Chuck Wendig's Blog, page 169

Just What The Humping Heck Is “Character Agency,” Anyway?

Whenever I talk about character in storytelling — seriously, I’ll talk about this stuff with Target clerks, zookeepers, parking meters, carpenter bees — I frequently bring up the notion that, for me, good characters possess agency. And this, I often say, is one of the things that really matters in a so-called “strong female character” — not that she is a character who can bend rebar with her crushing breasts, but rather that she has agency within the story you’re telling.

Often when I talk about this in public, someone — maybe the zookeeper, maybe the parking meter — raises his hand and asks the question:

“Wait — what is agency, again?”

And it occurs to me I don’t know that I’ve ever defined my terms.

And that is a Naughty Wendig.

(The Naughty Wendig is also the gamboling goblin-like creature who will steal the teeth right out of your mouth if you throw cigarette butts or fast food containers out of open car windows. The Naughty Wendig is a vengeful spirit, also known for gobbling down human toes as if they are cheese doodles in recompense for your shitty behavior.)

(Oh, also? The Naughty Wendig is also the name of a tavern in D&D, a sandwich you can buy at various transdimensional delicatessens, a sex toy, a sex move, and a Japanese candy that squirts blood when you eat it. Please update your records.)

(Parenthetical asides are awesome.)

(Whee!)

(Okay, sorry, moving on.)

So, let’s talk a little bit about character agency and why a character needs it.

Character agency is, to me, a demonstration of the character’s ability to make decisions and affect the story. This character has motivations all her own. She is active more than she is reactive. She pushes on the plot more than the plot pushes on her. Even better, the plot exists as a direct result of the character’s actions.

The story exists because of the character. The character does not exist because of the story.

Characters without agency tend to be like little paper boats bobbing down a river of your own making. They cannot steer. They cannot change the course of the river. The river is an external force that carries them along — meaning, the plot sticks its hand up the character’s cavernous bottom-hole and makes the character do things and say things in service to the plot.

Because characters without agency are really just puppets.

It sounds easier said than done. In the writing of a story it’s common to find that you had these Ideas About The Story and the character appears to be serving those ideas — she is not driving the car so much as the car is driving her. And it’s doubly tricky when you write a story that has more than one character, which is to say, uhhh, nearly all stories ever. Because one character who has agency can dominate the proceedings and set too much of the pace, too much of the plot. Other characters lose their agency in response. For example: an antagonist puts into play a particularly sinister plot that forces all the other characters to react to it again and again, never really getting ahead of it. That’s not to say that reacting to events is problematic — just that reacting to events shouldn’t be passive. It shouldn’t be the character going another way just because the plot demands it. At some point reaction has to become action. It has to be the character getting ahead of the plot, ahead of the other characters. The power differential must shift.

And it’s the character who should be shifting it.

Look at your characters. Are they fully-formed? Ask yourself: if the character in the middle of your story went off and did something entirely different from what you planned or expected — something still in line with the character’s motivations — would that “ruin the plot?” That might be a sign that the plot is too external and that the character possess too little agency.

Characters without agency feel like props.

Worse, they’re boring as watching a bear wipe its ass on a pine tree.

(Okay, that’s pretty comical for the first 30 seconds, but then it gets boring.)

(I’m just saying.)

Characters with agency do things and say things that create narrative. Plot is spun out of the words and actions of these characters. And their words and actions continue to push on the plot created by other characters, because no character has agency in a vacuum.

(Those who play tabletop roleplaying games understand this in a practical way, having embodied characters at the level of agency. If you’ve ever rolled bones with an RPG, you know when you’ve got a gamemaster who railroads the plot versus one who puts the characters into a situation and lets the plot spin out of their actions and reactions around that situation.)

What gets interesting about a story isn’t when some Big External Plot is set into motion. What’s interesting is when the agency possessed by multiple characters competes. This push-and-pull of character motivations, decisions and reactions is how stories that matter are created. Because they’re stories about people, not about events, and people are why we read stories. Because we are all made of people. Our lives are made of us and all the other people around us. We live in a people-focused world because we’re solipsistic assholes who think that unless we behold it and create it, it probably doesn’t matter. And in stories, that’s pretty much true.

Stories must be made of people.

And that can only really happen when those people — those characters — have agency.

(Because after all, your characters shouldn’t be parenthetical to their own story, should they?)

(Whee!)

Behold: My Phoenix ComicCon Schedule! All For You, Damien!

That’s right. I’m at the Phoenix Comiccon this week.

I’ll be there the whole damn time, from Thursday through Sunday.

YOU SHOULD COME AND FIND ME.

Gosh, that sounds sinister.

Edit:

YOU SHOULD COME AND FIND ME AND GIVE ME BOOZE AND COOKIES.

Much better.

Anyway.

My schedule:

What I Learned Writing My Latest Novel : Friday 10:30am – 11:30am

Angry Robot Preview Panel : Friday 12:00pm – 1:00pm

Urban Fantasy and the Real World : Friday 1:30pm – 2:30pm

The Taco Council : Friday 3:00pm – 4:00pm

Author Batsu Game : Saturday 4:30pm – 5:30pm

Drinks with Authors: Saturday 9:00pm till?

Supernatural in Contemporary Fantasy : Sunday 10:30am – 11:30am

Gosh, obviously I’m gonna be very busy on Friday.

And Saturday is some kind of Batsu game which is — you know, I don’t know what it is. I just know that whenever Sam Sykes asks you, “Do you want to be involved in X?” Assume ‘X’ is something really weird and embarrassing and horrible and your best answer is “NO NO GOD NO WHAT WHO ARE YOU” and then you should Taser him except I didn’t do any of those things and maybe, just maybe, I said “yes” (Sam claims I spoke an oath), and now I’m in this Batsu game.

Then, afterward, COME DRANKY DRUNKY DRINKY WITH ME. Drinks with Authors! Woo!

(I’m also noodling a kind of informal meet-up “kaffeeklatsch” with readers if there’s interest. If you’re going to PHXCC and that might interest you, drop a comment below.)

When I’m not at panels and not hunting wily taco prey with the rest of the Taco Council, I will be at my Author’s Alley table (#2414) with fellow deviant Stephen Blackmoore, author of the supremely kick-ass Dead Things. (Actually, I just read the follow-up, too, Broken Souls, and mmm. So good.) At the table, I will be signing books. And talking to people. And signing folks up for an army with which we can destroy my nemesis, Jaye Wells, whose books are always right next to mine on bookstore shelves so we are forced to do battle until one day we realize we’re better off teaming up and going to war against Brent Weeks (sorry, Brent).

