On Writing Half Faerie: Is it Insta-love for Melia & Ryder?

Insta-love is a popular phenomenon in young adult, new adult, contemporary—okay, insta-love can be pretty much found in any genre where characters are falling in love.

Why is insta-love so popular?

Why do some people love it while others groan and throw the book against the wall?

Chemistry is real.

Phermones, whatever you call it. Of the billions of potential partners on this planet, how many of us are attracted to all of them?

None of us.

Why not?

It just doesn't work that way.

Mysterious forces, seemingly, draw us to that one guy across the room wearing the glasses, the faded tee, and those jeans.

HIM.

Why?

If that romantic sighting goes any farther, we might get some answers. We might find we have amazing things in common, that some quirky trait of his drives us insane (in a good way), or that he's a great kisser. Or something. Or we might find out—Ugh! It was the most superficial of attractions and, please, get this guy away from me.

But if attraction blooms, and continues to grow...

When do we know it's love?

And what is love, anyway?

When I met my husband, I'd decided I was pretty much a failure at love. At least I was a failure at picking out someone to fall in love with. Cause the guys I dated before I met my husband, well, let's just say they all had their great qualities, but there was a reason they were in my past.

Uh-huh. You know what I'm talking about.

Back to my husband, my The One.

I was at a new job. It was completely overwhelming.  I don't think I noticed anyone or anything other than the stack of files on my desk for the first three months.

Then one morning I was in a departmental staff meeting and looked up.

There was this guy sitting across the room with this kind of halo of light around him.

I was like: Who is that guy?

A few weeks later, there was an office crises. Parents were calling to find emergency baby-sitters; everyone else was calling out for pizza. It was going to be a long night.

HE walked into the panic room. Sat at the table with the one dumb terminal. (Do they still have those?)
Took off his glasses. Stared at the screen. Put his glasses back on. Got up, said, "There's a comma missing in the JCL," and walked out.

OMG. Who is that guy?

No one stayed late.

I was standing by the elevators one morning with one of my colleagues. HE walked by, put one hand on her shoulder, put one hand on my shoulder, offered us both a simple, quick greeting, and was gone.

It didn't piss me off and I HATE for people I don't know to touch me.

It all climaxed at an office lunch at the Spaghetti Warehouse. We were talking about Titanic. It had been released a few weeks earlier and I'd already seen it three times.

"Why would you want to go see a movie when you already know the end?" someone asked.

"Because it's so romantic," I said. "I love it."

Ten people down, HE leaned forward, looked at ME, and said, "I love it too."

Be still my beating heart.

We went out soon after that, and well, now, we're married.

But until I'd met him, I'd never understood when someone told me, "You'll know."

Like, how will you know?

And then I did.

And living it was a revelation.

So I really wanted Melia and Ryder to have that.

Not exactly insta-love, but definitely insta-attraction.

Swoon.

I guess the only thing I can do at this point is leave you with that song…

What's Ultimately Dark... & What's Ultimately Light?

I finish reading The Wisdom of Psycopaths by Kevin Dutton. And how did I stumble upon this gem, you might ask.

Well, if you've been reading my blog at all—you've probably noticed an explicable swerve from the usual theme of faeries, magic, and enchantment to… uhm… me fangirling Dexter every other Sunday. Which, BTW, the more I delve into the shows wrap-up podcasts produced by Scott Reynolds and watch things like The Writer's Room episode featuring Dexter aka Michael C. Hall aka David Fisher, Sara Colleton, Scott Buck, Wendy West, and Manny Coto on the Sundance Channel, the more I discover my love for the show's WRITING is justified! YAY. I'd hate to be all crazy and fangirling over some pathetic show glorifying serial killers with lots of cliches and gratuitous violence like The Following… ahem. (Sorry!) Cause like Scott Buck said: "Dexter is about a serial killer, but it's not a serial killer show."

Okay, where was I? Oh, yes, I've given myself permission to go full-frontal fangirling on Dexter this final season and that means keeping up with the show's official blog, Dexter Daily. So there was a post on the blog about Kevin Dutton and THAT is how I came across The Wisdom of Pyscopaths.

And as you know, I'm super fascinated by psychology so I have to read this book. And I do.

