Wil Wheaton's Blog, page 25

6584 days

18 years ago today, I uploaded a bunch of files I’d written in a text editor, confirmed that the blogging software I’d installed was working, and I pressed publish on wilwheaton.net. It wasn’t the fanciest website in the world, but I went from knowing nothing about HTML and scripting, to launch of the website in just six weeks, and I built it entirely by myself (with some PHP and CSS guidance from a couple of guys I’ve since lost touch with). I enjoyed writing in my blog (powered by Greymatter!), and I felt like, for the first time in my life, I could speak for myself. My voice, which had only been heard through the filter of teen magazines, or vapid entertainment press, a voice which had been tightly controlled by the adults in my life, could finally have a chance to speak on its own truth.

It’s been a little over 6500 days, and hundreds of thousands of words, since I started writing a public journal and random people online started to give a shit about what I was doing. It’s so weird to think about how much smaller the Internet felt back then, how different our interactions were.

28 year-old me was struggling so much, in those days. He was trying so hard to be a good husband and stepfather with pretty much no support from his narcissist parents who weren’t thrilled about him marrying a woman with children. He struggled with undiagnosed depression, Anne’s vindictive and destructive ex-husband, and not meeting the extremely high expectations he had for himself. He has some real painful days ahead, but he gets through them with the love and support of his phenomenal wife, who he still can’t believe picked him, out of all the humans on the planet. He doesn’t know it, yet, but writing this blog is going to change his life, save his life, and make it possible for him to find his own dream, instead of trying (and failing) to live someone else’s.

So on this day, in 2019, as I look back on the early days of my life as a blogger, I have a lot of feelings, and I want to say thank you to everyone who has been around for all or some of this journey of mine. Because you’ve been an audience for me to speak to, entertain, challenge, and inspire, you’ve given me the unconditional support I never had to find my voice, and live my dream of being a writer and storyteller.

NB: This linked post from exactly 19 years ago is technically from the Blogger install I had at Geocities. I wouldn’t make a proper post at WWdN for another full day, but today is the actual anniversary of when I pressed the big red button to activate index.php, and since my website is actually old enough to go to a strip club, I thought I should mark the occasion.

about that audition…

About three weeks ago, I had my first audition in … um … in so long, I can’t even tell you when the last one was, or what it was even for. I average about 4 auditions a year these days, because most of what acting work I do get is offered to me, and I’m not going to complain about that even a little bit, because I am not an ass.

Anyway, this was the first audition since I had some explosive and life-changing emotional revelations, making it literally the first audition in my life where nothing more than just booking a job was at stake.

I don’t know if I can properly explain it, but that difference was fucking immense to me, and I think is one of the reasons it was the best audition I’ve had in … I want to say a decade? I think the last audition I felt this good about was when I booked Criminal Minds, so yeah it was a long time ago.

I’ve been thinking about it, and I feel like this audition was so great because of how I prepared as a human, as much as how I prepared as an actor. As an actor, I read the script, broke down the scenes, learned the lines, and made clear and specific character choices*. I’m good at that kind of homework, because I’ve been doing it for forty years, literally thousands of times. I enjoy it, and it comes very naturally to me, but I wouldn’t call it “easy”, if that makes sense.

So I did all my creative and professional preparation, like I’ve done for my entire life, and when the usual stress and fear and anxiety didn’t show up, I realized that all the emotional pain and the recovery work I’ve been doing to heal my childhood trauma was actually working! Remember when I wrote about ? It was similar to that. Maybe I’m making something obvious or uninteresting into something profound, but for the first time in my life, there was nothing more than a role at stake for me, and that freed me up to enjoy every step of the process, including the part where I knew, deep in my heart, that I wouldn’t book the job, because I never book the job**. Since I wasn’t carrying the existential and practical expectation or responsibility to book this job, and didn’t have anything to prove, I just had fun with it. I allowed myself to enjoy the entire process, and I honestly, sincerely, totally did not care if I booked the job. I knew that I’d do a good job, because I always do a good job. You don’t get to keep doing this for forty years if you don’t do a good job. But doing a good job or not really doesn’t matter, because everyone who auditions comes into the room with the same presumed level of competence and talent. We aren’t some of us special and some of us not. There are no sharks or dead money in the waiting room. The thing that’s going to decide who gets this job has nothing at all to do with anything any of us do on the audition. It isn’t about if we are good or bad. It isn’t about being worthy or unworthy. It isn’t about finally booking the job that will make me so famous and successful, my father will finally love me and my mother will finally be happy. It isn’t about any of those things. It’s just about being the best match for the role. And whatever it is that makes the actor they cast the best match is NEVER something that actor did in the room. It’s always something we have no control over, from looking too much or not enough like another actor, to some unconscious energy that hangs around us and makes us who we are. You know how the difference between a gold medal and not making the podium can be .003 seconds? It’s like that, more often than it isn’t.

