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Why Trying to Measure the Darkness Is Holding Superhero Movies Back

6/20/2016

Okay, fiction rant time:

Can we stop arguing over whether superhero movies are too dark or just dark enough, as if level of darkness is a single defining aspect by which these movies can be quantified and catalogued?

Can we please talk instead about whether these movies are good?

I don’t demand that superhero stories make me feel warm and fuzzy inside. I don’t demand that they make me feel sad or disturbed. All I ask is what I ask of every story:

Make me feel something. Well, something other than bored, insulted, or ironically amused. Make me feel something on purpose.

You want to tell a superhero story that will make me laugh? Make me laugh. You want to rip out my heart and drag it through the mud? Do it. I dare you. I will thank and respect you for it if you can.

Nope, that’s not it.

Man of Steel and Batman V. Superman utterly fail in this attempt. Why? Because they pile up the mud as high as they can, and they pull with the power of a freakin’ locomotive, but what are they pulling on? It’s sure as hell not my heart, because no part of these movies ever bothered to put the hooks into it first.

You can knock over as many imaginary buildings as you want. No one’s going to shed a tear if we haven’t had the chance to care about anyone inside them. You can put Superman through an endless gauntlet of public scrutiny and criticism, but if all you ever show us about your version of Superman is how much he has it coming, who cares?

One shot of playfully falling fully clothed into a bathtub does not a character make.

Deadpool works because it knows what it wants to be; a smart, biting, R-rated meta comedy, and that’s what it is. It goes all out with its humor and does it well, but it lets in the darkness where the character development calls for it.

Ditto Kick-Ass.

Ant-Man and Guardians of the Galaxy work on a similar principle, starting with the fun and letting in the dark when it fits.

Civil War manages to make it mostly work in reverse, by starting with a very serious storyline, but still taking the time to show us some of the lighthearted, banter-filled friendships that stand to be destroyed by said storyline, making the darkness mean something.

Plus a lighter new heart.

Different people have different tastes when it comes to ideal level of darkness, and an argument can be made that certain existing characters, like Superman, aren’t compatible with the dark end of the spectrum without losing their inherent spirit. That’s a valid criticism, but it doesn’t come anywhere near covering what’s wrong with the new big screen Superman. Take any pre-existing attachment to any particular ideas of Superman or Batman or comics in general out of the equation, and these still aren’t good movies.

Darkness does not equal substance. Absence of darkness does not guarantee fun. Darkness does not correlate or inversely correlate with quality. Darkness is one dimension among many that make up storytelling, and when it’s the only dimension your formula accounts for, guess what? You get one-dimensional stories.

So that’s your answer, DC movie makers. Your problem isn’t that you need to make your movies darker or lighter. Your problem is that you need to stop fixating on that dimmer switch and make them better.

Rant complete.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #1: The Glass Lampshade

5/30/2016

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See also:

Fiction Pet Peeve: Rape Gang Alley.

Fiction Pet Peeve: That Thing Designed for Dramatic Effect and Nothing Else.

Fiction Pet Peeve: "I Have to Go Now, Honey! I'm More Important Than You!"

Fiction Pet Peeve: The Cock-a-Doodie Lie!

Fiction Pet Peeve: "I Am the Parent, Therefore I Disapprove."

This is a simple one. It’s that moment when a character points out and possibly even protests the terribly insulting thing the plot is doing… to no effect.

Example? Why, I’m glad you asked.

In the final season of Angel, a series of shifts in the show’s focus and one actress’s pregnancy resulted in the main lineup of evil-fighters looking like this:

That’s five men (the green demon is a white actor underneath if you’re keeping score on that front) and one woman. The woman, Fred, is brilliant and thoroughly lovable but also the only member of the team without either superpowers or some level of combat training, making her the go-to damsel.

In the lead up to the series finale, Fred gets implanted with a demon, which is slowly killing her as it gestates and prepares to take over the world.

Desperate to save both the world and herself (because who wouldn’t be?), Fred works long hours in her laboratory looking for a cure, in spite of her deteriorating health. When Wesley, one of her many doting male associates, comes to tell her to rest, she objects with, “No! I’m not just the damsel in distress!”

“I’m better than that!”

Yay! Fred’s reclaiming her agency! Surely the writers have noticed how they’ve been treating her and are about to rectify the problem, and-

Oh, wait, no.

****Spoiler Alert****

Fred’s attempts to save herself come to absolutely nothing, and her soul is eaten by the demon who takes over her body, providing lots of angst for her many admiring male survivors.

****End Spoilers****

This peeve isn’t about the general practice of pointing out problems with fiction from within the fiction (known in storytelling jargon as “lampshading,” hence my little title joke).

It’s a technique that can do wonders under the right circumstances, ideally when the story pointing out the writing sin is a work of meta-satire that successfully manages to be smarter than most stories that commit said sin.

Sidney in Scream makes a complaint of this sort that works, because her respective story takes it to heart, when she tells Ghostface that she doesn’t watch horror movies because the victims are an insulting bunch of busty blondes who “run up the stairs when they should be running out the front door.”

I really AM better than that!

Sidney says this shortly after Ghostface finishes with his busty blonde first victim of the movie (played by Drew Barrymore), but Sidney herself remains competent throughout, outsmarting and outmaneuvering Ghostface, at one point running upstairs to escape through a second story window only after he blocks her attempt for the front door.

Even that opening scene with the death of Casey subverts the tradition Sidney is calling out by actively desexualizing the violence. Casey remains fully clothed in a baggy sweater throughout, and as soon as the scene transitions from flirty meta-banter to physical threat, it turns deadly serious, focusing on audience sympathy for Casey over the more typical creative dismemberment.

This part of the scene is not FUN.

Lampshading can also work when it’s used to write off a practical issue that’s standing in the way of the best possible story.

“Hey, didn’t we used to be a delivery service?”

In the case of this Futurama joke, the show is completely guilty of the sin it’s pointing out, that is, inconsistent accounting for how the characters spend their time and make their income. It works, though, because the strength of Futurama comes from the variety of its zany, episodic plotlines.

