Abigail Barnette's Blog, page 40

The Big Damn Writer Advice Column

It’s Thursday! Time to answer a question from the Big Damn Writer Question Box! Just one this week, because it was a bit labor intensive and the day got away from me.

Q: Why is good smut so hard to write / what differentiates the good (you) from the bad (EL James)?

A: Well, while I appreciate the compliment, I have to throw out a disclaimer here: there are many people writing better smut than I, and people writing much, much worse smut than E.L. James is. There are different kinds of bad, though. James’s smut is bad because her discomfort with the scenes is apparent to (some) readers. There aren’t a lot of grown-up words in the grown-up scenes; I’m not sure I ever saw the word “cock” in any of the first three. I think the strongest term used was “erection.” This, to me, looks like a writer who wants to write about sex but is uncomfortable overall with the language or mechanics of sex. Then you’ve got the bad sex written by authors who swing too far the other way. In their quest to be the most shocking and raw and provocative they use language that borders on juvenile. What’s supposed to be “dirty” and “shocking” just winds up embarrassing and unsexy. The characters don’t seem to be enjoying themselves. The sex is rushed, not detailed, and doesn’t further the story. There are so many ways that smut can be bad.

So, how do you avoid all this happening to you? Let me give you five tips.

If a word makes you feel uncomfortable and unsexy, it probably will come across that way to your readers. For example, some authors use the word “cum”. Some find it crude and will never have it in their books. Same way with readers. But if you type a word in your manuscript that you’re thinking, “Ugh, I just hate the way it sounds,” the reader is going to know that you hate the way it sounds, and it’s going to sound awful to them, too.
If thinking about a sex act makes you uncomfortable or you can’t fantasize about it without giving yourself the willies, don’t write about it. I sat on a panel once next to an author who made a big show about how outrageous and unique and hardcore her super dark and twisted erotica was. She described needle play and said that it was the hardest thing for her to write because it grossed her out. So…why write about it? It’s not going to read as hot and sexy because you don’t think it’s hot and sexy. And while most authors of erotica and erotic romance will admit that they write about things they’ve never done or would never actually do, but we almost always write things that turn us on. If you don’t see the appeal in a sex act, you can’t make it seem appealing to the reader.
Evoke the senses. Here’s an excerpt from Fifty Shades Of Grey:

And he’s inside me, quickly filling me. I moan loudly. He moves, pounding into me, a fast, intense pace against my sore behind. The feeling is beyond exquisite, raw and debasing and mind-blowing. My senses are ravaged, disconected, solely concetrating on what he’s doing to me. How he’s making me feel that familiar pull deep in my belly, tightening, quickening. NO…and my traitorous body explodes in an intense, body-shattering orgasm.

And here’s an excerpt from Begging For It by Lilah Pace (a book in one of my favorite series of all time, but which comes with a heavy content warning readers need to check out before they read the books).

He pulls the sheet down. Cool air ghosts along my back, my exposed lower body. Jonah groans slightly to see me naked from the waist down–he likes that.

Two fingers trace a line of heat along my leg, from the back of my knee all the way up to the hip, where he finds the crest of my pelvic bone. Back down again, closer to the cleft of my ass–and then his touch curves in toward my cunt. His rougher skin brushes against me, just enough to get slick.

Then I hear him lift his hand to his lips to taste me.

You’ve probably noticed that the first excerpt is much shorter, perfunctory, and covers everything from insertion to completion for the heroine. The reason it’s so much shorter is that it’s all telling and no showing. He did this, it made me feel [synonym for pleasure]. I was really into it, then I had an orgasm. The second excerpt is so much more different. There’s a focus not just on what the heroine feels, but how the hero feels and how sexy his response is to her. There are adjectives that describe the physical acts in a way that the reader can feel them; air “ghosts” along her back. Fingers “trace a line of heat.” Body parts don’t just touch, they have different textures. It’s like the difference between someone telling you about the sex they had and having sex yourself.

Your characters should enjoy themselves. The above excerpt from Fifty Shades Of Grey describes an orgasm, not enjoyment. Why? Because her body is traitorous. Because “NO.” And in a line before that excerpt, the heroine literally thinks, “Like I have a choice.” It’s not sexy if your characters aren’t enthusiastically consenting. It’s not sexy if they feel that pleasure is their body betraying them (unless, of course, you’re writing a scene where a sub isn’t allowed to come or something). Bottom line, the characters in your erotica or erotic romance are avatars the reader is experiencing fantastic sex through. They don’t want to have bad sex they’re not enjoying just because there’s a orgasm when there are hundreds of other books offering the mind-blowing bang of a lifetime.
Emotion, emotion, emotion. This is where I veer away from erotica and address erotic romance specifically. In erotic romance, every sex scene should develop the relationship and the way the characters feel about each other. It should start with intense emotion–even if that emotion is intense horniness–and end with emotional development or some kind of emotional closure.

Hopefully, this helps some of you out there trying to write your own dirty books.

 

Have a question? Put it in the box!

Jealous Hater Book Club: Handbook For Mortals Chapter 11 “The Devil” or “Readers’ Digest Condensed Boring Parts”

All has been quiet on the Actual Las Vegas Former Olympian front. Let’s keep it that way, dear, now that you know that Trout Nation can smell your pathetic lies from seven miles below the bowels of hell.

Speaking of hell, even though this chapter is titled “The Devil,” Sofiaie is not included in it. There is, however, mention of the sexual and physical abuse in Fifty Shades Of Grey in this recap, so heads up.

We begin with a time jump:

Several weeks flew by and I was in my dressing room getting ready for the show. I still hadn’t quite made a decision in regards to my personal life.

Of course you haven’t. We’re only at 51% of the first book in a five book series whose only plot at this point seems to be which dude you’re gonna bang. It would be like if Harry Potter defeated Voldemort at his first Quidditch match.

If I had known time was going to hop around so much in this book, I would have kept better track. Even if I had, though, it would still be incredibly difficult to tell how long these events have been going on for. It’s always “a few weeks” or “several weeks.” There have been no holidays or even a suggestion of what season it is, aside from the rainy season thing, which would put us in the fall when Larvae went on her bike ride with Mac. At this point, the nearest I can guess at how long Zindar The Pathetic has been in Las Vegas is something like six months, and I when I say “guess” I mean literally I’m guessing because I don’t care enough to go back and reread to find out because this book is terrible and even having a consistent sense of how much time has passed won’t fix that.

Every time I would start to lean in one direction something would pull me in the opposite.

Yeah, that’s your author’s lack of ideas doing that.

The cards had become quite infuriating because they refused to give me an answer, which was something I’d never experienced before.

Except for in the last chapter, when you said this exact same thing about this thing that has never happened before happening.

The only thing I could think was that this was the cards’ way of insisting that I needed to learn a lesson about making my own decisions. I had learned over the years that sometimes the cards insist you learn lessons, that is what each of our lives is about, learning lessons to become a better being–your soul can’t evolve until you’ve learned whatever life lesson it is you need to learn.

The lesson you need to learn is how to make decisions on your god damn own, Lavatory. This is, again, crushed-velvet-Pagan bullshit, wherein someone’s life is ruled by teh majihiks in cases where common shitting sense is what is required. You choose the guy you like the most, the guy you get along with most, maybe, just maybe, the guy you both actually think about and talk to. This isn’t the universe trying to teach you a life lesson to evolve your soul. It’s the universe saying, “Maybe try doing the thing that isn’t as interesting and mystical and mysterious and just sit down and handle your own shit.” Sure, that could be a lesson, but it’s really only a lesson if you learn something. I intensely doubt that’s going to happen in this case.

I sank into the director’s chair in front of my mirror and played with my hair and make-up a little, more futzing than actually doing anything. The show had supplied me with any and all of the make-up, skin, and hair products I wanted, and so for the very first time I had a plethora to choose from. I was even given every color of OPI gel ail polish that I wanted. Now every week my nails can be a different color instead of the normal black I always do. I had asked for every kind of Benefit brand make-up that existed and then extra fun eye-shadow from Too Faced in every color they make, and lipstick as well. It was more make-up than I could ever use, but I loved having it around. I was enjoying mixing the color palettes together to see what worked and what didn’t. I also alternated betwee the four different kinds of Sedu curlers, because I had fun playing with the different-sized curls it produced and then randomly put different moisturizers on from my Kiehl’s skin products, just to see what felt nice. All of it was just a place to put my nervous energy to use.

*Cracks knuckles*

It’s petty time.

150 OPI Infinite Shine gel polishes, at $12.50 each = $1875.00 (Sally Beauty)

“Every kind of Benefit brand make-up that existed”  = $5702.00 (Benefit website)

Too-Faced eyeshadow and lipstick, every shade = $4505.30 (Too-Faced website)

Sedu Curler = $195.00 (Neiman Marcus)

TOTAL BEFORE SALES TAX COST OF FANTASY-SAREM’S MAKEUP NOT INCLUDING KIEHL’S MOISTURIZERS THAT WE KNOW IS TOTALLY A REALISTIC EXPENSE FOR A GUEST PERFORMER IN A SHOW BECAUSE SHE’S A REAL LAS VEGAS OLYMPIAN AND THERE IS MORE TRUTH IN THIS BOOK THAN WE NON-GLAMOROUS PLEBS COULD POSSIBLY KNOW: $12277.30

A non-headling performer asked for and was granted twelve thousand dollars worth of makeup and hair shit that she doesn’t necessarily need but just likes having around.

On top of that, if you asked me, “Jenny, which prestige brands have the most boring, least wild party times edgy makeup you can think of?” I’m probably going to say Benefit and Too-Faced. I mean, I like both brands, but…Urban Decay? Mac? Illamasqua?

Wait, don’t buy that last one, they’re racist.

But still. Come on.

I finally stopped and sat back away from my vanity.

Oh, how I long to back away from your vanity.

I sat like that for a long time, anxiety washing over me, and decided I would try to focus on my breathing–a kind of meditation, if you will. I’d heard people say that it helped them, so although it had never helped me much I figured I’d give it another shot.

If meditation doesn’t help, why don’t you magick yourself calm? I love these parts of the book, where the author basically holds up a sign saying, “Hi reader, I think you’re an ignorant jackass.” People know what meditation is and that it involves breathing. You don’t need to explain it to them. Or maybe the point here is that when Zipper focuses on her breathing as a meditation, it’s a super special kind of meditation that’s different and unique and better than the stuff other people do.

So, while she’s trying to breathe through her anxiety about which guy she wants to date, one of them comes in. It’s Jackson, and he’s just stopped by for six whole lines of dialogue. They’re all fascinating, of course, like when he says “knock knock,” entering the room and “My band’s playing a late show tonight after work.” Liver can’t go, though, because it would require her to be in a scene with the guy she’s obviously not going to end up with and therefore the author can’t be fucked to give him a personality besides sparkling eyes and playing guitar. Oh, and because she has to do some work with Charles on a new illusion. So, obviously, Jackson is disappointed.

He rose to leave, but he bent down to run a thumb from the back of my jaw to my chin and kiss me on the forehead. I could feel myself blushing beneath his touch. He knew how to be so charming when he wanted to be, that expression about leaving someone weak in the knees, he knew how to do that in spades. He just oozed charm and charisma like no one I had ever met.

I know when I’m trying to describe someone as being knock-down, panty-dropping sexy, I choose the word oozed. Also, it would have been nice if the author would have oozed some of the charm and charisma onto the page so that we’d have some kind of proof of it besides our narrator going, “Oh yeah, he’s like totally hot, trust me.”

Jackson leaves and forgets his sunglasses, so The Zegend Of Lelda runs after him. Instead of finding him, she sees Charles and Zeb in the hallway arguing.

I always jump to the conclusion that something is about me and so that’s where my mind went first.

You don’t fucking say.

“It’s not good, that much I can tell you. I just don’t know how bad and what it all means”. I heard Zeb say, sounding worried.

Charles responded in an equally grievous tone, “You know we have to let some things take their own course, you must let it go for now.”

First of all, Charles talks like he just got transplanted from one of those Regency novels where the author thinks contractions weren’t invented until the 1980s. Second, “You know we have to let some things take their own course,” should be its own sentence, as should “you must let it go for now.” Third, you mean “grave”, not “grievous.” Grievous means causing grief. You know, like how mischievous means causing mischief. Fourth, if we find out what this horrible, no good, very bad thing is before the end of the book, I’ll be fucking shocked.

