Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 36
July 5, 2018
Jealous Hater Book Club: Handbook For Mortals, Chapter 19 Death (part one) or, “Super easy, barely an inconvenience.”
There isn’t much to report in the way of news this time around. Which is odd, right? I mean, considering this is definitely going to be bigger than Twilight and is going to be a major motion picture *checks watch* this year? Really? Are we still buying that line?
This is another ridiculously long chapter, so at the risk of extending the recap of this book out through the course of my entire natural life and into the bowels of hell that will feel like a blessed escape from this shit pile, I have to split the recap in twain.
Chapter nineteen begins with Chuckie Spopperfield and Mac sitting in Zani’s room.
The seconds felt like hours, the minutes felt like days, and the hours felt like years while they waited for Dela to be ready.
That’s pretty much what the last three chapters have felt like, honestly.
My body, if you missed the shallow breaths I was still taking, looked cold and lifeless. I couldn’t tell you where “I” was (as far as my spirit was concerned) because I have no memories of this except theirs.
It’s cool. We’re really not all that interested in where you were during this whole If I Stay interlude. But thanks for going on to tell us how worried Mac is about you.
While Mac looked hollow, like his soul had been drained of any life, Charles knows how to maintain the appearance of looking like things were okay even when they aren’t.
Wow, check out the double POV skew here. Sure, authors sometimes skew POV but twice in the same sentence is Olympic-level failure.
Wait, I just realized what Sarem competed in during the totally real Olympic career she claimed to have in the comments section here that one time. Which I will never stop bringing up. Writing Failure is an event, right?
As an aside, Lazi notes that Charles picked up the habit of pretending that everything is/was okay when it isn’t/aren’t because he’s such a great performer. I want to know how this is like, the one aspect of social interaction he’s managed to successfully copy and act out. Because like. He’s not great at interacting with other people any other time in the book.
Dela comes in and tells them that everything is ready for the ritual. She asks Mac if he remembers what he’s supposed to do.
Thinking through what she had said, he worked to convince himself that he coudl do what he had been told he would have to do. He slowly nodded his head in agreement. “Uh, yeah, I think so.” He didn’t sound very convincing.
Oh good, that’s exactly what you want in a dude who’s about to plunge a dagger into your heart.
He was also feeling the pressure of what he was responsible for.
That’s right. Everyone remember that Mac is responsible for the fact that Lungfish used him as an ingredient in her super dangerous spell without his permission and therefore he didn’t act exactly the way he needed to in order to carry out this spell and it’s…all his fault?
“Okay. Well, it’s time now. We need to go, but there is one last thing, Mac. You have to believe this will work. The mind is a powerful thing––the most powerful thing on earth even––and it can will magick into existence…or extinguish it.” Mac swallowed and nodded; he understood that my life was most certainly in his hands and it terrified him.
So…is Mac saying this? No. He’s not. That’s why he shouldn’t be tagging the dialogue. Especially since there’s no paragraph break at all and the previous paragraph ended in his thoughts, too.
Dela asks Mac to carry Larva outside, but first, we need to hear again how tragic and sickly she looks:
Looking through his eyes, it shocked me that my body looked so lifeless and the only thing that contradicted that was just small breaths that you could barely see. It was odd to see how I looked through everyone’s eyes––but more so through Mac’s. My skin was pale and when he touched my hand it felt cold and clammy.
The repetition in this book, my god. Stop padding it out. The faster we get to the end of this mess, the better. Also, does she look somehow healthier through Sandwich and Chuck’s eyes? If her physical state is barely breathing and lifeless, it’s unlikely she looks spry and hale when non-Mac people look at her, so the line about “more so through Mac’s eyes” makes no sense.
Like 99.33333333% of this book.
They go into the backyard and under some old oak trees and weeping willows.
In that moment, the trees truly looked like they were weeping.
Even the god damn trees are mourning for the potential loss of this remarkable soul?
Mac’s grip seemed to tighten as he walked, clutching me against his chest and kissing my forehead softly, in a way that was both caring and protective.
You know. As opposed to when you’re protective but you don’t really care.
A few evenly placed fountains had been cleverly built by my mother so that they could be converted into an altar whenever needed.
Why not just put up a permanent altar? Everyone in town knows you do witchy shit, Subway. Seems a lot easier and less expensive than running underground plumbing. Also, I need to understand how fountains can be converted to an altar, but again, there’s no description where it’s needed and tons of description where it’s not needed. We get paragraphs upon paragraphs about Zed’s clothing and how it flutters as she descends from on high, but no real sense of what this altar and ritual space looks like.
I can’t get over this. There’s barely any description of what the setting looks like in the most climactic scene of the book. Who does that? Who. Does. That.
The moonlight was shining through the trees and beaming directly on the spot where Mac was going to lay me down. It was almost perfect––and also very strange––the way the eerie silvery light hit exactly on top of the altar as if it were part of a lighting plot from the theater.
“It looks very dramatic, trust me!”
Dela led the walk wearing a cloak and carrying a large lit candle, which made her look practically regal. She was also carrying something oddly shaped and wrapped in velvet, which she held close and protectively.
I need to go off on a tangent here about crushed velvet and witch aesthetic. I have never in my life understood why velvet is so popular among a demographic that owns so many god damn cats. If the Neo-Pagan community ever broke free from the spell of crushed velvet the entire lint roller industry would collapse.
They walked to the long, stone table in the middle of the backyard.
Wait, wait, wait. On the last page, they had already walked “to the back part of the grounds behind the house and stopped under several large ancient oak trees near a couple of weeping willows.” That’s where the makeshift altar was. Now, it’s a stone table in the middle of the yard. No editor caught this? Sarem herself couldn’t keep track of the setting of the climax of her own novel for an entire page?
Charles took the ropes that Dela also had in her hands and bound my legs and arms to the table.
Is she gonna get away?
Mac is still struggling to grasp the “maghjihk is real” theme of the past two chapters.
Dela had explained everything that was about to happen to him as best as she could and––though it sounded crazy when he heard it––he thought that perhaps when he saw it, it would seem better and not as insane.
I’m going to buy a thesaurus, roll up into a Wizard World con, find their resident scam artist, slam it down on her table, and walk away without a word.
The winds were blowing hard and thunder could be heard off in the distance. Lightning danced across the sky and ripped through the clouds coming closer as the storm blew in; suddenly it was bellowing and intense.
If it’s stormy, how can they see the perfectly staged moonlight?
I had to admit that the storm made for a dramatic type of evening and was very fitting considering the situation––though it was a bit too Vegas for my taste.
It’s too Vegas for her taste. Literally, there was a dramatic storm as part of her majikel illusion that she designed, but yeah, these effects outside in nature where they are actually supposed to happen are just tacky.
I fucking hate this book so much. I’m going to Facebook Live me eating a whole god damn birthday cake and drinking a bottle of whiskey when I finish this recap. And the cake is going to say “Team Fuck This Scam Artist” in icing.
Dela ripped my shirt just enough to expose the middle of my chest, then took out a vial and rubbed something red on me. It reminded Mac of something he had seen in a movie once where it was called dragon’s blood.
Dragon’s Blood is a resin. You can’t make essential oil from it. Most Dragon’s Blood oil is either just fragrance oil or it’s some base oil with powdered dragon’s blood resin in it.
So, you know how Sarem references all the time that something looks like a movie or something from the stage? It’s making me so worried about my current YA work in progress. The heroine is autistic and had wanted to go to film school. She compares things to various movies because they’re her focused interest (as they were mine when I was a teenager). Now I’m seriously rethinking this character trait because of how clunky it seems in Handbook For Mortals. On the other hand, we know that Sarem talks about how dramatically cinematic her scenes look because this novel was basically a sales pitch for a movie she couldn’t get off the ground because her screenplay was fucking terrible, too. So, maybe I’ll be okay.
Even though they’re about to do this dire ritual and Zippy’s life is still in danger, Mac starts wondering if vampires and werewolves are real. No, this is actually a full paragraph happening in what is supposed to be an action-filled moment in the story:
That began to make him wonder: if magick was actually real, what else did people go around thinking was made up that really existed, as well? What about werewolves, vampires, fairies, genies, or Never-Never Land? Was everything made up really based off of reality? He thought of all the wonderful and terrible things that might actually be out in the world, and silently laughed at the irony, not really knowing if he was actually correct.
…where is this supposed irony here?
Every chapter has to have at least one inappropriately timed reminder of Zart’s staggering ethereal beauty and that’s not gonna stop just because she looks like a corpse:
Dela walked around and stood on the other side of the stone and me, her beloved daughter. She paused for a moment to stare at my face. Her words echoed in my head as she gazed and my face and thought about how hauntingly beautiful it was.
Deli takes out a dagger and she and Mac hold it together until it pulses with electricity.
Once Dela let go of the dagger and only Mac was holding it, he had to grip it with both hands as the pulsating energy grew stronger. Mac could feel it coursing throughout his entire body. The moonlight hit the dagger and it almost began to glow.
The moonlight that can break through the storm clouds?
As the winds picked up and rain started to fall, the sky seemed to open right above the altar.
Oh, that’s how the moonlight is getting through to be a totally not-Vegas-like spotlight.
The Vegas thing is still killing me. Like, she was criticizing how the setting of her possible death looked? That is laughably entitled. I’m not going to get over it.
The church bells chime and Sandwiches has to yell over the dramatic thunder and wind to tell Mac that it’s time.
Mac had been taught the chant that he needed to say, but for a moment panic spread over his face. He had forgotten the chant. How had he forgotten the simple words that Dela had taught him just moments earlier in the house?
When, exactly, was this? Because we never saw him learn these words “just moments earlier.” It never happened.
Also, you had one job, Mac.
Dela realizes he needs to call for his line, so she gives him the first two words so he can remember.
The words were odd and Mac didn’t know what they really meant, because when Dela offered to explain them to him, he said he didn’t want to know.
Um.
So.
How is this spell working if Mac has no idea what he’s saying? How can he trust he’s not being asked to reanimate Zargon as a zombie or kill her entirely and steal her magic or something? He doesn’t know these people. How does he know they’re not making him recite a spell that will bind him to Larvae forever? Or siphon off his life into her?
Also, let’s talk about the words, what they say, and just how “simple” they are:
“Sa ovim bodežom, prožet magije starih, i moje vere, neka ljubav preokrene kletvu Ja vaskrsne duh, dušu i telo Via Gardrich Verdicy!”
Now, I don’t know from Croatian, but that’s the language Google Translate detected (although it suggested that the last words should be spelled differently, despite not being able to translate them. Maybe it’s a name?) and it claims the spell he’s chanting is “With this dagger, pervaded by the magic of the old, and my true, let love reversed the curse I the crosswind spirit, the soul and the body Via Gardrič Verdičj!” This isn’t “simple” and easy to learn in moments for someone who doesn’t speak Croation. Is Sarem high?
Then, he did the unthinkable.
Though his hand quivered, he plunged the dagger into my chest.
Raise your hand if the thought of stabbing this character in the chest isn’t unthinkable at all to you.
The moment the dagger went all the way in, my body lifted from the altar everywhere but from my chest.
So, she flopped around, is what this is describing? And how is her body lifting up if she’s tied down? Did we forget that part?
Lightning struck the dagger, and Mac flew backwards, falling to the ground; in his hand he foudn that he was holding an oddly shaped glass sculpture, similar to what sand looks like when lightning hits it. In the flashing of the lightning, the weird contortions of the glass were twisted and yet beautiful.
Not only is “lightning” repeated three times in this paragraph, it’s repeated twice in the same sentence. This is probably one of only parts of this book that I genuinely like, though. Not just because Mac gets struck by lightning, but because it’s one of the few places where there seems to be any continuity or motif, in that it’s a callback to the earlier sand glass thing in the illusion. So, congrats, we found something that actually works here.
Zark starts barfing blood and the ropes around her arms and legs that the author forgot about before let go.
As he watched, the sight of blood pouring my mouth terrified Mac. He realized that he had no idea whether that meant things had gone right––or horribly wrong. He hadn’t actually been told what to expect once he did his part.
Oh, sweet! Irresponsible and selfish spellcasting is genetic. Sandwich McGee should have told Mac exactly what was going to happen in this ritual if she wanted him to be a part of it. Not doing so is just straight up bullshit.
Deli says they need to get Zunk inside, so Charles carries her.
I never really got to ride around on my dad’s shoulders as a kid. And though I didn’t get the real chance of experiencing him holding me then, either, at least I got his view of it.
Yet another example of Sarem having no clue how to employ italics. This isn’t a thought. It’s a part of the narrative.
They take Zard into her room, undress her and wrap her in blankets, and we get a reminder that she looks lifeless, is taking shallow breaths, and doesn’t remember this except through the memories of others. Writing Tip: If you’ve spent several chapters writing under the pretense that your narrator is viewing things through other people’s memories, trust that your readers are smart enough to remember which literary device you’re using. Because after a while, it becomes insulting to be reminded over and over again.
Finally, Mac couldn’t stand the silence and lack of any info. He looked directly at Dela and in an experated tone asked, “So, is that what was supposed to happen? Is she okay now? She doesn’t look okay.”
Another “looked directly at.” It wouldn’t stick out if it was “looked at” or “looked to” or “glanced at,” or some variant, but the “directly” just makes it pop out so hard that it feels like it’s been said more than the eighteen times it appears in the manuscript.
He did not have the patience my parents seemed to be exhibiting, probably because he expected all magick to just go “poof” and be completed.
Maybe that’s because no one is explaining anything to him beyond “stand here” and “say these words you don’t understand” because Pastrami The Great is just as magically negligent as her daughter. She tells him that yes, all of that was supposed to happen and now they just have to wait.
He hated Dela’s answer. It was too blasé and noncommittal for someone used to action and split-second decisions. He was learning what it was like to have anxiety––something he didn’t really deal with normally.
Wait, are we still talking about the same Mac? Because the Mac we’ve seen throughout this entire book is riddled with anxiety, constantly snapping at people and freaking out about safety, as per his job. As for split-second decisions and actions, he’s been dating-not-dating the same woman for a year and is still “taking it slow,” so he can’t even take the action of figuring out what their relationship is or what he wants it to be. That’s like, the main conflict in this fucking book.
Dela tells Mac that there’s no reason to freak out, since they can’t really do anything other than wait. She also says it could be “several long nights” before they know whether Zug is going to be okay or not, so Charles calls the theater to let them know what’s going on. And then, of course, he sprints onto his private plane and shows up at the theater in time for curtain, because that’s what happens in professional Las Vegas shows, right? Ex-Olympic figure skater Lani Sarem, who showed up to this blog to tell me that the show must go on and no one cares if performers die on stage in front of a horrified audience surely would never make such an amateur mistake as writing about a show temporarily closing because of a horrible, horrible accident?
