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!
Today we have a very special treat: a guest blogger. I hardly ever have a guest blogger here, but I think I should start doing so more often. All the fun of blogging, none of the pressure of staring at that damned blinking cursor. (Ah, Hemingway, your white bull has been replaced by something even more phallic).
But I digress. Today we are visited by the utterly awesome Saundra Mitchell, whose debut novel, SHADOWED SUMMER, knocked off my flip flops when I read it last year. (I wasn’t wearing socks because her descriptions of a steamy Southern summer were so spot on I felt like I was getting heatstroke just turning the pages.) It’s a very creepy ghost story, and to my genre-loving heart’s eternal delight, it’s been racking up the award nominations and wins ever since it was published. (I am the girl who defiantly turned in a ghost story as a final project after the instructor of the one creative writing class she ever took sneered to another student that he did not accept genre works in class.) This book was an ALAN nominee, a Junior Library Guild pick, on the VOYA summer reading list, and up for an Edgar Alan Poe award. Y’all — read it.
Oh, how I love it when the ghosts win, and when savvy genre writers like Saundra show the world that family secrets and coming-of-age can fit perfectly into stories that go bump in the hot, humid night.
Today, Saundra is here to promote hte release of the SHADOWED SUMMER paperback and to talk about one of my favorite topics: strong, kick-ass heroines. And — I blush to type it — she is talking specifically about Astrid. Take it away, Saundra!
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INDEPENDENT WOMAN
Astrid Llewelyn is the ideal kind of awesome. I found myself thinking this often while reading RAMPANT on a train toward Chicago. I forgot to be nervous about the trip, because I was so wrapped up in watching Astrid grapple with her unexpected destiny.
Now, there are a lot of awesome female characters in fiction and in film. Gwen from Merlin is awesome. Hermione Granger from Harry Potter is awesome. Katara from The Last Airbender is awesome.
And Astrid is awesome, not because she’s perfect at everything, or gets it right all the time, or makes ideal decisions–but because she’s not, and she doesn’t. In fact, her reaction to discovering that her mother’s seemingly dippy attachment to killer unicorn stories is true is one of the best portrayals of dumbstruck incredulity I’ve ever seen.
In short, Astrid is exactly what a real girl would be, if confronted with an Ancient Destiny, a Mystical World, and Her Part In It: conflicted, and confused. And I love that she doesn’t rebel just for the joy of it. When she comes around to her mission, it’s not for the convenience of the plot.
Even though RAMPANT is full of mythology and mystical creatures, it’s completely honest. I believe in it, and that’s why I eagerly await September, when I can dip back into this amazing universe with ASCENDANT. It’s why Astrid Llewelyn is the ideal kind of awesome for me:
She’s real.
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Hey, guys. It’s Diana again. So, who wants to read SHADOWED SUMMER NOW? I hereby provide you with six easypeasy ways to do so:
Borrow it from your local library (Since it’s a JLG selection. you can find it at a lot of libraries)
(I know this is the one you’re waiting for) — win it here, today!
All you have to do is leave your name in the comments. And yes, I know i never announced winners from the ASCENDANT ARC giveaway contest. Oops, sorry. But I will on MONDAY, as well as announce winners for this contest. That means you have until Monday to enter this contest and the other one.
Yesterday, while working on my first science fiction novel (I really never get tired of saying that), I started to recognize one of my characters from the outside and think of her the way a literary critic might. It’s a thing that happens when you spend four years getting a lit degree — you can’t turn off the analysis, even from your own work.I think it can actually help in writing because I can start to more consciously incorporate those elements of who I want her to be into the text.
Who I want her to be is pretty badass. I was describing my thought processes to my husband as we walked Rio last night, (Quoth a passer-by: “What a beautiful dog!” I know I’m biased, people, but really, she’s insanely pretty) and I think I said something along the lines of “[the character's] like Toph Bei Fong meets CJ Craig.” I love Sailor Boy. He kind of grinned, then said “Okay, I can see that.”
(By the way, this is not the main character I’m talking about.)
