"Frostfire" by Kai Meyer - Chapter 3, Part 4/7

            The door across from him was opened as well.  Then two others, farther to the front of the hall.  In the space of a moment the dark corridor filled with half-grown boys in pajamas.  Whispers and giggles pierced Mouse through.

            “What do you want?” Her voice sounded hoarse and breathy.  Her throat was suddenly as clogged as the corridor.

            “Girl-boy,” one of them said.   Others chimed in, and in no time at all there was a whispered chorus of it:  “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!”

            Mouse pressed her back against the iron bar of the emergency exit. Its cold cut through the jacket of her uniform like a blade.

            “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!”

            “The grown-ups say that you’ve never left the hotel,” said Maxim, and took a step toward her.  “Is that true?”

            Yes! she wanted to shout at him.  Yes, it’s true!  Because I’d die out there, and that’s just how it is!

            Nothing, absolutely nothing, gave her such fear as the world Outside.  She could not imagine herself standing on a street under the open sky.  The thought of this vastness, this emptiness, cut off her breath.

            She did not make another sound.  Not even a whimper.  Her heart galloped.

            Maxim’s tone stayed amiable.  “We have decided that you’ll miss out on a lot if you never go outside.  It’s high time, don’t you think?”

            “Girl-boy!  Girl-boy!” whispered the husky chorus.  More than a dozen boys, most of them with their voices breaking.

            “Please,” whispered Mouse.  “I haven’t done anything to anyone.”

            Maxim shook his head, smiling.  “Nor do we want to do anything to you.  Just understand – we want to help you.

            He gave the other boy a wave – he worked in the kitchen, in the butchery – and the stout fellow immediately grabbed Mouse by the shoulders and lifted her high like a bouquet of dried flowers.  Maxim stepped past her, unbarred the door, and shoved her out.

            Snow drifted about.  And a cold, that caused the throng of boys to give out a groan and flinch back a step.

            “It’s not far to the main entrance,” Maxim assured the wide-eyed Mouse.  “Really, it isn’t.  You don’t even have to go all the way around the hotel.  At most half.”

            Tears popped into her eyes.  And then she kicked the butcher-boy’s knee with all her strength. He howled, let her go, slid down the wall and held his leg, whimpering. A few others laughed hatefully, but Maxim motioned them into silence.  Two other boys jumped up – pages from the entrance hall – grabbed Mouse and turned her face to the open door.  In the darkness, she could recognize the landing of an iron fire escape.  Nothing else.  Only night and driving snow.

            She began to scream.  She struggled, thrashed about, scratched, kicked, and bit. 

            “…want to help you,” she heard Maxim say again, then she received a shove and stumbled out onto the iron stairs.  She stumbled, and was only at the last minute able to grab the railing.  Never in her life had she felt such a cold.  With a wail she tore his hands away, whirled around – and stared in Maxim’s smiling face.  A bundle of fabric flew out at her – the old coat that he had held in his hand.  In the same moment, the door slammed shut, and the iron bar on the inside latched back in place with a crunch. 

            “Let me in!” she cried in panic, and hammered with both fists against the door.  “Please!  Let me back in!”

What Should Theater Look Like and What Should Theater Be About?

Above are the two driving questions for my Theater History class that I am currently taking for a fine arts GE.  It's not that bad of a class, even though the professor has a tendency to analyze things for us and not encourage discussion and argument against her; I'm bored, but that's why I crochet.  No, the problem arises when we do three plays in a row about race relations, and that is the sum total of our look at American theater.  See, apparently "being American" means what race you are and how you're being oppressed.

There is a quote from August Wilson which I would like to paraphrase and dispute.  He argued against colorblind casting, claiming that it was devaluing African-American identity, and that instead there should be more plays written by blacks about blacks.  That way, black people would learn to respect their black identity.

While I respect the sentiment, and can agree it was probably appropriate for the times, I would like to bring up one point - namely, myself.  Am I even going to see the German-Chinese lesbian identity validated on the stage or in print?  Probably not.  The bigger question for me, though, is that if I did find a story that was not my own about a German-Chinese lesbian in America, would it mean anything to me?  Would that character really have anything to do with me?  Would this hypothetical character be obsessed with languages?  Would she be a ruthless literary critic?  A laconic feminist?  Would she have struggles with identity and independence that have nothing to do with her race or sexuality?

I don't think so.  I think that I am more than my race, ethnicity, and sexuality.

It bothers me when people try to portray themselves and their characters solely as representations of their race.  Yes, more racial and cultural awareness is good, but the whole purpose of racial inclusion is to show that people who aren't white Christian heterosexual able-bodied males are people too.  That does not happen if your black character is a cardboard cutout of a black person, and not a fully developed person with dark skin and African heritage.

Compare the last two plays we had to read:  "Zoot Suit" and "Cloud Nine."  "Zoot Suit" bored and frustrated me.  It is a whiny minority play, about Mexican-Americans in the 1940's bitching about how they're being oppressed and thrown in jail just because they're Mexican.  There is one line that goes something like "You just don't understand the Chicano people."  To which I reply "No, I don't, because I haven't seen any of your culture or personality, I'm just hearing how you're discriminated against.  I don't understand you any better than I did before."

Now, "Cloud Nine" focuses more on gender and sexuality than race, though there is a small racial component.  What "Cloud Nine" does is crossgender casting - Betty is played by a man, Edward is played by a woman; also, the black servant is played by a white man.  This shows how gender (and race) roles are just that - roles that we play.  It questions the very institutions.  That is so much more interesting and thought-provoking than "Look at us!  We're being oppressed!"  Is it not?

Re-emerging Into Reality

You may have noticed that I have been somewhat less diligent about posting in this month of November.  That is because I have been participating in a cult group madness challenge called NaNoWriMo - National Novel Writing Month.  50,000 words.  30 days.  One writer.

Okay, not one writer.  That is what is so wonderful about NaNo.  Writing is by nature a solitary activity, and sitting in a group of people all absorbed in their own laptops writing their own novels does not sound like a party by anyone's standards.  Still, it is a great way to stay motivated.  I tend to write in creative spurts, but I have a hard time finishing.  I get about half or two-thids of the way through, and the story starts to sag, and I start to see all the places I went wrong, and I want to start over and fix things.  And I get to a point where I don't know where to go next and I don't really care.

But with NaNoWriMo, every word counts.  Rule #1 is DO NOT DELETE.  Rule #2 is DO NOT GIVE UP.  I was up to being seven days behind, but I made up the difference in the last few weeks and pulled across the finish line with hours to spare.

I have done NaNo several times in the past, and this was a year of firsts for me.  It was the first year I made an outline the night before from a story I thought of that day.  It was the first time I threw out that outline on the first day and started with a story that had been smoldering in my head for a while.  And it is the first year that I re-started on the second day with a completely new story that had been gestating but I had not considered ready to be born; but it was my most viable option.  It is the first year I had no idea where the story was supposed to go.

