Instead, Watch ‘Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse’

So, the hotly anticipated Barbie movie has been released, and it is, from what I hear, a giant rug-pull on par with Puella Magi Madoka Magica, except less pleasing. This thing had a massive ad campaign, so enormous that everyone has been buzzing about it (though I am pleased to say that, Luddite that I am, I never so much as saw a single trailer). Its ad campaign promised that it would be a fun, simple, sugary film full of pink. Instead, it is apparently an over-long feminist lecture that actually uses the word “patriarchy” and expects you to take it seriously. And Ken, instead of being Barbie’s love interest, is the villain.

What most annoys me about this is that so many are shocked by it. Everyone should have learned by now that Hollywood is currently incapable of treating a long-running, much-loved franchise with any kind of respect. Smearing their feces on other people’s creations is part of their religion: They can’t not do it. How many fool-me-once-fool-me-twice situations do we have to go through before all of you finally wise up? Stop watching this crap. The people who make these movies and TV shows hate you, and they also hate the titles they’re adapting. How could a new Barbie adaptation from Hollywood possibly be anything but a hamfisted feminist screed? Barbie, after all, is a perennial boogeyman for feminists.

But if you really need some sugary entertainment featuring airheaded dress-up dolls, the best possible adaptation of Barbie has already been made: A series of short, CGI-animated videos called Barbie: Life in the Dreamhouse was produced by Mattel in 2012. It now lives on Netflix, where it has been rearranged into twelve half-hour episodes. (I know that link is crossed out because WordPress is screwy, but the link works.)

Life in the Dreamhouse does what the current movie should have done: Drawing probably on the depiction of Barbie in the Toy Story movies, it gently pokes fun at the Barbie franchise while also respecting it, its history, and its lore. Appropriately set in a fantasy version of Malibu, it depicts Barbie, along with her family and friends, living in a shockingly pink “Dreamhouse” filled with bewildering and sometimes dangerous gadgets. In a nod to the many different Barbie outfits released over the years, it portrays Barbie as owning a clothes closet so large it threatens to collapse into a black hole, and it also portrays Barbie as a self-styled expert on most every subject because she’s had thousands of different jobs. Barbie is a Mary Sue but without the features that make Mary Sues annoying: She is not a self-insert character, and her perfectness is always played for laughs.

In the new movie, Barbie lives in a world where every woman in named Barbie and evey man is named Ken, but Life in the Dreamhouse remembers that there are other dolls in the franchise, so sisters Skipper and Chelsea are regular characters (Chelsea, in particular, is a series highlight), as are several of Barbie’s friends, all of whom are given distinct and appropriate personality quirks. Most ingenious is the show’s treatment of boyfriend Ken: Although always remembering that Ken is essentially an accessory to Barbie and sometimes poking fun at the fact, Life in the Dreamhouse makes him a kind of idiot savant, a himbo who despite his airheadedness is a gadgeteer genius who inexplicably makes over-complicated Rube Goldberg machines whenever he tries to put together simple devices. Unlike in the movie, in which Ken is Barbie’s underling and ultimately her enemy, the affection between Ken and Barbie in Life in the Dreamhouse is sappy but genuine, exactly as it should be.

Life in the Dreamhouse is silly and saccharine. Its only source of real conflict comes from the twins Raquelle and Ryan, who are constantly trying and failing to separate Ken and Barbie out of jealousy. When Barbie isn’t accidentally foiling Raquelle’s plots, crises come from such things as gadget malfunctions or Malibu suddenly running out of glitter.

It’s genuinely funny, but more importantly, it’s short: Originally, the episodes were five minutes. The last few episodes run nearly a half hour, and they drag a bit as Barbie and her friends overstay their welcome. It’s also, unlike the new movie–which makes raunchy jokes and references to Proust–appropriate for kids. We could perhaps have a serious discussion of whether the airheaded bimbos and superficial lifestyle of Life in the Dreamhouse are really quality children’s entertainment, but at least the humor is child-appropriate, with no references to drugs or genitalia, and no resentment of one sex for the other.