They both notice Zart standing there.

“Hello, Zade. Is everything okay, dear?”

You’re her boss. Profesh as fuck, Spellman.

Zardoz asks what’s up with the dire.

Charles smiled and nodded. “Oh yes, everything is fine. Just silly magician troubles. Zeb, let’s go back to my office, shall we? See you later, Zade.”

Just magician stuff. That should make you feel better, what with being in a show that recently had a major malfunction that caused a performer to fall sixty feet and clinically die. Don’t worry about it.

The weird part of that phrasing is that he like, hired Zephora to be a magician in his show. So, “silly magician troubles” tossed out as though she wouldn’t understand doesn’t really work here. It would be like if asked another writer what’s wrong and they were like, “Just silly author troubles,” to patronize me.

Larvae decides that this is something she should look into. Obviously, that’s not what happens. More important stuff is happening, like stretching her leg provocatively against the wall, giving Cam a chance to comment on how flexible she is. Then Mac strolls up.

I bit my lip as worry spread across my face.

I still hadn’t told him I couldn’t go camping.

Do you have any idea what a relief it is to write about someone biting their lip with worry about a camping trip cancellation and not, you know, my husband is going to sexually punish me against my wishes if I make him mad because he love, love, loves to hit me? It feels so good to know that’s not going to happen in this book.

“I forgot to tell you earlier today, but I can’t go.” I said it with disappointment in my voice, because I really was disappointed that I couldn’t go, but I had a good reason at least.

Mac is annoyed because it was London’s idea for everyone to go camping again, but she has to work on an illusion with Charles. See, it has to be ready in time for the show’s anniversary, a big event that’s coming up that we haven’t heard about until right now and which according to Kindle’s search function is never mentioned again. Just like the premiere that was mentioned in the infamous Carrot Top scene. Mentioned as a big giant deal, never heard from again despite being far more interesting than whatever the hell else is going on.

“So, you’re going to spend your only two days off rehearsing with Charles while everyone else is camping?” Mac asked in a grumpy tone.

Now, I know that the point here is that Mac is going to get jealous of Charles and assume something is going on between him and LARP but I’ve got bigger questions. One of those questions is…how the fuck are they going to rehearse a show without anyone running the lights, sound, automated set pieces, monitors, fly rail, no stage manager or ASM, nobody there for safety checks or anything like that? They’re not rehearsing a one-act in a black box theater. This is a major show.

When will I stop asking too much of this book and just sink into the warm, bubbling septic tank of its contents until analytical brain death renders me unable to resist five-starring it on Goodreads?

Zenobia tells Mac that he of all people should understand how hectic and weird their schedules can be (despite being told that their days off are sacred in an earlier chapter, but whatever, consistency), and I’m wondering how Mac, Mr. Safety, isn’t asking the same question I am. No wonder he’s suspicious. But he agrees to get together with her for dinner when he gets back.

Just wait until you hear about the big new illusion Zack is working on with Charles. It’s going to blow your mind. Are you ready?

So am I, but it doesn’t happen. You should know that by now. Come on. Are you new here?

Instead, we skip ahead directly to when Mac and everyone gets back from camping.

I was about to walk over to the door and answer it when I had a thought. Things seemed…normal. Mac, whom I really liked, had just come back from camping, and there I was at home, listening to music and making dinner for the two of us. Wow. Normal. Weird.  I glided across the room feeling happy about the normal little life I had made for myself.

I glided across the room.

Ah yes, your normal little life of performing in a major magic show on the Strip where your employer provides you with $12k of makeup just so you can play with it for funsies and being desired by every man in Nevada and reviled by every woman on Earth. So normal. We’re real proud of you, Lindsay.

I answered the door and smiled at Mac, who looked just a little bit dressed up in his dark denim Levi’s jeans and a nice maroon and brown patterened button-up shirt with his coordinating brown suit jacket. His sterling silver cufflinks peeking out just past the end of the jacket sleeves.

When I think “just a little bit dressed up,” I think sterling silver cufflinks. And when I think “sentence fragments,” I think Handbook For Mortals.

He looked handsome and I immediately felt underdressed in black leggings, a grey see-through shirt, and black boots.

Honestly, I’m shocked that the sheerness of her shirt isn’t mentioned. In an “OMG I THINK HE LOOKED AT MY BOOBIES” way. But it’s not, because suddenly Mac notices proof of Zaffodil’s unfaithfulness!

I saw Mac eye was was on the table currently: show tickets from David Copperfield’s show–Charles had taken me there the night before–and a picture of Charles and me at dinner at Table 10, the four-star restaurant where we had eaten after the show.

I will never not get a little thrill of glee every time I’m reminded that this book takes place in a world where David Copperfield exists alongside a thoroughly undisguised and somehow more successful Great Value version of himself.

“You went to dinner and a show? I thought you said you were going to be working the whole time,” he said, sounding brash and accusatory.

“A girl’s gotta eat, doesn’t she?” I shrugged, not sure what he was getting at and why he looked so upset. I smiled and batted my eyes as I said it to try to lighten the mood.

Smiling and batting your eyes to be funny while explaining why you went out to dinner and a show with your boss (who promotes performers he bangs) isn’t going to defuse the situation, especially when the dude you’re explaining yourself to also knows you’re dating one other guy. Even though there’s nothing set in stone between Mac and Linda, it still looks like she lied. If this were any other book, Mac would have pointed out that rehearsing without the crew would be impossible, but that’s not an issue because it was the only way the author could set up a flimsy excuse for Mac to be suspicious and nobody in this book knows how to do their job in the first place.

“And the photo?” His voice was still monotone as he asked his questions.

“Oh. Um, the camera girl who came around to our table was really cute. I think he was trying to hit on her, so he bought photos from her.”

I’m shocked that this wasn’t an opportunity to slam Sofeieio with something about her boyfriend’s wandering eyes and how unsatisfied he must be at home.

“What are you trying to imply?” I finally retorted. If he was getting at something, then I wanted him to just tell me. I didn’t like the odd vibe he was giving off.

How on this entire polluted and dying Earth do you not understand why he’s interrogating you? Do they not have soap operas in Donkey Juice, Alabama or wherever the fuck you’re from?

Mac tells her it’s nothing and then pulls her close to tell her that the food smells amazing. And that’s it. That’s the end of the entire chapter. Yet another god damn chapter wherein the only parts we’re shown are the boring, shit parts, while other stuff that would make for a better story happens off the page. At least this one is blessedly short.

True Blood Tuesday S05E09 “Everybody Wants To Rule The World”

Aaaand we’re back. And the show is as sexist as ever.

Here’s the file. Hit play when the HBO sound and logo fade.

The Woefully True-To-Life Legacy Of Roseanne

In 1988, I didn’t see families like mine on television.

No, I’m not talking about white families. I saw white families on T.V. all the time. Family Ties, The Hogans, Growing Pains, Who’s The Boss, sitcoms that didn’t depict the ideal middle-class white experience were few and far between. As a child, I knew T.V. wasn’t real, but I also knew that these kinds of lives existed. Out there in the wide world, a family like the Seavers contended with the problems of juggling their father’s in-home psychiatric practice and their mother’s television news career. Some busy and successful single mom just had to be out there looking to hire a hunky live-in housekeeper to clean her already immaculate home. There were just too many people on the planet for that to not be happening. It just wasn’t happening in my family.

My family didn’t worry about the things television families worried about. Problems I was having with kids at my rural Michigan school were rarely met with tidy, thoughtful advice dispensed in a gentle, heartfelt conversation that made me feel better. Not because no one cared about me but because there simply wasn’t time between the two jobs my grandfather worked, my mom’s nightshifts at a printing factory and her day shifts at college, and the overwhelming burden of not just childcare for me, but home care for the entire family that fell to my grandmother. When I compared the slick, modern interior of Charles In Charge to our crumbling farmhouse–where pieces of the wall regularly chipped off and fell into the bathtub while I bathed in shared water to avoid filling up the septic tank–I felt a deep sense of wrongness about how we should be living.

The more I thought about it–and since I spent most days from four in the afternoon to nine at night watching a small black-and-white set on the kitchen table in my grandmother’s kitchen I had plenty of time to analyze this–the more I began to realize that the things that happened in my house weren’t the things happening in other houses. I became convinced that our lives and experiences were somehow bad, and therefore not worthy of consumption by a live studio audience. “We” weren’t on television because “we” weren’t acceptable. I started to resent the people on T.V., even though I knew they were fake. I started to resent my own family. I started to despair.

Then, something absolutely magical happened. It started with a few shrill, plaintive notes from a harmonica and a revolving camera shot around a crowded dinner table. The mom was fat and loud and unglamorous. The dad was jolly and loving, but he radiated worry. The kids weren’t wearing the latest fashions. No one was slick and polished. Their furniture was ugly, their kitchen had dishes in the sink, and my god, the green shag carpeting. They were living in a crowded bungalow, with people walking in and out at all hours without knocking. You could see their laundry, even when it wasn’t a plot point, and there were sometimes toys or backpacks on the stairs.

They looked like us.

To say I absolutely craved Roseanne would be an understatement. The show ran after my bedtime, but after much pleading, I received a stay of execution on Tuesday nights only. And I lived for Tuesday. I loved watching Dan and Roseanne fight–not argue, fight–knowing that they still cared about each other the way my grandparents still cared about each other even when they reached screaming levels of frustration. When Becky farted during her student council speech, I was mortified right along with her, while being as gleeful as Darlene. I can still remember how perfectly Sara Gilbert’s eyebrows arched into devilish triangles as she delivered, “Becky. Cut. The cheese.” I can remember her voice.

So many of the Conner family values were things I’d already learned in my own working class home. Treat others the way you want to be treated, but don’t let them walk over you. Speak your mind. Be grateful for what you have, because other people are struggling, too. And, long before any other influence reached me, Sandra Bernhard’s Nancy was a blueprint for my own queerness, despite admitted flaws in her representation.

Roseanne made me feel like I was worth something. Like my family was worth something. Like we were real.

I didn’t pay much attention at the time to the antics of Roseanne née Barr, née Arnold. She was always in the press, doing something controversial. I did wear out a VHS copy of her movie, She-Devil, a more outré attack on the patriarchy and the out-of-touch upper class than Roseanne had the luxury of being on network television. But Roseanne the actress and Roseanne Conner were two separate entities in my mind.

Would that they could have stayed that way.

In recent years, Roseanne the “Domestic Goddess” with her socially progressive television message has become Roseanne the overtly transphobic, outspoken Trump supporter spewing vitriol against Hillary Clinton and Palestine, retweeting anti-Muslim conspiracy theories and claims that Roy Moore’s accusers are all paid liars. She is, well…

She is exactly who Roseanne Conner probably would have become, were she a real person.

The Conners represented a very real slice of the population: blue-collar white Democrats who clawed through Reagan’s recession and the Bush, Sr. years, who knew exactly who to blame for their economic woes, who welcomed the new age of Clintonian prosperity and peace. Granted, some of them cheerfully voted for Bush the younger based on his folksy everyman persona, but many of the same people opposed his war, knowing it would be their children on the front lines, fighting not for freedom but for the wealthy.

Then came Barack Obama.

I don’t know much about Roseanne Barr’s political views before a black man ran for president, but I certainly know what they were afterward. Barr, now staunchly anti-Clinton if her Twitter timeline can be trusted as a barometer, lashed out at both Obama and Oprah in 2008, just before the former president clinched the Democratic nomination. She condemned Oprah for playing the “race card” and accused her of hating other women. Barack Obama, she alleged, was a racist capitalist with no plan for his presidency, who would condemn us to a McCain victory. McCain didn’t escape her ire unscathed; she branded him a fascist. Roseanne Barr saw white supremacy challenged, just as the white liberal working class who once worshipped her saw it challenged, and like Barr, they tossed the principles they previously claimed to hold directly into the garbage.

Like so many white women at the time, Barr embraced the narrative that a vote for Obama was a vote for the patriarchy. Some of the same Baby Boomers who often bragged about their social justice activism in their college days, who credited their generation with “solving” racism, saw an attractive chance to uphold the status quo by supporting a white woman over a black man and branding it the only true progress. With Fox News to stoke their paranoia and the new phenomenon of social media uniting them, they were able to convince themselves that white supremacy was righteous–but certainly not racist–and that they alone could save America through dubious “news” blogs and loud insistence that “common sense” drove their political views and not something far more insidious. When Clinton lost the Democratic primary, the GOP swooped in with tough-talking, gun-toting Mama Palin to be their “strong, independent woman”, and there was no turning back.

