This article was published in January 2010.

The end of the year means one thing for magazines: lists. Lists of bests. Lists of worsts. Lists of tops. Lists of bottoms. Lists of lists. Publisher’s Weekly caused an uproar when they released their list of Top 100 books for 2009. Only 29 female authors made the cut, and none of them cracked the top ten.

The Washington Post reacted with an article called “The key to literary success? Be a man — or write like one.” Salon.com responded in kind with “If you want to be a great writer, be a man.” Both articles were written by women, recalling advice from former college professors.

As I was reading both (valid) arguments that women get the shaft in publishing circles, I couldn’t help but compare the experiences of those women to the experiences of women in the fantasy genre. Sure, fantasy is full of epic male authors: Tolkien, Lewis, Jordan, Gaimen, Pratchett, Dahl. But fantasy also has its share of celebrated (and well-paid) female writers: Kurtz, Rice, Rowling, Weis, Bradley.

Is the fantasy genre simply more friendly to female writers?

I think so.

But why?

Let’s start by looking at the biggest bang (and bank account): J.K. Rowling.

By now, her personal journey is as well-known as that of of The Boy Who Lived. For example, that “K” in “J.K.” is not even her real name. When Bloomsbury bought Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, they feared that young boys wouldn’t want to read a fantasy tale by Joanne Rowling, so she adopted an androgynous “K.”

By the time Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire hit shelves, Rowling was the highest-profile author in the world, and everyone knew the “K” was for Kathleen. It didn’t matter that J.K. Rowling was a woman; what mattered was that she hurry back to her office and start writing about Hogwarts, Year Five.

Rowling also did another thing for female writers in the fantasy genre: she blurred the lines between children’s fiction and adult fiction. Women have always been trusted with cooking, cleaning and kids; so, the children’s publishing industry has historically been more accessible to females. During Harry Potter’s off-years, many adults went digging around in the children’s sections at their local bookstores, looking for an equally entrancing fantasy fix. And publishers paid attention.

But Rowling wasn’t the first woman to enjoy monetary success and critical praise for her fantasy writing. Before her, there were vampires — and three women who, er, brought them to life.

Marilyn Ross‘ Barnabas Collins series, Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro’s Saint-German series changed the vampire genre. Under their pens, vampires became brooding, tragic, poetic heroes. And unlike the implicit sexual themes in vampire stories before theirs, Ross, Rice and Yarbro made it overt.

What they did for vampires, Marion Zimmer Bradley did for Arthurian Legend. Her Avalon series boldly turned Camelot on its head and examined it from the perspective of female narrators.

And what Bradley did for Arthurian Legend, Katherine Kurtz did for Medieval fantasy lit. And what Kurtz did for Medieval fantasy lit, Tanith Lee did for sorcery.

I think fantasy is more receptive to women writers because it has a long, proud history of financially successful female authors in nearly every subset of the genre. While most writers will tell you they want to bring fresh, engaging concepts to print, they will also tell you that it is much easier to get published if there’s a record of success with what you’re writing. To that end, it would be disingenuous to tell a female fantasy author that men won’t read her books simply because she is a woman.

Of course, financial success and excitement from publishers isn’t synonymous with critical acclaim. Even with the accomplishments of the women I mentioned — and the dozens I didn’t — last year’s Hugo Awards were awfully slim on female nominees. [Editor’s Note: This year was better.) But I’m still not going to cry sexism.

If you want to be a great fantasy writer, they key isn’t writing like a man; the key is writing rich, textured, deeply-imagined stories. As women continue to do just that, it will only be a matter of time before full parity comes to the genre.

Or you could take a shot at writing your main characters sparkly genitalia.

Stephanie Meyer isn’t exactly celebrated, but she certainly hasn’t gone broke writing about vampires.

This article was originally published in December 2009.

Say what you will about the Twilight franchise — and there’s a lot you can say — one of the positives of the series is its prominent Native American characters, including a romantic lead.

And since you can’t turn on a television or computer without being bombarded by advertisements for New Moon, it got me thinking about the general lack of representation that exists for native people in mainstream entertainment, and fantasy doesn’t fare much better.

This isn’t to say that they don’t exist, however, and when I think back on all the various fantasy stories I’ve absorbed in my lifetime, there are actually some pretty fascinating characters…

7. Warpath

When the X-men recruited new members for the first time since their humble beginning, one of the new class was an Apache mutant named Thunderbird, who was very quickly killed off. Years later, his younger brother, also a mutant, took the name Warpath, and adopted a costume similar to his brother’s. Though he initially blamed the X-men for Thunderbird’s death, he later realized they were not at fault, and joined the heroic team X-Force.

