Michael Offutt's Blog, page 45

Christina Aguilera's song from Mulan is a beautiful ballad for paladins and a surprise for movie goers because its for a film that makes its debut on streaming.

Pretty soon, some of us who are subscribers to Disney Plus get the opportunity to pony up $30.00 to watch the movie, Mulan, which drops on the streaming service the first week of September. I have been looking forward to this movie for half a year now, and I will be purchasing said movie. It's actually got me excited, because I wrote in a much earlier blog post this year that I should have been able to see Mulan by now, and it sucks that I haven't been able to do so. The whole Covid-19 has sent the entertainment industry into a tailspin, and I deeply hope that movie theaters don't march off to the dinosaur tar pits and watching things at home becomes the "new normal." I say "yuck" to that, but as I'm a nobody in the world (pretty much), I will just have to adapt like most everyone else.

Now that I've said that, I will also add that I deeply enjoy that some of the streaming services are doing an effort to put out quality products. Mulan by any means was an expensive film, and it's kind of shocking that it is debuting on streaming and not in a theater. I applaud those who made the decision to give us a bit of a treat while we are all stuck at home dealing with a worldwide pandemic. Below is a music video for a song called Loyal, Brave, True by the singer, Christina Aguilera. It dropped last week, and I listened to it and instantly liked it. Again, this kind of quality is super unexpected from a movie that is making its debut on home screens. Christina's voice is so rich and full and lovely, and I love the Asian-feel to her outfit. I suppose being half-Asian, I feel a kind of kinship with movies and television that pay a respectful homage to those ancient cultures.

Anyway, if you have the time and you haven't heard the song, you should give it a listen. My friend, Meg, said that Christina's voice reminds her a lot of how Cher used to be, with a rich and full and powerful voice that is full of soul. I've thought about that assessment, and I think it hits the mark. It's also a beautiful ballad for paladins (for any Dungeons & Dragons players out there). 

Conclave of Shadows by Raymond E. Feist is a clever retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo.

I've been reading Raymond E. Feist's Conclave of Shadows trilogy. I'm in the second book, called King of Foxes, but something was bugging me as I was reading this clever yarn told in a fantasy world. And then I figured it out: it's a retelling of The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. Most of you out there are probably familiar with The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a fascinating tale wherein a man is wronged and sets out to avenge himself against those who falsely imprisoned him. The way in which he does this is a fascinating story with a Rube Goldbergian level of intricacy designed to bring ruin upon his enemies. While in prison he becomes super educated, being fortunate enough to make friends with a monk who essentially knows everything, and then he fakes his own death when his monk friend dies (so that he can be thrown out with the body bag). Along the way, he picks up a super loyal and very skilled follower named Jacopo (a former pirate), and then they get lots of funding via a fabulous pirate horde, and then the main character is reborn as the Count of Monte Cristo in order to ingratiate himself to the nobility of Paris, which becomes the perfect place for him to slow cook his revenge. How could you not like this story?
What Feist has done in his Conclave of Shadows trilogy is displace this story into the fantasy world of most of his novels (called Midkemia). There, a boy named Talon of the Silver Hawk is not imprisoned per se (like The Count of Monte Cristo character), however, he is reborn when his village is annihilated by some callous nobles who found his people to be "in the way" of their geographical goals. Left for dead, he is revived by members of a powerful and secret society with super deep pockets (think endless money) who educate him in all the same ways as Edmond Dantes goes through in The Count of Monte Cristo. He becomes a superb fencer, learns several different languages, and is firmly ensconced in a city called Roldem, which is just a city a stand-in for medieval Paris. The Conclave of Shadows gave this young man a new identity, calling him Tal Hawkins, and he is a new noble having come from the West. He promptly makes a name for himself by winning the Master's Sword Tournament (a very prestigious title), and he beds lots of noble women who find him very attractive. And then he gets a man servant who is an assassin, named Amafi, who is as loyal as Jacopo ever was to Edmond Dantes. Of course, he trains this agent of his to be his valet while he moves the pieces on the board to plot his revenge.
The revenge element begins with young Tal Hawkins attracting the eye (and thusly being recruited by) the very noble who was responsible for his village's death. And Tal doesn't just want to kill this duke. No, he wants to humiliate him, to bring about his ruin so that as/when the duke dies, he knows exactly why this is happening and who it is that is bringing about his ruin. And just like in the Count of Monte Cristo, his method of taking down his enemies by understanding their character and circumstances and bringing them to utter ruin through a few carefully chosen actions is incredible to witness. It really is a delight to read seeing as 1) I'm familiar with the story, and 2) it is one of my favorites, and 3) the sleight "magical" elements in the book change it up enough to heighten the tension in odd ways.
I'm actually quite surprised to see a fantasy novel mine classical literature like The Count of Monte Cristo. The main themes of revenge, love, culpability, greed, and ambition are all there, and they are treated in a way that does not allow easy answers. And it's a novel where the main character, this Tal Hawkins, is quite likeable not only because he is good, but because he is also evil. He is both the hero and the villain of the story, and that's just really interesting. 

