June 3, 2014 · 9:43 am

Put the ‘Mal’ in Maleficent

Disney offered up a brightly wrapped package of Angelina Jolie in a family-friendly live-action updated version of Maleficent. And while it was fun, kids would probably like it, and it was visually awesome…it wasn’t exactly a “classic” tale that will endure forever.

Heck, while the original Sleeping Beauty movie isn’t one of the best, it holds strong as a fairy tale and has some of the all-time best villainess scenes: classic.

But trying to make an obviously Big Bad into a Good Gal is … tough. I’m not sure it works in every case, or even if it ought to be done. I mean, the musical “Wicked” does a great job of it (but I personally found the book to be an unnecessarily dark/sexualized story that didn’t need to be told). Maleficent… would have been a great movie if it didn’t try to interlock with the original.

So I’d like to see someone else (ok, probably still Disney…) tackle a proper Maleficent redo, one that appropriately tied in with the original without changing it.

SPOILERS BELOW

So what is the problem with this incarnation?

The curse is totally changed. In the original, Maleficent curses the baby to prick her finger by sunset on her 16th birthday, causing her to die. It is only through the intervention of the Good Fairies that the curse is transmuted to “sleep-like death.”


(forgive the bad voice acting. The words are the same, though it isn’t the real actors. Disney being so tough on copyright makes it hard to find the original.)

But this one, in an effort to make our pal Maleficent not as evil, the curse is always “sleep-like death,” and we never even find out what the third fairy blesses Aurora with! (What kind of weak-sauce curse is sleep? I mean, yeah, inconvenient, but not nearly as bad as it couldda been!)

Other things that are changed:

  • The Good Fairies are not just adorably ill-equipped to be human, they are downright incompetent and therefore deadly. In this iteration, it makes exactly zero sense that the king would entrust his cursed baby to them. Aurora’s near-death experiences would probably make a good drinking game.
  • King Stefan is a bad dude. Like, not “could be interpreted as bad from a certain perspective”–just… bad. He’s probably in need of the creepy asylum guy from Beauty and the Beast. Maybe that guy can come pick him up?
  • Maleficent is not the dragon. Instead, she has a companion who changes into the dragon. Color me disappointed. More dragons, please?
  • The true-love kisser situation. I get it; it’s modernized, and we now (for good reason!) have a lot of discomfort with kissing sleeping maidens you just met. I don’t even mind the change here, but it’s a big one.
  • The whole kingdom isn’t put to sleep. I’m probably the only one disappointed by this, but I thought it was pretty cool that the whole kingdom was affected by Maleficent’s curse, and the short-circuiting of it in this film was a letdown. The kid’s been gone for 16 years; people aren’t the least bit harmed by this magic.

Alright, so they changed a lot of things: Maleficent doesn’t just embroider the original, it tore it up and started something similar but totally different.

So what would I like to see?

First, full-on no-holds barred EVIL Maleficent. I’m ok with evil folks having reasons for evil; that’s nice nuance. But make my toes curl! Scare me a little.

Second, she’s a dragon. The wings thing was neat and all, but no, I want her to be a big old scary dragon who likes to hang out in human form for some reason, except those darned horns won’t change.

Third…let’s get gritty. In my world, the kingdom’s main export is its fine fabrics and woven goods. The spinning wheel is Big Business, so this curse (to death, let’s not sugarcoat it) cleverly both imperils Aurora AND the economy of the entire kingdom. If he wants to save his daughter, the king has to destroy his people’s livelihood. If he doesn’t banish the spinners, he has doomed his daughter.

Makes the curse a whole lot more sinister, right?

So King Stefan banishes the spinning wheels, choosing to try to save his beloved daughter. But almost immediately the effects of his choice are felt, and his kingdom plummets into poverty. People start to curse the name of his daughter, and he fears for her life even more, so he sends her away to live in the woods, entrusted in the care of three fairies– a different class from Maleficent, and therefore safe from her magic.

Adopting a bit of the trope from the new Maleficent movie, maybe then we could have Maleficent come in and observe her handiwork. But I would have REALLY liked it if the curse itself is what changed Malificent’s heart: in the recent wording, Maleficent says “all who encounter her will love her…” I’d like that to extend to Maleficent, as well. So she’s hanging out, lurking around the kid, and the curse forces her to love the baby. In increasing exposure, she is helpless not to fall into her thrall.

I’d like to see where that story could go.

Like I said, a fun movie with INCREDIBLE costume design, but there were a lot of problems and plot holes (your big defense is a hallway full of spikes that you can easily dodge? Ok, Stefan, I’m thinking you weren’t really ready to be king there, buddy).

