The Dark Knight Rises: The Return of Bat Lazonne

My husband and I got to see The Dark Knight Rises on Saturday morning (I can’t remember the last time I hit an 11 am show, but it seemed like the only time we could get a ticket on opening weekend) when my brother was watching the kids, and I just HAD to write something on it. I was seeing all of these 4-star reviews and critical praise (with the exception of Entertainment Weekly, who gave it a mediocre B rating) and was intrigued. On the one hand, it’s a superhero movie. We go to those for the awesome, not for complicated storylines. On the other hand, it’s helmed by Christopher Nolan, who wrote one of our all-time favourite movies, Memento, and has become one of the most innovative auteurs in Hollywood. And those first two films were pretty fantastic, so the third should be pretty good, right?

No, it wasn’t. It was AMAZING. I’ve managed to see a lot of films this year, and it was easily my favourite. Oh sure, I’ve seen The Cabin in the Woods twice and have the DVD release date marked on my calendar so I can buy it and rewatch it repeatedly, but it was funny and fluffy and didn’t come close to matching the brilliance of this film. It had the action that a superhero movie should have, it was fast-paced, yet it had complex character development (character development! In a superhero film!), intertextual storylines that brought in the first two movies in subtle ways, and a plot that brought the entire trilogy full circle. WOW.

I’m not going to go into too much detail, and don’t want to spoil it for people who haven’t yet seen it, so I’ll just mention a few things I loved:

Tom Hardy. As Bane, he spends the entire movie in a mask that covers three quarters of his face. I kept thinking, “I must have misread things… that just can’t be Tom Hardy.” First of all, who casts the perfection that is Tom Hardy (best lips in the movie business) and then pops a mask on his face?? Secondly, I don’t remember him being that… huge. They took the smouldering Ricki from Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

and turned him into Vic Mackie from The Shield.

But sure enough, it was him. Amazing. And despite the mask, Hardy is able to show a range of emotion, from pure, unbridled rage to real emotion.

The performances in this movie across the board were rather stunning, actually. Christian Bale is quite extraordinary, in that he maintains a quietness throughout the film, conveying the real pain of Bruce Wayne through his eyes and movements. Anne Hathaway did a great job (I actually quite like her, but I wasn’t expecting her to be that good), playing Catwoman in all her devious glory, from annoyed muttering to cooing insincerity. Joseph Gordon Levitt is someone who I always expect to be great (tell me you have all seen Brick, please) and who I think I’ve loved in every movie… okay, I’ll confess I loved him on 3rd Rock from the Sun, which I watched all the time when I was younger. And he doesn’t disappoint here, in a sad but earnest cop who needs someone to believe in. Michael Caine returns to the Cockney Alfred, and brought me to tears in one of his scenes. Wayne lives with the horror of having watched his parents die right in front of him, without realizing that he’s had a father figure his whole life who has continued to watch out for him in a way his parents never could have, even if they’d lived. And Marion Cotillard is understated but brilliant as Miranda Tate, a part that starts out small but she pulls off some great stuff by the end of the movie.

And Gary Oldman. What is really left to say about Oldman? One of the most underrated actors of his generation, easily one of the greatest (I had the biggest crush on him circa Immortal Beloved it was kind of embarrassing), and he is WONDERFUL. Oldman is so good he risks stealing every scene he’s in, and yes, he’s been in many a movie where he’s completely chewed every inch of the scenery around him, but in this movie he, like the rest, plays his part with a great deal of subtlety. Nolan clearly wanted his cast to be understated, and it works.

Usually in a movie that’s pushing three hours, my husband and I emerge from the theatre talking about what could have been edited out. But I can’t think of a single thing that I would have removed. No, it’s not note-perfect — there are a couple of things in there that had us scratching our heads (did he just go to Uzbekistan and back in under three hours?) and a few other things that seemed just a little too convenient, but those are minor nitpicks in an otherwise awesome film. The action sequences are edge-of-your-seat suspenseful. And for Lost fans, watch for a scene that’s reminiscent of the fuselage destruction scene, and also keep your eyes open for Lost folks throughout the movie.

I loved The Avengers, and I liked The Amazing Spider-Man, but The Dark Knight Rises just took the superhero genre to a new stratosphere.

It's hard to talk about this film without mentioning the tragedy in Colorado last week at the opening night midnight screening. I've written three different things, and keep coming back and changing it, and I've just decided there are no words to express the horror and sadness I feel about what's happened. So I'm deleting everything I wrote, and instead I just want to say my heart and prayers go out to those who have lost someone they love, to the families of the dead, and to the injured who are trying to come to terms with the horror they’ve witnessed and experienced. May you one day feel comfortable enough to walk back into a movie theatre without fear. And may the world one day be a place where we don’t have to wonder if we’re next.

For a well-thought-out discussion of the depiction of violence in popular culture and the questions we need to be asking about it, check out Henry Jenkins' response here. 

And just so I don’t have to end this post on that note, as many of you who follow me on Facebook know, my four-year-old son insisted that the bad guy in this movie was named “Bat Lazonne.” I told him it was Bane, and he said no, he’d seen a commercial and he was definitely named “Bat Lazonne.” This has become such a running joke in our house that when we first saw him on screen, I think my husband and I whispered to each other simultaneously, “It’s Bat Lazonne!” and then dissolved into giggles. At first I thought the commercial said someone battles on, but now I’m thinking there must be an ad out there with a voiceover that says, “The bat lives on.” That’s the only answer I have. But if you have a better one, please let me know! ;) 

Slayage, Day 1, Part 2: Mashups, Grotesque, and Anime

After lunch, it was time for the second of four panels on the same day (I thought the convention was organized brilliantly, but I will admit that four panels on the first day was a little draining). It was a really tough choice for me, because off in one room Steve Halfyard was giving her paper, “Music in (and out) of the Dollhouse.” You will remember Steve as our resident musical expert during the Buffy Rewatch, where she added her little slices of cheese throughout (and often very long and in-depth analyses), giving so many of us a new way to look at — and listen to — the episodes. She was presenting with Neil Lerner, the other musical expert in the universe of Whedon Studies, and I really wanted to see their panel.

And in the second room was Samira Nadkarni, who was one of my lovely roommates. This was her first Slayage, but you never would have known it. As I said to her on her FB page after, she is a serious force of nature. I swear she has a pop culture reference for just about anything, and I thought she was hilarious and delightful every time I spoke to her. Oh, and brilliant, too. She live-tweeted every panel she was in, so much so that she was actually put in Twitter jail at one point for tweeting too much, haha! Her paper was called “‘Memory in itself guarantees nothing’: Witnessing and “the jews” in Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse.” Damn, that sounds like a good one.

But the panel I went to featured Patricia Pender, a professor from the University of Newcastle, David Kociemba, and Tanya Cochran. I couldn’t pass up these powerhouses all together in one. Also, the panel was called “Fandom.” Like I’m not going to go to that one.