That is another thing about NaNo.  It forces you to be creative.  For the first 20k or so I was writing myself in circles.  Then I added witch hunters.  I never thought I would until I realized that I needed something new.  And there they were.  That got me close to 40k before that arc came down.  The rest was a first person account filling in the gaps of the first arc.  Note:  First person in lovely for wordiness.  You can throw in so much opinionation and asides and rants.  It's wonderful.

Then I was still about a thousand short and spat out half a bonus scene with the witch hunters.

Every year after that first one I have told myself that I won't do NaNo - I don't have time, I don't any good ideas, I'm in the middle of another project - and yet somehow I always do.  And I don't regret it.  Any of it.  Even though all my drafts so far have been shit, and I don't very much think this one is any different, I wrote that damn novel.  I have proven to myself that I can can overcome my creative barriers.  It does not take skill to write, after all.  Skill can be learned.  It takes determination and persistence, and I definitely leveled up in that area this month.

Now for a rest. This is also the first year my wrist actually started twinging (at the 47k mark, when I was starting to think I might actually make it).  That has not stopped me from starting a new crochet project.  I want to get back to my translations - I've been making trips to the career center to see what the heck I can do with my life, and translator is still one of my options.  I also want to start reading books again.  Am halfway through the third Temeraire book and also for some reason have a strong urge to re-read the entire Chronicles of Chrestomanci.  Oh yeah, finals are coming up too.

Blah blah words blah oh wait, I don't have to count them anymore.

Epiphany

I just realized something today.

Yes, Marburg was the worst experience of my life.  I spent nine months clinically depressed.  I failed so many times to establish relationships that I came scarily close to giving up on anything.

But if I had never gone, I never would have been introduced to the anime Princess Tutu.

In fact, I would probably not have rekindled my love of anime at all.  Thanks to my one friend in that country, anime became a lifeline.

Was it worth nine months of depression?  Probably no.  But is it a damn good show?  Yes.  I can finally say that something good came out of that experience.

Note:  This is not a show for people who do not already have a healthy respect for anime.  The first six episodes seem silly and girly and fluffy and weird.  But if you can watch every episode from beginning to end without shedding a tear, you have no soul.

The Calm After The Storm

FFF.

Fuckin' Folk Fair.

What is Folk Fair?  For those of you who don't know, it is a large culture fair that takes over one of the academic buildings on campus.  Every cultural organization (and then some) gets a room or a table to put up an informational display about their country.  And sell food.  Seriously, people only really come for the food.

This year was particularly exciting because FFF fell on Halloween weekend, which is really weird timing, and also because none of us had ever planned a FFF before.  Nor did any of us live off campus and have a nice private kitchen and a grown-up refrigerator.  Fridge stuffed full of butter.  The worst part is that we grossly overestimated how much we needed.  We would have been more than okay with half the amount.  Fuckin' butter.

It's for cheesecake.  German cheesecake, that I should be allowed near because I ended up destroying two when taking them out of the pans and making one that did not get cooked all the way through (which really wasn't my fault, but I still had a hand in making it).  It is an absolute bitch to make, but after the first bite, you suddenly remember why we go through all this trouble every year for that damn cheesecake, because it is so freakin' good.

And it's over.  One more year done.  I swear I will never do it again, at the same time knowing that I will in fact get suckered into it.  But at least I have another ten months to relax and not think about it.  I can focus on distributing the gear to the fencing team, which shouldn't be too hard except that one girl is MIA and I'm starting to get a little worried.  Then I have to get the team to a tournament, which would be a lot easier if I knew how many were going, but they have not responded to at least a dozen emails.  Like herding canaries.

I have an exam on Monday, and an exam on Tuesday, and a research paper I should probably get started on, I still have no idea what I'm going to do for NaNoWriMo, and I'm likely going to catch my roommate's cold tomorrow.  Yeah.  Now that FFF is done, I can totally relax.  At least I don't have to bake anything.

Bisexuals in Literature

This post was inspired by reading Libba Bray's novel Beauty Queens, which is awesome and hilarious and the good kind of feminism, even if it does have diversity issues.  Like the fact that the only characters with distinct personalities are the white ones; the supporting cast the Black Girl, the Indian Girl (who become besties based on the fact they are both not white, which is actually played straight rather well), the Tomboyish Lesbian, the Transgender Girl, the Deaf Girl, etc.  Whereas the white characters that the story spends a (admittedly slight) majority of the time with include the Friendless Intellectual, the Psychopathic Perfectionist, the Wild Girl, and the Dumb Blond With A Heart Of Gold.  Y'know, actual personality types instead of just Issues.

But today's rant is about the Bisexual Girl, who in Beauty Queens doubles as the Deaf Girl.

What happens in the book is that a plane full of beauty pageant queens crashes on a deserted island (think Lord of the Flies with girls).  At one point, the Lesbian is wandering through the jungle, when she rescues the Deaf Bisexual Girl from being eaten by a snake, and falls in love.  Before she has any inkling that this girl might not be straight. 

Problems so far:

1.  The cardinal rule of being gay is DON'T FALL IN LOVE WITH A STRAIGHT PERSON.  For us, the question "Are they gay?"  has to come before "Do I like them?"  Granted, this might just be a me-thing, but it always irks me when I read a book where a girl falls in love with a girl before she has reason to thinks he might not be straight.  It just doesn't work like that.  To put it simply, heterosexuality is a real turn-off.

2.  If I were wandering through the jungle and ran across someone being eaten by a snake and had to rescue them, what are the chances we would have compatible sexualities?  If it were me, it would turn out to be a gay man.  Seriously.

Anyway, the Lesbian falls for the Bisexual Deaf Girl, who, as she is also a dancer, incites some oddly homoerotic moments with the Lesbian, who draws a fantasy comic with her as a superhero rescuing her love, when the BDG walks in on her, sees the comic, and they make out after only a brief:  "Are you gay?"  "Are you?"

3.  I'm not going to knock the coincidence.  The entire premise of the book is ridiculous, and it only gets wackier from their, with government conspiracies and insane third-world dictators.  But since BDG is established as bi, she really should have realized that asking the Lesbian to dance with her is rather flirtatious.  And since the Lesbian is sort of dykish tomboyish, BDG ought to have suspected her of not being straight, even if the Lesbian could not ping on her because you can't tell with bi girls.

There are about two paragraphs dedicated to the fact that the Deaf Girl is bi. And when hot male pirates show up on the island, she doesn't seem to get the slightest bit of enjoyment from the sight of all that man-candy.  Sure, she's dating the token Lesbian, but she can still look, can't she?

4.  Here we get into the problems extant in the wider literature.  YA authors who are big on diversity will throw in a token bi character to date their token gay character, so they can be super-extra representative.  The problems arise when bi characters are simply treated as gay characters.  Exhibit A, Alex Sanchez's masterpiece of the 90's, Rainbow Boys.  The Token Bi here actually dumps his girlfriend to be with the gay main character.  Bisexual, sure.  Bisexual training wheels maybe.  A later book mentions him grinning at the sight of a naked girl, but that's about all we get.

