Sunset Over Sea

For starters, I'm not even going to give a guess for when I'll be done with Pandora. I've been wrong every time since. I'll just say it will be done relatively soon -- relative to final exams. (Though really, if it takes more than the next two weeks I'm going to start flailing and ranting about homework and too long to-do lists.)

But for good news, here is a movie I made for asakiyume as part of the Kickstart Tu Publishing auction.





I created a youtube account in order to post it here, which means the song I've been promising behindpyramids I'd post will also be coming relatively soon. Probably relative to Pandora being updated.


ETA a little background: asakiyume chose the song, and I then went through her Flickr account and pulled pictures to form a storyline. All of the pictures are from asakiyume's Flickr account. The videos are from my computer, and are from varying places around the US. (The mountain is Mt Rainier.)

Well, it took me a while longer than expected, but this part is rather long. There are about 2 parts left, if you're curious.

If you are confused about the feather Pandora mentions about two thirds of the way through this part, go back and read Part 9.


The previous parts can be found here.


I knelt in front of my dresser, the drawers illuminated by the pale grey light filtering in my open windows. The room was chilly, but I wanted to taste the air.

I was dressed and packed, wearing hiking boots, jeans, and a thin sweater. My sword was across my back today, and pouches with food, water, and a few magical items hung from my belt. There was only one thing left.

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The previous parts can be found here.

A good summary of the Pandora stories can be found on wikipedia.


There are many stories of Pandora, stretching back in time like knots on a rope, each made of the same thing yet woven differently. It is a story of gods and of humankind.

The first story I learned, the youngest knot on that long twisting rope, places Pandora merely in the role of the first woman.

A creation of the gods, she was given many gifts: beauty, wit, and above all curiosity. It is this curiosity that brings evil into the world when she breaks an order from Zeus and opens the mysterious box. Only one peek and all the evils within flood out, brining disease and chaos on the world. But at the very bottom of the box is hope, the single shining light to come forth. For although evil is free, all is not lost; the gods gave us hope as well.

Take another step back and the story changes. Pandora is no longer a mere woman, but the vengeance of the gods. Given as a wife to Epimetheus, she is punishment for the fire Prometheus stole and gave to man. She opens the ceramic jar not out of curiosity but out of malice, and when all the evils fly out hope is trapped beneath the lid.

Follow the knots back once more and the jar holds not evils, but blessings, and when it is opened they all fly away to Mt Olympus. Only hope is trapped and stays on Earth.

The last step is ancient, the knot tattered and worn. In this story Pandora is formed from the earth before being given gifts from the gods. And the jar is no longer opened by her, but by a “foolish man” – Epimetheus, perhaps.

The knotwork builds and binds, tying story upon story, life upon life. The gods formed humans from dirt and blood and spit, building us from the emptiness of the universe. But Pandora was first, and she cried her problems alone.

The previous parts can be found here.


Halloween is the one night when magic goes unnoticed. People expect strange things to happen on Halloween – their souls remember the World-That-Was and how thin the walls really are between Faery and the human realm.

Normally I wouldn’t worry about Halloween. Normally the gateway goes from Faery to here on Halloween, not from here to Faery.

But for some reason I was nervous, my stomach fizzing in anticipation of the unknown.

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Sorry for the time between posts, but I've gotten through the flu and finals and finally have time to write (although I've been distracted today, so hopefully there aren't any typos in here I missed). Hopefully Pandora will be finished in the next two weeks.


The previous parts can be found here.


I met Dola on Thursday as I was leaving Suzzallo, having found nothing once again.

“Pandora! I was gonna text you. Do you want to go get lunch?”

I had an hour before my next class and had been about to go get food. “Sure, where do you want to go?”

“I don’t care – how about By George’s? It’s right here.”

“Okay, sounds good.”

Our conversation during lunch was completely normal, talking about classes, people, projects – and avoided Faery completely. But I could tell she was talking around something.

We left the café, the blue sky above us bright and clear, unusual in its intensity. Everyone was enjoying the clear skies, but it really should have started raining already.

“I was talking to Eric about Faery,” Dola began.

“What about Faery?” I asked, suspicious.

“About stuff…” She trailed off, waving her hand vaguely in the air.

“About mythology? About fairy tales? About a book you were reading?”

She shook her head and said in a rush, “About what happened and what you told me.”