Now, I just want to add here that a couple of people emailed me to ask if I would add a bit more detail on the description of the papers. While I’d love to, an academic conference is a closed place where the speaker assumes he/she is only speaking to the group who is present, and not to the world at large. These pieces are still looking for publishers, and many of them are still works in progress, where they present their paper so far and are looking for ideas to hone it further. So I’m giving some minor descriptions, and if you are reading this and I’m talking about your paper, and you do get it published in the future and want to let me know, I’d be happy to come back into this post and add an update to direct people over to where you got it published. (And also, if you think I’ve said too much about your paper, please don’t hesitate to let me know and I’ll scale it back.) OK, back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

From left: David Kociemba, Patricia Pender,
Tanya Cochran

David Kociemba went first. I have somehow missed to manage his paper at both previous Slayages, and I was determined to see him this time around. You’ll remember him from — you guessed it! — our Great Buffy Rewatch (yes, I’m going to list their GBR cred each time because that’s the context in which many of you first met them). He covered Week 4, Week 10, Week 26, and wrote a piece at the end of the Rewatch on “Chosen.”

His paper gave the results of several Rokeach value surveys he conducted with fans of Buffy, Angel, Firefly, and Dollhouse on what we perceive to be the celebrated values of each show. It was fun to watch (I remember filling out one of them… I think it may have been for Angel…) and interesting to see how much people reacted to the questions by thinking of the values Joss and Co. imbued in the show, rather than the characters themselves. I especially liked the observation that people referred to Joss’s vision in The Cabin in the Woods, even though Drew Goddard co-wrote it and directed it. David was a really dynamic speaker, and I can imagine how much his students much love his teaching style. I told this to his wife, Kristen Romanelli (who is one of the most stunning-looking women you will ever meet), who, incidentally, also helped out on the Buffy Rewatch on Week 19, Week 33, and joined my “hated it” side of the “Beer Bad” battle royale. By the way, David and Kristen both run Watcher Junior, a place where undergraduates can get their papers published on Whedon Studies. Go check them out.

Next up was Patricia J. Pender, and what a joy this paper was!! You guys would have LOVED it. Entitled “Parsing the Sexual Politics of Buffy Vs. Edward,” the paper was deconstructing the famous mashup that I have posted countless times here, and, well, I just need to post it again to make my quota:

There aren’t enough words to express my love for this. Also, for myself and Tanya Cochran, it’s the second time we’ve watched the mashup in a university setting this year. Patricia’s paper was lively and fun, and she mentioned an interesting piece where Jonathan McIntosh, the man who made the video, wrote why he did it. I don’t know who said it (if it was part of Pender’s talk or in the Q&A) but I wrote in my notes, “Twilight as abstinence porn, haha!” And again, HAHA! ;)

And finally it was time for Tanya Cochran, my dear friend whose house I had the pleasure of staying at in January when I did a Twilight talk at Wesleyan University in Nebraska (and where I got to meet our delightful and beloved Marebabe!). Tanya was one of the featured speakers at the last Slayage, and I honestly don’t know how someone could be that adorable and that brilliant all wrapped up in one neat package, but she is. She was a HUGE part of the Buffy Rewatch, guiding us through the show on Week 9,  Week 18, Week 26, Week 30, Week 33, and Week 36 (I’m exhausted just listing those!) Her paper was called “By Beholding, We Become Changed: Joss Whedon, (Anti-)Fandom, and Lived Religion.” She talked about fan activism and socio-political activism, starting with the now-infamous post Joss made on Whedonesque called “Let’s Watch a Girl Get Beaten to Death.” She discussed the various responses to his post (which was talking about the disgust he feels for torture porn like the Saw movies, and specifically refers to the trailer for the film Captivity. He was expressing his sadness in the face of Dua Khalil, a woman who had been stoned to death in an “honour killing” (just typing that phrase makes me want to throw up) and the fine line between the two. (Go read it if you haven’t.) Responses ranged from enthusiastic agreement with him to people calling him a hypocrite and saying his treatment of women was no better (see: Tara, Inarra, Echo, etc.) It was  really fascinating paper that made everyone in the room think more about this post and why we watch television, especially when Cochran brought it around to transubstantiation (you’ll have to read the paper to see how she got there, but it was an amazing transition).

Next up was the third panel of the day, at 3:30. Another tough one, but I went with the panel called “The Grotesque Across the Whedonverses,” with Cynthia Burkhead. Another veteran of the Slayage conference, Cynthia participated in the Buffy Rewatch on Week 13 with a beautiful piece on how a Slayer grows up. In this panel she did a paper called “‘You’re a week, little puppet man’: Locating the ‘Cute Grotesque’ in Angel and Dollhouse” by showing how certain characters, while they may look scary or grotesque in a way, are cutened in one way or another (at some point we’ve all thought of Puppet Angel, Clem, or even Harmony as cuddly). She talked about anime and moe, showing pictures of Lolita cosplay and tying the show into that tradition.

Rachel Mellen, Jared McCoy (in his very funky hat!) and
Cynthia Burkhead

The next two panels were Cynthia’s students, Jared McCoy and Rachel Mellen. For their first conference, they both did an admirable job and delivered their papers well. Rachel’s was called “‘Gingerbread and Gentlemen’: Grotesqueness in the Fairy Tale Elements of Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” and Jared’s was entitled, “‘My Pretty Floral Bonnet’: The Carnival Masks of Captain ‘Tightpants’ Reynolds.” Rachel’s focused on Kindestod from “Killed by Death,” while Jared’s looked beyond Mal on Firefly to show how several of the characters wear masks and disguises that the viewer must see through.

And now it was time for the final panel of the day. Again, while my decision had already been made prior to the conference, this was a time where a lot of heavy hitters were presenting. In one room was Heather M. Porter doing a quantitative examination of the episodes of violence in Buffy (I’ve seen her do two previous papers and she has a very unique way of looking at the episodes, which is always interesting to me) and Madeline Muntersbjorn, who I’d seen present at the last Slayage as well. In another room Mary Ellen Iatropoulos was presenting “Defining Joss Whedon’s Disability Narrative Ethic: The Impairment Arcs of Lindsey McDonald, Bennet Halverson, and Xander Harris,” which (spoiler alert!) ultimately won the Best Paper Mr. Pointy at the conference (more on that later). She was presenting with Stan Beeler, who I edited in a Supernatural volume put out by Stacey Abbott and David Lavery, and Richard Albright. Elizabeth Rambo, a keynote speaker at my first Slayage in 2008, was speaking in a fourth room on comics, and specifically Sugarshock, which I know pretty much nothing about and I REALLY wanted to know more about it (and Ian Klein and I were saying throughout the conference that there needs to be more coverage of the comics — like ‘em or not) so I loved the fact there was a comics panel and I wish I could tell you more about it.

But the panel I went with featured K. Dale Koontz, one of my favourite people and now one of my authors! (Yes, she and her husband Ensley — more on him later — are writing a Breaking Bad book for me, and I’m already enjoying the experience of working with them more than you can imagine.) Her paper was called “Some Call Me the Space Cowboy: Anime, Outlaws, and All That Jazz.” And while some people are content with PowerPoint to help illuminate their papers, Dale went much further and showed up to the conference with ANIME HAIR. No, really. And it was truly awesome. Behold: 

Dale a couple of days after her panel, on the
UBC echo stone. That hair is phenomenal.