Again, maybe I am making something simple and obvious into something profound, but I didn’t fully realize and internalize this until very recently. For my entire career, which started without my consent when I was seven years old, I carried so much emotional baggage into auditions with me, it’s a wonder I could even fit it through the door. On occasion, it helped (I have more in common with Gordie than just wanting to be a writer, it turns out), but mostly it just hurt me and weighed me down. Being able to prepare and go into an audition without it was more fun than I ever imagined possible.

Okay. So I had a great time on the audition. This character is so great. He’s misunderstood by the other adults in the picture, but the kids he ends up mentoring believe in him as much as he believes in them. He’s got some incredibly funny bits, and I felt like I could relate to him in a lot of ways that weren’t obvious on paper. I felt like I made some meaningful connections with everyone in the room, and they all felt genuine to me. When I left, I knew that I had done precisely what I set out to do, and did not want to change a single thing. I knew that I had nailed it, and given them the best version of myself. All I could do now was wait and try not to think about it.

About a week went by and we hadn’t heard anything. My manager called casting and they said the producers were taking their time, and that I was in a very small group of actors who were being considered. That was encouraging, and I allowed myself to imagine, just for a minute, how much fun it would be to play this character, and how much I would enjoy being a mentor to a bunch of young actors.

Another week went by, and casting told my manager that I was great, they loved what I did, they loved me as an actor, they loved me as a person, … and they cast someone else.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before.

I’m disappointed that I won’t get to play this character, and I’m disappointed that I won’t get to be a mentor on the set to a bunch of kids, and I’m disappointed that I won’t get to work in something that I know I would have genuinely enjoyed, and felt proud of. But I’m not wrecked. I’m not bitter. This is the same thing I’ve heard, nearly verbatim, for going on twenty years now, but since I’m not hauling around all this emotional baggage, I have a healthy and positive perspective on the entire thing. It isn’t about me as a person, or me as someone who never really had a say in what his career was going to be. It isn’t about proving my worth to people who I shouldn’t need to prove anything to. It isn’t about proving anything to myself.

It’s about a different person being a better match than me, and that’s it. That’s literally all it is, and if I hadn’t been emotionally abused so much as a kid, maybe it wouldn’t have taken me until I was 47 to have my “this is water” moment.

So I can feel disappointed, but I don’t feel like I am worthless, or stupid. That is a HUGE thing for me, and I can’t believe I spent literally my entire acting career — and my entire personal life until recently — feeling that way about myself.

*Doing that preparation is my favorite part of being an actor. The joy of discovering what a writer is asking us to do, and the satisfaction that comes with finding that interpretation and bringing it to life is what keeps one of my feet in the acting world, no matter how hard I try to step away from it entirely.

**Criminal Minds aside, it always comes down to me and one or two other actors. I don’t even have to ask for feedback from casting anymore, because I don’t need to hear, “you were great, but they went another way” ever again in my life.

 

is it too much to ask for a little professional courtesy?

This is entirely unrelated to my last post. As far as I know, the show I auditioned for a week and a half ago hasn’t done callbacks or finalized a cast.

Okay. So.

Casting for a TV show asked me to keep some dates open, because they said they wanted to cast me in their show.

Neat! I kept the days open, including rescheduling on other work that conflicted.

So they call us a few times to ensure I’m available … and then they just fucking disappear. They drop off the face of the Earth, and don’t make any effort to return our calls or get in touch.

A few days before the days I kept open arrive, I call the other job, which I had rescheduled, and tell them I’m available after all.

I start work on the other job. It’s really fun and I’m enjoying the process.

My manager and I are talking about something unrelated, and I ask him what the status of the TV show is. Like, did they push production by a week or two? Did they change their mind? What’s should I plan for the next few weeks? He hasn’t heard from them in a week, and since it’s two days into the week they asked me to keep open, we correctly presume the job isn’t happening this week. He calls them, and they tell him, “oh we cast the role with someone else,” and that’s it.

These motherfuckers repeatedly asked me to keep this week open, because they said they wanted to work with me, and then when they decide to cast someone else, they don’t even have the fucking courtesy and professionalism to get in touch with us and let us know that they don’t want to work with me after all. What if I had passed on this job this week? What if I lost the paycheck and the ephemeral, theoretical boost to my career that

It’s so fucking rude, so fucking inconsiderate, so fucking CONTEMPTUOUS of me and my team, I will *never* work for this show. I am nobody’s Plan B, and I have too much self-respect to give these fucking people the time of day if they ever deign to reach out to us again.

