For Real Friday: In Defense of Disney

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My daughter turned six last month and we went to Disneyland for her birthday. I love Disney, she loves Disney, we are a Disney family. I know disney isn’t perfect, but frankly, I’m getting tired of hearing about how letting my daughter look up to princesses is going to make her weak, needy, entitled, or obsessed with princesses.

First of all, my daughter is a modern six year old. Yes, she loves princesses but she also loves Toothless and Darth Vader. But even if she didn’t I wouldn’t be worried about her looking up to Disney characters, and here’s why.

These are the Disney princesses and notable female characters (not from sequels or minor characters. I’m also not counting Studio Ghibli, Marvel, or Star Wars because Disney only recently acquired them) that have existed in her lifetime.

All  of these women made things happen. They weren’t passive. They all exhibited bravery, intelligence, a good work ethic, and all kinds of positive character traits for a young girl to model herself after. They all have flaws, yes, but overall not horrible female role models. And they aren’t cookie cutters of each other when it comes to being feminine or tough or having identical caring and sweet attitudes.

But, yes, they have flaws. I don’t just mean character flaws, I mean there are some flaws in the choices that were made when constructing these characters. And since these movies were made for today’s children, by all means pick them apart for the messages they send. It’s important to do so because there’s always room for improvement.

I turned 29 last month. This set of princesses and notable characters came out between my birth and Bella’s.


I had an awesome childhood.A bit more passive, but for the most part, strong, brave female characters who get stuff done. Less so with Belle, Ariel, and Jenny, but they were created REALLY early in my lifetime. These can be picked apart for content because they are new enough in terms of messages sent, but with the fact that many of them are over 20 years old in kind. So yes, when we watch these movies, I’ll pause and talk to Bella about misconceptions and foolish choices.

My mom is 56. The third set of princesses and notable female characters came out when my mom was a little girl.

 

Aurora is pretty passive as are the vast majority of these characters. But can we maybe agree that a princess intended for the audience my mother belonged to as an infant maybe won’t hold up to the feminist values of today? Why would a princess intended for an audience in 1959 meet today’s standards of ANYTHING? When Bella watches these movies, we have LONG talks about how princesses can do anything princes can, but that not everyone is like Rapunzel or Tiana. Some people are more passive and that’s okay to. They still deserve to live.

My Grandmother is 80. The fourth set of pictures is from my grandmother’s pre-kid lifetime. Snow White came out when she was four. 1937.

We talk a lot about manners and being nice when Bella manages to sit through one of these movies. We watch the 2003 Peter Pan instead of the Disney one, we talk about how Cinderella was brave because she survived a really negative situation with grace. When she’s older we’ll talk a bit more about how Cinderella lived through some pretty serious emotional abuse and as one awesome blogger pointed out, sometimes being strong is just surviving until you can get out of a really bad situation. We watched Once Upon a Time in Wonderland and talked about how Alice grew up and kept her curiosity and wonder. And we haven’t made it through Lady and the Tramp because it’s in the vault and I honestly don’t remember it, but I bet there’s a dialogue we can have.

Look, I get that Cinderella, Aurora, and Snow White are on every piece of disney merchandise, but every time I hear someone start in on how horrible disney princesses are as feminist role models and that person starts talking about those three, I feel like hitting my head against a wall. 1937. Times have changed a bit since then. Compare Rapunzel to Snow White and you’re going to see a massive difference. I couldn’t even sit through Snow White as a kid. My daughter definitely won’t. Again, there are some issues with disney princesses, but can we stick to the ones intended for kids born this decade to pull those examples from since we’re talking about their impact on children?
That whole “Cinderella ate My daughter” thing drives me nuts because seriously, why would you expect a princess created in 1950 to teach your daughter anything other than the ideals of 1950?! Just have a dialogue with your kids and stop expecting Disney to do it for you. If you honestly can’t see SOMETHING in each of these women to hold up as a positive attribute, that’s a real problem because it’s not like any of these characters are bad people.

