The Mysterious Story of How Vampires Became More Human than Jocks in Much of Young Adult Literature

In just a few short days I’m going to have the privilege of giving a presentation on evolutions of the vampire in literature and film at a pop culture conference. In preparation for that presentation, I have read (and watched) a lot of vampire stories. Although many have had enjoyable and unexpected portrayals of vampires (and various fascinating takes on where vampires fit in a Christian or culturally relativist world), many have also had a few deeply unfortunate trends. Since my talk has nothing whatsoever to do with the role of athletes in vampire literature (and other young adult fantasy novels), I’m ranting out my feelings on the subject here instead.

So, here it goes: I am sick to death with the extent to which fantasy school stories are entirely dependent on stereotypes for their plots and characterization.

There is a huge subset of YA (young adult) fantasy literature, with and without vampires, that is basically the story of "I am a nerd. I am misunderstood. I am beautiful and intelligent and talented and socially facile and have magic powers and possibly an undead significant other, so clearly everyone just hates me because I'm too perfect. However, I never actually suffer any serious consequences for not being popular, because I still have 2.5 friends of assorted races and genders and anyway none of the people who dislike me are actually worth talking to. Plus, they'll all be proven wrong in the end anyway." A couple quick examples off the top of my head: Vladimir Tod. In the Forests of the Night. Ink Exchange. Vampire Academy. Bleed Like Me. Betrayals. Vampire Kisses. The Morganville Vampires. Sweetblood. City of Bones. Tithe. Demon in my View. The Silver Kiss. I Am Number Four. Blue Bloods.

ALL OF THEM portray high schools with supporting casts that are made up of some combination of The Dumb Jock (the idiot, the aggressor, the human incarnation of evil), The Queen Bee (the whore half of the virgin-whore dichotomy, the airhead, the giggling shallow embodiment of feminine = evil), The Weird Theater Kid (the kid who is actually weird, mind you, not like the protagonist), The Bully (the slightly different incarnation of The Dumb Jock who is often actually redeemed because he's just deeply ignorant and will eventually realize the error of his ways), The Mean Teacher (the one who hates the protagonist for no reason at all), The Nice Teacher (the one who loves the protagonist for no reason at all), The Tragic Goth (the girl who's beautiful, deep, probably skinny and pale while we're at it), The Loyal Sidekick (the guy who's slightly less good at everything than the protagonist and therefore exists solely to be his/her best friend), The Saint (the virgin half of the dichotomy), and The Swarm (the six or seven indistinguishable females with essentially the same attributes as the Queen Bee who exist only to worship her and put down the protagonist). And the plot basically revolves around what I often uncharitably assume is an excruciating revenge fantasy on the part of the bullied writer: the hero has conflicts with The Dumb Jock and/or The Queen Bee. The hero eventually reveals either superpowers or a boyfriend (depending on whether the protagonist is male or female, respectively) that makes the antagonist's eyes fall out with jealousy. The hero saves the life of the antagonist, leaving the antagonist either thanking the hero for his/her graciousness on bended knee or rejected by everyone else, who has swarmed over to go worship the hero instead.

And the thing is, from my limited sampling it actually seems to be a worse problem in teen fantasy/sci-fi than it does in other high school stories. There seems to be a chronic problem with stories like Vampire Diaries and Vampire Kisses where the vampire plot and the mundane plot are largely incompatible, barely interact except to give the protagonist a secret to lord over the antagonist(s), and one or the other fades completely to the background for most of the book. (The vamp plot disappears while the mundane plot comes to the fore more often than you'd think--Eighth Grade Bites, Sweetblood, and In the Forests of the Night all end up focusing so hard on the triumph of the nerd/goth over the jock/prep that they seem to forget that vampires exist in places.) The plot is driven by the assumption that OF COURSE the Dumb Jock is a terrible human being, OF COURSE the protagonist is Just Misunderstood, and OF COURSE anything nasty, judgmental, mean, or outright bullying that the protagonist says to the antagonist is entirely justified on the grounds that He Started It. There are probably lots of realistic fiction books that suffer from this same problem, but a) I’ve read a lot fewer of those, and b) I suspect that this kind of lazy characterization flies under the radar more when there are vampires or wizards there to distract people from just how awful the school story is, and c) I think this might even appeal to some publishers because vampire books are so often aimed at non-mainstream audiences.

First and foremost: this kind of thing is wrong because reinforcing stereotypes is wrong. Suggesting that an entire group of people is less intelligent, less complex, less human, or less deserving of love and happiness because of a single external attribute (such as quantity of makeup or presence of a letterman jacket) is wrong. Portraying entire groups of people as uniform and unappealing is wrong. All of that is obvious enough to hardly be worth writing down, but I feel the need to do so anyway after reading some of these books.

Where it crosses the line from driving me nuts to actually making me angry is that books have the power to influence behavior. (I’m in the process of writing my thesis on this effect.) These books portray genuinely awful beliefs and behaviors as acceptable, and I don’t want to know what those ideas are causing teens who read them to think. While it might be cool to suggest that unlikely heroes like The Weird Kid can save the world, that idea is no longer remotely radical anymore, and is now a cliche in and of itself. And often showing the “triumph” of the weird kid portrays really awful behavior as justified (name calling in I Am Number Four, slut shaming in Vampire Kisses, spreading malicious rumors in Vampire Academy, exposing others' secrets to harm them in Vladimir Tod) on the grounds that this is The Unpopular Kid (aka the stated hero) going up against The Popular Kid (aka the stated villain). And these books suggest that this behavior is okay. That revenge is a perfectly justifiable reason to be mean and nasty and say or do ugly things.

It also bears mentioning that the unpopular protagonist so often wins the contest on the antagonists' terms. It's often not the story of a character learning to love oneself or to value one's demographically appropriate 2.5 friends (The Wish by Gail Carson Levine is one awesome exception), it's the story of the protagonist's triumph through becoming more pretty, more beloved, better at football, better at bullying one's enemies, or more in control of the rumor mill than the antagonist.

The other thing is that this kind of writing can actually end up justifying a status quo in which kids are punished (with ostracism or mean rumors or being stuffed into lockers) for being "ugly" or "weird" or incorrectly dressed or socially unaware. Most of the social-outcast protagonists in these books are conventionally pretty, able to afford coordinated outfits, confident enough to express their uniquenesses, of average or below-average weight, in possession of above-average intelligence, socially aware, friendly, funny (more on that in a second), white, straight, fully abled, cis, American, and (with a couple notable exceptions) upper-middle class. I seriously question whether these books then accurately represent the dichotomy of the bullies vs. the bullied in real-world high schools. Unfortunately, it's usually the outsiders in a class who turn to bullying and frequently the insiders who are more or less nice, intelligent, mainstream, socially acceptable people.

