Matthew Borgard

It's that time again ... Oscar 2012

2012-01-24T07:32:00.000-08:00

So the 2012 Oscar nominations hit today, and I'll be writing up my complete list of predictions in the coming weeks. For now, I have a few thoughts:

This was one of those hard years for casual moviegoers, where many of the big, critically acclaimed films were artsy movies that came out in December. That means that they're hard to catch in theaters, and Netflix is a no-go because of the studio's insane 1-2 month restriction. As a result, I've yet to see a lot of these (The Artist, Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Descendants, etc.)
While she won't win, it's good to see Melissa McCarthy nominated for Supporting Actress for her performance in Bridesmaids. To me, she exemplifies what a good Best Supporting nominee should have: she doesn't necessarily steal the movie, or change its focus, but without her, it would have been significantly weaker.
Jonah Hill is sort of the opposite. Yes, he did a very good job in Moneyball, and he absolutely proved he can do more than sit around and make dick jokes. However, compare his performance to last year's Best Supporting Actor (Christian Bale in The Fighter) and it doesn't quite seem up to the same level.
Really? They stretched out the Animated category to five with the unmemorable-at-best Puss in Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2, but couldn't have done the same last year for Tangled? Whatever. Rango wins this category easily.
Rooney Mara should take the Best Actress trophy. Her performance was stunning.
Speaking of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I was surprised that Fincher didn't get nominated for Best Director. While I wasn't expecting a Best Movie nomination, I would definitely categorize the lack of Fincher as a 'snub.'
Also interesting to see both Tree of Life and Terrence Malik garner nominations. That's a very love-it-or-hate-it movie, and I expected most critics to hate it.

I'll be back in a couple of weeks after I track down the remaining movies.

New Dangers in a New Publishing Landscape

2012-01-20T12:26:00.000-08:00

One of the things that's often thrown about with self-publishing is the unprecedented level of freedom and control authors have with their works. And sometimes it's true. But if you think you can just assume that well-known companies like Amazon and Apple have your back ... well ... think again:

The nightmare scenario under this agreement? You create a great work of staggering literary genius that you think you can sell for 5 or 10 bucks per copy. You craft it carefully in iBooks Author. You submit it to Apple. They reject it. Under this license agreement [...] they won’t sell it, and you can’t legally sell it elsewhere.

For those with a lack of experience in the publishing industry, I'll go ahead and tell you: this is insane. It's akin to Microsoft saying "If you write your novel with MSWord, you can only publish it via Microsoft Reader." Wineman is correct when he calls this arrangement "unprecedented." I can't think of a single other case similar to this one.

Predictably, Apple evangelists have come out of the woodwork to decry that it's only fair that you can't sell your book anywhere else -- after all, Apple's product is freeeeee! And if they don't enforce this rule to make sure you don't, say, use iBooks Author to create a book and sell it on Kindle, then they're helping their competition!

Bullshit.

First of all, the concept is ludicrous. Do they really think a large number of people are going to use iBA, and then not use iBooks? That's absurd. Most people who use Apple products do so because they like Apple. Furthermore, if that's really an issue, charge for the product. Do not justify whittling away an artist's rights because you can't bother coming up with a solid business plan.

It used to be that writers needed to worry about scammy publishers who wouldn't pay, or agents that would demand money up front. And while those things are still concerns, the actions of Big, Presumably Non-Scammy Companies are becoming more and more worrisome.

This exclusivity trend is starting to be a problem, and it's not just Apple. Kindle's recently introduced KDP Select program requires that they be the exclusive seller of the submitted book, whereas before they required only that you don't sell your book cheaper anywhere else. KDP Select is essentially a book loaning program -- there's absolutely nothing that requires exclusivity. Amazon simply introduced it here, where it would be less of a disruption. I wouldn't be surprised if they required the exclusivity for all Kindle Direct books in the near future.

So, self-publishers: keep your wits about you, and don't assume just because you're striking it out on your own that you're protected from the shenanigans of corporations that don't have your interest at heart. Remember Yog's Law: "Money flows toward the author." And remember that anyone asking for rights above-and-beyond "let us publish this" is essentially trying to take some of your cash.

Review: Star Wars The Old Republic - Revan

2011-12-08T13:07:00.001-08:00

A clumsy, disappointing followup to a seminal game

*Very minor spoilers follow*

While the exploration of the Old Republic era started in the comics, Bioware's original Star Wars game, Knights of the Old Republic, created a massive interest in the events that occurred thousands of years before the appearance of Luke Skywalker. At the center of this story was Revan, the eponymous hero of Drew Karpyshyn's new novel. Ever since the end of the original KOTOR, Star Wars fans have wondered what happened to the mysterious Jedi-turned-Sith-turned-Jedi. And, if they're like me, they couldn't be more disappointed.

The basic plot is simple: Revan, now married to Bastila, remembers there's some great threat in the Unknown Regions and goes to seek it out. The secret, as we learn in the first chapter and as anyone familiar with The Old Republic can guess, is that the Sith are out there, waiting, plotting their invasion, so a significant portion of the novel is seeing the view of the Sith Empire culture from the eyes of one of it's citizens. It plays out pretty much how you'd expect. There are very few twists and turns, and even the ending, while slightly unexpected, isn't terribly surprising.

The most glaring problem with Revan is the characterization. Now, I fully admit that Karypyshyn had a rough job here. One of the main conceits of the KOTOR games is the ability for the player to create their own sense of who Revan (and the Jedi Exile, in the second entry) is. So there's necessarily going to be some disparities between Karpyshyn's Revan and mine. That's not my problem. My problem is that the other characters act nothing like themselves, if they have any characterization at all. Gone is the strong, capable Bastila Shan. She's been replaced by a Stepford Wife that seems to exist solely to say "I love Revan SO MUCH!" Canderous has been castrated, and he acts toward Revan like a rescued puppy toward its master. The rest of the characters are waved away with the flimsiest of excuses: "Oh, we can't possibly ask Mission to help save the galaxy with us. She owns a shop now! A SHOP!" This run down of all the companions from KOTOR (except Carth, who, for some reason, is not mentioned once) and the reasons why Revan doesn't want to talk to them gets pretty absurd.

Lord Scourge

The weird characterization doesn't stop there. It's not just consistency with previous material -- the novel has a plethora of internal consistency problems. Revan oscillates from a paragon of justice, completely unwilling to do anything anyone would frown on, to a witty rogue, charming the pants off of everyone he meets, to a heretic, bravely straddling the line between Light Side and Dark Side. If you asked me for a single trait that defined Revan, I couldn't give you one. And that's just lazy writing, in my opinion. The new Sith character, Lord Scourge (who, it must be said, is really the main character of the novel) undergoes similar contortions. He starts out as a typical Sith -- not so much evil, as just kind of a dick. About halfway through the novel, he has an about face and starts to think of a couple of people as his friends, suddenly grows a heart, etc. There's almost no incentive for this -- any motivation that's present is given to him offscreen.

And thus, we come to the second glaring problem of the book. A good 75% of the plot -- everything that's not Scourge's story -- happens offscreen. Revan's entire plot arc is just him remembering things, or having visions about things. Nearly every chapter in the first half of the book begins with Karpyshyn giving us a narrative infodump about something that happened in KOTOR, or something that happened between KOTOR and Revan, or something that's going to happen in The Old Republic. I understand this is a setup for Bioware's next game, and that you need to refresh people who haven't played the older titles in years, but the author chooses the clumsiest way to do it. Instead of cleverly dropping a few reminders here and there, he just decides to organize the majority of the novel as if it's the introduction in a video game manual. I can count two significant actions Revan takes in this novel. The rest of it is just backstory.

Strange and lazy choices, such as infodumps, are accompanied by wooden dialogue, horrible pacing and weak descriptions

Finally, I was very much surprised with how weak the novel is on the technical side of things. Strange and lazy choices, such as the aforementioned infodumps, are accompanied by wooden dialogue, horrible pacing (action scenes that go on for pages and pages, followed by major decisions and time shifts that are barely mentioned in passing) and weak descriptions. I say I'm surprised because Karpyshyn's other Star Wars novels have actually garnered a fair amount of praise. But after reading Revan, I'm not in much of a hurry to track them down. I believe Karpyshyn knows how to tell a decent story, as evidenced by his role in Bioware games such as Mass Effect, as well as what I've played so far of The Old Republic. And normally I can forgive mechanics if the story is intriguing enough. But the problems here are so glaring, and the story so lackluster, that I can't help but notice every little detail. I don't normally expect great literature from Star Wars books, but I do expect some authorial effort and external editing, something Revan is in dire need of.

In the end, I can't even really recommend this book to die hard Star Wars fans. The plot informs The Old Republic, and I'm sure some of the characters in Revan are the same we'll be fighting in endgame raids in a few months. But all the relevant information can be found in a few minutes on Wookieepedia, and the read would probably be just as enjoyable. At the very least, I was at least able to plow my way through to the end -- it was never so painful that I couldn't continue. But I can't say I had a good time of it.

Story Announcement

2011-11-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

This shall be short and sweet. My story, "We are Not the Favored Children," was selected to be published in the Dark Tales of Lost Civilizations anthology, edited by Eric J. Guignard and published by Dark Moon Books. The anthology will hit in both paper and electronic formats in Spring 2012, and I'll post more information here (and in the Bibliography up above) when it's available. Thanks to everyone who has sent me encouragement over the years! Hopefully this is the first step of a larger journey.

The Line Between Connecting With Fans and TMI

2011-10-12T13:07:00.000-07:00

The recent firing of Bocephus for some (not-too-controversial) comments, as well as conversations with some friends, have got me thinking about publishing and politics. We live in a hyper-polarized world. There's no such thing as a moderate anymore. If you think sales of assault weapons should maybe sort of be controlled, you're an evil communist who wants to government to control our lives and take away all of our means to defend ourselves. If you think some of the data surrounding climate change is a little bit questionable, you're an anti-science creationist wacko. There's no middle ground.

This is an unfortunate byproduct of modern society, created largely by a sensationalist media. The concept has been covered ad naseum by media critics like Jon Stewart, but suffice it to say that, with a lack of 24 hours of real news, the 24-hour news stations resort to blowing up trivial differences and pretending that we need to go to war over things that normal people can resolve with "Ahh, Bob, you're crazy!" There's also the broader issue of those in power encouraging the peasants to fight amongst themselves lest there be some sort of silly revolt, but one could write a book (and many have) on that.

So what does this have to do with writing? In the connected age, everything. Unless your words are so mind-bogglingly brilliant that the teeming masses have no choice but to buy them, you're going to be in the position of selling yourself just as much as you're selling your books. Many of the big success stories in the past few years, both in literature and in other forms of media, take advantage of the ability to connect with fans. Gone are the days J.D. Salinger or Harper Lee. Today's successful authors have a presence on blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Google+ (well, okay, no one really has a presence on Google+).

But there's a danger. Like a little boy who worships his grandfather only to grow up and find out the grandma left him because of the nightly beatings, we don't always want to know everything about the people who make our entertainment. Crossing the line from "purely professional" to "friendly" with your audience can give you some benefits, but it can also be risky. Example time!

A few months back, prolific author Jane Yolen participated in an interview in which she derided the Tea Party. Some conservative commenters interpreted this to say that she didn't want Tea Partiers reading her books. Now, for the record, I don't agree that's what she actually said. But talking politics in general is risky. Since I'm not a member of the Tea Party, it would be easy for me to say that the Tea Partiers overreacted here. But could I really say that if Jane Yolen went on a screed about some group I was affiliated with, I wouldn't even hesitate when considering buying one of her books? And hesitation is absolutely not what you want your audience to feel when they see your latest novel has hit the shelves.

Another famous example is Orson Scott Card, one of my favorite authors. Card is highly religious, notoriously opinionated, and not afraid to speak (er, write?) his mind, as evidenced by his anti-gay marriage rant (gotta love the constant quotes around "marriage" -- you just know he does the air-quote thing when he talks about this in person). He has an absolute right to his opinion, of course, and an absolute right to share it. But readers have a right to avoid his work if they choose. And that's exactly what some of them, many of whom were once big fans of Card's books, have done.

And it goes beyond controversy -- sometimes people just aren't going to like you. Shocking, I know, but it's very likely that if you picked 100 fans and decided to spend a week with each of them, at least a few wouldn't be your fans anymore. I don't want to name any names here, but there is one author in specific whose novel I enjoyed enough to follow this author's blog. Several months of whining about personal matters later, I unsubscribed. Does that mean I'm not going to buy any more books from this person? Of course not! But it also means I'm no longer tuned in to the author's feeds, which makes it probable that I'll miss when that new novel hits.

I'm not a fan of boycotts for political opinions. As much as possible, I try to separate the art from the artist. In the case of Orson Scott Card, I don't believe his political and religious opinions bleed into his work, and I continue to enjoy them (except Empire, which was ... hmm ...). But, as one of the aforementioned friends said to me, why should this necessarily be the case? If you find out the owner of your favorite coffee shops is a proud, card-carrying member of the Ku Klux Klan, even if the business itself has no history of discrimination in any way, would you not hesitate to continue going there? It's an uncomfortable topic to think about. I would feel horrible if someone, or a large group of someones, decided they couldn't read my work because of some trivial opinion I'd mentioned in an interview. But if they chose to do so, could I really blame them?

All that considered, though, I'm absolutely not saying that authors should feel the need to censor themselves. If you have something you feel like you have to say, say it, especially when it comes to issues you feel passionate about. I suspect Mr. Card feels the same way about the topic of gay marriage as I do, although on the opposite side of the fence: it's important enough to speak about regardless of whether it costs him readers. That's a choice each author needs to make on each individual issue: is it important enough to risk losing a piece of my fanbase by revealing my views? Sometimes the answer is going to be yes. Writers especially can't second guess every single thing they write on the basis of whether or not it's going to offend someone.

But what writers should be mindful of is that sometimes it's beneficial to keep things back. Do you hate soap operas? Perhaps. But does it help you to write a rant about how terrible they are and alienate the people who like them? Probably not. If you think it's important, go for it. But be aware of the consequences. Connecting with your fans is encouraged and very nearly necessary for success, but connecting with fans does not mean letting the whole wide world in on your every secret and opinion on every little issue. In the end, there's some things we'd prefer not to know.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm off to finish my posts about abortion and circumcision. See you soon!

Story vs. Choice, and Video Games as Art

2011-04-29T09:08:00.000-07:00

Warning: Spoilers for Dragon Age 2 follow

Something like five years ago (has it really been that long?), Roger Ebert posited that video games are not, and possibly can never be, art. I don't really feel like rehashing that argument (you can view the epic mound of responses here) -- suffice it to say that my definition of art is abundantly less draconian than Ebert's. To me, art is anything man-made and tangible designed to provoke an emotional reaction from the beholder (including lust, which means I consider even pornography a form of art!)

But let's stop to think about a middle position, somewhere between Ebert's point-of-view and mine. Maybe video games ARE art -- but are they any good at being that? One of the beautiful things about different forms of media are that they each excel in specific ways, while failing at others. Movies can give us a visual form of a story in a way nothing else can; the most wonderfully written description pales in comparison to even the most poorly filmed movie, in terms of giving us an image of what the scene or characters look like. In contrast, a movie will never, ever be able to get inside a character's thoughts the way a book can. Music, paintings -- they all have their strengths. Do video games?

Many people think of video games, at least those that focus on a story, as an interactive movie. If we go down that path, video games seem clearly inferior. It's just a movie that has removed authorial intent (something I don't find at all important, but some do) and inserted repetition. If a developer sets out to make a game solely as a piece of art, wouldn't making it into a movie improve it? And the answer is, yes. If you're trying to provoke the exact same feelings that a movie does, it would seem the smarter choice would be to just make a movie.

But here's where I reject that initial premise: video games and movies have a different strength ... at least in my opinion. I think I finally came to realize this while playing Dragon Age 2. One of my favorite characters is Bethany, your player character's sister. She's actually just kind of a normal, if a bit sheltered, girl, with no real quirk. But I liked her anyway. And then what happened? She died.

I felt sadness, anger, and eventually, acceptance. Upon reflection, I knew why the writers had made that decision. It added to my player character's, well, character. And I went on with the game, remembering my sister fondly. It was only after I completed it that I browsed the Dragon Age wiki and found out that Bethany's death was not at all preordained. She could have died in a number of ways, including at the beginning of the game. Or, if I'd made my choices differently, she may not have died at all.

Here's where people like Ebert would smile and say this is PROOF that games aren't art. If Bethany could have died in any number of ways, or not at all, than her death means NOTHING. Without intent, there's no story! Who's to say what "really" happened?

All true. But that didn't make it any less sad when I saw her die in my arms. And this is where I think games excel. Bethany's death provided me with an emotion that I never could have felt in a movie, book, or anything other than interactive fiction: choice. My choices killed Bethany. Not my character's choices, though that is what they became; that can be felt in any type of media. My choices. The emotion of regret -- "if only I had done this" -- is incredibly powerful. And it's one I've never ever been made to feel by anything other than a video game.

"But!" the protesting reader screams. "Can't you just reset and try again?" Well of course you can. Aside from the fact that this may be inconvenient depending on the length of the game, this is entirely possible. And it has to be possible for the issue of regret to come about. If I'd not been given the opportunity to choose this path, I could never regret it -- and to truly give me the choice, I'll have to be able to choose to keep her around too. But even if I replay the game, does that somehow nullify the original emotion I felt? Of course not. People in high towers like to somehow pretend that stories are written in stone, and anything that sullies that vision of 'canon' is ruinous. That's absurd. I can read as much Ginny-Hermione slashfiction as I can fit on my harddrive, and still feel butterflies in my stomach when Ginny kisses Harry in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. The same goes for any form of art. Multiple interpretations exist, but they don't all have to be mutually exclusive.

I think this is the root of the uproar a lot of people had at Ebert's explanation. His reasoning was not illogical; in fact, it was entirely logical. That was the problem. Art is not a logical proposition. If it was, computers could and would be making terabytes of art without any human interaction. Art is emotional. And when you say "X is not art," you're essentially saying "I know you think X has made you feel angry, sad, regretful, happy, and horny. But it really hasn't, trust me."