Point is: this thing’s gonna be “off the hook,” as the kids say.

Personally I like things on hooks. More orderly that way.

But whatever.

So many good authors. Some I know, some I’ve yet to meet in person, some I’ve never communicated with in any meaningful way. So, come to the desiccated hell-chamber that is Phoenix (100+ degree temps already! A sun like Sauron’s eye!) and we can frolic in the cholla and take peyote tabs and become coyote-people together.

Amazon, Hachette, And Giant Stompy Corporations

People keep wanting me to have thoughts on Amazon versus Hachette.

And I do! I do have thoughts. They careen drunkenly about like bumper cars.

I feel like this Slate piece by Evan Hughes kinda tells it fairly true.

I like a lot about Amazon. Amazon is one of my publishers. They’ve treated me well and treated my books well and — whaddya want me to say? They’re cool, I’m happy. (And expect me to be promoting my newest with them soon enough.) I also like that Amazon was one of the only companies that saw the Internet as an opportunity rather than a storm that would one day pass. The Kindle is great. They gave life to indie publishing — life it hasn’t had in a hundred fucking years. They put books in hands, man. They get books to people who don’t have bookstores nearby.

But, Amazon also scares me. They have a lot of power. They’re erratic. Some of the company’s behavior could easily be called “bullying,” and who likes bullies? Uh, yeah, nobody likes bullies. And right now they’re going nose-to-nose in the prison-yard with Hachette which means authors — some of whom I’m friends with — are getting shanked in the kidneys and left bleeding on the shower floor with delayed shipping times or lost pre-orders or whatever.

I like Hachette, too. I love a lot of their books and authors. I mean, shit, I love publishers. We can bag on Big Publishing all we want, but at the end of the day you still have to look back and say, okay, all those books that I loved growing up — the ones that made me want to be a writer — they were published by, in most cases, big publishers. I know a lot of people inside publishing. They are frequently awesome people. They are frequently book-loving humans.

I also know that Hachette, along with other Big Publishers, sometimes do scary things. Sometimes they write scary contracts with creepy provisions. Sometimes they’re not forward-thinking. Some of them still treat the Internet like it’s a rash that needs medication.

So, while it’s really, really easy to fall prey to the narrative of Good versus Evil (with various Side-Takers and Zealots claiming different sides as good and different sides as evil), I think it’s vital to resist such lazy categorization. I’ve seen what indie authors call Amazon Derangement Syndrome, which is when folks in the traditional system decry anything Amazon does as being some kind of Lovecraftian Evil — any change in the way they do business is just them building a throne out of the bones of innocent children. But I’ve seen the opposite, too — where indie authors cannot abide criticism of Amazon, as if Amazon is like, a pal they hang out with at a bar somewhere. “Amazon will never betray me,” the indie author says, even as Amazon breaks a bar glass and quietly cuts off the indie writer’s fingers because it hungers for fingers.

(Tip for indie writers: giving all your eggs to the Amazon basket means Amazon gains a lot of power over you. And you may say, “Well, then I’ll just jump ship if they change the deal,” which is all well and good until you realize your investment in them also helped create market dominance for the Kindle device. That exit strategy from Amazon doesn’t look so awesome now, eh?)

Again, good, evil: both of these ways are lazy thinking. Amazon isn’t apocalyptic evil. It isn’t your religious savior, either. It’s just a big company whose goal is, y’know, to get bigger.

And the same goes for Big Publishing.

Let’s try this.

Think of big companies as:

a) giant monsters

and

b) bacterial colonies.

Two creatures of wildly different size, but each with notable behaviors.

The giant monster — a kaiju, let’s say — does what a giant monster does. It stomps around. It doesn’t stomp people because it hates people. It stomps people on the way to find its breeding ground or on the way to mate with a particularly saucy skyscraper. People end up stomped like grapes because the giant monster couldn’t see them. The bigger it gets, the more it loses sight of people. The more it loses sight of all the little things underneath it. (Like, say, book culture.)

The bacterial colony wants to grow. It wants to replicate. It is programmed to fill space, to colonize — in a way, like humanity has itself done. Given no competition, bacterial colonies bloat exponentially. Seeing competition, some bacteria cheat to become resistant to that competition. Being resistant to antibiotics, for instance, allows bacteria to enter a period of unfettered growth. An epidemic. A pandemic. A holy-fuck-a-demic.

Big companies — Amazon and publishers alike — are big monsters and little bacteria.

They want to grow.

They want to stomp.

It’s their nature.

Now, generally, big companies push against other big companies to create competition. And our own government, in theory, regulates big companies so that they don’t stomp everybody or infect everything or completely destroy all their competition. That’s in a perfect world, of course, because that certainly doesn’t seem to happen very much anymore. (Mini side rant: the American public is cast further and further apart from the political system. Meaning, companies are allowed to give money to government in order to influence government to give companies more freedom. As companies get more freedom, they can spend more money to influence government. It’s a circuitry loop that We The People are no longer a part of, and you can see it with food, medicine, health care, insurance, and even here in publishing. If you are totally averse to forms of governmental regulation, then you at least need to try to regulate how money gets into politics. Regulate that and a lot of other things will take care of themselves. End mini-rant.)

Big companies acting without mitigation is how you end up with tons of money spent on war but no money spent toward the health-care of its citizens. (If only we classified illness as a foreign combatant!) It’s how getting antibiotics out of our food is a glacially slow process, and it’s why the FDA has far less regulatory power than you prefer (or think).

Again, this isn’t because companies are evil.

It’s just because companies have the motivation to grow.

Which means, somewhere down the line, making money.

Amazon wants to make money.

Publishers want to make money.

You want things more cheaply.

And there, a digression:

Recently, with food, I’ve come to understand that sometimes, food shouldn’t be cheap. This is a very privileged perspective, I recognize, but here’s the thing: food is something vital you’re putting in your body and cheap food isn’t often good food — at least, not cheap processed food. The cheaper it is, the more corners have been cut to get it to you. And the less people have been paid and the more people have been removed from the equation, which means more people have less money which means those people need cheap food and once again the goddamn carousel goes ’round and ’round. But there’s been some pushback there and you have the rise of farmer’s markets. Some markets are small stands and farmer-driven and offer good real food at competitive prices and some are big affairs where rich people go to buy purple broccoli because, I dunno, it’s fucking purple. All of that is good. It’s good we can shop at Wal-Mart, or a grocery store, or a farmer’s market, or a farm stand. The spectrum is necessary. The problem is when that spectrum is weighted too heavily — and that’s what’s starting to happen with book culture.

