could blame me that i wanted more.
Sep. 12th, 2011 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
damkiannaUggggggggggggh my god last week. I didn't even have to work Saturday the way I did last year, and I still did nothing this weekend but lie on the couch and slowly regenerate my brainpower. (Well, and wash my car, but that was under duress.) Late chapter will be late; apologies! /o\ I'm actually really really glad ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thelittlebang is having an extension - I mean, I hope nothing additional goes wrong for either mod and that everything works out well, but it's a lucky break for me.
Unsurprisingly, I missed all my TV - although on Monday that was because we went to see The Debt. I thought it was well-written and well put together, although it's not a movie I expect to rewatch regularly - it was well done, but not precisely enjoyable (at least not for me). Sam Worthington went a little Australian a couple times, but he was actually quite good; and Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain were both totally awesome, of course. I was with it up until maybe the final five to ten minutes: I liked that Rachel found the man, that he wasn't the right one, and that she chose to leave the note for the reporter anyway, but the part where she then just so happens to find the actual guy and they stab each other in the bathroom felt - to me - like it was totally out of nowhere. O.O I mean, I guess it was good if I wasn't expecting it, but. What. It felt like they had a perfectly good ending in finding the wrong guy but telling the truth anyway, and then they, like, started a sequel in the last five minutes - there must be consequences for killing somebody in a nursing home, right? What the hell happened after a woman with giant scissor wounds staggered into a waiting room? It just seemed like a really strange thing to do with the last five minutes of your movie. o.O
Also, I bought myself three books the other week, as I mentioned, and one of them was God's War, by Kameron Hurley. I know nothing whatsoever about the author; I picked it up and read the first ten pages or so, and then, recklessly, bought it.
I don't have the background to comment with real thoughtfulness on the book's depictions of Islam - but I say depictions because there were multiple nations whose people practiced in multiple ways, instead of one giant block of Muslimness, which was great. The main characters were all CoC, if I recall correctly, and SO MANY WOMEN. Black women, brown women, pale women; women who wore hijabs, women who didn't; women who boxed and cut off heads and teched tech and were queens and engineers and bounty hunters. Granted, some of them were killed over the course of the story, but so were several dudes, and the main protagonist and antagonists were ladies. The overall aesthetic was sort of Fireflyish, with a team bound together by time and unpleasant pasts and an inability to express their feelings to each other, and even if they kind of broke up at the end, this is only the first book of three.
So, basically, this book was constructed entirely from catnip, as far as I'm concerned. Even if the insect descriptions did make me shudder. D: I'm going to need to read it again before I'm going to be able to say anything approaching objective about it, because the first time I just blew through it in a haze of steadily-expanding love. Nyx is just such a fantastic badass, and there were quite a few characters whom I was not initially expecting to like and then I really really did (Inaya! Khos! Anneke!). And all the various tensions just really worked for me - the war onworld, yes, but also between belief and nonbelief, between individual convictions and the pressures of the world and the external situation, I just loved it. Ugh, I don't even, I'm getting flappy hands just thinking about it. I will say that there were some grisly bits, and the chance of a happy ending overall is probably not as high as I am firmly telling myself it is. But I already ordered the second book. /o\
But! Now I should get back to work so I can finish everything I need to do and then write like a writing person this evening to get myself back on track.
thelittlebang is having an extension - I mean, I hope nothing additional goes wrong for either mod and that everything works out well, but it's a lucky break for me.Unsurprisingly, I missed all my TV - although on Monday that was because we went to see The Debt. I thought it was well-written and well put together, although it's not a movie I expect to rewatch regularly - it was well done, but not precisely enjoyable (at least not for me). Sam Worthington went a little Australian a couple times, but he was actually quite good; and Helen Mirren and Jessica Chastain were both totally awesome, of course. I was with it up until maybe the final five to ten minutes: I liked that Rachel found the man, that he wasn't the right one, and that she chose to leave the note for the reporter anyway, but the part where she then just so happens to find the actual guy and they stab each other in the bathroom felt - to me - like it was totally out of nowhere. O.O I mean, I guess it was good if I wasn't expecting it, but. What. It felt like they had a perfectly good ending in finding the wrong guy but telling the truth anyway, and then they, like, started a sequel in the last five minutes - there must be consequences for killing somebody in a nursing home, right? What the hell happened after a woman with giant scissor wounds staggered into a waiting room? It just seemed like a really strange thing to do with the last five minutes of your movie. o.O
Also, I bought myself three books the other week, as I mentioned, and one of them was God's War, by Kameron Hurley. I know nothing whatsoever about the author; I picked it up and read the first ten pages or so, and then, recklessly, bought it.
I don't have the background to comment with real thoughtfulness on the book's depictions of Islam - but I say depictions because there were multiple nations whose people practiced in multiple ways, instead of one giant block of Muslimness, which was great. The main characters were all CoC, if I recall correctly, and SO MANY WOMEN. Black women, brown women, pale women; women who wore hijabs, women who didn't; women who boxed and cut off heads and teched tech and were queens and engineers and bounty hunters. Granted, some of them were killed over the course of the story, but so were several dudes, and the main protagonist and antagonists were ladies. The overall aesthetic was sort of Fireflyish, with a team bound together by time and unpleasant pasts and an inability to express their feelings to each other, and even if they kind of broke up at the end, this is only the first book of three.
So, basically, this book was constructed entirely from catnip, as far as I'm concerned. Even if the insect descriptions did make me shudder. D: I'm going to need to read it again before I'm going to be able to say anything approaching objective about it, because the first time I just blew through it in a haze of steadily-expanding love. Nyx is just such a fantastic badass, and there were quite a few characters whom I was not initially expecting to like and then I really really did (Inaya! Khos! Anneke!). And all the various tensions just really worked for me - the war onworld, yes, but also between belief and nonbelief, between individual convictions and the pressures of the world and the external situation, I just loved it. Ugh, I don't even, I'm getting flappy hands just thinking about it. I will say that there were some grisly bits, and the chance of a happy ending overall is probably not as high as I am firmly telling myself it is. But I already ordered the second book. /o\
But! Now I should get back to work so I can finish everything I need to do and then write like a writing person this evening to get myself back on track.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 08:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-21 09:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 02:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 10:53 am (UTC)... Possibly I overthink these things a little.
Plus I wouldn't know what to ask for.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 03:07 pm (UTC)I am impressed you can do big bangs, though. I need exchange-based ficathons to make me feel like the deadlines actually have teeth. Prompt-based or big bang or whatever, I tend to just blow off when I get distracted by something new and shiny.
(And seriously. They will not hate it.)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 04:39 pm (UTC)Thanks! I'd like to attribute it to my amazing conscientiousness, but it's mostly anxiety again - the idea of not completing something I told someone I'd complete is teeth enough for me. :)
(They could. D:)
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 05:23 pm (UTC)Ahahah. Doooo iiiit. You know you want to :-D.
no subject
Date: 2011-09-22 05:53 pm (UTC)