My own self

If you like this world so much, keep your fool mouth shut and maybe I'll let you keep it.

Me? I'm going to be a god again.

- Lex Luthor,
Justice League Unlimited 2x12: Alive!

Accounts of religion in Benin are vague, but the Bini apparently believed in a supreme god who created and ruled the earth; they considered it useless to worship him, however, since he was already benevolent. Instead, they worshiped numerous lesser gods, who they felt could mediate for them with the supreme god. The human sacrifices were offered not to the gods, but to the devil, whom the Bini blamed for all their misfortunes. Victims rarely struggled; some actually assisted the executioner, and a few even volunteered to be sacrificed - powerful proof of the intensity of their religion.

[...]

After the Europeans arrived, the slave trade mushroomed; farming and commerce were slighted and the economy - inevitably - started to collapse. The Oba [king], believing his bad fortune was the work of the devil, ordered more and more human sacrifices to turn the tide. But by 1897 the disintegration was complete; that year a British force found the city of Benin all but deserted and littered with the bodies of sacrificial victims. After four centuries of greatness, Benin had finally passed into history.

- Basil Davidson
in African Kingdoms, page 112 & 118.

Who watches the Watchmen?

I did! I did! And I'd like to go again! May I go again, mom, pleeeeeease?


Yes, I've now seen Watchmen, the movie based off of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' twelve-issue comic from the mid-eighties. As much of what I've read of Moore's work, it is highly dystopian, and very intelligent. As, er, some of what I've read of Moore's work, it's also rather entertaining. It is certainly very challenging. Frequently referred to as the best graphic novel out there, I must admit that Watchmen is among the heavier reads I've encountered, and few "regular" novels can compete with it for complexity.

It is thus no small wonder that the task of making this into a movie has daunted people from doing so for a long, long while. It is also no small wonder that Mr. Moore is outspokenly negative to the mere idea of making a movie out of any of his work. Too bad for him. While I agree that League of Extraordinary Gentlemen was a rather heavy departure from the source material, V for Vendetta was among the better adaptations I've ever seen. I thus have no problem with the attempt of adaptation of his work in general, though I do believe that when the creator doesn't want you to, you shouldn't, rights or no rights. Even if the creator is a stuck-up elitist who seems to judge people's worth by their amount and IQ-points over 150 and anarchist sympathies.

Still, all that aside, I agreed, Watchmen couldn't be made into a satisfactory movie. I freely admit, I was wrong. This movie satisfied me. Did it cut out some complexities? Yes, of course. Did it change some details and executions to make it work better on screen? Absolutely. And why shouldn't it?

Before seeing it, the one thing I heard most of all from friends and reviewers was how this movie was alright but too enslaved by staying true to the original book to dare being its own thing and thus achieve greatness. My expectations, then, were neither high nor low.

This seems to have been the way to go, expectation-wise, as I greatly enjoyed it. Mind you, it's been years since I read the book. I could simply be forgetting all the little things that made Moore's work superior to this. But I in all honestly felt that the movie stayed true to the comic, whilst also working as a movie. The pacing, so close to the book's own, was a little off in a movie, sure, but they shifted the weight of the narrative just enough that the pacing wasn't too off. And yes, the regular humans in superhero outfits fight as if they're rather superpowered anyway, and yes, the fightscenes are more flashy than in the book. So what? I mean, the only thing this movie remotely fits into, marketing wise, is the superhero-movie staple. Without scenes like this, anyone seeing the movie without having read the book would be thoroughly disappointed, not getting what they expected at all.

My only real problem with the movie, in fact, other than that the pacing could have been slightly better, was its overly long sex-scenes. Particularly two of them got to the point where you're embarrased as the viewer. That's unfortunate, and hurts the pacing further as well. I'm no prude, I don't mind the nudity and the simulated sex on the screen in front of me. I just mind it when it goes on, and on, and on. Two people moaning is not the world's most interesting thing. Still, it's a minor quibble.