So if someone could get this version together for me–maybe Jolie can even reprise her role?–that would be swell.

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May 29, 2014 · 9:54 am

On Death, and Life

Sometimes I marvel that human life exists for longer than a mayfly’s. With news of wars, car accidents, freak accidents, illnesses, and more, sometimes it feels like we are constantly living in some kind of Final Destination scenario: everything is trying to kill us.
And yet, here we are, living another day.
It flummoxes me. It feels like, what with all the peril we encounter every day, that we are all, individually and collectively, beating the odds. And that amazes me.
Sometimes, because of circumstances or age or geography, it seems like the odds get really stacked against us. That things almost compete to try to off you first.
I knew someone who worked at a cancer-education place. She said it was crazy how nonprofits competed to be “worst.” See, if your illness was “worst” or “deadliest,” you could pull more funding, get more grants. In a twisted way, it was like the nonprofits were sort of hoping that their illness would be the most horrible.
Maybe the illnesses and other maladies are competing. Maybe they really are conspiring to get us.
It feels that way. A family member of mine is dealing with a cascade of health problems now… I’ll be macabre and say it: it’s like a race. Will it be age that does it? The broken hip? Maybe that mole is really a cancerous growth. Perhaps it will be pneumonia, slipped in on the hand of a healthcare aid.
Are they placing bets?
When I was recovering from a rough patch in life, I wrote a short story, attempting to highlight this: how many things are trying to get you any given day. I laced it with real death statistics to try to hammer the point home. And yet, my conclusion went somewhere totally different (in the way that writing sometimes does). It ended up not bleak but hopeful: there are all these things, and yet…life goes on.
Life goes on. What a miracle.
In the immortal and wise words of Kurt Vonnegut: So it goes.

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May 27, 2014 · 9:55 am

Review: Local

LocalLocal by Ryan Kelly

My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I wanted to like this book, I swear I did.

The art is gorgeous and has depth despite being exclusively in black and white. It’s evocative and distinctive. Plus the main character has freckles-you don’t see that a lot in comics.

And my fiance recommended it to me, and most of the time that means I’m going to love it.

But I just don’t “get” Local. Or rather, by the time I did “get” it, I didn’t care anymore.

Local is an indie comic that I read in large trade form: I’m not sure if it originally debuted as individual single issues, but I pity the reader who tried to follow the story that way if it did. The idea is basically 12 loosely tied together short stories generally but not always revolving around Megan McKeenan. It’s billed as a “coming of age” story, and supposedly the stories are told sequentially by year, with Megan aging a year between each.

But it’s a mess to follow. You can’t tell that time is jumping around, and because the place IS ALSO jumping around (one of the central themes is moving around and trying to become “local” in new cities), it feels completely disjointed. Oh, and if that’s not enough jumping for you, you also jump around with point-of-view characters, including one section that focused on the lead of a band that is never again mentioned.

So. Supposedly it’s a coming-of-age story for Megan, but it comes across as a jumble. Ignoring all the non-directly Megan stuff, you’re left with the portrait of an extremely screwed up girl. Between bad luck and poor choices–and poor choices which, I feel, vastly outstrip “normal teen experiences” with their horribleness–her life is one catastrophe after another. I just want to buy her a sandwich and direct her to a counseling center.

And yet, despite the repeated failures of her life, we’re supposed to believe that things more or less all work out in the end for her. I’m finding that very hard to believe, though the final story tries hard to make it sound like she has finally seen her problems and they just sort of got better.

The “lesson” I got from this story is “life sucks and then you die.” Which…just isn’t my kind of thing to read for pleasure. Your results my vary.

No, Megan’s story is tragic at best, an overdramatic moral tale at worst.

But the art is beautiful, so if you’re feeling existential and/or you are an impressionable teenager, Local might be for you.

