BLOGGING LOOKING FOR ALASKA, pt. 4: Get My Swan Costume Ready

Hey gang, how's this going for you, so far? What do you want to hear more about? Less about? Let me know! Also let other people know about this series. New voices are always welcome in the comments. Previously: The Same Amount Of Ice

“128 Days Before”

Pudge and Alaska sit on a swing by the lake and smoke and talk. He notes her “electric-blue-painted toes,” and I wrote “MPDG” in the margins for the first of many times. Manic Pixie Dream Girl, for the unititiated, is a term coined by AV Club writer Nathan Rabin (the fact that Rabin coined the term is a big point of pride for the AV Club. Rightly so, I suppose, but they never let a reference to the term pass by without noting its origin) in response to Kirsten Dunst’s character in Elizabethtown; MPDGs are “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” We definitely have the makings for that, but we’ll see where it goes; Alaska could end up a meta-MPDG, or MMPDG,* like Clementine from Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind--Wikipedia’s (far too short) entry on MPDGs notes her rejoinder to Joel that “Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive.” Of course, one of the major complaints about MPDGs is that they are essentially static characters, and ESOTSM makes a kind of argument that everybody is static, including Clementine. And ultimately I’ll make the argument that Miles ends up being his own MPDG, if someone reminds me to.

(*Another notable coinage: The “Manic Trixie Nightmare Girl,” coined by Dan Kois w/r/t Kristen Stewart in the great little flick Welcome To The Rileys, which is on Netflix Instant now, FY Information.)

But as it stands, Alaska is very MPDG, emphasis on the P and G right now. She’s just referenced Simon Bolivar’s last words: “How will I ever get out of this labyrinth?” And Pudge asks the clear question: “What’s the labyrinth?” Or wait, did Simon Bolivar die in a literal maze? Was it a Tri-Wizard cup kinda deal?

Her mouth close enough to me that I could feel her breath warmer than the air, she said, “That’s the mystery, isn’t it? Is the labyrinth living or dying?”

Life’s infinite mysteries? CHECK. And then for a dose of quirk, we learn about Alaska’s “life library.” In her dorm are these stacks of books--it’s extreme enough that Miles thinks they might all fall on her and kill her (crushed by books! That would be a great way to go in a novel full of literary references)--and she tells him she’s read about a third of them so far, and wants to read them all before she dies (doing life-math here...she only plans to live to be 48 or so? Pending interesting new releases, I suppose. Pending Interesting New Releases would be a great memoir title if you were a slutty librarian, by the way). “But there is so much to do,” she says. “Cigarettes to smoke, sex to have, swings to swing on.”

(Alaska is not unlike the revisionist version of Alice Cullen I inserted into the Twilight books. Naturally, I like her a lot.)

Alaska tells Miles that he reminds her of The Colonel/Chip when they started school together, that back then he was smart but hadn’t “done much living.” You seem to have our narrator’s (and Nathan Rabin’s number, Al.) She and Chip became a kind of prank team, I guess, like Improv Everywhere but less annoying, as Miles relates to us thusly:

So Chip became the Colonel--the military-style planner of their pranks, and Alaska was ever Alaska, the larger-than-life creative force behind them.

Haven’t you ever heard of SHOW DON’T TELL, Pudge? I guess he wouldn’t have heard of that unless they were someone’s last words. Holy shit, those would be such baller last words! “Show, don’t tell.” And then you just die. I might have to use that.

And then Alaska is even vaguely flirty with our man, mentioning that he’s cuter than Chip. “But I didn’t even just say that, because I love my boyfriend.” Aw, hell. I like Pudge, and I can see where this is going already, and so I want to tell him to stay away, but I also know that if I were in his place I wouldn’t, so I can’t. Also, it’s a book and he’s a fictional character so there’s really no way for me to communicate with him.

Alaska and Miles start heading back to the dorms, and then she asks him he ever gets “creeped out” when walking alone at night, “and even though it’s silly and embarrassing you just want to run home?” Oh man, Alaska is Tumblr in human form! That shit would have like 60,000 notes.

“127 days before”

The next morning, Miles interrogates Chip about Alaska. She’s from a place called Vine Station, which sounds like a level from Donkey Kong Country, and her boyfriend plays bass, which means Pudge is definitely fucked. Bassists get all the crazypussy (see Vicious, Sid). Chip tells him that Alaska is a whackjob anyway, and that he should aim for one of the other girls. And then we learn about the bufriedos. A bufriedo is not an ethnic slur, which was my first thought, but rather a deep fried burrito. Taco Bell must have something like that, right? Because now I want one. Pudge describes having a “culinary orgasm” upon his first bite (that was kind of a premature culinary orgasm, kid. Work on your stamina) and shares his opinion that EVERYTHING is better fried (and with bacon probably, right? Alaska is Tumblr and Pudge is Reddit. Chip is 4Chan).

Pudge then meets one of our only other significant characters, Takumi. What does Takumi look like, you ask? He’s “Japanese” and “thin.” Got it? Good. Hahaha. And then we learn about Alaska’s absent roommate, who got kicked out of school in a blaze of glory, violating three of the school’s expellable offenses at once: genital touching (ha!), drinking, and doing drugs. It’s what The Colonel calls “The Trifecta” and what I call Monday, but the issue seems to be that no one can figure out how she got caught. Takumi is worried there’s a rat. I’m kind of impressed that there’s a social continuity between years of school at this place, by the way; when I came back from summer vacation I could usually barely remember my friends’ names.

Anyway, the guys at the lunch table can barely muster any sympathy for Alaska’s roommate and even less for her boyfriend, the other half of that genital-touching equation. He was a “Weekday Warrior,” you see, and there’s that unbreachable class divide we (sort of) heard about earlier. Now, generally this is something I agree with--eat the rich, etc.--but my and the Colonel’s class prejudices are tested when it is mentioned that Chip’s girlfriend is ALSO a Weekday Warrior. So what’s the deal, guy? You hate them, but not enough to not fuck them? Actually I guess that makes sense.

So we haven’t met the rest of the student body, really, or developed much of a picture of what life is like at Culver Creek, yet. We don’t even KNOW these Weekend Warriors we are supposed to hate, you know? And then we we do meet them, and they are, as it turns out, murderers. Seriously: That night, a couple of goons burst into our narrator’s room, and The Colonel just sort of passively lets them pull Miles out of bed and walk him outside in his underwear. They bring him down to the lake, duct-tape his arms, legs, and mouth, and then hurl him into the water before he can speak a word of protest or even really understand what is happening.

Uh, what? I am not much of a fighter, but I can tell you that I would never let something like this happen to me. I would find within me the strength of ten men, and I would END those motherfuckers right there by the lake. That (alleged) douchebag swan who hangs out by the lake would have a hell of a meal; it would be very final-scene-of-Let-The-Right-One-In out there. 

But if SOMEHOW they overpowered me (again, there’s no way that would happen, even out of shape as I am right now) the point where I was submerged and duct-taped would be the point at which I gave up and just DIED. I can barely swim with my appendages free! But Miles somehow relaxes enough to float to the surface (this is usually where I go wrong) and gradually wriggles himself to shore. In the YA books I’m used to, this would be the part where Miles wonders if maybe there’s something DIFFERENT about him. But instead he goes to Alaska’s room and she’s a total bitch for some reason and he goes to bed angry and confused and feeling like everyone hates him. Remember how we said Bella wasn’t relatable? Well, there’s such a thing as too relatable, maybe.