But I’m a Cheerleader,
Bring It On,
Saved!.

Internets, you know I’m a Jane Austen nut. But before I read a word of Austen, I saw the BBC adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, and Amy Heckerling’s adaptation of Emma. They both came out in 1995, the year I turned fourteen.

Yes, Internets, my very first teen movie was:

Clueless.

I was not alone. Clueless was almost effortlessly influential on teenage fashion and vernacular for years to come.

Hahaha, what am I saying, effortlessly? Amy Heckerling, who wrote as well as directed and is not incidentally a massive role model for me, sat in high school classes for weeks researching teen interactions, not to mention the literal years she spent on vocabulary. But she didn’t like the mid-90s grunge fest that was the fashion of the time, so Mona May, the costume designer, worked her ass off designing a specific colour palette and style chart for each major character, taking inspiration from European catwalks, rather than American sidewalks.

Those costumes were awesome, and suddenly every girl at my school with pretensions of cool was wearing knee-high socks. That was about as much as we could get away with, given we were all in uniform, but at least our skirts had plaid.

What Happens?

Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition, seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence; and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her…

Like you don’t all know, although I tended to shock people when I told them I hadn’t seen Heathers*, so there’s probably someone.

Valley queen Cher is fifteen years old, and, along with her best friend Dionne, named after “singers who used to be popular and now do infomercials”, rules her Beverley Hills high school. Chic, rich, and beautiful, Cher is ready to make anyone do what she wants, despite the sardonic commentary of ex-stepbrother Josh, who keeps suggesting there might be more to life than being charming and popular. As if!

Cher successfully argues her way to better grades, matchmakes her teachers, makes over a slobby new girl into a valley princess, and manages her father’s eating, but she can’t charm her way into a gay boy’s bed nor out of a failed driver’s license test. She’s losing her grip on popularity, and she’s starting to think that maybe… just possibly… she’s clueless. Worse, she has fallen majorly totally butt crazy in love with Josh! What if she’s lost his good opinion forever?

Whatever! All is revealed, a happy ending results, and Cher has finally found the boy to whom she’s going to lose her virginity. You can’t be too careful about these things – she’s way picky about her shoes, and those only go on her feet.

The Message?

Other people are real.

Okay, so you’re probably going, “Is this like a Noxzema commercial or what?” But seriously, I actually have a way normal life for a teenage girl.

It’s worth noting that, like Emma, Cher is really not stupid. Her debates may be “unresearched”, but they are hardly unstructured, and she has an excellent memory – even for the parts of Hamlet that Mel Gibson didn’t say. She just, as her father points out, lacks direction and the motivation to apply herself – much as Emma makes lists of reading material to improve her mind, and then never reads them, and neglects to practice the piano when a little more time would make her really good at it.

So Cher is smart, charming, sweet, and largely well-mannered, but Josh is not wrong when he names her a “superficial space cadet”. Cher “lives for makeovers” and views befriending a new girl and raising her social status as a “project” to be accomplished with clothing, makeup, and hairdye. She’s not entirely wrong to pay attention to appearances. A concern with the superficial is vital to Cher’s social success – in her milieu, what people wear, their makeup, hairstyles, homes and cars are all important messages that Cher can read and manipulate. But as her unsuccessful seduction of Christian shows, she might not have enough life experience to decode all of them. And Cher’s charm can’t win over an unimpressed DMV tester who will not overlook her driving deficiencies, no matter how serious a shirt she wears.

Moreover, this superficiality can be dangerous when applied to matters of the heart, where a deeper connection is usually thought of as a better deal. She got lucky with Miss Geist and Mr Hall, who clearly have genuine mutual respect on their side. But Cher sets her sights on Christian because he is “brutally hot”, fitting her own sense of aesthetics. This isn’t to say she doesn’t genuinely like him, but it’s clear that her decision to make him her first lover is based on superficial concerns – and hasn’t got as far as considering something as basic as whether he’s actually into girls.

“Would you call me selfish?” “No, not to your face.”