So anyway, as one can imagine, she’s heaps of fun to write.
But so are most badass female characters. Astrid is so conflicted about her abilities that I really did relish the scenes where she was like, “I do actually know what I’m capable of here, and you do too, so why are we playing this petty little game?” Just because you aren’t certain of the morality of using your powers (see also: Katsa in Graceling) doesn’t mean you aren’t completely self-assured about your ability to do so if needed.
It’s interesting to me now to look back on the three female main characters I’ve created and how different they are, but maybe it’s even early for that, because I’m not done drafting the third yet. She may change (though it is unlikely much because she isn’t entirely my creation — she’s based on an Austenian blueprint). And I do love her, too. I love Anne, therefore I love my Anne-like cognate. But badass she ain’t. Her strength is subtle and often stealth, as it must be in her life.
So I’m glad I got to sneak a badass in there somewhere. Also, I do so love the concept of mirror characters. I loved writing Phil and Astrid, and seeing the way Phil’s self-assurance and extroverted nature were things that Astrid admired (perhaps over-admired).
And in general, I do love me some badass female characters. Live for them. Was especially happy to see this one, which cleverly combines elements of Saffron *and* Joan Holloway for maximum Christina Hendricks geekery:
I’ve been a lazy blogger since coming back from vacation. probably because I haven’t been lazy in any other aspect of my life. We’re doing a lot of redecoration Chez Diana, I had houseguests, and I’m super busy with the draft of PAP. The blog, she suffers. However, I recently ran across a review of Rampant that reminded me of somethign I wanted to write about here: worldbuilding, sexual politics, and variations on a theme.
This review of Rampant by Aimee of To the Wolves, in which the reader is very interested in talking about the sexual politics of the novel (minor spoilers if you click through to the actual and more comprehensive review, but not here):
“Peterfreund remains faithful to the unicorn folklore that states that only virgins can tame them, and I loved how she used this; in the hands of a lesser writer, it’s the kind of thing that could potentially make me want to throw a book across the room. The topic of sex and virginity in YA novels can always be counted on to get folks raging on all sides of the sexual politics spectrum. Peterfreund’s unicorn characters are all discovering their powers – and how conditional they are – right at a point in their lives where they’re also discovering their sexuality, and deciding what they want out of their relationships with boys, and the confusion that all this causes is pitch-perfect.”
What is interesting to me is that as I see the different reader responses to Rampant, this issue seems to be the most polarizing. I’ve seen readers praise the approach and really dig into the ramifications of what happens to the characters and I’ve seen readers metaphorically (and perhaps physically, I don’t know) throw the book across the room.
My point of view on the subject, as it pertains to Astrid’s story in particular, is that the configuration of a unicorn hunter’s magic is something that we, in today’s society, would view as particularly misogynistic. In many ways, it mirrors the unbalanced valuation system that our society places on female virginity as defined, at times confusingly, by heterosexual sexual intercourse. It is young girls –not young boys — who are taken to “purity balls” and told that their virginity, specifically, is a precious gift. There are also a lot of young people today who are led to believe that “everything but” vaginal intercourse is a virginity-preserving option. Even as a teen, I knew people who would have anal sex in order to “preserve their virginity.” It’s rather bizarre, if you think about it. It doesn’t really have any benefits, either in the “physical intimacy” or the “disease” spheres. It’s an entirely artificial construct based around this definition of “virginity” (that the book’s magic mirrors).
As an abstinent teen, I dealt with a lot of the same questions and criticisms that Astrid does; this idea that a teenager (and especially a teenage girl) is not capable of making her own decisions on the subject, and must be shielded or kept ignorant of her options or terrified. The system in place trains people to think that teens aren’t capable of making this choice themselves without some outside force like shame or religion or etc motivating them. I don’t think that gives teens enough credit. Like me as a teen, Astrid just knows she’s not ready to have sex yet, and she really shouldn’t have to explain that to anyone. I also thought it was important that the different hunters have different reasons for the choices they make — and that all of these reasons are valid as well. If Rosamund chooses to remain abstinent because of her religious beliefs, that’s every bit as valid as Phil or Astrid choosing abstinence without the help of God.
