Alternative Valentine's Day Dates

It’s time for another Valentine’s Day. Since I no longer have to write valentines for every kid in the class (Note: If you underline your name when you sign one for a girl, it means you like her!), I thought I would mark the occasion by paying tribute to some women I would love to take out for Valentine’s Day. I’ve spent a lot of time with each of these ladies, and they’re all dear to me in their own way.

5. Harley Quinn

When Harley Quinn first appeared on Batman: The Animated Series in 1992, I was confused. I’d read plenty of Batman comics, and I couldn’t think of any instance where the Joker had a giggling female sidekick. There was Jerry Hall in the Tim Burton movie, of course, but this couldn’t be the same character. So I had no idea where Harley came from. By February of 1993, it didn’t matter. Harley had become as much a part of the Joker’s character for millions of kids as the maniacal laughter and green hair.

Poor Harley, forever trapped in a sole-dependent relationship she’s convinced is tragically co-dependent. To watch the Joker twist this naïve psychologist around his fingers in the 1999 episode "Mad Love" is one of the defining moments of the series. Harley is loyal to the end--if only she’d been corrupted, by say, an environmentalist, she might be out saving the whales with the same gusto she devotes to pillage and murder. She may be a high maintenance date, but if you win her over she’s yours forever. And ever.

4. Carmilla

Before Dracula, there was Carmilla, the original creepy Goth vampire hottie. She was the central villain in the 1872 short story of the same name, and she makes a great companion for Valentine’s Day. Okay, so she’s into girls. And she can apparently take the form of a cat, an old woman, a young woman, a middle aged woman, and some kind of blood sucking bird thing. But she doesn’t do that all of the time. In fact much of the time she can be downright polite. She’s lived a long time, so you know she’s well read and brings a lot of life experience to the table. You could do a lot worse.

Besides, since she only feeds on women, doesn’t that mean she’s safer to date than some kind of indiscriminate vampire like Salma Hayek in From Dusk Till Dawn? Case closed.

3. Samus Aran
In February 2003 I finally got the chance to play the original Metroid Prime, and I’m happy to say that on that Valentine’s Day Ms. Aran (she is a Ms., right?) was my date for nine consecutive hours of outer space adventure. She’s seen half the galaxy, fought thousands of monsters, saved countless star systems, and flies an awesome spaceship that hooks right into her impressive power suit. Plus she’s even got a maternal side, as evidenced when she protects a young Metroid hatchling from destruction and it adopts her as its mommy. Not even Leia Organa Solo boasts a resume like that.

All of Samus’ adventures are great, but the best of the bunch has got to be Super Metroid for the SNES. It’s one of the longest, most in depth, and impressive games made during that era, and a great way to spend some alone time with the lovely Samus. When a woman is flexible enough to roll into a sphere the size of a beach ball, you know there’s no position that’s off limits (not even that one you’ve always wanted to try but have been afraid to ask about.) She can twist herself into a ball, for God’s sake. There is nothing she can’t do.

2. That Elf on the Cover of the Original Everquest
It was tough to decide between this lovely lady and the night elf on the original World of Warcraft cover (look at those eyes!). If not for Everquest, though, Warcraft would still be a real-time strategy series, and millions of nerds would have been forced to turn elsewhere for entertainment. This magical elf was a trailblazer in the world of MMORPGs. Sex had been used to sell games before, sure, but never was there a product more deliciously tailored towards teenage boys. Earlier games in the genre had been hazier. The cover of Ultima Online, for example, had a wonderful painting of a massive medieval battle with dragons, wizards, knights, and princesses. And that’s enticing, sure.

But Everquest was different. Right there on the box was a promise: Spend hours upon hours leveling up in this game, and maybe, somehow, you might encounter a woman who looked like the elf in some capacity, either in real life or in the game. You weren’t a loser, because there was a beautiful woman right there on the box!

Though she would appear on the cover of almost every EQ expansion, we know so little about this woman. Beyond A) She’s a high-elf, and B)She’s hot, this woman’s life is a blank canvass, waiting for you to pay Sony $19.95 a month of your parent’s money to apply the paint.

