What I Look For In A Story

Intro/Overview

My brain sometimes likes to blog in the middle of the night. I wrote this thing and I wanted to share it. It's not what I usually do, but I figured I'd share it anyway. Please don't be turned off by the blocks of text.

SPOILER WARNING

There might be spoilers for The Twilight Saga, Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Angel, His Dark Materials, Shrek Forever After, The Hunger Games, Torchwood, Doctor Who, Dragonriders of Pern, and Dollhouse. I say might because I'm not sure exactly what I wrote or if it contains anything that might be considered a spoiler. Just be aware that I talk about a lot of stuff.

What I Look For In A Story

I know I do an awful lot of reviews on this blog. I'm forever saying that I'm really into characters, but I've never really gone into why that is. So I want to talk about the stuff I look for when I'm getting to a story. This applies to books, movies, fanfiction, and TV shows, not specifically to the printed word.

The first thing I look for in my stories are relatable characters. If I don't find a character to latch onto, I don't get engaged. That character doesn't even necessarily have to be the main character or my favorite character. Nine times out of then, the character we as the audience meet first isn't the reason I ultimately stick with a show or keep reading a book. For example: The Twilight Saga. I don't read any of The Twilight Saga books or watch the movies for Bella or Edward or Jacob. I read and watch The Twilight Saga to see what happens with Alice, Jasper, Rosalie, and Emmett. All of whom get little screen time/book time. My TV show example: Buffy: The Vampire Slayer and Angel. I started watching Angel because the first episode I saw featured Faith Lehane. I went to watch Buffy because I wanted to know Faith's backstory. I kept watching both shows because of Willow, Wesley, Fred, and Faith. I relate to and like these characters more than I like Buffy or Angel.

The second thing I look for is story. You can have great characters, but if your story is crap, you've lost me. I'm not just talking about the play-by-play here, either. To me, a story needs to gather up the characters and desposit them believably into a world that makes sense for them. The world around the characters needs to feel real to me and feel real to them. What the characters do to reach the endgame or come to the conclusions they do needs to make sense with how they and the world around them is established. The storyline should carry the characters through a journey that makes sense. There's a reason I had a gigantic problem with the His Dark Materials series. The world-building was largely great in the first book, but then fell apart in the later ones.

Fanfiction and movies often fall into problems with story. Fanfiction authors manage to disregard certain story elements more often than not. Looking back at my Minority Within Minority story, I was gigantically guilty of this myself. My characters did things that didn't make sense and didn't do things that made sense for how I'd created them. As for movies, the lack of or inconsistency in story can drop me a lot faster than almost anything else. Take Shrek Forever After for instance. I personally felt like this movie didn't need to exist. I get where the writers were trying to go with it, but the storyline was just ridiculous. I loved the first three movies and I loved the characters, but the story of Shrek Forever After didn't work for me in the least bit.

The third thing I look for is whether the story is a sequel or a spin-off or not. Oftentimes, I'll read or watch something because it's related to something else. If the first book in the series catches me, I'll read the second one. I'm actually going to cite a book series that failed to catch me here: The Hunger Games. I read The Hunger Games and have no desire to read either Catching Fire or Mockingjay. I was far more invested in the story once I saw the movie and I'll probably see the next ones. As for spin-offs, I'll definitely check out the spin-offs if I'm love the first thing. The same works in reverse. I watched Angel and Torchwood before I saw Buffy and Doctor Who, for example. I'm also more likely to check out a book or movie or whatever if it's set in the same world as the thing I'm interested in. For example, books by Amelia Atwater-Rhodes and books set on Pern by Anne or Tood McCaffrey. I understand and like the worlds created by the authors and I really enjoy the stories of the people inhabiting them.

I also want to add that I have a lot of patience with slow-burning payoffs so long as they make sense. Dollhouse springs to mind here. A lot of people had problems with Dollhouse for various reasons. I've heard part of that had to do with how slow the slow-burn was. Dollhouse often came off like there was no concrete storyline because it was slowly building the mythology and characters up to their final forms, as it were. We got a glimpse of the characters' final forms during the last and unaired episode of Season 1. People who didn't necessarily enjoy the normal Dollhouse episodes really enjoyed that one episode and wanted more. When they didn't get it immediately in Season 2, they were extremely disappointed. Personally, I loved the individual stories and the slow buildup to what eventually happened. That kind of buildup was necessary to completely get invested in the characters based off the show's concept. If you didn't care about the characters under their "doll" selves, you didn't care about what ultimately happened to them. At least, that's how I see it. Slow-burns in stories give more time to flesh out the characters and the world around them. I like that.

