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I read the Handbook For Mortals screenplay. It is worse than you could possibly imagine.

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There’s an important rule that you must always follow when sharing your creative work with people you trust: you must take caution not to fuck over those people with your egomaniacal scheming so that they later have the desire to see that work dragged to hell and New Zealand and back in front of all the mighty gods of Mount Olympus.

An anonymous source contacted me last week to gift me with some gossip and the most cursed object of all time:

A photo of the Handbook For Mortals screenplay on my dining room table, with highlighters and a mug of coffee.

That’s right. I have in my possession a copy of the Handbook For Mortals screenplay.

Please note the revision number: 3841. I sincerely hope that this was part of a numbering system and this has not, in fact, been revised three thousand times. Because I have read it, dear reader. And three thousand more revisions would not have saved this. From its earliest days, Handbook For Mortals has been a total non-starter.

“Wow, Jenny! I can’t wait for you to rip this thing to shreds in a very special episode of Jealous Haters Book Club!” you may be thinking. Sadly, it’s much more difficult to prove Fair Use for unpublished material. After a weekend of reading up on Fair Use and unpublished work by living creators, I have decided to forgo becoming embroiled in the stupidest lawsuit of all time. I will not be excerpting any lines of text. However, the dialogue and much of the action in the book is taken wholesale from a draft of the screenplay. In some passages, even typos are duplicated, suggesting that it was copy/pasted from one document to another. You won’t be missing much.

Remember when I was like, “Wow, this book sucks so much because you can tell it was being adapted from a screenplay?” Yeah, I was wrong. The book sucks because the screenplay sucks, and somehow the book is an improvement. This draft of the screenplay is from 2011, so it had at least five years to age like milk, but somehow it managed to come out as a fine…well, I can’t say wine, but at least a vinegar that would be particularly useful for cleaning laminate flooring.

So, just how bad is it?

Shot according to this script, Handbook For Mortals would have been a shockingly short film. If we were to follow the oft-repeated “one page equals one minute” advice, the 112 pages of Handbook For Mortals would create a movie that’s just shy of two hours. But that oft-repeated advice is wrong as hell, as anyone who has ever read a screenplay could tell you. This has a lot to do with the pacing of scenes. For example, the movie Braveheart was shot from a screenplay that’s 143 pages long, but it clocked in at 177 minutes. Why? Action scenes take up a lot more room on film than on the page, as do sweeping shots of the Scottish countryside. On the other hand, movies with snappy, quick-paced dialogue like Moneyball, have longer page counts and shorter run times (168 pages of mostly dialogue for 133 minutes on the screen). The Handbook For Mortals script is mostly dialogue with little action and incredibly short scenes, some with only five to eight lines of conversation without action, like the scene that opens with Mac and Zade lying on some grass chatting for less than a page. What isn’t dialogue is usually description, rather than action. If produced in this format, Handbook For Mortals would be more Dunkirk, less Gone With The Wind. It would need significant padding to get it past the one hour mark. And speaking of those short scenes…

The film version would be choppy and confusing to any viewer who isn’t Lani Sarem. Think the “several weeks later,” time jumps in the book drag the story out over what feels like a full calendar year? Well, you’ll love the screenplay, where everything seems to happen on the same day. Zade leaves her home in New Mexico and seemingly auditions moments later, as we shift from leaving home to the theater without any indication in either the script or the dialogue to suggest a passage of time. No shot of Zade passing a Welcome To Nevada sign, no exterior of the theater, just straight from Zade telling her mother goodbye to Zade opening the doors in the casino. After Sofia’s literal stage dive, she shows up at a bar just a scene later, fully healed, with no mention of a passage of time. Events within scenes move weirdly, too; within eight urgent lines of Pete shouting for someone to call the paramedics, they arrive on the scene as if they’ve been standing in the wings waiting for their cue.

Sarem’s writing micromanages everything. Anything you’d see an actor do on screen from laughs to eye rolls, even blushing is scripted. It’s true that direction like, “(laughing nervously)” will come up in screenplays, but it’s usually when the action is commented on in the dialogue. I haven’t read the Fifty Shades Of Grey screenplay because I don’t hate myself, but I assume Ana’s lip biting and eye rolls would have been included because they’re an impetus for Christian’s lines that follow and therefore must be acted out by Dakota Johnson. In the Handbook For Mortals script, Sarem frequently specifies how the lines should be delivered, what emotion the actor should convey, and what expressions should be used. As someone who reads a lot of screenplays, I feel pretty confident in stating that the number of times this occurs in Handbook For Mortals is highly unusual and displays a shocking lack of faith in the director and actors. This could be due to inexperience as a writer; multiple crucial elements are either missing or employed in strange ways, like fades to black separating what should be continuous scenes and v.o. dialogue labeled as o.s. lines, which suggests this may have been Sarem’s first time.

Sarem included plenty of chances to showcase her singing as well as her nude or nearly-nude body. We know from interviews and the listing on IMDB Pro that Lani Sarem envisioned herself taking on the role of Zade. Which is what makes it so incredibly cringe-worthy when the position of her body is breathlessly described as being fully nude and barely covered by a sheet or lying on her stomach in just her underwear while reading her tarot cards. Why would she be nude, you might ask? Because the “passionate kissing” post-motorcycle ride doesn’t end with the pair just going home and taking things slow. Instead, there’s a sex scene, complete with Mac undressing her and a morning-after discussion of her tattoo, which stands in for the family necklace. In case you’re not impressed with Sarem’s beauty, she included a lot of subtle hints that you should be.

She’s sexy and she knows it, and you’re going to, as well, audience. Besides the nude scenes, we’re treated to the same book interludes of male characters standing around and discussing how sexy they find her. When Sofia is introduced, it’s important to Sarem to note in the action that it should be clear to the audience that though Sofia is beautiful, her personality makes her unattractive. Many characters make references to how gorgeous Zade is and how great her body is, to the point that it borders on sexual harassment of Sarem, by Sarem.

The characters are all somehow much, much worse than their book incarnations…except for Mac. Without the narrative to explain to us that Zade is given lots of gifts and perks at the production’s expense, Sofia’s griping about the special treatment Zade receives comes off as nothing more than unfounded jealousy. There’s no internal monologue from Zade or Mac to describe Charles as socially awkward or unusually career-driven, so on screen, he would just appear to be a total jackass. When the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it dates with Jackson are removed, you’re simply left with a guy who likes to talk about how much he’d like to bang the chick he works with. Yeah, you read that right. The dates with Jackson aren’t in here at all.

