The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 2: Dubious Creatures
Episode 7: The Salamander Log
December 28, 2017
Dubious Creatures Episode 7: The Salamander Log
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 2: Dubious Creatures
Episode 7: The Salamander Log
December 21, 2017
Dubious Creatures, Episode 6: Weekend Omens
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 2: Dubious Creatures
Episode 5: Weekend Omens
December 19, 2017
Geekerella Review
This week's novel is Geekerella, by Ashley Poston. I heard about it because, this was a nominee for Goodread's Choice Awards in young adult fiction for 2017.
Ella lives with her evil step-mother and evil step-sisters, she has a summer job in a vegan food truck called the Magic Pumpkin, and the only light in her life is Starfield, a twenty-year-old, cult sci-fi show. The show is getting a movie reboot, and Ella is devastated to discover that for her hero, Prince Carmindor, they've cast Darien Freeman, hunky teen heart-throb from a soap opera that her step-sisters like. Those girls aren't real fans! Desperate to get away from her step-mom, she decides to go to a Starfield convention (the con her dad founded and where her parents met, and which she hasn't been able to go back to since his death), enter the cos-play contest, win the cos-play contest, and win the tickets to LA to see the movie premier, where she just won't get a return ticket. Meanwhile, Darien has to deal with hordes of screaming girls, and having to protect his image by pretending he's not a huge Starfield geek.
I had insomnia the other night, and I read this entire thing in one sitting. It's a fast read and an enjoyable read, even though I knew all the plot beats well ahead of time. She works in a food truck called the magic pumpkin? Okay, I know how she's getting to the con. She's going to wear her dad's cosplay, but her mom's big, fancy dress cosplay is also kicking around? Okay, so I know both how the climactic clash with her step family is going to go down and what she's wearing to the contest. But even though I knew the beats, it was the way the story was filled in that kept me reading. I liked the characters (especially Darien) and I liked seeing how they ended up where I knew they were going. And there was a kind of parallel: I knew how it was going to end, but wanted to see it happen, while Ella knows how the movie's going to go, and she'll still watch it to see it happen.
I liked all the different sides of Darien and watching how he had to present himself differently in different situations. My favorite part in the whole book is a moment when he says that Prince Carmindor meant so much to him because he was in command of a spaceship and also looked like him. He's Indian (I think, it was never stated). And now he's playing Carmindor and it's a dream come true but he's not allowed to go on TV and talk about how much it means to him, and meanwhile the old fans hate him and his co-workers think the movie is stupid. It was a gut punch.
There's some kind of painful fake-geek stuff going on. Ella is really unhappy that a bunch of screaming girls are entering her space because they like Darien's abs and not because they love the show, but her part in this seems realistic and the narrative doesn't go out of its way to condemn or approve of her covetousness. Darien is upset that he's not allowed to let his geek flag fly, so he gets accused of not being a real fan, and he's really hurt by that, because he is a fan! He is a geek! He just also has abs! So it seems like it's going to be a story about the two worlds colliding and figuring out how to share and learn from each other. And honestly, that would have been really easy if Darien had just started from the beginning, going on the media circuit saying, "This show means so much to me, and I'm thrilled to be playing this character." That would have pulled some of the screamy-fan girls into checking out the show and seeing it wasn't just a geek thing, and it would have pacified the old fans. But no. The book has this firm idea that you live and breathe the show or you despise the show because it's a nerd thing and there's nothing in between. Which is crazy, since Darien is clearly both a nerd and a heart-throb. Instead, at the end, all the characters that are shown in a positive light are "true fans" and the people who suck are only in it for the money or the abs.
So what if girls who wear makeup want to see a movie with an actor they like? So. What. Oh my God. It's upsetting.
But it wasn't upsetting as I read it, only in retrospect. And it honestly was a fun read.