Exhibit B:  David Levithan's Boy Meets Boy, and if you ever want to gag on a rainbow made of pure sugar, read that book.  Anyway, the bi guy there serves absolutely no function with regards to the plot, and has a backstory of making out with the main character and then claiming he was taken advantage of and really likes girls.  This is supposed to be in a fantastical super-tolerant queer utopia.  He can't be like "Oh, I'm bi, I guess that's okay"?

Exhibit C:  Brent Hartinger's Geography Club.  This one is a girl.  Who is dating a lesbian.  I believe in later books she crushes on a girl.  But she keeps referencing the fact that she is bi, and talks about hot guys with her gay bestie.

The root of the problem, I hypothesize, is that it is difficult to realistically portray a character who is attracted to both guys and girls without making them a slut.  A character gets only one designated love interest per story, after all, and a love triangle would be tricky because resolving it would make it seem like the author were favoring one orientation over another.

Solutions?

1.  Spend time talking about the bisexual character's emotions and development and coming out.  Bisexuals never come out!  Why is that?  Is it somehow not necessary?  Are they not a "real" queer unless they are dating a member of the same gender?  Is it because bisexual has the word "sex" in it?  I don't know.  But think about your heterosexual characters, and how they react to characters of the opposite gender who are not their designated love interest.  There can be sexual tension without a romantic subplot.

2.  A bi girl can date a guy, and still be active in queer rights stuff.  Trust me, I know people personally.  They don't lose their gay if they start dating someone of the opposite gender.  In fact, in brings up interesting plot points.  How does the boyfriend feel?  Is he weirded out, or chill?

3.  Heck, you could have two bisexuals of any gender combination date each other.  That would be an interesting relationship dynamic.

4.  Back to Beauty Queens:  When I saw the two token queers were going to hook up, I groaned and came up with an alternative subplot involving a token bi and a token lesbian.  Suppose it is a bitchy lipstick lesbian.  In fact, she might be the Psychotic Perfectionist.  Then, there's also a bi girl, one of the quiet ones who silently hates the lesbian's guts.  *Gasp!*  No token queer solidarity/romance?  Unthinkable!  If this were to happen, I would not even mind if the bi girl were crushing on a straight girl, as long as she eventually got over her.  Maybe hooked up with one of the hot pirates.  And then the lesbian can date some chick in the epilogue after she becomes a nice person, to prove that homosexual relationships are okay too. 

Seriously, not all gays like each other.  You can't put a pair of us on a deserted island and expect us to automatically mate, any more than you could put a heterosexual guy and girl on an island and expect them to.

(On the plus side, they don't hookup ever after; they break up amicably and the bi girl is dating a guy in the epilogue, while the lesbian is married.  So it ended up not being too bad.)

"Frostfire" - by Kai Meyer (Part 3/7)

            Some distance away, Mouse’s shoe-wagon waited, a steely law on four wheels.

            “You would really just give it to me?” she asked doubtfully.

            He beamed like the imitation gold on the walls.  “I can’t do anything else with it anyway.”

            “I don’t have any money.”

            “I want to just give it to you.”

            He doesn’t like you, her inner voice warned.  No one here likes you.

            “Agreed!”  she burst out.  Her heart raced yet again, as fast as it had when the Roundsman had grabbed her.  Only now for a better reason.

            “Right then,” Maxim said, stepped with her into the hall, closed the grate from the outside with a key, and affixed a metal sign on it with the label Out of Order.  Mouse found that to be rather daring.  But presumably one such as Maxim could be allowed such escapades.

            Mouse followed him down the hall, to a door whose inscription pointed out that only hotel personnel had entry.  Behind it lay an even narrower, darker hallway that led to the dormitories of the employees.  No carpet, no pictures on the walls.  Here pipes lay in the open over the plaster, not behind wood paneling.

            Maxim went with Mouse to the end of the corridor. An emergency exit was located there, a heavy door with iron bars; Mouse had no idea what lay behind them.  She knew the outside of the Hotel solely from the paintings in the ballroom, and there only the splendid facades were to be seen, not, however, the backs or other sections of the buildings.

            “Wait here,” said Maxim.  The doors of the bedrooms were located on the left and right of the hall.  Every six men had to share a room.  The rooms of the female employees lay a floor below. 

            Mouse nodded to him as he disappeared with an encouraging smile behind the last door on the left side.  A musty cloud of bedroom scent wafted over to Mouse.

            Here she felt anything but well, and already regretted taking the offer.  If anyone chanced to come out of one of the rooms, she would not be able to flee out of this dead end.  The door of the emergency exit to her back seemed at once to be even taller and heavier.

            She had no fear of a beating – the other girls and boys never went that far – but it would be enough that they would keep making fun of her.  Mouse had long ago stopped wondering why, even though she had never done anything to harm anyone.  Her only sin was her lowly work. And the way she looked.

            Perhaps Maxim’s uniform would change something about that.  If possible, she could win a little respect with it.  This fantasy alone was worth the risk of standing around in the corridor of the men’s quarters in the middle of the night.

            The door of the room swung open again.  Maxim stepped into the hall.

            “That was quick,” she said, with a shy smile.

            In his hands he held an old blanket like a bundle of rags.  Completely tattered and rumpled.

            “The moths were quicker,” he said, and it sounded just as friendly as he had before in the elevator.  For the first time Mouse realized that treachery did not always have to accompany malice and mockery; sometimes it hid itself behind a façade of courtesy and charm.

Corchet! Yay!

So, this semester I'm working on killing off some of my GE's, meaning that I am taking several classes that are fairly easy and fairly boring.  And what do we do when we are bored in class? 

Crochet!

The above scarf was made with Red Heart Super Soft yarn in teal, using a size I hook.  Pattern:  ch 22, *dc in third ch from hook, hdc in same loop; skip one st, repeat from * to end, dc.  Ch. 2, turn.

This one was made from Bernat Mosaic Calypso (gotta love yarn names).  With size H hook, ch 251, sc across, rinse, repeat.  It's my first scarf worked lengthwise, and I liked it so much I started a similar one with a different color but the same type of yarn.

For the hat, I adapted this pattern to a size J hook and LionBrand Vanna's Choice (in Wildberry).  Ch 64 instead of 46, and work 10 rows of the rib pattern instead of 8.

Responsibility

My life in isolation in Scheissburg drove me over the edge, but I think it is fair to say that I had been pushed to the edge by the previous semester.  Long story and confidential events shortened, I became Mark from the musical Rent.  I watched my best buddy Roger get his heart torn apart by Mimi (or perhaps he would be Benny by now), and dealt with Maureen's craziness on the side.  I watched my world and my friends sink into hell, and there was not a damn thing I could do about it, not even make a stupid movie.  Mark is a really sucky character to be.  He doesn't actually do anything.  Just stands around and mopes while everyone deals with crap.  He doesn't even affect anything.  He doesn't end up with a lover.  FML.

