Cupcake of the Week: New Videos!!!

In keeping (sort of) with the theme Genn started yesterday, I just wanted to make mention of something AWESOME that went up today via the LBD crowd. THIS:

This is a similar tack as the videos Maria did over the summer:

 

I really do love how they've made a very detailed world with what are generally the secondary characters in Pride and Prejudice and made them people with their own goings on. Much like what we've seen going on with Lydia in the bac ground (or any of the other characters, if you follow their twitter, tumblr, and so on). I love how three dimensional everything has gotten with the use of all of these forms of media.

 

And I am SOOOO looking forward to tomorrow's Lizzie video. I know we're getting to the end game, but damn is this end game good. :)

 

I am such a sucker for for this..... And for seeing more of the world of a story than the original may have given us. It's why I love the Fitzwilliam Darcy, A Gentleman series, among others. *Sigh* Thinking about it now, it might be time for my annual rereading....

 

Until later!

Pride and Prejudice, Abusive YA Relationships and YOLO

Yesterday was the 200^th Birthday of Pride and Prejudice. For 200 years the story of Lizzy and Darcy has been capturing the hearts and imaginations of generations. It’s a love story that I have to confess I’ve never read (please don’t revoke my nerd card) but I’ve seen many adaptations of. I know the story incredibly well (from watching far too many adaptations) and also from being friends with Angel. I’m pretty sure Angel can quote the book, at random.

Swoon, BBC mini-series with Colin Firth . . . sigh.

Right, back to the topic of this post. If you haven’t been watching the Lizzie Bennet Diaries (where have you been living? Under a rock?) then let me catch you up. The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice told as a series of vlogs. It’s a fantastic idea which so far has been well executed and enjoyable. Damn you, Thursday, why are you so far away from Monday (Lizzie’s vlogs go live on Mondays and Thursday at 9am PST, not that I’m like counting the hours or anything).

The flip side of Lizzie’s vlogs are a series of vlogs kept by her sister The Lydia Bennet. At first Lydia’s vlogs are so annoyingly painful to watch they make me want to YOLO my freaking eyes out. It’s hard to remember being that young. Or naïve. Or energetic. I wasn’t ever that much of a party girl. But something about Lydia is hopelessly and at times adorably youthful. *cringe* If you don’t have a youth where you cringed a lot, you didn’t have much of a youth.

In the past few weeks, as the dastardly George Wickham (or Wix, as Lydia calls him) has become a focal point of the story the tone of these vlogs has changed. Lizzie and Lydia had a massive fight before Christmas, prompting Lizzie to take an internship at Pemberley Digital (yes, I know, we all knew what that meant—Hipster Darcy! Did I not mention Darcy is a hipster? He is.) and Lizzie to go on a wild trip to Vegas. A trip where she reconnected with a certain Mr. Wickham.

(WARNING HERE BE SPOILERS)

Anyone who has read the book, or seen several (all, ok ALL) of the adaptations can already tell where we are going. We are moving into the endgame of the book. Just as Darcy and Lizzie finally realize that they love each other Darcy is called away, Lizzie has to rush home because her family is ruined and then . . . well, there’s the epic confrontation with Lady Catherine and finally, finally Darcy and Lizzie together at last. 

But . . . let’s rewind. Right now, we are rolling into Lydia’s part of the story.  A part that has always been vague.

Angel told me last week when we were discussing the vlogs (Yes, we google chat after we watch the vlogs, because that’s what adults do, right?) that in the book it just refers to the passage about Lydia and Wickham as ‘Lydia being completely under his power’.

This sounded ominous. You get the impression by Lydia being ruined (and subsequently Darcy forcing Wickham to marry Lydia—you read that right. Darcy. Forces. Wickham. To. Marry. Lydia. Mr Darcy’s Shotgun Weddings buy one get one free?) by the rakish Wickham is a bit lighter in the books. Lydia was a cheeky girl, but in the end it all works out.

However, this isn’t the case with the Lizzie Bennet Diaries. For me, this is the part where the adaptation gets really interesting. It’s a task in and of itself to retell Pride and Prejudice. We all know the source material. We know what is supposed to happen.

But what about Lydia’s story? She’s always the annoying younger sister who buggers everything up, right?

