Ethan of Athos

Ethan of Athos will probably be the first and only time I'll ever root for a society that thinks women are demonic. So seriously, kudos to Bujold on that one. The basic premise: Athos is a planet that was founded by a group of men who wanted to escape from women completely. They founded the planet and organized it based on a religion that is basically Christianity but with all of the "women are the source of sin" stuff amped up to one million. The men reproduce with uterine replicators, and the plot of the book is that their ovarian cultures are dying and one of their doctors must go out into the wide world (of women) and find more.

Trust me, I have no idea why the very nature of the book didn't have me wanting to chuck it across a room. When I wrote out that paragraph I was like, "but, wait, what?" Because nothing in there is false, that is the plot of the book. The Ethan of the title basically ends up embroiled in a ridiculous galactic conspiracy through no fault of his own, and is constantly being saved by a really awesome woman named Elli Quinn. Figuring out the conspiracy is half the fun, so I won't go into it too much.

But basically, even though Ethan of course figures out that not everything his religion taught him was correct, he doesn't suddenly go "OMG, I want to sleep with this chick!" There's no transformation of meeting the right woman, he's gay and perfectly comfortable with that (not that he knows any different, really, but that's not the point). I thought that was a nice change of pace, and that was the main reason I didn't want Ethan to figure out everything was wrong and lead Athos back to the ways of heterosexuality.

The only qualm I had with the book is it suffered from Sci-Fi Naming Syndrome, if only a mild case. There were two or three planet names in the book that I could never pronounce even for cash, and every time the name came up it made me completely stall for a second before my eyes passed over it, my brain still trying to figure out what it was. Seriously writers, don't get weird with your names unless they only happen once! And even then, you still probably shouldn't.

In general, Ethan of Athos is a good hard sci-fi comedy. Which doesn't sound like a genre that exists, but it's definitely hard sci-fi, and it's definitely funny just as often as it's full of action, so there you go. I recommend it to people who like sci-fi, like stories about sexuality or gender politics, and people who enjoy a good laugh that still makes you think.

Side note: ignore the covers, they're apparently all terrible. The one I have doesn't even fit the book, I think they got it mixed up at the cover factory.

Brave (kinda)

I feel like there's no point in reviewing Brave because apparently nobody else has bothered to. Apparently, the memo that I missed detailed that all reviews of Brave should instead be either sexist or about sexism. Or, absurdly, accuse Merida of being a lesbian. Because, you know, that's important. I can see why some people are going off on other tangents. Brave is a movie the wouldn't really inspire people to wax poetic about it or build a major fandom, or anything like that. It's a good movie, it's indeed a very good movie. But that's about all it is. Personally, I think that's okay. I enjoyed the film, I thought the visuals were beautiful (though it took time for the animation style to grow on me) and the voice acting was amazing. Merida was a fun character, I enjoyed her, she reminded me of me.

Only, you know, if I was any better at archery. But that's another point for another day.

My point for today though, is that it takes two combinations of things for Brave to hit home: you have to be a girl that can identify with Merida on some level and you have to have a specific kind of relationship with your mother, and probably be old enough to understand why your mother was how she was when you were a teenager.

I saw one post that got it right, Brave is a movie that doesn't shy away from the fact that teenage girls aren't perfect and are often terrible. And that mothers of teenager girls are often terrified for them and don't know how to communicate with them. And that in the end, once you get through the teenage years, everybody can see the other's person's perspective a little better and it forms a particular kind of relationship. If you've lived through that, and felt that, then Brave will probably make you cry (it did me, that's for sure).

If you haven't, then there's nothing wrong with you, you just had a different type of family and that's awesome.

The problem lies in the fact that outside of masterfully presenting this mother/daughter dynamic (which is rare enough to be worth praise), the movie doesn't really press the envelope anywhere else. Which is why critics are so distracted.

