When fandoms turn ugly.

Remember Game of Thrones? You probably watched it, right? You probably thought it was pretty good, too. You might not have liked the final season much (I have some things to say on this point in a minute which you might not like). You might even have read the books and liked them as well. But what you’ve probably not done is decided Game of Thrones is your hill to die on and that anything else in popular culture just doesn’t compare.

I’ve been unfortunate enough to be directly exposed to people that have, like a mad inbred Targaryen, simply gone off at the deep end. And no, it doesn’t just happen with Games of Thrones obviously. Star Wars is another high-profile fandom that is generally unpleasant. But the interactions I observed were with Game of Thrones ‘fans’. More particularly, mega fans of specifically the Mother of Dragons herself.

It was a bit of friendly competition in the shape of Twitter polls. Characters across popular culture with a focus on science fiction and fantasy pitted against each other to see who is the favourite. It was pointless and silly, but people I happen to follow were voting for their favourite characters, so it kept popping up in my timeline. And you wouldn’t believe the obsession some people have with a made up character winning a random Twitter poll. And the utter vitriol they would spit at the character they were up against, and that character’s fans.

The worst of all of these, for want of a better phrase, ridiculous fools, were the ones going to bat for Dany T. Not least because they were utterly misunderstanding her character as they declared her best because she be freeing slaves everywhere (remember though, no actual slaves were freed, because it's all made up). One competitor was Dana Scully, who is, quite frankly a million times better as a character, and a character that has in fact had a real-world impact – the popularity of The X-Files led to a significant increase in the number of women choosing career paths in STEM and medical sciences (called ‘The Scully Effect’). It’s one of the best things about art, this ability it has to change the course of a life for the better, and this little 5 minute video of women, including the incomparable Gillian Anderson, discussing it is a lovely thing.

Anyway, I’m not here to wax lyrical about Gillian Anderson and The X-Files (although, frankly I could for hours), I’m here to tell you about my exposure to an unpleasant fandom. Dany won that poll, beating out the OG himself, Gandalf the Grey in the final. There were calls of foul play, accusations of votes being bought (I really hope that wasn’t the case, because my already non-existent respect for these idiots would reach hitherto unknown levels of non-existence, if such a thing were possible, if they actually paid for votes. Anti-existence?). It’s one thing to be a nerd, or to geek out over some piece of media you’re obsessed over (for example, I’m currently in the throws of a fairly hardcore addiction to Babymetal), but it’s quite another to spit abuse at anyone that leans towards a different one. Especially when, in the case of the Daenerys-obsessives, the reasons you claim to love your character only shows everyone else you don’t actually understand her at all.

So. To the controversial hot take (and yes, while the following may not look like it, I am aware that it is not real, and I basically start to sound like those obsessives I was moaning about earlier, just without the hatred). Game of Thrones had a much-maligned final season. A good deal of the reason for this is Dany’s apparent switch from saviour of Westeros and slave-freeing badass and the one many viewers were rooting for, to mad innocent-murdering mega villain. But, the thing is, that didn’t come out of nowhere. There are clues throughout, not least of which is the fact that the Targaryens had been inbreeding for generations and pretty much every Targaryen’s default setting was either noble strength or deranged psychopathy, and no way to tell which it was going to be until your brother was being cooked alive in King’s Landing while the king looks on, laughing (unlucky Ned).

Starting from a position not of ruling, but of powerlessness, Dany’s Targaryen-ness took a while longer to manifest than usual, and let’s be honest, even without that kind of ancestry, the things she goes through would be enough to make a regular person want to burn down the whole world. Throughout her slave-freeing journey to queen, she demonstrates more than once that she doesn’t know the difference between justice and vengeance (I think a lot of people in the real world have this problem, which might be part of the reason why so many people loved the inbred psycho queen), and the development from inexperienced little sister to basically melting anyone she took a dislike to started back in season one – “The next time you lay a hand on me will be the last time you have hands.” A great line, and her brother was a prize twonk, but even then, more interested in vengeance than justice. Locking Xaro Xhoan Daxos in his own vault, along with her own handmaid. Punishing the slavers by doing to them what they did to others. None of this is justice. All of this is cruel and unusual punishment to enact vengeance. Feeling they deserved it (as most fans surely do) is irrelevant. There’s not much difference between what Dany was doing to her enemies all along and what Aerys the Mad King (Dany’s dad) did to poor Ned Stark’s brother. It’s just we considered Dany’s enemies proper villains until she got to King’s Landing. The end of Dany’s arc should not be a surprise if you’ve been paying attention.

Of course the die-hard fans of Dany argue the final season isn’t canon, that their queen is still the slave-freeing paragon of virtue they want her to be. Well, ok then, let’s consider the books. First off, Game of Thrones declined in quality from about season 5 (about the time it left the books behind), but the Dorne subplot is by far the worst part of any of it, including the final season. The problem is, the seeds for Dany’s final form have been sowed more definitively in the books so far published than they were in the show.

I really think GRRM has a problem on his hands with his final two books. He has stated on record that the show differs from the ending he has in mind for Dany (although it was apparently confirmed that Bran will end up on the throne). The cynic in me is picturing him seeing the reaction to the show and now desperately rewriting the next book to reframe Dany’s story, and not really knowing where to go, because the groundwork was more or less done for it. GRRM created this whole thing though, so I am taking his word on it and telling the cynic in me to shut up. But he's insistent.

When pushed, one of the Daenerys die-hards admitted that although they had been arguing that the books were not setting her up this way, they had only seen the show and read Dany’s chapters in the books and nothing else. So strong was the love for Dany T that they couldn’t even bring themselves to read the other chapters, which of course means they miss most of the story. Yet here they were, mouthing off like they are the expert and insulting anyone daring to question the assumptions they had made based on their incomplete picture. The mind truly boggles.

I could be wrong of course. A Song of Ice and Fire is infamous for taking the well-worn tropes of fantasy and gleefully ripping them to pieces. That’s kind of the whole point of it. Killing off your hero and main protagonist in book one (RIP Ned). Taking Dany’s baby, and the whole prophesised hero trope – ‘the stallion that mounts the world’ – except nope. He’s dead. No prophecy for you. So pretending I know what’s going to happen in the final two books is just silly. Anything could happen. Except, it looks like Bran will end up being king. Which, while also getting a fair bit of flack, is pretty much in keeping with the MO of the series. Who else could it really have been, when looking at how the show ended? Jon Snow? Based on his performance since he was brought back (being basically useless and losing pretty much every fight he’s been in and having to be rescued every single time), he’d be rubbish. Most useful thing he did was finish off Dany. Speaking of, don’t want her on the throne. She is, to put it mildly, an insane psychopath by the end. Tyrion? Yes he’s smart, but he’s made so many bad decisions, I actually think he’d be crap. Most useful thing he did was convince Jon to off queen T (shame his mate Varys and half of King’s Landing had to be cooked alive before he noticed what a literal hot mess she was). Convincing everyone to accept Bran was the last mistake we saw him make.

