Success = Failure

I need to give myself permission to write. More specifically, I need to give myself permission to write badly.

I think I would be happier if I wrote more. And I think I would become a better writer if I allowed myself to write badly from time to time.

Few things have made me as happy as writing. It doesn’t happen every time I write. Just sometimes, when I’m really into it.

But I’m afraid of failing. And because of that, I often will refuse to try.

If you have ever been held back by fear, I think you know the feeling. You want something so hard that your heart aches. Then over time you grow numb. Then over more time you forget.

But the pain of wanting never really goes away. It still cries out for what it wants. It never stopped. You just stopped listening to it.

If failure is the only thing preventing me from experiencing the delirious, creative joy of writing, then I give myself permission to fail.

When I learn how to fail, then I can learn to have fun. Then I can learn to experiment and create.

Then I can write.

That time when Solo happened

From a year ago:

Solo is on Netflix.

In many ways, it is the opposite of The Last Jedi. Where TLJ attempted to subvert expectations and wound up upsetting many fans, Solo is all fan service. Yet somehow it still manages to be mediocre as a Star Wars movie.

I've been using a new word to describe films I am not content with. "Inoffensive." When I call a film inoffensive, what I'm saying is not that it is particularly good or bad--not that I liked or disliked it. Mainly I am saying that the film took no real risks, didn't offer anything new, didn't make a good case for its own existence. (Unless it's a Transformers movie, for which "inoffensive" is the highest compliment I can give this Bay-tortured franchise.)

Solo was a Star Wars movie that I neither wanted nor asked for, especially from the fan fiction studios at Disney. But then, I didn't ask for Rogue One, and I wound up liking that hasty little movie (or at least liking some moments in it).

Star Wars needs to have memorable "Holy Shit" moments. It gets harder to include those moments in this era of advanced CGI. Frankly, audiences are harder to impress. That's why the story needs to be better now than ever before. (Our emotions. Our emotions.)

Today, Star Wars couldn't get away with a prequel trilogy. (Some might say that it didn't before.) Hell, today Star Wars couldn't get away with Return of the Jedi, which I now acknowledge was not good Star Wars--merely mediocre Star Wars with a few awesome moments.

And I'll admit it--I've grown to be something of a snob about this sort of thing. You know, geeky things. I am continually frustrated when things don't turn out to be the best possible versions of themselves. After all, life is full of disappointment. What's the point of escapism if it just brings further disappointment?

But I know that making a film is no small undertaking. So many things can go wrong. It's a miracle that anything likable makes it into the final product.

So when I express disappointment in a film, I try to keep it focused on the story--not on the people who made the film. Not the actors.

In the past, even Star Wars movies I disliked had one or two moments I liked to revisit. The Darth Maul fight. The Coruscant chase. Order 66.

The Force Awakens didn't have such a moment for me. There was nothing for me to revisit, because the entire movie was a "revisiting" of the original Star Wars. The Last Jedi, at least, had one such moment--the reappearance of Yoda. Rogue One had the Darth Vader moment at the end, and I liked the big battle on Scariff. Solo...

Solo had a bunch of references to things I liked, but not a whole lot of actual things I liked. But it wasn't bad. It had its charms. It was just... forgettable. Mediocre.

Inoffensive.

The value of stories

Sometimes, I forget the value of stories. What I need from them.

Stories can be great. They can make me feel more in touch with humanity, with myself.

They can also be not-so-great. They can feel empty and shallow.

The most disappointing stories are the ones that promise me everything I want but fail to deliver. But even more disappointing than those are the ones that give me exactly what I think I want, only for me to realize that wasn’t what I wanted at all.

Sometimes it feels like a story exists for the sole purpose of selling me something. To strengthen a brand, for instance. (Capitalism and art can coexist, but there are low points.)

My favorite stories aren’t actually *my* stories. But they *feel* like they were written just for me. But because I connect with them—because I relate to them—so strongly, I take “ownership” of them, which leads to other problems.

