Best of the Big Bads

The rise of the anti-hero changed television storytelling. It also changed the nature of antagonists. If the hero is a bit of a villain, their antagonist has to be a truly irredeemable bastard.

I teach my students to think of the protagonist as the focal point of the story, rather than the "good guy". In fact, a protagonist struggling with self-destruction (or failing to struggle) might face an antagonist who actually has their best interests at heart. As long as there's a conflict, it doesn't really matter, and most of the best stories don't deal with black-and-white right-and-wrong.

The phenomenon has hit literature as well, with Gone Girl being a good example of an imperfect (to say the least) protagonist - the selfish and philandering Nick Dunne - being made sympathetic by contrast when compared to his wife Amy, who with her rape-framing, media manipulation, and murder is "gone" in every sense of the word. Another good literary example is the journey of Jaime Lannister in A Song of Ice and Fire - from an arrogant and incestuous would-be child murderer, to one of the last beacons of honor left in Westeros as of book five. George R.R. Martin takes us there by contrasting Jaime against sellswords (The Bloody Mummers in the book; Roose Bolton's henchmen in the show), his ruthless father Tywin, and his power-grubbing sister-lover Cersei. (To be fair, next to that bitch face, one might mistake Vlad Putin or Dick Cheney for mildly human.) Chopping off his hand was a nice touch, because when he couldn't just win with a sword, he had to change everything about who he was.

As for television, I picked three anti-hero vs. big bad battles worth your time and Netflix subscription. Spoilers abound from this point down, so if you have "Sopranos" "Dexter" or "Breaking Bad" on your watch list, read the rest later.

Anthony Soprano vs. Livia Soprano
I gave late-season big bad Phil Leotardo an honorable mention below, but to me, this is always going to be the show that succeeded in making a mob boss look weak while making the viewer cower every time his elderly mother shuffled onto the screen. It's a shame the actress playing Livia died, because it would've been wonderful to see how Tony's giving her stolen airline tickets to see if she would rat him out or not - to see if she ever loved him at all - would've played out. (I know it was also tragic because a human being died, just saying.)

Livia's misery was so all-encompassing, she was less a person than a mobile black hole. Tony's laughably inadequate attempts to get her to enjoy any small activity at her nursing home quickly devolved into her exacerbating his depression, and eventually, her attempt to get his uncle to kill him. Her use of phony tears, revealing secrets at the worst possible time, and 'dementia' to avoid accountability, made Livia so terrifying that we had to root for the unfaithful, murderous career criminal she raised.

Honorable mention: Phil Leotardo was a square-headed old school don in the last seasons. His slow-simmering grudge over being robbed his chance at avenging his brother's death started with tough negotiations, graduated to verbal jabs, and finally led to the murder of Tony's brother in law in the show's best hit (all apologies to Big Pussy on the boat).

Dexter Morgan vs. The Trinity Killer
If you saw "Cliffhanger", you know John Lithgow is an amazing villain. "Dexter" was all about a serial killer with a code. He only killed killers who had evaded the justice system. As a forensic blood-spatter analyst, he was in a great position to mop up after himself. Season four of "Dexter" saw him struggling with balancing a new family with his "hobby". Enter Trinity, a serial killer doing a much better job of balancing family and slaughter. This is becoming a classic anti-hero vs. big-bad combination: Dexter has to face someone who is "more Dexter than Dexter". Eventually, Dexter realizes Trinity is only better at hiding, but then he has to face the fact that the balancing act he seeks might be impossible. By the time Dexter kills Trinity, Trinity has already figured out who Dexter is, and punished him like no big bad before or after. It was the series' dramatic apex.

Honorable mention: There were no other big bads anywhere in Trinity's league, but I give an honorable mention to the executive who ruined the series finale by saying Dexter couldn't die. Seriously, corporate douche, don't tell your writers how to write.

Walter White vs. Gustavo Fring
I love my big bad to be a chess master. Gus Fring from "Breaking Bad" was exactly that. Walt and Jesse had already clashed with lunatic drug lords by the time Gus came on the show, and Gus's calm was a wonderful contract to the mania of the earlier villains. Even when he cut an associate's throat in an agonizingly long scene that followed each and every one of his measured footsteps, Gus never lost his cool. He hid in plain sight, driving a used car and managing a chain of chicken restaurants. Later, they kept him 'untouchable' by keeping him off-camera, with Walt yelling at him through surveillance cameras in Gus's meth lab. Walt's powerless fury contrasted perfectly with Gus's placid domination.

