Wait, wait, wait; we need to go back a bit, to before publishing. Before the beginning there was oral history, and that’s how the Bible existed for a good (was it decades or centuries? Gosh, I can’t remember) time. Then, there were scribes, then there was canonization, then there was the collection of letters, psalms, and gospels, etc, we know as the Bible. And once it had a set form, it could be reproduced.

The common people couldn’t read, so the Bible had pretty pictures. The churches could read, the churches were rich, so only the churches–and the rich–owned Bible and could read them. In this time, publishing was elite.

Scribes wrote by hand. Only things worthy or being copied, were copied. Only people worthy of reading them, could read. Words were effort, words were beautiful, words were valuable.

Then, there was the printing press.

For that, you must thank Johannes Gutenberg, the Renaissance man who brought us the Printing Revolution in the Modern, Industrial age (insert more historical period terms here) even made his own, special, well-designed Bible. And then, God was in the hands of the people!

Words became cheaper, yes, but that allowed us peasants to afford them. We could all have Bibles, we could have many books. But publishing was elite. Typesetting was still a great effort. Writing was still a rich man’s leisure.

(Disclaimer: despite all my enthusiasm for the Bible’s contribution to the modern world, I’m not Christian. I’m Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, or Zoroastrian, take your pick )

Then, there was the vanity press.

In the Victorian Era, for example, a certain fellow by the name of Charles Dodgson wrote a story for a daughter of a friend and had it vanity printed. I mean, who would want to hear silly kid’s stories like that? It was full of personal references and in-jokes, and even parodies verses found in other (perhaps also vanity-published) works of the day.

But Lewis Carroll was still upper class enough to demonstrate that writing was a rich man’s hobby. Only rich men could pay for vanity presses anyway. What normal, sane man would spend his time reading books and trying to write them? That’s the work for folks in ivory towers. People like us are supposed to learn trades.

Then, there were typewriters.

And then we got people like Fitzgerald and Hemingway, men who hunkered over typewriters that they could carry on their movable feasts. They weren’t elite in many ways, but they were obviously insane. Words were how cheap? You’d have to look at the old serials to see, but off the top of my head, I think they got paid a nickel a word.

I’d like to think that this was the golden age of  journalism, penny dreadfuls, comics, and all that nonsense. I tend to think that this is when all the big houses came to be. This era was my image of writer from birth until I tried to become one, this romantic image of traveling the world, being unique and valued, being a little poor at times but never too poor, of having something deep to say. This image of drinking and being tragic, of sending out full manuscripts to houses, who actually looked at them…eventually.

Then, there were word processors.

Words became cheaper. College students were expected to write theses. There were more books.  Is this, maybe, when proposals and queries came to be? Perhaps the difference between commercial and literary fiction was also born here?

It’s not something I remember learning in literature classes: “We’re only prescribing you literature that’s old and worthy. Most of the books made today are so beneath us that we won’t even call it literature, just books. You aren’t supposed to like those, but everyone does.”

Even now I don’t understand all that this distinction entails. Does this mean I’m not expected to get involved in anything want? Have I mentioned that my only published credits are in literary mags, my main projects is commercial YA, and my interests/influences are animation, science, and philisophy? God, I’m in trouble now. I can’t find my pigeonhole. I’m in so much trouble….

Then, there were computers.

Wait, something went wrong here… I don’t mind things like the YA boom or the ubiquity of movie spin-offs, but something…

I mean, Jorge Luis Borges was a translator who gathered his references from reading work in other languages. A lot of writers I admire did that. They still do that, right? Translating? Yeah, we have the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Then why do I keep hearing that we don’t bring foreign books over here, that the US is too insular? I’m not sure if it’s always been like this, but something’s wrong.

I mean, was it always the case that you could be a author just by writing about women you (might have) killed or daughters you (might have) neglected? I know that ghostwriters are involved, but I don’t know… I used to believe in some things called ‘biographers’ and ‘journalists,’ people who’s jobs were to cover these things in ways that criminals, I mean, suspects couldn’t without a background in writing.

And I thought that said journalists or biographers would be valued for their work… no? Only their subjects are valued? That’s why their names aren’t on the books; that’s why they’re ghostwriters? Okay. Thanks for putting my hopes down.