Generally the most damning sin that marks the antagonists and gets punished time and again in these books is a lack of intelligence. And guess what? The kids who are apparently "clueless" or "dumb" in any given real life high school are often (although most certainly not always) a) from family environments that don't encourage them to focus on school, b) dealing with stuff that ranges from depression to autism that can get in the way of showing up to school every day bright-eyed and ready to learn, c) not coming from English-speaking households, or d) unable to afford (in the financial sense or the emotional resources sense) to devote time and energy to looking good, speaking well, and reading lots of books. Again, I'm massively oversimplifying it, but how about an awkward fringe vamp (or vamp lover) who is physically disabled? How about one that loves makeup? How about one who has terrible fashion sense but also excels at football?

Also, the fact that (shockingly) most high schools have more than two social groups means that as long as there is any kind of rivalry it's fairly easy to cast oneself as persecuted or an outsider even if that's not necessarily the only way to look at it. Which would then, according to these books, be sufficient justification to engage in a little social aggression of one's own. My group of friends in high school was composed entirely of socially awkward nerds, but that doesn't mean we would have had the right to start pushing people into snowbanks (Vampire Academy) or "outing" them as closet theater kids to punish them (Eighth Grade Bites) or deliberately trying to break up their romantic relationships to get even (Blue Bloods). People get picked on in high school for all kinds of awful reasons, and that doesn't mean that the correct solution should be more awfulness.

Meanwhile, there are lots of kids who are going through all kinds of hell in high school that is inflicted by their peers, and those kids often do not have a ton of great options when the administration can have limited power, their parents can't watch them 24 hours a day, and school counselors might not know what to do. Most of the time the persecution is real, not perceived, and most of the time the correct response to bullying is a form of limited ostracism or a form of external punishment acquired through telling adults about the situation, if there even is a correct response at all. That said, writing books that display a tiny shred of compassion for the popular kids or the aggressive kids or the preppy kids or the kids who like makeup and boys but don't fit in anyway wouldn't be the end of the world.

As Cates has said, it's always stretching the limits of believably to suggest that beautiful, intelligent, highly unique teenagers would ever not be well-liked by many people in their high school classes, because a combination of a smooth exterior and a confident interior is going to be one of the biggest forces driving one's upward social mobility in most teen social settings. Characters like Luna Lovegood of Harry Potter ("quirky" and therefore painfully socially awkward and punished for it) are relatively rare in YA fantasy literature compared to ones like the eponymous protagonist of Stargirl (good, unique, likable people who for some mysterious reason aren't liked at all), and half the protagonists I'm talking about are exactly Stargirl’s sort of smart, pretty, aggressively quirky teenager.

Circling back to the thing about the protagonist being "funny": you ever notice just how often that kind of humor is malicious? There are so often conflicts between the hero and the villain where the hero "wins" by mocking the villain more viciously than the villain mocked the hero. There's also a lot of behavior like that of Harry Potter’s Marauders (rebellion, whackiness, rule breaking, "having fun" at the expense of others, laughing at people rather than with them, letting pranks get to the point of bullying) on the part of these YA fantasy heroes that never gets called into question the way that the Marauders' behavior does. There's a world of difference between comedy that's based on irony or self-deprecation (most of what we see from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) and comedy that's based on mean-spirited mockery (Pride and Prejudice, to use my favorite love-to-hate example, for all its lack of vampires), and YA vampire books only too often rely on the latter type for their lighter moments. But the meanness tends to go without criticism as long as it's directed at the (unintelligent, sex-seeking, fashion-conscious) Lydia Bennets of the world.

A couple vampire books that I actually think get their portrayals of high school right: Twilight shows the Cullens as ostracized because they genuinely act weird (lurking in little groups, staring at people, never eating at lunch) and also has a complex miasma of shifting social groups rather than the "in" crowd and the "out" crowd, also taking the time to mention that "the best friend" (Jessica) is fairly surface-obsessed and that the quasi-antagonist of the class (Lauren) is a scared insecure kid who doesn't want to lose her popularity. Vampire Diaries (for all its many other flaws) also shows a high school with dozens of shifting cliques and protagonists who have social popularity, portraying a conventional bully in Tyler but rapidly making him more complex and sympathetic by rooting his aggression in his family struggles. Buffy the Vampire Slayer shows that Buffy's tendency to skip class and show up to dates with grave dirt in her hair gets in the way of her popularity, but also that most of the kids in her class are (gasp) decent human beings who take notice that she's their "class protector" and like her anyway. Percy Jackson deliberately sets up and then knocks down those stereotypes by having the shallow, popular, jock antagonist (SPOILERS) reveal hidden depths and then die to save the world... and then portrays the protagonist becoming the shallow, athletic top of the food chain in the sequel series.

And then, of course, there’s Animorphs, K.A. Applegate's story about a princess who becomes a fierce and terrible warrior, a criminal who acts as the heart and soul of his friend group, an athlete who plans out a strategy to save the world, a brain who becomes a Hollywood star, and a basket case who ends up joining the U.S. government. (Not sure where Ax fits in the Breakfast Club metaphor, but he also definitely starts out the shallow militarist who becomes a tough but adaptable diplomat.) Rachel and Jake, their school’s Queen Bee and Dumb Jock, respectively, are just two more sympathetic members of the team of heroes that saves the world in Animorphs. Almost like boys who enjoy sports and girls who enjoy buying clothes are real human beings capable of complex emotions or something.

I’m not asking writers to stop focusing their YA fantasy stories on the fringes of the high school social structure. I’m asking for more stories that portray even the popular kids with complexity, with compassion, and (at least occasionally) with brains. I'm asking for an end to the idea that social tit-for-tat is all okay as long as it's an outsider who is the aggressor. I’m asking for heroes that are socially clueless, or less intelligent than average, or not clear-skinned and slender and pale. There are too many stories out there right now that are downright cruel to huge subsets of teenagers, and I want stories that recognize the humanity of even those teenagers who happen to play on sports teams or enjoy going on dates.

