Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 42

Happiness is Working Internet and a Lot of Yarn

Krissie fixed my internet–she spent a lot of time on the phone talking to a very nice rep who got us online which I needed Krisse for because she has the patience of a saint and I have the focus of a fruit fly–which made it possible for me to hit the Knitpicks/WeCrochet Big Sale hard. For those of you not fiber freaks, once a year the two sister sites have a two week sale that’s really a blow-out, and even though I swear every year I have enough yarn (because I have enough yarn) they get me. So for the past week I’ve been killing my budget with new yarn, and now it’s starting to arrive, and it’s like Christmas every time another box lands. (For the record, this is my Christmas to myself. That makes it okay that I’m spending that much money. I think.). So for me, this week, happiness is yarn, and a working internet because that’s actually more important than yarn.

So what made you happy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, Nov. 16, 2023

This week I’m trying to read the new Murderbot, but I keep getting interrupted. Note to self: Simplify life so you can read.

What did you read this week?

The Vanilla Protagonist: A Grimm Problem

The new season of Grimm has started, and I’m still hooked; in fact, I think it’s gotten better. I’m trying to figure out why because there’s so much about I shouldn’t like. The romantic relationship is too Mary Sue, the Wesen-of-the-week bit should be getting old, and sometimes the plots don’t quite work (“Quills,” I’m lookin’ at you). But the biggest flaw, the thing that should be the dealbreaker, is that the protagonist, Nick, is one of the most vanilla heroes ever written. The actor playing him does a good job, but there’s only so much Good, Truth, and Beauty I can take in a protagonist before I wander off. Yet I’ll be logging onto Hulu every week to see what happens to him next. Which brings me to the big question: Why?

The Vanilla Protagonist is The Good Guy (or Girl). He’s honest, hardworking, brave, kind, empathetic, strong, loyal, faithful, and pretty. He’s so perfect that that he has no texture–those protagonists must be hell for actors to play–so there’s nothing to grip onto. When you think of brilliant protagonists on TV, you think of House or Walt or Buffy or Angel or the Doctor or good old Dexter. These are characters who are the most interesting people in their stories because of their flaws, their weaknesses, their unpredictability. In contrast, there’s no mystery to the Vanilla Protagonist; he’s always going to do the Right Thing.

If the lack of tension regarding the Vanilla Protagonist wouldn’t be enough to sink him, writers almost always surround him with characters who are more interesting than he is because SOMEBODY has to be interesting in this story. So in Grimm you get Monroe who pretty much owns the show whenever he’s onscreen just by the sheer force of his personality. Monroe is a werewolf, but he’s handing the whole rip-people-apart-at-the-full-moon problem with a strict regimen of yoga, pilates, drugs, a vegan diet, and vulnerable snark. How can poor, good Nick compete? Every time Monroe shows up, Nick becomes a straight man, which is pretty much the curse of the Vanilla Protagonist with everybody.

And it’s not just the protagonist’s pals. An even bigger problem is his antagonists. It’s particularly difficult in Grimm because we get a string of great villains who morph into animal-face whenever they get upset (the effects are really wonderful in this show) topped off with a terrific series Big Bad, Nick’s boss, Captain Renard. I have toyed with the idea of what would happen if they’d make Renard the protagonist because this guy has texture everywhere. He’s a good cop and he’s been protecting Nick throughout the seasons, but he’s also in league with the Hexenbeasts, he sent several people to kill Aunt Marie, and he’s a prince in some strange, foreign, magical kingdom that’s trying to . . . do something. He’s a mystery, but it’s a good mystery, we get clues every week, and while the clues are piling up, Renard gets all the great, dramatic moves. When a Reaper shows up to kill Nick, Renard tells him in a matter-of-fact, steely voice that Nick is off limits and the Reaper should leave town. When the Reaper sneers back, Renard cuts off the Reaper’s ear and says, “That’s what happens when you don’t listen.” It was brutal, it was bloody, it was a damn good moment. Add to that the revelation that Renard is half-Wesen/half human, and you’ve got a strong, conflicted, merciless character who keeps order in both the human and Wesen world. Baby-faced Nick cannot match angular, brooding Renard; his antagonist blows him off the screen every time.

The Vanilla Protagonist can sometimes be saved by having an interesting relationship (just as Buffy was getting too competent at saving the world, she fell in love with Spike), but Nick’s girlfriend Juliette is a Mary Sue (she’s a vet! she saves animals! she’s endearingly clueless about the progression of monsters that stop by the house for dinner or homicide!) and by the third or fourth episode, I was really hoping something evil would take her out so I’d be relieved of her incessant goodness and Nick could have some grief to roughen him up some. Instead, the show put her in a coma, and when she woke up, she remembered everything except Nick. That has big potential, so I’ve stopped hoping for a Wesen attack on her until I see how this shapes up. Even so, Nick is still being doe-eyed understanding, abjuring frustrated screaming for empathy and patience. This guy is so smooth, you could pour super-glue over him and roll him in carpet tacks, and it would all just slide off and leave him shiny again.

