How do I love fiction? Let me count the ways.

(sword on display at Château de Chambord)

There’s a ton of fictional aspects that don’t work in reality. But where’s the fun in that?! 

I appreciate the fictitious gems in books and on screen that make me suspend belief. I love when creatives take the mundane and fictionalize it. I’m a fictionist because I NEED fiction.

Why do I say I need fiction? Basically, to echo my post from last week, because fiction gives us hope that there’s more out there, that we’re part of something bigger than ourselves, that we’re capable of far more than we can imagine. And everyone needs hope. 

But back to our topic of the week which is: what’s your favorite bit of pop-culture fiction doesn’t work well in reality. Vivien Jackson beat me to this with her post yesterday (such a good top 10 list, go check it out!!), but here are a few of my favorite things that are better in fiction:

1. The ringing sword draw. You’ve heard it so many times you may believe it’s real. Though, in reality, a blade doesn’t shhhinnng when it slides free of its scabbard, unless you have one made out of metal and then you’ve got other issues. But a dramatic sword draw wouldn’t be…dramatic if there wasn’t a pure, metallic ring. Think Jon Snow drawing his sword against a mob of white walkers in Game of Thrones. 

2. When evil's defeated, their mountain/castle/spaceship blows up and becomes rubble. I really like this analogy to life as we’re constantly in a battle, internally or externally, for good to win out. It’s just not usually as epic as say Sauron’s eye exploding.

3. Implants. No. No, not those implants. The sci-fi implants that project a computer screen in front of the character’s face, the ones that open doors with the wave of a hand, the kind of implants that sometimes require the main character’s (MC) to eject a chip from within their body to provide evidence that will bring down the big baddies. You know…those implant

4. Capes. You know someone’s someone and that they mean business when they’re wearing a cape. And they always flow spectacularly in the wind, real or nonexistent. Think Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie in Thor Ragnarok.

5. The gadget save. Tweak as you see fit for sci-fi, mystery, thriller, horror, etc. But they’re all the same, the MC's in a fix and then their gadget-supplier shows up or sends them the perfect tool. Or, the MC’s smart enough to make the tool perfect…like in MacGyver and James Bond.

6. Televators. My then four year-old son said he wanted a televator: “You know, mom, one of those elevators that poofs you where you want to go.” My mind conjured a mix of Dr. Who’s TARDIS and Star Trek’s transporter, so number 5 is an homage to all of those futuristic re-locaters. 

7. The slow-mo first kiss. In my memory, my first kiss with my husband happened in slow motion as the crickets sang around us and the moonlight sparkled on the bench. And I love how fiction can recreate the lightening jolt of the perfect, first kiss and even amplifies it with rain/music/the impossibly suddenly empty room, etc. 

8. Damage Control. I love how the MC’s car can scrape the side fo a building, be shot up, make a jump over a parted lift-bridge, and still slide into a parking spot. Same for spaceships. The Millennium Falcon’s taken on more hits and lost more pieces than any car could ever dream! 

9. Dragons.

10. I have to do it…I just have to. I have to list running in high heels as number Ten. It’s incredibly difficult to pull off in real life, trust me, I’ve done it, and it’s dang near impossible to make it appear as if you’re sprinting in tennis shoes.

There you have it. Ten reasons I love fiction for its unrealisticness! What’s one of yours?

10 reasons fiction is better than reality

Ten Things I Dig in Fiction That Make No Sense in Reality (Or Why Fiction Is Better Than Reality)

1. Good guys always get shot in the arm or leg, and it's never fatal. In real life, a leg shot can absolutely be fatal. Shoulders, too. I highly suspect that if I were shot in any part of my body, I would not continue to chase the bad guy to the final showdown scene. I would call 911 and leave the thrilling heroics to someone else.

2. Bad guys just as often are terrible marksmen. Okay, I think the fantasy demands that assholes cannot be competent. It offends our sense of justice. But also, stormtroopers.

3. Psychopaths are geniuses. A prosecutor came and talked to my local writing group once, and one myth he was quick to dispel is that criminals are smart. He said, basically, you wouldn't believe how stupid most of them are. The geniuses are the exception, not the rule.