- Bug

Phenomenal Women

I loved The Avengers. Let's start there. I was skeptical going in, because I didn't see how having that many superheroes in one movie could possibly result in anything but a mad mixture of endless fight scenes interspersed with dialogue heavy scenes meant to summarize the plot, but luckily I was wrong. Hiring Joss Whedon (he of Buffy, Firefly, and Toy Story fame) to write and direct was possibly the smartest decision they could have made.

However, I loved The Avengers in spite of a glaring problem I had with the storyline. It's not an overcomplicated plot twist or an unrealistic character motivation. It's a lot simpler than that. In fact, it's obvious without ever seeing the movie. All you need to do is look at a movie poster. Notice how there's only one woman? Notice how many bloggers and critics and fans didn't notice? Yeah. That would be the problem right there.

I had a long discussion with Buggy about whether or not it was fair to accuse The Avengers of being sexist for only including Black Widow when there weren't that many female superheroes they could have picked in the first place. Sexist is a big word, and to be honest I'm not comfortable applying it to the way I feel about The Avengers. Instead, I think The Avengers is an example of a larger problem that exists in popular fiction, television, and especially Hollywood: the Strong Woman has become the Token Black Character. There's one in every story, but only one, and her personality can usually be boiled down to being 'tough.' It's fantastic that there are female superheroes, and doctors, and police officers, and scientists, etc. That's a huge step forward that a lot of people fought for a long time to achieve. But we've made that step, and now it seems like we've stalled. Would it be too much to ask for us to keep walking?

Strong Women Are Everywhere
Think about your own life. Think about the women you know. Is there only one or two who you'd call strong--independent, smart, capable? Unless you live in a black hole, the answer's no. In ten seconds I could name ten women I know personally or who are well know figures who are strong. Give me a minute, and I'll give you fifty. Madeline Albright. Isabel Allende. J.K Rowling. Aung Suu Kyi. Sandra Day O'Conor. Emma Thompson. Margaret Thatcher. Lady GaGa. Angelina Jolie. Cat Cora. Hillary Clinton. Sarah Palin. Hope Solo. Gabby Douglas. Malala Yousufzai. Beyonce. Love them or hate them, it's impossible to deny that each of these women is strong, intelligent, and talented in a way that has nothing to do with good looks. Strong women are everywhere--so why does fiction have such a hard time mirroring reality?

To me, the best example of a story with truly strong women is J.D. Robb's Eve Dallas books. What makes these stories so fantastic in their representation of women is Robb doesn't create Eve, a lieutenant with the NYPSD, in a vacuum. She doesn't make one or two strong women and call it a day, and, more importantly, she doesn't make strong women seem like anything out of the ordinary. The Eve Dallas stories are full of strong women. Within the main cast of a dozen or so recurring characters, roughly half are women. Half. Think about how strange that seems for a second. Try and list as many movies, books, and television shows where that's the case. Now, in how many of those stories are all the women capable and talented? How many cases are the women independent characters in and of themselves--they don't simply serve as 'the love interest' or 'the obstacle in the relationship?' The number I can come up with is depressingly small: Animorphs, Bones, The Descent, Rizzoli and Isles, The Circle of Magic, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and of course Eve Dallas.

What really makes the Eve Dallas stories special, however, is that there are an equal number of strong women present in the minor and supporting characters. Whether it's victims' families, other police officers, lawyers, witnesses, etc, there are constant appearances and mentions of women who hold leadership positions, demonstrate their intelligence, and show strength and independence. Of the stories I mentioned above, only Circle of Magic passes that test. We need stories that are filled with strong women--which doesn't mean replace the men with women. Real life is full of strong men and women. Is it too much to ask that fiction live up to the same standard?

A Woman Doesn't Need to Swing a Sword to be Strong
I love Tamora Pierce's Song of the Lioness series. First published in 1983, Alanna: The First Adventure introduced the world to a stubborn, thick headed, passionate and tough young girl named Alanna, who dreamed of being a knight in a world where only men could earn the title. Alanna was a tough and strong female character in an era where tough and strong female characters were practically nonexistent.

That was thirty years ago.

Alanna embodies an important step in the struggle for strong women in stories. She entered a man's world, defied stereotypes, fought for her dream, showed that a woman could be just as strong as a man, and scoffed at anyone who dared try and stop her. Alanna's journey mirrored the struggle that many women in the real world were fighting at the same time: the struggle to earn respect as scientists, politicians, sports players, etc. But, like Alanna, that struggle has essentially been conquered. It's time to take the next step, but writers, directors, and producers seem unable or unwilling to make the start.

Within the main cast of the Eve Dallas books, the strong women include a therapist, an MD, an ADA, multiple police officers, and a rock star. Eve herself hates the idea of shopping, finds fancy clothes a mystery, and actively avoids cooking and cleaning. In many ways, Eve embodies the 80s idea of what a strong woman looked like.

But this is 2012, not 1983. Strong women come in all shapes and sizes. As they do in the Eve Dallas books, they can love or abhor shopping. They can literally kick ass, or they can be intelligent and wise. They can gush over boys AND take down a perp with a handgun and a pocket full of cocaine. They can cry over sad movies and scream profanities at pushy cab drivers. They can love to sing and dance, or they can love playing soccer in the park, or--shocking!--they can love both.

Scarlett Johansen's Black Widow is an awesome character. But she falls into the same pattern that every strong woman seems to fall into today: she is a woman in a man's world. She is tough and aloof--no feminine weakness for her. She can literally kick your ass and she shows little emotion while doing so. She is serious and does not engage in bickering and jokes with the men on the team--she's above all that.

Women are strong and talented in a multitude of ways--there's no single image of a strong woman. Rosie the Riveter has passed the torch to chefs and artists, leaders and athletes, warriors and doctors. Rosie played her part, as did Alanna. It seems a shame that we can't continue the fight and fill our stories with phenomenal women of all shapes and sizes.

Now It's Personal
There's one final issue I'd like to address, and it's a point where even the Eve Dallas books, even the works of Tamora Pierce, falls down.

I have an awesome younger sister. She's at the top of my list of phenomenal women. She's no Primrose Everdeen--the thought of her as shrinking and shy is hysterical. If I ever tried to pull a move like Katniss and offer myself up to protect her, she'd tackle me into the dirt before the words left my mouth and call me an overprotective idiot. That being said, I'd still try, because I'd do anything for her, and she'd do anything for me.