The love triangle from the book is non-existent. Answering perhaps one of the most pressing questions I’ve had about the novel, the screenplay leaves out the oh-who-ever-will-I-choose subplot by almost immediately pairing up Zade and Mac. As in the book, Mac asks that they “take it slow,” although there’s no mention of his past heartache and just a few scenes later, he calls a company meeting to kiss Zade in front of the entire cast and crew, settling the matter. Though Jackson does have designs on Zade (and Sarem makes sure to include a scene where they kiss), his feelings aren’t reciprocated and absolutely no conflict arises as a result. This may be due in part to the fact that “Jackson” is literally Jackson Rathbone playing Jackson Rathbone. While the novel features “appearances” by Plain White T’s, the screenplay explicitly uses 100 Monkeys as the band, as well as the titles of their songs and the real names of the band members. Sarem wrote this while she managed the bandImagine if someone you worked with wrote a screenplay in which you’d be expected to portray yourself kissing and delivering lines about how much you want to fuck the character based off of and played by them. Considering that the marketing of the Handbook For Mortals novel now includes “Team Mac” and “Team Jackson” merchandise, it’s clear that Sarem saw Rathbone, still starring in the wildly popular Twilight franchise, as her ticket toward getting the film produced. When the personal and professional relationship between Rathbone and Sarem soured and she set out to turn the book into a Young Adult sensation, she simply tacked on a love triangle because Twilight had one, and Twilight was the only blueprint she had to work from.

Handbook For Mortals was never meant to be a series. In another blatant attempt at copying the success of Twilight, Sarem stretched her original idea (already paper thin) into what has allegedly always been a planned series. Leaving aside the age of the protagonist, the love scene and multiple unclothed moments, the Handbook For Mortals movie was clearly meant to be a one-off. The single element in the novel that suggests any sort of continuation of the story, Lamborghini Girl, is conspicuously absent. There is no mention of being the town outcast due to special “magick” powers, and there’s no greater “magick” community that could oppose Mac’s involvement with Zade. The “magick” conflict is missing because…

We don’t find out that Zade is “magick” until page ninety-four. The novel’s scenes of Zade’s secretive illusions are presented in the screenplay as exactly that: illusions. The confrontation at the lemonade stand and the attempted murder of a cyclist––events that are superfluous in the book––would have tipped the audience off to Zade’s abilities and were sorely needed on the screen. Instead, her powers are inexplicably revealed at the end of the script when Dela breaks the news to Mac. Imagine watching a movie that appears to be a romance with a weird title from beginning to nearly the end before learning that it’s actually a story about witches. And then imagine that when the love interest finds out that his girlfriend is a witch who’s been using him for magic without his knowledge, he simply laughs it off in the final line of the movie.

All of the problems from the book are present here. For example, Sofia’s name flipping between Sofia and Sofie depending on its use in dialogue or description remains throughout, as does her abrupt, unexplained disappearance from the book. Overly used phrases like “show blacks” and “deeply into [his/her/character’s] eyes” first debuted here, in abundance. Dela and Charles’s flashback is unnecessarily included and, if filmed, would be one of, if not the, longest scenes in a movie that…isn’t about them. Dela’s manipulation of Charles with magic, as well as Zade’s use of magic on Mac are never dealt with, and though the mysterious family necklace becomes a mysterious family tattoo in the screenplay, it’s mentioned once and nothing ever comes of it, similar to the book. The characters state their personalities aloud in dialogue, just as in the book. The tarot card reading scene is still just Zade talking aloud about what the cards mean. Basically, anything that didn’t work in the novel was ported over from the screenplay, which was already terrible.

So, there you have it. The Handbook For Mortals movie that, God willing, will never come to fruition. The only good thing I can say about it is that they actually say the title of the movie in the screenplay. And even then, it sounds stupid.

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136 Comments

  1. It doesn’t deserve the awesomeness that this would impart, but a version of it filmed entirely with Barbie dolls, a la the Karen Carpenter “Superstar” bio, would be AMAAAAAZING.

    June 11, 2018
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    • Dove
      Dove

      Barbie dolls might be the only thing that could save it… also it’d help if it was an Abridged version. XD

      June 11, 2018
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    • Bee
      Bee

      I would only pay to watch either a version with Barbie dolls or one done on Robot Chicken. Please let Robot Chicken do this.

      June 12, 2018
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      • I would consider donating to a GoFundMe for Robot Chicken + Barbies + H4M

        June 12, 2018
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      • randonimity
        randonimity

        Extra Credit Studios does great stop-motion work! Though they’re more known for their work of “The Most Popular Girls at School.”

        June 14, 2018
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  2. MayaB
    MayaB

    I have to ask. If there was no love triangle in the screenplay what was the movie even about?! What was the main conflict? I’ve read all the recaps and apart from the last 2 all the book was about was “OMG! Everybody loves me and I can’t decide between these 2 guys.”

    June 11, 2018
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    • Athena
      Athena

      A few people likened it to the movie Showgirls, but since I can’t remember much of that movie I’m going to say it’s like Burlesque. We’re supposed to root for the heroine overcoming at most mild inconveniences in her pursuit of Fame and Fortune, she gets the guy with minimal effort, and there’s a conflict for no other purpose than to extend runtime. And I LIKED Burlesque.

      June 11, 2018
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      • Athena, I was thinking of Burlesque, too… except none of the characters are played by people who bring certain presence/history to their roles to make up for the lack of plot.

        Now, if H4M was giving the Showgirls treatment — and Showgirls is one of the greatest cinematic adventures of all time (except for the gratuitous rape scene) — with some over-the-top scenery-chewing to add to its dubious morals, we could have some fun!