In any case, Life in the Dreamhouse is probably the best version of Barbie-themed entertainment we can hope for. As the new movie suggests, it’s increasingly unlikely that such an innocent and sincere take on a franchise like Barbie can be made anymore. If you were looking forward to Barbie because of the trailers and are disappointed to learn that it’s exactly what you should have already guessed it was, then watch Life in the Dreamhouse instead. It’s probably the best version of Barbie that will ever get made.

Orlando Innamorato, Part 2

Happy Easter. Admittedly, I did not finish the Orlando Innamorato during Lent as planned. Although I’m enjoying the story, it’s still slow going for me, not only because of so much else going on but because … the poetry of the translation really isn’t good. Mind you, I still think I chose the better of the two alternatives, but there simply is not a good translation of this in English. I really am looking forward to the sequel.

I’ve made it up to Canto XIX, which is not much further than where I was last time, alas. Orlando has lost his memory once and had it restored, Rinaldo has acquired a magical horse, and a lovestruck Saracen king has besieged Angelica in the hope of forcing her to marry him. Orlando has ridden to her aid and he and the enemy king, Agricane, have had repeated duels. In the end, they ride off to a secluded glade, fight once more to the death, and Orlando is victorious. In what is famously one of the poem’s most touching moments, Agricane asks to be baptized in the nearby fountain before his death, and Orlando graciously complies.

The religious outlook behind the Orlando Innamorato is necessarily baffling to the modern reader. At the beginning, Rinaldo proclaims without shame that Christians are known for gluttony, philandering, and war, and the general tenor of the work is less than pious, but there is also a sincere religious sentiment that shows itself at times. One may get the impression—and it may be a correct impression—that religion in the poem is not much at all about how one lives but simply about which god one swears fealty to, similar to a knight’s fealty to his lord. That may in fact be its viewpoint, but it’s unclear (at least to me, since I lack the proper background on the author and the culture of the time and place and so forth) whether that’s part of the satire or whether it’s sincere. It’s always worth keeping in mind that the age of chivalry was over when Boiardo wrote this.

Speaking of religion, I suspect that Kline has modernized some of the references just as Charles Stanley Ross has admitted to doing in his version. Frequently, the Saracens are represented as swearing to Allah, but it is my understanding that epic Christian poems of this sort are wholly ignorant of Islam’s actual doctrines and instead portray the Paynim as worshiping three gods called Apollyon, Termagante, and Mahound. The two latter are mentioned in the Song of Roland on which the present epic is based and portrays the Saracens tearing down their idols of Termagante and Mahound after they lose the Battle of Roncevaux Pass.

Not being an expert in this subject, I’m not sure how this misconception arose. Mahound, at least, is Mohammad, so it’s eeasy to see how that confusion happened. Apollyon is a name from the Book of Revelation, and since Christians have always read their present circumstances into that book, those Christians who were threatened by hordes of Muslims may have simply assumed that Apollyon must be the Muslim god. Termagante, who appears as “Trivigante” in both the Ordlando Innamorato and its sequel Orlando Furioso, is more obscure. I’ve done some looking around, and from what I’ve gathered, nobody is quite sure where the name comes from or how so many people in the Christian West convinced themselves it was the name of a Muslim deity.

At least in Kline’s translation, Trivigante first appears in Canto XVIII, in which Rinaldo does battle with what is so far one of the most interesting characters in the poem: Marfisa, a lady knight of India who has her handmaiden act as her squire. This is the first of the lady knights to appear, though she will be eclipsed in fame and importance later by Bradamante, who becomes one of the central characters and whom Ludovico Ariosto, in the sequel, makes ther the founder of the House of Este, Ariosto’s patron. Marfisa, we will later learn, is sister to Ruggiero, who will become Bradamante’s lover. Marfisa, at least at first, is an ironical character because she is so skilled in combat that she refuses to fight any but the best and most famous knights—which effectively makes her useless in war. She scowls and marches back and forth on a riverbank while the army she’s a part of is being routed, and she has a duel with Rinaldo, whom she seriously wounds, though he escapes because his horse bolts.

