Oops.

Some old posts will probably be popping up as new if you're subscribed to this blog by RSS - I'm uploading the contents of the old site here, but I sometimes forget to backdate them. For future reference, the next "current" article to be posted is part two of my "Season's End" TV review.

Crisis on Infinite Livejournals

Ugh, what a week. For the last eight days, neither my home computer or my laptop has been able to enter Livejournal; all I get is "Cannot find server". Oddly enough, several friends of mine succeeded, and I was able to do so via campus computers, but... well, I just have no idea what's going on. My IP is dynamic, so it can't be a problem with a specific address; I can't remote-post replies to threads via e-mail; and since no extensions of Livejournal are accessible, there's no way for me to contact their Tech Support or check their FAQ.

It's not my own site I'm worried about; Sententia's doing nicely here and I'll have all the old material uploaded by tomorrow. But dammit, I have a lot of friends on LJ and I just can't interact with them at all. It's very frustrating. :(

Diana's Adventures in TV Land: Season's End (Part 1)

It's been a surprisingly good TV season for me - I had four shows on rotation, plus I discovered the excellent "Dexter" in January. That's not how I normally watch TV; I tend to just pick a show and watch it exclusively until it either jumps the shark or ends. So, yeah, lots of good stuff these days.

Back in October I listed a bunch of shows that were launching in the fall: Veronica Mars, Heroes, Smallville, Supernatural, Nip/Tuck, Drawn Together and Lost. "Rome" and "Dexter" were late additions.

So how did the new year treat these shows?

Let's start with the biggest losers: "Smallville", by all accounts, is still treading water after six years of bland teen soap and outrageously stupid storylines, so I suppose Annette O'Toole is better off finding a job where she can actually be proud to name-check her show. "Nip/Tuck" ended up retconning Christian's attraction to Sean as "just one of those things", which pretty much killed any interest I had in the show, so whatever. "Drawn Together" never came back from its break, and I'm not sure anyone - including the creators - have noticed. Finally, threats of cancellation at long last jolted "Lost" into forward motion, but as far as I'm concerned it's way too little, way too late. That bridge has been scorched more thoroughly than Jennifer Love Hewitt's musical career.

Now, to the good stuff. :)

Rome was the first casualty of the new year, buckling under the weight of a severely limited budget that shortened the second season to ten episodes. Despite temporal restrictions, and the inevitable sense of apocalypse that comes with the transition of Rome from Republic to Empire, Bruno Heller and his cast acquitted themselves very well. We watched beloved characters die, or come full circle, or achieve the destiny they'd been speeding towards since day one. We saw actors, in the truest sense of the word, delivering phenomenal performances. And if the tragedies were strung a bit too closely together, it somehow avoided feeling repetitive, even in the most similar cases (Eirene/Gaia). So while this series will be missed immensely, I can at least take comfort in knowing that it went out properly.

The same cannot be said of Veronica Mars, cancelled with the conclusion of its third season. Quite frankly, both Rob Thomas and the CW handled the situation poorly: it's no secret that the series was never a ratings hit, despite its critical acclaim and devoted fanbase. The third season was greenlit as a Hail Mary pass, and it didn't work. The CW responded by not responding, declining comment on the show's fate up to and including the day they unveiled the fall schedule, with "Veronica Mars" nowhere to be seen. Aware that the news would infuriate a percentage of their viewers, Dawn Ostroff simply decided not to tell them. Not exactly appropriate behavior for someone who ultimately has a hand in making such decisions.

But Rob Thomas is equally to blame for the below-average way in which the series concluded; here was a man I praised for quick thinking, who was constantly reinventing the series to suit current circumstances, and he reacted to the possibility of cancellation by sticking his fingers in his ears and going "la la la"; reportedly, he never even considered designing the season finale to double as a series finale, just in case. As a result, "Veronica Mars" concludes with little closure, a mediocre finale to a mediocre season. Pacing was way, way off during the last string of standalone episodes: Logan's suddenly wondering if Veronica cheated on him weeks after they broke up, Dick has an 11th-hour breakdown that really, really, really should have been explored earlier, and the fate of practically every character is left up in the air.

