To Be A Hero

I enjoy DeviantArt. I’ll not lie.

A lot of my characters start out on DeviantArt when I go searching through some of the awesome artists on the website. It is a lot of fun to build a history around an image. I’ve also made no secret of the fact that I love webcomics. I was searching Ian Sampson’s gallery when I cam across a Legend of Zelda comic.

Being a BIG Zelda fan, I went ahead and read through it. One comic in particular caught my eye:

Yes, Link’s a woman. We’re looking at Rule 63 as a source of THAT particular element. For once, though, it is tastfully done and not horribly over-boobed (which tends to happen with such Memes).

Anyhow, I got to reading the comic and Page 6 really stood out. It’s an interesting statement, and one that I thought I would share thoughts on. Link’s speech is pretty straight forward:

“Legend says that only the Legendary Hero can wield the Sword of Evil’s Bane. But the truth is anyone can wield it. Anyone can fight evil. But everyone is so afraid. Everyone wants a hero, but no one wants to rise up to be one.”

The more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with that. Earlier this week I worked on how we are giving traditionally villanous characters heroic traits. And perhaps this is one of the reason.

I mean, consider this: We now villainize our heroes – both in real life and in fiction.

Look at most of our new broadcasts. I’ve grabbed some headlines off of a local news site to take a look:

• Dangerously cold temperatures expected in Kalamazoo this weekend and well into next week

• WMU men’s basketball team wins at Kent State for first time since 1996 with 75-59 victory

• Report: Runner seriously hurt after being struck by pickup truck near Battle Creek
• Kalamazoo-area schools canceling Friday classes because of winter storm
• Report: Mary J. Blige’s father critically hurt in Battle Creek stabbing

• Police find Kalamazoo man with dementia who walked away from Winchell neighborhood home

• Man stabbed by ex-girlfriend in Battle Creek in critical condition
• Traffic alert: Eastbound I-94 closed for several miles in Berrien County
• Westbound I-94 backed up at M-66 due to crash

 

Of those 9 articles, 7 of them focus on the negatives. The content of the articles is even better. For being ‘neutral’ reporting, there is a great deal of negativity in the majority of the articles – especially the stabbing one. Even the one about finding the demented man has 4 other articles linked within it dealing with the same incident that focus on blaming different parties for the problem.

The same thing holds true for our heroes both fictional and not.

I liked the Christopher Nolan Batman movies, but I don’t really agree that the Batman we see there is the kind of Batman that I have always pictured. I’ve read some of the Batman comics and in very few of them (Pre New 52 at least. I haven’t read much of the more recent stuff) would I see Batman moving immediately to his fists as a solution to a problem. Nolan’s Batman seems to be much more about shoving his fist in someone’s face than he is about solving dilemmas and out thinking his opponent. We see some glimpses of that, but isn’t really a focus of the character, nor is it a significant part of him. It does make for some amazing choreography and some excellent music, but it just doesn’t feel like I imagine Batman to feel.

On our real life front, we see far more articles attacking those we are supposed to admire than we see praising them. Do a quick search for ‘U.S. Congress, President Obama, (Insert Sports Name), (Insert Military Branch), (Insert Local Police Units)’ and you’ll find that those who are supposed to be our helpers and our heroes spend far more time in the press being bullied and biased than they do being admired or non-judgmentally discussed. I have no problem with criticism of our public officials and support, but there is a difference between being criticized and being demonized and we are definitely more on the demonize side of things in most of our major press.

So, is it really any wonder that no one wants to step forward and be a hero. Given how our society treats heroes, why would anyone want to pull that sword from the pedestal and declare for all their intent to slay evil and stop the bad guy? Doing so would be painting a target on your chest – and not only for the villain and their posse. It would also be an open invitation for the hatred and ridicule of the masses. We don’t have room for heroes in a society that focuses on the evils and negativity of itself. The notion that we can rise above that is so foreign and/or so difficult that we just abandon it.

It’s easier this way. Really, it is. That doesn’t make it right and it is part of why I work in the classroom that I do, but it is a constant uphill battle.

No wonder we don’t want to be a hero.

Moving Our Villains and Making them Heroes

I just got done reading the April solicits on Newsrama for the upcoming Comic releases and I notice a certain trend appearing – we’re really focusing on the Villains becoming Heroes.

