Supernatural - heroism

Just a few thoughts that keep rumbling around my mine about the show.
Spoilers ahead.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
It becomes apparent in the later seasons, that the brothers are honest to Gods heroes.  To paraphrase the Slayer's epitaph, they saved the world a lot. In Se1 though, they seem more like ordinary folk, not heroes so much, as two guys just doing a job.

I like that they aren't ever superheroes, they don't get magic powers (nothing long lasting anyway), they don't get power rings, they aren't superhuman, they aren't bathed in space beams, they can't do more than normal people can.

They have been brought up to shoot guns, hunt demons, do research, learn theological sigils and basic magic.  But they are ordinary people in ordinary bodies.  For the record, I don't think Sam's pshychic powers count as a superpower.

When they stumble along the riches in the Bunker they don't suddenly know everything, they still have to research, they've just got a comfortable base to do so from.  To be honest, they deserve a nice home, though the lack of natural sunlight would irk me. I bet it pisses Sam off too.  And Dean, though he might not ever admit it.

The brothers don't expect to live a long life.  They do what they do out of a sense of duty and responsibility, and because it's the right thing to do*.  They are intensely moral (until it comes to saving the other one from death or torture, then, ignoring those few episodes after the Trials, the rest of the world can go swivel).  To hazard a guess, they expect to die in their 30s or 40s. Most hunters get killed by something awful before they get old.

The thing about the brothers though, is that the older they get the harder they are to kill, because older hunters have got to be older hunters because they are very good at not dying*.  Or not staying dead in these two's case.  So in all likelihood they are going to get older and better and will die at a ripe old age of something boring.  Hopefully in each other's arms.

To get back to the original point, these are ordinary folks, like you and me, with specific training to be sure, but really just like you and me.  We could do what they do, if we tried hard enough and gave up enough.  That's an attractive quality in a protagonist.  It's more believable than Batman.


* Spot the Discworld references here.

All Supernatural, all the time

Hello world.  It's been 21 months since I last posted here but now I have Thoughts I want to gabble on about.

If anyone has looked at this blog over the last 5 and a half years they will have noticed a distinct lack of posts, and of those posts, the tone changed somewhat from mid 2014.  As much as I feel strange bringing up my dead child into what seems every topic conceivable, the death of my child changed everything.  It took me out of everything I was enamoured with and my connection to random internet dudes with seemingly normal, happy, un-traumatised lives.

Yes I know that you can never tell what is going on in someone else's life, especially when you just read internet personas, but that's how it felt.

I kept buying comics, irregularly, and I tried really hard to regain the enthusiasm I once had, and it was in there, but buried, and I still can't quite connect with it.  I've been a comics fan my whole life, and a serious comics reader from age 23 ish.  Comics, superheroes, DC comics, are part of my DNA.  I really wanted to take part in them again.  For fuck's sake, I named my child after Superman.  I fucking love comics.  But because of all that, 5.5 and a bit years on, I am still finding it difficult to get swallowed up by them.

I've watched tons of superhero telly and films.  I've got my fix that way.  Some shows are better than others.  Some gave what I want, some didn't.  Titans series 1 is fucking awesome.  I haven't managed to watch series 2 yet.

Then last year I cancelled netflix and got Amazon Prime.  I watched a few shows and got very into them.  Then I settled down to watch Supernatural.  A friend has been into it forever, and it's always been on my list to watch, and then Prime had seasons 1-13 available.

So last October 31st, I watched episode 1.

It's now mid March and I've watched all available episodes, which is mid to season 15, the final season, now airing in the States.  They went on filming hiatus, presumably to do cons, and now the poxy plague has halted filming.

But that's 318 episodes (assuming I can count right), in 4.5 months.  I think I watched 1 episode of Picard and a few Teen Titans Go eps in this period, but no other telly really.

I fucking love this show.  I haven't felt so excited about anything since pre-2014.  That includes all the Star Trek episodes barring TOS that I marathon'd a couple of years ago.  And I bloody love Trek.