You know, Casting, it takes literally one minute to get on the phone or send an email and let us know what you’re doing. Roles go to other people all the time, and it isn’t a big deal. What IS a big deal is giving me and my team the impression that we’re going to work together, and then just fucking ghosting us when you changed your mind.

Actors are people, too, and we deserve the bare minimum of respect when YOU reach out to US about working on YOUR show. Sure, we don’t expect feedback on auditions (it would be nice, but we know you’re seeing 20 actors for each role, and maybe you don’t have time to deal with all of them AND make the deal with the person you cast) BUT! When YOU call ME and ask me to clear my calendar so I’m available for you, and then you just fucking ghost me, you are an unprofessional ass, and I don’t like you very much.

I used to take this shit personally, but I don’t any more. This isn’t about me. This is about an industry that is so far up its own ass, the people who cast actors have stopped caring about us as human beings, and treat us like disposable, interchangeable widgets they can pick up and throw away whenever they feel like it. It’s bullshit, and my heart goes out to all the actors who are starting out right now, and have to deal with this shit every day.

for ten minutes today, i’m going to be an actor

Today, I have my first audition in … a year? 18 months? Something like that. It’s in 2 hours, and I’ve been preparing the scenes all day. It’s been super fun to break the sides down, try out different intentions and doable actions, and despite my best efforts, now I kind of want to do this role, because I think it would be fun. I won’t book it (I never do), but I’m surprisingly excited just to go into the room, flex my actor muscles for a minute or so, and then come home and get back to my regular life.

I usually go into a room with my scenes prepared, my take on the character, and the professionalism you’d expect from a 40-year veteran actor (holy shit that’s a long time). I have to emotionally separate myself from the outcome, because that kind of thinking gets in the way of my ability to perform, and interpret material.

But I’m not gonna lie: I’d love to work on this movie. The script is adorable and sweet and a lot of fun. It’s a movie for young people, and can I just tell you how strange it feels to know that I’m going in for a role of a teacher/mentor/cool adult in a project that’s really about the kids this character takes care of.

Maybe this will be the first time in over 15 years that I book a job from an audition. The timing is about right, in terms of swings of the bat and actually getting on base. Most actors have between 20 and 30 auditions for each job they book. I average about 4 auditions a year, which affords me lots of time to write and live my life, but makes it VERY unlikely that I’ll be cast in anything. Everything you’ve seen me in since Criminal Minds has been something that I was offered, or asked to do. So in about 15 years, I’ve had about 60 auditions and booked zero of them. I am *way* due to get a hit.

And I have to go into [major studio] today, and forget all of that. I have to forget how unlikely it is that I’ll book the job, or how fun it would be to play this charactern and how much I’d love to be part of something that’s fun and positive and inspiring to kids. I have to throw all that away, pretend none of it exists, and just do my best job interpreting the material, and bringing it to life.

“Just.”

If I’m lucky, what I do will be what they want. But if I’m not the person they want for this role, it’s not going to wreck my day the way it has 60 times over the last decade and a half, because I’ve done a lot of emotional heavy lifting and a lot of vital psychological work to separate my self-esteem and my personal sense of worth, from my success or failure in auditions. Like, I’ll be disappointed when I don’t book this job, but it’s not going to destroy me and make me question my entire life and career choices the way it did as recently as six months ago. It’s profoundly weird to know this.

ETA: I just got home.

I posted some videos on my Instagram story, if you want to see how it went, but … I had SO MUCH FUN! I loved the material, and every single person in the room was so welcoming and present and friendly, they created an environment where I could do my best work.

And I think I did my best work! I made some clear and deliberate choices, and I had a lot of fun bringing this character to life with them. I did two scenes, which show the two (profoundly opposite) poles of this character. I got some direction and made an adjustment on one of the scenes, and had even MORE fun with the direction than I had on my own.

Overall, it was a fantastic and fulfilling experience, and though it remains EXTREMELY unlikely that I’ll be cast, I feel super great about what I did today.

Here it is! The limited, collectible, hardback printing of Dead Trees Give No Shelter is now available.

Remember when I told you that I was doing a very limited, collectible hardback printing of Dead Trees Give No Shelter?

Well, it’s ready to go on sale RIGHT NOW! There are just 200 of these, and when they’re gone, they’re gone. I’ve priced them accordingly, at $100, which I know is a lot, but I’m offering a discount for today only, as my very small way of saying thank you to everyone who has supported me and my work for all these years.

