amatyultare (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amatyultare) wrote2018-12-25 02:55 pm
amatyultare) wrote2018-12-25 02:55 pm
Entry tags:
Questionable Media Month 2013, Part One, AKA let the Tumblr cross-posting begin!
*gently blows layer of dust off of Dreamwidth account*
Well! Tumblr is going down the drain and Pfio is not as stable yet as I'd prefer (though I do have an account there), so I think I'm going to make DW my home base for things that are longer than tweet or two.
As part of that, I'm slowly going to move all of my substantial posts and commentary from Tumblr to DW. I'm locking these posts for a bit so they don't flood people's dashboards, but I'll unlock them after a month or two.
First up is a chapter-by-chapter synopsis/review/rant of a book I read back in 2013. I labeled the series "Questionable Media Month" and posted one chapter per day (with two a day near the end of the month) every day in February.
A while back, a friend discovered one of my weaknesses: when it comes to certain types of bad books, if you give me a copy or even bring it to my attention, I feel compelled to read it. Which is how I heard about Bit Players, Has-Been Actors, and Other Posers. Here’s the Amazon.com summary:
Join Sadie Perkins in her quest for a lead role, as the Crudup High School drama club makes its own musical out of Twilight. Intrigue abounds. Why does Sadie’s rival Lucey really get the role of Bella? What’s behind foreign exchange student Nigel’s interest in high school theatre? And where does the show’s director, Mr. Ellison, disappear to three days before opening night? With everything falling apart, can the cast even pull off the show?
The ebook was $4.99. How could I resist?
I was not prepared, and neither are you.
Chapter 1 - Off-Kilter
We start in medias res, during a performance of Oklahoma. Hay sticking to our main character’s butt is apparently important. (Note – her name is Sadie, but we don’t find that out until Chapter 2.) Also, this book is in first-person, because of course it is. Also-also, this is the first time I’ve seen “twanged” as a speech tag.
Dude, unless you’re going to the school from Fame, you don’t call it your theater ‘career’ when you’re in high school and performing in a summer camp play.
As she goes out onstage her petticoats bunch up between her legs and almost make her trip? Um, petticoats don’t generally work like that? But as she curtseys she “reach[es] back and yank[s] at the fabric” so that’s okay. I just – what?
And then she starts crying and rhapsodizing about the special bond that actors share during a show. Also name-dropping Facebook because this middle-aged author needs to reassure us that she is Hip with the Modern Teenage Lingo.
Ready for some whiplash? Suddenly it’s three weeks later and she’s already a couple of weeks in her junior year. Which is the ~worst year ever~ because holy plot-dump Batman. The drama club is about to explode, there’s a hot foreign student, and her best friend went to California for the summer and came back…DIFFERENT. Did the author just tell me the entire plot of the book on page 3? Was there a prequel to this book of which I was unaware, and the author is trying to catch everyone up?
And then with absolutely no transition we jump back to what I must assume is a day or two after the summer camp show ended. She’s in her garage looking for dog toys when the old best friend Alex shows up and of course he’s newly hot and muscular and she doesn’t recognize him at first. And then she pulls a Carly Rae Jepson and runs away because she’s shy. Of course.
Um. She starts having a conversation with her dog about why she was shy. What the hell am I reading? (Also, her excuse for not knowing anything about his physical transformation was that he’s “a boy” so they didn’t really talk. Author, you JUST mentioned Facebook. People post what they’re doing on Facebook? Even boy people? Also, there’s this thing called tagging? Where you see when your friends are in Facebook photos? I’m just saying.)
So she goes to visit Alex and try to get over being weirded out by his hotness, and he’s all “I got my braces off!” and she’s in a literal trance over his well-filled jeans, like, I know it’s been a few years since I was in high school but I remember being a junior in HS and I was NEVER so hypnotized by a guy that I wasn’t able to maintain a conversation.
…wait, why did his aunt pay for his braces, when he lives with his parents?
Oh, I guess his aunt paid for his braces because his dad is “an alcoholic and a drug addict” and “left years ago” and so his mom works a lot but is poor. Okey-dokey. And then she gets jealous of the fact that he preferred California to home?
Oh dear Lord. She goes on an extended whine about how she never gets the lead part because…she’s too talented? And not pretty enough? And she’s always in comic relief or character roles and ‘making other people look good’? Oh, and they’ve performed High School Musical at her high school, because OF COURSE they did.
