Frustrated screen-writer in Progress.

Dear Ceilidh...

2012-11-06T18:55:18Z

"I am delighted to inform you that the University is offering you admission to MSc Theatre and Performance Studies..."

!!!

Yay! I got back into Edinburgh! Now I just need the money to pay for it!

Allow me a moment of smugness...

2012-10-18T15:31:24Z

Yay!

Dundee's my 2nd choice (after Edinburgh, of course) but having the back-up in place is a relief. Also, yay, further education!

Just got to find some money for it now. Anyone got £5000 free?

Caitlin Moran, white feminism and unacknowledged privilege.

2012-10-07T11:09:20Z

Right, I am probably just adding fuel to the fire here, given my past encounters with Caitlin Moran, her book and the utterly desperate and downright baffling level of defensiveness my negative review of her book caused, but given her recent outburst of privilege and ignorance, I feel the need to say something.

Here’s the thing about being a white feminist – we’ve got it way easier than we like to believe we do. Of course we’re often subjected to cruel and offensive insults, misogyny and our opinions being shut down by mansplaining and mockery, nobody is denying that. However, when the mainstream looks at feminism, we’re what they see. Jessica Valenti. Ariel Levy. Germaine Greer. Natasha Walter. Naomi Wolf. Julie Burchill (an awful figure who I don’t want lumped in with me but since she continues to advertise herself as a feminist and is seen by the media as such, in here she goes). The feminist scholars and commentators that are asked onto Newsnight and Meet The Press are seldom white or LGBTQ (Levy is openly gay and the exception here). Moving outside academia to entertainment, the same things occur. Amy Poehler, Tina Fey, and now Lena Dunham. I love the first two (but man, Fey's hugely problematic), I’m ambivalent on Dunham although she is undeniably talented. Caitlin Moran is often seen as the connecting figure between feminism and funny. I have been very vocal in my opinions on Moran’s book, which you can read here. Pay particular attention to the comments. Being compared to the pro-life movement was a new one for me.

Moran’s response to being asked if she’d asked Dunham about the exclusion of people of colour in “Girls” in her fawning Times interview, an issue that has been extensively covered by American media and can be found easily through Google, was “Nope, I literally couldn’t give a shit about it” . This, of course, created quite the fuss, and justifiably so. Moran continued to dig herself into a deeper and deeper hole, and people began to defend her.

Greg Jenner is a twitter friend of mine. I’ve always got on very well with him and find him to be friendly, interesting and always up for a debate. But he’s plain damn wrong here. I also really don’t appreciate the tone argument. It’s the David Cameron “Calm down dear” technique.

The exclusion of non-white people from the narrative, be it fictional or otherwise, deliberately or accidentally, is something inherently rooted in racism. I don’t think Moran or Dunham are racist, but there is something hugely worrying about a series being set in Brooklyn, a district where according to the 2010 census, black and Hispanic people make up over 55% of the population <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Brooklyn>, and the only people of colour are the crazy hobo and the help. Dunham is writing about her own privileged experiences, and that’s fine. She’s entitled to do so. She’s actually addressed these issues a lot better than most people have. However, when people like Moran declare Dunham to be the future of feminism, that’s a big issue that we need to address. Dunham’s character in the show jokes about being the voice of her generation, or at least a voice of a generation, but we’re not supposed to nod and say “Yep, she is”. Moran’s biases have always been pretty well documented, particularly in her book (Lady Gaga, who was nice to her and won her awards for her interview with her = cool feminist. Jordan, who was not so nice = “Vichy France with tits”), and this is another example of that. The entire industry is to blame for lack of diversity, but to criticise Dunham for it is sexism. Or something. Newsflash, people have been criticising media for lack of diversity for quite some time now. It happened with Friends, Frasier, Will & Grace, The West Wing, and a whole host of other massively popular shows. It still continues to this day with Amy Sherman-Paladino’s Bunheads, after Shonda Rhimes criticised the lack of women of colour in the show (Sherman-Paladino’s response was equivalent to Moran’s in many ways, in that she seemed to think Rhimes should put her gender before her race and support sisterhood or something). Ryan Murphy has been criticised for his stereotyping of race, among other things, in Glee. This isn’t new. The Dunham case isn’t new. What is somewhat new is how she’s being hailed as the future of feminism, by other straight white feminists. This is an issue. Feminism can’t be closed off to women whose narratives don’t match our own. We do everyone a huge disservice by thinking like this, and for white people to in any way police the definition of racism in their own favour is, yes, racist. Moran’s argument is spotty at best and downright ignorant at worst. Moran says “you wouldn’t insist boys had to always have black characters in their projects. It’s a sexist demand to make of an artist”. First of all, not all people of colour are black. Second, people have been insisting that for generations now! Dunham has received some sexist abuse, and I do think it’s unfair to lay the hopes of all female creators in entertainment at her feet in a make-or-break situation, but it’s not sexist for women to criticise other women. Moran does it all the time, often unreasonably so (I’m still mad at “Vichy France with tits”).

It is not unfair, unreasonable, sexist, racist or whatever other term you want to throw around, to ask for some diversity in the world of entertainment. The vast majority of artists in mainstream entertainment are straight white men, and they have responsibilities to do this just as much as Dunham does, particularly if they set their shows in areas were white people aren’t the majority.

We’re not “asking every female artist to represent 3.3b women in every project she does”. What we are asking for is real life to be somewhat reflected in the media we digest.

Moran began to block or ignore anyone who criticised her on this issue, including Gail Simone, and thanking everyone who defended. It’s sad to see someone so proud to call herself a feminist shut out any criticism of her obvious ignorance here. Then again, it’s not unexpected. I found out today that I wasn’t the only person Moran blocked for daring to ask her to explain her use of the words “retard” and “tranny” in her book. The impression Moran is giving is that she has no understanding or desire to understand feminist experiences that diverge from her own and that of her friends. Privilege is a term that gets thrown around a lot, particularly on Tumblr, but it absolutely applies here.

Feminism is ever changing, and we need to learn from our mistakes. Check out some of the things people like Germaine Greer and radical feminists said 40 years ago and cringe (comparing transgender women to rape, anyone?) It’s 2012. The straight white middle class woman experience is not the default mode of feminism, it never should be considered such. It doesn’t take much effort to educate oneself on these issues.

So excuse me, Ms Moran, for not giving a shit about giving my vagina a name (also please stop confusing the vagina with the cervix), clown porn and high heeled shoes. Feminism’s got other things to do, like sort out your mess and make sure we don’t do it again. Defending Lena Dunham is not the big issue here. “Fighting all forms of discrimination is the real feminist issue”. (Lisa Hajjar).

Hey, remember me?

2012-09-25T10:07:53Z

I keep saying I'm going to write a summary of everything I've been up to over these past few months but I'm always too knackered, too lazy or just too boring to get round to it. Well no more!

I actually had to check my LJ to see what the last entry I'd posted was on. It's been a while.

None of this will be new to anyone who follows me on twitter, although I don't blame you if you don't since I'm an exceptionally prolific and extremely annoying tweeter who rants constantly about my hatred for David Cameron, live-tweets the Democratic National Convention until 5am and I think I'm funnier than I really am.

The last place I left everyone was on my graduation. As you can tell, it was a joyously awkward event. Not as awkward as the official portrait photographs my parents paid £65 for and insists on displaying around the house. I can't even escape them when I go to my grandparents' houses! I get family pride, I'm very proud of myself and I looked swish in those robes but my god, I look like the smuggest nerd on the planet in those photos. I've never been able to properly smile in photographs. I'm just not photogenic at all. I always end up either looking like a smug jerk or a serial killer. My sister's the photogenic one, and doesn't she know it?!

Once graduation and moving back home was out of the way, I had about a solid month of lounging around, which I heartily took advantage of. I put together a list of things to do for the next year before September 2013, the date when I'll hopefully be returning to university to do my Masters. Yep, I've applied to do my Masters! It had always been a possible course for me to pursue after I'd graduated but given the difficult time I had in my final semester and the horrible stress I put myself through thinking I wouldn't get the needed grade, I just put those plans on the pile since they didn't seem like a possibility for me any more. Luckily, I pulled through and my parents are extremely supportive of my plans. My mum even said if I couldn't get a job I should just go back to university to do another degree. "You like politics, don't you? Do that!" I thought parents were supposed to discourage their kids from delaying entering the real world. Not that I'm complaining! So I've applied to do my Masters at Edinburgh (of course) and Dundee (advisor suggested I put in another application just so I don't get my hopes up for my first choice, and Dundee would be the most convenient outside of Edinburgh), hopefully to do an MLitt in Theatre and Performance studies! I'm really keen to continue studying political drama after my dissertation and would love to focus on the evolution of political drama in theatre, film and TV in the 21st century. If I must live under a coalition government then I should at least get some good nights out at the Lyceum out of it!

August came quickly and I was back down to Edinburgh to work for the Fringe Festival. Nat, my lovely best friend, was off saving the world or something in India so let me use his flat for the month rent free. The work was long - 10 hours a day from 7am, six days a week - and pretty menial - lots of litter picking, costumer liaising, wiping down tables, etc - but I really enjoyed myself. When you've got good co-workers you can make anything fun, even emptying bins. Well, almost everything. I had a pass to get into every show in a EUSA venue for free as long as it wasn't sold out but usually by the end of the day I was so exhausted and just wanted to go to the flat, lounge around and watch the Olympics (which I got really into, much to my surprise). I did see a few shows and had a great time. I also got to do a bit of celeb spotting and chatted briefly and awkwardly to Victoria Coren and David Mitchell! Best couple ever!

Of course, the best bit of Fringe was getting to see ah_betty for the first time in 2 and a half freaking years! Seriously, far too long.

Every year I try and get a photo by the poster walls in Bristo Square so here is this year's, with added friend! See what I mean about the smile?

We went for drinks, and ah_betty's sister came as well, and we went to see Stewart Lee live, a real highlight, especially since it included getting books signed by him! I love that he was selling his own merchandise after the show, and beforehand, he was giving out flyers for his wife's show. It was too cute. Before we could get our books signed, we had to rush to find a cash machine to get money to buy them, which was exhausting. I'm awkward and can't run to save myself. It's a curse.

Other highlights of the festival include meeting and chatting with Meg Rosoff after briefly gushing about how much I loved her books, seeing Sean Biggarstaff's arse in An Appointment With the Wicker Man (I am happy to confirm that Oliver Wood is packing!), getting drenched in fake blood and guts at Re-Animator: The Musical (luckily, ponchos were provided), introducing one of my friends to The Room at a midnight screening (yes, we brought spoons), seeing Greg Proops live in the front row, seeing katriona_lou for the first time in years and having a drink with her and her brother, and getting tipsy with another friend and laughing at politicians's Desert Island Discs choices (seriously Clegg, even I felt sorry for you when you picked Shakira). I hate to think how much money I spent that month but luckily I made quite a bit as well.

No sooner had I returned home from Fringe, to an empty house thanks to holidaying parents, before I got an interview and acceptance to my current internship! As I've mentioned on Twitter and Goodreads, I'm currently interning at the Wigtown Book Festival! I get to help organise a book festival! How cool is that? Wigtown is this tiny town by the coast in Dumfries & Galloway and it's known as Scotland's national book town thanks to its numerous second hand book shops. One of the things I'm helping with is a fringe book festival event for the local high school, and I'm looking for YA authors to help out for half an hour or so on Saturday 6th October. I know a couple of you follow me so please check out details here. I'd seriously appreciate it. These high schoolers are so passionate and really working hard to get this event off the ground.