All in all, I really and thoroughly enjoyed this movie. Almost as much as I did V for Vendetta, in fact. V had the combined advantages of a smaller cast and a shorter running time, though, making it feel more intense and work better as a movie to begin with. Considering the much more difficult task set to the filmmaker's on this one, I think they did way better than I could ever have imagined when I heard they were finally making it. The visuals are superb, and even though Dr. Manhattan looks about as fake as I expected crappy special effects rarely bother me. The use of music is simply phenomenal. The plots, characters and dialogue are basically all lifted directly from the book, meaning that while the dialogue sometimes might sound slightly off, it always sounds rather awesome, too, and as for the plots and characters, well, if one didn't like it one wouldn't have liked the book. And I did, very much. What remains then, is the acting. I am a very poor judge of these things, but I thought it was rather well done on the whole. Especially the Comedian and Nite Owl seemed spot-on, but I honestly didn't have a problem with any of the characters.

Also, this movie has Roschach. There has ever been another movie that could make that claim.*


I thought it was nifty. And I want to see it again. The only reason I'm not getting this movie a 9 is because I believe it might get overlong on rewatches, and I need to do them before I award it its final 0.5. For now? A very strong 8.5/10



* (If someone comes running with the 300 Easter Egg now, I'll bite. Seriously. With my teeth.)

I know, I'm posting very rarely lately. Three reasons for that. One, I'm lazy. Two, I have a ton of writing to do with regards to my master's thesis. And three, I watch a heck of a lot of TV.

On that note, even though I'm full-booked TV-wise until, well, September-ish very likely, I figured I'd have a run-down. You might remember this list from last spring. It's been very thinned out since then, my having seen Brisco County Jr., Dexter, How I Met Your Mother, Mad Men, The Tudors and half of Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (the rest is part of why any new stuff will have to wait until September) since then. A few new ones have been added, of course, so here's the list as it stands right now:

Alias
Brotherhood
Burn Notice
Dark Angel
Dirty Sexy Money
Drive
Dr. Who/Torchwood
Entourage
Farscape
Joan of Arcadia
Life
Medium
Monk
Moonlight
Jericho
Journeyman
Justice League
Oz
The Pretender
Quantum Leap
Red Dwarf
Sanctuary
The Sarah Connor Chronicles
Sharpe
The Shield
Six Feet Under
Supernatural
Tru Calling

Of these, I would currently like to prioritise the following five:

Brotherhood
Burn Notice
Sharpe
Justice League
The Shield

But which one of them first, that's up to you people. There is also the matter of carry-on-votes from last time:

Farscape (2)
The Pretender (1)
The Sarah Connor Chronicles (1)

Thus, I make the following ruling. One remaining vote last time equals qualification for the ones up for considering now. Farscape goes directly on the list with a vote in place due to its two carry-ons. If anyone wants to add another show to this list, let me know - if two of you want to add the same one, I'll even add it to the list of the ones that can be voted for.

Brotherhood
Burn Notice
Farscape (1)
Sharpe
Justice League
The Pretender
The Sarah Connor Chronicles
The Shield



Commence helping me waste more time daily, please!

Reading
- books I'm currently started on and on-going comic books I keep up with -
The Book of the New Sun, Gene Wolf
The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
The Lees of Laughter's End, Steven Erikson
The Reptile Room, Lemony Snicket
Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Season 8, Joss Whedon et al.
Angel: After the Fall, Brian Lynch et al.
The Secret Six: Unhinged, Gail Simone/Nicola Scott
Batman Cacophony, Kevin Smith/Walt Flanagan
Batman R.I.P., Grand Morrison/Tony Daniel
Batman Confidential: Do you understand these rights?, Andrew Kaeisberg/Scott McDaniel
Trinity, Kurt Busiek/Mark Bagley
Superman & Batman Vs. Vampires & Werewolves, Kevin VanHook/Tom Mandrake


Watching
- TV-shows I'm either currently re-watching, catching up on or following -
Easy Money, season 1
Boston Legal, season 5
Prison Break, season 4
True Blood, season 1
House M.D., season 5
The Practice, season 3
Legend of the Seeker, season 1
The Clone Wars, season 1
Chuck, season 2
Smallville, season 8
Heroes, season 3
Stargate Atlantis, season 5
Fringe, season 1
Monty Python's Flying Circus, season 1
The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles


Waiting for
- prioritised books, volumes or TV-seasons in stories I've already started on that I'm planning to get to relatively quickly when I have time and/or they're published/released -
Dance of Dragons, George R. R. Martin
Reaper's Gale and Toll of the Hounds, Steven Erikson
Flight of the Nighthawks, Into a Dark Realm, Wrath of a Mad God and Rides a Dread Legion, Raymond E. Feist
Phantom and Confessor, Terry Goodkind
Volume 6-> of Fables Bill Willingham
Volume 16-> of Ultimate Spider-man, B.M. Bendis
The Ultimates 3, Jeph Loeb
Ultimate Avengers, Mark Millar
Volume 16-> of Ultimate X-Men
Season 4.5 of Battlestar Galactica
Season 3 of Dexter
Season 4 of How I Met Your Mother
Season 3 of The Tudors
Season 8 of Scrubs
Season 7 of 24
Season 5 of Lost


Should be
Reading anything by Robin Hobb to make good on a promise before my guilt consumes my very soul.
Re-watching all seven seasons of West Wing since I've bought the DVDs recently.
Re-watching all twelve seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer/Angel since I've never watched them both in sync and proper order and this is a disgrace.
Finding time to figure out with just how many books a bunch of people including Neil Gaiman, George R. R. Martin, Robert Jordan, Terry Brooks, Katherine Kerr, Terry Pratchett, J.K. Rowling and Eoin Colfer have snuck out that I haven't managed or wanted to get to yet.

There are many opinions about most authors, but Terry Goodkind and his fantasy novel series The Sword of Truth is probably more divisive than most. Many love his books almost unconditionally, and many hate them outright. The reasons why are easy to see on both sides. (And there is no specific spoilers of anything major in this post, you can read on with relative safety)

You see, on the one hand, Goodkind has a deft ability to paint a rich, colourful universe where the fantasy archetypes are many and common but frequenting in versions distinctly Goodkind's own. There is something truly entoxicating about this for me as a reader - it is at once familiar and new, at once predictable and surprising, to explore his world and his characters. Add to his ability a capacity for plots that sometimes make quite interesting segues, an excellent ability to convey the beacons of hope still shining whilst pounding gruesome acts onto the narrative with horrific pathos, and a knack for writing quotable dialogue, one shouldn't have too much problems getting into the mindset of the stalwart Goodkind-fan.

Then you have the other hand, and I dare say, it's equally blemishing as the former is good. The following paragraph will thus be longer, because while what is good is easily described in a sentence, what's bad usually begs context and explanation to a much larger extent.

While Goodkind does indeed flesh out his world impressively, there is a spontaneity to it that sometimes makes it feel as though certain elements are thrown in haphazardly. This adds to the rich fairy-tale-like flavour of the world, but often get at a mood-wise odds with the increasingly logical and structured universe we're shown as the series progresses. This is a minor point, but it can be quite annoying at times to have a painter who can inexplicably make his drawings come to life in one book, and then have very strict rules about how to become a wizard and how wizards use their magic in another. The difference between the magic of a wizard, a sorceress and a war wizard is explained in complex detail, but the sorceror and the witch-woman is thrown in without further nuancing.
Another point in Goodkind's disfavour is the lack of originality to his main plots. Yes, the defender would as I did in the previous paragraph point out a quite excellent ability to make up for this with often quite well done twists, turns and variations along the way, but the fact remains that when you strip it down, Goodkind's plots are very, very simple and predictable. There is the hero, there is his old and wise yet amusing and quirky mentor, there is his bonny lass (who, whilst very much a capable protagonist in her own right, all too frequently gets in severe trouble which requires rescuing), and there is the big horrid villain. He's also been accused of copying Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time, and while some things are indeed of baffling similarities, it's always struck me as silly to claim he took them from someone else. Why would he? When you show the capability to construct and write thousand-page-narratives, why would you need to mimick the name of a prophecy or an organisation of female users of magic? Far more likely I find this to merely be a product of two authors writing at approximately the same time, in approximately the same style, in approximately the same genre. The conventions are clear, and they both use them thoroughly. When that happens, you will end up with similarities. But Jordan never copyrighted the magic sword or the powerful group of witches. (He might have copyrighted the concept that they should all have annoying personalities, though, I should look that up...)
The third, and by far greatest problem with Goodkind's writing is his very strong ideological and philosophical standpoints. It is his right as an author to place these in his work, and I see no issues with that. The problem enters when it obstructs the narrative. His earlier books didn't suffer from this - the messages were there, sometimes subtle, sometimes not, but they were still messages you read through and from what happened. In more recent years, likely due to increased popularity and thus laxer editing enforced by his publishers, Goodkind has slowly slipped more and more outright preaching into his stories. Speech-giving by characters only work so often, and after a while, it kills the pace of the story. For people who disagree strongly with the messages given, then, it also becomes harder to look past or interpret differently for those who would wish to do so. I'm sure that Goodkind's somewhat arrogant demeanor in interviews and ridiculous claims such as him not writing fantasy at all, but something somehow grander due to his political agenda, have only strengthened such negative reactions. Many people, then, quite intensely dislike Goodkind's series of books.

