Gamer (live action movie)

I just saw this movie, and now I feel like I need soap for my brain... I knew a little about the movie beforehand and, having found out about Slayers, figured there would be quite a bit of violence. Although Slayers did bother me, I hadn't heard anything about Society and wasn't prepared for how much that would bother me.

Synopsis:

At some time in the near future, a technology has been developed that will allow people to control the actions of other people. This technology gets used in a game called Society, which becomes hugely popular. People volunteer to be controlled (more than likely because they need the money - they're poor, or junkies, or whatever, according to one character) - these people get paid, but, considering what many of them are made to do, I'm thinking they're probably not paid nearly enough. Other people pay to control them.

You'd think Society would be enough for most people, but apparently people wanted more, and the game Slayers was created. Whereas Society uses ordinary people (desperate/messed up people who are, for the most part, pretty good-looking despite their situations, but still basically ordinary), Slayers uses death row convicts. Society is like Second Life or The Sims, only with real people. Slayers is like Counter-Strike with real people. Supposedly, Slayers gives these convicts hope - if a convict can survive 30 games, he or she gets to go free. In practice, these convicts rarely survive more than 10 games. Oh, there's also the "non-player character"-type convicts. Those can go free if they survive one game, but, since they're given pre-programmed actions (like sweeping streets, cheering during a game, etc.) and aren't controlled by a real person, not one of them has ever survived.

One particular convict, called Kable by his player (his real name is something else, but I can't remember what it is), has survived an astonishing 27 games and may become the first convict to ever go free. He doesn't know how hugely popular he is outside of the game - all he wants is to survive so that he can go home to his wife and child. His player, 17-year-old Simon, is contacted by a group trying to undermine Society, Slayers, and Ken Castle, the guy who created both games and the technology behind them. This group, which calls itself Humanz, gives Simon a mod that allows him to speak to Kable. Both Kable and Simon want Kable to win his 30th game, but Castle is secretly stacking the deck against him with a vicious convict who isn't controlled by anyone. You see, Kable's weakness is that any action controlled by Simon has slight lag time - Simon's commands need time to get to Kable. For this reason, Simon lets Kable control the shooting, although Simon could fully control Kable if he wanted to. An uncontrolled convict has no lag time to deal with. Kable manages to convince Simon to allow him to play without any control, and Humanz makes that possible by interfering with the link between Kable and Simon.

While Kable has been in prison, his wife has lost custody of their daughter and manages to eke out a living by allowing herself to be controlled in Society. Her player is an enormous, disgusting guy who likes to make her hit on and have sex with other people. With the help of Humanz, Kable manages to find her and drag her out of Society so that she can be freed the same way he has been.

When Kable hears that his daughter has been taken away and is currently in the care of none other than Castle himself, he goes to get her. Apparently, Kable was one of the first people to be given the new technology, back when it was thought it could be used to improve soldiers and increase human longevity. When things didn't work out, Kable was made to kill one of the other test subjects, a friend of his, and then put in prison. So, he and Castle have history.

While at Castle's place (no, I don't know how he got in so easily), he discovers that Castle has had the same procedure used on Society and Slayers people done on himself, only his brain cells don't receive, they transmit. Humanz has been infiltrated, and Kable's brain cells are back to being controllable (apparently, this can be done easily and remotely). Castle can fight Kable, but Kable can't harm Castle any more than Castle allows. Castle's plan is to one day be able to control everyone in the world, without anyone being the wiser.

However, his plans are transmitted to screens everwhere, ruining the whole secrecy aspect (a surviving member of Humanz and a reporter make this possible, although, again, I don't know how they could have managed it). Also, Simon gets control of Kable again and helps Kable kill Castle (thankfully before Kastle can make Kable kill his own daughter). Before Kable, his wife, and child leave, Kable has Castle's people free him and his wife. Except, you know, anyone could turn the control back on at any time, so I'm not sure how free they really are. Plus, Society and Slayers both still exist.

But don't think about that! Happy ending!

Commentary:

There were times this movie made me want to vomit. It was horrible enough seeing the convicts try to deal with the thought that they probably wouldn't survive the games very long, but I actually found Society to be more difficult to deal with. I doubt that the negative aspects of allowing yourself to be controlled in Society were advertised very much, so I wonder how many people volunteered to do that without knowing what they were getting into? Also, if you sit there and allow your Society "character" get hurt, shouldn't you, the player, be liable? The movie doesn't go into that at all. You could argue that the person being controlled brought it on themselves by agreeing to be controlled, but you could also argue that they aren't responsible for their actions and the results while they're being controlled. So, lacking a good answer, what, no one's responsible? Well, there's a recipe for hell.

The movie makes so many connections with games you currently see in real life (Second Life, Counter-Strike, etc.) that you might find yourself thinking, "Oh my God, something like this could actually happen, how horrible!" You know, if you could overlook the impossibility of the technology that makes it all happen, that is. I'd like to argue that, even if the technology were possible, something like Slayers or Society could never happen. At the very least, this is what human rights groups are for. Something like Society might be possible if the people being controlled were allowed to state that their players must abide by certain rules - those rules could be different for different people, but I doubt Kable's wife signed up for what her player was making her do. Plus, I think the appeal for the movie's players is that there are no rules they need to follow - they can do whatever their hearts desire, no matter how disgusting it is.

One part that sticks in my mind is a woman in Society who gets rammed into by someone - I think the other person was skating or something. The woman is horribly scraped and bloody, her mascara is running from her tears, and yet she's laughing hysterically, because her player (some old man) is laughing. Her player makes her lick some of her own blood off of herself.

You see why this movie sometimes made me want to vomit?

The players in Slayers and Society did a lot of the same things players in real life games of those sorts might do - you'd think knowing that they're playing with real people would result in some interesting adjustments, unless that's what all the sex and violence was supposed to be. One thing I did find interesting was Simon's reaction when he was able to talk to Kable. I'm only guessing this, based off of what little was shown of Simon and Kable's interactions, but I think Simon thought he had some kind of relationship with Kable. He seemed almost a little nostalgic about their past 27 or so games together and didn't seem to really comprehend that it wasn't a wonderful thrill ride for Kable.

When Simon starts going on about how all the convicts in the game deserve what they're getting, because they'd done stuff that got them on death row in the first place, Kable says that all that must go for him as well. Simon's response is interesting. He says that Kable is different, because Kable is his psycho. I wonder if this imagined relationship with their "characters" is part of the reason why some players like the games so much, and I wonder how many other people imagine that they have special relationships with the people they play. Well, if Kable's wife's player thinks of her as anything other than a doll and feels anything for her, maybe I don't want to know about it. Eww.

I was kind of surprised that Kable's wife didn't try to find herself a better job. I mean, how does the economics of Society work? I can't see anyone allowing themselves to be controlled unless they're either messed up or Society pays really, really well. However, I can't see players flocking to the game if it costs a ton of money - I don't see a guy like the one who controlled Kable's wife being able to afford to pay a lot, either. So, how does the money even out? And, even if it does pay a lot, why would someone like Kable's wife think it's worth it? Bagging groceries may not pay a ton, but at least it wouldn't give you nightmares.

Oh, and since I have the urge to poke at holes, how did a 17-year-old kid manage to get his "character" to survive 27+ games? Yes, Simon let Kable do a few things on his own, but still. These are real bullets, real grenades, real people with real wounds - I don't see how Kable survived as long as he did. Pretty much the only thing he had on his side was Simon's father's money - if a convict's player has money, he can get upgraded weaponry (which makes you feel sorry for convicts who, through the luck of the draw, got less wealthy players).

Also, as far as Society goes, how do schedules work out? Does a player say, "here's what hours I want to play, make sure you're available," and the person he or she controls fits their real life schedule around that? Personally, even if it weren't for the general ickiness of controlling a real human being, I'd still prefer games as they currently are. If the character you play isn't real, you don't have to worry about its schedule or whether it's hurt or sick or tired. The players in this movie might not worry about those things either (because, from what viewers are shown, they're all horrible people), but they'll have to worry when the person they control keels over dead.

So, did I actually like anything about this movie? Well, I cared about Kable and his wife enough to feel sorry for them. I hoped for Kable's survival, and hated it when Simon decided he wanted to have a nice conversation with Kable instead of paying attention to the flesh-shredding game he'd just begun (this annoyed Kable as well, and I don't blame him). Also, Gerard Butler looks good grimy. That's basically it. It doesn't paint a very nice picture of games and gamers, and I'd hate if it anyone pointed at this movie as an example of why games and gamers are all that is horrible and vile. It was depressing to see people used as living meat puppets, and, other than Humanz and maybe that reporter, it didn't look like too many people even cared.

The main reason I went to see this movie was because the idea sounded interesting, but the actual execution of it was less than I had hoped. I couldn't enjoy the action because knowing the situation made everything too horrific to be enjoyable, the movie was too fast and frantic for the characters to really get a chance to shine, and the writers didn't do nearly as much as they could have with their vision of what the future of gaming might be.

