A Small Potter World: Why We Don't Need the Cursed Child

At midnight on Saturday, July 30, my library system held a release party for the script book of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The play premiered this year, and made waves for casting a black woman as Hermione. J.K. Rowling didn't write the script, though she did write the screenplay for Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, but she did approve and allow the story to become canon.

I didn't attend this event, for one important reason: I may have grown up with Harry Potter, but I read the books to their official ending.That ending came one day in 2005, when "nineteen years later" seemed sufficient at the time.

Spoiler warning: Do not read further if you don't want to know details about The Cursed Child.

When Harry Potter ended, it marked an era of change. It meant that the kids and adults who grew up with the series had to find new works, but could keep creating the scarves, songs and crafts. Daniel Radcliffe could move onto Broadway, while Emma Watson developed her film career while attaining a college degree. We felt satisfied, with a few loose threads hanging. Pottermore vignettes would provide nuggets of information.

The Cursed Child doesn't tackle the issues that the end of the series would bring up, like the struggle to reform the wizarding world after a great war, the Muggleborn witches and wizards who became lost to the school system, or the next generation bearing the scars of their legacy. While Harry struggles with the trauma of surviving as so many died, his son Albus struggles with fitting into this new world. They both encounter Draco Malfoy's son, a nice kid named Scorpio who is nothing like his father. Scorpio instead of dealing with the obvious legacy issue -- that his dad was a prejudiced Death Eater wannabe -- deals with rumors that he's Voldemort's son, conceived via his mother going back in time. Drop in a new character that could be a fanfiction offshoot, as well as time travel, and you get a convoluted, unnecessary plot that makes readers stare at the script with a bewildered expression.

Harry Potter teaches readers to be compassionate, that you have to look at a person's choices to judge them, and that being brave is extremely difficult. Conflicts reinforce these events within the narrative, as well as the need to constantly see the other side of the story. Karma hits everyone in the end, good and bad, for their actions, while occasionally good people suffer terrible things.

The Cursed Child doesn't reinforce any of these themes. Scorpio, the best character in the script, doesn't want to be his father but is constantly judged before he even gets a chance to pick a side, even by Harry. Harry can be judgmental at times, but he knows better than to distrust someone because of what their parents did. That makes no sense at all. Harry, an orphan who craved a loving family, would never tell any child that he wishes they weren't his son, which he does in the play. That's just one of the many inconsistencies in the show. The rumor itself seems too ridiculous, because Time Turners work on stable time loops, and it's something that a DNA test could verify. And the character that appears and convinces Albus and Scorpio to go back in time? The original series had no hint of her, or plausibility.

So does The Cursed Child bring anything new? It brings up the pervasive survivor's guilt, the wishing of saving someone who suffered. It brings up that you can't change the past, which anyone can tell you, but you can make different choices to improve your future. At the same time, these themes can't save the show, or the script.

Growing up gives one a different perspective on Harry Potter. As a child I read Harry Potter for the magic, the descriptions of food, and for the adventure. It was easier to ignore Professor Snape's bullying and Umbridge's abuse because they got karma.  As an adult when I read the books, however, I get anxious. The real world has many people like Umbridge who get away with their actions, and you wish someone in the books would stomp her onscreen. We already got a world where karma kicked in, instead of undoing that karma temporarily using a Time Turner.

We have enough Harry Potter, enough of the good films and the books. Time Warner gave us those, LEGO games, and theme parks. We have the fanbase, and enough fanfiction to fill the Library of Congress. Heck, we even have loving homages to Harry Potter's impact like Fangirl and Carry On  by Rainbow Rowell. The market meets our needs.

We are satisfied, J.K. Rowling. We don't need another story to muddle the narrative. And if we did, we need one that reinforces what you wrote first. So please, let's read your thrillers instead.

A Christmas Special for A Generation: Nostalgic Thoughts on Elmo Saves Christmas

Happy Christmas Eve, everyone! We may not have chestnuts roasting on a fire here in Miami, and the Charlie Brown Christmas special has already aired, but the date is upon us. People are happier despite the crowded stores, and the radio has started to play classic carols. Thus it feels fitting to dive into some nostalgia into what I think about the holiday, regarding a classic PBS show that has been on the air for more than forty years.

Image source: http://assets.fontsinuse.com/static/use-media-items/25/24455/full-1412x1433/56701c58/sesamestreetchristmas.jpeg?resolution=0

A lot of changes have come to Sesame Street over the past few years. The original puppeteer for the Count, Jerry Nelson, passed away, and the actress Sonia Manzano, who plays FixIt repair-woman Maria, has decided to leave the show, and HBO has recently purchased the Sesame Street franchise, slashing the episode times from 60 minutes to 30 minutes. These changes may be for the best, but at the moment they feel murky and stab at my heart. I didn't lear n everything I knew from Sesame Street, but I learned quite a bit. I remember learning a sobering lesson about Christmas from the show, via a rather unusual holiday special.

Elmo Saves Christmas was a special that aired for a few years during the late 1990s, when Christmas in Miami means the sun shining on the green grass for a couple of days before blasting cold would come in. Kevin Clash was still performing for Elmo, and gave the character's voice an endearing scratchiness that sounded monster-like. Another special has since replaced it, so that you can only find several of the songs online. It featured Maya Angelou narrating how Elmo, after rescuing Santa from a stuck chimney, received a snowglobe that can grant three wishes. Elmo decides to wish that it were Christmas every day, so that everyone will be happy all the time.

Image source: http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060311195440/muppet/images/0/09/Elmo_Saves_Christmas-_Holiday_Favorites_(CD).jpeg


At the time, such a wish didn't sound like a bad idea. Christmas to me simply meant one day of the year when one could receive presents, enjoy good weather, and bask in a warm glow of holiday cheer. Santa during the special then sends Elmo out with a time-traveling reindeer, to show him what happens if Christmas happens every day, keeping people out of school, out of work, unable to send mail, and obligated to buy presents. Elmo's friends seem fine in the spring, slowly start to stress during the summer, and completely crack by winter. Having a holiday everyday nibbles away at the novelty, until what's left is a hollow shell of a celebration.

