Up to midpoint of season 2. Still a bunch of consistency issues, the worse ones being the ones around breath–if your vampire has no need to breathe to exist, and no way to exercise their lungs, they shouldn’t be able to gasp out; or, when held dangling by way of another vampire’s hand wrapped around their neck, to look as though they’re being strangled. [1]
And Gunn… OK, I’m the first for ethnic and class diversity in series, and the show’s record so far was pretty abysmal (all White apart from the occasional skimpy-clad Chinese demonness who doubles as martial arts specialist *sigh*). But really, did the one Black person on the show need to come from the street, have dodgy connections, and spout off “brother” every two lines? Do the words “bad stereotypes ” even register here?

[1]Also, how are they talking without lungs again? Or, for that matter, bleeding without a beating heart?

The one thing I often get told when I talk about the US/Anglophone dominance of the spec-fic market is some variant of “good translations are expensive, and the market is stretched so there is no money for it”. I’m sorry, that’s just not a valid reason.

Yes, I fully agree that a good translator is expensive. Translating, say, from French to English is more expensive than taking an English author direct. In this we totally agree. But…

But wanna take a guess as to how much a good translator from English into French costs, and how much cheaper it would be to buy a local author? ‘cos it’s known as a symmetrical problem, and we all have the same problems: the literary market is somewhat small (as opposed to TV, for instance), and overstretched.

Most non-Anglophone publishing houses have a fairly large Foreign Rights/Foreign Acquisitions department, which also handles translations. It’s an accepted part of the budget as much as paying authors for books and paying artists for cover art. Most Western Anglophone houses… don’t exactly seem to have the equivalent department. So the “we don’t have any money for translations” thing? Please don’t try to tell me that. It doesn’t stand.

I’ll accept the “there is no market for translations” as a valid point–but then I’ll ask you to start wondering: why is there no market for translations in the US/UK, and plenty in other countries?

Currently watching Angel (in Spanish, in an effort to keep my vocab up to date. So far, I’ve learnt lots of moderately useful words such as “stake”, “coffin”, “demon”, but you never know, I might need them somehow). I like the show, but the mythology is sometimes… particular. As in, you don’t want to dig in too deeply, because things might crack.

For instance, crucifixes and holy water are clearly harmful to vampires, whether they’re ensouled or not. But, conversely, it doesn’t seem to be a problem for Angel to stroll into a church, which is a. consecrated ground, b. the house of God (ie, the origin of the powers invested in crucifixes in the first place), and c. in a deliberate crucifix layout, like most traditional churches (the nave and the transept forming a rather characteristic shape…).

Interesting…

So I’m reading this book (the title of which shall be omitted, because I don’t think I want to remember it for even that long). It’s about a small town targeted by (yet another) serial killer who preys on young girls and has digusting sexual fantasies. It’s got the arrogant rich bastard, the arrogant rich bastard’s son who is also an arrogant bastard, the haunted police investigator whose wife cheated on him, the heroine whom everyone pines for and who is kind and comforting and great with kids but generally completely helpless. And in the end, the serial killer turns out to be the sweet mentally challenged kid, who kidnaps the heroine and tortures her.

Am I the only one who sees a problem with all the %%% clichés here? (and seriously, the guy with the mental troubles is a serial killer? Way to go to ease the mistrust and prejudice towards people who didn’t have much of a choice in what life dealt them)

Also, seriously, what’s with the serial killers in US novels? I’m getting tired of sexual fantasies and extreme violence towards women. Perhaps some people enjoy reading about that. I certainly don’t.

I get profiled over at Stomping on Yeti as an author worth watching, along with Rachel Swirsky, John Langan, Leah Bobet and Greg Van Eekout (it’s part 4 of a 5-article feature that’s going to profile 25 authors worth keeping an eye on in 2010). Many thanks to Patrick for the awesome comments.

The details she weaves into her work are exotic and refreshing and the worlds she creates, be they past or present, beg for further exploration.

And Cara over at Speculative Book Review lists Servant of the Underworld as one of her top five books for the year.

On a random, aggrieved note after reading a hundred pages of The Cardinal’s Blades: I love the book. I love the mesh of Three Musketeers with dragons, and it’s been such a long time since I had any proper swashbuckling. But one thing makes me cringe at almost every page: the Spaniard, Anibal Antonio Almadès di Cardio. Because Spanish doesn’t have grave accents. Neither does it have a nobility with titles like “di Cardio”: the nobility mark is “de” just like French (I know I’ve seen the “di” elsewhere–my best guess is that Italians might have that, but I’m not sure). I do wish some Spanish-speaker had reread that bit and corrected it, because it continually jolts me out of the narration and makes me want to scream at things.

BF and I watched this one this week. Clint Eastwood stars (and directs) as Walter Kowalski, a rather acrid Korea veteran who develops a relationship with his neighbours, a family of Hmong immigrants (the Hmong are an ethnic group from Southeast Asia, present notably in Vietnam). He takes the son of the family, Thao, under his wing, and tries to protect them from the depredation of a local gang.

