Guest Spots:

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On Monday, I mentioned the conversation between Kristin Cashore’s Bitterblue and Malian of Night from my own Wall of Night series, which is currently featured on Kristin’s blog:

Bitterblue Talks With Malian Of Night

Something else that’s very cool on Kristin’s blog is one of her featured quotes, which is from The Tricksters, by NZ’s very own Margaret Mahy:

“Then, at last, sitting on her stretcher-bed, she took from the very bottom of her pack an old peacock-blue scarf folded around a heavy, square book. She unwrapped it and opened it very carefully, as if guilty secrets might fall from between its pages like pressed flowers. This was Harry’s secret. She was a writer.”

I hope you enjoy both the quote and the conversation. 🙂

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UK/AU/NZ Cover

I also have three more guest posts out there in the wild at the moment.

The first is with Marianne De Pierres on her Burn Bright site, in which I talk on:

Keeping Your Fantasy Novel Fresh and Interesting

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The second is on Fantastical Imaginations, in which I post on:

Writing Epic Women

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The third is a reminder about last week’s post with Rising Shadow:

Magic In The Wall Of Night World

Enjoy! 🙂

by Rebecca Fisher

Introduction:

Sugar… spice… and everything nice. These were the ingredients chosen to create three perfect little girls. But Professor Utonium accidentally added an extra ingredient to the concoction: Chemical X! Thus, The Powerpuff Girls were born! Using their ultra-superpowers, Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup have dedicated their lives to fighting crime and the forces of evil!

So goes the opening sequence of The Powerpuff Girls, the popular animated series that ran for six seasons (seventy-eight episodes in all) on the Cartoon Network, and which also managed to generate a movie, a few TV specials, and a lot of merchandising. I still have the Powerpuff Girl pencil case and stationary. Created by Craig McCracken, the show was a huge hit during its run, combining stylised animation with quirky humour, genuine warmth and a unique trio of four-year old superheroes.

From left: Buttercup, Blossom and Bubbles

The central gag inherent in the show’s concept is that of three tiny pre-schoolers taking on hardened criminals and giant monsters derived from Japanese films. It is not just their age and size that provides the contrast of sweetness and violence within the show, but that they are so thoroughly feminine, fighting crime with cute hairstyles, in Mary Jane shoes, and bearing the names Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.

Premise:

Set in the City of Townsville, the sisters are cared for by their jovial and caring father-figure Professor Utonium, and are called to various emergencies by the Mayor via a telephone hotline (which has a smiley face and a flashing nose). Each one has a distinct personality: Blossom is the most mature and responsible of the girls, as well as their unofficial leader. Bubbles is the sweet and giggly one, who can be naïve and timid at times, but also surprisingly temperamental when she feels threatened or insulted. Lastly, Buttercup is the abrasive tomboy who loves fighting and often gets into trouble thanks to her inability to toe the line between what is and isn’t socially acceptable behaviour.

But despite their superpowers of flight, strength and laser vision (among others), they are still little girls who have to deal with things such as tantrums, bed-wetting, precocious crushes, school bullying, soft toys, fear of cooties and dependence on security blankets. They attend Pokey Oaks Kindergarten and have to carefully regulate their crime-fighting activities between classes, chores and bedtime, as well as being accountable to strict rules such as no fighting in the classroom.

The girls and their father: Professor Utonium

This naturally results in a fair amount of mood whiplash what with all the sweetness-and-light running parallel to the extreme violence required to defeat various monsters and criminals, but again – that’s all part of the charm.

Because each story is less than fifteen minutes long (each episode is broken into two mini-episodes) some storytelling shortcuts are taken, which cleverly feed into the quirky humour of the show. For instance, when three criminals decide to impersonate the Powerpuff Girls they easily find costumes and masks lying about in their cell. When the city is infested by cockroaches, Blossom deals with the situation by fetching a giant jar to scoop them all up, an inexplicable scenario casually summed up by the Narrator: “so with her lightning-fast speed and her knowledge of where to find giant jars, Blossom makes quick work of cleaning up the town.”

Story:

The good-guys-defeating-evil premise seems simplistic enough, but there is a surprising depth to the show, allowing adults as well as children to enjoy various episodes.

