The Dreaded Friend Zone

Unless you've been spending most of your time in seclusion at a Tibetan monastery, chances are you've heard about the movie adaptation of The Hunger Games and how it made obscenely large piles of money at the box office. The lady-friend and I contributed to its massive success on opening day, and we agreed that it was a surprisingly good adaptation – it remained very true to the spirit of the book, but it didn't cripple itself by trying to be a carbon copy. It changed a few things and dropped a few others, but most of the changes actually made the story work better by putting it into a wider perspective. In fact, the only negative reviews I've heard so far were from people who hadn't read the book at all, which is understandable: the movie basically takes it for granted that you've read the book and understand what's going on, so it doesn't necessarily work well as a stand-alone film. That being said, it's probably going to make a lot of people go out and buy the novel, so Suzanne Collins is pretty much making out like a bandit on this one.

In any case, The Hunger Games is aimed primarily at an audience of adolescent females, so it's required by law to have a romantic subplot in which two eligible young men throw themselves at the leading lady. Furthermore, the fact that it's a trilogy instead of a single novel means that the protagonist won't decide with whom to swap bodily fluids until the last possible moment – meaning that fans on “Team Peeta” and “Team Gale” (sorry, Team Haymitch; yours is a love that can never exist outside of badly-written fanfiction) will be cockteased with kisses, lingering looks, and conflicted feelings for three whole books before Katniss finally makes up her goddamn mind.

The Fans: KAAAATNISSSSSS WE WANT YOU TO BE WITH [STUDLY BACHELOR X]!

Katniss: Do you mind? I kinda have more important things to worry about right now.

The Fans: BUT KAAAATNIIIISSSSSSSSSSS

Katniss: WILL YOU BITCHES SHUT UP I AM BUSY HUNTING THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME OF ALL

The Fans: woooooow she a bitch. [Long pause.] GALE x PEETA OTP 4EVA

Suzanne Collins: … goddammit.

And this is why we can't have nice things.

In any case, Katniss does eventually choose one of the boys (SPOILER ALERT I'm not actually going to say who it is but it's pretty obvious), which means that everyone on Team Reject is all like “GOD Katniss is such a heartless bitch for not choosing [Reject] when they have such a meaningful friendship” and everyone who hears their whining feels the sudden urge to commit wanton acts of violence.

Aaaaaaand this brings me to my rant of the day: people need to shut the hell up about the Friend Zone.

What is the Friend Zone, you might ask? For the answer, let us turn to Rod Serling, one of Binghamton's only claims to fame except carousels:

Imagine, if you will, a young man. He is neither handsome nor athletic, but – like all men – he craves the attention of the fairer sex. For years, this young man has been drawn to a certain young woman: beautiful, popular, and practically perfect in every way. He would do anything to prove his love for her, but she doesn't think of him that way. He can only be a pal, a study buddy, and occasionally a shoulder to cry on – but never a lover. This young man is forever doomed to love a girl who will never love him back, eternally trapped in a twilight world of chaste hugs and blue balls: a world known only as... The Friend Zone.

Get the picture?

And just to be specific, this can happen to anyone – male or female, gay or straight. All that's required is a case of unrequited love and a counter-offer of a continuing platonic relationship.

Now, the Friend Zone is all well and good when it's brought up for humorous purposes, but I've heard enough people refer to it in serious discourse that it's starting to get a little disturbing. A lot of people are using the term in a reproachful way, insinuating that they're owed something by the object of their affection, and that's just plain bullshit. If you resent a girl for not feeling the same way about you that you feel about her, you're actually resenting her for A) not being a slave to your emotional whims, and B) not having control over something that people can't really control in the first place. Emotions are tricky sons of bitches – I've been known to fall for people when I'm dead-set on staying single, and I'm willing to bet good money that any number of my ex-girlfriends wish they could have been attracted to someone else instead. You can't control whom you have chemistry with, and you can't just snap your fingers and decide that you have chemistry with someone you've never been attracted to before – that's what alcohol is for, and it would be pretty damn expensive to go through a relationship in a state of constant inebriation.