Because you see, Bran being king means the bad guys (or rather, the enemies of humankind - whether or not that makes them the bad guys largely depends on how you view the world) won. The children of the forest, the ones that first created the white walkers. They’ve installed their puppet, Bran, on the throne. Humankind’s oldest enemies, persecuted almost to extinction, now have the power to do untold damage to their adversaries. Which, I can’t help thinking, is yet another fantasy trope – that the people with inherent goodness and honour win the day in the end – that this series has spent its time demolishing again and again.

I doubt the book series will be finished at this point (although I really hope I'm wrong on that point, because even though much of this post reads like a criticism, A Song of Ice and Fire really is a phenomenal series of books), so I’ll probably never find out what the true canon is, but you never know.

A lasting impression I could do without.

Have you ever read a book or watched a film that you know is extremely good, but you still wish you’d never gone anywhere near it? I’ve done it twice now. The first was when we watched Grave of the Fireflies. Studio Ghibli has a body of work that pretty much nobody can touch for quality, save maybe Pixar. Grave of the Fireflies is a 1988 animated film directed by Isao Takahata which forms part of the Ghibli collection. It brings home the devastating cost of war by focusing on two children in Japan near the end of the second world war, who lose their parents and have to try to survive together in the face of starvation and the antipathy of a population numb to tragedy. Studio Ghibli films are not afraid to focus on hardship, loss and grief, but they are generally optimistic. When I had finished watching, I felt something I’d never felt in reaction to a film before or since; a physical pain. My heart was broken and I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut. The film is incredible; told with the same gift for character and astonishing artistry that is par for the course for Ghibli, but I don’t ever want to see it again and I can’t bring myself to recommend it to anyone. It was like having my heart stomped on by the one person I can usually expect to make it soar. I was in a funk for weeks afterwards, unable to shake the feeling of desperate hopelessness it left in me. Art that can do that is undeniably powerful, but all the same, I’d rather not feel like that.

I recently read Random Acts of Senseless Violence. Written by Jack Womack and published in 1993, it tells the story of Lola, a young teenage girl living in a in a well-to-do area of New York, while the world around her falls apart. When her parents can no longer find work and have to move to a more dangerous area, we follow Lola as she changes from private school girl to ruthless gangster, and it makes for such a depressing read. It’s very well done, but it is so infuriating to see this innocent girl have her life taken from her and her potential lost. Not just Lola, but a society that could’ve been so much more devolve into shadow of itself, beset by riots and greed. It felt the same way reading High Rise felt, this chilling feeling of a society making the decision to let itself topple from the cliff edge, and the sense of everything slowly going to hell, when with just a little more will, it might’ve pulled itself back from the brink. A bit like living in a UK forcing itself to leave the European Union even though it knows full well what the consequences are going to be, or like I would imagine living in the U.S. under President Cockwomble feels like.

This book has stuck with me not just because of that though, but because of something specific, and that’s the death of Lola’s father. No longer able to make ends meet as a screenwriter due to the volatile world the book is set in, he has no choice but to work extremely long hours in a job in which he is constantly under pressure and screamed at and berated for barely enough money to afford the rent on the crappy apartment the family have had to move to. There is a truly haunting scene in which poor Lola finds her father dead having had a heart attack in the middle of the night, and eventually, this is the thing that pushes Lola beyond the point of no return.

I’m not saying that the world in which I live and work is anywhere near as bad as the unfortunate Lola’s. But I am on that borderline between just managing financially and not managing. And I do work overtime. Since reading that book, the only thing on my mind when I get up at 6:15 on a Saturday morning to work overtime to supplement my wages while my family sleeps is that dreadful scene of Lola discovering her father’s body, after he worked and stressed himself to death trying play a rigged game just to keep his family safe and alive (he’d already given up on happy).

If this strikes you as overly melodramatic, well you’d be right. I actually quite enjoy my job. My family are, relatively speaking, safe and happy. While I do always feel like I don’t have enough money to get by, the truth is, we’ve managed it so far, so I expect we’ll be fine. But that’s the effect of well-made art on the psyche. We are going to have to deal with major crises over the coming decades because nobody has got the will to do a damn thing about climate change, but instead of the biggest emergency our species has ever had to deal with dominating the news and the political stage, we’re arguing about whether or not it’s a good idea to rip up the fragile Northern Ireland peace agreement so Lord Snooty (how can you not look at that snivelling weasel Rees-Mogg and think of anyone else?) can keep hold of his unearned, inherited, offshore tax-free millions and withdrawing from the agreement that ended the Cold War (good job America. Well done).

So it feels like, as in Random Acts of Senseless Violence, we are also a society deliberately deciding to step off into the abyss, and that’s why Lola and her father struck such a chord with me; forced to narrow their view and look out only for themselves, and as far as her father goes, eventually die trying.

Still. Chin up, eh?

Dammit, Marvel.

I’m hearing reports from Comic Con about the first bits of footage from the next Avengers movie, Infinity War. Basically, everyone’s wetting themselves and it looks set to be the greatest thing ever. Pretty much everyone I know who’s seen Spider-man: Homecoming loves it. Superheroes generally don’t really do it for me. They’re ok – I dig the first couple of Superman movies, Chris Nolan’s Batman was alright, and I quite like some of the X-Men movies. Watchmen is a straight up genius graphic novel. But there are so many heroes, so many stories that I just get sick of them, and this massive surge of them in recent years is pretty much all Marvel’s fault. It all started with Iron Man. Didn’t really seem like my thing, so I didn’t bother watching it. Then along came a few others – Captain America, Iron Man 2, Thor. Still not really interested. Got roped into seeing Captain America and it was just as blandly uninteresting as I expected.

But, they just kept coming. And they started to (by all accounts – still not seen most of them) improve. But the problem was, Marvel was in the process of creating this connected mega-universe and threading all the narratives around each other. By the time Joss Whedon was announced as writer and director of Avengers Assemble I began to get interested. But it was all too late. There were too many to catch up with. And they kept on coming, and kept on improving. Avengers got raves pretty much everywhere. Was talked in to watching Guardians of the Galaxy, which was just brilliant fun (I figured that while still forming part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), it sat far enough outside it that I could manage). The second Captain America opened to rave reviews indicating it was a thriller about corruption in the powerful along the lines of All the President’s Men. And the orgasmic reviews keep coming; Ant-Man, Dr Strange and Civil War all met with rave reviews. Guardians of the Galaxy 2 was aces.

So what do I do? I’m a little OCD in that if I do join in the MCU, I’ll need to start from the beginning – all the way back to Iron Man. And I still don’t know if I can be arsed. So that’s my quandary. The very definition of a first world problem I know, but still annoying.

Am I missing out?

It is well documented that I’m a bit of a wimp when it comes to being scared. I don’t like horror generally, and sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on some great stuff. Well, let me rephrase. I know I’m missing out on some great stuff, but sometimes I wonder if I should care more about it.

There are some things I give not one shit about – the Saw franchise, for example. It can be as ingenious in its gory traps as it wants, but I’m someone it just isn’t going to be appealing to anytime soon. However, there are some things that perhaps I should make more of an effort to try, despite my fears.

