I finished watching the Dead Boy Detectives. Quite enjoyed it (if you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know I’m a Neil Gaiman fan). There were lots of fun bits. I want to know more about Kashina, whom the Night Nurse met in the sea monster. I actually liked the Night Nurse, even though her character was drawn to be unlikable.
But the story line I liked most was about the Dead Boys’ living psychic sidekick, Crystal Palace. Not having read The Dead Boy Detectives comics nor watched the Max Doom Patrolseries (in which both the eponymous dead boy detectives and Crystal appear), she was new to me. *** Spoilers below***
As the result of a demon possession, when we meet Crystal she has lost almost all her memories. She only remembers part of her name and nothing of her background. The demon has stolen her memories. What really intrigued me was the end of the amnesia plot line. Towards the end. Crystal, who has become a decent human being under the influence of her new friends, gets her memories back and realizes she wasn’t just slightly unlikeable (which she had a vague memory about) but a truly horrendous human being (give people night terrors or make them walk into traffic bad). She also learns about her dysfunctional family and how that had contributed to her toxic personality.
I really liked how the writing played with the potential of the amnesia in character development. Take a slightly blank slate character seeking for their identity. Build up their personality through their new experiences and social circle. even while desperate to remember their past. In a nod to be careful what you wish for, have them regain their memories (or at least some of them) only to realize their pre-amnesia personality was very different – and one they now despise – and must live with. Kudos to the writers.
It was a great series – classic detective/cop buddy show, if one of them was the literal devil. Great comedic edge.
But to choose Lucifer seems like cheating. And rooting for Hector over Achilles in The Iliad doesn’t seem to fit either, because Hector isn’t really a villain (and I’m not convinced Achilles’ is the protagonist).
I know there’s been occasions where I’ve thought the heroes so incompetent that I am a little rooting for them to just get taken out by the villains, but usually those stories are bad enough that I don’t remember them even if I did stick around to finish them.
Now I’m trying to think of stories were the heroes are upholding the social norms we are supposed to root for but I don’t actually do so, so I’d root for the villain. Again, I’m sure I’ve read such, but can’t think of any off hand.
Ugh. I think I’m going to go back to my cheating first thought and stick with the Devil, Lucifer from the Sandman Universe. And Crawley and Adam the Anti-Christ fit in there too.
Some things on my mind have me thinking about authorial voice. So I’m going to do a few posts on various related topics. Authorial intent vs. reader response will come up later this week, but today I want to talk about authorial voice vs. a character’s voice.
Often times when I am teaching, this distinction is one that students struggle with. I think of the character Tecmessa in Sophocles’ Ajax. I actually used to have a pair of cats named Tecmessa and Ajax.
Tecmessa (Grey and White Tabby) and Ajax (Black Cat)
When I read it with students, they often think the play is sexist because of how Ajax treats Tecmessa (a sort of “shut up, woman” attitude). But I encourage them to note that there is a difference between a character’s voice and an author’s voice. To look beyond that one voice to see how she fits in the play as a whole. Ajax himself is dead halfway through the play, due to his rigid attitudes towards relationships and inability to adapt. Meanwhile, the definition of nobility Tecmessa asserted to Ajax (recognizing common humanity and the responsibilities we have to one another in community) is where Odysseus and Teucer (the two main positive characters) end up at the end of the play. Just because Ajax is sexist doesn’t make the play necessarily sexist. The authorial attitude towards Tecmessa is different than a single character.
This came to mind as I was reading reviews of the new Avatar: The Last Airbender series. Confession: I haven’t seen it yet. School is so crazy, I’m probably going to wait until spring break to resubscribe to Netflix and binge the dickens out of it. And the reviews don’t leave me in a hurry to watch it. I’ve already noted the discussions of Aang’s character being flattened out. The treatment of Sokka also seems flatter. Specifically, his character arc with his growth in his attitude towards women and traditional gender roles has been eliminated. As The Mary Sue notes in comparison to the Netflix One Piece live action treatment,
Taz Skylar’s Sanji was able to embrace the less-savory aspects of his character, so why was the choice to make Ian Ousley’s Sokka less sexist so prominent?Why introduce a character to develop if there is no character to develop? Much like Sanji, Sokka’s attitude toward women is a key trait that is necessary to include, in order to show growth. If the One Piece writers could navigate how to adjust Sanji to fit their series while reflecting his in-anime character, surely those writing Avatar: The Last Airbender could have done the same with Sokka.