Even worse is her manipulation of Tai’s heart. Cher decides to set Elton up with Tai because he dresses well and is in the right social crowd. She engages in real manipulation here, lying to Tai that Elton thinks she’s sweet and giving her instructions as to how to attract his attention (“Pretend Travis is saying something really funny!”). But despite Cher’s hopes, Elton is a shallow snob who betrays his own unsuitability for anyone at all by hitting on Cher and rejecting even the idea of Tai – “Don’t you even know who my father is?” he demands, before sexually harassing Cher and then abandoning her in a parking lot, where she is consequently mugged**. Cher then has to pass on the news that he doesn’t like Tai after all, and after all the work she’s done to make Tai interested in Elton, Tai is devastated.

In fact, Cher’s disdain of Travis’s stoner style and status have temporarily prevented Tai from seeing the nice guy with whom she hit it off right away. Inspired by Cher’s own superficial assessment of Travis’ clique, Tai brutally rejects him, and tells him to join the stoners “on the grassy knoll over there” – the phrasing Cher had formerly used to point out where Travis “belonged”.

Cher has such a loose grasp on her own interiority that it’s little surprise that she largely treats other people like puppets to be maneuvered for her own interest and entertainment. As Roz Kaveney puts it: “There is genuine kindness in the way Cher takes Tai on as a project – and yet there is also a fundamental lack of respect. Cher is someone who selects her own outfits by using a computerised dress-up doll of herself, so it could hardly be expected that she entirely acknowledge another person’s autonomy.” She misreads Elton’s attraction to her and Christian’s lack of it, but crucially, it is Cher’s inability to recognise her own feelings for Josh until the last moment that provides the impetus she needs to realise that she is totally clueless.

You’re a virgin who can’t drive.

In thinking about Josh, and trying to puzzle out why she’s buggin’ about the potential Josh/Tai relationship, Cher sticks to the surface at first: “What does she want with Josh anyway? He dresses funny, he listens to complaint rock, he’s not even cute – in a conventional way***.” But then she considers what Josh might want, on a less than superficial level: “Josh needs someone with imagination, someone to take care of him, someone to laugh at his jokes… in case he ever makes any. Then, suddenly: Oh my god! I love Josh!”

Because she is sweet and well-intentioned, having recognised the superficiality problem, Cher does what she can to fix it: “I decided I needed a complete makeover. Except this time, I’d makeover my soul.” She tries to work out what makes someone a better person, and assesses the people around her on more than a surface level.

This time, instead of giving Dionne “snaps for her courageous fashion sense”, she praises how considerate Dionne and her boyfriend are of each other. Instead of assessing Christian’s personal style, she likes the way he “always wants everything to be beautiful and interesting.” And the subject of her first setup, social do-gooder Miss Geist, formerly assessed as a mess with lipstick on her teeth and a slip that’s always showing, is noted as someone who always tries to get her students involved in the world, “no matter how much we resist.”

And Cher stops resisting. Watching Miss Geist talk about the (fictional) Pismo Beach Disaster, Cher announces that she wants to help. As captain of the school’s Pismo Beach Disaster Relief fundraising efforts, Cher leverages her good looks and popularity to rally the troops and gather vital supplies. “This your influence, Josh?” her father asks, watching Cher give up her clothes and sporting equipment to the cause. Josh shrugs – and he’s right to do so, because, although he’s pointed out Cher’s superficiality many times, it took her own awakening to really make the change. While that awakening was inspired by Cher’s own feelings for Josh, he doesn’t know that yet.

He finds out, though, when a nasty lawyer yells at Cher’s attempts to help with her father’s case and storms out. Comforting Cher, Josh lets slip that he thinks Cher’s father is the only one who care about him. “That’s not true,” Cher says. “Are you saying that you care about me?” Josh asks, and then THERE IS KISSING and it’s adorable and then she catches the bouquet at Miss Geist’s wedding and it’s pretty clear that they’re going to have sex although Cher is now sixteen and I think that’s still not legal age in California so no one actually SAYS it.