Watch-alikes and Read-alikes:

• Ghost in the Shell (anime movie) - This movie takes place in a future where just about everyone has some sort of cybernetic implant, if not entirely cyberized bodies. Unfortunately, this leaves people vulnerable to brain-hacking. Section 9, a group of cybernetically enhanced cops, is called in to investigate a brain-hacker called The Puppetmaster. The sound effects and look of this movie are a little dated, in my opinion, but it's still an excellent movie (although it may require more than one viewing in order to figure out what's going on), and it's a great place to begin before trying any of the newer incarnations of this franchise. However, those who prefer something newer might want to try the anime TV series. Because so many people's bodies aren't flesh and blood anymore, there is occasionally a similar "I can do what I want and not worry about the consequences" feel. Also, brain hacks can sometimes allow people to take over others' bodies. Ghost in the Shell (all its incarnations) is more philosophical than Gamers, but its slick technology and many action scenes may hold a similar appeal.
  
• Second Lives: A Journey Through Virtual Worlds (book) by Tim Guest - Tim Guest writes about and interviews a variety of people who play virtual worlds and are involved in their creation. He also writes about virtual worlds in general, and the many ways people use them. Those who'd like popular non-fiction about virtual worlds that are similar to what's depicted in Gamer might want to try this.
  
• The Second Life Herald: The Virtual Tabloid That Witnessed the Dawn of the Metaverse (non-fiction book) by Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace - This book is not just about the Second Life Herald, a virtual tabloid that reports on Second Life events and people, but about Peter Ludlow's experiences in and research about virtual worlds in general (Second Life, The Sims Online, etc.). This book has several pictures, which can help the reader visualize what's going on in these virtual worlds a little better. Those who'd like popular non-fiction about virtual worlds similar to what's depicted in Gamer might want to try this.
  
• Uglies (book) by Scott Westerfeld - This young adult science fiction novel takes place in a future where, at age 16, "uglies," teens who haven't had any cosmetic surgery yet, are put through a major surgical procedure that turns them into "pretties," gorgeous, placid, fun-loving, bubble heads. Tally Youngblood is an Ugly who wants nothing more than to become a Pretty, but things become complicated when she is asked to betray a friend who has decided to leave the city and remain an Ugly. This is the first book in the series - next are Pretties, Specials, and Extras (the only book not featuring Tally as a main character). Like the players in Gamer, many of the people in Tally's world don't really have to worry about the consequences of their actions, because there will always be someone there to keep things from going really wrong. Tally eventually realizes that her world isn't the utopia she thought it was.
• .hack//SIGN (anime TV series) - This story is set mainly within a popular virtual reality RPG called the World. This particular story (there are several .hack//whatever series, manga, and games) revolves around a detached and introverted player character named Tsukasa. Many strange things happen around Tsukasa, and for some reason he can't log out of the game. Although the characters in this anime aren't playing other people, they're in a world so real that it might as well be the real world. It doesn't have Gamer's ultra-violence, but this vision of a world with a hugely popular, very realistic game might appeal to some fans of that aspect of Gamer.
  
• The Matrix (live action movie) - A hacker finds out that the "real" world is only a construct designed to keep people docile, so that they can be used as living batteries by robots - this hacker discovers that he is the only one who can free humanity from these robots and the constructed world. In a way, the people in this movie are controlling human beings - they don't know it, but they're controlling themselves in a world that doesn't actually exist. Those who liked Gamer's action, violence, and futuristic feel might like this movie.
  
• Surviving the Game (live action movie) - After the death of his two best friends, Mason just wants to die himself, until he is offered, and accepts, a well-paying job working for a hunting party in the Rocky Mountains. What Mason doesn't realize is that the rich businessmen in the hunting party plan on hunting him, and what the businessmen don't count on is Mason's renewed will to survive. Like Gamer, this is another action movie in which people are hunting people.
• Angelic Layer (manga) by CLAMP; Angelic Layer (anime TV series) - A 12-year-old girl named Misaki gets hooked on the game Angelic Layer, in which players battle it out with little dolls. Even though she's a newbie, Misaki becomes a strong competitor. She has no idea, however, that the game can give her more than just fun and excitement - Angelic Layer can bring her closer to her mother, a woman she hasn't seen in years. Like Gamer, the players in Angelic Layer control the ones that actually fight (who, in this case, are dolls and not people, although certain characters care for the dolls as though they really were people). Unlike Gamer, violence is limited to bloodless (or relatively bloodless - I can't remember) kicking, punching, and the occasional special move. This might be a good one for those who liked the idea of players battling it out through surrogates but didn't like all the sex and violence. The intended audience for this is children, but it can be enjoyed by adults as well.
  

Blogger's searching capabilities, or lack thereof

For all you Blogger users out there, or anyone who just happens to know a lot about it - what the heck has happened to Blogger's searching capabilities??? It used to be that I could search something, and I'm pretty sure that anything with those words in the title was listed first in the results, followed by anything that just used those words in the body of the post. Now... well, now I don't know what I'm getting.

For instance, I just tried a search for Ghost in the Shell, and I got one post. One. By the way, if I try that same search in the Edit Posts screen when I'm working posts, I get 8 (not counting this post). Why didn't those 8 other posts show up? I noticed the same thing when I tried to look for a particular post about James Patterson on Book Chase. At the time, I figured that Sam Sattler, the author of that blog, had just chosen to delete that post, but now I'm not so sure. I don't know when this change happened, but I'm not happy with it. It makes that little search box at the top of my blog useless. Maybe worse than useless, because there's no indication that it's skipping posts that actually exist.

Update:

Just did a search on Blogger's Known Issues blog (which could really use something like a comments feature, since Help Group doesn't seem to allow people to post new problems). This has been a known issue off and on since September 2006. Ye gods. You'd think they'd have it fixed by now. I know my search box used to work just fine, so I wonder what messed it up. The Known Issues blog includes a workaround, but it's annoying.

I'm alive!

For those who are still actually looking at this blog from time to time (boy has my readership tanked), just letting you know I'm still alive. I saw a mind-scarring movie today (Gamer) and almost have the post for it finished. Also, if you've taken a peek at my Shelfari widget, you might have noticed that I am reading a Western. Yes, that's right, paranormal romance and manga-loving me is reading a Western. Coming up with read-alikes for that one should be a brain buster.

The school year started maybe a month ago. I figured that, being a cataloger, this wouldn't affect me nearly as much as if I were a reference or instruction librarian. Turns out I've been wrong about that. Since I've got a conference and actual vacation time coming up next month, I've got to try to get a little ahead, but things haven't been going so well. I blame our ILS (integrated library system, for those of you unfamiliar with library acronyms). It sucks up all my time and causes me to sweat bullets as I try to advise our Systems Librarian in ways that will make our catalog better without breaking it first. ::shudder::

The Host (book) by Stephenie Meyer

After the horrible experience that was Breaking Dawn (see my post here), I was hesitant about reading this book. I finally ended up bumping it up to the top of my list of things to catalog because it's so freaking thick - at the moment, as far behind as I am on my cataloging, thick books are appealing. So, after I cataloged it, I figured I might as well read it. Surprisingly, I liked it. Meyer's writing style, which seemed unnatural in a first person book written from the perspective of a teenage girl, fit well in a first person novel written from the perspective of an alien. That's not to say I didn't have some gripes about the book - more on that in my commentary section.

Now for the synopsis. I don't reveal everything in the book, since that would take forever, but I do give away the ending. You have been warned.

Synopsis:

Humanity has been almost completely taken over by body-snatching aliens. No one noticed what was happening until it was too late. Now, the few remaining humans who haven't been taken over by the souls (what the aliens call themselves) hide, do their best to survive, and try to figure out a way to get their planet and the people they once recognized as friends and family back.

The only thing humans have on their side is that adults who resist are amazingly hard to truly take over. For this reason, souls are generally encouraged to take only young humans as hosts. However, when a human who may have information about the resistance is captured the Seekers (souls who gather up hosts and protect other souls - the only souls capable of anything even close to violence) decide that much could be learned if she were made into a host. A special soul, given the name Wanderer, is chosen to invade the human. Unlike most souls, Wanderer has never found a planet she truly felt was her home. Her experience with many different kinds of hosts might possibly make her the ideal candidate for dealing with an unruly human mind and overwhelming human emotions.

Wanderer is upset to discover that even she has problems with her human host. Amazingly, her host, Melanie, is still around, and she has no intention of telling Wanderer anything that might cause her loved ones harm. Mel can't manage to keep everything from Wanderer, but this turns out not to be too big of a problem. The constant bombardment of Mel's memories and emotions eventually causes Wanderer to care for Jamie, Mel's younger brother - and Jared, the man Mel loves. Mel's not too thrilled about the idea of Wanderer loving Jared, but, when she gets the opportunity to persuade Wanderer to go to her family without telling the Seekers what she's doing, she takes it.

