Ha!

Dan Brown ruins every thing!

Dan Brown's latest book takes down freemasons.org

Ha! So true...

In other news, now that The Gothic Novel has reached it's stunning conclusion* I've begun a new genre-parodying e-novel.

This one takes on the historical-mystery-thriller genre, which I both love to hate and hate to love.

I hate the dumbed-down scholarship and the way they put wild conjecture on the level with actual fact so that they're indistinguishable to the average reader (something scholars are quite capable of doing on their own without the help of fiction). I get annoyed with the way the protagonist, always a supposed genius in his/her field, will randomly forget hugely important information when convinient for building suspense**

But many of the genre's silly conventions appeal to me. I like the location-hoping, where every clue has to be visited in person at some famed historical site. I like the idea that great discoveries are just sitting there in plain sight, waiting for some one to accidentally figure them out. And I like an academic protagonist whose superpower is obscure knowledge. Especially, I like the character of the distinguished British gentleman with the sparkling wit and endless knowledge to turns out to be evil, usually.

The first chapter is currently underway. Stay tuned for...

When mild-mannered professor Nick Harris accepts a job at small college in the Midwest, he doesn’t expect anything more challenging than trying to interest a room full of teenagers in Early Modern history. But St. Mary Francis College holds the key to a centuries-old secret so powerful, so shocking, that the quest to unlock it sends Nick racing across the globe. He soon discovers that he’s not the only seeker interested in ancient truths. There are others following the same path, and some seem willing to kill to see that Nick never makes it to the end...

*I initially wrote "is done" in place of "has reached it's stunning conclusion," and whenever I do that (replace a simple word with a more hyperbolic statement) I imagine Winona Rider in Beetlejuice, writing her suicide note. "I am alone [scrtach scrtach] I am utterly alone. By the time you read this, I will be gone, having jumped [scratch scratch] having plummeted..." Just thought I'd share that. Incidentally, I learned the meaning of "utterly" from that scene.

**Interred with their Bones, which I'd otherwise classify as "pretty-not-bad," provides a particularly irritating example, in which the heroine totally forgets about Cardenio and then, when the plot requires it, it all "Oh, right! Shakespeare wrote some lost plays!"

Yes, I am Jumping on this Bandwagon

So, now that this market has been opened up, I'm pretty I need to exploit it. Perhaps I'll focus on Dickens.

Anyone interested in Oliver Twist, but With Werewolves?

I Have Not Words...

...to describe how awesome this is:



I'll just quote Jezebel's intro, because seriously. I have not words.

"In this brilliantly edited clip by Rebellious Pixels, Edward shows up at Sunnydale High and tries to put the moves on Buffy Summers, who sees right through his sparkly bs, shutting him down at every opportunity"

Some highlights:*

In the cafeteria part, there is a brief glimpse of Alice (from Twilight) and she totally has the same hair as Willow. It's fitting since Alice is the only Twilight character I mildly approve of.

The use of one of my all-time favorite Buffy quotes: "What are you doing? Here? At this table, talking to me, like we're some kind of talking buddies?" Oh, the many times have I wanted to say that (substituting "table" for "any place I go in my life").

The "Are you sure this isn't some fanboy thing?" line from "Buffy vs. Dracula": especially great because, had that episode happened within the last year or so, she totally would have said "Edward" instead of "Lestat"

And that reminds me: Some one in an A.V. Club discussion of the latest episode of True Blood** pointed out how the now-classic "brooding dark haired vampire+fun blonde vampire=good homoerotic times" was clearly at work, and attributed that convention to Buffy (Angle/Spike). Had I not been a good five days late to the discussion (having just totally legally watched that episode online), I would have had to point out in the most pompous manner possible that Angel and Spike are so obviously ripped off from Louis and Lestat... something that used to bug the crap out of me when Buffy first aired.

Aaaaaaand I'm going to just stop right there, because this may be the nerdiest post I've ever written. Which is an achievement.

*Perhaps the only downside is that I could identify which episode almost every one of those Buffy clips was from.

