Hoooooo. Very interesting, this is.
The new Jack Ryan novel is a prequel that takes place when he’s in his late 20s/early 30s.
One really has to wonder if Tom Clancy started writing this before or after Ben Affleck signed up to start making the Ryan movies. (Hollywood had already made the other ‘young’ Ryan novel “Patriot Games” into a movie.)
Who wants to bet this is the next one they make?
Friday: Stayed up waaaaaaaay too late working on the staff mess. I made some progress. There is a concom meeting tonight, so I think it will be more or less resolved.
Saturday: Went to the TMBG concert. Didn’t stay for most of the other 2 performers, and apparently TMBG came back out later, but we missed it. Still, I was tired of sitting on the ground and it was getting quite crowded, so I don’t regret leaving. Got to hear them do Istanbul, Particle Man /and/ the Malcolm themesong in person, so it was worth it. I was entertained.
Sunday and Monday: These days kind of blur together for me. ^^; I think I didn’t get up early enough on either day for them to be differentiated in my mind. RPed some, watched some television, played around on some MUDs. I did not get anything which I’d hoped to get accomplished, accomplished, but at the moment I do not care. I may care later.
Tuesday: I stayed home from work because I was so very very tired. The rest of the week will be quite short, so that’s good.
I’ve also had a new shipment of books come in, and I’ve been reading through them. That is partially the reason why nothing else got done this weekend, but more it was because of my lack of motivation. When I wasn’t at work last week, I spent my time either in bed or lying on the couch like a lump. I seem to be working out of it now, having gotten some shoujocon foo done on Friday night, and keeping up with the dishes this weekend. If I can manage to fold the laundry tonight — highly probable, given the way the IRC meetings go — then I will feel more on top of things and keep the momentum going. If I can finish the +info, well, then I’ll be ahead of the game.
2 new HP doujinshi arrived today. One Marauders-era, one Weasley twins centered. I’ve only had a chance to flip through them, but they both look cute. It took me the longest time to figure out that the bajji that Percy was freaking out about was his /badge/. I have no idea. I think I was just putting the emphasis on the wrong syllable, because now that I know, it seems very obvious.
I saw an amusing bumper sticker today:
And finally, today on the radio I heard a very very sad thing.
MISS PIGGY IS A CANNIBAL
That’s right folks. Miss Piggy and Kermit are now pitching the Dennys Grand Slam Breakfast. Now, Miss Piggy was initially reluctant to do this, because it didn’t strike her as classy enough. Kermit, however, nixed french food because, as he said “I’m a frog. I don’t do French.” (An interesting statement in and of itself, coming from Dennys.) So with pressure like that, and with the price so low, Miss Piggy ordered 3 of them. Eggs, Pancakes, Bacon and Sausage.
K: …
I finally got to watch my Transformers DVDs! Hurrah. Watching these reminds me of the old crossover universe I had before I came up with the one I still play with. This crossover universe was Transformers/My Little Pony. Now, you may think that was an odd pair, but there was some logic behind it. See, on MLP, there was a girl, Megan. And I thought she looked a lot like the girl on Transformers, Carly. So I decided they were sisters. Instant crossover.
Now the strange but true fact: The guy who wrote the screenplay for the first Transformers episodes, also wrote the MLP movie.
(And in a random remark, Megan also had an actual little sister, Molly. For a very long time I thought Molly’s name was Mollyann (like Pollyanna), because of the way they used to say it on the commercial. It was years before I realized they were saying Molly /and/ Baby Sundance.)
Oh, yes, and the age old question: who would win a fight, Yoda or Gandalf, has been answered. Yoda would win.
Saw Episode 2 last night. It was actually a very funny movie. I’m not sure if it was intended to be a very funny movie, but it was. I could probably stand to sit through it again in a week or two, but not until then. And I really hate to say it, because the more often you say it the less credible you become, but it was sooooooooo slashy. I’m sorry. The dialogue was stilted and ridiculous and sometimes I wonder if Lucas really /thought/ about what it sounded like. The impression I was left with was that it could have been much worse. R2 in flight was worth it.
I also tried vanilla coke. It was ok, but there was too much coke flavor and not enough vanilla.
Today, I went to Wellesley for one of my prof’s retirement party. The daughter of one of the other profs was there and she is /so/ tall. When I started there she was this tiny little peanut of a thing, and now she’s like, grownup looking. She’d looked very big when I saw her last year too, but this year even moreso.
I also saw Monique and Kerrie who I hadn’t seen since I graduated, and I was really happy. They’ve been in graduate school in Michigan, and M. told me some funny stories about this class she had. It also reminded me of another story that Katrin had once told me, so I will recount that one here too.
Once, Katrin was observing with the 24″ telescope. When she got done, at about 4am, she went to close the dome, but the motor had burned out. She couldn’t get it closed. So she called campus po to see if they could help her contact maintenance or something. They were very upset to find that she was in the building at 4am and started arguing with her about it. But eventually someone came up there and after a while she managed to get the dome closed and the telescope covered. Later, campus po complained to the department that they shouldn’t have students using equipment in the middle of the night, and couldn’t they do it during the day?
