Last Cal post of the semester, plus GoT and (you guessed it!) a meme

[lunasariel]

OK, so, for all intents and purposes, I'm officially DONE with my first full year as a Cal student! I say "for all intents and purposes," as I technically have one more tomorrow, but our professor gave us only one instruction: "bring breakfast." So I think I'm good.

That leaves only a paper and two sit-down finals, all of which went more or less smoothly (but not quickly or easily, which necessitated my radio silence for the past several days). The paper, as I think I've said, was actually fun, so I'm not sure whether or not it counts as work. My ENGL 45B final, on Tuesday, was definitely a job and a half, but I think I did okay. The page of notes was a lifesaver more than once, for the quote IDs as much as the essay(s). Also, I could commiserate with M afterwards and compare answers. Irish Lit, though...*shudder*. I emailed the professor to ask whether or not we could bring notes, since he hadn't mentioned it in class, and I kind of, um, got yelled at via email. I mean, yikes. I don't know whether I just caught him at a bad time, or a lot of people had been asking that question ("a lot" being relative; there are only, like, 10 people in the class), or what, but I really don't think I deserved capslock for a perfectly legitimate question. This actually galvanized me to study harder, since, okay, he already apparently thinks I'm some kind of slacker, and I sure don't want that opinion borne out on the actual test. On the other hand, it caused worse test-taking anxiety than I've had in years, which didn't lead to the greatest night's sleep, which in turn wasn't the best thing in the world for an 8 AM final. Speaking of which, the test itself wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, especially considering the professor's extremely fearsome reputation, but I'm still glad I spent a couple of hours immediately before feverishly reciting lists of aislingi and the chronology of the Easter Rising.

Now, though, The Roomie has moved out, and her side of the room looks kind of strange without all her stuff: no more posters on the walls (I can do without that creepy Twilight one staring at me, though), no more books and snacks spread across the desk, no more mini-fridge under the mirror, no more jacket hanging off the edge of the bed. Oh, well, mine will look just as strange tomorrow; I'm getting picked up Friday night, so I'll have plenty of time to run all the little errands that still need to be run. I will miss this view, though. The Bay is kind of foggy today, but there are what looks like jasmine and roses in the garden of the Buddhist temple next door, and People's Park is as close to blooming as it gets. Hey, I warned you guys about my end-of-the-semester nostalgia!



I don't know if this makes me a bad geek, or a bad person, or what, but secretly, one of the things I'm really looking forward to at home is getting back on World of Warcraft. Understand, I'm a strictly solo, character-oriented player. I can't stand the "lol-fag-n00b-tank" players as much as anyone else. It's just that, during D&D dry spells (which, TBH, generally are more frequent than times when there's a game running), I do hanker for some character creation, and WoW sates (fills? slakes? How does one abate hankering, anyway?) that hankering. I really hope that nobody hacked in and stripped my human paladin the way they did with my worgen hunter, because I'm looking forward to getting back to her. The pally, I mean. Of course, I was sad to lose my hunter, but, eh, her story was mostly complete. Her motivation was to find her missing family, come to terms with her new form, and convince others to do the same, all of which she accomplished (more or less). The pally, though, is still a work in progress. At the moment, she's on a quest for redemption after murdering an inconveniently-placed but otherwise unarmed blood elf arcanist who, it turns out, was working on a cure to the blood elf addiction to magic. She only found this out when one of said arcanist's colleagues, another paladin, unwittingly saved her life. The two struck up a friendship, or at least a partnership, and it eventually came out that he's looking for whoever or whatever killed his fellow researcher (and possible love interest? He's kind of cagey on this point), much to her discomfort. She's actually mostly left off the warrior's life now, having seen where that leads, and turned more towards academics, having become something of an archaeologist of note, and even earning a professorship. She's mostly been working on High Elven history, secretly hoping that she might be able to finish her victim's work. She still hasn't worked up the courage to tell her friend the truth, though, especially since their alliance has softened his previously implacable hatred towards his people as it has hers towards his. So we'll see where that goes.



Aside from some Maskerade to keep me sane, I've had to put myself under a book/movie/TV ban for a few days, as the temptation to blow off studying in favor of watching Babylon 5 was pretty damn strong. Now that all the heavy lifting is done, however, I can get back to my more usual pursuits. The careful reader will have noted that I've rather fallen behind on Game of Thrones the past couple of weeks, and I've finally started working to remedy that. Today's fare was episode five, "The Ghost of Harrenhal."

