Showing posts with label story telling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label story telling. Show all posts

22 August 2014

Confessions of an Avid Reader - And Other Such Nonsense

I stumbled across a picture on Facebook today and it reminded me of something that I've been coming to terms with over the last little bit - some of my favorite books, the really good ones that have me hooked and will never ever let me go are really, really poorly written. And none of us avid fans care.

Shakespeare doesn't seem to have a lucid grasp of the English language half the time. (This probably has to do with the era in which he lived, but that's another blog post for another time.) Most turn of the century works are very dry and matter'o'fact, among these Anne of Green Gables, Little House on the Prairie, Little Women, Princess of Mars, and Dracula. Go back and read the beloved and lauded Harry Potter novels, yes, go back to the first one, and you will see that even the esteemed J.K. was extremely immature in her writing of HP and the Philosopher's Stone. I could even argue that that well renown worker of magic, who taught many of us classic fans what a novel is, is guilty of some things that many editors nowadays would be aghast to find! She uses *gasp* semicolons abundantly and frequently places conjunctions at the beginning of sentences - both things an editor friend of mine insists are major no-nos in writing. But somehow they all get away with it!

Now, I am being facetious, of course, but you get the idea! If you go through any great work of literature you are sure to find many technical problems, misspellings, grammatical errors, plot bunnies, and what may be considered generally as poor storytelling. Some write their narrators with no voice. Some have no real taste for aesthetic appeal, specifically when describing things (if any of my fellows have read The Neverending Story, you may know what I mean). Others oversimplify, even for children's books. And yet, without fail, we love them. We read these books over and over and over, devouring them like a favorite meal - or a favorite dessert. We consume, share, read aloud, and get new copies of these books the instant they come out. We even get multiple copies if we really like the cover or size of one, and then we turn around and get the eCopy for light travel reading!

Case in point - Stephanie Meyer.


So, confession time. I love The Host. I'm nearly done with it and it won't let me put it down. It is like the experience of reading Twilight (yes, I read the whole thing) but ten fold. If I didn't know better, I would say that the book is possessed and calls to me with a the voice of a siren whenever I have a spare minute. What's worse, once I have the book in hand, it's as though the binding grows hands, reaches out and holds my nose to the page. It becomes increasingly difficult to put the book down. I've had this experience before, with other books, of course, but it seems very prevalent with Stephanie Meyer because... it's just... so... bad! 

I had a friend discuss this with me once. She summed it up with:
"It's like book crack! You open the pages and you're hooked on some new kind of drug. Because the writing really isn't very good." And I'd have to agree! 

From her frequent mid-sentence interruptions to her inane ability to force her reader to loose track of who is talking due to her under-use of nouns and inability to use quotation marks to carry over into another paragraph when speaking in short sentences (can I just say this is really annoying) to her blatant overuse of the word "chagrin" Stephanie seems to break most literary rules. Things that would normally really irritate readers are somehow over-tolerated. I've even seen multiple typos which makes me wonder about her editor. o.O Still, I cannot put the book down.

Now, I must take a moment to defend her. Stephanie's writing has vastly improved. You can tell just by the first few lines that she's really grown as a writer by the time she started The Host. Her writing is more mature, and it's not just that she's writing for adults rather than for teens. She reached her million words by the time she finished the infamous Twilight Saga.

I've heard over and over the Rule of 10,000 - 10,000 hours spent actively, consistently working on a skill usually equivocates in an expertise regardless of education level. This is also true for writing... but it's less like ten thousand and more like one million. It has been said that a writer must write one million words before they write their first original word. This seems pretty obvious in most premature writers. Take Christopher Paolini, his first truly great piece was his final book, which seemed the most original and most clearly defined. It just seems deeper than the others, and maybe that's because it is. The number one complaint I heard from most of my friends while reading his absolutely fantastic series was that they wished that his parents had given him more time and let him mature as an author. I would contest that this has something to do with the one million word rule. And this seems no different for Stephanie Meyer.