Me, I quite like them. At times, often in recent books, I find his preaching to be annoying, unnecessary and demeaning to his characters, but there is no denying that the sheer zeal Goodkind puts into his writing due to this opportunity for him to share his enthusiastic propaganda, that zeal sometimes puts a fire in the story that would probably not be there without it. Yes, it sometimes goes horribly wrong, and that's a shame and poor writing from his side. (More importantly, since they're usually things easily fixed, they're bad editing from whomever is supposed to keep his artistical whims a little under control) And yes, I agree with virtually nothing in Goodkind's hardcore individualistic view of the world. But no, I don't see this as purely a problem. The end of his sixth volme, Faith of the Fallen, is wonderously emotional for me to read, and this is exclusively due to the amount of idealism and outright propaganda for his own way of seeing the world Goodkind filled that story with. In other words, this is a valid point against much of his work, and certainly one of the strongest reasons he'll never be among my favourite authors. But it doesn't automatically remove the fact that behind it, there is often a surprising amount of quality - especially in the earlier books when the propaganda was still toned heavily down. To me, the good sides of Goodkind's books are stronger, bigger, better than the bad ones, and unless his writing degenerates completely, I will keep reading and looking forward to the new volumes for as long as I have time to read fiction. Not as my first, second or third priority. But somewhere down the list, well above the books I think that "well, one day, if I have time, I'll read those" when I glance at, there you'll find Goodkind, and he's not going anywhere.

So where am I going with all this? Well, ABC is out with a TV-series that is based off of these stories(for now, obviously, limited to the first book), and today I watched the double-episode pilot.

My expectations were rather low. Sam Raimi is listed as the creator, and while he might have spawned occasional brilliance in his day as well as being responsible for the awesome Spider-man 2, there is no denying this man has touched a lot of cheese as well over the years. In my head, Raimi's cheese combined with the controlling influence of Goodkind could go nowhere truly good.

Well, as of yet, it hasn't - but it hasn't gone anywhere bad either. Because there is virtually no cheese at all. Sure, there's cheese if you consider the mere fact that there is a main villain, a budding hero, a damsel in distress and a mysterious old wizard running around on screen, but if they hadn't had that, this would have been a horrid trip away from the source material that nobody in their right minds would have approved of. Just because something's been done so often that the mere thught of doing it again seems like such a clichè it gets called corny and cheesy from the get-go doesn't mean it can't be done well. I've seen nothing so far that makes me think these guys won't do it well. Thus, in my opinion, no cheese here, except for a few overly dramatical uses of the score and one special-effects-shot that was a little over the top. That's it, and in an hour and a half of televised high-budget fantasy, that's nothing to fret about at all.

Beyond the lack of cheese, as well as a (much more expected) lack of the obvious propaganda of Goodkind's later books, there was one additional pleasant surprise. Of course the plot would be changed to fit the new medium, but I expected (as one tends to do) all such changes to be exclusively bad. Most were. However, two of them were very good indeed. Allowing us to see Kahlan's sister in the beginning is an added incentive to care for Kahlan's character and mission that made the series start off at a better note than it otherwise would. The second one is bigger, and shapes the plots of both the first two episodes; one of Kahlan's hunters survives and becomes a tangible, human threat on the "safe" side of the border.

