more thoughts on the Bullshit Reversal, and some case studies

Earlier, I talked about the Bullshit Reversal (better known as Refusing the Call). This occurs when the hero is presented with the opportunity to do what we know he's going to do because we bought our ticket to see him do it, except the hero initially says no and a variable amount of additional dialogue is required to talk him into it.

I hate the Bullshit Reversal for two reasons: first, it's a waste of time. Of course the hero is going to do the thing he initially refuses to do: the audience wants the hero to do it, and has tuned in based on the ads trumpeting the hero's doing of that very thing. The second, deeper, reason is that characters are defined by their choices. Thus, as a general principle, it is more interesting to see people doing things that they choose to do, things they *want* to do. You learn a lot more about the character that way. The Bullshit Reversal is bullshit because it is a falsification of two choices. For a Bullshit Reversal to be not bullshit, the hero has to have a good reason to initially refuse. A good, strong reason, not just "I don't wanna." The hero then has to have an even *better* reason to reverse this decision. The best Bullshit Reversal I have ever seen, one of the few that actually works, is in LAWRENCE OF ARABIA. ( This is it: )

fanfic continues going pro

TWILIGHT fanfic author turns to originals, writes BDSM novels that catch fire among Manhattan mommy set.

Michele Yogel devoured all 1,200- plus hot-andheavy pages of the “Fifty Shades” trilogy in less than two weeks.

“I couldn’t put it down,” admits Yogel, 33, who shooed away mom friends at her son’s school pickup because she didn’t want to be distracted from her reading.

“I’d be sitting on my couch at 7 a.m. with my two kids while they’re watching cartoons and drinking milk, and I’d be reading it on the Kindle app on my phone,” she says.

Which wouldn’t be a big deal —except for this Upper East Side mom was engrossed in a triple-X novel about a 27-year-old billionaire, Christian Grey, who seduces college grad Anastasia Steele and trains her to become his submissive sex slave.

“The last book I read was ‘The Help,’ ” says Yogel. “You know ... normal, mainstream stuff.”

“Fifty Shades,” an erotica trilogy dubbed“mommy porn” by some, is rapidly becoming a cult hit among Manhattan women, who are exchanging well-worn paperback copies and excited whispers about the book’s “red room of pain” (a sex playroom) while meeting at Fred’s at Barneys or parent-teacher conference nights at school.

It’s like “Twilight” for the grown-up set. Except, you know, with lots of sex instead of vampires and abstinence.

I cannot decide which of the above sentences is my favorite. (No, actually, I can. But it's not one of those sentences. It's this one, from deeper in the article: "The second and third books explore Grey and Steele’s deepening bond as they find true love outside the constraints of a BDSM contract, with a few plot points like an attempted kidnapping and lots of private-jet travel (don’t fret, the sex barely misses a beat).")

The author, E.L. James, is from the UK, works as a tv executive, and has two teen sons. The books are "Fifty Shades of Grey," "Fifty Shades Darker," and "Fifty Shades Freed;" they're published as e-books and print on demand by what the article describes as "a small Australian publishing house." Has anybody optioned "The Captive Prince" yet?