So here's my challenge to Ebert (as I know he reads this blog religiously), and anyone else who disputes that video games are art. Find me a painting, movie, book, song, play, radio drama or anything else that can make me say "Wow, I really wish I hadn't done that," and I'll give more credit to your train of thought.

Excerpts from "The Mormon Renaissance" and "Mission to Tau Ceti: A Retrospective"

2011-04-19T10:24:00.000-07:00

2012-2024

The beginning of the modern Mormon Renaissance can be traced back to the second decade of the millenium. In 2012, with a fractured Republican primary containing upwards of 8 candidates, all considered viable, Sarah Palin is nominated with 35% of the delegate total. The general election is considered a disaster, and though Barack Obama only wins with 395 out of 538 Electoral Votes, as the solid-red states in the South and Big Sky regions stay in Republican hands, it is a blow to the superconservative wing of the party. They are futher marginalized in 2014, when Republicans, instead of gaining seats, as is the tradition for the minority party in midterm elections, lose several, expanding the Democratic majority.

In the runup to 2016, the GOP looks to moderation to win back power. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, now 66 years old, is ushered into the frontrunner status, and wins the GOP nomination handily. He eventually nominates former Senator from Maine Susan Collins, who chose not to run for re-election in the Senate due to a likely primary loss, as his Vice-Presidential candidate. He faces Senator Amy Klobuchar, a popular senator from Minnesota, with former Montana governor Brian Schweitzer as her running mate.

Romney's campaign focuses on moderation, and is able to eek out a close 278-260 electoral win, even as Romney loses his home state of Massachusetts, and the Democrats retain majorities in both the House and Senate. During the campaign, as in 2008 and 2012, much is made of Romney's Mormon faith. This has little traction in the mainstream media during the campaign, as the questioning consists mostly of "Would your faith influence your governing?" to which Romney's answer echoes JFK's: "Only in the aspect that my faith influences my morals. But as with all Americans, I can and do have disagreements with my church, and I can promise as President that I would never cede control to any religious authority." This satisfies most Americans -- indeed, in the wake of the election, many pundits point to independent groups attacking Romney's Mormon faith as contributating factor to Klobuchar's loss, even in an otherwise successful year for Democrats.

However, as Romney's presidency begins, the Mormon faith comes under fire from conservative organizations. Several prominent conservative names, including a few members of the House of Representatives, inquire into the religion with delcarations that Mormonism is polytheistic, and that Mormons believe that God is just a normal person who received powers of creation after his death. These ideas are discussed ad nasuem, with some coming down that yes, Mormons do technically believe this, but it is not the most important part of their belief structure, to assertions that these more unfamiliar tenets are actually apocryphal and no longer represent the Church's official positions. Nevertheless, the accusations dog Romney throughout his first two years, and the approval of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints plummets to an all time low.

As the country begins to recover fully from the effects of the depression in the early part of the decade, however, Romney's approval rating remains high, and he sails smoothly to reelection in 2020. His second term completes fairly uneventfully in historical terms, and the hysteria about the LDS faith dies down. Romney exits gracefully amid a prosperous US economy and the best outgoing Presidential approval rating in modern history, besting even Clinton and Reagan.

Following his retirement, Romney pens two books. The first, a memoir detailing his time in office, entitled Faith in America, was only moderately well-received, as, though he was a popular president, he faced little scandal in his presidency and disappeared from the limelight after his second term. His second, a biography entitled Mitt Romney: My Life, My Faith addressed the more controversial aspects of LDS beliefs that came up during his first term. It was criticized by many, who claimed it cast Mormonism (and Christianity in general) in a more victimized light than it really was in modern society. Regardless, it became a recordbreaking bestseller, due mostly to the attention it received in Christian circles, even outside of Mormons. And most historians point to it as a turning point for the denomination, which grew to represent 20-30% of the Christian population in America by 2080. Indeed, in the last half of the Century, it is the only specfic Christian denomination other than Catholicism to grow as a percentage of the adult population in the country, as many more Americans began to consider themselves unaffiliated Christians, or nonreligious, with the majority of these changes happening from losses in the mainline Protestant churches.
- Jeremy Williams, The Mormon Renaissance

2070-2080
As the expedition to Tau Ceti began to solidify, with several groups already outlining their plans for the voyage, many influential members of the LDS Church lobbied the leadership to organize a church-supported mission, based on four main factors:

1) Mormon beliefs were uniquely qualified to tackle such a mission, as Mormon cosmology allowed for, and even explicitly mentioned, life on other planets;

2) Mormon doctrine called for spreading the message of Jesus Christ to all those who would hear it, and the possibility of witnessing to a foreign population seemed an opportunity too good to pass up;

3) Tithes were paid for no reason other than to build up and extend their Heavenly Father's kingdom. Therefore, the mission would not be considered a waste of member resources;

4) And finally, the participants in the mission were likely to be seen as heroes, especially in the case that Tau Ceti is inhabitated. In that case, the expedition would be seen as a chance to be a "city on a hill" to the rest of the world.

The Church came under fire from secular and political organizations (including, it must be disclosed, yours truly) who claimed that the Church wanted to meddle in what could be a developing society, or invoke the wrath of an advanced one. However, the President and Prophet attempted to assuage the fears by assuring the public that they only wished to present their beliefs, and that they would respect the cultures and beliefs of others as they did on Earth.

The Church leadership officially declared, in 2075, that they would indeed organize a flight to the newly discovered planet. The ship was to be named The U.N.S. Liahona, named after the compass given to Lehi to facilitate his escape from Jerusalem.
-Mary Scott Davis, Mission to Tau Ceti: A Retrospective

I was just reminded of this piece, languishing on my computer, by a similar (but much more detailed) "how-they-got-to-space" type story by a peer, I figured I'd throw it up. It was originally written for a friend's forum game, revolving around a bunch of different groups from Earth sending off expeditions to a planet called Tau Ceti (a place whose copyright belongs to him, and not me).

P is for Piracy

2011-04-12T11:07:00.000-07:00

No, I'm not doing the totally-hip-and-cool A-Z Blogging Challenge (which I would link to, but I have no idea where it started). I just couldn't think of a better title.

This post is going to be fairly short, and it's going to be big on assertions and assumptions, cause that's the way I'm feeling today. I'm channeling a lot of energy into my new job (Linux!), and into finishing the final, tricky scenes in To the Boundaries of Heaven.

That said, I'd like to talk a little about piracy, specifically book (though I may touch on piracy in other media as well). The topic has come up recently in several forums and blogs, as well as in my local writing group.

I think the most salient point I can make about piracy is the difference between an emotional response and an economic response. Most people who focus a lot of energy on fighting piracy have an emotional response: "These people are stealing my hard work!" That is a completely legitimate response, because it's true. While "stealing" is not quite the right word, it certainly feels like the same thing. These people are enjoying the fruits of your labor (years of writing and editing!), and contributing nothing for it. Hell, I'm a big believer that piracy is free marketing, and even I get a little bit pissed off.

But emotional damage is not economic damage. Where I think a lot of parties, both individual artists and publishing/distribution companies, are getting off mark is the idea that their emotional interests and economic interests are 100% aligned. "My book is downloaded 1000 times a month from ThePirateBay, so if I stop those dirty pirates, I'll see 1000 extra sales monthly!" Anyone with a smattering of common sense (and I absolutely hate the concept of common sense) can tell that this is a faulty argument. This makes as much sense as saying an author pricing an eBook at $.99 could multiply his profit by six figures simply by charging $1,000,000 for it. Many, if not most, illegal downloaders are downloading the material not because they're highly interested in it, but because they're highly interested in it at the price of $0. Raise the price to $.99, and they no longer care.

But let's assume that perhaps 10% of pirates would buy your book if an illegitimate option were not available (I think that's more than generous). Is spending a good chunk of your time and frustration chasing down 10% of a market that's not all that interested in being your customer really a great business decision? Wouldn't a better business decision be to just ignore this sector, and write another book for the people who ARE your customers? This is where emotional and economic decisions diverge. The author focusing on the emotional will track down every torrent, send out DMCA notices and nasty emails, try to seed the web with fake torrents, etc. The author focusing on the economic will say "screw it" and spend that time writing.

I don't have the space to address the multitude of topics on this matter, but here's some food for thought:

Piracy is publicity. Even if it takes a bite out of your profits (which I disagree with), it's still publicity. A pirate is just as likely as a buyer to tell his friends that a book rocked (or sucked!)
Not all illegitimate downloads are a lost sale. In fact, very few are.
DRM (Digital Rights Management, obtrusive software that makes it more difficult to pirate) does not work. At all. Pirates can get into the most locked-down DRM in a matter of weeks, usually a matter of hours, and disseminate a clean, DRM-free version to the pirate community. This means the only people that DRM affects is legitimate users. In fact, if your DRM is so bad that it makes the product hard to use, or removes expected features, it will likely drive people who would have bought your book to pirate it.
You can not stop piracy. Ever. If a book can be read, if a song can be heard, it can be copied. At best, you can try to delay it, but that hardly ever works. Like death, piracy is inevitable. So why spend your time worrying about it?

Why so serious?

2011-03-31T08:23:00.000-07:00

I don't really have anything important or writing related to say -- still working hard on the book! -- but I want to get in the habit of not neglecting the bloggin'. So, in honor of the release of Tangled, how about some Disney songs?

My all-time favorite Disney movie:

And this one's up there, too. Also, I'm pretty sure this movie served as a catalyst for puberty for me.

Mulan is often ignored, but it really shouldn't be. Who says Disney doesn't make strong female characters?

And finally, since I can't embed any Tangled videos (stupid EMI!), here's a bonus:

Story vs. Demographics -- What's Fair?

2011-03-25T08:02:00.000-07:00

Dragon Age II's Merrill, as drawn by squanderling

Making commercial art, or really, any art that's designed for an audience, is always a matter of balancing self-expression with enjoyability. Sure, if your 500,000 word stream-of-consciousness epic about sea slugs is just dying to be written, put that baby on paper!

But on some level, writers want to produce something that people will connect with, and sometimes yes, something that will make us a little bit of cash as well. At what point, then, does an artist "owe" something to her target audience?

I started thinking about this as I scrolled through my daily (okay, more often than that) check of Kotaku, and came upon the following article, covering the complaint by one fan about the lack of romance options for straight male players and the writer response from Bioware, the developer.

Let me start by saying that it annoys me when people with a strong love of heternormality include other people in their argument, as if we all agree with them. The original poster, Bastal, complains that:

BioWare neglected The Straight Male Gamer

And this is offensive on its face. I am a Straight Male Gamer (such an important concept, apparently, that it needs to be capitalized!), but I did not feel neglected. I did not feel neglected when I played, as I generally do in Bioware games, as a bisexual female character, and I did not feel neglected when I replayed, as again is customary, as a bisexual (and kind of an asshole) male character. Go ahead and complain that you feel neglected, but please don't lump me in to your anti-gay, anti-woman tantrum.

Even worse is the assertion that the two romance options for a heterosexual male character, Merrill and Isabela, are somehow not normal, not sufficient:

Unfortunately, those choices are what one would call "exotic" choices.

Exotic? I doubt the poster could have chosen a more offensive word if he tried. For the uninitiated, Merrill, as seen at the top of this post, is a quirky Elven woman, so I suppose I can understand that. Maybe some people just really can't get past the pointy ears. But the other option is Isabela. Who is Isabela? A sharp-witted pirate, one who is, shall we say, experienced in the ways of love. So did Bastal label Isabela "exotic," and thus undesirable, because of her sexuality? It's a possibility, and that's incredibly misogynistic. But the more likely scenario is because she looks like this:

For the vision-impaired: she's not white.

So yeah, there's also a creepy racial undertone to this whole argument. Bastal is not even simply complaining that there aren't enough wimmin for his taste; he's complaining that there aren't enough chaste white wimmin for his taste, and Bastal don't approve of no miscegenation. The argument is gross and offensive from the beginning, but Bastal brings up a fair topic for discussion. Bioware has made games where, say, a homosexual male character has no romance options, and this is generally acceptable, because it's not necessary to shoehorn every sexual option into every game. But imagine there were no options for a heterosexual male character. Is this somehow less acceptable because the Straight Male Player is the target audience?

Privilege, or Demographics?

Those who fail to recognize their own privilege tend to get understandably angry about being accused of bigotry. I don't hate "the others," they insist. It's the others who are demanding unfair benefits that outweigh their representation -- it's all about the demographics. I represent x% of the population, so I should get exactly x% of the consideration.

Hopefully, most of you are shaking your head about how lame that reasoning is. For those of you that aren't, it may be because you're thinking of this in the setting of a video game, and not a book or a movie. The main character in Dragon Age 2 is supposed to be a representation of the player, right?. But that's not the case. Bioware long ago dispensed with the idea that the player character is a simple avatar. Mass Effect's Commander Shepard and DA2's Hawke are voiced characters with opinions, fully formed backgrounds and agency. Yes, your choices influence their personality (more on this next week), but the age of the silent, blank canvas protagonist is over.

The other problem with this reasoning, of course, is that the writers never once removed choice from the player. Even in earlier Bioware games, your player can be a homosexual, or asexual, or whatever -- there just may not be a character in your party with whom you can consummate your love. What Bastal is demanding is that Bioware cave to his expectations and actually design the OTHER characters in the game based on demographics.

When you look at this demand from the perspective of any other type of art, it clearly falls apart. The focus should be on the story, and on the characters. They should grow from conception to creation. Their sexuality should be something that is a part of them, the same way as hair color; it shouldn't be thrown in because 80% of our players are blond, and therefore 80% of characters need to be towheaded as well.

Kaidan Alenko is bland, but at least he's not randomly gay

Bioware has actually gotten better at this over the years. The romance options in their early games were very formulaic, but even then, they didn't force sexuality on a character when it clearly didn't fit. Dragon Age 2 is some of their best work. It's a lesson in what happens when the romances are not designed by committee, but by natural character growth. The sexuality and romance just fits. Stoking love in this game never felt like I was just checking a box in my character's profile, and that's an achievement of which the developers should be proud.

But should they be worried? Target audience is always a part of marketing. For good or bad, if I write a literary novel from the point of view of a gay character, it's likely to be labeled as 'LGBT Fiction' and ignored by the mainstream public. There's nothing anyone can do about that. A reader who doesn't want to read about, or play, a homosexual character doesn't have to. If Bioware's sales drop off sharply because of this (I seriously doubt it), they'll have no one but themselves to blame for not addressing the correct market.

Where Bastal crosses the line, however, is in the insinuation that an artist OWES her target audience something. How entitled of him! If a fan of Fantasy novels picks up a book marketed as Fantasy, and it has no magic, he has every right to say "I don't like this book, and I'm not going to read it because it doesn't have magic." He does NOT have a right to say "How DARE you for not putting magic in here! Your target audience enjoys reading about magic! You OWE us!"

This, I believe, is the answer. Bastal has every right in the world to say "Unless you include a white heterosexual woman for me to romance, I won't buy your game." But Bioware has the right to say "This is the story we're telling. Deal with it."

Writers do not owe an audience anything other than the best story they can produce. They do not owe you any elements you think to be required. They do not owe you a sense of heteronomality because most of the population is heterosexual. They do not owe you a release date. To paraphrase Neil Gaiman: Bioware is not your bitch.

I don't normally comment on video games here. While video games are one of my life's passions, nearly half the internet is devoted to them (the other half, of course, is porn). But when gaming and writing merge (as they do in the best games, in my opinion), I think it's a valid topic for discussion here. The newly released Dragon Age 2 exemplifies great video game writing in a couple of ways, so I'm going to talk about that in a couple of different posts. More to come.

The Case of the Icky Readers

2011-03-23T07:55:00.000-07:00

Nathan Bransford generated some interesting comments last week about the value of 99-cent readers. The initial conversation revolved around an interview with Zoe Winters, an eBook author. The article, "Does Lowballing Attract the Wrong Kind of Reader?", sent chills down my spine just reading the title. The wrong kind of reader? What, exactly, is that? It seems like a business complaining about "the wrong kind of customer" or "the wrong kind of venture capitalist." But maybe she has a point? It's worth exploring, right?

No, not really.

The Quality of the Customer

The thrust of the argument is that "quality" of a customer is more important than "quantity." Let's briefly touch on the assumption that someone who would purchase a $37 eBook, a price-point that interviewer Jennifer Mattern seems to advocate, is "higher quality" than a reader who buy at 99-cents. The idea is that buying a book at a high price instills reader loyalty, whereas a lowball price does not. That's absurd on its face. How many times has a high price made you more likely to buy something else from the same company or author? How many computer manufacturers, for instance, try to shoot for the highest price possible out of the idea that if consumers pay too little, they won't be likely to buy from that company again? Nobody, of course. If, out of some case of temporary insanity, I pay $37 for your eBook, it better damn well be one of the best books I've ever read, or I'm exceedingly unlikely to purchase any of your future works. On the other hand, price your book at $.99, and not only will I be more likely to buy it, I'll be a lot more likely to give it the benefit of the doubt, see the potential, overlook the flaws and try your next book.

I have a feeling that Ms. Winters and Ms. Mattern agree with my logic up to now. "Of course a higher price doesn't instill loyalty. It weeds out those readers who aren't loyal!" Ms. Winters even says:

"I think the readers I attract now are truly interested in MY work, and not just a bargain. I feel like the readers I’m attracting are the types of readers who are going to be passionate about the work and tell other people."

This, to put it simply, is a fallacy. Math averse should look away right now. Let's call X the set of readers that will read a book at a $9 price point. Let's call Y the set of readers that will read a book at a $.99 price point. I'll use some of Ms. Mattern's noncontroversial assumptions that the readers in Y are, on average, more loyal (and thus more desirable) than the readers in X. This is certainly true; if you're selling your book at a bottom-of-the-barrel price, you'r certainly going to attract a certain readership that is voracious in reading, and don't really care who or what they consume as long as it's cheap.

