"When a powerful wizard vows to rid the land of love through the use of his fire-breathing dragon, a brave team of eccentric warriors embark on a grand quest to break the curse, defeat the wizard, and slay his terrible beast." I can't deal with the sheer mind-altering beauty of that description. RID THE LAND OF LOVE? VIA DRAGON???!?
The wizard?? Is also?? Played by Spike from Buffy the Vampire Slayer?? I DON'T KNOW WHY. WHY NOT.
We start with a definition: "Dolvarnog: an enchanted fire-breathing dragon specifically trained to murder anyone showing outward signs of love." AMAZING. Oh gosh, one of the actors is the Fighter from Mythica. Fantasy Amazon Prime movies have a lot of actor overlap.
THERE ARE SLOW-MO FACE CLOSEUPS AND WHOOSH SOUNDS.
OH MY GOD YES CINEMATIC SLOW MOTION MONSTER FIGHTING.
See? See how easy I am to please?????? It's not hard!!
...mmph, the Sacrificial Virgin is comically killed by a love-dragon right after being saved, I don't love THAT. Ok, the Handsome Knight got killed too, my annoyance is assuaged. What's good for the goose is good for the gander. Even better: He got killed in slow-mo, which is the best death.
I just have so many questions about a wizard who specifically trains a dragon to ONLY look for love.
Oh hello, what's happening. A pretty blond man is running in slow motion and acquires a magic ring. He gives it to his forbidden lover, who is ALSO from Mythica. This Fantasy Movie Venn diagram is getting crowded. (The forbidden lover is a woman, sorry if I got your hopes up that a fantasy movie might have gay rep. I'm disappointed too. Her forbiddenness is that she's an elf and his parents are racist.)
Wizard Spike is apparently doing this whole dolvarnog thing because he's in love and his childhood girlfriend refuses to un-breakup with him. Blond can't marry his Elf girlfriend unless he brings back his older brother, the Mythica Fighter from before the credits. OFF WE GO.
Warrior doesn't want to marry and settle down, so Blond can't have his Elf, BUT a magical dragonfly drops a "help me Obi-Wan Kenobi" message from Wizard Spike's captive ex-girlfriend. She even does the Leia motion of fiddling with R2D2; somebody was enjoying themselves. "Help me if you want to hold me, you're my only hope." OH MY GOD WHAT TERRIBLE PUNNAGE.
Elf-maiden got herself partially Dolvarnog'd so now we're on a FETCH QUEST and also some utterly amazing, uh, wagoneering was done and there was some catapulting.
The fat guy saved everyone!
Leia is befriending the dragon and it's sweet.
They're slow-motion eating now and we have hit the limits of what slow-motion can make cool.
I wonder if I'd like this hero as much as I do (I do!) if I didn't already love him from Mythica. I like to think I would, but unless I get amnesia we'll never know for sure.
[TW: Rape] I should TW for a previous scene; Blond was kidnapped and sexually threatened by a goblin queen, but he was saved just in time. And of course the whole thing with Wizard Spike holding his cousin hostage until she agrees to marry him is rapey. Just heads-up for all that. It's certainly possible to make a fantasy movie without threatening anyone with rape, but a lot of writers seem unaware of that??
There's a whole lot about romantic love being the BEST THING EVER and I keep wanting to yell "have you heard of aros" at the tv, but now they have to fake love as a trap so one of the guys is dressed as a woman and I'm having to switch to yelling "have you heard of gay".
Everything goes belly up because Blond is made of impatience and arrogance, and now his big brother has to fix it and I do like the line "It doesn't matter whose fault it is; all that matters is we fix it."
I laughed out loud when Leia pointed out AGAIN that she and Spike are cousins and he says "It is very common in some cultu--" and she yells "NOT HERE!!!" How delightful. A fantasy movie that also manages to satirize fantasy movies.
Aww, a good friend hug happened! Uhhh, and then....toxic masculinity happened about not crying. Why, Movie? Why do you do this to me.
God bless Spike for doing his best in this role, really. I love seeing famous actors being good sporting villains in terrible fantasy films.
Hahaha, Leia insists on reading her own wedding vows to stall for time, and her vows do that *scroll falls to the floor and keeps rolling several feet* thing. SHE'S READING HER OWN LIFE STORY, HAHAHA. ...Her life story includes a love affair with a centaur prince.
@pastellistin. ...is she filibustering her own wedding?
SHE IS.
*eyes widen* Her life story includes love affairs with an awful LOT of magical creatures. I like her.
Awwwwwwww!! They named the dragon Noogie and he's a very good boy.
A happy ending, and they get a NEW Leia message from an orc maiden in need of help for the orc to save (and presumably love and marry), so omg isn't that just the sweetest thing? Well, that was lovely. Way better than I was expecting and/or the usual standards of Amazon Prime movies!!
Like, I would totally watch that a second time.
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Film Corner: Dudes & Dragons |
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Open Thread: Thin-film interference |
Apparently when oil on water makes rainbows, it's known as thin-film interference. (The oil is the thin film.) Picture was taken two and a half months ago, about halfway down the hill from my house.