Gus specialized in frustrating Walt by out-maneuvering him. When Walt put a bomb on Gus's car, he seemed to just 'sense' it and walk away. Later, when Walt finally blew half his head off, we were left with the impression Walt got lucky. Gus, cool to the end, walked calmly into the hall with half his head skeletonized and fixed his shirt before dropping dead. It was the series' most gruesome and enduring image.

Honorable mention: Gus's second-in-command Mike was also an amazing big bad, though Walt was actually worse than Mike. When Walt kills him in a cowardly sneak attack, Mike asks, "Jeez Walt, would you let me die in peace?" before slumping over dead. It reminded me of Edward R. Murrow asking Joseph McCarthy, "Have you no decency, sir?"

So here's to the big bads and the big roles they play in the stories we love. You can't have a (good?) anti-hero without one.

***And here's some self-promotion mixed with promotion of others: click below to see the latest collection featuring one of my short stories, along with eleven excellent tales of love, grief, desire, denial, and all the other emotions on my bi-polar to-do list.

http://www.amazon.com/Saints-Sinners-Fiction-Festival-2015-ebook/dp/B00TOUV04W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1429839691&sr=8-1&keywords=saints+and+sinners%3A+new+fiction+from+the+festival+2015

P.A.R.C.C: Failure by Design?

In New Jersey, we're breaking in a new standardized test this year, known as the P.A.R.C.C. As with most standardized tests, or anything new in general, the level of anxiety in my school is high.

There are aspects I like. The Research Simulation Task involves reading, viewing instructional videos, analyzing pictures and graphs, and using the information to synthesize an evidence-based conclusion. It's an honest preview of what students will have to do in college. And barring bugs, the fact that the test is computer-based will save tons of wasted paper.

There are aspects I'm reserving judgment about. I don't know for a fact that every radical, union-busting corporate politician is going to use what's likely to be an iffy first year of results to pursue an anti-education agenda. My guess is they'll try, but I don't want to assume people will fall for it. The first year of a new test is traditionally the worst, results-wise. In fact, the state's perceived need for a new test is based in part on widespread mastery of the old one.

I don't know for a fact that my board and administrators will choose to over-react and micro-manage or if they'll feel forced to do so. I refuse to freak out ahead of time. Unlike some of my teaching years, this year I can say I have administrators who have all taught tested subjects for a substantive period of time, so at least they critique from an informed position.

I can say I feel bad for districts who don't currently have supportive or sane administrators. That type of boss will no doubt use the first year speed bump to scare some great people out of the profession. I also feel bad for teachers in districts that don't have the advantages of mine. My students come to school fed, clean, healthy, and (mostly) rested. This isn't the case everywhere.

I would be ecstatic if the results of the test were prescriptive for the student. If the state is willing to tell us a student's weaknesses and offer feedback or a plan of action for next year based on this year's results, that would go a long way toward getting teachers on board. Imagine performance-based cluster groups to teach mini-units based on student needs. Imagine if the test results were used the right way, for the long-term benefit of each student taking it. On the other hand, if it's just a random bad score with no information about why, we should seriously consider helping parents organize mass opt-outs as a means of protest and to affect permanent systemic change. If I'm not allowed to fail a student without explanation (not that I'd want to), the state isn't allowed to do that to its public schools either.

Which brings me to the aspects of this test I hate, and I submit, you should hate them too.

The reading materials are ancient and stuffy, and were selected with the profit motive in mind, rather than giving students a fair chance at success. By now you may have seen the one online sample assessment, featuring ye olde and too far above grade level reading samples. All year, teachers work to find books we believe students can relate to, works that are verbally and thematically challenging while remaining developmentally appropriate. The materials selected by Pearson and friends for P.A.R.C.C. were selected based on being old enough to be in the public domain (in other words, free to use). This will negatively impact the results. Pearson needs to pay for age-appropriate material. They can do so while maintaining their precious profit margin, a concern that the state should've always insistent on being ancillary to genuine student development. I know it's a thought crime, but the profit motive is toxic in many domains (public schools, health care, prisons, highways, etc).

The hardest writing portions of P.A.R.C.C. are in early March, to the detriment of students and for the convenience of Pearson's graders. This lost month is massively important for the average twelve-year-old, and I'm willing to bet my colleagues in other grade levels feel the same. As an English teacher, I understand better than most that grading writing in a substantive way takes time. So why doesn't the state or Pearson or the subcontracted subcontractor grading the responses take the extra few weeks? I'd sooner have the results ruining my Halloween party than have the test rushed and my students a month less prepared.

