ankewehner.de

It’s been 52 weeks since I started the “post a bit of fiction each Friday” thing. Once I didn’t post anything. Once you got a list of “very short stories” gathered from my Twitter account. Ten times I missed the Friday time window, though I think with one or two exceptions it was Friday somewhere in the world still. And forty times, it just plain worked. A few were rushed and half-arsed, but, over all, it worked.

I am very happy about this.

Since I am interested in tracing ideas, and at least one reader might find this interesting, here are some thoughts on the origins of my ideas:
(more…)

I bought Soulless after coming across recommendations on a comment thread on Ursula Vernon’s Livejournal. Probably I should have paid more attention, but, oh, well. Let’s look at the blurb:

Alexia Tarabotti is labouring under a great many social tribulations.
First, she has no soul. Second, she’s a spinster whose father is both Italian and dead. Third, she was rudely attacked by a vampire, breaking all standards of social etiquette.
Where to go from there? From bad to worse, apparently, for Alexia accidentally kills the vampire – and then the appalling Lord Maccon (loud, messy, gorgeous, and werewolf) is sent by Queen Victoria to investigate.
With unexpected vampires appearing and expected vampires disappearing, everyone seems to believe Alexia is responsible. Can she figure out what is actually happening to London’s High Society? Will her soulless ability to negate supernatural powers prove useful or just plain embarrassing? Finally, who is the real enemy, and do they have treacle tart?

That blurb made me expect a mystery with a bit of romance thrown in. However, it’s at least half romance, including sex, and the mystery bits didn’t seem handled very well.

I get the kind of mystery where the reader is supposed to know more than the protagonists trying to figure things out, because some scenes are not from the protagonists’ perspective, and I get the kind of mystery where vague hints are dropped that the reader might figure out things faster than the protagonists.
In this book, there was a hint early on not only dropped, but highlighted with red flashing lights and a klaxon, so I was left with the impression that the supposed investigators were remarkably dense never considering something in that direction.
That leads to my main beef with the book: The plot is utterly predictable. The only suprises are of the kind “man with a gun enters the room”, metaphorically speaking; nobody turns out to be anything other than they seem.

What I like best about this book is the worldbuilding. It’s an alternative history in which the Renaissance was triggered by immortals (vampires, werewolves and ghosts) giving up their “masquerade”, and by the time of the book they are accepted sub-societies that people who survive the initiating bite get congratulated on joining, at least in Britain.
Another interesting bit were the mindgames Alexia was playing with herself at some point regarding her relationship (or not) with Lord Maccon.

As to the writing style, I think the author was mostly going for an amusing tone. There were a handful of places where the words themselves threw me right out of the story (most bizarre example: referring to penis-in-vagina intercourse as “he impaled himself”).
There were at least that many lines that struck me as particularly funny and/or clever, though, so over all not too bad.

For me it was OK to read fluff, but nothing that makes me want to buy following books. I suspect someone who has more interest in romance and sex might get more out of it than I did.

Yes, after all I am one of the people who added to the visitor-count for that movie.

The hype seems weird, but over all it wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be, after some things I’d heard.

Some spoilers following, in case you’re even more slow finding your way to the cinema.

(more…)

So, recently I finished re-reading Making Money, the 36th Discworld novel, by Terry Pratchett. I have read all of them, some of them more often than I can remember.

I’m a bit sad that in my mind the best part of Making Money is that the list of Discworld books on the first pages includes those for younger readers as part of the main series, rather than on a separate list. People going “they are children’s books, so they’re not Discworld book” were a kind of pet peeve of mine, while this novel just fell flat, to the point that I took a break to re-read a 50 volume manga series between chapters.

There were a few bits of impressive or funny descriptions, sure, and I did finish it, and maybe it’ll grow on me if I re-read it more often. For now at least, it just doesn’t click.

Mr Bent’s sermon-rants about gold at the start put me off, and the idea (suggested on the backcover an by Moist von Lipwig in the text) that he might be a vampire does not gel from the start, considering that that would be the first vampire not admitting to being one in how long? The entire series?
Gladys, the golem with a crush on her boss, the abrasive Adora Belle Dearhart, Moist’s old associate with the denture troubles, the Leonardo-with-a-narrower-specialisation, the generic slightly mad scientist and interchangable Igor, the utterly pathetic bad guy Cosmo… No-one in this book caught my sympathy or interest, which is sad.

As to Moist, in Going Postal his crazy stunts to revolutionise the mail system were fun to read. In Making Money, the things like breaking into his own office at the start make sense as something to show he doesn’t deal well with routine, but, well, compared to his last book, his later actions seem rather boring, at least if you already have a basic idea of how money works despite not being backed by gold.