I think it is wrongheaded for fans to think, “I need this story to be for *me*.” It doesn’t feel right to me for fans to shape and bend someone else’s story to their will.

When I was a more avid reader of comics (I’ve grown more selective in my old age), I couldn’t understand the people who kept talking about the books they hated. To me the answer was simple: “Stop reading those books. Read something else.”

But they had a different attitude. They considered themselves huge fans of those books, therefore the books were somehow obligated to give them the experience they desired. The fact that they didn’t—or couldn’t—was a show of “disrespect” to fans.

This strikes me as a kind of intellectual laziness. The fan is no longer putting in the work to search the world for the art that speaks to them. They expect the art to be handed to them on a silver platter.

No. We, the fans, need to do the work. We need to keep looking. Because it is very likely that we will grow dissatisfied with what we have. We will reach a point where our favorite thing has nothing left to give us. And we need to be okay with that. We cannot be resentful, because that leads to toxic behavior.

We found great art before, we can find it again.

And if we can’t find it, then we need to make it.

Gargoyles Fanfic: "Rose"

It felt like he had been asleep for ages. He was in the clock tower. Or was it the castle? He was asleep in bed. Or was he a statue? He was a man. Or was he a gargoyle?

Everything else seemed normal. The gargoyles shed their stone skin, roaring, eyes ablaze. Elisa was already there, telling them about the Pack, or Dr. Sevarius, or Thailog, or Xanatos. It all seemed so very far away now, like a dream.

“You’re starting to notice.”

He turned around. The man before him had blonde hair, glasses, and a stony demeanor to match his stone hand. But even disoriented, he could tell that the man did not belong here.

“What’s happening? Is this some kind of trick?”

The man adjusted his glasses. “That would be out of character. What do you remember?”

“I remember… running. Fighting. Pain.” His eyes darkened. “It was all I knew. I thought it would never end.”

“When did it end?”

“When I found them.” He turned to them. Goliath. Elisa. Hudson. Brooklyn. Broadway. Lexington. Bronx. Angela. “I felt safe with them. For a while. But I think some part of me never stopped running. Never stopped looking over my shoulder.”

“Despite your power?”

“Power?” he laughed. “What is power? Just another problem. Another complication. Another thing to be afraid of.” He stared at his hand. Once they had been sealed in metal to mask his true nature. He was meant to look human after all. Claws would have been a dead giveaway.

“That power saved your life on numerous occasions.”

“It did,” he conceded. “It was an advantage. But it was also a crutch. It made me a target. It made me dangerous. It made me an enemy. I never wanted to fight. I only ever wanted to be safe.”

“Maybe that was too much to hope for.”

“Maybe it was. Maybe I should have been grateful. I had strength. I was programmed to fight. I even had magic. But none of it felt like it was really mine. It felt like… like a layer of stone skin protecting the flesh underneath.” He stared at his hand, his talon. “Like it was given to me on a whim. I started to wonder. What was underneath all of that? What was so precious that it needed so many layers of protection?”

“Perhaps nothing.”

He looked at the man. He could sense no malice. “Perhaps. When I was… made… I was designed to be a tool. I was never meant to think for myself. All they cared about was making a weapon. They didn’t intend for anything to be underneath all those flashy abilities. I was actually kind of glad to be rid of my powers. Afraid. But kind of glad.” He got a faraway look in his eyes. “Like I was getting closer to finding the real me.”

He looked once again at the ones who took him in. They seemed farther away now, even though none of them had moved.

“But there never was a real me.” It was not a question, but he waited for the other to respond.

“No,” he said. “There never was.”

He stood silently with this revelation. And then he nodded. “So what was I, then? An illusion?”

“Something like that.”

He looked over his shoulder. “Will they remember?”

“Perhaps,” he said. “In dreams.”

“Was there a point to any of this?”

“I suspect someone was curious. They wanted to see what would happen. You were made to satisfy that curiosity. But this was never really your home. You were always just a visitor. Some part of you must have known this.”