I’ve never before seen an adaptation focus on her as a character. Other than as a silly schoolgirl who gets in way over her head with the ‘menfolk’. But, The Lydia Bennet, is brilliant. What begins as a silly schoolgirl turns into something else. And for the first time (in my opinion) we get a real look at what the relationship between Lydia and Wickham would have looked like if she were in fact ‘completely under his power’.

*Shivers*

To fully understand this we have to look at last week’s video. Last week, Gigi, Darcy’s irrepressible sister, drops by Lizzie’s vlog to confess to the world the story of her and Wix. Go on watch it. I’ll wait.

You’re probably thinking what Angel and I were thinking. Um . . .  am I missing something? I think, very cleverly that we are.

We know that Lizzie edited out ‘the crying bits’. We know that Lizzie is worried that the video will anger Darcy. But actually, what we are seeing in this video feels a bit melodramatic. We don’t really know what Wix did to anger Darcy (ok, besides dating his MUCH YOUNGER sister and living with her, prolly mooching off her etc). But overall, this sounds more like a ‘relationship’ than abuse or anything terrible. Anything as epic as Gigi is making it out to be.

Now, don’t get me wrong here. Clearly whatever happened between Gigi and Wix (I am going to keep calling him that as it cracks me up—also it rhymes with dick, which he is, I’m mature like that.) was traumatic. I am sure it was probably abusive and I am in no way downplaying that. All I’m saying is that the video we’ve seen is vague at best. We can conclude that Gigi wanted to warn the internet about Wix and that she is really hoping to warn Lydia.

It’s a warning that falls on deaf ears.

The same week we get this *cringe worthy* video on the Lydia Diaries. Go on, watch it. I’ll wait.

Right, after watching this video we see exactly what Gigi could not verbalise. This is not the Lydia we’ve come to know and love (ok tolerate). This is a girl ‘completely under his power’. She’s pale. She looks unhealthy. We watch as Wix loses his temper with her over very minor things. We watch as he manipulates her. Threatens to do whatever he has to do to be with her forever.

In short, we are watching the intimate diary of an abusive relationship.

At first, I was floored. I couldn’t believe that the creators had chosen to tell Lydia’s story this way. Frankly, I was expecting the party girl to have a stint in rehab as the emergency that pulled Lizzie from Darcy. I never saw the abusive relationship. I wasn’t sure how I felt about this plot twist.

Until I talked about it with Angel. In today’s YA literature we are seeing a lot of borderline abusive relationships. Edward and Bella being just the tip of the iceberg. In a fair bit of modern YA  (please note this is not ALL YA and I am not going to start naming names here, though I could and you’d get bored) young girls are told that overpowering, borderline abusive relationships are all about ‘love’. Being controlled by a man/vampire/3000 year old demigod/centaur/fallen angel/zombie/triceratops is actually a form of love. If a ‘mate’ orders you around, isolates you from your family, friends, the things you love to do and tells you that ‘your love is the only thing that matters’ then it must be true love.

People, this is not true love. That is the classic pattern of an abuser. Isolate someone from their family and friends. Remove their interests outside of ‘you’. Make it so that their world revolves around you. Your love. And keeping you happy. Make the person feel like they need to be ‘good enough’ for you and that if they aren’t somehow they are in the wrong. This is terrifying.

What scares me more is the crop of literature that has popped up saying that this is how you find a healthy relationship. Even if it is fiction. Even if it is ‘escapism’. What worries me is that this sort of escape isn’t being produced for the romance market, who we know understand the conventions of the genre, this is being pushed at teens. Teens who are going to base their first, second, third, relationships on an abusive pattern.

So, I salute the Lizzie Bennet/Lydia Bennet Diaries for tackling this sort of a relationship. Not only have they handled it (so far, I can only go based on what we’ve seen at the time this blog is published) incredibly well, but they’ve also forced me to think about so much of the YA literature that is being produced.

In Lydia’s last published video entitled 'Good Enough' (Am I the only one who gets the reference to the Sarah McLachlan song about abuse?). Go on, give it a watch. I’ll wait.