The play neglects to mention, however, just how much it hurts to be in that situation.  To simultaneously be certain there is nothing you can do and still have the urge to fix everything.  Torn apart, much?

In summary, my two resolutions for this year are:  1.  Stop being afraid of things that won't kill me (did I mention that already?) and 2.  Don't make things my problem that aren't.  Because I came to the realization that I can't take care of anyone else if I can't take care of myself.

So now that we're in the second act, Maureen is having trouble with Joanne, and I can tell him what we all know he needs to do.  I can assure him a thousand times over that yes, people are going to be upset with him, but we as his friends will never abandon him.  But when it comes right down to it, this is something he can only do himself.

Last fall got to the point where I wanted to confront Mimi/Benny and have a very frank conversation with him about my take on what was going on.  That did not happen until after it was essentially too late.  Now, I'm choking off the impulse to do the same with Joanne.  She barely knows me.  And yet...I know she's about to go through hell.  A part of me thinks I could say something, do something, to make it easier.  So where do I draw the line?  Is she my problem, or isn't she?  Do I keep from getting involved, or am I already involved?

What is going to happen is that I won't say anything unless she approaches me.  Then all bets are off.  This is a very delicate situation, and any direct interference from me could very easily swing things the wrong way.  So Mark, get thee behind thy camera where you belong.  The best thing I can do now is call encouragement as the actors play their parts.  For I am an actor too, and I have my own parts to play.

How did we get here?  How the hell - ?
Pan left.  Close on the steeple of the church...

Why are entire years strewn on the cutting room floor
Of memory?
When single frames from one magic night
Forever flicker in close up
Of the 3D Imax of my mind?...

Why am I the witness?
And when I capture it on film?
Will it mean that it's the end, and I'm alone?

Well, I'm Still Alive

Life has just been rushing by so fast, I hardly have time to sit down and catch my breath.  Classes have started up, and I just dropped a class for the first time.  Yay!  Semantics and Pragmatics is exactly as dry and pointless as it sounds.  So now I can concentrate on "Why the hell am I taking Racquetball?"  and "Why the hell am I reading these pretentious artsy plays?"

There's a temporary lull, just before all the orgs start up.  Since I dropped English, I might do German Club after all (might, mind you).  But since I'm coaching fencing, and technically have some sort of officer position in Outloud (the LGBTQA oh screw political correctness, the gay group on campus), I really don't want to stretch myself too thin like I did last fall. 

Fortunately, drama has so far been kept at a minimum.  There is a minor issue with a Jesus-freak who is in and out of the closet like a jack-in-the-box, but he is not my problem, and I will not let him become my problem.  I have two resolutions for this year.  One is to not make things my problem that aren't, because it doesn't help and just stresses me out.  The other is to stop being afraid of things that won't kill me, namely (I finally thought of name, aren't I special) page fright.

I haven't been writing a lot lately.  I don't know why.  I don't really feel inspired.  To keep in shape, I've been writing a page a day of whatever comes into my head (and no, you can't see any, yes that means you).  Perhaps if I feel daring I might post some of the better samples.  Some of them seem to be connected, leading to intriguing possibilities.  I'll probably have something ready to go for NaNoWriMo in November.  It's like my normal mood swings (not my 8-month depressive stint) where I know I'll swing back eventually. Sooner or later another story will come.

Rainbow Triceratops Attack!

This is Trissie the Triceratops, who I crocheted over the summer.  She now resides in my dorm.

It seems to be a thing to post crochet patterns on blogs, but I didn't actually make this up.  I got it here, substituting gray for rainbow, and since I had no actual animal eyes, I scrounged up some buttons.  It actually works quite well.  Though I still can't figure out why the legs on the pattern critter are so much shorter than Trissies.  Oh well.

"Frostfire," by Kai Meyer (Chapter 3, Part 2/7)

            After Maxim had closed the lattice gate, she placed herself next to him so that she did not have to look him in the eyes.  But from clamorous excitement – and she was still a bit breathless from her flight – she had forgotten the mirrors on the walls of the cabin.  And no matter where she looked, the blond elevator boy seemed to be watching her.

            Mouse hated mirrors.  She was too small and thin for her age, and when she looked at herself like this, there was really not much girlness to her.  She was pale, even in this light that made every other person look healthy; even her lips seemed to her to be colorless and thin.  Her dark blue eyes always appeared a bit tired, perhaps because she always was tired.  The Concierge, who presided over all the lowly hotel attendants, had determined that she had to look like a boy, or else the fine guests might take offense that they let her work through the entire night.  That had been back when she was very small, and so she knew nothing else.  Mouse, the Girl-boy.

            The elevator set itself in motion with a jerk.  Above them in the shaft, the steam-works hissed.  Powerful gears crunched.

            “That’s a pretty uniform,” she said because the long silence was making her all restless. 

            “Thanks,” Maxim said, and then his gaze swept over her own clothes.

            You deserved that, she thought bitterly.  He will see right away that your shoulder-pieces have been mended with carpet threads.

            “Would you like one like it?” he asked

            She still could not look him in the eyes.  “Like it?”  she repeated uncertainly.

            “A uniform like mine.”

            “I’m no elevator boy.”  And also would never be one, she added in silence, namely because the Concierge did not like any girl, not even if she looked like a boy.

            “That doesn’t matter.  I grew almost a head last year.  You can have one of my old ones.”

            “You’re not serious!”

            “Why not?  In my trunk they’re just being eaten by moths.”

            Hard to imagine that there were moths in the dormitories of the pages and elevator boys.  In the hole in the cellar where Mouse slept, there were in fact rats. But that did not bother her.  She liked just about everything that was small and crawled on the ground.

            “Well?”  Maxim asked.

            The elevator came to a halt.  In front of the cabin grate lay a corridor that was only imperceptibly less magnificent than any in the suite level.  Everything in the Hotel Aurora was precious, expensive, and elegant.  Except for the behavior of certain employees, when no guests were present.

Frostfire - Chapter 3, Part 1/7

[Dear Readers:  Sorry this took so long in coming.  After my time in Arschderwelt, Deutschland, I wanted nothing to do with the language for a couple months.  However, I am now recovered and resuming my work, though school starts soon and I might not have as much time for it.]

The Chapter About A Betrayal And The Terror Of The Outside World

            Maxim, the elevator-boy, stood in his cabin, one hand on the the open sliding grate, the other on the long lever that sent the elevator on its trip through the landings.  He smiled across to Mouse.

            She stayed a few steps away from him.  The interior of the cage was lined with polished brass, gold, and mirrors.  Electric light filled the narrow box with the glow of an eternal sunset.  Its radiance flowed out of the interior of the elevator into the hall and touched the tips of Mouse’s feet.