Books are food for our mind. A strained, mawkish metaphor, but true (for me) just the same.

Food is bad when it’s too expensive, but problematic when it gets too cheap.

We need that spectrum.

And books are like that, too.

When advocating for indie bookstores, it’s tricky because you can’t just say, “You should pay more for books.” “Why?” “Because indie bookstores.” “But why?” “Uhhh. Something-something freedom?” How do you convince people to spend more money just because?

Here’s why.

You pay more sometimes because you’re supporting an indie bookstore you love. (And if you do not love it, if you don’t feel that the bookstore is good to you or is worth supporting, don’t do it. Indie bookstores aren’t awesome just because they’re indie.) Good indie stores support a community. They bring authors and readers together. They foster book clubs. They create a curated environment for people and full of people that love books. IT’S LIKE MAXIMUM BOOKAWESOME UP IN THOSE MOTHERFUCKERS. And so, we support them.

We also pay more sometimes because it contributes to the health of the whole. It’s worth realizing that you can price yourself out of existence. You can make books so cheap that it’s very hard for the entire industry to survive. You can also salt the earth for everybody else so that only one provider exists — and that one content funnel can then set the rules for how everything is done. Books and book culture are threatened by carelessness and monoculture. Just as it is with antibiotics or food production or global warming, sometimes we need to think beyond our own margins and to the health of the thing outside of us.

This isn’t to say you should eschew Amazon entirely. (I still buy there. I still publish there.) Or that publishers are somehow charity organizations who have only your best interests at heart. Publishers, as with Amazon, are filled with people who are awesome. But they are companies who fill spaces like floodwater, who do what they must not only to survive but to excel. And it’s also not to say that Barnes & Noble is the best thing ever because hey, they’ve done this same shitty thing to authors and publishers — just recently with Simon & Schuster. It’s not even to say that indie bookstores are unilaterally beneficent creatures — because I publish with Skyscape/Amazon, I’ve actually received some overtly shitty treatment from a handful of bookstores by dint of being associated with Amazon. (One store outright banned me with great anger and vehemence.)

Listen. Amazon has seized on opportunities that have sometimes been rejected by book publishers — and book culture is the stakes on the table to be won or lost. Amazon cares about content and low prices. Big Publishing cares about preserving its own culture and relevance. Readers and authors are left in the middle.

So, what the fuck do you do?

I will scream this until my throat collapses, but:

Diversify.

I think that as readers and authors our best bet is to continue to diversify how we write books, how we publish books, how we buy books, and how we read books. We should get shut of the idea of MORE CHEAPER BIGGER FASTER and reject the idea that stories are just “content.” We should then ask how to foster competition both by voting with our dollar and by voting with our actual goddamn votes. We should think about books less as personal entertainment devices or as content blobs and think of them as parts of a whole — as parts of a culture beyond just self-satisfaction. Thus we support stories and storytellers all around the world. Books: vital for our mind as food is vital for our bodies. An old, outmoded idea, maybe. But one I believe in just the same.

We should shop at multiple locations. Buy all kinds of books from all kinds of authors. Buy traditional. Buy indie. Publish that way, too. Go everywhere. Try it all.

Do not be married to a single ecosystem.

Fuck the monoculture.

And, while we’re talking about Hachette authors –

Hachette books now have their own .

B&N is doing a Buy 2 get one free deal on Hachette books.

Hell, Wal-Mart smells blood, too, and are offering many Hachette books at 40% off.

Or, you could always go to your friendly neighborhood indie bookstore.

You have seen Indiebound, right?

The Holy Taco Church Is Open For Salsa Salvation (And Other Links)

Author Kevin Hearne had an idea.

He said, and I’m paraphrasing:

“I LIKE TACOS AND LOTS OF AUTHORS LIKE TACOS AND I WANT TO BE A TACOPOPE BECAUSE TACOPOPES GET A TACO CAR AND A TACO JET AND A TACO WAVERUNNER.”

He invited several authors to participate in a religious organization that consists of two things:

a) authors who love tacos

b) tacos.

So, I pretty much said FUCK YEAH, except it probably sounded more like SSHFUG GYEAH because I had like four tacos in my mouth or something. Maybe five. Shut up.

Anyway, this thing has an almost unholy roster of authors, including:

Kevin Hearne, Delilah S. Dawson, Sam Sykes, Leanna Renee Hieber, Karina Cooler, Jason Hough, Andrea Phillips, Greg van Eekhout, Diana Rowland, Brian McClellan, Jaye Wells, Stephen Blackmoore, Beth Cato, Wes Chu, and Vicki Petterson.

And, y’know, me.

I am Taco Pastor, Priest of the Pineapple Parish, y’all.

Anyway. Click on over. Say hi. Sign up for updates.

We’ll be posting recipes and various Ethereal Taco Thoughts.

Also…

You will find me two other places today.

First, an interview with me at Clarkesworld! Wendig’s Golden Prolific, which I talk about YA, sci-fi, muse-elves, outlines, and other TOPICS OF INTEREST TO YOU FINE PEOPLE.

Second, me and the spectacular Gail Carriger show up at SF Signal today in a podcast recorded by Scrivener guru and all-around bad-ass Patrick Hester. Check it out! (Recorded at Pike’s Peak Conference in Colorado Springs last month.)

Pick A Paragraph, Post It, Let The Critique Wash Over You Like A Wave

I’ve been enjoying watching you folks FIGHT FOR MY AMUSEMENT IN COMMENT SECTION BLOODSPORT — er, ahh, I mean, “Critique one another’s work in a constructive way.”

As such, it’s time for that once more.

Take a paragraph from your work in progress (AKA: “WIP”).

Post it in the comment section below.

Then, go and critique someone else’s.

Critique is not meant to be binding. Nor cruel. Be constructive, not destructive.

Go forth, post, critique.

Flash Fiction Challenge: Random Title!

Last week’s challenge: 100-Word Stories.

Once again: the title challenge rears its gorgeously weird head.

I love this challenge and it usually get a lot of play, so let’s do it.

Way this works is: you’re gonna randomly throw together a title for your story.