The special did a good job in not hammering in the message that "Christmas every day is bad" and instead reflecting the childlike naivety. In fact, several characters, like Santa's elves, point out that Santa shares part of the blame in giving a childlike Muppet such power, and imply that similar disasters have emerged from other users of the wish-granting snow globe. Santa seems to admit this in part, especially when his morose song "Everyday Can't Be Christmas" doesn't convince Elmo at first, and he has a rather alarmed expression when Elmo uses his first wish to request a glass of water. He also takes the time to come to Sesame Street, warn Elmo, and give him a way to see what will happen. When Elmo gets a second chance to choose either the snow-globe or an ordinary toy at the special's conclusion, he chooses the ordinary toy but Santa offers him something far more extraordinary that won't cause temporal anomalies. Many questions arise from the fact that despite having given the snow-globe before, he hasn't thought to take it out of production, and one wonders what the previous gift recipients did with their wishes.

Image source: https://i.ytimg.com/vi/LgDlMHEuQZ0/hqdefault.jpg

The other important thing about this special was that it showed rather than told the consequences, and used concrete imagery to convey these devastating actions. As mentioned in my previous Christmas post, it irked me in Mickey's Christmas Carol how it hammered so much at Scrooge being a miser would condemn him, so that you couldn't sit back and enjoy thirty minutes of animation. In contrast, Sesame Street knew how children thought, that is with visuals instead of words. Elmo can't comprehend consequences in the long term that emerge from too much of a good thing, especially when everyone appears happy on hearing the news. Neither could the viewers at the time, including myself, who came along for the ride. I was quite shocked to see Sesame Street as deserted, and not even Grover trying to sell Christmas trees could add enough humor to quell the blow.

The third thing was that this special showed one Muppet making a series of mistakes, and despite the increasing consequences manages to amend for them. Elmo wishing for Christmas every day is somewhat forgivable, again because he is a child with a childlike mentality. He makes the mistake of not taking Santa's concern seriously, which is again understandable since he cannot visualize the consequences that the man in the red suit brings. The farther Elmo travels into the future, however, the more he realizes that people aren't happy, especially his friends and loved one, but he keeps going forward, hoping that "real Christmas" will recapture the joy that he meant to spread across the year. His final mistake in what happens when he realizes that he has a way to undo Christmas everyday-- with his last wish-- and takes too long to do so, instead of fixing the problem straightaway.  Despite those mistakes, Elmo finds a way to undo his wish, and save everyone from constant holidays.

Image source: http://cdn.madman.com.au/images/screenshots/screenshot_2_1112.jpg
 For those reasons, I do hope that Sesame Street starts airing Elmo Saves Christmas again, with its memorable songs that can make one laugh and also sober up instantly. It isn't often that we have a Christmas special with such mood swings and strong plot to show the consequences of our actions, It's A Wonderful Life notwithstanding, and makes us feel like little kids again. For the moment, as we all do with Christmas, I'll keep the hour-long special with me through the year, with my memories of childhood Sesame Street.

 Image source: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/muppet/images/6/6b/ESCKeep.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20121222025729

Old Shame

On Monday before last, while searching for a hard copy of a science fiction novel I plan to revise, I found a hard copy of another long story, a dystopia with intended moral ambiguity and a boarding school of horrors. Immediately I put it away and hid it in the drawer, along with the poems and short stories that had earned me A's in middle and high school. The shame colored me all evening, to think that I had written something so laughably terrible and dark.

Last Tuesday, coincidentally, AvannaK on Tumblr posted a few old Naruto fanfics that she had written when she was younger, with apologies for characterization and shipping. I thought they were well written and had less obsessive shipping than a few young adult novels I had read over the weekend, and told her so. So did a few followers, but she still responded with modesty:

Jumping7Salon:Awwwwwww I want to give 20 year old Avanna a hug!!
AvannaK: or a smack in the face with a dictionary

Image source: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2332/2223106956_af70c2bdf1_z_d.jpg


Writers always have that interesting contradiction: the egotistic ones, like me, know that we can write well, and we submit works when we feel they are ready to be published, but we also have some works that can never reach the proper light of day, and when they do, they are like the rogue dandelions that the gardeners could not pull out. I don't think I can ever read the bad fanfiction that I wrote when I was a teenager, but a few of them are still floating around online; half a dozen more disappeared when I switched computer hard drives. No, I will not tell you that pseudonym I used.


We writers have one thing in common when we have success, big or small: self-deprecation. Our old works embarrass us because we know what we did wrong then, and that we can do better now. AvannaK's concern involved her not knowing how to characterize Sakura in Naruto fanfiction, since it seems that when we fanfiction writers started out we tended to make our girl characters obsessed with the guys or vice versa, giving no thoughts to canon. With that said, she still finds the right words and phrasing to paint vivid scenes.  

For context, Sakura takes a bit to warm up to Naruto in canon.

Image source: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2253/2434786922_bce339e47a_z_d.jpg?zz=1

 

When submitting I try to hold onto my ego and belief that "THIS story is good!" and I ride on a high that it's going well, that "THIS story" will be the one to earn professional rates. The few times that I get an acceptance on the first try, like with "The Opera Singer," it brings a great sense of vindication especially when those stories come from a dark place. The times when a story that I work hard on gets nothing? I feel like a wave has flipped me over, and that the story isn't good enough. That it has lost my edge.

Some of these stories, I have retired because I run out of places to send them. I don't delete them like I used to, but I feel ready to move on to other stories, that feel right, and get back to the troubled ones when I know how to fix them. Probably when I have more energy I'll deal with them properly, and understand what to change. My endings are still fairly weak, but I'm getting better at them. 

Image source: https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5096/5459331064_b824d401d5_z_d.jpg
In the meantime? I'll watch the embarrassing dandelions bloom in my garden of stories. They deserve a small place, for having helped me start.  And I'll keep praising Avanna's works, old and new,  because her dandelions are undiluted power.

Harriet The Spy Was My Nancy Drew

Last week, the 85th anniversary of Nancy Drew happened. The article details how Nancy became a role model to girls living in the Great Depression, driving around in a car and wielding a gun to deal with potentially dangerous criminals. Later editions turned Nancy into a damsel in distress, needing a college boyfriend to save her, but she inspired a generation of female readers.