For each of these two good changes, there were a good dozen bad ones, some of them somewhat understandable, somewhat less so. Not to spoil anyone who have not read the books nor seen the pilot (it does surprise me that you still have the stamina to read this if this is the case, by the way) I will not go into detail on antyhing so changed that is plot-related. Suffice to say that I have no idea why the part of memorizing the book couldn't have been included, as it is probably the main clever twist to an otherwise straightforward narrative in the original. On the less plot-related changes, especially annoying was the inexplicable choice to have Darken Rahl's hair be black rather than light blonde (probably to avoid making Craig Parker look like he did as Haldir in the Lord of the Rings-movies, sigh), and his men from a seemingly quite dark, medieval society rather than the sandy, light country of the books. I chalk this up to somebody's decision that hey, people won't get that they're evil if they don't have dark hair and live in poorly lit castles.

The characters were well done, to a one, even if the plot moved far too quickly for any of them to ever have any particularly interesting or cool scenes. In lieu of this, I was pleasantly surprised to see how much screentime was given to characters such as Chase, Michael and George. Zedd, my favourite character, was well enough done, and by the fairly renowned actor Bruce Spence, but he was never given a chance to sparkle with the little things that makes his character awesome in the books. If things such as that is allowed to happen as the series progresses, it will gain a lot more favour in my eyes.

So far, so good. I'm not impressed, but considering my very low expectations, I must admit to a certain feeling of reassurance. This probably won't be an awesome TV-show, but it won't make the books look too bad, and it might even get pretty good in its own right as it gets a few more episodes to stand on. It also might not, but no reason not to stay positive has been shown me yet, so I prefer to give it the benefit of the doubt. After all, as a huge fan of the first book of this series, I'm a viewer highly prepared to pick apart every little weakness I think could have been avoided, and a viewer who at the same time knows the basic outline of every little bit of the plot before it happens. In other words; the good stuff is expected, the bad stuff not. Making a favourable impression on me should be pretty hard for these guys, and yet, I did not dislike it as the pilot came to an end. Some things bugged me greatly, of course, but nothing happened to make me outright angry or disappointed. I will be quite interested to now follow and see this show develop into something that will actually make an impact on me - either by disappointing the small hopes I'm now allowing myself to feel, or by satisfying them by becoming genuinely worth my while.

A very strong 6.5/10 with a clear potential to reach both a 4 and an 8 within few more episodes.

It's been alright but nothing stellar - much like I've come to expect from Heroes. Still, the tendency so far is that they have a lot of very good ideas and themes to put their cast through, but end up not always really hitting the targets on the actual execution. One of their better episodes lately just aired, however, and it was one of the better ones even if Mohinder, Claire, Peter and Hiro all acted like irrational morons and my second favourite character died.

Seriously, though - Hiro's always been an utter git making decisions and plans so infantile and stupid it makes the brain hurt to just think about them, but this season he's simply being so ridiculous that if he now was to actually get something right, I'd be outraged of how incredibly out of character that would be.


The weird thing is that Sylar, whom I've never liked, is flat out interesting this season. I find myself enjoying his scenes more than virtually any others. Making him so far the only character who the season has actually improved upon.

There are some really, really talented fans out there.



Kristen Bell for Harley Quinn is sheer genius. This person had some other well done posters, too, but this was the one that impressed me.


Elsewhere on the web, these two rooting for Riddler's inclusion in the franchise are pretty awesome, too:

For reasons unknown even to myself, I've decided to write a post listing seven TV-shows eminently awesome and incredible, but that was always without a shot of reaching my list of my top five absolute favourites no matter how good they'd be. I'll tell you a little bit about each of them, why they're awesome and you should see them, and why they'll sadly never manage to climb to the top of my own lists - often through no real faulting of their own. And why seven? Well, hey, it's a lucky number, maybe it'll give me enough luck to make someone check one of these shows out because of the list.

