Aliens, a Love Story

"If it comes to that... I'll do us both."
-Hicks

I've always suspected that my idea of romance and relationships is a little off. Today is only affirming that, because Aliens is on. I love Aliens, way more than Alien. I've been debating every time I'm at Target if I can buy Aliens without owning Alien or if that's against the rules of life. Why do I love Aliens so much?

Well mainly because of Hicks.

Hicks may be up there with my ideal man. He takes charge of a bad situation, he's great with Newt, and he makes snarky comments. All things I enjoy. When he gives Ripley his tracker watch thingy I almost swoon. His promise to kill both of them so they don't get alien embryos all up in their business is one of the most romantic things I've ever heard. Of course is you know anything about Aliens you know Hicks is not the real hero of the story, Ripley is, and that's awesome too.

So since my ideal romance story involves danger and snark and girls that are equally bad ass as guys, it's probably not a surprise that I don't really enjoy romance novels. I have read my fair share. I used to steal them from my grandma when I needed something to read. When I worked at a book store I'd page through them here and there. But I can't really get into them, UNLESS there's a humorous element.

Basically I need the books that are romcoms. I can't do straight gushy love so there better be some shenanigans and brouhaha to keep me interested. You'd think that would be pretty easy to find, but apparently I'm picky. I also want interesting female characters and dialogue that doesn't make me beat my head off the wall. And is it too much to ask that we don't always randomly impregnate people? I mean seriously, there's more to life than knocking up the female lead.

I find it intensely frustrating trying to find new books that meet my criteria. I read the description on the back and it sounds like it MUST be a funny story and then it's just not. It's atrocious. It makes me lose faith in humanity.

And then there's Jenny Crusie.

I love Jennifer Crusie stories with a passion. I first started off with her story Faking It, which has art theft, multiple personalities, orange-pinapple muffins, and fake orgasms. Slowly but surely I started accumulating more and more of her books, including the ones written with Bob Mayer which are my favorite, hands down. Her stories are amazing. Yes, there's romance. Yes, it gets sappy sometimes. But they are hysterical for one thing, and for another despite the absurdity that goes on (and trust me, it can get absurd) they feel more real.

This year I started to suspect I had a Jennifer Crusie problem, because prompted by my friend Erin I decided to start tracking the books I read. I reread Jennifer Crusie novels A LOT. I realized why last week, when I was rather depressed so I decided it was time to read one of the new ones I had been saving. Her books just make me feel better, plain and simple. And realizing that, I made a decision.

For NaNoWriMo this year I'm going to try and write a happy, funny, love story.

I've known about National Novel Writing Month for ages. If you're not familiar, it's basically where you write a 50,000 word story in the month of November. I've debated doing it several times, but I've always had an excuse to not do it (ex: several papers due that month, moving, or taking a lot of vacations). This year though my friend Erin is doing NaNoWriMo and she inspires me to try as well.

There are sooooooo many reasons why this may be the worst year to do it. I am traveling literally every week of the month. I have a vacation with my family. I have a wedding to attend. I have work functions. I have Thanksgiving with my brother. BUT, I'm going to try anyway. I think I'm going to be cutting out TV completely for the month, and that's okay.

I do better with goals. I do even better when people know my goals, and I don't want them to know I've failed. Take my jazzercise progress as proof (I hit my 150 classes before the end of October! WOOT!). I have not been writing as much as I should. I love writing, I have a ton of ideas, and I need to just MAKE MYSELF DO IT.

I actually came to the decision to participate a few weeks ago, but the idea of writing a happy story is new. This may sound weird, but except for my fanfiction, which is admittedly fluffy, all my writing tends to be dark. Not like Stephen King dark, but there's pretty much always some sort of either depressing or scary element. That's fine and dandy, but I really want to challenge myself this year. I want something that makes other people happy and gets them through tough times like Jennifer Crusie does for me.

Will I be successful? Oh lordy, who even knows. But the point is I am determined to try.

GTFO MY WOMB!!