I felt a sense of disconnect. The Nancy Drew that I knew was not the girl detective of my childhood. Sammy Keyes eventually became that,but another fictional lady came in between. She was a little older than me, wore fake glasses and ratty jeans to go out spying, and she wrote in a notebook. This was Harriet the Spy, from her titular novel by Louise Fitzhugh.

Image source: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/6/10922464_a04a3a97a3_z_d.jpg?zz=1

 I shied from reading Harriet the Spy at first because of the title. The thought of reading about a girl that spied on others, including her friends, and wrote about it in her journal, did not appeal to me. I like reading about characters who are fundamentally good and who didn't get into trouble. My siblings kept checking out the book from the library, and I kept returning it.

Then one day, I cracked it open and started. I became captivated, and started reading. The book paints a picture of the 1960s, when children could wander the New York City streets without their parents worrying, and slip into dumbwaiters. Kid bullies could spill bottles of ink on their victims because ink bottles were part of the curriculum. Authors still use heavy typewriters, and can crinkle up their paper with poor handling. People could order egg creams -- a type of cream soda that I had never heard about before-- and sip them slowly. I had always pictured them as a drink to slurp from a bowl, but they apparently came from tall glasses.

This is what kids drank in the 1960s

Image source: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4119/4809140778_c789c0b7de_z.jpg

More importantly, the story itself featured an imperfect yet likable protagonist that doesn't want to change when the world imposes changes upon her. Harriet loses a lot of valuable things, and people, and the path to winning them back or letting them go does not always have a straight answer. She represents brutal honesty in a world that does not appreciate hostile words, and thus suffers persecution. Even readers, like my brother who recommended the book, have little sympathy for Harriet and for the honest notes she writes in her notebook. The film adaptation makes Harriet's thoughts worse, so that her former friends have a more valid reason to bully her, though there never is a valid reason for bullying a child in my opinion.

Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird mentions how writers as children are told to ignore their instinct and accept little lies as opposed to swallowing and registering proper truths. One cannot create believable fiction without knowing how real life works, and how people behave, why they act the way that they think. People do and think horrible things, sometimes with good intentions.  Sometimes their motivations are complex, but they do not behave in a vacuum. A writer, too involved in the art of crafting as I am, can miss all those actions and motivations and real life, perhaps because we cannot face the horrifying truth.

Image source: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7398/10340268116_58fa280623_z_d.jpg

 
Harriet taught me that a character with stubbornness and brutal honesty can be likable, and she demonstrated a skill that all writers need: the ability to observe. This eleven-year old girl spies so that she can learn more about people, to put them in the books that she will write later. She faces the daily mundane horrors that plague humanity on a regular basis, whether they concern heiresses with too much money or birdcage makers with too many cats. Her problem lies in having no filter for her thoughts when they end up in her notebook, and when her notebook ends up in her friends' hands.

I had an epiphany after reading Harriet the Spy: I wanted to write, and to become a writer. My desire to create stories hadn't notified me; the fiction prompts in preparation for the FCAT hadn't notified me either. Yet I wanted to write, and to create worlds that would absorb readers the way older books had absorbed me.

Image source: https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3292/2908092283_2f7283a9f9_z_d.jpg?zz=1
Unlike my sudden desire to learn figure skating after reading the Boxcar Children, writing was a skill that I could hone on my own time, with just a piece of paper, or a blank notebook, and a pen. The computer could also help, with various writing programs and access to the Internet. I learned later how to connect with fellow writers using the web and to find soundtracks,  but at the time computers only made me feel official, that I could write something that could be printed and look official.
 There was a bit of a problem: I had the ideas, thanks to Harry Potter fanfiction and inspiration from fantasy authors,  but I didn't have any idea how to structure a story, or what elements were involved. I didn't know how to use words to develop character. Worst of all, I didn't know how to write honestly, or how to observe people.

 I withdraw from the real world, finding a structured fiction more appealing than the harsh realities of our time. "Write what you know" seemed to be a facetious piece of advice, since what a person knew was not necessarily what interested them. I didn't start incorporating personal experience into fiction until high school, and even then it took about four more years to learn that it was okay to do so, in fact encouraged.

Image source: https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1159/763255266_eae4a9aa27_z_d.jpg

Harriet knew better than I did about how to write, and how to record life without a filter. It gets her in trouble,  but the book argues that writers need to be honest with themselves while lying to the people they know to avoid hurting people's feelings when you use real details. One can use filters, but only after the rough drafts are written.

Paranormal Romance: What Works and What Doesn't

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 During the first weekend of January, I was going through my bookshelf to finish library books before the start of school, and to read one hundred books this year. I noticed that I had two paranormal romances that I had not picked up, Starcrossed and Beautiful Creatures. Beautiful Creatures is a novel that my friend Cory likes, and it was popular enough to become a feature film.

Starcrossed is about the descendants of ancient Greek families finding out that they’re mortal enemies, and that they cannot get together for fear of starting a war. The book went on an emotional roller coaster of “I want to be together, we can’t stay together, if we stay together it’s going to cause a war, wait suddenly new characters arrive and want to be dangerous, no we actually have bigger problems” for about two hundred pages. The suspense kept riding up and down, and at the end of it the sequel hook made me feel a little dizzy.

Image source: https://farm9.staticflickr.com/8247/8455179348_0a17f2d4b8_z_d.jpg

Beautiful Creatures involves even more “opposites attract but can possibly lead to death” love, this time in the Deep South. I might have tolerated the snarky tones, the bullying towards the female love interest, if it weren’t for one teensy fact: the narrator, who dreamed about escaping his home town and the ignorance there, puts all his dreams of college aside and never talks about it for the rest of the series. My biases towards the Deep South and to people who believe in the Civil war’s glory didn’t assist with my enjoyment, and neither did the absence of people of color in the story that would suffer from such an environment. I admit that I am biased about places I’ve never been which have a profile of people not treating minorities well, but my biases are based on general American history and proven facts. A twenty-first century book about such a place that ignores the facts, especially in the light of Mike Brown and Tamir Rice and other victims of violent racism, does not earn my good graces.

I don't have grudges or prejudices against the paranormal romance genre, since it's merely a construct of "magic and romance dominating the plot" for the most part, and some of my favorite YA novels like the Abandon trilogy and Sunshine handle both elements with finesse. After reading both novels, however, and especially knowing that Twilight started the trend towards paranormal romance, a prejudice against paranormal romance is threatening to rise. This is a problem because if I ever want to write the genre, I’d want to write it with sincere effort.

