Savy Leiser's Blog, page 5
August 1, 2018
Video: Unboxing UNEDITED Book Proofs!
On Saturday, you saw the finalized cover of Just Me, Wrigley. But I bet you didn't see what that cover looked like the first time around! Hint: it was NOT pretty!
In this video, take a behind-the-scenes look at the original cover of Just Me, Wrigley and how I edited it to make it what it is today!
Just Me, Wrigley releases on August 11! It's now available for preorder on the Furever Home Friends website!
Happy Wednesday!
Love,
Savy
In this video, take a behind-the-scenes look at the original cover of Just Me, Wrigley and how I edited it to make it what it is today!
Just Me, Wrigley releases on August 11! It's now available for preorder on the Furever Home Friends website!
Happy Wednesday!
Love,
Savy
July 30, 2018
VIDEO: How to Make Your Dialogue More Realistic [Writing Tip of the Week]
It's time for a new Writing Tip of the Week!
Creating dialogue can be hard, partially because it's difficult to replicate realistic speech patterns, while still making sure each piece of dialogue contributes to the story's plot and character arcs.
Hopefully this week's writing tip will give you some good advice on how to overcome dialogue-writing-block!
What do you think? Was this tip helpful?
Happy Monday!
Love,
Savy
Creating dialogue can be hard, partially because it's difficult to replicate realistic speech patterns, while still making sure each piece of dialogue contributes to the story's plot and character arcs.
Hopefully this week's writing tip will give you some good advice on how to overcome dialogue-writing-block!
What do you think? Was this tip helpful?
Happy Monday!
Love,
Savy
July 28, 2018
COVER REVEAL: Just Me, Wrigley (Furever Home Friends #3)
Happy Saturday!
Today is the COVER REVEAL for the third Furever Home Friends book, Just Me, Wrigley .
Check out the cover below!
Just Me, Wrigley will release TWO WEEKS from today, on August 11! Stay tuned for some fun announcements about our upcoming launch party!
And as a bonus, here's an adorable picture of real-life Wrigley:
What do you think of the cover? Let me know in the comments below!
Happy Saturday!
Love,
Savy & Wrigley
Today is the COVER REVEAL for the third Furever Home Friends book, Just Me, Wrigley .
Check out the cover below!
Just Me, Wrigley will release TWO WEEKS from today, on August 11! Stay tuned for some fun announcements about our upcoming launch party!
And as a bonus, here's an adorable picture of real-life Wrigley:
What do you think of the cover? Let me know in the comments below!
Happy Saturday!
Love,
Savy & Wrigley
July 25, 2018
How to Find Internal Motivation
As everyone knows, I'm way more about information rather than motivation. I get annoyed with motivational books or podcasts that tell me, "You can do it! We all have the potential! Blah blah blah!" I already have a decent amount of self-confidence, and I've already committed to making it happen. So, someone telling me I can do it isn't anything new.
Usually, I like to read books or listen to podcasts that give me practical advice: how can I utilize social media to grow a larger audience? What are the optimum times to post? How can I learn SEO to drive more people to my website? How can I get more press, connect with others, etc.?
But that doesn't meant that motivation is useless. In fact, sometimes it's necessary. But for me, motivation is internal. I don't want others to tell me I can do it; I want to KNOW that I can do it deep inside of me. And for me, that has come from motivational wall art!
Let's be real: when you start a business, or start your own journey of becoming a professional writer, success doesn't happen overnight. It's good to have big goals, but those goals on their own seem so overwhelming and insurmountable. We need to break them into smaller goals. We need to create plans. We need to execute each individual piece of our plan.
And after we do each part, the response often feels underwhelming. We put out a new social media post announcing a countdown to our book; it gets a few likes, but nothing life-changing happens. That's going to be the majority of your actions as a writer or business owner; the majority of things you do will have an underwhelming response. But you have to keep doing them--because as a whole, they'll be greater than the sum of their parts.
That's where my motivational wall art comes in. A lot of times, each action starts to feel like you're shouting into a void, or like you're running in place on a treadmill. But you can't stop. Even moving forward VERY SLOWLY is still moving forward. And that is the ONLY way to find success in such a complex and competitive market.
So, do I need to wake up at 5 am before going to work to get all my other stuff--freelance work, blog posts, podcasts, etc.--done? Yes. Do I need to spend additional time educating myself about SEO and online algorithms, reading textbooks, breaking down online articles, and taking notes like I'm in school? Yes. Does it feel like I need more than 24 hours in a day for all of this? All the time.
But these pretty reminders on my bulletin board tell me that I have to keep doing them. There is no other option.
And if all else fails, I can always drink more coffee.
Happy writing!
Savy
Usually, I like to read books or listen to podcasts that give me practical advice: how can I utilize social media to grow a larger audience? What are the optimum times to post? How can I learn SEO to drive more people to my website? How can I get more press, connect with others, etc.?
But that doesn't meant that motivation is useless. In fact, sometimes it's necessary. But for me, motivation is internal. I don't want others to tell me I can do it; I want to KNOW that I can do it deep inside of me. And for me, that has come from motivational wall art!
