Stories, Discernment and Homework

     This Laura Story song has been stuck in my head an especially large amount for the last couple months. It usually plays pretty often, for whatever reason, but....yeah. I'm just...exhausted. More than usual. Past the energy of complaining. Past "keep your head and keep plowing." At least that ear infection is slowly improving, that's something.

      Almost halfway through the final Harry Potter, which will be something done, at least, once it's finished. This has been an incredibly unproductive week; haven't been able to concentrate on homework at all, and haven't even written up this week's Idol recaps yet. J.K. Rowling's writing has definitely gotten better over time; it's just....something, I don't know. They're all so massively long, for one thing. (Between the seven, they cover roughly 3,600 pages and just over a million words. 1,084,170 to be Hermione-exact.) That takes a lot of energy. And like Martin Cothran wrote once in an editorial in an issue of The Classical Teacher magazine, he was quoting Madeleine L'Engle's opinion of Rowling's books: "They're nice stories, it's just....there's nothing to them." Because there isn't. So they aren't really that harmful, like a lot of people said. They're just empty. Which is much worse in some ways, because there isn't anything to ponder which could be considered worthwhile(though I have no doubt lots of academic scholarly papers and books have dissected elements.)
     I've also been watching handfuls of episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because it was homework. That was also tiring, but for a different reason. For one thing, I had my critical observation reporter instinct on. And for another, Buffy is what turned Joss Whedon into Joss Whedon; so that was interesting from that standpoint. And they have been very well-written and engaging plotlines; though a lot of Wikipedia research has had to be done to finish the outline of blank spaces between episodes. But even if the makeup of the vampires is really awful as-only-90's-special-effects-can-be on second viewing; vampires are still scary. I mean, I appreciate that Whedon played with and mixed up all the stereotypes and historical depictions into crafting this world and everything, but the concept is incredibly uncomfortable. But as somebody who frequently tries to evaluate pop culture by Biblical principles and mesh them whenever possible, while still striving for and admiring high artistic quality, it's an interesting situation. It's one of those "some people can eat meat sacrificed to idols and others can't" deals like Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 8, or the folks at PluggedIn are always arguing amongst themselves about. I'll skip the Buffy section of the Whedonverse if possible, and let others appreciate all the good parts(which, of course, there are lots of).
     But the thing that makes Buffy most dangerous is that it's such a well-told story. Louis L'Amour knew this well, that well-crafted narratives can be bombs. So did G.K. Chesterton, J.R.R. Tolkien, Harper Lee and Agatha Christie, plus a lot of other dead people I can't think of right now. Stephen King knows this. When tales are engaging, with an emotional pull created by following the adventures and trials of very complex characters with a lot of depth, that creates a lot of potential energy. MacGyver would be one of the first to agree that when a bunch of highly-flammable potential energy is bottled up, things will go either very right, or very, very wrong. (Come to think of it, Peter Parker and Norman Osborn serve as good examples, too.) The main premise of "high school is hell", taken literally like it is in the show, is really interesting from a storytelling angle. Never having attended an actual high school, I can't say how accurate that is, and I would be more inclined to say that college is. But apparently Buffy had quite a bit of trouble with that, too. Anyway, for me, the dark side of Buffy is too strong to think it very safe to be around.
     The Harry Potter books contain a lot of magical elements, too, but they strike me as harmless because they are first and foremost not well written enough to pose a danger. The later books have progressed far enough for me to shrug and say, "Huh. That was fine, I guess," and forget most of what happened almost immediately, but the early ones made me angry they were so bad; the fierce kind where I wanted to fire the book as hard as I could into the wall and cry in frustration at society in general for turning these into basically the biggest book series ever.

     Fuller House premiered on Netflix Friday; and they managed to match the tone perfectly. That's pretty amazing. And it doesn't help if you're one of those strange people who dislike Full House, but if you're a fan it's been awesome to see how the Tanners are doing nowadays. And as sitcoms, they both fill a much different niche of the storytelling spectrum; so the goals and expectations are different. Because the world needs more sitcoms which are actually funny, and because the main goal was to literally recapture Full House if possible, Fuller House is a success. (Especially when thrown into contrast with all those other Netflix shows....they are dark. Have mercy.)

     So now I'll get to work on those Idol recaps and then head back to doing homework.