#better characters

[jabitha-endgame]

Tabithadale tomorrow!

I love being excited about this show! 

Everyone say thank you Tabitha Tate

[teen-titans-confession-box]

I get really uncomfortable whenever people act like one of the Titans is better than the rest or try to rank them. While we’re all going to have our preferences, as actual characters they’re all on equal ground. (Yes, I’m including Terra here. She was just as well-written too.)

[treybriggsthewriter]

Let's talk. 

There's a misconception that trauma, abuse, neglect, homelessness and a variety of other negative experiences will lead a person to be hardened and ill-humored. And, in some cases, that's true. Trauma will definitely change a character's perspective. It'll change how they respond to the world and people around them. It'll change how well they can deal with small nuisances and giant issues. It will not, however, make them humorless. Unless they are characterized as such. People will laugh. Not everyone, obviously, and this depends heavily on the type of person your character is in general. Your characters will deal with the same trauma very differently depending on personality and belief. But for the most part, people can find something funny even after they've been hurt and maimed and depressed. They won't laugh every second of the day, or at every single thing, but they don't suddenly lose their ability to find humor in certain things because of their hard life. 

In fact, sometimes trauma simply changes what you find funny, how easy it is for you to find things funny, and what you do when things are funny enough to garner a response. This is important, especially in terms of fleshing out real characters. Your hardened killer might like corny jokes but sit stoically through the funniest comedy show. 

Your emotionless narcissist might laugh fervently at someone falling or someone getting hurt. 

Your analytical, fact-focused dork might find something about the shape of Uranus funny. 

It's okay to let your characters have multiple layers. And the only thing that can make a character humorless is...well...if that is the whole point of their character. So let the traumatized villains and heroes laugh.

[theblanddcu2021]

Yes or no, should there be an Outsiders movie?

Yes.

[quagmatv]

Problem Sleuths is the superior MSPaint Adventures story, and nothing can convince me otherwise.

[bettercharactersblog-blog]

A book that’s fun but flawed

There's a very touching back story to this book: the author, Jane Lotter, was a very successful humorist writing for the Seattle Sun and winning awards for doing it. Critical acclaim aside, she could not find a publisher for her only novel, The Bette Davis Club, and so decided to take matters into her own hands and self-publish. Then she passed away, and only after that did Lake Union Publishing come forward with interest in the book. Ms. Lotter never lived to see her book widely distributed, but it's success is a testament to her wit and writing.

Margo Just is a fifty-something woman who, while perhaps not the hero of her own story, is certainly the likeable-but-flawed protagonist of it. And this is really something because in the history of  literature we almost never see a woman over 35 who is not the mother, mother in-law, step-mother, grandmother, other quirky but secretly wise relative, bitch boss, foreign-born housemaid, life-altering nanny, cougar mistress, or other such similar accessory to the youthful, vibrant (often male) protagonist. To have a story be about a woman in her middle stages of life is relatively unheard of and the first thing that drew me to this book.

Our protagonist has arrived at her half-sister's daughter's wedding only to discover the bride has successfully pulled off a mysterious disappearing act. Despite her extended family being one of considerable wealth, Margo has been struggling financially for, well, her entire life. Through a series of truly contrived circumstances which include an audacious amount of money, she finds herself in a car with the deserted groom on a journey to locate the fleeing-but-irresistible bride. If this sounds like the circumstances of a movie plot rather than someone's life, that's not unintentional. Margo adores the cinema of classic Hollywood and her extended family is deeply embedded in the corporate money-making schemes of today's movie industry. The style of the book parallels the overt plots we often see on the silver screen and, like the comedic misadventures we fancy on our televisions, this book is an enjoyable if sometimes bumpy ride.

