This week’s love-turned-obsession? Disney’s TANGLED. (What follows is not really about the movie’s plot, so those who haven’t seen it are safe from spoilers!)

I saw this in the theater almost two weeks ago with my husband and some friends. I’d been clamoring to see this since I read a review saying that the film featured music by Alan Menken — THE Alan Menken, of ’90s Disney movie-musical fame. By the time I was six or seven, I ranked Alan Menken up there with Mozart and Beethoven and Vivaldi (names I’d learned in music class) because what child in the ’90s did not have a life-altering reaction to “Under the Sea” or “Part of Your World”?

From the very opening line (Flynn: “This is the story of how I died.”) to the song of the end credits, I was… spellbound. Captivated. I sat there and I swear to all that is good I felt like I was a kid watching BEAUTY AND THE BEAST or THE LION KING or CINDERELLA or SLEEPING BEAUTY for the first time. No Disney film has done that for me since before MULAN.

I’ll give you some history. My mother put Disney videos on for me from the time I was capable of focusing my eyes on a television screen. The songs, the stories, and the characters were imprinted upon my consciousness at an early age. The Disney Princess Movie is a permanent part of my soul. The first stories I told myself as a kid (when not attempting to write another Cam Jansen or Encyclopedia Brown mystery) were all my own made-up princess stories, because none of the real fairy tales were… well, exciting enough. (After I saw FERN GULLY and THUMBELINA my stories, briefly, became fairy princess stories. Don’t judge me.) So obsessed was I with the Disney princess movie that in third grade, at age eight, I proclaimed before the entire class I wanted to be a Disney animator when I grew up. My drawings (pretty decent for an eight-year-old) were [mostly] of princesses and I knew that after I went to art school I’d totally be drawing the next Disney princess. And even years after I realized that animators aren’t the ones who make up the story and that I was more interested in telling the story than animating someone else’s, I still look at Disney movies and there’s this strange itch I can’t scratch. Like, in another life, if the profession I’d chosen when I was eight was the one I was involved in today, maybe I’d be working on a movie like TANGLED even now. It’s almost like a kinship. We grew up together, Disney movies and I, and we share a special bond.

(Which makes me imagine me and my friend Disney Princess Movie going to lunch together, because even today I anthropomorphize everything thanks to, probably, Disney. I digress.)

So when I left the theater having seen TANGLED, I was in knots. (HA!) I wanted to see it again! I had to download the soundtrack! (When that love turns into obsession I don’t do thinks by halves.) But a couple of blocks away from the theater, TANGLED’s shortcomings started poking me… but I realized they weren’t the movie’s shortcomings at all. The poking, prodding thoughts I was having had nothing directly to do with the movie I saw but everything to do with the necessary form of the Disney princess movie and its parent, the fairy tale. The story. The tropes. I started asking questions about them when I read the original Grimm and Anderson and even Lang, which led me to studying this stuff in college, in part: tropes and themes and histories of stories like this, in medieval and early modern literature, in classic fairy tales. The old crone and the witch, the step-mother versus the mother, the innocent naif and the handsome swashbuckler.

I looked at TANGLED under this critical lens and thought, It’s still a fairy tale. Though this film had some of the best nuance and backstory of any Disney princess movie, it was still a very basic fairy tale. But what was it about Disney princess movies, I wondered, that got me to start writing my own stories? Imagining the characters and the depth and the reality behind that very basic fairy tale. THE LITTLE MERMAID hardly characterizes Eric outside of his being a handsome prince; the most exciting part of SLEEPING BEAUTY is Prince Philip’s wild ride to slay Maleficent, which relies on no involvement from the film’s titular princess. (And of course the fairies give him the sword and the shield!) I had to write my own stories — set in my own worlds, with my own crazy casts of characters — because I needed to tell stories that felt as wonderful as my favorite Disney movies but as real as my own experiences. I wasn’t a princess. I was a complicated contradiction of a child. I needed to write a story that reflected me.

So two weeks ago I realized all over again: as swoon-worthy as TANGLED was, as absolutely awesome, active, and wonderful its princess was (as Meg Cabot so beautifully points out here), it wasn’t enough for me. No Disney movie has ever been “enough” for me. Because even as a kid I wanted more. More complexity, backstory, layers, and history. Though TANGLED’s character backstories and psychologies were pretty deep stuff for a Disney film, they weren’t equivalent to the depth to be found in say, a great middle grade or YA novel. The reason why I decided when I was twelve that I needed to write novels was due in direct part to my obsession with providing my characters with the depth, backstories, and psychological growth I was missing in my favorite Disney films, because as a medium and a format they’re not exactly optimal for providing that. (And the G or PG rating? I wanted to get a little more intense with my worlds and Disney movies usually can’t do that and have the same wide-ranging appeal.)

Disney movies were the first stories I ever really started analyzing, and that analysis was what led me to realizing the important role of the writer in the genesis of a story (of course, you say, but this was revelatory for Erin the eight-year-old!). That led me to wondering what makes a good writer, a good story teller, and started me on the path that led to me taking writing course after writing course, attempting my first drawer novels, then studying writing (and critical analysis!) in college, and now to writing for real. By the transitive property, Disney movies are what led me to my chosen career. (That and Star Wars, but that’s an obsession worthy of another post.)

So in a really round-about way, seeing TANGLED reaffirmed my passion for (and obsession with) writing young adult novels.

Do you share my Disney princess movie obsession? What experience have you had with Disney movies?

First of all, it’s June. Where the blazes did half of 2010 go already? Secondly, there are many happenings this month so far. It’s my last month of the day job before summer vacation (sweet!) and I cannot wait until I have all of that glorious writing time. Because it will be glorious. As it is, I can’t dig into a local café (and there are tons in Williamsburg) for more than an hour before I need to get back to work/life, and one of my favorite places to write is at a café, with an iced coffee or tea sweating on the table beside me.

Then, nearly every weekend this month we have friends visiting from out of town. It’s a magical time when friends visit. It gives us an excuse to stop being homebodies and actually explore this fantastic neighborhood and the entire city, making us feel better about the money we’re spending. We’re seeing a Broadway show! There are street fairs! Museum exhibits! Good times to be had by all! If left to our own devices I will hide in a corner with my laptop and the boy wonder will play a game (or, now, play with the kitten)… or I’ll play a game (oh, Little Big Planet, you are addictive), or we’ll cook or bake… But we live, as so many people remind us, in frakking New York City! Which apparently obligates us, by virtue of the necessity of allowing others far away to live vicariously through us, to go “out” and “have fun.” We do. Just last week, we were invited to Milk & Honey, a bar that is not myth! I had two of the best cocktails I’ve ever had in my life. But we don’t do that kind of thing all the time. We strive to live sustainable lives.

The “New York City life of a twentysomething” is one stereotype I’ve never fully understood. (There’s an episode of Sex and the City that goes into this; twentysomethings here are supposed to live lives of fun, carefree frivolity involving many one-night stands and much alcohol, the kind of lives that thirtysomethings and fortysomethings regard with mild jealousy. This confuses me!) But how can a twentysomething (who isn’t one of the rare 6-figure earning twentysomethings, or who doesn’t have daddy’s credit card) actually afford to go out all of the time, especially in an economy where so many people in our age bracket are losing their jobs? Unless you love dive bars, hole-in-the-wall restaurants, or you know someone who can pull you into a “cool” place, bypassing an expensive cover, going “out” costs add up. Usually going out makes more sense than, say, having a house party — especially when a lot of people I know are either renting rooms in multi-room apartments with relative strangers, living in a “box” of a studio (which we did! We did that!), or living outside the city entirely (which makes grabbing a group together to go to their place a trek rather than a casual jaunt).

