Book Foo and Ego Boost
Sep. 26th, 2009 01:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
newnumber6Start with ze Book Foo.
Finished: Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami (reread)
Started: The Science Fiction Century, Vol 1, by assorted (short story collection)
I've read BR several times so there's not much new to say. However, there are a couple things I want to comment on in terms of the plot, compared to what I might have expected. Spoilers, of course.
One of the things I enjoy about the book is the... sort of... lack of the typical hollywood romantic subplot. Oh, sure, there are characters who have interests in others, some to the point of it being the motivation for their entire actions. But they're not the main story. In the main story, one of the lead characters has a crush on the other. She knows it's more or less unrequited, that he's interested in somebody else. He knows that she's interested in him, too, but although in a more normal situation they might grow close together, his best friend had a crush on her, and, more importantly, they both know that THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THIS CRAP. They sort of occasionally make reference to their feelings, but nobody dwells on it, because they're fighting for their lives. Heck, even towards the end, you're sure they'd stick together if at all possible, but don't know for sure that they'd _get_ together, as a couple. Comparatively, I'd be surprised if they made a Hollywood adaptation of this and they DIDN'T actually have the characters explicitly fall in love (and profess it, maybe even having a makeout scene) in the middle of the game. Which would be a shame. I also like a couple of instances of non-romantic friendships going on. (Hiroki and Takkako). Maybe I'm a sucker for the platonic friendship. It's kind of refresh that most of the time where romance is the prime motivator of a character, it's for noble but ultimately foolish quests, rather than a "true love conquers all" attitude.
(on the negative side, it is a bit wearying to have so many main characters also having a crush on that main character... it almost feels like the classic Mary Sue mistake, having your main character, in addition to being nice and noble and honorable, also being the most popular guy there is)
Another aspect of this is that, well, there are two big 'threat players' in the game. You'd think they'd have to face one, then the other. Yet, one of them, the main characters never even meet. Their paths simply never cross, even though that story is a big part of the book. I quite like that, because it makes sense. There are enough side stories going on that they sort of meet in particular ways, and in many cases not at all, and that's perfectly okay. There's only one instance where I would have liked one of the subplots to have had more of an effect on the ending, and that's in one particular way that I saw how it _could_ be done easily to provide a bit of extra payoff. But that's not even a complaint, just something I'd have done (one of the very few changes I'd make if _I_ were adapting it into a Hollywood movie... which I did write up once as an exercise in working with script form, but that's another story).
Anyway, that's about all I had to say.
Finished: A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Started: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (reread)
Not much to say about A Fire Upon the Deep. Really liked it, as usual. No particular added payoff in reading the series in chronological order as opposed to publication order, so I'll probably go with the usual next time. Key phrases: hexapodia as the key insight
A post on 1984 by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
karenjeane reminded me that I hadn't read the book in a while, and since I needed something to read, well, it seemed like a perfect choice. Odd that I've been reading a bunch of books with a 'totalitarian government' theme lately, though... Battle Royale, A Deepness in the Sky (sorta, with the badguys), 1984.
In other news, I got a nice little ego boost yesterday. You know this icon? (assuming you're not reading a really old entry and I've rotated it out since). Well, I made it from a larger page-edit I did in Photoshop using that particular gag. I made it something like a year ago, for the old scans_daily community (and probably one of the last Photoshops I've done, I haven't even made many icons since the community was shut down). But yesterday? Someone posted it to a 'funny images' thread on the (revived) Ships and Giggles forum. When I revealed I did it, the poster told me that Matt Fraction, current writer on the Iron Man comic, just tweeted about it. Text was:
"This IRON MAN/DR. HORRIBLE mashup has delighted Team IRON MAN to no end: http://tinyurl.com/yckhmxo (thanks Cth. anybody know who made it?)"
