C. L. Norman

I finished rewatching the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series and it got me to thinking of love triangles and what works for me and what doesn’t.

Buffy by the end of the series is in a love triangle with Angel and Spike. Both are vampires with souls and both love her. And let’s face it, both are good looking. So why is it that folks vote for Buffy to choose one over the other?

Personally, I think Spike is who she should end with. The reason why is the same reason I am glad Joey ended up with Pacey on Dawson’s Creek and why I was frustrated with Felicity choosing Ben over Noel on Felicity.

Angel and Buffy was the dream relationship. The first crush. The first love. The hazy, rose-colored, slow-music playing relationship. Don’t get me wrong. I fully believe that Buffy and Angel loved each other and they had a nice run, but they changed and grew up over the next few years and their love was more of a reflex after that happened. It wasn’t real anymore.

Spike and Buffy started as enemies but they grew and changed together. They worked at their relationship or tried to avoid working at it. Their feelings for each other grew from enmity to allies to friendship and finally to love. After all that effort and growth, they should be together.

At least for a while, the whole unaging thing on the part of Spike will get to be a problem eventually. But that is a whole other topic for discussion.

A new vampire love triangle is on TV. This one is on Vampire Diaries between Elaina, Stefan, and Damon. I’ve read the books and despite a love triangle being advertised on the back cover, I never thought that there was any danger of a triangle forming. Elaina was never in any danger of loving Damon and so no triangle. In the tv show that possibility is already there. My daughter is an avid fan and I like it but the triangle possibility is starting to draw me in. I want to see what happens next.

Of course all of this may be me justifying the girl ending up with the ‘bad boy.’ I am a sucker for the bad boy, they are more fun.

What is your favorite love triangle? Which ones worked for you and which ones had you yelling at the book/TV/screen “No!”?

        

I like Urban Fantasy because most of the protagonists in the stories are rogues. Or at least roguely.  Urban Fantasy takes magic and puts it in worlds not too different from our own. Urban Fantasy is fun and usually a fairly easy read.

The protagonists in Urban Fantasy rarely follow the rules, rarely lack for a snarky comment, and rarely have that quality that keeps them out of trouble.  Most every one of them loves their weapons. Whether it be a gun or a sword or a knife, they take care of it and keep it close by. Most of the time the love comes from the necessity to defend themselves from the denizens of darkness at a moments notice.

They also tend to have a colorful past. Orphans or abused children growing up on the streets, these characters have story hooks written all over their backgrounds. Enough hooks to keep their authors busy for years to come. This is great if you are a fan of the character, not as great if you like the author but not the series. I tend to adore the spunky character so this is a good thing in my eyes.

Their love lives. I could stop right there. Every one by now knows that urban fantasy is a hair away from paranormal romance and vise versa. Love lives will be complicated and involved. I love it. And I am frustrated with it. I like romance in my books, I even like the occasional romance novel. These complicated love lives make the books go from ok to great. I get frustrated when I think a couple should be together and book after book comes out where they dance around each other, meaningful glances exchanged, but no one acts on it. It is sorta like a TV series that keeps finding excuses not to put the main characters together. Frustrating.

A fair amount of urban fantasy takes our common, every day, hum-drum world and twists it. Just a little, just a nudge, and then magic happens. In Lousiana there are vampires, elves, and weres living side by side with bar patrons. In my home town of the Tri-Cities there is a wolf pack down the street and a vampire nest in the hills, and down near where my dad lives is a community of fae. Magic is happening all around us in these books. And it is fun.

Other urban fantasy push today’s world into the future or make tomatoes deadly to humans or cause magic and technology to alternately work but never at the same time. And then the monsters come out to play. How cool is that?

Most all urban fantasy that I have read or perused in the process of putting it on the shelf at work has a single POV character. A lot of spunky females and a few snarky males are telling their stories on these pages. Sometimes it is in third person but most of them seem to be in first. Either way the story is usually an easy read. Lots of action, quips, and mystery drive the reader through the pages which is my favorite type of book.