I care about the characters haircuts and food choices, and relationships, and personality depths, and in jokes, and the depiction of the monsters, and I have got my own headcanon for various episodes, and I love to hate some characters and plot developments, and I have shouted about my passion for this on facebook, and on twitter, and I CARE.  I care about who they fuck and who they fight, I imagine what would happen if they crossed over with the Discworld, I do comparative analyses of Supernatural vs Buffy in my head, I care about the philosophy of the show, the theology, the morals, the music, the actor's acting styles, the clothes.  I care about what the show has to say about women and about men and about justice.  I care that it has queer characters where being queer isn't a plot point, it's just normal.

I have fallen hard and fast for it and I am a fan again.  I fucking love fandom.  The passion and the nitpicking and the camaraderie and the jokes and the seriousness and the passion.  Fandom of nay sort can be pretty toxic, Supernatural has it's own toxic fandom, but on the whole I'm happy to be a part of it again.

Over the last few months I have had Thoughts about The Show buzzing around my head, but I was too busy watching it to write anything down.  Now I'm all caught up I have time to write, and to get my thoughts down.  Some will be Serious Thoughts, some will be Fluffy Thoughts.  This is the first post and now I need to work out what I'm going to do next.  And how to tag these posts because I swear, I have totally forgotten what my lists of labels are.

Books and comics

Recently I have read a few more books - the Leviathan series by Scott Westerfeld, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and two Tiffany Aching Discworld books (spoilers for the final Discworld book - A Shepherd's Crown).  I have also read a few comics.

Get to know me questions

I'm bored and found this on tumblr so thought I'd do it here.  Cross channel memes, yeah.

1. If someone wanted to really understand you, what would they read, watch, and listen to?

Read - the Discworld books, particularly the witch and watch ones.  Supergirl: Many Happy Returns.  Elizabeth McCracken's An Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination.  Alternatively, they could read this blog and New readers...start here!.

Watch - the Buffy telly show.  Listen to - 90s britpop, metal and punk albums, with a dash of Shampoo, 5ive and Steps.

2. Have you ever found a writer who thinks just like you?  if so, who?

No, but some of Terry Pratchett's creations make total utter sense to me - Granny Weatherwax and Vimes in particular.

3. List your fandoms and one character from each that you identify with.

Discworld - Granny Weatherwax

DC comics - Linda Danvers Supergirl

Buffy the Vampire Slayer - Tara

4. Do you like your name?  is there another name you think would fit you better?

I like my online name, I think it suits me just right.

5. Do you think of yourself as a human being or a human doing? do you identify yourself by the things you do?

Wanky question.  Human being.  I identify myself by the things I am.

6. Are you religious/spiritual?

Not any more.

7. Do you care about your ethnicity?

I'm white.  No I don't care about it, I don;t need to care about it, I live in the UK and being white affords me the privilege to not have to care about it.

8.   What musical artists have you felt most connected to over your lifetime? 

Manic Street Preachers and the Wildhearts.

9. Are you artist?

I can do some origami and some crafty stuff.  I can put together costumes, following tutorials, but I don't think that makes me an artist.

10. Do you have a creed?

No

11. Describe your ideal day.

12. Dog person or cat person?

Kitties all the way.

13. inside or outdoors?

Both.  The home comforts of indoors with the freedom to go outdoors whenever I like.

14. Are you a musician?

Hell no.

15.  Five most influential books over your lifetime.

The Discworld series.  All 30 plus of them.

16. If  you’d grown up in a different environment, do you think you’d have turned out the same?

Nope.

17. Would you say your tumblr is a fair representation of the “real you”?

Nope, my tumblr is just comic stuff that makes me happy.  My blog isn't all me either, it's what I choose to write about and put on here, but that's not all I am.

18. What's your patronus?

I found this definition of a patronus: The Patronus Charm is difficult, and many witches and wizards are unable to produce a full, corporeal Patronus, a guardian which generally takes the shape of the animal with whom they share the deepest affinity.

I have no idea what my patronus would be.  Something that likes pretty things but doesn't really exist, I guess.

19. Which Harry Potter house would you be in? or are you a muggle?
Hufflepuff - values hard work, patience, loyalty and fair play.

20. Would you rather be in Middle Earth, Narnia, Hogwarts, or somewhere else?
Of the list, Narnia.  Elsewhere, the Discworld.  I would like a world with narrativium.