The flip side of this is that the idea of abstinence has become such a polarized one that a lot of people have a knee-jerk reaction to it. If I discuss abstinence, that means I’m trying to control the minds of teenage girls and teach them that their desire for sex (if they have it) is evil and wrong. I have gotten this reaction to my book as well. I think sometimes, it’s because magical powers are so often presented as being the ultimate “good” in fantasy novels. It’s better to have magical powers than not to have magical powers. Therefore, the argument goes, it’s better to behave in a way that allows you to have magical powers. And therefore, the author is making the argument that this behavior is the better one.
Am I? That decision is, of course, up to the reader. Not everyone who reads my book is going to come to this website and listen to me say, “Oh, wow, no! The magic in Rampant sucks! It’s misogynistic and antifeminist!” I either succeeded in getting that across in the book to that particular reader, or I didn’t. I am interested to see how the opinion changes, however, when they read Ascendant this fall. (Or perhaps not, as I don’t think it likely that most folks who disliked Rampant will continue with the series.)
At the same time, that’s Astrid’s story, which is very much concerned with the role of the woman in today’s society and today’s sexual politics. In Ireland last year, a discussion with my soon-to-be editor Holly Black on this exact topic led me to challenge myself to write a story set in my world that wasn’t about those topics. The result is “The Care and Feeding of Your Baby Killer Unicorn,” in this fall’s Zombies vs. Unicorns, in which there is nothing about sexual politics whatsoever.
Later, fresh from finishing Ascendant, and in need of a breather, I took an entirely different tack on the world. If the magic is misogynistic in today’s society, what might it be in another society? In more ancient times, institutional virginity or the perception of it (Vestal Virgins, Catholic nuns, Queen Elizabeth I) was actually a form of feminine freedom. Retired Vestal Virgins had rights that no other woman in Rome did. Catholic nuns were some of the only female intellectuals of the European middle ages. Queen Elizabeth consolidated her power by not marrying a foreign head of state. Depending on the configuration of society, could a unicorn hunter actually have more freedom than the alternative? The result of that trail of inquiry is “Errant” my first historically-set story and my contribution to July’s Kiss Me Deadly anthology.
I have been thinking a lot about how different the three stories I have coming out this year are. They each explore a facet of a world I built for the purposes of one particular story — Astrid’s story. But as different as she and her situation are, Astrid has a lot in common with Wen, Gitta, and Elise, and I hope that I do each of them justice as young women who are trying to make the best choices they can for themselves.
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.
So like every child of the nineties, I was obsessed with Calvin and Hobbes. We had all the collections in my house and I loved reading them, over and over. I really connected with Calvin — his limitless imagination, his ability to turn anything into a narrative, his love of nature. Sailor Boy and I often quote lines from our favorite comic strips, especially the one where Calvin comes upon Hobbes sleeping in the sun and begins to recite:
“My tiger, it seems, it running ’round nude,
His fur coat must have made him perspire.
It lies on the floor, should this be construed
As a permanent change of attire?
Perhaps he considered its colors passé,
Or maybe it fit him too snug.
Will he want it back? Should I put it away?
Or leave it right here as a rug?”
It should be noted that Rio, to whom this poem is most often directed, is about as amused by our efforts as Hobbes was in the strip.
At its height, C&H was subject to a ton of copyright violations. Though Watterson never licensed his images for commercialization. the streets were rife with cars bearing bumper stickers of an evil, peeing Calvin. And then, Watterson ended the strip (to a great fan outcry), and lived as a recluse. But recently he gave an interview to a local Cleveland reporter. Naturally, I was all over it.
My disappointment in the interview is mainly that, with all the opportunity the reporter had to ask BW about his long career, he settled for basically asking the same question over and over again. Look:
What do you think it was about “Calvin and Hobbes” that went beyond just capturing readers’ attention, but their hearts as well?
What are your thoughts about the legacy of your strip?