We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies and shows, said discussions including plain text spoilers. These are the current ones:
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Film Corner: The Crown and the Dragon |
This one says "After Will's father is killed by a dragon, he embarks on an epic journey to seek vengeance against the vicious monster." Nice and straightforward. A guy in Ikea fur rugs sits on a rock and plays a recorder. A dragon immediately swoops down and sets him on fire. Everyone's a music critic.
Oh no, the captions are wildly out of sync. That's gonna be a problem. Hey, @PrimeVideo can you check the captions on DAWN OF THE DRAGON SLAYER? They're out of sync, 3 minutes in. Thank you! I'm gonna take a nap while they fix it.
Ok, we can't figure out why this ONE MOVIE won't caption properly on my devices (everything else does!!) so let's try THE CROWN AND THE DRAGON which is almost the name of my favorite novel on the Choices game app. "Elenn, a noblewoman and Aedin, a smuggler, traverse danger and peril across dragon-filled lands to fulfill her calling as the Paladin."
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Film Corner: Vikingdom |
Ok, tonight's Amazon Prime movie is called Vikingdom. That's...I'm pretty sure that's not a word but it is now. Here's a picture of Crisp when I asked him to define Vikingdom."Based on Viking mythology, Eirick battles from hell and beyond to retrieve the missing artifact, Odin's Horn, before Thor and his army can unleash its powers to conquer the world." I... What... No? Where do you START with that? Hell? Thor? Odin's....Horn? But you know what, it's FINE. Movies mangle myths all the time, I'm down with it, let's do this. HERE WE GOOOO.
Dammit, none of the captions are showing for anything. Lemme reboot all the things.
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Film Corner: Journey Quest (Season 2-3) |
[TW] We left off with the wizard and the elf girl captured by orcs. She'd been subjected to a rape threat, and the dude who wanted to hurt her accidentally killed himself. That was when I stalked off.
Perf (the wizard) accidentally blows his own clothes off and is revealed to have a tattoo which says "Meat Henge" and a finger pointing down to his...why would...why. Ok. In plot developments, we learn that Perf's failed life-magic attempt accidentally turned the Cleric into an intelligent zombie--which is supposed to be impossible. A sexy assassin sexily accosts everyone and a kinky ropeplay joke is made. We're not doing great for female representation that isn't immediately sexualized, friends.
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Narnia: High and Lonely Destiny |
[Narnia Content Note: Genocide, End of the World]
The Magician's Nephew, Chapter 5: The Deplorable Word
I'm sorry it's been such a long time since the last Narnia; life has been difficult over here and I'm so grateful for your continued patience with me. You are all the best. As you may recall, we last left off with the castle crumbling around the children while Jadis unhurriedly hauls them out whilst playing tour guide.
They came at last into a hall larger and loftier than any they had yet seen. From its size and from the great doors at the far end, Digory thought that now at last they must be coming to the main entrance. In this he was quite right. The doors were dead black, either ebony or some black metal which is not found in our world. They were fastened with great bars, most of them too high to reach and all too heavy to lift. He wondered how they would get out.
This feels faintly strange to me but it's hard to explain why.
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Open Thread: Colors of the Sky |
Just after Sunset on Sunday.
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Friday Recommendations! What have you been reading/writing/listening to/playing/watching lately? Shamelessly self-promote or boost the signal on something you think we should know about - the weekend’s ahead of us, so give us something new to explore!
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Film Corner: Morning Star Warrior |
"After conquering their enemies, a group of triumphant warriors return home to rejoice with their nation. What starts as a day of celebration quickly turns to horror as the group discovers that the world they lived in has changed forever." Well that's delightfully vague. "Changed forever", like, aliens? Or, like, post traumatic stress? I don't know.
Two opposing armies stare each other down and so far everything looks nicely expensive and artsy. This is a much better quality than my usual fare. Someone had a costume budget. War happens and this looks kinda realistically what I think war would look like in terms of (three guys knife a dude because one on one fighting is harder than bringing your mates to help) but I have no idea which side wins SMASH CUT TO CREDITS.
(Bless you all for reassuring me that my live tweets are ok. The world is just so overwhelming and this helps. Thank you.)
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Open Thread: Ripples and Light |
Light going through ripply/wavy water creates an effect on the bottom that we never quite figured out a name for* when some light is concentrated into brighter areas† which naturally makes other areas darker. This . . . doesn't look like that very much. I think that the reason is twofold.
First, the waves are large enough to be visible in themselves, thus distorting the view of the play of light and shadow on the bottom. Second and, I believe, more importantly is where the picture was taken from. Basically, if I hadn't cropped the image, my shadow would be in it. (The bottom of the picture is level with the top of my shadow's head.)
Unless you happen to be a light source, this is as close as one can come to seeing what it looks like when the light coming out of the water is altered in the exact reverse way of the light going into the water.
* The reverse effect, the play of light and shadow created when the sun reflects off of a rippled surface (which is usually seen on ceilings) has a name in Italian, though it also applies to light from mirrors, which doesn't look the same at all.
WanderingUndine calls it "lakelight" when it's off a lake, which suggests a decent formula (pool-light when off a pool, sealight when off the sea, so forth.