This phase is a unique one: the post-college, pre-”real life” phase of learning to be an adult, finding a grown-up identity (because, yes, that identity we discover as teenagers gets smashed by college, then that collegiate identity gets ripped apart by the “real world”…) All of that fun stuff! I’ve been told a lot, by a various folks that the twenties are “a magical time” or somesuch, that I mustn’t “squander” my time, that I need to “live life while I still have one.” Um, what? (Does that mean that one’s life ends with marriage and/or children? Really?) Do those people realize that telling me that is akin to telling a teenager that they will “get over” all of their teenage drama and hardships, that they just have to “suck it up and deal”? (Because I was told that. That being a teenager was a phase I needed to push through, like slogging through mud, and I’d get through to the other side filthy but whole. Thanks, advisors, for telling me that. Helped so much with the day to day of teenage life, knowing that I was sunk neck-deep in mud out of which I’d eventually discover how to crawl.)

I didn’t know how to deal with that well-meaning advice then, and I don’t really know how to live without “squandering” my life now. What does that even mean? Perhaps it’s because I spend part of my days with a lot of New York City moms — every conceivable (positive and negative) stereotype of them — and all sorts of babysitter/nanny-types. A lot of them ask me the usual questions, get a little picture of me, then proceed to give me life advice. Sometimes there are some pleas — “Don’t have children yet! Please! Don’t! Doooon’t!”) Sometimes there are lectures: You should do this. You should do that. (Because I’m asking for it? Like I was when I was a teenager? I am definitely the kind of person who enjoys making and learning from her own mistakes rather than getting inundated with well-meant but not applicable advice, thank you!) I heard a peer say that the twenties are for partying, the thirties for marrying, the forties for kids. That was the life plan, and she was following that perfectly. Plenty of time, later, for “important things”! Some moms have made similar comments. Why are you married so young? The twenties are a time for freedom! (Because a marriage isn’t… free? Because one can’t do what one wants to do… while also in a committed relationship?) This is not to say that one ought to be in a relationship, please don’t get me wrong, but can’t we make our own choices? Can’t we decide that being committed is just as fun as being single, simply different?

This whole sensation, this well-meant advice about how I ought to be spending my twenties, is very similar to what people said when we got engaged. That for a forward-thinking, modern, feminist woman to be engaged! Before thirty! Oh dear me! What is the world coming to? My response then was, well, wasn’t the feminist movement — isn’t it still? — ultimately about freedom of choice? The ability for a woman to make individual life choices that suit her, not ones that should suit all women or ones that used to suit most women? So why am I supposed to be living my twenties in one way? It’s almost as if there’s this implication that my example pulls down the average for all free, single-life loving twentysomething women everywhere. I’m ruining the curve, oh no!

If I lived in a different state, in a small town, would it even be weird for me to be married? Some kids I went to high school with have kids now. I read a piece in New York Magazine this week, a brief spot on 26-year-old Leelee Sobieski. About being a “young” mom, she says,

“People in the middle of America have babies at my age,” Sobieski says. Had she and Kimmel planned to be parents this early? She pauses. “We fell in love,” she finally says. Still, “I wish I had a girlfriend that had a baby. That would be so nice. I feel like I’m doing this thing that’s really weird, but I look around me and realize that everyone has babies. Look at all these people! So what?”

This is, I think, what some people who have urged me to “live life!” in my twenties are worried about happening to me. That now that I’m married, logic says BABIES! and clearly, babies will ruin my stereotypical twentysomething fun. Some mothers (especially some of the mothers I’ve met who had their first children rather “late in life”) have even expressed mild skepticism when I say we’re not planning on babies yet. (Clearly, I must be mistaken, because I am married. CLEARLY. Women who want no babies, who are married? I feel your pain. Why does society insist on it? Can’t it be up to us?) If I spend a Saturday night — or Memorial Day Weekend — at home, watching TV, cooking dinner, playing the PlayStation… why is that wrong? Someone asked me recently what I’d done over my holiday weekend. Did I go on vacation? Did I go to the beach? Did I leave the city as one ought? No, I said, we stayed in. We adopted a kitten. We made hanger steak. There was a significant pause. “Why didn’t you go out?” I paused. “Should we have?” They paused. “Well, we had fun this weekend! We went to X, we did Y…” Well, good for you. No, really — good for you; I’m not bitter. I had fun. You did, too. Yay for all!

I don’t know where this rant is going — do rants go to any sensible conclusion? But the bottom line is that I am in my twenties and I am having fun. I’m not living my life with any regrets and it bothers me that some people assume I am because I’m married, because I’m… I have no idea! Well, people will assume and I can let them. I’m happy and I’m enjoying the experience that is my life, in all of its uncertainties, new experiences, and happy days of relaxing in front of the television or cooking dinner with my husband (and kitty!). We do things, too. Maybe they’re not the things other twentysomethings do, but we’re not interested in being them. We’re interested in being us. A lot of the “grown ups” I’ve gotten to know the last year assume that there’s something wrong with my life because I’m not following the life path they followed. Some have blatantly judged me for it. To them, I say: I’m doing just fine, thanks.

I live in New York City. I take public transportation. I’ve had more colorful and interesting experiences taking the public transit system here than I did back in Pittsburgh (which was technically my first major solo encounter with public transit), but none of them have lived up to the stereotypical horror stories I heard growing up in the suburbs. Some of my experiences here have been delightfully strange (subway dance routines being the favorite) and some have been plain old creepy (use your imagination, I’m sure it’s close). That’s fine. Sometimes I overhear arguments (always fun!) or one-sided very loud phone conversations (always curiosity-prickling).

But what bothers me — that which makes this a rant — is when I overhear someone’s blatant ignorance, prejudice, misogyny, homophobia, or… well. When people are being offensive (and not quiet about it!), I get annoyed, but when they’re being offensive as a direct result of miseducation, misunderstanding, or a (voiced!) unwillingness to learn… *grumble* I get very mad. Seeing and hearing this kind of thing on TV, on the Internet — that’s expected. But on the bus?

Today it was homophobic in nature. I overheard two teenagers (tenth grade by my guess) talking about being gay in the military and what “being gay” is, by definition, and then how that definition (involving a comparison to a woman) correlated to a gay person’s inability to be an ineffective soldier. (GRRRRR.) One actually asked the other to define “gay” because he didn’t really get what it was. The other teen’s response was so offensive, so misinformed, so casually homophobically ignorant and… I can’t even describe the way it made me feel. As if I’d been punched in the gut, maybe. I’ve heard stories of homophobia, seen blatant homophobia and talked with friends and peers who’ve experienced it first-hand, but never before has it hit me so hard. I’m straight, but that doesn’t change the way it makes me feel. I hated this today. What made this worse was that the teen finished his definition by saying, “That’s what I think it is. I’m pretty sure, like, that’s it.” That actually made me almost turn around and say something — and these were very scary-looking teenagers! (I am easily intimidated) — because I couldn’t believe what he’d just said was, apparently to him, speculation. Loud, ignorant, offensive speculation.

