Write Club - Villainy

Hey y'all. This post I wanted to discuss villainy. Villains in stories are in many ways as important as the heros, and they make a clear and specific impact on your story. Let me make it clear that by villain, I don't mean antagonist. An antagonist is the person (or persons) causing the conflict that your lead character has to face. For example, Apollo Creed in Rocky is the antagonist, but he's not evil so he's not a villain. He's just the guy that makes the plot happen, namely that Rocky is being given the one of a kind chance to fight the champion though he's nobody in the boxing realm. So, a villain is a type of antagonist, because they cause conflict, but an antagonist is not always a villain.

So what makes a good villain? Well, let's first put out some of the best and most terrifying villains there are out there, from various genres. I pick Hans Gruber from Die Hard, Ursula from The Little Mermaid, Kerrigan from Starcraft (note that at this point I have not played Starcraft II), and King Edward I from Braveheart. There are other good villains out there, but I'm very familiar with these, and they're also well known. So let's look at what makes these villains the awesome villains they are.

The thing I look for the most in a villain is whether or not they engage the fight or flight response in me, if this particular villainy seems realistic, and if I want to see more of them. These kinds of baddies tantalize you and make you wish that you could join the book and save the lead characters from them, or help the good guys solve the case. I love to see monsters display the absolute worst of humanity in the most delightful of ways. Let's go over the picks and see what exactly is so fun about them.

Let's start with Hans Gruber, the man who held hostages in the Nakatomi building in California, only to find himself stopped by a New York cop wandering in the abandoned areas in the building. The thing that makes Hans distinct from other villains is his intelligence. He might not be the best for beating someone up or hacking a computer, but this guy is a real leader. He constructed a well thought out plan and did his best to keep it going despite the fact that everything was crumbling around him. Despite being surrounded by cops and hassled by John McClaine, he actually got fairly close to succeeding.

Just looking at the guy, we see his distinctive taste in clothes, his love for literature, and his persistent calm in the face of trouble after trouble. He always seemed to be in control, not only of himself, but of the hostages' fears and of his own tempermental men. He calmly probed the crowd for the one man he wanted to discover information from, never once letting this man's refusal to talk bother him. He cleverly faked out McClaine (for a while) by pretending to be a hostage. Even when one of his minions was freaking out because McClaine killed his brother, he kept control of his group's actions.

What made the best part of his character was that at the end, despite all of his cleverness, leadership, and saavy, he was just out to get money. Hans could have done anything with his life, and here he was just stealing paintings and savings bonds. This guy has an actual story arc. Hans' finale is a dramatic fall out of the window, right before he is about to shoot John McClaine in the head.
　
So the qualities of a good villain we learn from Hans are:
- smarts
- own story arc
- control
- a death deserving of his crimes.

Ursula from The Little Mermaid is a totally different kind of villain. I absolutely loved her villainy as a kid, particularly because she wasn't trying too hard to be an obvious monster, and yet you knew all along that she was only the most evil of octopi. I'm sure most of you are familiar with the story of The Little Mermaid, where Ariel half-fish being decides that she wants to live on land and is madly in love with Prince Eric. So she goes to the sea-witch Ursula to see if she can get legs.

The thing about Ursula is her total vanity. She uses make up, but at the same time she seems perfectly comfortable with her body, creating the image of a self-confident woman who is in control. See there? She and Hans share an aspect of villainy, just in a different way. Ursula's vanity is an additional flaw that the writers exploit to flavor her character and make her distinguished from other Disney villains.

One of the things I loved about Ursula was her more or less admittance to evil. She gives a vague excuse saying that she used to be evil, and now all she does is help "poor, unfortunate souls". This is so clearly a lie that you know Ariel doesn't believe it, and you find yourself shouting at the screen for Ariel to swim away before she does something stupid.

Ursula is someone who enjoys being evil, and who happily delights in her schemes. One of things I feel makes her unique is her love for Flotsam and Jetsam, her minion eels. This love, while more of a master to a slave, is actually somewhat genuine. Other villains might treat their servants like crap, but Ursula actually shows appreciation for her minions. This too fits in with her vanity, as her most intimate servants are like accessories, part of herself. She could no more dislike them than she could dislike her own personality.

What we can do with Ursula that we can't do with other villains is compare her to the villains of other Disney movies. Let's do that! Okay, so first up is the evil witch queen from Snow White. I feel that this villain is okay, but her problem is that she's mad at Snow White for being more beautiful than her. It's not a matter of power or anything big, just sheer jealousy. That's actually kinda sad. Also, her plan to give Snow White a poison apple was overly complex. Couldn't she just shoot Snow White with an arrow or something? I realize that this is a problem with the actual fairy tale than the Disney version, but this still applies.

Cinderella's stepmother was a pretty good villain, I just don't feel like she was used appropriately. The stepmother's anger at Cinderella for being gentler and more lovely than her own daughters should have been more accentuated. Like, she should have been more harsh at Cinderella for the slightest mishaps and proud of each minor achievement of her own girls. All in all, she was still interesting, but she wasn't the greatest villain.

Malificent of Sleeping Beauty was a marvelous stage villain. She was evil, bitter, and full of hate. However, she too misses the mark. It's awesome she can change into a dragon, but I find it weird that simply being snubbed for a christening party alone would cause her to want to ruin Aurora's life. In the book this jealously was explained very well, but here Malificent feels the need to find Aurora for some reason, even though she's already placed the curse on her to die at the age of sixteen. Why does she need to kidnap Aurora? In the fairy tale she placed the curse and left it at that, not to be seen for the rest of the story. I appreciate what Disney did with the story, but all the same, Malificent was just too concerned about it.

Also, her minions are useless. She's got all these goblins and warthog soldiers, but all they ever succeed in doing is kidnapping the Prince the first time. Before that and from then on, they accomplish nothing. They're deliberately idiotic. What kind of a villain keeps these idiots around? Ursula's two eels were more useful than the whole lot of these guys.

Next in line is Gaston from Beauty and the Beast. This guy is actually pretty hilarious as a baddie. My problem with him is that he's kind of a ham, trying way too hard to be a jerk and manipulate Belle. That was probably the point for his character, and it really was enjoyable. Overall he's one of the better Disney baddies, but at the same time he's too simplified. His lack of depth prevents him from being the best.

One of the best Disney movies ever is Aladdin, and it has the villain that I feel is second to Ursula: Jafar. Jafar is the assistant to the Sultan, and he is busily working on a way to steal the power from the Sultan and take his place. I like this guy because he's unashamedly bad, dastardly and always keeping his eye out on Aladdin. He's quick to discover that Aladdin isn't a prince and almost kills him. More than once, actually. He also has a sense of humor, sick as it is.

However, the real downfall of Jafar is two things: his cheat stick and the Sultan. Controlling the Sultan with a scepter is really cheap, and is a gimmick instead of Jafar taking power by cleverness. Also, if Jafar can make the Sultan do whatever he wants, then why does he need to take his place? Can't he just stay by the side and keep pretending to be loyal? When the princess marries, he can just control the guy just like he did the Sultan.

Also, Jasmine's dad is a stupid ruler. He's lame, easily impressed, and totally lacking in sense. As much as heroes are judged by the villains they fight, villains are judged by the heroes that they face and rulers they defeat. Controlling the Sultan wasn't hard by any means, making Jafar unable to beat Ursula in a contest of evil.

Eh, the villain in Pocahontas was lame. I don't even remember what they called the guy, but it was John Smith's leader or whatever. I didn't like that movie much, and the baddie was one reason why: he was shallow, stereotypical, and completely uninteresting. You can compare him to Gaston and Gaston's selfishness, but Gaston was fun to watch and made you laugh. This guy? Eh. Moving on.

Mulan's baddie, Shan Yu, was pretty good. He was evil, greedy, and merciless. He wasn't as distinct as other baddies, but he was someone you could really be afraid of. However, I found his vague beastness to weaken the character. His seemingly superhuman strength made him too cartoonish, like the point where he burst through the ceiling of the emperor's palace to fight Mulan. How in the world is that even possible? I really shouldn't question cartoon physics, but Mulan as a movie tried to be more or less realistic when it came to human ability, and if there was a part of other fighting that was fake, the movie convinced you it was possible. Also, there's this one point where Shan Yu could have gotten away and killed the emperor, but he cries out in...I dunno, beast-like rage or something, and Mulan hears him, causing her to go and stop him.

