It's about sex and death

It seems to me as if the main thing the authors of this article (it's German, sorry) couldn't accept, even though they didn't say it, is not the brutal murders in the novels they write about, it's the fact that the writers are female. Women don't imagine such brutality if they're normal - this seems to be what they really think.

I happen to like Tess Gerritsen's novels. They are sometimes brutal in the descriptions of murders and suchlike, but most of all they are well written and picture strong characters - not few of them women.

And, let's face it, we are living in a brutal world. Sex and death seem to be destined to rule our lives. And if I pick up a thriller, I expect it to show me the dark sides of our real world. I don't expect it to be all fluffy bunnies and pink tutus. And for me, to show the full extend of the madness embedded in the minds of the murderers also means to show the full extend of the blood and the gore they revel in. It's not something that gets me off, but it's something I find necessary and almost normal for a novel of that kind. And I've read it in novels written by men as well.

So this seems to be what it all boils down to: those are women writing such dreadful stories (instead of the shallow love-stories and melodramas they should be writing). Not strong men who might have been cops once in their life, but women who are not supposed to be so cold-blooded and used to violence.

And from my experiences - and given the fact that, for example, most pathologists these days (which means those recording the dreadful details of a murder) are women - that's a very old point of view. Women are usually committing less violent crimes, but they do experience violence just like everybody else - if not more of it. Women are beaten more often in their family (while most men are beaten somewhere else, like a pub). Women are more likely to be raped or assaulted (sexually or otherwise). In other words: women are more likely to become the victim of violence than men, on the whole.

Still, talking and writing about violence is still seen as the domain of men (just like talking and writing about sex, but that's another topic). So it's scaring for some people to see women writing about it that easily and that successfully.

It's the 21st century, not the year 21 A.D., so learn to live with it!

Wake-Up Call

And then there's this article (German as well), published on the same website on the same day. How long have the authors of this article slept? Ten years, twenty?

E-sports isn't very well known in Germany, yes. But after writing several articles about how teenagers and people in their twenties are gathering and playing "Killerspiele" together on so-called LAN-parties and organizing themselves in "Clans", the journalists in Germany should have stumbled over e-sports before ... honestly.

In other countries, there are people who live by taking part in e-sports tournaments and playing "StarCraft", "Unreal Tournament" or other games for a living. In Germany you can maybe finance your next vacation with it, but that's all.

But now even ordinary people and groups working together in normal companies build clans and come to e-sports events. So you can't go around saying any longer "it's just some murderers-to-be who are doing this".

The shock of it must have been immense.

Haicuts and Magazines

I got myself a haircut today. That's not something special, I wear my hair short, it grows quickly and so I have to get a new haircut about once every eight weeks. It's something which doesn't bother me a lot.

I usually visit a rather cheap chain of hairdressers, both because I don't really care a lot about who cuts my hair (and the people working there surely are a good as the more expensive hairdressers, but at half the price) and because you don't need to make an appointment beforehand. I decide I need a haircut, I go there, I get it, done. That's how I like it.

The bad side to not having to make an appointment is that you usually have to wait a lot. But that's not a problem for me, on the whole, because I go to the hairdresser when I don't have an appointment to keep. So whether I wait twenty minutes or two hours doesn't make much of a difference.

This is where the magazines at the hairdresser come in. In Germany you'll find a bunch of magazines (usually in special covers) wherever you usually have to wait a lot. Doctors and hairdressers are on the top of that list, naturally. But while doctors usually keep a large variety of magazines stocked, the hairdressers have an overflow of gossip- and fashion-magazines and usually between two and three other magazines - which is the only kind I like to read. I'm a woman, but I'm not really partial to gossip ... or fashion.

And even I can't make one good magazine (the other one was missing) last for two hours. Waiting for the haircut this time was torture ... but, to be fair, I got a marvellous head-massage afterwards.

This has given me a lot of time to think and so I wondered about one article in the magazine (but more about that below) and the reason why most of the stuff they keep there is so ... girlie-like. I mean, am I the only woman in the world who only uses gossip- and fashion-magazines when she can't sleep? There's only so much time you can spent with the crossword-puzzles in there and afterwards they get boring - at least, if you're not interested in the whole "who has cheated on whom with whom"-spiel or the latest fashion trends from Milan (or elsewhere) you can only wear if you're one hour from starving to death.

Anyway, I survived the two hours and got myself a nice new haircut.

What about the quality of TV?

While I was waiting for my haircut (see post above), I read about the low quality of private TV-stations in a magazine (for more about the quality of magazines in a hairdresser's shop also see post above). And that made me wonder how a magazine which basically does pretty much the same "infotainment" magazines on the private TV-stations do as well could judge them like that. But then, it's one of the very righteous magazines which also go against "Killerspiele" and everything that doesn't fit with their pseudo-liberal view of the world.

