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.

Bird by Bird was the first book recommended in a thread I started about writing advice books over at thewrite_away community. I've made it something of a project to read the recommendations in my free time. I started with Bird and finished it over a weekend traveling to another city and back.

( Here's what I thought )

So, bumps and all, Bird by Bird is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in a perspective on the ups and downs of a writer's life, especially one that is funny and compassionate at the same time. I liked it a lot.

Phyllis Ann Karr's Frostflower and Thorn and Frostflower and Windbourne were published in 1980 and 1982 respectively. The sorceress Frostflower and warrior Thorn hail from the Tanglelands, the kind of gritty, dangerous pseudo-Medieval European fantasy setting that is very much at home in the eighties and which is seeing a resurgence in the aughts and teens of this century. (If the descriptors "gritty," "dangerous," and "pseudo-Medieval" remind you of anything, Frostflower and Thorn begins with a note that it was first written during George R. R. Martin's Clarke College workshop in 1977.)

( Worldbuilding, pacing, feministing )

Frozen is, in my memory, the first movie I have been agitating to see for an entire month. This began when I saw the Let It Go clip on YouTube via Love, Joy, Feminism. Like Libby Anne I was deeply moved by the way Elsa felt free to break away and express everything about herself she had been forced to repress all her life. Watching it, I tasted again the lonely exhilaration of that moment when you forget about being good and dutiful and give yourself permission to be your own self, a necessary if not final step to healing.

This began my hankering to see the movie, which to my disappointment would not open in Korea for another month. I all but marked the day on my calendar and pestered the husband about it every few days, until the long-suffering man took me to see it yesterday on opening night.

( Here be many spoilers )

For all its flaws and limitations Frozen has come further than just about any Disney movie since Lilo and Stitch, and shows that feminist storytelling is good storytelling, period. That's only natural, since stories are about human concerns and feminist themes are issues that affect people in their relation to gender and sex. Feminism, in other words, is about huge swathes of life. Leave those out and you can't tell the full truth of human experience. Frozen goes in the right direction. My only complaint is that it doesn't go far enough.

One-line summary: A suspicious tailor joins Dr. Bashir for lunch. It's all downhill from there.

( Synopsis )

( Can I nickname this episode Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy? )

That trust, a calculated, mature trust with eyes wide open to the ramifications and consequences, is both the force that makes friends for the Federation and sometimes makes it vulnerable to its enemies. It's the balance the Federation's peoples have struck in a perilous universe and it paid off in this episode, and in the form of Deep Space Nine, a place where friends and enemies from across the worlds are brought together for stories in infinite and enjoyable combinations.

(06/14/13: Updated with synopsis. Spoilers and some bad language.)

I've started watching Deep Space Nine on fairladyz2005's recommendation, and it is certainly worthy of high praise. I've finished the first season and like it so much I've decided to write a series of posts talking briefly about my impressions.

One-line summary: Sisko falls into a hole and must dig his way out.

( Comments )

Overall "The Emissary" does what a pilot episode should do, setting up a premise for the whole series that will be a source of new conflicts and stories. The episode gave me high hopes for the show, the first season of which was a mixed bag with some real highlights. More on that later; for now, Luna out.