What’s even funnier about this to me is that unlike the case with Sofia’s fall, there’s no real indication to the cast or crew that Ziffendel’s injuries were caused by something in the illusion. So, the show will close down instantly if a performer falls ill, but if a performer falls from a great height during a rehearsal, no big, the show must go on.
When he came back in, Mac questioned Charles about why he woudl call them and tell them anything. The questions flooded the room: Wasn’t he afraid they would find out things that he didn’t want them to know? Wasn’t it risky to tell them things? the air was filled with “What ifs?”
Charles had a very logical reason, though, which didn’t surprise Mac. After all, if Charles was anything, he was logical. Charles explained that when you don’t want people to ask too many questions you try to make sure they feel like they are in the loop with information so they don’t start poking around. It made complete sense, and Mac saw how good Charles and Dela both were at making sure people only learned what they wanted them to––even though they made everyone feel like they knew everything.
I love that Mac finds it super reassuring that his boss is great at manipulating people. This is another one of those places where you can practically read the editor’s note in the margin. “How is Charles able to explain what’s happening without anyone asking questions?” And yet again, instead of addressing the issue in a thoughtful way, Sarem just opts for telling the reader not to worry about it, it makes sense to the characters.
Charles told Mac that he had made a special call directly to Jackson, ensuring him that they would also keep him in the loop.
Assuring, Lani. It’s assuring him.
Charles knew that Jackson hadn’t been thrilled that Mac went to the hospital when he was’t able to since he was still on the floor with the band, uanware what had really been going on backstage. By the time Jackson learned anything, Mac had already been on the way to the hospital. On the the other hand, Jackson did not know that Mac had made the trip to Tennessee.
Again, this smacks of an author directly expressing an editor’s concerns in the text, rather than editing the text so that it’s never an issue. Why wasn’t Jackson blowing up Charles and Mac’s phones, if he cares about Larvae so much? It’s not much of a love triangle, certainly not the point that “Team” buttons are needed for marketing, if one leg of said triangle doesn’t really give a shit about the supposed object of his affection.
Linda praises Mac for his dedication to watching over her and compares him to a guardian angel but notes that he’s super exhausted. He passes out on a loveseat in her room. I’m going to end this recap here because it’s a common sense place to split the chapter.
We’re almost done, guys. Hang in there.
June 29, 2018
The Big Damn Buffy Rewatch S04E04, “Fear, Itself”
In every generation, there is a chosen one. She alone just got back from vacation and is still in need of a god damn break. She will also recap every episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer with an eye to the following themes:
Sex is the real villain of the Buffy The Vampire Slayer universe.
Giles is totally in love with Buffy.
Joyce is a fucking terrible parent.
Willow’s magic is utterly useless (this one won’t be an issue until season 2, when she gets a chance to become a witch)
Xander is a textbook Nice Guy.
The show isn’t as feminist as people claim.
All the monsters look like wieners.
If ambivalence to possible danger were an Olympic sport, Team Sunnydale would take the gold.
Angel is a dick.
Harmony is the strongest female character on the show.
Team sports are portrayed in an extremely negative light.
Some of this shit is racist as fuck.
Science and technology are not to be trusted.
Mental illness is stigmatized.
Only Willow can use a computer.
Buffy’s strength is flexible at the plot’s convenience.
Cheap laughs and desperate grabs at plot plausibility are made through Xenophobia.
Oz is the Anti-Xander
Spike is capable of love despite his lack of soul
Don’t freaking tell me the vampires don’t need to breathe because they’re constantly out of frickin’ breath.
The foreshadowing on this show is freaking amazing.
Smoking is evil.
Despite praise for its positive portrayal of non-straight sexualities, some of this shit is homophobic as fuck.
How do these kids know all these outdated references, anyway?
Technology is used inconsistently as per its convenience in the script.
Sunnydale residents are no longer shocked by supernatural attacks.
Casual rape dismissal/victim blaming a-go-go
Snyder believes Buffy is a demon or other evil entity.
The Scoobies kind of help turn Jonathan into a bad guy.
This show caters to the straight/bi female gaze like whoa.
Sunnydale General is the worst hospital in the world.
Faith is hyper-sexualized needlessly.
Slut shame!
The Watchers have no fucking clue what they’re doing.
Vampire bites, even very brief ones, are 99.8% fatal.
Economic inequality is humorized and oversimplified.
Buffy is an abusive romantic partner.
Riley is the worst.
Joss Whedon has a problem with fat people.
Spike is an abusive romantic partner.
Why are all these men so terrible?
Wicca doesn’t work like that.
Have I missed any that were added in past recaps? Let me know in the comments. Even though I might forget that you mentioned it.
WARNING: Some people have mentioned they’re watching along with me, and that’s awesome, but I’ve seen the entire series already and I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So… you know, take that under consideration, if you’re a person who can’t enjoy something if you know future details about it.
Of all the Halloween episodes the show has done, this one is hands down the very best. It is one of my all-time favorite episodes and possibly the funniest episode of the series. I love it with all my heart.
I mean, check out the opening shot:
It’s the Great Xander, Pumpkin Harris!
Buffy is still heartbroken from the manipulations of Stupid Fucking Douchebag:
Buffy: “I was just thinking about the life of a pumpkin. Grow up in the sun, happily entwined with others. Then someone comes along, cuts you open, and rips your guts out.”
Xander tries to lift the mood a little by announcing that he’s got the perfect scary Halloween movie: Fantasia.
Xander: “Fantasia? ”
Oz: “Maybe it’s because of all the horrific things we’ve seen but hippos wearing tutus just don’t unnerve me the way they used to.”
Xander: “Phantasm. It was supposed to be Phantasm!”
It doesn’t matter, though, because Buffy, Willow, and Oz were planning on going to a party at a frat house. They forgot to mention this plan to Xander, who plays it off like being excluded from college stuff doesn’t bother him. Still, they all agree that going to the party will be a rad time and Buffy morosely leaves. Xander, Willow, and Oz discuss the fact that she’s very sad about SFD because this was back in the day when if someone missed a single episode of a TV show they were lost forever and needed a ton of exposition to catch them up.
Meanwhile, Buffy is wandering the streets of Sunnydale sadly when a guy in a monster mask runs up on her and is surprised when she knocks the fuck out of him.
#8, mask dude. Look, everyone in town knows there are monsters because we’ve seen #26 in action. We also know that only weeks ago the mayor of the town turned into a god damn giant snake demon whose transformation darkened the sun and resulted in the explosion of the high school in an incident where many lives were lost. We also know that at this point, the entire town knows that a Slayer lives there, because she organized the student body into the army that vanquished the god damn giant snake demon whose transformation darkened the sun and resulted in the explosion of the high school in an incident where many lives were lost. So, let’s say you’re a dude who lives in Sunnydale where there are real monsters and you know for a fact that there’s at least one real monster hunter out there.
Why are you dressing up in a monster costume and attacking random people without anticipating at least the possibility of getting punched?
Like, if you’re a guy putting on a mask and running at people like you’re going to attack them you should already accept that someone might get startled and hit you. That’s just like, baseline expectation for something going wrong, even if you don’t live in a town full of monsters. But if you do live in a town of monsters, you should have a reasonable expectation that you’re even more likely to trigger someone’s fight-or-flight mechanism. And if you live in a town full of monsters and a monster hunter? You should thank your lucky stars all you got was punched in the face, pal.
Anyway, he asks what the hell is wrong with her and she despondently echoes the sentiment to herself because, you know. Clearly, there’s something wrong with her if SFD doesn’t want her. Ugh, Buffy, why can’t you see what a total jag he is?
After the credits, Buffy and Willow are heading into the cafeteria, where Willow bemoans her lack of “Wicca” progress:
Willow: “I’ve got the basics down: levitations, charms, glamours. I just feel like I’ve plateaued, Wicca-wise.”
Buffy: “What’s the next level?”
Willow: “Transmutation. Conjuring. Bringing forth something from nothing. Gets you pretty close to the primal forces.”
So, I understand that the “primal forces” remark is #21, as it foreshadows the “First Slayer” stuff that happens at the end of the season, so that’s not an issue here. What is an issue to me is how the show conflates Wicca and Witchcraft, especially as the season goes on. I’m not a Wiccan, but that’s where my Paganism started. I can safely say that I never had to levitate, charm, or glamour anything to move up a level. In fact, I never had to do any magic at all to feel connected to “the primal forces,” because that’s what Wicca is. It’s a nature-based religion that honors the inherent spiritual energies and cycles of our planet. Practitioners may or may not also study Witchcraft, but the two aren’t the same. Some Wiccans do Witchcraft. Some Witches are Wiccans. Not all Wiccans do Witchcraft. Not all Witches are Wiccans. And while it might seem like it’s not a big deal, this is just world-building in a fantasy show where none of this really matters, the conflation of Wicca with fictional Witchcraft and spooky magic powers is what keeps a lot of people from being open about their spirituality, which is really sucky. It wasn’t as though “Witchcraft” wasn’t available to use as a descriptor in this world building. Using the name of a real religion because it sounds more interesting is frankly insulting. Especially considering how Willow’s “Wicca” arc goes for the rest of the series.
Oh, and speaking of #21, Willow also says:
Willow: “Then again, what is college for if not…experimenting.”
Oz walks into the conversation and assumes they’re talking about wine coolers, but he when finds out they’re discussing magic he says he hopes Buffy isn’t encouraging Willow. Because he’s worried about how dangerous her magic “Wicca” powers are. So, uh…see why I have a problem with this? Because here we have a cultural phenomenon television show describing a very real and very misunderstood religion as dangerous and something people should be concerned about their loved ones getting involved in. All because she’s going to be dealing with power that Oz thinks she can’t control. So, let’s just add another number to our list: #42: Wicca doesn’t work like that.
Oz tells Willow that he’ll support her no matter what, but that he doesn’t want her to feel the way he feels when he’s starting to get all werewolf. Buffy spots SFD across the cafeteria and runs out. Willow followers her and tries to convince her to go to the Halloween party, but Buffy tells her that she’s done with dudes for the moment. And Willow is like, okay, but you can still go to the party. Buffy says she probably won’t get to go because Giles is going to want her out patrolling since he totally doesn’t care about Halloween.
Cut to:
I don’t know if cultural appropriation falls under #12 or #17 but knock that shit off, Giles. You’re smarter than that.
Buffy is horrified by the decorations and Giles’s overall enthusiasm for the holiday:
Buffy: “What is going on here? You hate Halloween.”
Giles: “I’ve never said any such thing. As my Watcher’s duties took precedence I simply hadn’t taken time to embrace its inherent charms until now.”
Then he shows her a Frankenstein decoration that mechanically jitters around.
Retired Giles needs a hobby.
Buffy suggests she go patrolling and Giles reminds her that monsters don’t really like Halloween and tend to stay in. Which I thought they all knew, so I don’t know why Willow didn’t have that one in her arsenal to combat Buffy’s depression excuses. Either way, Giles tells her that there isn’t going to be any spooky goings on and not to waste her time. But Giles doesn’t realize that Buffy is going to spend Halloween…
AT THE AMERICAN HORROR STORY MURDER HOUSE!

Inside, the fraternity brothers are setting up for the super cool party. Polo shirts are everywhere. They want to make the house as scary as possible so that girls are afraid and end up fucking them. I honestly have never been so afraid of plastic skeletons that the only way to soothe my fear was to have sex with a dude in khakis. Maybe my standards aren’t low enough. But whatever.
Frat Guy: “Is there any holiday that’s not about getting laid?”
Other Frat Guy: “Arbor Day.”
Uh, dude. You really needed to say “Mother’s Day” here.
Frat Guy tells Other Frat guy that he’ll call Oz to get the sound system fixed and oh, by the way, I found this spooky occult symbol in this book let’s decorate with it. Even if you don’t live in Sunnydale, you should know not to fuck with ancient symbols and shit.
Back at Xander’s basement, Anya randomly shows up unannounced and startles Xander, who reminds her that it’s customary to knock before busting in on someone. She wants to know why Xander hasn’t called her, despite her saying that she was over him after they had sex. He tells her that since she said that, he assumed she meant it. But she didn’t and she wants to go out with him that night. He explains that he already has Halloween plans with Buffy, Willow, and Oz, but Anya can’t wrap her newly mortal noggin around why he’s still friends with them. She points out that unlike them, he’s not in college or living on his own, so they no longer have anything in common.
Oof. Let me tell you how hard I feel this. I did not go to college after high school as most of my friends did. Nobody ever really told me how to like…sign up for the SATs or apply to colleges, so I assumed it was something you did after high school was all over. As a result, I guess I kind of missed my chance, having to work to pay rent and bills and such with no money left over to pay for extravagant extras like higher education. This isolated me from those friends, whose lives seemed easier and effortlessly like the movies and television shows that had prepared us for a post-high school life of what we expected would be non-stop wacky parties and the exhilaration of a blissful, responsibility-lite transition into adulthood. It was very easy to feel like I was doing my late teens/early twenties “wrong,” and it still kind of does. I really love Xander’s arc in this season because there were so many people going through this at the same time it was airing (including me), and it’s the one area of Xander’s economic reality that isn’t played up just for laughs but to give him some much-needed character development after three fairly static seasons of Nice Guy comic relief––though in this scene, there is a joke about Xander’s alcoholic uncle who lives with them because you know. Poor people drinking too much and having to live in a multi-family/multi-generational household is somehow shameful and the result of the low morality that led to poverty in the first place or whatever bullshit capitalist trash drives this sort of narrative. (#36).
Xander tells Anya that it doesn’t matter that his friends are all in college and he isn’t. But he can’t put up much of an argument. He invites Anya to go to the party with him and she asks if that means they’re dating. He admits that their relationship is “date-like” and Anya is pleased––until she finds out that this particular date involves a scary costume.
Back on campus, Buffy asks Professor Walsh for the assignments for the day, citing a personal problem as the reason for her absence from class.
Professor Walsh: “Right. I count four limbs, a head, no visible scarring, so I assume your personal issue wasn’t a life-threatening accident of any kind and am therefore uninterested. You got problems, solve them on your own time. Miss another class and you’re out.”
I just once want her to give this bullshit hardass act to someone and have them be like, “My parents and siblings were killed this morning in a brutal home invasion gone wrong. I am the only member of my family who survived. I was talking to the police and a counselor but this class is important to me and despite my personal tragedy––the emotional impact of which you can’t begin to fathom––I don’t want to fall behind because I value your insight and the time you take to educate us.”
