Video Killed the Literary Star

I heard about the making of an Artemis Fowl movie (ten years late), which made me happy.

Then I heard who was writing the movie, a certain Micheal Goldenberg, whose movies have never been rated above the scale of "mediocre". Which made me a little less happy.

And then, of course, the death sentence: they're putting both the first and second books into one movie. That piece of information had me rocking back and forth in a corner for an hour, trying to be optimistic about it and failing miserably. I'm thoroughly convinced that they're going to just utterly destroy Artemis Fowl, the same way they did Inkheart, the same way they did Percy Jackson, except worse.

So of course, because I'm me, I wrote a letter to Michael Goldenberg.

Now, I can't find a business address to send it to, and Disney Studios is apparently too secretive to allow letters from fans who take an interest (you'd think they'd like ideas from fans now rather than an ocean of complaints afterwards but whatever) so I can't find anywhere on earth to send it to. Which is extremely frustrating, since I took so long to write a letter that was productive instead of anxious and stupid, and respectful instead of drowning in doubt for the writer's abilities. That took time, I can tell you that right now.

But it was all for naught, so I thought I might as well put it on here.

Mr. Goldenberg,

I have recently learned of the work that is being done on the film adaptation of the Artemis Fowl books, and as a fan of the series, I must say that I am excited for the project. That being said, there are a few things I worry about concerning the adaptation, which I’m sure you will understand.

            Firstly, the plan to combine the first two installments of the series into a single movie. Let me say, I understand the reasoning behind this tactic. The end of the second book certainly gives our amoral anti-hero Artemis a much more clear-cut redemption, for a start, which is nice. It also provides much more closure for the issue of Artemis’s father’s disappearance. However, though I understand the logic behind the idea, I don’t entirely believe that it could be executed well. For instance, the transition between fighting the fairies and allying with them midway through the film would be strange at best, not to mention that in order to fit both stories into a single movie, one would probably have to cut a lot out of the plot of both stories, which wouldn’t be ideal as most of it becomes important later. I strongly believe the first book alone can carry its own movie.

However, if you believe viewers would be unsatisfied with the ending of the first book – admittedly, Artemis doesn’t prove to be a very dynamic character in the first installment alone – allow me to suggest a solution. You could end the film with the beginning of the next book, with Artemis receiving the ransom note from the Russian mafia. This would provide a cliffhanger, something for audiences to look forward to in coming movies. Admittedly, this doesn’t solve the issue of Artemis’s moral ambiguity, but it would show a more sympathetic side of him and hint at the growth to come. And while it doesn’t exactly provide closure for the issue of Artemis’s father, it would definitely address it, which I believe would have nearly the same effect. It also has the added advantage of providing enough time to fully tell the story of the first novel without it seeming rushed, which is always a good thing. If you are unsatisfied with the place this leaves Holly Short, I would suggest focusing on her intense anger towards Artemis at the end. This would at least suggest that said story does continue, and hint at confrontation later, something else for audiences to look forward to.

            I would also like to advise you in a few things which should be considered in creating the film. Firstly, please do not forget to include Juliet Butler in the first story; while it is true she could be cut out of the story with relative ease, it does introduce her early, which would prevent her from seeming like a deus ex machina should you ever adapt The Eternity Code, the third installment. She also helps show that Butler is, in fact, a man of honour, which is important to his character. Secondly, don’t forget about the humour. True, it’s stylish to be dark and edgy these days, which could be easily done with this dangerous breed of fairy, but a large part of the reason I fell in love with this series was the smart humour underlying everything. It is important. Please do not forget that. Thirdly, be very careful with how you handle the character of Artemis Fowl. He is a protagonist, but then, so are the fairies. He is not evil, but he wishes to be thought of as such, in the first story at least. Most importantly, please stay away from using the story of Artemis’s parents as a tearjerker story. It is sad, and should be shown as such, but Artemis does not seek sympathy. That is how the author succeeded in making his story sad without seeming like a rather cheap excuse to do immoral things.

            I hope you understand that I am not insisting the film be exactly as the book was; I am aware that they are two different media and will therefore need to be treated differently. I am insisting, however, that you make a real attempt to do the books justice, rather than glossing over two complex stories. An audience the books have not reached will see the movie, and as someone who has loved the Artemis Fowl series for many years, I do not want that audience to come away disappointed. Therefore, please consider my suggestions for the film adaptation, as I truly believe that they would help retain the story’s original integrity, and in doing so, retain what made it great to begin with. Thank you for your consideration.

Respectfully,

Megan Hands

Pretty good, right? I thought so. I also thought it better I not mention that I'm only sixteen. As a fan, I'm already not taken very seriously IN SPITE of the fact that I've been studying what makes a story good for years now and have managed to pin down all the primary reasons that Artemis Fowl worked. There's a friggin' science to this stuff, believe it or not, and trying to make one good story out of two great stories is kind of like trying to make a cake out of two pies: it may sound like a good idea at the time, but it just doesn't work like that. 

Since this is my blog, I'm going to give you a much longer list of reasons why this movie is probably going to fail. 

First of all, and this bugs me to no end: They're undoubtedly going to white-wash everybody. I know this because they already did it with the graphic novels, and the film industry is notorious for this. In spite of the fact that they repeatedly describe Holly as having "coffee-coloured skin", and repeatedly describe the Butlers as being strikingly Eurasian, we all know that in the movie they're all going to be white. Which will irritate me, and probably a lot of other people as well. 

Secondly, I know I've addressed this, but what the actual frig are they thinking? Putting both books into one movie? What the hell? Not only are both stories plenty big enough to have their own movie, that would involve having Artemis KIDNAPPING A FAIRY and the fairies TRYING TO KILL HIM in one half of the movie, and then Artemis and the fairies (including the one he kidnapped), WORKING TOGETHER for the second half. No matter how good the editing, the acting, that'll be awkward at best and distractingly unbelievable at worst. I just can't picture it. 

Thirdly, the character of Artemis Fowl is so easy to screw up. I know because the smart ones usually are. Everyone generalizes the smart characters so that they're just smart, when in fact there's a lot more to the process than that. It happened to Abed when Harmon left Community, and there's absolutely no doubt in my mind that Artemis Fowl will suffer. If they put some sappy music to the scenes with his mother in an attempt to make us go "Aww, he's good at heart", I'm legit going to be angry. It's a sad situation, yes, but he doesn't try to make anyone sympathize with him, which is what makes it believable instead of cheap and if the movie doesn't reflect that I'm going to be mad. He's not all bad - he's really guilty about the mind games he bamboozles his captive with - but he is far from nice, and if they try to portray him as some kind of good kid got in over his head type thing, I'll be mad. Because he's not in over his head. Some heroes hear the call to adventure and fear it. Artemis friggin' staked out  the call to adventure for a couple months and kidnapped it, then blew up a boat on the way home as a warning. 

Oh, another thing they'll for sure screw up: Commander Root. In fact, most of the LEP. Artemis Fowl has a pretty big "Good Isn't Nice" thing going on, which is actually pretty awesome. While most of the LEP has this thing going on most of the time, I think of Commander Root specifically because Commander Root is probably the least nice (and most abusive) one of the good guys. Sure, he spends at least half the series shouting at people to not be idiots or to shut up or to press the button or he'll climb up there and push it with your face, but he's still one of the goodest good guys. He's in it to help people. He'd risk his life for Haven city, or even another officer. He once walked with live grenades over a hole that basically went to the center of the earth to open a route to Los Angeles to help save Haven. Also, in the same incident, came out of it with broken ribs, coughing blood and everything. Point is, he's one of the goodest good guys in the series (especially considering Artemis Fowl and Mulch Diggums count as good guys as well). And just because he's a strong believer in tough love, possibly to a fault, doesn't mean that the audience should be turned against him. I'll admit that when I first read Book 1 I did not understand whether I was supposed to be for Root or against him. But no matter the initial first impression, he nearly got blown up for Holly Short, and if the movie manages to portray Root as your stock character horrible boss, I will not be happy. 

Okay, on the subject of the pure size of the stories they're trying to fit into a single movie, here's the main plot points that would take up the bare skeleton of the movie:

Book 1:

- Exposition: we meet Artemis, Butler, Juliet, his mother, find a fairy and deal with them, and translate the fairy Book. 

- We meet Holly Short and Commander Root and Foaly as Holly goes on an aboveground mission tracking a rogue troll. A mission which goes spectacularly sour. I'm talking buildings are destroyed, the whole thing.

- Holly goes to fill up on magic, Artemis kidnaps her. 

- Root follows Holly's tracker, which leads to a boat, which Artemis then blows up and Root has a very very close call. This is how they find Artemis, so can't be taken out. 

- The LEP find Artemis and go to Fowl Manor. They try to attack the manor, and Butler makes short work of them. I can't remember if the time-stop is already in effect at this point, but somewhere along the lines the fairies put a time-stop on Fowl Manor. 

- Root tries to negotiate with Artemis, which results in Root being very angry and Artemis being very smug. He asks for whatever his amount of gold is, which he figures is a small price to pay for not compromising fairy culture. 

- Somewhere along the line Holly escapes from her cell. She still can't leave the house due to magic rules about human dwellings, but she can wreak some havoc. 

- Root sends in Mulch Diggums, who retrieves the Book and then fakes his own death. 

- Root loses control of the situation as Cudgeon is instated as Acting Commander. He sends in a troll to provoke a call for help, which the fairies could then interpret as an invitation, which they need to enter the dwelling. 

- The troll destroys half the manor, and essentially kills Butler, except that Holly healed him at the last minute, and then Butler sends the troll sprawling. No call for help. 