Then there’s family; you’d think the Vanilla Protagonist would have perfect parents since he turned out so emotionally healthy and psychologically sound, but instead he often springs from the family from hell. In Nick’s case, family is Aunt Marie who gives him the good news that he’s the next Grimm before dying in his arms from cancer and Wesen attacks (Aunt Marie kicked ass after chemo and took names in the ICU) and Nick’s mom. Kelly, who supposedly died in a car accident when he was twelve only to turn up as the grimmest of the Grimms, so textured she could be limestone. I kept looking at Mom, who could rip off Wesen heads with her teeth, and Nick, who really wants a Group Hug, and thinking, “Maybe he was adopted.” But no, he’s a Grimm.

Another thing that kneecaps Vanilla Protagonists is that they’re always stuck doing the Right Thing. When Nick’s facing down a good Wesen who’s about to kill the Hexenbeast who tried to murder Aunt Marie, the dumbass shoots the Wesen and saves the Hexenbeast because . . . I’m not sure. Granted it was going to be tough explaining why he didn’t save the Hexenbeast since everybody else knows her as a hot lawyer and he was assigned to protect her, but it seemed like a bad move. Unfortunately, Nick hasn’t given it a second thought, so experience has not put some spice in his vanilla.

The Vanilla Protagonist, in short, is a problem for storytellers.

So after thinking about what makes Grimm work for me, here’s what I’ve decided keeps me hooked on a vanilla helmed story, the things I’d use if I ever lost my mind and decided to go Vanilla:

Make the Vanilla Hero Really Likable: Nick’s a good guy with some serious problems: monsters keep trying to kill him, his mother is a murder machine, the love of his life can’t remember who he is, and he sees Animal People. And yet you can sum up all of his speeches as “Gosh.” Why this guy doesn’t get his ass kicked weekly is beyond me, but he really is nice, so I don’t want him dead. Interesting would be better, but if I can’t have that, then so-likable-you-don’t-want-him-to-die is the next best thing.

Surround the Vanilla Hero with Strongly Flavored Supporting Characters: Monroe. Monroe’s crush, Rosalee (he’s a wolf, she’s a fox, they’re so CUTE together). Renard. Nick’s partner Hank. Nick’s mother, Kelly the Grimm. Bud, the endearing Eisbiber (beaver) who fixed Juliette’s refrigerator and brought pie. Chloe the Coyotl who’s taking five AP classes. Wu, the deadpan uniformed cop. The bench in this show is so deep, you could spin-off new shows forever which means that people will keep reading/watching just to be part of the community. That’s important in any book, I think, but it’s essential for a vanilla-based book.

Give the Vanilla Hero a Fascinating Antagonist: I’ve always thought that a great antagonist was more important than a great protagonist, and Grimm is good evidence of that. I’ve already enthused over Renard, and Kelly’s shaping up to be more problem than parent (more Kelly, please, I love that bitch), and then you add in the parade of Wesen who have shown up to play. They range from predators to victims, savage to sweet, and part of the fun is figuring out who they are, what they are, and what they want, which often is just to get away from Our Good Guy. One of the best parts of the series is Nick trying to save Wesen who run from him screaming because Grimms historically have killed every Wesen they’ve met. Fave moment: Nick explaining to Wesen-Killing-Machine Kelly that Monroe and Rosalee are his friends and that therefore she should not kill them ever while Kelly glares at Monroe and Rosalee, and they smile back, ready to run if she makes a move. When Rosalee hugs Kelly as a gesture of solidarity at the end of that scene, it’s like a poodle hugging the Angel of Death. So if your protagonist is vanilla, bring in the chocolate, the butter pecan, the raspberry ripple, and the Chunky Monkey to keep the reader’s palate happy, and keep them interacting with the protagonist so their variety and flavor rubs off on him.

Make Sure Vanilla Hero Plots Are Different from Anything Else: Any series is going to have some dud episodes but Grimm has had remarkably few, thanks to the variety of Wesen available to threaten people or be threatened by them. Add to that the ingenuity that the writers bring to the murder-of-the-week story–a lawyer is killed during a flash mob rendition of “YMCA,” a Bluebeard eats frogs that make irresistable to women, Adelaide the Hexenbeast tries to assassinate Juliette with a cat–and the continuing mysteries that intrigue without annoying–who is Renard? how’s Hank going to cope now that he knows about Wesen? where’s Kelly and how is it that there are any Wesen left in Portland with her on the loose?–and you have a premise that pretty much guarantees that there’ll be something in every episode that will make it worth watching. Even “Quills,” the episode without a climax, had Monroe finally making a move on Rosalee, over-cautious though it was.