Also, why don’t we hold boy characters to the same standards? “Most girls aren’t princesses.” Yeah, most boys aren’t written by radioactive spiders, but you know, at least princesses EXIST. “They just wait around for their princes to save them.” Not since the 50’s. “They all revolve around relationships.” So does life, but okay, name me a super hero who doesn’t have a girlfriend/or a tortured backstory completely defining his character that involves a girlfriend. “They’re pretty.” And every super hero is hot and strong, or a hot nerd. But we don’t pick them apart. “They’re too girly.” No. First of all, no they aren’t. Not even in my grandmother’s generation were the princesses/female characters uniformly anything. But secondly, what is wrong with girly? I’m girly. My daughter’s girly. Girly is a spectrum. The existence of girly shouldn’t offend us, being limited to only being “girly” should.

Super heroes are allowed to exist without constant criticism. What does it say to our girls that their heroes are constantly being thrown under the bus for being too girly while their male counterparts are never called into question? What does it say to our BOYS that female protagonists are constantly being criticized while their heroes actions and attributes are never called into question.

 

Writing on Wednesday: Fairy Tale Reboots

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Another panel I recently attended was ‘Once Upon A(nother) Time: Fairy Tales Retold.  Here’s the authors and a bit of what they talked about.

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Danielle Paige wrote the Dorothy Must Die series and the television show Hemlock. She was the moderator of the panel and made sure all the authors had a crown or tiara. I had two chances to get her autograph, and both times chickened out because she was on her way somewhere, and there was a moment of eye contact and hesitation like she was silently asking “Did you want me to sign that,” and I missed both windows :(. She was very casual, very laid back, and very entertaining.

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E.K Johnston wrote A Thousand Nights, as did Renee Ahdieh. Not co-wrote. They both rewrote the same fairy tale, which made putting them on the same panel kind of odd? I mean, if it was a Thousand Nights panel, that would be one thing, lots of different perspectives, but it was like everyone else on the panel had written about different fairy tales or approached it in a different way, and then there were these two authors, one from the culture that produced the fairy tale, one not, and I think she felt that. I think it made it hard for her to answer questions without feeling like she was stepping on any toes. It would have been like having the writer of Descendants and The School of Good and Evil at the same panel. They’re in direct competition.But maybe they aren’t, I don’t know. I haven’t read either book so they may be entirely different.

One thing I really noticed at the conference was how much I HAVEN’T read. In most circles, I can kind of pride myself on being on top of new releases and familiar with most books. Here, I was in a completely new league. For every author I knew absolutely everything about, there were three I’d been *meaning* to get to, but there’s so many books! So little time. Makes me wonder what else I’ve been missing out on.

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Marissa Meyer is famous for her Lunar Chronicles, which I absolutely love. I really wanted to get her autograph, but she said she was on her way to another panel, so I didn’t get a chance to :(. She didn’t say much during the panel, which was a shame because I’m really interested in her perspective. She wrote such an amazing and interesting series.

Lockhart wrote We were Liars and has a fantasy anthology coming out next year. I haven’t read her book, but she had a wry humor which I definitely appreciated, so now I need to add her story to my TBR pile.

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Soman Chainani wrote “The School for Good and Evil,” which I actually have checked out from my library right now. He was very anti-disney, and bashed The Little Mermaid, which I hated him for, and Pan, which I loved him for.

Seriously. Pan. I’ve never been so angry when watching a movie. That wasn’t Peter Pan! There’s an origin story for Peter Pan in Little White Bird, this didn’t just contradict everything ABOUT the source material, it changed Peter’s character into someone uncertain and scared and that’s NEVER been Peter. I liked the idea of making Hook and Peter friends but they failed to deliver because they weren’t each other’s foils. They were caricatures picked up from another story. And I’m not even going to go into TigerLily. Ugh.

Anyway….

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Renee Ahdieh wrote The Wrath and the Dawn, which is also based on A Thousand and One Nights. I remember seeing her cover making the rounds before her book came out and thinking it was amazing. I’ll definitely be adding it to my TBR pile along with Johnston’s version.
I found it interesting the different impact that fairy tales had on the author’s growing up. Chainani and Lockhart were exposed to the Grimm versions and the darker versions from a young age and kind of resented the sugar coating of those tales, whereas Johnston and the others were raised with the disney versions like myself and were willing to fight to the death to defend them. Personally, I’m a fan of both. Enjoy the magic when you’re little and revel in the darkness as you grow. There’s a lot of layers to fairy tales. Let them mean different things to different people. There’s always going to be something that resonates.

Movie Monday: Homeward Bound

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Homeward Bound is one of those movies I watched over and over and over again as a child. And now, because karma is real, I watch it over and over and over again with my child. But hey, there are worse movies. I still kind of love Homeward Bound.

