I’ve been paving a road to somewhere with good intentions about my writing so long that if I’d just linked the paving stones together and used them as a lever, I could have swapped proverbs and moved a mountain instead. So a few weeks ago, when my estimable pater was in town, we went on a Writer’s Market safari to Powell’s.

I was somewhat disillusioned with the great WriterMarketbeast, when brought to earth, for it proved to be more or less what it claimed; a book to help writers of all stripes find places to sell their writing; included in all stripes, of course, one finds stripes such as ‘writers upon industrial metal-coating processes’ and ‘writers who do consumer comparison articles on fishing lures’. While I in my egotism had assumed the Writer’s Market would be more specifically tailored to my needs, I do not begrudge the coating-fanciers and literary fisherpeople of the world their moment in print; however, shelling out the odd forty or fifty ducats for several inches of their moments in print seemed a bit much.

Looking at the back covers of this tome and its companions (such as Poetry Writer’s Market and Children’s Writer’s Market) I discovered my dream had a form and a name: [http://faerye.net/img/articles/novss_writersmarket.jpg|image|Novel and Short Story Writer’s Market]. I suppose Portland has more than its fair share of aspiring authors, or perhaps they move in packs and Powell’s was unprepared for their onslaught, for while the other specimens it had in plenty, this, my desired volume, was sadly lacking. Powell’s Beaverton apparently suffers from much the same pandemic of roving fictionalists, and I was forced to abandon my local bookstore and take solace in the comforting card catalog of Amazon.

Now at long last it has come, and at long last I’ve been at my complex within office hours to pick it up, and at long last I feel like doing something more than falling asleep, taking a bubble bath, or fighting the forces of smoke detection. Time to crack the book and start searching out all the ‘NOs’ that stand between me and ‘YES.’ Time to find out if there really is an Anthropomorphized Crime Story Digest.

I’ve been run off my feet at work, accumulating overtime at an alarming rate and piles on my desk at a nearly concurrent one. I don’t really mind that, because in general the piles are allowed to wait until after the overtime and so forth—the folks are reasonable. But after about four weeks in overdrive, a person gets downright crotchetty from tiredness (not to mention becomes blog-neglectful.) So it was that when I entered my abode last night all I really wished to think about was some food and possibly a movie, and my brain flatly refused to think about the loud squeak I heard as I was locking the door.

As I was shucking off my work shoes, it squeaked again, and I couldn’t really continue to ignore it. It was the sound of a small unoiled wheel, or a large self-confident rodent. I opened up ‘Date/Time’ on my laptop, and it seemed to occur around 30 seconds apart, somewhere around every five minutes. Too regular for an ROUS, but rather odd for anything else.

It was not my alarm clock. It was not my washing machine. I carried out my ablutions in a peregrinatory manner, closing doors and waiting patiently and finally determining the sound to have come from the crafts room. Up close, it sounded like a rather strident squeak-beep. It came from above my head. Then, 30 seconds later, it came from down the hall. I climbed up on a chair in my bedroom and examined the smoke alarm. Far from being out of juice, it’s hooked in to a continuous AC supply! Nonetheless, SQUEEP it did, to the distress of my tympanic membrane, and I read around the button, ‘PUSH TO HUSH’, which I thought a rather amusing way of putting it.

That smoke alarm duly ‘hushed’, I moved my chair of operations to the crafts room. ‘PUSH TO HUSH’ the button informed me. I pushed. SQUEEP. This did not seem much like hushing. I pushed again. SQUEEP. I waited with bated breath. SQUEEP, it insisted. I held the button down to test the smoke alarm (do this ‘weekly’, the inscription read. I wonder how many good little boys and girls do so?) SQUEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEP it emitted, in a good simulation of danger. SQ-P it added, and entered its recurring SQUEEP state. I pressed the button again. SQUEEP, it said morosely, and fell silent for six minutes.

Emboldened, I prepared to go over to Ryan’s for a movie. SQUEEP, the smoke alarm broke across my industriousness. SQUEEP, it repeated five seconds later, in case I had not heard. A model of self-restraint, I jabbed the button again, with predictable results. “Fine!” I said, and threw myself down in a chair. Five minutes, six minutes, seven….