It got me thinking about Cinderella stories and how the evil step-mom is portrayed. It's in the fabric of the story that she sucks, so that's to be expected, but sometimes she's evil into the realm of caricature. I stop reading a bunch of Cinderella retellings because I'm just rolling my eyes through the first chapter. The step-family is soooooo meaaaaan for nooooo reeeeeeason, and Cinderella is soooooo opreeeeeeesed. It often makes me hate Cinderella right off the bat. And part of this is just that that's how the Cinderella story starts. And part of it is that your step-mom is not your mom. It's hard to tell where you stand with them and they do things differently from how your saintly, loving mother did them. So they get a lot of resentment thrown at them. And then part of it is that teenagers feel like their parents are completely unfair. So introducing a character in that situation is a challenge.
It got me thinking about if I've read or watched any retellings where I liked the evil step-mom or where she was shown in a positive light even while making Cinderella do chores and want to get away. I can't think of any, but I liked Angelica Huston in Ever After because Angelica Huston is a goddess, especially when she's evil. There's also a scene at the beginning where she holds her dying husband and cries, "Don't leave me here!" so I kind of got why she's so bitter. Mostly, I want to see a retelling where Cinderella is a grumpy teen who hates her step-mom and her step-mom is a reasonable lady who is trying her damnedest to hold it all together with three kids (one of whom is new to her and hates her) and no help. I've been thinking about that part in Labrynth where Sarah comes home and fights with her step-mom about the wet dog and her step-mom being unfair, and the step-mom says, "She treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy story no matter what I say."
***
Ella lives with her evil step-mother and evil step-sisters, she has a summer job in a vegan food truck called the Magic Pumpkin, and the only light in her life is Starfield, a twenty-year-old, cult sci-fi show. The show is getting a movie reboot, and Ella is devastated to discover that for her hero, Prince Carmindor, they've cast Darien Freeman, hunky teen heart-throb from a soap opera that her step-sisters like. Those girls aren't real fans! Desperate to get away from her step-mom, she decides to go to a Starfield convention (the con her dad founded and where her parents met, and which she hasn't been able to go back to since his death), enter the cos-play contest, win the cos-play contest, and win the tickets to LA to see the movie premier, where she just won't get a return ticket. Meanwhile, Darien has to deal with hordes of screaming girls, and having to protect his image by pretending he's not a huge Starfield geek.
I had insomnia the other night, and I read this entire thing in one sitting. It's a fast read and an enjoyable read, even though I knew all the plot beats well ahead of time. She works in a food truck called the magic pumpkin? Okay, I know how she's getting to the con. She's going to wear her dad's cosplay, but her mom's big, fancy dress cosplay is also kicking around? Okay, so I know both how the climactic clash with her step family is going to go down and what she's wearing to the contest. But even though I knew the beats, it was the way the story was filled in that kept me reading. I liked the characters (especially Darien) and I liked seeing how they ended up where I knew they were going. And there was a kind of parallel: I knew how it was going to end, but wanted to see it happen, while Ella knows how the movie's going to go, and she'll still watch it to see it happen.
I liked all the different sides of Darien and watching how he had to present himself differently in different situations. My favorite part in the whole book is a moment when he says that Prince Carmindor meant so much to him because he was in command of a spaceship and also looked like him. He's Indian (I think, it was never stated). And now he's playing Carmindor and it's a dream come true but he's not allowed to go on TV and talk about how much it means to him, and meanwhile the old fans hate him and his co-workers think the movie is stupid. It was a gut punch.