The only other character who, so far, has a personality is Astolfo. Astolfo is a clownish boaster with minimal skill who happened upon a magic lance that has made him one of the most formidable knights in a joust but is too silly to realize his recent successes are not due to his own ability. Boiardo clearly has some affection for Astolfo, and if I remember Bullfinch’s summary version correctly, he plays an important role in the epic. We might see him as Marfisa’s opposite: He rushes headlong into battle because of his arrogance and she refrains from it for the same reason.

Orlando Innamorato, Part 1

I have finished the first eight cantos of Orlando Innamorato, which brings us up to almost one hundred pages of A. S. Kline’s translation. That should put us well on track to finish the book before Easter on April 9th, which is our goal.

I think I made the right decision in buying this edition. Further checking has confirmed that Kline’s is one of only two complete translations of the Orlando Innamorato into English and the only one that attempts to imitate the original’s rhyming scheme. However, Kline’s translation varies considerably in quality and is often clunky. It’s entertaining, but I admit I’m looking forward to finishing it so I can get to Barbara Reynolds’s acclaimed translation of Orlando Furioso, which is a much more readable version of a more famous epic.

Historical Background

I neglected to note in my earlier post that these two works are based on another epic called the Song of Roland, written in Old French in the eleventh century, which is in turn loosely based on a real historical event, the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, which took place in AD 778. The situation described in the Song of Roland is unhistorical, though the battle itself really happened. In real life, Basques attacked Charlemagne’s forces in the Pyrenees during their return to France because, after unsuccessfully besieging Saragossa, Charlemagne tore down the walls of Pamplona. All of Charlemagne’s rearguard was slaughtered, including Roland, who subsequently became the subject of epic poetry. As portrayed in the Song of Roland, however, Charlemagne and his twelve paladins have conquered all of Spain except Saragossa, whose king Marsile first sues for peace but then treacherously attacks the retreating French thanks to Roland’s turncoat stepfather.

Summary

The story as Matteo Maria Boiardo and his successor Ludovic Oriosto tell it is even more convoluted and complicated.

A hundred pages in, and we are still a long, long way from the battle that will form the climax of the second of these two poems. Boiardo goes wherever his imagination happens to take him and does not particularly care if all the various adventures and subplots form a cohesive whole. With his tongue no doubt firmly in his cheek, he tells us that his outlandish tale is definitely true because he has it directly from Archbishop Turpin. Turpin is another real historical figure who entered myth, and is in the Matter of France one of fiercest of Charlemagne’s twelve paladins. Boiardo appeals to his authority whenever the details of his poem get especially ridiculous.

The story starts by introducing a great Saracen emperor, Gradasso, who reigns somewhere beyond India. Most of the world is at his feet, but he covets two things, both of which belong to Charlemagne’s paladins: One is the super-sharp sword Durindana, wielded by Orlando (the Italian name of Roland); it can cut through steel or stone, and its hilt (says the Song of Roland) contains several priceless relics. The second is Rinaldo’s steed Baiardo, the fastest runner and highest jumper of all the world’s warhorses. To secure the world’s greatest sword and its greatest horse, Gradasso plans a military campaign to conquer first Spain and then France. Why would someone from, presumably, the area of Myanmar attack France by way of Spain? Don’t ask questions like that; from Boiardo point of view, there is Christendom in Western Europe and outside of that a great, amorphous mass that might be termed Pagandom, the geographical features of which are malleable.

After Gradasso’s brief introduction, the story starts where it properly should, at a jousting tournament: Charlemagne has invited all the greatest warriors in the world, both Christian and Saracen, to compete. Although the poem is greatly concerned with the defense of Christendom against her powerful enemies, it is not especially pious: When a visiting Saracen king asks Rinaldo how to pay honor to Christian noblemen, Rinaldo promptly replies that Christians are gluttons at table and whores in bed, but above all admire martial prowess. One wonders if Bishop Turpin would approve.

The festivities are interrupted by the arrival of Angelica, a princess of Cathay, who offers to marry any man who can defeat her brother in combat. Cathay, by the way, is ordinarily a name for northern China, but Boiardo seems to think it is a city in India. We may envision Angelica as either a Chinese or Indian princess, depending on our preference.

