Why am I Not Writing?

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I haven’t seriously worked on a manuscript in quite a while. I don’t know why. I’m sure there are things that I can talk to my therapist about this that could get to the heart of it. But it’s Sunday morning and I don’t see her until later this week. Time to think about this on my blog.

It’s not that I don’t have ideas. I’m constantly thinking about my writing. I’m constantly mapping out plot lines, characters and locations. I have big plans for my manuscripts and the world that I’m creating. The work is there, it’s just waiting for me to do it.

I have a writing partner who is burning through one of my past manuscripts, improving it with every comment she makes. I appreciate her to no end. I know that I’m eventually going to have to start coming up with new stuff for her to read. Yet, I don’t do it.

It’s not that I’m not writing at all. It’s just been this blog and short stories. I haven’t gotten into the nitty gritty of a novel or novella. The issue could be that I’m not being kind to myself. That I’m allowing my inner thoughts to tell me that not all writing is created equally and because it’s not a novel, it doesn’t count. But writing is good no matter what you do. It helps free up your mind and lift your spirits. Which is why I don’t want to poo-poo non-novel writing, that would by extension make fanfiction not legitimate when it is.

It could be the size of the project. I know that it’s a number of tinier projects but even with just one part of it, sometimes it feels a bit too much. Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. The short stories I’ve been writing are more like building up speed. I’ll get back to the novels once I get these stories out.

That could be it, because I do feel a little backed up when it comes to writing. I wrote in my journal last night for the first time in about six months. The act of it, made me want to do it more. So, I’m going to try and make it a daily thing. Turn myself into a regular old Doug Funny. I’m going to follow this idea for a while and see if it pans out. I’m just going to write until I literally can’t anymore. It’ll be a happy journey no matter the destination.

Dealbreakers- Being Rude to Wait Staff

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I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how beautiful you are. I don’t care how charming and darling you are. If you are rude to wait staff, I will throw down the money for my meal and I will fucking leave(Leaving someone with the bill is detestable).

Being rude to wait staff shows you exactly what kind of person that you’re dealing with. They think people are beneath them and pathetic. They don’t give baseline respect. They will be a shit to you at some point in the future.

Being that we should move away from conscripted military service, we should have people do mandatory service jobs. Make them learn how to live like the common people. You wouldn’t have to do it for a year, you could give them three months and they would learn not to be assholes. I wonder how long that would take to work the Karen attitude out of our society. I think give it a generation or two for the old Karens to die and then we could move on as a far nicer and kinder world.

But of course, there are some people that don’t learn understanding from suffering and decide to inflict their pain on others. That could throw a wrench into the whole thing.

That brings me back to the whole thing about being rude to service workers. Like, I would like to think that it wasn’t just my past in the service industry that makes me a good person and that I’m not rude to them. It’s stupid in general to be rude to someone who has access to your food. Not that I think that all wait staff is going to do bad things to the food if they can. I think it’s just so easy.

But a restaurant while not a house is still someone’s property and livelihood. They invited you in and you’re going to be rude to them?

It just further infuriates me when you get TikTokers going into stores and causing a mess. They turn them into human props because they know that they can’t do anything to them. It reminds me of Homer and the Amish.

Is that who you want to be like? Homer Simpson?

You Just Kind of Know

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Failure isn’t a bad thing and I don’t think that you should ever give up on your dreams. However, I know that I’ve met people in my life who have done so. Those are the people that I try to offer a bit more patience to but the thing is, they are generally not great to be around.

They tend to have a low level of annoyance going at all times. Like a bull constantly getting ready to fight against something. The whole world is frustrating to them. They want vengeance for their dashed dreams. It’s even worse if the world has piled up things that just further push them away from what they really wanted to do. Children, jobs they hate but need or other things like that.

Those things that pile up just churn up more bitterness. Eventually, leading them to have their hatred and anger right behind the eyes. You can see it almost a mile away in these people. The bitterness.

I’ve always believed that you shouldn’t give up on your dreams and that you should push towards them. I know though that I write that from a place of extreme privilege in that I have no one to take care of but myself and I have a good enough job to afford me to do what I want to do.

So, the only thing I can offer is to find a way to do it in an affordable way when you can, which is a tall order for some people. My father knew about my dreams of being a writer but he always wanted me to make sure that I had a job to fall back on. I find the little hours where I can write. According to Stephen King you’re a writer when you have six-eight hours a day to write. I think that that’s stupid though. What would be the point if you’re sitting there and nothing is coming out? I think you should always be thinking about your writing or whatever your hobby is. It can calm you throughout the day.

