The water has been fixed. I can run the dishwasher and the washing machine again. I've taken the solar shower down and can take regular showers again. It's so nice not to have to haul all that heavy water. While I was, I thought about those movies and books in which the hero procures a water source, and that's the end of the problem. If the hero's injured, carrying the water is a chore. Otherwise the authors never focus on it. It's amazing how tiring and time-consuming moving water is and how much of it it can take to do things. It's also surprising how little it can take. Washing dishes doesn't take much. Washing clothes takes a lot. Wet clothes are even heavier than wet water. I ended up going to the laundromat almost immediately. But all that's over with. I'm no longer getting my 1800s on.
I got a little bit done on the paintings for the covers for AoE and the mystery/romance from a few years ago. I'm not an illustrator so I don't know if they'll work out. But I'm trying. I also got a little writing done recently. Slowly, things are kind of getting back together.
This next part contains more, massive spoilers to the last Hunger Games book. As I noted a couple of weeks ago, Hunger Games is pure Greek storytelling, which is a disappointment. In Greek stories the hero wins but loses the thing he loves most or the thing most precious to him. That's boring and not true to life. Imagine having a child or spouse die every time you got a big promotion at work. That's Greek literature. The last time I talked about this I was fewer than 20 pages until the end of book 3. I speculated that maybe the virgin, female protagonist would die as a sacrifice. It didn't happen. She used knowledge from the character who represented Lucifer to murder the character who represented God. The God character was standing on a balcony and fell when she died. That's right. The God character was a woman. The imagery is God falling dead from heaven. The Lucifer character laughs, when God dies.
And then the story fizzles out. The protagonist is locked up for a few weeks and then sent home with no consequences and no punishment. Admittedly, there aren't always consequences in real life, but she murdered a major character. No, she was the victim. The romance part fizzled as well. During the story, the protagonist loved the one she was with at the time. She never made an active choice between the two men in the story who loved her. At the end, one of them moved away, and she married the one who stayed in town. There was a line saying she loved him, but it was never really shown in the story. She flip-flopped back and forth between the two men or just used one like a tool and threw him away.
Book 1 was a page turner. Book 2 wasn't bad. Book 3 dragged and had an unsatisfying ending. All the annoying, irritating things I was hoping would be fixed never were, because that's not Greek storytelling.
I haven't seen the movies, but I know this. There's no way the weak, wishy washy, flip flopper from the book will ever make it to the big screen. The character is too weak and feeble as a person. She's a passive victim. Hollywood will change her into a strong character, because that's what audiences like. So, I expect the movies will be decent or even very good. Except the last one? In book 1 the protagonist trades places with her sister to save her life. In book 3 the sister is killed right in front of her eyes, because Greek storytelling demands the hero loses the thing he loves most. Would Hollywood ever put that in the movie? I kind of don't think so. They changed the ending of The Manchurian Candidate. The nation is in a different place. I don't see them ending the movies in a sad, tragic hopeless way like the books did.
Have a great weekend.
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