Flying Whale Productions

National Novel Writing Month

Yikes!!! 

Since my position as a Naturalist at Glenwood Gardens ended as of 10/31 and since I have not been sucessful at finding another job I've signed up to do NaNo WriMo.  I'm going to try and write a 50,000 word novel between now and November 30th.

I'm planning on revising and expanding a short story I did a while back.  If everything comes together I'll have a Steampunk version of Cinderella with a twist.

Like I said Yikes!!!

Pooh and the swine flu

 

What is the appeal of Blood Sucking Dead Guys - Why do empowered modern women crave Vampire Romance?

I admit I went through a brief vampire fiction phase in my 20's when I hung out with theater people, had purple highlights in my hair and dressed in black.  But, since I have become a mature  adult I just don't see why any healthy well adjusted woman would want that sort of relationships that vampire fiction are all about.

Most of what bothers me about Vampire Romance is that it is all about unequals relationships. Almost always the Vampire is male, and super-alpha.  He dominates the heroine in a way I find distasteful when I sit and think about it. 

In a relationship with a Vampire a human always had everything to loose.  This seems to play out in three main ways, but in with each of the basic Vampire plots the human, who is a woman in almost all vampire fiction is in a position of weakness.

The first option in Vampire fiction is that the Vampire is immortal and the heroine is human.   She is prey and he is playing with his food. This is the plot in Dracula, although there are many other complications and sub-plots and Dracula isn't a Romance in the modern sense of the word. In this plot the woman is basically a consumable disposable item to the Vamp.  To believe a love story with this set-up you have to believe someone can fall in love with their food.  Sure I may I love Greater's Strawberry Chocolate Chip ice cream, but  I'm not going to consider it my equal as a life partner.  On top of that in this sort of plot the woman is always weak, inexperiences, and child like compared to the immortal vamp. Which makes this sort of like pedophilia with a mature person taking advantage of an unformed person and calling it love.

In the second basic Vampire Romance plot the main characters can stay together if she becomes a vampire.  This plot basically says the only way a woman can be happy is if she completely transforms herself on every level ,and gives up her old life completely to be with her man.  The difference between saying that about a regular guy and a Vampire is that a Vamp has the ability to force this transformation on his lover, it is the by-product of their lovemaking, and she will probably enjoy it. This is a variation the rape fantasy or  forced seduction scenario  that has been rejected in almost all other sub-genres of Romance.

The third Vampire Romance plot is the most rare.  In this plot  true love can "cure" the vamp.  This is basically the "If he loves me enough he will change" plot  that is at the root of all bad-boy, reformed Rake, redeemed highwayman, pirate with a heart of gold  Romances.  In many ways this is the plot I find most disturbing.  It is dangerous because being fed that sort of nonsense causes women to, at lease internally, blame a husband or boyfriend's bad behavior on themselves for not loving enough.  It leads to women staying with men who are abusive because they think the abuse is their own fault for not putting enough into the relationship.

There is some Vampire fiction out there that does not fall into these plot pit-falls.  Tanya Huff's Blood  series  and Fred Saberhagen's Dracula Tapes, and Old Friend of the Family , come to mind, but although their are love story sub-plots in these series they are not Romances.  I have not read Twilight but I saw the movie on a plane recently.  I wasn't giving it 100% of my attention but it seemed to be a mix of plot #1 and plot #2.  I'm not the target market for that book or movie but Edward gave off very creepy stalker personal space invader vibes to me. 

Despite everything women have done in the past century to become equal players on the world stage even modern liberated women seem to  want someone to come in, sweep them off their feet, and take them away from all their troubles. We've been told it is not PC to wait for Prince Charming, so are we turning to dark and dangerous Vampires to fill this roll?  Is that OK  because everyone knows Vampires are not real, so it is harmless way to indulge in a "I which someone would take me away from this" fantasy?  Is it because unwanted/unplanned pregnancy isn't a worry with a Vampire Lover?  Is it an insidious plot to keep women addicted to fiction where they are subservient to men and there by keep that as the correct state things in women's subconscious?  Is it just a fad that will pass? I've heard all that discussed at various chat-rooms and Con panels, and I'm still not sure why Vampire Romance is so hot. 