For many special education students, this is simply child abuse. The paradigm where schools go out of their way to meet students' special needs during the school year, and then the state forces them to take the same test as everyone else in the spring, has never made sense. A harder test without accommidations ranging beyond "more time to climb a mountain with no gear" is going to set these students up for pointless discouragement.

For better or worse, this test will change the school experience for the majority of students in my state, and any other state attempting to align itself to common core in the name of keeping their federal funding. My inner paranoid liberal wants to believe this is a Trojan Horse to destroy and ultimately privatize public schools, motivated by the fascist Koch-A.L.E.C. minority that's done so much damage to so many national institutions in my lifetime (cue Star Wars Empire theme). But I'm not there yet. I've done all I can to prepare my students this year, and I'll adjust my approach based on this year's results. I've yet to see evidence that P.A.R.C.C. is failure by design. Time will tell.

Video Games that Tell Great Stories

You may be an eighties baby like me, in which case you remember being thrown out of the house at some point, bleary-eyed after ten consecutive hours of Nintendo. (You may have also hyperventilated from blowing in the damn cartridges to make them work. These kids today and their DVD games, they'll never know...) If so, you might also remember the first great plot twist in gaming. 1986's Metroid broke ground for many reasons. It was one of the first free-roaming games: rather than running left to right a la Super Mario, the setting ran left, right, up, and down, which was mind-blowing by rubix cube age standards. It was the game that first popularized giving you permanent upgrades and a password system that saved them, so your character evolved. It was also, as you found out at the end, the first game with a female protagonist. Lady gamers are very accepted now, but in the Bea Arthur shoulderpad era, I can't explain how revolutionary this was. The fact that the protagonist, Samus Aran, had a spacesuit that concealed her gender (along with that wonderfully ambiguous name), meant that (at the time, mostly male) gamers assumed they were a dude, until they found out they'd been a strong woman the whole time. Radically progressive for the dark ages of Reagan.

That was the first game to show me games could tell a story with genuine character development. I tried to get my folks to understand this evolution, but they were still big on the "outside" thing. (At least it taught me how to talk to humans.)

In 1989, a game called Ninja Gaiden ushered in the next big breakthrough in video game storytelling: cinema scenes. After a level of harrowing jumps and frenzied enemy attacks, you'd be treated to a mini-movie showing why your character needed to go to some other dangerous place. It was a giant leap forward from, "We're sorry, Mario, but the Princess in in another castle." This was the first time finding out what happens next was the impetus for playing on.

The first time I ever played a game and realized I would read it as a book was 1995's Chrono Trigger. The story was Sci-fi gold, with arguably the best antagonist in gaming history. The time-hopping quest was centered around preventing the 1999 destruction of the world by Lavos, a godlike alien parasite that burrowed into the earth during prehistoric times and spent centuries draining it dry.

Playing games now involves being a part of an interactive movie, but the first popular game to create this feeling for me was 1998's Metal Gear Solid, which told the tale of Solid Snake's quest to wrestle a bipedal tank equipped with nuclear weapons away from an army of genetically engineered super soldiers.

The first time video games created a setting that was a character in its own right was 2007's Bioshock, which told the tale of Rapture, a city under the sea created as a libertarian paradise where "splicers" could purchase superpowers in exchange for their labor. Of course, splicing featured insanity as a side-effect, so by the time your protagonist arrived, the place was a dystopian theme park loaded with twitchy supermen.

These are traits we take for granted in modern gaming. We expect jaw-dropping plot twists, an interactive movie experience, spectacular villains, and environments that qualify as characters. A game like The Last of Us is better written than many episodes of "The Walking Dead". If you aren't an eighties baby, and happen to encounter any of these games in an emulator, experience them. There is no replacement for a great novel, but the greatest games can offer something like the immersive experience of a book.

Do We Celebrate Enough?

This little blog is all about a dream I'm chasing, and as we move into a new year, I have to be honest: I'm not where I want to be just yet. I imagine many of you are in the same boat, since my audience is mostly other writers, and many of you dream of discussing your genius at length with Oprah, just like me.

So I wanted to take this opportunity to celebrate how far I've come and give everyone else the chance to do the same. I have my ritual for rejections: I get sloppy drunk and complain to my husband and cat about how that fifty shades bitch can't even structure a paragraph. I have a one-night pity party, then I resubmit elsewhere.

I don't have a similar ritual for my successes. Actually, when I have successes, I think I get sloppy drunk and summarize my soon-to-be published story to my husband and cat.

