Mari Ness's Blog, page 34

One scratch more!

For those of you waiting impatiently for Les Miserables next week, the Little One would like to offer up his latest poem, which he feels perfectly captures the spirit and meaning of the original novel:

One scratch more –
Another day, another lap moment
This endless road to nirvana –
This human who scratches my chin –
Surely she'll do it again!

One scratch more!

I was not scratched enough today –
will I be scratched enough tomorrow?

One scratch more!

Tomorrow she'll be typing away again –
And yet that does not scratch my chin!

One scratch more!

One more nap here on my own –
One more look of her not caring –
What a life I might have known,
I'll just walk into her lap!
She'll be sure to scratch me there!

One scratch more!

One scratch more – wait, where is my tuna?
I must nip this in the bud,
I must sink my little teeth in,
I must mark my point with blood!

Watch her run amuck,
watch her squawk and curse,
note how this results in hands in my fur!

One scratch more to my nirvana!
Tomorrow I'm certain has lots of scratches for me in store!
One scratch more!
One more scratch!
One scratch more!

mariness @ 2012-12-17T15:08:00

Was feeling better this morning and went out for a bit, to come home to a return of aches, fever, sore throat -- not my usual chronic illness symptoms. So glad I had that unhelpful flu shot. Three hours of napping later and my fever is worse. Going back to bed and staying there for awhile.

Roald Dahl reread starting up

Over at Tor.com, I've started up the Roald Dahl reread with a look at James and the Giant Peach.

A bad headache is creeping in, so anything else is going to have to wait for a bit.

Mid season TV chatter continued: Fringe

And speaking of Fringe --

Previous seasons of Fringe have explored the bizarre, the disgusting, the parallel, and the very bad science that happens when you keep a cow in the lab.

This season, Fringe has at least given up on the cow. (Unless it got Ambered, in which case, I don't want to know.) So that's a plus. But Fringe has also given up on something else, and it took me awhile to identify it: Hope.

(Also, "fun," but we'll get there.)

I'm behind this season, so perhaps this eventually did get addressed, but the first few episodes were almost relentlessly grim and depressing. Even the few moments of reunion/joy/happiness were, well, depressing. It probably doesn't help that the set designers, reading the scripts, have gone with, "Ok, well, grey it is then!" and the camera people have followed their lead with nice grey filters everywhere.

The result is a show that I'm just not looking forward to watching any more. It's odd. I'm not against grim and depressing – I mean, I've been reading and watching Game of Thrones. I will probably even end up watching Anna Karenina on DVD eventually, which if I remember correctly did not exactly have a happy ending in the book.

But some place in the third episode of this season I realized the problem. I'm assuming, because this is television, and this is the last season of Fringe and the showrunners know this, that the show is – eventually – going to end up with a happy ending. (As proof I show you the final episode of last season which had the possibility of being the last episode of Fringe ever when it was filmed.) And that's great. I love happy endings.

But they have to feel right. They have to feel justified, not contrived. And they have to fit into the universe of the story that has been written.

I could believe in happy endings in the first four seasons of Fringe: this was a show where people encountered monsters and flipped universes and parallels and fought or learned to work with them; the entire point of the show was, "secure the monsters for everyone's safety." But the part of the point of this season – set in a grim future – is to restore the damn monsters. So not only am I watching a grim, depressing and very grey future, I am watching a future where everyone wants things to go wrong again. (And on a sidenote, I'm watching a future that's suggesting that most of what was done in the first four seasons was completely wasted since they were all running around chasing the wrong monsters.)

I can accept the incredibly depressing ending of Anna Karenina because within the crafted universe of that story it can have no other ending. I have a bad feeling that at the end of Fringe, I'll be thinking of other possible endings. (For instance, not having this season.)

Anyway, thanks to this I haven't been watching as much Fringe as I generally would have, and while flailing to find something to watch that wasn't Fringe, ended up watching the new Upstairs, Downstairs. Oh, dear. Enough for its own separate entry. Which will have to wait a bit since I'm about to head out.

Mid-season TV chatter: Revenge, Once Upon a Time, Grimm

I guess it's about time for an incomplete mid TV season round-up, hmm? Let's see.

The greatest disappointment of the season, so far, has been Revenge. This was my unexpected favorite show of last year, but, alas, this year the show has seriously slid off – more plunged off – the rails, mostly because not enough wealthy people have been thrown off buildings, shot, or boarded exploding planes. Focus, show, focus. Also the show has brought on some new villains called "The Initiative" who are just not using enough Botox or wearing enough designer clothing to have the same sizzle. Admittedly someone fell off a balcony which was nicely dramatic and added more people with English accents which is always a good thing, but, not enough. It's a classic example of the importance of sticking with your original concept.