There's some kind of painful fake-geek stuff going on. Ella is really unhappy that a bunch of screaming girls are entering her space because they like Darien's abs and not because they love the show, but her part in this seems realistic and the narrative doesn't go out of its way to condemn or approve of her covetousness. Darien is upset that he's not allowed to let his geek flag fly, so he gets accused of not being a real fan, and he's really hurt by that, because he is a fan! He is a geek! He just also has abs! So it seems like it's going to be a story about the two worlds colliding and figuring out how to share and learn from each other. And honestly, that would have been really easy if Darien had just started from the beginning, going on the media circuit saying, "This show means so much to me, and I'm thrilled to be playing this character." That would have pulled some of the screamy-fan girls into checking out the show and seeing it wasn't just a geek thing, and it would have pacified the old fans. But no. The book has this firm idea that you live and breathe the show or you despise the show because it's a nerd thing and there's nothing in between. Which is crazy, since Darien is clearly both a nerd and a heart-throb. Instead, at the end, all the characters that are shown in a positive light are "true fans" and the people who suck are only in it for the money or the abs.
So what if girls who wear makeup want to see a movie with an actor they like? So. What. Oh my God. It's upsetting.
But it wasn't upsetting as I read it, only in retrospect. And it honestly was a fun read.
It got me thinking about Cinderella stories and how the evil step-mom is portrayed. It's in the fabric of the story that she sucks, so that's to be expected, but sometimes she's evil into the realm of caricature. I stop reading a bunch of Cinderella retellings because I'm just rolling my eyes through the first chapter. The step-family is soooooo meaaaaan for nooooo reeeeeeason, and Cinderella is soooooo opreeeeeeesed. It often makes me hate Cinderella right off the bat. And part of this is just that that's how the Cinderella story starts. And part of it is that your step-mom is not your mom. It's hard to tell where you stand with them and they do things differently from how your saintly, loving mother did them. So they get a lot of resentment thrown at them. And then part of it is that teenagers feel like their parents are completely unfair. So introducing a character in that situation is a challenge.
It got me thinking about if I've read or watched any retellings where I liked the evil step-mom or where she was shown in a positive light even while making Cinderella do chores and want to get away. I can't think of any, but I liked Angelica Huston in Ever After because Angelica Huston is a goddess, especially when she's evil. There's also a scene at the beginning where she holds her dying husband and cries, "Don't leave me here!" so I kind of got why she's so bitter. Mostly, I want to see a retelling where Cinderella is a grumpy teen who hates her step-mom and her step-mom is a reasonable lady who is trying her damnedest to hold it all together with three kids (one of whom is new to her and hates her) and no help. I've been thinking about that part in Labrynth where Sarah comes home and fights with her step-mom about the wet dog and her step-mom being unfair, and the step-mom says, "She treats me like the wicked stepmother in a fairy story no matter what I say."
***
December 14, 2017
Dubious Creatures, Episode 5: Chaos
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 2: Dubious Creatures
Episode 5: Chaos
December 12, 2017
Mr. Fox Review
This week's novel is Mr. Fox, by Helen Oyeyemi. This was recommended to me, again, by my friend Eric. So thanks, Eric!
Mr. Fox is a novelist in a marriage that is fizzling out, when Mary Foxe, a kind of muse who is a figment of his imagination and with whom he's infatuated, walks back into his life to tell him that he is a monster and his novels are monstrous, namely because he keeps murdering his female characters. Interspersed with this narrative are the beginnings of stories that maybe Mr. Fox wrote (that's not definite, but that's the impression I got), most of which star himself and Mary with some cameos from his wife (who is usually dead).
This was a great book. It had depth and the structure was deft and impressive. The shorter stories are all unfinished (until the very end of the novel), just as Mr. Fox doesn't know how his situation with Mary or with his wife is going to end. Is he going to change his ways and become a more loving, caring person, or is his avatar in the story going to murder Mary after several other female characters have been tortured for no real reason other than to make it gritty? And on that point, this novel says so much about violence against women in fiction without ever going on a diatribe about it. In the first few pages, Mary tells him, "You kill women. You're a serial killer Can you grasp that?" And that's all that's said of it directly. But it sets it up so that everything that follows is evidence of Mr. Fox (as a writer) killing women (characters). The reader is looking for it: if the women die more frequently than men, if they die with purpose, and it becomes clear that he's enacting some internal misogyny in his writing if not in the real world. (But also in the real world.) So you could say that the whole book is about pointing out the prevalence of these tropes in fiction and about how one instance is fluke but eight of them is a pattern. But since none of that is spelled out, it may just be my interpretation.