The Wire
Possibly the best show I've ever seen, if I were to completely ignore my genre-preferences and other biases, though I do think that Deadwood would probably still have it beat. There's never a weak episode on this show, not a one. The the season plots are so vast as to more give an impression of a single gigantic five-episode-miniseries (each episode being an entire season...) than a truly episodic TV-show like I as a viewer have been trained to expect from just about every other show I've ever seen. To me, this show's basically only failing is that it is too real - this isn't a century or a millennium old history, this isn't a story involving witches and warlocks or dragons and griffins, this isn't set in space or featuring larger-than-life people dressing up in costumes and beating up criminals. Characters aren't larger than life in this show, they're just people like everyone else. Which is awesome, by all means. But it isn't my preferred brand of tea.

Blackadder
Brilliantly sarcastic, the different incarnations of E. Blackadder have to a one been entertaining. I do admit to some issues with the very first series, it being halfway too childish for me and halfway too intelligent with all its Shakespearean references, but the rest of this show is a childhood favourite still going strong. The plots aren't always as interesting and the jokes do sometimes seem uninspired or repetitive, but the truly brilliantly funny moments make up for this. My favourite will probably always be the fourth series, Blackadder Marches Forth, set in the First World War, and as educational and poignant as it is silly. Where the other series do try to have some measure of parody or clever presentation of a period long past, I feel none of them manage it as perfectly as the fourth. This show is funny if you like wit, sarcasm and cunning bastards, but it could never reach the top of any list of mine being a comedy show with little to no character development or personal drama.

The West Wing
While a good bit more variable in quality than The Wire, The West Wing is still a true gem of television. The fifth season might be a little hard to endure after the initial brilliance of the first couple of seasons, but I promise you, by the end in the seventh this show was long since gone awesome again. If it had been set in 1850 or on the continent of Westeros, this could probably have a shot to be my favourite show ever. Clever discussion of political issues, partisan characters with different biases, the political quagmire of never getting anything done, idealism met by realism, this show had all that a show about the White House's senior staff should have. (I'll also cheat and throw in a mention of the other show of Sorkin's I've seen and loved, Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which does the exact same thing for behind the screen TV-politics as West Wing does for behind the scenes world politics)

Judging Amy
I know, I know, putting that on this list makes me look like a girl, but it was good, people! I have never rewatched it and cannot tell you for sure I'd like it as much today as I did six years ago, when I had watched an admittedly tiny fraction of the good shows I've now seen to compare it with, but I remember this show very fondly as clever, engaging, and very much feeling like it had characters who were, to a one, real people. Balancing very well the protagonist's courtroom cases in the juvenile courts with her and her mother's personal lives, ideals and beliefs, I remember both laughing and crying during several episodes of this show.

Wonderfalls
Incredibly well made, let me tell you that. Witty, intelligent, with fun characters and good plots. It's even got some fantastical elements. But it's just too quirky to ever really completely win me over. The drama is good, but not awesome. The comedy is good, but too off-beat and not the central point. The issues are interesting, but there's not enough action in the execution of the plots surrounding them to drag me in. It's one of those odd shows where I go "yeah, I like this, this is super well done, and I'd like even to rewatch this many times, sure, but I don't think I'll ever quite love it" because it's lacking a certain something ineffable to be the right kind of show for me. It's indubitably awesomely well done, though, and if you haven't, you should check it out.

Dexter
This show does on paper have it all - bigger than life characters, development of said, intricate season plots, engaging individual episodes, humour, drama and action. When I say it could never reach my personal top five list, it's due to the premise - it's a show locked to one protagonist. I prefer ensemble shows for their much wider opportunities for interesting dynamics and less dependency on clever plot twists. Of course, the fact that it's neither a period piece nor fantasy or sci-fi doesn't help much. But the show is truly awesome, and catching up on the first two seasons over the course of two weeks have been one of the more memorable TV-experiences of my life.

The Inside
As I mentioned in my review of the first season of Dexter, The Inside is a dark show, and to me, that's its failing. I'm faint of heart and mind, I can't take watching something too dark or upsetting and still truly enjoy it. That being said, the characters, the plots, the manipulations of the awesome, awesome character played by Peter Coyote, this is something as rare as a police show that's not only watchable, but eminently engaging. It's too dark for me to truly love it though - it might even be too dark for me to ever rewatch it. Certainly not alone. But it's very good, and it's a deserving mention on this list.




That's that. Hope that some of you will end up checking out at least one of 'em. They all deserve it.