These people were the Conners, the Dans and Roseannes and Jackies trying to survive outside of the Family Ties mold. They became the America Roseanne resisted all those years ago; the crowd that cheered a same-sex kiss now floods their Facebook timeline with rants about gay wedding cakes. The people who grieved the loss of Lanford Custom Cycle and nodded sympathetically when the power company shut the Conners’ lights off now would view the same family as deadbeats who created their own problems, rather than victims of a grinding capitalist trickle-down machine. They can do this because they’ve rewritten history to suit themselves. “I bought a house when I was twenty.” “I never got a handout from anyone.” “I didn’t go to college, I worked for a living.” All of this conveniently ignores that houses cost considerably less in 1975, that a college education wasn’t more expensive than one of those houses at the time, and that jobs that didn’t require a bachelor’s degree were plentiful. Adjusted for 2017 inflation, the 1988 Conners are the “lazy” generation that accrued mountains of student loans, worked unpaid for “experience”, and don’t have three kids because even owning a hamster is too much of a financial commitment. They are the people that their original audience now despises.

Now, Roseanne is set to return in the spring of 2018. The viewers who once cheered when Dan was arrested mid-KFC bucket for beating up Jackie’s abusive boyfriend will switch channels from Fox News’s nightly explanation of why women who are raped are merely overreacting. As the winter snows melt all around their tattered Trump yard signs, they’ll settle into some welcome working class nostalgia. They will be reunited with the Conner family, though which version of the Conners is still uncertain. With Dan having been retroactively killed off via voiceover in the show’s finale and a bonkers plot twist that saw the Conners become instant millionaires, it seems unlikely that the family we bid farewell to in 1997 will return without any retconning in the writers’ room. But will the show depict the sad reality of what its eponymous star has become? Will audiences be asked to ignore the fact that the characters we once loved would have inevitably slid into full-tilt Birtherism and Pizza Gate conspiracies? Or will the reboot become a bullhorn to amplify its star’s wild cries of liberal intolerance and public embrace of an actual fascist, the way it once served as a platform for progressive ideals?

I don’t feel I can support the reboot, or, sadly, the cast, who’ve all agreed to return to work with a woman who spends her days promoting alt-right hate under the guise of centrism and reasonable discourse. I certainly don’t feel like I can trust the Conners; like several of my own family members who stubbornly vote for the hand that holds them down time and again–for reasons having nothing to do with white supremacy, of course–the love I once felt for them has become tainted to the point of sorrow. Too many of us who grew up on Roseanne have seen parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles follow the same twisted path that Roseanne Barr continues to forge. What could the show possibly offer us now? We don’t want to see D.J. opine about ethics in games journalism. We don’t want to sit through a TERF-y rant from Nancy or hear about how Becky can’t get a promotion due to affirmative action. Yet time has proven that this is the natural progression of Roseanne Conners everywhere, and it’s hard to shake the feeling that the Connors who felt so real in 1988 would be nothing but a fairytale in 2018.

Trout Nation 2017 In Review

Every year, I make a post where I highlight what I believe to be my very best posts from the year. But this year, I’m not sure I had that many truly “good” posts. Yet so many of you continue to visit and support this site. I’m blessed by your continued presence and participation, but I’ve obviously lost my drive and focus, not just here, but in my fiction writing, too. So, with that in mind, I’m going to try to enter 2018 with new drive.

That said, here is the Trout Nation year in review:

January

I re-released Surrender, a book of my heart that I poured massive research into only to see the publisher crash and burn a few short years later.

I ranked every song in Galavant, a stunning work of epic silliness that you should definitely watch if you haven’t already.

Chronic pain patients were thoroughly insulted by Veronica Roth’s Carve The Mark, a New York Times bestseller filled to the brim with racism and ableism.

February

I offered some helpful tips to the jackass journalists gleefully using Fifty Shades Darker as a vehicle for their desire to demean women.

And I offered some helpful terminology to enhance your Mario Karting experience.

Have a writing question? This is when The Big Damn Writer Question Box debuted.

March

People with enough time on their hands to obsess over wanting to break up an actor’s marriage decided I was a terrible person. Captain Kirk was on my side, though.

Say Goodbye To Hollywood, a somewhat-inspired by Fifty Shades Of Grey novel, released.

I hated Beauty And The Beast so much that I loved it.

Abortion was a big theme in March, with my stance on cis male allies and a review of a fantastic HBO documentary posting within days of each other.

April

I got plagiarized. Again. This has got to stop happening. Luckily, you all had my back.

I showed you how to make a waffle, via a weird video.

May

My mental health took a crash.

And I absolutely had it with MAGA and their fake concern for the LGBTQA+ community.

Why even are male writers? And other tips for incorporating bear-death into your writing career.

June

Wonder Woman was, despite popular criticism, really darn queer.

Did you know that panhandlers make more than minimum wage workers do?

July

Twitter continued to protect Nazis.

My daughter’s reaction to Jodie Whittaker’s casting as the Thirteenth Doctor went viral. I even got interviewed about Doctor Who on BBC Radio, so basically that was a dream come true.

My husband had a problem with my proposed career change, and we made another waffle!

August

Neil and Sophie returned in The Sister. Sadly, it didn’t become a legitimate New York Times bestseller like Handbook For Mortals did.

September

We finished our re-watch of Buffy season three and started season four. Which seemed like a perfect time to come clean about some weird shit I keep in my office.

October

I got the opportunity to review Una, one of my favorite films of 2017.

We dove into a parallel rewatch of Angel. I’m pretty sure I messed up the title on that recap.

November

I started an ongoing series about the worst person I’ve ever met.

December

Bronwyn Green Leslie Knope-d the absolute fuck out of Christmas, but even her beautiful gift was nothing compared to the blessed visit from our favorite con artist, Zade Sarem.

So, here we go, into 2018 and a brave new world of however this plays out. Thanks as always for going on this incredibly weird journey with me.

An In-Depth And Formal Reply To An Actual Vegas Performer

Yesterday, someone left a comment on one of my Handbook For Mortals recaps.

Actually, I work in a Vegas show on the strip and yes this kind of stuff does happen. Automation is a fairly new thing (last 15 years) and doesn’t work properly all the time. Also, performers in Cirque and Cirque type shows get injured all the time. If you think an investigation of that kind would happen every time there was a serious injury well we would be doing that every day. That is why we get paid well. Most of us are athletes, a lot of us Olympic athletes and we know what we signed up for. Injuries happen during the shows all the time. We are doing crazy stuff and it’s dangerous that’s why people pay a lot of money to see it. People get injured during the show and you don’t even know and we keep going. We don’t stop the show. The one and only time someone fell to their death was actually during KA. DURING A ACTUAL PERFORMANCE IN FRONT OF A AUDIENCE. They witnessed it even…I think the show was back in a day or so. Accidents that happen during rehearsal that only leads to injury an injury like this, wouldn’t even stop the show that night. The show must go one is a real thing in our world.

I have also fallen asleep in my theater before the doors. I find it odd that you tear apart something that you don’t know. You have never worked at a Vegas show (you admit that when you talk about the falling asleep in the theatre scene) yet you INSIST that’s not how this works.

Catwalks lead to platforms in these types of theaters. Perhaps, she should have described it better since most of you wouldn’t know this, but I understood exactly what she’s talking about.

If I remember reading somewhere, she lives in Vegas and works in entertainment. They say write what you know. Maybe the things she wrote are more rooted in reality than you know.

I have also run into Carrot Top (not with Wayne Newton though) in that very mall.

I don’t think this book is the greatest book of all time and I don’t think I’ve ever heard Lani compare her book to THUG. I think the story is overall fun and while if you want to run a fine tooth comb over it, you will find mistakes. You can do that with almost anything. Huge budget movies that cost over 100 million dollars have some errors. There are websites dedicated to finding them. Though those websites are more like a scavenger hunt fun type of find the error. Not a tear someone apart, the way you have engaged in here. All of you really. I bet most of you who are commenting and putting her and the book down have never even put out a book. I wonder what we could all say about your own book. Some of what Jenny says is funny but if you were actually being objective here you would point out the good stuff too. There is lots of it, but your whole point is to bring someone and their art down as much as possible. And you are criticizing her for being some kind of bad person?

You should really try checking your own moral compass here.

I knew from the moment I read, “I have also run into Carrot Top” that this Lani Sarem’s sock puppet account. First of all, the authorial voice is the same with which she wrote Handbook For Mortals. Secondly, who the fuck brags about running into Carrot Top or knowing Carrot Top or just basically talks about Carrot Top as much as she does? But Tez, our awesome Trout Nation comment moderator checked out the domain behind the commenter’s email address, readervillage, and found that it’s registered to…

I’ve redacted some info because we don’t dox around these here parts.


Isn’t it super weird that someone who has an email address registered to a domain owned by Lani Sarem just so happened to stumble across my posts about Handbook For Mortals and decided they needed to defend the book? What makes it even more super weird is that readervillage isn’t even a website. They do have a Twitter account, though, and in the bio they explain that they’re just here to help you find a good book:

If you need to a place to turn for accurate helpful advice. It takes a Village. Reader Village. http://www.readervillage.com  coming soon.

Now, I’m not sure how soon readervillage.com is coming, considering if you click that link it’s going to take you to a page where GoDaddy informs you that the domain has expired. But I’m glad that a service exists to give me “accurate helpful advice” about what book to buy. Judging by the fact that every single tweet on the account seems to be shilling Lani Sarem’s appearances, the book must be some kind of huge phenomenon!

What I’m saying here is that it might be a total coincidence that a commenter with an email address from an expired domain for some kind of shady backdoor PR machine that only promotes Handbook For Mortals  and which is owned by Lani Sarem just happened to show up to call me and everyone in the comments section a bad person and defend the books. Oh, no, sorry. What I meant to say is that this is absolutely one hundred percent Lani Sarem.

I originally made a glib remark to this “anonymous commenter”, but knowing now that I’m dealing with a totally legit New York Times bestselling author, I better put on my Sunday britches and give this a real response.

Actually, I work in a Vegas show on the strip and yes this kind of stuff does happen. Automation is a fairly new thing (last 15 years) and doesn’t work properly all the time.

False. The show that Zade’s diving act is inspired by, Cirque Du Soleil’s O, opened in 1998 with state-of-the-art automation. Earlier than that, EFX opened in 1995, featuring, you guessed it, fully automated set pieces and animatronics. Cirque Du Soleil’s Mystére opened in 1993 and featured a revolving stage and automated lifts. These are just shows in Las Vegas. By the early 1980s, Broadway shows like Cats and Les Miserables already featured automated stage pieces. Automation isn’t new to theatre, in Vegas or anywhere else. And while nothing works all the time, no one in the comments or the recap suggested that it did, or that accidents didn’t happen because of it.

Also, performers in Cirque and Cirque type shows get injured all the time. If you think an investigation of that kind would happen every time there was a serious injury well we would be doing that every day. That is why we get paid well. Most of us are athletes, a lot of us Olympic athletes and we know what we signed up for. Injuries happen during the shows all the time. We are doing crazy stuff and it’s dangerous that’s why people pay a lot of money to see it.

This is the part where it really becomes embarrassing for you, Lani. Please do not come to my blog pretending to be an Olympic athlete. All I’m going to do is cackle my way straight to hell. And while yes, performers in Cirque-esque shows do get injured frequently, that doesn’t mean they’re not investigated by OSHA. They are required by law to report serious injuries. That’s how there are statistics that back up your “all the time” assertion. There are also OSHA inspections of major Las Vegas shows and investigations when something goes seriously wrong. Your anecdotes don’t invalidate government regulation and facts that anyone can just google for free. Of course, nothing matches the real-life experiences of a make-believe Olympian.

People get injured during the show and you don’t even know and we keep going. We don’t stop the show.

Except for when they do. Like in 2007 when two acrobats performing in Zumanity fell during an aerial act and the show had to be stopped to remove them on stretchers. While the show did later resume in front of the audience, it did stop, to the point that tickets were refunded to over a thousand audience members because of the delay.

The one and only time someone fell to their death was actually during KA. DURING A ACTUAL PERFORMANCE IN FRONT OF A AUDIENCE. They witnessed it even…I think the show was back in a day or so.

