The message of comicsgate has always, always, been that ideology has become the center of modern comics. Not that politics are in comics. Not that comics can't have political messages. It's that popular comics have become a propaganda machine for the progressives and their ideology at the cost of story. You listen to even five minutes of a single comicsgate video and that becomes obvious quite quickly. Anyone who says differently is lying. Period.
Like Mark Waid. Definitely him.
No, don't go and read an article about what people say it's about. Or any non comicsgate person.
These folks are on Youtube. They aren't hard to find. And they're not that hard to listen to either, particularly Perch.
I didn't say these people were saints. Or even that I like them. They're people, and thus are a decidedly mixed bag. Some folks "classified" as comicsgate don't even go by the moniker, because they just want to talk about comics, like Perch. But you have folks like Just Some Guy (a very much so black dude, as he frequently brings up), who seem to have mainlined the comicsgate Kool-Aid, despite having some points... sometimes.
But then again it's remarkably easy to dunk on Mark Waid. Dude's a genuine creep.
So maybe I'm giving Just Some Guy a bit too much credit.
Point is, I'm not necessarily a fan of comicsgate either.
So, why am I bringing this up?
Because Eric July's Isom #1 is currently at 3.2 million bucks and I've heard very little about it from the establishment.
He hit 1.5 without any form of advertisement. At all. And anyone who says differently is lying, best of my knowledge. It's absolutely bonkers!
Sure, at some point Fox propped him, but that was after he made that actually shocking sum in a day. Without any help from anyone in the comics industry. And the response on Twitter has been... I'm not going to copy some of those responses to him on Twitter. Go look. You'll find them. Some of them are just flat out racist. It's not subtle. Nor is it right. A black dude makes a comic book about a black superhero... and folks are calling him an Uncle Tom. And a whole hell of a lot worse. Not to mention calling him a liar and a fraud.
One of the rumblings from the Comics Gate folks is that, really, right when you get down to it, the "mainstream" only cares about power. They don't care about race, or minorities or whatever it is they're propping up, they specifically want power, and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it.
Which, by the way, factors into what socialism really is to begin with: the weaponization of disaffected lower classes by one element of the upper class against another.
But this isn't kind of blatant.
Why am I posting this? Why am I bothering to write at all?
Well, it ain't because I bought a comic from Eric July. I've not spent a red cent on his work. I took a look at the website, shrugged, thought "Not for me", and went about my business. The book could be great! I hope it is. But I have absolutely no stake in how Eric July does. I'm not sitting around and hoping he'll fulfill (he has it done and printed already, unless he's faking that warehouse I've seen), nor am I a comicsgate person myself. If a work is good and I'm interested I'll buy it. I've a full run of Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man by Tom Taylor sitting in my closet right now and I love the ever-loving shit out of it. The incredibly woke Tom Taylor probably wouldn't want to be in the same room with me, nevermind be my friend. I don't care. His writing on that title was gold, and I bought every last issue of it. I wish he'd write like that more often.
I'm pointing this out because the fact that someone is knocking it out of the park like this and there is concerted effort to shut him down is enormously obvious. Again, go check Twitter if you don't believe me, cause I'm not blaspheming my hard drive or blog for you.
I'm pointing this out because a black dude making a black superhero, the very definition of what the left has called inclusivity, is getting called a traitor and an Uncle Tom (AND WORSE). There's not a lot of ways to go forward with that, folks. He doesn't share their politics. Therefore he is hated. It is truly that simple.
It's also exactly what comicsgate was saying would happen, the whole time.
No, really, I went and looked. They've been calling it for years.
I am not suggesting that comicsgate are great people. I certainly am not on their side, for the same reason I'm not on the establishment's side: I don't pick sides, best as I can. There is many a thing I disagree with comicsgate on, their idiotic and garbled non-Euclidean screaming about the sequel trilogy being one of them. I think libertarianism, Eric July's political leanings as pointless as Waiting on Godot. You can't call anything "apolitical", because that's impossible. And, with the exception of Perch and Razörfist, the rest of the group have some clear axes to grind. Perch is just too damn even keeled to have a grudge and Razörfist had been complaining about the issues that led to comicsgate and gamegate for years before either movement came to pass.
Oh, and Chuck Dixon (remember him??) seems to be a pretty even-keeled and standup guy from what I can tell.
But, c'mon. This is obvious. On this one spot the comicsgate people are 100% right: the mainstream comics industry is rotten from the inside out, having exchanged story for straight up propaganda, and it's playing out, in real time, if you know where to look.
The fact that you have to know to look should be enough of a reason to be deeply concerned.
I've not felt anything more positive than mild irritation over the last few Marvel movies.. the ones I didn't think were just so outright stupid that I didn't even bother. Feige's vision is the very worst of the comic book franchise: just building to the next big thing, with installments that don't matter. And I don't mean as installments or even as pieces of content, although content go fuck right off. Like, there's nothing in these latest... time sinks... that I can feel is an actual spiritual statement at all. And what little I can get I hate, as it's just cynical nonsense.
But this?
This perplexed me.
The Ave Maria? For this scene? And remixing it for the soundtrack throughout the entire damn movie? Like, you don't just do that by accident. You can't. That's as on purpose as it's going to get. The darkest moments of this movie feature the Ave Maria. Y'know, The Hail Mary:
Hail Mary, Full of Grace, the Lord is with thee! Blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
There is some disturbing shit happening in this movie, to that prayer. And the way it's shot? It's meant to be taken in the context of that prayer.
We'll get back to that in a minute. So pin, going in.
Then there's this use of Something in the Way by Nirvana:
Underneath the bridge
Tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals I've trapped
Have all become my pets
And I'm living off of grass
And the drippings from my ceiling
It's okay to eat fish
Cause they don't have any feelings
Something in the way
Mmm-mmm
Something in the way, yeah
Mmm-mmm
Something in the way
Mmm-mmm
Something in the way, yeah
Mmm-mmm
Something in the way
Mmm-mmm
Something in the way, yeah
Mmm-mmm
Folks generally think this song is about Cobain's time being homeless, and his attempts to justify his existence, particularly since, as it turns out, Cobain loved fish as pets. So this is more or less a song about coping with existence as it is.
These two songs alternate, and indeed they duel through the movie. Or at least they seem to. Whenever Riddle shows up the Ave Maria plays. Whenever Batman shows up Something in the Way plays. And when Batman is going nuts right up in the Riddler's face? The Ave Maria plays. This seems to be a simple and shut case, just another director using classic Christian music to make some bold and edgy statement about the uselessness of the Christian faith and yadda yadda yadda insert some bullshit statement here.
YAWN.
Open and shut, right?
Well wait, one sec. I strive to not be an ideologically blinded person. Strive. And this movie really resonated with me, so there's something true in here. It's not my job as a Christian to return evil for evil, but good for evil. I have no doubt that someone as purposeful as Matt Reeves meant such a statement, but I hope not. The fact that it resonates means there's something different going on here, something a bit deeper, at least for me.
