![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Sep. 22nd, 2005 11:13 amGods and little fishes, I am tired. All day, and some of yesterday, I've been in that state where you see your hands moving and don't associate them with yourself. I feel very detached, like I'm not connected to my body. I'm watching my hands type this, click-click-click, and I still don't feel that the words are written by me, that the hands are moved by me. It's a very odd feeling. I need sleep.
I'm not going to get it tonight, though, because I've got to do my APEuro notes tonight. I hope.
----
In much more interesting news, I got Bronze Age volume 2 out of the library. It's Yet Another Trojan War story. I haven't read vol. 1, but hey, it's not like I'll miss anything!
Report: I didn't like it. It was in historical mode, sans (or mostly sans) gods as gods, and more about politics and events. It was also very wide-reaching, over all the people and events. Myself, I thought that was a failing. Trying to tell about everything, it ended up about nothing. I couldn't see people often enough to get invested in them. I, of course, miss and mourn the gods. Someone ought to keep them in.
Some things that really really got me:
Achilles was dark and Patroclus fair. What's more Helen was dark. Congratulations, inkers! You have just totally screwed up my character perception--and my internal eye is stronger than your drawings! Achilles has red-gold hair. He is described as such. It's the demigod trademark, that unnaturally fair hair. Menelaus has red hair too, by the way, as well as Odysseus, so you can stop drawing Odysseus with dark hair, kthx. But...dark-haired Achilles? Dark-haired Helen? Does not compute. No way, no how.
The names were screwy. Yes, I realize that there are at least two ways (Greek or Roman) to write them, but you should never do what was done here. Patroklus? Kassandra yet Clytemnestra? No. Pick one and stick with it. I know you want to write Ajax, no Aias, and Menelaus, not Menelaos. So leave Herakles out of it! Inconsistency is evil.
As a history, I thought it very good. However, it was crap as a story, as a re-telling. It didn't live, didn't have anything powerful behind it. The gods were gone, and all their poetry with them. The larger-than-life, realer-than-real stories of the heroes were gone. Everything was life-size, exactly. The poetry, the sense of a great, powerful force behind the ships, was gone. And the Achaeans were a musical people. Without that music, there is nothing left.
The story told nothing new, nothing in a way or from a perspective I hadn't seen before. It was the classical literature, with all the gods taken out and the demigods reduced to mortal, all combined together and forced to reconcile. It was nothing new. And since it could not measure up to the beauty of the originals--it didn't even try--it fell flat. It failed as a story, as a legend. Accurate history-as-she-is-taught, but none of the magic left. That annoys me, because I know it could be done. A comic could be made that brought the sheer beauty and terror (as the dawn) into focus.
It could be done, but it wasn't. That's what gets me.
Oh, and they kept calling Agamemnon the "High King" too. That annoyed the heck out of me.
I'm not going to get it tonight, though, because I've got to do my APEuro notes tonight. I hope.
----
In much more interesting news, I got Bronze Age volume 2 out of the library. It's Yet Another Trojan War story. I haven't read vol. 1, but hey, it's not like I'll miss anything!
Report: I didn't like it. It was in historical mode, sans (or mostly sans) gods as gods, and more about politics and events. It was also very wide-reaching, over all the people and events. Myself, I thought that was a failing. Trying to tell about everything, it ended up about nothing. I couldn't see people often enough to get invested in them. I, of course, miss and mourn the gods. Someone ought to keep them in.
Some things that really really got me:
Achilles was dark and Patroclus fair. What's more Helen was dark. Congratulations, inkers! You have just totally screwed up my character perception--and my internal eye is stronger than your drawings! Achilles has red-gold hair. He is described as such. It's the demigod trademark, that unnaturally fair hair. Menelaus has red hair too, by the way, as well as Odysseus, so you can stop drawing Odysseus with dark hair, kthx. But...dark-haired Achilles? Dark-haired Helen? Does not compute. No way, no how.
The names were screwy. Yes, I realize that there are at least two ways (Greek or Roman) to write them, but you should never do what was done here. Patroklus? Kassandra yet Clytemnestra? No. Pick one and stick with it. I know you want to write Ajax, no Aias, and Menelaus, not Menelaos. So leave Herakles out of it! Inconsistency is evil.
As a history, I thought it very good. However, it was crap as a story, as a re-telling. It didn't live, didn't have anything powerful behind it. The gods were gone, and all their poetry with them. The larger-than-life, realer-than-real stories of the heroes were gone. Everything was life-size, exactly. The poetry, the sense of a great, powerful force behind the ships, was gone. And the Achaeans were a musical people. Without that music, there is nothing left.
The story told nothing new, nothing in a way or from a perspective I hadn't seen before. It was the classical literature, with all the gods taken out and the demigods reduced to mortal, all combined together and forced to reconcile. It was nothing new. And since it could not measure up to the beauty of the originals--it didn't even try--it fell flat. It failed as a story, as a legend. Accurate history-as-she-is-taught, but none of the magic left. That annoys me, because I know it could be done. A comic could be made that brought the sheer beauty and terror (as the dawn) into focus.
It could be done, but it wasn't. That's what gets me.
Oh, and they kept calling Agamemnon the "High King" too. That annoyed the heck out of me.