I just really want Maggie Walsh to have the shittiest day possible. Because here’s the thing: Buffy isn’t in medical school. She didn’t miss a class that will someday determine whether or not another human being lives or dies. She’s a freshman in a psych 101 class that’s probably fulfilling some bullshit credit requirement. And despite having an issue that prevented her from showing up to class, she still made the effort to come in to get the assignments. She’s not blowing the class off. One might assume that the goddess of all human psychology would recognize the difference between a student who doesn’t care and is bullshitting and a student who legitimately wants to succeed and is making effort.
What really pisses me off about the Maggie Walsh character is how much of a stereotype she is. She’s this “strong” woman who shows her strength by being a no-nonsense ballbuster. But she’s the villain. I’m torn on how to feel about her. Is she a mark of the show’s feminism, highlighting how these stereotypes are negative? Or is her stereotypical she-beast nature just lazy writing? This gets especially muddied for me when we begin to see her almost incestuous fixation on Riley and her motherly adoration of Boringstein later in the season.
Speaking of Riley, he’s there and witnesses the whole thing. He tells her that her work in class hasn’t been great lately but that he understands how tough freshman year can be. When Buffy says she’ll use the night to complete the assignments she missed, he encourages her to go out and party:
Riley: “Halloween isn’t an night for responsiblity. It’s when the ghosts and goblins come out.”
Buffy: “That’s actually a misnomer.”
No, it’s a misconception. Misnomer is when you use the wrong term or name for something.
Anyway, they have a nice moment and it’s back to Murder House, where the frat guys are painting the occult symbol on the floor. Xander and Oz are both there while this is happening, but only Xander expresses interest in what the symbol is and where it came from. Frat Guy tells him that the symbol came from a book that had a lot of cool stuff in it, which should be a red flag to Oz and Xander, but the former is setting up stereo equipment and the latter is distracted by a bowl of grapes. Our heroes have succumbed to #8, so I guess that’s something that gets worse gradually as you get older?
Anyway, Xander notices the grapes are peeled.
Other Frat Guy: “Eyeballs, man. Blindfold chicks, have them put their hands in the bowl and tell them it’s eyeballs. They love that.”
Xander: “And here I was wasting time buying them flowers and complimenting them on their shoes.”
In case you come to my blog to look for romantic tips to woo that special someone, just a heads up: no women like to have their hands thrust into bowls of eyeballs. You’re welcome. I just saved your anniversary.
Oz turns on the shrieking scary Halloween sound effects and realizes there’s an imbalance coming from one of the speakers. He’s going to fix this by trimming up the wire, which I’m not entirely sure fixes that type of problem? But that doesn’t matter. We need to get this spooky symbol on the floor activated somehow, and Oz accidentally cutting himself and dripping blood onto it is how we’re gonna do it. Within seconds of his blood hitting the painted circle, waves of mystical energy emanate from it and a toy spider turns into a not-so-toy spider.

At Casa de Summers, Joyce has her sewing machine out, working on a costume for Buffy. She’s repurposing an old Red Ridinghood cloak, which leads them on a trip through memories of happier times. They talk about how much Buffy’s father loved taking her trick-or-treating and how much Joyce loved eating Buffy’s candy.
Joyce: “Your father loved spending time with you.”
Buffy: “Not enough, I guess.”
Joyce: “Buffy…”
Buffy: “That just paved right over memory lane, huh?”
Joyce: “You know the divorce had nothing to do with you.”
Buffy: “I don’t know. I’m starting to feel like there’s a pattern here. Open your heart to someone and he bails on you. Maybe it’s easier to just not let anyone in.”
Joyce: “I thought it might be easier. You must have noticed that I’m not exactly the social butterfly that I was when I was with your dad. I don’t think I made a single new friend the year we moved to Sunnydale.”
Buffy: “Why not?”
Because she made a new friend and that friend turned into a zombie and got killed by a shovel through the skull. I mean, Joyce doesn’t cite that example, but she does mention that she dated an evil robot and that’s kind of made her gun shy in the love department. Reasonable, Joyce. Reasonable. But her point is that eventually, she made new friends and learned to trust other people, and that Buffy should focus on all the loved ones she has who haven’t abandoned her.
At the dorm, Willow is on the phone with someone, adjusting her kick-ass knight costume. She says that they’re going to have to force Buffy to have fun at the party and brutally murder SFD if they see him. You know. In the spirit of the holiday. She leaves for the party and walks past all sorts of wacky college characters and disagreements. We cut to Murder House, where Other Frat guy is trying to pull off his “put your hands in this bowl of peeled grapes and then touch my dick” plan, but it doesn’t go quite right. He tells his blindfolded lady companion that she’s touching eyeballs and:
Buffy meets Xander on the sidewalk near Murder House. He’s all dressed up in a tux and she’s in full Red Ridinghood regalia.
Xander: “What you got in the basket, little girl?”
Buffy: “Weapons.
Xander: “Oh.”
Buffy: “Just in case. Like the tux, Xander.”
Xander: “Bond. James Bond. Insurance, you know, in case we get turned into our costumes again. I’m going for cool secret agent guy.”
Buffy: “I hate to break it to you but you’ll probably end up cool head waiter guy.”
Xander: “As long as I’m cool and weild some kind of power.”
They mosey across the street, where Willow and Oz, sans costume, wait.
Willow: “I’m Joan of Arc! I figured we had a lot in common, seeing as how I was almost burned at the stake. And plus she had that close relationship with God.”
Xander: “And you are?”
As they stroll down the street, two dudes with giant guns, night-vision goggles, and fatigues step out of the bushes. Buffy makes a crack about their nice costumes, not realizing that they’ve just run into the season’s Big Bad. Willow says they’re going to have “the best time” at the party.
Cut to the interior of Murder House, where the running and screaming has commenced. I can’t describe it for you in detail because there is a ton of stobe lighting effects and I have epilepsy but what I will tell you is things are bad and getting worse if your Halloween party involves real dead people in a way that is unintentional. The gang arrives at the party and Oz says ominously:
Oz: “Let the horrors begin.”
But the horror I’m focused on isn’t so much the fact that Other Frat Guy has just fallen down the stairs and broken his neck and died, but the yellow vinyl siding on the entryway of Murder House. I’m so glad that shit got taken care of before Ryan Murphy showed up. That shit would have been the real American horror story.
Oz, Willow, Buffy, and Xander enter the surprisingly deserted house, but Oz assures them they just need to follow the signs to the actual party. While they walk the hallways, Buffy talks about how unscary the decorations are, but Xander gets spooked by a skeleton and Willow freaks out over some cobwebs. Oh, and the very real tarantula that perches on her shoulder. Uneasy, the group decides to keep moving toward the party. But when they enter the next room, Oz is confused because he was expecting to end up somewhere else. Oh, and there’s blood. Real blood, Buffy deduces via smell.
Buffy can sniff-test human blood.
No wonder the plastic rats aren’t spooky enough for her.
Speaking of rodents, they all hear a weird squeaking sound that Xander blames on his shoes. They look up in time to see a whole ceilingful of bats just swoop the fuck down on them, only to disappear and leave behind cheap rubber imitations. A demonic voice demands that someone release it, and the gang knows they’re in trouble.
Meanwhile, Anya is about to arrive in her terrifying costume:
But when she gets to the door, there is no door. Wait, is that why the siding is there? Because they were able to cover the door with a siding panel? And maybe that atrocious siding isn’t actually affixed to the house? It was just set dressing? Please, God, someone tell me that siding came and left with the production.
Anyway, Anya can’t get in. As she looks for another entrance, she sees a woman screaming and pounding on a window that suddenly bricks over by itself. She knows something’s up and takes off with the intent to save Xander.
Inside, Oz cuts the speaker wires to stop the constant Halloween sound effects so that they can concentrate. They realize that there are no stairs and no door anymore and that they’ve just gone in a big circle. Willow wants to get out, and Buffy makes a crack about how much they all wanted her to come. But Willow doesn’t want to joke. She reminds Buffy that they don’t know what they’re facing, and everyone…ignores Xander.
Xander: “Okay, my turn. Does anyone hear that?
Buffy: “Well, as soon as we start dealing with it I’ll know what it is I’m dealing with. Do you hear something?”
Xander: “Like I said. Sounds like a hissing.”
Buffy: “It’s like a…’sssss’ noise?”
Xander: “I thought the word hissing kind of covered that nicely.”
The hissing is the quiet sobbing of Frat Guy, who’s in a closet rocking and crying. He stammers that he’s sorry and he didn’t know, and while Oz attempts to comfort him and get some answers, the guy just manages to utter a dire warning:
Frat Guy: “It’s alive.”
And then we see the plastic skeleton that scared Xander before, but it’s not so plastic now:
So, my favorite part of this shot is how much it looks like an album cover for a smooth adult contemporary skeleton that your grandma would describe as “foxy.” He’s like the Crypt Keeper’s hotter brother and he knows it. The line he’s about to lay on you works every time. He’s leaving with your numbers and your panties, ladies. And he’s not gonna call you. Don’t hate the player, hate the game.
My second favorite part of this shot is how much it looks like the poster for Evil Dead 2. I don’t know if that’s intentional, but I like to think it is. There are a lot of great horror movie homages in this episode.
After the commercial, the group is trying to calm down Frat Guy when Josh Groban’s skeleton attacks Buffy and slashes her arm. She knocks it down and it turns back into plastic. Then they look back at the closet where Frat Guy was hiding, only to find that he––and the entire closet––is gone. Buffy formulates a plan. She says she’s going to head deeper into the house to look for survivors and tells the others to find a way out. Willow balks at being asked to abandon Buffy, but Buffy has her reason for sending them away:
Buffy: “We need help. We need the only person who can make sense of what’s happening.”

Anya knocks frantically on the door and bursts in the moment it opens a crack:
Anya: “Xander’s in trouble. You’ve got to do something, right now!”
Giles: “Anya––”
Anya: “Are you listening? Xander’s trapped.”
Giles: “Uh, where’s Buffy and the others?”
Anya: “Oh, they’re trapped too. But we’ve got to save Xander!”
Giles gets Anya to calm down and give him some more details. When she tells him about the disappearing window, he gets an idea of what’s up. He tells her not to worry because at least Xander is with his friends.
Smash cut to Buffy and Willow in a heated argument. Buffy tells Willow that she can’t worry about fighting monsters if she’s also trying to protect the others, and Willow is like, just because you’re a Slayer doesn’t mean you’re in charge. Willow wants to do a guiding spell to get them out by conjuring spirits or something. Buffy is like, no, because your spells don’t always work, and Willow tells Buffy that she’s not a sidekick before storming off, followed by Oz. Left alone together, Xander tries to do damage control with Buffy on Willow’s behalf, but Buffy…ignores Xander. And then she starts calling out for Xander. While he tells her to stop joking around, she heads off in a huff to find him. They haven’t been ignoring Xander. He’s invisible.
This is…what, the second instance of invisibility on this show?
In another part of the house, Willow’s witch ego is spiraling out of control to the point that she doesn’t notice Oz sprouting a lot of worrisome hair and fangs. He’s transforming, despite it not being the full moon, and tells Willow she needs to get away from him. She’s like, no, I can do the spell, but he tells her there isn’t time. She tries to grab him and he inadvertently claws her. As he runs away, she shouts:
Willow: “Oz! Don’t leave me!”
#21 in full force here. The house is amplifying the things they fear the most. Oz’s fear that he won’t be able to control his transformations and he’ll ultimately hurt Willow. Xander’s fear of no longer existing to his friends because they’ve moved on without him (but don’t worry. A spooky decapitated head reassures him that he’s totally not invisible). So, Willow’s biggest fear is…
Well, it’s losing Oz and that’s great foreshadowing for the rest of the season. But it’s possible that she’s afraid of her magic, too. She does the conjuring spell, bringing a little tiny green light into existence. She tells it to take her to Oz, but her thoughts quickly scatter. She knows she should try to find all the trapped people first. And then she has to find a way out of the house. Every time she thinks of something else, the light splits and multiplies, until she’s surrounded by a bee-like swarm.
So, here’s #4 in action. Willow’s spell puts her in danger and she shouts to Buffy for help. Which is exactly what Buffy said was going to happen, so now Buffy has to rescue her. Also, Willow already said hey, we don’t know what we’re dealing with. So why, in the middle of what is clearly a spooky paranormal situation, would you then introduce magic you’re not familiar or successful with? Ego. Pure ego. Willow’s spiritual path is infuriating because it’s all about aggrandizing herself, something that never really gets dealt with through the course of the series because it turns into an addiction narrative instead.
Anyway, Buffy is looking for a path to Willow to help her, when she pushes open a door and falls straight into the cellar. It kind of looks like the chick pit from “Buffy vs. Dracula,” but we’re not there yet. Anyway, Other Frat Guy’s reanimated corpse is down there with her, broken neck at all, and he’s ready to get pretty fucking personal:
Other Frat Guy: “They all ran away from you. They always will. Open your heart to someone and… But don’t fret, little girl. You’re not alone.”
Decomposing hands thrust up through the ground to grab Buffy as she struggles. Let me use the commercial break to talk about #16. Buffy has just fallen pretty far and landed flat. Yeah, that hurts. She probably got the wind knocked out of her. But zombie hands? She can’t get away from zombie hands? Come on. Literally, all she had to do was stand up, but she lays there until after the commercial when they’re now whole zombies. I mean, she could have even just rolled to avoid the hands before they even got a chance to dig themselves out. Also, where are her weapons? Oh, right. She sat them down and left them behind. Like you do when you’re a Slayer whose entire life revolves around being tough, using weapons, and not dying? I guess? This has always bugged me. She knows she’s up against something supernatural and she left her weapons behind, anyway.
Outside the house, Giles examines where the door should be and says, well, he’ll just have to make one. And then he gets a chainsaw.
In the basement, Buffy continues to struggle, crawling away from the zombies and trying to kick them. That’s the big ass fight scene in this one, by the way. Buffy crawling frantically away from zombies and kicking at them while crying in terror. Ring-a-ding-ding. She makes her way to a tiny door and escapes from the basement directly into the attic where the party started and then went terribly wrong. There are people huddled, terrified in corners, including Oz, who’s no longer an almost-werewolf. Willow bursts in, swatting at the lights which are now gone. Once they’ve reached the room, they’re suddenly no longer being tormented by fear.
So…why did the party devolve into chaos in that room, if it’s an unaffected part of the house?
Buffy tells Willow and Oz that they need to find out a way out and Xander says:
Xander: “I’d offer my opinion but you jerks aren’t going to hear it anyway. Not that Didn’t-Go-To-College-Boy has anything important to say. I might as well hang out with my new best friend, bleeding dummy head, for all you dorks care.”
Buffy: “What is wrong with you?”
Xander: “You…you heard that? You can see me? Good. Oh god, good.”
