Seanan McGuire (seanan_mcguire) wrote,
Seanan McGuire
seanan_mcguire
  • Mood: thoughtful
  • Music: Talis Kimberley, "Still Catch the Tide."

Vegemite.

deird1 wrote a really fascinating article about something she terms "the Vegemite Effect,", which is so accurate and earnest that it should just about be required reading. Because she's right. The short precis:

"No matter how good something is, if you were expecting something else, you'll hate it."

People ask me periodically why I chose to be Mira Grant for my science fiction when I was already happily myself for my urban fantasy. My standard answer is all about marketing and branding and setting expectations, and all of this is completely true...but the real answer is all about Vegemite. People who like me for me were going to know that I was Mira Grant, because it was an open secret, and they were the ones who'd just be expecting my words. People who like my urban fantasy weren't going to pick up a book by someone else expecting magic and hijinks. And once Mira established a readership of her own, people who liked science and zombies weren't going to up my books expecting the dead to walk.

The Vegemite effect explains a great deal about how we approach media of all types, not just books, but comics, movies, and television. There's a lot to think about. And if you've ever wondered why sometimes I say "this is salty" repeatedly before I hand you something...

...well, there you go.
Tags: contemplation
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phillip2637

September 25 2012, 15:59:13 UTC 4 years ago

I have no problem with any of that.

However, I've also always thought of creative people as...people. They probably have a variety of interests and, if (e.g.) Barbara Hambly wants to write historical mysteries as well as fantasy, I'm absolutely fine with that too.

I used to be a big David Bowie fan; I got over the idea of having expectations really fast! :-)

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 16:00:16 UTC 4 years ago

There's nothing to say "don't do that," but it does make some interesting points about the psychology of changing directions. You need to say "it's salty" in every possible way before the first bite is taken.

ldwheeler

4 years ago

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markbernstein

September 25 2012, 16:16:57 UTC 4 years ago

I agree completely. A couple of other examples come to mind . . .

Some years back, I went to a concert by jazz trumpeter Nicholas Payton, and came away hugely disappointed. Payton is good, and I own a couple of his albums, so what was the problem? In a word, Vegemite. The concert was advertised as a tribute to Louis Armstrong, my all-time favorite jazz performer, so I went in expecting Payton's group to be working in something approaching Armstrong's style. Instead, they performed tunes previously recorded by Armstrong, but did them in a post-bop style that was developed decades later. It was jarring. (As a side note, trombonist Wycliffe Gordon recorded an Armstrong tribute album last year called "Hello Pops", and it captures exactly the spirit I was looking for from Payton.)

Sondheim's "Into the Woods" (a show you know well) Vegemites itself. The first act works well as a self-contained unit, where by the end all the visible plotlines are resolved successfully and happily. Then, after intermission, all the rotten seeds planted in Act I sprout, and everything goes to hell. I've seen audience members react very badly to that.

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 17:30:41 UTC 4 years ago

I've seen that reaction, too. It's never pretty.

groblek

4 years ago

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janetmiles

September 25 2012, 16:25:04 UTC 4 years ago

*nods* My version of that has always been, "I love oatmeal raisin cookies, but not when I was expecting chocolate chip."

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 16:25:38 UTC 4 years ago

Totally.

pickledginger

4 years ago

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megotelek

September 25 2012, 16:28:26 UTC 4 years ago

I see this with movie reviews so much. There've been several times where I've loved a movie and critics HATED it, but when I read the reviews, it seemed like they were expecting a completely different movie than the one they watched. And then judged it harshly based on what they thought it should have been (or was marketed as, some trailers are horrifically bad with this), rather than what it actually was.

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 16:28:50 UTC 4 years ago

I think that's killed a few movies I really, really loved.

weds

September 25 2012, 16:41:44 UTC 4 years ago

This is giving me giant flashbacks to the Vegemite vs. Marmite conversations I had with Australian and British friends over the course of several years, and the way one could get derailed over different salty, even.

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 16:43:02 UTC 4 years ago

Expectations color everything.

liddle_oldman

September 25 2012, 17:00:48 UTC 4 years ago

Her post is in fact brilliant, and your point is taken as well.

I didn't like iRobot: A Will Smith Adventure (I now put "A Will Smith Adventure" after all his titles; it fits most of them nicely) until I suddenly realized that they had actually, purely by accident, filmed With Folded Hands, a completely different robot story from about the same period.

(Also, if Susan Calvin were to shoot at something, she wouldn't close her eyes and she'd hit it.)

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 17:31:22 UTC 4 years ago

I didn't like Will Smith vs. the Zombies until I stopped viewing it as I Am Legend and started viewing it as the aftermath of a successful act of biological terror.

liddle_oldman

4 years ago

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tikiera

September 25 2012, 17:07:24 UTC 4 years ago

I am going to have send various people a link to the Vegemite - I can be extremely picky regarding food and a lot of the pickiness is that there a bunch of foods that I have gotten myself to like and enjoy, in one preparation and one preparation only.