Use a d20 or a random number generator to consult the table at the bottom of the document to roll for a story’s title. It’s a two-part title (meaning, two random numbers 1-20) and whatever title you get must fit the story you write for it. (Examples: “The Dead Boy’s Doghouse,” “Shotgun Promise,” “A Key For Helix.”)

You’ll have 1000 words, par usual. Post at your blog, link back here. Due in one week — June 6th, Friday — by noon EST. And so, the title tables are (note that you’re free to put the word “The” in front of your title or pluralize words as appropriate):

Column One

Whispered
Mirror
Junkie’s
Amaranthine
Diamond
Shotgun
Labyrinthine
Bloody
Seven-Year
Crown of
Starship
Betrayer’s
Scarlett
Ugly
Unlucky
Dead Boy’s
A Key for
Grave Robber’s
Castle
Cackling

 Column Two

Murders
Worlds
Helix
Beetle
Dowager
Gunslingers
Firestorm
Promise
Sea
Kevin
Doghouse
Pelican
Breakfast
Curse
Coinpurse
Rider
Bastards
Diary
Souls
Jackals

Burning The MRA Playbook (Or, #YesAllMRAs)

The other day I wrote this thing — “Not All Men, But Still Too Many Men” — with the goal of pointing folks toward the #YesAllWomen hashtag on Twitter, where women talked about their stories, experiences and fears when faced with the spectrum of male entitlement and rape culture.

That post generated a little heat, and eventually (also unsurprisingly) attracted the attention of some of our finest citizens and charming charmers, the MRAs, or Men’s Rights Activists.

Now, not every comment was a septic slap in the face — but for every comment I let slip through, I got another two that weren’t so nice. Many were from self-identified MRAs, some of whom seemed to think I was a woman? A bearded lady, perhaps. They called me “cunt” and “fucking bitch” and one of them said I was probably single and had a lot of cats? I dunno. No idea. Some didn’t think I was a woman but instead wanted to compare me to a woman, which is obviously the worst insult they think they have in their arsenal. Many of them echoed similar sentiments, ones I’ve seen on Facebook recently, too, that seem straight out of the MRA playbook: calling mothers to task for raising shitty men (either weak men or abusive ones); women tricking men into pregnancies; women abusing men; women falsely-reporting rape to get men in trouble; inequality is a myth; not all men; men are entitled to love (this person did not say “sex,” but intimated that “love” included the physical). And so on. Often with, to be honest, a great deal of misspellings and dogshit grammar and the reading comprehension of an aging, mule-kicked spider monkey.

I did not win bingo, though, as none of them threatened to rape me, so I guess there’s that.

Then, I saw that the folks of Posthuman Studios, makers of the game Eclipse Phase, wrote a post about MRAs which, in essence, told MRAs to fuck off from their forums and their fandom. A quote from that (though I recommend you go on over and read the whole thing):

“Here’s our stance: If you self-define as an MRA, please fire yourself as an Eclipse Phase fan. We don’t want you. We want our forums to be open and inclusive, and we don’t see the point of debating with you anymore. You have other places on the internet where you can wallow in the awfulness of your male privilege.”

I did get a few emails from men who self-identified as MRAs and these emails were polite enough and they pointed out correctly that, hey, sometimes men’s issues are real and worth caring about. Not to the exclusion of women’s rights, but hey, you know, some things are a bit wonky for dudes. And they’re not wrong. Prostate cancer is a tough row to hoe. Men can be the victims of domestic abuse and rape, and it often goes unreported because the harsh whip-sting of male jerk culture sometimes lashes back and catches us on the chin.

Men have issues, too.

Real issues that need to at least be discussed.

I agree with that.

But.

But.

You knew that was coming, right?

Buuuuuuut.

You can be concerned about men’s issues without portraying that as a loss of our rights. You can care about advocacy for the issues surrounding boys and men without joining what is very traditionally a misogynist group who, to remind you, has a very distinctive (and notably shitty) playbook when it gets into arguments. It isn’t nice to (or about) women. The movement claims in one breath to want equality for all humans, but then in the second breath spits venom on mothers and rape victims and it dismisses and denies and derails, attempting to refocus the conversation to: HEY FORGET THEM LYING CHEATING LADIES, WHAT ABOUT THE POOR MENFOLK.

Reframing the argument again about men.

And, further, portraying men as the victims in all things.

(And ironically, many of the issues surrounding men are, in fact, caused by men. Gasp!)

Let’s shift gears and look at it this way.

I am concerned for animal rights.

I like animals.

I admittedly also eat them, but whatever.

I think it’s wise to treat our animals ethically. And so you might say that I am a Person who is interested in the Ethical Treatment of Animals, and if you were to pluck an acronym from that you might see that I should be a member of PETA. Except, I despise PETA. They kill animals. They just linked autism with dairy in a dubious claim. (Click here to see their awful “Got Autism?” advertisement.) Just because I like animals doesn’t mean I’m going to join the ranks of a toxic group like PETA. Liking German history doesn’t mean you have to join the Nazi party. Being interested in white linen bedsheets doesn’t mean you join the KKK. And –

Being interested in issues surrounding men doesn’t mean joining the MRM.

Maybe, just maybe, you’re a nice guy who self-identifies as MRM.

Yeah, don’t.

Because the MRM is ugly business.

It’s full of misogynistic, mansplaining, self-entitled nastiness.

It promotes a culture of victim-blaming, victim-shaming.

It wields its privilege like a weapon while yelling about not having any privilege.

It acts counter to feminism instead of alongside it.

It is thick with PUA (pick-up-artists) clowns.

It often comes accompanied by racist, homophobic, transphobic throughlines.

The MRM is attempting to further rig an already-rigged game. And it does so in the same way that our political process sometimes duct-tapes awful legislation to good legislation to slip it through the door — the movement claims to care about men’s issues, some of which are legitimate and worth looking at, and then suddenly once in the door starts yelling about sluts and the myth of rape culture and paternity fraud and how age of consent is oppressive. In other words, it claims to be about men’s rights, but really, it’s all about women’s rights.

Meaning, it’s about taking them away.

It doesn’t want to improve the rights of men, but diminish the rights of women.

It doesn’t love dudes. It just hates ladies.