The big Team Sparkly and Co. news is that Renly gets ganked right off the bat. There is a minor change, where Renly agrees to leave Robb the North in exchange for an alliance against everyone else, which is actually very in-character for HBO!Renly. But then the shadow baby (who the CGI people actually did a great job of making clearly Stannis) shows up, stabs him in the back, and everything goes to Old Valyria in a handbasket. After that, Brienne and Loras apparently switch places. Brienne is the one who we see running mad and slaughtering the guards who failed to save him, and it's Brienne we see cradling the corpse and screaming, it's Brienne we see truly grieving. Seeing her reaction to his death was actually fairly heart-wrenching; I believed that I was watching a person react to the death of someone they loved with all their heart. Loras just seemed...mildly inconvenienced. I mentioned a while back that Finn Jones' only expression seems to be "pouting," and that was in full effect here. I get that they were trying to go for a more shell-shocked kind of grief for him, but that doesn't really play out, at least not for me. Margaery played understated sadness (for Renly) and grief (for Loras) rather well, but Loras himself just seemed kind of put out at the whole thing. It also looks like we're not going to get to see Loras abscond with and/or bury Renly's body, although I do hold out at least some hope for the armor scene later on in the season.

The focus of the episode seemed to be split between Arya and Dany. Dany has finally gotten to Qarth, so we got quite a few nice shots of Croatia. We also got introduced to quite a few new characters, including Pyat Pree (appropriately creepy!) and the masked woman whose name I forget. The CGI for the dragons continues to be excellent; they're even kind of...adorable? They make these cute little croaky noises and burp little puffs of flame and smile when they get it right. It's like something out of How to Train Your Dragon, which is disorienting, but also kind of neat, since I feel safe enjoying their cute moments now, free from the anticipation of something horrible happening to them later on (well, as far as ADWD, at least). There was also a lot of talk about ships and how to acquire them this episode, which, for some reason, made me really excited to see Barristan's Arstan's reappearance, which should be coming up relatively soon.

Arya, I mean Arry, I mean Nan was probably my favorite part of the episode. Her interactions with Jaqen continue to be awesome, and it turns out that she and Tywin play off each other rather well. There's even a scene where she kinda sorta wins his respect by subtly threatening him, which is quite a feat when one is a kidnapped nine-year-old servant girl threatening one of the most powerful, dangerous, and cold-blooded men in Westeros. There was also an unexpected amount of fanservice in these segments, with Gendry spending the entirety of his one scene shirtless and sweaty, and Jaqen smiling from under his hair and pursing his lips more than is, I suspect, strictly necessary, although the famous bathing scene is still to come (I hope). Speaking of Jaqen, we got the first of Arya's three deaths, the Tickler. He wasn't built up nearly as much as he was in the books, so his death had less of an impact, and left me wondering why she didn't just send him after Tywin, since Jaqen offers her the deaths literally less than ten minutes after Tywin declares his intent to kill Robb.

There was also quite a bit of Night's Watch shenanigans, where, once again, Sam was almost lethally adorable. Seriously, he, Garlan, and Tyrion need to form the Nice Guys of Westeros Mutual Protection and Support Society, where they use their various positions to guard each other's political and romantic backs. So, basically, Garlan would haul Tyrion out of trouble, and then they would both go and haul Sam out of trouble, repeat ad nauseum but still. Dolorous Edd continues to grow on me, after my initial "WTF?" reaction, and his expression in response to Sam's line about how lovely the bloody cold frozen wasteland they're schlepping through is, and how much Gilly would love it, is priceless. We also get introduced to Qhorin Halfhand, who, like Barristan, has initially underwhelmed me, but we'll see where things go.

We also checked in with Theon (who, it seems, is back to being comedically hapless [although there was some foreshadowing and off-screen action running up to his attack on Winterfell]), Tyrion (wherein Lancel is also comedically hapless, Bronn is snarky as hell, and the wildfire is introduced as ominously as possible [all together, now: ooooooo!]), and Bran (Rickon sighting!), but these actually took up comparatively little screentime.


Finally, give us this week our weekly meme! We're back to more generalized pan-fandom fare this time; a randomized character meme should be coming up again soon, though.