By the time Stephanie finished the Twilight novels, you could already tell that she had vastly improved as an author. I have said many times and will say again, if she had just started with the final book in the series and went from there, the literary world would be the better for it! Seriously, hold your vomit and take a little of your time to actually go and read ALL the books in the Twilight Saga. Gag your way through the twisted relationships, and the sparkly vampires and read the books as though you were watching the writer struggle, rather than hearing Bella be a useless bag of... well, you know. The journey of the character Bella is on par with Stephanie's journey as a writer, going from being a holier-than-though why-do-I-even-bother kind of a person, to an emotionally devastated why-do-I-even-write-this-crap sort of person, to someone that can not only stand on her own two feet and say "I have something to write for!", but also into someone who has near-godlike super powers that has us all under her spell.

And by Breaking Dawn, Stephanie has taken her characters on a journey of actual improvement. She dragged her characters through an emotional roller coaster on par with Six Flags and then bothered to end the thing without even inciting violence. I could go on, but this is an argument for another time.

All of this brings me back to The Host, all the wonderful, addicting, book-crackiness of it. The narratorial style is annoying, you want to punch the pacifist main character, and yet by the end you find yourself wondering why you had ever thought such horrible things and, dare I say, you even love them.

But along the way she annoys every perfectionist bone in my little writing body almost to the point of making me want to go through the entire book with a red pen, marking all the confusing, annoying, chagrin-having spots and sending her back the copy with an angry note saying, "Why do you have to get me addicted to this sort of BS?!"

But I don't. Instead I devour the entire thing in record time (for me anyway) all the while giggling and snorting my book-crack down to the very last author's note.

So, what is it? What draws us back to these super-addictive, badly written books? Is it the characters? The plot? The world building? The bad-writing itself? Or is it some bizarre mash of all of them? I would say it's probably the latter.

Orson Scott Card once said that children tolerate one form of bad writing, while adults tolerate a completely different kind of bad writing the trick is finding the bridge between the two, the comfy place in the middle where both adults and children will want to read the book. I would say the Stephanie has probably found that middle ground, specifically with The Host. For us, as adults reading this novel, the words being said may be flawed - and looking back on it now, I can see how she may have done this on purpose given the difference in storytelling between the two main characters - but still, the story is worth telling. It's worth reading, and, quite possibly, that's why we tolerate all the mistakes in all those classic novels. Because the story itself is bigger than the words that contain it, because the story itself is more important than those mistakes.

As a note, yes... me and my Mormon writers. *sigh, ugh, the whole shebang*.



24 September 2013

NaNoWriMo is Coming

A cousin of mine has been encouraging me to take on the massive task of doing NaNoWriMo this year. Part of me is dreading it, but some other part of me is thinking that I finished Hard Bank Left in little more than a month using the chapter-a-day method. So, here I am, thinking of what exactly I want to write about and a few under-appreciated ideas come to mind. If you, my loyal fans could help me narrow down which novel I should write, I would really appreciate it.

The tentative titles, genres, and loglines I have in mind are as follows:

We Are Pilots (near-future post-invasion)

Delta, an Air Force fighter pilot, is kidnapped in a sudden alien invasion, forced through a screening process, and is forced to fly as a pilot for the invaders in their long term interplanetary war.

Driven (dystopian sci-fi)

In the future, a terraformed Mars loses contact with Earth, leaving its unsteady government system vulnerable to the power-hungry crime lords that have long since been pulling the strings in political realms. Rya leaves her two sisters shortly after their parents die in order to work for one of these crime lords as a race car driver, only to discover that she's in over her head in more ways than one.

In the Time of Angels (religious comedy)

After Altamont, the Angel of Destruction, frees Belfast, the Angel of Time, from his "eternal prison" she guilts him into what she believes is the most important mission of her entire career.

Feather Flies, Jixies, and the Secret Door (YA Fantasy)

When her mother is assigned over seas, Jessica is sent to live with her father in his large, mysterious house where she discovers that not all childhood fantasies are imaginary.

16 August 2013

Fan Art Friday

I'm extending the due date on the competition by another week. The last two weeks have been really busy and irritating and difficult for me. But I'm here to do a little bit of positive at the end of the week, and hopefully bring you a little bit of sunshine to carry you through the weekend.

Welp, it's Fan Art Friday, and once again I am short on fan art... However! Never let it say that I shall be deterred!