Mel is overly optimistic. While she and Wanderer do manage to find Jeb (Mel's uncle), Jamie, and Jared (so many "J" names...), the reunion isn't as rosy and wonderful as she seems to have expected it to be. Jeb and the rest now live with a hidden community of humans and, although Jeb seems willing to wait and see if Wanderer is as harmless as she appears to be, the rest of the community, Jared included, isn't quite so accepting. As far as Jared is concerned, Mel is dead, and Wanderer is just a monster controlling her shell. Mel longs to convince him that she's still around and can't believe he would possibly hurt her. Although Wanderer has fallen in love with Jared via Mel's memories of him, she is less convinced that Jared will happily accept the truth, and rightfully so. Jared and others repeatedly try to harm Wanderer. For the most part, the only ones on her side are Jeb, Jamie, Doc (who was originally going to experiment on her), and Ian (who tried to kill her when he first saw her).

With the help of the few people who do seem to like her, Wanderer eventually gains the acceptance of many of the people in the community. Jared eventually believes Wanderer when she tells him that Mel is still alive, which introduces another complication. Remember, Mel's memories have caused Wanderer to fall in love with Jared. Jared loves Mel, and Mel loves Jared, but Jared can't kiss Mel's body without Mel getting upset, because Wanderer enjoys the kiss too and Mel doesn't want Jared kissing Wanderer. As if things aren't complicated enough, Ian eventually falls in love with Wanderer, which again upsets Mel because she doesn't want Ian. Mel's emotions make it impossible for Wanderer to figure out how she feels about Ian. There's no way either Mel or Wanderer will end up with anyone as long as they both share the same body, which Wanderer, by the way, still completely controls.

Although many people in the community have come to like Wanderer somewhat, and although many people enjoy listening to her stories about other worlds (when those stories don't remind them of the plight of their own people), hardly anyone really trusts Wanderer not to betray them if given the chance. When Jamie gets sick, Wanderer knows she could get him medicine that could help make him better, but no one wants to risk letting her go back to her own people. Jared sneaks Wanderer out, the raid is a success, and Jamie gets better. Suddenly, everyone realizes they've got a golden goose - all they have to do is send Wanderer out, and they can have all the medicine and food they need. Constantly taking from her people without giving anything back makes Wanderer feel a bit guilty, but she's happy to be of some use to the community.

Unfortunately, the Seeker originally tasked with collecting whatever information Wanderer managed to get from her host has not given up looking for her and kills a member of the community. Wanderer doesn't want the Seeker to be killed, but she doesn't want to put the community at risk either, so she comes up with a plan. She tells Doc that she'll show him how to remove a soul from its host, but only if he promises her a few things first. First, no soul that is removed must ever be killed. Instead, they must put the souls into cold-storage tanks and arrange for them to be sent to one of the other planets the souls have colonized. Second, Wanderer must be removed from her host. Third, when Wanderer is removed, she doesn't want to be placed into a new host. Wanderer would rather die than continue to live as a parasite.

The last request is the hardest for Doc to agree to, but he really wants to learn how to remove the souls, so he does. Wanderer won't let him tell anyone else what he's agreed to, but people find out anyway. Jared doesn't seem to mind too much (except when he does, although I'm still not sure that his sadness was genuine), but Ian is deeply upset. In the end, Wanderer sneaks off and has Doc perform the procedure.

Except, of course, it's not the end. It turns out there's a little loophole that will allow Wanderer to continue to live without having to be a parasite in an unwilling host. Doc and the others discover that not every human who is freed from being a host can fully recover - some of them have been hosts too long or were unable to mentally fight back the way Mel did. After Doc removes the soul from one such body, Wanderer is given that body. Although she's upset at first, the soul who originally had that body will be safely sent to another world, the body itself would be an empty shell without her in it, and everyone seems happy to have her back. Without Mel's emotions to confuse things, Wanderer happily begins her new life with Ian. When members of the community run into another group of free humans, she also discovers that she's not the only soul who has chosen to side with the humans.

Commentary:

Despite its length (slightly over 600 pages), I read this book in two and a half days, which is a good general indication that I enjoyed it. I'm not sure how well all the alien worlds Meyer writes about would hold up to scientific examination, by they are at least fun to read about. The love story (stories?) is a bit awkward but also interesting. Meyer does an excellent job of making Wanderer and other souls sympathetic, which has the unfortunate side effect of making humans seem like violent, nearly irredeemable monsters. True, the human hosts are taken unwillingly, but I couldn't help but think that the souls were doing a better job with their human bodies than humans themselves do. One of the ways humans finally noticed they'd been invaded: lots of humans suddenly became kinder. Pedophiles, drug dealers, and others who harmed people and broke the law began turning themselves in. Oh, the horror.

Overall, I actually found myself liking the aliens more than the humans. When Mel turned up among the souls, they chased after her so that she could be implanted with a soul. She was badly hurt, but only because she tried to kill herself in an attempt to avoid getting taken over. The souls healed her body, implanted Wanderer into her, and sent Wanderer off to her new job (as a teacher of soul history) and new life in the nearly perfect human world - no one ever has to pay for anything, all injuries can be healed, all illnesses can be cured, everyone trusts each other, no one lies if they can help it, and the only negative emotions anyone feels come from their human hosts.

Aside from the Seekers, souls aren't capable of violence, and even most of the Seekers would probably prefer not to hurt anyone. The souls really have more to fear from humans. When Wanderer turns up among the human community, they, for the most part, try to hurt her. They make their hatred of her clear and, even though she has never once lifted a hand even to defend herself, they fear her. I can understand their fear that she might tell the Seekers about them - after the way they treated her, it was crazy of her not to want to. However, you'd think they'd eventually realize that, on an individual, physical level, they have nothing to fear from her, that all the violence in their interactions with her comes solely from themselves.

Well, enough about that - time to write about those gripes I mentioned at the beginning of this post. In short, they are the book's length, the ending, the way Meyer writes about love, and the whole "humans are so unique" thing.

The Length: Meyer's editor seems to be afraid to force her to tighten up her word count, since book length has been a frequent problem for her. No, I don't think the only good book is a short book - I like plenty of long books. However, I believe that there should be a purpose to all those words. As I read The Host, I found myself thinking that, although I was mostly enjoying myself and certainly making good time reading the book (the check out period of this book was only a week, so I had to finish it quickly regardless), the book didn't really need to be this long. There are many, many pages spent on Mel longing for Jared, Wanderer lamenting how much she is hated, and Wanderer trying to win people's trust like an eager puppy. A better writer, or better editor, could have condensed all these things and more without, I think, the quality of the book suffering. Heck, it might even have become better, and maybe I wouldn't have wanted to smack Mel so much.

The Ending: Usually, when someone complains about a book or movie's happy ending, I'm the one wondering what's wrong with that person. I don't like it when my entertainment depresses me, so I tend to like happy endings. I liked Wanderer a lot and was happy that things turned out well for her, but Meyer's determination to make this a happy ending for everyone, absolutely everyone, was difficult for even me to swallow. Wanderer lives, and humankind will eventually be freed from its alien invasion (one person at a time, but I suppose Doc could teach others how to do it). The alien invaders, who aren't actually all that bad, won't be killed. The truly nice souls, the ones willing to do just about anything for their human friends, will be able to stick around, inhabiting mindless bodies. Ian's brother magically becomes a decent guy. Everybody's happy. Well, everyone except the beings the souls use as hosts on other planets, but who cares about a bunch of non-humanoid aliens? The humans are saved!

To my mind, it's a happy ending that's only happy because Meyer allows her characters to just forget all the things that can't be fixed. The souls will continue to take over hosts, because that's what they must do to survive, and the humans (or, at least, Wanderer's humans) won't be killing the souls they remove. What about the souls who lovingly care for their unimplanted human children? Will they remove the souls from those human bodies, even though those souls would then have to leave behind the children they've grown to love?

I can imagine Wanderer and Ian eventually having children, but they would be human children only. I'm sure Wanderer would continue to hate what she is too much to spawn millions of little host-needing parasites. From a soul perspective, this is kind of sad. Wanderer may have found herself some friends and someone to love, but she can only keep all of that if she doesn't let herself truly be what she is. When Wanderer's host is ready to die of old age, I suspect she'll just let herself die. It probably won't even occur to her to have children the way souls do.

Love in Meyer's Books: I suppose I could just write about love in The Host, but what I have to say really applies to all of Meyer's books. Love, in Meyer's worlds, has a tendency to be disturbingly masochistic. In Meyer's Twilight books, Bella and Edward would just die without each other - in fact, when Edward thinks Bella is dead, he tries to commit suicide. Bella realizes that Edward craves her blood and could possibly kill her at any moment, but she loves him unconditionally (I guess having surivival insticts would make her love less pure?) and doesn't care. Plus, she'd love it if he would turn her into a vampire - who cares about the friends and family she'd have to leave behind, after all?

