Art!, Other Peoples' Work!, Writing!

Shameful

| am reluctant to admit that most of my artistic energy has been spent drawing men from Doctor Who and Sherlock. But I’ve fallen into this phase where observational drawings give me a lot more catharsis than my own characters, probably due to the fact that I’ve been doing very little writing or story-telling. I recently did create a cover for a hypothetical comic revolving around me and two of my closest friends at this school where I’m the accomplice to my friend the serial killer. Haha, that’s just the kind of morbid humor that keeps me going.

And I don’t really want to post any art right now because I haven’t gotten into one of my huge scanning fests, so I don’t have a ton of what I’ve been working on ready to put up here.

I’ll just post the one that I just finished, which is something that happened today. Again — I’ve been getting a lot more pleasure from recounting true stories, and that goes for drawing and writing. So in addition to that Doctor Who related comic that I’m going to post, I’ll also put up here a short story I wrote based on a real encounter I had on the city bus the week before last.

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And:

The city bus is a vessel for the unexpected.

After volunteering at the mental health community center, which would sound to be the most interesting part of the day, I scuttled into the slushy city streets to catch the bus.

I took my seat, giant pink headphones on, and then a gentleman sat next to me. Usually, if someone is creepy I’m mad that they sit next to me. But if they’re cute then I’m very pleased. Well, this man was somewhere in between, so I settled down and rocked out in my head.

Then he tapped my arm, so I slid my headphones down and gave him my attention.

He was somewhere in his late twenties but his wavy black hair over his headband included strands of silver. He looked at me and said, “Excuse me, but I am new to this country and I wanted to know if we could talk, so that I can practice my English.”

Enthusiastically, delighted by his request, I said, “Sure! Of course.”

I listened patiently as he explained that he had just applied for a Social Security Number and asked if I had gotten one, too. When I seemed confused, he drew the conclusion that I was a resident. Then understanding, I told him “Yes,” and said I’d had one my whole life. What a funny thing to take for granted – my own personal number issued to me by the government.

I allowed him to compose his questions carefully and made sure I listened closely. They were simple things: Am I a student? Were there dorms around here? Then why was I so far from West Bank? Are the people at that community center of all ages?

At one point he broke off mid-sentence and pointed past me and said, “Is that a helicopter?”

Grinning, I confirmed.

“Ah,” he said, sitting back in satisfaction, “it’s the same in my language.”

When I told him his English is good, he laughed, shook his head, and said “No, it’s not.” He went on, “Usually people do not like talking to me: They cannot understand me, and they talk so fast.”

I said, “Oh! Did you want me to talk fast?”

“No, because I cannot follow what they are saying. You are talking slowly, and it’s good.” He told me he was new to this country and that he did not speak English where he was from. “It is hard because I’m so alone. There is no one around me.”

Then I fell into a perfect display of American ignorance and said, “Aren’t there other Indian Ph.D. students?” His confusion following my question immediately revealed my error. I was flustered until I tried to rectify it frankly and said, “Well, hold on, where are you from?”

He laughed and touched his face and said, “You thought I was from India. I am from the Middle East. I suppose we may look similar.”

Feeling terrible, I said, “I’m sorry! I made an assumption.”

He dismissed the error as easily as I had made it and our conversation continued, with few moments of silence as the streets passed by. I told him I used to go to school from home and described Brooklyn Center in geographical relation to Minneapolis.

He asked, “Is it by Duluth?”

Endeared by the comparison, I said, “It’s in that direction! But it’s a lot closer. Did you go to Duluth recently?”

He nodded. “I went this weekend because someone told me I would like it.”

“Did you like it?”

Making a slight face he said, “Yes…”

I laughed and said, “Kind of?”

“Well it is different because they told me how beautiful it would be. But I have seen many beautiful places – in Switzerland, in my home country. Here it is winter.”

“Yeah,” I told him, “a lot of people think winter is ugly. Because it’s just white and slushy.”

The conversation drifted. We were getting close to my bus stop.

“What country are you from?” I asked, driven by the realization that he wasn’t going to say but burning with curiosity.

“Oh,” he said, glancing at me sidelong, his reticence clear. “I am from Iran. Do you know it?”

I smiled and nodded. And that’s it. I wondered if he believed I would hate him for it.

He said, with a faintly bewildered expression, “You have been very nice. Some people I talk to just…they do not really want to. I find that people here are…” He searched for words. “…Cold. Like the winter.”

