It is hardly a new thing for members of another gender to sing gender charged songs. Tori Amos did it quite a bit with one of her albums, and listening to her rendition of ’97 Bonnie and Clyde is creepy. But I have to wonder, why not bend the lyrics? I mean, I can see the “you are covering a song, dip-weed, you don’t change it,” but both in the case of Tori and of Jonathan, it feels like they are trying to bring the other genders take and feel to the song. So why not a song about the mother killing the father, and why not a song from a guy who was cheated on and dumped? And this isn’t me trying to be all hetro-normative either. I’d be fine if the singers were going for non hetro-normative takes, but at least in these two cases (and likely in others), it just doesn’t seem like what they were doing. Iunno, thoughts?

As I recall from my limited political science, patriotism as we know it is pretty new and came about with the concept of “nations” instead of countries. With the nation, you don’t just happen to live in an area and speak a language and share a religion. Nor do you happen to do this with an indiscriminately large number of people, in addition to being ruled by some sort of common body or person. No, you actually acknowledge this and embrace it, making it part of your identity. This, of course, leads to nations that are larger and smaller than their host countries. Larger, in the form of empire and religion, smaller in the form of special-interest-type groups.

And, of course, since you actively identify with these groups, you have pride in them, because they are part of you. But, I think we all have heard that famous bible quote: “Pride goeth before the fall.” What does nationalism and patriotism do?

Well, first the good. It does help bind a people together. Witness the USA post 9/11. Because of nationalism and patriotism, we swarmed to our collect wounds in NYC and DC and that field in PA. We comforted and consoled, and did what we could to get through the devastation. We then deployed our might against those responsible.

Of course, the bad. Riding that same “we’re number one” attitude, we are then duped into attacking another nation that, while annoying and not exactly led by a nice person, was not directly causing us, or even our interests, harm. I remember watching the live footage of Baghdad in the first ours of Shock and Awe, and wondering what the Hell we were thinking.

And let us not forget some of the other outcomes of severe patriotism. The unilateral attack by the “American” public on anyone even remotely resembling a Muslim. The paranoia that still grips us when we fly or attend major events. The polarization between “parties”, another wonderful invention of our era, of doves and hawks. Patriotism, my friends, is the fuel that burns ideological wars. I find it ironic, in fact, that we always teach our children good sportsmanship, and yet we cannot accept that maybe another country does something better than us, and when they do, we marginalize the thing, such as soccer (but my god, swimming! Now that is important.)

So, how do I celebrate the most patriotic day? In what I think is the right way, and with a mood of reflection. I do not, as it happens, think I live in the greatest country on Earth. I do think that I live in an awesome country though, and I am duly appreciative of that fact. And, for the record, I do not think there is such a thing as “the greatest country on Earth.” Or, perhaps, it just doesn’t exist yet. Because if it did exist, it would have to be the only country on Earth. And yeah, we are a ways off from that.

I read a quote earlier today that went something along the lines of “the next major step in societal evolution will not happen until war is abolished.” Well, I take it a step further: war will not be abolished until patriotism is dead. You can have pride and respect for your country, but this blind idolatry is just that.

Now you may lynch me.

No, that can’t be it. But there is a certain human hatred of change, I think. Even the young, most flexible people that embrace change hate it. See, they embrace and love it, but only in certain fields. And there, they love it because it isn’t really change. It is still something they are in control of, after a fashion, or perhaps at least something they understand. Kind of like surfing, I’d imagine. The surfer doesn’t control the wave, but they can still ride it because they kind of know what it will do. The same goes with change.

And even old people like change, or at least embrace it after a fashion. Perhaps it isn’t as outward, but it seems the more crotchety and old a person gets, the more they look inward for the change to embrace. Their bodies, which have honestly been fairly stagnant for a while, are changing again, so that is what they have to embrace. And perhaps we are all like that. It isn’t that we hate change any more or less, we just change which change it is we are changing with. (Phew!)

And me? I guess I am starting to drift away from feeling like keeping up with computer tech and focusing more on publishing and writing, which I guess is a good thing, ‘cept my newfound change-love isn’t paying ye olde bills yet (although I am getting paid for some writing now, so that is a plus). So meh, change. But what happens when my old love and new love meet? What else? A big cluster of pain. Thus why I am writing this. I have a Firefly post to put into Tor as I read this, but Tor upgraded to a new system for putting blogs in, and I don’t want to deal with it. So I am putting it off and whining. Go me. Oh well, back to actually doing work.

Now, tell me, is there any way that even the most inobservant of people who are at least looking at you would miss the sheer forced nature and utter facetiousness of that smile? Is there any way that there is anyone that doesn’t know that you aren’t smiling on the inside? Well, maybe if you are a clown and a kid is looking at you. After all, we all know clowns don’t smile on the inside, but only after we become adults.

So, why do I bring this up? Well, I have started to wonder at how this has become an accepted writing tool. There are typically two types of people that typically have smiled that don’t touch their eyes. One is catty people, the other is complete manipulators.