I have always liked raw peppers. I have taught myself to eat them in fajitas. But if you put a roast pepper before when I am expecting a raw pepper or fajita pepper, then I am going to not want to eat it. Even if it's the best roast pepper in the world, and I would like them if I just tried them.

I am going to have to try it when what I expected is a roast pepper, and knowing how it will be different from the two preparation of peppers that I like. Otherwise, I will hate the roast pepper. Because it's not raw, and it's not in a fajita.

I am that picky. I am really neophobic when it comes to food.

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 17:31:33 UTC 4 years ago

I get that.

tikiera

4 years ago

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tikiera

September 25 2012, 17:11:05 UTC 4 years ago

I have always liked that you had Mira Grant.

I have friend that love urban fantasy, but really wouldn't like a zombie novel. I can recommend Seanan McGuire to them freely, knowing that they are going to love the Toby books and the Incryptid books, but I don't have to worry about making certain they know which titles to buy.

And I can recommend the Mira Grant stuff to the people who can't stand novels with elves in them and again, not have to worry about making certain that they pick up the right book.

After having a friend pick up Exit Strategy by Kelley Armstrong (which doesn't have any urban fantasy elements at all) who then refused to try the Otherworld stuff even if I lent her mine -- yeah, I can fully understand the Vegemite experience when it comes to books. Some people are as picky about books as I am about food.

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 17:31:54 UTC 4 years ago

That's part of why I like me having Mira Grant: that response, right there.

taldragon

September 25 2012, 17:12:07 UTC 4 years ago

that is an awesome link (even if i loathe Vegemite), and very very apt.

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 17:32:05 UTC 4 years ago

Yeah, I was impressed.

pickledginger

September 25 2012, 17:15:05 UTC 4 years ago

It's a great column -- except for the Vegemite, which to me tastes like miso gone dangerously bad.

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 17:32:11 UTC 4 years ago

Hee.

jamileigh17

September 25 2012, 17:18:46 UTC 4 years ago

Yes! Exactly! I use a similar metaphor about tea. If I'm expecting chai and have earl grey, I'm just going to be annoyed. It's not that it's bad tea, it's that it's not what I wanted it to be. I have to be in a VERY particular mood to read zombie books, because they're not my cup of tea normally (I'm chicken, and horror and me don't get along terribly well). To me, it makes perfect sense to go by a pen name for that. (Then again, I go by a pen name because I don't want everyone I meet to immediately connect me to books. It was more a concern when I was writing romance than YA, but though it's not a secret really, I just like having that distance there.)

seanan_mcguire

September 25 2012, 17:32:26 UTC 4 years ago

That makes sense.

groblek

September 25 2012, 17:37:31 UTC 4 years ago

Thanks for the link. That does explain a lot. Off the top of my head, I can think of one example, an author's series that really annoyed me because the blurb on the back and the plot of the first book led me to expect something very different than what the series became in later books, so much so that I never read the last book. In fairness to the author, I wasn't misled - he later posted the outline of what he had intended to write, and it was in keeping with what I'd been led to expect, but editorial decisions and other things ended up shaping the story very differently. I actually really like other series and books of his that are of the same general style as what the series became, but since I wasn't expecting it, I was annoyed. It did teach me that in this particular author's case, I should break my rule about not going into a book with any expectations beyond what the story leads me to expect.

And as an aside, the one time I had Vegemite, I was told that people either love it or hate it, so my reaction was complete indifference. At some point, I should try it again without a setup that will trigger my contrarian nature.


seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 14:57:14 UTC 4 years ago

I get extremely annoyed when I pick up one thing and get something else. It's not a "delightful surprise," it's a betrayal. That's the reason I won't read Connie Willis anymore.

alitalf

September 25 2012, 17:54:18 UTC 4 years ago

Most of the time, I have found that if I enjoy a writer's fantasy stories, I am not likely to be so happy with their science fiction, and vice-versa. There are a few writers who seem to change voices to match my expectation of the way a story of [whatever type] can be told well. Some writers, for example Tanya Huff, seem to manage to make this stick, using just one name.

I first encountered you under the nom-de-wordprocessor Mira Grant, and when I had read the Hugo nominated novel, and the second in the trilogy (which I took care to order in time so that I could read straight on from Feed), I moused around to find out if you had written anything else.

(A friend once remarked that "all" she asked of her food was that it would surprise and delight her. Feed did that for me. I had not had high hopes of the subject matter, but I was unwilling to cast a vote for the novel category unless I had read everything nominated. I was really glad of that decision!)

