You, Sir and Madame, are not romantic

[meganbmoore]

 From crumpeteer, 10 romantic movies that really arent.

Half (or so) I haven't seen.  Two I have and had issues with myself.  The others I remember liking when I saw them long ago, but suspect I'd have problems with now.

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Have you read George R.R. Martin's "A Song of Ice and Fire" books?

Nope...that came out after increasing genre-crankiness had left me drifting away from modern epic fantasy. I've had a few folks rec it to me, but these were mostly the same people who also raved uncritically about stuff I loathed like Eddings and Brooks, so that was...not a big selling point. But I did flip through an anthology that included "The Hedge Knight" a few years ago and the prose didn't cause me pain, so that's a very good sign. Perhaps this is something else to add to the BookMooch list.

And now I'm really curious about the one you still can't remember. Was it the Sarah Monette/Elizabeth Bear wolves-and-Vikings thing?

what have you seen Abe Hiroshi in?

Um...don't laugh...Godzilla 2000. I have a not-too-secret weakness for kaiju.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Eddings I have fond teen memories of, but...they should remain fond teen memories. They're among the things I know I can't touch now if I want to still think well of them, if you know what I mean. Brooks...was my high fantasy intro. It's like I can't make myself stop, no matter how much I want to. I kinda want him to do something to piss me off so I can escape.

GRRM is a whole other thing, though. It's the only one of the huge, epic, bestselling, everyone praises high fantasy epics that I really like. I'd actually be curious about your reactions to it. Most people seem to be all about the plotters and betrayors and schemers, whereas I find the Starks(the wolf family) the most interesting. Even though it causes them more harm than good, and often seems foolish, they try to cling to a strict moral code and humanity that their world has no place for, and try(not always successfully) to keep from being crushed by it.

I have a feeling the book was something I saw at the bookstore the other day that sounded like something you'd like and I'd planned to ask if you'd read it, but forgot to write it down.

I am curious about the Bear/Monette books, now though.

As far as Godzilla 2000...I now believe you should watch his Taitei no Ken, which is pure, anachronistic, samurai shonen crack as a live action movie.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

They're among the things I know I can't touch now if I want to still think well of them, if you know what I mean.

Totally. There is a ton of once-beloved YA genre fluff that I'm just as fearful to pick up again, now that I'm very critical and jaded; I'd rather just leave them as vague, happy memories.

All the recs for stuff like Brooks and Eddings wouldn't have bugged me so much if they hadn't been so uncritical. If those friends had been more like "well, the prose is a little clunky and the plot is a bit derivative, but I really like these characters" I would have had more realistic expectations when I picked them up. But it was more in the vein of gushy "oh, it's the coolest thing since Tolkien!" and...no, just not even close. I got burned a few times like that following their recs, since we *did* have a bunch of favorite books in common and some of their recs (mostly SF) did click with me, but I eventually figured out that in epic fantasy in particular, our tastes just Did Not Synch very well. I'm really just insanely hypercritical and anything that whiffs even slightly of being too derivative or genre-cliched, or some prose styles that I could forgive in other genres, put me right out of the groove in high fantasy. Maybe back when I was reading fantasy more voraciously I could have enjoyed those, but not anymore.

I have a feeling the book was something I saw at the bookstore the other day that sounded like something you'd like and I'd planned to ask if you'd read it, but forgot to write it down.

Was it F/SF? If it was, and something published in the last 15-20 years or so, the answer is "probably not". If it was something more on the horror/paranormal side of the fence, odds are slightly better.

I am curious about the Bear/Monette books, now though.

It's a one-shot, A Companion To Wolves, published late last year. I haven't read it yet, but it sounds like it's very, very much my sort of thing. Here's a bit from matociquala's journal in 2005 when they were first cooking it up:

<sub>It's like the sex and mud and beard lice in A Companion to Wolves. No sex, no beard lice, no book. Because part of what that book is about is an argument with the tendency, in certain tendrils of the fantasy genre, to kind of sweep anything vaguely unpleasant under the rug. The Inciting Incident, of course, was the infamous semi-elided dragon-mediated rapes and less-infamous extremely-elided institutional homosexuality in the early Pern novels. But then the book takes on a life of its own, and the worldbuilding does too, and if you pull out that one thread (i.e., isn't a bit icky that dragonriders are making off with teenaged boys, some of whom are going to wind up bonding to green dragons, and we all know what those green dragons are like, and wouldn't it be interesting to tackle those social issues head-on rather than eliding them) then the whole structure of the book collapses. And you essentially have a fuzzy wish fulfillment fantasy about a boy and his wolf fighting trolls and obtaining an understanding of the world, and the world really doesn't need another one of those.