The noun "caustic" means "thingy that burns", with the adjective from which it is derived meaning "burny". Most optical caustics do not burn; I feel that this technical term was badly chosen.
We have special open threads set aside for discussing various movies and shows, said discussions including plain text spoilers. These are the current ones:
● Game of Thrones
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Open Thread: Purple |
Have a flower.
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And, like on all threads: please remember to use the "post new comment" feature rather than the "reply" feature, even when directly replying to someone else!
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Transcending Flesh: Children and Childhoods |
Note: This was previously published on my Patreon.
This essay is one in a series which focuses on writing gender in science fiction and fantasy settings that provide body modification options beyond our current level of technology. Note that you can download this collection of essays from my website here.
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Transcending Flesh:
Gender and Body Diversity in Futuristic and Fantastical Settings
Essay #13: Children and Childhoods
~Infants and Alteration~
Giselle is an author who wants to write a BodyMod magitech society wherein every child is altered at birth to have a "boy" body (i.e., with a penis) and are only allowed to switch to a "girl" body (i.e., with a vagina) when they reach adulthood and legal emancipation from their parents' decisions.
I do have to point out that this premise makes very little sense to me. Some societies heavily prioritize bearing children of a specific body configuration, yes, but those communities do not attain total parental adherence to that ideal. Some parents will always exist who disagree with the larger cultural values around them, or who simply refuse to alter the bodies of their children against their will. Having said that, this is one premise which has a note of real world truth: it is still legal and acceptable in many places for parents and doctors to surgically alter the genitals of children without their consent.
The belief that all infants are born with one of two types of genitals is incorrect and unscientific. Many people are born with genitals which cannot be easily sorted into a binary "male/female" dichotomy. Our society uses the term "intersex" to refer to people who experience one or more of a variety of conditions which may lead to atypical development of physical sex characteristics; in this book I will use the term "perisex" to refer to people who are not intersex, with a note that the term "dyadic" may be used elsewhere.
In an effort to force a binary state which does not occur in nature, our culture has accepted the use of genital surgery on infants incapable of consent. Many intersex people are subjected to surgery at a very young age because of a bigoted society which believes that adherence to a constructed cultural norm of what genitals "should" look like is more important than individual bodily autonomy and self-determination.
Given this context, Giselle's world in which babies are fed into the BodyTron5000 to receive a standardized body becomes much more plausible. However, it is important for the author to understand that this culture is terrible, and to make certain that this fact comes across to the reader. The alteration of children's bodies without their consent is a human rights violation which flies in the face of all personal autonomy.
Giselle's fictional culture is not performing a "favor" for its infants. Bodies, whether intersex or perisex, are allowed to possess beautiful variation. Neither intersex nor perisex people are all longing for surgery to make them identical to everyone else. Any setting which performs body modifications on babies is a dystopia, and the author must be aware of that; this situation is not something which can be played off as a cutesy cultural quirk of Planet Monogender. Moreover, the author must be aware of real world parallels and how this situation isn't hypothetical for many of their readers.
~Childhoods~
Let us now consider two trans people in their late thirties, both of whom have the bodies they desire through the wondrous invention of BodyMod magitech. However, one of them was allowed to access that magitech at age four, while the other was not allowed access until age eighteen and legal emancipation from their parental guardians. As a result, these two trans people have had very different childhoods.
When an author writes a BodyMod magitech setting, it is important they understand that even if bodies can be changed easily later, experiences cannot be: we only have one childhood. Some authors get so wrapped up in the fact that their trans characters can "change later" that they forget that childhood experiences, validation, and affirmation are all incredibly important things which can affect a person's mental wellness.
Forcing someone to experience puberty in a body which causes them dysphoria is cruel. In Giselle's fictional world, every person in her setting is forced to experience puberty in a specific type of body regardless of their consent. This is an act of society-wide violence which would harm a large number of its inhabitants, and which only contributes to the stark fact that Giselle's setting is a dystopia and cannot be played for laughs or cutesy cultural characterization. If you are writing a society which is in any manner accepting of trans identity, then people must recognize that children have bodily autonomy and deserve the right to experience childhood and puberty in a body which does not cause them discomfort.
In our society, the biggest objection to allowing children to transition is that they might be "wrong" about their identity or could "change their minds later". This is not a good reason to deny a child access to transition, in part because it is based on a fundamental misconception of what "transition" is in this context. Childhood transition involves social transition (i.e., telling people the correct pronouns to use), presentation changes (i.e., clothing, hair, etc.), and puberty-delaying medication which prevents early onset of puberty and the major bodily changes which accompany it. None of these steps are irreversible, and it is important that cis people stop portraying childhood transition as scary and primarily surgical when it is neither.
Moreover, in a society where every body can be custom-made at any time to any specification, there is no good reason to deny a child the chance to grow up in a body they feel comfortable with. "But what if they change their mind later?" ceases to have any meaning in a world where there are no consequences to changing one's mind because the BodyTron5000 can grow and attach an unlimited number of body parts! "We can change it later, so you can't change it now" makes no sense unless bigotry is in play.