I’ve recently been watching a lot of old Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn films. I adore Katharine Hepburn films, with or without her real-life love, Tracy. The African Queen, Phiadelphia, The Lion in Winter — Hepburn is a presence — regal, clever, riveting. (In fact, I think the only film of hers I don’t like is Bringing Up Baby, in which she plays a ditz, albeit a secretly clever one.) And in her romances with Tracy, I have noticed a common theme: Tracy’s character is usually quite explicitly attracted to her character because of her intelligence. In Woman of the Year, he does not want her to be a housewife — he wants her to be her high-powered, world-changing self, just with a little more consideration for him and their life together. In Desk Set, there’s that marvelous scene on the roof where you can actually see Tracy’s computer programmer falling head over heels for Hepburn’s research librarian as she nails every trick question he asks her.
It’s rare to see this trope in romantic films, but I love it. This probably comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me or has read my books. I tend to write characters whose intelligence is very important to them, and who would rather be valued for their brains than anything else. Nothing makes Amy more angry than to be called stupid. Nothing makes Astrid more frustrated than to be told that knowledge and intelligence won’t help her. And when these girls find love, part of the way they can tell is that the person who loves them is really attracted to their smarts.
I was struck by this, watching a Hepburn/Tracy the other day, that it’s not something you see so often in films or stories these days. For all the talk of “strong female characters,” they seem to focus on physical strength. I think a lot of romances fail because there isn’t that THING where the audience recognizes why character A is utterly perfect for character B — but even when they succeed, when they have that THING, it’s very rarely, “Oh, baby, you’re so SMART.”
Long-time authors talk about author theme — or they used to; these days it’s all “brand brand brand.” Author theme is often described as something you find yourself writing about over and over again, even subconsciously, regardless of what genre you’re writing in. It’s not often something you can recognize after a handful of books — you need to have a substantive body of work. (The authors I hear talking about it most have usually been in the biz for decades.) I know that my two series are feminist books — they deal deeply with modern women’s issues like sexism, sexuality, and the expectations and limitations placed on modern young women. (That they deal with them disguised as comedies and fantasies is my own little trick.) But that’s the nature of those series — even though it’s six books. I don’t think the book I’m working on now is like that, or the one-that-isn’t-Ascendant coming out in October. However, each of those books are still about women who are valued for their intelligence — and I was attracted to the latter project in large part for that reason. I don’t think this is necessarily an author theme, but I do think it’s clear that I have a “type.” I probably wouldn’t get too far if I tried to write about a ditz.
What movies or books have you read recently that present this kind of story? I want more!
I am a big, big fan of retellings, in general. I think the first time I was aware of one was when my parents introduced me to West Side Story. My dad is not the biggest musical fan, but he loves West Side Story, because ballet-dancing gang members are totally awesome. I saw West Side Story way before I saw or read Romeo and Juliet, in fact.
(My husband, Shakespeare lover that he is, is probably even now drawing up divorce papers. Nah, just kidding. In fact, last year, he got me tickets to the new bilingual WSS when it was in DC gearing up for its Broadway run.)
Anyway, thus began my long love affair with retellings. I love Clueless, I love Bridget Jones’s Diary, I love Valiant, I love O, Brother, Where Art Thou.
And of course, given my long and devoted love, I’ve come to several conclusions about what makes for the best kind of retellings,or indeed, what even constitutes a “retelling” as opposed to an “adaptation” or a “reboot.”
For instance: The Baz Luhrman film Romeo + Juliet is not a retelling. It’s an adaptation. Though set in modern day California, it uses Shakespeare’s dialogue. West Side Story, on the other hand, takes the general plot (two young people from feuding groups fall in love, igniting street warfare and death) and certain character relationships (the “Romeo” and the “Mercutio” are best friends, the “Juliet” and the “Tybalt” are closely related) from Shakespeare’s play, and creates something entirely new.
On the other hand, I think the Drew Barrymore film, Ever After would definitely count as a “retelling.” The framing device reveals that the story is going to be about the “truth” behind the legend of Cinderella. There’s no magic, and the fairy godmother is really Leonardo Da Vinci. (Oh, and the prince recognizes a heck of a lot more than Cinderella’s slipper!)
It starts to get a little sticky at times. Now they’ve even got these “remixes” — stuff like Pride & Prejudice and Zombies, which takes the actual text of P&P and mixes it up with original material. (And no, since i get asked this all the time… my book is not one of these.)
Adaptations (by their very nature) and “reboots” (due to the rights issues involved) are much more common in film than in books. (I say, just as John Scalzi announces his sale of the “reboot” of the Little Fuzzy series.) So what differentiates these things? Might be one of those “I know it when I see it” things. It usually requires a very different setting. Batman Begins is a reboot, because there have been other Batman film franchises. Otherwise, it would have been an adaptation, because it was adapted from the comics.And yet, Ever After, which takes place in a frocks and swords European fairy tale-ish setting, is a retelling.
Gah, now I’m even confusing myself. Perhaps I should just stick with “I know it when I see it.”
How excited am I about the movie adaptation of the Beauty and the Beast retelling BEASTLY, by Alex Flinn? 1) I totally loved the book, 2) I love how many adaptations are coming out of YA novels these days, 3) Neil Patrick Harris.
Also, dudes in hoods are hot. I think I spent four books detailing that little insight into my psyche.
In passing, is it me, or does Beauty and the Beast, in particular, lend itself very well to retellings? I can’t tell you how many romance novels I’ve read that are retellings of that book, and one of my favorite YA novels of all time, Valiant (my troll love is vast), is also a retelling of that story. I think because it has a really great theme about loving someone for their insides, and the magic in that story is so metaphorical in nature, that it can truly be whatever you want it to be.
Speaking of Holly Black, I definitely credit a few conversations I had with her in Ireland last year with my decision to move forward with this project. Holly has tacked several retellings, and done it so skillfully that more than one person I know has said to me, “Oh, yeah! Valiant *is* Beauty and the Beast! Now I see it!” Her newest retelling is, of course, White Cat, which is based on the (rather obscure) fairy tale by the same name. Having read both Holly’s incredibly awesome fantabulous book and the fairy tale, I would argue that even fewer people would make the connection. You know, if they’d ever read the fairy tale. Which most people haven’t.
My point being, is that Holly’s way of thinking about retellings freed my mind from some of the doubt demons I had about tackling my own. And basically, what I got from the conversation was this: fair game. No matter what the source material, that’s THEIR story. Your story is your own, and you can feel free to jettison, combine, and remix whatever elements you need to to make your story the best it can be.In fact, the more it is your own, the better I like the retelling.
For instance, the troll in Valiant (unlike the boy in Beastly) is not under a curse. He is, in fact, a troll. True love will not make him “beautiful” again. Because that wasn’t the point of Black’s retelling, which was more about Val (the “Beauty” character) and her personal journey. Whereas it is the point of Flinn’s retelling, because her story focuses on Kyle’s (the “Beast”) personal journey and how his “curse” was the catalyst for that to occur.