I can get behind horror in a sci-fi setting a little more easily – I love Alien for example, and I might be one of only a few people that looks back on Event Horizon with fondness. I was scared watching those films, but still enjoyed them – in fact watching Alien for the first time all alone on ITV one Saturday night while my parents were out, eyes wide and heart hammering almost out of my chest as Ripley, Jones in hand, raced for the dubious safety of the Nostromo’s escape pod while lights flashed and smoke poured will always be one of my fondest film-related memories. But more standard horror is something I have tended to avoid, and continue to do so. Watching the Japanese language Ring trilogy left me feeling really quite traumatised (I swear I could see Sadako in every fucking shadow for months afterward) and while I can say they are decent films (the first one is genuinely excellent), I have no desire to watch them again anytime soon.

So I guess what it boils down to is that I need to find the good stuff and avoid the crap. Easier said than done when I’ve generally avoided the genre for so long. I think I’ve found two places I might be able to start, though. Being married to a librarian is a truly brilliant thing – I’ve found China Miéville and Anne Leckie, kept up with Brandon Sanderson’s latest releases and picked up classics from H. G. Wells, J. G. Ballard and Kurt Vonnegut. Thanks to Rach, I recently read Weaveworld, a fairly old novel written by Clive Barker – he of Hellraiser fame. Hellraiser and its sequels is probably a prime example of the kind of thing I tend to avoid. Weaveworld is one of those books that just boggles the mind – not only the imagination and the story, but the prose. Barely a page went by in that book that I didn’t find a passage, or a line, or a few words that made me take a breath and just admire the craft of an absolute master of words. The only other two authors I’ve found to be comparable in terms of that gobsmacking use of language are the aforementioned China Miéville and Stephen King. What is striking is that there are many moments of horror in Weaveworld and in Miéville’s work, and I’ve heard tell that King might dabble in horror from time to time as well. I couldn’t tell you for sure because the only books of his I’ve read so far is the Dark Tower series.

There’s got to be something in that, right? The three most gifted authors I’ve read have strong horror threads in much of their writing, with Barker and King famous for specialising in it? I’m clearly more comfortable when my horror is mixed with other genres – the sci-fi of Alien, Weaveworld is fantasy, The Dark Tower is also fantasy, with a large dose of western and Miéville is, frankly, beyond categorisation. Maybe I can use Barker and King to cross over into more straight horror?

Games are the same. I have tried to get through Bioshock a number of times – the premise is wonderful and the game is clearly quality – generally thought of as pretty much the best of the last generation. But when I play it before long I find myself a little too creeped out and I move on to something else. I want to play it. I want to finish it. I want to move on to Bioshock 2 and Bioshock Infinite, but I want to get through Bioshock first.

So maybe that’s where I’ll start. Pick up another Clive Barker or Stephen King book. Finish Bioshock. Maybe then I’ll find the guts to keep going and see what I’ve been missing out on. Maybe.

The city is alive.

I recently had the good fortune to spend a night in London. Living in the Midlands, London is distant enough to me to feel like it may as well be another country. I know it’s down there, and I know as far as most of the world is concerned, it’s the only part of this country that counts. Sometimes I feel like I’m the equivalent of an inbred farmer in the sticks, considering himself almost a different species to these fancy city folk. The sensible part of me knows that cities are full of people not that different to me; the difference being that there are more of them; something you’d think would put me off, but for some reason doesn’t.

We got there by train – first to London Euston, then Underground, then another short train journey into Croydon. The thing that strikes me about London, is the sheer numbers of people, all different and no doubt complex, yet all specks besides the city as a whole, like stars in a galaxy. We got to our platform in the Underground, only to find our train was jam-packed. As I was preparing to force myself into this mass of bodies, my travelling companion, with the benefit of more experience in this, placed a hand on my shoulder and motioned me to wait and let the train go. I then learned that there was another train coming along in a mere 90 seconds. And another 2 minutes after that. On and on, day and night. The number of people constantly moving in, out, through and under the city is mind boggling. The roads are almost never free of buses – usually there are 2 or 3. To use a car to get around London seems ludicrously inefficient.

Endless movement, endless offices, endless new buildings going up, endless restaurants, apartments, banks and hotels, endless people. It adds up to something that while made up of these separate parts, feels somehow beautifully alive in its own right, and I love that about it.

It makes me want to tour cities everywhere, to see how each melting pot of humanity feels, to see if they are different. It’s why I’m drawn to fiction where a city becomes a character in its own right, like Ankh-Morpork in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, or New Crobuzon in China Miéville’s Perdido Street Station.

Cities are alive, and, while certainly bad for the environment, the wealth of positive inspiration I get from them manages to quiet the concerned ecologist in me.

It’s like they knew somehow.

A few of the books I’ve read fairly recently have a few unsettling things in common. First off, not too long ago, I read George Orwell’s 1984. Published in 1949, it tells of a rigidly controlled society where to even think outside the accepted lines is to invite horrifying conditioning until your mind thinks the proper way. The population are told what to think, and the structure of society ensures the population think it, even when it flies in the face of all observable facts. Recorded history changes overnight and yet to call attention to this, to question what those with authority tell you is truth is simply not conceivable. It’s hard not to find echoes of Orwell’s totalitarian vision in the way newspapers will publish blatant untruths again and again because it backs their ideology, driven to recent ludicrous highs in the lead up to the election.

(Loosely related tangent: Russell Brand is a cock; we all know this. There is, however, no denying that the cock has become a bit of a figurehead for the disillusioned non-voting masses. So, appearing on Brand’s web show The Trews as Ed Miliband did, in an effort, however half-arsed, to at least try to engage with these people is surely worthy is it not? It seems not. The official Government line is that Brand, and therefore by extension, the large percentage of the population he is speaking for, is a joke. Way to show contempt for the people whose lives you’re supposed to be working to improve. The papers declared it to be the desperate move of a lunatic. Why is it such a terrible idea to try to talk to the apathetic non voters? I agree that they should vote, but apathy doesn’t justify the contempt the press has shown them, lumping them together as some kind of bad smell it’s impolite to even acknowledge. Of course, judging by the recent election results, the silent majority might well consist of mostly UKIP voters, so now here I am, quite out of character for me, kind of hoping they go back to being silent.)

Anyway, back to the point; prescient novels. It seems Orwell’s future is one increasingly within the realm of possibility with every passing year. I’ve mentioned before how one of my favourite films growing up was the 1960 adaptation of The Time Machine, but I hadn’t, until recently, read H. G. Wells’ original novel. Rach picked it up for me from one of our local libraries (I get a delicious thrill every time I remember I’m lucky enough to live in a place where ‘local library’ is plural, and now that where I live has gone blue for the first time in over a decade, I’m concerned that may not be the case for much longer). Published in 1895 and set in Victorian times, it follows a scientist, known in the narrative only as ‘The Time Traveller’ to the year 802,701 to discover what has become of Earth and humanity in the far future. It turns out the divide between the rich and poor in our society continued to grow and grow and grow. It’s incredible that even pre-1900 there was concern in society about the widening gap between the classes, and that over 100 years later, we’re still having trouble with that issue. Did I say incredible? I meant incredibly depressing. But hey, I suppose I’d better get used to things being incredibly depressing for a while.

