The List

Romantic comedies (and any romance genre for that matter) are our modern-day equivalent of fairy tales. At least the “girl-finds-a-prince or the boy-is-given-a-princess-type” fairy tale. It has a discernable formula—two people meet, they fall in love, an obstacle separates them (and according to Hallmark movies, that’s at the hour and thirty mark), and then all hurts are mended to a happily ever after conclusion—and often used devices. One of the most used is the List.

You know what I’m talking about.

My first conscious awareness of it was as a kid watching When Harry Met Sally

One character, typically the guy, but I’ve seen some good lady lists too, enumerates all the reasons they can’t picture life without the other one. The one with the list always seems angry and frustrated to have to relate the list. The profess-ee stands, usually with tear-brightened eyes, in bewilderment. I’ve seen this done well and…not so well. Even so, I think it’s something that is glaringly absent from more traditional fairy tales.

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Prince to Cinderella

“I think it’s adorable that cleaning products make you twitchy and you insist on going around barefoot.”

Prince Charming to Snow White

“No one eats apple pie quite like you.”

Prince to Rapunzel

“I love how grounded you are even though you live in a tower.”

If you’re thinking those aren’t really lists, you’re right. I think it’s what keeps the romance out of fairy tales. Relationships are transactional and haphazard. It's like marrying the firefighter who rescued you from a burning building when thanks (albeit profound) and maybe baked goods would do the trick. I suspect if either party were pressed for specifics about why they were together, the reasons would be unsatisfying.

Why do I bring this up? I suppose the breezy offerings at this time of year for books, movies, television and even music. Some tropes are admittedly overused, but some are as welcome as a cool breeze on a summer day. And it led me to wonder, where do fairy tales fit in? My conclusion: they don’t—at least not in a way that makes me want to use them as a romantic ideal.

Adult Rant

Maybe it’s the mom of a teenager talking, but I’m really tired of protagonists with lousy impulse control. It might also be the reason I’ve been actively seeking out books with adults. When I think about it Chosen One children or <gasp> teens would be a nightmare. Despite knowing nothing and adults actively trying to help them they have a psychotic need to “go it alone” or “try things out: at night, usually in a forest or a creepy basement.

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I understand the appeal, especially in speculative fiction. Powers have become a short-hand for hormones just as monstrousness or shifting has for puberty. I get it—lots of changes! But at the risk of sounding old—GET OVER IT. Too often it gives the protagonist carte blanche to treat everyone abominably after which the protag is forgiven in time to fix the mess mostly made by the protag.

For all I know fairy tale characters could have become just as tedious in the same way given the depth and breadth of a novel-length story. There is potential.

Jack’s larcenous proclivities could be the medieval equivalent of a teenage joyride in a stolen car.

Red Riding Hood’s deviation from the path, a stand-in for teen rebellion.

The boy in the Snow Queen who was infected by the evil mirror shards and ran away, analogous to runaways and drug use.

Still, I feel the need to rant. But maybe it’s just me. I know there’s a ton of people who love the snarky teen, whose only redeeming feature is saving the world. For me, it’s not enough. Do I ask for too much? Maybe.

But I’m a grown-ass adult.

Questions for the Queen

I’ve been in analysis mode with Snow White for some reason.

I’ve decided not to question it.

Ever think the mirror was messing with the queen? It was a fairy mirror and fairies are notoriously fickle and endlessly mischievous. Maybe they were tired of getting the same question over and over again.

How many times do we have to tell this woman she’s pretty? Damn!

Either the mirror wanted to get in the queen’s head or there was some fairy-dwarf feud we mere mortals are unaware of.

And why kill the girl? Wouldn’t marring her perfection work just as well and easier to pass off as an accident?

“Oops, sorry you broke your nose falling down the stairs. Is that a scar?”

“Don’t worry, I cut my own hair all the time.”

Clearly being nice didn’t figure into the “fairest” bit if the mirror was already giving her rave reviews up until Snow started growing. And the story explicitly says the queen was vain. So, stooping to some mean girl tactics are less extreme when compared to her other homicidal tendencies.

What would you ask the queen?

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To Warn or Not to Warn

To Warn or Not to Warn...that is the question.