I’m not going to do a long summary of homeward bound, both because the premise is pretty simple, and I’m afraid if I get to typing I might discover that I can actually reproduce the whole movie verbatim.

So here’s my attempt at brevity:

Chance, Shadow, and Sassy (2 dogs, 1 cat) are left with a friend of the families during their human’s temporary move, they’re not content to be left behind. They escape the farm and take off on a dangerous journey across the Sierra Mountains to reunite with their loved ones. Along the way, they run into all kinds of problems, but are ultimately successful in finding their way home.

Great movie. Love it. Love the soundtrack, love the scenery, love the characters, love everything about it, except for something I never realized until I was an adult.

A temporary move.

The Seaver family, comprised of three children, one wife, and one newly married into the family husband, move at some point shortly before the school year begins and return by Thanksgiving because the brand new husband has a vey temporary job in San Fransisco, which is incidentally within reasonable enough driving distance from their home to visit on weekends.

Why? Why would you do that to three school aged children? It wasn’t even an entire semester? The oldest is in High School! It’s not a small deal to entirely move schools during a single semester. What good does coming back just in time for Thanksgiving break to end and finals to begin do? If it was a year, I’d understand, but it was just the I’d say it was for the experience of living in a new place but it wasn’t like they moved far, and again they could have visited on weekends.

Did I mention that they literally made this move the day they got married? The balloons and Chance’s digestive issue prove it was literally the same day. The kids seem to have a great relationship with Bob and all, but way to leave them zero time to process that there’s this huge and permanent change in their family before driving all night to leave their beloved animals that they clearly use as coping mechanisms with a near stranger.

Also, They wouldn’t even go inside this lady’s house. They’re leaving their animals with her for five months and they won’t even go inside for a few minutes to socialize. That’s how thoughtless/bad at planning these people are. It’s either thoughtless (as in they just didn’t think about the massive favor she was doing wit them and consider that maybe taking her out to dinner or something would be polite) or bad at planning because they left immediately after their wedding, drove overnight, and were in such bad shape time wise to get Bob to his new job, that they couldn’t stop for longer than a few minutes, even if it meant giving the kids some time out of the car and to really say goodbye to their animals.

Those poor children. No wonder Shadow was so determined to get back to Peter. His parents aren’t looking out for him at all.

This seriously bothers me more every time I watch it. Despite my issues with the humans, it’s still a great movie. I just wish I wasn’t watching it for the fiftieth time this year.

 

 

 