In Bridget Jones’s Diary, it’s not Bridget’s little sister who runs off with a disreputable man, thereby ruining the family’s reputation, it’s her mother, whose lover scams the Jones family friends out of their savings. (If you’ve only seen the movie, you are probably wondering what the heck I’m talking about, since they cut this plotline.) But in both cases, the fact that Darcy (it’s so convenient when characters get the same names in retellings, isn’t it?) tracks down the scoundrel in order to save Bridget/Lizzy’s family is the catalyst for them to reunite. In West Side Story, Tony (Romeo) still kills Maria’s (Juliet’s) beloved relative after the man kills Tony/Romeo’s best friend, sending him on the run and forcing Maria/Juliet to make a horrible choice between her family loyalty and her one true love.
The point is, in a retelling, you are taking a particular part of a story (a plot, a character, a story question, a theme) and using it as a jumping off place from which to create something entirely new. West Side Story used the plot and characters of Romeo & Juliet to talk about race relations in mid-century Manhattan. Valiant took plot elements and themes from Beauty and the Beast to tell a story about dark fairies, murder, and drug addiction. Clueless cut and combined and jiggled around character relationships from Emma to fit into a late 20th century lifestyle. And you can do those things because you are serving the needs of your story, and in order to create that omelet, well, you might have to break a few of the old story’s sacred eggs.
In other words: No fairy godmother? No problem. Use Da Vinci.
There has been a lot of chatter on Twitter lately about the role of gender in YA books. On one hand, women writers and female-centric books dominate the YA market. (An interesting phenomenon given the “general knowledge” that a girl will read a book by or about any gender, but most boys will only read books about–or sometimes by–males.)
On the other, there’s still a lot of sexism. Female characters are held toridiculousstandards (especially by female readers!) and vilified for having faults. In YA fiction, as in adult fiction, male writers are showered with praise and awards while comparable books written by female writers are not. Year after year, critics “best of” lists are all about the men. In that post, critic Lizzy Skurnick writes:
I got a glimmer of an answer last year as I sat in a board room hashing out the winners for one of the awards for which I am a judge. Our short list was pretty much split evenly along gender lines. But as we went through each category, a pattern emerged. Some books, it seemed, were “ambitious.” Others were well-wrought, but somehow . . . “small.” “Domestic.” “Unam –” what’s the word? “– bititous.”
Oh, those damn scribbling women and their little domestic novels!
A few months ago, I visited the Jane Austen exhibit at the Morgan Library in New York City. The exhibit displayed some of Austen’s letters, first editions of her works, things like that. But the exhibit that stuck with me the longest was on on Nabokov. Seems he wasn’t such a fan of Jane (along with Emerson, Twain, and other males):
“I dislike Jane, and I am prejudiced, in fact, against all women writers. They are in another class. Could never see anything in Pride and Prejudice.”
He was called out by Edmund Wilson, a famous literary critic. Great, huh? Well, wait until you see the manner of the calling-out:
“You are mistaken about Jane Austin. I think you ought to read Mansfield Park. Her greatness is due precisely to the fact that her attitude toward her work is like that of a man, that is, of an artist, and quite unlike that of the typical women novelist, who exploits her feminine day dreams . . . She is, in my opinion, one of the half dozen greatest English writers.”
So she’s good, but only because she writes like a man. Astounding, huh? Because no male writer (and certainly not Nabokov), ever made a great work of literature out of exploiting his own daydreams. Right? Anyway, Nabokov revisited Austen, found an appreciation for Mansfield Park, and proceeded to teach it in his lit classes at Cornell. All’s well that ends well, I suppose.
As I said in yesterday’s post, I watched the new PBS version of Emma. I have to say it won me over in the end, but only because I am a sucker for the proposal scene and the way the two characters, who have had such an unequal relationship throughout the entire book come together in a moment of true mutual respect. Yes, it’s due to a big misunderstanding, but it’s quite moving, and it makes you realize that when they are married, he won’t treat her like the child he spent the first half of the book treating her as.
But I digress. My point here is that each episode of the mini-series began with actress Laura Linney addressing the screen and lecturing: “Is Jane Austen too ordinary and narrow for today?” she asks us. Linney’s point turns out to be that Emma Woodhouse is not Harry Potter or Edward Cullen or Wolverine. That she’s just a normal human with normal flaws. (Those magical guys all have “normal flaws” too, though.) However, the use of the word “narrow” is suspect. Ordinary? Fine. But narrow far too closely echoes another famous critic of Austen’s, Ralph Waldo Emerson:
I am at a loss to understand why people hold Miss Austen’s novels at so high a rate, which seems to me vulgar in tone, sterile in artistic invention, imprisoned in their wretched conventions of English society, without genius, wit, or knowledge of the world. Never was life so pinched and narrow. The one problem in the mind of the writer is . . . marriageableness . . . Suicide is more respectable.
Oh, Ralph, tell us how you really feel!
It must be nice to live in a world where your options are wider than “marriageableness” or not. I feel like Emerson must have read the first line of Pride & Prejudice, took it at face value, and then went for a walk in the woods. The women in Austen are concerned about marriage because marriage was the only “business” they were allowed to conduct. And Austen’s characters do in fact realize the folly of bad marriages. Elizabeth Bennet would rather risk the kind of poverty that ends up befalling the Dashwoods than wed Mr. Collins. Her friend Charlotte decides that the stigma of being an old maid rates higher on the humiliation scale than that of being married to a fool with good prospects. In Austen’s novels, the onset of love goes hand in hand with the onset of respect. They are romantic within the realm of practicality. Talk about a woman’s daydream! Those were high hopes for the 18th century gal. (And if you want to read about how easily it can all go wrong, check out Millenium Hall by Sarah Scott.)
So Austen is narrow. But it doesn’t stop in the 18th century. I recently read a New York Times profile of the writer/director/producer Nancy Meyers. Meyers is famous for her women-focused domestic comedies. She writes about affluent women and their families and their romances. Sounding familiar? Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, It’s Complicated — these are hers. The first page of the long article is devoted to talking about how Meyers was asked to move from her table at a tony LA restaurant. Ha, see? Even powerful Hollywood moguls get no respect — you know, if they’re women.
Then the writer goes on to talk about how important and influential and successful Meyers is — never letting go of the fact that gosh, it’s hard since she’s a chick. In response to a complain about the number of takes she likes to do of every scene, her (male) agent is quoted as saying there wouldn’t be a complaint if Nancy was Mike Nichols. And gosh, Jack Nicholson respects her, too! I especially loved this bit:
It would be tempting to attribute Meyers’s uninflated manner to her being female — to having been trained from birth in the art of the soft sell — except for the fact that she is more straightforward than girlish, more clear than coy. “She’s just really smart and doesn’t seem to be impeded by all the weirdness that everyone brings to whichever gender they are,” says Helen Hunt, who starred in “What Women Want.”
In other words, just because she’s powerful, don’t fear that she’s that horrible, aggressive kind of female. Don’t fear that she’s a bitch.
