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Con report: Nimbus and Vulkon were entertaining, though the chunk of Florida separating them, not so much. Florida drivers are the spawn of Satan. I did enjoy the long stretches of highway where the official, posted speed limit was 70 – it was like a dream come true.
I also enjoyed my Nimbus panel on legal aspects of fandom, even though it started at the ridiculous predawn hour of 8:30. The Nimbus con was half academic, with panels on book-banning, Harry/Hermione versus Ron/Hermione, slash (huge), and justice in the wizarding world, the last by the incomparable AJ Hall. Many of the people there seemed to have HP as their first fandom, which made them an interesting bunch. Vulkon was straight-up fangirls and boys – the James Marsters lookalike was creepy, especially since we also had![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
mustangsally78's Spikebot in the very same outfit.
I finally got Clark and Lex action figures at Vulkon. Clark has detachable Kryptonite hands! You can also pull Lex's hand off, but there's no black-gloved replacement, sadly. And then Sally gave me Rosie the Riveter, which makes six or, depending on how you count, seven figures for my office windowsill, the other three/four being Mulder, Scully, Spike, and Scully's autopsy corpse.
Had a lovely visit with Sally, during which we shopped, played in her pool, ate, and saw "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," more's the pity. I also got a preview of her new series with Chase, and it made me remember why I loved Xander so much in the early seasons. Good stuff, people. Next visit: Disney! (The Swan & Dolphin, where Nimbus was held, was Disney enough to call the staff "cast," but I didn't see any characters. The food was terrible, in the main, though the onion rings were okay.)
The challenge responses have been great so far. Many people, however, have yet to speak up. I'm looking at you. Metaphorically, anyhow. Although it's not a formal part of the challenge, I will give extra love to stories that have Clark leap tall buildings in a single bound, or fly faster than a speeding bullet, because we should have some cliches that are just for Superman. Z. has agreed to make some graphics -- he's thinking action figure Clark & Lex against a cartoon desert island backdrop. Most of the others would be harder to illustrate, especially since the action figures' clothes don't come off.
Unscheduled book review and rant here.
J.D. Robb, Naked in Death:mustangsally78 gave me this for the plane back to NY. Sorry, Sally, but I hated it. This is romantic sf, the story of a NYC cop somewhere in the second half of this century, who starts investigating the brutal murder of the granddaughter of a conservative Senator and gets involved with a gorgeous billionaire who's an experienced hacker and an excellent shot, and who might just be her primary suspect. He only has one name! It's Roarke! Multiple typos turned my initial "meh" into annoyance, and POV shifts that nearly gave me whiplash finished the job. The author can't figure out any way to let the reader know that Roarke finds Eve Dallas (the cop) fascinating from Eve's POV, so we get three paragraphs of Roarke's and, wham bam thank you ma'am, back to Eve. I skimmed over the sex scenes; they may have been good and they certainly were athletic – Roarke and Eve go eight hours without a break the first time -- but I didn't care about the characters enough to watch. I did skim enough to see that he makes her come like she never has before and mounts a determined assault on her well-guarded heart in addition to her well-guarded vagina.
It is interesting to me that there's a certain icy woman/determined, caring man pairing that's almost the inverse of the more Harlequiny icy man/loving woman who survives his brutality only to find that he was mean because he was disturbed by his uncontrollable attraction to her, like the R-rated version of pulling pigtails on the playground. I used to read those Harlequins, and now I tend to find myself reading things with the Aeryn/John, some views of Scully/Mulder, or Eve/Roarke pattern, like Song of the Dragon, reviewed in this space a while back. The Harlequin plot doesn't seem too popular in current fantasy and sf, while the role reversal seems so easy to find that it's hardly "reversal" any more.
Are the pleasures the same? With the mean man, the attraction was that the early humiliations made the woman's ultimate triumph sweeter; the man's rage at his helplessness was ultimately futile, because the helplessness was what prevailed. With the mean woman, I don't think it's quite the same, because usually the woman's ultimate acceptance is presented as a mix of helplessness and choice, the idea being that the man has proved his worthiness by performing all the emotional (and sometimes physical or financial) tasks she sets for him, so she can give him her heart, which is calling out to him anyway. These days, I prefer het pairings where the power isn't on a one-way journey – my Scully & Mulder, who tear at each other like two scorpions in a bottle, or even most of Anita Blake's lovers. I suspect that Robb was trying for this more complicated dynamic, but she didn't get it as far as I'm concerned.
