Cupid Bow Mouth

Young Adult Fiction’s Online Commissars

An interesting look at the impact of social media and the ever shrinking bridge between author and audience. I’m curious as to why publications are pulled or retracted in the face of online censure (it seems very much part of the current cultural zeitgeist in which public apologies are de rigeur no matter the severity of the offense, intention of the offender, or the distance between the offense and the current day) especially considering that all books are not written for all people. I am very much reminded of the Goodreads ratings and reviews and how for as many positive reviews there are negative ones. I find it always disturbing when people opt not to read a book based on a negative, subjective review. Such divisiveness in literary trend really is par for the course and shouldn’t resolve itself into censorship. Per the article, the book wasn’t actually read in its entirety and that, also, is deeply problematic.

To the articles failing, the insistence that this is a “left-leaning” habit assigns blame of a wider behavior to a particular political movement. The underlying issue of censorship overall predicated on determining what is deemed appropriate to the masses is the larger concern that impacts a multitude of perspectives and authors writing about a multitude of subjects. I wish the article had moved beyond the specifics of this particular novel and touched more on the general habit because that is the location of alot of impetus that lands books on the Banned Books List.

Take a look, there are points for consideration. As always, I recommend staying out of the comments.

Today is a day where I feel like I am the worse writer in the history of writing. I just plain, flat out suck. Not being able to get around that sucks. It's partially inspired by the brief moment of empathy I experienced while watching The Words, the other part is a result of my complete failure to write something worthwhile for an anthology that I'm supposed to contributing to.

Whatever. Right now, I suck.

In other news, Billy the Vampire Slayer. I get the reasoning as explained by David Greenwalt and Marti Noxon, but I'm not going to lie and say that I'm too keen on it. I understand the narrative intention, it's like Robin Wood taking it upon himself to beat vampire bad guys. My distaste for this particular plot is, I think, located around the assumption of the title Vampire Slayer. The gay part, I don't care. A guy fighting vampires, I don't care. A guy fighting vampires and appropriating the vampire slayer moniker I find problematic. I'm still trying to work out exactly why. It is possible it has to do with the overabundance of hero narratives that revolve around men, and how the Vampire Slayer was (for better or worse) strictly female but is now being usurped by another male hero.

It's not like I read the comics, anyway, so I really don't suppose I should care.

I had forgotten how good of an actress Alyson Hannigan is. Re-watching The closing arc of S6, I also forgot how much I hated the angry, whiny, I am so tortured and angry bitchiness of Dark!Willow. I forgot how very badly I wanted Buffy to kick her ass or for someone to just kill her already. I mean, I do get it. I get that she's deep in the soul hurt, but her response to that pain is so beyond the boundaries of the acceptable that I just wanted her ass kicked, but good! Re-watching S4-S6, I see, very clearly, the path that got us to this place and none of it (possibly with the exception of Oz leaving) makes me sympathetic to Willow. Which is odd, no matter how much I disagree with Buffy or with what she does, I am pretty much always sympathetic. Same thing with Xander. But Willow in the moments post-Seeing Red, I pretty much hate. There is the theory that Willow and the magicks have merged into an independent personality, but I don't totally buy it. I think that Willow's addiction to magicks is an addiction to power by the powerless. She is afforded a control beginning in S4 that has been missing her entire life and over time as she realizes how powerful she is, she becomes obsessed with feeling in control. Not to diminish Tara's death, but Willow's reaction reads ,in a very real way as an uber tantrum because she can't get her way. It is fueled by her grief over Tara, which she refuses to actually experience, that feeds into rage, I think as a way to protect herself.

Then Xander shows up on the cliff and the cracks crack and then I feel sorry for Willow. Very, very, very sorry.

So, yeah, my amateur psych evaluation. Oh, Logo, thanks for bringing back Buffy. I hadn't forgotten my love, but, well, I find that I'm falling in love all over again.

oh, and I am reminded that I do not remember at time during which I did not love Anya. That trend continues.