You think wrong. Sarah Guillot-Guyard died in that accident on June 29, and Ka was closed indefinitely pending investigation. You know, those things that don’t happen because the performance is so important that it overrides state and federal law? Yeah, one of those imaginary things that we non-Vegas plebs foolishly believe exist shut down Ka until July 16th, and the show didn’t return to a full schedule until July 23, almost a month after the initial accident. And that investigation? It didn’t close until November.

I find it odd that you tear apart something that you don’t know. You have never worked at a Vegas show (you admit that when you talk about the falling asleep in the theatre scene) yet you INSIST that’s not how this works.

I find it odd that you wrote a book and INSIST that everyone in the industry bend to you because you think you know better than those of us who’ve worked in it for decades. Gosh, I can’t even imagine your frustration, with people talking about stuff they don’t know!

Except every criticism I make in one of these recaps is something I actually research. Which was how I knew about Ka and Zumanity and how OSHA conducts their investigations of stage shows, specifically in Nevada. Because I do my homework before I jump into something. You probably should have done that before you tried to pull your stunt. Or create an untraceable sock puppet.

Catwalks lead to platforms in these types of theaters. Perhaps, she should have described it better since most of you wouldn’t know this, but I understood exactly what she’s talking about.

I don’t recall having an issue with catwalks leading to platforms, but I’d guess that you knew what she was talking about because you are she.

If I remember reading somewhere, she lives in Vegas and works in entertainment. They say write what you know. Maybe the things she wrote are more rooted in reality than you know.

The fact that you took so many pains to try and cover the fact that you are Lani Sarem talking about yourself in the third person makes this so much more cringey than it would have been otherwise.

I have also run into Carrot Top (not with Wayne Newton though) in that very mall.

This is how I knew it was you, by the way. You’ve name dropped Carrot Top in more than one interview. We get it. You know Carrot Top. But the point wasn’t whether or not he’d be there. The point was whether or not Carrot Top and Wayne Newton would be strolling around a mall together after a publicized appearance. And I still call all the bullshit on that one.

I don’t think this book is the greatest book of all time and I don’t think I’ve ever heard Lani compare her book to THUG.

We’re in agreement on that. But while you didn’t compare your book to The Hate U Give, you have mouthed off about its author more than once, telling readers at a signing that it’s “not my fault Angie is black,” and accusing her of jealousy in a Facebook post that God and everybody saw.

I thought it was a particularly nice touch that you asked to friend someone who said that The Hate U Give is only popular because it’s anti-white people.

 I think the story is overall fun and while if you want to run a fine tooth comb over it, you will find mistakes.

You do not need a fine-toothed comb to catch your mistakes. You could run a yard rake over this book and find the mistakes. You could run a combine harvester over this thing and find mistakes, and that’s because you thought you were smarter than anyone else in the industry, that you were going to be able to easily scam readers, retailers, publishers, and Hollywood to get the movie deal you dreamed of.

Huge budget movies that cost over 100 million dollars have some errors. There are websites dedicated to finding them. Though those websites are more like a scavenger hunt fun type of find the error. Not a tear someone apart, the way you have engaged in here.

The “tear someone apart” aspect you’re seeing here is because I don’t like con artists. I don’t like scammers, I don’t like people trying to cheat their way to the top of an industry that they don’t know anything about and frankly don’t belong in because they couldn’t be bothered to pay their dues and learn just like the rest of us. I’m tearing you apart, Lani, because I don’t respect con-artists who aren’t good at conning people.

I bet most of you who are commenting and putting her and the book down have never even put out a book.

This is an author’s blog. And many of the regular commenters are authors, themselves. You would be surprised at how many people here and elsewhere on the internet are critical of you and your book because we’ve written one ourselves.

I wonder what we could all say about your own book.

I wonder, too. Why don’t you head on over to Amazon and pick up my free book, The Boss? I mean, there are already 601 reviews for it and 60% of those are five stars, leaving it with an overall rating of four-and-a-half stars. In fact, most of my books are highly rated there, but I’m sure you could find all sorts of things wrong with it. Go ahead and leave the link to your review in the comments, I would love to get some tips from a real-life bestselling author.

Some of what Jenny says is funny but if you were actually being objective here you would point out the good stuff too. There is lots of it, but your whole point is to bring someone and their art down as much as possible.

First of all, everything I say is funny, because I’m fucking hilarious. And if I were being objective, I would still struggle to find anything good to point out about your book. It was clearly written as quickly as possible by someone who was more interested in grabbing fame than actually giving readers a decent story for the ludicrous price you were charging for it. I notice you’ve changed the price on Amazon, but when I bought the ebook, it was $9.99. You’ve admitted in interviews to selling the hardcover for $35.00 at conventions. And as for bringing down someone’s art, you published a book with a cover that literally steals another artist’s art.

And you are criticizing her for being some kind of bad person?

Yes. I am absolutely criticizing you for being a bad person. Because you are. Bad people tell endless lies to paint themselves as the victim of situations they caused through their own shadiness. Which is what you do. You scammed your way onto the bestseller list. You lied repeatedly about it. You changed your lies multiple times when you got caught. You wrote an op-ed for Rolling Stone and were the subject of a lengthy feature on Vulture yet you continue to tell people that you haven’t been given a chance to tell your story. You intentionally miscategorized your book as YA when it’s clearly not, simply to take advantage of a popular genre. You talked shit about the book industry, my industry, because your scheme unraveled, but somehow that’s our fault because we don’t understand how to run things as well as you do. When none of that turned in your favor, you blamed another author for your downfall, an author who did the work and got something she deserved. And now you’re here, lying yet again because you just can’t help yourself. Lies, lies, lies, upon lies and lies and lies. You are a liar.

You are an outsider who barged in and not only wanted instant glory but a complete overhaul of publishing to suit your goals. Are there issues in the industry? Yes. Were you the scam-artist savior we needed? No, and nobody fucking asked you for your opinion or your overpriced, under-edited dreck that you insist deserves a place beside legitimate books and legitimate authors.

The worst part about all of this? You think we’re dumb enough to believe you. You think we’re dumb enough not to see through your ineptitude.

You insult authors.

You insult readers.

You insult the entire publishing industry.

That’s why people don’t like you. You’re an egotistical, delusional liar who can’t even pull off a convincing sock puppet on the internet.

You should really try checking your own moral compass here.

Just checked. It’s pointing directly to the magnetic pole of fuck you and the pseudo-famous friends whose coattails you rode in on. You and your technicolor dream hair can stay the entire fuck away from my blog from now on.

PS. When you’re trying to stage a fake picture of your book in a bookstore, Sarem doesn’t fall alphabetically between Lowry and Lieu.

The Worst Person I’ve Ever Met (Part 4) or “Cathy’s Big Day”

Need to catch up? Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

“Sam cheated on me!”

A few weeks before the wedding, Cathy tearfully broke the news to me that she was having second thoughts. I was confused. Cathy and Sam were proud of their open relationship and their occasional swinging, often sharing details of their exploits whether the information was wanted or not. Cathy had taken greater advantage of the arrangement, a fact she often bragged about, keeping score between the women Sam had slept with and the partners she’d had–some of them my old boyfriends, who she continued to pursue.

“Don’t worry,” she once insisted. “I would never sleep with [Mr. Jen].”

This, Mr. Jen assured me, would never be a problem. He strongly disliked Cathy, from her “just kidding” barbs to some truly disgusting personal habits he recoiled from. One of these was the way she smoked cigarettes. Her upper front teeth jutted out at a slight angle–leading one of Sam’s male friends to comment that receiving oral sex from Cathy would be “like rubbing your dick on a cheese grater.” When she smoked, she placed the tip of the filter against her teeth to inhale, then made what could only be described as the noise Anthony Hopkins made at the end of his famous “fava beans and a nice chianti” line from Silence Of The Lambs before exhaling. She had no shame when it came to seemingly any bodily function, picking her nose openly wherever she might be and flicking it to the floor, even at the dinner table or when out at a restaurant. When it came to menstruation, she was similarly inconsiderate; at a large party held at my house she came to me and said, “I couldn’t find the trash can in your bathroom, so I just left my tampon on the counter. You can clean it up later.”

I could clean it up later. I informed her that under no circumstances would I be cleaning up the unwrapped tampon sitting in a pool of blood beside my sink in the only bathroom in our house full of guests.

On another occasion, she was laying on my new couch, legs fully spread in her skirt–another of her habits, which came, she insisted, from her deep understanding of and comfort with her “womanhood”-with a very visible stain spreading across the crotch of her panties.

“Um, you’re bleeding through,” I told her.

She made a disgusted noise. “I know. My period has been really heavy lately. I don’t even care, I’m just going to let it go.”

“Uh, I care. You’re sitting on my couch,” I snapped and received a brief lecture on the internalized misogyny that made me fear my own body and its natural processes before she grudgingly went off to handle the situation.

Cathy’s reason for not wanting to entice my husband to cheat? “He’s just not very hot.” The notion that my husband might not want to sleep with her because he loved and was faithful to me never entered her mind.

But the faithfulness of husbands was of utmost concern when it was her fiance cheating on her. There was an exception to their open relationship rule that he’d broken: they were never to sleep with past romantic partners, and Sam had. This struck me as a fully reasonable stipulation. Sex for fun was one thing. Sex with emotional entanglement was altogether different. And I could understand her hurt; as Sam hadn’t just slept with an ex-girlfriend. He’d slept with the one that got away, and he’d done so more than once.

During the year or so that I hadn’t been speaking to Cathy and Sam, he’d slept with Jackie, the woman he’d been madly in love with long before he’d met Cathy. From my understanding, Jackie had been his high school sweetheart and first love, and Cathy had been incredibly threatened by her friendship with Sam. “I specifically asked him to never sleep with her,” Cathy sobbed. “And he did.” Not long after, Jackie had gotten pregnant. The timeline had been too close for Cathy to trust that the baby wasn’t Sam’s, so she had gathered a few of her pagan friends to do a spell to “break the tie” between Sam and Jackie and their possible love child.

The spell went like this: while evoking the goddess Hera–something that had to be the idea of one of the friends, as Cathy never evoked deities in ritual–, they all visualized Jackie, her unborn baby, and Sam tethered to each other by silver cords. One by one, they “cut” the cords, not just between Jackie and Sam, but between Jackie and the baby, as well.

“Not just a silver one, there was a red one, too,” Cathy said.

“What was the point of that?” I asked, hoping Cathy would give me an honest, repentant answer.

“So Sam wouldn’t love the baby,” she said, not meeting my eyes. But the meaning of the visualization was clear. Cathy had wanted Jackie to miscarry or fail to form a maternal connection to her child. Later, I learned from Jackie that the timeline wasn’t off at all; she’d never slept with Sam prior to the conception of her daughter.

Still, Sam admitted that he had broken the rule not long after their engagement, and no amount of Cathy’s horribleness justified that. I fully expected her to cancel the wedding, but when I pointed out that she would have to return the gifts, she wavered in her resolve. “If you’re going to call it off, you have to call it off now,” I warned. She said she would think about it.

About a week prior to the wedding, I and the other bridesmaids gathered at Cathy’s apartment to “rehearse” our hairstyles. A friend of Cathy’s would be styling us on the day of, but she’d never met any of us and wanted to practice. We waited for two hours for this friend to arrive. When she did, it was in a hoop skirt and crinolines. She’d been at a Civil War reenactment that had run long, and cell phones weren’t allowed on the battlefield. She didn’t apologize for keeping us waiting. To break the tension of her late arrival and sour mood, I joked, “So, who won?” With a glare, she informed me, “The Union. Unfortunately.”

That I would have my hair styled by a Michigan racist who longed for the glory days of the Confederacy was somehow not the most disturbing revelation of the afternoon. Instead, it was the fact that of all the other bridesmaids, I had known Cathy the longest, at five years. The others had known her only a year or two, with the exception of the girlfriend of a groomsman who had met her only months before. The fact that Cathy had no friends, male or female, from her hometown, high school, or even prior to the current decade was the very first time I’d seen a red flag in full color. Maybe it wasn’t just me who was annoyed by and suspicious of her behavior. Maybe there had been others who’d cut her out of their lives the way I’d tried to previously.

The night of the rehearsal dinner, I was ready to be finished with the entire wedding. I was cranky at the amount of money we’d spent–even the dinner that night, traditionally paid for by the family of the groom, came out of our own pockets–and frantic at the amount of time I’d wasted for planning my own wedding. But when we walked into the dining room, I saw that Sam and Cathy had gotten a huge birthday cake.