I've had some requests on reference photos for a couple that I absolutely love: Josh and Gabe. I revealed them briefly about a year ago, thinking at the time that the very next book I would be writing would be Shifter Centric... come to find out, I have a lot of work to do before I can start writing SC - which is intended to be to HBL what the Ender's Shadow series is to the Ender's Game series. So! For your entertainment, and reference, here is more of Josh and Gabe.

Josh

Gabe

My original version of Josh and Gabe

Andrea Hatch's version of Josh and Gabe

I hope you love them as much as I love them. ;) You get to meet them in the last parts of Hard Bank Left.

12 August 2013

Sneak Peak!

First things first! I recently watched Jack the Giant Slayer  and you must tell me...


Would she or would she not make an excellent Krys? (Green eyes aside) Just looking for your thoughts.

Speaking of which, I feel inclined to share with you a small snippet of what I've been working of in Tailslide. So, without further ado, here's a sneak peak at Tailslide:


My foot landed squarely in his face with a loud and satisfying crack. Blood began to gush from his nose, spilling all down his shirt. He doubled over, screaming and cursing and howling in pain. Without hesitation I snatched my dagger out from his belt and dodged toward the pile of crates. Above the crates was a zip line. The plan had barely started to formulate before I realized just how much this was going to hurt. But, it wasn't like I had many other choices.
With one great bound the zip line handle was in my left hand, but I wasn't free yet. Swinging my leg as hard as I could, I managed to clear a large stack of crates to my left, but not without sending my body careening sideways. The burning in my shoulder and wrist bit deep into the muscle and refused to release, but I couldn't let go, not just yet. The ground was still too far away and I was still recovering from my last great leap.
Legs swinging and flailing every which way, arm cramping, and knife held overhead, I sped toward the bottom of the line where a rather intimidating man waited, arms outstretched. My options flipped in front of me like a possessed Rolodex. One in particular stuck out and I went with it. It all started with swinging my back leg forward. The man below laughed at this. He wouldn't be laughing for long.
A split second before landing, tucked in my extended leg, forcing the excess energy into extending my other leg into a kick which landed smack in his xiphoid complex. The resulting crunch was not a pleasant one. No sooner did my foot make contact than I let go of the zip line bringing me hammering down on his already crushed sternum. As if that wasn't enough, I rammed my knife into his neck.
There was a time that I would have cared that I'd just taken a life, when the blood spilling across the deck would have troubled me to sickness, but that time had long since passed. These people weren't human. They kidnapped, experimented, treated my kind as animals all for the sake of aether. If us nightlings had to die for them to get their fill of aether, then by all means, I'd kill them first.
“Two down,” I muttered, pulling my knife from the man's jugular with a putrid spray of dark blood. “Who's next?”

09 August 2013

Fan Art Friday

I really don't have much for you this week. I've been very busy trying to coordinate this character competition. YOU HAVE ONE MORE WEEK PEOPLE! Please spread the word. So, for you, here is what I have for FAF.






In a word:

OHMYGOSHITSDOWNTOWNCHICAGOINTHELAST FEWCHAPTERSOFHBL!!!

I know... not really one word... and I missed an apostrophe... but still; that's pretty much it. Hope you guys have a great weekend!

07 August 2013

My Obsession With the Insane

As you may know, I seem to write a lot of crazy. And by "a lot" I obviously mean every other character...The list seems to include at least one character per chapter that's a little bit off their rocker. And, though it might not be obvious at first, you'll quickly see exactly what I mean.

 Let's think... who are some of my special crazies?...
Elicith, Ero, Ve, Fes, Constantine, Drystan, Cassandra, Caps, Alasier, Maggie, Asper, and even Krys and Cadence are all various levels of mentally unstable.

So why? you may ask. Do you want the simple answer or the complicated one? Because the simple one is that aether affects the mind. A human mind can only handle so much aether at a time, overusing it, overdoing it, can cause a sort of psychosis, split personality disorder, or even drain your life.

You want complex?

Let's take the Dureri from my novella Adrianna. Obviously there's something unnatural about them, their actions seem to be outside the realm of normal human behavior. And yeah, sure, you can write that off as it being a simple matter of them not exactly being mortal in the strictest sense. But there's more to it. You can only torture people for so long without going just a little bit mad. Drystan is the best example of this.

