Writing: Why you gotta go and make it so complicated?

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A few weeks (or has it been months? Who knows! Time is relative) ago, I joined Pinterest as a way of sparking some visual creativity, which some of you may know I’ve always been a fan of. And Pinterest did not disappoint:

It’s beautiful!!! *heart eyes*

(While we’re here, you can check out the Creative Quibble Pinterest Board here, and also check out this board if you’re only really here for the books).

But one thing I’ve noticed that I’m not so crazy about is the plethora of writing advice infographics along the lines of “Words to Use Instead of X.”

Before I start talking about why I don’t like this and don’t think it’s helpful, let me say that this isn’t a criticism of those dispensing this kind of writing advice, or even the advice itself. It’s not bad or wrong – I’ve personally found it useful in certain circumstances – but I think for aspiring writers to get the most of it, there needs to be a very specific approach.

When 1+1=3

Writing isn’t a science where you can replace one thing with its equivalent and get the same result. When you tell someone to use “enraged” instead of “very angry,” you could be legitimately improving their writing – or you could be ruining their work. The only way you can know for sure is if you see the word choice in the context of the piece itself.

Remember the scene in Friends where Joey tries to write Monica and Chandler a recommendation for their adoption agency but gets a little overenthusiastic with this thesaurus feature?

That’s basically what you risk when you follow this kind of advice willy nilly.

For example, one of these posts suggests “deafening” as a replacement for “very noisy.” But these two are not necessarily the same thing. What about “piercing”? It may well be a better replacement for the meaning you’re trying to convey. What about “cacophonous”? Riotous? Clamorous? Ear-popping? And that’s just off the top of my head. All of these words mean “very noisy.” None of them refer to the same kind of noise.

Another post gives 50 alternatives to the phrase “looks like,” including “mirrors,” “reflects,” “parodies,” “mimics,” and “parallels.” Personally I prefer this kind of post because it gives the writer a chance to consider what works best for their meaning, but that still requires one to be very familiar with the language and confident in what they want to portray.  If you’re in that category, then you may well find these posts exceedingly helpful. But if you’re just starting to get comfortable with writing, I think you need to approach this type of advice carefully.

I think the best, most authentic writing comes from where you are naturally in your vocabulary and your environment. When I was in grad school, I had several people tell me that my writing wasn’t “academic” enough, because I tended to use short sentences and paragraphs and everyday language. That was a direct result of my training in journalism – it was what I was reading and writing naturally, and so it carried over into my graduate work. I rather liked it – I find a lot of academic writing cumbersome to the point of being unintelligible. Here’s a pro-tip: if you’ve hit line four but you’re still in the same sentence, stop and find somewhere to put a period. No one knows what you’re talking about anymore.

But I digress. My point is this: I could have tried to mimic the academic style I was told to by my peers (for the record, my professors never took issue with my writing style), but it would have come off as awkward and artless. Writing is not a “fake it till you make it” skill. It’s something that needs time to develop naturally, and it’s also unique in that to perfect your writing, you need to do something else – read.

Reading is the only way to grow your vocabulary in a way that will organically feed into your writing. That’s the long and short of it. You can save all these posts and bookmark thesaurus.com and read the dictionary every night before you go to bed, but none of that will feed into your writing like reading does.

And speaking of reading…

Just say it!

One thing that really, really bugs me is when people give you a list of words to replace “said.” Guys. Guys. You do not need to replace “said.” In some cases, when you’re trying to really emphasize an attitude or a characteristic, it is appropriate to use “stammered,” or “demanded,” or “snapped.” In most cases, “said” is just fine. In fact, it’s better than fine.

Here’s why: your reader isn’t actually seeing the word “said.” That’s not how the brain works. It doesn’t read every individual letter or word. Instead, your brain scans and absorbs a context, and fills out the details from there. Have you ever been reading a page and suddenly stop and go, ‘wait, what,?” because what’s happening now doesn’t make sense with what you just read. So you go back, only to discover that you missed a crucial “not” in a sentence in the last scene, which is why the what happened afterwards was such a shock.

It’s not because you’re skimming or falling asleep or otherwise not paying attention. That’s just how your brain reads. When your brain sees quotation marks in the context of a story, it knows that there’s dialogue coming up, i.e., someone is saying something. It doesn’t need to read the word “said” to know that, so more often than not, it doesn’t.

So as a reader, you’re not registering the word “said,” and you’re certainly not nitpicking the author’s use of it. But of course as a writer, it’s a different ball game entirely. Because you’re typing it out so much, you become paranoid about your use of “said.” Is it boring? Is it evocative of what you’re really trying to express? You have an image in your head of exactly what your characters are doing and thinking and feeling; is “said” really doing them justice?

Yes. Yes it is. Don’t just take it from me. Author and publisher Rob Hart is a huge proponent of “said”:

Said and asked are beautiful in their simplicity. They are completely anonymous words. We know what they mean. We’ve seen them so often that our eyes recognize the shape and convey the meaning with zero effort. We glide right over them.

That’s very important when you’re reading dialogue. Dialogue flows. Conversations don’t stop so we can figure out what people are feeling. We intuit it. And having these nearly-meaningless words to steer you along means that you’re not pausing to figure anything out.

But when you see that a character retorted or blustered or hissed, your brain slows down. There’s something there you need to process. It’s momentary, probably imperceptible, but when it comes to writing a flowing conversation, the pause may as well last for hours.

In writing, everything counts. Where you put your periods. The white space between the paragraph breaks. Everything. And said and asked are very valuable tools in your arsenal. Because they get the job done and get the fuck out of the way. They’re so good at it, they can completely disappear when you need them to.

