I Suddenly Remembered My Charlemagne

It's Tuesday! The day I go see The Hobbit!

I love it so much. I've almost worked out the geography of the final battle without breaking, like, geography. "The North" is very big, after all, and you have to go around the Mountain to get to Ravenhill (which is on the west side of the Front Gate), so...yes. Except it all falls apart when the Moria orcs come out of the EAST, but whatever: almost got it.

ANYWAY. I remain completely verklempt about the whole thing. I think I spotted Benedict Cumberbatch in the Lake-town scene. I for sure found Katie Jackson, who appears to be Unnamed Lady's daughter, which is great. RICHARD ARMITAGE'S FACE, MY HEART. ALSO DEAN O'GORMAN.

I do wish there had been about three more seconds of camera on Martin Freeman when Thorin tries to kill Bilbo. But that is, in the grand scheme of things, a small quibble, and you can hear a sort of panicked breathing the whole time, so that's a nice touch.

Thranduil, I can't even. ALSO: BARD. AND THE CHILDREN.

And Elrond.

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Faith and I went to see three movies in theatre, and re-watched the first two HOBBIT movies at home. All were a lot of fun. Since one of the movie we saw was THE HOBBIT, I won't go over it again, but we ALSO saw BIG HERO SIX and MOCKINGJAY I, so that was good times.

I though BH6 did really well in terms of fusing Japanese and American culture. It was very pretty, from a visual standpoint, and the characters were clearly not all white either, which was handy. Probably my favourite Stan Lee cameo (in the actual movie, not in the extra, which was just...well, this is a kids' movie!).

As a bonus, FEAST was also pretty good.

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BUT LET ME TELL YOU MY FEELINGS ABOUT MOCKINGJAY PART I.

( Spoilers! )

Does Part II come out in six months, or 12 (I mean, six/12 months form the release of Part I. I realize that I am quite behind!).

Today on the blog I talk about endings, why I love them and why it bothers me when people complain about them.

(Spoilers obviously)

A Note About Endings

As I expected (and feared), TWoP posted a thread about how reality TV shows would be improved if they incorporated elements of The Hunger Games. Some day, I will learn my lesson with this website, I promise. ;)

Anyway, in the comments of the post, someone commented rather harshly about Suzanne Collins having "cribbed" her ideas from Battle Royale, and how it was so obvious, and that it would be better if she just admitted it. I was already aware that Battle Royale existed (when I recced the books to speedy_leen, she got her roommates to read it by saying that they were similar), but the comment made me angry, so I did some more research.

Collins claims to have had the idea based on the myth of Theseus, wherein Athens is required to send 14 children ("children") to Crete every year so that the Minotaur can eat them. It makes sense when extended through the book. In Battle Royale, the "death match" is a form of social control. In The Hunger Games, it's the enforcement of abject terror and misery. I think that difference is small, but it's also key.

In any case, I do believe that it's entirely possible for Collins to have written the entire thing without ever having heard of Battle Royale. For starters, BR was only translated into English in 2003. The Hunger Games was first published in 2008, but she was probably working on it for longer than that.

Let me give you some personal examples. When I wrote the first draft of "The Stone Thief", I called the city Valdemaar. On December 1st, I found out that Valdemar is actually a country written about my Mercedes Lackey. I've read some of ML's stuff, but not those books. And when I typed Valdemaar the first time, I just threw letters on the keyboard until I saw something I liked! Similarly, I have thought of my "untitled wing!fic" as "Knife" from the very beginning. When I wrote the short story, I thought the name was too obvious, but now that it's novel-sized, it works out. I didn't meet rj_anderson until months later.

There's also a chance that one of Collins's test readers had read/heard of Battle Royale and mentioned it to her, and then she purposefully stayed away from it. I have yet to read Tamora Pierce's "Melting Stones" because I am currently writing books about people who do magic with stone. I've signed that book out of the library THREE TIMES and talked myself out of it on each occasion.

I suppose my point is this: there is a somewhat limited pool of ideas out there, and most of them come from older myths and legends anyway. It's the plotting and the character arc that make the story, and these are two areas in which Suzanne Collins excelled. No one writes in a vacuum, but it is possible to create a vacuum around you on purpose when you're writing. I'm about as unprofessional as it gets, but when I am writing I a) stop watching Legend of the Seeker (on account of it being fantasy), and b) stop reading Tamora Pierce (WHICH IS HARD TO DO!). Mostly, I just wish people would THINK before they talk about stuff on the internet.

Girl power, post-apocalyptic, really not like Survivor, so good it kind of hurts, brilliance in concept and in execution, sequel that more than lives up to the hype.

I can't really be coherent (and trust me, it's been nearly an hour since I finished the book during which time I filled the car with gas, went grocery shopping and drove 30 kilometres) because this book just blew my mind on about 18 levels. I can't even make a list of things I like, because it would be EVERY THING THAT HAPPENED. I read it in the Starbucks at Chapters, and made myself go home before I started reading "Mockingjay". Fortunately, I've learned to read without shrieking and hyperventilating whilst in public, but I can't stop myself from rocking back and forth and looking like I want to.

How awesome is an author that can pretty much do the same thing TWO BOOKS IN A ROW and have it leave me feeling totally gutted and speechless both times? BECAUSE, REALLY. My mother once told me that watching me read is like watching someone play a full contact sport. I don't think this is always true. But there are certainly books where it's pretty darn close. So close, in fact, that once I finish "Mockingjay", I'm probably going to have to read Shakespeare for a week to calm down again.

( I can't stop thinking about Rob and Amber )

9.75 out of 10. Because, like with figure skating, I'm saving the perfect score for the ending.

Okay, I can't start Mockingjay until after dinner, which isn't until six, or I won't go. I am sort of wishing I had rj_anderson's phone number so I could call and yell at her for recommending these books just as I was exiling myself to Thunder Bay where there is NO ONE TO TALK TO ABOUT THEM! ;)