Willow tries to Brightside Barbie this shit and says hey, at least they all found each other and got away from the things tormenting them. Buffy is like, no, it drove them there for a reason. She looks at the sigil on the floor and Xander tells her he saw the frat guys painting it. Yet nobody says, “Uh, hey Xander? Why the fuck didn’t you mention this shit to us before we came to the haunted party?” Because that would be my first reaction. We live in Sunnydale and you saw someone painting an obscure sigil out of a weird old book? And you didn’t think this was worth mentioning?
Willow says the book is in Gaelic but that maybe she can translate it. Did we miss the part where Willow learned Gaelic? I can believe it of Giles, who has been trained in spooky ancient woo his entire life. I could believe it of Anya, who’s been alive for a millennium and therefore has had time to study it. I have a harder time believing it of Willow, but this show does kind of treat her like, “Oh, she’s smart. So she can do literally everything.” She says the spell will summon Gachnar, a demon that feeds on fear to manifest itself into being. Buffy says they need to stop being afraid of it so that can’t happen.
Xander: “If we close our eyes and say it’s a dream…it’ll stab us to death! These things are real!”
They decide yet again to leave the house that’s unleavable. This script really needed someone to look over it and go, “Hey, you’ve got this exact same idea expressed like nineteen hundred times? You might want to just trust the audience to remember that the characters still need to escape the haunted house even if they didn’t say it a second ago.”
The group makes for the door when it bursts open and:
Xander: “Giles? Hey, everyone, it’s Giles. With a chainsaw!”
Nicholas Brendan deserved an Emmy based on his delivery of this line alone. The Goofy-like shriek of pure fear he leads into it with is brilliant and his panic makes it clear that this would, indeed, be one of his worst fears.
Giles and Anya come in and Giles immediately explains what’s going on:
Giles: “Gachnar. Of course. Its presence infects the reality of the house but it’s not managed to achieve full manifestation. We cannot allow this to come into being.”
I love how there are seemingly a bajillion monsters and demons out there and Giles is like, oh yeah, Gachnar, why didn’t I think of specifically him? How has this guy gotten a good night’s sleep ever in his life when he knows about all this stuff?
Anyway, Buffy asks if she’ll still be able to fight it and Giles shows her what she’d be dealing with:
Please note that Willow said the text in the book “looks like Gaelic” and struggled to read it. It’s clearly English. So much for being the smart one.
Buffy says she doesn’t want to fight Gachnar, so Giles finds a passage on shutting the whole shit down.
Giles: “The summoning spell for Gachnar can be shut down in one of two ways. Destroying the mark of Gachnar––”
Giles: “Is not one of them and will in fact immediately bring forth the fear demon itself!”
Oh shit, guys. Buffy fucked up. I don’t want to point out that the ritual for summoning Gachnar is kind of pointless if all you have to do is just destroy his mark but I have to because this is Trout Nation and goddamnit, we don’t fool around here. What would be the point of summoning Gachnar and trying to bring him forth by feeding him fear and stuff if you just have to break his sigil? You could draw it on a piece of paper and rip it and bam, here he is.
It is what it is, I guess. I still love this episode because it’s hilarious.
They all stand around the hole in the floor, looking down helplessly into a vortex of blazing light while Gachnar emerges.
Everyone’s terror turns to confusion as they realize that the demon that’s been tormenting them is about the size of a Star Wars action figure. But he tries. In his tiny, squeaky voice, he tries.
Gachnar: “I am the Dark Lord of Nightmares! The Bringer Of Terror. Tremble before me! Fear me!”
The best part of this scene is how Buffy tries to stifle her laughter. Like she doesn’t want to be unnecessarily cruel before killing him.
Xander: “Who’s a little fear demon? Come on, who’s a little fear demon?”
Giles: “Don’t taunt the fear demon.”
Xander: “Why? Can he hurt me?”
Giles: “No, it’s just tacky.”
Then, in a couple shots that I’m a hundred percent sure have been paused and screencapped and frantically masturbated to in the decades since this first aired, Buffy picks up her foot and squishes Gachnar.
Back at Giles’s apartment, Oz, Buffy, and Willow are eating the left-over trick-or-treat candy. Xander finally addresses Anya’s “scary” costume (bunnies frighten her), and Giles finishes up his Gachnar research.
Giles: “Oh, bloody hell, the inscription. I should have translated the Gaelic inscriptions under the illustration of Gachnar.”
Buffy: “What’s it say?”
Giles: “Actual size.”
Cut to credits.
There is so much wrong with this episode. Why does Buffy abandon all of her weapons and march off alone into what she knows is a haunted house trying to kill them? Why would Willow use magic she already said she’s not sure of using yet in a situation she argues is unstable? Why didn’t Oz or Xander mention the sigil not just when they entered the house but literally hours beforehand? What happened to all the people who died in the house while Gachnar was trying to manifest? Why would a smart guy like Giles just plunge chainsaw first into the wall of a house with the electricity still on? And right by a porchlight, at that? Now that they know their deepest fears or whatever, why don’t they ever get addressed? Their individual character arcs continue on in those same paths of conflict without any acknowledgment from the characters that these are real problems they need to deal with?
Things like Willow’s magic and Buffy’s abandonment of her weapons could have been easily explained with a single line of dialogue somewhere, from any character. “Something isn’t right…we’re not acting like ourselves.” Anything. I mean even a line that bad could have been delivered by Seth Green and changed the whole thing. Then everyone gets to the top of the house and they get the book and it’s like, oh, it alters reality AND your perception. Because the whole, “worst fears” thing was already done in season one, anyway. Plus, putting an emphasis on how manipulation through fear is robbing them of their ability to make decisions that will aid their survival would have made it even scarier. But none of that happened. All the tension was just, “We have to get out of here,” over and over and over. Ugh, it sucks sooooooo much.
“Fear, Itself,” is in my top ten Buffy episodes of all time.
June 25, 2018
When Your Writing Retreat Turns Out To Be Natural Disaster Adjacent
Every year since 2012, an intrepid band of international adventurers convenes in Michigan’s beautiful Upper Peninsula to write and relax in a secluded cabin far from the cares of a world with reliable cell coverage and wireless internet. On the shores of the beautiful and terrible inland sea of Lake Superior, spirits both metaphysical and alcoholic flow as freely as the creativity and camaraderie.
Okay, what I mean is that for a week every June a bunch of authors (This year it was me and Bronwyn Green and Jessica Jarman and Kris Norris) go “up nort” to get drunk and complain about how hard it is to be a writer and how nobody understands us. It’s a great time, so I was quite surprised to pull my daily tarot card on the morning our grand adventure began only to get the Wheel Of Fortune reversed.
From BiddyTarot.com (which is an amazing site, by the way, and you should totally check it out if tarot interests you):
Oftentimes, the reversed Wheel of Fortune indicates that there are negative forces at play that are outside of your control, leaving you feeling helpless and powerless.
Obviously, my first thought was that this referred to us being swept off the Mackinac Bridge by a rogue wave or gust of wind. Because that’s the thing that I’m most frightened of on a trip to U.P. despite it only ever happening one other time. Somehow, we made it across the Mighty Mac unscathed, as you can see in the video below.
We even survived a weird and frustrating encounter with two separate strangers.
But overall, things were going pretty okay. What did that tarot card know?
Well, that tarot card apparently knew that poor Kris Norris, who bravely ventures into the United States from Canada to see us even though it has to be like passing into some kind of anarchic hell world, was making an unnecessarily lengthy trip from Vancouver, B.C., to Minneapolis, MN. It took her thirty-six hours to fly between the cities. When Jessica Jarman arrived at the airport to pick her up, Norris’s luggage had taken a side trip. To Chicago. Where it would stay until one in the morning. Since the flight delay had already massively set back their departure from Minnesota, Norris arranged for her bag to find its way to the Houghton County Airport and they struck out on their drive to Michigan.
Despite a few detours, Bronwyn and I arrived at the cabin ahead of Norris and Jarman. About an hour later, we heard thunder. “Watch, they’ll get here and the second they get out of the car it will be like, whoosh!” I joked. Sure enough, Norris and Jarman and the rain all arrived at about the same time. We chatted for a while, then went to bed, but I woke often through the night from the thunder and noise. Generally, storms don’t bother me, so long as my devices are fully charged, but even the rain was super loud and it just went on and on and on.
I woke to frantic, ALLCAPS texts from some friends who live in Hancock, warning me of flash flooding and checking to make sure we were okay and had arrived safely. Bleary-eyed, I checked the news on my phone––usually, we don’t get any cell or data at the cabin, but this year the signal was strong enough most days to at least get information via Facebook––and stared in shock. This is what happened:
Flooding In Houghton County (TV6)
Houghton Co. Dealing With “Catastrophic” Flooding (Michigan Radio)
Sixty Sinkholes Open In Michigan After Flood After Flash Floods Strike Upper Midwest (Newsweek)
Gov. Rick Snyder Declares Disaster For U.P. Counties Devastated By Flooding
Those are all sources from different days and have a lot more information than was available to us at the time, but you get the picture. I crept upstairs to Bronwyn Green’s room and gently nudged her awake, which resulted in me almost getting karate chopped in fucking half because Bronwyn is apparently ex-KGB or something and jerked violently awake and ready to fight. I told her what was going on. Well, I summed it up: “I guess Houghton and Hancock are like…fucking gone?” One of us said, “Wouldn’t it be funny if we couldn’t get Norris’s bag because the airport washed away?”
We all got up and got on our phones (except for Norris, whose data connection relies on Maple syrup and fresh Canadian air to function). The stuff we found was mostly first-hand accounts of the damage via videos and photos circulating in the immediate aftermath, including this one from TV 6 (or, as people seem to refer to it regionally, “da channel six noose”):
The newscaster’s focus on the Taco Bell sign sent us into fits of laughter. If you’re not from Michigan or you’ve never lived in Michigan, you probably can’t appreciate the way Michiganders tend to fixate on incredibly small, mundane things in the middle of huge events, issues, and occurrences. But we were still kind of nervous. Houghton and Hancock are two separate towns on opposite sides of a river with a bridge between them. That bridge is the only way to access the tip of the Keweenaw Peninsula, where we were, and the roads to the bridge were washed out, underwater, decimated by sinkholes, or all of the above. Which left us trapped. Shit felt…kind of serious, but we can never be truly serious about anything. When Jessica Jarman broke the news that the airport was indeed inaccessible and therefore all of Norris’s clothes, toiletries, and medications were now in the heart of a natural disaster, we accused her of angering God and causing her to smite the entire county in the process. I suggested it was part of an elaborate Canadian conspiracy to battle the United States via the forces of nature, which Norris confirmed to be true. Then, we headed out for groceries and I updated readers about the situation via Facebook Live:
We were able to joke about the weird predicament we were in because we had no clear picture of the extent of the damage apart from some shaky videos of streets turned into waterfalls and the news anchor lamenting the loss of the Taco Bell sign. While Jarman’s sister fed us information from her home near the flood zone, we wouldn’t learn about the heartbreaking death of Thatcher Markham until much later. All we knew at that point was “thank god it’s just property damage and nobody has died.”
Once the National Guard arrived, the damage started getting repaired quickly. By Tuesday, some businesses had reopened and we were able to get to the airport, where Norris was reunited with her stuff. By Thursday, Jarman’s sister informed us that the way through Houghton/Hancock was clear and that the highways to the south were once again open.
But Monday, however, some furry friends who love pic-i-nic baskets arrived:
The flooding meant trash collection was postponed for the week. Which meant that when the people who’d rented the cabin the week before and had considerately moved their refuse to the garbage cans had inadvertently laid out a buffet for bears who’d headed to higher ground. We decided to keep our refuse in the cabin with us, instead of in the garage where our bear friends––who’d set up camp in the thin strip of woods between the driveway and the neighbor’s house––might be tempted to claw or push through the door to get at more trashy treats.
When the time came to go home, we got to view some of the remaining devastation. Whole streets churned to chunks of rock. Roadside parks filled with standing water. Businesses damaged and houses marked with waterlines on their siding. And good lord, the mud. Everywhere, mud.
The damage to Houghton and Menominee Counties happened in a matter of hours but will take much, much longer to repair. Early estimates put the cost of the damage at 50 million dollars. Low-income areas that were hit will take longer to recover; some residents may find themselves permanently displaced. Wells have been contaminated, trails and parks and other tourist attractions that boost the local economy will need maintenance.
Now, you may be thinking, “Wow, that’s awful. I wish I could do something to help.” Well, I’ve got a few suggestions! First of all, there are several fundraisers going on right now. If you can’t donate, share the links on social media; maybe someone you know has a couple dollars they’re looking to do a good deed with.
Thatcher Markham Fundraiser
Houghton County Museum Flood Relief
Patchin Family Landslide Relief
Houghton County Flood Relief Fund
Have you been looking for a place to vacation? Somewhere you’ve never been before? The Keweenaw Peninsula could sure use your dollars! Visit waterfalls, beaches, museums and copper mines while staying in locally owned hotels, dining at locally owned restaurants, and shopping for souvenirs at locally owned stores. The Keweenaw Peninsula tourism site can help you plan your trip.

All dark humor aside, my heart is broken for the Markham family and for the home and business owners whose lives have been upheaved by this disaster. Over the past six years, this part of Michigan has come to feel like a second home, as one of the most important weeks of my year occurs there. It’s a place unlike any other in the world and I wish all the residents the very best possible outcomes in the wake of this tragedy.
June 11, 2018
I read the Handbook For Mortals screenplay. It is worse than you could possibly imagine.
There’s an important rule that you must always follow when sharing your creative work with people you trust: you must take caution not to fuck over those people with your egomaniacal scheming so that they later have the desire to see that work dragged to hell and New Zealand and back in front of all the mighty gods of Mount Olympus.
An anonymous source contacted me last week to gift me with some gossip and the most cursed object of all time:
That’s right. I have in my possession a copy of the Handbook For Mortals screenplay.
Please note the revision number: 3841. I sincerely hope that this was part of a numbering system and this has not, in fact, been revised three thousand times. Because I have read it, dear reader. And three thousand more revisions would not have saved this. From its earliest days, Handbook For Mortals has been a total non-starter.
“Wow, Jenny! I can’t wait for you to rip this thing to shreds in a very special episode of Jealous Haters Book Club!” you may be thinking. Sadly, it’s much more difficult to prove Fair Use for unpublished material. After a weekend of reading up on Fair Use and unpublished work by living creators, I have decided to forgo becoming embroiled in the stupidest lawsuit of all time. I will not be excerpting any lines of text. However, the dialogue and much of the action in the book is taken wholesale from a draft of the screenplay. In some passages, even typos are duplicated, suggesting that it was copy/pasted from one document to another. You won’t be missing much.