Let's start with the use of women in this story. It is of interest to me that Reeves not only begins with the Ave Maria but focuses on the last few minutes of the mayor, with his family. The Riddler waits to kill until the woman and child are gone. In the absence of wife and children the man dies. It's of interest that the DA dies protecting his family, begging for the mercy of God. It's also of interest that every. Single. Threat. Made. Always comes back to a mother. Namely one Martha Stark. Far from the Ave Maria being a commentary on "No good woman left" the song is being used to show just how wrong Riddler is, for trying to use something holy and good in a twisted way.
Also, notice something interesting about the ending scene here?
The mayor is an idealistic, pure woman. Or at least she appears to be, and has given me nothing but assurance that she is. The person Batman lowers into that stretcher, the one who changes those angry eyes?
It's a woman.
These women are softening the rage of Batman, whereas they sting the rage of the Riddler. So the songs don't "duel", they merge. The feminine redeems Batman, finally. He can accept his role and purpose in protecting. He becomes a true knight.
But the Riddler’s singing the Ave Maria on the movie, you may protest! Shouting it, actually! And yes that’s correct but you know who shouts that Jesus is the Son of God in the Gospels? It’s not the apostles, who are bungling morons and traitors. It’s not Mary His Mother, whose silence is a key part of the text.
It’s the demons. They shout the truth all the time.
And Christ shuts them up every chance He gets.
Pretty clear image, ain’t it?
Batman’s silent at the end. Riddler isn’t.
It’s also of note that the first step of the Christian life, East and West, is the remembrance of death. That doesn’t mean “Things are icky”, it means “All things have a downward trajectory to despair, dissonance, and oblivion, and it’s happening to me, right now. There is one arc to the universe, DOWN. All progress is dissolution.” The remembrance of death is the realization that this world is not, has never been, and never will be home. It’s to become disgusted with your surroundings on an existential level, to wish to remove yourself from the filth, even if such attempts hasten your destruction, BECAUSE ALL PROGRESS IS ALWAYS TO DEATH.
Progress. Is. Death.
And time is progress on steroids.
The remembrance of death is considered the first gift of God. The thing He gives you so the other gifts can be given
And when you accept it? All the way down? That this is where you’re going? And there’s nothing to be done, that you’re powerless to stop it? A strange thing happens. You are able to see people. You can see the soul behind their eyes, and something new begins to take shape. Something strong and good and wise. Something tiny and firm and sad, yet accepting and loving. Even joyful in some moments.
It looks remarkably like The Batman’s eyes at the end of the film.
And I find that absolutely inspiring.
SO...
I just found out that the Ave Maria is a funeral song. Don't look at me and judge! I never went to a Roman Catholic funeral where I heard it! And I've been Eastern Christian since 14! We don't sing the Ave Maria, we've got our own stuff and and and -
So.
With that in mind, this movie is a lot easier to decipher. I mean, it's obviously about death. And how one reacts to it.
Yup.
Look, I like my take better, okay???
I'm allowed.
But hey, insert rant about how art has multiple interpretations possible.
The three comprehensive virtues of the soul are prayer, silence, and fasting. Thus you should refresh yourself with the contemplation of of created realities when you relax from prayer; with conversation about the life of virtue when you relax from silence; and with such food as is permitted when you relax from fasting.
- St. Ilias the Presbyter, Gnomic Anthology III
I still want to scream that Dave is just as right as he is wrong. There’s always a healthy sub-culture of crafting and art in every geek and nerd community that I’m a part of. Hell, the TTRPG community has always embraced a relatively high level of DIY. I mean, I was doing homebrew almost out the gate, in high school! Technically I’m doing it now. It wasn’t very good in high school. One might argue I’m not very good at it now. But I’m doing it. But Dave isn't talking about the minority, he's talking about the general trends. See, the problem is that, four years after this series came out, not a lot has changed in the fandoms I follow. Star Wars is still as toxic as hell, in no small part because of the eradication of the EU and Disney making a "new" canon (EU was never canon folks, sorry).
But see, there’s a healthy way to approach all of this. We cannot stop contemplating the good, true, and beautiful. I didn’t say we shouldn’t, I said couldn’t; humans are built to constantly meditate upon what they think is good. We do that or rot. But our brains wear out after prolonged exposure to direct thought. They get tired and need to relax.
And this is where the quote at the top comes in. “Created realities” is what’s said. For some that may mean a life of hiking or gardening. For others martial arts or philosophy. But some of us? We wanna get into something abstract, a sub-creation of the mind. We like having something made up to think on. That’s relaxing.
The object of St. Ilias’s statement isn’t to make a straitjacket, but to simply say: “Goodness is the point, however you get there.”
If you can relax while playing a game with your friends, and thus build relationship and affection? Great! Mission accomplished! Is watching a TV show filling you with hope? The hope’s real, who cares how you get it? If playing an obsessive amount of RPGs helps you understand and forgive the real world, then fantastic!
It’s drifting away into nonsense and ennui that’s evil. Whatever helps you stay here, with the ones you love, that’s what’s good to contemplate. And, when people do this together, it’s naturally communal. They build silly little things. The fact that they are silly is the point. The fact that they aren’t real is irrelevant. As people build and debate they build a culture, something informal and invincible, so long as their higher goals align. Things like The Brothers Grimm, LOTR, fan fiction, it’s all folk culture.
Or it can be.
The thing is that geek/nerd culture is a bastardized form of folk culture: the difference between someone who paints his own minis and those who carve their own chess pieces is academic. But now we can rely upon these huge centers of production and we have gotten lazy, and even the bits we do do we scoff at, because they're not shiny enough like the mass-produced bullshit.
Yes, I'm aware most fanfic is awful.
But that's not the point.
The point is that nerd/geek culture is the monetized form of folk culture... which then chokes out folk culture. Because the love of money does that. We've gotten to the point to where we just take in this stuff passively, as opposed to making it ourselves and giving our own little tweaks to it.
Corporations making up crap for us consumers is not culture. Culture comes from the bottom up, in response to top-down influences. Instead of guiding us along in contemplating the good when we’re tired most of these corporations merely want to make a buck.
And I think the drive that Dave woke up in me, years ago, was to not be a part of that bastardized imitation of culture. I didn’t know it then, but the drive to make games that pointed out something good while you were tired began here.
Because yes, this is ultimately why I design now. I want things that help guide me to goodness when I’m too worn out to do it myself. I want to be able to relax and not lose a second to evil, because evil rides in with tides of disintegration and time. Evil doesn’t need to try, not here in this world. Good does.
None of us deserve that. We should be able to relax and still keep our focus on goodness. We need to trust that we will be carried, just a bit, while we rest from the exhaustion that living can inflict.