I say all that, but really this villain wasn't too bad. He wasn't distinct enough to rise to the level of others, but he served the appropriate purpose in Mulan that was required of him. In that, he did a great job. He's not the kind of villain that you'll appreciate well or remember much of, but there's so many other people in this movie to like and have an interest in that it doesn't really matter. That's a thing to remember about baddies, and actually characters in general. Sometimes the plot doesn't focus around them, and you have to decide, as a writer, how much influence you are willing to give to them.

If you don't have a lot of opportunity to talk about a character, then make them as interesting as possible in the short amount of time they have, and that way your readers will want to hear more about them, instead of feeling that your story is bogged down by too much detail (which will be the subject of another posting at some point). You can always do a spin-off story about them, or if you feel like you can just leave them as they are and your fans will write fanfiction to fill in the gaps for you. Leaving gaps for your readers is always a great idea to keep them interested in your story for longer periods of time.

Shadow Man from The Princess and the Frog had so much dang potential. So much! The plot for this movie was clumsily handled by the writers, leaving all of the characters but the firefly severely underdeveloped. Shadow Man was no different. He had so much going for him: his freaky magic, his sentient shadow, and his general entertaining demeanor. This guy was hilarious! However, he suffers from several things. First of all, if you look at this movie, you'll notice that he almost never does something himself. He's got those spirits running around for him and the servant pretending to be Navine. Only three times does he directly antagonize characters: the time he was trying to poke the Big Daddy voodoo doll, the time he stomps on the stupid firefly, and the time he tempts Tiana (his best scene, I think). Villains need to do things for themselves, facing the heroes and intimidating them with all the gall they have.

Also, Shadow Man's motives were unclear. In the opening song, he appears to be motivated by money, particularly as he tricks a man into taking a bad hair potion for coin. However, once he reveals his plan to take over New Orleans, it just feels weird. There was no foreshadowing for this. Then throw in the whole thing where he's trying to keep the spirits from taking him down into his afterlife, and he's scrambling, running around and trying to keep everything together. Where's the confidence and control?

The main thing that bothered me about Shadow Man is that he doesn't even know that Tiana is interfering with his plans until the very end of the movie. He knows she exists because he saw her at a restaurant, and he saw another frog leave with Naveen at the party, but he has no reason to assume that its her. Tiana is the lead of this movie, and Shadow Man is always off dealing with other people. How lame is that mess?

So, at the end of the day, Ursula really is the best Disney villain, from a literary perspective. What do we learn from her?

Villains should:
- be distinct
- have relevant help
- be interesting
- have a set out plan for power that has wiggle room just in case.

The next villain is one of my favorites of all time: Sarah Kerrigan of the Starcraft series. Now, Starcraft has this sequel out now, so I'm going on the original and the Brood War expansion set only. It always pissed me off that Glynnis Campbell wasn't the one voicing Kerri in SCII, and besides, if I ever talk about Star Wars characters, I will have nothing but complete disregard for the prequels, which I refer to as Not Star Wars. I don't think Starcraft II is all that bad, but for now it's just going to have to wait.

Anyway, Sarah is a great villain because of her deep history. The plot of Starcraft basically goes that there are three races out there, the humans, Protoss, and Zerg. These three races are fighting for domination of the galaxy (one not near earth). Sarah is a human fighting under Arcturus Mengsk, a man that once saved her life and is rebelling against the current human ruling faction. She becomes good friends with Jim Raynor, a simple but good man also in on the cause, and you begin to think that their relationship can get so much deeper. That is, until Kerrigan is betrayed by Arcturus in his quest for power. Mengsk abandoned her on a planet, believing that she would be killed by the Zerg, a malevolent race of creatures that take other species and turn them into new forms of Zerg.

The plot goes on without her until it is revealed that the Overmind, the leader of the Zerg, wanted Kerrigan to become his "daughter", and mutates her into a Zerg that is not just a brainless servant, but is a powerful, ferocious enemy of all who oppose the Zerg. Once the Overmind is killed, Kerrigan decides to take over the Zerg for herself and gain revenge against the faction that stole her childhood, Mengsk for betraying her, and Raynor for not saving her. In the end, she tears through all of the Protoss and human factions, making herself the supreme leader of all that exists....and it means nothing.

The reason why Sarah Kerrigan is such a great villain is because she didn't start out that way. She used to be a little naiive, trusting Mengsk even though his actions made it clear he preferred power above all else. She went through so much, being subject to experiments that tested and probed her telepathic powers. After Mengsk saved her, she trusted him not unlike a father. Once infested, the Overmind was like a really sick version of a dad, leaving Kerrigan with even more demented daddy issues.

This poor girl's troubles have risen up in her and filled her with an anger. That anger is hollow. Kerrigan might rule the galaxy in the end, but that was never what she ever wanted. Her entire conquest was to get back at everyone that had ever hurt her. Now that she's won, she doesn't know what to do with herself and her power. All she knows is that she doesn't want to lose control ever again, because she doesn't trust anyone to be an authority over her.

As pityable as she is, Kerrigan is responsible for many deaths. She kills off several characters that are beloved to the people that play this game, and she torments Zeratul, the most popular Protoss character, by brainwashing his Matriarch and forcing him to kill her. She spared Raynor's life at one point because he was someone that cared about her in the past, but once she murders his friend Fenix, he swears to kill her one day.

Hans and Ursula are valued for their skills and attitudes, but Kerrigan's interest comes from her depth. You can either feel sorry for her or hate her, and whichever you do is up to your perspective. There is no set in stone way to feel about her. Other characters are engineered for you to specifically hate or like them, but Kerrigan is open ended. You either want her to die for all she's done, or somehow become de-infested, or somehow make up for her crimes in the way she dies.  The game doesn't make this choice for you.

So Kerrigan shows that a good villain:
- has depth
- has ties outside of evil
- is still a person with aspirations and fears
- doesn't always realize how evil they are.

Okay, so my last villain is King Edward from Braveheart. I'm gonna be honest: crazy Mel aside, I love all the characters in this movie, especially Steven the Irishman. The real reason I like Edward as a baddie is because he's so hardcore. Okay, well the story goes that Edward is oppressing the Scottish people, and this local man William Wallace has to stop him so that Scotland can be free of British oppression.

Edward is portrayed as a man both harsh and strong, someone you just don't want to mess with, especially head on. In any direct fight, he's sure to win. This guy is smart, cunning, deceptive, and willing to take advantage of the slightest thing he can. Early on in the movie he tricks a bunch of Scots by saying he wanted to negotiate peace, but he slaughters all the people that show up to his meeting. This guy has no mercy in him at all. He firmly believes that the Celtic Islands should all be under one rule. That is, the rule of Britain.

Even in real life, Edward was someone who was hearty and physically strong. Even to his oldest days he was risking his life simply to show off his daring. However, he had one major failing: bad parenting. A lot of people objected to the portrayal of Prince Edward II in this movie, and I understand why, but the fact of the matter is his character in the movie was a natural extension of who Edward II really was. He was simplified for the purposes of the movie, but in real life Edward II was nowhere near as feared as his father. He relied so much on his father's hardcore nature and iron-fisted rule that he never achieved the political wisdom Edward I had. He always was so close with his pal Piers Gaveston that it actually interfered with his political needs. He and Piers made fun of the British Lords without considering that perhaps these men might actually be vital to his rule once his dad died. Notedly, Piers was replaced with Phillip in the movie, and they never showed this mockery (or the Lords much at all), but that is what actually happened.

So that was where Edward failed the most. In both real life and the movie, he never made his son realize that power isn't a static thing and it can slip out of your hands easily when a weak ruler gets the throne. In both, Scotland becomes free shortly after the death of Edward I, and despite all of the political and economic gains Edward did for Britain, Scotland reachieved its independence. Notedly, Scotland belongs to the United Kingdom mostly because of intermarriage, and it ended up that one of the kings of Scotland (James, I think) turned out to be next in line for the English throne through various circumstances.

Edward is a king with strong beliefs and strong greed, and he is unable to be swayed from this path by anyone. He is overcome in the end by sickness and secrecy, the only two things that could directly bring him down.

He shows us that:
- villains are selfish and don't see from others' viewpoints
- the audience wants to enjoy both the evil and the downfall of evil in the villain.
- villians need to be strong to be believable and feared.
- No villain is too strong to have a flaw.

So, who do I feel is the greatest villain of all time? That's hard to answer. There are many different types of villains, and each is enjoyable in different sorts of ways. Hans Gruber is a crafty villain, one that stays in control by using his brain. Ursula is a trickster villain, who uses anything besides physical strength (magic, tricks, servants) to get what she wants. Kerrigan is a damaged villain, who fights for herself and not for money or power. Edward is a hardcore villain, one that has to be worked around, not directly fought. So which type is the best? Isn't it really a matter of taste?

