On Fantasy

Duke Forest at Sunset

As much as I love California, I'm slowly starting to love North Carolina. It wasn't until this summer, when MLC and I would have the opportunity to drive around the area instead of staying in the Duke bubble on campus, that I realized I love being surrounded by forests. There's a certain age in this part of the country that California doesn't seem to have. The older houses still stand with the distinct air of the time period of its youth. The forests are the perfect backdrop for a story, whether supernatural thriller or urban fantasy.

Speaking of urban fantasy, I recently realized that my taste in books have changed drastically over the years. When I was younger, I devoured fantasy. Among my favorites when I was younger were Gail Carson Levine (my all-time favorite Ella Enchanted, The Princess Tales series, etc.), Tamora Pierce (Song of the Lioness quartet was my favorite), Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials series, Garth Nix's Sabriel series, to name a few off the top of my head.

Once I got to high school, I'm not sure what happened. I think there were probably a lot of factors involved. One, this was around the time that I found Francesca Lia Block, who is still fantastical in her own way but much more urban. Two, this was also around the time that Rogue and I became addicted to fictionpress stories, including Against All Odds by Myrika, Interrogame by Hate to Hope, and He Punks Me Not by Slideshow -- none of which are fantasy. Three, maybe realistic YA fiction was popular at the time the way supernatural is now. I don't know, since I wasn't really paying attention at the time, but now that I think about it I was reading books by Meg Cabot, Sarah Dessen and Ann Brashares -- all of which were stories about (somewhat) regular high school girls with regular problems.

Now that I'm in college, I think the only novel I've read for pleasure this year has been Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. I still write YA though, not only because I'm still technically a teenager, but also because it's what I know. I know high school and I know how teenagers think. Adults confuse me. I think at heart, I am still very young and naive. I am just as drama-free as I have ever been, and so the only real drama I've witnessed is the drama of my teenage peers.

Though I don't particularly follow the YA market anymore, I'm still slightly attuned to what books are out there. Interestingly to me, the ones that keep popping up again and again have been urban fantasy or paranormal romance. I'm thinking of Wicked Lovely, Tithe, The Iron King, Shiver, and Hush Hush -- what's up with all the fairies, werewolves, and angels? It's as if once Stephenie Meyer's vampires crashed open the gates, all the mythical creatures ran off after them in a rampage.

I haven't actually read any of these books, but even if I had the time, I don't think I would. And I'm not sure if it's because my tastes have gotten more literary in the last few years. For some reason, I am just not interested in fairies, werewolves, and angels anymore. I think the ideal YA book for me would be one that still has some of the fantastical elements I loved when I was younger, and yet at heart, the book is still about probing the characters and their relationships. Even better -- if it was a character-driven, fantastical YA book that was a literary work of genius -- every word is picked for a reason, parallel themes run all across the book like the Tokyo subway, and people could spend ages dissecting the book and discussing its meaning -- I would snap THAT up in a hurry.

I've been following a lot of literary blogs in the last year, reading about the trends and whatnot. It's all fine and dandy, but I really don't care that "angels" are the new thing or that YA dystopia novels are trending. I feel it doesn't matter. In the end, you want to be the one who starts the trend, not the one who tags along for the ride. It doesn't matter if tomorrow all the agents out there are looking for stories about whirlwind romances with Fabio the Bogeyman because that's what's selling -- if I'm writing in hopes of latching onto the coattails of a trend so I can be published, then that's not really writing at all.

What I think is more concerning is if somebody starts the trend before you get a chance to do it yourself. It would be easy to complain bitterly that someone stole your thunder, but in the end I feel like you'll just end up wondering why you didn't work harder and write more when you had the chance.

GMH & MMT

I was never particularly fond of fmylife.com. It's a little sadistic, taking pleasure out of someone's misery. I never jumped onto the My Life is Average (MLIA) bandwagon either. It was just that -- average.

Someone showed me GivesMeHope.com the other day. They call it FML for Optimists in the byline. I love it. Some of them are happy; others are bittersweet. Some of them are so fairytale-cute that they make me wonder if they're fictional, or if they actually happened in people's lives.

But I don't really care if they're real or not. I don't think it matters at all. There's so much crap and hatred in this world that I can still give kudos to someone who invents a short story that brightens my day.

