As for writing... writing cycle starts tomorrow, have tentative idea what I'm going to be working on, at least part of the time. It also occured to me today, that somehow since I started writing again, Toronto's become kind of my default setting for Earth based stories. I don't know how that happened, because usually I avoided Toronto before.. I think if I had any default setting, it was New York (due to all the exposure from comics). But now I usually write stories as though they're set in Toronto, and sometimes change it after the fact or if it doesn't fit. I kind of like the idea of giving my city a little more exposure in SF.. but on the other hand, most of my exposure to culture has been from US TV shows, so it's possible I might make some mistake with something that may or may not be different in the US than it is in Canada (like, say, for the sake of illustration, how police are structured... I don't know if they roughly follow the model of the US, or if they're different in some way I can't easily determine).
Anyway, that's about it for today.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-02-06 11:15 pm (UTC)You're completely right about Sarah, though. She's always been really hardcore and now she's refusing to kill anyone? Not buying that. I was thinking about the ep last night and something struck me. Do you think the fallout shelter may be the same one they went to in T3? It just struck me as very familiar.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-06 11:34 pm (UTC)I don't _think_ it was meant to be the same bunker as in T3... that was built into a mountain, IIRC, and this one just seemed like a hardened storage facility, whereas the T3 one was a command post bunker.