  

She was comparing Firefly to an anime show that started in 1998 called Cowboy Bebop (which I’m told is all out on DVD and now I must get it) within the context of a snootiness within sci-fi fandom that space Westerns aren’t as important as pure sci-fi shows. She talked about the history of Bat Durston and the history of resistance to this particular genre, which may have led to the early demise of Firefly. Great paper, told by the incomparable Dale, who — no, I haven’t forgotten — participated in the Buffy Rewatch as part of the “Beer Bad” smackdown, then as part of a back-and-forth discussion with her husband Ensley in Week 34 (aka “The Body”), then in the brilliant video telenovela version of “I’ll Never Tell” during our “Once More With Feeling” week (one of my favourite things in the entirety of the Rewatch), and then on her own in Week 40. And finally she wrote a piece at the end of the Rewatch about Why Buffy Matters.

And finally, there was a change-up to the schedule. Originally Jes Battis was supposed to be presenting with Dale, but he became ill and couldn’t do it. Meanwhile Matthew Pateman was scheduled to present on Sunday afternoon, but through some scheduling weirdness his flight was leaving on Sunday morning before the last day started, so he switched over into this panel. And there was no way I was missing that paper. I mean, I could have fodder for months of mocking.

Surprisingly he was still walking after our horrible encounter the day before with too many stairs. Otherwise known as my mortal enemy, my nemesis, the evil one, Giles, my dear friend, Matthew was part of the Rewatch as well, when he came in early to join us on Week 3, the hated it camp of “Beer Bad,” Week 28, aka “Restless” (the guy wrote a book on the episode, so I couldn’t let anyone else cover it), The Cuppy the Mustard Slayer video in our “Once More With Feeling” week (Ha!!), and a poem/video he did for the end of the Rewatch, starring his daughter’s Barbie dolls.

Matthew and I a few hours after his paper at the banquet (more
on that later), proving we really CAN get along. For a couple of
seconds, at least. 

This was the first time I’d actually seen him as part of a panel. I’d seen his keynote in 2008, and performed a looney tunes routine with him at 2010, but now I was seeing him as a regular speaker. His paper was called “Whedon Studies: The Director’s Cut,” and in a word, it was brilliant. I even told him afterwards (in front of other people, no less!) that I was seriously risking my reputation by saying this, but he really did a masterful job. His paper was a call to arms for Whedon scholars, pointing out that so much of the scholarship has focused on Whedon himself as the auteur, and the writers — Espenson, Fury, Noxon, DeKnight, Greenwalt — as the true masterminds behind the show. But what of the directors? The editors, script supervisors, etc.? The directors in particular were who he was focusing on, and showed us the half of all directed Whedon material is actually done by 10 individuals. There’s a certain look to Buffy, to Angel and Firefly and Dollhouse, and that’s largely the vision of these directors. I think the people in the audience were kind of stunned (including myself, who, I confess, is absolutely guilty of attributing much of the vision of shows to the writers, from Lost on down) and you could see everyone becoming more self-aware from that point on in the conference. I’ll be very interested to see if we start seeing more papers on James Contner and David Semel and David Grossman as a result. I realized when I got home (with a bit of a sinking feeling) that at the back of my Angel book, Once Bitten, I have a table of all of the Buffy and Angel writers, but none for the directors. I do think part of the issue is that most academics have studied writing and can dissect that, but when it comes to directing, unless we actually have a background in it in some way, it’s hard for us to write about it. But he’s right — that needs to change.

Next up: THE BANQUET. 

Aaron Paul: Before He Was Famous

I watched this earlier today and was laughing out loud. This is one of Aaron Paul's first TV appearances... when he was a contestant on The Price Is Right. And it's insanely funny.

Nikki's Slayage Report, Day 1, Part 1: Puppets, Puppets It Must Be PUPPETS!!!

Day One of the Slayage conference kicked off with Cynthea Masson as the opening keynote speaker. Cynthea won the Mr Pointy Award (the Whedon Studies Association award that is shaped like a more phallic version of Buffy’s stake) for her 2008 Slayage conference paper where she demanded a second look at the oft-overlooked Angel episode, “The Girl in Question.” She was a featured speaker at the 2010 Slayage conference, and now she was the opening day keynote. For those of you who followed the Buffy Rewatch, Cynthea was the one who deftly guided us through Week 7 (“Lie to Me” and “The Dark Age”); the “hated it” side of the “Beer Bad” debate; Week 26 (“Who Are You,” “Superstar,” “Where the Wild Things Are”); Week 29 (“Buffy Vs. Dracula,” “Real Me,” “The Replacement”); the English Department committee meeting parody of “Rest In Peace” for our “Once More With Feeling” week; Week 43 (“Normal Again,” “Entropy,” “Seeing Red”); and Week 51 (“Empty Places,” “Touched,” “End of Days”).

In other words, Cynthea was probably as glad as I was to see the end of the Rewatch. Thank you once again for all your hard work with that, Cynthea!!

I’ve regretted missing her 2008 presentation on “The Girl in Question” (though I did have the opportunity to read the excellent paper on it), but I marveled at her featured talk in 2010 on the episode “Belle Chose” on Dollhouse. Once again, Masson didn’t disappoint. Her opening keynote was entitled, “‘Break Out the Champagne, Pinocchio’: Angel and the Puppet Paradox.” It was all about how Smile Time wasn’t just a one-off, but a culmination of several references to Angel being a puppet leading up to it, and how other characters fall into the puppet theory. First of all, who knew there was such a thing as puppet theory? But now that I do know, I’m fascinated by the topic. Puppets have always fascinated me — marionettes are clearly beholden to their masters, who hold the strings and force them to do what they want, and there’s always a subtle creepiness to watching a puppet show, from the way they move so astonishingly (if you see a truly masterful puppeteer at work) to that impassive, almost sad look on their faces. From the puppet in La double vie de Veronique to the puppet show in Being John Malkovich (the first time I'd ever seen a puppet have a facial expression), they are truly remarkable creatures. And it wasn’t until Cynthea’s talk that I realized just how much they interested me. I’ve always been a fan of stop-motion animation, mostly because they appear to be puppets without the strings. Tool’s video for “Sober” is still possibly my all-time favourite music video followed by His Name Is Alive’s “Are We Still Married?” because they both captivated me the first time I saw them. And I’ll never forget flipping channels one night in my early 20s to find PBS showing the Jan Svankmajer film Alice, a stop-motion nightmarish retelling of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It took me two years to track down the film on video, but I did, and I still have it. I’ve bought imports of the works of the Brothers Quay, and Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s Mr Punch so riveted me with the cover alone that I not only devoured the graphic novel, but a poster of the cover — signed by both author and illustrator — is the only thing that hangs in my office.