Anyway, Cher is still not totally clued up, but she is certainly less clueless, and for a rich, white, beautiful sixteen-year-old, that is not an insignificant step. So she gets rewarded with a cute boy with more clues, and, major bonus, since her father was hardly even married to his mother, my incest squick is triggered not at all. Happy ending for everyone!

Other Things:

- Amy Heckerling’s insistence that the cast speak in complex, multi-syllablic, slang-laden sentences proved frustrating for a few of them. Donald Faison had particular trouble with, “Okay, but street slang is an increasingly valid form of expression. Most of the feminine pronouns do have mocking, but not necessarily misogynistic undertones.” In the special features of the Whatever special edition, which I super recommend, he wonders, “How come I can’t just say, ‘My bad?’ ‘My bad, baby, kiss me.’” But I have little sympathy, because in the movie, he spits it out, smirks, and pokes his tongue out, and it’s SO CUTE.

- Stacy Dash, who plays Dionne, was 28 when the movie was shot. She played Dionne in the series, and later turns up in the ALSO awesome Amy Heckerling movie, the romantic comedy I Could Never Be Your Woman, where Dash plays… an adult actress playing a teenager on a popular high school comedy (where Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, Rosie, is a writer). Dash’s character is romanced by a dweeby nerd PLAYED BY PAUL RUDD. I nearly fell off the couch. I Could Never Be Your Woman was never theatrically released in the US because of distribution bullshit. I highly recommend it. There is a great scene where- wait, footnote ****

- For the longest time I thought that was how you said “Haitians”.

- God, I could talk about this movie forever, but I want to include two secondary sources: This archived People article that talks about Cher’s style and makes fun of other young stars (gross). And this essay about Emma vs Clueless by Suzanne Ferriss (I don’t agree entirely with her conclusions, but it’s a fun comparison piece.)

- Heck, one more: this AFI interview/panel with Amy Heckerling:

The movie, Fox movies, bought the pilot from the TV company for me to develop as a film. And then I went back and read Emma and started to work out the structure. They were really worried about girls being the main characters. They kept saying, Let’s see more about what the boys are doing, let’s see this boy in his home and this boy with his car and this boy doing this and that. And I said, But this is an inner monologue in the girl’s head, so what does her head know about what’s going on with him at his house with his car?

What have I missed, Internets? What have I got wrong? Let’s talk teen movies!

* I watched Heathers a couple of days ago. I don’t like it, but now I know where “Fuck me gently with a chainsaw” and “I love my dead gay son” come from!

** I just realised I fully stole the structure of that scene for one in Guardian of the Dead, complete with love interest turning up to be helpful, only with would-be rapists and creepy patupaiarehe instead of a mugger. AHAHAHAHAHA, GO ME, GOOD TASTE IN THIEVERY.

*** Yeah, this doesn’t work when you’ve cast the very cute Paul Rudd (currently being hilarious and handsome on Parks and Recreation)

**** This happens:

Older TV exec: Courtney Love?
Producer: Drugged-out hag.
Older TV exec: Faye Dunaway?
Producer: Don’t call us, we’ll call you!
Older TV exec: Sharon Stone?
Producer: Hag.
Older TV exec: Geena Davis?
Producer: Hag.
Older TV exec: Sigourney Weaver?
Producer: Hag.
Older TV exec: Kim Basinger?
Producer: Hag.
Older TV exec: Emma Thompson?
Producer: Brit hag.
Older TV exec: Susan Sarandon?
Producer: Red-state-alienating hag!
Older TV exec: Meg Ryan?
Producer: Too much plastic surgery.
Older TV exec: Melanie Griffith?
Producer: WAY too much plastic surgery.
Older TV exec: Patricia Heaton?
Producer: *Pointless* plastic surgery.
Older TV exec: CHER.
Producer: *Insurmountable* amount of plastic surgery!
Rosie: [who's been overhearing all this from the next chair & getting increasingly annoyed, swings round & grabs the Producer by the chin] Listen, you little bird of a man, where do you come off insulting these women? How many hit songs did you sing? How many Oscars do *you* have? Could you look cute next to Warren Beatty? Or live with Don Johnson? Or act with Ted Danson? You’re not worthy of kissing Cher’s tattooed ass!