“What?!” I had known what she was going to say, I really had, but I couldn’t stop my reaction. It was too in-bred in me.

“You didn’t tell me not to talk about it, just that no one would believe me,” Dola said defensively.

I stopped by the foot of the stairs leading up to Red Square. “You’re right. What did he say?”

Dola crossed her arms and stared out over the mountains lining the horizon past the city buildings. “He said I should try to get you to take me to Faery.”

I blinked at her. “Girl, you couldn’t have chosen a worse time to ask me that.”

“So you won’t take me?” She finally looked me in the face and I could see the hidden disappointment.

I rifled my fingers through my braids, hanging free today. “Let’s wait and see. I can’t take you now, there are too many problems at the moment, but maybe later, in a month or so – ask me again then.”

“All right, I guess—”

Screams cut her off and I was running up the stairs before they registered consciously. I entered Red Square at a sprint, taking in the three leaf beasts on the far side, the cluster of students, and the girl on the ground.

( Read more... )

This has been making the rounds on facebook and I thought it was so cute I'd share it here. I want a kitten like that!

Sorry once more for the time between posts. I got the flu last week and am still recovering, as well as having to make up work I missed.

Previous parts can be found here.


"Cathedral of books" was only partially a poetic name for the library; the Suzzallo reading room really does look like a cathedral.

The vaulted ceiling overlooks a carpeted floor lined with long wooden desks, reading lights shining off the hardwood surfaces. Bookshelves line the walls, filled with a random collection of all topics, and anchor the long stained glass windows rising between the arches.

Chandeliers hang from the ceiling and shed a soft yellow glow over the shuffling silence. At either end of the room sits a desk in isolation, the centerpiece for a sweeping alcove, a quote engraved on the wall and a globe of the world hanging from above.

I couldn't expect to find whatever-it-was just by looking around the room, it would be hidden much better than that. Disguised as a book, hidden in a chandelier, placed in a crenelation on the wall or shelves -- it could be anywhere, and I had no idea of its size.

I would have to focus incredibly deep and go over the entire room inch by inch; it would be best to be invisible, because after a while I might start getting strange looks.

I looked around the room, at the students bent over work or reading. Might as well get started.

Previous parts can be found here.

I had been warned, and I took it as the challenge it was. Time to talk to the tree man, I decided.

I found him in the chestnut grove, like he had said, sitting beneath the only pine tree in the group. The sky was clear for a change, not even a skein of clouds covering the blue like a veil, just a pure clean blue that spiraled softly into infinity. I took it for an omen.

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Tu Publishing is trying to get off the ground. The idea of this Publisher is to print YA books where the characters are multicultural. However, like any new business a certain amount of money is needed to begin. This is where the auction to kickstart_tu comes in. People are auctioning off different they own, can make, or can do, in order to help raise money to get Tu Publishing started. The nice thing about this is if the specific goal is not met, Kickstarter, where the donations are made, will refund all donaters their money. The end date for the goal is December 14th, and so the auction closes on December 9th, to make sure all donations get in on time.

If this was confusing, go read sartorias 's post about Tu Publishing or asakiyume 's post about the auction because I'm tired and they say it better.

Anyway, I don't have so much extra cash at the moment, so I'm offering an auction item. I will make a video out of your photographs or artwork, with a song in the background, on the model of the example I show in my auction post.

For previous parts see here.


I was leaving class on Tuesday when I got a text from my friend Matt. There’s a cool dragon in the fountain. U should come c it.

Dragon? In Drumheller Fountain? There was a chance it was some awesome stunt by frat boys or a cool light show by the engineering club, but with my dream still pounding in my head I wasn’t going to take that chance.

Slipping through the chaos of the doorway I exited the building at a dead run. Luckily for me, my classes were near the center of campus, so I didn’t have far to go.

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Sorry for the time between posts, schoolwork overwhelmed me. They'll be another one soon.
Previous parts can be found here.


We were trying to catch feathers.

But they floated away as we reached for them, a crazy blizzard from a sky of blue breaking with the weight of stars. We laughed as we ran in circles but the laughter turned to screaming.

I finally caught one, grasped its soft down and iron core, and it blazed in my hand like the winter moon, summer sun, a crackling star.

All the feathers disappeared, gone. Except the one in my hand faded like mist, leaving a lightning shimmer in the air, binding the unseen like a thread.