In the first novella, Adrianna, the character of Drystan is explored a little. He's described as obsessive, clingy, and impulsive. He's described as hating who and what he is. At first glance this is brushed off with an explanation that may seem a little too easy: he views the body as sacred and doesn't like seeing anyone hurting - let alone doing the hurting himself. If you haven't read the book yet, please do so. Just keep in mind that this description of him isn't a cop out, I'm just holding out on you. ;)

Later in the series Drystan's psychosis deepens as he becomes more obsessed with Adrianna and goes down a... questionable path.  I try to make it a little unclear as to why this is (after all, I have to keep challenging your mind, don't I?), however I will say this, being Dureri isn't all that it seems. Sure there's the glamor and the immortality and the inability to feel pain, but there's a little bit of a side affect that most Dureri don't even notice: split personality disorder. (This is explored in Adrianna, so if you have questions, go read the novella.)

The mind doesn't have the capability to deal with the whole new set of input, heightened senses, all the goodies of being Dureri. So, the mind creates a divergent personality that can cope with the entirely new life. Over time the two personality sets merge - usually as the trauma of being changed lessens - sometimes this creates a super genius like Renee, Gilgamesh or Nereida. And sometimes you get a messed up jumble of a person like in the cases of Cassandra and Drystan.

For other cases, you're just going to have to read through the stories, aren't you. ;)

05 August 2013

The Question that is Adrianna

So, I've had some questions arise as to when I would write a squeal to my novella, Adrianna.So, here are my plans: I have a series of 5 more novellas lined up. By the time they're all done I'm going to reprint them into two full books. I'm still working out the details of the story... which is a really fancy way of saying that I've hit a block of where the first chapter of the next book will go.

However! I can tell you that the next two novellas are titles Dawn and The Hidden War. If these give you any idea about what the topic of these stories are... well then you're a step ahead of me. I only have the vaguest of ideas on what to put in these novellas. This is mostly because I know exactly what's going into the 4th novella and I have no idea how to get there! As you may be able to conceive, this is more than a little frustrating for me, and explains my hiatus on the Pocketful of Pain series...

That said, I can leave you with some pictures of actors that inspired the PoP crew.

Cassandra


Gilgamesh


Nereida


Renee


Adrianna


Drystan



And introducing...!

Anandi


If you haven't read Pocketful of Pain: Adrianna yet, you can snag a copy at Chapter One.

26 July 2013

Fan Art Friday!

Continuing with the bad guy theme: Constantine. The baddest bad guy ever - supposedly. In truth I know little about this guy. I know his history. I know his basic appearance. I know what has happened in his life. But his motivation is still a mystery to me. In writing HBL I had a close encounter with him... But this still leaves him a mystery to me. Thankfully, the edits I have in mind for Hard Bank Left give me the space to make Constantine the silent predator. I have very few pictures of him, but I'll share what I have.

There you go. That's pretty much it... only a little older. He's pretty much a scary business man. Aaaand I really need to work on him. *sigh*

But I do have pictures of The Twins. Yeah, that's right, The Twins. They're a pair of grotesquely evil torturing Dureri that I'm going to cover in Target Lost. I'm not going to tell you much in hopes that you'll find out in the webisodes. But, here are the reference photos that I totally love!








24 July 2013

The Implications on the Soul: The Creation of an AI

Over the years I've written many science fiction and semi-sci-fi (steampunk) stories that involve the creation of an artificial intelligence. Some are more in depth than others, but all involve the basics behind my belief in a soul and how the soul works.

In my faith, a soul is what happens with an intelligence enters a spiritual body. The soul is then placed in a physical body creating a "living soul." (Mind you this is my personal beliefs based on the teachings of my church.) So, what defines an artificial intelligence? Mainly the artificial part.

Now, I must clarify, my faith-based definition of "intelligence" is what I am going to refer to from now on as "the spark", and the "spiritual body" we are going to call "programming" or "the program".

Current AI programming is pretty obviously just that, programming. It's essentially a fully functional spiritual body, a body meant for the housing of the intelligence or spark, that can operate independently, but has no self-driven purpose. This in and of itself has helped me have a more complete understanding of my own existence, let alone the nature of God. But all that aside! A spark must enter an AI program in order for the program (either of its own accord or of Heavenly Design) in order for the AI to function as an autonomous, self-aware being. This is something I explore in depth in a sci-fi novel I've been working on for a while now. (Yes, you shall just have to wait and see!)