So, consider, if you’re sympathetic to the MRM, maybe think about what that connects you to. Think about what that says about you. Think for just a second about, is this a group that’s actually going to address issues? Or is just going to spin more hate and spit in the eyes of women just for being women? Even if some elements of the group want to change things, MRA is marked. Indelibly. Tattooed with ink brewed from its own shittiness. Who’s going to listen except other MRA-types? I mean, consider that one of their issues is the bullying of boys, okay? Bullying is a genuine issue and a real problem, and yet they want to address it without acknowledging that the attitudes explicit inside the MRM are what help cause that bullying in the first place because boys tend to bully other boys. And then MRA members use bullying tactics on women and men to get their point across, thus proving that the concern is utter bullshit. (“BULLYING IS BAD. AND PROBABLY A LADY’S FAULT. DON’T BULLY OR I’LL BULLY YOU BECAUSE SOMETHING SOMETHING DUDE YOU’RE SUCH A GIRLYPANTS MAN-GINA.”)

(I mean, c’mon, y’all. As I have noted in the past, vaginas are like, 1000x times tougher than testicles. Those ladyparts are basically tough as tractor tires. Our balls are as tough as tissue paper. We get flicked in the nuts by a badminton birdie we’ll double over for 20 minutes, moaning and rocking back and forth. Our balls are like little yarn-bundles contained in a thin, wifty sack of outlying flesh. They unspool like bobbins of delicate thread when damaged. Women on the other hand push entire people out of their lady-realms like divine fucking beings. So, maybe that vagina-analog isn’t the best insult, misogynist dudes. Kay? Kay.)

MRA tactics are over the top, unnecessary, and often incredibly nasty.

They want to burn down a perfectly nice house to get at a few mice.

Because they’re extremists.

You can love animals without hating people.

You can be an environmental activist without sinking boats.

You can be Muslim without blowing up buses.

You can be Christian without bombing abortion clinics.

You can be a man interested in issues surrounding men without hurting women, without shouting them down, without perpetuating rape culture, without being a misogynistic jerkoff bully whose claim to having a meaningful agenda is lost the moment he opens his mouth and says something awful. (Or types it on the Internet without the ability to spell or put words together in a cogent, intelligent way — as all too often seems to be the case.)

Care about men’s issues all you want.

Just don’t do it according to the MRA playbook.

Be a good man. And teach your sons and fellow men the same.

And P.S. — MRA fans? I don’t want you either. You’re not going to like my books anyway.

And P.P.S. — comments off because really, what’s the point?

Michael Martineck: Five Things I Learned Writing The Milkman

In the near future, corporation rules every possible freedom. Without government, there can be no crime. And every act is measured against competing interests, hidden loyalties and the ever-upward pressure of the corporate ladder.

Any quest for transparency is as punishable as an act of murder. But one man has managed to slip the system, a future-day robin hood who tests diary milk outside of corporate control and posts the results to the world.

When the Milkman is framed for a young girl’s murder and anonymous funding comes through for a documentary filmmaker in search of true art beneath corporate propaganda, eyes begin to turn and soon the hunt is on.

Can the man who created the symbol of the Milkman, the only one who knows what really happened that bloody night, escape the corporate rat maze closing around him?

Or is it already too late?

* * *

I will not tell you what I really learned

The world of The Milkman – the Free World – is post-government. Corporations foreclosed on debt-ridden nations and started running things themselves. In this world there are no nations and thus no laws. Not that the world is in chaos; companies just have different priorities. Once you let your mind play with this for a while, you might learn things about yourself that you didn’t want to know. Right now, in the real world, people do all kinds of creepy, crazy-ass stuff. Hemmed in only by the laws of economics and physics, I imagined people going deeper into the dark. I imagined. Me. A nice guy from the suburbs who wanted to write a book about economics. Some things crawled out of the shadows and into the book. Not everything. I won’t tell you about that stuff. Maybe next time.

This book isn’t about anything

As a corollary to above, as per unanticipated plot threads, novels sprawl, even tight ones. That is why they are not short stories. This is not bad. Unlike my beloved suburbs, sprawl in a new, wholly imagined world is great if you treat it like a garden: feed it and weed it, and don’t let it get out of hand. My book about a divergent economic model for the globe is almost equally about the lengths people will go for their children. It’s about love and fairness and tenacity and I’m pretty happy my book isn’t about anything – any one thing. It is about lots.

Don’t be yourself

I am a listener, a collector of sounds and blurted thoughts. I’m not shy – I engage people in conversation – but I’m much more likely to ask questions than answer. I like to read and ponder, none of which gets a novel out the door. These traits lay a decent foundation for writing; but, to write, that is a different story. Opening up, expressing, answering those questions I ducked. It’s not me, or to be more honest, it was not the me I was comfortable being. This novel showed me that, just as a book isn’t about one thing, neither am I.

Don’t write about what you know

Ray Bradbury gets to this in his wonderful Zen in the Art of Writing. Write about what you want to know. This book exemplifies that approach. No one knows what it’s like to live in post-government society. I wondered. I’m pretty sure there is an inquisition particle – a curiosity carrying proton, or curton, if you will – that attracts other curtons. The sense of newness and discovery you feel while you write whips up those feelings in others. Unless your curtons have garlic. Not everyone likes garlic.

Write poorly

This is the one that matters: don’t let grammar, spelling, word choice, blanking on a character’s name, POV or loud noises stanch your flow. When the words come, do everything you can to keep them coming and worry about the mess later. Writing is an 18-step process. Once I figured that out – poof! – I had a novel. A crappy novel, but I fixed that. Now it’s a pretty good one. I hope you’ll check it out.

* * *

Michael Martineck: I have been writing in some form or another since I was seven years old. More recently, I have written short stories, comic book scripts, articles and trio of novels. DC Comics published some of my work in the 90s. Planetmag, Aphelion and a couple of other long-dead e-zines helped me out in the 00′s, which is also when I published children’s books The Misspellers and The Wrong Channel. Cinco de Mayo, a novel for adults, is now out from EDGE Science Fiction and Fantasy Publishing which is also the publisher of The Milkman. I live in Grand Island, NY. with my wife and two children.

 

Michael Martineck:  Website  |  Twitter

The Milkman: A Free World Novel :  Amazon

Big-Ass Book Bundle: Ending Soon, So Get It Before The Bone Man What Never Mind I Didn’t Say Anything About A Bone Man

The Gonzo Big Book Bundle.

Seven writing e-books.

Name-your-price, starting at $10.

Buy eBook

I’m running this until the end of the month, which is in just a few days.

Nab it while the nabbing is good.

Or before the BONE MAN finds you.

I didn’t say anything about a BONE MAN. Who said BONE MAN?

It wasn’t me.