1) Best book you read last year
:
Objectively, probably A Song of Ice and Fire. As I said when I first read them, I don’t think GRRM quite deserves the moniker “the American Tolkien,” but he’s damn close. After interminable Lord of the Rings knockoffs wherein the unassuming young hero from a small village assembles a multi-racial and/or multi-species team in order to transport Item A to Location B, discovering his great destiny, saving the world, and re-installing the rightful king in his long-empty throne along the way, it was great to get a genuinely different look at a lot of epic fantasy standards. And ASOIAF isn’t being different just to be different, either. GRRM has a lot of genuinely fascinating ideas, and isn’t out to just tear down Tolkien in order to build himself up. I’m usually rather on the protective side when it comes to the Professor and his works, and yet I genuinely had a great time with ASOIAF. GRRM makes a very good move in not making everything death, darkness, and despair. Yeah, the Robb Starks and Renly Baratheons of the world get killed sometimes, but then again, so do the Joffrey Lannisters and Gregor Cleganes (maybe); that’s life.

2) Best book you’ve read more than three times:
Lord of the Rings, doy. I’m on my semi-yearly read-through now, and I’m pretty sure this is either my fifth or sixth time. My dad, though, has read it every harvest (he’s a winemaker) for the past 15 years, and when I’m his age, I hope that I can say something similar.

3) Favorite series
:
Er, that’d be Tolkien again. I guess Lord of the Rings could be counted as a series, as it generally appears in three volumes, but the whole of Middle-earth is a place I’ve been happily inhabiting for the last decade or so, and have not the slightest desire to leave. I mean, the guy spent his life creating a fully workable world, and it shows.

4) Book you wish you could live in:
My last answer notwithstanding, I could stand to live in the Inkheart world. It’s a darker and more realistic look at the “RL people sucked into fictional universe” stock plot, but that doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be fun. I’d love to geek out with talk to Fenogilo over how the Inkworld interacts with the real world and why, kind of worship Elinor, and smack and/or hug pretty much everybody else as needed.

5) A book that makes you happy
:
Protector of the Small. I went through kind of a rough time in junior high/early high school, and Tolkien and Tamora Pierce both helped keep me sane for a lot of it. These were both majorly escapist works for me at the time, and I enjoyed PotS especially because I could kind of live vicariously through Kel. Even if I didn’t have a lot of friends (or any, really), or if I wasn’t particularly good at anything, Kel was, and I could enjoy her doing things like kicking ass and taking names, or just receiving support from her friends and family when she was in trouble, when I couldn’t do them myself. So every time I read them, I remember what they did for me at the time, which leads to me enjoying them all the more now.

6) A book that made you sad
:
I know this isn’t exactly the most original of answers, but pretty much every Harry Potter book from Order of the Phoenix on out. Every time I picked a new favorite, they got offed, and in the most tragic way possible. For possibly the first time in decades, Sirius was entirely happy, but this was only due to battle-induced insanity that caused him to think that his best friend was still alive, and gave his life in pursuit of Death Eaters. Dumbledore’s death was part of an enormous and complex plan reaching years into both the present and future, but that doesn’t erase the fact that Harry’s mentor and protector died just as Harry could have really used his help, both physically and emotionally. Remember the annoying house elf that kept popping up for the last several books? “Here lies Dobby, a free elf.” *sob* And then came the Battle of Hogwarts: Snape, Lupin, Tonks, both Creevys, Lavender, Fred Weasley… am I forgetting anyone?

7) Most Underrated book
:
I can’t decide between Temeraire and Pamela Dean’s Secret Country trilogy. It’s difficult-to-impossible to find complete sets of either of these in most libraries or bookstores, which is a real shame, because they’re both fantastic. This is rarity is especially bad for Secret Country, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen a physical copy of besides my own, and I used to work in a library. It’s truly inventive in a way a lot of books aren’t, and does some really fascinating things with the nature of reality vs. fiction and the impact each one has on the other. I gather that I read it at a rather younger age than her intended audience (I think I was 10 or 11), so I remember never quite fully knowing what was going on, but the prose and characters always kept me coming back.
Temeraire, of course, I’ve been going on about enough to make obvious why it’s awesome, and why more people should be reading it. Basically, Naomi Novik read Patrick O’Brian, Patrick O’Brian read Jane Austen, Jane Austen read everything and anything, and all this got funneled into a series starring Napoleonic-era dragons and their captains, which is by turns an epic fantasy, an urban fantasy, an alternative history, a travelogue, a pulp adventure, a medical thriller, a political thriller, a war narrative, a sea narrative, a novel of manners, and I’m honestly not quite sure what else. There’s literally something for everyone, and I can’t think of anyone who I wouldn’t recommend them to.