But, once a fully sparked, fully self-aware AI is born, what is the best way for said AI to become part of society i.e. how do we give it a body. This has been a point of contention between my husband and I.

He believes that this soul can enter the body of a brain dead person, or can possess a body forcibly. I see both of these as possession. Spiritually speaking, there's no God involved. The spark enters the body with no additional work necessary. This is where I get a little frustrated. It'd be like transplanting someone's memories into someone else's mind. If any of you have watched Fringe then you'll know what I'm talking about when I say that putting some one else's brain matter in to a person's brain, it literally makes them crazy. The existing wiring doesn't know how to interpret the foreign matter. Now imagine putting someone else's entire brain into a body and then connecting it to the existing wiring... not a good combo!

I believe that a more purist way of looking at how to make a body for an artificial intelligence. Think of Fifth Element with Leeloo had to have her body reprinted. (Yes, I know the science is wrong.) Think of having an entire artificial human. Think of building a body by manipulating the elements into proteins and then manipulating those proteins into a DNA sequence until you have a completely artificial body with no soul. This is where we cross the line into killing God... taking his place. It's dangerous ethically, but it's the next logical step in our evolution as human beings. But still, this empty human shell, void of any prior memories, void of any prior programing, is perfect for the installation of an artificial intelligence. This would perfectly fit the bill for giving an AI soul human form. Is it any wonder that our human souls only enter this world through new born babies and not through the preexisting bodies of the brain dead?

I'd like to hear your views on artificial intelligence, the soul, and what way would be best to give AI a chance at being a fully functioning member of society. Thoughts? Opinions? Awesome books and TV shows? Let the discussion commence!

22 July 2013

Trying to be the Next Shakespeare

Everyone who has ever put pen to paper (or imagination to some sort of medium in an effort to create a novel) has at one point or another, thought of themselves as the next William Shakespeare. To which I say "Poppycock!" while also admitting that I am personally guilty of such thoughts. *blushes* Allow for me to break down both why our world today is making it more and more impossible for Shakespeares to be reborn.

So, Shakespear is known for a lot of things, iambic pentameter, moving speeches that ring in our hearts for ages, stories we will never forget, but there are three things that people can unanimously say define Shakespeare: a world class sense of humor, moving dramas, and wordsmithing.

Humor is something that requires great whit, something that many authors have in spades. I have a fantastic friend in the UK that has such a brilliantly dry (and very British) sense of humor that I can read some of her stuff and crack up for hours afterwards just remembering her sharp lines. The problem is that this humor, often times, removes us from the overall drama of a deep and interesting story line. Shakespeare was, in his highly gender biased, highly classist Britain, was able to blend these two things in such a way that it appealed to both sexes and all classes. His humor bled into his dramas. His drama bled into his comedies. This is something that is often lost in modern literature.

On another note, Shakespeare didn't have to worry about these stereotypes. From the dull underclass soldiers in Much Ado About Nothing, to the highly staunch and aristocratic McDuff in That Da** Scottish Play Shakespeare writes highly stereotyped, classist characters. And yet, we love and drool over these plays as some of the highest pieces of literature ever written.

So, why can't we write similar stereotypical characters? In modern terms, you'd have to write a plethora of stories that cross all classes, truly human stories. In our world of multicultural, international extremely diverse relationships, it's becoming increasingly difficult to write something that you feel may apply to all human kind without being called racists. This is particularly true for American writers.

The accusations and cat calls of whitewashing characters, calls for more diversity, are attacking our creative abilities. I write international characters. But I still believe that my characters would best represent their areas by not being hyper stylized, or hyper stereotyped! At the same time, there is absolutely nothing wrong with your character realistically representing a certain culture and that culture fitting certain stereotypes. Some tropes and stereotypes are true and accurate representations, but they do not represent the full depth of a character. We, as authors, must be careful when walking these stereotype lines.