6. Elisa Maza

In the 90s, Disney came out withGargoyles, a surprisingly dark and interesting cartoon series which featured a group of stone-by-day, flesh-by-night creatures who were connected to the human world by their best friend, a policewoman named Elisa Maza. What was impressive about her character was that she was a good person and a strong, intelligent cop, who just happened to be a woman, and half-African-American, half-Hopi to boot. This is the kind of diversity we need to see more of in children’s programming.

5. Danielle Moonstar

The second X-man on the list (which is a series that scores high points in diversity), Moonstar was a young girl of Cheyenne heritage when she was first brought into the X-men’s junior team, the New Mutants. Her main power was the ability to project images of people’s worst fears into their head, and she also had an empathic rapport with animals. Later on, she honed her psychic powers to be able to generate bursts of psionic force.

4. Little Bear

One of my absolute favorite books as a child was The Indian in the Cupboard, which is perhaps the story most responsible for imbuing me with a lifelong love of fantasy. For anyone who never read it, you’re truly missing out on a phenomenal tale of a young English boy named Omri who is gifted a magical cupboard that makes his toys come alive, and the relationship he forms with the proud Iroquois, Little Bear, who comes out of the cupboard standing six inches tall. Little Bear is actually a very real man who was transported from his own time by the magic of the cupboard, and he teaches Omri many things, among them how to respect those who are different from you. (There’s a movie version, but I don’t recommend it.)

3. Pocahontas

Though the fantastical Disney tale differs wildly from the actual history — talking trees aside, Pocahontas was a child when John Smith arrived, instead of a full-grown hottie with a figure Barbie would envy — Disney’s Pocahontas is a relatively decent entry in its animated musical repertoire. It tells the story from both sides’ points of view, and in Pocahontas we’re given yet another young, independent, headstrong female lead, as is the Disney staple. (It’s a shame the best song from the score, entitled “If I Never Knew You,” was cut from the final version of the film. You can, fortunately, find it on Youtube.)

2. Mani

An often overlooked gem, Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte des loupes) is a pretty cool film from our buddies in France, featuring a French taxidermist and his companion, an Iroquois warrior named Mani played by Mark Dacascos, who kicks a whole lot of ass throughout the film. What’s nice to see is that Mani, an outsider for not only not being a Frenchman but a Native American as well, is one of the most likable (and badass) characters in the film.

1. Jacob Black

All right, we knew this was inevitable. Love it or hate it, the Twilight series does boast not one but several Native American characters (belonging to the Quileute tribe), and the fact that Jacob Black is a romantic, heroic lead is nice to see in a genre picture such as this one. Now if only we could do something about those screaming tween girls.

So, as we can see, while there is some representation of Native American characters, the fact remains that across the media of television, film, and books, stories are still shamefully lacking. In fact, I think one would be hard-pressed to find many more examples of decent, 3-dimensional Native Americans in fiction in general, and that is, quite frankly, a travesty.

Maybe, in the end, that will be Twilight’s legacy: helping to bring Native American characters into the spotlight, and setting a trend for future writers to follow. One can only hope.

So I guess this means I’m on Team Jacob, huh?

This article was originally published in December, 2009.

Last week I pointed out the rather disgusting sexual appetites of certain fantasy heroines, namely Buffy Summers, Sookie Stackhouse, and Bella Swan.

But when you take a second look at these vampire/human couples, there’s another disturbing trend: an age gap.

Specifically, an age gap that in some cases spans several centuries.

And these are couples that in some cases involve a teenage girl. So why are we okay with this?

(Bill Compton of True Blood, you get a pass this week. Sure, you’re scandalously older than you’re girlfriend Sookie — you were in the Civil War, after all — but at least Sookie’s an adult.)

Let’s start with you, Edward Cullen, with your big dreamy eyes and your dirty, dirty hair. Sure, you may have that young, boy-next-door, Cedric Diggory-kind of appeal, but lurking behind that underdeveloped chest is the cold, dead heart of an old geezer. Does anyone else think it’s insanely creepy that an old man just keeps going back to high school?

It reminds me of that moment in Dazed and Confused when Matthew McConaughey says, “That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.” That was unsettling to hear from him, and he was a hot dude in his 20s!

And then you not only go after this girl, you fill her head with nonsense about how all you want to do is kill her, but you’re such a gentleman that you’ll behave and let her live. And somehow you get her to love you for it!

Do they not have Megan’s Law in Forks, Washington?

But of course, that’s merely Twilight, which came well after the couple that started it all: Buffy and Angel. Before they got all freaky with each other, it was relatively unheard of for humans to sleep with vampires. What did you unleash, Joss Whedon?

He was 247. She was 16. He kept telling her how much he loved her, and waited, patiently, until finally having sex with her on the night of her 17th birthday. You got that? He slept with her the moment she became legal. That’s just as creepy as all of those websites counting down to the day the Olsen twins turned 17.