In any case, she’s the most beautiful woman in the world and the paladins fall instantly in love with her, especially the titular Orlando. Charlemagne’s court wizard Malagigi, however, discovers that Angelica is part of a convoluted plot to destroy France. Shenanigans ensue, and when the dust settles, Angelica has disappeared, Orlando and Rinaldo have ridden off in search of her, and Astolfo—the worst warrior but biggest braggart among the paladins—has come into possession of a magic lance that can instantly unseat any opponent. Astolfo then unexpectedly dominates the jousting tournament, leading to further shenanigans that end with Astolfo imprisoned for brawling.

Meanwhile, Rinaldo drinks from a magic fountain that causes him to hate Angelica, but Angelica drinks from a different fountain that causes her to love Rinaldo. Further shenanigans ensue. Angelica’s lament, when Rinaldo flees from her, results in some of Kline’s best poetry:

Should he not offer me a glimpse, at least,
Of his fair face, so that by gazing there,
I might upon those handsome features feast,
Or quench love’s fire, and so no longer care?
Reason would wish to find desire had ceased,
And yet reason has no place in this affair.
I call him cruel, of harsh unbending will,
Yet, be that as it may, I love him still.

The solitary adventures are momentarily interrupted when Gradasso’s forces arrive in Spain. France comes to Spain’s aid but then Spain allies with Gradasso and the united forces attack France, besieging Paris. Charlemagne’s forces are almost defeated but Astolfo is released from prison and, riding forth with his magic lance, challenges Gradasso to single combat, which he wins. Gradasso, surprisingly good-natured about the whole business, turns around and goes home.

Orlando, meanwhile, slays his way through the wilderness, encountering giants and ogres every few steps. As an example of both Boiardo’s use of classical material and his sense of humor, Orlando helps a pilgrim who thanks him by giving him a magic book that can solve any riddle. Soon after, Orlando encounters the Sphinx, who tells him of Angelica’s whereabouts but then demands that he answer a riddle. Orlando, unable to answer the riddle, attacks the Sphinx, kills it after a long and brutal battle, and only afterward remembers the magic book in his possession.

While Orlando—supposedly the greatest of the Paladins even though he’s never where he should be—is dithering around, Rinaldo is abducted by the lovelorn Angelica. Despite her machinations, he easily escapes her. He has various adventures almost indiscernible from Orlando’s and finally arrives at the hair-raising Castle Cruel, where a withered crone and her army of giants feed captured knights to an invincible monster born from a corpse. Rinaldo is thrown into a pit with the monster. He is fighting for his life and bleeding from several wounds. A cliff-hanger ends the eighth canto.

Discussion

Boiardo borrows from anything and everything. The backstory of Castle Cruel pulls from the Metamorphoses and other sources of Greek mythology. The Sphinx from the legend of Oedipus gets a cameo. Tristan and Isolde get a mention. There are probably other references I didn’t recognize.

The story is absolutely all over the place. I wonder if Boiardo had an outline or simply went where his fancy took him. But in either case, he’s very good at remembering his various plotlines. He hasn’t dropped a thread yet, and he has several of them going simultaneously.

But I think what most fascinates me is how all this grew out of a real historical event. If we knew nothing about the Battle of Roncevaux Pass, we might assume the Orlando Innamorato is pure fantasy. But as it turns out, it has an historical core, albeit a deeply buried one. I may muse on that more in a later post.

It Is Imperative to Buy Physical Media

By now, readers are probably aware of the outrage over the soon-to-be published Bowdlerizations of the works of both Roald Dahl and Ian Fleming. Two very different authors, the first is the writer of several well-known children’s books, especially Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the second is the author of the James Bond novels.

To make perfectly clear where I personally stand, I detest the work of both these men. James Bond is a disgusting pig of a character; I have hated every Bond movie I’ve seen, and when I read Casino Royale to give Bond one more chance to entertain me, I found it boring as well as disgusting. And as for Dahl, I have always found him too mean-spirited for a children’s author.

But that isn’t the point. Disliking these men’s work does not give me or anyone else the right to change what they wrote. Trying to eliminate “offensive” content from them would utterly change the character of their books: If Dahl is no longer allowed to call anyone fat and ugly, and if Fleming is no longer allowed to write about a drunken, philandering misogynist, then all of their novels will be reduced to about two pages in length.