Although I really am anti-Vanilla-Hero, there is one theory I’m still considering: Given Grimm’s offbeat plots and the cast of characters for whom “strange” is an understatement, it’s possible that stories like this need a vanilla protagonist just so there’s one plain, uncomplicated thing in the plot for viewers to hold onto. I’m not completely sold on that theory, but I am sold on Grimm so clearly the Vanilla Hero is no longer a dealbreaker for me.

How about you?

I Have No Guilt So I Watch Grimm

You know, I have no problem recommending Person of Interest because it’s such smart storytelling. I love recommending Leverage because it’s such smart storytelling. I tell everybody about iZombie because it’s such smart storytelling.

And then there’s Grimm.

Grimm is run by people who routinely forget entire story lines, shove new characters in weekly, change the rules at any given moment, and often take implausibility so far out toward the edge that it circles back and bites them in the butt. The Grimm people look on smart storytelling the way extreme sports addicts look on yoga. They are batshit insane and so are their stories.

I love Grimm.

There were so many reasons not to in the beginning. The hero Nick was so vanilla that extra sprinkles wouldn’t have made him interesting. His girl friend Juliette made vanilla look like a step up. The premise was ridiculous–there are monsters around us killing people and nobody has noticed for thousands of years–and the set-up was a cliche: of course the hero is a homicide detective and there’s a case-of-the-week. So looking back as Grimm finishes its fourth and possibly best season yet, why did I stay? (SPOILERS BELOW)

1. Monroe. The first episode was a Little Red Riding Hood story with a wolf Wesen (the race of monsters that look like animals but can appear as humans, too) kidnapping a little girl in a red hood after ripping apart a college student in a red hoodie. (Little kids and dogs do not die in Grimm; a teenager did once, but he was going out to have sex in the woods, so I chalk that up to horror movie tropes more than Grimm rules.) Nick narrowed his search down to one guy, a wolfish-looking clock expert, who actually was a wolf-Wesen (a Blutbaut, try to keep up), but a reformed one who managed his blood lust with a vegetarian diet and pilates. From the first episode, Monroe was the guy to watch, the perfect partner to straight-arrow Nick.

2. The humor. Okay, a lot of the humor came from Monroe, but there was plenty to go around. Grimm is not a comedy, it’s a monster of the week show and it can get fairly, well, grim, but there’s so much snark in the show from people like Sergeant Wu and the devious Captain Renard, plus there’s Bud the beaver-like Wesen who should have his own show where he just babbles. One of my favorite all time moments in this show is when Nick, his partner Hank, and Captain Renard are all in the captain’s office, and Hank gets the news that a woman they’ve all slept with is pregnant again; he looks at Renard (who knocked her up the first time) with one of those “Did you have to?” looks, and Renard just shakes his head and points at Nick. (It helps that the woman they’re talking about is one of my favorite characters, a take-no-prisoners witch who’s tried to kill all three of them at one time or another, and still they can’t resist her.)

3. The monsters. I’m not a big fan of horror and I do not like being scared, but the monsters on this show are terrific. They’re also, as it turns out, not monsters, just people who are, uh, differently abled. This is important because Nick was born a Grimm, which means he has the job of killing all the Wesen he can find. Except he’s not killing Monroe, the guy’s his best friend. And Bud the beaver/Wesen is a great guy. And then there’s the love of Monroe’s life, a wonderful woman named Rosalee, who’s a fox/Wesen. Basically, Nick likes Wesen as long as they’re not trying to kill somebody, which means he has some explaining to do whenever he meets a Wesen who’s not a crook. The Grimm drinking game is triggered by Nick saying, “I’m not going to kill you!” which I think is a good line for a hero.

4. The characters’ arcs. The one thing the writers do seem to keep a grip on is their characterization. The people of Grimm not only do not act out of character, they actually grow and change, none more than our vanilla hero, Nick, who is now capable of tossing his badge to one side and going full terminator on the bad guys, usually in tandem with Monroe, who helps by turning into a wolf/man (but not a werewolf; that’s somebody else). I think being turned into a zombie was good for Nick. It really sharpened those edges and now he has crazy eyes when he goes full Grimm.

5.The bad guys. Such good antagonists. The Bad Wesen of the Week has been some terrific actors–Amy Acker was a beautiful spider and Arnold Vosloo was a terrific scorpion–but there are also organized groups of great power after Our Gang, like the royal family, a bunch of dickheads who keep sendin assassins to take out Nick, even though the bastard prince of the family (that would be Captain Renard) has him under protection. You’d think the royals would get tired of getting their assassins’ heads back in boxes, but it never seems to pale on them. Sometimes they come after the magic coins that Nick has, except he gave them to his mother who took them somewhere that the writers forgot. Sometimes they’re after keys that Nick fought for and then the writers forgot, except he finally used them to unlock a box that had this thing in it that nobody’s sure exactly what it does. (I’ll bet you anything the writers don’t know either; the showrunner admitted they’d forgotten the keys and brought them back for the 100th episode. I love the idea of these writers all sitting around going, “So these keys we made up a couple of years ago. What are they for?” Because I do that all the time when I plot.) The first year, the hexenbiest (witch) Adalind was a major problem for Nick; this year he’s living with her and their son, who have just been blackmailed into leaving him by a Wesen rebel group trying to take over the world, or at least Portland, by making Captain Renard mayor, which brings us to . . .