            Maxim looked past her down the corridor.  “Where is your shoe wagon?”

            Strange for him to ask about it.  The elevator-boy hated it when Mouse occupied his cabin with the clumsy cart.  Mouse herself had not been able to  notice the scent of the shoes for a long time, but the boys claimed that the elevator stank of sweat and leather for an hour afterward.  Annoyingly, there was only this one elevator in the hotel, and the use the wagon on the stairs was impossible.  In fact, this was the first elevator of its kind in all of Russia, imported from America, where the new technology was being developed by a man named Otis.  The board of directors of the Aurora was tremendously proud of it.

            Maxim was not just any elevator-boy.  At sixteen years old, he as the oldest and most experienced among them.  And pretty, besides.  Mouse had once been secretly in love with him – until the day she had seen how, for a few copecks, he had let the rich daughter of a hotel guest kiss him.

            “Well?” he asked.

            She sought vainly for mockery or deceit in his tone of voice.  Perhaps he really did just want to be friendly.

            “Well what?” she asked crisply.

            “Your wagon.”
            “Oh, that…I left it a few floors below.”

            “Shall I take you down?”  All the elevator boys were immensely proud of their task, nearly as much as though they carried the cage on their own shoulders through the floors.  Besides that, they had the best-looking uniforms.  All velvety red and set with the same imitation gold that decorated their cabin.  In the elevator, they melted entirely into the sparkling, mirrored area.  My golden boys the Concierge called them, whose darlings they were.  But Maxim was everyone’s darling.

            “I’d rather take the stairs,” Mouse said, and wanted to turn away. 

            “Oh, just come inside.  In the middle of the night, no one uses the elevator at all.  I’m bored.”

            And she of all people should change that?  Maxim had never given her any more attention than a dirty footprint that a guest had left in his elevator.

            Carefully, she went into the cabin and stepped completely into the golden light.  For some silly reason, she suddenly seemed to herself to be a real girl, as though this time the unearthly light made not only the elevator boy but also her much prettier.

            “Fourth floor?”  asked Maxim, and took the lever in his hand, as though the Czar himself had walked into his cabin.

            Mouse hesitated briefly, looked around the deserted corridor one last time, then stepped over the narrow crack into the interior of the cabin.  She became a little dizzy as her feet made a faint, high sound despite the carpet.  The certitude of the deep, black chute under her always filled her with unease. 

What Not To Read

My latest obsession, it seems, is dragonriders and gender roles.  So, in order to make my research complete, I tracked down what might be the only book by a male about dragonriders, that is not a subversion or Eragon:  Dragonmaster,  by Chris Bunch.  It has been most educational.

Things I have learned from two chapters of Bunch:

1.  Do not use run-on sentences, they are not, and will never be, your friend.  Fragments, only sparingly when effective.

“Somewhere in the crags just above the village, and Hal thought he knew just where from his solitary, but not lonely, hill explorations, the beast had its nest.  The nest where dragons had hatched their young for over a century.”

2.  Do not overly smeerp.  Worldbuilding is your friend, and if you can’t be bothered to think about how your society works, then you should not be writing fantasy.

“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the warder…Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll ride for the city and hire the best advocate I can…That’ll put a bit of a stave in their wheel.”

Suppose he had written:

“Naturally, we told them to go away or we’d call the police...Tomorrow, before dawn, I’ll drive into the city and hire the best lawyer I can…That’ll put a bit of a wrench in their works.”

Creating a medieval fantasyland is more than just replacing any modern references with period-sounding alternatives (though a toothbrush is still a toothbrush*).  Apparently, even in this world where the poor are really oppressed, there is still a sort of justice system that even a poor restaurant owner tavern keeper can call on.  Which never comes up again (presumably).

3.  Your main character is not an author avatar.  Go play a video game for that.  Your main character has his (or her) own personality and ambitions.  Don’t have them wander around aimlessly until they find plot.

“He’d been offered other steady work in the two years since he’d left the stony mining village, but had never accepted, not sure of the reason.”

The reason?  The author needs you to not have any attachments so you can drop everything and chase the plot, whenever it should appear.  He also needs you to keep moving so that you eventually find the plot.  If you’re going to do that to your character, at least give them a real reason to be a rootless wanderer.  It also doubles as character-building.

4.  I don’t care how beer is made.  The point of the chapter is that Hal gets drunk and tries to ride a dragon.  We don’t need digressions into beer-making at the hops-picking harvest festival thingy that is never going to be mentioned again.  There’s worldbuilding, and then there’s relevancy.

*A note about toothbrushes in fantasyland:  They don’t often exist.  Occasionally I have run across a mention of scrubbing teeth with baking soda (once, in 10,000 page series), or “tooth-sticks,” whatever those might be.  They do seem rather modern to be in a pseudo-medieval world.  However, according to Wikipedia, methods of dental cleaning have been around since 3000 B.C.  Some ancient cultures chewed twigs from certain trees, and around the 14^th century A.D. toothbrushes with animal-hair bristles were in use in parts of Asia.  However, it is most likely that only those of wealth and status would have the luxury for that.  Toothbrushes were not mass-produced in Europe until the late 18^th century, but the word itself dates from 1690.  Interestingly, tooth-brushing did not catch on in the U.S. until after WWII, when soldiers were required to brush their teeth every day.

In other words, if you want your characters to brush their teeth in fantasyland, you can damn well have them brush their teeth.  It’s your world.  The humble toothbrush does a good job of illustarting how difficult it is to make a convincing fantasyland; you have to consider every aspect of daily life, up to and including brushing one’s teeth.

Writing Again

Sometimes it's easy.

Sometimes it feels like the story is writing itself, like it's all already there and you just have to record it.  Every word it perfect, every plot twist just the way it has to be, the characters developing in new and exciting directions so fast you can barely keep up.  It's like something is burning inside you, just under the ribcage.  It's like being horny; that maddening need to be with the story, to let it consume you.

Other times it's hard.  So hard, you don't want to face it.  You look at what you've written, and you wonder "How did I come up with that shit?" and it doesn't seem worth it to fix any of the millions and millions of problems with the text.  The characters are flat, the whole concept is unoriginal.  Your story is boring.  Your initial creative rush has died to a trickle of foul sludge.  New, exciting ideas hover at the edge of your mind, and you want to leave this one behind and chase them, even though you know it will all end the same, and that you won't be able to commit until you finish this one, and maybe, just maybe, a part of you still believes in that boring old story.

It is this that separates the writers from the dreamers.  Even when you don't want to face the story, you do it anyway, and stare at the document for hours, forcing out a sentence every few minutes.  Then it feels like the story is there again, but trapped behind a glass wall, and it can't get out.  Still, you plow on ahead.