Blah blah reminiscing over her summer job, blah blah they play basketball, watch a movie and YouTube videos, blah blah can’t quite get rid of the crush but whatever, and “our ‘reunion’ lasted all of seventy-two hours”. And that’s Chapter One. Only…twenty-eight chapters to go. God help me.
Well! Tumblr is going down the drain and Pfio is not as stable yet as I'd prefer (though I do have an account there), so I think I'm going to make DW my home base for things that are longer than tweet or two.
As part of that, I'm slowly going to move all of my substantial posts and commentary from Tumblr to DW. I'm locking these posts for a bit so they don't flood people's dashboards, but I'll unlock them after a month or two.
First up is a chapter-by-chapter synopsis/review/rant of a book I read back in 2013. I labeled the series "Questionable Media Month" and posted one chapter per day (with two a day near the end of the month) every day in February.
A while back, a friend discovered one of my weaknesses: when it comes to certain types of bad books, if you give me a copy or even bring it to my attention, I feel compelled to read it. Which is how I heard about Bit Players, Has-Been Actors, and Other Posers. Here’s the Amazon.com summary:
Join Sadie Perkins in her quest for a lead role, as the Crudup High School drama club makes its own musical out of Twilight. Intrigue abounds. Why does Sadie’s rival Lucey really get the role of Bella? What’s behind foreign exchange student Nigel’s interest in high school theatre? And where does the show’s director, Mr. Ellison, disappear to three days before opening night? With everything falling apart, can the cast even pull off the show?
The ebook was $4.99. How could I resist?
I was not prepared, and neither are you.
Chapter 1 - Off-Kilter
We start in medias res, during a performance of Oklahoma. Hay sticking to our main character’s butt is apparently important. (Note – her name is Sadie, but we don’t find that out until Chapter 2.) Also, this book is in first-person, because of course it is. Also-also, this is the first time I’ve seen “twanged” as a speech tag.
Dude, unless you’re going to the school from Fame, you don’t call it your theater ‘career’ when you’re in high school and performing in a summer camp play.
As she goes out onstage her petticoats bunch up between her legs and almost make her trip? Um, petticoats don’t generally work like that? But as she curtseys she “reach[es] back and yank[s] at the fabric” so that’s okay. I just – what?
And then she starts crying and rhapsodizing about the special bond that actors share during a show. Also name-dropping Facebook because this middle-aged author needs to reassure us that she is Hip with the Modern Teenage Lingo.
Ready for some whiplash? Suddenly it’s three weeks later and she’s already a couple of weeks in her junior year. Which is the ~worst year ever~ because holy plot-dump Batman. The drama club is about to explode, there’s a hot foreign student, and her best friend went to California for the summer and came back…DIFFERENT. Did the author just tell me the entire plot of the book on page 3? Was there a prequel to this book of which I was unaware, and the author is trying to catch everyone up?
And then with absolutely no transition we jump back to what I must assume is a day or two after the summer camp show ended. She’s in her garage looking for dog toys when the old best friend Alex shows up and of course he’s newly hot and muscular and she doesn’t recognize him at first. And then she pulls a Carly Rae Jepson and runs away because she’s shy. Of course.
Um. She starts having a conversation with her dog about why she was shy. What the hell am I reading? (Also, her excuse for not knowing anything about his physical transformation was that he’s “a boy” so they didn’t really talk. Author, you JUST mentioned Facebook. People post what they’re doing on Facebook? Even boy people? Also, there’s this thing called tagging? Where you see when your friends are in Facebook photos? I’m just saying.)
So she goes to visit Alex and try to get over being weirded out by his hotness, and he’s all “I got my braces off!” and she’s in a literal trance over his well-filled jeans, like, I know it’s been a few years since I was in high school but I remember being a junior in HS and I was NEVER so hypnotized by a guy that I wasn’t able to maintain a conversation.
…wait, why did his aunt pay for his braces, when he lives with his parents?
Oh, I guess his aunt paid for his braces because his dad is “an alcoholic and a drug addict” and “left years ago” and so his mom works a lot but is poor. Okey-dokey. And then she gets jealous of the fact that he preferred California to home?
Oh dear Lord. She goes on an extended whine about how she never gets the lead part because…she’s too talented? And not pretty enough? And she’s always in comic relief or character roles and ‘making other people look good’? Oh, and they’ve performed High School Musical at her high school, because OF COURSE they did.
Blah blah reminiscing over her summer job, blah blah they play basketball, watch a movie and YouTube videos, blah blah can’t quite get rid of the crush but whatever, and “our ‘reunion’ lasted all of seventy-two hours”. And that’s Chapter One. Only…twenty-eight chapters to go. God help me.