The first two thirds of this are rather good: Walter is a pretty unpleasant character, bitter and casually racist, and the movie depicts rather well the culture clashes that follow as he attempts to cohabit with his neighbours. There’s some nice set pieces, with everyone acting pretty well, and you learn to know both Walt and the Asian family next door.

Where the movie falls apart, though, is in the last third. The “war” with the gangs comes to a head when Thao’s sister Sue (who initially introduced him to the family) is beaten up and raped on her way home, and things go downhill there. Walter concocts a weird revenge plan which basically amounts to getting killed in front of witnesses so the gang can be arrested by the police. What’s really annoying about that is that the movie seems to take it as a given that the police won’t arrest anyone unless a white veteran gets killed. By doing so, it dismisses Sue’s testimony as basically worthless, which is bewilderingly racist or misogynistic, or both. I know accusations of rape are a bit iffy sometimes, but when the victim has been beaten black-and-blue beforehand, I don’t think there should be much of a problem as to material evidence.
And, to cap it all, the last shot of the movie is Thao driving the titutar car along a stretch of beach–without his sister or his girlfriend–giving the viewers a very clear message as to what this movie really is: it’s about Man with a capital M, and virility and general chest-thumping, gorilla-style. The women are just accessories no one gives a darn about. They exist to be protected, to cook and to chatter in the kitchen, to be sisters and girlfriends and facilitators–and to be raped, when the script requires it. Even before the rape, Sue had completely vanished: as soon as she had performed her designated role of introducing Thao to Walter, she becomes insignificant, part of the background–and the rape is just the confirmation of that.

I’m sorry, are we in the 21st Century, or is this still the Wild West?

And while we’re on the subject of writing in other cultures….

Dear Interwebs (and dear writers/editors/journalists),

If you’re going to be using or quoting French words, would you please try to get the accents right? It may not seem like much to you, but witness:

-“côte”=slope; “coté“=side
-“mat”=matte, Fool trump in tarot; “mât”=mast
-“pâte”=dough, “pâté“=spreadable paste made with meat, “pate”= a word that doesn’t exist in the dictionary (though “patte” does)

I can deal with no accents whatsoever, since I’ll assume they’ve all been stripped. But please pretty please with cherries on top, don’t just randomly add them and hope it looks good. It doesn’t. It just looks weird, unpronouncable, and written by someone who had no blasted idea of what accents were for.

And if you’re going to be making up French first names, could you please check the time period when your story is supposed to be taking place?

You might not know it, but before 1993, the civil servants at the town hall (where you go to register a birth), could reject anything that wasn’t on a pre-approved list (it’s here in French, if you’re interested. A shorter version in English is up on Wikipedia). The list was calendar saints, mythology (Greek/Roman), some foreign names (very limited, since the ones listed are James, Ivan or Nadine), some substantives, and acceptable variations on spelling of an authorised name (Marianne for Marie-Anne, Mathieu for Matthieu, Michèle/Michelle). And you actually had to justify why you weren’t giving a proper French name (as in, a calendar saint).

And before 1966, anything that wasn’t a calendar saint had very, very low chances of going through.

So, if you’re going to be creative with first names, please don’t set your story in 1945.

Arg. Getting to work today: 2h30 minutes in a packed bus (vs. 45 minutes usually).
Yes, it snowed. Loads and loads of snow, to be precise, and it’s not a good idea to have hills between you and your destination in that sort of case, especially when the cities are taken by surprise and don’t put salt on their roads to remove said snow.
Also, the suburban trains were on strike, just for the heck of it.

(getting back from work: 1h00, thanks to a colleague’s car and half an hour crammed into a train that was literally packed to the rafters. The mood has been better.)

/snark on

So, for his birthday, I gave the BF a shiny present: the gold edition of Age of Empires III by Ensemble Studios. It included this nifty-looking set of extension called “The War Chiefs”, and “The Asian Dynasties”, which add Native American and Asian civilisations to the game, respectively. Now, the basic principle of AoE III is that each civilisation has a home town, and a great leader: the French have Napoleon, the Ottomans have Suleiman the Magnificent…

And the Aztecs? Well, you can almost imagine the conversation that went on between the developers at Ensemble:

“Ok, we need a war leader for the Aztecs. Someone great, who changed the face of their Empire” *looking over the list of Aztec Emperors* “Darn it, everyone has names of four syllables or more. No gamer is going to have the patience to memorise those.” *looks over the list again* “How about Tizoc?”
“Er, didn’t he only reign five years?”
*dismissive hand* “I’m sure he was cut down in the prime of his glory. Like Alexander the Great. Nah, he should do fine.”

At least, that’s the only reasonable explanation of how we end up with the worst Aztec Emperor in history, the only one who lost his coronation war, barely conquered anything worth mentioning, and died in murky circumstances barely five years after ascending the throne. (poisoning by his own generals or priests was suspected)

*goes bang head against wall*

(not that the Chinese fare any better, since they’re attributed the Kangxi Emperor, who was a Manchu, not a Chinese–but at least you can make a case for his greatness. Tizoc is just… ugh)

/snark over

EDIT: ok, I stand corrected. The game effects a random choice of leader, and does so among a predefined database that includes Tizoc, Cuauhtemoc and Tenoch. It was sheer bad luck that we got Tizoc twice in a row..