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May 22, 2014 · 9:34 am

Seeking: Summer Beach Reads

I’m going on vacation soon (soon, but not soon enough! I’m too excited to wait!!) and it’s not my typical thing. Normally I’m a plan-every-minute sort of gal, but this time we’ll be relaxing on a beach, swimming lazily, maybe exploring the local area if we get ambitious, and drinking ourselves under the table (woo all-inclusive resort!).
And I hate to admit it but I’m really anxious that I’ll get bored of relaxing.
But, thanks to the wonders of technology, I’ll be able to bring as many books as I care to via a well-stocked Kindle.
Except I don’t know what to read.
I like to read a lot of things, but I gravitate toward the contemplative, heavy stuff. And that’s just not going to work for the beach and the “vacation” sensibility. I need to lighten up.
I liked In Her Shoes and The Secret Life of Bees, but those sorts aren’t my usual repertoire and I’m not sure what to look for. I would almost categorize Leviathan Wakes–a sci-fi epic–as this sort, because it was engaging and could be read on a “lighter” level, but that’s an unusual fit.
So, here’s what I’m looking for: light but engaging stories available digitally. No horror or gritty fantasy (looking at you, Game of Thrones). Genre fantasy/sci-fi is good but only if it is a bit original (ex. I read The Black Unicorn and it was TERRIBLE).
Can y’all help me out? Recommend anything amazing?

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May 20, 2014 · 9:33 am

The Bride Price: Pedestals and Critics

Before it happened to me, I did not realize it, but being a bride–a female person intending to get married in a ceremony in front of a group of people–comes at a price.
Being a bride, just a few weeks out from the wedding, means you are suddenly completely open to judgement, direct and indirect, on EVERYTHING.
(This is said in no way to diminish the realities of those people who still, in 2014, have to face a LITERAL bride-price: those women and, frequently, girls who are bought and sold for “marriage” because women are not worth much in their society. I realize I am privileged in that my problems are very first world. My heart hurts for those women, and I wish I had an answer to banish the practice forever. )
Growing up in the American South, I expected some of this. I more or less knew the protocols for attending a shower and had a vague sense of what was required of me. But I had no idea it would be this long and tiring a stressful slog that it has been.
First, there’s the pressure from the “WIC” (the Wedding Industrial Complex). These are the folks whose only aim is to make you feel shitty so you’ll spend more money on their products in an effort to reach an unattainable ideal (looking at you, The Knot!). This came out from the bridal shop who was dismayed that I’m not a size 6…and then was dismayed when I did lose weight before the fitting (told ya so, lady!). It’s the patronizing way the vendors call me “sweetie” or “darling.”  It’s cloying, but I can write it off (most of the time) as someone just trying to wring cash out of my little fists.
But there is also family pressure. People who, despite my directly asking “is there anything in particular you care about a lot that I should know?” coming up at game time (or when it is too late to change the choice!) and expressing their shock that I’m not doing something “traditionally.” (I’m marrying a man, while wearing a white dress, in a church, followed by dinner. What isn’t traditional about that?!) This was/is more painful and there just isn’t anything I can do, as far as I can tell.
There was the expectation by some of my bridesmaids that weddings follow one script all the time, and that if I was not going out of my way to accommodate them and their vision of what that meant, that I was a “bridezilla.”  (And then, when I tried to ask them for support, decided to quit instead. Both those things hurt a great deal).
But even when I win, I lose.  After a bridal shower, I wrote my thank you notes. I was super-proud of myself for finishing the 20+ notes in a weeks’ time. But by Sunday, I was informed that I had “caused a kerfuffle.” Apparently my heroic thank-you-note feat had made some other girls look bad, and feathers were ruffled. (I “joked” with the worried parties that, don’t worry, I don’t be able to keep up that pace for long.)
Can’t win for losing.
It’s exhausting to try to be “perfect” all the time. I don’t even really WANT to be perfect–I’d so  much rather just be myself.
I apologize, wedding-reality-show girls and real-life brides, for any judgmental thoughts I had about you. That’s not what you need. That’s not helpful. It’s okay to relax; remember, it’s about the marriage, not the wedding.
Until then, let me know if you want to share a margarita. I use as heck could use one.

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May 15, 2014 · 10:31 am

The Burning Jealousy of the Not-Quite-There-Author

Let’s talk about jealousy. I have it.