Some of the best episodes are told from the villain’s point-of-view or revolve around peripheral characters, providing a fresh spin on the usual formula. In one episode the girls’ painfully shy classmate has an imaginary friend whose antics spiral out of control, leading the girls to defeat it by summoning their own imaginary friend. In another, we meet the girls’ neighbour who is achingly bored with his life and increasingly resentful of his neighbours. Getting a secret thrill out of watching villains on television, he plans his own escape from the banality of non-heroic life, and the story paints a surprisingly vivid portrait of the supposed glamour of criminality.

Another simply involves the girls getting bored on a rainy day and re-enacting some of their adventures with toys and dress-ups, whilst another has the trio relate their latest adventure Rashomon-style, with each lending her own perspective to the events (thus Bubble’s version is visualized as childish crayon drawings, whilst Buttercup sees things as a series of dark and gritty comic-book panels.)

Perhaps the show’s most distinctive element is the existence of an unseen narrator, whose enthusiastic commentary is peppered throughout each episode. He offers observations, makes droll comments, points out story elements, breaks the fourth wall and sends off each episode with a rousing repetition of: “and so the day is saved, thanks to: the Powerpuff Girls!” He ends up being one of the most humorous parts of the show, particularly in his futile attempts to warn characters of what is obvious only to the audience.

The show’s success lies in subverting and playing with their established formula, not just the stories they tell, but in how they tell those stories – not to mention inserting plenty of girl power into the proceedings.

Characters:

As mentioned, all three girls have distinct personalities, but are also backed up by a strong supporting cast. As well as Professor Utonium as a loving single parent, the girls have their kindergarten teacher Miss Keane, and the Mayor’s shapely assistant Sara Bellum, to offer them guidance (though not so much the dim-witted and diminutive Mayor). In a nice touch, many episodes focus on the citizens of Townsville and the friends, family and classmates of the Powerpuff Girls saving them from peril, demonstrating that anyone can be a hero and proving the truth of the old adage: “it takes a whole village to raise a child.”

As well as this, the girls have an impressive rogue’s gallery, ranging from the spoiled Princess (think Veruca Salt from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, only worse) to Fuzzy Lumpkins (a hillbilly pink bear who hates people trespassing on his property) to HIM, a truly scary devil with a pointy goatee, thigh-high boots and a creepy voice that echoes as though in a cave, ranging from a high-pitched falsetto to a deep demonic growl. Perhaps most significantly is Mojo Jojo, who is to the girls what Lex Luthor is to Superman, or the Joker is to Batman: their main nemesis.

A talking monkey with an oversized brain and the personality of a mad scientist, his repetitive and convoluted speech patterns (“I am Mojo Jojo. Mojo Jojo is my name. The name that I have is Mojo Jojo”) is partially modelled on bad anime dubbing, making him the show’s most memorable villain.

Conclusion:

The level of creativity and innovation in The Powerpuff Girls are its most enduring qualities, for each episode is filled with irreverent humour, clever wordplay and visual gags, many of which are slipped in under the radar, which in turn provides the possibility for rewatchability. It’s therefore ironic that the world’s youngest superhero team caters just as much to an adult audience as it does children, as it’s likely that not many under-ten year olds would appreciate one of the show’s most celebrated episodes: a story composed almost entirely of references to The Beatles. (Believe it or not, it manages to reference about sixty-five songs and events in its fifteen-minute timespan).

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Next Time:

The next time I post one of these reviews it’ll be October, the month of Halloween. So in celebration of that, I’ll be watching and commenting on some of my favourite spooky Stop-Motion animated films, starting with The Nightmare Before Christmas.

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Rebecca Fisher

About The Reviewer:

Rebecca Fisher is a graduate of the University of Canterbury with a Masters degree in English Literature, mainly, she claims, because she was able to get away with writing her thesis on C.S. Lewis and Philip Pullman. She is a reviewer for FantasyLiterature.com, a large website that specializes in fantasy and science-fiction novels, as well as posting reviews to Amazon.com and her own LiveJournal blog.

To read Rebecca’s detailed introduction of both herself and the series, click on Big Worlds On Small Screens.

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Previous Big Worlds On Small Screens Reviews: [click on the title to view]

• Avatar: The Last Airbender—Season One
• Maddigan’s Quest
• Warehouse 13
• Charmed
• Justice League
• Xena Warrior Princess
• Roar

Anthem for Doomed Youth

About The Poem:

I asserted last week that World War 1 marked a significant change in the treatment of war in poetry, and by poets. I also said that probably no one rang in that change more significantly than Wilfrid Owen, with his poetry that juxtaposed compassion with the grim realities of war. I feel Anthem For Doomed Youth displays both qualities, from the record of death in which there is no glory, to the blinds drawn down on a generation of young men. To requote Owen again from last week:
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“My subject is War, and the pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity.”