To counter this, last year's greatest disappointment, Once Upon a Time, has improved somewhat this year, largely because it's given up on its original concept, which was "tell what really happened in fairy tales and story books," which thanks to Network Interference became "tell what really happened in Disney movies," and rarely managed to give new twists on either, despite a generally strong cast. (Lena Parilla in particular has had a lot of fun playing the Evil Queen, mostly, I suspect, because of the fabulous Evil Outfits.) Paired with this was a "real world" storyline that made no sense the more you thought about it (if nobody can come in and out of Storybook, how exactly are they getting gas to drive their cars? That sort of thing) and overall just never hit the potential of the cool concept. I couldn't exactly blame the guy playing the genie for fleeing the show, even if he ended up fleeing to the train wreck that is Revolution.

Anyway, this year the show has more or less said, to hell with the retelling fairy tales concept, and instead just gone with a hodgepodge of various characters from various books who wander around an Enchanted Forest (Motto: With our Enchanted Geography, You, Too, Can Reach the Enchanted Pond and the Enchanted Beanstalk and the Enchanted Towers and the Enchanted Poppies and Anywhere the Plot Needs You To Be Within Hours!) interacting with each other, which is a lot more fun and oddly ends up making more sense – I mean, we've all been waiting to see the Queen of Hearts and Captain Hook join forces. So that's all good. It helps that Captain Hook is really rocking the Sexy Bad Boy vibe. It's probably not a good sign that of the many, many men the show keeps throwing at its main protagonist, Emma, this is the first pairing I've liked. I mean, he's Captain Hook. (That said most of the men thrown at Emma have not exactly been the upstanding hero types.)

Which is not to say that this season hasn't had its bumps. Kudos to the show for finally introducing an Asian character (who in her last scene rather hinted that she's more than willing to, shall we say in a family friendly sort of way, go both ways), minus several hundred points for casting an actress who can so far be most kindly called "wooden" (up until the seriously gay scene, that is). Minus still more points for completely underusing the talented Sarah Bolger and inexplicably forcing her to use an American accent. (The accents are all over the place in this show and make no sense anyway, so why anyone isn't using native accents I can't tell you.) And since people still can't get in and out of Storybook (with the exception of maybe three or four people) I'm still wondering how they are getting gas for their cars. Does the town have an oil refinery we haven't seen? Anyway.

The other fairy tale show, Grimm (aka "the successor to X-Files and Fringe, except instead of aliens and whatever Fringe thinks it's doing this week we're going with shapechangers very loosely based on various fairy tales, frequently not the ones collected and retold by the Grimms"), stuck with "exactly what are we supposed to do with the generally useless girlfriend on this show," went with "love triangle with a suspiciously convenient amnesia angle!" which at least gave the actress something to do, and allowed the show to explore its mythology further. I'm still not loving it, but it's a considerably better thought out show than Once Upon a Time; less ambitious, but usually more satisfying, and not a bad replacement for X-Files and Fringe.

Oh, Les Miz - Call Me, Maybe?

For all of you who can't wait for Les Miserables this Christmas, something to tide you over:

Christmas train

I love little model trains. Just love them. Back when I was a little kid, my brother had a Lego train set, which we played with endlessly, creating Lego City, Lego Town, Legoville and Lego Space (Lego trains go everywhere) as places to send the train to. The train also went under the bed which added to the mystery and sometimes the Lego people had wars over the train, as you do, and sometimes they just quietly traded, and sometimes they carried cookies.

Back in the States, my brother next got one of the model electric trains, on a little track, which I could watch endlessly. I got him a second little toy train set later, when we were in Connecticut. More watching trains.

Some day, I told myself, I would have a house of my own and a room that had a full train set with lots and lots and lots of trains on multiple tracks.

And then I kinda grew up – only kinda – and lived in places that were too small for trains. Or so I told myself. Plus setting them up was going to be a bit of a problem. I did consider putting up a shelf high up on the walls in my Hollywood apartment so I could have a train going round and round – but the corners. Oooh, the corners. That was going to take a little bit more balancing and bridging and –

So I didn't. And slowly the idea of model trains backed off, bit by bit.

Until last week, when I heard various sounds coming from the living room. This happens a lot, so I ignored it, until I came out and saw –

Christmas train!!!

Yes, we now have a Lionel Christmas train going round the Christmas tree and the coffee table (the coffee table mostly by necessity because moving the coffee table to accommodate the train would mean blocking access between the kitchen and the living room). It has a little train engine that lights up and makes train whistles and a little caboose that lights up and a little car dragging Christmas trees.

Naturally, we have put little Star Wars Lego figures on it. Originally this was just Lego Christmas Yoda and Lego Chewbacca guarding the train and then somehow Darth Vader and a stormtrooper got on board ready to attack. So if I no longer have Boba Fett firing at Ewoks in the Christmas tree (a decade long tradition ended when Boba Fett's head came off) we at least have Yoda on a Christmas train.

