21 Monday May 2012
Posted in Goofiness
I’m still suffering some sinus ickiness, so I thought I’d perk us all up on a yucky Monday with some good old fashioned cuteness! Enjoy.
And one of my favorites:
(I’m pretty sure I drew many space unicorns in my youth.
18 Friday May 2012
Posted in Buffy, Freudian Friday, Television, Writing
First order of business — to those of you who get email updates, I sincerely apologize for publishing earlier this morning my idea for a blog post: writing a good story without a villain. Call it a preview of coming attractions. (And also picture me smacking myself on the forehead repeatedly. Doh!)
Second order of business — I’m still looking for guest posts to run in mid-June when I’m away getting married and stuff. So, if you’re reading this, let me know if you’d like to see your own content here. I will owe you cookies and/or a future guest post.
On to Freudian Friday madness. I’ve noticed lately that I’ve been talking a lot about difficulty connecting with a show or a book if it lacks a good villain.
That’s not quite the oxymoron it seems—villains are people, too, you know. They had parents (usually), birthday parties, first loves… and a really intriguing villain gives the audience glimpses of that past and the personality it created.
So if you’re looking to raise—I mean, write—a good villain, keep the following traits in mind:
1. Humor
Part of what makes Joss Whedon’s work so great is his love for a comedic villain. We’re rooting for our hero, sure, but the villain is just so damned funny we can’t help but like him a little, too. Take Captain Hammer. He’s a smarmy, self-involved jerk, sure, and apparently frightened of geese, but he’s frickin’ hilarious.
Who could resist that insincere smile?
Even though we’re rooting for Doctor Horrible, it’s hard not to love Captain Hammer—his fists are not the hammer, he doesn’t need tiny cue cards, and he’s played by Nathan Fillion. How could we not join his groupies?
(Note that extreme good looks didn’t make this list… but they certainly don’t hurt.)
2. Vulnerability
While we’re on Doctor Horrible, let’s talk about the man himself. He “has a PhD in Horribleness,” so, even though he’s our hero, we know he’s looking to become a Big Bad. But his other name is Billy, he wears slouchy-hoodies, he’s too scared to talk to his crush, and he’s played by Neil Patrick Harris: he just screams sensitive soul.
What a crazy random happenstance!
We also know, though, that he keep stalker-photos of his crush and feels wildly inadequate compared to his aforementioned nemesis, Captain Hammer. The fact that he’s vulnerable makes him likable, easy to relate to—he really is a good villain. It’s the exploitation of that tragic flaw that pushes him into the Evil League of Evil.
3. Real Concern for Something or Someone
I’ve mentioned before that I think Mayor Wilkins is an awesome villain. He’s got the humor, and his concern for Faith makes him vulnerable: it’s what enables Buffy to kill him. The Mayor’s love for Faith shows that he’s more than just an evil dude looking for ascension and life as a big snake-demon. He’s also a man with fatherly impulses, someone who wants to sponsor and protect young people.
Sure, he’s evil–but he’s also a family man.
We occasionally get to see him through Faith’s eyes as the only person who ever truly believed in her. And that makes him far more interesting than a villain who only wishes to destroy everyone he touches.
4. A Little Bit of Crazy
One of my personal favorite Buffy villains is Glory, the exiled Hell-God who wants to kill Buffy’s sister Dawn and use her magical Key energy to open the doors back to home-hell. As a god, Glory operates on a completely different plane than the human characters, and Her Sparkling Luminescence is completely batshit crazy. One of her powers is draining humans of their sanity, turning them into some kind of sleeper-agent mindless zombies who eventually activate to do her bidding.
The Most Unstable One claims sanity from nice people like Tara.
Her madness makes her alien, and she’s more frightening because of it. Someone who neither understands nor cares about our “rules” and works completely outside of them is more difficult to beat—and more outrageous to watch.