No, I don’t think Dave quite has the picture, even now. His truly black pessimism allows him to see the rot, but like many of the neo-reactionary YouTubers he has trouble realizing what the point of having a point of view different from the rotten mainstream is for. But without his promptings I wouldn’t have gotten here.
"Oh God, another one" is what I thought upon reading the headline of Christianity Today. I mean, I frequent enough gaming groups to know they're practically lousy with progressives. I listen closely enough to know that their hatred of Christians isn't totally unwarranted and is usually because some family member said something to the extent of "Dungeons and Dragons is satanic!" and then the poor nerd had to endure a living hell simply because they found something worthwhile in a poorly understood hobby. Conservative Christians are bad at figuring out RPGs. That's not a controversial statement. Period. And, while this article isn't nearly as irritating as it looks upon first glance, it's still symptomatic of basic issues that Protestants have with... well... being human. Still not a good article, by and large.
I do recommend reading the article before going on, by the way. Here it is again.
Now, in the 2020s, I am wondering if my evangelical elders weren’t partly right about the way fantasy role-playing can paganize a culture—just not in the way they expected.
Right here, at the beginning, we have a problem. That word: "paganize". I'll bet you that most Americans (Wiccans included!) wouldn't know real paganism if it bit them in the ass. But we'll get back to that. Just know, right here, that right at the beginning of the article Dr. Moore commits a fatal error: he thinks that paganism has anything to do with what's going on in "fantasy roleplaying", as he calls it.
It doesn't.
If anything it's the lack of paganism that's the problem, not its presence.
But we'll get there!
So we'll address the good of the article, which is more evidence of manufactured consent being a constant in this... "republic". Dr. Moore breaks down Bannon's disgusting tactic on manipulating people through Breitbart. To quote Dr. Moore:
Senior asked whether Bannon considers what he has done in propagating political media and in energizing populist nationalist movements to be “the gamification of politics.” He replied that this is exactly what he’s doing: “I want Dave in Accounting to be Ajax in his life.”
That is gross. I'm perfectly aware the left has their own form of this, but that doesn't mean I can't call out Bannon's evil tactics here. Bannon realized the basic premise of pretty much most MMOs: keep the dopamine stream coming and you can sorta comfort yourself with the fact that none of the things that happened reflect who you are in the real world at all. Bannon's response to this phenomenon was perverse: make that wish to have the two "halves" of a disaffected person become one in a way that benefits him. So he admits to pumping this tragic dopamine spiral into Breitbart.
I mean, I can't get that out of most progressive "news" institutions, so at least he's honest?
Yay?
Here we stop for just a moment to remind everyone reading this post that manufactured consent is the problem of a republic (I won't call it democracy, democracy is just flat out evil): he who gives information to the voter has the real power. Period. That's who you have to worry about. And, as distasteful and gross as Bannn's tactics are, it's the same basic Marxist narrative as the left pushes, and just as deliberately. If you are sitting on the left and going "Oh you stupid conservatives!" you really have not learned anything from the last ten years, at all. Both sides are trying to weaponize the common folk for their own profit, that's all socialism and any variation of Marxism has ever been.
And will ever be.
To resist the left as persecutors is in itself Marxist.
But Dr. Moore does not point this out. I do not know if he knows it, but as we're about to get to, his basic presuppositions are so wrong, on such an egregious level, that I think he's drinking the Kool-Aid as much as anyone else. He lumps in things that do not belong together with a flippancy that I actually find shocking.
And it takes work for me to be shocked at the idiocies of conservatives.
It turns out actual fantasy role-playing—whether it be Dungeons and Dragons in a treehouse years ago or multiplayer video games on a screen now—is, for most people, harmless fun.
Hold up. Just hold up. That's like comparing playing baseball in real life with playing a baseball video game. TTRPGs require active engagement of the imagination in common with others, while holding to a ruleset to guide said common imagining. The benefits of this activity have been tracked, with some pretty awesomely verifiable results, over the last few decades, and roleplaying is itself a therapeutic activity, in and of itself a good thing to do. TTRPGs are not morally neutral. I'm not saying everyone has to play them, but they're actively good for you to do, should you choose to do them.
MMOs, while there's some obviously good examples of them being healthy, also have a strongly addictive element to them, shown by actual cases of people pretty much literally pissing their lives away on an addictive loop that is more like a slot machine than a real game. Obviously they're not all like that. And not everyone who uses a slot machine will be there until they shit themselves. But anyone who thinks MMOs and slot machines (and the social media that's based on it) aren't designed to be addictive are kidding themselves.
I do not fault Dr. Moore for not knowing about the therapeutic benefits of TTRPGs. I do fault him for not engaging in just the tiniest bit of common sense.
You might find that nitpicking. It's not. This level of basic ignorance is a common trend of this article. For instance, right after that:
Paganism, after all, demands the sort of significance that is heroic, in which one’s virtues of strength and power are celebrated in story and song.
Has the man read any actual mythology at all??? Like, at all??? Even a few seconds of reading anything before Christianity reveals a total lack of caring about humans. Humans do not succeed in these myths because they're cool, they succeed because the gods like them, and that's a very important distinction to draw. Assuming humans show up in the mythology at all, like in most Norse stories. Speaking of the Norse, there's a good reason why the common folk went Christian, as the scraps of the old religion they followed involved all sorts of awful crap like human sacrifice. Bits of Mediterranean practice we have are no better; temple prostitutes would get knocked up by men intentionally possessed by spirits so the child would start out possessed. And it just goes on. And on. And on. To be pagan meant to realize that humans were worth fuck all in the grand scheme of things, and therefore were perfectly expendable.
Where are on earth is any of that in CNN or Breitbart??
The problem of paganism, of course, isn't that the pagans were wrong for realizing that human life was cheaper than toilet paper, or that the world is inherently predatory and cruel. That's as obvious as walking into a war-torn country, of which there are many today. Western society is the exception to the truth... and that only goes insofar as you don't look at a garbage can behind Planned Parenthood.
At least the pagans had the balls to call the things they killed human.
I can't even get that out most progressives. Cowards.
No, the problem of paganism is very different: they leaned into the cycle of cruelty. They found there was no way out, so they didn't bother to try. There's a nobility in accepting things as they are, and it's this nobility I think the modern "pagans" try to recreate... but if you're going to do that you better be willing to build an altar to put those baby parts on. And you better be willing to own up to to what it is that you're doing.
Progressives can't because their ideology is inherently dishonest in a way that no pagan could ever afford to be.
And conservatives are just progressives driving the speed limit.
So.
This brings us to the end of the article, where Dr. Moore attempts to solve the problem with Christianity as he understands it. Of course his presuppositions are so wrong that anything he tries now is going to be hollow and insulting. He's trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist. And besides setting off the baggage of many a conservatively-raised human (that includes me!) he present an image where all the words aren't technically wrong but it all adds up to one horrifying lie.