The catty people I don’t mind. After all, these are people who are trying to pretend but fail miserably at it. They wear their emotions on their sleeves and stab backs before said backs are even turned. For them to have that funny looking smile you just saw in the mirror, no problem from me at all.

But manipulators, really? Not only is this person’s fake smile supposed to be a sign of their ingenious and masterful ability to hide their true motives, the observation of said smile is supposed to speak to the ability of the observer to see past the manipulator’s game. Gah!

A real manipulator would know how to actually squint a little when they smile to make said smile look genuine. A real manipulator would force a smile in a time where said smile would be suspicious, even if it does touch the eyes. I guess it just gets back to my usual gripe that manipulators are always “evil” and must have their disguises casually ripped off by the morally upright and usually “stupid” hero. I won’t even get into my normal diatribe on the anti-intellectualism that is prevalent in novels, nor the irony that the writers of said novels are usually very intelligent people.

And, I think this is one reason I enjoyed A Game of Thrones better this time through reading it. The heroes, the Starks, actually really annoyed me for the most part, while the villains, the Lannisters, had me rooting for them. Why? Because the Lannisters were practical. There was a line in there, near the end, that I loved. One of the Starks, the older daughter who thinks life is a fairytale, realized that it isn’t, and thinks to herself “In real life, the monsters win.”  Well, maybe monsters is a little harsh of a word, but yes, the people who are willing to play the game win. What is wrong with that, honestly?

Caveat: The Fife in no way endorses complete and total Machiavellian means. He says this with a smile that touches his eyes. Honest.

See, The Long Price Quartet (as the series this book starts is called) exists in a world where some people communicate using both words and accompanying poses. Alright, interesting concept, especially when dealing with such people and others who are not as adept at the poses so miss nuances, if not complete understanding. But, here is the hitch: presentation. I cannot think of any way to actually do these “languages of fans” to an excessive degree without making them trite and slightly annoying.

See, all the descriptive texts for the conversations—those little beats between the actual dialogue—were eaten by the poses. He says something, then takes a pose that is kind of “duh”, like he asks a question and takes a pose of query. There might be a little more detail than just “of query”, but like “a pose of query that implied a formal frankness”, but all of this was usually present in the dialogue. In the events where there was only a pose and no dialogue, it felt like poor attempt at making the characters more eloquent than the writer felt himself capable of.

Another instance of this in writing, one where I am actually pulling the title of the post from, and that is the Wheel of Time. One of the nations in that book series has an entire language of fans (which I want to think is drawn from a real nation somewhere that did the same thing), where you could non-verbally communicate. In The Wheel of Time, Faile, the character that uses the language, only does so on rare instance due to the fact that almost no one else in the series knows it, and the one person who does know some is her husband, who she has been teaching it to. There, it makes sense as a means of subterfuge. But if it was all over the place, well, I’d probably be annoyed by it too.

The related problem, of course, is how to relate massive use of such a thing, especially when it is required to understand the dialogue, on a movie screen. Yeah, baseball movies have the call-sign things between coaches and players, but all you need to know there is that communication happened, not what it was. Imagine, though, having to work in some explanation for poses or fan-motions so that the audience could have a chance at knowing what is being said, and then having to expect them to remember more than one or two meanings. Gah!

So yeah, Language of Fans is right there on my “cool yet bad idea” list. Can anyone think of a counter-example? I’m hard pressed.

Well, I’ll start with the good things. The movie actually had pretty decent acting, from the two brothers who were betrayed and react differently, to the prince who was framed, to the Priestess-Princess that has her own motives and designs and isn’t just there to be a love interest.

There is also, honestly, a pretty strong plot. Granted, I pretty well every twist as it was foreshadowed, from who the real villain was to what the Prince would have to do to save the day. I even called the heart-wrenching extremes he was pushed to. I also do not feel that the time-travel thing at the end cheapened the story at all. So yeah, plot was perhaps a hair generic, but it delivered one at least being structured and whole.

The first thing that hurt the movie, I think, was the thinly veiled modern commentary, from the invasion of a country looking for weapons that aren’t there to an amoral businessman who is just dodging taxes and takes up a fairly large part of the screen time for his character’s actual worth.

Some of the dialogue betrayed the modern call-forwards much like watching an old episode of Hercules or Xena, and much of the dialogue was extremely contemporary. Which, honestly, was very jarring since the characters were not tongue-in-cheek contemporary themselves. Imagine King Leonidas complaining about work unions or a Fair Tax. Yeah.

But, I think the number one thing that hurts this movie is how pretty it is. Now, I love pretty things. I’m attracted to them like a moth to flame, which is probably why I watched The Golden Compass, Avatar, Clash of the Titans, and Prince of Persia. Yet, all of these have a similar failing, and that is far too strong of a desire to show of what they can do on the big screen with special effects and computer graphics, and not enough of a feeling for telling a story. Several times in this movie, I felt like I was watching someone playing a videogame, either for in-game play or watching cinematics for the game. And that, my friends, is what I feel hurt this movie the most because it was the most jarring.