“I feel like we also took out the element of how sexist [Sokka] was. I feel like there were a lot of moments in the original show that were iffy.”
🤦🏻♀️ Having a sexist character isn’t iffy -it’s how the world around the character reacts that makes it iffy or not. And Sokka’s sexism was (as I recall) shown to be in error and occasions for learning. The Mary Sue provides good specific examples and how they are handled. And note how it relates the larger issues of the social norms of the Water Tribe (that were challenged and changed in later books) as well as the war trauma Sokka had suffered as a young boy. And if you want to fight sexism, eliminating it from your narrative doesn’t accomplish anything. Including it in a character who grows from it might lead readers to see themselves and grow along with the character.
I’ll highlight how it is handled in the opening episode, as Rambler Kai notes and provides the video for on Twitter:
ironic as it is, you IMMEDIATELY make Sokka a less interesting character to watch by stripping away the sexism, its an intentional character flaw that the show acknowledges
I’m sad to think about the character as made less interesting and just more flat, but also see that mistake I’ve often seen in my students – mistaking a character’s voice for the authorial voice. I’ll repeat what I said about: watch how the world around the character reacts when weighing how the author might be leading you to respond to that character’s point of view.
I enjoyed the Percy Jackson series and am glad there will be a second season. Now I’m looking forward to the live action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender.
Yes, there was a movie, but it is best blocked from memory. I have greater hopes for the series. I’m not without trepidations. As The Mary Sue pointed out
the Netflix team made the decision to make Aang’s narrative more straightforward than it was in the original animated series. “He’s kind of going from place to place looking for adventures,” Kim said. “It’s a little looser as befits a cartoon. We needed to make sure that he had that drive from the start.”
Kim continued by explaining that the solution they found was giving Aang a vision right at the beginning, so that the stakes are very clear to him and so that he’s immediately motivated to reach the Northern Water Tribe and start learning waterbending.
And I’ve got to agree with them that this critically alters the central character in not a good way. Aang was frozen for a century precisely because he was running away from responsibility – and carrying guilt because of that and the subsequent slaughter of his fellow airbenders. Or, as The Mary Sue notes:
Aang’s arc within the three seasons of ATLA is a hero’s journey in the most Campbell-ish of ways—and one of the steps that happens right at the very beginning of that journey is the refusal of the call, when the hero is called to adventure and initially runs away from it before actually committing to the quest.
(Other changes also noted in the same Mary Sue post). Aang sounds like a much flatter character in this series. That would be a pity. But I withhold judgment til I actually watch it.
Shortly before the Pandemic, Madeline Miller announced her Circe book was going to be made into a HBO-Max series. Then of course the world took a big pause and that seems to have been the death knell for the series. Given (HBO-)Max’s tendency to scrap even completed movies, it is perhaps unsurprising. But it is sad. While I love the middle grade and young adult retakes on myth, Miller’s books are adult retellings (and excellent). And given how well HBO handled Game of Thrones, I was excited to see what they did with Circe. And I hold out hope that someone will adapt it someday, even if Max has decided to pass on it.
8 short episodes later, we’ve reached the end of the line for the first season of Percy Jackson on Disney+. While I loved it, both how it faithfully rendered the books but also evolved them in great ways, I do agree with El Kuiper on The Mary Sue that it demonstrates how limiting current streaming-season lengths are:
Disney+’s Percy Jackson series boasts a fantastic cast, impressive special effects, and an undeniably gripping emotional narrative. As a long-time fan of Riordan’s books, this series has been a dream come true.
And yet, the finale made it abundantly clear that Percy Jackson, like so many of its peers, has been restricted by its meager episode count. Eight episodes of varying length may seem like a lot to tell this story, but as is so succinctly pointed out in the Percy Jackson making-of documentary that is now available on Disney+, the narrative takes this heroic trio from one end of the U.S. to the other, including a trip down to the Underworld and a brief sojourn to the top of the Empire State building. There is a lot of ground to cover.
