Things belatedly enjoyed (and a reread of Names and Forms)

[katsaris]

So, Bhutto has been assassinated, and the world grows darker still with yet another victory for Islamic fascism -- as if Iraq/Palestine/Lebanon haven't been enough. But I wasn't planning this for a political post... just happened that Bhutto's killing roughly coincided with a post I was prepping for other issues.

...

So, anyway... have recently greatly enjoyed three works which I'd heard and been vaguely curious about for years, but for three different (but all stupid) reasons, I never got around to enjoying till now.

Buffy the Vampire-Slayer/Angel:: Reason for failing to watch this till recently was very simple -- no DVD rental shop I've ever been in has even heard of the series, let alone actually have it.

So, after months of periodic asking around, I'm now quite unashamedly downloading them both via uTorrent. Am now halfway through Buffy's 4th season (and Angel's 1st) and have been loving them greatly. (especially Buffy).

Greatly recommended, especially for the people with the patience to see how the series improves around the 2nd season after several weaknesses of the first -- e.g. the utterly lame villain that "The Master" was. But once the series got around to introducing characters like Spike or Ethan Raynes, oh my...

Haven't yet formed a full opinion on "Angel" but one thing I like is how we finally get a protagonist character that's an introvert and who's idea of fun is hanging around at his home with a good book. :-)

"The King Must Die" by Mary Renault: The reason I failed to read this earlier is rather embarrassing really. I knew it atleast in part dealt with mythological-era Minoan Crete. I on the other hand had already written a Gargoyles fanfic dealing with Minoan Crete, Names and Forms.

So, I knew that after reading a superior novel centered on the same era about the same location, I'd be terribly embarrassed about my own inadequate portrayal of Minoan Crete. And yeah, that embarrassment came as I expected but it still oughtn't have prevented me from getting and enjoying the book. Gonna be getting its sequel "The Bull From the Sea" soon, as well.

One thing I know I *particularly* failed with in "Names and Forms" are the vivid depiction of the "taurokathapsia" - the bull-dancing. My own handful of mentions of it there shamefully trivialize it. Also, since I had Daedalus as one of my secondary characters, and listed a few of his supposed inventions (including a folding chair :-) I kick myself for not doing as the "The King Must Die" did and recognize the "wooden cow" he created according to myth as a wooden bull serving to help train new bull-dancers. That'd have come in handy, especially since it irked me from the start that I hadn't been able to find a place for it, when I had managed to find a place for even much more trivial elements (like Laelaps, or Minos' ring)

This book, combined with Steven Pressfield's "The Last of the Amazons" (another book greatly recommended by me), also ended up changing my pespective on Theseus. My own fanfic ends with the birth of the Minotaur, and so concludes much before the coming of Theseus -- but I had known what part Theseus would have played in the story if I ever wrote a sequel, and it'd be that of a villain, a Gaston-like (c.f. Disney's 'Beauty and the Beast') monster-killer killing the monstrous in form but innocent (and beloved by Ariadne) Minotaur. My old perspective on Theseus was roughly what I wrote in an old "Ask Greg" commentary at http://www.s8.org/gargoyles/askgreg/search.php?qid=710.

Now after these two books... well Theseus would still be a villain, doing a villainous deed, but he'd a villain with a goal that could be considered admirable -- promoting his idea of human civilization which is a much more dynamic one than the stability and prosperity and peaceful joy that Minos prefers in his old age and that Minos admired in the old Cretan civilization. Theseus would be going to kill the Minotaur for the same reason he killed the bandits on his way to Athens, or that he stole the Amazon queen, or even attempted to steal Persephone from Hades himself -- not because they're easy but because they're hard (ref:Kennedy), to prove that they can be done. In the Minotaur's case in particular, he would be seeking to reverse Athenian subservience and defeatism by destroying the chief symbol of a reemerging Crete that had defeated Athens a few decades back, and which was stealing away most of Athens' talent.

Reading again my old sad excuse for a Minoan-era fanfic, I have to say I'm surprised at how utterly clumsy some of my lines were. Now see this line here for example:

And sometimes this doesn't apply and even a king must do these things by himself.

This ought have been something like:

And sometimes this isn't so, and even a king must be a king alone.

Or this line:

And although the next night she would wake up indeed alone, it turned out that the egg she'd lay six months later would be proof enough.

That's painfully clumsy, the long series of short words and clumsy conjuctions. The following would be marginally better:

And although the next night she'd wake up alone indeed, she would have proof enough in the egg laid six months later.

Don't get me wrong, I still like many of the things I wrote in that story... I still love much of how the sphinx-girl ("Golden") acts and reacts for example. I still like most of the flashbacks. There's just lots of things in it that I dislike as well. :-)

V for Vendetta: And the reason I didn't watch this when it came out a few years back was because I had assumed it was about nothing other than some masked superhero who's mask was even sillier than Batman's or the Phantom's.

It's instead one of the movies I must have most enjoyed in my *life*. I watched it three times in the last four days. I'm still digesting it really, can't think what to say first about it.

I understand that the original comic's creator has issues with the movie adaptation -- that the original comic seems to be about Anarchy vs Fascism, while the movie adaptation seems to be more about Liberalism vs Fascism. And if I had read the original comic (am sure I'll be getting it for myself soon) I might have the same issues with the movie. But as I haven't read it... all I can say is "Heartily recommended!".

One sequence was predictable in its conclusion, atleast for me. Won't spoil it but am very glad at Evie's anger at the end of it towards V. If she had been any less angry, I'd have been seriously seriously annoyed at the movie.

Anyway, I loved it, loved it, loved it. Go get it and see it.