The Brilliant Creation That is Mastiff

It took me awhile, but I finally realized why it took me so long to warm up to Beka Cooper. She is the first Tortallan protagonist who I (Suzanne) genuinely see a lot of myself in--and when I was reading Terrier and Bloodhound, I did not like what I saw. The terrible shyness and fear of speaking in front of large crowds, the strident adherence to guidelines and rules, the tireless dedication to work, the taking of everything far too seriously. It hit too close to home. These are all traits that I possess, and they are things that I do not necessarily like about myself. It was difficult seeing them on the page. It was difficult to accept that someone so similar to me could be a hero in one of Tamora Pierce’s stories.

And yet, by the time we get to Mastiff, there is no question that Beka is indeed a hero.

Tammy doesn’t wait for us to catch up to Beka, in the three years since we’ve seen her. She doesn’t wait for us to get to know her fiance. For if we ever thought that Tamora Pierce lacked gusto, nerve, or oomph, we are proven wrong by the first sentence of this book:

We buried Holborn today.

Turning My November Around

Being a recent college grad is hard. Being a recent college grad since the economic shithole in 2009 is torture. Being a recent college grad since the economic shithole in 2009 who has no idea not only of life plans, but of any employment prospects in general, sucks.

This is where my life was a month and a half ago. In general, I was bored. Not a great place to be.

And then I stumbled upon NaNoWriMo’s website. I’d vaguely heard about the challenge, called National Novel Writing Month by those not in the know, to write 50,000 words in 30 days. And on a whim, I decided to do it. After all, if I couldn’t find time to write 1,667 words a day when I was dissatisfied with life, when would I be able to do it?

A Dazzling End

Following this finale, it’s really funny to go back and re-read our Let’s Kill Hitler reaction post, from what seems like so long ago already. In that, our biggest concern with the second half of Series Six was that Moffat had built too large of a house of cards this time around. That, as io9 recently put it, he wouldn’t catch all the balls he was juggling in the finale. He was doing so many wonderful, fascinating, unique things to the show, to the Doctor’s, the Ponds’, and River’s plotlines--but would it all come together in a way that both made sense and was satisfying?

In that sense, this finale did not disappoint in the slightest. Some things felt a bit rushed, yes, but that seemed mostly to be a consequence of the fact that the finale was only one episode long (which we’ll deal with later). And in the end--in those last ten minutes especially--everything felt complete. It made sense. The Doctor evading death was not a hand-waving, timey-wimey thing this time, as it was in The Big Bang last year. His emotional journey--at least for this season--has been completed in a way that actually brings us closure. River’s biggest mysteries were solved in a way that did not feel ret-conned. Sure, there are still some questions, but we were not left with the burning, gaping holes we were left with at the end of Series Five. And after all the doubts we had about Moffat’s ability to pull this off, seeing it all play out in this way was so incredibly satisfying.

F*ck you, she's awesome

The fact is that there aren't enough decent female characters out there. But when they do appear, they inspire. They are something to celebrate, to defend, to admire. The characters that when someone starts to complain about, we can't help but defend. What would the world be without them? We each posit our respective lists of top five (and more) female characters in the sci-fi and fantasy we read/watch.

"What's he doing?" "He's saving us."

It just might be the understatement of the year to say that in this half of the season, the writers are pulling out all of the heartbreaking stops. Last week we were floored and moved by the tragic beauty that was The Girl Who Waited. And this week, we are presented with an extraordinarily fantastic episode that is possibly even more heartbreaking and tragic: The God Complex.

No one comes away from this with a happy ending. By the end of this episode, every character we meet is either dead or forced to say farewell to a dear friend who has changed their lives irrevocably. And that statement applies equally to Amy, Rory, and the Doctor. No one is happy, and everyone’s heart is broken.

Say goodbye, to the world you thought you lived in

The Girl Who Waited was a brilliant example of why we love this show so much. Because when Doctor Who gets it right, it gets it right. At its core, this show is not about time travel or aliens or sci-fi or even saving the world. An episode doesn’t need to have a monster or a villain -- all it needs is a situation that puts the companions and the Doctor in a place where they discover painful things about themselves and have to make difficult choices.



When we first heard the episode title, I naturally assumed it was going to be all about Amy, and perhaps a reflection back on her childhood. It never occurred to me that Amy would have to wait, again. Yet wait she did. "You could spend a lifetime in here.” And she does. It’s progressed from "twelve years, and four psychiatrists,” to thirty-six years, and a lifetime of bitterness and loneliness. To me, the whole episode was an exploration, a magnification, of that small but nonetheless emotionally powerful scene in The Doctor’s Wife, where House manipulates Amy to stumble upon an aged Rory, and then his rotting corpse, surrounded by horrifying graffiti -- HATE AMY.

Sending a child away: or, why the Night Terrors sucked

Clones, as usual, agree completely. It wasn’t that there was anything actually horrible about The Night Terrors. It was just that there wasn’t anything good.