There definitely isn’t a supernatural BONE MAN that I’ve hired to hunt down people who displease me by failing to take part in my wonderful book promotions. He definitely doesn’t have a thousand fleshless fingers and centipedes for his lips.

There’s no BONE MAN.

Night night.

Sleep tight.

Don’t let the BONE MAN bite. Your face. Off the skull. Which is how you join the BONE MAN and haunt people as one of his OSSEOUS MINIONS oh there I’ve gone and said too much.

*draws curtains*

 

25 Tips For Traveling With Toddlers

The toddler’s secret goal is to destroy your vacation.

It’s not the toddler’s fault. It’s just how this little creature rolls. Toddlers, after all, are made up of Chaos Particles — little sub-atomic building parts that grow more excited and agitated when they see the chance to destroy serenity and undo order. The toddler is an entity whose very presence invokes entropy, and in the toddler’s presence, all things drift toward total breakdown. Consider what happens if you place a toddler in a perfectly clean room. In 4.63 seconds, that room will look like Godzilla the King of Monsters had a sexy-time orgy with seven other kaiju. The coffee table will be upside down. The TV will be on some pay-per-view boxing match. A bunch of cats that aren’t your will be running around. The ceiling fan? On fire.

Again: it is not the toddler’s fault. It’s just what they’re made of. Over time, as the toddler ages, the Chaos Particles fuse to become the same building blocks that comprise us all: electrons, protons, atoms, molecules, high fructose corn syrup, Red no. 40, Lincoln Logs, whatever. (Exception is when they enter their teenage years, at which point all molecules break down into Sullen, Surly Quarks and Quantum Asshole Strings.)

So, if you’re going to travel with a toddler — like, say, going on vacation — you need to be prepared. You need to steel yourself against what’s coming. Shore up your defenses. Build armor. Train your army. Ride out in front of them on a horse with your face painted blue and give an impassioned speech about BUT THE TODDLER SHALL NEVER TAKE… OUR FREEDOM.

(Ha ha ha they totally take your freedom. They’re freedom-eaters, you fool!)

I just traveled to Myrtle Beach with my wife and toddler, and so having done something once, I am now prepared to tell you how to do it like the blustering, stammering blowhard that I am.

And so, I give you: 25 tips on traveling with your toddler.

1. Accept Now That Your Relaxing Adult-Style Vacation Is Fucking Dead

Ha ha ha, you poor, poor parent. You actually thought you were gonna get in that spa visit. Maybe get your drank on. Do some jet-skiing, some sun-tanning, some late-night sexy-time. Mmm, yeah, no. Your adult vacation has been washed out to sea like a broken condom. It has been abraded by coral and eaten by an eel. Your vacation now is wet wipes and snack bags, stuffed animals and Matchbox cars, zoo visits and playgrounds and potty-time in awkward bathrooms. You will glimpse your once-upon-a-time adult-style vacation sometimes, a fleeting shadow like watching the Loch Ness Monster pass underneath your boat. Once in a while you may even catch this mythical creature and get an hour here and there to yourself. But the vacation you once had is not the vacation that exists for you now. Because toddler.

2. Begin Your Propaganda Bombing Early

You can’t just spring a vacation on your toddler like it’s a surprise. “TA-DA, GET ON A PLANE NOW, TINY HUMAN, HERE, JUST CRAWL INTO THIS WINGED METAL TUBE WHICH WILL BE FLUNG ACROSS THE HEAVENS AT HIGH SPEEDS.” You gotta get in their heads early. You are the Propaganda Minister for your own vacation. You need to start selling it early. Get them excited. Tell them about all the things you’re going to do (and do not lie about this, for toddlers remember your tricksy promises). You have to sell them on the plane, the beach, the mountains, the car ride, whatever’s on the agenda. Love-bomb them with the coming vacation. This is valuable because it also might signal trouble spots — if you start telling the tiny dictator about the plane ride and she starts freaking out about it, well, that’s a sign you have some more propagandizing to do.

3. Forget The Schedule, Aim For Grab-Bag Of Options

We like to think of our schedules as rigid as rebar, as inflexible as the Incredible Hulk, but truth is, our schedules are snowflakes under fragile glass. And in the hands of a toddler — who, let’s remember, are AGENTS OF CHAOS INSERTED INTO THIS WORLD BY CACKLE-MAD DEITIES — your schedule is a crumpled-up paper airplane that won’t fly five inches. Schedules are reliant on movement, timing, precision. Toddlers are the antithesis to those things, and so your best bet is to scrap any regimented schedules and instead hew to a random floating grab-bag of options — think of your vacation like the menu at a Chipotle. Every day is a potential buffet of treats, and you can build your schedule as you go rather than at the start of the day. You know why drunk drivers sometimes walk away from horrific accidents? Because they’re too drunk to realize what’s happening, and so they turn all ragdoll as the car folds up around them. The lucky dipshits survive because they’re inadvertently flexible. So: be flexible. Don’t let your vacation plans snap like an old man’s legbone. The winds of the toddler tornado are fierce, and you must bend to them.

4. Your Goal Is To Just Get To The Next Thing

Break your vacation up into digestible toddler-sized chunks. The toddler is a small person and so your vacation must seem small to meet their perspective. Forget grand, sweeping journeys — think Duplo blocks. Don’t overdo it. The goal, then, is to get your tot to the next thing. Not tomorrow. Not the end of the trip. Just the very next thing. Don’t worry too much about “later,” just think about “soon.” Think about what’s next, and do what needs to be done to get them there. Food? Nap? Promise of the premise? More propaganda? As noted earlier: don’t lie. Toddlers will believe whatever tiny fibs or epic deceptions you give them, and they will seek every opportunity to hang you for your insolence. They will remember. And they will ruin you for it.

5. Bribery Is Shameless, And Also, You Should Totally Do It

I am not a fan of appeasement because something-something Hitler. Appeasement parenting is a good way to raise a little monster, because you will train them to push and push and push and expect more and more and more because that’s how appeasement works. “I don’t want my little tiny person to be upset!” you say as your child flails and flounces and shrieks like a cat in a wood chipper, and so you give them what they want and they learn a vital lesson: Ah, yes, the way to orchestrate the completion of my desires is to throw the kind of shit-fit that would make a coked-up baboon go quiet with fear. Now, all that being said — you also have to recognize that vacations are precious, rare things. Sometimes they require delicate care and while that does not mean appeasing your tot, it does mean getting ahead of problem areas with good-old-fashioned bribery. On a plane? Give them some new toys. At a new restaurant? Time to open up some crayons. Long car-ride? No time like the present to let them unveil the new proton cannon you had mounted to the mini-van. The timing here is vital: you don’t bribe them in the middle of tantrums. You bribe them to get ahead of the discomfort caused by ALL THESE NEW THINGS.