21. Do you love easily?
No.

22. List the top five things you spend the most time doing, in order.
Checking for movements.
Thinking about my babies.
Thinking about my partner.
Thinking about my next set of appointments.
Thinking about my physical state.

23. How often would you want to see your family every year?
Discounting my partner and kids, I can happily see family just every few months, with a bit of contact over phone, email or skype between that.

24.  Have you ever felt like you had a “mind-meld” with someone?
Don't be ridiculous.

25. Could you live as a hermit?
With adequate maternity care, yes.  So perhaps I mean no.

26.  How would you describe your gender/sexuality?
Gender - female, but had my life gone a different way I can see how I would have become more masculine identified, but never male identified.
Sexuality - bisexual.

27. Do you feel like your outside appearance is a fair representation of the “real you”?
Well, I'm very visibly pregnant now so I look like a mother, so yeah, I guess?

28. On a scale from 1 to 10, how hard is it for someone to get under your skin?
Very, very easily.  I'm a moody bastard.

29. Three songs that you connect with right now.
I am not connecting with any songs right now.

30. Pick one of your favourite quotes.

"...And that's what your holy men discuss, is it?" [asked Granny Weatherwax.]"Not usually. There is a very interesting debate raging at the moment on the nature of sin. for example." [answered Mightily Oats.]"And what do they think? Against it, are they?""It's not as simple as that. It's not a black and white issue. There are so many shades of gray.""Nope.""Pardon?""There's no grays, only white that's got grubby. I'm surprised you don't know that. And sin, young man, is when you treat people like things. Including yourself. That's what sin is.""It's a lot more complicated than that--""No. It ain't. When people say things are a lot more complicated than that, they means they're getting worried that they won't like the truth. People as things, that's where it starts.""Oh, I'm sure there are worse crimes--""But they starts with thinking about people as things..."--from Carpe Jugulum, by Terry Pratchett.

Ten characters from literature

My old podcast mate, @feemcbee for you twitterers, put up a tumblr post listing ten characters from literature she's in love with.  So I decided to do the same.  I came up with six and then got stumped:

Superman
Black Canary
Green Arrow
Susan Sto Helit
Young Granny Weatherwax
Wonder Woman

I don't know who else I'd put on there.  Granny and Green Arrow are there because I like cocky bastards. Canary, Susan and Wondy I'm in awe of.  And Supes is, well he's Supes.  Who isn't a little in love in with him?  My first thought on seeing this list, was yeesh, I'm so gay.  Except I'm obviously not and then a little while later I thought ooh this could be seen as bi erasure by the self and then I started snoring because conversations like that bore me senseless nowadays.

Fee and I decided that comics totally count as literature.

Who would be on your list?

A few pages from Carpe Juggulum

A little trip to Lille

I went to Lille with work a few weeks ago and I took photos.

Lille is a strange little city. It's grey and concrete and a little bit grotty, but nonetheless has a certain charm to it that makes me rather quite like it.  I didn't get to see much of it because I was there at a work conference.  We stayed int he world's shittest hotel - it smelt of smoke, it was noisy, the temperature control was just bizzare and the sliding door to the bathroom broke so I had to really struggle with pushing it open and closed.  The shower was a tray with a curtain and at the end of each shower the floor was sodden with pools of water.  When I arrived I found this delightful towel on the bed:

It doesn't make up for the shitty hotel.  We went out to a cafe for the breakfast each morning - croissants and coffee - which was alright.  The second morning I got some street harassment - it was 7.30 am and a bloke in his 20s/30s starts walking beside me and asking me questions.  Fuck off.  I thought he was going to follow us into the cafe at one point, but thankfully he didn't.

The conference had some good stuff:

Mmmm delicious French pastries.

Artisan lemonade.  They also had pink and yellow stuff.  It was tasty.

Being so close to Belgium there was good beer:

And food baked in beer:

This was the sweetest stewed beef I had ever tasted.

We also briefly visited the Christmas market before we left:

It sold tat.  Made up gifts that only exist to fill the consumerist clamouring in our capitalist souls.  I didn't buy anything.