I started chasing this dream in 2008, and I've never really taken a minute to appreciate the new places it has taken me and the new people it forced me to meet.

In 2009, I joined my first writing group and mustered the courage to earn my first rejection.

In December of 2010, I enjoyed my first accepted story.

In 2011 I convinced an agent to help me sell my first novel.

Later in 2011, I lost my first agent, but it was the same time as my second published short story. Sometimes, the devious fate angels toss you some charity.

I earned my third and fourth publishing credits in 2012, and was nominated for my first award.

I earned a fifth publishing credit in 2013 and my first paid story in 2014. I also finished the first draft of my second novel.

I've found four supportive writing groups and two great places to read. (Ivanhoe in Paterson and Reststop Rejuvinate in Rockaway.) I'm lucky enough to be a regular contributor at a great literary festival with supportive editors. (Saints and Sinners down in Nawlins.)

I've learned, very slowly, to take longer to be sure a piece is done before sending it out into the world.

I just passed the 10,000-word mark on the first draft of my third novel.

If you share my dream, you may be likely to share my tendency not to stop and appreciate the progress you've already made. Do it. Take a minute to take inventory of your own dream and celebrate the progress you've made towards it, even if that fifty shades bitch didn't leave you any room on Oprah's couch.

Goodbye Middle Earth

The Peter Jackson movies are over. It's been a long walk there and a long walk home. (Eagles, I know you're a proud, noble, ancient race, but can we use you as mystic taxis? Just once?)

I was skeptical in December 2001, when I went to see "Fellowship". I loved the books, but I'd also seen that ghastly 70s cartoon. And we were in the midst of those shell-shocked months after 9/11. Liberal college kids like me didn't know what to do or even how to think. (Am I really a bad American if I don't get behind our anointed twit of a president? Did he actually just waste all that national volunteer spirit by telling us to shop? Is the band Anthrax going to have to change its name? Did some zealot gang really take down the World Trade Towers with fucking boxcutters!?)

Besides being eye-candy, Jackson's first trip into Middle Earth was a needed dose of chicken soup for the nerd soul. Obviously, the film was written months before 9/11 and the books were written decades before that, but Gandalf's telling the balrog "You shall not pass!" had a very specific meaning for those of us who were adults (or adult-ish) at the time. We were watching good successfully stand up to evil. The fact that it took the form of the ultimate sacrifice only made it more inspiring. The fact that those of us who'd read the book (and knew Gandalf would return) still got teary is a testament to Jackson's direction, along with the acting chops of Elijah (Giant-eyed Nooooo!) Wood and Ian (Fly, you fools!) McKellan.

Nostalgia is one of the main reasons Middle Earth has endured, and will endure. We have a certain nostagia for a world where good and evil are very clear and distinct from one another. You could've slapped Groucho Marx glasses on the Black Riders in the first movie and everyone still would've known they were bad guys. They were, all nine of them, dressed like Death himself. Death. Like the grisly reaper mowing. Like the impossibly difficult second-to-last boss in the original 8-bit Castlevania. The Ring Wraiths were powerful and scary, but unlike the dangers we were facting as a nation, they were damn easy to spot.

It's worth remembering the Lord of the Rings books were published in the 1950s. Tolkien's world is one where the noble men of the white, white, almost translucent west, do battle with the dark subhuman orcs and swarthy elephant riders of the east. The west kind of seems like America and Tolkien's U.K. The east kind of seems like countries where people can tan, plus Russia. Tolkien's world is, alas, eurocentric. Tolkien's world is also (equally alas) a sexless sausage party. For these reasons, Tolkien's world is somewhat simple. In this regard, Middle Earth has some of your conservative uncle's dangerous, straight white manly-man nostalgia for a world that never really existed in the first place.

Some of Middle Earth's moral clarity involves leftist messages as well. Anyone cutting down trees to build even the most primative wood-and-water machines is likely to have the trees cut him down in return. Especially if his name rhymes with "Schmaruman". And when the King returns to the city after a life of exile in the wild, he remarks, "there is not enough here that grows and is glad". Even the King's a bloody tree-hugger. Tolkien's romantacism of the Shire underlines this endorsement of pastoral life.

Liberal message two: When Frodo suggests killing Gollum, Gandalf scoffs "Many who die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Don't be so quick to deal out death on a whim." Sounds like Tolkien weaving in a loud anti-capital punishment message. In fact, the whole story hinges on it, since Gollum's greed, not Frodo's nobility, causes Sauron's fall. It's Gollum's lava lake swan dive that ultimately saves the day.