Brandon Sanderson just finished a kickstarter for a ten-year-old book that almost hit $7 million in funding.

Brandon Sanderson through his company Dragonsteel Entertainment just finished a Kickstarter for a ten-year old book that nearly hit $7 million. Let me reiterate that...this book has been out for ten fricken years...available in hardback and paperback and audiobook, etc. from the big publisher known as Tor. It's as common as dirt to find online and despite ALL OF THAT, it is making MILLIONS OF DOLLARS. And I assume (now) that the rights have probably gone back to Mr. Sanderson for him to do with as he please. The book? The Way of Kings. Anyway, if they haven't gone back to him, maybe there's some kind of catch whereas he's allowed to just sell copies of vanity special editions, or something like that, and keep all the profit. Maybe the publisher was like...eh...there's no money in the vanity stroking business of leatherbound, beautiful, illustrated editions. That's a fools game! If that's what they thought, they are looking pretty silly right about now.
Sure...there's going to be overhead with Sanderson's company Dragonsteel Entertainment. Maybe a few hundred thousand in overhead. Possibly the cost of a middle class home in Salt Lake City ($500,000) in overhead (which is chump change to a lot of the ritzy crowd that calls this place home). But definitely not $7 million. This Kickstarter goldmine was unbelievable. Kudos to Brandon who should be laughing all the way to the bank. I mean...damn.
And it should terrify traditional publishers. Kickstarter is launching bankable authors into the stratosphere as far as the money they can reap from their intellectual property. But of course...that's the key, right? The word "bankable" is kind of a catch-22. However, if you've got your name out there in lights already for one reason or another, there is no way in hell that I think you should ever go with a publishing house. Kickstarter is the way to go...period. I've been watching Michael J. Sullivan's Kickstarters and have been blown away with the numbers those Kickstarters have been creating. But Sanderson's $7 million on a ten year old book? WOW!!!
Anyway, I just thought I'd share my thoughts. I think traditional publishers are going to be taking on a lot of unknowns (remember the days when mid-list writers were looked down upon?) to pay the bills in the future. All the big names can just say "FU" to them and go their own way, and they can do so in their Bentleys and their Rolls Royces. The mid-list will become the "only list" willing to sign with a publisher. Oh how times are a changing.

Dark is a humorless slog of a show that nevertheless has good eye candy and is somewhat compelling to watch.

I have been watching Netflix's Dark, and I've got three episodes left in the third season. Up to this point, I've been pretty much hooked on it enough that I don't want to abandon it. But it also is one of the most frustrating series I've watched because of several reasons.

1) It's hard to care about the character's world because it is so small. I know that there is a town that the characters all live in, but there's maybe ten significant locations that just get used and reused by repeated visitations of the old, middle-aged, and young characters traveling through time.

2) The story is just a string of vignettes that are slammed together for essentially three seasons of television. Each vignette has two people talking in serious hushed tones, there is usually one if not both characters experiencing such strong emotions that they are on the verge of tears, and then there are lots of hugs. And it is this thing over and over and over again. As soon as one vignette ends, you zoom to another location and another time where two characters come together, discuss either how futile and frustrating the time loop is and how no one seems to understand anything about what's going on enough to find a clear direction, and there is always this momentary shock or realization heightened by dramatic music. Oh and the tears. There are always tears.

3) The plot is purposefully confusing and convoluted, so much so, that it actually feels like the showrunners are drawing the story out longer to make it more convoluted and impossible to figure anything out. By season three, you've got two separate worlds each with their own past, present, and future versions of the characters facing an apocalypse which you aren't quite sure would be necessarily bad if you could just get to an end or some kind of conclusion to a story arc. As I said earlier, the world is impossibly small because it is essentially ten significant locations repeated ad nauseum season after season.