I think before today I might have been a little mistaken in my own assumptions about the prevalence of this kind of thing in the world. I knew it exists, but I didn’t think that knowledge applied to my little corner of the world. Knowing a thing exists outside of my own sphere of experience and experiencing it are two different things, and it took getting my gut metaphorically punched today to remind me of that. Things like this happen every day across the world, and those comments aren’t only about sexual orientation. That ignorance doesn’t only occur in people under the age of 18.

I’ve been told this. Over and over. Statistics, news stories, vague accounts. But I’ve never had a gut-level reaction about casual, callous homophobia/ignorance through any of those “telling” experiences in real life. The only experience I can correlate this with is, honestly, something I read. Someone else’s evocatively-written first-hand account was the closest I’d come before today to feeling that same emotion — and I think that says something, oddly, about the power and necessity of art, of good writing, of fiction and brilliant narrative non-fiction. It has the power to convey profound truths without us having to experience them for ourselves. Today, I did, and that comparison has really hit me hard. That’s what good writing can do.

Good writing has the ability to make us feel things we may not otherwise be in a position to feel, and because of that we are fuller, richer human beings. That old adage, show don’t tell: that’s the beauty of good writing.

Today reminded me, in a very strange and unexpected way, why I write fiction, why I write fantasy; why I consume books and watch movies.

I haven’t experienced a lot of things first hand. In some cases, I may never experience certain things — going to the moon, taking core samples from the icy crust of Antarctica’s Lake Vostok — and for those things I tend to depend on fiction to give me the sense of that realism. To educate me by illustrative, gut-wrenching example. I look to movies like The Hurt Locker to make me feel what it’s like to be under pressure as a bomb specialist in Iraq in 2004. (A recent rental; it’s been on my mind since.) Films like Slumdog Millionaire (which I know surprised a lot of people I know) have an effect when they show you a world you’ve never seen — whether because of lack of experience, travel, or simple knowledge — and by showing you that glimpse, they can affect change. (I’m one of those believers that a change of mind, of heart, can later have a profound impact on the world. Call me an optimist if you must, but I believe that.)

To me, almost more than any other genre, fantasy can’t lose that sense of human connection, the base-level emotions of humanity that bring us together and drive us apart. (Though I’m sure this can apply to science fiction and any other genre in which the world has the capability of being more important than its people.) Fantasy is, like any good fiction, ultimately a mirror of our reality. When I read it, when I write it, I can explore other cultures, worlds, and characters. People I’ll never meet. But they can have a profound influence on the way I view others and the way I view the world. I said earlier today (in a very different context!) that the best fantasy story is one that uses the “genre” to illuminate the differences, possibilities, and promise that exist in our world but by seeing them in a fantastic context they stand out all the more starkly for it. It’s the emotional, “show” connection that gives fantasy, fiction, narrative non-fiction — all good writing, in a sense — its power.

(Okay, this also may be Battlestar Galactica influenced — I’m on Season 2 now, bear with me — and how humanity- and emotional-centric that “science fiction” show is — as it should be.)

No, I’m not going to turn today’s experience into fiction. (A blog entry will do, ha.) I’d be the first person to tell you that I hate preachy books. Doesn’t mean I can’t take that emotion I felt today and work with it, though.

Fiction, at its best, helps to make us feel things our own first hand experience may prevent us from feeling, or to illuminate those things we see every day and don’t appreciate — the list goes on. My take away from today is that as a writer I have the power to show by example and sometimes, in my sheltered little world of a computer screen and daily habits, I need to be reminded that I don’t know everything feels, but what I know, I can share. In turn, I can learn from others.

Maybe one of those teens will see a compelling movie or read an engrossing book — maybe? — that will teach them something, illuminate what they don’t understand. Maybe someone will tell them a compelling story that will get them to see a different point of view. See — because understanding can’t be forced. But seeing is the first crucial step. That is, in essence, what compelling stories ought to do. I hope one day they encounter a story like that.

Today I’ve been writing (for real, for the first time in days), finally forcing myself through the climax I’ve been avoiding writing. I doubt I’ll finish what I want to tonight, but getting through a bit makes me feel productive. I keep pushing it off because I’ve come down with a case of the “what ifs” regarding the scene. What if I did this? What if I took the scene in this direction — or that? The forward motion of the plot is stalling because I’m getting hung up on the details. I just need to push forward with the gut and then rewrite if what the gut likes turns out to make no sense. Methinks. Hm. Sounds like a plan, at least, and I certainly need one of those!

My priorities since Saturday have mostly been leaning toward wedding stuff — writing up the ceremony script, deciding on our vows and what we’ll say — and nailing down other details (the florist, the menu). I’m reluctantly annoyed about this stuff taking up my time. I want to be doing other things but I don’t like pushing wedding stuff to the side or off. It’s supposed to be important, right? It is. I just don’t like thinking about it because thinking makes me worry about Murphy’s Law. Where I go, Murphy’s Law follows, it’s a proven fact of my existence. Planning as much out in advance, as painful as it is, is really necessary.

The bridal shower is this Saturday. Part of me is excited, part of me dreads it. A little. I’m never very comfortable in a crowd, and make that crowd a group of women fawning and gushing about the approaching wedding and I think I might pass out a little due to lack of oxygen. (My smile will be plastered on and too-tight, not allowing enough oxygen to get to my brain; I can see it now.) I keep trying to focus on the bright side: everyone there will be there because they care about me. They’re not set on embarrassing me (too much) or making me uncomfortable (unless it’s funny). I hope. Being the first (of our close friends, of our generation/age of cousins) to get married is awkward. We’re doing everything with little personal experience guiding us. I’m always nervous about endeavors like this. But I keep trying to reassure myself that the nervousness is the good kind, the eager-for-the-new-experience kind of nervous. My only bridal shower experience was my cousin’s. I was in high school, bored out of my mind, and I really didn’t care about all of it. Now I’m not much more enthusiastic about the details, but I think my natural curiosity will pull me through it. I want to see how this will all turn out.

I’ve realized that because I’ve been writing so much fiction this last month — the last 6 weeks really — and focusing on the wedding in all of my other time, my blog entries have suffered a bit. I really miss getting all literary or critiquey on this blog! I think I need to write up and schedule a few posts reviewing the books I tore through this past weekend, at the very least. I have a few drafts of essay-ish posts I’ve been writing… I think I need to finish a few of them. I love discussing fantasy. Complaining about how my wedding planning is progressing (or not) should be going on the blog I’m keeping for family and friends for the wedding. Right? Sigh.

Yes, it’s old news, generally, for people who know me, but it’s also shockingly real all of a sudden. Between today and yesterday two boxes from Papyrus Custom Printing arrived containing — hoho, you guessed it — custom-printed wedding announcements and thank you cards. So it’s all slowly becoming more real. That and the fact that the year is currently 2009 and is thus the same year (two thousand nine) that is printed on everything it’s no longer a vague “future” thing. It’s rapidly becoming a now thing.