For Real Friday: Pinterest Moms

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I have a confession to make. I’m a wanna be Pinterest Mom. I say wanna be because I have not reached the true levels of epic parenting worthy of a Pinterest board. My rice crispy treat Christmas trees looked…terrible. I mean, absolutely terrible. But my reindeer cookies turned out adorable! My Ninja Break cookies fell to pieces, but my sock snowmen are my daughter’s favorite Christmas decoration, and maybe I’m still sweeping up glitter from when Santa visited last year (I sort of forgot I have cats who play in the fireplace), but it’s been a year and my daughter is still talking about it. I save more pins than I’ll ever even attempt to try, but I do try some of them, and maybe I give nothing back to the pinning community, but only because all my creative energy goes into writing. I want to make cute bento lunches and have a cool new craft every day. I want to be that mom. But it just takes so much effort, so I settle for using cute sandwich cutters and sticker books then call it a day.
Despite my laziness (and please don’t misinterpret this. I’m not saying Moms that don’t do those things are lazy. I’m saying I’M lazy because I totally could. I have the time. I have the craft materials. I have the inclination) I don’t stress about it overmuch because my daughter is happy and healthy and loved. If the Pinterest Moms stopped doing all their awesomeness, their kids would also be happy and healthy and loved. I don’t think any particularly crafty mom is under the impression the only way their children will survive to adulthood is with unique bento lunches and themed snacks.
But you know what? It DOES make their kids happy (if you don’t think cute shaped snacks make a children happy, you haven’t spent much time with a five year old) and it makes Moms happy to do things that make their kids happy. And if they have the time, and the materials, and the inclination, what harm does it do as long as they aren’t being utter snobs about it?
I’m so tired of people accusing these moms of showing off when they post their cute ideas to Pinterest with detailed instructions, so that people like me, who just can’t think of one more elf on the shelf pose to save their lives can also get in on the creative mom magic. I’m tired of people looking at these moms and feeling threatened, or saying they’re pathetic, or have some sick need to live through their children and it’s really all about them because the kids don’t care. I’m tired of people linking this to entitlement culture and saying that somehow, leaving carrots for the reindeer along with Santa’s cookies is going to lead to spoiled children who grow up and become useless members of society.
It needs to stop
Children hear their moms making snippy comments about someone having too much time on their hands and it makes a powerful impression. People without children, people who are not impacted whatsoever by the existence of cute deserts of elves on shelves, jump in to make fun of these women whose only sin is that they’re trying to do something cute and fun.
I’ve seen these women deflate. I’ve seen unbelievably crafty, talented moms who used to take so much joy in planning these moments flush when they talk about them. “Oh, it’s silly,” or “it really didn’t take that much time,” or “I don’t normally…” all because people took something they loved, something that wasn’t hurting anyone at all, and ripped it to shreds in the name of humor.
That alone would be sad enough, but here’s the thing, the attack of Pinterest moms (or for that matter any attack on moms who aren’t crafty, who work, who don’t work, who breast feed, who don’t breastfeed, who attach, who free range, who wear green, whatever) is a symptom of a larger problem. Everything that women do, everything that women enjoy, is under constant attack, mostly by other women.
Women who enjoy dressing up and putting on makeup and coordinating everything try to hard.Women who don’t make that effort are lazy, terrible people. Books that appeal to women, like Twilight, are torn to shreds on a level that books that appeal to boys, like Maze Runner, never do. Boys who read Twilight are judged on a level that girls who read Maze Runner never are. “Not like other girls” is a heavy compliment. “Boy” shows are literally cancelled if too many girls like them.
This constant critique, the constant belittling of all things girls could possibly get any enjoyment from, has a powerful effect on society. Women are constantly trying to strike a balance, because if they try too hard they get torn to shreds, but if they don’t do anything they’ll be judged just as harshly. Mostly this results in a lot of hedging. “Oh, this old thing.” “Yeah, I just had a lot of time on my hands this morning.” “Oh, I know, I look terrible, I just…” “Oh, I know it’s silly, but….”
It needs to stop. Women need to stop apologizing for getting enjoyment out of the things they like. And we need to stop making other women feel like they have to. This season, let’s make an effort to stop ripping each other to shreds.
Starting with Pinterest moms.

 

Writing on Wednesday: Meg Cabot

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The next panel event I attended was an author chat with Meg Cabot and Melissa de la Cruz. I’ve already talked about Cruz, so I’ll talk a bit more about Meg Cabot.

Cabot wrote The Princess Diaries, the Airhead series, the Abandon series (which almost stopped me from getting published, but that’s another story), The Avalon High series and a ton of other middle grade, YA, and adult books. She’s impressive. I didn’t get as many notes from this one because there wasn’t enough room. Meg Cabot talked a bit about working with Anne Hathaway and Julie Andrews. Mostly she talked about her new middle grade series, Diaries of a Middle School Princess, though she did touch on the Airhead series, which made me happy. Most of the panel featured the writers answering questions from the crowd. It was really precious watching the little kids try to articulate their questions when they were so star struck! But I was most impressed with how much time and attention Cabot and Cruz gave each question. They were so sweet and so respectful and so kind. It was just really heartening to watch.

I got a wristband to get Cabot’s autograph, but every time I stopped by her line it was an hour deep, so I opted to go to panels instead, because while signatures are awesome, just listening to all these writers talk about their process was just amazing to me. Plus it was great exposure to new books.

Movie Monday: The Swan Princess

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I’m just gonna put this video here and I’m not even going to summarize this because I maintain that “This is my Idea” is THE best growing up montage penned to film. You get to know the characters, watch them grow, establish firmly that what they have isn’t istalove (there’s a small element of that when Derrick finally catches on that Odette’s gorgeous, but the narrative backs up the fact that they were raised together and know each other on a level most prince/princess stories don’t).

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Immediately after the song, Odette asks what Derrick sees in her other than her beauty. Odette’s hesitation makes a lot of sense because she’s known Derrick her ENTIRE life and he’s never seemed to notice her before she got pretty, whereas in the song, we see that she was more than willing to be friends with him on multiple occasions. Derrick screws up and asks “what else is there,” prompting Odette to leave and their brief engagement is dashed to pieces.