The Host has similar problems, plus some readers may take issue with Meyer's love of large physical age gaps. Mel is 17 when she meets 26-year-old Jared - he kisses her the first time they meet, but, because of her age, refuses to have sex with her. How gentlemanly! (You can't see me, but I'm rolling my eyes.) When Wanderer is put into her final human body, she lies about its age (almost 17), so that Ian won't go all gentlemanly on her. That one threw me a little because, it seemed somewhat unnecessary. After all, while Wanderer new body may be disturbingly child-like (she looks smaller and younger than her actual physical age of 16-nearly-17), Wanderer herself is a few thousand years old. I can't help but wonder what Meyer was trying to do. Why not make Wanderer's new body a sweet-looking, cute, petite 20-year-old or something?

Ok, I got a little sidetracked there. Back to what I really wanted to write about - love in The Host. Mel loves Jared, so much so that she can't possibly believe he would hurt her when she comes back to him implanted with Wanderer. She doesn't think she could have harmed him if he had been in the same situation - her love would be too great!! Oh, I swoon. Ahem. Well, as far as Jared not harming her is concerned, Mel is so very, very wrong. Jared wants to kill her. He tries to kill her. Several times. The only reason he stops is because it upsets Jamie so much. Mel wants to throw herself at Jared even though it's practically guaranteed that he would break her face if she tried it.

Apparently, only one person in Mel's body can have survival instincts at a time. When crazy Mel wants to throw herself at Jared, sane Wanderer holds them both back and tells Mel to get a grip. When Wanderer starts to love everyone so much that she begins to hate her existence as a parasite, Mel tries to stop her from having herself removed and allowed to die. Again, a character's love is so great that she is prompted to express it in ways that cause her pain/death - at least in Wanderer's case, one could see her actions as part of her species makeup, since soul Mothers must give up their lives for their children to live. Both characters lose there sanity where Jamie is concerned, although I found this much easier to swallow. Mel and Wanderer both viewed themselves as something like Jamie's mother, and mothers will sometimes do crazy things to protect their young. I can buy that and even be ok with it. Plus, Jamie never once tried to kill Mel/Wanderer. I still can't believe Mel was hardly even phased by Jared's reaction to her. The more I think about it, the more I hate Jared. Or maybe Mel. Or both of them. Ian, at least, only tried to kill Wanderer when they first met - perfectly understandable, since she was the enemy and he had never known Mel pre-implantation. I also appreciated that he didn't like how willing Wanderer was to harm herself and overlook her own needs/wants in order to help others. That gives him several points over Jared.

"Humans Are Unique": This cropped up a lot at the beginning of the book, and it annoyed me. Wanderer had been implanted in 7 or 8 extremely diverse hosts prior to being implanted in Mel. Readers are told that humans are so very unique. Their emotions are stronger, more erratic, and harder to control than the emotions of any other beings the souls have used as hosts before. One thing Wanderer notes is that Mel is her first host to have a sense of smell.

Saying "humans are unique" makes me think to much of all those sci-fi shows in which some alien, in a tone filled with awe and/or respect, notes that some "uniquely human" characteristic makes humans one of the strongest/most frightening/most whatever species he/she/it has ever encountered. Even shows I love, like Babylon 5, have engaged in that sort of thing. I really dislike it, because it implies that humans are special. Why do we have to be special?

It helped, I guess, that Wanderer loved the characteristics of some of her other hosts' bodies almost as much as the emotions she gets when she's in a human body, but I still could have done with a little less focusing on the ways humans are different from any other host she's known. Aside from the bit where Wanderer talks about previous hosts that are most physiologically similar to humans, Meyer writes very little about the similarities between humans and other hosts Wanderer has been in.

Well, I should wrap this up. Again, I liked this book. If the Wikipedia article I read is correct, there will be a second book (unless of course Meyer decides not to publish it, just as she decided to "indefinitely delay" her leaked book), and possibly even a third. Personally, I think The Host stands well enough on its own. I'll read the sequel, when and if it comes out, but I do hope it's not just an attempt to milk another potential cash cow.

By the way, try reading the blurbs on the book jacket. Meyer is called "a hybrid combination of Stephen King and Isaac Asimov" (by author Ridley Pearson). Umm... I wonder if Stephen King read that - it reminded me of his "Meyer can't write" comment. Maybe the blurb was set up to mess with him. Also, just in general, the blurbs are kind of funny. I mean, they practically glow. It's like a madlib of fawning.

I consider my first two read-alikes to be good matches for this book - my third and fourth are a stretch. I know I've read something at some point in which two minds lived in one body. It would probably make a better read-alike, but I can't remember it, and Amazon, Google, Fiction_L's archives, and NoveList haven't been able to help me figure out the title. Well, if I think of it, I can just tack it onto the end.

Read-alikes:

• Uglies (book) by Scott Westerfeld - This young adult science fiction novel takes place in a future where, at age 16, "uglies," teens who haven't had any cosmetic surgery yet, are put through a major surgical procedure that turns them into "pretties," gorgeous, placid, fun-loving, bubble heads. Tally Youngblood is an Ugly who wants nothing more than to become a Pretty, but things become complicated when she is asked to betray a friend who has decided to leave the city and remain an Ugly. This is the first book in the series - next are Pretties, Specials, and Extras (the only book not featuring Tally as a main character). Those who'd like another book with action, a bit of romance, and a group of rebels might want to try this. There's something about The Host's style that reminds me of this one, too.
• Blood and Chocolate (book) by Annette Curtis Klause - Vivian is a werewolf, part of a small community of werewolves living in secret among humans. Vivian's father, the pack leader, was killed when the pack was driven out of its previous home, and all that remains is for a new leader to be chosen before the pack can move to a more permanent home. In the meantime, Vivian doesn't really feel at home with anyone in the pack. She begins dating a human, but how long will their relationship last if she tells him what she is? Even worse, people have been getting killed and Vivian can't be certain she wasn't responsible. Again, something about The Host's style made me think of this one. Like Wanderer, Vivian has to somehow figure out how to fit what she is in with her new human relationships. I prefer this book's resolution to The Host's.
• I Am Legend (book) by Richard Matheson - A terrible plague of some kind has turned almost all of humanity (and many animals) into blood-thirsty creatures of the night. Robert Neville, who is immune to the disease, appears to be the only remaining uninfected human, although he is hopeful that there are others like him out there and that he can find a cure for the disease. As in The Host, humankind is on the brink of being completely taken over. To say too much would be to give things away, but Matheson, like Meyer, also blurs the lines between the "good guys" and "bad guys." The style isn't much like The Host, and the tone is bleaker. This book has been made into a movie featuring Will Smith - the movie is, not unexpectedly, pretty different from the book, although it keeps the basic premise. Personally, I enjoyed the book more.
  
• Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (anime movie) - In the future, almost everyone has been cyberized. Batou, a police officer who is practially a cyborg, and his new partner Togusa, who is mostly human, investigate murders committed by prototype "sexaroids," female robots created for sex. This movie probably won't make complete sense unless you've seen the first movie. Actually, it might not make complete sense even then. Still, it's great eye candy, and it has an interesting way of looking at dolls versus humans. It's not much like The Host in tone or style, but those who'd like something in which a human and something non-human (in this case, dolls/robots) don't exactly live comfortably together might want to try this.
  

One weekend, two movies

Usually, I'm so tired when the weekend rolls around that one movie at the theaters is about all I can handle, and, even with that, there's no guarantee I'll be watching it headache-free. For the past few days, however, I've been trying a new tactic. In three days, I've gotten as much sleep as I previously got in a week. Not half bad. All I do is set a "bedtime alarm" - the hard part is making myself stick to it, but so far so good.

Anyway, all this extra sleep has allowed me to see both movies I wanted to see this weekend. If you've paid any attention to the poll on the top left corner of this blog, you can probably guess that those movies are The Time Traveler's Wife and District 9.

With The Time Traveler's Wife, I ran into my usual difficulty with movies based on books. I have a very hard time not comparing these movies to the books they were based on, and this one was no exception. I thought it was an ok movie, which saddened me, because the book was more than just ok. Although I haven't read the book in a while, I was able to tell that scenes had been cut out and I was even able to remember quite a few of those scenes. For the most part, I wasn't particularly bothered about any single scene being cut out or changed (except for the ending), but I felt that, taken together, these things being left out lessened the movie's emotional impact in comparison to the book. It probably also didn't help that the movie couldn't give the audience the same view into Henry and Claire's minds that the book could. I did have certain scenes I really enjoyed in the movie, though. I think my absolute favorite is the part where Henry meets his mother on the subway.

I knew almost nothing about District 9 - I had no idea, for instance, that it was going to be so gory. The parts that made me cringe the most weren't the ones with people being blown up, however, but the parts where the main character was going through his metamorphosis. Ew. The documentary style used in the film was interesting and, I think, made the aliens seem more realistic than they might otherwise have, although it got a little awkward when the story couldn't accommodate it. At first, it was kind of hard for me to tell that the scenes I was watching weren't supposed to be things filmed by some unknown cameraperson anymore. Of course, these past couple sentences probably made no sense to anyone who hasn't seen the movie. Anyway, it's a pretty good movie, although I got a little impatient with its pacing at times. Its ending packed more of an emotional punch than I had expected.

