Dollhouse--Expectations

[erastes]

Well, at the moment, I would rate this series as close to brilliant.

I read a little while ago on an agent’s blog (and buggered if I can remember which) about how it had taken 8 hours to capture peoples’ interest and how they compared that to pitching a book to an agent’publisher because you sure don’t get that leeway when doing that.

I’m going to ramble here probably.

First of all – I’m not from the MTV generation. I will give anything a “go” and I won’t be put off by a slow start, whether its a book or a tv series. I was baffled and foxed by Dollhouse, and I didn’t know what to expect, but it wasn’t crap. It was well written compared with some series I could mention!!  It was hugely creepy (as I’ve said before) and I know that some of my friends took that as being "woman exploitation=creepy” – but I couldn’t believe that of Josh Weedon. If he wanted to do femsploitation he would have had his wimmin in Firefly dressed in short skirts, tin foil and certainly not shooting from the hip.  He was up to something else.  Last week he proved that to me, as the series blew wide open and this week (which seems to be the week everyone else is talking about) was better still. Pathos city and a world of opportunity to kick arse.

But—comparing it to a book, I know that agents and publishers bang on about “WE MUST BE HOOKED IN THE FIRST PAGE” or whatever, and ok – that’s their gig, but I think to think that the rest of us work like that is to underestimate what goes on. Sheesh – if that was really the case, how many of us would have read past page one of any of Hardy’s novels, eh?  Hooked, no. I don’t have to be hooked. I just need a reason to carry on, and for me, the premise of Dollhouse, the wrongness of what is going on (even though it seems a lot of people took it as face value) was enough to hook me for seven hours before things REALLY started kicking off. (this is me recommending it btw, in case you didn’t notice. If you cast it aside in week one…. wrong!!!!)

What I also liked hugely was November being “normal” sized – a 12 or a 14 UK stylee, (although dressing her as a frump pissed me off) – I hope that was Josh reacting against the fans who complained when Tara DARED to put on a little weight. The fact that Victor has sticky out ears is just gorgeous. I wanna hug him.

On a related note – It seems to me that it’s about “expectation.” We are all too damned lazy to explore for ourselves, or to give something a change.   Vashtan spoke to me earlier about Standish and how he understood how some readers were a little upset about how the book developed.  Standish did start as an homage to the “classic” regency romance. Byronic brooding hero, blond fainting sickly overpowered other hero – but Vashtan says that to make them jump into bed after 3months timeline in the book was shocking the reader—I’d set a “contract” up and said “hey reader, this is ‘this’ type of book” – and then I’d gone and trampled all over that, had the men leap into bed with each other and completely broken the traces of what romance should be about.

Well, GOOD.

I don’t want anyone to start any of my books with expectations of how its going to be, or how its going to end.  I’m not writing for the reader (and that sounds horrid I know) – I’m writing for me and hoping to hell that the reader likes it. There is no contact.   If you want formula, if you want predictable, perhaps I’ll provide that, perhaps I won’t. At the moment, due to publishing constraints, most of my work has “romance” on it (and I’ve discussed how that label pisses me off ad infinitum) but one day, I hope I’ll be free of that, and you can take your chances.

Look at films. Over in the Uk at least, we don’t have expectations of how a film will end.  We might pigeonhole it into “romantic comedy” but that doesn’t insist it ends happily. And any genre of film, be it Sci-fi, Historical, Action, Horror, Mystery blah blah may ALSO include a romance (however it ends). Chris Smith said to me after reading one of the chapters of Mere Mortals “Are you going for Romance or Horror or Mystery?” and I said - “why not all of the above and perhaps more?”

I told you rambly, didn’t I?  Yes yes, I know you are all going to say “but book HAVE to have genres” – but I’m still going to say “why the hell do they?” because TV/film/play doesn’t. It constantly surprises me. Dollshouse surprises me and that’s why I love it. It’s mystery and spy and romance and hope and action and Xfiles and god knows what. To leave me wondering at the end of each episode can only be a good thing.  Because I come to it with no expectations.

Comments

[essayel.livejournal.com]

I'm going to worry about what genre I've written when I finally finish something - like the one about the 1970s cryptographer and his gardener communicating with flower arrangements, or the Scythian warlord and the Theban sculptor, or the 15th century actor acting as a 'messenger' for a Florence banking house. None of them fit in anywhere, I'm just having loads of fun writing the stories and if nobody wants to read them - well fair enough, they can go on Skyehawke or something.

I've never developed ambition, just a burning need to tell stories.