Remember when I was like, “Wow, this book sucks so much because you can tell it was being adapted from a screenplay?” Yeah, I was wrong. The book sucks because the screenplay sucks, and somehow the book is an improvement. This draft of the screenplay is from 2011, so it had at least five years to age like milk, but somehow it managed to come out as a fine…well, I can’t say wine, but at least a vinegar that would be particularly useful for cleaning laminate flooring.
So, just how bad is it?
Shot according to this script, Handbook For Mortals would have been a shockingly short film. If we were to follow the oft-repeated “one page equals one minute” advice, the 112 pages of Handbook For Mortals would create a movie that’s just shy of two hours. But that oft-repeated advice is wrong as hell, as anyone who has ever read a screenplay could tell you. This has a lot to do with the pacing of scenes. For example, the movie Braveheart was shot from a screenplay that’s 143 pages long, but it clocked in at 177 minutes. Why? Action scenes take up a lot more room on film than on the page, as do sweeping shots of the Scottish countryside. On the other hand, movies with snappy, quick-paced dialogue like Moneyball, have longer page counts and shorter run times (168 pages of mostly dialogue for 133 minutes on the screen). The Handbook For Mortals script is mostly dialogue with little action and incredibly short scenes, some with only five to eight lines of conversation without action, like the scene that opens with Mac and Zade lying on some grass chatting for less than a page. What isn’t dialogue is usually description, rather than action. If produced in this format, Handbook For Mortals would be more Dunkirk, less Gone With The Wind. It would need significant padding to get it past the one hour mark. And speaking of those short scenes…
The film version would be choppy and confusing to any viewer who isn’t Lani Sarem. Think the “several weeks later,” time jumps in the book drag the story out over what feels like a full calendar year? Well, you’ll love the screenplay, where everything seems to happen on the same day. Zade leaves her home in New Mexico and seemingly auditions moments later, as we shift from leaving home to the theater without any indication in either the script or the dialogue to suggest a passage of time. No shot of Zade passing a Welcome To Nevada sign, no exterior of the theater, just straight from Zade telling her mother goodbye to Zade opening the doors in the casino. After Sofia’s literal stage dive, she shows up at a bar just a scene later, fully healed, with no mention of a passage of time. Events within scenes move weirdly, too; within eight urgent lines of Pete shouting for someone to call the paramedics, they arrive on the scene as if they’ve been standing in the wings waiting for their cue.
Sarem’s writing micromanages everything. Anything you’d see an actor do on screen from laughs to eye rolls, even blushing is scripted. It’s true that direction like, “(laughing nervously)” will come up in screenplays, but it’s usually when the action is commented on in the dialogue. I haven’t read the Fifty Shades Of Grey screenplay because I don’t hate myself, but I assume Ana’s lip biting and eye rolls would have been included because they’re an impetus for Christian’s lines that follow and therefore must be acted out by Dakota Johnson. In the Handbook For Mortals script, Sarem frequently specifies how the lines should be delivered, what emotion the actor should convey, and what expressions should be used. As someone who reads a lot of screenplays, I feel pretty confident in stating that the number of times this occurs in Handbook For Mortals is highly unusual and displays a shocking lack of faith in the director and actors. This could be due to inexperience as a writer; multiple crucial elements are either missing or employed in strange ways, like fades to black separating what should be continuous scenes and v.o. dialogue labeled as o.s. lines, which suggests this may have been Sarem’s first time.
Sarem included plenty of chances to showcase her singing as well as her nude or nearly-nude body. We know from interviews and the listing on IMDB Pro that Lani Sarem envisioned herself taking on the role of Zade. Which is what makes it so incredibly cringe-worthy when the position of her body is breathlessly described as being fully nude and barely covered by a sheet or lying on her stomach in just her underwear while reading her tarot cards. Why would she be nude, you might ask? Because the “passionate kissing” post-motorcycle ride doesn’t end with the pair just going home and taking things slow. Instead, there’s a sex scene, complete with Mac undressing her and a morning-after discussion of her tattoo, which stands in for the family necklace. In case you’re not impressed with Sarem’s beauty, she included a lot of subtle hints that you should be.
She’s sexy and she knows it, and you’re going to, as well, audience. Besides the nude scenes, we’re treated to the same book interludes of male characters standing around and discussing how sexy they find her. When Sofia is introduced, it’s important to Sarem to note in the action that it should be clear to the audience that though Sofia is beautiful, her personality makes her unattractive. Many characters make references to how gorgeous Zade is and how great her body is, to the point that it borders on sexual harassment of Sarem, by Sarem.
The characters are all somehow much, much worse than their book incarnations…except for Mac. Without the narrative to explain to us that Zade is given lots of gifts and perks at the production’s expense, Sofia’s griping about the special treatment Zade receives comes off as nothing more than unfounded jealousy. There’s no internal monologue from Zade or Mac to describe Charles as socially awkward or unusually career-driven, so on screen, he would just appear to be a total jackass. When the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dates with Jackson are removed, you’re simply left with a guy who likes to talk about how much he’d like to bang the chick he works with. Yeah, you read that right. The dates with Jackson aren’t in here at all.
The love triangle from the book is non-existent. Answering perhaps one of the most pressing questions I’ve had about the novel, the screenplay leaves out the oh-who-ever-will-I-choose subplot by almost immediately pairing up Zade and Mac. As in the book, Mac asks that they “take it slow,” although there’s no mention of his past heartache and just a few scenes later, he calls a company meeting to kiss Zade in front of the entire cast and crew, settling the matter. Though Jackson does have designs on Zade (and Sarem makes sure to include a scene where they kiss), his feelings aren’t reciprocated and absolutely no conflict arises as a result. This may be due in part to the fact that “Jackson” is literally Jackson Rathbone playing Jackson Rathbone. While the novel features “appearances” by Plain White T’s, the screenplay explicitly uses 100 Monkeys as the band, as well as the titles of their songs and the real names of the band members. Sarem wrote this while she managed the band. Imagine if someone you worked with wrote a screenplay in which you’d be expected to portray yourself kissing and delivering lines about how much you want to fuck the character based off of and played by them. Considering that the marketing of the Handbook For Mortals novel now includes “Team Mac” and “Team Jackson” merchandise, it’s clear that Sarem saw Rathbone, still starring in the wildly popular Twilight franchise, as her ticket toward getting the film produced. When the personal and professional relationship between Rathbone and Sarem soured and she set out to turn the book into a Young Adult sensation, she simply tacked on a love triangle because Twilight had one, and Twilight was the only blueprint she had to work from.
Handbook For Mortals was never meant to be a series. In another blatant attempt at copying the success of Twilight, Sarem stretched her original idea (already paper thin) into what has allegedly always been a planned series. Leaving aside the age of the protagonist, the love scene and multiple unclothed moments, the Handbook For Mortals movie was clearly meant to be a one-off. The single element in the novel that suggests any sort of continuation of the story, Lamborghini Girl, is conspicuously absent. There is no mention of being the town outcast due to special “magick” powers, and there’s no greater “magick” community that could oppose Mac’s involvement with Zade. The “magick” conflict is missing because…
We don’t find out that Zade is “magick” until page ninety-four. The novel’s scenes of Zade’s secretive illusions are presented in the screenplay as exactly that: illusions. The confrontation at the lemonade stand and the attempted murder of a cyclist––events that are superfluous in the book––would have tipped the audience off to Zade’s abilities and were sorely needed on the screen. Instead, her powers are inexplicably revealed at the end of the script when Dela breaks the news to Mac. Imagine watching a movie that appears to be a romance with a weird title from beginning to nearly the end before learning that it’s actually a story about witches. And then imagine that when the love interest finds out that his girlfriend is a witch who’s been using him for magic without his knowledge, he simply laughs it off in the final line of the movie.
All of the problems from the book are present here. For example, Sofia’s name flipping between Sofia and Sofie depending on its use in dialogue or description remains throughout, as does her abrupt, unexplained disappearance from the book. Overly used phrases like “show blacks” and “deeply into [his/her/character’s] eyes” first debuted here, in abundance. Dela and Charles’s flashback is unnecessarily included and, if filmed, would be one of, if not the, longest scenes in a movie that…isn’t about them. Dela’s manipulation of Charles with magic, as well as Zade’s use of magic on Mac are never dealt with, and though the mysterious family necklace becomes a mysterious family tattoo in the screenplay, it’s mentioned once and nothing ever comes of it, similar to the book. The characters state their personalities aloud in dialogue, just as in the book. The tarot card reading scene is still just Zade talking aloud about what the cards mean. Basically, anything that didn’t work in the novel was ported over from the screenplay, which was already terrible.
So, there you have it. The Handbook For Mortals movie that, God willing, will never come to fruition. The only good thing I can say about it is that they actually say the title of the movie in the screenplay. And even then, it sounds stupid.
June 7, 2018
Jealous Haters Book Club: Handbook For Mortals, Chapter 18 The Chariot part 2 or, “No One Is Responsible For Their Actions”
For your laughing pleasure, Esther Anne sent me this lovely screenshot:
First of all, @WHORadio is a prime example of why you need to carefully consider how your social media/web branding is going to look without spaces in it.
Second, the “some are saying” part is 100% true. It’s just that the “some” are Lani Sarem and Thomas Ian Nicholas. It’s a very exclusive group.
You can listen to interviews here if you have a high cringe tolerance.
So, when last we met, Lani Sarem was telling us about how in love her characters are, rather than showing us.
We also just saw Mac learn the truth about Zani’s magical lineage and finally got an answer to whether or not she’s immortal. She is not, which makes the fact that we’ve now spent like three chapters as some kind of leisurely stroll against the clock even more nonsensical. Upon having learned that his long-term not-yet-girlfriend is a witch, Mac says:
“Why do I feel like I am in some bad episode of Bewitched?” Are you both being serious right now?”
The mid-sentence quotation mark is present in the text, that’s not my finger slipping. This chapter has a higher-than-usual occurrence of typos.
Also, even a bad episode of Bewitched wouldn’t have had massive internal hemorrhaging. Imagine Darren inviting Larry over for dinner in the hopes of winning a promotion and Endora straight up fucking murders him.
He felt his whole world turning upside down––whether because these people were crazy, or beause what they were talking about was actually real, he wasn’t sure. Either way, he felt like he couldn’t win. He couldn’t be certain which option he preferred at the moment: did he hope everything they had said was true or did he hope they were crazy?
There’s that crazy again, implying delusion and separation from reality.
There’s a full page about the necklace that Zargon always wears and that is apparently a huge part of the story and has only been mentioned once before. I’m going to assume that since it’s barely on the page, the necklace is a super important piece of the story. Because that’s how this book works: needless detail about costumes and gifts lavished upon Lumbar, very little mention of things that turn out to be important.
Mac became fixated on Dela as she pulled at the pendant and ran it back and forth over the chain it hung on. He fixated on it because it was a nervous habit that I also had––and knew I had almost the exact same necklace, too., though mine was slightly smaller and the writing was less noticeable. He had never seen me without it and knew it was important and something to do with my family.
Ah, the random italics strike again. This is just a small slice of the description of the necklace, which takes up two long paragraphs. And Mac recognizes this nervous “habit” despite there only being one scene in which Lumps actually displays this behavior.
Charles explains that the reason no one can figure out Zoaster’s illusions is that they’re not illusions, they’re real magic. Mac asks what that has to do with her being sick now.
“When she did the Creation illusion, she built you into it. She was using you as a…how do I explain this? You were a conductor of sorts. Some magick needs to be grounded, basically, like electricity needs a grounding wire. She needed really strong energy to ground that magick and keep it stable. The magick she was doing was dark and old magick that…well…isn’t always very stable on it’s own. It’s referred to as chaos magick for obvious reasons. That’s why she wanted you to be on the board for the illusion.”
Record scratch. Hang on. There’s a lot to work on here.
No one had seen this illusion until opening night because it was so super secret. Laminate and Charles had only ever practiced it alone, with no one else in the theater. At one point, Mac was away on a camping trip when they were developing the illusion.
So, how did Ziggy “build” Mac into it if he wasn’t there all the other times she did it? Why was his absence only an issue during the actual performance and not during those rehearsals? If she’d been doing this super dangerous chaos majgikh all that time, if the excuse is that the majhgikal forces were ever so unpredictable and delicate, had it gone right every single time they’d rehearsed it? If that were the case, why would she have needed to make Mac’s presence a part of the spell?
Also, let’s talk about Mac’s involvement in this illusion. People cast bindings and hexes and curses all the time. I don’t pass judgment. Sometimes, people do magic for other people without permission. Do what you’re going to do. But this isn’t the same as casting a spell on someone. This is forcing someone to participate in your spell, as a conduit for magic or energy or whatever, without their knowledge. This isn’t using a toenail or a lock of hair. This is using an entire living person, body and soul or spirit or animus or whatever you want to call it, as an ingredient in magic that our protagonist acknowledges is super unstable and dangerous. Did she have a plan in place for what she would have done if things had gone wrong? What were the possible consequences to Mac? Did she have any misgivings about using him this way? Will any of this ever be explored?
Probably not.
“When did you walk off the board?” Charles asked.
“You mean during the show?
No, when you were doing the audience participation bit at that pirate-themed restaurant and your waiter forced you to “walk the plank” while everyone sang “Happy Birthday” to you. OBVIOUSLY DURING THE SHOW, YOU YUB NUB.
Never. Like I told you, after we got into our fight I was so upset that I knew I couldn’t run it, so I had Cam do it.”
Right now, he’s like, admitting to his boss that he walked off the job.
Charles and Sandwich grill Mac on when and where he was during the illusion.
He was feeling a little queasy about the fact that he hadn’t been there for me during such a critical moment––even though he’d had no idea I was relying on him in such a way.
You know what makes me a little queasy? The fact that right here is where blessed with the gift of hindsight, our narrator should examine her actions and note that it was wrong of her to have involved Mac without his permission. And then she should think about how bad it makes her feel to see him feeling bad over her actions. But that would only work in a book written by someone who isn’t envisioning their main character as a direct avatar of themself and who believes that any wrong choice their fictional self makes somehow reflects badly on who they are as a real-life person. Those types of authors tie themselves in knots trying to explain to readers that while it appears that the character has done something morally reprehensible, it’s okay because reasons. Nothing they ever do is actually wrong.
See also: Post-Obsidian Butterfly Anita Blake.
Anyway.
“So as long as you were in the theater, she could draw from you. It was when you walked out that the energy backfired through her, and that’s why she’s hurt,” Dela surmised from what Mac had just told her. He thought her comment held a tinge of blame––or at least it sounded to Mac like he was being blamed––but Dela wasn’t blaming him at all, just talking out loud.
This is another section where it’s clear that someone told Sarem, “You know, it seems kind of unfair that Dela is being so blamey here,” and she was like, “Ah, good catch. I’ll fix that,” and then the fix was just to throw in a line assuring the reader that what they’re reading right off the page isn’t actually what’s happening.