One of the reasons we read fairy tales is to be transported in a predictable way. Yes, it’s all fantastical, but there are big neon sign type clues that tell you it’s coming. If you save a golden fish in a lake, you better believe it’s going to get you wishes. If a fairy godmother comes with a dress for the ball, you’re going to catch a prince’s eye. And if some rando takes your broken-down old cow and gives you beans, your garden is not getting basic wildflowers.

But would you want to know that the story contains economic hardship, foot mutilation or the dismemberment of a giant? Does it effect the experience? Admittedly fairy tales are rarely read once, so you already know what you’re getting by the first reread. I call that the Shakespeare clause. You don’t read Shakespeare for the ending—he lays that out at the beginning—you read it for the language and the twists of the plot. Unless it’s the histories, and then you already know what’s coming.

What if all you want is some surprise twists and turns? This is the Shyamalan clause. Once you know the ending, is there any point to watching the movie again? Maybe or maybe not.

This is all a long way of working out my feelings for book blurbs that tell the reader what to expect from the book explicitly. I don’t mean the “Will she save the world or lose her life?” descriptions. I mean the warnings. Lately I’ve seen a lot of addenda stating how steamy the romance will be or giving trigger warnings about violent acts. Is it really fair for the author to have to give these kinds of descriptions for a potential reader? In the case of the trigger warning, I can see the desire to warn, but as to the heat levels for the romance—that feels like you don’t want to waste a reader’s time. And I think that’s where I struggle. Part of the reading experience is wasting time. After you finish school, any reading you choose to do is just that, a choice. I know we’re all super busy, but even the book I relegated to the DNF (did not finish) pile taught me something about my likes and dislikes. You look at the cover art, you read the back blurb, you skim the first few pages and then you take a chance. It’s relatively low risk, so why not leap? Reading is literally (and literarily) a pastime.

Jack didn’t hesitate at the bottom of that beanstalk, he just climbed.

As I said earlier, I’m on the fence. Blurbs can be misleading and then as a reader you feel cheated. I’m also the person who hates watching the Netflix trailers that give away the entire story and then I don’t watch because, why bother?

How about you? Do you want to know exactly what you’re getting when you open a book or is part of the adventure finding out as you go?

The Mushroom Fairy

My last post I focused on the magic that I found traveling on the west coast. A comment from one of my readers who lives in the west coast made me think about how there are times that we forget how magical our own backyards can be.

When I moved to my house over ten years ago, I walked my daughter to and from preschool. She's older now and walks herself, but I still enjoy walking in my neighborhood. Most especially I love seeing mushrooms. At this time of year they crop up everywhere and I can't resist taking pictures of them. Mushrooms are magical in my opinion--the colors, the shapes, the sizes, the suddenness--all of it is amazing and though I'm not a poet, it inspired me.

The Mushroom Fairy

She sets to work in the dampness of dusk

Arms laden with magic, air heavy with earthy musk

Soft soil delights in fairy tending

Seedlings thrive and ivy wending

By dawn all spells have been cast and thrice chanted

Greens, golds and grays securely planted

What sprouts are spongy clouds, an enchanted playground

Where fairies play and dreams abound

New Year, Old Story

Readers, December was tough. Something about dealing with the holidays under the malaise of a pandemic and all the other issues that came along with it made it impossible for me to sit down and write posts. It was a struggle to finish my next round of edits, but I prioritized that and finished. Now just two or three more rounds to go…

I know I’ve brought up Sleeping Beauty before, but the story seems right for so many occasions. Remembering to double-check your invitations. Being kept in the dark about a vital secret. Saved by a stranger, albeit creepily because he had to kiss you without permission. Learning to move on.

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In this instance I was thinking about the bit players. The townspeople and the royal couple, elder edition. After being asleep for 100 years, how do you shake it off? For the townspeople, would you be angry that the king and queen’s oversight caused a major case of sleeping sickness? For the king and queen, do you atone, abdicate or maybe form a constitutional monarchy after the inevitable uprising from your subjects? And of course, for Sleeping Beauty: do you pack a bag and decide to brave the wide world you’ve been denied? I’d like to think all that happens. I’d like to think that the happily ever after really involves everyone becoming wiser and more mature after such a shared experience.

And that’s what I hope for this new year. May we all become wiser and more mature after such a shared experience.