Well, just in case it isn't, I submit that Darth Vader is perhaps a good candidate for the greatest fiction villain of all time, as far as literary appeal goes (I'm sure there are more destructive baddies). He is not only strong in fights, but also in the Force, which enables him to do things that most people can't. Also, his dark costume and heavy breathing make him well known even among those that have never seen Star Wars or don't even like it. He remains one of the most recognized bad guys of all time, whose depth, strength, smarts, and control will ensure that he remains known for many years to come.

Something Annoying

Hey y'all.

Okay, so I work at a bookstore, and a bunch of the time we get these autobiographies with the most pretentious titles ever.  I really can't stand them.  I mean, they're all like "Me", "My Life", "My Story", or "The True Confessions" of someone I don't care about.  Gah!  Okay peeps, if you're going to write a book about yourself, please don't let it sound like you think you're everything.

I know I like to hang out around fiction, but here's a little exercise for you, just to challenge your skills.  Think about your life, and then come up with the title of a biography for yourself.  The only rule is, you can't use these words:

I
me
my
ordinary
extraordinary
story
tale
confession(s)
true
life
am
fate
destiny
future

I've come up with a few for myself, but really since I'm so young it's a bit pretentious to have a title for something like this anyway.  Still, I'm pretty much choosing between "Pass the Ducks", "Stupid Melody", and "Always Hardcore".  Basically I'd have to wait and see how my life really turns out to see which is better. 

Pass the Ducks comes from the Nutcracker song Pas de Deux, which is one of my favorite songs ever.  It's very dramatic, and the daring of the song really makes sense (in my head) with the ridiculous title of my book.  I've always been a combination of extremes, so the silliness plus the seriousness works for me.

This is also why I like Stupid Melody.  It's the title of one of my favorite DJ Redlight songs, and while the only lyrics to the song go "it's just a stupid melody" the song actually argues against itself, sounding a lot more powerful than its title gives it credit for.

I'll admit that Always Hardcore is a bit pretentious on my part.  I like it, but I really wouldn't choose it unless I did something amazing like liberate a Communist country, cure cancer, and bake a tasty raspberry chocolate cake all while juggling mugs of hot coffee.  Hey, you never know.

Well, that's my submissions.  What would make a good title for your story?  Remember, you can't use one of the above words, and you have to title your book in such a way that people would want to buy it.  Also, what would you put on the cover?  Let me know!

Nitpickery - Darkness in the Mirror.

Hey y'all.  I feel like gettin' a little nitpicky today because I stayed up late last night reading this book called Darkness in the Mirror, and I can feel rant mode going on. 

I have a problem with the library.  This problem is, they have a multiplicity of books written by people who never should have been published.  A while back I checked out this book called Sorry, It's Not for Us (or something to that nature), which dictates the plight of a woman who must choose what books to allow her publishing company to pick up and which to say no to.  She speaks of very high standards, and her reasoning is interesting.  However, the library must disagree with this.  What other reason would they have for publishing the nonsense I've checked out there for the past several months?  It had The Dark Tower by C.S. Lewis, but that was the one good book I've ever checked out from the library.

So Darkness in the Mirror is a story about a family, and one of the genetic traits of this family is schizoaffective disorder.  First one woman gets it, then her daughter Ruth passes it on to her daughter Ondie.  She has another daughter, Serita, who seems to have escaped this fate.  Ondie is trying to get back with her baby's daddy, not knowing that he's having a fling with Serita.

The reason why I picked this book off the shelf was because it was by Erica Lewis, who happened to be near the C.S. Lewis section, sadly small in the library.  Also, the cover is of serious young woman who has just written "I hate you" in lipstick on a mirror, staring coldly at her reflection.  Now, doesn't that sound like a good story?  Think of it, a woman versus herself and torn apart by madness...how exciting!

Meh.

I've come to expect a lot from madness books.  There's so many complex emotions in insanity, and when presented correctly it's perfectly thrilling.  However, this book wasn't about the madness at all.  It was a friggin' soap opera.

How did this book suck?  Let me count the ways.
1. Lackluster plot.
2. Undercutting its own drama.
3. No real characterization.
4. Vastly underdeveloped writing style.
5. Ignoring the specifics of schizoaffective disorder.

There might be other things, but for now we'll stick to these, as they are the main functions of what exactly is wrong with this story.  Yes, I'm going to spoil this story at lot, but since there's nothing to it anyway, you're not losing anything.

Let's start backwards.  Number 5 is the absolute worst thing wrong with this book: ignoring the very thing that makes someone want to read this book in the first place.  It mentions the disorder, shows a couple of mad episodes, but in the end I know nothing more about the disorder, only that it makes people paranoid that other people are scheming against them.  This story seems to be about family drama without any real theme or point to it.  Come on, where's the struggle against madness?

4 is a problem that all writers go through at some point.  No one starts off as a good writer.  We all go through a stage where we think we know crap about writing, but in the end only everyone else can see the noobs that we really, truly are.  Writers can be underdeveloped in many ways.  They can ignore emotion and just write block for block what happens, they can rush through parts they think are uninteresting, they can use all these fancy-schmances words and references that they don't really know how to use effectively, and they can write boring dialogue that no one would actually say in real life. 

This book is guilty of all of the above, hence the "vastly" part.  I mean, holy crap!  Why the crap was this published, other than for cheap relationship fantasy?

Let me show you an example from the book.

"He dashed back inside and grabbed the keys off the counter and sprinted down two fights of concrete steps with no shoes on.  He pressed the button on the keyless remote and the noise halted.  But his was not the only alarm that sounded.  Serita spied her smashed windshield and the brick that laid it to waste.  Ondie zeroed in on her standing there when the clamor from her car ceased.  Serita backed into the apartment like a frightened rabbit."

This is a description of Ondie discovering Serita at Dexter's (her baby's daddy) house.  Aigoo, it's like a dang kid wrote this mess.  They're obviously trying to sound dramatic, but this is a major fail.  I mean, if this were a first draft written during NaNoWriMo to be edited later, that would be one thing, but I am astonished at any publishing company that would put this in print.  Why aren't there any commas?  Why isn't there a description of Ondie that makes her as frightening to the reader as she is to Serita?  Why are they describing flat statuses rather than action?\

Hint, writer peeps.  If something is happening, like a dog is chewing on a bone, say the dog's chewing on a bone.  Don't just say he had a bone in his mouth or something dull like that.  Describe an action like an action, and your words will play like a movie.

Okay, I will attempt to write something a bit better, because I'm an arrogant nerd-girl and I can.

"At the sight of his former love (the woman who'd had his child!) beating up on his Jeep with a branch, Dexter dashed back inside, snatching his keys before he dashed right back out.  He ignored the impact of his bare feet on the concrete as he rushed down the stairs to stop the mad woman.  The first order of business was to get his car alarm off -- he by no means wanted to attract more of his neighbors' attentions to this mess.  As he clicked the panic button on his keys, he realized that his alarm wasn't the only one going off.

Shaking like reed in a storm, Serita peeked her head out the door.  It was every bit as bad as she thought it was: Ondie had taken a break from his jeep to start with her Ford.  A brick appeared in Ondie's hand, tightly gripped.  Serita watched in terror as her sister angrily swung her arm, casting the thing smack into her now shattered windshield. 

As if knowing that she was being watched, Ondie's eyes snapped straight up, focusing solely on baby sister Serita.  She stared into Ondie's bloodshot glare, regretting it instantly.  There was no pain in the older girl's eyes, no betrayal or tears.  There was only hate, a hate married to the worst sort of rage imaginable.  It was then that the younger sibling knew that what she was seeing was not Ondie.  It was the devil."

There, I think that's a bit more dramatic.  That's the way a madman should be portrayed, as someone outside of themselves.  Thing is, a lot of authors have trouble with something I call "dwell".  Dwell is basically where you take an emotion and just dwell on it, expounding it and making the emotion come closer to the reader.  Too much dwell can be bad, but I've found that most often it's the opposite problem that occurs.

Okay, so let's start at the beginning.  This story starts off more or less following Ruth, the mother of these two girls.  Once Ruth's mother dies (in the most cliched way possible), the story sort of goes on to tell, not show (bad, bad, bad!) exactly why Ruth's marriage goes south -- her daugher Ondie shows signs of the disorder and the time this consumes puts a strain on Ruth's marriage to Kenny.  Then it goes on a continuous loop of being focused on Ondie, Serita, and Ruth.  You can really tell that this author is far too feminist for her and her readers' good.  I guess the story sorta runs around Ondie.  At one point the story is told a little bit through Dexter's parents, but since these people have no real plot importance, she really shouldn't have bothered. 