The list of strong brotherly relationships goes back to literally the dawn of storytelling. The Epic of Gilgamesh, the oldest existing story, deals with the relationship between two men who, while not born brothers, become brothers to each other with all the relationship implies: camraderie, protectiveness, support, trust, competition, love. Moving through time, the examples are endless: Hector and Paris in The Iliad. Jacob and Easu, Jonathan and David, Moses and Aron in the Bible. Caleb and Aaron in East of Eden. The Brothers Karamazov. Death of a Salesman.

Five years ago, there were three different television dramas that featured a pair of brothers: Supernatural, Numb3rs, and Prison Break. And that's only counting shows where the brothers are genetically related, not shows that feature bromances like Psych, Scrubs, and Rescue Me. Two years ago Rizzoli and Isles premiered, and it was treated like a big deal because it featured two female leads and the relationship between them.

I've already questioned why the strong women seem to be missing from much of television, movies, and popular fiction. Here's my personal bone to pick: where are all the sisters? I can't believe--in fact I know for certain--that mine and my sister's relationship is unique. Of the women I know who have sisters, many speak about the relationship as the most important one in their lives. So where are the stories that reflect what it means--what it truly means--to be sisters? We should have left the fairytales and stories such as King Lear behind a long time ago. But all too often, when a show or book does feature sisters, one is given prominence while the other is merely an obstacle or a competitor or an annoyance or an object to be protected.

I'll finish with a quote by Barbara Alpert: “Sister. She is your mirror, shining back at you with a world of possibilities. She is your witness, who sees you at your worst and best, and loves you anyway. She is your partner in crime, your midnight companion, someone who knows when you are smiling, even in the dark. She is your teacher, your defense attorney, your personal press agent, even your shrink. Some days, she's the reason you wish you were an only child.” 

Reading it over, it really seems a shame to me that there aren't more stories about sisters, because of all the rich possibilities that exist in such a relationship. We need stories that show women as they truly are, not as we've idealized them to be. Women who are sarcastic, smart, reserved, bubbly, amusing, quick-witted, practical, and foolish, wild dreamers and level headed planners. And we need to see women interacting with other women--not as rivals, but as equals. Not as the strong woman who stands out alone, but as sisters who fight and laugh and argue and defend with and for one another.

--Cates

Make Me Smile: A Review of Sarah Micklem's Firethorn

I recently read Sarah Micklem's Firethorn, a high-fantasy novel for adults. To be perfectly honest, if I wasn't required to read it for class, I probably never would have picked it up. I put that out there just to acknowledge that this book is not the sort of thing I usually choose to read, so some of my feelings about it may be due to my lukewarm attitude towards the genre in general, rather than problems specific to this particular book.

To be clear: I love fantasy, but only certain types of fantasy, and even within the types I like I'm very picky. For one, I vastly prefer children's fantasy to fantasy stories intended for adults. The exceptions are pretty much Lord of the Rings and medieval literature like The Mabinogion and Sir Gawain. (Yes, I am a nerd. Sue me.) Then, even within children's fantasy, I vastly prefer 'low' fantasy--which, to me, is defined as fantasy that has its basis in the real world, like Diane Duane's Young Wizards books, to 'high' fantasy, stories set entirely in a fantasy realm with little or no connection to the real, modern world,  like Victoria Hanley's The Seer and the Sword. (Of course, my absolute favorites are the ones that take place almost entirely in a fantasy world, but manage to start or anchor themselves in reality, like Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, all of Eva Ibbotson's work, the Pendragon books, etc., but I digress.)

Firethorn is definitively both high fantasy, and intended for adults, not children. (I'm pretty sure anyone fifteen and up would be fine reading this, but that's true of most adult novels.) The thing was, even though Firethorn isn't my usual cup of tea (Twinning's Earl Grey, brewed for two minutes, with a slice of lemon if available.) there was a lot about it that was very, very good.

The writing was beautiful and flawless in a way that made me jealous with its flowing, lyrical language. The titular main character skated the hairy edge of Mary-Suedom (and, from what I heard, dove right off the freaking cliff in the sequel) but managed to be likeable, sympathetic, and engaging. The main thing that saved her (for now) was that she was flawed. She was naive, and impatient, and conceited at times in a way that made her entirely real and relatable. Then there was Micklem's world-building, which was phenomenal. Another review described it as 'typical serf and sword medieval with an Indian-Greek-Japanese mythology fusion,' which captures it very well.

Micklem's greatest strength is making this world feel incredibly real to the reader, from the sights to the sounds and the settings and, yes, the smells. For most of the novel Firethorn is travelling with a group of soldiers marching off to war, and there is no romanticising to be found. The entire experience is captured in gritty, realistic detail. Firethorn is travelling with the soldiers because she becomes the, ehm, "bed companion" of one Sir Galan, and though they have a mutual attraction that grows into something like love at the end, it is done in a very realistic, non-romantic way. Neither ever forgets that she is a mud (low-born) and he is a blood (noble) and therefore she is bound by law to obey him.

With all of that going for it, I really had to sit down and think to figure out exactly why I did not enjoy reading this book.

The one reason I knew I'd had an issue with it was because throughout I couldn't escape the distant feeling, like a minor itch, that Micklem had copied just a little too much of Firethorn's character from Tamora Pierce's Alanna of Trebond. The similarities were thus: both are redheads, both are healers who grow into their gifts over the course of their stories, both are stubborn and proud and suffer the consequences of their stubborness/pride, both are women operating in a mostly men's world, both grapple with their feelings for a high-born man because they fear losing their independence, and both are marked by a female god as special in the middle of a forest. All of what I just said could be and probably is true of other characters in literature, except the last point. Again, I'm probably over-reading it and I'm sure it wasn't deliberate. But I couldn't escape the feeling that I was reading about Alanna under a different name in a somewhat different set of circumstances.

The bigger problem though, and the reason I started this blog post, was that the book did not make me smile at any point while reading it. Now, again--this is not a cardinal sin. This is a problem that is specific to me, definitely not to every reader out there. But after thinking about it, that was the problem that I specifically could not overcome. There was nothing joyful in this book, and there was nothing humorous. I get that humor was entirely not the point of this story, but that didn't change the fact that it wasn't there, and therefore I didn't enjoy the book.

All of my favorite books, and even every one that I can recall enjoying, have made me smile.

