Continue reading »]]> So we know I obsess a little about fairy tales. It’s true.

What? Both are dangerous. Both can be weapons.

Have you wanted to read some of the canon tales and not known where to begin?

• SurLaLune Fairy Tales has classic tales, as well as poetry and essays inspired by tales.
• D.L. Ashliman has curated an extensive collection of tales at his site Folktexts.
• Better Know a Child Ballad is a rad blog that’s going through summarizing and discussing the Child’s Ballads, viz. where all the badass Celtic ladies go to rumble.

Are you under the misapprehension that fairy tales are about passive white princesses?

• Seanan McGuire knows the score. Oh yes.
• Also, she has rad series of stories coming out in digital form that are a fairy tale police procedural using Aarne-Thompson types as police codes!
• No idea what the Aarne-Thompson Index is? Educate yourself.

Have you, like me, wondered “What’s with all the mutilated women in fairy tales?”

• Here’s a great essay by fairy tale scholar Midori Snyder that ponder just that.
• Speaking of monstrous doings, this series of BBC Reith lectures from Marina Warner, “Managing Monsters,” discusses monsters, pop culture, and gender.

Are you a writer of tales who wishes they only had somewhere to submit their work?

Here’s a few markets that dig the tales:

• Ellen Datlow is editing an anthology of horror tales called Fearful Symmetries. If your tale is horrific enough, it might belong here. But hurry up: deadline’s May 31st, 2013!
• The Fairy Tale Review does lovely themed issues.
• Poet? Try out Goblin Fruit. For this submission period, the deadline’s June 1st.

Continue reading »]]> Also, spoilers. SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, I’m gonna go ahead and ruin everything forever, so watch it before you read this post.

*

Moving on.

I could and will in the future talk about active characters, which I find the most important reason why Oblivion is a good movie, but frankly I need to see it again to talk really coherently about that, and it just went out of the theater down the street in favor of Star Trek, so instead I will talk about symbolic props.

I used to be very, very afraid of using symbolic props. I thought they’d just be cheesy. It felt like Trying to Make my Writing Meaningful, which seems like it would be overblown and silly.

But no, symbolic props and I have totally made up and stuff. By a “symbolic prop,” I mean an object that stands for a character want or larger concept. Bonus points if it stands for different things at different times during the story. Symbolic props are perhaps the most powerful in film and comics, because you can insert a visual without having to talk about it at length or draw special attention to it.

So for real now, spoilers.

Symbolic Props in Oblivion

The plant

Jack has a little plant he’s nurtured in a can. There’s a scene of him sitting on a cliff, looking down at these giant water-sucking machines that the droids protect, machines that are sucking the oceans away, the source of life on earth. Jack waters his little plant with a sterile plastic pouch of water. Later, he tries to give the plant to Vic, who drops it over the side of the house-on-a-pole because she’s desperate to keep everything under control and follow the rules until they’re supposedly joining the others in two weeks. Anything from the outside is considered “dirty,” possibly irradiated, and certainly Not Allowed. It’s a moment that made my heart drop; emotionally effective because the plant represents both characters’ wants so well.

Water

In general, water plays a really interesting role in this film. While it’s not a “prop” per se, it does a lot. It’s the resource the Tet is sucking off the planet. It’s the lake by Jack’s cabin contrasted to the rest of the world. It’s the swimming pool that’s at the house, wherein Jack has dreams of his forgotten wife. The water of the pool has become the water of his subconscious.

Jack’s NY Yankees cap

Jack takes out his Yankee’s cap as soon as he gets down on earth’s surface. It represents his fascination with Old Earth culture; it also very literally says he puts on a different hat when he’s on Earth’s surface. He’s able to visualize the old earth ball game when he has the hat on. Later he stows his hat at his cabin retreat when he goes off to see the Tet, knowing he’ll never be back.

The book

The book Jack takes from the New York Library represents his curiosity, as well as the heart of his convictions. The lines he reads in the book, the lines that prompt him to take the book with him, are the same lines that he repeats in the very face of the alien menace: “And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, For the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods.” (This same line comes up in an episode of Doctor Who when the Doctor is looking a giant evil thing what may or may not be Satan in the face. Just saying.) The point is in terms of writing: It’s not just that Jack memorizes that quote, it’s that he has a relationship with the book, which is a physical manifestation of that idea/quote.

The Empire State Building viewer

This is the opening image of the film; Old New York as seen from the top of the Empire State Building. Not only is the viewer symbolic of the old world, but it’s a symbol for Jack’s proposal to Julia. The exact spot where he proposed to her years ago is the (now ruined) spot where “he” asks her: “Who are you?” and she reveals that she’s his wife.

The wad of gum

Jack uses a wad of gum to fix Droid 166. At that point in time, the gum represents the lack of resources from the Tet as well as Jack’s ingenuity. Later, Jack rips out the “battery” of Droid 166 because he remembers that it’s just stuck in there with a wad of gum.

Droids

Droids are very slick, like all of the technology we see. (The alien invasion: brought to you by Apple.) At the beginning of the film, we’re confronted with the danger of the droids as well as their function: the droid is about to blow up a dog, an obvious innocent. Jack steps in the way, using his magical powers of voice recognition: “Jack Harper, tech 49.” He will do the same thing to protect Julia from a droid later. Likewise, the dog scene hints at the destructive power of the droids that will come ’round later. By the end of the movie, droids have moved from being a vague nuisance and a responsibility to a fearsome enemy.

