In Defense of Escapist Fiction

aka "we all know the world is full of chance and anarchy, so yes, it's true to life for characters to die randomly, but newsflash! the genre's called fantasy, it's meant to be unrealistic"*

On my main blog I've once talked about (link) how I stopped reading Feast for Crows halfway through and lost most my interest in Game of Thrones, because it's so dark and depressing and nothing good ever happens (there's a TV Trope for that, too, "Darkness Induced Apathy"). And even though it's gotten somewhat better in season 6, you can still see that it won't end well at all. So reading and watching GoT doesn't really make me happy, it doesn't really fulfill the reason I consume fiction anymore. I personally like to escape my everyday problems, anxieties and pains into fictional worlds. And if the fictional world is filled with even more horror and agony than what I read in the newspaper everyday then sometimes I just can't take it anymore.

Not everything needs to be gritty and dark and realistic. I live in reality (I presume)! Sometimes I don't want realism, I want escapism! I want a world that's better and easier, where the good guys win in the end and there is a clear objective, an honorable goal to work towards. Sometimes I just want to see the characters I've learned to care about live and receive the happy ending they deserve. Sometimes I want to know that there's a way things can be just and that fighting for goodness is not in vain.

Don't get me wrong, realism, too, definitely has its merits and a lot of fiction I greatly enjoy would rather stop in the middle of a sentence than present us with a happy ending. But in my core I long for stories that end well, because the world I live in deely unsettles me from time to time and I need to escape to somewhere where I am safe.

Satori just wants things to be good and nice for once


* That's my favorite line from the EpicRapBattle between George R.R. Martin and JRR Tolkien. Watch here.

Oryx & Crake discussion questions

We held a lesson on Oryx & Crake where we discussed some questions that I will share with you right now.

Introductory Questions:
What kind of genre does the book belong to?
What kind of protagonist is Snowman? Can we trust what he's telling us?
What kind of society do we find in 'Oryx and Crake'?

Genetic Engineering:
Where do we find Genetic Engineering in the book?
What connotations does Genetic Engineering have in the book?
What are the drawbacks and the advantages of Genetic Engineering as mentioned in the novel?

Consumerism and Capitalism:
Who holds the power in society?

Old World vs. New World:
How does the Old World differentiate from the New World?
Can we see differences in the language? What role does language play?
What sort of values were important in the Old World? How did this change over time?

Identity:
Who is the Self, who the Other?
Can religious themes be identified?

 Of course I also have answers to all of these questions, but that's not the purpose of this post. Maybe I will take up one or two of these questions and elaborate on them further.

And here comes their hetero love interest

aka stop trying to make Moira/Charles happen, it's not going to happen!

I've watched X-Men: Apocalypse and generally liked it. I've had some problems with it (further elaborated in my main blog), but in total it has been fun. One of my bigger problems will be discussed here since it ties with a broader issue.

There are quite a few people who didn't like the Sharon/Steve kiss in Captain America: Civil War. I understand them. It was unnecessary and ultimately reduces Sharon's character to a love interest and/or substitute for Peggy. (I'm not going to open the lid on how it should have been Steve/Bucky, because I like to stay out of the more aggressive discussions in fandom.) But at least it wasn't at all in focus and at least Sharon was somewhat relevant to the plot. Not so Moira McTaggert in XMA.

Moira is absolutely and totally unnecessary to the movie. Her character adds nothing and does nothing of note and is literally just there to remind the audience that oh yes Charles did have a hetero love interest. This is not fair to her character or to the fans. Let's backtrack a bit.
In X-Men: First Class Moira was introduced as a career driven woman who had to hold her own in a violently sexist CIA. Throughout that movie she decides to support the mutants regardless of what her superiors might say. Charles flirts with her in the very beginning, but becomes professional as soon as he realizes why she's there. All of their further interactions (up until the kiss in the end) are friendly but stay professional. Because of James McAvoy (Charles) and Michael Fassbender's (Erik) outstanding chemistry, they actually cut scenes that would have furthered Charles and Moira's relationship. A big part of the press said afterwards that First Class was the tragic love story of Charles and Erik. James McAvoy himself said on multiple occasions that that's what he was going for. But regardless of that and shippers' unique perspectives (I have to admit I am horribly biased, because I love Charles/Erik with all my heart and if I had an OTP this would be it) you have to admit that if they had wanted to set up Moira/Charles as the love story in the movieverse they should've done so more thoroughly. (Besides: why does a franchise such as X-Men so desperately need a love story at all? Their universe is filled to the brim with gripping and emotional motivators that do not rely on romantic love, but who am I to judge.)
Notably Moira is completely absent from the following Days of Future Past (and a love subplot is also thankfully absent). Anyone who wants to argue that it's actually about Erik and Charles somehow fighting over Raven's romantic affection, are free to do so at their leisure, but cannot expect me to believe a word of it. Once again the most emotional scenes are between Charles and Erik, adding to the chemistry of the younger versions the incredible chemistry Ian McKellan and Patrick Stewart have.
Along comes XMA and informs us that Moira has always been on Charles' mind and that she has been his great love all along while giving her nothing to do plotwise. It feels more than unrealistic and implausible. (It's almost more out of the blue than Erik's sudden family.) Especially considering once again the scenes Charles and Erik share. You can't claim to want to convince the audience that 'yup there's totally nothing between them at all' and then have Erik break out of his violent rage/Apocalypse' manipulation by remembering what he and Charles had.


I hope I did not rage too much or wrote too much from my shipper's point of view. I just wanted to call attention to a rather prevalent strategy in movies where they introduce a female character for the explicit and only purpose of being a love interest. Either because they believe every story needs a love story (it doesn't. it really doesn't) or because they can't find a reason for women to be there otherwise or because they want to discourage shippers and further heteronormativity. Rant finished.