But let me tell you about fairy tales.
Several of the smaller stories have the feel of a fairytale, which was unusual considering that several of them were contemporary (or at least, not set in a vague "long ago"). When I say that they felt like fairy tales, I don't mean they were retellings of well known fairy tales in a contemporary setting, I mean that they had a fairy tale's typical flatness and magical realism.
In contrast to some of the other stories told by Mr. Fox, which feel less like fairy tales. In those, we are placed in a scene and we get dialogue and reaction and intersection. There's a kind of depth, a flushing out of things, almost like it's been unpacked for us. And at it's heart, this is what makes a fairy tale. Because of their flatness, they're open to interpretation. In a lot of fairy tale retellings, the writer has interpreted it and is presenting us with their interpretation. They've done the unpacking and removed the flatness from the tale. So my question is: Do those still count as fairy tales? Is a fairy tale about the plot points or is it about the form? Lately, I've been leaning towards thinking it's the form.
***
Next week: Geekerella, a retelling of Cinderella at a Sc-Fi convention by Ashley Poston.
Mr. Fox is a novelist in a marriage that is fizzling out, when Mary Foxe, a kind of muse who is a figment of his imagination and with whom he's infatuated, walks back into his life to tell him that he is a monster and his novels are monstrous, namely because he keeps murdering his female characters. Interspersed with this narrative are the beginnings of stories that maybe Mr. Fox wrote (that's not definite, but that's the impression I got), most of which star himself and Mary with some cameos from his wife (who is usually dead).
This was a great book. It had depth and the structure was deft and impressive. The shorter stories are all unfinished (until the very end of the novel), just as Mr. Fox doesn't know how his situation with Mary or with his wife is going to end. Is he going to change his ways and become a more loving, caring person, or is his avatar in the story going to murder Mary after several other female characters have been tortured for no real reason other than to make it gritty? And on that point, this novel says so much about violence against women in fiction without ever going on a diatribe about it. In the first few pages, Mary tells him, "You kill women. You're a serial killer Can you grasp that?" And that's all that's said of it directly. But it sets it up so that everything that follows is evidence of Mr. Fox (as a writer) killing women (characters). The reader is looking for it: if the women die more frequently than men, if they die with purpose, and it becomes clear that he's enacting some internal misogyny in his writing if not in the real world. (But also in the real world.) So you could say that the whole book is about pointing out the prevalence of these tropes in fiction and about how one instance is fluke but eight of them is a pattern. But since none of that is spelled out, it may just be my interpretation.
But let me tell you about fairy tales.
Several of the smaller stories have the feel of a fairytale, which was unusual considering that several of them were contemporary (or at least, not set in a vague "long ago"). When I say that they felt like fairy tales, I don't mean they were retellings of well known fairy tales in a contemporary setting, I mean that they had a fairy tale's typical flatness and magical realism.
Dr. Lustucru's wife was not particularly talkative. But he beheaded her anyway, thinking to himself that he could replace her head when he wished for her to speak...After a week or so old Lustucru got around to thinking that he missed his wife. No one to warm his slippers, etc. In the nursery he replaced his wife's head, but of course it wouldn't stay on just like that. He reached for a suture kit. No need. The body put its hands up and held the head on at the neck. The wife's eyes blinked and the wife's mouth spoke: "Do you think there will be another war? After the widespread damage of the Great War, it is very unlikely. Do you think there will be another war? After the widespread damage of the Great War, it is very unlikely. Do you think..." And so on.This section feels flat, by which I mean that it's a lot of summary and the shocking moments are presented in a deadpan manner that makes them ordinary. Of course she could talk when her head was put back on. Sure. It also relies on architypes instead of flushing out the characters. Dr. Lustucru is a crazy doctor and his wife is his wife. The reader fills in the rest. When the story is over, we can go back and shiver at the beheading. We can muse on how the wife must have felt, why she's stuck in a loop about the war, what her characterization must have been for her to be both a non-caracter from Dr. Lustucru's point of view, someone he can put away and then make speak at will, and a woman whose dead hands clutch at her dead head and cling to her last, chilling words. There's a lot going on here, but non of it is unpacked for us.