Continue reading »]]> We interrupt your regular programming to bring you a link roundup, a feature which I am hoping to run weekly (likely on Wednesdays in the future). Oblivion Part Two will go up on Monday. But now for something completely different…

This week: Disney.

If you grew up in America, you are likely to have a relationship with Disney: Love it, hate it, obsess about it, love to hate it, have embarrassed unironic love for it, have unabashed unironic love for it, throw up in your mouth a little whenever you see it, whatever.

For the record, I tend to fall into the nerdrage/mouth throw-up camp. That being said, I really do enjoy singing Disney songs. This one time I directed a Kabuki play, and the all-male cast’s anthem was “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan. As culturally incorrect as you can get, but there’s still something fabulous about blasting that song in the theater with 11 guys belting it out.

Anyway. Disney links!

Let’s start with something positive! This cosplay is pretty badass!

This post about Tiana from Racialicious encapsulates the love/hate/rage feelings I get from Disney pretty well.

You know how they were trying to make Merida from Brave all sexy and stuff for the Disney Princess collection? People aren’t so into that. Sadly, though, Disney is not listening.

The movie I love to hate the most: Beauty and the Beast. Here are some plot holes in it!

Remember that one time Disney actually tried to buy a holiday? Or rather, since they’re making a film about it, they wanted to, like, trademark it and stuff. And they thought that was okay, apparently just ’cause it came from another culture? Yeah, that time. (DID YOU CATCH THE BIT WHERE THEY WANTED TO MAKE DIA DE LOS MUERTOS CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS? BECAUSE I FIND THAT LIKE ALLCAPS RIDICULOUS.)

If you haven’t seen the Advice For Young Girls From a Cartoon Princess series from the Second City Network? Well, Ariel, Snow White, and Belle have some key advice for you.

And last but not least, did we all catch this talented youngster’s parody Disney Princess song? I think it’s adorable; I do wish that he went a little deeper with some of his points. Because there are much, MUCH deeper issues in Disney. I think he gets the closest in the Aladdin section. …Anyone up for making a Disney Prince one with me? Especially you’s folks who can sing? I have some devious ideas.

I’m sorry if I’ve wrecked anyone’s hopes and/or dreams. They were probably nebulous dreams that ended up being realized in the form of a prince ’cause that’s more convenient than figuring your shit out anyway. *cough*That is to say, sorry, here’s some adorable and only sometimes creepy pictures of Disney couples all dolled up for prom.

Post your Disney links in the comments! Sharing is Caring!

Continue reading »]]> This is Part One of a review/craft breakdown of the movie Oblivion. Happily, Part One is pretty much spoiler-free; nothing you wouldn’t see in the previews.

Directed by Joseph Kosinski, 2013

So, after seeing a whole lot of films that seemed to be written by either a team of trained monkeys with typewriters or the vast and terrible Hollywood Machine, boy was Oblivion a lovely breath of fresh air. (Apparently others disagree, but lo, I will break it down yo why this film is good.)

The film wasn’t really on my radar; I tend to roll my eyes whenever Tom Cruise is in anything. And the irony of Tom Cruise’s  Scientologist ass in a film that involves hostile alien takeover was not lost on me. Thetans eat your heart out. Cruise aside, though (and seriously, I *almost* forgot it was him), I am a huge sucker for dystopian stories. So Oblivion is right up my alley. Also, the whole damn score is by M83, orchestrated by the guy who worked with Daft Punk on the TRON: Legacy soundtrack. Also, the movie would be worth seeing in theaters for the visuals alone.

But a lot of movies have rad soundtracks and pretty visuals. I mean, that was true of TRON: Legacy,  Joseph Kosinski’s first go at film directing. But this movie had so much more going on.

So, what this movie has that so many do not:

1. Careful and strategic worldbuilding (which actually could have been slightly *more* careful at the end, but hey. It still outclassed many sci-fi releases of the past decade)
2. Here’s the kicker: Really well-designed, active characters that all had clear motivations upon which they acted.
3. Kicker No. 2: A clear “ticking clock” in every scene that drove the plot forward.
4. Nice use of symbolic props.

So many films tend to forget these, particularly number two. Seriously. It is oddly difficult to write active characters, even when you’re trying. It’s so much easier to throw big scary monsters at your characters and see how they’ll REACT.

So, let me break down the beginning, non-spoilery bit so you can see what I’m talking about.

We begin by meeting two characters:

Jack Harper and Victoria, or “Vic” Olsen. They live in a ivory tower of a fancy house on top of a giant pole that lands them well above lightning-filled doom clouds.

Thus.

Jack Harper is a mechanic. He explains his job in voice-over: He fixes the drones that repair the machines that suck up the ocean that powers the getaway vehicle (a giant tetrahedron craft called The Tet) that has all remaining humanity on it and will shortly be bound for Titan (Saturn’s moon) since Earth is wrecked (radiation, hostile aliens called Scavs) after the big ol’ war where the alien invasion force blew up the moon then invaded. (Worldbuilding, anyone?) But day-to-day, he fixes drones.

Jack Harper, played by Tom Cruise.

Vic is Jack’s controller. She stays up in the tower. She’s a line between Mission Control on the Tet and Jack; she literally watches his back for Scavs and other hazards while he does his job. She’s pretty frigging anxious to get out. At the beginning of the movie, she can’t stop thinking about how it’s two more weeks, and then they’ll go up to the Tet and be whisked off to Titan with everyone else. She’s doing her damnedest to hold it together for just two more weeks, and trying to get Jack to do the same. (Ticking clock, anyone?)