Let's be real: when you start a business, or start your own journey of becoming a professional writer, success doesn't happen overnight. It's good to have big goals, but those goals on their own seem so overwhelming and insurmountable. We need to break them into smaller goals. We need to create plans. We need to execute each individual piece of our plan.
And after we do each part, the response often feels underwhelming. We put out a new social media post announcing a countdown to our book; it gets a few likes, but nothing life-changing happens. That's going to be the majority of your actions as a writer or business owner; the majority of things you do will have an underwhelming response. But you have to keep doing them--because as a whole, they'll be greater than the sum of their parts.
That's where my motivational wall art comes in. A lot of times, each action starts to feel like you're shouting into a void, or like you're running in place on a treadmill. But you can't stop. Even moving forward VERY SLOWLY is still moving forward. And that is the ONLY way to find success in such a complex and competitive market.
So, do I need to wake up at 5 am before going to work to get all my other stuff--freelance work, blog posts, podcasts, etc.--done? Yes. Do I need to spend additional time educating myself about SEO and online algorithms, reading textbooks, breaking down online articles, and taking notes like I'm in school? Yes. Does it feel like I need more than 24 hours in a day for all of this? All the time.
But these pretty reminders on my bulletin board tell me that I have to keep doing them. There is no other option.
And if all else fails, I can always drink more coffee.
Happy writing!
Savy
July 23, 2018
VIDEO: How to Find Inspiration & Create New Ideas [Writing Tip of the Week]
Welcome to my new Monday segment: Writing Tip of the Week!
As I work on expanding my video presence, I am going to be offering weekly writing tips on my YouTube channel. These tips will be emailed the previous Friday to my subscribers-- so if you subscribe, you get the Writing Tip of the Week EARLY as a perk! (In addition to that whole free book of writing tips you get for subscribing!)
For the first Writing Tip of the Week, we're beginning at the beginning! How do we generate ideas? How do we cure writer's block when we get stuck? My video below goes through some tips!
Be on the lookout for a NEW Writing Tip of the Week video next Monday. AND, if you subscribe to this blog, you'll get it in your email on Friday!
Happy writing!
Savy
As I work on expanding my video presence, I am going to be offering weekly writing tips on my YouTube channel. These tips will be emailed the previous Friday to my subscribers-- so if you subscribe, you get the Writing Tip of the Week EARLY as a perk! (In addition to that whole free book of writing tips you get for subscribing!)
For the first Writing Tip of the Week, we're beginning at the beginning! How do we generate ideas? How do we cure writer's block when we get stuck? My video below goes through some tips!
Be on the lookout for a NEW Writing Tip of the Week video next Monday. AND, if you subscribe to this blog, you'll get it in your email on Friday!
Happy writing!
Savy
July 19, 2018
All About My Writing Tips Book!
For those of you who are already subscribed, this is old news! But for those of you who haven't yet, check out this video I made about the free writing tips workbook I'm offering to everyone who subscribes!
This book is full of prompts, exercises, and general motivation! Hope it helps you!
Happy writing!
Love,
Savy
This book is full of prompts, exercises, and general motivation! Hope it helps you!
Happy writing!
Love,
Savy
July 11, 2018
July 10, 2018
How I Became an Illustrator
Today's post is a video about how I became an illustrator-- how I developed a unique style and developed a fun, quirky character named Wrigley!
Just Me, Wrigley comes out next month!
Happy watching!
Love,
Savy
Just Me, Wrigley comes out next month!
Happy watching!
Love,
Savy
June 27, 2018
Pride Month Book Reviews! #6: Ship It
Ship ItBy Britta Lundin
This book made me legitimately angry. I am so, so upset about this book. If you enjoy reading rants, then this will be your favorite book review from me ever, because this book is OFFENSIVE. And part of the reason for that is I'm this book's perfect target audience. I'm a queer nerd girl who loves dressing up for conventions and watching weird sci-fi shows and reading fanfiction. That's what this book is all about. But this book portrays that culture so, so poorly, despite the fact that the author is a part of it. This book makes all of us look bad, and it preaches viewpoints that I agree with, while executing them in the worst possible ways.
Let me frame this for you. Have you ever had a controversial opinion, and you want to convince someone else that you're right? Then you find a piece of art or literature or journalism or television or ANYTHING that preaches your same viewpoint, but you CAN'T use that to defend yourself, because the person who has that opinion explains it in such a trashy way, so it would just make you look even less credible? That's this book. Imagine you're trying to convince your pro-life grandma that abortion should always be legal. Then you read a book where the main character has these beautifully written, logical, and IMPORTANT rants about women's free choice. But then imagine that the main character is also a literal baby ax-murderer, so giving the book to your grandma would only weaken your cause. THAT'S THIS BOOK.
So, by now, if you know me, or if you've been following this blog, you probably know I'm a hardcore Kirk/Spock shipper. The amount of fanfiction I've read about how those two get together is in the thousands. I'm so deep into it, that not only do I want it to be canon, I genuinely believe it already is (in the original series, not any reboot stuff). I won't spend too much time on that, though, because if you wanted, I could write you an MLA-formatted research paper about why I believe this to be true. But we're not here for that today. I'm just putting this out there to show you how emotionally connected I thought I would be to this book, and how much I thought it would speak to me. IT DOES NOT.