On their way out of the kingdom, Odette and her father are attacked by “a great animal.”

 

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“That’s twice in one day!”

Meanwhile, Derrick is playing chess with his best friend and trying to ignore his steward’s lecture. One of the things I love about this movie is how well the background characters are fleshed out. I only wish Odette interacted with a single other female character even once in the movie. The evil female character is literally mute and she never even talks to Derrick’s mom. Not once. Not in a single scene.

 

Anyway, Derrick’s just decided to prove his love for Odette since he’s incapable of vocalizing it, when an injured guard bursts in to tell him Odette’s carriage has been attacked. Derrick rushes to the scene and discovers her father just in time to hear his last words.Derrick’s grief when Odette is lost and his grief for the king seem very realistic, and he’s the ONLY character that seems to grieve (well, other than Odette).His mom instantly goes on with life as though a long time family friend and surragette daughter weren’t just brutally killed in her kingdom.

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The scene switches to Odette and Rothbar, the bad guy. Rothbar wants to marry Odette so he can take over her father’s kingdom. I wonder what happened to Odette’s kingdom though? Like it seems to be an integral part of the villains plan, to take over her father’s kingdom, but the King is dead and the heir is presumed dead. But it’s never addressed again.

Also, I love how important consent is in this universe. The King and Queen worried Odette wouldn’t consent to the marriage with Derrick, and when she didn’t, that was that (though they could force her to spend every summer with him). Rothbar can literally turn people into animals and has a ridiculous amount of power, and he can’t force her to marry him.

Meanwhile, Derrick is practicing his hunting skills on the local musicians. He’s sure Odette’s not dead and he’s going to keep practicing until he’s sure he can take on any great animal.

Meanwhile Odette is making friends with the sentient woodland creatures and making zero effort to figure out where she is. I mean, I get to turn back human she has to be on the lake when the moonlight touches is, but why turn back human? In human form, Rothbar just keeps pestering her to marry him. I’d stay in Swan form until I could *do* something as a human.

Oh, curse caveat, the curse can only be broken when her true love professes his love to the world and does something to prove it. Odette immediately decides Derrick’s her true love, even though she doubted it the day before. But then again, now she’s alone in the world and he’s the only one left that she knows.

The scene shifts to a beautiful duet between Derrick and Odette that I’m just gonna put right here because I love it.


Derrick eventually makes an unlikely connection and realizes the animal is a shape shifter. Meanwhile, Derrick’s mom is trying to marry him off and Odette finally decides to DO something about her predicament and with a risky mission (where she stands watch) she obtains a map.

She and puffin track down Derrick, who meanwhile is hunting a shapeshifter. He spots Odette and determines SHE must be the great animal and follows her back to the pond, shooting arrows all the way. She lands in the water, changes back, and they hug, kiss, and hatch a plan. Derrick’s going to prove his love for her at the ball tomorrow.

Only Odette’s forgotten tomorrow there’s no moon. But Rothbar’s overheard the plan and sings the worst villain song ever while disguising his mute helper as Odette. Fake Odette goes to the ball and everyone’s all “is that Odette?” “I don’t know, we only saw her every summer for Derrick’s entire life and like, 3 days ago.” “Huh, maybe it is her.”

Derrick professes his love to the wrong swan, mortally wounding Odette. Derrick figures out his error and rushes to the lake only to find Odette breathing her last.

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Furious and grief stricken, Derrick goes after Rothbar and in a truly awesome scene with all kinds of callbacks to the beginning, fights and defeats Rothbar with a single arrow.

Returning to the lake, Derrick makes this tearful confession:

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And it’s enough to bring back Odette. They live happily every after.

I love this movie so much. I mean, there’s major plot holes, and it’s missing other female characters, and Odette’s pretty passive, and they didn’t USE the fact that these two characters have known each other their entire lives nearly enough, but it’s a pretty good movie. So glad Bella wanted to watch it.

 

 

 

 

For Real Friday: How To Tell if Your Holiday is Under Attack

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We hear a lot about the “War on Christmas” this time of year, so I’ve created this handy questionnaire to help people determine if their holiday is under attack, ranked in order of severity.

Can you answer yes to any of the following statements?