No one’s mourning the fact that we don’t spend more time watching the cast delivering packages. This isn’t something that’s central to the point of the story, and there’s no real-life social context attached. It’s an oversight that doesn’t ill-use or insult anything except, mildly, the audience’s long term memory, so once we receive this nod of acknowledgement, we can move on to enjoying the crew's more interesting spacefaring hijinks, satisfied that our intelligence is respected and the creators aren’t trying to slip anything past us.

The lampshade only becomes pointless, worse-than-nothing glass when a work of fiction commits a more real-life serious or story-integral sin and then points it out without doing anything to remedy it, apparently with the mistaken belief that pointing at the problem is the same thing as fixing it.

There’s a scene in City of Bones in which the Shadowhunters have to sneak into a church to raid a secret stash of anti-demon weaponry. So as not to imply that Christianity is the only viable avenue for fighting evil, Jace quickly explains that all organized religions are secretly in on the cause.

“We could just as easily have gone to a synagogue or a mosque.”

Yeah, but you didn’t though, did you, Jace? The lampshade line is there, but Christianity remains the only religion we actually see involved in fighting evil.

Okay, religion is an extremely delicate subject, and if an artist doesn’t feel qualified to represent a real-life culture in fiction, steering clear can sometimes be the wisest course of action, so maybe we can give that one a pass.

Not so much this little gem of a moment in the Twilight book-verse:

“You know, I saw this story on the news last week about controlling, abusive teenage relationships.”

Jacob throws this out there in Eclipse, the book in which Edward disables Bella’s car and physically prevents her from visiting other friends. The joke of this line is presumably intended to come off something like, “Ha ha, Edward and Bella sure are easy to mistake for an abusive relationship, aren’t they? But they’re not, though.”

Except they completely are, and this lampshade does nothing to change how unhealthy they are or how reprehensibly the story romanticizes that abuse.

Should we even touch how bad the Marvel movies have gotten with this lately? Eh, why not, we all know these, right?

Remember that party scene where the Avengers men all acknowledge that, back in their solo franchises, most of them had love interests? They talk for a while about what the ladies are up to and try to one-up each other with stories about how smart/independent/tough/generally awesome their girlfriends are.

That’s really sweet, guys. It’s great that you’re so supportive. Sounds like some of those women are having pretty cool adventures!

…Which we’re never, ever going to see any of, are we? Not a snippet of any of them ever doing anything remotely relevant to any movie that we’re actually watching, ever again. Nope, the narrative follows the men, and the men alone, wherever they go.

But at least we’re going to get some new costumed women soon who might get some narrative focus of their own, right?

…Right?

“It’s about damn time.”

So sayeth Wasp when Hank Pym, her movie-universe father, finally bestows on her her mother’s supersuit, indicating that he’s done being demeaningly overprotective of her.

Yes, Marvel. It is about damn time Hope’s father acknowledges her power (see last week’s peeve). And yes, we get the meta-joke that it is about damn time Marvel movies likewise acknowledge female supers collectively.

It was "about damn time" a long time ago. It was "about damn time" before this post credits tack-on in Ant-Man, and it continues to be "about damn time" far more urgently and dramatically than a 2018 release of a movie titled “Ant-Man and The Wasp” (emphasis mine) can come anywhere close to addressing.

Lampshades alone don’t make problems go away, not if the problems are big enough. Self-deprecatory humor can only buy you so much leeway. Sometimes the only patch for that insulting plot is to just do the thing right in the first place.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #2: I Am the Parent, Therefore I Disapprove

5/24/2016

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See also:

Fiction Pet Peeve: Rape Gang Alley.

Fiction Pet Peeve: That Thing Designed for Dramatic Effect and Nothing Else.

Fiction Pet Peeve: "I Have to Go Now, Honey! I'm More Important Than You!"

Fiction Pet Peeve: The Cock-a-Doodie Lie!

As this is a list of fiction pet peeves, and we're approaching the top, it’s probably not necessary to start out by noting the intensity of my loathing for this habit of fictional parents, but I’m going to anyway.

Hate it.

Swinging at it with a red-hot mace hate it.

Okay, let’s get on with this.

I’m talking about those fictional parents who unilaterally and selfishly disapprove of their children growing up and pursuing happiness in any way (especially romantically), while asking us, the audience, to sympathize with their pathologically unreasonable dehumanizing of said children, who often aren’t children at all.

Pictured: A disapproving father and a goddamn assistant district attorney superhero!

Let’s just say it, one of the biggest problems with these fictional parents is that they’re almost always fathers obsessing over maintaining control over their daughters.

This assumption that girls have less of a right or desire to make their own choices and mistakes in the pursuit of adulthood (and sex) than boys do, or that it’s somehow cute and fitting for fathers to feel a sense of possession of their daughters that doesn’t apply to sons or mothers, is a massive real life issue of inequality that fiction more often than not plays for cheap laughs.

I am the dad, therefore I disapprove. Cue laugh track.

I am the dad, therefore I disapprove. Cue laugh track.

Oh, wait, I decided I like my adopted daughter’s husband after all. Guess I better musically sign over the lease and title. Cue the awwws.

Shudder.

This kind of parental disapproval also gets used, bafflingly, in attempts to make villains sympathetic by supposedly proving that they “care” about someone other than themselves, in spite of the fact that their possessiveness usually demonstrates the exact opposite.

I am the dad, therefore I disapprove. Cue conflicted sighs.

I am the dad, therefore I disapprove. Cue conflicted sighs.

And as horrible as the gender stereotyping is in all these, that’s not to say that the mother-son, mother-daughter, and father-son versions don’t exist, or that they can’t also be hugely problematic.

Lois’s behavior toward her sons on Malcolm in the Middle, for example, is notoriously nightmarish.

She disapproves of almost everything any of them do, including most of their relationships, plans out each of their lives from beginning to end down to the smallest detail, and applies techniques banned by the Geneva conventions to make them comply with her vision. And yet, Lois as a character is not only played for laughs but played for sympathy, with her actions repeatedly excused and justified as tough love.

As with many overused and oversimplified fictional motifs, there’s of course a tiny grain of truth in here that occasionally gets explored with some actual care. It’s no secret that parents and their children fight, or that parents (ideally) want to protect their children. Sometimes parents are overcautious or slow in recognizing their children’s maturing capabilities and needs, or they project their own experiences on their children beyond the point where it’s helpful, and often parenting mistakes are made with the best intentions.