Hart makes an important point about the anonymity of “said” and “asked.” When you write, you’re trying to convey a certain idea or image, and often you become so invested in that image that you become obsessed with making sure the reader sees it exactly as you do in their mind’s eyes. So you use these unnecessary words and add emphasis where you don’t need it because you’re trying to force the reader to conform to your vision of the narrative, and instead you push them out of their reading bubble and force them to recall this outside force, you, the author, that has created this imaginary world.

They were immersed in your world. Then you dragged them out and beat them over the head with your complicated dialogue tags.

Sometimes, it’s better to just go with your instincts and not overthink these things. You can always go back and edit. And when you do, you may find that your work is in better shape than you thought!

*Feature image credit: John Davey via Flickr.

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“Uncanny Magazine” staff talk representation and “Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction”

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A few weeks ago I came across a Kickstarter campaign called Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction. It was all over my Twitter feed because it was around this time that the American House of Representatives was trying once again to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and this time they came dangerously close to managing it.

It seemed like the campaign had dropped out of the sky to send me a message: science fiction is finally doing something about representation! Also: check this thing out.

Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction is part of the Destroy series (previous: Women Destroy and People of Colo(u)r Destroy, among others) by “Uncanny Magazine,” an online science fiction and fantasy magazine that publishes fiction, nonfiction, and some killer artwork.

Issue 17 cover art, courtesy Lynne M. Thomas

I reached out to the editors of “Uncanny,” Lynne M. Thomas and husband Michael Damian Thomas, who along with Managing Editor Michi Trota and Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction Guest Editors-in-Chief Dominik Parisien and Elsa Sjunneson-Henry, discussed the upcoming issue and its place in the current sci-fi scene:

1. What have you noticed with representation in sci-fi over the years? A lot of people would argue that sci-fi has a representation problem – what’s your take?

Michi: If you’d asked me several years ago, I’d have said that there wasn’t much representation beyond primarily white people, particularly white men, writing SF/F. But I think that’s because I didn’t know where to look, as well as the fact that SF/F writers, editors, artists, and other creators who aren’t able-bodied, cisgender, heterosexual white men are just not made very visible by the industry. Because the truth is that marginalized creators have been a part of the genre since the beginning, and there are so many creating amazing stories and art. But we’re continually pushed to the side and erased so that it seems like it must be “a new thing” whenever waves of visibility for us come back around. Which can be really discouraging for marginalized creators who want to be part of SF/F;  – it’s hard to imagine yourself as part of something if you don’t see people like you included from the get-go. It’s a long-standing problem because there’s still the entrenched idea that women, POC, queer people, disabled people, etc., aren’t “appealing” to a general audience, as if, say, white able-bodied characters will appeal to everyone, but stories featuring disabled POC are “niche” and therefore not worth the marketing effort.

I think what we’re seeing reflected in projects like Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, and the previous Destroy projects, is a push for those with power and influence in the industry to be more aware in their choices of work and creators to publish. There’s more of a desire to actively combat biases and normalized systems of discrimination instead of just waiting for these problems to fix themselves, or relying on marginalized people to do all the work of addressing our own oppression. And the more visible marginalized creators are in all aspects of SF/F— – as characters, writers, artists, editors— – the more it encourages other marginalized people to imagine the possibility that there’s also room for us to be an active, welcome part of the genre.

2. The Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue is coming at a time when the Affordable Care Act is on the brink of repeal. Was this part of the impetus to develop this issue?

Elsa: No, but it’s certainly a driving force behind how I look at the issue. As a disabled person, and certainly as an editor, right now my perspective is shaped by what’s happening to disabled Americans, and this legislation and repeal are a huge part of that. But it’s also about the legislation that already exists: The ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] turned 27 this July, and yet there’ve been no improvements to the law in that time, nor have there been better laws put in place. Civil rights for disabled people are a long ways from equal, and that shapes how I look at disability representation as a whole, too.

When we’re not equal in real life, in our governance as citizens, it’s hard to envision futures where we’re equal. I hope this issue challenges that, and creates better futures for us.

3. How would you describe the representation of disabled people in the sci-fi and fantasy genres generally?

Elsa: Well, there’s not as much representation as I’d like. And by that I mean, there isn’t enough variety. There was a hashtag by Netflix recently: #FirstTimeISawMe, and I saw a lot of disabled people posting that they’ve never seen themselves in literature or film. Myself included. I’m partially deaf-blind. I’ve certainly never seen myself in science fiction, though occasionally I’ve seen pieces or parts of my experience.

Often, disability is erased, especially in settings in the future where medical science could theoretically cure all disabilities and illnesses. Same goes for fantasy settings where magic can do the same. The good representations are few and far between. Of course there’s the beloved Miles Vorkosigan series [“Vorkosigan Saga”], and there’s Inquisitor Glokta [“The Blade Itself”]. But it’s not enough, and there’s very few film representations that involve disabled actors (count: None as far as I know.)

Cover art for “Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction”. Courtesy Lynne M. Thomas

4. What are you hoping to achieve with this special issue? Is there any particular goal or conversation you’re trying to induce?

Dominik: For my part, I want to give disabled writers an opportunity to tell their stories. It can be difficult to want to write about a character like yourself if you’ve never encountered one in media. It’s easy to internalize the conception that you don’t belong, that people don’t want to read about others like you. I want to help disabled authors who might be reluctant to write themselves or people like them into their stories to have the confidence to do so, not just for this special issue but in general. Something like Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction is important, but it’s an opportunity and not a solution. You can’t have these stories appear only in this environment, otherwise their value becomes limited, sanctioned in a way. I want editors, writers, and readers to see people’s enthusiasm for the project and demand to see more material like it elsewhere.