“I know you’re not going to have a birthday this year because of my day,” Cathy said. “So I wanted you to at least have something special.”

As we left that night, Sam “jokingly” suggested I chip in for the surprise cake.

The morning of the wedding, we arrived at the church to find it wasn’t air-conditioned. It was the hottest July fifteenth on record at that time. Between constantly fanning Cathy and trying to wrestle her into her too-small dress (she’d bought a two, planning to shrink to that size before the wedding, but had only achieved a six), we barely had time to deal with her frayed nerves. Some of her anxiety was caused by cold feet over the Jackie situation, but some was also directed icily at the bridesmaid who’d been roped into the wedding by virtue of dating the groom’s best man. Cathy had insisted on a child-free wedding–her own son had not been invited–but the bridesmaid’s babysitter had canceled and she’d been forced to bring him along. Cathy seethed and pouted about her ruined day, despite the fact that the child who had ruined it hadn’t even crossed her path. He’d spent the morning quietly reading and drawing in the church foyer and never uttered a peep throughout the rest of the day.

By the time the bridal party walked down the aisle, we were wilted, sweating profusely, and exhausted from the heat. Twice, I thought the bridesmaid next to me would pass out. My feet swelled through my strappy sandals. As we entered, I noticed a woman in full funerary attire sitting in the second row. It was one of Sam’s casual sex partners, who hadn’t been invited but who had shown up anyway, in a black dress, large sunglasses, and a huge hat complete with veil. I burst out laughing. I couldn’t help myself.

I don’t remember much about the ceremony or the reception, the latter of which was held in the banquet room of a bowling alley that was quite literally falling down. Half of the building had burned up the year before and had never been repaired. The banquet room’s dancefloor was a crumbling shuffleboard court with tiles that detached and skidded around if hit just right. There wasn’t air conditioning there, either, but a huge industrial fan blew mildew-and-cigarette scented air in from the bowling alley bar. We waited until they cut the cake before we left. I vomited at a gas station from the combination of stress, heat exhaustion, and possibly the food, which had been catered by the venue.

At least it was over, I reasoned. Now that she would no longer be focused on being the center of attention, Cathy would return to being the friend I remembered before she’d succumbed to her bridal ego.

 

Next time: “The Last Five Years”

It’s A Snow Day!

I slept in beautifully, gloriously, and now my work day is all sideways. Hence, no advice post today. But guess what I do have.

A portrait of myself as a goddess crushing the patriarchy.

Bronwyn Green commissioned this masterpiece from Jared Pechacek. Look at the detail! I’m still absolutely blown away by this, every time I look at it. The little pin on the shoulder of my toga actually says “Gallifrey” in circular Gallifreyan. That’s how freaking spot on this is. Look how haunted my American Girl doll is!

If you’d like to own a piece of Jared’s work, visit his online shop or visit his twitter for prices on commissions.

The Big Damn Angel Rewatch S01E02, “Lonely Hearts”

In every generation, there is a chosen one. No, shit. Wrong show. What am I supposed to do, now? I guess I’ll just have to recap every episode Angel with an eye to the following themes:

Angel is still a dick.
Cordelia is smarter than everyone.
Sex is still evil.
Sunlight isn’t nearly as dangerous as it was in Sunnydale…
…but its danger is certainly inconsistent.
Vampire/demon rules aren’t consistent with the Buffyverse.
Xenophobia and cultural stereotypes abound.
Women are disposable and unrealistic.
Vampires still @#$%ing breathe.
Some of this stuff is still homophobic as fuck
Blondes, blondes everywhere

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: Just like with the Buffy recaps, I’ve seen (most) of this series already, so I’ll probably mention things that happen in later seasons. So a blanket spoiler warning is in effect.

After a “previously on” we find Angel brooding at his desk at Angel Investigations. He’s sitting in the dark until Doyle comes in and points out how stereotypical his behavior is:

Doyle: “It’s Friday night. It’s the most social night of the week. I mean, a couple of lookers like us should be out there enjoying the night life… Instead, you’re sitting here moping around in the dark like some kind of–”

Angel: “Vampire?”

Doyle: “Well, yeah. I was going to say slacker but yeah, to you, Mr. Obvious.”

Doyle thinks they deserve a night off…the three of them. He has a crush on Cordelia, but he’s not sure how to act on it. He wants to enlist Angel to help win her over.

Doyle: “Wait a minute, I don’t even know if she likes me, man. Unless you put a good word in for me, you know? Just tell her what a great guy I am.”

Angel: “I barely know you.”

Doyle: “Well perfect, that should make it easier for you, then.”

He adds that Angel should avoid spilling the beans about Doyle’s demon side since it tends to turn women off.

Let’s talk about how a competent actor can make a character who should have been genuinely unlikable into something endearing. Doyle is basically Whistler, the demon guide from season three of Buffy. But the guy who played Whistler tried for (or was directed to have) this annoying, faux-tough guy bravado that was 100% grating to anyone who’d ever met a guy who couldn’t tell the difference between a trilby and a fedora. Even though we never saw it happen on screen, I consider the notion that Whistler referred to women as “M’lady” part of the Buffy canon. We know that Doyle is the replacement character for Whistler, and his mannerisms and overall personality are basically the same on paper. But Glenn Quinn played this character as he was: insecure, desperate to be cool, but ultimately a giant, awkward nerd. Those lines could have been delivered with that same “Look at me, I’m a confident demon with Rat Pack swagger” thing that Whistler had going on, but Quinn stammers his lines as though he’s desperately awed by Cordelia and recognizes that she’s wildly out of his league.

Remember, this is the same guy who played the second most unlikeable major character on Roseanne and somehow took a two-dimensional bad romantic choice and made him human. If you ever have a chance, look for the episode (I tried to find a clip on YouTube to no avail) where Mark and David argue about their mom and the way they were brought up. I firmly believe that if he were still alive today, we’d be seeing Glenn in major film roles.

She said, somewhat biased as a die-hard Covington Cross fan.

Cordelia comes into the office super excited because she’s made business cards for Angel Investigations.

Angel: “Look at that. There’s our number. It’s uh, right next to a, an um, a butterfly?”

Doyle: “It’s obviously not a butterfly, you idiot. It’s a..it’s a bird. No, wait, no, it’s an owl! A bird that hunts at night! Brilliant! It’s a–”

Cordelia: “It’s an angel!”

Okay, in fairness, it’s kind of vague:

But I feel like if your name was Angel, and your business was Angel Investigations, you’d kind of immediately jump to, “Oh, this is supposed to be an Angel.” At the very least, since he’s a vampire, he should have guessed it was a bat.

Doyle praises Cordelia for being super smart, but she’s not buying it. She smacks him, and he doubles over, not because of her playful hit but because he’s about to have one of his painful visions. He sees a packed nightclub that he thinks he recognizes, but that’s all he gets, besides the feeling that something bad is going to happen. Angel tells him that he got his wish: they’re going out.

Cut to the nightclub, where a man introduces himself to a shy, nervous-looking blonde woman. He gives her a line about how he hates places like the bar that he presumably came to voluntarily. That’s so tired, really. I remember guys saying that shit to me back when I was single and I would almost always respond, “Then you should probably leave.” And of course they thought that was a great idea, let’s get out of here together. Men in bars are insufferable.

Then, the opening credits. Have I mentioned yet how much I love the theme song? It could be an hour long and I’d listen to it.

When we rejoin the man and woman in the bar, they’re sitting at a table, chatting intimately about their past romantic failures and how they have to believe that someday, they’ll meet the someone they’re destined to be with forever.

Angel, Cordelia, and Doyle enter and split up to case the joint. On the dancefloor, people are wildly out of sync with the music. Like, comically out of sync. I love when that happens because you just know that on set they had some other thing playing or nothing at all, and then when they tossed the music over it, it just doesn’t work. That happens at the end of the special edition of Return Of The Jedi, where you can see Lando grooving in the background on Endor during the big Ewok celebration at the end. The new music has a different tempo, but they didn’t crop him out, so it just looks like Lando has no rhythm but a lot of enthusiasm. Music mismatch is fantastic and it never fails to get a laugh out of me.

While Angel tries to get information from the bartender, Cordelia networks the crowd, handing out business cards so obviously that it’s a wonder she doesn’t get kicked out for soliciting. Doyle stops her and points out that if they’re too conspicuous the police might get involved. He tells her to try to just talk to people organically before springing “hey, we can solve all your problems” on them, but she argues that she’s good at reading people. she points out some examples, including “Sarah, Plain and Tall,” the blonde woman we saw before. Cordelia says the woman must have money, if she’s snagged the good looking dude she’s leaving with.

At the bar, Angel is having a tee hee, gays are funny moment:

Angel: “No, seriously, I wasn’t hitting on you.”

He says to a guy walking away from him. So, I’m adding #10: Some of this stuff is still homophobic as fuck. Why? Because there’s nothing funny about “tee hee, people think Angel is gay.” Being gay wouldn’t demean him. Being gay isn’t demeaning. And this isn’t going to be the only joke to that effect in season one.

A woman at the bar–a blonde woman, because every woman besides Cordelia seems to be a blonde–introduces herself as Kate. She asks Angel if he’s okay, because he looks worried. He tells her that he’s looking for someone to rescue, and asks her if she’s in need of rescuing. She thinks he’s trying to pick her up:

Kate: “I gave up on the knight-in-shining-armor concept a while ago.”

She’s clearly unhappy and says she comes to the bar pretty much every night, trying to meet someone instead of sitting alone in the dark. And Angel acts like that would suck while being acutely aware that he does that shit as a passionate hobby. He lies and tells Kate that he’s a veterinarian, and she says she knows she can trust him because he likes animals.

I don’t know if there’s supposed to be chemistry in this scene, because after three seasons of Buffy and now this, I’m starting to think that Angel can’t really have chemistry with anyone. Season one of Buffy, with all the will-they-won’t-they, had some good romantic tension, but I think that was largely driven by the forbidden love angle and the fact that we were experiencing it along with Buffy. On his own, I don’t really care all that much about Angel’s romantic happiness. I don’t mean that in a churlish way; I just think his other conflicts and problems are more interesting than who he longs to fuck but can’t because soul.

In another location in the bar, Cordelia asks Doyle about his visions, and he explains them to her:

Doyle: “Well, they’re messages I get, you know, from the higher powers. Whoever they are. You know, it’s my gift.”

Cordelia: “If that was my gift, I’d return it.”

I have some bad news for you, Cordy.

A sleazy guy approaches with the Angel Investigations business card and asks Cordelia if that’s really her number. He wants to call her up for a date.

Cordelia: “This is a business card. We offer our services to people in need.”

Sleazebag: “Well, I might be in need of a little service. You charge by the hour?”

Doyle tries to intervene by saying that Cordy is with him, but she’s quick to shut that down.

Over at the bar, Angel and Kate are getting a little more cozy and introspective. She tells him she has a hard time trusting men. Kate is kind of a downer. She calls herself a “self-flagellating hypocrite slut” and bemoans how the more she goes out to bars, the harder it is to meet guys.

A big part of that is probably the fact that she’s mopey and constantly putting herself down when she talks to them. But that’s just my theory.

Back at male posturing central, Sleazebag one is joined by his friend, Wingman McAlsosleaze. They accuse Cordelia of being a sex worker soliciting in the bar and Doyle being her pimp. Cordy is about to get physical over this, but Doyle tells her violence is not the answer. Then he throws a punch and suddenly, it’s a bar fight.

Can I talk about the fight scene here? It’s…not great. In my investigation of IMDB, I found that none of the stunt coordinators for Buffy worked on Angel, and it shows. While Buffy’s fight scenes are thrilling, this bar fight feels obviously staged and not organic. The bad guys seem to be standing around waiting to be punched or kicked like everyone is trying to walk through the choreography. The only thing I really like about it is how short it is. That’s realistic; most fights don’t last all that long, and on Buffy they really drag out (which, when it’s supernatural character against supernatural character, I suppose it’s forgivable). Still, this scene is just poorly executed to the point of unintentional cheese. This fight is accidental fondue.

The bartender comes in to break up the fight, though he looks more like that one hip young high school teacher you had than a bouncer. He handles the fight just about the same way a teacher would, too, with stern words and not much manhandling. The sleazebag guys are apparently repeat offenders and get ejected from the bar. Why are they allowed to be there in the first place?