As I was saying, in this last video we see a very different Lydia. This girl is a mess. She’s all over the place. She’s strung out on her love for Wix. She’s worried about pleasing him. Being ‘good enough’ for him. The old YOLO Lydia was the shit. The life of the party. The girl everyone wanted to smack, but also be. She was so full of joy. This Lydia, not so much. She’s a sad starved flower waiting for her sun to return.

This video painfully shows the insidious forms of abuse that exist in Lydia/Wix’s relationship. I felt myself start to tear up when I watched this. It’s a fine piece of acting and an important turn in the plot. With a very scary coda of a question mark as to when the next video will be airing.

So thank you, Lydia Bennet Diaries for shedding some light on this issue. Because you’ve given me a lot to think about. A lot to rant about. A lot to worry about. Mostly about the state of romance in some YA novels.

I’ll be waiting hopefully for an update from Lydia soon.

And I promise on my next reading post I’ll tackle some healthy YA relationships in fiction. 

Because there are TONS out there. I promise.

Forget the Big Audacious Goals. I'm Going Too-Small-to-Fail.

Every New Year’s, I get a bit carried away with my own fabulousness.

I love to set big, audacious goals for the new year. Big, inspiring, breathtaking goals. Goals so big they can’t fit in the door. Did I mention they’re big? Big and audacious. I blame the champagne.

Of course, I usually fail at them. This year, I failed at my biggest, most breathtaking and audacious goal: getting a novel, for the first time, agent-ready. To give myself credit, I’m making pretty good progress in getting my novel ready. But the most optimistic forecast has it being ready by middle of this year. So…big audacious fail.

So this year, I’m doing something different. Forget the big goals. Forget a new big audacious goal every month. I’m not doing that. Forget it.

Instead, I’m underachieving. On purpose.

Bear with me here. I'm thinking too-small-to-fail. Instead of going big or going home, you lower the bar. My only goal is to get through this scene. This particular scene I’m working on right now. I’m just going to fix that, this week. Or maybe just two pages of it.

I want my goals this year to be so pathetically easy I can do them even during the worst weeks. You know, those weeks when stuff like THIS keeps happening.

I’m hoping that this strategy will get my novel agent-ready even faster than I wanted. But I’m not looking at that. I’m just focusing on one thing at a time. One day at a time. One week. For once in my life, this year, my eyes are anywhere but on the prize.

Fairy Tale Friday: The Snow Queen, Or Don't Piss a B**** Off

            Once upon a time, there was a girl, Lila, and a boy, Mark, who lived across a garden from each other in a quaint little village in the North. While they were good most of the time, if there was trouble to be had, they would often be found in it together. It was hard to know who had instigate it or whose idea it was, but there they'd be, head-to-toe in mud or soot or, on one occasion feathers, sometimes in tow by another neighbor with wide innocent eyes and all their parents could do was shake their heads.

 

They were warned -- most of the time, sure, it's innocent fun, but just beware. There are people you don't want to piss off in this world. The least of all was the original Snow Queen.

 

When they were small, they were warned about a white car that drove through town once a year on the first day of winter. The windows were heavily tinted and the car itself was worth more than most of the villagers made in a decade. And when the car was spotted on the road leading to town, everyone was warned to be off the streets. The woman in the car did not take dealing with "peasants" lightly. She'd mow an old man down if he crossed in front of her car and sue his family for the damages. And while grown folks were like grass before a gardener, what she really loved was to take young men home with her, never to be seen again.

 

Imagine this, in white.

 

 

It was really for everyone's safety, then, to be buttoned up tight behind closed doors on the first day of winter.

 

On the first day of winter when they turned sixteen, Mark got it into his head that this year, they were going to actually see the car and he was pretty sure he'd found the best place to watch it covertly from. Lila tried her best to talk him out of it, but all to no luck. The best she could do was go with him and make sure he didn't do something stupid, like the time he set up the ding-dong-ditch, just to see who really lived in the old, creepy house at the edge of town and accidentally burned the place down.

 

Ooops....

 

 

Yes, he thought he had a magnificent plan this time to get the car to stop and see who it was that had been terrorising the town for so long: mud balloons to the windshield from two places along the route. With two of them, while the driver was distracted, he'd be able to finally see who was in the car that drove through town.

 

"It's fool proof," he told her.

 

She wasn't convinced. He wasn't exactly the brains of their little operation.