8) Most Overrated book
:
The Sword of Truth series. I once accidentally ended a budding friendship by letting slip that I found it overrated and clichéd, and the prospective friend literally never spoke to me again. But seriously, why? It apparently has enough fans to make a viable TV show, but I got 150 pages in before giving up, having found nothing but clichés, and peeking into future books reveals quite a bit more Narm, Most Righteous Good vs. Vilest Evil, and the author shoehorning in his political opinions than I was prepared to deal with for 12 books (at the time).

9) Book you thought you’d hate, but ended up liking
:
A Song of Ice and Fire, actually. At that point, I’d read too many bad deconstructions of epic fantasy to really hold out any hope for the genre, and the appellation “the American Tolkien” earned one hell of a raised eyebrow. Basically, I told George R.R. Martin to give me his best shot, and he did. Oh boy, he did. It goes beyond merely taking a realistic look at epic tropes, but creates a fully workable world, full of the same mix of good people, bad people, good people in bad situations, bad people in good situations, and people who are one big tangle of good, bad, and “I need a drink” as is in the real world.

10) Favorite Classic
:
Northanger Abbey. It’s certainly not the best-written Jane Austen, but it’s my favorite. The first time I read it, I was in exactly Catherine Morland’s position (albeit with expectations re: magic and adventure as opposed to re: Gothic romances), and it was really the wake-up call I needed at the time. Since then, I’ve gone back and revisited it a couple of times, and I’ve been able to laugh at myself, as well as to enjoy the hell out of the satire. If Jane Austen were alive today, I’d love to show her some self-insert Mary-Sue fanfic and see what she’d do with it, because the result would probably be similar.

11) Book you hated
:
The whole so-called Twilight Saga. Ouch. Yes, I read them all, just so I can make statements like these and know what I’m talking about. Not only was the prose painfully bad and the characters less than two-dimensional, but I was actively insulted by the fact that I was exactly the target audience, and if this is the kind of thing lonely teenage girls are supposed to enjoy, then something, somewhere, is deeply wrong. I mean, okay, it’s stupid and the characters are annoying, but the levels of casual anti-feminism were truly scary. There was only one female in a position of authority, and pretty much the point of her character was that she wasn’t an effective leader. The heroine spends all her time doting on her abusive stalker, and is so helpless that, not only can she not make any decisions for herself, she needs to literally be picked up and transported from place to place so she doesn’t injure her silly little head. The only female character who wants anything like independence is portrayed as a hysterical bitch, whose folly at wanting self-determination leads to her failing catastrophically and needing to be rescued by her male counterparts, to whom she then meekly submits. And that’s not even getting into the discussions of the various Mary-Sues/Gary-Stus or the whole demon baby/imprinting business.

12) Book you used to love, but no longer do
:
I used to be a big Redwall fan. No, seriously, I was a *big* fan. There was a period of about five years where I had one Redwall book or another continuously in progress. A new release was, on my personal scale, somewhere above the last day of school, and only slightly below my birthday. I remember loving absolutely everything about them, and dragooning various members of my family into dramatic reenactments of my favorite scenes. These days, though, not so much. I guess it’s just part of the maturing process, but now I merely like them, not love them, and haven’t picked them up for several years (of course, this might be because they’re now too delicate to take out of the house, after I spent the majority of my childhood lugging them everywhere with me).

13) An author you will read anything by
:
Naomi Novik. I read her fanfiction for a series I’d never read, fergawdssakes! And it was damn good fanfiction, too. Actually, I’ve been looking for her other not-Temeraire stuff, and have run into something of a roadblock: Naomi goes by astolat in most circles, but either someone else has the same name, or she’s really unexpectedly into Merlin, Entourage, and Supernatural. I can’t suss out what is and isn’t hers, which is a shame, because the one work I know is hers is fantastic.