4. If you're captured and imprisoned or stranded on a desert island, your makeup will stay perfect as long as necessary without having to reapply anything ever. It's like cosmic justice for kidnapped (fictional) folks. Exhibit A: Princess Leia's lip gloss. Exhibit B: Every female character (and male beard, for that matter) on the TV show Lost.

5. In olden times, nobody ever had to shave, they were just naturally depilated. Because we don't want to imagine hirsute heroines. Adjacent truth: heroes never have back hair. They just don't.

6. If one has curves, they are always in the right places and never in the exact wrong places. My arm jiggles especially appreciate this one.

7. When dismantling a bomb, no one is ever color-blind and neither must they whip out reading glasses to even see those tiny wires. Their vision is 20/20 and color-perfect. Meanwhile, I carry three pairs of glasses so I can read restaurant menus. Conclusion: Do not put me in charge of defusing the bomb.

8. "No one is ever really gone." I like how some movies even have that as an actual line. I guess it's the Terminator fantasy in all of us. Or the one that's still salty about Han Solo.


9. When protagonist gets into a terrible situation, some barely remembered childhood skill will enable them to escape, defeat the baddies, and win. Like Rose Tyler's gymnastics in Doctor Who, right. Am waiting for my super spelling abilities to shine.

10. It's amazingly easy to run in high heels. Lie. It isn't. But that scene in Jurassic World was still
pretty badass.

Bonus: When a fictional contagion spreads over the globe, some scrappy, good-looking scientists come up with a vaccine in like three days. If you find said scrappy scientists in real life, please nudge them toward some heroics. In the mean time, I'll just sit here in my comfortably fictional world a little longer, 'kay?

Shootout at the Villain's House: Can You Spot the Fiction amid the Fiction?

We've read the scene where the good guys roll up on the villain's dilapidated victorian house in the hard of night. The tires of their rental car crunching over the gravel drive. They cut their headlights on approach. The car idles with a soft purr. A barn owl hoots in the distance. Hero's heartbeat thunders in his ears as he reaches for his gun, eyeing the cracked house windows. His buddy cocks his gun and puts a hand on the interior door handle.

A cat yowls. 

Gunfire from the house. Car windows shatter, spraying glass everywhere. The front door is thrown wide. The villain steps into the moonlight, aiming a shoulder-fired rocket launcher at the good guys. A flurry of fucks and the driver hits the gas. Tires squeal as the car fishtails. Pedal to the floor, the car zigs and zags, neatly avoiding projectiles. The passenger fires at the house, taking out two of the shooters in the second story. The rocket hits a tree and explodes. The driver turns and fires his gun out the broken rear window, through the smoke and haze, nailing the villain in the chest.  A hard right on the wheel and the car side-slides on to the county road.

The good guys look at each other wide-eyed. Grins bloom.  Catch-phrase is uttered. Off they go into the moonlight as an inferno engulfs the house of hatred.

Sound familiar? Come across some variation of this in a dozen or so books? Hundred-odd times on TV? There are a few things in that scene that play really, really well in fiction but that don't happen in real life (unless there's a special-effects crew involved).

I'll give you three examples, but there's a slew of others. Can you spot them?

1. You can't cut the headlights on a common rental car. Daytime Running Lamps (DRLs) became standard in the 90s, and the average rental car is kept for 13 months. 

2. Tires don't squeal on gravel. Laws of physics and friction apply. 

3.  The marksmanship of the passenger. 

 

The Alphahole Conundrum

My books! Spotted in the wild at George R.R. Martin's Beastly Books.

Our topic at the SFF Seven this week is "Sex on the Beach & Sand in the Wrong Places: What's your favorite bit of pop-culture fiction doesn't work well in reality?"

For the record, I'm going to put out there that you CAN totally have sex on the beach without getting sand in the wrong places. It's not even that difficult. Are these other people rolling around in the sand with sticky parts first?? I can't even.

Anyway...

