Short Story Storm

What should I write?

- A posthumous monologue from the costume designer of Twilight! The Musical.
- How To Eat a Strawberry Seductively.
- I once saw Heath Ledger’s Ghost surfing in San Onofre.
- You probably shouldn’t touch that.
- A man goes on a blind date with a woman on a full moon, he gets fresh and she bites him. After that he transforms into a woman during the full moon every month for the rest of his life.
- Rework the storyline from the Power Rangers Pilot as a serious science fiction adventure.
- Modernized Pied Piper of Hamlin.
- Drug dealers from Mars.
- The bilingual thoughts of a woman attempting to dub exercise videos in Spanish.

Crush

Some people HATE that term. Probably because we all used it in grade school to describe getting giggly around other small children, who in retrospect spit mac-n-chess when they spoke and stuck legos up their noses. However, the fact remains that this word, as silly and overused as it is and despite its connection to adolescent doomed-to-implode twitterpatedness and awkward girls with braces, is a one-syllable transportation device for a very universal idea.

I see him. I want him. Crush.

Don’t worry.I’m not going to talk about real life today.

I tend to equate all real-life relationships with fictional relationships, not just fictional relationships between fictional people (Darcy and Elizabeth, that makes sense) but I also tend to think about my own relationship with Darcy (that makes less sense and sounds sad) and my relationship with Elizabeth (Hay una?) and my relationship with Darcy and Elizabeth together. I do this, partially because I overthink EVERYTHING and partially in order to better understand character. How realistic are they really? Could I reasonably sit down and talk with them and what would my expectations be for their behavior?

So, let’s talk about different types of character crushes.

Virtual Crush

This is the saddest, so I’m going to talk about it first. This is when you actually have romantic feelings toward a fictional character that can only be compared to the kind of feelings that you might have for a real person. This kind of crush when taken to the extreme is best described by that horrible moment right before you call your therapist when you realize, “Oh no. I’m in love with Edward Rochester. I compare all the men I know to him and I can’t be happy as long as I’m not with him, which I never will be, because he DOESN’T EXIST!”

That exaggerated worst-case-scenario-type example is the logical conclusion of the virtual crush. You actual have feelings for this character. It could range from wistful sighing and fantasying to full blown you-might-want-to-think-about-medication illness.

If you find yourself with a virtual crush. Don’t worry, you’ll get over it. Probably.

For example, growing up… I was madly in love with Tuxedo Mask from Sailor Moon.

Yep. I was pretty sure I was going to marry him. Then I turned seven.

Don’t judge me.

Archetype Crush

If you’re a writer like me this is the character who you adore and who you will probably create little shadows of in your own stories. This can easily be someone you find attractive, but without necessarily taking it into the sad virtual crush area of character crushes. If this character is romantically involved with another character in the story, chances are you’ll identify with said character without necessarily wanting to take her place. It’s the person you admire but with a safe amount of distance. You might find yourself exhibiting symptoms of the virtual crush, but things are under control and if you happened to slide into another dimension where this person was flesh and blood, you’d probably just want to pick their brain, not jump their bones.

Like the friendship that goes a level deeper unexpectedly, the Archetype Crush can stealthily transform into a Virtual Crush.

Contrary to certain rumors, I don’t usually go for scary, anti-social zombies with facial tattoos. However, that being said, my big Archetype Crush right now is Kai from Lexx. I love everything about him. Spock-speak in a sexy baritone, passive aggressive aloofness, the fact that he’s totally lying about not having emotions, his whole backstory, that stupid wig…

The Dead Man in Black. So dreamy.

…I was going to jokingly post some of 790’s poetry about Kai, but… I just can’t do it. It’s too awful.

I just can’t.

Moving on.

Redemption Crush

Some jerk once said that all good girls secretly prefer evil guys.

The fact is that most girls, regardless of whether they are good or not will find themselves drawn to attractive men, whether they are good or not… but that’s a whole other argument that I’ve been avoiding for a couple of years now.