Cincinnati Shakespeare Company does Comedy of Errors as a Twilight Zone Episode

Saturday night we went to see Comedy of Errors at Cincinnati Shakespeare Company.  It was a blast.  This is the play with two sets of twins, multiple cases of mistaken identity and all sorts of confused hijinks.  SCS staged it as a cross between a really bad shoestring budget 50's SF movie and one of the lighter episodes of Twilight Zone.  The sets were sort of bland, but the costumes bounced between Jetson retro-future chic, and Star Trek Next Gen Granimals for Grownups, they,and some creative and over-the-top cheesy bad SF-props, did a great job of setting the tone for the production.   There was an added frame with a Rod Serling-esque Narrator   who also popped up from time to time to redirect the audiences attention to one point or another, but other than that they didn't change the play. 

 It was a little odd to hear the dialog talk about swords when the characters had ray-guns,  but for the most part it worked.

OK, I did hear one couple grumbling in the lobby, but they were so completely adrift I'm willing to bet any staging of Shakespeare that wasn't 100% "authentic" would have been too much for them.  I also suspect that neither of them had ever seen Twilight Zone or any other SF show in their lives.  That  makes them pretty sad and narrow folks in my opinion.  The brilliance of Shakespeare's plays is that the plots and language are so good than even The Comedy of Errors, which is all fluff and silliness strikes a universal cord that transcends staging. 

Shakespeare's plays are alive, not static and dusty.  They almost beg to be reworked and tipped on their ear like this.  Personally I think Shakespeare would have gotten a really kick out of this version of his work.

The show runs through April 26th.  Tickets prices are quite reasonable.  If you are in the Cincy area you should try to catch it.

(photos from the CSC website)

Is under-clad pirate statue worth a bunch of Religious uproar?

A Girardville PA an antique store has a statue of a female pirate in its doorway. The local Catholic priest was offended by the statue and organized protests, including a march ending at the store where he "commanded" the owners to remove and destroy the statue.

You can check out the whole story  here

 I think the thing is rather tacky, and tasteless, but no closer to porn than the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit edition.

Maybe things like this are why more and more Americans say they are spiritual but not members of an organized religion, and according to Newsweek the number of people who self-identify as Christians is falling.

Seriously, there are lots of wrongs in the world that could use a few protest marches, some community organization and a rant from the pulpit to engage the public in working for a solution,, this stature isn't one of them.  When religious leaders waste time and energy on stuff like this it debases their stature  in the community, and weakens their moral authority.

Fine Arts Fund

It's that time of year. The Fine Arts Fund is running their 2009 fundraising campaign, and no suprize in today's economy they are not getting the responce they would like.  If you do not have the option to donate to the FAF at work, or if you do and would like to add a little bit extra, check out their website here

The FAF provides support and assisstance to scores of Arts organizations arroud the Greater Cincinnati Are and we would be a poorer city without the work they do.

We Haven't Got There Yet - By Harry Turtledove

If you have time and ability to read a short story on line you MUST go to Tor.com and check out  We Haven't Got There Yet.  By Harry Turtledove.  Shakespeare watching a producion of Tom Stoppard's . Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.  It is great fun. Yumminess wrapped in layers of yumminess.  I know I'll have something in mind for the short fiction section of the Hugos next year.

Battlestar Galactcia series finale

I didn't get to see this Friday because I was at Millennicon.  The hotel did not have SciFi Chanel in it's cable package, but the Max and Erma's that is the Hotel restaurant had satellite TV and the manager arranged a Battlestar viewing party.  He's a fan. The TV's in the bar stayed on March Madness, the rest of the restaurant showed the series finale.  I missed that because of being on a panel at 10:00 and spent the weekend avoiding spoilers. I got to watch the two hour end last night.

Not as grim as I thought it was going to be, also not as hokey as it could have been. 

I was sure Hera, or at least on of her patents was not going to make it.