I can and have read books mostly devoid of humor that I still enjoyed, like Phillip Pullman's Golden Compass. But I can still remember smiling when I first read about daemons, and the description of the kingdom in the North, and the bridge made of dust. If a book doesn't have humor, it needs to have wonder and awe, at least for me to enjoy it. To give a "literary" example, John Steinbeck's East of Eden is a heavy, serious, not-funny-in-the-least story. But the moment when Lee, Samuel, and Adam discover the meaning of Timshel gave me chills, and the ending, with its quiet promise of hope and redemption between Cal and Abra, gave me a happy, hopeful feeling inside.

Firethorn never did that for me. That's not to say the book is all doom and gloom, but it is heavy and serious, and even when things are going well or looking up for Firethorn, it's all still pretty grim. K.A. Applegate's Animorphs was even darker and heavier than Firethorn, for all that it was written for children, but it was still a rare book in the series that didn't make me laugh out loud. (Don't believe me about the darkness? Just try tracing Jake and Tom's relationship and character arcs sometime. If you're not weeping at the end, you didn't read the books.)

So my long, drawn out point is: I didn't like Firethorn because it didn't make me smile. Maybe I'm alone in this. Maybe it's because I'm addicted to happy endings. Maybe it's because high fantasy for adults really isn't my thing. Maybe it's because it started off with twelve pages of scenery and no dialogue, something that's sure to put me off. But I did not enjoy reading Firethorn, and I don't care for the book. To me, great literature--whether for adults or children, whether science fiction or literary novel, whether written a hundred years ago or a hundred days ago--are the stories that do it all. The ones that make you laugh, cry, smile, scream, tear out your hair and dance around the room. Great literature makes me smile.

Kates


P.S: On a mostly unrelated note: I strongly, strongly recommend reading Georges T. Dodd's review of Firethorn, and his objection to its (and other medievalist fantasies') portrayal of rape. Then, read Sarah Micklem's even better defense of her story and her character, and of rape survivors in general. Both of them have excellent points and present them in a logical, respectful, well-written manner. I'm going to meet Sarah Micklem tomorrow, and though I'll stay mum about my feelings about her book, I will thank her and congratulate her for her phenomenal, empowering essay.

Harry Potter: What's Up With the Ending?

SPOILERS. OBVIOUSLY.

By the time I reached the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, I was so emotionally wrung out that Harry and the gang could have joined Monty Python's Flying Circus and I wouldn't have noticed. The only part that caught my attention was the last line, because JKR had announced years ago that the last word of the last book would be 'scar,' but later modified that statement and said that the last sentence would contain the word 'scar.' Sure enough, it did (Okay, it was the second to last line, but still), and I liked the last line. I thought it was a subtle way of informing the readers that the darkness was more or less gone from Harry's life, and that the great pain/weight that had dogged him for his entire childhood had finally dissipated.

Upon rereading, however, the ending made me vaguely uneasy, and it wasn't until I heard other peoples' responses that I figured out why. This is my attempt to dissect the ending and understand my own and others' feelings about the final chapter in the Harry Potter Saga.

I think it's important to start out this dissection by acknowledging that JKR is the lord, master, and yes, god of the Harry Potter world, and therefore she can do whatever the heck she wants. While I don't always agree with authors' decisions (Ron and Hermione being a good example...no offense to them or their fans, I just can't see them as a couple) I do acknowledge that it is their world, and therefore they get to call the shots, while I should just consider myself privileged to read their stories. So, JKR was perfectly within her right to end the Harry Potter series the way she did, and I trust that she wrote the ending that felt right to her.

To understand why I felt uneasy with the ending, I thought about some of my favorite endings to series/books and tried to find the common threads. The three I picked were Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials, K.A Applegate's Animorphs, and Avi's The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. (SPOILERS! OBVIOUSLY!)


His Dark Materials ends with Lyra and Will returning to their own worlds, with the assumption that they won't see each other again until they die. They're making a great sacrifice in order to repair the universe and save humanity's souls, and while they know it's the right thing to do, it doesn't mean that their hearts are any less broken. Still, they understand that this is the only option, and so they both resolve to live their lives, visiting the same bench in the Botanical Gardens in Oxford at the same time, so they stay connected. As expressed in The Amber Spyglass, they must both "build their own Republic of Heaven." The ending is sad, but it's also hopeful, because it implies that they are both going to design their own fates.


Animorphs ends with Jake, Marco, and Tobias on a likely suicidal mission to rescue Ax. Rachel is dead, and Cassie is living out her life on Earth. A lot of people dislike this ending, both because it's a cliffhanger and because many people see it as an implication that the Animorphs would rather go out fighting than try to live normal lives. However--which of the Animorphs' missions wasn't suicidal? As Marco was so fond of pointing out, everything they did was "insane." I don't think that K.A Applegate was killing her characters, I think she was sending them off on their next grand adventure. And as for Cassie not coming along, another sticking point for many fans, I think it was because Cassie was already involved in another adventure--saving the planet. Again. The Animorphs ending worked for me, because  to me anyways it implied that the Animorphs would carry on forever doing the same thing they'd always done--be heroes

Finally, The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle ends with Charlotte running away from her family and rejoining the crew of the Seahawk before they set sail. It doesn't say if she actually sailed off with them, or if her family caught up with her--it just ends with her climbing on deck. And this more than anything epitomizes the two main reasons why I didn't care for (There. I said it. I didn't like the end, okay?) the end of the Harry Potter series.


All three of those endings I picked have three things in common, three things that I think were missing from the end of Deathly Hallows. First, in all three endings the characters are neither entirely happy nor entirely sad. Second, in all three endings the characters are doing what they love, or at least what they believe to be the right thing. Third, and perhaps most important of all, all three stories end ambiguously.

My first issue with the ending of Deathly Hallows is that everyone seems so ridiculously happy. This is only a moment in their lives, lives that logically are varied and complex, but especially coming right after the Battle for Hogwarts, it was too much sugar too soon. Everyone, from Harry to Malfoy to Teddy Lupin to Ron and Hermione, seems content and happy. It's as if all their problems ended with Voldemort's death, after which point they all lived peaceful, normal lives. Again, obviously this isn't entirely the case, but we don't get anything but that one scene, and that scene makes it seem like their lives are all butterflies and daisies.