6. Actually, Lots Of Your Parenting Rules Can Go On Vacation For A Little While

Vacations are a good time to let loose, right? Go on, have that third margarita. Eat the goddamn cheesecake. Gobble a fistful of benzos and karate-fight a hammerhead shark. The same thing goes for your normal parenting rules. You won’t feed the kid chocolate? It’s vacation time. Give the kid some chocolate. He wants to stay up late? It’s vacation time! Kid wants a bow-and-arrow and the keys to the rental car? IT’S VACATION TIME. Okay, maybe don’t let him do that last part.

7. (But When You Get Home, Lock It Down)

What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, including that time you let your toddler dress like an adult and go win big at the craps table. Though the long trenchcoat and oversized mustache was definitely super-adorbz, it’s time to quit that shit when you get home. Whatever rule-breaches happened on vacation are game over goodbye upon arriving back in reality.

8. Routine Maintenance

Despite rule breaches, there exists some value to keeping to routine, if not all of the rules. While a more flexible routine is likely necessary, it’s still good to have some semblance of what the tiny human experiences at home. Bring some carryover of the routine, be it bath-time, book-time, bed-time, snack-time, wibbly-wobbly-time, Adventure Time, Hammer Time, whatever. Here it pays to know your toddler (which is why I make mine fill out a weekly 10-page Get To Know You survey) to know how much to keep and how much to jettison out the airlock.

9. Though, Also Consider This An Opportune Time To Change Routine

Sometimes, little things creep into your daily toddlerian routine that you don’t like. It happens. We like to think that as parents we have Ultimate Control, but sometimes, bugs get into the programming. Somewhere along the way, our tot watches the iPad while on his last potty break for the night, and after that, extracting him from that iPad is like trying to pull a chestburster xenomorph off an astronaut’s face. But traveling is disruptive; you can use it to disrupt those bits of your routine that you won’t want to continue, maybe saying goodbye to them for good.

10. Time The Trip Around The Tot’s Pre-Existing Toddlerian Schedule

The actual vacation itself may modify or utterly obliterate all sense of routine and scheduling, but during the actual travel time, it may help to time things out along the lines of the toddler’s usual existence. It sounds like I’m trumpeting the obvious here, but try to be near food when your kid would normally eat. Nap-time can be a good time to travel because SWEET, SWEET NAPS. Make sure you’re near a bar when the toddler’s Martini Hour approacheth. Etc, so on. Our plane trip out was during the tot’s bed-time, but was too exciting for him to do anything but remain wide awake — which pushed us into over-tired territory. We flew back close to bed-time on the way home, which means he slept like a hibernating bridge-troll. Neither was awesome because that means he was basically up till 1:00 in the morning like one of those drunks who just won’t go down for the count. “I love you guys. I like you so so much. ANUBBER WHISKEY FOR ME AND MISTER BEAR.” *flings a shoe* *cry-eats Cheezits* *fills diaper*

11. Bread And Circuses, Teddy Grahams And Tablet Apps

Bring entertainment. The diminutive dictator, the itty-bitty imperator, the Lilliputian lord/lordess, demands to be entertained. Bread and circuses! Once again, this is not necessarily the best policy for raising a child day-to-day, but it’s a damn solid one to carve your way through traveling with a toddler-type. Bring games. Crayons. Play-Doh. Snacks. Train squirrels to be gladiators. Entertainment is power. Besides: it’s a vacation. You want to be entertained. So do they. (Seriously: an iPad or other tablet is awesome for all this. It’s a toy-box, book-shop and video-service all in one. In a small device I had a ton of educational apps, several hours of Peppa Pig videos, and a Hot Wheels catalog. Oh, and forget those ‘kid-specific’ tablets. Those are expensive junk. A real tablet will cost as much or less, with cheaper, even free, apps.)

12. Have A Hand Free (Like, Always)

You need a hand free. At any moment. You might need to hold the tot’s hand. Or steer them away from broken glass on the parking lot. Or hold their doll while they pick their nose and wipe it on a parking meter. Or straight punch a grizzly bear. Whatever. This seems obvious until you actually travel somewhere and realize your hands are nearly always full, particularly when you’re making your way through the Dante’s Inferno that is the airport. You’re carrying a diaper bag and a sand pail and a container of Animal Crackers and a canister of bear mace and next thing you know you’re looking up and your toddler is stealing someone’s Jeep 100 yards away. Have a hand free.

13. Prepare Your Packing List Like, Seven Months In Advance

Okay, maybe not that long, but seriously, packing for a trip with a toddler isn’t the same as packing for your normal adult vacation. Packing like an adult means carelessly packing the night before — “Oh, toothbrush and underwear, done!” Packing for a toddler is like building a Rube Goldberg doomsday machine. It is best done with care — meaning, not the night before you’re about to leave. Give the toddler some input, but oh holy shit do not let them pack their own bag. You will end up with a Hello Kitty backpack full of driveway gravel, doll heads, and mini-Snicker bars. And they’ll probably also put something in there that triggers security at the airport, like, hey, this seems like a good time to throw a butterfly knife in there. The toddler will have some kind of logic for it because toddlers always have logic (“That’s how Dolly eats her peas.” “What?”). Consult the toddler, but never let them have control of the packing. Also, how’d your kid get a butterfly knife? Was it cheap? Can he get me one? I lost mine at the airport.

14. Oh, Shit, The Fucking Car Seat

I have no good advice for how to deal with a car seat. None. We chose to rent one there at our vacation destination, and goddamn was that a nightmare. But we also watched other parents struggling with car seats and that looked to be an equivalent trip through the nightmare factory. You could check the car seat, but those things are apparently precision-balanced by monks in Nepal, and baggage handlers throw stuff around like they’re Donkey Kong flinging barrels at a tiny Italian plumber. You could carry-on the car seat, but that’ll cost you — and now you’re lugging the thing onto a plane, and car-seats are woefully cumbersome, like carrying one of the really-awkward Tetris blocks. (Wow, two old-school video game references in one. YOU’RE WELCOME.) We did find the RideSafer, which is a safety-compliant vest. Easy to pack.

