Five Things for February

It's time for that... irregular?... feature again! I think I did it in November, and then kind of neglected it in December and January, and now here it is again and it kind of covers December, January and the little we've seen of February too.


1. I watched the 2009 BBC miniseries adaptation of Emma a week ago and I LOVED it. I always thought the version with Kate Beckinsale was the best adaptation, but this one beats it by a mile. For one thing there's more of it. Four hours of it. For another I really, really like Romola Garai. For yet another, Jonny Lee Miller is eye candy. There's no two ways about it. It's funny, it's touching, it's really great. If you're an Austen fan and haven't yet seen this one, go watch it!

2. We're moving house. Again. Three moves in about three years. It's a big fat pain in my rear end. (On the bright side, if we get the house we want - and there's no telling whether or not we will - it's a lovely house.)

3. I love Grey's Anatomy. And especially Chandra Wilson, Sandra Oh and Kevin McKidd in it. I have been a huge fan for a long time but I don't think I've ever said so on here. Or maybe I have. Either way, I love it. In fact, I love it so much I sometimes dream about it. You know something's got its claws into you when that happens.

4. Massive website redesign! My old one was driving me crazy. I didn't really like the way it looked anymore, but it was also a huge, huge trial to update. Literally took me twenty minutes to get in there and change or add, like, a sentence. Which meant, of course, that it put me off updating the darn thing and what's the point of a website if you're not going to share new and current stuff?

5. And this. Because it's cute.

What have you been up to recently? Are you a fan of Emma or Grey's Anatomy or babies? Moving sometime soon? (If the latter is a yes, I feel your pain.)

I've been gone a long time...

Well, that blog holiday was practically a gap year. I'm not going to go into why I've been away for weeks and weeks, because it's all long-winded and dismal and boring, but I will say I'm now back (yay!) and have lots of exciting things to talk about in the next few weeks. Plenty of amazing books to recommend, movies and TV to force down your throats, and maybe I'll scrounge around for the odd cute baby photo or two. Because we could all do with a little more cuteness in our lives.

I'm also going to start posting here once a week (on Tuesdays) unless I have something special or exciting to say. It's not that I don't love blogging, but I feel like I'm not doing it as well as I'd like to and I'm hoping that giving myself one post a week will make that one post a better one.

And so, to tide you over till next Tuesday, here are a couple of movies I've recently seen and loved... 

What to Expect When You're Expecting 
I was always going to watch this, given I was pregnant and had a baby not all that long ago, but it's surprisingly and refreshingly fun!

Harry Brown 
Gritty and dark. And it's got a vigilante Michael Caine. (I know! Alfred gets to be the superhero!) What's not to love?

And this isn't a movie, but I recently started watching ITV's Doc Martin. I'm most of the way through the five seasons already. It's absolutely brilliant.

Seen anything good recently?

A Reflection on The Inbetweeners

Believe me, I never thought I'd write this post. In fact, even the thought of trying to be straight-faced about The Inbetweeners is enough to give me a jaw-ache.

Yet here I am.

Some of you may have heard of The Inbetweeners. Some of you may be fans who watch it religiously for the endless laughs. For those of you who have no idea what this is, in short, it's a British TV show about four teenage boys at the end of their high school lives. It's also about four teenage boys who swear, drink, and seem to talk almost constantly about sex. It's also a BAFTA award-winning show, which means somebody has found something to admire in it.

The most important thing you need to know about The Inbetweeners, though - and the thing that I notice most about it - is that there are no lines. The show doesn't take itself seriously. It's not supposed to be taken seriously. It's about silly fun, cheap laughs, and the odd moment of 'aw that was quite sweet' where the characters (sort of) redeem themselves. Just about every Naughty Word has been used in just about every episode. We have seen testicles. We have heard about a million different words for parts of the female (and indeed, male) anatomy. We've seen and heard about various bodily functions. We've seen, for Christ's sake, a squirrel being deliberately run over. And as someone who once watched her younger brother try and fail to save an injured squirrel that fell off our roof, I did not enjoy that.

The other thing you should probably know is that I'm not generally the blushing damsel type. I was raised by a family who didn't believe in censoring anything. I had aunts who loved to squabble (colourfully), an actor father who got me to run lines with him from scripts sometimes filled with profanity and sex, and a mother who is so liberal that the only thing she wouldn't let us read or watch was The Exorcist because she was afraid it would scare the tonsils out of us. Fair.