They were bemoaning - at length - the fact that only very few private TV-stations (as opposed to those controlled by the government) put out a lot of documentaries (although some of them do...). They have to make money with the stuff they show, after all. Low rates of viewers means less money from advertisements. But then, what does that in essence mean?

It means the stuff those TV-stations air is exactly what most viewers are interested in. They have to take care of that, otherwise they won't get the rates they need. But putting away what they don't want to show isn't limited to private TV-stations.

ZDF and ARD are the two governmental supported TV-stations in Germany (ARD is composed of a large group of regional stations, actually). Ever since they breached out, they have also changed the quality of their program quite a bit. For example they've banned everything high-cultural, like theatre or opera, to a special station, 3Sat, which is a cooperation with Swiss and Austrian TV. The same goes, to a certain degree, for ARTE, a French-German cooperation. There's a special station for documentaries as well (Phoenix, which I quite like to watch). And there's a special station for children's programs, too. Ever since "Kinderkanal" (Children's Channel) went up, ARD and ZDF have shown next to 0 programs for kids. In addition, even though every adult in Germany has to pay around 17 Euros every three months for those stations, they have, over the last couple of years, started to work with advertisements as well. That makes me sick, especially as I probably watch a total of one or two hours a week of their programs.

Private stations never claimed to be anything but specialized on entertainment. They have their own news which - while maybe a bit shallow - nevertheless cover the same stuff the online-versions of most print magazines in Germany (which I browse every day) also cover. So how can the print-version of a magazine go on at length about 'bad journalism' which they do online as well? Hypocrisy, I guess. They have some cultural magazines (usually late at night) and are specialized in showing what 90 percent of the viewers want to see.

Young people - those who watch the private stations - tend to get their information elsewhere, usually online. They don't need 20 magazines and news shows on TV. They tend to make their own picture of the world - and especially the internet, where you can search and cross-reference easily, helps a lot with that. And the private news shows tend to do it better, with more explanations and a better wording.

Older people tend to watch ARD and ZDF (or their regional stations) a lot anyway. But - as I know from my parents who are both 60+ - even they quite often find the programs boring.

While the private stations tend to create their own series - or simply buy the ones from other countries they like -, ARD and ZDF seem forced to produce their own versions of formats that have been successful somewhere else. Where's the point in that? Imagine a successful series from the US or even the UK, but with German actors. That takes a lot of the fun out of it, mostly (an Australian format translated decades ago is the only one which I personally find has made it very well in it's German version).

I don't just watch a show like "House" (for example) for the medical cases. I'm not a doctor or nurse myself, neither am I a fan of series like "E.R.". I watch it for the cases, but I also watch it because of Hugh Laurie who plays such an interesting character. For me, Dr. Gregory House only works that way when Hugh Laurie plays him. I don't even want to imagine a German actor in this role (especially as some of the stuff probably would not happen in a German version - it's different if they just do a voice over for it).

The same goes for other formats. The only remotely interesting Sci-Fi series ever produced in Germany (in the 60's, if I remember it correct) had six episodes and was more fun than suspense. Nevertheless, "Raumpatrouille Orion" is far better (despite gigantic goldfish, equipment that screamed "recycled household stuff" and absolutely hideous dances) than other attempts (very few) to produce something that could look a series like "Star Trek" in the eye. (We can do for cinema, though, just watch "(T)Raumschiff Surprise".) We Germans do great crime stories and mediocre soap operas, but we're really bad at most other stuff - 'cause it's against our idea of culture, I guess. So why take a format and produce a new, usually worse series instead of just buying the series as a such and do a good German dubbing? Works perfectly for the private stations (which also produce their own formats, but have left the idea of stealing the formats far behind - after "Married … with children" [calling the German version a disaster would be flattery]).

Quality of TV is decreasing everywhere, at least from my point of view. But to me it's more shocking what happened to the supposedly 'better' government-supported stations that to the self-financed private ones.

Update on the World of Darkness

I really did have to get the world straight again, after all, it's a matter of life or death. (Well, joking here, sort of.)

The "World of Darkness" was created by White Wolf Publishing as a background for various role-playing games dealing with monsters and magic. Currently, after quite some redesign, it's four different types of 'monsters' the player can be: Mage, werewolf, construct (like Frankenstein's creature) or vampire. All of them are to be found in the "World of Darkness" which is basically like our world, just more brutal, more corrupt and a lot darker.

After some serious reforming, the role-playing games have been renamed. The new games are called "Mage: The Awakening", "Werewolf: The Forsaken", "Vampire: The Requiem" and (new) "Promethean: The Created" (Promethean comes from Prometheus, a figure of Greek Mythology that's supposed to have created the first artificial life-form - man). I am partial to "Vampire: The Requiem" or - as I knew it until yesterday - "Vampire: The Masquerade". (The Masquerade is the most important rule among the vampires in the World of Darkness: Never let a mortal see what you are - unless, of course, you plan on killing him anyway.)