And for able-bodied writers who want to write disabled characters into their books, I want them to read the material — the fiction and poetry, but especially the nonfiction and personal essays — and to consider how they’re writing those characters, and why. Are they actually writing a character, a person, or just a trope or a plot device? Are they perpetuating harmful representation? These are important things to consider, especially because it’s too easy to dismiss criticism later by hiding behind good intentions of “‘ just wanting to include those characters.”’ Stories have an impact, and our nonfiction in particular is a powerful way of showcasing that.

Elsa:  Dominik hits the nail on the head here: having disabled authors tell their stories is the most important part of this issue, and that includes nonfiction. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to share a wide variety of experiences from disabled authors, about genre, about their writing processes, about themselves.

5. Let’s talk about the “Destroy” series more generally. What was the goal of the series originally? Has that transformed over the years?

Michael: When “Lightspeed Magazine” started the series with Women Destroy Science Fiction, they began their mission statement with: “Women aren’t writing ‘real’ science fiction, the fallacy goes. ‘Real’ science fiction is… . . . whatever science fiction certain men like. Some days this makes us sad. Some days it makes us angry. And some days it just seems hilarious… . . .and a quip on Twitter turns into a special issue of LIGHTSPEED in the space of roughly half an hour.”

This was expanded for their Queers Destroy Science Fiction and People of Colo(u)r Destroy Science Fiction special issues. The goal for the series is to challenge the idea that science fiction literature’s default is cis, heterosexual, able-bodied, white, American male creators and characters who shared those creators’ points of view. These special issues quite successfully countered that these stories should be privileged over everybody else’s.

Editors of “Uncanny Magazine.” From left to right: Michael, Michi, and Lynne. Courtesy Lynne M. Thomas

The Destroy series has transformed over time by finding many different marginalized voices from a variety of backgrounds with each subsequent special issue. The series has also more and more embraced intersectionality and understood that there is an axes of oppression and discrimination.

Of course, the biggest transformation has been passing the series to “Uncanny Magazine”. Since “Uncanny” already shared these values with the series, it was really a perfect fit for us.

6. What’s next for “Uncanny Magazine”?

Michael: Year Four for “Uncanny Magazine” promises to be extremely exciting. Thanks to the amazing response to the Kickstarter, we know we will be doing both the Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction issue and a shared-world dinosaur issue along with our four regular issues. The Hugo Awards are in a week (“Uncanny Magazine,” the Thomases for editing, and “Uncanny” stories by Alyssa Wong and Brooke Bolander are all finalists) and the the World Fantasy Awards are in early November (the Thomases and Bolander’s story are also finalists for that award). We will also have a new poetry and reprint editor (Mimi Mondal) and interviewer (Shana DuBois) for Year Four.

We are so grateful for all of the community support of the magazine. We think we are doing something important, and it’s only possible thanks to our contributors, staff, and readers.

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How many buildings can we blow up in one episode? A review of “Dirty Pair”

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About a week or so ago I stumbled on the Tumblr blog “Yuri Looking Pissed.” I was about to scroll right on by, but this caught my attention:

And that’s the end of Yuri Looking Pissed! What started out as me making a joke on Twitter turned into a way for me to share my love of Dirty Pair, as well as an excuse for me to share goofy screenshots.

The way it was written reminded me a lot of Josei Next Door’s Sailor Moon recaps, so obviously the next question was: what’s “Dirty Pair”?

As it turns out, “Dirty Pair” is an ’80s-era anime about two women, Kei and Yuri (aha!) who work as intergalactic special ops police officers for an organization called WWWA or 3WA. The show, in case you couldn’t tell, is set back in the future – specifically, the 22nd century. Kei and Yuri’s code name is Lovely Angels, but they’re constantly referred to as Dirty Pair because of the trail of destruction they tend to leave in their crime-fighting wake. Kei is particularly trigger-happy and fully believes that the best way to get things done is to shoot at people relentlessly until they obey. Yuri is not much better, but she’s armed with a light-saber style sword instead of a gun, so that tends to limit the amount of damage she can wreak.

Ah, the delicate flowers of womanhood.

The show didn’t get a lot of traction in its day, so the series is quite short.  The original “Dirty Pair” is only 24 episodes long I believe, and “Dirty Pair Flash,” its ’90s-reboot cousin, is a series of three seasons each with only five or six episodes.

I started out watching “Dirty Pair Flash” – and the dub, nonetheless, so I’m fully prepared to be crucified by internet fandom hordes. But hear me out for a second. I decided to watch “Flash” because it was such a low time commitment, and I wasn’t sure if I would even like the show. When I finished the first season, I went back to watch the original…and didn’t like it as much. I only saw one episode, so perhaps I need to give it few more before I render judgment (and I most likely will), but I found that “Flash’s” short seasons meant that you got dropped into the action right away, and the storyline in general was tighter and more fast-paced than that of the original.

Also, I’m not sure I can get behind this style. The phrase “’80s-tastic” comes to mind:

The hair alone is upsetting, but shoulder pads!! C’mon guys! Via Yuri Looking Pissed

Questionable fashion and style choices aside, I really like the show. It’s like a cross between “Thunder Jet” and “Star Wars” but with awesome girls who work for the galaxy authorities as opposed to against.

Of course, that might be part of the problem. There is certainly a “fighting the man” component to a lot of popular television shows that resonate with a target audience of tweens and teens, who often see themselves as victims of the powers that be, i.e. parents, teachers, librarians, crossing guards, driving instructors, etc.

The show also doesn’t fit the “magical girl” genre, in the sense that neither Kei nor Yuri are magical, nor do either of them display the qualities of “femininity” that young girls are socially conditioned to aspire to. Yuri, at least in “Flash,” can be incredibly whiny and annoying; Kei would probably just straight up murder you if you said the wrong thing to her. This doesn’t bother me at all, but I’m also an adult who has come to appreciate that sometimes, whininess and aggression get things done. I don’t know that 12-year-old me would feel the same.