  1. If other people near my residence discover me celebrating said holiday, it is statistically probable I will be tortured, maimed, and/or murdered
  2. I am forbidden to teach my children about my holiday
  3. My children must learn to celebrate (not acknowledge or learn about the existence of) holidays other than my own
  4. I could lose my job if my employer discovers I celebrate my holiday
  5. My religion explicitly forbids me from doing a thing or requires me to do a thing on my holiday, but to maintain economic, social, emotional, or physical well being, I must do/not do it anyway
  6. If I tell others that I celebrate my holiday, I will lose social standing
  7. I am forced to celebrate (not acknowledge the existence of)  a holiday that contradicts my religious belief or else I risk physical, emotional, economic, or social consequences
  8. I am forbidden to decorate spaces I control with my holiday’s decor

If you answered yes to any of the above statements, your holiday may be under attack.
Here’s what is NOT an attack on your holiday

  1. Other people can answer yes to more of the above questions than I can and that makes me uncomfortable
  2. Other people, businesses, or agencies do not also celebrate my holiday or force others to pretend to celebrate it to make my month more festive.
  3. Other people do not celebrate it correctly or understand the real meaning of my holiday
  4. Other people do not celebrate my holiday enthusiastically enough
  5. Other people acknowledge or even celebrate other holidays
  6. Other people don’t specifically wish me my specific happy holiday
  7. Other people do not decorate for my specific holiday in spaces that I do not control
  8. Other people decorate for their own holidays instead in spaces that I do not control
  9. Other people do not play my holiday music is spaces that I do not control
  10. Schools and retailers do not acknowledge or celebrate my holiday on days that are NOT your holiday (i.e no Christmas plays or parties on December 16th)
  11. My employer asks that I am respectful to holidays other than my own  while in their space or representing something my employer

Please do not say your holiday or religious belief is under attack if your biggest problem is that other people are not making life festive enough for you. It’s incredibly entitled, not to mention it draws attention away from people of all religious affiliations who have are actually putting their lives, health, economic, emotional, or social status in danger to acknowledge their holidays. Instead, do some good. Every time you hear a holiday greeting that offends you, donate your time or money to a religious organization of your choice that uses its resources to help the victims of actual religious persecution. You’ll make the world a better place, and if that’s not in keeping with the holiday spirit, whatever holiday you celebrate, I don’t know what is.

 

Writing on Wednesday: World Building and Historical Fiction

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One of the panels I attended at #YALLFEST was  Moat By Moat: World Building in Historical Fiction, moderated by Libba Bray. Rae Carson, who I already talked about above was also a part of this panel.

A bit about the authors:

0f154bde6523de25a2073ef0e2640203Gail Carriger– Is awesome! She’s a former archeologist who wrote The Parisole Protectorate series, The Custard Protocol series, and my personal favorite, her young adult Finishing School series. I wouldn’t have considered her series to be historical fiction though. She writes supernatural, alternate history, steampunk. The books are comedies so she noted frequently that people forgive her a lot in comparison to other more serious and actually historic setting driven stories. She did sign my book, but she was on her way out the door when she signed it, so I didn’t have the nerve to ask her to sign my notebook. Loved her outfit, she really dresses up like the characters in her novel.

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Elizabeth Wein wrote the Code Name: Verity series, The Lion Hunters series, and Black Dove, White Raven. I haven’t read her books, but she reminded me a lot of me when she talked about her childhood. The clapping game she and her friend made up for Hamlet’s Soliloquy stole the show. I have a video, but you really have to have been there to fully understand the hilarity.

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Ryan Graudin writes alternate history with a supernatural bent, mostly focusing on “What if Hitler had won.” Her books include All that Glows, Wolf by Wolf, and the Walled City. She’s another author I haven’t read, but she’s definitely been added to my TBR pile.

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Carol Weatherford is prolific and probably the most famous author on the panel. She’s written more books than I can list here. A few of her works include Becoming Billie Holiday, The Library Ghost, and Jazz Baby.

The First question Libba asked was where do the authors begin their world building process. Most of the authors agreed finding the voice of the protagonist was their first step. Once they have a protagonist in mind, the setting, a very specific setting, complete with atmosphere, came next. Gail Carriger said most of her stories begin by her “overhearing” snippets of dialogue between two characters, and before she knows it, the rest of the story fills in. Rae Carson mentioned that one thing that really helps her is establishing limits, what they can’t say, what they can’t do, where they can’t go, whereas Elizabeth Wein said she tends to annotate places that need more research as she goes along, and cautioned that sometimes research makes you procrastinate.