Later, the writer, Daphne Merkin, calls Meyers’s women-centric, romantic films “retro” and “post-feminist” — tags I find rather shocking. Because they are romantic? The women in Meyers’s films are successful and (usually) wealthy from their own accomplishments. Diane Keaton’s character in Something’s Gotta Give is a hit playwright with a tenured professor (in Women’s Studies, yet!) for a sister. Cameron Diaz’s character in Holiday owns her own movie trailer production company (and a mansion in Beverly Hills). Diaz puts it bluntly in that film when she tells Jude Law’s single-dad character that she feels comfortable telling him about her success because she knows he won’t be intimidated, having been raised by a mother who was a high level executive editor at Random House. The romantic elements of the film do not detract from the feminist ones.
And the writer momentarily agrees:
“These women are self-sufficient and notably energetic. They may not have men, at least when we first meet them, but they make do with friends and children and siblings, for whom they whip up tasty dinners and homemade pies and laugh over their own situations. When men do appear on the scene, whether in the form of a babe-chasing player like Jack Nicholson’s Harry or Alec Baldwin’s renewedly impassioned Jake (or Dennis Quaid’s Nick Parker in “The Parent Trap,” for that matter), they awaken dormant desires that nevertheless have to be fit into pre-existing, busy lives.”
But then she spends a few pages obsessing over the filmaker’s focus on set dressings. She criticizes the thread count in the upholstery as being needlessly lush and overindulgent. Let us unpack the following quote:
“Whether her insistence on “softening the message” [Meyer's quote, which I for one believe was taken out of context] through plush surroundings ultimately weakens the films — renders them more glossy and insular than they need be, even for a genre that is inherently fizzy — is a question I have debated with myself and others.”
So, because women-centric romantic comedies are “inherently fizzy” we should make doubly sure to grit them up in a visual sense? I wonder how many other filmmakers are asked not to put their characters in fancy cars or film in exotic locales in order to, you know, make something real. These damn domestic female stories!
“At worst, her films can give off an air of tidy unreality — and it is this unexamined aspect, I think, this failure to even hint at darkness, that most fuels critical ire. Richard Schickel condemns Meyers with faint praise, hinting that she and the studios have struck a devil’s pact of sorts. “Clearly there is an audience for sweet little middle-class romances of the kind she makes, and it pleases the studios to indulge a woman, whom they would not trust with more vigorous projects. It’s as if they’re trying to say: ‘Hey, we’re not sexists. We make Nancy Meyers movies.’ ””
“Sweet little middle class romances.” (First of all, anyone who lives in a house like the Hamptons mansion in Something’s Gotta Give is NOT middle class, fwiw.) But can’t you just hear Emerson’s or Nabokov’s dismissal of Austen in those words? Can’t you hear the dismissal of that roomful of critics deciding on literary awards? Why is domestic a dirty word? Why is a character driven movie about a successful person dealing with their personal lives a Best Picture nominee if it stars George Clooney, but not if it stars Meryl Streep? I think I’m inclined to agree with Meyer’s agent. An article like this would never be written if Nancy was Ned.
I leave you with this (there’s a little bit of language at the end):
There’s been a lot of talk around the blogosphere recently about the general love of bad boys. I’ve seen a few folks saying that nice guys can work too (and a few more actually claiming “bad boy” status on characters I would certainly categorize as “nice guys”) but it’s pretty much nothing compared to the wave of bad boys taking over books.
My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?
Bad boys never did it for me. I never had a thing for Heathcliff (abusive, horrible puppy-killer!) or Mr. Rochester. I liked Gilbert Blythe and the fine, upstanding, stick-in-the-mud (if jerky) Mr. Darcy. (Actually, I *really* liked Captain Wentworth, who I suppose had the technical bad boy edge of being a privateer.) I thought Angel was a sociopath, and though I liked Spike as a character, I was never attracted to him and found his relationship with Buffy to be utterly laughable (as opposed to his relationship with Drusilla, which I actually found quite effective and moving). Me, I liked Riley — til they ruined him, that is.
(It is important to note that I do not think that angst=bad boy. Edmund Pevensie, upon whom I have a crush I’ve actually been paid to write about in detail, is angsty — but not a bad boy. He had one little lapse in judgment, and proceeds to spend the rest of the books atoning for it. A lot of bad boys are, however, angsty, which is usually our entry into sympathizing with them.)
So the only bad boy I ever fell for was Logan Echolls of Veronica Mars. And I fell hard. Perhaps it helped that Logan was still a child, and it was possible for him to rise above his abusive father and horrific home life that was making him into a psychotic jackass (See above re: angst and sympathy). I watched the end of the first season of VM with my heart in my throat worried/terrified that Logan had murdered his ex-girlfriend Lilly in a fit of jealous rage. And through it all, I loved him. My one bad-boy crush.
Perhaps my love for Logan helped when I found myself crafting my own bad-boy love interest — or what one reviewer (positively, if you can believe it) called “the asshole love interest.” It certainly hadn’t been my intention to write that guy, and it was really challenging too, to make it believable — to me — that a reasonable woman would take that kind of risk with her heart or with her safety. It took the better part of a book to set up a situation where I could even get her to a point where she’d initiate it, and another book entirely to get the relationship off the ground. It had to be believable for me.
And it worked, if the reader responses are anything to go by. People love Poe. I sometimes wonder how much they love him, and how much they love the trope of the bad boy. I worked hard on him, but most folks were on board right from the start. There’s something about bad boys that gives them that capital. Ironically, though bad boys have a population of readers ready to love them from the word go, good boys have to work five times as hard.
Here are the struggles they face:
If they are sweet and considerate, they are perceived as weak.
If they are steadfast, loyal, and sure of their feelings for the girl, they are perceived as desperate, lying, or too good to be true.
If they are fine upstanding citizens, they are perceived as bland and goody-two-shoes.
And to those naysayers, I present Mr. Lloyd Dobler:
Let’s face it, we all want John Cusack standing outside our house with a boombox.
And the whole point of Say Anything, really, is that Lloyd embodies everything that a bad boy is not. He’s sweet, and considerate, and unassuming, and steadfast, and stand-up, and absolutely, unequivocally in love with a girl that everyone thinks outclasses him.
MIKE: I wanted to ask you: how’d you get Diane Court to go out with you? LLOYD: I called her up. MIKE: Yeah, but how come it worked? I mean, like, what are you? LLOYD: I’m Lloyd Dobler. MIKE: This is great. This gives me hope. Thanks.
Lloyd isn’t boring or weak (he can manhandle drunks at a party pretty handily), but he’s also pretty accepting of the fact that his general lack of ambition and his vague idea of being a “professional kickboxer” doesn’t hold a candle to Diane’s future and destiny. So why do we like him so much?
A friend of mine told me it’s because Say Anything is, ultimately, Lloyd’s story. It’s not the story of a high-powered ambitious girl who accepts the gentle love and devotion of a nice guy like Lloyd Dobler. It’s about Lloyd, everyone’s favorite everyman, who through true love and devotion wins his prize of the beautiful girl. We’re with Lloyd. We really want him to get his heart’s desire, and when he does, we cheer.
