The Supreme Court Like Gay Marriage. Good For Them.

Anybody else remember this vain, tone-deaf exercise in poorly-written victimization? 

That happened. So did DOMA. I don't know what either of those were about. And neither will future generations.

Maggie Gallagher wants not to be lumped in with the segregationists of the mid-20th Century. Her best tack would've been to not hop on the discrimination train in the first place (I imagine it looking like the armored train from Goldeneye: archaic, paranoid, shuttered windows, and while impervious to bullets is extremely vulnerable to Court-triggered explosions). She can wring her hands all she wants now. Forty years down the road, she's Bull Connor without the dogs.

It's probably classless to stick the knife in like this.

.@ChickfilA Any specials today?
— rob delaney (@robdelaney) June 26, 2013

If it's hard not to, it's because there are still 36 states that have outlawed gay marriage. 6 more only allow marriage lite. Until those are fixed, this isn't over.

Man of Steel

WARNING: SPOILERS AHEAD

Man of Steel: in which Hollywood continues to insist on re-telling origin stories. I don't want to lean too hard on this point, as the temptation to re-tell Superman's iconic origin story must be strong, if only because it's the most obvious way to get the audience to identify with a character, something that's hard for Superman generally. And MOS handles Superman's origin reasonably well, but as with The Amazing Spider-Man before it, even when done well (and this is the most thorough film adaptation of the end of Krypton and Clark's youth in Kansas, narrowly beating out Superman: The Movie), there's a distinct feeling of deja-vu that brings the pacing to a crawl.

This origin has been told a thousand times. Grant Morrison told it in one surprisingly poignant page in All-Star Superman. Mark Waid's excellent Superman: Birthright tells the whole story with pathos, managing to fit the brunt of Superman mythology into a psychologically-realistic package. Some small examples: MOS ends with Clark getting hired at the Daily Planet, with no mention of a journalism background; S:B has Clark working as a reporter before becoming Superman is ever a thought in his head. S:B also features Clark fleshing out his identities (Superman and bumbling Clark Kent) with John and Martha, the Kents studying acting and costume design and working out all the kinks of Clark's plan before he goes and does it; MOS has Clark receive his costume whole cloth from the ghost of his dead Kryptonian father.

Side note: I wasn't a fan of them killing off Jonathan Kent again, and especially not a fan of Clark accepting that that was how it was supposed to be because he "trusted" his father; a personal thing, just rang false to me.

Now, are these metrics not fair because I've read the source materials? Yeah, probably.

But as though to apologize for treading old water, director Zack Snyder does what he was hired to do--the action in MOS much improved from the deeply disappointing Superman Returns. Especially worth highlighting is Superman's battle with Zod's lieutenants in Smallville, which earns special attention as perhaps the most exciting fight scene in recent superhero history. Many reviewers have focused on the relative lack of heart of the second half of MOS, and that's fair, because even viscerally exciting action will lose its soul if it goes on too long--something that Snyder can and will do unapologetically; he levels Metropolis with surprisingly little pathos. But at least this action is something new for the character on film. This is what we wanted after SR and Snyder doesn't disappoint.

But when the action is done, we're left with the character we were introduced to and kind of like (he is saving our asses, that helps) but, like the people he protects, we still don't really know him. He's not as accessible as Iron Man, not as fantasy-worthy as Batman. The focus on his Kryptonian backstory comes at the expense of Clark the human being (Ghost Jor-El tells him that he is equally from Earth and Krypton, which gives short stick to the place he was raised in and planet he identifies with); the Kryptonian aspect should be largely superficial not just because that makes the most sense psychologically, but because it's what makes us like him. We Superman fans revere Clark, not Kal-El. Warner Bros. is almost certainly going to expect sequels and the "who" of Superman has time to be fleshed out, but that needed to be done here, especially given a worldwide audience that has no innate reverence for the character. Henry Cavill mines a few moments of likability, despite a grin that often looks too much like a smirk; I'd love to see what he can do with a deeper script.

