Monthly Archives: August 2021

Late-Posting Ear Infection Blues

Posted on by Henry

The title says it, really.

I’ve got several things to share, notably: I just read Amari and the Night Brothers by B.B. Alston, I’m currently reading Three Ordinary Girls by Tim Brady, and on Tuesday I just put together the rough layout of my second World Seed (pre-art).

But I’ve got an ear infection, and the antibiotics I’ve been given are wreaking havoc on my guts and my energy level. And since today was far busier than I’d expected, here I am writing about this at 10pm.

I’m going to be out of the loop for a bit, but I’ll probably have posts for you about those two books at some point in the near future. And if you play RPGs and want ideas for scenarios, or want kits that will teach you ways to make any cool idea into your own scenario, check out Whimsy’s Throne on Patreon.

Advertisement

A Dead Djinn In Cairo, by P. Djèlí Clark

Posted on by Henry

Short, fast, fun. A Dead Djinn In Cairo is a good read, with a marvelous setting. It’s also my first time reading any of P. Djèlí Clark’s work.

As a veteran fan of investigative mystery horror, adventure, and Mythos stories, the tropes here feel familiar. That seems intentional. These character and plot tropes are called on to lend the story its structure and familiarity, and they make the story quick and tight when it might otherwise require more explanation and exposition. This works well; it’s an expert’s use of the existing genre shorthand to sketch in structure and conventions, and it lets Clark explore ideas and settings that rarely make it into these genres. It’s skillfully done, and worth admiration.

That exploration is part of why I don’t mind P. Djèlí Clark’s reliance on tropes for narrative stability. He lavishes his attention on novelty elsewhere, with quick splashes of set dressing that seep slowly out of the scenery. The combination of elements is delicious (a turn-of-the-1900s ascendant Egypt, women’s increasing independence, religious turmoil, fantastical creatures and beings in our world following the removal of some of reality’s barriers…). It’s all very good. I love the world he’s created here and will happily read more of it.

But that reliance means I don’t yet have a sense of whether I’ll like P. Djèlí Clark’s other narratives. At some point I’ll want more than my enthusiasm for this cool setting; I’d love for the narrative and its tropes to feel exciting without feeling like they hew so closely to the genre’s conventions, and I’d love for Clark to take the standard tropes and twist them a little more firmly into his own setting’s image. That said, I’d certainly recommend this story over any number of other genre stories. He delivers the expected tropes at least as well as any of the older examples I have to hand, and the trappings of P. Djèlí Clark’s story are more appealing to me. Based on this, I hope he’ll find other ways to exceed those stories as well.

Ted Lasso S2, 2 episodes in

Posted on by Henry

It’s… not as good yet.

I’ve been struggling to figure this out. I’m not surprised that it doesn’t feel as incredibly good, because the experience of that first season is hard to replicate. But I’d hoped that it wouldn’t feel like such a come-down. And I couldn’t understand why it did until I’d talked it over with my partner.

Actually, we talked about it, then saw an interview with two of the writers, then talked about it some more. The interview helped things click, talking it over again settled them.

Season two is still more like what I want from television right now than most other shows are. It’s still a show that (mostly) feels pretty good, and I still enjoy it. I still recommend it, to those who liked the first season.

But the rhythm is off.

Season one of Ted Lasso had a spectacular rhythm to its delivery of plot development. It built arcs and finished them neatly in places during an episode that left me feeling secure, which is strange for most TV shows I’ve seen recently. And even when arcs were left hanging between episodes, I didn’t feel like the show was toying with me and my feelings. Nor did I feel like the show was hooking me and dragging me along to the next episode, even as the appeal of the show and its story *absolutely* hooked me and pulled me along. In many ways it felt like Ted Lasso’s first season was confident enough in where it was going with its story, and willing enough to trust that I would want to stay with it, that it didn’t do the “grab the viewer by the hanging plot threads and unresolved emotions, and only offer resolution NEXT TIME” thing. I liked the writers not doing that.

Season two, two episodes in, doesn’t feel as self-assured to me. It doesn’t feel like it really trusts itself in the same way. It’s far more concerned with grabbing and holding on with its unresolved threads, less willing to trust that the audience will want to keep watching.

The way this shows most, for me, is in how unresolved things feel at the end of an episode. What really brought this home for me was the interview with the writers, in which they admitted that they didn’t have the whole season written before they started filming. I don’t envy them going from “we have everything written out beforehand” to “nope now we have to improvise and hope we’re at least one episode ahead.” And I think (just guessing here, wild speculation) that they’re leaving elements unresolved in the way they have so far *because* they need to leave themselves openings for the next step. Without the whole season planned and written already, they feel the (understandable) need to give themselves a clear and easy way forward.

This also means that it feels like they’ve had less time to edit their work. Season two, so far, doesn’t feel quite as slick as season one. It doesn’t feel as clearly like they’re moving from best-possible-scene to best-possible-scene. I’ve even wondered—maybe one or three times—whether there was a better scene they skipped or didn’t think of that they would have included if they’d had more time to think things over.

It doesn’t help that I also want them to do a different thing with a particular character (it’s Nate, folks, I want Nate to be not-an-ass). I fully expect that to be resolved at some point, probably this season, but god it’s grating.

Now, counter-argument: maybe the writers have a good idea of what they’re doing (even if they don’t have things already planned and finished). Maybe they’re leaving these plot threads open because they have plans for them later in the season and they know everything needs to be lined up long beforehand. I can absolutely see this being the case; I actually suspect they *do* know where they’re taking things even if they aren’t quite sure how they’ll get there. And maybe they simply decided to make the second season feel less episodic and more like a binge-show where each episode bleeds into the next, complete with tension and unresolved issues.

Honestly, my trust in these writers being competent is a big reason for why I’m still watching the show. I’m watching because I believe that counter-argument, and because I enjoyed the first season so much and want to see where these characters go. But regardless of how much I believe they know what they’re doing I’m still sad that some of that feel, the tidiness and rhythm of season one, feels like its gone.