Have you met Mr. and Mrs. Awesome, their son Totally and their daughter Frikkin?

The second season of How I Met Your Mother is just what you'd expect - more of the same, but maybe just a tad better for experience and character-growth. By the latter I mainly mean the form of growth you get from getting familiar with a character and the writers at the same time finding their way with them and trying new things - there's obviously not that much of actual character development in a sit-com.

Still, there's some. Barney is made retroactively much nicer and more human as stuff like his despicable behaviour towards Marshall early in the season is explained towards the end. Ted and Robin both grow individually in their efforts to make it as a couple. And Marshall and Lily go on from their sad break-up at the end of season one to have a very cute and touching season.

While the jokes on this show are funny and the characters are good, it wouldn't be that much better than your average well-written sit-com if not for one particular thing - the running gags and catchphrases. Those are what makes this show golden. It can be anything from Marshall's fascination with the unknown or his childish glee at the small things in life to Barney's "waaait for it"-remarks, but if there's one thing this show is good at, it's using continuity for jokes. The slap-bet, on that note, is the most ingenious running gag I've ever encountered, and I pray to what TV-gods there might be that it won't be forgotten in season 3.

Sadly, though, it's when continuity gets that important it's the most annoying when mistakes are made. Most of them are relatively easily explained away as off-cam development (like how Lily in season 1 suddenly was okay with having the wedding indoors or Marshall in season 2 was okay with it being outdoors, or how both Barney and his brother grew up to be very similar people with a tight bond but we simultaneously know Barney became the way he is now on his own during a traumatic break-up), but some really eat at you. One in particular is making me crazy, and that's how we learn that Barney in 2x17 was still terrified of Marshall's Fiero after trying to slowly drive in it on a parking lot a year earlier, only to have him steal a moving-van in the blink of an eye in 2x18. Sure, you can hypothesize he learned how to drive in the past year anyway, or called in someone to steal the van for him, but neither seem particularly believable.

With the exception of that particular peeve, I loved the season, and I loved the development in it. There's not much more to say, really, without giving away all the gags and jokes and twists. Suffice to say they keep up their interesting use of the show's relatively unique quality of being told by someone decades later by making fun and surprising twists on the way they tell some of the episodes, but that I still feel this could be taken even more advantage of. At the end of its second season, How I Met Your Mother remains a very strong sit-com with potential for being greater still. And I'll keep watching, hoping it will, but being happy even if it won't. 'Cause with this show, the only thing that's certain is that it'll be legen - waaaait for it...

The free Captain Hammer-comic (Dr. Horrible-tie in) is out! And it's very entertaining!

Issues 6 through 8 of IDW's canonical Angel - After the Fall made up a series of flashbacks to the events taking place directly after the series finale Not Fade Away, tellingly entitled First Night.

The frame-story of First Night seems to take place about at the same time as issue 5 of the regular series did, which I like, as it places First Night in a natural place in the series as a whole when you're reading it. The frame-story is only a few short pages with each issue, centered on Betta George, but it does have a rather big reveal to the main story. The flashback-stories themselves, though, are the meat and purpose of this volume of After the Fall, and they're done quite differently from the main story, primarily through the use of different artists with the different stories. I won't go into detail on the art, simply because it's been a while since I read them all and none of the stories' different artwork stood out as particularly good or bad to my banal tastes.

The stories told are those of Spike, Connor, Lorne, Wesley, Gwen, Gunn, some "civilians", and, technically, Kate Lockley, a character not seen since season 2 of the show. Spike's story was, to me, odd. Parts of it was very good, parts of it seemed off and too silly for the character. Lynch writes a very good Spike - impressively so - but does have a slight tendency to overuse the character's comedy-aspects. For instance, while the individual lines work, I cannot imagine Spike being happy to realize he's in Hell, talking out loud to himself about it, and conveniently forgetting about his friends who were all in mortal danger half a second ago. That might have happened with soulless Spike, but it rings false with his ensouled self. Still, parts of the story is good, and I'm willing to make excuses and far-fetched explanations for why he'd do this to make it all work.