The benefit for those looking to achieve their dreams is that it’s slightly more possible with the world of Youtube. You can use that to find your possible fans, to elevate yourself and just find a community. It’s raised stars from a variety of people and it could be someone else.

All to make the world a little less angry. Lord knows there’s too much of it. Maybe it would also stop people from voting stupidly.

There Has Always Been a Sexy Fox Character

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Throughout the ages there have always been sexy fox characters. The first in my memory is Robin Hood from Disney’s Robin Hood. If Helen of Troy had a face that launched a thousand ships, this anthropomorphic fox launched a thousand fursuits.

I’m not a furry, but I get it

From there, there has always been a sexy fox character just hanging around. I get why it’s foxes. I mean, one of our synonyms for sexy is foxy. I just don’t fully understand it because this isn’t my thing. Now we’ve kept it going throughout this time. Next one that I can think of is Renamon.

The amount of thirsty fanart for this digimon is through the goddamn roof. I’m trying to think of why this one hit so hard when there are so many other super thirsty designs that you don’t even need to try to make creepy through fanart.

Look at this thirst trap

An honorable mention of course is Lola Bunny from the original Space Jam. This rabbit version of Natalie Dormer came out of nowhere and probably introduced a whole new generation to the world of furries.

Wait a minute… bunny and fox. Oh my God, Disney knows what they were doing.

Could that have been a variable in the creation of this movie? Is it all coincidence? Who could say. But this more mature male fox character does lead me to one of the points of creating this post. The new Star Fox designs. Now, there have been a number of designs for Star Fox from the polygonal in Star Fox 64 to the fresh young man in Smash Bros. Ultimate.

Look at this fresh young man whose ready to hit the clubs. He looks like he drives a Ferrari but it’s not because he’s having a midlife crisis. Just that he’s living life on the edge. Over the weekend, they announced the remake for the Switch 2 and showed the new designs. And the reaction has been mixed.

Okay, I don’t hate it. But a lot of people do and I think I can understand the reason why. Go back to that last picture and look at it. Young looking and fancy free. Ready to do battle in the Smash Bros tournament or whatever the hell they’re doing. This one, seems to be more mature, older. In a word, a daddy. And I think that’s why people don’t like it. As with all things we idolize the young while we disdain the old. I’d give this new Fox a mortgage. I’d demand a co-signer for young Fox’s mortgage application.

The thing is about this Fox McCloud is that he’s a daddy. And as gaming has matured with its audience so has its characters. We’ve gotten so many games about sad dads. It’s time for a sad fox dad.

Where Am I?

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I embarrassed myself a few years ago. I said to one of my lady friends who has a beautiful wife that I had just heard of this person named Chappell Roan and her wonderful music. I asked her if she had heard it and she replied “Yes, I’m married to a woman.”. It was a good burn. But it does highlight something that I never thought would happen, I am so out of the loop when it comes to music.

I thought from her sound that Chappell Roan was a cool indie artist. I didn’t realize that she was a huge pop star that everyone knew about. I was trying to come up with songs for a rock playlist and couldn’t really come up with that many. I did the whole listening to a hundred albums thing last year but I don’t remember that many songs from it. When I listen to Spotify, I keep going back to old favorites instead of finding new things.

Maybe I’m not that bad off. But the fact of the matter is that new music doesn’t excite me the way that old music did. I think a big part of it is that that music hit me at exactly that moment when I needed it. I fell in love with it. I walked with it. I took it places with me. We had a relationship. Everything since then has been a one night stand. We did our business and we both moved on.

I don’t want it to be that way but I think I can change it by listening to more music. Maybe check out some articles on Spin or Rolling Stone about up and coming bands. It could just be that I have no connection to any of these bands. When Bright Eyes was putting out the bulk of his music, I read articles about him and I was like “Oh, he’s sad just like me!”

Now that I’m on the subject of music magazines, I want to talk about Blender. Sure it had the stink of its parent company, Maxim on it, but it was a good rag nonetheless. I had a subscription but then Blender got closed down and they finished my subscription with Maxim. This was infuriating for two reasons, one its porn lite that is just like “Oh you’re not brave enough to buy Playboy.” Secondly, Maxim is/was a terrible magazine. Just the worst misogyny. It was like I ordered sushi and the chef came out and hit me with a dead fish and poured soy sauce on my head. It’s the same sentiment but completely different delivery.