The funny thing about all of this is that the actual exchanging of vows — or, well, not that; the actual signing of the documentation legally declaring us husband and wife – is the easiest part of the thing. It’s absolutely everything else that’s going to have the possibility of driving me crazy.

stress vs. willingness to spend

I’ve decided it comes down to something that can be explained graphically, and so I made a quick graph in MS Paint, old-school style. Basically I believe that the more or less you’re willing to spend, the less stress you have because if you’re not willing to spend much at all, you can’t have much, and if you’re willing to spend endlessly, you can hire someone to stress out for you. But if you fall any where in the middle, you eventually succumb to a certain amount of stress. The middle is where I estimate you’re willing to spend enough money to get everything exactly the way you want it to be but you’re not willing to go the extra step and hire a wedding planner to do it for you. I bet there’s a lot of room for argument with this graph but for the point’s sake, let’s go with it.

I’m somewhere on the rapidly increasing slope of the first part of the curve, where we’re not willing to spend much but by that token that means we have to do everything ourselves and we have to make certain sacrifices in order to ensure we don’t spend more than we actually want to spend. This complicates matters rapidly. Like choosing a photographer. Do you all have any idea what photographers charge now a days, especially when you have Keyword: Wedding as part of the transaction? Or a florist? If it’s just for some event, that’s one thing, but you throw in the word WEDDING and the prices skyrocket. It’s annoying. Really. This is part of what I hate about the wedding industry. (Other things include special cake servers encrusted with pearls and your monogrammed initials, EW; the list goes on.)

I hate that you can’t have an inexpensive wedding yet classy wedding. (Another graph: cost vs. “class.” You can imagine how sharply the slope inclines in that one.) It’s impossible. We chose up front to do the one thing guaranteed to keep one kind of cost down: we’re inviting only a select group of people, not all one hundred plus potential people we listed early on in the process. I just mailed twenty — twenty – invitations today. That basically amounts to forty people, maxiumum. That few meant stamps, invitations, and up-front costs are down. Favor costs are down. Food and drink costs are down — there just aren’t that many mouths to feed, so we can get elegant in food and beverage choices instead of going hick to be cheap. Reception site: we were able to get one that fits 100 people reaonably comfortably which will be just roomy for the forty of us.

However, regardless of how many people are going to the wedding, the photographer still charges for X amount of time and X amount of photos. There is a limited window of negotiation. We’re going to negotiate the heck out of it. Florist — there’s going to be a cost to that because of the Keyword: Wedding issue, but we’re only ordering a handful of tasteful little — tiny, really — arrangements for little tables, plus the usual lapel & bouquets. But as there’s only one Best Man and one Maid of Honor, no additional wedding party folks, that means we don’t have to go crazy expensive by any stretch. (I also have flower tastes that run basically only to peach/cream/white roses, nothing like orchids or calla lillies or gerber daisies, nothing crazy unusual or expensive.) So that’s one thing.

All of it, regardless of our cost-cutting methonds, makes Bryan and I wince a little. We knew from the start we’d be doing this wedding ourselves — our invitations are written from us, as etiquette states the people who pay for the party are the ones who are “hosting” thus from whom the invitations technically come. We also knew we wouldn’t want to wait very long to be able to really afford more (we were more inclined to go to City Hall and get it done, really, rather than waiting another two years to save up to have a big wedding). Honestly, even if we could afford a BIG wedding, neither of us wanted one. Neither of us is into complicated things. We like simple. Easy. Stress-free. But unfortunately even this path that we’re taking, while it looks on the outside to be stress-light, is actually more stressful than we really anticipated.

Or maybe it’s just me. Bryan is more or less mellow but I find I am starting — starting — to agonize a little about the details. I really know I shouldn’t. I should really stop thinking about any of it. All of it. I went ahead and did all that I’ve been able to do this early in the game and I think that’s a lot. I’ve been trying to keep on top of everything. All of the details. It’s agonizing, really, when it comes down to it, because I am a detail person. I can’t even write if it’s not in the right font. When anything remotely associated with the wedding comes across my vision and it’s not the way I want it I have to struggle to tell myself not to get involved or worried about the details where I can help it.

This morning at the post office, I discovered that the “wedding” stamp, a white heart on an ivory background, was 59 cents but because our envelopes had something “three-dimensional” (i.e. a ribbon) in it, I needed to pay a surcharge per envelope, making the stamp cost 62 cents. The 62 cent stamp was a green dragonfly. The envelopes were ivory; the wedding stamp was ivory. I had a moment — a fraction of a second moment — where my inner monologue was made up entirely of shrieking, agonized profanity. The perfectionist in me was clawing at my insides, desperate to make myself say, “Let’s go with two 59 cent stamps per envelope because they are the wedding stamp and they match so perfectly. The unnecessary cost is worth the effect of the cute little stamps on the envelopes.” Instead, I decided to go with the green dragonfly stamp. It’s classy. Yes it is. I tell myself this. I have been telling myself this. It’s also better than the 59 cent stamp and a 3 cents stamp (or 3 1-cent stamps) per envelope. I had to strike down the urge. It’s only the envelope of the invitation! You’ve written out every single address in the proper etiquette with your nice script handwriting and it looks lovely and classy but it’s only the envelope! The clerk at the post office looked at me strangely. She looked so regretfully at me, too. It was as if she anticipated the breakdown or the hissy fit. She looked at me, rumpled layers of clothing, damp ski jacket, pink extremities, and I swear her look told me, “You can break down, now, I’ll understand and sympathize.” It was surreal. I calmly and detachedly stamped all twenty envelopes, dropped them in the box, and walked out. Do you see what I mean about willingness to spend versus stress? I might have paid $15 more for double the unnecessary stamps to make ‘em all “pretty” but I’m not willing to, so I sacrificed that for a brief moment of stress indulgence. Sigh.

Thinking about it more, I realize I’ve gotten the look a few times now. The “Oh, she’s the bride, if it doesn’t go her way she’ll throw a fit, so let’s be prepared for it” look. Sometimes it’s tinged with sympathy, as if it’s really fine — accepted and expected! — for me to indulge in a fit because it’s practically my duty as a bride to throw a fit or ten; sometimes it’s tinged with resignation. The David’s Bridal clerk was looking a little resigned to me throwing a fit when the gown I wanted wasn’t in stock pretty much anywhere so I’d have to order it blindly if I really wanted it. But I didn’t throw a fit, I approached it all with an almost clinical practicality. If anything I was actually a bit snarky, more or less because I hate dressing rooms. Hate. Hate. Hate. (If she would have tried to come into the room with me I would have thrown a fit. Yep, and it’d be my ordained right to throw a fit, too.) I tried on 6 dresses and each one was not perfect and I was shrugging about it, dancing around in the gigantic flourescently white things, saying exactly whatever popped into my head. “Meh, this one’s too crusty with sequins. I’m not getting married in Vegas.” Or, “This one’s visible boning makes it look a little cheap. I’d much prefer the hidden boning.” “This one’s bodice is a little low and slices into my boobs uncomfortably. I don’t want to be a slutty bride, thanks.” And what was really funny was that the bridal consultant still didn’t get a sense of my personality after all of that, even after I really blatantly said I can’t wear strappy heels because my feet will hurt so stop pushing them on me or that the ridiculous foam thing they pretended was a bra was actually horrifically uncomfortable so I don’t want to buy it for $75, thanks. Hm, I suppose I was sort of rude. I said it very politely with a smile, maybe that helped. My mother was also there being judiciously practical with a hint of emotion leaking through now and again. (I think she too is realizing the ritualistic aspect of this is just about real now.) Also, the more I think about it, I think I was deliberately pushing on the snark because I was refusing to get all gushy about it. (High gush factor in a bridal store dressing area. HIGH GUSH FACTOR. I hate being gushy. Hate hate hate. Just like dressing rooms!) I refuse to be a girly girl about a lot of things, and being all “Aw! I’m in wedding dress! Prance, prance, prance!” probably would have made me vomit a little. Thus the snark. Make everything into one big joke or criticism fest and the sentimentality gets shoved aside. I couldn’t even bring myself to smile in the pictures my mother took of me in the trial gowns. 

