The Magicians Rewrite

For my rewrite, I decided to visit the Magicians as now that I have read the first and sequel, I think I can evaluate the series a bit better. The Magician series mostly focuses on the life of Quentin, an apprentice mage who soon becomes a master. The novels focus on Quentin’s journey from adolescents into adulthood. The novel main theme is the idea of the journey to adulthood and focuses mostly on teenagers. The novel’s portray and introduces a bundle of ideas that teenagers go through. One that striked me with the most is the idea of indecisiveness.

Indecisiveness is one of the things that every teenager can relate with. What do I want to do with life? What college do I want to go to? Who do I ask to the prom? These questions often take long or even sometimes never get answered. For Quentin, his destiny was layed out for him when he magically appeared in the college of Brakebills and started on his life of being a mage. In reality, I think most teenagers are thrusted into their college or life dream. I haven’t a met a single person who has said that the decisions they made at that volatile period were layed in advance. Most often there is some event or shift in our life that flings us on that path. This really hit home for me because all of my life, I wanted to be an engineer. It was the sudden realization three months it was time to apply for college that I wanted to pursue a career in art and design. Instead of going to Brown or Berkely, I ended up here in Ringling instead and like Quentin, I have never regretted it.

Quentin’s college life in the first novel is something I think every single Ringling student can relate to as well. Quentin suffers through agonizing assignments and long hours to achieve his dream of being a fully fledged wizard. But throughout his years in the college, he often questions himself if this actually is his dream, often wondering if life would have been easier if he went to a regular college like his friends back home. Often through my nights of sleeplessness, I wonder if my days making virtual worlds can beat living in the real world. Trust me, I no longer live in the real world as I can’t even tell when the sun comes up and when the sun comes down when I work in lab. But Quentin taught me something fundamentally important, that through all the hardships, for better and for worst, will lead you down a road of adventure. I think this is very much true for every Ringling student as I’m sure life as an artist is a adventure of their own. Everyone here who doubts themselves even for a little bit, should read this series to meet someone who has the same fears, but lives through them and just says “fuck it”.

The Executioner's Beautiful Daughter

The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter was an enthralling short story where I love it but I know that I should have hated it. The Executioner’s Beautiful Daughter by Angela Carter was enthralling tale which, besides the fact that the title suggests that it should be a beautiful daughter, is generally about the social statues of the village in which she lives in. This is a classic example of one of the most important aspects of game design, where the world in which the event takes place in is more interesting then the event itself. Most of the writing in this short story revolves around that of executioner, revolving around what he looks like and what his habits are as an executioner. But this is all done to give us a understanding of the world he lives in and why, through social customs, he is the person he is.

                The beginning of the short story is by far the most engrossing and fascinating part of the story. This is because the details in which Carter explains the scene totally took me in. The description of the Executioner is very intense, setting us up for the shocking reveal of the victim himself, which then also sets us up perfectly for the rest of the story. It is due to the death of the brother, we as readers; start wondering about the sister and what to understand the significance of the title. I was actually bewildered that there were less details about the daughter in general, as the title of insinuates that the short story would revolve around her. However, Carter instead details the surrounding elements that are connected to the executioner’s daughter. This gives us the reader, a good basis as to ascertain the personality and life of the executioner’s daughter, which in my opinion is what makes this piece so intriguing.

                This short story has changed my view in general in the amount of depth a short story can provide a reader. Though less then I would wish in any story, the details was presented in an interesting way where I felt that every detail to understand the story and even give it some depth.

A portrait of Shunkin

The portrait of Shunkin by Tanizaki Jun’ichiro was an interesting short story which surprised me because I actually enjoyed it. Shunkin is a short story that is a memoir to Shunkin and her lover named Sasuke. The story focuses on their lives from childhood all the way to their elderly days and is ultimately as a sad tale.  The story is told through the narration of a man piecing together their lives through various resources that he has found and is told through a speculative point of view.

If you have read my other blog post about the sci-fi short story, you probably have already pegged me (and I also peg myself) as a short story hater. However, Asian short stories, which are often told the through the narrative of a memoir always pique my interest. Whether it is due to the fact that is because reading any Asian short story reminds me of my own heritage or it is through its narrative style is debatable, but Asian short stories often capture what I find most important in any novel, character development. Shunkin does not fail in delivering a great progression of the characters as they grow from children to adults in such a short amount of text. Jun’ichiro does a great job in portraying the psyche of Shunkin and also that of Sasuke, as they grow up together in the same household. But what I found the most interesting in this short story was the great portrayal of the difference between that of master and her servant.

Being raised in a culture where the gap between the servant and master is large, I understand and can relate to the relationship between Shunkin and Sasuke. Therefore, it was interesting to see Sasuke’s psyche toward being her servant, even in their elderly days where they are both blind. Often a servant is known to often resent the power and stature of the master, this is especially true in Asia where the servant often can never reach the stature of those born into the rich.  It was a mystery to me as to why Sasuke adored Shunkin so much as he did and that is what led me to become so engrossed into this enthralling love story.

Johnny Mnemonic

Known for being a complete hater of short stories (how can you reach the depth of plot and character development in a short story!) I was reluctant to read one but time constraints forced me to take a look at one. Sadly, my opinion on short stories was only reinforced after reading Johnny Mnemonic. Johnny Mnemonic is about a data carrier who through cybernetic alterations to his head, is able to store cyber information in his head. He makes a decent living with his job of carrying sensitive information for wealthy or underworld figures, until he has a tussle with Ralfi, who is overdue on his pay. The short story was not only a hard read but it was also almost unreadable as the style of narrative and the abruptness and rush feel of a short story resulted in what I call a mess.

The story itself had a premise that was easily understandable (when you reread sentences about two or three times) but because it is a short story, the author has no space to explain certain details the story. Things such as “the meeting was set for Drome at 2300 but I rode the tube three stops past the closest platform and walked back”. This one sentence can easily explain as to the nature of my confusion. What is Drome? Is it a club (which it was)? Is it a restaurant? What is a magnetic dog sister? What is a tube? All these different details about the story was never truly explained and left me wanting to know more. But sadly, as this is a short story, I will never get to know more than just glancing cursory details because the story is not long enough to support small details about the world. In my opinion, he should have written an engrossing novel instead of a short story (especially in the sci-fi genre).

                The style of narrative also added to the confusion. It seemed that the author purposely gave small details as a narrative technique. Whether this was because the target audiences of this short story are supposed to be sci-fi buffs but it made it infinitely harder to understand due to the sheer amount of unexplained details.

Snow Crash

Snow Crash, written by Neal Stephenson, has got to be one of the most horribly confusing by ultimately interesting book I have ever read. The book is about Hiro Protagonist, a half black-half Japanese male that is a suave hacker in the world of the metaverse and the best swordsman on the planet. He is joined by a female protagonist that goes by the name of Y.T, a 15 year old courier (a person who makes deliveries on a skateboard in this world), that eventually meets up with Hiro. The whole story revolves around them and a cornucopia of other minor characters that end up clashing together in a crazy story that will not fail to make you sit on every page thinking on what just happened.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, as many novels I read these days do not try to challenge the reader as intellectually as this novel. This is due to the fact that the story of this novel does not follow a clear cut path and often spirals into what seems to be the mundane into the absurd. What makes it so hard to follow is the fact that the novel starts off harmlessly enough, but then spirals into a plot about robot assassin dogs, huge aircraft carriers that harbor a population the size of a country, and a hiro (see what I did there?) that often gets into the most absurd situation. However, this does not mean that this book is necessarily bad; it may even be the best part of this novel. It breaks the bounds of the conventional with its absurdity that it is refreshing read which makes you stop every so often to try to piece together the plot in all of its craziness.

All this absurdity is then even added by the insane amounts of knowledge that the write then bestows upon us, especially around the middle of the novel. Through the fact that some of if not the majority of the novel takes place in the metaverse, the equivalent of an mmo like perfect world, a lot of text is situated in explaining the innerworkings of the system through the eyes of a hacker. Though to a hacker, such as I happen to be, it was easy to piece together most of the dialogue and immense amounts of information thrown at me. However, the another suspecting reader, this can  get confusing very fast and it will probably be a deal breaker for most readers. This unfortunately makes this novel a hard read for many and will result in  a lot of people giving up around 50 pages in due to the massive amount of confusion ultimately going to be settling on them.