Google fun

This, like my earlier squirrel stuff, is a bit off-topic, but it's fun. After attending an online conference presentation today in which the presenter said that libraries are in the perfect position to aggregate all available information on books, from reviews about them to digitizations of the books themselves to whatever else, better than Google (because libraries so have the money to risk enormous lawsuits...), all this somehow seems appropriate to me. By the way, yes, I use Google. Lots. I just don't preach the Google gospel like some.

Google Announces Plan to Destroy All Information It Can't Index - This one's a few years old, but still good.

Then there's this new video. Looks like Google is softening its position on non-believers a little.

Marked: The House of Night Book 1 (book) by P.C. Cast and Kristin Cast

The basic setup of this book - young person finds out he/she is special and gets taken to a school for special people, only to find out that he/she is even more special than the other special students - is not original. Don't get angry at me, House of Night fans - I'm not saying I didn't like the book, I'm just saying it's not very original. I really did enjoy the book, because I like books of this type. Also, it makes it incredibly easy to come up with a list of read-alikes (at least for this first book - the later books may be a different story).

Synopsis:

All Zoey wants to do is be a normal girl, living a normal life. She wants her almost-boyfriend Heath, a handsome quarterback, to stop guzzling alcohol, and she hates what her family has become since her mother married John Heffer, who's a member of the People of Faith and expects his new family to conform to their beliefs. Although her life has its rough spots, she is not happy when the Tracker finds her at school and Marks her. Once she's been Marked, everyone around her is afraid of her, including Kayla, who Zoey thought was her best friend. The only one who doesn't automatically fear her is Heath - he seems drawn to her and she to him, although she eventually realizes that what she's really drawn to is his blood.

The people at school fear her, and her mother and stepfather want to drive Satan out of her with the help of the People of Faith. With no one else to turn to, Zoey runs to her Grandma Redbird. Grandma Redbird has never forgotten her Cherokee heritage and made sure that Zoey didn't either, teaching her various Cherokee rituals over the years. Zoey figures Grandma Redbird is accepting enough to still love her, and she'll know what to do. If something isn't done soon, if Zoey doesn't go to the House of Night, she'll grow sicker and sicker until she dies.

On her way to Grandma Redbird, Zoey hits her head and has a vision in which she meets Nyx, the vampyre Goddess, who tells her that she is special and will act as Nyx's first true Daughter of Night. When Zoey wakes up, she finds that her grandmother has taken her to the House of Night. Grandma Redbird eventually leaves, with the assurance that Zoey will be taken care of by Neferet, High Priestess of Nyx and now Zoey's mentor in the House of Night. It's already apparent that Zoey's not the average fledgling - the crescent moon tattoo that she was Marked with is completely filled in, like that of a mature vampyre. However, only Zoey knows about her meeting with the Goddess. Something compels her to keep that information a secret from Neferet.

During Zoey's tour of the House of Night, Neferet has to leave for a few minutes, and Zoey stumbles upon a female student offering a male student a blow job. It's obvious that the two have history and that not all of that history is good. The guy turns the girl down and then spots Zoey - the two of them have some kind of moment, until the female student gets pissed off and Zoey runs away. Later on during her tour, Zoey finds out that the female student is named Aphrodite (students can choose to rename themselves when they enter the House of Night, and that's the name she chose for herself). Because Aphrodite is the leader of the Dark Daughters (sort of like a combination Honor Society and sorority) and is therefore likely to become High Priestess one day, she thinks she's queen of the school, and she hates Zoey and anyone else who doesn't follow her lead.

Because vampyres don't like the sunlight (they don't burst into flames, but their eyes are extra sensitive to it), classes are held at night. Zoey gradually gets used to her new class schedule, which includes "Vampyre Sociology 101," "Drama 101" (in the outside world, vampyres are heavily represented in the arts - for instance, most big-name actors and actresses are vampyres), "Lit 101," "Fencing," "Spanish 101," and "Intro to Equestrian Studies." During her drama class, she sees the boy she saw with Aphrodite again - his name is Erik Night, and he's a fifth former (Zoey is considered a third former - I believe you're considered a full-fledged vampyre when you make it past the sixth former stage).

Although Zoey makes lots of friends and enjoys her classes, it's not all light and happiness. Fledglings like Zoey and her friends can die at any moment. The Change is tough, and two third formers die during the course of this book. Also, having Aphrodite as her enemy doesn't exactly make Zoey's life easy. Because it's obvious that she's special (what with her filled-in Mark and all), Aphrodite invites her to a Dark Daughters ritual, hoping to scare her off by slipping her some real blood in her ceremonial wine without telling her. Usually, a third former wouldn't like the taste of blood yet, but Zoey's not a regular third former. The wine tastes good to her, although she throws it all up when she finds out it contained blood from a fellow third former (fledglings aren't allowed to drink human blood).

Zoey doesn't like the Dark Daughters in general and Aphrodite in particular, but she agrees to join in the hopes of overthrowing Aphrodite. Things have happened during various rituals that have led Zoey to believe that she may make a stronger potential High Priestess than Aphrodite, so Zoey's friends happily back her.

Because she believes that cleaning up the Dark Daughters is vital, Zoey almost misses out on a chance to date Erik Night, but the two have a date lined up by the end of the book. Also, Zoey does indeed manage to take over the Dark Daughters, but Aphrodite, whose special ability involves having visions of future misfortunes, warns her that she doesn't know what's really going on and that she's only going to be used - Zoey's first thought when she says this is of a vague and bloody vision Aphrodite had and the red-eyed ghosts/zombies/whatever of the supposedly dead third formers Zoey had seen. Oh, and Heath, who Zoey accidentally managed to Imprint (bonding him to her like a lovesick puppy, something a third former shouldn't be able to do) will probably be ok.

Commentary:

Like I said, the basic idea behind this book isn't original. "Special schools for special people" can be found all throughout young adult and children's literature. The world the authors have created is interesting, although I'm not sure how well it would hold up if more details were given. What I mean is, human beings are frightened of vampyres. However, vampyres are so insanely popular in the arts that all the really well-known people in any area (painting, acting, etc.) tend to be vampyres. Vampyres like Aphrodite help prevent major disasters (Aphrodite tries to hide her visions, but, when she can't, the information from her visions helps prevent things like plane crashes and more). I'm sure there are vampyres with other abilities that the world at large finds useful. There are rules against vampyres feeding willy nilly from humans. And yet, despite all of the good things vampyres do for people, their popularity, and all the rules they have protecting human beings, they're still feared. It works from afar, but I'm not sure how cohesive it would all be if the Casts tried to create a fuller picture of the outside world. However, it looks kind of like they're going to keep the focus on the House of Night and vampyres, so maybe that won't ever be a problem for them.

While I liked the book as a whole, it kind of bothered me how neatly everything came together for Zoey, especially since she seemed to have such bad taste in friends and boyfriends in her human life. As a human, her best friend was an airhead who was trying to steal her almost-boyfriend (Zoey always calls him that, as though to distance herself from him, but it really just makes her seem wishy washy - it's obvious Heath isn't going to change, and you already think he's lacking in brain cells, so just dump him already, Zoey!). Her almost-boyfriend cheated or almost-cheated on her with her best friend and was slowly killing all his brain cells with alcohol and drugs. After she's Marked, Zoey instantly ends up with a crew of nice, trustworthy friends who don't act the slightest bit jealous that she's obviously meant for great things and has Erik Night, the hottest guy at the school, chasing after her. The only remaining sign of her previously iffy taste in people (other than that Heath continues to be a problem) is her decision to be with Erik Night despite the little things that prick her attention - that he was with Aphrodite for so long despite her obvious meanness and selfishness and that he didn't seem to have any problems with Aphrodite drugging a human guard.

Near the end of the book, when Neferet makes Zoey the new leader of the Dark Daughters, Zoey finds herself wondering why she ever felt she couldn't tell Neferet everything. My theory, which Aphrodite's final words seem to support, is that Neferet and other mature vampyres are involved in whatever it is that makes fledgling vampyres that appeared to die in the Change turn into something red-eyed and evil. Zoey didn't see the first third former die, but she did see the second - she sees Neferet give him something to drink, something that supposedly makes his death less painful, and she's told that Neferet is always there for the fledglings who die.

At the time, all of these things seem like the activities of someone who's trying to help fledglings with inevitable death, but what if the stuff she gave them to drink turned them into something else? What if Neferet is always with those who reject the Change just so that she can help them become true monsters? There have been several times when Neferet has gone cold and scary, and Zoey always brushes those moments off, but what if there's something more to them? After years of being sexually abused by her father, Neferet may not have many reasons to like humans, so maybe she's working against them while appearing to try to help vampyres and humans live in harmony.

