Vimes and Sybil

I think that maybe quarantine is getting to me, but then again, I wasn’t really in an emotionally stable state before this all started anyway, so maybe it’s just me being emo again. I’ve been playing a lot of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey again, but I think that maybe I’ll stop because… well, I’m not actually doing much there, just kind of spinning wheels. So I’ll switch, if I haven’t by the time this Note is posted, to something I got for free/on sale. I put a question on Tumblr asking if I should do Journey or Shadow of War next and so far Shadow of War is winning.

Also people seem to like my Book Diary, and that’s cool!

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Vimes and Sybil

There was a Note I released some time ago when I said Terry Pratchett didn’t really write compelling romance. I stand by that, for the most part. While they aren’t completely without sparks, many of the couples in his books don’t feel as if there’s that much hardcore romance, not that much buildup. Heck, the book that’s explicitly written to parody Romeo & Juliet is also about football and Mr. Nutt coming to terms with who he is. And it’s fine; after all, Pratchett wasn’t setting out to write romance stories.

A friend pointed out though that there’s one couple that lasts throughout the series and I’d be kind of remiss to not count them as one of the great romances of literature. And that is Sam Vimes and Sybil Ramkin.

Now to be clear, their romance in Guards! Guards! isn’t one of the most epic ones in fantasy literature. It’s not out of nowhere, but it’s not the main focus of the story. And the two of them get along and work together really well.

But theirs is not a typical romance, for a fantasy novel, for an action couple, or… anything really. Sybil Ramkin is described as looking like a valkyrie. Not a stick-thin figure you see in art sometimes, but a massive woman, the kind who plays a valkyrie in the opera. And a large part of that is muscle; after all, she breeds dragons, and even if they’re small creatures on the Discworld, they’re still very dangerous. And it’s not as if Vimes is ever described as being particularly handsome either; the artist Paul Kidby’s depictions show him as something like a more grizzled and wiry version of Dirty Harry.

Neither of which are meant to be, at first glance, conventionally attractive. 

[glares pointedly at the upcoming BBC adaptation]

Which is part of the point. The people who stand up and get things done don’t necessarily look glamorous. They don’t look like supermodels, or actors playing superheroes. They’re just people, but mind you, Sybil is tough as nails and is one of the few who gets to call the Patrician by his first name, and Vimes is stubborn enough to control a demon trying to possess him by shouting the words of his son’s favorite book.

And yes, there is this sort of romantic notion to them as a couple; after all, she’s one of the wealthiest nobles in the Discworld, with a notable family tree, and he’s a guy who grew up on the wrong side of town and conquered his own alcoholism to become a good man. But it’s downplayed in the narrative itself, especially because Vimes doesn’t act like a noble or particularly play up becoming a Duke.

I haven’t read every Discworld book, but the ones that I have read in which they’re featured there’s not really a lot of grand romantic gestures. I cannot recall any kind of storyline where Vimes is scrambling to do something big for an anniversary, or desperately looking for a big gift or anything like that. But at the same time, their marriage isn’t in the background either. It’s not as if there are heavy makeout scenes, but there are things that come up. Nightwatch has a subplot of Vimes trying to be there when Sybil gives birth to their son. There are mentions of the lunches she packs and how she wants to eat healthy. 

Maybe that’s not really capital-R Romance; not a lot of big set pieces. Yeah, there’s a rescue, I suppose, but it’s not like there are the hallmarks of big-name love stories, like loud passionate fights or paragraphs describing their kisses. But I think, upon reflection, that what Pratchett wrote is infinitely better. It’s lacking the cheesiness, but it replaces it with something better:

Here is a marriage that works because the two people love each other, and they’re working together to support each other. 

That’s it, and that’s all.

This is no small thing; especially in fiction. Fictional relationships, especially those that last a long time, are often defined by how overwrought they are with unnecessary drama. Epic fights, epic breakups, epic get-togethers, epic kisses and dates and all of that. A lot of this is because many writers admit they don’t know what to do with characters once they’re in relationships; they decide it’s boring. This is part of why Marvel decided to break up Peter and MJ’s marriage in the controversial One More Day comic: they thought that a married Peter Parker was too boring of a character. I suspect that’s why Tom King and DC didn’t go through with Batman’s wedding storyline.