And when I was in high school, I was pretty much known to most of my friends as the one whose mind was in the gutter. Someone said 'long', I usually finished the sentence with a euphemism for boys' private parts. Someone said 'hard'... you get the idea.

Yet in spite of this upbringing and this high school career, I, Sangu Mandanna, Mind in the Gutter, spend most of The Inbetweeners episodes cringing. And blushing. And wincing.

Which goes to show you just how far the show goes.

I'm sure there are thousands of people who claim the show goes too far. Way, way too far. Sometimes, I even agree. Last week's squirrel-killing episode, for a start. I hated that bit. Steve, who derives immense amusement from the cheap laughs and the silly gags, didn't like it either. In fact, I wouldn't even call myself an Inbetweeners fan. I probably wouldn't notice missing an episode, and I certainly don't clear my day to watch it.

But for all that, I admire it. I admire the writers. The producers. The actors. Everyone who lets the show air exactly the way it is.

Why? Because The Inbetweeners is a rare example of something that's rapidly vanishing: the lack of boundaries. I might not agree with or enjoy everything I see in an episode, but I admire it all the same because there are no lines. In a world where books are being banned from libraries and TV channels censor out kissing (yes, this happens), I think a show like this is a nice, nice thing.

As someone who writes for young adults, whose YA novel is out on submission to publishers right now, I worry all the time. I find myself censoring myself when I write. Is this too politically incorrect? Will someone kick off if they read this line? And I wish I could stop doing that, because there's enough being cut out and chipped away out there already.

That's why I admire The Inbetweeners. It's a show about young adults that doesn't hold back. It airs late in the evening, so that children aren't unwittingly subjected to the swearing or sexuality, and it gives us a choice. If you find it offensive, don't watch it. If you like it, you can watch it, no holds barred and all that. We get to choose. And I love that. 

I'd love to know what you guys think.

On Writing Relationships

I've neglected the blogosphere shamefully this past week. Partly it's been a case of Real Life taking over, and I haven't wanted to visit blogs knowing I won't be able to properly sit down and read and comment on posts. So sorry about that, everyone, I'll be back to making my rounds of my favourite bloggers this week!

It's also been a case of not really having anything to blog about. Yes, I have ideas for posts and stuff I want to say, but I never write up these posts if I'm not feeling passionate about the topic at the time. So I've waited until I have felt that spark again.

I don't know about you, but relationships in fiction are so important to me. The relationships between friends, lovers, family are, to me, the anchor of a story. No matter how great a plot is, no matter how clever the twists and turns are, I'll never be able to love something if the characters and the relationships between them (or even some of them) aren't interesting, compelling, moving, fraught, amazing... I could go on.

So I'm going to offer up a few things that have occurred to me about why fictional relationships work, and what specific story or relationship made me realize these things.

Tension is key. No one cares about a relationship where everything goes swimmingly all the time, and the characters never have doubts, or argue, or do something awful without meaning to, etc etc. In Veronica Mars, my favourite relationship is the one between Veronica and her father. They stick together through thick and thin (and believe me, things get thick). But they're also not above lying to each other, protecting each other through various underhanded means, tricking one another, and generally confronting each other over issues that are important to them. This is why this relationship works. 

On the flip side, they do stick by one another and that's as important as the doubts. The reason I lost interest in the Logan/Veronica romance was because there was too much doubt, too much conflict, too little loyalty and faith and awesomeness between them. They were unhappy far more than they were happy. I think there needs to be a balance.

The nature of the relationship itself is in question - and is then satisfactorily resolved. Do they love one another? Hate one another? Are they going to betray the other? Will they forgive the other one? Will they overcome their different ideals to love each other, or will their ideals matter more? This kind of conflict is an off-shoot of tension, I guess, but I needed it earmarked separately because it's so effective. When you question a relationship from the outside, and then finally get your answers, it's satisfying and moving. And it keeps you interested right through.

Key example? Luke and Darth Vader in the original Star Wars trilogy. Being twenty-two and the daughter of a Star Wars fan, I knew Darth Vader was Luke's father before I ever watched any of the films. I think most people do these days. But that, if anything, makes the question even more gripping. Will they reconcile? Can he be redeemed? Will he kill his own son - or save him?

We got great answers to those questions, and that's why I love their relationship so much.

The characters have to be able to stand on their own. They have to be able to stand individually as great characters before they can make a great relationship. Otherwise, it's just a hollow relationship that doesn't quite ring true, no matter how much you praise the love. For me, Romeo and Juliet epitomize this. Everyone knows them for the tragic love story, but when I read the play, it was kind of disappointing. I just thought 'meh, they're not that great, either of them. Pfuee!' And their relationship didn't feel real at all.