I also enjoyed my Nimbus panel on legal aspects of fandom, even though it started at the ridiculous predawn hour of 8:30. The Nimbus con was half academic, with panels on book-banning, Harry/Hermione versus Ron/Hermione, slash (huge), and justice in the wizarding world, the last by the incomparable AJ Hall. Many of the people there seemed to have HP as their first fandom, which made them an interesting bunch. Vulkon was straight-up fangirls and boys – the James Marsters lookalike was creepy, especially since we also had
mustangsally78's Spikebot in the very same outfit. I finally got Clark and Lex action figures at Vulkon. Clark has detachable Kryptonite hands! You can also pull Lex's hand off, but there's no black-gloved replacement, sadly. And then Sally gave me Rosie the Riveter, which makes six or, depending on how you count, seven figures for my office windowsill, the other three/four being Mulder, Scully, Spike, and Scully's autopsy corpse.
Had a lovely visit with Sally, during which we shopped, played in her pool, ate, and saw "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen," more's the pity. I also got a preview of her new series with Chase, and it made me remember why I loved Xander so much in the early seasons. Good stuff, people. Next visit: Disney! (The Swan & Dolphin, where Nimbus was held, was Disney enough to call the staff "cast," but I didn't see any characters. The food was terrible, in the main, though the onion rings were okay.)
The challenge responses have been great so far. Many people, however, have yet to speak up. I'm looking at you. Metaphorically, anyhow. Although it's not a formal part of the challenge, I will give extra love to stories that have Clark leap tall buildings in a single bound, or fly faster than a speeding bullet, because we should have some cliches that are just for Superman. Z. has agreed to make some graphics -- he's thinking action figure Clark & Lex against a cartoon desert island backdrop. Most of the others would be harder to illustrate, especially since the action figures' clothes don't come off.
Unscheduled book review and rant here.
J.D. Robb, Naked in Death:
mustangsally78 gave me this for the plane back to NY. Sorry, Sally, but I hated it. This is romantic sf, the story of a NYC cop somewhere in the second half of this century, who starts investigating the brutal murder of the granddaughter of a conservative Senator and gets involved with a gorgeous billionaire who's an experienced hacker and an excellent shot, and who might just be her primary suspect. He only has one name! It's Roarke! Multiple typos turned my initial "meh" into annoyance, and POV shifts that nearly gave me whiplash finished the job. The author can't figure out any way to let the reader know that Roarke finds Eve Dallas (the cop) fascinating from Eve's POV, so we get three paragraphs of Roarke's and, wham bam thank you ma'am, back to Eve. I skimmed over the sex scenes; they may have been good and they certainly were athletic – Roarke and Eve go eight hours without a break the first time -- but I didn't care about the characters enough to watch. I did skim enough to see that he makes her come like she never has before and mounts a determined assault on her well-guarded heart in addition to her well-guarded vagina. It is interesting to me that there's a certain icy woman/determined, caring man pairing that's almost the inverse of the more Harlequiny icy man/loving woman who survives his brutality only to find that he was mean because he was disturbed by his uncontrollable attraction to her, like the R-rated version of pulling pigtails on the playground. I used to read those Harlequins, and now I tend to find myself reading things with the Aeryn/John, some views of Scully/Mulder, or Eve/Roarke pattern, like Song of the Dragon, reviewed in this space a while back. The Harlequin plot doesn't seem too popular in current fantasy and sf, while the role reversal seems so easy to find that it's hardly "reversal" any more.
Are the pleasures the same? With the mean man, the attraction was that the early humiliations made the woman's ultimate triumph sweeter; the man's rage at his helplessness was ultimately futile, because the helplessness was what prevailed. With the mean woman, I don't think it's quite the same, because usually the woman's ultimate acceptance is presented as a mix of helplessness and choice, the idea being that the man has proved his worthiness by performing all the emotional (and sometimes physical or financial) tasks she sets for him, so she can give him her heart, which is calling out to him anyway. These days, I prefer het pairings where the power isn't on a one-way journey – my Scully & Mulder, who tear at each other like two scorpions in a bottle, or even most of Anita Blake's lovers. I suspect that Robb was trying for this more complicated dynamic, but she didn't get it as far as I'm concerned.
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