Fantastic!! Congrats!

To begin with I'm very excited for Mary Robinette-Kowal who I've been an ardent fan of for years now. It's nice to see the rest of the world realizing what I've known for a while. But I have noticed this year especially I've been a lot less "into" awards. To begin with I haven't read most of the stories, which I know means I'm missing out. But since the Stokers I've been asking myself why I haven't read them, and it simply comes down to I'm not terribly enthusiastic about reading from the lists made by people saying this is what I should be reading. It's like being in high school again, with the teachers and administration laying out the definition of what well read/educated is, and me finding it less than worthy. Of course I've read some wonderful things on people's recommendations and because they were required. I was that person who enjoy the heck out of Shakespeare, loved Lord of the Flies and Fahrenheit 451 and Animal Farm, but found The Inferno too random (and emo)never got through Native Son and despised Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man with ever fiber of my being. But really what it comes down to is that I hate being told what I should get out of a story. In school you were told what poems meant, not asked. And there's always this element with awards lists of "the people" (be they "the experts" or "the industry") denoting these as the worthy story experiences above all others. That these are the tales that define SF/F/H for this year. In the end that puts a lot of pressure on me to enjoy them, or take something meaningful from them, which immediately changes the way I approach them. That could be just me, though.

I agree, and disagree. First, I really like the look of Green Lantern, but you're right, it's more weird and SF, which will alienate audiences. Thor did that too. I loved the Thor movie because I thought it was different. Instead of a guy getting super powers and suddenly becoming better than other people, even moralistically (and I do enjoy super heroes, but that's what the genre is) Thor starts out a god and learns to connect with people. It's a humanizing tale, and I've heard people complain because it isn't a traditional power fantasy tale. That said, I'm uninterested in reboots. I'm not interested in an Antman movie. I think the process of how they're putting an Avengers movie out is excellent marketing, but a single bad movie could kill its momentum. and those missteps are easier than the hood steps that have been taken so far.