(Naturally I ended up ordering my dress blind — the size will work, no worries — and I figure that’s the best thing all around. Dressing room was for almost naught, though, tear, tear a little for that.)

I think as things move along, I’m going to either get snippier, snarkier, cooler, or gushier. (I’m going for snarky cool — detached from stress, staying far away from gush.) Though the bridal shower might be hardest. That’s pretty much the ultimate estrogen gush fest. Please, someone get me a provocative gift or toy so I can open it in front of a bunch of middle aged women and have a good belly laugh. I really think that will be essential in keeping away the gush factor. Oh, and beer. I think I will need beer at my shower. Or a nice margarita. 

So many things to come in the next month or two. The bridal shower. The bachelorette party. (I am staying out of planning that one — I am not Scrubs‘ Elliot, thank goodness. So long as I am not forced to do anything inappropriate with a man who is not my husband to be, I think I will tolerate pretty much any curveball the ladies decide to throw at me.) The only (unfortunate? fortunate?) thing is that the wedding festivities don’t end after the wedding. In May there will be receptions held for us by Bryan’s family, which means we get to have more opportunity for by-proxy stress and gush. Oh, joy. The funny thing is that throughout all of this, Bryan has agreed with me. He hates all of this as much as I do but unlike me he dismisses things. No worries. He puts it out of his head. He knows if a matter needs fussing over I’ll be fussing, so he doesn’t have to worry about fussing. It’s funny, really; we just want it to be over. Or, rather, we want the day to be here already so we can just stop worrying about the planning. Or maybe I want that more than he does. The marriage thing is exciting but the wedding thing is more stressful than anything. I think I’ll get legitimately excited when it’s here. It’s the agony — borderline, borderline agony — now I can really do without.

Repeat the new mantra: Low stress, low gush, happy times will come. Breathe.

As the article states:

If only Meyer had taken Buffy as her template. If only she had used that groundbreaking series as her foundation and built on it. If only there was a Whedonesque intelligence and modern, feminist sensibility informing Twilight and its successors. If only.

What you have instead in Meyer’s work is a depressingly retrograde, deeply anti-feminist, borderline misogynistic novel that drains its heroine of life and vitality as surely as if a vampire had sunk his teeth into her and leaves her a bloodless cipher while the story happens around her. Edward tells her she is “so interesting … fascinating”, but the reader looks in vain for his evidence.

(A disclaimer: I absolutely love Buffy and Joss Whedon; go rent Season 1 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Go. Now.)

After reading that, my first thought was, Oh, thank God someone just came out and said it in a respectable newspaper. We passionate, obscure bloggers can only do so much.

To stumble-upon-ers: I am a writer and lover of books about kick-ass girls who do things, who save their worlds, who break stereotypes and shatter tradition. I wrote a whole thesis on this. I am fervently critical and passionate about this. When I read a book in the genre I love that praises the passive female protagonist — or rather, praises her for being special when she is not — I get mad. Had the books been written from Edward’s perspective, or in third person, one could probably argue that poor Bella is not so much the protagonist — the one who makes the action happen… because she’s not — but rather the Female Love Interest, or Designated Love Interest to the more vibrant Edward. It’s so much his story. She reacts to him. In New Moon, when Bella is mostly on her own for the book with Edward’s decision to take a break, she isn’t alone. No. She finds a new male on to whom she can latch — Jacob. It’s not so much her story as the story of the dependent relationships she forms.

It’s Bella who is our narrator, Bella who is our guide into this fantasy world. But rather than guide is in and stake out her own space within it, she gets subsumed within it and dissolved by it, replaced with a character who is only a shadow of a strong, independent female; a shadow of the woman Edward keeps insisting she is. Meyer tells us how wonderful Bella is. She never shows us. Poor Bella loses herself in her relationship with Edward.

Granted, Bella has moments. Those moments are what kept me clawingly optimistic throughout my reading of the series. Whenever the plot pulled my hopes down, I clawed out of that hollow of despair and said, “No. Bella will eventually Kick Ass. She has to prove she’s Awesome. After all, why else would both Jacob and Edward love her so much? She has to be Awesome.” But that moment never came — not really. When it kind of did — in a subversive, (passive) way in Breaking Dawn (Bella’s shield) — I was disappointed. Bella doesn’t determine her own destiny, like some fantasy protagonists. She isn’t faced with a destiny she didn’t chose and proves she can brave it and make the best of it, like others. She’s not a fantasy hero or even a heroine. She’s a tragic gothic stereotype of a heroine who, rather than dying spectacularly, just keeps on living.

Here’s another disclaimer: I am engaged to be married. I will be married in March to my soulmate, a man for whom I would do anything and who would do anything for me. I am not some crazy feminist writer/blogger who loves Women Who Do Things and say that women can’t do things with men hanging attached to them. Of course women can do things while in love, while in relationships — any kind of relationship with any one, for that matter. Women can be independent and be committed at the same time. Isn’t that the trait the media most praises in a successful career mother? The woman who is able to balance kids, husband, job, personal life? She is the ideal to which we women in western society are supposed to ascribe, to shoot for.  (Which, in itself, is still sad; that women are still seen to have “complete” lives only when surrounded by that nuclear stereotype, regardless of her personal sense of completeness or fulfillment with her own life, whatever or whomever it may entail.)

And then there’s Bella. When she finally finds the balance, she’s not Bella at all, she’s some thirtysomething analogue whom we don’t recognize from the “normal” teenage girl she once was. One could argue Bella changes and grows throughout the series. I argue, rather, that she inconsistently fluxes between melodramatic anxiety and passivity until she transforms into someone who is most certainly not an organic incarnation of a grown-up Bella but rather a forced shell of who we’re told she is based on roles she is given — wife, mother, vampire… non-human being.

What’s interesting, in the context of me speaking about this on this blog, is the thought that’s occurred to me that criticizing books on this blog while being an author myself is a little… well, iffy? But I suppose the other way to look at it is this: If I met Stephenie Meyer in real life, and she asked me, “What is your honest opinion of my books?” I would, frankly, be honest. I immediately and superficially enjoyed her books — I did — but they left me unsettled. The more reflecting and discussing I’ve done, the more unsettled I’ve become. I am still unsettled, even more so after letting Breaking Dawn sink in. (My enthusiasm was so short-lived.) I won’t be able to re-read them. I know that. Having read them as a happily-in-a-relationship twentysomething, not a depressed 17-year-old bemoaning her lack of love life — oh, how those years changed me — I have a completely different view. Reading those books as a mother, I’d feel different yet again. I suppose the ultimate beauty of a blog is that you don’t have to read it or agree with what I say, but hopefully my point of view might have given you a new view from which to consider while forming your own.

But, strangely enough, I am glad these books exist. I am glad I read them.