But anyway, I'm digressing. These are all the things I look for in stories... which is a lame way to end what was essentially an essay, but I've always been really bad at endings, if you hadn't noticed... if you had no idea, well... welcome to the blog?

Love ya, Jessie.

Why I'm Not Finishing "The Amber Spyglass"

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not read any of the books in the His Dark Materials book series, please do not read the following review. There will be spoilers for the entire series, though I do focus on reviewing The Amber Spyglass. There will be a "Houskeeping" section in this blog post so feel free to skip down to that.

The Amber Spyglass by Phillip Pullman - Review

Well actually, just the first 59 pages, not the entire book

I was really trying to just go and get this series under my belt. I probably should have just left it alone when The Golden Compass didn't interest me enough to pick up The Subtle Knife in the first place. But no, I had to give the series another chance. Well, I'm done now. Not gonna even force myself to finish The Amber Spyglass.

I'm stopping because I just can't bring myself to care about the characters, or what they're doing, at all. Not to mention, there's suddenly a new race of people to keep track of. I understand that in a book series with multiple worlds there are going to be a lot of different creatures. I understand that not every creature is going to be explained in the first couple of books. However, in a trilogy, the last book should not be introducing new players to the mix. We should know who our players are, what they want, and how they plan on getting it. This has not happened with the His Dark Materials trilogy. I still don't know what the hell is going on. The main characters don't know what's going on. No one seems to know much of anything.

The Amber Spyglass starts off with a girl named Ama interacting with Mrs. Coulter. Mrs. Coulter has apparently kidnapped Lyra and has he sleeping in a cave. Yes, sleeping, like, under sedation type sleeping. We then jump to Will, who's got a pair of Angels protecting him in order to bring him to Lord Asriel. The main Angel of the pair, Balthamos, is impatient and rude. His entire plan hinges on convincing Will to go to Lord Asriel but Will would rather look for Lyra. Balthamos gets increasingly tetchy because he apparently can't or won't just grab Will and drag him off to Lord Asriel for some reason. When the second Angel, Baruch, returns from where ever he went off to, he's then sent to Asriel by Will and... captured or something.

Meanwhile, Serafina Pekkala reappears from where ever she went off to at the end of The Subtle Knife. Except, she's in her world talking to Iorek Byrnison about Lee Scoresby and the death she could not prevent. She goes off again, telling Iorek how to get to Lee's preserved body. And apparently, foxes can suddenly understand human speech and tell Cliff Ghasts. Uhm... right, Whatever. Iorek goes off to see Lee and eat him in order to... vengeance. It has to do with vengeance. I was skimming by this point.

Back to Ama. She's decided to go to some monks and get a cure for Lyra, who she thinks is under a spell. When she sneaks into Mrs. Coulter's cave with the cure, she finds out that Mrs. Coulter lies. And then we get some Lord Asriel time. He talks to a Lilliputian - I'm sorry, Borrower? Fairy? Oh! Pixie? No? Gallivespian? That's it, a very tiny person we've never heard of before but are apparently small enough and common enough to be spies... sounds like something a very observant child should have said something about... ya know, if she was at all actually observant.

Yeah... this is where I'm stopping. I didn't even realize the small person was teensy until I read about him jumping onto a not-giant bird. Turns out, I accidentally skipped a rather large paragraph describing the Gallivespians. When I start skipping like that, I know I'm uninterested. So I'm stopping.

My overall opinion of the His Dark Materials trilogy: should probably have been a four book series, at least. It would have given Phillip Pullman enough time to fully develop the characters and better develop the storyline. I'm not saying I could do better, but... the story is choppy at best. I don't care about any of the characters. Only the first universe is really developed in any satisfactory way. I'm just done with it. Probably gonna reread me some Harry Potter... again.

Housekeeping

I did not get around to watching last week's selection of shows. I got home too late tonight to watch Arrow and due to spoiler-y trailers, I'm not watching Supernatural tonight. So... yeah... that stuff's not happening tonight, or it might be, I'm not sure yet.

Anyway... if all goes well, I should have up some reviews tomorrow. Maybe.

Love ya, Jessie.

The Subtle Born Wesen

SPOILER WARNING

If you have not seen last Friday's episode of Grimm or read The Golden Compass/Northern Lights or The Subtle Knife, please leave the blog and come back later. The following reviews contain spoilers.