I was absolutely delighted by this comparison and I wish now that I had expressed more agreement with him. Instead I tried to produce words that were similarly meaningful and I know that I failed – me, a natural English speaker, worse with my words than a man that has been in this country for two months.

I had to get off and I did so reluctantly. Our conversation wasn’t over. I stomped into the snow and could feel the moisture through the soles of my Chucks. I stood on the street corner waiting for the lights to turn. I looked through the windows of the bus and found his face. He waved. I smiled.

Okay, fine, this too:

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All right, that’s all.

Actually I will also add what is really a natural thing for me to say now: at the moment, I’m really defining myself through these different works of fiction. I blame it on Tumblr, because all I use it for is reblogging things from LotR, Game of Thrones, Sherlock, Doctor Who, Avatar (The Last Airbender), etc. Consequently, I’m convincing myself to be determined that I only want people in my life who think either my obsessions are funny, or who are just as obsessed as I am. Haha. Whatever.

Other Peoples' Work!

The Other Boleyn Girl

I am sleepy and just finished the movie after having read 400 pages of Phillipa Gregory’s “The Other Boleyn Girl” over the last two days and the other 250 pages within the last week. In other words, will this review be as coherent as I’d like? Probably most definitely not.

Anyway, I hardly need to say that the book far outdid the movie and that the movie picked and chose points from the book and excluded many others while also rearranging them as it pleased the movie making people. That’s always irritating. On the other hand, the acting was superb and that’s a surprise because I did not expect Scarlett Johannson to make a better Mary Stafford than Natalie Portman, who made a significantly better Anne than I anticipated. (Also, now having seen “The Other Boleyn Girl” with her borderline psychotic acting, I’m beginning to think Portman is as psychotic in actuality as she is in “Black Swan”). George Boleyn was superb. And although William Stafford, barely in the movie at all, was positively adorable, I attributed a much higher level of smoldering masculinity to him in the book than the freckled skinny guy showed in the movie (edit on 4/10/12: that freckled skinny guy was Benedict Cumberbatch, one of the most smoldering bachelors on the movie scene right now…HAHAHA. But still…different kind of sex appeal.).

All right, now that that’s out of the way — the book. I haven’t gotten this absorbed into a book in a long time. I mean, I’m sore from sitting for consecutive hours reading simply because I could not bring myself to physically stop. Gregory’s writing is florid, smooth, and warm. Mary was a wonderful narrator, balancing gentleness with realism. I wanted her to win her quiet, well-deserved life and love for the whole book. And Gregory delivered the happy ending with all the female sensibility anyone could muster. Well, at least the happy ending for Mary. She’s really the only one that won.

This was a book on the brutality of sexual politics. That’s really all. And that strikes a resonant note for me because, as I was watching ten minutes of “The Bachelor” (one of my first time watching the show), I realized we haven’t changed. As much as the cast revolved around King Henry, and pleasing his every whim, and seducing him into giving others what they want, well, that’s exactly what “The Bachelor” (aka “The King”) does today. It’s a royal courtship with the meager addition of a few shinier lights and better-cut scenes for added drama.

Now, is Gregory’s depiction of the English court altogether accurate? Well, who knows, some say it isn’t, but I don’t care. I will admit her slightly informal dialogue broke some of the magic for me, because I couldn’t imagine such colloquial language in such grandiose halls as she excellently described. I haven’t looked into any of the controversy of this book and I don’t care to.

For me, it was a delight. It was a wonderful, wonderful delight to depart so readily into a fictional world again as I haven’t since I was in my early teens. However, I’m certainly glad I hadn’t gotten my hands on this book when I was that age, because it’s pretty darn sensual. It’s rarely explicit but, boy, I mean, a book revolving around sexual politics is bound to be. Gregory handled it well but probably went overboard at times. I would have liked to read of a greater distinction between Mary’s antics with the King (a girlish, naive fantasy for her) and her love with William Stafford (true, through and through). Regardless, Gregory won me over to a lot of the less ambitious characters. Her prose was pretty and neat and her characters’ stories were well-knit. In particular, I was really impressed at how well she kept the characters in order. I often lose track of who’s who in books with a large cast, and the cast of “The Other Boleyn Girl” was monumental in size. But I said “Oh, I hate her.” and “Oh, I like him. I’ll bet he’ll come back in later and woo her. … Oh, good! I knew he’d be back. I’m so glad he got knighted.” and “Man, she’s creepin’ at their door. I know this is going to come back to haunt them, that dirty snake.” And on that note, yes, the storyline was more or less predictable. But that didn’t at all, in the least, inhibit my desire to read it through to its whopping 600-some page conclusion.