        June 11, 2018
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        • Indigo
          Indigo

          Admittedly, I write this with the benefit of a creative writing degree, but I literally came up with the following treatment in about five minutes.
          Zade is growing up in small town Tennessee. Her mother tells her constantly to be careful with her magic and not mess with dark forces etc., which Zade chafes against. On her 18th birthday, her mom takes her to the grand council of witches or whatever, who say she can never be, I don’t know, certified, because her father isn’t magic. Hurt and angry, Zade decides to run away to Vegas.
          There she gets the job in her dad’s show, blah blah blah, and everyone admires the hell out of her skills. Zade feels accepted for the first time in her life. However, she gradually realizes that her magic gets stronger and less controlled the stronger she feels and she hurts people by accident. One day she screws up a trick (oh, I’m sorry, an illusion) in front of her dad, who is visibly disappointed. This motivates her to try ever more extreme feats of magic. In the meantime, she falls in love with Mac and finds that being with him stabilized her powers and she can do even more cool stuff, yay. Gradually she comes to rationalize more and more risky behaviour until the big illusion. In the book this would be where Zade gets hurt, but we’ve all seen why this is bullshit. So instead it’s Mac who gets hurt and she has to save him. She doesn’t know how, so she has to go back to Tennessee and get her mom. Cue spell that’s actually dangerous to Zade to save him. She does. Whee, happy ending.
          Now. Is this a hackneyed, unoriginal plot clearly pieced together from several better known films with a telegraphed moral and riddled with cliches, not to mention a gaping plot hole at the end? Sure. Like I said, ten minutes. The point is that introducing *some* kind of conflict and motivation beyond “tee hee, I’m so beautiful it’s a curse except it never actually inconveniences me”? Is not that hard.

          June 11, 2018
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          • MyDog'sPA
            MyDog'sPA

            “The point is that introducing *some* kind of conflict and motivation beyond “tee hee, I’m so beautiful it’s a curse except it never actually inconveniences me”? Is not that hard.

            I think she’s trying hard not to have any conflict. Some of the folks in my early screenwriting classes did that (along with cultural appropriation of every native-American tribe where they thought their main character would do an emergency trip from New York to Los Angeles that for some reason had to drive because they couldn’t fly would willy-nilly take a 1 1/2 hour detour from Highway 40 in Arizona to mysteriously wind up in Canyon de Chelly where they ‘found’ their true inner selves. Gaack. Happened like clockwork. More than once.)

            Anyway, Lani keeps showing us how newbie she is, and will forever remain so.

            June 11, 2018
          • Athena
            Athena

            Yeek. One writer in the group I attended decided to set her book in Ireland, even though she wasn’t from there, had never been, only because she wanted fairies in it and apparently that couldn’t happen if it wasn’t in Ireland. Then the only thing “Irish” in what she submitted before dropping out was a character had a rueuben sandwich and inconsistent accents.

            June 11, 2018
          • Dove
            Dove

            I agree that LS clearly worked hard to avoid conflict but… wtf is Canyon de Chelly? I’ve never heard of it. o.o

            June 11, 2018
          • Dove
            Dove

            Yeek. One writer in the group I attended decided to set her book in Ireland, even though she wasn’t from there, had never been, only because she wanted fairies in it and apparently that couldn’t happen if it wasn’t in Ireland. Then the only thing “Irish” in what she submitted before dropping out was a character had a rueuben sandwich and inconsistent accents.

            … A Reuben sandwich? Good lord. Why not a Monte Cristo? 😛

            Also, for fuck sake, had she never heard of Tinkerbell at least? *shakes head sadly* Did she ever say what she was gonna do with those poor fairies?

            June 11, 2018
          • Athena
            Athena

            Did she ever say what she was gonna do with those poor fairies?

            Her main characters were all going to be distantly related to fairies. It gave them all magic. I think fairies were going to come back into the characters lives, but we didn’t get that far. The idea could have been good, but we were getting her completely unedited draft (she’d forgotten a character had a sprained ankle) and she told us flat out that she wasn’t planning on doing any edits until the group had read all 22 chapters she had already written. I got the intense feeling said writer dropped out because she wasn’t getting the praise for her work like she got from a couple of friends. She brought it up twice how much her friends loved it.

            And yes, a reuben, served with iced sweet tea, in Ireland.

            June 12, 2018
          • Sarah J
            Sarah J

            Ooooh, I love trying to think about how bad stories could be improved. I like your idea, that would be an interesting book. It gives the character flaws that help drive the plot and there’s a real conflict.

            June 12, 2018
      • Anon
        Anon

        Burlesque has some good dancing and I love listening to Christina sing. I wasn’t in love with the storyline for Chicago, but the singing and dancing were fabulous.

        Somehow, I doubt this movie will have that kind of thing going for it.

        June 11, 2018
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        • Athena
          Athena

          Like I said, I like Burlesque. I have the soundtracks of both it and Chicago. The think that makes Burlesque likeable is that the characters are. You want the characters to overcome adversity, even if in hindsight the most of the conflicts were minor. Almost none of the characters in H4M are likeable, most are outright despicable, so we have no desire to see them succeed. So a light plot can be entertaining if the characters are.

          June 11, 2018
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    • Sarah J
      Sarah J

      A lot of amateur writers, especially those who only do it because they think it will be easy fame and money, kind of forget to have a plot. A real plot with a conflict, anyway. They have a perfect self-insert lead character who doesn’t make mistakes, and if there are any obstacles, they just get blown through. It comes from not understanding what makes a story good and interesting. I wrote lame stuff like that too when I was young.

      June 12, 2018
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  3. I wonder what the rating would for this would be? It’s unlikely it would be totally young adult with near nude scenes/sex. Also that Jackson thing is JUST PLAIN CREEPY!

    June 11, 2018
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    • The book is so sterile that I kind of expected that Lani Sarem had some kind of aversion to sex. That’s one of the more surprising things.

      June 11, 2018
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      • I agree. It was semi-prudish to the point of the main character blushing when Sofia/Sofie talked about sex.

        It’s weird to have even a post-coital scene in this.

        June 11, 2018
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      • Yeah because in the book it appeared that the mention of ANYTHING sexual caused Zade to blush. A post-coital scene with skin showing would even be strange.

        June 11, 2018
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        • Oops double post – one didn’t show until after I posted a second time. Ignore me.

          June 11, 2018
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        • Jane Eyre
          Jane Eyre

          I think it’s bc she changed this thing to a YA novel and YA can’t really have nudity and sex-scenes because not only the audience but the characters are teenagers, and since her only source of ‘how to YA’ was Twilight and all the books it spawned she probably noticed that all these books shy away from sex and have the heroines be very virginal so when she translated the script she added that to fit the form she was going for. But she forgot her character is still an adult and working instead of being a teenager so all of her and other character’s behaviours seem so juvenile.

          June 11, 2018
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          • Indigo
            Indigo

            Also, I think she may have been told not to use any bad language. Okay, fine, not all adults curse, or not in all situations – but no adult calls another one a jerkface in any seriousness, and if they did, it certainly wouldn’t trigger a goddamn bar fight.