Image source: https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4010/4236219145_8533299059_z_d.jpg

Starcrossed and Beautiful Creatures suffer the fundamental problem that I’m finding in most paranormal romance: previously established “smart” characters make stupid decisions over an obsession for another person, guy or girl. Even worse, the stories justify these decisions as “right” despite the illogical approach that the narrators take. I actually applaud novels like Afterworlds by Scott Westerfeld where when the narrator makes a stupid decision, like paying $3500 a month in rent for a year, it haunts her in the end.

The problem is that in romance stories, the conflict involves getting the leads together, and what keeps them apart. Poorly written paranormal romance makes the conflict highly exaggerated or blown beyond proportion in the face of greater evils, and with obsessions. People can be rational about love, thus when you show rational characters behaving irrationally for pages on end it frustrates the intellectual reader and promises only a world where obsession is the norm. The same applies not just to boy meets girl relationships, but also to non-hetero-normative ones. 

 Image source: https://farm1.staticflickr.com/217/447998635_b25d434a9b_z_d.jpg

Which paranormal romances handle these conflicts well and plausibly then? Quite a number, to be honest. The first one that comes to mind is, as mentioned before, the Abandon trilogy by Meg Cabot: that features a relationship between seventeen-year old Pierce Oliviera and Underworld ruler John Hayden. Due to a near-death experience Pierce has encountered John in the Underworld and at fifteen thought she was too young to die and settle down with a guy forever; this is a plausible road block, as is an older Pierce finding herself in dangerous situations due to the necklace that John gives her. She spends half the trilogy trying to figure out how to get rid of the Furies that are plaguing her, her friends and John, and the other half deciding if such a relationship could work. In other words, she never lets her growing feelings for him get in the way of taking practical measures to handle an ongoing conflict, though at times she does admit that she cares for him a lot. Meg has also written satirical paranormal novels about mediators falling for ghosts and soap opera writers expressing strong dislike for vampires, so she knows what types of conflict to avoid.

Team Human by Justine Larbalestier and Sarah Rees Brennan also makes the paranormal material work by satirizing the Twilight mythos with vampires and showing a believable world involving such creations. In that novel the protagonist Mel tries to stop her friend Cathy from turning into a vampire to stay with the new exchange student Francis. Mel in the meantime develops feelings for Kit, a human raised by a vampire family, who lacks certain social skills and is matter-of-fact about how terrible normal people can be. Both sides bring up points about whether or not becoming a vampire is a bad thing, and eventually Mel and Kit resolve their differences by working together and learning to see the other's perspective, before they engage in any sort of relationship. In other words, they behave rationally and communicate about their desires and needs.

 Image source: https://farm7.staticflickr.com/6216/6381696375_33619885d8_z_d.jpg

As for myself, I haven't written a paranormal romance yet, but I wrote about romance and fantasy. In my webcomic A La Mode before it went on hiatus, I had a relationship develop between two characters over time, based on their interactions. Lamode, the nineteen-year old main character, takes her time to express feelings for a local medical student, and before the hiatus they became an official couple. Their obstacles mainly stem from having two different backgrounds and going on a disastrous first date as a result: the boy B.B. is a twenty-one year old rebellious medical student that takes her out to a horror film, and Lamode is a reluctant witch from a conservative atmosphere, unused to jump scares and suspense. When I was writing the comic I was letting their personalities bounce off each other as they communicated their needs and worked through that disaster; their different backgrounds will still be an obstacle when I resume, but they’re working through it without the high-stakes drama in typical paranormal romance. In addition they're both too busy with their jobs-- medicine and baking-- to become obsessed with each other.

Here is what works in paranormal romance: legitimate road blocks that are not necessarily dramatic, three-dimensional characters, and communication between said characters. Don't go for the star-crossed love that predated every novel ages ago with Romeo and Juliet and every mythos in the Western Hemisphere. See what a little bit of mundane conflict can do in a fantastic world.

Image source: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7137/7791363520_23eac29801_z_d.jpg

Respect the Source: Why Fifty Shades Irks Me

Hi all,

Happy belated International Women's Day! Finished with final exams (finally) for the first part of the semester, so I can blog! Going to be flying to India for a week, so will be offline in all likelihood.

 Recently on Tumblr, I found out that a lot of young-adult and fantasy authors post material there; one of my new favorite blogs posted this interesting bit on how Fifty Shades of Grey did well at the box office and on the bestseller list. For those who don't know, Fifty Shades is an erotic adult trilogy about how an ordinary college graduate ends up in a legally binding, non-consensual BDSM relationship with Christian Grey, a millionaire that has better things to do than to micromanage another adult's life. A film version premiered on Valentine's Day this year and has grossed $150,048,805 in ticket sales.
 
I haven't read Fifty Shades of Grey, let's get that out of the way first. While considering it, two separate people that I know and trust instructed me NOT to read it, and it's a red flag when the actors for the film adaptation describe their discomfort with acting out the book's scenes. With that said, I have heard bits of the prose and marvel at how people find it unintentionally funny. Doug Walker and his brother Rob describe that part of the book's fun lies in its terrible writing, and comment on how the actors make a valiant effort at genuinely playing out the parts.

It's not just the fact that Fifty Shades has terrible writing according to my friends, or that it was originally posted as Twilight fanfiction on the Internet and remains 89 percent similar to its incarnation. What troubles me is the sensation that author E.L. James cheated when writing her novel, that she played some sort of a practical joke on the writing world and the publishing industry. As Bookshelves of Doom pointed out, if James had chosen a more "high-brow" young-adult trilogy to inspire her work, like The Fault in Our Stars by John Green, she would have received more flak.

Image source: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7173/6709267351_71a9d64fd6_z_d.jpg

This sensation did not feel rational; I've written my fair share of fanfiction and enjoy it, and Neil Gaiman has pointed out that no idea is original; Rudyard Kipling inspired Gaiman's Newberry winner The Graveyard Book, and Gaiman wrote a troubling response to the Narnia books via "The Problem of Susan". C.S. Lewis in turn took inspiration from the Bible for the Narnia books, and despite disagreements over how he treated Susan, he does know how to tell a story.       