Victoria “Vic” Olsen, played by Andrea Riseborough.

Jack and Vic are in charge of a limited section of territory in between radiation zones. Hint: It’s New York. The only other things we know about Jack and Vic: They’ve had a mandatory “memory wipe” so that they cannot reveal secrets should they be captured by hostile aliens. Jack has memories of Old Earth and a woman he doesn’t know.

Vic is actively trying to get out; she’s ready to go and is doing everything she can to survive these last two weeks to Titan. Jack is trying to preserve the memories of Old Earth as much as he can before they leave. He’s also curious. And, as with any good story, today is the day something different happens.

• Major Dramatic Question: Will Jack solve the mystery of what happened to his world and who this woman is? (Will Jack be able to preserve his world?)
• Passover Question: Why is tonight different than any other night….? Well…”An object has come down in Sector 17″ is all I’ll say.

Apparently Kosinski got Tom Cruise to sign on based on the little Oblivion comic/ashcan book, and then spent a year working on the script. And to my mind, it shows! Michael Arndt, of screenwriter for Little Miss Sunshine, was among the writing team.

Other cast members include Morgan Freeman, Olga Kurylenko, That One Guy From Game of Thrones, and Xena’s Friggin’ Stunt Double.

Okay, now go see it already! Next post will be filled with Spoilery, spoilery spoilers. I plan on tracking the character motivations and symbolic props throughout the whole thing in a delightfully anal-retentive way.

Continue reading »]]> So, watching The Neverending Story* for my rad upcoming podcast, “Everything is Ruined Forever,” where we watch films from childhood and then destroy them, I was thinking about Meta.

Meta is an interesting term, because I feel like it’s often misused by people under 30, much like the term “epic.” Things that are good or nifty or rad or awesome have suddenly also become epic, which is a funny colloquial misappropriation of the term. In fact, the term epic has gained an oddly specific and scholarly meaning in video game theory, as in “epic win.” In her fascinating book Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal defines epic wins as “opportunities for ordinary people to do extraordinary things, like change or save someone’s life–every day.” (p. 247) Traditionally, epics were about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things, so I find this re-appropriation pretty dang interesting, and appropriate for our current worldview.

Actually epic.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not suggesting that we should stop using the term to mean “awesome” (which is in itself a misappropriation of a term meaning “filled with awe”). I just think it’s healthy to be aware of the original meaning. “Epic” was originally a form of poetry, specifically one that followed the exploits of a particular person over the long term, like in the Iliad and Odyssey. (Neither of which I can spell on the first go, apparently.) Were we to apply that to today’s world, things accurately describable as “epic” would include the Indiana Jones series, Batman, and the sort of generational romances that Nora Roberts writes like eight of following one particular character or family.

In the 19th-ish century, there were references to “epic theater” as a counterpoint to “dramatic/realist” theater…to me, this feels very much like Rachel Pollack’s distinction between Epic Voice and Intimate Voice in fiction. Intimate voice is found in realist fiction where we show and don’t tell. Epic voice is found in things like the beginning of A Tale of Two Cities, or One Hundred Years of Solitude, or the Bible. It emphasizes the voice of the teller, often adds a sense of grandness, and lets you know the narrator has credence. The first paragraph of Beloved is another prime example. Were we to use “epic” in this sense nowadays, we could accurately describe things with a grand voice that invoke godlike power as “epic.”

So I got a bit distracted there. Back to meta.

Meta, as we use it today outside of its specific meaning in chemistry, is not even actually a proper word. It’s a prefix, stemming from Greek. The actual Greek word has a really slippery meaning that includes “after,” “between,” “together with,” “above,” “beyond,” and/or something to do with change. Metamorphosis, anyone? But somewhere in the 19th century the meaning “beyond” took precidence, with ideas like Metaphysics, i.e. study of Things That Are Beyond the Realm of Physics.

These days, we use the meta- prefix to indicate, as the Oxford English Dictionary** puts it, “Prefixed to the name of a subject or discipline to denote another which deals with ulterior issues in the same field, or which raises questions about the nature of the original discipline and its methods, procedures, and assumptions.” (oed.com) Now, that’s a mouthful that’s a little deeper than the Urban Dictionary’s definition, “A term, especially in art, used to characterize something that is characteristically self-referential.” Meta- is not just referring to the discipline itself, but questioning the very nature of said discipline. For example, Metacognition is thinking about thinking. Metacriticism refers to critiques of criticism.

Is this pizza actually meta? Does it make us question the fundamental nature of pizza? Or is it just recursive?

The Neverending Story is “meta” because it is a story within a story about stories. In the movie, Gmork the wolf brings in meta-awareness regarding them being in a tale, and tells the movie explanation of the Nothing (i.e. people’s lack of imagination). In the book (strikes righteous pose), not only is there the OMG Bastian can go in the storybook he’s reading, and OMG the lies society tells are killing Fantastica level of meta, but there’s also the level of meta that the story Bastian tells himself about who he is once he’s inside the book literally shapes him. His gift is storytelling, but at the same time he uses it for both good and ill once in Fantastica. In the very end (mild spoilers) he has to literally mine stories in order to get himself ready to re-enter the human world. (The Picture Mine is perhaps the best metaphor*** for writing fiction, like, ever.)