Satori has a lot of feelings about that

P.S. To say it with James McAvoy's very own words: "It's kind of like a love story where you don't always like the person you're in love with, but you still love them. It's like, Charles and Erik always hate the way they approach things. He's just like "Ahhhh, he's always wanting to kill the humans! He's always going on about the same old shit!". And yet, I love the guy. I can't kill him, I don't want to mind control him, I love him."

Can you?

I have a lot of feelings about androids and how human they are. This is a collage using pictures from different movies dealing with that topic. The collage addresses the topic of artificial life using a quote from the movie iRobot.

Featuring images from the movies Blade Runner, Ex Machina, A.I. and the show Almost Human (and the quote from iRobot).

Crake, Religion and Irony

In the novel Oryx & Crake by Margaret Atwood (which we read in my SciFi Uni class and which is amazing) the narrator looks after a new species of human. His childhood friend Crake obliterated nearly all of humanity in order for his brand new custom designed humans to live. He thinks that humanity is some sort of virus and hopelessly flawed. As a genetic engineer he designed the new humans exactly like he wanted. They are herbivores, do not need clothes, have a set and promiscious mating cycle, their pee holds off predators, they are good looking and kind, do not get sick and can heal injuries by purring. And they do not believe in any gods. Or at least that's what Crake intended.

The narrator tells the Crakers (as he calls the new humans) about the one who made them and consequently they view Crake as a sort of god and Snowman (what the narrator calls himself) as a sort of prophet who brings them stories from Crake. They are reverent and accept anything that Snowman tells them as a law, as long as he says it comes from Crake. He even pretends to be in contact with Crake through a broken wristwatch (the Crakers have no concept of thechnology) and says that Crake "came down" through a tornado. The Crakers readily believe him and rely on that belief in their daily lives. There is also another god. The goddess Oryx (who was the narrator's girlfriend in the old world and taught the Crakers about animals and plants). The Crakers call themselves "Children of Crake" and all animals "Children of Oryx". Because animals are sacred to Oryx they don't harm them, except for the fish they get for Snowman once a week and if they're in danger.

The narrator himself observes the irony of the present situation. Crake abhorred religion and religious sentiments and tried his best to erase them. And now in the new world that he is no longer part of he has become his new humanity's god.

 
Later on Snowman takes a longer journey and leaves the Crakers for a while. While he is gone they built a likeness of him and pray for his safe return. It seems that some form of artistic expression and spiritual belief is (at least in the novel) integral to human nature and be it a human nature so fundamentally altered like that of the Crakers.

Satori adores this novel and loves working with it

Science and Egalitarianism

I know I just said that this blog will not have any reviews, but this isn't a review so much as it is an evaluation so it still fits. It's already been posted on my main blog.

Made with the Scale of Inclusivity of HerStoryArc (https://herstoryarc.com/her-story-arc-scale-of-inclusivity/).

1) Not offensive to women: 1/1
Eureka is in my opinion not offensive at all. Yes, one or two times there's a female character in her underwear, but it's definitely counterbalanced by the (partial) nudity of male characters and in both cases it is not sexualised, but furthers the situation's hilarity.
There is an episode in which pheromones make women be attracted to the main character, but he never makes a move to abuse this at all, is very concerned and anyway the whole disaster ends in him having to run away, because they'd kill him otherwise. It's funny as shit.

2) Features a female protagonist and/or supporting character: 2/2
Even if Jack is a white male protagonist, the show features women (and WOC) who are arguably protagonists in their own rights. Jo for example or Alison or Zoe. Additionally there are a lot of female supporting characters (or main characters of later seasons) and half of the background or one off characters - even the antagonists - are female (and mostly very capable scientists btw).

3) Passes the Bechdel Test: 3/3
Definitely does. There are many women and even if they sometimes talk about men they more often discuss the scientific problem of the week (because they are instrumental in solving it!), their fears and hopes, their plans for the future and how they can prevent Eureka from total obliteration this time.

4) Artistic and/or entertaining: 4/4
This show gets 4 points for two reasons. One: I've rarely seen a show of which I enjoy all five seasons in the same way and of which I like almost all episodes. Usually a show's quality declines more or less drastically after the first two seasons or it has a few brilliant episodes embedded in a mass of fillers. Two: the idea that all the problems are caused by and later solved through (extremely fictionalized) science is fantastic and very well realized. The characters are mostly brilliant scientists and they're all ambitious, slightly eccentric and cause world threatening catastrophes that can only be averted with even more science - and Jack and Jo's everyday logic. Furthermore the show is wonderfully creative, funny and geeky.

5) Above and beyond general media: 4/5
As I've said before Eureka's female characters are great. Nobody questions their suitability as a scientist, police officer, or manager (jobs that oftentimes go to men, but are naturally in women's hands here). They are complex and despite romantic relationships independent and focussed and above all completely different from each other. Additionally Eureka features quite some POCs as main and supporting characters. Women and POC both are as important as their white male counterparts.
I didn't give it 5/5 in this category, because of the prevalent "single women wants a good man" trope that is responsible for nearly every woman ending up in a (heterosexual) relationship (even though the relationships themselves are very sweet and wonderful and developed naturally) and because of the unnecessary jealousy story-line in season 5 that doesn't do justice to Alison's character.

Therefore Eureka gets a 14/15 rating.

I heart movies

I love movies. Those of you who know me from my regular blog will know. Not only do I love movies, but I also love all other kinds of fictional stories, be it TV shows, novels or theater. On my regular blog I mostly write about movies anyway, so why open up a brand new one? The answer is pretty simple: my regular blog is in German and this one won't be. Also, don't expect reviews here. This is the place where I will be sharing my feelings and musings with you. Enjoy!