It's okay to have the perspective jump a bit to show what other characters are thinking, but in the end it's best to keep your story being seen through the eyes of one character or two to four characters whose story is interwoven.  I dunno, maybe if this story had some sort of united theme, then the jumpy perspective would be okay.  There's just no themes to this book.  Overall, it's just like coming in to work and listening to your friend gossip about a coworker and her family's mental history, and just about as well told.

Let's get some more into those negative points.  This story had no real characterization mainly because it pretty much refused to make characters reveal anything deep going on in their heads.  You can tell that the author thought of these as 3D people, but she really didn't bring the characters' depth into the story. 

For example, she says that Ondie's doctor, Dr. Mathis, was a nice guy, but you really don't get to see him do anything much of worth for Ondie.  His advice is flat, his descriptions lack emotion, and he doesn't do anything in the plot other than listen to Ondie and say hi to people. 

Maya, Ondie's daughter, is constantly being shuffled from daycare to Grandma Ruth's, to Dexter's, and then back to daycare.  You rarely get to see her do anything that makes her distinctive from other children.  She worked with paints a lot, so the author could have made her a good artist or something.  But no, Maya is merely another under five little girl, cute but only there to die dramatically and cause her mother no end of grief.  She's practically a redshirt.  Yeah, Maya dies in an accident just after Serita discovers that she's pregnant with Dexter's kid.  Harsh, no?

That's also an example of how Lewis really undercuts her own drama.  Maya is barely there and then she dies, leaving behind no impression of herself in the reader's mind other than a vague shadow of a two year old.  Also, one of the dramatic points of the story is that Ondie supposedly wants Dexter back.  However, early on she meets Paul, the hunky Jamaican guy.  In the other book, the one about the woman who rejects badly written novels, she explained that you're supposed to hold back your character's hope/good things/victories until the near end of the story.  I know one person who really should have listened....

Also, Ondie is the dang luckiest person in the world.  Her mom does everything she can to help her, she's got a dang hot Jamaican man to hang on to, Dexter doesn't press charges when she wrecks his jeep and knocks him down his steps, she manages to get out of a 90 day stint in a mental hospital without a hint of trouble, she keeps her job even after that, and Paul still stays with her throughout all her mental breakdowns.   Yawn.  Let me know when something interesting happens.  Well, they did have that small thing where Ondie thought Paul was cheating on her, but that passed quickly and without any real incident.

Honestly, this story could have been really good.  It could have been dramatic and told with intimate detail the plight of a mentally damaged person.  As is, it's a stupid soap opera where we have no clue what anyone is thinking at any time.  Ruth is obsessed with getting her girls to talk and work things out, but once Ondie smashes the cars and Serita has her baby, Serita gets so afraid that she pulls out a restraining order on Ondie.  Even then Ruth doesn't give up, and yet we are never really shown any true emotions about how Ruth feels.  She's just doing it for form's sake.

So yeah, lackluster plot in the sense that there is no real sense of accomplishment.  Only people just sleeping around without thinking about it and no one even bothering to tell anyone to have some moral standards.  It's all just a bunch of selfish people wanting what they want and never really considering how other people feel.  Ruth wants her girls to get along, Serita wants Ondie to leave her alone, Derrick wants to have a normal family, Kenny wants to defend his daughters (he does a terrible job), Derrick's parents want him to stay away from that family, and apparently Ondie wants Serita to suffer. 

Yeah, that's right.  At the end of the book, Serita starts suffering from postpartum depression, and this seems to lead her down a path that could possibly be schizoassociative disorder.  At this point, and only at this point, does Ondie finally calm down.  She had a boyfriend that could only exist in a book, a good job, and she managed to avoid most of the serious consequences of her actions. 

But no, these don't sway her any.  She doesn't calm down at all until Serita is put under mental examination by Derrick.  In fact, this makes her so happy that she tells Dr. Mathis that "the beast that she can't control" is gone.  She finally decides to leave well enough alone and stop aggravating an already bad situation.  If she could have done this before she smashed up Derrick's and Serita's cars, then she would have been spared a lot. 

That is insanely stupid.  That's like saying you can only heal once you get revenge or feel justified.  Was that the dang theme of this book?  A little thing called self-control would have stopped all this nonsense from occuring.  Heck, it's making me thing that this disorder is an emotional disease, caused by stress or something.  I dunno, like the sins of the fathers passing to the the sons...or mothers to daughters, as the case may be. 

In any case, it was not worth staying up late to read this nonsense.  No real madness, no real plot, no real themes, and a seriously underdeveloped writer. Next!

Music You've Probably Never Heard -- Andy Hunter

Hey y'all, it's time for another session of Music You've Probably Never Heard.

Now, I like techno. That should be abundantly clear to anyone who's read my blog. Thing is, a lot of techno seems to be repetitive and all about the artist rather than about making good music. It's a modern thing. Back in the 90s, particularly the first half, is the glory period of the genre. Nowadays everybody's remixing everybody's songs, which is why there's forty million inane remixes of the same classic song, and only rarely are these remixes actually worth it. In all this nonsense and bullcrap, I present to you an artist that's actually making new stuff. And this new stuff is good.

His name is Andy Hunter, and he's a DJ from Britain. This guy was introduced to me by a friend of mine when we were driving in the car to a friend's house. This dude is worth a listen, particularly if you're not into the darkest stuff like I am. He concentrates on making stuff that is artistic and yet listenable, and beautiful with or without lyrics. He's hard to classify, as some of his stuff is more dramatic and others are trancier. Still others are just fun dance stuff. I'd call this guy a producer of modern electro pop or electro dance. General house, at least.

Let's kick this off with a good one, shall we?

Come On: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGYjxiGsy8g

Come On is a great song. The beginning is very dramatic, but it quickly jumps into a pulsing beat that's highly energizing. This is not a song you can just listen to for five seconds and move on. If you do, you lose out. This song is not static. You really just need to get this music playing as you're going down the road or messing on the computer, or biking. Good stuff, good stuff.

You want a song with lyrics? Pssht, who needs lyrics? What, really? Well, okay then.

Stars: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCxMoeEJexU

Yeah, normally I don't require lyrics in what I listen to (or lyrics that I understand), but heck, these rock. Or they would if they were less chill. Now, this song is very mellow, very poetic, and if you like to relax to music, then this is your tune. It's perfect for being out at night and just cruising in your car. Heck, I think most of Andy's stuff is good car trip material. Better get it on iTunes or somethin', because you won't regret it.

Lifeline: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHIGBKUiR2k

One of the things I really like about Andy Hunter is that he is unapologetically Christian. He's not there to get all up in your face, but at the same time he's not going to fudge about his beliefs. We all really need the things that only God can bring, and that's what this song is about. It starts off kinda mellow, but then it starts jumping and kicking, being all awesome and stuff. This is my favorite, okay, no second favorite Andy Hunter song. It's just so much dang fun.

Open My Eyes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKAwWQjLew0

This song is really pulsing, really awesome. It's not as good as Lifelight, I think, but it's not bad at all. It's fun stuff!

Sapphire: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=opPTElqesQI

You are legally required to listen to this song. No, really. Sapphire is one of the pwnest things I have ever heard in my life, and it is the pwnest of the pwn. It's a very story-esque piece, telling a story without words. Stop what you're doing right now and click the dang link above. It is your duty! It has this really awesome old-fashioned feel to the music...definitely my favorite.

Let's change up this feel with another favorite of mine.

System Error: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIRYIo4D3Dw

This song doesn't have but two words as its lyrics, and it doesn't need any more. This song just rocks out, is totally weird, and totally uplifting in a weird rock/tech sort of way.

You know what a really good addition to techno is? Or electronic music in general? Black people. EDM and black people is like chocolate and caramel: awesome together. Chicago House is a great genre, for example, because it's all soulful and not pretentious. One of my favorite kinds of songs to hear is black folk songs from like the 1800s (or at least sound like that) done all up in techno. Huh, I really should do an entry about black people in music at some point. Sounds like a good idea for February.

Anyway, for right now, Andy Hunter has done a song sort of in this area, or at least has a really soulful singer. Honestly, it's songs like these that make Andy hard to classify. Check out this song. It really has nothing to do with the others, but it's still good.