14) An author you will avoid at all costs
:
Stephanie Meyer, for obvious reasons. No more need be said.

15) Favorite author’s favorite book:
Lord of the Rings, probably. I mean, The Hobbit was one of the mainstays of my childhood, and The Silmarillion is full of all kinds of epic stories and moral ambiguities, but I find LotR to be a good balance between the former’s readability and the latter’s scale. I struggled to get through all the dense prose of Sil, but, while there are still some bits of LotR that drag, there’s a lot more action and snarky humor to leaven the endless descriptions of trees with. The whole thing, especially because of the additions of the hobbits and, um, dialogue, just feels a lot more immediate and, for lack of a better word, human.

16) Favorite male protagonist
:
I can’t decide! Picking just one, out of hundreds of books, movies, and shows? Yeah, no.

17) Favorite female protagonist
:
Ditto.

18) Your favorite quote from your favorite book
:
The first one that comes to mind is “Christine had been carried into Salzella’s back-stage office and put on a couch. Agnes had to fetch a bowl of water and a cloth and was wiping her forehead, for there are some people who are destined to be carried to comfortable couches and some people whose only fate is fetching a bowl of cold water.” As a definite Agnes, and one who is often surrounded by Christines, man, do I know this feeling.
Actually, come to think of it, the other Discworld quote that springs to mind, “Those who make happy endings rarely get them,” also comes from Maskerade. Huh, upon deeper thought, this is a more depressing book than I usually think of it being.

19) A book that disappointed you
:
Mercedes Lackey’s Heralds of Valdemar books. A lot of people seem to really enjoy them, but I could never get into them. This is a shame, because I get the feeling that if I had started them, say, five years ago, it would be a different story. As things stand, though, I found the heroes too irreproachably good, the villains too irredeemably bad, and, unusually, the narrative from a glaring lack of songs/poetry rather than the usual excess.

20) Favorite book turned into a movie
:
Lord of the Rings, of course, although I do have high hopes for The Hobbit.

21) Favorite romance book
:
Lol, I love how I just mentioned in my last post that #YouKnowYou’reAnEnglishMajorWhen “Romance” is always capitalized and refers to the 18^th and 19^th century literary movement born out of deliberately anachronistic tales of chivalry. So I’m going to go with Northanger Abbey, which is more of a parody of a (Gothic) Romance than a straight-up example, but it’s more of an affectionate parody than a harsh criticism, so I can still enjoy it for what it is.

22) Favorite book from your childhood
:

Either Martin the Warrior or Robin Hood, both major obsessions of mine for quite a number of years. I guess I can see the similarities: both are episodic in nature, follow a large cast centered around a rebellious folk hero, and deal with a ragtag bunch of misfits executing a gruella campaign in defiance of tyranny and cultural/racial (or, in MtW’s case, species) oppression. Also, both are a hell of a lot of fun, both to read and act out the more triumphant scenes of.

23) Book you’ve been wanting to read for a while, but still haven’t
:
The Vorkosigan Saga, after hamsterwoman piqued my interest, but now she’s actually lent the first few books to me, so now I’m waiting only for the time.

24) A book you wish more people would’ve read
:
Oh, Temeraire, definitely. We need an actual fandom, people! Actually, I’ve been trawling LJ, trying to dig up, trying to dig up anybody who has actually read these books, and I’ve discovered something really weird: literally more than half of them are librarians or librarians in training. Seriously, out of the five or six people (counting me and hamsterwoman) who have posted about Temeraire more than once, one is actually a librarian, and myself and at least one other are in training for such (okay, I guess I’m kind of in pre-training, but you get my point). As Mal Reynolds would say: huh.

25) A character you can relate to most
:
Maybe it’s just because I’m reading Maskerade right now, but sometimes I feel a lot like Agnes Nitt. As to why, see #18.

26) Book you plan on reading next:
*points to #23* Also, I’m split between Evelina and The Female Quixote, the two Gothic Romances I’m bringing home with me over the summer.

27) Book you’re currently reading
:
Let’s see…Maskerade (as mentioned), The Fellowship of the Ring, The Once and Future King, and Dragon (technically, anyway; I have a bookmark in it, but haven’t had time to start it yet).