However, where I believe Ms. Mattern's and Ms. Winter's argument breaks down is in the assumption that X is not a part of Y. The assumption is that all those loyal readers somehow won't be there if you sell your book for cheap. That's false logic. A low price point doesn't scare away loyal reader, or if it does, that has failed to be proven to me. Ms. Winters muses that a low price creates some sort of psychological idea that the book is going to suck, which is not the way it works in any other creative medium, so I'm not sure why anyone would think it would be the case here. Instead, the likely truth is that X is a subset of Y. Y has all those crazy, unloyal, finicky readers, sure, but it has all the same loyal readers as X. If your only concern is having "the right kind" of readers, I see no reason why a higher price point would help you achieve this goal.

So 99-cents is the way to go?

Not necessarily. What my post shouldn't be construed as is an economic suggestion one way or another. The interview itself shies away from the examples of 99-cent millionaires, instead focusing on how such successes are rare. Ms. Winters says:

"I think almost no one can make a solid living with 99 cent ebooks because you have to have huge volume for that. When I sold 6,500 ebooks in June 2010, that was around $2,300. Well, most people can’t live on that, especially after you take out Uncle Sam’s cut."

And that is a completely fair statement. Maybe most authors can't make a living at that price point. If that's the case, raise your prices to $2.99. Or $4.99. Or $37.99. The idea that 99-cent eBooks exert a downward pressure on all prices is a similarly valid one, but that's not a worry that individual authors have control of. Regardless of how you price your books, there will be authors that sell for 99-cents. Hell, there will be authors that give their works away for free, and not all of these works are "low-quality." Some people just care more for readership than money. That is their right, and it's pointless to think that the entire marketplace is controlled by how you price your books.

One of the strawmen that gets thrown around, sometimes, is that people like me (sometimes referred to as 'Freevangelists') think everything should be free, and an author shouldn't deserve to make money. Nothing could be further from the truth. I think great artists deserve to be compensated, and I would love a world where talented authors could be guaranteed a living. But that is beside the point.

The argument from 'Freevangelists' is not that free or low-price is always ideal, but that it's sometimes ideal. If you can make $1,000,000 selling eBooks at 99-cents, but you only make $500,000 selling eBooks at $2.99, should you raise your prices simply because 99-cents "devalues your work?" Of course not! It's silly! I'm absolutely not saying that 99-cents is an ideal price, or that all authors should aim for that. Each author and publisher is going to need to make economic decisions based on their individual situation. That's part of running a successful business. What I'm saying is that discounting a certain price point because of it makes you feel icky is wrong, both from an economic view, and from the view of respecting your fans, regardless of how much cash they shell out. A fan is a fan. A reader is a reader. Cherish them.

The Best Films of 2010, Part II

2011-02-23T14:35:00.000-08:00

It's that time! I've officially watched all the Best Movie nominations, so I feel totally qualified to give my worthless opinion on this nigh-meaningless award show! Seriously, though, there were some pretty good movies this year. If you didn't read my first entry, check it here. For the record, I saw The Social Network, The Fighter and Winter's Bone since I wrote that. The Fighter and Winter's Bone were both very enjoyable movies, though I think TSN edged them out overall (and it probably edged out The Town from my list).

This followup will just be a rundown of my picks for each category (other than a few in which I didn't see all the entries, like Documentary, etc.). It will be a lot more sparse and less melodramatic than previous post.

Note that my picks are what I think should win, not what I think will win -- though I may address that in certain categories. I'll highlight the things I didn't actually see in red. Maybe there's some amazing indie movie out there that blows everything away, so I'm hedging my bets. On with the show!

Best Original Screenplay
Another Year
The Fighter
Inception
The Kids Are All Right
The King's Speech

All right, so The Fighter and The King's Speech are going to be duking it out for a lot of these on who I think will win, but I think King's Speech is the better movie in most regards. You can certainly see it in the writing. Though it's hard to fully separate writing from directing from editing, The King's Speech has a better pacing and overall arc. The Fighter has some really great bits -- I particularly enjoyed the subplot about the documentary -- but we also see a few events happen over and over again (i.e., a fight between family and his life), and these aren't always presented in fresh ways. It gets to be a little redundant at times, and I think that's more of the fault of the script than anything else. The King's Speech, on the other hand, hits its mark well. The pacing is great, the characters are well written, and it never gets bogged down.

Best Adapted Screenplay

127 Hours

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter's Bone

All right, all right, yes -- The Social Network is very clearly a Sorkin joint. The characters are very pithy and quick-witted. There aren't really any strong women to speak of. But it succeeds anyway. It succeeds at making us both like and dislike this irritating, annoying character. It succeeds at making us care about the trials and tribulations of people who, let's face it, at the end of the day, they're all multimillionaires. So I have to give Sorkin props for that. It also helps that some of the other scripts were messes, even for good movies. Winter's Bone was a pretty simple tale, but it really fell apart at the end. The whole thing revolved around people snitching and people finding out about meth labs, but the thing is, EVERY SINGLE PERSON in that town ran a meth lab, and every single person knew about it, so the issue seemed forced to generate conflict. True Grit was all right. Maddie was written well, but the rest was ho-hum. Toy Story 3 touched me to my core, but the central conflict wasn't all that impressive. So Facebook Movie it is!

Visual Effects

Alice in Wonderland

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

Hereafter

Inception

Iron Man 2

The rotating room was brilliant, that's all I can say. I haven't been that blown away since The Matrix. It wasn't even all that original, really, but Inception executed it so well.

This was a category where I was actually really disappointed this year. Iron Man 2? Please. Aside from the fact that the movie sucked, I don't remember being impressed by anything visual. Alice in Wonderland has to be disqualified for the ridiculous Red Queen with elephantiasis. Harry Potter? It had Dobby, I suppose, and the multiple Harries, but cloning characters on screen isn't really that impressive anymore. We all saw The Parent Trap.

Sound Mixing

Inception

The King's Speech

Salt

The Social Network

True Grit

I almost didn't pick a winner for this category because of the lack of Black Swan. Seriously, the fact that Salt got nominated, but Black Swan didn't is kind of disgusting. Black Swan literally made me gasp at the awesome way it used sound. Inception is the only one who came close to using sound as creatively or masterfully. So I'll pick that, but don't be fooled, Black Swan should be the winner.

Sound Editing

Inception

Toy Story 3

Tron: Legacy

True Grit

Unstoppable

Same story as above. I still remember the cracking of Nina's feet in Black Swan. I can't remember a single sound effect from True Grit.

Best Original Song

"Coming Home" - Country Strong

"I See the Light" - Tangled

"If I Rise" - 127 Hours

"We Belong Together" - Toy Story 3

Ye gods, kill me now, I listened to Gwyneth Paltrow's country song. You'll have to at the ceremony. Change the channel. It's awful.

You know, it's weird that songs have to be regular 3-minute long vocal songs to be considered in this category. Many songs from 127 Hours could have put up quite a fight, but "If I Rise" isn't the strongest piece on the soundtrack. So yes, Tangled wins. "I See the Light" is probably the best song from the movie, outside of the simple, short "Let Your Power Shine" motif. It's not the best Disney song ever, but it's sweet, catchy, and I hate Randy Newman.

Best Original Score

How to Train Your Dragon - John Powell

Inception - Hans Zimmer

The King's Speech - Alexandre Desplat

127 Hours - A.R. Rahman

The Social Network - Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross

I feel bad because I didn't really notice the music in The Social Network. I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing. But it doesn't really matter. Because Black Swan isn't eligible for this category (it used too much of the music from Swan Lake to be considered "original"), 127 Hours takes it easily. Hell, it might have anyway. Listen to this, specifically the last half, and tell me that's not fantastic.

Best Film Editing

Black Swan

The Fighter

The King's Speech

127 Hours

The Social Network

This, along with director, was one of the hardest categories to decide. I feel like all of these films are edited extremely well. The King's Speech was paced well, but I feel like that was mostly scripting, so I crossed off that one. 127 Hours did a great job making this confined subject interesting, but I can't shake off the weird, over-the-top camera angles in the first half-hour or so. It was likely a directorial choice, but it's an editing one as well. The main reason I gave it to The Social Network is how flawlessly it combined scenes taking place at different times to intensify certain themes. Once the movie shows you that this isn't going to be a step-by-step, day-by-day type of movie, you never really question it. It's clean and unambiguous, even though it's untraditional.

Best Cinematography

Black Swan

Inception

The King's Speech

True Grit

The Social Network

Social Network and The King's Speech both had some great shots (the school board room, and the physical therapy respectively), but I thought Black Swan just outclassed them. A lot of the scenes in that movie truly impressed me. Powerful, but subtle. Also, it's kind of funny that 127 Hours didn't get nominated for their crazy angles. I figured it would have just because it was unusual. I guess the Academy disliked them as much as I did.

Best Art Direction

Alice in Wonderland

Harry Potter

The King's Speech

True Grit

Inception

This award always mystified me, because it seems like more of an administrative thing. I guess it's an award for the overall Art Design, so in that sense, I think Inception should win (and Alice in Wonderland should lose horribly). But it's not a category I have a lot of insight into.

Best Animated Film

How to Train Your Dragon

The Illusionist

Toy Story 3

I refuse to pick a winner for this film out of protest, because Tangled wasn't nominated. I'm not saying it should have won, but it should have absolutely been on there.

Best Supporting Actress

Amy Adams, The Fighter

Helena Bonham Carter, The King's Speech

Melissa Leo, The Fighter

Hailee Steinfeld, True Grit

Jacki Weaver, Animal Kingdom

I still think Steinfeld deserves to be nominated for Best Actress, but since she wasn't, she certainly deserves to win the award here. Adams and Carter did exceptional work as well, but Steinfeld held the weight of the entire movie on her shoulders.

Best Actress

Annette Benning, The Kids are All Right

Nicole Kidman, Rabbit Hole

Jennifer Lawrence, Winter's Bone

Natalie Portman, Black Swan

Michelle Williams, Blue Valentine

Jennifer Lawrence nearly stole it. Seriously. I would not be surprised, or all that disappointed, if she won it. I was really blown away by her performance. But I was also blown away by Portman's performance, as I outlined in Part I, and I think she edged out Lawrence just barely. Both actresses were by far the most interesting parts of their respective movies, but Portman gave more nuance. It may be because Lawrence had less to work with (I wasn't really impressed with Winter's Bone, other than by her performance).

Best Supporting Actor

Christian Bale, The Fighter

John Hawkes, Winter's Bone

Jeremy Renner, The Town

Mark Ruffalo, The Kids Are All Right

Geoffrey Rush, The King's Speech

Christian Bale, no question. This might be the most obvious pick of the night. He simply became that character. It was spot-on perfection. Geoffrey Rush was good in a charming sort of way, but Bale was better. I'm pissed off Andrew Garfield (Eduardo from The Social Network) didn't get nominated, as I thought he did a fantastic job, much better than Ruffalo, even. He deserves recognition for that part.

Best Actor

Javier Bardem, Biutiful

Jeff Bridges, True Grit

Jesse Eisenberg, The Social Network

Colin Firth, The King's Speech

James Franco, 127 Hours

Again, this is sort of an obvious one. Franco was decent. Bridges brought it, as usual. Eisenberg did a great job, and this role is certainly going to catapult him to mainstream stardom instead of being a poor man's Michael Cera. But Colin Firth was incredible. He showed frustration, sadness, vulnerability, without overdoing it. And of course, the voice was brilliant. Listen to recordings, and it's pretty eerie how close he sounds to King George.

Best Director

Darren Aronofsky, Black Swan

David O. Russel, The Fighter

Tom Hooper, The King's Speech

The Coens, True Grit

David Fincher, The Social Network

Aaaagh. Best Director is really hard, because, as I've said, it's really hard to separate it from editing and writing. I don't think True Grit or The King's Speech did enough for me to justify awarding those directors. The other three are tough. Really tough. I decided against Russell because of the aforementioned redundancy that pops up in a few places in The Fighter. Deciding between Fincher and Aronofsky is a toss-up, honestly. I gave it to Aronofsky because of one thing: a weird scene in The Social Network where we see the Winklevoss Twins come in second place in a race. It's a very wink-wink, nudge-nudge type of moment, and it pulled me out of the movie. So Black Swan gets the trophy.

Best Film

Black Swan

The Fighter

Inception

The Kids Are All Right

The King's Speech

127 Hours

The Social Network

Toy Story 3

True Grit

Winter's Bone

I think I said all I need to say on this topic previously. Toy Story 3 is a masterpiece on multiple levels. It touched me, and was memorable on a level that none of the rest of the movies on the list will achieve (all right, I'll probably remember the amputation scene from 127 Hours). It won't win, of course. If I had to bet, I'd bet on The King's Speech. But I wish the Academy would not discount films just because they're animated. Pixar has been released what should have been Best Film contenders pretty much every year now. This time, they should win.

(Classic) Review: "Herland," by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

2011-01-27T17:27:00.000-08:00

"Life is a stuggle, has to be," he insisted. "If there is no struggle, there is no life--that's all."

Utopian fiction is a tricky business. It's generally a misnomer at best. Utopian fiction often falls into one of three categories: Utopia that turns out to be the utter opposite of paradise for some, if not all, of the inhabitants (dystopia); Utopia that turns out to be flawed in one way or another; or, a utopia that actually is heaven on Earth. The first two types of stories are generally more interesting. The third, unfortunately, is where Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland falls.

That's not to say there's not some very interesting ideas here. Herland was written near the beginning of the 20th Century, and many of Gilman's thoughts are ahead of her time. The main problem, however, lies in Gilman's choice of outlet. What may have been better suited for an essay is instead formulated as a sort of adventure novel that never quite gives us an adventure.

Herland revolves around a simple premise. Somewhere in the unexplored jungle lies a pristine, modern paradise populated solely by women. A group of intrepid (not really) explorers stumble upon what they call Herland, and the inhabitants teach them their history, their culture and their way of life. That's it. There are relatively few twists (the men try to escape at one point, fail, and are brought back). The ending isn't too unexpected. It's really more of a what-if essay than a fleshed out story.

In a somewhat interesting choice for feminist literature, Gilman uses male protagonists to filter the reader's view of the issues at hand. Our viewpoint character is Van Jennings, a sort of middle-of-the-road kind of guy who can see both sides of any argument. This makes for a kind of boring and timid "hero" (if you can call him that, which, now that I think about it, no, no you can't), but I can see why Gilman chose him. The reader is not really asked to follow along for any sweeping judgments. Instead, we identify with Van as he observes the other two male characters: Terry Nicholson and Jeff Margrave.

Terry is, to put it bluntly, an ass. He holds the traditional turn-of-the-century views of women, but escalated to sometimes comical levels. To Terry, women are silly little things with no real intelligence or capability, obviously the inferior sex, and only really necessary as a motivation for men. One of the best examples of his character: to him, the existence of Herland is less of a scientific impossibility than a social one. He argues against the concept of female-only reproduction (which, in one of the most speculative aspects of the story, is identified as parthenogenesis). But to him, the craziest part of this country is the idea of women living amongst themselves with no men to run the town, grow the crops, maintain and invent the technology and stop all that silly female bickering.

If Terry is the resident misogynist, Jeff resides squarely in the opposite side of crazy. He represents the pro-feminist camp, which is generally cool, but sometimes creepily approaches putting women on a pedastal (something, it should be mentioned, Terry does as well, but in more of a "women are so frail, they shouldn't do work" kind of way). I'm not sure if this is intentional on Gilman's part, or if Jeff is supposed to be a positive character and our modern ideas of feminism have just changed in the past 100 years. However, given the fact that Jeff is not our central character, I'd like to believe the former.

Jeff and Terry frequently spar over the roles of women in society, while Van watches on, giving us the novel's only real conflict. Unfortunately, this conflict becomes repetitive almost immediately. The woman claim they have accomplished some spectacular achievement, Terry says no, that's impossible because woman are stupid and silly, Jeff says nuh-uh cause women are awesome! All while Van nods his head and jots it all down in his mental notebook.

My other criticism, beyond the lack of a real plot, is that Gilman's female characters all sort of run together. A strange thought, isn't it? In a book about the exceptionalism of women, the women become exceptionally stale and boring. There's really no difference in any of them. They're all incredibly smart, capable, confident in themselves and their culture. The three women who end up getting paired off with the males (Ellador, Celis and Alima) seem different in temperament, but that's only because they are given different situations to react to (Alima, who gets to deal with Terry, is obviously going to behave differently than Celis, who gets Jeff).

So what's to like about Herland? Gilman's subtle references to feminist thinking of the time. In one of my favorite passages of the book, one of the women brings up the concept of being trapped in one's own home and life:

"It's not the same thing at all," [Terry] insisted. "A man wants a home of his own, with his wife and family in it."

"Staying in it? All the time?" asked Ellador. "Not imprisoned, surely!"

"Of course not! Living there--nautrally," he answered.

The point being how silly it is to consider a woman's confinement in her home "natural." This is very likely a reference to Gilman's own The Yellow Wallpaper (a speculative-ish feminist story surrounding a woman's depression and confinement. It's absolutely fantastic). It is also oddly similar to Virginia Woolf's then-unwritten A Room of One's Own, though exploring the idea of living quarters in opposite directions.

It is moments like these that made me sit up and evaluate Gilman's work in the greater pantheon of feminist literature. To my disappointment, there were exceedingly few moments that made me sit up and consider her work in the realm of adventure or speculative fiction. Maybe this isn't so bad. I'm sure Gilman was more concerned about her feminist themes than whether or not her work could be adapted into a Syfy Original Movie. But if one were to read, say, a feminist western, one would hope that the work had something to add to both of those genres.

The most relevant passage in the book seems to be the one I quoted at the beginning of this post. Terry asserts that life must be filled with struggles to be worthwhile, and the women inform him that, no, living in a perfect world is perfectly satisfactory. In my interpretation, Gilman is speaking directly to the reader at this point. It seems evident that she knew that her story was more about the themes and ideas than any sort of character development. And she seems okay with that. I guess, in the end, that's all we can hope from an author -- that everything they do is done with full knowledge and purpose.