Magical girls also have the advantage of visually appealing and fantasy inducing transformations. In cases where they don’t, they exude a sense of elegance and beauty that falls much more easily into those traditional paradigms of femininity and womanhood.

It’s crime-fightin’ time! Excuse me while I get dressed.

Kei and Yuri are not dressed to fit that paradigm. Their uniforms (I use this word very, very loosely) are what many would call provocative – “Flash” particularly does not shy away from cartoon nudity – and one gets the sense that they’re designed to appeal to a male gaze.

Nothing says “we mean business” like brandishing guns in your underwear. Via Oh no! It’s the Dirty Pair!

If you look at the Sailor Scouts’ costumes, they’re not necessarily any more modest, and there is arguably quite a bit of suggested nudity in the transformation sequences. However, the design – skirts, bows, an emphasis on nail polish and gloves and nice shoes – gives the viewer a sense that this is targeted to girls and their sensibilities and preferences.

(It may be worth noting at this point that the creator of “Dirty Pair,” Haruka Takachiho, and the illustrator, Yoshikazu Yasuhiko are both men. Naoko Takeuchi, writer and illustrator of “Sailor Moon,” is female).

Now, there’s no reason why this show shouldn’t be targeted towards boys. Unfortunately, boys tend not to consume media where females are the main characters. Fun fact: J.K. Rowling’s publisher insisted that they use her initials on the “Harry Potter” covers instead of her name because they were concerned that boys wouldn’t buy a book written by a woman.

Why this is the case is an issue beyond this particular post’s ability to tackle (but stay tuned!). The point is this: you may not have heard of “Dirty Pair” before. You may not have found it interesting or engaging as a child. Watch it now. It’s good.

And let me know which you like better, “Flash” or the original!

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How to use Happy Planner stickers when you don’t have a Happy Planner

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Sometime last year I became addicted to watching planner videos, or Plan With Mes, on YouTube. For those of you who are blessedly unfamiliar, Plan With Mes are exactly what they sound like – you watch a girl (usually) plan her day or week in her planner.

There are several popular types of planner in this mysterious and ever-expanding online community. They actually turned me on to the Passion Planner, which I’ve been using since the beginning of the year. But one of the more popular planners is the Happy Planner, a product of Me and My Big Ideas. It’s a discbound weekly system whose main attraction is the plethora of stickers it comes with.

Well, not “comes with.” You have to buy them. And buy them I did.

Happy Planner stickers are incredibly attractive. They’re super colorful and chock full of positive reinforcement in the vein of “You got this, girl!” or “Today’s the day!”

So I bought two packs, coming up to a total of around 2000 individual stickers.

It’s a lot of stickers for someone who does not, in fact, own a Happy Planner and has no intention of purchasing one in the near future. I’m pretty happy with the Passion Planner, and for a while I was using the stickers in that planner with varied results.

One of the better outcomes…I quite like how this turned out.

Starting this month, however, I’ve begun incorporating bullet journaling into my organizational system. A bullet journal is essentially a DIY planner – you can find everything you need to know about the system here.

As I began my bullet journal, I thought about how I could create some visual interest in what is otherwise generally just a plain notebook with to-do lists in it. I wanted to incorporate my stickers, but without the vertical physical structure of a planner, I wasn’t sure how I could make it work.

I came up with the following solution: take a scissor to it.

Essentially, what I’ve done is I’ve cut up the solid box stickers into thin strips, similar to decorative or washi tape, and used those to introduce an element of color into my journal.

If you’re feeling really fancy (or you have a fun-shaped hole punch) you can cut out shapes.

I also cut out some of the individual elements in each sticker sheet to include on my pages. I store a small collection of the pieces in the back pocket of the journal.

The fun thing about this is that it gives me more freedom to mix and match the colors, instead of feeling married to the original color scheme on the sheets. For example, on the Fourth of July I wanted to go with a red, white, and blue theme, so I pulled out some red strips and some blue strips and went to work.

The decorative element has been really helpful to me in encouraging me to use my planners. Being able to see something bright and colorful and fun has made it so that I’m excited to see what I’ve got going on each day, rather than dreading it. They can also serve a functional element as well: the headers are useful, and the sticker strips can be used to block of areas or mark a new section or day.

So embrace your stickers is what I say. You can’t argue with results.

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The villain’s villain: Big bads, small fry, and the dynamics of power (Or, A review of SVTFOE: The Battle for Mewni)

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Last week, Disney XD released the long-awaited, three-episode Season Three opener of “Star vs. The Forces of Evil,” titled “The Battle for Mewni.”

For those of you unfamiliar with this show, it essentially follows magical girl/rebel princess Star Butterfly of the Mewni dimension after she is sent to Earth to learn how to employ her magical princess powers. She befriends human boy/karate kid Marco Diaz, and together they hop through dimensions and battle the monsters (literally) who would strip Star of her magical wand.

Star GIF - Find & Share on GIPHY

From the get-go, there are two main villains in this story. The first is Ludo, a tiny owl-like creature who is intent on getting Star’s wand and has somehow corralled a group of hapless but far more intimidating monsters to do his bidding. The second is Toffee. We’ll get to him in a minute.

Ludo is what I like to call the “Emperor Pilaf” of SVTFOE: determinedly evil but hopelessly (and hilariously) inept. He has moments where he poses a true threat to the life and safety of our heroes, but mostly he’s just there to kickstart the series with some kind of conflict. Like Emperor Pilaf in “Dragon Ball” (and if you have not watched “Dragon Ball,” drop whatever you’re doing and go watch ALL 200 episodes IMMEDIATELY. I’ll wait.), Ludo is there to provide structure and purpose to a set of episodes as a season, as opposed to it simply being our two protagonists (Star/Marco; Goku/Bulma) overcoming a series of minor hurdles.