It’s been awhile since I did my own little indie print run like this. In fact, I think I have to go all the way back to the initial release of The Happiest Days of Our Lives to find the last time I handled printing and order processing and printing all on my own. It’s a fair amount of work, but it’s tremendously satisfying to see where in the world my words are going to go live.

I’ll start taking orders right away, but just know that it’ll be a couple of days before I’m actually able to ship these, since I’m just one person doing it all myself. (And because I’m doing this all by myself, I’m not able to autograph or number these. HOWEVER! If you come see me at a convention from now until the heat death of the universe, I’ll be thrilled to sign your copy for you, at no charge.)

I’m really excited for everyone who wants one of these to finally get to have one. The design and artwork in this edition is just beautiful, and it feels very special to me. Oh, and if you care about this sort of thing (and I hope that you do) this is printed in America, in a union shop.

Buy Dead Trees Give No Shelter – Limited Edition Collector’s Hardback.

i exist

About a year ago, my Internet friend, Ross, told me about an app that some friends of his developed. It’s called Exist.io, and it aggregates all the fitness and diet and exercise and mood trackers we have in our lives, so we can get a clear overview of how our choices affect our existence.

I was primarily interested in discovering how certain habits and inconveniences affected my daily life, and Exist will let me see correlations that I wasn’t necessarily making on my own. For example, I figured that sitting in traffic (that most Los Angeles of pass times) would have a uniformly negative impact on how I felt at the end of the day. I mean, I fucking hate traffic, so I presumed more traffic would equal more bad days. But after a year, I observed that it has no measurable impact, at all.

What I did learn, though, was surprising to me. The single most consistent factor in how I feel about myself and my day, on the 5-point scale, is how productive I am. If I fuck off for a whole day, I feel shitty about myself. If I’m not being creative, or doing something that makes me feel useful, I feel shitty about myself. When I do things that are productive, like writing, or getting a lot of adulting done around the house, I feel better about myself. So my newest challenge is to figure out a way to feel worthy and good about myself, even on the days when I can’t or just choose not to be productive.

You may notice that I didn’t post here once in June. Part of that is feeling like I didn’t really have anything important to say, but a really, really big part of it is feeling like I’ve lived my life in public since 2000, and I kind of need my own personal space. It’s scary to feel that way, because I’m struggling with this sense that my acting career is over, and though I’ve written two manuscripts in the last year, neither one will be released for quite some time, so I feel like my writing career is moving much more slowly than I want. I’m afraid that, if I pull myself out of the public too much, I will immediately fade out of whatever relevance I have, my entire professional career will die, and I’ll be forgotten before the end of the year. Being middle-aged and recovering from childhood trauma is THE BEST THING AND DOESN’T SUCK AT ALL!

Krusty the Clown groan

Anyway.

Because I’ve been feeling unproductive and moderately to completely worthless, I haven’t been posting anything here (there is a LOUD and INCESSANT voice in my head that keeps telling me nobody cares about me, and nobody misses me when I don’t write here, and that voice sounds an awful lot like my dad). But I’ve been writing a little bit on my Facebook, and I answer asks almost daily on my Tumblr. A few things have come up that I feel good about, and at least one of those things feels worth sharing today.

So here’s something from Tumblr that I hope some of you find useful:

Ask: Hi! I just went 48 hours without a drink and I’m really proud of myself and wanted to tell someone. Thanks for being so open about your sobriety, it’s a big inspiration for me and I’m sure for many others.

Answer: Hey way to go! Do you plan to stay sober? If no, accept my admiration and go on with your life!

If yes, may I offer some thoughts based on my experience? A couple of big things I lived through that would have been nice to know about in advance?

The first few days weren’t the hardest for me, probably because my body was detoxing lingering alcohol-related stuff. But right around the seventh day, I started to get cravings, and it was tough for a few days there. I was on the phone with Hardwick (who was like a sponsor to me, though I didn’t to a program) almost every day, asking lots of questions, like “is this normal?” and “will this end?” The answer was yes, and sure enough about ten or so days after I had my last drink, I went for weeks without any serious craving.

Then.

Oh shit.

Then, around the fourth week, I had this day where all I wanted to do all day long was drink all the beers in the world, and I couldn’t figure out why. On that day, “one day at a time” became “one hour at a time”. I got through it with the support of Chris and Anne, but it was really challenging.

Around that time, I became aware of all these feelings and emotions and painful memories that I had been numbing with alcohol. They were like FINALLY YOU CAN DEAL WITH US! And that was a whole thing. I went to the therapist a lot around that time, and I read a lot of books that helped me understand and begin to heal the trauma I had been self medicating away.