For fans of feminist literature, Herland is sort of a must-read. In fact, I'd assume most fans of feminist literature have already read it. That's like saying "If you're a fan of fantasy, you simply must read this Tolkien fellow!" But, as it is a very early example of utopian/futurist fiction, it may be of interest to specfic fans. And if that's your sole interest, you may want to skip Herland. It doesn't go much further than its synopsis. Instead, for feminist science fiction, go for any of Margaret Atwood's books (ignore her unfortunate views on science fiction), or the aforementioned work, Gilman's seminal The Yellow Wallpaper.

Herland can be downloaded for free from Project Gutenberg.

The Best Films of 2010, Part I

2011-01-24T23:31:00.000-08:00

Okay, so this is a writing blog. Technically, I shouldn't even be mentioning films. Es ist verboten. VERBOTEN!

However, since I don't really have a dedicated cadre of readers expecting any certain subject, I am allowed the freedom to do whatever the fuck I want (like speak in German). With that said, let me introduce part eins of a two part series concerning films. Specifically, films released in 2010 (a year that seems universally reviled, but which I didn't really mind).

In the first part, I'm going to lay out my picks for the best movies of the year. Unlike the Academy, I'm going to keep it to five. Ten starts to border on ridiculous, and to be honest, I'm not sure there were 10 films that truly deserve the honor. Look at the Golden Globes. When you have to nominate god damned Burlesque and The motherfucking Tourist, you have too many slots. Note that I'm not a movie buff, per se -- there's still a few big name films from 2010 I haven't seen yet (127 Hours, The Fighter, and probably most egregious, The Social Network, which I'll discuss at the bottom). With that said, let's begin, in no special order.

1 - Black Swan

Girl on girl action lolz! Nina is not amused.

First off, can I say how fucking stupid and dismissive it is when every single talk show host has to introduce this movie with "Any movie that can get guys to see a movie about ballet has got to be good! Derp derp! Girl on girl!" Black Swan is not about ballet any more than Fargo is about a city. It is the story of an artist struggling with perfection. It is the story of a family plagued by mental issues. It is the story of a girl forced to be sexual with no guide, no preparation. Black Swan is about a lot of things. It's not about ballet.

Now, I'm a sucker for weird movies, so Black Swan already has a leg up on the competition. My imagination tends to run wild with interpretation, and the director, Darren Aronofsky (who looks kind of like a chubby David Arquette), certainly invites that. If you're the kind of person who likes a straightforward story (and there's nothing wrong with that), you'll hate this. There's no two ways about it.

But beyond the surreal plot, there is much in the film to objectively enjoy. Black Swan is truly a movie where each aspect hits the mark and contributes to the overall effect. The score is spot-on. It blends Tchaikovsky's compositions with modern discernment to create a sound setting that is simultaneously chilling and heartbreaking. Portman's performance as coddled and confused Nina Sayers is magnificent. Not being nominated for Best Actress would be a travesty. I don't want to say that she can't top it, because I'm hoping she has a long and illustrious career in front of her, but I truly think she could retire tomorrow and still be counted among history's great performers solely for her job in this film. It's that brilliant. The symbolism is layered and complex. I find myself discovering new little motifs just replaying it in my mind, and I've only seen it once. For instance, did anyone notice the implication of Nina injuring herself with a mirror, of all things? Very interesting.

There are missteps -- Aronofsky relies too heavily on cheesy thriller tropes and unnecessary cheap scares. The characters and plot provide enough tension on their own. And I think it's fair to say that this is a love-it-or-hate-it film. I can absolutely understand some people not connecting. But in pure impact, Black Swan was without equal this year.

Long hair is looooooooooong

2 - Tangled

Okay, if I'm a sucker for weird movies, I'm a god damned fool for musicals. Disney musicals? Forget about it. Aladdin, Little Mermaid, Lion King. Love 'em. The Princess and the Frog wasn't up to the level of those golden-age classics, but it was a step in the right direction. So I was cautiously optimistic walking in to Tangled. I expected to like it. I didn't expect to love it.

You know the basics. Rapunzel has really long hair. She's kept in a high tower by a wicked witch. She's rescued my a handsome prince. Roll credits. Of course, with John Lasseter in charge, we're spared that formula. Tangled's Rapunzel is a bright young girl whose kept in her tower not by any otherworldly power or feminine weakness. She's kept there by a jealous mother. Mommy dearest preys on her daughter's self-confidence to bolster her own. It's probably the best and most relatable theme in any movie I've seen this year, and it comes from a fairy tale. Imagine that.

Tangled is simply the best non-Pixar Disney animated film I've seen in ages, probably since Mulan (that's twelve years, if you're counting). And it's got probably the best female lead in their entire history. She's smart (and not just in a inconsequential way like Belle), she's capable, she's cute and she shirks the Princess Complex from the beginning. It's weird to say that, because in the end, Rapunzel is a princess. But unlike Ariel, unlike Jasmine, unlike Snow White, that fact doesn't really inform her character. She doesn't find out until the end of the movie, and truthfully, it doesn't matter. It's more important that she has a family that loves her and a partner who bolsters her confidence instead of stomping on it. Her royal lineage is beside the point.

Of course, Alan Menken's songs don't hurt. The man who composed The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast and Little Shop of Horros, among others, is used to great effect here. The recurring healing incantation ("Flower gleam and glow/Let your power shine") is as memorable and head-sticking as any Disney tune, and I See The Light joins Can You Feel the Love Tonight and A Whole New World in the list of great musical love themes. I won't say this is Menken's best work (that probably belongs to Aladdin), and there are fewer songs than I'd like, but it's enjoyable nontheless.

The actors work great. I'm not a huge Chuck fan, but Zachary Levi is charming as fuck, if you'll excuse my French. And of course, Mandy Moore is as cute as cute can be. She's one of those actresses who doesn't draw a lot of attention, but generally gives a great performance in whatever she chooses to do. At the end of the movie, I asked myself "Who voiced Rapunzel? She was really good. Oh ... oh wow! I didn't even realize!" That's just the kind of actress she is. But yeah, the two have chemistry. It just works.

Criticisms? A few. The movie felt short, was is probably a necessity for it to work as a family film, but it leads to the pace being a little too rushed. Specifically, the love story between the male and female lead kind of pops up out of nowhere, as if the writers realized "Crap, we need them to be in love now. Aaaaand BE IN LOVE!" And, as I said, I wished we got a bit more music (thought that's a criticism I can levy at other Disney films as well -- they seem to be afraid to go full musical). But all in all, this is one of those movies that makes me want to have a kid, just so I can show them that there are strong positive messages in this world.

3 - Toy Story 3

The darkest movie about small plastic

objects you'll see this year

Seriously? Another animated movie?

First off, fuck you, guy. Who the fuck do you think you are? Did you not read the part of this being MY BLOG? The stuff about the German words?

Second off, it should go without saying that there are animated films, and then there are Pixar films. I shouldn't even have to do a writeup for this. Just those two syllables -- Picks Czar -- tell you all you need to know. Yes, this movie is funny. Yes, it's poignant. Yeah, you're probably going to tear up. Yes, it's got John Ratzenberger. At this point, I'm almost not even excited to go see a Pixar movie anymore, because I just know it's going to be great. How fucked up is that? I'm actually disappointed because I know I'm not going to be surprised. It's like they made Cars solely for me to maintain a modicum of doubt.

It has this man.

Okay, enough fanboy gushing. Why does another animated film deserve to be counted among the best of the year? Because it's a masterful end (likely the end -- it should be) to a wonderful series. Because it tears at your heart without using cheap shots like Toy Story 2 or even, it could be argued, Up. The melancholy in Toy Story 3 is directly relevant to the journey of the characters. Not just the journey in this movie, though it certainly stands on its own, but the journey from the beginning of the series.

When Toy Story 1 was released in 1995, I was the target audience. I was 8 years old. That's not to say it doesn't stand up, or that adults can't enjoy it just as much. Both of those are true. But Andy is and always has been the character whose life the events of the movie revolve around. Like Christopher Robin to Winnie-the-Pooh, Andy is the lens through which we view these persistent toys.

When Toy Story 3 was released in 2010, I was the target audience. What? This is still a kid's movie, right? True. And you're no longer a kid, you're a 23. You're a grown-ass man. True, too. But so is Andy. He's moved on. His childhood, like mine, is gone. It's never coming back. If the biggest misconception about Black Swan is that it's about ballet, the misconception about Toy Story is that it's about toys. It's not. It's about childhood. Always has been. Toy Story was about what it means to be a child. Toy Story 3 is about what it means to no longer be a child. That's why we cry. Not because we're afraid these toys are going to die, but because we fear the kid inside us already has.

And that, in a nutshell, is why Toy Story 3 deserves this honor. I could go in depth about the acting, the animation, Randy Newman's classic quirky soundtrack, etc., etc. But that's not why this movie is great. It's great because Pixar understands how to make a film meaningful to every single person who watches it. My nieces and nephews aren't going to understand these films the way I do, but they don't enjoy them any less. My parents aren't going to connect to them the same way I do. But they're going to see it through Andy's mother -- they've sent a kid to college. They've been through the process of packing away those action figures that seemed oh-so-important just a few years ago. In some ways, this is my most hoped-for film of 2010. I think we can all be pretty sure that Tangled isn't going to be nominated for Best Film. Even in a field of 10, the Academy isn't a big fan of animation. We all know The Social Network and The Kids are All Right will be on the list. Regardless of their merit, they're just the sort of films that appeal to critics. But Toy Story 3 transcends that. It truly deserves to be considered just as much as any live action film released this year.

Criticisms? Not really. The central conflict (toys shipped off to a kindergarten and have to escape) isn't the most memorable or original, I guess. But who cares?

!!Spoiler Alert!!

Before I leave the subject, a bit more on the death of the child inside us. That theme is one of the most gutwrenching ideas in any movie I've seen in a long time, because it hits close to home for all of us. But the filmmakers know that. And so they give us the perfect ending. Andy sits down and plays with his old toys with a new friend, a little girl named Bonnie. He plays in the same way that I play when my 3-year-old niece hands me a bowl full of plastic vegetables and tells me it's my lunch. He plays in the same way I play when my 6-year-old nephew lays out a Nerf armory in front of me and tells me that I'm on his team. My inner child isn't dead. He's just finding new toys to play with.

4 - The Town

"And why do you think you deserve to

join The League of Handsome Men?"

Huh? No. Stop. Just stop. The Fucking Town? You're nominating A Ben Affleck Joint? No Inception, no Blue Valentine, no King's Speech, but you put a Bostonian heist film on here? That's retahdid, you fuckin' queeah.

Yeah, yeah, so it's Ben Affleck. Yeah, he's can be kind of silly. He was in Daredevil. He was in Gigli. GIGLI.

You know who else has been in some terrible movies and is kind of silly? Marky Mark Wahlberg. Oh, excuse me. ACADEMY AWARD WINNER Marky Mark Wahlberg.

So I try not to discount an actor solely because of some missteps, or some personal weirdness. If Robert Pattinson made a movie as entertaining as The Town, I'd get on my knees and receive his greasy glittering man-juice.

Obligatory. Say hi to your mother, plant.

Speaking of Marky Mark, I'd say The Town reminds me heavily of The Departed (a good thing!). The Boston setting and crime-focus is obviously a part of this, but they employ similar structures of unrelated characters and events winding into each other. The characters are forced into situations with no good options. It forces us to face what we would do these situations. But surely, you say, I'd never get involved with organized crime. But that's the thing. Affleck's character didn't really choose this path either. These people are often times born into crime. That's not to minimize personal responsibility -- I feel like the movie does a decent job of keeping Affleck's character real and imperfect -- but the whole point of the film is to paint a picture of a world many of those of us born into privilege (and yes, I consider myself privileged just in the fact that I had a stable home, love and support) can never truly understand.

Of course, the acting is where The Town truly shines. Affleck is very good. Jeremy Renner is very good. John Hamm is great. Of course he is. He's John Hamm. Brilliant casting. You want a flawed antagonist that the audience can't help but find charming anyway? Cast John Hamm. Also, I hear he's popular with the ladies.

The Town is not perfect. It treats its female characters as disposable. The lead character, Claire, is so forgettable that the writers literally forget about her in the second half of the movie. She's used as motivation for Affleck's character, and not much else. Blake Lively's (bleh) character is pretty much a drugged up version of the same thing. The message regarding her seems to be "Don't neglect your old lovers, or your rival will use them against you!" The females are pretty much just there for the males to use as leverage. It's unfortunate. And yet, the rest of the film is good enough for me not to care. Not an easy thing to do. So yes, there always has to be a Dark Horse pick, and The Town is mine.

5 - True Grit

Aw, do we have to bring Matt Damon with us?

You'll notice in the Black Swan entry that I didn't quite say that Natalie Portman should win Best Actress. Why? 14-year-old Hailee Steinfeld. She's so talented that she shared this year with Annette Benning, Marion Cotillard, and the best performance Natalie Portman has ever given, and I'm not really sure who should win the oscar. My biggest achievement at 14 was deciphering Metal Gear Solid 2.

Yeah, let's see Little Miss Thing fit THIS into canon!

Ms. Steinfeld's acting, and the handling of her character, the headstrong ahead-of-her-time Mattie Ross, is the sole reason True Grit is on the list. It might be the reason it's on everybody's list. Seriously. I struggled. It barely made the cut. True Grit is a pretty good movie. It's not out of this world amazing. Jeff Bridges is funny. Matt Damon is good. The pace is perfect. It's a Coen movie. Like Pixar, that name brings with it a certain quality of expectation. But, it must be said, it sometimes carries a nagging "So What?" True Grit brought the "So What?" It brought it, it unwrapped it, and it took a picture with it wearing a fake smile for grandma. It simply wasn't that memorable. A cool adolescent girl tags along with a loose cannon US Marshal and a by-the-book Texas Ranger. She's looking for the man who killed her father. She finds him. Thirty or so years later, she's still smart, she doesn't need a man and she never really saw either of the two men again. Roll credits.

The problem I have with True Grit is the problem I have with a lot of Coen movies. I'm not asking for a "save the world" plot. But I frequently feel like there's some greater point, some deeper mystery that I'm missing. As you can tell from my Black Swan review, I am not opposed to finding my own meaning. But many Coen movies seem like simple, surface stories with just enough subtlety to make you think something else is going on. But damned if you're going to figure it out unless you have a Ph.D. in Film Studies.

So if it's that flawed, why put True Grit on here at all? Because, simply, the character of Mattie Ross is that awesome. And I will fully admit to sometimes using that word inappropriately, but Mattie is truly awesome. When she speaks, you can't help but be transfixed. When the "responsible" men leave her behind, and she fords the river, emerging on the other side, sopping but dignified, you can't take the unconscious grin off your face. Some of it is due, no doubt, to the character in the original book. I can't comment too much on that; I haven't read it. Some of the credit has to be laid on the Coens. They coaxed a powerful performance from their child actress. And, of course, we can't forget young Hailee. She brings Mattie to life. I can't remember when I rooted for a character as much as I rooted for Mattie. You want her to succeed, even though the stakes seem fairly trivial, as far as conflicts go. If True Grit succeeds in any way, I think it's that. It is a simple story, but Mattie makes you care about it anyway.

I wouldn't be surprised if True Grit wins Best Film. The Academy loves the Coens, and it's generally deserved. I have grievances with some of their films, but it can't be denied that, objectively, they are fantastic filmmakers. This isn't their best film (Fargo), and it's not their worst (Burn After Reading). It is, as great movies go, completely middle of the road. And yet, if someone forced me to pick only 5 movies from 2010 for them to watch, I couldn't not choose it. Damn you Joel. Damn you Ethan. You frustrate me to no end, but I love you anyway.

Honorable Mentions

The King's Speech

Seriously, aren't there any other
actresses in that country?

The King's Speech breaks the mold of a traditional period piece. Colin Firth is fantastic, and is probably a shoe-in for best actor. The chemistry between Firth and Geoffry Rush is among the best I've seen in a long while. I particularly enjoyed the subtle focus on how technology changed both the world at large, and the lives of a royal family straddling two distinct periods. The story, untraditional as it may be, is pure charm. It's not quite lifechanging enough to make the top five but I'm certain it'll make the Academy's top ten, and rightff .... rightffffuuu .... deservedly so.

Inception

The finest spintop-based film since Beyblade The Movie

What can I say? It's Inception. The acting is great, the gimmick is fascinating, and that action is superb. The rotating room is the most inventive fight scene since The Matrix. There are some plot holes here and there, and the pace falters in the third act (a snow level, Nolan? Really?), but it's destined to be a genre classic.

Others

I greatly enjoyed Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, Easy A, Kick Ass, Harry Potter and the Adverb Macguffins: Part One, though none of those really deserve to be Best Film. They are just very entertaining.

If there were a category for Best New Actress, it should go to Mia Wasikowska. She starred in Alice in wonderland and The Kids are All Right, the former of which I liked more than I had expected, and the latter of which I liked less than I had hoped.

Is she the third Wasikowska Brother?

All right. Moving on.

But wait, what about ...

...The Social Network. Yeah, I know. It's the odds-on favorite to sweep the biggies. Best Film, Best Director, Best Writer. Maybe even Best Actor. Does it deserve it? I don't know, maybe. I haven't seen it. Shoot me.

I'll be rectifying this tomorrow, but I wanted to get this out there before the nominations were announced. I'll be considering Fincher's film when I pick my favorites from the official nomination. I'll let you know what I thought of it then. If you simply must know which of the above 5 I'd bump off to include The Social Network, assuming I love it, it'd probably be True Grit or The Town. Gun to my head, True Grit might fall to a very close #6.

I'll be writing up Part II in the next few days, after the nods are announced. It'll be the traditional rundown, selecting my favorites (note that word -- it won't be who I think will win, rather who I think should win). See you soon!

A confession

2011-01-23T16:07:00.000-08:00

I've finished NaNoWriMo (50,000 words, a small novel or novella) something like 4 times. I've yet to finish a story. That is about to change.