And also it would probably be damaging to your health or something.

Another common claim about the Friend Zone is that it's the (nearly) exclusive realm of “nice guys.” You know the stereotype: girls always go out with jerks who objectify them and don't really care about them, but never with the sensitive, considerate guy who's always been there for her and would treat her like a princess. But here's the problem: if you're a “nice guy” who thinks that some girl is a bitch because you've been her friend for years and she still hasn't put out, YOU ARE ALSO OBJECTIFYING HER. The only difference between you and the asshole she's dating is that only one of y'all is getting laid.

Protip: If you treat someone like royalty, that someone will probably treat you like a peasant. Fuck that feudal bullshit; grow a spine and treat the object of your affection like a normal human being.

Does it suck to get rejected? Absolutely.

Is “I don't want to jeopardize our friendship” one of the most overused, cop-out-tastic ways to shoot someone down? God yes.

That being said... is there a healthier way to deal with rejection than vilifying the person who rejected you? Yuuuuuup.

Someone can be a bitch or an asshole for many reasons (e.g. “He drowns puppies in his spare time,” or “She pays hobos twenty bucks to fight to the death”), but “She doesn't want to make out with me” isn't one. But hey, if your “ideal partner” is stringing you along, using you as an errand boy, or just plain too busy fucking everything that moves to notice or care about your feelings, then maybe you need to examine your definition of an ideal partner.

Like I said, you can't just flip a switch and change how you feel about someone, so I'm not suggesting that you simply stop being in lust love. But if you know you have no chance with someone – and especially if that someone kinda treats you like crap anyway – then you should take a step back and decide whether or not it's worth it to keep being a lovesick puppy who never gets laid.

Either that, or you could just whine about the Friend Zone like a passive-aggressive douchebag.

Your call.

The Suckrificial Lamb

Two weeks ago, I posted about my undying hatred for Ted Mosby, the main character/narrator of How I Met Your Mother. While I stand by every word of that post, I feel that a certain amount of clarification needs to be made: yes, he's pretentious and insufferable and I want to kill him with fire every time he scrunches up his mouth in that fucking smug smile he has, but his overwhelming shittiness actually serves a greater purpose:

Ted Mosby is HIMYM's Suckrificial Lamb.

For those of you who don't know what that term means (possibly because I just made it up), let me explain. If you've ever read "The Lottery" by Shirley Jackson, you should be familiar with the concept of human sacrifice as a means to secure the greater good of the community. Long story short, some poor bitch gets stoned to death (spoiler alert) so the town can have a good harvest, and then everyone who's still alive does a little happy dance. (See also: The Wicker Man.) In short, one person's sacrifice – whether willing or not – can ensure the stability of a town and its livelihood, though some people claim that killing Nicolas Cage won't bring back your goddamn honey.

In any case, the same principle can apply to fiction. Every story needs to have a certain amount of Suck, which is another highly technical term I just made up to refer to all the negative aspects of said story. Suck isn't necessarily a bad thing in and of itself – it can be used to create character flaws and conflict and generally make the story more interesting, but it can also manifest itself in bad writing and other things which will alienate your audience. So, let's say (for the sake of argument) that you're writing a story, and you've just created a bunch of characters who are all just a little too awesome. There are three possible courses of action:

Option 1: Do nothing. Everyone stays improbably awesome and nothing bad ever happens to them. This is problematic because it's completely unbelievable and also boring as hell. The work drowns in Unintentional Suck.

Option 2: Distribute some Intentional Suck evenly between the cast members. This can result in more human, well-rounded characters, but it's difficult to do really well: not enough Suck and you have the same problem as Option 1; too much Suck and none of your characters are likeable. Tread carefully.

Option 3: Dump the majority of your Intentional Suck on one or two characters and let everyone else stay awesome. The character in question will be almost universally hated, but the others will seem that much better by comparison. Congratulations, you've just created a Suckrificial Lamb!

These types of characters are easily identifiable if you listen for the following conversational pattern: “I really enjoy [movie/show/book X], but [character Y] can [go to hell / eat a bag of dicks / get sodomized to death by rabid howler monkeys]. But everything else about it is great!”