Unrelated to all of that, I wonder: what's with the popularity of facial tattoos lately? Pretty facial tattoos also came up in Scott Westerfeld's Uglies series, and I'm sure they've come up in other books I've read recently. I suppose that when/if all of these things are made into movies, the facial tattoos will make for some lovely visuals.

Again, unrelated to all of that: I wonder if church groups have been slamming this series? The only organized religion (other than all the Nyx worship) that comes up in this book is the People of Faith, who make me think of the people who make their kids burn Harry Potter books and Pokemon stuff.

The suggestions below are in no particuar order.

Read-alikes:

• Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (book) by J.K. Rowling - After spending 10 years with his uncle, aunt, and their bully of a son, all people who hate him, Harry Potter learns that he is a wizard and has been invited to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Although things don't exactly become easy, as he tries to deal with a new magical world he knows nothing about, his celebrity status in the world of witches and wizards, and a powerful enemy who tried to kill him when he was just a baby, Harry still manages to enjoy himself and make friends. This series has a wider audience than I expect the House of Night series does, but it'd make a nice suggestion for someone who just wants something with magic and the "special school for special kids, starring the most special kid of them all" theme.
• The Strange Power (book) by L. J. Smith - This is the first book is Smith's Dark Visions series. Kaitlyn Fairchild is a psychic whose drawings predict the future. The only problem is, her drawings usually don't make sense until after whatever they predict has happened. When she finds out about the Zeetes Institute, a place where she can learn to control her abilities, she decides to go, but the institute may have have more sinister intentions than Kaitlyn realizes. Although the Zeetes Institute isn't a school in the same way the House of Night is, it does have a bit of the "special school for special people" feel. Like Zoey, Kaitlyn finds herself dealing with potential romance and darkness and danger just under the nice surface of the Institute.
• The Initiation (book) by L. J. Smith - This is the first book in Smith's Secret Circle series, although it is no longer available on its own - the link will take you to the Amazon.com page for a volume combining the first book and half the second book (what were they thinking?!). Cassie isn't thrilled to move from sunny California to gloomy New England, but it isn't long before things get interesting for her. Her new school is practically ruled by a group of gorgeous teens who appear to be feared and/or respected by everyone around them. Cassie gradually discovers that, not only do these teens have special powers, so does she. As she gets involved with the group, she begins to fall for the boyfriend of one of the girls. This book and series, like Marked, has magic, a group of girls who think they're better than everyone else, a school setting, a female main character who may be able to make everything right again, and romance. Several characters are similar to characters in Marked.
• Gakuen Alice (manga) by Tachibana Higuchi - When Mikan's best friend leaves to attend the mysterious and elite Alice Academy, Mikan goes after her and tries to become a student at the academy herself. Alice Academy turns out to be a special school for children with amazing abilities (like flying, telekinesis, etc.). Once Mikan manages to prove that she belongs at the school, she becomes a student. Unfortunately, students are allowed little contact with the outside world, and there are other secrets the school and its teachers are hiding. This is meant for a younger audience than Marked, but it's still quite a lot of fun. Like Marked, there are indications that the children at the school are being used in some way. Those who'd like something else with the "special school for special people" theme (with Mikan, like Zoey, being one of the most special of them all) and a bit of romance might want to try this.
• Arrows of the Queen (book) by Mercedes Lackey - Talia is part of a very restrictive community that she doesn't feel she fits in with. She dreams of being able to leave and serve Heralds (sort of like travelling peace-makers, although they do much more than that) and their Companions (beings that have bonded with humans and that look like horses, but that are at least as intelligent as humans). Talia's wish is granted when a Companion finds her and bonds with her, taking her away to be trained as a Herald and the new Queen's Own (emotional advisor to the queen). This is the first book in Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar series. This is another "special school for special people" recommendation and has quite a few other things in common with Marked - Talia's oppressive home life, the book's detailed descriptions of her classes, equestrian class, weapons class (for Zoey it's fencing, for Talia it's quick and dirty self-defense), etc.
  
• The Summoning (book) by Kelley Armstrong - After Chloe Saunders suddenly starts seeing ghosts, her father and her aunt have her admitted to Lyle House, a home for troubled teens. All Chloe wants is to convince the adults at Lyle House that she's better and can leave, but it's not long before she starts noticing that there may be something sinister going on. A couple of the other teens at Lyle House are convinced that Chloe really can see ghosts and is, in fact, a necromancer - they may know what they're talking about, since one of them can do magic. This isn't a "special school for special people" book, but it has the same sort of feel at times. Like Zoey, Chloe has to deal with sudden freaky changes to her life, new friends and enemies, people who can't necessarily be trusted, and potential romance (a very tiny part of the book, since Chloe is more concerned with getting to go home that finding herself a guy in the slim pickings of Lyle House).
  

Here's what I could be writing about...

I'm reaching new levels of pathetic - I can't seem to make myself write my posts! Or update my Shelfari bookshelf. Also, I managed to damage myself while sleeping and now can't turn my head all the way to the right - yesterday it hurt enough that I tearfully gobbled down arthritis-strength Tylenol just so that I could keep cataloging (we're about to get a 500-book shipment in, all at once, and I'm the only cataloger...), but today I'm doing a bit better and can laugh at how stupid the situation is.

So, since I can't offer anything else at the moment, I'll just write up a list of most of the stuff I'm procrastinating on writing about. As in, I haven't even written notes for myself. Crud. Well, I'll include some mini notes here.

• Foul Play by Janet Evanovich - A woman's job (as a TV clown entertaining children) is taken by a chicken. She gets blamed when the chicken goes missing, but, not to worry, a veterinarian who has fallen instantly in love with her is there to help her clear her name and figure out the true culprit. It's goofy romance - you've really got to be in the right mood to enjoy this sort of thing. I was in the mood for the romance, but not so much the mystery. Oooh, missing chicken, how mysteeerious...
• Slumdog Millionaire - It's amazing how much hype you can miss out on when you don't watch TV and only vaguely pay attention to news online, but even I heard about this movie. I just didn't want to pay $20 for it. So, when the local entertainment store had a "buy one clearance rental DVD, get a 2nd for $1" sale, I jumped on it. I liked the movie, but I felt the actual romance in it was lacking. The only thing I hated was the nearly unreadable subtitles. Also, I wanted to smack Jamal's brother.
• Naughty Neighbor by Janet Evanovich - A press secretary with an annoying (and sexy) neighbor finds her life turned upside down when said annoying neighbor's troubles start spilling over onto her. These troubles involve politicians and a missing pig. Notice a missing animal theme? The mystery is even more pathetic in this book than in Foul Play, but I found the romance more interesting. This is actually kind of embarrassing to admit, and, if I ever manage to make myself write a full post, you'll see why.
• Resident Evil: Degeneration - The Raccoon City tragedy is over, but that doesn't mean it's forgotten. After all, who could forget a bunch of zombies and other things even more horrific? Seeking revenge for the death of his family, a man lets the T-Virus loose, but things really start to suck when he becomes infected with the G-Virus. Actually, the outbreaks are pretty well-contained, so the horror is fairly small-scale. And kind of boring. With painful voice acting, despite the voice actors being veterans of many anime. The English voice actors - there's no Japanese language track. This was a horrible, horrible movie. I plan to sell it as soon as I've written a full post about it.
• Promises in Death by J.D. Robb - Coltraine, Morris's girlfriend and a fellow cop, is killed and it's up to Eve Dallas to bring her murderer to justice. It's not just any old case for her, not just the job - and I was thinking, "when is it ever just the job for Dallas?", but Robb made such a big deal about this I had to mention it. Robb tried to play with readers' emotions by bumping Coltraine up to "Morris's increasingly important girlfriend" status in the previous book, but I found I couldn't work up the kind of shock and sadness over her death that Robb was maybe going for. I did really like Dallas's new car though. I wonder how she'll wreck it?
• Serve It Cold by Ronnie Blackwell - One of my Podiobooks listening choices. It features several readers, but not quite enough people for me to always be able to tell the voices apart (especially when it comes to female characters). This one involves marijuana, nice New Orleans detail (not sure how accurate it is, but it all sounded good to me), a very fishy divorce case, some exhibitionists, art, and murder. I liked it, even though it was a bit too complicated for work time listening.
• 8810 by Nicholas Taylor - Another one of my Podiobooks listening choices. A guy gets a job in the auditing department of a big insurance company and must deal with the boringness of his job, his coworkers (some become his friends, others are just weird, and some fall somewhere in between), and the Dilbert-like idiocy that is just a part of corporate life. It's kind of like The Office, only it's not consistently funny. However, it's still well worth a listen. Plus, I love some of the Colorado details - the bit about Halloween in Colorado is absolutely perfect and absolutely true.
• Black Bird, vol. 1 by Kanoko Sakurakoji - Misao is horrified to discover that Kyo, her first love, is actually a tengu, a kind of demon, and that she has the dubious honor of being special - a demon who drinks her blood gains a long life, one who eats her flesh gains eternal youth, and one who makes her his bride will have a prosperous clan. Kyo wants her to be his bride and promises to protect her from all who would harm her, but Misao doesn't want him if he only wants her for what she can do for his clan. I don't know what the whole series will be like, but this volume was one big excuse for Misao to get hurt repeatedly, so that Kyo could heal her. By the way, he heals using licks and kisses. If you flip through it and think it has a lot of sex, that's because you're mistaking the healing scenes for sex scenes. I'm sure the similarity is intentional. It's not porn, but it's racy. I think it may become my guilty pleasure, at least until I tire of watching the many ways Misao can bleed all over the place.
• Fullmetal Alchemist, Season 1, Part 1 - I now own the whole series (minus the OVAs, which I might not be able to afford for some time - if I decide to pay it, the ALA membership fee will kill all my extra cash and then some this month). You have no idea how happy this makes me. I would list this series among my top 5 favorite anime. I've only ever seen it all in English dub, so it's a treat to see it in Japanese. Watching this while I'm watching Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood really brings home how fast the new series is speeding through things. On the one hand, I think that does a disservice to the characters and some of the heavier emotional stuff, but, on the other hand, the pacing of the original series could've been a tad faster.
• In Odd We Trust by Queenie Chan and Dean Koontz - I haven't quite figured out yet how much of the writing Koontz did versus Chan, but, regardless of who did how much, I wasn't impressed. This manga-inspired volume, which takes place before the events of Koontz's Odd Thomas, didn't communicate Odd's charm well. Plus, the story was very simplistic, and the art was wooden. I don't know what Chan's art is like in her other works, but, in this, the artwork as a whole needs to be more dynamic and there are basics, like perspective, that need work (Sherry's headband, or whatever you call it, really bothered me - you can always see the entire curve of it, even when her face is in profile).
• Skip Beat!, vol. 1 by Yoshiki Nakamura - ILLiad is down at my library and has been down for two weeks now, so, while I'm happy that I've started reading this manga, I can't wait until it's possible for me to request the next volume, because it seems like it might be a while before I can reach the point where the anime ended. I really like this series, but I have to admit that I prefer the anime so far - I just like the artwork in the anime better.

