Thursday, December 8, 2011

Inspiration: Novel


Love Medicine by Louise Erdrich


*Note: Contrary to what the picture indicates, clicking to look inside will not take you there after all. I believe you'd have to go through Amazon to do that.

My, this book has been on my reading list for years. And to think, I did not like it at first. I was begrudged to buy it ($14 was a scandalous sum for a book) for the freshman reading list for Honors English I in high school. High school. They had us reading textbooks and suddenly we were reading Jane Eyre and this novel, though it's funny, I actually liked Jane Eyre. This book, this book however revolted me. Its themes surround Native American Indians, and that was interesting, but I found the people in it immoral. A prostitute, a drunkard, a cheating husband, several suicides. Fourteen-year-olds do not have that sort of depth, I should like to think. But the more I trudged through advanced placement English (don't think I'm gussying myself up--English was my worst subject aside from gym), the more I found literature wanted to rob us of innocence. I personally think that contributes to emo teenagers, among other things.
So fast forward a few years during a spring cleaning raid, when I found this book in the back of my shelves, aging nicely in its paperbacking because nobody had really touched it. What a waste, I was thinking, taking it out, reading a few lines. And from there I was hooked. Erdrich writes with a sort of nostalgic, melancholy cadence, rounding her characters out nicely. Beyond the endless metaphors, it is a well-written piece that provokes, repels, and laments its central families' tragedies. But its purpose, I think, is quite hopeful. Her characters are relatable because their mistakes are very human.
John and Wanda's fight was inspired by this book. The first-person accounts of Todd and Lance also take root from her storytelling. So yes, I keep it handy when I'm caught in a writing funk, its prose rampant with love, lust, hatred, forgiveness, and death. Which is kind-of the Legend story too, come to think of it.


Friday, December 2, 2011

Drabbles: The JeanxScott Debaucle

dear reader:

I don't think it's much of a revelation about me when I say, first of all, that I did not like Jean Grey very much. In the original X-Men, she was too intelligent; like a female Hank McCoy, but more attractive (obviously) and without an alias. In the movie, she was older--lovely, yes, but again too intelligent, a teacher rather than student. And in the Evolution series, she was--by far--too good to be true.
I have put off writing this, mostly because I myself did not know the root cause of my dislike. I remember attaching myself to a deep dislike of Jean Grey for the obvious reasons. She is conveyed as "perfect," though, now in retrospect, the show repeatedly tried to disprove this misconception by emphasizing the limits of her powers. But how do you reign in a monster you yourself created? There she was, the epitome of nice, pretty, tall, intelligent- everything we introspective, quiet types dislike. And as I hopped on the hate-Jean bandwagon prematurely (and gleefully, I don't deny) a part of me was wondering how it had spiraled into this. What more, the Jean-Scott pairing was far overrated. Although she was with Duncan, she knew Scott liked her, and the way they worked together, even Fred would have guessed they were meant to be a couple. But what's the fun in that? There's no guessing, no what-could-have-beens? Just the same, boy-meets-girl story. Bo-ring.

The real pairing to like, of course, was Remy and Rogue. Now there's a pairing. Rogue was everything (seemingly) Jean was not. Dark, gloomy, brooding, Rogue reeked of mystery, and that made her interesting. We as writers could elaborate on her, dissect her mind, bring out her worst and best parts because the show had kept those things secret. What more, Remy had barely entered the drawing board when fanfiction just about exploded with reams of him. How would he meet Rogue? How would it all play out? The show's writers, come to think of it, had a lot on their plate by the time Remy debuted and he kinda really definitely fell short of expectations (that haircut! his eyes weren't red! His accent was not Cajun!) But that is another drabble in and of itself.

Jean, however, was out in the open (so to speak). She was like a duck which you just had to take aim and fire. And for good reason too--when you portray someone so impeccable, you leave room to make them ridiculous. And isn't that what perfect is? Just a ladder rung below looney? I am borderline Type-A myself and could just as well identify with Jean, except that that is just what I do not want to do. Nobody likes competing with overachievers--and as a closet overachiever, I can say this outright. It was so easy to write her as ridiculous; she became a metaphorical punching bag free-for-all, and I churned out Rogue's Diaries to take my jab at it. Don't get me wrong--I don't regret it. Not everyone shared my distaste for Jean, and maybe that should have confirmed that I hit home on ridiculous-Jean. But I always stuck it to myself to do her justice. Challenge accepted.

So imagine my chagrin when this whole fricking year, I was stuck--quite literally--in a JeanxScott funk. Everything I wrote I hated. I realized that I was writing about the Jean that everybody assumed they knew--pretty, well-off, a lady of ways and means. Ugh. And this was after I had read Atonement! This was after I had watched North and South. I was in the right mood, but the words weren't right. So I stopped assuming and decided to do something I had never thought to do: I scoured fanfiction for some good Jott. And what surprised me was not that the fact that there wasn't many, but those that I did find were actually pretty darn good; like, well-written, evocative, emotional pieces. I even favorited one of them. So what did they see in this "boring" couple to write something like that?

Fast forward to the present. As this Legend story develops, my one and primary goal (among my many other very-important goals) is to present most of the characters of Evolution in their most explicit of portrayals. I went for dramatic this time, and that is much harder to convey, if one should hope to do it right. So when this story took its slow turn towards a JeanxScott arc, I knew I had to put aside my preconceptions toward this couple to be able to write objectively, honestly. For once.

Some questions I asked myself: what can make me like Jean? What qualities could I admire in Scott? What about them could make my audience swoon (yes, swoon) and then break their hearts when their relationship falls apart?
Chapter Nineteen touches upon all of these. Jean is a caged, quiet girl, her family isolated by her sister's illness despite their opulent standing in New York society. She has some characteristics that I felt imperative to keep--her prettiness, humanized by her self-consciousness of having red hair, her intelligence, her devotion to the gospels of Charles Xavier. But her sister's sick, her sweetheart up and left her, and she is utterly dissatisfied with herself. Enter Scott, and the rest you'll just have to read :D The real kicker, I should admit, is based loosely on my experience: staring at an old flame's Facebook picture, his long-time girlfriend at his side; the convalescent sister respected and acknowledged by my best friend; feeling unfulfilled with a very complete life. For I have learned the only way you can truly understand is to make it personal. Now, if I could only manifest mutant powers of my own, it would come full-circle. But that, of course, remains to be seen...