It’s an unhealthy view of relationships to think that because they’re boring, at least to the people not in them, that they’re not really worth reading or seeing. Terry Pratchett didn’t care; he just wrote a healthy relationship, included it in all of the books featuring Vimes. He even goes so far as to suggest (in a discussion about alternate realities) that a version of Vimes that committed violence against his wife, wouldn’t really be Vimes, it would be someone so far removed from him that it wouldn’t be the same character.

So I was a bit off when I said that Pratchett didn’t write romance well; he doesn’t write Grand Romance because, well, he doesn’t care. And I can’t blame him for that. But it’s not that he doesn’t care about depicting relationships, because he does. Vimes and Sybil are a happy, lasting couple. They’re not [insert name of dramatic couple here] but they’re not meant to be. That’s not what interests Pratchett. 

They’re two people who make it work in a weird, hectic world, supporting each other without question through love, work, and bacon sandwiches.

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Samurai Jack and Dialogue

‘Sup peeps. Both Uncharted and Journey are free on the PlayStation store, which is cool I guess. I’ve mentioned watching Samurai Jack, I think, but lately I’ve been getting really into Community too, and I’m thinking of rewatching the first season of The Clone Wars since I have those DVDs (got them from Blockbuster when they went under years ago!).

I was considering doing another Rick Riordan Note, but I think I’m going to try making that for ImpishIdea? Something about responding to fan criticism, or Percy’s fatal flaw, or something like that.

Now, let’s talk about Samurai Jack!

[Also a lot of what I’m talking about here applies to the original Star Wars: Clone Wars 2D animated series too, because it’s also created by the same animator, Genndy Tartakovsky, and has a lot of stylistic similarities.]

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Samurai Jack and Dialogue

Since I’m going about two episodes a day with this show, I’ve been thinking about it a lot. One of the things that sticks out pretty early on is how light on dialogue several episodes are. There aren’t any with no dialogue, at least that I can think of off the top of my head. But there are many that don’t have that much.

So the story of Samurai Jack goes something like this: an ancient evil being called Aku threatens imperial Japan. The Emperor’s son, our titular samurai, manages to fight him using a magic sword, but before he can fully defeat Aku, the monster chucks him in a time portal and he lands in the far future. The samurai finds himself in a futuristic world with robots, aliens and mutants alongside magic and swords, and it’s all ruled by Aku. So he’s trying to go back to the past so that he can stop this dystopia before it happens, helping random people being oppressed by Aku’s reign as he does so.

In the first four seasons, while there are some episodes that lead into each other, for the most part, each episode is something of a standalone adventure. Aside from flashbacks and such, there are very few recurring characters--the only human that shows up between seasons often is the Scotsman. A couple of the gods appear in more than one episode, but it isn’t like they have direct interactions with Jack.

And from the introductory movie (or three-part episode, depending on what format you watch it in), the series has huge chunks of story that don’t have dialogue. Jack’s training montage, for instance, shows him going around the world and learning different skillz. There’s not a word of dialogue from when little Jack leaves Japan until he gets back as an adult, where he happens upon one of Aku’s minions whipping his father.

This made me think about dialogue, and how much dialogue gets put into screen stories these days, especially in bits that don’t really need them? Samurai Jack has fight scenes in which there’s not a word spoken, unless it’s with someone like Aku who just never shuts up. It’s in-character, so it makes sense. But considering that he’s fighting robots and monsters for most of the series, of course there isn’t a lot of dialogue in those sequences.

But there are other sequences that don’t have dialogue, nor is there much reason for it. “The Blind Archers,” aside from the bit that he’s being shot at, has an extended sequence where after Jack blindfolds himself, takes in his surroundings by listening to what’s going on around him, and showing us what he hears as he hears it. After a brief word to explain what he’s doing, there’s not another word in the episode until he defeats the archers.

Then there’s the episode showing the origins of Aku, and a huge chunk of the first part doesn’t have dialogue at all; it just shows you what happened. And considering that it starts before human history began, of course it can’t have that much dialogue.

