Jlawrence’s Comments (group member since Mar 08, 2010)

Jlawrence’s comments from the The Sword and Laser group.

Yes, the event was great (especially to see Veronica's head explode when Tad Williams walked on stage), and it was fun meeting everyone!

Anne, you should save up and become part of the Dragon*Con S&L cabal - if not this year, next year! :)

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/02/1388948...

Looks like they asked listeners for suggestions a month ago, now you can vote for 10 titles from the selections and the final result will be their top 100 list.

aldenoneil wrote: "Jon wrote: "If you see me, please be sure to say hello."

We need to develop some sort of S&L greeting/secret handshake."

One hand a laser (pew pew pew), the other a slashing sword?

Wow, I had no idea about these either! This will be good motivation to try to have a chunk of writing ready to bring into a workshop for next year...

Anne wrote: "This goes without saying, but he should definitely say something in Dothraki."

Yes! Ask him to say, "Listen to the Sword & Laser Podcast!" or "Join the Sword & Laser Bookclub" in Dothraki.

Of course, that brings up the questionable existence of "laser" (not to mention "bookclub" and "podcast") in the Dothraki tongue, but I'm guessing an approximation could be worked out phonetically (as loan words).

Desperately trying to finish Feast for Crows!

(It's hopeless, I'll be joining the DwD discussion late...)

Or Gary Numan to do a cyberspace/urban fantasy mashup double CD? Wait, he probably has at some point...

Nice, I like the idea of a game where you scavenge shorelines for steampunk-y artifacts, and I've always liked Dolby's penchant for sci-fi.

aldenoneil, I salute your bravery for wanting to re-experience Howard the Duck.

http://gplus.to/jjsonick

aldenoneil wrote: "I've always been curious why it is we (OK, I) get so caught up in fictional lore when our real, actual history is ripe with drama, and serves as the basis for any fictional lore out there. E.g., I'..."

I think it's rooted in a story grabbing you, and then you wanting to absorb everything else about that story that you can. I'm interested in history and slip non-fiction books into my reading queue with moderate frequency, but well-crafted fictional worlds (usually meaning interesting world-building + good story + good writing/directing/whatever) have always had a deeper draw for me. I've bought Planescape campaign sourcebooks, even though I've never used them for an actual tabletop RPG session, just because I became fascinated with that world thanks to the excellent PC game Planescape: Torment. Sometimes if the world-building is creative enough, I don't even need a story to be fascinated by the fictional world. The best example of that for me is the Codex Seraphinianus.

On what series have the most complex lore -- I think the winners would likely be decade-long franchises whose lore built up largely unplanned by sheer accretion. Take Star Wars which Alden mentioned - if you just stick to the movies and their novelizations, well, there's a good amount of content there but it's not *so* complex. But if you include all the spin-off novels, comic-book, rpg sourcebooks, etc. (not to mention video games like the awesome Tie Fighter one mentioned above), you not only have a complex tangle of lore, but the additional task of deciding what's canon and not, what contradictions you will overlook or hope will be retconned, etc.

For more consistent and directed complex lore, Herbert's Dune and Wolfe's New Sun are the two most familiar to me, and Tolkien certainly for his great breadth and originality in world-building (it's hard to sense that originality now that his world has been used as a high-fantasy template for a bajillion other works). There's a number of authors listed in posts above that I've been meaning to read, too.

Re: YA angst in The Hunger Games:

(view spoiler)[ Phillip wote: " Especially the end bits where Peeta finds out the truth about Kat's feelings. "You don't love me? I love you! Now I'm gonna go sit in my room and cry like a baby about it." I couldn't help rolling my eyes. I mean come on, there was some serious life and death stuff that just happened out there. This bothers you? The girl you like maybe doesn't like-like you back? Even when Katniss and Peeta are teamed up, she starts thinking sometimes about Gale, and then becomes confused about her feelings for Peeta, and you can just see this whole love triangle thing coming a mile away and it's enough to make you wanna gag. I'd prefer Katniss to be a stone-cold badass instead..."

See, this is what I actually liked about HG - the predictable thing would have been for Katniss to actually fall in love with Peeta during the course of their fighting together, but instead she is mostly *acting* to gain approval of the audience/possible sponsors. She is *playing* him - that's pretty unsentimental for a YA protaganist. Likewise, Peeta's reaction seemed to be less one of "I can't believe you don't like me" and more of "I can't believe you *pretended* to fall for me, manipulated me, for the audience's benefit", and therefore less simplistic, less gag-worthing angst. Also, the amount of pages the characters dealt with such angsty feelings seemed pretty mercifully low.

I do grant that now the potential triangle is set-up, there's plenty of room for it to become more gag-worthy in the sequels (which I have not read), but at least in this first book it wasn't the huge eye-roll-athon for me it could've been. (hide spoiler)]

Yeah, it was the premise that sparked the comparison for me. Maybe someday the set-up of "junior high kids dumped into a circumscribed outdoor environment, given a few starting tools & weapons, and told to fight to the death by the oppressive government who brought them there and which runs and watches the game" will be as prevalent as the set-up of "inexperienced young warrior joins up with wise old sage and assorted warriors of various skills to find the [insert mystical object here] that will enable them to defeat [insert big baddie here]" -- but currently it's still pretty unique.

That's why it's interesting to me to see what they did differently. We all seem to agree that Hunger Games did plenty of things differently with the premise that it's far from the watered-down, mainstream knock-off of Battle Royale that frankly I feared it was going to be before I actually read it. I mean, it is less dark and less violent, in keeping with its YA target audience, but it did create its own sense of powerful impact in different ways.

aldenoneil wrote: "Eric wrote: "The Mayor"

Would that be Jlawrence?"