4) The characters don't really eat. I've seen eating maybe once in three seasons. But they do smoke, have sex, talk in hushed desperate whispers, and feel the full gravity of their fates while trying to unravel the endless loop of the apocalyptic circumstance that has got them all trapped. There's some teen angst, suspicion, manipulation, but very little eating. It all seems very German, as many of their characters are quite easy on the eyes (so it does have that going for it).

5) Dark has no humor. There is no laughter and there are no jokes. It is one episode after another of intense stares, dramatic tear-filled eyes, pleas of conscience, serious discussions, and hugs. 

Anyway, all that aside, I'm actually enjoying the show, because it is science fiction, and I am curious as to how it will all end. Are any of you watching it out there?

The Lebanese explosion in Beirut is the perfect event and meme to encapsulate the entirety of 2020.

Like most of you, I'm deeply shocked by the explosion in Beirut that has killed over a hundred people and wounded thousands of others. And like you, I might be wondering why it was allowed to happen. Apparently, there was hundreds of tons of explosive ammonium nitrate stacked next to fireworks in a warehouse for years, and people knew about it. But nothing could be done because all the power to make decisions on this dangerous stuff rested with stupid and ignorant people. Does that sound like 2020? It sure does to me.
Where I might differ from you is that my brain likened it to the perfect event that encapsulates all of 2020. I mean...the meme potential for this thing is incredible (but I'm not going to create any). For example, one could draw an arrow to the smoke stacks raging at the Beirut port and write, "Anti-maskers screaming 'I do what I want!' and 'You NOT the boss o' me!'" And then "BOOM!" the explosion leveling the rest of the city.
Or another meme could be an arrow pointing (again) at the smoking stacks of the port followed by writing that says "Ignorance" and then another arrow pointing to the rest of Beirut with writing that says, "Well-informed people who can't do anything against the ignorant." And then "BOOM!" the explosion takes out all those informed helpless people.
Or yet a third meme that features (again) the word "ignorant people" pointing to the smoking stacks at the warehouse with a second arrow pointing to the surrounding buildings of Beirut with a label that says, "People who tolerate the stupid and ignorant because there's no way it will affect me." And then (of course) the catastrophic "BOOM" that does indeed affect all of those tolerant people.
It's a cruel twist of fate, I think, that this thing comes along and can describe the utter shit show going on in the United States right now with anti-maskers vs the scientific community. That it could literally be a political meme with (again) a red arrow pointing at the smoking stacks with just the words "Trump and his ideas" and then another arrow pointing at the city of Beirut with the words, "Citizens of the United States" followed by the catastrophic "Boom" that wipes everything out.
/Shakes my head. Have a nice weekend.

It's August and the IWSG has questions about genre choices and the way we write.

Dear writers and blogfest participators, it is the first Wednesday of August in the year 2020, and it's time for The Insecure Writer's Support Group monthly post. If you are somehow unaware of this blogfest, you should head over HERE to get setup. It's a lot of fun, and a chance to connect with many other writers. The Insecure Writer's Support group was originally created by Alex Cavanaugh, who is very active in visiting blogs. However, he is not without help. The awesome co-hosts for the August 5 posting of the IWSG are Susan Baury Rouchard, Nancy Gideon, Jennifer Lane, Jennifer Hawes, Chemist Ken, and Chrys Fey!

August 5 question - Quote: "Although I have written a short story collection, the form found me and not the other way around. Don't write short stories, novels or poems. Just write your truth and your stories will mold into the shapes they need to be."

Have you ever written a piece that became a form, or even a genre, you hadn't planned on writing in? Or do you choose a form/genre in advance?

Thus far, I have not ever written in a genre that I hadn't planned on writing in. However, and to be fair, "speculative fiction" is a huge genre encompassing everything from sword and sorcery magic to hard science fiction and everything in-between. Making up things seems to be where my comfort zone is right now, but that doesn't mean that it won't change. My taste in things is continuously evolving.
Thanks for visiting, and I hope the August heat doesn't break your air conditioner. 