Of course, even when this story is done and I can write the words The End on the bottom of the page (and then promptly delete them -- how cheesy would that be?), the novel is far from finished. Rewriting, adding, cutting (and cutting, and cutting): these are the things that turn mediocre ramblings into something that anyone would have half a mind to read. Take, for example, the first chapter I posted a few days ago. Nothing much has changed with regard to substance. Even when I first wrote it, more than a year ago now, it told the story of Victoria and her young ward, Emma, traveling to her former home of Arden to conscript her nephew. The story is the same. But the structure? The wording? The flow (or, in the case of the initial draft, lack thereof)? Day. And. Night.

So yes, I plan on replicating that process for each and every of the nearly fifty chapters (many of which may, thankfully, disappear entirely). But that's for later. For now, I can't stop being excited about the prospect of having a complete manuscript. It's intoxicating, the idea that I could send this document (.odt, natch) to someone and have them comprehend the complete story the way I do. It would be a chore to read, oh yes, full of plot holes, inconsistent characters, time jumps and plodding description. But it would be a story with a beginning, middle and end.

It has been one of my lifelong dreams to write a book, regardless of whether or not I can send it into the world at large. And though I have many dreams, this one is nearing fruition. I can't complain about that.

Matt Borgard is almost officially a novelist, I guess?

(Classic) Review: "A Princess of Mars," by Edgar Rice Burroughs

2010-10-13T18:53:00.000-07:00

"So this was love! I had escaped it for all the years I had roamed the five continents and their encircling seas; in spite of beautiful women and urging opportunity; in spite of a half- desire for love and a constant search for my ideal, it had remained for me to fall furiously and hopelessly in love with a creature from another world..."

Ask anyone about Edgar Rice Burroughs, and one word will come to mind: Tarzan. Among all his works, Tarzan alone has become an integral part of our popular culture, to the point that any civilized-feral culture shock story will draw comparisons to the seminal character. However, in terms of literary influence, another one of Burroughs's works may be even more important. His John Carter of Mars (or Barsoom, in the Martian native tongue) series serves as one of the earliest examples of a space opera*, featuring a faraway planet, strange creatures, a passionate romance, and, of course, martial combat.

The first novel in the series, A Princess of Mars, first introduces us to John Carter, a confederate soldier who is inexplicably transported to Mars. Once there, he finds out that the society is nearly barren of resources, and as such, has reverted in large part from an advanced, intelligent society to a number of barbaric, warring tribes. John jumps from tribe to tribe, learning their customs and befriending their natives, before finally setting off on a mission to save the entire planet from destruction. On the way, he meets the titular Princess (who unlike the four-armed insectoid Green Martians, is completely humanoid), and falls head over heels (as you can see in the quote above). One of the book's weak points is its poor handling of female characters (something that, unfortunately, carried through to a lot of the science fiction genre). The Princess, Dejah Thoris, has little to no agency, and serves only as a damsel-in-distress, and, to a lesser extent, a source of exposition and explanation for John. The other main female character, a Green Martian, at least has a story and motivations, but is also placed in the story to spur a male character to action (in this case, Tars Tarkas, a Green Martian that John befriends).

APoM was released nearly a century ago, in 1912. The age of the book alone is dizzying, as many of the aspects of the story are considered genre tropes, though these are admittedly borrowed from older genres such as romances and westerns. The fact that "Princess" is getting a big budget film adaptation soon is ample evidence of this; it's unlikely that they'll even have to change a great deal of the plot. The only places that the book truly shows its age is in some of the antiquated phrasing, and the aforementioned outdated thinking (at one point, Carter comments that the princess's naiveté is "good, feminine logic").

That said, the book has some technical issues that even age doesn't completely justify. This is understandable. A Princess of Mars was Burroughs' first full novel (though the first Tarzan novel was published at the same time, I believe what would eventually become A Princess of Mars was written first), and some of the amateur mistakes shine through. The most glaring problem, in my opinion, is Burroughs's ham-fisted use of foreshadowing -- but foreshadowing is the wrong word. Fore-outright-telling-you-what-is-going-to-happen is the closest I can come to describing the issue. At one point, John Carter meets a ferocious Martian "dog" who attacks him, and comments, before even resolving the attack, that the dog would one day become his close companion and risk his live to save Carter. This occurs often in the early stages of the novel, when the characters are being introduced, and it gets old quickly.

The first Barsoom novel is probably not one that is going to keep a modern reader on the edge of his or her seat from cover to cover. It lags in places, and many events tend to be quite similar. For example, Carter first arrives at a tribe of barbarians and is forced to adapt and fight his way into their good graces. Later, he falls in with another tribe, and goes through the exact same process with a slightly different outcome. These issues are worth the read for Science Fiction literature fans, however, to experience such a significant piece of the genre's history. At the very least, the next time you watch a science-fiction show or film you'll be able to roll your eyes and say "ERB did that 100 years ago."

Download A Princess of Mars for free at Project Gutenberg

*Technically, according to the experts at Wikipedia, the Barsoom novels are classified as "Planetary Romance," not "Space Opera." The distinction is mostly academic -- the Barsoom novels certainly inspired later space operas, such like Star Wars.

Review: "Deepsix," by Jack McDevitt.

2010-07-13T20:55:00.000-07:00

"That anyone could believe the human animal was designed by a divine being defies all logic... The more pious among us should pray that next time he does the job right. But we might in justice concede that there is one virtue to be found in the beast: he is persistent." -Gregory MacAllister, "Bridge with the Polynesians"

Anyone familiar with my media consuming preferences knows how much I loathe entering a series from any point other than the very beginning. Every episode of a television show must be watched in perfect order, regardless of the strength of its continuity. I don't really care that 95% of Bones episodes are self-contained, thank you, please change the channel until I'm caught up on this season.

So it was an interesting experience for me to find out halfway through Deepsix, the second novel in Jack McDevitt's (unofficially named) Academy series, that I was missing out on a previous novel. That neurotic part of my brain that forces me to research chronology before reading a comic book immediately demanded I slam shut the cover and rush out to grab the first book, The Engines of God. However, after calming myself with a small cup of organic chocolate pudding, I realized that McDevitt had, thus far, done such a good job with characterization and (brief and rarely necessary) summaries of previous events, that I didn't feel lost or out of the loop. So I pressed on (and God help the author if I ran into a "See ACADEMY #1!" footnote).

Deepsix is a deceptively simple tale -- so simple that it's somewhat difficult to discuss without giving away the twists and turns of the plot. The story revolves around the titular planet, a world teeming with exotic-yet-familiar wildlife, and the efforts of a small group of characters investigating it. Not much needs to be said. The expected plot points are hit: getting on, exploring, and getting off. Like any good story, the characters make the experience. And the characters here are fantastic.

Our main protagonist is Priscilla Hutchins, intergalactic pilot and star of McDevitt's previous novel. To be honest, while Hutchins's determined but down-to-earth attitude is perfect for the main viewpoint character, she's not the most interesting member of the group. That distinction belongs to Gregory MacAllister, the most widely-known and widely-hated writer in the universe. I fully expected the misogynistic, misanthropic blowhard to play the "annoying sidekick" throughout the journey, finally redeeming himself in an unexpected act of heroics at the end while muttering "I ... I still don't like women!" at the end while the female characters bombarded him with appreciative kisses. This doesn't happen. Instead, it's an absolute joy to see how MacAllister's many complaints about humanity are more philosophical than pragmatic. He doesn't change drastically over the course of the novel -- only our perceptions of him change. The rest of the characters are equally fleshed out, but considering MacAllister's interesting persona and strong voice, Deepsix is clearly his book.

As is customary in most science fiction stories, the plot drives the narrative more than the characters. It's simple, but it works -- the team explores the planet, and in the end, must devise a way to get offplanet. The exploration is never boring, and it often raises a number of questions and mysteries about the inhabitants of Deepsix. Enough of these questions are left unanswered to keep the reader's imagination, but enough are answered to avoid frustration.

Of course, no story can come without criticisms, and I have a few: First of all, the book is dense. It is dense in words, which isn't so much a problem. The 500-odd (paperback) pages fly by, especially near the climax, when McDevitt ratchets up the tension. However, it is also dense in the number of characters and settings thrown into the mix. This issue resolves itself after the first hundred pages or so, when the author decides which characters to really focus in on. It really grates for those first few chapters, though. Characters are introduced with full names, viewpoint sections, and personality quirks -- and then never heard from again. It's damn overwhelming to try to keep track of them before you realize which ones you can forget about.

We're also treated to an entire subplot -- not even a subplot, really, as it takes up at least half of the book -- about the flight crew's efforts to weld some metal to their ships. I realize these sections are meant to give us a breath from the fast pace of the ground team. And these sections might be highly interesting to a civil engineer or hard, hard-scifi fan, as I'm sure all the descriptions of stress and atmospheric pressures and such are authentic. Nevertheless: 250 pages. About welding. I could have done with only, say, 100 pages, and been just fine.

As slow as these sections can be, however, McDevitt's fleshed-out characters and compelling situations rise above it. I can't recommend this book enough -- I don't remember enjoying a science fiction novel this much since Speaker for the Dead (and I reaaaaaally enjoyed Speaker for the Dead). Buy it and read it -- no matter what your personal neuroses tell you.

Mini-Review: Carrie by Stephen King

2010-01-31T14:05:00.000-08:00

Carrie by Stephen King

What Stephen King's first published novel lacks in literary merit, it makes up for in charm and originality. Carrie is not a long novel, and it's not a particularly moving or emotional novel (though, the emotion of the menstruation metaphor may be lost on my male sensibilities). But it is an interesting novel, one that clearly shows the potential that King cashes in with his long, illustrious career.
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

NaNo winds down -- will I make it?

2009-11-24T11:18:00.000-08:00

Just thought I'd throw up a quick status: Currently at ~27,000 words, with less than a week to go in NaNoWriMo. Many of those words are high quality. Many of them are not. Some of them are song lyrics and an almost completely unrelated script. But I will finish. I'm determined. Next Monday, I've got the whole day to crank out the close to 20,000 words I'll need to make the 50k target. But it's going to happen.

In other news, I've recently completed a script for the internet show I'm developing with a few friends. It's short and sweet, and occurs right in the middle of the season, which has yet to be written. But I like it. It made me actually laugh, and I don't normally laugh at my own writing, so that has to mean something. Here' s a taste:

SEAN

OPEN! …on Martin Luther King Jr.

MAX

That could work.

SEAN

He's been assassinated, and there's blood everywhere

MATT

Jesus Christ, okay, we're not doing this...

SEAN

Zoom in to his assassin, chugging a nice, refreshing Pepsi. Fade to the tagline: Pepsi: Not What You'd Expect.

MATT

Not only is that the worst advertisement I've ever heard, I'm not sure you actually understand the concept of product placement.

Finally, I'm finishing up Star by Star, which is probably the most important book in the New Jedi Order series, if not the entire EU. It's pretty good so far -- incredible by Star Wars novel standards, actually, but merely good by regular book standards. I'll probably have a review of it up on December 1, after NaNoWriMo is done.

Review: Get Down, by Asali Solomon

2009-02-09T11:27:00.001-08:00

Get Down: Stories is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award-winning compilation from little-known author Asali Solomon. In Get Down, Solomon gives her readers fleshed out, unique characters set in the not-as-near-as-it-once-was past of the 1980s. As a book with an African-American author, whose characters all happen to be black, it would be easy to categorize this book as the cliche "exploration of what it means to be black in America." And there is some of that, to be sure. But Solomon achieves something much greater. Her characters are not defined by their skin color or their culture, as seems to be the case in so many so-called "ethnic" novels. Instead, she creates her characters with specific quirks and goals, such that their blackness is just one part of their multifaceted identity.

The first story, Twelve Takes Thea, is probably the most focues on the "minority issues" in America. It features a twelve-year-old girl, the titular Thea, struggling with fitting in among her classmates, most of which are white. Her best friend is another young black girl, who happens to transfer to a different school soon after the story begins, and an Indian girl whom Thea cannot quite wrap her mind around. This story twists and turns toward an emotional ending, though Solomon uses a sort of strange flash-forward device that I feel is somewhat unnecessary. Twelve Takes Thea would be something I would highly recommend to younger (middle school) readers, both because of relevant reading level and subject matter (though, the rest of this book does not follow this trend at all).

That Golden Summer and Party on, Vorhees! are two of the book's shortest stories, both checking in at around 10-15 pages. I'm lumping them together because they share a common theme and structure: an adolescent trying to embrace their approaching adulthood, and getting into a dangerous situation because of it. Both stories are somewhat lacking in plot -- Vorhees in particular seems to just ramble on without any real goal -- but they make up for it in character. While Golden Summer focuses mainly on the child, Vorhees has a group of children, as well as an older woman who recounts her days as a mischievous youth, hopping from party to party. Solomon is able to reveal a lot about her characters simply by the way this woman tells her story, the way the children react to it, and the way the main character, who has presumably heard it time and time again, recounts it to the audience.

William Is Telling A Story is quite a departure from the other pieces in the book. It features a young man named William who is apparently struggling with his sexuality -- but not in a commonly seen way. He is comfortable relating to his friends that he had a sexual experience with a man named Kelly, and he still seems interested in chasing women. However, he can't seem to get Kelly off of his mind. It's an extremely complex tale -- probably the best one in the book, though maybe not the most enjoyable -- so I won't try to do it justice here. Suffice it to say that Solomon takes a complicated and sensitive topic and draws it in a fresh, respectful light.

My favorite story has to be The Star of the Story. This story is unique among the others, in that it features the viewpoints of two character weaved in and out of each other. The mother, Akousa, is an older woman seeking to rekindle a flame she had in the past, while her son, Eduardo, is a large outgoing boy with an unhealthy obsession with his cousin. The story isn't perfect -- Solomon takes a risk putting the two largely unrelated narratives together, and I don't think she treats the topic of child rape with the sensitivity it really deserves -- but it's engaging and thought-provoking.

I won't talk about the other two stories, mostly because they are fairly simplistic, when compared to the other pieces. One is cute and enjoyable to read -- the other, not so much.

Finally, I have to address the comment a woman in my reading group made. She said she thought the book was "crap," not because of the writing, but because they weren't "her type of stories." I'm pretty sure I know what she means -- she's white, so she feels like she can't connect with the characters and immediately turns herself off from the writing. That's unfortunate. I'll be blunt, and say that there are stories where a certain demographic is writing for that demographic, and they don't expect or desire anyone outside of that to be a part of the readership; there are many examples of men-writing-for-men or women-writing-for-women where the opposite gender is not encouraged to participate. However, Get Down does not even approach that sort of genre. For all its flaws, Get Down shines brightly at its best moments, and its casual-yet-masterful style pulled me in and held me tight. Solomon does not put forth the idea that she prefers one type of reader to the other -- if you have problems "relating" to her story, that is most certainly your problem.

Such A Holy Place To Be

2008-11-07T21:35:00.001-08:00

“Your wig's crooked, dude.”

Even with all the pins and clips stacked on my scalp, I was having a hell of a time keeping my fake hair straight. My long blond locks had slipped to the side during the walk to the Tau Gamma Ro house. I tilted them back the upright position, and checked my eyebrows. Still there. Thank God.

“So you're gonna have to follow my lead tonight, dude. Keep your mouth shut and I'll send one of these girls your way.”

I threw up my thumb and gave a half-hearted smile. I hadn't dated – or done anything of the sort – since I started school earlier in the year. Rex, on the other hand, was out with one of the girls from his classes almost as often as he was out tossing a Frisbee. Female interaction was at the forefront of my mind tonight.

Rex stepped across a rickety porch and I followed, worried only a little that one of the rotten planks would collapse. A large guy in a Spartan uniform stood in front of the open door and looked us over. His top half dripped with some sort of gleaming oil, but his shape was more Milhouse than muscle.

“Rex, Adrian, glad you guys could show up. I like the zombie costume!”

“Zombie hobo,” Rex corrected.

The guy turned to me. “And, uh. What the fuck are you supposed to be?”

I knew this was a mistake. “I'm Jareth, the Goblin King.”

“What?”

“Bowie. I'm David Bowie.”

“Oh. All right, it's all good. Food and drinks in the kitchen, chip in if you want any of the hard stuff.”

The party had started without us. Black and orange streamers blocked entry to the stairways. The main floor of the house was filled with vampires, Jedi and ten-dollar Wal-Mart costumes. The characters in the room were disjoint as always. Halloween parties seemed like a sort of pop-culture convention, with attendees linked only by the red plastic cups in their hands.

Every possible variation of liquor lined the countertops in the kitchen, but the promised food left a lot to be desired. I begged Rex to stop somewhere on the way, but he pushed on, insisting that we would be late. My stomach gurgled and sloshed as it began to digest itself; I grabbed a handful of tortilla chips to quiet it.

I met up with Rex in the main room, surrounded by some old friends of his. He introduced me, and we watched as one of them made his way to the center of the room, next to a small karaoke machine, to perform an ear-shattering rendition of “Cold as Ice.” Rex pushed me forward as his friend finished.

“Dude, you have to get up there. Come on, you can't dress as a rock star and not do karaoke.” Rex placed his hand firmly on my back and shoved me in front of the machine.

No one seemed interested in the spectacle, which calmed my nerves. I motioned to the dinosaur running the machine. “Anything by David Bowie? Space Oddity, maybe?”

He rummaged through the book for a few seconds, then nodded. “Yeah, it's here. It's a duet though. Got anyone to join you?”

Rex was already busy chatting up a skanky Navy girl whose uniform had to be against regulations. I tried my luck anyway. “Rex, it's a duet. You know you want to sing with me.”

He twisted his neck around. “Dude, don't be gay. I'm not gonna sing a fuckin' duet with you.”

I tugged my right eyebrow as Rex accompanied his real interest into the kitchen.

“Hey, I'll sing.” A nurse with long black hair, a short skirt and red cross hat stepped toward me and grabbed the second microphone. “Is that okay with you?” She smiled. As if I would turn her down.

“Fine with me. You want to take the high notes?”

“Of course. Try to keep up.”