That doesn’t stop her from then reiterating the not-blame just a few lines later:
I was on my deathbed because of him.
Okay, like, at this point it feels like you’re really just on your inconvenience bed because there’s been absolutely no sense of urgency with regards to your condition. But either way, no, it’s not because of him. It’s because Zagina did her majghk without telling him. Dela even says that, but of course, we have to have our hero bereft that he thoughtlessly hurt the precious star of the book despite any of her reassurances:
“You didn’t know, so it’s not your fault. It’s not like she told you so you were aware. She’s a lot stronger than I knew, though. I don’t know how she made it through to finish the illusion, considering you left halfway through. It’s amazing that she could pull from you as long as you were in the theater.”
I know you’re suffering from crushing guilt because you think you killed your girlfriend but now is a great time to praise how strong and amazing she is. Just ignore the part where your spiritual autonomy was violated.
“Why would she do that without telling me?” Mac asked, sorrow in his voice and pain reflected across his face.
Because like mother, like daughter, Macswell:
“Well, I did it with Charles for years without him knowing, and she knew that. Of course, Charles was in the show, so he couldn’t have left. It’s really dangerous to use someone who is unaware without a surefire way of knowing they wont leave.” Dela was trying to reassure Mac it wasn’t really his fault, but it was only partially working.
It might just be really dangerous to use someone as a component in a spell without telling them in the first place. But this explanation allows us to finally lay the “who’s to blame?” question to rest for once and for all.
Spoiler alert: It’s Mac. Mac is to blame.
“Well, I wasn’t supposed to leave. I was just livid at the time. I let my emotions get the best of me. That’s something I don’t usually do. If only I could make it right.” Mac said the last words as he drifted off in thought. He felt more regret than he ever had about anything in his life.
Isn’t that a throbbing red flag right there? Remember what he was doing before he stormed off? Oh yeah. He was physically assaulting Lance up on the catwalk. Remember? Shaking her and hurting her on purpose? Gosh, he let his emotions get the best of him. That doesn’t usually happen. He regrets it so much and wishes he could make it right.
But back to the blame:
“[…]This isn’t exactly the best explanation, but, basically, because you caused the energy surge, you have to fix it as well.”
That’s Dela’s take on the situation. Mac is fully to blame and now he has to fix this mess. Our heroine glides right on past any responsibility for her own actions because it’s majjjekk and a different world and mortals can’t understand blah blah blah, totally absolved.
But Mac is willing to do anything to save Zunt, so he asks what he has to do:
“Normally I would sugarcoat this, but we don’t really have that kind of time. I’m just going to get down and dirty and to the point. Please try not to freak out. I have to forge a …um…well, it doesn’t matter what it really is. It’s going to look like a dagger––though it won’t actually be a dagger at all. It’s not worth explaining to you what it really is, other than it’s magick.
That’s the motto of the Lani Sarem School Of Storycraft.
At three o’clock sharp tonight, you’re going to have to plunge it into her heart on my altar outside.”

So, Mac does more thinking about how “insane” they must be and how everything he knows has been turned upside down or whatever. He tells Dela she sounds “crazy” and asks how stabbing Zappatos in the heart will help fix anything, but I’m over here like, “Couldn’t hurt to try, right?” while eagerly sharpening a kitchen knife like a cartoon chef.
“It’s extremely difficult to actually explain but, in a way, it will release the enegery that she’s battling with, plus––remember––it’s not a real dagger it’s a just going to look like one. It’s magick, with healing properties––think of it like an EpiPen. […]”
“Think of it working like this common object if that common object didn’t work exactly the way it works and instead you just kind of drove it through someone’s heart.”
Dela explains that once the energy inside of Limbo is released, she can then heal her and hopes that Mac listens and doesn’t think she’s “crazy.” Because like I said last time, this is the chapter of crazy.
Dela’s hands traced over the table out of nervousness, the tips of her fingers tracing the grooves of the tabletop in alternating slow and swift movements as the clock ticked by.
The seconds on the clock ticked by. The clock ticks but it doesn’t go anywhere while it’s doing that. And you have absolutely no chance in hell of suddenly ramping up the race-against-time drama now. Especially when Mac thinks:
Mac couldn’t believe everything that had happened in the past forty-eight hours […]
Remember when we couldn’t figure out how much time had passed? Well, here we go. Forty-eight hours. Lorde has been dying for forty-eight hours while they sit around drinking iced tea and sharing stories about the good old days. First of all, how long was that fucking story? And second, an author cannot reasonably expect us to believe that time is of the essence when we’re now on our third chapter of exposition sans heroine. No one has provided any kind of reason as to why they didn’t snap into action the moment they arrived. They just keep talking about how they don’t have much time and they have to act right away, after this quick story about their love lives and also would you like some fucking iced tea? We’ll get around to curing her at three in the morning two days later.
Mac is still grappling with the whole magic thing and he asks if Dela is sure this is the only way to save Zoloft.
“Dela’s not sure that at this point that even this will save her. Zade is pretty far gone already.” Charles’s voice resounded with pain and urgency.
Oh, now it’s urgent. After the How I Met Zade’s Mother tale of his past sexual conquests is over, now things are urgent.
“You don’t know how insane what you’re asking me to do sounds….”
WE GET IT! INSANE! CRAZY! NOT SANE! MENTAL! WEEEEE GEEEEET IIIIIIT. I think I said in the last recap that they say crazy and insane something like seven times but it feels like it’s a lot more. I realize now why that is: with the exception of it being used like once to describe Betty, it’s always being used in the exact same context. It’s always being used to express Mac’s doubt and that makes it stick out more.
“I do know how insane it sounds, Mac. […]”
See?
Anyway, Mac says he’ll stab Lindt Zuffles in the heart and Dela goes off to forge her magical hammer or whatever the fuck it is she’s going to do.
There’s a long section where Charles studies Mac and realizes how much Mac loves Zerbert, and Mac cries because he can’t lose her and it’s all his fault. Charles is like, “you won’t lose her!” but he doesn’t say, “and it’s not your fault,” because if it isn’t Mac’s fault, it’s Zungbean’s fault and we cannot have that, dear reader. Oh ho ho, no, we cannot have that.
Mac asks Charles why he and Dela broke up and why he left Zunder’s life:
“In regards to Dela, well, the biggest reason is that I was a very stupid, ignorant man––and it’s a very long story.”
It’s not like you don’t have time. Just let your kid die a little more. What’s the harm?
He paused for another moment before he carefully chose his next set of words. “Also, I’d like you to understand that I never left them. Dela left me and took Zade away. Though, yes, it was because I did her wrong and deserved it––at least for the most part.” Pain and sorrow filled Charles’s voice and his eyes looked heavy and pierced with regret.
His eyes look pierced? Ouch.
So, Mac asks Charles to tell him the “short version” of the story. Which, you know, why not go the long route? Why not waste more time while insisting that the situation is urgent?
“Let’s just say you handled all of the information about Dela and Zade remarkably well compared to how I handled it when Dela told me. I lost it when she told me what she was. It was right after we had Zade. I thought maybe she had made me love her––which, by the way, even they can’t really do. Lust yes; love, no. Magick can help open your eyes and heart and even change circumstances to make it optimal, but it can’t force anyone to love you.”
Let’s just acknowledge here that Zade and Mac aren’t even dating exclusively and they’ve known each other for what, under a year? But Charles and Dela met during the seventies and their daughter is in her twenties. That means he and Dela were together for like twenty years before she told him the truth. And it was like, “By the way, I’ve been doing majjjikk on you without your permission for twenty years, surprise!” We really can’t blame Charles for not taking that all in stride.
“Because I wasn’t sure if I could believe her, I cheated on Dela to see if I could. When I was able to cheat, I realized that if she had put a spell on me she wouldn’t have ‘let’ me be able to do that
So, to test his theory, he had to go all the way through with it? Like Dela is going to cast a spell to prevent him from infidelity but it’s not going to stop him from engaging in the earliest stage of cheating? Like, she’s not going to remove the thought of doing it from his head? She’s going to do some spell that lets him flirt with chicks and seriously consider cheating? He had to actually cheat, like, go back to some woman’s place, make out, grope, get a blowy james, whatever they ended up doing, but he had to like, complete the act to make sure? Sounds like some desperate rationalizations going on there, Chuck.
I felt so guilty about what I had done that I started drinking heavily and even started doing drugs. Dela said she understood and forgave me, but I got to a real low point.
“To make matters worse, I also started talking about putting Zade in the show. I guess Dela saw that guy I used to be––the jerk that slept around and was power- and money-hungry. When she asked her cards, she saw that going back to my old life was one path I could take. There was another path where we would all be happy together, but she couldn’t see which of the two I would choose in the long run. So she chose her own path. She just up and left. I came home one day…to a letter.”
Because Sandwich Jones couldn’t see exactly what was going to happen in the future, she took her toys and went home? Okay.
“In the letter, she said she would come back when––and if––I had decided to take the right path, and when she saw it clearly. Her leaving made me so much worse, because when she left it made me depressed. It caused even more havoc on my thoughts; on top of everything else, I was embarassed. I never talked about my failure. I found out later, though, that she did put a spell on me to not talk about Zade––or to admit to a connection to either of them. That never made any sense to me, but I think it was because our break-up was just too hard on her. I broke her heart, so she thought it was best to push me out of her life altogheter. She just didn’t want to have to deal with our past at all. That’s the short version, anyway. Someday I’ll tell you the full one.”
There’s a longer version?
I want to go ahead and recap what we’ve learned in this chapter and how no one is responsible for it:
Zandelion used Mac to do a dangerous spell without telling him but that’s not her fault because her mom did it, too.
The spell went wrong but that’s not Lasik’s fault because Mac unpredictably left the theater.
Mac left the theater, but that’s not his fault because he was really, really emotional.
Charles cheated on Dela but that’s not his fault, he had to do it because he thought he was under a spell.
Dela kidnapped their daughter, keeping Charles from seeing his own child until she was an adult, but that was the cards telling her to do that.
Charles returned to his old ways, but that was Dela’s fault because she left him.
Charles never went back to see his own child because Dela had put a spell on him to make him…not be able to tell people about her?
Yeah, back up. Charles could have contacted his daughter but he didn’t because of a spell that made him not talk about her? Also, let’s look at how really sinister that binding is: without the ability to speak to anyone about having a daughter or an ex-partner, he had no legal recourse to pursue custody. From the way the spell is described, it wouldn’t have prevented Charles from trying to contact Zeddar Leese and Deli on his own, but it definitely would have prevented him from ever getting help in trying to assert his parental rights. Basically, Dela kidnapped their kid and put a spell on him so she could never be caught.
Which leaves me at the end of this chapter wondering: why can he talk about it now? At what point was the spell lifted? When he was in the waiting room at the hospital? Why didn’t his memories show any sense of surprise that he could reveal this secret? And why is he still in love with Panini after she did something so truly heinous?
The answer is: like the author herself, no one in this book is responsible for their actions just so long as they really, really want what they did to be the right thing.
June 5, 2018
Why I’m backing away from romance “community” concerns
Yesterday, I announced on Twitter that I no longer wanted to be tagged in, talked to, or asked about anything relating to #CockyGate, book stuffing, or any issue affecting the romance “community”, barring something like discrimination or prejudice. It may have seemed like a flounce out of nowhere. In reality, it was a mixture of a few things that have been going on for a while and which finally came to a head.
Mainly, the catalyst was the question: “Where were you?”
Without naming names, here’s the situation: Author X, with whom I have acquaintances in common, was called out for a video she made last January. In the video, which she now claims was “satire”, this author mocked Author Y, who called out Kindle Unlimited page stuffing scams. Author X went on at length for thirty minutes, proclaiming that book stuffers are smart, that she doesn’t care about book stuffers because she’s not a KU author and it doesn’t affect her, and making fun of Author Y for using YouTube and her low follower count. This allegedly satirical video resulted in some of the Author X’s readers and some other authors––who were probably page stuffing, themselves––to attack and threaten Author Y, who then removed her videos.
In other words, someone tried to call out a very real issue affecting authors and readers and another author went to ridiculous lengths to silence her, all while admitting that the issue didn’t have any impact on her career, anyway.
So, it was your standard Indie Romance Monday.
Now that the page stuffing scandal has gotten even more traction, Author Y stepped up and said, hey, I was talking about this a while ago but Author X made a video and it got people to attack me so I shut up about it. Obviously, some people were angry about that. My take (on another person’s Facebook status about the situation; I did not post the original call out or any statuses of my own about the issue) was that the “satire” video failed and Author X should apologize and retract. Others believed the same. But Author X chose instead to shout about how no one was silenced (they were), that she doesn’t hurt people’s feelings (she did), and perhaps my favorite (and the only direct quote I’ll use here): “Don’t you find it strange that I ‘silenced’ her, yet she suddenly has the courage to come forward and share this video for everyone who didn’t see it before?”
I wanted to scream, “NO, YOU STUPID BITCH, IT’S NOT STRANGE! IT’S THAT SHE KNOWS SHE HAS SUPPORT NOW!”
But all of that shoulder-tightening nonsense aside, what really got me was that several people on a very contentious Facebook thread about it demanded to know “Where were you?” when this was going on in January if I cared so much about it.
Where was I?
I wasn’t carefully monitoring the social media feeds of every single romance author to see if someone was being mean to them.
Where was I?
I was probably over-extending myself trying to stick up for someone else on some other issue affecting our alleged “community”.
Where was I?
Not making sure to follow two authors I’d never heard of until very recently to make sure they were able to get along with each other because I am not the fucking Indie Romance Preschool Monitor.
That “Where were you?”, repeated twice in that thread, four times in private messages, was the perfect “gotcha!” for people who, until their friend was called out for her actions, were happy to use the #GetLoud hashtag to stick up for silenced or under-siege authors. But the second it was someone they liked, all the old standbys came out. She was joking! It was sarcasm! Doesn’t anyone understand satire? Gosh! And when people still said, “yeah, she might not have intended to hurt this author, but she did,” they immediately jumped to that “Where were you?” Because if you imply that a person didn’t care enough six months ago…
What?
Six months ago, I didn’t know this was happening to Author Y. No one did, because she was afraid to speak up because she had been, what? SILENCED. Nobody knew what had happened to her because she didn’t have a large following at the time, so she had no support. Obviously, people didn’t hear about it then. That doesn’t mean they can’t care about it, now, or that people just not knowing something was going on means that it wasn’t a big deal and they should get a pass for their shitty behavior.
But no. “Where were you?”