Excuse me while I quake in fear. Via Tumblr

Ludo in particular provides some much-needed worldbuilding to the SVTFOE universe: he gives us a sense of what monsters’ lives are like and why they would want control over the wand so badly. His misadventures humanizes monsters, which gains increasing importance as the series goes on. More importantly, he is there as a contrast to what true evil really looks like.

And now let’s talk about Toffee.

Damn…

Toffee starts out as Ludo’s right hand man (*ahem*). He’s clearly the brains of the operation, inasmuch as there is one, and he eventually leads an ouster of Ludo after several episodes of hilarious incompetence.

Unfortunately, the ouster of Ludo is not hilarious, because Toffee is not here to screw around. No, Toffee knows exactly what he’s doing, and he has a plan, a long-term, insidious plan. And thus you have the Big Bad facing off with the Small Fry.

Without giving too much away, Toffee possesses Ludo and uses him as a hapless, harmless-looking vessel from which to achieve his goals. Once he’s done with him, he spits him out – literally.

Yeah, good luck sleeping tonight

“The Battle for Mewni” is the climax of the Toffee/Ludo storyline, in the sense that you see the true extent of Toffee’s powers and his abuse of Ludo. The interaction between Toffee and Ludo in this finale is what really captured my attention.

From the start, it was obvious that Toffee was using Ludo for his own goals. In many ways, Ludo was the perfect tool, since he’d been trying to capture Star’s wand for ages without even the hope of success. Star had no reason, at that point, to see him as a legitimate threat – the most he was was an inconvenience. Who better to hide behind than the one nobody takes seriously?

But here’s the thing: once Ludo outlives his usefulness, he’s tossed out as the viewing audience would expect. But Ludo comes back with renewed vigor and this time, he’s actually successful even without the help of his monster crew. BUT – and I know this is a lot of buts – he’s always clearly inferior to Toffee. At no point does he pose a serious threat to Toffee’s goals.

So why does Toffee use him again?

Why Ludo?

Villain vs. Villain is a lot more interesting than Villain vs. Hero

From where I’m sitting, there doesn’t seem to be anything that Toffee can do via Ludo that he couldn’t do without him. Ludo’s ineptitude makes him a comical figure as the usurping kind of Mewni, but what purpose does that serve? Ludo effectively forces the Mewmans into servitude, but surely Toffee would have been even better at that. And in the end, it doesn’t even seem that Toffee is particularly interested in ruling Mewni – having (supposedly) defeated Star and her allies, he simply turns to leave, walking away from the ruins of Mewni.

Let’s compare this to Dragon Ball one more time. In the second to last arc of the series, Emperor Pilaf and his gang revive the Demon King Piccolo after numerous failed attempts to capture the dragon balls for themselves. Their plan is to use his superior powers to gather the dragon balls and then steal them for themselves.

Image result for king piccolo with the pilaf gang

You can tell already this was a bad idea. Source

This, obviously, is not going to work.

Once again, there is no doubt at any point that the Pilafites are in over their heads. They can never be a threat to King Piccolo because he is simply operating at a level beyond their capacity – they cannot even begin to contemplate the evil that he has planned. And, much as you would expect, he only keeps them around while they are useful to him. Once they’ve outlived that usefulness, he dumps them.

So why does Toffee go back to Ludo when he no longer needs him?

In her blog post, writer Katie Cooney identifies nine elements that make for exciting, threatening villains, and a few of these points are very relevant to a discussion of Toffee. The first is his surface motivation. When we first meet Toffee, it seems pretty obvious that what he wants is power. He pretends to believe in Ludo as a leader, but really he wants to wear that hat himself. He pretends to want the monsters as a group to be successful, and that serves as excellent cover for his ouster of Ludo. And truly, power suits him. (See image above. Not the throwing up one, before that).

But what power really is, is control. Toffee wants control – over the monsters, over the Butterflies, over Mewni. When we see him in flashback, we see that had once had control, over a literal army of monsters who believed in him, and who would have followed him into the depths of Hell (or Heaven, depending on your perspective) because of his ability to project dominance.

And then teeny-bopper Queen Moon cuts of his finger.

This flashback scene, I think, is crucial, because it encapsulates the moment when Toffee’s end goal changed. Now he wants that finger, not in his hand but on it, because it represents everything that he lost in that moment – not just control, but the prestige, the respect, the dominance that gave him that control in the first place.

Without the finger, Toffee is emasculated (and yes, I mean that with all the connotations it implies). As long as he doesn’t have the finger, his need for control is overwhelming. He takes a perverse pleasure in forcing Star to be the architect of her wand’s destruction. And he keeps going back to Ludo.

Ludo is easy to control. He’s small and pathetic and in over his head. Even at the height of his power, he is easy prey. Toffee has influence over the other monsters, but without his finger, he needs something more. He needs that tangible control over Ludo’s mind and body to exert dominance. The stronger his hold over Ludo becomes, the more forward he is about decimating Mewni’s magical population. A fingerless Toffee would never have attacked the magical high commission, but in the body of Ludo, he takes them on with a smile on his face.

Once he has the finger, he can walk away. His prestige has been returned to him. He’s proven that can still exert dominance, can still run the show, without it. With it, he is invincible.

Well, not really, because Star kills him. But you get the idea.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen this kind of Big Bad-Small Fry interaction before, and I thought it was fascinating – you can tell because I’m still thinking about it a week later. Now, with Toffee seemingly vanquished and Ludo safely on his way to a redemption arc, I’m excited to see what the show does with new villains. Toffee’s demise left a lot of questions unanswered, and I don’t know how they’re going to top his ‘rise to power’ arc.