Oh man, I wonder if it’s on iTunes?

On the list so far:
Bend It Like Beckham
Bring It On
But I’m A Cheerleader!
Clueless
Easy A
Empire Records
Juno
Mean Girls
Saved!
Stick It

Recommendations are very welcome.

I can’t guarantee I’ll even get to all of the ones on my list (some of the messages are pretty nebulous, but either beloved or interesting enough that I kinda want to talk about them anyway) but heck. Why not?

On with the show!

Teen Comedy With A Serious Message Number One: Bring It On.

Oh, Internets. You know my feelings about cheerleading. Of course this is the first movie I’m going to tackle.

What happens?

Here’s the deal, Missy. We’re the shit, the best. We work hard, have fun, and win national championships. I’m offering you a chance to be a part of that.

Torrance Shipman has just been elected the successor to the scary Big Red, captain of the Rancho Carne Toros, six time national cheerleading champs. When disaster strikes, and they need a new cheerleader, she champions bad seed Missy, who’s just moved in. (“I moved here from Los Angeles/This school has no gymnastics team/This is a last resort!”)

Because this isn’t a democracy, it’s a cheerocracy, Torrance overrules the others and invites Missy to join. In turn, Missy alerts Torrance to the fact that Big Red has been stealing routines from another squad, and after some initial fumbling, the Toros put together a new and genuinely original routine for nationals. They come second, which, because they did the right thing – eventually – “feels like first.” As a bonus, Torrance breaks up with her shitty boyfriend Aaron and hooks up with Missy’s cute brother, Cliff. (“You believed in me! That’s important to me! You believed in me!”)

The Message?

Racist appropriation of someone else’s creative work is disgusting, and way too easy to get away with.

Tried to steal our bit/But you look like shit/But we’re the ones who were down with it.

You see, Big Red hasn’t been stealing from just any squad. She’s been ripping off the East Compton Clovers, an “inner-city” Los Angeles school that’s never been able to make it to Nationals – and thus is unlikely to ever prove her crimes. “Inner-city”, by the way, is movie code for “Black”.

Missy is disgusted when she sees the “new” Toros routine she’s supposed to learn. She takes Torrance to an East Compton game, where she can see the evidence with her own eyes. A teary Torrance clearly recognises the routine, and as the two girls leave, the Clovers, led by their captain Isis, come out in force.

They immediately make it clear, to both Torrance and the audience, that what the Toros have done is not simply a matter of stealing a routine, but an act of racist appropriation. The Toros are a team that is almost entirely white (and economically privileged – the houses we see are spacious and expensively decorated, and those are not the homes of the squad’s “rich girl”, who can come up with $500 at will). And they have been taking the credit for the creative work of underprivileged people of colour.

The Clovers react angrily to Missy and Torrance coming to view the “ethnic festivities” at their school, feeling, that like ‘Raggedy Ann’, they are there to steal.

Torrance: ‘Raggedy Ann’?
Isis: Ugly redhead with a video camera permanently attached to her hand. Y’all been coming up here for years trying to steal our routines.
Lafred: And we just love seeing them on ESPN.
Torrance: What are you talking about?
Isis: ‘Brr, it’s cold in here, there must be some Toros in the atmosphere’? I know you don’t think a white girl made that shit up. Our free cheer service is over as of this moment.
Jenelope: Over!
Lafred: Finito!
Isis: Every time we get some, here y’all come trying to steal it, putting some blonde hair on it and calling it something different. We’ve had the best squad around for years, but no one’s been able to see what we can do. But you better believe, all that’s gonna change this year. I’m captain, and I guarantee you we’ll make it to Nationals. So just hand over the tape you made tonight, we’ll call it even for now.