28) Guilty pleasure book
:
Actually, Nightrunner. I fell head-over-heels in love with it my first time around, but on re-reads, I started to notice quite a few problems with it. Now it’s not a book I’d necessarily recommend to most people, but I just love those sexy, dumbass spies so much!
Runner-up: Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter, back before it started actively sucking and it stopped even being a guilty pleasure. This was back when all of Anita’s problems couldn’t be fixed by having an orgy and/or spontaneously developing unheard-of new powers, the other characters had actual personalities and their lives didn’t revolve around Anita, and she just generally wasn’t so overt a Mary-Sue, and the author didn’t get petty revenge on her ex-husband by demonizing his expy for no discernable in-story reason, and also didn’t create a Gary-Stu expy of her second husband, who she met through him being literally the president of her fan club. :\

29) Favorite book title
:
Um, does this mean the title of my favorite book, or just the title that I think sounds the coolest? Because if it’s the former, I think we already know what the answer is. If the latter though, um, for some reason, I really like Fool Moon. Not the most original answer, I know, but for some reason this title, and those like it, was a big part of why I started really getting into the Dresden Files. Yeah, I don't know how my mind works, either.

30) A book that changed you life
:
If this answer hasn’t gotten too terribly old yet, LotR. I actually have a really strong sense-memory of running through a dark parking lot, sometime during my first read-through, trying to “run like an Elf” (which, according to my mom, looked something like grand jetés) and suddenly being struck by this weird feeling that something important was happening or had just happened. 11 years later (funny, considering I was 11 at the time), and I’m still a die-hard Ringer, so I guess my instinct was right. I know it sounds kind of stupid, but no book has ever had an effect like that on me before; I’ve never been so consciously aware that a book was actively changing my worldview.

Comments

[hamsterwoman]

I'm bummed to hear about how they handled Loras at Renly's death scene; I'd seen unimpressive caps, but was hoping it was better in action -- alas, doesn't sound like it...

re: Inkheart -- is Elinor the... aunt/grandmother/older lady? (You can tell I've only seen the movie, and don't remember it too well besides :P)

Our library had a copy of The Secret Country (but only the first book) which I read and enjoyed (as far as "kids from RL find themselves in a magical land" trope, I think it has the most believable treatment :P). I was sorry to discover the library apparently didn't have the rest of the trilogy. BTW, speaking of Pamela Dean, I don't remember, have you read Tam Lin?

I actually read Wizard's First Rule (which I admit is kind of a cool title) when the Sword of Truth series was just starting out, and it was... pretty bad. Like, I kept waiting for some original, interesting thought to make its way through all the cliches and torture porn, and it just never happened. I remember picking up the second book at the library to see if perhaps he'd gotten any better, and getting as far as halfway down the first page and closing the book with a sense of revulsion, because, if anything, it had only gotten worse. (I don't actually know who reads these books... I've never met a serious fantasy fan who enjoyed them...)

I think Mercedes Lackey is one of those authors that you really need to "meet" at the right time, early enough, so that you build up some fondness to last into your adulthood. I read my first Lackey books as a teenager, and they're not, you know, particularly good books. There's fun world-building, but it's very shallow and everything is mostly black-and-white, and she has some very... odd narrative tropes that show up again and again. But if you're not expecting well-thought-out fantasy, her books can be a lot of fun. (But even with the residual fondness of discovering her in my teenage years, I can hardly read some of her latest stuff, like the AU!Egypt-with-dragons series which could've been pretty awesome but isn't.)

(There's another series (or maybe a standalone? I forget..) she co-authored with someone whose name I forget, an early urban-fantasy-with-fairies which is set in the Bay Area and features Ren Faires and a threesome relationship involving an Elf and a couple of humans. IIRC, the title of the first is Bedlam's Bard. I remember quite enjoying that one, though, again, I was a good deal younger then, so I'm not sure how it would hold up now.)

trying to “run like an Elf” (which, according to my mom, looked something like grand jetés)

Aww! For several years after I read LotR, my favorite footwear was low-heeled, short suede boots with very quiet soles that I wore wherever and whenever I could because they made me feel like I was walking like an Elf (I had a pair in brown, succeeded by a different shade of brown, succeeded by grey). And I think my Elf-fascination phase also permanently shifted my wardrobe towards greens, browns, and greys -- the grey definitely came from Tolkien, as I never even liked that color before.