Christianity, as a historical fact, has never disagreed with paganism on the shockingly cruel nature of life. Nor had it ever tried to paint a different picture until Protestantism, because actual, historical, Christianity values life experience over something like a book. It is not an abstraction. What Christianity is, instead, is an acceptance that the world is going to break you. Over. And over. And over. And over. There is no "winning". You can't beat the house, and even if you do you'll be sitting in a puddle of your own piss and awfully creamy underwear and really, at that point, did you really beat the slot machine? Did you really?
Down.
Down.
Down.
That. Is. Life. Period. Not liking it doesn't make it not so! Sorry!
But what Christianity, real Christianity, preaches loudly and without reservation, is that God became man so He could be there to catch you at the bottom. It goes from a bone-crunching fall to landing into the arms of your father after he threw you into the air. It turns all the anxiety of falling through the air and realizing you're going to get really hurt into something thrilling, because He's waiting for you, arms outstretched and ready, smile on His face.
Some of us just happen to get tossed into the air particularly high, and the drop can deliver a particularly heavy kick of fear.
We all also happen to experience the drop, however scary, in decades, not moments.
Ain't that a bitch?
It's the same inputs of death, decay, and illness, but with the knowledge that it adds up to something incredible.
As an aside, I don't say that as someone who has completely unlearned the old ways of cynicism, mistrust, and rampant trauma that is classical liberalism. The Enlightenment era peddled the idea that somehow humans, just on their own, are capable of figuring out the world, and that there are methods to get around the brutal facts of the world. I can see that it's wrong, but I'm only just beginning to realize there may be a better, more positive, way of thinking than assuming that humans have something that they never did: power.
I suppose Dr. Moore's sum up of what he thinks is Christianity at least touches on the actual pitch of the 2000 year old religion. But it's more a blind squirrel finding an acorn. Or a stopped clock being right twice a day. I don't know Dr. Moore, and I really shouldn't pretend to, but this article I find scandalous in the actual sense: it confuses and hurts one's ability to think about the truth. He misidentifies the dying throes of a sick and twisted ideology for something else, and therefore he misleads, however unintentionally.
But I find that in a lot of Protestant stuff, so there's that. It's almost like classical liberalism is just the philosophical outgrowth of Protestantism, or something.
The locked and rusted gate of the necropolis stood before me, wisps of mazed kelp threading its spikes like the mountain paths, the unchanging symbol of my old exile. I launched myself upward, swimming several strokes and thus flourishing the skull without intending it. Suddenly ashamed, I released it; but it appeared to follow me, propelled by the motion of my hand.
Gene Wolfe; Urth of the New Sun
The above passage, where Severian encounters his childhood (a torture guild) home after drowning his formerly frozen planet with a new sun, summarizes my experience with C-PTSD. Time and again I was forced to confront a series of facts: my past was dead, I had killed it, and it was never meant to last.
My past is dead. Many people think something along those lines but very few people must confront the fact that dead means rotting. My past wasn’t just gone, it actively disintegrated, morphing into new and horrid shapes, revealing new details I’d not thought about as a child, similar to finding the skull of a childhood friend at the bottom of the ocean.
Or a childhood rapist.
Or the fading memory of your wife’s childhood laugh.
All. Rotting. At the bottom.
In one big oily mess.
But it was what was left behind that haunts me still. Memories of what I valued and why were underneath the things that rotted, but now exist as half-shades of their own, without the things that gave them context. I've tried. And Tried. And tried. To get back what I had atop of these more foundational, more primal, memories. But the person who had made those memories is long gone. His innocence, his joy, his strength, it's all gone, vanished into the ether. There's just me, here, in the present.
The truth of it is the next part: I did this, to myself. By wanting to heal, by wanting more than what I could give, I had to destroy what I was. On some level I knew who I was just simply couldn't get me through the next lifetime. I had set my face like flint so hard, had put everything I had into the attitude, that to change was to fall apart. All of this emotional wreckage... I had done it. And I had to.
But the hardest part of it all, as I examine my emotional wreckage, is the knowledge that it was always going to happen. I remember how I felt, why I felt, and how driven I was... and I know now it was never going to be a long-term thing. And it isn't. I'm far weaker than I was before. I don't have the willpower. I can't face the same emotional storms I once could. But I don't need to now, I suppose, now do I? Life has changed. I am married. A father. I went to visit family for July 4th for criminy's sake, that was definitely not something I did as a child. I'm in a new place. I chose this new place. And that means everything that could not adapt to that new place had to die.
That just so happened to be almost everything.
Almost.
But not quite.
If you think this post has nothing to do with Urth of the New Sun then I don't know what to tell you, but it does. It has everything to do with it. Wolfe, on coming back from the Korean War, could not hear a loud noise without collapsing to the ground in a heap. He lived with his parents because his PTSD was so bad that he couldn't live a normal life on his own. Book and Urth of the New Sun were written very much in this period of recovery, and I just... I felt this book in a way that's impossible to understate. Even more than New Sun I always walked in a dream when reading this book. It was a dream where I could just... be. I was what I was: strong, defeated, pathetic, and some form of nobility that I have a hard time owning.
But it's there.
Just like with Severian, the former torturer, rule, and then drowner of Urth.
I think this the weakest of Dave's videos in the series. He goes into Conquest's Laws, and while I don't think that's wrong I think it shortsighted for the constructive point Dave was trying very earnestly to make, but more on that for the amazing epilogue. Dave's point, ultimately, is that the corporate buyouts of IPs will inevitably lead to the bastardization and commercialization of the things that us nerds and geeks love so much. And, regardless of how negative Dave gets, he views that as a tragedy. He mourns. There is something to nerddom and geekdom that goes beyond the materialism that it so often gets bogged down in. It's hard for me to sum up, though. I sit in my room surrounded by RPG books and comics, so I definitely count as a geek. So I'll give you my story with my favorite superhero: Spider-Man.
I first saw a picture of Spider-Man when I was four years old. It's one of the few genuinely positive memories I have from my childhood: the red and blue suit just jumped out at me, and I found that I wanted to know why someone would wear something that.... colorful.
And then I found this piece of beauty:
I watched it out of order from the ages of seven to.... oh jeez I'm still watching it today. I had to piece the timeline together, episode by episode. And I managed it, actually. The overall arc of the show was seeing Peter Parker grow up from an isolated loner to a leader, the Uncle Ben of superheroes. I've written a bit on the show, so I won't go into it more, although you can go here to read it. The point is, the ideas of accepting responsibility and the world as it was, not as I wanted it to be, were shown by the show. They dressed up these themes in a bright and somewhat silly package and when I grabbed for the bright and sillly package I got the themes.
Once I realized there were comics I got them... and found Ben Reilly. Mary Jane and Peter were married, and he wasn't Spider-Man, and the clone was Spidey now? Something about it didn't feel right, but I found Ben to be an interesting take on the problem of Spider-Man, and so that was... good enough.