There was this ferris wheel.  If you look closely you can see that the cars are painte dliek Christmas puddings:

I read Raising Steam while I was there.  This page reminded me that the romantic relationships I want in fiction are those where the couple has been together several years and are comfortable with each other and still deeply in love, but also have lives outside of the relationship:

In summary, if you can visit Lille, do it.  Also read Raising Steam.

A further Merry Christmas to everybody!

I have two more things for you!

- By Mike Maihack.  Visit his site here and buy the comic here.

Was the Hogfather a God?  Why not?  thought Susan  There were sacrifices, after all.  All that sherry and pork pie.  And he made commandments and rewarded the good and he knew what you were doing.  If you believed, nice things happened to you.  Sometimes you found him in a grotto, and sometimes he was up there in the sky...

- The Hogfather, Terry Pratchett.

Stuff that's been swimming around my brain for a while

I have come across tons of cool stuff lately so I'm going to dump them all in this blogpost.   Enjoy.

This video is my friend interpreting Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody into British Sign Language.  If you like, performances, Queen or BSL do yourself a favour and watch this.

Here's a story about the sinking of the USS Indianapolis, which went into the Jaws movie.

Here's a graphic showing the sign language family tree.  It's not entirely up to date, Auslan (Australian  Sign Language isn't on there, for example) but it's a good start and probably useful for folk who don't know much about how sign languages develop.

Sci-fi women rock:

 

I'll end with a few turtle themed pictures:

Discworld Watch and Witches and Death and a few others

'Tis (some of) the Discworld characters.  From left to right, the top row is:

Sir Terry Pratchett (erstwhiel clever author) , Death, Susan (daughter of Death), Lord Havelock Vetinari (Patrician and tyrannical ruler of Ankh-Morpork), the Luggage and Rincewind (a wizard), the Librarian (an Orangutan), Moist Von Lipwig (Postmaster of the Post office), and One of the posties who I can't remember the name of, because I've only read Going Postal once.

From left to right, the bottom row is:Granny Weatherwax (a crotchety old Witch-supreme), Nanny Ogg (a boozing, crude lovable Witch –nearly-supreme) and Greebo (a vicious wolf baiting cat), Magrat Garlick (a hippy Witch), Sir Samuel Vimes  (Commander of the City Watch, Duke of Ank-Morpork and Blackboard Monitor), Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson (6 ft 6 dwarf-by-adoption, Watchman, not-so-secret heir to the throne of Ank-Morpork),  Angua (werewolf, Watchwoman), Fred Colon (fat, bit stupid, Sergeant of the City Watch), Nooby Nobbs (Corporal of the City Watch, has a certificate to prove he’s a member of the human race).

I'm not sure where I found this piece of art but I loves it.

On Stories

Glamour magazine recently did an article on 'The weird sex things he secretly wants to try'.  Number 6 was female superhero sex*.  The text reads:

'Our female superhero crush isn't only about the fact they are drawn with proportions so pneumatic they make Barbie look like a Dickensian waif.  They project power and confidence, yet they are always troubled.  Sometimes they need rescuing, if only from their personal demons, and we're just the sensitive he-men who could do it.
The great thing is, any real-life woman can be a superhero - just be strong and confident, and let us know you need what only a man like us can give'.

Emphasis mine.

First off, let's get John Stewart's views on this:

Secondly, that isn't a description of any superheroine I know of.

What is really bizzare about the text is that it's turning the costumed woman into a doll, existing only for the male lover.  In the view expressed, the woman has no autonomy, that's all taken away to make all her actions, desires and characteristics about the man.  She needs to be rescued by her great manly lover!  He can soothe all ills and pains!!

This is a good example of how even women's magazines, supposedly writing for and about women, still publish stuff explictly from the male gaze point of view.  They could have taken another approach to (or indeed criticised) this point of view, but no.

I realise that it is a fantasy, but fantasies reflect reality.  Glamour talks about feminism and tries to put across some sort of pro womens rights agenda, yet they also include articles like this.  Reading it I can't help but recall all those examples of bad anatomy, all Greg Land's pornface art and all those times when women's fierceness and independence is destroyed by comics such as Superman/Batman 72 (more Lois from that issue here), or other books where women's roles are relegated to the sidekick, or downgraded to being the love interest.