A related point: We know Superman wants to protect us, not dominate us; motivation is what makes him the hero and Zod the villain (quick word: Michael Shannon is a lot of fun in the villain role). And that's important because that knowledge is the difference between Superman and Nietzschean Superman for the viewer (that goes for superheroes in general, actually). But it's easy to identify with General Swanwick at the end of the film; this guy is asking us to trust him, when we don't know him. In light of the news out of the NSA these past weeks, could we trust him? Should we? MOS never gets into that, save a cameo from a Predator drone (funny: Gen. Swanwick complains about it costing $11 million dollars days after a major city is reduced to rubble). Again, probably a good basis for the sequel and that's what a character like Lex Luthor is meant to do. But a large problem for Superman the last few decades has been relative tone-deafness and I wonder how much longer his stories can afford to ignore present conditions.

Despite largely mediocre reviews, MOS is almost certainly going to warrant that sequel, if only because Warner Bros. really wants to get a jump on that Justice League project. And MOS may prove a decent base for a larger DC Universe. It's not hard, at this stage, to imagine some of the other heroes coexisting with Superman--Wonder Woman and Green Lantern in particular (watching Metropolis get flattened gives me some pause about Batman, but they're not going to attempt JL without him). However, we need a further look at this Superman first. Because for all the pretty, pretty fireworks, we've only just absorbed the first rays of yellow sunlight of why the hell we should care.

Grade: B

The NSA Pees In The Pool

I was refraining from saying anything about the NSA data-mining, also know as PRISM, also known as "you know how you know that there's urine in the pool, but you don't think about it?" In part because there's probably more to come. But also because what I have to say pales in comparison to what others have already written. Then I remember that I wrote a book about an overzealous surveillance state. And that I'm probably not allowed to let it pass just because that government is being operated by a president I kinda like.

We knew that private companies were compiling our information--for targeted advertising or for simpler customer service--and we had little problem with that. We can opt out of those, right? We knew that Google had a running record of our porn searches, but we didn't need to think about it. And we knew that with evolving communications technologies, we were creating our own records of ourselves: our movements, our purchases, our major and minor life events. Again, we were fine with that because that was our choice and whatever resulting wounds were self-inflicted.

But simultaneously, we also knew that the government was fighting a War on Terror somewhere in the background. We knew the Patriot Act existed (and had been reauthorized by Obama) alongside the NDAA and so many other innocent-sounding acronyms. We may not always have been conscious of it, and we kicked up brief fusses when something new plopped down in front of us: body imaging at the airport, removing our shoes at the airport, no liquids at the airport... a lot of it had to do with inconveniences when flying (we could've started taking trains, but trains are for Euro-fags). The point is, we could've--and some of us did--put two and two together a long time ago. We're not allowed to be shocked now. We can be outraged, on the understanding that we may look silly doing so. As of this writing, nothing appears to be illegal. On that level, some outrage is probably called for.

It was understandable of liberals to expect better of Obama, but never totally realistic (though, hey, torture's gone, so... whoo?). It's always been on us. We get the government we deserve. We wanted Internet, cell phones, and security. Welp.

From my time in the federal government, I know that low- and mid-level abuse is vanishingly rare (yes, I'm aware of the IRS thing). That kind of tinkering is both extremely illegal and also pointless for most bureaucrats to think about, because they don't want to intrude on your life--it creates more work for them. And I think of the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras in operation in a place like London, where too much information is granted to an entity--however nefarious--to be of any good to anyone; they have to really want to track someone to get use out of the system and that initiative has to come from the top. I generally trust President Obama to use these methods with the right intent. I may, however, not trust his successor, just as I did not trust his predecessor.

And there's the rub.