Here's a brief summary of the premise: Claire is a 16-year-old super-nerd who enjoys writing fanfiction, hanging out on Tumblr with other nerdy teens, and watching a new show called Demon Heart (which others have pointed out is a Supernatural rip-off, but I've never seen that show so I can't confirm or deny).
She believes that the two main characters, a demon named Heart and a hunter named Smokey, belong together, because they have palpable sexual and romantic tension on-air. She goes to a convention and asks the creators and actors during a Q&A about whether they will end up in a relationship. They laugh her off and say she's crazy, and she leaves crying. Then, a video of the interaction goes viral online, and the creators realize that their response could be offensive to the LGBT+ community because of the way they laughed off the possibility of a same-sex relationship. Plus, Claire is a social media influencer with thousands of Tumblr followers.
The creators then make a contest and rig it so Claire wins, and as a result she gets to travel with the creators and actors on the rest of their convention tour. Along the way, they try to get good press on Tumblr, and she tries to convince the showrunner to actually have those characters end up together. Meanwhile, Claire keeps running into Tess, a cute fan-artist who draws art based on Demon Heart, who is going to the same conventions as her. While Claire grows more attracted to Tess, she starts to realize that her interest in seeing a same-sex relationship on TV is not something she's just doing for the other LGBT+ kids out there... it's something that's actually personal to her, because she is one of them.
Okay, so that all sounds well and good, right? Sounds like a cute, fun, though not super realistic adventure where nerd girls are validated and queer girls find happiness. And it WOULD be that... if Claire didn't stoop to crazed-stalker-level tactics to manipulate the show's cast and crew. But we'll get into that. First, I want to be positive.
So, with all that in mind, let me start with the things I liked about this book:
Also the cover is BEAUTIFUL!
- Rico
Rico is one of the stars of Demon Heart. He's the older actor, and is more experienced in Hollywood. Overall, he's a nice guy, he's good to his fans, he's good to his coworkers, and he's agreeable to be around. There's nothing bad about him. He's a funny guy and everyone likes hanging out with him. I wish he'd been around more.
- Tess
Tess is Claire's love interest. At first, I loved her, because she's an artist, she's confident in her sexuality, and she's got cute style. But then later on in the book Tess does something awful, which is overlooked along with the rest of all the awful things the characters do. (Except the straight white men. Whenever they do awful things, they're made out to be Literally the Worst. Because they are, but the other characters shouldn't get a pass either.) She tells Claire's mom that Claire is gay, despite the fact that Claire is not yet ready to talk about this. She just straight-up tells Claire's mom that, as an act of revenge for something else rude Claire did. What a healthy relationship, am I right?
Anyway, I'm talking about good things right now, so let me get back to that real quick:
- The representation
This book features an interracial relationship between two women. That's fantastic! Claire is white, Tess is black, and they're both female. Also, while Claire is pushing for more gay characters on TV, Tess asks her why she hasn't also spent her whole life pushing for more black characters on TV, if media representation is her only goal. This is what makes Claire realize that the reason she cares so much about gay representation specifically might be more personal to her, and she starts to awaken to her LGBT identity. And she also starts to push for more racially diverse TV casts as well.
- The ideas it preaches
There's a beautiful quote on page 122 of this book. If this book were made up of great stuff alike this quote, I would've loved it. But since this quote is said by someone who's an awful human being, it doesn't help my cause at all.
Here it is:
Plus, this paragraph does a brilliant job of showing the subtle cultural sexism we've come to accept in relation to storytelling. The majority of fanfiction authors are female, but the majority of writers and directors assigned to reboot franchises in their own image are male. Why does society inherently trust men's interpretations of a work more? Why do people think I'm weird for genuinely believing Kirk and Spock are in a relationship, but JJ Abrams, who has admitted he doesn't even like Star Trek, can just put Spock in a relationship with Uhura and no one cares? Now it's getting personal.
When I originally read that paragraph, I thought I'd hand this book over to other people to help them understand my perspective. I actually gave this book 2 stars instead of 1 on Goodreads for that paragraph alone, along with some great commentary about how teenage girls' opinions are easily disregarded, and how giving a character a same-sex relationship doesn't change who they are at their core. Then, of course, I learned that Claire, the person saying all of these great things, is a garbage human being, and nobody should trust her, so fuck me.
Claire, the main character who is spouting all of these platitudes, is legitimately off-the-wall insane. I'm talking about horror-movie-antagonist insane. This is a girl we're supposed to root for and get behind. But as some other smart reviewers on Goodreads have pointed out, as her actions get more and more outlandish, the book feels like it's about to turn into a slasher about the dangers of obsessive fandom. It does not. Claire remains the protagonist, and we're supposed to root for her, while she continues to stalk her favorite TV show's creators and actors, hack their social media accounts, follow them to their hotel rooms... I'm not even kidding here.