The jackbooted censors who are in charge of the new, bloodless editions of these men’s work have their excuses, of course. They always have excuses. Puffin (Dahl’s publisher) has pointed out that Dahl himself revised his work over the course of his life, but that is obviously a motte-and-bailey argument: The censors are destroying the man’s work on the thin excuse that he himself sometimes revised it. Given his importance in the history of children’s literature, it is obvious that what they ought to do is release critical editions comparing and contrasting the changes Dahl made, not release a censored edition in which they make further changes themselves.

The excuse for altering Fleming’s work is even thinner: The first American edition of Casino Royale was censored, so we might as well turn around and censor everything else, right? That argument is too stupid even to rebut.

Notably, the tabloid Daily Mail discovered that the chief censor working on the Dahl books describes herself as a “non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchist who is on the autism spectrum.” That is enough to demonstrate that the alterations to Dahl’s work were not done innocently without ideological motivation. Note especially the pairing of asexual and polyamorous: The English language is allegedly this woman’s job, but she has no concern with the actual meaning of words.

And as for Fleming, the Telegraph reveals some of the alterations. In Live and Let Die, Bond visits a strip club, giving Fleming occasion to write:

Bond could hear the audience panting and grunting like pigs at the trough. He felt his own hands gripping the tablecloth. His mouth was dry.

The new version instead reads:

Bond could sense the electric tension in the room.

Whatever one thinks of Bond, the new version is nerveless and clichéd. This is why you don’t mess with other people’s books. And what exactly is the reason for this change? What exactly offended the “sensitivity reader”? I thought feminists liked to call men pigs, and Bond is especially deserving of such an epithet, so what is the problem here? The answer is that there is no answer: “Non-binary, asexual, polyamorous relationship anarchists” do not have actual principles; their offendedness is as random as their self-descriptions are.

We can say this, at least: Things are not yet as bad as they are going to get, so there is still time, but the time is growing short. Right now, the censoring of two famous authors is enough to cause widespread outrage, but it should also provoke some questions: How many other, lesser-known authors have been similarly censored without outrage? How many more authors will be censored? How long until the outrage peters out and the censors can march forward unimpeded?

We must buy physical books. We must build ourselves collections of the works we want to preserve. Every one of us must become an archivist. And it is not important only to save literature. We must save older dictionaries and grammar books as well because these same censors are working to corrupt the language, and they have been wildly successful. Get dictionaries and grammar books from 1989 or before; that seems to be the cut-off point after which the institutions were captured.

And as for older copies of now-censored books or books out of print, my opinion on this matter is rapidly changing: I once opposed any violation of copyright, but I now suspect that some copyright-holders do not have a moral right to the properties they own. So now I am tempted to say, scan and share the banned Dr. Seuss books. Scan and share your Roald Dahl novels, your James Bond novels. Bit-torrent the despecialized editions of the original Star Wars movies. And thumb your nose at the copyright holders.

I am not quite there yet. But I am rapidly approaching.

Lenten Reading: The Matter of France

Years ago, I had an annual practice in which I gave up watching or reading any fictional works for Lent in order to focus on some substantial nonfiction reading. These days, my ratio of nonfiction to fiction is much higher, so I’ve abandoned this particular Lenten practice. Nonetheless, I have decided (a little late, since Lent started a week ago) on my Lenten reading, and I invite anyone interested to join me. It is not nonfiction, but that doesn’t matter.

I have decided I wish to read the romantic epic Orlando Furioso, one of the great works of western literature which Ludovico Oriosto produced in 1516 and revised in 1532. The work is a sequel to the earlier, unfinished Orlando Innamorato of Matteo Maria Boiardo. These works together are part of, or are based on, the “Matter of France,” a cycle of literature about the deeds of Charlemagne. Generally, the Matter of France contains few fantastical elements, but the two Orlando epics are pure fantasy containing little historical content but lots and lots of magic, strange creatures, and bizarre journeys. Many anime fans know some names from these epics thanks to the FATE franchise and would do well to familiarize themselves with the originals to clear up misconceptions.