Random Joy in Weird Times

Whenever I'm given unexpected good news, I think about the Valiant Tailor. It was a small thing, working away at his trade and then pausing for a snack only to be interrupted by pestering flies. He ended their buzzing with one blow and was so tickled by the fact he made himself a sash proclaiming the feat.These days it's the small victories that have to be celebrated. For an indie writer, small victories have to be gathered up whenever possible to make sense of the madness of wanting to make this a profession. But they do come.My novella, a small but meaningful project, languished for a while. I was going to make it into an audio book, but the costs were a touch prohibitive. Then I was alerted to the fact that Draft2Digital got their printing off the ground. I opted to try it and then thought nothing off it with the world slowing swirling out of control. Today I was greeted by a surprise package:Seeing it made me smile. And I think smiles are definitely victories. Hope you find your smile today!

Miss Plot?

For those who don’t know, I love Star Trek. While I’m iffy on the original series, I’ve seen the original cast movies more times than I can count. I watched them after discovering my first love, Star Trek: The Next Generation. My love affair continued through Deep Space Nine, Voyager and even Enterprise (although don’t get me started on the last episode—as far as I’m concerned the penultimate episode was the finale we all deserved)!I love that all the shows were essentially a group of people we cared about and admired who tackled galaxy-changing problems every week (and let’s be honest, with all that’s happening in the world right now I could do with some problems that are addressed and solved in 45-90 minutes). The stories were what you called plot driven. It’s become a shunned phrase for some, but one I’ve never sneered at it.Fairy tales are an example. The story is the most important aspect. Sometimes the characters don’t even have names and yet we accept them. A story starts with a problem and within a few pages the problem is solved. Simple, yes, but effective.A funny thing happened on our way to create deeper stories—we ejected plot. Now T.V. shows, movies and books spend an inordinate about of time delving into a character’s psyche learning what drives them, what damaged them and if the two are the same. It does make for more nuanced storytelling, but it’s also exhausting.Don’t get me wrong, I love a good, meaty story with complex characters that are larger than the lives they lead. And yet, there are times when I crave something easier. I’m guessing this is the perfect time. Have your entertainment tastes been altered by quarantine?

Living a Fairy Tale Trope

It’s a familiar trope in fairy tales. Cinderella had her father’s estate. Snow White and Sleeping Beauty both had a cottage in the woods. Rapunzel had her tower with no doors. Belle had the Beast’s castle. In fairy tales, princesses tend to find themselves in isolation.It’s not unusual. These stories were written in a time when most women could measure their worlds in the square feet of their homes. Men worked outside—women, inside. But even modern fairy tales hold to the same truth. In the Disney movies Jasmine has to disguise herself to escape the palace and quickly has to return, while Elsa has been in seclusion for so long her sister Anna can’t even remember the last time the gates to the castle were opened.I’ve been thinking about these women a lot lately in light of recent developments. I hope Rapunzel had half the imagination of Anna or else she would have gone mad. Now, more so than at any other time I can think of, is when we rely on creatives to get over the sense of bewilderment. Maybe Snow White wouldn’t have let her stepmother in if she’d had Twitter to keep her company. Sleeping Beauty could have blogged about her weird kingdom without spinning wheels and started a Go Fund Me page for new clothes. And Rapunzel could have built a simple ladder from repurposed items in her room from a YouTube tutorial.

What I’m saying is, hang in there. Isolation isn’t as isolating as it has been in the past. There’s a lot of uncertainty, but there’s also a lot of creativity. And while I do want to thank all the brave women and men who are on the front lines of this pandemic, I also want to take the time to thank the women and men on the “homefront” playing music, writing stories, and doing the myriad other creative things that have made staying at home more bearable.And a shout out to delivery people—you’re doing amazing work! 

Fairy Justice

Imagine if you will Rapunzel still wandering the swamp with her twins in tow and the prince elsewhere, still blind and searching for his love.Imagine the maiden in Rumpelstiltskin handing over her baby to the fairy who demanded her as payment.Imagine the Woodsman never happened by Grannie’s house and Red Riding Hood still being digested in the stomach of the wolf.Fairy tales appeal to our very basic sense of justice. They’re so popular in childhood because for a child everything is concrete. There’s a bad person and a good person. The bad person is punished and the good one is given a new start.It isn’t until we’re older that we see the gray areas. The lack of agency. The casual brutality. The inequalities. And yet, we return to these stories or some modern derivative to feel a sense of vindication.Sadly, life rarely works out so neatly. Bad people continue to behave badly without correction or condemnation. Good people are overlooked It contributes to a sense of disillusionment that only the simply ordered world of storytelling can assuage.Sometimes fairy tales are the balm we need to ease the crazy that is modern life.