But what if this was Diane’s story? Would we then perceive Say Anything as being about a very successful girl who takes pity on the class slacker, has a little summer romance, and when her life goes all topsy-turvy, settles, knowing this guy is willing to be her house-husband and general shoulder to lean on in England? Comforting, sure, but not exactly the stuff of high passion.
Heck, even Lloyd’s cadre of girlfriends (a delicate balancing act, from a writer’s perspective, to present Lloyd as being platonically beloved by women without coding him as someone who is not boyfriend material) have to have a discussion about his catch-factor:
REBECCA: Hey, I know this is a strange thing to say, but maybe Diane Court really likes Lloyd. COREY: If you were Diane Court, would you honestly fall for Lloyd? (long pause) Yeah. DC: Yeah! REBECCA: Yeah.
And maybe it also helps that Lloyd is so in love with Diane — standing-outside-the-window-with-a-boombox kind of love. But of course, that kind of thing can backfire on a nice guy. In high school, my friends and I used to say that a romantic gesture had nothing to do with the gesture — it was the guy doing it. If you liked the guy sending you secret notes and flowers, it was romantic. If you didn’t, it was lame and stalkery. If it wasn’t cutie-pie John Cusack — Lloyd Dobler who we were all rooting for — standing out there with the boom box, we’d probably recommend that Diane call the cops.
I ran into that problem myself with Brandon. The sweeter and more romantic Brandon was to Amy (and, most importantly, the less that Amy responded to it) the more his actions were viewed by the readership as lame and desperate. So maybe it’s that Amy actually likes the equally lame (from an objective standpoint) stuff that Poe pulls. I mean, a half-eaten pack of LifeSavers as a present? Not exactly diamonds and chocolates.
As the reactions to the boys in the SSG series came in, I was fascinated by what readers chose to believe of Amy’s narration and what they discarded. All first person narrators are to some extent, unreliable, in that the reader only sees what they see. Even if they are telling the absolute truth to the reader, they are not omniscient, and they bring their own biases into the situation. Take, for example, Amy’s initial reaction in SSG to Clarissa’s overtures in the library. Because Amy hates Clarissa, she thinks Clarissa is trying to be bitchy to her and to question Amy’s right to be tapped by Rose & Grave. Later, of course, we discover that Clarissa was honestly curious. Readers assume Amy’s version of events, and are corrected only when Amy is.
(Of course, some of them are never corrected. I am always surprised by the number of letters I get from people who hate Clarissa, even though Amy grows to love her.)
So perhaps readers’ disdain for Brandon’s romantic efforts is a result of Amy’s disdain. And yet, Amy is plenty disdainful of Poe through both SSG and UTR, and I got lots of letters at the end of UTR that were pro-Poe. (Which, honestly, was a relief, given what I was about to do with the storyline.) It’s hard for me to say, since I’m the writer. Were there subtle manipulations coding the reader to root for Poe over Brandon? Sure, why not? Are my skills as a writer, then, not up to snuff if I haven’t succeeded in making you root for the romantic coupling of my choice?
Now there’s a question to get neurotic over.
It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.
(I found the most lovelorn pic of Spike I could for this part, and, sidebar, do you know if you just google the word “Spike” this is most of what comes up? No actual, you know, spikes.)
There are some old screenwriting tricks writers sometimes use to create sympathy for an otherwise unlikeable character. If he’s mean, show that other people — people we’re inclined to like — like him. Have him be sweet to children or small animals.This is called “save the cat.”
When we see Logan going to get the belt his father will beat him with, we understand there’s a reason behind his jackass nature. When Spike risks death to protect Dawn, we see that he really does care about both Summers girls. Personal sacrifice, vulnerability, unshakeable interest in the heroine (who can’t help but be at least flattered, though returning the interest is the brass ring)… these are all games that you get to play with the bad boy. But the good guy? He’s not otherwise unlikeable. The readers already know his vulnerabilities. They like him.
They just don’t lurrvvve him.
Except when they do? Why do we swoon over Lloyd Dobler when he’s nothing like Logan Echols?Or are they different populations entirely that do the swooning? Are some of always going to be Team Bad Boy and some of us always going to be Team Nice Guy? And what does that make of me, Team Nice Guy, except for that one little dalliance with Logan?
The Winners of the Jeri Smith-Ready Giveaway are: B.E. Sanderson and Rhiannon! Please email me about your prizes. The way this will work is, the first winner to email me gets their choice of either Wicked Game or Bad to the Bone (include your choice in your email). The second winner to email me gets whatever is left.
Last night, SB and I went to see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Now, I’m not very familiar with HBP (Or Deathly Hallows, to be perfectly honest). I listened to HBP on audio twice, and read DH once. Compare that to multiple readings of the the first five, including dozens (probably) of 3&4. So I may just not be remembering things correctly. I’m not as familiar with the book, so I’m not always aware of when a script makes changes for the better, or are able to bypass things that might work in books and tell it differently for the sake of the visual medium (something that the Lord of the Rings movies, for example, did brilliantly). Also, I felt that HP6 was a tad problematic on a fundamental level (Harry spends half the book on a mission from Dumbledore to discover a secret that, eventually, it seems that Dumbledore already knows — not to mention that the whole Half-Blood Prince’s anticlimactic reveal). I do, however, feel that the film didn’t necessarily solve these problems (it really could have been an easy fix) and introduced others that were entirely unnecessary. I’m not super familiar with Yates’s work (I saw OOP and liked it, but pretty much any opinion of mine would have been a step up from the book), so maybe it’s just that his story sensibilities are UTTERLY different than mine. But. Yeah. His story sensibilities are utterly different than mine.
For instance, was there any particular reason that we needed to spend about as much time on Hermione’s charmed birds when she’s crying in the courtyard as we do on, oh, I don’t know. Dumbledore’s death scene? Throughout the movie, there seemed to be this odd focus on story elements and scenes that didn’t, in the end, seem to have much bearing on the entirety. There were a LOT of shots of the overacting Lavendar Brown going all mooney-eyed over Ron. A. Lot. It was funny the first few times. Then it got old. Also, was it me or was Ron shunted almost completely to the side in this film? It would have been easier to buy Hermione’s vast unspoken love for him if he were actually included in some of the serious scenes. His character has entirely been reduced to a comic relief. (Compare to Sokka of Avatar, who manages to be both goofy and a contributing member of the team.) He just sits there, staring dumbly into the distance, out of earshot of their very important plot conversation at the big end sequence where Hermione promises to be there for Harry when he says he’s going to drop out of Hogwarts.