You have to be invested in them. Some of you may disagree, but for me, a relationship in a book or movie or TV show has to be something I'm deeply invested in for me to care at all. It's amazing how much of a difference that emotional investment makes. Even if you tick every single one of the boxes above, a relationship will still fall flat if a reader or viewer is not invested in it. This is the wild card and it's annoying because it means we as writers could tick the boxes and still not create that special spark. To use a reality TV metaphor, the relationship might be able to dance, have a great voice, look good - but it's always going to be trumped by something that has that special X factor.

For instance, when the Harry Potter books were still coming out, I had my heart deeply and firmly set on the idea that Harry and Hermione were better together than any other characters in the books. They had a spark I couldn't identify, something that made me go 'wow, I love seeing how these two interact and stick by each other'.

This made me a little impatient (to put it mildly) with the Ron/Hermione romance and don't even get me started on the Harry/Ginny one. I used to find Ron and Hermione's bickering irritating. But other readers tell me they loved this because it threw up 'sexual tension'. Me? It left me cold, in spite of ticking the 'tension' box. But if Harry and Hermione argued? I lapped it up like a starving cat confronted with cream. 

Oh. And did I mention relationship-love is so subjective?

And that's my (rather long) two cents on the subject. What do you guys think?

Carrie Bradshaw: a Rant

Another character post today, largely triggered off by this post by Saumya, about Sex and the City. While it's a great post, it got me thinking about Sex and the City in general.

I'm not a big fan of the movies, but I like the show. I like the shoes, I like laughing at and half-admiring the lifestyle portrayed, and I like Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte (i.e. the heroine Carrie's best friends). In fact, when I watch an episode of Sex and the City, I always check the episode description first - and I find myself looking for phrases like 'Meanwhile, Samantha...' or 'Charlotte realizes that...' or 'But Miranda thinks...' or generally any combination of those names and some sort of similar phrase involving them.

Fact? If an episode seems to revolve almost entirely around Carrie alone, I skip it.

Why? Carrie Bradshaw sucks.

This is the Main Character. The Heroine of the Tale. The Narrator whose voice we have to listen to right through the episode. The Writer of Rhetorical Questions about Men. We're supposed to love her (and I'm sure many SATC fans do). Most of the show's characters are flawed in some way, but their flaws come across with such honesty, humour and sympathy that you can't help liking them anyway. Carrie, on the other hand...

I find that 90% of the time I can't stand her and 10% of the time I feel a little bit sorry for her. That's about it. As a character, she so utterly does not work for me that I often want to beat her on the head with a broomstick.

For one thing, she's unimaginably selfish. I've lost count of the number of times one of the other women has had a genuine crisis (Miranda finding out she's pregnant, Charlotte being unable to get pregnant, Samantha and breast cancer), and Carrie, most of those times, can't do anything but whine about her boy problems. Seriously. Ninety-nine per cent of the time, Carrie is whining to her friends about the most insignificant little details and completely overlooking their (bigger) problems. Occasionally, they'll call her on it (usually it's Miranda), at which point she'll say 'oh. Saw-ree' and then go straight back to whining.

This just makes me think, she's a crap friend and I wouldn't want to know her, let alone be her friend. And the thing about characters (the protagonists, anyway) is that for them to work, you have to either want to be them, or want to be their friend. Otherwise, why would you care to watch or read about them?

(Yes, antagonists are an exception. Plenty of books have made successes out of antagonist-Main Characters. But this isn't one of those situations. Protagonists can be as flawed as anything, but should still be likable. Carrie just... isn't.)

Then there's the way she treats men, notably Aiden. Aiden, for those of you who don't know it, is a flawed, lovely, wonderful guy and one of Carrie's Great Loves. He wasn't perfect, but he loved her and forgave her and he was just nice. But she treats him horribly and eventually 'chooses' Big, who, by the way, I've never understood the attraction of. 

That just made me think you're an idiot. And not a very nice person.

I really should apologize for the rant, but I think it's got such a significant point at the heart of it. Basically, that I like Sex and the City. But I'll never buy the DVDs. I'll never love it. And that makes such an enormous difference. 

And the reason I'll never love it is Carrie Bradshaw. Were she a small bit part, I could overlook her. But how can you overlook someone who is constantly whining and in your face? 

Main characters should not suck.