A coy redhead wanders up to Angel and flirts with him. Is this show the opposite of “Teh evol blonde” trope? Because blondes in this show are almost universally sad, small, and vulnerable, but the second a redhead strolls onto the scene she’s aggressively flirty and self-assured in a way that feels like the audience isn’t meant to like her. She’s not a person, she’s a caricature, so I’m calling #8 and making a new entry on the list: #11: Blondes, Blondes everywhere.

Speaking of blondes, Kate sees Angel talking to the redhead and looks rejected and angry. In another part of blonde town, “Sarah, Plain and Tall” is in bed with the guy we saw her leave the bar with. She says it’s time for her to go, and he tells her he understands, but he just wants to hold her. And she doesn’t seem all that into the holding.

The bar is less crowded at closing, and Angel laments the difference between having a social life in his past and trying to meet people now.

Angel: “You know, I was young once. I used to go to bars. It was never like this.”

Doyle points out that Angel used to go to taverns, which was a different situation because everyone in a small town knows each other.

Cordelia: “Yeah, like high school. It’s easy to date there. I mean, we all had so much in common. Being monster food every other week, for instance.”

You know, we spend a lot of time in season four of Buffy watching the gang struggle to fit into life post-graduation, but on Angel we don’t see that happening to Cordelia. Maybe she had to mature faster because she’s living in abject poverty in a big city, instead of going to college with financial support from parents in the town where she grew up. It kind of makes me look at the Scoobies in a new light; they seem a lot younger when you’re watching the shows side-by-side, and their normal world problems carry a lot less weight for me as a viewer.

The bartender/bouncer (I’m not sure what his job is because he seems to be the only employee in the place) tells them it’s closing time and they have to go, but we have to hang around for some exposition first:

Cordelia: “A couple of hundred years ago, the only thing you had to worry about was a hangover. Today, because of your curse thingy, you can’t sleep with anyone or else you might feel a moment of true happiness and lose your soul, become evil again, and kill everyone.”

I know they have to provide background because the show is just getting started, and I know this is in the days before DVRs made it possible miss an episode and still be able to follow along the next week, but honestly, some of this is so damn clunky while the series tries to find its feet.

The next morning, we rejoin the vulnerable blonde in the dude’s bedroom. Only now, she’s wearing a tube top and a sexy skirt with a high slit up the side, as well as smokey makeup and bright lipstick. Where did she get all this stuff if she’s staying over at his place? IDK, I guess it doesn’t matter. The more pressing issue is that the dude on the bed is super duper dead.

Back at the office, Doyle complains that he’s not finding any information about the bar they just visited. Cordelia is trying to man the computer, but I assume years of relying solely on Willow to provide computer-based info has really slowed her down because she snaps at Angel not to spell so fast. Her technological failure is irritating enough to Doyle that he jumps up to do it for her. When he types with basically normal, human speed, Angel and Cordelia are both impressed at his “computer skills”. Because no one could type before computers.

Doyle’s amazing hacker skills find them two leads: a missing girl and an “eviscerated” corpse that both had connections to the bar. Angel puts Doyle and Cordelia on research and heads back to the bar, where he runs into Kate. He apologizes for ditching her the night before and tells her not to go inside because it’s not safe. And since she can’t trust people and since Angel admits he’s still going to go inside, she figures he’s just rejecting her again. She angrily informs him that she can go wherever she wants and storms inside, where she takes a seat at the bar next to a blonde woman whose face isn’t shown at all. And that’s how we know it’s the same woman from earlier: an extra’s face wouldn’t be so conspicuously concealed from the camera because it looks unnatural and like bad blocking.

A guy is telling Demonic Blonde that he finds it hard to meet people because of his job, etc. But despite leaning heavily on his tales of being a high school geek, Demonic Blonde is way into him. Just down the bar, a guy asks the bartender if a Kevin has been in that night. The bartender saw Kevin leave with a girl the night before, so, cha-ching, we know who got murdered by Demonic Blonde last night.

Back at the ranch, Cordelia and Doyle are looking through a pile of old books in Angel’s occult library and hold. the. damn. phone.

Obviously, “research” here is a hold-over from Buffy. Because what did they do anytime they needed to find a demon? They hit the books. Giles’s books. The books that Giles had because he’s a Watcher and therefore would have an occult library of his own, built through years of Watcher training and access to their resources. But why does Angel have one? We’ve never seen this massive collection in his mansion in Sunnydale. He only started being the Angel we see today within the last five or so years; his transformation to doer of good began the same day Buffy found out she was the Slayer. At what point between then and now did he amass a huge collection of obscure occult texts? And if he had them, why didn’t he let the Scoobies use them any of the nine hundred or so times they had to save the world and had reached a dead end?

Anyway, Cordelia and Doyle are looking through the books and she says:

Cordelia: “Ugh. Demons. Is there anything more disgusting?”

Doyle: “You think so?”

Cordelia: “Come on. Okay, look at this one. This demon wears a wreath of intestines around its head. I mean, honestly, what kind of statement is this thing trying to make?”

Doyle says he thinks that some demons can be nice if you get to know them, but Cordelia says that she’s known plenty of demons, thanks but no thanks. Doyle’s romantic prospects are looking grimmer

At the bar, the bartender remembers the name of the girl that Kevin guy went home with. I find the memories of the extras on television shows are pretty convenient when compared to the memories of people in real life. I tended bar briefly and I remember exactly two customers from that entire time: the guy who came back because there was something wrong with the tap and his beer was all foam but he wasn’t a dick about it, and two guys who were in the band Korn. That’s it. And that’s not just because time has glossed over those days. It’s because I legitimately didn’t care about the customers I served once their tip was in my pocket and they were walking away and leaving me some god damn peace. In fact, it’s been that way in every customer serving job I’ve ever had. If someone came in and said, “Did you happen to see this guy last night,” my answer would be a solid, “can’t remember.” I suspect this is the same for many of you out there serving the public.

Either that or I’m a gigantic asshole.

Both could be true.

Anyway, both the bartender and the guy looking for Kevin know Demonic Blonde’s name. It’s Sharon. And one of the guys even knows her last name. Because she’s a regular. So, this bar is basically like Cheers, but for demons.

Angel leaves to track her down by finding a pay phone with a phone book and looking up her name. Ah, the turn of the 21st Century. What a time to be alive.

Anyway, I didn’t quite catch her name, but it sounded Dutch. She’s already in bed with the dorky guy, having had some bad sex that the guy keeps apologizing for. She spoons up behind him all cozy, and we cut to Angel running down a sidewalk frantically. Dorky guy is sharing all his cuddly vulnerability with Sharon when all of a sudden a thing like the tiny head that comes out of a Xenomorph’s mouth shoots out of her chest and into the dork’s back. Angel bursts into the apartment just in time to find the now demonic dork getting dressed, the tentacles of the creature slithering into his spine, while Sharon’s bruised up corpse lays in the bed.

Demon Dork: “You’re not human.”

Angel: “Newsflash, pal. You’re a bit off the evolutionary chart yourself.”

Hey, wait, does that mean demons don’t evolve? That would be a fascinating development to explore. Imagine on Angel or Buffy if they thought they had all the information about a demon, only to find out it had evolved since whatever dusty old century the book about them was written, and now our heroes have to alter their plan? That would be great.

But here I am, getting sidetracked. Demon Dork says that eventually he’ll find a body he can live in forever, but in the meantime, dead human bodies keep being so gosh darn temporary. Angel and the Demon Dork fight, and somehow Demon Dork fights really well despite being in a body he just slipped on a minute ago. Despite much impressive and cringe-worthy vampire hissing, the dude manages to wipe the floor with Angel. And these assholes just stand there filming the whole thing:

I mean, seriously. Lend a hand.

Demon Dork escapes, leaving Angel there with the corpse. Which is a great time for Kate to burst in and draw a gun and a badge. Oh shit. Plot twist.

After the commercial, Angel tries to convince Kate that he’s not a murderer, he’s a private investigator. He just doesn’t have a license. Kate pegged him for a serial killer based on their interaction the night before. She tries to cuff him, but he knocks her down and runs, diving out the window. And sitting on the ledge, unseen by Angel or Kate, is Demon Dork.

As per the instructions Angel gave them, Cordelia and Doyle arrive at her place. Doyle isn’t impressed by Cordelia’s living situation. Or, more accurately, he’s impressed by how bad it is.

Doyle: “Wow, this place is…I thought girls were supposed to like pretty things.”

But he insists he finds her slovenly ways “refreshing” until he steps in a bowl of oatmeal.

Angel arrives, establishing the “vampires can’t enter a house without being invited” rule while clarifying that a person has to be alive for this stipulation to apply. He fills Cordy and Doyle in on what’s happening, but he’s also shocked at the way Cordelia is living. The problem is that Cordy has until very recently been waited on hand and foot, and she never learned how to not be a gross slob because it was always being cleaned up for her.

Cordelia: “Is it my fault maid service was interrupted? It was supposed to go home, hotel, hotel, husband.”

This is why post-Sunnydale Cordelia is so fascinating to me, and why I wish we could have seen her meet up with the old gang again in like, season two of Angel.

Also, why she and Xander could have gotten back together and been a much better couple than Xander and Anya, but I’ll go into that more later in both series.

Angel tells Cordy and Doyle that the demon they’re looking for is a Burrower, a creature that exchanges fluids to jump from host to host. We see the demon’s current body picking up a girl in a bar and Kate breaking into Angel Investigations and poking around the office and apartment. She even looks in the refrigerator, so I guess it’s a good thing he didn’t have blood in there? We see the Burrower take on another host, then Angel shows up at Cordelia’s apartment.

In broad. Goddamn. Daylight.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

This is clearly #4. Even if we were to argue that on Buffy the vampires had to be in direct sunlight, that would only explain away Exhibit B. As Exhibit A clearly shows, Angel is perfectly fine to walk down a street after sunrise. What’s the rule there? Like, he just has to be off the street before Starbucks opens or something? Because it’s very clearly daytime in that picture. Coming from a show where his house had to be either underground or shrouded in blackout curtains, I’m finding this whole thing a little hard to swallow. I understand it’s difficult to have a vampire detective character carry an entire show if he can’t move about the city freely during the day, but it is possible. It’s called Forever Knight. Look it up.

No, seriously, look it up. Because Angel is basically Forever Knight/Buffy The Vampire Slayer crossover fic.

Cordelia has found out that the Burrower is named Talamour, and that it’s been around since forever. Its only weakness is fire, and once it moves from one host to the next, the old body decomposes rapidly. Angel decides they should call Kate since she’s been tracking the demon for longer than he has. When he asks her to help him find the killer, she tells him he’s the killer, and he’s like, yeah, no, you know that’s not true. Kate won’t back down, but Angel tells her to go ahead and come to the bar armed and with backup if she needs to

So, Kate goes to the bar because that’s how this sort of, “Just give me five minutes, here is why you should trust me” thing always goes with cops in movies and TV.  The bartender asks her if she wants her “usual” and Kate shows him her badge so he knows she’s on the job. She asks him to keep an eye out for the “tall, nice-looking” guy who helped him in the bar fight from before, and the bartender is like, sure, obviously, because I am a bartender in a popular nightclub in the second largest city in the United States of America, I definitely a) remember a specific dude who’s been here a couple of times and b) have the time to watch out for him. Okay, that’s what I said. He just says it’s not a problem.

A guy comes up to Kate and tries the “God, don’t you hate places like this?” opener, but he gets shut down when the bartender comes back and tells Kate that Angel is out in the alley. The bartender followers her into a back room and when she tells him to call for her backup, he knocks her out. She falls to the floor and he rips open the back of her shirt because dun dun duuuuuuuuuhn, he’s the infected one now. The demon is about to slither right into her spine when Angel shows up and starts fighting it. Because the Burrower already started the process of the leaving the host, the body is beginning to break down. It tosses Kate and Angel in the basement and goes back into the bar to try and pick up a new host body. Fortunately, his smooth lines don’t work since he’s covered in blood and has a flap of skin falling off his forehead like a broken screen door.

Meanwhile, Kate and Angel are still trying to escape the basement. He pulls out a fucking grappling hook and says they’re going through the windows that Kate estimates are twenty feet up.

Now, wait. Wait a second.