He nodded. “It was a good dream. Strange but good.” He hesitated. “Can I… Can I say goodbye before I go?”

“I’m sorry. You are already gone. You have been gone for a while.”

He looked over his shoulder. They were far away now. Talking about patrolling. Saving the city from Demona. Reading Shakespeare. Fighting. Loving. Living.

It comforted him to know that they would go on, even without him.

“Are you ready?”

He laughed quietly. “How could anyone be ready?”

“Then it’s time to go.”

“Wait,” he said. “There is another—one whose life is bound to mine. Will she be okay?”

The other man stared at him.

“I guess it doesn’t matter if none of it was real.”

“Yes, none of it was real.” The other man then did something rare for him. He smiled. “But I never said it didn’t matter.”

* * *

He had been given one final gift. It was just a dream, but somehow that made it more precious.

He was looking down at the city, passing by overhead. Goliath was there, Elisa in his arms. Hudson was there too. And Brooklyn. Broadway. Lexington. Bronx. Angela.

And her.

Her hand was in his. When everything else melted away, he could still feel her hand and see her smile. She was still there when the city faded. She was still there when his friends faded. She was still there when he had forgotten his own name.

But even that was okay. He didn’t need a name.

He was a gargoyle.

I Have Feelings About Movies: Star Wars Edition

J.J. Abrams' Star Wars movies feel like what he thinks Star Wars means to us more than what Star Wars means to him. He bent over backwards to deliver what he thought were crowd-pleasing moments.

George Lucas did not always deliver a Star Wars film of consistent quality. But he did have consistent vision. He had something to say.

This realization has made me retroactively like The Last Jedi more. For all the flaws of that film, I have to give credit to Rian Johnson for creating a movie that was not purely fan service.

He tried to make a Star Wars movie that was meaningful to him, one that challenged us and tried to give us something new within a familiar framework. I may not have liked the final result, but I can appreciate the effort. And I respect his vision a hell of a lot more than Abrams' soulless appeal to nostalgia.

I've spoken before about my issues with how the trilogy has developed the new characters. After three films, I still feel like I barely know these characters.

I think they took too many shortcuts. We needed more interplay between characters, less running around and reacting to chaos. We needed a better balance of "quiet" moments and "loud" moments.

There's a joke I've seen floating around regarding Abrams' storytelling technique. "When you don't know how to end a scene, have someone barge into the room with weapons." (Or perhaps a random tentacle monster on a smuggling ship will do.)

I'm very intrigued about this trope of "interrupting" a quiet or expository scene with action. I don't recall either the original trilogy or the prequels using interruptions excessively as a transition from one type of scene into another. (For a million examples of this trope, see [or don't see] Aquaman.)

Earlier I gave the film a B-/C+. And my assessment was true--from a certain point of view. But if I'm paying attention to the minutiae, the technique, the characters, and the vision--if those things matter to me (which they often do)--then I give the film a lower grade.

The film was more or less what I expected it to be. The two prior films had tempered my expectations, and that's why I gave it a higher grade at the time. But it's not the kind of film that sits well with me. It gives me intellectual indigestion the longer I sit with it. In other words, it gets the higher grade as long as I'm not actually thinking too much about it.

Oh well. Some days the Force is with you, other days you're with the Force.

To end this on a more positive note, I would like to share what I consider to be my Star Wars "headcanon":

Original Trilogy
Revenge of the Sith
Original Thrawn Trilogy
X-Wing/Rogue Squadron novels and comics
Clone Wars
Rebels
Mandalorian

I'm open to adding more. Anything by Timothy Zahn is worth reading. I'm just way behind on the literature.

Thoughts on Doomsday Clock

This book was more or less what I'd hoped it would be.

So why didn't I like it?

One of the issues, I think, was the issues. Waiting sometimes multiple months for the next issue did not enhance my reading experience.

The first few issues were genuinely exciting to read. I had bought into the hype. But by the end I found that nothing could really grab me, except for the ideas.

Some notes:

The New 52 is officially over. It exists somewhere out there as another Earth. Earth 52.