Lastly, I thought that Nobel laureates went to books people read, things people talked about enough for me to know them, off the top of my head. And yet, I can’t find them unless I really try. Am I doing something wrong?

(Hmmm… In that case, I might have a better chance at being published if I were to kill someone than if I were to send out a query letter. Hmmm… I mean, I am too minority to get much airplay out of killing someone, unless I target a blonde girl. Everyone loves little blonde girls. And five is a very tragic age at wish to die. I might not even need to kill her, a very pleasant kidnapping could be just newsworthy enough, so hmmmm… Stockholm syndrome might be interesting to attempt, so hmmm…

I’ll have to keep this all in mind. But if I’m still lamenting about being unpublished at age 40, and a kindergartens goes missing in So-Cal… I’m only guilty if you’ll give me a book deal.)

So now where are we now?

The Bible has reached its ultimate form in The Message. If you buy the audio CD, Grandmaster Flash narrates it. No, I kid.

Today, words are free. The Internet is here, it’s free.  Anyone can write a book, and the people like it this way, the people like freedom. The publishers like it this way, as long as they make money. The small presses don’t care about money but that old prestigious kind of writing that school taught me to admire. By the way, I hope they aren’t still teaching kids that sort of stuff. Hopefully, they read current masterpieces and understand the market. …They don’t? Oh okay, thanks for correcting me.

Next, there will be the ebook.

Not only the ebook, the ereader, epublishing, the death of Borders (R.I.P ), and the age of publish-then-filter as opposed to the filter-then-publish.

Physical books will return to being a rich man’s past-time. We peasants have something cheaper, easier. Vanity publishing will lose its name again. And literary fiction, perhaps, was just the strand of rich-man’s literature that has always existed and will always exist. Maybe, because I’m poor, I’m not supposed to read that stuff. I’m not supposed to care. It’s not for me. And I’m not supposed to care about books going out of business; that’s for people who have leisure time and ivory castles. I was supposed to learn a trade.

The big publishing house, should care about their own downfall, but more likely, they will not fall but adapt. I worry about people who are dedicated to translating Albanian novels with the understand that they won’t sell, but I see no need to worry about great corporations that get money from Steve Jobs’ death, Bristol Palin’s pregnancy, and Tina Fey’s career in comedy.

I still cling to my romantic delusions of writers, but I’m going to pull a Pollyanna and say that things are getting better. It’s like democracy in action, the current writing world. Sure, all democracies in this world are a bit corrupt, but they’re never as bad as monarchies… right?

If anyone can write, then even a nobody like me has a chance. And that’s immensely preferable to the times in which a poor, non-royal, non-celebrity like me couldn’t afford the presses of the day.

It’s like, hey, at least I can read.

(This History comes courtesy of someone who’s done little research. Take it with a dash of salt and feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

I’m the opposite of that. I’m more a once-bitten, forever-shy person. You punish me too much, and I learn helplessness. I’m a depressive realist. It’s something like the opposite of religious, guided by the opposite of faith.

So anyway, the reason I’m making these connections is because I entered a Redesign Hatsune Miku contest a while ago, but I lost. Of course I lost; I’m Charlie Brown.

Here’s what I entered:

I drew this Miku redesign and it won nothing so dunno what to do with it now

I drew this cyberpunk miku based on my older sis's designs

By the way, all the things in my gallery are from roughly three years ago. I used to paint in college, realistic landscapes with cartoon girls in them, but I only managed to sell two and then my ego got a little…

But yeah, when/if I draw more, I’ll put more in there. I still won’t ever consider it more than doodling, however. I think I earned the right to call myself an artist, but I don’t feel like I should.

Anywho, I’m sure why no one’s wondering why I vanished for a week plus but it’s because I had a birthday, my mom had a birthday, I love bubble tea, Fontana has a magical library, the junkyard gives me a headache, being female makes me sick, and other boring things like that.

“I honestly didn’t exist as a kid, I didn’t. You can look for me in yearbooks, ask supposed classmates, but you’ll never find me. I won’t have been there.”

“So if we look you up right now…” A laptop was pulled on stage, a planned event. “you think we still won’t find anything? Sounds like a challenge to try.”

“There won’t find anything before the release of my first album. That’s my birthday.”

The audience laughed on cue.