Musing on the Muse

Next week, A Noble’s Path, the second book in my Enchanted Path series, is being released. It’s a bittersweet moment. I’m hoping that it leads to more interest in the series, but I know it also means having to embrace more marketing. It’s not my forte, not because I’m shy, but because it means selling myself as much as selling my book. The book I don’t mind talking about—I get very few opportunities to do so—but talking about myself seems immaterial to the writing process.Then again, maybe that’s not so true. There have been quite a few instances lately where a book has been reviled because the writer was considered insensitive to the subject matter, which happened to be outside their background. I write about Latina protagonists because I’m Latina and I felt there weren’t enough of us as leads in stories. I write speculative fiction because I love the idea that a story is not limited to what we know. And yet I wonder if the former statement negates the latter?Is it limiting to only write from a Latina perspective just because I’m Latina? Would it be equally limiting to only write from a female perspective because I’m a woman? I think about all those fairy tales dictated and transcribed by men, who gave little to no agency to women. Caucasians who included minorities as caricatures as plot devices for stories. In those instances, the writers were limited by their gender and ethnicity not knowing anything but their own narrow perspective. It made their characters wooden and incomplete. And yet, it does give us some insight into white male rationales from a certain time period.I suppose my opinion on this subject has yet to coalesce. Should a writer be allowed to write from all viewpoints? Isn’t trying to get into the heads of people unlike yourself the beginning of attempted understanding? In an ideal world, it would be. In reality, it alienates people. One side defensive, trying to justify their right to write whatever they want. On the other, a cancel culture that precludes debate or discussion. Again, I haven’t made my decision.The only thing I can say is my desire to see myself and my daughter in stories drove me to write, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t seen myself in Anne Shirley, Elizabeth Bennet and Jo March as well as countless other women and men as I immersed myself in their stories. Great stories should be universal and personal, simultaneously because stories should connect us—joyfully, painfully, in humor and in sadness—by making us seek each other out and talk about it.

January with Thumbelina

January is a quiet, broody month. The end of the holiday season is as sudden as the beginning of it. The weather is unpredictable and rarely appreciated. And the new year has a sense of urgency to be different or at least better than the last. It’s all exhausting!I think about Thumbelina hiding out with the field mouse for the winter all cozy and grateful. Of course, the peace doesn’t last because the old field mouse because the next in a long line of creatures that think Thumbelina should marry. Thumbelina is forced to run away to avoid yet another arranged marriage. That’s what January feels like, a forced marriage between your expectations and other people’s—uneasy and slightly ominous.And yet, this is the month I’ve decided to release my new book. Crazy, huh? And yet…This post is a short one and I fear the next one will be, too. But routines are promises you make to yourself. So even a short post is a promise kept.Keep a lookout for A Noble's Path, book 2 in the Enchanted Path series.

Does this come in Faery?

I use lots of keystrokes analyzing fairy tales. Today I want to discuss why we're so fascinated by them. They're old and antiquated. They're stilted and repetitive. They're sexist and...really sexist!So why the appeal? One answer is royalty. In a healthy majority of the stories good deeds, virtue, cleverness, and beauty yield majestic results. Most end with a man or woman being married into the royal household. And yet. Royalty is old and antiquated. Stilted and repetitive. Sexist and...you get the picture.Nevertheless, they're two concepts I'm fascinated by despite my modern sensibilities. Fairy tales are little glimpses into wish fulfillment. Adventure. Rewards. Escape. But what about royalty?In real life royalty is a prescribed life. Everything is planned along a well-trod path. Separate and above. It sounds just as stultifying as being an indentured servant or a maligned orphan. Why is that considered a fairy tale ending?Personally, I like a little pomp. It adds excitement to the everyday. Fairy tales and royalty are the pop of color we all crave once in a while.