Patrons entering the bar have to do so by descending a flight of stairs. Now, we’re in a basement that has a ceiling over twenty feet high, that Angel and Kate had to fall down a flight of stairs to get into. How deep does this building go? Is this normal for buildings in L.A.? I mean, my assumption is that the entrance to this club is at street level, then you go down. So, are there buildings in L.A. with multiple stories underground? I’m seriously asking because I’ve only ever been to L.A. once and that was just for a day. I can’t tell if this is bad set planning or just how shit is in California.

Anyway, back to Angel’s fucking grappling hook. Just as you might be thinking, “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me with this,” in response to Kate’s breathy, “Who are you?” he launches the hook, snags a beam and…brings the entire thing down.

I hope that wasn’t load bearing. There’s a whole ‘nother basement relying on its support.

Anyway, we’re the second episode into the series and it’s nice to have this reassurance that while the tone is more mature, some of the silly humor is still going to be here for us.

Kate shoots the lock off the door (why didn’t she think to do that in the first place?) and they run after the Burrower. The host body is looking super rough now. Like, The Walking Dead rough. He grabs a woman off the street and forces her into an alley. That’s his first mistake. Angel is great in alleys. It’s like, 70% of his whole deal. They wrestle each other toward a conveniently-placed oil barrel fire, and the Burrower is obviously the one who falls in. As he staggers around burning and shrieking, Kate fires a few rounds into him.

After the cops and firetrucks show up, Kate is talking to Angel:

Kate: “Well, seems to add up. The bartender was connected to everyone. I must have talked to him a dozen times. I never had a clue.”

Angel: “It’s hard to get to know people.”

Kate: “Yes, it is.”

This raises a concern I probably should have had way back when I was just recapping Buffy, because it must have come up at least once. The bartender didn’t actually kill all those people. The demon inside of him did. But now in the eyes of the cops, the newspapers, and his family, he was a serial killer. This poor guy didn’t do anything wrong, but he’s going to posthumously bear the blame for all those murders. It’s not like there’s anything anyone can do about that, but I wish it would get addressed at some point. Maybe it does. I’ll just have to keep an eye out.

Kate uses the most cliche line in the history of all screenwriting:

Kate: “I didn’t thank you…for saving my life.”

I find it difficult to believe that there isn’t a website that keeps track of all the times this phrase is used in a movie or TV show. Maybe it’s on TV Tropes, but I have a lot to do today and that place is a god damn trap, so I’m not going to check.

In the interest of starting over and trusting each other, Kate admits to illegally searching Angel’s apartment. He gives her his card.

Kate: “What is this? A lobster?”

Another officer asks to talk to her, and when she turns back dun dun duuuuuuhn! Angel has vanished.

Back at Angel Investigations, Angel suggests to Cordy and Doyle that the three of them should go out and have fun.

Cordy: “Or we can go home.”

Doyle: “And you can sit in the dark, alone.”

Angel: “God, yes. Thank you.”

He sits down at his desk, the lights turn off, and we fade to black.

This episode isn’t all that strong, to be honest. Cordelia and Doyle aren’t given much to do, and they’re basically the most interesting characters at this point. The interaction between Angel and Kate doesn’t really bring anything new to the vigilante/cop dynamic, and Kate isn’t given much of a personality besides “stock tough lady cop who can’t trust anyone.” This early in the game there needed to be a way to keep the core characters more involved; this episode just felt like a heavy-handed treatise on being lonely and tortured and how difficult it is to make a human connection, etc. That shit might be true, but it’s an overall theme for the title character. Cramming it into a single episode just feels too obvious.

Jealous Hater Book Club: Handbook For Mortals chapter 10, The Hanged Man or “Internalized Misogyny, Rinse, Repeat”

Another week, another installment of “Lani Sarem shows her entire ass.” In her now infamous Facebook thread, she added further proof of her racism to the mix, asking to send a friend request to a writer who insisted The Hate U Give was only defended by readers because it contains hatred of white people (Thanks to Cheryl Z for bringing attention to that in the comments). It’s only a matter of time before Sarem openly attributes her failures to reverse racism.

Some people have noticed that Sarem has copy/pasted the same question in several different Facebook writing groups. It’s pretty clear that she’s not doing it just to drum up vocal support; nearly every time she tells her sob story about nobody listening to her and everyone being against her, some indie author with a bug up their ass about how persecuted they’ve been by the “gatekeepers” swears they’ll buy a copy of her book. Her new marketing plan is at least less convoluted than the original one.

And away we go.

Zanielle tells us that we’ve time jumped to a few weeks later. So now she’s been in Vegas for what? A few months? And we’ve still not yet gotten to any sort of magical plot. Instead, we go to McMullan’s with her and the cast and crew.

I was still figuring out the whole “Mac and Jackson” situation, which each of them seemed to dance around while I hung out with the other.

Again, this is “a few weeks later.” And we already know that she’s been spending significant time with both them. So, how long, exactly, does it take? And how is Levi not doing exactly the thing the evil bitch who broke Mac’s heart did? Is the only difference that they’re not boning?

That said, I could tell they were both starting to get antsy and I knew that sooner rather than later they would want some kind of answers.

I feel like we should make a betting pool over when this is going to actually happen. My bet is on “not in this book.”

The whole situation was something that we didn’t really display at work, although it was obvious that a few people from work had an idea (I knew Tad knew something), but we had kept it away from most people at work and I liked it that way. Overall, keeping it to ourselves kept our work environment drama free. At work, Mac and Jackson were just colleagues to me, and they both seemed fine together at work as well.

Wait, are you talking about work? Work, like your job where you work? I feel like you could have made it clearer that you’re talking about stuff that happens at work. Maybe you should have been more specific that this was about work and mentioned work more in that paragraph about the stuff happening at work.

Also, just so you’re aware, Ziplock, there’s no “we” in that sentence. Jackson and Mac are talking about it constantly, and you were the subject of an entire conversation at work. Basically, you keep it away from work and they just run their mouths like gossipy cartoon animals in a Disney movie. Zephyr wonders if all this non-fighting over her will ruin Jackson and Mac’s friendship, but she once again states that she still doesn’t know how to handle the situation because she’s so torn between the two of them.

Jackson and I agreed on almost anything that came up and everything seemed easy with him. If I had written on a piece of paper all the things I wanted in a guy, well, he would have fit it to a T, except my ideal guy would also have powers.”

That errant quotation mark was present in the text, that’s not my ham fingers clogging things up.

All of this would be far more compelling evidence in Jackson’s favor if we’d ever seen any meaningful interaction between the two of them. All we ever hear about, though, is that they talked off-screen and oh, by the way, his eyes seem to sparkle. So…Jackson is clearly mahgjikkahhhl, right? That’s going to be the big twist or something?

I had learned from my mom that it’s easier when you are both magick–it’s actually deeply frowned upon or somone like me to end up with a mortal.

Another thing that’s “deeply frowned upon” is introducing brand new conflict and pretending it’s been there the whole time. Were we all just collectively in the bathroom during the other scenes where Zune was hemming and hawing over these dudes because of this highly problematic “breed with your own kind” edict? Is that why we missed it? Is that why something that should be a pretty major part of the romantic conflic hasn’t been brought up until now?

It’s practically a law for us to not be with our own kind. My mom instantly became an outcast for having me with a mortal. She never cared, though, because had always been a rebel, and I guess I didn’t really care either.

If it’s “practically a law for us to not be with our own kind,” that means you’re expected to not be with your own kind. What you meant was, “It’s practically a law for us to be with our own kind,” but you don’t know how words work. And I’m still unsure what Sarem means by use of the word “mortal.” The opposite of “mortal” is not “magjikhal,” it’s “immortal.” So, just like with Apolonia, we’re reading a book where the heroine may or may not be incapable of dying. As I stated numerous times during those recaps, you cannot create a sense of danger for an immortal character by threatening them with mortal consequences, so you need to be real fucking clear in your character building as to whether or not they’re a fucking immortal.

I guess the issue is when you “mix” you don’t know if your chilldren will be mortal or “gifted.”

Again, not the opposite of “mortal.”

Since I could do magic, mom’s “excommunication” was lifted and eventually people in our world forgot and stopped caring.

Tip: If you want to write about a secretive underground world full of majikkk and prohibition against mixing the races, maybe you should mention that any of it exists before you get halfway through your book.

The worry is that if too many of us pair up with mortals, and have mortal children, then we will stop existing. I cared about this on some level but that kind of problem was something I could fret about later.

No! It really isn’t! It’s something you should have been fretting about this whole time! Then there would have been actual conflict in your love story when now there is none!

Mac, was also a mortal and we clearly had our differences–but so much passion had sparked between us.

You might have wanted to find a way to work that into the narrative somehow. Obviously, the conversations about Aimee Mann and the long scenes of looking at each other while not trying to look at each other are the number one priority, but maybe somewhere you could have squeezed in a little more “passion” if you’re going to describe it as, you know. “Much.”

I have always hated making tough decisions, but usually the tarot was far more helpful than it had been so far, considering that it hadn’t given me a clear-cut winner no matter how I asked it.

First of all, asking the same question over and over again is probably not going to result in greater clarity. Especially not greater clarity than the extremely specific spread we saw earlier in the book. At this point, you’re just waiting to turn over a card that’s all text saying, “PICK THIS GUY.”

My mom’s favorite band from the 1960s was the Monkees–who also had their own TV show, which she also loved.

…That’s nice?

 

“You know what Peter Tork says of decisions,” she would tell me. “To allow the unknown to occur, and to occur requires clarity. For where there is clarity, there is no choice. And where there is choice, there is misery.”

Peter Tork doesn’t say that. The Indian dude in the sauna in Head says that.

In other words, he probably had to decide between two girls.

No, that is definitely not the context. It’s one thing to use dated pop culture references in your YA book. It’s another entirely to use dated pop culture references, get them wrong, and have no idea what the context is. Peter Tork (and the rest of The Monkees) are in Head, but it’s not an extension of the show. It’s existential counter-culture satire lampooning the very idea of The Monkees. It has nothing to do with a love triangle.

I laughed at the thought of “WWPTD–What would Peter Tork Do?”

He’d probably understand how capitalization works in acronyms, but whatever.

So, after a paragraph about Zanilla Lice changing her clothes and deciding whether or not to ride to the bar with Jackson, she decides to take her bike.

I wasn’t sure how it would look for us to show up at the same time, but Jackson actually didn’t seem to care who knew about whatever was going on between us and the little cool he did play, was only because he knew it was what I wanted.

And yet you just told us that all three of you were keeping it secret. But this wouldn’t be the first time you changed your story in the actual middle of the story.

Jackson goes off to talk to his band, and there’s a moment of romantically charged eye contact between Lay Z and Mac.

I wanted to go over and talk to him but figured I would stay away for a bit, though I noticed he was looking my way–a lot.

I mean, if she had just gone over and said hello to him, a guy couldn’t come up to her and start hitting on her, setting up the big almost-fight in this chapter:

He was obviously hitting on me, even though I was not even remotely interested–not just because I already had one too many prospects, but also because I am not the “get picked up at a bar” kind of girl.

Not Like Other Girls™

He was funny and it was kind of fun to have him fawning all over me and, honestly, it was better talking to him than standing by myself awkwardly.

Or, you could have gone to talk to Mac. Like an adult in a relationship with another adult.

I think that’s a huge problem with this book. None of the adults act like adults. If I were in this situation, I would think to myself, “Don’t avoid him, because people might think you’re difficult to work with and it would be better if they just suspected something was going on.” And for their parts, my coworkers might not immediately assume I want to fuck everybody I see.

Of course, Mac sees Livia talking to the guy and gets upset. He comes over and:

“Mac.” He introduced himself with a quick smile and a firm handshake.

The guy shook Mac’s hand, but cocked his head to the side and gave him a brazen look.

Brazen? Is he trying to pick up Mac?

Dude asks if Mac is Zippy’s boyfriend.

Mac looked at me for a second as if to ask me what he should say. I stayed silent. He was gonna have to figure this one out on his own.

This is exactly what’s wrong with the whole thing. You’re in a relationship together. Even though it’s casual, you need to talk about how it works.

Mac admits he’s just a coworker, then puts himself between Zani and the guy–whose name is Justin–and says she should come do shots with the rest of the group.

I normally would have wanted to be stubborn in a situation like that and would have said no just to spite him. This time there was something his face, though, and the look in his eye said I shouldn’t be stubborn. I did give him a look that said I wasn’t thrilled before answering him, “Oh. Um, sure. Shots. Cool.” I nodded.

