The Blog of Roon

Renate never wanted to be a hero. She wanted to be a sidekick, specifically, her brother’s—and failing that, she wants to raise cattle and kids (the human variety) and lavish love on all the people around her who deserve it.

No ambition, some would say of her. I disagree. She’s got plenty of ambition. Just not the personal kind. I mean, really, if keeping your home safe from the depredations of the meanest damn dragon in the world plus all his badass henchlings isn’t ambition, what is?

I don’t think most of the people she meets manage to read that off her. In a way, that’s good; it’s why the more-Kahanite-than-Kahan Dorothy Durai keeps failing to shove her off course. It does point to a possible weakness, however. The first person or dragon who offers her what she knows perfectly well is her deepest wish could succeed in removing her from the board entirely. I imagine we shall see.

This musing arises because I myself seem to confuse people. Because I’m puppy-dog enthusiastic, don’t mind work in a good cause, and don’t have any speaking phobias, SLIS handed me the “ambitious” tag and I’m still rather boggled about it. Because, c’mon, me?

There’s stuff I’d like to see happen during my career, sure. It’s got jack-all to do with fancy titles, fancy pay, or fancy office space. Everything to do with righting wrongs, kicking butt, and taking names. Fighting the good fights as they come up.

Yeah, I’m almost as corny as my characters. There’s a reason I’ve got Don Quixote on my office bookshelf.

Renate, at her most helpful and compassionate: “I’m sorry if I’m disappointing your death-wish. Believe me, I understand how frustrating that can be.”

Renate has a Grand Plan for chucking a monkey wrench into the Purgatory tour. IM commentary on it from Aryk’s player, Matt:

Matt: Would we actually be able to get them to do that? Because if we could that would be hilarious!
DorotheaSalo: dunno
DorotheaSalo: we’ll see how persuasive Renate is
Matt: Ha ha, that’s awesome.
Matt: Serve ‘em right, too.
DorotheaSalo: but, hell, how *else* do you take down a rock band?
Matt: We could kidnap [band member] Hermit.
DorotheaSalo: LEGALLY.
Matt: Oh, legally, right.

Glad somebody likes my plan…

(Crossposted from Alan’s blog, mostly because of the Dragonhunt comment. And because I didn’t want to lose it, though it’s a little profane for CavLec proper.)

Saw Kingdom of Heaven yesterday. Thought it kicked Gladiator’s ass all over the screen.

I totally see why some people didn’t like it, and I totally disagree with them. This is not a heroic film, which everyone seems to have been expecting. This is a film about snatching what small victories you can from the Inescapable Logic of Fate. About not being a fricking hypocrite, even when half the world around you is—and about the discovery that when you’re not a fricking hypocrite, the people around you do strangely heroic and non-hypocritical things in order to follow your example.

It’s a very Dragonhunty film, actually, aside from the near-total absence of women (in the flick, not in Dragonhunt!). Tell me the Templars aren’t Heaven/Hell all over.

And I dug it. Really good flick, I thought, and one more people could stand to see and think about.

It’s a very anti-religion film. Very. I suspect that’s where some of the reviewers’ hate comes from, covertly. Me, I loved every anti-clerical moment of it. Which isn’t to say it was one-note about religion; there are decent and honorable religious characters, the main difference between them and the indecent and dishonorable ones being (again) the lack of hypocrisy.

Ridley Scott films a mean mass-battle scene. As good as Jackson. My husband says better, but I disagree; the focus in this film is different from LotR, so of course the techniques are different. There’s one post-battle scene that’ll haunt the hell out of you. I don’t know why no one’s done it before, but there it is.

Kingdom is significantly less manipulative than Gladiator; the manipulation scale isn’t at zero by any means, but most of the manipulation happens early in the movie in order for the Logic of Fate to take over about one-third through. I felt manipulated by the whole long-lost-daddy setup (I would rather have seen than been told of Godfrey’s basic humanism), but I didn’t feel manipulated at all by the fate of the King of Jerusalem (which I won’t spoil).