About The Poet:

Wilfrid Owen

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As part of being shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award, I’ve been doing a few Q&A’s and also guest blog posts (I suspect you may have noticed!)

Last week though, I promised you something “special” coming up that was also under wraps in the meantime — but yes, right now on Kristin Cashore’s blog, you can read a conversation between her character, Bitterblue, and Malian of Night.

UK/AU/NZ Cover

UK/AU/NZ

Here’s Kristin’s intro, by way of a lead in:

“Last year, I spoke with New Zealand-based fantasy author, Helen Lowe, about Bitterblue, an interview that has since been translated into both French and Chinese – probably because Helen asks good questions! Recently, Helen’s novel The Gathering Of The Lost, the second novel in her wall of night series, was shortlisted for the David Gemmell Legend Award for epic-heroic fantasy. Congratulations, Helen!

Authors can always get together and talk. But what if our characters talked to each other? Helen had the idea of writing a guest post for my blog that was a conversation between Bitterblue and her lead character, Malian of Night. The result, which you can read below, is a really nice introduction to Malian and her situation. Thank you for writing this conversation and letting me share it on my blog, Helen!”

To read the full interview, click on:

Bitterblue Talks With Malian Of Night

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With The Gathering Of The Lost currently shortlisted for the international David Gemmell Legend Award, which celebrates the epic-heroic fantasy genre, I thought it was time to talk again about why I write and love epic fantasy — especially given the body of thought “oot thar'”, that alleges that the genre is misogynistic, reactionary and glorifies violence.

Now if NZ author, Kate de Goldi, is right that every writer has a “bone” he or she tends to “gnaw away at through their writing”, then it may well be that some writers of epic fantasy are concerned with misogynistic and reactionary bones, or the glorification of violence, and their writing will reflect that accordingly.

I would point out, however, that if some writers in epic do display these characteristics, they are certainly not limited to that genre of literature alone–and it is certainly not true of all writers of epic. To pluck a few names from authors currently writing, I can readily say that, so far, I have not found Daniel Abraham misogynist, or Kate Elliott  reactionary, or that Stina Leicht glorifies violence. Far from it, in fact.

So I thought I’d like to reflect again on what else epic fantasy may comprise, and very often does.

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Firstly, for me epic will always be about the grand sweep of events—in many cases world altering—and using the play of those events to examine the conflicts they generate within societies and individuals. The stuff of life, in my opinion—and I love reading it, so it’s perhaps not surprising that I want to write about it as well.

Some other reasons I choose to read and write epic fantasy include:

— epic fantasy is also high fantasy and allows the author to write stories that operate at the mythic and legendary level of storytelling, in the same way as the epic sagas such as the Iliad and Parsifal, for example;

— All SFF allows the author to explore ‘what if’ and ‘wonder’ and to speculate on the how and why of other worlds, but because of its grand sweep and focus on world altering events, epic fantasy—more than any other in my opinion—allows the author to speculate on the behaviour of characters and societies. Several reviewers have already commented on the matter-of-fact equality of men and women in the Derai society of The Heir of Night. The opportunity to “just do” this, without either “discussion or worthy treatise” (SFX) is part of what it means to write speculative fiction.

— All SFF requires the writer to do a certain amount of world building, but while urban fantasy is almost-but-just-not-quite-our-everyday-world (Robin McKinley’s Sunshine is a great example of this) and steampunk draws heavily on what we know of late 18th-19th century history, epic fantasy requires world building on a, well, epic scale.  The world is often, but not necessarily, alternate to ours and holds out the possibility of other beings, cultures, societies, and ways of doing things: fan-tastic.

So to look at those authors I mentioned above, in his Long Price quartet, Daniel Abraham created a world in which magic is based on poetry; Kate Elliott’s early industrialised, Spiritwalker world is gripped by an Ice Age in which West African and Celtic magic, as well as the peoples who generated them have fused; while Stina Leicht’s Fey and the Fallen  juxtaposes fallen angels, the fey, and the church militant in a conflict within the northern Irish troubles.