Hope you had fun at your final/breakfast, and good luck with the packing and move!

[lunasariel.livejournal.com]

I'd seen unimpressive caps, but was hoping it was better in action -- alas, doesn't sound like it
Nope. For some reason, they chose to make that scene more about Margaery's ambition than anything else. Granted, this is far from an unworthy topic, but...I mean, really? Here? :\

is Elinor the... aunt/grandmother/older lady?
Yes! I actually don't think I've ever seen the movie, but in the books, she's a badass older lady very much in the tradition of Granny Weatherwax/Olenna Tyrell, although not quite at their level.

speaking of Pamela Dean, I don't remember, have you read Tam Lin?
Hmm...I don't think so. That was the one about the girl going to a small liberal arts college, and then magic ensues, right? I remember hearing about it (from you, I think), and putting it on my To Read list, but then it just kind of never happened.

I remember picking up the second book at the library to see if perhaps he'd gotten any better
Wow, you're a lot braver than me! I think I gave up just after being introduced to totally-not-Aragorn, after already being worn down by totally-not-Gandalf/Merlin/Obi-Wan, totally-not-Wormtongue, and Stock Fantasy Hero spontaneously developing superpowers just in time to save Stock Fantasy Heroine.

I think Mercedes Lackey is one of those authors that you really need to "meet" at the right time, early enough, so that you build up some fondness to last into your adulthood.
Exactly. These would have been my absolute favorite books in the world in junior high or early high school, when the whole "young outcast forms soulbond with magical creature and joins community of like-minded protectors of the realm" thing really appealed to me, but now, not so much. Also, it probably didn't help that I started reading HoV at roughly the same time as ASOIAF. XD

low-heeled, short suede boots with very quiet soles that I wore wherever and whenever I could because they made me feel like I was walking like an Elf (I had a pair in brown, succeeded by a different shade of brown, succeeded by grey)
Wow, now I want some of those! I imagine walking in them would feel rather Elf-like. Also, I'm with you on the wardrobe decision! Can't go wrong with forest colors.

[hamsterwoman]

but in the books, she's a badass older lady very much in the tradition of Granny Weatherwax/Olenna Tyrell, although not quite at their level

She is pretty badass in the movie, too, and gave me the same Granny/QoT-like vibe. And is also played by Helen Mirren, and was thus my favorite thing about the movie. :)

That was the one about the girl going to a small liberal arts college, and then magic ensues, right?

Yep, that's the one. I actually have a copy somewhere, if you want me to dig it up come fall :)

after already being worn down by totally-not-Gandalf/Merlin/Obi-Wan

Heh. That's when I knew the book was bad -- when even a fairly standard rendition of one of my favorite character tropes irritated me more than anything.

Also, it probably didn't help that I started reading HoV at roughly the same time as ASOIAF. XD

Heh, yeah, the comparison there is not in Lackey's favor.

[lunasariel.livejournal.com]

And is also played by Helen Mirren, and was thus my favorite thing about the movie. :)
Oooh, I'd forgotten about that! Yeah, Helen Mirren automatically makes any role awesome.

That's when I knew the book was bad -- when even a fairly standard rendition of one of my favorite character tropes irritated me more than anything.
Exactly. I mean, how do you get *the* single easiest fantasy archetype wrong?!

Heh, yeah, the comparison there is not in Lackey's favor.
Lol, true, but it wasn't so much the quality comparison as the fact that ASOIAF had me in an über-cynical/realist state of mind, so when none of the Heralds abused the virtually unchecked power they were given, or the queen turns out to be perfectly kind and just, it actually messed with me a bit. XD

[hamsterwoman]

ASOIAF had me in an über-cynical/realist state of mind, so when none of the Heralds abused the virtually unchecked power they were given, or the queen turns out to be perfectly kind and just, it actually messed with me a bit. XD

Oh, yeah, I totally get that, too! I get the same feeling when I read black-and-white fantasy right after ASOIAF, and one of the reasons I haven't like Lackey's books as much lately is that her good guys are all so improbably good and pure and *gag*

[brit-columbia.livejournal.com]

Congratulations being done with your first year of university! Man, where did the year go?

[lunasariel.livejournal.com]

Thanks! And, with regards to time: I know, right? There is definitely this weird sense that I just got here, and the rest of the year got sucked into a wormhole or something. XD