I imagine it all stems from how very far the series strayed from its original premise, due to its WB-esque relationship drama. Joss Whedon named S1 Logan Echolls one of the top characters on TV; two years later he's a castrated fop. Veronica herself ended up following Buffy Summers' footsteps and crossing the Rubicon from snarky to bitchy, becoming rather unlikeable in the process. Keith stopped being fun. Such things make you wonder why you were watching the show to begin with.

At which point you pop in the S1 DVDs, and you see it. The mysteries, the intrigue, the wit, the irresistable characters. That, to me, is "Veronica Mars". And no matter what came afterwards, that first season is an accomplishment that can never be taken away.

That's the end of part 1. Part 2 coming shortly! :)

Book Review: "Troy" by Adele Geras

My fascination with the Trojan War and its legends aside, Adele Geras' version of the tale makes for very compelling reading, for a number of reasons.

Geras incorporates a lot of aspects that are usually ignored for the sake of streamlining the story: characters such as Oenone (Paris' first love), Deiphobus (the Trojan prince who marries Helen after Paris' death) and Hermione (Helen's daughter) are part of this world, and even if they don't directly appear in the narrative, their very existence shapes the way we view the characters. Helen, for example, is no longer just a runaway wife but a mother who abandoned her child. Geras also places a heavy emphasis on the passing of time - though the novel is mostly concerned with the final years of the war, we are never allowed to forget that the city has been under siege for ten years. This broadens the scope of the tale considerably, breaching the confines of a two-hour Hollywood blockbuster and regaining the epic dimension originally set down by Homer.

Most adaptations of the Iliad provide both Greek and Trojan perspectives, typically from those characters who are considered to be Homer's protagonists (Hector, Helen, Paris, Achilles, Agamemnon, Menelaus and so on). Part of what makes "Troy" so remarkable, then, is where Geras places us, as readers, in the fictional world she constructs. For starters, we're exclusively given the Trojan viewpoint until the very end of the novel, where Greek characters start popping up as focalizers (it's a nice bit of metafiction where they "invade" the narrative even as they're invading the city). This, of course, leads to a far greater dramatic impact, because we've spent the whole story in Troy, with Trojan characters, and their ultimate fate is dismal, brutal and destructive. You feel the horror and the loss much more strongly, I think, than you would in a narrative that divided your attention between the winners and the losers.

Geras takes this innovation a step further by pushing the Trojan royalty - in other words, the recognizable characters such as Priam, Hector and Paris - to the sidelines (some more than others; Helen is still a significant presence, but Cassandra is practically a ghost). All the main characters of "Troy" are servants, handmaidens and such, a class that's usually invisible, faceless and anonymous. Not only that, but with the exception of Iason the stable boy, all the main characters are women, and that provides a very unique and intriguing outlook on the war. It also allows Geras to avoid repetition by dramatizing the same familiar scenes; all the major events are seen from an "external" perspective, through the eyes of the women on the walls of the city. In fact, some fairly "important" events happen entirely off-page simply because there are no women to witness it.

I also like the subtle ways in which the author undermines the mythological dimension of the story, despite active participation of the Olympian gods. Helen, for example, is still the most beautiful woman in the world, but her relationship with Paris isn't quite as idyllic as the public thinks; she's tormented by the loss of her child, he feels pressured by her and seeks relief with palace servants, and there's just a tangible sense of erosion. One thing that's mentioned early on is that Paris' beauty - once the male equivalent of Helen - has faded; he's put on weight, he's lost his boyish charm, and while he's still attractive, there's a certain polished shine that has gone away in the face of harsh reality.

"Troy" is, ultimately, a story that works on two levels: it tells the story of the Trojan War through the eyes of Trojan women who never existed as far as Homer's concerned, and it follows the lives of those Trojan women as they search for meaning amidst the blood and havoc. As might be expected from a female-centric work, it's very much a novel that deals with women's issues such as pregnancy, the threat of rape and mother/child relationships, but it also uses the backdrop of the siege to take these potential cliches in new directions. And it's an excellent read to boot, well-paced and coherent. Grade: 4 Trojan Horses out of 5.