And sure, she was technically legal when she started having crazy house-shattering sex with the punky Spike, but he was still over the hundred year mark, while she was a mere 21. And furthermore, he had been in her life since she was 16 — albeit as a mortal enemy — so he had known her in the context of being a child. What’s the deal, William the Bloody?

Aside from the fact that these are beautiful girls, one has to wonder just what someone who’s been alive that long would really have to talk about with a 16-year-old girl. Here’s a sample conversation:

Vampire: Hey, you.

Girl: Hey, you. You know what I was just thinking about? The ’90s. Man, the ’90s were kick-ass.

Vampire: The ’90s? Oh, please. They had nothing on the Roaring ’20s. Man, those days were the tops.

Girl: The top of what?

Vampire: No, the tops. The cat’s meow.

Girl: You have a cat? Aw, I love cats!

Vampire: Why don’t you listen to your i-Plod?

Girl: iPod.

Vampire: I miss speakeasies.

Yeah, not a lot in common. And yet in story after emo story, we see girls getting suckered in by these debonair vamps (and interestingly, almost never do we see these stories with the genders reversed).

So let this be a cautionary tale to concerned parents out there: if you see your daughter hanging around a boy with pale skin, an anguished expression, and an unusually vast knowledge of antiquated colloquialisms, get those crucifixes and garlic ready pronto. You’ll thank me when you don’t have any unexpected grandchildren with fangs.

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This article was originally published in November, 2009.

I’m a tolerant guy. I believe in the mantra “live and let live.” I don’t judge other people for what they do behind closed doors, provided no one is being hurt, everyone is an adult, and everything is consensual.

But I’m taking a stand: I think sex with a dead body is pretty effin’ nasty.

So why are all these fantasy heroines doing it?

Personally, I blame Buffy, that sexed up vampire slayer. The girl had a thang for corpses. Yes, corpses, plural, because she did the deed with not one but two vampires, and all the Buffy the Vampire Layer jokes that can ever be made have already been exhausted.

Psychic redneck Sookie Stackhouse from HBO’s True Blood didn’t just sleep with a vampire — she inhabits a world where many people, male and female, chase the excitement of sex with the undead, and are given the hilarious moniker “fangbangers.” Genius.

And Bella Swan from Twilight? Well … okay, I don’t really know because I’ve never read the books, but I read online that she and Emo King Edward Cullen do eventually make the beast with two backs, despite the entire story being some kind of weird allegory for teen chastity. (Because how else to encourage young girls to guard their virtue by inundating them with sexual images of guys like the one below?)

It’s funny, this new creature that is the sexually active vampire. Vampires have been sensual creatures ever since Bram Stoker penned Dracula, and Anne Rice reinvigorated the idea of erotically appealing vamps with Interview with the Vampire way back in 1973. But Dracula never actually sealed the deal with Mina Harker, and Anne Rice made it clear that these were dead bodies that just happened to be walking around.

Lest you think they work like living bodies, Rice specifies. Never one to shy away from descriptions of bodily functions, she explained that once a person becomes a vampire, their body evacuates itself, and they can never eat (food) again. Furthermore, all their … stuff … stops working, so no sex for Lestat, sexy as he may be.

But then along came Buffy and Angel, and their tragic romance — she was born to kill all vampires, and he got all fangy whenever he got excited. So naturally, who better to lose her virginity to? According to Angel, vampires don’t breathe, even though we see him panting and smoking cigarettes at times. What’s more, we’re informed that his heart isn’t beating. But if … well … doesn’t his heart have to beat, so blood can flow in order to … well, you see where I’m going with this.

In any case, ew.

All the rules of death were thrown at the window for True Blood, because those southern vampires have a lot of sex. With a lot of people. In every conceivable combination. They’re still dead, though, Sookie! Gross!

As for Bella, well, I can tell from the inescapable advertisements for New Moon that she’s involved in a love triangle between vampire Edward and werewolf Jacob, so I guess it’s a toss-up between necrophilia and bestiality.  (I say go with the werewolf — at least he’ll keep you warm at night.)

I get the forbidden love, Romeo and Juliet angle that a relationship between a vampire and a human offers.

But ew! Dead bodies!

• On Wednesday, my fellow Palantir-peer Tim O’Leary told you that Buffy alum Amber Benson was questioning the originality of the new SyFy comedy Human Relations, and was wondering if she was going to have to call Dark Willow on them. Syfy has broken their silence, and said “Poppycock!” Not literally, but they may as well have said it.

• Yesterday, Beauty and the Beast 3D disappeared from the release schedule at Disney. At the same time, Pixar saw Twilight: Breaking Dawn Pt. 2 releasing on November 16, 2012, with Monsters, Inc. 2, and promptly moved Monsters, Inc. 2 to November 2.