- Cudgeon is fired. Root sends in the gold for Holly to come back, then planning to throw in a bio-bomb which would kill everyone there but leave the manor intact, which would leave the fairies free to stroll in there and recollect their gold. 

- Holly is sent out. 

- Artemis feeds everyone left in the manor (including himself) a sedative. 

- The bio-bomb gets detonated. 

- The fairies still can't enter because Artemis and Co. are still alive. The sedative let them escape the time-field, and therefore the bio-bomb, which means that the fairies lost. 

- Holly has healed Artemis's mother of her crippling depression for half the ransom, so that has to show up. 

And that's only Book 1! The bare essentials, I swear! Can't cut out Cudgeon because he's the reason for the B'wa Kell Rebellion in Book 2; can't cut out Mulch because he shows up in every single story and is the only reason a lot of things are even possible. Can't cut out Holly's escape because Butler wouldn't be healed otherwise; I'm telling you, bare skeleton. If you don't think that could take up a whole movie by itself, you're crazy. 

The second story involves:

- Artemis gets a ransom note from the Russian Mafia for his father. 

- Holly discovers goblins illegally importing human technology to power illegal fairy weaponry, something far too smart for a goblin to come up with (the author WILL NOT let you forget that the goblin species are idiots by nature). She suspects Artemis. Nothing at all to do with a personal vendetta or anything.

- Holly takes Butler and Artemis in for questioning. 

- Root interrogates them. Foaly interrogates them. Nothing. They know nothing. 

- Artemis and Root strike an uneasy deal; they'll help find the human responsible for the illegal stuff if they help him rescue his father from the mafia. 

- Butler finds the human and is nearly killed, but survives. The team heads off to the Arctic. 

- As they're in the Arctic, they get attacked by a couple of goblins sent by Cudgeon and Opal Koboi, his partner in crime. They are, of course, instructing all the goblins and, unbeknownst to our heroes, orchestrating an entire rebellion underground. 

- There's this whole thing where Root and Butler are trapped in a cave and Holly and Artemis have to get them out by jumping onto a train practically dripping with radioactivity. It's hard to explain, but it's this whole thing. 

- Holly's finger gets cut off, which Artemis then helps her to heal. 

- While all this is happening, Opal and Cudgeon have trapped Foaly, started the rebellion, blamed Foaly for it, and the LEP are losing the battle. 

- Root and Holly realize what's going on (Foaly manages to send them a text from Artemis's lo-tech human technology) and head back underground. But the only way in would be to break into Koboi Labs, which is virtually impossible. Except Holly knows a certain con who can do it. One who faked his death. 

- The whole incident with Root that I talked about earlier. I suppose that could be cut out easily enough. 

- They find and trap Mulch Diggums so he can help them with breaking into Koboi Labs. 

- After some seat-of-the-pants stuff, they break into Koboi Labs, leaving Artemis by the shuttle while the professionals do their job. 

- Except now Holly and Butler and Root are fighting off hundreds of stupid goblins and Mulch is calling for help, and Artemis goes up to help him. 

- Artemis infiltrates the main headquarters of Koboi Labs (by climbing through tubes full of plasma - it's this whole thing), which then allows Foaly to expose Cudgeon as the traitor he is. Cudgeon then puts a gun to Artemis's head, and then Foaly exposes Cudgeon to OPAL about what a traitor of an evil partner he is (he was planning to kill her), and then Opal proceeds to attack Cudgeon, which effectively kills him and knocks Opal out. So Haven is saved and stuff. 

- Root and Holly head back up to the Arctic with Butler and Artemis to save his father, which they do (by shooting him... but not really.... it's hard to explain). 

- Denouement: Artemis and the fairies have grudging respect for each other, Holly has her classic "spark of decency" line, Artemis participates in the first cool moment of his life (where he catches a coin which Holly tossed up in the air and shot straight in the center). Not essential, I suppose, but it's one of those things that are so loved by the fandom that if you don't include it you'll get in a buttload of trouble for it. 

AND THEY THINK THEY CAN PUT BOTH THESE STORIES INTO ONE MOVIE. 

They're going to have to either cut out half the things and change most of it (which, as I may have mentioned, would not be advisable since most of it becomes referred back to later in the series) or make it friggin' five hours long. Also not advisable.

I just want a good movie adaptation that also happens to be accessible. Is that so much to ask?

There's so much more that could go wrong with this movie, though.

I do not know how on earth they plan to introduce Mulch Diggums and his special dwarf talents. There's just no tasteful way to do it for film, so far as I can see. He tunnels by unhinging his jaw, eating the dirt and rapidly ejecting it out the other end. And, like, his hair can be used as lock-picks. And his saliva hardens on contact with air. And can also be used as a sedative. And also is luminous. And his skin can be used as suction cups. Dwarves have so many gifts bestowed on them by evolution that they could take over the world if they would just stop getting arrested.

But the thing about that, is that these "gifts" play a huge role in the series. There's no way to get into Fowl Manor without Mulch, nor Koboi Labs, nor an uncountable number of other escapes/breaking and entering. But the thing is that it's easy to explain how it works in a book. Less easy in a movie.

OH. OH. OH.

IF THEY STAGE THE MOVIE AS AN LEP POLICE FILE

THEN THEY COULD EXPLAIN EVERYTHING STRAIGHTFORWARD.

ALSO EVERY CHARACTER WOULD GET A SIMPLE EXPOSITION AND PROFILE.

WHICH MEANS THAT WE'D SPEND LESS TIME ATTEMPTING TO UNDERSTAND THE COMPLEX CHARACTERS BECAUSE THE INFORMATION WOULD BE RIGHT THERE

AND MORE TIME FOCUSING ON UNDERSTANDING THE COMPLEX PLOT WHILE THE CHARACTERS JUST UNFOLD.

Shoot. Shoot. Shoot.

Yet another good idea that I will be unable to send to anyone.

WHY WAS I NOT HIRED TO WRITE THIS FRIGGIN' MOVIE?

WHY COULDN'T THEY HAVE WAITED ANOTHER TEN YEARS SO I WOULD GET A SHOT AT IT?

But this is actually such a good idea. Because every character has a whole bunch of background that has to be set up to fully understand everything. Like the fact that Butler is Artemis's bodyguard for life because of the tradition amongst the Butlers and the Fowls. And that he's the third most dangerous man in the world. (If I remember correctly, the second most dangerous man in the world is his uncle, and the  most dangerous man lives on a desert island and spends all his time meditating and beating up coconuts or something like that). Also the fact that Artemis Fowl is the head of a criminal empire, which makes his family filthy rich, but his father is missing presumed dead and his mother is suffering from depression. And he's a genius who believes in fairies. And Holly's the first female Recon officer on the force ever, which makes her subject to a lot of sexism. And Root is one of her only supporters. And Cudgeon and Root are lifelong friends. And Opal Koboi and Foaly are old college rivals. There's just so much background which is easy enough to deliver in a book but less easy to deliver in a movie. And this is all without including the beloved minor characters, like gung-ho Captain Trouble Kelp (infamous for choosing Trouble as his name when he graduated from the police academy - and also for the line "If you're looking for Trouble, you've come to the right place") and his brother Corporal Grub Kelp, who's a nervous, whiny little brat. ("But Mommy said!"). Hard to introduce since they're not terribly important, but they recur pretty frequently and become pretty useful to have already established.

But this LEP file idea. Then we could introduce everyone quickly and easily.

I'm brilliant.

If only I would just be HIRED TO WRITE THIS MOVIE

BECAUSE I GUARANTEE I UNDERSTAND IT A HUNDRED TIMES MORE THAN ANYONE ACTUALLY WORKING ON IT.

THIS IS SO FRUSTRATING.

This is the thing.

The thing is that most fans think they want a movie which is exactly like the book.

But that's not true. Because they're two different platforms which accomplish different things and have different strengths. That's why it's a movie ADAPTATION. And I realize that, and I'm not saying that the movie should be exactly like the book, because as a student of storytelling, I know that it shouldn't.

But I also know they're going to just botch this movie. They're going to just destroy it. Which makes me really really mad. Because it's such a good story, and they're going to tell it all wrong.

But I am qualified to know how to tell this story because I've read and re-read the series countless times since I first discovered it. My box set has served me well. I've thought about it at great length. Hell, I actually did start writing a screenplay for it last year, though I didn't get it anywhere near where I wanted it. But obviously, if I think about something for long enough then I eventually come up with the correct strategy.

But Michael Goldenberg isn't being paid to come up with "the correct strategy", is he? He's just being paid to pump out a script that the cast (preferably including Asa Butterfield - the kid is Artemis) can read. No disrespect meant towards Mr. Goldenberg, of course, but let's face it, he probably read the first two books only, if any at all, and doesn't at all know where the series is actually headed. Which is a problem, because the series goes on for another six books, and you need to frame the first story appropriately, knowing where characters like Root and Artemis and Butler and Holly are headed. Otherwise it just won't make sense.

I'm just really frustrated.

If you're just tuning in now, to summarize, I really hope the Artemis Fowl movie comes out nearly as good as the book was to read, but I'm not overly confident that it will. I've lived through a lot of crap movie adaptations of really brilliant books, and I fear that Artemis Fowl will just be another to add to the list. Which makes me very sad and very angry, but thanks to secretive Disney, I can't even pretend I'm doing something about it. Sigh. 

The Voices Won't Let Me Stop Writing

I got a T-shirt this Christmas that said exactly what the title says. It is, of course, for humourous purposes, but it's a lot more accurate than I care to admit to my non-writing friends. Along with the other one I got, "Writer's Block: When your imaginary friends refuse to talk to you." Again, a lot more accurate than it really should be.