The ongoing theme of the book was finding hope. How do you take a morally gray world like Watchmen and reconcile it with the pervasive hopefulness of Superman? What happens when cynicism and despair clash with optimism and hope? What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?

The answer is change.

But what changed exactly? Superman's world is more or less restored. The JSA is back. The Legion is back. Even Ma and Pa are back. Superman's world looks the same as ever. We have discarded the uncomfortable unfamiliarity of the New 52 and have fully embraced nostalgia.

The thing that changed was Watchmen.

Watchmen was a world without hope. But when you pit an ideology like that against Superman, Superman always wins. So naturally the story of Watchmen now ends (or newly begins) on a more hopeful note.

This alteration to the world of Watchmen is an interesting "political" statement. Perhaps the writer was watching MSNBC one day and thought to himself, "The world is running out of hope. This is like the beginning of Watchmen. What can I do to change the narrative?"

The writer understands that cynicism is not sustainable. A soul cannot survive on it. A soul needs hope. So changing Watchmen from a story of cynicism to a story of hope is a bold political statement indeed--certainly when you consider how sacrosanct the original story is.

Or was.

Perhaps part of the meta narrative was that the writer wanted to break the "hold" Watchmen had over the rest of the comics industry. Its cynicism seemed to infect all the other books in some way, and it poisoned an entire cinematic universe starting with Man of Steel (directed by the director of Watchmen). In other words, he wanted to put Watchmen in its place, contain its influence.

Well, there's no better way to defeat Watchmen than to give it hope.

So I was completely on board for the meta narrative alone. I think the weakness of the story was the, er, "narrative" narrative.

By about halfway through the series, I just stopped feeling it. The initial hype was gone. I lost interest in the mounting conflict. I only cared about how it ended, not how we got there.

And the book was repeatedly delayed.

Nothing kills momentum like a delay. It's one of the reasons why I primarily read this stuff in collected volumes. But I was so hyped, I knew I couldn't wait that long. Yet I wound up waiting a long time anyway.

There's a longer conversation to be had about the ideal way to publish and read comics. All I can say is that following a book for 2 years when it should only have lasted 1 year does affect my enjoyment of it.

Detaching myself from the actual timing of publication, reading stories on my own schedule--my own terms--is the best way for me to enjoy comics. Reading a single chapter every few months is not.

Passivity of the Jedi

In the past I've praised Luke's role in Return of the Jedi, how he essentially took both Vader and Emperor off the chess board so his friends in the Rebellion could do the real work.

What I hadn't noticed before is that this is in stark contrast to his behavior in Empire Strikes Back, when he is so worried about the fate of his friends that he is willing to abandon his Jedi training to save them.

The result is that he not only walks into a trap, but his friends--who managed to escape on their own--actually have to come back and rescue him!

Luke's more passive role in ROTJ is the result of lesson he learned from his disastrous decision. He finally begins to understand what Obi-Wan had once said--that there are alternatives to fighting.

In ROTJ, he doesn't even have to fight in order to win. He just has to occupy Vader's and Emperor's attention long enough for his friends to complete the mission.

This is probably why I think that the one thing in The Last Jedi that felt true to his character was Luke projecting himself to Kylo Ren rather than engaging him directly. Luke would not actually fight if he didn't have to. He just needed to distract Kylo Ren long enough for the Resistance to escape.

With Rise of Skywalker coming out soon, we will see if Rey herself learned any of these lessons. She has proven herself to be very naive in The Last Jedi. She was plagued by doubts about her identity and purpose. And the one thing she was certain about--that she could bring Kylo Ren back to the good side--wound up revealing how much she still had to learn. She had more faith in Kylo Ren's strength of character than she did in her own.

And it's these flaws that have me convinced that she is not a Mary Sue, no matter how "powerful" she is. A Mary Sue is not just about power levels and how easily that power is acquired. It's about lack of depth. It's about characters who don't make mistakes. Well--Rey has made a number of mistakes in TLJ. Now let's see if she learned anything from them.