The folktales from India that I’m reading at the moment are rife with meta. Metatales? There are many stories about stories, or tales in which the story the other characters are telling is like a character unto itself, as in a story that is angry and destructive because it’s not being told. One of the overall points of these types of tales is to gently make you realize that listening to stories can change you. Listening to the Ramayana, one will be spiritually affected, transformed. I’m pretty sure most religions feel this exact way about their sacred texts. I feel that way about texts that are sacred to me. (Seriously, you guys, read the BOOK of Neverending Story.) But I like the idea that the actual process of experiencing the story can change you. That’s one of the major points of A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. Being changed by stories is also why we have fandom; a thousand Whovians might agree. By the same token, it’s is why in Hebrew, the name of God is written without vowels–because the name of God is literally a magic word that has such potent powers that it’s not only blasphemous to write it out, but dangerous. This is why the Golem is awakened with a word and put to death by erasing one of its letters. This is why in the beginning, there was not God, there was a word.

Bonus content: Eddie Izzard discusses use of the word “awesome.” Also, in my OEDing, I found that the vague analogous Latin prefix to the Greek prefix Meta is…Trans. Perhaps Eddie Izzard is a…metavestite? Makes us think about clothes and gender performance because of how he wears clothes?

*And I will break down in great intellectual detail why the movie sucked butts compared to the book, but that is another story, to be told another time.

**Your library probably subscribes to the OED online. It is the best thing ever. EVER. Ever. I didn’t realize until today that I could access it through my library card number. This in itself is a reason for libraries to exist, never mind the whole “free books and media” thing.

***From the Greek Meta- (see previous long-winded definition) + -phor, “carrying”. Metaphors carry the meta.

Continue reading »]]> So, I was at a poetry class the other day (poetry! I know! It totally happened to me!) and someone there said, “I want to write fiction. How do you start?”

What a damn good question that I don’t spend nearly enough time thinking about.

To my fiction brain, poetry seems to just kind of happen to you, which I realize is a gross oversimplification of poetic craft. Perhaps one must be more calculated going into fiction…which is also a gross oversimplification. Let me try to expand.

With comics by Kate Beaton to help me explain the finer points of craft!

The seeds of fiction can be pretty dang spontaneous. Sometimes fiction starts when characters speak to you; you have a voice or a person that you can’t get out of your head. (Poets go for ecstatic mania, fiction writer for obsessive schizophrenia? Something like that.) Sometimes fiction starts when you hear someone tell a funky anecdote and you go “ohh, there’s a short story there.” Sometimes fiction starts when you have a topic or a place you know you need to write about: Russian mail-order brides, or the Isle of Skye, or the family farm in Texas. Sometimes the seeds of fiction start from a compelling what-if question: What if I had been telekinetic in high school? What if there really IS a global conspiracy to keep the American government under the control of corporations? What if we could share dreams, literally, when sleeping? What if Jesus had been reborn as a gay Mexican boy?

I find freewriting an important place to let that stuff out. Subconscious dribble turns into stories. Sometimes exercises turn into stories. Italo Calvino called the Tarot “a machine for generating stories,” and I often play with Tarot cards while freewriting…but that is another post, to be told another time.

Today, I want to talk about what happens after you have that initial moment of recognition: “Ohh, that’s a story.”

Say you just heard your friend talking about how her mother sent her newspaper clippings about women who got raped or attacked in the mail all through college. No letter. No note. Just these creepy stories. That story instinct buzzes inside you at this, and you want to do something about it, but you’re not sure what.

First: Ditch reality.

A rookie mistake I’ve both committed and seen other folks commit, especially when writing fiction set in this world with nothing supernatural happening: justifying mediocre choices because, the author cries indignantly, “That’s the way it really happened!” This isn’t reality. It’s fiction. What happens in reality doesn’t necessarily make good fiction, and the catharsis of fiction rarely extends to reality. So, give these characters some space to not be your friend and her mom, but to spring from those seeds.

Okay, so maybe not like this…

Second: What do your characters want?

In our pretend story, we’ve got two main characters so far: mom and daughter. Exploring what they WANT is gonna be fuel for your story. Does the daughter want independence? Maybe she’s annoyed by her mother’s persistent article-sending and does reckless stuff to compensate. Does she want safety? Maybe her mother’s articles secretly terrify her and therefore she is afraid to talk to people or do much of anything. What does mom want? Is she lonely/does she want her daughter back in the house? Does she want safety for her child? Is she afraid her daughter will get raped because of some past trauma in her own life? Is she just really controlling, and if so, why does she want control so bad?

Character want is more obvious, quite frankly, in longer fiction than in shorter fiction. You can track the wants of characters in Pride and Prejudice or The Master and Margarita or Anne of Green Gables pretty well–each novel has a several characters who all WANT something. In Pride and Prejudice, Darcy wants Elizabeth. Elizabeth wants Darcy, but also wants independence within her family structure. In The Master and Margarita, Berlioz wants to prove his secular reality to the world; Satan wants to expose people’s selfish idiocy, and Margarita wants love and revenge against those who’ve wronged her lover. (The narrator actually has a direct discussion about what Margarita wants, and says, “Evidently, however, she spoke the truth in saying that she wanted the Master, not the Gothic house, not a private garden, and not money. She loved him. She spoke the truth.”) In Anne of Green Gables, Anne wants a rich, romantic life that lives up to her imagination.