I looked around. I was alone, always alone, but there was someone I needed to find.

I woke with my head pounding, Remember this, remember this, remember this.

Previous parts can be found here.

    Magic has a feel to it; if you know what you’re sensing you can tell it’s being used.  Of course there are ways to conceal magic, but those are complicated and rarely done.  Nevertheless, if a small spell is created near an area with a constant magic flux, it will be difficult to pick the two apart.

    The stand of chestnut trees was close enough to the observatory that any magic I felt could have come from the gateway – but there had to be a reason Dola had brought me here.

    “Dola, what—”

    “Shh, just watch.”  She flapped her hand at me and took up a stance near the edge of the trees.

    I stared at her, framed by shadows with her gaze sweeping the ground, but she didn’t notice.  She normally chattered, and given a chance to talk would spill story after story – not stand there in silence next to someone who had questions to ask.  But maybe she just wanted to keep whatever-it-was a surprise.

    I turned back to the trees, scanning the shadows and fallen leaves for a clue.  At the base of a sapling my eyes landed on a small man covered by the glamour of a stone, with tree-bark patterns on his skin and hair like moss.  I recognized him as one of the Seelie fae who lived around campus. 

    He raised his hand as he saw me staring and patted the ground.  I nodded; I would ask him questions later, when Dola wasn’t here.

    Then the wind blew through the trees, shaking the branches, and a few chestnuts dropped off, striking the ground with a crack.

    The first turned into a butterfly, and fluttered woozily off into the gusting wind.  The second turned into a sparrow, which hopped a few times before taking off, and the third turned into a tiny garter snake that sped away into the grass.

    None of them stayed chestnuts.

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sartorias has been summing up conversations and topics discussed at WFC while she's been there, and in her last post went a bit more in-depth on some interesting topics. The one that caught my eye was about Mormons writing spec fic, specifically touching on Orson Scott Card and Stephenie Meyer.  I haven't read much of Card's works, but I did read the first three Twilight books, and the relationship between Bella and Edward caused multiple rants disturbed me, considering I'm a strong feminist.  When I heard that Stephenie Meyer was Mormon, I wondered at the connection.  There is one, but it's different than I supposed.

seajules says,
"If you're a feminist who's gotten past the concept that of course women have our own goals and views and desires, and we are as entitled to them as men, and that our experiences are valuable as part of the human experience, and our sexuality is no more inherently dirty than men's, then Meyer's not going to seem to have much of value to say, and may in fact look like a giant step backwards. If, however, you're part of a population where positive messages about women's experiences, including sexuality, agency, desires, skills outside of child-rearing and man-assisting, and authority in telling our own stories, are still regarded with suspicion, then Meyer can actually be argued to be incredibly subversive. I can't help but wonder what the books would have looked like had they not passed through the filter of her bishop's patriarchal authoritative approval. Probably not much different, since I don't get the impression Meyer is much of one for self-reflection and may genuinely be naturally inclined toward the role her subculture has trained her to accept, but its the subtleties that tend to count most in subversive narratives."

She has a longer explanation/review of the series from an LDS point of view in the rest of the thread.  Or you can read it below.
( Read more... )

Part 1 can be found here.


            Magic is like drawing.  Everyone can draw, to a certain extent, but some are better at it than others.  Even those who are great artists have talents in particular areas – landscapes, portraits, anime – but all of them can draw a circle, a square, a moon and sun.
           Magic is the same.  Everyone can do magic, to a certain extent, but some are better at it, or have more power, than others; and different magic users have different talents.
           Like all magic users I know a few basic spells, but my talents lie in sight.  I have strong foresight and can create and see through lies, both visual like the faery glamour, and built into language.
            So last Thursday, after I walked around all day feeling naked without my sword, I took the hint and began wearing it constantly.  In Faery I wouldn’t have gotten a second glance, but on a college campus in the United States I decided discretion was in order, so covered it in an invisibility spell.
            On Monday, after my last midterm of the quarter, I was walking out of the library when I heard my name being called.
            “Pandora!  Pan!”  I turned to see my friend Dola sprinting across Red Square towards me.  “You just have to come see this, it’s the strangest thing.”  Her curly brown hair framed her face in a jumble, the wind having made a mess of everything.  But her eyes, her eyes were eerie, as if she’d seen something she never believed possible.
            A jolt of adrenaline shot through my bones, and I closed my hand over the hilt of my sword.  “Show me.”
            She took off running again, up towards the entrance to campus, and I pelted after her, backpack bouncing as I ran.  What was up at the front of campus?  I tried to consider as I ran uphill.  It’s a useless question, mostly, because Faery is everywhere and you can step into the In-Between at any point; but some places draw magic more than others and so are more likely to have strange occurrences.
            We reached the top of campus, Dola breathing hard as she led me into a stand of chestnut trees, and I had my answer.
            What was up at the entrance to campus?  The observatory: one of the easy accesses to the Unseelie Court.
            It’s why I think there aren’t any other Guardians in Seattle: who would want to live closer to the Unseelie Court than they had to?  I, tough girl that I am, ignored that consideration when choosing to come to UW.  Let’s hope it wasn’t a mistake.

