True Blood's Warlow is the most interesting vampire to come along since Eric Northman and yes, I only watch True Blood for the PLOT!

Okay True Blood, as of last night's episode, I'm totally engrossed in you. But there are days when I feel we are in a Bad Romance....

That's Warlow on top. And that's Sookie's "slay any vampire" power she's
holding to his head. If that isn't the best way to kill a vampire, I don't know
what is. And it's one of many reasons I like Warlow so much.

This season of True Blood started out with me doing much head shaking. I didn't see the need for the "Billith cam" (where we got introduced to the way Billith sees the world) unless it was for priceless gifs like Sookie Stackhouse saying the word "Fuuucck" in slow motion. Last season wasn't that great either, so my expectations were maybe a wee bit low. We had the oldest fairy in the world who loved Ke$ha, we had five hundred characters, we had Sam and Luna running around naked in every episode, and there was hardly any Lafayette (and I love me some Lafayette), but this season has somehow pulled itself up by the bootstraps and given us some real interesting characters.

Okay, this gif really is amazing. You should download it to your phone and
text it to anyone that messages you. It's funny as hell to get their reaction.

Now I'm freely admitting that I was deeply skeptical when I heard of Warlow. For those of you who don't know who Warlow is because you aren't watching the show (well I have no idea why you're even reading this if you aren't watching the show) but just to explain: Warlow is the vampire that killed Sookie's parents, and he's supposed to be very old and very powerful.

He killed Sookie's parents! But doesn't he have a nice smile? I guess if he
had a good reason to kill Sookie's parents it can't be all bad, right?

Warlow's the reason why Jason Stackhouse completely lost it and said "Knowing my parents were killed by a vampire is the worst thing that's ever happened to me." And that's a pretty big statement since in one season of True Blood, a pard of were-panthers spent at least six episodes gang raping him over and over. So either Jason has a gift for ignoring anything that has to do with sex, is stupid, or he just really didn't like hearing that his parents had been killed by a vampire. I'm actually not sure which of those three applies, but it's True Blood so it's not like any of their problems get so bad that they just can't hump their way through them, right?

In a world filled with super-powered freaks, Jason Stackhouse's super-power
is the ability to hump his way through any problem that arises. Damn. I think
I'm jealous of that.

Anyway, with regard to Warlow, I thought they were going for another kind of Russel Edgington-type character and I thought, "how unoriginal." But they aren't. Warlow is way more complex, and I love where this is going. And they're employing the same kinds of techniques that make Bill, Eric, and Pam interesting vampires, i.e. the flashback.

Now I know I just heard all you writers out there groaning, but the flashback really works in television (maybe not so much in writing). Last season with Eric, we flashed back to the time where he made Pam (think gas lamps and Victorian England and you've got the time perfectly). And with Bill, it's not been so much flashbacks as it's been surreal conversations with Lilith (the vampire goddess and perhaps the first vampire?) while being surrounded by bloody naked women strutting vagina first into the sun. And well...if you've got a nice body and are a feminist, I honestly can't blame you for strutting vagina first into the sun. It just might be the greatest meme ever.

Censorship courtesy of io9 :) Ladies, do you feel empowered yet?

So we get introduced to Warlow who is a fairy that's crossed with a vampire and who's basically almost as old as Lilith. She made him in fact (and we're talking about prehistoric times here). The first flashback we got from Warlow read "3500 years ago..." That's pretty damn impressive. But it also turns out, he's not really a bad guy. He was a good husband that got turned into a vampire by Lilith while putting water in a jug by the river for his family. And now 3500 years later, he's come to marry Sookie Stackhouse, and it turns out he loves her and actually saved her from her parents who tried to kill her. Yeah...in a seance with Lafayette, Sookie found out her "loving parents" really didn't love her all that much. They feared her, thought she was weird, and pretty much just wanted to get rid of her. Warlow stopped all that.

In another season, Lafayette said, "I am not gmail for all you dead bitches." But for Sookie,
he IS gmail...and for the record, I love the way Lafayette says "bitch." It's more entertaining
than when Jesse Pinkman says "bitch!" and that means a lot. Don't believe me? Here are
my scientific findings to back up my hypothesis:

Verdict: Lafayette wins!

Warlow can walk in daylight, saved her brother, and sure...he's done some bad things like destroy an entire nightclub of fairies that worked as strippers and then stuck Sookie's grandfather "the King of the fairies" into the dimension he had to live in and survive for a long time, but Sookie's grandfather was weird anyway.