I'm not sure what I'll do once this internship's over. I've sent in my Masters applications so will just need to wait and see on that front, but not before hunting down some funding. I'm hoping to get a job down in Edinburgh to earn some extra cash for the interim year, or even one back home which would mean I could save on rent. My best mate Nat's going to be appearing on an episode of Pointless (British quiz show where you have to get an answer with no points) and since he refuses to tell us how well he did on it, we need to wait for the episode to air so we can judge him. All in good jest, I assure you. It's a bit weird not being at uni while all my friends are still there but hopefully that won't be for long!

Bored

2012-07-11T18:35:53Z

I'm taking a break from reviewing books and everything YA related.

It used to make me so happy and now I'm just angry all the time. I'm sick of seeing friends and fellow reviewers be smeared and bullied by anonymous cowards playing the victim card as they post personal details online and claim to be the good guys. I'm sick of people claiming I'm a bully or a jealous hater or anti-feminist because I dare to think that romanticising domestic abuse is a bad idea. I'm fucking fed up of 50 Shades of Grey and Beautiful Disaster (which just got a publishing deal with Atria, did I mention that?) and spending my time trying to get someone to understand why all this shit is so problematic and why "it's just fiction" is no excuse only to be blocked or cyber-stalked or just ignored. It's exhausting and aggravating watching the bullies and the hacks climb to the top of the tower and be heralded and rewarded for perpetuating the worst stereotypes about women, relationships and what constitutes romance while those with genuine talent and creativity are ignored. I don't want to deal with this shit for now so I'm taking a hiatus. I'm not quitting forever or anything. That'd be too easy. I just want to get some fucking perspective back and do things that make me happy for a change.

So if anybody has any cool ideas for new hobbies or things to try out I would seriously appreciate it. I still have a few parts of the Orwell Project saved on my laptop to be posted, which I'll do in due course.

"In defence of 50 Shades of Grey" by Laurie Penny - a rebuttal.

2012-07-08T16:41:36Z

The circle of pop culture life vaguely resembles that of the stereotypical hipster argument. Something become popular, people brag about liking it before it was cool to do so, the backlash occurs with similar bragging, then the backlash to the backlash. Often this can go on and on until the original argument has lost all meaning and descended into ranting, swearing and humorous pictures of cats, such is the state of the internet. Online culture has meant that this process has been speeded up to dizzying levels, with the entire cycle beginning and ending in the space of a few weeks. While it doesn’t pertain to pop culture, the Kony 2012 phenomenon is a perfect example of this. Now we have a surprising addition to the pop culture fold in the shape of Twilight BDSM fanfiction turned saviour of the publishing world, E.L. James’s “50 Shades of Grey” series. I have ranted about this series more than is probably healthy, and my review and discussion of the series can be found here and here. The series is absolutely awful in every way possible and yet it’s being heralded as the hot new thing, receiving more media coverage than one ever imagined it could. Why? I think it’s a combination of extreme hype, savvy marketing and coming into the market when there really isn’t much else to talk about. Of course, there has been backlash, mainly from people who have no understanding of how fandom, fan-fiction or basic sexuality works. The New Statesman’s columnist Laurie Penny, who describes herself as writing about “pop culture and radical politics with a feminist twist”, now joins the fold of the defenders, but doesn’t do a very good job, and since I’m so sick of people entirely missing the point of my criticisms of this god-awful series passing itself off as women friendly, I just had to reply.

Penny admits to enjoying the first book. That’s fine, that’s her prerogative. We all have different tastes. I question her comment that the book is “terrifically trashy” with “a few quite good, quite detailed descriptions of fucking written from the point of view of a woman who seemed to be really enjoying herself.” The protagonist of the series, Anastacia, may orgasm EVERY SINGLE TIME she has sex (one way you can tell the book is more fiction than fact), but she’s also someone who has no real understanding of what she has entered into. Christian, a man so charming he should be used to advertise mace, fails to fully explain what he wants from her, tries to mask abusive actions as kinky, and continually puts her into situations she is uncomfortable with. People defending the actions within this book as being those typical of a dominant-submissive/BDSM relationship are clearly ignorant of the facts regarding these issues. It’s not romantic to have the heroine admit how she worries about upsetting the man who she’s supposed to be able to trust for fear of his twitchy palm.

I have no issue with women reading porn. I encourage anything that encourages people to get their freak on, be it films, TV, books or even fan-fiction, something Penny does bring up. She is right that fan-fiction communities are predominantly female (at least the ones I’ve occupied were) and that it’s an interesting way to “re-occupy” a text. However, she doesn’t bring up a key issue with this particular piece of fan-fiction, mainly the filing off of serial numbers and repackaging as “original” fiction. I’ve discussed this at length before, which you can find in the above link, so I won’t rehash my argument here.

The crux of Penny’s argument seems to be that badly written porn is okay because it’s badly written porn for women. But it isn’t just badly written porn, although the prosaic quality is heinous. This is badly written porn that entirely misunderstands what a D/S relationship is and instead normalises a controlling jerk as someone who’s just sexually adventurous. It takes the oft imitated “stand by your man and you can change him” narrative and tries to use that to justify why an abusive and controlling jerk would want to have kinky sex. Apparently it’s not good enough just to say he likes to dominate a woman. It has to be tied up in his neglected childhood. When the biggest mainstream exposure a BDSM centred piece of media receives is one that entirely twists and misunderstands what BDSM actually is, that’s something that needs to be addressed. Unfortunately, the media seems more interested in pretending a vanilla fan-fiction is the 21^st century Story of O (also, I have to stridently disagree with Penny’s assertion that Anne Rice’s Sleeping Beauty trilogy is well written. It really isn’t). The idea that porn for men isn’t mocked is also pretty laughable. There are entire websites dedicated to mocking bad porn. I am pro-porn in the sense that I think we should be making and promoting more women friendly stuff. 50 Shades isn’t women friendly. It’s not particularly friendly to literature lovers either.

Penny’s argument rests on the idea that anything created by a woman for a woman must be encouraged. To that I have one word – Twilight. If it wasn’t for Twilight, 50 Shades wouldn’t exist, and don’t we all yearn for those days. Twilight is massively sexist abstinence porn and the only reason Penny seems to be defending 50 Shades over Twilight is that the former contains some badly written sex scenes. Penny herself refers to Twilight as “actively disturbing chastity propaganda”. Which it is. That doesn’t make 50 Shades the preferable alternative.

Porn doesn’t have to be art, although it has the potential to be. In our culture of contrasts – over-sexualised yet fetishizing virginity – it’s tough to get the balance right and to find something truly feminist friendly and pro-equality in terms of sex. There are countless great romance and erotica novels that I hope will get more exposure in the wake of this series reaching pop culture saturation. However, I remain steadfast in my refuting of Penny’s remarkably weak article. 50 Shades cannot be looked at separately from the culture that created it. Born from the purity worshipping sex free porn that is Twilight, part of the generation of literature for young women that normalises passivity in women and rape culture in relationships as the romantic ideal, in a culture that continues to put women second. There’s nothing empowering about James’s series because she doesn’t have a clue what she’s writing about. She’s giving porn a bad name, and it never had a good one to begin with. Just because something was written by a woman and for other women that does not make it women positive. If Laurie Penny wishes to defend “50 Shades of Grey”, I suggest that she formulate a stronger argument.

Warning: Graduation photos shown may be more awkward than previously thought.

2012-07-07T23:09:03Z

Well, I'm back home and in front of the TV on the couch while dad's snoring away on the next couch, so I thought now would be a good time to finally upload those graduation pics. It's mostly me with my family looking awkward but snappy in the robes.

Daz kept trying to get me to smile so I just ended up giggling.

See, this is what happens when I smile.

Dad bought a suit just for the occasion. Someone said he looked like a doorman at a club.

Mum also bought a new outfit for the occasion. We're not really a family that dresses up much.

Both grandmothers, maternal on the left and paternal on the right. Poor paternal gran was knackered by the end of the day since we'd trailed around Edinburgh for ages and she wasn't used to it.

My auntie Emma (the first person in my family to go to uni) and my cousin Katie. Both are more photogenic than me.

Me picking up my degree! Right before they called me Kylie. *grumble*

Seriously, that's my range of smiles in photos. Smug weirdo or serial killer glee. The graduation photographer really wasn't happy about it and kept trying to get me to show my teeth, which was just never going to happen. That photo also includes my family. I guarantee it's going to look like something from the Addams Family.

The Orwell Project: 3 - "Eve" by Anna Carey.

2012-07-05T19:56:39Z

Once again, thank you for the comments and your thoughts. I have a few more things I’d like to discuss regarding some points I made in my “Matched” review regarding the separation of author and text, but I think it may be easier to do so in a separate post, possibly on The Book Lantern. I know I said “The Selection” would be my next entry, but cheap Kindle deals plus my birthday plus an uncharacteristically lovely day meant I just had to move onto another book with a lot of hype and a dead end.

Summary (taken from Goodreads): The year is 2032, sixteen years after a deadly virus—and the vaccine intended to protect against it—wiped out most of the earth’s population. The night before eighteen-year-old Eve’s graduation from her all-girls school she discovers what really happens to new graduates, and the horrifying fate that awaits her.

Fleeing the only home she’s ever known, Eve sets off on a long, treacherous journey, searching for a place she can survive. Along the way she encounters Caleb, a rough, rebellious boy living in the wild. Separated from men her whole life, Eve has been taught to fear them, but Caleb slowly wins her trust...and her heart. He promises to protect her, but when soldiers begin hunting them, Eve must choose between true love and her life.

Cover impressions: The moment “Twilight” is invoked in the promotion of your book, you’ve got some serious hype to live up to. The same applies to the use of “The Hunger Games”. However, to bill a book as a combination of both is just setting yourself up for disappointment. It’s not unusual to see such comparisons made in the advertising of a book. It’s the entire backbone of the Orwell Project, after all. Publishing, now more so than ever, needs to make money, and the easiest way to get the tills ringing is to create hype. It’s not always successful, as we’ve discussed, but when deployed in the correct manner it can work wonders. “Divergent” managed it but “Matched” and “Eve” both stumbled. With “Eve”, I can easily see why, just from that promise of “The Hunger Games meets Twilight”. For many, the romance was a crucial part of “The Hunger Games”.

I’ve only read the first book, a shameful admittance on my part, but I always felt that the romantic element felt tacked on. Suzanne Collins’s agent admitted that she had suggested more romance for the series, whilst Collins was more interested in the war element. It shows, even in the first novel where the manipulation of narratives such as a dream romance broadcasted live make up a fascinating part of the story. I know many people disagree with me on this, but romance has never felt like a crucial, necessary or even particularly interesting addition to a dystopian narrative. It feels distracting, often serves solely to fill pages and suggests a complete lack of priorities for the protagonist. When society has crumbled and you’re up against a totalitarian government or something similar, you should be more worried about that than if the guy you like will hold hands with you. Romance works best as a secondary plot, and even then it’s tough to pull off well, so to push it front and centre is asking for trouble. So, with that long ramble off-topic, I bring the project back to “Eve” with the shocking revelation that I genuinely enjoyed it for the first third of the novel.

“Eve” opens with the introduction of an all-girls’ school, walled off from the rest of society in the remnants of what once was America, ruled by one King. These girls, having lived comfortable lives and educated in trades they believe they will spend their lives working in, are set to graduate and move into the next level of education. For school valedictorian Eve, her dream of being an artist is in sight, but her world is shattered when she sees the truth for herself – eighteen year old girls are strapped to beds, forcibly impregnated and must breed continually in order to replenish the country’s population. Understandably, Eve runs away, directed by one kind teacher to follow the path to a safe haven known as Califia. On the way, accompanied by fellow runaway Arden, she meets a man for the very first time, Caleb, who helps the pair out and shelters her from the military, who are keen to bring her to the main city where she shall take her place as the King’s new wife.