----------------------------------------------------------------

I recently read Going Under by Justina Robson.  This is the third book in the Lila Black series.  Lila is a cyborg on an earth where ther Quantum Bomb of 2015 brought the human, elf, demon and faery planes into co-existence.
On page 116 of the first paperback edition the nature of the hero and the heroine is discussed:

(This conversation takes places just after a female demon has died in a dramatic and senseless manner. She demon was young, beautiful and talented and so has been labelled a hero).

(Lila speaks) 'Heroes can't be self-doubters Malachi,' she told him.  'I read it in the book of rules.  That means I can't be a hero.  So at least I'm safe from that one.'
(Malachi speaks) 'That's the spirit!'. 'You could probably be a heroine though' he added. 'You're in love, you're racked with self-questioning, you're at the mercy of society's higher forces and you're riddles with a form of consumption.  That's quite gothic'.

Why are the two definitions so different?
I'm fairly certain the description of the heroine is meant to be tongue in cheek, whilst still being a valid comment on Lila.  Nevertheless, that idea of the weakened heroine is taken from a lot of literature, so why have female protagonists in literature been given this damaged role?

Given Lila's personailty and abilities you could add super to the front of heroine and still be making an accurate observation.  By this book, Lila's machinery is melding with her fleshy bits and she can produce guns and other weapons out of her arms just by thinking about them.  A bit like Guy Gardner as the Warrior.  Lila may question herself and the motivations of those around her, but she's not a passive person drowning in her own worries.  She gets on with things.  She does what needs to be done.  She's pro active.  She may not like what she's become but she does know who she is.  She's a pretty darn good fun character actually**.

-------------------------------------------------

Witches Abroad by Terry Pratchett.
Withces Abroad is a Discworld story about stories.  On the Discworld there is an element called narrativium.  It ensures that stories happen according to basic fictional tropes, such as wheels that roll out of fires and gently come to a stop, or third princes embarking on and succeeding on a quest where their elder brothers have all failed.  Page 8 of the 1997 paperback edition says this:

'Because stories are important.
People think that stories are shaped by people.  In fact, it is the other way around.
Stories exist independently of their players.   If you know that, the knowledge is power.'

One of the main themes of the book is how you shouldn't treat people as if they are characters in a story.  You can't make happy endings for people.  It's immoral to attempt to do so.

The flip side of this is that as the text says, stories are important, they do have power.  They give us a framework to navigate through life.  They reflect our experiences and value within society, even when they don't feature us.  When we have fiction we don't entirely like or agree with, we create our own stories and narratives to satisfy us.  Any long time comic fan knows how this happens.

This role of stories is why I have included Witches Abroad in this post.  What does it say when Glamour tells us a story where women will always need and depend on men?  Where Going Under tells a story of how heroes are strong and heroines are indecisive?
And what is the significance of books like those in the Discworld series which highlights the existence of these narratives and give us a different kind of female protagonist?



*Yeah, cos that's really weird.  I think Glamour may be jumping on a bandwagon here.
** According to the blurb this book is 'the work of a smart and sexy novelist having smart and sexy fun'.  This description tickles me and so I mention it whenever I mention the book.

Book news! Part 1

Town names streets after the Discworld. Wincanot in Somerset is not only twinned with the Discworld city of Ankh Morpork but has also named two streets after Ankh Morpok streets - Treacle Mine Road and Peach Pie Street.
That, is brilliant. I want to move there.

On a book related matter, The Guardian has done a list called 1000 books you must read before you die. They have a sci fi section, so i got interested. Here's the list and my thoughts on the books:

Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979). Some of the later books were better.
Brian W Aldiss: Non-Stop (1958) Don't know it. Mutated rats sound interesting though.
Isaac Asimov: Foundation (1951) After I tried to read the book with the crazy computer named Hal in I decided I hated Asimov.
Margaret Atwood: The Blind Assassin (2000) Really not keen on The Handmaid's tale, I do not like her writing style. Therefore have been put off reading anything else.
Paul Auster: In the Country of Last Things (1987) Haven't read but it sounds really good. And has a female protagonist. Rock on.
Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory (1984) Read when I was 16 (or thereabouts) and loved it. Skipped to the end early cos I was desperate to find out the plot twist and have never done that again. Would love to re-read.
Iain M Banks: Consider Phlebas (1987) Not interested in his SF stuff, but the boyfriend loves it.
Clive Barker: Weaveworld (1987) Isn't he a horror director?
Nicola Barker: Darkmans (2007) Set in Kent, near where I grew up. Could be worth a go.
Stephen Baxter: The Time Ships (1995) Ugh, sequel to the Time Machine. I hope he writes better than Wells.
Greg Bear: Darwin's Radio (1999) Again, boyfriend loves Bear, I haven't found any interest in him myself though.
Alfred Bester: The Stars My Destination (1956) This an SF masterworks book I think. is on my list of books to read.
Poppy Z Brite: Lost Souls (1992) Vampires and rock and roll. Sounds awful.
Algis Budrys: Rogue Moon (1960) Sounds blah.
Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master and Margarita (1966) I've read this one. The second half was much much more enjoyable than the first story. If you try it, keep at it, don't lose heart too quickly.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton: The Coming Race (1871) Apparently the city of Vril-ya inspired Bovril. Not interested, written too long ago.
Anthony Burgess: A Clockwork Orange (1960) Last time I tried to watch this I was meant to be high but just ended up depressed (not because of the film). I don't think I should bother.
Anthony Burgess: The End of the World News (1982) Not interested, see A Clockwork Orange.
Edgar Rice Burroughs: A Princess of Mars (1912) Burroughs has always tempted me.
William Burroughs: Naked Lunch (1959) Tried to read this. Failed.
Octavia Butler: Kindred (1979) This sounds awesome:
Butler's fourth novel throws African American Dana Franklin back in time to the early 1800s, where she is pitched into the reality of slavery and the individual struggle to survive its horrors. Butler single-handedly brought to the SF genre the concerns of gender politics, racial conflict and slavery.
Samuel Butler: Erewhon (1872) I should have read this at Uni, doing my Utopias and Dystopias module. Victorian, so i reckoned I wouldn't like the style and I picked up Ursula Le Guin instead.
Italo Calvino: The Baron in the Trees (1957) This sounds great. Fantasy about a boy living in a tree and the French Revolution. Great!
Ramsey Campbell: The Influence (1988) Horror. I don't need to read horror, or I shouldn't read it anyway....
Lewis Carroll: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) Read as a child of course. Wouldn't like it now.
Lewis Carroll: Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There (1871) As above, except I don't think I ever read it.
Angela Carter: Nights at the Circus (1984) Now Carter is good. I should read this.
Michael Chabon: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (2000) About comics maybe? Is it worth reading?
Arthur C Clarke: Childhood's End (1953) Maybe I meant Clarke when I commented on Asimov earlier?
GK Chesterton: The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) Hmm. Could be OK, but probably written too long ago for me.
Susanna Clarke: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell (2004) Nowhere near as good as it was hyped to be. I found the experience rather frustrating.
Michael G Coney: Hello Summer, Goodbye (1975) Long summers, long winters, i'd like this. :)
Douglas Coupland: Girlfriend in a Coma (1998) Umm...no. This would be too close to the bone I reckon.
Mark Danielewski: House of Leaves (2000) Started reading, gave up. Not captured at all.
Marie Darrieussecq: Pig Tales (1996) Could be good. Could be explicitly feminist hamemring you over the head with it's ideologies. I've had enough of books like those (hello, 50% of the output of the women's press)
Samuel R Delaney: The Einstein Intersection (1967) Never heard of it.
Philip K Dick: Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) This sucks.
Philip K Dick: The Man in the High Castle (1962) I like alternate universe stuff. This could be good, but Dick is every hit and miss.
Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum (1988) I studied Foucault at Uni. Bloody difficult theory and the poor translation didn't help. I doubt I will pick this up.
Michel Faber: Under the Skin (2000) "can also be read as an allegory of animal rights" That interests me.
John Fowles: The Magus (1966) Never heard of the book or the author.
Neil Gaiman: American Gods (2001) Ahh yes! Awesome, made of win, recommended, you have to buy, etc etc.a His best book.
Alan Garner: Red Shift (1973) I think I've read this. I've read a lot of his other stuff and it is excellent. Recommended.
William Gibson: Neuromancer (1984) Too hyped for me to accept.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman: Herland (1915) Love love love. Everyone should read. Its so..leafy.
William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954) spit hack spit. Hate this. Hate it with a passion. Studied it at school. Fucking rubbish. I remember thinking that I had no interest in it because there was no way I was going to identify with the boys in the book. No way at all.