I don't spend a lot of time thinking about fiction vs. reality. It's pretty clear to me - as I think it is for almost everyone - that stories aren't the same as real life. We want different things from our stories than we do in life. The fact that people even ask about it, like the perennial question about whether readers understand that romance in books isn't the same as in real life, is a head scratcher to me.

Um, yes. We DO understand that fictional romance is different. That's why it's called FICTION.

Every time someone complains about how there should be more awkward, terrible sex in romances I want to ask if they didn't get enough of that in their own lives. Really, that's what you want to read about for entertainment? Okay...

Anyway, one disconnect between fiction and reality is the domineering romance hero. He's broody. He's quick to anger and deliciously sexy when he loses his shit. He's protective, obsessed with the heroine to the point of suffocation. He's powerful, ruthless, and an irresistible force of nature.

We love this guy!

We would never in a million years want one in real life.

The term "alphahole" is often applied to this kind of hero, though I don't much care for it. I think most Romance readers use it for this kind of hero who goes too far into asshole jerk territory. And, pedantic types who seem unable to distinguish fiction from reality, will go on about all the behavioral red flags madly flapping here.

True enough. Like I said, we don't want this guy in real life. It's about the fantasy.

What is it about the fantasy that works here? I dunno. Could be an atavistic thing where that silverback gorilla still wows us and makes us feel safe and fertile. The herd buck is majestic and thrilling, no doubt. Also, I think power is interesting to us, no matter what form it takes.

Really, it's no conundrum at all.

Happy 4th of July!

DepositPhoto

Stay safe from fireworks and COVID19....

From the Author's Collection

Surrender Boxes

Surrender Boxes

Note: This post is NSFW. Or much else, really.

Now is the pandemic of our discontent made glorious treasonous activities by our 'acting' government; And the blade racism and brutality lour'd upon our Black and Brown siblings in the broad light of day now in our bosoms buried.

So not doing this for an entire blog post. I'm sure my main point is clear. 2020 sucks so far and if I could go full-on Karen and speak to the manager, I'd return this nonsense and get my money back. No. Y'know what? Keep the money. Just. Take back the covidiots and murder hornets. The rest might be manageable. Maybe. Instead, I'm stuck inside, working from home, with elderly, frail parents under my roof in a state where precious few people seem to have two brain cells to rub together to keep warm. Most especially about science. But okay. So I'm a little rage-y and angsty and anxiety ridden these days. Between the news and doom scrolling, who isn't? Honestly. I'm tired enough at this point that ending up like Richard the III, buried beneath someone's car park, doesn't sound all that bad.

The problem is, we're all emotionally exhausted, but few of us can sleep. Let me introduce you to Surrender Boxes. Surrender boxes can be actual physical boxes you use (search, you'll find all the New Age-y type boxes available). The notion is simple. You write down what's bugging you and you drop that into the surrender box, close the lid and walk away. Stupidly simple right? Well. It gets simpler. You don't need a physical box or to write anything if (also like me) you're uber lazy. Build a mental one. Gather up all the crap rolling around in your head. Mentally stuff it in the box, close the lid, tell yourself there's nothing that can be done about those issues right this second, anyway, and that's it. Go to sleep. The kicker is that it's effective. There are a few psychology articles available but for the most part they skate uncomfortably close to religions that are not mine that I prefer not to link them.

It's a great exercise to be tossing and turning in bed with a thousand worries and thoughts racing, then to gather those all up in a great mental armful and chuck them into cold storage. I'm in bed. What the hell am I going to do about those issues *right at that moment* anyway? That's right. Nothing. So surrender them. Pick them up in the morning. They're still in the box. Only. They'll have shifted and transformed.

That's the beauty of surrender boxes. They change things. I have a short vampire novel fast drafted. Beta readers all hit me on one major part of the story. I finally said, "I don't have the time or the chops to fix this." But it BUGGED me. Stuffed it in a surrender box last night. This morning, it emerged. Fixed.

Here's how someone else used their surrender box to build a sublime piece of art and The Official Theme Song for 2020:

The World Needs Hope

Let’s see…let’s see, what’s been on my mind? Honestly, not a lot because the world’s a dumpster fire and I’ve been fighting a bug. Naps and tea are my friend. 