Grimm - "Natural Born Wesen" - Review

Okay so... "Natural Born Wesen" is essentially  a vehicle to introduce a new player in the form of the Wesen Council. Mind you, we don't know yet if the Council will play a huge role in the series. It is kind of nice to know that the Council is there and that the Wesen have their own sort-of police. Nice bit of world building.

As for the rest of the episode, I thought the back robbers were fairly standard bank robbers. It's usually a group of three, most often two guys and a girl. One of the group wants out after people end up dead. That person then ends up murdered by one or more of the others. This is exactly what happened here. Guy wants out, other guy murders him, girl gets in on the murdering. Standard bank robber plot. Fairly boring. The only part of this bit that was fun, was Monroe. His utter lack of under-cover skill his always hilarious.

As for the carry-over from last week, I thought it was interesting that Juliette and Renard essentially had to drink some of Nick's blood to be cured. Not what I thought would have happened, but interesting. Another thing I found interesting about this bit: no one goes to check on Juliette. She spends all night next to her door and no one notices. No one thinks to check on her at all that night. Nick's one phone call was really short and it was one phone call. Girl's been through a lot and not a one of the "Scoobies" thinks to check on her. What? Gah!

I did find Juliette's hallucinations interesting. My theory: the chasm represents her memories of Nick and the electrical motes represent her synapses firing, trying to regain the memories. Or something. Hope she finds out what's actually going on soon, because this beating around the bush thing is getting old.

Overall, the episode was interesting. It seemed like a lot of filler, especially after the whirlwind of last week. Hope we get more plot stuff next week.

The Subtle Knife by Phillip Pullman

I finally finished the second book in the His Dark Materials trilogy, The Subtle Knife. I liked it a lot more than The Golden Compass, though it still wasn't stellar. The Subtle Knife is very much a setup book. People are being introduced and then moved into place. The reason for the moving around isn't explained in any satisfactory manner and I still don't understand most of the character motivations.

Lyra still irks me. She is much too bubbly and friendly for her own good, even when trying not to be. I do not understand her at all. One point really stuck out to me, during the beginning of the book. Will tells Lyra to go wash herself up and she tells him she doesn't know how. Now, granted, it's been a very long while since I learned to wash myself, but I'm pretty sure I learned how by observing my parents washing me. Lyra's apparently been washed by servants or something her entire life and still doesn't know how to wash herself? How is she such an observant child and yet doesn't know how to do that? I know it's a nit-picky thing, but I about wanted to shake her over it. It just doesn't make sense to me.

Will Parry, I found much more believable and interesting. He's had to deal with a mentally ill mother on his own and then accidentally murders someone trying to get away from them. It really wasn't his fault the guy tripped over the cat. I found Will rather smart, savvy and properly wary of the people around him. Though I don't quite understand the Subtle Knife itself, I think Will is an excellent choice of a bearer. At least he's had it stolen less than Lyra did with the alethiometer.

We get to learn more about Lee Scoresby through his search for Grumman. He's every inch the practical man I thought he was. I enjoyed his daemon, Hester, as well. When she wasn't being quiet, she was wonderfully sarcastic.

Serafina Pekkala was... meh in The Subtle Knife. She didn't really do all that much besides lead the witches to the Citigazze world. I thought it was interesting that her magic could not heal Will's hand, but I'd have liked an explanation as to why.

Overall, I found The Subtle Knife much more interesting than The Golden Compass, though it still didn't engage me as much as I would have liked. I've started the last book in the trilogy, The Amber Spyglass. So far, it's... meh. I dislike angels in fiction and their ridiculousness. But that's all I'm saying for now.

Gaiaonline Easter Event

It's coming! Today we had a storyline update about Gaia's Easter Bunny. I thought it was interesting and slightly fairytale. I can't wait to see what happens with the event!

Housekeeping

So... I did a little tweaking on the "Reviewed" page. The "Movies" section now has a table separating the list in two. This was done so that the page wouldn't be longer than it has to be... which is already really long. I was thinking about doing something similar with the "Books" and "Fanfiction" sections, but I'm not sure how that would work exactly... the titles and their authors are just too long, I think.

I'd like to know what you guys thought of the latest episodes or whatever of the stuff I reviewed. Let me know in the comments, if you would take a few moments. I'd greatly appreciate it.

Love ya, Jessie.