I’m actually with Zanta Laus on this one. Mac doesn’t want to define their relationship, but he comes charging over and doesn’t want her to talk to this guy? That’s not how it works, champ.

This is also one of the very few places in this book where someone’s characterization is consistent with what the author is telling us it is; Mac is behaving this way due to the jealousy we’ve already seen him display.

So, obviously, this can’t be a thing where Zoella just goes off and she and Mac talk about how he can’t rush in and stop her from talking to people. That would be a productive conversation that might further their romantic tension. Instead:

I had started to walk away when Justin grabbed my arm and started to pul me back roughly. Mack instantly grabbed Justin’s arm and forced him to let it go. It would have been obvious to anyone who cared to look that Justin had been drinking a little too much.

“Owww! You jerk face! What’s your problem, man?”

I’m sorry, did this chick write a bar fight sparked by the words…

you jerk face?

Because the interaction had gotten loud, some of the crew had walked closer to us. Half looked like they wanted to see what was going on, and half were ready to jump in if they neeed to. At the same time, a couple of guys who seemed to be Justin’s friends had walked over to back him up.

“Besides you? Nothing,” Mac said sourly.

This is going to be the most devastating confrontation the fourth grade has ever seen.

“I’m not the problem. You are,” Justin said as he swayed a little and glared deep into Mac’s eyes.

Why does Mac have more sexual tension with this dude than with Zephora?

Of course, Lade is quick to tell us that she’s not into being fought over. If only there were someone around who was magjikhal who could do something to make the fight–caused or exacerbated by her own sexy powers of sexiness–not happen! Alas, Zod’s mahgjicks only work if the author remembers them.

“Zade said goodbye. I suggest you do the same,” Mac warned.

“What are you going to do about it?” Justin said belligerently.

Justin asked belligerently, but whatever. My biggest issue here is that neither of these guys is actually going to throw a punch or anything. They just keep standing around having every pre-fist fight verbal interaction ever portrayed in any book, film, and television show for all time.

Larva tries to pull Mac away from the impending fight that will never arrive, but she’s powerless, having only all of her boundless powers. So, Tad has to intervene on her behalf.

Which means now there are three dudes involved in this fight.

“Look, man,” Tad said, “I think you have had a little too much to drink, and I am sure that in this state you are positive that you can bend steel, but let me assure you that the sober vesion of you would think differently. And while I’m sure your friends are very tough, there are about twenty or so guys in here that work for this guy.” He gestured toward Mac, then continued, “He’s our boss and we like him–and we will make sure you never touch him. So, how about you re-think what you’re about to do?”

Sorry, now there are twenty-three dudes involved in this fight.

Chris, one of the show’s electrician’s, went straight up to the front to show there really were several of them.

Chris is either showing that there are several electricians or he’s showing them several unnamed things that belong to the show’s electrician. The first interpretation, however, requires you to ignore the misplaced possessive apostrophe.

Justin’s friends tell him to back off and leave:

“I know that I don’t want to get into a fight for you over a girl who’s obviously interested in someone else. Let’s go. Now.” Justin’s friend nodded towards Mac when he said the part about me being interested in someone else.

Which is fucking hilarious because literally, nothing about this situation suggested that Livonia was more interested in Mac. From an outsider’s perspective, she was flirting with Justin and then Mac came up and aggressively tried to move her away from the situation. At no point in the interaction did it seem like she was more into Mac than Justin, even in her own head, where she was annoyed with him.

So, the friends take Justin away and of course, at the last minute he turns and lunges for Mac, who steps aside.

I just stood there wide-eyed and watched as Justin crashed into a metal beam that spanned from floor to ceiling in the main part of the bar. Mac had just happened to be standing in front of the beam so it worked out in Mac’s favor when he sidestepped his would-be attacker. It was pretty impressive how hard Justin hit the metal pole, head on, like a freight train that hit the side of a mountain. His head and body went flying backwards–hard–as he crashed then hit the ground.

Hoo boy, there’s a lot here. Let’s start with the heretofore unmentioned metal support in the interior of the bar that has never been described definitively. Is it a beam, or a pole? A pole is round. A beam is rectangular or h-shaped. Now, someone is going to come in here and be like, “As an architect, I can confirm that sometimes poles are square,” or something, but I’m sticking to my guns on this from an authorial standpoint. If someone says “beam” a reader thinks squarish. If someone says “pole” a reader thinks roundish. They are different shades of the same concept and this author has used a touch too much Phthalo Beam on her happy little canvas.

All right, next on the list is the freight train hitting the side of a mountain. This…does not happen, Lani. A freight train’s route is very, very much planned in advance. If a freight train hits a mountain, it is because Wile E. Coyote has painted a fake tunnel on the side of it and quickly redirected the track, and even then it is incredibly unlikely that the collision will occur, owing to the notoriously poor quality of Acme products. I think what you were thinking of was a plane hitting a mountain or a freight train hitting something else.

As for Justin’s head and body flying backward…why not just, “he flew backwards,” as that sentence doesn’t imply that his head and body are moving independently from each other anyway?

Moving on to “flying backwards–hard”, it’s not the flying that’s hard. It’s the collision, either with the pole or with the ground.

You know who would have caught this stuff?

An editor.

You know what Sarem obviously lied about?

Having three of them.

We all stood there for a few moments, basically wondering if he had knocked himself out. He finally opened his eyes and slowly sat up. Mac could be very cocky when he wanted to be and leaned down towards Justin before he urged, “Friend, I think you should leave now.”

Every male character in this book is “cocky,” Lazarus. It’s the only way your author knows how to portray men.

I thought about the big knot he was going to have on his head the next day.

(That excerpted line is just a bookmark for something coming up. Keep it in your back pocket).

“Well, that would have been fun,” Tad said sarcastically. “Okay, kids, back to what you were doing. Turns out there will be no fight at recess after all.” He laughed.

Him laughing doesn’t actually make it funny.

It was silent for a couple more moments before everyone began to resume their conversations and the laughter picked back up. Mac and I just kind of stood there looking at each other for what felt like hours but was in reality was only about ten seconds or so.

That’s a super accurate description of reading this book. It feels like hours but is in reality is only about ten seconds or so.

He looked like he was trying to read me, and how I was reacting to what happened. I stood there for a moment looking back at him with a blank stare, mainly considering the knot Justin would have on his head in the morning, before walking away to where a couple of the girls had returned to talking.

Why does Justin’s head injury merit two separate mentions? Also, this is the part of the scene where Zenobia Lome should tell Mac that she doesn’t appreciate what he just did and he needs to get his shit together and decide what they’re going to be or something. But, as I have mentioned previously if they talk to each other, the flimsy soap bubble of “tension” pops.

Mac hung back with Tad and I purposely stayed within earshot so I could still hear what they were saying over the bar noise. The girls were talking about a new store in the Forum Shops that they all were “super into,” but that’s all I could tell you about their discussion, because I had completely tuned them out so I could hear Mac and Tad’s conversation.

Translation: “I’m rude.”

“That guy looked crazy and was pretty big. The only reason he didn’t crush you was because he was too drunk. Are you and Zade even actually dating?” Though one of the other girls could have heard if they weren’t so engulfed in their conversation about the mall, I was pretty sure I was the only one who actually overheard their conversation and I perked my ears to hear Mac’s response.

Leaving aside the fact that Lassie here is a literal Collie with perking ears and all, just let that sentence about the girls not overhearing wash over you in a glorious tidal wave of self-centered misogyny. How dare those shallow bitches talk about things that interest them rather than eavesdrop on Zapp Lannigan’s relationship drama! Ugh. Women be shoppin’, am I right?

Meanwhile, Tad cuts Mac’s bullshit excuses right the fuck off with the only words of sense anyone has ever spoken in this entire book so far:

“[…]If you’re not serious enough to say you’re dating, then Zade can talk to whomever she wants. We’re not fifteen. That’s high school bullshit.”

Never in the history of any book I’ve ever read has a character so clearly screamed that he has become self-aware of the absurdity of the narrative he’s trapped in.

I had never really seen Tad mad like that. I wondered why he was taking Mac’s actions so personally–more personally than I was, even.

Because he knows now that he’s operating within a reality that bears no resemblance to the world he should know and his soul is screaming.

Jackson goes over to talk to Mac, as well, because no chapter would be complete without Sarem reminding us that two boys are fighting over her avatar. For understandable reasons, the last person Mac wants to talk to is Jackson, but it happens.

“I’m sure Zade appreciated you defending her honor,” Jackson interrupted, it was obvious Jackson wanted to say whatever it was he had to say and didn’t care if Mac wanted to hear him or not.

It’s obvious that Sarem wants to use run-on sentences and doesn’t care if a period is required instead of a comma or not.

Jackson ignored Mac’s statement and continued to talk, “I just think that Zade’s a big girl and she can handle herself.”

You know who should be saying this to Mac? Larth Zader. This is a conversation that we should be seeing between the two of them to build up literally any conflict at all that doesn’t hinge on Ziffy’s indecisiveness.

I wasn’t sure why Jackson had made such a huge point to come and say what he had to Mac, and was not sure what he had accomplished. Must have had something to do with me and the fact I was basically seeing both of them, but I didn’t get what Jackson gained out of saying that to him.

Are you fucking serious? Are we really trying to make some sort of dramatic intrigue out of the fact that the heroine can’t tell if a conversation about her had something to do with her? Is that really the level of ham-fisted terrible writing that we’ve reached? And the book is only half finished, so there’s no way we won’t sink lower, but I cannot fathom how we ever could. I have read some incredibly thick heroines before who miss the point time and again for the convenience of the loose narrative but HOLY SHIT. She just shot past Anastasiabella Rose Steele-Grey-Swann on the oblivious scale.

Aside from the girls I was standing with, I no longer had conversations to listen to.

And listening to the “girls” is clearly out of the question.

Instead of paying attention to the girls I had zoned out in my own thoughts about everything an still wasn’t paying any mind to them or the conversation.

This is the second time Sarem has made it a point to tell the reader that her avatar is intentionally ignoring the women around her. I’m sorry, I know you’re supposed to separate the art from the artist, but this is so clearly the author’s insistence that she, herself, personally, would never, not in a million years, ever want to have any casual, positive interaction with another woman. This is absolutely Lani Sarem’s statement that she does not like women and she is the only woman who isn’t a silly, vapid bitch.

Also, Kindle search says that the word “conversation” is only used 64 times in the entire book, but that’s impossible as it was used at least four hundred times in this scene alone.

The women–I’m sorry, the girls because this is middle school–notice that Luella ZeVille isn’t paying attention.

“Oh! Sorry, I must have zoned out. What was it?”

“What’s your favorite clothing store?” she asked slowly and purposely, putting emphasis on the word store.

You needed to put emphasis on looking up the word “purposefully,” because that’s what you meant.

I pursed my lips together as I tried to think of any store, but I just wasn’t good at this girl-bonding thing.

There have been two scenes in which Zed Leppelin has gone to the mall for extensive shopping sprees. But she can’t remember names of stores and she doesn’t really get the whole talking about shopping thing. Which is all that women–sorry, girls–ever do.

She pulls a name out of her ass by remembering that she’s wearing a Betsey Johnson dress.

“I love her, but she doesn’t have stores anymore, you can only buy her stuff online now, which I hate cause I like to try things on first,” Nora, a tall, skinny blonde who was a dancer in the show said very passionately, as if we were talking about world peace or something.

This entire book has been solely about how many guys want to date Labia, how colorful her hair is, how everyone thinks she’s pretty, how girls are always jealous, and again two shopping scenes, but talking about a pretty common thing to talk about somehow makes the other women boring and horrible and nothing at all like her, who has interests and pursuits so far above basically anything feminine at all.

The weirdest part about this scene is that we’ve been explicitly told that woman should not like Zarbra. Yet here are some women making an effort to be kind to her and she’s like, “Ugh, they’re so beneath me.” Why doesn’t she suspect they might have magic? Why isn’t she relieved and grateful that they’re not attacking her at the lemonade stand?

In the mall.

Where she always fucking is.

I needed to get out of the bar and clear my head; I really needed to figure out who and what I wanted.

Yet your author had an entire chapter to do that and chose instead to make men fight over you, give you a chance to express her hatred of women, and not further either the magical plot or the relationship in any meaningful way.

Making excuses of an oncoming migraine, I excused myself from the girls’ conversation so that I could leave before I started banging my head against the table.

Jesus Christ, Lani Sarem. Me fucking too.