I am sad about their ridiculous popularity, but I am a firm believer in the idea that dialogue is that which expands our minds and enables us to grow as human beings. Without two (or more) sides to any view or argument, where would the growth be? Without different opinions, what kind of people would we be?

I suppose, ultimately, what I’m hoping for is for more novels and stories (for children and young adults, especially) from the Kick Ass Woman (or strong, assertive young woman or girl) point of view. I want more books that show women doing anything and everything men can do — and have done — in both real life and in existing literature of every genre. I want female characters in fantasy that display the same depth, complexity, assertiveness, and power of many male protagonists in fantasy.

Some authors have and are succeeding at this in certain subgenres of fantasy (Robin McKinley, Tamora Pierce, Garth Nix, Shannon Hale, Patricia Briggs, Jeaniene Frost); some have partial yet luadable success (Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials). Some books featuring male protagonists have casts of female characters with terrific complexity and depth (Jim Butcher, Sherwood Smith, Robin Hobb, George R. R. Martin) and some with female protagonists have surprised and pleased me with the journeys of those protagonists (Trudi Canavan). We have to keep going, though. That’s why I write, that’s why I’ve always wanted to write.

As I’ve said, this also means novels featuring male main characters/ protagonists/ heroes with co- and supporting female characters who are equal to their male counterparts in complexity, emotion, and range of possibility. This is starting to happen more and more frequently; however the waif/weak/incompetent female love interest still exists, though, as supposed counterpart to her brave, heroic, and intelligent male protagonist. Why does this happen in fantasy? Think of the successful marriages you know: those couples are not fractionally as imbalanced and mis-matched as quite a few fantasy couples tend to be. Fantasy characters deserve to be as real as any real person, as any good, realistic character in any other genre.

Parents should get involved and responsible in this discussion, as well, for the sake of their young readers (in terms of children’s and YA literature). They should recognize which books contain which messages and be able to respond intelligently and with good information to the questions curious kids and teens will inevitably ask in response to books that provoke such thought. Regardless of the book, its characters, or its message, if it provokes serious intellectual conversation, I think that’s a terrific and laudable thing.

Anyway this post got me thinking more and more about Robert Jordan and Terry Goodkind. I’ve both bashed and defended them on this blog, pretty recently, too, and her utter evisceration of them led me to two interesting revelations about my own opinions of them and fantasy in general: I am really haughty and elitist (or really, really contemplative?) about fantasy literature, what I like about it, what I hate, and what I write — but I do so enjoy the B-movie (or C-movie) novel or series every now and again. The part of me that in a very hick, low-brow manner really, really enjoys a movie the high-brow folks tell me I should disdain, or enjoy a fantasy book that the academic nerd part of me wants to beat remorselessly until it’s beyond dead. I’m that way with movies, too.

The first time (and subsequent second two times) I read Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World (the first book in his Wheel of Time series), I loved it. I still, deeply, do enjoy it. I read it when I was 15; I was in 10th grade social studies class when the kid behind me said, “You like fantasy books, right? You’d probably like this book.” And pointed it out to me. I went, bought it, finished it, and bought the second… and third… up to the eighth, which was all that existed in paperback at the time. The ninth was coming out soon in hardcover, but I was cheap. Anyway I devoured them during the spring of my 10th grade year, amid jeers of my high school softball team compatriots who thought I was a complete and total nerd for reading 800-page books. (Some thought I was insane, others were incredulous, others nodded and said really complimentary things that embarrassed me and my loath-to-brag-about-my-high-grades attitude; I was rather the reluctant good student in 10th grade as opposed to the bitter elitist I became as a senior in high school.) At the point I was at in my life, those books really made a difference to me. They were, now that I think of it, the first major epic fantasy series I read. (I read Tolkien for the first time almost eighteen months later.)

Goodkind was more of an accident. I stumbled upon Wizard’s First Rule in the bookstore (or was it on Amazon.com?) in the desperation of one looking to move their addiction from one drug to another. I stand by what I said a few weeks ago — I did enjoy Wizard’s First Rule. I devoured it and the subsequent five or six books — with a bit more pain and reluctance, each time. In fact, Wizard’s First Rule was the book that helped bring Bryan and I together — I saw it sitting on the desk in his room at college and pointed it out, saying I’d read it and enjoyed it, and we bonded over it. (Long story short, he never actually ended up reading beyond the third book, I think.) However, in re-reading it years later, in the fall of 2006, I stopped after a few chapters. I cringed. I’d been fully immersed in English literature and Creative Writing classes at college by then, and I’d also read a lot more fantasy. A lot. Not only fantasy but other genres as well; I’d discovered the 18th century, too, a century I’d somehow mysteriously skipped in my education in high school and college up until the fall of 2005.

I now, in 2008, have come to agree with Limyaael’s assessment, that the books are more or less full of excess, badly disguised tropes, and annoying, annoying things. (I’ve always been a hater of the Sisters of the Light, but I didn’t start disliking the Aes Sedai until later.) I think a lot of Jordan fans (speaking from experience as a former active member of a Robert Jordan fan site) idealize the books far beyond their merit, and in addition a lot of them take the framework of the books (which is more or less fun) and use it to imagine their own worlds, characters, and doings, all of which are a lot more interesting than what Jordan came up with. Also, there are a few particular characters (all female) that had me gnashing my teeth, probably Faile in Jordan’s chief among them. Oh, Faile and Perrin. Shoot me in the foot. Not to mention Rand and the three ladies, which me, the mostly liberated woman, found irritating for its sheer implausibility based on a bad characterization substantiation rather than its concievability as a basic concept. I’m all for well-written open marriages or polygamy, or what have you, but it has to be well-substantiated and based in concrete characters. When your characters are flimsy, which Elayne (sorry) mostly is (Aviendha was always a favorite until she started being all cuddly with Elayne in a manner that was so blatantly not the Aviendha we all know and love)… oh, on and on.

But I still think of them fondly, for all of that! I find I’m embarrassed. I too am embarrassed somewhat by how inordinately excited I am by the upcoming Legend of the Seeker series based on the Sword of Truth books. (There was a half hour preview on TV this past Saturday; I was all geeky about it. Gosh, I am really geeky.) I’m also excited about the movie Twilight, even given how much I’ve criticized the books on this blog. Why? Maybe it’s that I find I have a personal stake in the genre, and I am really emotionally connected to how well those series/movies portray their source material as well as how well they do financially.

(I always find myself wondering what I’d do if someone options my stuff. Depending on the contract I’ll probably have little say or choice but still… I just hope it doesn’t turn into a Seeker: The Dark is Rising atrocity. ATROCITY. They ruined Susan Cooper’s book! Not that the twelve year olds ever heard of the Newbery Honor-winning book The Dark is Rising before that film, but…)

True Blood, HBO’s series based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse books, is terrifically true to the books (as far as Sookie’s plot is concerned), but it also takes its own liberties in creating interesting, new subplots (Tara and her mother, Tara and Sam, Jason and his addiction) that aren’t in the books at all — but the show does it well, while still staying loyal to the source material. I’m also fascinated by the adaptation process (and Hollywood versus independent means (Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog) versus television, both cable and network). Twilight is likely to be either decent or bad (it can’t be better than the book unless it halves the angst and quarters the melodrama, which from the trailer I can’t imagine it doing), and Legend of the Seeker looks, well, good. I doubt it’ll be amazing (even Sci Fi’s excellent take of the Dune novels wasn’t amazing, though I do own it on DVD, teehee). I don’t watch a lot of amazing television, but I do watch a lot of decently good television — more than I did in college, anyway. Fringe, Pushing Daisies — they’re not perfect or out-of-the-heavens wonderful (they’re not the pure, unadulterated nerdgasm that is 30 Rock, for instance), but I do enjoy them. And what, may I ask, is wrong with that? Nothing, I hope.