Still, I just bought one book under the name Seanan McGuire, wondering whether I would enjoy the fantasy as much. I enjoyed the first couple of chapters of Rosemary and Rue enough to buy all the others in the series then available. My enjoyment of the series increased as, it seemed to me, you got into your stride.

I do get the reason for using a separate name, and it may have turned out to work well for you, but it may slightly tend to hide your light under a bushel, in that it is less immediately obvious that the same person has written different types of stories in ways that match the individual story rather well.

There are a few writers for whom it doesn't matter what they write, I will want to take a look, in the hope and expectation that it will be interesting. You are one of those. To my perception, the quality of storytelling stands out well enough that one name might have worked well for you - though we cannot now know for sure. Still, this does allow you to play the good and evil twins off against each other - now who is which?

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 14:58:22 UTC 4 years ago

It may hide my light a little, but from what I've seen, people who will like me regardless find both of me, while those who would be really upset by one of my genres either don't follow me, or aren't as upset when they do discover the "alter ego," because the name on the cover is a clear warning label.

tsukara

September 25 2012, 18:04:22 UTC 4 years ago

This works really, really well, and explains so much about things I thought I would love, or learned to love later, but didn't at first.

Also it goes well with the Marmite Effect (those things most people either LOVE with deep passion or HATE with equally deep passion, with a few people in the middle of the spectrum--many polarizing fandoms, for instance... and I apologize in advance for the TV Tropes link). As long as one doesn't mix up the two, I guess.

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 14:58:41 UTC 4 years ago

I love that creamy food spreads are now a default metaphor.

ducktape74

September 25 2012, 18:11:40 UTC 4 years ago

That's almost dead-on how I explained to someone why an author would write under a pseudonym! After all, someone who is in to the idea of 12st-century fae might not be in to zombies - I certainly wasn't prior to reading "Feed" - though I don't know that I would eschew the former due to the latter, but that's me.

Can you imagine if Anne Rice had published her Beauty books under her name instead of A.N. Roquelaure? Of course if she were writing them now, the critics would (rightly?) complain of her riding the 50 Shades of Dreck coat tails all the way to your local big box and grocery store shelves.

Sorry, my rant got out. Bad rant, no cookie.

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:09:55 UTC 4 years ago

They've actually given the books new "50 Shades-style" covers and slapped them all back into stores. It's horrifying.

fadethecat

September 25 2012, 18:11:59 UTC 4 years ago

Oo. This is such a useful shorthand for explaining this process. There have been a few books ruined for me by terrible blurb/cover combos setting me up for a different sort of book. (At least one of which I think I would've loved if I'd gone in expecting a practical approach to the side-effects of a multi-century conspiracy controlling all the nominally ruling monarchs with the resulting manipulation and bloodshed, instead of expecting fluffy! girl power! magical fantasy! hijinks! as the marketing had led me to expect.) It also explains better for me the different pen names thing, which I'd always sort of vaguely understood before as a way of separating product lines in general.

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:10:13 UTC 4 years ago

I'm glad this makes sense!

nyxalinth

September 25 2012, 19:04:59 UTC 4 years ago

For some reason, I just can't get into Urban Fantasy for the most part. But zombies? Yes.

Mind, with zombies, I have to know what it is going in. I know not to read certain authors if I'm wanting gore and guts and they write more character-driven stories. Likewise, if I want something similar to Feed, I know that Ed Lee or Tim Curran is not the direction in which to go.

Sometimes it's hard for me to try new authors based on, say, Amazon reviews. Someone will say "OMG this book is the most (insert adjective that always gets my attention) I've ever read!" then come to find out there was one paragraph maybe that matches that. Gore and sex (I'm a very visceral person) always get my attention, and if someone says "This book was so gory it made me sick!" and it turns out that all there is is a barely described "Rawr, I'm a zombie!--fade to black" scene, then I want to tell them "Maybe you should go back to reading (insert tame author here) if that's your idea of gore."

So yeah, the book might not actually suck, but if I go in expecting Edward Lee or Wrath James White levels of shocking and I get something along the lines of Charles Grant or Lovecraft (I love them both, mind), then I am usually disappointed.

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:10:45 UTC 4 years ago

I love me some Ed Lee, but yeah, I'm not going to recommend him to everyone who says they read Feed. Just because dude, not the same thing at aaaaaaall.

nyxalinth

4 years ago

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dornbeast

September 25 2012, 19:24:00 UTC 4 years ago

This is actually why I took so long to start reading Fables.

I didn't particularly like Bill Willingham's writing, so I didn't give Fables a first glance. As it turned out, that's the only work of his that I do like.

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:10:54 UTC 4 years ago

That makes sense.

alicetheowl

September 25 2012, 22:04:42 UTC 4 years ago

Most of the books I hated the most are because people strongly recommended them to me. I have different tastes from some, but I have my turnoffs, and they're not everyone else's turnoffs. Nowadays, if people recommend a book to me, there's a series of questions I ask before I add it to my to-read.