She played something without category that people rounded to freak folk or indietronic. Her first album was a cocktail of noise and industrial with French sixties pop, its cleaned-up lyrics from when she used to cut herself. Her second was twee IDM, an ambient and acoustic blend topped with sedate lyrics stabilized by success. Her latest album was spiked with house and funk, a bit of blue-eyed soul that emulated ballads and torch songs at times.

Isolt had never written a love song. Some time after she was labeled a pervert for given a porno groove beta to the song pondering whether her cat served as a replacement for human relationships, she decided to try.

She returned home to her father’s house and crouched by the screen door with a microphone to capture its slam. She sat, folded legs squished in the V of tree branches to capture morning birdsong. She lay on the ground to feel the rumble of plane lifting off, and recorded its tremor. The little dogs yapping in the picket yard of the neighbors, she captured. The tinny minimalism of her twelfth-birthday music box, she captured. The ‘Love Me Tender” of her neighborhood ice cream truck, her old violin teacher’s improvised fiddling, the merry-go-round at the country fair; she also captured.

Isolt crashed in the garbage, with a sleeping bag on cold concrete. She spent her waking hours pawing through the records of her parents’ lives. There had to be soul and chanson, and whatever other ground she already covered, but also an angled modern opus by the local orchestra, also the Amen break, also a cheesy 808, Coltrane’s Blue Train, also Jesus Bleibet Meine Freude by the choir of her alma mater, also the alt rock of cross-country rides in her older sister’s car, also drill and bass, also jump rope rhymes, also the New Wave that her mother never outgrew, also also also also…

It took her five years to complete her love song.

Love Song was an album, seventy-eight minutes long. Its themes and instruments rose and fell like characters in a story whose plot arcs completed. It began small and acoustic, with only her playing everyone, but mushroomed into a hundred-character cast yarn. The strings section weaved itself around breakbeats, cymbal clangs digitized as they reverberated, chiptunes bounced off lyrics in French whispers. It was an omnium-gatherum that everybody panned.

Critics titled it, “Isolt’s Holy Mess.”

“Her new album is an ambitious project,” they occasional conceded.

“That failed to come together as a whole,” they usually concluded.

They disagreed on what parts were salvageable. Some thought the orchestral work was something she’d been leading up to, and they urged her to explore it with restraint. Some held up the vocals as worthy of being transplanted to other, real songs. Those who loves experimental and noise told her she was too light for them, too pop so try harder.

Isolt’s favorite critic found merit in half the song, excess in the rest. He gave it its highest published rating of three out of five stars. She sent him a Bugatti as thanks. Other than that, she was mum. When asked to comment on Love Song, her responses were,

“No reason in particular.”

“Uh, no.”

“If you think so.”

“Uh, yes.”

She couldn’t bullshit about her magnum opus. Did she think it a magnum opus?

“Uh, no.”

She started work on a chamber-pop album to regain her alienated fans.

Years passed.

Isolt reached the point that she could no longer get by on sex appeal, and regretted not showing more skin when she could. She was still unpacking Love Song into more easily-digestible albums, and could continue to unpack it for another decade.

In the meanwhile, she dated men so young she called them boys, men who were all concept and no action, men who would lie on her stomach and hum songs to her heartbeat.

She would ask these men what they thought of Love Song, and they confessed that at least half of it was rubbish: too mainstream, or not mainstream enough, or lacking variety or lacking repetition. And then she’d swim on, to the next beau.

Isolt became old enough to have offspring; they came in the form of influencees. Girls wore their hair normally like she innovated for shows. Bands took her sounds from a single album and expanded it into styles. Everyone borrowed and forgot to thank. She didn’t mind.

She watched one of her kids on the television, a girl with too-long striped sleeves, a FRUiTS-bright one piece, and a heart-lipped mouth incapable of bullshit. She was describing her favorite album, Love Song, defending it against laughter and confusion. She explained the patterns behind the time signatures changes, the meaning of the backmasked secret lyrics, how it was ultimately more intuitively than intellectually that she began to “like the song, every minute. Not just understand it, but to sense its logic and agree completely.”

Those clear eyes turned to the camera and seemed to cross miles to meet hers.

Isolt was cowed, red, hot, breathless, heart quickened. She could faint.

So this was how it felt.