Now that, in and of itself, isn’t a bad thing. I can understand it from a marketing stand point – Hey! Check it out, Lex Luthor is leading the Justice League! Spider-Man is being controlled by Doc Ock! This will be different and exciting! – issues and conventions like this will sell comic books if for no other reason than for comic fans to prove how bad the issues were *cough* Crisis *cough*.

However, I see a more disturbing trend in observing our media and our overall culture in America.

We’re doing this everywhere. TV shows like Dexter and House, take someone who would traditionally be a villain (or at least a character to despise) and transforms them in to a likeable character with heroic traits. Our Heroes are receiving the reverse treatment – I’ve never seen a Batman like the one featured in Nolan’s trilogy and Man of Steel Superman isn’t anything like the Superman I grew up watching on the Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.

Politically I see the same thing happening. Both the last few national and state level elections I have participated in aren’t broadcasting ‘Our candidate is awesome because of X, Y, and Z’ and are instead focusing on ‘The other guy is a traitor, polygamist, baby-eating monster.’ Our news, if we can call it that, is filled with similar spoilers.

For some reason, we’ve decided that we need to focus on our evils and sympathize with them rather than empathize with our goods. We’ve stopped embracing and encouraging our good parts and chosen to focus, instead, on nourishing our dark side.

As fun as it is to examine the dark side, I don’t want to live there and I don’t want to participate in a world that wants to move towards it. I work in Education, and my work is about hope. My writing is very similar – I focus on hope. I am not saying that my characters don’t have flaws any more than I am saying that I am without flaws; that would be unrealistic. But I don’t focus on those flaws and make them the most important part of my character or my students. If I did, I’d never be able to win.

And, in my opinion, that’s where this negativity leads to – it’s dragging us down in to believing that we can’t win. You see it all over the news and in comments sections on news sites – we can’t fight this; it’s too big, it’s too hard, it’s too powerful. The reason we can’t see our way to those victories is we’re so busy focusing on the shadow that we miss the light. Which is a shame.

There is a great deal of good in the world. A great deal. That we miss it is through our own personal choice and prejudice. It is much harder to be good and honorable and we always want to make sure and drag others down with ourselves. When we fail, we do not want to be alone in that failure – it makes us feel better.

At some point, however, we have to see beyond that and start to hold ourselves up and not drag others down. We are just as capable of pulling others up to our level as we are of dragging them down – it just requires more work. For whatever reason, that work is something that we fear and avoid. I can think of a half dozen reasons why this might be, but they’re not really for air.

I’m just trying to understand why we focus on these things when those items where we do focus on those positives and on helping each other and pulling ourselves out of darkness do so much better in our media. At least according to the numbers I can find.

Man of Steel got some 600 Million. And that’s a good take.
The Avengers got 1.54 Billion. With a B. More than twice Man of Steel. And personally, if it hadn’t been a ‘reboot’ movie, I don’t think a lot of people would have gone to see Man of Steel.
According to http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/budgets/
it is only beaten by Avatar (another movie with more light to its darkness).

These kinds of stories do sell well, and I see a lot more good in people than I do the darkness we are choosing to focus on as a society. I have to wonder if I am unique or broken somehow sometimes.

Just some food for thought. Where would you stand on that spectrum?

A Changing Atmosphere of Reading

I find it interesting how different it is to read today than it was a mere year ago. If we jump back a decade, it is even stranger. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how easily reading is being made available at any time and any place.

In my experience reading was something that was done in discrete sections and times. I’d read after school on the bus or after homework time, but it always involved sitting down and finding a place to get my reading done in. I’d look forward to it and plan for it. It was a good thing, but at the same time something that sort of separated my reading in to chunks.

Those discrete sections were by themselves and isolated. While stories can be sectioned off like that, they are not meant to be isolated from the rest of the work. Comprehension and meaning of even the most basic of narratives requires the experiencing of both the finite ‘pieces’ and the larger whole. Before five years ago, such an integration of experience and ability was almost unheard of but now, from what I see, it is commonplace.

