jheti, posts by tag: shadows - LiveJournal

I can't read this book.

Why not? It's very simple: the Evil One's name?

Is Tharn.

As in, "Tharn goes stiff with shock and falls down dead."

I can't get past it. I just can't. Every time he's mentioned, there goes my canon fodder, CLUNK.

(No, that's not a typo. A presumption, yes, but not a typo.)

Tharn, Tharn, Tharn, CLUNK, CLUNK, KERPLUNK.

Oh. Also, it has grievous tone problems. I can forgive all sorts of stupid plot shenanigans--fantasy continues by them--but not tone problems like these. They're massive. By turns it tries to be a "horrors of war" pastiche, a Homeric wanderer's adventure, and a fucking kung-fu movie (without the kung-fu). It succeeds, kinda sorta sometimes in spots, at the last two. Its rendering of the first is laughable.

And it's got hideous First Novel Name Disease.

What's that? Simple. There are a dozen proper names in the first six pages, and it's just too many. Especially because it's a hodge-podge: some are places, some are people, and some are racial designations of these people, and since they're fantasy!Christians and fantasy!Arabs (with a side-order of fantasy!vaguely!Chinonipponese) those will be important throughout the battle, and, presumably, throughout the book.

Except, I can't care, because there's no way of telling them apart.

I got to page 80. Of 754.

I picked up Aurian next: Mary Sue Saves THE UNIVERSE.

Ah, ah, but I'm reading this for one thing only. I will stop after I get through her turn as a gladiatrix, whenever that comes.

Besides, it's at least swifter than most Mary Sue fiction, fan or otherwise. The thorougly hackneyed, totally undiverting plot is buoyed by its own stupidity: I keep reading with a sort of horrified, gleeful fascination, waiting to see when Aurian will reach up and eat the sun itself, simply because she discovers she has the power to do so.

And it was cool to see a woman with the "male" powers of earth and fire, and not, like "spirit" or "crystal" or "seabreeze" or any of that froofy shit women usually get stuck with.

I have the last book of the trilogy in my possession. Judging by the reviews, I will not miss much by not having the middle volume also.

She's ridiculously overpowered, and I like it. Not enough to recommend it, but again, it's better than other stuff I've read in the same vein, by virtue of its quickness.

Just like it says in the title bar.

I'm trying not to think about it, where it = life, and channeling all my frustrations into the inch between Koteth's fists and Mileena's face.

Koteth isn't my other. I rather suspect Kung Lao is. He's no good, but he's the most religious, and certainly willing to die for an idea(ls), which is as close to a polar opposite as I have.

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...Tiny asides are tiny.

I would just like to say

THAT LEENA IS IMPOSSIBLE

AND SHE IS MAKING THIS intensely difficult for me HARDER THAN IT NEEDS TO BE.

BECAUSE SHE IS DIFFICULT. AND WILLFUL.

AND MAYBE SHE DESERVED IT WHEN HE KILLED HER.

Is all.

I'm just saying.

Okay.

Damn it.

I just need 17,973 more.

I had to go and re-read Shadows. I mean, I remember the main gist of the core plot, and certainly the turn in it I've planned from the beginning, but I couldn't remember who was in the cast besides the Couple and the people I'd made up, and that's not good. XD

I figured out why he did it. I mean, I figured that out a year ago, but now I'm figuring out how to say it.

And, um, well.

I had to reconstruct ppl's birthdays.

So I had to go find this again. Now in prettier, easier to read form.

You can mash their signs up against each other using the relationship charts here.

Oooh, dorky resource. ^_^

Telsor is a METAL OX. That is so cool.

Baraka's chart is Water on both counts (Horse or Rabbit, depending on who we ask), and Leena's is Metal (Rat or Ox, depending on the lifetime).

Koteth is a Fire Rat. Brin is a Metal Rabbit.

Ismar is a Wood Goat. *Hee hee snicker.* XD

Yeah, I'm positive anyone but me totally cares, but uh, there you go.

I have no idea what Kitana is; I'm not doing backwards math to find out, and anyway there is no Harpy in the Chinese zodiac. *Halo polish.*

I was planning--er, I mean, wishing
And oh, how embarrassed I'd've been
If you knew what I was thinking

(I crossed my fingers, but I didn't beg)

That Stone Around My Neck, Portion the Third:

minus approximately 10,200 words.

Interested parties may wish to go and poke the musefoo. It's in the sidebar on the left.

I figured desperate guys never had a chance with you

She loves it. They all know it's about the Diaspora, it has been since they first heard it, but it's her fucking favorite.

And we KNOW
Queen Mary Todd has sent her army
AND I CAN BE THE HERO THAT YOU NEED ME TO BE!

...You do what you want to do
I cannot tell you how to feel

If I can just get past her turn as Lady Macbeth (and she's stalling, somewhat understandably), they're going to hurt her, and it's going to be awesome.

For us, anyway. The audience might have less fun with it.

I find I can get behind heretical ideas
And make them real

The grievous deeds of the Floridian forces? *Smirk.*

ETA: 1,348 and this is the definitive version of How That Scene Happens, so I CAN STOP WRITING IT.

It let me go.

I'd cry, but that's the prerogative of children and laureates.

The best G Major Open Door song is Weight of the World.

This keying process destroys my favorite song on the album, but Weight was a very so-so song that turns gorgeous from the capo-up.

I'm now in that restless state of a psychological "itching"--I don't know what else to call the crawling sensation that's in my fingers and scalp and the back of my shoulders--that part where More is trying to be had, but the scene is finished, and there is no more, and you want more and the more wants to come, but won't or can't. It almost hurts.

Infinitely more wonderful than being blocked. It was like they were dead.

I was getting ready to write them funerals, or mourning, or something, just for myself in one of my paper books, because I thought they were gone and never coming back.

You know I'm serious. I'm too literal minded to be other than serious, much of the time.

Homework, now.

Koteth is Samwise if Samwise was the town whore.

The boozy, backstabbing, usually non compos mentis gender-conflicted horndog ARSONIST town whore.

With swords. Yeah.

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I got the big breaks and the bass, one, two, check!
Rough to the core, come and get a taste of the mixture

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Nine hundred and four words. Newish. Roughly as follows:

EVERYONE: Omg what the hell did you do to Baraka? HOR.

LEENA: Help me or get out of my way. Now is not Sermon Time kthx...Hey, you know, Aliira is in fact a whore, I was just doing my job and that means he owes me money? Can we pls to sort that out ten minutes afterward and just be realists right now? Or is that inconvenient for you?

Also, I've read enough on lucid dreaming to realize two things: it will not stop the signal, which was the whole purpose of trying to learn how, and it's too much work to boot.

Though there was a sentence that amused me--something about how our natural, inviolate core morals will show up in our dreams, that what we can't make ourselves do something we actually believe by daylight is wrong.

If that's at all true, I must be an amoral sod.

And apparently dreams are deeply personal things that shouldn't be shared with the entire Internet.

Cheaper than therapy. Also less destructive when they bail on you.