Having conquered the need to struggle for anything, the upper classes have evolved into the Eloi; mindless children, spending the days frolicking, eating, fucking and, well, not much else. Certainly not thinking. Their language is hugely simplified and their attention span is practically non-existent. The Time Traveller contends that this shows that struggling and fighting for a better world is what has driven us to achieve so much throughout the years, and when we finally got what we had struggled for for so long, our drive, our intelligence, our will to improve and our creativity withered and died, no longer needed. Meanwhile, the working classes have retreated underground and evolved into pasty, light-fearing Morlocks, living in dark holes full of machinery and manufacturing. The relationship between those above ground and those below is no longer economic, for there is no longer the need for an economy. Nor is it master and slave. The Morlocks continue to manufacture clothes and shoes for the Eloi, but it is not to serve them, nor is it because they are still some beaten down underclass. For the Morlocks have become cattle farmers, and the Eloi their unthinking food source. The gap between rich and poor, between upper and working class, has been widening for some time and is already pretty sickening. Inexplicably, we seem happy for it to get worse. The 19th Century concerns expressed in The Time Machine seem more timely now than ever.

And then, I came to High Rise. I’d read some J. G. Ballard before; The Drowned World, The Wind From Nowhere, The Terminal Beach & The Drought were my first experiences of the British writer, which I picked up after raiding my father-in-law’s book shelf. When news broke that Ben Wheatley was adapting it and that it is widely known as Ballard’s best novel, I reached out to my local libraries again and picked up a copy. High Rise was published in 1975 and is set almost entirely within the concrete walls of a recently opened self-contained living apartment. 1000 apartments on 40 storeys, the building includes shopping malls, swimming pools, schools and anything else the occupants might need. The only reason to leave is to work.

It doesn’t take long for things to start going awry; able to shut themselves off from society completely, those living in the high-rise begin to alter their self-contained society into something more primal – physical class distinctions evolve, literally lower, middle and upper class, reflected in the floors they occupy – and, freed from the restrictions placed upon them by a civilised society, a different rule takes precedence, that of hunter/gatherer, of predator and prey.

The really uncomfortable thing about High Rise is the fact that the inhabitants of the building actually welcome this degeneration, like a long-tamed beast finally throwing off its shackles. There is a sensation of the people actually pushing things further and further deliberately, out of a need just to see how far it can actually go; they embrace the darkness eagerly. The thing about High Rise is that it is so disturbingly plausible, that while the apartment building offered the ideal environment for the events described, sometime it feels there is every possibility of pockets of civilisation going this way as a prelude to the whole of our society plunging purposefully and giddily down this path of de-evolution. The intent of our new Government to re-legalise foxhunting and stop Britain being subject to the Human Rights Act, maybe even to withdraw from Europe altogether, make it feel like our entire country is becoming a self-contained high rise of its own, and the feeling of the balance tipping, gently at first, then quicker and quicker towards oblivion that many of us currently have is evoked so strongly in the early chapters of Ballard’s novel it is dizzying, and not a little disconcerting.

Of course, things on the whole aren’t quite as depressing as all that. While it is really quite depressing that in the decades since these novels were written and published, it seems we’ve failed to progress at all, there is hope in that we don’t yet appear to have slipped any closer to the hellish visions dreamed up in them. We might yet find our way to a future civilisation more positive than those described in 1984, The Time Machine and High Rise. More like The Commonwealth described by Peter F. Hamilton. More Star Trek, less Mad Max. Here’s hoping.

The value in repetition.

I’m a repeater. My favourite records are played again and again until they wear out and must be bought again (Definitely Maybe, Parklife, Grace, Is This It?, Different Class, Songs for the Deaf and Appetite for Destruction amongst dozens of others, if you care). Throughout my childhood I re-watched my favourite films to death (The Time Machine (1960), War of the Worlds (1953), Goonies, Gremlins, Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones) and that hasn’t changed much since I’ve got older apart from the addition of a few others – Pulp Fiction, Lord of the Rings, and Fight Club along with many more. The hours I sunk into playing through Sonic the Hedgehog, James Pond, Alex Kidd, Road Rash, Flashback and Street Fighter II and more over and over again in my teens I have no doubt would be terrifying were they ever to be added up, and more recently, I’ve been through the Gears of War campaign more than once and can see myself playing though GTA V again before too long.

There are, I don’t doubt, many people who have quite the opposite point of view; when you’ve seen a film once, you’ve seen it, so what’s the point of seeing it again? But if I love it, why would I not want to see it again? Those records, those films and those games became a support system for me while negotiating the difficulties of adolescence. They were friends, they were retreats – they were my happy place. They still are, in a way.

Books also had their place. I’d like to be able to tell you that I loved books above all those other things; that I used to spend hours, days even, lost in them. Alas, I wasn’t that bright. I did like books – I would read Roald Dahl, comics and adaptations of my favourite films. As with films, music and games, I would re-read my favourites – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, George’s Marvellous Medicine and a junior version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade – that would all become dog-eared and well thumbed, and later To Kill a Mockingbird would become my favourite. This recent article about books written for children kicked off this whole train of thought. It makes a good point about the validity of children’s books, as they have to be written with repetition in mind. They have to be robust enough to stand up to kids reading and re-reading them over and over again. While as adults we certainly do re-read our favourites, they are never tested to the extremes kid’s books are – I particularly like the Neil Gaiman quote in the article about how while he can’t justify every word of American Gods, he can of Coraline. Does that mean he thinks Coraline is a better book? I doubt it, but it does sound as though he takes special care over his children’s books compared to his adult books, and it’s probably because of the retellings the children’s books are subjected to.

But I didn’t really get into reading until I got into my teens, when I found Robert Jordan, Professor Tolkien and Terry’s Brooks and Pratchett. I am in fact re-reading Pratchett’s Discworld series at the moment. I wrote this this ages ago about how you generally have differing points of view when coming back to something like a book series or TV show later in life, and a similar thing has happened with Discworld. My favourite hasn’t changed – previously it was Small Gods and so it proves to be the case still – the conceit that gods are only as real as they are believed to be and their power diminishes with their belief, leaving them to essentially die along with their last believer is such a stroke of inspired genius that I doubt Pratchett will ever top it (although he’s come close a few times). Taking the series in more general terms, however, my favoured stories were always the ones that involved the wizards of Unseen University, or Death. While they are certainly the funniest ones still, I’m much happier this time round in the company of Watch Commander Sam Vimes and witch Granny Weatherwax. I could be well off the mark here, but they feel somehow truer, as if their righteous fury at the injustices of the world is closer to Pratchett’s true view of the world and echo the points he’s really trying make under the funny. This piece written by Neil Gaiman about Pratchett and his anger being the ‘engine that powered Good Omens’ might suggest I’m not that far off the mark, after all.

As usual, I don’t really have much of a point, but I suppose what I’m getting at is you should spend time in the company of the things you love.

People: not all bad.

I’m not unaware that this blog will often contain rants about the stupid and ridiculous things people do for the most stupid and ridiculous reasons, which, frankly, can sometimes get a little depressing. Sometimes it’s worth making a conscious effort to remember that we are responsible for brilliance.

There is a lump of matter in our skulls that can think its way beyond primal survival instincts and contemplate its own mortality and place within the cosmos. It can ask and answer questions about not only its origins, but the origins of the universe within which it finds itself. We can place ourselves in the shoes of those who are less fortunate and help them.