5. Belief They Are Doing Right
Finally, a convincing, near-likable villain believes she is doing right. While I could talk about Marnie/Antonia from True Blood or the Lord Ruler from Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn, let’s stick with the Joss Whedon theme, and get Willow into the mix. No, she’s not a true villain, rather more of an antagonist (which nebulous difference I won’t get into), but she is a Big Bad at one point, with an endgame first of vengeance and then of destroying the world.
Big scary veins aren’t a good look for anyone.
Willow turns evil because she wants to avenge Tara’s murder, and she’s driven to destroy the world because she can’t stand the pain that fills it. Dark Willow has a point: the world is a terrible place, especially in the Buffyverse, and sometimes it does seem like a supervillain would be justified in destroying it all and starting over from scratch. We feel for Willow, even as we’re rooting for Xander to stop her. A goal we can understand makes a villain reasonable, and makes the hero’s triumph more difficult and more bittersweet.
What do you think makes a good villain, readers?
16 Wednesday May 2012
Posted in Life, The Other Kristin
I am planning a wedding.
Specifically, I’m planning my own wedding to the guy I’ve been dating for seven years and living with for five. The decision to get married wasn’t exactly a surprise—it was more like cleaning out the big box of old clothes in my closet. It’s something we’ve intended to do forever, but we’re only just now getting around to it because, frankly, planning a wedding is only marginally more fun and satisfying than said box-emptying… but it’s a lot more expensive and time-consuming.
Okay, that was bitter. As we get closer to the wedding, I’m getting a lot more excited, and that big box was never even remotely amusing.
I’m finding that the more decisions I make about the wedding, the more silly problems—many of them even hypothetical!—I come across.
“What if the out-of-town officiant has an emergency and can’t make it?”
“What if the Etsy sculptor can’t give the owl a bowtie?”
“The handfasting cord is too lightweight, and if it’s windy, it’ll blow around!”
These questions irritate the crap out of me, because people don’t seem to like my answers. Saying, “I guess we’ll find someone else to perform the service,” or, “I’ll guess the owl will have a regular tie,” or plain old, “Oh well,” just seems to puzzle people.
Drew has started answering all of these questions with a straight-faced, “Well, I guess the wedding’s off!”
Oh, no, we didn’t get out first choice rehearsal venue! “Well, I guess the wedding’s off!”
The nearest Men’s Wearhouse is 45 minutes away! “Well, I guess the wedding’s off.”
What if said Men’s Wearhouse doesn’t have shoes big enough for the father-of-the-groom? “Well, I guess the wedding’s off!”
The groomsman’s gift arrived broken! “Well, I guess the wedding’s off!”
You get the idea. It puts all these bridal catastrophes into perspective. Because, really, we’re getting married. Flowers, cake-toppers, ribbons, shoes, and pocket watches really don’t matter in the scheme of things. It’s going to be an amazing day.
Plus, Drew got me Medieval Sims to play when I start to feel stressed out. And that’s love.
14 Monday May 2012
Posted in Life
Tags
Back in my New Mexico reporting days, I was coming back from a city council meeting late, around 11 p.m.
We lived way out of the town that I worked in, just off what they call the “High Road” to Taos. The road home was twisty and narrow, frequently washed out by rain, snow, wind, or, well, any weather generally. And because we lived out in the “What’s a streetlight?” boonies, it was extremely dark. I was exhausted and feeling tense from the meeting, more than a little on edge.
I came around a bend and spotted a hulking, four-legged monster in the other lane.
Surprised, I slowed down for a better look and saw—a horse.
Scary, right? The poor fellow had wandered out of his enclosure and into a road where people regularly drove half-again over the speed limit.
I pulled over, puzzled about what to do. It wasn’t exactly an emergency, so I was reluctant to call 911. I didn’t want to get out of the car to help the horse myself and risk getting hit by a car or (it’s possible) shot by someone who thinks I’m stealing it. On the other hand, a car hitting a horse could reach catastrophic levels, for both car passengers and horse. And I love horses.
So I called 911.
“911, what’s your emergency?”
“This IS NOT an emergency. I’m calling because I’m on State Road XX near Chimayo, and there’s a horse in the road.”