The cards have been transferring (faxing?) this whole time, so I just now reach into the box and take out the fifty card deck.

The main pictures on the cards are of the masked Cabinet members. I always thought the masks looked roughly the same, but now that I can see them clearly, I realize that some are  ball masques, some are  noh masks, some are  Carnaval masks. Some are broken, some have plumes, many have  color accents. One is like a luchador, one is like a smiley face, one is like a fox, one is like a child. The wearers of the masks have nicknames like Fairy Godmother, Artist-Scientist, Princess Dragon, Hermit Miser, Youngest Daughter, Frog Prince, and Herald. The nicknames stem from not only the mask designs, but also the details like height and voice that are listed like bios and the agendas listed here. Storyteller, for example, has a half-mask and tends to go on when allowed to speak. Invisible Man wears glasses over the plainest mask, and is usually silent in government meetings.

The cards’ colors are as Lucien taught me: the three socialists (Donor, Kind Ogre, Threshold Guardian) and two communists (Ironman, Ironwoman) are dark red and darker red. The social liberals, social democrats, and progressive are affably bright shades of red, with occasional yellow or orange or green details. Centrists are numerous and purple. Conservatives are a trustworthy blue. The three libertarians (Eternal Boy, Black Witch, Invisible Man) and two anarchists (Temptress, Original Human) are dark blue and darker blue. The four radicals (Evil Twin, Outcast, Trickster, Little Dragon) are black.

Of course, the cards also list the politician’s focuses in the forms of star-like polygons that stretch across a circle like a spider web. The more important the focus is, the longer the arm of the star will be. The focuses (they look like stats on a RPG character) are things like nationality, healthcare, education; and the things that influence the stats are the minister’s past support, number of papers supported, and so on. The card I’m looking at now, Jack Hans Ivan Taro, is an all-around okay character, so his star makes a polygon of roughly equal sides, right in the middle of the web. He’s a centrist, so I guess it only makes sense. But the next card I pick up, the red Artist-Scientist, has max stats on education, healthcare, culture, technology, and research funding. She has concavities in areas that have little to do with the arts or sciences.

Earth Mother cares most about family, Old Master cares most about preserving heritage, Invisible Man cares most about free trade, Flower Child cares most about the environment, Donor cares most about foreign aid, and so on.

Lucien sees me looking over the cards and explains. “The thing about politics is that everyone has an agenda. Things like political preferences spring from upbringing and personality. Rather than hoping that people can manage objectivity despite that, our approach is to draw out those biases, make them evident. And then, we try to assemble such a wide-ranging cast that all bias is canceled out. The balance is as delicate as a magic formula.”

“Hmm…” I just continue looking.

I think that if you do what Lucien says, though, you have to acknowledge that people are a little selfish. I guess the people with kids to raise would value family more, people who immigrated would be more accepting of immigrants, and people would obviously support the departments that support their jobs. The only people here who seem to have no agenda are dark cards like the Outcast and the Trickster. Their stat plots are sometimes confused scribbles with the explanation that they will argue whatever isn’t being said, say things just to make people angry. The Trickster’s mask even has a long nose like Pinocchio after a lie. Who elected these guys ?

It should be the name of someone you don’t personally know, but still feel you know, someone you’ve heard mentioned multiple times in the last week. You should know their face, as well as a bit of personal information about this person (did they have surgery? what are their relatives called? who are they dating now?). It should be a name I’ve also heard.

Names you might have chosen: Lady Gaga, Kim Kardashian, Ashton Kutcher, Charlie Sheen… etc.

Quick! Give me another name!

It should be the name of someone you don’t personally know, and don’t feel you know, someone you’ve only rarely. It should be a name on the tip of your brain.

Maybe it was on the bottom of that nonfiction book you liked. Or maybe they gave a quote in some news article, arguing a point or explaining some new theory or receiving some award, ruling some nation. Maybe their names appeared here and there in textbooks, but now that you’re old and graduated, you can’t recall it anymore.

Names you might have chosen: Carl Zimmer, Slavoj Zizek, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Temple Grandin–more figures than I can name. It needn’t be a name I also know, but it can be a name I should know.