So yeah. I’m not sure there could have been another topic in the Whedonverse that would have captured my attention like this one did, and Cynthea delivered it with her usual brilliance and enthusiasm, and had the entire room in the palm of her hand. She pointed out several incidences of puppet commentary throughout her talk:

-the fact that both puppets and vampires share the same existential condition in that they are both simultaneously alive and not alive (mind = blown)

-puppet theory is full of language you would use to describe the living dead

-the Puppet Paradox refers to both a demon and a soul

-Skip tells Gunn they’re all puppets

-in S5 Angel has a dream that Spike is turned into a real boy

-Cordy refers to Angel as “Pinocchio” when he discovers the Shanshu Prophecy

She even introduced us (well, me) to a fabulous comic called “Pinocchio: Vampire Slayer” where Pinocchio tells a lie, his nose grows, and he breaks it off to use as a stake against vampires, hahaha! (I MUST find this.) Amazing, amazing paper, and I hope it’s published soon so I can read it again. Her paper ended with a call for people to hold up their own puppets (she’d told everyone ahead of time to bring them” and everyone joined in a rousing chorus of “Self Esteem” from “Smile Time.” There were Angel puppets, sock puppets, Spike puppets, Derrida puppets, and hand puppets everywhere. The perfect start to the conference. And just as I was going to grab a photo for something else, I realized I had video! I'm the annoying giggler (that's pretty much me 24/7) and you might not be able to read it but at the end, the screen says this paper was brought to you by the letters S, C, W, and the number 5. Genius.

Next was the first difficult part of the conference: having to choose what to watch and what to miss. There was so much I wanted to see, but having seen two of Rhonda Wilcox’s papers before — and being blown away by both — I simply couldn’t pass up seeing another. The panel was called Law and Language, and the first paper was from Erma Petrova, entitled “I’m Declaring an Emergency”: Leadership and the State of Exception in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Her paper was asking whether a Slayer has the right to declare the War Measures Act and suspend the rights of people for their own good. Faith believes so, and Giles does as well — both of them tell Buffy at different points that she needs to stop and look at the Big Picture. In “Get it Done,” Buffy does essentially declare a state of emergency, and in doing so she gets people to use their power, rather than finding a way to claim more power for herself.

The next paper was Sharon Sutherland and Sarah Swan’s “Vampires, Reavers, and Lawyers: Joss Whedon’s Lens on Law,” where they showed just how many different kinds of law are in Whedon shows. They were looking specifically at the exploration of law in non-law TV shows, and broke it down into three categories:

-People having to take matters into their own hands because the law failed them (Dexter, 24, House)

-explorations of how the legal institutions are inadequate (The Wire, Veronica Mars, The L-Word)

-the development of new legal systems in the face of lack of an existing one (Deadwood, BSG)

-Whedon Law covers all three. They looked at the scene where Buffy and Xander argue over whether or not Anya should be killed in “Selfless.” They showed the scene of Gavin talking to Lilah about how they could nail Angel from a legal angle rather than a supernatural one. On Firefly they showed the clip between Mal and Inara where they discuss the fact he defends her honour while calling her a whore, and who is a slave in this world and who isn’t. And on Dollhouse they showed the contract negotiation between Caroline and Adelle. It was a great paper (that they said was a work in progress) that really made you think about the different ways law has been used in Whedon properties.

Rhonda Wilcox was next. You’ll remember her as the “Mother of Buffy Studies,” who joined our Rewatch to brilliantly tackle Week 10 (“Phases,” “Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered,” “Passion”); Week 31 (“Fool for Love,” “Shadow,” “Listening to Fear”); and beautifully sang the “Parking Ticket” song in our “Once More With Feeling” week. Her paper was “A Soliloquy by Any Other Name: Speech-Making in the Whedonverses.” She began by asking if we remembered the following speeches, and as she outlined them, of course we remembered every one of them: Spike talking about this world as home in “Becoming, Part 2”; Spike’s “love’s bitch” speech in “Lover’s Walk”; Buffy’s speech to Jonathan in “Earshot”; Buffy’s speech to the First/Tara in “Restless”; Anya’s fruit punch speech in “The Body” (sniffle…); Jonathan’s speech in “Conversations with Dead People”; Angel talking to Kate in “Epiphany”; Mal’s “I aim to misbehave” speech in Serenity. She showed how these key speeches (and others) are integral to the show thematically. One of my favourite lines in her talk was about that last one, saying that Mal’s speech is the controlled speech of a man who refuses to be controlled. Oh, Rhonda, you slayed us again.

Okay, I think I’m going to break these up a bit, so I’ll stop there. Next up… more wonderful Whedon scholarship!! 

Nikki's Slayage Report, Part 1: Stairway to Hell

The Rockies. Double-doubles at Tim Hortons. “Deleuzoguattarian.” And the turning of water into wine.

Yes, this year’s addition to the lineage of biennial Slayage conferences was a force to be reckoned with, and I hope you’re ready to sit back and listen to my version of the events, and what I saw. Slayage 5 was a doozy, and more fun than I can remember having in a very long time.

First, for the uninitiated. As many of you who followed the Buffy Rewatch know, the Whedon Studies Association is a group of scholars who study the works of Joss Whedon, presenting and publishing various papers that enrich the understanding of the worlds he has created. In the beginning, it was pretty much Buffy-centric, which then extended to Angel. Now topics include those, plus Firefly, Dr. Horrible, Serenity, Dollhouse, The Cabin in the Woods, The Avengers, the Season 8 and 9 comics… pretty much anything Joss has touched. (Toy Story, The Astonishing X-Men, Runaways… anything he’s worked on is fair game.) Many of the scholars who belong to the WSA were involved directly in our Rewatch, writing about the episodes and helping to guide you through the entirety of the series.

Slayage began as a website devoted to publishing these papers as a journal, and in 2004 the scholars got together for the first conference in Nashville. I was invited to that one, but was 8 months pregnant at the time, so that was out. They gathered again in 2006 in Georgia, and the biennial tradition was born. In 2008 they met in Arkadelphia, Arkansas, and I was invited again, this time happily accepting to be the banquet keynote speaker. I was a little nervous (I don’t get nervous about public speaking unless I’m not quite sure who my audience is) because they were academics, and I was but a lowly writer of episode guides and former academic. But they welcomed me with open arms, and made me feel like part of the family. (And for anyone who’s been at academic conferences — and I’ve been at a few others now — the Slayage Conference of the Whedonverses (SCW) has the most welcoming, nurturing environment you can possibly imagine. All young scholars with an interest in Whedon should try it out in the beginning if they want to immediately find mentors that will be with them throughout their careers.) I returned in 2010 in St. Augustine, Florida, for SCW4, where I once again delivered the banquet keynote alongside Matthew Pateman, an esteemed Whedon scholar from the UK who had delivered the opening day keynote in Arkansas and who I’d become friends with in the intervening years. It was like a family reunion, with new faces and friends and memories to leave with. (If you go to the Slayage tag on this blog, you can see all of my writings about the previous two conferences.)

So when I heard SCW5 was finally leaving the South and coming to Canada, I was thrilled!! I immediately posted things all Americans should know about coming to Canada, and happily awaited the joyous event. This year I wasn’t delivering a paper, and could just sit back and enjoy everything. This year I was going to meet new people and generally fly under the radar. Yep. So… that didn’t happen.

