One of the reasons I love living near Philadelphia is the history. So much happened in that little port town in a short period of time before New York grew to gargantuan proportions and Washington, DC became the capital city. The reason Americans have a holiday to celebrate on this date, in fact the reason why Americans have a country, was a document signed in Philadelphia 234 years ago this year.

It was signed because a few colonial land-owners didn’t want to pay taxes to the British crown anymore.

…Okay, all right, there’s more to it than that. The English had demonstrated that America was something of an annoying step-child, a sore spot with the French and while its resources were valuable to the Empire, the populace was somewhat irritating. After the French were beaten in the North American front of the Seven Years’ War (commonly known as the ‘French and Indian War’ in America, because who cares what the rest of the world calls something), England turned their attention to some of things America had been doing that the English didn’t like. Americans were skirting mercantile procedures to bolster their own profits, pushing westward despite angering the native tribes and were training militia rather than relying on troops from England. King George’s response was first to ask the colonies to help with the cost of the war fought on their soil (this was the ‘no taxation without representation’ thing), and then to tax the colonies directly, quarter troops in colonial homes and refuse to recognize colonial commissions of officers, basically sending the message that American soldiers were not as good as English ones.

So everybody was a little pissed off all around.

Thomas Paine wrote Common Sense, which became a best-selling book on American shores with over 500,000 copies in circulation during the first year – impressive even by today’s standards. It glossed over the philosophies of Rosseau and Locke that were informing the impulses of American movers and shakers towards libertarian thinking, and presented the argument for independence to common American folk, by way of making the argument something of a sermon. So the American rhetoric began as it meant to go on, it seems.

Back in those days, freedom for Americans means freedom from foreign rule. Nowadays, freedom for most Americans seems to mean freedom to do whatever the hell we want to whomever the hell we want, whenever the hell we want. That sounds less like a democracy and more like anarchy to me, or at the very least an autocracy. Most Americans need someone to tell them what to be afraid of and who to hate today, at least. But there I go again, breaking the promise I made that I wouldn’t let this blog get political.

What bothers me is that this holiday, the day on which Americans celebrate the fact that they did win freedom from foreign rule, has been ‘dumbed down’ in a sense, at least for me. In fact American nationalism feels kind of dumb of late. Instead of singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” which is in fact our national anthem, a lot of sporting events and whatnot begin with “God Bless America.” The implication of that, for me, is that God should bless America and no place else. I hate to break it to these so-called patriots, but there are nations in the world other than America that need help from the Divine a lot more than we do. The worst thing we have to worry about is running out of oil or pissing off another country so much that they nuke us. Other countries have people wondering what the hell they’re going to feed their kids today.

Americans have that problem, too, but ask the average conservative Republican if they care.

I’m going to veer into political territory one more time, if you’ll indulge me. To me, being an American means having freedom of thought and expression. We are forgers of our own destinies as individuals, and any force that seeks to oppress, dumb down or stifle our ability to think and decide for ourselves should be our enemy, not necessary a foreign power with a different point of view. We should be worrying about how to feed and educate our children, honor and care for our elderly, employ those in need of a job and play a positive role in the future of our planet.

Instead we are told to buy what we can, even if we can’t afford it, that we should be afraid to go anywhere outside of America and any notion of health care or fuel supplies that cost less (if indeed they cost anything) are decidedly un-American. All “good” Americans should bow down to the Free Market the way they bow down to the blond-haired gun-toting Jaysus that loves little fetuses and hates anybody who worships anything other than Himself, meaning Jaysus is “a good American.”

I hope I don’t need to go into detail as to why that line of thinking is bullshit.

Francis Scott Key asks the question “Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?”

To me, it does, and it will. As long as people continue to think freely, and bravely rail against notions that seek to stupefy, retard or oppress the rights of the individual, it’ll wave proudly. This is why I call today ‘Independence Day’, not ‘the 4th of July’. This is why I pay as little attention to fanatical rhetoric from either side of the political debate as possible – in the case of the right, I follow some folks on Twitter just to know what the enemy is thinking. I want to engage my brain when I salute my flag, you see. I don’t want to do it just because some bloated blowhard tells me I should. I want to be proud of this country and, in a way, I am.

I’m proud of the fact I can bang out all of these words without fear of getting dragged away in an unmarked van to be shot behind the chemical shed. I’m proud that the people with whom I disagree can be marginalized or even ignored because nobody in this country has absolute power. I’m proud that in spite of all of the free-floating negativity, people are still out there trying to do good, making an effort to improve the world around them instead of just fattening their own pocketbooks and being kind to one another – and some of those people happen to be Americans, thank God.

Yes, Americans are arrogant. Yes, we throw our weight around a bit more than we should. And yes, we have a lot of humble pie to eat from the last decade or so of shenanigans we’ve perpetuated in the name of defending ourselves.