Let’s start with the confusing as that’s how the episode opened. Apparently the pearls don’t just return them to the Pacific Ocean off Los Angeles (where they’d entered the Underworld), but to the Atlantic off Montauk beach, where Percy and his mother had stayed in a cabin in the opening episode. They return to the cabin where they heard all flights are grounded. This is a big change from the books, where Percy & Co. actually dare to take a flight home from LA. I guess the audience is supposed to get it from recognizing the cabin from the first episode, but it took me (an adult, observant viewer) quite a bit of time to get it. At first, I just thought they’d glossed over the flights home. I was confused. Then it clicked when later in the episode when he returned to the cabin to look for his mother. But if they were going to do this to help with the compacting of the series, some verbal utterings by the heroes would have helped. Like having Percy say, when he spotted the cabin, “Hey, that’s the cabin Mom and I stayed at. We’re back on Montauk/in NY.” He does hear a mysterious whispering, seemingly from his mother, that draws him to the cabin and calls for her when he enters, but really, it was just confusing at the time.
The good: I really like how they handled Luke. Unlike in the book (where his anger is in part directed at Percy and he tries to kill him outright), he tries to recruit him to Kronos’ side. He declares his friendship. Thus the downplaying of the shoe-betrayal throughout the episodes makes more sense. And I like the more sympathetic Luke. Annabeth observes it all with her invisibility cap and when she reveals herself, we see Luke’s love for her (even if as a sister) which better sets up the much, much later (last book) turning to her as a last resort of fleeing Kronos and the gods.
Both Percy and Annabeth end up leaving camp early (which is weird – and no bead ceremony) and Grover heads off on his searcher’s quest, indicating he is off to the seas. Which brings us to the bad: the stupid plug for Walt Disney World. The series has decided to make the smartest human character in the book horribly naive about the world at large and especially pop-culture. Annabeth tells Percy that her father is taking her to Walt Disney World, which she says sounds like Water World only less determined to kill you. Percy laughs and Annabeth asks if she missed something and Percy tells her to just go be a kid, leaving me thinking “Thanks for the advertisement, Disney Channel.”
A few other notes:
The scenes of Percy reunited with his mom were great. The blue pancakes with blueberries were fun, as was Sally telling Percy not to refer to Kronos as granddad. But that brings us back to Stinky Gabe – or rather doesn’t in the episode. Gabe is saved for a mid-credits scene.
I get why they down play this subplot. Having Sally marry a man she despises to help Percy was always a bit uncomfortable. Having her suffer domestic violence was also uncomfortable, especially in a middle grade fiction book. Having her not only kill Gabe in the book, but also sell his petrified corpse as a statue to fund her return to school had its discomforts.
But in the Disney+ series, she is a woman who not only doesn’t need saving, but doesn’t even need to save herself. She is never the victim of Gabe. His obnoxious, but she can quickly put him in his place. I had wondered when they first changed their relationship what they’d do with the Medusa-head killing of him, but as the episode drew to a close, I felt like he didn’t even exist, like an oversight. Until the mid-credits scene, when Gabe kills himself by opening mail addressed to Percy (the Medusa head, returned to sender by the gods). No explanation of what’s done with his petrified corpse.
But this is problematic for the prophecy Percy got. He’s supposed to “fail to save what matters most in the end,” because he recognizes that Sally needs to make the choice to save herself. But there’s no saving of Sally because she doesn’t need to be saved. So what does that mean for the prophecy (explored more here at the Mary Sue)?
The other thing that doesn’t get any play is the great prophecy. Unlike the book, Percy & Co. missed the deadline for getting the bolt back to Zeus. This sets up a very different scene on Mt. Olympus and gives Poseidon an even better chance to play the good god protecting him (by surrendering to Zeus to end a war that was avoided in the books when they make it back by the deadline). But without the great prophecy mentioned, we lack the sense of why Zeus might want to kill a “forbidden child” of the Big Three.