So, yay! Reading is a delight to me, I just wish I had less trouble finding gems like this! Soon I’ll be back to school (too soon) with no time for pleasure reading. I’m glad I read something so huge while I could. This’ll hold me for a while.

Other Peoples' Work!

“It’s Superman!” (by Tom de Haven)

So, not only is this the first book I’ve actually finished for pleasure in a long while (I don’t even remember what the last one was…”Return of the King,” probably), it was also very far out from my usual. As emphasized by its coincidence with Tolkien.

“It’s Superman!” is what it sounds like. It’s a Superman story. It goes back to Clark Kent (aw)’s teen years and his eventual journey to New York, where he meets Lex Luthor (who escapes, the bastard) and Lois Lane (who hates him; man, she’s got spunk). It’s set just before the beginning of World War II in 1935. It’s got robots (I mean Lexbots). SO many people die. It’s a period piece and I love it for that, because it’s not overdone, but it’s not painfully sparse as many classic 19th century writers were (duh, since this book is recent, 2005). It’s incredibly fast-paced and its omniscient narration makes me care even about Luthor’s thugs or that fat lady that was in love with the Lieutenant. Clark Kent is adorable and vulnerable, and that’s probably what saves the book. He’s always teetering between cockiness and uncertainty and usually sways towards the latter. I like that. It’s not so super.

So, I mean, I don’t have a ton to say about it because my reaction to it is as straightforward as the book is. There’s one really good line that I connect with, and that makes me really understand Clark Kent:

“And he is suddenly afraid the more he discovers about people in the world the sadder he will become.”

This book definitely scored me some geek points though. I mean really.

Emotional Breakdowns, Other Peoples' Work!

Mulan (Don’t Make a Man out of Her)

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So, one of my all-time, longest-lasting favorite movie is “Mulan.” My whole family + all the childhood friends I’ve ever had know this. My high school and my Bethany friends know this, and most of them agree with me.

Now, “Mulan” merits praise for a lot of the obvious reasons: it has some of the most memorable musical tracks of any Disney movie (“I’ll Make a Man Out of You” anyone?); it wrangled in one of the biggest comedians of its time (Eddie Murphy); its artistic delivery is polished, detailed, and graceful; and the orchestral music itself has a life of its own.

Some might notice I’ve left out something crucial: the characters.

That’s because they deserve a discussion of its own.

See, as I’ve left my teen years I’ve approached this “feminist” mentality that started my first year of college. It took off from there and steadied into a reliable facet of my worldview. What I mean by “feminism” is that I’m someone who believes in women being able and qualified to be highly achieving professionals and intellectuals. That’s my main argument. I may even be one of those women with a difficult time understanding the decision of some to be “housewives” (however, I do respect that decision). I’m someone who believes women should speak up for themselves and defend their rights. I believe in making my own decisions, and I resist the idea of submissiveness unless it’s to someone worthy of it. I don’t think these traits should garner a girl the label of a “bitch,” but honestly, if those are the behaviors that get them the title, then the title is a good thing. However, I’m also quite a little rule-follower. I have a lot of social propriety and I don’t like feeling as if I’ve been rude.

This is the wonderful complexity I think “Mulan” nails on the head, for which the writers should be endlessly commended.

See, “Mulan” is not a movie about a girl that rejects her society’s values in favor of some self-serving goal. She has become what some schools of psychological thought would call “self-actualized.” She does break the rules. But as the emperor tells her,
“I have heard a great deal about you, Fa Mulan.
You stole your father’s armor,
ran away from home,
impersonated a soldier,
deceived your commanding officer,
dishonored the Chinese Army,destroyed my palace!

And you have saved us all.”

Mulan’s accomplishments came at the expense of her personal safety and societal stability.

But, possibly even more importantly than that, ultimately her actions that won her victory were inspired by and delivered through her gender perspective. You know what I’m talking about — Yao, and Lin, and Chien-po — become “ugly concubines.” Were it not for Mulan’s unique female perspective, nobody would have ever gotten into the palace in time to stop Shan Yu.

Yes, Mulan physically and emotionally improved and hardened herself throughout the course of the movie. But I don’t think she ever rejected her femininity unless it was necessary for her safety (“Just because I look like a man doesn’t mean I have to smell like one”).

This beautiful balance I think is what all women should strive for. Nobody should strive to fit their gender roles at the expense of their own personal betterment. Nobody should accept gender roles if that means placing them above their own values. Nobody should accept gender roles if it impedes upon intelligence or physical or emotional well-being.

Another point I wanted to make, but lost sight of when I got on my pedestal via the words above, was how Disney STILL managed to reject her as a powerful female for the sake of their advertising.
At one point, I’m sure you all saw “Mulan” covers where there was the “feminized” Mulan with “Ping” in the reflection of her sword. This is the essence of the movie.

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However, in the later DVD release (not sure about the details — I got this one within the last few years; it came with the horrendous second movie), they kept the flashy sword while TOTALLY removing the intentions they had for having the sword in the earlier cover in the first place. For some reason, this is pretty damn offensive to me. Most people, I hope, have seen “Mulan” and know better. But just like — for some reason, the cover artists made the decision to all but eliminate “Ping” from the portrayal of the movie. The tiny figure on the tiny horse doesn’t even have her hair in the traditional Chinese bun. WTF?
mulan-ugly

This leads me into my second point about Disney’s inability to follow through with Mulan’s accomplishments: Her Barbie doll.

My parents happen to still believe I’m a 12-year-old girl, so once in a while they’ve bought me a Barbie doll. I’ve got this Mulan doll they released as part of the “Disney Princess” arc. She’s wearing a sparkly pink kimono with a fancy golden crown on her head.

WHAT?

A. Mulan never wore that elaborate of kimono in the film
B. Even though Shang got the hots for Mulan and she made him all flustered and Grandma Fa told him to stay forever, and so Mulan *did* implicitly end up with a man, hello, SHANG IS NOT A PRINCE. HE IS A MILITARY OFFICIAL.

THEREFORE, this crown they placed on the Mulan-Barbie’s head is a total fictionalization with no basis whatsoever in the actual character they depicted.

Thus, the Barbie doll designers didn’t have the balls to accept the fact that Mulan, a very pretty, intelligent, physically accomplished woman, is pretty damn kick-ass and would probably rather wear armor if she had a choice in the matter. They just packaged her away in the serial stereotype of a Disney princess. (I will note, we all know she’s not the only one they’ve done this to, but she happens to be the dearest to me.)

So I suppose I’m making a point here about the disparity between quietly admitted attitudes about gender — say, movies produced in the 1990’s that depict very strong, uncompromising females — and what people actually have the balls to admit out loud for fear of being shunned by society.

I mean, maybe most individuals feel all right with a woman like Mulan (by the way, she’d have had a much harder time in Chinese society with what she did), but mostly we’re all still stuck under this idea that we can’t fess up to the possibility that there’s a problem.

THERE’S A PROBLEM.

That’s what I have to say to all the blind optimists I know.

No matter how much you choose to let that fact rule your life, please, don’t pretend there’s not. Don’t try to ignore it. Accept it.

And if you’re feeling brave enough, do something about it.

Other Peoples' Work!

A Not-So-Tiny Rant

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So I have a confession about this “guilty pleasure” television show that turned out not to be such a “guilty” pleasure — it was called “The Playboy Club.” It premiered on NBC and my attraction to it was the 1960’s vintage setting. I watched the first episode online expecting to quickly and with much disgust turn it off, thinking it would be rife with sexual promiscuity and derogatory themes.

But the first episode introduces the primary conflict: the accidental murder of a mobster by the main heroine, Maureen, who was defending herself against the mobster’s sexual advances. So begins her complex relationship with the only other witness to the murder: an up-and-coming district attorney. These two do NOT immediately begin a sexual relationship. There is no sexual tension between them: they are simply and only co-conspirators.
The women who are the “bunnies” are headstrong, intelligent, and professional.
The show features an African American bunny who states once that she is saving her money to buy a house because “black girls ain’t ever supposed to own nothing.” The show features one bunny who is married to Sean Maher of Firefly fame. These two are homosexuals whose marriage is a sham because at that point in time, coming out of the closet would have been catastrophic on so many levels. Another one of the main characters, Caroline, is an older woman struggling with her age. She relies upon her position at the Playboy Club and it’s obvious she feels the pressure upon her as she’s getting older and being replaced by young, fresh women like Maureen.
In the last episode, as if the writers suspected the show’s fate before it was decided, the show features a spy — a new bunny hired who is actually a reporter from the local newspaper (for the first twenty minutes, you’re absolutely certain this woman was actually hired to uncover Maureen’s secret murder.) She meant to enter the Club and expose it as a harem and a cesspool for debauchery. When the truth comes out Caroline, the other leading lady of the show, confronts the spy and accuses her of trying to turn her hard-working, trusting, earnest girls into simple whores. The reporter is humbled and eventually issues a retraction to her story.
Caroline, who has been involved with the attorney and thus has antagonized Maureen thinking Maureen and him (Nick) were involved, is an interesting character herself. When Sean Maher’s character (a political man) suggests to Nick that he date some political man’s wealthy daughter for the sake of his campaign, Caroline begrudgingly allows Nick to do so. This brings up the issue to Caroline that to the public, Caroline isn’t good enough: she’s crude and dirty. She’s a proud woman and so begins to retaliate against Nick’s dating the wealthy daughter. You find out at the end of the last episode that the wealthy daughter is in fact in cahoots with Sean Maher’s character. She’s a lesbian who wants to finally be “the good little heterosexual girl her daddy always wanted.”

The main and nearly exclusive tension of the show rests in the possibility of Maureen and the attorney’s crime being uncovered. It’s not sex. Here’s what floors me:
THERE IS LESS SEXUAL CONTENT ON THIS TELEVISION SHOW THAN THERE IS ON ANY OTHER SHOW I CAN THINK OF. My favorite television show “Bones” is more rife with on-screen sexual encounters and sexual content than “The Playboy Club.”

This is a show about what it’s really like to be living within societal taboos. It shows that everyone is just trying to survive in their own way. It deals with a number of controversial topics intelligently.

Why does this floor me?
“The Playboy Club” was just cancelled. I found this out by searching for episode 4. Watching these episodes has been a highlight of my week for a month.
I also found out that the show was cancelled probably due mostly to the opposition it received from The Parent Television Council. Naturally enough, the council opposed the show — BEFORE IT EVEN AIRED — for its lewd content and derogatory display of females.
Never before have I found it so obvious that someone forming an argument like this had not ever looked into what it was they were opposing. I see more women put into derogatory positions all the time on shows that continue airing with extreme popularity. This did not put down women. It gave them intelligence and independent thinking and power. The main men on the show were unanimously respectful, if not subordinate, to the women.

It’s just sad that an intelligent show like this got all the heat just for having to do with Playboy, while sitcoms can reinforce gender stereotypes every single day and nobody questions it.

Emotional Breakdowns, Other Peoples' Work!

Total Absorption

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I am experiencing the most intense literature-related whiplash OF MY LIFE.

You know what I’m talking about — the daze that follows the departure from a fictional world in which you’ve long invested, whether your own or someone else’s.

In my case, devouring the tales from Middle-earth as penned by J.R.R. Tolkien was an unexpected endeavor for me. I don’t remember exactly when — it was possibly two or three years ago — that I quickly read “The Hobbit.” Then immediately after that I plunged into “The Fellowship of the Ring.” It must have been near that fall that I began “The Two Towers,” which is the most battle-intense of the three parts of LotR. So naturally, being a girl, I got bored of the battles and stopped halfway through the middle of the book.

Fast-forward now to this summer. My family decided it was time once more to watch the trilogy of films from Peter Jackson. Then when the last images from “The Return of the King” fell away, I was hungry for more Middle-earth. So I picked up “The Two Towers” again. I had bought this big single-volume version that thus presented Tolkien’s epic in the way in which he intended — as one single book, divided into the 3 parts known by the movies. So I started reading “The Two Towers” probably last week. Then as it got past the battles I got much more enthralled, and then suddenly this past Sunday, I was reading “The Choices of Samwise Gamgee” and then ALL OF A SUDDEN “THE TWO TOWERS” WAS DONE.

“The Return of the King,” like the last of the three films, is the accumulation of the preceding two parts of the epic. It’s nonstop action, and we’re talking ACTION — not the slow crawl that, say, Stoker’s “Dracula” comes to, right when you expect the pace to become breathless.

Anyways…I was tearing through 50 pages a day, which considering the density of Tolkien’s writing I see as very impressive. Then yesterday I read 100 pages of “Return,” and had only 100 left to go, and so I stayed up last night to finish it. I bid farewell to Frodo and went home to the Shire with Sam early this morning:

And thus today I am whiplashed, watching production videos on Peter Jackson’s Facebook page for “The Hobbit” as I am desperately thirsty for more preciouss and hobbits and dwarves and wizards.

And reading Tolkien the last few weeks has taken quite an emotional toll on my own writing endeavors.

See, Tolkien’s “The Lord of the Rings” is THE, and I mean THE EPIC FANTASY.
Like, every fantasy story any writer could tell following Tolkien’s penmanship is blarney – it’s dishwater – it’s an imitation.
And I’m not going to pretend like that doesn’t have its own implications for me.
Plunging myself into Middle-earth revealed acutely to me my own shortcomings yet living in my precious little Helios, in the cardboard bridges I tried to forge.
And rather than serving as an inspiration, for the last week Middle-earth has conquered my own pen. I know I’ll move past this — I’m determined to, but for now I’ve given myself over to pondering my own place in the realm of fantasy. See, given the depths to which Tolkien developed Middle-earth — with languages and song and history and weapons and races and geography — he offers many lessons to me. All these areas I wondered how to establish in Helios make a little more sense with Tolkien’s help. Ah, that he still lived!

I mean, I’ve got to say this, because it was running through my head for many a sentence and many a page in Tolkien’s words…you know that an author has done something splendid when the movie adaptation doesn’t have to add cheap thrills and awkward love scenes and badass one-liners…because the words penned by the author himself, and the epic scenes he wove together, are already so phenomenal that no invention of a filmmaker catering to an audience of another century could possibly outdo the original.

Now, what stands as the biggest argument against the movies that completing Tolkien’s book has raised concerns the very different endings for the film and book “The Return of the King.” The film basically excluded the last 60 pages of the book and opted for a cheerier alternative. That is to say, in the film, the hobbits returning to the Shire found it unchanged. That wasn’t Tolkien’s vision. In the book, Sauron has infiltrated Hobbiton and turned it rancid with “ruffians.” Frodo, Sam, Pippin and Merry must before they can settle in at home start an uprising of hobbits and drive the men out. There are casualties, and Frodo at last finds Sauron or “Sharkey” seated in Bag End, gloating over his corruption of Frodo’s home. Then Frodo offers this bastard wizard mercy, and offers Grima Wormtongue safety in Hobbiton…but lo, Sauron detests Frodo for his mercy and disparages Wormtongue, who then slits Sauron’s throat before himself being struck down by arrows from hobbits standing guard. 0___0; THEN, and only then, can Sam marry Rosie and can Frodo leave with Elrond and Galadriel across the Sea.
I see why the films avoided this last conflict in Tolkien’s story, but I don’t respect it. At the very end I think they deserted the dark depths into which Tolkien’s cast must descent before the last page can be written in favor of something easier to stomach.

This aside, ah…I am spent. Tolkien gave me such a high and now I want more.
Now I must apply myself elsewhere — to school, and to my own worlds! May I be guided by J.R.R. Tolkien and his small heroes as I paint my own tiny picture under his grand, everlasting mural.

Other Peoples' Work!, Writing!

Contemplating Sequence

So, with the Redefining Evil trailer mostly done, and nothing to do for that but wait for C’s edit to come back to me, I once again was restlessly without a project. The book teaser took me a solid week to do. I wanted to hold off on publishing it to give myself time to tinker with the art and music, but I’m not sure that I’m feeling too compelled to go back to the images — an age-old problem. I now just need to decide whether to scrap the idea of modifying anything or to just give myself a breather from it and then come back.

Anyhow, I’m reading Fledgling by Octavia Butler. She’s a really renown science fiction/fantasy author, a powerhouse black woman who died around 2005. My dad was a fan of hers, and I ran across Fledgling while I was exploring the “Vampires” subcategory of Fantasy on the B&N website. I thought it would be cool to read a vampire book by someone who doesn’t “specialize” in vampire fiction and also is known for good writing. I’m a little over halfway through, though, and I’m pretty disappointed. Reading this book sparked a recent comment from me on the Redefining Evil FB page. I was really disappointed immediately to find that Butler was basically trying to reinvent the vampire myth. She doesn’t wait very long before her narrator, a black woman named Shori who is a genetic experiment to see if black vampires are less sensitive to sunlight, disses on popular conceptions of vampire lore. It’s one thing to say “that’s what they say, but that’s not how it is” — which is annoying and common enough as it is — but then to add in a contemptuous attitude when debunking vampire myths…gosh, what the hell is the point? Like, I sincerely don’t understand that. I much prefer a writer who embraces customary treatment of this or that subject. When I say that, Patricia C. Wrede’s Arthurian fantasies come to mind. They all take place in traditional fantasy settings, with the knights in shining armor and the dragons and their dragon keeps and the princesses with pretty gowns and long flowing hair. But Wrede (a local Minnesotan, BY the way) deals with this in a wry, cheeky, refreshing way. Cimorene was a huge inspiration to me when I was younger. She doesn’t take nobody’s shit and happily becomes a dragon’s servant after running away from home because she got bored. Sounds like Lucienne, which makes absolute, perfect sense. Anyway — Wrede didn’t write anything “new,” per se, but what she wrote, she wrote WELL. As Solomon says, “What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (Eccl. 1:9b-10a). I always, always, always think of this — especially as it pertains to storytelling. Anyway, what’s more is that this new vampire idea done by Butler (essentially, she keeps the sensitivity to sun and feasting on blood…but, like how the smutty vampire romance authors do it, having your blood sucked is an incredibly pleasurable and addictive experience, so vampires are basically polygamistic drug lords…) is sort of rather quite boring. The narrator is stoic and unemotional, and the characters are boring, without quirks or admirable characteristics. It’s the same encounter over and over again. “I thought his smell was enticing.” and then “I bit her, and she didn’t like it, but we would learn to like it. Then we slept.” and then “The attackers came and tried to burn the houses down, but I am a super vampire so I killed half of them and caught this one and since I bit him now he’s my pet. Woot.” The answer for any conflict is just Shori biting them and intoxicating them and then making them do her will. Uh. What? Butler gave herself an easy entrance because the story starts with Shori waking up after the aftermath of a fire that killed her family, naturally with a head wound that caused amnesia. Thus, the narrator is able to learn vampires at the same time as the reader, so we never have to guess about what kind of vampires Butler’s writing about. I mean, I have a tiny bit of hopefulness still — Butler’s writing is supposed to be grim and gritty, and so there might be a twist yet in store that will win me over to her world. But somehow I’m doubting it. Big sigh.

One night a few days ago after I started reading this, I randomly opened up “Sun-Walking” because I often like skimming through my writing as I do my pictures. Well, before I really knew what was happening, I had read the first solid forty pages and wanted to keep going. It reignited my interest in it. Before I started that Ava project that I dropped, I was debating between starting a new story, rewriting “…Whispered the River,” or writing the sequel to “Sun-Walking.”

A while ago, shortly before I finished the first draft of SW, I started thinking it had the potential to have a sequel. I definitely didn’t think the relationships had resolve, and the conflict wasn’t set up to be solved by the end of the story. Now, with the rewrite, there’s even more tension left to play with. One of my goals while writing it was to maintain a kind of momentum my writing frequently loses. I kept it up until the ending, and now I’ve changed it. There’s a lot of energy to the story. I’m pretty excited. I decided on making it into a trilogy because of the phases I thought the story could take. I thought I would call the second one “Sky-Dancing,” but I hadn’t figured out what to call the third. Today I landed on “Wind-Running,” but decided that would make a better name for the second one. So now, this trilogy is tentatively called the Apprentice of Light trilogy, which includes “Sun-Walking,” “Wind-Running,” and “Sky-Dancing.” 😀 I figured out what I wanted to happen and say in the second book, and it’s a bit inspired by Diana Wynne Jones’ “Dark Lord of Derkholm” as well as the world-hopping design I set up for “Farewell, Fairytale.”

I haven’t done a series since I wrote “…Whispered the River,” but unlike …WtR, I’m going to keep track of characters and not add them in just because I thought I had an intriguing design. I’m going to keep the plot focused and central and not build sub-plots and super-plots. “Wind-Running” is going to take place in a world more like mine, so it won’t have the little plot holes that “Sun-Walking” had. I’m usually opposed (violently) to series, but to justify a trilogy I only have to look at Jonathan Stroud, and then I know that it *can* be a classy thing to do.

Whether or not this will actually work is, as usual, a toss-up. But it’s nice to set my sights on this, and I have a lot left to learn about Lucienne and Levi.

YAY!

Emotional Breakdowns, Other Peoples' Work!, Redefining Evil, Writing Journey, Writing!

“Will I go to Mordor? Maybe.”

“…Do I want to? No way in hell.”

In the rewrite of the hospital-related chunk of RE, I offered Danyil an adorable LotR reference. I’d been trying to decide what sort of man he was outside of his police chief persona, and I’m thinking he’s pretty much a huge book nerd. And no, I don’t mean “Just like meeeeee,” I mean like oookay Danyil settle down, you’re too excited about a literary device.

Anyway, regarding that crazy rewrite, I’m pretty much I’ve bitten off quite a bit more than I can (easily) chew. I think I wanted to do it (subconsciously or not) because it would be an easy way to channel my emotions into something that will do exactly what I tell it to do. But now I want to brush up so many more things and I’m worried that I’m going to make it messier by wanting to do all this. None of these changes are currently in the main manuscript, so it’s not like I’m endangering anything, but I really want these changes to work…I just wish it were working easier.

I think there are lots of little sketches of different things that I could add to this…but I’d better go work on that aforementioned scene.

p.s. today I mourn the death of Diana Wynne Jones, author of so many quaint, lovable, escapist fairytales like Howl’s Moving Castle, the Chrestomanci chronicles, Enchanted Glass, Dark Lord of Derkholm, and so on. I am so sorry that Enchanted Glass was the last new idea of hers I’d ever read. ):

howell_sophie

Other Peoples' Work!

“The beauty of belief”

Whoo-ie! I love me a good book-related rant, especially when it’s something as unusual and truly inspiring as Mary Doria Russell’s 1996 novel The Sparrow.

I’m actually reading this book for my transfer Christianity course, and given how the class has gone thus far, I see why. See – it’s a piece of fiction. It’s Sci-Fi at its core. It’s got cursing; it’s got questioning; it’s got secular material. And yet it simultaneously taps into Christian theology – no, more than that, the true struggles, heartache, dark nights, and swells of belief of a faith journey. In that regard…it’s absolutely, perfectly “my cup of tea.”

The prose is beautiful and the emotional clarity and authenticity of the cast is impossible to miss. Every emotional breakthrough, downfall and struggle that the cast experiences grips me completely. The main character, the glue that holds the whole story together, is Emilio Sandoz. I’m totally taken by him. He’s this small Puerto Rican priest with a messy past (Andrew Stillwater, anyone? Well, you know…without the Spanish accent) whose eyes smile for him. The range of women depicted is also stunning. You’ve got an older woman named Anne Edwards, whose agnosticism is tested and who swears like a sailor while possessing a ginormous heart that causes her to fix strangers their ethnic “comfort foods” in her home. On the other end of the spectrum there’s Sofia Mendes, whose stony exterior hides a sharply intelligent, injured, vulnerable young woman.

MMM! I am liking it so much.

To give you a sample of Russell’s wonderful prose, feast upon this:

He [Emilio Sandoz] was aware of his agnosticism, and patient with it. Rather than deny the existence of something he couldn’t perceive himself, he acknowledged the authenticity of his uncertainty and carried on, praying in the face of his doubt.

That really struck me because I just…I understand that feeling. It’s the kind of reassurance I definitely needed. And this line is from Sandoz’ past, not the Sandoz we know he develops into being (a priest that is sensitive enough to befriend those who are antagonistic towards religion), which is also reassuring.

Russell also does not go about this story without humor. Example:

… John had no talent for the game and so he was nearly home before he got it, at the very moment he managed to step into a fresh pile of dog droppings.
Crap, he thought, in observation and in commentary. He stood there in the rain, contemplating his shoe and its adornment and his own guileless good nature.

From what I’ve learned about Augsburg and especially its approach to spiritual things, “The Sparrow” is a sensible choice for one of the staples of their religious courses. It might approach Christianity without the usual hostility of many works of fiction, but while it embraces it, Russell also presents characters whose faith walks are all over the place. Sandoz is the vision of a pious believer and yet we know from Russell’s narration that he’s not always certain. Anne is moral without religion but questions if Sandoz’ conviction might be onto something. Sofia broke from the religion of her childhood but revisits it for its comforting qualities. Some of Sandoz’ superiors, the priests, are definite dogmatics (Johannes Voelker D: D:).

Just the whole tone of her treatment of Christianity and how she grasps the individual’s struggle with their convictions is so raw and authentic and absolutely something I strive for in my writing.

Now, the only trouble I’m left with is getting through another 90 pages by Monday. But when I put it that way – what do I have to worry about? 🙂