• Alan Ball confirmed he’s planning to bring witches into the mix on True Blood in season four, right in line with the books. Since that also coincided with Hurricane Katrina in the books, I’m not sure how he’s going to resolve it, but I do remember it means Sookie gets a cat.

• Pacey from Dawson’s Creek is probably going to guest star on Vampire Diaries for his old boss Kevin Williamson. No idea what character he’ll play, but I’m hoping he’s just a supernatural version of Pacey, because Pacey was already otherworldly.

• This is somewhat random, but a family was packing up their home in preparation for eviction, and found ten comics in the basement. One was an Action Comics #1, and that basically paid off their mortgage since it’s worth at least $1 million dollars. Why do I only find dead mice in my basement?

• I made our vampire-hating editor Brent cry when I told him that NBC bought a script for Zombies vs. Vampires, which is described as a “procedural buddy cop show.” Zombies in this reality are normal and part of society, just medicated. And the cop’s partner is a secret vampire. McG is going to produce it. Can we drive a stake through this craze yet?

• It turns out that men cry a lot at genre movies. Topping the list of movies that make men cry is Lord of the Rings: Return of the King. Bridge to Terabithia also made the top twenty, but the one that truly puzzles me is The Night Before Christmas (Tom & Jerry). Is that a typo?
  

• As long as we’re talking about things that Tom & Jerry have played, here’s an interview with Paul W.S. Anderson, who wrote the Three Musketeers 3D that’s underway. Probably not going to see that, just stay home and watch reruns of Tom & Jerry’s version on Cartoon Network.

• Twilight has invaded Riverdale in the new Archie comic, and MTV has a preview of the first eleven pages of the special edition spoof. Just at a glance, I had a hard time telling if it was spoofing Twilight or Vampire Diaries.

• The producer of Watchmen has licensed the rights to Mage: The Hero Discovered. I’m not sure if it’s a superhero thing or a magic thing – I just can’t get past the fact that he carries a “magic baseball bat.” If A.Rod had that, it wouldn’t have taken him so long to get to 600 homeruns.

• The list of guest stars for the 22^nd season of The Simpsons is endless, but the most notable is using Daniel Radcliffe to voice a Twilight spoof in “Treehouse of Horror XXI.” When franchises collide!

• Here are some blurry photos of the mechanics that make The Forbidden Journey ride at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter work. At least it looks like sturdy metal.

• The Guardian is a respected newspaper, so I was amused they created a list showing Ten of the Best Dragons in Literature. But it’s still respectable because they called it “literature” – see how that works? Which one is your favorite?

• Here’s a fairly detailed character description for Jerrik Dace, the elite veteran featured in the upcoming “Golems of Amgarrak DLC” for Dragon Age: Origins. He’s royalty – dwarven royalty.

• And apropos of nothing, here’s the trailer for Venture Bros. 4.5. There are people with magic in it, right? Oh, who cares – Venture Bros. is just awesome!

• I’m down with Sam Raimi, as he’s given us a plethora of geeky delights over the course of his career, from Evil Dead to Xena to Spider-Man. Not sure how I feel about his upcoming Oz prequel project, but the idea of him doing an apocalyptic scifi western is pretty darn cool.

• Jerry Bruckheimer recently tweeted a new still of Jack Sparrow in the latest Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and it … well, it’s really boring.

• So by now we’ve all seen this image …

• But here’s a new shot of Thor as he apparently is on trial and about to be banished to the human world. Notable in this pic is it’s the first shot of Loki with his iconic horned helmet, which you can see if you reeeealllly squint and look at said God of Mischief all the way to the right.

• If you’ve got some time to kill, check out the 5 Gaping Plot Holes Hollywood Knows You Won’t Notice.

• I will never, ever, ever forgive the creators of Lost for how they wasted six years of my life. But if you can overlook that the show was ultimately directionless and devoid of any meaning, sense, or plan, there’s apparently a twelve-minute-long prequel on the DVD of the sixth season.

• Ouch. Some reporter totally smacktalked M. Night Shyamalan to his face.

• Well, we’ve finally found a movie that looks like it sucks more than Twilight, and it’s … a spoof of Twilight.

Okay, I know that Buffy didn’t invent the wheel.

I know that Joss Whedon liberally borrowed from Anne Rice when creating his epic vampire series, and that Rice herself had taken a cue from plenty of other authors, Bram Stoker being one of the big ones.

But I think we can all agree that when a certain valley girl staked her way into our hearts in 1997, something special happened.

Sure, the 1992 Buffy movie was a silly camp-fest. But thankfully, the stars aligned for Whedon when the then-fledgling WB network wanted to turn the film into a series, and the rest is history. Buffy the Vampire Slayer became one of the most influential television shows of the past two decades, made stars of its young cast, and basically invented the TV genre of urban fantasy.