Since writing’s difficult right now I’ve been trying to get some reading in. There are a lot of books out that were written to shed light on the misdeeds of mankind, the horrors we commit against one another, the real, honest side of life. And while I agree that it’s important to have stories that reflect our pain and suffering, I believe it’s even more important for our stories to have hope. 

I believe you reap what you sow, that you get back what you put in, and that every story changes a person. 

In real life it’s not always easy to choose kindness and positivity. I fail at times, and when I fall short I tell myself to do better next time. But what about our writing? What are we saying with our words?

I want to both read and write about the kind of hope that’s prevalent in the Lord of the Rings and Salvation Day by Kali Wallace. In LotR, Frodo’s surrounded by a group of varied individuals that come together because they share the same hope; to free Middle Earth from Sauron’s rule and therefore ensure freewill for all. In Salvation Day, enemies must come together because they know if they fail, space won’t be big enough to protect mankind. 

Fantasy, sci-fi, it doesn’t matter what genre, what matters is the message we put out there. Is there hope for the present? Is there hope for the future? Is there faith in something bigger than ourselves?

Hope can surprise you, can be stronger than first appears, and can redeem us. That’s what I want to put out into the world, hope.  

I want people to look up to the sun. I want people to see the beautiful fighting for space between the darkness. I want people to read my stories and be uplifted…by hope. 

As 2020 says, Hold my beer

Ask anyone and they'll likely tell you 2020 is the most whacked, chaos-filled, if-a-zombie-apocalypse-is-gonna-happen-this-is-the-time-for-it year in the history of humans keeping track of years. We've had pandemic, market collapse, quarantine, toilet paper shortages, proof of UFOs, racial justice uprisings, murder hornets, earthquakes, wildfires, weird early-season North Atlantic tropical storms, and remote learning. If somebody pitched 2020 as a story idea, nobody would buy this crap.

My brain is much like the world in 2020.

As a result, when a topic like "whatever is on your mind" comes up, I have no idea what to tell you. So, here's what I'm thinking, in no particular order:

- The Hamilton livestream on Disney+ is gonna have to save the July 4th holiday this year. That's a lot of pressure for a musical.

- The books I'm reading (KU) and listening to (audiobook) right now are both about terrible people being terrible to each other, and I just can't with that anymore. Need to take a step back from all the negativity, no matter how good the writing is. Plz rec reading material that will bring extreme joy.

- Gillian Anderson in 1996 was luminously beautiful. Consider my crush revived. The fam and I are rewatching all of X-Files, and that's one thing that really stuck out to me. Also how unrelentingly white the cast is.

- I'm writing a story right now that's best described as badass Mary Poppins in space, and I luff her. It. Them. Whatever.

- Why is it taking so long for BioWare to give me Dragon Age 4?

- I wouldn't call myself a farmer, per se, but man, the oregano, mint, and strawberries are having all the parties in my back yard. I'm sure there's a cocktail in that.

- Shh, politics. See above: terrible people being terrible physically hurts. Stop it.

- My high school bestie created an art installation to honor the Black folks killed while in police custody in the U.S. I helped a little, and ooof. All those names were people. God. Click here to see what 1,960 looks like.

-  We're getting a taste of this right now with the masks, but what if we had to wear full pressure suits and helmets every time we went out of our houses? Would physical beauty cease to be the thing that makes people notice each other? Or would we have to develop actual personalities and/or talents? Would we sell advertising space on our oxygen tanks? Could we broadcast our voices to each other with backing soundtracks?

- Why don't my dogs go hoarse when they bark for hours on end?

- What can I do with the 17 bananas accidentally purchased via curbside oops? Have made banana bread, smoothies, banana-and-Nutella hors d'oeuvres, and squashed up banana with blue sugar sprinkles. Ideas welcome.

 - This is probably the best time in history to be an introvert. Parts of me are really digging the solitude, but also there isn't much solitude in a little house with three other people extroverts and some pets.

- I think my car misses me. Might take her for a drive around the neighborhood later.

- I miss reality, but I think it's broken right now. The sign says, Come Back Later. Maybe in 2021.