And let us not speak of the mishandling of the entire Half Blood Prince plotline. It’s awkward in the original, but it COULD have been integrated so much better. The true horror of Sectum Sempra is not simply that Harry doesn’t realize what a horrible spell it is (after all, this is after Malfoy breaks his nose with his boot), but also that it reminds Harry of the torture that he himself underwent at the hands of the evil headmaster in book 5. Thou shalt not cut with invisible objects. (And thou shalt not cast spells thou dost not understand, either, but whatever.) And then, Ginny Weasely recommends hiding the book? Ginny Weasley, who knows from evil books by mysterious authors? Guys, we already saw you burning newspapers in the first scene. I think that’s a gun on the wall.
Speaking of the Weasely house — what was up with that whole Christmas thing? Does Ginny Weasely really go around tying boys’ shoes in the book? There was a lengthy sequence I could have done without. And the Death Eaters came to… do what exactly? Make sure everyone was well out of the house before they burned it to the ground? Speaking of what the Death Eaters come to do — and again, this might be betraying my bad memory of the book — but don’t they have a huge battle at Hogwarts? They come in and start attacking people? The werewolf guy bites all kinds of folks, including one of the adult Weasely’s who came to help in an OOP capacity? These Death Eaters in the movie — I’m not sure why they were there. To back up Draco? I mean, what was the whole point of the yearlong, laboriously detailed and repeated struggle with the Vanishing Cabinet? So Bellatrix could come in and break some windows? Srsly?
In passing, moviemakers, one of the benefits of being able to cut away to the villain doing villainous things throughout the entire film is that at the end you don’t need that scene you often have in books where the heroes and the villain talk about what the villain had been doing the entire film. Also, the idea that Harry just sits around while the Death Eaters kill his mentor is a lot harder to swallow when Harry is, in fact, just sitting around, and not immobilized, invisible, and wandless as he is in the book.
So that was the bad. It is a testament, perhaps, to the mythic/epic qualities and my love of hte series that despite these drawbacks, I did enjoy the film. I am moved by the story. I guess it’s a question of whether I want to watch these movies as movies in their own right or whether I just think of them kind of like fan art — I watch them to be reminded of how much I liked hte books and to be reminded of my favorite things about the books. A few of my favorite parts:
Jim Broadbent. In general, I love everything this actor does, but I thought he was a particularly good choice for Slughorn, who is one of the juiciest parts in the entirety of the series, if you ask me. Bellatrix may be sexier and more fun to play, but it’s difficult to pull off what Slughorn must — as the only “good” Slytherin in the entire series, he’s got a big burden, and he’s an incredibly complex, flawed character. Broadbent nailed it. Soooooo good. Every scene he was in was positively riveting.
I do like the new Dumbledore. He was so good here.
I like how they KINDA made an argument for the whole “go be friends with Slughorn” thing, making it about Dumbledore trying to figure out how MANY horcruxes Tom had made. Though they probably could have hit that plot point harder. (Though, honestly, wherefore the new Damienesque Tom? He looked so off. Was Christian Coulson not available again?)
The expanded Draco scenes. That actor is also shaping up rather nicely. They give a lot of credit to the main three, but some of the other kids are great. (More Neville, if you please!)
Luna Lovegood is my hero.
The Katie Bell sequence was fantastic and terrifying. It was terrifying in the book and just as terrifying in the film. Kinda had a Japanese horror-film quality to it, don’t you think? Like something you might see in The Ring?
I did not go see the midnight showing of WATCHMEN last night. Too much to do. I didn’t even make it up until midnight, let alone 3 a.m.
Sailor Boy, who first attracted my attention doing a Spawn impression (long, long story involving Tim Curry, and not the way y’all think) and has introduced me to many a comic book and graphic novel since then, has dropped hints that he may wait to see it until my return from Ireland. But I’d owe him one. In the meantime, we’ll have to content ourselves with this brilliant, subtle, and incredibly perverted little bit of parody (The Scooby Doo Bubastis might be my favorite part).
I’m not sure how funny (and/or disturbing) this is to people who haven’t read the book. But trust me, it’s a doozy.
I really enjoyed the discussion about movies on the last post. Like Julie, I find myself less and less interested in the type of movies that win awards. I think there’s a noticeable difference between these “award bait” films and the movies that the vast majority of the movie-going public goes to see. And I think that’s wrong. You can have films that are wonderful and also worthy of awards. I think it’s similar to literary snobbery — if it’s not a limited-release art house film, fuggetaboutit? I am lucky in that I have an art house cinema a few blocks from my house, so I can easily go see Rachel Getting Married and Slumdog Millionaire (both of which actually seem really interesting to me) — but I find it ironic that I’ve actually seen more of the nominated documentaries this year than I’ve seen the nominated “pictures.” I read a lot of reviews of the Revolutionary Roads and the Readers of the world (I believe it was the Slate film critic who decided the Reader should be more appropriately titled Boo Hoo I Boinked A Nazi) and I can honestly say that neither of them seem the slightest bit interesting to me. Not even in the DVD renting realm. More like, if I did have cable, and they were on cable, and I was flipping stations, I may give them a whirl. Instead of watching those, I rented Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind again, which is a great film, and in which Kate Winslet is phenomenal. And as for this year’s Oscar-nom darling, Benjamin Button, well, aside from the fact that I hope they are giving Audrey Niffenegger some kind of money for stealing her plot (it’s certainly not Fitzgeralds!)*, a short film (now, unfortunately, unavailable) comparing it shot-for-shot with Forest Gump was all I needed to see to convince me to skip it (and Brad Pitt’s bad southern accent. He should join a club with Nicole Kidman).
So yeah. Movies.
In other news, it’s beginning to thaw out there. I even took Rio for a walk yesterday. She went nuts. Horrific leash manners, really, for about half the walk. I had to lay down the law, which, naturally, she didn’t appreciate at the time, but she loves me plenty now. Snuggled with me last night and everything. It’s a truth universally acknowledged by dog trainers that puppies like it when you’re the boss of them. Pack dynamics and all.
Okay, I’m off. Today is a big writing day for me. I am in one of those instances where I have to go back into my manuscript and fudge with stuff and add chapters because I realized I got the order somewhat muddled and things have to happen before the things I’ve already written about happen. Joy.
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* Seriously, does it strike anyone else as being the same deal where George Lucas tried to get the rights toTheHobbit and couldn’t, so he made Willow instead?
Scalzi argues that characters who are generally put together are not necessarily Mary Sues. I found this post very interesting because of a conversation I had on Fangs, Fur, Fey a while back (nope, can’t find it, I looked) where someone more versed in the SFF world than I told me that the accusation of “Mary Sue!” is so ubiquitous that it has almost lost all meaning.
***For those who are curious, “Mary Sue” is a term used to describe idealized, often-authorial-self-insertion wish fulfillment characters, usually in fanfiction, but occasionally in original stories. For instance, fan-fiction is rife with the perfect, young (often teenaged) new ensign on the Enterprise/Student at Hogwarts/vampire slayer who shows up, is beautiful and beloved by all thecharacters — but especially all the male characters–on the show, is especially talented and perfect in every way, is above the temptations/concerns/weaknesses/faults that plague the others, saves the day and then, often, dies in the arms of the cutest guy. There are even “Mary Sue Litmus Tests” available online, which are rife with the most hilarious questions (especially if you’ve read a lot of fanfic), such as “is the character’s name a name you really like? Extra points if it’s Raven” and “Are the character’s eyes a color which is found in nature?”***
Anyway, apparently it’s gotten to the point in SFF land to call “Mary Sue” on a character who has any kind of special power (dude, isn’t that why we’re writing stories about them in the first place?) or who isn’t phenomenally screwed up, or who is liked by anyone in the book at all. Which, unfortunate. Anyway, read the piece.
