I Am Completely Serious

elongated_tito just made me watch Sin City. I know it's kind of, like, done to complain about the movie's treatment of women, but. Yeah, okay.

( Eleven-year-old girl that Bruce Willis has just rescued from bad guys tells him, 'I'm still a virgin, thanks to you.' )

And I just ended up taking the movie a lot more seriously than I meant to, and I think I'm stopping here and putting this under a cut.

I just finished Rocannon's World, Ursula LeGuin's first published novel. It's definitely by LeGuin, so it's good, but it's also definitely early. It has a Huge Faceless Mystery Enemy Who Cannot Be Reasoned With And Must Be Destroyed. This isn't something you associate with LeGuin, and she clearly wasn't comfortable with it - they're the reason for the Journey, but just barely have a name, are there only at the very beginning and very end, and then are only kinda-sorta there.

The protagonist defeats them with the help of a Mysterious Wise Man On A Mountain, because, being a basically sensical character, he cannot overcome a nonsensical problem on his own, and thus requires an equally nonsensical deus ex machina.

In between, he deals with smaller and more comprehensible crises which are recognizably human, animal, or weather. Those parts are LeGuin. Fortunately, she learned to drop the end-paper.

Random note: I'll eat something generally thought inedible if Rosemary Kirstein hasn't read this book, because (elliptical spoiler for both Rocannon and the Steerswoman series) her Demon Cities are Rocannon's Angel Cities.

(This entry edited a few times over a few minutes after posting it, because my genius comes in spurts, like mustard.)

Books that are awesome recently: the Steerswoman series. Rowan and I are getting married, and neither you nor heterosexuality nor any other force of nature have any say in this, Rosemary Kirstein.

Books that aren't: An Excellent Mystery, the eight kajillionth or whatever book in the Brother Cadfael series. This book has Sexual Politics, which I'll talk about under the cut, my whole thing being just one big spoiler. (And I also gratuitously spoil book one (A Morbid Taste for Bones).)

( ... )

I took three Cadfael books in the series out of the library, but now this one's pissed me off enough that I don't feel like reading the others. I read Cadfael stuff when I'm stressed out - the plots are always kind of predictable and the endings are all happy and Cadfael always gets along with everyone - and, well, they're basically Mary Sue stories with all the dirty fingerprints wiped off, which is the most soothing type of literature you can get without actually involving puddle duckies saving Christmas.

But this time Peters was apparently out of Windex, and the dirty fingerprints made it to press, and now I know all these things about her that I didn't want to, and I don't want to read more of her stuff until I've managed to forget them somewhat.

(And that my children is one of the neverending stories of fandom.)

In related news, this dog here is completely retarded. What the hell, why is it you think corduroy would taste good, you retarded dog.