 A fair amount of epic fantasy (which I love too) spends a lot of time jumping from character to character, all around the map of their world, slowly bringing together disparate threads into one single rope. I admire the authors who can do this but it requires extra work on my part to keep every thing straight in my head. The urban fantasy is easier to read when my schedule is busy or my mind is feeling overworked.

These are the reasons why I like Urban Fantasy, what are yours?

        

In no particular order, here are 10 roguely types I am thankful for. I am grateful I had a run in with them either in the pages of a book or on the screen, big or small. They are fun and exciting and have contributed to my love of the snarky not-so-law-abiding characters.

1. Phillipe the Mouse from Ladyhawke.  From that first scene where we see him chattering away to himself and God while making his escape from an inescapable prison, Matthew Broderick as Phillipe captured my attention and my adoration. If you are wondering where Mouse got her name it was from this character.
2. Silk from David Edding’s Belgariad and Mallorean.  Silk mastered the arts of disguise, lockpicking, pick pocketting, corrupting the young and he did it all with a flair that left him my favorite character in a series of ten books full of so many interesting characters.
3. Han Solo from Star Wars. Who says rogues can only be in european fantasies? I certainly don’t. Han Solo with his blaster at his side and that crooked grin is my favorite rogue in space. So what if he can’t pick pockets (that I know of) or pick locks. He gets into plenty of trouble without those skills and watching him try to get out is something I have loved to do since I was a wee child.
4. Malcom Reynolds AKA Mal from Serenity/Firefly. The only reason Han is my favorite rogue in space is that I’ve known him longer. Mal holds a very very close second place in my heart. Mal has attitude and flair that is attention grabbing from the beginning. Watching his confidence leak away when confronted with a woman, Inara, is so much fun that I kept hoping for more of those scenes.
5. Sydney Bristow from Alias. Ok, so Sydney didn’t have the snarky attitude most of the rogues on this list have but she was so cool in her many disguises and spies are such close cousins to rogues that I had to include her. I rewatch the Alias seasons about every six months I adore the character so much. She had mad skills and so many obstacles to her dreams that I love watching her journey through it all to the happy ending she so much deserves.
6. Max Guevara from Dark Angel. Max had the snarky attitude, the world outlook that said theft was just part of a healthy economy, and enough selfishness to make her a world-class rogue. She was also genetically engineered to make her really good at it. While the second season of this series (with the exception of Jensen Ackles) irritated me with its complete change of direction, I love the first season. Logan’s attempts to make Max into a heroine are a joy to see.
7. FitzChivalry FarSeer AKA Fitz from Robin Hobb’s The FarSeer Trilogy and beyond. We get to see Fitz learn how to become an assassin under the tutelage of Chade and once he starts mastering those skills his life gets more complicated. At the end of the first trilogy I felt so sorry for this character for everything that he had to sacrifice and endure. He lacks snark but he is a hero with skills with poison, sword, and sneaking. This rogue is one I feel so sorry for that I don’t want to leave him alone in his world. I have to visit to keep him company as he goes through his trials.
8. Kylar Stern from Brent Weeks‘ Night Angel Trilogy. Kylar is an assassin, a wetboy if you will. He is also an orphan like Fitz but instead of growing up in a castle being trained there he grows up in the slums. Kylar is trained by Durzo Blint who has plenty of his own secrets of his own. No snark but a conscience, Kylar chose the field of assassination as a way to escape his life on the streets and rides that very bumpy road to the end. And I couldn’t put the books down until he got there.
9. Hanse Shadowspawn from the Thieves World series.  Hanse had attitude, stealth, nimble fingers, and mystery. He was a the ultimate second-story man and his stories were my favorites in this series.
10. Seregil from Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner books. Seregil has aliases, a way with a set of lockpicks, a trick for dealing with pesky guard dogs, and snark enough to light up a suite of rooms. He is part spy, part rogue, and all fun. And he may be showing up on the big screen soon too. So very cool.

