Is THIS a geek? No, it is Rick Moranis in Ghostbusters.
This is a thing on the internet that people are talking about, and I admit that I kind of don’t really understand it, so I am appealing to you — NERDS — for help. What the shit is Geek Pride?
Like, people act like it’s a thing like, “I am proud to be a Geek.” What does that even mean?
Man, you guys. I wasn’t even going to write about this, until Charlie Jane Anders posted up this article from The Wrap, which is about how The Hunger Games and The Avengers are doing so well that there’s no money left for Battleship, and it contains a quote from Universal’s domestic distribution chief Nikki Rocco in which she says:
In my heart of hearts I feel ‘Battleship’ would have fared much better if in its third week ‘Avengers’ wasn’t doing $55 million.
This is basically the same thing as saying, “I believe that if pizza weren’t so successful as a food product, more people would be lining up to buy my turd sandwich,” in that yes, duh. Of course people would rather see The Avengers nine times than see Battleship. I would rather watch The Avengers nine times, and I hate watching anything twice. I would rather watch no other movies for the rest of my life, and watch The Avengers every single day until the Four Horseman annihilate the world at the front of a wave of radioactive space sludge than watch Battleship.
Because Battleship is a turd sandwich.
I was going to write a long piece about this thing here, by Lev Grossman, author of The Magicians, which is a book of which I liked about 60%. The piece is about how genre fiction is more than just escapism, there’s psychological merit to fantasy fiction et cetera and so forth.
But the more I think about it, the more I don’t get why anyone would bother.
GUYS. Genre distinctions are for librarians and bookstore clerks. You use them to group together books that are kind of like each other so they’re easier to find.
If you READ books, then the only two distinctions that matter are: Interesting Stuff and Dumb Stuff. And really, there’s no hard distinction; books that challenge you, that improve your intellect in some way, that give you new perspectives and ideas…those are Interesting Stuff. Interesting books have a large apportionment of Interesting Stuff. Dumb books don’t.
Up, down, period, the end. Everything else — fantasy (and its distinctions: epic, high, urban, &c), science fiction (likewise hard sci fi, space opera, space cowboy TV shows that probably would have dropped off in their second seasons), mystery, horror, “Young Adult” novels, Books by Michael Chabon, ET CETERA AND SO FORTH, it’s all hokum.
The thing of it is, the reason that Epic Fantasy — for example — the reason that people think that’s a dumb genre that’s not improving in any way, or whatnot, it’s not because there’s something implicitly not interesting about Epic Fantasy. It’s because it’s all the fucking same.
What the hell is this, oof, nevermind, I don’t even care that much. Lev Grossman, sometimes I don’t even KNOW man.
It’s taken for granted that the artifacts of our culture are barometers for the zeitgeist, but just how true is it? Are Superman’s portrayals in the comics indicative of changing national attitudes towards power, criminality, and patriotism? Is Superman’s popularity as a character directly correspondent with social conservatism, or a liberal foreign policy?
HERE IS THE RULE:
You cannot justify the existence of a thing in a story by arguing that it is a necessary consequence of other elements in that same story.
Why not?
In my last post, I suggested that I had a number of questions and problems with The Avengers, despite generally having a pretty good time while watching it. I don’t know if other people, ordinary humans with their inferior movie-watching abilities, are capable of both simultaneously enjoying something and engaging with it critically, but I am.
ANYWAY, when I declared that it was possible to make basically the same movie but also fix all of the problems that I had, Moff (author of Moff’s Law) admitted that he almost believed me.
Almost. Believed. ALMOST.
Look, I’m not trying to give anybody a hard time here. The Avengers was a fun movie, and I was committed to liking it. Hulk smashed, Thor knocked some stuff around with his hammer, Captain America threw his shield at guys. You know, the stuff that happens in The Avengers. Every moment of the movie was an exciting and dramatic moment — people were falling out of things or into pits or whatever, getting zapped by stuff, things were going wrong. There were a lot of jokes, which were great. All in all, A+ time, would watch again.
But.
So, now you are a writer, great! You have probably made a lot of characters in your writing, and gone to classes, and done workshops, and read a bunch of books, you probably know about ten times more on this subject than I do. And yet here you are, reading what I, BRAAK!, have to say about writing, as though I know what the fuck I’m talking about.
Well, since you’re here, let’s talk about how to humanize a character, and let’s be real about it, you know? Just. Real.
QUICK! I am writing down all of my thoughts about this before I have time to organize them. Spoilers follow the jump, DON’T READ THEM unless you have seen the movie. It is a pretty good movie, and it is worth seeing, and don’t find out anymore about it than that.
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