Matt Anderson and I were talking about the uncomfortable sensation that I got from Fifty Shades's success, from the fact that it was inspired by a troubling young-adult trilogy that disappointed the reader, and he pinned it down: Fifty Shades despite having terrible writing became a success, either because people purchased the book to mock it or to enjoy the more erotic elements. James's trilogy didn't add anything to the book world or to the fanfiction world. She didn't explore a different side of an "ordinary" girl getting involved with an emotionally abusive, powerful partner as Bella Swan got involved with Edward in Twilight, or perhaps even a unique take on the premise that vampires have carnivorous relationships with humans.

Image source: https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7233/7159605420_f1e6133713_z_d.jpg

Fanfiction by itself has a vague definition; copyright laws determine what characters and settings are public domain and what aren't. Many Lovecraft anthologies have filled the publishing world this year, for example, while Sherlock Holmes's copyright becomes murkier. With that said, the best fanfiction tends to supercede the original author's purpose and dive into a new world, either literally or figuratively, while showing knowledge of this strange territory; Hitchups for example depicts how Hiccup's wanderlust in a deviation, combined with loyalty to his dragon, leads him to becoming a different kind of hero that he becomes in canon, one that cannot tie himself to Earth but still needs bonds to his old home. In contrast, later fanfiction that took the same idea of Hiccup leaving before his final examination tread on similar territory, sometimes condemning the characters that stayed on Berk outright or offering minimal sympathy.

I see inspiration as a springboard into a large swimming pool; you take a leap off established solid ground and end up in a flurry of different water, sometimes aching if you did a belly flop. As long as you make your mark, no matter what the distance from the original starting point, then you have the right to call that story your own. At the same time, one must show that we know the starting point's location, no matter how far we've deviated from it, and pay homage to its origin. To do so otherwise, by weak characterization or convoluted plots, shows disregard for your source and for the reader.

Mel Brooks once said that "You cannot have fun with anything that you don't love or admire or respect." Having done various parodies such as Young Frankenstein and Spaceballs, Brooks knows how to make any mockery work and to tastefully cross lines. In addition to parodies, inspired works ideally ought to follow similar guidelines so that  "love," "admire," and "respect" become the key words. One must act to respect original sources, to remember to pay homage to what made the previous stories great.

Image source: https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2624/3790520713_27b4946e23_z_d.jpg?zz=1

The Graveyard Book won the Newberry Medal because while paying homage to an English classic that barely avoided racism, Gaiman understood the intelligent prose and themes that children and adults craved, about the power of living and facing down evil. Spaceballs became a classic cult film because while mocking Darth Vader's impact it told a cohesive if absurd story about stealing precious oxygen and rescuing a rebellious princess, showing regard for the hero's goals to discover his identity and earn a reward. Even Shrek, for all the original film's bitter blows towards Disney and fairy tales, displayed a belief in true love breaking curses and outsiders finding happy endings. Fifty Shades despite purporting to have "true love" only reinforces the idea that people ought to be in sadomasochistic relationships with no boundaries, which Twilight already portrayed for a younger audience. The setting and characters were different, but the central idea remained the same, and many readers bought it.

If you're going to write because another author's story inspired you, take that leap and remember your original source. Respect your audience's intelligent and desire for a good story. 

Sick Weekend Two: The Danger of Silence

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Hey All,

I'm sick again. Fortunately it's not as painful as the sickness that I had in December, but battling a sore throat and mild fever while doing schoolwork and writing this blog. But I feel the need to write it, to keep up with my earlier resolution to blog once a week. My problem was that I hit the dreaded sensation that  every writer must get in their lifetime: a Block.

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When I was a teenager, I read books about writer's block. I read comics about writer's block, including Neil Gaiman's "Calliope" which is a story that has since become a cliche in popular culture regarding writers interacting with muses. When I read these stories, I laughed; the idea of not being able to write a word seemed to be an inherent character deficit that could be corrected.

Now that I'm in a slump myself, I feel some sympathy for some of the fictional writers that suffer blocks. Not the one in "Calliope" though; he gave all writers a bad name in terms of what he does to the titular muse. I feel sympathy for Mike Noonan in Bag of Bones, however, because he stops writing due to external stresses, namely his wife dying in the novel's opening pages. Like him, the pressure to do well and stay healthy has affected how I view the words. Sometimes it feels like I'm stepping from one slipper stone to another across a rapidly moving river whose current has destroyed others.

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Traditionally "writer's block" refers to a writer not having any ideas, at least according to popular culture, or having stale ideas that quickly fall apart on the written page. In most cases the blocks happened after the writer had hit success with one novel, and had shut down shortly afterward. The solution to such a situation, which Joanne Harris did implement in real life, was have another book ready for publication. In her case she nearly suffered a block after Chocolat became a success but had already written Blackberry Wine, her next novel that delved into writer's block, the fantastique nature of the French countryside as well as tourist threats. I was planning to do the same thing with Carousel, since I have two novel rough drafts on queue, but stress and business school interfered with my plans. My next long work probably won't happen for a while, not until I finish some short stories.

For those wondering, I don't agree with how Jay the protagonist was portrayed during his block in Blackberry Wine; he got a block because he based his first successful novel on real life, and the success drove him to write "trashy" science fiction for ten years. Call me a fan of the former pulp writers like Ray Bradbury, but there is nothing shameful about writing about aliens as opposed to "literary" fiction. Also, I'm suspicious about basing entire novels on real life, since that can lead to hurt feelings and lawsuits. Jay could have easily started traveling with the money and freedom that he earned, to find more adventures to put into his books. For those wondering about his girlfriend Kerry, it's never a good idea to volunteer to be a blocked writer's muse and hope to encourage good works out of him or her. You will just end up frustrated and disillusioned. Better to brainstorm and encourage, rather than to cut their "trashy" works.

Currently I'm working to get out of my slump and back into the field, while searching for jobs, managing home duties and keeping up in schoolwork. I'm optimistic because this week I actually finished a decent tale for a friend's birthday, the first breath of life into this school year. And with luck, 2015 will mean that I make my goals with aplomb again. Wish me luck!