Up until Eve meets Caleb, the novel is rather enjoyable. It’s by no means a masterpiece and the first person narrative became a tired staple of the genre long ago, but the first third of “Eve” remains well paced with a genuine tension and hints of an exploration of the change in gender roles when society crumbles. Given dystopian fiction’s history in tackling women’s issues, most notably in Margaret Atwood’s classic novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” and, more recently, in the much hyped YA debut of Lauren DeStefano, “Wither” (see my review here), it’s no surprise to see another novel tackle the topic. However, it quickly becomes apparent that the author has no real interest in such issues, nor indeed in accurately developing a world where such drastic changes in gender roles would occur. It’s another world with a single non-democratic ruler that briefly mentions a decadent city where the rich live carefree, much like the Capitol, but the decision to divide the sexes and have the girls be explicitly taught to fear and hate men before forcing them to breed leaves the reader with nothing but questions. Surely if such a patriarchal system were to be instigated then it would be far easier and more sensible to teach the girls about traditional domestic roles of housewife and mother. To push this traditional role not only as the norm but as the girls’ sole function would require the involvement of men, even if sexual intercourse never takes place. Spending seemingly unlimited resources on providing schools of young girls with comfortable room, board and several years of education also seems pointless. One character says this is done because it makes the next step easier if they have had several years of the supposedly fulfilled purpose of learning a trade. While Eve’s naivety and fear is perfectly in character, to have her go through such a u-turn, from fearing men her whole life as she has been taught, to becoming entirely consumed by the first one she meets, feels unnatural and rather insulting. It asserts the insinuated gender norm of the society, that women are passive and need to be protected. While I wouldn’t quite compare it to “Twilight” as the marketing did, the author’s need to insert a romantic angle ruins the promising potential of “Eve”.

Let’s talk about reproductive issues in dystopian fiction. Science fiction has a long standing history of using the body and its subsequent invasion as a metaphor. The numerous “Invasion of the Body Snatcher” movies used its eponymous theme to tackle contemporary fears and issues such as the McCarthy witch hunts. Ridley Scott’s “Alien”, its sequels and the recently released sort-of prequel “Prometheus” famously tackle the fear of bodily infection and loss of control over ones extremities. Personally, nothing terrifies me more than losing power over my own body. Today, with women’s rights being constantly threatened and abortion providers being shut down, severely limited in their power and even birth control coming under entirely unfounded scrutiny, it’s not a surprise to see teen fiction tackle the topic. That’s not even taking into account that glorious thing known as puberty, a horror scenario to many a teenage girl.

At the heart of these books, mainly “Eve” and “Wither”, although we can’t have this discussion without mentioning “The Handmaid’s Tale” (a similar theme appears in the next Orwell Project entry “Glow”), is the terrifying and not all that fantastical idea that society views a young woman’s worth solely as a walking womb, and that she shouldn’t even have control over that. Given the dystopian genre’s long and illustrious history in exploring the contemporary world through seemingly fantastical scenarios, this is a theme that deserves proper execution. My main issue with “Eve” and “Wither” is that they shy away from the nitty-gritty of the matter and because of this they end up falling into some tired and suspect tropes of general YA. Despite everything that occurs in both novels, both heroines end the novel with their virginity intact. This is especially uncomfortable in “Wither” given that heroine Rhine’s 13 year old sister wife ends up pregnant while the husband respectfully keeps his distance from the 16 year old. The novel sets up a genuinely unnerving premise – a world where women are forced into polygamous marriages in order to quickly repopulate the earth before a virus kills them all at the age of 20 – and refuses to go all the way. “Wither”, like “Eve”, has many problems in its world-building, but by setting up the ridiculous and damaging dichotomy that the heroine’s ‘goodness’ is inextricably connected to her ‘purity’, the novels end up going against that they’re supposed to be condemning. I’m not saying that the heroines had to have sex or be raped or be subjected to something equally gruesome and degrading; that’s horrific. The issue here is in the authors mollycoddling their heroines against the world they have created. What is the point of setting up such a scenario if the reader is perfectly aware that the heroine is safe from the evils they’re up against? Ultimately, “Eve” fails to live up to its potential because it refuses to fully embrace the premise it has created. Eve's companion Arden arguably goes through more yet it is she who sacrifices herself after Eve makes a monumentally moronic decision (after the first third, Eve sadly loses any semblance of sense).

I’m not exactly known for my ringing endorsements of romance in young adult novels. It’s not that I hate romance – I love it and happen to think that it’s one of the most challenging and rewarding genres in fiction, both to read and to write. My issue has always been with the oversaturation of romance in the genre and the reliance of insta-love over true characterisation. Not only does “Eve” squander its potential as a dystopian novel in favour of focusing on the romantic angle, the romance itself is dull, uninspiring and fails to work on its own level. It just doesn’t work in the world Carey has created. The novel is far more concerned with high school rom-com style misunderstandings and stolen glances, something which this reader found mind-boggling considering the evidently more important issues unfolding throughout the novel. The series has potential as a whole but in order to fully live up to it, the author needs to fully embrace the concept she has created, spend far less time worrying about the romance, and to tighten up the world-building and mood substantially. However, the abrupt ending and clear assertion of the heroine’s priorities (take three guesses) don’t fill me with much hope.

Next: "Glow" by Amy Kathleen Ryan (I quite liked it!), "Legend" by Marie Lu (I also quite liked it!) and "The Selection" by Kiera Cass (what the hell was that?!) I'm not doing the Big Brother's check-list right now since I'm not entirely confident it works as well as the Sparkle check-list did and am looking for ways to improve it.

Kylie's looking pretty swish, eh?

2012-06-28T22:15:56Z

Yeah, they got my name wrong when I went up get my degree. However, I still got it!

I'll post more pictures when my family go crazy and upload them all onto Facebook.

The Orwell Project: 2 - "Matched" by Ally Condie.

2012-06-13T21:09:38Z

Thank you to everyone who read and commented on the first Orwell Project entry, and apologies for the next part taking so long. It’s been a busy month for me due to ending university, my internship, job, numerous volunteering positions and organising my graduation (2:1 MA hons in Celtic & English literature, fuck yeah!) so reviewing had to be shelved for a while. Now that I will probably have a lot more free time on my hands as I join the ranks of unemployed humanities graduates, this will hopefully move along a little more speedily.

Summary (taken from GoodReads): Cassia has always trusted the Society to make the right choices for her: what to read, what to watch, what to believe. So when Xander's face appears on-screen at her Matching ceremony, Cassia knows with complete certainty that he is her ideal mate... until she sees Ky Markham's face flash for an instant before the screen fades to black.

The Society tells her it's a glitch, a rare malfunction, and that she should focus on the happy life she's destined to lead with Xander. But Cassia can't stop thinking about Ky, and as they slowly fall in love, Cassia begins to doubt the Society's infallibility and is faced with an impossible choice: between Xander and Ky, between the only life she's known and a path that no one else has dared to follow.

Cover impressions: I distinctly remember reading a Publisher’s Weekly piece on the much buzzed about auction for publishers to acquire the rights to the trilogy by Condie, an author who had only previously published Mormon-centric teen fiction from much smaller publishers, and the much talked about seven figure sum the author received. Condie’s agent, Jodi Reamer, is nothing if not a savvy businesswoman. What followed after that auction were many months of hype and a not insignificant publicity campaign that, while nowhere near matching that which “Divergent” would later receive, still warranted attention and discussion. As expected, the first book in the planned trilogy went straight into the New York Times bestseller list. However, there were rumblings that the book had not sold anywhere near as well as expected, and the reviews were decidedly mixed amongst readers. With the final book in the trilogy being released in November, one can’t help but notice how little buzz there is surrounding its impending release, especially when compared to that which preceded “Insurgent”, the follow-up to “Divergent”. Having finally read “Matched”, it’s not hard to see why. I must admit that this book took a lot longer to read than it probably should have. Part of the blame for that can be directed towards myself and my schedule, but the main reason it took me so long was because I was so unbelievably bored with this book.

Small side note: The cover is pretty but it’s yet another addition to the less than creative field of pretty skinny white girls in prom dresses that seem to have flooded the YA cover market. I find it interesting that the marketing for this book, along with several upcoming Orwell Project books, focus their attentions on the shallow and fashionable elements of the story. This dress appears in one scene and yet the marketing is all about it.

The premise for “Matched” is a familiar one, especially to those of us who have read works such as “1984” and “The Giver”. Set in an undisclosed point in the future of what I assume is America, The Society dictates every part of the lives of its citizens. They control who you marry, when and how many children you’ll have, the education you’ll receive, the job you’ll do and when you shall die. Their reasoning for doing so is based heavily on statistics that prove their decisions equal long, content and productive lives for all. The book opens on the night of the matching banquet of our 17 year old hero Cassia. Wearing one of a selected number of dresses (the admittedly gorgeous green number adorns the cover of the book), she eagerly awaits the Society’s decision as to whom she shall marry. To everyone’s surprise, she is matched with her good friend Xander. Such instances are rare as the vast majority of the Society’s citizens are matched with strangers. However, Cassia’s carefully ordered life takes an unexpected twist when, upon checking the details of her match, the file containing details of Xander shows not his face but that of another boy she knows, called Ky. Unfortunately this match cannot be since Ky is an aberration and is thus forbidden from being matched. Cassia finds herself in a state of turmoil over choosing the boy chosen for her or the forbidden mysterious stranger. If that final sentence doesn’t make you a little queasy, you’re a stronger YA reader than I.

Before I even get onto the utterly bland stupidity of the romance, the story’s central focus, I must touch on the one thing I did like about “Matched”, and that is the prose. Condie writes beautiful prose, striking a fine balance between a lyrical quality and yet remaining purposeful in her word choice. It’s tougher than it looks and I commend her for that. It works to extremely emotional effect in one particular scene with Cassia and her grandfather. However, the book fails on almost every other level, starting with the world-building.

The premise of an all controlling society is nothing new in fiction. It’s a backbone of dystopian novels and can be written in a highly effective manner. I recommend “The Giver” by Lois Lowry as a strong example, especially given that “Matched” borrows heavily from the tropes used in “The Giver”. Obviously, the Society is originally viewed as a utopia, bringing peace to its citizens, but the main problem with Condie’s Society is that it is completely toothless. Almost every character breaks some sort of rule throughout the story, be it minor or major. If this is a small sample, how does this translate to the Society as a whole? How on earth do they keep order? Given how much free will is allotted to the citizens, I remained baffled as to how they functioned. Surely if people are constantly breaking rules, and know they are doing so, then they are fully aware that their government is not utopian, therefore they become ungovernable? The Society claims to have eradicated certain illnesses, such as cancer, through the matched pairings, but while I’m no doctor, I’m not sure that’s how cancer works.

The Society has set aside 100 of each thing for the citizens to appreciate, such as 100 poems or 100 songs. How are these 100 poems decided out of the immeasurable amount of literature created over the course of thousands of years of human achievement? Let’s look at this logically (since I doubt the Society did): it would make the most sense for the Society to pick 100 American poems, given the location of the story, but which era would they choose, if any? For example, I love Edwin Morgan, and it would be tough enough to pick 100 of his poems to preserve, let alone 100 poems from every poem ever written. Would drama written in verse count? What about works translated from a foreign language? How is a poem deemed suitable? Given the often deeply confessional, political or cultural specific nature of some poets’ work, how can one be sure the poem they choose doesn’t incite some sort of revolution amongst the people? Books are burned in dystopian societies for a reason – because words are power. Some poems require a lot of research and analysis to truly appreciate the power behind them. I’m currently reading a biography of the marriage between Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and it’s uncovering so many of the complexities behind each of their work that I’d never even considered before, and I consider myself a huge Plath fan in particular. This particular aspect of the story bugged me quite a bit, especially since I’ve spent hours analysing one stanza of a poem for an essay. The 100 poems choice is made all the more confusing given that the citizens are taught to read but not to write. To me, that doesn’t make a lot of sense. How is that even possible? In one supposedly touching scene of romance building, Ky teaches Cassia to write, but if she can read perfectly, as is mentioned on more than one occasion, surely she could just see the words in her head and copy them down? There is no real logic behind these decisions made by the Society. The society in “The Giver” works because they have eradicated colour and music and anything creative. Here, Cassia’s world seems utterly ridiculous in comparison. There’s no logic here at all.