“I’m leaving now. And if you decide to do that again at ten o’clock at night, please note I have earplugs and I’m not afraid of you!”

This was a bit of an inadvertent bluff, as I realized at 4 am when a parched mouth woke me and a triumphant SQUEEP roused me to wrath. Should I wear earplugs, I would doubtless sleep through my alarms and awake when I should already be standing at a Hospitality Desk in East Portland. I stumped out into the crafts room and pressed. SQUEEP. Press. SQUEEP. Test. SQUEEEEEEEEEP SQ-P. I sat down on the chair. SQUEEP! it remarked from on high. I refrained from replying, “Squeep you!” for it seemed to me that language would only awaken me further. Finally, I withdrew from the crafts room, closed the doors, trailed down to my bedroom, and pulled off my robe. I stuffed its hem under the crack in the door and piled its sound-dampening fluffiness liberally thereupon. I turned the fan to high and lay down. SQUEEP, something may have cried in the darkness, but I don’t know, for I didn’t hear it. This morning, the sound is gone, and one feels a little silly contacting the management about a vanished problem. I’m sitting ten feet from the innocent-looking disk this moment, and it hasn’t disturbed me one jot. Still, I don’t trust the little beggar. I think it’s a penthouse gremlin condo. And I think I’m going to need extra coffee today.

Ironically, I did not post this on [My blog starts on article number 5. This is not for any sinister reason, but rather because I am a big spaz and couldn’t figure out how to edit articles, so I just deleted and reposted it until I was happy.|text|May 29], the ACTUAL faerye anniversary, because I remembered it as May 30. Ach!

At any rate, Faerye Net is two years old. Time to roll over to B7 on the %20s%20u-%20f%20i%20o%2B%2B%20x%2B%20e%20l-%20c-” target=”links”>blogger code, and time, were the website a human bean, for the obstinacy to really hit the oscillator. Luckily, however, this site is but a collection of bits, bobs, and bloggets, and rather than spending its first two years in throwing food about or making extraction attempts on my hair, it has been improving my life and my self.

One of the best ways to become better as a writer is, unsurprisingly, to practice, and Faerye Net has given me a safe playground, a place where I don’t have to consider marketability, geekosity, or anything. Here is storytelling at its most simple; apart from the personal essays and anecdotes, the stories I write here are not even really meant to communicate or inform; they simply attempt to entertain. Thanks to the rigors of blogging, I can now sit down with a blank mind and think, ‘I feel like writing a story,’ and prompt a story-seed to appear. The productivity I sometimes attain; the validation of positive comments, whether here or via e-mail; the thrill of victory when I conquer the blank page of my mind; these are lasting joys, and things I hope to carry with me as I hike on through life.

It’s been a good two years, little webspace. Here’s to many more.

Please go to your calendars, PDAs or other memory aids and write on September 30th, ‘SERENITY opens in theatres’. Right now. Go do it. I’ll wait.

Back? Good. Now, on this day or one soon after it, you will gather those people you like and care about…and those whose money you wish Joss Whedon to share in…and go to see Serenity. My reasons for this are manifold, and are as follows:

UNSELFISH:

• I love Joss Whedon and wish him and his creative endeavors to prosper, flourish, and rejoice.
• My love for Joss is giving and unjealous and I wish the world to enjoy the beautiful glistening fruits of his brain.

SELFISH:

• I wish him to make more. For this he needs your money and demographic vote.

That is all I can tell you, my friends. I cannot even tell you whether it is one of my favorite movies, for I was too distracted by loving it to think about other movies and compare. Go. Watch it. As many times as you see fit. Somewhere in this ragged, horrible little world, there’s something that’s just…right.

I have had to ARGUE in the past few days that Leia is awesome. There are some things which are just Truth, people. Princess Leia is a badass. Han shot first. Norby the Magnificent has saved the Universe once again. Ford Prefect really knows where his towel is. Spock dies at the end, but he comes back in the next one.

It was late, very late - or perhaps one should say early - when I finished seeing Revenge of the Sith. I immediately gave the movie a slap for the perceived gender bias I saw, and trailed out to the night air, where I and my fellow geeklings stood around the movie, walloping and picking at it until it was crying for Papa George to take it away from the mean consumers. I think someone even bit a chunk out of its ear, but I ain’t namin’ names. This is simply what we geeks do. Anyway, it was a very bedraggled and upset little movie that got in the car with us on the way home.