I found an opinion piece on Caitlin Kiernan's treatment of The Sandman Series in DC Vertigo's The Dreaming that was far less than stellar. The reviewer, Roxane Grant, seemed to have taken affront a Kiernan's writing style and preferred genre, insisting that Kiernan was a completely inappropriate choice for the type of derivative endeavor that The Dreaming was purported to be. Having only read the first three issues of Neil Gaiman's The Sandman, and having never read The Dreaming, I can't comment on whether or not that statement is true. My affection for Kiernan's writing immediately rears it's head and scoffs at the possibility of such, but that's a personal bias and really has nothing to do with anything.

This is not a slam on the piece. There were flaws in the non-argument, but it's an opinion piece and not a critical review, so, again, that's irrelevant here. I did take issue with a few things as a Kiernan fan, but that's also really neither here nor there. What I do want to focus on are the reasons that Grant lists for how Kiernan "killed" The Dreaming and extrapolate that into a question that I have for all you writers on my FL.

Grant writes that "Vertigo made two fatal mistakes," the second of which concerns this post.

"The second mistake was in giving Kiernan such a massive responsibility, when she was obviously not as talented a storyteller as Gaiman. Caitlin R. Kiernan is a novelist with a limited scope, best known for imitating the dark fantasy writing styles of Poppy Z. Brite and Anne Rice. I say she is a restricted writer because she seems to have a goth fetish and seems incapable of writing in any other genre. This handicap is also reflected in her comics, and eventually came to dominate THE DREAMING. Prior to permanently taking over the book, Kiernan had written a short story the prose anthology of SANDMAN, and issues 17-19 of THE DREAMING."

The highlighted text is my where my interest lies. My initial response was that writers typically write in some sort of genre (and I mean genre in the most traditional sense of the word) and they usually stick to that genre, sometimes because of personal preference and sometimes because of audience resistance to change. When authors stray into other terrain we often see pen names employed to differentiate the new type of novel from the author's previous works (possibly to prevent alienating the original fan base more than anything else -- I'm only speculating, so I'd love to hear from those of you in the publishing industry). When we as readers reach for an author, I think, that we are reaching for a particular type of read. With Kiernan we're expecting dark, lush, nightmarish dreamscapes and hardscapes. We're expecting that gothic, punk rock type of aesthetic.

So as far as writing another genre goes, I'm wondering, how many writers,under one pen name, really do write across genres? Do YOU write in one genre or in many? Do you think that's a fair assessment of someone's writing to take issue with the genre that they write in? And I'm asking you guys this, dear FL, because I know that quite a few of you are wildly more well-read than I am.

My other issue with Grant's statement is that crack about the "goth fetish." Granted that this is an opinion piece and maybe Kiernan just really isn't her cup of tea, after all the leap from Gaiman to Kiernan is not a small one, but I find that you can usually recognize the "fetish" within a writer's body of work. And when I say fetish, I mean the theme or idea that permeates an author's canon, whatever they're obssessed with at the time. We all have demons or questions that we explore in our writing and I don't think that it's too far fetched to say that we explore those themes across our personal canon and not just within the confines of a single creative endeavor. That's not to say that the themes don't change over time. Ultimately, we may answer the question, resolve the puzzle, lay our demons to rest or just become interested in something completely different. Or maybe not.

My second question to you, then, is this: Is it fair to say that Kiernan has a goth fetish? Is it fair to say that all authors have a fetish of some sort? Do you? If yes, what is your fetish?

Okay, so I lied, that's a series of questions. But let me add a couple more; Do you think that you write in one genre and only one genre? Are you interested in writing other "types" or styles of things? Why? Why not?

Tell me something. Tell me anything.

The sign-ups for the Meta-thon are officially closed. The list is as follows:

tkp
glossing
germaine_pet
rahirah
a2zmom
beer_good
my_daroga
desoto_hia873
darlas_mom
thedeadlyhook
seraphcelene

Okay, we've got a meta-thon going!

Meta is due on Saturday, October 20th. Links can be posted in the comments section of a Masterlist post that will go up on October 19th. It will be crossposted to Insanejournal and Livejournal for the conveience of the participants. I'm so excited to see what everyone writes!!

Thanks for signing up, everyone.

reading writing meta meta by xanphibian

Can I get a hell yeah!

