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Sep. 23rd, 2004 09:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
giddygeekI saw Sky Captain this weekend and enjoyed it in much the same way that I enjoy Talliswood. Terribly amused to see a Sky Captain slash community already, although as soon as I heard the first 'good boy, Dex!' I knew one was coming. I didn't really see slash in the movie, though. Was I just blinded by my mad desire to have a giant killer robot with tentacle arms?
Oh, the gen-ness of Sky Captain reminds me--I saw that post people were linking to, about newbie mistakes? It made me laugh, and realize how much of a newbie I still am eight years after I started reading fanfic. But three, maybe four years ago was my most newbie moment of them all--I had joined one of the gen/smarm Sentinel lists because it was the first one I saw on Yahoo. I was a total slash newbie, I didn't even really know why it was called slash, and the smarm read so much like the slash that I asked on list what the difference was.
Yeah. There are probably still emails coming in to my Sentinel-fic address, explaining what. Exactly. And. Precisely. The Differences Are. Thank-you-very-much-GET-OFF-OUR-LIST-SLASHER!11!!
Most overreacty fandom ever, man.
Anyway, this weekend, I also read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I picked it up on Thursday and it took me until Sunday to get past 300 pages, despite spending quite a few hours with it, because I just could not get into it.
My main complaint was with the characters--Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange in particular. Until the very end, they were almost completely unsympathetic. Not that they were villainous; that would at least have given them a hint of personality. They were just cardboard cut-outs.
A few of the 'minor' characters were more interesting--Mr Norrell's servant Childermass, for example, and Stephen Black, the servant of Mr Norrell's friend Walter Pole. Black is the real hero of the story, so far as I can tell. His story was fascinating to me.
Most of the writing was dry and academic in a way that totally did not suit the story that was being told. The magic described was absolutely fabulous, however. And the stories Susanna Clarke told in the footnotes were often beautiful and eerie--they were worth the price of the book.
I got the impression that the author much preferred the fairy tales she was telling in the footnotes to her own story, like she knew that the universe was much more interesting than most of her characters. I'm going to look up her short stories, I think. They're probably a lot more satisfying than this book was.
Now, I'm going back to my regularly scheduled internal countdown to my next payday, when there shall be the purchase of Due South DVDs. Thank God they're finally out, man, I've worn my tapes to a very pathetic, near shredded state.
Oh, the gen-ness of Sky Captain reminds me--I saw that post people were linking to, about newbie mistakes? It made me laugh, and realize how much of a newbie I still am eight years after I started reading fanfic. But three, maybe four years ago was my most newbie moment of them all--I had joined one of the gen/smarm Sentinel lists because it was the first one I saw on Yahoo. I was a total slash newbie, I didn't even really know why it was called slash, and the smarm read so much like the slash that I asked on list what the difference was.
Yeah. There are probably still emails coming in to my Sentinel-fic address, explaining what. Exactly. And. Precisely. The Differences Are. Thank-you-very-much-GET-OFF-OUR-LIST-SLASHER!11!!
Most overreacty fandom ever, man.
Anyway, this weekend, I also read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell. I picked it up on Thursday and it took me until Sunday to get past 300 pages, despite spending quite a few hours with it, because I just could not get into it.
My main complaint was with the characters--Mr Norrell and Jonathan Strange in particular. Until the very end, they were almost completely unsympathetic. Not that they were villainous; that would at least have given them a hint of personality. They were just cardboard cut-outs.
A few of the 'minor' characters were more interesting--Mr Norrell's servant Childermass, for example, and Stephen Black, the servant of Mr Norrell's friend Walter Pole. Black is the real hero of the story, so far as I can tell. His story was fascinating to me.
Most of the writing was dry and academic in a way that totally did not suit the story that was being told. The magic described was absolutely fabulous, however. And the stories Susanna Clarke told in the footnotes were often beautiful and eerie--they were worth the price of the book.
I got the impression that the author much preferred the fairy tales she was telling in the footnotes to her own story, like she knew that the universe was much more interesting than most of her characters. I'm going to look up her short stories, I think. They're probably a lot more satisfying than this book was.
Now, I'm going back to my regularly scheduled internal countdown to my next payday, when there shall be the purchase of Due South DVDs. Thank God they're finally out, man, I've worn my tapes to a very pathetic, near shredded state.