The cast is pretty darn good, and Orly actually mostly manages to hold up his end of things despite being up against the likes of Liam Neeson and the totally kick-ass Jeremy Irons. Props to the casters for actually casting Arabs as Arabs (even though Saladin wasn’t an Arab, he was a Kurd, but oh well—I can forgive that one, especially as the actor was fabulous).

Orly’s got two basic problems, one of which he can probably fix and one of which he may be stuck with. The first problem is his utter lack of irony. A few moments in Kingdom needed a shit-eating grin or some other indication of Orly’s awareness of the irony he was surrounded with, didn’t get one, and fell a little flat because of it. The second problem is Orly’s reedy, weightless voice, and honestly, I’m not sure that’s fixable. Still, he did okay, and he was certainly pretty to look at.

So was Martin “Celeborn” Csokas, playing a total asshole. Wouldn’t have thought he could do it, but he was great, creeptastic without having to chew scenery.

Good film. Dorothea-Bob says check it out. If you stay for the credits and are a total LotR geek, watch for the impressive number of LotR people involved with this one. Good to know those folks aren’t going hungry.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. Renate has another plan.

Okay, I admit the last time I had a flash of screaming genius, it worked out okay. This plan, however, depends not on Renate’s friends, but on a bunch of crazy wannabe-terrorist thugs in Eridu. If it backfires, it’ll backfire big.

Right, so here’s the situation. Renate is working security on the Purgatory tour of the Silver Coast. The wannabe-terrorist thugs, who call themselves the Knights of Destiny, got to the concert venue in Eridu and made nuisances of themselves. Purgatory’s Heaven bodyguard, Darm Sobredaño, suggested to Renate that they strongarm the Knights into something so stupidly violent that even the corrupt Eridu police would have to arrest them.

Renate was not pleased with this plan; not only does it endanger Eridu (the Knights not being terribly careful with crossfire), but it scores Purgatory big pity points if it works. Darm as much as admitted that was part of his reasoning. So our Rennie made a counteroffer. Let me talk to them, she said. I’m one of theirs. They’ve had their fun already. Maybe I can convince them to back off.

Darm chewed on that, and bought it. Much to the good of Rennie’s plan, mind you. Mua-hahahaha.

If this works, it’ll be a beautiful, beautiful thing. The big bad Heaven knight, outwitted by a no-account little backwoods farm girl. Purgatory goes down in flames. Sleazy promoter Hadley Domingo burns right along with ’em. And best of all, Renate will have broken neither the law nor her word. I’m talkin’ beauty, do you hear me?

If it works. Which it may not. And Darm wants to take Renate out somewhere he can talk to her privately, which frankly scares the daylights out of me. What can he possibly want? But she’s a game little thing, so she’s going to dress up pretty and go along.

She’ll have to depend on Darm to keep vampires off her. The Purgatory tour has been marred by two murders, both done by vampires. And it just so happens that Purgatory has a vampire on staff. Rennie established through a fairly solid logic chain that Purgatory’s vamp didn’t do it—and somebody (not sure who yet) on the local Camarilla-equivalent did. Also not sure whether the frame-up was for convenience or in malice; could be either. Rennie being Rennie, she went straight to the press, and the Camarilla is, shall we say, less than pleased.

In other news, Renate and Lyria had a little chat, in which they drew up the first plans for establishing Lyria’s religion. I had been afraid that I’d have to turn Renate into a fire-breathing evangelist, which doesn’t suit her one bit, but in fact I don’t. All I have to do is recruit people with dreams—and I’ve got two or three in mind already. One is a former member of the demon evangelists we defeated along with the Ruido Grande. Another… is Dorothy Durai, and I’m really not sure how that’s going to play out, because there’s a really weird kind of, um, go-away-closer thing going on between Dorothy and Renate, so weird it bewilders even me. Just weird. But Lyria says she’ll help with the Dorothy-wrangling, so we’ll just have to see how it goes.

The third candidate… had better wait until Lyria’s a bit stronger, I think. But she definitely fits the profile, oh, yes…