Here are some of the things that Claire does:
- Waits for Jamie, the showrunner of Demon Heart, outside of his hotel room every night to pitch him on the idea of making Smokey/Heart canon. She has told him she's felt this way multiple times, and he keeps walking away because he's tired of having a fan dictate how to write his show. So instead of writing him a letter, or getting the PR manager (who is on Claire's side) to sit down with him and talk it through, she decides to sit outside of his hotel room every night, so that he can't escape until she's done talking. After a while, he gets tired of being stalked, so he spends all night at the bar until Claire falls asleep outside his room. She continues to do this every night.
- Writes erotica about the real-life actors of the show, Rico and Forest. Not the characters. The ACTORS. These are real people. And then she posts it on Tumblr.
- It gets worse. While they're on tour, Claire gets to know Forest. They even get on slightly friendly terms, and he explains that he didn't have a great relationship with his father. Claire then adds a subplot about his father beating him into the erotica she writes. Forest's father never beat him. Claire made that up and put it in her story.
- I need to just emphasize real quick how NOT OKAY this is. Guys, no one loves fanfiction more than me. Write whatever you want about fictional characters -- none of it is real anyway! But writing about REAL PEOPLE in explicit sexual situations, using things they told you privately, and then POSTING IT ON THE INTERNET FOR YOUR THOUSANDS OF FOLLOWERS is not fanfiction!! It is SEXUAL HARASSMENT, plain and simple. Forest sees the story on Tumblr and he feels uncomfortable. Because he just read a story about him and his platonic friend having sex in explicit detail. A story that was publicly posted. NO SHIT he feels uncomfortable about it. Anyone would!
- Claire gets away with this of course. Forest is made out to be the bad guy because he's uncomfortable with it, so Claire thinks that's homophobic or something. Don't get me wrong, Forest is shown to be legitimately homophobic during earlier parts of the story. But this is not one of those parts. CLAIRE, YOU IDIOT. HE DOESN'T HATE THE STORY BECAUSE IT'S GAY. HE HATES THE STORY BECAUSE YOU WROTE MADE-UP EROTICA ABOUT HIM AND SHARED IT WITH THE ENTIRE INTERNET. Am I not coming through clearly enough??!?!?!?
- Also she hacks Jamie's Twitter account. Jamie is a shitty guy through the entire story, don't get me wrong. He admits to queerbaiting, which is not okay. (For those of you who don't know what that means, it's when a showrunner adds sexual/romantic tension between two characters of the same sex so that gay fans will get invested, but then never actually has them end up together, and acts like it's crazy that they'd think that, because they want to keep the macho straight crowd. It's a manipulative marketing tactic, like people who use feminism to market shitty movies. It's not a good thing to do.) But in the end, being a shitty guy is not a crime. Stalking someone, harassing them, and going into their social media accounts without their consent to post your own opinions on it... those ARE all crimes.
- Jamie even says to Claire, "If you don't like what I'm doing with my show, make your own." She brushes this off. But in reality... that's the solution. Claire is a decent writer and she's super passionate about diversity on TV. She has just made all these invaluable Hollywood connections. Why is she not leveraging this to climb the ladder and make her own show? Or better yet, YouTube is a thing. She could start a web show and if it's popular, it'll grow. Or she could study film production in college. There are SO MANY OTHER THINGS SHE COULD'VE DONE. But instead she goes straight-up psycho, and gets rewarded for it.
I'm not even kidding about any of these things. How does anyone think this is okay?!
So, basically, all the good things it preaches about caring about women's opinions, about getting more diversity in the media, about treating gay characters as more than a marketing tactic... all that goes out the window, because the characters preaching it are legitimate psychos. This does more harm than good. It portrays hardcore fans as crazy, when that's the viewpoint it was trying to negate.
Fuck this book.
I read this book on an airplane, and Tyler read parts of it over my shoulder because he was bored, didn't have any books of his own with him, and forgot to charge the Nintendo Switch before we left. Tyler kept distracting me from reading the book by commenting about how trashy it seemed while reading over my shoulder. At first I wanted to argue with him and defend the book, but then about halfway through I realized it was legitimately trashy. I hate when he's right.
Anyway, that's all to say that Tyler requested to have a guest spot on my blog this week to share his thoughts about this book as well.
So, please enjoy our first episode of TYLER'S CORNER.
Tyler's Corner
I know next-to-nothing about this book aside from what I gathered from looking over her shoulder on a plane (and what Savy has told me while ranting after finishing it), so obviously my opinion is highly informed and valuable. Every single time I glanced over to see what was going on, I had new ammo to annoy her with, since she clearly wanted to like the book (sorry, Sav, love you, you’re just fun to pester :P)
The most hilarious thing I saw included the character’s goal being to “make her ship canon”. “Fandom” in general comes off pretty silly to me, but the level of vitriol and perceived ownership of media people have around “shipping” is a whole new level. I’ve seen stories of people offering real money for random people on the internet to reveal the personal information of others because the person likes a certain ship, or makes art of it. The idea that a fan would harass a creator to change their work to suit randos on the internet would be funny if it weren’t so real.
