Read “Daisy Jones and the Six” after “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”

2025-03-27T01:48:10Z

This was okay, but my hopes were a bit higher after Evelyn Hugo, which I really liked. Both were by Taylor Jenkins Reid within her “famous women” universe, so I feel compelled to compare them.

This had a lot going for it— it was well written in the oral history style, with nicely distinctive voices for the characters. It also did a thing that interests me a lot, examine and dramatize the creative process. Often times stories depicting artists just show their art kind of springing fully formed into the world, but this actually told a compelling story about the actual development of the meaningful work. I enjoyed that a lot, particularly when a character makes a creative choice that demonstrates growth in the journey they were on. It especially impressed me because the art in question was music, which is a notoriously difficult thing to write about evocatively. One might as well “dance about architecture,” as they say. And I am so music-ignorant— it’s the huge major gap in my genres of artistic knowledge —that I often have a hard time understanding the way people discuss it. But Reid managed to describe songs and the process of creating them very effectively, such that even my dumb ass felt like I could get a sense of what the work was like.

But I think one of the primary reasons I enjoyed Evelyn Hugo more than Daisy Jones (both the books and the characters) was because Evelyn felt very flawed and human, while Daisy just felt kind of archetypical and one-dimensional. Evelyn fights tooth and nail for things, overcomes real challenges, and has deep human flaws like self-centeredness and toxic ambition that influence her choices and make her feel real and human. Daisy is just superhumanly talented and charismatic and falls ass backwards into basically everything she wants, despite not really trying or working— and the one thing she does want but can’t have, the narrative makes it plain she’s basically already got it in all ways but one, and adds like a PS saying “But she can have it in the end!”

I’m realizing how much I dislike Most Special Boy/Girl in the World narratives. Not stories about people who are special, which of course can be fascinating. But when the whole world seems to be in awe of the character and props them up, with no counterpoint, no human frailty to balance and give it depth, or at least with the idea they did something to earn it in a meaningful way.

I’m also not sure how to feel about the heavy reliance on the art created in-universe being autobiographical. I know why writers writing about artists do that— it’s the easiest way to make the art they’re creating comment on the artist-characters’ journeys. And I can’t say that, as an example of that tactic, it wasn’t executed well. But it’s kind of played out to me and feels a bit lazy, rather than trying to make the in-story art speak to the meta journeys more obliquely or indirectly.

In fact, this story kind of DEPENDED on the artist-characters’ work being OBVIOUSLY autobiographical, that you could literally see what was going on in their lives by their public personas and performances onstage. I know that they were modeled on Stevie Nicks and Lindsay Buckingham, who may actually have been living out a lot of their own romance in their work and performances. But I actually think that plays into a huge fallacy, of artists in general and famous artists in particular, that you can always interpret their work as authentic representations of themselves. Like, Hollywood is super fake, a matter of persona and construction and carefully crafted imagery to capture imaginations and sell records. Just because that rock star is really good at LOOKING like he’s in love when he sings doesn’t mean he is— if he weren’t, he probably wouldn’t be so famous that you’ve heard of him, and can watch him perform with such a high profile. Evelyn Hugo did a much better job of exposing the falseness famous people adopt to build their careers in the public eye, which felt more real to me.

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October Review Challenge, #14 - Piece that got slept on

2020-10-14T22:31:45Z

October Review Challenge, #14 - "What’s a piece of yours you feel got slept on?"

Oh, Christ. All of them.

Okay, kidding. Though I wish people would pay more attention to the stuff I've made. People are really resistant to trying new media. GO OUT AND WATCH AND READ MY STUFF, OKAY? IT'S REALLY GOOD AND I WANT THE ATTENTION ON IT.

Anyway, for real. Among my pieces that I always felt were better than they generally got credit for, I would have to say my cowboy larp, The Stand. I finished it back in 2011, after playing in a western game that I thought had potential but didn't quite live up to what I wanted it to be. I've always liked westerns, even though I think the genre needs updating to tell meaningful stories in the modern day, and I put in an effort to do so in this game. I had been writing larp, alone and in groups, for some time by this point, so my sensibilities were fairly well honed. I came up with some fun mechanics— the way you could travel to various locations to investigate in the surrounding terrain, the little mini game where you could wrangle wild horses. And I wrote some really meaningful story.

The game is set in the late 1840s, during westward expansion and just before the Civil War. There was a lot of interesting stuff about how people use power in a situation where authority and law was what you made it, and how people interacted with war and injustice. I did my best to meaningfully include characters who were Native American, Mexican, and black instead of allowing it the history to be whitewashed, especially given the big political issues of the time period. I had a resolution that one third of each racial group present in the game would play a heroic role, one third would play a villainous one, and one third would be a shade of gray. At the time that seemed fair to me, a way to hold myself accountable, though these days I am very, very cautious about villainizing characters from marginalized groups. And I know I am more educated about racial representation now than I was a decade ago, so I'm sure I made mistakes. If I were ever to run it again, I'd make sure it was carefully edited for any possible failures on that count, but I do recall trying my best. Still, there were a lot of really rich characters in the game, with interesting conflicts, relationships, and mysteries to unravel.

I ran it three times. It was kind of a big game, so I worried about it being hard to fill after that. And while I got a fair bit of positive feedback immediately after, it seemed like it kind of immediately left everybody's mind. Nobody much talked about it afterward, and I don't think anybody ever heard of it by word of mouth. I guess the experience didn't stick, which makes me sad. I'm not exactly sure why. The best I can come up with is that the style of larp was very conventional for narrative "secrets and powers" games, to use Nat's term, and the western genre didn't exactly light a fire under anymore.

Still, I'm quite proud of the game. And I have good memories of it. Haz Harrower-Nakama and Ada Nakama were legally married during one run of it, playing characters who were romantically involved. I got such a kick out of that. And natbudin wrote a song called "Stand and Deliver" from the perspective of central character Malcolm Royce, who was called upon to make a stand against a gang of bandits that were threatening the town. It's a really good song, available now on Blue Sky, Nat's latest album on Bandcamp. Those things are pretty serious honors, so I guess I should count my blessings. It means a lot when people emotionally engage with one's work in any way. It's basically the thing I want most in the world from people.

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All Eyes on Me

Read “Daisy Jones and the Six” after “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo”

October Review Challenge, #14 - Piece that got slept on