But America is still a country worth defending, and even if in the future the word ‘expatriate’ might follow my nationality, I’m proud to be an American.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

This week’s Escapist is talking about constructive criticism. Yahtzee himself chimed in on criticism on one point:

Criticism is a powerful force for good. Nothing ever improves without coming to terms with its flaws. Without critics telling us what’s stupid and what isn’t, we’d all be wearing boulders for hats and drinking down hot ebola soup for tea. – Zero Punctuation: Overlord 2

I could make all sort of analogies for criticism. There’s the bonsai tree example, the fat on a steak visual, the sanding of a bat to remove its splinters for a nice clean hit; I could go on. But suffice it to say that the best criticism is one that sees what a work is going for and points out the flaws so that the crux of the work can be improved while things that don’t work can be discarded.

Declaring something to be absolute crap is a great way to appear critical and level up on the Internet, so that’s what some critics will go for. This should not, however, deter the creative mind from letting criticism getting in the way of creating something. Even if said criticism is coming from that selfsame mind.

Even if you’re not looking at your art as a means of income, and it’s just something you do for fun, critics shouldn’t deter you from trying to create something if you’ve the mind to try it. However, some criticism is meant to be constructive, while other criticism becomes destructive very quickly. There’s a world of difference between “This sketch needs work,” and “Your art is horrible and will never improve.”

It comes down to a difference in mentality. Some people want to cultivate dreams in this world, to help bring a new vision to life. This requires a lot of effort, though, more than some people are willing to put into a creative endeavor, and it can be a scary thing. Like the man said, there will always be mediocrity out there, people who can’t deal with the extra percentage of effort some put into what makes them passionate. That, I feel, is where a lot of destructive criticism comes from. But I could be wrong.

Anyway, you can’t be afraid to put your work out there. Good criticism will help your work get better, and bad criticism can pretty much be ignored. Just like there is such a thing as good & bad writing or good & bad film-making, there’s good & bad criticism.

Test everything, and hold on to the good.

Let’s face it. Fiction is a planned endeavor. The best works are ones that are plotted out from first act to last, from beginning to end. They have structure, flow and purpose. Some even have a message to deliver along with a story to tell.

But when that message is tied to an anvil dropped on the audience, or the story is delivered with gaudy wrapping paper surrounding a poorly-constructed product, the whole thing suffers. You can have all of the CGI in the world in your film but if there’s no coherence to the narrative or depth to the characters, all you have is a bunch of CGI. People can get that by logging into World of Warcraft. Or Grand Theft Auto. Or Second Life.

I’m going to use a key example in all of this. Since this weekend turned out to be something of a success in terms of experimentation, even if it kept me from doing things like going outside or spending time with loved ones or smelling like a human being instead of a pile of rage and shattered dreams, let’s use Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Lame Title Talentless Hack Fanboys Clones.

Contrivance is Bad Writing

Plain and simple. If you write a scene that’s intended to be heartfelt, or romantic, or tragic there’s a very basic rule you need to follow. Show, don’t tell. If you can show characters being in love, or caring about one another, the audience will understand what’s going on without having to be told, and what’s more, there’s a much greater chance they’ll actually care about what’s happening. Or, you could just have your characters sitting around talking about how they feel.

There’s a right and a wrong way to show people’s emotions, too. Is it really that hard to weave emotional undercurrents into plot-salient actions and dialog? You don’t need to draw out a scene of two young people frolicking in a field with lilting, string-heavy music playing at fortissimo to show they’re so in love. You might as well be sitting in the wings with a bullhorn shouting, “THESE TWO ARE IN LOVE AND YOU SHOULD EMPATHIZE WITH THEM BECAUSE THEY’RE IN LOVE BECAUSE THEY SAY THEY ARE.”

“You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! THAT MAKES ME FEEL ANGRY!”

Me too, Beelzebot. Me too.

Contrivance Defies Logic

Let me toss a hypothetical your way. Say you have a plot in which you need to deal with an idea you presented in a previous work. You also have a fan favorite character whose origins you want to explore. How do you work both of them into the same work at the same time?

First of all, why? Why is it necessary for one to have anything to do with the other? If you want to show that character X is a badass, fine. If you want to explain how cloning works, fair enough. But having every single fucking clone patterned on the same person who has the family name of a fan favorite character but about as much development as a patio umbrella and less depth than a teaspoon raises more questions than are likely to be held in the writer’s brain at any given moment.

You know, questions like: Why did they pick this jagoff to be the prime clone?

Why is he trying to assassinate some one in the Republic and fighting Jedi when his clones are going to be used to support both the Republic and the Jedi? Did he just not know? Did nobody tell him what his clones were for? Did he not think to ask?

Did anybody bother to think about this shit, let alone write it?

I paid ten bucks to watch THIS?

Contrivance Destroys Enjoyment

We enjoy stories. We like to read them, listen to them, watch them. We like to envision the action, let the characters grow, anticipate what happens next.

The problem with prequels in general and Lucas’ six hours of wanking onto a green screen in particular is that there’s really only one way for things to resolve. You need to get characters and situations into a certain configuration so the already established works make some sort of sense. Unless you’re going far, far into the past of your own universe – thank God for Knights of the Old Republic – if you don’t do things right you will outright ruin any enjoyment of said previous works.