When asakiyume asked if I was going to write a story to go with my "What if?"s I wasn't intending to do it immediately.  I've got two other projects I'm in the middle of already.  But then breathingbooks asked as well, and I've been walking around with this character in my head who had fit so nicely into a world already formed for a different story...  So I think Nanowrimo for me this year will be Na-finish the projects I'm working on-wrimo, meaning hopefully this story will be done by the end of November.  We'll see.  I hope you like it in the meanwhile.  And without further ado, Pandora part 1*.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

            I had heard of a secret hidden in the Suzzallo Reading Room, a key of some sort left by the fae.  It wouldn’t get me through the Unseelie Court unscathed, but it should get me through faster, and if this kept up I might need the advantage.

            When I was little, I asked my mother why fae could use magic so easily, but most humans only used magic by accident.  She told me that humans were the dreams of gods, while fae were the dreams of angels; thus humans are closer to the makings of the world, while fae are closer to the workings of it.
            There are those of us for whom magic does not take great study and work, for whom magic comes naturally, like to the fae.  But we are not fae.  We are human: born of blood and dirt and the spit of gods – and being human has its advantages, as well as disadvantages.
            We are called Guardians by some, Witches by others, but our task is always the same: we walk the boundaries and edges, placed there by the power in our human blood, and protect those who are ours.
            I am the only Guardian in the city of Seattle, a junior at the University of Washington.  I’m the right age, and as I told my family when packing for school, sometimes I like to pretend I’m normal.
            But it never lasts for long.

*Disclaimer: though the university is real, the people and occurrences are not.

I've been listening to Into the Woods quite a bit lately.  This is partially because I bought it this summer recently, but partially, I think, because it fits my life at the moment.  If you haven't heard of the musical, it's a combination of four fairy tales: Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, and adds fourth, new story as the center plot: the Baker and his Wife who want a child.  The witch from Rapunzel has cursed the Baker and his Wife to be barren and if they want a child they must fetch four things for a potion: a cloak as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn, a cow as white as milk, and a slipper as pure as gold.  So all the characters journey into the woods and meet one another.

"The woods" is this interstitial place where things that are outside the norm can occur.  In the woods you learn things and see things that you wouldn't otherwise know.  In the woods you grow up.

The songs aren't just musically beautiful, they're true to life.  Things that happen to people, that people think, that people really want and not just wish for, are all encompassed in the songs.  It's a great story, and one that makes you think.

( cut for songs )

What if...

...every time the leaves swirled up from the ground a leaf-beast was created that started wreaking havoc?

...the observatory on the edge of campus, covered by bushes and vines, was really an entrance to the Unseelie Court?

...you carried a sword around every day for protection?  And it was invisible?

...that blond spiky haired boy sitting next to you in class was really an elf in disguise?

...the chesnuts turned into butterflies when they hit the ground?

...shadows detached themselves from under trees and followed you until you walked through a patch of light?

...the things you see out of the corners of your eyes were really there?



...you turned all my questions into a story?  How would your story be different from mine?

One
I was watching pieces of Star Wars II: Attack of the Clones the other night and came up with a compromise for costumes.  The only woman main character wore either dresses with low bodices or skin tight pants outfits that "just happened" to have the bottom of the shirt ripped off during a fight scene.  Meanwhile, all the men in the movie are wearing what amounts to three layers of clothing -- three baggy layers of clothing.  This is quite normal for action movies, if not so heavily emphasized (though it can be worse).  So I came up with a compromise.  If all the women are going to run around in skin-tight midriff outfits then I think all the men should have to run around with their shirts off.  Turn and turn about is fair play.

