Batblog

Punching Your Babies

I think it's pretty safe to say that people are flawed and fallible as a rule. They still tend to produce great works of art, or course, but even even the best works are more often than not rife with the flaws of their creators. So, to take a break from the general positivity I've tried to maintain in these blog entries (like, what have I actually criticized? Twilight and bad fanfiction? Those are easy targets), I think I'll undertake a very different sort of exercise; taking works and artists that I love with all my heart, and mercilessly picking apart their flaws.

After all, nothing made by human hands can ever be perfect (except for the Portal games, anyway), and it's always healthy to recognize that something doesn't have to be flawless to be great.

-Mouse Guard: Here's a fun drinking game; try reading every volume from start to finish, while taking a shot of vodka every time a character says "selfless," "greater good," or starts yammering on about how they "put the needs of all mice ahead of their own." Or better yet, don't, because you'll probably wind up in a hospital bed in a coma before the night's over. I don't drink, though, so the worst that I ever get is achy eyes from all the eye rolling I have to do. Still my favourite comic series, though.

-Richard K. Morgan: This is probably my favourite contemporary author, but there does seem to be one problem that's consistent across almost everything I've read by him; Richard Morgan does not know how to write sex scenes. Now, I don't consider myself particularly prudish (if I was, the Scissor Sisters probably wouldn't be one of my favourite bands), and I'm definitely not opposed to sexual content in my literature as long as it's not all there is to the story, but there just always seems to be something... Off-putting about how this guy writes about sex. He might be getting better about it, though; I actually kind of liked (or at least didn't mind) most of the sex scenes in The Cold Commands.

-Redwall: Ignoring specific books (I could probably talk all day about why Eulalia! and Loamhedge are terrible), there are a couple of issues I have with the series as a whole. Firstly, there isn't much of a sense of continuity throughout the series. I'm not even talking about all the world elements that only showed up in the first book and then got dropped, like horses, cattle, and real-world locations; Brian Jacques probably didn't know exactly know exactly where he was going to take the setting, and ultimately decided that those things didn't fit with what he wanted it to be. That's reasonable, as far as I'm concerned. But beyond that, important world details (like whether or not there's a mountain range between Redwall and Salamandastron) tend to change from book to book fairly regularly. There also isn't much in the way of world-building in this series, so I have a difficult time getting a sense that this world could ever actually function as a real place. Nothing could ever change how important or fun this series is to me, but these are still flaws.

-Guardians of Ga'Hoole: As a fun, fantastical beast fable about racism, these books are wonderful. But did you know that owls actually poop; or that eagles, sea gulls, hawks, and crows cough up pellets too; or that many of the family corvidae (crows, ravens, and magpies) are some of the most intelligent and social birds alive? If your knowledge of ornithology mostly comes from these books, then you probably didn't. Which is a particular shame, because this is a series that seemed to be intended as a great way to "learn about birds," when it's honestly only slightly more biologically sound than Redwall (the series where foxes appear to be roughly same same size as mice and weasels).

-The Secret of NIMH: This movie is an amazing, gorgeous, wonderful mess. Most of the problems with this movie stem from that silly magic amulet, and every one of them could have been cleared up by just a few lines of dialog about where it came from and why it's important ("Jonathan meant it for you" is about the extent of what we get for backstory). But, nope; it's just an inexplicable magical macguffin haphazardly wedged into the plot, presumably in order to provide a more visually impressive climax.

Well, that was fun. I might have to do this again some time, but maybe focusing on video games instead. I love video games, but most of them have lots of flaws to pick out (again, except for Portal; Portal is perfect).