Since the romantic element takes up the vast majority of the story, so it must take up the vast majority of my review, unfortunately. To put it succinctly, the romance is awful. It’s the worst of what YA romance has thrown at us over the past 5 years. Dull, insipid, poorly developed, overly reliant on “mysterious”, “brooding”, and other such descriptive words, the love triangle unfolds pretty much as you would expect. It’s the join-the-dots of YA romance, headed by an extremely annoying heroine with absolutely no concept of how basic human emotions work. It’s a very conservative romance, with a simple brushing of hands bringing about emotions in Cassia so extreme, I shudder to think how she’ll cope when she has her first orgasm (yes, I know Condie is a Mormon and that she was inspired to write “Matched” after chaperoning at a high school dance, but the book is terrible enough independent of the author, so separate my thoughts shall remain). I get the thrill of a first crush, we all do on some level, but here it is heightened to such ludicrous proportions that don’t even fit in with the society in which Cassia is living. This all controlling Society decides who you shall marry, but still allows cross-gender interaction and the odd kiss or two amongst the unmatched. Why? I refuse to believe this Society is stupid enough to assume that no child under the age of 16 has ever felt an attraction, physical or emotional, to another human being before they are matched with a spouse for life. We are supposed to believe that Cassia has never felt any attachment, romantic or otherwise, to another person, even subconsciously, before she is matched with her supposed close friend and then all of a sudden, there is a switch which changes everything. This is a world devoid of sexuality, not because the Society dictates it, but because the author has eradicated it and refuses to address it. Which brings me to a side note I must address.

Where the fuck are the gay people in dystopian fiction?

On top of believing that teenage hormones do not exist, the reader is supposed to assume that homosexuality, bisexuality, and anything remotely resembling an LGBTQ lifestyle just does not exist. The matchings exist to create content relationships and strong families, and I get that. However, there is not one single acknowledgement that LGBTQ people even exist in this Society. If Condie had taken a moment to mention that queer lifestyles were outlawed or something similar, I wouldn’t have been happy but there would have been some sort of understanding, but there’s nothing. It’s not that gay people aren’t allowed in the Society, it’s that they don’t even fucking exist, and this makes me so angry. Given the pathetically small percentage of LGBTQ representation in current young adult fiction, to have this seven figure sum selling trilogy, one that publishers fought over to buy, one that was buzzed about for almost a year prior to release, just ignore a significant portion of the population disappoints me. The characters in the book have the option to reject their match and live life as a Single (which also opens up another whole heap of plot holes) so I assume this is what LGBTQ citizens choose? If so, why does the author not acknowledge this? Are LGBTQ people not worth her time, or any dystopian author’s time? Given how much YA likes to pat itself on the back for being so diverse and supporting LGBTQ readers, seeing the most buzzed about books once again focus on the straight pretty skinny white girl in an expensive dress while entirely ignoring LGBTQ people makes me want to vomit.

Back to the romance. Ky is the one Cassia falls for (it’s the biggest shock of the year!) apparently because she’s forbidden to. They barely interact and they know next to nothing about each other, and yet we’re supposed to believe they completely adore each other and will do anything do stay together, as long as it doesn’t stop Cassia from being entirely passive as a heroine. Her supposedly close friendship with Xander is shown to be equally as poorly developed but at least they have conversations together and Xander exhibits a modicum of a personality. Ky’s entire worth as a romantic heroine seems to rest on him being mysterious and forbidding. Call me old fashioned but I’d like to get to know someone before we brush hands and declare our everlasting love. While there is a lot less of the grating angst commonly seen in YA romance when it comes to the heroine choosing between two boys, the fact that Cassia immediately seems to fall for someone she barely knows does nothing to bring me in as a reader. When it is revealed that the romance between Ky and Cassia is also a set up by the Society, for reasons too pointless and ludicrous for me to note, this has no effect on anything. Cassia barely questions her thoughts on the issue, which is odd given how preoccupied she was with the decision between her and Xander. It’s not love, it’s obsession. This forbidden romance also has absolutely no effect on the plot. About 50 pages from the end of one extremely slow read, Cassia’s family are sent to a new location and Ky is sent to another, not because of their romance but because of two entirely unrelated incidents that are barely mentioned in the novel. The entire focus of the story is completely inconsequential to the central plot. Basically, the romance is literally pointless. If that doesn’t irritate you as a reader, I don’t know what will.

This review suggests I am much angrier with this book than I actually am. Aside from the complete erasing of LGBTQ representation (and that rant could easily be applied to any number of big selling YA novels), this book mostly just bored me. It’s lifeless in almost every possible way, bland and comparable to birthday cake icing – pretty to look at but utterly lacking in anything remotely resembling substance. Where Condie’s prose shows a strong level of control over the language, the Society depicted completely lacks it. I’m struggling with a way to properly sum up “Matched” because it was so entirely pointless and forgettable, but it wasn’t atrociously bad. I found “Divergent” to be a far worse book, but there was a note of ambition behind it. “Matched” feels lazy in comparison, far more invested in an entirely inconsequential romance one can find in any number of YA books than in giving dimensions to its characters and the world they inhabit. “Matched” is solid proof that gimmicks can only take you so far in YA, and the same can be said for hype.

Big Brother’s Checklist:

· World-building: Terrible, frivolous, completely lacking in the logic that is frequently mentioned in reference to it. I spent way more time thinking about the holes in the 100 poems scheme than I should have.

· Strong premise: It’s a gimmick, pure and simple. A “What if…?” idea that’s good for taglines but not much else. If you’ve read “The Giver” then you may find yourself trying to figure out the percentage of that seven figure advance that Condie owes to Lois Lowry.

· “Strong female character”: Cassia isn’t supposed to be the kickass heroine Tris was depicted as, but she is described as intelligent on more than one occasion, including by the Society, and yet she remains passive, childish and really annoying throughout.

· Love triangle: I’m counting this as a yes because, while Cassia is very decisive in her choice between the two potential romantic interests, the reader is still subjected to far too much internal angst from Cassia on the issue.

· Sense of threat: There isn’t one.

· Strong villain/antagonist: The Society isn’t a strong enough threat to really register as an antagonist, nor is there another present.

· Lack of priorities: Romance always works better as a sub-plot unless you can write the hell out of a romance. Brief hand brushing, letters on napkins and mysterious strangers just don’t cut it.

· Overdone/unnecessary romance: Unnecessary should have been this book’s title.

· Supporting cast: With the exception of Cassia’s grandfather, who exhibits wit and warmth in the one standout scene of the novel, the supporting cast barely registers. I was interested in learning more about the relationship between Cassia’s parents, but little time was allotted to them.

· Deeper meaning: There doesn’t seem to be one.

· General writing quality (pace, plotting, prose): Beautiful prose, terrible plotting, sluggish page. Half a point here.

· Originality/execution: Read “The Giver” instead.

Bingo count: 11 ½ /12.

Next time on the Orwell Project: Kiera Cass’s “The Selection”, as possibly to be seen on the CW in the near future. I’m also looking for suggestions on how to improve the Big Brother’s checklist. Is there anything I should add or take away? Once again, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this book and others coming up in the Orwell Project, and if you can recommend a dystopian novel that actually acknowledges LGBTQ people, then you’ll get a gold star and my thanks!

The Orwell Project: 1 - "Divergent" by Veronica Roth.

2012-05-08T00:15:59Z

Welcome to the first entry in the Orwell Project! Those of you who follow me on twitter may have seen my brief tweets whilst reading the first book on the list, and you may have noticed that my opinions were less than positive. I go into every book with an open mind and aim to give each of them a fair chance, as I did with the Sparkle Project (yes, really), and what better way to start off my exploration into the new dystopian YA craze than with what is arguably the biggest success story of the post-Hunger Games market.

Summary (taken from GoodReads): In a future Chicago, 16-year-old Beatrice Prior must choose among five predetermined factions to define her identity for the rest of her life, a decision made more difficult when she discovers that she is an anomaly who does not fit into any one group, and that the society she lives in is not perfect after all.

Cover impressions: Veronica Roth started writing “Divergent” in college, and was quickly signed up by agent Joanna Stampfel-Volpe. The book rose to success at an unusually enthusiastic pace, with a 200,000 copy first run by HarperCollins, and a huge online promotional campaign. The campaign is what interested me the most upon the book’s release. Part of the promotional campaign included a Facebook campaign where you could “discover your faction”, and to me this is a huge reason as to why the book was so successful, certainly selling more copies than similarly themed and promoted novels. A huge attraction of the novel’s concept is the idea of choice, of looking inside yourself and deciding which human traits you value the most, and having your entire life dictated by that choice. As I mentioned before, much of the appeal in teen dystopian novels these days lies in the inherent choices one must make, and the subsequent consequences of that decision. Unfortunately, “Divergent” fails on this front by falling into several major pitfalls of the genre.

The Chicago of the future depicted in “Divergent” is one divided into five factions, with the citizens of each faction devoting their lives to one specific virtue that they consider the most important: Amity (peace), Abnegation (selflessness), Candor (honesty), Erudite (intelligence) and Dauntless (bravery). Upon turning 16, each citizen must take a series of tests to discover which faction they are most suited to, but are then given the freedom to choose whichever faction they wish to join later on. This confusion is one of the first big missteps of the novel. Why introduce mandatory tests to find a suitable faction if the citizens then have free will to decide differently?

Beatrice/Tris, our heroine, belongs to Abnegation, but decides to join Dauntless, after receiving inconclusive test results which identify her as Divergent, the name given to those who are shown to possess more than one of the allotted virtues. Once again, the red flags come up, revealing my biggest issue with the novel. The world building makes absolutely no sense. The concept of dystopian societies relies on the notion of a world that seems perfect but is shown to be extremely flawed and often dangerously problematic (an idea many writers and publishers can’t seem to wrap their heads around), but while the concept of a world run by a series of such virtues sounds interesting at first glance, I cannot think of an instance where this would work without someone calling it out. How can you divide humanity into one of five virtues? How on earth can you be brave and not honest, or intelligent and not peaceful? Why would possessing more than one of these virtues be dangerous, as Tris is told? I can understand brainwashing one’s citizens into wholeheartedly believing in this system but by offering choice surely that gives them agency to question it? Those who do not pass initiation are sent out into the outskirts to be faction-less, taking on the grunt jobs and living on hand-outs, and yet the possibility of a completely justifiable uprising is never mentioned. Even if the society of this world had been watertight in its depiction of an entirely subservient society, I can’t imagine those without factions not rebelling in some way. The way in which every character just accepts this, along with every other world-building hole, felt lazy.

How on earth is this system governed? It is mentioned that Abnegation are in charge of politics of the city because of their selflessness, which sounds divine in terms of contemporary politicians, but who decided this? How can one be selfless when it is one’s job to dictate to others how to rule their lives? We’re given no indication of how the rest of America outside of Chicago works, which constantly raised questions as to the function of local government versus the role of Washington and the Congress and Senate (granted, I’m a politics geek so I doubt most teenagers are stressing over this like I am). Tris also attends high school with other factions, which logically makes no sense since surely allowing such a system would only encourage rebellion. Each faction is assigned a different job to do but the idea that each position would only require one virtue is ridiculous and illogical. This complete lack of sense is present throughout the entire book and is impossible to overlook. I cannot invest in a novel that leaves me asking so many questions. The concept and its lack of thought reminded me of Lauren Oliver’s “Delirium”, set in a world where love is a disease. It sounds like an interesting concept until it’s thought about for longer than five seconds.