See how fantastically behind I am? Well, for now I'm just going to go do some neck stretches, but maybe I'll get a full post written tomorrow. Right.

Well that's kind of odd

I just took a look at my visits in Statcounter for the first time in days. I had something odd happen on Saturday. If I'm reading this right, someone visited 109 posts in this blog over the course of 8 or 9 hours. I suppose it could've been a very dedicated new reader with strong eyes, no concern for carpal tunnel, and way too much time on their hands, but I'm not that optimistic. Now I'm kind of wondering if I'll one day stumble across a cloned version of this blog, or at least many copies of its posts. Pretty pathetic, if that's the case - I try to catch grammatical and spelling errors, but, beyond that, my writing isn't exactly stellar. I used to at least try to limit the length of my posts - now I just write whatever I feel like, in however much detail I feel like.

I'm baaack!

Ok, so I never actually left - it was just one of those weeks. The AC in my apartment started dripping, twice, which wasn't great for all the stuff nearby it... including my blow dryer. I had no idea that thing was a bit wet inside when I plugged it in, but at least all that happened was that I got to hear a scary sizzly snapping noise. Now I just have slight water seepage from my bathroom floor - here's hoping I can convince the apartment maintenance people to do something about it before it turns into mold.

A few plastic storage containers, a new blow dryer, a quart of chocolate fudge ice cream, and a day off have helped my mood some. I'm very behind on my blogging, though, which seems a bit pathetic. One post a week is all I aim for, and I didn't even manage that.

I do have lots to write about, both in full posts and in passing. I've been getting much more into listening to books/stories in podcast form. During the past few work days, I've been listening to The Leviathan Chronicles - I highly recommend it (there's a trailer on the site - at least go try that out!). If it were just a book, I'm not sure I'd be saying that, since the story is slower paced than I'd like and the mystery element not as interesting as it could be. However, the production is excellent. It's not an audio book - if I had to compare it to something, I'd say it's like a radio play. There's a full cast, enough sound effects to make you think you're listening to a TV show or something, and a narrator. It all sounds really, really good, and it's a joy to listen to. Even if the story continues to not grab me, I'll still listen to it. The only drawback, for me, was the size of the files - well, the first file, at least, since I never tried any of the others. With Podiobooks stuff, I usually download all the files and then listen to them in Windows Media Player - it's easy to tell where I've stopped for the day, and I don't have to pause my cataloging to click to the next file. Because the files are so big, I just listen to The Leviathan Chronicles directly on the site - not too big a deal, but the site's player doesn't tell you how many minutes or seconds into a chapter you are (or even how long a chapter is), so it's a little hard for me to stop in the middle of a chapter and start it up at the same spot the next day.

Well, moving on. I decided to go see a movie today - in particular, I saw The Ugly Truth. Happily, it cost me less than $3, because it failed on all levels. It was a romantic comedy that was neither romantic nor funny. I think there were a couple scenes that made me laugh, but I can't say what they were, since those scenes were so unforgettable that I can't remember them mere hours after seeing the movie. As far as the romance goes, it seems like the script writers decided that simply calling something romantic makes it romantic, which, unfortunately for them, isn't true. For instance, there's a bit near the end where the two main characters, Abby and Mike, suddenly succumb to the passion/lust that started to build between them during an earlier dancing scene - they start kissing in an elevator and probably would've torn each other's clothes off if they'd been somewhere more private. Later, Abby says something about this time in the elevator being incredibly romantic. Huh? Passionate, ok, lustful, yes, but romantic? Do the script writers even know what romance is?

That's only one of my complaints about the movie, but I can't say I hated it as much as so many critics did. It just wasn't very good, and I'd probably be more upset about that if the movie ticket had cost me more and if there had been anything else I'd decided not to see so that I could see this instead. The nice thing about the movie theater here is that it's cheap. The not-so-nice thing is that they only show a handful of movies at a time. I've already seen the new Harry Potter movie and have no desire to watch stealth guinea pigs or whatever else is showing right now. I'm looking forward to The Time Traveler's Wife in a couple weeks, though.

That's it for now. Hopefully I'll get off my butt and finish a book or movie post sometime in the next few days.

Earl and Fairy (anime TV series) on... um...

Ok, ok, so I watched this on YouTube. Terrible of me, I know. I can't say it's the best show - it's too short (only 12 episodes) and there's no chance for anything to get properly developed - but... there's something compelling about it. Actually, it's probably just my inner fan girl going, "Ooh, romance and gorgeous guys! Wheee!" Yep, I'm shallow like that. Still, if that was all it took for me to fall in love with something, I'd have fallen in love with La Corda D'Oro, a show filled with gorgeous guys, and that one couldn't capture my interest even after 4 episodes. Earl and Fairy (Hakushaku to Yousei) had me almost as soon as Edgar first met Lydia.

Synopsis:

This story is set primarily in Victorian England. Lydia Carlton is a fairy doctor, someone who acts as sort of a mediator between humans and fairies. She's spent her life being ridiculed and mocked for her belief in fairies, because no one can see them but her. That, combined with her belief that she isn't particularly pretty (she says her hair is the color of rust and she doesn't think her green eyes are very pretty), makes it hard for her to believe that someone like Edgar could really be interested in her.

And, at first, he isn't, not really. Edgar needs a fairy doctor in order to find the Sword of Merrow - if he can claim that, he can become the Blue Knight Earl. Having been branded a slave after the death of his parents, gaining a respectable title and a place of his own is very important to him. Lydia isn't so sure it's wise to help him, but she's too kind to leave him behind. In the end, Edgar gets the sword, and Lydia assumes things are done between them. However, Edgar has become more and more attracted to her. Plus, without Lydia by his side, he could never hope to communicate with all the fairies that sort of pop up as part of the "Blue Knight Earl" package. Edgar makes Lydia exclusively his fairy doctor, without actually consulting her about it first.

Lydia does end up staying with Edgar and being his fairy doctor, but she can't quite bring herself to believe that he really loves her. For one thing, he's such an outrageous flirt that it's a little hard to believe him (according to him, her hair is caramel-colored, her eyes periodot). Although he asks her to dance only with him at a ball, he still feels free to dance with other women. For another, Lydia believes he may still have feelings for Ermine, the sister of Raven, Edgar's servant (Raven, by the way, has a sprite within him and is lethal to all if not controlled by a master like Edgar).

Supposedly, Ermine is dead, but she apparently died at sea or something and has now become a selkie. She and some freaky spectral black dogs work for the Prince, who murdered Edgar's parents. After the "finding the sword" storyline is finished, Lydia and Edgar must worry about attempts on their lives. A group that opposes the Prince thinks Edgar might be working for him and therefore wants to kill him. However, even after they are persuaded otherwise, Edgar still has the Prince's minions after him. Ulysses, a young blond man from the Prince's court, believes he is the true Blue Knight Earl and is determined not to let Edgar get in his way. Like Lydia, Ulysses can see fairies, but Ulysses chooses to use his knowledge of fairies to control them and force them to do his bidding. Ermine and the spectral dogs are under his control.