In terms of dramatic structure, distilling your character’s wants can lead you to find something called the Major Dramatic Question. The question that, when it is answered (or decisively not answered,) the story is over. Will Anne find her way? Will The Master and Margarita be happily re-united? Will Satan be foiled? Will Elizabeth and Darcy get married?

Third: What does that want LOOK LIKE?

So, props. I was used to props from theater; you don’t have a prop on stage unless it’s doing something in the scene, and it’s extra bonus points if the prop can be symbolic or hold visual weight: Yorick’s skull, anyone?

Props also apply in fiction: not so symbolically blatant as film or practically chosen as theater, but hey. Oftentimes there are things or people that represent what a character wants.

Take Elizabeth Bennett, for example. She wants independence within her big ol’ family. What does that look like? Marrying Mr. Darcy. Darcy becomes a symbol of Elizabeth’s wants, and a nicely mutable one considering all the times he’s got a giant stick up his ass and Lizzie’s re-calculating if he is the answer to all her problems or not.

Margarita has a prophetic dream in which she sees herself flying over the landscape to a shack where her lover resides; that’s why she’s so eager to use the magic ointment she’s offered to go flying and meet…well, Satan, but it was a nice try. The ointment is tied right into Margarita’s desires, and is a nice concrete object. The dream helps her actions make sense and help us believe she’s acting rationally.

In Anne of Green Gables, Anne freaks right out about puffed sleeves on a dress: a nice, concrete metaphor for that rich romantic life she so desires.

In our hypothetical story, those newspaper clippings are a GREAT prop to play with. Perhaps the mother comes to visit the daughter, who’s hiding out in her dorm room with, like, every article posted on the wall by her bed, and Mom realizes how much she’s freaking out her child. Perhaps the daughter’s final act of rebellion is to NOT open the letter and toss it out or burn it with a cigarette she’s smoking at a sketchy frat party.

Fourth: Why NOW?

Here’s how *not* to do it!

So, that roar of ignition for your story: the moment it begins. In dramatic structure, it’s sometimes called the Passover Question, as in: Why is this night different than any other night? Why is this moment different? There has to be a tipping point that gets things started.

In Pride and Prejudice, the story starts when Bingley moves into Netherfield Park (and the Bennetts hear about it, prompting the daughter-hocking to begin in earnest). In The Master and Margarita, the story begins when Satan, that old catalyst, comes to town. In Anne of Green Gables, the story starts on the day when Anne comes to live with Marilla in Green Gables.

In our story, perhaps it’s the day Mom is finally coming to visit, and the daughter has to hide signs of the lesbian relationship she’s been having with her roommate. Or Mom’s visiting her daughter at college for the first time, and we’ve been following the story from Mom’s POV, and she has aforementioned “oh crap I’m making my daughter a completely paranoid shut-in” moment. Or it’s the night the daughter goes out for the first time and something traumatic does or doesn’t happen. Or it’s the night the daughter is actually attacked at a sketchy frat party and either she gets raped or dissuades her attackers. Maybe she fights off potential rapists and then goes home and rips up all the articles her mom keeps sending. There are all kinds of different stories to choose from here.

Also, this happens.

A final thought: In the same way that I must read more poetry if I want to write poems (and make it specific: watch videos of slam and/or go to slams if I want to write slam poetry), if you want to write fiction you must read it. Want to write short stories? Read short stories. Want to capture the aesthetic of Russian literature? Read Russian literature. Want to retell fairy tales? Read a lot of freakin’ fairy tales. Read what you want to make, and steal its tricks. As Picasso said, “Good artists copy; great artists steal.”

Continue reading »]]> So, I don’t really read superhero comics, not from the Big Two, at any rate. Never really got into the intricate plots, and while I like the characters, I was never so attached to any of them that I felt the need to religiously follow their stories.

But I do like a good superhero. I’m using the term *very* loosely here. For inclusion on this list, all the person needed to have was some supernatural power unavailable to mere humans. Heroism optional.

After last week’s post on characters who you’d want to be/characters who you want to objectify, I thought I’d explore Option C: Characters who are awesome, and who have great stories, but who you wouldn’t ever really want to be.

 10. Christian Walker, Powers

Powers, written by Brian Michael Bendis, art by Michael Avon Oeming, published by Marvel Icon (originally Image)

Powers chronicles the investigations of former superhero Christian Walker and his human police partner, Deena Pilgrim. Walker has left his superpowered past behind, but it comes up to bite him in the butt fairly frequently, from media scandals to LARPers playing his character and then getting gruesomely murdered. Awkward.

9. Tony Chu, Chew

Chew, written by John Layman, art by Rob Guillory, published by Image

“Tony Chu is almost always hungry, and almost never eats. Here’s why: Tony Chu is a cibopath. That means he can take a bite of an apple, and get a feeling in his head about what tree it grew from, what kinds of pesticides were used on the crop, and when it was harvested. Or he could eat a hamburger, and flash onto something else entirely. ” (from issue #1)

Yep. For every food aside from beets, Tony Chu can tell who made it, where it came from, and if it’s animal, how it died. Tony’s a cop in a world rife with black market chicken, rogue FDA agents, and lots and lots of murder. So here’s the unfortunate part: humans are animals. Tony’s boss is a jerk. Tony gets to cannibalize corpses for his job. I mean, I guess luckily he doesn’t have to eat *much* to get an impression… Eeeeew.