Yes, there are episodes that have a huge chunk of dialogue. But so much of the actual action takes place without it. It sounds dumb when I put it like that; of course there’s not a lot of conversation going on during a fight. But sit and think about the animated shows that you watched as a kid. How many of them have absolutely no dialogue during the fight scenes. Usually there are quips, or explanations of what someone’s doing, or side characters watching saying something.

There’s so little of that in Samurai Jack. And there are non-action scenes that tell you so much without saying a word, and it’s beautiful.

Now I’m thinking of Samurai Jack as the polar opposite of the 90’s Spider-Man: The Animated Series. Have you ever watched it? There are rarely a few seconds that aren’t spent by someone (usually Peter) talking. 

Film and television are visual mediums. That’s something that sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised how often it’s forgotten. Yes, there are times where you need dialogue, and I’m not saying that every story can be composed the same way that Samurai Jack is; and it doesn’t need to be. But it’s a good reminder of how much story you can tell without having to directly say anything. You can great stories with sound and sights alone. The audience can pick up quite a lot by what you show them.

You don’t need for Jack to tell the audience that he’s pissed; you can convey it through his frustrated expression, and how he fights with much more aggression and starts screaming in incoherent rage. You don’t need to tell us that the archers are blind; you can just show us how Jack discovers they are, when he waves his hat out as a target and they don’t shoot at anything until they hear a noise. You don’t need to have Jack wail and moan about how much he misses home; you see it as he wanders around the ruins and has wordless recollections about growing up there in its glory days.

This works well by virtue of the story’s format, I know; some of this wouldn’t work as well if you’re juggling several main characters, and want to give all of them some development. But because this show only has the one lead, and it’s not too worried about inter-episode continuity, it can afford to not rely heavily on dialogue and still tell powerful stories that carry the series. And it works extremely well because of it.

Samurai Jack is one of the best animated series I’ve ever seen (at least, so far; I haven’t gotten to the final revival finale season, so who knows?). It’s easily the one that takes advantage of the medium it’s in the most--by showing instead of telling, as a good animated series should.

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Harry, A History and Fandom

I am watching… a LOT, actually. Just finished season six of Buffy, and I’m almost done with Locke & Key and the second season of The Expanse. And I’m streaming Samurai Jack because that’s free right now and that show is awesome.

Anyhow I reread this book by the webmistress of the HP fansite, The Leaky Cauldron. This Note’s going up on the Blogger site and also on a photo on my Facebook, to see if I’ll continue this book thing.

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Harry, A History and Fandom

Harry, A History by Melissa Anelli is a sort-of memoir that details one Harry Potter fan’s journey through the HP fandom and its various movements and drama. And I remember when I first read it, I really liked the book. And upon rereading, I still really like it. But I feel different about it, and it seems as if I picked up an artifact of a different age. Fandom culture has changed so much since this book’s release in 2008.

In a way, it’s a bit like reading Ready Player One except without as much of the cringe in the dark turns gamer culture took. That makes this book sound bad, so I’ll try to explain with more detail.

When I was reading reviews of Harry, A History on Goodreads in preparation for this Note, I kept seeing a lot of the same idea repeated by many readers: this claims to be a sort of biography of the Harry Potter phenomenon, but it’s not really reflective of the average fan’s experience. Anelli’s telling the story of someone who became a superfan; someone who had reading parties with her friends after waiting in line for the next book to come out; someone who went to conventions that hosted shipping debates; someone who went on tour with a band that based their entire image and musical career on the HP books. Yeah, maybe the average fan had some involvement with some of this, but not all of it by a long shot. And especially now over ten years after the release of Deathly Hallows, so much of this has become obscure fanlore.

The book spends quite some time detailing the formation and exploits of a band called Harry and the Potters, and all the spin-off bands that it spawned. But I had never heard of any of these bands before reading this book, and I don’t think most HP fans today have a passing familiarity with the bands at all.