Also, there's this part about the actor Forest, trying to get a role in the movie adaptation of a video game he likes until he realizes the game is sexist. The whole bit about the video game being revealed to be hyper-sexist is so dumb. The details of the game (a mission based on killing specific prostitutes) are clearly intended to reference the outrage around people killing prostitutes (which is in no way encouraged) in Grand Theft Auto, a game where you can kill pretty much anyone. But to make matters worse, the author makes a strawman game unlike any that exists (or at least any that has ever been widely known) and uses it to make a random, last-minute jab at video games in general as sexist, unrelated to the plot at large.
Plus the voice of the author comes off like its written by a middle-schooler, no style whatsoever.
Well, that's my way too passionate review, and Tyler's thoughts based on what he read over my shoulder!
There's just one book left in Pride Month Book Reviews! Then, July will kick off with some more writing tips and other book-related topics, including Furever Home Friends pupdates! And hopefully some more Tyler's Corner coming soon!
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? PLEASE share, because I've been reading Goodreads reviews of it obsessively for days.
Happy reading!
Savy
This book made me legitimately angry. I am so, so upset about this book. If you enjoy reading rants, then this will be your favorite book review from me ever, because this book is OFFENSIVE. And part of the reason for that is I'm this book's perfect target audience. I'm a queer nerd girl who loves dressing up for conventions and watching weird sci-fi shows and reading fanfiction. That's what this book is all about. But this book portrays that culture so, so poorly, despite the fact that the author is a part of it. This book makes all of us look bad, and it preaches viewpoints that I agree with, while executing them in the worst possible ways.
Let me frame this for you. Have you ever had a controversial opinion, and you want to convince someone else that you're right? Then you find a piece of art or literature or journalism or television or ANYTHING that preaches your same viewpoint, but you CAN'T use that to defend yourself, because the person who has that opinion explains it in such a trashy way, so it would just make you look even less credible? That's this book. Imagine you're trying to convince your pro-life grandma that abortion should always be legal. Then you read a book where the main character has these beautifully written, logical, and IMPORTANT rants about women's free choice. But then imagine that the main character is also a literal baby ax-murderer, so giving the book to your grandma would only weaken your cause. THAT'S THIS BOOK.
So, by now, if you know me, or if you've been following this blog, you probably know I'm a hardcore Kirk/Spock shipper. The amount of fanfiction I've read about how those two get together is in the thousands. I'm so deep into it, that not only do I want it to be canon, I genuinely believe it already is (in the original series, not any reboot stuff). I won't spend too much time on that, though, because if you wanted, I could write you an MLA-formatted research paper about why I believe this to be true. But we're not here for that today. I'm just putting this out there to show you how emotionally connected I thought I would be to this book, and how much I thought it would speak to me. IT DOES NOT.
Here's a brief summary of the premise: Claire is a 16-year-old super-nerd who enjoys writing fanfiction, hanging out on Tumblr with other nerdy teens, and watching a new show called Demon Heart (which others have pointed out is a Supernatural rip-off, but I've never seen that show so I can't confirm or deny).
She believes that the two main characters, a demon named Heart and a hunter named Smokey, belong together, because they have palpable sexual and romantic tension on-air. She goes to a convention and asks the creators and actors during a Q&A about whether they will end up in a relationship. They laugh her off and say she's crazy, and she leaves crying. Then, a video of the interaction goes viral online, and the creators realize that their response could be offensive to the LGBT+ community because of the way they laughed off the possibility of a same-sex relationship. Plus, Claire is a social media influencer with thousands of Tumblr followers.
The creators then make a contest and rig it so Claire wins, and as a result she gets to travel with the creators and actors on the rest of their convention tour. Along the way, they try to get good press on Tumblr, and she tries to convince the showrunner to actually have those characters end up together. Meanwhile, Claire keeps running into Tess, a cute fan-artist who draws art based on Demon Heart, who is going to the same conventions as her. While Claire grows more attracted to Tess, she starts to realize that her interest in seeing a same-sex relationship on TV is not something she's just doing for the other LGBT+ kids out there... it's something that's actually personal to her, because she is one of them.
Okay, so that all sounds well and good, right? Sounds like a cute, fun, though not super realistic adventure where nerd girls are validated and queer girls find happiness. And it WOULD be that... if Claire didn't stoop to crazed-stalker-level tactics to manipulate the show's cast and crew. But we'll get into that. First, I want to be positive.
So, with all that in mind, let me start with the things I liked about this book:
Also the cover is BEAUTIFUL!- Rico
Rico is one of the stars of Demon Heart. He's the older actor, and is more experienced in Hollywood. Overall, he's a nice guy, he's good to his fans, he's good to his coworkers, and he's agreeable to be around. There's nothing bad about him. He's a funny guy and everyone likes hanging out with him. I wish he'd been around more.
