The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare

You know how some people make new years resolutions like: Read Fifty Books in One Year? Well, I think one that better applies to me is: Read Less Books & Do More Work & Other Stuff because by January 3rd I'd already read three books. But that's not entirely my fault. Cassandra Clare shares a large part of the blame.

Here is what the back cover of City of Bones has to say for itself:

When Clary Fray heads out to the Pandemonium Club in New York City, she hardly expects to witness a murder. Much less a murder committed by three teenagers covered with odd markings.

This is Clary’s first meeting with the Shadowhunters, warriors dedicated to ridding the earth of demons - and keeping the odd werewolves and vampires in line. It’s also her first meeting with gorgeous, golden-haired Jace. Within twenty-four hours Clary is pulled into Jace’s world with a vengeance, when her mother disappears and Clary herself is attacked by a demon. But why would demons be interested in an ordinary mundane like Clary? And how did she suddenly get the Sight? The Shadowhunters would like to know...

Clary Fray is a fifteen-year-old artist (because YA heroines always want to be artists or writers when they grow up & never accountants or publicists or occupational therapists*) whose world is turned upside-down when she realises she can see through the glamour that demons & other Downworlders use to become invisible to humans ("mundanes": the new muggles). Then her mother disappears & Clary & her nerdy, bespectacled best friend Simon team up with teenage Shadowhunters Jace, Isabelle & Alec, to find out where she is.

Clary soon discovers that her mother was once a Shadowhunter herself, & that all of Clary's early memories of the demon world have been erased. Also, serious Bad Guy Valentine, an evil ex-Shadowhunter previously presumed dead, wants to summon demons to help him eliminate any Shadowhunters who don't agree with his Death Eater-ish beliefs.

Evil supernatural purists, mysterious tattoos, demons, werewolves & vampires, a beautiful boy with a serious attitude problem: City of Bones (along with its sequels, City of Ashes & City of Glass) sounds like your typical young adult urban fantasy. Which it is. Only not all typical young adult urban fantasy is this addictive. Here's what really worked for me about this series:

1. Good prose. One of the reasons this series is so easy to read is because it's just really well written. The descriptions are gorgeous, the dialogue is snappy & often very funny & the pace is perfect. I could hardly put it down (I read an entire trilogy in three days, of course I could hardly put it down).

2. Good stock characters. In some ways Clary is like every other YA urban fantasy heroine (she's artsy, she thinks herself plain but boys love her even if she doesn't realise they do, she ends up with unusual powers), only somehow, probably related to point 1, she's very likeable & not annoying in the slightest. She's also maybe more fleshed-out than the other heroines I'm thinking of: she's kind of nerdy, a little flighty & quite short-tempered, which makes for a pretty realistic supernatural teenager.

Similarly, Jace is the Regulation Hottie. He's a bad boy with an attitude problem & a blatant disregard for authority who functions as one-third of the love triangle that always seems to involve a "plain" girl, her nerdy but wise-cracking best friend & an aloof & mysterious new boy. But Jace isn't idealised in the way that some Regulation Hotties are (*cough*Edward*cough*); he has a carefully & sensitively crafted backstory to his brooding & can get pretty exasperating (which also makes for a pretty realistic supernatural teenager). So while I'm generally always on Team Best Friend when it comes to love triangles, I have to admit that the chemistry between Clary & Jace can get pretty electric.

Some of the secondary characters include sexy, ass-kicking Shadowhunter Isabelle & her moody, closeted brother Alec; Dungeons-&-Dragons-playing, curly-haired best friend Simon; sarcastic, glittery warlock Magnus Bane; & charismatic but manipulative bad guy Valentine. All pretty standard characters (except Magnus, perhaps, who is too awesome to be counted as a stock character) but all excellently written, engaging & complex. This is how all YA fantasy characters should be written.

3. Forbidden love. I LOVE forbidden love. Tortured romance is so much more satisfying than regular romance, & although this series does action & adventure really well, it often feels like the romantic tension is leading the plot. And with the intensity of the will they/ won't they/ can they/ can't they, that's hardly surprising.

4. ALL the supernatural creatures! If you like vampires & werewolves & faeries & warlocks & angels & demons & you just don't know which to chose, this series has 'em all. Now I have to admit I'm not a big fan of angels. Angels in fiction (especially in YA) tend to make me roll my eyes a lot (unless they belong to Philip Pullman or Neil Gaiman). In the Mortal Instruments series Shadowhunters are humans with distant angel ancestors, & there's a fair amount of angel lore to go with all the demon stuff (while somehow avoiding discussing if any particular god exists within the word of the series) which I suppose makes sense, but I'm not particularly fond of it. The demons of the series are great, however, sort of like Buffy demons only with less of the kitten-eating & more of the human-ribcage-cracking.