Anyways, I was recently sent a link by my friend who also considers herself a writer, and it was just full to the brim of useful links and helpful tips and advice for writing and character-work and dialogue and plots and all that jazz. Which made me very happy, and they are comfortably sitting in my Bookmarks bar on the top of my screen. But what interested me especially was the bits about dialogue.

I never considered dialogue one of my main problems as a writer. My favourite books were always rich with smart dialogue, and I liked to think that my work was reflecting my influences. Problems of mine may include pacing, character development, and believably writing from the perspective of a male, but it never occurred to me that my technique for dialogue may be faulty, excluding the fact that sometimes my work simply has too much of it.

But there is a problem, and I'm not sure how this was brought to my attention before, but my "You've considered this before" bells were going off all over the place when I was reading it. And the problem is that many of my characters have voices that are absolutely identical to each other.

This may not seem like a big deal, if the characters themselves are unique, right? Who cares if the super-girly nymph Juniper speaks like the sarcastic and tomboyish storm fernei Tempera, so long as the characters are clearly distinguished, right? Except it is a big deal. People will care. Because dialogue is hardly believable if two very different characters have the exact same speech pattern, is it?

Think about how real people talk. Me talking to my friend.... Alexis, for example, to use a direct contrast. Our personalities are very different, and our conversations reflect that. Just, for example, Alexis will often confirm statements others make by asking questions, like, "Did you?" or "Really?" whereas I will do the same thing by saying things like "No kidding" or "No way!" Subtle, isn't it? This is why it's so difficult to get a proper grasp on it.

I tend to answer questions by repeating the question, or at least part of the question. "Did you see that episode?" "I saw it." Ask the same question to Alexis, it will most likely be a simple yes or no. Isn't it interesting, when you really pay attention to the subtle intricacies of individual speech? Isn't it just fascinating? (Rhetorical questions. Another habit of mine.)

On a less... inconsequential scale, it's much more interesting to pay attention to actual conversations that happen. Some people may use sarcasm more. Some people may have a habit of trailing off, trusting others to figure out their meaning. The trick is not to think of what the people/characters are saying, but rather how they're saying it, and how that reflects their personalities. There is, of course, the obvious factor that someone who was raised, perhaps, in the south, they may have an affinity for the not-quite-a-word "ain't" or "y'all", and someone may be more profane, if they were raised in the environment for it. But it goes a whole lot deeper than that, doesn't it?

I have a list of quotes from one of my favourite book series, Artemis Fowl, which I have loved since forever at least partly because of its entertaining dialogue. Now, let's take a look at some of these quotes and figure out what they say about the character speaking it?

Let's start simple. Typical Foaly complaining: "I am so unappreciated." Simple, right? But, focus not on what he's saying, but how he's saying it. There were other ways to say it. "No one appreciates me." "Why doesn't anyone appreciate me?" And, really, if you wanted to get a whole lot more creative, a billion other variations of the same meaning. But he said it like this: "I am so unappreciated."

What jumps at me right away is that the subject of the sentence is himself. "I". Judging by my few half-baked attempts at variation, the subject could have been "Nobody". But that would take attention off himself, and Foaly doesn't want to do that. Typically, our loveable smart-ass is quite self-centered. The sentence itself reflects that, but also the way he said it. Make sense?

Let's try another one. This is fun. Alright, Julius Root is annoyed at Artemis for sticking his nose in where Root figures it doesn't really belong. So he says, "Don't you worry your juvenile head about it. Concentrate on growing some bristles." Again, there were other ways to convey the same meaning. "Be quiet, this has nothing to do with you" would have been one thing, and one can imagine the hundreds of other variations. So why does Root choose to structure his sentence like that: "Don't you worry your juvenile head about it. Concentrate on growing some bristles."

It's typical of Root, really. Rather than just instructing everyone to mind their own business, as he well could have, he chooses to belittle the people who irritate him or imply that he can't do everything himself. In this case, he implies that Artemis's theories are invalid because of his age. Every conversation is a negotiation for status, really, and Root prefers to gain his upper-hand status by making verbal jabs at the other person. Artemis tends to accomplish the same thing by demonstrating his superior intellect, which can entail, but isn't exclusive to, making a show of tediously explaining something to others what was immediately obvious to himself.

Alright, one more. Let's find an Artemis quote... Okay, one of my favourites from the first book: "Let us proceed under the assumption that the fairy folk do exist, and that I am not a gibbering moron." I think we can all infer what was going on in this situation, and once again it could have been said in a hundred different ways. So why did he frame his meaning like that?

It's very formal, for a start. Artemis usually is. "Let us" rather than "let's" already conveys that. Now look at the vocabulary used. Was it necessary to use all those words? Not at all. Did it characterize Artemis and the way he speaks? It certainly did, flawlessly. No one's going to mistake that sentence as something that anyone else said. That's not to say that other people in the series aren't intelligent enough to speak like that, they just don't. Artemis does. It's just... how he talks.
On a slightly different note of analyzation, the bit at the end, about assuming he's not a "gibbering moron", is clearly a sample of Artemis's brand of sarcasm, which in itself is obviously quite different from, for instance, Mulch Diggums or Foaly's flavour of sarcasm. This is mainly because Foaly and Mulch use theirs to poke good-hearted fun at the people around them, while Artemis uses his mainly to communicate how dumb the people around him are being, effectively shutting them up. Again, it's the negotiation for status.

Now, it's not only the way people say things - it's also WHO they're saying it TO. Artemis Fowl doesn't have a whole lot of good examples of this, because Root is always the commander and Holly's always a police officer and Artemis is always smarter, and there aren't a whole lot of situations where the roles change. But, if we go back to my characters Juniper and Tempera, then we can start really looking at the difference it makes when considering WHO they're talking to. Obviously lifelong friends Juniper and Tempera are going to talk to each other on a much more familiar level than they're going to talk to the newcomer, outsider, Randy. Tempera tends to be a lot more sarcastic, for example, and Juniper tends to be more patronizing, tones that they would never use with each other, you understand.

Aren't the intricacies of dialogue FASCINATING? This is why I decided to write a whole post on that alone. It's something very subtle that requires a lot of attention to detail to get properly. There are certain easy ways to get around some parts - for instance, assigning one character an extremely distinct way of speaking, such as, for example, a very formal and unnecessarily verbose pattern of speech - but it's not always that easy. Going back to my own characters, Juniper and Tempera, neither of them are going to talk in a way that's going to make someone raise their eyebrows, but they've got to talk DIFFERENTLY. You understand how difficult this can be after you realize that all these characters come from the same person's mind, and that person has their own pattern of speech that is very easy to simply leak into all their characters.

The problem, you see, is every character needs to be treated as a proper person, with their own voice, not the author's, and hearing every character's individual voice can be difficult sometimes. It's also what makes writing so gosh-darn fun. I can't explain precisely why that is. All I know for certain is that the jokes about "the voices" and "imaginary friends" are a lot more than jokes. In fact, they're basically the truth. To be a writer, you need to hear the voices. Take from that what you will, but it really shouldn't be a surprise to find out that most writers are a little bit insane. Facts o' life, guys. Facts o' life. I think you'll find most writers, depending on how self-aware they are, happily accept that. I, personally, prefer the term "eccentric", thank you very much. Cornelia Funke, writer of the indescribably wonderful Inkheart trilogy (and Reckless and Dragon Rider and The Thief Lord which are also wonderful) even says, and I quote, "So what? All writers are lunatics!"

So... quit judgin' me, alright?

All I Want for Christmas Is...

Well, Christmas is here. In a day. It sure came quickly this year, didn't it?

There are lots of things I could talk about with Christmas. I could talk about the over-commercialization and glorification, and the fact that most of the traditional Christmas story isn't actually true and was moved to winter to counter pagan ceremonies. There are a lot of things I could talk about.

But the thing about it is, all that is very cynical. True? Sure. But also very cynical. And I don't consider myself a cynical person. I am, however, honest.

And quite honestly, I really don't care that Christmas is all about commercializing everything. I love buying my friends and family presents that I'd overheard them saying was on their list. Now I know I've gotten them something they actually wanted, and I can feel good in knowing that I gave them something. And yes, there is also a good feeling in recieving too. I wouldn't attribute that all to pure greed, though. Isn't it nice just to know that someone thought about you, about what you would like, thought about making you feel good? Isn't that in itself just a wonderful warm feeling?

Not to mention that without the commercialization of Christmas, we wouldn't have a lot of wonderful things. Things like the movie Love Actually, or It's a Wonderful Life, or A Christmas Story, or even How the Grinch Stole Christmas. Stories about love, about the goodness of people, about the payoff of helping others above yourself, about family, about the spirit of unity and kindness. It's not all complete bullcrap. Yes, some parts of it are completely manufactured to get you to spend money, and maybe in other circumstances I would be griping about it, but we're not spending for ourselves, are we? We spend for others. Because we actually care, that's why. And that's the heart of the reason that I don't even pretend to be annoyed by the commercialization of Christmas. Because if there was anything for society to be pressuring us to do, as far as things go, buying gifts for the people you care about is not actually an awful thing.

Just drown yourself in the spirit of love and caring and joy and all that jazz! Also, drown yourself in egg nog. That stuff is the nectar of the gods.

So, with that, merry Christmas to everyone. Happy Hannukkah, if that's your thing. Have a fantastic Kwanzaa. What did the pagans celebrate? The solstice? Have a wonderful that. And hey, if you choose not to celebrate anything, that's fine too. Just enjoy the goodness of others. This may be the one time of year where it's fashionable to be kind to others, and you shouldn't take that for granted just because it stems from a celebration you choose not to partake in.