What comes to my mind when comparing those two books is how mundane Making Money is. Paper money is something we all are used to. There were some bits of description that tried to create a sense of wonder about how a penny would “turn into different things” depending on what it was exchanged for, but for me it just didn’t work. Money is something practical and lacks the “magic” and personal touch of the written word that, in form of letters, drove Going Postal.
Superficially, the cabinet and the golems added some magic to Making Money, but it seemed rather tacked on rather than integrated into the story.

In summary, Making Money seemed to me mostly like a mix of “let’s write about how money works” and “let’s modernise Ankh-Morpork” with story sprinkled on top, rather than the (admittedly very high) quality of storytelling that I love so about other books in the series.

The Stepsister Scheme is a novel based on fairy tales.

Shortly after her honeymoon, Danielle – also known as Cinderella – is attacked by one of her stepsisters, who tells her that her Prince Charming is gone. She insist on accompanying Talia (Sleeping Beauty) and Snow (White) to find and rescue him from his kidnappers.

Jim Hines draws on not-Disneyfied versions of the tales, adding his own ideas on top of it. Talia received among other things the fairy gift of grace and dance – and considers fighting a dance. She also is well-informed about goings on in the kingdom, and has more than a bit of criminal energy. Snow is a sorceress adept in mirror magic. Danielle’s main contribution to the team seems to be a certain knack for finding ways to twist fairy “contracts”, though the whole talking-to-animals bit doesn’t hurt, either.

There are only three things that bothered me a bit, but they were rather minor. First, a trend of repeating some words too often in short intervals. Second, the “we don’t care about you, we just want the child you’re pregnant with” stuff – but then, Danielle didn’t exactly play the part of incubator on legs, when she could help it. Third, the strong plot hook left for the sequel – not a real cliffhanger (though I guess it could be if you care more about children than I do), but it’s a practise I dislike.

On the plus side we have a nice adventure plot with mystery elements, friendship in a group of women (rather than the usual “dudes plus one token female/love interest”). I particularly likes easygoing, enthusiastic Snow.
The world as such also feels alive, with Snow and Talia’s background from different countries, and the politics between the (human) kingdom of Lorindar and the fairies.

It’s fun to read and will end up on my bookshelf, and I will probably get the sequel eventually.

Judging by a recent post in Jim Hines’ Livejournal, the announced trilogy (second part to be published this year) has already grown to a tetralogy.

---

“Sleeping Beauty’s” background is based on Sun, Moon, and Talia, a pretty disgusting tale with an even more disgusting Aesop tacked on.

I can’t think of many other fantasy/adventure books focusing on a group of women, in fact, only the Discworld book featuring the Witches. Anyone got any recommendations?

This is halfway an attempt to explain why I have so negative reactions to images of sexy women, partly an attempt to unload a bit of the pressure I feel I’m under. It’s a summary of what has been going on in my head for years, piling up ever higher until I’m close to snapping point quite often.

I see advertisments using women as decoration. A photo of a woman’s arse: Buy our kitchen knives! A woman swimming nude: Buy our margarine! A bunch of women in sponge bikinis cleaning a car by rubbing their tits and arses against it: Buy our cellphone plan!
I understand that “they” see women as things, not as people.

I see movies and comics which supposedly feature action heroines. They wear high heels and corsets, long hair and dangly accessories, clothes that consist of more holes than fabric, or that cling as tightly as body paint. They are routinely shown in ridiculous contortions to show off their tits and arses. Often they will need rescuing from a male hero, or they are killed off for the effect that will have on a male hero, or they will be made a love interest, a trophy of a male hero rather than someone in their own right.
I understand that “they” see women as commodity for men, as sex objects. Women need no brain, no common sense, as long as they are sexy. And they are not expected to have any sense.

I see an advertisment of a woman in an evening dress with cleavage well below bust line and slit sides up to her hipbones, next to a man in a suit. He is grabbing her arse, and she likes it. I see that women are expected to show more skin than men. I see images of nude or nearly nude women used as decoration a lot.
I understand that “they” want women to be exposed, vulnerable.

I see photos of women tied up and gagged, degraded and beaten, staged to look “sexy”, for example, featured on deviantArt.
I understand that “they” want to hurt and rape women. That explains why they like women to be vulnerable: It makes hurting us easier.

I see actresses who all look the same, female comic figures that all look the same, all young and “sexy” (while male actors and comic figures come in all kinds of ages and shapes).
I try on clothes, and nothing fits me properly.
I understand that “they” think I (and 99% of women on this planet) have no right to exist, because I don’t fit their narrow mold.