That’s it. My list of 10 rogues I am thankful for this holiday season. I hope you all have a Happy Thanksgiving. What roguely types are you thankful for?

        

Monday nights put my DVR to work, overtime. Heroes, Lie To Me, and Castle are three of my favorite shows and I get cranky if I can’t watch them in a reasonable amount of time.

Heroes

I haven’t managed to watch Monday night’s episode of this but I will be as soon as I get home from work tonight. I am an avid fan of Sylar (who isn’t?) and the Sylar that is in Matt Parkman’s head has me creeped out. Is he really there? at least in part? Or is Matt hallucinating and going crazy? Did Sylar figure out how Matt’s power works during the process of making Sylar into Nathan?

Speaking of which, the whole Sylar is Nathan thing was bound to fail almost immediately and why Angela, who gets flashes of the future, couldn’t figure that out, I have no idea. It is an interesting premise but Sylar had too many powers that would reveal the truth for it to work properly.

HRG needs to get back to work. It was fun trying to guess what he was up to, who he was working for, who he was protecting. If there is a true rogue in the group, I would nominate HRG. He always seemed ahead of all these super powered folks around him. Is it possible his power is to outthink the people who he is surrounded by? His motives are always mysterious or not easily believed. I want to see him in action again.

Lie To Me

I am a new fan of this show. I watched about 4 to 5 of last season’s episodes and now I am hooked. As a lover of liars and thieves in fiction, it is a natural leap to adore deception experts. And of course I also am an avid fan of whodunnits, so this show is firmly in my sights.

The Lightman character has a wonderfully complex personality. He is able to detect lies and hidden truths from the littlest clues. He is also able to lie freely and easily as needed with very little time for planning. At least it appears that way. The lies he tells help him get to the truth, like a crowbar to pry open a rusty door to see what is on the other side. I love to watch it.

Monday night’s episode also added that he is willing to remotely spy on his office to keep control of it. He can’t let it go for even a week of fun in the sun with his daughter. Also he seems the most genuine when he is interacting with his daughter. His temper appear, the games disappear and he is just a dad worrying about his kid. It is wonderful to see.

Castle

I have to admit it. There is one singular reason I chose to watch this show in the beginning and that reason is named Nathan Fillion. I have adored watching him on the screen since he was Joey in One Life to Live, as the Preacher in Buffy, as Mal in Serenity/Firefly, and others. The approach he has to most roles make me wonder if he isn’t a rogue in life as he is on screen. He has an energy and a twinkle to his eye that makes me think he is putting one over on every person watching him. He is fun to watch and so I was predisposed to like Castle from the beginning.

Castle is also a whodunnit so I am hooked. It has a lot of sparkling banter between Castle and Beckett that reminds me of Moonlighting with David and Maddy. Banter that just proves that these two characters are attracted to each other but aren’t ready to pursue it, which is always fun.

The crimes they solve are complicated and figuring out who committed the crime before it is revealed is fun, and usually I am wrong. Which is ok because when the answer is revealed I realize why I was wrong and I vow that the next time I will get the answer right.

What do you like to watch on Monday night?

        

I just finished reading Best Served Cold by Joe Abercrombie.

I was attracted by the blurb on the cover that mentioned a female mercenary who is left for dead and vows revenge on those who tried to kill her, and that the best killer in the world is sent to finish the job. Mercenaries out for revenge and assassins sounded right up my alley, so I checked the book out.

I have to say up front that I haven’t read any other books by Mr. Abercrombie and this was my first experience with his writing. I adored the level of detail and the characterisations in the book. Almost everyone could be classified as a rogue and I had no problem with that.

The pacing of the story was a little odd for me. It read more as episodic than as one continuous narrative. So there were a lot of ups and downs in the tension through the story. This made for natural places to put the book down for the night. I could get use to that type of pacing but it felt uncomfortable in places.