There was one other thing that would be different at this Slayage conference: my best friend Sue — and constant Slayage companion — wasn’t able to make it. It was a lonely plane ride, a lonely cab ride, and in almost every panel I was thinking of the conversations we’d have been having after, and I saw countless things throughout the four days that I thought we’d both be doubled over laughing about. I missed you, Suzie!

I arrived in Vancouver on Wednesday morning. I was up just after 5 for an 8am flight, arriving just after 10 in the morning local time in Vancouver. I figured it was going to be a tough go trying to stay up late and switch my body clock over, but I was going to do my best. I hadn’t been to Vancouver in many, many years, and the last time I came was in the evening when it was dark. Flying in from the east during the morning is one of the most extraordinary things you’ll ever experience. I just sat in my seat staring out the window at mountains as far as the eye could see (there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so it was just snow-capped Rockies) and wondered if there may still be places on this earth that remain untouched by humans. Could there be some peaks in there that no one has ever set foot on? And what about those little towns you could see in some of the valleys? How isolated are they? Amazing. Here are some shots I took from my seat window:

Vancouver is nestled between the ocean and the Rockies, so as you’re staring out at this magnificent geography, the pilot begins to descend the plane and you feel like you’re about to land on the mountain range before you realize nope, Vancouver is right there. I defy anyone to go to Vancouver (especially when the weather is perfect) and not have one moment or more where they wish they didn’t have to go home, and begin wondering how they could make it work if they moved there.

I was staying with a group of Slayage people at the Gage Residence at UBC, where the conference was being held, and we were going to be roomies. I was the first to check in (the rest were coming in that evening), and immediately went into the room and was hit with a wall of HOT. The rooms were hot and stuffy, the sun was shining in through every giant window, and I ran around the common areas opening all the windows and trying to cool the place down a bit. Whatever happened to Vancouver being cool and rainy all the time? And not humid? Have all my Vancouver friends been lying to me when they mock me here in Toronto in my 100-degree heat, 120 with humidity?

I caught up on emails and such, and then decided to try to lie down for a bit and see if I could grab a quick nap. Shockingly, I went right to sleep (even in the most tired days after my kids were born, when I hadn’t slept for 1,389 consecutive hours, I could not nap) and woke up about an hour or so later, feeling completely refreshed.

That evening I went downtown (using the transit system, my iPhone’s GPS, and a prayer) and met up with one of my authors for dinner who I hadn’t seen in over a year, and then when I returned to the residence there was a whole heap of Slayage folks standing out front of the place. It was so great to leap out of the car and give (and receive) big hugs from people I hadn’t seen in so long. Ian Klein, who’s been my conference buddy since we met on the shuttle in Arkadelphia, wandered up a few minutes later (yay, more hugs!) and then we went inside where people settled in to their various rooms and Ian and I sat up and chatted until we just couldn’t stay awake anymore.

The view from my room
of the sun rising just before 5

The next morning, there was no official Slayage business until the reception that evening, so I had a free day. I was up just before 5 (even though I hadn’t gotten to bed until 11:30) for a couple of reasons: one, my internal clock still wanted me up early, and two, because the room was so desperately hot I left the curtains open so the air could come through the little window in the room… and my window happened to face east. D’oh. So I grabbed a quick shower, got dressed, and went outside for a walk (however, I stopped at the front desk to ask if I could rent a fan or buy one nearby, and the woman said they had tons of fans and handed me one: hurrah!!). I headed over to Marine Drive because I wanted to get right to the water’s edge. Not sure why this was a particular obsession of mine, but I’d seen the water for a couple of days now, and I wanted to be there. I found a secluded area where I stood for nearly 15 minutes and not a single car drove by (amazing) and just watched the sun as it rose above the mountains and gleamed onto the water. There was near silence, and I just heard the birds and smelled the flowers. Paradise.

It really is as peaceful as it looks. Incredible.

The rose garden, which distracted me (it doesn't take much,
but this would distract anyone)

And then my phone buzzed with a text from Matthew Pateman, saying he had gotten into town the night before and was now up because he couldn’t sleep (he was coming from the UK so his jetlag would be far worse than mine), and was I up yet and did I want to hang out? I hadn’t seen him since the previous Slayage, when the two of us had done the banquet speech where we acted like lunatics (he the ranting jargonistic professor and me the annoyed slangy blogger) and I texted back where I was, and he, too, was on Marine Drive walking in my direction. So I started heading towards him when I could smell roses. And that’s when I saw the rose garden, and jogged up the stairs into it so I could just smell the roses and take in the gorgeous surroundings (we went back on the last day to see it). Since I’m nothing if not easily distracted, I got a call from Matthew a few minutes later asking if I was still heading towards him, and I told him where I was and he said he was about 10 minutes away. So I continued walking towards where I guessed he was and three minutes later (we clearly don’t love the guy for his map-reading skills) we bumped into each other. Hurray for maps!

After hugs and catching up on life, loves, children, work, and current changes, we grabbed lunch at a place on Marine Drive and afterwards, I said I really wanted to find that water. We continued up the road a bit (it was much busier now, and much hotter!) and finally found a sign that said “Trail 6” and I clapped and happily started skipping along the trail, happy to have found my way to the water. It involved stairs. Not just any stairs… about 400 steps down I started thinking, “Oh my god, I have to come back UP these stairs…” And, 5,792 steps later, we found ourselves at the bottom of the stairs… on a clothing optional beach. D’oh.

Now, since then I’ve discovered that apparently the two of us are the only two people on the planet who are not aware there’s a clothing optional beach right next to UBC, but there ya go. I took off my flip-flops and started walking to the water through the sand… which quickly turned into a sprint when I realized how damn hot the sand was! I hit the water and… ahhhh…. And then we stood and looked off at how amazing the mountains looked, and the sparkling of the sun on the water, and the rock inlets, and what a gorgeous day it was. Well… that’s what I was doing. I can’t really attest to what scenery Pateman was checking out. (Ha.)

Of course, it was right around here that I suddenly realized I wasn’t wearing sunscreen of any kind. And I burn instantly. Nice one, Niks. Really nice one. So I went back up the beach to some logs that were under a tree and we sat there for a while as our feet dried. And then I got the bright idea that if we went further down the beach, we could probably find another trail with fewer stairs. Right? Of course I’m right. Off we went. It took less than a minute before Pateman was griping behind me in British, and as the terrain grew rockier, and the rocks got bigger, and the trees blocking our path grew in number, he was convinced I was out of my tree (no, wait, more convinced I was out of my tree) and started muttering something about the trouble with following Canadians and how the British are the ones who lead, or something to that effect. I was determined at this point, and continued skipping along and I said, “Oh, you will SO OWE ME something if I’m right.” He muttered something about giving me something if I was wrong (ha!) and just as I was keeping calm and carrying on and he was doing everything he could to betray his Englishness in that regard… we found the trail!!!! YAY! I WIN! I WAS RIGHT!!!

And…

It had just as many steps as the previous one did. Possibly more. UGH.

Ten minutes, one heart attack, and three hip replacements later, we were at the top, triumphant but exhausted. But mostly triumphant (in my case, anyway). We split off to go check email and whatever, and I grabbed Ian and we all headed back over to first register for the conference (more hugs with people we hadn’t seen yet) and then grabbed dinner at the same place we’d been for lunch, a place called The Grill just off Marine Drive. Great spot with good food, and close to everything we needed to get to.