My second issue was closely tied to my first issue, and it was that all the main characters seemed to have cookie-cutter lives. A lot of this was confirmed in JKR's post-Potter interviews, but even in those few pages it seemed that all the main characters were happily married, with relatively stable, normal lives. Ginny as a mom seemed particularly weird to me, although quite frankly all of them as parents was just odd. Again, not blaming JKR--it just didn't work for me. It's a logical progression of their lives, but up until those last 2,000-odd words the only way I'd seen those characters was struggling to defeat evil, going on grand adventures, and fighting awesome battles against the mystical creatures and the powers of darkness. The image of them all as parents sending their 2.5 kids off to school was jarring and bizarre for me. And even knowing that they were all doing things they enjoyed, it all seemed a little too...nice, for lack of a better word. Didn't they ever get the urge to battle a dragon? To sneak into a secret government building? To solve a magical riddle? And again, maybe they did, but we don't get to see it.

If I could change just one thing about the ending, it would have been to leave the kids out. If we'd jumped five years into the future and seen them all chatting, or doing laundry, or juggling fireballs, and Hermione and/or Ginny was pregnant, that would have been fine. But seeing them as parents, with school-aged children, didn't work for me in the least. I recently read a Robert B. Parker book (he's a phenomenal mystery writer whom I can't recommend strongly enough) where two characters have a long discussion about how people change over time, despite what we want to believe. And one of the greatest catalysts for change in a person's life is becoming a parent. The children's presence took me away from the tightly woven world of Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived, and his school mates, friends and enemies alike, whom I'd been following for the past decade, and dragged me out into the wider but more mundane adult world.

Like it or not, the Harry, Ron, and Hermione we see at the end of Deathly Hallows are not the same people we've been following for the whole series. Among other things, their having children fundamentally changed who they are, and that's the crux of my discomfort with the epilogue: I felt like the series didn't end with the characters I'd grown to know and love, but with a bunch of charming strangers.

Minutiae (Or other little random thoughts that didn't fit in the body of this post):

*Part of me wonders if JKR called it an epilogue specifically because she didn't want it to be thought of as part of the HP series, but as a charming add-on to satisfy readers' curiosity and give her a chance to make her characters happy. I wonder if she wanted readers to consider the denouement following the battle the final scene of the HP series.

*I don't know how I feel about Harry calling his son Albus Severus. Others have mocked the nuttiness of that name, but what bothered me was the Severus part. To me, it was very clear in "The Prince's Tale" that Snape was entirely motivated out of his love for Lily Evans--not Lily Potter. Snape felt no affection for Harry, and any protectiveness towards him was born out of guilt over Lily's death. Snape was not a saint--far from it, in fact--and his love was tainted with possessiveness and bitterness. It's telling that Snape is unable to see Dumbledore's point, that Harry is far more like Lily than like James, when it was fairly obvious to the reader from midway through the fifth book that Harry was his mother's son. The fact that Snape never saw, never even tried to see, beyond the surface shows that he's just as petty and prejudiced as we've believed him to be throughout the whole series...and Harry knows all of that. I get that he comes to see Snape as a person instead of the enemy, but giving his son Snape's name seems a bit much to me. I don't care what else Snape did--as Sirius says, the true measure of a man is how he treats those he holds power over, and as evidenced again and again throughout the books, Snape fails that test miserably. Just look at his treatment of Neville if you don't believe me.

*Speaking of naming issues, Rose and...Hugo? Sorry. It's a little thing, and not important, but those names so don't work for me. I was also sort of disappointed that Ron and Hermione's son wasn't named Fred, but I guess I'll just assume that they left that name to George and Angelina.

*Another naming issue: (And I can already hear Bug yelling at me for my obsession with names...what can I say? I find them fascinating.) I didn't like that James Potter (grandson) seemed just like James Potter (grandfather). I hate it in stories when a character carries another (usually dead) character's name, and then they end up bearing a strong resemblance to the person whose name they carry. (For instance, Anakin Solo to Anakin Skywalker in the Star Wars Extended Universe, and Thom, Alanna and George's son, to Thom, Alanna's brother, in Tamora Pierce's Trickster series.) I thought a big part of the Harry Potter series was the message that we make our own choices and design our own fate, regardless of who or what others assume we're going to be/do. Having little James Potter strongly resemble older James Potter seemed to undermine that message, and even little Lily Potter resembled older Lily Potter. Again, it's just a snippet, but I didn't like the implication.

*I wanted to know more about Harry's role in Teddy Lupin's life. Aside from Dumbledore, Sirius was the most important and most influential adult in Harry's life, and even that's arguable, because Harry felt a more personal connection to Sirius, who was the closest thing Harry ever had to a loving parent. I thought it was an important and well-crafted piece of parallelism to have Harry willingly accept the role of godfather, since his godfather had such an impact on his life, and he would see it as a big and serious (pun intended!) responsibility. It makes sense to have Andromeda and Ted raise their grandson, but I wished we'd had a little more follow through on the exact nature of Harry's relationship with his godson. (UPDATE--I re-re-read the last chapter, and there's one line where someone comments that Teddy comes over for dinner three or four times a week. Works for me.)

*I have a theory that most authors are either good at beginnings or endings, but not both. There are exceptions in both directions--some are good at both, some are good at neither. But in general, most excel at one but not the other, and JKR's strength definitely lies with beginnings, not endings. Thinking about it, I realized that the endings were some of the weakest parts of all the books, with the possible exception of Half Blood Prince. Sure, the scenes leading up to the endings were generally quite good, but a lot of the endings themselves were a bit flat compared to the rest of the stories. The beginnings, on the other hand, grabbed the readers' attention and dragged them into the story, and were for the most part well done.

*Regardless of what I said above, I did not and do not totally loath the ending. In fact, there are a lot of things I like about it. Again, I think the last line works very well, and I wish the rest of the epilogue had the same subtlety as that last line. And if it had to contain children, then I like that the epilogue took place at Platform 9 and 3/4, because it did symbolize a continuing journey, and more importantly, it was the start of Harry's journey towards love and family, the entire point of the story, and now he's back in the same spot, surrounding by his loving family (including Ron, Hermione, Teddy, etc.) It did have a nice roundness to it. Finally, just a little thing, but I liked Harry and Ginny telling James to watch out for Albus. I saw it as a subtle nod to the influence the Weaselys (a caring, protecting family) had on both Harry and Ginny. It might have driven her nuts at times, but in the end Ginny was glad that she grew up with six older brothers watching her back, and she's passing the message on to her son. Similarly, Harry saw that by sticking together, the Weasleys managed to stay strong and healthy (by which I mean they came out of the entire tragedy more or less as loving and caring as they'd been at the beginning) and he's passing that message on to his own children.