Having addressed these two things, which are often addressed in modern literature and have indeed been conquered by many modern authors - JK Rowling, Steven King, Stephanie Meyers (particularly with The Host, I don't even count Twilight), and Suzanne Collins are just a few of the most popular modern authors that have managed to entwine humor, drama, and transcendentally human stories.

Now! Wordsmithing! In modern culture, it seems that wordsmithing has been transitioned from authors to music artists like Snoop Dog that think that adding -izzle to the end of a word all of a sudden makes the word cooler. But then when authors go to their editors with a new word that they feel fits the description better than any existing word and the editor tells them that the word doesn't work... this is a disservice to creators everywhere.

In Hard Bank Left one of the chapters is titled "Unwillfully Discontent". It is not a hyphenated/compound word. This is a portamento. My friend and editor offered me some better antonyms for "willful": involuntarily, unwillingly, unconsciously, unfeelingly, unintentional, unknowingly, disregarded, forgotten, neglected, unplanned, chance, indeterminate, methodical, wittingly, impartially, unenthusiastically... The list goes on. But the words didn't sit right with me. They didn't convey precisely what I meant with the word. For me, the meaning of "unwillfully" or "unwillful" means, "against what one intends to do, but not without desire to do so." In other words "unwillfully discontent" = "being discontent out of duty to one's personal code rather than being discontent by what one actually feels" or "being discontent out of sheer stubbornness, but wanting to enjoy one's self." I'm sure that any number of the antonyms would have done well, but I was looking for a perfect match - and seeing as how many if not all of the antonyms have predefined cultural and contextual definitions, they wouldn't do. I had to come up with something more specific.

When editors are involved, and you have Grammar Nazis around every corner all of whom see it as their duty to correct what they think are nonsense words like "acclimatize" *cough* my dad *cough* then the English language is not allowed to evolve. Sure, you have sites like Urban Dictionary that do post popular nonsense words, or words that are so obtusely mispronounced that they are considered a new word. But most true blue editors and hard core Grammar Nazis will use such sites as proof that new words cannot and should not be invented. And yet, there are so many options of what words can and should become.  Editors should not put limits on author's creative license because they (the editors) believe that there is a better word. Sometimes the author isn't just pulling crap our of thin air, sometimes they have actually weighed all the options and decided that their word is more tasteful and better fits what scope of language they are going for.

If anyone is interested in the English language, it's origins, and where it's headed, I strongly recommend one of my new favorite books: The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got That Way by Bill Bryson.

20 July 2013

Fan Art Friday

Wow... is it Saturday??? Where did my week go? No seriously, my husband has a different work schedule on Saturday than he does the rest of the week, so I was freaking out when he got up at 8 and I thought it was 10... yeah, that was a bit of a shock.

So! Fan art Friday... again, I have little fan art to present, but I figured I might keep up with my theme of sharing what inspires me. (Seriously, I have a bunch, so I'll keep it coming.) So, it's bad guy day!

You've heard me make references to her, and seeing as how she's playing a bigger role in HBL, it's high time you guys see my inspiration for Ero Gleilien. This character, like many of my characters started off as something completely different in a completely different universe. Ero was originally a crazy Wild Elf in an RPG that had a major schtick with goblins. The best image I can give you of what she used to look like is this:

courtesy of Ashli Hara

But then I started writing a sci-fi novel and Ero became a care free pilot with an attitude that went a little something like this:

I still love this character, but I found in writing HBL I needed Ero and her partner Caprisha to fill a role, so she turned into more of a staunch bounty hunter working with a federal agent. Of course, all that would be a cover for her true self - a Commandant in the Shadow Cast's private military. (No worries my other characters got renamed, they have not gotten lost in the mix up!) So, now Ero looks a little something like this:

mixed with a little of this

 Yeah... I know, figure that one out. But I had a dream and somehow it worked! So, you'll just have to read on and see what I have in store.


10 July 2013

The Damsel in Distress: Jeldhen

Alright, so most of you are familiar with the "damsel in distress" cliche and how it objectifies those that are captured, blah, blah, blah. If you really want to get into it here's a feminist vlog that addresses this concept in depth (I strongly recommend that you take the time to watch the series later, though they're rather lengthy):




The essence of the cliche is that women are reduced to objects or victim states as a plot device to propel the story forward and motivate the main characters (namely men) into defeating the bad guy.