“Is it alive?”
“Um… yes?”
“Where are you?”
*gnashing of teeth, because I’m familiar with the territorial crap the cops regularly give people out there* “I’m near Chimayo, but I’m not sure if I’m in Santa Fe County or in Rio Arriba.”
“Well, we’ll need to turn it over to Santa Fe County if you’re in their jurisdiction.”
“Okay…” I pinpoint my location for the 911 guy. The newspaper had covered stories in the past about sometimes cops and emergency vehicles got so caught up in the territorial-jurisdiction disputes that it took a very long time for vehicles to get their. (When I was telling my publisher about the head-on collision we survived in northern Santa Fe county two days after the fact, the third question he asked, after “Are you okay?” and “What about your car?” was “How long did the ambulance take to get there?” followed by “Who was it?”)
But then the real kicker of this surreal phone call:
“What color is it?” the 911 guy asked.
“The horse?” I asked. “Um… I don’t know! It’s dark outside! It could have been anywhere from palomino to grey to brown.”
Of all the asinine things to ask! It’s a horse… in the road! If you find two horses in the road, and one of them wasn’t the one I called about, get it out, too! For the love of all that is holy, let’s apply some common sense to the situation!
“Hmm. Okay. We’ll send someone out.”
They asked me if I wanted to give my name, and I definitively said no—no public records trail of this for me, no thank you.
I got home and told Drew about it, and recounted the story to my fellow reporters the next day. One guy told me that a former editor always said that those emergency operator folks are just like fast-food drive-thru operators, but with more authority. I’m sure that’s not always the case, and that some 911 operators are skilled, thoughtful folks who work really hard and save lives with that work.
Still. If anything ever taught me to think before I ask a question, it was that 911 guy. I only hope the horse got home okay.
11 Friday May 2012
Posted in Books, Buffy, Freudian Friday, Tarot
Today’s post is the crux of two larger series I’d like to do for Freudian Fridays: friendship in fantasy and homosexuality in fantasy. And those two are not as disparate as perhaps they should be: it’s become a fairly common occurrence in fantasy for the line between friendship and attraction to blur and characters to throw their sexual preference out the window, despite evidence that they usually lean firmly the other way.
I’m talking about spontaneous bisexuality, the choice to engage in a homosexual relationship either because the character is lonely or because she likes a given person so much that she must escalate their relationship.
Okay, time for the required disclaimer: I’m aware that sexuality and gender are fluid, that Kinsey developed a Heterosexual-Homosexual Rating Scale (I live near the Kinsey Institute, after all!), that it’s up to the individual, that none of these things are set in stone. I’m not trying to advocate for some sort of heteronormative caveman relationship standards in genre fiction. To the contrary, I’m pointing out something about the genre’s treatment of homosexual relationships that troubles me because it cheapens those relationships… it also damages the idea of strong female friendships. Disagree with me all you want, but let’s all stay civil to one another in our discussion.
I’ve been thinking about this topic for awhile and have resisted writing it because I’m afraid I’ll put my foot in my mouth and the internet will hate me. But the Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 8 graphic novel I just read, Wolves at the Gate, finally gave me the nudge I needed to give up my reluctance and point out this little problem.
So what was it that pushed me over the hump, you ask? Well, spoiler alert: Buffy engages in a homosexual one-night stand that turns into two nights and maybe more.
Post-coital, pre-comical.
In and of itself, that’s fine, I guess. My trouble is that Buffy herself is pretty staunchly hetero: she never shows any Phoebe-on-Friends-like interest in her friends, is shocked when Willow reveals her sexual preference, never pays any sexual attention to attractive women, even says herself that she’s not gay “so you’d notice.” No, she’s lonely, and so falls into bed with the first person to express a real interest in her. Of course, the scene devolves into a complete sexual farce, with Xander barging in, expressing a wish for Willow to appear, and then—poof—Willow appears. Willow later demands a description of Buffy’s behavior in bed from Satsu, suggesting that Willow herself wouldn’t mind the chance to hop in Buffy’s bed herself. The trouble is, Willow’s relationship with Tara is treated seriously and tenderly, while other bi-sexual choices and behavior are treated with levity—just look at Andrew, after all!