And, while Torrance and the rest of the squad were genuinely ignorant of what Big Red had done, ignorance is not really an excuse. The damage has been done, and the Toros have already profited from that malfeasance. As Torrance indignantly told Missy before witnessing the damning routine, “Our routines are 100% original! Count the trophies!”

“I swear I didn’t know.” “Well, now you do.”

Even worse, however, Torrance reluctantly agrees to carry on with the routine anyway, because, as antagonist Courtney puts it: “We learned that routine fair and square. We logged the man-hours. Don’t punish the squad for Big Red’s mistake. This isn’t about cheating. This is about winning.”

The problem is, of course, that they didn’t learn it fair and square, and the situation is about cheating – and about using their privilege to get away with it.

It takes the Clovers actually showing up at a football game and doing the same routine in the stands before Torrance will do more than wring her hands about doing the right thing. And even then she tries to take shortcuts, before she puts her big girl’s spankies on and does the work herself.

Then it looks like the Clovers won’t be able to go after all – they just can’t get the funds. Most of the Toros celebrate, but Torrance insists that her father’s business pay their way – partly out of guilt, and partly because she wants her squad to be genuinely the best. Which means beating the best. And she recognises the Clovers as the best.

But Isis rejects the cheque. Instead of relying on this contribution, the Clovers appeal to an icon from their own neighbourhood, TV personality Pauletta, who comes through in her show’s wish-granting hour. Neither Torrance’s money nor Torrance’s guilt are welcome to the Clovers – but her competitive spirit is.

Isis: You wanna make it right? Then when you go to Nationals… bring it. Don’t slack off because you feel sorry for us. That way, when we beat you, we’ll know it’s because we’re better.
Torrance: Oh, I’ll bring it. Don’t worry.
Isis*: I never do.

Anyway, the Clovers go to Nationals, the Toros bring it, and the Clovers win national acclaim and ten thousand dollars with their own spectacular routine. And Isis and Torrance have reached detente – certainly not a friendship, but a wary respect for each other. (It does strike me as unrealistic that self-reliant and goals-focused Isis would bother thinking too much about Torrance’s feelings and “rewarding” her for doing something that’s absolutely baseline good human behaviour, but hey, Hollywood happy ending)

Isis: I just want to say, captain to captain, I respect what you guys did out there. You guys were good.
Torrance: Thanks. You were better.
Isis: We were, yeah.

Other Things?

- Torrance’s gay cheer friend Les is awesome – about the only one on the squad, other than Missy, who resists carrying on with the stolen routine. And while he doesn’t get a relationship of his own, he does get a genuinely cute moment of nervously introducing himself to a guy he likes, and getting the “I’ll see you around” meet-cute response.

- There’s a totally unnecessary bit where it’s implied a male cheerleader digitally penetrates a female one while he’s holding her. She giggles, but she looks surprised – she clearly wasn’t expecting it. So: 1) Dude, how hard is it to ask first? Yes means yes! 2) Come on, in the middle of a routine your hands should be making sure she doesn’t smash her skull, have some professionalism.

- There’s some major girl-on-girl hate, but also a lot of girl-on-girl love. Missy and Torrance sro it up, and Isis and her immediate friends are a strong, cohesive group.

*Can I just point out that Isis is an amazing character, given incredible presence and depth in her few lines by the sterling acting chops of Gabrielle Union? Gabrielle Union should be a star on the level of Kirsten Dunst, and should most certainly have more work than Eliza Dushku, but she’s not, and she doesn’t, because – surprise! – racism.

I still hear things like, “Gabrielle, you gave the best read! If we decide to go black, you’re at the top of the list”. I’ve actually been told, “Gabrielle, you’re absolutely perfect for the role, but the role is a girl who’s most popular in school”. I’ve been to the point where I brought in my yearbook. “See how popular I was? It really can happen”.

Gabrielle Union – source.