Season three of “Star vs. the Forces of Evil” resumes in November on Disney XD.

What do you think? Is Toffee coming back in season three? And will any villain ever be able to make us feel the way he did? Let me know!

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Books you should read instead of the classics: An alternative To Be Read list

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Recently, Lizzy of My Little Book Blog wrote about how she gave up on a To Be Read list chock full of classics and must-reads as decided by the Conglomeration of Literature Professors, which as we all know is a branch of the Illuminati.

(That was a joke. Hah.)

The post really resonated with me. I too have a TBR list in some dust-covered notebook that I’ve probably lost. It has a ton of familiar titles, all of which I have now forgotten.

I have, of course, read my share of classics. Jane Austin, the Bronte’s, Charles Dickens, several depressed Russians. My feelings on each vary widely. The only Charles Dickens I’ve ever read that I genuinely enjoyed was “A Tale of Two Cities.” Depressed Russians are great, but not for the books they’re most well-known for. “Crime and Punishment” is a great story but much too long. Leo Tolstoy has a book whose name I no longer recall but that was vastly more interesting than “War and Peace,” which is also too long. “Anna Karenina” is too long and has almost no likeable characters. “The Three Musketeers” is a fun romp, but “The Count of Monte Cristo” is too long and has too many characters. About a solid half of the book could be a separate story.

There’s a theme developing here. It’s not that I’m opposed to length in and of itself, or to multiple storylines. I think a large part of it is that language has changed and evolved and our expectations of what books should do has also evolved in ways that make these books seem less epic and more just long. Really, really long.

So instead, I would like to humbly offer a few alternatives to the classics that dominate our TBRs. Here’s a list of 10 books I think you should read:

The Travels of Ibn Battutah – edited by Tim Mackiintosh-Smith

On the road to Multan and ten miles distant from it is the river called Khusru Abad, a large river that cannot be crossed except by boat. At this point the goods of all who pass are subjected to a rigorous examination and their baggage searched. Their practice at the time of our arrival was to take a quarter of everything brought in by the merchants, and to exact a duty of seven dinars for every horse. When we set about the crossing of this river and the baggage was examined, the idea of having my baggage searched was very disagreeable to me, for though there was nothing much in it, it seemed a great deal in the eyes of the people, and I did not like having it looked into. By the grace of God Most High there arrived on the scene one of the principal officers on behalf of Qutb al-Mulk, the governor of Multan, who gave orders that I should not be subjected to examination or search.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold – Gabriel Garcia Marques

Many of those on the docks knew they were going to kill Santiago Nasar. Don Lázaro Aponte, a colonel from the academy making use of his good retirement, and town mayor for eleven years, waved to him with his fingers. “I had my own very real reasons for believing he wasn’t in any danger anymore,” he told me. Father Carmen Amador wasn’t worried either. “When I saw him safe and sound I thought it had all been a fib,” he told me. No one even wondered whether Santiago Nasar had been warned, because it seemed impossible to all that he hadn’t.

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat – Oliver Sacks

You have to begin to lose your memory, if only in bits and pieces, to realize that memory is what makes all our lives. Life without memory is no life at all…Our memory is our coherence, our reason, our feeling, even our action.

A Border Passage: From Cairo to America – A Woman’s Journey – Leila Ahmed

Even in my own childhood, Zatoun, my mother’s paternal home, was a place palpably apart, imbued with some unnameably different order and way of being. The aura and aroma of those other times and other ways pervaded it still, in the rustle and shuffle of silks and the soft fall of slippers along hallways and corridors, in the talk and gestures and in the momentary tremor of terror precipitated by the boom of Grandfather’s voice, and then the quiet, suppressed, chortling laughter of the women as its boom faded and he passed into the recesses of the inner hall. The order and aroma of another time, other ways, another order.

The Truth – Terry Pratchett

Shall I try again? he said. “Listen carefully. Drugs equal chemicals, but, and please do listen to this part, sheesh, chemicals do not equal drugs. Remember all that trouble with the calcium carbonate? When you paid the man five dollars?

“Made me feel good,” muttered Mr. Tulip.

“Calcium carbonate? said Mr. Pin. “Even for you, I mean…”

Alexander at the World’s End – Tom Holt

The City of Athens, you see, has for quite some time now used Scythian slaves as policemen. Sorry, you don’t know what that word means; it means men paid by the state to keep order and punish people who break the laws (or at least, that’s the theory). We had to use foreign slaves for the job because no self-respecting Greek, let alone Athenian, would dream of doing a job that involved exercising practically unlimited power over his fellow citizens. Quite right, too. Ask yourself; what kind of man would you get volunteering for a job like that? Men who want that kind of power are by definition the last people you’d allow to have it.

Full Moon – P.G. Wodehouse

The moment Tipton set eyes on E. Jimpson Morgatroyd he knew that he had picked a lemon in the garden of medicine. What he had hoped for was a sunny practitioner who would prod him in the ribs with his stethoscope, compliment him on his health, tell him an anecdote about a couple of Irishmen named pat and mike, give him some ointment for the spots, and send him away in a whirl of good fellowship. E Jimpson proved to be a gloomy man with sidewhiskers, who smelled of iodoform and had obviously been looking on the black side of things since he was a slip of a boy.

In the Eye of the Sun – Ahdaf Soueif

How wonderful to simply do things instead of wondering if they are worth doing or discussing whether to do them or being told not to do them or listening to somebody else describe doing them.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

 

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitation by their poet master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem “Ode to a Small Lump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning,” four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the president of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off. Grunthos is reported to have been “disappointed” by the poem’s reception, and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled “My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles,” when his own major intestine, in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck and throttled his brain.

What are your must-reads that don’t make the average TBR list? Let me know in the comments below!

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Nadia watches Netflix: A Young Doctor’s Notebook

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I don’t know why this show is classified as a comedy.

Is it funny? Yes. There are certainly moments of hilarity that catch you by surprise and make you actually LOL, but they are far outnumbered by the sheer depressiveness that drives the actual plot.

In “A Young Doctor’s Notebook,” Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe plays a med school graduate in 1917 Russia. He’s a star student with zero experience, sent out to a small village in the middle of an unending blizzard. The nearest town is three days away, and not surprisingly, our hero is less than thrilled about this, especially with all the excitement happening in Moscow.

The reason we’re being introduced to the young doctor’s rather unfortunate circumstances is because of Jon Hamm, who plays the same doctor 17 years later, in 1934. He’s under investigation and in the process finds the notebook he kept of that time, which also chronicles his descent into morphine addiction, something he is trying to hide from the Revolutionary Guard going through all his stuff.

So not really the premise for a comedy, although again, the show has its moments of hilarity. Mostly these come from the city-bred, educated doctor’s clash with the uneducated residents of this sad little village, whose idea of medicine is limited to “gargle” and “drops.” In one particularly dark/hilarious scene, Radcliffe is insisting on operating on a young girl who is unconscious and clearly dying, her face completely blue. Her mother, sobbing and terrified of surgery, asks, “Can’t you just give her some drops?”

I’m going to be honest and say that I was predisposed to liking this show. I have a fascination with anything set in Russia during the first half of the 20th century, especially during or around the Russian revolution. I also like comedies. As much as I like it, however, there is no denying that the show is dark. Visually, the setting is gloomy and gray. Radcliffe’s life is incredibly dull, stuck as he is in this little hospital surrounded by 12 feet of snow. He becomes more and more disinterested in his patients’ welfare in the face of their ignorance and their admittedly blase attitude to health and hygiene. Still, because the seasons are so short (four episodes each), it seems like he succumbs to depression rather quickly.

Hamm, meanwhile, is struggling to hide his morphine addiction. This is where the show loses me a little. Hamm watches his younger self take morphine and laments his fate, but in reality that’s just not how painkiller addictions work. It’s not something that kicks in from the first moment, especially if, as in the case of our young doctor, you take the painkiller for actual pain. As long as you’re taking a painkiller for genuine physical pain, you should not get addicted – this is why morphine is used in hospitals, but not cocaine or opium (anymore, at least).

In any case, “A Young Doctor’s Notebook” is a show I highly recommend. It’s the kind of show that’s a new take on the well-known setting of revolution-era Russia and pokes a little fun at it while at the same time addressing a difficult – and very modern – issue. One thing I know for sure, after this show, I’m going to read Tolstoy with a very different mindset.

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Why YA literature leads the pack in Muslim representation: A guest post at Words Beneath the Wings

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Last week, I had the privilege of being featured on “Words Beneath the Wings,” the blog of #RamadanReadathon founder Nadia. My post discusses why YA lit is always quick on the uptake when it comes to diversity and representation. Read it here:

WHY YA LITERATURE LEADS THE PACK IN MUSLIM REPRESENTATION – GUEST POST BY NADIA ELDEMERDASH

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The nature of human nature: A review of “Last Man in Tower”

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“Last Man in Tower” is a novel by Indian writer Aravind Adiga. The story is about the struggle between a real estate developer and the residents (eventually, resident) of the tower block he wants to tear down.

Via goodreads

I was intrigued by the book because its premise is very different from a lot of the “set in India” novels you usually get. Here, there are no arranged marriages, no slum dwellers, no epic Bollywood lifestyles. Instead, “Last Man in Tower” is a story about a universal issue, gentrification, and the impact it has on this one building and its middle-class dwellers.

The developer wants the land in order to build his dream project, and he offers to pay an exorbitant amount of money to the residents of the dilapidated Mumbai tower block so as to tempt them into selling him their flats. The catch: they have to accept the offer by a certain day, and they all have to sell before anyone can get the money.

At first, several residents resist, but the developer is able to convince all of them except for an old retired schoolteacher. And thus the conflict goes from developer vs. residents to everyone vs. teacher.

The teacher, by the way, has good standing in the building – he tutors some of the other residents’ children. But he’s also known for being very strict, so as each resident gives in, their opinion of him warps. Instead of being a lovable if curmudgeonly old man, he becomes a cruel, selfish man who gets a kick out of traumatizing their kids with his outdated teaching methods.

The story, ultimately, is a reflection on human nature. What motivates good people to do bad things? What motivates one person to stand against his neighbors, pitting his will against theirs? How far can you push someone before they crack?

Why is it so easy to turn people against each other?

I won’t tell you what happens, because even the Chronic Spoiler has her limits, but I highly recommend the book. “Last Man in Tower” is a novel that goes beyond its setting to address universal issues, and its one that I think anyone can enjoy and learn from.

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Science fiction digs deep in Haris Durrani’s “Technologies of the Self”

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I have a complex relationship with science fiction. On the one hand, few genres are as exciting or have as much potential; on the other hand, the tendency for novels to devolve into “let me explain my theories on particle physics in excruciating detail” is, in my experience, high. So when Haris Durrani told me about his debut novel, “Technologies of the Self,” I was intrigued. When I read the blurb, I was relieved.

Courtesy Haris Durani

Durrani’s novel is really an exploration of law and the state via the medium of time-travel and other futuristic weirdness. It’s already won an award – the Driftless Novella Prize – and (interview spoilers!) may just be the first in a series. Durrani gave me the scoop on how this all came about.