Just something to think about.

So, I hope that by the end of the holiday season, your heart has been reasonably warmed against the cold of December. That is, if it's cold where you are. Of course, I'm here in Vancouver, so just maliki liki maka, I guess! xD

I can't think of a good way to finish this post, so here's some Love Actually for you. If you can watch this without smiling even a little bit, then I'm pretty sure you don't have a soul. Also, if you haven't watched Love Actually, you really have to do that. Now enjoy the spirit of love and Christmas.

Artemis Fowl: a Series of Thoughts, a Saga of Feels

[This one's really freakin' long. Brace yourself]

Artemis Fowl.

That is a series of books that I loved when I was in grade five. 

And I still love to this day. 

I always feel a little embarrassed, because when people ask about my favourite books, I say Misery, Duma Key, Hitchhiker's Guide, and oh yeah, Artemis Fowl. It was written for ten year olds, which is why everyone looks at me funny after I say it, but oh my god, the series is brilliant. I have accidentally (but inevitably) fallen back into the series for what is umpteenth time of an uncountable number of times in my life, but I always find myself burning the midnight oil to finish the book I've already read a hundred times previously. So, this is the obligatory rant associated with it. 

General plot summary:

Artemis Fowl the Second, son of Artemis Fowl Senior, an irish crime lord with a large fortune gained by means that were mostly illegal. Except Artemis Fowl Senior got attacked by the russian mafia and is now missing, presumed dead, somewhere in the arctic, and Angeline Fowl, the wife, has basically gone insane with grief, to the point where she sometimes does not even recognize her own son. This leaves Artemis Fowl the Second, who is twelve years old, in charge of running the family business. However, the Fowl estate and fortune is not in incapable hands; it just so happens that this particular twelve year old is a genius and a criminal mastermind (I think one of the examples, besides the action packed adventures, is that he beat the world chess champion in six moves). It also happens that he's at just the in-between age where he's young enough to believe in fairies and magic, but old enough to want to exploit it (which is what his father taught him anyways; Aurum est potestas is the Fowl family motto, which means Gold is power). Fairies are real, of course. They live under the earth's crust, away from the rampant plague of humans destroying the world with violence and pollution and all manner of things. And in Haven City, the main capital of the fairy world, there is a woman police officer named Holly Short, a captain in the LEP (Lower Elements Police). Because she's a recon officer, this makes her a LEPrecon. Get it? LEPrecon? Like leprechaun? I friggin' love this series so much. 

Anyways, long story short, Artemis kidnaps Holly and holds her ransom for fairy gold. After a lot of fighting, sieges, threats and underhanded schemes from both sides, Artemis manages to outsmart the fairies - which is not easy, considering they're at the very least fifty years beyond our technology, and also have magic, and..... various other specials skills. I don't want to spoil too much, but you know me. I'm going to go ahead and spoil it anyways. 

The main players in the series are, of course, Artemis, his bodyguard/servant/one man army who is aptly called Butler (that's like, legit his name though), Holly Short, the LEP technical consultant Foaly (who is a centaur so he's called Foaly hardy har har), who is even a match for Artemis intellectually, LEP Commander Julius Root, and the kleptomaniac dwarf Mulch Diggums. Also appearing is Butler's sister, Juliet, and the recurring villain of the hour, the evil pixie Opal Koboi, who also happens to be a genius. Literally, by the end of the series there are five geniuses running around saving/destroying the world (Artemis, Foaly, Opal, the nemesis-turned-ally Minerva, and Artemis's little brother Myles). 

First thing I loved about the series: it was clever. I mean, LEPrecon? HOW did they come up with that? Freakin' brilliant. Not to mention all of Artemis's outlandish, but genius and impressively believable plans. Amazing. 

Second thing: if you know me, you know I love to laugh. Humour is something I love to constantly surround myself with, and something that has huge value to me. And the sense of humour in these books is flipping fantastic. Every single character has a smart aleck mouth on them that'll make you laugh out loud, from Artemis's withering brand of sarcasm to Holly's dryness, to Foaly delighting in his own annoyingness to Root's overly-macho routine, to Mulch's delight in having people hate him. Even Butler gets a quip in here and there. Just hilarious.

There was an exchange I read in one of the short stories that the author wrote along with the eight books, and it made me literally laugh out loud. It's Holly's initiation into the LEPrecon unit, and she's the first female in, so Root is skeptical. And he says,

"You have twenty minutes to cry, or pray, or whatever it is you females do. Then I'm comin' a-callin'."
to which Holly replies:
"Yessir. I'm going to start crying presently. Soon as you're over the horizon."

Methinks that was probably funnier in the story.

Oh, that story also included Root's brilliant line:

"Would you shut your trap? I'm trying to swallow my pride here!" Another line that made me literally laugh out loud.

Or how about when Artemis is trying to teach his little brothers how to order food in french, and little three-year-old Myles calls him a simpleton? These geniuses are just the best.

OH OH or how about when Artemis and Minerva first talk, and they go into this whole "UGH no one understands my intellectual jokes, it's so hard being a genius" conversation. Butler'd already been making jokes that Minerva was Artemis's girlfriend (to which the response was generally, "Wow, real mature Butler"), and as Artemis gets off the phone, Butler says, "So, how'd your first real conversation with a female go?" and Artemis replies with sarcasm to drown in, "Fabulous. We're planning a June wedding." Just cracks me up everytime.

Now, the series is obviously about growing up and stuff, which Artemis does - he goes from kidnapping fairies (and nearly killing a few of them) in book one to sacrificing his own life to save the human race in book eight. Pretty dramatic change. And I heartily appreciate that side of the series.

But what interests me more about the series is that it's about love. Family love, parental love, sibling love, friend love, everything except romantic love - and frankly, that's okay with me. We don't need romance in a book series about a teenage boy who considers wearing jeans and a T-shirt the most horrible of indignities and doesn't yet know how to talk to anyone without sounding pretentious and superior. I mean, this is partly why I love Artemis, I'm just sayin' that I do not begrudge the author at all for not introducing romance. In fact, I'm thankful. There are enough books about that stuff, and I've never cared about it.

ANYWAYS, my point is that this series is, more than anything, I would argue, about love. Yes, Artemis is nasty (not evil - don't be so quick to use the word evil), and the author has literally said that he named him Artemis Fowl because Artemis was the goddess of the hunt and Fowl sounds like Foul, so actually Artemis's name basically means foul hunter. BUT everything he ever does in the series is out of love. He only hunts the fairies not necessarily for greed (which he does undeniably have an abundance of - he was brought up to think like that) but to be able to have enough money to rescue his father who has been missing, presumed dead, in the arctic for over a year already. That is how much he loves his father. Also, let's not forget that at this point, his mother has been suffering from a crippling form of depression ever since Artemis Senior disappeared, and oftentimes his mother does not even recognize him. In the first interaction we encounter between Artemis and his mother, she says "Stop calling me Mother. I don't know who you are but you're certainly not my Arty." To which Artemis is forced to reply, "Of course, Mrs. Fowl. This is the last you'll see of me." Like, excuse me, my heart just broke. How does this happen within two chapters of a book?

TANGENTTANGENTTANGENT

I think my point was that, in spite of the fact that Artemis is not necessarily a NICE character (or even a happy character - now there's a thought), he is undeniably a LOVING character. This has motivated him to: heal his mother's depression (by bribing a fairy but still), rescue his father from the russian mafia, bring Butler back from technically being dead for twelve hours, bring a dead Holly back to life using complicated time-stream weirdness, go back in time in order to save his mother from a mysterious disease, and eventually sacrifice his own life. No, Artemis is not a nice character. Not in the least. He's conniving, untrustworthy, superior, greedy and generally just less than charming - and no, these qualities aren't very much altered even by the end of the last book. But you know what else he is? Loyal. Loving. Competent (which is very much an under-statement). His determination meter is equal to the circumference of the earth. And if you're in that exclusive circle of people (or People) that Artemis cares about, then he will quite literally go to any length to protect you. All in all, he's not quite the friendly conversationalist, but if he's watching your back then you're safe. Period.

I've talked a lot about Artemis's family (not nearly enough about the Butlers or the twins, but I may or may not get back to them), but now let's talk about Artemis, Holly, and the People. In book one, Artemis kidnaps her and holds her for ransom. Which, you know, is a less than endearing introduction, especially considering that Holly's a goddam LEPrecon badass that could have knocked the infuriating Mud Boy (the People's name for humans) to kingdom come if they'd not been on Fowl turf. As it was, Holly left Fowl Manor having to be satisfied with a punch to the Mud Boy's nose and half the ransom back in fairy hands. EXCEPT GUESS WHAT? There's another plot in Haven City that involves humans. And their number one suspect is Artemis Fowl.

Surprisingly enough, Artemis actually is innocent of something. Has no idea of this plot. But they manage to strike an uneasy deal where Artemis helps them with the plot (which turns out to be the first phase of the goblin rebellion) if they help him save his father from the russian mafia. The second book ends with Artemis and Holly not necessarily liking each other, but definitely having a mutual respect, something that Artemis had never anticipated - his intellectual superiority over most other people meant that most people he met were not considered worthy of his respect.

By the end of the series, Artemis and Holly had saved the world five times together, and there were definitely things that Artemis did along the way that seemed unforgivable, the secretive manipulative Mud Boy, but the important thing is that the two seem to at least understand each other and their motives. By the end of the series, they're good friends.