Complex and sophisticated languages, music, architecture, storytelling and many other forms of creation and expression. Not only the ability some have to create, but the ability of others to appreciate it. To respond on a deep emotional level to another person’s creation and either understand what it was they wanted to say, or take an entirely new interpretation of it beyond the creator’s original intention.

People you wouldn’t look at twice on the street are transformed into desirable, sweaty sex gods/goddesses if they’re standing in front of you playing music that fills your head with noise and your bones with vibrations. Moving pictures or written words become real and important because we have an imagination within which they become tangible things.

I know there are a many people in the world who aren’t in any kind of position to appreciate these things the way I can, and I know there are many things that aren’t right in our world – hell I usually moan about most of them right here, but we still have potential. Maybe we’ll realise it before we go under.

But is it art?

Not really. But maybe, in a way. I’ve had conversations before about whether cinema is really art. Well, yes, it absolutely is. Sure, when presented with Transformers: Dark of the Moon it is harder to contend this. But, what about ‘real’ art? For every tortured Van Gogh masterpiece, there is a light switch or unmade bed. Now, I'm not here to tell you that that kind of modern art isn't art, but I am contending that film has as much right, perhaps more, to be called art. Cinema is another form of storytelling, and storytelling is an art form, whether it is in the form of a book, graphic novel, concept album, or simply told around a campfire. If you don’t agree are you really trying to tell me that Tracey Emin is an artist, and yet Terrence Malik is not? Then you are nuts.

But games? Now we’re on to rockier ground. Roger Ebert would say no. There are many others who might tell you yes. Me? As usual, I’m kind of on the fence. Ingenious? Definitely, whether classic or modern – Pong, Pac Man, Tetris, Sonic, Street Fighter, Resident Evil, Mass Effect, Bioshock, L.A. Noire... on and on the list goes. But art? Stories in games now have a much more cinematic feel, and as mentioned, I believe story-telling is a genuine art form. And some of the concept art and graphical touches are simply phenomenal (just two of many, many examples are shown below). But the stories and the design, which are art, is in service of the creation of an addictive diversion, which is not. So is art employed in the service of something which is not art still art? Perhaps some things man was never meant to know.

Concept art for Gears of War.

Concept art for Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

“But they changed it.”

It’s all about the difference. The difference between a book and a movie. Sometimes when a book is adapted into a film I can get annoyed. Sometimes I get annoyed at other people who insist every last detail of the book they love should remain intact. Books can do great things. They can give you a character that is, in a way, uniquely yours, since how you interpret that character; the way they look, the way they sound, the way they walk and a load of other things is in your head. In someone else’s head it will be a little different. Sure, there are descriptions, but they often merely inform how a character is in your head, rather than acting as a complete immutable definition. The same goes for landscapes, architecture and many other things.

Films do something different. They show you, definitively, what that character looks like, how they sound, how they move, what that location looks like, or the internal layout of that building. Books allow you the freedom to create your own picture in your imagination. Films are more visual. They tell you what that picture looks like. There are other differences. Books often give you an insight into the innermost thoughts of a character. They can present an internal dialogue to tell you what the character thinks, and their motivation for their actions. Films give you a chance to apply your own take to the internal workings of character’s minds, using clues given by the actor’s performance.

What this boils down to is that they are very different ways to tell a story. When a book is adapted into a film, it is impossible not to account for this. There are, however, right and wrong ways to do this. If you understand the differences between the two, you could change a myriad of things, even the ending, and still adapt a book successfully. One example: Stardust. Neil Gaiman’s original story has quite a melancholic ending, which suits the story rather wonderfully. Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman’s film version retains much that made Gaiman’s original such a joy, but it is mostly lighter in tone, and a brighter happier ending suits it better.

For the screen, stories generally have to be simplified or changed in some way to make them more accessible to a wider audience. That’s not an insult to film, it is a simple and obvious (to most people) truth. Examples? Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Jurassic Park to name just three. Occasionally, the changes made vastly improve on the source material (The Godfather, The Shining.) Sometimes a valiant attempt is made that just doesn’t come together (The Lovely Bones, Dune.) Sometimes, the changes undermine everything about it and nothing can help it to recover (step forward, The Golden Compass.)  Some would argue Watchmen falls into this category, but I’ve neither seen nor read it, and have heard too many differences of opinion to be convinced either way.

By now, you’re probably wondering what the point of this entry is (none – have you not read this blog before?). Over the years, I’ve had many a conversation, debate and argument of the merits of films, books and the differences between them. Since this blog is a bit of a sounding board for me to make my thoughts and opinions known (or at the very least, to allow me to organise them), what better place for me to air this opinion? The two franchises that come up the most in these debates with both friends and colleagues are Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings (infer what that says about me and the people I converse with what you will). I would always find myself in defence of the film versions. Potter, under the guidance of author J. K. Rowling, trims the unnecessary sub plots to squeeze the plots into the running times. Seeing as the decisions are largely made or approved by the original architect of the series, the changes are fairly easy to justify.

Rings, on the other hand, is very different. The original author is dead. Only one person on the entire production ever met him (Christopher Lee). Some major changes have been made. Frodo is much younger. The Scouring of the Shire and Tom Bombadil are cut completely. Elves join the humans at Helm’s Deep. Faramir has a very different arc, taking Frodo and Sam to Osgiliath. This has annoyed a great many people. Every change, in my opinion, is justifiable and in fact, a film that stuck closer to the novel would have suffered. Scouring happens after Sauron is gone. To have the decoy still posing a threat after the destruction of the main villain wouldn’t work. In the book it has the effect of bringing into stark relief that even the rural paradise of The Shire doesn’t escape the War of the Ring untouched. The film accomplishes this in The Two Towers with a line of dialogue spoken by Merry: “The fires of Isengard will spread, and the woods of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. There won’t be a Shire.” The Tom Bombadil part is frankly the dullest part of the books so I was quite pleased it was cut. With Helm’s Deep, Jackson and co accomplish what is essentially a master-class in building up tension in the run up to a climactic battle set piece, and the arrival of the small Elvish army to join the small human army to take on the huge army of Uruk-Hai is a perfectly judged moment – the book loses nothing from not having it; the film gains a wonderful, perfectly cinematic moment. The Faramir change is a little thornier, because it involves a small amount of criticism of Tolkien’s work. Faramir in the books is a bit one-dimensional. A bit boring. Apparently, the only guy in Middle Earth who can resist the power of the ring without breaking a sweat. There’s barely an arc, no real character development – hell, he’s barely even a character at all. He is so perfect, I think, to illustrate firstly the big difference between him and his brother Boromir, and secondly to suggest there is strength left in men, giving a reason to hope. The films change this. He isn’t so perfect. He is still clearly not his brother, but here he must earn his strength; he can only let the ring go when he begins to understand what it does. Removing Faramir’s nonchalant disregard for the ring and Tom Bombadil altogether, the film-makers have made the ring that much more potent – there is not a single soul in the films who is immune to its effects. This works better for the films, where there are fewer opportunities for depth of subtlety afforded the book.

So, don’t automatically groan when the adaptation of your favourite novel makes some changes. Consider the audience and see if those changes are made for a good reason or not. Or, you know, tell me why I'm wrong.