Actually, the Mortal Instruments series reads sort of like a cross between Buffy the Vampire Slayer & Harry Potter. (These are a few of my favourite things...) It's good, reliable young adult fantasy & I highly recommend it.

*It used to vaguely annoy me that so many characters in novels want to be or become artists & writers until I realised that for every character who achieves their childhood dream of becoming a writer, there is an author writing these characters who achieved the very same dream.  

Ashes by Isla J Bick

So you know when you pick up a book in the shop (after having judged it by its cover, of course), what's your criteria for determining if you think the book'll be good or not? Mine's pretty simple: I look at the cover, I look at the back cover, I read the prologue & the first few lines. Then, usually, I have an idea about whether or not I think I'll be interested in the whole book.

Here is the back cover synopsis of Ashes:

Seventeen-year-old Alex is hiking through the wilderness when it happens: an earth-shattering electromagnetic pulse that destroys almost everything.

Survivors are divided between those who have developed a superhuman sense & those who have acquired a taste for human flesh. These flesh-hunters stalk the land: hungry, ruthless & increasingly clever...

Alex meets Tom, a young army veteran, & Ellie, a lost girl. They will fight together & be torn apart, but Alex must face the most difficult question of all: who can you trust?

So already this book ticks a couple of boxes. Standard YA pretty-girl's-face-half-obscured cover? Check! Dystopia? Awesome! Zombies? Has potential! Probably resourceful female protagonist? Excellent! So I open the book, & that's when it happens.

Picture the scene if you will: me, beautiful, gorgeous, exquisite, radiant reader standing in the book shop, too old to be in the children's section but looks about sixteen so nobody bats an eye, coming face to face with The Greatest Prologue Ever. Now, I'm not generally a big fan of prologues. I write them, I read them (it's very unusual to find a young adult book without one) but I very rarely find that they actually add to the story. Except this one. This prologue puts all other prologues to shame. This may be the Prologue to End All Prologues.

Within the first six pages of this Most Wonderful Prologue of All this is what you, the reader, learn: Alex is hiking completely alone. Her aunt Hannah (presumably her legal guardian) calls her, not knowing where she is. Alex has her father's gun. She is not suicidal but has been in the past. She also has a brain tumour & the treatments she's been taking aren't working so she wants to take this hike while she still can. She is competent & resourceful (& has a wonderful narrative voice - all wry humour & matter-of-factness) & this'll be the last time she'll ever speak to her aunt again.

And just like that, you're hooked. There is no way you can't buy this book. The protagonist is clever, she has a fascinating backstory, & you know that zombies are going to come along at any minute. So you buy the book & read on.

(Also, because I think everybody should read this book, this review will contain NO MAJOR SPOILERS. I hope.)

That hooked feeling of I can't stop reading now because Something Dramatic is going to happen that will Change Everything lasts for pretty much the entire book. Every chapter ends with a cliffhanger that is carefully placed for you to keep turning the pages as fast as you can. The sudden apocalypse in the middle of nowhere is pretty much standard zombie fare, but the distinction between those who die immediately & those who become zombies is very interesting, & the fact that Alex, Ellie & Tom are pretty much alone in the wilderness for most of the book actually amplifies the post-apocalyptic anxiety.

Ashes is more or less split into two halves. The first half is fast-paced & hell-for-leather. The three characters, Alex, nine-year-old Ellie & twenty-year-old army dude Tom are all equally fascinating, & their relationships are complex & human, & make a lot of sense in context. Still, Alex's relationship with every other character is tinged with varying levels of uncertainty. Even grumpy Ellie & love-interest Tom are potentially keeping big secrets. So the first half swoops you, the reader, up & doesn't put you down until approximately halfway through the book, when Alex finds herself in Rule, a cultish little town that proves to be strangely adept at keeping the zombies at bay.

After that, the action slows down significantly but by now you're almost grateful because you've developed craps from turning pages so quickly & you really need a cup of tea.