And yet, I know perfectly well that if that book goes to press, there's going to be a faction of readers who are like "oo, icky, the sex totally ruins this nice YA novel!" (nevermind the beheadings: beheadings, okay to many people's perception of YA) (no, it's not a YA novel, put down the axe--but some people think any book with a teenaged protagonist must be YA) and there are going to be readers who are like "there's all this sex, and it's not erotic at all, what's with that?" and then, Goddess willing, there will be a faction of readers who are like "Whoa! Genderfuck! And an honest appraisal of the difficulties in living your life while dealing with a physical response to the biological rhythms of another species! And negotiation and compromise and people making sacrifices to defend their families! And the psychic cost of war! And dude, pitched battles in Lovecraftian troll-tunnels, and beheadings, and beard lice, and GIANT PSYCHIC DIRE WOLVES! How cool is that?!"

And it's that last guy I'm aiming for. Dead between his eyes. Because there are books for the other two already, and they don't need my book.</sub>

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Well of course it was F/SF...

That book may have actually been it, come to think of it. I'd say "I have to go back and find out" but I already left there with a bag and a half of books this week anyway...

Terry Brooks clicked with me almost solely for a character: Wren Ohmsford. While all her male cousins were scampering around and angsting over romance and everything else and getting locked in jail and such, Wren was literally fighting her way through hell on earth, becoming queen, then fighting her way right back through that same hell with the entire elven race literally in her hand, so she could come back and save their butts.

Sadly, while some of his female characters were decent enough and the males were ok enough for your standard "coming of age fantasy heroes" Wren was the only one I ever cared about...and the one of that Shannara series he cared the least about. Everyone else got detailed post series lives...Wren got "she became queen...she's regarded as the best ruler ever...but I won't tell you squat about her." I was ready to give up on Brooks altogether, and then he brought in Grianne, who went from the handmaiden of the world's greatest evil to the most powerful force of good the world had ever known, and didn't waste her life beating herself up for her youth. She's so powerful that it essentially took an army of magic users to send her to hell, and the second she got there, she started tearing the place up to get out(sadly, I fear that in the end, she will be rescued by her nephew, the typical Ohmsford hero, instead of saving herself.)

GRRM is...well, I'm largely attached to it for the characters, and the moral message/life of the world, but it also does an extremely good job of making "huge and epic" actually feel huge and epic, instead of tust a thick book. He's the only one to ever cross the 750 page line without me wanting to tell him to shut up and get on with it.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Ah, I know you read at least a few paranormals so I didn't want to presume.

Here's the cover art for ACTW, does that look familiar?



GRRM is...well, I'm largely attached to it for the characters, and the moral message/life of the world, but it also does an extremely good job of making "huge and epic" actually feel huge and epic, instead of tust a thick book.

That is another excellent selling point in its favor. I have no problem with loooooong books when the length is necessary to tell the story properly, but I hate hate hate books that just seem to be full of unnecessary padding to the point where a proper editor would have to trade the red pencil for a chainsaw.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...nope, wasn't it.

The GRRM books are, for lack of a better way to explain it, several epic fantasy storylines playing out all at once in one huge landscape...you have the unwanted son struggling through corrupt court, the illegitimate young man struggling to find his place and becoming a leader, the boy leading a rebellion after the murder of his father, the "villainous" man finding redemption, the noble girl forced into the wild after being separated from her family and birthright and growing up on the streets, determined to have her revenge, the exiled princess returning to reclaim her birthright, and the girly-prissy girl who has to grow up and nevigate an enemy court. All these plotlines (and others) can be the core plot of any epic fantasy, but they're all taking place in one world, at one time, over the same kigdom.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

ACTW may have a couple of strikes against it for your tastes -- there are apparently no major female characters (well, at least no HUMAN females), and in keeping with that whole unflinching look at the green dragonrider problem, there's a lot of rather gritty gay sex. But that whole idea of deconstructing the psychic-animal-buddy trope that's so often a totally idealized fuzzy cliche sounds soooo up my alley.

And samurai crack sounds like fun. I still need to watch Damo and a bunch of other things, but before I start scavenging for downloads and rentals I need to poke more closely at some of the local cable channels and see which of the dramas they're running are subtitled (the listings are remarkably unhelpful so the only way to find out for sure is to tune in). I get a couple of Asian networks, primarily Korean-focused given the area demographics but there's one that runs a handful of Japanese series; I just noticed last night that this station's running the old TV version of Zatoichi so I'm going to be going on a major old-school Katsu-binge soon.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

On the record for dramas: Avoid Goong like the plague. It's immensely popular, but if it didn't give you hives, I'd go into shock.