So isn’t it crazy how everyone is ripping it off and not giving it credit?

Does anyone remember that genius episode of South Park entitled “Simpsons Already Did It,” in which Butters realized anything that could possibly happen in the town of South Park had already been covered by The Simpsons?

That’s sort of the case with vampire shows these days, only in this case, The Simpsons is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and South Park is, well, everything else.

The biggest vampire properties these days are True Blood, Twilight, and The Vampire Diaries. All of them, interestingly, based on book series, and two of those three series were written after Buffy had gone on the air.

In all fairness, the Vampire Diaries book series, which featured a high school girl who fell in love with a vampire, was published in 1991, six years before the Buffy series aired. Therefore, they get a pass.

The other guys? Not so much.

Like The Twilight Zone before it, Buffy changed the game and influenced a huge amount of projects that came after it.

Let’s break it down:

Twilight, which was published in 2005 (2 years after Buffy wrapped), featured a high school girl who falls in love with a vampire. Their love is angsty and forbidden, and the vampire lover, Edward, resists having sex with her lest he lose control. Not a far cry from the situation with Buffy and her undead beau, Angel, in the beginning of the series.

Twilight also features Jacob, a werewolf with a gigantic crush, not unlike Oz, played by Seth Green, who premiered in the second season of Buffy.

Dead Until Dark, the novel which became the inspiration for the entire first season of True Blood, centers around Sookie, a perky blond waitress with telepathic abilities, who begins a steamy romance with a vampire named Bill. Sookie is tormented by her ability to read minds, and finds it refreshing that she can’t hear the thoughts of a vampire.

Great plot, right? It was even better when it appeared in the “Earshot” episode of Buffy, which aired in 1999, two years before Dead Until Dark was published.

And the influence extends beyond just these shows. Daybreakers, which came out earlier this year, took place in a world overrun by vampires, in which they harvest human blood with advanced machinery. Of course, this idea was already explored in the third season Buffy episode “The Wish.”

Blade: Trinity, which featured the extremely Buffyish Abigail (Jessica Biel), had a plot which took a known vampire slayer — Blade — and put him up against Dracula … a la the fifth season opener, “Buffy vs. Dracula.”

Even the campy, low-budget soap Dante’s Cove had a character named Van, a lesbian witch who became intoxicated by her own power, leading to tragedy. Sound familiar? It should, as that was pulled right from Willow’s arc in Buffy’s sixth season.

As stated earlier, I’m well aware that Buffy itself pulled from a lot of different sources, but there’s no question that, whether consciously or not, many authors are directly influenced by the plots of the ground-breaking show. I actually believe that most authors are unaware if their stories may seem a little too similar to Buffy, as the show has become so much a part of the cultural fabric — particularly among fantasy fans — that the influence may very well be entirely subliminal.

So, who knows? Maybe the future will bring us genre stories that feel less derivative. But until someone massively reimagines the vampire mythos, chances are they’ll still bare a passing resemblance to our Sunnydale cheerleader and her adventures.

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Another spring is giving way to summer, and you know what that means: Love is no longer in the air.

Oh, it’s easy to fall in love in March and April when the cold, harsh winter is melting away and the sun is shining on your face and the birds are singing and the trees are flourishing and the bumble bees are all exhausted from all their pollen-gathering and bee-copulating.

But summer is stifling and the kids are out of school and, if you’re me, you’ve been crawling around in your attic trying to fix your air conditioner eight out of the last ten days. Summer makes for grumps, and that means it’s far less likely that you’ll feel the delicious bite of cupid’s arrow — unless you take your cue from the world of fantasy.

Using the sci-fi canon as a guide, we’ve made a list of five ways to make someone fall in love with you, even in the sweltering heat.

1) Become a fighter pilot — 30 Rock has taught us a very important lesson about humor: Things are funny when they’re true. And so Liz Lemon’s series-long fascination with her imaginary boyfriend, Astronaut Mike Dexter, never gets old because we’ve all been there. Who hasn’t been in love with a fighter pilot at some point? (Seriously, show of hands. I don’t believe you.)

Han Solo, Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, Starbuck, Apollo, Buck Rogers, Maverick, Ice Man. It takes a perfect storm of athleticism, arrogance and cockpit know-how to become a top pilot, and when you master it, it’s like making the perfect mix CD. You can get anyone to fall for you at any time in any place on any planet.

2) Give a gift from the heart, preferably one that’s charmed — It’s not just the inexplicably gullible Uther from BBC’s Merlin that has been hoodwinked into love by donning an enchanted pendant (although we can’t remember anything as disgusting as him shagging a troll).

Since the beginning of time, women and men have been using enchanted gifts to woo one another. And it always works because humans are the most narcissistic creatures in the galaxy! We think we deserve gifts! Everyone of us is Snow White: we would all take apples from bitches because … who would want to poison us? No one! We’re lovely!