The Hunger Games: Why do we love misery?

Like most sensible people, I love to read.  While I’d give anything a go, if you’re familiar with some of these entries you’ll know the stuff I read the most: Stephen Donaldson, Brandon Sanderson and similar.  The bigger, more involved and more complex the better.  Give me huge, over-reaching themes set against backdrops of wars, politicking and struggles for the very soul of humanity, that feature huge casts of varied characters.  Give me Martin, give me Jordan, give me Herbert and give me Tolkien.  Let me get lost in detailed worlds and hundreds of thousands, no, millions of words.  But give me something else as well.  Give me hope.  Give me a reason to root.  Give me a happy ending.  Or, if not happy, exactly, then something to make the emotional investment worthwhile.  Basically, what this amounts to, is that I do not like them to be too realistic.

If someone accused me of being a pessimist, I’d be hard pushed to deny it with any level of credibility.  While our species is capable of some of the most incredibly wondrous and beautiful things, our talent for prejudice and discrimination knows no bounds.  We find it hard to empathise, to care about much beyond our immediate circle of friends and loved ones.  Not all of us, clearly, but many of us.  We hate all too easily.  This is why I want something slightly more positive in the stories I read.  I want to read about a humanity worth saving.

The thing that has prompted this whole train of thought is my recent reading of The Hunger Games trilogy.  *BY THE BY, THIS POST CONTAINS HUGE SPOILERS, SO IF YOU DON’T WANT THE ENDING RUINED, STOP READING AND COME BACK AFTER YOU’VE READ IT*  You’d be forgiven for thinking, as I did, that this is a series jumping on the back of the Twilight phenomenon.  The popularity of the series is almost a direct result of Twilight fans looking around for another fantastical horror-tinged series told from the point of view of a teenage girl.  The back of the books carry a hearty recommendation from the talent-vacuum herself, Stephenie Meyer.  Everything about it screams bandwagon-jumper.  Eventually, I was told enough times that it is not (mostly from Empire magazine and not Twilight fans because, well, who can trust a Twilight fan?), that I grasped the nettle and decided to give it a try.

While it is much more simplistic in terms of plot, characterisation and language than I generally prefer (it is meant for teens after all), it is undeniably well written.  Incredibly, I was brought almost literally to tears in the opening pages, when Kat volunteers to replace her little sister Prim in the games (the Hunger Games of the title, where children of the lower classes are forced to fight to the death for the entertainment of the privileged – it is hard to miss the heavy-handed criticism of our love of talent-based reality TV).  It is shockingly moving, and more than enough to convince me of its infinite superiority to the sparkly vampire guff it gets lumped together with.  Nothing else in the series matches that moment for triggering such a raw visceral emotional response; not Rue, not Peeta, not Gale.  The rest of it is a fine read – easy to follow, faced-paced and full of (sometimes really rather gruesome) action, heroics, horror and derring-do to escape seemingly impossible situations.

However.  The ending.  I despise the ending.  Not because it isn’t well-conceived and impressively executed.  But because it is one of the most pessimistic endings I have ever read.  It skews far too close to the reality I wish to escape from.  It goes to great lengths to point out that in war, your greatest allies are often no better or worse than your bitterest enemies.  Everybody is trying to kill people.  Killing people is a really shitty thing to do, and Katniss, the girl at the centre seems to be one of the only people capable of realising this and is punished relentlessly for it.  While she doesn’t suffer quite as much as Morn Hyland (Morn Hyland is the lead character in Stephen Donaldson’s Gap Sequence and is a character that suffers more than any other fictional character I have ever come across – so much so it almost completely ruins the series), she is, by the end, no more than a shell of a human, unable to take joy in anything.

*HERE COME THE SPOILERS* While enduring great hardship, Kat just about remains a whole person through most of the story, until the leader of the rebellion (who is supposedly on the same side as Kat) deliberately engineers the horrific fiery death of Prim with the sole purpose of breaking Kat to secure her own power.  It is a despicable thing to do, but certainly not outside the realms of believability, and it underlines the point about both opposing sides in a war being equally capable of atrocity.  In the current climate of celebrating every member of our armed forces as unquestionable heroes despite many of them being, in the words of the late, great, Bill Hicks, “a bunch of hired fuckin’ killers”, it is a particularly bold narrative choice.
Unfortunately, it is deadly for the story, and this stems from the opening scenes described above when Kat volunteers to replace Prim to keep her safe.  The whole point of Kat’s actions in all of the books, the reason she does what she does, is, more than anything, to protect Prim.  When she fails in that and Prim burns, it isn’t as emotional as you might think.  It has the opposite effect.  It makes you stop caring about Kat and her cause.  If the writer is willing to take even Prim from her in such a terrible way, then what is the point in investing emotionally in her at all?  I understand the point made, I do.  I even agree with it.  But it ruins this series.

To make it worse, there is a passage near the end, just after Prim goes up in flames and Kat herself is on the edge of death that describes Kat as being on a watery surface.  Above her all the people she loved that have died are birds soaring through the sky heading to some undisclosed but easy to guess destination.  Kat is unable to follow them and is instead being dragged under the surface by terrible clawed things representing the people she hates who are dead.  The bird that was Prim tries desperately to save her, but cannot and eventually has to let Kat go under to be clawed and shredded.  What this says to me is that even in death, the only thing that awaits Kat is an eternity in hell.  At a point earlier on, in the midst of a desperate battle to end the oppression of the lower classes, Kat murders an unarmed civilian to stop them raising the alarm.  This is her fate thanks to that instinctive action.  Suzanne Collins must hate humanity with a passion few can muster to give her heroine such a desolate ending.

The so-called happy ending, describing Kat getting together with one of only a few resolutely decent characters and having children rings utterly hollow and is tempered by Kat’s overwhelming fear for them.  This is not due to poor writing; on the contrary - it feels entirely right for the character and completely intentional on the author’s part.  Some stories have bittersweet endings – see the final pages of The Lord of the Rings, or Stardust.  Some have a devastating climax that manage to strengthen the story and wring the emotions – see the brilliant and wrenching The Book Thief or The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas, and some have a cheap gag designed to annoy readers – step forward Stephen King’s Dark Tower.  The Hunger Games is just resolutely pessimistic at the expense of almost all reader satisfaction, and while the author’s point is strongly made and keenly felt, much of the enjoyment is sucked out of the experience.  It is a shame that such a well conceived story leaves such a bad taste in the mouth.

Read like nobody’s watching.

If fantasy books were music they would probably be jazz. Many of the people that like them often talk and act as if they know more about writing / playing that other mere mortals, and assume readers / listeners of other styles simply cannot grasp with their limited intellect what the converted know instinctively. At the same time they will not consider listening to / reading any other genre, knowing without doubt it won't be worth the effort. Everyone else knows it's mostly shit and a bit of an embarrassing genre, that maybe you have a fling with at one time in your life and hopefully move on from. Having said that, occasionally there is an example of the genre, a piece written / performed by a writer / player of such dazzling talent, that it deserves to transcend the genre and if those who write it off were to give it a chance the complexity, intricacy and scale of the piece would simply blow their minds.