Of course I have it for the biggies, the JK Rowlings and the Stephen Kings and the Shakespeares and the Jane Austens of the world. That’s a given, but that kind of jealousy is motivational: those are the success stories everybody looks up to.
To a lesser degree, I’ve got that for the Hugh Howeys and the Suzanne Collins’, our most modern wave of authors who, one way or another, adapted to the changing face of publishing and owned it.  But even so, that’s not the kind of jealousy that seeps in under your skin and makes your heart clench up.
No, that kind of jealousy is more intimate… reserved for the people who you (or, at least, I) think I’m at least on par with, maybe in terms of skill, or concept, or–mostly–in terms of starting point. The other newbies; the ones who get just ahead of me.
The shoulda-been-me’s.
I feel spasms of jealousy periodically on twitter, when someone I don’t even actually know announces a book deal or landing an agent or winning a contest. But lately, I am struggling with a big weighty ball of jealousy brought on by a real-life connection.
See, someone I have known pretty much my whole life has just self-published. She wrote the book in less than a year. Months ago, she asked me for the basics on advice for how to get published, and I gave her the Cliff Notes version: you can do the long slog or you can self-publish. She said self-publishing sounded more like her speed, and I pointed her to some resources and offered my editing services at a “friends” price. She turned me down, and I didn’t hear much about it, until she asked me to be a beta reader on short notice. I’m a little overbooked right now, so I declined and wished her well.
Two weeks later, BOOM, there’s her book out on Amazon, and she’s promoting it like crazy. She’s doing interviews, working her contacts, shilling that book everywhere on Facebook–you know, the stuff you do when you’ve just published a book on Amazon and you’re trying to get the numbers up.
But, oh, does it burn me.
I’ve been to the conferences, I’ve read the books, I’ve built a blog and joined Twitter like I was told. I’ve gone the traditional route because of promises of greater potential. I’ve entered the big open submissions opportunities. I’ve written the succession of query letters and dutifully waited while working on something else.
In other words, I followed “the rules.”
It feels like a sharp and painful contrast to this woman, who right out of the gate “broke” the rules: she compares her book to a game-changing classic; she didn’t have any internet or social presence before publishing; she never did a contest; she’s never written before at all!; she didn’t get a professional editor to work on it; and, of course, she self-published.
But people in our circle are talking about her. She gets glowing praise on her Facebook page. She can call herself “an author” and not be questioned.
It burns me right up.
But I realize this kind of jealousy isn’t helpful. This is my problem, and her being different doesn’t mean I’m illegitimate.
(However, I will say that much of the claptrap super-small authors or aspiring authors pump out about “there’s room for everyone” and “your time will come” and “celebrate everyone!” feels like a lie right now. I have a hard time believing “anyone” can be an author…)
So I need to get over this. I may have to start by buying her book.
How do you cope with author jealousy?

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May 13, 2014 · 10:26 am

Review: Sex Criminals

Sex Criminals, Volume 1: One Weird Trick (Sex Criminals #1-5)Sex Criminals, Volume 1: One Weird Trick by Matt Fraction

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Funny. Poignant. Beautiful. Oh, and it has sex in it.

It’s pretty rare that my fiance reads a book then says, “OMG, you HAVE to read this.” So it was a big deal. And I devoured it. This comic is gorgeous and probably deserves the “Comic of the Year” banner the New York Times gave it (though Saga, Volume 1 really can’t be forgotten).

This comic answers a question everyone has asked themselves at some point: “If I could freeze time everytime I had an orgasm, what would I do?”

…Of course everyone has asked that question.

For Suzie and Jon, the answers vary, but when they meet and discover they aren’t alone in this crazy ability, they decide–of course–to rob a bank.

In other words, Sex Criminals is a totally run-of-the-mill story.

Just kidding. It’s irreverent, but it’s also fairly deep. (Spoilers to follow, but really you should read this comic anyway and most of this stuff is introduced right away.)

When Suzie’s dad is killed in an act of random violence when she is 10, she struggles to cope. Her mom is barely holding herself together, and Suzie is left to process it all on her own. She finds solace in the quiet of the bathtub, where the running water can erase sound and leave her to just “be.” Except…the water under the tap feels [em]really good[/em]…and time stops.

Suzie struggles to figure out puberty and this ability (can everyone do this? Why don’t any of the books explain this!?) all alone, and uses what she calls “The Quiet” (this time-frozen thing) to work out her feelings. She grows into a smart girl who loves libraries, and is desperate to save her local library, even if it means buying up every book, one at a time.

That’s how she meets Jon. They have an instant connection; even reading about it feels like reliving the Best First Date Ever. And then, when they have sex… woah. They discover, finally, they aren’t alone in this ability. And then they hatch a plan.

Can I just stop for a minute and talk about the art? Man, this kind of book is why comics/graphic novels need to exist. You just couldn’t get the same effect in reading about how Suzie’s elementary classroom had a motivational poster that says “Reading is Sexy” and get the same kind of laugh I did when I noticed the derpy frog poster in the background of an otherwise tragic scene. There are visual clues like that everywhere, and it is just …amazing. And Suzie and Jon look like real people. Praise be to Chip Zdarksy for drawing a woman with kick-ass HUMAN proportions! It’s so refreshing.

And then there’s the colors! You’ll just have to see it to know what I mean, but The Quiet is really transcendental art. It’s gorgeous.

