There Is No Safety In This World

Many years ago, friends told me I should watch a show called Farscape, and leant me some terrible-quality VHS tapes (I did say many years ago) of Season 1 episodes. I was entranced from the first episode: so much world-building, happening so quickly and elliptically. A whole set of plot and relationships being revealed woven through the quite interesting plot.

Then I found out that what I had thought was the premiere (you can't really call it the pilot when there's an important character called Pilot) was episode 7 (PK Tech Girl).

I mean, I still like the show. But that sense of breathless excitement I had watching that first ('first') episode promised things that were never quite fulfilled.

More recently, I got a book called Deathwish on spec for $2 from BookBub by an author I'd never heard of (Rob Thurman), and was immediately drawn in and agog for a couple chapters, until I followed up on a sneaking suspicion and found it was actually the fourth book in a series. (I read the whole series. I have many, many mixed feelings about it, but that is another story and will be gone into at another time.)

Tonight, I have realized that the reason why the opening sequence of the first episode of Naruto Shippuden is so breathtakingly bewildering, and the world-building with its jutsus and mysterious headbands and kazekagis and hokages slips by so fast and smooth isn't that it's being tantalizing and expecting its viewers to keep up, it's that this is actually the second Naruto series.

My bad. I could have known that. I blame my young client/informant, who assured me that I had to see all of Naruto Shippuden before I could watch Naruto Next Generation, but failed to mention that there might have been anything before either - but really, given the first 5-10 minutes of Naruto Shippuden, I should have guessed that anime aimed at oh, probably younger teens, wouldn't be quite so sneaky or demanding of its viewers. I /did/ finally stop and check, not because of the speed and slipperiness of the establishment of plot, world, characters, and relationships, but because of the sharp change of pace between those beginning sequences and what followed.

Mostly, I think, I don't catch it sooner when these things happen because I love the sensation of being dropped into a river midstream and expected to get my head pointing in the right direction and start moving with the current on my own. It's exciting and intriguing, and in all three cases, I wish I'd been right.

Alas, what is learned cannot be unlearned*, and so I am going to go back and at least poke at the first Naruto series.


(The art's not bad and there is, blessedly, no fan service (read, T&A) that I've seen yet, and the girl who is probably supposed to be the Healer Type also is wildly powerful and destructive. Unfortunately, Naruto follows the classic model of the brash, cheeky young hero, who does very little for me. We'll see. There are hints that he has backstory angst, which might help.)

* This is manifestly untrue, of course. There are probably more ways of forgetting things than there are of learning them in the first place, but a good aphorism doesn't have to rely on such paltry factors as accuracy.

When I first discovered Dick Francis's books as an adolescent, I found them exciting. I read everything my library had and waited eagerly for new releases. I didn't like all of his books equally, but there were very few I didn't like at all. I even wrote to him, although I was 16 or 17 at the time and it was less fanmail than it was a complaint that I felt his characters drank too much, especially for jockeys trying to watch their weight.

Since then, rereading his books has been comfort-reading, and the ones I liked best, I have reread to the point where, on any given sentence, if I had closed my eyes, I would have had a very good guess how the next one started.

And now, alas, after my recent bout of rereading, I'm discovering that I can't anymore. Things I noticed before but was able to set aside - primarily what now feels like pervasive self-satisfied/self-righteous conservatism with the majority's peculiar conviction that it is being oppressed by almost any minority that gets attention - keep thrusting themselves to the forefront and refusing to be ignored, spoiling my ability to wallow.

Alas. Farewell. We had a long and close - albeit 100% one-sided - friendship, but we have grown apart. Or, I have grown apart, since the books are static and the author is no more. (And his son does not count. At least his father could write. Or his father and mother in a largely unacknowledged collaboration could, anyway.)

The caveats to this wake do seem to keep adding up.

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As always, when I criticize a book or an author, I am quite content to speak only for myself. I am very happy for other people to enjoy books I cannot; I'm only sorry that I no longer seem to be one of them. Reading is highly individual, and although I don't dismiss authorial intent, I do think it's true that every reader invents the book in the act of reading it, and reads a very slightly different book from that read by anyone else. If you like Dick Francis's books and expect/intend to go on liking them, I think that's awesome. I still cherish the memory of what that enthusiastic fandom was for me for decades. If you like Felix Francis's books, I'm vaguely baffled but still very happy for you.