I can’t think of a better example of this than Star Wars. Every time you see Darth Vader, every time you hear James Earl Jones rumble out his orders and declare the ‘promotion’ of another officer, you see and hear the whiny little psychopath pictured above. It’d be different if Anakin had been characterized as somewhat insecure but nonetheless good-hearted, concerned about the scope of his power and wanting nothing more than a happy, peaceful life.

But no, we got a self-centered, power-hungry, whining, disrespectful asshole.

He had to be with someone so he could have kids, so he’s set up with someone who could have been every bit as inspiring to women now as Princess Leia was back in A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. You know, a confident, intelligent, competent and brave young woman who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty but still knows how to look good and deal with people.

But no, we got a vacuous, empty, shallow, entirely underdeveloped plot convenience.

She has to leave the scene before the end of the last prequel, since Luke and Leia get separated for their safety by Obi-Wan and Bail Organa. How can we get this to happen? Does she make some kind of brave but stupid decision to make one last effort to reach the man she loves who is now lost in his own desire for justice that has been subverted and perverted by the Dark Side of the Force?

No. Just have her drop dead of a broken fucking heart. They might as well have said the midi-chlorians did it.

Mister Lucas? With all due respect for the pioneering you did in science fiction and special effects back when I was a little boy…

FUCK YOU.

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, crap! He’s finally snapped! He’s going to get himself a white hoodie and start jumping on random people so he can stab them in the neck with a #2 pencil to to make sure people get the irony!” First of all, no. Neither Altaiir nor Ezio jumped on ‘random’ people and I certainly wouldn’t, either. Secondly, I’m talking more about the seminal line in the titular Assassin’s Creed than I am their way of dealing with problems. The line in question: Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

I was set on this course of thinking by one Henry Rollins. I saw on the Tube of You that he’d given some thoughts on Jesus. This bit’s sort of brief, but focus on what he says at about the 1:45 mark:

Rollins’ awesomeness aside, he makes a very good point that’s helping me get back into the groove of working on Citizen, a boost that I needed after this weekend’s experiment. Basically, it boils down to not listening to what other people might have to say about trying to do something creative or interesting with my life.

According to some, to make it as a writer, you have to pander to a certain demographic. Success in the modern literary world, according to sales figures, means main characters who are little more than blank slates onto which young & impressionable readers can project themselves, shallow stock supporting characters that do little more than fuel the ego of the protagonist (and by extension the author and/or reader) and presenting the whole project in an easily marketable way that can generate enough hype to overwhelm any criticism of the work itself. If sales trends are to be believed, this is the truth of the fiction market.

But remember, nothing is true.

Further, you don’t want to get too complicated, some might say. Don’t get to involved in your characters. Don’t stop to develop them. Don’t build a world that people can believe in. It’s just window-dressing, a green screen, and shouldn’t have any depth to it. Let readers project what they want into it just as they do the personality-deprived protagonist, and by the way, why are you trying to make that into a human being? You can’t spend time doing this stuff and expect to finish what you’re writing, let alone be successful with it, they’d cry. That’s not allowed!

And yet, everything is permitted.

You see what I’m doing here? I don’t have any intention of giving up. I won’t water down what I’m doing just to make it more palatable to the masses unused to the taste of something more complicated than gruel and wallpaper paste. I won’t compromise the visions that keep me up at night in order to make my work trendy. I don’t care what the teeming masses think is true, or what those in the world of business or sales or marketing think an individual is or is not allowed to do. Just because some people gave up on their dreams long ago doesn’t mean I have to do the same.

Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.

It might seem a bit odd to take a line from a video game franchise this seriously, but when I stopped to think about what I’m trying to do, what I need to push myself to finish, I found myself ruminating on why it’s important, and not just to me. I’m certainly not expecting anything I write to change the world or sell a bazillion copies or even help me get away from the environment of the corporate day job. I know that it’d take months or even years after finishing just one novel for it to finally see print, and even then I’d be lucky to sell a dozen copies to friends and family.

That’s the truth of this situation.

Nothing is true.

I’m not allowed to expect anything more.

Everything is permitted.

This is an interesting position for me to be in. It seems that last week’s review of Avatar had some people wondering what movie I’d actually seen, since I didn’t instantly fall in love with Pandora, nor did I gas myself into oblivion to be reincarnated as a Na’vi.

…Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still, a few folks at the Escapist thought I was mistaken in drawing a comparison between James Cameron’s latest money machine and a little film from last year called District 9. They further didn’t seem to get why I considered District 9 a better film, since it too is a sci-fi action drama with a message and a unique alien race never before seen by humans. I was going to fire up District 9 on the Netflix Instant Queue because I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an evening than streaming a film this good directly into my eye sockets, but someone very astute pointed out I’d already reviewed District 9 and while I haven’t given it the ICFN treatment, I’d just be repeating myself for the most part.

But you know what we haven’t had in a while? A cage match.

So let’s toss these two into the mix together and see which emerges victorious. I will attempt to remain as objective as possible for the benefit of all you Avatar fans out there.

Let Mortal Kombat begin!