3) Trap the object of your affection in a confined space, become emotionally unavailable — This technique can work on a spaceship (see, again: Han Solo), but it works equally well with something as ordinary as a police box. Say you are a centuries-old, always-dangerous, occasionally-curmudgeonly, slightly-unhinged bloke with a Messiah complex and a bizarre fetish for being called “Doctor.” Do you think any woman in her right mind would fall in love with you? Absolutely not. Especially if you made clear at the very beginning of your relationship that you’re always being called to sacrifice those closest to you for the good of humanity.

But then, why do all of Doctor Who’s companions fall hopelessly in love with him? And even more bizarre, why do we — who have had the advantage watching eleven doctors over 40 years — fall hopelessly in love with him? We’re not sure. We just know that small spaces and emotional distance is a foolproof recipe for love.

4) Brew or purchase a love potion — No, we’re not talking about tequila. We’re talking that special witches brew that was explored so thoroughly in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. It can be administered directly from a cauldron, concealed in confectionery, even diluted in a beverage.

The effects of love potion are immediate and they are potent. It is a powerful aphrodisiac, as evidenced by the fact that the wealthy, handsome Tom Riddle shagged the disfigured pauper Merope Gaunt. (And that Ron Weasley thought he was in love with Romilda Vane when, well, have you met Hermione Granger?) The benefit of a love potion is that if you fall out of love, you can stop giving it. The danger of a love potion is that it can spawn the most evil wizard of all time.

5) Die — No, we’re serious. Accept the fact that you’re never going to snag the man or woman of your dreams and give yourself over to a vampire. In a few centuries, gorgeous women 200 years your junior will not be able to resist you. You can try to murder her. You can verbally abuse her. You can cause her families to be slain. You can hate her friends. You can invite her to a party where your family will try to suck her blood. You can even almost (accidentally) kill her while having sex with her, and it won’t matter. She will love you FOREVER.

You don’t need to be funny or smart or charming. You don’t even need to be handsome. All you need to be is dead. Also, you might want to think about growing your hair out.

Do you have any other sure-fire ways to make someone fall in love with you? Share them in the comments!

Bill Condon

Bill Condon, the director of the upcoming movie The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn (which could possibly be divided into two movies), has posted an open letter on The Twilight Saga facebook page.

Here’s the letter:

Greetings Twihards, Twifans, Twilight Moms, Team Edward, Team Jacob and Team Switzerland,

I just want to say hello to all of you and let you know that I’m stoked to be getting underway on the adventure of making BREAKING DAWN. As you’ve probably heard, I’ve been given a very warm welcome by Stephenie and Team Summit - who are super-focused, as you know, on getting these movies right.

I’m pretty busy bringing myself up to speed on what you already know by heart: I’ve read BREAKING DAWN twice, rewatched Catherine’s and Chris’s movies 2-3 times each, have all four CDs playing in my car, and have Catherine’s notebook, Mark Cotta Vaz’s companion books, and even Volume 1 of the graphic novel here on my desk - a corner of my office is starting to look like Hot Topic. I realize that this barely qualifies me for “newborn” status in the universe you’ve been living inside for a few years now, but a guy’s gotta start somewhere.

Like many of you, I’ve always been slightly obsessed with vampires, dating back to the prime-time series DARK SHADOWS, which I followed avidly as a kid. But that alone hadn’t been enough to get me interested in making a vampire movie, even though my early screenwriting and directing efforts grew out of a great love for horror movies and thrillers. Since making GODS AND MONSTERS thirteen years ago, however, I’ve been yearning for a return to a story with Gothic overtones.

The wonderful world that Stephenie has created has obviously struck a chord with you, and I don’t think it’s difficult to see why. For me, her characters are simultaneously timeless, yet very modern. Rooted in a beautiful, real landscape with a great sense of place, Bella, Edward, Jacob, and the rest of the Forks/La Push menagerie, experience emotions that are primal, and universal: desire, despair, jealousy - and it all comes to fruition in BREAKING DAWN. This is a final chapter in the best sense; not just wide in scope and scale, but emotionally charged and intense throughout.

I’m a huge admirer of the already-iconic Kristen, Robert, and Taylor, and wanted to be the one to work with them as they face the challenges of bringing your beloved characters to the end of their journeys. Really, what could be more fun than that?

Please feel free to ask questions in the comments section below, and I’ll do my best to answer them. I hope that this will be the first of many occasions I’ll get to check in with you as we set to work bringing BREAKING DAWN to the screen. I am excited and grateful to have all of you alongside me for my TWILIGHT journey.

All best,

Bill Condon

P.S. Answer #1: No, there won’t be any musical numbers

The letter already has almost three thousand comments.

Read the letter and comments here.