There's that word again..."weird" and I've used it multiple times here. Is "weird" really something that I should use to describe True Blood? Don't answer that, or the universe may possibly explode. Maybe my whole point to this utterly pointless post is this: Warlow is hawt, and I'm weird because I watch True Blood.

So yeah, I think True Blood's Warlow is the most interesting vampire to come along since Eric Northman. Anyone else agree?

The Cool, the disturbing, and the vulgar of season five's finale of True Blood

Ever wonder how the oldest vampire in the world would die and what he'd say? Russell Edgington to Eric "Well, f*ck." Edgington was in the episode for less than five minutes. Like that joins some kind of Kate Beckinsale quota of flashing tit before title. I want to borrow a quote from Lafayette...

Kind of anticlimactic to kill the oldest vampire in the world like that, don't you think? However, "anticlimactic" does not describe Sunday's episode of True Blood. It was by far, the most satisfying episode of the season. I think it could have stood by itself, and HBO could have just canceled all the others. For one, this episode had a HUGE body count. It reminded me of "Body Count" by Ice-T.

The Cool Stuff:

Eric killed Russell Edgington after an entire field of fairies pooling their magic couldn't even make him pause in his monologue. You know it's bad when all the power you and your allies can muster won't stifle a monologue. But just like in the Incredibles, Russell got caught monologuing and Eric squished him.

Eric and Sookie were like Batman and Catwoman teaming up to face the bad guy. 

Salome got snuffed. She drank up the Jesus juice, only Bill spiked it with silver. How could you not see that one coming? And it wasn't the Jesus/Lilith juice anyway. Maybe it was just Kool-Aid.

Tons of people died. HBO cleared house AND it's about damned time. Jason Stackhouse took out like ten vamps. Eric killed ten. Tara killed about five. Eric's sister killed about ten. And in True Blood, when vamps die, they explode like water balloons filled with food coloring.

Jason Stackhouse as vamp slaying commando had me at "Fang banger!"

Tara French-kissed Pam. Serious vamp on vamp, interracial, face sucking goin' on. *Throws confetti. Best line from Jessica, "I KNEW IT!" Yes you did, honey. Yes you did. But so did we. *yawn

You would never guess that Pam was a former hooker by the way she dresses.

Bill became a naked vampire god. It isn't True Blood unless you are drenched in blood and running around naked. And his fangs were larger than Eric's. Yeah, you read that right. Vampires are size queens too.

Bill's fangs are bigger than Eric's. Sookie can verify that. She's been with both.

Alcide killed the deranged wolf-pack master and got twice as many lines in one episode as he's had all season. However, he didn't kill the wolf pack master shirtless. I take away one point for this short-sightedness on HBO's part.

Roz is killed by Sam expanding in her head. That's the only thing about this entire season of shapeshifters that paid off.

The Disturbing Stuff:

Sam Merlott doing reconnaissance as a house fly when he wasn't nude. It was ten minutes too long, which is probably precisely the amount of time they could have spent cutting all that out entirely. I guess they needed to wrap up the Emma storyline, not that there even was one to begin with.

Andy Belflour's pregnant fairy woman gave birth to four kids. Only birth sounds a lot like orgasms, there's lots of light emanating from "down there" and it apparently requires a lot of salt as she downed an entire container of Morton's. I guess fairies don't have to worry about their sodium levels.

My favorite lines from the birthing scene:

"My light broke."
"Who knew watching an alien giving birth could be so comforting?"
"Andy Belflour, you're a dick."

"I only slept with her twice in the time I've been dating you." At least
he's honest, ladies. Oh infidelity thou art a cruel mistress,
especially when the other woman is a fairy.

The Vulgar Stuff:

Jason and Eric hit it off like schoolhouse buddies.  Here's their exchange (NOTE that it's less effective unless you visualize Jason's lines said in a thick southern accent):

Jason: Fanger

Eric: Blood Bag

Jason: Leach

Eric: Breather

Jason: Dead F*ck

Eric: Meat sack.

Jason: "If I want to be a fool, I will be a fool. That's my God-given right as an American."

Ain't that the truth. Oh True Blood, I shall miss your craptasticness. Writers of the world who receive rejection after rejection, take heart from True Blood. Know that you are rejected because your writing is NOT THIS GOOD. Long live Sookie Stackhouse!

Have a great Tuesday. Ciao.

I vote for Russell Edgington as the new Jabba the Hutt

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True Blood is one of the worst things on television that you should watch regularly

My really guilty pleasure is watching True Blood during the summer. This show is just plain awful and the writing is so bad. Yet, I enjoy it thoroughly. Here's the laundry list of things that you really should never do (from JUST one episode), but no one is telling Charlaine Harris or the makers of True Blood:

1) Half the cast got high on blood and then gave each other...piggy back rides.

2) They hired an awesome actor (Christopher Meloni) from the Law & Order series and then just gave him a few lines and killed him off.

3) We have vampire night vision. Why do we even need this?

4) We have another plot line still continuing from the past...you know, the fae one...where I guess we give bullsh*t lines to Sooki about her luminescence and how she's basically a battery and is gonna run out.

5) We have another plot line with a raging Ifrit or Efreet or some djinn thing chasing Belflour.

6) We have another plot line with Lafayette and former lover Jesus (who is now just a disembodied head with his lips sewn together). Oh and the same lip sewing happened to Lafayette who had the courage to spit in the face of the guy holding the gun on him but then didn't take the gun away.

7) We have another plot line with Lilith becoming real. Why did we need another cast member?

8) We have another plot line with Alcide challenging the wolf pack leader for supremacy. The other wolf leader is unworthy because he's a drug addict.

9) We have another plot line with humans using Barack Obama rubber masks to kill vampires. They call themselves a "hate group" and serve someone called "Dragon" but we don't know who that is yet. They managed to suck in Hoyt who is angry at Jessica for dumping him for Jason Stackhouse (his buddy). Sam Merlott is kind of in on this plot line and does a lot of sniffing and rolling around on the floor like a dog. It's bad acting, looks bad, and is just plain stupid.

10) We have another plot line with Tara as a vampire who is slowly de-icing Pam's heart. Somewhere in all of this, Tara's mom shows up and says she's married to a preacher now and that "she can't have no daughter who is strippin'! and bein' all vampire-like."

My head is spinning. How could the writers let all of these plotlines get out of control like this. Why are there now so many cast members in True Blood that I can't keep track of them? It's ridiculous.

But yeah...I'll be watching again on Sunday. So terrible, I know. I'm part of the problem.

True Blood is one of the worst things on television that you should watch regularly. If anything, it will tell you that 1) terrible makes CA$H and 2) If you want to have respect as a writer, don't do this sh*t in your stories. But then, you probably won't make #1.

Have a great Wednesday.

I love that I live in the golden age of trash fiction

The website io9 recently did an article on the golden age of trash culture, and I couldn't agree more. You can read the whole article HERE. In the TL;DR version, basically "there is more corporate-funded trash being unleashed on the public than ever before... and meanwhile, there's a huge wave of new-media trash coming as well."

Isn't it glorious?

All the movie adaptation of this book needs is to cast
Alex Pettyfer as the guy. That's it. Ka-Ching. Google
Alex Pettyfer and you'll see what I'm talking about.

With free books and or 99 cent offerings on kindle, we have access to wafer-thin characters in just about every paranormal situation you could shake a stake at. The rise of erotica with such offerings as Fifty Shades of Gray and the subsequent sequels are plain awesome. Plus you can read smutty books on the kindle in the subway or on the train because no one can see what you're reading so you don't have to be embarrassed by the fact that you're secretly into whips and chains or possess bizarre sex fetishes.

On television insanity rules. Basically, nothing is too insane or too out there. Really, writing has broken through a boundary where you can literally string together a story from four random dice rolls (roll twice in the first section) and it seems to work. Example:

1 A guy who gets naked a lot
2 A girl who gets naked a lot
3 A vampire who gets naked a lot
4 A werewolf who gets naked a lot
5 An alien from the planet Shmieldorf who gets naked a lot
6 A ghost who gets naked a lot

1 Don't have sex but falls in tortured love
2 Can manipulate fire but is a cheerleader
3 Can read minds but feels guilty about that
4 Can teleport into a person's dreams and realizes they are actually dead in real life
5 Learns magic at a school for magical peeps
6 Drives a BMW hybrid while listening to Chicago love songs

1 Takes Newt Gingrich to a moon colony.
2 Saves the world from Goatzilla
3 Pimps minors out for sex
4 Finds a duck with super powers and prevents an alien invasion
5 Wins a game show in a post apocalyptic setting
6 Gets married.

Okay my rolls using my trusty 6-sided dice are: 3, 4, 4, 6
My new story plot is "A vampire who gets naked a lot and a werewolf who gets naked a lot can teleport into a person's dreams and realizes that they are actually dead in real life and then gets married."