A Brief Field Guide to Suckrificial Lambs

True Blood: Imagine everything bad that could happen to one person. Now imagine reacting to all that stuff in the worst possible way, usually by telling your friends and family to go fuck themselves. Throw in a drinking problem, an upper lip that never stops quivering, and a compulsion to bring up slavery every five seconds, and you've made yourself a heaping plate of Tara Thornton! Bon appetit. (Sookie and Bill tie for second place. I'm getting really sick of their shit.)

Buffy the Vampire Slayer / Angel: I'm more or less convinced that Joss Whedon emerged fully formed from his father's head, because the way that Dawn and Connor are written makes me think that he never actually experienced life as a teenager. Both shows are overflowing with drama of one sort or another, but sweet zombie Jesus those two take the cake for their whiny, obnoxious behavior.

Mad Men: In a show populated almost exclusively by awful human beings, Pete Campbell manages to be the one character that I can almost never bring myself to sympathize with. Interestingly enough, he's played by the same actor who played Connor on Angel. Hmmmmmmmmm.

Avengers: Earth's Mightiest Heroes: Hank motherfucking Pym. I mean, he's already loaded with Suck because one of his main powers is actually talking to ants, but then he decides that the only way to make himself less useful is to become a pacifist and actively sabotage his teammates while they're trying to apprehend some dangerous supervillains. Oh, and then he builds a super-intelligent robot who almost murders them all. Way to go, jackass.

You get the idea.

So, yeah. Ted Mosby... I hate you with a burning passion, but your suckrifice makes the rest of the How I Met Your Mother that much better. I would shake your hand, but I'm afraid your Suck might be contagious.

Operagasm: Dealing With the Uninitiated

Stop me if you've heard this one before (yes I know that you can't stop me and you're not actually hearing anything here but shut up and let me finish): a dashingly handsome young baritone who looks nothing like Harry Potter so shut up already sings an aria of some sort at a concert and is approached afterward by someone who enjoyed his singing but who knows absolutely nothing about classical music. Several moments of polite (if slightly awkward) conversation follow, until the enthusiastic listener goes and says something which makes the singer do a facepalm. As it happens, this joke has a multiple-choice punch-line:

A) “So do you want to sing on Broadway some day?”

B) “How does such a big voice come out of such a little body?”

C) “Has anyone ever told you that you sing like Josh Groban?”*

*Other possible singers include Andrea Bocelli, Michael Bolton, Charlotte Church, Sarah Brightman, etc. You get the idea.

We've all been there – and by “we” and “all,” I am of course only referring to other people who do exactly what I do. But it's unavoidable: sooner or later, every performer will have to interact with fans who mean well but have no idea what they're talking about. In such situations, you basically have two options:

1. Be an asshole.

2. Be a decent human being.

Now, the first option might be tempting at times, but it's important to remember that people who say these things to you are trying to pay you a compliment. There are a lot of people who know nothing about opera, because they're poor and opera is pretty much only for rich people, mob bosses, and evil geniuses. So be polite, be gracious, and under no circumstances should you respond to their questions like this:

“So do you want to sing on Broadway some day?”

1. “You know, I'd love to be in Rent. I don't think anyone's ever written a show about starving artists falling in love in a big city and then getting horrible illnesses before!”

2. “Absolutely. And while we're talking about wasting talent, I think Stephen Hawking would have been an awesome high school science teacher.”

3. “Fuck yourself.”

“How does such a big voice come out of such a little body?”

1. “Whenever I defeat another baritone in single combat, I behead him and absorb his voice powers.”

2. “Well, you're built like a brick shithouse. Why isn't your voice bigger, fatass?”

3. “Fuck yourself.”

“Has anyone ever told you that you sing like Josh Groban?”

1. “Fuck yourself.”

2. [See first response.]

3. [See first response again.]

Today's really a multiple-choice day, isn't it.

