The Games

The Hunger Games trailer sucked. It was like watching starfish copulating - you know that it's supposed to be fascinating but it doesn't look like anything's happening to you.

In the trailer Jennifer Lawrence is running through some trees. Really, really exciting stuff. Running, trees, some 'running' camera angles, trees, shoots an arrow. Yeah, this is totally how I imagined the book would be in live action.

What the fuck is running through trees supposed to symbolise? And also, screw you casting director. All I can see when I'm supposed to see Katniss is a well-endowed blonde. I don't care if she dyed her hair, SHE STILL LOOKS BLONDE. god.damn.

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen
Oh My God, it actually looks like Katniss! Half-starved, dirty, tanned, slightly exotic looking!

Jennifer Lawrence
Wait...what? Hey fuck you, photoshop.

On an unsimilar note, I just read Ender's Game. It is part of my attempt to educate myself in sci-fi classics. Or 'classics', depending. Despite winning this and that writing award, Ender's Game wasn't particularly impressive, especially if you compare it to the world-building in Neuromancer - I didn't understand half of it, but it was awesome and confusing. And coherent, if that makes sense. There isn't a strong sense of a world in EG, more like, this is this-a-way and that is that-a-way and you don't need to know all that stuff because you're not smart enough to understand it. But I need good world-building to believe a story, especially if that story reminds of, like, a space episode of Sweet Valley Twins and Friends. Or an Anne McCaffrey escapist episode.

Actually yeah. Orson Scott Card's writing reminds me a lot of McCaffrey's.

In fact, I think this is the alternate cover for Ender's Game.

The premise of a boy genius is also explored in Martian Time-Slip (Philip K Dick), but it is handled way differently. In EG, everything is so neat and cliche. Ender isn't allowed to trust anyone or make friends because he won't be a good commander if he does. This does not seem to bother him much. The book SAYS it bothers him, but it doesn't really seem like it. And all he does is train and push his subordinates and be freaking perfect all the time. He only passes out once because of this. So who is this kid, Jesus Christ?

Sorry Ender, there's only one eleven year old Jesus Christ
...wait, is that Jessica Alba?

The whole book sort of coasts along from school school to battle school to command school, every one of which Ender excels at. He is the most perfect of perfect students ever to attend these places. Hating Ender is unfair -he can't help being brilliant and only seven (WTF. I just +10 years, because tell me which seven y/o speaks in complete sentences?). Not beating Ender is normal - don't worry, he beats everyone and is super noble about it. Hey Ender, turn left, go straight and die can or not? Bleeding insufferable twat.

Also, I may be prejudiced because I discovered the writer is an anti-gay Mormon. Which is interesting because I had asked the Plum whether the personal views of an author would affect the choice of us reading his/her work. And I thought that since I knew what Card thought of gays and all that, yet I still read the book, I felt that it did not really affect me.

But now I am thinking, am I more willing to believe that it is Card's shallow word-building and Marty Stu main character that makes me unable to connect to the book, or had I, however small and subconsciously, already considered disliking the book from the beginning, or at the ending when I found out he was a Mormon?

I do not know, but my opinion is that all Scientologists are mad.

Irrelevant, just like the last sentence.