But, what to do? I mean, this movie is, much like any SpecFic movie, about the world as much as it is about the characters.  We need to feel the epic nature and grand vistas, but is it really worth the amount of screen time that is given to sweeping panoramics of cities or deserts or ruins? After all, aren’t we supposed to be marveling at the beauty of what they can do on the big screen?

Well, here’s an idea for you. If you want to see those kinds of video-game style graphics, play a video game. The movie screen shouldn’t be about showing off the budget they had for special effects. It should be about producing the highest of quality story in two to three hours that a TV show just couldn’t handle on the scope. You want amazing special effects, make them invisible. The audience should not be aware that they are there. I’m not saying you aren’t allowed to have giant sandstorms, towering cities, or over-large scorpions, but don’t dedicate 10 minutes to a fight that features these things.

I want story. I want to see how the characters of this world are reacting to it, not how the world simply is. Show, don’t tell, they say, and that doesn’t mean let me see it on the screen. That isn’t showing. Figure it out, Hollywood. Please. And leave the vapid eyecandy where it belongs, as the backgrounds for fancy video-games (which I will gladly play).

I know that sounds cheesy, but oh well, I’m in a cheddar mood. And, in particular, a mood to wonder at the oddness of love in a world of science. Love cannot be tested. The very concept of testing love breaks it. To try and force someone to prove love hurts them, and anyone who has ever had an “if you love me you’ll . . .” thrown at them knows this. And to anyone who doubts love, here is a simple concept: if you doubt it, it isn’t missing in the other person, per se, it is missing in you.

And right there is where love and faith come together. You can know when you are in love, but you have to take it on faith the other person is. You have to take it on faith that the other person won’t hurt you or betray you. And, if you know that you cannot trust that person, well, you might not be able to control your love for them, to turn it off like a switch, but you can at least have the presence of self to take yourself out of the situation. If there is one thing I doubt, it is that anyone who knows your feelings and does not return them will ever properly return them. To think otherwise is a romantic comedy, and those are just works of fiction.

Or perhaps I’m being emo. But meh, everyone has the right occasionally.

About a year ago, I had the honor of getting to meet Tom Doherty, the publisher and top dog of Tor books. In the course of the conversation, I asked him if he had any insight or idea of where the genres were headed, and he replied with an odd answer. He said that books like Twilight by Stephanie Meyers are good. Not per se good on their own, but good because they are brining a different audience into genre. It really made me realize that this man could see the silver lining to any genre cloud, and not just one with dollar signs. Although dollar signs might be involved, and I don’t fault him for that. He is a businessman too, after all. (yes, this is quite a setup).

Which is why I don’t fault him in this article. (It’s only a few paragraphs, read it, I’ll wait.)  For those who don’t even want to read that much off my site (and who would), his quote of “We are excited to publish Terry Goodkind again. Millions of people delight in the novels of Richard and Kahlan and eagerly await the continuation of their story.”

Yes, that is right, Terry Goodkind, the man who believes he has the power to channel Ayn Rand; the man who doesn’t write fantasy novels, but instead philosophical discussions with fantastical settings; the man whom, whether or did it intentionally or not, ripped of Robert Jordan’s setting and trope-mixture four years later, is getting to write three more books for Tor.

Now, I originally liked The Sword of Truth. Even to this day I think the first five or so novels aren’t bad (although number two had a bit much in the ol’ melodrama.) OK, they all have a good amount of melodrama, but I was a teenager when I read them, so sue me. I ate that stuff up. I had tried The Eye of the World, but it didn’t stick the first time, so I had to settle for Goodkind. I will admit, I somewhat regret that, but it’s past, so whatever.

Anyway, it was around book five that he started to get into the political commentary hard and heavy. Saving grace for book five was I really liked the pseudo-villain, Dolton Campbell, for being a sneaky prick who was burnt by his actions and didn’t whine about it, but instead got even.  But after that, the entire story became an Objectivist parable. The writing style also went downhill because at this point, it is Terry F-ing Goodkind, you don’t need to line-edit him!

So yeah, the series jumped the shark, I said F-it after Naked Empire, and finally got my hands on The Wheel of Time and have been happy since. Now if I could only make myself read G.R.R. Martin, but that is another rant.

But now, Goodkind is coming back. Humorously, I hear that he had signed a three book deal at Putnam, and the first one bombed like hell. (pause) OK, I just went and looked up the summary of The Law of Nines on Amazon. I see why. Callbacks to The Sword of Truth in an urban-fantasy (not that he’d call it that, I’m sure). No word, as far as I know, of what happened to his other two promised books with Putnam. I wonder if they just dissolved it after the bomb. Good money after bad and all that.

But, long and the short is, Goodkind is back at Tor, and a small part of me died a little.

In other news, I noticed Terry Goodkind has signed a three-book deal with Tor for more Sword of Truth type novels. That breaks my heart. I’ll explain why in another post.

Oh, also, my latest Firefly rewatch is up too: “Our Mrs. Reynolds”