Disturbed by this, the doctor tried to remove his wife's head again. But the body was having none of it and hung on pretty grimly.
In contrast to some of the other stories told by Mr. Fox, which feel less like fairy tales. In those, we are placed in a scene and we get dialogue and reaction and intersection. There's a kind of depth, a flushing out of things, almost like it's been unpacked for us. And at it's heart, this is what makes a fairy tale. Because of their flatness, they're open to interpretation. In a lot of fairy tale retellings, the writer has interpreted it and is presenting us with their interpretation. They've done the unpacking and removed the flatness from the tale. So my question is: Do those still count as fairy tales? Is a fairy tale about the plot points or is it about the form? Lately, I've been leaning towards thinking it's the form.
***
Next week: Geekerella, a retelling of Cinderella at a Sc-Fi convention by Ashley Poston.
December 7, 2017
Dubious Creatures, Episode 4: The Jackalopes
The Twenty Percent True Podcast
Season 2: Dubious Creatures
Episode 4: The Jackalopes
December 5, 2017
A Spark Unseen Review
This week's novel is A Spark Unseen, YA historical fiction with some steam punk by Sharon Cameron. It's the sequel to The Dark Unwinding, which I talked about a few weeks ago. I actually listened to the audio book of this one, because I just now realized I could do that.
Katherine has been running her uncle's estate for a few years when men sneak into the house in the night to kidnap her uncle, who is wanted by both the British and French governments because he knows how to build a torpedo that could give whoever controls it a dominant navy. Her uncle's delicate constitution means Katherine refuses to hand him over to anyone, so they fake her uncle's death and escape to Paris to hide and search for Lane, Katherine's main squeeze who ran off to be a spy at the end of the last book. Of course, it turns out that running off to France when the French are after them doesn't make them any more safe.
The change in setting means this novel is a lot less Gothic than its predecessor. That's a bummer, because it was very well done in the last novel. I suspect that this one might fit into a different genre like "Political Intrigue in Paris Novels", but if that's a thing, then I'm not familiar with it. It's kind of a spy novel, but instead of Katherine being a spy, everyone around her might be and everyone's a suspect.
It still has great characters. I especially liked Henri, the wealthy French guy who sees right through everything Katherine does and acts as her interpreter for most of her search for Lane, helping her find her boyfriend while flirting up a storm at the same time. There's also Mrs. Hardcastle, the busybody English neighbor, who used to be besties with Katherine's evil aunt. The supporting characters are all given moments of surprising depth that are just as great as the first novel. They were almost all new characters, and I still loved all of them.
***
Next week: Mr. Fox, literary fairy tales by Helen Oyeyemi.
Katherine has been running her uncle's estate for a few years when men sneak into the house in the night to kidnap her uncle, who is wanted by both the British and French governments because he knows how to build a torpedo that could give whoever controls it a dominant navy. Her uncle's delicate constitution means Katherine refuses to hand him over to anyone, so they fake her uncle's death and escape to Paris to hide and search for Lane, Katherine's main squeeze who ran off to be a spy at the end of the last book. Of course, it turns out that running off to France when the French are after them doesn't make them any more safe.
The change in setting means this novel is a lot less Gothic than its predecessor. That's a bummer, because it was very well done in the last novel. I suspect that this one might fit into a different genre like "Political Intrigue in Paris Novels", but if that's a thing, then I'm not familiar with it. It's kind of a spy novel, but instead of Katherine being a spy, everyone around her might be and everyone's a suspect.