Now, imagine that instead of learning more about the first kind of figure, you learned more about the second. Imagine that the newspapers reported what Zizek said instead of what Sheen said. Imagined that the paparazzi sought  Nobel prize-winning presidents or prime ministers for magazine covers, instead of music award-winning exhibitionists. Imagine your friends around the water discussing epigenetics instead of possible nose jobs, animal welfare instead of possible sex addictions.

What sort of world would that be?

Perched on branches, claws for hands

She can’t hunt can’t eat is scared

For she’s domesticated.

All the honest platitudes

Won’t teach her the right attitude

To raise dead songs like Frankenstein

Or preach back to the choir.

She nods or bows, her eyes are wide

Suits&ties are telling lies

To coat what she wants to have made

Her voice shrinks to a whisper

“Hey, the sky is blue.”

They already knew

There’s no need for you…

So she’s silent.

Notions sometimes pound

To tear the duct tape down

With neither smile nor frown

She is silent.

Cat ears gorge and feast instead

To take new thoughts into her head

The top of someone else’s lungs

Makes it hard to breathe it out

Her newest is drowned

Bobs and flails and then resounds

From a better mouth with common sense

An orator, his audience

“Ah, the sea is blue.”

But that is nothing new

There’s no need for you…

So she’s silent

Her creator knew the art

Of redacting useless parts

So she has no mouth or heart

And is silent.

Here, kitty, kitty

Hey, kitty, kitty, shush

Here, kitty, kitty

Hey, kitty, kitty, shush

Kitty, kitty, shush now.

Kitty, kitty, shhh…

It took Merle a while to return to the reality of the library about her. She gasped as she emerged, and promptly dived into the next world. And then the next, and then the next, and then the next… It was a series of visions: paradise gardens growing on islands in the sky, pagodas houses on the midday moon, miraculous space oceans with kingfisher girls diving in their breadth, sunshowers following the marriage procession of the fox bride and groom… She had almost forgotten about her assignment. She was to research the author.

Still, Merle held his autobiography to her chest and pivoted with it like someone in love. It’s a nice feeling to have discovered such a rare and wonderful author. It’s like having my own secret Anderson, Perrault, Carroll, or Hoffman. I wonder what this French gentleman would think to know that a strange girl like me loved him so much, as though his star-shaped fancies were a perfect fit for the star-shaped entrance to my mind.

Thinking herself poetic and smiling like a Cheshire cat, Merle took a seat and began to read. The book went intoEugènePons’s bibliography. Only the three Merle read had been published. He left many unfinished works, but they were unpainted sketches and French cursive about which she could only conjecture. He lived a surprisingly troubled life characterized by unsteady income and a rocky marriage. His mother was one of two suspected schizophrenics in the family. Eugène himself was very nearly a recluse as a child. Merle nodded, admiring him all the more for his ‘triumph over adversity,’ as it was in her mind.

A bystander could guess the contents of the book by watching Merle read. A smile would break out of her face upon a joke, her eyes would widen at an unexpected revelation, and her brow would crease with thought as she reread a difficult passage. Gradually her expression grew more and more serious, until she finally dropped the book with a thump that caught eyes.

She tried to resume reading the book as normal, but her eyes kept back glancing back to the last paragraph she’d read:

In 1953,Ponscommitted suicide by overdosing on barbiturates.

It shouldn’t have shocked her so much. She knew he was certainly dead by now. No matter how much she cheered for him, she couldn’t rewrite the book and magically make it all better. Her ‘very own secret writer’ had died a tragic and obscure death.

Why? I would’ve wanted you to keep writing. And I know a lot of other people appreciate you too, so why? Merle rubbed her eyes, cleared her throat, and focused on her assignment. With this, she would make even a few more people aware of him. If there was any sort of heaven for authors, she would give Eugène Pons something to look down and smile about.

Merle took her paper back from the hands of the teacher and nearly choked as she sighted the red C + on it. She folded her arms hid her face in them. It was fine if they thought she was sleeping. I let you down, Mr. Pons, I’m sorry. I guess I’m just too stupid. She hunched over her school desk, the paper beneath her folded arms.

“Take me back! Please send me back there!” she cried in hushed whispers, but nobody heard her speak.

…when I finish a project has returned.