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What The Handmaid's Tale Offers

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One thing I have to confess this semester: I am a cynic, and I have a hard time believing that humanity can improve and correct its mistakes. We've taken a long time to give marginalized groups basic rights, like the right to vote, and yet they keep facing persecution in both developed and developing countries. When people disagree, we can't agree to disagree or have a calm, rational discussion; the Internet is full of fiery disputes and vitriolic, anonymous hate that at times has had a devastating effect.

Society and its problems change, but the people who spur hatred or righteous fury and rebellion don't; we still have men who think it's their right to shoot schoolgirls for speaking out, or politicians who think that women do not deserve equal pay. We still have Jim Crow existing under different laws, and prejudice against others merely by how they look with darker skin and curly hair. What's worse is that we either tolerate these injustices, seeing each one mount up after the other, or pick our battles and confront them head on. Sometimes choosing an issue can lead to one losing friends, like when abolitionists and women's suffragettes split after the Civil War. 

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If I could change people's minds, when I disagree with them, I'd like to change their minds by offering them free copies of the books that I read. Specifically, I'd like to get a steam shovel, load the scoop with books, and dump the load on people who do not use their heads to think about what a misogynistic opinion may do to a girl's life. For those who do not believe in women's rights, and in fact blame women for not getting ahead in life, I'd like to gift them with The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood. Currently I'm listening to the radio play during the car rides to and from school, and it's the scariest science fiction story I have ever heard, because it's the truest. It's happening for real, and people are perpetuating it.

Humanity and society exist in a flux; overall standards of living have improved for certain populations, but constant change does not allow for an objective view of "better" or "worse."  It's part of the reason why I have only written a total of two dystopic stories, though I like the genre; dark dystopias that suggest that the old days were better, or even imperfect, were off the mark. So are the false utopias that portray our time in a negative light.

Image source: http://www.cbc.ca/books/handmaids-tale-cover.jpg


For those who don't know, The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novella about an oppressive society based on a loosely interpreted version of Christianity, depriving women and their freedom. After assassinating the President and Congress, blaming it on Muslim terrorists (this was written before 9/11) Christian extremists freeze women's bank accounts, take them into custody and condition them into becoming baby factories for designated husbands. The narrator, Offred, used to be a progressive writer for a women's magazine; now she is a handmaid, a broken soul who longs for her daughter and is coerced into playing forbidden games like Scrabble with her "husband," the commander. She tries to find love in this world she has accepted, but love is hard to find when everyone is against you.

The Handmaid's Tale is scary because at the moment it has played out in more than one country, to varying extents. The United States has had controversy over whether or not companies should cover birth control, even when it's needed for medical conditions, as well as if pregnant women receive ostracism and prejudice in the workplace. One of Glamour's women of the year didn't receive a teaching assistant-ship in the 1960s because her university assumed that she was going to get married and have children, and thus not "develop her career."

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Other countries also play out the dystopia, often depriving women of their choices. Iran's lowering the age of marriage from eighteen to nine, after overthrowing the Shah, showed such extremism even if abiding by sharia law, and in Nigeria 100 schoolgirls were kidnapped and shown to be undergoing conditioning to deny their right to education, thus the right to have choices. We also have politicians that use the term "legitimate rape" when talking about women who are assaulted, as well as men with entitlement issues that go on violent rampages when they don't get what they want, and father chaperones who turn away girls from prom because their dresses turn the fathers on. Right now the March for Life has started a campaign against contraceptives, despite those contraceptives helping women with medical conditions.

Margaret Atwood warned us this would happen. And we didn't listen.

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No matter how many times we reflect those issues in fiction, it takes great tragedy and courage from the victims to speak up, and for even the remotest change to occur. When such people speak up, they often risk their lives and their reputations, like when Malala Yousafzi spoke for women's education, got shot. Our refusal to listen, and to make things change makes their actions more necessary, because otherwise we doom ourselves. What's worse, sometimes critics blame the victims, believing they are at fault for how others mistreated them.

I have a hard time believing that change will come for real, and permanently. If a dystopian novel from the 1980s predicted that extremists, regardless of religion, would deprive women of their choices, and we have to fight an uphill battle to make sure that we keep our right to learn and to control our bodies, then we fly towards a terrible future.

People who have joined March for Life, the Taliban, and the Iranian government need to read The Handmaid's Tale before they make decisions about others' bodies. They need to know about the price of depriving choices from women before enacting similar oppression. We've handled the price of freedom well enough on our own, and losing our choices would be a hefty price to pay to conform to a black and white ideal.

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Research in Films: When We Cannot Suspend Our Disbelief

My older brother and I have become discerning with films that he receives from his Netflix subscription. If the film doesn't survive fifteen to twenty minutes of viewing time, then we turn it off and return it. We usually find this happening when our disbelief gets slammed into our faces instead of suspended.

The film Rio was one such example. For those who don't know, Rio is a film about a domesticated parrot who must learn to mate with the last female of his kind, and learn to live in the Amazon jungle while evading poaches. By "domesticated" I mean that this bird brushes his teeth with his book-loving owner, won't leave his warm home for the cold winter outside, and drinks hot chocolate with cookies.

That is one suicidal bird.

Image source: http://www.animationsource.org/sites_content/rio/img_screenshot/115221.jpg

If you're going to write about birds, know this: birds cannot eat chocolate! Like most animals, they will find the substance toxic except in small amounts, and you have to account for weight. Also, why would you give your pet something that could kill them in large dosages? How did this cartoon parrot survive with such an owner?

This scene, along with the creepy scientist who shows up, killed the film for me and my brother. We turned it off and returned it via Netflix. It reminded me of a lesson that I had absorbed from reading about animated film and books: when writing fiction about real elements: do your research. 

Yes, I'm looking at you, chocolate-poisoned Blu.

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Stories rely on suspense of disbelief, especially those that have elements of real life within the fictional narrative.When you have story elements that contradict with facts that the audience knows, the audience loses that suspense and thus cannot get invested in the audience. We have less excuse to ignore facts than we did before, what with the Internet having various free information, as well as experts only too happy to provide their knowledge. 

That said, we cannot conform completely to what we know about real life, because real life does not always lend easily to fiction. 

Pixar learned this the hard way when they released the film A Bug's Life. They ignored physics of ants being able to survive great falls and take large heights, anatomy in regards to choke holds working on the insects, and most egregiously  . . .

"I'm lost!" So are we, four-legs.

