Writing Daken...

An interview from USA Today with Daniel Way and Marjorie Liu, the writers of Daken: Dark Wolverine. This satisfies me that the writers are deliberately doing what I hoped they were doing; using Daken's point of view to keep up the ambiguity; making us doubt Daken's badness, or at least, unable to take it for granted; making the character evolve.

"It's hard to tell what he's going to do next, and that's where a lot of the popularity of the character has come from," Way says. "It's tough when you're writing these books. People don't really root for the villain, at least in this medium. At their core, all fans want their villains to be equal and opposite to their heroes, just because that makes it balanced and makes it satisfying.

"In Daken, they kinda get both, so they find that it's OK to cheer for him. You can watch him just being an utter bastard and enjoy it, because he may make up for it later. Or he may not."

Characters to avoid...

30 Day Book Meme: – Day 23 - Most annoying character ever

1. Susan Silverman in the Spenser novels by Robert B. Parker. Now, I love Spenser himself very much, and Hawk as well. But Spenser's girlfriend Susan? She has her moments, but she never has a hair out of place, she wears high heels at all times, she shops for fun, and she eats by nibbling on lettuce leaves. I can't relate to a woman like that!
   
   
2. Harry Dresden, in the novels by Jim Butcher. He's a loser.
   
   
3. In Marvel Comics: I'm starting to find Deadpool annoying textually as well as metatextually. For a long time, he was fun. He was funny. But the more stories there are, the higher the percentage that aren't really funny, and I'm starting to flinch when he comes around.
   

Ten reasons to love Daken...

Ten reasons I'm loving Daken, son of Wolverine:

1. He talks back to Norman Osborne. He fears nothing and no one.
   
2. He's clever.
   
3. I like his sense of humour: dark, impish, defiant.
   
4. He wears designer suits. He dresses better than Tony Stark - except when he doesn't. Wears tattoos and nakedness well, too.
   
5. With a good artist, he's gorgeous. Wild hair.
   
6. Wolverine loves him, even though he breaks his heart.
   
7. He has funny phone conversations on rooftops with Johnny Storm.
   
8. He has moments of painful vulnerability.
   
9. He remains ambiguous, with an edge.
   
10. He's bisexual, or omnisexual. Pansexual? But avoids defining himself.
    
11. He's the best there is as what he does, or maybe second-best after his father.
    

Zen Kitchen...

I had a wonderful birthday dinner with gamergrrl at the Zen Kitchen on Somerset Street. Gorgeous vegetarian food - I was left wanting to go back there again. And again.

Afterwards, we went back to my place and watched Lost Girl, which she liked as much as I thought she would.