Upon leaving Abnegation, Tris is sent to the Dauntless camp to begin her training for initiation. The biggest chunk of the book is spent in what I find easiest to describe as an extended training montage. Since the Dauntless value bravery above all else, naturally their training process is like a big adventure camp, complete with punch-ups, tattoos and paintballing. These frivolous activities are supposed to be what proves, for the biggest part of the story anyway, who the truly brave are. The Dauntless spend a lot of time getting tattoos, dyeing their hair wild colours and generally dressing like Sex Pistols fans. The definition of bravery presented is questionable at best. The stakes, which make Dauntless seem more like a summer camp than a truly life-changing initiation, are set ridiculously low, except for the frequent punch-ups the trainees must go through. While this element of the world is questioned by Tris, she buys into it ultimately but I don’t – why is violence brave? Surely the braver thing would be to say no? This element is set up for a later pay-off into the evils of another faction but once again the mishandling of the world-building raises some questions. Who is monitoring the factions? Leaving them self-governed is just asking for trouble. There’s no authority present, which also means there’s no real villain or sense of threat. The closest the novel comes to having a villain is the opposing faction Erudite, because apparently valuing intelligence makes one instantly maniacal and ready to take over the world. There’s a less than subtle anti-intellectual tone throughout the book which seriously annoyed me. The inherent premise of the book is where the issue of this lies, but given that the supposedly heroic Dauntless are happily beating up each other, I fail to see them in a better light than those who value intellect. One of the tensions of the novel lies in Erudite’s slandering of Abnegation, yet one would expect Candor to be doing their job of being honest about the inherent flaws of the city’s governmental rule. Once again, too many questions.

The stakes are raised in the second stage of initiation when Tris and company must go through extremely life-like hallucinations of their worst fears to learn to overcome them (because the true definition of bravery is overcoming one’s fear being attacked by rabid birds). Given that not much of any true consequence happens throughout this large portion of the book, I was disappointed by the lack of real character development, both for Tris and the supporting cast. I genuinely forgot the names of several of the Dauntless trainees, who remain distinguishable only by their token roles – best friend, love interest, bully – while Tris veered between cold, dull and a bit of a hypocrite. She has a distinct lack of compassion that I found to be a complete turn-off due to the inconsistencies of her depiction. While Tris admits she is too selfish to stay in Abnegation, but this doesn’t explain her often cruel nature as well as her habit of passing judgement on everyone. Characters exist to serve purposes and not much else. Peter is a bully and not much else. Al is the nice boy having trouble fitting in until he suddenly turns bad then kills himself for a cheap emotional pay-off. Not one supporting character makes a lasting impression and all feel entirely disposable.

Of course, her emotions change quickly for the romantic interest, Four, who I am sorry but not at all surprised to say is a typical YA jerk. Then again, I can’t think of many YA romantic leads who managed to draw blood from their supposed true love. I tend to get very angry when the “I was only trying to protect you” card is played in any novel, but here it angered me more than usual since “trying to protect” Tris includes physically hurting her, demeaning and humiliating her in front of others and treating her like a child (although she is often immature and dim-witted). Of course, he also has a tortured past and is brooding but gentle and loving, ticking off so many clichés in one swoop. The fact that the supposedly strong Tris falls for this hook, line and sinker entirely contradicted her depiction as a “strong female character”. It does not help that Tris seems to pick up each part of her training with ease. I’m not sure knife throwing and using a gun (something Tris finds a lot of security in, and don’t even get me started on the pro-gun stuff) are something that just come naturally.

The moral element of the novel feels shoehorned in. Tris makes references to God and praying but we are given no sense of the role of religion in this society. While the factions suggest an inherently Christian foundation to the city’s new rule, there’s no depth to this, nor any real rules put in place. It’s difficult to imagine a society without religion, or something resembling a religious element, be it the “worship” of a leader or the following of a divine theistic being, and I think the world of the novel would be much more complex and interesting if this was explored in more depth, but the author can’t just add a few references to God and hope for the best, especially when most of what the societies do to rule their city contradicts the inherent teachings of God and Jesus.

In terms of general prose, pacing, etc, the novel is serviceable at best and plodding at worst. Clocking in at almost 500 pages, the story feels sluggish, poorly developed and more concerned with an extended action montage than any semblance of developing its poorly structured society and undeveloped characters. I have no issue with the novel’s less than original concept since strong execution can more than make up for that, but there are too many holes in this novel for me to ignore. One cannot shove the major plot developments into the final 50 pages after expecting the reader to trudge through such boredom for so long. And here’s my biggest issue beyond the basic structuring of the novel – this is a world where the essential message is those who value intelligence are all greedy, selfish, power-hungry schemers who are working to take over and destroy all that is good and selfless, and if those who are truly “brave” need to shoot them in the head to stop them, so be it. Dystopian fiction is inherently political, I have no problem with authors taking a specific slant, even if it’s one that directly contradicts my own politics, but the basic premise of “Divergent” is one that is flawed to the extreme, and one that any reader can pick apart within 10 minutes of the first page. Tris may express disagreement with the violence of Dauntless but she is only happy to use it herself, frequently, and it always works. The generalisation and complete misunderstanding of basic human thinking is mind-boggling. “Divergent” is weak in almost every way. Its world-building has more holes than Princes Street’s tram building project, weak characterisation, plodding pacing, predictable and tired romance and inherently fails in its objective. Needless to say I will not be reading the sequel.

Big Brother’s Checklist:

· World-building: Utter failure for all the reasons I mentioned above.

· Strong premise: Falls apart very quickly and is entirely illogical.

· “Strong female character”: The quotation marks are there for irony’s sake, as seen in the hilarious Kate Beaton cartoon. Tris is weak, frequently contradicts herself and is all too quick to fall into the romantic damsel mode, which isn’t particularly suggestive of brave. I also deeply resent her supposed displays of bravery when they rely so heavily on contradicting everything she supposedly stood for.

· Love triangle: Thankfully no, although I was fearful for one moment.

· Sense of threat: There isn’t one.

· Strong villain/antagonist: Making intelligence your villain without any real development or explanation will not win me over.

· Lack of priorities: The entire Dauntless faction lives for this. Paintballing is a display of bravery?

· Overdone/unnecessary romance: Four is a jerk who will undoubtedly prove to be a popular romantic hero in all his clichéd wonder, but he was entirely useless and unnecessary as a character, and his treatment of Tris was in no way “protecting” her.

· Supporting cast: Weak, poorly developed, seemingly only there to provide useful exposition and serve convenient roles when the occasion called for it.

· Deeper meaning: Intelligence is BAD!

· General writing quality (pace, plotting, prose): Serviceable to weak. I hate to bring an author’s age into the equation since it’s often used as a lazy smear and proves to be inaccurate a lot of the time (Hannah Moskowitz is two years younger than me and continues to knock my socks off with her talent), but the immaturity of the storytelling is painfully evident in places, but remains readable, even when the pacing and lack of development is a turn-off.

· Originality/execution: Weak. I seem to be using that word a lot but it feels the most fitting.

Bingo count: 11/12.

Next time on the Orwell Project: I honestly have no idea. I’m waiting on a few books arriving from the library so I will update this entry when I have more information, or post it on Twitter (@Ceilidhann).

After the Games - The Orwell Project

2012-05-01T01:48:20Z

The Summer I began the Sparkle Project, my YA review venture into the world of Twilight inspired paranormal romance and its reoccurring problematic elements, saw the release date for the 3^rd and final book in the wildly popular Hunger Games series, Mockingjay. I must admit that it took me far too long – until this February, just before the movie was released – to read The Hunger Games, and that was for a number of reasons. One, I have become pretty averse to hype in young adult literature due to having been immersed in it for almost two years now. Two, I was extremely annoyed by publishers heavily promoting a YA series once again through a Team [insert man here] strategy, dumbing down any complexities the series and its heroine may have into one rehashed love triangle. And three, I’m a huge dystopian fiction fan. The Handmaid’s Tale proudly sits on the list of my all-time favourite books. When a writer of particular skill or imagination tackles the topic of a twisted society, the results can be extraordinary, eliciting genuine fear and understanding from the reader, and reminding us a little too much of the possibilities that could spring from our own world. I know I’m not the only one who viewed the recent contraception debate in America and thought about Offred. The jargon of these novels have entered everyday language, from Newspeak to Big Brother and beyond. It’s not hard to see why the genre is so alluring to readers of all ages.

So why has it become so popular in YA? In my opinion, part of that has to do with the excitement element. There’s just a whole lot more happening in dystopian YA novels than most of the romance centred paranormal reads that have dominated the bookshelves and continue to do so. The possibilities are endless. Whereas the paranormal romances present a somewhat fetishized image of love conquering all, dystopian fiction offers something else; tough decisions, although the same heightened emotions are there. These novels also have strong connections to contemporary socio-political commentary, acting as mirrors to the world they inhabit. Of course, there’s also romance. While PNR presents forbidden love surviving the boundaries of mythology, dystopian pushes romance head first into societies that forbid it. The role of romance still plays a heavy part in the marketing of these novels in a similar manner to the Team Boy publicity that I oh so despise, because it’s still profitable. Whether it appeals to me or not, there’s something appealing to the demographics about forbidden love in all its forms, and this is a new outlet for it. Given the rumblings that Suzanne Collins was asked to add more of the pointless love triangle element into her series by the publishers, I can’t help but feel as if we’re stuck in a rut, even if we have moved on from sparkles. I have found myself disappointed with the dystopian YAs I have read so far (Delirium, Wither, Enclave and The Pledge), but this fad still has some steam left, so I am announcing my new blog venture:

After the Games: The Orwell Project.

(Thanks to Paige for the name suggestion).

I have picked 10 dystopian YA novels that have received varying levels of publicity, acclaim and commercial success. Some of you may notice that a few notable novels are missing, which is explained in the rules below. I have reviewed each of these novels and will include mention of them throughout the various discussions. I also wish to note that this project will not take on the same form as the Sparkle Project. I’m afraid my days of snarky recaps are over. I am extremely grateful for every view and comment these reviews received, and if it wasn’t for them I would not still be blogging today. However, I’ve grown as a reviewer since then and feel the more straightforward analytical approach would work best here. Besides, I wouldn’t want to subject you all to the pain that is my attempts to be funny! If you wish to read along with me, that would be great!

Rules:

· Each book must have been published post-Mockingjay.

· The book must either be a stand-alone or the first in a series.

· It must have been advertised, hyped or otherwise described in terms of being the next Hunger Games, or a twist on the novel, or any sort of emphasis on its dystopian elements.

· It must be something I have not read before.

The list of books I shall be reading, in no particular order, are as follows:

· Divergent (Veronica Roth)

· Matched (Ally Condie)

· Glow (Amy Kathleen Ryan)

· The Selection (Kiera Cass)

· Shatter Me (Tahereh Mafi)

· Legend (Marie Lu)

· Possession (Elana Johnson)

· XVI (Julia Karr)

· Eve (Anna Carey)

· Blood Red Road (Moira Young)

I have not yet compiled my dystopian bingo card to accompany each review, but I will provide one as soon as possible. Each review will be posted simultaneously on my blog and my LiveJournal page, then will be added to GoodReads at a later date. Stay tuned for my first review – Divergent by Veronica Roth – next week!

Shameless plug time!

2012-03-24T19:56:06Z

Have you ever wanted to combine your passion for angrily tearing apart badly written fan-fiction BDSM porn with the British democratic process? Look no further!

Ed Miliband reviews 50 Shades of Grey!

I need to go hide my Labour membership card so nobody tries to cut it up now. Enjoy!

Happy non-denominational holiday fun fest!