            June 11, 2018
          • Athena
            Athena

            Well, drunk guy was very drunk and moonblinked by Zade. A sober person would have laughed their ass off at such a weak insult, but drunk guy had his buddies and girl he was interested in watching. I’m not saying the scene isn’t a week, asinine attempt to point out Zade has this ability she can’t control, which just puts more emphasis on the fact that she’s doing absolutely nothing to control it so shit like this doesn’t happen. Just that a guy being so drunk he throws a punch at somebody for calling him jerkface is the least of that scene’s problems.

            June 12, 2018
          • Person
            Person

            There actually are sex scenes in plenty of YA, like even the really mainstream popular ones, like The Fault in Our Stars by John Green. Which also had some mild cursing in it, as I recall, so we didn’t even need the jerkface bar fight scene.

            Also…the last Twilight book includes Bella and Edward fucking a bed frame apart. So.

            June 14, 2018
    • Cody Cromarty
      Cody Cromarty

      If it has Lani Sarem nude? NC-17 to keep anyone from witnessing that.

      June 11, 2018
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      • Nyx
        Nyx

        Of all possible response, do you really need to go for the cheap body shaming?

        June 17, 2018
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    • Sigyn Wisch
      Sigyn Wisch

      I mean, Titanic was PG-13 and it had an implied sex scene and Rose’s tits showing for a second or two. If Sarem isn’t focusing the camera on hers, it would probably also be PG-13.

      June 11, 2018
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      • Sarah J
        Sarah J

        True, but Titanic was made primarily for an older audience and the characters were adults. Having a sex scene in a YA film might be a harder sell, (not just to the audience, but to parents and studios) especially if she wants to make it a big franchise.

        June 12, 2018
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        • Laina
          Laina

          Rose was actually 17 in Titanic (in the past).

          October 9, 2018
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    • Aye
      Aye

      It’s so groooooossssss ewwwww

      June 20, 2023
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  4. Cavalish
    Cavalish

    My god it’s like a tragedy. It’s exactly like a Greek tragedy. There should only be greeks.

    June 11, 2018
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  5. Anon
    Anon

    So the year of the screenplay explains Zaria’s age, at least. But if Lanoy plans to still play her, they need to fix that.

    And is anyone surprised the screenplay is awful??? It seems to me (and maybe it’s just me) that it’s more difficult to write a good screenplay than to write a good novel, simply because of the format itself. And she can’t write a good novel, so …

    June 11, 2018
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    • Lol, I bought it would probably be better because the book was so horrid and for some reason Thomas Nicholas thought it would be a sound investment of his time, money, and reputation. Like, I thought it could achieve a Disney Channel Movie-level of quality (terrible but coherent) but this just sounds. . . Why.

      June 11, 2018
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    • Mike
      Mike

      I was thinking that when I read it. It being from 2011 shows that she at least wasn’t completely delusional in the ages and thinking she could play the lead character. If she’s 35 now, 7-8 years ago when she started working on it, she easily could have played someone in their mid 20’s. And it makes Dela and Charles meeting up in the late 70’s much more reasonable too. So credit where it’s due, if you rearrange the book to be taking place almost a decade ago, suddenly the timeline isn’t quite so fucked up.

      June 11, 2018
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      • I got a very intense early-00’s/90’s teen movie (specifically Crossroads) vibe from the entire novel.

        June 11, 2018
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    • Black Knight
      Black Knight

      It’s not objectively more difficult to write a good screenplay than a good novel. They call for somewhat different skills (which is why things that work in books don’t work in films and vice versa), and so depending on one’s skill set a screenplay could come far more naturally than a novel.

      That said, it is clear that Sarem possesses none of the skills necessary to generate either a good novel or a good screenplay.

      June 11, 2018
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      • Casey
        Casey

        I think the reason writing good screenplays seems harder is because we’re exposed to novels in their whole novel-ness our entire lives, whereas I’m 25 years old and admittedly a dumbass, but I’ve never seen a real screenplay, ever. The skills and techniques are vaguely mysterious, I think, so certainly picking it up is trickier without the baseline novels have of “Oh, I know what this looks like.”

        June 13, 2018
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  6. Hey Jenny, was Zeb in the screenplay at all? What was his function, if he was? His presenCe in the book is baffling since its kind of implied he’s magic (he and Zade have a weird confrontation that’s all cryptic, then the weird incantation when she’s dying)! but nothing ever comes of it…

    June 11, 2018
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    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      Oh yeah, no, he wasn’t at all. How did I forget that when he plays such an important role? LOL

      June 11, 2018
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      • So literally she added an entire character for no reason. I don’t know what I expected.

        June 11, 2018
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        • Dove
          Dove

          I’m beginning to wonder if LS accidentally got too much help but didn’t know WTF to do with all the suggestions people gave her. Refusing a massive overhaul of her story but throwing in every idea without using it for any true conflict would explain a lot?

          June 11, 2018
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      • Dove
        Dove

        That surprises me, but not entirely. I kind of assumed he was there in the script as a weak subplot and then lost his villain status or something. That he was never there explains why his purpose is so confused. I wonder if LS was originally going to try and make Zeb into an implied villain since she thought a series would need one, but then one of those poor editors talked her out of it? It would explain why Lambo Girl was such an obvious toss-in at the last minute and why Zeb was never written back out. He just became more padding!

        June 11, 2018
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    • Carrionbird
      Carrionbird

      Oh man, what with all the joke names for Zade I totally forgot Zeb was the name of a whole other character.

      June 11, 2018
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      • Carrionbird, I forgot about “Zeb’s” existence, as well. And his placement in the “plotline” indicated that he’d have some significance in the book, later….But, no.

        June 11, 2018
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  7. Mel
    Mel

    Wow. Just, wow. This whole thing is one huge train wreck that I can’t look away from.

    I actually hope she and American Pie make this thing, if only because it might just be the most cringey yet hilarious thing put to film. Like, this would top The Room, if Lani plays Zade and includes everything about being super young and having everyone fawn over her. Comedy gold.

    June 11, 2018
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    • shel
      shel

      Only if nobody has to pay for it… because if it makes any money, it will only encourage them to make more bullshit like this…

      I can get behind a campy, silly story… but it needs to at least be slightly well written…

      They should just make a youtube video and call it a day, especially since it sounds like they’ve only got enough material for a short video.

      June 11, 2018
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    • Imagine Lani-As-Zade saying to (an identical) Lani-as-Dela “mom, I’m almost a quarter-of-a-century years old!”

      It would be glorious.

      June 11, 2018
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      • Mel
        Mel

        Bahahahaha! I would actually pay to see that…well, pay a bootlegger to see it so the money goes to someone more respectable than Zani.