Since I made a name for this blog by calling out the abuse and plagiarism in Fifty Shades Of Grey, I’ve been able to use it and my social media presence as a tool to support authors and readers who’ve run into situations where they’ve felt powerless. I’ve been able to call out bad author behavior and scams. I’ve been really lucky to have the voice that I have and the platform that I have. But I’ve also gotten a lot of shit for it. The owner of a now-defunct publishing house threatened me with physical violence. A publisher declined to release an anthology if I was included in it. I’ve been told gossip at bars at conferences about authors who’ve threatened to pull their books from publishers if they ever bought a manuscript from me. A guy threatened to make a necklace from my teeth. Rumors were started that I spent time in prison for gang violence and therefore shouldn’t be allowed at some events. Through trying to defend authors and readers, often after someone requested help from me, I have made myself persona non grata in my own industry. I don’t go to many conferences anymore because of my experiences at the few that I have gone to recently. Many times I spent evenings alone in my room while people who have been lovely and friendly to me for years in private wouldn’t chance being seen with me in public in front of other authors, agents, and publishers. At Romantic Times in Dallas, I spent several nights crying over the humiliation of receiving “the cut direct” from people who later tried to pull, “Oh, that was you? I didn’t even recognize you!” as though I didn’t have my name right there on my badge.
Interestingly enough, it was Anna Todd, an author I’d called out here on this blog and later apologized for, who was the kindest to me at that event. I’ll always be grateful to her for that.
And yesterday, at the height of all of this nonsense, I was asked, “Where were you?”
Because I haven’t done enough.
Because I don’t care enough.
Because I could be giving more.
One of the people who asked, “Where were you?” had even been sending me screenshots from private groups to keep me updated about Faleena Hopkins. She’d sent me things she’d asked me to post or spread the word about. She’d been fine with using me as a tool, but the moment I mildly disagreed with her friend, Author X, she’d demanded to know: “Where were you when this was happening back in January?”
Well, where the fuck were you, romance “community”, when I needed you? That’s right. You were nowhere. You were telling me not to worry about it. You were telling me that I was making too big a deal of it. You were telling me to make it into a joke, to laugh it off, while I suffered and struggled with suicidal ideation because I knew, just from the response of people in the industry that I’d once trusted, that I was alone and nobody had my back. But now I’m supposed to jump at every screenshot over every trivial matter that might arise. You want to come to me with your grievances and gossip, you want me to listen, but practically no one listened to me in my time of need and if they did, only one author expressed public support.
But I’m supposed to do more. I’m supposed to care about what’s happening in your snotty little private groups where you talk shit freely about other authors in comfortable anonymity. I’m supposed to give a shit if author A’s feelings got hurt by Author B over something incredibly small and stupid, while larger problems are going on. These demands are constantly streaming into my emails, DMs, Facebook messages, Tumblr inbox, anywhere someone thinks they can grab my attention and be granted my time, my anger, my energy.
Yesterday, when I announced on Twitter that I was resigning my unintentional post as attack dog, people sent very nice messages suggesting self-care and stepping away for my own mental health. These messages are appreciated and I don’t want to appear ungrateful by saying this, because I am so grateful for the support of readers and authors who are still out there, doing what they can. This post is not addressed to you. But I want to make it clear: this is not me stepping away for my mental health. My mental health is fine. This is me acting out the scene from Half Baked when Scarface quits his job. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you’re cool, and fuck you, I’m out. This is me quitting and walking out of the office backward with both middle fingers extended.
Where were you?
I was right here. I was doing what you asked me to do. I was wrecking industry connections and stifling my own career. I was taking time out from writing books and blogging the fun stuff that makes me happy. I was spending my days constantly despairing over the state of an industry I loved, losing ground while cheaters and disingenuously “nice” people prospered. That’s where I was.
I’ll tell you where I’m going to be from now on: writing my books, focusing on my career and working as hard as possible for my readers. Blogging the stuff that’s fun, not the stuff that’s going to make me dread getting online. Not answering emails trying to alert me to the latest crisis, problem, or pointless drama I don’t even want to be involved in.
Where were you?
Where the fuck were you?
May 30, 2018
BABY MAKES THREE IS HERE!
I said it would be May, and by god, it IS May!
Baby Makes Three (Penny’s Story): With a supportive spouse who adores her and a fresh start toward the career of her dreams, there isn’t much else that Penny Parker-Pratchett wants…except for a baby.
When a second pregnancy brings Penny and her husband, Ian, the surprise of a lifetime, it seems that his vision of domestic bliss isn’t quite what she’d thought it would be. With motherhood closer than ever before, Penny must contend not only with doubts about her maternal instincts but also with the reality that sometimes life doesn’t always go as planned…
Baby Makes Three (Ian’s Story): Married to the love of his life, owning a successful architecture firm, and living in a tropical paradise, Ian Pratchett knows he’s achieved a dream most people would envy. But one goal remains painfully out of reach—fatherhood.
When Ian and his wife, Penny, are finally blessed with a second chance at parenthood, the pain of past losses haunts him. And when their blessing turns out to be more than they bargained for, Ian must let go of the fears that have driven him to success, or risk disappointing the one woman he swore he would never let down again.
As always, I hope you enjoy the book(s) and thanks for your continued support of my bonkers writing dreams!
May 25, 2018
Jealous Haters Book Club: Handbook For Mortals, Chapter 18 The Chariot part 1 or, “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend”
I don’t think I have any Lani news this time around, simply because Book Twitter is so busy with #CockyGate and #ForeverGate at the moment. But I do have a heads up about content this time around. If you’re mentally ill and “crazy” or “insane” as a pejorative bothers you, it’s all over this chapter. No exaggeration. “Crazy” is used seven times in this chapter. “Insane” is used four times. That might not seem like a lot, but in context, it becomes impossible to overlook. It will continue into the next recap.
There is so much in this chapter that I’m splitting it into two parts. It’s not that the chapter is long, necessarily. It’s just the high amount of wrong with it.
We’re also going to get the G-word and a lot of made up, One True Path nonsense, too. Enjoy!
This chapter finds us back in the kitchen, where Mac is out of iced tea. His lack of tea is the only thing that saves us from the story of Charles and Dela’s “romance.”
The beautiful way Dela weaved her words and her prowess as a storyteller had Mac listening so intently the whole time that the sudden pause in the story brought him jarringly back to reality.
Again, this is the author complimenting herself on how great she told the story since she’s the one who wrote it. Writing Tip: don’t bother to actually write well. Just tell the reader that you did.
Don’t actually do that. Or your book is going to end up here.
Dela goes to get Mac more tea, giving Mac time to muse over what he’s just heard. Oh, and to insult an entire race and two subcultures of people.
Mac had seen Charles only one way for so long. Mac vaguely know that Charles had toured as a traveling magician when he was young but had never known that he was basically really a carnie and a gypsy in a traveling circus.
Let me just…ugh. Okay, carnies and circus folk aren’t the same thing. And they really aren’t the same thing as Roma. For one, you can’t choose to be a member of a marginalized diaspora as a way of life or career or through affinity or affection for the race or culture (something Lani Sarem refuses to accept despite numerous requests from Romani people). As for carnies vs. circus…it’s right there. It’s in the name. Carnies are a subculture of people (some say a dying subculture) with their own dialects and customs related to running a traveling carnival. Circus performers are part of a subculture of people with their own terminology and customs related to performing in a circus. You can choose to grow up and be in the circus or to become a carnie if you’re drawn to that kind of life. And Mac has opinions on what makes a person a carnie, a circus performer, or a g-word:
He knew other who had experienced that life. Often, people who started off that way did so because they had nothing and no one. That life was a collector of the odd and the misfits. Charles must have also started out with nothing and really had no one to end up there.
If the Roma have nothing and no one, it’s due to racial and cultural discrimination that has ripped their people apart. Carnivals do attract all kinds of people to work in them, but in the past, the majority of carnival companies were owned and run by families, like any family business that hires additional workers. And circus performers? Where the hell else are they going to go to use their skills and training? The bank? Nobody wakes up and accidentally becomes a lion tamer because their life is in shambles. People took the skills they had, got together in groups and set off to make money. We often say people “ran off and joined the circus” but there have always been skilled performers who’ve deliberately set out to hone their talents specifically for circus performing. That’s why there are now prestigious circus schools. Cirque Du Soleil wouldn’t exist if talented performers didn’t want to be in a friggin circus. It’s not necessarily a last resort.
So, Mac is thinking about how hard life is for people in the circus and how unglamorous Charles’s life must have been.
His eyes darted towards Charles, who was off in thought, thinking about the past and the woman sitting next to him.
How can Mac see what Charles is thinking? Also, thanks for clearing up that people lost in thought are thinking. We’re all too stupid to get there ourselves.
Mac’s opinion was rapidly changing and he really was starting to see why Charles had achieved all of his fame and greatness.
Um, when have we ever seen Mac believing anything to the contrary? He’s shown nothing but admiration toward Charles for his work ethic and talent so far in this whole book. And if he didn’t, why would a story about Charles sleeping with a bunch of women indiscriminately make Mac realize how Charles achieved fame and greatness?
Charles tells Mac that he hadn’t planned to wear the bulletproof vest as Dela had advised him to:
“I was convinced that what Dela had done that first day was some sort of really good parlor trick. I was a magician who pulled off these impossible feats every day; if folks knew how they were done they would know how easy it is to fool people. I had always believed we were both tricksters, deceiving people in our own ways. The difference––I always thought––was people came to me to be fooled; they wanted me to deceive them, but they came to her for the truth. I finally realized that she didn’t have ‘sleeves’ to hide her kind of cards, though, so I tried to have conversations with Betty to see if I could tell what she was thinking or if she acted odd. It didn’t take long for me to see that Betty was incredibly hard to read––and reading people was usually something I did easily. […]
I love that this section completely reinforces what I said about Sandwich McGillicuty in the last chapter. Here’s Charles going, “I’m a fraud who’s good at reading people,” directly after we heard about how some people are hard for Dela to read. Thanks for the backup, Chuck.
He finishes the giant block paragraph of dialogue by explaining that he figured it wouldn’t hurt to wear the vest as a precaution.
Dela was a good storyteller but Charles was a master.
Because god forbid Chavid Spopperfield: Dream Daddy be bested at any skill. What follows that sentence is a rapturous paragraph describing the volume, pitch, and speed with which Charles speaks, how his facial expressions match what he’s saying, and how impressed Mac is with him.
He looked to Mac and grinned only slightly from the corner of his mouth. His eyes sparkled, making Charles look mischevious and full of secrets, and Mac took the bait.
Then they just start pawing each other’s clothes off in a frenzy and Charles raws Mac right on the fucking table in a pool of iced tea and broken mason jars.
Obviously, that doesn’t really happen. But I’d like to point out that the way that was written, Mac’s eyes were sparkling and that made Charles look mischevious and full of secrets.
As I scanned through Mac’s memories, […]
So, I think this is enough to confirm that the last chapter was, in fact, Zani looking at her parents’ memories of flirting and checking each other out.
Anyway, what she can tell from Mac’s memories is that he’s interested to know what happens next.
He wanted to know what had made his two hosts––who were obviously still madly in love with one another––break up, and then not even allow their daughter to see her own father. Mac had been drawn completely into the story between the two of them. He was more hooked than a housewife watching, Days of Our Lives.
Wow, what a great boyfriend, finding your childhood trauma so super entertaining. And what a great feminist you are, parroting that bored housewife trope! Girl power! Can’t wait for your “female-led” motion picture.
Charles says it was difficult to hide the bulletproof vest from everyone.
That Sunday I wasn’t even sure whether I was hoping for Deal to be right––or whether I should hope that Betty wasn’t really that crazy.
So, here’s the thing: everybody learns about offensive shit at different times and not everybody finds the same stuff offensive. I still refer to events and coincidences as being crazy, even in my fiction writing and not just as an off-the-cuff remark I haven’t broken the habit of. As a mentally ill person, I don’t have a problem with describing a pizza as “crazy good” or saying, “Whoa, people still think the Earth is flat? That’s crazy!” That’s not the case for everyone. I know some mentally ill people who would prefer that the word never be used at all. I’m not gonna sit here and be like, “I, arbiter of all mental health social justice, decree that this word is or isn’t okay to use!” with my mighty staff held aloft. I’m just giving you a read on my barometer where the word “crazy” is concerned.
This? I don’t like.
It would be one thing, I guess if they were describing someone who behaves in a zany way as crazy. You know, like Crazy Dan’s Discount Fireworks Emporium. Because owning a big giant building packed to the rafters with powerful explosives is bananas. But they’re describing this jilted woman (already a stereotype) as “crazy” because she plans to murder someone. And that really contributes to the commonly held misconception that “crazy” people are always violent and that violent people are always “crazy.” It’s not enough for Betty to just be jealous and a shitty person. She has to be “crazy” in a clinical way because it makes her more dangerous and spooky and dramatic, a la Leila or Layla or whoever in Fifty Shades Darker. She couldn’t just be a jealous lover. She had to be a crazy person because then she’s way more threatening and scary!
Anyway, he wears the vest and Betty shoots him and he, unfortunately, survives to spawn the worst heroine this side of Anita Blake. Mac is like, whoa, she shot you?
Even though he was expecting that answer it was still insane in his mind that it happened. “That’s completely crazy. I can’t even fathom…she really shot you!”
“Wow, that’s so crazy someone shot at you, that’s insane,” isn’t necessarily something I personally would take issue with, if it wasn’t followed by Charles finishing the story with:
“So, Betty went to a mental hospital where, I believe, she received help––and I lived to see another day.”
So, yeah. Betty isn’t just out-there crazy. She’s crazy-crazy, and the guy who mistreated her and sent her off on whatever breakdown prompted her to become one of the extremely rare mentally ill people to perpetrate meticulously pre-meditated violence doesn’t even really care if she got help or not because hey, it didn’t affect him.
Really, think about that. Think about how impressive we’re all supposed to find Charles, what an amazing person he is. And we’ve just heard that he so callously disregarded a woman he had employed for years that she became clinically mentally ill and he doesn’t remember if she even got help.
Mac asks Dela what she’d seen at the end of Charles’s reading the night she’d warned him about Betty.
“Well, I saw that if he listened to me about the vest, and survived, we would be together––and we would have Zade. […]
You knew. You knew and you did nothing to stop it from happening.
Now, since Mac asks a question about Dela’s gift of claribullshit and why she couldn’t see the whole thing with Charles and Zade clearly, we need another long passage about mystic woo, burdened under the weight of a thousand similes.
“We all have free will. Now, when you get a reading, you are opening up the possibility of changing what happens based on the information you get and, therefore, you are making a decision at that time. It’s kind of like when you get in a car to go somewhere. The people you ask about in a reading are the people riding in the passenger seat of your car. You, the one getting the reading, are the driver of the car. Your decisions based on the reading determine where everyone who is riding with you goes. If someone else gets a reading they then become the driver of their own car.” She paused, waiting to see if her explanation had sunk in. “I can explain further, […]”
Please don’t. Because none of that made any fucking sense in the first place. All of that basically says that if someone doesn’t get a tarot reading, their lives are hopelessly out of their control and they are bound to the whims of other people in their lives who do peer into their future.