My favourite book, even after all these years, is still probably To Kill a Mockingbird, even though I haven't read it in donkey's years, but beyond that it's more likely to be Lord of the Rings or Dune. I try to be as eclectic as possible, but like an old schoolfriend that never changes, I often find myself coming back to the genres of the geeks and social lepers. Why? Not sure. Maybe it's easier to get lost in a story if it's further removed from reality. Maybe the escapism is what's important. It's one thing to tackle themes, characterisation and organic plot developments within a real world that everybody knows intimately; it's quite another to conceive of, imagine, develop and design that world from scratch within the confines of your own head (or in the case of sci-fi sometimes many different worlds) and to describe events barely on the fringe of tangible understanding (hello, Peter F. Hamilton) while still being able to make the reader connect on an emotional level.

In this respect, I think writers of crime thrillers and romantic guff have it easier here. The world-building is already done. There's a fairly recently-arrived-in-the-UK writer, goes by the name Brandon Sanderson, who is open and honest about the difficulties involved in crafting a fully realised fantasy series like no other writer I know. He's the guy who's taken over finishing the Wheel of Time series following the death of creator Robert Jordan. It is Sanderson's own Mistborn trilogy, however, that really shows what's involved. It took something approaching nearly 30 drafts of the series before he considered it complete. Years of refining the plot, the characters, the magic system (something else the fantasy writer has to develop which is unique to the genre, and bastard hard to get right, if Sanderson's notes are anything to go by), the world, the politics and countless other elements. On his website there is a chapter by chapter commentary, and he'll share early drafts of the series with anyone who asks, as well as giving updates on current projects. The work paid off. While, admittedly, most efforts in the genre are, well, shite, Mistborn is remarkable, pulling together themes of religion and atheism, morality, redemption, corruption and a boatload of other stuff, with startling action, possible only with the help of a genius magic system. A series that deserves to be read even by people who have long since moved on from that fantasy bollocks.

Perspective may change with age, but Joss Whedon will always be freakin’ brilliant.

There's an old argument that political beliefs change as a person ages - when you're young and hopeful you find yourself in the left wing camp, shouting for equality and wanting everyone to get a fair deal. As you age, you accumulate more wealth and feel that as you've earned it, you deserve to hold onto it - you become more right wing, defending the richer half of society, decrying the less fortunate as simply too lazy to achieve as you have done. This, while probably true in some cases, is largely bull crap and Roger Ebert, David Attenborough, Terry Pratchett, Ian McKellan and Stephen "I hate women" Fry are five names off the top of my head to illustrate it.

Be that as it may, in some matters perspective really does change with age. I'll give you two examples. Take Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time fantasy novel series (you may remember from this entry http://experiment627.blogspot.com/2010/07/stephen-donaldons-gap-sequence-how-far.html that I read very uncool fiction). The series of 13 (with one to go) books has many hundreds of characters, each with their own specific take on the world. There are the kids: Rand, Mat, Perrin, Egwene and Elayne - when, as a youngish person I first read those books it was to those characters I related the best and I got frustrated with the older characters holding things up and thinking they knew better. When I re-read it as an older person (and I know early 30s isn't that old, but it's older than a teenager and old enough for perspective to change) I found myself relating more to the older characters - Nyneave, Moiraine, Siuan and Gareth Bryne and sometimes found the impetuousness of the younger characters to be a little annoying. I suspect if I read the series again 15 years from now I'll find myself sympathetic to yet another point of view. Such was the impressive depth and skill of Jordan's writing that he was able to recreate the inner workings of a characters mind that the character automatically connects to a reader of a similar age. Jordan even wrote from a female perspective so well it led some readers to speculate that he was actually female (there are at least as many strongly developed and varied female characters in Wheel of Time as there are male ones, something of a rarity in this genre).

Another writer able to do such a thing is Joss Whedon. Rach and I have almost finished re-watching the seven season run of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is, frankly incredible and the defining TV show of a generation. When watching it the first time round, I distinctly remember having the following impressions: I was annoyed with Riley, because I found him a poor replacement for Angel, I was annoyed with Dawn for being a bit of a brat, I was annoyed with Buffy herself in season six for being miserable and shagging Spike all the time, and I totally loved Willow and her descent into darkness. I think maybe I felt that way because of my age. Watching it this time around, the Buffy and Angel arc got boring pretty quickly, because of all the moping and misery - it was a lot more fun when Angel turned evil. Because of this reaction, I didn't find Riley half as annoying. I don't know if it's anything to do with being a father, but I didn't think Dawn was treated very well and I think they should have done more for her, so when she started to act out I sympathised with her instead of getting annoyed. Buffy, in season six, has been dragged out of heaven by her friends into a world of death and demons, where she feels nothing and cannot bring herself to care for anyone or anything. It's no wonder she turns to Spike, seeing as he's the only one who could come close to understanding. This time, I kind of couldn't stand Willow and her selfish petulance and her increasing addiction to dark magic. I couldn't sympathise with her and felt she should have known better. It struck me as how being only a decade or so older, I could find myself seeing things in a completely different way. With both The Wheel of Time and Buffy it's the layered writing and detailed characterisation that allows this, and for me is the mark of a truly brilliant writer. Anyone wanting proof of Whedon's extraordinary ability as a TV writer and director need look no further that the Firefly episode Objects in Space (which contains philosophical musings on self awareness, and funny bits), or the Buffy episodes Hush (terrifying horror), Restless (lucid and fractured dreamscapes) and The Body (a perfect recreation of the overwhelming feelings of free fall, numbness, fear and sickness when confronted with the death of a loved one).

I wonder how I'll think by the time I'm 60..?

Stephen Donaldson’s Gap Sequence – How far is too far?

Anyone who knows or speaks to me for more than a little while will learn that I am a reader of probably the least coolest fiction there is - sci-fi & fantasy. Although, and it's important to make these distinctions; not exclusively sci-fi & fantasy, and not shit sci-fi & fantasy - David Gemmell, I'm looking at you. When not shit, this type of storytelling can be extremely complex, and layered with multiple strands holding a distorted mirror to our own social and psychological issues. Try reading Iain M. Banks, Robert Jordan, Frank Herbert or (obviously) Tolkien, and then you'll see what I mean.

Sometimes, a series I read tends to be cleverer than I am (not, granted, a particularly difficult achievement), and I have trouble following all the nuances. A writer that often does this to me is Stephen Donaldson. I've recently finished Donaldson's Gap Sequence, which has troubled me somewhat. Donaldson is best known for his Thomas Covenant series, which caused me similar problems, although to a lesser degree than the Gap Sequence.