I could have done with fewer flash backs, or having the info in these flashbacks worked into the show earlier in the season and over a longer period of time.  I don't know if that was because they didn't know this was going to be the last season when they started or if  they thought viewers have the attention span of gnats and wouldn't remember things that were dropped as subtle hints.  Don't they know the wiki-brain fan-boy types  never forget anything and there has is almost as much blogging about this show as there is about the stock market?  Subtle hints would have been picked out and done to death in the blog-o-verse.

All the "religious" stuff didn't bother me, because I thought it was an interesting way to go for such a "realistic" SF show.  In the real world people do big political stuff for religious reasons all the time, I think overlooking religion and or faith as anything but a cardboard cut-out source for slimy small-minded bad guys is one of the major flaws of the  SF genre as a whole.

Roslyn's is Moses leading the people to the promised land but not getting to enjoy it personally.

Loved finding out that Caprica 6 had a Baltar talking to her in her head all this time.  She is one of my favorite characters in the show.

I've always felt Boomer was a tragic character she got a just and satisfying tragic character not a hero, not a villain death

I'm a sentimental HEA girl at heart so an ending that has at least a small pink bow on it suits me, even if it was hokey and played fast and loose with paleo-anthropology. (I didn't get how people could be both tribal and pre-verbal that didn't make any sense to me)  I like to think everyone can be redeemed and will get what they deserve in the end, all evidence to the contrary.  It nice to see it happen if fiction even if it can't in real life.

Still some unanswered questions - What happened to the centurions? Who was Starbuck?  If she was really and an "angel" who was she talking to in the piano episode? God? Her father? Another "angel".  Is the "He",  who does not like that name, really God.  I'm thinking maybe the missing Cylon Daniel. Is that an opening for some sort of spin off? Obviously whoever He is he's still keeping an eye on things with humanity and its creations.

I felt the take-away-lesson at the end wasn't that technology is bad, but that not accepting creating technology is part of what makes us human is wrong. To be whole and balanced we must embrace technology and its consequences, as equally as any other aspect of human nature.

The blending of human and cylon in a complete social/technological re-boot this time around instead starting another culture where cylons are tools/servants/toys or a separate tribe is what breaks the destructive cycle. Becoming one with the Tech, not the getting rid of it altogether is the road to salvation - That is God's plan.

SF and Racial Dialog in America

For those of you who think all SF fans and readers are pasty-face socially inept dweebs living in their parent's basement take a moment to check out this series of guest blog posts on Race from SF writer John Scalzi's Whatever blog. SF Fans are more in touch with this real world issue than most folks I know. 

Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed, Part I

Mary Anne Mohanraj Gets You Up to Speed, Part II

These guest blogs are the response to the Internet war over Race in SF has been burning up the Internet the last few months over mostly white writers in a mostly white genre writing "other" characters for their mostly white readers to to read.

I'm a white middle-class kid from the 'burbs, but I come from a political family with one parent from each party.  Both parents were politically active in Civil Rights issues over the years, and did their best to raise kids who would see everyone as their equal.  I grew up hearing my folks talk about issues of race from a political viewpoint.  I'm smart and informed enough to know that although we have made great strides things are still not perfect.  I'm also smart and informed enough to know that  looking at Race as a two sided right/wrong black/white issue isn't the way to fix things.  Dialog is.

These posts are about Race in SF, which for all it's open mindedness, and forward thinking, is still mostly read, written, and populated with white guys from Middle America, or as author Steven Barnes says "white folks and their imaginary friends".   I think these post have some real insight into the state of Race relations in the US today and they come to those insights from a slightly different angle than most essays on the subject. 

Even if you are not into SF, not a SF Fan, not a SF writer, not a writer of any sort, you should still read these posts, and take time to root through the comments too.  It will give you something to think about.

I wasn't big on Gen Cem either, but I'm not sure about Red Lobster

The nut-jobs from Westboro Baptist Church showed up at University of Chicago the other day.   

Student groups countered. 

I know which signs I think truly reflect God.  Only humans are imperfect enough to hate. More photos from this protest here.

 

Mentally unstable people, like the folks at Westboro Baptist and the Young Earth Creationists, who distort religion to further some personal agenda, or to get back at a world they can't put in a little box and completely control, are the reason more and more people in American say they can't connect with an organized religion, even if they have deep spiritual yearnings.