And then he vanished? I wasn't a regular buyer at the time, so I had no idea what happened. And, at the age of ten, I couldn't just get on the internet and find out. I looked for a few months to try and get some sort of an answer, but couldn't find anything in any source. Where the hell had Ben gone?
So I 411'd Marvel Comics, and called the editor, Ralph Macchio.
Yes, I did this, at ten.
Ralph was quite surprised to have a child on the phone. I got to the point, and finally found out that Ben was dead. Dead! And I was told that he had died to save Peter from a situation that he very clearly did not need to be saved from. Peter's spider-sense very much so would have been able to save him from the situation that Ben died to protect him from. And I said so. Loudly. At ten. To Ralph Macchio, the man who was "responsible" for the change. Mr. Macchio showed incredible restraint with me, trying to tell me he disagreed with my assessment... but it's hard to argue with a ten year old who had seen Spidey jump through tires while mouthing off. Something in Mr. Macchio's voice, however, caused me to relent.
You see, he hesitated. And sounded a bit embarrassed.
At ten? I'd never heard this tone of voice before. I knew I was missing something. So I relented. I wasn't happy, but I could tell that I was missing pieces of the picture and needed to think on it. So, like I usually do, I sat and thought on it, for years and years. At thirty four I know exactly what that tone of voice was. Mr. Macchio was trying to be a company man at that moment. He had his marching orders and needed to hold the line. That's not a judgment on his character. He had a job and he needed to get it done.
I continued to call Mr. Macchio for years afterwards, up until I was seventeen or so, when he retired. This was during the legendary Ultimate Spider-man run, where Bendis and Macchio more or less had free reign. Mr. Macchio sent me a copy of Bendis's script for Ultimate Spider-Man #11. Which I drew my own version for. And then sent back to Ralph Macchio at Marvel comics. He and I talked over the phone about it, and he gave me critiques that abide with me to this day. As I got older he and I had deeper conversations, where I learned a bit about how the comic business actually worked. If you could get a good story out that was fantastic, but the editorial and corporate mandates came first, at all times. Mr. Macchio did not break this news to me directly, but gently, over the months and years of our conversations. Looking back I am in awe of just have gentle Mr. Macchio was with me, and how callous I was, by sheer accident of being young. He put up with a lot, and I benefited from his patience and gentleness.
And then came Spider-Man: Reign. I don't know how controversial this is, but this is my favorite Spider-Man story. Period. There were things on going in my life, at that point, that I badly needed from this story. And thank God I got it, because I don't know where I'd be today if not for the tale of Peter Parker falling apart because he'd killed his wife... and then being able to move past it. My parents were on the verge of divorce, Lyme's disease had practically wiped out my ability to tell reality from hallucination, and I had either been blacklisted by my friends or lost them due to the stresses of their own lives. And this story, as controversial as it may be, reminded me that even though I was down I was never truly out.
It is the only comic I have held onto from that time, coming up on twenty years later.
At the other end of stories of that time was Civil War. By now I had gotten a good whiff of what corporate interference smelled liked from Mr. Macchio, and so I approached this story very differently than I had before. This was obviously corporately mandated. Corporate had written the story and Mark Millar had been tasked to make it not awful. And he kinda succeeded? Unlike most of the fans I knew at the time, I liked that Spidey had unmasked. JMS had taken his company mandate and worked it into a legit story, showing Peter's growing reliance upon Stark and the system Stark represented. It was pretty clear this wasn't what JMS had necessarily wanted to do, but he wrote the hell out of it.
And that definitely applies Back in Black. Was it corporately mandated? Probably. JMS was not one to just make up events and throw huge waves at the rest of the Marvel line, The Other event being the notable exception to what was actually a pretty quiet and introspective run. But JMS took the idea of Peter having nothing to lose anymore and pushed it as far as a good writer could ever be expected to push it. I freaking loved it.
And then I had an idea. I called Mr. Macchio and pitched it to him. What if Peter was reunited with his daughter May? What if Osborn had her, this whole time, only for Stark to seize all his assets... and thus May? I outlined a three issue arc, where Peter went after the Thunderbolts (who Osborn was in charge of at the time), shooting flaming webbing in Venom's face to knock him out of commission... and then being captured by Stark. And shown the truth. And May, Peter's own daughter, rejected him. She didn't know her dad! And Mr. Stark was a hell of a lot nicer than Osborn! So Peter kidnapped his own daughter away from Stark and brought her back to the New Avengers, distraught over being rejected. The three parter ended with Luke Cage helping Peter to grieve the events, and Peter decided he was going to stick it out with May until she was old enough to understand what had happened. I pitched this story to Mr. Macchio, over the phone. And he told me in that same company-line voice that they had figured out another direction to take Spidey. I told him I couldn't wait to see what it was.
And then Marvel had Spider-Man sell his marriage to the devil. So he could save Aunt May.
See, most folks? They saw this as the corporate interference it was. I did too, but I had made a pitch at Marvel, no matter how silly that may sound. And I know that my pitch was probably going to be rejected, even if it was good enough. I was a seventeen year old nobody talking to an editor who had very generously lent his time to me. But this? This horseshit?
I could feel JMS's heartbreak. He had spent the whole run rebuilding Spider-Man into a mature man. He was becoming the Uncle Ben of Marvel. And it was beautiful. To have Quesada come in and trample all that JMS had done, and to force JMS to write it...
At that point I realized it wasn't a fluke. Ben Reilly had been born and killed out of the same corporate urge. It wasn't a flaw in the system, it was the system. Marvel was trying to sell a product, not a story. They wanted content, not character, and definitely not art! Up until this point I had wanted to become a comic book artist and writer. It had been a dream of mine since seven. I had worked as hard as I could. I wasn't very good and I don't think I would have made it, now that I look back at it. But did I know that at the time? No, but it was my dream. I wanted to write and draw Spider-Man, and had wanted that so badly I could barely see straight.
And that dream died with One More Day. Because Marvel owned Spider-Man. And I knew I couldn't work with Marvel.
Mr. Macchio left around this time. To this day I wonder if One More Day hadn't broken him too.
The cold hard truth was this: to Marvel Spider-Man wasn't a character. He didn’t have a history. He didn’t have a personality. He hadn’t grown or changed, because that’s what characters do, and Marvel doesn’t want that, even now. Marvel regards Spider-Man as a property. And Marvel can dictate what could happen with that property. If someone was willing to work with them to manage Spider-Man as Marvel would like all well and good, but if Marvel didn't want to sell the artist’s vision it was done. It didn't matter how good the story might be. How true. How good. Those things don’t matter to Marvel. Not above making money by selling their product. The relationship between corporations and the geek/nerd is not a symbiotic one, but parasitic.
Corporations do not care about meaning, they care about money, and if you make them big enough they will farm you for that money, however they can do it. Your own meaning can be torched for all they care, the money must keep flowing.