Ian and I at the reception (I'm wearing my very special
Buffy Rewatch bracelet!) We're laughing because wonderful
Rhonda was trying to take the pic with Ian's phone, but I
think she turned it off, then downloaded his email, and
then surfed the web a bit before we got it. I adore her.

After that it was off to the Slayage reception!! I’d bumped into almost everyone I was looking forward to seeing, but there were some new ones there. David Lavery, one of the founders of Slayage, gave a PowerPoint audience participation game where we had to divide ourselves into teams (on mine was Matthew, Ian, and a first-time Slayage attendee named Jessica who had introduced herself to me earlier and told me she’d followed the Buffy Rewatch all the way through!) and Ian gave us the team name, “Why Dawn?” Heeheeeeee!!! Anyway, the game was a LOT of fun. We had a total of 8 clues, I believe, and in each case you had to guess which person associated with Whedon he was talking about. If you got it on the very first (difficult) clue, you got 10 points. Second clue, 9 points, and so on. My personal favourite was the 10-point clue, “I made John Locke walk on Lost.” David Fury! (I rocked the Lost clues.) Standing next to me was Stacey Abbott, who recently put out a book on Supernatural, and there were a lot of those clues as well so her team (Team Jetlag, which also included Lorna Jowett and Michael Starr) was going head-to-head with our team. The next night it was announced they’d won by a large margin, and we came in third! Woohoo! Go intertextuality! And then we all dispersed and headed back to respective rooms (most of the conference attendees were Team Jetlag at this point) and Ian and I watched Undercover Boss, which I’d never seen before but it was kind of badly awesome. End of the first full day.

Next up: the actual conference begins! For everyone who followed the Great Buffy Rewatch, stay tuned for more stories and appearances by many of the people who were involved in it: Tanya Cochran, Rhonda Wilcox, David Lavery, Ian Klein, Matthew Pateman, Alyson Buckman, Cynthea Masson, K. Dale Koontz (Guffey), Ensley Guffey, Steve Halfyard, Stacey Abbott, Lorna Jowett, Elizabeth Rambo, David Kociemba, Kristen Romanelli, Jennifer K. Stuller, Cynthia Burkhead, and many MANY more who weren’t part of the Rewatch. I hope you enjoy! 

SCARY SMASH!!!

(Thanks to Nikki Faith for this link.) I loved it for so many reasons, not least of all because this is how storytelling happens in my house, too. My son or daughter comes up with the basic premise and I start asking leading questions to make it go in different directions, and my husband and I are often in stitches at the result. The idea to take that story and animate it — starring Joss Whedon as "Gerald" — is genius. Also, watch how the SQUAT team is always squatting, hahaha!

The Dark Knight Wheezes

I've been waiting a VERY LONG TIME to post this... probably about 9 months. Last summer, probably around this very time, there was a teaser trailer put out for The Dark Knight Rises, which opens this weekend. It was a great trailer, but I must admit, I know I wasn't alone in listening to Gary Oldman's ominous words and thinking, "...wait, what? What did he say?"

No, I definitely wasn't alone, for a group of filmmakers that have formed a company called Flashback Films thought the same thing, and created a parody trailer for it. And one of those guys — the one playing Commissioner Gordon, in fact! — is our very own Sagacious Penguin, one of the most astute commentators this blog has ever seen. He was here with us week after week while we watched Lost, and I was thrilled when he emailed me last fall and sent this to me. I thought it was hilarious, and was going to post it then, but decided to wait until the movie came out. Make sure you subscribe to the company on YouTube; they have lots of great stuff where this came from.

 

Look Who's Coming to Storybrooke!!

Surprise, Surprise...

Guess who won a Mr. Pointy tonight? Completely unexpected and a devious and lovely and wonderful surprise by the Slayage folks. This wasn't the Long Mr Pointy that I'd been nominated for — I'd been telling people since the nomination that the bibliography was going to win that one for very good reason. This is an award they made special for me. I'll tell you more about it later (it's past midnight, or 3am my time), but I'm very thrilled and humbled and OH MY GOD I HAVE A MR POINTY!!!!! ;)

Happy Birthday to Us!

Why, turns out it's that time again... the birthday of Nik at Nite! Yes, six years ago today I started this blog, and it grew and grew and grew... and then I neglected it a little and it began to disappear, but let's blow the dust off this blog, wish it a happy birthday, pat yourselves on the back for sticking with it for so long, and get ready for my coverage of the biennial Slayage conference! I'm here in Vancouver right now and preparing for the conference to officially start in a couple of hours while spending most of the day enjoying this gorgeous campus. Also, I made the mistake of walking down FOUR THOUSAND STAIRS to the beach (my single-minded determination to do things like "see the water up close" knows no bounds) and had to walk back up them, so I'm a little sticky and gross and tired right now. But I shall rally on, and give you proper coverage of the event!

So for all of you who tuned into the Buffy Rewatch last year, you're about to hear about the works of Joss Whedon in even greater detail than we offered you then.

Happy Birthday, Nik at Niters!

The Next Chapter

Several years ago, my uncle gave me a copy of a book called In Praise of Slow, a non-fiction book about how much our society measures everything by time (our lack of it, how there’s never enough of it, how we’ve always run out of it) more than ever, and how we never take the time to just slow things down and enjoy life. For months after, he’d ask me if I’d gotten around to reading it, and I’d joke that I just didn’t have time. We’d both laugh.

A few months ago I read an article in The Guardian about a palliative care nurse who has spent many years sitting by the bedsides of patients at the ends of their lives, and she was talking about the Top 5 regrets people have on their deathbeds. Number 1 was, “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life that was true to myself, not the one that others expected of me.” Number 2 was, “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

My kids are 4 and 7. Today they graduate junior kindergarten and grade 2. In the fall they’ll be in senior kindergarten and grade 3. I don’t know how this happens. I could swear my oldest was just born yesterday. When she was 2 years old, I wrote this in a journal: “I want to keep her at this age for the rest of my life, still small enough to hold in my lap and rock to sleep, but big enough to walk beside me down the street while I hold her hand. Small enough to want kisses and hugs, but big enough to have a conversation with. Young enough to still be learning new things and not be jaded, but old enough to know what’s right and what’s wrong. I just want her to stay two forever. The other night we went out for a walk with her new wagon and I was walking behind her while she insisted on pulling it. Rob was in the front. I walked behind her, watching this little girl with the blonde hair that’s starting to curl up in the back, pulling this big wagon and not giving up when it got caught on things, walking in her flip-flops that are much too big for her (they’re for a 4-year-old, but she loves them because they’re too big), in her little sundress, with such a look of determination as she pulled that wagon, stopping every once in a while to pick a dandelion and turn to me and say, “Here, Mommy! Dandelion!” and turn and keep walking, and I thought how do I stop time and just preserve her like this forever?”