**Which was also pretty great... the vampires are really hitting it out of the park this week. UPDATE: The trend continues at Go Fug Yourself, where they say of Kristen Bell's outfit "That is saucy. I feel like this might be the uniform they put the waitresses in over at Twilight McLestat's Vampire Bar and Grille" and of Eva Green's "BLAAAAAAH. This woman is not particularly interested in draining the blood of the innocent, or interrupting the sleep of the just, or disturbing the dinner of the holy, or stealing the mail of the virgins, or trimming the bangs of the uptight, or anything even REMOTELY sexy and vampiric. And ergo, I have no use for her."

Oh, I'm Just Sitting Here in the Dark, Thinking About Vampires

Why is it so hard to get things done in the rain?

I had big plans for today. BIG PLANS!

But now, I'm just curled up on the couch with a cup of tea, staring into space and thinking, "In that episode of Buffy where the evil vampire Willow showed up, after they knocked out Evil Willow and decided that Good Willow should take her place, who actually switched the clothes? Because they totally went all out and even put Good Willow's pink tights on Evil Willow which is... intimate. Did Giles and Xander leave the room for this? I hope so."

EDITED TO ADD: The A.V. Club just got around to reviewing this episode, and there is an entire comment thread discussing the issue of whether or not one should put pink tights on unconscious vampires.

And also, "I read somewhere that the writers always knew that either Willow or Xander was going to be gay, but weren't sure which one, so when they did the episode with evil vampire versions of everyone, they gave both Evil Willow and Evil Xander gay 'tendencies' to keep their options open, which is interesting. I mean, everyone knows those slutty vampires will get it on with anyone because they transcend human concepts of sexual preference. But I'm interested in the writer's implicit assumption that vampire teenagers 'figure out' they're gay before human teenagers. And I wonder if there is a way to relate that to my own sexual figuring out, in which vampire literature played a large role. It both helped me to understand the concept of 'otherness' as something to be embraced, even desired (rather than hidden or avoided), and to understand sexuality as something more varied and complicated than 'his thing goes in your ladyparts, the end' which was pretty much all I'd gotten so far."

So now I'm thinking, "What will become of all the gay, goth teenagers out there, with Twilight all the rage?* What would I have turned out like, if at 13 my imaginary vampire love affair had been with Edward, rather than Lestat? Perhaps miserably married to my emotionally unstable high school boyfriend, since obviously love means never having a moment to yourself or making an independent desicion. Perhaps I would have spent my college years in a sort of premature spinsterhood, believing that I was in love with my best guy friend and unwilling to make a move lest it 'ruin the friendship,' all the while secretly fantasizing about the cool girl across the hall.** I hope those Twilight kids graduate quickly to Anne Rice, is all I'm saying."

Now my tea is cold.

*I sort of already posted about this.

**Perhaps I would have read any other books, ever? Yes, yes. Hyperbole for the sake of making a point!

Guess What Disturbed My Sleep Last Night

It was just so... so messy.

I've always had a policy against watching movies that question the nature of reality right before bed. I shall now add "movie in which people live with raccoons" to that list.

Also, is that not the worst tag line ever?

Go Fug Yourself mocks is better than I could:

"Have you SEEN the tag line for Grey Gardens? It's something like, "the true story of Jackie O's incredible relatives." I'M NOT KIDDING. How freaking lazy is that? I mean, I guess it's DIRECT, but it's also BORING and doesn't seem to convey the idea that Drew is playing a woman who regularly wore her skirt on her head as a fashion statement. I'm serious. That needs to be better conveyed, and "Jackie O's crazy relatives!" doesn't do it. On the other hand, this would be an amusing trend. Like, "Terminator Salvation: Yeah, Yeah, This Is the Movie Where Bale Lost His Shit." Or, Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince: The Awesome One With All the Flashbacks and Stuff, But Be Warned BAD THINGS HAPPEN AT THE END.." (iv) I guess that doesn't have anything to do with the matter at hand, but I had to get that out."

I take their word for it about Harry Potter, because for some reason I do not remember that book AT ALL. Apart from the end, which I believe I knew before I read it, I could not tell you a single thing that happens in it. Though I distinctly remember waiting anxiously for my brother to finish it so I could have his copy. And hanging out at some sort of garden party at one point, watching this little kid sit in the corner and plow through like 500 pages of text. And the Simpson's episode where Homer makes up a fake ending for Lisa so she won't be sad, and says "No man should outlive his fictional wizard!"

I wonder if the fact that reading it coincided with the period in my life in which I was spending a lot of time under the influence of a certain mood altering substance which seriously needs to be decriminalized has anything to do with it?

Epic Fantasy (4/1/09)

iWeb's blog template automatically include a picture with each entry, and I'd often find myself struggling to find an appropriate one. Sometimes, that lead to nonsense, sometimes, to total greatness. I include the picture I found for this entry as evidence of the latter.*



Some time in 2008, a friend and I were in the Books A Million in Staunton, VA (a store, by the way, which shelved novelizations of the Star Trek movies as “Literature,” a section distinct from mere “Fiction”), wasting our lives, as was the style at the time. Something spurred me to begin ranting about Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series. I gotten to this point in the rant: “And even though I never thought they were great, and now don’t even like them anymore, I have to buy each new book as it comes out just because I’v devoted so many hours of my life to this story. I don’t even want to know but I have to know how it ends...”

And my friend said, “You know Robert Jordan is dead, right?”

I stopped mid-step, mouth agape, “Wha---?”

“For like a year now.”

In a film version, we’d now cut away to a shot of pigeons flying off the roof of the mall to illustrate the volume of my exclamations of dismay. I believe I referred to the deceased author as a fucking bastard, which in retrospect was a bit harsh.

Especially since I’ve recently learned that the first volume of the final book of the series (the first of three) will be released in November of this year. Here is an enthusiastic (to put it kindly) fansite’s take on the news.

While closure will be nice (cross fingers), I am leery of this three-volume business. Calling three books one book doesn’t make the series any shorter. Saying they were only split up because there were too many words to fit into one book is no excuse (I’m looking at you, George R. R. Martin. And you look a lot like my dad, btw.).

I say this with love, but epic fantasy has got to be stopped. I’m a big dork who is as interested in made up history as real history, who doesn’t baulk at the thought of a book that is as thick as it is wide, who will happily spend an entire weekend sitting under a tree reading what is basically a thinly-disguised rewrite of Lord of the Rings as long as the writing is passable and the characters are engaging. I am the genre’s target audience (except, arguably, for being female) and I am ready to give up on it all together because I am so tired of having my socks knocked off by the first entry in a series and then find myself, four or five books later, slogging through tout of obligation with no idea why I ever enjoyed this crap (you better not let me down, Patrick Rothfuss).

Is this all about publishers pressuring authors to drag things out as long as the books remain best sellers? Does it happen because, once authors reach a certain status, they become unwilling to make the sort of sweeping editorial changes that made their first books so tight? Is it that the ideas remain exciting but the process of writing becomes ever more tiresome? Does one loose all sense of perspective after a decade of getting paid to fantasize?

Robert Jordan is the perfect punching bag when you want to bitch about series that start with a bang and end with a very, very drawn out whimper, but to be honest, I never thought his books were all that good. The writing is incredibly repetitive, which is why it baffles me that the series went on so long... he never seemed to have that much to say. His characters got broader rather than deeper as the series went on, and that starting from an assemblage of stock figures. The books were never more than mildly entertaining (to teenage me, now-me would never have gotten past the Mars-Venus gender relations in book one).

George R. R. Martin, on the other hand, was that good. A Game of Thrones was fabulous; funny, genuinely tragic, disturbing, loosely based on the Wars of the Roses, featured male and female characters of equal depth and diversity, and best of all did not indulge in the moral absolutism that makes much of the genre seem so childish. The prologue alone kept me awake for a couple of nights (remember those zombie guys from beyond the Wall? yeah, I barely do either).

The second book was as good as the first. The third was slightly too long, and a bit too bogged down in the intrigue stuff, which works better, I think, when the supernatural stuff is there to put it in perspective. But hey, it was still better than a lot of what’s out there. The fourth slid into okaysville. The fact that only half the characters were featured did not, LoTR-style, increase the suspense, so much as it screwed up the pattern of juxtaposed viewpoints that worked so well in the first books. I have a feeling that when the series ends (he better bring it to the fifth book), I’ll look back and think that it would have been awesome as the trilogy it was originally supposed to be.

Just stick to the trilogy format. That’s all that need be done, authors. If you find that your story has grown too big to fit into three books, make it smaller. You can always write another series in the same world.

As an example of doing things right, take Jacqueline Carey. She wrote three great (and sexy) books about a spy/courtesan in an alternate-universe Renaissance Europe. Then, because she wanted to keep writing and people wanted to keep reading, she wrote more books (about the “next generation,” if you will). These books, I feel, are not as good. But I don’t feel obligated to read them, because the story that initially hooked me is finished. Still, I do read them (as do her other fans). I read them with no expectations that they’ll live up to the original, and so I can enjoy what’s there to be enjoyed.

Is this my longest blog ever? Possibly.

Is that ironic? Yes.

Here’s a mildly relevant comic:

Fiction Rule of Thumb

*Seriously, fantasy art is totally insane, and often bears little to no relation to the content of the book. I've read some perfectly reasonable and thoughtful books that I was totally embarrassed to take out of my house because the cover was, like, a chick in a metal bikini holding a flaming sword. And I get to the end of the book and be like "Wha? Where was that sword lady?" because she'd never even appear in the novel.

And Another Thing... (originally posted 3/1/09)

Allow me to clear something up.

When I listed “vampire-themed romance” as a guilty pleasure, I was emphatically not referring to the Twilight series. Though I’ve read all four books and seen the movie, I don’t so much like them as I am intrigued, confused and mildly disgusted by them. In fact, one might say I appreciate them ironically, in that I appreciate them in a way that is contrary to their literal intention (assuming that their literal intention is to tell a romantic story about a teenager and her vampire boyfriend, rather than to brainwash a generation of young women into subservient baby-making machines, that is...)

Here’s what I don’t get. How can there be so many girls (and not a few women) out there who think there’s something romantic about a patronising stalker who physically prevents his girlfriend from doing anything he disapproves of? Or a manipulative bully of a “nice guy” who believes that being in love with a woman is a license to take advantage of her friendship in order to try to force himself on her or trick her into physical intimacy (I actually disliked Jacob a lot more than Edward. Bella at least agrees to participate in Edward’s bullshit, but Jacob persists despite her repeatedly telling him to stop)? I can understand the teenagers, a bit, as when I was one myself I was actually in that relationship I didn’t see anything wrong with it until much later. But shouldn’t grown up ladies know better? And shouldn’t grown up lady authors think twice about publishing a book that indicates fucked up asshole love is true love?

In fact, there were times when I got the distinct impression that the characters had motivations that the author herself didn’t understand (unless we’re meant to see Bella as an unreliable narrator, which would make Stephanie Meyer a way more sneaky and subtle writer than seems possible). It was pretty obvious to me that Edward resisted making Bella a vampire because it would mean giving up a significant amount of control over her. It’s a move right out of the creepy boyfriend play book, but its pretty clear Meyer meant us believe his stated motivation (some claptrap about her eternal soul).

This is why I actually liked the movie a bit more than the book. With most of Bella’s internal monologue stripped away, the audience had to view the characters’ behaviour with a certain amount of detachment (the cheesy special effects, I think, inadvertently enhanced this), which made their general fuckeduppitude more obvious. I also liked how Edward, who in the book is presented as utterly flawless, came off as just as much of a freaked-out adolescent basket case as Bella. It made the relationship seem less accidentally-creepy-cause-it’s-suppose-to-be-sweet and more deliberately-creepy-to-make-a-point-about-obsessive-teen-love (this was possibly aided by the fact that I am fully grossed out by Robert Pattinson, both in the movie and in real life).

I’m also interested in (and troubled by) what the success of Twilight means for vampire fiction as a whole. It has always been about the subversion of repressive sexual norms, gender roles, religion, “traditional morality,” but now the genre’s hottest commodity is a vehicle for preaching abstinence and heteronormativity, with plenty of casual sexism and a soupçon of anti-choice rhetoric tossed in for good measure.

How sad is it that in a series about a sexy vampire and a sexy werewolf there are only a couple of instances of entirely accidental homoeroticism?

Very. Very sad indeed.