So the two things I guess I hope you’ll take away from this are:

 It’s totally normal to have INTENSE cravings, and they will pass. I used a LOT of seltzer water, LaCroix, and the occasional caffeine-free soda to satisfy the habit I had of having a drink every night. Having those cravings doesn’t mean you’re weak or anything like that. It’s just habit and biology. After about 45 days, the cravings (which were rare and usually mild) stopped. That was, like 1200 days ago, so I am proof that the intense cravings can and will stop. Oh, but when Anne’s having a great IPA and I’m like, “Man, I wish I could have that,” I remind myself that the reason I stopped drinking was my inability to have one and stop. I’m not going back there, so I make a choice not to drink every day.
It’s totally normal for some profound emotional things to surface, and you should expect it. You’re going to have this overwhelming clarity and perspective on your life that you didn’t have when you were drinking. If this happens to you, you may want to be prepared with a therapist appointment.
Oh, and one last thing that I just remembered is that I kept (and keep) a private diary/journal about my experiences, where I am relentlessly honest with myself. That made a HUGE difference for me, and most of my sober friends tell me that they wish they’d done. It’s profoundly helpful to read back and see my progress, while I contextualize things that I didn’t realize were super correlated.

It’s been almost 3.5 years since I took my last drink, and I don’t regret it at all. Maybe that’s your path, or maybe it isn’t. Whatever path you choose to walk, know that these last 48 hours are a real and good and fantastic thing. I’m super happy for you and I hope that you are living your best life!

I occasionally miss having a beer, or a cocktail in a swanky speakeasy, but I do not regret, for a single second, stopping drinking. Before I quit, I was drinking two or three drinks a day, and waking up with some degree of a headache almost daily. I was getting bloated, and the self-medicating wasn’t helping me deal with the childhood trauma I was successfully avoiding. The best part of getting sober, for me, was finding the clarity and perspective that I needed to get out of some toxic relationships that were being maintained out of guilt and inertia, and to start reclaiming my sense of self, so I can find out what my dream is for myself, after spending my entire life doing what other people wanted and expected from me.

I’m in a nonzero amount of existential and emotional pain as I work through this stuff. I’m uncovering things daily that make me feel sad, or angry, or frustrated, or some combination of all three. I cry a lot for the child I was, and the childhood I missed. I spend a lot of time forgiving the teenager and twentysomething I was, knowing now that he was doing the best he could do, without the unconditional love and support a teenager needs to navigate through their world. Some days, I score 5 (great) in Exist. Other days, I hurt a lot and I score 2 or 3 (bad to okay). But I score every day, honestly, and I’ve been able to use that data to help myself heal and move toward living my best life.

I just looked at Exist, and I see that, in the last 90 days, I scored 48% of them as 5, 40% as 4, and 10% as 3. That’s really, really great to know, and though it shouldn’t be, it’s surprising. Since Friday, for some reason, I’ve been wearing the heavy lead apron of Depression and feeling like I’m drowning. It really does feel like it’s been forever, and it’s so healthy and helpful to realize that I’ve been feeling between bad and okay for only a couple of days. It’s a reminder that Depression lies, and the bad days are not forever.

If it matters, you can consider this an unpaid endorsement of Exist.io. It’s made it possible for me to use science and real, measurable data to understand myself, and it’s been a significant part of my self care routine. If your brain has anything in common with my brain (and I’m so sorry if it does), maybe it’ll be helpful for you, as well.

Happy July, everyone.

destroy all monsters

My friend does this thing where he smokes some cannabis and watches movies that I guess are enhanced by his altered state of mind.

I know, I know, you’re like, “So what? We all have that friend, and it is me!” I hear you. The thing is, my friend writes reviews of these movies, and they are fantastic. Witness:

Lance’s Movie Joint Perhaps you think Marvel pulled off the world’s greatest film crossover event by designing a 10-year, multi-film, multi-character movie arc that would lead everyone to the same place at the same time, but I must respectfully disagree because I have seen the world greatest film crossover event and it happened in 1968. Consider that in one 90-minute film (not two 3-hour bladder contests) you get Godzilla, Rodan, Mothra, Gorosaurus, Manda, King Ghidorah, Anguirus, Kumonga. and Godzilla Jr. (aka Godzooky) all in one film battling each other for world monster supremacy. And that film is Destroy All Monsters. I need to pause here and express a warning if you’re planning on smoking a doob or two and settling back with a party size bag of Doritos and a 6-pack of Coke Zero and watch this film and that warning is do not try to make sense of this film in the context of any other Toho kaiju movie because this one stands alone. Whereas in some other cinematic universes there exists a thread – however tenuous – that ties them all together through references and backstories, no such thread exists here other than “hey there are gigantic monsters on the Earth and sometimes they get pissed off.” I actually tried to piece together some kind of puzzle of all the other films leading up to this one to see how all the monsters ended up on the same island and why only Mothra needs two tiny women singing to him (her?) whereas the others act independently and do the monsters like humans or nah and why always Tokyo (though in this case they also destroy Moscow, Paris, and New York for good measure) but then I got higher and thought to myself, fuck it, nothing matters anyway. While the (SPOILERS!) costumed actors portraying this variety of monsters do their humble best to stomp all over the carefully and lovingly crafted sets of tiny buildings and real working vehicles, the real stars here are the set designer and the dubbing actors who manage somehow to be even more unbelievable (and awesome) than the monsters. Several times I had to rewind the film to re-experience a line or a look or, like, Godzilla performing some expert karate moves, and what higher praise can I give than that this film managed to overcome my brain’s fuzziness several times to provide things that were crazy awesome amazeballs? You’ll be tempted to talk over the dialog as the monsters engage in one of many, many, many scenes of Thunderbirds-like destruction, but don’t do it! The very next line uttered could be the best one yet – followed by an even better one. It struck me how much these films rely on an uneducated audience, and how much we all know about physics and space travel and gravity that we didn’t (care about) in 1968. Nothing makes much sense, but it’s all pretty and camp and awesome. [5/5 Weeds] (Currently streaming on The Criterion Channel, and you must watch the dubbed version for the full THC effect.)

So I have never been a huge fan of Kaiju movies, but I think it’s because I never saw the right ones. I saw the Matthew Broderick Godzilla, which is damn close to unwatchable, and I vaguely recall being a teenager and seeing some Kaiju movie that was all about annoying little kids singing songs at a Kaiju monster while someone talked into a wristwatch. (It is distinctly possible that my brain has invented a single movie from random bits of TV I saw on weekend afternoons when I was growing up).

But after reading Lance’s review of Destroy All Monsters, I decided that I would give this movie a chance to be my proper introduction to Kaiju … and holy shit I loved it. It was so weird and so over the top and so badly dubbed and such a goddamn delight to watch! If this is a fair and representative sample of what Kaiju movies are like, I’ve TOTALLY been missing out for, like, my entire life.

If you, like me, are new to this genre, or are curious about it, I can’t recommend Destroy All Monsters enough. It’s got a TON of exposition so you don’t have any FOMO about complext character backstories or whatever (if any) thread connects the larger Kaiju film world together. There are no children singing songs, at all, and the Kaiju do a goddamn delightful job destroying all the carefully-constructed cities they stomp around in. There are no silly breakdancing moves, and everything in it is grounded in some version of reality, so I never felt like it was insulting my intelligence by pandering to any section of the audience with dumb fan service like, oh to pick a random example out of thin air, the final season of Game of Thrones.

The big brains at SyFy wire have you covered, too, if you are like “I want to watch one of these movies, but I don’t want to risk a three dollar investment because I am a savvy consumer.” Check out this Really Big List of Ways To Watch Kaiju Movies Online, and if you partake of the wacky tobacky, get ready to enjoy a sublimely weird and totally satisfying, supremely fun 90 minutes.

“I’m full.”

A few months ago, I started telling Anne, “I’m full,” when we are out with friends, my brain has had enough social interaction, and I’ve crossed a threshold from having fun to feeling overwhelmed. When I get full, it’s time for me to leave, and I don’t beat myself up for that, or force myself to continue being overwhelmed because I feel like I shouldn’t stop having fun, or I’m worried that my friends will be offended that I have to leave. (They won’t be. Good friends who are worth having in my life care about me and understand my limits.)

Self care is so important, you guys. Take care of yourselves and put your own mask on before you assist another passenger.

It’s okay to have a great time with your friends, or with your partner, then then feel like you’re done and it’s time to go spend some time alone to recharge.

a terrifying tale, beautifully told

I woke up yesterday morning to a couple dozen emails from Bandcamp, informing me that my novelette audiobook, Dead Trees Give No Shelter, is suddenly selling like crazy.

I figured someone must have shared a link somewhere, but I didn’t know it was Cory Doctorow at boingboing until I was looking at the Internet during lunch. Cory had incredibly kind things to say, and he praised my work pretty effusively. As someone who is a writer in large part because Cory supported me and gave me guidance when I was just starting out, getting this kind of recognition from a peer means more to me than I thought possible.