Watched two movies in the last two days. Both sucked. One was Code 46, which seemed right up my alley, but ended up making no sense whatsoever. It’s the near future, and everyone needs these very specific time-sensitive documents to travel anywhere and the cities all have massive border control and everyone else lives outside the city. Oh, also, cloning and in vitro fertilization had previously been such a problem that there was a widespread “inbreeding” panic and now there’s a law called “Code 46″ which says that you can’t have sex anyone who may be genetically related to you. Which I suppose means you’re supposed to get screened before you get busy. Also, there are these viruses you can take which give you special powers or limit your behavior. Oh, and if that isn’t enough, they also have supercool new technology that regrows fingers and alters memory.
Anyhoo, Tom Robbins travels from Seattle to Shanghai to investigate someone who is smuggling out these time-sensitive documents that you seriously need for every single aspect of your existence. But that’s just a MacGuffin. Really, he’s there to meet and have a whirwind affair (depsite the fact that he’s married and has a kid) with Samantha Morton, improbably playing someone named “Maria Gonzalez”, who, although she never does her (practically shaved) hair or puts on makeup or wears anything other than shapeless factory-worker clothes, is apparently the type of girl who goes in for a full on Brazilian bikini wax (yes, I know this, becuase we get to see all of her lady bits). And there are all these ENDLESS shots of her walking in slow motion through subway stations and airports, and long lingering shots on some random dude singing karaoke in a bar. The movie was 90 minutes long. Felt like 200.
***SPOILER WARNING*** (mouse over to read)
Well, with a name like Code 46, I bet you know what happens. Turns out these two are related. As a Code 46 violator (not sure how the gov’t found this out), Morton is forced to have an abortion, has her memory altered to erase Robbins, and gets this handy dandy little “virus” that makes her dread the touch of anyone she shares genetic material with (see, because they now think she’s an incestophile) and, what’s more, makes her slip into a trance and report it if she does manage to commit another Code 46 violation. Which means there’s a really weird “rape” scene in which Robbins has to strap her downa nd hold her while she alternately screams in pain and insists she loves him. (Why she loves him, I don’t know, because she’s had her memory of him erased.)Then she reports it. How she manages to report it I don’t know, becuase it was previously established that after he came and rescued her from the government, they were kind of on the run and had to go live on the “Outside” in the shanty towns where the government couldn’t get them. Indeed, at the end of the movie, Morton chooses to stay on the outside, where she won’t be punished or have her memory erased, while Robbins chooses to have his memory erased and goes back to his wife. She even says “they don’t care what happens ‘outside.’” So why do they come after them once they leave? It’s a mystery.
***End Spoiler Warning***
So that was the first movie. The other one was Rumor Has It, which I probably should have just listened to my friend Anna, who swore I’d hate it. It started out pretty good — it’s about the family that were supposedly the inspiration for the book and movie, The Graduate. And I have to say that I really believed Shireley MacLaine as the grown-up Mrs. Robinson, and I actually like Kevin Costner quite a bit as the grown up Benjamin Braddock. I even liked Richard Jenkins as the much-maligned man that “Elaine” actually marries. It was especially cool because it sort of recast the story so that the characters all had slightly different motivations than seen through the lens of the Graduate fiction,a dn they got to give their own version of events, and you could see how some of it was “true” and some wasn’t.
But the movie was baffling. I guess to make the ages work, they had to set it in the early 90s (because they didn’t want “Elaine’s” daughter to be more than 30), though aside from a few references to Clinton and dot-coms, there was literally nothing in there that was remotely 90s. The fashions weren’t, the hair and makeup wasn’t, the cars and decor and wedding clothes really weren’t! Don’t even get me started on the cell phones! And then there’s this scene where Jennifer Aniston wakes up in Kevin Costner’s bedroom and on his bedside table, he has a picture of himself with Clinton, and a picture of himself with FIDEL CASTRO. On his bedside table.
And Jennifer Aniston’s character bugged the hell out of me. Is it a requirement now that the “job” they give romantic comedy characters is “writing obituaries for a newspaper?” How many romantic comedy characters is that now? I can count three off the top of my head. And then there was the romance. I guess there was supposed to set up this pattern — “Elaine” left her husband and ran off with Kevin Costner before returning and settling down, so they had this whole thing with Jennifer Aniston doing it too (this is not a spoiler, it’s the point of the movie), but I’m sorry, if I’m cutey-patootie Mark Ruffalo, and a rich lawyer in New York, and, to top it off, very sweet and loving and supportive and ready for commitment, and my so-called fiance refuses to tell her family that we’re engaged, treats me like crap, steals my anachronistically small cell phone to run off to San Francisco and have a very public affair with a man twice her age who also slept with her mom and grandma, and then she comes crawling home with the oh-so-romantic apology of “I can live without you,” (especially after he overheard her grovelling to her lover for a far lesser offense for like ten minutes about how handsome and fabulous and what a great lay he was) — yeah. Plenty more fish in the sea, Mark. PLENTY.
Maggie Stiefvater, who once made waves online with her “I just don’t get romance” post and then a year later sold a big fat werewolf romance to Scholastic (releasing this fall!) has put up a very thought-provoking post furthering her thoughts on love and romance. I think it’s safe to say that Maggie’s opinions on the matter have shifted somewhat in the past year and a half. However, I don’t agree with her current thesis that large gestures don’t work, and only by writing around romance do you get romance. (Updated to add: Maggie has amended herself to “earned” big gestures, which I agree with absolutely — see below.)
For instance, the scene in The Village that she points out as an example of a “small gesture” of love is, in reality, anything but. Here we’ve got Joaquin Phoenix’s character, as stoic and silent as ever a character was, finally breaking through after half a movie’s worth of teasing and being told he’s in love for the “things he refuses to do” and revealing a concrete example of his love — GRABBING her hand, not “refusing to catch her” which she claims he’s done for years. Then he admits in a moving, impassioned, grand speech a few scenes later:
“Why can you not stop saying what is in yours? Why must you lead, when I want to lead? If I want to dance, I
will ask you to dance. If I want to speak, I will open my mouth and speak. Everyone is forever plaguing me to speak
further. Why? What… good is it to tell you you are in my every thought from the time I wake? What good can come
from my saying I– I sometimes cannot think clearly, or- or do my work properly? What gain can rise from my telling
you… the only time I feel fear as others do, is when I think of you in harm? That is why I am on this porch, Ivy
Walker. I fear for your safety above all others. And yes… I will dance with you on our wedding night.”