The moral of the story: you are never too old for Christmas trains.

And speaking of returning to childhood...I wasn't going to get one this year, really really truly I wasn't, and then it was on sale, so...yes, I have another Lego Star Wars Advent Calendar. Because starting the day with a touch of magic and mystery is always a good thing.

ICE!

This post and the next one were supposed to go up yesterday, as part of a Happy St. Nicholas' Day. (Actually, this post should have gone up before Thanksgiving, but who's paying attention?) And then, things happened, as they do, so, Happy St. Ambrose Day and Dia de las Velitas Day! Or, Happy Friday.

In any case, it's a time for chatting about certain holiday celebrations! So, part one: ICE!


ICE is an ice sculpture thing hosted by the Gaylord Palms Hotel. I've wanted to go for years, but never could find anyone who wanted to go with me, until this year, when my mother unexpectedly scored tickets.

So, ice sculptures!

For some reason this year the Gaylord Palms had joined up with the upcoming Santa Madagascar movie. (Or whatever it's called.) In theory this was an awesome merge of cartoon and ice. In practice, this meant going round and round a large room blasting the trailer from the Madagascar movie as lights kept blinking at us, making me really dizzy. (The general idea, borrowed from Disney et. al., was to keep people entertained while in line, thus the volume to ensure it could be heard over noisy children, which worked rather less well when the room didn't have any noisy children, as in our otherwise well timed visit.) My mother, who couldn't remember even hearing about the Madagascar movie before this ("Is it a Mickey thing?") wasn't doing much better. With joy we saw that we had finally, finally neared the actual entrance, which meant NO MORE BLINKING LIGHTS and no more of the dizzying noise and –

"You'll have to wait here –" said a woman, stopping us.

The hall in front of us was empty. "Oh, please," I said. "The sound and the lights are making me dizzy."

A wheelchair occasionally has its advantages. She waved us through to the hallway and then we both started feeling better.

The next bit was some nonsense over photos, which unfortunately was another room with blinking lights. Another dizzy bit. And then, finally, we got our big parkas and got into the ice sculptures and even if they were almost all from the Madagascar movie it was all terribly awesome.

Also, COLD. And I do mean very cold – the sculptures are kept well below freezing to, well, make sure they don't melt. Which might be all very well for you more northerly folk, but for Florida people, it's cold.

How cold? Well, cold enough that you are not going to be getting decent pictures because, and I am not kidding, my cell phone was too cold. Admittedly, it's a cheap cell phone, but, equally admittedly, it's cold. Since I didn't have my camera with me (which was just as well; that camera hates anything that it doesn't consider to be perfect lighting conditions) that left me with just the iTouch. Which, as it turns out, is not exactly the best thing to use when your fingers are half frozen.

It also leads to pictures that mostly come out looking like this:



Although occasionally I did a bit better with something like this:



Or this:



Penguins:



They also had ice slides, which I didn't go on, mostly because they looked REALLY cold, and a Sphinx, which did not seem particularly Christmasy, and various other things, mostly telling the entire story of the upcoming Madasgascar movie with the result that my mother and I realized now not only did we not want to see the movie, we didn't have to -- we'd just gone through the entire plot.

The movie stuff, however, was followed by some really lovely ice angels:



I could have spent a lot more time there, but it was COLD. So we fled looking for hot chocolate. Alas, the available hot chocolate was pretty terrible, but, fortunately, they were also selling gingerbread cookies as a saving grace.

Afterwards we spent some time looking around the hotel, which apart from ice sculptures, a convention center, water slides, various pools, massage and spa services also has a wetlands area in its lobby, which is pretty awesome.

Next up: Train! I think it deserves its own post.

Publications: Apex, Daily Science Fiction, Tor rereads

Rather a busy day for publications around here. Let's see.

1. First up, Apex Magazine published its December issue today. In it appears my short story, Labyrinth. You can read it for free at that link, or buy a copy for your Kindle, Nook or Ipad using any of the links on the sideline.

2. And last week's Daily Science Fiction flash piece, Shattered Amber is also now up on the web.

Assuming all continues to go well, you will be seeing short stories from me in future issues of both publications sometime next year.

3. And the Georgette Heyer reread continues with Death in the Stocks, the first of the three Heyer mysteries I'll be reviewing.

Blog posts with – gasp – actual content, not just links, coming soon, I promise, but for now, I'm pretty wiped.

Cover posing

Some of you may remember when Jim Hines did an elaborate series of posts demonstrating just how hard it is to look like a woman on a fantasy book cover. It was so hilarious, he won a Hugo Award for Best Fan Writer.

And now, Jim is promising to do another round, this time as a fundraiser for the Aicardi Syndrome Foundation.

You know, at this point, I could lie, and say that I'm helping out because of the Foundation. (And really, I should, because this is an excellent cause.) But, um, honestly I just want to see more of those poses. Join me?