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
    • Leigh
      Leigh

      On the one hand, I feel bad for her because Lax Suthor really feels that she has been unfairly maligned. In my few interactions with her, she has defended her stance and her book as “just my opinion” even though she has the creativity of a sugar cube. On the other hand, I hope this garbage fire gets made because the public will finally tell her what she doesn’t seem to want to believe; that she is a terrible creative and a whiny brat and needs to pull her head out of her ass.

      June 11, 2018
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      • Indigo
        Indigo

        It kind of reminds me of how Atlas Shrugged was adapted into a film trilogy a few years ago. If you’ve never seen it, it is god awful – a great example of what happens when people with no creative experience use a bunch of their own money to make a pet project.

        June 11, 2018
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        • Leigh
          Leigh

          I haven’t seen it, but I’ve never had the urge. I like that one guy in it (you know the one I mean XD) , but not enough to subject myself to Ayn Rand.

          June 11, 2018
          |Reply
        • Jamoche
          Jamoche

          What I really loved about it was that they had to resort to crowdfunding to pay for the third installment. They couldn’t even manage to keep the same actors for all three parts.

          There’s a blogger who’s been sporking the Rand books and movies for a while now: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism

          June 19, 2018
          |Reply
      • ViolettaD
        ViolettaD

        The Florence Foster Jenkins of moviedom, except that poor Jenkins’ brain was being eaten by the syphilis her first husband gave her.

        June 13, 2018
        |Reply
    • Lucy
      Lucy

      I thought this as well, I kinda want to see this made because it is awful. It would be ridiculously hilarious.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
    • Yaaaassss! “The Room.” It turned out Wisseau (sp) wanted Johnny to be a vampire, but they just kind of dropped that part of the plot partway in. I could see the same happening with Zebra…except that Sarem forgets that the character is supposed to be a witch.

      “Oh, hi, Mark!”

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • Leigh
        Leigh

        I was getting The Room vibes too! I was going to suggest that LS ask Wiseau to produce LoL

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
  8. A
    A

    When I saw your tweet, I gasped so loudly at my desk, that coworkers were looking at me with befuddlement.

    I thought the screenplay would be bad, but oh heavens, is this like 200x worse than I ever expected. This review is like a gift under the tree on Christmas morning. This made my Monday. THANK YOU.

    Completely not surprised by the ridiculous nude scenes because frankly, once you pointed out a while back that she was probably fibbing about her age by a decade, it all made sense. The IMDB, the cover, the ridiculous hair– she genuinely is looking at all of this through some wacky tinted glasses and she thinks she truly is Zagnut. So much cringing.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • Rebecca
      Rebecca

      …is that one smile the only thing she knows how to do with her face?

      June 13, 2018
      |Reply
      • Dove
        Dove

        That would explain her acting career never getting off the ground, so my guess is yes.

        June 13, 2018
        |Reply
        • Evil!Blonde Bitch
          Evil!Blonde Bitch

          I dunno, Kristen Stewart only has one facial expression and she managed to get the part of Bella in Twilight (arguably one of the bestselling teen franchises of all time) so she did okay. How Stewart landed the role, I will never know, but since Lanier clearly cribbed most of her “YA” novel from Twilight, she probably figured that it was okay if the lead actress of a franchise had a limited repertoire of expressions.

          June 13, 2018
          |Reply
          • Dove
            Dove

            Yeah, but Kristen Stewart seems inoffensive in her blandness. Lani Sarem makes me cringe any time I see her videos for a few seconds and then I nope the hell out. It’s not as bad if your limited range is more neutral?

            June 13, 2018
          • Casey
            Casey

            Also to be fair, Stewart is actually quite charming in other roles. Same face, but it comes across as more wry and dreamy. (Listen, her skit on SNL made me fall in love with her and I can’t ever come back from it.)

            June 13, 2018
          • Melissa
            Melissa

            I actually like Kristen Stewart. Speak is my favorite performance of hers. She may not be able to play a charasmatic or sexy character, but she can do subtlety and ‘bridge over troubled waters’ types well. Twilight was a poor use of her (and really fucked her over by ruining her public image imo) since Bella has no real deep desires or hidden feelings to hint at and the only thing that can save such a beige Mary-Sue is an actor who’s willing to get wild and really ham it up.

            June 24, 2018
  9. Fer
    Fer

    And it is sad, not only because is awful, but because is practically revenge fiction.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • Indigo
      Indigo

      I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: the only thing more boring than hearing about someone’s dreams is hearing about their daydreams.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • Leigh
        Leigh

        I think I’ll embroider that on a pillow. It will go nicely with “Babies and poems: only interesting to the people who created them”

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
        • Dove
          Dove

          I feel that’s unfair to poetry though. Memorizing rhyme schemes, or at least some repeating couplets, is how storytelling was handed down long before writing became so pervasive. Historically it’s interesting in a more general sense?

          June 11, 2018
          |Reply
    • Sarah J
      Sarah J

      If the movie gets made, I wouldn’t be surprised if she included a heavy-handed jab at the people criticizing her writing and “marketing techniques”.

      June 12, 2018
      |Reply
  10. L
    L

    Thank you so much for this and your recaps. As A said, the was like a Christmas present wrapped in chocolate on my Monday morning.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
  11. Cris
    Cris

    Second-Hand Book of Embarassment, the majikkkkals screenplay.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
  12. Mike
    Mike

    The title already doesn’t make sense in the book with how little she does anything magical. Why call it Handbook for Mortals if it’s primarily a ‘love story’ between her and Mac with even less magic in it? I mean, that kind of gives away the twist if we’re supposed to be in the dark the whole time.

    I knew this screenplay would be bad. There was honestly no way it couldn’t have been. Scenes already felt excessively padded and the transitions were terrible. If she was padding out a screenplay that had included a transition shot between her home town (which seems to have changed states? Am I remembering that right?) and Vegas, there would be a scene in the book where she’s driving along the highway and causes a car accident ‘cuz the driver looked at her funny. If she’d been adapting something where there were dates between her and Jackson, those dates would have, you know, existed… in the book. Rather than being mentioned that they happened and never seeing them.

    But honestly even with knowing all of that before reading this, I’m still shocked at the level of bad this was. How delusional are the people she spoke to about this screenplay? How did anyone support the idea enough to see it get as far as it DID? And how the fuck do I get in on that kind of support?! My script is actually DECENT! Ah professional jealousy. Ain’t it grand.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • Evil!Blonde Bitch
      Evil!Blonde Bitch

      You know that thing about ‘curves in all the right places’? Zani has padding in all the wrong places, both in the novel and screenplay. Puts padding in the mundane scenes (Carrot Top) and leaves out vital things (a shot showing her arrival at the audition or some explanations as to WHY her family has story time while she’s bleeding tf out). She focuses all the attention on “tee hee, I had sex with Mac and also read tarot cards” and not “OH BY THE WAY GUYS I’M A WITCH”.
      Basically, this isn’t a handbook for mortals, it’s a handbook on how NOT to write. Jenny, you are a rock star, and you deserve a stiff drink for dealing with this dumpster fire of a script.

      June 12, 2018
      |Reply
    • JaneEyre
      JaneEyre

      I’ve been rereading those recaps and comments and I wonder whether people were really excited about this screenplay. I mean Sarem and American Pie are the only people who claim that there was excitement about the script. But they don’t bring out any significant names. It’s all incredibly vouge and generalized. and with all the other lies it makes me think this is just another attempt by Lani to deal with overwhelming criticism of the book. “Well, you guys might not like it but PLENTY OF PROFESSIONAL PEOPLE THINK I’M BRLLIANT SO SHUT UP JEALOUS HATERS!”. Heck, she only named Skye Turner, but they’re friends. I’m going to give Skye the benefit of the doubt and say she pretend to be excited because she didn’t want her friend to feel bad. A lot of people don’t criticize their friends or family too harshly.

      November 29, 2021
      |Reply
  13. Sigyn Wisch
    Sigyn Wisch

    Imagine if someone you worked with wrote a screenplay in which you’d be expected to portray yourself kissing and delivering lines about how much you want to fuck the character based off of and played by them.
    ^ That actually would not bother me, but I’m weird and I can see how it would squick out most folks. I usually confine those kinds of fantasies to short stories that will never see the light of day, though. Or I get someone else to play my fantasy-person and we deliver it as satire.

    So the majority of the screenplay is Laesar Zalad wanking to herself by proxy. That doesn’t surprise me.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
  14. It sounds like… The Room for Mortals.

    Ugh.

    I genuinely couldn’t have imagined it would be that bad and pointless.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • RodeoBob
      RodeoBob

      Oh hai Mac!

      …OK, it almost works.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
    • BRB writing AU Fic where the characters from *The Room* take the place of the characters in HfM. Lisa = Zade, Mac = Johnny, Mark = Jackson. Denny = Riley, obviously. Tad can be played my the underwear guy.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • Dove
        Dove

        “Zade, you’re tearing me apart!”

        “I know. Jebi se. Got that? It’s my best spell. I’m using physics magljk.”

        “Well, stop it… Hey, it hurts me, okay.”

        June 13, 2018
        |Reply
  15. K.J. Skye
    K.J. Skye

    Is it really weird for a character named Sofia to be nicknamed Sofie…? Like, I know they’re the same number of letters but Sofie is a syllable shorter to say than Sofia, unless I’m pronouncing one of those horribly wrong.
    I’m all for pointing out the many, many flaws this book seems to have, I just don’t think that’s one of them.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • JennyTrout
      JennyTrout

      What makes weird is that in the screenplay, there’s no mention of the nicknames thing like in the book. So, you have a character named Sofia who is never called Sofia out loud in the entire script. You wouldn’t know her name was Sofia unless you read the screenplay…so what’s the point?

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • K.J. Skye
        K.J. Skye

        Ah, yeah that’s weird

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
    • Dove
      Dove

      I think the issue is that it’s really easy to mix up those two when you’re typing up a draft in a hurry, since they’re so alike, and since we’re never given any indication that Sofie is truly a nickname when the author got so hung-up on nicknames in general, IE Mac, Zade, Charles, and Dela, it seems more like it’s a typo or else an intentional attempt for people to get under the character’s skin, since the author seems to take issue with having her own name pronounced wrong (it’s mostly people who hate Sofia calling her by the name Sofie instead, if I’m not mistaken, and I think it’s inconsistent.)

      Otherwise, I’d agree with you, although I’d think such a shift works better in a movie/tv than in a book since the shorter syllable makes a much bigger difference than the spelling does.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • Rebecca
        Rebecca

        It’s so easy to fix, though! Ctrl+F “Sophie,” replace all “Sophia.” Done.

        June 13, 2018
        |Reply
        • Dove
          Dove

          Absolutely, but she’d have to accept that she made that mistake first and clearly she’s not concerned about old typos. 😉

          June 13, 2018
          |Reply
          • Rebecca
            Rebecca

            …point.

            June 13, 2018
  16. MyDog'sPA
    MyDog'sPA

    It sounds like every other screenplay I read when I started writing screenplays in Screenwriting 101: No conflict, no character arcs, incomplete world building, improper pacing, no structure (if not improper structure), and lousy characters/character development.

    What did I miss? Lani hit it out of the park on her very first try!!!

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • MyDog'sPA
      MyDog'sPA

      Oh yeah, I forgot over-direction and lack of time management.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
    • Amy
      Amy

      Not her very first try. This is probably her 3,000+ revision.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • MyDog'sPA
        MyDog'sPA

        Amy, it just means she’s consistent and never even wants to learn how to do even one right. 3 editors on the book, remember? So she’s stuck at the same level of newbieness for perpetuity. Blechk.

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
        • Dove
          Dove

          Lord, I can’t believe I’m gonna give LS any credit but… she did take some of the advice that she was given. Her unwillingness to revise the whole damn book is what made that obvious and it continued to drag everything else down. If LS gave a shit about writing, she could get better (or she could at least parrot what her editors recommended.) Of course, she wants fame and fortune NOW and improvement on her skills would take time, so it’s irrelevant to her and you’re basically correct. 😛

          June 13, 2018
          |Reply
      • MyDog'sPA
        MyDog'sPA

        It’s also possible that the scrip rev. number (3841) is a scripped.com number, not hers.

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
  17. Amy
    Amy

    Because Lani likes to tout her experiences in show business and her years around scripts, I thought the script would actually be…. Comprehensive at least. Maybe her skills were not for YA lit. I can write a decent short story but I can’t write scripts.

    So I got it wrong: Lani did write herself into sex scenes, but because she decided to change it into a YA novel, she had to cut them out. So wait– she didn’t want to make the book into a New Adult because people would think it’s all about sex, yet there’s sex in the original script??? If there was sex, the book would have sold and/or garnered some actual fans.

    I am truly amazed. Now this book is even more cringe-ier knowing she wrote having sex with Ratheborn, and she wanted this printed and filmed???? Fanfiction rules state you DON’T show your fanfics to the actors!!! Because it’ll embarass them!! Oh god, did she show this to him???????

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • Dove
      Dove

      I think she only wrote about sex with Mac, but kissing poor Mr. Rathbone is still bad enough. Maybe finding out about the script is what soured their relationship? Aside from her doing stupid shit on the job…

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • SofiaThatB*tch
        SofiaThatB*tch

        Check twitter and search for “Lani Sarem” or #lanisarem. There are really old tweets bitching about her and how she handled the band

        June 13, 2018
        |Reply
        • Dove
          Dove

          Hrmmm… when I have more time. I’m betting there are a lot of them. XD

          June 13, 2018
          |Reply
    • Athena
      Athena

      I for one am glad she didn’t write sex scenes in the book. We were saved pages of Mac praising Zazoo for not having a thigh gap like the ebul Clara obviously must have had, then a short paragraph of Pole A into Slot B sex, followed up by Mac saying Ziploc was the best he’d ever had even though she was a virgin.

      June 13, 2018
      |Reply
      • ViolettaD
        ViolettaD

        “Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.”
        – Muriel Spark, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie” (from two pupils’ imagined correspondence between their sexually-involved teachers)

        June 13, 2018
        |Reply
  18. Gretel
    Gretel

    At this point, I want the movie to happen.
    I want it to happen and be as catastrophic in the making process and end result as it ought to be. And then I want a documentary like with The Artist talking about Sawdust and how self-absorbed she is and how fucking awkward it was filming it and how every step of making this piece of wet hamdsandwich was pure torture for the production team.

    That’d be so fucking funny.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • You’re not alone. If this sort of disaster vanity project is your thing, google Maradonia and the Seven Bridges. It was a book written by a thriteen year old who finally got it made into a feature-length movie. It’s literally the worst thing I’ve seen in my life. Oh, and the author (who was I think in her late teens/20s when it shot) starred in it.

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • VGK
        VGK

        Oh the Maradonia Saga is such a beautiful mess! I so second this.

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
        • Liza
          Liza

          OMG that movie. Just a bunch of clips edited together randomly. It has exactly the quality I expect of Idiot Book for Dumb Asses

          I gotta give Tesch credit, though. For a 13 year old she has some impressively sophisticated phrasing. The story makes no sense, plot is completely lacking, grammar doesn’t exist, she doesn’t understand that words have meaning, and that putting them in a certain order also has meaning, etc. But still. Some things I think “damn, that sentence doesn’t make any sense, but it sounds so bougie.”

          Tesch’s parents didn’t do her any favors self-publishing and then filming that mess, but she has a whole lot more going for her than Sarem does. Sarem wasn’t a child when she wrote hers…

          June 15, 2018
          |Reply
  19. Jenny (But not Jenny Trout)
    Jenny (But not Jenny Trout)

    I would watch the hell out of this movie after I have margaritas. Margaritas made the Twilight movies so much better and they made 50 Shades of Cray-cray fun (I was the closest to drunk I’ve ever been and sis and I were in the fun theater.) Seriously, I’d get some friends and LOTS of alchol and have a good laugh while yelling at the screen MST3K style because you know it’ll be direct to tv.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
  20. VGK
    VGK

    I would so love to know what Lani did to cause this anonymous source to have no problem sending you the script! With that in mind…people involved with the book/movie know about these recaps and must like them if they sent you the script in good faith.

    With the exception of the actual Vegas performer. But still.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • MyDog'sPA
      MyDog'sPA

      Hmm, note that the ‘idea’ is co-authored with an “Andrea Dennin” with ‘extra inspiration and edited’ by “Mickey Stark.” I have no idea who they are in relation to Lani, but it’s odd that these very people aren’t included on authorship of the novel.

      Of course, if I was them, I don’t know if I’d want to be on the author list for the novel, but it may be these folks, may be others. Oh the problems one has when one is a superstar (in her own mind . . .)! 🙂

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
      • Amy
        Amy

        A reviewer pointed out that the person who did the intro, Skye Turner, never got any type of shoutout. No facebook name, no twitter name, no mention of her books, nothing. I haven’t heard anything from miss Turner since this thing started.

        Tis a mystery….

        June 11, 2018
        |Reply
        • Amy, everyone knows Skye Turner is Faleena Hopkins, and she’s coaching Lani on how to trademark the word “magick.”

          June 11, 2018
          |Reply
          • Oh god please god no. Of course if those two were to form the ultimate book troll each of them would end up vying to be the center of attention and ultimately, they’d eat each other.

            I take some comfort in that.

            June 12, 2018
  21. I had wondered what it was you were hinting at with earlier tweets, and now we know!

    Revision 3841, plus five years, plus transformation into a book? How much time and energy and money was wasted over all these years?

    Meanwhile the writing in the band she was managing at the time? That is super creepy and gross. Ugh.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
  22. Dove
    Dove

    Hey, Jenny, do you think there’s a strong possibility the script started out as fanfiction? I remember a few rumors, from the book reviews, that it began life as a Twilight story on Wattpad, which might have been in script format. That would explain the whole “mortal” thing and why there’s the reveal at the end, assuming the readers already know what she’ll turn out to be… although there aren’t any witches in Twilight (I think) so I assume she was originally a vampire.

    June 11, 2018
    |Reply
    • Dove
      Dove

      LOL wait nevermind. I’m a dummy. Doing a search shows you mentioned that in the very first intro/chapter 0 review. I just want to know the long and winding road this poor monstrosity took, you know? Did it go from prose or script fanfic to serial numbers filed off script to a terrible novel? I guess the answer is yes!

      June 11, 2018
      |Reply
  23. Leigh
    Leigh

    Is it me or does she have Ted Cruz face?

    June 13, 2018
    |Reply
    • Leigh
      Leigh

      Like, you don’t know why, but you want to punch her in that smug smile.

      June 13, 2018
      |Reply
      • Dove
        Dove

        Ted Cruz is definitely punchable but for some reason, my flight reflex kicks in whenever I see and hear Lani Sarem.

        June 13, 2018
        |Reply
        • ViolettaD
          ViolettaD

          Imagine Sarem and Martin Skreli mating and producing spawn….