--Cates

The Werewolf De-Fanged: How Stephenie Meyer Did the Loup-Garou a Greater Disservice Than She Ever Did the Vampire

It seems as though these days every Anne Rice fan or eyeliner-wearing semi-punk can talk your ear off about how Stephenie Meyer effectively de-fanged vampires through her works, reducing them from the once monstrous forms that they used to inhabit as soul-destroying murderous creatures of the night to harmless tortured souls that only want a place in the world where they can sparkle in peace.  Although I definitely agree with the people that think vampires should be evil and although I mourn the loss of the vampire-as-a-villain in much of modern literature, I also think that the Cullens are just the last step in an extremely long process that has been gradually de-fanging the vampire since the days of John Polidori and has included everyone from Anne Rice to Joss Whedon. 

However, I don’t particularly care about vampires, to tell the truth.  They don’t interest me nearly as much as that other archetypal denizen of modern horror movies that has survived in the collective human consciousness since prehistoric times: the werewolf.  Werewolves are, in their own way, infinitely more terrifying than even vampires.  They are perfectly ordinary human beings that attend town meetings, go to mass once a week, say hello to their neighbors, and every so often stalk through the night raping and murdering their neighbors.  They are the monsters that don’t just look like ordinary people, but actually are ordinary people—most of the time.  Then, whether because of the uncontrollable pull of the moon or because of their conscious spell-work, they take on other forms—and they lose themselves completely as they satisfy their most base and ugly of desires.  Not only could that nice man next door secretly be a bloodthirsty killer, but that mysterious animal that tears out the guts of your livestock and children could be the nice man next door.  And you’ll never find out unless you shoot him or expose him to silver.

 It’s a little-known fact, but vampires are actually based on werewolves.  The legends that provided the inspiration for Bram Stoker’s Dracula were of creatures that operated only at night, that resisted holy objects and consciously chose to do evil, that had unusually shaped hands and nails, that changed forms under the light of the moon but were weakened by the presence of sunlight, and that had special relationships with animals commonly associated with Satanism, including bats and canines.  Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Dracula is a werewolf.  Well, he’s technically a hybrid of vampire legends and werewolf ones, with a healthy dose of good old nasty humanity thrown in there.  (Guess that makes him Renesmee Cullen and Jacob Black’s love child, then.)  But the point remains: the werewolf is a very specific, very terrifying archetype in human culture, and it is never ever going away.  Today, we just call the werewolves of old serial killers (or just Freddy Krueger) and the things we call werewolves have, shall we say, devolved somewhat from their original incarnations. 

That said, I have many and various problems with Stephenie Meyer’s portrayal of the loup-garou.  I really, truly wish she had not de-fanged these monsters even more so than vampires, and that she had not done it so very effectively.  Of course she has the artistic license to write whatever the heck she feels like, and the popularity to have whatever the heck she feels like read by millions of people (including yours truly), but I am deeply bothered by the extent to which she is unfaithful to my all-time favorite monster legend.  As James Marsters, the (talented, sexy) Bela Lugosi of our generation, said, “If you’re going to write about that metaphorical monster, keep it true to its original purpose as a metaphor.”  As previously stated, werewolves were created as a way for people to explain serial killers.  And now Stephenie Meyer has them as perfectly ordinary teenage boys that occasionally are a little harrier than most people.  Rather than portraying them as monsters in human form, or, more accurately, humans who take on monstrous forms as an external symbol of the depravity within, Meyer chooses to make her werewolves protectors of the small, valiant ancient warriors that have been gifted with an additional set of abilities so that they can protect the innocent unknowing humans from the inhuman threat in animal forms as well as human ones.  By her definition, the Quilute aren’t werewolves; they’re Animorphs.

Wolves have long held conflicting sets of symbolism in human mythology.  On one hand they’re feared and hated as the scourge of livestock and even occasionally the killers of children, but on the other they’re respected for their strong family structures and incomprehensible endurance.  They are mothering, nurturing murderers, that will literally allow themselves to be killed to save their young but are also capable of acts of brutality and even cannibalism that the human mind shies away from contemplating.  In short, wolves are an excellent metaphor for human beings.  And when a human being gives into the animal side so completely that all conscious thought or moral reasoning is lost under the passionate need to satisfy one’s carnal needs… Then a werewolf is born.  It’s just a person that, quite simply, has all the nasty intelligence of a human being and all the power and self-motivation of an animal.  That description doesn’t even come close to applying to the Quilute. 

At least Meyer’s vampires are still distinctly animalistic: even the good ones must struggle against the instinctive desire to kill people, and even the good ones occasionally give in.  They may sparkle, they may brood, they may even have cute baby vampires that they then start wars over, but they are still, on some level, less than human.  Their natural way of life is to depend on murder for existence, and just because the plucky band of main characters decides to follow an alternative lifestyle, that doesn’t mean that the vampire community as a whole has anything to contribute to society.  They are still monsters, they are still scary, they are still the very last thing that you want to hear going bump in the night. 

Not so the werewolves.  They aren’t animalistic, they don’t struggle against base instincts or even seem to have any base instincts at all, and they never lose control in any way more dramatic than the occasional wrestling match or involuntary kiss, and they are as disgusted by the idea of killing people as any human being would be.  In short, they are just perfectly normal people that have an extra ability or two.  Not animalistic people, not monsters, not even semi-horror figures.  Just good citizens doing their best to keep the leech population down.  Just your friendly neighborhood wolf-men.  Sad to say, but these are not werewolves. 

Actually, it came as a huge relief to me when Meyer herself acknowledged that her werewolves, in short, aren’t.  There’s a brief moment near the end of Breaking Dawn when the contrast between these benevolent protectors and the night-creeping killers of old Europe is finally noted, and the end conclusion is that these are just your harmless everyday skin-walkers.  Never mind that skin-walkers were evil Native American shamans that were pretty much no better than your average werewolf…  But the damage had already long been done by that point.  No one actually remembers that the werewolves of Twilight aren’t technically werewolves.  After four books’ worth of referring to them as werewolves, a single throwaway line about their actual classification isn’t going to change anything.  People think of werewolves as your typical struggling young men (and one young woman) going through life with one extra blessing.  Lycanthropy sounds terribly romantic the way that Meyer portrays it: no sickness, no problems, an automatic group of people that will always have your back, super speed, super strength, exactly as much aging as you want to have.  Frequent exposure to semi-naked teenage boys.  That’s not quite how lycanthropy is supposed to be.