In any case, I'd be lying if I said that some of those responses didn't flit through my head whenever someone asked me one of those questions, but my standard response is just to smile and nod and say thank you. It's not that I don't want to sing on Broadway (I would in a heartbeat because I'm a musical prostitute and will whore my talents to the highest bidder) or that I think I'm a better singer than some random popera star; it's just that the comparison between styles is a little on the “apples to oranges” side. It can be a little obnoxious, but when you get right down to it, it's still meant as a compliment and it should be taken as such.

No one's going to come see you perform if you get a reputation for being an asshole to your audience, and maybe, just maybe, your performance will be the gateway drug that creates a new opera addict. Anything's possible, after all.

But seriously, don't tell me I sing like Josh Groban or I'll cut you.

How I Murdered Your Protagonist

As most of you have undoubtedly already discovered, Netflix's selection of movies and TV shows is kinda like heroin. You start out and everything is awesome and you're just like “Holy shit Mad Men and Doctor Who and Sherlock and all this other shiny stuff” but then you turn into a hopeless junkie who takes advantage of every free half hour to squeeze in some more Supernatural. Best case scenario, you manage to control the habit before it takes over your life, but it's much more likely that you'll: A) overdose and need someone to inject pure adrenaline into your heart, or B) you'll end up fighting a bunch of strangers in an alley because you think the rotting corpse of a stray cat is actually your dead daughter.

Actually, that last one is pretty unlikely unless you're absolutely godawful at writing comic books. But I digress.

In any case, one of the side effects of my Acute Netfliculitis was that I started watching How I Met Your Mother a few months back, and I pretty much loved it. The cast had good chemistry, the humor was surprisingly risque, and it had a fun tendency to mess around with over-used sitcom tropes. (Also, I'm more or less behaviorally conditioned to like anything with Neil Patrick Harris in it.)

In short, everything seemed great.

Somewhere along the line, though, things started to change. I noticed a flaw in the early episodes, but I was willing to overlook it because the rest of the show was so fun. I hoped it would get better, but it really, really didn't. In fact, I just finished the fourth season, and my mild annoyance has swelled into irrational antipathy.

I hate Ted Mosby.

He's obnoxious and pretentious and passive-aggressive and is always a bitch when the situation doesn't even remotely call for it.

I hate him and I want him to die.

Of course, I know this is impossible: Ted is the show's narrator, and the whole point of the show is that it's a story he's telling his children (a story that involves WAY too much sex with random women to be appropriate for sharing with one's own offspring). Barring the possibility that Ted pulls a Swayze at some point in the show's future and is actually contacting his children from beyond the grave (I guess Bob Saget would be a medium?), I'm sure he's going to survive until the show ends.

Le sigh.

The inherent problem with HIMYM is that the event which brings about Future!Ted's happy life is also the event which will end the show. It's How I Met Your Mother, not How I Met and Courted Your Mother and We Had Some Rough Patches but Everything Turned Out Okay in the End. There is a theoretical end-point for this show, but it's going to get dragged out for as long as humanly possible because it's a popular sitcom and popular sitcoms always hang around for a few seasons too long. The show has to keep going, so Ted also has to keep being an obnoxiously, consciously naïve wet blanket who's waiting around for The One to show up on a silver platter.

In short, the show is suffering from what I like to call the Incredible Hulk Dilemma.

You see, all Bruce Banner wants to do is settle down, live a normal life, have the government stop chasing him, and never turn into a giant green smashing machine again. That's all well and good, and maybe it'll actually happen some day – but the day Bruce Banner achieves lasting peace is the day that his story ends. No one cares about some scrawny irradiated scientist; they read those comics because they want to see HULK SMASH. If the unstoppable, rage-fueled monster gets to be happy, the story ceases to have any point.

The same phenomenon is at work in HIMYM, but it achieves the opposite effect: the plot point that's keeping the story going is actually the one I care about the least. That being said, I would probably care about Ted's love life more if he occasionally turned green, tripled in size, and went on a rampage through downtown Manhattan.

Oh well. The show has already surprised me several times, so I'm holding out for a major plot twist at the end: those kids we keep seeing aren't actually Ted's children; he's just gone crazy and kidnapped them and is telling them this big long story to try and make the Stockholm Syndrome set in faster.

Here's hoping.