Monique’s class was not, shall we say, very academically inclined. It was an intro class and apparently full of jocks. So she decided to be nice, and gave them an easy question as a problem. They had two weeks to answer this: You are going to colonize one of the satellites of Jupiter. Which do you choose, how will you set up your colony, where will you get food, etc? She decided she’d pretty much accept any answer if it seemed like they’d made some effort to think about it.
Now, the obvious answer is, of course, Europa. It’s the moon they think might already harbor some life. After that, you could make up whatever kind of Star Trekky thing you wanted.
Some of the answers she got:
I would colonize Io, because it’s warm. [Io's average temperature is -143 C] We would get food and water by stretching a long tube back to Earth. [Monique's comment: I hope it's fire resistant, because it's going through the SUN.]
My source of food would be cannibalism, because it’s too hard to bring food with us.
All right. I’ve been sitting on this for a while, so I should actually write it up.
Now, I don’t really think the idea that Mary Sues exist in original fiction is all that controversial. We’ve all read books where you can tell the author is living vicariously through their main character. Whether or not the character is a Mary Sue is hard to define, exactly, but like other things, you know it when you see it.
One of the biggest Mary Sue characters I can think of is Jack Ryan, of Patriot Games, Sum of All Fears, etc fame. He is original: Tom Clancy made him up, and Tom Clancy writes about him. But it is clear, to me, that he qualifies because he possesses many many qualities of Mary Sueness.
1. Mary Sue is smarter, more powerful, and more talented than everyone else
Jack Ryan starts off as a ‘normal’ guy. If a man with a PhD who consults for the CIA can be considered normal. An oh, yeah, before he went back to school to do what he really loved? He had a fling with Wall Street and made himself millions of dollars. But he gave that up, because it just didn’t satisfy him. He wants to spend time with his family, but he has such a strong sense of duty and honor that when his country calls, he can’t really say no. Because he knows, in his heart, that no one else can do it.
Eventually, he becomes President of the United States.
2. Mary Sue gets to sleep with the person you wish you had
Cathy Ryan is the perfect (from a male perspective) woman. Not only does she have 4 children (2 boys, 2 girls) whom she raises almost singlehandedly (Jack is too often out saving the world), she cooks, she shops, she organizes and she keeps the house going. She is blonde and her biggest flaw is that she feels like she’s flat-chested. And did I mention that she’s also a world famous surgeon?
3. Mary Sue can save the world and no one else can
Throughout the various novels, Jack is consistently the first one to come up with an answer, to put the pieces of the puzzle together, and not only that, is generally the only one with the integrity and guts to actually do anything about it. He runs off to Columbia to rescue stranded soldiers. He refuses to allow the President to launch a nuclear attack. He helps the head of the KGB defect. He throws himself at IRA terrorists to save some people in a car. In most of these cases there are other people who possess the same facts as Jack, but are not willing to do what we, the reader, can clearly see is RIGHT. The people around him are usually arrayed against him, but the people two or three levels below him — the common soldiers, the actual workers — are always impressed by him. An illustration of this is at the end of _The Bear and the Dragon_, Jack refuses an order to evacuate Washington DC because a missle is headed there. Instead, he forces his way onto a Navy ship and hangs with the sailors while they try to shoot down the missle. This apparently shows that he has a bigger penis than everyone else.
4. Mary Sue’s flaws are not really flaws
Jack’s biggest flaws are: He refuses to do something he thinks is wrong. He smokes sometimes and drinks sometimes. Once, he was impotent because of job stress, but then he got his wife pregnant twice more to prove that was no longer the case.
I think I could go on, but I’m not writing a paper here. There are good qualities to Jack — most of the earlier books, I was really on his side and enjoyed reading what he was doing. I still do enjoy the books quite a bit. (Don’t get me started on the movie versions. Suffice it to say, if you’ve seen the movies, you have no concept of the actual plot of the books.) But as time has gone on and Jack has progressed in his career, he’s become more and more Mary Sue-ish. You know that this is what Tom Clancy wishes and thinks he could do if he became president. I have to wonder if Dubya has listened to these books on tape.
Okay. Japanese class is over! Yay!
The staff mess is not quite fixed up but I’m working on it.
I haven’t had time yet to watch Transformers, but perhaps tonight. But right now, Price is Right is on! That was my favorite gameshow when I was little. We used to have the board game. It was kind of cool.
*goes back to making dinner and procrastinating tackling the shoujocon staff mess*
This is a reminder to certain people to pre register for Shoujocon. Certain people (well, person) who has gone to see Sir Paul. Hmf.
But if I had the cash and the inclination, I could have gotten tickets to go see too. And I will probably be going to see TMBG next Saturday. For free. Ha!
E, let me know if you wanna meet us there. They’re playing at the Hatch shell.