Here's a thought. Artemis and Holly are character foil (a term I learned in english class and have been eager to find examples of in my analysis practises). They exist as opposites in order to complement the other and highlight the qualities in each other that are important to the books. For instance, Holly's recklessness and split-second reactions to stressful situations highlight the fact that Artemis is able to foresee almost everything in a way that is very chess-player-like, and vice versa. Artemis has an irritating way of seeing everything in a very academic and detached way, leading his life with his brain. Holly is an extremely emotional character who often disobeys direct orders from her commander(s) in order to save lives, decidedly leading her life with her heart. This is at the core of what makes the two of them such a great team. Huh. Analyzing books is fun, isn't it? (This is what I am doing on my Friday night god I'm such a nerd).

Any other notable aspects of the book? Holly and Artemis, love, growing up, humour, family, hmmmm...... Okay. Let's talk about the villains of Artemis Fowl.

In the first book, it took me a while to figure out who the real villain was, because the conflict is undeniably character vs. character, and it pains me to say it because I love the kid, but Artemis is the villain of that book. And you know what? He was one of the most rounded and relatable villain characters I'd ever read about before. (How is it possible that a character so unlike any other can be simultaneously so relatable?) I've spent far too much time contemplating the balance between antagonist Artemis and protagonist Artemis (which is funny because in The Time Paradox, it literally becomes an Artemis vs. Artemis epic showdown) and after much debate amongst myself, I've come to the conclusion that Artemis is the villain of the first book, against the fairies. And an incredible and fascinating villain he was, too.

But it all kind of went downhill from there.

Don't get me wrong, I love the villains of Artemis Fowl. The ultra-narcissist megalomaniac Opal Koboi is to die for, Abbot the demon is wonderfully evil, Spiro proves that all businessmen are probably the devil, Turnball Root (recognize the name? He's Commander Root's older brother) is a positively delectable villain. It's all very entertaining.

My problem is that the well-rounded villain that I'd gotten a taste of in Artemis Fowl was not what followed.

Opal Koboi, the recurring villainess of the hour, a super-genius megalomaniac and probably more self-absorbed than Narcissus himself, is delightfully entertaining. Her plans are unpredictable, shocking, intricate, and positively operatic in the melodrama that ensues. Her narcissism has her thinking she can read people's minds, and only a character such as this, with such an overwhelming personality, can pull off the cliche "I want to watch them suffer, right after I tell them my entire evil plan". Which she does. On a regular basis.

As fun as she is to read about, she has no motive for her acts. Nothing to make her a rounded character. Just some world domination with a side of gruesome revenge, if you please. She's actually quite cliche. Which is, at least in part, what makes her so extremely entertaining, but from a character perspective it's a little bit of a let-down.

Spiro. Spiro was fun. One of those businessmen just booming with confidence, thought he was all that, and was able to pay a lot of people to make sure he was, in fact, all that. I mean, he didn't know what he was dealing with when he set out to kidnap Artemis. But he was a worthy foe, not by intellect of course, but because he had a lot of power on his side, and constantly had the upper hand. It's just the same problem though, isn't it? It's all about greed. And I know in my post about villains I said that my favourites were the ones who were just inexplicably evil for no real reason, which continues to be true (it's no coincidence that the book Spiro appears in is one of my favourites), but I do like characters with a few dimensions.

Abbot. Talking of inexplicable evil. The demon who took over the body of a warlock, killing him for no reason besides straight-up idiocy. Has got more brawns than brains - his mind is not where the threat lies. The threat lies in the fact that he's been ruling all the demons with a Hitler-like regime against humans and warlocks and every fairy that didn't continue fighting humans in the war. This is the only villain who seems to do the things he does for no conceivable reason at all. He's still fun to read about, don't get me wrong, because inexplicable evil is my favourite, but a lot of it seems oddly pointless.

Turnball Root. This one's my favourite, besides Artemis himself. This is for a few reasons. Firstly, backstory. He's the brother of Commander Julius Root, and was arrested and thrown in jail by him (and in one of the author's short stories, you see a whole bit between the two of them in which Turnball rants to Julius about jealousy and renders Julius helpless as a kitten, which is simply delicious). Secondly, he's not as smart or self-absorbed as Opal Koboi, which would make him almost comical, as Opal is. He is, however, quite smart enough to kill a lot of people from a jail cell thank you very much, and quite self-absorbed enough to be convinced of his own victory. If you've ever seen Speed, he's quite a bit like the terrorist in that movie. Not a genius, but quite smart. Not straight-coat, solitary confinement insane, but quite crazy enough to disregard a lot of lives to reach his own goals. One of my favourite interactions happen between Julius Root and Turnball Root in the short story:

(Turnball's about to feed a LEPrecon a spider that will literally tear it's way through his insides and kill him)

Julius (weak as a newborn kitten, can't even stand up without throwing up kinda thing): Turnball, no.

Turnball: I must. Think of it as already done.

Julius: Turnball. It's murder. 

Turnball: Murder is a word. Just another word. 

Thirdly: The guy's got class. You know those classy villains, that know just when to stop talking and just how to get the upper hand and has a billion cards up his sleeve, and never really loses his cool? He's like that. Which is awesome. Fourthly: Motive. It's not greed. It's not power. None of that stuff. It's simply about freedom. He wants to be free of the fairies that have been hunting him down for centuries (fairies live a really long time), and sure, maybe some revenge as a side-project, but his main goal is just being free. Strangely relatable, dontcha think? Fifthly: There was a quote from James Marsters, and I can't remember exactly how it goes, but it was to the effect of "In order to play a good villain, you need to find the love." Something I whole-heartedly agree with. Well, the author found the love with Turnball Root. His forbidden human wife, who he saved from a plane crash. They die together on her last flight ever. THESE are the dimensions I've been looking for. Not enough for us to totally sympathize with the villain, but enough to see that evil plans aren't the only things running around their minds, y'know?

Anyways. Villains. They're cool. Yeah.

Alright, let's talk Atlantis Complex.

In book seven of the series, Artemis starts showing actual, legitimate remorse for the crimes he committed in the past. Which is quite a bit of growth on his part. The problem with this is that, because he stole magic from the time-stream, this remorse shows up as the mental illness the Atlantis Complex, commonly in those with a guilty conscience, and generally exclusive to fairies, but because of his meddling with magic that didn't belong to him...

The Atlantis Complex seems to have symptoms of just about everything. OCD and psychosis mainly, and in extreme cases, multiple personality. It just so happens that Artemis has an extreme case. Which means that when he hits his head (after freaking out that all his friends were trying to kill him), he switches from our calculating, ruthless Artemis to whimsical and romantic Orion. (I'm just going to stop this right here - Orion. That's brilliant, isn't it? Because Artemis and Orion were enemies in greek mythology... the amount of mythological references in these books, man...) Orion has nowhere near the intellect that Artemis does - in fact, he's kind of a half-wit. Not that Artemis would be a whole lot of help either, considering he was in the middle of a total breakdown, but Orion is particularly unhelpful considering that Turnball Root is trying to kill everybody.

Now, mental illness of any kind is a touchy subject. There's a lot of things that are generally misunderstood about it - I am, of course, thinking of the whole "Have you tried NOT being depressed?" and "Doesn't it bother you that you have to take meds to feel normal?" mentality. And I was very happy to note that the author did not make these kinds of mistakes. Foaly and Holly don't blame Artemis for his illness, they just try to help him get through it. Not even willpower of Artemis's caliber brings him back to reality, because it isn't something he can help, can it? True enough. And then, in the end, he was seeing a psychiatrist, which is another move the author made that I approve of.

The only thing I would argue about is Artemis's "full recovery". Is it possible to fully recover from a mental illness? Well, I'm not an expert, but I'm fairly sure mental illness is something that can be... let's say, subdued, but never vanquished, y'know? Still, though, it never precisely said he didn't struggle, it just said that he'd recovered. So I suppose even there my argument doesn't have a whole lot of purpose.  It didn't talk about it a whole lot after the seventh book, though.

Because after that is the eighth book, the grand finale of the series and holy wow stuff goes down. Full spoilers ahead, guys. Opal Koboi makes herself an ultra-powerful being, for one, and the second thing is that Artemis sacrifices his life to save humankind and HE DIES HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO ME.

I guess it's not as bad as all that. I mean, he came back at the end. He'd been dead for six months, and what happened was that Foaly made a clone, as Artemis had instructed him to, and Artemis's spirit was able to possess it, as Artemis had essentially been existing as a ghost for six months, held on this plane by pure willpower. My problem with this is that, though the spirit is the same and the clone is almost exactly the same, IT ISN'T THE SAME. For one thing, the clone has six toes on one foot. We can thank Foaly for that one. But that's not as big a deal to  me. The big deal to me is that the clone has TWO BLUE EYES. Ever since Holly and Artemis went through the time-stream together, they'd switched eyes, meaning they each had one hazel (from Holly) and one blue (from Artemis). And Artemis having two blue eyes, it just, it just seems to completely erase the history the two had shared in the long and eventful journey of their eventually becoming friends. Not to mention the fact that Artemis had completely forgotten who everyone was. That's bad also.

Argh. It was a satisfying end to the series, no doubt, with Artemis pulling the greatest trick out of his hat he'd ever pulled and cheating death, PLUS the incredible amount of growth implied by his sacrifice.  These are all good things. But it also left me very upset, and that may or may not stem from the fact that there are no more books in the series.

I need cheering up now. Let's talk about Myles and Beckett. That should do it.