This is all real, exploration-worthy stuff.

Edna from Hairspray is a perfect positive example of a disapproving fictional parent, one who tries to veto her daughter’s ambitions in an attempt to shield her from reliving her own disappointments, but who eventually learns to trust in her daughter’s self-confidence, becomes her biggest cheerleader, and comes out of her own shell, inspired by her daughter’s example.

King Triton from The Little Mermaid follows a similar pattern.

He certainly crosses a major line when he destroys all of Ariel’s stuff, but he doesn’t do it out of a blanket disapproval of the concept of his daughter growing up and falling in love. In fact, when he first hears the rumor that Ariel’s in love, he’s thrilled for her and can’t wait to meet the object of her affections. There isn’t even a mention of any political restrictions on whom Ariel should marry, being a princess and all. He doesn’t break out a shred of disapproval until he finds out that Eric is human, at which point he flips out over that very specific prejudice, instantly feels horrible about it, and ends up growing to accept Ariel’s choice and celebrate her happiness.

Parents placing a different level of value or different expectations on boys and girls is also a very real issue that can be depicted responsibly. Park's parents in Eleanor & Park are a great example of fictional parents who do this but ultimately learn to accept and respect that their son isn't what they once assumed he should be.

Of course, not all fictional parents have to work out their issues and end up supportive allies of their children by the end. Real life sadly holds truly terrible parents as well, parents who exert control over their children for entirely selfish reasons, without wanting to see them grow into self-reliant adults with happy romantic relationships and full lives. Fiction has a place for those parents too.

Ahem.

That place is not smiling in the opening credits of a show about a heartwarming, would-be appealing family.

The Secret Life of Bees does the extreme negative of the gender issue well, because even though Lily's father is given a slight, grim sort of pity toward the end, he’s fully acknowledged as a bad father. Treating a child as a possession rather than a budding human being due to gender (or for any reason), is bad parenting, and he’s a bad parent. No arguments there.

There’s nothing wrong with unhealthy relationships in fiction, as long as the work doesn’t ask us to believe that they’re anything else.

The point where the disapproving parent triggers this peeve is where a story shrugs off this kind of bad parenting as “just the way parents are,” or, more commonly and insidiously, “just the way fathers with daughters are.”

I’m looking at you, Arrow/Flash/Legends of Tomorrow TV universe.

If you’re a dad with a daughter on these shows, you automatically hate any man she might be romantically involved with. You hate any possibility of her doing anything dangerous which, given the superhero universe, means doing anything at all. In fact, you usually hate the possibility of her ever hearing about the existence of anything dangerous or meaningful or plot-related in any way, unless, in the case of Merlyn, you need to use her for some part of your own scheme which you’ll later claim had something to do with loving her. You fully endorse the use of guns and dishonesty to keep her under control.

Oh, she might call you out on it on occasion, but don’t worry, less than an episode later, she’ll tell you how right unconditionally forgiven you are, because you were “only trying to protect her.”

Then you’ll make a condescending, off-the-shelf joke about how all fathers want to keep their daughters helpless and isolated forever and you just can’t help it and couldn't possibly be expected to.

…Bull…. Shit.

This dysfunction is not inevitable. It is not healthy, and it is not cute. Respecting your adult daughters as human beings is not too lofty an ideal to aspire to. There are plenty of wonderful, supportive parents in the real world, who want their children, daughters included, to chase their dreams and their dream partners and live real, adult lives.

This is what good parents want for their children. The same things they’d want for themselves.

There are even a few of these parents in fiction, though not nearly enough.

Know what I think, Lance, West, and Merlyn? I think if you couldn’t be motivated by disapproving of everything your daughters do for no reason, your shows wouldn’t know what to do with you.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #3: The Cock-a-Doodie Lie!

5/17/2016

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See also:

Fiction Pet Peeve: Rape Gang Alley.

Fiction Pet Peeve: That Thing Designed for Dramatic Effect and Nothing Else.

Fiction Pet Peeve: "I Have to Go Now, Honey! I'm More Important Than You!"

If you already know what I’m getting at based on the title above, Horror geek kudos to you. Double kudos if you happen to remember the 2009 3D remake of My Bloody Valentine, to which I will be taking a sledgehammer in this article.

Oh, and for which there will be spoilers, in case you care.

Now, to explain this peeve to anyone who hasn’t guessed it, I’m going to turn the mic over to my good friend, Annie Wilkes.

"The bad guy stuck [Rocketman] in a car on a mountain road and knocked him out and welded the door shut and tore out the brakes and started him to his death, and he woke up and tried to steer and tried to get out, but the car went off a cliff before he could escape! And it crashed and burned, and I was so upset and excited, and the next week, you better believe I was first in line. And they always start with the end of the last week. And there was Rocketman, trying to get out, and here comes the cliff, and just before the car went off the cliff, he jumped free! And all the kids cheered! But I didn't cheer. I stood right up and started shouting, 'This isn't what happened last week! Have you all got amnesia? They just cheated us! This isn't fair! HE DIDN'T GET OUT OF THE COCK-A-DOODIE CAR!'"

Thanks, Annie!

In the book version of Misery, Annie expands on this by contrasting it with a different week of her favorite serial, in which the cliffhanger left Rocketman in a crashing plane, and the start of the next episode showed him finding a parachute under his seat.

Maybe not the most likely thing to happen, she admits, but she finds it acceptable. And that’s the real point of this peeve. Drawing the line where manipulation of the audience crosses over into just plain cheating.

That line is crossed when the story lies.

A couple of my favorite movies sadly nudge their toes over this line. Sorry, Ex Machina and Saw II, you’re in the hot seat this week.

Overall, Ex Machina is a seriously smart and intense Sci-Fi thriller, and if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend skipping the spoiler section here and watching it asap.

But it does have two little lines in it that drive me crazy…

***Ex Machina spoilers ahead***

"Ava isn't pretending to like you."

Nathan says this to our hero, Caleb, about the flirtation he’s developing with Ava, the artificial intelligence they’re testing together.

What Nathan means in that scene is that he programmed Ava to be capable of sexual interest as a human would be, not to flirt with Caleb in an artificially pre-scripted way.

