The Willoughbys is a pretty good book. And it's the book for a book club. And are you new here ZB? And um, are you a boy or girl. *blushes*

(I'm a girl, and I've been here for about 5 months.)

Squee! A place to rant about characters and trends that I hate, and then suggests books! ZB, I hereby grant you cookies. *gives cookies* TAKE THE COOKIES. NOOOOOOWW!!!

Ahem. Commencing ranting. Beware of the troping!

So. Let's talk about other people's antagonists, shall we? Namely, fantasy/science fiction antagonists (read: villains).

In my not-so-humble opinion, a good villain is not a Villain Ball holding Complete Monster with a Zero Percent Approval Rating who will carelessly sacrifice hundreds of mooks because We Have Reserves. No. That's boring, overused, and a sure sign of Black and White Morality, which is ALSO boring and additionally often rife with Moral Dissonance. Eragon, I'm looking at you, you creepy little sociopath.

My ideal villain is a Chessmaster, Dangerously Genre Savvy, intelligent, Deadpan Snarker Villain With Good Publicity, who makes frequent use of Xantanos Gambits and Roulette interspersed witht he occasional Batman Gambit to keep things interesting. En will even have occasional Pet the Dog moments to heighten en's chances of Ensemble Darkhorse. En may or may not be good looking, I don't care ((although the ones who are good looking are subject to a depressing amount of Draco In Leather Pants and sqealing Fan Dumb fangirls. Don't look at me!! At least I admit it when I fangirl at characters! *coughHavelockVetinaricough*)) Mild insanity is a bonus, but stark raving mad not so much. En has to be lucid sometimes, otherwise en would be at risk of picking up either an Idiot Ball or Villain Ball or both. Anti Villainy helps. Example? Vetinari, although his position on the Hero-Villain sliding scale is... er... complicated, to say the least. I don't care. I'm using him in this rant because he (a) is epic, (b) fulfills a lot of the traditional markings of villainy, up to and including the Evil Goatee of Evil, and (c) considers himself to be and on several occasions has labeled himself as evil/a villain (quote: "I see evil when I look in a mirror").

Oh, that was a lot of tropes. Sorry. Moving on! For fun (and those of you who don't know what any of the pretty tropes mean), I'm going to disect the above paragraph! Wee!

1. Chessmaster. Always knows what's going on, and how to skew situations to en's favour. Ties into another trope which would probably get zapp'd.

2. Dangerously Genre Savvy: Knows the way the story works, and how to use such events to en's favour. Doesn't necessarily know they're in a story, but they've read stories similar to the world they're living in and know how they work, and also fully aware of historical events and that history repeats itself, and makes sure to avoid the mistakes of other people. In a world like the Discworld, where things happen because of narrative causality, they may evoke well-known rules like million to one chances happening nine times out of ten.

Oh. Wait. The period's over.

So...

To Be Continued!

Okay, if you guys have been looking at any random book posting thread, you may have noticed that I am totally in LOVE with the Percy Jackson series!!! I love how Rick Riordan writes in the past tense, and it's now in the presence. I also really like the Kane Chronicles, (by Rick Riordan) it's really good, but I'm guessing that not much of you have read it, (it came out last Saturday, today's Tuesday) and I only read about 5 chapters of it, but I won't reveal anything yet, in case one of you are planning to read it, but haven't gotten to it! I recommend it!

CAPTCHA: wghk: Why goats hike Kilimanjaro 

I will happily take your cookies! *takes cookies*

The Goose Girl:

Did you know that Bayern is a real place? It's like a territory in Germany or something, and that's where the Grimm Brothers are apparantly from.

-☺☻

@ML: Yes, Howl & Calcifer were much better than Sophie, and Chrestomanci was much better than most of the Chrestomanci Chronicles' MCs. In fact, he was 1 of the 'notable exceptions' I mentioned to the main characters being annoying—he was the MC in The Lives of Christopher Chant. And 8 Days of Luke is another of her books. As I said in PP, I seriously think that JKR may have taken some characters & ideas from it. Especially the Dursleys. Not on purpose, though—8DoL was written in '75; she could have easily read it years ago and forgotten aout it, but some details would have stuck in her subconscious mind, and she wouldn't remember why, so she'd think it was her own imagination...

Anyway...

@NDT: Hm. My opinion is rather odd here. If I wanted, I could probaly go on & on about the things I don't like about Warriors, and only list a few things I did like. And yet, I find it so desirable. And I don't even know why? I'm just... drawn to it. I want to read it. Maybe it's the fact that I would just love to have the experiences of 1 of its characters—Willowshine especially. Unless Erin Hunter has managed to control my mind, and probably those of millions of people everywhere if the number of fansites are anything to go by (just google warriors cats and you'll see what I mean). And maybe she has. But anyway...

@ TNÖ: I definitely didn't understand everything you said, but I think I agree.

@ZB: PJ was wonderful. I used to despise the main character, but I changed my mind.

@Hannah: Really? That's interesting... But I suppose authors probably do that more than we expect. Again on the subject of DWJ, Lubbock is a city in TX and Syracuse a city in NY...

AP etc. says 'mzum!' 'Museum!' Or 'Mm... it's yummy.' Which would come out distorted because he was eating.