2011-12-24T20:51:38Z

I'll write a longer, sappier and more pretentious post for my 2011 summary but for now, I shall simply say that I wish all of you a very merry Christmas. I shall never be able to repay you all for everything you've done, especially regarding the whining and pathetic existential crises of confidence that have made up the vast majority of this year's entries. You're all so lovely and I love & appreciate every single comment I've received from you all. Those kind words and bags of humour, support and love have meant the world to me.

So to give you all a laugh, here's a photo of me during Xmas 1995. Ah, that fringe.

My top 5 films of 2011.

2011-12-15T03:10:04Z

Honourable mentions:

True Grit (Coen Brothers)

I tend to not include films released post-Oscar season like this is my list because I’m a pedantic loser but I have to include the Coen Brothers’ latest film in my list. Based on the wonderful Charles Portiss novel, the brothers have managed to make a pitch-perfect adaptation of tough, witty and wry source material whilst retaining an unmistakably Coens-esque vibe. Even if Westerns bore you to tears, I strongly recommend this movie because it transcends that genre and becomes something all the more rewarding. Filled with archaic but endlessly fascinating and often extremely entertaining language that flows from the mouths of the perfectly cast ensemble (newcomer Hailee Steinfeld is nothing short of a revelation as the heroine and yes, she is the lead no matter what the Oscars say) set to harsh yet undeniably beautiful landscapes, gloriously captured by my favourite cinematographer Roger Deakins. Filled with black humour, tension and built in a completely gripping world, I can’t recommend True Grit enough.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part Two (David Yates)

I must admit up front that I have always had severe difficulty separating my love for the books and what they gave to me as a young, impressionable book-worm from the movie adaptations in order to judge them objectively. This film also has the added disadvantage of being half a movie, and its inclusion here has as much to do with the experience I had watching it in the midnight screening on opening night as it does with the quality of the film itself. Nothing will ever beat that movie experience for me; sitting in a crowded theatre with two good friends in costume, laughing and crying and cheering and applauding as we saw the climax of something that’s been a constant companion throughout our childhoods and adolescences. However, I can say that DH2 was a worthy climax that had me gripped throughout. We saw some of the shunted supporting characters truly shine, some brilliant special effects, well shot action sequences and even Emma Watson was bearable! This placing may be sentimental but the heart wants what it wants.

5. Wuthering Heights (Andrea Arnold)

It’s a period piece without the doily frills and restrained passions. Arnold’s adaptation of the Emily Bronte classic (which I haven’t read so cannot lay testament to how faithful it is) is as raw, gritting and brutally honest as her contemporary set work. It’s much more of a mood piece than anything else, following Heathcliff and Cathy’s lives on the infamous moors as their wordless relationship of fascinating evolves into something much darker and uglier. Cast almost entirely with unknowns and stripped to the bare bones (there is no music until the very end, and the inclusion of the Mumford and Sons song is just awkward), Arnold doesn’t shy away from the ugliness of the characters, especially the bigotry directed towards Heathcliff, with this film also being the first time an actor of colour has taken on the role. To his credit, James Howson is a strong Heathcliff, and the actors playing the younger pair manage to build a realistic relationship in few words. Kaya Scodelario is the one damp squib of the project, which is unfortunate since Arnold usually has such a good eye for casting. I could easily have seen Fish Tank’s Katie Jarvis in the role. Best of all, this is a Wuthering Heights where the Heathcliff-Cathy relationship is not romanticised one iota. It’s dark, it’s unhealthy, it’s dangerous and it’s supposed to be! Praise be! The film does have a few moments that feel out of place, as if Arnold is working too hard to make the project ‘edgy’, but overall it’s a fantastic mood piece that proves you don’t need to overdress your period piece to make an impact.

4. Take Shelter (Jeff Nichols)

It’s a rarity these days that a movie truly surprises me but Take Shelter did just that. It was also another rare instance in which I had absolutely no idea what was going to happen. The sheer sense of dread Nichols fills the screen with becomes practically unbearable at times as we watch Curtis’s life and mind slowly unravel. Michael Shannon has sort of made a career out of these types of characters lately but his performance here is terrific. It’s painful to watch him suffer with visions he cannot understand or comprehend whether they are real or not, and the tension building until he finally lets it all out is an unforgettable climax. Despite some of the most eye-catching and unforgettable visuals of the year, it’s a subtle movie that values tone and character over big spectacles, and it’s all the more successful a suspense drama for it. Michael Shannon for a Best Actor nomination please!

3. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (Tomas Alfredson)

Shannon has some competition in the best actor field this year thanks to the career best powerhouse performance of Gary Oldman, heading up the strongest ensemble of the year, including John Hurt, Colin Firth, Kathy Bates, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Hardy. To call Oldman’s working in this film mere acting feels like a disservice. He is Smiley. Every twitch of his face, every shrug of his shoulder, every mumble that comes from his mouth works together to create a character as complex, intricate and labyrinthine as the film itself. Alfredson has made a film full of drab colours, an exploration of loneliness and the pain of treachery so beautiful. It’s the anti-Bond spy movie.

2. The Skin I Live In (Pedro Almodovar)

I love it when films divide opinion; it makes the conversation so much more interesting. No film did that more for me than Almodovar’s horror film without the scares or gore, a strange film that gleefully jumps between horrifying psychological thriller and trashy camp soap opera in the way that only this director could manage. It’s a wholly bizarre film that dares to be crazy and is all too happy to make you squeamish or giggle uncomfortably (having seen the film twice in the cinema, certain key scenes elicited both reactions). Filled with some of Almodovar’s favourite tropes – voyeurism, relationships between women, splashes of lurid colours – the real strength lies in the cold, clinical way in which Almodovar tackles the protagonist, played by Antonio Banderas in the best performance he’s done in years. There’s a sense of detachment from the action unfolding that leaves us with an emotional intensity to match the undeniable camp. I can’t really say much about the movie without spoiling its key plot point. If this looks like something you’d enjoy then definitely check it out, but be prepared to see opinions divided.

1. Hugo (Martin Scorsese)

When one thinks of Scorsese, one doesn’t usually think of big budget children’s movies (adapted from the wonderful illustrated novel by Brian Selznick) filmed in 3D and featuring dog reaction shots. However, after seeing Hugo, I felt as if this was the most personal and heart-felt movie Scorsese’s made in years (although not even living legend Marty can film a good dog reaction shot. It’s just impossible). Scorsese is wholeheartedly dedicated to this story, a love-letter to a bygone era as well as the pioneers of film. He fills every scene with such life and such vibrancy that I find it impossible to talk about without gushing. Anyone who grew up loving film as much as I do will be able to relate to Chloe Moretz’s reactions of glee and terror as she sees her very first film, becoming so invested in the drama she sees unfolding that she forgets it’s not real. It’s real to her, just like the magic of Georges Melies is real to Scorsese. The 3D is utilised better here than in any other movie I’ve seen, enhancing the experience rather than distracting us from it. I’d been reading a lot of reviews for this film and was so dismayed by those who said it was too good for children. What a horrible attitude to have, and I bet these are the same critics who complain about the terrible state of children’s movies these days. The truth is that this is a wonderful family movie that doesn’t treat its audience like fools. Scorsese has a story to tell and you’re all invited along.

Let's hear it for the 13.4% - female directors.

2011-12-14T05:30:54Z

I can't sleep, I'm too emotional and I'm resisting the temptation to read the remaining 5 mini-cakes in the box next to my bed. I need a distraction and The Hollywood Reporter gave me one (no, I'm not in this one.) The serious lack of women in directorial positions in film is of no big surprise to me or anyone else. Even this year, where we have a brilliant selection of women directing films, is evidence of the studio system being run primarily by straight white guys, with women directors taking to the indie route to get their films made. The Hollywood Reporter's round-table of directors this year featured no women and when the topic was brought up, most danced around the subject. So, to save my twitter followers from the pain of my spamming, I've decided to put together some videos, pictures and facts on female directors. I hope you enjoy it. Please comment with further facts and people I may have left out!

Lynne Ramsay (We Need To Talk About Kevin, Morvern Callar, Ratcatcher):

Ramsay was the original director of The Lovely Bones (without having read the entire book, and was disappointed once she had) but was removed from the project in lieu of a more commercial director willing to stay faithful to the book, in this case Peter Jackson.

Andrea Arnold (Red Road, Fish Tank, Wuthering Heights):

Jane Campion (The Piano, Bright Star, Portrait of a Lady):

A rejection letter from Walt Disney Studios animation department in 1938, regarding their hiring policy on 'girl' animators:

Only two studio animated films have been directed solely by women:

The Tigger Movie (Jun Falkenstein)

Kung Fu Panda 2 (Jennifer Yuh Nelson.)

This makes Yuh Nelson the most successful female director of all time.

Angelina Jolie (In the Land of Blood and Honey):

One of the most famous women on the planet decides to write and direct her very first film about the Bosnian war, using primarily her own funding and the independent route, with every possibility that it'll be a flop and films it both in English and Serb-Croatian. Can you say badass?

Sarah Smith (Arthur Christmas):

Prior to directing Arthur Christmas (huzzah, another animated film directed by a woman!), Smith produced The League of Gentlemen and directed episodes of The Armando Iannucci Show. She is already much cooler than I could ever hope to be.)

Kathryn Bigelow (The Hurt Locker, Near Dark, and the only woman to have ever won a Best Director Oscar.)

Lisa Cholodenko (The Kids Are All Right):

Mary Harron (American Psycho, I Shot Andy Warhol, The Notorious Bettie Page):

Sofia Coppola (The Virgin Suicides, Lost in Translation, Marie Antoinette):

Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen, Lords of Dogtown, that sparkly thingy):

"I couldn't get an interview" to direct The Fighter "even though my last movie made $400 million," Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke said. "I was told it had to be directed by a man — am I crazy? [...] It's about action, it's about boxing, so a man has to direct it ... But they'll let a man direct "Sex in the City" or any girly movie you've ever heard of."

Julie Taymor (Titus, Frida, Across the Universe):

The first woman to win a Best Director Tony award. Let's all just forget about Spider Man: Turn off the Dark.

Niki Caro (Whale Rider, North Country, The Vintner's Luck):

Dee Rees (Pariah):

Vera Farmiga (Higher Ground):

Brenda Chapman (The Prince of Egypt, Brave):

I just know I've forgotten some big name female director in this entry so please feel free to contribute with your favourites. I'd love to hear some opinions on the state of the film industry in terms of gender politics, be it the people making the films or the content they present.

The dissertation of doom!

2011-12-12T03:51:52Z

I frequently make reference to my dissertation on twitter (by which I mean I panic and complain a lot) and all the things related to it that only I find fascinating. More and more people have been asking about it and my advisor gave me the go-ahead to actually begin properly writing the thing (EEK!) so I thought I'd stick this info dump here, taken from an e-mail sent to one of my twitter friends who wanted some more details. I got carried away.

So my title is "Cruel Britannia: The Purposes and Strategies of Post-Thatcher Era British Political Theatre." It's mainly concentrating on the plays written during John Major's time as PM after Thatcher and up until the arrival of New Labour in 1997. There was a group of playwrights from this period who grew up under Thatcher's time as PM who came to be known under the mantle of "in-yer-face" theatre, where their work was characterised by its blatant aggressiveness and confrontational attitudes, including use of overt violence, sex, sexual violence, language, cruelty and nihilistic attitudes. The theatre was definitely political but not directly so. They never came out and said "Fuck Thatcher!" It was much more vague than that, drawing attention to the culture and civilization Thatcher's business attitudes that widened the class gap dramatically brought upon us. There's a sense of universality in what they write - it may seem far-fetched at first but in reality, the horrific events described in the plays came about because of the subjugation of the younger, working class generation by the older powers above, they're just taken to the extreme hyper-realist logical conclusion. I'm concentrating primarily on 5 plays:

Blasted - Sarah Kane (the first time I read this play I had to go lie down, I was so emotionally exhausted. Kane draws a direct connection between a woman being raped in a hotel room in Leeds to the outbreak of civil war. The play was inspired by the atrocities in Bosnia and the media's fascination with such events yet never really offering any help - this was also post-first Gulf war and the rise of the 24/7 news coverage and cable news network system, which practically awarded voyeurism, so Kane's just being more blatant about it. Tough read but I highly recommend her and her other work.)