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Ants have six legs. Anyone who has seen an ant knows that, whether they're praying on stray bread crumbs in the park or sneaking through cracks in your walls. How can we plausibly accept these four-legged characters as the same insects we have known before? Dreamworks releasing Antz around the same time didn't help, especially when it depicted more anatomically correct ants that conformed to typical ant society, which is essentially absolute monarchy.   

Pixar learned from its mistake, however, in time for the next animal film Finding Nemo. If they were going to suspend disbelief, they  They consulted several marine biologists, learned to animate water so well that they had to make the water less realistic, and visited the Australian oceans. They also found what facts that they could discard, like the fact that when a female clownfish dies, her male partner changes genders, because it would have been too jarring for the tale they wanted to tell. The fact that they got the rest of the details right, apart from giving the fish cartoon eyes. 

Meet your new mom, Nemo

Image source: http://screencaps.us/200/3-finding-nemo/full/finding-nemo-disneyscreencaps.com-523.jpg? 

Why was ignoring clown fish biology and fish eyes acceptable, while four-legged ants weren't? Because the realistic details, from scuba diving to the Sydney harbor, helped create a believable world. We know that male clown fish aren't overprotective of their children, but after meeting Marlin we can believe that he is an overprotective dad that happens to be a clown fish. 

As a result, Finding Nemo was a critical and financial success for Pixar, allowing them to pave the way for various, believable worlds, like Paris restaurants for their film Ratatouille. They even found a way to make ratatouille look like a fancy dish; having tried to make said dish, which at its simplest level is eggplant soup, I can say that making thick soup look fancy is hard.

Having tried to cook ratatouille, I can say that it's a dense eggplant stew.

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 We can learn from Pixar that it's best to do the research, and then to pick and choose what aspects of truth to use, what facts to merge with fiction. Pixar has certainly learned, and they have integrated that research quite well. With luck, they'll keep that blend in the future, as animated films become more competitive and audiences become more demanding. 

Keep up the good work.

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Selling Your Soul: Thoughts After Watching Saving Mr. Banks

"Of course a movie shouldn't try to follow a novel exactly — they're different arts, very different forms of narrative. There may have to be massive changes. But it is reasonable to expect some fidelity to the characters and general story in a film named for and said to be based on books that have been in print for 40 years." Ursula K LeGuin

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Happy belated Fourth of July, everyone! Hope that no one got burned by fireworks, or rained out. It was quite a wet weekend, and I spent that Friday relaxing. Then I got the most wonderful news via the Alban Lake newsletter; my novella "Carousel" has been accepted! It will be published in the fall, and I will inform you of further details when I receive them.

My birthday happens to be tomorrow, but we celebrated over the weekend, my family and I, by watching a Disney biopic I've been dying to see: Saving Mr. Banks. The reason was twofold: I have a passion for stories about authors getting their books published or turned into film, and because Mary Poppins is the best Disney live-action film, period. The story, which isn't accurate with actual details, is about how Walt Disney cajoles, bargains and eventually convinces Mrs. P.L. Travers to sell the book rights to him, so that he can make a film for his two daughters. Parallel to that, we see Mrs. Travers's childhood told in flashback, about her loving relationship with her alcoholic dad, who can't keep down any banking job he acquires. Because of the reality that inspired the Mary Poppins books, Mrs. Travers doesn't want to sell the rights, and goes to Los Angeles purely to refuse the offer. Disney won't give up, however, and he will do what he can to convince her, while sneaking cartoons into the finished product and having Mary Poppins sing.

If Disney bought me champagne, hired a limo driver and paid for my two week stay at a nice hotel, I'd be much more convinced to give him the rights to me work.

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The film portrays two real human beings in somewhat sympathetic light: Walt Disney does business with his animation and is not afraid to lie, while Mrs. Travers doesn't want her creation to be tarnished. Yet we can see that Disney has love for the books, seeing that he fought for twenty years to obtain the rights and allows the author to approve the script, a right that most authors don't have nowadays. And the reason? To keep a promise to his two daughters. He could have chosen another story with a dead author or a more agreeable one, like he did with Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan, but he pursued Mary Poppins for twenty years.

My personal preference for the film and bias comes from watching it a dozen times as a child, learning most of the songs by heart. Julie Andrews brings the right balance of sweet nature and stern front to the role, so that Mary Poppins is charming but by no means saccharine, and David Tomlinson provides perfect foil as the stiff Mr. Banks who finds his life turned awry by this strange nanny.You have the most powerful music in the dramatic arrangements of "Feed the Birds" and a story that acknowledges that parents have it harder than their children do, as well as the dramatic side to growing up.

Mrs. Travers didn't like "Feed the Birds," the best song in the movie. Just . . . what

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I had trouble seeing Mrs. Travers's point of view for several reasons: she is a sour puss about the whole endeavor and disrespects every part of the film process, she takes for granted the red carpet treatment that Disney bestows on her, and Mary Poppins makes a better movie because of the changes from the books.  All these points I believe are important, since the treatment she received is unheard of most days.

These days a writer would have to be J.K. Rowling, Neil Gaiman, or Cressida Cowell to receive such treatment, since the rights are usually negotiated between a publishing company and literary agent. Ursula K. LeGuin has also pointed out that most writers don't get to approve the script; she didn't get such privilege for both adaptations of her Earthsea novels. The only thing you can do is blog about if you liked the movie or not, and in addition, Walt Disney's films at least had quality animation during the time period and original, legendary music. In the twenty-first century, quite a few authors have had Disney mangle their books at times, or create a faithful adaptation that cannot sell the story. Meg Cabot can assert to the former regarding Avalon High, though she remains diplomatic and optimistic about reaching new fans.

This film is a travesty for people who read the books, or for those who appreciate good storytelling

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After thinking about Saving Mr. Banks for a day, however, I wondered what it would be like to have one of my works adapted, and dramatically different from what I envisioned. "Carousel" came to mind, a story that features orchestra and modern classical music prominently; the modern music pays homage to "The Rite of Spring" with its chaotic, dissonant chords while providing conflict for when Renee's orchestra can't play their new piece. If a director and screenwriter came to the project with no knowledge of modern classical music or how an orchestra works, I'd be concerned. If they deliberately changed the novella to be a horror movie knockoff or changed the plot to promtoe a feminist agenda, I'd express disapproval. That would be all I could do, under the circumstances.

