Yes, I've been involved in these discussions just as much as the next nerd, and it's only gotten more heated as the last half season draws closer. But today, I made a realization. Those of you who may not be current with your BSG watching may want to stop reading here.


Most of the arguments on who is a cylon begin with who CAN'T be a cylon. Roslin. Appolo. Starbuck (though there is some dissent here). Adama. Baltar, though Baltar has since the miniseries been my extremely long-shot fave. In fact, the current favorite appears to be the inconsequential B-list gimp Gaeda.
I argue that the final cylon MUST be one of the following: Adama, Roslin, Appolo, Baltar, or Starbuck. Because if it's anyone else, I literally don't care.

Funny, I don't see Gaeda in this picture. Of course, I don't see anyone but Boomer and Number Six.
 

The flaw with most people's logic is they cite "evidence." The writers are not going to use any past deeds, evidence or reasons to choose who the last cylon is. BSG is so awesome because of what happens to the characters you care about. And guess what?

I don't care about Gaeda. At all. Or the doctor. Or Helo. Or Zarek. Or anyone else in the frakking fleet. If they're not one of the main non-cylon five, I could care less.

Come on, people. We've waited years to see the cylons revealed. They've drawn out who the final cylon is for a season plus. Do you really think they're going to bestow all that pent-up expectation on Gaeda? They already did that once with Roslin's assistant what's-her-butt. I don't care about her, either. The only thing that saved the last set of reveals was Tigh, as illogical as it was. Seriously, who with all the mountains of evidence pointing to Tigh didn't see that coming? The writers are not going to waste this, the biggest reveal ever, on a second-string cast member based on "past evidence."

I guarantee the last cylon is in this pictu... wait. Dammit. And I used to LIKE this show.
 

I know this is not a satisfying argument. I don't cite any reasons anyone specific is or is not a cylon. Because reasons don't matter. If BSG does it right, they will hit you where it hurts the most.

Using that logic, the last cylon is clearly Appolo ;) How's that for left field?

November, for most people, is a time for Thanksgiving. It's a time for turkey, pumpkin pie, cool whip and cranberries shaped like a can.

But not for me.

I mean, it is for me too, to an extent. Thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays because it combines two of my favorite things: cooking, and eating. Who couldn't love that? And it's a major feature all Novembers come with.

But November for me is more important for something else:

National Novel Writing Month.

Every November, trillions of people around the universe set out to write a fifty thousand word novel in thirty days. That's about the size of Catcher in the Rye, for reference, or about 150 pages of type in Microsoft Word. It seems like a daunting task. Many fall along the way. Only the strong survive.

And I just have one thing to say.

Apparently, Vikings were big on the novel writing.

That's right! For the second year in a row, I've completed the NaNo challenge. This one is entitled Shadow Blood, the sequel to my un-award-winning NaNo novel last year, the young adult fantasy Shadow Soul (which I'm currently sending out to agents; yeah, it took me a year to edit and polish it to the point it wasn't embarrassing). When it's all said and done, it'll be about 65,000 words.

I know most of you don't see why doing this would be fun, or why this outranks cooking a turkey and stuffing my face with it. I can't really explain it coherently, but I'll do my best.

The jpegs they give you to pimp your win are definitely a big perk.

NaNo turns November into a stressful month. Three nights of the week I spend in coffee shops until late at night, cranking out words. I talk to my writing partner, one of my closest NaNo buddies, multiple times a day. (Well, maybe that isn't much of a change from the other eleven months of the year.) Every spare minute of my time is spent mulling over plots, characters, situations.

But for all that effort, you get something most people never have. You get a creation of your own mind, something that you created and made that no one else has done. You have a completed novel sitting on your desk, with characters that have a life of their own. You have made a world that lives and breathes with as much truth and power as the world you live in. Even if it is never published, even if no one else ever reads it, you have made something that's wholely from you.

That's why I love NaNo.

And also, because I'm an attention whore.

So, for all my fellow NaNoers out there, congratulations for a great 2008! And I hope to see more of you writing next year!

Movie Night Presents:

Twilight

starring Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson

Rating: Two OMG angst much? teens (out of five)

It's been awhile since I've written a Movie Night blog. Actually, it's been awhile since I've blogged. Actually actually, it's been awhile since I've written anything but my NaNo novel. But I'm at 47K now, and I could use a brief break.

Plus, my friend Renda and I saw Twilight last night at the midnight showing. (It was a spur-of -the-moment decision at about 10:30 PM.) I figured my impressions of that movie were blog-worthy.

Twilight, for those of you currently residing under rocks, is the young adult vampire book by Stephenie Meyer. It tells the tale of Bella Swan, a high schooler who moves to Forks, Washington to live with her dad when her mom and father-in-law move to Ft. Lauderdale. While there, she falls for the amazingly handsome Edward Cullen, a fellow student who turns out to be a vampire.