Miracle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra1wx8jlWqA

Okay, here's another odd one, very meditative and spiritual. This song is deeper than anything I've ever posted, and is really for getting closer to God. Listening to this just makes you want to be quiet and listen. It really feels me with a sense of humility. A lot of trance tries to pretend that it's spiritual, but it's really that cheap knock-off spirit crap that basically lends credence to every spiritual thing out there. Well, I got news for you, peeps: not all spiritual is alike, and not all of it is good. This song, however, is. So listen to it, why don't you? Lift your hands and open your heart, this stuff is for real.

Translucent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2hs3TXH7ey4

This next song, Technicolor, is another reason why Andy is so dang hard to put in a set musical genre. Andy Hunter just pwns. This song just is weird as crap in the beginning, then gets into a synthpop/black gospel groove. Quintessential party groove right there. Pretentious people, leave your drama behind.

Technicolor: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd-2v5izhxQ

Let's finish this entry off with some weird techno mess, shall we? This next song is some crazy mess that is all out party. It leans a little more towards techno, but technically speaking it's still house music. This is called Radiate. It's all about the party, all about movement. You just have to check this out.

Radiate: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gj26p8J6ofQ

I seriously hope Andy Hunter gets more popular. He deserves it. So much pop crap today sounds all the same like it all came out of a cookie cutter. All the genres are suffering from stagnation these days, mostly because music is being more about the artists than it is about people. Okay PSA to all artists out there, underground or glitzy pop. Music is best when it's all about the person listening, not about how great the artist is. People want songs they can connect to, not crap about how much money the artist has, or the latest boring trite the artist has to say.

So that's why Andy Hunter's line of work is so refreshing. It doesn't sound like all the pop nonsense that's out there, and it doesn't even have to stray into the darker, more industrial side of techno to do so. See, good music can be both relaxing and not boring crooners singing boring things to boring tunes.

Crap We Read at School

I was thinking the other day about the people who say we shouldn't read The Adventures of Huck Finn in school because it's racist or something. I don't think it is. I mean, the Jim character, a black guy, is a total weirdo, but that's how I always took it: he was weird and not black people in general. If the book claimed that all black people were like that, then I see what they would mean, but it's not like that. There are plenty of other weirdos besides.

This book wasn't the best thing ever and I preferred The Adventures of Tom Sawyer to it. I didn't like it a lot because it was really depressing at parts. I mean, you have a runaway slave struggling to get away and free his family too, Huck's dad shows up and pretty much kidnaps him in the attempt to steal his money, the "king" and the "duke" try to con a family who has suffered the recent death of important family members, those two get tarred and feathered, Jim gets captured again, and the kindly widow dies. the book ends on a mildly happy note with Jim being free and Huck being taken in by some of Tom's relatives, yet the story isn't over for Jim and Huck doesn't want to be civilized. This just wasn't the fun ride that Tom's story was, which was kind of surprising considering it was about two guys having adventures as they raft down a river.

So yeah, a sad book. And that's when I start thinking about all the other crap that they made us read in school. Each title is a work of more or less depressing crap. Huck Finn is literally the best book that we had to read there, unless you count Shakespeare. I'm not surprised that a lot of the kids didn't bother reading this stuff.

Let's see, there's The "Great" Gatsby. UGH. That had to be the worst crap they forced us to get through. Oh man was it ever lame. It was basically a story of how this dude was cheating on his wife with this chick, but it was cool because that chick had her on guy on the side. And apparently it's a mortal sin to be a poor man, or else you just can't ever get married. Seriously, this one woman cheated on her husband because he wasn't rich, and this other chick would only sleep around with the narrator, a middle class guy, and nothing more. In the end the two people who most deserve to be punched in the face get off scot-free. Pardon me sir, but could you spare a Scot or two? There's a couple that needs  punching. Fresh out? Darn.

Another stupid story was The Glass Menagerie, a weird little story about a normal family that for some reason is completely emo. I don't remember much of it, but really, there's no need. It was one of those stories with no real point to it. All I know is that it was sad and the brother broke the girl's glass animals. Yawn.

Let's see, another one was called something like A Doll's House or Doll House or some crap by Henrik Ibsen. This one didn't make me want to shoot myself, but it was still pretty lame. It was basically about a couple who were becoming distant, and then the wife realizes she never really understood her husband so she leaves him. But don't worry, it's okay because the dude is selfish and likes embroidery better than knitting. Sarcasm is so hard to write. I mean, I understand if you leave a jerk husband, but this guy wasn't that bad. What made it worse is that they had children already, and this lady just decides she's going to leave just like that because the children are just dolls she plays with in her doll house. The story ends on her departure, and the husband, a little tipsy, proclaims that he understands something. Depressing. Okay, maybe this book does make me want to shoot myself.

We had to read a couple fiction books set in Africa, and I think now that I prefer nonfiction from Africa, unless they're African legends. Or maybe the schools just pick out meh books and decide that they're classics. Cry, the Beloved Country was okay. Still depressing though. It's about the poverty and such in Johannesburg, and there's this pastor who lives out in the country. He was nice. One of the things he did in Johannesburg was try to rescue this one girl who had become a prostitute, but as he provides a way out, the girl runs away and returns to that life. The pastor goes home and nothing really changes. The story makes no progress, and you're left wondering why you bothered reading it. The best part of it was when they taught some Afrikaans words. That was cool.

On the other hand, Things Fall Apart was just weird. I mean, the story was okay and not disinteresting, but the title threw me off. How can things fall apart when they were never together in the first place? It starts off with this guy, Okonkwo, in an African tribe living the normal tribal life, but he's a total jerk. First, he steals a guy's wife (he has a total of 3 in the book), and then when one of his wives angers him, he shoots at her. He misses, but still. Also, since someone from another tribe murdered one of their tribe's people, Okonkwo takes in a boy from this tribe and practically raises him as his own, until the day when the leaders in the tribe decide to finally kill the boy. This is all the first part of the story. 

The second part is when white people start to arrive, and both good and bad things happen. There's basically no overall change. Things are different, but they don't fall apart. Okonkwo was always worried about his son Nwoye, and in the second part the boy becomes a Christian, further distancing himself from his non-understanding father. Okonkwo ends up hanging himself, but this feels very needless as Okonkwo's stubbornness is the cause of his own death - the suicide was completely unnecessary. If things fell apart for him, it was merely because he was far too proud. But again, it's depressing. Sheesh, can't the good guy win at something? Maybe learn to adapt?

And who can forget Arthur Miller's The Crucible? Me, or so I wish. It's the spiced up version of the Salem witch trials, in which any character we could possibly care about dies, and another guilty party gets away. The worst part about this story is that it was written as a metaphor for the Communist scare in Hollywood. It didn't go anything like the Salem witch trials! There were real Communists in Hollywood, trying to take over and create a Hollywood that hates America (oh wow, their scheme must have worked). They intimidated members of the Screen Actors Guild, and even threatened to throw acid in Ronald Reagan's face, as he was the president of the SAG at the time. I am full of rage at this blatant propaganda. And why don't I have any Scots?!

Another book that was okay and yet depressing was Their Eyes Were Watching God. The title was very misleading. It's about a biracial African American woman's life and misadventures in love. Janie Mae marries a dude on her mother's advice, only he turns out to be a jerk. So she runs off with this wealthy guy, who also turns out to be a jerk. But he dies. So Janie Mae finally finds true love in a poor but loving man, and marries him. And then there's this flood and he gets rabies and has to be shot. Yeah. The only point where they happen to be watching God is when the flood is going on. For the rest of the book, the characters ignore any above influence and do as they please. This is another one of those books where you wonder why you bothered. Unless you like tragic romance, I guess.

So we did learn a bit of Shakespeare, and unfortunately that's really the only classical literature we got into. Did we get to look at any of the comedies? Nope! Romeo and Juliet and Macbeth were the Shakespeare we read. I wish we had done more. I never really could sift through the Shakespearean vocabulary, and reading these in class were a lot of fun, despite that I could never understand them on my own. And I still can't. But that's another two depressing tragedies on the list. Oh wait, I think we did Hamlet too.