There’s this idea that girls wander about after a certain age constantly obsessing over their biological clock. We plot, connive, and fornicate until we’re Glenn Close agonizing “this may be my last chance to have a child” and end up dead in the bathtub.

I hate to be the breaker of a bad myth, but this isn’t true. There are many people out there that just flat out don’t want children. Many people have babies just because it seems like the thing to do at a certain age. And sure, there are those of us that do want kids eventually, but it’s not something to obsess over everyday.

Now having said that, there is a teeny bit of basis to the myth. Every so often your body sneak attacks with an OMG BABIES moment. Logically you know there is no way on this green earth you want a child at the time. Your body has other ideas. The good news is this normally passes very quickly. The better news is that if you ever run into this situation, I have compiled a list of the best movies to make you definitely not want to even think about the word “baby” for at least a year, if not a decade. Brace for spoilers and grossness ahead.

3. The Fly (1986)

I love Geena Davis and Jeff Goldblum. They are adorable together. If you’ve never seen Earth Girls Are Easy you should definitely get on that. However, I will probably never watch The Fly again. There are limits to how much ooze and ick I can take. 

So Jeff Goldblum is a crazy scientist (so fitting) and he ends up merging with a fly. At first, he looks all amped up and sexy. Then he starts getting more disfigured and disgusting until he eventually becomes this weird fly-ish creature.

Who knew you could make Jeff Goldblum not sexy...

Why would this make you want to go into womb lockdown mode? Well, Geena Davis has been getting it on with Jeff Goldblum and winds up pregnant. Was it normal sperm? Fly-mutated sperm? We just don’t know. But her dream about the child is enough to keep me from having kids for quite a few.

2. Joshua

This is a movie we randomly found back in college when we were in the habit of arbitrarily grabbing horror movies from Blockbuster. Sadly this movie is not widely recognized as it’s not a traditional horror movie by any means, but it is TERRIFYING.

I almost hate to spoil this one.

Joshua is the story of a family adjusting to a new baby. It’s not a perfect family. There are hints that the maternal grandmother was off her rocker, the older child, Joshua, randomly throws up around the house, and all of a sudden the new baby switches from happy and adorable to a screaming nightmare. The dog dies, the mother starts to lose her mind, and Joshua gets creepier and creepier.

The face of evil.

So how does this inspire you to NOT procreate? The scary thing about this movie is it’s a psychological thriller and entirely possible (as opposed to having larva babies which seems a bit unlikely) that you could spawn children that are not quite right in the head and torment their entire family. I mean really, somebody gave birth to people like Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy.

1. Prometheus

Ok, as this movie is more recent, warning, MORE SPOILERS AHEAD. I mean sure everyone should have seen it back in theaters, but considering I just saw the movie for the first time yesterday I will make allowances.

Now one could argue that any of the Alien movies can cause some pregnancy pause as they consistently feature aliens popping out of bodies in a twisted birth parody. I won’t discredit those films, but in general those are the results of an alien forcing its nastiness down your throat, chilling in your abdominal cavity (as opposed to your womb as it happens to men too) and again, not the likeliest thing in the world.

In Prometheus, things start to go bad when android Michael Fassbender decides to put a little something extra in Logan Marshall-Green’s drink. LMG then goes back to his quarters and is having a little conversation with girlfriend and fellow scientist Noomi Rapace. To summarize what happens next, I will relay our commentary during this scene:

Me: DON’T KISS HIM! He has black goo in his body! Stop kissing him!

My brother: If you think kissing him is bad, imagine what happens if she receives his seed.

Me: Wait, what? DON’T RECEIVE HIS SEED! NO! DO NOT RECEIVE HIS SEED!!

Guess what? Idget warrior receives his seed. LMG dies, Noomi Rapace freaks out, and when they’re scanning her to see if she was infected they find out she’s 3 months pregnant with something that looks a little off. Michael Fassbender thinks they should just put her back to sleep, but luckily Noomi Rapace has the will to live and handles the situation in what I now considering one of the most disturbing movie sequences of all time.

Yeah… I wandered around for the rest of the day clutching my abdomen in panic. Should I ever end up in space, I’m planning to wear a chastity belt.