So, fair warning: this post gets pretty dark and personal and sometimes oddly political. Not like "Screw the conservatives I'm a liberal" but "Gah this whole thing is dumb". I comment on history and more than a few other events that are outright disturbing. If that's not your cup of tea no harm, no foul, but you are warned.
Yes, that's a joke and yes I find it clever. Tough.
2020 rocked most of us. It got me into a quiet and dark room, checking emails and taking calls that no one else would. I am so extroverted that being alone is physically painful. And, in order to make sure my kids have free reign at the house, I'd deliberately put myself into a situation where being alone would be a daily thing, eight hours a day. I was also still having flashbacks on the regular, which made the additional stresses just that much harder. It was during this time I discovered Gene Wolfe and The Warning. It's not often you find such direct avenues of grieving, which is one of the most important things you can do in your life. Turns out they were both instrumental in helping me do so. Wolfe’s Solar Cycle and The Warning’s two albums were pretty constant companions to me from then out.
So to say I was interested in The Warning’s third album would be a bit of an understatement. There's a lot of depth in their songs and their writing, and I was excited to see how the third album would evolve.
... and then the Mayday EP dropped.
It felt weird, listening to one half of the album. I loved the songs on the album! The Ladies Three had gained an appropriate amount of depth from Queen of the Murder Scene, and that was nice but... I 'm one of those people who is learning to not judge something until the full product is out. And I know the Mayday EP is technically a complete product but the knowledge those songs were going to be part of a larger picture... I couldn't quite do it. I wanted to know the full thing. So this has been such a surreal feeling. I’ve listened to about half of these songs for about a year… and then the second half dropped. And I realized what The Ladies Three had done: cut up their own album and made a completely different statement. I don’t begrudge them that process, but I do have to admire the end results. The same songs in the Mayday EP manages to feel completely different than how they feel in their album, Error.
And I do mean completely different.
And Error is all the better for it.
So it's a "random noise" intro... with a strong amount of tone. It's the beginning of the rabbit hole to nowhere, to the things that cannot be found. The name itself hints at what the "random intro noise" thing is actually doing.... getting us into a particular mood and dropping us into nowhere.
The thing that I've found, in my last few years on the internet and real life, there are always these spots where no one I know goes... but there's life there. A full ecosystem. This song makes me think of the canals running through Oklahoma City, and the random life you'll find if you look down there at just the right time. Or the random entrances to places you can find, if you just go far enough.
The other night I was walking around, and found a gap in a fence behind my Walmart. I didn't take it because I'm not stupid, but I followed the fence to see where it went. It was utterly and eerily silent. I couldn't hear anyone or anything, at all, despite there being a mall right acrost the canal and the Walmart parking lot being packed. I got this feeling that I was truly alone, truly in a new place... and then I looked down, into the canal, and realized that, if I wanted to brave breaking the law, I could have gone down into the canal system and found a completely different way of experiencing the city I've lived in for the last few years.
If not for my wife and children I would have gone down. I don't know if I ever would have looked back.
Because in such places are the portals to Faerie and all things we count as strange. And yet they exist, right next to us.
And yes, sometimes my curiosity almost gets the better of me.
I've a very pointed critique of Marxism and socialism... mostly that it's a sucker's bet. One group of oligarchs leveraging the common people against the other, with talks of revolution and justice and a utopia. And it always ends the same way: tyranny, bloodshed, and bodies behind the shed and everywhere the common folk deign not to look. Having read a bit of the turn of the 20th century Socialists I find it eerie how close these lyrics mirror not just them, but the incredibly violent Anarchists who the Socialists replaced.
The fact that the song is a duet between someone trying to recruit someone else with this rhetoric... I find that weird. Not bad, mind you. The Warning is no stranger to straightforwardly presenting weird and creepy things without anything more than a desire to sympathize. But, given that the first song of the album pretty much "introduction to being lost"...
And to be fair, that's exactly what happened with the Anarchist/Socialist "revolution" of the early 20th century: there was a growing realization that a change in the system for the better wasn't just impossible, but that any attempts to change it only further compromised them and made the situation more difficult to get out of. Until World War I there was a growing realization that all they had fought for had been corrupted.
And then tens of millions of people died.
I told you this wasn't going to be a happy post.
And y'know what? Let's stick with the WWI shtick for now. Because that's clearly going to make people happy. Post WW's I and II European art went abstract and absurd, going into realms hitherto unknown to deal with the grief of losing so many people. Bodies became objects that just shattered into the weirdest of shapes (a trend that began barely a decade before WWI), with plays like Waiting for Godot clearly about the disassociation of extreme grief becoming the standard of modern drama.
Again, I highly doubt that's what The Ladies Three had in mind, unless the ladies are seriously well read or know enough art history.
But, for me personally, this song has a large amount of significance. During the.... "evacuation"... of Afghanistan, I had to take calls from people trying to get Afghanis out of the country. The call referenced in that post was one of the hardest thing I've ever had to do. And it was a Friday, the heaviest day of the week, where the people calling to shout because general so and so wanted his phone now, thank you! And I'd just had a call, where I knew my helplessness had killed people.
In between each call I listened to Choke, focusing my pain and anger into a singular hot point, which I used to push through the rest of the day. At one point I reached out to The Warning via PM:
That's within twenty minutes. I mean, what else was going to be said to me? There's no way to fix the freaking problem. But twenty minutes is...
Let's just say that gave me strength to keep going.
Don't think that was the only call I took about Afghanistan that day, and don't think it was the only time I couldn't help, with disastrous results being likely.
I would wake up in the middle of the night for weeks and months afterwards, wondering what had happened to the families that I had been unable to help, hoping they were alright, hoping they had somehow made it out and weren't dead or worse. There was a lot of rage burning deep in me at the injustice of it all, of the callousness of people who said "Not my country not my problem". Of the administration that dropped these people who we had upended and then abandoned after twenty years.
But in the middle of it that message from (what was most likely) Dany still burned, right along with the anger. Someone had heard, in the thick of it. And there wasn't much she could do, but she was certainly more helpful than most of the people I met that day. It put me in a place where my wife and father could comfort me, because I was not in a mood to be comforted, at all, before that point.
So yeah. Choke means something very special to me.
It always will.
This is another song that really came through for me at the time, resulting in a dream where something I didn't even realize needed to die went down in flames. Its bass line burns through my skull and sometimes gets me moving in situations where I otherwise can't. Don't take the brevity here as not loving the song. I just can't one up that linked post. Nor will I try to. I love this song.
God, every time I hear this song I just want to hand Pau The Wizard Knight by Gene Wolfe. There's just such grief in this song, and I dunno, it's one of those songs where I find myself going "Yup, you're right", and then wanting to give a hug.
Because, honestly?
I'm not sure there's a better way to state what this song is talking about. The song is tightly coiled and feels like, if I press too hard on it, it'll rip my hand off in a moment of grief and rage. There's an inherent injustice being complained about here that I found The Wizard Knight helped me mourn and accept.