I've had some people voice concern over the squeal to Hard Bank LeftTailslide - being little more than a cheap use of a trope to motivate Krys and force her to confront her darker side. I can see where this idea comes from. All you have to do is read the description of the book and this is the first concept conjured. I want to assure you that this initial bulrb is intentionally misleading with the intention of forcing the reader to come to their own conclusion as to what Krys's inner darkness is. But, yes. Jeldhen does get "kidnapped" and Krys is intent on rescuing him.

Now, without giving away too much *inhales deeply and tries not to burst*, in the first book, Krys is put into a situation where some damselling occurs, but it is clear throughout the book that Krys has the ability to take control of the situation and simply has to figure out how. She is never objectified in the reader's perspective - though she is objectified in the eyes of her captors. I did this in an effort to draw attention to what women go through when being brutalized or victimized. However, rest assured that her kidnap is not merely a plot device, it does serve a higher purpose - and no, it's not the purpose of making Jeldhen come after her. There are greater powers at work here. What that is, though? You'll just have to read and find out!

In Tailslide *again holds breath and attempts not to explode* Jeldhen has already been captured, forcing Krys to confront her so called "inner darkness". Here's where one might draw the line between the damsel in distress motive and the sire in distress:

When a woman is put into the damsel position and the main character is a man, the essence of the theme becomes (as Anita points out here) is that the man is driven by a loss of masculinity due to an implicated failure of his duty to protect the ones he loves. While this is not wrong, nor is it a misrepresentation of what husbands, boyfriends, and fathers would truly experience if put through a member of their family being kidnapped or killed, this is not what Krys, nor on a whole women, go through when put in the reverse scenario.

When Jeldhen is kidnapped, Krys - much like any male counterpart in a similar scenario - is anguished over losing her best friend, experiences feelings of inadequacy in her ability to protect the ones she loves, and overall feels as though she has lost all control. However, she does not allow these things to stop her from progressing as a person. She is not solely driven by her need to prove herself, or a need to get her best friend back - though this is certainly how it seems at first.

Krys does not go on a solo, destroy all Shadow Cast killing spree (even though she would really like to). Instead, she steps up to her tasks as a Keyper and does what she has to to bring them down without unnecessary loss of life. She does not become a super soldier, even if she is capable of it, nor does she become the universally praised hero that wins metals and gets all the recognition. Krys is the epitome of an every day soldier with a cause, and (hopefully) someone young people of every gender can look up to.

03 July 2013

Artists, Stories, and The World We Live In

In writing my stories, I try to keep my characters as diverse and creative as I possibly can. This is my personal reflection of a modern society put into a modern fairy tale. I live in a global universe, so do my characters. But, when my characters go to a certain location, I expect to find people living in that location that belong their. I don't expect to find Scots living in Singapore. Likewise, I would not expect to find Santa Clause (or in this case the Snow Queen) to be living at the South Pole.

That said, I've come across a post on Tumblr that has really got me seething. You can find it here. There are many arguments made in this post, which goes back and forth over many different reasons why characters at Disney look similar. Some assume that the artists are lazy, or *rolls eyes* racists. But here's what I have to say on the matter.

Individual artists, successful artists, make their money out of being stylized. This is how they make their money. An artist is selected out of hundreds of thousands because the producers like their style. Any artist or animator will tell you that!

And I would leave it with "That's it. Nuf said." but there's so much more to this than just that simple fact! I recall watching one of the extra features on Lilo and Stitch where they were talking about the specific style of the movie coming from this key animator that had been a concept artist for years and had always had that similar style. They talked about how, for animators, it was difficult for them to do because it was SO stylized, but it was well worth it!

Now, from what little I know about 3D animation, it's a lot easier for everyone to be on the same page animation wise - and by a lot easier I mean A LOT easier. But there's still a distinctive style! Looking over all the Disney classics, you can tell they're classics just by the animation style. The eyes, are the same, the proportions are the same.  Sure, the styles may vary from film to film, but they all have that classic feel.

