subscribeThe twenties. An aimless rant.
Friday June 4, 2010
(Warning: This didn’t start as a rant, but it became a rant. Yay!)
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.
Romance novels & Twilight ranting
Tuesday July 22, 2008
I’ve read three books lately: Walk on the Wild Side by Christine Warren, and A Hunger Like No Other and No Rest For the Wicked by Kresley Cole. (The titles. I KNOW. Oy.) They’re all three legitimate romance novels and I’m a bit embarrassed to say I really enjoyed them. You get past the gratuitous “generous curves” and “intense arousal” descriptions and, well, the plots are good and the characters fun and well-drawn. I probably liked Cole’s better, but only because it’s a new world with new supernatural rules and I really liked them. (I was a little bit like, “Valkyrie?! Awesome!!”) They actually reminded me a lot of Sherrilyn Kenyon’s Dark-Hunter books, but in a way that Kenyon’s books can be a bit kitschy and a little, well, full of themselves, Cole’s were sort of pure adrenaline. The Dark-Hunter plots are not as thick as Cole’s plots were (though the thinner plots probably help keep the series moving forward at its ridiculous rate of perpetuation) and Kenyon’s are a lot more predictable. Lots of stuff goes on in Cole’s books apart from the romance. (Yay for actual, really awesome world building and creative fantasy! Kenyon only gets bonus points for every fourth or so book; a few are re-reads for me, the others, um, not so much. And that’s what I judge a book by — it’s re-read-able-ness.) And the romance aspect is a lot more complicated than in Kenyon’s. (The girls don’t give it up right away. Yay!) The men all being 6’5″ and well-muscled, though? If that’s how it is across the genre… I suppose I will have to deal with their lack of handsome male protagonists who stand at a normal height. Sigh. (Then again, I suppose most women don’t read romance novels to see normal men described in vigorous detail, eh?)
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.
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