My incredibly unorganized summary has left a few things out. For instance, there's Kelpie, an UnSeelie fairy who has been trying to secure Lydia's hand in marriage for a while now. There's Nico, the fairy cat who hangs around Lydia and can take her to and from the fairy world. There's Paul, a painter whose works Edgar likes - at first he appears to be another rival for Lydia's affections, but that turns out not to be the case. If he were to have ended up with anybody, it probably would've been Banshee, a banshee who used to serve the Blue Knight Countess, the Lady Gladys.

Commentary:

I can't believe how much is crammed into only 12 episodes. When I first started watching the show, I figured all 12 episodes would be about Edgar searching for and finally finding the sword, but that part of the series is over pretty quickly. The rest of the series, with Edgar and Lydia dealing with Ulysses and his minions, is interesting, but there's not enough time for everything to get covered as thoroughly as I would have liked. Ermine and Raven are two characters who I felt were the most shortchanged. It's never revealed how Ermine died or what her relationship with Edgar was (were they lovers, as Lydia believes, or were they just close?), and, as for Raven, I just would've liked more about him. I thought the whole bit about the sprite inside him was pretty interesting, and I wanted to get to know him as more than just a quiet, expressionless servant.

As I watched the show, I felt like I was missing out on a lot of the story. When I did a bit more searching online, I discovered that my feeling wasn't so far off the mark - apparently, the story started off as a series of light novels and has since spawned a manga version, drama CDs, and a visual novel (see Wikipedia's page for more info). It's a little depressing, because, if a second season of the anime is never released, I don't stand much of a chance of finding out all the things I want to know (Edgar and Lydia's relationship is still up in the air by the end of the anime, Ulysses isn't completely vanquished, and we haven't even seen the Prince yet). I could probably hunt down some scanlations of the manga, but I've never run across fan translations of light novels before.

Even with what story there was in just the anime, however, I was pathetically hooked. I may have already made this clear in the beginning of this post, but one of the things that hooked me was Edgar. He's a charming and horrible flirt who can't seem to fathom what his behavior must look like to Lydia - he just acts all wounded when she tells him she can't believe his compliments and protestations of love. All of that may sound a little bad, but he's really not made to look like a slimy character. Very little happens to back up Lydia's feeling that Edgar is being insincere - he dances with a few ladies during the one bit with the ball (which only bothered me because he told Lydia not to dance with anyone but him - ok then, but shouldn't it work both ways?), which is the worst of it until, while drunk, he says Ermine name during an almost-kiss (and potentially more, if he hadn't screwed it up?) scene with Lydia. When he sobers up, he doesn't remember what he said, and Lydia refuses to give him the details.

Which leads me to another thing I liked about this show - the humor. While it drove me crazy that Edgar wasn't able to figure out whose name he said before the anime ended (if he had figured it out, he could've explained himself, and the romance between him and Lydia might've gotten a decent resolution, rather than the "to be continued" feeling it actually had), I loved the semi-ongoing joke it inspired. At one point, Edgar asks Raven if he can think of a woman in his life whose name he might have said while drunk. Raven pauses and then asks Edgar if he'd like him to recite their names in alphabetical order. The first time the joke comes up, it makes Edgar seem horribly promiscuous, but, when the joke comes up again later on, the names Edgar explains to Lydia are all of random females in his life, such as a dog he once had. It helps that Raven gets the funniest line, since he's so deadpan about it. There's lots of other funny moments in the show - quite a few of my other favorites feature Kelpie, whose non-human nature didn't always gel well with human-thinking and the human world.

On a very surface level, another thing I enjoyed about this show was the artwork. I can't help it - whether I like the artwork or not tends to play a big part in how much I initially like or don't like a show. Great artwork won't necessarily keep me around if the story and characters aren't very good, but it can get my attention and occasionally smooth over a few rough spots. It's similar to the way well-done special effects can help encourage me to like a movie that isn't necessarily all that good. Both things are a bit embarrassing to admit, but they're true - looks do matter. Earl and Fairy's artwork and character designs (except for, at times, Lydia's hair, which would probably look stringy if someone tried to reproduce it in real life) appealed to me. I love pretty eyes, and this show had them in spades. The animators loved doing close-ups of people's eyes, especially Edgar and Lydia's, but also sometimes Raven's (and Kelpie's, but his eyes were just strange). Edgar and Lydia's eyes are considered so important, in fact, that their eye colors are actually named in the anime - Edgar's eyes are ash mauve and Lydia's (according to Edgar) are periodot.

Speaking of shallow reasons for liking the show... I loved the opening. I wasn't sure about it at first, because the opening music seemed like a rather odd choice for a show set in Victorian England, but the energy of it all really matched the energy of the show, quick and upbeat. The animators managed to cram nearly every character into only a minute and a half of animation, so it gives viewers an idea of what they're in for without actually giving anything away (which can't be said of all anime openings - there are some that should really come with spoiler warnings). Oh, and to round out the shallowness, I'll end this paragraph by saying that my favorite bit in the opening is at the beginning, when Nico is chasing the sparklies - so cute!

Overall, I really enjoyed this anime, but that's probably because I didn't expect anything more than for it to entertain me, which it did quite nicely. There's plenty to get a romantic soul all stirred up, although nothing actually happens - besides all the flirting, Edgar and Lydia almost kiss, but never do (unless you count Lydia's hand), and there's a bit where drunken Edgar manages to get Lydia onto his bed, but then he ruins things by saying Ermine's name and passing out. Also, there's adventure of the sort that makes me want to use the word "swashbuckling" - it's great fun of the "popcorn for your brain" sort. The only "bad" thing that happens is the death of a fairly minor character - although momentarily sad, this part is handled so gently that it almost feels like the character didn't die, but rather just went to live in a different plain of existence. It seemed a bit odd that the other characters weren't more emotionally affected by that character's death, but I suppose the writers didn't want to darken the mood too much so close to the show's ending.

Watch-alikes and Read-alikes:

• Ouran High School Host Club (manga) by Bisco Hatori; Ouran High School Host Club (anime TV series) - Haruhi, the only scholarship student at an elite school for the rich, is forced to become a host in the Ouran High School Host Club after breaking an expensive vase. Unfortunately, Haruhi is actually a girl - in order to stay in the host club and pay off her debt, Haruhi must make sure that no one outside the host club finds out that she's not a guy. Edgar's flirty behavior reminded me (and quite a few other YouTube viewers) of Tamaki, the president of the host club. The overall light tone should appeal to fans of Earl and Fairy, as should the romance in the show (which, due to Haruhi's denseness, can be even more frustrating than the romance in Earl and Fairy).
• Howl's Moving Castle (anime movie) - A young woman named Sophie is cursed by the Witch of the Waste, who turns her into an old woman. The only person Sophie can think of that might help her is the wizard Howl, who has a bad reputation for seducing pretty young women. Sophie makes herself part of Howl's little family by getting a job as his housekeeper. She gradually learns more about Howl and his friends, and several curses and contracts are dealt with before the movie ends. This movie was based on a book by Diana Wynne Jones, but the two are so different that I have not listed the book here. Those who'd like another story that mixes adventure with a bit of romance (not focused on as much as in Earl and Fairy) might want to try this. The characters even share some similarities - Howl, like Edgar, is a charming and flirty guy when Sophie first meets him, and Sophie, like Lydia, doesn't think she's particularly pretty.
• You Slay Me (book) by Katie MacAlister - This is the first book in MacAlister's Aisling Grey series. All Aisling wants to do is deliver an old, gold dragon statue to her uncle's client in Paris. Instead, she comes across a dead woman and a mysterious and sexy man. The man (who is also a dragon), named Drake, disappears, along with the statue. Aisling has to prove she didn't kill the woman and recover the statue, all while dealing with the revelation that she is a Guardian (basically, the Keeper of the Gates to Hell). Like Lydia, Aisling is mixed up in the world of the supernatural and has a guy interested in her who she feels she can't quite trust. This series features humor, romance, and adventure. Those who liked the "gentleness" (lots of tension, but nothing actually happening) of the romance in Earl and Fairy may want to stick with my first two suggestions and avoid this one, as this series actually has sex in it.
• Black Bird (manga) by Kanoko Sakurakoji - (added Dec. 9, 2009) Misao has always been able to see spirits and demons and things, but, because no one else can see them, her special ability has tended to be more of a curse than a gift. When she was a little girl, she met her first love, a boy who could see the same things she did and who protected her. On the day she turns 16, Misao is attacked by a demon who tells her that the entire demon world is after her because of the benefits her blood, flesh, or hand in marriage can give them. She's saved by the young man who was her first love - who turns out to be a demon. Does he really love her, or does he just want to marry her because it will cause his clan to prosper? Those who'd like another series with danger, romance, and supernatural aspects might want to try this. Like Lydia, Misao can see things others can't and doesn't trust that the guy who says he loves her really does.