8. Barry Ween, The Adventures of Barry Ween

The Adventures of Barry Ween, written and drawn by Judd Winnick, Oni Press

 Barry Ween is supernaturally smart. He’s also ten. He’s very much aware of how smart he is, but how dumb everyone else is by comparison, and therefore gets away with a lot. He’s *also* very much aware of his parents’ mortalities and health conditions, his friends’ flaws, and the alien menaces that regularly threaten the earth. So…in a way he’s kind of like the Doctor, except instead of reacting to intense cleverness with childlike optimism, he’s pretty much foul-mouthed and cynical as hell.

7. Night Owl, Watchmen

Watchmen, written by Alan Moore, art by Dave Gibbons, published by DC

Secretly, any of Alan Moore’s characters could have gone on this list. So why Night Owl? Well, he’s the only one of the Watchmen who’s a) not completely deranged and b) still taking his job seriously after all these years. He’s an idealist. He’s also a sad shell of a man who has to dress in his work outfit in order to have sex. I mean, I get roleplay as kink, but roleplaying as yourself…? Actually, come to that, I think Batman and Catwoman are in the same boat, as I recall from Catwoman…. Anyway, I’m just saying, perhaps Comedian had a better attitude? It’s tough being an idealist in a world that’s gone to hell.

6. Ragdoll, Secret Six

Secret Six, written by Gail Simone, art by Nicola Scott among others, published by DC

Ragdoll is the wackiest of the “C-list” superhero team, The Secret Six. Ragdoll is genderless and weirdly jointed, and dresses in a sort of Harlequin-on-hard-drugs outfit. They provide comic relief for the team, but have moments of kicking some pretty righteous ass. And although they could have easily slipped into being the Annoying Comic Sidekick, Ragdoll holds their own on the team and is charming much more so than annoying.

5. Delerium, Sandman

Sandman, written by Neil Gaiman, art by a wide variety of folks, published by Vertigo

Delerium is the youngest of the eternal godlike beings known as the Endless. We know she used to be Delight. And now she is Delerium. And that’s about it. She’s a de facto patron saint of the mad, and may be the most powerful of the Endless, although she has a hard time stringing two thoughts together. She speaks in rainbow speech bubbles, and sometimes gets distracted and turns into butterflies. Don’t catch her in a bad mood, though, if you value your sanity.

4. Crazy Jane, Doom Patrol

Doom Patrol, written by Grant Morrison and later Rachel Pollack, drawn by Richard Case et al, published by DC

First off, the entirety of the Doom Patrol are not really people you’d want to be. They’re all pretty sad or broken or disfigured or so occult as to be unapproachable. They all have difficulty either with other people, with hanging out in their own skins, or both. Crazy Jane takes the cake, though, in my opinion. She’s got many many many personalities, some of whom have superpowers, some of whom do not. She can’t control who’s driving at any given time. She can be really sweet, or really scary. She’s definitely no one to mess with, especially psychically. She has broken many a thing that’s tried to take over her mind(s).

3. The Maxx, The Maxx

The Maxx, written and drawn by Sam Keith, published by Image, re-released by Wildstorm (apparently)

Like most of my favorite comics, I am not entirely sure what happens in The Maxx. The Maxx himself is a Jungian nightmare creature who is trying to sort his psychological shit out while also being a large purple rabbitmonster. He’s also the protector/spirit animal/shaman guide of the Julie, who is sort of the protagonist? This is a damn cool series with shamanism, Keith’s trippy art, and weird weird psychological allegories about trauma. But like I said, often I’m not sure what the hell is happening at any given moment.

2. Desolation Jones, Desolation Jones

Desolation Jones, written by Warren Ellis, arted by J.H. Williams III, published by Wildstorm

“Because I tell you, I’m sick to the back teeth of this shit.”

So when you get exposed to deadly radiation you get to be a rad superhero, right? Technically, that’s what happened to Desolation Jones. He’s the result of the British government experimenting on folks trying to turn them super. He’s also a sad, stick-thin, impotent guy who flies in the face of the Hulks and Spidermans of the world. He hates sunlight and is more or less completely depigmented. And has a fierce drug habit. But he somehow manages to kick ass and take names. So there you go.

1. Johnny, a.k.a. ‘Nny, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac

Johnny the Homicidal Maniac, written and drawn by Jhonen Vasquez, published by Slave Labor Graphics

Superhero? Whaaa? Well, for one, ‘Nny has a supernatural ability of sorts, or at least he’s a supernatural pariah. Thus all the murders without getting caught. And while he’s an unrepentant murderer and decidedly not heroic as we think of it…I think he’s a classic anti-hero, in that by his evil he accidentally does good. His mania drives him to kill, but (spoilers) he’s actually saving humanity from the depths of madness and evil that live in his basement. The world needs Johnny. Heck, I think everyone needs a little ‘Nny in their heads, a personified evil that keeps true evil from spilling out.

***

Okay, my dears, who’d I forget? Tell us in the comments, love.

Continue reading »]]> When I wrote about subjectivity and objectivity, I wanted to follow it up with this post.

I defined subjectivity as seeing from inside a character’s head–a close view from their perspective. Objectivity is what is “really happening” outside of any characters’ heads.

Subject and object are a whole different bag.

Grammatically, the subject of the sentence is the thing that’s doing the action. The object of the sentence is the thing that’s having the action done to it.

For example:

Buffy staked the vampire.

Mario rescued the princess.

Scott Pilgrim wailed on his jet red-guitar.

Grandma got run over by a reindeer. (Or, in active voice: A reindeer ran over Grandma.)