          June 13, 2018
          |Reply
      • Crystal M
        Crystal M

        Mmmm, I don’t feel the urge to punch her. I get the urge to duct tape her mouth shut so I don’t have to listen to her.

        June 15, 2018
        |Reply
  24. One thing I have to say the Sofia/Sofia thing does not bother me in the least (one of the few things that doesn’t). I just assumed it was a nickname. It would be FAR worse, if someone were to explain it.

    “You see sometimes we call her Sofie, it’s just a little like Sofia, you know?” Mac took a long drag on his cigarette. “It’s really NOT her biblical name, but we kind of change it up. Let me explain in several long paragraphs why we did that.”

    June 13, 2018
    |Reply
  25. ViolettaD
    ViolettaD

    Did anyone else get cold chills when Jenny said, “somehow the book is an improvement”?

    June 13, 2018
    |Reply
  26. ViolettaD
    ViolettaD

    Anyway, she got the “mortal unknowingly falling in love with witch and being first disillusioned then accepting” thing from “Bell, Book, and Candle.”

    June 13, 2018
    |Reply
    • Elyssa
      Elyssa

      And “Bell, Book, and Candle” is fucking delightful and no leading man Lani ever writes is going to hold a candle to Jimmy Stewart.

      June 18, 2018
      |Reply
  27. Dr_Aelira
    Dr_Aelira

    I’m curious to know how many people Sarem held at gun point in order to get this horror show off the ground? It doesn’t seem possible that anyone willingly assisted her with this disaster.

    June 13, 2018
    |Reply
  28. Reading through this, it really seems as though Lani Sarem has a deep-seated hatred of teenagers. Every time one appears in the book, it’s just so that Zada can insult them and prove her superiority, despite the fact that she’s meant to be only a few years older. And every typical YA Trope that appears is used in the most insulting way possible, not helped by the knowledge that they weren’t in the screenplay, meaning that they were added purely to appeal to teenagers and get the book sold.
    It’s ironic because Lani clearly wants people to view her as youthful enough to pass as one, but doesn’t want to be mistaken for one.

    June 15, 2018
    |Reply
    • ViolettaD
      ViolettaD

      I don’t get the no-sex-in-YA thing. Years ago, in Paul Zindel’s books or Norma Klein’s, there was plenty of teen sex. As in real life, it was often disappointing, if not traumatic. Blossom Elfman’s books often focused on teen pregnancy, and in those days, you couldn’t parlay that into a career in Reality TV.

      When did YA books become so sanitized?

      June 15, 2018
      |Reply
      • Amy
        Amy

        Sanitized? I disagree.

        “The Stars Never Rise” has forced sterilization, child abuse, teen pregnancy, and child enslavement.
        “I am Princess X” has matricide, slavery, child abuse, child murder
        “Gilt” has rape, beheading and quaterings
        “The Call” has graphic violence and gore
        “Angelfall” has graphic violence and gore

        And all of these have been printed in the past ten years. A current popular YA series is the Throne of Glass series, and the author has no problem writing sex in her books.

        Lani does NOT have the writing maturity to handle sex scenes, let alone sex scenes in a book for teens.

        June 15, 2018
        |Reply
        • Person
          Person

          YUP. Plus even mainstream darlings like The Fault in Our Stars, which was all about 2 kids with cancer, included a scene where the protagonists had sex; the last Hunger Games book has a fade-to-black style sex scene; Twilight’s last book had sex…you really only have to glance at the most boring “this is what sold the most recently” part of the shelf, and there it is.

          Not to mention that GOSSIP GIRL was YA, and I remember reading one to try it out back in my teen years and there was SO. MUCH. SEX. A character even mused about whether sex with Boy B would be as good as sex with Boy A.

          June 15, 2018
          |Reply
          • Person
            Person

            Argh, I wish I could edit the first part of the sentence where I listed the books! X_X

            June 15, 2018
        • Black Knight
          Black Knight

          I agree with ViolettaD. There’s the occasional exception, like Throne of Glass, but by and large YA these days does not include any real sex scenes. It’s become much like films, and your own examples prove the point – graphic violence of any kind is okay, but a consensual sex scene, not so much.

          I read a lot of YA too and almost always, sex is either non-existent or it’s described in an extremely vague, brief, euphemistic fashion – especially queer sex.

          That said, I sure don’t want Lani attempting to write sex either (except purely for the snark potential). But there are a lot of very good American YA authors who run scared these days. Anything violent is A-OK but ahhhhh, no sex! The children!

          June 15, 2018
          |Reply
        • Evil!Blonde Bitch
          Evil!Blonde Bitch

          Can you just imagine Landwar trying to write sex? Good lord. I’m assuming either IKEA erotica (“he inserted himself into me” type jazz) or something trying to be flowery and profound but failing.
          I mean, I read the book recently. One chapter ends with: “I grabbed and kissed him passionately as a feeling washed over me. I think that feeling was the happiest I’d ever been.”
          The cringe was real, y’all. If she had actually written sex, it would be just as awful as Fifty Shades sex. Meandering, euphemistic, vague, insta-orgasm (maybe even come on command), trite musings about how this is more “magickal” than anything, and Mac saying she’s amazing, even though she’s a virgin. Maybe even her hymen breaking for more terrible sex tropes! And probably a lack of knowledge of how human anatomy works as a side bonus!
          Any awful tropes I’m missing? Because I GUARANTEE that Lani would hit every single one like she’s playing a fucking game of bingo.

          June 16, 2018
          |Reply
          • ViolettaD
            ViolettaD

            If they film that and it gets MST3K’d, I hope they voiceover fart sounds with every thrust.

            June 16, 2018
          • ViolettaD
            ViolettaD

            “I start to move. REALLY move.”

            June 16, 2018
  29. Lucy
    Lucy

    This is odd. I tried to search Jackson Rathbone Lani Sarem and can barely find anything. I keep getting: Some results may have been removed under data protection law in Europe. Learn more.

    I thought I searched their names a couple of weeks ago to do my own fact checking and didn’t get that message. But maybe it was there and I didn’t notice before.

    June 17, 2018
    |Reply
    • SofiaThatB*tch
      SofiaThatB*tch

      All the gossip is in twitter my friend

      July 4, 2018
      |Reply
  30. Seraphina
    Seraphina

    I’m from Tennessee, fit the age for Zade, and have wild colors in my hair! Sure, I have no acting talent, but I have an authentic Southern drawl, and Zade has no discernable personality. I think I could manage bland. Y’all laugh, but I think this role was made for me!

    June 24, 2018
    |Reply

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