From this point forward, I will treat a drippy kitchen faucet the way I treat a malfunctioning computer keyboard: I will detach it, throw it out and buy a replacement.
This shit is not worth the headache or the mess.
DOLLHOUSE, part 2
StandardMore mostly spoiler-free thoughts.
Apparently, Whedon has been telling people the show “gets good” after the first five or six eps. Sorry, but I don’t think Fox is going to stick around that long, and only the Whedon die-hards will still be watching. They can try to convince their internet buddies to give it another chance, but… no.
Here’s why I think the show is in trouble, talking solely about the concept and the tone:
If the show is about corporate creeps who erase people’s memories and then whore them out to billionaires, then the creeps are evil and the whoring is repulsive. The pleasure of the show comes from seeing Echo resist and strike back. If the show is more action-adventure, as the network has reportedly insisted, then the audience is supposed to be thrilled by the dangers she’s been whored into.
That doesn’t work. It breaks the tone with a nasty undercurrent of ick.
And not only does the lead character not actually have any, she also doesn’t have any agency.
Compare it to a show that I think works, mostly: BURN NOTICE. The hero of that show is a spy who’s been “burned” — fired from his agency, all his assets frozen, no explanation needed or given. He’s stranded in Miami taking on PI and anti-con artist jobs for rent money while trying to find out who burned him and why. In the second season, he’s put a face to the people who destroyed his career, but he is still trying to work out who they are.
The major difference there? Michael in BURN NOTICE has agency. He makes his own decisions, plans, takes action, fights, whatever. Echo in DOLLHOUSE can’t. She can only be what her creepy pimps make her.
The only way to make this show work is to do what they hinted at once or twice–she needs to break her programming, and fast. Maybe that’s what Whedon is hinting at when he talks about the sixth episode.
One of this summer’s big releases is going to be the 3D animated science fiction film BATTLE FOR TERRA. Check out the trailer here.
I know one of the producers from our days on Wordplay, and I can’t express how happy I am to see him doing so well. Plus, the movie looks awesome.
Check it out.
Book three and book two
StandardFirst, a link: We’ve already had Jane Austen meets Dracula. Then we had Jane Austen and Zombies.
Now, finally, to complete the trifecta, we have Pride and Predator, courtesy of, yes, Elton John. (Seen via Bookslut.)
Would you really rather live in a different world than this one?
And now to more/less serious things. This morning I really dug into Man Bites World and did a lot of good work. I finished well, well over my daily quota–far enough over, in fact, that I was thinking I might manage my weekly quota by Friday and could (gasp!) sleep in on Saturday morning.
Then I came home and found my editorial notes on Everyone Love Blue Dog waiting in my inbox.
Which means it’s time to put book three aside and get back to book two, momentum or no. And the notes are very good, too, just what you’d expect. (Side note: I’m told book two will be coming out in May 2010, tentatively)
And unfortunately, they’re just what I was afraid of, too. The biggest note is on the ending. It’s meant to be a tragedy–violent, thrilling, and terrible, in which the protagonist is backed into a situation where he has to fight people he doesn’t want to fight.
Should I change it so he doesn’t fight them? So they don’t die, but instead wake up later with amnesia? Let his partner live to come back in another book? And that minor character? And that one and that one, too?
Too many corpses is the verdict. I don’t know what to think about that. That final fight scene was the scene the whole book was aiming toward. It’s why the protagonist is wrestling with PTSD in book three and is desperate for some kind of redemption.
And these are books about a basically decent guy who’s been drafted into an organization of ruthless killers. Should we expect him to get a little murderer on him sometimes?
At the same time, I understand the concern. The ending is very dark. Very dark. Maybe it’s “I’ll never read anything by this asshole again” dark. I don’t read many books like that, so why did I write one?
Seriously, I read books that are harrowing but basically fun, so why am I talking to my wife about comparisons between the basic brutality of incredibly powerful utterly alien supernatural beings and the sociopaths on third world death squads?
This is something I need to figure out. What makes you pick up a book you would consider “dark.” A book that is harsh and unforgiving to its characters, where they face deadly situations and actually die. When, if ever, do you go looking for that?
Thank you. Also: links
StandardThank you to everyone who commented on the cover art in my previous post. I’m very happy with it. The only decision I have left is whether to make my default LiveJournal icon out of the entire cover, as Anton Strout does, or just a blow-up of the head the way Tim Pratt does. What do you think?
or
?
Your input would be appreciated.
Also, I have been somewhat foolish in that I have not been providing links to the actual book at actual websites where you could actually purchase it if you actually wanted to. So! If you’d like to buy the book, now you can at any of these fine online retailers: Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble online or Mysterious Galaxy.
And now I go back to my regular life. FYI: the boy is off school this whole week, so I expect to fall behind on reading my f-list and not catch up for quite a while.
Enjoy your day!
Well! What have we here?!?!