If we're comfortable with one government being able to do a thing, we have to be comfortable with every subsequent government being able to do that thing. The government does not cede authority: that would be irrational on its part. And that goes double when presidents of both parties have done something. So now we ask questions. And it is we, because congressional Republicans can and will weasel out of investigating and fixing this (Benghazi this is not, apparently) and Democrats will be all too happy to slump away from the scene. Calmly, rationally (again, this is all legal and we only have ourselves to blame in the first place) we find out how the government uses the info and where's it been successful in the past (did it help get bin Laden? That would be bolster the case). Is the price of swimming in someone else's urine worth the convenience of being able to pee in the pool?

... I might have that analogy backward.

Maybe now we finally get the grown-up discussion about security and civil liberties. Maybe we don't let fear and anger rule the day. Maybe a kind of libertarian awakening occurs and we start pulling back the security apparatus we've allowed to be erected in our name. But that doesn't appear to be happening yet. And if the distracting argument of Edward Snowden's heroship or villainy is any indication, we're not yet ready for the adult conversation. That and the fact that I'm sure someone laughed at my use of the word "erected" (that person was me--I'm not ready for the conversation). 

Character Allignment (explained via The Wire)

I played Dungeons and Dragons once, in high school, and I haven't had the desire to replay it since. I was too fat to be beat up over playing the game, so that wasn't it. Some have suggested I had a bad dungeon-master, which is possible (I don't even remember who the dungeon-master was, even though I remember most everyone involved). But for me, D&D is too much like writing on the fly in a group, which is never ideal for producing stories. Teamwork and imaginative problem solving, sure, but not so great for a narrative, which I somehow came to assume was the point of the game (it's not). And then there's characterization. While many imaginative players can and will create interesting characters, it's all too easy to wind up with characters who are dull, single-dimensional, and monomaniacally focused on a quest or a single, vague character trait, like being greedy or noble or drunk. I blame the D&D alignment chart.

As fun as the chart can be for we nerds to play with, it's a seriously flawed tool for character building. No real, live human being can fit into one square perfectly. Abstractly, one's personality might be most at home in a particular cell, say Lawful Neutral, but will tend bleed out into adjacent cells (Lawful Good, True Neutral) as the pressures of the world force different, non-dice controlled reactions out of them. Be honest with yourself: do you fit into one of those nine paradigms every day of your life? Do your friends?
 
And if a real person has no comfortable home on the chart, what chance does a compelling, realistic character have? Or at least a character that a writer wants to be compelling and realistic. Batman, for example, after seven decades of different creators and continuities, can be made to fit into all of the alignments at once. Superman can do it, too, but you have to stretch a bit more.

Then you have something like The Wire, one of the most compelling dramatic narratives ever allowed by the powers that be to grace our television screens, with characters based on real world drug dealers, cops, and politicians. Those who have seen the show (otherwise known as The People Who Should Be Allowed to Vote) know that many of the characters contain staggering shades of complexity, shifting back and forth as the crushing reality of the Baltimore drug wars impinge upon them, playing off of each other like characters in a really good novel. It shouldn't be possible to do an alignment chart of The Wire characters, right? Probably not, but here it is:

That's... actually not bad. I wonder about McNulty, though--Chaotic Neutral seems to fit him just as well, but as much as a self-destructive fuck-up as he is, he does typically work to benefit others.

Also, if Avon is Chaotic Neutral, I'm tempted to slide Stringer into Lawful Neutral; but then I get to thinking about D'Angelo and suddenly Stringer's placement here works a bit better. For balance, you could drop Avon into Chaotic Evil, since he's just as much a part of Baltimore's rot as Stringer, but no one beats Marlo Stanfield for that title (except maybe Snoop).

And Omar is about as True Neutral as they come ("It's all in the game."), but seems to me to slide across the middle, into Lawful ("A man's gotta have a code.") and Chaotic ("Well, you see Mike-Mike thought he should keep that cocaine he was slinging, and the money he was makin' from slingin' it. I thought otherwise."). Recall season two's "All Prologue," in which Omar casually obliterates Maurice Levy.