What would you like to tell the fans who are still grieving about the end of your strip?
Because your work touched so many people, fans feel a connection to you, like they know you. How do you deal with knowing that it’s going to follow you for the rest of your days?
How do you want people to remember that 6-year-old and his tiger?
You can actually see Watterson growing frustrated with having to answer it repeatedly over the course of the interview. There was literally only ONE question that veered from this repetitive pattern: “Do you like the idea of a C&H postage stamp?”
Watterson was pretty gracious though. He just kept beating the drum of: “The only part I understand is what went into the creation of the strip. What readers take away from it is up to them. Once the strip is published, readers bring their own experiences to it, and the work takes on a life of its own. Everyone responds differently to different parts.”
This is so true. Now, decades later, I’m an author myself, and I see that what people choose to take away from my book could be what I put in there or could not. It can sometimes be something that I never even saw in the text myself.
I spend a lot of time wrestling with the notion of “Why did Reader X get this part of the book, but Reader Y missed it? Why did Reader Z love this part of my other book but doesn’t love a similar part in my new book?” (Curse you, internet, and your proliferation of reader reaction blogs and websites!) BUt I can’t control what experiences the reader is bringing to my work, and how the simplest turn of phrase might jar something inside of him or her.
I wonder what the secret is to Watterson’s zen. How it is that he came to a place where he could say, “I just tried to write honestly, and I tried to make this little world fun to look at, so people would take the time to read it” and be done with it. Because when I’m writing, I believe that. When I’m writing, I think to myself, Oh, isn’t this fun. I really like this part. I think this part is fun to read, I think people are going to like this. I am writing for the reader’s entertainment. I want to make the experience of reading one of my books a good experience for the reader. I want it to be exciting and informative and romantic and scary and funny and sad.
But whether it IS to each individual reader — well, that’s up to them.
And, in passing, what a waste. What great questions the reporter could have asked! “What do you think Calvin is doing now, all grown up? Is he an astronaut? A writer? Is he a desk jockey with a marvelous inner life? Does he drive his wife crazy with sick snowman jokes every February? Does he take his kids for hikes through the woods? Does he recite poetry to his dogs while they nap on the rug?”
The following post has spoilers for RAMPANT. If you haven’t read RAMPANT, consider yourself warned.
Yesterday, I discovered a review of Rampant online. Which pretty much makes it a day ending in -y, but this one had me on the verge of hysterics. I love reviews that make me look at my own work in a new way, and this one made me look at it in a way that was simultaneously off the wall and yet, made a lot of sense.
Here’s the part that had me and Sailor Boy laughing our butts off:
And oh yes, the tall mysterious stranger who regularly saves Astrid’s life, spouts meaningful broody comments about her destiny and is possibly flirting with her? The if-this-was-Buffy-he-would-be-Angel character? It’s a unicorn.
Now, my pal Sarah Rees Brennan has long advocated for an Astrid-hearts-Bucephalus love story, and I have long advocated that she should seek professional counseling on this matter, but I never put together the reason that she feels this is so right and true — and now I do. It’s because, in the story, Bucephalus’s role is the one usually filled by the wiser/more cynical/world-weary/advisor dude who totally has the hots (or vice versa, or mutual) for our naive heroine. Think Han Solo and the virginal, white-clad Leia. Think the Goblin King Jared and all the advantage he tries to take of the nubile Jennifer Connolly (man, that movie is disturbing. The more I think about it, the more disturbing it gets.) Aragorn and Eowyn. Buffy and Angel. Angel’s a few hundred years old and he spends the entirety of the first season ridiculing, reluctantly saving/assisting, advising, and blowing off Buffy (my favorite line of the series might be when Xander, by far a more noble character, is basically like, WTF, really?), and, also, he wants to get in her pants.
You see, boy heroes in fantasy get elderly wizard-types who are conveniently killed by the enemy. Girl heroes get sardonic older-but-sexy types who want to sleep with them.
So that’s interesting.