Artemis unexpectedly finds himself with twin three-year-old brothers, and has absolutely no clue how to handle it. This is very amusing. And also so cute. It's obvious that Artemis absolutely and completely adores his brothers, but especially in the case of Beckett, he just doesn't get them. Beckett is an average three year old boy, who delights in mischief. However, his twin Myles is an Artemis in miniature. Absolutely hilarious. Calls people "simpleton" and complains that his favourite loafers are ruined, and knows the periodic table of elements by heart and speaks with the same vocabulary that Artemis himself does. It's just so cute. I love the twins. I wish there'd been more of them in the series.

So, I think I've milked the series for everything I wanted to discuss. That should do it. I'd just like to add that the title of this..... casual essay, applies to both this post and the series itself. Mind=blown.

Also, if they do end up doing a movie of this series, as they've been planning to for a good decade or something (and I think I read somewhere that the author is currently working on the screenplay?) THEY HAD BETTER NOT BLOODY BOTCH IT. I AM DEADLY SERIOUS ABOUT THIS. IF THIS TURNS INTO ANOTHER INKHEART THEN I AM GOING TO HURT SOMEONE.

Thought I'd throw that out there.

[Edit: I just found out. The movie's moved out of "development hell" into pre-production. They're melding the first two books into one movie. I've spent a good hour today rocking back and forth in a corner worrying that they're going to completely butcher the entire thing. I know they will, I just KNOW that they will...]

Now, I'm currently in love with this music video created for the Artemis Fowl tour that the author went on. There were two songs that I've found: Call Me Artemis Fowl, and Complex: Atlantis. I find myself really not liking the Call Me Artemis Fowl one, but Complex: Atlantis has grown on me quite a bit, and the video that they created along with the song is very compelling and, well, just awesome. So here ya go. So you can appreciate it as well.

Hint: the empty white room? Is Artemis's mind. Boom. Also, there's a moment where it flickers between a serious Artemis and ruffled-hair smiling one, and that's the switch between Artemis and Orion. I just really enjoy this video in general. 

Obligatory awesome quote from the book:

"If I win, I'm a prodigy. If I lose, then I'm crazy. That's the way history is written." 

P.S I thought I was done but I discovered more Artemis Fowl awesomeness today. 

Turns out that while the author was on his Artemis Rocks! tour to promote The Atlantis Complex, he was, first of all, making vlogs of his touristing, and second of all, touristing with someone who cosplayed as Artemis the whole time. This is hilarious because A) they stick out like a sore thumb - a grey-haired Irish guy wandering around with a teenager dressed in a suit and mirrored sunglasses - B) because the author is actually a really funny guy (he'd have to be, he thought up the characters Mulch and Foaly, didn't he?) and C) the guy who cosplays Artemis is really really good at staying in character.  And all in all it's just awesome and is currently my favourite thing. 

Okay, I'm seriously done now. I promise. Well, I can't promise anything. But I'm fairly certain I'm finished.  

Misery is an Incredible Book

[NOTE: I am not talking about the movie. Don't get me wrong, the movie is pretty great as well, in it's own right, BUT I am talking about the book, which, while it holds the same concept, differs quite a bit. Just something to keep in mind. Even though Kathy Bates is quite an impressive actress.]

I just finished my first re-reading of the book "Misery" by Stephen King.

I loved it the first time and I think I love it even more now.

I am aware that certain people would prefer to argue that books and movies such as this are little more than gruesome horror, that it's just pointless and stupid and sadistic and gross. But what you must understand, what I must make you understand, is that this book in particular is so much MORE than that.

Look; if you are in the midst of reading the book or would like to, stop reading here. I don't want to spoil what is an incredible experience for newcomers. But if you don't want to read the book or already have, then please, join me, spoilers and all.

Now here's the thing; there ARE gruesome bits in it. Yes, I will grant you that. Fine. But this book is not, for instance, The Shining. After reading The Shining I could not walk into my bathroom without checking the bathtub for stray dead people for a couple months. This book is not that. At least, not in the same way.

If this book keeps you up at night, it is not because you're imagining things crawling out from under your bed. It's because this book makes you ask questions. Simple questions, like "How?" as in "How did he survive?" and "Why?" as in "Why was she like that, why did she do that?" In short, this book is fantastic because it is utterly and extraordinarily fascinating.

If you do not know the premise of the book, let me clear that up:

A popular writer (Paul Sheldon), mostly known for his melodramatic, house-wife-pleasing romance novels, a series about a character called Misery Chastain, heads off to Vegas with a new, action-packed manuscript about a car thief. He gets in a car crash, shatters most of his lower body. I mean, his pelvis was broken, both of his legs are just shattered, the whole thing. He is found by a woman called Annie Wilkes who recognizes him as her favourite writer, and rescues him from his car. But instead of taking him to the hospital like a normal person, she takes him home and has him heal in her guest bedroom. ("I'm your number one fan!") Because she's an ex-nurse, she has a lot of medical supplies apparently just kind of lying around her house, such as a painkillers, anesthesia, and needles. It doesn't take long for Paul to realize that he isn't a guest here; he's a prisoner. She's never going to let him leave.

So why is this book so incredible?

Well, there's a few things.

First of all, just consider this; there are two characters in the entire book. I mean, okay, three cops show up near the end, but they're not really characters, just plot devices with about a line of dialogue each. So think of that - most of the book only contains two characters interacting with each other.

Now consider this: only about maybe sixty percent of the book has them interacting. The meat of the book takes place in Paul Sheldon's head. Which makes it sound boring, but oh my god is it ever not. I've never gotten so immersed in a book as I have in Misery. I've never stayed up half the night trying to finish the final quarter of a book like I have with Misery (which is ironic because now I'm sad it's over). Misery is one of those books I read non-stop for hours before I finally realized I may want to actually do some homework.

Misery is the definition of a psychological thriller.

Just imagine it like this: he's trapped in a house with a woman who is clearly insane, someone who has done horrible, awful things to him, the worst of which being cutting off his foot with an axe. He loathes her, despises her, had in fact planned to stick a knife in her throat right before she found it and performed the footectomy.

BUT

He also relies so heavily on her. He relies on her for food, water, for his painkillers, for everything. In the book he often refers to her as the goddess, because she controls whether he lives or dies, whether he suffers or not, everything. He hates her, but there are so many instances in the book that has him crying and pleading with her.

The thing is, Misery is not gruesome horror. There are gruesome parts to it, but that isn't the book. The book is a slow and captivating study of the breaking of Paul Sheldon's mind.

For instance, the book starts with him often attempting to reason with her. He knows she's crazy, but he tries nonetheless. And then she goes and does something so awful and horrible that no matter how many times I read the scene I just can't stand it.

After she discovers he killed off the character Misery Chastain, she makes him burn his book.

Not a paperback copy. No. She forces him to choose between possibly slipping into a coma or burning his one and only manuscript of his unpublished book about the car thief. He burned it. I don't think anyone but writers can understand the sheer, undying agony that is for the soul.

There was the punching him in his shattered knee for complaining about typewriter paper. Then, because he made her angry at some point - I don't recall the exact reason - after making him suffer without giving him his painkillers, she made him drink from a floor bucket full of disgusting water and soap and everything (which sounds not that bad, but it's one of the things that continuously returns in the book - because not only did she cause him intense emotional and physical pain, this is the first instance in the book that really humiliates and dehumanizes him. If Paul Sheldon's mind was made of glass, this would be the first crack). And then, of course, cutting off his foot after she discovered he could leave his room on his own. Cutting off his thumb after he wouldn't tell her how his book ended. These last two were the most important cracks of Paul's mind, which brings me to one of the most fascinating parts of the whole book.

The book isn't in first person, it's in third person, but it's in limited ominscience. Which means we know what Paul's thinking, but no one else. Not Annie, no one. For ninety nine percent of the book we're reading Paul's thoughts and Paul's thoughts only, and by the end of the book they're horribly confused and scared and hopeless and scared and desperate and scared and angry and scared, but they're COHERENT - we are able to understand what he says, what he means, and why he does what he does. But for the one percent that we're not reading Paul's thoughts, for the one scene in which we see it from an outsider's perspective, the cops arrive and find him broken and trembling on the floor of Annie's parlour, and he's turned into an incomprehensible, babbling lunatic. If that scene doesn't get your stomach twisted in knots then I don't know what will. He is so tortured. He is tottering on the edge of insanity and he is clearly losing his balance. That both horrifies me and fills me with an incredible fascination.

There's another scene - right after Annie kills a cop - that really stuck in my head. What she does is she gets Paul and carries him down into her dark, rat-infested cellar. She starts talking about how ungrateful he is. You know, 'All I ever did was rescue you, splint your poor broken legs, feed you, give you medicine, talk you out of a bad book you wrote and convince you to write the best one you EVER wrote.' Paul replies, (in a moment of recklessness - he would usually never talk back to Annie at this point) "You also cut off my f*cking foot!" And she smacks him across the face and starts berating him for using the F word. And it's tiny in comparison, and it's never brought up again, so I was wondering why this scene in particular stuck out to me - after mutilating him and torturing him, why is slapping him something that sticks so strongly to me? - and I think I know why.

The thing about being smacked in the face is that it's just small enough to be petty to bitch about, but just big enough to completely and utterly humiliate you. In a weird roundabout way, being slapped is more dehumanizing than having your foot cut off. Going to all the trouble to amputate his foot the way she did shows that he's worth that. He's worth all that trouble. Obviously it's  exercising a wrong sort of control over him - she's playing God, or goddess as he would put it, by, and I quote, "exercising editorial authority over his body" - and it's one of the main things that puts Paul over the edge, has him living in utter fear for the foreseeable future - BUT, and this is a weird and possibly cold-hearted point if you manage to misunderstand me, BUT: This act doesn't send the message that he's not worth anything. It sends the message that she feels the need to diminish how much he IS worth, because she needs to have complete control of her pet writer.