Parts 2 and 3 to come. I have flicked through them and ma very surprised to see there are no Discworld books in there. And no George R R Martin. I would also add in Sheri S Tepper - the margarets, or Beauty too.

The Discworld

Has anyone read any of these? I'm a massive fan and must have read some of them 15 or 20 times. They are satirical fantasy written by Terry Pratchett, he who has just been awarded a knighthood, and they number 36 books so far.

Anyway I just re-read A Hat Full of Sky, one of the Young Adult ones, and was struck yet again by how good they are. This one deals with themes of loss, finding your roots and yourself and growing up, stepping out to become an adult.

Granny Weatherwax (the most senior and powerful head witch) teaches Tiffany Aching, (our young protagonist) about witching and the difference between right and wrong, and why it's important that witches don't cross that line.

I say teaches, it's more like she points Tiffany in the right direction, because knowledge that you aint gained yourself aint worth a damn. Plus, Tiffany (whose name means Land Under Sea, appropriate because she lives on the Chalk) has already got all the power and knowledge she'll ever have, she's just gotta unlock it for herself and understand it. Now, it in't like most fantasy novels where the withes do big showy glittery magic. Most of Discworld witching is about not using your power and about helping those that acn't help themselves, and something called headology. Like psychology, but considerably less wanky. It occurred to me on this reading that witching on the Discworld is similar to old style nursing, but a damn sight more respected. Course, if you ain't got respect you've got nothing.

Can you tell a large part of my morality and philosophy comes from these books? I used to read avidly as a child, I read everything I could. Then I hit adolescence, got depressed and pretty much quit reading. For 3 or 4 years the only thing I read regularly was the Discworld books. They were very important to me and one of the few things that I could focus on and get when I was in that state. That and music. I read the music papers cover to cover every week and month, but the only stories I could get were the Discworld ones.
As I was starting to come out of my fug, I picked up books again, and now, again, all I do is read. Except lately, it's mostly comics.

Anyway, back to my original point about Mistress Weatherwax. In a Hat Full of Sky she taught Tiffany about witching. In Equal Rites she teaches Eskarina about magic and wizardry.
I think it would be really good to do a comparison of the two books, of Esk and Tiffany and of Granny's teachings. I sure as hell in't gonna do it - I know I'm not, that's too big a topic and too time intensive and I'm too lazy. Plus, I did an essay on one of the other books - Witches Abroad, at Uni, and it wasn't very good. Literary criticism was not my forte. It's possible I'm getting better and relearning the skills, at least I hope so.

But if someone else were to do such a comparison that'd be ace!

5 fictional characters meme

Jumped on from Kalinara at Pretty Fizzy Paradise who gave me the letter O.

5 Characters Meme
1. Comment on this post.
2. I will give you a letter.
3. Think of 5 fictional characters and post their names and your comments on these characters in your LJ (or blog).

Here we go:

1) Oracle
Barbara Gordon. She used to be Batgirl doncha know, until the Joker shot her in the spine, leading to dear old Babs becoming paralysed from the waist down. now she's in a wheelchair. And now she's Oracle, holding information for all the world's superheroes. And in my opinion she's far more interesting as Oracle. I think she's come into her own, I think she's a positive role model for wheelchair users and I think it's fantastic that she can still pretty much take anyone in a fight. She's works out, she's got pretty damn good upper body strength.

When I think of Oracle I think of a panel in Nightwing, drawn by Greg Land, whereby Dick has taken Babs to the circus and they are practicing on the rings, swinging about way up high, recapturing Barbara's feeling of freedom she had when she could walk. It's a really uplifting (no pun intended) panel.