The world is unfair. We can be unfair back, in a good way. And we need to be.
Who know? Maybe one of these days I'll be able to drop that 800 page tome of a book in Pau's lap and laugh as she complains that books that size are not meant to be dropped on people. The cynic in me says that's never going to happen but I also thought I'd be dead by now and I'm not only not dead, but loved and loving those who love me. So anything is possible.
Amour... is a strange song. After the rage and cynicism of Money there's this.... yearning. It's right about here that I started to think that, while The Ladies Three weren't out to make a concept album, they did, of sorts. This need to be loved still exists in the heart of whatever person they're talking about, and they know a vital truth about love: you do indeed bleed for those you love, and sometimes you do cause them to bleed, because there is literally no other way to help. Love is, indeed, the trenches, where life and death of soul is always on the line, where the difference between soul torture and soul surgery becomes academic. The song is dark, but I find it to be true in a way that most would flinch at, because nobody wants to think of their lover as a surgeon.
And yes there's sometimes you'll hate the lover's guts for not backing down. Because God, wouldn't it be nice to be left in your own little hell?
But you could flip the song, couldn't you? You could take the context of the previous songs about corporatism and rage and make it truly cynical, to a degree to where the emotion of the song is a front, a pull down the rabbit hole with a counterfeit love, a counterfeit suffering. Given the way they've done the song and where they placed it you could argue for either.
I mean, I think that's masterful.
But who knows? Someone could read this and go "Well first of all you shouldn't be torturing people you love" and then I'd be facepalming so hard that I'm sure the sound could be heard around the world.
It's freaking Evolve, people. This song rocks. But it now comes after a song asking if you're willing to really go through hell for someone.. and put them through hell sometimes. So that's a bit of a switch up from the EP. And y'know what? I really like the contextual change. I already loved the song, and found that this change in the placement gave it an interesting tinge to it.
If this song isn't about social media I have no ability to read any subtext at all, and I hardly think that controversial a statement. And yes, social media is deliberately addictive and all that.
But here's the thing: when I first heard the preview of the song, I thought of the Shadow, that Jungian idea that the parts of you that you don't acknowledge will find a way out, they will get at you, they will be heard. And that bit about the "error inside", has been a constant living and breathing reality right down at my very core, for the last six years especially. Creepy subtext of the rest of the song aside... yeah I really had to think about it awhile.
Okay, Z is one of my favorite songs. That bass line just gets jammed in my head and I sing it ALL the time. All my kids know it. Even my wife, who doesn’t listen to The Warning, knows the bass line.
So, y’know, whatever you make of that.
Folks, this may be the darkest commentary in the entirety of the post. If you skip it I won't blame you.
I felt... things... listening to this song. And none of them were comfortable, and none of them are probably what most people feel listening to it. And it's hopefully not what they meant by writing it.
I remember Audrey, the woman who raped me when I was six. I remember her smile, her laugh, how beautiful she was. The curve of her hip in her jeans. I remember playing knights and dragons. I remember sitting in a shed months after she had done what she did, hating every last person on the planet and wishing it would all burn down and that I would get to watch, at six. I remember holding her as she sobbed about what she did... and did nothing to change it. I remember the promise I made that day, that nobody, nobody, that I could help would be ignored like I was.
Fucking. Nobody.
And then it gets hard to see the screen as I type, because of the flood in front of my eyes. And then I have to come back a few minutes later because it took me five times to type that fucking word "because" correctly.
Because, whether Audrey likes it or not, I'm not going to Hell for hating her. I know I will if I do so, and I refuse to pay for her mistake in any capacity. She raped me, she forged this connection to me. I can't kill the connection without me dying too, so if I have to drag her screaming ass into Heaven with me so fucking be it. I will always love her, always. I can't not. So. Fucking. Be it. I love her. If she is going into Heaven with me because of what she did so be it.
But I ain't going to Hell for her.
Period.
I really, really, really hope that even a thousandth of that emotion is not what prompted the creation of this beautifully heartbroken song. I really hope so. I bear what I have because I must. It is love, no matter the consequence, or die. That's it. That's what I got.
If that was the case in any way shape or form for anyone, nevermind these three ladies, that would be tragic.
If it is, I heard you. I hear you.
But dear God I hope I'm wrong.
I'll admit it: I don't like how the song starts. It just feels... off. The transition from... okay maybe I've got a particularly intense reaction to 23, so maybe nothing following that is going to be welcomed immediately? That's probably it, but MAN that's not a fun jump for me!
Fortunately this song has one of the best transitions in the entirety of the album, if not the best. They take the notion of the modern cult that you can find very easily (hint: it's called twitter.com) and switch the feeling from sarcasm and anger to pure desperation. One of my favorite things about The Warning's lyrics are their absolute dedication to remaining in character. It's why I love the song Stalker so much: the empathy of that song is resoundingly powerful.
And it's on full display here. Masterfully. This ending section.... just damnit it's so good.
So we're back to something a bit darker... actually the rest of the post is going just stays there. Oh well.
I know there are many fans who have talked about how this song makes them cry. It seems to be an even split between 23, Amour, and Revenant. Revenant does not make me cry.
Instead I just feel numb.
As if I just stood on something I'd not used for a very long time, and I really want to sit back down. And get off it. Whatever it is. That is not a comfortable feeling. Cause that usually means there's something way down there, waiting, lurking for the moment to drop... whatever it's hiding.
I know at the end of the day I'll handle it, but that doesn't mean I have to like knowing there's something waiting.
So I don't speak Spanish. I went and pinged The Warning's Patreon Discord for some help on... tone. Cause I wasn't quite sure what they were saying, given that martyr can mean any number of things. Turns out that the word martyrdom is being used in the same sense English speaking folks mean when they say "playing the victim".
Man, I'm glad I asked, because that was tripping me up.
So I went and found a fan translation and corrected it to where it's not literal. That seems to be closer to what they're saying.
Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to see
You suffocated yourself with your own hands
When everything indicates that someone’s is finally coming to save you
You find yourself abandoned again
Drown in your victimhood
It’s your destiny, hand yourself over
You try to find an explanation in the depth of your being
And you fall again into the void
Finally you secretly realise the pain will stay
It’s your new life of martyrdom
And there’s no going back, you can’t escape the fire that’s at your feet
And in the darkness you’ll get lost
Drown in your victimhood
It’s your destiny, hand yourself over
Sometimes the most obvious things are the hardest to see
Drown in your victimhood
It’s your destiny, hand yourself over
Learn from those who are real martyrs
If you have to live in fear
It’s better to die in the hands of a goodbye
To your sad life, foolish victim! Say goodbye!
No, that's not a literal translation or whatever. But from what I can gather from folks who do know Spanish that'd be a bit better of a fit for English. I think.