That was 6 years ago. And I can still see her walking in front of me in that little sundress, looking for the next dandelion. Now she disappears to a corner with her nose in a book, waving me off because she wants to finish this chapter. Part of me is delighted looking at a tiny version of myself at that age (any nook I could find, I’d squeeze into it and sit there for hours with a book), and part of me wishes she still needed me to read those books to her. I go into her room at night as she sleeps and I stare at her, marvelling at how tall she is, how big her feet are, how she takes up most of her bed in her perpetual octopus-like state when she's asleep. My hand used to engulf hers. Now, when she takes mine in hers, her long fingers wrap around mine and I’m once again surprised at how big she's become. (I know many of you are thinking, “Wait til she gets to university!!”) ;) 

But we get up in the morning, I rush to get ready for work while my husband gets the kids fed and clothed, and I hurriedly pull her hair up and brush their teeth, throw snacks into their bags and sign any paperwork that needs signing, zip up their bags, slather on sunscreen, pop hats on their heads and run out to the car to drop them off at their caregiver’s. My daughter runs into the school (usually seconds before the bell) and my son trots off with the caregiver to spend the morning with the other kindergarteners before he goes to his afternoon class. After school, caregiver picks them up and my husband grabs them from her house at 5, and I get home around 5:30, rush to make dinner (sometimes my husband’s already got it going), kids cry and moan and whine about something that’s happened that’s colossal and devastating because they both have really low blood sugar before they eat, and then we eat and then it’s rushing off to whatever extracurricular activities my daughter has, then get baths, and off to bed. Bed is usually a long fight where they want just one more page read or another glass of water, etc. That’s when I remember I needed to work with my daughter on her math and my son on his alphabet, but oh well… we’ll do that tomorrow night, right? Right?

Of course, at work I’m working on half a dozen things at once, I have a to-do list that on some days I can work through like a madwoman, on others it barely gets touched. And all day long my mind is half on them. I’m slipping out into the hall to call doctors or dentists or teachers, but usually I’m just calling my husband to remind him to pay the caregiver, or to run back to the school because I forgot the sunscreen, or I forgot to stick in those cupcakes I baked last night and they need them for the party that afternoon. My mind is always scattered these days, because there are so many things warring for its attention. I used to have a mind like a steel trap. Now I have to write down everything or I’ll forget. 

I used to write books. Remember those? I used to blog a lot, too. Now I’m lucky if I get a post up once a week. Or every two.

And with all this going on, I’ve hit that moment in my life that we all come to: the infamous crossroads, where you need to make a decision. Do you keep along the path you’re on, no matter how tough it is, because it’s a known place? Or do you venture into the great unknown and take a massive risk, hoping things will get better? How many of us wake up every morning determined to do something different, and at the end of the day realize we’ve done the same thing we always have, but tomorrow will be different? How many of us vow to slow down, to turn off that computer, put away the smartphone, and be engaged with family and friends and spend as much time as we can with our children? When I’m away from my kids, I want to be with them the whole time. When I’m with them, I’m constantly worried about the work things I should be doing. Even on weekends. I’m wired a certain way, and I’ve surrounded myself with people wired exactly the way I am. We have to be moving all the time, doing things. Multitasking.

Multitasking is just doing a bunch of things at once, and not doing any of them well.

The last two years of my life have taken me on an emotional rollercoaster. Two years ago, I was on top of the world: Lost was coming to an end, I was doing a ton of publicity for it, I had the final Lost book in the works, my kids were both healthy and happy and doing well in everything they did, I loved all the books I was working on at my workplace, my husband and I were happy and doing all the things we wanted to do, I was on my way to Slayage to deliver a keynote… and then it was just one of those things, where starting from the moment I got back from Slayage and lasting the next two years, if something could go wrong, it did. Things happened, my world was jolted several times, the rug was torn out from under me repeatedly, people I thought I could count on suddenly were not the people I could count on, and I began seeing those little inspirational sayings and NOT rolling my eyes, but thinking, “Yeah, that is totally true.”

I KNOW, right?? Crazy. ;)

And so, I’m taking the plunge. There’s a reason this blog has become a ghost town. Today, June 29, is my last day working in the offices of ECW Press, where I’ve been an editor since 1997 (outside of my freelance job as a writer, since 1998). That’s a really long time to be at one place. I’ve watched people come and go, and the office evolve, and the atmosphere change time and again, and the way books are made has changed drastically from when I started there. But I’ve always been the constant. I stuck with that place through three bankruptcies. I found some of my best friends in that place, and watched many of them leave and move on to other things, but thank goodness for email and phones to keep in touch with so many of them. My boss has been my mentor, a father figure, and a dear friend.

When I started working at ECW, I was a student, I still hadn’t finished my graduate degree, and I was engaged to be married. After I started working there, I moved in with my fiancé, then married him. I became an author many times over. I discovered new writers and watched them grow into rather well known ones. I got three cats. And after 14 years, I lost one of those cats. I’ve had four addresses since I started there, and bought my first house, then sold it and bought the second, and now I just sold this one and bought what may very well be the last one.

And, most importantly, I became a mother. I have watched my daughter grow from a feisty, demanding, high-maintenance baby into a confident, stubborn, imaginative, daydreaming, obstinate, beautiful little girl. I have watched my son grow from a quiet, easygoing, laid-back baby into a shy, sensitive, smart, hilarious, inquisitive little boy. They are the source of my biggest laughs, my deepest worries and frustrations, and my greatest joys. And my husband, who has gone from being a grad student to becoming one of the biggest golf journalists in North America, has been by my side every step of the way. When he’s not off golfing and calling it “work.” (Ahem.)

I used to keep a crazy pace. Before I had kids, I’d be in the office for 10 or 11 hours, every day. When I worked from home I’d work even longer, well into the evening hours. I’d come into the office on weekends and continue working because I loved the quiet. I threw myself into every aspect of the job, and LOVED it. And when I wrote books on top of it, I could start writing the moment I got home, while eating my dinner at my desk (my husband was a freelance writer so he’d be doing a similar thing down the hall) and write until midnight. I would start writing early in the morning on weekends and go all day and into the evenings. I wrote two books while I was pregnant with my daughter (books on Alias and Angel), and I figured they’d be my swan songs. I mean, how do you keep up this pace with kids?

And then I realized, you can. Or, at least, I can. On my daughter’s second birthday, the first Lost book was released. When I was pregnant with my son, I was writing the next one, and on maternity leave, I wrote the third. When I went back to work after he was born, I realized I still had the discipline I had before, but I was no longer working 11-hour days and part of the weekends; I was working 8-hour days, then coming home, being with the kids until they went to bed at 8 and then working until 12. Back up at 6 (that’s when the kids woke up) and continuing on. My husband took the kids home on weekends and I learned to work from 7am until 11pm, with two one-hour breaks in between. The most I wrote in a week was 65,000 words; the most I wrote in a single day was just over 15,000.

But then again, ask any mom who’s been on maternity leave with a baby whose feeding schedule is every 40 minutes and who never naps. Trust me, if that child naps for 15 minutes, we can do laundry, clean 3 rooms, and cook an entire lasagna in that time. You learn to become extremely productive in small spurts.

