Upon the Backs of Robots

When I was a young man, I never really thought about what sort of entertainment I consumed.

I never really contemplated the philosophical ramifications of my He-Man action figures.  I had a Skeletor figure with one of those little orbs in the chest that changed sigils and that was badass as fuck and that was good enough for me.  I never wondered what message I was deriving by reading Drizzt novels.  I knew I was reading a lovelorn weirdo with two swords and a magic cat and that was just fine.  I never contemplated the deeper meaning of my Spider-Man comics.  He was a dork who got to dress up and swing around and punch people in the face.

When I was a young man, these things were just things that made me happy.

I miss those days.

While they might not be gone forever, I’m pretty sure they’re gone for the moment.  Because, for the moment, there’s big business in deconstructing the things that made us happy as kids.  I mean, just check out this Cracked.com article on the recent Avengers: Age of Ultron movie.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

…all right?  Got it?  Pretty fuckin’ weird, right?

I mean, I guess it’s not the content of the article itself that puzzles me.  It’s a fair critique and introspective view of a movie where people dress up in tight-fitting clothes and fight an army of killer robots, sure.  All the same, the article gave me some pause.  Not the quirky kind of pause in a romantic comedy just before a charmingly befuddled British man busts out a chuckleworthy line to a smooth, confident blonde woman who deeply yearns for meaningful relationships.  No, this was the bleak kind of pause that happens when you see a teddy bear lying in the street and it takes you a moment to realize why it made you sad.

So, here’s a question.

Why are we, as geeks, so dedicated to making ourselves unhappy?

I guess that’s a rhetorical question.  I already stated the reason above: there’s business in it.  It’s something to talk about.  And talk about it we do.

It feels like routine at this point.  Some big event (a movie, a comic, a video game) is announced and, for awhile, we’re all really happy.  The trailers come out and we get all excited.  Then, the analyses of the trailers come out and we’re all interested.  Then, the deconstruction of the trailers come out and we’re all a little less enthusiastic.  Then, the dramatic griping comes as we all lament how George Lucas better not betray us or Joss Whedon better not ruin this or whatever.

Then the event happens and we enjoy it as long as it takes for us to get back to our blogs and start deconstructing it and pointing out all the problems with it and then we’re all sick of talking about it and the next event is met with more cynicism and it speeds the process up.  The gap between excitement and despair shortens a little and it stops being watching movies or playing games.  It becomes consumption.  And it is exactly as romantic as the word “consumption” sounds.

As to why we do it?  I have my theories.

Most of them revolve around us still wrapping our heads around the idea of not seeking outside approval for enjoyment.  Enjoying things feels like a waste of time.  You can’t just watch a movie.  You need to understand it.  You need to suss it out.  You need to strip it apart and put it into little pieces and turn each of them over and over until you find the flaw, the one thing that proves you did not waste your time by watching this movie because by GOD you have something to say about it.

And that’s fine.

Really.  That’s the other theory.  We love to understand things.  It’s in a geek’s nature to learn, to dissect, to study.  We like dedicating ourselves to our crafts and obsessing over them until we learn every bit of them.  And that’s grand.  That’s why speed runs are their own thing and longplays are their other thing.

Somehow, it’s only when these two theories meet that we begin to see the problem.  When the need to learn is combined with the predisposition that only deconstructing is valuable, then we start entering this cycle.  You don’t just see it in movies.  You see it in books, in games, in comics.  Whatever tropes exist must be subverted.  Whatever has been constructed must be torn down.  Whatever has been referenced must be derided.  Idols must be torn down, gods must be disproved, the Wizard of Oz must be exposed.

This is where we get things like Batman vs. Superman from.  Personally?  I think it looks a bit dumb.

We go in with the idea that to love something, we must destroy it (like the Cracked article suggests).

And I disagree with that.

I’ve heard it said that geeks aren’t interested in new material.  I’ve heard it said that geeks are in search of material that kindles their sense of nostalgia, that recaptures the joy they felt when they were kids and they didn’t question everything so darn much.

And I don’t necessarily disagree with that.  Some of it, anyway.

I mean, I’m not particularly ashamed to admit my own nostalgic lusts.  I wrote an entire love letter to Drizzt Do’Urden, after all.  And if you read my twitter feed, you’ll see that I view shame as a decidedly useless emotion and devote a lot of time to preaching about the virtues from writing from a place of joy.

And that’s where I think there’s a different way of doing things.

The longer I write, the more I become convinced that there is really only one thing that differentiates one fantasy story from another: whether the author loves the tropes he’s working or hates them.

When he hates the tropes, it shows.  His characters are cynical and callous, afraid to be genuine and reluctant to show a wider range of emotions.  His plots are dull and lifeless, usually revolving around bleak conflicts with bleak characters where we aren’t sure if we want to see the ending.  His voice, as an author, is one of sneering contempt: angry at the characters who exemplify them, angry at the genre that made them popular and, above all else, angry at the audience who enjoys them.

He deconstructs.  And he does it quite well.  And at the end of the deconstruction, there is a pile of parts on the floor.

But when he loves the tropes, it also shows.  His characters are in possession of a full range of emotions: some are optimistic, some are callow, some are stupid, some are joyous, some are angry all the damn time.  His plots are wide and complicated and often messy and full of crazy shit like exploding tigers or wizards that spit bees.  His voice, as an author, is sometimes muddled and occasionally he has plot holes, but he’s so damn enthusiastic and exuberant about it that you can’t help but be swept along with it.

He constructs.  He creates.  He builds up.  He fleshes out.  He makes big, teetering monuments that look like they might fall down but somehow, they work.

The above two paragraphs constitute the entirety of my review of Avengers: Age of Ultron.  As you can imagine, I liked it.  Quite a bit, actually.

I suppose some people might equate what I’m saying with blind reverence for tropes.  Some might say I’m willfully ignoring the uglier aspects of those tropes–the damsels in distress, the irredeemable evils, the men in white hats who aren’t very interesting.  Some might say I’m disregarding the whole reason we started subverting and deconstructing them.

I don’t agree with that.  I can see where it might seem like that, but I don’t agree.

Because I’m not advocating regurgitation.  I’m not advocating that we copy or mimic.  I’m not advocating that people just continue on upholding the tropes and leave them on pedestals behind velvet ropes.

Rather, I’m advocating that we play with them.  Let’s find out what made us fall in love with them, rather than finding out why we shouldn’t be in love with them.  Let’s flesh them out.  Let’s build on top of them.  Let’s take the parts we like from them and smooth over the parts we hate.  Let’s see where they go and carry them to new conclusions.

Let’s have fun.  Let’s be okay with writing fun.