Sometimes there’s even an indirect object or a supporting clause.

Jayne offered Vera to Mal, even though she were his favorite gun.

So why the grammar lesson? Because I think it helps us understand subject versus object when it comes to perspective. I want to get to that tricky little word that gets overused and misused so frequently….Objectification.

While this is not an all-encompassing definition, objectification can be defined as making a character or person into the passive object of a story rather than the active participant or agent. In other words, an objectified character is one to whom stuff is done, rather than them doing stuff on their own.

Feel the power of the male gaze. FEEL IT!

In terms of bodies, though, objectification more than that. It’s making the body from a vehicle for a person to an object, a thing devoid of its own agenda. In the USA, objectification is more often seen applied to women’s bodies, and often from a male point of view. (For some reason, lesbians are not big on objectification. Perhaps they’re looking for their partners to be…women? rather than sex objects?)

The male gaze in comics is beautifully deconstructed in The Hawkeye Initiative, a collection of illustrations of our favorite male archer trying out all the female poses. Morgan Jordahl also shows us why comics are silly for not holding male and female characters to the same standards:

Butt-window. Yep. Find out why.

In simplistic terms, the world gets broken down into people who you want to be and people who you want to fuck. Reverse-engineer that, and it turns out this worldview characterizes YOU as a heterosexual male who is confused by people who don’t fit into either category (i.e. most queer people, any women who are not trying to be pretty for them.) I don’t know about y’all, but even were I a heterosexual man, that’s not exactly who I’d want to be.

And yet this happens all the time, and my favorite genre, comics, are wicked guilty of it! Especially in the mainstream. Indie comics gave us the Bechdel test, among other things.

After DC rebooted its universe for the New 52 last year, there was some very well-deserved outcry about a few of the titles’ portrayal of female characters, namely Catwoman and Starfire. Laura Hudson’s article on Comics Alliance does more and better explaining than I care to at the moment. I want to talk specifically about Catwoman.

First off, let me tell you a story. At MoCCA, I was working the Goddard table with Rachel Pollack, a long-time DC writer. A woman came up to the table because she recognised Rachel from DC. Turns out, she was Ann Nocenti, writer for Catwoman. I had a momentary brain-fart and forgot that Judd Winnick wrote the beginning of Catwoman, so I asked her what she thought of the first issue. “Well, I wrote it,” she said, meaning Issue Zero, which I haven’t actually read. This led me to, in my misunderstanding, asking about the first page of the first issue. I’m sure my phrasing was a little…abrasive. “Did you really write for her face to be out of the frame?” So, we figured out then that she hadn’t written Issue One. But still: she got very defensive then, saying things like “It’s a sexy comic. It’s about women running around in catsuits.” “There’s nothing wrong with T&A.” and “I guess I’m kind of anti-feminist, then.”

And then she left, obviously in no mood to talk feminism or gender in comics.

So, to show what I was talking about in terms of Catwoman:

So, presumably Selena Blair, i.e. Catwoman, is getting dressed and busting out of her…house…right before it gets raided (and explodes, if I remember correctly). Here’s what I see going on on this page:

• In no panel to we see Catwoman’s complete head or face.
• In every panel, we do see her red bra (the only thing with significant color).
• The conversation is clipped words, seemingly incomplete thoughts, although we do also get internal monologue from Selena.

The overall effect is that Catwoman is an object, not a person. This is helped by the fact that we never see those cats again. Seriously. Catwoman is like the least responsible cat owner ever in the new 52.

Want more? Check out Geekerific’s Trade Secrets! podcast on the first trade of Catwoman New 52.

Objectification check! Here are some of the art choices that make someone into a subject or an object:

• Framing: Can you see the characters’ face, hands, or eyes?
• Where they’re looking: Is the character looking at the camera? Down? Right at another character? What does their gaze say about their attitude and frame?
• Pose: Are they in an explicitly sexual pose? Are they *posing* for the viewer at all, or in a position that’s relevant to what they’re actually doing?

But don’t take my word for it! What’s your take on this? When do you see objectification happening, and why?

Continue reading »]]> This weekend has been Exciting Times in the land of Anne Bean.

I have traveled to New York City for the first time, navigated the subway system all by myself with only occasional mishaps, and had a fun time aggressively jaywalking (how a Seattle girl gets cheap thrills). This was all in service to the grander goal of attending MoCCA Fest (a.k.a. Museum of Comics and Cartoon Art), a rad indie comics con in Manhattan.

I was attending in two capacities: One, to check out the con and two, to be an ambassador for the MFA program at Goddard College, which seems to be the only MFA program in the nation that has a degree in writing comics. “Writing the graphic novel,” they call it, and in terms of your work being a large publishable chunk that terms is accurate. I basically got to spend two days chilling at a cool con with my advisers,Susan Kim and Rachel Pollack, who are awesome and fascinating people.

At least one person snickered ’cause they thought it said “Goddamn College.” But then, I flew across the country to rep it, so clearly I have a great opinion of it.

Here’s a short list of rad people and books who I saw/talked to/checked out:
(Assort that as you will. I mostly talked to people and checked out books, but the other way around isn’t out of the question either.)