- Tess
Tess is Claire's love interest. At first, I loved her, because she's an artist, she's confident in her sexuality, and she's got cute style. But then later on in the book Tess does something awful, which is overlooked along with the rest of all the awful things the characters do. (Except the straight white men. Whenever they do awful things, they're made out to be Literally the Worst. Because they are, but the other characters shouldn't get a pass either.) She tells Claire's mom that Claire is gay, despite the fact that Claire is not yet ready to talk about this. She just straight-up tells Claire's mom that, as an act of revenge for something else rude Claire did. What a healthy relationship, am I right?
Anyway, I'm talking about good things right now, so let me get back to that real quick:
- The representation
This book features an interracial relationship between two women. That's fantastic! Claire is white, Tess is black, and they're both female. Also, while Claire is pushing for more gay characters on TV, Tess asks her why she hasn't also spent her whole life pushing for more black characters on TV, if media representation is her only goal. This is what makes Claire realize that the reason she cares so much about gay representation specifically might be more personal to her, and she starts to awaken to her LGBT identity. And she also starts to push for more racially diverse TV casts as well.
- The ideas it preaches
There's a beautiful quote on page 122 of this book. If this book were made up of great stuff alike this quote, I would've loved it. But since this quote is said by someone who's an awful human being, it doesn't help my cause at all.
Here it is:
"Every week I get anonymous messages in my inbox telling me I should write a real book. Well haven't I already? What makes what I do different from 'real writing'? Is it that I don't use original characters? I guess that makes every Hardy Boys edition, every Star Wars book, every spinoff, sequel, fairy-tale retelling, historical romance, comic-book reboot, and the musical Hamilton 'not real writing.' Or is it that a real book is something printed, that you hold in your hand, not something you write on the internet? Or is 'real writing' something you sell in a store, not give away for free? No, I know it's none of these things. It's merely this: 'real writing' is done by serious people, whereas fanfiction is written by weirdos, teenagers, degenerates, and women."This beautifully puts into words an idea that I've been trying to articulate to others for a long time. What does it mean for something to be "canon" anyway, when so much stuff is rebooted? This is a question I've pondered a ton as a writer and content creator myself. Is the 2016 Ghostbusters reboot canon, or is it fanfiction? Is the 2009 Star Trek reboot canon, or is it fanfiction? Well, a lot of people would say it's canon in an alternate universe. But that would make ALL fanfiction technically canon, but each within its own separate universe.
Plus, this paragraph does a brilliant job of showing the subtle cultural sexism we've come to accept in relation to storytelling. The majority of fanfiction authors are female, but the majority of writers and directors assigned to reboot franchises in their own image are male. Why does society inherently trust men's interpretations of a work more? Why do people think I'm weird for genuinely believing Kirk and Spock are in a relationship, but JJ Abrams, who has admitted he doesn't even like Star Trek, can just put Spock in a relationship with Uhura and no one cares? Now it's getting personal.
When I originally read that paragraph, I thought I'd hand this book over to other people to help them understand my perspective. I actually gave this book 2 stars instead of 1 on Goodreads for that paragraph alone, along with some great commentary about how teenage girls' opinions are easily disregarded, and how giving a character a same-sex relationship doesn't change who they are at their core. Then, of course, I learned that Claire, the person saying all of these great things, is a garbage human being, and nobody should trust her, so fuck me.
Claire, the main character who is spouting all of these platitudes, is legitimately off-the-wall insane. I'm talking about horror-movie-antagonist insane. This is a girl we're supposed to root for and get behind. But as some other smart reviewers on Goodreads have pointed out, as her actions get more and more outlandish, the book feels like it's about to turn into a slasher about the dangers of obsessive fandom. It does not. Claire remains the protagonist, and we're supposed to root for her, while she continues to stalk her favorite TV show's creators and actors, hack their social media accounts, follow them to their hotel rooms... I'm not even kidding here.
Here are some of the things that Claire does:
- Waits for Jamie, the showrunner of Demon Heart, outside of his hotel room every night to pitch him on the idea of making Smokey/Heart canon. She has told him she's felt this way multiple times, and he keeps walking away because he's tired of having a fan dictate how to write his show. So instead of writing him a letter, or getting the PR manager (who is on Claire's side) to sit down with him and talk it through, she decides to sit outside of his hotel room every night, so that he can't escape until she's done talking. After a while, he gets tired of being stalked, so he spends all night at the bar until Claire falls asleep outside his room. She continues to do this every night.
- Writes erotica about the real-life actors of the show, Rico and Forest. Not the characters. The ACTORS. These are real people. And then she posts it on Tumblr.
- It gets worse. While they're on tour, Claire gets to know Forest. They even get on slightly friendly terms, and he explains that he didn't have a great relationship with his father. Claire then adds a subplot about his father beating him into the erotica she writes. Forest's father never beat him. Claire made that up and put it in her story.
- I need to just emphasize real quick how NOT OKAY this is. Guys, no one loves fanfiction more than me. Write whatever you want about fictional characters -- none of it is real anyway! But writing about REAL PEOPLE in explicit sexual situations, using things they told you privately, and then POSTING IT ON THE INTERNET FOR YOUR THOUSANDS OF FOLLOWERS is not fanfiction!! It is SEXUAL HARASSMENT, plain and simple. Forest sees the story on Tumblr and he feels uncomfortable. Because he just read a story about him and his platonic friend having sex in explicit detail. A story that was publicly posted. NO SHIT he feels uncomfortable about it. Anyone would!