The ending was a little weird for me and I don’t want to give anything away so I won’t give details. I expected certain things of the story and was surprised often that events didn’t unfold in the way I anticipated or wanted. As I mentioned before I am a sucker for a happy ending and this ending was neither good nor bad. It just was.

I came away feeling like the author set out to make a statement about revenge. I definitely felt “cold” by the process in which revenge was sought and achieved.

The story made me think. I picked up the book for a fun, roguely read. I didn’t get that. I am still thinking about the book and probably will continue to for several more days.

        

1. Having your characters keep secrets should never work out like they want it to.  When they finally reveal or are forced to reveal their Big Secret, unexpected and unwanted results should follow.
2. Killing off your characters doesn’t have to be permanent. But if they are brought back, don’t gloss over how they got back. Have a rock solid explanation or leave them dead.
3. Setting up complex family relationships can really increase the drama or stretch the reader/viewer’s imagination too far. Everyone related means everyone has a stake in the outcome when one of your characters is in trouble. Everyone related shouldn’t be the entire population of a town including that stranger that just moved in last week and is Grandma’s long lost love child.
4. Death bed confessions should only be made by the truly dying. Putting your main character in a hospital bed and then having everyone gather around for a chat is boring and predictable. Use these kinds of scenes very sparingly.
5. Having brothers or comrades-in-arms in love with the same woman creates tension. Having that woman sleeping around with both brothers creates a slut.
6. Lack of research cannot be disguised by a lot of action.
7. Two people repetitively talking about their secrets or problems for hours at a time is boring. Throwing a third person into the room who doesn’t know what is going on or is the object of the problem creates delicious tension.
8. Everyone, no matter how awful their lives are, has time for a holiday or a moment with the family.
9. Bad boy characters are especially appealing to the feminine audience. Keeping their motives a mystery and their looks to-die-for is always a crowd pleaser.
10. Ending on a cliffhanger is a good thing. Everyone comes back for more. Ending on the same cliffhanger over and over is not.

        

So I discovered Supernatural finally. Just a few days ago when my computer went down I ordered an episode on my iPhone and immediately started kicking myself for not watching it earlier. I had good reasons at the time. Like I had enough shows I was following, another show in the same time slot, worried that picking it up after season one would just leave me dazed and confused. None of those reasons are sounding good enough now.

The two brothers in this show are fun and interesting to watch. I look at them and I just want to tear their characters apart and look at them again from the inside out, analyzing everything about them that makes them so much more than the everyday monster hunters.

Dean is the resident rogue of the show. He has the quips and the smart alecky attitude and Jensen Ackles has always appeared to have a bit of the imp in him in every role I have seen him in and it makes him one of my favorites. Sam though is the rebel. Dean listens to no one but his dad and Sam listens to everyone but his dad (keeping in mind I am only half way through season one at the time of this entry). Sam is the rebel or the black sheep of the family and it is neat to see as he would be considered the “good” son from those outside the family group.

This show would be interesting enough watching two ordinary folks fighting the unusual in a semi-ordinary world. But the two characters here have been crafted so wonderfully that I enjoyed learning more about them than about the world they live in. They have all these built in conflicts or layers that make them wonderfully rich, like a triple layer chocolate cherry cake. A person can just dig in and enjoy.

First, they are brothers. Brothers and sisters for that matter have very different kinds of relationships. There is sibling rivalry and sibling protection and love. Second, one witnessed and remembers his mother’s death and the other does not. One stayed home and was the dutiful son and learned all his dad had to teach him while the other left to experience a different kind of life. All of these layers are introduced in the first 15 minutes of the first episode.

If I can learn to create even half of these subtle layers and shadings in my characters I will count myself lucky.

What do you think of these characters?

        

I finished a very good book yesterday. Cast in Silence by Michelle Sagara is the fourth book in a series featuring a character who I think can be classified as a rogue. 