“Didn’t you like me?” it pewled, after the sobs died down.

“Schmeh, you were all right.”

“I had a duel!”

“Too much lava. It was cheap.”

“Wookies?”

“Talk to the Hasbro, cuz the fangirl don’t care.”

“You’re mean.”

“And you have bad acting!”

However, I found I was a little preoccupied with the movie. I found myself pondering it a lot, and the next day, when I blogged my musings on gender and took them over to RPGnet to subject them to the salutory buffeting of public opinion, I dug eagerly into the wealth of threads on the movie. There were celebrations and denigrations, complaints and plaudits…and a lot of insight. A chappy named Balthazor told, on my sexism thread, how he and his wife had been appalled by Padme’s hand-wringing ineffectualness, but had developed a theory of Padme’s tragic fall to explain it, and a second theory using Padme as an embodiment of the Republic. Discussion of the prophecy about ‘restoring balance to the Force’ was very productive, eventually culminating in a Forum regular named Bailywolf providing a really well thought-out description of how Luke constitutes balance between the Sith extreme of thoughtless surrender to emotions and the Old Republic Jedi dogma of detached, emotionless reason.

In short, this movie is rich. It’s full of things to discuss and figure out and theorize about; it does, in fact, imply that the Jedi dogma has failed, which was something I prayed hopelessly for after Phantom Menace revealed the strangely dogmatic, churchy Jedi faith, so unlike that in Episodes IV – VI. It makes the first prequels make more sense, even if it can’t erase the self-indulgent oh-neat factor, weak characterization, and convoluted unexciting plots, and even falls prey to those itself in parts (I may have stopped wailin’ on you, little movie, but I’m not going to stop giving you noogies when you deserve ‘em.) This movie gives we who nitpick, analyze, link up and geek out much work to do. It has its flaws, but its merits outweigh them; without further ado, I’m going to confess. I like it.

This article contains very mild spoilers. If you, for instance, don’t know that Anakin becomes Darth Vader and the Jedi are wiped out, then I suggest you go watch the GOOD movies.

“Loren’s back in town,” said wonko, “and he’s going to a 12:01 showing of Episode 3. You want to go?”

“Georgie has not earned that level of devotion from me! But, yeah, of course.”

Having heard various ravings on the topic of this movie, I was already envisioning a blog post for today. It began:

Dear George,
I know I said you would never win me back, but somehow you’ve swept me off my feet….

However, this is not that post. I remain unswept. Don’t get me wrong; the movie was not bad at all. It felt a lot more like Star Wars — though of course had it really felt exactly like the original three, I’da been swept like a dust bunny when the Queen is coming to tea. It had strengths, but many failings. I’m not here to discuss the shots that would have taken my breath away in a video game but were juuuust too fake for a movie, or the classically stilted Lucas dialogue, or how focused on stunt rather than emotion all the obligitory duels in the first three are, or why fabulous actors suddenly become wooden in these movies. Nor am I here to praise the underlying political message (Yay, Georgie! Give blue lightsaber vs. red lightsaber a whole new meaning!)

This is what I’m here to talk about: I love Princess Leia. She’s one of the most important fictional characters in my life — probably the most. And George Lucas and Carrie Fisher brought her forth when the track record for strong women in adventure movies, let alone sci fi, was poor. She started a streak, from Ripley in 1979 (though she still had to strip down to Very Small Underwear onscreen) onward, through to the Evie Carnahans and Elizabeth Swans of our present, happy day — albeit with some people Just Not Getting it (Vicky Vale, folks, 1989. If the Joker wanted you for a little giggle-girl, wouldn’t you at least, I dunno, get a gun?) During Episode I, I was vaguely insulted that Queen Kabuki was supposed to be Leia’s mom. During Episode II, her moments of action-heroine spunk made my disapprobation wane slightly. I went into Episode III with some expectations of the wooden piece labelled ‘heroine’ being a strong character, perhaps noble in the face of adversity, choking back her own pain and disappointment to hasten into hiding and protect her children.