The second half of the book is paced very differently & almost loses its voice a little - Alex is suddenly a lot less Alexy - but the chapters set in Rule end up being a little like the Hallows-searching sections in Harry Potter & the Deathly Hallows. A lot of readers thought those chapters were dull & lagging, but I like to see them as evidence of the writer emerging the reader in the characters' worlds. The characters feel bored & disillusioned, so the reader does too. I think that's what happens in Ashes. The various circumstances that bring Alex to Rule take their toll & so the character changes, & the story, so bound up in the character's narration, changes too. It's interesting in its own way, & it lets us see Alex, & the world she's suddenly woken up in - in a different light.

Then, about eight chapters from the end (this is a big book with small chapters), you forget everything I just said (just like you forget the fact that my pronouns are completely mixed up today) . The pace picks up, the action kick-starts again & within a few pages there's no way you're putting this book down again. By the time you close the book you're absolutely aching for the sequel, which, unfortunately, won't be available for another year.

Ashes, however, is. So if you like dystopias or zombies or survival-in-the-wilderness narratives or post-apocalyptic fiction (& who doesn't?) you really should at the very least read the Prologue of Amazingness. And I defy you not to read the whole book after that. 

Wicked Lovely by Melissa Marr

(This isn't about The Vampire Diaries, sorry. I will totally catch up soon though, I promise.)

When faced with a book synopsis that starts with Rule #3: Don't stare at invisible faeries, I was equal parts intrigued & disinterested. I was intrigued because that's a really great line, & disinterested because faeries, really? The prologue had me a little wary (it seemed to be very much of the fairies, really? variety) but my disinterest soon became reading-on-the-bus interest & even reading-while-walking-from-one-bus-stop-to-the-next interest. So let me preface this review by saying that I liked the book. And that I bumped into a lot of people while reading it. And a couple of lampposts.

Here is the full inside-cover synopsis:

Rule #3: Don't stare at invisible faeries.

Aislinn has always seen faeries. Powerful & dangerous, they walk hidden in mortal world. Aislinn fears their cruelty - especially if they learn of her Sight - & wishes she were as blind to their presence as other teens.

Rule #2: Don't speak to invisible faeries.

Now faeries are stalking her. One of them, Keenan, who is equal parts terrifying and alluring, is trying to talk to her, asking questions Aislinn is afraid to answer.

Rule #1: Don't ever attract their attention.

But it's too late. Keenan is the Summer King & has sought his queen for nine centuries. Without her, summer itself will perish. He is determined that Aislinn will become the Summer Queen at any cost...

(There will probably be spoilers in the rest of this review, so don't read it if you plan on reading the book. Unless you like spoilers. Some people are into that sort of thing.)

Aislinn is a pool-playing, rock-music-loving teenager who is just a little bit traumatised by the pretty horrific acts that faeries do to & around humans without our knowledge. She's always ignored the faeries she can see, until one of them becomes strangely fascinated by her & won't stop following her around. She finally confides in her friend-&-sort-of-love-interest Seth, & they decide to find out what Keenan the faerie Summer King & his tragic Winter Girl Donia want with her.

What Keenan wants is for her to be his queen, because that's ultimately what all men faeries want. He has also wanted a lot of other girls to be his queen in the last few centuries but only his One True Love can hold the staff of the Winter Queen without being burned by the frost & any girl who fails becomes a cold, bitter Winter Girl, endlessly bound to Keenan & always in pain, waiting for the next girl he chooses to try to take the staff. Any girl with whom Keenan falls in love becomes marked & begins to change into a faerie, so those who choose to try taking the staff & fail become pain-filled Winter Girls & those who refuse to try become pleasure-seeking Summer Girls. Women of both seasons are equally bound to Keenan. Overseeing all of this is Keenan's Very Evil mother, the power-hungry Winter Queen, who will stop at nothing to ensure that Keenan fails to find a Summer Queen, & who wants the world to be trapped in an Endless Winter Mwahahahaha.

So. The plot works well despite not being the most gripping, as do the various moments of menace & tension throughout the book, the wonderfully realistic & really quite creepy descriptions of the faeries, & a couple of spark-bright characters.

Aislinn's a pretty cool heroine. She's smart & capable & doesn't make any silly mistakes (unlike a certain famous heroine *cough*Bella*cough*). She also has an Awesome Feminist Grandma. Keenan is presented as charismatic but comes off as selfish, manipulative & stalkery (not unlike another supernatural love interest I could name). Donia is multi-layered & conflicted, & not presented as the angsty jealous lover she could easily have been. The relationship between her & Aislinn is one of the most interesting relationships in the book, & while I feel like it could have used more screen time (so to speak) it works really well & definitely adds something to the otherwise pretty straight-forward romance. However, Seth is a little too perfect to be a teenage boy, & the Winter Queen is like something out of a pantomime.