Real people, and realistic characters, have no true alignment. Fans are welcome to have fun guessing, but writers and creators must note that, for the same reasons that their creations can never be their own, dynamic character relationships will always be too messy to fit into the alignment chart. And that to try is to needlessly diminish a character's potential.

By the way, I did run Nos Populus characters through the alignments, after finishing the book. James Reso is generally Chaotic Neutral, with forays up and down the Chaotic wing. I'll let readers decide where they think the rest of the characters fall.

Nine Billion Copies!

Over at The Writer's Circle, Mia Siegert has penned a piece on the philosophy of "writing for oneself." She argues that such a claim augurs a kind of narcissism and that many writers use it as a way to avoid having their work peeled apart by others. She says, in part:

I’m not saying nor suggesting that one should write with the sole purpose of gaining audience approval, but observing that the mentality behind writing for one’s self can be and often is problematic. Those writers with too much self often don’t deal well with criticism, if they can cope with it at all...

[t]he way one deals with critique is critical to a writer’s future successes and ability and willingness to improve.

All true. Though, how many people genuinely enjoy criticism, even the constructive kind? By the way, appreciating and valuing that part of the process in helping to improve writing is not the same thing as enjoying it.

Certainly, "I write for myself" can be and is used as a hedge, covering anything from insecurity to laziness. But isn't that also where writers tend to start? How about ultra-personal diary-type material, (though I'd think that a person probably wouldn't discuss such a thing in public)? And what are writing exercises if not "writing for oneself?"

Maybe it's a matter of degree. If a writer claims that all of their writing is for their eyes only, it will sound lame. But, in addition to not having to listen to that person, we should remember that any decent writing will typically start "for oneself"--writing as practice, or therapy--before evolving into something the writer feels will fairly reflect on themselves and their skills in the larger, harsher world. Nos Populus was a combination of the two, vacillating back and forth over a few years until I decided it was ready to hand over to a couple of people I trusted to edit it. Then a few more years until I was girded enough to publish it.

Figured against my costs for publishing, I'm actually still in the red. Not by anything significant, of course, and I don't mind that part. Writing to finance writing is about all that I aspire to, money-wise. And anyway, my dreams of acclaim and royalties were more like outlandish fantasies; almost certainly not going to happen, but "stranger things... " sort of situation. It was about finishing the book, getting it out there, and avoiding the trap of editing it over and over again for years, driving myself irretrievably mad while negligibly improving upon a project that never sees the light of day. For myself, in a way.

Or take self-proclaimed "self-publishing failure" John Winters. He had a book, got frustrated with the query-agent-publisher stage, took his book to Amazon, found the process amazingly easy, didn't sell much, experienced a mysterious sales surge that disappeared just as mysteriously, and sits at the end of it all with a little-noticed, less-sold book. Hits close to home for me and (I shudder to think how many) millions of others. Would you take "for myself," away from him? Then again, Winters also managed to garner a five star review at Amazon; more than I can say for Nos Populus (no reviews is kind of like a perfect rating, right?). He also got to write a piece for Salon, so he's got that going. You can purchase a copy of Winters' book here. And here's his blog.

People sometimes ask me how my book sales are going. It reminds me of when I was unemployed immediately after college and I'd hear "how's the job search going?" They're making me think about this draining, demoralizing, seemingly futile process. And they can't think it's going well, or they'd have already heard about it. It takes whatever remaining socialization skills I still possess not to scream back, "Haven't you heard? I've sold nine billion copies! I'm the McDonald's of self-publishing!" But that's not fair to them. Is it? No, probably not.

I am sorry to sound bitter. Although in a world where Snooki gets to have multiple books published (she can use the words "my new book;" think about that), Paris Hilton gets a record deal, and Grumpy Cat is in talks for a film, one can't be totally surprised when creative-types who bust their asses to realize the same dreams just want to shove a shard of broken glass into their respective jugulars.

The point is, in a field as punishing as trying to write for others, having "the personal" to fall back on is as much a crutch as it is a parachute made of sanity. Just try not to overuse it.