*grabs soapbox*
Look, folks, there's no really nice way to say it: the world of "shoulds" is poisonous. For the past three years every single time I've ranted to my therapist or priest about something bothering in my life that damned word comes up. Or "must". Eventually I said either of those words so much my therapist started saying "That's a lot of mustabation you got going on there, you okay?"
My therapist thinks he's hilarious.
But he does have a point. Despite the humor that makes me cuss him out mid-session. Should should should should doesn't get you anywhere. Mustabation isn't healthy. Hanging onto what you think should be is gonna make you miserable. You will wind up crushing your own life and thinking yourself noble for it.
And you're not.
Sorry.
There's nothing noble about hanging onto something that clearly isn't real.
This song is one of my favorite things. I just... I vibe with this thing in a particular way. If there was any one short little thing I'd used to sum up the last six years of my life... it'd be this song. This little ditty. I keep going about my life, minding my own business, trying to just... live... and then something comes up, pulls me down, and I better figure it out before I drown. Ultimately the only thing that seems to work is to just let go of being afraid of drowning at all. Or of what happens when you do.
Because I have, several times.
And each time I come back with a slightly gentler, slightly softer, view of the world. I can't stop the inevitable within myself, nevermind with others. But yes, drowning under decades of emotions isn't pleasant. At all.
So that's my long, rambly, personal, and sometimes overly dark reaction to the album. It was a lot more than I expected. And I expected a lot from The Warning. Like, a whole hell of a lot. I'm a picky picky person about lyrics being in songs, preferring to listen to post-rock just so I don't have to shove idiotic nonsense between my ears. None of this was idiotic. It was beautiful.
"For some time, it has seemed to me that it would be even easier to maintain the position that pain proves or tends to prove God's reality... What pain does do is act as a motivator in all sorts of less than obvious ways. It is responsible for compassion and the hot foot; it makes people who do not believe in God think about God... Very few people seem even to have noticed that although Christ was a 'humble carpenter', the only object we are specifically told he made was not a table or a chair, but a whip.
And if Christ knew not only the pain of torture but the pain of being a torturer (as it seems certain to me that he did) then the dark figure is capable of being a heroic and even a holy figure, like the black Christs carved in Africa."
Gene Wolfe, Helioscope
I have endured a lot of pain in my life. Raped, molested, betrayed, ostracized, and more have been done to me. There is a ball of rage in the pit of my stomach at all times, one which must be continuously dealt with and soothed in order to not fly into random bouts of rage, on reflex. I know this is true because, when I get upset, I have a hard time not yelling at my wife. I don't mean yelling at her in a "HOW DARE YOU" I mean that my voice just naturally goes to a volume that one should only reserve for true trouble or when you're trying to mentally break someone. And I don't want to do that to my wife, or kids, or anyone, so I have to watch my voice. And my words. And my thoughts. And everything, really, because once the rage gets started it takes me a lot to get out of it. It is constant work. It feels like an illness of the most pernicious kind, requiring around-the-clock maintenance to live anything resembling a life.
The worst part isn't that I must fight myself in a constant knock-down drag-out war. I mean, that part sucks, sure, but that's not the worst. The worst is when my defenses drop and I do hurt someone. It's easy. I'll find myself yelling, or a random extra sentence is said that I really didn't want to say but fuck, it's out there now and I have to do damage control. I find that worse because I can't undo the harm I just did, and if I let myself get rolling there's a truly epic amount of harm I'm capable of. So if that ball starts it takes a lot of extra work not just comforting the person I just hurt, but also in calming myself down. I have to pull double duty, and fast, because both me and the other person matter and things have to get cleared up.
And that's not comfortable, at all. Rage is weaponized grief, so I have to get down to the bottom of each instance of rage, find out what's causing the grief, and try to find a way to comfort what's down there. Because it's not necessarily easy to figure out what's being grieved over, and sometimes I find myself asking "Wait, that's it? That's the thing that's giving me so much grief right now?" But grief is grief, and trying to downtalk it inevitably leads to more rage. And that just makes my own job in being peaceful that much harder.
So, let's just say that the end of each day I am exhausted, all the way down.
And it is worth it.
God, it is so worth it.
Because, somewhere at the bottom of all this, I'm aware that rage wants to turn the world from a collection of subjects that deserve my veneration, love, and forgiveness into a collection of objects that don't get a say in what happens to them. It's a nice, simple, quiet universe, where nothing else but what you want matters. And that's convenient. Quiet.... ish. I like quiet. I don't get that too often.
But you know what isn't there? Beauty. Love. Life. It's not the quiet of a meadow, it's the quiet of a wasted battlefield. And, as comfortable as it is, it's not the comfort of being at peace, but the quiet drifting off into the black, a surrender to death. This is no rejuvenation. And if there's one part of my anger that's useful, it's the demand that I arrive at this peace. I want it. I am not going to settle for less, nor should I. Whether I deserve it or not is totally irrelevant to me. It's what I want, and by God it's what I'm going to get, no matter what it takes. Fuck all notions of entitlement, of whether I deserve it or not, I've been through to much to let the things that happened to me win. I cannot let what happened dictate who I am.
And, sometimes, it doesn't. There's just peace.
So far it hasn't been more than a few moments every few months, but each and every time it's completely and utterly worth it. For just a few moments there is no war. No pain. Just a quiet enjoyment. I can just be. Each time it happens it stays a little longer, each time is a bit more intense. And it gets a little bit harder to return to the battle. The good-bye to that moment of interior relaxation hurts all the more.
But if there is even a single soul in Hell Christ will go there and stay till they leave.
And there is a part of me still in Hell. It still screams and shrieks and promises revenge and kicks and spits. And if Christ is going to get that part of me out I have to be there. It's a pain that goes way beyond cruelty, and somehow getting my wounded personality to respond is more painful than the most fiendish of tortures. There are times I just cannot comprehend going any further, where I feel the interior pull to black and void. I sometimes wonder if that's not the moment Christ makes yet another whip and sends me back. Because if there's anything that I know pisses God off, it's when you abandon the misfortunate. Who is more misfortunate that I have power over than myself?
No one.
Not a single freaking soul.
And yes, I would think that would warrant a whip made of cords. At least he doesn't put rocks and thorns into the whip! He just wants to get me moving. It's not the rage of a persecutor, but the anger of a parent who wants me to freaking act right I don't, by and large; if you think for two seconds I don't need such treatment you've not been paying attention. I've run from myself my whole life, at great personal cost. I'd be pretty mad if any of my kids did that to themselves for five minutes. Nevermind three decades. So, even though I don't do it very well, I'm finally doing it, somehow.
And it's been better than anything I could have ever imagined.
It's worth it.
No one ever told me the interior pain would be worth it. Not like this. I'm not sure anyone could have. But it is.
To anyone who wonders, to anyone who is lost because straining is so fucking difficult that you just want to die, this is worth it.