There's another leftist message in there: greed is no good. It doesn't end well for hoarders in Middle Earth. Ask Gollum, Smaug, and that bald master in Laketown.

Politics aside, there are Middle Earth messages everyone can endorse. Sam proves the value of friendship and loyalty. Frodo proves the nobility of mercy and attempting sacrifice. Sauron proves that the inability of evil to understand goodness can be evil's undoing. It never occurs to Mr. Demigod Visine ad that someone would inherit power and, rather than use it for his own good, endure significant suffering just for the opportunity to give power up, for the good of all.

Sounds like Tokien was advocating for the redistribution of power to the masses. But then how can Mordor be a stand-in for Soviet Russia? Maybe Middle Earth isn't as simple as I thought. Still, the point of all this is, I'm going to miss it. Nerd hugs and nerd love to you all. Happy Holidays as well.

The Fascist Ex (and what I'm up to now)

Rather than do my typical summer routine this year (driving myself crazy for not having time to write). I gave myself a pass and took the summer off. And then I wound up writing a lot. It's amazing what you can do when you aren't kicking your own ass.

New Projects:

The Fascist Ex – David Hellman is the American Hitler. He’s rising to power as head of the homophobic Patriot Party, and the only man who can stop him is Adam Ford, David’s college boyfriend, who no one in the Patriots knows about. Much of David’s rage stems from the fact that Adam viciously broke his heart. To save his country, Adam will have to out David - ruin his ex-boyfriend’s life for the second time - and Adam has never stopped loving him.

Love Lines – A scientist creates LP9, a formula that allows one to see love. The market potential is unlimited, he reasons, because who wouldn’t pay to see if their crush, or girlfriend, or spouse loved them, or someone else? The potential for abuse, blackmail, and chaos is as unlimited as potential sales.

Projects that are coming to fruition:

Femorph – Children can change their gender at will, until their bodies calcify on their eighteenth birthdays. Michael’s is coming up in six days. He’s spent half his life as his femorph, Michaela, because his best friend Aaron is in love with her. Michael is also in love with Aaron. When Aaron realizes he can bring the opposite morph to the surface by relaxing the dominant one with an orgasm, he knows he has the power to take Michael’s choice for him. He must choose between what he wants and what's best for Michael and Michaela.

(I finally had that magic moment with this piece where I slaughtered my darlings to get it under 7,000 words for Saints and Sinners.)

Eagle Eye – A sniper is injured and psychologically scarred in one of our endless, amorphous foreign wars. (I wrote it before the rise of the ISIS boogeyman.) He returns home to be dicked around by a newly-privatized V.A. He comes to the conclusion that men who profit by keeping soldiers broken are terrorists. He becomes the sniper of the 99%.

(This one was suffering from a too-quick ending. I’m told that’s a common struggle among men my age.)

Projects I’m shopping around:

Jesse Rules – A closeted grunge-era Holden Caulfield seeks fame, to get his mind off of his unwanted feelings for his guitarist. At the dawn of the 24-hour news cycle, he concludes that nothing gets attention like murder.

(My first novel can’t seem to find a home. It isn’t life-affirming in the least, so gay publishers are balking. It has a gay character, so straight publishers are balking. I tried something different and submitted it to a contest that turns unpublished novels into movies. My character is an amoral fame-hound. Hollywood could be the home my grungy bastard child needs.)

Rise of the Paramancers – In the earth kingdom Gorge, Karth trains to become a geomancer, a sorcerer capable of manipulating the earth. Gorge and the other three elemental kingdoms of Axis are threatened by the arrival of a paramancer, a sorcerer capable of manipulating all elements. An arms race ensues, and apprentices will have to quickly become masters if Gorge is to survive.

(I have a good publisher checking this one out right now. The main thing was, in my world, I didn’t want magic to be Harry Potter point-and-speak. It’s more like yoga – physically and spiritually demanding. I wanted my sorcerers buff and haunted. The characters are facing changes that overwhelm them, so it’s relatable as can be. Karth is straight but his master and best friend are gay, so I’m really going for all audiences. An X-box Kinect game and line of action figures can be in the works as soon as I can convince just one person with clout to care.)

That’s all for now. If you see me with a faraway look in my eyes, it’s because I’m constructing or deconstructing some fantasy world in my head, or dreaming of an ally with marketing connections.

-James Russell

 

Cliche Retirement Party

Summer movie season means we story-lovers are treated to some outstanding storytelling. Also, we’re bombarded with clichés. Let’s take call some out, in the hopes of shaming them out of the collective writer’s toolbox.