I don't think these kinds of stories could have ever had a place in the 80's or the 90's because people would see through them. But now...bring it on baby. Just look at True Blood. I'm addicted to this show which has about as flimsy a writing as anything. In Sunday's episode, a guy talks to Bill Compton and gestures at a book. He says, "Do you know what this is?" Bill answers, "It's a Bible." But then goes on to say that it's not "THE Bible" but the "original testament"...you know...the vampire Bible and then they go on to say how vampires came first and were really god's children and how Adam and Eve came later and it just shows how humans were meant to feed vampires.

Brilliantly written dialogue? Alcide is awesome. This really is

the written conversation. Not kidding.

What did I think of that background? It was both brilliant and incredibly stupid trash and I loved it. The mire of bullshit that flows from writers these days is awesome. In our trashy culture...pure bullshit reigns. You can explain anything away in your plot--plausible no longer matters, just make it up. For television and movies, you don't even need to script it. This kind of thinking can be done on the fly as long as it sounds clever. And being random is now king.

Random True Blood baby eater character that got more lines 
than Alcide 

Random characters (like those in the above picture) are key to trashy stories. Have you seen Jersey Shore? Random is that cast's bread and butter. That and tanning, big bewbs, and tequila.

From the article, io9 points out that Michael Bay is one of the greatest film makers alive. Have you seen a Michael Bay film? All you need are explosions. That's it. Check out one of the greatest moments in last night's True Blood episode. Jessica (the red-head) gave Steve (a former religious pastor) a "Fang Boner" by describing Jason Stackhouse's butt and cock to him and offering to sell him for $20,000.00 since she technically has the rights to Jason's body. How is this at all great television? I have no idea, but I'm glued to the screen like millions of other watchers in America every Sunday with our bowls of Cheetos and our guts hanging out over our belts muttering, "damn...this show is GOOOOOODDDD. Mmmmhmmm."

So writers...WRITE MORE TRASH! WE NEEDSSES IT. There clearly isn't enough. Twilight, as an example, is getting rebooted by Lion's Gate because they don't want to lose their cash cow. Yep, they are going to cast a whole new group of people right after Breaking Dawn, Part Two shatters records this fall.

I can't wait. I hope they get a better looking Edward. #JustSayin

What's the deal with incest?

I watch True Blood, so I think those of you out there who watch it know where this blog post may be heading. But first, a few words. As far as the vampire series goes, it took a long time for me to really warm up to it. But there's just something hypnotic about all that white southern trash as a vampire setting. Girls walking around in Daisy Dukes with some hoodoo in the bayou and protagonists with awesome names like Sookie. And let's not forget Jason Stackhouse who's in the series for one reason...to be naked.

Eric and his sister just got done having sex while Bill (on the right) listened in.

So in the premiere on Sunday, Eric Northman banged his sister. And it makes me ask the question, what's the deal with incestuous storylines? In Game of Thrones, Jamie Lannister has an incestuous relationship with his sister Cersei (both are HBO Series by the way). Are writers using incest because it's shocking?

RECENT OBSERVATIONS:
I've heard Cassandra Clare has an incestuous relationship in her novel City of Bones (which will probably be turned into a movie one of these days).

In a Big Bang Theory episode, Howard Walowitz tells everyone that he lost his virginity to his cousin.

On one episode of Boardwalk Empire (another HBO show), a flashback-heavy installment revealed a sexual relationship between Gillian (Gretchen Mol) and her son, Jimmy Darmody (Michael Pitt).

So anyone else notice that incest seems to be cropping up a lot lately? Or is this an old hat and has been explored for decades and I'm only just noticing it?

I remember when I was much younger overhearing a conversation in a store where a high school kid playing a video game in an arcade bragged to another kid that he was having sex with his own sister. I remember feeling quite repulsed by that statement. And I still think I'm a little repulsed by it.

I guess I should try to be more open-minded. But yeah, each time I come across one of these plotlines, it shocks me.

Are any of you writers out there using incest in your books? If so, why?

And to celebrate the return of True Blood I give you the following gifs :)))

Lafayette staring down Alcide. Too awesome for words. Go Lafayette. For those that don't
follow this show, Alcide is frickin' huge. Like seriously...take an MMA fighter at the peak of their
fitness and you'd have Alcide. He's also a were-wolf.

Jason Stackhouse playing Rock Band. He seems undamaged psychologically
from the fact that he was raped for an entire day last season by were-panthers.
In True Blood, sex with anyone, anytime goes hand-in-hand with grits in the a.m.