It's not that I necessarily need my faerie queens to be terribly believable, but one-dimensional villains that are a bit camp & more like Disney baddies than actual antagonists aren't as scary as the kind of unsettling villains you can almost understand. As for Seth, well, he's the boy all teenage girls who hate Edward Cullen dream of having. He & Aislinn start off as friends & he waits patiently for her to notice their growing attraction. Before they sleep together, he gets a full STI test & presents her with the papers. He makes the first move but respectfully (& very obviously) waits for her to retaliate & asks her if she's okay with what they're doing every step of the way. He won't have sex with her for the first time when she's feeling fragile & later even lectures her on the importance of consent. Oh & he goes down on her & is totally really great at it. And I am all for anti-Edward-Cullen characters, I really am. I am all for safe sex & the importance of consent & cunnilingus & other alliterative acts but Seth is not like any teenage boy I ever knew (no offence to the teenage boys I used to know). And that sort of takes away a bit from the believability of his character. Having said that, it's refreshing to see a kind, respectful young man as love interest in a supernatural young adult book, because those kinds of characters are few & far between.

I worried for about half the book that this was going to pull a Twilight with Team Keenan winning out over Team Seth in the end as the Summer King got progressively more sympathetic but it almost feels like Wicked Lovely was written in direct retaliation to texts like Twilight & although you sort of got where Keenan was coming from at the end, he's still a manipulative spoiled brat & Aislinn is smart enough to realise this.

All in all, Wicked Lovely was a lot better than I was expecting. It turns the tired tropes of Twilight & many of its offshoots on their heads, the action is pretty fast paced while still allowing for a certain amount of character development (if only for a select few) & both Aislinn's world & the invisible faerie world that exists alongside it are vibrant & believable. I won't be tripping over my feet to buy the sequel, but I'll definitely read it at some point, & with great pleasure.

Misfits, victim blaming, & words that don't lose their meaning if you write them too much.

I want to write about Misfits even though I've only seen three episodes of season one (all in a row, with Alan, until two in the morning even though he had to be in work at eight) & I realise that means that I'm behind everybody in the whole world & possibly the known universe. Amoebas on Mars have seen more of Misfits than I have.

(Are there amoebas on Mars? Does it really matter?)

I've been recommended Misfits by a lot of friends, by my cousins (but not my aunt who doesn't like gorey violence on TV) & by my siblings. Some people said it is like a British, less cheesy Heroes & I really liked the sound of that. Some people said it is like Skins with superpowers & I really didn't like the sound of that. Alan mostly agreed with me, except that he hated Heroes. So we settled down with two cups of Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime tea & a gluten-free orange & chocolate chip cookie we bought from a lovely lady with a lovely hat at a stall in Waterford & we watched the first episode. And then we watched the second. Then we brushed our teeth & put on our pyjamas & watched the third. The first thing I'm going to say about Misfits is that the beginning gets you hooked.

In case I'm not actually the only person in the known universe (well, one of the only two if you count Alan which I really should, shouldn't I?) who hasn't seen the first season of Misfits, here's a summary:

Once upon a time there is a small group of young offenders in their late teens/ early twenties who are forced to do community service in orange jumpsuits. They fight a lot & flirt a bit & paint some benches & then get hit by lightning during a sudden hail-&-lightning storm. The next morning they all have superpowers, except for Cute But Annoying Irish Guy, whose superpower seems to be being cute & annoying but not in equal measures (he's a lot more annoying than he is cute. Also, he's probably a sociopath). Awkward & Slightly Creepy Nerdy Guy can turn invisible, Insecure Chav Girl can read minds, Disgraced Athlete Guy can turn back time & Sexy Black Girl can't touch anybody without them wanting to have sex with her. Oh, & Hot Probation Officer can become a rage zombie. After Rage Zombie Probation Officer has killed Really Annoying Chav Guy Who Doesn't Get a Superpower Because He's Only in One Episode & attacked the others, the motley group of superhero delinquents kill him & bury both of the bodies under a bridge.

Misfits does characters really well. Despite the way I've named them they become a lot more than caricatures & it's as interesting to learn more about them as is the having-killed-the-rage-zombie plot which quickly becomes secondary. Kelly, aka Insecure Chav Girl, is probably my favourite character so far (& not just because of her amazing accent that's so thick you could float rocks on it), & a lot of screen time has been given to her life outside of or around the superhero-powers-rage-zombie-killing plot. Alisha (Sexy Black Girl) & Curtis (Disgraced Athlete Guy) are also pretty sympathetic characters even if we haven't seen as much of their personal lives as we have Kelly & Nathan. Simon (Awkward & Slightly Creepy Nerdy Guy) makes me feel pitying but uncomfortable whenever we see him alone, which is probably intended & certainly effective. Nathan's background is the most explored & while he's the mouthpiece of a lot of the humour in the show he really is terribly annoying &, as Alan would say, a bit of a dick. I'm sure he'll grow up & get better as the show progresses but for the moment he reminds me a little too much of real life Cute But Annoying Irish Guys for comfort.

There's a sort of uneasy atmosphere running through the show that's broken by the increasing number of moments of slowly blooming camaraderie between the main characters & that really serves to put us in their heads. As well as that, Misfits is very clever, & very much aware of itself. Despite the often cringeworthiness of Nathan's behaviour, he gets a lot of the funniest lines, & the script is very, very funny if you like dark humour. One line that stood out for me (but doesn't necessarily show the dark humour of the show, I dunno, I just thought it was funny) was when the fledgeling superheroes are talking about their powers & Kelly wonders if there are people like them all over town. Nathan replies deadpan: “No, that kind of thing only happens in America.”

So Misfits is clever, & funny, & very prettily shot. I don't know much about camera work (I'm a literature student who only dabbles in film & television when it involves vampires) but the colours are bright & clear & the special effects are subtle & spot on. The actors are talented & the script is great.

But.

I have a big problem with how women's sexuality is represented in the show, & with Alisha's storm-given power. I'm going to start slow, & dedicate a couple paragraphs to female sexuality in general in Misfits before moving on to Alisha's power. Yes, I know this is really long but it's interesting, promise. Stay with me!

We already know that Alisha is the Sexy Black Girl. She's beautiful & confident & uses her body & desirability as a tool to get what she wants. It'd be great to see a character like this on a television show that wasn't then somehow demonised or punished for her openness & sexuality, but I'll get to that later. Because she is ultimately punished for it, it's possible to almost see her as one half of the overused virgin/whore dichotomy. You know, if you squint up your eyes a bit.

In this case, Kelly becomes the unlikely virgin to Alisha's whore. She was arrested for starting a fight in Argos with a girl who called her a slag & hits her soon-to-be-ex fiancé for thinking the same thing, even though it's obvious from his thoughts & her words that they have never slept together despite being engaged, & therefore it's unlikely that she has ever slept with anyone. The care taken with setting her up as an underestimated & sympathetic character is interesting when put alongside her virginity & fear of being called a slag & put against Alisha's “bad girl” manipulative sexuality.

The third female character whose sexuality is explored in the first three episodes (which are very full episodes, really, although not as full as this post-slash-essay is turning out to be) is Ruth, a young volunteer working with elderly people at the community centre who catches Nathan's eye. (Quick note for my fellow Martian amoebas: here be spoilers!) Ruth is flirty & confident & she & Nathan end up getting drunk & high & messing about in the community centre until Nathan sees his naked stepfather (long story) & chases after him. The next day he shows up at Ruth's house & asks what would've happened the night before if he hadn't run off “chasing a naked guy through the carpark” & she answers something along the lines of “the best sex you've ever had.” Again, we're introduced to a woman who owns her sexuality & who is comfortable with sex, which is apparent in the sex scenes that follow. But like Alisha, her confident sexuality does not go unpunished. Nathan discovers – rather abruptly – that she is in fact eighty two years old & that the storm somehow temporarily granted her wish of being young again. For the awful crime of Wanting to Have Sex While Old she is insulted & ridiculed by a disgusted Nathan & although he finally regrets his harsh words she dies alone in her home before he can apologise.

So girls who don't have sex are the most sympathetic, & girls who have lots of sex are ridiculed or punished for it. Which brings me to Alisha's powers. Alisha is a young woman with a healthy sexuality & a no-nonsense attitude to men's reactions to her (“feel free to stare at my tits, yeah?” she tells Curtis when she catches him staring) but instead of showing us a woman who is comfortable in her body & with her sexuality, Alisha is introduced to the audience as the “my mum warned me to stay away from girls like you” girl who uses her sexuality to manipulate people (which isn't a problem in itself) & very quickly gets punished for it (which is).