I started to respond, but was blotted out by the drum roll. We sang well, even as our styles diverged. I did my best Bowie impression to the point of incoherence, while the nurse opted for a classical performance. It bothered me. There was something wrong about singing Bowie like Rent. Still, there was something interesting about her. I, of course, didn't need to look at the lyric prompter. It surprised me that the nurse didn't either. I hadn't expected to find a glam-rock fan among Rex's sort of people.

We received a clap or two on our way out of the room, but most of the partygoers were engrossed in other things.

“You want a drink?” I asked her.

“Sure. I left my cup over there, and you know what they say.”

I didn't, actually, know what they say; but I wasn't going to argue the point. This girl was pretty, really pretty, and I was going to hang on to any chance to strike up a conversation.

“Amber,” she told me as I filled her cup from the keg. “My name is Amber.”

“I'm Adrian. Thanks for backing me up in there. You sing really well.”

“Sure. You were pretty good yourself. Really, uh, freaky. So, you're a big David Bowie fan?”

“I guess, yeah. I just watched Labyrinth the other day, I thought this costume would be amazing. I don't think I pulled it off, though.”

“No, it looks great!” replied Amber. “Especially your blouse, it really completes the ensemble.”

I laughed. It wasn't very often that a girl could make me laugh. “Just be glad I didn't go with the bulging pants.”

Amber raised an eyebrow, and I felt my legs cross in front of me.

“What is your major?” I asked her. It was the most inconsequential thing I could think of to say.

“Polisci. You?”

“Molecular Biology.” It was normally a source of pride, but coming out of my mouth now it felt pretentious. Amber laughed, which didn't help my confidence.

“You're in a real science. That's cool.”

“No, political science is admirable. Researching the effects of 'change' on the adolescent brain, right?”

“Shut up. I know, though. It's a notch above business and worth just as much. I'm not going to be a lawyer, so I don't know why I'm doing it.”

“You could run for office. I'll vote for you.”

“Definitely. President Amber, I can see it. Let's hope no one takes any pictures of tonight.” She tugged at her seductively short skirt. “That'll be the end of my career.”

“So, are you a freshman?”

“Senior.”

I choked down a mouthful of beer. “Of course, sorry. You look young.” What?

“Thanks. What about you?”

“I'm a Junior. One more year, God willing.” I crossed my fingers and stared at her face, looking for any sort of tell that she had caught my lie. She gave off nothing more than a calm smile. Either she had bought it, or she had practiced her poker face.

Amber and I chatted in the kitchen, sliding to the side for the occasional patron who needed whatever we were parked in front of. When we could see the smooth white bottoms of our cups, we refilled them. We grabbed one of the main room seats as it emptied. My head had already become misty from the beer; drinking was not my strong suit.

We talked a while longer on the dusty pleather couch. Amber pointed out people as they walked past. That one has dressed like a werewolf for four years straight. Those two have a constant competition to outslut each other. Jim gets sick every year, we're pretty sure he just fakes it to lie down and look up girls skirts, don't know why he goes to such lengths at a party like this. There was a long silence between us as Amber ran out of quirky students to describe. She looked at me, suddenly, an odd smile creeping across her face.

“Have you gotten a tour yet?”

“A tour? No, this is my first time here.”

“Here, you have to see the library. Most of these frat guys are the biggest pigs I've ever met, but for some reason, they have, like, the coolest library. Really vintage stuff.”

“You realize that the school has a library, right? A pretty big one.”

“They don't have stuff like this. It's in the other wing of the house. Here.” She handed me her cup. “Get us another drink and meet me over there.”

I made my way back into the kitchen, and Amber headed in the opposite direction. I filled our cups, awkwardly juggling them, and turned to walk back into the main room. Rex was in the kitchen.

“Hey man, what's up. Don't drink too much, you don't want to end the night with a sack in your face.” Rex clapped me on the back, nearly causing the beer to spill over the rims of the cups.

“It's for a friend.”

Rex grinned, his perfect white teeth stretching from ear to ear. “Aw, yeah, I saw that. That Amber chick, right? Right on, man. Make sure to bag it, that girl's with a different dude every year. Don't get too attached.”

“What?”

“Don't get attached. Pop it and drop it, dude. She's a maneater.” Rex slammed remainder of his drink into his mouth and walked past me to the alcohol.

“Thanks, Oates. I meant the part about ... bagging it. About being with a different dude every year. Are you just screwing with me?”

“I'm telling you, that girl is always hooking up at frat parties.”

“Did you ever...?”

“What? No way, bro. I mean, she's hot and all but I've always had other girls. Still, dude, I'd go for it. But be careful.”

Rex finished his concoction and slapped me on the back one more time before walking back outside.

I made my way toward the library. Rex's warning echoed in my mind, despite what I thought was undeniable chemistry between me and Amber. Had I been conversing with the school whore for the past hour? No. Rex didn't know what the fuck he was talking about. Maneater? I hadn't ever seen Rex with the same girl for a whole week. Who was he to talk about anyone?

“Took you long enough. Long line?” Amber sat, legs crossed, in front of a long line of streamers blocking the entrance to the library. She stood out from the Blond Sorority Girls and Depressed Emo Chicks that seemed to populate the campus. There was a perceptible intelligence that penetrated and amplified her appearance. Rex was wrong about Amber – she wasn't one of them.

“Sorry, I was talking to my roommate. I'm ready to see this amazing library.”

She twisted her head around, slipped under the streamers, and gestured for me to follow her. My stomach twisted; I felt like everyone in the room was staring at me, waiting to see if I'd join Amber in the library. This was not true, of course. A majority of the people in the room were already buzzed, and the rest were too bored to care about anything going on in our part of the house. I took a deep breath and darted under the partition, careful to keep our drinks from spilling. Amber took her cup from my hand as soon as I stood up.

“You make it okay, champ?”

This girl had an uncanny ability to make me feel ridiculous. She led me into the darkened hallway, hitting a switch after we rounded a small corner. Overhead lights flickered on, revealing a large room packed from wall to wall with bookshelves.

“The left shelf is old tests and homework, but I doubt you're going to find any biology stuff in there.” Amber pointed to the middle row of books. “I'm not sure how this part is organized. I think they stick books in here when they forget to return them to the library.” She moved along to the right side of the room, grabbing my wrist and dragging me along as she did so. My wig slid down my face, covering the slight hue of red that crept into it.

“This is the good stuff.” Amber ran her finger along the spines of the dusty old books, evidently looking for something specific. “Here, look at this.” She inched her fingers between the spines of two large tomes and pried one out. She flipped through it, holding the book open so that I couldn't see it. Then she laid it open on the table.

“What the fuck?” A naked woman adorned the page. She sat on her knees, her arm stretched out past the top of her head.

“It's Marilyn Monroe.”

I stared closer at the photograph. “I can see that. She's naked.”

Amber jabbed a finger into my shoulder. “I figured any guy would recognize this. This is the first issue of Playboy. And it's not a reprint – this is the actual thing.”

“Is it rare?” I asked.

“I don't know. Maybe not. But that doesn't stop it from being cool, don't you think? They have every issue down here, from 1953 on. I think they think that it's just an awesome porn collection, but it's actually a pretty interesting look back in time. I like to read the articles and find out what people thought back then. I'm only up to like 1960 ...what?”

I had been staring half-conscious at Amber the whole time. I couldn't help but smile. “They let you in here to look at their porn?”

“Not exactly. They know me here, they let me in.”

“They know you come in to browse their magazines?”

“No, I don't think so. But they let me in, that's all I really care about.”

“You're crazy.”

Amber folded her arms. “Excuse me? I find this stuff fascinating.”

And then, with Amber staring at me, slightly annoyed, I kissed her. I have no idea how I managed it. It was the most utterly bold thing I had ever done in my life. Amber accepted the kiss, and even ran with it, but made no effort to take things further than that. I looked at her after I pulled away. My head spun half with the alcohol, half with the excitement of being so presumptuous.

“Ah,” she muttered. “I guess these pictures affected you more than I thought.”

Jesus Christ. Just when I felt comfortable, she punched me in the gut.

“I'm just teasing you,” said Amber. “I just wasn't expecting it.” She leaned in and kissed me again. It was short and sweet; there was no making out. We looked at each other for a short time after it was over. I turned my attention back to the Playboy collection.

“I wonder if you could get these magazines from them. Like, buy them or something. Or get them to donate the collection to the school.”

“I doubt it. These guys are kind of dumb, but they aren't completely clueless.”

“So you never got with any of them?” Shit. What in the name of God made me say that. Alcohol may help some guys with romance, but not me.

“What? Of course not. I'm sure there are rumors, with me here all the time, but I wouldn't touch them. I feel weird enough flipping through their books.”

“Yeah, I was just curious. My roommate's just an idiot.”

Amber looked into my eyes. “What do you mean?”

“Nothing, nevermind. My roommate was just giving me crap.”

“About me?”

“No, not exactly,” I lied. “He just told to be careful, you know.” I was not a good liar, and the alcohol made it ten times worse. I could feel myself getting drawn into a trap, and I wasn't having any luck getting out of it. I prayed that Amber would drop the subject. She didn't.

“Worried you were going to get knocked up?” She grinned at me. “Don't worry, I'm not that easy.”

“No, I know, I see that now.”

“Now?”

Fuck. This was the last night I would ever drink.

“I mean, now I know you, I know you're not like that or anything.”

She didn't buy it. “Like what? Who have you been talking to?”

“I told you, Rex was just giving me crap.”

“Wait, Rex? Rex Wilson? Your roommate is that douchebag? What, he told you I was a slut, and you believed him?”

“No, that's not what happened. He was just talking out his ass, you know. I'm a little buzzed, I got paranoid.”

“Paranoid, or did you think you were going to get lucky?” Amber closed the book and brushed past me, sliding it back in place. “Jesus Christ, Adrian. Why would you ... why would you hang out with him?”

“I didn't pick Rex, he's my roommate! I didn't know him before this year. And I didn't come here ... I mean, I'm not ...”

“You didn't come here to get laid?”

“Amber, of course not. I'm not like Rex, I'm not the rest of those guys in there.”

“Really? Adrian, why did you come to this party? You told me you don't like the guys here. You obviously can't stand the sorority girls. Was it just the booze and the free food?”

I stared at Amber, running through responses in my mind. I frantically searched for something that wouldn't run her off. I came up short.

“I don't know. Rex invited me, I guess I just figured I'd try to meet some people.”

“Listen, Adrian. You're a cool kid. Don't let Rex fuck you up, okay? He's not a good guy.”

“What do you mean, what's wrong with Rex? He's not the smartest guy, sure, but ... what happened? How do you know him?”

“I know him better than you do. It doesn't matter. I don't ... I'm not going to talk about it. I think I'm going to go home, all right? I'm sorry.”

Amber pushed past me, oblivious to my protests. I stumbled after her. She walked straight through the streamers, past a few cries of “hey, what the hell,” and out the front door. Rex stopped me from walking after her.

“Shot down?”

“Fuck you. Fuck you.” I struggled to get past him, but he held me there.

“Dude, don't get beat up over it. There's another party next week, we'll hook you up there. I didn't get any either.”

I snapped, ramming my hands into Rex's shoulders and pushing him into the door frame. “You asshole. You goddamn fucking asshole. What did you do to with her? What did you do to her?”

In a single quick motion, Rex placed his arm out in front of me and slammed me back into the other side of the doorway. The surprise more than the actual violence knocked the breath out of me, and I struggled to get it back with Rex's arm pinned across my chest. A few excited “oooooh!”s floated through the room, hoping for a fight to end the night's festivities.

“Calm down, Bro,” said Rex, inflecting the last word with just a hint of threat. “Why don't you walk home and get into bed. You'll forget about this in the morning, I promise.”

An unexpected feeling crept into me as I stared at Rex there in front of me, his massive arm goading me to yield to his strength. It was not a feeling of hatred, or even fear, but overwhelming disgust. Right then, I looked at Rex as every misogynistic quip, unwanted harassment and demeaning joke rolled into one miserable human being.

“What was it?” I asked Rex, raising my voice. “Did you screw her? Did you screw her one night and leave her like the rest of the girls? Was that it?”

Another round of agitating groans hit Rex, and he pushed the hard bone of his forearm further into my lungs. I smelled the acrid liquor on Rex's breath. He grit his teeth as he spoke. “You don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Go home, Adrian, and we can talk about it later.”

An Indian chief turned sideways and moved through the doorway. He winked at Rex. “Hey man, let the kid have the girl. You had your go with her, right?”

Rex stepped back and glared at him. “Whatever. Fuck it.” Rex spit a glob of something on the ground and walked back into the house, careful not to look at me.

I leaned against the outside wall, catching my breath. “Hold on,” I yelled out to the Indian.

The man, now well off of the porch, turned and looked up at me. He looked to me like an actual Indian – Asian, not Native. Even with my chest pounding, I couldn't help but wonder if that was intentional.

“You know Rex?” I asked him.

“Sure, he always comes to the Halloween party. Don't worry about him, it's just a touchy subject.”

“What is?”

“Well, that girl. I'm surprised he came, actually, if he knew she was going to be here. They hooked up a few years ago.”

“So?”

“Well, I say 'they' hooked up, but she wasn't completely sober, if you know what I mean.”

The stupid smirk on the guy's face nearly made me puke. I slid down the wall and landed in a sitting position. “What the fuck. Rex, what the fuck? He's a player. Why the fuck would he do something like that?”

The Indian shifted his feet, and I could tell he regretted walking into my drama. “Uh, this was a long time ago. He might've been a first-year. Look, don't worry, she got him back. I guess she realized what was happening and started beating the shit out of him.” He started to chuckle as he recounted the memory. “He ran out of one of the back rooms with his pants around his ankles. That girl was right behind him, beating him with a god damn Playstation controller.”

I pushed myself up off the wooden porch and steadied myself. “So that's it. My roommate is a rapist.”

“No, I don't think he got that far. He's just a dick. We always tease him about it. He just says that she was a whore, and she freaked out from some bad mushrooms or something. I don't know, man, we don't really pay attention to him. Anyway, I've got to get going. Good luck.”

I stared at the chief as he left. Amber was long gone. She hated me. Who could blame her. I defended him. Shit, I stood up for him. I felt sick. I felt alone, looking at the people around me. I didn't belong here. These people had no idea who I was. They had no idea who I was dressed as (and they probably would have called me a fag if they did). It occurred to me only then to wonder why Amber had come to the party. I wished Amber had stayed so I could ask her that question, along with delivering an endless apology. I decided I wanted the chance.

I halted and turned toward the kitchen. I stormed past some of the half-drunk crowd also making their way home – acting and looking like zombies, now. I had no idea if I was doing the right thing, or if I was wasted, but it didn't matter. I grabbed a napkin and pen from the kitchen. I chewed on the end of the pen, conscious that it wasn't mine. There were a multitude of things I wanted to write: Rex is a creep, You're Awesome. It seemed so childish. And then, looking up at myself in the kitchen mirror, staring at my crooked wig and smeared mascara, my hand moved.

I'm floating in a most peculiar way

And the stars look very different today

I don't remember knowing, in my slightly drunken state, just how corny my note was. But, in hindsight, it was the only thing I could have written that wouldn't have made me a condescending ass. I scrawled my phone number on the bottom in the most legible writing I could manage.

I strode into the library, apathetic to the big frat guy's dirty look as I walked past him. I ran straight to the Playboy collection, and began to examine the volumes. A year was scrawled on the spine of each. 1957. 1958. 59. 1960. Yes, I could find her online. I could ask someone else at the party about her. But that was too inelegant, too unimpressive for a victimized girl you'd just implicitly called a whore. I gulped, closed my eyes, and slid the napkin between the books.

Satisfied, I left the house for a second time. I tore off my wig as I walked through the cold air, scratching my short black hair. I looked up at the sky and whispered a small prayer that Rex wouldn't come home tonight.

Thoughts on 'Legend of the Seeker'

2008-11-06T08:20:00.001-08:00

Just wanted to share a few thoughts about the new Sword of Truth TV adaptation, Legend of the Seeker:

Many changes from Wizard's First Rule in the first two episodes
Presumably this was done to speed up Richard's departure from Westland, so they could do a few monster-of-the-week type episodes. Most of the changes seem arbitrary to me. Unless they are planning some big shocker later, Zedd is not Richard's grandfather (though, if they do drop this bomb later, it means Zedd basically lied to Richard in the first episode). Also, Richard does not really know Zedd until he is named Seeker. This characterization sort of worries me, as it seems to change the character in a drastic way for no real reason.

The Book of Counted Shadows is probably the biggest change. I would guess they thought the original plotline of Richard memorizing the book as a boy would be too complex to explain in an episode or two, and they might have been right. Kahlan brings the book (along with the Sword of Truth) with her into Westland. It's apparently written in High D'Haran, which Richard can magically understand because he is the Seeker. Later on, the Book is destroyed (and Richard doesn't memorize it or anything). It'll be interesting to see if they write the Book out of the plotline, or if it comes back.

Some assorted things: Richard seems to be the Seeker even before he is named, as he can understand D'Haran. This is slightly different from the book. Kahlan's sister accompanies her to the boundary before she is killed. George Cypher's wife is not Richard's birth mother.

The acting, on the whole, is pretty good:
The actor playing Richard does a great job. He fits the look perfectly and lends a genuine believability to his lines. Kahlan is pretty decent as well; so far, she hasn't had much of a chance to do anything other than look cute, but she has her moments in the pilot. Zedd's actor, the famous Bruce Spence, does a good job with an alternative interpretation of Zedd. He's not as jovial or mischiveious and Zedd in the books, but he has his moments of quirkiness, and his smile is spot-on for Zedd. Also, I always imagined Zedd as sort of short, and Bruce towers over the other actors, so that takes some getting used to.