Kaylin Neya is part of law enforcement but she wasn’t always. She also performs her duties in a way unique to her and not necessarily by the book. She has a funny way of opening her mouth before she thinks things through. A tendency I can heartily empathize with. Just ask my coworkers, family, and friends.

Kaylin lives in a world that is very different than many other fantasy genre settings. Her world is peopled by races you don’t usually see in other places. No elves or dwarves here.

One thing I particularly admired about this book, now that I can’t help but read with an eye toward writing technique, is the dialogue. In many places the dialogue provided exposition. However instead of explaining every little thing, I noticed that there were “holes” in the exposition. Places where the characters involved had figured out something but didn’t belabor the point or spell it out to the reader. This encouraged me to keep thinking and wondering and brought me deeper into the scene.

I have a terrible and chronic leaning towards overexplaining things. I hope to one day master or least reach journeyman level in holding back from my reader enough to keep them guessing and engaged.

Thank you, Ms. Sagara, for a great read.

        

Mouse. A gnome rogue character from my first D&D game. Of course then it was known as AD&D.

I created her when I was in college just after the invitation to join a game that was run in the student union between classes. I was intimidated by all the language; D20, THAC0, AC, etc. I glanced through the book and reasoned out that a fighter had to know too much of the combat rules, a wizard or a cleric had to know the magic system, but a rogue, a rogue is a free spirt and not constrained by the roles the others were crowded into.

Then it became time to choose a race and I saw the line in the gnome’s description that stated they were curious, their noses led them into trouble more often than not. I was attracted to this idea. This meant my character could poke around as much as I want to and it would be “in character.”

Next lets throw a little personality into this character. Yes, I am one of those gamers. One of those who state things like “My character wouldn’t do that.” I decided that in addition to being curious she was cowardly when it came to physical confrontations. She also loved the shiny stones and disdained those flat dull metal coins. Now I had a hook into how she would react in any situation she could possibly get herself into.

And she got herself into a lot of “situations.”

Mouse was named for one of my most favorite rogues, Phillippe the Mouse from Ladyhawke. And like a mouse she poked her nose in anything that crossed her path: doors with “Do Not Enter” signs posted on them, unexplored caves, and most importantly unemptied pockets.

Those pockets were never left empty for long though. Once emptied of the shiny rocks, those dull coins her adventuring companions kept sharing with her were distributed in those convenient spaces.

If a fight resulted from her explorations then she didn’t stick around to trade blows with the foe. That task fell to her bigger and bulkier companions. She ran and sometimes hid but more often than not found more trouble to bring back to her friends.

She remains my most favorite character in my entire career of gaming. What is your favorite character?

        

Greetings.

Rogues. Scoundrels. Scalawags. Hustlers. Rascals. Thieves. Bandits. Pirates. Pickpockets.  These are the kinds of characters I love reading about the most or seeing up on the big or little screens.

These men and women are occasionally the hero of the tale but more often reside in a grey area between the two sides. Three qualities I have noticed in these characters include:

• Don’t live by the rules. These folks make up their own rules. Sometimes they pretend to the follow along for their own ends but if a rule gets in their way they are very quick and willing to ignore it to get their desired results.
• Always have a snarky comeback. These are the one liners that everyone remembers and more often than not cause their audience to laugh out loud. Or have a milk out the nose moment.
• Fun. These folks are fun. They may be in the deepest of dangers with no hope of rescue, death riding on their shoulders, but they remain fun. They laugh in the face of danger. They crack jokes as they skewer their enemies with a dagger. They are always fun.

I will be writing about these guys when I am not writing about my own writing. Yes, I am a writer. Or rather a wannabe writer. I write primarily sword and sorcery fantasy though I have recently delved into the urban fantasy genre. The short story is not your typical urban fantasy. It involves a semi-retired dragon-slayer called into action once again in the Pacific Northwest. John St. George is a rogue at heart. Not many take up the call to slay dragons but he does it anyway, despite the dangers, despite his bad knees.