 

You’re an engineer. How did you get into writing?

I cannot remember a time when I was not a writer. My interest in science and robotics arrived hand-in-hand with stories I read about them, and I was immediately drawn to producing those kinds of stories myself. I fell in love with writing after my cousin gave me “I, Robot” and “Ender’s Game” in fifth grade, and the rest is history.

I’m now in law school, a path I probably would not have foreseen as a young reader and LEGO tinkerer. But in retrospect it is a natural progression, since my interest in technology and its stories has always revolved around social and political issues, to which law is fundamental. I like to think my obsession with Isaac Asimov’s “Laws of Robotics” had a lot to do with it too.

Is there an intersection between engineering (or technology) and writing? How is that reflected in “Technologies of the Self”?

Writing is itself a technology…I often think of a provocative passage from “Phaedrus,” in which Socrates tells Plato of the myth of the Egyptian god of writing, Theuth…There are interesting stories about Islamic scholars’ reticence to write down the Qur’an and of scholars who did wudu’u [Islamic ritual ablution] before writing down Hadith, because they viewed the written word as an inferior form of communication. All of this goes to say, the written word is a technology, a result of or catalyst for change. I tend to be a Luddite about these things, but I reluctantly succumb to the necessity of putting words to paper.

“Technologies of the Self” cover, courtesy Haris Durani

Law is also technological. This is at the heart of “Technologies.” The title is a reference to a line from Wael Hallaq’s “The Impossible State,” in which…[he] compares Foucault’s concept of “technologies of the self” – the social and legal mechanisms that regulate the inner self as a means of maintaining order in the modern state, from schools to hospitals to prisons – to Al-Ghazali’s “techniques” – the practice of Islam, from dhikr to prayer to other socio-legal obligations. The story in “Technologies” is an attempt to grapple with the tension between these two kinds of technologies: the external regulation of the self by the state and the internal regulation by practices of faith.

Also, engineering, writing, and law all require creative processes. They operate from and produce innovation and new ways of thinking about the world.

The protagonist of “Technologies of the Self” is an engineer with the same background as yourself. To what extent would you say the character is a self-insert or a way of exploring your own identity?

Yes, the narrator, like me, has a Dominican mother and a Pakistani father and is also a Muslim. But this story is a fictionalization of the experiences of myself and my friends and family. I’m wary of calling it a memoir or a self-insert as much as I am of calling it fiction. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the story is about the nature of reality, as much as it may be an attempt to capture it. Junot Díaz once said in an interview that his recurring narrator, Yunior, is not the same person that he is but is “drawn from the same cloth” (I’m paraphrasing), and I feel similarly about my relationship with the narrator of “Technologies.”

Still, it is true that “Technologies” is a way of exploring my identities as well as the lives of my family and friends. In part, I wrote the book because I had never encountered their experiences on any screen, page, or stage. On the other hand, everything I write is an exploration of my identity, regardless of whether I’m conscious of the fact, because I am the writer; who I am inherently shapes the narratives and assumptions that underlie my characters and stories.

You write a lot about science fiction. How do you think the genre can best encapsulate issues of identity for PoC?

I’ve never set out to write so much about the genre but, somehow, that’s what’s transpired…Although science fiction, as much as mainstream literature, has problems with representation, the genre as a whole has mostly fallen outside the mainstream, rejected or neglected by the literary elite. Growing up amidst Western-centric curricula and as one of the few Muslims and students of color in class, this quality attracted me. The average science fiction novel often felt more attuned to social and political issues than the average literary novel. The genre gave birth to authors with radical ideas about race, colonialism, politics, and technology, like Octavia Butler, Frank Herbert, and Kurt Vonnegut.

I think there is sometimes a concern from PoC readers and writers that science fiction is escapist, that it deviates from “real problems in the world” and retreats into “allegory.” This couldn’t be further from the truth. The genre has the remarkable ability to reveal what is most true – and perhaps most horrifying – about our society and to force readers to confront these truths, no matter how brutal, unnerving, or uncomfortable.

What’s your take on the rising trend of novels around Muslim identity? Is that something that comes naturally because the 9/11 generation is now at adulthood, or is there something else going on?

Your observation about the 9/11 generation is probably true. I think there is also an increasing thirst within the literary community for these narratives. I’m not always sure that this is a good thing. While there are several great novels about the Muslim identity, most of the successful ones hardly ever relate the experiences of practicing Muslims. There are either “secular Muslims” (Muslim in name and perhaps in belief, but not practicing Al-Ghazali’s “techniques”) that appeal to the liberal idea of what a “moderate Muslim” ought to be, or irrational, militant fundamentalists, which also appeal to the liberal notion of what “religious” ought to be. There is nothing inherently wrong with either of those kinds of characters, because they do exist in the world, but…I am hard pressed to think of more than a few widely-known, popular novels that truly dive into the experiences of a practicing Muslim. This is the group that suffers the brunt of Islamophobia today.

Rather than critique from the sidelines, producing my own work is the best response. I also co-founded The Muslim Protagonist, an annual literary symposium at Columbia University that seeks to give a platform, mic, and audience for Muslim and allied writers. The symposium is now entering its sixth year.

What’s next for you?

I just came out with a novelette, “Champollion’s Foot,” in Mithila Review. It’s about a crew of failed rebels, from a colonized planet of Dominican Muslims, who discover alien detritus in deep space – with jinn. I have a short piece on space law and global economic inequality forthcoming from the exciting new journal Poet’s Country. And I’m Guest Editor for the upcoming Special Space Opera Issue of The Fantasist, an important new journal for long-form fantasy, broadly defined.

And, “Technologies” is only one chapter in a much longer saga…

You can purchase “Technologies of the Self” from Amazon.

This interview has been edited for length.

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