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?”

I mean, just wondering.

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 whole review. (Bonus: the reader loved the book.)

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.

No, not the band.

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.

Even Persnickety Snark, in her attempt at a “defense” of good boys calls them out on these things: “Too often nice comes across as boring.”

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?

Stay tuned to find out!

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.

A few links from around the internets:

• 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.)

• The Guardian is opening their doors for a short story competition. As I just finished my first short story in years and years (and my first ever for publication), I’m in such a short story mood. Would probably enter were I not busy busy busy with KU2.
• Lilith Saintcrow is off on another one of her exquisite rants about the publishing industry in “a good book ain’t all you need.” Check it out!
• An agent points out the lie that’s Bookscan numbers.

And finally, since I’ve been plotboarding, I found this especially amusing:

Do you remember Matt, who danced his way across the world with a bunch of strangers? The video was one of the most popular viral videos of 2008. I found it joyful and brilliant and elevating.

Then I read an article yesterday talking about how he’s faced a lot of skeptics, saying the video is “fake”. Here is his response:

I love this guy. What an attitude.

However, I did find this response a bit disappointing, because I learned that the video was not quite as indie and viral as I’d originally assumed. As it turns out (gleaned from Matt’s web page), there was a real, individual “dancing” video made back in 2005. This is it:

Still beautiful, still uplifting. As it turns out, this was also a viral success, though on a far smaller scale. It was such a success that Matt found himself a sponsor in Stride gum company, and talked them into funding another trip around the world where he’d have the opportunity to dance with people who had written him about his first video. Stride no doubt assisted him with access to the more difficult locations (like the weightless jet, the Papua New Guinea tribesmen, the dancing next to the guard in the DMZ, etc.) And thus you got the Hi-def “Where the Hell is Matt” that we all enjoyed last year.

I think it’s an amazing story, and in the end, I don’t care that it wasn’t as “indie” as I’d assumed. It was still gorgeous. Good on Matt for being so creative, and managing to make a living out his silliness. Good on Stride for giving this guy a little money (and it was probably a very little, in the scheme of things) to create such an uplifting piece of art. Good on the people of the world for participating.

I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about what I do for a living as art, though perhaps I should, I know that when I’m writing, I want people to be uplifted and transformed. I want their hearts to pound in the romantic scenes, I want them to grow breathless in the action sequences. I want them to laugh and to cry, to be swept away in the story, even if it’s only for three or four hundred pages. And that’s what good art can do. When I watch Matt, I feel something big stir inside me. I want to create that in the reader.

I’m supposed to be blogging at 70 Days of Sweat today. but there is some sort of technical difficulty with my post (Help me, Alison! I’ll be your best friend!) and until that is resolved, you won’t get to hear about my rocking writing outfit (it involves robots).

It’s also officially winter around here, and I hate to whine, considering how hard they are getting it in the Northeast and the Midwest, but holy schmoly, why anyone would want to live out outside the tropics still baffles me. I have entered that period of time where I’m just permanently cold and will be staying that way until May. SB keeps talking about how great it will be when it snows, but…no.

This was a big audience weekend for me. I went to see Amanda Brice dance in The Nutcracker on Saturday night. I don’t think I’ve seen The Nutcracker since I was a little girl, and I never remembered being a big fan. I really enjoyed it this weekend, however, and I think I realized why I didn’t like it as a child. It was because the story was over halfway through the show. They defeated the Mouse King, and then the second half of the ballet was just… celebration? Fun, but boring to a my childhood self. As an adult, I was able to set aside my ravenous need for story and simply enjoy some dancing. (The E.T.A. Hoffman story, by the way, has a whole other act with the Mouse Queen and a quest and it isn’t until the very end that the spell on the nutcracker is broken, but it didn’t leave as much room for dances of sugar plum fairies…)

Then, on Sunday, I watched Live Free or Die Hard (if you like the Die Hard franchise, and I do, and like Justin Long, and I very much do), and then Waitress, which I was really looking forward to, and was really disappointed by (totally lost my sympathy for the main character, which is an important lesson in storytelling), and then Tin Man, which I was also very much looking forward to.

I remain undecided about it. On the plus side, woo, fun! Steampunk! Plus, I’m so intrigued by any vividly imagined retelling of something so a part of the cultural consciousness. Also, having read almost all of the Baum books, I gotta say, this is far from the weirdest thing he ever came up with (the vegetable people living inside the hollow earth might take the prize there), so it’s not that much of a stretch, and I don’t think he would be against any of it. And, Alan Cumming. Plus, they set up the Caine character SO FREAKIN’ WELL (his first name is Wyatt, and I love it!) and that torture was brilliant. Brilliant story.

On the minus side, I think they’ve got a lot of interesting ideas there that they aren’t really exploring, I’m not totally sold on Zooey Deschanel’s choices in portraying DG (is she for even one minute surprised about the things she’s seeing?), and so much of the plot seems to hinge on, whenever they get in a pickle, they know someone, and whenever things are going well, they come across some other invention of Azkadelia’s that is in their way. (”Azkadelia’s vapors?” Come on. On top of her flying monkey tattoos and life-sucking breath and psychic-lion-brain-sucking machine, and brain-removal surgery, and the iron torture device/life-support machine –not to mention that’s plenty enough reason for him to be a “tin man” without needing to resort to calling cops “tin men” and also, why, if he was a cop, did he live way out in the woods…?) Anyway, I am sitting on my hands, waiting for it to come together in the next installment. (Speaking of the next installment, if you’re trying to become the queen of a given kingdom, why would you invent a machine that could destroy said kingdom, as the Mystic man seems to intimate in the previews? Questions…) Right now, I’m wondering if Glitch actually did invent all this stuff for her, which would be a cool twist and character-wise, etc…

And we watched Desk Set. I love that movie.

What did you do this weekend?