Slapping someone, on the other hand, tells someone that they're just not worth anything. They never had worth, that they're nothing, and they're not even worth any form of effort. And to slap him after him talking about the footectomy shows that she really just doesn't care about him or his pain whatsoever. And then, of course, leaving him helpless in the dark, rat-infested cellar overnight while she hid the body of the cop, was probably the final crack that broke the glass of Paul Sheldon's mind. Again, the pain has him living in tremendous fear, but it's the smaller but more dehumanizing things that really break his mind. I don't think I can tell you how many times the phrase "Now I must rinse" is in the book (a reference to the drinking out of the floor-bucket scene).

Call me sadistic, but that is extremely fascinating.

One other thing I loved about this book, that's possibly less relatable; it describes what it's like to be a writer with incredible accuracy. That makes perfect sense, because obviously the book was written by one,  but it's still something where you don't really think about the process until you see it written down somewhere and you go "OH MY GOD THIS IS MY BRAIN". It's clearly a writer's book. It talks about the difference between "getting an idea" and "trying to get an idea", something that I think every writer can relate to. It talks about that sudden stroke of inspiration - he refers to it as the "sweatshop" (the back part of your mind that works really hard to come up with ideas) sending up flares. He talks about that trance that happens when you're writing, where you're somewhere else completely - Paul often uses it to escape Annie's house - he calls it falling through the hole in the paper, and that's accurate too. It's also accurate when the hole sometimes shrinks to the size of a pinhole and you can't tell what's going on within the pages at all - writer's block, basically. And then he talks about how being a writer means remembering every scar you've ever gotten - because, of course, that's where the stories come from -  and I thought about it and went "Wow...... it's true." Everything is so true. Not to mention Paul thinking about how, in becoming a writer, he doomed himself to a life of dissection when it comes to books.

Speaking of dissection, there is one thing I love about Stephen King books - he knows how to capture the stream of consciousness. When Paul is panicking in his head, Mr. King writes it with such honesty, and it's just a huge run-on sentence but that makes perfect sense because it's his thoughts, and he's panicking, so it's not polished, or, at some points, even really coherent without some decoding involved. Which is so honest, because who actually has a comprehensible train of thought, especially when thrown into a state of panic?

I would love to talk about symbolism now, but the fact is, I haven't figured it all out yet, and besides it's pretty redundant to what I've already said. If you're willing to have a book club talk with me about Misery, then please do. I would love that.

And if you haven't read it then please, please, do yourself a favour and read Misery. But before you do, try to be open-minded about it. Understand that it's not the freaking Saw movies, it's not meant to be particularly gory or just, y'know... torture-porn. It's not. It's nightmarish for completely different reasons. It is primarily about the terror of being totally at the mercy of someone who exercises none, and it is the story of how an ultra-controlling and psychotic woman drove a once-happy-and-healthy writer to the brink of insanity. There's only one word for it: fascinating. Not to mention that it's brilliantly written. It is so worth the read. I cannot express my adoration. Just arrarararargh. I have no words. Just read it. Absolutely brilliant.

P.S I'd just like to mention, in spite of the note at the beginning of the post, that the book is so so so much better than the movie. Not that the movie wasn't great, because it was, but it didn't capture a lot of what the book was fundamentally about. First of all, Paul Sheldon never loses his nerve in the movie, he never stops trying. He flips Annie off after she "hobbled" him. I suppose it's admirable to have a character with guts, but it misses a lot of the whole point. After Annie "hobbles" Paul, he's scared to even look at her wrong, let alone signal a nice clear "Eff you."

Secondly, the parallels between Paul and the book he's writing, along with all the rest of the psychological defenses that Paul put up, went completely out the window in the movie. It was the stuff like that that made the book so captivating to begin with, and it's kinda disappointing that the movie missed what was such a huge part of the book.

Despite the fact that the screenplay adaptation was less than perfect, and James Caan as Paul Sheldon seemed (to me) less than fabulous, I will happily give them this; Kathy Bates is downright amazing as Annie Wilkes. Fantastic performance on her part. Definitely deserved the Oscar she got for it.  And for that reason I would recommend this movie, AFTER having read the book. Seriously though. Read it. You won't regret it.

Reasons I Adore MyMusic

I posted something a while back advertising MyMusic as my "favourite thing of the week". The thing is that it's grown beyond that and is now one of my obsessions I'm currently juggling, between Whose Line, the Buffyverse and this.

The thing is that I'm not quite sure why I love it as much as I do. I mean, it's a sitcom, and it has its funny moments, but I don't think that that's what got me into it the same way that Whose Line and Community was like that. So what exactly did get me into it?

The relationships between the characters. That's what did it.

I think that I see a reflection of my friend group in the cast of MyMusic. A bunch of very different people with very different tastes, but who generally accept each other for who they are and work together as a team nevertheless (except for the latest episodes in which they drive a professional team-builder to the brink of insanity, but that's not the point).

Let me give you a solid introduction to what this is about:

There are (originally) eight main characters to the show, each named after the genre of music they're into (because "Broad stereotypes are so much easier to remember than names"). They are as follows:

Indie:

Culkin.

Resident hipster. Founder of the MyMusic production company. He can't like anything that's liked by anyone else. His favourite things to say include "You've probably never heard of it", "That's so played out", "It's ironic", and "That's so mainstream". He also made up his own synonym for the word cool called "Culkin", which every MyMusician knows to be the highest compliment Indie can give. He's kind of a jerk, really. Only one person on the show has ever brought out anything resembling a soft side in him, and that would be:

Scene:

I'm Scene, you see!

One of the two interns working at the production company. Often mistaken for being emo, but she's not emo, silly, she's Scene, you see! :D The most naive, innocent one in the show. I'm pretty sure she never actually works, but instead scrolls through Tumblr all day and watches Youtube videos like nyan cat, or Youtubers like Danisnotonfire (which is something I can kinda get behind). Loves anime, wears too much eyeliner. No one in the production company gets her. She's around teenagerish age, and she screams incoherent noises on a regular basis when she's happy, which is most of the time. She also cries everyday at two PM, don't ask her why, she doesn't know, she just knows it has something to do with Tumblr. She may be naive and innocent (which she totally is), but she's the only one in the cast who really inspires any kind of sympathy from other characters. She also has a huge crush on Indie, don't ask me why, I don't get it. Being an intern, and Indie being a jerk, she has to share a desk with the other intern who she's made friends with, aptly named:

Intern 2:

F-f-f-flowcharts are the best

Doesn't like any specific style of music, hence the name. In fact, he was specifically designed to be the most bland character in existence. He's probably the only one there who gets any work done. Possibly gets off on doing work, especially with flowcharts. Don't ask me why. Extremely loyal to his company, considering the abuse he gets put through. He doesn't have particular taste in music, which "doesn't really fly" at MyMusic, and as a result most characters have an arbitrary hatred for him, so he gets regularly abused. As far as I can remember, he's been strangled, beat up, had drinks thrown in his face, used as an ottoman on a regular basis, had his computer smashed, I'm pretty sure Indie once told someone "You can eat him if you want", nearly been fired, head dunked in the toilet, and oh yeah, he's been shot twice. The show's catchphrase is "Shut up Intern 2". Poor guy's got it rough man. There are only two characters who consider themselves friends with Intern 2, and that would be Scene, and:

Nerdcore:

Keep calm and DFTBA

Previously known as Hip Hop. Head of marketing at MyMusic. During all of season 1, he was known as Hip Hop, and he would listen to all the hardcore rap and stuff and be all gangster, until eventually Intern 2 found out that he was actually a poser and was in fact secretly a nerd. It is a grave offense at MyMusic to be found out as a poser (you usually get dragged to the rats) so he and Intern 2 kept that secret until, in an attempt to save the rest of the staff from being fired, he came out as a nerd. It took Indie a little bit to get over his nerdophobia, but eventually he did and Hip Hop got renamed Nerdcore. It is worth mentioning that Nerdcore and Intern 2 have a very notable bromance going on here. In season 1, Intern 2 saved Hip Hop from being found out as a poser and took the fall for having Daughtry on his iPod (everyone at MyMusic has an arbitrary hatred for Daughtry as well. I dunno) since everyone hated him anyways, and then an episode or two later Hip Hop saved Intern 2 from being fired. They're just adorable. Though he and Indie had a strong bond when he was Hip Hop, the bond seems to be stronger with the rest of the staff now that's Nerdcore, because he can genuinely talk to Scene about anime, or talk to a fellow fan of Game of Thrones:

Metal:

What would Jamie King of Slayer do?

The newest addition to MyMusic. Head of production. Has major anger management issues. This isn't new metal, what with Korn or Linkin Park or whatever, this is old-school metal, Slayer and Iron Maiden and stuff. He has problems with authority ("Duh, I'm metal!"), and as a result he's once held the office hostage while Indie was out of commission, locked them in a room and renamed the place Metal Town. Yep. So in some respects he's irresponsible, what with the head-banging and the temper and whatnot, but on the other hand, he has a family. Yep. When he was twelve he got his girlfriend pregnant at a Coal Chamber concert ("We kissed, and then I don't even know what happened"), they had a shotgun wedding, and now his wife has abandoned her metal ways and become a typical fifties house-wife while his fifteen year old daughter, Rayna (who notably had a crush on Intern 2, which forced Metal, in a fit of rage, to... let's say torment him. Yeah, I'll not spoil that tidbit) is just an average teenage girl of today, obsessing over Justin Bieber and One Direction and Metal's there wondering where he went wrong. He's developed a respect for Indie as head of the office, but because of his problems with authority he has butted heads with:

Idol:

She totes invented the duck face. Hashtag natural flawlessness.

