A while back there was a bit of a flap about Dragon Magazine paying 3 to 6 cents a word for fiction--all rights to it, forever, and not just fiction based on their properties (which I could kind of understand), but anything they accepted (HA HA HA no).  And that was a pretty dang shady deal, there. Even now it's not so great--they claim $0.06 a word as the starting rate now, but they still want all rights to your stuff forever and ever. I thought it would take some doing for a publisher to out-fail Dragon on this.

That doing has been done, by TokyoPop's Shining Stars Program Pact. Here, have a .pdf. I dare you to read it all the way through without your jaw hitting the floor.

At first glance, it doesn't look so bad, right? Nice plain English, friendly enough tone, that's kind of refreshing. Until you actually read it. There is not a DO NOT WANT macro in the world big enough for this.

The part I find scariest: the general consensus, with which I would have to agree, is that this contract and the program it goes with aren't targeting the "adult who knows his/her rights and has some familiarity with the way reputable markets work" demographic--they're targeting the "teenage DeviantArt user who doesn't know better and can be bullshitted into thinking this will make him/her OMGFAMOUS" demographic. And that, folks, is just not on. Not on at all.

Bryan Lee O'Malley has done a bang-up job of breaking down exactly what is wrong with this contract in gruesome detail, and I implore and beg of any comic-makin' doorQs who might be thinking Tokyopop would be a good place to start publishing: read that before you send themanything.

On the one hand, I'm glad everyone in the world needs the services provided by my day job like RIGHT NOW; I do like to eat once in a while and your money, part of which becomes my paycheck, is greatly appreciated. So is the cash money my excellent boss gives me for working overtime. Which I have done every damn day for the past two weeks.

On the other hand, this working overtime every damn day for the past two weeks is not terribly conducive to writing the Shousetsu Bang*Bang story that is due in three weeks, a story that's about... two-thirds done. Would it be bad form for me to call in to work? How would I phrase that? "Hello, Boss? I'm sorry, but I cannot come to work today because I must write a gay sex scene and I have a deadline." I don't know, would that fly? 

Speaking of Bang*Bang, the 2008 Yuri Special hit the proverbial stands yesterday, if you are into that sort of thing. I didn't contribute to this one because I can't write girlporn worth crap. I particularly recommend "We Are More" and "The Jazzman's Last Jive," and this has absolutely nothing at all to do with the fact that they were written by two very dear friends of mine, the latter of whom also put together this issue.

WARNING: The following contains spoilers for the last two Supernatural episodes. Big fat hairy ones. Also, due to the subject of my rant and my displeasure with The Powers That Be and with a certain particularly ugly strain of fangirl, I will probably say "fuck" a lot.

I love Supernatural. I do. This is no secret. It's kind of dumb sometimes, but at least it's really, really fun dumb. Also really hot dumb, but never mind that.

These last two episodes have done things that strayed well out of "fun dumb" territory and into the land of just plain "dumb," and even as much as I love this show, I just kind of have to shake my head and ask... well, this slightly doctored picture of Bela pretty much covers it for me.

Which brings me to Stupid Supernatural Trick #1: Bela's death.

Mr. Kripke? Writers? May I ask what the fuck that was?

It's not Bela dying in and of itself that pisses me off. Properly handled, the whole "Bela made a deal" plotline could have been awesome. But no. We got one extremely vague clue in "Red Sky at Morning," where we learn she was responsible for the death of someone in her family. We got her ripping off the Colt at the end of "Dream a Little Dream of Me." And that was it. Until the second-to-last episode of the season, where the writers just kind of went "O BTW BELA MADE A DEAL AND SHE'S GONNA DIE NOW, K?" 

You know, that alone was bad enough. Her last scene, where all of a sudden she is OMG SO SCARED AND ALSO A WEEPY GIRL, was so horribly out of character it wasn't even funny--especially after she refused to play the pity-me card with Dean earlier by not telling him the real reason she made the deal in the first place.