But later on, when Nathan is trying to ease Caleb out of the head game he’s put him through for the purpose of testing Ava, he proposes, as an alternative to Caleb’s debate between believing that Ava likes him and believing that she’s an imitation of a person liking him, the third option that, “She’s pretending to like you.”

The pause after this suggestion might as well include a "dun dun DUN!" music sting.

What Nathan is saying this time is that Ava is not imitating flirtation because she was programmed to, but because she is conscious and intelligent enough to view Caleb as a means of escape from Nathan’s lab and is manipulating him for this purpose, which turns out to be exactly the case.

It’s a great twist, mostly, but it’s undercut by the She’s not pretending to like you/She is pretending to like you contradiction.

The most satisfying twists are the ones that were hiding unnoticed under our noses the whole time. Twists that come out of nowhere can be okay too, but twists that come out of a place we were explicitly told not to look, those feel like a cheat.

***End Ex Machina spoilers***

Saw II pulls almost exactly the same gambit.

***Saw II spoilers ahead***

The premise of Saw II is that Detective Matthews and a full S.W.A.T team have John Kramer (a.k.a “Jigsaw”) cornered in his lair while one of Jigsaw's deadly games plays out, with Matthews’ son stuck inside it. The twist is that the game has already finished, the monitors in the lair are showing a recording, and that Matthews’ son was being protected throughout the game by a Jigsaw accomplice and is now inside a time-delay safe that will open and reunite him safely with his father, if Matthews can only wait around that long without doing anything rash.

It’s my personal favorite of all the obligatory Saw twists, enough so that it actually topped my list of favorite underrated twist endings.

There’s just one teeny little line you have to ignore, or it ruins everything.

“[You can waste time here until your son] starts to bleed from every orifice he has. Oh yes, there will be blood.”

Jigsaw is referring to the sarin gas that kills the losers of the game, and he’s explicitly stating that this will happen to Matthews’ son in the near future, as if the game is still in progress.

All the other cryptic gibberish Jigsaw feeds Matthews throughout the movie makes sense in retrospect, knowing that the sarin game is over and Matthews’ own game only requires him to sit still while the timer runs down, but this one line has no alternate interpretation that works that way.

It’s just a flat-out lie.

***End Saw II spoilers***

The Ex Machina and Saw II offenses can be somewhat defended by the fact that Nathan and Jigsaw are both untrustworthy characters. They damage the sanctity of their own experiments by lying to their subjects the way they do, which doesn’t seem to mesh with their motivations, but they’re imperfect, not entirely sane people. Jigsaw’s even dying of a brain tumor. It can be rationalized that they’d make a few mistakes and occasionally fail in adhering to the scientific method.

What can’t be excused is when the story lies directly to the audience, without a fallible character as an intermediary.

Your turn, My Bloody Valentine 3D.

This one’s simple. It’s a whodunit slasher movie with a shrinking cast of suspects. Classic! Let’s all try to guess who the killer is before our friends can!

Wait a minute, let’s not.

There’s really no point, not when the culprit, Tom, is effectively absolved not too long into the movie by being locked in a cage while more killing happens outside his reach.

It’s a killer-with-multiple-personalities twist, so some moments can be explained away as an unreliable narrator. Tom interacting with the masked killer, for example, is written off as a hallucination, but this doesn’t work on the cage scene.

The cage is not a hallucination. The pickaxe that the the killer uses to bend the door, trapping Tom inside, is not a hallucination. The big reveal montage showing how everything was done has Tom using the pickaxe to bend the cage shut from the inside, but… Annie, would you like to field this one?

THE PICKAXE WAS ON THE COCK-A-DOODIE OUTSIDE OF THE CAGE!!!!

You’re the best, Annie. Please don’t hurt me.

We enter into fiction expecting to be misled and misdirected a little, sometimes more artfully than others. When we go to a movie called My Bloody Valentine 3D, we should probably expect tricks as tacky as a parachute under Rocketman’s seat. But we always deserve better than the Cock-a-Doodie lie.

It means the difference between a cheap, cheesy good time and the joyless futility of playing a guessing game with Chris Griffin.

Chris: Guess what word I’m thinking of. And it’s not kitty.
Meg: Is it kitty?
Chris: GET OUT OF MY HEAD!

Hey, audience! Guess who the killer is. And it's not Tom.

It's Tom! Betcha didn't see that one coming, did you?

I don’t want to play anymore, do you?

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #4: "I Have to Go Now, Honey! I'm More Important Than You!"

5/9/2016

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See also:

Fiction Pet Peeve: Rape Gang Alley.

Fiction Pet Peeve: That Thing Designed for Dramatic Effect and Nothing Else.

Oh, whom to call out this week! There are so many to choose from. As a completely isolated occurrence, this trope might be a minor annoyance, but what launches it to top five list peeve status is the fact that it happens all the time.

Seriously, go to a summer blockbuster, and you’ve got a good eighty percent chance of witnessing it. Possibly two or three times.

So where to start…

What the hell, let’s just shotgun it.

List not exhaustive. Not remotely.

This is that moment when the hero abandons the love interest (or occasionally another variety of living motivator, as in the case of Ant Man and his daughter below) to go be somewhere more important.

Sometimes this involves saving the world,

Or another world.

Sometimes it’s about personal angst.

Sometimes the hero is literally given no choice.

Sometimes the important someplace else the hero is going is simply away, in some condescending effort to protect the character left behind.

Because of course only the hero knows best.

Sometimes the parting is a tragic tearfest.

Sometimes it only exists implicitly, and the inconvenient abandoned characters are swept unceremoniously under the rug.

Sure, their hitching-a-ride maneuver together in Civil War was cool, but at last report, Hawkeye was retiring to spend time with his wife and kids, and Ant Man had just spent his solo debut movie fighting to clear his name in order to win visitation rights with his daughter.

What the hell are they both doing here at all, much less helping the side of the Civil War conflict that will brand them both international supercriminals? Why is there only a passing moment of questioning this decision for Hawkeye, and none at all for Ant Man?

Not that paying attention to the abandonment scene is necessarily better. Once the hero makes the intention to leave known, whatever the reason, the love interest is then put in the absolute no-win position of playing the part of the whining, nagging, “what about meeee?” hindrance to what needs to be done,

Or saying something to the effect of, “Oh, I understand, of course you’re more important that I am!”