To get to the point, a redemption crush is specifically when you like the villain (wait for it) and you want more than anything to see him become a good guy (just liking the villain is different and deserves a separate essay all to itself, at least). You feel sympathy for them to the point that you want them to live happily ever after as well, and that can only happen if they’ll lay aside their evil ambitions for nobler causes. This is a pure empathetic love. You don’t desire defeat, for the bad guy, you want him to get a second chance.

You will be disappointed in the story if he doesn’t do a Heel Face Turn. Sometimes he does, sometimes (usually) he doesn’t. It can be effective either way, depending on what the writer is going for.

Anyway, I feel this way about Prince Nuada.

Yep. That’s right. It’s just because he’s pretty.

For me classifying these characters helps me organize my expectations and emotions connected to them, so that I can understand what exactly the writers managed to effectively do that made me feel this way. Tvtropes was right, television is forever ruined.

At thirty pounds, kiss a random stranger.

I didn’t make too many New Year’s Resolutions this year. I typically don’t, but I did have a couple of vague ideas sort of floating around that I failed to turn into concrete goals. Things like; I want to write four novels this year, and I’d like to be able to do a handstand for a full minute and a muscle-up, complete FRAN AP… Last year I had a couple of soft, unsolidified goals like this that I actually managed to complete. I ran a 10K, I did NaNoWriMo, head-butted a Marine (alright, that wasn’t a goal, it was just fun).

Anyway, you might notice that some of the physical goals that I’ve set for myself are kind of hard on the shoulders. I managed to screw up my right shoulder pretty bad a few years ago, and ever since then I’ve had a hard time doing anything that requires full mobility in that shoulder. It took me a few years to figure out that when I force it to work, it feels better! Loads better than when I baby it. I’m sure there’s a spiritual lesson in there, but anyway, I can finally do un-scaled pull-up which is huge for me, and it’s an important step towards the muscle-up.

A good friend of mine made the goal to lose 30 pounds, and what’s awesome is that she’s actually well on her way and now we’re into February, so good for her! She came up with a somewhat unusual and adorable reward system. At five pounds she gets a manicure, at ten pounds she goes salsa dancing, at fifteen pounds she crashes a wedding, etc.

I thought about putting together something similar for my own goals, but then I realized I’m totally boring and the only rewards that would motive me would be really uninteresting things like ‘take a nap’ which I would probably do anyway.

Anyway, as it’s going to be March soon enough I just wanted to give a big “KEEP IT UP!” shout out to everyone who is awesome enough to make goals for themselves and then achieve them.

The Bechdel Test

1. Are there at least two (named) women?

2. Do they talk to each other?

3. Do they talk about something besides men/a man?

I don’t buy into the simplistic idea that some hold about the Bechdel test; basically that any movie that doesn’t pass is evil misogyny incarnate. There are some great movies that massively fail the Bechdel test, movies that even manage to promote a positive, strong image for women. However, the Bechdel test is fun for me. My favorite new show failed this week (the most recent episode of Once Upon a Time) but it did so in such a way that it had me thinking about how fair the test is. Most of the dialogue was between one man and one woman (Regina/Mr. Gold, Emma/Mr. Gold, Rumpelstiltskin/Belle, over and over and over) there was a lot of Mr. Gold in this episode, which is great because I luurve him.

It very nearly fails the reverse as well. The men at the beginning are talking about war, though their attention shifts to Belle in the course of that scene. Mr. Gold and Mr. French are TECHNICALLY talking about business, though it kind of seems later like they were actually talking about Mr. French’s daughter in allegory.

I feel like there’s probably a good reason why people don’t apply the Bechdel test to novels. At first, I figured it was because they probably all pass most of the time. Television shows and films are more constricted by time. They need to get to the point of the plot (hopefully) which means that if the story doesn’t have anything to do with politics, the Higgs-Boson particle or Thai food, then the women probably aren’t going to discuss those things.