I've learned that, if I go into a book with high expectations of how much I'll love it, even if I would've felt indifferent toward it or even tipped toward "like" if I forgave certain pet peeves, I'll be angry by the end.

A very popular book came out early last year that intrigued me with its back blurb about mythology and suspense and integration of UF elements into a literary novel. Instead, I got a book about a woman who turns helpless after she falls in love with a guy. :/

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:11:25 UTC 4 years ago

A very popular book came out early last year that intrigued me with its back blurb about mythology and suspense and integration of UF elements into a literary novel. Instead, I got a book about a woman who turns helpless after she falls in love with a guy. :/

Isn't that about 90% of UF?

alicetheowl

4 years ago

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thedragonweaver

September 25 2012, 22:59:01 UTC 4 years ago

I see that with a lot of things. "Oh, I don't like the direction this band's taken in the more recent albums." "I can't stand Doctor Who since Stephen Moffat's taken over." "Dude, this person used to know how to write."

You know what? I've stopped trying to expect a certain thing until the second time I've encountered it. (The second time with the exact thing, that is.) I credit improv training. It makes life much more fun. (I love LOTS of things, even as they change and morph.)

Oh, and on the authorship thing, you're far from the most extreme example. K.J. Parker's other works are so far removed in style that if they'd been published with the author's original byline, there would be very upset people out there. As in Misery-level upset.

thedragonweaver

September 25 2012, 22:59:50 UTC 4 years ago

P.S. I like ALL of the new Doctor Who, and can enjoy quite a lot of the old stuff (though I will admit, sometimes it's the MST3K type of enjoyment.)

seanan_mcguire

4 years ago

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anna_en_route

September 26 2012, 00:30:55 UTC 4 years ago

This was very interesting and timely (and reminded me of my first encounter with wasabi...definitely *not* avocado)

But one off-topic thing jumped out of that article...does peanut butter really have sugar in it in the States???

spectralbovine

September 26 2012, 02:32:27 UTC 4 years ago

A lot of the big brands do, yeah.

anna_en_route

4 years ago

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seanan_mcguire

4 years ago

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thedragonweaver

4 years ago

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thedragonweaver

4 years ago

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spectralbovine

September 26 2012, 02:31:44 UTC 4 years ago

I love the Vegemite Effect!! I've been using it for years.

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:12:19 UTC 4 years ago

I got it from you!

spectralbovine

4 years ago

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mel_redcap

September 26 2012, 06:35:28 UTC 4 years ago

...I've seen this happen with a review of the iPhone 5 in my local paper. Yesterday, in fact. The (fairly long) review boiled down to this:

"Well, yes, I suppose it's nice and pretty, but they should have made the screen wider. All the other new smartphones have made the screen wider. I was expecting them to have made the screen wider. It's got a lovely display, but it's not as wide as I wanted. It's fast and pretty and they have made the screen longer and I'll even admit that it's the perfect ratio for watching movies in landscape mode but by golly I looked at all these other smartphones that have widened their screens and I will not accept one that hasn't followed the trend slavishly!

"...Did I mention that they haven't made the screen wider?"

There I was looking at it and going "Huh, and here I was, being glad that they haven't widened the screen, because it's the perfect width for me to do things one-handed." And my husband, who has kind of stubby hands, loves it because it fits in his grip. And his friend, who has nerve damage in his right hand, is happy because he doesn't need flexibility he doesn't have any more to reach across the screen with his thumb. And said friend's wife... so yeah, we weren't expecting jam instead of Vegemite, and we're appreciating it for what it is. XD

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:25:11 UTC 4 years ago

That...I...what?

Arrgh.

mel_redcap

4 years ago

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thedragonweaver

4 years ago

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theliz13

September 26 2012, 08:15:10 UTC 4 years ago

I totally understand the name game. It's the very same reason you should keep your homemade candies under one label, and your homemade bio-toxin under another. It really isn't fair to surprise someone with bio-toxin when they're just looking for butterscotch.

And the salt line just made me think of "Better Off Ted", where poor Lem was being followed around by the (sic) "underpaid white guy"
"THIS IS SALTY! WHAT IS IT!" (While wearing earplugs)
"You're eating salt."
"WHAT??"
"SALT!!"
apropos of nothing... but salt.
:)

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:25:34 UTC 4 years ago

I dunno. I think it's funny when you surprise someone with bio-toxin.

vincentursus

September 26 2012, 10:11:53 UTC 4 years ago

In the words of Garfield the Cat: People don't want nice. They want consistency.

seanan_mcguire

September 26 2012, 15:25:51 UTC 4 years ago

So true.
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