There are quite some changes in the game: different clans (13 down to 5, two of which are new), different organisation (not just 2 fractions, but 5 covenants) and an overall change in the vampire world.

The old "Vampire"-system sparked two computer games: "Vampire: The Masquerade - Redemption" and "Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines".

While "Redemption" had a rather soggy story about a young crusader who falls in love with the woman taking care of him after an injury, kills a vampire who has been threatening her and the town she lives in and is subsequently turned into a vampire by one of the other clan elders, "Bloodlines" is much more free in the whole storyline. In "Redemption" the character is given to the player by the game, a young fighter named Christophe who gets turned into a Bruhja (that's one of the 13 clans of "Masquerade"). As all clans have different special abilities (known as disciplines), game-play is, to a certain degree, limited by this. On the very positive side is that the whole story starts out in medieval times (in Prague) and ends in modern-day New York. After about half the story (and a trip to Vienna), Christophe gets trapped in a crashing castle after a fight against a boss enemy. In the basements of a society hunting down vampires, he returns to life about thousand years later. (As, in the role-playing game staking doesn't kill a vampire, they just fall into a trance.) The good thing about this is that the player gets the chance to play a vampire both in medieval times (with swords and so on) and in modern times (with guns and suchlike). For the time the graphics were great, too, so playing the game was really fun.

"Bloodlines" on the other hand - created shortly before the role-playing game was changed into "The Requiem" - features the clans usually associated with the Carmarilla (one of the two fractions in "Masquerade") and turned the player into a newly changed vampire whose Sire (the vampire who made him) was executed for creating a new vampire without being allowed to do so. Nevertheless the player was allowed to live, just to prove he was worth living. So he was sent from L.A. to Santa Monica first - and that's where playing started in the game. As "Bloodlines" was based on the "Half Life 2" engine, the surrounding was great, there were a lot of different jobs to do, there were 7 different clans to come from (and the player could either answer questions to find the right one or just choose) and the whole starting point was different. It was far more role-playing like. The story wasn't that soppy either ... well, apart from the execution right in the beginning, of course. Imagine: You don't even know you're a vampire and suddenly people storm into the hotel suit, stake the woman/man you've been spending the last night with and pull both you and him/her out of it. A short time later you're in a desolate theatre and a guy you don't know starts talking about how sorry he is to be forced to do that and has his gorilla behead the woman/man. And the only reason why you get out of this alive (well, sort of) seems to be the rather angry comments of one of the people in the audience.

But back to "Vampire: The Requiem". I have to admit that the new basics are rather interesting. There's more fractions (and the five clans are split up in some more) and there's a few rather interesting new ideas. So I'll have a new source book to draw information from ... especially for writing my own stories, but for other things as well. (And writing the post has made me consider reinstalling "Bloodlines" on my computer.)

Although I'm glad not to live in the "World of Darkness", it's an interesting place to visit.

Shadow of the Vampire

No, this post is not about the movie with this title (thought it's extremely good and you should watch it, if you get the chance), it's about "Dracula" overshadowing Bram Stoker's other novels. And the whole post is an addition to the one about "Vampire".

Even for a classic, "Dracula" is an exceptional book in many ways. Since published first in 1897 (due to the content it was sorted into the 'pornographic' section of the market - what can I say? vampire brides are loose women...), the novel has never been out of print - and it has been translated into almost every major language still spoken on earth.

To be honest, the book isn't as 'hot' as most of the movies based on it. There's pages and pages written in the style of various diaries, excepts from newspapers and stuff like that. It's a good read, if you like that sort of thing (as I do), but it's not a fast read ... or easy to understand. It's quite thick, too.

But what Stoker has understood on a very basic level, just like Polidori when he wrote "The Vampyre" or Sheridan LeFanu when he wrote "Carmilla", is that the vampire is a very sexual creature - even without vampires having sex themselves. The werewolf is a savage creature, the ghost usually can't interact with people on a physical level and we all don't want to imagine Frankenstein's creature on a date, but the vampire hunts - and kills - by seducing. This has made "Dracula", whether you read it or watch a movie (I'd suggest the Francis Ford Coppola version - or the one made by Hammer, although it's not exactly close to the novel), one of the longest-lasting stories in the media. Count Dracula himself does not just jump out of the dark, grab a person and drain it (although he probably could...), he seduces, drinks from his prey during various meetings until the final moment of the kill (or the change of a mortal into a vampire). The same thing is true for Polidori's Lord Ruthven or LeFanu's Carmilla. And if you look to modern vampire stories like those of Ann Rice, it's even more obvious.