I’ve got to pause here for a shout out. Lance Reddick was fabulous as Zeus. He brought great auctoritas to the role, a perfect King of the Gods (more than the character in the book, where Zeus at times has a bit of a buffoonish aspect). It’s heartbreaking that we won’t get to see more of this excellent actor’s work after his passing this past March. The whole episode is dedicated to his memory.💔
Back to the Great Prophecy and “Forbidden Children” of the Big Three: Hades, when we met him in the previous episode, had zero resentment over Percy being a forbidden child and both Zeus and Poseidon breaking their oaths after trying to kill his own already existing children (Bianca and Nico) and killing their beloved mother in the attempt. Hades even offers Percy sanctuary when he learns Kronos is back and decides to try and keep the master bolt.
The only hint of the Great Prophecy is when Kronos, in Percy’s final dream, says, “You are the key to my rise.” Sally asks Percy about his dream, but he changes the subject and then it’s just gone. They repressed that foreshadowing for the future books/episodes.
I certainly hope that we get more seasons/episodes of the other books. Overall, despite the compacting of material, it was very well done. But season 2 is not yet confirmed (that I’ve seen).
At last we reach the Underworld. ***Major Spoilers Ahead*** because the episode sort of peeved me. I feel as grouchy as a three-headed guard dog, although the episode definitely had its pluses as well.
Two big things that leap out at me are the flying shoes and the pearls.
First the shoes. Perhaps I’ve overlooked something, but as far as I remember (or can tell by glancing back through critical moments of the episodes) Luke gave Percy the shoes and then that was it for them. When Percy learns about the dangers of him taking to the air (the perfect moment to hand them over to Grover to use – and the moment when he did so in the book), nothing arises (so to speak) about the flying shoes. He never, as far as I can tell, gives them to Grover in the Disney+ series. Grover – before this episode – has never used them, even in places where he did in the book (which worked well as establishing them with Grover and underscoring Luke’s betrayal). But now that they are needed for the major plot point of that betrayal, Grover uses them early in the episode as the only groundwork for the later crucial scene. I assume something in an earlier episode that would have set this up hit the cutting room floor, but still it feels sloppy to me.
Speaking of Grover and sloppy (or should I say slobbery), Percy distributes the pearls right away in the episode and Grover loses his when briefly eaten by Cerberus (or at least caught in his mouth before emerging covered in slobber). Not Grover’s fault, as Percy assures him when he hands over another pearl to Grover, but still I hated they made Grover the heavy for Percy’s later mom-dilemma. Given how they’ve set up the uncaringness of the gods, this felt at first unnecessary. But then Poseidon showed up in the episode (more on that below). Nevertheless, thus the problem of the fourth pearl was solved.
So if the stomach acids of Cerberus dissolve the pearl, will he find himself suddenly in the ocean?
I loved the grove of Asphodel and the soul-trees of regret (very Vergilian Field of Mourning with its myrtle grove), but was sorry to have Annabeth pulled out of the Underground before the big action at Tartarus got going. Actually, I hated it. Having her there for the pit and a witness for what is really going on felt important. Plus she is a fun and central character. And nothing arose that would benefit from her absence. Why?? I’m sort of miffed.
And having Percy find the master bolt not in the palace of Hades also cut out some great moments from the books when Hades knows it’s there and Percy doesn’t. But in this episode Hades doesn’t want the bolt (at least not until he hears about Kronos and feels the need for a defense).
On the other hand, I love Hades the character in this episode. Very different than in the books, but as with Ares, a real upgrade in personality. And I’ve never liked the whole Hades must be unhappy with his lot bit (and thinking in the book that he wants a war to increase his kingdom never made any sense – 100% of the mortal population will end up down there with or without war). I like a Hades who likes his kingdom. The H gods (Hermes, Hephaestus, and Hades) are really the best of the lot in this series in terms of humaneness.
Poseidon also gets a H for human-feeling. The whole flashbacks to Sally taking Percy to a boarding school (fabulous job by Azriel Dalman as young Percy) set up a drawing in of Poseidon as a good guy (good god). How Sally knows so much about the gods’ family is still a question.
Ramblings 