The votes are in...

And the Ron Jeremy Award for Biggest Dick In The Industry goes to Joe Quesada! This award is given in recognition of your unparalleled ignorance and willful disregard of your customers. Well done, Joe. Now go crawl back to your slime pit and wonder why you just can't seem to get those darn women to read your comics.

Because I've had it up to HERE with Livejournal...

Welcome to Sententia 3.0! Content to follow. :)

And Me Without A Black Dress

Thursday was, to quote Melaka Fray, a "Bad day. Started bad, stayed that way."

First I lost a bet with my friend Hannah, and had to read "All-Star Batman #5". Which I thought I could do, being prepared for Miller's usual foolishness. So imagine my surprise when his depiction of Wonder Woman sent me flying into a volcanic rage. I was screaming, throwing the comic around, ripping pages. I'm a little embarrassed about it now, but you know what? After MJ, and the hypocrisy of the Citizen Steel scandal, and the shameless exploits of Superslut, and Storm becoming a trophy wife, and Sue giving her husband a goodbye boink before abandoning her children... gah. I just couldn't take it anymore. Lately it feels like DC and Marvel are bombarding me with misogynstic and sexist tripe, and I'm not a violent person, but I swear, if I'd had a baseball bat and Frank Miller was within swinging distance, I would've been seriously tempted to crack him upside the head and let the misogyny drain out.

Fortunately, there's a cure for exposure to Neanderthalism, and her name is Shaenon Garrity. I sat myself down and reread the first few months of "Narbonic: The Director's Cut" to cheer me up; worked like a charm (the Theftbot gag and Madblood's reaction gets me giggling every. single. time). Of course, then I started asking myself why in hell was I still bothering with mainstream comics when there are women like K. Sandra Fuhr, Ursula Vernon, Shaenon Garrity and Aeire doing superior work online (and no small number of highly talented men as well - Rich Burlew, Randy Milholland, Kristopher Straub, Justin Pierce, Scott Christian Sava and so many more who don't need Power Girl's tits to tell a good story). But it's sort of a "righteous man in Sodom" thing - I stick around for guys like Brubaker, Whedon and Carey, and maybe the Lunas have another "Ultra" up their sleeves, and there's always Vertigo...

Anyway, I digress. A few hours later, I found out that "Veronica Mars" had been cancelled. My first reaction was "Okay, no shock there, the show hasn't exactly been at the top of its game lately." Except the first season was flawless, and that's what I remember when I think of the series, and even at its weakest it still stood head-and-shoulders above most of its contemporaries (mostly because Kristen Bell, unlike Tyra Banks and the Fashion Police, can string more than two sentences together without sounding completely stoned). Bye bye, 21st Century Nancy Drew. I'll have a proper eulogy when I do my end of the season review.

To top it all off, Jeff Lester - one of the great critics of the comics blogosphere - announced his departure from The Savage Critics at the end of the month. There aren't many online individuals whose opinions I trust wholeheartedly; Jeff is one of them, on account of his wit and his ability to cut through the BS and pinpoint, with total clarity, the things that need to be said. I remember my surprise when news of the impending Black Panther/Storm marriage broke; most people were debating canon vs. retcons, but Jeff was one of the few who drew attention to Storm's status as an independent female icon, an African-American woman leader of a prominent superteam, and how that was being threatened for the sake of a sales boost. When Wolverine #50 came out, Jeff again hit the bullseye by pegging Marvel's great flaw: its administrators have bought into their own hype to the extent that not only do they publish crappy comics, they do so secure in the belief that they're releasing absolute gems.

On May 26, the blogosphere will shine a little less brightly.

And then, of course, my Internet connection drops dead over the weekend, forcing me to post this long after it's relevant.

So... yeah. Thursday sucked.