Metareview: Thoughts on the "Mark Does" Websites

I think it's often easy to overlook how unbelievably vast the internet is. It's one thing to read the number of pages Wikipedia has, or hear how many hours of video is uploaded to YouTube every second, but I don't think anyone can actually comprehend how much content is stored across the world at this point.

This is compounded by the fact that at this point, my internet browsing habits are pretty circular. I check my emails and Facebook, read through the webcomics I like, look for updates on blogs I follow, browse Reddit's main page and the subreddits I actually care about (Starcraft, Gaming(news), RPG, Warhammer), etc. I even have almost a routine of websites I tab through when first logging on my computer every day.

Even though I visit a lot of websites through Reddit, I wouldn't really consider that finding new territory. It's easy to see the internet as consisting of a lot of content I purely don't care about (celebrity news gossip anyone?) or pages that I glance at for one second before moving on and never looking back (hello image memes).

Therefore it's always a very nice surprise when I actually find a website that I end up returning to and browsing much of the content, and I had just such a surprise the other day. A friend has recently started up a website where she blogs about reading A Game of Thrones and that she drew the inspiration from two of her favorite blogs, Mark Reads and Mark Watches. I was very much intrigued by the GoT project; I had just recently finished reading the series and expressing my reactions to a friend, and then turned around and talked to another friend as he started the same journey. I was very curious what another person would think of what I consider a fantastic series. Out of curiosity, I clicked through to the websites that inspired this venture, not suspecting that I would spend the majority of two days reading the content there. (Also, forward apologies for no pictures in this post)

The Mark Does pair of websites are theoretically review websites, which is why I was able to give this post its oh-so-clever title. At first, given the amount of content, I figured it was this guys' job, but he apparently writes this much (and watches/reads the media that inspires it) in his free time while living what sounds like a very full life. It's also apparently very well-followed and regarded given the amount of comments and followers he seems to have, so I'm a bit surprised I hadn't heard of it before.

I say "theoretically" above because there are some key differences between his "reviews" and they kind I do here. What Mark does differently is pick up an entire series, either book or show, and read/watch one chapter/episode per day, and write a comprehensive review after each. He also has an incredibly strong spoiler policy; his goal is to enter these series with as little knowledge as possible to fully enjoy them. Furthermore, I'd classify the reviews as more of a reaction: we read his thoughts, his predictions, and his analysis of the events of each segment, completely independent of what is forthcoming.

This is the key reason why I've found this blog so fascinating, and why I've spent so many hours over the past couple days reading through the extensive archives. It seems he initially started this project with the Twilight series in order to try to understand the fervent fandom, and gradually grew to completely detest the books. He was then urged to read the Harry Potter series (I might be getting this chronology completely wrong, and if so I apologize) and this show in his review of the first chapter of the Sorcerer's Stone; he's deeply concerned he's getting into another horrible mess, and is quite mocking of several aspects of the series.

Being a huge fan of the series as a whole, it's a gratifying change to see how much this has changed by the time he gets to the first chapter of The Deathly Hallows, where he has likewise fallen in love with the universe and its lore. When first clicking over to his site, the Harry Potter archive caught my eye immediately, so it's the first thing I went to, and decided to skip right to book seven. I intended to read only a review of two, but ended up going through his review of the entire book, and enjoying it all the way (and on a side note, I cannot for the life of me comprehend how he limited himself to one chapter a day, not just this but for many other shows/books he's enjoyed. I honestly don't think I have the willpower).

I think this was for a couple of reasons. To begin with, it's a great way to quickly re-experience a fantastic series, since the reviews, while lengthy, are still naturally quite shorter than the book itself. Since he has placed himself in a self-imposed absolute spoiler-free zone, his reactions to the events of the book naturally mirror my own many years ago as I experienced the events for the first time, and it's quite a cool feeling to have those feeling re-evoked.

On a more humorous note, it's kind of amusing to have a sense of omniscience, since as a previous reader I obviously know where everything is going, and seeing what predictions he gets right, what clues he picks up and misses, what he focuses on, and all the rest are quite interesting.

More importantly, I think it's incredibly compelling to be able to see a person's gut reactions to a book in such small chunks. I'm sure everyone, like me, began discussing the book as soon as we finished it, but discussions like that are kind of fleeting. How do you encompass such a large, intricate book in a 10 minute conversation? Discussion would invariably focus on a few key points, like the epilogue, or the spirit scene, or whatever, and naturally a ton of content would fall to the wayside.

In this format, you can see his reaction to pretty much everything. You can see what he predicts happening, how he views current events as connecting to the past, how his opinion of characters wavers over time, and so on and so forth. It's a really compelling experience, precisely because his reactions don't always match mine. It's fascinating to peer into another's mind as they react to a work you hold very dear.

In a similar vein, I ended up going to the Watches site and reading through his review of Firefly/Serenity. Readers of the blog know I'm not the biggest fan of the show, but apparently Mark now is, and although I often disagree completely with him, I now have a better understanding of why some fans are so fervent in their love for that show.

The site is certainly not without flaws. He tends to repeat a lot of phrases and hyperbolize a lot (some of which is understandable, but it gets to be a bit much occasionally) and occasionally he delves a bit too much into personal history. I understand it's cathartic for him, and that responses to a true work of art often have a lot to do with personal connections and that many of the readers probably enjoy him drawing parallels to his own life, but the couple sections of his Deathly Hallows reviews that were purely written accounts of his life were two that I ended up skipping.

However, these flaws are more than covered up in how interesting I find this style of blogging, and makes me wish I had thought of the idea first (although I doubt my style of writing would have attracted as many followers as his does). I read through all of the Deathly Hallows and Firefly reviews, and in starting to read the His Dark Materials reviews (which are ongoing) they interested me enough that it convinced me to start reading alongside him, despite the large number of books I want to read this summer. I also started reading the Avatar: The Last Airbender reviews, which are also ongoing, and I suspect a couple of readers of this blog would find them very interesting (he calls out The Great Divide as being bad and not contributing to the story, despite only having seen the episodes up to that point).

Anyway, it seems I've ended up writing far more than I intended (I guess this is a good sign for my goal for the summer?) so I'll just suggest that readers check the sites out. Let me know if you find them as interesting as I do, or better yet, if you don't, tell me why not. I'd love to have a discussion about this, and he's also reviewed a number of series that I personally haven't read but I know some of you have, such as Hunger Games and Fringe. Until soon!

-HTMC