- Claire gets away with this of course. Forest is made out to be the bad guy because he's uncomfortable with it, so Claire thinks that's homophobic or something. Don't get me wrong, Forest is shown to be legitimately homophobic during earlier parts of the story. But this is not one of those parts. CLAIRE, YOU IDIOT. HE DOESN'T HATE THE STORY BECAUSE IT'S GAY. HE HATES THE STORY BECAUSE YOU WROTE MADE-UP EROTICA ABOUT HIM AND SHARED IT WITH THE ENTIRE INTERNET. Am I not coming through clearly enough??!?!?!?
- Also she hacks Jamie's Twitter account. Jamie is a shitty guy through the entire story, don't get me wrong. He admits to queerbaiting, which is not okay. (For those of you who don't know what that means, it's when a showrunner adds sexual/romantic tension between two characters of the same sex so that gay fans will get invested, but then never actually has them end up together, and acts like it's crazy that they'd think that, because they want to keep the macho straight crowd. It's a manipulative marketing tactic, like people who use feminism to market shitty movies. It's not a good thing to do.) But in the end, being a shitty guy is not a crime. Stalking someone, harassing them, and going into their social media accounts without their consent to post your own opinions on it... those ARE all crimes.
- Jamie even says to Claire, "If you don't like what I'm doing with my show, make your own." She brushes this off. But in reality... that's the solution. Claire is a decent writer and she's super passionate about diversity on TV. She has just made all these invaluable Hollywood connections. Why is she not leveraging this to climb the ladder and make her own show? Or better yet, YouTube is a thing. She could start a web show and if it's popular, it'll grow. Or she could study film production in college. There are SO MANY OTHER THINGS SHE COULD'VE DONE. But instead she goes straight-up psycho, and gets rewarded for it.
I'm not even kidding about any of these things. How does anyone think this is okay?!
So, basically, all the good things it preaches about caring about women's opinions, about getting more diversity in the media, about treating gay characters as more than a marketing tactic... all that goes out the window, because the characters preaching it are legitimate psychos. This does more harm than good. It portrays hardcore fans as crazy, when that's the viewpoint it was trying to negate.
Fuck this book.
I read this book on an airplane, and Tyler read parts of it over my shoulder because he was bored, didn't have any books of his own with him, and forgot to charge the Nintendo Switch before we left. Tyler kept distracting me from reading the book by commenting about how trashy it seemed while reading over my shoulder. At first I wanted to argue with him and defend the book, but then about halfway through I realized it was legitimately trashy. I hate when he's right.
Anyway, that's all to say that Tyler requested to have a guest spot on my blog this week to share his thoughts about this book as well.
So, please enjoy our first episode of TYLER'S CORNER.
Tyler's Corner
I know next-to-nothing about this book aside from what I gathered from looking over her shoulder on a plane (and what Savy has told me while ranting after finishing it), so obviously my opinion is highly informed and valuable. Every single time I glanced over to see what was going on, I had new ammo to annoy her with, since she clearly wanted to like the book (sorry, Sav, love you, you’re just fun to pester :P)
The most hilarious thing I saw included the character’s goal being to “make her ship canon”. “Fandom” in general comes off pretty silly to me, but the level of vitriol and perceived ownership of media people have around “shipping” is a whole new level. I’ve seen stories of people offering real money for random people on the internet to reveal the personal information of others because the person likes a certain ship, or makes art of it. The idea that a fan would harass a creator to change their work to suit randos on the internet would be funny if it weren’t so real.
Also, there's this part about the actor Forest, trying to get a role in the movie adaptation of a video game he likes until he realizes the game is sexist. The whole bit about the video game being revealed to be hyper-sexist is so dumb. The details of the game (a mission based on killing specific prostitutes) are clearly intended to reference the outrage around people killing prostitutes (which is in no way encouraged) in Grand Theft Auto, a game where you can kill pretty much anyone. But to make matters worse, the author makes a strawman game unlike any that exists (or at least any that has ever been widely known) and uses it to make a random, last-minute jab at video games in general as sexist, unrelated to the plot at large.
Plus the voice of the author comes off like its written by a middle-schooler, no style whatsoever.
Well, that's my way too passionate review, and Tyler's thoughts based on what he read over my shoulder!
There's just one book left in Pride Month Book Reviews! Then, July will kick off with some more writing tips and other book-related topics, including Furever Home Friends pupdates! And hopefully some more Tyler's Corner coming soon!
Have you read this book? What did you think of it? PLEASE share, because I've been reading Goodreads reviews of it obsessively for days.
Happy reading!
Savy
June 26, 2018
Pride Month Book Reviews! #5: Noah Can't Even
Noah Can't EvenBy Simon James Green
This book is like Arrested Development, but in contemporary Young-Adult novel form. I've seen so many negative reviews of it, saying that it's unrealistic, unbelievable, and ridiculous. Yes, it is. That's the point. I LOVED this book!