First Five Pages Syndrome

Hello FF Readers!I'm currently neck deep in rewrites, so pardon the short post.We’ve come to that time of year (which has become more and more nebulous) when TV shows make a last bid for our attention. Quite a few of those shows are in their freshman run and are competing with a huge field to get noticed. By consequence too many of these shows suffer from what I call First Five Pages Syndrome.Writers know that this is the mythical time it takes a reader to pick up a book and decide whether or not they intend to finish it. So, writers try with near maniacal precision to craft the perfect opening—five pages worth—to entice a reader to keep reading. As a writer I find this beyond stressful. As a reader, I feel like the first five pages are condescending. I give a book considerably more than five pages before I abandon it.TV shows do the same thing. They try to accomplish in one episode what used to take a whole season. It makes it feel hurried and overstuffed, like a badly made sausage. It’s something I keep in mind while I wade through another round of edits. Good stories are good stories and writers have to trust they’ll find the right readers.

Admitted--Not Accepted

Here’s a weird thought. Have you ever had that moment when someone makes it clear that although you’ve been admitted, it does not mean you’ve been accepted? It made me think about Cinderella.After Cinderella was found by the prince and then he married her, what happened next? She was, for all intents and purposes, a scullery maid who spent the better part of her life subservient to others. She may have been beautiful and good, but was she ready for a world that was not her own?It turns out there are many versions of this story as far back as Ancient Greece and exist outside of Europe. The story is essentially the same, with a widower and father remarrying a woman with daughters of her own who supplant the widower’s daughter. She, in turn is mistreated and maligned until a prince comes with some footwear from the lost and found and takes her as his wife. Happily ever after ensues.Or does it? A mysterious woman captures the prince’s imagination (and allegedly his heart) and he marries her into a royal household. Do they accept her? I keep thinking of Lady Catherine de Bourgh and her speech to Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice:“…for do not expect to be noticed by his family or friends, if you willfully act against the inclinations of all. You will be slighted, and despised, by everyone connected with him. Your alliance will be a disgrace; your name will never even be mentioned by any of us.”Was such a speech given to Cinderella when she first arrived at the palace? I’d like to think she was able to push back as Lizzy Bennet did, but Cinderella’s story was all about how good and compliant she was—not a firebrand. Did she accept her new lot—the same as her old one with better clothes—just as passively?We’ll never know what happily ever after looked like to Cinderella and her prince; we can only speculate. My only hope is that when any of us is confronted with situations in which we’re admitted, but not accepted we can say as calmly and coolly as Lizzy Bennet:“I am only resolved to act in that manner, which will, in my own opinion, constitute my happiness, without reference to you, or to any person so wholly unconnected with me.”

Author-versary

Last week a fellow writer and blogger celebrated her first year as a published author. I thought it was an amazing idea and wrote in her comments how much I lamented not having done the same. Not the post, but the celebrating. When you’re an indie author, work can be a bit of a slog. Everyday is an opportunity for a hundred and one things that will get your books noticed. Writing book two, getting book bloggers interested in reviews, posting news about your journey, fostering community with other indie writers. The list goes on and on and it never feels like you’re doing enough.Except we do.Do you know how many people tell me how amazing it is I’ve written books and published them, and I just shrug it off? About as many people who say they want to write a book too and never get around to it. And yet, I’m always reluctant to trumpet the successes. It’s a pity.So, I want to thank Azaaa Davis, author of the Demon Hunter book series for reminding me to celebrate. And now I’m going to remember to mark my author-versay (I really hope I make that catch on) from now on.Are you celebrating any writing milestones? #Authorversary

Fairy Tale Ambitions

I’ve been thinking about ambition lately. Wishes, yearnings, desires. It all sounds very intimate. Ambition is all about what we want deep down inside and work toward. We all have them, don’t we?Here’s where Snow White lost me. After escaping a death sentence because the queen’s servant takes pity on her and finding shelter with the dwarves, she sits back and cleans house.Cinderella lost me when she discovered her mother’s grave granted wishes asks for a dresses to go to a ball.The Sleeping Beauty, Briar Rose, barely wakes up and sees her family before they marry her to the who, according to the story, just happened to kiss her when the curse was weakening anyway.What they all have in common is ambition, or the lack thereof. Princesses (or in the case of Cinderella, aspiring princesses) hardly ever want anything aside from the essential. But given the power they could wield, they choose instead to be martyrs.Snow White could have easily told her story to the dwarves and at the end asked them to help overthrow her evil stepmother (who, if had resorted to killing children to be called the most beautiful must have been engaging in other nefarious endeavors). Cinderella could have asked for an escape route, money to fend for herself or if you want to get truly dark, a potion to rid herself of the evil women in her house. Briar Rose should have walked away—a hundred years under a spell and I’m sure she wanted to see something of the world before being tied down.Shouldn’t princesses dream of being queens? Queens seek power, respect (and yes some go the fear route), and to be more than they are. That’s not a bad thing. Ambition is part of human nature. What does that mean for fairy tale princesses?