"Come back with your shield, or on it."

This is that moment that draws the line in the sand between primary and secondary characters. Between the characters whose choices matter, and the ones whose choices don’t. Those who will be treated as heroes, and those who will be treated as motivators or obstacles for the plots of those heroes.

Or, in those cases where the abandoned character is inescapably main, it serves as a telling test of the respect the abandoning character (and maybe the author) has for the abandoned character as a decision-maker.

Answer: None.

Okay, there is some emotional human truth hidden in a few of the less egregious instances of this trope.

Most people who enter into a romantic relationships in real life probably struggle at some point with balancing the responsibility to partner and family with the responsibility to self, personal goals, and any non-relationship-related feelings of one’s purpose in life.

It’s not always easy, people screw up, and not all couples can find a functioning balance. That’s a completely legitimate piece of the human experience to explore, and certainly one that would be exacerbated by the lifestyles of superheroes and similar archetypes.

Plus, when we think about the term “hero” as something more than a synonym for “protagonist,” we’re thinking of someone willing to make personal sacrifices for the greater good. Giving up the chance to live a long, happy life so that lots of other people will have that chance falls under that description.

Then there’s the fact that we only have so much room to care about so many main characters at once. Sometimes a story really does demand pushing away the extras to give the hero that big moment. The final Harry Potter book would have lacked a certain amount of that “coming full circle” feeling if Ginny had tagged along on the horcrux hunt with the original central trio, for example.

The issue is that the pervasive and unremitting use of this moment, which sorts one lover onto the hero side of the line and the other onto the passive plot device side, the pattern that emerges is quite clearly, “Romantic love does not require the mutual respect and effort of two equals.”

Worst of all (and truthfully the crux of this peeve) is the way this implication combines with the fact that the vast, vast majority of the heroes who do the abandoning in this trope are male, while the love interests are not only female, but are frequently the sole female representation in the story, or even lazily attempted token examples of female strength.

This compounds the message that “Romantic love does not require the mutual respect and effort of two equals,” making it into “Women exist only as needed to add romantic subplots to the lives of men, and have no priorities or abilities outside of loving men and caring for their children. Men, on the other hand, lead full, varied, meaningful lives which may include romance, women, and children, though these are often dangerously tempting distractions from more important matters.”

A message that gets repeated and re-affirmed over and over and over again, through infinite little fictional moments like these, each with its own excuse of varying flimsiness.

Sigh.

Think I’m going to stay in tonight and rewatch Mad Max: Fury Road.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #5: That Thing Designed for Dramatic Effect (and Nothing Else)

5/3/2016

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Seems like time for a new Fi’s Five list, doesn’t it?

A couple years back, I posted a rant (among my favorite articles on this blog to date) about one of my biggest fiction pet peeves: Rape Gang Alley.

This month, I’ll be counting down five other recurring fictional motifs that get under my skin. Some are plain and simple errors, some are common cheap devices that rub me especially the wrong way with their excessive prevalence.

First up, that monster, weapon, place, etc. crafted carefully for maximum dramatic effect… and nothing else.

Example, you ask?

Well, much as it pains me, I’m going to pick on The Hunger Games.

I love-love-love The Hunger Games, so I mostly forgive its wordbuilding flaws for the sake of the great characters and moments said world supports, but the rules of the eponymous game definitely count as an example of That Thing.

They're perfectly designed to set up Katniss's rebellion, which means they're pretty severely unrefined for their intended purpose of subjugation within the universe.

Really, in seventy-four years of forcing teenagers to fight to the death for the amusement of the rich, not one of them has ever considered suicide before Katniss? There’s no “play by the rules or we’ll kill your family” contingency already in place for this?

And if there isn’t such a precedent in play to keep tributes in line, why have none of them ever tried taking their righteous anger out on their captors at the first opportunity before? No one ever thought it might be worth putting up a force field to allay any temptation before Katniss’s stunt?

Sure, Katniss is a rebellious type, but these aren’t huge leaps given her position. No one else went there first? In seventy-four years? Why not? Why are all these loopholes still available?

Because drama wants Katniss to get to do these things and catch the bad guys unprepared.

Or, for a less cerebral, more visceral kind of logic-challenged drama, how about those subterranean monsters from The Descent?

The Descent is a frequent low-level entry on lists of the scariest movies of all time (when said lists acknowledge the existence of movies made within the last twenty years). It follows a group of spelunkers who lose their way in a cave system full of flesh-eating troglodytes, and yes, scary it is.

The problem is that the main weakness of the creatures, the main hope for the heroes, basically the central deciding element of the conflict, is the fact that after evolving for as long as they have in the absence of light, the creatures can’t see.

This allows for a lot of very tense scenes in which the heroes must make as little noise as possible to allow the creatures to pass them by, including a scene in which one of the creatures crawls unknowingly over a living person’s body.

Okay, it’s dramatic, but drama is all the thought that went into that monster design. Animals that evolve to live underground do end up with limited or nonexistent vision, because vision isn’t a priority for survival or mating when there’s no sunlight to see by. Other senses, on the other hand, are a priority when vision isn’t a viable option, and animals that survive and thrive without light adapt to compensate.

Why on earth would a species that’s existed underground long enough to lose its eyesight not have developed a decent sense of smell? How about heat sensing? Even while swimming through rivers of blood, those lost humans have to stand out pretty warm against an underground stone backdrop.

The only possible reason for these creatures to exist this way is to be able to crawl dramatically over potential victims without eating them.

It’s in the same boat those blood testers from Feed that drive me absolutely nuts. Who in their right mind would program a device to give results to the question “am I about to become a zombie?” in the form of dramatically cycling lights, unless their sole priority was to create audience tension?

This gripe isn’t a dismissal of the importance of drama, not by any means. The point of fiction is to make the audience feel something, and writers get a certain level of license to push things in dramatically necessary directions. There’s a responsibility, even, to give the fiction a chance to push further or present its subject more clearly than the cluttered randomness of reality can do alone.

But please, present me with that story in a place that feels possible from every angle, not only head-on. Give me enough internal logic to keep me from thinking my way out, and I’m that much closer to a captive audience.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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What This Feminist Sees in Harley Quinn

6/9/2014

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If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve seen Harley Quinn come up more than once, more than enough times to realize that I’ve got an extra soft spot for her.