Margo Just is difficult. Not as a personality trait, but as a character. She is 50-something, single and floundering and this particular combination make her both wonderful and problematic. As mentioned above, we don't often get to see middle-aged women in the protagonist role and Ms. Lotter gives us someone who is at times compassionate, contemplative, and the victim of some really rough luck; but, at times is also judgmentally cruel, afraid and dependent. To put it simply, I went through waves of being delighted and disappointed by this character. While she is the center of her own story, there are few times that I felt she was steering it. Between her father, her ex-lover and her burgeoning friendship with the jilted groom who is literally driving the car, the reader is left uncertain of how often Margo has ever been in the driver's seat of her own life.

The humor is quick and sharp. The cast of characters are wildly entertaining in their heightened dramatics. The story is heart-warming and the moments of genuine character connection fulfilling. The Bette Davis Club, like it's main character, is entertaining if a bit flawed. As we begin to gently approach the warmer seasons, you'll enjoy this more as a sunny read on the beach rather than a subject of feminist discourse.

The Bette Davis Club

by Jane Lotter

Contemporary Fiction

[bettercharactersblog-blog]

A book like no other

Unconventional. Raw. Honest. Discomforting. Truly beautiful.

I can say with confidence that Eileen is unlike anything I have ever read. It debunks and subverts stereotypes at every turn of the page while presenting you with what should be an entirely unlikable cast of characters who you can't help but be completely fascinated with. The story thrives in an uncomfortable environment continually pushing the boundaries, yet there is a normalcy that seems almost mundane. It's full of contradictions, but that's what makes it so fantastically, horribly, heart-wrenchingly honest.

In the snowy days leading up to Christmas, Eileen Dunlop is trapped in her small New England town (called X-ville), living with an alcoholic father and working in a boy's juvenile prison facility.  All she wants in the world is to get away, to be someone else; and, all she needs to do so is an external push. Because while not bereft of ambition, Eileen lacks the self-motivation to take her destiny into her own hands. Along comes fate, setting into motion a series of events pushing our protagonist past the point of no return, to freedom.

Told from the point of view of an older, wiser, more experienced and renamed Eileen, this could be considered a coming of age tale. A turning point in a young woman's life. Except unlike the common caterpillar to butterfly version of events, this feels more like a lone, struggling, recently-hatched sea turtle finding it's way to the sea across a vast expanse of sand with no sense of direction and any number of obstacles and predators in it's way. Some people are just born with more hurdles in their path, and Eileen is certainly one of them. A product of a distant mother who passes away at an early age and a father who wants little to do with her, Eileen has been raised to believe she is about as worthwhile as the dead mouse she has in the glove box of her car. 

Eileen is filled with self-loathing, while being completely obsessed with her appearance and the image she is putting out into the world. She scrutinizes every person she meets and every element of her own existence to see how they might be put together and where she might fit into the picture. She creates fantastical versions of what could happen someday with Randy, her workplace crush. She's simultaneously intrigued and humiliated by her own sexuality. She seems to unapologetically recognize her own failings and never once shows regret for her part in the events that unfold. Our older narrator has found peace in understanding that everything that took place leading up to that fateful Christmas day was necessary to propel her into the life she found after her flight from X-ville. And while this does not make her a pilar of virtue, it gives the reader a meticulously told pragmatic series of events which leave little room for excuse or misunderstanding. You may at times be aghast at the events unfolding, but you never doubt their truth.

I can't honestly say Eileen is likable. I am fairly certain you will be fascinated by her. What's more, I think she is a character emblematic of the kind of people who are too often neglected or forgotten by society at large. Admittedly, if I met Eileen on the street, I would likely pass her by without another thought. If I met her in a bar, I imagine I would try and escape that conversation as quickly as possible. This all says far more about me than her, and I think that is one of the strongest elements to this book. Where are the Eileens of the world? How did we create them? How did we dismiss them? These women, these people, deserve a voice too and this powerful book is a lens into that world. Add to this the slowly unfolding mystery that leads to her escape, a masterfully manipulative secondary character who I've not even touched on and some of the most poetically graphic writing I've read in quite some time and you get a book you won't want to put down. 

Eileen

by Ottessa Moshfegh

Fiction, Mystery, Thriller