In a novel, however, a certain amount of character development has to happen and it’s kind of hard to develop female characters who don’t speak on a variety of subjects or clearly have other concerns in their life that aren’t related to men. It’s not realistic. Even the silliest girls I’ve ever met could talk about something besides men from time to time and managed to do so in a way that told me a lot about who they were. I’m thinking of one instance in particular when a boy-crazy friend of mine suddenly went into an impassioned rant about her love of music and aesthetically bizarre home décor.Suddenly, I felt I knew a lot more about her.

What DOES bother me is when we’ve got a story with a strong female lead, a compelling plot that doesn’t have anything to do with romance, and during the one sequence when our strong female lead is with another woman they either talk about men (usually in an objectifying way) or they discuss shallow topics that seem removed from the action at hand; ‘oh darling you look wonderful in that dress, who does your hair?’

It doesn’t ruin the movie for me or anything, it just makes me roll my eyes and wonder when our chick is going to continue kicking butt.

I went ahead and checked with all my post-mission novels—they all pass the Bechdel test, but I think I’ll have to say that Rosenrot technically fails the reverse. The male characters are rarely together, one of them can’t speak at all and the others usually don’t discuss anything but witches. The only instant that I could argue counts is when Myth and General are shouting at each other and Rosenrot overhears a couple of phrases. They aren’t talking about any women at all in that moment, but they’re barely communicating. It’s just a couple of heated phrases and then they notice that Rosenrot is there. I’m not sure I feel comfortable saying that counts. I’m pretty sure that Rosenrot fails the reverse Bechdel, but hey, I’m doing serious retooling right now and you never know what will change.

All this got me thinking and made me wonder if my life passes the Bechdel test… So, here are some other women who I spoke with this week and here’s what we talked about.

Lauren – biology, my car, her car, writing/casting a Labyrinth reboot, men. FAIL

Manda – work, a Mohawk hat I made. PASS

Kate – Her MTC class and this week’s episode of Once Upon a Time. FAIL

Jensen – a way cool painting I found, ordering cookies from BYU food to go, our plans to go to St. George this weekend. PASS

Joan – surgery, food, doctors/my grandfather. FAIL

Melinda – upcoming preparations for History class/work. PASS

Lenore – the nobility of serving others/cleaning as a way to grow spiritually, The Help, Teaching, my friend/boss, my dad, Jesus Christ. FAIL

Sarah – my grandmother, my uncle and my nephew. FAIL

Whitney – walking in on her male acquaintance as he was leaving the bath. FAIL

Brenna – the likelihood of designing a kid’s science fair experiment that would cause boogers to rain from the sky (it makes sense in context). PASS

Internet (who I feel is female) – I posted about the Bechdel test, and briefly mentioned several men, including that I love Mr. Gold, although I’d like to clarify that I meant it in a writerly ‘character-admiration’ way rather than a pervy fan-girl way. FAIL

Here’s the conclusion I have reached. If you are not a completely self-centered person and if you talk to somebody else, ANYBODY else long enough, you are going to eventually mention other people and unless you live in an alternative reality in which there are no Y chromosomes, some of those other people you talk about will be men.

I only had one conversation with a woman this week in which we discussed men or a man in a remotely romantic way and that was when Lauren and I were speculating about who to cast in our imaginary play-land Labyrinth reboot and even then I think my comments about a man in the entirely of this forty-five minute conversation were “Yeah, he’s hot. I really like his voice.”

The End.

But, the point of the Bechdel test isn’t to determine whether or not your female characters are preoccupied by men romantically, it’s supposed to be more about how much their lives appear to be oriented around men and their choices and actions. Do these women live their own lives and have other concerns besides the concerns of the male characters with whom they interact? Are we people or are we framework?

Maybe the topics of conversation that I follow with other females say more about me and these other women then they do about society and feminism. In fact, I’m sure they do since my life isn’t a form of media being added to the pop culture slurry. Thank heavens.