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.
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Thursday, July 28, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, July 25, 2011
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.
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.
Friday, July 15, 2011
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.
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.
Sunday, July 3, 2011
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!
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!
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