About half the reviews talk about how poorly the movie treats men. Most of the rebuttals to those comments are "that's how women have to live every day, qq more newb." Which is fair, except for the fact that Brave doesn't marginalize it's men. They're all pretty well drawn out for supporting characters. Merida's suitors are comic relief, but they all have charms to go with their faults. The triplets are crazy and "get away with murder" but they're also really smart and resourceful and even without lines they have a depth when you think about their relationship with Merida.

As for the people trying to make a case that Merida is a lesbian because she likes to shoot arrows and doesn't want to marry a guy that she probably couldn't even carry on a conversation with...there's just nothing for those people. I've got nothing, I can't even contemplate how stupid and terrible life must be for them, having so few brain cells. The point of the movie was about choosing your own fate and your own life, and creating it yourself. To force Merida into a stereotype because it makes your brain feel a little better is to go against everything it stands for. Who knows what kind of person Merida is attracted to, I doubt she even knows. But she'll figure it out and it might be one of the guys and it might be another princess, and the world will keep turning on.

Oh, and to the person who said that Merida still wasn't a good role model or a positive step for women for being the protagonist because she's still a princess...go lock yourself in a tower. In fiction, women can be depicted as princesses as a metaphor for the responsibilities and struggles we face because of stereotypical gender roles. One would think a media or literary critic would understand that much, that's like Women's Lit 101.

Revenge or Why We Gave Up On This Show

Revenge was suggested to me by a lot of people. Being a big fan of tumblr, I saw a lot of gifs make their way around while the show was on the air. It looked interesting, so I thought I would watch it eventually. Then I was searching for something to watch on the plane during that international flight I've mentioned a few times, and I didn't have time for another movie. They had the pilot, so I watched it. The pilot really hooked me, I seriously wanted to know what happened. I feel like I've said this a lot lately, but for some reason I've been watching a lot of pilots. But this is a pilot that does what it's meant to do, it quickly establishes setting and character.

So my best friend and I decided to start watching the show together. It took us a while to get around to it. The thing is, for a while we were both still really interested in the story. I loved the way it was slowly revealing how corrupt and terrible the people in the Hamptons were. I liked watching this complicated plot come together.

To say that I "liked" the characters is a little odd. I found them interesting, I wanted to know more about them, but I thought they were despicable people. Obviously, that's what I'm supposed to think. Basically the only people I liked all that much were Nolan and Jack. But I found most of them interesting. They seemed to be multi-faceted and have really rich backstories.

But as we went on in the show, I just started to get grumpier. The thing that got me the most was that this was a show about super rich people, a world that I know absolutely nothing about and honestly don't care to. I can be a bit of a jerk like that, I don't like rich people very much when they carelessly spend money and are generally frivolous.

And a lot of the characters that I thought were multi-dimensional stopped really getting dimensions. Conrad? Stereotypical. Charlotte? Fitting more into a box every episode. So once they started a stupid pretend love triangle with Jack, Daniel, and Emily I was generally done. Nolan was still cool, but everything was getting so twisted and convoluted that I just started getting more cranky about it.

Then Tyler showed up and NEVER WENT AWAY. He was not a good addition to the story and he annoyed me more every episode. One of my big things is that if the plot of your story is hinged on a misunderstanding that could be cleared up in two seconds with a simple conversation. Not even an honest conversation! All of Tyler's plots rested on people not talking to each other, and then they did talk and then they never got around to shunning Tyler and telling him to go away since it was obvious he was playing some kind of game.

I was trying to watch the show without spoiling myself. It's rare for that to happen, so I thought I'd try. But Tyler pissed me off so much that I looked up to see when he went away. In doing that, I accidentally stumbled on a couple other things. I gave the show three more episodes after that, but I realized that I just didn't care anymore. I would rather read the episode summaries on Wikipedia than watch all these people make all these mistakes over and over again. I was done with them. This became one of those rare cases where I read a spoiler that made me so angry I was no longer invested in the journey to get there. So I switched to watching Supernatural, and I'll be writing longer reviews of that show instead, starting next week!