Even when your mother walks into your room and asks "Oh, what are you doing?  Are you writing?"  "Yes."  "Is it for your blog?"  "No."  "Oh, do you have some sort of project, a story?"  "I don't really want to talk about it."  "Well, you could just say a manuscript," as she goes off in an offended huff, because even though we usually get along great, if there is a problem with our relationship then it's always my fault, and she never bothers to ask me if maybe I'm being belligerant because I'm upset about something, and what might that be?  Not unless I have a complete emotional breakdown and burst into tears, and even then it's hard to get her to actually listen.  Note to self:  When you start seeing a counselor in the fall, make sure to bring up your crapsaccharine relationship with your mother.

And then you're all frazzled and can't concentrate, and feel oddly violated and raw, so you maybe force out another sentence or at least finish the one you were on, then close down and let the story recover.  But it is still there, that nagging, unfinished business that you cannot quite leave behind you.  And you're going to have to go through it all over again tomorrow.

This is what separates the writers from the dreamers.

Dragons Are Ponies For Boys

I just watched about a quarter of "How to Train Your Dragon."  Unfortunately, I made the mistake of reading the book first.  I did keep my expectations prety low, but I had hoped that I would at least be able to recognize the story.  I was quite disappointed, because the book showed the book as nasty, selfish creatures that had to be tamed by brute force, as opposed the the love-at-first-sight telepathic bond, and I had hoped that Dreamworks would be able to work with that; that they would like the gruesome and unromanticized view of dragons instead of the ponies.  Alas, it was not to be.

No, seriously.  Ponies.  Dragons have been receiving the same sort of treatment for a long time.  They are that beautiful creature who will carry you around and do anything for you because he loves you and you have a telepathic bond. 

The funny thing about the dragonrider subgenre is that it is propogated almost solely by women.  Yet most of the protagonists are male.  It is as though girls are not expected to like dragons, even though the number of female writers in the subgenre begs to differ.  Men, on the other hand, write more about dragonslaying than dragonriding.

What does this say about the sexes?  Girls are more interested in having relationships, boys are more interested in killing things.  So what else is new? 

Girls like big scaly flying monsters is new.  Girls don't just want oddly proportioned pastel equines.  Girls like cool as much as cute.  Why is this so hard?  Why does this have to be disguised so much that McCaffery's weyrs are exclusively male except for the token chick, Goodman's Eona even has to disguise as a boy to become a dragon-whatever (okay, I haven't actually read that one.  You know how I feel about Crossdressing Epics).  In Eona's case, anyway, it seems like it should be the other way around.

Apparently, this concept is quite hard to grasp.  Well, I guess I'll add "female dragonrider" to my list of ideas for stories I may or may not ever write. 

Vampires

I hate vampires.

Sure, I went through my Anne Rice phase when I was fourteen, and I've read (almost) everything Amelia Atwater-Rhodes has ever written, but by the time the Twilight thing came around I was well over them.  Then, well, the Twilight thing came around, and that killed vampires for good.

Or so I thought.

It was the show "True Blood" that brought them back to me.  Yes, I know they're based on novels, and no, I haven't read any but the first one because I want to keep my respect for the show.  Then there was last summer's collaborative Writing Project of Doom, which involved vampires.  Sexy sexy gay vampires.  Well, all vampires are gay, really.  Seriously, the Meyer woman's attempt at making vampires less gay was to have them sparkle.

Because the Writing Project was Of Doom, my collaborator and I made a pact for this summer:  No vampires.  And what do I do?  I get all excited about a Big Gay Writing Contest, stare at a blank page for a few hours, then jot down the first promising sentence that pops into my head, which happens to be:  After my brother was turned into a vampire, my coming out was almost a relief to my parents.

Oops.

Like a magician with a string of flags, I managed to pull a story out of that first line.  As you may have picked up from my last post, the story needs work (understatement).  The scenes without vampires are all good, and can be worked into the new fabric when I have one.  The vampires will need to be completely, if you'll pardon the pun, revamped.

What I did, as the Nostalgia Chick would say, is create a story from hate.  I hate sparklevamps.  I hate the fact that when I walk into a Barnes and Noble, there is a section just for "Paranormal Romance."  (At least there is one for "Fantasy Adventure" as well.)  I hate how a bloodsucking fiend has had its fangs trimmed, turned into a prettyboy badboy for pathetic teengirls to swoon over.  Vampires.  Are not.  Teenagers.

Thus, in my story, I worked to make my vampires as repulsive as possible and ended up with a sort of AIDS/gangs/drugs screwed up mixed metaphor.  As my beta pointed out, I could replace the vampire with any one of those without changing the story a bit.  Furthermore, I hated the vampires.  They weren't any fun.

I don't hate all vampires.  I like sexy Erik Northman, the sexy badass in charge.  I like Atwater-Rhodes, though her vamps are some of her less compelling characters (I may revise that opinion once I get around to All Just Glass).  To be honest, I never really "got" Rice's vamps.  They were just kind of emo and weird.

What I was going for was a similar vein to Holly Black's "The Coldest Girl in Coldtown," a suberversion of all the prettyfication vampires have recently undergone. Which is a stupid thing to do, because she already wrote that story, so I should write a different one.  In fact, I should get started on that right now, because this whole post is simply procrastination.  I just need to lay down some ground rules for vampires first.  Not just for my story, but for any story I will ever write, read, or respect.

Rules for being a vampire:

1.  You are not a teenager.  Even if you were one physically when you were changed, you are an immortal bloodsucking monster.  You will use your apparent adolescence to your advantage and to manipulate your vicitms.

2.  You will not fall in love with a human.  Humans are food.  If you find one especially pleasing, you may turn it and keep it around as an immortal companion until you tire of it and kill it, or it tires of you and kills you.

3. You will be sexy.  Bonus points for bisexuality.

4.  You will be powerful, dangerous, ruthless, and badass.  No one wants to hear you whine.

5.  You will not be psycho.  Crazies are boring.

6.  You will not be stupid.

7. You will be selfish, and above all, inhuman.  But inhuman in a sexy unattainable way.  Eating people who love you is good.

8.  You cannot be "vegetarian."  No "I only eat animals" or "I never kill my victims."  The latter is acceptable only if your reason is that you do not like to clean up bodies.  Any attempt to make you more benign so that the poor teenage sop thinks she has a chance with you is cheating.

So perhaps instead of angsty teenage delinquents, we have a not-friendly neighborhood vampire slowly taking over a town.  Kind of like 'Salems Lot, only...not.  Hm.  Needs more thought, still.

Blah blah blah

First of all I feel that I owe my very best friend in the whole wide world an apology, because I've been avoiding him.  Why?  I just sent him the first draft of the aforementioned vampire story and asked him to critique it.  Then I spent the next few days convincing myself I was busy, when really I just wanted to convince myself that I had never written anything and no one had ever read it.

I think I need to give a name to this problem.  Presentation Anxiety, how about?  It's like stage fright, only with the written word, instead of spoken.