Blogfests, Wednesday Blues, and Salty Crisps

It's finale season on the telly, and it's obviously blogfest season online. I've just decided to host one (please do sign up in the sidebar if you like the sound of it!), but I'm also participating in a few others. Namely the Logline/Hook Line Blogfest, hosted by Bryan, on the 22nd of May; the Beach Scene Blogfest, hosted by Rachel Bateman, on the 5th of June; and the Bad Boy Blogfest, hosted by Tina Lynn, on the 20th of June. If any of these sound good to you, mosey on over and sign up! Woo!

I've done absolutely nothing this week, writing-wise, which is making me very sad. It's always worst on Wednesdays, I find, just because I feel like I've wasted half the week and now have to make the most of the other half. I don't know about the rest of you, but when I don't or can't write for a stretch of time, I start getting very restless and feel that all's not quite right in the world. 

That said, this has been a crazy week so far, so I suppose I should be paying more attention to other things! And by 'other things', I mean general craziness, the last scraps of university, and watching the finales of my favourite shows while eating salt and vinegar chip-sticks. Ah, crisps.

I tweeted this yesterday, but it must be said again. Writing and editing a novel should count as exercise. It's not fair that all this work does little calorie-burning.

If you've managed to get this far in this rambling and somewhat incoherent post, here's your reward (if you can call it that). The opening of ECHOES, my YA urban fantasy that's currently out on submission to agents.


But first, a couple of definitions from the ECHOES dictionary;


Echo (n.) flesh and blood individual, stitched from mysterious materials by a Weaver. Sole purpose is to mimic his/her other in every way, and ultimately replace them if necessary. They are raised in isolation far away from their others. They are not considered human.

Other (n.) real person in the world, often the child of familiars. When others die, echoes replace them, if they're wanted. It's a very controversial idea and many people don't like it one bit.

Familiar (n.) the person or persons who pay for and ask the Weavers to make an echo for somebody they love.

Weaver (n.) two men and a woman who stitch echoes at their Loom in London. While familiars (almost) always have the final word on an echo, the Weavers own and govern every echo.

Hunter (n.) person who has sworn to hunt down and rid the world of echoes.


Enjoy!


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(Text from the novel removed. Sorry!)

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Insomniac Chronicles

I suppose the title is shameless hyperbole. I'm not really an insomniac. Nevertheless, I think it probably says a fair bit about me if I tell you that it's nearly seven in the morning, it's gotten light outside, and I haven't yet been to bed. I write this with the heavy, tired yet wide awake eyes of somebody who has been having a very difficult time sleeping lately. 

I've been doing a half-module on sleep this year. The Literature of Sleep. We've spent so many hours analysing novels that focus on sleep and dreams. We've spent hours discussing insomnia, narcolepsy, dreams, sleepwalking, metaphors, allegory, sleep as healing, and so forth. What I'd give for one of those seminars now. Talking so much about sleep always made me sleepy in spite of the fact that they were very interesting seminars. I could use that now. But, without a seminar, I'm left on my own, in a very pretty student bedroom the size of a matchbox, with a desk light and a lamp with a dull bulb because the old one fused. So, instead of pondering sleep or sleeping, why not use that time productively?

Blog posts are productive, me thinks.

I've been watching an awful lot of Grey's Anatomy. Am madly in love with Kevin McKidd, whose Owen Hunt and Poseidon are both properly edible, and who happens to be a fantastic actor to boot. So, I've been watching Grey's Anatomy when I can't sleep, or when I can't work. I was hoping to finish a dissertation chapter today, but I haven't done that; and I was hoping to finish the first chapter of Half today, but I haven't done that either. Instead, I've done absolutely nothing useful and will have a heck load to catch up on over the rest of the week. Must keep up with my weekly quotas of academic/book writing.

On the writing front, I've received two more rejections to my query for ECHOES. That brings the total up to 4 rejections out of 10 letters sent, of which only one was a request for a partial before that was rejected. Ah, well. 

Have discovered a new song. Lenka - Trouble is a Friend. I love this song, and when I usually discover new songs I love, I normally listen to them constantly until I'm sick of them. Listen count of this song at the moment: six times. Joyful.

I might try to write more of Half. I wonder if I'll ever get to bed this morning, or if I'll have to stay up all day and go to bed really early tonight.

I blame Grey's Anatomy. All those doctors and those unearthly hours and those long shifts without sleep. It infects you. 




Update at 8:09 AM. Have now listened to the song about 16 times. Might need sleep.