• The zombie-light film The Crazies came in third place at the box office with a respectable $16.5 million opening, behind the freak-out thriller Shutter Island and the dumb buddy cop movie Cop Out. I call it zombie-light because the zombies aren’t really undead, precisely. I’m a traditionalist.

• Speaking of fake zombies, they evidently have First Amendment rights to protest against the blind materialism of American life by preaching in a mall. At least according to an “activist” judge – we’re sure Rush Limbaugh will pipe up that hating consumerism is un-American.

• A dozen years after the first film, Todd McFarlane has a plan for his Spawn 2 film, and the plan is if you want something done right, do it yourself. He’s got most of a script, plans on directing, and possibly financing the film all by his lonesome. Seems fitting for a servant of the underworld.

• The very first teaser trailer for Tangled is out. This is supposed to be a slightly, well, tangled retelling of Rapunzel story, complete with magic, towers and princes. The Disney film comes out November 24^th, just in time for you to fight the Thanksgiving shopping crowds.

• Combining the musical with the fantastic, Andrew Lloyd Weber is set to risk everything on his Phantom of the Opera sequel (he calls it a continuation), Love Never Dies. If you ask me, gambling the legacy of a musical that has grossed more than Titanic and Avatar combined is either a sign of amazing bravery, or proof he’s so rich he doesn’t have to care anymore.

• The rumor mill says that DC Entertainment is moving full steam ahead with new films. The latest says they’ve found a director for The Flash – Greg Berlanti, who produces a lot of television including Brothers & Sisters on ABC. What do you think – can switch successfully from a sudser to a super hero? Does knowing he wrote most of Green Lantern help?

• In other DC Entertainment rumors, the reason Chris Nolan is consulting on the new Superman movie is that his brother Jonah wants to switch from writing to directing, and DC wouldn’t sign off unless Chris was involved. I don’t know what they’re worried about, at this point Superman couldn’t get any worse, unless they try and make it dark, like The Dark Knight.

• In still more collisions of Batman and Superman, that record sale price for a comic book set last week by Action Comic #1 with Superman has been eclipsed by Detective Comics #27, where Batman first appeared. The Caped Crusader fetched $1.075 million.

• io9.com takes a rather sarcastic look at Beastly, the new take on Beauty and the Beast starring Alex Pettyfer, Neil Patrick Harris and Vanessa Hudgens. While reimaging a fairy tale as a cross between Mean Girls and Gossip Girl should be a kryptonite for me, something intrigues me about this film, and it can’t just be the thought of Mary-Kate Olsen as a witch. If you don’t want snark, just watch the trailer/featurette.

• You know what else seems over-the-top at io9.com? Their look at the Marvel-branded television sets, which are evidently a real thing. When the new Disney division showed Marvel-framed televisions on the Disney-produced Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, I assumed it was a one-off, not a synergy thing. Silly me – Mickey Mouse televisions have been around for years, so it makes sense the House of Mouse would exploit Wolverine.

• It’s finally happening – Shout! Factory is releasing the Matt Frewer Max Headroom on DVD this coming August. I haven’t seen it in more than twenty years, and I really can’t imagine it holds up all that well, but I have fond memories of the show.

• Over at New Scientist they have an interview with roboticist Noel Sharkey about Artificial Intelligence, the pros and cons, and the likelihood that we could create it, and whether we should create it. It’s a lot more fun to read than it sounds.

• Fueling his likely undying fear that Edward Cullen is a role he will never escape from, Robert Pattinson was trying to do press for his new slacker film Remember Me and they couldn’t resist asking him about Twilight: Breaking Dawn, 3D, and whether the book becomes two movies. I’d honestly feel sorry for the guy, except for him being impossibly rich and handsome.

• There’s the coolest Lego spaceship I’ve ever seen over at SciFi Wire, and that’s not just because I always had a soft spot for Stargate: Atlantis. Plus, they link you to the 15-year-old artist’s (what do you call a Lego-sculptor?) Flickr site for even more of his starship constructions.

• Over at AfterElton.com, I took a only-slightly queer look at Alice In Wonderland, but mostly that was an excuse to post a mountain of media about the movie. There are trailers, interviews, and my favorite – the character progressions showing how they got the Red Queen’s head to look that big or the motion capture on the Tweedles. It’s really fascinating how much of this movie is CGI.

• Looking to help Legend of the Seeker get a third season? The folks over at HerBlueEyes.com (a Bridget Regan fan site) offer helpful suggestions, and even a sample letter to be sent to local affiliates!

• And finally, this picture may be old, but it tugged at my heart strings. Evoking the signpost from M*A*S*H, we see distances to all our favorite fantasy realms. I wish I knew who created this so I could thank them.

One of the biggest cultural mysteries of our generation is: why would a fully-functioning, adult member of society leave the house wearing a Team Edward t-shirt?