On a different issue having to do with artistic style, has anyone noticed that you can look at a film and guess with darn good accuracy who the film was made by? This goes for live action or animated. Go ahead, explain to me why! Explain to me that directors have a specific way they want the film to look and they get it. Explain to me that they have a style to convey a theme, a location, a common thread in a series of adventures. But no, the people on Tumblr that criticize a successful person for sticking to their style is simply a jaded critic that has yet to do anything truly successful with their lives.

That said, on to point 2.

The argument of racial ambiguity really pisses me off. Disney does a good job of keeping a story's characters racially tied to their place of origin.  The Jungle Book takes place in India. The Legend of the Emperor of Cuzco takes place in the Andes. Atlantis is Mediterranean. Tarzan is about a white boy found by white people in the depths of Africa. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is French. Hercules is appropriately Greek! Aladdin distinctively reflects the tales of Scheherazade in her classic 1,000 Arabian Nights. Mulan is a Chinese historical figure, just like Pocahontas is to the new world. Peter Pan, The Sword in the Stone, and Alice in Wonderland are all British classics by British authors which they set in *gasp* Great Britain!

The point of fact is that Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel are all fairy tales compiled by the Grimm brothers. These fairy tales are from the German and French country sides and have things central to their story that require that setting. Just as I fully anticipated The Hunchback of Notre Dame to take place in *gasp* Paris!, I expect to see these classic Germanic fairy stories to take place in *gasp* Germany! Now, The Princess and the Frog, while sweet and a really creative take on a classic Grimm story (The Brothers Grimm being, of course, German) did not stick to it's alleged country of origin. Then again, there aren't very many story centric references of to culture in the fairytale which Disney botched. But, seeing as how they've completely changed the story before *cough* The Jungle Book *cough* I won't contend it.

Now, if you want to get really persnickety about this, which I most surely shall, The Little Mermaid, The Snow Queen, and Thumbelina are all H.C. Andersen stories. He is Danish. I expect danish influence in these movies. The Little Mermaid has Danish ships, a Danish castle, even Danish countryside. Now, seeing as how The Snow Queen is written to take place in the northern most part of Norway, or possibly Russia, and that the Snow Queen's castle is supposed to be at the North Pole... And seeing as how the South Pole is so frigidly terrible weather wise that even modern explorers avoid it at all costs... And seeing as how even the great and mighty Inca didn't sail in those treacherous southern waters - whereas the Northern Sea used to freeze over completely on a regular basis and peoples have been known to cross them - I expect that Scandinavian/Slavic touch, white skin and all.

But take heart! Disney's running out of tales from my ancestors. I believe the only the only ones left are: The Princess and the Pea, and The Troll King. But then after that, you have the stories of Baba Yaga, The Tales of Ulster and any number of Viking tales. Yeah... us crazy white people were really good at coming up with some frighteningly entertaining stories. And it's not that other cultures don't have them too, it's just that the majority of Disney animators are white, the majority of their watchers are white and they - LIKE ANY OTHER CULTURE - love sharing their favorite bed time stories! I, personally, have been waiting 13 years for them to make a featured film out of Rapunzel. From the time I was 8, it was my favorite fairy tale. 

Now, that's not to say that other cultures don't have great fairy tales and cautionary stories, they do! And shame on Disney for not drawing attention to those stories. But don't take my favorite fairy tale and try to turn it into a story about a culture I know nothing about. Turn that culture's fairy tales into feature length movies instead! Why not? There are the Native American tales of Cayote, and the Mayan tales of the Jaguar warriors, and the Chinese tales of Monkey, and you can pick from any number of Hindi stories. Then there's the African tales of Spider. Or, heck! You can go do some more of Scheherazade's  1,000 Arabian Nights. I know for a fact that they didn't even even cover half of them in the Aladdin TV series. The fact of the matter is that there are a lot of other multicultural fairy tales to choose from, so stop ragging on Disney for keeping the culture that the fairy tales belong to in tact.

Now for those of you that saw this, thought "tl/dr" and skipped to the last paragraph, I suggest you go through and reread the entire rant, it's pretty interesting. If not, then I leave you with this: Disney is running out of northern European fairy tales to tell in their animation. So, now they actually have time to research some far eastern tales that don't involved being eaten by tigers (or dragons, or wild demons, take your pick), or they're going to have to move on to the Irish tales of Ulster... which aren't really that pretty either.