In case I didn’t explain what I am working on, I will now: one series based on my fifteen-year-old desire to write The Greatest Fantasy I Can Think Of. Because it is The Greatest Ever, it is jam-packed and long. Oz-series long. I am working on cutting & streamlining, but I know it will be troublesome.  It’s like an unborn baby I’ve been carrying for years. I can feel its weight on me at all times, but I know I’ll miss it terribly if it’s gone.

What I’ve finished: editing book 2 as of three-four years ago, hence the emptiness.

Book 1 has synopsis and query ready to go. I even have a list of agents. I only queried two, getting no answer and a form rejection. I’m scared of agents right now. I’m a coward and a recluse without any friends, and I’m hated by all humans… or so it seems, most of the time.

I’ve been waiting for my courage to return since December, and then I’ll resume sending out queries. If I can’t get published by the end of the year, my plan was either to return to school to learn a more useful thing, or to join the Peace Corps to toughen up.

Right now, I am making silly rules for myself: only query females because the one who rejected was male and probably wouldn’t like you much anyway. Sometimes I am more afraid of women, sometimes more afraid of men, so I might reverse the rule eventually.

Silly rule two: try to act just as haughty to agents as they are to me (but only in my mind, not in actual queries!) I know that agents are the dom here, I’m the sub (I’m sorry. Watching too much anime has made me prone to S&M jokes) but I can at least have fun and pretend that crossing off the bad matches gives me some kind of power. If Ms. Snark can have fun making fun of writers, I ought to be able to make fun of agents in turn, especially if they are the snarky kind I’d never query anyway. But God, an arranged marriage would be easier than querying. Even brain surgery would be more fun, if they’d let me stay awake.

(Random thought: why is there no OKCupid or Match.com for agents? It could analyze your work and compare to other books and tell you to read them and direct you to their agents and the agent’s blogs and instead of tests, there’d be writing exercises…

Other random thought: why didn’t anyone tell me writing worked this way? （︶︿︶） If I knew that when I was ten, I wouldn’t be useless this now.  I would have majored in Bio and I’d be saving people’s lives and being useful, not insane and sick in the head.)

In any case, here is my joke query for ‘Book 1′ that explains my interests and influences. I occasionally post excerpts of it,  but I don’t plan to put up the whole thing in order:

Lucky! Shinji Ikari Balthazar Bux gets to spend his summer vacation on the secret island of Macondo, courtesy of his aunt Raharu “White Rabbit” Katsuragi. The solitary island is usually friendly but wants to urge Bux back home ASAP. They fear that he is the second coming of the boy Antichrist Atomsk-no-Seimei.  They fear that he’ll bring Macondo’s downfall if he learns of their Stargate to Slumberland and its childlike empress Paprika Rei.  They’ll use anything from the silent treatment to nightmare inception to their national Power Rangers force to stop him.  But Bux will take it all on, because he plans to stay forever.

There are references to least seven of my favorite works in there but I’ll only explain one right now: the Antichrist is from the Bible.

Honestly, I haven't read all of this book, but I love reading it. Especially the Message translation! And I'm not even Christian. ^^

 

She had no problem at all remembering the plot, the artwork, or the impression it left on her. The book was golden twilight and dandelion winds, the scent of cinnamon and the sound of Aeolian harps. The impression was as strong as ever, but she couldn’t write a book report with that little, let alone the short biography that was due Monday.

Merle took a seat and thought back to when she back first seen the haunting little fairy story. She was five, rummaging through the treasures of her family’s self-storage warehouse. Sitting in a chest of toys among a copy of Little Black Sambo, unopened packets of Sea Monkeys, a toy viewfinder, and several windup tin toys, was The Lost Child. It almost seemed to fly into her hand for want of an owner.

The text had been translated from French into looping handwritten cursive indecipherable to her until fourth grade. The pictures were hand painted in misty watercolour lamé and seemed to float in the middle of the page like an ukiyo-e print.

The story was simple yet strange: a boy wakes up in a field with no memories and only a butterfly to accompany him. He soon finds that the butterfly contains his memories, and can impart them to him upon touch. The lost child pursues it across forests and fields and strange abandoned cities, aiming to catch it in a cage. He meets nymphs, sprites, wind-up dolls, and other creatures as he journeys, too caught up in finding himself to enjoy their company.