I read a fantasy that is just some Tolkien fan fiction published by Doubleday and once I got off my high horse I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Twenty years ago, I was unaware of this thing we call fan fiction. I would also say that I was an unkind reader, viciously defending the intellectual property rights of stories of authors that I had never met. Rather, I was in love with the stories they created, and woe to anyone that borrowed a plot from them to fill in the holes. I looked down on writers who did that, who "stole" an idea and just changed all the names and rehashed the story to fit their own ends. I even used that language saying, "So and so is a terrible author because they stole all their ideas from this other author. How unoriginal." But then, I suppose, I grew up.
I'm not sure when my sensibilities toward reading things changed, but somewhere along the line of reading this and that, when I came across something that desperately smacked of something else that I'd read, I started to think, "This is actually a brilliant piece of fanfiction and they must have loved this author a lot. I do like how they are filling in a bunch of stuff that I always craved more of."
Most recently, this happened while reading Dennis McKiernan's Silver Call duology. This author must have loved the Moria part of Tolkien's Fellowship of the Ring. And I honestly cannot blame him, because the trek through Moria is an exciting and memorable piece of that fantasy series, culminating with the fight versus the balrog over a cleft of doom.
Dennis McKiernan's fanfiction duology (published by Doubleday nonetheless back in the eighties) is almost a blow by blow account of Tolkien. The main character is a warrow, which is just a hobbit really. His name is Peregrine Fairhill and his servant is Cotton. They join a four-thousand strong army of dwarves wanting to reclaim an underground kingdom called Kraggen-Cor that lies underneath a range of towering mountains (sound familiar?) These ancient dwarven halls are teeming with things called Ruhks and maggot-folk, but these are just orcs and goblins. And their ancestors originally lost the ancient kingdom when the dwarves of old dug too greedily in the earth looking for starsilver and unleashed a terrible demon called a Gargon, that met its fate in a battle on a bridge that spans a bottomless crevasse. Yes, yes, it is all things we have seen before.
Even the entrance into Kraggen-Cor is lifted right from Tolkien. The ancient dwarven gate is on the side of a mountain and borders a deep and brooding lake filled with evil. Inside the lake is the Kraken-Ward, a hundred-tentacled thing that snatches dwarves up by the dozen and kills them swiftly with its powerful arms. You might ask, "How on earth did this thing get published?"
Well...it's actually good. You know, like Fifty Shades of Grey is just Twilight fan fiction, and it's actually pretty decent? The writing is as good as anything I'd read of Tolkien. And the author, though he lifts a ton from Tolkien, branches off on his own. For one, you get to spend a lot of time in Kraggen-Cor with a band that's making its way toward the gate next to the mire from the other side. Their trek through the endless dark of the ancient Dwarven Kingdom is filled with peril and discovery. Additionally, the author deals with threats in detail, satisfying a lot of questions that go unanswered in Tolkien's tale. For example, the author explains that this squid monster got to the lake because a long time ago, a powerful evil sorcerer named Modru (think Sauron) had a dragon snatch it from the ocean and drop it in the lake to stand guard over the West door so that his evil forces could rule in Kraggen-Cor.
And the dwarf army also deals with the squid monster by breaking the artificial dam that is responsible for the lake in the first place (using their stonecunning and tools), and once the water flows out, out flows the monster to crash onto the bottom of the cliff. Then they hurl boulders down on top of it until they crush it to death. I thought that was a rather nifty and clever solution.
So here's the thing: I think there's value in fan fiction. I wouldn't have said this twenty years ago, because I was caught up in youthful snobbery believing (still) that the only people who deserve to get published are people with original ideas. But I've let go of that nonsense, realizing that publishing is just a business, and decisions on what deserves the light of day and what doesn't all seems to boil down to money. Educated liberals would probably decry me of this opinion, but in doing so I think they are wrong. I rather enjoyed Dennis McKiernan's fan service to Tolkien, and I thought his characters were very well-developed, as was all the Dwarvish language he went to the trouble of mapping out in an appendix to the series. I think we can spend too much time and effort looking down our noses at a piece of art and decrying it as a "knock off," without appreciating the fine nuances that make it sparkle in ways that the original did not. And that's all I have to say on that.

What are the Great Old Ones and why do they make such good fictional villains?