Barbara apparently has photographic recall and a near (if not actual) genius intelligence. Now while I'm happy with the super bright aspect of her, I'm not with the photographic recall bit. It just seems that for someone who is not a meta human, the writers felt they had to stretch it a bit and make her more interesting by giving her a photographic memory, and that's a cop out. I want Barbara to be like an ordinary person, to be like me. And while I'm not a genius, I can work hard, I can understand things, I can test and strengthen my intelligence, but I can never have photographic memory and neither can the majority of people. I don't think she needs this aspect, I think she's capable of doing what she does w/o it.

Also, Babs was a librarian in her day job, and that's just cool. :)

2)Ororo Munroe
Storm from the X Men. I don't read much X-Men, because I can't afford to follow two universes, and DC will always win out on the strength of their characters.
So far as I know, Storm was born in Africa whereby her tribes people treated her as a witch because of her mutant weather capabilities. At some point she came to America and was a master (mistress?) thief, and was picked up by Professor Charles Xavier and taken to the school for gifted children. I believe she led the X-Men for a bit.
In the X-Men movies she had a kick ass costume, in the 80s she had a lame ass punk inspired costume and I'm sure previously had a barely there costume. Using the excuse that she can control the temperature around her body due to her weather abilities, and therefore doesn't need to wear clothes, is not acceptable.
I understand that some people are offended that Ororo, who is black, has blue eyes and white hair. It represents a whited up version of the character, which is doubly offensive when there are so few black characters, who have black features, in the Marvel Universe.
I also recall seeing complaints that when Ororo got married she became a supporting character in her own book. That sucks.

3) Optimash prime
The Mr Potato Head version of Optimus Prime. This isn't cheating.
I didn't watch Transformers as a kid, I couldn't see the big deal about Robots that transformed into cars, or trucks, or stereos. Consequently I couldn't tell you if Optimus Prime is a good guy or a bad guy. Though I do know it's Autobots vs Decepticons. I quite enjoyed the Transformers movie. It's big, it's silly, it's full of plot holes so big you could drop one of the robots in it, but it's fun.
When I learned of the existence of Optimash Prime, I creased up. I think this is a wonderful piece of merchandise and it brightens my day whenever I think of it.
Potatoes in disguise!

4) Offler the crocodile god
From the Discworld. The Discworld has a massive pantheon of Gods, loosely based on our earth ones. I believe that Offler is inspired by an Egyptian deity.
He has a human body and a crocodile head. He talks with a lisp, due to his massive fangs. In theory he's quite keen on smiting the unbelievers, or anyone who disagrees with him, or offends him, but unfortunately he's also rather idle and so doesn't pay much attention to what's happening on the Disc.
Add this to the increasingly secular* nature of inhabitants of the Disc, and you get a God with dwindling power. Honestly, I think he just likes to it on Mount Olympus, eat and drink and play games with humanity using the Chess board style game of the Gods.

*By Secular I mean the denizens of the Disc know that the Gods exist, which is precisely why they don't see the point of worshipping or believing in them. You don't go around believing in chairs or tables do you?

5) Oberon, King of the Fairies.
Specifically, the Oberon that appears in A Midsummer Nights Dream, the only Shakespeare play I really care about.
This Oberon is a proud, selfish jerk. He treats Titania, his wife, abominably. She's taken care of this human child and Oberon wants the kid for himself. So he gets Puck to drug Titania so that she'll fall in love with the first thing she sees when she wakes up from the drug induced slumber.
This turns out to be Bottom, currently sporting an asses head. Titania woos Bottom and they fuck.
Oberon thinks this is hilarious. I think that's a fairly vile thing to do to your wife and should be construed as sexual assault.
However, Oberon isn't all bad, as he has a soft spot for humans. He sees the Demetrius/Helena relationship and gets Puck to lace Demetrius' eyes, except Puck laces Lysander's eyes, and then there's this massive balls up and a complicated love quadrangle between Demetrius-Helena-Lysander-Hermia.
Anyway, when Oberon sees how it's all gone wrong he berates Puck and fixes the situation so everyone loves the correct person. So he can do some good.
Basically, hes' a fairy, and fairies act as fairies act and that isn't according to human morals or requirements. Trust a fairy like you'd trust a cat.