Deadlines in the World of Make Believe

Fairy tales love deadlines. Midnight curfews. Seasonal mandates. Royal decrees with an expiration date. It ramps up the drama to know that not only does a protag have an obstacle to overcome, but there’s also a clock on when it must be completed. Readers love that.You know who doesn’t love it? Writers. We put our characters through the ringer, but nothing compares to the rollercoaster of meeting a deadline—especially when you’re an indie pub author. Deadlines are yours to control and without external forces demanding you meet them; they can become ephemeral. Empty. Pointless. It takes an extraordinary amount of discipline to keep to a self-imposed deadline. And sometimes we fall short.I know I did. I expected to return to my blogging within a month. Three months later I’m finally climbing out of my book edits. And I’m not done, but I realized that being a part of this community was something I missed. Not the deadlines for posting! I did, however, miss interacting with fellow writers and bloggers. But to avoid ramping up the drama in my life, I’ll be kinder to myself with deadlines and post every other week—at least until I finish edits for book two in my Enchanted Path series, A Noble’s Path.And thanks to those of you who kept reading even when I wasn’t writing.

Fairy Tale Travel

Besides reading, my favorite hobby is travel. I love seeing new places, visiting old ones, learning about history, culture, and I’ll own it, Disney World too. No shame here! Recently I took a trip to Ireland.For me, vacations are a departure from the everyday when it’s all about enjoyment and adventure. Maybe it explains my love of literature and writing, too, because characters are rarely ordinary and tend to find themselves in extraordinary situations.So, I started thinking about fairy tales—like I do—and travel. Granted, at the time most of these stories were conceived, travel was a dangerous undertaking and therefore rare. Even royals who went “on progress” stayed for months at a time because it was so arduous.And fairy tales were no exception…if you were female.Girls who traveled got eaten by wolves or betrayed by jealous servants. Was there a princess who ever left a castle voluntarily? Meanwhile, princes practically tripped over single women of marriageable age whenever they galloped out on their steeds. Then I remembered The Snow Queen.The original story found here barely resembles the Disney version. Gerda travels from place to place, facing danger all to save her childhood friend, Kai. It’s one of the few instances that I know where a girl saves a boy and purposely goes on an adventure. It's a beautiful tale, but hardly fun. In stories, travel is for a purpose not for pleasure.In short, fairy tale characters don't take vacations. Isn't it strange that one of the most fanciful art forms we share doesn't believe in time off? Honestly, there was no time, but I do my best to always insert a little whimsy.   

Fantasy Realness Overload

I acknowledge that my title sounds like an episode of RuPaul's Drag Race, but that's not what this post is about.I write fantasy. It's an umbrella term I'm comfortable standing under. I've written stories in adult fantasy, paranormal, historical fantasy, YA and even a middle grade fantasy about a boy who's half unicorn. Needless to say I appreciate the renaissance of Must See Speculative Fiction TV that is finally getting its due.But you should see my DVR queue. Episodes record one after the other and I can't bring myself to watch. The fantasy shows I watch are reflecting real life so much (minus magic, mutant abilities and aliens) that it's lost the one element which draws me to it--escapism.I read the news. I have a graduate degree in history. I know how bad the world has been and the parts that still are. Fantasy and sci-fi are supposed to mitigate the holy crow moments that come at me fast and furious daily. So even though I want to watch the eight episodes of The Gifted I've saved, I also don't want to be bothered. I want to be entertained. And because it's a show and not a movie the hoped-for pay offs are seasons away. It's a slog because they lack hope. A happy ending would end the show so the bad guys keep winning. The Gifted isn't unique in this. It's not the only show waiting for my attention.It's why I like The Magicians. It is so far removed from real life (despite taking place mainly in New York) that I can enjoy the reversals and plot twists. It's my escapism from what used to be my escapism. That and reruns because I know how those end.I'm not bashing shows that borrow from current events (I've watched my share of Law & Order marathons), but sometimes I want to breathe a sigh of relief and pretend--if only for 30 minutes or an hour--that nothing real is happening. Just me, comfy clothes, and