It was terrifying, sure. But that was about all it had going for it. And it never did anything with the terrors - those dolls were creepy to begin with. No new horror for kids, the way gas masks, stone angels, and shadows have been. Whether you consider it scary or not depends on whether you respond to the traditional horror/thriller movie tactics. Laura was terrified, Suzanne was not. But we both were bored. Very bored.

It felt like Fear Him, except that where Fear Her had an interesting alien, a novel way of disappearing a person, and a great child actor, the Night Terrors had... an alien whose capibilities weren’t really discussed or explored, a boring way of disappearing people, and a child actor who didn’t do anything besides look scared. Oh, and there was no wonderful scene of the Doctor carrying the Olympic torch (which he must, by the way), or David and Billie looking cute. On the contrary, Rory and Amy were again shoved away and just got to run around a lot - but unlike Doctor’s Wife, their running scenes were entirely devoid of personality, much less conversation.

Not just for teenage girls

Sometimes, the extent to which this world is still horribly, unashamedly sexist pisses me off. We are constantly confronted with the sexism of this world, and I have been becoming more and more aware of it. Usually, I can wish that it wasn’t so, and know that sometime, things will change. But sometimes - when I hear Taylor Swift’s “Love Story,” read certain interviews with Steven Moffat, or read about radical Christian groups, just as examples - I realize that it is still happening, still going on, still rampant in this world, this time, in my world. And I am really angry.

Times like that, I turn to Tamora Pierce. For those of you unfamiliar with her work, she is most famous for her five series of books set in the fantasy realm of Tortall. It all began with Alanna, the gutsy short redheaded twin who wanted to become a knight, not a lady. So she switched places with her brother to start her page training, disguised as a boy. She eventually becomes the King’s Champion and a legend by the name of the Lioness. There’s Daine, the outcast of a rural village who has a special ability to communicate with animals, an ability that makes her the kingdom’s greatest gift when immortals descend out of legend to the real world. There’s Kel, the first girl to try for the knighthood undisguised, who faces her own set of challenges. There’s Aly, Alanna’s daughter, who is hampered by her sheltered life and wants to become a spy, and is suddenly thrust into the role of mastermind of an island nation’s rebellion. And there’s Beka, a young policewoman determined to uphold the rule of the law and help the people survive in the worst-off areas of the kingdom.

All her stories, needless to say, are amazing. They’re the kind of fantasy I always hunger for. They’re the books that I’ve re-read more than any other - yes, perhaps even more than Harry Potter - and that I will continue to re-read, because they never get old. They’re the books that are comforting late at night, and inspiring when I’m down. They have great plots, novel ideas, and lovable characters. And I would love them for that alone.

Our "Deathly Hallows: Pt 2" Review

As we have previously stated on this blog, of all the geeky things we adore in this life, Harry Potter will always and forever be our first love. Yet, as both of us have had endless problems and quibbles with the film adaptations of the books, neither of us were very emotionally invested in the release of the final movie. "It All Ends" came for us four years ago, when the seventh book was released. So I think it took us both by surprise when--as the release date drew near--we both became rather nostalgic, emotional, and filled with a tad bit of regret that circumstances prevented us from attending the midnight premiere.

Circumstances also prevented us from seeing it together, but as we are clones, it came as no surprise that once we exchanged phone calls and emails we had essentially the same thoughts.

First and foremost: After seven movies, seven tries, they finally finally FINALLY got it right. Our major problem with the previous seven movies has been less with what they leave in and leave out (though it is always a disappointment to see what gets cut), and more with the fact that they have never felt like true adaptations. An adaptation is supposed to capture the spirit of the original work, and with a couple of exceptions, the movies never felt quite right, never felt like they captured that spirit. Characters always seemed really out of sync with their literary counterparts, and choices of setting and pace always brought something down. But this time...they captured that spirit perfectly. The beauty of this movie was in the little details, and for once they got those little details down pat. There were parts that were line for line, word for word from the book, like the section with Ollivander and Griphook...especially the part when Ollivander said "the wand chooses the wizard" in exactly the same way he did ten years ago. Brilliant.

Gandalf: From Staff-Elf to Maia

How the evolution of Gandalf’s character mirrors
the development of Tolkien’s story



“Gandalf! If you had heard only a quarter of what I have heard about him, and I have only heard very little of all there is to hear, you would be prepared for any sort of remarkable tale.” [1]

Though J.R.R. Tolkien is often accused of creating characters that lack depth, upon further consideration, it is difficult to pick out a major character in The Lord of the Rings trilogy that qualifies as “shallow.” If such a character were to be selected, however, Gandalf would be perhaps last on that list. From the moment he is introduced in the opening pages of The Hobbit, he is a complex and mysterious figure – he comes and goes on mysterious business, never reveals all that he knows, and says barely anything about himself. In the course of The Lord of the Rings and the Unfinished Tales that follow, his role grows and changes exponentially. Yet despite the changes and development his character undergoes throughout the course of the series, despite the new information that is revealed about him, he remains very similar to his first appearance; he is still a character shrouded in mystery. The vast expansion of his personality as a Maiar demonstrates just how little the reader knows about the figure who was named Mithrandir.