Two
I was at home over the weekend and came to a realization about that "hit reflex" I mentioned in my last ramblings.  It didn't, as I had thought, come automatically with my reflexes.  My dad tends to to wave things like dishtowels or his hands in peoples' faces or ruffle their hair without warning.  He also tends to tickle without warning.  At some point I must have started wacking him to get him to stop tickling me or sticking things in my face (not like it worked) and that turned into wacking people when I was startled.  Well, duh.  No wonder the reflex became so easy to repress when I went off to college.

Three
...actually, this is just me whining about feeling dumb and not knowing enough about politics...I think I'll skip it...
Although, it is interesting how I can be watching these news programs about the health care bill and still feel like I'm only seeing a tiny piece of the picture, and then I read one comment on a post and suddenly things make more sense.  Part of that is definitely that I'm not really on my own yet, so I've never had to pay attention to stuff like health care before. 
...And suddenly my experience with learning MatLab on the go seems a lot more like life  ...That's not really a good thing, considering it's taking me forever to learn how to use MatLab (or what to me feels like forever -- I have no real way to gauge it).  Hope I'm better at life. *grin*

So I've been busy and the internet has been on the bottom of my to-do list.  Not that I posted much to begin with, but I do enjoy reading others' posts and commenting.  And letting people know I'm still alive, since for those of you who overlap with my fb friends, well, I haven't been on there much either.

But here's an interesting post about gender bias about authors, which I just read while madly skimming through all I've missed in the past, um, let's say month.  I've been thinking about gender differences for a while, off and on, and my train of thought started again when I visited my cousins earlier in the summer.  We were sitting at dinner (the whole family: mine, theirs, and the grandparents) and my cousin M (male) tells a story wherein a friend of his said something insulting about my cousin S (female) so he punched his friend.  The next day his friend apologized.  I wasn't really in this conversation, it was more my cousins talking about their plans for the weekend, so while my aunt says 'I don't condone violence' (that's a quote) even though his friend did apologize, I'm sitting there thinking 'yeah, but wouldn't it be nice sometimes to actually be able to hit someone when you want to?' 

I've always had pretty fast reflexes, and apparently, along with those reflexes came what I called my defensive* "hit-reflex."  As in, someone pokes me, startles me, or whacks me, and I hit back without even thinking about it.  I took kick boxing in 11th grade, but stopped because I was afraid I was going to hit someone and hurt them for no real reason.  I've since trained myself out of the reflex, at least enough that I don't hit people anymore when I'm startled.**

But my cousin's story got me thinking about the difference in gender -- how much is really built in, and how much is society?  Yes, women and men have different bodies, and slightly different hormones, but do we really have different brains?  There are articles every so often with things like "boys are better at science and math," etc, and I've always been skeptical.  Boys and girls start out very similar in make from the time they're fetuses; as we get older we get more different in body, but how different in mind?  Then there are those people who even have a strange conglomerate of chromosomes -- they may appear female or male, but in reality have chromosomes that mark them as the opposite sex -- does their brain then work according to how their body looks?

Back to the story: girls aren't allowed to hit, whereas it's expected in boys.  If you see two sets of people fighting, where one set are women and the other are men, who do you think is having the worse argument?  The women, usually.  In order to physically hit someone, a woman has to overcome all the social teachings that say nice girls don't hit.  Does that mean if they were taught that it's okay to hit, they would hit people more often?  Probably. 

I read a lot of books when I was younger with heroines in them.  Alanna who dresses up as a boy to become a knight, Cimorine who runs away to live with dragons and learns magic, Sabriel who becomes the anti-necromancer of her kingdom and was second place in her girls school fencing class.  I've since made it through puberty with a sense that it doesn't matter as much how "pretty" I look as how much I can do (and a strong desire to learn some type of martial arts enough to be at least competent).

I was sitting outside my office (where I'm an intern) eating lunch this afternoon when a family walked by and stood next to the resturant on the lower level of the building (which I was sitting outside of) and discussed whether they wanted to eat lunch yet.  (There was a mom, dad, grandma, daughter, and two sons, the kids all being middle school/high school age).  I ignored most of their conversation, but as they were walking away I heard the mother say to one of the sons "stop being so sensitive."  Presumably he'd lost an argument or something and not gotten what he wanted, so he was moping.  I thought "would the mom have said the same thing to the daughter?"  Maybe, I don't know her.  But from my observations of people up to this point, I would guess not.  It might have the same meaning in the end, but would most likely be phrased more like "stop moping, act nice."  That comes with its own set of problems, but both of them are genderized.