I have previously read Bullfinch’s deceptively titled Legends of Charlemagne, which summarizes these two works in prose. Bullfinch conveys the impression, and may himself have believed, that he is delivering a faithful presentation of the Charlemagne cycle rather than the inventions of two poets. In any case, his work is engaging and makes a good starting point for anyone who finds epic poetry intimidating.

My plan for Lent is to make it through the Innamorato before Easter at least, and then tackle the Furioso itself later. Having decided this, I have to choose my translations, since I don’t read sixteenth-century Italian.

Because the Orlando Furioso is more popular than its prequel, there are more translations available, the earliest being that of John Harington from 1591. That might seem the best option since it is close to the publication of the Italian original—but an online search reveals that it and most early translations are Bowdlerized, leaving out all the steamy parts. I oppose Bowdlerization on principle.

I have therefore decided on Barbara Reynolds’s translation of the Orlando Furioso, which is available from Penguin. From what I’ve seen, Reynolds appears to know what she is doing, and her version does not appear to be an abridgment. Her translation is probably less beautiful than Harington’s, but it is apparently more complete. Also, it was written in the 1970s and does not appear to have been updated, which means it will contain few or none of the corruptions of language so beloved by today’s academics.

Choosing a translation of the Orlando Innamorato is more difficult because there are fewer and less satisfactory options. William Stewart Rose produced an abridged prose version that’s somewhat famous and would probably make a good introduction to the Furioso, but I have already read Bullfinch’s prose summary, so that does not interest me. More recently, Charles Stanley Ross produced a poetic but non-rhyming translation. However, the above-mentioned Barbara Reynolds convincingly eviscerated his work in a thorough review (that, maddeningly, I can’t find again, or else I’d link it). A few samples confirm Reynolds’s opinion that Ross’s poetry is awful. To make matters worse, the most recent edition of his work has a foreword announcing that “terms of gender and religion have been updated.” As already stated, I detest Bowdlerization, even self-Bowdlerization, so the Ross version is a no-go.

I finally decided on the translation by A. S. Kline. It’s recent, so I’m wary of it (a discerning reader should be wary of any translation produced within the last decade), but it might be the best version that is both in English and not abridged. Unlike Ross’s, it does not attempt to keep the meter of the original but—like the original and unlike Ross’s—it rhymes. From what I’ve seen of it so far, the poetry is merely passable, but that will have to do.

The Cup of Agamemnon

Yeesh, it’s been a while. So much has happened over here, and we’ve managed to clone the magical girl not once but twice now.

I seriously need to get another novel out. Part of my problem is that I’ve had trouble buckling down on a single project I’ve been drifting back and forth between sequels to my existing work and other things, but I finally grit my teeth and decided to finish The Cup of Agamemnon, a planetary romance I’ve had in the back of my mind for some time.

Below is a teaser from the first chapter. This is rough, of course, and it may be too heavy on info-dumping, so it will likely be trimmed before it sees print:

“Is he dead?” Angelica asked.

“He’s breathing,” I replied.

“Then he’s not dead.”

“Not yet,” said Sam after spitting out a stream of blackish liquid produced by the stuff he’d been chewing, “but he will be if you two stand around jawing.”

“That’s true,” I answered, “but you’re not supposed to move an injured man.”

“Sure. But you ain’t supposed to leave him in the mountains to freeze to death, either.”

“Very well. Sam, grab his legs. I’ll grab—”

“Ain’t no sense in it, him being light. I’ll just carry him myself.”

And Sam, the hulking brute, did exactly that: He bent down, took up the unconscious Gernian, and threw him over his shoulder like a sack of tubers. I winced, but I held my peace. Right now, I wanted to keep my head attached to my shoulders—and considering my situation, that meant holding my peace.

To make a long story short, our interstellar craft had unexpectedly struck atmosphere during a phase-out of its Alcubierre drive’s warp field. An Alcubierre drive is tricky to operate, especially in-system: By compressing spacetime in one direction and expanding it in the other, it can move a ship across the galaxy in a minute without relativistic effects. But traveling such a distance in one go would build up enough energy to produce a nova-sized explosion when the drive deactivated, so it’s necessary to travel in short hops, stretching a minute-long trip into months. Inside a star system, the hops have to be even shorter.