Sex Criminals is definitely a book for an adult…well… it might also be a book for a teenager who is still figuring out that whole sexuality thing, though the cover alone might freak out the parental types. While sex is important to the story, it is always tasteful and the art is never more than PG-13, though the brash and totally careless way the characters talk about sex is definitely going to be a turnoff for some readers (don’t worry; the sex acts described in the high school are all made up. I think.).

This really a science-fiction/Bonnie-and-Clyde/coming-of-age book and … it’s just great. True, author Matt Fraction and artist Chip Zdarksky may have come up with the concept as a way to tell as many sex jokes as possible, but I can’t blame them for that, and I can’t wait to read more. And see more.

(This book only got 4 stars because I think the pacing may be a little uneven. We’ll see. There was one section that, while still pretty to look at and which gave me a giggle, made me really glad we bought the volume rather than the individual comics. That story was…a tad thin.)

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May 8, 2014 · 10:27 am

Garden Journaling with Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson is my favorite president. Sure, he had his faults, things we completely disagree with with our modern sensibilities (and rightfully so), but he was a contemplative man with a thirst for knowledge. And I’ve always thought he was just generally cool. He designed his house! He was personally involved in the Corps of Discovery expedition (better known as “Lewis & Clark’s trip”). He was pretty sure they would find wooly mammoths out there (I bet his was pretty disappointed when they came back without the mammoths, though…)

And, it turns out, he kept incredibly meticulous notes on his garden/plantation. He was an observational scientist who was willing to try out new things and keep records of the results. We know things about his era that would otherwise be lost to time if it weren’t for his careful notes. Plus, his garden is now used as a seed bank for rare plants.

A page from Jefferson’s garden journal

As it turns out, I’ve started a garden recently. My brother Ryan and I have taken on a plot at a community garden, and we’re excited to have a “real” garden (the herb garden on my porch is nice, but not exactly a vegetable mecca).

We talked about what to plant for awhile –squash, zucchini, tomatoes, bell peppers, other hot peppers, green beans, eggplant, and two varieties of sunflowers. Maybe sweet potatoes, but we’re having trouble finding the slips–and debated where to plant, etc. Then my brother joked that we needed a garden journal because TJ had one.

Being modern folks…we have a garden GoogleDoc. But, in keeping in the spirit of the thing, we’re writing it as if we were Jefferson.

Ex. “Hottie plant was selected for its humorous name and possible appeal to Ryan. Covered plants assiduously with organic material and watered three times as prescribed by our father.“

Ryan may have made a mistake in joking about the journal; so far, I’m enjoying that almost as much as the garden part. And it will help us keep track of who has watered and when, so it’s practical to boot.

I’ve never really kept a garden before, and I’ve certainly never journal-ed about it. Any gardeners out there? Any favorite tips to offer?

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Video

Lessons From the Renaissance Faire

A Renaissance Faire offers a special type of whimsy. It’s not remotely historically accurate, it’s overpriced, the scent of patchouli is overwhelming, and the attendees are a strange mix of plainclothes tourists and first-time cosplayers.

But I love them. It’s a crazy sort-of weird interest, but common enough that I can admit it in public.
So I went last weekend, which was fun (and I have the requisite henna tattoo to prove it!). During the Don Juan & Miguel show, I had an epiphany.
Don Juan & Miguel offer a swordfighting/whip-cracking/comedy show. They’re really good; they’ve been coming to our Faire for years, and they’re always fun.
Anyway, at the show I saw, Don Juan was playing around before the official start, chatting with the crowd. He had a bull whip and set up three cups on a tray, stacked one on top of the other. The idea was to use the whip to take out the middle cup, dropping the top cup into the bottom.
He screwed up. Twice. In a row. It just didn’t happen. The second time, he even managed to smack himself in the face with the tassel on his whip! (ow)
For some people, that would have been it: show over. In front of a crowd of about 30 people, he flopped.
But apparently missing isn’t all that uncommon when you’re a performing comedy/whip guy, so he maintained a cheerful patter and WHAM–there it went. Cup fell neatly into the bottom cup, and we all applauded like mad.
It didn’t even matter that he had failed.
That’s really trivial, I know, and obviously he is a really good whip-handler with lots of experience, but that felt really significant to me: he just kept going. He wasn’t remotely worried about the mistake; he just did it right.
In writing, it can be hard to know if you’re doing it right. But I appreciated the reminder to just keep trying.
Now watch these guys make some cheese puns and have a giggle:

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May 6, 2014 · 10:15 am
Video

Special Video Celebration

 

 

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May 4, 2014 · 4:24 pm