 

Still, she crouched across the street on the roof of an unoccupied shop while he hid down a small alley not far off, both of them with balloons full of dirt and water and while the cry went up that the car was coming, they stayed, waiting where they were hidden.

 

(Maybe this would have worked better?)

 

The car was not long in coming.

 

The big, sleek luxury model growled it's way along the road and with timing borne of years of cooperative warfare against the other kids in town, they struck. The white car was pelted with balloons. Some bounced off only to be broken by the tires or splatter across the pavement, but there were a few that hit and hard. Mud coated the windshield, the rear window and the side windows. And when the car pulled to a stop, it was with nervous, hysterical giggles that both of them ducked back behind their respective barricades.

 

The door opened and sharp heeled shoes clicked on the pavement. "What the... Ugh! Who the-- who did this?! Of all the infantile.... " She waited a beat or two before shouting, "Show yourselves NOW."

 

It was a strange compulsion that pulled the boy out from his hiding place: a mixture of curiosity about the woman behind the voice and the command she wielded with it. He peered out and sensing in the silence that followed something else had happened, his hidden companion did likewise. What she saw terrified her.

 

He stood there like a deer-in-headlights in front of a cool blonde, dressed in a white sheath dress, white stilettos, and white pearls and a long white-fox fur.

 

“You,” she said, pointing one crystal-studded talon at Mark. “You did this?”

 

He was struck dumb looking at her. She was so lovely that in that moment there was no room for anything else in his young, hormone addled head. He nodded.

 

“You’re coming with me. And you’re cleaning this up. You won’t go home until I’m satisfied.” She approached him with a controlled saunter, appraising. “Aren’t you a lovely looking thing,” she purred, tapping a different nail on his cheek. Do a good job and I think we can both make out of this satisfied.” She grabbed hold of him and lead him back to the car.



Maybe this was what she was thinking? Probably not....

 

“No! Wait. Don’t take him. I’m responsible!” Lila shouted from her hiding place. 

 

But it was to no avail. The minute the Snow Queen’s hands were on him, he was done for. Neither of them seemed to hear her as the Queen ushered him into the passenger seat.

 

Lila scrambled down from the roof in time to see the white car kick up a little splash of the mud they’d thrown.

 

The Queen didn’t wait for him to buckle up before she revved the engine and took off.

To Be Continued...
Part 2

Impin' Ain't Easy

If you know me, you know that I am a huge Game of Thrones junkie. I was into the books before they were cool, and way before there was a TV series based on it. I remember when they were casting said TV show, I got into a conversation with a casting director who had the hardest time finding the right Khal Drogo. I knew the perfect person. Too bad it had just been cast last week.

Anyway, the latest book in the series isn't coming out for, like, a million years. And the new season won't start til the spring. For those of you who are counting the minutes, like me, here's a little something to tide you over.

Swashbuckling Adventure!!

At some point recently, I realized that my phone has a book function, right before I got myself a new e-reader, and I decided that this was a fantastic opportunity to do some reading that I hadn’t done before or had read so long ago I couldn’t remember most of what had happened. So, I started last month reading classics on my phone and ran right through Treasure Island. It made me so happy. And, to keep the momentum of classic adventure stories going, I decided to move on to Three Musketeers. And that’s when I hit the brakes. I had never read Three Musketeers before. My understanding of the story at this point has been incomplete. Seriously incomplete.












So, as I’ve been working through the inadequacies of my understanding of French swashbuckling literature, I’ve also been trying to read other books, knowing this is going to take time. (I’m not reading it in French, by the way. I don’t really speak any thing more than “food ordering French” …. so, yeah. But, I’m not sure, there may also be some problems with the translation I’m reading).

And, while I’ve read several other books so far, I found a book that bowled me over.

The Lies of Locke Lamora.

Now, that’s a swashbuckling adventure!

It was strange reading these two stories at the same time, because, while they’re marketed as being the same genre (mostly), they couldn’t be more different. The Lies of Locke Lamora follows a group of gentleman thieves, while the Three Musketeers (as you may already know) surrounds the story of four noblemen (imagine that), three of whom are already musketeers in the King’s service, while the fourth is looking to get in. There are, yes, court intrigues and street brawls in both. There are enemies of the state in both, yes. But...