Hell, if you’re a friend on my personal Facebook account, you’ve been seeing me in that costume above as my profile pic since last Halloween.

As a writer as outspoken as I am on gender equality issues, I know this particular fascination of mine has garnered more than a little confusion and a few raised eyebrows, so I suppose I should explain.

Do I love Harley because of some obscure logical analysis of why she should qualify as a feminist icon?

Hell no.

I love her because no one’s pretending she is one.

Harley’s no icon. She’s not the symbol this generation of women needs. She’s something just as important.

She’s a good character.

To those who don't know, Harley Quinn is The Joker's on-again-off-again girlfriend/lieutenant.

Lieutenant, not partner. He makes that abundantly clear.

She’s an ex-psychiatrist, formerly Dr. Harleen Quinzel, who got through med school mostly thanks to an athletic scholarship and sleeping with the faculty, interned at Arkham Asylum, and soon got assigned to The Joker's case presumably through some wildly irresponsible administrative error. Joker promptly talked his way out of his cell and into her pants, and so a new supervillain was born.

Joker's a lousy boss and worse boyfriend, to put it mildly.

I considered a picture to illustrate, but… he's the f**king Joker, use your imagination.

Yet Harley follows him out of love, not fear, lives for his approval, falls for his every ploy, and when he's not around, amuses herself by playing dress up.

So to sum up, she's weak-minded, subservient, codependent, childish, materialistic, and not particularly bright. She’s every negative female stereotype you can think of and then some. She’s everything I never want to be, would never encourage my future daughters or women in general to be.

But guess what? There's more to good storytelling (yes, even responsible storytelling, which must also be good storytelling in order to touch people deeply enough to matter) than characters who are good role models.

There are plenty of tough, independent, "strong" female characters in today's fiction. Current tokenism standards almost require it. This is a step forward from the days when the average one-woman-per-story did nothing but cry, be rescued, and get married, but that’s all it is, a step, toward the equality which remains a blip on the horizon.

A few of these "strong" female characters are actually well-written, and I dance for joy every time I find one,

Staying within Gotham, Barbara certainly has her moments.

…but the majority still seem to exist to add some cheap sex appeal for the male audience, a gesture of "here, are you happy now?" toward the female audience, or worst and most insulting of all, both.

For example, let's have a look at the most famous feminist icon in Gotham, Catwoman.

Ahem.

She’s a lone wolf. Mostly. She carries a whip. She knows how to take care of herself. She takes what she wants. She oozes confidence.

Okay. But who the hell is she? Why is she a thief?

Because she... uh... likes shiny things?

What's with the dangerously high heels? What's with doing everything in the most sexual manner possible, like she's working a stripper pole every moment of every day? Sure, it sometimes helps by throwing her male adversaries off their game, but she acts exactly the same when she’s alone.

Nobody can be sexy all the time. There's absolutely no reason for that to be her sole constant and defining quality except as an effort to keep teenage boys turning pages.

Batman gets to sleep around too and that’s all well and good, but that doesn't mean he has to risk broken ankles and bullets to vital exposed areas every night to prove it. How does doing so help elevate her to his level?

And speaking of Batman, why does Catwoman keep chasing after possibly the most emotionally unavailable character in fiction who isn't actually a robot if she's so damn smart, independent and confident? I could accept him being her one weakness, the exception to the rule, but first I'd have to get the rule.

Nothing about the whole Catwoman equation rings true.

And she's not alone. Why/how/by what definition does Talia Al Ghul "love" Batman while opposing everything he stands for and remaining perpetually ready to sell him out to her genocidal, megalomaniacal father?

Through what internal logic do her priorities come about?

They don't.

She's just foreign and exotic and therefore functions according to quaint and mysterious rules that don’t have to make sense, and of course she's obsessed with Batman, because she's female and inconvenient to get involved with.

Nice sexist/racist twofer there, DC.

This is where Harley is a breath of fresh air.

Why does she follow The Joker? Because she's stuck in an abusive relationship. Because she can't stand to stop believing in the story she's told herself and staked all her hopes on, that he loves her, that they can be happy, that things will get better.

She follows him because going about life the right way was hard, so she quit. She wants to live for fun and mischief and sex without responsibilities. She wants to screw a charismatic badboy (literally) without getting screwed by him (figuratively), and she refuses to accept that life doesn't work that way.

And why does she do everything in the smallest, most fetishized costumes she can come up with?

Because she has incredibly low self-esteem and is constantly trying to prove to herself that she's attractive and loveable.

Sold.

I buy all of that. I buy her when she swears she’ll never go back to Joker and hides out with Poison Ivy, enjoying the freedom of being herself without him, the relief of a healthier friendship (yes, and quite possibly a healthier something more), trying and failing to absorb some of Ivy’s very-slightly-more-explained-than-Catwoman dominatrix-esque man-eating attitude.

I buy her when something bad enough happens that it forces her to think, and she reverts temporarily to the sane, compassionate, ambitious, often fairly shrewd woman she used to be, that she could have been without Joker.

And I buy her when Joker snaps his fingers and she's back in his arms.

Their romance is a twisted, tragic trainwreck, she’s a twisted, tragic trainwreck, and that’s what she's supposed to be. No one’s halfheartedly dressing up the things she does for Joker as some kind of progressive, liberated forwardness like Catwoman’s ill-advised flirtations. She’s a comic book version of someone we’ve all met, of self-destructive feelings we're all capable of. Her weaknesses and lunacy aren't implanted in her to make her conveniently rescueable and compliant with a nonsensical plot. They’re lifelike. Human.

Harley is the way she is because it's the way she is, not because someone dozed off at the writer's desk and filled in the blanks with some half-formed notions of what women are or should be like.

And that is what is missing from the majority of women in today's fiction, far more than strength, intelligence, and independence:

Honesty. Thought. Depth.

That is how we will know when we've achieved equality in fiction. Not only by the number of female characters or even by what they do but by why they do it. Or rather, whether there really is a why, beyond a few perfunctory excuses and the demands of the story.