Hey There Delilah asks Mac if he understands.
“Uh…yeah it’s a little hard to follow but I think I get it. But…then…what happened?” Mac asked, realizing that while he was interested in the story––and even more intrigued by the gift that Dela possessed––he was pretty sure that he missed the point as to why this was all relevant in regards to what was wrong with Zade.
There are times in this book where you can just see the editor’s notes. “Um, Lani? This whole part is…there. Good! I mean, it’s good! It’s fascinating. But…why exactly are we getting all this information now? How is this relevant in regards to what’s wrong with Zade?”
And then Sarem just wrote her direct answer to the editor’s note into the manuscript rather than cut her precious parental love story to get back to the immediate action.
“No. Sorry. I mean…Well, that was a great story, but I’m confused, and i think I must have missed something. Why did I need to know this now? What does this have to do with Zade dying? What happened…to Zade?“
Like, this had to be another editor note (if we’re going to operate under the delusion that this thing had editors). “Why hasn’t Mac asked what’s going on with Zade?” Dollars to donuts, someone suggested she should cut the entire Charles/Dela/Betty subplot and, rather than tighten up the book, she chose to leave it and explain in the text that gosh, she’s just such a talented weaver of stories that everyone got caught up.
It’s like some weird meta-upstaging of her own author-insert protagonist. “Yes, yes, I know you’re dying, but everyone who loves you is just so enraptured by my talent as an author that they’ve forgotten all about you and left you off the page for three chapters.”
Dela pursed her lips together
Well, you can’t purse your lips apart, can you?
and, for a moment, looked deep into Mac’s eyes. She hoped she was doing the right thing. She hoped that he could handle the truth about what their family was––and she hoped Zade would be okay with him knowing. She thought about looking into it for a moment with her cards, but the reality was that she knew he was going to have to understand it all to save my life.
The POV catastrophes in this I swear to fucking God. And these people cannot do anything without consulting their cards. Can you imagine going grocery shopping with them? “Hmm, these strawberries are two containers for five dollars but I’m not sure I would eat them both before they went bad…” and then Dela just plops down in the middle of the produce section and lays out a gigantic spread involved all seventy-eight cards.
Dela is sad that Zunk isn’t going to have a chance to tell Mac about her witchiness herself and that he would be more inclined to believe if it were coming from her.
I would have preferred to tell Mac myself and I still wish he didn’t have to find out so soon after we met, but there wasn’t an another option and i wasn’t in the capacity to voice any opinions. I knew she had no other choice.
If I ever meet Lani Sarem in person it will be unfortunate and I will regret every choice I’ve ever made in my life up until that point, but if I do ever meet her I am, for a moment, going to look deep into her eyes and ask, “What the fuck is up with the fucking italics?”
This entire chapter is Zort telling the reader directly what everyone in the room is thinking and feeling and has ever thought and felt. We’re already in her POV, even if she weirdly skews it by referring to herself in the third person in the narration every now and then. There are a bunch of spots where she refers to herself as “I” in the telling of the story. It just happened in a POV skew above. What makes this part so different that it has to be set out stylistically from all those other times?
NOTHING! NO REASON!
“I, and therefore Zade, come from a very long line of tarot readers, but we are more than just that. The one skill actually has nothing to do with the other. They are separate trades. Kind of like welding and carpentry: they are two totally different things, but it can be very helpful if you can do both. There are many that do only one or the other.”
You know what else is very helpful? If you mention what both things are when you’re talking about two things. Even if they’re unrelated.
Mac says he’s confused and it’s like, no fucking wonder. She’s talking about how tarot reading doesn’t have anything to do with this other thing she hasn’t mentioned yet, then she jumps into contractor metaphors.
Before she clears up the confusion, though, we need YET ANOTHER GOD DAMN LECTURE ABOUT TAROT.
“Mac, my daughter and I are tarot readers––but that’s only the side thing we do. Tarot will help to guide you and give you answers to your life’s questions and it points you down your life path to the lessons you need to learn. We all come into the human form to learn lessons and to grow. Tarot helps you to correct the mistakes you’ve made in your life. Tarot, if we go far enough back, actually comes from an ancient form of Judaism, which we can trace back to the kings of old––soothsayers are in the bible, kings would not make moves without consulting one. But Zade and I also come from an even longer line of practicing witches, and even beyond that, magical beings. The real kind––spelled with a ‘k’ at the end––not what Charlie usually does. Not mortal but not immortal either, clearly.
If “real” magic is spelled with a ‘k’, why don’t they come from a long line of magicKal beings?
By the way, the thing about Tarot coming from Judaism is one of those unsupported New Age rumors, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell. The first time I heard the Jewish tarot origin story was in the ’90s when celebrities starting taking an interest in Kabbalah and then a couple of “Tree Of Life Tarot” decks and books came out, presumably to cash in on the trend. All of the “evidence” that it’s somehow connected to Judaism seems to come from numerologists who go, “Well, there are x number of things mentioned in the Old Testament and there are also x numbers of cards in this suit,” etc. If anybody out there has non-numerology based stuff about a connection between bible-times Judaism and tarot, drop a link in the comments. But for now, I’m declaring the claim of tarot in the Old Testament false. Tarot was a popular card game in the middle ages that somewhere down the road became a fortune-telling device in the eighteenth century.
Not everything used in modern-day witchcraft or New Age-ry has to have ancient, mystical origins to be valid. Not even in your fiction.
So, now we know the answer to whether or not our main character is immortal. It’s always good to find that stuff out 83% into the book. That’s like, the perfect place.
Mac is having a hard time grasping this majgikhhall information.
“Like the TV show Charmed, witches?” Mac asked warily.
“Oh, no. That show got to be pretty silly. They did get some things right, like the power of three. We do a lot in threes. Ever seen a movie called Practical Magic with Sandra Bullock?”
“Yeah, I think so.” Mac nodded.
“Much more like that. Actually, I am almost sure a real praciticing witch either wrote that or helped write that, though a real witch probably wrote Charmed, too.”
Alice Hoffman, author of Practical Magic, is Jewish. The people who wrote Charmed aren’t witches. A better reference to pull here would have been The Craft, as they actually consulted with witches throughout development and filming. And one of the stars of the movie, Fairuza Balk, is Wiccan and apparently owns a New Age store. And another of the stars, Rachel True, is a professional tarot reader who has her own book and deck coming out soon.
There is a funny story, though, about the witch consultant on the Practical Magic film, if you ever want to look it up and have a laugh. I mean, it’s probably not funny to the people she cursed, but it’s funny to me.
Charles chimed in to help explain what Mac was stumbling over.
But Charles isn’t magicK…
Oh my god.
He’s going to MagicKsplain.
“What I do––what every magician does––is the art of deception, we are very good at being con artists. What Zade and Dela do is real magick––yes, with a ‘k’––not grand parlor tricks.”
This book feels like it was written specifically for me to make fun of it.
“So, do you worship the devil?” he speculated. He wasn’t a “go to church on Sunday” kind of guy, but he did believe in God.
Hey, remember that chapter where Lemur probably paralyzed the guy on the bicycle? And Mac was furious that she read tarot cards because believing in stuff is stupid and he uses reason and logic? Now he suddenly has a spiritual side?
Dela scoffed at his question while shaking her head. “Hardly. No, just like everything beautiful, magick comes from God. Prayer is a form of magick. He gives us all the ability. Some are just afraid of it. Of course, just like any other skill some are better at it than others. You may play basketball well. I do magick well.” She raised her eyebrow and smirked slightly.
BEHOLD! Every fifteen-year-old who’s just bought a Silver Ravenwolf book!
Seriously, the “All spiritual beliefs are my (real and correct) spiritual beliefs in disguise” One Twu Way bullshit grates on me so badly. I think pretty much anyone who wasn’t raised in some kind of pagan religion has gone through the phase of smugly telling their Christian friends that when they’re praying they’re actually casting spells. Some people never get through that phase and walk around talking about how all modern religion is really based on Celtic magjickh or some shit. If this applies to you, knock it the fuck off, you’re embarrassing the rest of us.
Also something to stop doing when talking about any paganism or witchcraft or magic, k-type or not?
She was satisfied that she had given him enough to begin to question what he had been taught growing up––or at least enough information to doubt what he had believed all along.
And you know what? Everyfuckingbody else quit doing this, too. It’s not your job to “fix” anyone who doesn’t share your faith. “But Jenny, what about religions where it’s okay to have child brides?” Fucking try to convince them that having child brides is like, illegal and wrong, not that they’re supposed to believe in this/these Gods or magical forces. “What if their church is homophobic?” Again, them not thinking your belief system is superior is not the issue in that particular situation. Converting them to your faith shouldn’t be prioritized over mitigating the harm they’re doing to other people. Plus, many religions teach from a very early age that anyone asking you questions in an effort to make you doubt your faith is the reason you should cling to that faith tighter. In other words, trying to change someone’s mind will only make it up even more. Live your life, don’t hide your beliefs, and if they want to convert from whatever their faith is, they will and it’s not your business.
This book is starting to feel like pagan recruitment material.
Charles and Dela explain how she became his assistant after Betty, and how she secretly used magic to make his illusions better.
So, basically, she used magic on him without telling him or asking for permission. How romantic. Ha ha, just kidding. That’s abusive as hell.
It was evident by looking at the two of them that true love never dies––nor does it know time and distance. When you love someone it’s a force that exists despite what walls you put up to hide how you feel. Their eyes couldn’t lie about how much they loved each other.
Hopefully, their eyes aren’t in as fucked up and toxic a relationship as their whole bodies are.
Next recap, we’ll find out how it’s All Mac’s Fault that Zade did something stupid and abusive, too!
May 23, 2018
#CockyGate2: Forever Boogaloo
In a story that’s getting weirder and weirder by the minute, it appears that someone has filed for a trademark for the word “forever” as it relates to all titles across all genres in print, e-book, and publishing houses.
The author? Heidi McLaughlin, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of Forever My Girl, recently a major motion picture and one of the specimens entered on the application.
And yup. This case is just as big a banana split as Faleena Hopkins’s trademark of “cocky”. But in a whole different way. See, McLaughlin claims that the trademark has been filed by…an impersonator?
The “Marisa” referenced in the post is McLaughlin’s agent, Marisa Corvisiero, of Corvisiero Literary Agency, who McLaughlin states did not file the trademark on her behalf:
Due to the high level of “poor me, I volunteer, I donate to charity, people in my life have died and it made me very sad,” in her post, I’m officially not buying that it was a mistake. Maybe that’s unfair of me. Or maybe it’s because we see this canned victim reaction whenever someone’s scheme falls through.
May 21, 2018
Things That Scare Me And Are Easily Avoidable
Greetings, Trout Nation. As you may have guessed, I am a fucking coward. I am afraid of everything. Despite having grown up in a haunted house and firmly believing that I’ve been abducted by aliens, and despite the fact that I often roll joints on an Ouija board, I’m so afraid of the most ridiculous things. Things that can easily be avoided.
There are some things that are just scary, but sometimes you have to get through them. My fear of being cut in half by an elevator? Well, sometimes you just have to get on that elevator (move very fast, and never try to squeeze through closing doors. Thirty people a year are gruesomely killed by elevators. Look it up). Live in Michigan but you’re afraid of driving over the Mackinac Bridge? We all are and have been since 1989, but if you live here, you’re gonna have to do it some time. Like I said, these are unavoidable situations for me sometimes (though I have been known to take the stairs to ridiculous heights). But here are some things I fear that are easily avoidable.
These are a few:
The Congress Plaza Hotel, Chicago, IL If you have some spare time and want to read some truly morbid shit, give The Congress Plaza Hotel a Google. You’ll find charming stories about a mother throwing her children to their deaths from a twelve-story window, America’s first serial killer, H.H. Holmes, prowling the lobby for victims, and there has been a rash of suicides both in and outside of the hotel walls. YouTube provides endless hours of amateur paranormal investigations and tours of floors where rooms have been padlocked shut, wallpapered over, or otherwise sealed. I’m terrified of the place.
Solution: Just don’t go there, dipshit. I once did one of those Priceline deals where they don’t show you the hotel, just the price. I snatched up a room for seventy bucks a night!
Then promptly canceled it and ate the non-refundable cost when I saw it was at the Congress. No. Fucking. Thank you.
The Bolton Strid, Yorkshire, England This is a lovely, burbling little stream that will fucking eat you alive. No joke. It has a reported 100% fatality rate for people who fall into it. As someone who regularly experiences l’appel du vide around dangerous bodies of water, I am 100% sure that I’m 100% going to jump into the 100% fatal stream. What makes the place so dangerous? The water is a lot deeper than it appears. Like, a lot. And it’s full of underwater caves and currents. And I’m pretty sure the Gwragedd Annwn live in it and will pull you in. I don’t fuck around with fairies.
Solution: Just don’t go there, dipshit. I live in America. It’s not like I’m going to accidentally stumble into the damn thing.
Being instantly vaporized by a powerful electrical current I am so afraid of electricity. And I don’t know why. It’s all over my house. But what scares me most are the giant substation transformer things just sitting out there. Sure, there are fences and warning signs, but just thinking about them makes me break out into a cold sweat. My grandfather once told me that there are ones that are so powerful, they can vaporize you. What the fuck. That’s horrifying. I don’t want that to happen to me.
Solution: Don’t fuck with electricity, dipshit. This one isn’t even going to be a problem. I won’t change a fucking lightbulb. The light figure in my office flickered one too many times and now I sit in the total darkness. This shouldn’t be an issue. But it is.
Woodchippers Who wouldn’t be afraid of a giant machine that can grind you to pieces in a matter of seconds? People get sucked into them all the time. OSHA describes this as “total body morselization.” You know how I know this? Because I’m so fucking afraid of them that I’ve read OSHA reports about them. Never underestimate my capacity for terrifying myself needlessly. But there have been truly horrifying accidents with this mind-bogglingly common piece of equipment that any jackass can rent and operate. I do not fuck around with woodchippers.
Solution: What I’m already doing. I just don’t deal with woodchippers. A few months ago, Consumers Energy was outside my yard trimming tree branches from the lines and feeding them into a wood chipper. I wouldn’t even go outside. I banned my family members and dogs from going outside until they were far, far away. So, I’m doing what I’m doing, yet I’m still afraid at all times.
Overall, I guess I’m a fearful person. I hear about things that could happen and it scares me. I think about things that will never happen or I could easily prevent and it scares me. I know I’m not the only one out there. Traumatize us all with your unfounded fears in the comments.
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