But the fail icing on the fail cake that was Bela's death? I'd been avoiding spoilery interviews and such, so when a friend pointed me to this interview the day after this episode aired... well, once again, please refer to the illustration for an approximation of what I had to say to that. He never actually says so in so many words, but from this interview it's not unreasonable to suspect "fangirl hate" as a contributing factor in Bela's departure. And if you've spent any significant amount of time reading fan reactions to the show, you'll know that there was one hell of a lot of Bela hate.

I don't get it. I really don't understand why fangirls hated Bela so much. ...no, actually, I do have a pretty good idea. She was hot. She was intelligent. She was kind of a bitch and made the Winchester boys look like idiots a few times. There was just a teeny tiny hint of flirtation. Oh, and she also happened to be female. My thoughts on fangirl misogyny are worth a whole 'nother post by themselves, but here's the short version: I triple-dog dare you to find me even one Bela-hating fangirl who would have objected to a hot, intelligent, kind of assholish male character with a British accent that occasionally made the boys look dumb and might have sort of flirted with them a little. 

Anyway, Bela is out. Which makes me very sad. But we've still got Ruby, at least! Right?

Right?

Stupid Supernatural Trick #2: Ruby's (apparent) demise.

Now surely, I thought, surely if Ruby does die soon, surely it will be with a big old bang, maybe she'll take a mess of demons with her if she goes. I mean, after the badassery she'd displayed all season long, surely she would not also fall prey to "oh crap gotta write her out" syndrome, right?

Ugh. 

Okay, granted, Lilith did not actually come out and say she killed Ruby. She said she sent Ruby "far, far away." So all we know for sure is that Lilith evicted Ruby from her meat jumpsuit and claimed it for herself, and there is a possibility that this is not permanent.

Still, this does not look good for our pet demon. Even worse, if "sent far, far away" is Lilith-ese for "dead dead dead," the writers didn't even give Ruby, who has been awesome and badass and very, very important all season, the courtesy of a decent on-screen death. Just... poof. Ruby go byebye, maybe for good. What the fuck, yo? At the very least, the Katie Cassidy meatsuit sure looked dead, so even if Ruby does claw her way back from wherever she's been sent (back to Hell, maybe? If the Megdemon could bust out on her own, surely Ruby could? I can hope), it won't be the same Ruby we've gotten to know.

And finally, we have Stupid Supernatural Trick #3: holy unsatisfying cliffhanger, Batman.

I cannot think of a worse way to have ended this season. That was terrible. And not even in the good way. The "Mission Failed" season finale is fine, if it's handled right--by which I mean, if there's obviously some hope that things will be okay. Sure, the Winchester family and the Metallicar got pasted by a semi at the end of Season 1, but they still had the Colt, they still had the bullet, and there was no way at that point that everyone in the car was dead.

This... I see no way out of this for Dean, at least not without some severely stupid plot tricks in the future. 

I know nothing official about Season 4, but I can make educated guesses. Obviously, it's going to be Deanless--at least, for a while. I don't care for that. I don't care for that at all. I am a Dean Girl. There are many, many diehard fans who will continue to watch this show no matter how much stupid shit TPTB throws down, but this may be more than a lot of fans are willing to put up with. There is no show without Sam-n-Dean. And I am really not sure how I feel about the possibility of a Sam-as-Orpheus trek into Hell to drag Dean back. And while I'm thinking about severely stupid plot tricks--we waited all season for some more information about Mary's involvement with the Yellow-Eyed Demon, and we got nothing but a little crumb early in the season. And one throwaway "your mom" dig by a smartass demon later on, which was kind of a cheap shot.

I don't know. I still count myself as one of those diehard fans who'll keep watching no matter what, at least for now. But if Season 4 continues on this not-so-grand tradition of introducing awesome characters, giving them crappy exits from the show (or no actual formal exit at all, just having the character sort of evaporate--Ellen, anyone? How about Tamara? Or the Megdemon?), and leaving loose plot ends dangling in the breeze forever, that might change.

Intarweb gremlins ate the post I was working on this evening. :(

I will rewrite it tomorrow. For now: sleep.