We'll know when there are equal numbers of male and female characters of equal prominence and when those female characters, to the same extent as the male ones, explore the best and the worst of human nature, our strengths and our weaknesses, with equal care and insight.

After all, what is it that makes or breaks potentially great characters if not their flaws?

So do I think female characters in general should be more like Harley?

No. Just like male characters, female characters in general shouldn't be any one way.

Am I satisfied with DC or comics as a whole because of her?

No. Just like male characters, one instance of doing something well with a female character doesn't cancel out all wrongs.

I still dream of the day when half of all well-written characters, good and bad, weak and strong, will be female simply because half of all people are, without that quality having to be a gimmick and a primary if not sole character trait.

But as things stand, Harley Quinn is one of- no, I'll come out and say it, she is my favorite female comic book character. Not because I admire her, but because I understand her.

Weak or not, the simple fact that there's enough to her to understand makes her ahead of her time. By which I mean, that's right, our time.

Notes:

1: Comic characters are shared by many authors and are written with varying quality at different times, so I’m analyzing the most common and well known versions of each character. Harley has been handled less carefully at times, and there may well be Catwoman stories I’m unfamiliar with that come closer to salvaging her. Due to the vast amount of material in the DC universe, I just don’t know.

2: I actually despise the word “feminist.” I use it above because it’s the only term that fits in a headline and is instantly recognizable as something close to what I mean. I’m an antisexist (a word that doesn’t exist but should), not a feminist. I stand for the advancement of equality, not the simple advancement of women to the greatest extent possible over all else, as the etymology of “feminist” implies. The fact that women have historically gotten the short end of almost all inequalities makes these two goals coincide frequently enough that they’re very easy to confuse, but they are not the same.

So to the guys out there, no disrespect intended.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Zombie Reading Lists, Writing about Boys, and an Actual Book Signing! (Blog Tour Recap)

5/18/2014

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Okay, this one isn't all blog tour recap. It's physical tour recap too! The tour giveaway is still active in both the posts linked to below, and as always...

You can order the book here!

My Top 10 Zombie Influences

1: World War Z (book) This is the ultimate zombie novel. The thought and research that must have gone into it is staggering, and far beyond anything I can imagine attempting. How is that an influence, then? Because it took me deeper into a zombie apocalyptic world than anything else and started my brain really working there.

2: Zombieland It's a zombie comedy road trip. I think that influence is pretty clear. I wanted to give YA readers the kind of zombie fun this movie offers a primarily adult male audience.

3: Shaun of the Dead This was the first zombie movie I ever saw, and consequently the first zombie comedy I saw. I have no doubt that mixing zombies with British romantic comedy did a lot to endear them to me.

4: The Walking Dead (TV) I became a fan of this one too late for it to have much of an influence on me as I was writing Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of), but with it being the main work of zombie fiction everyone knows... (Click here to read the full list)

What Made You Write Such a Nontraditional Male Lead?

When offered the dizzying freedom to write on any topic I wanted for this guest spot, I gave a lot of thought to what question I wished someone had asked me about Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of) that no one had.

I've been asked a lot about zombies, about the heroine, Cassie, and about writing itself, but even though several early readers have commented on how much they enjoy her partner in zombie survival, Norman, and how different he is from what they expected, I've hardly had the chance to talk about him, apart from once being asked if he's based on someone I know.

So what made me write such a nontraditional male lead?

Part of it has to do with personal taste. I've always had an attraction for comedians. Humor takes both brains and guts to pull off well, both attractive qualities, and cheering me up and keeping the world in perspective by making me laugh is often one of the most helpful things someone close to me can do.

There's more to Norman than my own quirky perspective on what makes a good boyfriend, though. In fact, that's sort of the point.

In YA books, and female-oriented books in general, male characters often run together into a sea of square jaws and chiseled abs. There are brooding bad boys and infinitely patient, righteous good boys, that's often the extent of their personalities, and we're supposed to consider that variety. In the worst cases... (Click here to read the full post)

Signing at Barnes & Noble Fullerton

Just had to put this in here! Had a great time, signed a lot of books, answered a lot of questions about the creative process, gave directions to a lot of people who got lost looking for the customer service desk. If you missed it, I'll most certainly be posting details for future signings as soon as I know them myself. Hopefully there'll be some closer to LA later on.

Big thanks to everyone who did make it!

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Why Zombies?

5/14/2014

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One thing nobody tell you about blog tours is that some tour spots simply fall through.

In preparation for the Confession of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of) blog tour, I answered a few blogger's questions that for one reason or another never ended up going live.

But why let them go to waste? Here's one a lot of people have asked in passing in one way or another, asked simply and answered in full:

Why Zombies?

This is a question I’ve never really asked myself, because I never made a conscious decision to write a zombie story. The idea for Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of) was one that came out of the blue and hijacked my brain, so I can only speculate on what made me write it.

Obviously, I have a lot of love for zombie fiction. Plenty of zombie stories were bouncing around my head when the idea arose. It's fairly intuitive in retrospect that they were something I'd want to play with.

But why do I love zombies? Well, for starters, they're one of the perfect escapist devices. I don't mean that as a bad thing. I believe one of the purposes of stories is to take us places we couldn't otherwise go, and I see no shame in that.

Zombies transform their world. They tend to rip out the structure, and for a wanderlust-stricken artist tied to a day job which, at the time, involved yelling at the corrupt salespeople of a corrupt and enormous corporation for not following a few of the more arbitrary rules while having to ignore the massive corruption itself... well, you can see the appeal in grabbing a baseball bat and taking off to knock the heads off corpses, feed the animals at Tulsa Zoo, and get drunk in Elvis's TV room.

I'll admit, the anarchic quality of zombie fiction also lends itself very well to YA, my main passion as an author. In YA, especially speculative YA, one of our first tasks is often to get any responsible adults out of the way so stories beyond the realm of the usual can happen. One of the things zombies do quite reliably is get rid of most of the people who would normally demand acknowledgement.

(Hey, you can't say I'm not honest about it.)

I think the biggest reason I found myself writing about zombies, though, comes down to mood. I write scary, dark, and heartfelt-heavy, and I write funny and sarcastic. Some of what I write swings more to one side of that spectrum than the other; Confessions of the Very First Zombie Slayer (That I Know of) is very much on the fun side, but both those elements will always come through for me. I can't write a story completely free of jokes or completely free of darkness or other feelings, and zombies are the line right in the middle of all that.