That thing where a character dies with their eyes open and another character closes them. I get it. Character A died and Character B wants to be all charitable and make sure they can enjoy death’s peaceful slumber. Or something. Actually I’m pretty sure Character A’s new full-time job as a dead person means they can’t tell you shut their eyes with your fingers. I know what it’s supposed to do: show how humane and grief-stricken Character B is. But it doesn’t work anymore. Retire it.

Guilty Parties: Even recent masterpiece Snowpiercer is guilty of this bullshit.

Exemption: You can use it if the villain opens Character A’s dead eyes back up to show what a sick, sacrilegious twat he or she is. Christopher Walken did it once and it was the only bright spot in a lame film.

Inspirational speech by a dude on a horse. Braveheart did it. Lord of the Rings did it twice in one movie, but that was decades ago now. Here’s how it goes: Army A is small, but heroic. They’re up against Army B, which is comprised of Orcs or Imperialist Englishmen, as if there’s a difference. They have a massive numeric advantage, heavy cavalry, trolls with giant bass drums, crooked teeth (and that’s just the English har-dee-har!). So Army A is pooping in their kilts or armor or kilt armor, until their hero gets up on his horse and goes “Schmamedy Schma-schma Doobeedoo” (I see them and I’m scared too). Then he gallops a bit and goes “Dippidy Doheckadeedron Schmamedydoe” (But I refuse to give in to fear). Then he raises his sword and goes “Schmadoopiddy Da-doo-bah Teabag!” (To Hades with their numbers. Let’s kill them all and teabag their corpses). They rally. They win. Yawn.

Guilty Parties: See above + every movie with an underdog army

Exemption: You can use this if Army A listens to the speech, runs bravely into battle, and gets completely eviscerated. That would be a wonderfully realistic surprise.

The night is darkest just before the dawn. I love you Dark Knight, but holy cliché, what were you smoking when you shat this line into an otherwise glowing script? I know, a line isn’t a cliché, but the philosophy behind this one is. Night isn’t darkest just before dawn. It’s darkest in the middle of the night. When things are all wrong and the Joker is killing judges and blowing up Rachel despite Batman’s best grunting inquires of “Where’s Rachel?!” there’s still a lot of work to do to get out of the darkness. In fact, putting things in order takes a lot longer than destroying them. This horse shit quote implies that just sticking it out passively is a good plan of action. This line is the equivalent of that kitten poster that says “Just hung in there.” Wrong. Irresponsible. Improvement requires a ton of work. This cliché isn’t just corny, it’s a dangerous lie.

Guilty Parties: Pretty much every action movie.

Exemption: None. This line and the philosophy behind it are pure ass. All forms of it should be violently torn from all scripts henceforth.

Wise and moisturized Abercrombie Elves. I feel like I’m picking on LOTR a bit, but there’s a reason Tolkien’s world has become cliché – it was amazing so a billion people copied it. That said, I’m dying for a fantasy where the humans and the race of comic relief dwarves/goblins/gnomes come upon the elves in an hour of dire need. And the elves, instead of being wise and perfectly moisturized orgasmic hair gods, come out of their huts with beer bellies and warty noses and go “Deerrrrrrrrrrp, me dunno how too halp yoo!”

Guilty Parties: All movies featuring the vain, pointy-eared bitches. Sorry Orlando Bloom. And call me.

Exemption: See above. It’s time for ugly dumbass elves.

A Rom-com that doesn’t end in an airport, train station, bus depot, or wherever they gather hovercraft. I like a good Rom-com in part because they’re so rare. "Friends with Benefits" was great despite ending in a train station. But most of them are so formulaic that watching them is pointless. I don’t have the answer, but I can tell what I don’t want. No more confessions in the rain. No more last minute wedding objections. And please, for the love of Justin Timberlake and Channing (sigh) Tatum, no more confrontations at places where people get on things to go elsewhere.

Guilty Parties: Every fucking Rom-com.

Exemption: Maybe if the grand gesture fails, but then the two people run into each other months or years later and they decide to give it another chance for an actual, adult reason. "Enough Said" did a nice job of this. It was a plus that the actors looked human, rather than trim L.A. robo-beauties.

So let’s retire these tropes. They served us well for a while. Then they grew stale through repetition. It happens. We just need to acknowledge it and act accordingly. Who knows? Some of them may even reappear in a decade or two, in a fresh context. Except for that “Night is darkest” bullshit. I really can’t get over that one.