That is not to say that electronic books did not exist before then – there were many formats and documents readily available to read electronically, but it wasn’t convenient nor was it integrated. Now, however, it is incredibly simple to maintain your continuity and comprehension while reading. I can load a book in to my tablet and read it while I am having breakfast and then continue right from where I left off on my phone while riding in the car to work (assuming I am not driving) and pick it up during my breaks or have it open in a window in the back while I am working. I can integrate my reading experience with the rest of my events and not have to worry about separating it out or missing anything.

Which is a significant change for me. I’m not saying that I was a lazy reader before, but I find with my Kindle app, I’m much more likely to open a book and commit to it. There’ s more time for reading when I can grab those five minutes between class periods or during my short break while I am working than when I had to section it off from the rest of my experience. With a 1-year-old daughter at home, this becomes even more true since she completely ignores Daddy’s divisions of the day.

I’m still pretty firmly in the middle. I do a lot of reading of both paper and e-ink books, but I found that I was truly disappointed that my textbook for class wasn’t also available in Electronic format. The ability to move my book and not worry about my notes was extremely useful last semester and I can’t help but wish that when my book group request will be followed so I can use the electronic version of that text for class as well.

It’s a change in the atmosphere and I know there is some reluctance to shift. My mother, for one, is determined not to consider an E-Reader. My Father, on the other hand (who generally read Clive Cussler and that’s about it), would consider it. There are always those that ignore the change in the atmosphere, but there are always those that find their direction changing with it.

Just some food for thought for the day while I monitor detention.

Insights and Interest on Self-Publishing Article

So, I recently read an article linked on one of the blogs I follow – I Read Encyclopedias for Fun

Encyclopedia discusses some interesting thoughts in the post and I encourage any of you who follow me to check it out. It’s an interesting blog in the first place and much better about updating than I am.

Anyway, I read the linked article about self publishing, which I will also link. It’s by Dana Beth Weinberg, whom I’ve never met or even heard of. However, some of her insights and thoughts jumped out at me. In particular, I read this line: 

Emotions run high when writers and publishers debate the merits of self-publishing. Some people hold that self-published authors couldn’t break into the world of traditional publishing, gave up, and rushed their poor quality work to market. Others praise self-publishing as a democratizing force that makes it possible for authors to share their stories, even when traditional publishers, perhaps wrongly, imagine those stories don’t have large and lucrative markets. As such, self-publishing gives authors the freedom to share stories with limited appeal or, alternatively, the means to demonstrate marketability and perhaps attract a traditional publisher. In yet another view, self-publishing is a highly entrepreneurial activity. Self-published authors take home a larger share of royalties, and by cutting out the publisher middlemen, they stand to bring home a lot more cash even if they sell fewer books than they would with traditional publishers.

 

I’ve mentioned before that I am a web comic fan. This comes off as a very similar attitude to the one that web comics faced back when they started. There were several articles talking about the phenomena of web comics and their impact on the industry. The first sets of articles discussed how poor they were and how they would never have a significant impact on the comics industry. Later, as they became more popular and several of the more well known ones – Penny Arcade, MegaTokyo, Dinosaur Comics, and Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal to name a few – began to really get their name out there, there was discussion of keeping web comics and traditional ones separated. Yes, the traditional comics acknowledged, these guys do exist. But they are not our competition, they are their own crowd. Now it is, generally, acknowledged that traditional comics and the web comic medium are contesting for similar audiences. Web comics are being printed, traditional comics are being digitized in to readers.

I see a similar pattern in the research and tone of the Self Publishing article. While I agree with many of the thoughts and tones of it, ultimately, I think we are going to see a very similar pattern to the one we have seen in Web Comics and music – an acknowledgement, separation, and finally acceptance of the self publishing movement. We will also see similar trends – some self publishing authors will become quite successful, others only moderately so. Some will grab on to specific niche markets and squeeze it like a garrote, others will go for general appeals.

Personally, I am excited for the notion. As I’ve stated before – I am working very hard on my writing (well, as hard as I can. I’m also a new father, and, let’s face it, babies are pretty awesome. Especially mine!) and if I can’t find someone to buy it then I’ll probably go with self-publishing.

Just thought I would share a bit.

On the positive side – things are starting to settle down over here and I should be back to posting my reviews and other posts more regularly. I’m going to start with a once a week update schedule to get myself back in to the pattern and advance from there. Thanks, everyone, for your patience! 

Please, feel free to leave your thoughts or ideas below!