I used my rarely used twitter (http://twitter.com/starpilotsix)to let him know I was responsible in case you were wondering. So yeah, like I said, nice little ego boost there. :)
Finished: Battle Royale, by Koushun Takami (reread)
Started: The Science Fiction Century, Vol 1, by assorted (short story collection)
I've read BR several times so there's not much new to say. However, there are a couple things I want to comment on in terms of the plot, compared to what I might have expected. Spoilers, of course.
One of the things I enjoy about the book is the... sort of... lack of the typical hollywood romantic subplot. Oh, sure, there are characters who have interests in others, some to the point of it being the motivation for their entire actions. But they're not the main story. In the main story, one of the lead characters has a crush on the other. She knows it's more or less unrequited, that he's interested in somebody else. He knows that she's interested in him, too, but although in a more normal situation they might grow close together, his best friend had a crush on her, and, more importantly, they both know that THIS IS NOT THE TIME FOR THIS CRAP. They sort of occasionally make reference to their feelings, but nobody dwells on it, because they're fighting for their lives. Heck, even towards the end, you're sure they'd stick together if at all possible, but don't know for sure that they'd _get_ together, as a couple. Comparatively, I'd be surprised if they made a Hollywood adaptation of this and they DIDN'T actually have the characters explicitly fall in love (and profess it, maybe even having a makeout scene) in the middle of the game. Which would be a shame. I also like a couple of instances of non-romantic friendships going on. (Hiroki and Takkako). Maybe I'm a sucker for the platonic friendship. It's kind of refresh that most of the time where romance is the prime motivator of a character, it's for noble but ultimately foolish quests, rather than a "true love conquers all" attitude.
(on the negative side, it is a bit wearying to have so many main characters also having a crush on that main character... it almost feels like the classic Mary Sue mistake, having your main character, in addition to being nice and noble and honorable, also being the most popular guy there is)
Another aspect of this is that, well, there are two big 'threat players' in the game. You'd think they'd have to face one, then the other. Yet, one of them, the main characters never even meet. Their paths simply never cross, even though that story is a big part of the book. I quite like that, because it makes sense. There are enough side stories going on that they sort of meet in particular ways, and in many cases not at all, and that's perfectly okay. There's only one instance where I would have liked one of the subplots to have had more of an effect on the ending, and that's in one particular way that I saw how it _could_ be done easily to provide a bit of extra payoff. But that's not even a complaint, just something I'd have done (one of the very few changes I'd make if _I_ were adapting it into a Hollywood movie... which I did write up once as an exercise in working with script form, but that's another story).
Anyway, that's about all I had to say.
Finished: A Fire Upon the Deep, by Vernor Vinge (reread)
Started: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell (reread)
Not much to say about A Fire Upon the Deep. Really liked it, as usual. No particular added payoff in reading the series in chronological order as opposed to publication order, so I'll probably go with the usual next time. Key phrases: hexapodia as the key insight
A post on 1984 by
karenjeane reminded me that I hadn't read the book in a while, and since I needed something to read, well, it seemed like a perfect choice. Odd that I've been reading a bunch of books with a 'totalitarian government' theme lately, though... Battle Royale, A Deepness in the Sky (sorta, with the badguys), 1984.In other news, I got a nice little ego boost yesterday. You know this icon? (assuming you're not reading a really old entry and I've rotated it out since). Well, I made it from a larger page-edit I did in Photoshop using that particular gag. I made it something like a year ago, for the old scans_daily community (and probably one of the last Photoshops I've done, I haven't even made many icons since the community was shut down). But yesterday? Someone posted it to a 'funny images' thread on the (revived) Ships and Giggles forum. When I revealed I did it, the poster told me that Matt Fraction, current writer on the Iron Man comic, just tweeted about it. Text was:
"This IRON MAN/DR. HORRIBLE mashup has delighted Team IRON MAN to no end: http://tinyurl.com/yckhmxo (thanks Cth. anybody know who made it?)"
I used my rarely used twitter (http://twitter.com/starpilotsix)to let him know I was responsible in case you were wondering. So yeah, like I said, nice little ego boost there. :)
