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I Fixed Wicked For Good
NOTE: This is just me fooling around. I get that this is a classic show for a reason, and I’m not gonna claim to be better than Winnie Holzman (who wrote the book for the show) or Gregory Maguire, who wrote the original novel the show was based on. I never saw the show, I never read the book. All I’ve got to go on here is the movie adaption.
NOTE NUMBER TWO: Spoilers, y’all. So many spoilers.
The Trappers – An Excerpt from “The Forest Witch”
Compared to these efficient travelers, I was a wild thing. A creature of the woods, as at home on that tree branch as any bird or scurrying rodent. So when the trappers passed under my tree and the woman glanced upward, she didn’t see a young woman crouching in the sycamore. She saw an animal. A faerie. A thing.
Feminine Rage
A list of things NOT to do to your female characters. These are all real examples of things that I saw in two anonymous manuscripts shown to me by two anonymous misogynists. Both misogynists tried to explain to me how each and every point of sexism was okay in their case.
Get ready for some spicy sweary fury because my heart rate is up and I am ready to let loose.
Trope: The Four(ish) Letter Word
If you had to guess what a religious/fantasy comedy, a classic regency romance, a space opera, and a teen vampire soap opera have in common, what would you say?
Well if you’re smart, you’d say “trope” because I basically gave it away in the title.
Specifically I mean Good Omens, Pride and Prejudice, The Empire Strikes Back, and Vampire Diaries. And also I mean a specific romance trope that most people are at least familiar with: enemies to lovers. That’s right, Crowley and Aziraphale, Elizabeth and Darcy, Han and Leia, and Damon and Elena all follow the same romance trope in their plots and subplots. So do about a kergillion others but these are the ones I came up with off the top of my head.
Wednesday
So I binged watched Wednesday yesterday… but I almost didn’t. In fact, if I’d had anything more interesting to do at all (or if I’d had any more energy… it’s been a very long holiday break), I would have stopped after episode one. Why? Because something about the show just didn’t sit right. And though the mystery and the beauty did keep me invested enough to continue, there was just something about the character herself that didn’t land.
The Village – A Romance
Who else here LOVED the movie, The Village (2004) by director M. Night Shyamalan? I am not a horror fan. Not even a little bit. So you may wonder why I loved this movie so much. Well that’s because it’s not a horror movie. It’s a romance masquerading as a horror movie. And I loooooove romance! And in particular, I loved the paring of Lucius and Ivy.
Piranesi – Book Review
Holy sweet baby Jesus I loved this book. It has been a long, long time since I sat down to read, and just got lost in the book. Even other books that I rate 5 stars, usually I have to make time to read. But not with Piranesi.
I had to know what The House was. I had to know how Piranesi and the Other got there. I had to know what was going on. And with Piranesi’s innocent, articulate, reverent voice, it was a joy to find out.
Nettle and Bone – Book Review
Rating: Five Stars – I came for the bone dog; I stayed for the demon chicken.
Well, I also stayed for the dust-wife, the lyrical voice, the imaginative characters, the small stakes (relatively speaking), the fantasy, the gray morals, and the fairy tale vibe. This book isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty damn good, folks.
An Enchantment of Ravens – Audiobook Review
Rating: Four Stars – A lush and original fairy tale – literally. This romance follows Isobel into the magical world of the Fair Ones, where she is has to basically handle a bunch of immortal toddlers, and it’s kind of awesome.
To Flashback or Not to Flashback
Oh, the flashback. That fickle bitch of a literary device. I promise you, every single creative writer in the history of the world has agonized over this very question at least once in their career: “Should I do this in a flashback or not?”
I would say that most of the time, like 80% of the time, the answer is a resounding “Hell no.”
Yes, I did just pull that statistic out of my ass. I’m basing that on the fact that in prep for writing this post, I struggled real hard trying to think of published books that used the flashback.
The Finisher – Audiobook Review
Rating: Four Stars – This is another hard one to rate. There were so many things about the writing style and the meandering plot that bothered me – a lot. But at the end of the day, I NEED to know what happens next!
Within These Wicked Walls – Audiobook Review
Rating: Three Stars – A lush, fantasy re-telling of Jane Eyre, what’s not to love about this one? And in the first half, I was all in. I wanted to know how the horrors were going to be resolved, I was loving the slow burn romance, but then… suddenly everything went blah.
The Sleeper and the Spindle – Audiobook Review
A quick and imaginative retelling of the classic fairy tale, Sleeping Beauty. This is a short story, and that heavily plays into my rating for this one. Because I’m not sure it would have held my attention much longer. But as it is, I can easily say that this story ended at the right time, and that’s a huge plus in my opinion.
The Ring – A True Story
I bought the ring for two dollars at a junk store in Pittsburgh. All in all, it was worth the two dollars. But I’m not sure it was worth the heartache.
Let me just say, before we get too deep into this, that there is no deeper meaning to this story. There’s no allegory, no personal revelation. It’s just a cheap ring and the manic determination of the author who bought it.
Connecting the Dots
So this week I finished my hundredth rewatch (give or take a few) of Avatar The Last Airbender. Let me start by recommending this show to anyone who enjoys fantasy and adventure, because it’s a literal goldmine of story telling and character.
But the thing I wanted to talk about today with ATLA is the way in which it connects all the dots so completely. It’s a story telling technique that I try to use in all my stories, and it’s one that even some trad pub novels occasionally overlook.