We made a bad hop and collided with our target. The protective ceramics burned off, and the ship hit the dirt hard, so it was now a smoking pile of slag. We were stranded without food and with little water in a barren range of mountains where the air was thin and cold but breathable. There was no snow, either because the wind had blown it away or because the air was too dry.

We were four in number: Three of us were mammals, so our needs were similar, but the fourth was something indeterminate, transcending all mortal classifications. Fortunately, he had his own ways of sustaining himself—ways too disgusting to describe.

The peaks over our heads were rough and came to sharp, needle-like points. The rocks, mostly flint, cut into our feet. But I knew this world was inhabited, or at least had been, and I was confident that we were not the first to walk through this forbidding mountain pass: There were telltale signs of beasts—too many to be random—mostly in the form of droppings but sometimes of churned gravel or overturned stones. At regular intervals, we found trash pits containing steel wire, fragments of what were probably harnesses, and rusted steel cans soldered with lead. All the evidence pointed to pack trains. This was a trade route, and I said so to my companions.

Our de facto leader was Angelica. She told me to shut up, so I did. She had been the ship’s captain, and she was still in charge. Besides, her formidable technology put the rest of us at her mercy. She was our best hope for making it out of the mountains and finding water, and she could also kill us in a nanosecond if she had a mind to.

By the way, she blamed the crash on me.

Continue reading “The Cup of Agamemnon”

New Magical Girl Just Dropped

Had a new baby today, a healthy little girl. Mommy and baby both doing well. No pictures as of yet for the sake of internet security etc.

Childermas

It is still Christmas until January 5th, so this is a Christmas post. Today is Childermas, which commemorates the “Massacre of the Innocents” described in Matthew 2:16–18. Chronologically speaking, it might make more sense to have this commemoration after Epiphany, which is January 6th, but so it goes.

Anyway, in honor of this somber day, I have a picture of myself with Magical Girl Number 2. Recently, we visited The One, an annual event in Enid, Oklahoma, which boasts of featuring the largest fresh-cut Christmas tree in the world. It seems a shame to cut such a stately tree for this purpose, but maybe it gets used for firewood afterward. It certainly is impressive to look at.

Posing with Magical Girl #2 in front of The One.
Posing with Magical Girl #2 in front of The One. The rest of my friends are laughing too, just off-screen.

Anime Review: ‘Fairy Musketeers’

I never knew how much I needed to see Little Red Riding Hood in a sword duel with Gretel until I watched Fairy Musketeers.

Fairy Musketeers (Otogi-Jūshi Akazukin). Starring Nobuyuki Hiyama, Rie Kugimiya, and Motoko Kumai. Directed by Takaaki Ishiyama, et al. TV Tokyo, . 39 episodes of 24 minutes (approx. 940 minutes). Not rated.

Available on Crunchyroll.

In the post-Madoka days when most magical girl anime is about blood, guts, and misery, or else full of snarky “irony,” I like to look back on an earlier, slightly more innocent time when magical girl stories were about giggly, fidgety females who saved the world in between shopping trips and junk-food binges. And when I look back on that time, I like to watch Fairy Musketeers. Fairy Musketeers is not the best-written magical girl show, nor is it the best animated, nor the best edited. But it has an intriguing premise, a likable collection of characters, a satisfying conclusion, and a sweetness that avoids becoming saccharine.

The Fairy Musketeers pose dramatically.
No magical-girl show is complete without goofy catchphrases.

Originally produced as an OVA (that is, a straight-to-video production, which doesn’t have the same stigma in Japan that it has in the States), Fairy Musketeers was later expanded into a 39-episode TV series, which is the more readily available version. Merchandising heavily dictated its content, and the show has a few out-of-place props and plot swerves as a result. Although it drags at times, it’s consistently fun. It is one of my all-time favorites, and it’s clean enough to let the kids watch.

Continue reading “Anime Review: ‘Fairy Musketeers’”

And We’re Back

The site was down for much of the day today, for reasons unclear to me. This has been happening more often lately, and I’m not technical enough to know why, though it makes me wonder if the site is unstable. I don’t have anything particularly weird plugged into it, but who knows?

Anyway, we’re back. My hosting service is prompt in answering customer queries even though they have trouble keeping me online.