I had planned to go to Christchurch and join friends for New Year’s Eve, but the recent quake and heavy aftershocks prompted a schedule change. Instead, I brought in the season playing cards with my mother and youngest brother, who insisted, after a few false starts, that we hold hands and sing Auld Lang Syne.

There are many worse ways to greet the New Year than safe, warm, well-fed and singing with one’s family. And there may not really be any bad way to bid goodbye to 2011, a year that sucked most heartily on a number of levels for a vast number of people.

There were certainly good things in my life: my oldest brother got married to a wonderful woman; my second book came out; I was able to attend ALA and the World Fantasy Convention; I spoke at Reading Matters and had a blast; I watched a lot of great TV and read a number of great books (some detailed in this guest post at The Book Smugglers”); and I had a wonderful time mentoring an exceptional young woman (hi, Laura!) through the Big Brother Big Sister program, which I am finally able to talk about.

But on the whole, 2011 was pretty damn awful, and I wanted to see it out with some grand gesture. Here, then, is the song that increasingly became my anthem as I clung to the certainty that this, too, would pass:

And this is the song I wish to be my anthem for 2012:

May you all have a fabulous year.

I mean. I love them. I love spending time with them.

But my Dad has spent his married life making the family meals, and he’s got the menu down to a fine art: Roast meat, steamed fish, or cold cuts, accompanied by boiled potatoes, steamed silverbeet and cauliflower, and occasionally carrots and peas. There might be a gravy. There might be a cheese sauce. There will be a green salad for the rabbit food eaters.

And this is a fine menu! But it becomes progressively less fine when one is served it every day.

Now that Dad is out of the kitchen, it is unquestionably mine. Dinner tonight was fajitas and potato salad, and coconut milk rice pudding for dessert. Tomorrow we’re barbecuing some venison, which I am currently marinating in garlic, cumin, salt, pepper, and a lot of a really nice merlot. Not sure what I’m doing after that. Maybe I’ll make a curry! Maybe I’ll put together a risotto! The possibilities are endless, and carb-tastic.

In between establishing my dominion over the kitchen, I have been cruising through my journal and finding my favourite posts this year in order to make a Best Of list. Internets, several of them are about food! I know that you are shocked.

February 3rd: I DO Love A Good List.
February 24th: What To Do With Words.
Feb 26th: A Message From Christchurch.
March 4th: Smiling at Grief.
April 1st: NEW Shattering Cover!
April 18th: Karen’s Top Four Novels Guaranteed To Prompt a Massive Session In The Kitchen.
April 22nd: Teenagers, Sex, and Young Adult Fiction.
June 7th: How To Make A Birthday Cake.
August 23rd: Thursday watch the walls instead.
August 28th: Past and Present.
October 15th: Creepy Cake N Bake: Dark Chocolate Teacup Puddings.
November 9th: And All For One (incredible movie).
November 19th: Problems, Awesomeness, and Not Being Alone.
December 25th: Faith in foxholes.

Tales for Canterbury is an anthology of original short stories and reprints by writers from inside and outside New Zealand. All proceeds are going to the New Zealand Red Cross Earthquake Appeal, to aid people in the stricken city. None of the contributors nor the editors are getting paid.

Editors Anna Caro and Cassie Hart started putting the anthology together the day after the earthquake, and the response has been incredible. So much so that they opened pre-orders for the anthology one month after the quake. If you know anything about publishing, internets, and also about Star Trek, you know that this is Warp 13.

So, the pub date is expected to be mid-April (!!!!) and pre-orders are open, for both electronic and print copies! You can pre-order copies at Random Static for $12 NZ (electronic) and $24.95 NZ (print)*.

What Christchurch gets for your money is badly needed help.

What do YOU get for your money?

Awesomeness.

The full contributor list can be found here, but it includes such luminaries as Juliet Marillier, Gwyneth Jones, Sean Williams, Jay Lake, Helen Lowe, Tina Makereti, Jeff VanderMeer and Neil Gaiman.

Oh, and me, all a-flutter at my inclusion in such stellar company.