OMG. It definitely reframes things. In this final season, Dr. Vogel—the neuropsychiatrist played by the phenomenal Charlotte Rampling—espouses edgy theories about psychopaths, a perspective which comes straight out of Dutton's book or at least from the studies cited therein. What's really irreverent is the book's final chapter… Gee, I just can't SPOIL it for you…  But I'll leave you with a hint. It seems there's a distant proximity between the psychopath and the saint.

And of course that gets me to thinking about Umbra… because these kinds of questions about what's ultimately dark and what's ultimately light fuel the cosmology in Daughter of Light.

Fangirling Pick of the Week: Download Dexter Wrap-Up Podcast 7.02 (#24) with Jennifer Carpenter from iTunes.

Fangirling Dexter: The Psychology of Dexter

Since I've decided to fangirl Dexter on my blog, I feel kind of weird. The shows about a serial killer, you know. So I'm reading The Psychology of Dexter by Bella DePaulo Phd. I'm not sure it's helping. It's a collection of essays that were written post-Season 4. (No Dr. Evelyn Vogel insights.) Many of them focus on Dexter as a killer. UGH! That's not why I watch the show.

Finally, I get to an essay that zooms in on the issue's of Dexter's identity. His sense of self. His self-identity. It discusses how self-identity develops and it examines the development of Dexter's. Yeah. That's why I watch the show.

Two things in life fascinate me: Spirituality and Psychology. I guess that's why you find a post about Dexter following a post about The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe on my blog. I guess.

I'm super curious. I always have been. I'm fascinated by what makes people tick, including myself. Tick-tock.

I suspect that our spiritual beliefs and psychological realities are the two legs are psyches stand on. Even if we don't have spiritual beliefs, that is a spiritual belief.

Back to Dexter. The show is intensely psychological, offering a unique window into one man's psyche.

It works like this:

1. We see Dexter at work, the blood spatter expert.
2. We see Dexter interact in his personal relationships with his sister, his colleagues, and his victims. And of course with Harry's "ghost."
3. As the series evolves we became privy to the events in Dexter's life that make him who he is.
4. And yes, we see Dexter kill. Only killers of innocent people according to Harry's Code, unless things go awry.
5. Then we get that fabulous voice-over. Of it all.

The show wouldn't work without the voice-over. I've read a few of the books in the series, and no offense to Jeff Lindsay, but the TV show took an interesting idea and blew it out of the water. All the main characters in the show are in the books, but Dexter is a decidedly more disturbing character in the books. Just sayin. I stopped reading the books.

So it's the voice-over that makes the show, not the killing. My opinion. We see Dexter's mask, and how he creates it. We see what his mask hides, how disturbing that is, and perhaps, if we are inclined to believe, the plausible roots of his psychopathy. The voice-over, along with Michael C. Hall's impeccable acting and delivery, are what engages us. Okay, what engages me.

Dexter is constantly concerned with his identity. He's often confused by social expectations. Most don't seem to make a lot of sense to him, and they seem like a lot of bother. But Harry, his foster-dad, taught him that he needed to appear normal because he isn't normal. Harry and Dexter's relationship is very dark, but it's all delivered with such intense genuineness, you can't help but be charmed. Okay, I couldn't helped but be charmed.

To say the personality of the character Dexter is a multiplicity of constructions is an understatement. The fascination is in how he processes, adapts, accepts, and reorients himself. The gems are his incisive insights on the  ever-present absurdities of the social condition.

Deb, Dexter's younger foster-sister, is his most enduring counterpoint. She doesn't see behind his mask… [no spoilers here!] So there is this kind of crazy normalcy contrasted with this off-the-charts insanity, and we get  Dexter's inner thoughts on it all. Quirky. Irresistible. Dark Humor.

And then Dexter evolves. Each season he has a particular social conundrum, a new role to take on. How he experiments, fails, succeeds, and resolves the season's particular perplexity is woven deep into the fabric of the show's plot, which always includes a Dexter nemesis and a big crime that the department is working on.

The brilliance is in how these threads come together—sans cliches, season after season. We, the viewer, are constantly surprised, amazed and gratified with how it's pulled off. And that voice-over. Dexter aka Michael C. Hall charms us in spite of ourselves. Ick. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? No answer.

Okay, that's a pretty long-winded justification of my guilty pleasure.

Fangirling Pick of the Week: Episode 8.04 Scar Tissue Wrap-Up Podcast The first 30 minutes of the podcast writer Tim Schlattman provides incredible insight into the writing process that created the series. [SPOILER ALERT]