It's not that he's a bad writer - on the contrary, he's particularly impressive, which is why I can finish his novels despite my reaction. He tends to make his heroes a little more difficult to root for than your average. Which again, is usually not a problem, but I wonder if Donaldson takes it too far. Take Thomas Covenant for example, the hero in the Thomas Covenant series. In the first book Covenant is introduced as a recluse suffering from leprosy. He used to be a successful writer, but his wife and son have left him and he's looked at by most people with not a small amount of disgust. Donaldson's medical background (or possibly his father's - I can't remember at the moment and I don't have one of his books to hand) helps to give the character plenty of depth. Due to the standard magic/nonsense/event thing, Covenant finds himself in a fantasy land where his leprosy heals and upon retrieving the feeling in his nerves, one of his first acts is to rape a girl aged about 16 who was helping him. Now, there are two justifications for this in Covenant's own head - it's his first erection in years as well as the first time in years he's been able to touch or feel. In addition to this, his refusal to accept the place he's found himself in as real absolves him (in his own head) of responsibility. Clearly, this does not excuse him in the eyes of the reader, and over the course of a series of books, Covenant's unbelief crumbles and the consequences of the act are far-reaching and desperately tragic. He is not a man it's easy to come to like. This appears to be Donaldson's particular skill, or at least a recurring theme of his - no person or act is beyond redemption. As Covenant suffers under the consequences of his act, and as he attempts to undo the damage he caused, as the reader you do, slowly, come to empathise with him and accept him - even to like him. This is no small achievement of Donaldson's.

With the Gap Sequence I wonder if he went too far in the suffering he inflicted upon one of the main characters, if he made it too much of a stretch in his attempt to redeem one of the inflicters. The Gap Sequence is Donaldson's retelling of Wagner's Ring Cycle. Only the opera is retold in the form of a series of science fiction books. I told you some of these writers were clever. The character, Morn Hyland suffers more than any other character I could name - probably more than was really necessary. After the emergence of a previously unknown and uncontrollable condition causes the death of her father, Morn is captured by a truly reprehensible character and is repeatedly degraded, beaten and raped, sometimes in unpleasant detail. 'Detail' in this case doesn't mean so much the physical acts themselves, although that is sometimes there, but the emotional and psychological torment inflicted upon her. I think sometimes Donaldson loses sight of the point that fiction, particularly fantastical fiction, is supposed to entertain at least as much as it disturbs, and I very nearly decided to stop reading on a number of occasions. Upon engineering her own escape, Morn is abandoned by the very organisation she serves, and given as payment to a different, but equally horrid (possibly worse) character who continues the physical and mental abuse to the point where anyone would have lost their sanity. Indeed, Morn does, a least a little - for it to be otherwise would have been unrealistic. (Yes, I do note the irony of using the word 'unrealistic' when describing a science fiction story, but setting and characterisation are two very different things.) After these prolonged events, she is then, in her fragile state, expected to save her race and be a hero in the way these stories go. As talented a writer as Donaldson undoubtedly is, I questioned the need to put Morn through quite such an extended episode of horror. So damaged is she, that the happiest ending Donaldson can conceive for her is *SPOILER* to leave her weeping hysterically in a room by herself, struggling to gather the courage to face the world outside. Realistic, yes, but necessary? Both of the men involved have back stories and through them the reasons why they are the way they are become clear. As with Thomas Covenant, only ten-fold more, this does not excuse their actions. However, Donaldson continues his theme of redemption and one of the characters becomes a hero of sorts, someone to root for. After almost putting the series down so many times during the first two books, this was difficult to swallow, and made me not a little uncomfortable.

So why did Donaldson go so far with Morn? I don't think it's anything to do with him not understanding the trauma rape victims undergo, as the consequences and emotional states of those involved are realised in a way that clearly shows Donaldson understood the magnitude of what he was putting his characters through. I don't really know, but I can tell you that despite my best efforts, I kind of was rooting for this guy a little before the end. So maybe it comes down to Donaldson's continuing theme of redemption - anyone can be saved.

Or maybe I should shut up and think about something more useful.

An attempt to understand why people like shite.

I've been trying to understand why the whole Twilight thing exploded. I don't know why I've been trying to understand this, I suppose it's because I have too much time on my hands and not enough interesting thoughts in my head to fill it with. The whole thing was passing me by, but recently my wife got caught up in it. Now, that's not to say she's a 'Twi-hard' - she doesn't scream at the mere mention of Rob Pattison, she's not planning on any tattoos or T-shirts to proudly advertise her obsession. Truth be told, she's a bit embarassed by it. However, like it and enjoy it she does.

I get most youth culture crazes, even if I don't share them. Take Harry Potter as an example. I can understand why so many fans got swept up in the books and the movies. I certainly didn't become a fan, per se, but I can acknolwedge that the books are very well written. The first few are most definitely written for kids - they've got that simplistic way about them, like a less sophisticated Roald Dahl. The idea is that the reader should be a similar age to the title character, allowing the books to increase in depth as the reader matures. As such, the writing style and the story increase in complexity with each book. The stories caught the attention of so many older readers because of the subtleness of Rowling's writing - simplistic enough for kids but with just enough underlying darkness and complexity to attract adults. As the books go on, the darkness is much less underlying and the 'for kids' moniker is left behind. In addition, the attraction of reading something that evokes how it felt to be a child is very strong for many readers.

The same is true of The Hobbit. It was also written for children, but with enough potential for expansion into more complex themes to attract adults. A potential that was realised with the writing of The Lord of the Rings, which has such a multitude of underlying themes and levels of depth that most who read it cannot ever leave it behind.

Another example is Star Wars, but this is more about remembering and attempting to relive childhood memories than hidden depth, because the last thing Star Wars is, is deep. Personally, I think it's completely over-rated and is nothing compared to the likes of Indiana Jones and Back to the Future. That's because I was late to the party - Star Wars was released two years before I was born. People love it because they love how they felt watching it as a kid. Those same people hate the prequels. The prequels are, granted, poor films, but so, I would contend, are the original ones. Those that hate them hate them because they were not children when they watched them, and were, therefore, not the target audience. They were not young enough, not simple enought to be taken in by that world. There is a whole generation out there that will tell you that their favourite Star Wars movie is Episode 1. That's entirely down to the age they were when they watched it.

When I attempt to apply that logic to Twilight, it falls apart. Yes, it's aimed at teenagers, and not women in their 30s, but the same is true for Harry Potter. The fact is, they are very badly written - Stephenie Meyer couldn't write her way out of a wet paper bag. You can see it in the writing - while Rowling writes in a way that children can relate to she creates a very vivid picture of a hidden alternative world in our heads. On the other hand, Meyer's style is simply dull, like a teenager with no imagination and an over-riding obession with a boy would write. I can tell Harry Potter is written for children by a talented adult. I can't tell if Twilight is written for teenagers, in the style of a teenager or by an actual teenager. When Rachel tried to explain to me why she liked it, she gave me a hint as to the actual reason why I couldn't understand. She said it made her feel like a teenager herself, reading Point Horror and Point Romance novels, and that while she knows the writing is unsophisticated, the feeling of nostalgia it evokes is more effective. So, the truth is, it's probably because I'm male and simply can't understand. Fair enough. But, to be honest, I think girls deserve better than this depthless, vacuous shite.

What baffles me further is that like many other Twilight fans, Rachel's now got into True Blood. True Blood is much better - smart, well-written novels and a surprisingly good TV series. It's almost like the reader grows up and moves from one to the other - kind of like when you first discover holding hands and then move on to sex. I can't understand how it's possible to be a fan of both (Twilight and True Blood, not holding hands and sex) - it's akin to liking both Mozart and The Wiggles.

Of course, there's no reason why I should care at all. People are obviously free to like whatever they like regardless of what I or anyone else thinks. It's frankly none of my business. Maybe I can't help thinking I'm missing out on something. I doubt it, though.