But would I, if they gave me the same treatment as they gave P.L. Travers? Would I betray my integrity for Disney dolls, the limo rides, and champagne? Would I allow a lousy story to happen, if I had the script approval rights that she bargained for in Saving Mr. Banks? If the story wasn't lousy, but went in a different direction from the tale, would I like it?

I'd like to think "No" in response to the latter question, because I'm someone who grew up on good movies that were vastly different from their source material, usually for the better, but then again that opportunity is not likely to come my way, unless I am extremely lucky. It's a question that each writer has to ask herself: how much is one's soul worth? There is no one right answer, and we often don't have the liberty to answer it in the modern world.

Would I sell my work for this kind of room? Totally! I call dibs on the Pooh Bear doll

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Saving Mr. Banks was a good film. It asked the right questions about personal integrity, kindness contrasting with sincerity, and what it means to have a good movie versus a completely faith adaptation. Also, Mary Poppins sings. No one can convince me otherwise, not even the author herself. Denying her that denies the power that makes her memorable.

If Walt Disney were alive and seduced me with a limo and paid flight to Los Angeles, a day in Disneyland with him and the classic rides, I would give in because I'm a fan. He may have been manipulative and ruthless as a businessman, but he did produce some of the best animation of the time period. If I were a fan of other directors, and I happen to like Henry Selick and Joss Whedon's work, then I would probably enjoy their changes for the sheer fact that I get to be a fangirl, and to work with people I admire. That would be the price of my soul.

Writing for Other People

"On This Site in 1987, Nothing Happened". Vacation photo from the Casablanca restaurant in Los Angeles.

Hi everyone. I was away on vacation for the past week, visiting California with family. Later I may write a blog post about it, but first I want to talk about a topic that has recently become important in my life: writing for other people. By that I mean writing a story for another person on request, the plot to their specifications. It's very much like commissioning a work of art in words, and you can even do them for birthdays or for Secret Santas during Christmas. Other times you can do them for an anthology, or when ghost-writing for a well-known author. This post will cover these various options.

First, writing for your friends and family. I find this a personal pleasure because people usually give me ideas and a lot of flexibility. My writing has recently improved over the past year as well, so I usually don't skimp on plot or implausible resolutions. The friends who read the tales appreciate that someone took the time to pay attention to their ideas, to expand on them and create a small world in which unique ideas and requests exist.

Let me turn to two varying examples. On May 4, my story "The Soothsayer" was published in Sorcerous Signals magazine. I hope that anyone who can donate to the magazine will, because it was an honor to have editor Carol Hightshoe choose my work. "The Soothsayer" was written for my friend and fellow author Corissa Glasheen, who was suffering a rough week and a sick day. She asked for a story about a psychic whose power involves dead people, and that it was all. I wrote a tale that fit the bill, albeit one that also involved the Sleeping Beauty story and talked about kings and queens. Carol Hightshoe liked it as much as Cory did.

For her birthday last year, Cory asked for a story about cosplaying, or dressing up as your favorite fictional character. I wrote a complicated tale about a cosplayer designing a Big Ben costume, Big Ben being the clock in London. Half the people who have read the tale, including Cory, love it; the other half dislike it because they have no idea what's going on. One day I'll figure out how to revise the story so that it doesn't confuse the other half, but it fills my heart with pleasure to know that Cory enjoyed the tale.

Cory is one of the most poetic young writers hitting the South Florida atmosphere, so you should totally read her blog and story in the upcoming Flux-Fiction Anthology

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Matt Anderson and I have had some soul-searching discussions on the topic, for reasons that I'll mention below. He and I agree that we should write to please ourselves first, and to write for friends if you can and they like your writing but he and I differ on what it means to write for other people that will pay you for your work. Here I am referring to anthologies, or  "a published collection of writings (such as poems or short stories) by different authors" according to Merriam-Webster online.

Anthologies often center around a given theme, from shape-shifting to supernatural prom nights to bad kisses, and rely on unique author voices to tell different tales. Most fantasy and science fiction authors have contributed to or created various anthologies: Bruce Coville of Unicorn Chronicles fame has assembled about half a dozen, as has Jane Yolen, Terri Windling and Ellen Datlow. Neil Gaiman recalls how an anthology prompt saved him from a weekend of writer's block in his short story collection Smoke and Mirrors, and Justine Larbalestier blogged with glee about the fictional battles between zombies and unicorns in their titular anthology.

Not making this up; this anthology exists. I'm Team Unicorn.

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Cory was kind enough to introduce me to a local fantasy author Philip McCall II in the fall. After reading the first chapter of my wolf novel, Phil asked me and Cory if we could contribute to his latest anthology, Flux-Fiction Volume I. He made the same request to Matt after reading one of the latter's short stories, liking the writing. He gave us each a prompt, a character from his God Gates universe, plot outlines and a reasonable deadline. After the emails with such information, Phil then made himself available on Facebook so that we could ask questions and even provided visual references for some of the characters.

It was quite a new experience, receiving permission to write about another author's characters and to not have to slap the fan fiction label onto my story. Having an established continuity and characters, much like when writing fan fiction, helped ease the writing process because I only had to make up the details. Knowing that the author had given us each a tremendous opportunity increased pressure, however, since we were putting various spins on his beloved characters.

 Phil kept encouraging me however; he had chosen us to write because he believed in our prose. He knew that we could come up with powerful narratives, nerves aside, and that we would turn in our stories before the May deadline. As a writer himself, Phil also knows that encouragement keeps inspiration and creative determination alive; when I sent him my story's first thousand words, for example, he sent back a raving response and mentioned the excerpt on Facebook. Knowing that he enjoyed the prose so much gave me the confidence to finish, and to write an action-packed, bloody tragedy. It was a great joy to know that such words could come from my fingertips, and that the story pleased more than one person. Matt and Cory's tales are also amazing, and I have read enough of V.B. Kennedy's prose to know that her story will be a hit.

I like writing for other people because I can make them happy, and because the most delicious words arise from such a creative challenge. Knowing that I can rise to the challenge makes me excited for more writing prompts, like from Eggplant Literary Publishing for their children's magazine Spellbound. It also makes me excited to write a new tale for Cory this year for her birthday, to see what ideas will emerge from her requests.