In the memories received from the butterfly, he begins to see images of the family he left behind and of a female genie warning our protagonist not to seek his memories further. But he persists all the same…

Upon thinking of the story’s genie, it dawned on Merle to ask the librarian. The librarian, in turn, directed her to the indexes of published books organized by year and country. Merle sheepishly admitted that she couldn’t navigate the books alone and asked for the librarian’s help.

In a catalogue of eighteenth century French children’s books, on a single page in a 5000-page book, there was a two line entry:

The Lost Child, 1943 ISBN 0337562114

Pons, Eugène C.A.

It was so meagre a mention, yet a biggest lead she could wish for. Merle danced, safely hidden between bookshelves. Eugène Charlot Amaury Pons, she discovered, was a figure existing as little more than a name in indexes. He’d written two other books: The Death of a Fairy and Other Stories in 1939 and The Winged Teapot in 1943. Merle immediately hungered to read them, hungered. Upon seeing that both could be found at another library a couple cities away, she declared that library superior and decided to head there. Tomorrow, however; it was evening and both libraries were closing.

The lost child’s eyes fluttered open. He looked up into the pale face of the genie whose bosom he had awoken in. She spoke with a snowflake voice, “You came back. I told you not to come back.”

“What happened?” The lost child looked around himself. They were on the shore, waves ebbing and flowing with a regular tempo. He knew that shouldn’t have run away, that he was late returning home, and had to head back soon, but…

“What happened to them all? Marrah the tree nymph, Love the lunar goddess, Lucien and Rowan and everyone else. Were they all a dream?”

She stroked his hair and nodded. “I gave you escape, eternal rest, but you chose to return. So be it. I cannot grant you any more wishes.”

His eyes widened, his palms took hold of her dress, “No, please. Take me back! Please send me back there!” She looked to the seaside impassively as tears dropped into her lap.

“Please! Send me back!”

“Please send him back. Yu Mei, you mean, mean meanie.” Merle tossed her pillow down and realized that she was awake. There were tears in her eyes. Whether from sleepiness or sadness, she wasn’t sure. The Death of a Fairy… The Winged Teapot… even just the names intrigued her. She had a golden twilight premonition as she set off, and an hour of driving would do nothing to dampen it.

The girl being carried is called Clarisse. Don't she just look like a damsel? I've also heard that she inspired moé...

I’m probably only inadvertently feminist. I’d rather call myself anti-feminist because my attitudes go against the grain in so many ways. But I don’t hate women, of course not. I’ll have to explain that later. Here, I’m just going to talk about situations where a woman’s female injustice sense goes off and turns out to be wrong.

It brings  this episode to mind.

I agree with the top comment; its point was a little hard to grasp when I  first saw it, but when I watch it now. Wow… They had some gall to even tackle that.

I kind of hate strong female characters. I like well-rounded characters, male or female. In short, I think they make real women look weaker and praise male traits in female bodies. The good thing is, I think all decent women understand this, so I’m not alone.

I will give some example of acceptably weak female characters:

1) everything Ghibli. Apparently, the damsel in distress he wrote for Castle of Cagliostro left such a bad taste in Hayao Miyazaki’s mouth that he became a feminist.

But the only one of his characters I’d call strong is Princess Mononoke, and her violence is seen as misguided. Moreover, she has a counterpoint in the movie, a woman more like the strong sort, but with her own flaws. Sheeta  and Pazu seem equal in strength, complimentary. Kiki doesn’t fight but she fights internal & external battles and is  able to save Tombo. Similarly, Chihiro recovers her parents without a fight scene, but through hard work and a small quest or two. Sophie is, like in the source novel, more clever that strong, although she does have (strong!) power that eventually saves those in trouble. I could go on, but I think the point is made.

acceptably weak example 2) Princess Arete.

It’s very slow movie, Ghibli-esque but more atmospheric. Arete is captured like a damsel in distress, she spends long quiet moments doubting herself or being passive. But she’s clever. Terriibly clever, she escaped imprisonment, defeated her captor (without raising a fist!), and saves a village. And she does it all with a sort of feminine grace.

That’s not to say she’s supposed to perfect. She’s plain to the point people don’t recognize her as a princess, she’s bookish and curious to the point she invites trouble, and last of all, she is very, very quiet.

I can imagine a fan of Strong Female Characters watching this movie and being bored. They might even think it sexist ! But that would be exactly the sort of false alarm I mean.