Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Will Grayson the counter counter counter counter post

"The pride was yours! The presumption was yours!"
----J Michael Stracznski

Elfarmy has has the audacity to call me audacious for calling her audacious here http://elfarmywrites.blogspot.com/2010/12/will-grayson-will-grayson-counter.html

She wrote "You might remember that collaborating on a book is not a competition."

True but in this book where the two authors are so different in style and one is, in my opinion, much superior to the other then it can be viewed as a competition. I also think that David Levithan should be the super famous one and not, as he told me when I ambushed him in a hallway at ALA, "The half of Will Grayson who isn't on TV all the time."

She then wrote "I never said that all of his characters and all of his plots are really alike"

Um, actually you did, "The summary of a John Green book: Somewhat nerdy teen with a specific quirk and lovable friends confronts an issue that is easily related to by teen readers through humor and character-recognized metaphor.
Either you like that plot line, or you don't. I do, and therefore I don't mind that the books are the same." and "Yes, Pudge, Colin, Quentin, and Will all share traits. They all sound somewhat the same within their minds."

I did not mean to diss Tiny Cooper and I also did not mean anything by saying that he was created by John Green. I was attempting to be snarky and funny and obviously my point was lost. I apologize.

"You can't say a book or an author is bad just because the main character (or one of them) annoys you. That just means you didn't enjoy the book."

I wasn't necessarily criticizing John Green for Uppercase Will's personality. But actually I disagree with your point. If the main character is not likable and he was supposed to be then that is a sign of a bad author. I am not saying that Will was supposed to be likable, I was just making the point. And he was somewhat likable I just didn't like the way he treated Tiny.

"You keep blaming flaws within the book on John. David Levithan worked on this book as well, and you can't attribute only the good parts of it to him." I didn't/don't. I enjoyed the play stuff and John Green can be both laugh out loud funny and touchingly romantic but I believe that he is overrated.

She then wrote that saying that John Green has good taste in music was "complimenting the person, not the author."

I know, I was trying to find something nice to say, and I did enjoy the music references in the book.

Elfarmy concluded by writing "I will think about this and most likely see that you are correct once I've written those short stories for my deadline. Who has author credit now? I do. In YOUR face."

Ok, congrats on the deadline and whatnot but it is author cred, not credit.

1 comment:

elfarmy17 said...

Actually, I found a (John Green) quote on the matter of basing characters off of himself: "My teenage self was very different from the guys I write about, but I think when people have watched a lot of my videos and heard my voice a lot, it's inevitable that they'll invest pieces of me into those characters. (This is troubling in some ways, but it also has its advantages, I think.)"