StandardSo, I surfed over to Amazon.com to look into setting up a (new) associates account for myself, and what should I notice in “Your Recent History” section but cover art! For my book!
Who knew??
Here it is:
::ahem::
I likes it!
Skip this post if you hate Valentines Day
StandardBut first of all, I met today’s goal and made up the words I missed on Wednesday. The book is finally hitting its stride, thank Pikachu. Now, if only I hadn’t put in a bunch of exposition that was basically a repeat of 30 pages before…
I hate exposition.
Also: it’s Love Day. I got up at 4:30 to make Salad Eater the ginger pear scones she requested. I’d mixed the dry ingredients last night and wrapped her gift, too (Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell). No flowers this year. That was an expensive book.
Unfortunately, I left to write today’s pages before she woke up, so her Love Day gifts were sitting on the table waiting for her. It would have been nicer if I was there, but it didn’t happen.
Time to collect my library books and go home.
“Something fell on my leg.”
StandardDOLLHOUSE. I watched it. It wasn’t what you’d call fun or exciting, but it was a show that lasted an hour on Friday night.
While I’m sure that it seems like a great concept to the actors and writers–new roles to play every week! Acting chops on display! Write in a new genre every script! Hooray for variety!
But isn’t the point of a TV series to give the audience a lead character they will know and identify with? Because they don’t have that here. They just have this vacuous, child-like nothing.
One thing I did like about the show was the parallels they drew between the pretend character’s pretend memories of abuse and the actual character’s actual abuse–she even lies down in a sealed box just the way the little girl is sealed in that refrigerator.
But yeah. Kinda dull.
Something disturbing I just realized
StandardAnnoying WordPress has a word counter at the bottom of this “Add New Post” window, telling me how long my posts are. First, sorry for being long-winded.
Second, that previous political post was over 500 words long, and I wrote it in about 20 minutes here at my desk.
Why is that disturbing? Because on days that I work my day job, my daily writing goal is a measly 500 words. I have about an hour, hour and fifteen minutes to hit that goal.
And sometimes I don’t make it. Cripes, it’s not the typing that’s hard, it’s focus and knowing what comes next in the story. If I could manage that, I’d be way, way more productive.
I need to come to my work more prepared.
It’s been a while since I talked about politics here
StandardI never even commented on Daschele’s withdrawal from the health care reform fight, even though the scandals he was facing seemed fairly minor and his loss hurt our chances of seeing decent health care reform in this country.
But I do want to post about two things, quickly. First, I hope everyone takes a couple minutes to read this op-ed in the Washington Post. It’s co-written by Nouriel Roubini, one of the few economists in recent years who publicly warned of the financial crash that hit us months ago.
He’s calling for the government to nationalize the banks put failing banks into receivorship. It’s worked in the past, and if the government acquires and then sells troubled assets after they aren’t so troubled any more, it would not be such a financial hardship on the tax payers.
It would also free up credit for businesses who are struggling to replace capital and reduce the size of institutions that are “too big to fail.” We really shouldn’t have those any more, and a little breathing space to let us regulate those would be welcome.
Check it out.
Next, I have leap frog over the Republican refusal to join Obama and the Dems on the stimulus package, bipartisanship, GOP discipline (message- and otherwise) enforced by hardcore conservative interests willing to put up ambitious conservative politicians in the upcoming primaries and talk about Betsy McCaughey.
In 1994, McCaughey was part of the political hit job against the Clinton health care reform plan. She wrote an article in which she said she read the whole thing and gave her thoughts–and stated that the plan would allow the federal government to block you from seeing a doctor of your choice.
This was reported widely by Republican opponents and in the press, and helped fuel public opposition to the bill. Nevermind that it was an outright lie. Clinton’s plan stated exactly the opposite. Explicitly.
Now she’s back, claiming that the stimulus bill has secret provisions that allow the federal government to decide what treatments you can get.
It’s all BS, but it’s all over Fox News, Rush Limbaugh and the other usual suspects. See here for a small link farm (really more of a pea patch) of bloggers pointing out the outright deceptions in her remarks.
How does that rate a comment when the whole stimulus bill fight didn’t? Her lies this time around are an attempt to stifle means testing for medical treatment. What works? What doesn’t? What works best? What’s uselessly expensive? See, McCaughey is on the board of a medical device company, and works for a think tank funded by the pharmaceutical industry. She knows that one in five dollars in this country is spent on health care, and that a frightening percentage of that money is wasted on unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.
Very profitable unnecessary treatments and name-brand drugs.
It sounds crazy to say it, but some people think that gathering data on what treatments work best–saving lives–and which don’t is controversial. They’re afraid that letting Americans see the numbers will cut into their profits. And they’re right.
Watch out.
In happier news, I met my daily goal again today. I have a book to give my wife for VDay, and when I leave to write in the morning, I plan to have it waiting on the table for her along with a nice, fresh scone.
Cya.