It still has great characters. I especially liked Henri, the wealthy French guy who sees right through everything Katherine does and acts as her interpreter for most of her search for Lane, helping her find her boyfriend while flirting up a storm at the same time. There's also Mrs. Hardcastle, the busybody English neighbor, who used to be besties with Katherine's evil aunt. The supporting characters are all given moments of surprising depth that are just as great as the first novel. They were almost all new characters, and I still loved all of them.
***
Next week: Mr. Fox, literary fairy tales by Helen Oyeyemi.
December 3, 2017
NaNo Post Mortem
At the start of this NaNo season, my friends over at NaNoWriPod threw in the towel. Most of them haven't succeeded at NaNo since I've known them, so having a podcast about it was getting too strange. But they ended on the note that NaNo is kind of useless, since after a month, even if you win, you have a heaping pile of garbage that doesn't have an ending.
My reaction to this is OF COURSE YOU DO.
First drafts are heaping piles of garbage, especially first drafts of novels, where you had an idea half way through and NaNo wouldn't let you go back to edit, so you just kept going with it from the middle as if it had been there all along, leaving yourself nothing but a cryptic note in the margins for you to find in a month and puzzle over.
NaNo is for writing horrible first drafts, and the rest of the year is for editing. If you only write during November and you only write a first draft, then, yeah, you're not going to get much done and you might not enjoy it.
The problem I ran into this year was that I was not in the right place in my writing cycle to write a first draft. I had the second season of the podcast launch on November 16th, and I had a book proposal due to my agent at the end of the month. That means I spent a lot of time editing and polishing rather than regurgitating first draft nonsense. For the first half of the month, it looks like I participated in NaNo every three days, and that's basically what I did: writing a draft of an episode and then editing the next two days to get it ready. The second half of the month, I would update my word count and the apparently not hit enter or something and I'd log back in the next day to see that they hadn't been counted, and then I was too lazy to go back and spend the time to figure out how many words I'd done. Since I wasn't going to win anyway, it seemed kind of useless to even log in.
I really like NaNo. I like the community. I like the emphasis on vomiting out a first draft so you have something to work with later. I like the emphasis on letting it be awful. But I think that as you move forward in your writing cycle, it gets harder to set aside projects in progress to do NaNo in November and easier to cough up a rough draft without all the scaffolding that NaNo provides.
You know I'll sign up again next year.
My reaction to this is OF COURSE YOU DO.
First drafts are heaping piles of garbage, especially first drafts of novels, where you had an idea half way through and NaNo wouldn't let you go back to edit, so you just kept going with it from the middle as if it had been there all along, leaving yourself nothing but a cryptic note in the margins for you to find in a month and puzzle over.
NaNo is for writing horrible first drafts, and the rest of the year is for editing. If you only write during November and you only write a first draft, then, yeah, you're not going to get much done and you might not enjoy it.
The problem I ran into this year was that I was not in the right place in my writing cycle to write a first draft. I had the second season of the podcast launch on November 16th, and I had a book proposal due to my agent at the end of the month. That means I spent a lot of time editing and polishing rather than regurgitating first draft nonsense. For the first half of the month, it looks like I participated in NaNo every three days, and that's basically what I did: writing a draft of an episode and then editing the next two days to get it ready. The second half of the month, I would update my word count and the apparently not hit enter or something and I'd log back in the next day to see that they hadn't been counted, and then I was too lazy to go back and spend the time to figure out how many words I'd done. Since I wasn't going to win anyway, it seemed kind of useless to even log in.
I really like NaNo. I like the community. I like the emphasis on vomiting out a first draft so you have something to work with later. I like the emphasis on letting it be awful. But I think that as you move forward in your writing cycle, it gets harder to set aside projects in progress to do NaNo in November and easier to cough up a rough draft without all the scaffolding that NaNo provides.
You know I'll sign up again next year.
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