My contribution, “The Unicorn Bell”, is something of a urban fable. It features seven-year-old Sophie, a full moon, a nor’wester wind, and the most magical thing in her Nana’s magical house.

If you liked Guardian of the Dead and/or Queen of the Kitchen, I think you’d like it. Even if you don’t, odds are that you’ll really enjoy something.

Pre-order here!

Also, feel free to link everywhere you see fit.

* Non-NZers: if you are eyeing those prices and going, “wellll, if it’s for CHARITY”, be aware that these are actually very cheap prices for New Zealand books. Trade paperbacks often come in at nearly twice that, I am not kidding. Also, if you are in the USA, remember that this is New Zealand dollars. It’s like… fifty cents of your money**.

** Okay, maybe a dollar.

I plan to make the terrifying Schadenfreude Pie for Christmas dinner – if there were ever a better time for a pie composed entirely of sugar and fat, I don’t know it – and of course ran into manifold difficulties acquiring the ingredients.

Graham crackers? Dark brown sugar? Dark corn syrup? Molasses? Not in evidence, and possibly unholy.

These things are probably all available somewhere in Melbourne, but they were not in my local supermarket, and I had privately resolved that, given the other stresses of preparing Christmas dinner (for the first time by myself, go me!) I would not make myself frantic trying to find arcane American ingredients, and would instead acquire reasonable substitutes.

I did manage to get my hands on clear corn syrup, which I walked past four times, on account of the label read GLUCOSE SYRUP and added underneath ~Derived from corn~.

Afterwards, discussing my difficulties with friends, I noted that at least my chocolate was likely to be better than that in the original pie, since they appear to be standard semi-sweet chunks, and I am super hardcore about my cooking chocolates.

BFF Robyn: I am not surprised.
ME: Hey, some people have a wine palate. And some people can recognise chocolate with fewer than 40% cocoa solids at twenty paces.
MIGGY (who is from Idaho): I have a potato palate. Sadly I am not kidding. Living the stereotype~
ME: Interesting! Come to think, I have friends with really high rice standards.
MIGGY: I mentioned this to [Another Friend] and his thing is milk.

Do you have a thing like this, internets? Are you an insufferable snob about potatoes, or milk, or mayonnaise, or tomato sauce (if you will, ketchup), or cheese?

I mean, I am kind of a snob about cheese in that I insist it should come from a cow and not be orange, but I can’t really tell the difference between a superb cheddar and a mere rather nice one. But my chocolate taste is well-developed. I will happily chow down on a Snickers, but the difference between that and Green and Black’s Dark is remarkable to my tongue.

BFF Robyn’s superpower – well, in addition to being able to break bricks with her hands – is that she is a supertaster.

This is one of those mutant powers that embarrass the X-Men. It’s all very well to have laser eyes or telekinesis, but some mutants have the power to heat their hands to something that approaches a bar heater! Or the power to grow scales!

Supertasting is one of those powers, in that BFF Robyn cannot eat a lot of things that taste just fine to me because to her they are horrendously bitter or taste of soap. It’s hard to be a mutant in a world that hates and fears you!

ME: What was the thing at the restaurant? I remember you were super grossed out.
BFF Robyn: It was some kind of like goat cheese something? I can’t recall, except that it was with a spoon and I put it in my mouth and almost spit it across the table.
ME: EXCELLENT CONTROL.
BFF Robyn: For real, man. Usually I have some kind of spidey-sense or something, I think because of odour.
BFF Robyn: But this one I was all, ooh, that looks good OH GOD BETRAYED.

For “occasionally”, let us read “all the time”.

So the other day I went to the comics store (Comics R Us, Bourke St, they are awesome), picked up my holds, and spotted a trade paperback entitled The Guild.

“Oooh!” I said*. “A comic book based on the hit cult web series written by and starring the exceptionally smart and funny Felicia Day?”