The Last Man Standing in the Battle of 100 Men Vs 1 Gorilla

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He didn’t know why he agreed to this. Some kind of bravado in the moment, maybe he thought it was a joke. But then he had been picked up along with five other men. They had been driven to a warehouse. There were several dozen more men there. Not one hundred. Not yet. They were still being collected. There were cameras along the walls and ceiling. It was well lit. There were no weapons around. They would be fighting hand to fist.

He looked up and got an exact number on how many of them there were. It was a large digital counter. On one side, it said 76, the other it said 0. Eight more men were brought in and the number jumped to 84. After about an hour of waiting another 16 came in and the number was now 100.

The men were standing around, talking strategy. Psyching themselves up. They were getting ready. Some of them were stretching. A voice came over a loudspeaker.

“Attention, we have collected the 100 men. It is now time to introduce the gorilla.”

There were a pair of double doors and they swung open. The gorilla came running into the room. Loping on his enormous fists. He had seen pictures of gorillas but he had never known had big one could be. Its muscles moved under its skin and hair.

Many of the men no longer seemed confident in their abilities anymore. They moved around and shifted amongst themselves. One of them was shouting for them to rush the gorilla. That they could overwhelm him.

About twenty of them, not including the one that called for them to do so, charged. The gorilla beat his chest and roared. The first one got to the gorilla and he had his neck broken by the gorilla’s enormous fist. He fell to the ground, stricken and dead.

The rest of them didn’t make much difference. The gorilla fought them with fist, hand and fang. Soon there was so much blood that it came to his shoes. Shouts of triumph soon faded to screams of terror.

At one point, the gorilla was swinging one of the men into the others. He never tired. He never slowed. When they ran, he chased them. He looked up at the digital counter and watched as it went down to 20, then 15 and finally 1. He stood in the middle of the warehouse alone. The gorilla was punching a corpse in the corner.

When he was done, he walked towards him. The last man standing. The gorilla came with the speed of inevitability. There was no running from him. There was no fighting. They were fools to think that they could contain this force of nature. When the gorilla got to him, it clasped his head in its mighty paw.

“I’m sorry, I was a fool,” he said through his tears.

*squish*

The Saturday Night Live Midnight Matinee Crew Has Been Killing It

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I’ve always been a big fan of SNL, my housemates and I used to sit down and watch it almost every week. It’s sometimes hit or miss but there’s one skit that’s always on point. That’s the midnight matinee section, where it’s a little more high budget but never enough that it looks too good. As a fan of MST3K’s we’re barely above a public access show aesthetic, I’m a huge fan of this. I’m going to talk about a few of my favorite ones here today:

My Best Friend’s House- This one is wonderfully twisted and sold by the talent of Ariana Grande’s excellent comedy chops and vocal range. A young woman recalls the smells of her best friend’s house only to find out that the dad is a serial killer and it was all a coverup.

In a similar vein is the My Room sketch featuring Olivia Rodrigo. She sings about how great her room is only to find out that she’s in a zoo on a bug planet.

Probably my favorite one, is the Beppo sketch where John Mulaney is desperately trying to save a horrible monkey puppet named Beppo that’s in space.

I want to bring attention to these wonderful sketches even if I have to spoil them a little bit. Check them out and have a good laugh.

Batgirl: Transcending Bad Beginnings

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Once a upon a time in the world of comics, a man named Fredric Wertham wrote a book called Seduction of the Innocent where he made accusations that the relationship between Robin and Batman was too gay. Mostly because the children that he spoke with that identified, though giving that it’s 50s science I’m going to take that with a grain of salt, as homosexual wanted to live like the two of them. Fellas, is it gay to want to live in extravagant wealth without financial worry? Also that they constantly saved one another, which I guess only women need to get saved. Fellas, is it gay to want to get saved?

To combat this, they created a Batwoman and Batgirl who were Kathy and Betty Kane respectively. They were to create a kind of Batman family like how Superman had his family of himself, Krypto, Lois Lane and Supergirl. They were unpopular and were dropped after only a few appearances. Batman comics started losing favor continually and then along came Batman ’66. It helped to revive Batman’s popularity but there was a problem in that they were still considered gay. Well, that shouldn’t be a problem? You had Batman flirting with Catwoman all the time. That shouldn’t be an issue! You had a beautiful woman portraying her, the wonderful Eartha Kitt. What could possibly go wrong…

Oh right… she’s a black woman. And if they can’t have gays on the TV in the sixties, you certainly couldn’t have an interracial relationship. What to do? Well, you follow Rule 63 and introduce the female version of a character. Thus, bursting from the twin foreheads of racism and homophobia comes Batgirl portrayed by the beautiful and racially acceptable Yvonne Craig.