I love meta and I love discussing writing. I’ve often thought of treating fic as I would treat the books that I’m reading: lay them up against theory and classic crit to examine how the writer is able to do what they do (convey sen, emotion, visuals, etc.). In fandom, this would commonly fall under the banner of concrit. Most people seem to be Very Nervous about concrit, it’s bad form, unnecessary in a community where all is for fun, you don’t want to step on anyone’s toes or hurt their feelings. With that in mind, I offer concrit up to the people who I know are interested and can handle it. xanphibian’s post gets at what my ideas are of concrit on a larger level than just what some assume it is. That is to say, we’re not just talking about criticism in terms of “this is bad” or “this doesn’t work”, but also how the fic operates and achieves its goals via the more technical aspect of writing. We’re talking more than just concrit or a review but a critical analysis of a literary piece, and let’s be real – fanfic is literature. It may not be considered Literature because of its marginal status (copyright issues, derivative, etc.) but it is literature. Hell, if a pamphlet can be literature, fanfic can damn well be literature. Some of it is even Literature.

Personally, I am totally willing to offer up my fic for the attempt. All the same rules of fandom, of course, applying. Although, I have a feeling that there will be no takers because it always comes down to the same argument with concrit – people get their feelings hurt. Well, seeing as how I am an adult, and seeing as how I can only grow if I get concrit, I would love to see an essay or brief meditation on something that I’ve written or a compare/contrast to different pieces, etc. I’d love to do the same for other willing writers. I think that the closest I got was a comment I made to tkp’s Pretty Screams in Paradise. It was a fabulous thinky exercise and reminded me of all those reasons that I love Lit classes and academia, all the fun, technical reasons that I love and hate being a writer.

I just completed Scott Westerfeld's YA trilogy Uglies, Pretties, and Specials. They were a really fun read, although I can't say how much I loved the ending of Specials. I need to ruminate on it a bit. It was a little disappointing and part of that is because I very much wanted a Happy Ever After ending. Specials definitely does not give us that and I need to think a little more and sort out my thoughts before I talk anymore about it.

But, what these books did leave me with is an interest in the body as read through ideas of a utopian or dystopian future. How is the body understood or re-imagined to fit in with the philosophical changes in a future society? How is the body re-created, alienated or mechanized? How do those changes/differences reflect the interior ideas of the new society; do they? Are the physical adjustments representative of mental/intellectual changes? Westerfeld deliberately connects the changes in the physical body with changes in the mind. The physical differences between Uglies, Pretties and Specials are markers for the differences in the way that they understand and interact with the world. Within the individual 'types' there are also subdivisions that further finesse those pre-determined thought processes and their social ramifications.

( The Future Body (spoilers for Scott Westerfeld's Uglies trilogy) )

The gender coding time of year has started off with a bang. Every time I turn on the TV I am assaulted by commercials featuring little girls playing with plastic stoves and oh, how cool it is and they talk! Apparently, when she wasn't off having adventures featuring sharks, shipwrecks and the rescuing of handsome princes, Ariel was busy filleting fish. I was unaware.

So, sorry. Pardon my sarcasm.

Did you SEE how much junk she had in that cavern? Do you know how much TIME it takes to accumulate that much stuff? How much searching and exploring has to be done? I guess the marketing peeps over at Disney don't really think so.

What really got me, however, was the Dora the Explorer stove.

( Buffy got it wrong: Re-inscribing the Active Feminine Just in Time for Christmas. )

Oh and a note to glossing: THANK YOU!! I will email you later. But everything made perfect sense and thank you thank you thank you!!!

I don't watch 'Reality TV' often. I just don't find it terribly interesting. Of what I will watch, a very limited list (ANTM, The Amazing Race, Dancing with the Stars, occasionally Celebrity Fit Club), I most dislike anything that gives America a chance to vote. It is, among other things, why I don't watch American Idol. America, en masse, is stupid. Hello, look at our stupendously retarded leader. Wait, let me take that back, it's an insult to retarded people everywhere.


( TV, Democracy and Ballroom Dancing )

Adolescent Middle Ages

I know that there are plenty of brilliant people out there who could write something wonderful and insightful. Hell, if my life weren't so scattered, I might even give it a whirl since this is RIGHT up my academic alley.

Yis! Precious! The Precious!