Connor's - and Kate's, which is really just the continuation of Connor's - story is one of the best of the series. His juggling of his new and old memories, dealing with being in Hell, following the examples of his three fathers (though I'm a little disappointed in how he never has any strictly positive thoughts about his third one) all works splendidly. The main disappointment here is that the preview-picture on the first page of the issue with Kate's intended surprise appearance had Connor say "Kate" in a speech-bubble. Ouch.

Lorne's story is well-written and at times very fun, and unlike a lot of people I didn't mind the cartoony set-up or rythm of it, but the plot was so saddening in its incredibly convenient content. His entire character-arc in season 5 is cheapened as he basically just gets over his issues and moral trauma, and the plot of the story only works because of an immensely powerful unknown deus ex machina-sorceress who pops by and fixes everything and then leaves. The only way I'll find this story to be worth it is if Lorne later in the story turns out to still have huge issues surrounding his actions in season 5 and the sorceress shows back up and has some function in the plot. Because honestly, while the writing is excellent here, the actual plot is on the level of a fairy-tale.

Wesley's story is probably the by far more satisfying of the series, and that's saying something when coming from a Wes-fanboy like me. It was by no means perfect, but it was well done, it made sense with the character and the plot, and it seemed relevant to the main story. Way to go, Lynch. Enough said, I think, you should just go read it.

Gwen's story is also very good. It tells you where she is mentally, it fills in a lot of what she's been doing since we saw her in season 4 without really saying anything about it, and it's both touching and sad. Very happy about this story, it's the first real justification for having the character in After the Fall at all. And we get to know a little more about the barrier around L.A. too.

The Civilians-story was utterly pointless. Here Lynch had a chance at showing us how regular people had dealt with being sent to Hell, and he wasted it on a quasi-funny and utterly irrelevant series of pages about a doomsday-believer that has no bearing on the story and no bearing on how the reader is experiencing the world that's been created for the series. This was an excellent idea that could have shown us a lot about the background and surroundings of what was going on in the main story. Instead, it wasted my time and money and several pages that could have been about, well, anything else, on one insignificant fringe-person's outlook that tells me nothing about how most civilians actually reacted. Enormous disappointment.

Gunn's story is very ambiguously good. On the one hand, it IS good. It's well done, it's funny, it's exciting and touching, and it reveals some small things about Gunn's post Not Fade Away-time that's nice to know. On the other, it doesn't really reveal a single thing of significance, doesn't shine any mentionable amount of light on the main plot, and doesn't do anything surprising at all. Still, one of my favourites of the series. I'd rather have this kind of "good but kind of a tease"-stuff than the swings and misses I was served in the Lorne-story (honestly, the character would so far have been far better off if Lynch hadn't brought him back in the comic at all, he's just going around saying funny things) and the Civilians-fluke.

One thing the series missed sorely was a Nina-story, and I hope that's because her backstory will be told in the actual main storyline instead. Her presence and role in the story is a mystery and really needs to be told.

All in all, First Night was a little disappointing to me. It could have been a lot more than it was - but by all means, some parts of it were pretty awesome. Still, it's not a bad read, and I've not yet lost faith in After the Fall. I'm sad to say, though, that the thoroughly perfect continuation that was started in issue 1 of the series with this arc has received yet another bunch of unnecessary blemishes.

So, I did really well on the exam that mattered and I thought I did mediocre at. And then I did mediocre at the exam that didn't matter and I was sure I did very well at.


And somehow, I'm thoroughly unhappy about that. Sigh.

Smaller sets would be awesome. Way overdue, albeit far better late than never. Mythic rares probably isn't a very good idea, but if the maths as Rosewater lay them out indeed work out, it shouldn't be more difficult getting one than any given Lorwyn-rare in the smaller sets, and it does appeal to my inner Vorthos.




But a LAND replacing a common in every expert-level booster? That's effectively dropping one card from every pack I buy while putting just enough lands there that new players will be annoyed for not having enough of them to play with anyway. I'll feel like I'm being flipped every time I browse through a pack and see those lands.


Seriously? A basic land?!



I'm too old for this nonsense.

I am, of course, talking about this.

...which one of these things I will post about next. 'Cause as my list of things to post about is ever-growing, I find it more and more tricky to summon the willpower to sit down and attack it head-on on my own.

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