Some of the other actors aren't so great, but they are able to do a passing job. Chase is just okay -- he's lost a lot of the charm he had in the books. Darken Rahl is not scary (nor blond) at all, which is disappointing. However, to give the actor the benefit of the doubt, he hasn't had a chance to do anything but order guards around, so it's possible for this to improve. Adie's actress doesn't do a great job. She seems bored, and has no accent, which makes her speech manerisms ("Adie not be knowing what you mean") very weird. It's like if Yoda still talked in inverted syntax, but otherwise had the voice of a normal person. It just doesn't work.

The special effects are bad
They just are. It's not surprising, as this is a syndicated TV show, but it's still not ideal. The gars looked terrible; they really should have used puppets. In one scene, Zedd uses Wizard's Fire to kill a gar, and there is a really cheesy stock explosion. I will say, though, that the actual Wizard's Fire looked pretty much how I imagined it.

I'll keep watching to see if the show trends in the right direction. Pilots are almost always worse than the actual show, so Legend of the Seeker actually has promise. We'll see how willing they are to stick to the source material. Episode 9 is entitled Denna, and if they actually cover the whole Mord-Sith, Richard being tortured arc in a single episode, the show is in for a rough time.

Review: Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, by David Foster Wallace

2008-10-24T22:54:00.001-07:00

"The fuzzy Hensonian epiclette Ovid the Obtuse, syndicated chronicler of trans-human entertainment exchange in the low-cost organs across the land, mythologizes the origins of the ghostly double that always shadows human figures on UHF broadcast bands thus: ..."

This is the opening line of one of the stories in Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, written by the late David Foster Wallace. I wouldn't say this line is at all representative of the work in and of itself, but it is a great example of what Wallace is* trying to do with this book. Regardless of what Wallace himself says in one of the stories, Interviews is experimental fiction, plain and simple. That's not to say that there aren't great themes or characters contained within -- but I think one of Wallace's main goals was to try some crazy shit and see what happened. When he opens his story with a overtly loquacious translation of "The muppet from the syndicated tv show was talking about shadows," I'm not sure how he could argue with such a classification.

Just to let you know what I mean, here's a (non-exhaustive) list of some of devices used in Interviews: Second-person narration, super-detached narration, beginning a story in the middle of a sentence, large pieces of stories contained in 5+ page spanning footnotes, a story in the form of dictionary entries, stories in the form of question-and-answer sessions, stories in the form on word problems, meta-meta-second-person narration, etc. This is maybe half of the unexpected, unique risks that Wallace takes.

Of course, a risk wouldn't be a risk if it guaranteed success. Some of these devices work better than others. The extreme detachment of the narration (referring to the main character as "the depressed person" throughout the longest story of the book, for instance) becomes grating as Wallace uses it in at least half of the stories. Writing a short story in a footnote is cute at first, but annoying when it pops up two or three times. The dictionary story is, at best, boring and, at worst, pretentious.

But when Wallace hits, he hits big. The quiz section, entitled Octet, which starts to plod on a little too long, became on of my favorite sections when I was finished. The final pop-quiz of the cycle is written in a meta-fiction style that I loved. This quiz is written in second person, starting with the line “You are, unfortunately, a fiction writer,” which I laughed at for far too long. This quiz describes “your” (Wallace's) thought process in writing Octet and considerations on what should go into this final quiz (which is great, because it leads to mind-bending turns of phrase such as “I would leave this unsaid if I were you”). Meta-fiction is a tricky subject; straight meta-fiction (“I'm the author!”) is sort of cliché and uninteresting by now, and even meta-meta-fiction (“I'm the author and I know I'm writing meta-fiction!”) isn't completely original. But Wallace's choice to write the piece in second-person (“You're the author, and you're writing meta-fiction!”) is something I've never seen before, which made up for some of the less enjoyable quizzes in the cycle. Stories like this serve to remind us why we need authors who will push boundaries rather than just emulate the masters.

The bulk of the book is made up of titular Brief Interviews With Hideous Men sections, which are presented as question-and-answer sessions between and interviewer and a so-called hideous man. Sometimes these interviews are presented as neutral; other times, I got the feeling that the two people knew each other personally (even though the questions are never written out, simply represented with a 'Q'). I absolutely loved this part of the book. I can't get enough of creepy, transgressional characters. Possibly realizing that a bunch of similar interviews with different characters could still get repetitive, Wallace chooses to break them up in different sections of the book. Even in the same section of Brief Interviews, many of the interviews are presented in slightly different formats, which was a great editorial choice. Ultimately, whenever a certain story falls a little bit flat, Wallace swoops in with an Interview to keep your trust and interest.

Another story I particularly liked, called Signifying Nothing, is a short, simple story about a man that, for no apparent reason, recalls a day that, as a child, his father wagged his penis at him. Wallace presents this possibly scarring situation with a hilarious absurdity. The main character is not angry or horrified, but simply confused about why such a thing would ever happen, which is an easily understandable position. There is nothing hugely distinctive or experimental in this story; just simple plot and great dialogue and characterization. The main character's line upon confronting his dad made the story for me: “I sort of briefly described what I had remembered, and asked him, 'What the fuck was up with that?'” Wallace's dialogue is nearly always spot-on, and often incredibly funny. It's actually sort of unfortunate that he doesn't use as much of it, as the narration doesn't benefit as much from the crazy situations, characters and devices that he applies.

Ultimately, I wouldn't call Brief Interviews With Hideous Men a masterpiece. It is somewhat inconsistent in quality, ranging from page-turn-a-minute brilliant, to page-turn-a-second-because-you-just-skipped-five-of-them boring. However, it is clear that David Foster Wallace is a literary mind to be reckoned with, and I look forward to reading more of his work. It's a shame we lost him prematurely, as I could certainly see myself smiling with glee after finding the release date of his newest novel.

8/10

You are, unfortunately, Matt Borgard, and you've just finished your latest review...

*Is it appropriate to talk about a deceased writer in the present tense? I've always been told to speak about books as if they are happening in present time, but something about this just seems wrong. **
**Don't include this in the blog.

Review: (NJO) Agents of Chaos I: Hero's Trial by James Luceno

2008-09-27T23:32:00.000-07:00

* Warning! Star Wars EU spoilers! *

I first attempted to read the New Jedi Order series in high school ... and it didn't go well. The reason, I've found out, is that the audiobook of the first novel, Vector Prime, is catastrophically abridged. Earlier this year, I got back into Star Wars, so I decided to try NJO again. I had better results -- Vector Prime is readable, but not great. It serves as a setup for the rest of the series. The Dark Tide duology was much better, though it seemed to contain a little too much "monster-of-the-week" type adventures for the characters. So I went into Hero's Trial -- the first book in James Luceno's Agents of Chaos duology -- cautiously optimistic that the upward trend would continue.

Hero's Trial gives us the first real glimpse of the NJO Han Solo, dealing with the aftermath of Chewbacca's death. In the Dark Tide books, he's almost unbearably emo; it's understandable, but not necessarily ideal for a story. It's good to see Han back in his element here. He's upset and slightly more low-key in certain areas, but it works for the kind of characterization that Luceno uses here. Han is still too standoffish with his family for my tastes. I kind of wish that Luceno went in a different direction than the cliche middle-age crisis (though Han fiddling with having an affair would be interesting!), but there are only a few moments in the book where I found myself rolling my eyes.

The big picture seems to be fairly inconsequential until the very end. A Yuzhang Vong priestess, Elan, and her familiar, Vergere, decide to act as defectors to trick the Jedi into a meeting, where Elan can slaughter the lot of them. This defection eventually attracts some unsavory characters, who, of course, have connections to Han (what unsavory SW character doesnt?). This defection leads the Galactic Alliance and Han Solo to (separately) track the defectors and fend off Vong. There's a pretty big conflict at the end, with about four or five separate groups fighting for different things. It's exciting, but starts to strain credulity when the Vong begin fighting against their own fake defectors being returned to them.

One of the best new additions that Hero's Trial introduces is Droma, a male Ryn (new species, looks a bit like an older, but not ancient, Dark Elf) . Droma, in Chewbacca's absence, is the perfect foil for Han. He's smart, slightly sarcastic (but not annoyingly so), and mystical if not superstitious. He doesn't put up with Han's crap, which is exactly what he needs at this point in the story. Of course, Leia would probably be even better in this position -- but so far, NJO has been pretty unwilling to have her do anything of consequence.

Overall, Hero's Trial is a good read -- not great, but not bad either. I'm still waiting for that killer book: one that connects on every level, and makes me say wow. But for now, it's entertaining and continues the SW story. I'll give it a 3/5.

The Certainty of Chance

2008-09-15T15:36:00.000-07:00

Nothing is certain. The impossible or unexpected could happen at any time. That was the lesson of the day. Evolution was a theory — so was gravity. Technically, nothing about physics was certain. Mrs. Miller told the class that, theoretically, it was possible that one of the students could shove a pencil through a desk. Nora spent the rest of the period testing that hypothesis.

Nora's English teacher was sick, so she got a free period. Nora “freed” herself from the school and headed home. The day wasn't over, and "expect the unexpected" wasn't confined to physics. She learned that when she got home and found her brother and his girlfriend having sex on the couch. They sprinted to his room before Nora could say anything, and the girl left soon afterward.

The incident made dinner even more awkward than normal. Her mom was absent, as usual. Thursday was surgery day, which meant all the doctors and nurses in the center had to stay until the anesthesia had worn off in the last patient. Her dad started eating as soon as he got home, without changing out of his suit. They had the rest of the lasagna from the night before. The cottage cheese standing in for ricotta always tasted like dry lumps of dirt after a trip through the microwave.

“How was school?” Her dad asked.

“Fine,” Nora replied. “I got an A on my first calc homework.”

“Good.” He turned to Mark, her brother. “What about you? Did you find a job?”

Mark shook his head. “No, not yet.”

“Why not? Did you just sit on your ass all day like always?”

Mark looked at Nora, but she kept my mouth shut. “No. I talked to John. They might have an opening for a painter. Part-time at first, but...”

“Great, part time. Fuck. I swear to God, if you don't find a real job in a month, we're going to start charging you rent. I'm sick and tired of you freeloading.”

“Wonderful,” said Mark, trying his best to appear unfazed.

“Look at your sister. She works hard in school, she knows exactly what she wants to do with her life. She's going to be a CEO while you're still living with your God damn parents.”

Mark didn't speak, so Nora chimed in. “I made an appointment with a counselor for tomorrow. We're going to go over college stuff, I guess. I think it's pointless, but the school requires it.” Nora's father seemed to accept that, and went back to eating his dinner.

Nora volunteered to do the dishes, in hopes that her brother would mellow out a little. No such luck.

“A perfect student, a hard worker. Really working Dad today, aren't you.”

“Shut up. If you want to wash these, you're more than welcome.”

“No thanks. I'll let it slide since you're keeping our little secret.”

She smiled as politely as she could. “No problem. Speaking of which, I'll need a ride to Sarah's tomorrow afternoon. And probably again this week. It's not like you have anything better to do.” Other than your slut girlfriend, she thought to myself.

“Fine,” he said. “But if I see this on your Livejournal, you're fucking dead.”

“Don't worry. I'll change the names to protect the innocent. Namely me.”

He sneered and stomped off.

“I'll say hi to your girlfriend at school tomorrow!” she yelled after him. She found it both perverted and hilarious that her long graduated brother continued to lust after high school girls.

* * *

Nora's eyes cracked open after she heard Mrs. Miller utter the absolute worst words a teacher could say: “Partner assignments.” There was nothing worse than being pitted with a stranger in the first few weeks of school. She listened as the teacher ticked off pairs of names. Sarah shrugged at her when “Sarah Jones, Nate Wilson.” More and more of her known friends fell off the list, before Nora's partner was finally announced. “Nora Nelson, Rachel Baker.” Rachel Baker. Nora looked behind her with a stare of half-apathy, half-horror. It was her. Murphy's Law.

Rachel rolled her eyes as their gazes met, and Nora turned ahead to look at Mrs. Miller.

“All right, everyone, please meet up with your group member and start talking out your first project. Feel free to ask me any questions you might have.”

Nora leaped to the teacher's desk before she finished the sentence. “Mrs. Miller, I don't think I can work Rachel. We have some... personal issues.”

Mrs. Miller raised an eyebrow. “What kind of issues, Ms. Nelson?”

“She and my brother are ...” Nora paused slightly, but caught herself. “Dating. I don't really feel comfortable working with her.”

“Ms. Nelson, you are a senior. You'll be graduating this year. You'll need to learn to be professional and work with people you don't like if you want to succeed in college next year. If you two have problems, come and talk to me again, but I want you two to give it a shot. I think that's fair.”

Nora, defeated, sulked back to the empty seat next to Rachel and plopped down.

“Couldn't get yourself reassigned?” Rachel flipped her springy, dyed-blonde hair behind her ear.

“Let's just finish this and be done with it. You don't like me, I don't like you, but let's do this and get a good grade out of it.”

The sides of Rachel's mouth lifted up into a grin. “Who said I don't like you? We've never even met.”

Nora stared at her partner, lips parted, not sure how to reply. Being stuck with an airhead blonde in physics class when she needed an A was bad enough. But getting stuck with her brother's high school love bunny was almost more than she could handle.

“Look, I'm dating your brother, big deal.”

“More than dating.” Nora hid her surprise at Rachel's cavalier identification of the elephant in the room. Nora was not the most comfortable person in the world when it came to sex, and she certainly didn't feel like discussing it now, with Rachel.

“Fine, whatever. We're not breaking the law. If you want it to be this way, that's fine with me.”

Nora did want it this way. The less contact she had with this girl, the better.

* * *

“University of Wyoming. Good job, Nora.” Mara, the senior guidance counselor, poured over the folder containing Nora's ACT score, personal statement, resume, and acceptance letter. “Very impressive. I can see you've worked hard these past few years.”

Nora nodded, gluing the best fake modest smile onto her face. “Thanks. I've just made college my goal for the past four years, I'm excited to finally get there.”

Mara (who preferred to be called by her first name, she had told Nora) nodded silently, turning over the pages in the folder. “Where else did you apply?”

Nora stared. “What do you mean?”

“What other schools have you applied to?”

“Well, none. UW is offering me a scholarship, and it's close to home.”

The counselor closed the folder and handed it back to Nora. She removed her reading glasses and placed them on the desk. “What are you planning in majoring in?”

“I'm not quite sure,” replied Nora. “I like math and science – maybe biology. But I like literature too, so I've thought about English.”

“You seem very smart and well-rounded, Nora. I'd like to know what you'd think about applying to a few more schools.”

Nora felt like she had been punched in the stomach. She had been expecting a quick chat, a pat on the back and an ego boost; she hadn't been prepared for any conflict.

“Well, I mean, I don't know. My family doesn't have a lot money, I'm kind of relying on that scholarship. And UW is a good school, and it's close to home. I mean, some people are going to Colorado and stuff, but I don't really see a reason to move out there.”

“Of course, Wyoming is a great school. But Nora, you're one of the smartest students we have, you're at the top of your class, you have clubs, NHS, volunteer work, AP credit ... I'd really like to see you apply to some upper tier colleges. Yale, Vanderbilt. You can worry about money later. If you need money for applications, there are fee deferment programs I can help you with.”

Nora sat speechless. From the day she entered high school, she had planned to go to college with her friends, an hour away from home. Her mind and actions had always been focused on that singular goal. She felt blindsided – offended, even – that this woman had the gall to smash that, to imply that her plans weren't good enough. Mara slid some paperwork out of a file cabinet and handed it to Nora. Nora took them without saying a word and placed them into her folder.

“There are some applications and information packets in there. I think it would be healthy if you looked over them and picked one to apply to. Even if you get accepted, there is no pressure to have to go. But having options is always beneficial.”

Nora let out her best emo sigh. “Is this required?”

“No, Nora, this is not required. But I am sure a student like you knows how important it is to strive for something more than the required, and shoot for the exceptional.”

The motivational-phrase-of-the-day did very little to encourage Nora.

* * *

Rachel took the mechanical pencil out of her mouth long enough to send a question down to Nora. “What did you get for d equals five?”

Nora clicked the button on the stopwatch as her the ball hit the floor and marked down the time. “1.24. And 1.58 for d equals ten. Here, let me do the calculations for g, and you can write them down.”

“I've got them. Hold on a second, and I can finish.”

“Great,” Nora said, failing to hide the sarcasm from her voice. She stared at Rachel's sheet of paper as the girl worked through equations, stopping ever now and then to punch a few numbers into her bulky graphing calculator.

“Hurry up,” Nora said. “I've got some other homework to work on. I was hoping we could finish this early.”

“Just do it then,” said Rachel.. “I can handle this.”

Nora sighed, but continued to watch Rachel work. She didn't feel comfortable moving on to something else until this was done. She peered over at Rachel's equation and noticed a mistake.

“X should be positive there, the way you set that up.”

Rachel looked up to where Nora had pointed, and nodded. “You're right. Thanks.”

“Are you sure you don't want me to do it?”

“That's it,” said Rachel, slamming her pencil on to the black lab table. “What is your problem? I've been nothing but cooperative, and you've been treating me like a idiot for the past month.”

“Calm down,” whispered Nora, hoping to fend off the few other students who had turned to look at them. “I told you before, I just want to get through this class. We don't owe each other anything else.”

“You owe me some fucking respect!”

That did it. Mrs. Miller appeared at the side of the desk. “You ladies need to leave the room and work this out. I won't have you disrupting my class. I was hoping you two could manage to be professional. I'm disappointed. We will talk about this after class.”

Nora, humiliated, sulked into the hallway and sat against the wall. Sitting in the hallway against the wall like ... like a goddamn delinquent junior high student. Rachel leaned on the opposite wall and slid down into a sitting position.

“Nice job,” Nora said.

“Are you kidding me? You can't manage to be civil for an hour a day, and this is what happened.”

Nora's heart pounded, anger surging through her veins and sending her to her feet. “You're screwing my brother. How the hell am I supposed to act. I walked in on you screwing my brother! That's not something that you just forget.”

“So what?” Rachel replied. “I'm dating your brother. Get over it. Sometimes people have sex. We were idiots, and did it in the living room. You don't need to throw a giant fit over it.”