There’s also quite a lot the book leaves out. Admittedly, there are some big fandom moments like A Very Potter Musical (which is FANTASTIC, by the way) which couldn’t make it because they weren’t released yet. But Potter Puppet Pals? That was a massive part of Internet culture, even outside of the hardcore Potter fandom, for years, and it’s not mentioned at all in this book. Things like college Quidditch teams, or unofficial guide books, or that weird Snape cult (YA RLY) never get mentioned. Sure, I don’t expect the book to cover every single aspect of the fandom ever, and maybe I’m only speaking from my experiences and I’m wrong, but I figured some of these were huge parts of the fandom and deserved at least a mention. Everyone I knew could quote “Mysterious Ticking Noise” and yet it’s not mentioned at all, but Harry and the Potters get a whole chapter?

I was also struck by the chapter on shipping, appropriately titled “The High Seas.” For those not in the know, “shipping” generally refers to fan preferences in relationships. So for the HP fandom, the big Ship War (which to my frustration, some people still argue about) is between Harry/Hermione and Ron/Hermione. And people care a lot about this; there were debates at conventions. When Half-Blood Prince came out and made it pretty obvious where this series was going, people received death threats and a man in his thirties wrote to Rowling about how disappointed he was that she wasn’t a better writer. A thing that certainly didn’t help was that the screenwriter for the films admitted to thinking Harry and Hermione should get together, which kind of shows in the movies if you watch them.

What got to me most was that this book more or less presents the fandom of Harry Potter as one big happy family, aside from the shipping wars. And I’m glad that Anelli felt that way, that she was able to make lifelong friends and connections which have made life better for a lot of people. But fandom is hardly always so beneficent. Cassandra Clare, now famous for her Mortal Instruments series, got her start in the HP fandom as the author of the fandom-defining novel-length fanfiction series the Draco Trilogy (many bits of which she cannibalized and reused in her original fiction). And that fanfiction also got her into a messy plagiarism scandal that haunts her to this day, and a history of cyber-bullying to boot. And hey, let’s not downplay that there were fans who sent death threats to the author, other fans, and actors from the films over the romantic relationships of fictional characters.

I mean, heck, I learned through Wikipedia that the author herself was cyber-stalked by someone banned from the site.

It’s also a bit funny because the impression Anelli gives of Rowling is of a humble Everyday Jo who’s just glad that people gain enjoyment from her books. If people read deeper into her books, then alright. And that’s the way I tend to read Harry Potter. But over the past few years, it seems like Rowling bought into her own hype, and tries to paint the books as a woke political commentary which… doesn’t work if you do more than broad thematic ideas, because if we read Harry Potter as political tract, we’d have to say it’s calling almost all government corrupt and useless and asking us to arm our children with weapons the government is trying to regulate. And that’s without getting into House Elves. Or goblins. I suspect none of that is the message Rowling was trying to convey, and that she was writing something of a modern fairy tale fantasy, but she won’t say that now, she’ll act as if somehow Voldemort represents Donald Trump or something.

So it’s a little uncomfortable reading this image of Rowling as a humble but brilliant author that is seemingly surprised by her own cultural importance because these days it feels as if she’s embraced that cultural importance, perhaps a bit too much. 

Still, it’s a very good book; Anelli puts much more detail than I would in covering several fan movements, and you do feel a sort of palpable excitement when she recounts her own anxiety and anticipation for the books as they’re coming out. It feels a bit like a time capsule from the early 2000’s, or a slice of the past that I’d almost forgotten. Maybe it’s because I’ve become a bitter and cynical raisin of an individual, but I don’t feel that sort of excitement for movies or books anymore.

And while I am miffed about a lot of what’s left out, I’m amazed at the level of detail of most of what’s in the book. There’s an entire chapter about an interview Anelli did with Laura Malory, the soccer mom from Georgia who famously tried to get the Harry Potter books banned from schools and one of the leaders of the Christian movements against the series. And Anelli doesn’t seem to like her, but she portrays this woman a lot more sympathetically than I would have expected; certainly more than most of the fandom would. There are sections about how the books got published in the first place, how seriously the spoilers for the final book were guarded, how Warner Brothers reacted to all the fan content being produced, and just how big this freaking series got. This was worldwide news, guys.

Maybe Harry, A History isn’t completely reflective of everyone’s experiences, and maybe it leaves out quite a lot. But it’s a celebration of a book series and a fandom that brought people together, and I can’t exactly fault it for that.

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