By all rights, the werewolves that exist in the Twilight-verse should be terrifying monsters.  It is even possible for them to be terrifying monsters and human characters at the same time—countless examples of how this can be done stretch all the way back to The Wolf Man—but they are sadly lacking.  In light of the legends that led to the creation of the modern werewolf, and the interpretation of werewolves that has retained dominance for as long as humans have been telling stories, Edward has every right to be terrified at the thought of Bella hanging around with a whole pack of these creatures.  The werewolves in most stories are at best humans cursed with a terrible monstrous nature, and at worst the most depraved creatures that have ever existed, shamans that change themselves into animals with the explicit intention of destroying lives.  However, ironically, Edward actually has nothing to fear from the Quilute, who are werewolves in name only; they have nothing of the werewolf nature in any of their actions.  In short, Meyers has de-fanged werewolves as well. 

To give credit where it is due, the destruction of the werewolf as we know it has been a long process that has involved everyone from Anne Rice to J.K. Rowling, but Meyer was unquestionably the straw that broke the hypothetical camel.  Rowling’s werewolves may be just ordinary people struggling to make it in a world that hates them for who they are and are respectable citizens with “furry little problems” twenty-seven days of every twenty-eight, but they are unquestionably monsters that extra twenty-eighth day.  Mild-mannered Professor Lupin attempts to eat his best friend and three of his students just because they’re there, under the influence of his inner animal.  Laid-back Bill Weasley is described as tense and temperamental after being bitten.  Fenrir Greyback seems to have given in to that animal side entirely; no one can deny that a man that goes around attacking young children for the hell of it is a monster of the highest order. 

Annette Curtis Klause may have put one of the nails in the werewolf’s coffin by being one of the first people to write a successful book about werewolves that are human no matter what shape they hold—Blood and Chocolate is a novel about a girl who is really just a normal person except she occasionally runs around in animal form under the full moon—but her werewolves are nonetheless definitely animalistic.  They literally fight each other to the death to determine who will lead their packs, and they are organized about the same way as real wolves in the wild, with a strict pecking order that is occasionally enforced with physical violence.  Patricia Briggs also writes about werewolves that are conscious even when transformed, but hers are humans that fight constantly against animal instincts and occasionally even then lose control of themselves.  Much like Meyer’s vampires, Briggs’s werewolves are continually fighting against the possibility of becoming rapists or murderers, and many of them give in. 

However, the werewolves of Twilight don’t have this struggle.  They do not have to work for their humanity, and they do not follow the strict structuring of a pack; Jacob goes into open rebellion against his alpha and the worst consequence is that he loses touch with a few friends along the way.  Most legends have werewolf packs killing interlopers without hesitation.  Meyer’s werewolves have something that her vampires don’t: humanity.  While this is not necessarily a weakness in most characters and is in fact a strength, it deprives her characters that should by all rights be monstrous of the ability to be anything but normal people.  Jacob even explicitly states at one point in Eclipse that he considers himself to be more human than Edward, and in fact he is.  Jacob, like the rest of Meyer’s werewolves, doesn’t even retain the semblance of inhumanity.  He may occasionally lose his temper, but he does not have the mind of a werewolf, only occasionally the body of one.  Edward and Bella have infinitely more to fear from vampires and werewolves in Meyer’s universe, because for all that they may sparkle, the vampires are still in some ways monstrous.  The werewolves can’t even claim that dubious honor. 

 The monsters that haunt the dark places of the human psyche come out in various ways, and this particular form has been one of the most lasting, and the most terrifying.  Lycanthropy has been used as a metaphor for serial murder, for social ostracization, for local paranoia, for humanity’s conflicting nature, for the fear of the unknown, and even for AIDS. Stephenie Meyer has every right to use it as a metaphor for teenage angst.  I just wish that she hadn’t. 

In the Beginning

For more years than we'd like to count, my sister (Buggy) and I (Cates) have wasted far too many hours whining, raving, ranting, and screaming with joy over the various books, movies, TV shows, plays, and sketchy internet ads that we encounter. After a particularly trying week of disastrous dialogue, pointless plots, and cardboard characters, we decided we needed an outlet for our inner monologues and so made the highly questionable decision to unleash our minds into the world. Small children and pregnant women be warned.

What will (hopefully) follow will be our clever (hah,) and keen (as if,) observations about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--in fantasy, of course. In particular, we'll have lots of stuff about teen and children's literature and movies. What you need to know about us:

1. We love all things C.S Lewis, although we wish the man had fleshed out his writing a bit more. Also, anyone who thinks the purpose of The Chronicles of Narnia is to convert children (or anyone) to Christianity has either A. never read them, OR B. never read another fantasy novel.

2. Similar to item 1, anyone who thinks that the purpose of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials is to convert children to atheism has either A. never read them, OR B. never read another fantasy novel.

3. While we also love J.R.R Tolkien, we see Lord of the Rings et al as a brief peek into his inner mythology rather than cohesive, contained works like the Chronicles of Narnia.

4. J.K. Rowling is a frighteningly brilliant woman. If she is, as someone once said, "The dumb person's idea of what intelligence looks like," then we proudly stand with the dumb people.

5. While we have some serious problems with Stephenie Meyer's writing and storytelling, we have much more serious problems with the people who lambast and derail Twilight without ever having read it or seen it. One promise we will make right now: We will never criticize something we haven't read, seen, or heard.

6. According to us, Animorphs may have been the most brilliant children's series in the latter part of the 20th century. K.A Applegate is a for-the-most-part undiscovered genius.

7. Disney Pixar is fantastic, but its forerunner, the Japanese filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, is a genius.

If any of those statements resonates with you, or if you wildly disagree with everything we've written, then we think you'll enjoy this blog. Future movies, books, tv shows, etc. that will likely be covered in this blog include: Blue Bloods, Ouran High School Host Club, Avatar: The Last Airbender, Uglies, Death Note, House MD, Bones, Alice in Wonderland, Queen's Thief, Vampire Academy, Thursday Next, Toy Story, Tamora Pierce, Broadway, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, as well as all the series and books mentioned above....and anything else that pops into our heads. Buggy has an affinity for bad anime and angsty teen novels, while I have an affinity for Disney Channel and reality TV, so those will undoubtedly make (horrifying) appearances too.

Fare thee well, fellow foragers of fiction.