• First Second Press, who publishes not only Susan Kim’s graphic novels, but really quality graphic novels of many varieties: Gene Luen Yang’s American Born Chinese, Ottaviani and Myrick’s Feynman, and Lucy Knisley’s Relish: My Life in the Kitchen are just a few of their titles. Also, I heard Lucy Knisley speak about her work, which was great. Some comics prof once told her that writing about food was “cheating.” Goodness knows why. But anyway, damn the man; she showed them!
• Top Shelf comics…second to Archaia, these guys put out some frigging attractive books. The design, binding, and texture of the cover are always fitting and delicious. Also, they have a lovely line of comics that are, like, actually for kids.
• Also, apparently Pantheon’s graphic novel line is like Every Classic Graphic Novel ever made. By “classic graphic novel” I mean “thing that you recommend to your friends who don’t read comics to prove that the genre is literary.” That being said, it’s a great lineup and a worthwhile reading list for anyone.
• Scott C! He is a swell guy as well as a sweet illustrator. I bought his Book of Great Showdowns. If you are a film nerd at all, you will be deeply amused.
• Also I chatted with Maki Naro of Strip Search. I thought I saw Monica Ray, but it was apparently a very good Doppleganger, which makes me glad I didn’t shout not her name and/or “Strip search!” at her. Would’ve been awkward.

There was much more. There’s always much more at cons. My favorite bit, though, was being able to hang out and talk shop with rad indie comics creators. There’s nothing like it.

Continue reading »]]> Since I am neck deep in revisions right now, I figured I would write about a specific chunk of craft:

Subjectivity.

What is it?

It’s a way of getting into a character’s head in so that the audience can see, not objective reality (whatever that is), but the reality that the character lives in.

This exists in all genres. As a only occasional poet, I’d argue that poetry can easily be the most subjective of the genres, but then poetry is only sometimes concerned with story, and more often concerned with what my brilliant poet friend Shae calls recreating a specific vibratory, emotional experience for the reader. Getting on a wavelength together, if you will. Being in each other’s heads.

Fiction can also be quite subjective, especially when it has close psychic distance or an intimiate voice. To me, though, the most interesting experiences in subjectivity come in film. Film is supposedly an objective genre: the unfeeling camera’s eye. Of course, as early as Georges Melies folks were messing with the objectivity of the camera’s eye. Still, subjectivity requires a finesse of effects in film.

In an obvious way, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon is a classic of subjective film. The audience gets the same story three ways from three different characters; what seems like a simple story is not so simple. It’s a mystery and a whodunnit, and the audience’s concept of who is innocent or guilty changes several times during the film.

Alex Trebeck and Jesse Ventura guest star as Men in Black in “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space”

In a silly way, the X-Files Episodes “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” and “Bad Blood” both involve characters recounting the same events in different ways. I think “Jose Chung’s From Outer Space” is an episode that any writer should watch because it is about a writer trying to gather some kind of objective truth out of a mess of subjective accounts from people. It also dances an interesting dance between the supposedly objective intro before the credits and the subjective accounts from everyone involved.

In “Bad Blood,” even the characters change depending on who’s telling the story. Luke Wilson’s small-town cop character in handsome and intelligent in Scully’s version; in Mulder’s version he’s Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel, complete with buck teeth (“He had a slight overbite!” Mulder declared when Scully calls him on it.) and lines like, “Y’all must be the gov’ment people!”

At the end of that episode, though, they go back to the town and we get an “objective” view of the situation.

X-Files is interesting to me in general in terms of subjectivity and objectivity because we the viewers get to see the aliens, lake monsters, fluke men (guhhh), and even vampires in ways that Scully and Mulder don’t. We have seen like five or ten times the aliens that Mulder has. That being said, so much of the filming is done in from someone’s perspective as part of a recounting that objective truth is difficult to determine. I’ve watched the whole show, and frankly I’m still not sure the single truth of what actually happened to Mulder’s sister. (I know, they supposedly explained it. But that was hard to swallow for me considering the large amount of subjective data we get throughout the show. I mean, is Alex Trebeck also a Man in Black?)

On a less immediately obvious level, Black Swan is an incredibly subjective film. Black Swan is a movie that relies on the audience believing in Nina’s subjective world. We have to believe that what she sees is true. Otherwise, it’s a movie about a crazed ballerina slowly acting more and more paranoid until she breaks a mirror, stabs herself, and then dances Swan Lake.

Even little scenes in Black Swan are subjective. When Nina is learning how to do the Black Swan’s 32 pirouettes or whatnot, we see both her in the camera and we have a moment of the camera becoming her, and swooping around in circle after circle so that the audience can feel the disorientation that she does.

With each physical transformation or moment that she sees the double, we see reality as she does, a flash of the Double and then a flash of her own reflection helping us to see her scattered mind.

Subjectivity is also necessary in films like Fear and Loathing is Las Vegas…otherwise it’s about some questionable men in Hawaiian shirts trashing the living hell out of a hotel room. If they’re tripping balls, we the audience had best be tripping balls with them so that we understand the stakes they’re feeling in the story.

The lens subtly distorts the image here; the narrator and camera are both unreliable. And this isn’t even the part with the living wallpaper.

So, my little April Fools, I have  an exercise for you, just for funsies:

Take a story of yours, or a folktale, or a story you know really well, and rewrite it two ways: As objectively as possible, and then as subjectively as possible. What information might only make sense in one of your character’s heads, and how can you let us in? (Bonus points if you storyboard this out, for those of you who’ll touch film or comics with a ten foot pole.)

…The True Story of the Three Little Pigs! by John Scieszka & Lane Smith is a good example of the “fairy tale” version of this prompt.