So right now, having finally worked up the nerve to check my email, I feel pretty wretched.  Nausea is my chief emotion at the moment, a side affect of the anxiety.  I also feel a crushing doubt in my abilities as a writer, and a voice in my head is trying to convince me that I am not up to the challenge, that I should just keep these stupid little attempts at stories to myself and not try to do anything with them.  See, I don't write for enjoyment or ambition.  I write to keep my sanity.  So all that matters is that I write, right?  I can handle the world of the writer, but the world of readers is too big for me.

I am now telling that stupid little voice to shut up, because I can get over this.  I've heard everything I knew made that story suck, but I also heard the things I might have forgotten that made it good.  Right now the vampire plot feels a bit off - and I'm thinking "Why did it have to be vampires?  Seriously, where did that come from?  I don't even like vampires." - and it needs complete overhaul.  I might even nix it completely and go for a mundane plot.  Okay, probably not that; I'd get bored, not to mention that thwe whole story sprang from the first line, in which a vampire is essential.  So some hardcore reimagining.  (But seriously, why vampires?) 

Not to mention that the only scene in the story that seems to work and that I actually like (and my beta-bestie agrees) is a scene that has no vampires...

Ah well.  Here, have a metaphor.  It's like (okay, simile) a massive home improvement project.  You have to rearrange all the furniture and completely gut a room, and then fix whatever is wrong, and then you find other things going wrong and have to fix them, and then you make a mistake and have to fix that, and it's just so much work, you don't even know if it's worth it anymore.

Is it worth it to me?  I'm not going to answer that yet.  I'm just going to say that if I should give up any sort of publication aspiration, I should have a better reason than fear. 

Writing

I'm not even insomniac right now.  A symptom of summer vacation.

So anyway, there's this.

For those too lazy to click on the link, it's a gay writing contest.  I could be published.  Seriously.

And so, in a major counting chickens way, I am going to go pretentious writer on you and talk about my writing process.

It starts, naturally, with ideas.  I looked at the contest guidelines, and all it gave me was a fictional (check) unpublished (check) short story about "being queer."  That should be easy, I thought.  Everything I touch turns to gay.  Honestly.  Even dragons (though really it's more like they're third-gendered...hey, they're my dragons, I can give them whatever biology I want!).

Then I dug up the short pieces I currently have in the works (a very generous way of saying a couple paragraphs saved in a word document), and realized that they somehow all featured heterosexual relationships.  No cheating on this one; I would have to start from scratch.

It was obvious to me that there would have to be some sort of fantastical or supernatural element to the story.  Because it's me.  So in a sense this story would be a double subversion, both of a typical fantasy story and of the typical gay story.  No gay angst or bully-story (I hate bully stories, with utmost apologies to anyone who has ever been bullied).  And absolutely NO.  LESBIAN.  PARENTS.  I will save my rants on the gay-lit genre for other posts; suffice to say that, as my last post hints at, a major part of my inspiration for writing comes from being annoyed at how stories are all written this way, when I would much rather someone tried writing it that way.

Essentially, that is how I decided on a recently-outed lesbian high-schooler with a vampire brother.

Sometimes, writing it easy.  The story is just there, burning like an overly poetic flame, and you have to dash to capture it all on paper before it burns out.  Yes, I really do mean paper.  I feel like I think better with paper.  This feeling rarely lasts for more than a week, which is one of the reasons I have trouble with longer works.

The first draft is insane.  You just write.  It doesn't matter if it makes sense; what matters is that it is right.  Censorship is not your friend.

Then, after a rest to ease my cramped wrist, I type it up as the second draft.  My first draft of the vamp story was 30 pages written, a bit over the 5k word limit, so some things had to be cut.  Some scenes had to be cut anyway, because they had nothing to do with the plot; or, at the very least, incorporated into other scenes that were relevant. 

After that comes what is more of a draft number 2.5 than a third draft.  Read through what you typed, fix typing errors, delete pointless sentences, clean up the prose a bit.  Make it presentable.  Because that's the next step.  Presenting it. 

You can look at my old posts to see how bad this is for me.  It really is just pure cowardice on my part, though.

You see, if no one ever sees anything I have written, I can congratulate myself on being an unrecognized genius, and indulge in all sorts of fantasies of what being a famous genius author would be like.  I disgust myself, sometimes, I really do.

If, on the other hand, I do show it to some select, trusted, friends, and they tell me "Yeah, it's good, but you need to elaborate on that plot point and add some description, I only know what one character looks like, and where are they anyway?" and I take their good suggestions and finish up the story, and send it off to the publisher...I get fifty bucks and a published work.  I gain a foothold in the publishing world, so that all this writing I do might mean something someday (stories don't mean anything if you got no one to tell them to, and all that).  At the very least, I get my first rejection note and attain my first milestone on the way to being a published author.  That seems the more likely scenario, because you just know that some 14-year-old girl is going to submit a poem about wanting to kill herself, which trumps vampire junkies by a college student.  With apologies to anyone who has ever written poetry about wanting to kill themself. 

The point of the last paragraph was to say that a real rejection letter is better than dreams of grandeur.  Right?

Then again, I suppose the point of having dreams is to follow them, and no one ever said that would be easy.

The Crossdressing Epic

This issue annoys me so much I can't sleep until I rant about it.

It all started with Scott Westerfeld's Leviathan, which I am currently reading because I feel obligated too, and because I might get money for writing a review of it.  If you don't know, it is about an alternate history where WWI is fought with giant steampunk mechas and genetically engineered mutant creatures.  It is a really cool setup, and it is a shame that it is ruined by completely awful protagonists.

To be fair, the boy protagonist is not so bad, and by the time he is standing on top of a running mecha while being shot at, trying to cut loose a signal flare using his dead father's sword...yeah, he's cool.  The girl is the one I want to punch in the face.

The problem with crossdressing epics is that, rather than providing a unique and intriguing view of gender roles, they fall far too easily into the trap of relying on gender stereotypes.  Second, every sentence devoted to the girl worrying about someone discovering she is a girl, is a sentence in which nothing happens.  I don't care if she is supposed to be a strong female protagonist, and a role model proving that girls can do stuff (if they dress like boys), I want to go back to the flaming sword mecha fight.

The girls who follow this path are all luckily tall, skinny, and flat-chested, but none are actually lesbians (or trans, for that matter).  Because lesbians did not exist before the 60's, and certainly none of them tried crossdressing.  I am not saying that the heroines of crossdressing epics should necessarily be gay; I'm just saying that it seems to never even have been considered.

Furthermore, CE's act all progressive and feministy, but again, why is being a boy the only option?  Why can't she wear skirts and be married and be a devious manipulator, the power behind the throne?  Or a spy?  Or a badass housewife?  Because people want to read a typical boy's adventure story, but be feministy and include a female protagonist who is not a princess that needs to be rescued.  Or they are too lazy to come up with an original plot. 