Ways that Bucephalus is like Angel:
Knows more about heroine’s powers than she does
Knows more about heroine’s enemies than she does
Has been secretly watching over heroine
Is older and more experienced than the heroine (bonus points for WAY older)
Possesses more than a little cynicism and world-weariness
Is not entirely trustworthy to heroine, not least because
Is someone that the heroine should, by rights, be killing.
Ways in which Bucephalus is nothing like Angel:
Does not want to have sex with the heroine.
Is not seeking redemption in any way.
And the redemption, to be honest, is pretty Angel-specific (or, hell, let’s say vampire specific, as another dozen examples pop into my head). Lord knows David Bowie’s not looking for any of that nonsense, and Han Solo is pretty much dragged kicking and screaming into the whole rebellion thing. So, aside from the sex, we’ve got ourselves a character type. A type that does not actually map to “large venomous bovid species” so much as “hot dude in tight pants.”
Sarah, everything makes so much more SENSE now!
And yet… no. There will be no hot hot hot Astrid/Bucephalus action in Ascendant.
Dmitri and Rose. Bill and Sookie. Eric and Sookie. Poor Sookie!
But I wonder how much our reactions as an audience are mapped out for us by these stock character roles. I remember watching Avatar: The Last Airbender (really hate that I have to specify lately) and waiting and waiting and waiting for the episode where Iroh dies. You know, because he’s the elderly wizard-like advisor who is coaxing Zuko back toward the side of good. And then, when he doesn’t (ironically, the actor voicing him did), being really shocked. Not really knowing what to make of it. You see, I’d had him written off as Merlin/Gandalf/Obi-Wan/Dumbledore. And he wasn’t.
So maybe Sarah’s theories about Bucephalus as tortured romantic hero weren’t — as I always accused her — a product of her unique and uncanny ability to latch on the most unlikely romantic pairing in any work of literature to great comic effect, but rather a reflection of our indoctrination into this trope of fantasy fiction — the sardonic older protector who takes the pretty young thing under his wing (or hoof, as the case may be) and is hella sexy to boot.
Poe and Amy. Yowza. And that’s not even fantasy.
And there’s a lot to be said here on the topic of why a (primarily female readership) is interested in this paradigm. Even if the women are strong, the men must be stronger? Does the girl have a special power? The men’s power has got to be bigger and better? He has to know more about it than she does? Is that true? I remember the guidelines for the old Silhouette Bombshell line of action-adventure romances. They were looking for strong heroines and heroes who were their match.
I wrote a book aimed at that market, about a very strong woman who owns a security company and hires an agent who doesn’t like to play by the rules. They fall in love. In the revision letter, I was told to cut her backstory (she started the company to avenge the kidnapping and death of her younger sister), make HIM the owner of the company, and have him hire her, who was to be reassigned a generic military background. Oh, and could I set it in South America instead of Europe? And dump the plot?
Suffice to say, I did not do those revisions. I’m not sure what kind of book they were looking for, but it clearly wasn’t the one I wrote. I offered to write them a different book. And what stuck with me most out of all the things they asked me to change was the way they wanted the power dynamic of the characters to switch. They didn’t want HER owning the company and hiring HIM (even though he was incredibly knowledgeable about both the business and the case they were on. (And therefore mapped pretty well to the paradigm.) He was as smart as she was, as good an agent as she was, as well trained in martial arts and use of weaponry as she was… (actually, he was an explosives expert).
It was many years later that I began writing Rampant, and from the beginning, I knew I had a very different romantic plan for Astrid. She’s strong, physically, and she’s very brave, and she has special powers, but the man for her is not the one who teaches her how to use a sword, or knows more about her magic than she does. Because I believe that strength can be complementary as well as corresponding. Giovanni strength is his normalcy. He’s a rock in her very unstable world. Which I suppose makes him the mirror of Bucephalus.
Seriously, this is all making sense to me now. I just thought that Irish dame was spouting nonsense.
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?
Check out this great new review of Rampant, from the independent bookstore Russo’s Books in Bakersfield, CA:
Like most red-blooded girls, I’ve always like horses, and unicorns are an extension of that. Being a mythology buff, I’d bump into unicorns in my readings a lot. And I have to say, that’s where this book really hooked me.