Through her, Batgirl rose to heights of popularity where it was rumored she might be getting her own TV show at some point. They did something innovative with the character, which was having her be the daughter of commissioner Gordon. This twist was held over for when she was reintroduced in the comics along with her signature red hair.

Barbara Gordon would maintain the role for a long time until the dark ages of comics got her and she was crippled by the Joker. The years she spent as Oracle were important to the character as well. Since then through multiverse changing shenanigans she has reclaimed the title. Though I did like Stephanie Brown and Cassandra Cain in the role. Maybe one day I’ll sit down and talk about those two, especially the bullshit around Stephanie Brown’s death.

The thing I want to point out though is that sometimes a great character can come from anything. Including the nonsense that is homophobia and racism. While I might have had a kind of downer take on all of this, I think that it was worth it for Batgirl to be here.

She’s risen above giving Batman and Robin a case of the not gays and became a cornerstone of the franchise. When they made both Batman the animated series and The Batman, they included her as part of the core group. I can’t think of anyone who would not consider her in that role. Maybe I’m hanging out with the right comic book fans or the reality is that that’s where she deserves to be.

Character Profile: William Adama

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The character profile series is going to be me going over characters. The things I like about them, hate about them, find interesting or confusing. To start this series off I’m going to start with one of my favorites, Admiral William “Bill” Adama from Battlestar Galactica.

Spoilers for Battlestar Galactica

There’s always been the conversation of whose your favorite starship captain and it always boils down to two choices: Picard or Kirk. Well, you could be a cool kid and go with the radder third option: Adama.

Adama doesn’t have anything backing him, no Federation, no shields, no backup fleet. It’s just him, his pilots an their Vipers and the Galactica herself. The Galactica being nothing more than an upgraded aircraft carrier. Despite all of this, he’s entrusted with the safety of the remnants of humanity. All 50,000 of them, a number that steadily decreases.

He’s a man of principle and brute stubbornness at times. But he still allows his mind to be changed when he’s presented with new information. He’s also willing to listen to those around him when he takes particular lines of action that might not be the most intelligent.

When the fleet splits over the president wanting to remain at Kobold and search for the tomb of Athena, it takes his communications officer to tell him that he’s making a terrible choice. Hell, he wants to stay and fight the Cylons until Roslin has a sit down with him to tell him that that’ll get everyone killed. They end the conversation, he goes away and has a think then comes back to admit that she was right and he was wrong. It’s after the former that the two of them get on the same page and become an unstoppable tag team.

The man also believes in fairness, justice and the law. He has one of the greatest lines in history about the role of the military: ““There’s a reason we separate military and the police. One fights the enemies of the state, the other serves and protects the people. When the military becomes both, then the enemies of the state tend to become the people.”

I’ve seen all kinds of captains of starships. Some of them are happy go lucky, others are reckless and wild. Adama looks like a stick in the mud in comparison. But the sternness in his nature I think is the perfect fit for this show. Those other captains can dance because they have the room to do so. Adama lives on the edge of the knife. If he messes up, that’s the ball game. He could end the entirety of the human race. He’s not the teacher you want every day but when the shit hits the fan, you’re glad he’s running your classroom.

He also passes the Han Solo test. It’s a test that they brought up in the Red Letter Media review of the prequel trilogy. That a good character is one you can describe without bringing up what their job is. Thus, Han Solo is a great character because you don’t need to know he’s a smuggler/pilot to know what kind of person he is, charming, funny, rash, loyal and secretly kind.

Adama is stern, thoughtful, quiet, honorable and stubborn. He makes his presence known without too much effort.

I think alot of this kinds from the fantastic actor that is Edward James Olmos. Also known for killing it in Stand and Deliver. I couldn’t possibly imagine anyone else in the role. Thanks to his masterful work, we also got one of the best romances of sci-fi history which I’ll cover in the Laura Roslin profile.

Adama is a great character amongst greats. He embodies everything that makes Battlestar Galactica stand the test of time. You’ll be seeing more of these show as I keep doing this series.