In the end all fiction is about storytelling, and in my opinion epic fantasy contains some of the very best stories, with grandeur and sweep, “what-if” ideas, a sense of wonder, intriguing world building, and tremendous passion and heart.  Put quite simply, a significant number of epic fantasy stories rock! I love them—and that’s why I write them, too.

We’ve just passed the spring equinox here in Christchurch NZ and that means it’s also time to gear up for the Canterbury Poets’ Collective Spring poetry season — for which I have just received the programme and can tell you it’s looking like a mighty fine lineup.

Better still, you can see for yourselves:
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Canterbury Poets Collective (CPC) presents:

Poetry in Performance, 2013 Spring Season

Open mike and guest readers:  Wednesday 3 October – 27 November at 6.30 pm

 (Audience vote for the Best Open Mic Poet.)

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2 October: Peter Olds, Sue Wootton, Nick Williamson

9 October: Peter Bland, Phoebe Wright, Teoti Jardine

16 October: Sarah Jane Barnett, John Pule, John O’Connor

23 October: Michelle Amas, Ben Brown, Sarah Amazinnia

30 October: Harry Rickets, Helen Jacobs, James Norcliffe

6 November: Riemke Ensing, Jeffrey Paparoa Holman, Rodney Foster

13 November: Reihana Robinson, Poets from Hagley Writers Institute

20 November: Best of the 2013 season’s open mic readers.

27 November: Special poetry event to celebrate Sarah Broom.

The venue is the very comfortable space at the CPIT Students Association (CPSA) Hall,
5 Madras Street.

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* CPC acknowledge the support of Creative New Zealand, Arts Council of New Zealand,
Toi Aotearoa.

“You see, in my view a writer is a writer not because she writes well and easily, because she has amazing talent, because everything she does is golden. In my view a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”

~ Junot Diaz

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Like last Saturday’s quote, this observation from Junot Diaz is so on the nail (in my humble opinion) that I just had to share it.

The Wall of Night Series map; design by Peter Fitzpatrick

The A Geography of Haarth post series is traversing the full range of locales and places from The Wall of Night world of Haarth. Today we’re still in “H” and Emer, sort of…

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Hills, (the):  semi-independent hill region, lying partly in Emer, partly in Aralorn
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“On every raid,” Hirn concluded harshly, “they have left something behind—a weapon of Barrowdun in the Hillholt camp, a token of Hillholt in the ruins of a Barrowdun farmstead. Someone, my lord, wants war in our Hills.”

~ from © The Gathering Of The Lost: The Wall of Night Book Two; Chapter 17 — Oak and Hill

It was very nice to see a post on my local Christchurch City Libraries blog yesterday, featuring my shortlisting for the David Gemmell Legend Award.

The post was even kind enough to describe my writing career as ‘stellar’, which was kinda cool. 😉

I also smiled to read: “Publicly announcing you are writing a 4 novel series seems a very brave thing to do. Can you keep the story and characters credible over 4 books? Keep them interesting and maintain the standard?”

Mainly because one of the reasons I have spent so much time on Daughter of Blood, The Wall of Night Book Three is for all those reasons: to keep the story and the characters credible for readers, and to maintain the standard as the story progresses — because as I said in my Legend Award finalist’s interview:

“I like to describe The Wall of Night as one story told in four parts … It’s still really the one story, but in fact each ‘part’, i.e. book, is turning out to have its own distinct character, which is fun, although it can also be demanding to write.”

But it’s nice to know that folk out there understand that it’s not necessarily a “1-2-3, join-the-dots-and-you’re-done” type exercise. Again, I also very much appreciate the shout out.

To read the full post click on:

Helen Lowe continues her stellar career

On Monday, I promise guest posts to come, and the first of these has now posted on genre site RisingShadow. Here’s the lead-in:

“When Robin Hobb provided a cover quote for The Heir Of Night, the first novel in The Wall Of Night series, she spoke of “A richly told tale of strange magic…” That focus felt right, because for me, to be Fantasy there must be at least a glimmering of magic – but the Wall of Night series is absolutely full of magic, and some of it is indeed exceedingly strange…”

To read the full article, click on:

Magic In The Wall Of Night World

I had a lot of fun writing it, so I hope you enjoy it as well. 🙂

Oh yes, and there’s a giveaway — fully international and all that, but RisingShadow are running the show so you’ll have to check in on the post to find out ‘the gen.’