L.J. Writes

The extended version of The Handmaiden was amazing. It wasn’t always easy to watch, particularly when the story moved to Hideko’s viewpoint, but it was a beautifully crafted story with a happy ending and I loved it. Here are thoughts that I had on first viewing about what heteronormative patriarchy does to female sexuality, and what the character of Count Fujiwara said to me about marginalization and misogyny.

Both sections have heavy spoilers for The Handmaiden with warnings for content including trauma, suicide, and sexual violence. Most of it is about Fujiwara; discussing Sook-Hee and Hideko's intertwined story required much more thought and work, and will be in a separate post.

( Brief thoughts on the reclaiming of female sexuality in Hideko's story )

( The tragedy of Count Fujiwara )

(The original version of this post appeared on my Tumblr on April 8, 2018. This version, among other changes, incorporates an addition I made on August 6, 2018 about Fujiwara's name.)

Mark was feeling a little down on New Year's and we searched for movies to watch. We both wanted something historical and he hit upon Dragon Blade, a piece of historical fiction (with heavy emphasis on "fiction") that was supposed to portray a clash between the Han Dynasty and Roman Republic on the Silk Road. I remember mentioning this movie to lb_lee a while ago, and it came out in early 2015. With that sexy premise and a star-studded cast of Jackie Chan, John Cusak, Adrien Brody and more, it looked promising in theory. We had both seen the trailer, though, and didn't have very high hopes. Still, we just wanted to see cool battle scenes and turn off the higher brain functions for a while.

The critical brain, however, is not so easily turned off in geeks and ended up making everything gloriously funny. I don't even know where to start. There's the hilariously implausible idea that a branch of the Han military were basically UN Peacekeepers dedicated to keeping the peace on the Silk Road without hurting anyone. (Jackie Chan beating up both sides of a fight to break it up totally counts as hurting in my book, though.) There were the unnecessarily drawn-out fight scenes. There were the huge leaps in the story that left the audience scrambling to fill in the gaps. There were crowds of men screaming in slow-motion about every half hour like they won the Superbowl, while emotional music swelled in the background trying to manipulate the audience into joining in the undeserved emotional moment. It was Hollywood's Greatest Hits put together without any structure or design, making for one of those incoherent movies where you're left wondering at the end what the hell it was all about.

( In which I proceed to spoil the entire movie )

Okay, so not everything was funny and some things were just rage-making and the whole thing sucked. Still, there were some spectatular battles and fight choreography as advertised, and plenty of unintentional comedy to laugh at. The production values were high and would have worked in a better put-together movie. This possible glimpse into the future of Chinese blockbusters--the movie did fairly well in China--is both instructuve and disturbing because, as I said, Dragon Blade learned some of Hollywood's lessons very well. The disturbing part is that the lessons don't stop at overdone CGI effects and manipulative swelling music.

I read the Pern series only in part and badly out of order. A long time ago, and we're talking around two decades, I found Dragonsdawn and Dragonquest in a bookstore and read them one after the other. I found them a) to have some good ideas, b) boring in the execution, and b) skeevy as hell in places.

( Discussions of rape and reproductive coercion. )

Fast forward to the present, where chordatesrock got a bout of nostalgia about the series and asked if I wanted to read the series, in proper order this time. I decided to see if that made things better, and hoo boy. If I thought the abusive relationship dynamic in Dragonsdawn was bad, Dragonflight would deliver much, much worse.

I've been hearing a lot about how good Books 3 and 4 of Legend of Korra were, but I didn't particularly feel like watching Season 2 after hearing lackluster reports about it. My sources disagreed on whether Book 2 was safely skippable, and I went back and forth until I finally decided to bite the bullet and watch one episode. If I hated it, I could always stop and move on to Book 3.

( Spoilers, and why I find Iroh despicable )

In sum, the first half of Book 2 is a giant leap over Book 1 and far less infuriating. It has actual character development, real consequences, and moral complexity. It was a lot of the things Book 1 should have been, and while it's no replacement for a strong first season it's good to see the effort being made.

20 Master Plots and How to Build Them by Ronald B. Tobias was recommended by splinteredstar on the write_away writing books recommendations thread. I really liked it and recommend it even more for its introductory chapters than for the master plots, though the plots weren't bad, either.

( A good book hiding an even better book )

Still, even in its disparate parts 20 Master Plots was well worth my time for its intelligent discussions about story, plot and morality. If nothing else I would recommend Chapters One and Four for the theory of plot and deep structure.

See also: 20 Master Plots smacks down Plot Versus Character, at least in my febrile imagination.