nindogs

I'm starting to think that my titling has become counter-productive and are really an unhelpful way of attracting no one to my posts. Your other option was, of course, A Day in the Life of a Chest-infection , which, you know, I've suffered over the past week. ANYWAY. Having (finally!) seen X-Men: First Class , I was going to use it for a pleasant "perfect villain model" post. The brilliant Janice Hardy, however, already beat me to it and did a better job , so I shall save that post for another film. Instead, today I tear you away from your work and your children, and myself from my writing and my studies, to talk about climaxes . I had a chat the other day with a classmate, who's planning on writing a story for her English Extension 2 Major Work in the HSC next year. She wanted my opinion, as a writer, about the necessity of a climax. (I may or may not have made a few sexual jokes first, of course) She had this idea to have the larger climax toward the beginning...

Surely, surely , by now you have seen Darren Aronofsky's Oscar-nominated Black Swan; oh, you know, the one about that dark, twisted ballerina? Right. Now we're on the same page. So as someone who probably spends far too much time analysing film and novels for the hell of it, I can tell you now that Black Swan has a lot of depth to it. I, however, will not be reviewing it or talking about any concepts you could expect; rather, I will be using it to talk to you about character perfection . I don't like the term 'Mary Sue'. Like paranormal , or star-crossed or danger , it's misuse or even its overuse in YA has led to loss in its meaning. To defame a character by crying "Mary Sue!" is not as much of a scandal as it once was, and to some extent, the misunderstanding amongst the literary world has only led to repeat-offenders and the persistence of a worn formula in not smothering itself in its vapid-ness. Yes, in my own way, I'm talking about dimension...