"Can't get paid if you crawl away like a little bitty bug, neither. I got a share in this job. Ten percent of nothing is—let me do the math here. Nothing into nothin'. Carry the nothin'...." Jayne Cobb - Firefly



(via Icefloe-ArtSoul on deviantart)

 

While I need to get over certain preconceived notions about The Three Musketeers, The Lies of Locke Lamora, well, all I really knew going in was that the cover (and some other things I’ve read about the author) was kick-ass. While I’m trying to reconcile images of Kiefer Sutherland as this tragic-yet-stoic leader of the merry band of Musketeers, there’s none of that with Locke. I have his description of an average man of average height with average looks, a man designed to blend in and be forgotten, a man who was practically born to become other people and play confidence games. (A concept I find particularly awesome.)

(Look at Kiefer Sutherland rock that hair!)

 

Locke is a novel set in a fantasy world (based on Medieval Venice) that has a very real way of running. Characters are gritty, flawed. The world is full of anti-heroes. The Three Musketeers, while set in historical France, is a world I can’t even begin to understand. People fall easily in and out of love and while, yes, our heroes are imperfect, they’re almost comical in their imperfections (and yes, I know it was meant to be satire, but...): D'Artagnan falls in and out of love so fast he forgets the woman that went missing all because he was intending an assignation. Pages go by, and it isn’t until another character reminds him that he was supposedly in love that he’s reminded he needs to pursue more ends -- until he falls in love with the person he should really question and ignores those ends to pursue her and then pursue revenge against her. Athos isn’t some tragic stoic hero, he’s a mean drunk. Porthos is... well he’s exactly the same. And Aramis? Well... I’m just going to let that go for now. People are persuaded into behavior that they have previously claimed not to be capable of (Constance), while others … I still don’t see where they really got one up on anyone. Meanwhile, Locke is never anything more than he admits to being -- unless he’s pretending to be someone else. And even then, he is still a stronger character with tighter ties to his brother-Gentleman Bastards (in my eyes) than any of the four Musketeers.

Translation issues aside (or maybe because of the translation), I am also having the worst time staying in the moment in Three Musketeers, meanwhile, the voice in The Lies of Locke Lamora pulls you in and drags you along in a story that tells you both about his past and present, the benefit of which I still haven’t gotten in Three Musketeers.

Of course, part of this might be because I loved the 1993 movie. And while I liked the more recent one, we can't even begin to compare it to either the book or any of the earlier movies.

Mind you, I’m not finished with The Three Musketeers yet, and I do intend to finish by hook or crook, but I burned through the Lies of Locke Lamora and I fully intend to grab the sequel, Red Seas Under Red Skies,  just as soon as I find it. It’s a strange feeling, since I love (or thought I loved) adventure stories. But, it could be the translation. I know that’s caught me up on a book before. I still haven’t finished Sophie’s World -- entirely based on a translation where I felt I was being talked down to. Three Musketeers just reads erratically (in neither English nor French is ngrm a word, and that’s the least of my problems).

I think I might just pick up Red Seas Under Red Skies, instead. Man. I want to see what’s next for one Priest of the Nameless Thirteenth....


Ahh, Chains!
(via TolmanCotton on deviantart)

And the Midnighters



Here's the letting go.

Today is 'Blue Monday' otherwise known as 'the most depressing day of the year. I was having a relatively good 'most depressing day of the year'. I mean, you can't hold much stock in pseudo-science (though I do love me some good pseudo-science). I was productive at work. I was getting things ticked off my lists. I was happy.

You can see where this is going, right?

I struggled for a while to think of what to write for today's blog post. I wasn't sure what my weekly Karma Post was going to be about. Part of me wanted to write about how I'm becoming this cynical arsehole who has lived in big cities long enough to start to understand that fundamentally the girl who grew up in a small town is changing into this much more polished person. A person I don't recognise most days. A person who uses British spelling and punctuation  A person with a 'mid-Atlantic' accent (a delightfully jarring mixture of American and British). A person I'm not 100% I like. Or dislike.

That would be a good topic for a blog. It should have been the topic for this blog.

And then . . . I changed my mind.