If you're going to read this book, go into it expecting an absurdist, borderline surreal depiction of high school. Everything is a hyper-cliche, while at the same time being too weird to be believable. But what's amazing about this is, the author never once breaks from this tone. I could see this book being a disappointment if we thought we were in some kind of realistic plot, but then suddenly the humor started getting weird. But the absurd tone and humor is held 100% throughout the book, which is why I found this so much fun to read.
Here's an example:
The opening scene of the book is our main character, Noah, who's stuck at the top of a climbing wall in gym class. A cliche buff female gym teacher in a track suit yells at him to get down, but he can't because he has a giant boner. Then while he's still up there, the super-hot promiscuous blonde girl from this class runs outside throwing around flyers for his mom's Beyonce tribute act. He later learns that his mom is banging a 19-year-old second-year senior at his high school, who Noah once peed on because he was peeing out his bedroom window. His mom is a terrible parent, borderline abusive, constantly neglecting Noah, but it's never taken that seriously. Think of Lindsay and Tobias from Arrested Development and how neglectful they are with Maeby. It's like that. No one ever faces consequences for their horrible actions, and every other sentence that comes out of Noah's mouth is awkward and cringey and makes you embarrassed for him. Many readers have criticized this, saying nobody could every possibly be as constantly awkward as Noah. No one could ever have to put in their mouth literally every time they open it. But that's the point. Everyone is a caricature.
This book is included in Pride Month Book Reviews because the main relationship is between two guys. Noah's best friend, Harry, announces toward the beginning that he's in love with Noah. The rest of the book, Noah has to decide whether he feels the same way about Harry. Meanwhile, Noah's senile grandmother wants him and Harry to get together, while also plotting an escape from her retirement home with a secret relative that Noah doesn't know exists. So, even though the romance is cute, the book never stops being weird to make way for it. This book is a brilliant example of tonal consistency.
So, do I recommend this book? YES! But I do not recommend it if you're looking for something realistic. If you're cool with something extremely stylized, then give this a read. You'll enjoy it.
Out of everything weird about this book, the thing that surprised me most was that it was published by Scholastic. This book has small indie press written all over it. But maybe the fact that it's written in British English makes it seem more normal to Americans? I'm not sure, haha!
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
I have two books left in Pride Month Book reviews: one that I HATED, and one that I LOVED. So get ready for some serious emotions coming within the next few days!
Happy reading!
Love,
Savy
This book is like Arrested Development, but in contemporary Young-Adult novel form. I've seen so many negative reviews of it, saying that it's unrealistic, unbelievable, and ridiculous. Yes, it is. That's the point. I LOVED this book!
If you're going to read this book, go into it expecting an absurdist, borderline surreal depiction of high school. Everything is a hyper-cliche, while at the same time being too weird to be believable. But what's amazing about this is, the author never once breaks from this tone. I could see this book being a disappointment if we thought we were in some kind of realistic plot, but then suddenly the humor started getting weird. But the absurd tone and humor is held 100% throughout the book, which is why I found this so much fun to read.
Here's an example:
The opening scene of the book is our main character, Noah, who's stuck at the top of a climbing wall in gym class. A cliche buff female gym teacher in a track suit yells at him to get down, but he can't because he has a giant boner. Then while he's still up there, the super-hot promiscuous blonde girl from this class runs outside throwing around flyers for his mom's Beyonce tribute act. He later learns that his mom is banging a 19-year-old second-year senior at his high school, who Noah once peed on because he was peeing out his bedroom window. His mom is a terrible parent, borderline abusive, constantly neglecting Noah, but it's never taken that seriously. Think of Lindsay and Tobias from Arrested Development and how neglectful they are with Maeby. It's like that. No one ever faces consequences for their horrible actions, and every other sentence that comes out of Noah's mouth is awkward and cringey and makes you embarrassed for him. Many readers have criticized this, saying nobody could every possibly be as constantly awkward as Noah. No one could ever have to put in their mouth literally every time they open it. But that's the point. Everyone is a caricature.
This book is included in Pride Month Book Reviews because the main relationship is between two guys. Noah's best friend, Harry, announces toward the beginning that he's in love with Noah. The rest of the book, Noah has to decide whether he feels the same way about Harry. Meanwhile, Noah's senile grandmother wants him and Harry to get together, while also plotting an escape from her retirement home with a secret relative that Noah doesn't know exists. So, even though the romance is cute, the book never stops being weird to make way for it. This book is a brilliant example of tonal consistency.
So, do I recommend this book? YES! But I do not recommend it if you're looking for something realistic. If you're cool with something extremely stylized, then give this a read. You'll enjoy it.
Out of everything weird about this book, the thing that surprised me most was that it was published by Scholastic. This book has small indie press written all over it. But maybe the fact that it's written in British English makes it seem more normal to Americans? I'm not sure, haha!
Have you read this book? What did you think of it?
I have two books left in Pride Month Book reviews: one that I HATED, and one that I LOVED. So get ready for some serious emotions coming within the next few days!
Happy reading!
Love,
Savy