I can definitely believe that. It’s easy to fall down the rabbit hole of research, but I’ve also been in situations where I literally can’t write another word until I fill in those details. So I’d say it’s a mixed bag. One acknowledgement I was happy they made is that contemporary settings demand just as much research and world building as historical fiction, at least initially. The authors talked about how they tied personal experience in with their work, even if historically they can’t relate, there’s always a universal experience.

One thing Ryan Graudin and Gail Carriger elaborated on was the juxtaposition of light and dark, of humor and sadness, to echo each other and really bring each other out.

Some of the sins of worldbuilding they agreed on were…

–White washing

— Sugar Coating

— Self-censoring

–Inconsistency

— Forgetting the other senses

Some other tips they offered were to ignore linguistics until line edits (though they also mentioned no recognizable English would have been spoken in many of their settings, so remember you can take liberties). N-grams Google will tell you when a particular phrase originated.

I found the panel to be very entertaining and informative, even though I don’t write historical fiction. I love reading historical fiction though! One day I may delve a bit into the Trojan War, but for now, I’m happy in my contemporary zone.

 

 

Movie Monday: The Good Dinosaur

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I’m not going to go into much detail on this one because 1. It’s new and I don’t want to spoil it for anyone and 2. At $10 a ticket, I’m only going to be watching it once until it comes out on iTunes.

But man was it a good movie.

The Good Dinosaur is The Lion King meets Milo and Otis with DINOSAURS. It’s also a coming of age/boy with his dog story. The movie manages to cram a lot of theme work in despite long stretches of Pixar quality silence.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not UP. But it was a really good movie. Beautiful imagery, surprisingly intense plot, somewhat epic, at times genuinely terrifying for my six year old, (two words: Sky Sharks, you’ll get it when you see it) at other times it was heart wrenching (Stick Figures will make you cry, fair warning), and oddly lacking in comic relief, it’s definitely worth a watch.

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Instead of doing For Real Friday this week, I’m doing Thankful Thursday because…Thanksgiving. I’m thankful for my family, my friends, great books, and for being fortunate enough to live in the moment.

Living in the moment is hard when you’re stressed or broke or busy. But I’ve been making a conscious effort. And I recognize my privilege here. My husband and I are mostly in a place where life is pretty stable. I’m able to stay home with my daughter and write, but we’re not comfortable enough for that to be a long term plan, so I’ve been finishing up my EDs in school library media this semester. After a semester of interning five days a week, balancing school work, editing Venus and Adonis/Aphrodite, studying for the GACE, attending conferences, and just being overall very busy, something really nice happened last Friday.

I had a minute to breathe. I’d taken and passed the GACE the day before. I’d finished up all the intern hours I had to do and was just going back in for a few hours to wrap up some loose ends, I’d finished another pass on Aphrodite, and Bella was about to be off for an entire week (I’m really involved at her school). So I woke up, got everything ready, and then went to wake up Bella.

She didn’t want to get out of bed. It’d been a hard week for her, we’d just been so busy! And for this one day, I wasn’t in a rush. So instead of dragging her out of bed and stressing us both out as I rushed her along her morning routine, I returned to the kitchen, put our breakfast on trays, and snuggle beside her for a breakfast in bed.

“It’s just hard to get out of bed sometimes,” Bella lamented.

“I know,” I sympathized. Sometimes, it really is. So we snuggled, and ate, and she told me all about her dreams, and I told her all about our plans for Thanksgiving break (a lot of staying home and doing nothing, but also maybe the zoo) and we just had this perfect moment of relaxing and not being stressed and just enjoying each other. Then breakfast was over, she got ready for school, and somehow we weren’t even late. It’s like time froze for that one magical moment and I could just feel her tiny little body tucked against mine as she stared into my eyes and told me absolutely everything that came to mind. She’s going to outgrow moments like that. She mostly already had. Most mornings she’d be pushing me away from her and grumbling that she has to brush her teeth RIGHT NOW so she doesn’t miss playground time.  So I’m thankful, SO thankful, that I was in a position to take advantage of that one precious moment before it was gone. And I hope I’m lucky enough to catch the next one.