1. Emily Bronte
Now here is a woman who could use a Valentine’s Day date. If Carmilla is the original Goth, then Emily gave birth to Emo. It doesn’t take many pages of Wuthering Heights to get the impression that its author had been burned in the past. For Emily there was no “happily ever after,” no all conquering love. Romance was a painful pulling apart of yourself that left you broken, scared, and alone in the desolate British countryside. She’s not quite as famous as big sister Charlotte or as beloved as fellow Brit Jane Austen, and that's just the way she likes it. I imagine she prefers to spend her time home alone writing poetry while blasting Nine Inch Nails on her headphones to the stuffy London scene.

Sure, she would reject the idea of a date at first. She’d be one of those people who would go on and on about how Valentine’s Day is an evil creation of the greeting card companies and that men shouldn’t wait for a special day to show women they love them. But once she was out of the house, she would have fun. There is a fine distinction between passion and pain, and no one could walk that line like Ms. Bronte.

Just be sure to call her the day after. Otherwise she’ll probably start to cut herself.

Happy Birthday, Edgar!

And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.

That’s a quote from “The Haunted Palace” by Edgar Allen Poe, who celebrates his 200th birthday today. It was later quoted in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Does it have any relevance to our current political or economic situation? Nope. Does it have some special relationship with what’s going on at my life at the moment? Not really. But it still gives me chills. It’s writing like this that likely inspired me on my ill-advised path to become a writer.

I’ve always been drawn to Romanticism (you’d have to be to name a blog after an Arthur Machen story, right?) and especially the Gothic Romance. There’s something about decaying castles, forgotten ruins, and other fantastic sights that hit just the right nerve. When I first read Poe in the forced readings of 7th and 8th grades, I thought I was reading the best of the best. The stories were enriched by their age—they felt like authentic slices of an archaic American past; even the very young country, it seems, had a place for ancient ghosts and decayed aristocracy. That first impression has never really changed, though I’m likely more of a Lovecraft man these days.

My early writing, then, was a mess of description and atmosphere. I would go on for pages and pages about a house or field, pouring out every word of description I could think of to bring the place to life. Nevermind that I had no idea who lived in the house, what happened there, or why anyone should care. It was enough to paint a picture with words. In the intervening years of searching for a writing identity, I’ve gone all the way from that flowery prose to free-verse poetry to clipped, dialogue heavy stories, back to overwriting again, on to stream of consciousness nonsense, and just about everywhere in between. But it was always, for good or ill, in the realm of heightened description and heavy sensory imagery that I felt most at home.

I’ve read some Poe recently, and what once seemed the very image of perfection now seems a bit stuffy, overburdened with ostentatious erudition, as Abigail Adams (Laura Linney) might say. Had I continued writing in that vein, I might have been very popular in the 1850s, but I doubt I would have much impact today. But in all that erudition there is a real sense of beauty and, oddly enough, joy in the world around us. People don’t write pages and pages of description anymore, but that spirit, the spirit of using writing to help transform the world into something magical that is the heart of Romanticism, is still alive and well.

In that way, I think, I’ve come to peace with the Romantic in me. Every book about writing will make a point of finding your voice, and that’s certainly relevant advice. The next challenge, however, after you’ve found that voice, is to embrace it and make it work for you. No screenplay will ever get read that has paragraphs upon paragraphs of description, of course (as it should be), but a well written, tight description of a place or person can go a long way towards creating an atmosphere. A screenplay, is, after all, a blueprint for images. “Like a rapid ghastly river…a hideous throng rush out forever…” is, in only a few words, about as visual of an image as you can get. It's not about running from your own writing style, then, in search of the "right" way to write. It's about finding ways to make that style speak to your audience, whoever they might be.

Edgar Allen Poe was born 200 years ago today, and with all the styles and writing philosophies and movements that have come and gone in those 200 years, his stories are still a blast to read. I can’t think of a better birthday present than to tell him thank you for making me a writer—a flowery, ostentatious, old-fashioned, Romantic writer. Really, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

(Actually a better birthday present may have been a cure for rabies, cholera, syphilis, or whatever it is that killed him at age 40. That would probably be more immediately helpful than knowing you inspired some dude living 160 years later. But I do what I can.)

(Unrelated note: Isn't this picture of Poe's mother the most frightening thing in the world? Seriously, right?! No wonder he was so odd.)