In their new documentary, Explorer: Vampire Forensics, the National Geographic Channel set out to answer that question. Well, not that question, exactly; NatGeo was more concerned with the origin of the vampire, so they employed a little forensic anthropology to a centuries-old myth.

It was sort of Bones meets Anne Rice — an interview with a vampire skeleton, if you will.

Using Mark Jenkins’ book as a springboard, National Geographic trekked back to the Middle Ages to study the legend of the undead.

The vampire wasn’t always a sparkly, tragic emo hipster with bedhead, of course. Or a leather jacket-wearing, strong-jawed Angel. Or even a caped aristocrat with a widow’s peak and a pale face. That’s all 19th century European romanticism. Jenkins believes he traced the legend of the vampire all the way to the Indo-European past.

China’s centuries-old version the vampire is a monster of the undead who spreads disease and discord. Unfortunately, for him, he’s not much of a fly-er. In fact, his only mode of transportation is hopping.

India’s blood-suckers are spirits who weren’t cremated properly. They can reside in the air and are small enough to accidentally swallow. Unlike tasty insect legs in a bar of chocolate, though, India’s vampire spirits feast on intestines.

Greece — Santorini, specifically — is home to lush tales of the undead. But these vampires didn’t always want to destroy people. Some came back to help out in the family business, or steal vegetables from the garden. (Vegetarian vampires! Just like the Cullens!)

Jenkins thinks the legend of the vampire probably sprang up around the time of various plagues. In the 19th century, Europeans were completely clueless about things like bacteria and hygiene. In the face of pandemics, folk tales usually took over. When people dug up mass graves and saw bloated corpses and compared that to the emaciated bodies of their dying relatives, they just assumed that the undead were somehow absorbing life from the living. Similarly, decomposing clothes and bloodstained mouths were thought to have been defiled by vampires.

Also, when villains were put to death, it was easy for mass hysteria to set in, and for people to think they kept seeing the undead baddie wreaking havoc around town.

As far as flying goes, vampires only really became associated with capes and bats during stage productions. If an actor needed to disappear through a trap door, there was nothing like cape flair to distract the audience. (For further proof of the power of cape distraction, see: Elvis, Adam Lambert.)

Much of NatGeo’s documentary focuses on “The Vampire of Venice,” a partial skeleton of a woman that was discovered in 2006, on the Venetian island Lazaretto Nuovo. The jaw of the skull had been opened and a brick was shoved between her teeth, an exorcism technique  Italians used on vampires.

Here’s a clip from Vampire Forensics:

So the origin of the vampire can be traced back to the plagues of the Middle Ages. And the modern vampire can be traced to the plague of the Twilight Saga. Somewhere in between, good people like Bram Stoker and Anne Rice and Joss Whedon made vampires a staple of the fantasy community.

Here’s hoping someone else comes along and puts the smackdown on the sparkle. It’s the modern version of the brick between the teeth.

Vampire Forensics will air various times on National Geographic, including this Saturday at 4 PM.

• Best of both worlds? The Spider-man team met with the Avatar team to discuss filming the next episode of the webslinger saga in 3-D.

• Speaking of Avatar, here’s a fun little story about how the power of love changed the ending of one particular screening of the movie on Valentine’s Day.

• And in case this just wasn’t enough Avatar news for you blue-cat-monkey-people lovers, James Cameron is planning to write a prequel to the blockbuster … in the form of a novel.

• In the never-ending avalanche of both remakes and franchises, this article speaks of the efforts to turn Dean Koontz’s Frankenstein novels into a series of films. Anyone excited about this? Hands?

• I know everyone out there is just dying for more vampire stories, something our culture is almost completely deprived of, so thank the powers that be that The Vampire Diaries has been picked up for another season. The article is informative, but I found calling the CW the “C-Dub” and the show’s performance its “perf” to be just on this side of obnoxious.

• And while we’re on the subject of vampires (don’t you love these segues?), here’s another potential 3-D story for you. Turns out that the masterminds behind the Twilight saga are trying to figure out if they want to project Taylor Lautner’s glorious six-pack abs into the third dimension.

• What’s that, you say? Can’t get enough of Megan Fox’s bust? Well, neither can a lot of people, but fortunately, you can soon own it when these busts are released as a tie-in to the Jonah Hex movie. Horndogs everywhere, you’re welcome.

• I’ll just own this: Lord of the Rings is my favorite fantasy story of all time, and I own all the various incarnations of DVD’s, including the pretty craptastic Ralph Bakshi cartoon. LOTR was the book/movie/video game series that made me a fantasy fanboy, and it will always have a special place in my heart. Therefore, I get majorly psyched when someone with the same love in their hearts busts out the elbow grease and makes a fan film such as Born of Hope. May I suggest a trip to their website? The trailer is below: