Welcome to More to Read

Black History Month is almost over, but that doesn't mean that anyone should stop learning about black history or what it means to be black in America. 

Prior to the start of Black History Month, I saw a meme on Facebook asking who was the reader's favorite black author, their favorite black filmmaker, poet, etc. and I realized how few of these answers had more than two people for me to choose from. Some of the categories only had one person for me to pick.

It also got me to realize that I often don't think too hard about who the author is of my favorite stories. Well, unless it's J K Rowling, Stephen King, or (ugh) Nicholas Sparks.

So I started going over the books I was hoping to read over the coming year. There are a lot, but that's beside the point. What I noticed is that, even thought here were a wide variety of books by genre (fantasy, classic, business, etc.) the author's I was picking up weren't the most diverse group of people. The authors were primarily white men.

Back in high school, I'd read a lot of great books by a wide variety of authors. I especially loved Chronicles of a Death Foretold  by Gabriel García Márquez, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, and From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet by Vikram Seth (I think I was the only one who liked this last one in my class, but I could be wrong).

So why wasn't I doing the same as an adult?

Heck, I love science fiction and I hadn't even read Octavia Butler (I know, take my science fiction fan membership away now).

For Black History month, I celebrated by reading and supporting black authors. I picked up a collection and of poetry by Morgan Parker. I found her poetry to be raw and incredibly emotional. I just started For Colored Girls who have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf a choreopoem by Ntozake Shange and have Don't Call us Dead a poetry collection by Danez Smith for right after.

Seriously read this amazing book.

I also picked up Tomi Adeyemi's Children of Blood and Bone. If you love fantasy, were a fan of Avatar the Last Airbender, or just need an all around amazing book, this is for you. I can barely put it down. When the TV show and/or movie is made, they had better give it the Harry Potter or Game of Thrones treatment. I've heard that there rumors that Rick Famuyiwa has been hired to direct.

Even more exciting, the sequel, Children of Virtue and Vengeance is coming out in June! Yes!

Until next week.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to Navigating the Commuter Trains

Short post tonight guys.

Random picture of Portland and Mt Hood

I’ve lived near a train station my whole life. 

Growing up in Virginia and around D.C. we had the Metro and VRE (Virginia Rail Express). The metro was fine - as long as you lived near one - it’s big grey honeycomb design unique to our city. Sure it occasionally floods, and catches fire, and there was that one time a lady gave birth at L’enfant Plaza station, but it works for us in D.C.. Unless you need to get to Georgetown. They didn’t want a metro stop, so you have to take a bus.

The VRE wasn’t the worst, but it was far from the best train system. It shares a line with Amtrak. There is absolutely no hope for you if you get on the wrong train and heaven help you if you miss the last one for the night. It only goes north in the morning and only goes south in the afternoon and evenings. 

I got on the wrong train once and ended up 45 minutes away from home. Never made that mistake again.

I didn’t much take the local train in Maryland. We had a convient line into Baltimore (with free parking), a more expensive line to D.C. (without free parking and at the airport), and Amtrak. I took Amtrak quite a bit for work to Philadelphia. It wasn’t too bad, fairly convient all around, and it was all better than the VRE.

New Jersey and New York are an entire different form of mass transit beasts.

The trains are always running. They are convient, easy to use (after maybe the 4th or 5th try), and can cost a pretty penny if you aren’t paying attention. Thankfully the subway is a flat rate to ride, but NJ Transit can get pricy when you’re a commuter.

Of all the mass transit I’ve ever had to get to know the ones for New York and New Jersey are the most infuriating and best. You can get almost anywhere by Subway, PATH (haven’t used),  or commuter train. It might take 2-4 hours, but it is possible. 

It’s also possible you might see rats the size of house cats, a fire or two, oddly dressed tourists, oddly dressed locals (but since they live here it isn’t really odd), and have the station you want to get off at unexpectedly closed so then you have to hope that the next station isn’t so you can backtrack or change trains.

By far the strangest experience I ever had on a train was when I was on my way home from a bachelorette party on the coldest night of the year. I managed to hope on the last train from Hoboken (sometimes known as The Vomit Comet) and things were relatively normal...until the guy in the seat across from mine decided that he couldn’t wait to get home to pee.

He got tossed off the train at the next station and I quickly moved to the next train car.

I’ve probably been spoiled by my easy access to public transportation. I love the freedom I feel knowing I can hop on a train to get to the airport or the city. It’s a bit of a trip, but the time spent on the train can be relaxing.

Even when I have to change trains in Secaucus.

Until next week. 

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Welcome to the Genre of War

Yesterday, I was able to hear Nicholas Parisi give a talk on Rod Serling. He's an expert on everything Rod Serling and recently wrote a book which compiles everything Serling ever wrote from The Twilight Zone to Planet of the Apes. Parisi tracked down everything, including the first short story published by Serling.

Serling served in World War II, in the Philippines, as a paratrooper. The experience later influenced many of the works he wrote, including his first short story. The semi-autobiographical story centered around having supplies airdropped to his unit's location after 10 days of fighting without any food. One of the unit's members, and a character based off a real friend of Serling's, jokingly narrates the descent. The unit's relief quickly turns to horror as the supplies are dropped right on top of them, with enough force to decapitate the Serling's friend.

Guernica by Pablo Picasso - how he depicted the Spanish Civil War

I wish I could read the original story, but hearing the synopsis got me thinking. I've seen wars portrayed across many genres. From the real life inspired tragedies such as "War and Peace", "Battle of the Bulge (1965), and Glory (1989) to the mysteries such as Stalag 17 (1953) and The Night of the Generals (1967). There are the dramatic autobiographical stories such as "Band of Brothers" and Patton (1970). There are even comedies like "Hogan's Heroes" and "M*A*S*H" (the 1970 movie and TV show).

My dad is a bit of a war movie buff, so I've seen quite a number of war movies. He's particularly fond of the more action heroic World War II movies of the 50s, 60s, and 70s, such as The Dirty Dozen (1967), Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Kelly's Heroes (1970). These were movies that I watched a lot as a kid. The good guys always worked as a team to take down the evil Nazis and the Nazis were definitely the bad guys, there was no question.

Just like how monsters in horror aren't just monsters, war in fantasy, science fiction, and even horror isn't just about the war. It's often part of a larger commentary on human society, our technology, our ethics, and our ideologies.

In Harry Potter the wizarding war is about the evils of magical Nazis, while the original War of the Worlds shows how easily a civilization can fall to an enemy with advanced technology (basically it was written to show imperialist countries how easy it is to defeat someone with better technology and exploit their fears of invasion).

The wars depicted in the world of Narnia are often allegorical to fighting on the side of God and defeating evil. The war against the Fire Lord in "Avatar the Last Airbender" is about restoring balance to the world and finding a creative way to defeat your enemies without killing them (I love Aang's solution to this so no spoilers if you haven't seen the show - skip the movie).

Independence Day (1996) shows the tenacity of the human/American spirit in the face of an enemy that's hell bent on wiping us out as well as the horrors of weapons of mass destruction. And Star Wars is a classic good versus evil story.

Why does war one of those catastrophic events that can cross genres so easily?

My guess is because of how ingrained it is in our history as a species.We have historical accounts of war which we study, sometimes in our literary classes such as Homer's "The Iliad",  or to learn strategy such as the works of Sun Tzu "On The Art Of War". Some of these historical events have become historical fiction in the form of the movies like Gladiator (2000) and 300 (2006) - the later of which also includes a number of fantasy elements.

War is apart of our common human history. There hasn't been a civilization that we learn about in school, which hasn't been affected by war and violence in some way. The history of my country  starts with a war for independence.

There's a lot more on this subject that I can write on. I haven't even touched on the many video games that make the player question the ethics of their actions or contemplate how their actions might end up killing or saving millions of people. Heck, I didn't even mention my favorite fandom, the Transformers franchise (ignoring the Bay movies) which is all about the destruction of war on an alien species driven to Earth where they continue to fight.

The reason I chose to write this post is because I noticed that the subject of war easily crosses genres. Some writers use it as a commentary, while others are writing from a place of experience as a need to understand and come to terms with what they went through - like Mr. Serling.

War is horrible. There's no denying that.

And I honestly don't have a good, philosophical, or thoughtful note to end this post on. So I'll repeat the one statement I feel is most true:

War is horrible.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next time!

Welcome to the Misunderstood Villain

This week's topic came about for a couple of reasons:

1) I saw the play "Wicked" - which was awesome

2) I started watching the latest incarnation of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" - rebooted by Netflix

3) A conversation I had at dinner last week with a group of amazing writers regarding our treatment of some of history's greatest heroes...or were they really villains?

It's that conversation that's been getting the wheels in my head turning. We were mainly discussing how Alexander the Great (or the Bastard depending on where you're from) has been turned into a bit of a hero in our modern retelling of his conquests. In reality, he killed a lot of people and there are some places today who still hate his memory. Heck, Alexander built a land bridge to reach a well fortified island which refused to surrender to him and, when he finally reached the island, he proceeded to murder everyone there.

But the way Hollywood puts it, he was an amazing guy who was trying to unite the world, flawed, but still repetitively cool. The same treatment happens to a lot of conquerors. We definitely have a fondness for the Roman Empire, despite the fact that they pretty much enslaved everyone they conquered.

However, since history is written by the winners, we get to hear all about the greatness of some of history's worst people in the best light. They weren't ruthless invaders out to murder and enslave, they were trying to unite their people and gather more resources.

One of the writers in the group even brought up the idea that some of our greatest monsters in modern history could one day get this type of treatment. I really hope not, but that doesn't mean it's not possible.

Anything is possible.

Especially since Hollywood and other medias really like the misunderstood villain trope right now.

This trope has popped up a lot recently (along with the bait and switch villains, but that's another blog post/rant). We see it in the play and book "Wicked", there was the recent re-imagining of Sleeping Beauty by Disney where Maleficent was really the good guy all along, and you have the countless retelling of fairy tales told from the villain's perspective.

This isn't a bad trope and it occasionally goes hand in hand with the equally interesting villain redeemed trope.

I'm just starting to see it over and over again.

When this trope is done well, it's really good and interesting. I love Zuko's character arc in "Avatar the Last Airbender" and "Wicked" is great (so long as you don't think too hard about some of the inconsistencies between the original book and movie). I freaking loved "Wicked".

But I'm starting to feel it's becoming overdone.

In recent years we've had loads of examples of the misunderstood villain, my personal favorite being Loki in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There's also the characters in the Disney remakes (I've already mentioned Maleficent, but also the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland), Lucifer in Supernatural, and multiple Batman villains (minus the Joker) like Mr. Freeze and the Penguin.

Again, it's not a bad trope. It just needs to be done well.

"Wicked" is an amazing book and play. I can totally believe that the Wicked Witch of the West got her reputation by defying the wizard and wanting to be a freedom fighter instead, just not in the context of the original book. For one thing she wasn't green and another she isn't even that much of a protagonist. The original Wizard of Oz book is more or less a road trip with obstacles story with the Wicked Witch of the West briefly appearing around the midpoint of the story before Dorothy kills her.

The wicked witch I remember

Her character in "Wicked" is so far removed from her character in the book, I wouldn't believe they were related at all if I didn't have a story synopsis tell me they are.

Now I'm watching the re-imagining of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego". As a kid, Carmen Sandiego was a bad guy. There was no questioning this and the members of ACME were the good guys putting a stop to Carmen's horrible plans. In this version, she's a spunky teenage white hat thief trying to get back at the real bad guys who raised her. I think it's a really entertaining show and fun character, but I'm having a hard time equating her with the villainous character I grew up with.

I understand what's going on with these stories. People like retelling stories with characters they're familiar with (which is probably why we've seen so many versions of Sherlock Holmes) and hearing a story I'm familiar with told from a different point of view is a lot of fun when done well.

Batman is remade all the time. Sometimes he's campy and fun, other times gritty and serious. My personal favorite version of Batman is from the "Animated" universe which lead into the "Justice League" cartoon series. There he was a good balance of serious and humorous. However, that version could never be mistaken for the "Dark Knight" Batman or the live action TV show version.

It's fun to see characters and stories in new ways. Real life isn't always as straight forward as we want it and people can recall the same events very differently. Sometimes villains aren't villains, they're scapegoats or people in the wrong place at the wrong time.

There's a song in "Wicked" that goes into this a bit called "Wonderful" sung by the Wizard. It really drives the theme home that Elphaba is being scapegoated by the real villains of the story. They're rewriting history so that she's not a freedom fighter but a terrible wicked witch.

I love "Wicked", Tom Hiddleston as Loki, and even the Supernatural version of Lucifer.

But there are some villains that I don't think deserve this makeover.

A certain serial killer is getting the Hollywood treatment. I highly doubt the movie is going to make him out to be some misunderstood individual, this guy was pure evil. It's just that there are some people who might idolize him and the movie might show him in a more sympathetic light than he deserves. I don't know for certain that it will, but the

It's one thing if it's a fictional character getting these makeovers, but I don't like the idea of a real life villain getting one. The families the above mentioned serial killer's victims are still alive and still have to live with the horrible things that happened.

These villains don't deserve the "misunderstood" treatment.

If you enjoyed this post (or it really pissed you off) please like, share, and/or leave a comment. I love hearing from my readers and I hope you guys like hearing from me.

Until next week.