This is so awesome, and it makes me so happy! I have sold more copies in twenty-four hours than I have in the last twelve months! And the eBook is screaming up the charts in the Kindle store, too! Right now, it’s #2 90-minute fiction & literature short reads, #23 in horror, and #44 in horror literature & fiction. WOW!

I guess I’ll remind y’all that there is a limited edition, collectible hardcover coming out in about a month (it just depends on how long it takes the printer to get them to me), and I guess I’ll quote Cory’s incredibly kind comment on my writing, and narrating:

“Wil Wheaton’s 2017 standalone novelette Dead Trees Give No Shelter is a beautiful, spooky horror story in the vein of Stranger Things. A terrifying tale, beautifully told.”

and

“It literally made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.”

I have a hard time feeling good about myself, and I struggle to not dismiss the kind things people say about me and my work, so today I am making a choice to feel proud and accomplished, and to be so so so so happy that so many new people are going to be exposed to my writing and narrating, today.

Here are handy links, copypasted from boingboing:

Dead Trees Give No Shelter [Wil Wheaton/ebook]Dead Trees Give No Shelter [Wil Wheaton/audiobook]

and the sky was all violet

Earlier this week, I wrote this on my Facebook:

It was so long ago, the exact time is fuzzy. Maybe it was Fall of 1992, or early Spring of 1993. My friends and I were *deep* into Mother Love Bone, Soundgarden, Hole, and Nirvana.

My best friend, Dave, and I fancied our 20 year-old selves to be quite sophisticated, musically speaking, and we professed a specialized understanding and appreciation for Kurt Cobain’s lyrics that the people we disdained as “mortals” couldn’t even begin to fathom.

Sidenote: I’ve been listening to massive amounts of grunge and riot grrl for about a month, and I can honestly and embarrassingly admit that 20 year-old me wasn’t *nearly* as insightful, wise, and sophisticated as he thought he was. He really needed to shut up, and he did *not* have the understanding and appreciation of this music that he thought he did. I know this because 46 year-old me is finding things in these lyrics and albums that younger versions of me weren’t nearly mature enough to see.

So it’s late afternoon, and Dave and I are walking up Veteran in Westwood, to the loft that I share with Hardwick. On our walk, we pass a frat house. On this particular day, this frat house is blasting Nirvana’s “In Bloom” out of its open windows. Kurt Cobain screams, “he’s the one who likes all our pretty songs/ and he likes to sing along/ and he likes to shoot his gun/ but he don’t know what it means / knows not what it means / when I sing it.”

Dave and I look at each other, and the pure, unfiltered, raw and unadulterated CONTEMPT we have for the people in this frat (which I deliberately call a frat because it annoys the douchebags who join fraternities to meet other douchebags) can move mountains.

“These fucking guys,” I say, gesturing dismissively at the house.

“They don’t even know he is singing about THEM, man!” Dave finishes my thought.

It is only now, two and a half decades later, that I realize Kurt Cobain was singing about ALL OF US.

Oh, twentysomething Wil, you are such a privileged little white boy, and you have so much maturing to do. You’re doing the best you can, but … just slow your roll, kid.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on my twenties this week, as I have immersed myself in the music I loved then. I’ve been unpacking a lot of what and who I was then, and how he relates to who I am, now. One of those reflections inspired me to write this, today:

All this grunge and riot grrl I’ve been listening to has knocked loose a memory that’s kind of shameful and regrettable, and even though this probably doesn’t matter to anyone (least of all the potentially-offended parties), it bothers me, so if you’ll indulge me for a moment…

When I was a teenager, I loved punk and rap, because both forms of music were rebellious, and they talked about tearing down the power structure that oppressed people who didn’t look like me. My parents *hated* the music I liked, which helped me to come to love it. Funny how music does that.

Anyway, I think my introduction to grunge was Nirvana, which lead to Soundgarden, then Stone Temple Pilots, Smashing Pumpkins, and eventually to Mother Love Bone and the Melvins. These people spoke my truth, and they spoke what I wanted to *be* my truth, if that makes sense.

At some point in my late twenties, I kind of turned away from most 90s music, and went back to the Black Flag, Sex Pistols, X, Dead Milkmen, Dead Kennedys, Fugazi, and similar punk rock that shaped much of my identity and influenced me so profoundly when I was a kid. I felt like grunge was something that an immature version of myself listened to, while early punk was something a version of myself listened to while he was growing into his own identity. Does that make sense? I felt like young me got a pass on being an idiot, because he was young, while twenties me was judged more harshly because he was old enough to know better. At 46, I can look back on both versions of me with tremendous empathy, and know that each version of me was doing the best he could at the time. Someone once said if you don’t look back on your early twenties with mortification, you’ve fucked up somewhere along the way, and I tend to agree with that.