Cat noises and hisses came from across the hall. A student, with a backwards baseball cap, baggy pants and visible underwear, had wandered by and seen them fighting. He guffawed and kept walking. The distraction allowed Nora to hold back a reply, so she sat back down and turned her head.

“You know, I work just as hard as you. You're not the only one with senioritis.”

Nora puffed air through her nose. “Whatever. I'm getting through this, and then I'm done.”

Rachel sat mute for a few moments, and then continued. “Your brother told me you got a scholarship from UW, right? That's pretty cool.”

Nora said nothing.

“Your brother is pretty jealous of you, you know. He dicked around in school, but I can tell he's envious. I think he figures you would of gone to some amazing school. Harvard, or something.”

“Why are you talking to me?” Nora muttered.

“I don't know. Nevermind.”

The fifteen minutes waiting for the bell to ring were the longest fifteen minutes of Nora's life. That wonderful sound couldn't come soon enough. She closed her eyes for an eternity, then opened them to look at her watch. Still five minutes to go. Rachel had been completely successful in making her feel like shit, a feeling far worse than the humiliation she had felt in the classroom. Nora held the top rank in her class. She had been elected as the president of Astronomy Club and treasurer of Key Club. She had taken more AP tests than any other senior in her class. She could do this.

“Sorry.” Nora felt the words escape from her mouth, but didn't remember forming them. It was like a band-aid that had been ripped off. Unfortunately, Nora had made far more than one cut. “I'm sorry. It's just ... it's my brother. It was just sort of a shock, you know.”

Rachel turned and looked her in the eye. Nora had a hard time maintaining the apology, and looked down at the floor. “I should have been able to get past that, but ... I don't know. I guess I don't like to mix school and home.”

“Why?”

Nora hadn't been expecting the question. She had been expecting Rachel to act equally standoffish to her, but the girl had defied her again. “I ... don't know. I like school, I like working, you know. Home life is sort of just ... there.”

“I know what you mean. I've been working my ass off studying for the SATs. I'm going to try to get a higher score. I really want to get into a good school, get out of this state. It drives you crazy. Know what I mean?”

Nora didn't, really. But she nodded and smiled. “Where are you thinking about.”

“Well, UW, CU, of course. That would be great. I really want to get in Stanford, but I think I'll need better test scores to be really competitive there.”

“Stanford? Really, I wouldn't have ... uh, that's cool.”

“You wouldn't have expected it?”

“Sorry,” came Nora's sheepish reply.

The bell rang and the horde of students piled out of the doorway. Sarah waved at Nora as she passed, and Nora waved back, her face bunched up into a worried smile. Mrs. Miller walked out as soon as the room had emptied.

“I wish you girls would have come to talk to me before it came to this. I wish you could have worked things out, but I know it doesn't always happen that way. I'm going to allow you girls to work alone for this project, and we will rotate partners afterward.”

Rachel rose, seemingly content to leave it at that, but Nora spoke up. “It's okay, Mrs. Miller. It's my fault. I've been having some family problems, and I took it out on Rachel. I think we worked it out. I'm sorry.”

Mrs. Miller raised her eyebrow in her signature interested-but-skeptical face. “Are you two going to be able to work together, then?”

Nora nodded. “If that's okay with Rachel.”

It was.

* * *

It was late when Nora got home. Mrs. Miller had another class after theirs, and had required them to come in after school to finish their experiment. Nora had talked to Rachel for a little while after they had finished. Nora ended up inviting her to her house – she told Rachel that her father was worried about this unknown girl dating Mark. It would be awkward, at first, that Rachel was in high school – but Nora felt confident that she would be able to make a good impression. And she figured she owed the girl enough to help her to that end. At the very least, Rachel would be a good influence on Mark, and Nora's father was sure to see that.

Nora ate some of the leftover pasta her family had saved for her. She told her parents she stayed late to finish a project, but she didn't reveal the whole story. She supposed that the rest of it should be left untold, and it wasn't like she was lying – not exactly.

After her shower, Nora felt completely ready to collapse into bed. The day had been emotionally draining, if not physically so. But before she could pass out onto her mattress, the corner of her eye caught a small manila smear. That folder. That damned stupid folder. She hadn't even looked at it since her meeting with Mara, but there it sat, as it sat every night. Today, though, it seemed particularly ornery. Taunting her. She couldn't help herself. Nora grabbed the folder and dropped to the floor.

Mara had included a large amount of information in the folder. Princeton, Yale, Brown... standard Ivy League fare. They didn't appeal to her. Too snooty, it seemed like. Nora though about giving up, admiting defeat to the yellow bastard of a folder, but the last pamphlet and application stopped her. Stanford. Not Ivy League ... but not state. California – a far cry from the windy Wyoming plains. It seemed poetic. How could she not go for it? She opened the application, and saw the standard requests for information. Name, GPA, test scores. And then the essay. She grabbed a pencil before even looking at it, determined to do this before she lost her nerve.

Nora looked at the question. Write a short (500-1000) word essay about a specific obstacle you overcame to achieve academic success. She stared at the ceiling in thought. These questions were always pointless, and Nora had never been sure exactly what the readers would be looking for. But in a divine moment of realization, it came to her. She put her pencil to the paper, and began to write: “Nothing is certain. The impossible or unexpected could happen at any time.”

Miracle

2008-09-06T13:41:00.000-07:00

I had seen other purported miracles before, but it was hard to deny the resemblance in this one. The image stretched nearly to the top of the back wall of the cathedral, and contained all the requisite icons. The Blessed Virgin, The Child, and the halos encircling each of their heads. My first thought was that a group of students, late in the night, had painted her as a practical joke, but the visage was far too big, and painting such an enormous figure in a single night without alerting any of the nuns inside would have constituted a miracle in itself. Furthermore, there was no paint or dye of any kind on the wall. The colors seemed to have been imbued on the stone itself, and no amount of scrubbing removed or faded the holy image.

Lucia, a novice, was helpful. She was young, no more than sixteen years old, and possessed a subtle beauty in her face. She beamed when we were introduced, and emitted a joyousness at odds with the calm, cautious demeanor of the older sisters. The elder women in the convent did not strike me as fearful or apprehensive when I first met them, but in the face of Lucia's exuberance, I found myself reevaluating that position.

Lucia led me to one of the main prayer rooms in the cathedral. Light spilled in from the large entryway, but there were no windows in the room. Candles lined the walls, and adorned the pews, leading to a central podium beneath a painting of The Savior. On the podium sat a small, purple box, adorned with a single golden crucifix on the front. The top of the box sat open, hanging behind the large container on golden hinges. It was empty.
"Here it is," she said, announcing the object as if it was self-explanatory.

I picked up the box and examined it. The inside was coated with velvet, and the empty container seemed heavier than I would have expected.

"Try to close the box, Father."

I did as the girl suggested. To my surprise, the lid refused to move.

"The hinges must be stuck," I offered.

"I do not believe so, Father. I believe this box to be a miracle from God. We received this box two days ago, in the morning, at the entrance to our cathedral. I found it when I arrived to start my morning duties. It was closed when it arrived her, so I opened it. There was nothing inside, Father."

"That sounds like a donation, not a miracle, Sister Lucia."

"Yes, and that is what we thought. Sister Carilla, my mentor, agreed, as did the rest of the sisters. But when we attempted to close the box, we found it as you see it -- stuck. And then, yesterday morning, the Holy Madonna appeared on our great cathedral. Father, I believe God has blessed us, for some reason that I cannot guess."

After years of investigating miracles, I couldn't help but be skeptical. Lucia's story sounded not unlike others I had heard from small towns attempting to gain a boon by luring worshippers and tourists with a vague image of a saint. "Thank you for your words, Sister Lucia. You have helped greatly."

"Then you accept that this is message from God? It is truly a miracle?" Her eyes glowed brighter than the box's golden cross.

"I will stay here today, if your sisters have room for me. There are many rules and procedures for investigating holy occurrences, and it is impossible for me to tell what has happened here after only an hour's contemplation."

Lucia nodded, the fire from her face gone, for the time being.

My first day at the convent was informative. My second was worrying.

Lucia had woken with scratches running up and down her arms. The sisters gathered in a circle around Lucia. Some studied her wounds with the eye of a scholar. Others watched the girl herself for any giveaways about what had happened during the night. A few sobbed and wailed, fearing that the marks had been a punishment from God.
"Could it be stigmata, Father?"

The crowd of nuns parted to allow me to view the girl. "Stigmata wounds resemble the crucifixion wounds of Jesus Christ, Lucia. Have you not learned this in your studies?"

"Of course, Father, I did not meant to imply that these are the wounds of our Savior. But I have heard of other wounds appearing, wounds that match those of saints." She presented her scoured arms to me. "Do you know of any wounds that this could resemble?"
I didn't, of course. Lucia's account of saintly wounds was purely fictional, as far as my knowledge went. But I humored the girl by examining her arms. I made special attention to view her fingernails. They held no blood, no skin. I pressed on one of Lucia's scratches, expecting the girl to cry out in pain. She did no such thing.
"They do not hurt, Father. It is a blessing, not a punishment. A mark of pride and humility."
"Father, Sister Ana Lucia will help you with any information you need. We will examine Novice Lucia and inform you of what we find."
They found nothing, other than the scratches. No blood in Lucia's room. No witnesses to anything strange during the night. No other wounds. My skepticism was being tested.

My second day was worrying. My third was horrifying.

Screams erupted now from outside the cathedral. At the wall where I had only two days before seen the Blessed Virgins, the sisters had fallen to the ground. Most of them were sobbing -- the ones who weren't had fainted. I turned my eyes to the wall, and let out my own cry. What had once been a beautiful homage to blessed Mary had been destroyed. Mary's son was no longer Jesus, but a twisted devil. The Virgin's eyes had been blotted and scratched in crimson, and started a trail of blood leading all the way down to the ground. Some of the nuns had dipped their fingers in the substance, and from the horrified looks on their faces, I could tell that it was not a trick.

We found Lucia kneeling in the prayer room, screaming of visions.Her hand grasped an ebony stiletto. Blood enveloped the blade, as well as her arm. When we entered, the girl turned to look it us. Deep, red pits resided where her eyes should have been. Dried gore lay in a stream down her face. She cried, but shed no tears.
"They will not stop, Father! They will not stop! I can see them! Please, make them stop!" She wailed, and thrust her finger out at the box. "Make it stop, Father! I beg you! Please, God, help me!"

The box was no longer empty. Lucia's excised eyes lay neatly upon the black velvet interior. I couldn't stop myself from edging my hands toward her eyes, from desperately wanting to place them back in her head. But the box would not allow it. As soon as my hand approached it, the lid snapped shut. I pried my fingernails under the lid, bending them back as I attempted in vain to reopen the box. It was too late. Lucia had fallen to the floor, and was now silent. Sister Ana Sofia, now weeping uncontrollably, shook her head as she cradled the poor girl in her arms.
The image on the wall was gone. I returned home and submitted my report. The miracle reported was a hoax perpetuated by a novice. The original eyewitness, Sister Ana Sofia, confirmed my account. I never visited the convent again. I did not tell anyone about Lucia's box, for fear that it would again, for any reason, be opened. The box stays where it is, buried. Undiscovered, undisturbed.

Review: Naked Empire by Terry Goodkind

2008-08-22T10:30:00.000-07:00

First, a little history for the unenlightened.

You have to wonder what happened to Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series. The first book in the series, Wizard's First Rule is one of my favorite fantasy novels of all time. Stone of Tears, the followup, was not perfect, but it was a great addition to the growing epic. The books that followed never achieved the enchantment of the first novel, but still managed to be entertaining.

Then, somewhere between the fifth and sixth books of the series, Goodkind read Atlas Shrugged decided he'd rather be writing political allegory than fantasy. The sixth book, Faith of the Fallen, was a diatrabe of sorts againt Communism. Yes, Communism, the economic structure that hasn't really existed since the mid-eighties. Way to be current.

Anyway, that book managed to be entertaining despite the proselytization. Richard's (that is, the protagonist's) struggles against against an ideal rather than a discrete enemy actually helped FotF become one of my favorites of the series.

The next book, Pillars of Creation, took a detour from this train of thought to tell the story of Richard's long lost sister. Again, mildly entertaining in the league of some of the middle novels of the series.

Then comes the topic of today's review: Naked Empire. Ho-ly crap. This is easily Goodkind's worst book. As easily as one can tell Goodkind was introduced to Objectivism before writing FotF, one can see the author's intentions and train of thought in writing this pile of scum. Goodkind, evidently, saw some war protestors (presumably against the Afghanistan invasion or the very start of the Iraq War, given the time period), was enranged, had a fantasy of murdering them all, and then made that into a book.

The novel concerns a new race of people, the Bandakar, who are discovered hiding away in some remote part of enemy territory. The Bandakar, to put it simply, are idiots of the highest degree. They are complete pacifists, sort of, and so refuse violence of any kind, believing that it leads to more violence. Of course, this society has now been taken over by Richard's enemy, the Imperial Order, and they beg Richard to save him.

Of course, Richard needs their help to do so, so he must convince them of their evil ways. What follows are pages upon pages of excruciating sermon: "You must fight back!" "We can't." "You have to!" "We can't!" "You have to!" I've essentially summed up half the book with those quotations.

The funniest part, however, is how tyrannical and scary Richard starts to sound. All the Bushisms about destroying evil instead of letting it destroy you are there, but Richard spouts it with such merciless cruelty that you could really see it coming from some dictator. Richard believes that the only moral course of action is to utterly destroy "evil" by any means necessary-- the irony seems lost on Richard and the author that the enemy, the Order, believes the exact same thing.

Deeper in the discussion, Richard attempts to define the world as black and white and rail against Nihilism (again, way to fight against something relevant, Terry!). Essentially, Goodkind wants to have his cake and eat it to. He wants interesting, motivated villains, such as the leader of the Order, Jagang, and a sorceress, Nicci, who recently defected to Richard's side. But at the same time, he wants his villains to be absolutely, unabashedly evil, with no hope of redemption. Goodkind seems to oscillate between these points of view at will.

Beyond the political discussion, the basic plot is pretty lame. Richard is poisioned, and has to go on a fetch quest to retrieve three antidotes from three different towns in the Bandakar "empire" (and no, we never really get a good reason why the antidotes are separated and hidden). On the way to get his antidotes, Richard and a small army of Bandakar drive the Order out of their villages. The rest of Richard's group is completely tangential to the storyline -- his sister is completely irritating, and his wife Kahlan, who until now has been a shining example of a strong female lead, is, in the end, relegated to the damsel-in-distress.

Oh, I can't end without going back to the protester slaughter I mentioned earlier. Near the end of the book, a large group of pacifist protesters try to prevent Richard from killing the Order soldiers. Fine, I can dig that. But instead of making them real or giving them anything relevant to say, they shout stock phrases like "NO WAR! NO WAR!" Yeah. You can see the peace signs and flower power, and feel the RAGE in Terry Goodkind's heart at these hippies. The lesson here is, apparently, any kind of protesting against war or violence is wrong, protesting war amounts to protecting pure evil, and such protesters deserve to be violently slaughtered. Man, isn't Objectivism just the CHEERIEST little belief structure?

I'm not so sure if I want to give books scores, or just let the review speak for itself. But since this marks the 8th book in the series, and also the worst book in the series, I'll go ahead and give it a 1/8.

Matt Borgard is praying to Ayn Rand that this series redeems itself in the final trilogy.

The Lives of Stars, Abridged

2008-04-23T14:17:00.003-07:00

I see the light, and toward the source I run

with you beside, and spirits on our heels,

into the glimmer of a dying sun

Against the men and women we did shun:

they block our way, the only exit seals.

I see the light, and toward the source I run

And on our path, until our time is done,

we cast away our ever-loved ideals

into the glimmer of a dying sun

A mirror on the wall, our faces shown

I view myself, and what my life reveals

I see the light, and toward the source I run

The starlight breaks; our hiding spot undone.

The dark recedes, the shadow fades and peels

into the glimmer of a dying sun

And when you’ve made it through, I’ll strive, alone,

uncovering the half-truths we’ve concealed.

I see a light, and toward the source I run

into the glimmer of the dying sun

2008-04-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

The Lives of the Ones You Love My song, gone: glutted by these divine spirits

Nihon Shoki

2008-03-11T21:34:00.000-07:00

日本書紀

The security guard eyes me suspiciously as I approach the counter. He's seen me for the past three months, two weeks and four days. “Namae?” he says. “Lolingusu-san,” I reply. My name is a rolling labyrinth of R's and L's. I am not Yamamoto-san or Tanaka-san, or even Sumisu-san. I am gaijin, and nothing more.

I sit down at my desk and smile at the secretary, who greets me with the standard ohayo. Her name is Takahashi-san. I don't know her first name. No one knows anyone's first name. I stare at her ass as she walks by, searching desperately for some folds under black pants, tantalizing clues to ease me into my workday. She usually wears a thong on Mondays. She wears panties on Fridays. Today is Monday.

I think about what it would be like to fuck her. To run my hands across her skin, like the moonlight, and caress her small, nearly absent breasts. To smell that scent that all these women seem to have, like lavender and snow. I wonder if it would be like all the Asian pornography, where the woman's ecstatic moans sound more like embarrassed squeals and star-shattering screams start even before the sex does. I've had sex once since I've been here, with a girl from a bar. She was blonde, American, and smelled like cheap beer.

My boss appears. His rapid Japanese rends my fantasies like bullets, each word destroying a fragment of what keeps me sane. I only comprehend half of what he says, but it doesn't matter. “Memo” and “report” mean the same thing in both languages. So does “sexy”; they say “I'm going” when they're coming.

My living quarters are as mundane as my cubicle. I eat ramen tonight. I have it sent from home because they don't have the right kind here. The television is worthless – news, soap operas, and anime – low quality. A music video appears on the screen. Notes flow nervelessly from a young girl's lips, and her eyes, dazed, fix on a flushed sakura, a cherry blossom, falling feather-like into her upturned palm. Is this what they long for? What keeps them going in the face of indestructible idlenenss? I extinguish the television and the lights, and fall asleep, wishing there was a cherry blossom outside my window.