There are a lot of fictional properties that contain lore about the Great Old ones, and all of them go back to H.P. Lovecraft's creations in his rather "unreadable" horror fiction. I say "unreadable" because there's almost no dialogue. Reading them is like reading a first hand account of events but with narrators describing things in terms that no one alive today would use. They are going to appear in the last season of Sabrina on Netflix (assumedly) in force, and it seems like a very good choice as the whole Satan storyline seems to be a bit played out. Additionally, they are in the Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition game as the power behind the warlock class, they are in movies like Hellboy and the Cloverfield franchise (loosely), they definitely inspired The Mist (a Stephen King story), and they make their rounds in online memes during political season with "Why vote for the lesser evil? Cthulhu (insert date)." I could probably name a dozen other times the Great Old Ones either directly inspire something in a story or directly contribute to it. HBO is about to add a new series called Lovecraft Country, which will (no doubt) have Great Old Ones in it. So, I'm here to ask and perhaps answer the question: what are the Great Old Ones and why do they make such good fictional villains?
The Great Old Ones are a group of unique, malignant beings of great power created by H.P. Lovecraft. They reside in various locations on Earth, and they once presided over the planet as gods and rulers. They go by strange-sounding names like Azathoth, Shub-Niggurath, and Cthulhu. In nearly all of the stories featuring Great Old Ones, there's a common theme of human insignificance and cultists. There are always cultists.
These are people who have noticed that there is actual, physical proof of one of these things existing, which makes them unique as the only godlike figures with definite presence behind them. The cultists seem to not realize that these gods of the world have no good side at all, and they stumble over themselves to get on the good side of the "true religion" as fast as they can. And then there's usually the subject of timing, which mostly has been set in the 1930's, but has found success in modern and future timelines as well. Here's a bit on that "timing" part from the tabletop roleplaying game, The Call of Cthulhu:

"When the stars were right, They could plunge from world to world through the sky; but when the stars were wrong, They could not live. But although They no longer lived, They would never really die. They all lay in stone houses in Their great city of R’lyeh, preserved by the spells of mighty Cthulhu for a glorious resurrection when the stars and the earth might once more be ready for Them. But at that time some force from outside must serve to liberate Their bodies. The spells that preserved Them intact likewise prevented Them from making an initial move, and They could only lie awake in the dark and think whilst uncounted millions of years rolled by. They knew all that was occurring in the universe, but Their mode of speech was transmitted thought. Even now They talked in Their tombs. When, after infinities of chaos, the first men came, the Great Old Ones spoke to the sensitive among them by moulding their dreams; for only thus could Their language reach the fleshly minds of mammals...

That cult would never die till the stars came right again, and the secret priests would take great Cthulhu from His tomb to revive His subjects and resume His rule of earth."

So why do they make good villains? Rather, why do people (authors and writers) mine Lovecraft's mythos for villains to insert into fantastical horror fiction? I think the answer is a bit...complicated. For one, they are completely invincible in comparison to humanity, so as far as a threat goes, it's always high-stakes (which makes for great storytelling). Second, their alien nature is so utterly bizarre that it creates madness in all who gaze upon them. This is also a great storytelling hook. Who hasn't been entranced by the rantings and ravings of a mad person in a fictional story? Finally, Lovecraft himself said something about them which gives a clue as to why they are great villains. He said that the Great Old Ones were meant to be amoral rather than malicious. This is in keeping with his belief that the universe itself was alien and uncaring, which makes them in many ways "unknowable." Whereas in the figures of Satan or in undead, we may see something familiar, I think that the horror of the Great Old Ones is increased because they are unlike anything we can imagine. The closest thing might be something we see in the Prometheus movies, but even that (I think) falls far short of the apocalyptic awfulness of the Great Old Ones.

When I heard Olivia de Havilland passed this weekend I was astonished by the many things that had happened during her long lifetime.

Olivia de Havilland in 2018. She was already 102. Wow!Olivia de Havilland was an interesting person. And I don't mean "interesting" in the all-encompassing nothing-burger of its modern definition, where it can literally mean anything and define nothing other than, "That was...interesting." No, I mean "interesting" in the sense that the life she lived, the times in which she lived it, and the people she knew...are all fascinating to a person like me. She certainly was touched and shaped by Hollywood, and then did a turn in shaping its future in ways that surprised everyone. There's nothing I can really say about her that isn't already known or wasn't covered by some obituary like the one in The New York Times. All that I can say about her is that she was a great entertainer, and she brought joy into my life when I saw a captivating performance brought to life by her acting ability.