But Stoker, although not a full-time writer, wrote more than just one novel. In addition to "Dracula", he wrote three more novels (although I have to admit that I never managed to read through one of them) and a host of short stories. The short stories are actually better than the novels - a fact also true for Arthur Conan Doyle, but that's another topic. Especially those gathered in "Dracula's Guest" surely are worth reading. Stoker wrote rather dreadful stuff, especially when he was not using pages over pages for it.

But this is about the other novels (which have also been converted into movies). There are two I can recommend to those who have managed Dracula (as they are rather similar in style). Those are "Lair of the White Worm" and "The Jewel of Seven Stars".

"Lair of the White Worm" has only been transformed into a movie once (and said movie features Hugh Grant in a kilt - a good reason to watch it on it's own). The basic story is that of a priestess serving an old god (said White Worm, which is rather a dragon without legs or some sort of dinosaur than a worm in the way most people would understand it today). The priestess wants a young (and, naturally, innocent) girl as the next sacrifice for her god ... and a host of heroes (men, but in Stoker's time that went without saying) are fighting the serpent-like woman and her god. You might hazard a guess on the outcome, but it should be clear what happens in the end...

"Jewel of the Seven Stars" has been used for a movie at least twice. There's "The Awakening" with Charleston Heston and Stephanie Zimbalist and "Bram Stoker's The Mummy" (produced not so long after "Bram Stoker's Dracula"). The latter is more true to the original story, although both have been taken from their original setting (Stoker's own time) and 'replanted' in modern times. It doesn't really harm the story though, unlike "Dracula" and "Lair of the White Worm" it hardly works with specific means. And an ancient Egyptian queen (one of the evil sort, of course) coming back to life in an archaeologist's daughter isn't bound to a special period of time. And it's not ending too well...

In both cases the movies are actually better than the novels, at least for a modern reader. Stoker's style isn't easy to cope with and he definitely wrote better prose in "Dracula" than in his later novels. Maybe it's because essentially (though with female villains) he's been rewriting "Dracula" in the other stories. It's always basically the same. There's a threat coming from outside (so the more or less reluctant 'heroes' are not really to blame themselves). There's a band of heroes that forms, there's the damsel in distress and finally there's the demise - which way ever - of the evil (though not in the movie versions of "The Jewel of Seven Stars", in which the queen survives).

But nevertheless, only very few people know about Stoker's work, as long as it's not "Dracula". And that's a shame.

They must really need someone...

This morning I was phoned twice by a temporal employment agency in Bretten (a town not too far from my own). The second time I managed to get to the phone in time. But, honestly, it wasn't worth it.

I was told I had applied for a job with them and if I could come in for an interview this afternoon. When I asked for details about the job (I had not applied for), I was forwarded to another employee who told me that they had gotten a letter from the Arbeits­amt (which is an office of the German government, dealing with unemployed people - like me, currently). Since those letters normally are sent to both parties - the unemployed and the possible employer - and I haven't gotten mine (the postman comes to my house around twelve), they must have gotten theirs this very morning (and the first call was shortly after eight o'clock). Now, normally it would be my job to contact them (and most of the employers take their sweet time answering).

The fact alone that they get the letter and immediately phone me, even before I've gotten mine, is suspicious. And then the first words were something along the lines of "we've got a great job, wonderful office, interesting project". I mistrust such description when I asked before what kind of job this was. And then came the real damper: it's in Ettlingen. I personally only had contact with two call-centres in Ettlingen. One doesn't employ people from my hometown, because it's too far away and they usually have several hours break around noon. The other one is Walter Telemedien, a company I wouldn't work for if it were the last on earth. So I told them I wouldn't drive to Ettlingen from my hometown on a regular basis, it's too far and I need time for my web-master. They argued other employees would do it, that couldn't be the problem. But I know someone who drives over an hour for a call-center job from Stuttgart to my hometown, so the argument "others do it, too" doesn't really work for me.

I didn't even ask which call-centre it was, since first of all I find it very suspicious to 'catch' me like that, phoning and wanting the interview on the very same day - you never get that in Germany under normal circumstances - and in addition Ettlingen is too far away to drive there every day for a few Euros the hour (as temporal employment agencies never pay well, usually it's 7,41 before taxes). They obviously really need people for that job and if the office were so great and the people there were so nice, that shouldn't be the case. I would have gone there had the job been in Bretten or somewhere closer to home, but not to apply for a job in Ettlingen.

I've got another, regularly managed interview tomorrow (even though I doubt I'll take the job, it's quite far for those measly Euros as well, but there's a possibility to switch from the temporal employment agency to the regular employer, so I'll at least ask). And I've still got some time, I don't need to take the next best job, no matter where it is, who's employing me and what they pay for it.

What does that teach me? People who phone so early and urgently and can't just leave a message on the answering machine are not to be trusted.