I was thinking earlier that this has to be one of the reasons I’ve always been compelled to be a writer. I’m a nit-picker, a perfectionist, one who constantly enjoys picking out things that don’t jive with me and explaining what would work for me and why. But rather than stop there (or merely point out what doesn’t work for me and bemoan the state of the world), I write. When I saw Disney’s Pocahontas as a 5th grader and was up-in-arms pissed and self-righteous about how utterly inaccurate it was, I knew I wasn’t like all the other kids. Or, even, some of the adults. (Yeah, I was over-dramatic from the cradle, ask my mother or my 2nd grade teacher, Mrs. Galdeau. They’ll tell you.)  As a kid, I’d read a book about a male protagonist and the whiney female he saves and initially love it. The older I would get, the more I would question it. I’d wonder what if it’d be like this or what if that had happened instead. Eventually I’d get to the point where I’d get pissed and go write my answer to it. (Harry Potter evoked that in me. I was 13 and hopelessly annoyed at it after I was initially bubbling with giddy joy over it.)

As I’ve read more of the canon, as I’ve learned about writing, re-writing, hacking and slashing, editing, and all of the details, I find myself needing and demanding further complexity of myself, of my characters. I find my plots twisting in ways I’ve never seen in a book before, characters doing things I haven’t seen characters in books do before. I keep asking myself the questions. What if, what if. Why be confined to stereotypes or tropes? I’ve studied Campbell inside and out (and have the thesis to prove it) and knowing the formula I feel I’ve full license to break and bend it and find new ways to explore it based on the trends my characters take and the answers to the questions I find myself inescapably asking. Naturally someone’s done everything before in one way or another; I mean, there are only 36 basic plots and Shakespeare wrote most of them. I don’t know how much I really believe that. Our world is constantly changing. Our literature, our fantasies, should, too.

I write things that intrigue me — I don’t write to make myself happy. I’m not easily made happy. I enjoy challenges, being made to think, and yes, while I hate seeing myself mess up, I do it all the time. With enough hindsight, I look back on my mistakes, blunders, and unexpected happenings, and I learn from them. Or, ideally, I hope I do.

And then there were the blatant Wheel of Time take-offs. Sisters of the Light, Aes Sedai… oy. I used to really whine about that, and I still am annoyed. I wouldn’t have been so annoyed if it’d been done more uniquely and if it’d been plain old written better. Jim Butcher’s Codex Alera‘s books have trite moments, images, and devices, but he uses them in his own unique and wonderful way. (And come on, who doesn’t like the familiarity of the old tropes? I certainly love them and use them!) Tavi is, initially, a lot — a lot — like Garion in The Belgariad, but he’s so unusually himself. His story is so great. The perspective shifts and subplots are all tightly controlled, unique, and well-written. It’s part of the genre of heroic epic fantasy, but it’s not anything that’s come before it.

(I wonder if I love the Codex Alera books so particularly much because I figured Tavi’s big thing out by about what, chapter 3? Compared to my other epic fantasy series, when the secret came out past the middle in Wizard’s First Rule and at the frickin’ end of The Eye of the World. Like, just around the time Rand figures it out himself. Oy, still annoyed about that. But I was what, 15…? I was naive yet.)

ANYWAY. I will watch it. Because Wizard’s First Rule is a book I would recommend to anyone who likes epic fantasy — legitimately, the series really does jive with some people. Some people keep reading to be completionist, some think it’s brilliant. I think it had the potential to be one of the best had it been condensed and written better. (Robert Jordan has Terry Goodkind’s ass spanked in the raw writing talent department, just so you all know where I stand on the RJ/WoT vs. TG/SoT question.)

Hm. On that note, any browsers of this post have any new epic fantasy series recommendations? Having read the books posted on my Books page, I’m looking for a new epic series. I probably always am looking for a new series. Because there’s still so much out there…

But I am curious. I feel like I’ve passed judgment on the series without being a completionist about it. So there. I shall read it and then pass all sorts of haughty judgments on it as it is my right as a random reader to do and I shall be content.

I just hope she chooses Edward… </endpotentialrant>

Whoa, parenthetical commentary much? Sorry. Eh. Um.

(Tangent: Acheron comes out next month. So. Frickin’. Excited. I never said I wasn’t a Sherrilyn Kenyon fan…)

It’s funny. I know I’ll never write romance but I do enjoy reading it (so long as it’s paranormal romance; even in the romance genre I need genre to keep me interested). Sometimes when I’m reading regular fantasy, though — for an adult audience — I do wish there was a bit more than, like, a chaste kiss going on. Or, like, “and then they had sex, and it was amazing.” I mean, movies tend to have more than chaste kisses going on, for Pete’s sake, when it matters. (Granted I’m only all for any romantic stuff if it fits in the plot. Gratuitious sex scenes need not be added for me, thanks.) Bitten by Kelley Armstrong is a good example, actually: more than chaste kisses but it’s not the plot’s focus, though those scenes are integral to the plot’s development in terms of the characters’ developments and emotion. In Bitten, Armstrong just basically makes the intimate scenes as descriptive as any other scene — it’s just another scene. But every scene in that book matters. Strolling through downtown Toronto on a business lunch break, running through a thick forest as a wolf, discovering a dead body half-buried under a bridge… And I appreciate the novel because of that. Her scenes also have really good pithy descriptions and are full of action, and none of the wonky romance language. (Sometimes the vocabulary in a romance novel has me rolling my eyes or laughing — like, really? Really? You used that adjective and adverb combination? Really? Whenever things fit stereotypes, I laugh.)

It’s a fine line for me, I suppose, the “sex scene” business in a book. And in YA Fiction, it’s an even finer line. Yes, some teenagers have sex, yes some abstain until college or marriage or what have you — but you see a very interesting sort of reflection of that reality in YA fantasy that makes it seem as polarized as I’ve made it sound. For the most part, I’ve seen, it’s sex or no sex. Kiss or all-the-way “and they had sex.” Fantasy is a reflection of our reality placed within a fantastic background. It stands to reason that all aspects of a teen’s reality should sort of make their way into a well-written novel, if there is a legitimate place for it. For teens, it’s not just sex or no sex. There’s a hell of a lot of confusing, angsty middle ground. And there’s so much drama associated with it, ripe for the novelizing. Rarely do I see teen novels — in the fantasy category, mind you — that actually make use of that middle ground when the need arises. It’s sort of an all-or-nothing thing, and that confuses me. (i.e. Right before the climax, or at the very end of the denouement, the characters either kiss or they do it.) For example, you have Tamora Pierce’s Trickster’s Choice/Trickster’s Queen with Aliane actually, well, having sex, and then Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl‘s Princess Isi being all, well, chaste in an utterly Princess-like fashion. Both characters are approximately the same age — seventeen to eighteen, ish — but that sort of polarity (and you’ll see more of what I mean if you’ve read those particular novels) is what I’m talking about. Admittedly, for Isi it fits her culture and character, but I was a little put out by Aliane’s sort of, well, what happened there. (Those aren’t my favorite Pierce books, and that’s one of the big reasons why.) It seemed sort of added.