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// edit //
Thanks to Astrid, makesmethink.com is now my preferred method of procrastination. I agree with Astrid -- some of the ones on GMH are too sappy for my tastes. But I think I'm still a sucker for bittersweet tragedy. Here are some I picked out:

Today, I was looking through the Facebook remembrance groups of two people that died from my high school. The girl was sweet, smart, quiet and unpopular. She was killed by a drunk driver. The guy was inconsiderate, rude and popular. He was the drunk driver. His group has 602 members. Hers has 48. MMT

Today in downtown San Diego, I watched a blue collar Mexican man get harassed for being Mexican. It was a blatant act of discrimination. And the man actually began crying. As he left the office building, he took off his jacket. His t-shirt underneath read, "I love the USA!" MMT

Today, after I watched my dog get run over by a car, I sat on the side of the road holding him and crying. And just before he died, he licked the tears off my face. MMT

Today, after a 72 hour shift at the fire station, a woman ran up to me at the grocery store and gave me a hug. When I tensed up, she realized I didn’t recognize her. She let go with tears of joy in her eyes and the most sincere smile and said, “On 9-11-2001, you carried me out of the World Trade Center.” MMT

Today, at 3:40PM in my San Diego home, I put a gun to my head. Just as I pulled the trigger the ground began violently shaking from an earthquake. I lost my balance, the gun went off, but the bullet missed my body entirely. Tonight, I threw the gun in the ocean. MMT

Today, I wondered if the thousand unsaid "I love you’s" that I've kept to myself recently might actually be better than confessing out loud that I’m still in love with you. MMT

Miscarriage

There’s a rose on the windowsill
Swaddled in a cloak of sunlight
Sometimes curled asleep in a bud
Or crying pink fragrant tears.

They say pain is a necklace of roses,
Everyone wears one --
A necklace of thorns
Clawing at the place where
Part of my heart has gone.

But the fragrance is still here
Lingering like a sweet memory
Though your time was fleeting
The rose still blooms for you.

Eos

"Morning. Strawberry sky dusted with white winter powder sugar sun. And nobody to munch on it with."

- Missing Angel Juan by Francesca Lia Block

L'hiver

It is winter here. The snow falls like the footsteps of a Siberian tiger. It's been like this for as long as I can remember -- this coldness, this apathy that numbs me to the bone.

They say glass does funny things to people. It can be the aphrodisiac, the seductress in the mirror luring you with your own reflection. Or it can be the weapon, slashing your skin into ribbons of flesh.

There was a shard of glass in his eye. I don't know when it happened; by the time I realized what had happened, he was already lost from me. What he had once murmured as beautiful -- my hair, my eyes, my lips, my nose, my face, my skin, my bones -- decayed in his eyes overnight. They say the only cure is for his own tears to wash the glass away, but by then the tears had crystallized in a coat of frost.

It was winter then. The snow fell like his footsteps, softly disappearing from my sight.

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Update on my life: I am currently doing summer school for six weeks, living off-campus in an upstairs room of an old North Carolina house with the girl I met when I first visited Duke who is now a good friend of mine. Too often I feel as if she is my mother, driving me to class, cooking for me because I never learned, vacuuming the carpet while I jump from chair to chair watching her like a cat. I like it so far. I'm learning two kinds of chemistry -- Organic Chemistry II and the chemistry of cooking, having watched my roommate cook each and every meal.

I've been looking at my old writing from early high school, and I think my Francesca-Lia-Block-esque style has gotten rusty. Will hopefully be blogging more in that style soon.

You Belong With Me

It's May. I still have more than a week of reading period and finals, so I am not going to officially resume blogging yet. I will, however, reward your patience with this one-shot I happened to post on Fictionpress earlier this week as my own sort of study break reward.

Author's Note: Don't get me wrong. I enjoy Taylor Swift's songs as much as the next person, but I can't help but wonder how the cheerleader would respond if she heard that song.
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Bow down to the Queen, bitchessss!

In this lawless land of high school melodrama and bickering cliques, there's a law of natural order in this place. Let us review:

One: Alpha Male and Alpha Female are together. Either that, or they've already been together before but they've broken up (perhaps multiple times, each with more weeping and screaming than the one before) but nobody dares to date one without suffering the wrath of the other, so hence they are still together in a de facto relationship.

Two: Anyone who dares disturb the natural order of things will suffer the consequences.

Bow down to the pinnacle of human evolution. Yeah, that's right.

As far as Tay is concerned, she may as well write her own requiem a la Mozart in Amadeus and send it off to the 102.7 KIIS radio station for their next songwriting contest as a follow-up to that song of hers that made her the local star. I can already hear the radio jockey on the airwaves garbling the brilliant title: "You Belong with Me, Pt II: Only in Chick Flicks, Chick Lit, and Other Emotional Porn for Chicks." It'll just as big of a hit as that wretched song she wrote that won her that radio station contest last month and marked a big spanking target on my back. Even the class idiot could tell who that song was written about. After all, there's only one boyfriend to the one cheer captain at this school, and that's yours truly.

Yeah, and I'm sorry you were born with that face.

Before you start stroking my ego with reassuring compliments about my beauty, my brains, and my sheer awesomeness, thanks honey, but don't waste your breath on things I already know. There is no girl better than me in this pond, so why should I feel threatened by a little fly who's been buzzing around my ear about why my boyfriend belongs with her? I don't feel threatened. I feel annoyed.

Honey, you really think you'll get my man looking like that? Please sit down.

And so, in honor of all the misaligned cheer captains in the nation who are sick of being stereotyped as either brainless bimbos or manipulative harlots, I will now do a close reading of the offending song, not only to demonstrate my intellectual prowess to you all, but to also expose the stinking parade of non sequitur bull that seems to have drawn everyone in like flies to poop.

