(Melo)drama in Three Acts

This morning I learned that one of Matt's uncles has passed away. He's not someone that Matt and I were close to at all, but it's still a sad surprise for us, and plain awful for some of his family. Whenever something like this happens - whenever I know that people close to me are mourning or troubled - I never know what to do with myself, publicly or privately. I had written a good portion of a silly blog post about movies and opera before I heard about the death, and when I went to work on it some more after I knew about Uncle Dave, my subject seemed trivial to the point where it would be insulting to post it.

On September 11, 2002 I was a college student, a senior. I'm not sure if anybody had really assimilated the impact of 9/11 only a year later, but I was not quite 21 and was only just learning how big and unimpressible history was compared to any one event in history. The point is, I wore all black that day, mourning, and when I went to the student union around lunchtime, I saw a woman wearing rather outlandish flowered shoes and brightly colored ribbons in her hair.

At the time, I was disgusted. I thought she was extremely disrespectful for not sticking to muted colors on that day. I had a conversation with someone about this - I can't remember who - and the someone disagreed with me. A decade later, I disagree with myself. Sort of. I still think it's a good idea to show respect for what we lost that day, but I also think that if we tamp down any signs that life goes on, if we only allow for ONE reaction and ONE appropriate mode of dress on that day or any day, we lose something important as a nation and as a species. That woman might have just been oblivious to the anniversary of 9/11 and wore what she would have worn any day, but I'm going to choose to believe she dressed brightly on purpose. She was a flower growing out of blackened rubble.

This might partially be justification for not wanting to trash a post about fucking Twilight that I worked hard to make entertaining, but I do believe every word. And I mean no disrespect when getting on with my life, even when people I love are hurting. I want to do what I can, but when I don't know what to do, I'm going to do what I always do. Freezing everything I do so as not to be perceived as a jerk seems mostly like it's just paralyzing, rather than helpful at all.

So.

Isn't It Just Contemporary Fantasy?

In my local library, the SF and fantasy are in a section far away from the regular fiction section, and in fact are in the same area as teen fiction. I am not in love with what this connotes but, you know, oh well. I was browsing along the shelves a few weeks ago and came upon The Urban Fantasy Anthology, edited by Beagle and Lansdale and with a few top-notch authors in it, and picked it up. I've heard an awful lot about urban fantasy in the last five years, and seen increasing numbers of these terrible covers at Barnes & Noble, but if you asked me to define it I could only guess lamely. (Related to that link and well worth reading: this. Also this, funnier still.) I thought it would help to read a whole anthology of the actual genre.

There are no fewer than four introductions in this book, and three of them mention Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When I saw that, I went [oh.] So that's what urban fantasy is. It would be nice if they'd just said that.

As I work my way through the stories, a lot of what I read reminds me of Charlaine Harris's Sookie books, which I read voraciously whenever they're released (every year on the dot - actually, it's May, isn't it? Yessss!) and which I love for their transparency and speed and sex scenes. I would never call them great literature, and some of them I wouldn't even call good writing. They are, however, extremely fun. But there's a sort of studied casualness to the fantasy aspects of both those books and these stories that I find hampering. I remember, when reading Neverwhere, how effortlessly Gaiman introduced London Below, and how he didn't linger or waste words on supernatural stuff when it wasn't necessary. This is hard to do while building a genuine world, really really hard, and some of the authors in this anthology don't seem to have mastered it.

The thing that bothers me, though, is how ho-hum the stuff that comprises "urban fantasy" seems to me. In the anthology, I've read a pretty good but more or less standard ghost story; a lovely Gaiman story, wistful and imaginative and really very unfantastic (and not at all encouraging to someone moving to Los Angeles in a few weeks); a story by Lansdale that I truly hated, a dudeish post-apocalyptic zombie/sex bloodbath without a single pleasant sentence; and a few others in the realm of fantasy that I enjoyed, but that I wouldn't call urban. I guess I pictured that those ubiquitous kickass book-cover chicks would be parkouring all over a sooty Gotham with explosively powerful crossbows. In fact, yes, that's exactly what I pictured when I thought of "urban fantasy". Is there a book like that, one that's actually decent? Because I'd read that.

In other news, I have another story idea. This one might keep me from having to write the old old idea that I fear fucking up, or from having to iron out the Marilyn book until I get my nerve up.

In the last week, I've completely gorged on Twilight Rifftrax, watching all four released movies with their accompanying riffs. It's really helped. While I'm not exactly embarrassed about the thoughtfulness with which I've (perhaps needlessly) approached the series in the past and the complete sucker that the romance bits made of me, I did want to have a more objective view of the whole thing. Rifftrax has helped with that a lot, although I still find myself being a sucker for certain aspects of the movies.

That suckerism, along with some gender reading I've done in the past couple of weeks, made me ache desperately to write...something. Some kind of thing that would explore idealism and yearning in relationships, that would get down to real words all the vaguenesses I feel when I read romance novels and watch Edward and Bella getting it on. An essay wouldn't do it, wouldn't give me the freedom I needed. So I was really grateful when I came up with this idea. It's sci-fucking-fi, AGAIN. Digging myself in deeper. I suppose I could mutate it to more present-moment fantasy, make it fae instead of techy, but that's not how I picture it right now.

Of course, writing will have to wait until I get some actual frickin' sleep. Or have my house packed and ready to move. Or find a renter. Or...daaaaaaah.

In this post I've copped to devouring Sookie Stackhouse books and getting roped in by Twilight. If you're just joining me for the first time, I promise I'm not always such an airhead. It's just, y'know, you have to read everything. High, low, creamy middle. Stick only to uppercrust stuff and you become Harold Bloom: soulless, snobby, relentlessly confused about why the world doesn't agree with you. I'LL GET YOU ONE DAY, BLOOM! BLOOOOOOOM!!

Married to the Martyr

A few weeks back, I went to a midnight screening of the fourth Twilight film with a friend of mine. I'm not much of a Twi-hard, because I think the books are pretty godawful and the universe is pretty problematic. (Not getting into that right now, Dracula-type fans.) But I find it an interesting cultural artifact, I enjoy some of the laughably terrible dialogue and presentation, and I'm a complete sucker for the appealing way [certain aspects of] sex and romance are presented in the movies.

Breaking Dawn: Part 1 troubled me in a way the rest of the movies didn't. When I got over my midnight-movie hangover, I wrote an essay explaining why. I sent it to Slate (for Double X) and to Salon, but neither one of them was interested, so instead the whole internet gets it for free. Enjoy.