I don't come from the generation that was her intended audience. Far from it, Gone With The Wind was already forty years old by the time I saw it. When watching it for the first time, I was captivated by the great Hollywood beauty of Vivien Leigh, who was dead before I was even born. Vivien seized the screen in just about every role I ever saw her play, and I thought she was a greater beauty in her prime than Elizabeth Taylor, whom my parents spoke of in reverential tones when discussing film stars. I didn't originally think that Olivia de Havilland was pretty, but I realized once I'd grown older and understood things better, that this was intentional because the character of Melanie Wilkes is a bit of a milquetoast with none of the strength of the character, Scarlett O'Hara.

But even forty years after Gone With the Wind was released, the world was still a much slower place. I may work on a computer now, and I don't consider myself "old" by any means. However, I still remember having to turn a dial to change a television set and feeling fortunate that my television set could get channels 12 and 13, which showed a lot of Godzilla movies that I liked. The world was still slow enough that old stars from the forties were still household names, and entertainment didn't come at you from streaming sources that are so plentiful it's like taking a sip of water from a firehose.

I am kind of awed not only by the quality of de Havilland's life, but by the length and span of it. My mother was still a child when Olivia de Havilland was being filmed as Melanie Wilkes, and Ms. de Havilland outlived my mother by four years (and my mom was an old person when she died)! Her co-star Vivien Leigh, died in 1967. Ms. de Havilland outlived the famous Scarlett actress by more than five decades. I think that's rather incredible, and a tribute to good genetics, healthcare, and probably some luck to boot. In fact, she seemed so out of place in my mind when I realized that Olivia de Havilland was still alive (I think Liz told me about it a few years ago in a comment on my blog). Olivia was still alive in a world that had so completely transformed, seeing not only the rise of fascism in America (from Paris), but a worldwide pandemic, and a thousand other things. If anything, knowing this fact about this Hollywood legend was like contemplating an anachronism: a person who could have told you (until this weekend) of personal conversations with the likes of Judy Garland, Errol Flynn, Clark Gable, and the list goes on and on.

Anyway, it's a fascinating thing to think on, this connectivity of the past to the present. I can't help that with her passing, there's a kind of Golden Age "Instagram" that has also left the world. A repository, if you will, of vignettes...candid moments...and personal revelations of other artists who left their work for us to appreciate, and who (in time) will be all but forgotten save for the lasting pieces of entertainment that we can watch, and hence appreciate the characters they portrayed. 

Can We Have a Conversation about the Having Conversations Industrial Complex?

Image taken from Jezebel and this article that talks about the Having Conversations Industrial ComplexYesterday, I learned a new term. It is called the "Having Conversations Industrial Complex." The phrasing is quite clever, as it plays on Eisenhower's farewell address in which he talked about the "Military-Industrial Complex."

Anyway, the "Having Conversations Industrial Complex" is defined as thus:

"A loose assemblage of professional speakers, non-profit organizations, astroturfed activists, diversity consultants, academic advisory boards, panelists, and politicians who are paid to generate a "conversation" that doesn't need to show tangible results. The only role is to generate more conversations while those on a frontline are injured, arrested, and labeled as "terrorists." The Having Conversations Industrial Complex pushes people and projects through a revolving door of empty promises, acting as agents of reformism."

I want to be really clear when I say that a lot of people would like things to be different in our country. I also still think that conversations about how to resolve problems are necessary. However, action and work are hard for two reasons that I think are honest and very uncomfortable truths

The first is that a lot of Americans don't like to work. They like to sit back and point out things for other people to do. I'm not going to use the term lazy, but I've seen people unable to manage the decay in their own homes much less start a revolution or hold people accountable. And these aren't disabled people. Rather, they are entitled, and they just want to play all the time. They don't think they should have to get their hands dirty, because they never have had to do this in the past. I know lots of adults who run a car into the ground rather than do the maintenance to keep it going, who drive around with cracked windshields because they don't want to have to do the work to get it replaced (even if it is free because of insurance), and who don't want to clean up after themselves so they leave litter in public parks. These are the people who plague social media with what I call "Awareness porn." They try to make people "aware" of what's going on in the hopes that somebody will step up to do the work. It never occurs to them that the "somebody" is the person in the mirror.