But this thing that I want to take responsibility for happened when I was in my thirties, *definitely* old enough to know better, and is an embarrassing and shameful example of Shitty White Boy Privilege.

Real quick, before I get into that: I watched Iggy Pop’s Epix docuseries, PUNK, and loved every second of it. I loved all the interviews and reflections on the early years of punk rock, going all the way to the MC5 and the Stooges in the late 60s, and I was grateful to realize that, while I was >just< too young for the 80s punk I loved, and >just< too old for the Warped Tour stuff that I still think is for children, I was *exactly* the right age for grunge. Nevermind hit when I was 19, and I was READY for it.

While 21 and 22 year-old me was running around acting like he understood Nirvana at a deeper level than most people (he didn’t), he discovered this album called LIVE THROUGH THIS. for the 5 of you don’t know because you just came out of a 30 year coma, that’s Hole’s big break through album. It is flawless, and I listened to it on cassette so much when I lived in France, I broke the tape. It was as important to me as anything else I’d ever listened to, even though I only understood a tiny percentage of the lyrics and images, because Courtney Love didn’t write it for shitty little privileged white boys like me.

In the PUNK documentary, they talk to Kathleen Hannah, who formed Bikini Kill (a group I am only a little ashamed to admit I just learned about this year). She talked about recording Rebel Girl and other songs on their debut album, and performing for audiences that were filled with privileged white boys like me, who didn’t have any idea how privileged we were, and feeling irritated because she didn’t make her music for me and idiots like early-twenties me. I’m glad I didn’t discover her and her band until this year, because I was WAY too immature to appreciate what she sang about, and what it meant to women. In fact, I’m confident that 20s me would have been shitty and dismissive and arrogant about the whole thing, because he was REALLY not aware of the bubble he lived in. I mean, he had his own issues and his own traumas and pain to live with (which is a big reason why he loved punk and grunge so much), but he was still a white boy in a white world, you know?

Okay, back to now.

When I was in my thirties, I thought it would be funny to declare on Twitter, “Live Through This is the best album Kurt Cobain ever wrote.”

I know. What an asshole thing to say, for so many reasons, which I’ll get to in a second. I’m willing to give that version of me a tiny bit of slack (I mean, like, a TINY bit), because he thought that EVERYONE knew Courtney Love had written that album, he was just doing some trolling to work up people who should know better, and … ugh, I hate that I have to admit this … “it’s just a joke, why are you taking everything so seriously.”

He knew better. I knew better. He thought he was being clever, but as Scalzi observes, the default fail mode of clever is asshole, and I was, in that moment, an asshole.

I reduced Courtney Love to Kurt Cobain’s girlfriend, and in so doing, I diminished EVERY woman who has ever worked hard to make something in any field. I diminished and insulted and demeaned every woman who has worked twice as hard as her male colleagues, for 80 cents on the dollar. And then, when I was called out for being shitty, I dismissed the fair criticisms and minimized my behaviour as “just jokes”.

For the last month or so, I’ve been listening almost exclusively to grunge and riot grrl from the 90s, and every day I think about this shitty thing I did, that I’m sure nearly everyone has forgotten. I’m sure Courtney Love doesn’t know I exist, and I’m sure she could not care less about what I think.

But I put something shitty into the world, at her expense and at the expense of more women than I can count, and I regret that. I’m embarrassed and ashamed, and I just want to publicly say that I’m sorry to Courtney Love and to every woman who was insulted, demeaned, and hurt by me being a shitty privileged white boy.

LIVE THROUGH THIS is an incredible album. It is one of the best albums of the 90s. It holds up today in ways that lots of music I was crazy about then does not. It’s a deeply affecting and powerful record that deals with painful subjects in ways that reclaim power from abusers and an abusive system. It’s the album I needed but didn’t deserve, and Courtney Love did an incredible job writing, performing, and recording it.

We all do the best we can, I think, and it is with that knowledge that we can be gentle and forgiving to younger versions of ourselves. However, the younger version of me that demeaned and diminished a woman for a cheap and lazy joke absolutely knew better, and he did it anyway. I did it anyway. I regret it, I’m am ashamed of it, and in order for 46 year-old me to forgive thirtysomething me, I have to take responsibility for what I did.

Is it the biggest thing in the world? Probably not, but it’s been bothering me, and owning my failure is the only way I’ll be able to let it go.

I’m so sorry, not just for this, but for all the shitty things I did to people who didn’t deserve it when I was young and foolish. I’m doing my best to be a better person now, and I hope that by sharing my personal failures, maybe it’ll help someone else who is now where I was then open up his eyes and make some changes in his life.