The Wild Blog in the West

That's not a compliment. It's actually an insult to children, since I'm sure many have greater capacity for empathy than many adults ever will.  In school, we learn how to analyze math problems, science experiments, or motivations in literature, but strangely never everyday human behavior.  Only the most inspired teachers will set aside time to discuss human behavior, and with mandated testing, that time is smaller than ever.   Otherwise, attempts to understand human thought are relegated to specialized fields: psychology, anthropology, criminology.  We save our deepest fears for private therapy sessions rather than discuss and analyze them in a public group.  Of course it makes sense to want privacy in some situations, but by separating feelings from our everyday lives, by telling ourselves that certain feelings shouldn't "be there," by pretending that they don't exist, we risk painting ourselves and others as one dimensional. So we wa...

Jane Austen was born in 1775 and died in 1817.  Most of her work was published between 1811 and 1818.  Yet she is repeatedly lumped together with authors from a much later time, such as George Eliot (1819-1880), Elizabeth Gaskell (1810-1865), and Anthony Trollope (1815-1882).  Together, they and many others are referred to as "Victorian authors," even though Queen Victoria didn't come to the throne until 1837. The reason seems to be because these authors, and more, frequently set their works in the English countryside, where towns were small, life was slow, and old landed wealth reigned supreme.  Of course Victorian authors covered much more than that, as anyone who has read Charles Dickens would know.  And while the countryside did, in many ways, seem suspended in time throughout the 19th century (something I comment on in a Downton Abbey  post ), it still experienced fundamental changes.  Changes that were beginning during Austen's lifetime, but ...

It's a bit of a stretch to call Pitch Perfect a musical, though you could argue it has just as good a claim as jukebox musicals like Rock of Ages .  Or better, since it was actually, you know, worth watching. Pitch Perfect  shouldn't work nearly as well as it does.  In most respects its "edginess" has a sanded-off quality: it's the type of movie where having slightly heavy dark eye makeup makes you an alternative freak.  Where deep inner meaning can be found in The Breakfast Club  ending.  Where a Mylie Cyrus song is "cool" and "now." Virtually everything about Pitch Perfect  you have seen before.  In fact, I consider it to be Bring It On  with a capella singing instead of cheerleading.  Both feature situations where characters assume the mantle of leadership, which includes steering the group to a championship.  Both have the "alternative" character who was reluctant to even join, but who soon schools the rest of the group....

The sunset was like a bright beam of orange spun cotton candy dancing on a fiery mound of... oh screw it. So description.... yeah... Even though I draw, my writing has always been weakest when I try to describe things.  Objects in a room.  A sunset.  Clothing.  Faces. Still, I didn't think that my description was that bad until I encountered the view that historical novels should immerse  you in the period, fully fleshing out the world to make you feel as if you were there.  See, for example,  The Crimson Petal and the White . I don't immerse.  I describe and move on.  Now and then, I'll mention a detail if I think it's important.  Or I might give a thorough description of a character if that character matters.  But I don't linger.  I rarely paint a scene. I never thought that lessened my readers' enjoyment, but maybe I've been depriving them.  Maybe I should take the time to really sketch out the surround...

One project that I'll be undertaking over the next month or so (or whenever I get around to it) is cleaning up my labels and listing them on the sidebar to make it easier for people to search my site by category.  So instead of 5,000 labels under each of my Les Miserables  post, I will have just one or two labels like "les miserables" and "musical."  Or if I want to talk about my novel, I might list it and anything related under "historical fiction."  Hopefully it will make it easier for people who have come to this site for a specific purpose to find something.

For my previous Things That I Love, read here . I'm always the last one to know. That's an exaggeration, but not a big one.  I usually discover awesome shows only after their awesomeness has been proclaimed to the world.  Such was the case with Mad Men , Breaking Bad , and Homeland .  And such is the case with Orphan Black . The buzz surrounding Season One and early Season Two brought me to BBC America, even though I watch maybe five shows a year, and usually never on channels not named HBO or AMC.  I knocked back 10 episodes in two days -- hooray for On Demand and marathon viewing! -- and never looked back. Orphan Black  is the type of show that could not have worked even five years ago, due to the special effects required.  It is an amazing blend of technology, writing, and acting.  If any of those parts failed, the show would fail.  Fortunately, they seem poised to succeed for quite some time. So?  What's It About? From here,...

A few days ago, the 15th anniversary of a milestone passed: I had my first fanfics published on a major fan website.  They were Daria fanfics on the now departed Outpost Daria, then the mecca of all things involving the MTV cartoon.  I remember trembling when I saw my fanfics listed among the two dozen under the "New Updates" header.  Now it was official!  I feared abusive comments, but mainly expected to be ignored. Days passed and comments trickled in... and not only were they positive, but two of them even came from  Daria fanfiction's top dogs at the time!  I printed out each email and tucked them into a folder, which I still keep around.  The positive feedback left me warm and floaty, and dying to write more!  Burnt out from revising my historical novel (ironically, a proto version of my current one ), I found writing scripted "episodes" of my favorite show to be invigorating. The stories in my head began to multiply and form the bead...