“That’s right!” he said. “The comic is actually written by Ms. Day and drawn by Jim Rugg, who illustrated The Plain Janes, one of your favourite YA comics. It is a prequel to the increasingly well-acted and always well-scripted web series that has awesome guest roles from Wil Wheaton and Teal Sherer, the latter of whom upon you have a giant girlcrush.”

“Oh my gosh,” I exclaimed. “A story explaining how the Knights of Good got together! You know, once someone told me I looked a bit like Felicia Day and I was totally thrilled. Although I have naturally wavy hair.”

“Um,” he said. “I can give you a small discount?”

Of course I bought the book and read it on the train home. Of course it is smart and funny and charming and beautifully drawn. And something I noticed, and found totally hilarious, is that the book highlights that the MMO Game that timid Cyd and her fellow Knights of Good play rewards normative feminine behaviours.

“And for killing stuff you get rewards, like clothing!” Codex enthuses. “Whose idea was that?! GENIUS!

It’s an open secret that the Game is actually World of Warcraft. Which I also play! With my naturally wavy hair! In fact, the second I got home from the comic book store, I was loading up much-anticipated expansion pack Cataclysm and taking my werewolf-in-a-top-hat for a ride.

Okay, so World of Warcraft is a game where female characters almost universally get massive racks and sexy /dance sequences. Armour that is full coverage on a male avatar often exposes cleavage and stomach on a female build, and jokes about female players are stupidly common on many servers. (Not mine. Proudmoore for life, yo.)

But it’s also a game where quests are rewarded with shiny new clothes and adorable animal companions. Where, to maximise your character’s usefulness and earning potential, they must learn how to cook food and wrap bandages. Where they can create useful (and pretty!) objects by practising handcrafts, picking flowers, and making jewellery. Where you get a much valued achievement for running around the world and hugging small animals.

Also, you can buy a flying pony made out of twinkly stars.

World of Warcraft. Often sexist. Totally girly.

* This dialogue is made up entirely. But I can assure you the actual conversation was no less informative and charming.

I recently wrote a two-part article* on why vampires in young adult fiction are awesome, with a selection of some of my recent favourites.

I see you, Lili Wilkinson. I see you shaking your head!

You are mistaken, and here’s why:

I adore many trends that are supposedly overplayed but actually classic favourites. And, much like Meat Loaf, bright red lipstick, and jelly shoes, vampires are awesome, and I hope they stick around forever. Haters to the left, where they may bite me.

Vampirism is a fabulous metaphor for a lot of things that often happen in adolescence: physical transformation; new temptations and cravings; intensity of emotion; uncontrollable desires. Also, vampires are sexy, sexy danger, and while in real life, dangerous people are not at all sexy and ought to be avoided if possible, they can be a lot of fun in fantasy. Fantasy is a safe way to play around with the notion of the redeemable monster, the terrible being that nevertheless loves and protects the right person.

“Teenagers with Bite”: Part One. Part Two.

Of course the rest of the magazine is well worth your time, but may I particularly recommend “No Return Address”, by Sigrid Ellis?

I was angry when we had that fight, too. Our last fight, though I didn’t know that at the time. What did you expect me to say? You come in late and you’re bloody and filthy, and you tell me some story about “the fey,” and “faeries.” About the fey and our family and a war. You said, “I have to go, Mom. The Unseelie Court has taken the Southern Provinces, and only our family’s bloodline can save the High Ones.” It makes no sense. Those are things out of stories, out of books. I just want to know, Amanda—in what universe did you think I would not ask you what drugs you were on?

As an enthusiastic YA reader, this is the other half of a story I have read many times in different guises, and I found it both beautifully written and fascinating.

And don’t forget, you can visit me THIS SATURDAY at 2 p.m., at Borders Melbourne Central. I will be signing with the excellent Foz Meadows (See above! In the list!) and doubtless making up OUTRAGEOUS LIES about where my ideas come from.

* Why is it in two parts when both parts are quite short? Therein lies a stunning tale of my own incompetence! Always check files before you attach them to make sure you’re not sending the first half of a draft, kids.