Shopping and Fucking - Mark Ravenhill (Great name, eh? This is pretty much the defining play of the period & shares some similarities with Kane's work, but is much more concerned with the effect selfish capitalism and an obsession with materialism has had on our society, especially the young, who have become so apathetic and cold to the horrific things they are put through by the people who exploit them that they barely notice it. Their world has become simplified into nothing but cold, emotionless consumerism, i.e. shopping and fucking.)

Mojo - Jez Butterworth (For my money, Butterworth's the best playwright in UK right now. I'm a teeny bit obsessed with his latest work Jerusalem, which takes the issue of English national identity and blows it apart. His debut is like a Tarantino film set in 1950s rock 'n' roll London, written by Harold Pinter. This one heavily relies on the noir style but also tackles the issue of exploitation of the young, hard working generation by the intimidating, older and never on stage bosses.)

Ashes and Sand - Judy Upton (This one's about a group of violent, amoral working class school-girls who run riot in their seaside town, mugging people to raise money to go away and escape their aimless, opportunity free lives. It's very blatant about tackling how the working class have been ignored and pushed aside, leaving them with no prospects or opportunities. Upton was heavily anti-Thatcher, although she also expressed much dismay at New Labour and what she saw as a return to the status-quo. This one's interesting since there's one adult character who the girls manipulate for their own use, and he has some serious issues with women as well as a stiletto fetish!)

The Beauty Queen of Leenane - Martin McDonagh (An old Irish woman lives with her spinster daughter and the pair have a twisted, hate driven yet co-dependent relationship that's fuelled by a desire to destroy one another. Like Mojo, it's big on the exploration of the exploited younger generation but it's also very interested in breaking down romanticised images of Ireland, something I can get heavily behind as a Scot who hates it when that happens here. This one harks back to Hollywood melodramas as well as psychological thrillers. Would love to see it performed but alas, probably won't happen.)

There's some great secondary reading out there too. Aleks Sierz is pretty much the authority on the "in-yer-face" movement. Rebecca D'Monte edited a fantastic collection of essays on political theatre of this period called "Cool Britannia?" which also has some fascinating pieces on national theatre of Scotland, Ireland & Wales, feminist writings (one where the writer defends Mamma Mia!) and minority playwrights, none of which I could sadly fit into my topic in my word count. Michael Billington's "State of the Nation" provides a fascinating insight into British theatre post-WW2 onwards, with historical, cultural and political context. It's essentially my dissertation bible. Unfortunately, since my topic is considered pretty new by English lit standards it can be hard to get further reading on certain texts. It does force me to get creative though.

Why I am done with Keith Olbermann.

2011-11-30T03:20:18Z

I can't believe I'm even bothering to address this but here it goes. Last night, I live-tweeted Countdown with Keith Olbermann, something I have done on and off for roughly 2 1/2 years. Countdown is the show that inspired my passion for politics. Olbermann's commentary was what lead me to discover Rachel Maddow. It made me want to know more about the injustices of the world. I dare say it was one of the driving forces behind me becoming so heavily involved in the politics of my own country, going so far as to join a part and hope to actively campaign. I can't deny the impact it's had on me. It's also given me the best group of friends I could ever hope to have. I haven't always agreed with Olbermann. Sometimes I've been actively angry at him. However, even during those times, I saw him as someone willing to engage with his audience and learn from his mistakes. Once, me and some of my friends managed to get him to apologise for using transphobic attitudes towards Ann Coulter, something he has not done since then. I try to be vocal about my criticisms of people I respect because I think it's important to hold them accountable when they make mistakes. They're supposed to be better than pettiness. They're the vocal voice of a movement or opinion and they must be articulate. It's a big job but he's been doing it so well for so long. The jokes about his ego and such are all well known but I firmly believe in his message and defended him for many things.

Then he blocked me on twitter today.

I understand the sheer teacup storm nature of this topic and I know how silly it is to be so upset over something as insignificant as a twitter block, but when someone you've practically idolised for years, someone you can say genuinely had an indelible impact on your life, actively decides to push you aside, it bloody hurts. My friends consoled me and wondered if it was a technical glitch, as twitter is so fond of falling victim to. Some friends, and other people who I have never spoken to before, asked about it, and the answer was confusing:

"you don't insult my friends - by last name - on twitter."

I honestly had no idea what he was referring to. I checked my tweets and wondered if he was referring to a tweet where I'd commented on former congressman Alan Grayson's hair (which was never intended as an insult), or possibly my discomfort over using Olbermann's show as a platform to ask for political donations. Then more tweets revealed this:

"she addressed him as "Lewis""

The Lewis in question is Richard Lewis, the comedian. My tweet being mentioned here is this:

"What do Bachmann's looks have to do with it, Lewis? #Countdown"

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann's physical appearance was mentioned in one of Lewis's comments, which I found unfair since it's unfair and extremely misplaced to emphasise style over substance in politics, especially in regards to women, who have faced such discrimination for so long. I never followed up on this tweet except for a couple replies to friends, and my tweet wasn't meant as some malicious insult to Lewis. Olbermann's justification for blocking me came here again in another reply to a friend of mine:

"Just the last name is far more insulting than just the first. We're done here."

This is new to me. I've always been told that it's ruder to refer to someone you don't know by their first name, since it adds an edge of condescension to the equation, and with twitter, tone is so hard to grasp sometimes. Countdown is a political show and it's commonplace, or at least it is in UK, to refer to political figures by their surnames. I do it all the time and I know I'm not the only one. 140 characters requires brevity. The choice of surname wasn't meant as some damning critique of Lewis, nor was it meant as the insult of the century. Besides, Olbermann refers to someone by their surname a few tweets earlier. Maybe it's only rude if you're British:

https://twitter.com/#!/KeithOlbermann/status/141677694415937537

So what do I have to say to this all? Honestly, I'm more confused than anything else right now, but there's some undeniable sadness and anger. Mr Olbermann, I think what you did was extremely petty. Not just blocking me but blocking anyone who you construe as disagreeing with you or daring to question you. I understand that you must get a lot of extremely insulting and possibly threatening messages every day and I can't imagine what it's like to deal with that, but your actions here are downright confusing at best. I've supported you and your show for so long, even during times when you were heavily criticised, because I stood firm in my belief that you stood up for what was right. But I'm done now. I'm not going to creep around on egg-shells for you or anyone else. I believe in the power of words and the responsibility that comes with them. If you think I'm being some sort of bully for using someone's surname then maybe you should think about the impact you have when you refer to a network as a "political whorehouse" or a female commentator as "a mashed up bag of meat with lipstick" or when one of your guests calls a rape accusation "hooey" or when a frequent guest on your show says, in reply to GOP's false equivalences over violent rhetoric "Well, I think that's what they said about the burning of the Reichstag, if I recall correctly." Practice what you preach, Mr Olbermann. I call you that because it's polite. So I'm done.

I also vote.

Do you want an Xmas card?

2011-11-29T03:03:47Z

Of course you do! Snail-mail is amazing because you can't put stickers on an e-card!

Comments will be screened so please leave your name and address in the comments below and wait patiently by your door for a lovely card with my semi-presentable handwriting and some non-Xmas themed stickers.

Also, completely unrelated to snail-mail and such but I've got a lot of free space on this entry to fill and nobody comments here anyway, but I'm thinking about giving political writing a try, just to amuse myself at first but maybe trying to submit it to a few blogs later. This will inevitably end badly since my political tweets are rambling at best and my own confidence in my writing skills has declined recently due to getting only 64% on my latest essay (and not being able to read my tutor's handwritten notes) but I'm getting sick of Blairites clogging up the field and my vengeful side wants to even things out a little. Anyone know how the hell I'd go about researching how to do this properly?

That was a stupid comment, wasn't it? Here's some painfully early Xmas music.

Lie down on the couch...

2011-11-23T23:11:08Z

What with the first semester of my final year quickly coming to a close and the rest of my life approaching on the horizon, I've been reading a lot of graduate and internship applications, trying to sort out how I move from student life to the real world. It's been interesting but mostly terrifying, but that's only when I really have the time to think about it since I have so much other stuff to do. Pretty much all of them ask for a few paragraphs on why I feel I am suitable for the position or what I hope to achieve or what unique skills and talents I could bring to the table, and I'm reminded frequently of how bad I am at selling myself on that level. I'm getting a lot of personal statement flashbacks from high school (holy crap, how was that 5 years ago?). Luckily I have more jobs and experience to fill out these things with nowadays but the sentiment is still the same. I'm just not very good at complimenting myself at the best of times unless it's sarcastically. It always feels so smug to me to do so. Not that I have an issue with others doing it, nor do I think it smug when they compliment themselves, I've just never had that much self-confidence. I have no idea what I'm getting at here, I'm a bit too frazzled to say anything entertaining.

I'm volunteering with the higher education programme again tomorrow but this time it's with primary school kids who will be about 10 or 11, which is a new thing for me. I do enjoy doing it all and I think it's an extremely important programme, especially these days with higher education being seen more and more as something not for a specific class of people, but I don't think I'm selling the experience very well to them. The spontaneity of it all is interesting and does force me to keep thinking and on my toes but I'm sure I'd be a lot better at that if I could get a decent night's sleep. I couldn't sleep until after 6am, although this was also due to some internet worries I won't delve into, and the only reason I didn't sleep until dinnertime was because I had a student rep meeting to go to. I just can't turn my mind off any more. I don't know if it's stress from studies and such or if it's the big you-know-what threatening to rear its ugly head, but whatever the case, it's fucking me up badly and the doctor won't help. Herbal sleeping tablets don't work either, haven't done so for a long time, and googling for advice just leads to a lot of homoeopathic bollocks. I got some suggestions from twitter a couple of days ago but if you have any more I'd really appreciate them. I know there's no quick-fix solution, as much as I'd like one, but at this point in time I'm pretty much willing to try anything. The lack of a decent schedule is fucking with my studies more than the average student should have to deal with.

I don't want to end this entry on such a downer so here's the Time Warp put to the Batman cartoon.

Adventures in CV Padding.

2011-11-13T15:18:10Z

I was on Facebook a couple of nights ago talking to my friend Eleanor and she was asking when she'd next see me, and proceeded to start naming days, which I crossed off one by one because of things I had to do. I realised just how much stuff I have to do over the next few weeks which is brilliant for my CV and not so great for my failing attempts to get a decent night's sleep.

A couple of weeks ago I managed to drag myself out of bed at 7 (don't laugh, this has become increasingly difficult for me over the past few months!) and go to a higher education event at a high school in the city for this volunteer programme I signed up for. Essentially, my job was to sit with a bunch of 4th years, of varying enthusiasm and attitude, and talk to them about the amazing adventure that is higher education. It was an interesting experience since the other volunteers and I genuinely had no idea what to do! We were given a basic outline and told to go for it. The spontaneity was a bit terrifying but I think I coped okay. No complaints anyway. I'm doing it again tomorrow morning but with 5th years instead. I'm also supposed to be helping out with the primary school version of the programme but haven't heard any details back.

Last Saturday I volunteered at the Scottish Poetry Library which was several kinds of epic. It's the most gorgeous building (and architecture students hang around outside trying to take photos without us noticing) with some beautiful artwork inside and just being in there was a lot of fun. I did a lot of shelf stacking and alphabetising which is my idea of geek heaven, plus you can have as many free cups of tea as you want! I'm hoping to do it again sometime in the near future. The woman in charge (with the same name as me) said I could come back and help with some events and such. Looking forward to it.