The unicorns portrayed in the book aren’t the sparkly white horses with perfect spiral horns that are the boiled-down and sweetened unicorns popular today. They are based on the historical record of unicorns from around the world. No two unicorns from any region were alike, and that is reflected in this story. These guys are vicious! And yet, somehow, some of them are still quite adorable (like that little stinker Bonegrinder!)
The pacing is excellent, the excitement level is on the ceiling through most of the book, and the characters are completely developed and become like actual, real-life friends. I love Astrid and her cousin, and her mother drives me nuts! Even more than my own mother does! This novel is completely original and different from anything else I’ve read (and I’m ALWAYS reading) and I can’t wait until she writes more– this NEEDS to be a series!
The bookseller goes on to express concern that it’s more a book for older teens, “[especially] in our conservative town of Bakersfield,” but says (bolding original to the text):
Otherwise, this book is so much fun, so different from anything else out there, and so well done, I’d be pushing it into everybody’s hands as a must-read.
Nice, huh? I know there’s been a lot of talk lately about responding to reviews and how it’s always A Bad Idea, but I think the downside of that is that authors might feel afraid of participating in discussions they meant the book to engender in the first place.
Rampant, being a book about virgins with superpowers tied to their virginity, deals with the issues of sexuality, feminism, the commodification of virginity, and how religion, culture, and tradition intersect with modern society and the pressures on a teenaged girl. It has a strong abstinence message. It also has what I’m glad to see this reviewer call “well-written, tasteful, and accurately realistic” discussions by the characters in the book regarding the topics above. I’m proud that I’ve written a book where the female characters are making informed decisions about their choice to remain abstinent. They do it for different reasons, too: some have religious or cultural beliefs that form the basis of their choice. Others want to keep hunting unicorns, an activity incompatible with being sexually active. Some just aren’t ready, or just aren’t interested. All are valid, and it was important for me to show that. As an abstinent teen myself, I was often surprised and put off by the assumption that “only Christians” or “only prudes” or “only insert-descriptor-here” were saving themselves, and if I didn’t have a darn good reason not to, then I should.
For the record, “I don’t want to,” is one of the best reasons in the world. You don’t have to justify it to anyone. Not your friends, not your boyfriend, not your prom date, not that mean girl who put a “V” in Sharpie marker on the door of your locker that everyone could mysteriously translate and make fun of you for. Being a virgin is not an epithet.
I put a discussion of virginity and abstinence in the book because it was something I talked about when I was a teenager, and it was something I was interested in and would have liked to read more books about. Kind of like how I wanted to read more books about women warriors, and ancient Rome, and myths and legends, and really close friends, and kissing boys, and Renaissance art, and all the other stuff I put into Rampant.
Oh, and just in case the bookseller at Russo’s sees this… good news: it is a series! I’m writing the second one now, and it’ll be out in Fall of 2010. We haven’t figured out the title yet, but we have a bunch of finalists.
The BookMaven responds to another one of those tiresome genre snobbery posts. I agree with a lot of it, but I’m not sure she goes as far as I would. So, I don’ have a PHD in Literature, just a lowly BA, but I’m baffled by the attitude that books are some different sort of story, that they are somehow required to only exist on a certain level which is not true for television, film, theater, etc. The BookMaven argues for her early genre snobbery by talking about how she liked to read Poe as bed time stories as a child. Um…. So Poe is thumbs up and Stephen King is thumbs down? What’s the difference, aside from a hundred years?
Poe and Dickens, and Shakespeare, and so many of the writers who are considered the luminaries of the form wrote FOR THE MASSES. In college, I studied Radcliffe and Austen and Behn and Scott and Burney and all those damned scribbling women whose novels were ridiculed by the literary elite of their time. I wrote my college thesis on LOST HORIZON, which Pocket Books likes to fashion “the first paperback.” (It’s not, but it’s a cute marketing ploy.)
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.