About twenty minutes into the movie, at the first or second mention of ‘bringing balance to the Force,’ I thought, Maybe what the guldurned prophecy means is that Anakin will bring about GENDER balance in the Force. Luke’s a Jedi, Leia becomes a Jedi. Balance! I thought I was making a funny.

Then the Jedi purge began. A few male Jedi tried to hold off their attackers but were killed. Then, a scantily-clad female Jedi of the tentacle-head dancing girl species…got shot in the back and fell dead into the flowery mud. I didn’t even see a lightsaber on her belt. I made a noise of protest. Cut to another female Jedi, on a speeder bike. She… got shot in the back without realizing what was happening and dissolved in a fireball. No more female Jedi were shown. I think there were some girls among the younglings, but the only ones we saw with lit lightsabers, even in the security holograms, were boys.

Perhaps Padmé will save me, I thought! Perhaps she will stop sitting around like a pregnant prom queen (seriously. Prom. Seven different costumes of prom.) and exchanging high school-style “No, I love YOU more!”s with her tall drink of evil, and DO something. I was right! She eventually left her apartment! To…run to the arms of the guy she’d been told was eeeeevil (since small-scale genocide seems to get her hot, why am I surprised?) and get smacked around. “You’re a good person!” she whined. Umm, no, honey. He’s not.

And on the more abstract women’s issue of sexual mores…she won’t be allowed to continue in the Senate if she has a baby without being (publicly) married? We have clones running around and yet it’s inconceivable that a rich lady of politics and leisure went to the Republic Sperm Bank and said, “Have any force-sensitive blond donors?” And didn’t they make a big point of Padmé being an elected official? The mandate of the people only lasts until you become a single mother? Lovely.

I’m not saying George Lucas is a misogynist bastard. Heck, I wouldn’t even say that he is indulging in deliberate sexism. But I am saying that a tenth of the care and attention he lavished on droid designs would have, if aimed at women, revealed that his movie had no female Jedi Council members; no women carrying lightsabers (or even blasters, unless I missed a scene); no women resisting or fighting back; and a weak, sorry excuse for a female heroine.

No, filmmakers don’t have a responsibility to portray a society only recently fallen from the utopic as full of strong, empowered women. But when a filmmaker gives one generation of girls the best role model for intelligence, assertiveness, wit, strength, competence and leadership for which they could ask, and another generation of girls a passive paper doll with bad taste in men, I get disappointed. I’m pretty sure Leia would be, too.

People in Taipei and Tokyo are sending you RSVPs via e-mail. *sigh*

someone’s work reaches deep into your heart and pulls out your innermost feelings for all to see. Sometimes it’s a geeky comic strip.

No, folks, I’m not dead, I’m just raking in the overtime. I promise Marcel’s mousy meanderings will conclude at some point. However, my own maunderings being more mollifying if they have some motive other than mollification, I shall merge this message with some musings.

I have been thinking recently about what I’d do if I were a supervillain. Now, don’t think I’m taking the term ‘supervillain’ in its strictest sense. Costume strictly optional here. But it’s fun to think, if I were a villain — a type from movies, from pulp, from comic books, from TV — what type would I be? After long consideration (okay, about two bites of yogurt), I’ve decided I would be the villainess who says many witty, strange, or cutting things and is utterly mad. The quotable crazy, shall we say.

Now, this is not just because it suits my rather mad personality. This is not simply because my favorite villains ever are Callisto from Xena (“I never drink intoxicants, Theodorus. I like to experience life in all its agonizing glory. I don’t want to dull the sensation for a second.”), Drusilla from Buffy (“Miss Edith speaks out of turn. She’s a bad example, and will have no cakes today.”), and Harley Quinn from the Batverse (“I love museums. Do you think they’ll be mad that I drew raccoons on the abstract paintings?”)— and do NOT make me choose an order on those. It is not merely that I am fascinated by fictional madness, its wellsprings, meanings and clarity. I have a really practical reason for this.

If you’re crazy enough, they can always foil your plan without you looking like a pseudo-competent poser. Cuz, you know, crazy! Even more importantly, if you’re quotable and lovable enough, the fans adore you. And if the fans love you and the writers can defeat you, you will never, ever die.

P.S. What kind of villain would YOU be, fair reader? Bond? Buffy? I bet EMeta would wear gold lamé and debilitate the heroes with his horrible word-play attack. The PUNSTER!