Alisha's punishment is her powers. Where the others gain the ability to read minds or turn invisible, Alisha is given the “power” to cause anyone who touches her skin to be consumed with desire for her. At first she uses this power to sleep with men who shower her with compliments & can't keep their hands off her, but soon she realises that the power still works when she doesn't want to have sex, & after that several times an episode one or more men will attempt to rape her.

I have two problems with Alisha's powers. The first is the obvious: this is a textbook case of victim blaming. Each character's power is supposed to befit their personality, so the disgraced runner wishes he could turn back time to rectify his mistakes, the nerdy loner fees like he's invisible & the insecure girl can hear what people really think of her. The Sexy Black Girl, on the other hand, has the power to make men try to rape her whenever they touch her skin. Confident black woman who is empowered by her sexuality? Young person comfortable with having sex outside of a monogamous relationship? We can't be having with that now. The unspoken assumption is that Alisha, because of her powerful sexuality, deserves the “power” she has been given. The unspoken assumption is that a woman who has a lot of sex deserves to be raped. The unspoken assumption is that men simply can't help themselves because of how she dresses, speaks & carries herself, & that they have no choice but to rape her. The unspoken assumption actually becomes spoken in the third episode, when after Curtis & Ben, a young social worker, attempt to gang-rape her in a car, Alisha tearfully tells Curtis, “I know it wasn't your fault. It's all me.”

So needless to say that's all very problematic, but that's not the only problem I have with her powers, or with the way sexual assault is dealt with in the show. Firstly, there are a lot of rape jokes in the script, & while this is often problematic in that rape jokes in popular culture & media trivialise & normalise sexual assault, all of these jokes are said by Nathan, who, as I've said before, is a bit of a dick, & I think the audience is supposed to think so too. However, the nature of these jokes do support my argument about the one of the ways the show deals with sexual assault. Nathan makes a joke about prison rape followed by one about sexually assaulting a ninety-year-old woman. Sexual assault of people in prison & of elderly people are some of the least talked about or publicised & most joked about forms of sexual violence. We live in a culture that almost glamourises the “tragic life story” tales of sexual abuse or assault & the SVU style stranger-in-a-dark-alley rape cases that are the minority in real life, while simultaneously ignoring, making fun of & discrediting all other forms of sexual violence. In Misfits, all of this gathers together in the character of Alisha.

My second problem with Alisha's powers ties in to all of this. When Alisha touches someone they seem consumed with lust & throw themselves at her. We see her deliberately touch & have sex with a number of men in clubs before she approaches Ben at the community centre. When the sex is over he dresses himself, seeming a little confused. He says things like “I don't usually do this”, & “we did have sex didn't we?” Later, Alisha has a similar exchange with Curtis. She tells him that because of her power she could have him any time she wants but he seems uncomfortable & tells her not to touch him. She touches him anyway & they end up having sex in a toilet stall. When it's over & she breaks contact with his skin he is angry & confused. Later he explains that it's as if she'd drugged him. He says she had no right to do that & warns her never to touch him again. What we've just watched is essentially a rape scene. Unfortunately, like Nathan's throw-away jokes about prison rape or sexual assault of an elderly person, the culture we live in doesn't tend to take male rape victims seriously, especially if they have been raped by a woman.

So here we have a television show that in only three episodes has perfectly personified the idea of rape culture, where women raping men is ridiculous, prison rape is hilarious & the rape of an elderly person is just something to laugh about. Where women who dress to emphasise their body or have comfortable casual sex deserve to be raped. And while I suspect that Alisha's rape-victim-power storyline soon gets old & she learns how to use her superhero “gift” to influence & manipulate rather than to entice to rape, it's the fact that her power began as an enticement to rape that bothers me, because in real life there's no such thing (as enticement to rape I mean, not as superpowers which we all know secretly exist). And I don't think I've ever typed the word rape as many times as I have writing this.

So Misfits. I like it. I think it's very funny & very cleverly done & very well acted but I also think it's extremely problematic & I'm not sure yet that all the verys will trump the extremely. I suppose I'll have to wait & see. What about you, invisible reader? What do you think? (And because I'm still convinced I'm the only person in the known universe – except Alan & a couple Martian amoebas – who isn't already on season two, I might ask you to keep the spoilers to a minimum, in case I decide to go with the verys after all.)