These things work in tandem with each other. We believe the impassioned speech and we thrill at the big hand grab because of the small gestures that lay the groundwork. And those small gestures all build up to what romance fans like to call “the gut punch moment”: the declaration, the realization, the proposal or the reconciliation, or the love scene, the kiss on the dock in the rain or the “you pierce my soul” letter or “I know” before being lowered into carbonite or any of the thousands of grand gestures that leave the audience breathless and elevated in every romance ever told. You need ‘em both. You need ‘em all.
Shanna Swendson actually has an excellent seriesof posts on this, in which I think she gets to the heart of why “you complete me” doesn’t really work (for Maggie and me, at least). It’s not that it’s the “big gesture” — it’s that it’s the big gesture without the small one. Tom is a shit to Renee, who loves him because, I don’t know, he’s got some kind of idealistic outlook on life that attracts her? His last-minute realization that she actually is worthy of his affection, and not just her kid, is false and hollow, because no “small gestures” accompany it. In fact, the “you complete me” shot is even cropped so that you can’t see Tom is doing the sign language for it as well, which would be a sign that he at least PAID ATTENTION to something Renee showed him once upon a time. Shanna’s point is all about romantic comedy filmmakers focusing on these big gestures without the small ones, or thinking that if you line up the right order of events and a big misunderstanding, you’ll wind up with a romance.
Maggie’s other point is an interesting one, about how the reader is dying for two characters to make a romance happen, and that is, I think, why filmmakers can get away with crap like 27 Dresses and, to an even greater extent, Prince Caspian. Hey, look, we have two attractive people who are not related to one another in this film. Let’s put ‘em together! People will buy it. We don’t have to work on that.
Ugh.
I am always surprised by the attempts made to ’ship my characters. After Secret Society Girl, people were all after a romance between Malcolm and Poe. Lately, I’ve been hearing rumblings about one between George and Jenny, which, I’m sorry, is about as likely to happen as Malcolm and Poe. But the point is that people like it when characters fall in love. But that doesn’t mean that storytellers should just go ahead and toss any old random people together, Because then you end up with, well:
WRONG! Ewwwwwwww…..
Now, this can get a little sticky, because I’m also a huge believer in following chemistry, which is, of course, indefinable. Some people may see massive chemistry between two characters where others don’t. I don’t know how much chemistry the actors in Prince Caspian might have had to whoever made that stupid, stupid decision, but there certainly wasn’t enough to overcome the canon of “eww” that accompanied their romance. I never found there to be any chemistry between the leads in the short-lived TV series Moonlight, which probably accounts a lot for why I found the show lacking. But other people completely loved that romance. On the other hand, I applaud show runners like Rob Thomas for following the chemistry of Logan and Veronica to its natural and delicious conclusion on Veronica Mars. I really don’t think they imagined a romance between those two, but when it became clear that she and Duncan were flat as pancakes on screen, while she and Logan crackled like summer lightning — well, where do you go?
And different types of romance are necessary for different characters. For instance, Maggie derides “common interest” as a reason for romance, and yet, in some cases, it’s why we are rooting for two characters, particularly in stories where you meet each character on their own long, long before they ever encounter the other. I still remember my first reading of Lord of the Rings. When I got to the part where Eowyn (bless her shield-maiden soul) kicks the Witch King’s enrobed hiney and falls into a magical coma, I remember exclaiming, “No! She can’t die. She must live and marry Faramir!” Sailor Boy, reading in the next sleeping bag over (we were in a tent in Australia at the time) was all, “Wait, she doesn’t even know Faramir and is in love with Aragorn.” But you can’t fool this romance reader. Eowyn is awesome and all, but Aragorn is a demigod. It was never going to work out. Meanwhile, Faramir is equally awesome, equally noble, equally mortal, and equally in need of someone to try a little tenderness. They needed to live happily ever after and root the orcs out of Ithilien. You knew that they would be perfect for one another when they finally met and a big part of that was their common interest. they were twin souls, serving twin purposes in their respective cities (the young, intelligent, brave noblemen who pushed the leaders of their city to betterness). They belonged together.
So before I wrote SSG, I wrote four romance novels, none of which were published, and one of which received a rejection letter praising my characterization and writing, but regretting the lack of , well, romance. Ah well, I was still learning the ropes. And perhaps the editor in question didn’t find my romantic gestures (grand or otherwise) as romantic as I do. For instance, I find it profoundly romantic that Poe saved the mouse because Amy said she liked it. I like even more that she doesn’t find out about that for months and months. Now, not a lot of people think of mice as romantic, so…
Right. My point was…something. It was that I wasn’t such a huge success at writing romance novels, but I wrote novels that were not shelved as romance novels and received heaps of reviews praising what RWA likes to call the “romantic elements” of my books.
The last three books I’ve written have been more blatantly romantic than the first two. In Rites of Spring (Break), Amy’s love life goes front and center in the plot line, and I remember half-joking with my romance writer friends that the structure of the story maps to a romantic suspense. Rampant, killer unicorns aside, is a love story. And those of you who have read the first chapter of Tap & Gown in the back of ROSB know that the question of Amy’s spring break romance looms large. But those were vastly different projects, in both conception and execution. In SSG, I had a very different denouement to the love story in mind, but those two crazy kids were like magnets. So I just went with what felt natural — though actually, ridiculous chemistry aside, it took a whole book to make it work in any rational manner (and their trials aren’t over, because these two have a HUGELY rough row to hoe if they really want to date). In Rampant, I had always intended on a love story to get in the way of Astrid’s duty, but I had to “cast” her love interest several times before I had the right kind of chemistry. The first time, he wasn’t interested in her. The second time, she wasn’t interested in him. But then I landed upon Giovanni, and they clicked, and it was gorgeous. It was also really interesting to write, because Giovanni is a markedly different kind of hero than any I’ve written before, and way, way different than Jamie. Oh, Giovanni. I’m a little bit in love with him.
Yes, I just finished writing a big scene between Astrid and Giovanni for KU2. Why do you ask?
Unfortunately, I can’t really talk about their “small gestures” vs. “big gestures” or “common interests” though their romance is the one on my writerly mind, because no one has read that book yet and I am spoiler-averse and it’ll be months and months (and months and months and argggggggh… don’t mind the crazy author in the corner). But I can talk about Rites of Spring (Break) — look away if you have not read the book yet. Look perhaps, to this page, and order yourself a copy (my shameless plug of the day) — and mouse over white text to read ROSB spoilers:
In ROSB, we’ve got this slow-burn romance going on for the first half of the book, but I keep it on the DL, even from the narrator. She has no idea what I’m doing to her. In fact, she’s under the mistaken impression that I’m getting her together with some other guy. Poor girl. Meanwhile, Poe keeps popping up, starting in the first chapter, and showing that the events of Under the Rose have permanently changed their relationship, and that a lot of their antagonism is more based on the fact that they are used to it, rather than actual negative feelings or even disagreements. In fact, they are pretty much on the same page — they have the same sense of duty about the society, the same concerns and insecurities about their future, etc. Who knew? (Ahem. me.) The events are a prelude, meant to disarm and discomfit her around him. Long looks, tete-a-tetes, and odd moments of tenderness — none of which add up to anything taken on their own, but set the stage for Amy’s upcoming “duh” moment, which happens when Poe, after saving her life, drops her off at the cabin. “Big gesture” alert: Amy looks out the window and what should she see? Poe pacing in front of her cabin, undecided between coming back and saying — something, but what? — to her, and leaving, letting things stay as they are.