So the last I can remember at the moment is Jane Eyre, the story of a girl who was raised for a few years by an abusive aunt and then sent off to an oppressive school only to become a teacher there. She becomes a governness for a man, Rochester, in an estate, who has lived a nuts life and lost to death a lot of his family (as it was with Jane). They finally fall in love, but then Jane find out that he's married to an insane woman, and she's not comfortable marrying him if he's still already married. She runs away and works with this missionary dude and his associates for a while. The missionary wants to marry her before they go off on a missions trip, but Jane objects because she doesn't love him. Feeling that Rochester needs her, Janes goes back and finds out that his crazy wife burned down the house. Rochester now is missing an arm and is blind, but they are able to get married. Yeah. The whole book is soaked in a soggy bog of depression and general state of unhappiness until the very end, when Rochester recovers enough of his sight to see their son. I had intended to read this book again, but after looking at the spark notes, no. Ain't no way.

I'm starting to like Things Fall Apart better. Compared to some of these others...

Look at that. Every single book we were forced to read in school is depressing. Each of them deal with the struggles of people not against a clear enemy, but against things that should be on their side: their parents, other family, religion, their spouse, their culture, whatever. All of their victories are stained by tragedy, and none of the books leave you with a sense of uplifting. They have no delight, no eucatastrophe (but plenty of the opposite), no strength of character, no boldness and no bravery. These books simply cannot be enjoyed (Shakespeare aside) in anything but a literary sense - in that you feel that you are cultured and smarter for having read them.

I like lists! The things these books have in common:

- rebellion against some standard

- lots of sadness

- no clear enemy to fight directly to solve your problems

- self-righteous main characters

Ask yourself: why did the schools choose these books for your children to read? What are they trying to teach your children? To not read, apparently. And it's working.

Please don't take away Huck Finn! It's the best book on this dang list -- there's no way the schools would let you read something as imaginative as Tom Sawyer. Thank God for Shakespeare. He's so classical that he has to be read, and he's a break in the trite "modern literature" age. Ah, I need me a good C.S. Lewis book right about now. Not only is he clever, interesting, and not too afraid of cultural taboos to tell the truth about modernism, but he's plain entertaining. Give me some characters with some flaws. Delicious flaws and bad habits! Not sordid main characters that think they know everything about morality and say "screw you if you disagree"!

So, if you read this, please put down an author or book title that doesn't stink. I'd like to read something good please. Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go find some Scots now.

Music You've Probably Never Heard -- Gaelic Storm

Hey y'all!  Let's listen to some music.

Okay, so I'm a Irish person by ethnicity, and there are a lot of things I love about Irish styles.  Generally Irish people have three distinctive style types: singing very sad songs about real life, singing songs with harsh, mean, or violent lyrics with an extremely upbeat tune, and finally singing ridiculously happy songs about things that are not even possible.  The first song I ever heard by this band was called Johnny Tarr, and it falls into the last category.  It follows the story of a "hard drinking son of a preacher" and his ability to drink bartenders out of stock.  Honestly, this is the kind of song you can just listen to over and over again and enjoy it every time.  You just have to learn the lyrics and sing along!

Johnny Tarr: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlqdqNGhJaA

This song was made by Gaelic Storm, and I just had to get more of their stuff after I heard this song.  I swear that this band is the most addictive thing ever!  Why you've never heard of these guys is beyond me.  I mean, I hang out in hardcore rave city, and I'm all about these guys.  You don't even have to be Irish to love them.  You'll wish you were though.

Okay, so I'm going to review their album Special Reserve, because I own it.  Or I would if I could find the darn cd.  I'm just lucky I copied most of it on my computer before I lost the darn thing.  Remember, don't just listen to two seconds of these and then skip away.  Really play these songs and listen to the whole thing.  That's the real pleasure of them.

Track one is a traditional Irish song, Courtin' in the Kitchen.  I liked it okay, it's a bit cheesy for me, but it's fun nonetheless.  I'm sorry I couldn't find a normal version of it, but here's a link to a live performance.  They didn't have a normal version on youtube.

Courtin' in the Kitchen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jIYj4pIW18

Johnny Tarr is next, and if you don't like this song then you are the most pretentious person in existence, I hope you realize.  

Next is The Schooner Lake Set, a lyricless piece that was done for a movie.  There's no video for it on youtube, I'm sorry to say, but it's a great song that's filled with bagpipes and drums and great to just listen to while you...I dunno, clean the house or write a book or something.  Fun Irish stuff.

The Leaving of Liverpool and Drink the Night Away are actually two fairly similar songs in mood and theme.  The Leaving of Liverpool is about an Irishman leaving for America to gain fortune, leaving his love behind for the time being.  It's one of those songs that's sad, but with an upbeat tune.  It's very nice.  I actually like Drink the Night Away, as more of the sadness shows through its merry beat.  The bridge is especially dramatic, and it makes me happy.  It's a very contented song despite itself, and a lot of fun as it talks about going off to make more money and a fortune, though this one seems to be more about leaving friends than a specific love.

The Leaving of Liverpool: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4wEjAtPaQA

Drink the Night Away: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3n1ZXdKQrQ

After Hours at McGann's is another lyricless piece, one that's fun and merry.  It's more casual than the Schooner Lake Set, but it's still got lots of fun too it.  Again, youtube is being aggravating.  Grr.  Come on people.

Swimmin' in the Sea is actually a song I don't like.  The tune and singing wail mournfully, and it's something I really hate. It's actually sort of a sweet song about the singer's childhood, and listening to it again...well, it's not quite as bad as I thought. I'm still not really into it, but look at it and see if you like it.

Swimmin' in the Sea: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gz0mx-6nG8E

This next song is the most addictive song on this dang cd.  I let my friend listen to this, and he couldn't get over how fun it was.  It's the story of a man whose life went completely wrong, either by a woman or alcohol.  And that's the best part of this song, as it doesn't say which one is the real culprit but poetically equates wayward women to booze.  It's hilarious.  Match that with a fun beat, and it's one of the greatest songs I've ever heard. It has a long intro, but the lyrics are well worth the wait.

Nancy Whiskey: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0TBwFLW4GY

She was the Prize slows down the cd and get sentimental.  It's a really sweet song about a man and his true love, and it almost makes me cry.  It's very sweet.  Take a listen, y'all.

She was the Prize: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0O2cH_PnMc

Johnny Jump Up/Morrison's Jig is another powerhouse of the disc.  Plain and simply, it rocks.  It's a song about an impossible cider that does a multiplicity of hilarious things.  You're gonna love this one. Gah, I have so many memories of my boyfriend singing this terribly off-tune.  

Johnny Jump Up/Morrison's Jig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u56R_qHTLVI

Next is Titanic Set.  That's right, these guys were in Titanic.  I bet you forgot all about them if you saw that movie, didn't you?  This is a pretty good song, very peppy and nice.  Feels like two songs in one.

Titanic Set: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LT3XH1ikHk

Ah, now this song is fun.  It's Tell Me Ma, a fun song about men flirting with a pretty girl.  It's very silly, but you've just got to hear it.  Fun as mess.

Tell Me Ma: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qlx9tkVpyxI

This album finishes up with Beggarman, the most hyper and lyrically tangled up of the bunch. You've really got to be hardcore to keep up with all these words.  It's a very fast song about the life of a beggar who makes his own life and enjoys every bit of it, just as you'll do with this song.

Beggarman: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RkCQKpyllU

Before I leave off, I want to include a song that isn't on this album, but I just heard about and really want to share with you.  It's honestly the funniest thing ever.  It tells the true story of the time the lead singer of this band literally punched Russell Crowe in the face.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xtVipOjTEE

Well, they've done a lot of songs over the years, but I'll let you find more of them.  They are a very silly, fun band, one of the most fun you'll ever encounter. 

Nitpickery -- Mega Man movie review

Hey y'all. I know I said I was going to review Disney princess movies, but for my lack of ownership of them (and my desire to not steal) I'm going to have to delay this for a bit. Besides, there are other things I want to review because they are interesting to me. I'm going to be reviewing a fan film, done entirely out by non-professionals, in particular Eddie LeBraun, the director. They actually did a pretty good job for what they had, though I'm going to nitpick them anyway, because that's what I do. Overthinking is fun! Yay!

Okay, so this film is called Mega Man. I kept thinking that "Get Equipped" was part of the title, but that's just the tagline. Anyway, it's basically a retelling of the plot of the first Mega Man game on the original NES. Man those were the days. I miss 'em. I'm just old enough to barely remember a commercial for the Game Genie that actually came on TV years ago. Anybody remember that? Naturally with my love of original video games (it hasn't been long enough for them to be retro!), I just had to see this film. I'm kinda shocked how good aspects of it are. I think we're going to see more of LeBraun as time goes by.