I was voted out in 2000, but thanks to undead ballot-box stuffing, yes, I regained that office!

Now that the idea of Summer Glau playing Katniss has been mentioned, it's hard for me to accept anyone else doing it, even though rationally I know Jennifer Lawrence will likely do a fine job.

Woody Harleson I can actually see pulling off Haymitch.

But Lenny Kravitz as Cinna.....er......um.....

Adrienne wrote: "I also prefer the characters in The Hunger Games, as they felt much more real to me. I didn't connect with any of the characters in Battle Royale, so I wasn't as invested in the outcome of the fight."

Yes, I felt that way too - but since I had only seen the film, I wasn't sure if it was short-changing Battle Royale's characters. Katniss is a great first-person narrator, so the various POV characters in BR would have to be pretty strong to compete...

Andrew wrote: "I actually found myself making comparisons to Ender's Game (a book I have read and love) whilst reading The Hunger Games which had many similar threads - kids as the main actors, a competitive game element, perceived power imbalances between the protagonist and competitors, affordances of skills or attributes for success etc."

Ah, I'm an Ender's Game fan too, but hadn't draw that comparison, but you're right, there's some interesting parallels there.

Sean wrote: "I've not seen the film, so I don't know what explanation they offered there, but the book is set in an alternate reality where Japan won WWII. The Program is supposed to be one of those things Fascist states do because somebody once thought it'd be a good idea (supposedly to measure how hard the people will be able to fight if the Home Islands are ever invaded) and keep doing because nobody ever decides differently."

A-ha, that's a much more better explanation than the one offered in the film. Instead of a fascistic alternate history, the film depicts a near-future Japan that has suffered economic collapse. Handily, wikipedia quotes film's introductory intertitle text:

"At the dawn of the millennium, the nation collapsed. At fifteen percent unemployment, ten million were out of work. 800,000 students boycotted school. The adults lost confidence and, fearing the youth, eventually passed the Millennium Educational Reform Act, AKA the BR Act...."

In the film it didn't strike me as a great way to make the disillusioned youth *less* fearsome... ;) (But it did have some power as an ultimate promotion of dog-eat-dog competition).

If you've seen or read Battle Royale, it's hard not to compare it to The Hunger Games, as they both feature a dystopian future in which kids are forced to fight other kids in a controlled, government-run arena, the fight being all-against all, to the death, only one winner.

I've only seen the film (released in 2000). It would be fairer to compare book-to-book, but it's still interesting to compare film-adaption-to-book.

Battle Royale has the edge of realizing the shocking premise first, but Collins did enough interesting things with the premise that The Hunger Games didn't feel like a rip-off to me. And, as Boots mentioned in another thread, Battle Royale itself is indebted to Lord of the Flies and The Running Man. I would only be ticked off if Collins claimed the premise of The Hunger Games was without precedent.

One major difference: in Battle Royale, the group of combatants is an entire school class whisked away to the arena. That is, they all *know* each other, and a lot of the horror and tension in the film comes from characters turning on not just former allies, but actual former friends they've grown up with. This allowed Battle Royale to go to some darker places than the Hunger Games.

Another major difference is the presence of an interactive live audience in The Hunger Games. The idea of participants courting game-altering sponsors gives The Hunger Games a layer of reality-TV satire and tension regarding whether participants are "acting" to impress sponsors or not.

The rationale for the existence of the game makes more sense to me in The Hunger Games than the film Battle Royale, but that might be a weakness of the film adaptation.

I enjoyed both, though "pummeled by a powerful if schlocky horror film" might be a better description than "enjoy" for my experience with Battle Royale. The characters in Hunger Games, especially Katniss, were more well-developed than Battle Royale's, but now I feel I'm getting into truly unfair comparison territory, as films are notorious for losing subtleties of character development in book adaptations.

Can anyone who has read the book Battle Royale comment on the differences and similarities?

I do find Valeria and the Atrium of Time a interesting puzzle. As for what's revealed about her in Urth of the New Sun:(view spoiler)[Not much. He mentions her several times, and we directly encounter her once, but Severian in Urth makes a point of not writing much about her, declaring he wants her kept private to him -- possibly the only bit of narrative trickery in Urth (as opposed to the multiple ones in Book of the New Sun) and he admits it directly! I do think if she was meant to be a failed Autarch, there would have been more hints of that in Urth. (hide spoiler)] As for her possibly being Severa, (view spoiler)[I hope not, don't we have enough incest via Dorcas already? :/ (hide spoiler)]. I am still quite curious about her and the Atrium, though.

Ed wrote: "The incorporation of Thecla's memories/personality into Severian's psyche has already taken place by the time Severian puts pen to paper in order to record the events we read in The Book of the New Sun, so I don't see any reason for some memories to be "colored" by Thecla but not others."

True, that integration has taken place, but I'm still intrigued by the idea her consciousness might have some precedence when Severian is specifically remembering their time together (that she might partially take over bits of the narrative of those memories - a shadow of how she was able to partially take over his body several times during the events of Book of the New Sun).

But I admit there are additional things that argue against that. There are a number of incidents of Severian contradicting something he wrote earlier that have nothing directly to do with Thecla (his reaction to executing Agilius, for example), which makes his pattern of saying one thing and revealing a different version of it later look independent of Thecla's consciousness, even though that pattern includes his memories of her. (view spoiler)[It's also interesting that in Urth of the New Sun there's practically no hint of narrative trickery and barely any mention of the multiple consciousnesses within him - the Thecla within him isn't even summoned during the sight of the aquastor-Thecla during the trial, if I remember correctly. (hide spoiler)]

Veronica wrote: "We should find a place to get a drink nearby afterwards"

Yes, I think some of my co-workers know that area, I'll ask around...