15. Do Not Leave That One Precious Toy At Home

Our tot has a rotating group of precious toys, so this one was tricky — but if your toddler has like, a favorite bunny or blankie or ninja weapon, do not forget it. If that thing is 600 miles away from you and the tiny person, oh, jeez, I pray for you. Because these little imps remember all this stuff. They’re like a dog with a bone. They’ll never let you live it down and every three-point-four minutes of the vacation the tot will be screaming DO YOU HAVE CURIOUS GEORGE DO YOU HAVE HIM DO YOU DO YOU DO YOU HUH WHY NOT AAAAAAAAAH GRAVE ENNUI PLAGUES ME I AM ALONE IN THIS FRACTURED UNIVERSE FOR I AM WITHOUT A MONKEY WHO IS ALSO AN APE BUT NO ONE CALLS HIM AN APE AND DOOM DOOM DOOOOOOM TO YOU ALL.

16. Hunger And Fatigue Will Conspire To Crush Your Puny Vacation

As I said in an earlier post about toddlers, without food and sleep, your toddlers become hill cannibals. This is doubly true during trips because everything is already wonky — lots of NEW SHINY SCARY OH GOD WHAT’S THAT HEY THAT LOOKS FUN — and so any dip into hunger and fatigue is magnified. At that point they’re pretty much werewolves. Rampaging, howling werewolves with flamethrowers. Lots of stuff gets missed during travel: be sure to address food, drink, sleep. Oh, and potty-time. Being on an airplane is not the ideal time to deal with pee-sodden sneakers or a poo-shellacked seat-belt.

17. Consider Crisis Points And Contingency Plans

Things will go sideways, pear-shaped, wibbly-wobbly, fucky-wucky. As an adult traveling alone or in pairs, so what? Missed connection. Late flight. Closed highway. Hotel reservation gone south. Shit happens. You might panic at the time, but really, you’re fine. You’re adults. Try that with a toddler in tow. You miss a connection or are delayed in any way, now you’ve got a heap of new problems: a collision of boredom, impatience, hunger, fatigue, general toddler malaise and bewilderment. What’s your next move? Plan ahead.

18. Do Things They Wanna Do, Not Just Things You Want Them To Wanna Do

I’ll admit, sometimes I’m the father who wants my son to like things he doesn’t necessarily like. He loves trucks and I don’t give four good goddamns about trucks (unless they’re carrying ice cream), so maybe I try to gently elbow him into liking other things (so far, he’s not keen on whiskey tasting). Getting your kids to check out new stuff is good! That has real value because tots need exposure to new things. He was dubious about going to the aquarium and the shark tank in particular but he loved the sharks. Just the same, I recognize he has his own little ecosystem of wants and interests and I’d be a right rollicking jerk-faced jerk-pants to ignore them. Plus, it’s vital to give your toddler some vacation time too — it’s their trip, same as it is yours.

19. Check Them With Your Luggage

Toddlers are tricky travelers, so your best bet is to check them with your luggage. As long as they don’t weigh more than 50 pounds, you can — *receives note* — oh. Ohhhh. Oh. You, uhhh, you can’t do that? You sure? I mean, WHAT NO YOU CAN’T DO THAT HOW DARE YOU. *clears throat* *quietly removes toddler from suitcase*

20. You Seriously Cannot Have Enough Baby Wipes

I don’t know what it is with toddlers but somehow they’re always sticky. It’s like they keep a jar of strawberry jam in their pocket and sometimes they dip into it with a couple of fingers. Wherever you go, wet wipes will be welcome. Pee. Boogers. A grilled cheese sandwich they found in a parking lot. Frankly, just fill a whole fucking backpack with baby wipes.

21. Build In Extra Time (In Fact, Bring Along A Goddamn Time Machine)

Toddlers take an extra 27 minutes to do everything. Anything from getting out the door to blowing their nose to picking a stuffed animal for the car ride. Whatever the normal time you would take, add 27 minutes to it. Build this into any and all vacation scheduling. Particularly when you have important things to do like, say, get on a plane, or be in an illegal Toyko drift race.

22. Consider Shipping Stuff To And From Your Destination

Stuff is heavy. Toddler stuff is extra heavy. It’s possible that every toddler is in fact a distributor of personal black holes. Anyway, given that airlines these days ding you for every bag you bring — “What’s that in your pocket, a wallet? That’ll be a $35 Wallet Transportation Fee” — you should consider the notion of shipping a bag to and from your destination. It’s probably cheaper than whatever the airline will cost you, because their cost almost surely involves tithing a finger, a nose, maybe a coupla toes.

23. Know Your Child

This sounds stupid, but really, really, seriously think about your kid. Think about what they like. What they fear. What they want. Then compare it to your vacation. Hold the mental transparency of your child against the blueprint for the vacation. Do they line up? “Foodie vacation in Spain” is not a toddler-friendly vacation. “Seven weeks in a McDonald’s ball-pit” is very possibly a more toddler-adjacent trip, but mostly it’s just trying to realize you have a family now, not a pairing of booze-guzzling world-traveling grown-ups. Go to the beach. Look at a fucking zebra somewhere.

24. Sympathy Instead Of Stubbornness, Empathy Instead Of Anger

Think about it. Your toddler has done like, 3% of the things you’ve done in your life. She’s probably never been on a trip and if she has, her goldfish-like brain has already cast it back into the sea with the rest of the flotsam and jetsam. This is weird, wonderful, scary stuff. Frustrating and confusing and fun. Our toddler frequently wore the face of “hey, what the shit is going on here” constantly. Sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a scowl. So, you have to be sympathetic. Go to them with empathy. Try to grok what it’s like. Give them a little extra space to be frustrated and have fun on a trip. It’ll soothe everybody’s surly beast.

25. Learn To Love The Chaos

It’s gonna be total cuckoopants. So: enjoy it. Embrace the weirdness of it all. Just as they say, WHEN IN ROME, VISIT THE TAUROBOLIUM AND SPEAR THE BULL AND BATHE IN ITS BLOOD (paraphrase), they also say, WHEN IN TODDLERLAND, BE LIKE THE TODDLER. Okay, nobody says that. Point is: give into it a little. Go with the flow. Just for this trip. The toddler will thank you, because as we’ve already discussed, the toddler is basically pure chaos.

And sometimes, pure chaos can be a whole lotta fun.

[Edit: I should thank Fran Wilde, Paul Acampora and others for supplying me with the "give toddler toys on the plane" tip. That worked like a charm.]