I hear someone saying “women are bad at maths and logical thinking”, or “women are bad at spatial thinking and reading maps”, or “women don’t understand technology”.
I understand that they take one look at me, and decide I must be stupid.

Then I also hear them saying anything like “women like buying shoes” or “women wear makeup”.
I understand that if they knew me, they would consider me an unnatural freak, because I don’t fit their mold for “woman”.

I hear someone say “women are better at social interaction and empathy than men”.
I understand that they think I’m a complete failure, because I’m a woman and not good in the one field women are supposed to be good in.

I hear someone saying “Women are only happy in their natural role. If a woman thinks she wants to be anything but a housewife and mother, she’s just deluding herself.”
I understand that they think I am a machine, a thing, without a mind, without a right to make choices.

This is what living in my head is like, on a bad day.

I don’t like little children. I am interested in technology, and don’t do too badly in maths. My spatial thinking is, if a recent test I took is any indication, better than that of the average man. I hate buying shoes and clothes. I’m short, and have small breasts because most fat goes to my thighs and arse. Shaving my legs gives me a rash, so I’d rather not even try what would happen if I shaved my pubic hair, and I’m not masochistic enough for waxing anything. I’m a geek with trouble socialising, and the out I looked for was taking up Friday Night Magic: The Gathering tournaments, where I’m the only woman among a dozen guys.

I am sick and tired of being told very nearly every day of my life, in many little ways, that I have no right to exist as I am, that I should either try to change myself and suffer, or cease existing altogether.

I don’t. I suspect the reason why I prefer English songs to German ones is that ignoring the lyrics is easier. I also tend to skip songs/poems inserted into stories, but before I go off on a tangent too far, here’s the point: I’d like to make some music recommendations, including lastfm links where I could find them.

First, I love soundtracks. Y’know, the score kind.

Probably my favourite bit of soundtrack from recent years is Up is Down from the third Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack, by Frank Zimmer. It’s from the “rocking the boat” scene. The contrast between the lighthearted and more dramatic bits is well balanced, and over all it jut makes my feet tap every time I hear it.

Another piece I fell in love with is the title theme of the fifth season of Babylon 5. There’s a spirit of big things ahead captured here. I eventually found it on the CD The Ragged Edge. Unfortunately it’s very short; when I cut it out two other bits it was stuck to, only 1:30 were left.

One thing I claim occasionally is, “Everything is better with e-guitars”. It’s why Metallica covering Ennio Morricone’s Ecstasy of Gold sounds pretty awesome to me.

Mind, electric violins are wonderful, too, and since they’re not quite as common can be a nice change.

There is, of course, Vanessa Mae. I got the album The Violin Player cheaply some time ago, and my favourite song is Classical Gas.

One musician I discovered recently is Ed Alleyne-Johnson. He acconpanies his own playing by recording bits and looping them, and it just sounds awesome. He has both original compositions and covers of pop/rock songs. Of what I heard, my favourites are Sweet Child o’Mine and Zephyr Song, both covers (of songs by Guns N’ Roses and the Red Hot Chili Peppers, respectively). Of the original compositions I quite like Orange.

One of the few musicians/bands I ever saw live was Charlie McMahon and Gondwana. Didgeridoo and whatever else. Unfortunately there is hardly anything on lastfm, but maybe you can find it on your own if you’re interested. Swarm – which is a very loooong song, only gets started properly 3 minutes in – from the album Travelling also features an electric violin, and the rhythm combined with the burr of the didgeridoo and the sweeping violin melody puts flight in my mind. (Like “flying”, not like “fleeing”, OK? OK.)

Manifest Destiny – Nightcrawler is a one-shot comic from a few months back.
For those not following Marvel Comics: “Manifest Destiny” refers to the X-Men moving from New York State to San Francisco.

I really do wonder what the hell Marvel writers/editors were thinking when they took the label for an idea that boils down to “We must take away land from inferior humans, because God made us superior” and apply it to the X-Men.

Anyway, spoilers will follow.

(more…)

I take an interest in American comics taking place in Germany, or featuring German characters, mostly because I want to know if really all American comic creators are so stupid they believe we’re stuck about a hundred years in the past, as “all houses are timber frame constructions and people wear lederhosen every day” suggests.

The Eternals series published by Marvel in 2008-2009 did better than most.

Pertinent plot points: There’s a group of superhumans (the Eternals) who have been turned into humans. Most of them don’t even remember their true nature. Those that do are trying to find the others.

One of those they find is a German engineer, living under the name Phillip Stoss. “Stoss” is an existing, as far as I can tell not very common name. The etymology of the name might be more complicated, but obviously it is the correct alternative spelling of “Stoß”, which is a noun translating to “push”, or a number of similar things, depending on context.