I grew up with a sister and never had many guy friends.  I think I'm more comfortable around girls because I'm used to them.  But I was talking with my friend A a while ago and she mentioned that she was living with a bunch of her guy friends next near and it would be a relief because there wouldn't be as much drama.  This harkened back to a conversation we'd had last year, where she talked about having too much "girl drama" and I realized I had no clue what she was talking about.  Reminder: mostly girl friends.  Still very little idea of what constitutes "drama" let alone "girl drama." 

I mentioned the story about my cousin to A and we embarked on a short discussion of girls vs guys.  She started with saying that guys, overall, were more chill than girls.  I replied that that may be so, I don't know enough guys to really say, but if it is so, how much is it society conditioning rather than natural temperments?

You can see I'm big on this society conditioning thing.  Most of my early stories have girls as main characters.  When I first started adding boys into my stories I realized that I did not know any boys -- as in, never really talked to them.  So what I decided then was that girls and boys were essentially the same, and if I was going to write a boy as a main character then I should ignore the "boy" part and focus on the "character" part.  That was probably a good decision (despite the fact that I had yet to learn how to actually make a "character" a "person").  

But there is a fact that I look at my stories now and still see females as the undisputed main characters.  Yes, there are guys too, but rather few compared to the women when looking at point-of-view characters.  When I ask myself why, one of the answers that often comes up (I don't really know the answer, these are more like suggestions to my mind about why it's thinking this way) is, well, I'm a woman, so I can better/more easily write how females think.  Wait.  Screech.  Halt.  Does this mean females and males think differently?

So then I run up against the thought that while I definitely think that guys and girls are essentially the same, some part of my brain is acknowledging the fact that I do also believe in a difference.  So what, exactly, creates that difference?



ETA:  This is further compounded by an article I read a few months ago which was a well written personal story talking about the bias against transsexuals in our society.  I didn't want to ask this question, and be branded rude or insensitive, but I kept wondering how the author, when he was a kid, knew he was a girl.  I never "knew" I was a girl.  I was told "you are a girl because of how you look" and was given dresses to wear and was sent to dance class.  If I had been told I was a boy and had been sent to play baseball I would have followed just the same.  Matter of fact, I was sent to kiddy soccer, probably for the same length of time I was sent to kiddy ballet and tap.  I played outside and climbed all over our swing set, climbed the tree in our backyard until my mom yelled to stop because wh was afraid I was going to fall and kill myself (though how she saw that but missed the swing set adventures, I'm not sure).

So again, what's the innate difference?






* I realized while at home that my dad tends to to wave things like dishtowels or his hands in peoples' faces or ruffle their hair without warning.  He also tends to tickle without warning.  At some point I must have started wacking him to get him to stop tickling me or sticking things in my face and that turned into wacking people when I was startled.  Well, duh.

** No wonder it was so easy to train myself out of the reflex when I went off to college.

I saw the Star Trek movie last week, and thought it was very good. I'm not a Trekkie -- I've seen maybe a couple shows, and so had very little knowledge of when "in jokes" were used in the movie. But I still thought it was good. Although there were scenes with lots of things blowing up (I actually like those), and some scenes where minions or side characters you didn't know got killed just to show the danger of the situation, those instances were rare, and sometimes even had a purpose. Also, there was rarely violence or disaster without a purpose, it was there either to make a point or as humor. (Although, by the third time Kirk got into a life-threatening situation, especially when he did it by almost falling off something-with-a-long-drop again, there wasn't much of a danger feeling left. And I'm discounting the fact that we know he's going to survive anyway.) In the way of good things, there were a few scenes with a heavy emotional impact, and I don't just mean when people are killed. I hesitate to call those scenes dramatic, because I feel like drama is often used to describe a scene where emotion is shown but not felt by the audience, whereas these scenes were good. So, overall, a positive rating and I wouldn't mind seeing it again myself.

As a side note, the actor who plays Kirk, Chris Pine, could play Lucivar in Black Jewels if it gets made into a movie. He does the arrogant insolence well, among other things.