Look at how really really ridiculously good-looking we all are! Of course we're vampires!

And that's all it's about. Because beyond the twenty-minute sequence where an evil vampire is hunting Bella, there is nothing more to this plot.

So, first, the good (and there are a few good things about the movie). First, we went to the midnight showing, so the comedic value of the reactions of the teenage fangirls packing the theater made it worth my ten bucks. All of them oohed and aahed and laughed in unison at the appropriate teen girl moments. One girl said as we left (and I quote): "That movie was far too short! I feel like somebody slipped me some GHB!"

The part with the evil coven of vampires was also pretty cool. James, the hunter vampire, is scary, and the fight between him and Edward is great. Also, the initial setup of Bella's family situation and her moving to Forks is engaging. I wanted to find out about Bella and what conflicts would come from her move to the Northwest.

Only I never did. Because she quickly meets Edward, and the movie loses all momentum and dives full-bore into her angst-ridden romance with a vampire.

Now, I've read this book as well, and I thought it was okay. Her writing style is similar to J. K. Rowling (with the same major shortfalls). But the failings of the book, which I could forgive, were expanded to mind-numbing proportions in the movie.

First, the damn thing is boring. There is NO CONFLICT. None. It's all about Bella and Edward pining for each other Romeo and Juliet style, but minus the backdrop of their feuding families (IE the thing that kept Romeo and Juliet moving). I guess that works if you're a teenage girl, but it gets a D-minus as a good plot.

As God as my witness, my soul-withering angst will support this movie!

And R&J is also good because it's a tragedy; they both die at the end. Guess how many of the main characters in Twilight die at the end? If your answer rhymes with "not a single goddamn one, Reid!", you win.

Second, the characters are bad. They're all two-dimensional. The good guys have no faults, and quickly devolve to charicatures if they're not one of the principal players. All the characters could have used a lot more fleshing out to make them real. That might have livened up their generally flat dialogue, too.

Third, the way it characterizes the Northwest is a travesty. Not only does it rain all the time in the movie (which isn't as true as you would think), but every other Seattle cliche is thrown into that movie too. Edward drives a Volvo, because everyone in the Northwest drives a Volvo. Everyone watches Mariners baseball. And everyone drinks Rainier beer! I haven't even seen a can of Rainier in over a decade, but all beer in this movie was Rainier. Just because the mountain's out here, it doesn't mean we have to drink anything named after it.

They also get bits wrong that no real Seattleite would: despite the fact that it does in fact rain quite often, no one in Seattle uses umbrellas. If someone has an umbrella, they're a transplant from California. So get them out of your Northwest teen-angst movie!

Such errors aren't surprising; I looked up Stephenie Meyer on Wikipedia, and she's from Connecticut. No wonder. I'm sure she decided on Forks for a setting because her Google search turned it up as the area of the US with the fewest days of sunshine.

Which brings me to my last huge beef. What's wrong with the picture below?

The tops of trees are the natural habitat of the Northwest Feral Jackalope, which would have ripped them to shreds?

Besides that.

Okay, it's DAYLIGHT in this picture! And the doofus on the left is a vampire! WTF? Twilight's assertion is that vampires don't like sunlight because (and you're gonna love this, I did):

They get all sparkly! Sunlight reflects off their skin like it's full of diamond shards. And that, people, is why vampires don't like the sun. Hence why Edward and his buddies hang out in Forks. So the lesson here, kids, is that you don't just dump one of the standards of vampire lore (they can't go out except at night), you dismember it and then pee on its grave!

I think the worst thing of all with this movie, besides having no plot and no conflict, besides throwing in every Seattle stereotype and besides raping the corpse of vampire mythology, is that the two leads have no chemistry together. That comes with casting two people whose combined career high-point is playing Cedric Diggory. Even if either of them were attractive like they were supposed to be (which they weren't), if they had displayed some attraction or chemistry with each other it still would have worked. Think Buffy and Angel, or Han and Leia. But they had nothing. Everything about their love for each other felt forced. On a movie built entirely on lovey teen angst, that absolutely destroyed whatever hope this movie had.

Again, the part where the evil vampire coven comes in was good. That was only twenty minutes of the movie, though. That conflict could easily have been on equal footing with the angst crap, and it would have improved the movie by approximately a million times.

My final verdict:

Go see Bolt. It's got a Hamster. In a ball.

Looking at my past few blog posts, I'm on a real YouTube kick.

This is a recording of a phone call prank by a couple of Montreal DJs... to Sarah Palin.

It's painful at times.

I'm in the full swing of National Novel Writing Month now (I'm at 8500 words already!), but I'm going to take time out to watch the returns tomorrow.

I have my preference of candidate, but no matter what, make sure you get out to vote, people! I may not agree with your vote, but I'll respect you for it ;)

She's so awesome.

Okay, so I cheated on the 5 friends thing.