On my daily commute home I felt crushingly defeated. We have weeks of winter ahead of us. Winter is a difficult time for me. I get a bit of SAD and the lack of light feels so unnatural. I'm a bit like this for four months or so:

Photo found at: http://www.funnyjunk.com/funny_pictures/630916/Sad/ 

Not exactly the place I want to be. Not for any extended period of time.

Then there's the fact that 2013 has started and I'm still in the same place I was in 2012. For the most part that's a good thing. I love my job. Love it. I work with fantastic people in an industry that I love. I cannot speak more highly of the people I work for and with. They are all beyond brilliant and amazing co-workers.

So, why the feeling of defeat? I've got this little problem. Well, it's kind of a big problem. It's why I'm only now forcing myself to properly blog. I am not good at letting things go. I suck at it.

So, I guess that's what this post is really all about. When to let things go.

Way back in November 2010 I started working on this book. I'll call it a book now, because I've lived with it long enough that calling it a 'draft' or 'project' seems dismissive. I was excited about it. I had gone through a few other ideas and none of them had worked out. I wasn't a skilled enough writer for the concept. I over complicated what should have been a brilliant idea. I could go on and on. I won't though. I'm nice like that.

Anyway, I fell in head over heels disgusting love with my new book. Everyday I sat down to work on the book it was like this:

Image from: http://www.tumblr.com/tagged/tangled%20kiss

It was such a departure from anything else I'd previously written. I was scared. Certain this would be a hot mess. It wasn't. The book was written relatively quickly (about four months, which for a girl with a full time job felt fast). I was shocked at how easy the process had been.

Then came the revision. I have spent the next, what, nearly two years in a constant state of 'oh-shit-this-is-terrible-worst-thing-ever-shoot-me'. It's not a pleasant place to be. After writing the story so quickly I hadn't expected to be stuck in the editing place.

I sent the book out to friends. Most of them loved it. Some of them had thoughts. Overall, I was all like:

All of them had notes, but the overwhelming consensus was: 'why haven't you sent this out to agents yet?'.

Because this is what I'm really like. Deep down inside:

That's right, I'm a frightened bunny. Doesn't matter how many lovely folks tell me not to freak out it's just my nature.

What if, after all this work it sucks? What if its the right book at the wrong time? What if it's terrible. What if people laugh at me (let's be honest, it can't be as bad as Fifty Shades of Grey)? What if, what if, what if . . .

The thing is, I could kill myself with what ifs. And in the end I'd get no further then writing this post. Because, if you never let the thing you're afraid of go, you never get anywhere.

I'm afraid of this book. I'm scared it could be something amazing. I'm scared it could be terrible (though I know deep down its not). I know, deep down, that this book is something special. But believing that is a scary thing. Believing anything is about letting something go and standing behind it.

It's time. I've written my query letter. I've done my research. On the most depressing day of the year I'm sending off my first query. I may get no replies. I will hopefully get some nice rejections. I may even get lucky and have someone request a partial. But, I can tell you one thing, sending this out into the world is one way to combat 'Blue Monday'.

Because if 2012 taught me anything it's about letting go. When we hold on too tight to the things we love, we lose them in a crushing way. It's time to let this one go. Either way, this is a new start. I couldn't be happier. Or more scared.

Here's the letting go.

Fairy Tale Friday: Lesson From the Legend of Bluebeard

You know the story of Bluebeard, right? The legendary pirate, handsome and rich beyond any maiden’s wildest dreams—and, of course, a dark and dangerous bad boy. Rumor had it he’d been unlucky in love—his wives were in the habit of disappearing mysteriously.

He married again, a beautiful young noblewoman, and told her she could go into any room in his castle—except the locked one down in the basement. Naturally, that piqued her curiosity. She couldn’t stop thinking about what was in the locked room—treasure beyond her wildest imaginings, a map to the fountain of youth—or maybe just embarrassing baby pictures her pirate husband didn’t want getting out. Dude had a scary reputation to maintain, after all.

So one night when her husband was off raiding and pillaging, she broke into the locked door—only to find the other wives. Rows and rows of dead bodies, hanging from hooks.

And then she heard a sound behind her. She turned to see her husband standing in the doorway, knife in hand. “Should’ve stayed on the other side of that door,” he said, stepping into the room.

Moral of the story? Reverse psychology. It really does work. 

Have a great weekend, everyone!