So the story of the movie goes thusly: Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are genius robotics scientists that have just developed a line of robot masters that will perform duties to make life easier for humans. After Dr. Wily is expelled from the project, Dr. Light and his robot "daughter" Roll proceed to build another robot, this one called Rock. Jealous of Light's fame and accolades, Dr. Wily steals the robot masters and uses them to devastate Fujiwara City. Rock decides to risk his life and become Mega Man, a fighter robot capable of taking down Wily and putting an end to the terror. He his helped from time to time by the mysterious Blues (AKA Proto Man) who is Dr. Light's first creation, a robot that ran away from the lab to seek his own fate.

This movie is actually visually effective for something not on a big budget. The cinematics of it are great, and the camera angles do their best to show off the places where these are filmed. I'm pretty sure that it was filmed in New York, but the movie calls it Fujiwara City. In the games it was Monstropolis, but whatever. The name change isn't a big deal. S'all good. It's not like Monstropolis is all that great a name anyway.

So, yeah, the way it was filmed was definitely the best part of this film. Being a fan film, they simply didn't have the budget to make something too spectacular, as far as fight scenes and costuming went. Also, they couldn't show anything blowing up, because naturally this was filmed in a city and you can't blow up public property. Not without getting arrested, anyway. So, there's no damage to the city from the rampaging masters, a column of smoke looks very solid, and trying to make Cut Man's hand blades fly out convincingly makes creative battles take a hit.

The movie opens up with Dr. Light doing a check up on Roll right before a reporter is due to show up and put Dr. Light and his new robot masters on television to gain exposure and begin to sell them commercially. I have a bit of a problem with this scene: why is Dr. Light letting a reporter into his lab when this is also his house? That's a security compromise, to say the least. Tyler Perry filmed Diary of a Mad Black Woman partially at his house, and he eventually had to move because people knew what his house looked like and wouldn't leave him alone. I'm just saying, it's probably better for Dr. Light to pick a warehouse or some neutral site to display his creations.

Also, the camera (the one the reporter's camera man is holding) is pretty close to the reporter's face at one part. You can't imagine he's getting a good shot. Even worse is when the reporter is signing off, and the camera, instead of letting the robots be in the background (which any reporter would want to showcase), lets a very moody Wily be very clearly on camera and brood. I know that LeBraun probably wanted to show Wily's jealously, but there are other ways to go about it.

Before I get too much further, let's talk about the acting job of the first actors to come on. The reporter and camera man were fine in acting, though I felt the reporter was slightly too cheesily done. Decent enough. Can't complain. The real gem of the first part, and indeed all of the movie, is Jeanie Tse as Roll. She's friggin' perfect. She's not particularly how I view Roll is, but she's even better. Jeanie is perfect in the part of playing a robot who is silly, sweet, and a bit too abrupt to be human. The slight awkwardness and total sugar innocence Tse brings to this character really brings about the idea of what Roll always was supposed to be in the games. In the Mega Man universe there's always been a thematic conflict between fighting wars and innocence, and this Roll stands perfectly on the side of innocence. She doesn't understand evil, and doesn't try.

Some people who watched this commented that Roll was annoying, but they're wrong. I'm calling it like it is. Any annoyance she has is like C3P0's in Star Wars: perfectly fitting for the realm in which it's portrayed. Certain people are probably too sensitive to that kind of thing, or maybe they just have a tag-along sister like Roll at home.

Ah, now the actors who played Dr. Light and Dr. Wily are Edward X. Young and Dave Maulbeck, respectively. These two characters side by side...okay, let's do this one at a time.  This is going to take some explaining.

Wily was fairly terrible, at least at first. A lot of people seemed to think that he stole the movie in the same sense that the Joker stole the movie The Dark Knight, and quite frankly it makes me ashamed that people have such an opinion of this Wily. He didn't do a great job. Then again, I haven't seen The Dark Knight, so whatever.

My criticism of this movie's Wily goes like this: he's pretty one-note. You're almost always seeing him through close-ups of his perpetually sweaty face (come on, makeup people) and he's always bickering about how important he is or how badly he's being treated. It's really annoying. Can't we see him chill for a minute and...I dunno, make a hot dog or do a crossword puzzle or something? Releasing the tension once in a while would help.

The way I always viewed Wily in the games was that he was always determined, and always ready to stack circumstances to make him look smarter.  I mean, come on, this guy has been defeated by Mega Man like ten times already without showing sign that he'll ever give up. He's got to be the most arrogant and gleefully evil baddie ever. Seeing Maulbeck whine and complain for the first two thirds of the movie was annoying. Wily might whine, but he's never unable to compliment himself and enjoy his intelligence. This is the Wily we get to see the last half hour of the film, one who is confident and boastful until the very last second. That I appreciated.

Also, his accent was very annoying. I think they were trying to go for something Germanic, but it really came across as a partly Russian accent, and a bad one at that. He's too deliberate in his constant turning of Ws into Vs. Gah. It was really distracting. I really hope they weren't trying to for a Russian accent, because that just doesn't seem like Wily, and if LeBraun wanted to do a sequel with the Russian Dr. Cossack, it just wouldn't fit right.

As far as looks go, I was pretty annoyed at first that Wily wasn't portrayed by a bald man. After a while, I let it go. It wasn't important for the character to look note for note like the game version, and this one wasn't too bad, other than being perpetually sweaty and having hair look like it was painted. I kinda liked it in the end. However, his looks, satisfactory as they were, created a reality conflict with the looks of Ed Young.

Let me explain. Maulbeck had a goofy, parodiacal appearance and over-emotive acting. Dr. Light's actor was the exact opposite: he was played by a guy who actually was older, and looked genuine rather than being some guy in a costume. I absolutely adored how LeBraun actually found a guy who could pull off the Dr. Light style, but this guy's acting had the exact opposite problem as Maulbeck's. He was very dull sounding, and it rarely felt like any of the serious topics he spoke of had any real emotional connection to him. He rambled on in the same mild tone without really making me believe he cared about anything going on.

It would have helped if he added more physical movement to his acting. Little things, like sighing, or rubbing his head, or scratching his ear, or fiddling with some technological whatnot. Maybe if he's upset he can slam a screwdriver down on a table. When he moved like this (very rarely in the film) it was a far more believable performance.

So, when you put these actors side by side, it really looks weird. Young looks very real and serious, while Maulbeck looks goofy and trying to make people laugh. It's just impossible to take this work seriously when both are side by side. It's like putting a clown in a movie where intense jurors are trying to decide if a man is guilty of murder. For the most part, I blame Maulbeck (or the way Dr. Wily was written) because this film more or less tried to have a serious tone about robots trying to understand humanity. Alternatively, LeBraun could have gone a more silly route and thus Maulbeck would have fit in better, but as is Wily wasn't a good villain. I mean, sure he's supposed to be an angry, jealous, emotional guy, but at the same time this dude is dangerous. It's very difficult for me to take whiners seriously. For most of this movie, I didn't feel the danger that should have been eminating from him. 

Let's move on. After the interview, Dr. Light takes Dr. Wily into his office and tells him that he's fired, thus ending their friendship (I'm going to cut out spoilers after this, but this isn't too huge a point, so don't worry). My problem with this is the excuse Dr. Light gives him: he wants to work on his new robot by himself. Well, he's just made a bunch of other robots, so why can't he just work on his robot by himself and let Dr. Wily handle making more commercial bots to supply the inevitable demand that his interview would bring? There are plenty of other reasons to fire Wily. Like his bad attitude and hygene. Or maybe Dr. Light already suspects that Dr. Wily is a looney. It's weird that we never see Dr. Light and Wily really being friends. I mean, Light put up with Wily for a reason.

Actually, y'know what? You don't actually have to make it so Dr. Wily was fired. You could have him just get pissed off really bad one day and just steal the robot masters with the access he has already. Maybe the new robot, Rock, will be so good at assisting Dr. Light that Dr. Wily just gets pissed off and starts blowing stuff up. I would have loved to see Wily interact with Rock before their fight against each other.

During the next part, Dr. Light works on Rock while Wily complains some more to his sentient AI computer Olga, played by Elizabeth Lee. Now she was a pretty good actress, and her accent, while still more Russian than German, actually sounded good. Too bad they don't really use her for anything. She's just kinda there for a couple of scenes and "poof", away she goes, never to be seen again. She has a couple of jokes, but overall her lack of a background or a future makes her pretty irrelevant.

Okay, this is a PSA to all people writing baddies: don't have them rant and rave about revenge and outdoing the good guys and then the good guys just forget all about it and get surprised when the baddie does something evil. In this movie it wasn't as bad as others, but still.