4. The writers willingness to say, “Fuck it, why not make the hero a zombie?”

Basically, the thing that makes Grimm such uneven storytelling is the thing that makes it so damn entertaining. These writers will do anything EXCEPT destroy the core community. That is, at the end of the day, Nick, Monroe, Rosalie, Hank, Wu, Captain Renard, Adalind . . . they’re not going anywhere. Supporting characters may bite it, but they know enough not to screw with the stuff that brings the viewers back. Okay, they killed Juliette, which was okay with me, but then they brought her back as . . . actually, I don’t know what Juliette is now except they call her Eve (because she’s brand new, argh) and she wears really weird wigs. And Nick just threatened to kill Renard which is a nice callback to the first season when Renard tried to kill Nick’s aunt by sending in Adalind with a syringe full of poison . . . well, you had to be there.

I’m not going to tell you Grimm is great story-telling because sometimes it’s not. But it’s almost always great community, and no matter how lame an individual episode might be, I’ll still watch these people snark, fight, fall in love, have babies, do disgusting things to get their powers back, and generally bend reality without a second thought.

Where to start:

The Pilot is good: It manages to deliver an amazing amount of exposition while still telling the story of the kidnapped child. No worries, the kid makes it back home just fine. The kidnapper, not so much.

Working Wednesday, November 15, 2023

Sorry this is late. I’ve been working. Really.

What did you do this week?

Argh Author: Susan Berger on The Modern Romantic Podcast

I thought today was Sunday, so I didn’t get this up in time but isn’t this great?

Happiness is Watching Movies with Two Good Friends

This week, Krissie (Anne Stuart) came to visit, which is always great, and we met Pat Gaffney for lunch and shopping and dinner, but the best part was the night we watched Barbie together. They hadn’t seen it, and I was a little worried since I suggested it because I love that movie. But they did, too, and it was so much fun watching their faces when we hit the highlights, and I still cried at the end when they talk about how dangerous being a human is (especially if you’re a woman). But mostly I was just so happy, sitting in my darkened living room with two of the friends I love most, watching a really good story.

What made you happy this week?

This is a Good Book Thursday, November 9, 2023

I didn’t have time to read this week–houseguest–but we talked about reading all week, so that counts, right?

So help me out: what did you read this week?

Working Wednesday, November 8, 2023

One of the great joys of having Krissie come to visit–besides the fact that I actually get some cleaning done before she arrives, not enough, but some–is that she’s good at fixing things. As I write this, she has volunteered to set up or fix:

My internet [Done.]
My printers (that won’t work because the internet is wonky) [Doing that today.}
My TV [Doing that today because Pat Gaffney is coming over tonight and we’re going to drink pink lemonade or possibly pink wine and eat popcorn and watch Barbie]
My sewing machine (older than God, but Krissie is the Mistress of Sewing Machines)[She found it in the garage, stay tuned)
My coffee maker (I don’t drink coffee, a Keurig is a mystery to me) [Done.}

Along with figuring out where to put the wall lights in her room so she can read in bed and determining how big the table tops should be on the bedside tables and figuring out how to hang the curtains from the ends of her canopy bed since those supports had ends that were too big to go through the curtain’s holes. (She gets to decide that because any guest room I have is called “Krissie’s Room.” We’ve been friends a long time.)

So that’s what we’re working on this week, along with the books we’re struggling with–I’m still trying to find Rose in Rocky Start while Bob’s halfway done with Very Nice Funerals–watching more movies that we will then take apart because we’re writers and we have very different views on how story should go–next: Trenchcoat–and talking about sewing and crochet and food, and figuring out whether the rug on my front porch was a good idea (probably not]. So much to do, so little time (only a week).

So what did you work on this week?

Happiness is a Guest for a Week

So yesterday I went to an airport I’d never been to before to pick up Krissie (aka Anne Stuart) so she can check out my new place and let me take care of her. Yes, it’s Friend Spa Week, and we are going to have many meals out, some with Pat Gaffney since they go way back, too, and we’re going to talk about writing and life and watch movies and write books and generally just wallow in being Very Long Time Friends Who Write And Like To Eat and Watch Movies. Today I am happy because I put up with the hassle of an airport (and getting lost on the way home) to collect a week of joy.

What made you happy this week?