There's tragedy to zombies. There's the loss of people and of a way of life. There's the challenge of forging new bonds under unfamiliar circumstances. But there's also natural comedy to zombies. They’re dumb and mindless and gooey. They’re made for silly action and slapstick.

Zombies live in the same no man's land between serious and not where I am most at home.

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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Fiction Pet Peeve: Rape Gang Alley

3/22/2014

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Hello, all. As those who follow me elsewhere online may know, fiction pet peeves are a feature I usually run on my Facebook and Twitter when such a thought strikes me. When this particular trope recently solidified itself on my conscious pet peeve list, however, and I started analyzing why, I knew it wouldn't fit in a reasonable Facebook post, let alone a tweet.

So buckle in, it's time for a literary rant.

You know the trope I'm talking about. Our heroine finds herself cornered down a dark alley by the dregs of society who have absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the plot, and the hero swoops in to rescue her in the nick of time.

If you've been around me long, you know my feelings about sexual equality and the responsibility of art to lead social progress, so you're probably thinking I'm going to complain that scenes like this make the heroines appear weak and helpless, and in particularly poorly handled instances, that's true, but it doesn't have to be, and it doesn't come close to covering the whole problem here.

A scene in which the heroine is rescued by the hero isn’t inherently wrong. Rescues are great for stories, and while I believe firmly in equality, true equality still allows for the hero to rescue the heroine, as opposed to the other way around, half the time. Everyone needs help now and then.

Even Michael Westen needs to be rescued sometimes, and if he's not the hero you want your heroine to be equal to, I don't want to know who is.

As for the rape attempt itself, I'm a horror author. I'll never say there's anything an artist should avoid dealing with just because it's too horrible, as long as he or she can do so intelligently, and rape is no exception.

If you're going to write a villain of a sexually predatory nature,

Or if you're tackling a universe where rape is supposed to be horrifyingly prevalent and/or institutionalized,

...Of course these are details you shouldn't shy away from. Because they’re part of the world and story.

I could go on at length about how much of this very dark theme there is that deserves to be dug into and all the different fictional contexts where digging in is perfectly appropriate, but I think those two pictures above are quite enough for one day, so I'm going to skip back to the point, one fictional context where I'm sick to death of rape being used.

Quick, we need to establish that the male lead is a decent guy! Easy, we'll just frog march the heroine down rape gang alley so he can intervene! There, done! Who's for margaritas?

Sick of it. Sick.

Apart from being lazy, clichéd, and often insulting to women, it's even more insulting to men.

Think about what this trope says. First of all, it says that all alleys are crawling with rape gangs. Okay, we know there are bad areas and bad people and that bad things do happen, but rape gangs in every single alley a heroine (especially a YA heroine) walks down? Can't she ever get to her car safely? Or run into a desperate junkie who just wants her wallet? Ever?

Oh no, all men except this exceptional hero, even the ones who aren't fully realized, noteworthy villains, have to be complete monsters who are out to get her.

Then there are the criteria this sets for an acceptable male love interest.

1: Don't be one of the rapists.

Well, duh.

2: To get a girl's attention, you must stand up to a roving rape gang on her behalf like it's nothing.

Wait, what?

This is not beginner level, qualifying round stuff! It's not something your average teenage or twenty-something good guy can do and walk away from in one piece, or (hopefully) that most will ever have occasion to attempt! How did this become the standard opening move?

I'm not saying it's not a noble and impressive thing to do or that a guy should run away scared in this situation if we’re supposed to like and admire him, but for the love of god, can he at least be scared like a sane person who doesn't do this every day?!

Okay, he gets a small pass on the nonchalance part if he has relevant superpowers, but contrary to popular belief, not all YA male leads do.

Even more realistically, how about he tries to protect the heroine and can't, because he promptly gets his ass kicked by these psychopathic hardened criminals? We respect characters more for trying than succeeding anyway.

What's that? That's a little darker than this bonding moment between our romantic leads should be? It would leave them with more physical and psychological scars than this story has room for?

Well golly gee, maybe this isn't such a great time to mess around with a topic like sexual assault after all. Any woman who's been faced with threatening sexual advances can tell you that they can mess with your head for a considerable length of time afterward, even when unsuccessful, especially if you're a teenage virgin still trying to get comfortable with the idea of sex under the most nonthreatening circumstances.

Is this really the most romantic idea you've got for a scene?

More to the point, is this really all we believe a man has to offer? A level of human decency and respect that should go without saying, and his services as the biggest, toughest, preferably superhuman-est bodyguard available against less worthy men?

Can't he charm the heroine with his wit and intellect?

I realize this relationship is different in the books, but I couldn’t resist.

Can't they bond over common goals and experiences that allow them to understand each other in ways that no one else does?

Can't he stand by her when more common and far less glamorous opportunities arise, like against the easy-to-follow court of public opinion?

Yes, all these other ways of building a relationship take a lot more work to render effectively in a story than a quick detour down rape gang alley, but guess what, my fellow authors? That's our job, and I say we roll up our sleeves.

I'm calling for deeper male characters and deeper romances in our female protagonist-driven stories.

Who's with me?

Agree? Disagree? Comments are always welcome! Or keep up with my fictional musings by joining me on Facebook, on Twitter, or by signing up for email updates in the panel on the right!

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<<Previous

Why Trying to Measure the Darkness Is Holding Superhero Movies Back

Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #1: The Glass Lampshade

Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #2: I Am the Parent, Therefore I Disapprove

Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #3: The Cock-a-Doodie Lie!

Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #4: "I Have to Go Now, Honey! I'm More Important Than You!"

Five More of Fi's Fiction Pet Peeves #5: That Thing Designed for Dramatic Effect (and Nothing Else)

What This Feminist Sees in Harley Quinn

Zombie Reading Lists, Writing about Boys, and an Actual Book Signing! (Blog Tour Recap)

My Top 10 Zombie Influences

What Made You Write Such a Nontraditional Male Lead?

Signing at Barnes & Noble Fullerton

Why Zombies?

Why Zombies?

Fiction Pet Peeve: Rape Gang Alley

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