Their first onscreen kiss is part of a devastating, un-sexual episode.
TV-Tropes calls situations like this “But Not Too Bi“: Buffy’s and Andrew’s attraction to the same sex is something whimsical, while Willow’s relationship with Tara is something beautiful.
There are many variations to this, but key is to create some form of pecking order between the sexes, presumably in order to make the character more appealing to the audience depending on what gender and sexuality they are expected to have, while at the same time having the titillation, comedic material or diversity of ‘deviant’ sexual behaviour. Of course, the prevalence of the trope brings some Unfortunate Implications for real life bisexuals; that in the end it’s only one gender that matters to them and that their experiences with the other one are worthless.
Which brings me to the heart of the problem. Have you ever played The Sims? Individual Sims develop relationships based on a meter bar which ranges from negative-x to 100, with 100 being the closest, most caring a Sim relationship can be. In the early editions of the game, though, when Sims crossed about 65, they automatically had romantic feelings for one another—regardless of gender. Yes, I say “gender” and not “sex” because Sims have no gender-preference: they fall in love willy-nilly with no choice in sexual orientation. It flies in the face of the scientific evidence that says sexual orientation is a product of biology and is not a choice.
These two are actually pretty cute.
Real people are not Sims. I love my best girl friend very deeply, but I don’t have sexual feelings for her. (Sorry, dear.) But sometimes, in fantasy worlds, people tend to act like Sims. I personally wouldn’t say this, but I’ve heard it pointed out that Willow transforms into a lesbian just because she and Tara spend a lot of time together and have a lot in common. Willow falls in love with Tara out of convenience. Magical power could also be read as a metaphor for gayness: it’s an Othering of the character, the characters have to deal with the consequences of what makes them special, and they’re naturally attracted to someone similarly Other, i.e., Buffy and Satsu. I don’t agree with that analysis (we have no evidence that Witch-Amy is other than heterosexual, for example), but the fact remains that it could stand.
We’ve been picking on Buffy a lot, so let’s look at another example: Rachel Morgan and Ivy Tamwood in Kim Harrison’s The Hollows series. 
Ivy (vampire) and Rachel (witch) are business partners and (arguably) best friends. Ivy is bisexual, Rachel is heterosexual. Ivy is in love with Rachel. She also wants to drink Rachel’s blood, but, abused in her youth, can’t separate blood-lust from sexual-lust. Rachel wants to escalate their relationship, to know the intimacy that comes from sharing blood… but… “She’s totally not gay.” She insists on her hetero status, and yet she and Ivy share several sexual experiences with blood, and Rachel is left wondering how she can find a balance.
Rachel’s only romantic relationships are with men, but her relationship with Ivy is at the center of the series—and I frequently find myself wondering as I read if the two are really friends at all. Ivy set up their living situation in an effort to seduce Rachel, and it’s unclear what relationship she intended that seduction to create. Is Rachel teasing Ivy, torturing her by insisting that she’s straight but still engaging in what Ivy views as sexually-charged behavior? Is Ivy using Rachel, trying to “convert” her from what Rachel believes is her deeply-ingrained preference? Are they friends at all, or is this an abusive “romantic” relationship?
I’m not okay with the blurring of female friendships and abusive relationships. Maybe Rachel is using Ivy, and maybe Buffy is using Satsu: either way, it’s not a healthy friendship, and it’s setting up the bi-sexual or lesbian woman to get hurt. While there are examples in the fantasy genre of healthy female friendships and healthy lesbian relationships, we should’t accept the harmful relationships with question or, worse, with humor.
What do you think, readers? Agree, disagree? Do you hate me now? What are some other examples of healthy and harmful relationships? What do you make of Tara from True Blood, who I left out to save on length?