Unbeknownst to Poe, his indecision is moot. Amy instantly grasps what he would be saying were he to come back, and knowing that is enough to change things. Poe likes her.
And really, knowing is half the battle. Because Amy? Not so much with the pretending. She can’t go back to her former antagonist relationship with him. Not given what she knows. So she needs to confront Poe either way: tell him no way is that shit going down, or okay, you’re cute, let’s make out in the sand. (Which they do — “big gesture again”.)
The interesting thing about how their relationship played out, though, to me, is that the power dynamic was not what I expected. Adolescent understanding of a power dynamic is that the person who knows how the other person feels is the one with the power. (This is why you kept your crushes a secret in high school.) Amy knows Poe likes her, therefore, she should be the one in control. And she is for about one chapter. It’s in her hands if things go any farther — if they have a date, if they kiss. After that, the power shifts rather dramatically, and I wasn’t expecting it, though I felt that, in the end, it made for a much more mature romantic storyline. Poe wasn’t going to be embarrassed to be “discovered,” as Malcolm was sure he would. He was going to own it.
I remember seeing an interview with Kristen Stewart, where she was talking about her vision of Bella in the Twilight movie, and how she had the power in that relationship because there was no question of what she wanted; Edward might be torn, but she knew. She wanted to be a vampire and to be with Edward. Well, Poe wanted to be with Amy, and once he thought there was a chance of that happening (which he didn’t back at the cabin, but with the date and the making out, well, he went for it), he had all the power. The power of conviction and of clarity. Yes, he could still be rejected, he could still be hurt by her, but there is a core of strength to honesty that can’t be touched by those things, and it’s a core that Poe hadn’t often had a chance to display in the series. He’s sneaky and manipulative, but not, apparently, when it comes to love. And it trumps any card that Amy attempts to play. I really, really liked that. He could be a deeply flawed person and he could even be wrong about their relationship, but he was absolutely forthright about his own feelings, and that’s incredibly powerful, especially compared to Amy’s wishy-washiness. Honestly? She didn’t stand a chance. He had to be rewarded for such a big step for his character, though also in keeping with his character, who despite his manipulative nature, is very blunt honest and dedicated. And those were all small gestures, but together, they were a tidal wave.
But because of that, in the end, Poe didn’t have to do a lot of “winning” of Amy, and it was Amy who had to go to Poe’s house for the big romantic gesture and reconciliation. And, if I’ve accomplished my goal, you believe her (and Poe believes her, which is a more difficult prospect) because of all her small turning points coming up to that — how she looks for Poe, and thinks of Poe, and is deeply, deeply, fundamentally hurt when she thinks Poe doesn’t trust her — which hurts even more because of how nakedly honest he’s been to her– so hurt she makes herself vulnerable to Darren. That what is going on here is something more than gratitude, and might need to be explored.
Which brings us up to Tap & Gown, where the story is far from over.
I feel that I’ve perhaps wandered far from the original purpose of this post, but what can I say? I’m a hopeless romantic. I love it all, the character perfection and the gut punch moments and the big romantic gesture and the tiny, infinitesimal moments that add up to a love story.
4. Figuring out the correct usage of “each other” versus “one another” because according to Tap & Gown copyedits, I never, ever, ever get it right.
5. How I Met Your Mother. Seriously, it’s become comfort food in our house, We watch it all the time.
6. Figuring out what else I can make with my food processor.
7. This animation. I miss World of Warcraft, which I haven’t played since August and which I now can’t play on my computer, because I don’t have enough space to download the patches, let alone upgrade to Wrath of the Lich King. Also, this story utterly rocks! Oh, would that I had the power to create visual art as gorgeous as this…or, you know, at all.
I’ve recently been watching a lot of old Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn films. I adore Katharine Hepburn films, with or without her real-life love, Tracy. The African Queen, Phiadelphia, The Lion in Winter — Hepburn is a presence — regal, clever, riveting. (In fact, I think the only film of hers I don’t like is Bringing Up Baby, in which she plays a ditz, albeit a secretly clever one.) And in her romances with Tracy, I have noticed a common theme: Tracy’s character is usually quite explicitly attracted to her character because of her intelligence. In Woman of the Year, he does not want her to be a housewife — he wants her to be her high-powered, world-changing self, just with a little more consideration for him and their life together. In Desk Set, there’s that marvelous scene on the roof where you can actually see Tracy’s computer programmer falling head over heels for Hepburn’s research librarian as she nails every trick question he asks her.
In Bridget Jones’s Diary, it’s not Bridget’s little sister who runs off with a disreputable man, thereby ruining the family’s reputation, it’s her mother, whose lover scams the Jones family friends out of their savings. (If you’ve only seen the movie, you are probably wondering what the heck I’m talking about, since they cut this plotline.) But in both cases, the fact that Darcy (it’s so convenient when characters get the same names in retellings, isn’t it?) tracks down the scoundrel in order to save Bridget/Lizzy’s family is the catalyst for them to reunite. In West Side Story, Tony (Romeo) still kills Maria’s (Juliet’s) beloved relative after the man kills Tony/Romeo’s best friend, sending him on the run and forcing Maria/Juliet to make a horrible choice between her family loyalty and her one true love.
My writer friends have been noting the phenomenon as well. One writer was bemoaning the current trend of “the badder the better” and saying it used to be the bad boy hero was some dude who’d just killed a man. Then it became an assassin with a heart of gold. Then just an assassin. Then just a murderer. Another writer wondered if this onslaught was a factor of readers wanting to live vicariously through the exploits of a fictional heroine who walks on the wild side with a lover who is mad, bad, and dangerous to know. But, hasn’t that always been the case with bad boys in fiction? This isn’t a NEW trend. So why now are books filled with ever more reprehensible men?
It’s interesting that there seems to be a definite line between “steadfast” and “obsessive”. The former is the realm of the good boy, and it’s apparently boring and desperate. The latter is the realm of the bad boy (he climbs in your bedroom window, he stalks you, he’s always there, watching you). It’s apparently sexy. Spike is an excellent example of this. He chased after Buffy no matter how much she told him to stop, no matter how much his obsession with her became increasingly desperate and pathetic (first making his real girlfriend, Harmony, dress up like Buffy for sex games, then later, making his own Buffy sexbot), and viewers still found him incredibly attractive and cheered him on. Now, tell me truthfully. If you found out that some dude had a crush on you and when you rejected him, he dressed up a sex doll to look just like you — ummm. Hot? I don’t think so.