He works for “Ziffengel Motorwerks” in Zuffenhausen. If “Ziffengel” is supposed to be a reference to anything, I couldn’t figure out to what – “Engel” means “angel”, though. “Motorwerks” I’d buy as a name for a metal band, because the butchered grammar is on par with stuff like using umlauts ignoring that they are pronounced differently from their corresponding regular letters, but not a serious company. The correct plural would be “Motorenwerke”, or, if you like, “Motoren Werke”. That’s what the MW of BMW stands for, by the way.

A very minor quibble: Zuffenhausen would properly be Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen. But anyway, using Zuffenhausen as base for a car company was a very nice touch. In the real world, it’s the seat of the Porsche headquarters.

He says his parents were killed when he was two, and, “I was sent to live with my Grandmother in Dresden. She looked after me until I was sixteen.” The next thing he said about that was, “We lived above a little toy shop in a small village in the Schwarzwald.” Now, the entire page was written to show up inconsistencies in his memory, what with mixing up pet names and car makes, but that is by far the biggest mistake. Since there is no reaction from his wife, or the people (probably) pretending to be German attorneys, I get the feeling it’s something the writer missed. Let me illustrate:

Dresden is way out East, the Schwarzwald as far in the Southwest as you can go. Furthermore, while it’s not easy to guess the age of comic characters from their faces, I don’t think he’s older than 50. In that case, those two places are in two different countries, and the Inner German Border was not that easy to cross.

One of the nicer points is Stoss correcting the “where did you attend college” to say he went to a university of applied sciences. The one in Cologne actually exists, and was founded in 1971. I can’t figure out what “Rhineland University” is. The closest possible match seems to be the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelm Universität Bonn, calling itself “University of Bonn” on the English version of its own website. It doesn’t seem to deal with engineering, though.

It may be not really obvious, but to me someone having a BMW or Audi as a first car sounds a bit weird, since they’re both relatively expensive brands, even moreso around the supposed time of Stoss’ youth (70s). According to my mother a VW Käfer, R4 or “Ente” was typical, with the very occasional old Ford thrown in.

Lastly, I’l like to point out that the inconsistent lettering was a bit confusing. The “interview” didn’t have brackets, so were they speaking English? But the property Stoss was alledgedly inheriting was in Germany, so why would attorneys from an English-speaking country be involved? Probably just a slip.

Oh, well, all in all, even with the problems, it’s better than most, and there obviously was some effort to get things right involved.

Marvel Comics, Eternals, written by Charles & Daniel Knauf, Illustrated by Daniel Acuña, letters by Todd Klein

*points at title* That’s a children’s book (9+) by Derek Landy, a sequel of one I liked a lot, so I picked it up when I spotted it on the shelf in a local bookshop.

The backcover blurb reads, “You know how it is – you think you’ve saved the world, and then ANOTHER evil villain turns up with an unbeatable monster and starts breaking things. Oh, yes, and you’ve got a skull for a head. A thirteen-year-old girl for a sidekick. And no clue what to do…”

Now, while the weird prevalence of very nearly every damn book dealing with saving the world is getting on my nerves a bit, the first book’s writing style made up for that. That blurb also suggests that Skulduggery Pleasant is the protagonist, which would have been nice. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

Playing with Fire takes place about one year after its prequel, and Stephanie is a mage in training and the skeleton detective’s junior partner. She is the protagonist, and the title character of the series is a supporting character only.

As to the plot, some evil mage was sprung from prison and now tries to revive some kind of Frankenstein Monster which in turn will call Lovecraft-style elder gods back to our world.

In short, this book lacks everything that made the first one interesting.

The great dialogue that was the reason why I liked the prequel was nearly entirely absent, being genuinely funny in maybe two or three places, and otherwise coming across like annoying bickering rather than amusing banter. Unless dialogue was outright dropped and replaced by action scenes with far, far too many “and”s in them. Top it off with over-the-top gore I thought I didn’t have to endure in children’s books.

Neither was there a mystery, or any surprising plot twists. It was pretty clear what was going on from the start, and when information was needed, it was only a question of going to a particular person who had it, all very linear.

On top of that the more interesting plot threads (I’m thinking particularly of Stephanie’s reflection, a double summoned out of a mirror to take her place at home and school while she’s off adventuring, possibly growing into more than a mere reflection) are left dangling for the sequel(s?). I do not like books that cannot stand on their own, and I really dislike obviously deliberate sequel hooks.

Well, that was money wasted, and I definitely won’t buy the next part.