This is another problem of society marches on, and literature stays stuck in a rut, blindly following the patterns of novels from before and ignoring the plots of real life.  Sexism does still exist today; a woman in a typically male profession will face it, leading to complications more interesting and relevant than trying to avoid being seen naked.  At least Westerfeld does have historical context.  Though considering girls have a lower body mass, you'd think they would be more in demand on bioengineered airships...

Which brings us back to my original complaint of wanting to punch that particular protagonist in the face.  Her only defining character trait is being a girl.  Otherwise, she behaves just like your average dopey farmboy protagonist (I have no idea if she actually comes from a farm or not).  Westerfeld tries to compensate by assuring the audience that she is in fact a very good flyer.  However, it comes off as insecurity in writing a female protagonist.  She just has to be really super good at what she does.  You know, to prove the sexes are equal and all.

I did track down a quote from Discworld that might help potential writers of CE's:  "in an age before unisex fashions, trousers meant 'man' and skirts meant 'woman'. Trousers plus high-pitched voice meant 'young man'. People didn't expect anything else, and saw what they expected to see."

Which makes complete sense; if a girl is doing something so unthinkable, why is she so worried someone will think it?  She's tall, skinny, and flat-chested, so what's to worry about?  Get back to the plot already!

I'm Proud To Be Minnesotan

On Sunday I went to Twin Cities Gay Pride.  (Or LGBTQA...whatever).  This is the first time in my life I have attended a gay event of this magnitude, and the first time in my hometown.

My brother's reaction:  "Yeah, I think I'll sit out."
My dad's reaction:  "Just don't go running off to the Gay 90's  (local gay bar)."
My mom's reaction:  "Sounds fun.  Maybe I'll come too."

Here I have to add a little tangent about books (because it's me, after all).  One of my biggest frustrations with gay-themed teen books from the nineties is that they are all coming out stories (or staying in stories, but those seem to be a fading trend), and very few of them offer any sort of picture of what it is actually like to be out and gay to your family.  In other words, I'm sailing blind.

So to my brother I can say, It's okay, I don't blame you for trying to retain your heterosexual male dignity, to my dad, Umm, I'm not of age and you know I don't like to drink anyway, and to my mom...well.

I had agreed to meet with a friend from college at Pride, and I like to keep my college life and home life separate.  It's just so weird when they intersect.  I was also in my independent teenager  mode, and did not want my mom in my life any more than was absolutely necessary.

But.

How many gay people do you know whose parents are not only willing but actually want to go to Pride with them?  At least among my immediate circle of friends, the answer is depressingly few.  The world is changing, but it has not changed so much that I can take my family's unconditional love and acceptance for granted.  I know too many people in too many situations.

So in the end, I did go with my mom (I needed her to drive me anyway).  Because it is not just the gays that we are celebrating at Pride.  It is our place in the world, a place where we can be free to be who we are, and the people who make that world possible - not just gay people, but our neighbors and friends and families who love us.

It gets better.

Not even in the course of your individual life, but the enitre course of the world is getting better.  Let's stick around and see just how good it can get.

Quoth the Rowling, Pottermore

Sorry about the title.  Couldn't resist.  Despite which, I still don't have a clue what Pottermore is.

I am the Harry Potter generation, defined here as someone who 1) waited for a letter from Hogwarts, 2) went to a midnight book release.  So I read it.  I liked it.

Then it became popular.

If HP had not become so popular, I can see two ways my life might be different.  1)  I would like it more than I do now, treasure it for its nostalgia purposes, immerse myself in the world.  Or 2)  I'd stick it in the back of the shelf and forget all about it.

As far as stories go, it is rather forgettable.  There's a kid who discovers he has special powers and has to stop some evil dude from doing evil stuff.  The characters are rather bland, rather stupid at times, and the magic stuff (wands and broomsticks etc.), which start out as delightfully whimsical, become more narmy as the series grows darker.

That last paragraph could get me burned at the stake.  Or at least accused of being a snob (why yes, I am still bitter).

Stop hating on Harry, he says.  It's just a kid's book.

Just a kid's book.

So too is Warriors.  So too is Artemis Fowl.  So too is almost...every...single...frickin'...thing...by DIANA WYNNE JONES.  And did I mention Narnia?

The problem of the matter is that Harry hits puberty.  Narnia is like a roller coaster; you must be less than this high to ride.  Rowling, with a book series that spanned seven years, had two choices: She could pretend puberty does not exist and keep her target demographic as 8-10 year olds.  Or she could anticipate her aging readers and transition her books to YA.

And that, I think, is why HP became so popular.  It aged with the readers.  Not well (see Potter Puppet Pals Wizard Angst), but it is the only series I can think of that started out with a child protagonist and ended with a teenager that was written to act like a teenager.  While most other books have to rely on new generations after the old one ages, the HP generation stuck with those books.

I can't think of many other reasons HP became so popular, though  I suppose I could hazard a few more guesses...

-The action took place in a school.  Everyone knows about schools.  But this was a magic school, so it was interesting.  Fantasy stories have a tendency to take the reader away from the familiar and recognizeable.  Lots of forests.  Castles.  Places most people don't live.

-The magic was very generic.  Nix had his light magic (or bells, but Sabriel isn't as nostalgic to me), Duane had her mystical Speech, Jones had...whatever Jones had.  But to the average layperson, the connotations that go with the word "magic" are still waving a wand and mumbling a few funny words.  So an ordinary person (for want of a better term) could pick up HP and recognize the magic.

And that's it.  I mean, does anyone really care about any of the characters' personalities?  Besides Sirius, that is?  No, because the characters simply play their roles as Designated Hero with a saving-people thing, Designated Sidekick who backs him up in everything, and Designated Smart One who dispenses plot-relevant information and gives advice for the hero to ignore.  Oh, and Designated Love Interest to...be fallen in love with.  Though in all fairness, Ginny seems to be able to do a better job getting Harry to listen to reason than Hermione does.

I did not realize I was quite this bitter.  I know that the world is not fair, and that Jones, who is the superior being, will never be as rich or famous as Rowling.  And I wouldn't want her too.  I would rather keep her private, personal, something I can form an instant connection over with a person.  And I have resigned myself to the fact that HP has altered the face of fantasy forever.  If I say I like fantasy, I usually hear a response like "Oh, like Harry Potter?  Like Lord of the Rings?  Like Terry Pratchett?"  And the answer is no; like Sarah Monette and Diana Wynne Jones and Galen Beckett and Meredith Ann Pierce.  Books by people who like magical stuff, but don't feel bound by genre constraints or the expectations of the readers. 

Dammit, I guess I am a snob.  I still remember those few years when fantasy was mine, and the choice was to feel like a freak for reading about magic, or to be proud of being different.  So when the public eye turned on my secret niche, the only choice was to seek deeper obscurity.  Or maybe I'm just irked that for most people, HP is the definition of fantasy, when it is so much more than that.