The scheme to make Fujiwara City suffer continues, and the six robot masters start causing mayhem. Rock chooses to upgrade into a fighter-bot and call himself Mega Man, because there is no one else to stop Dr. Wily.

Let me stop right there for a second. Okay, if a movie maker doesn't have the ability to make something show up in your movie, he shouldn't reference it. I'm talking about the lesser robots, like Sniper Joes and the like that you fight in the game on the way to the bosses. It's obvious this movie didn't have enough money to make complex lesser baddies, so they should have made the plot circle around their absense, not point it out glaringly. Ooh, I have an idea. If mindless robots were needed to imply the extent of Dr. Wily's control over the city, then combine the Sniper Joes and Mettools. Have people wearing all black, including masks, and then put a met helmet on them. Boom! There you go! They can be the generic baddies to spice up action scenes.  Maybe they have a shield, they definitely have guns, and you can call them Metool Joes.  Fans would appreciate something like that.

Jun Naito plays Rock. He does an okay job. He is fairly convincing of being a more or less innocent robot who just wants to help. I wish they had been less "Oh, I don't want to fight" and more "I'll do whatever it takes to save the day", because that's the real attitude of Mega Man in the game: dorky and naiively heroic. Not too big a problem, though, and I enjoyed his performance. Not great, but hey, he did the job.

Y'know, I really like how Rock, Roll, and Blues are all Asian people. Mega Man as a series comes from Japan, so naturally these people would be Japanese. It's a pleasant change, and you can really tell that casting was done with proper actors in mind, of those who were available. Some of the commenters said that Rock was boring, and I guess I see where they come from with that. He's pretty good during the earlier parts of the movie, but towards the end he gets really dull from trying to be cool. I guess it's easier for people to play awkward characters than cool ones. Like in the Matrix how Neo is far more interesting at the beginning of the movie than he is at the end.

We have Elec Man, Ice Man, and Fire Man as the actors with body armor on, and Cut Man, Guts Man, and Bomb Man are the digitally created masters. I liked the digital guys, but my problem with them was that their personalities weren't very clear cut. The Mega Man 1 remake Mega Man Powered Up gave these robot masters cheesy personalities, and for the most part LeBraun follows these to a more serious extent (Powered Up was some cheese, man), it just didn't seem like the digital guys weren't distinctive enough. It wasn't the acting so much as the writing. You can call Fire Man delusional, Ice Man schizoid, and Elec Man arrogant, but there's no real way to describe the others this plainly. Whatever. At least they looked awesome. I particularly like how Cut Man's design was upgraded to make him look more deadly.

The live action robot masters were awesome! Fire Man's looks were great, but I had a problem with him. They made him obsessed with justice and think that Wily was doing the right thing, but the problem with that is there's no real logical connection between blowing things up and justice. He could have really bolstered Wily's performance by having Fire Man say things about all people being appreciated for their genius or somesuch like that. As it was, his words sounded like ranting. The actor, Hugo Salazar Jr (awesome name!), did a good job with what he had to work with, and I like how much crazier than the other robots he was.

Ice Man! Wayne Chang! Wayne was a perfect pick. He was so cute, just like Ice Man, and he did a good job bringing to life the master. However, of all the robot masters ever designed, Ice Man should have been the easiest to costume. He wears a cute blue parka in the game, but not in the movie. Why not? He would have looked a lot more distinctive and sweet. Come on....please? For me?

Alan Fung as Elec Man to me was the second greatest acting job in the movie. He was magnificent, and I really believed him as the macho, arrogant bastard that Elec Man definitely is. I wish he could have had a greater role in the movie, like stealing something (spoiler: the designs for Rock to make Copy Robot) from Dr. Light. He was just too devious a baddie to die so soon. And he had great hair. LeBraun does a sequel to this movie, he needs to cast Alan Fung as Quick Man. And in the meantime, somebody needs to cast Alan Fung in something else, because he has acting gravitas.

My one problem with Elec Man is the way he died. Well, not the physical way, because that was pwn, but who did it. Spoiler alert, go skip ahead if you don't want to read this. Proto Man kills him. I know that Proto Man is supposed to help Mega Man out, but until Mega Man 9, Blues never actually assisted Mega in any actual fighting, and that's only if you count Proto Man's downloadable play mode as plot canon (I don't). Even worse, Elec Man, a very dangerous master in the game, isn't able to damage Proto Man at all. Proto Man is a prototype to the newer robots, so shouldn't he be weaker? Lame.

Also, this movie is about Rock going to fight the robot masters because nobody else can. This bit really shoots that in the foot because if Proto Man can do so without incurring damage to himself, what's the point? It's a huge letdown. In Mega Man 3, Proto Man's first game appearance, he actually fights against Mega Man because he doesn't trust him right away. Couldn't they have done something like that? It would have been really intruiging if Proto Man thought Rock was just a stupid hero automaton Dr. Light made to save everyone. Or heck, save that entire plotline for a sequel, and just have PM do a cameo or two just to watch Rock and see what's up. Another idea would be to have him actually work for Dr. Wily because for whatever reason he's tricked into trusting Dr. Wily more. Something.

Spoilers are done now.

Okay, so let's talk about Sung-Mo Cho, who played Proto Man. Most of my complaints for him are due to faulty writing, not acting. He did a good job being the mysterious and slightly self-righteous Proto Man, and I can tell I would have enjoyed him more but for plot awkwardness. I mean, come on, (spoiler!) his free will results from a power core error? That's like saying a clock gets free will because its batteries started leaking. There are better ways to say he has free will. And since clearly Rock and Roll have free will themselves (Rock's choice to be a hero was his own, Roll's choice to make pancakes instead of eggs was her own), it's pretty ridiculous that fixing the error would make him an automaton. There's better ways to make him run away from home.

Also, the problems between Proto Man and his estranged creator are potentially very complex. I feel that they are oversimplified in this movie, and they more or less get resolved in the end. Come on, let some bitterness drag on a while for intruigue's sake! Instead Proto Man seems to be handled in the exact way to prevent LeBraun from having good drama for a sequel. Honestly, the subplot of Dr. Light's wife was fairly poorly done, and cutting out Proto Man would have given both it and Rock some time to develop. Of course, that sort of does tie LeBraun down to a sequel, and he'll probably want to change it up at some point. Bah, nobody ever does anything for the Mega Man 5 robots...they're my favorite...wah. Whine whine, complain complain.

Okay, so throughout the action of this movie, there are times when the action just slows to a crawl and Dr. Light gets out needless explosition. First of all, you'd be surprised how good a work is when it's trimmed down, and secondly, it's always better to show rather than tell. It feels like nobody can ask Dr. Light anything without him giving a long winded answer. And when Mega Man finally defeats the robot masters, the plot starts really kicking, only to be slammed in the face with how the fight with the yellow devil ends. Honestly, that plot point needed to be cut out entirely. Use the time on it to extend the fight with yellow devil and make it look awesome.

You know, in this Wily complains that Dr. Light isn't the only one who's lost someone. It would have been really interesting to find out that Olga was really Wily's dead sister that Wily put into a computer to save her life. Or maybe just have him muse over someone really important to him that died or left him, or something. That would have been cool. Not really necessary, but cool.

I really love Wily's freak out session when he finally loses at the end. It combines the hilarity of Wily begging for his life like in the games with the seriousness of Wily's real hurt from his lifelong rejection.

Okay, so to sum it all up, there are several things good and bad about this movie, but overall, it feels very much like the fanfiction I read over at fanfiction.net. It's an origin story for Mega Man, it doesn't go too far from the game's bounds and give it more creativity, and the plot feels clunky whenever it has to transition from one scene to the next. Writers will be very inspired for certain moments of a story they want to write, but in between those they have to figure out how they're going to make everything work.

This may have been a low budget film, but good writing costs only time, not money. The dialogue itself was fairly good, other than Dr. Light being forced to be Captain Exposition, Wily not being able to do anything but whine for the first hour, and Fire Man's ranting. If proper plot planning had been done, then much of the film's problems could have been avoided. As a writer, I see things like this and wonder how they happen. Writing alone would have turned this film around and made it much better. Costuming and a better computer budget would have helped, but not to this extent.

This film is fairly good if you are a fan, but for those of you who aren't into Mega Man or don't know what it is, it's a fairly standard action movie with a few cute moments. Heck, I like it despite all of its flaws. It's fun, silly, and in certain ways better than Hollywood could do. I look at this movie and see a great big wad of potential. Go to megamanfilm.com and click the link to check it out.