"You're on the phone with your girlfriend, she's upset. She's going off about something that you said 'cause she doesn't get your humor like I do. I'm in the room, it's a typical Tuesday night, I'm listening to the kind of music she doesn't like and she'll never know your story like I do."

Would you look at that? Two lines into the first verse and the accusations are already flying in. I'm racking my brain trying to recall this Tuesday night conversation with Lucas, but as you know it takes some time for this massive brain of mine to sort through everything all for such a trivial detail. But never mind that for now. All I want to know is, how does she know I'm upset and "going off" about something he said when she's in her room? Did she wiretap his phone? And for your information, Tay, I get his humor. I get it. "That's what she said" jokes are not my cup of tea, but if you and Lucas have bonding moments over giggling fits anytime someone uses a sentence with the word "long" or "hard", then be my guest. Country music isn't my cup of tea either, but you don't see me implying some sort of inferiority when I mention that you don't listen to Chopin or Tchaikovsky, do you? Oh wait.

"But, she wears short skirts, I wear T-shirts. She's Cheer Captain and I'm on the bleachers. Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find that what you're looking for has been here the whole time. If you could see that I'm the one who understands you, been here all along, so why can't you see? You, you belong with me, you belong with me."

Damn right, I wear short skirts. Not only is it the prescribed uniform for every single cheerleading squad in the country, it'd be a travesty for legs like mine to be constantly bundled in pants every day. That's as if Taylor Lautner stopped flaunting his shirtless body in those Twilight movies and tried to woo Kristen Stewart in lumpy Christmas sweaters instead. Can you imagine the outrage? It's a travesty, I tell you.

When you're a 5'11" cheerleader, it's a crime to wear pants.

"Walking the streets with you and your worn-out jeans, I can't help thinking this is how it ought to be. Laughing on a park bench, thinking to myself... Hey, isn't this easy? And you've got a smile that could light up this whole town, I haven't seen it in a while since she brought you down. You say you're fine, I know you better than that... Hey, what ya doing with a girl like that?"

Now I'm confused. Brought him down? Pray tell, where did I bring him down to? Now that you mention it, I was always the one bringing him anywhere, not the other way around. Who drove the car in the music video? That's right. If you really think having a boyfriend like Lucas is about laughing on park benches and walking down streets in worn-out jeans, you are sadly mistaken. And oh, there's my favorite line: "Hey, what ya doing with a girl like that?" If you close your eyes, you can practically hear the line from Eminem's "Ass Like That" echoing in the background. "Hey what ya doing with a girl like that? I ain't never seen an ass like that."

"She wears high heels, I wear sneakers. She's Cheer Captain and I'm on the bleachers. Dreaming about the day when you wake up and find that what you're looking for has been here the whole time. If you could see that I'm the one who understands you. Been here all along, so why can't you see? You belong with me. Standing by and waiting at your back door all this time how could you not know? Baby, you belong with me, you belong with me."

Wearing high heels is nothing to be ashamed of. It's a skill. It's an art. Walk around campus in those for a day and let me know how nice your feet feel afterwards.

"Oh, I remember you driving to my house in the middle of the night. I'm the one who makes you laugh when you know you're 'bout to cry and I know your favorite songs and you tell me 'bout your dreams. Think I know where you belong, think I know it's with me."

Well, there we go again with… wait… WHAT? Lucas drove to her house in the middle of the night? What kind of a boyfriend drives to another girl's house in the middle of the night? What kind of a boyfriend goes to another girl other when he's about to cry? Hell, what kind of a boyfriend tells another girl about his dreams? Lucas is not exactly the sharpest crayon in the box, I will admit that, but anyone who is supposed to be regarded as my social equivalent should at least have the common sense not to associate with someone of inferior rank. And speaking of Lucas, where has he been this whole time this song has been causing havoc? Why hasn't he already publicly responded to such a heinous love letter to preserve what remaining dignity he's been left with after the girl made the outrageous suggestion that he, of all people, should belong to her?

I don't get it, Lucas. How do you even manage to BREATHE around that disgusting thing? I can't even look at something that ugly without getting hives.

Either this girl is a pathological liar, or a king is about to be beheaded.

"Can't you see that I'm the one who understands you? Been here all along, so why can't you see? You belong with me. Standing by and waiting at your back door... all this time, how could you not know? Baby, you belong with me, you belong with me. You belong with me, have you ever thought just maybe... You belong with me? You belong with me."

You know what, Tay? You're right. A man worthy of my affections would have already denounced such an atrocious conjecture that he should belong to anybody else. A man worthy of my affections would have ripped the song out of the air from the FM airwaves with his bare hands the moment he first heard that song on the radio.

Excuse me? You don't get tired of drama; drama gets tired of you. OFF WITH YOUR HEAD!!

So you know what, Tay? You don't need to lurk around the back door anymore. Take him. He's all yours.