The second uncomfortable truth is that many Americans are unaware of their lack of power. In the past, Americans could ask for something and they usually got it. Things were civil and parceled out, and wants and needs seemed to be addressed. That world is gone, but few know it yet. Faced with this reality that comes in the form of asking for things and being repeatedly traumatized by the words "No, you aren't going to get that, and I don't care how you feel about that!" many are just floundering like a gasping fish on a dock. I see the concept of "power" in modern America as a choice, but it is also binary. You either have it or you don't. If you don't have it, that's okay. But let's be honest and admit that we are helpless to affect change (for whatever reason). A person that taps out and says, "I'm not going to do the work to affect change" may not be what others (who desire change) want to hear, but I still think that's okay. You do you, and that kind of thing. It's like Eugene on The Walking Dead admitting to his cowardice (so shameful, right?), which was honest but true (I loved that character by the way). But sitting around creating work for others by making them "Aware" of the jobs that need doing and acting as a "supervisor" is (I don't think) very helpful other than to make you feel like you are doing something, when in fact you are doing nothing. Nobody asked for a supervisor, and yet there are millions of them on Facebook trying to make people "aware of the injustice." Honestly, you'd have to be blind to not see it. But I suppose they all feel like they are doing something. All I see is that they are doing nothing.

Going back to my discussion on "power is binary" in the previous paragraph, the reason I say that the concept of power in America is binary (and a choice) is because we all (technically) could flip the switch and say, "It's time to take this matter into our own hands." But what does this look like? Protesting? Yes, that's a part of it. Riots? That too. This is where violence comes in...revolution...civil war. Most people are unwilling to go there (as am I). And I think it's perfectly okay to want to just sit and do nothing and be honest about it. For me, I've adopted a strategy of realizing that the oppressors are going to continue the abuse and as I've chosen to do nothing other than peacefully vote and see if an election brings about change, I'm powerless to affect real and sudden change. Therefore, I will adjust my life accordingly and try to build a life as best as I can around the continuing abuses going on around me. I think that's okay too.

When there's no choice but to live in the swamp, one does their best to at least pick out the areas that will cause the least distress, right? However, there's some strange narcissism and shaming that is happening with the people who are engaged in "Awareness Porn." As I stated earlier, they are actually doing nothing, but they feel like they are doing something. And that feeling that they are doing something, is making some of them "shame" those who are honest about doing nothing and very transparent about it. They can do this, because they think that they are doing something. "I'm out here working so why aren't you?" But from my perspective I'm like, "Uh...you haven't done real work in ten years. Let's be honest, here." In other words, on paper, the two individuals are doing the same thing. They are both doing "nothing" only one is sharing posts on Facebook waiting for "someone" to do "something" because they can't be bothered to do anything about the injustice they are pointing out...and the other is watching Netflix. Personally, I think the one watching Netflix is making the wiser choice, and it's overall better for the person's mental health.

It is for these two reasons that bringing about actual change is really hard, and why all of us just take our turn on the revolving carousel labeled with "The Having Conversations Industrial Complex." How long has our society been talking about sexual assault? The 1970's? What about racism? a hundred years? We live in a polarized country. People chant "we need justice," but what does that look like in a democracy where everyone's opinion of justice is different? Let's also be honest about one other thing: revolution isn't happening in any form that I see. But if I'm wrong (which does happen), it will result in a violent civil war that will shake out far worse for minorities than the current status quo (in all likelihood). That's just how I see it.

Liberals on my Facebook feed are tough talkers. "The time for talking is over!" and "This is unacceptable!" with nothing to back it up. Why? Power is binary and they have chosen to absolve themselves of doing the work that needs to be done, and that's okay. I've made that choice too. I'm a pretty non-revolutionary person by nature, so I'm not advocating throwing up the barricades. I also am skeptical of people whose rhetoric seems to demand a military (or paramilitary, or revolutionary terrorist) campaign who make no effort to actually prepare or train or back up their rhetoric in any way. Does anyone seriously think that progressives would win a civil conflict? I don't. So strongly worded diatribes are gonna have to suffice, while the oppressors repeatedly oppress and ignore boundaries. This is what happens when consequences for actions are absent.

So what is left? I think it is summed up in this message that I got from twitter that was retweeted thousands of times:

"A Woman of a Certain Age (user) wrote: 'I just broke down sobbing. I have never done this before. I think I am at my limit. How much more corruption, collusion, racketeering, conspiracy, treason, abuse of power, bribery, embezzlement must we take before someone does something? I don't want to live here any longer.'

And that's just the thing: "...before someone does something?" Not me...just...someone. It's America in a nutshell once again pointing out the terrible and then passing the buck. This is why many of us are screwed.