I've already squealed excitedly about this on Twitter but it bears repeating. On Friday night, after an afternoon of catching up with my friend Dara who I hadn't seen in months, I went to help out at the National Museum of Scotland's late night event. Suffice to say, it was amazing. It was essentially a children's museum party for over 18s, with booze instead of juice. There was face painting, a silent disco in the kid's percussion section, live animal handling, dress-up (I do question the ethics behind a Colonial theme dress-up in the section with the stuffed animals), bracelet making, live music and Hungry Hungry Hippos (which was harder to set up than it should have been). Essentially, the volunteers were there to join in with the fun, just on a slightly less alcohol driven mode. It was some of the most fun I've had in ages and I'm definitely signing up to help again at the next event next year (which coincides with the museum's Egyptian exhibit so you know that's going to be epic!). Here's me with my face-paint:

I also joined something. A party. A political party. That likes red. Feel free to mock me but I've been working up the nerve to do it for months.

So I feel pretty good about the fact that I can pad out my CV without lying (I was also the Medieval honours class rep for the Celtic department which required me to complain about my course to the face of my course lecturer. He was lovely about it so it was okay.) There's also my job (I was working until 4am last night so at least I have an excuse for sleeping in stupidly late today) and my studies, which I'm pretty content with. I handed in my essay early (SCORE!) and got confirmation back that my dissertation is good to go, which is a relief. Overall, I've got lots to do but I like it that way. Luckily all this volunteer and work stuff never really requires much commitment beyond a few hours so I've still got time to concentrate on the dissertation of doom and the semi-dead language translations that relax me more than they should. As long as I still have Monday nights free to win the pub quiz with, it's all good.

Because the night belongs to the sleepless losers.

2011-10-11T03:33:46Z

Yep, insomnia's back. Crap.

This is, as you can imagine, extremely inconvenient for me. I, for lack of a more eloquent term, have shit to do and I can't reach the amazing potential people keep telling me I have when I'm constantly exhausted. Even if I go to sleep at 5am and wake up at 2pm, which is an increasingly regular occurrence, I still feel constantly knackered and unable to concentrate properly. After a reasonably successful Restoration lit tutorial today, I headed off to Medieval Welsh and just hit a blank. The lecturer wasn't explaining things too clearly in my opinion but since everyone else seemed to be doing a bang-up job, maybe that's just me. I just ended up staring gormlessly at the Power Point presentation as she repeated things in an increasingly louder and slower manner, the way one tries to train dogs. Things certainly weren't helped by the smug twunt next to me who smugly sniggered and made sure we all knew that he had no problem with what we were discussing. He was an inch away from having the Mabinogion shoved up his arse.

I know I can do all this stuff perfectly well, although certain Welsh pronunciations will always be tongue twisters for me, but the lack of sleep is beginning to fuck me over. Usually the bouts of insomnia hit me a little later in the term. So I'm seeing the doctor in the morning because I do not need this shit. I have a lot to do this year and I intend to do it well. I've got two English lit courses, a 40 credit Medieval Welsh class, my dissertation, my part time job as well as several blatant CV padding adventures (2 class representative positions, volunteering at Scottish Poetry Library, peer support training, education representatives in schools) to try and make myself more employable before I take the terrifying leap into graduate applications. Sadly the vast majority of them are for law firms and accountancy training. I can't change the world as an accountant! I got an e-mail starting with the phrase "Would you like to work for Goldman Sachs?" No. I'm not evil. I'm still not sure what things I'm going to apply for. I know I want to work in some field of charity research or fundraising but it's still touch and go. There's also the worry that the whole panic disorder thingy may come back in full force. I last had one at my summer job in QMU, which was embarrassing for all involved. I can keep things pretty controlled and while I know the risk is always there, or at least the threat, I can recognise the warning signals. At least I hope I can. May be a bit different if it actually happens. I know I'm perfectly capable of doing my course, my job, my social life, my extra curricular activities and my blogging at the same time. I just need to fucking sleep!

It's been one of those days.

2011-09-07T19:01:28Z

First, the positives.

I finished my contract with QMU on Friday then went out with my now former co-workers. It was a great night only slightly marred by being refused entry into the casino with everyone else because they don't accept invalid passports. The bouncer looked at me like I was a weirdo when I said I hadn't renewed my passport because I hadn't been abroad since 2008. Apparently the bouncer business is paying well enough to make foriegn travel a frequent occurence in his life. Still, the night was a lot of fun and there was much headbanging to be had in the bar to the live band. I'll miss them all a lot.

Then yesterday I went to the recruitment day for the Edinburgh uni student association (EUSA). It's a strange thing for me to get a job interview so quickly after leaving another job. Usually there's a much bigger time gap between the two events, which makes me increasingly panicky. The event was like a team building exercise crossed with speed dating style interviews. I must have done okay because a few hours later they e-mailed to offer me a job! I was so excited I almost keeled over. This was exacerbated by my having found out moments after giving blood. Acecakes! My training day is tomorrow and I start on Saturday, the beginning of Fresher's Week. The Term begins on 19th. I'm actually really looking forward to going back to uni. It'll be nice to have a sense of normalcy after an erratic summer. I'm also rather itching to get going on my dissertation. I've been buying and reading a lot of plays in preparation, which isn't doing my bank account any favours (seriously, plays are so expensive!) I've never tackled anything quite like a 10000 word dissertation before so it's going to be one hell of a learning curve. I do get the feeling my choice of topic - post-Thatcher era British political theatre - will leave me feeling a tad depressed.

Then again, it seems that nothing leaves me feeling quite as depressed and hopeless as politics does. Yeah, yeah, I know you're all bloody sick of me talking about it on twitter and it feels like every 2nd entry on this LJ is me wangsting away like a tween with hormones on overdrive, but it is something I spend far too much of my time thinking about, and the vast majority of that time is me spent being angry, sad, confused, hopeless or a crazy mixture of the whole lot. I wrote about the age of hope being dead during the riots and while I may have been a tad quick to jump to such feelings, most of that still rings true for me and it feels like it's never going to get any better. It's all so seedy and bitchy, it's worse than high school. At least with high school, millions of people didn't get fucked over in the process. We talk about hope and change but where is it? There's so much smugness and behind the sickening smiles and self congratulatory backslaps, it all basically amounts to "We're shit but we're not as shit as them" from all sides. Denial, finger pointing, outright lies, smears... it's fucking stupid! I know it's fucking stupid and I know it's never going to change, so why am I so invested in it all? Is it really worth it?

Maybe I'll just hang up my political socks and focus on something that makes me happy for a change. It's not as if I'm some beacon of insightful political commentary in the vein of Olbermann and Maddow anyway. I don't bring new shit to the table, just shit. I think it's something I need to outright cut out of my life. I tried taking breaks from it all, one day free from it all every now and then, but it's no good. I just get roped back in and the cycle continues.

Having said all this, you'll probably see me getting angry about some Tory or something on twitter about 5 minutes after this goes up.

Shit.

The Age of Hope is Dead: Rambling thoughts on the London riots.

2011-08-08T22:01:28Z

Like many people, I have been watching the coverage of the riots in London over the past few days. There's been a gamut of emotions going through my mind since this all started - anger, fear, confusion - but the overriding feeling I've had, especially in the past few hours, is that of disappointment.

3 years ago, Obama was campaigning to be the US President. Like many non Americans, I was enraptured with this charismatic figure who seemed to embody the hope and change emblazoned across those now iconic Shepard Fairey posters. I, an 18 year old student still green to the world of politics, my opinions raw blobs of stubbornness and half-formed opinions waiting to be moulded, was inspired by what we all saw as a new age of hope, one that was ready for my generation to take the reins and change the world.

Now it's 2011. The GOP held Congress hostage until Obama bowed to 98% of John Boehner's demands, sending the DOW plummeting and the country's AAA status downwards, the UK is witnessing the dismantling of public services, the NHS, massive rises in tuition fees and the evident corruption that makes the cogs of power turn, and the streets of Croydon are ablaze. It already feels like a different age, one many have compared to the Thatcher years. The rioters (predominantly labelled quickly by the press and officials as youths) are tearing apart their own streets, burning down the homes and premises of people they may know. Anger is definitely in the air but it's chaotic anger full of sound and fury signifying nothing. The death of a man at the hands of the police is being seen as the instigator of much of this but we can't be certain it's the sole source of anger. What these thugs are doing is contemptible - it's fury directed in the wrongest way possible, hurting those who have done nothing wrong and in the end, nothing will change.

The same people will still be in power; ineffectively deploying far too little police to sort out the problem, more worried about Olympics PR than homes and livelihoods of those they are supposed to protect and represent. Political cards are played to no real solution. The people who are in charge, those who seem to forget that they work to serve us, seem to disappear and have no grasp of the situation. Cuts will still be made, police numbers will be slashed, public services will disappear and young people, my generation, will continue to be punished. The Croydon council leader who was on BBC News earlier said these riots had nothing to do with the lack of adequate youth services in the area, and while such a thing may not be the cause of the riots, in the long term it is something we must give our attention to. How can we end the vicious cycle that this generation is in if we aren't given the proper tools to make the changes we desperately want and need? These rioters aren't fighting for any specific cause - many are just so sick and tired of the same old shit and want to start something. It's wrong, and when this is all over and arrests are made, will anything really change? Nothing will change, except there will be a few more people without homes, a few more people in prisons and some men in suits condemning these actions with the most PR friendly messages possible.

I had to turn off the news earlier. I just couldn't take it anymore. I was told by someone a long time ago that I could change the world. But if I, in my extremely privileged position of being a university student with a job and family support, feel helpless, how do the people in London feel? The age of hope is dead, but to be honest, I doubt it ever existed to begin with.

Lots of things have happened but I can't remember them all...

2011-07-20T20:59:34Z

* duckgirlie visited me with one of her friends and we went for drinks at the Pear Tree and chatted about lots of silly, interesting and random things. Then duckgirlie and I went off to the Brass Monkey (coolest pub in Edinburgh) where we chatted about fandom, Dan Savage, pundit musicals, the misogyny in Sex & the City and many other cool things. I got to hear her use the phrase "ALMIGHTY COCKPUNCHINGS!" out loud. It was epic. Then she slept on my floor and I had to abandon her the next morning for work. Sadly didn't get any pictures but rest assured we looked fabulous, although my top buttons kept coming undone.

* Work's kind of a shambles. The bosses are completely incompetent, couldn't manage a piss up in a brewery and the guests are rude and accuse us of being incompetent and filthy. Luckily my co-workers are all really cool and we manage to keep spirits up throughout the day.

* I received confirmation on a few press passes I managed to attain for the Edinburgh Book Festival - Sarah Brown (*squee*), Alexander McCall Smith, Marcus Sedgwick, Eoin Colfer, Mark Kermode, Grant Morrison and a couple others. The only ones I was rejected for were China Mieville and Caitlin Moran, the latter of which is probably for the best since her book sort of pissed me off.

* The reason Moran's book pissed me off is the same reason P.C. Cast pissed me off and I ended up writing my latest for the Book Lantern. So far I've gotten back a lot of responses and opinions, the most of any entry I've ever written for the site so thanks for that! You can read it here: http://www.thebooklantern.com/2011/07/c-word-on-pc-cast-incendiary-language.html#disqus_thread (for some reason LJ won't let me link it properly.)

* I've spent a lot of time getting too excited and outraged over recent political developments. I've been tweeting #hackgate with the same fangirl style zeal usually reserved for reality TV show finals. I'm also thinking of joining a certain political party...

* I've been listening to a lot of David Bowie lately so here's a song to end this entry abruptly: