Thought of the Week: Are They Really So Different?

A child and a grownup…but which is which?

A child and a grownup…but which is which?

It’s a funny business, living with a child. It’s a little bit like living with a mooching flatmate who is quite a bit smarter than you. (And shorter, which sort of makes up for it.)

You see, when you’re talking about children in the hypothetical (as in, “we might want kids some day”, or “aren’t your sister’s kids wonderful?”), they seem a little bit like kittens: small, furry and adorable. They’re supposed to giggle and coo and drink from a bottle and smile with a little toothless smile. Or say things like, “Daddy says mommy gets grumpy when she sits on rags, but I don’t see why she doesn’t just get up.” They’re supposed to hold your hand crossing the street, and be suddenly polite when your parents are over.

Uh…right.

What tends to happen is they cry and vomit on you, shit on your shoes and flush your car keys down the toilet, say things like, “Mommy, daddy said not to tell you he drank six bottles of beer last night,” and then suddenly they want to read to themselves at night, and tell you off for using bad language. There isn’t really a gradual change (at least that’s how I remember it); one day they’re a tiny little brat, and then suddenly they’re more of an adult than you are.

And that’s the funny – and scary – part. Children, of course, are supposed to emulate their parents. They’re supposed to try on mommy’s lipstick, cut themselves shaving with daddy’s razor, check themselves out in big brother’s high heels; it’s what they call growing up [side note: I think that might be where I went wrong]. And you think that you’re supposed to be in control of that process. After all, the whole reason to have kids is so that you can raise them in exactly the opposite way to how your parents raised you.

-Pluto-a

It’s perhaps as likely as anything that children come from here.

The thing is, you’re not. Whatever you think you will be/won’t be/ought to be/would be if your wife didn’t nag you so much, that’s exactly what won’t happen. You turn around, and there’s this little four-foot nothing person that looks and acts like…well, like you, only better. Naturally, you ask where on Earth this person came from. Who let them in? Do they have a driver’s license? Should you offer them tea, or put them on the next flight to Pluto?

Children make themselves from what they find around them. And that is probably about the only thing that you have any say in. You see, we’ve raised Little Satis (through no deliberate thought) to speak, to think, to read and to understand. I think what might have happened is that this opened his eyes to see what was around him. And what he saw was us telling him we love him, yelling at him because he won’t clean his room, reading to him at night, and telling him for the millionth time to turn the damn light off when you leave the room (us swearing, too). And this made him. Would you like to know how I know?

Because now he tells me off for leaving the lights on. Reminds me to give him his vitamin. Points out that mommy will be angry if I leave clothes on the floor. Wakes up early because he doesn’t want daddy to be late and lose his job. Tells me to write things down as they come to me because I know I’ll forget.

And quite suddenly, I’m not sure who the grown-up here is. He’s telling me my music sucks, and I’m really sure that’s supposed to be the other way around. He’s giving mommy foot rubs, and telling her she watches too much TV. That nurturing environment? All of sudden he’s taking care of us, the incompetent grown-ups.

Then again, maybe that isn’t too bad a thing. After all, we’ve already taken care of him for eight years; it’s about time we got something in return.

daysarejustpacked

The Redemption of Erâth: Book 2, Chapter 2

Chapter 2: Isles of the Cosari

What now awaited Brandyé was a thing beyond his imagination. Who these men were remained unknown, but where they had come from was now clear, for before him lay a creation of a size and nature that he had never heard spoken of, even in his grandfather’s wildest tales.

It was a water vessel – so much was clear, for it lay half upon the beach, and half in the shallows of the sea. But it was as unlike the craft that had borne him from Consolation as a pebble is to a mountain. The vessel’s hull rose some ten or more feet above his head, and atop that he saw a great mast, towering high towards the clouds, and from which hung vast drapes whose purpose he could not fathom. To the rear of the craft stood another mast, though shorter than the first, and the tapered bow ended in a carving of some fanged beast that reminded him uneasily of the fierundé.

There were perhaps some dozen men on and around this great craft, and Brandyé could see many more animals – small deer, foxes, a kind of wild pig, and birds that resembled pheasants. Each was bound in a […]

Read the complete chapter here.

Movie Night: The Avengers

Year: 2012

Director: Joss Whedon

Production Company: Marvel Studios

Leads: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans

avengers-assemble-poster-500x742Well, well, well. Here is a movie both Little Satis and I have been dying to watch for I don’t know how long, and finally decided it was just time to get it out of the way.

I should start by saying that I am a fan of good superhero movies; that is to say, movies that both respect the style and material of the original comic book, while at the same time humanizing the characters by giving them flaws deep enough to destroy themselves, never mind the bad guys. In essence: The Crow = good; Batman & Robin = bad.

One of the most successful of these in recent years has been, of course, Chris Nolan‘s Batman trilogy (Batman Begins, The Dark Knight & The Dark Knight Rises). We are introduced to a Bruce Wayne who fights not for a noble cause but for revenge; a man who has no desire to continue his crusade against Gotham’s underbelly other than for his own self-flagellation, driven by hate and guilt.

But this is the DC Comics universe. Responsible for the two most formidable superheroes ever created – Superman and Batman – Marvel ought to be the underdog, always caught in the shadow of their larger-than-life siblings.

But not so. Other than the recent Batman films, D.C.’s output has been mediocre, at best; meanwhile, Marvel Studios has had nearly incessant success over the past decade with the Blade trilogy, the insanely popular X-Men franchise, Iron Man and Captain America: The First Avenger (I’ll let them off for the first Hulk and Fantastic Four). More than this, though, they’ve carefully built an entire universe of co-existing and overlapping story lines, threading the continuity between Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor and Captain America in so deft a way that there was really nowhere left to go but: The Avengers.

Though obviously distorted by necessity for Hollywood, The Avengers retains a remarkable affinity for the comic book origins; though many of the characters are different, Iron Man/Tony Stark and Captain America/Steve Rogers are core members of the group, and this is evidenced in the film by the focus of drama on these two (and indeed the conflict that arises between them). Even the story is retained: demigod Loki comes to earth seeking revenge on his brother, Thor. Loki’s power of illusion and manipulation causes near-fatal rifts between the fledgeling group’s members, until they realize that they can only defeat Loki together.

To be perfectly honest, there’s not a lot else you need to know about this movie. In the past, Marvel Studios has done a good job of digging deep into their characters’ history and bringing out the ‘person’ behind the superhero, something that is particularly noticeable in the X-Men films as well as Captain America. While there is an attempt to retain this in The Avengers, the very fact of having an ensemble cast of superheroes dooms this from the beginning: it would be nearly impossible to focus equally on six different characters and still have room for self-reflection.

Not that it matters. Perhaps the most enjoyable thing about The Avengers is that, frankly, it doesn’t try to pretend to be anything other than a mindless, visually thrilling romp of destruction. And at this, it is very successful. Despite the knowledge that at least half of what’s on screen at any given moment was created by ILM, the visuals are nonetheless stunning, and – astonishing, really, in an era of CGI-anything – there are a few moments that are quite literally jaw-dropping, including the ridiculous aircraft carrier scene (if you’ve seen it, you know what I mean).

This is not an intellectual movie. In fact, it doesn’t even advance the stories of any of the individual heroes (something Kurt Vonnegut would understand), and no one leaves any different to how they entered. It’s basically good guys kick bad-guy ass. The genius of this movie is that it works anyway; having come to know the characters so intimately through their previous filmic incarnations, it’s actually kind of relaxing to sit back and watch them blow shit up.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