For my books, my characters’ sexual activities (or complete lack thereof) are based on a wide combination of factors, just as any person’s sexual activities are. In what I write, as in reality, there are situations and characters who will and do experience the plenty, the lack, the good, the painful, the awkward, the embarrassing, the misunderstood. Et cetera. I’m not planning on purposefully including or not including anything unless it fits. And I both like/hate the pre-climax/end-of-denouement kiss/sex thing. I mean, you either need the bolstering before you go to battle or you get the reward once you’ve survived — it’s an overarching fantasy thing, not just YA. But in real life you have bumbling flirtation, awkward kissing,  betrayed lovers, stuff that’s a heck of a lot more complex than just the pre-battle bolstering or post-battle reward.

This whole discussion brings me around in some ways to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight Saga and its beating-around-the-bush with teens, sex, love, commitment, and marriage. (I won’t actually reveal the plots here but I do plan to get into it, so watch out.) Oy. I have and can go on and on and on about this. Bella is presented as a stereotypical (and in a lot, a lot of ways uninterestingly stereotypical) teenager. But she and Edward have nothing short of a ridiculously, unusually atypical relationship with its attenuating circumstances involving physical, well, involvement. Edward and Bella, for lack of a better way to say it, can’t get jiggy (cough, 1997, cough) — or, for that matter, even a little carried away — without consequences. Jacob throws a wrench into the chaste machine in his own way in book two (and by wrench I mean some repressed-hormone-tongue-action) and by the third book, it’s all a bunch of non-real confusing relationship-y stuff. How’s a normal girl supposed to look at that fantasy plot (admittedly involving werewolves and vampires but ultimately still about teenagers) and apply it as a mirror to her reality? (Believe me, if you’ve read these books, you’ll see what I mean; you’re probably hopelessly confused otherwise.)

So my biggest criticism with these books is mostly the fact that I have trouble reconciling Bella’s predicament with anything any normal teenager would face in her own reality. The choice between two different guys’ loves is one thing — unusual in and of itself outside of a Hollywood script; and Bella is still, by the third book, relatively unremarkable, mind you, despite Meyer’s failed attempts to prove otherwise — which makes the whole Bella / Edward / Jacob quandary even more complex. If Bella were a hero/heroine worthy of their adoration I would put this whole argument aside. Entirely. But she’s not. She’s just… well. As far as I can tell she is The Right Girl at the Right Time, and barring any Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix-like bombs (after-the-fact prophecies), I am not convinced she’s very special. Plus, the issues that arise when discussing anything involving teens and sex arise in an even more mature format here between Bella, Edward, and Jacob — sex, marriage, children, immortality versus mortality, even potential suicide! (Romeo and Juliet, gag a little) — and make Bella’s choice a bit, well, unreal.

Or, well, EMO. EMO EMO EMO EMO. All she’s missing is the black eyeliner and My Chemical Romance on repeat on iTunes.

Cough. Um. Yes. Moving on and circling back.

Fantasy is not unreal fiction. Fantasy holds a warped mirror to reality to better highlight issues, ideas, and characters through a fantastic lens, enabling an author certain storytelling freedoms. But ultimately fantasy, like any genre, is still rooted irrevocably in our reality and as such still needs to feel real. And I want — I really do — to feel like I’m in Bella’s shoes. But I can’t. By the end of that third book things have gone so far out of my own spectrum of understanding and experience that I cannot even really enjoy it anymore. That said, I know others do enjoy it — others not as flippin’ critical as myself, and I know I am critical — but I wonder just how many feel absolutely rivetedly connected to Bella and her CHOICE. Because really. Really? Who has that choice? Who can even symphathize enough with Bella to the degree to feel riveted by that choice? Evidently a heck of a lot of teenagers. And it makes me so confused. I am not that far out of my teens. Is this what teenagers think is hopelessly romantic? Is Meyers warping the romantic dreams of teenagers by hinting that this could happen to any average girl? It makes me wonder if she is. And if she is, it makes me wonder and worry a little about the elements on the table for discussion in these books — sex, marriage, children, immortality versus mortality, even potential suicide, as I said.

It’s not even that, per se. It’s also to do with Meyers’ inconsistency — though it may also be her attempt to display a teenager’s wide-ranging, ever-changing emotions and feelings and beliefs.

I wonder if these teenagers have read Jane Austen. (Talk about consistently chaste and lovely stuff. Ah, Austen.)

I’m getting really worked up about this!

So.

Let me pose a spoiler-filled scenario to myself, non-fantasy, and let me see if I can wrap my head around this. So let’s say Bella’s choice is not between a century-old vampire who looks 17 — Edward — and a Native American werewolf who really is 16 — Jacob. Rather it’s between a sensitive, handsome, book-loving, science guy who’s an expert in martial arts, but he has had a disease preventing him from being able to father children — let’s call him Sedward. Sedward wants to wait until marriage to have sex, and he’s promising a happy, un-divorce-able eternity together with him and his loving (but strange) family. In the other corner we have a 6’5″ football player with a love of motorcycles but with a surprising intellect and winsome smile — let’s call him Racob. Racob is perfectly healthy in the testicular sense. Racob is much younger and more immature than Sedward but he’s got that much in common with Bella, who’s more around Racob’s age. Bella’s dad loves Racob and is cooler to Sedward, but he wants Bella to be happy. Both boys are Bella’s type, in their own way, and she’s torn between her older, more persisting love with Sedward, whom she believes to be her soulmate, and her fiery, sudden passion for Racob, who is vociferously offering her the moment, contrasting with Sedward’s promise of eternity. See the quandary? Now, see, I’ve made the situation somewhat human. BUT. What girl is really going to have that choice — at eighteen, no less? For “Sedward” Bella would give up college, give up a normal life, but for “Racob” she would give up Sedward. And then there’s the whole sex thing. She can’t have sex with Sedward — gah, Edward, until marriage with him, as per his deal, at which point he’ll turn her. She wants to be turned Oh So Badly. Then there’s Jacob with his hot mouth (ugh) and muscle-y physique and his “but you can have my babies, Bella” ridiculousness — THEY ARE TEENAGERS, COUGH — and his hatred of Edward. Jacob’s a hell of a lot more immature than Edward.(Jacob cannot see that he too is a monster as Edward is, being a werewolf himself, whereas Edward is consistently The Bigger Man and is much more, well, frickin’ mature. Though he is a LOT older than he looks.)

So that’s the LONG — or the short, depending on whether or not you really believe that’s all I have to say on the matter, cough — of why I am so quasi-excited/not excited for Breaking Dawn. Because really. The book’s plot more or less revolves around Bella’s choice and such. And I hope to goodness she chooses Edward for my own sanity. And I’m shocked by that actually because I’m almost always in the “Have the werewolf babies!” camp. (Yes, it’s come up  a few times across the genre. Yes, I am usually anti-vampire. Yes, werewolves are usually awesome.) But the way Meyer has characterized them… I mean, she characterizes them as a part-gang, part-football team, part-frat house. I can see the appeal to a teenager but really…? Really? Frick, REALLY!?

Obviously I have no opinion on the matter.

EDIT: Read my rant on Breaking Dawn here.