But something happened during that final book: my body said nope, I’m tired of you trying to be Wonder Woman. I was pushing myself too hard at work and trying to write a book on the side while using up my much-needed holiday time to do publicity for the end of Lost. I’ll never forget the long weekend where my husband took the kids away for a long weekend, leaving on Thursday morning, and I worked my 7am to 11pm days, and on Sunday I suddenly felt my head… vibrate. That’s the best way I can describe it. It was a buzzing feeling. I remember glancing at the time on my computer, and it was 3pm. Not late enough to quit, I thought. I glanced out the window at the house across the street. Then I looked back at my computer. 5pm. I rubbed my eyes… 5pm. I sat there for a moment as a jolt of shock ran through me. How could that have happened? I hadn’t fallen asleep, I was awake. But I had absolutely no memory of those two hours. It’s as if I had just powered down like a robot. It terrified me… and I also took the hint. I immediately stood up, went downstairs, and watched sitcoms for the rest of the evening.

While I was finishing up the final book, a dormant heart arrhythmia I’d been born with decided to wake up and say hello (apparently it’s brought on by extreme stress). Remember that scene in season 5 of Buffy when Riley goes to the hospital and they clock his heart at 150bpm and Buffy says, “Oh my god, no one can live with a heart that fast”? On last year’s rewatch, I thought that line was hilarious… because that’s what mine had clocked at. 155, actually.

I’ll say it again: Riley was a wuss.

Oh, but it didn’t stop there. Every time I thought I’d have one thing under control, something else would happen that would turn my world upside down. And it was all stressful. To protect the privacy of my kids I won’t go into details, but let’s just say the heart thing turned out to be the least of my worries. I can deal with me being sick, but when others get sick, I feel like the bottom drops out of my world. It’s ongoing, and we’re dealing with it, but much of my time has been spent reading books, trying to figure out what’s happening, and doing my very best to keep things under control. My kids, my extended family, my friends… one bad thing after another happened, and like I usually do, I internalized it, put on the happy face I’d learned to use since I was a kid (people have always commented on how I laugh constantly…). I’m one of those people who talks and talks and TALKS incessantly about everything in my life… until it starts to go wrong. And then I clam up. I stop telling people what’s up, I avoid any conversation that might lead to a, “So how are things?” because I don’t like lying, and I don’t like sounding like a pity whore. And that’s why I’m uncomfortable about writing what I just wrote: I don’t want anyone to feel sorry for me. Trust me, I know people who have gone through things in the last 2 years that make me look wussier than Riley. And that’s saying a lot. I used to handle anything that came my way. It was like I had Wonder Woman’s bracelets and could just “Ping! Ping!” any difficult thing away from me. Now I have a bodily organ that’s betrayed me, and it destroyed my bracelets, dammit!!

I know you noticed the blog wasn’t being kept up. Tumbleweeds were floating across my screen. And I tried to keep it occupied. The Buffy Rewatch helped hide the emptiness of it during 2011, but 2012 has been more obvious.

I was used to doing a million things at once and getting them all right. Now I couldn’t do anything right, or at least it felt like I was failing on all fronts. And every day I felt like there were people reminding me of things I was doing wrong. So I decided, ENOUGH. I had to make a change. I want to take on less work, but do an excellent job at it. I want to write on my blog, and bring people back to it and return to what I used to do here, and just schedule time in my day to do just that. I want to be an organized mom (HAHAHAHA!!! Oh… oh… that’s hilarious, I know… ) and actually have everything in on time, not realizing the day a permission slip is due that it’s due and I have to drive back to the house, sign it, and run into the classroom waving it in the air. But you can’t be a full-time mom, a full-time editor, and a part-time writer. There’s simply not enough time.

And so. I am leaving ECW… and Toronto. Yup, after 16 years, I’m leaving the big T-Dot, and heading back to my home town of London, Ontario. My husband and I have sold our house and bought a beautiful house that not only gives me my own office (MY OWN OFFICE… Oh, Virginia, you were SO RIGHT about me needing a room of my own!), but it backs onto a wooded area with several miles of walking trails. My daughter the explorer completely freaked out when she saw the place. And so did I. I will be near most of my family, and, very importantly to me, my best friend, who has been a rock to me for many, many years. 

I love so much about ECW, not least of which are my bosses, who not only supported my move, but offered me a chance to keep acquiring books for the press, and to keep editing. I’m going to continue pretty much doing exactly what I do now… but part-time. The other part of my time will be spending time with my wonderful children, being organized, blogging, and trying to find some sense of order in my life that went away about two years ago. And I will spend hours and hours in that forest with my kids, roaming the trails and climbing trees and just… slowing… down. Phones will be left at home, computers will be turned off, and lives will be lived. And I get to continue to work with my authors, who are also my dear friends, and keep in touch with the people in my office and continue to hone the skills I’ve developed for 15 years.

And maybe I’ll find the time to write that next book I’ve been thinking about.

Earlier this week my fellow employees had a good-bye dinner for me and one other person who’s actually leaving this week as well. My boss gave a heartfelt speech, I got verklempt, and when I got home I felt drained. I looked at my husband and said, “Fifteen years in the same company.” He said, “That’s quite an accomplishment.” I said, “Yeah… but it also makes me feel kind of old. Like, I’m retiring already.” He said, “No, you’re not. You’re preparing to begin the next chapter. You’ve completed phase one, and now it’s on to phase two. Who knows what that will bring?”

As I posted elusively on Facebook earlier this week (before realizing I was one of THOSE FB posters, like those people who post, “OMG I can’t believe that just happened!!” and people write, “What happened?” And they respond, “I don’t want to talk about it.”), I’m ending a chapter of my life this week and beginning the process to a new stage in my life. But I’m going to try really hard not to see this as a week of lasts, and hope that instead it’s a gateway to a lifetime of firsts.

I’m sad, but also happier and freer than I’ve felt in a very long time. I’ve made it through a very difficult period and I’ve come out on the other side, and I feel stronger because of it. I’ve gotten back to where I was, and yes, it shows. There are more grey hairs, there are more lines around my eyes and on my forehead where the worry planted itself. But I’m back, and wonky heart notwithstanding, I’m better. The people who matter are by my side. And the two littlest people who matter will be at my side more than they have in a long time.

And I do promise MUCH more activity – and interesting things – coming soon on this blog… which, with any luck, will soon be a website. You’ve all had enough down time. I’ll be back very soon, and I’ll make it worth your wait, I promise.

One of the most oft-repeated lines on Lost was “See you on the other side.” I feel like somehow, I’m on that other side, and I can’t quite see what’s out there yet (much like Christian opening those doors at the end... SOMETHING was there, but we didn’t know what) but I’m excited to see what it’s going to be. 

A few months ago, I finally read the first chapter of In Praise of Slow, and it was a catalyst for the decisions I’ve since made. I called my uncle to tell him I’d actually started it, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t read it earlier, and we talked about me possibly moving back to London. He said to me, “You know, no one gets to the end of their lives and says, ‘I wish I’d spent less time with my kids.’ You’re doing the right thing, kiddo.” I really do hope so. And maybe I’ll finally find time to read the rest of that book.