The exact opposite of Indie. Head of social media. Everything she likes is the most mainstream stuff out there. All pop all the time. Her name actually derives from the fact that she is a fan of anyone who ever won American Idol. She's shallow, but thoughtfully so, who knows what she wants and what she wants to accomplish, even if the things she wants to accomplish are rather airheadish. Her outer image is very important to her, her social media is very important to her, and her job is very important to her. Fact, she defines herself by being a working woman. A coupla layers there. For a while there, she became a raver rather than her reality TV show watching self, because of:

Techno and Dubstep:

They are plurfect. Boom zubawub brznx. 

Who you would think I would define separately, but in fact they're never apart, and nor shall they be here. They're a perfect duo. They handle talent bookings and stuff like that, but really they're just a coupla ravers dancing all day. They're practically a couple by how much time they spend together. Also, Dubstep can only speak dubstep language, and only Techno can understand him/translate for others, so they're basically perfect for each other. Dubstep seems to be the one who takes himself less seriously, while Techno seems quite easily insulted and is quick to retaliate. They're rather disconnected from the rest of the office - there aren't a whole lot of storylines that connect them to the rest of the office for whatever reason, probably because they never actually leave their office/dance party long enough to actually talk to anyone. I love them. They're adorable. :)

Much like my other obsessions, it's an ensemble thing, and so the relationships between the characters play a huge role in the appeal of the show, like Intern 2 and Nerdcore's bromance (they recently hosted an episode of Tumblr Tuesday where they briefly suggested their ship name be Intercore. I died of laughter xD) or Idol and Metal's constant competition for authority, or the dynamic between Indie and Hip Hop/Nerdcore. Not to mention the fact that the show is filled with amazing moments that should be remembered in history of great moments in Internetainment, from the kissing scene in "They Finally Kiss!" to Hip Hop and Intern 2's scene in "State of Shock" to the entire episode of "Party Time!" to the Flowchart Song in "Return of the Hipster" to the group from 4chan in "One Will Die" to the entire episode of "Ghosts" .... the list can go on and on. These are all moments I've watched multiple times just because I love them so much.

Another thing about this show? I sell it as this stupid, ridiculous gimmicky thing, which in some ways it is, but it also has a pretty important theme, which is that no one is just one thing. The characters all begin as one-note stereotypes in an effort to show you how ridiculous it is to stereotype people or think you know everything about a person based on what clothes they wear or what music they listen to. Who would have guessed that Hip Hop was a nerd, or that Metal had a family (actually, to be fair, they were kinda foreshadowing that Hip Hop was not what he seemed, BUT THE POINT STILL STANDS).

On a more behind-the-scenes level, MyMusic is sorta the first of its kind. First of all, the blend of Youtube stars and television stars is awesome - the makers stand by the idea that entertainment is entertainment, so why not have traditional entertainers and Youtube entertainers unite and work together for a common goal? (It's because of this idea that my favourite Youtuber ever on earth in the world is now good friends with an actor from Buffy MY WORLDS ARE COLLIDING I CANNOT HANDLE THIS!) As a result of this, the show stars traditional actors like Adam Busch and Lainey Lipson and Jarrett Sleeper along with Youtube stars like Grace Helbig and Jack Douglass. I just find this awesome because, when you think about it, working on Youtube and working on TV are fundamentally different, so when you put the two together you end up with this refreshing, unified piece of content that manages to balance the good aspects from television with the good aspects of the Internet.

Not only that, but the show NEVER BREAKS THE FOURTH WALL. As in, ever. They work pretty  hard to make the MyMusic universe as non-fictional as possible. They accomplish this by creating AND MAINTAINING Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Google+/Spotify/everything accounts for not only the main characters, but also minor recurring characters, like the Shaman, the Viking - even Scarfman has a Twitter account. AND HE'S MADE OF SCARVES.

Fact, here's a list of all the social media accounts they've created (a few of them are inactive because the character may have died or something, but most of them are still active). IT'S BOTH INCREDIBLE AND COMPLETELY INSANE.

They also accomplish this by acknowledging the fact that MyMusic is a production company that creates content to do with music and also other things, so every week four shows come out of the MyMusic production company NOT including the so-called "documentary" which is really the main sitcom. Not to mention the fact that they also maintain a MyMusic blog in which every character writes posts about what's new in music or pop culture or whatever.

So if you don't yet understand why that makes it awesome, let me sum it up for you:

A) The characters are all very different, making the relationships between them very interesting.

2) It's filled with moments that will make you want to rewatch them over and over again.

C) For such a ridiculous show, the theme is actually something pretty thought-provoking.

4) It mixes traditional television style entertainment with modern internet style entertainment in a way that just WORKS.

E) THERE'S ALWAYS SOMETHING GOING ON IN THE MYMUSIC UNIVERSE. It may be shown on the social medias, it may be shown in the other shows or just the plain old sitcom, but much like real life, the MyMusic world NEVER STOPS. Which is pretty damn admirable on the part of the writers.

And now, obligatory awesome pictures.

"You're the Amy Pond to my Matt Smith! Companions to the end!" THE BROMANCE IS REAL. LOOK HOW ADORABLE THEY ARE.

Oh, Intern 2 and his flowcharts. Look how happy he looks. One true pairing right here.

"Quickly! Everyone overdramatically do something so they don't think we were looking at them!"

R.I.P Jacques-Andre Larrivee

People who know me may have heard me talk about my larger-than-life french teacher, Monsieur Larrivee. He liked and definitely cared about all his students, though regularly got irritated with me not for talking too much but for not talking enough. He had the shyest kid in class stand on their desk and shout. He had nicknames for so many of his students; Alexis was High-maintenance, Josh was Diva, Emerald was Vert (which means green in french), Liv was Blondie. The two Iranian kids were his Atomic Bombs, which often brought him complaints about being racist, but in fact he was just being hilarious, and he always made clear that if he did offend anyone we were free to call him out on it. During the first class he told us that it was okay to swear in class, just so long as we swore in french, and after every class he would bid us play in traffic. Sometimes I thought he was a little cruel, sometimes I thought he was downright hilarious, but I realized after that semester that I'd never learned more at school than in that class.

It's worth mentioning, probably, that Larrivee had the largest collection of frogs ever. Over eight hundred. He doesn't even like frogs. The classroom was absolutely stuffed with stuffies and knickknacks and posters and pictures of frogs everywhere. This started because when he first began teaching, way back in the seventies, he told his first class he had, "Yes, I'm a frog," the racial slur for frenchman. At the end of the semester, as a joke, the class presented him with a frog as a gift. And that continued up until last year, when Larrivee retired and gave all his frogs and various other items to students of his.

We were among his last classes he ever taught, and not only that, we were his favourite that year. He often told us that. Everyone who'd ever had Larrivee for a teacher loved him, even if he could be a little harsh at times. He told us at the beginning of the semester that by the end he'd have an adjective for all of us, and he told us at the end. Mine was "intellectual". I'd never associated that word with myself before, and now I realize that it's both flattering and fitting.

He retired last year at the end of the first semester.

A couple days ago, while vacationing in Japan, he had a heart attack and died.

Of all the things that could have killed him. He was old, but he was healthy. He'd walked to school from his place every day, and I'm sure he stayed just as healthy after he retired. After battling cancer on multiple occasions, taking chemotherapy three or four times, after all that, he died of a heart attack in Japan.

Larrivee may have seemed like little more than a bitter old frenchman, but he wasn't. He had a fair amount of wisdom with all that, and if not wisdom, he had so many stories to be telling. He really was so proud of his skill for storytelling, and he valued auditory intelligence above all other intelligences. There were a lot of stories he never finished telling us.

He was going to accompany a bunch of frenchies to France this year on their field trip.

Larrivee touched the life of every student he ever taught. He will be deeply missed by so many people.

Rest in peace, Monsier Larrivee. Reposez en paix. Vous allez nous manquer.

P.S Larrivee was possibly the only man in the world who would go in front of a school on Terry Fox day, talk about having cancer, and say we need to laugh at it more. In a similar strain, he also once told us, his Conversations class, that it was healthy to laugh at death. It may seem in bad taste, but I have to fully agree. Me and my friend Erin shared our fair share of tears today, and then spent the rest of the day laughing at memories of his class. Remember when he called Jacey Jesus? Remember in improv, Courtney's mime? Remember, how he used to look at Caleb and just go, "Espece de...." (Sometimes he'd finish the sentence with "espece de merde" - this was what he said when someone in the class was irritating him - it was usually Caleb. He was also fond of calling us "les vaches espagnols" if we were speaking particularly bad french, or  just looking at us and saying "Vachement" if we'd said something particularly stupid). Remember that time when.... remember that time when...... the list went on and on. So I'm going to enjoy the memories I have of Larrivee, as an appreciation for the wonderful individual he was, and I'm sure he himself would approve of this coping method.

P.S.S If you never had the privilege of meeting Monsieur Larrivee, I found this ten minute audio bit online from one of his former students, and I personally can't listen to it again because I'm going to start bawling like a baby again, but I think it will help other people understand what he was actually like beyond his reputation.

https://m.soundcloud.com/moonchez/funeral?utm_source=soundcloud&utm_campaign=mshare&utm_medium=facebook&utm_content=http%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fmoonchez%2Ffuneral