I am in need of distinct good versus evil today.

I am in need of distinct good versus evil today.

Let me explain. I grew up on stories, reading books, and movies. I grew up on imagination. I grew up consuming make believe and tales of good and evil. It’s a particularly comforting thought for me, to know that at the end of the day good triumphs over evil. I spent the most impressionable years of my life consuming these stories, stories which have left a long lasting impression on me. When I first started writing all those years ago, the first book I wrote was about a boy who set off from his village all alone and got wrapped up in a whirlwind adventure with more experienced heroes to face off against an ancient evil and a world ending threat. I know that story even now, almost 20 years later, like the back of my hand. Now did it go anywhere? Ultimately no. While I didn’t do anything with that story, other than spend close to 5 years fleshing it out, it did further cement the basis of the stories that stick with me today. Good versus evil. The stories I spent countless hours submerged in led me to basing the heroes and villains that I incorporate into my own stories. After all, each and every artist is a kleptomaniac of good ideas.* I grew up with children fighting against oppressive regimes and dystopian governments. I grew up with intellectuals exploring and discovering. I grew up with the underdog. I grew up with found family. I grew up with silent protagonists against insurmountable odds. I grew up with the punching of Nazis. I also grew up with villains that wanted to take away all that was good. With villains that sought to take and take and take. With villains that hoarded wealth. With villains that claimed that they themselves were the heroes instead. With villains that wanted to break apart family. As I grew up I had to learn the hard way that stories are not real life. And as I came to terms with it I also fell in love with new stories, more complicated stories, where good and evil aren’t as clear cut as I would wish. I also became a Christian, and was subsequently influenced with this theology. And I was fine with it because the good and evil that I recognized as a kid fit into the neat little boxes of good and evil that Christianity presented me. And I continued to grow up Right now, in the present day, it’s Martin Luther King Jr. Day as I write this. I don’t know when I’ll post. I can be hot headed and I can be stubborn and while these traits about me exist I also want to speak clearly and concisely and consciously. All that I see out there when I look into the world is, well, a lot of evil. For a lack of better words. I’m seeing a slide to fascism. I’m seeing the billionaire oligarchs control our means of communication. I’m seeing a lot of people whom I once looked up to and admired gladly cheer and celebrate darkness because it protects them from fear. Fear of the scarcity, of the other, of the unknown. Fear manufactured by the very darkness that they celebrate It never sat right to me that in Star Wars Episode 7 that the First Order was a thing. And then you find out as the audience that the First Order were really remnants of the Empire that changed its name and became something new. The latest Indiana Jones movie had a villain who was a former Nazi that became a NASA scientist who wanted to “fix” history. Tears of the Kingdom has Ganondorf come back from being a zombie after literally forever being dormant. It feels like it’s the end of Two Towers, where the armies of Isengard break like waves upon Helm’s Deep and Theodan says “So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?” It feels like Pippin’s realization when Merry says “The fires of Isengard will spread, and the forests of Tuckborough and Buckland will burn. And all that was once great and good in this world will be gone. There won't *be* a Shire, Pippin.” It feels like Frodo sinking to the ground when he says “I can’t do this, Sam.” I’m in the moment with the death of the Forest Spirit in Mononoke. I’m in the moment where Cluny the Scourge has taken over Redwall Abbey. It’s the resignation felt, that this is it, and there is nothing else BUT this. As a plot device, we know that it is darkest before the dawn. We know that in these stories that right as the darkest dark falls upon the land that the heroes stand back up to fight, and somehow they win in the end. This is where we find out that the First Order can be defeated through community.** This is where we find out that the villain's plans fail and that you can’t go back to fix the past. This is where we seek out allies that will fight with us against the darkness. This is where Gandalf crests with the dawn with a host of Rohirrim. This is where Pippin stands up to the challenge and convinces Treebeard to fight. This is where Sam says “That there's some good in this world, Mr. Frodo... and it's worth fighting for.”*** This is where Ashitaka and San end the Nightwalker’s wrath. This is when Matthias, the very reincarnation of Martin the Warrior, leads a coalition of outsiders to retake the Abbey. In stories, this is when the villains fall. In real life? It’s hard for me to see the right leaning government that the United States has right now as anything but villains. If they aren’t villains, why are they villain shaped? Why do they rail against the oppressed and the weak and the vulnerable and the marginalized? As an adult, reading adult books, I recognize that it isn’t as easy as dividing the world into good and evil, into right and wrong.***** Life is complicated at best. It’s easy to say one thing is correct and one thing is incorrect and be done with it. Then you look at all the things that make up that one thing and you realize that it’s far more complicated than you could ever understand. Some of that still stands, some of that is bullshit. There’s something about bombing kids that puts a bad taste in my mouth. There’s something about devaluing others that makes me clench my fists. There’s something about goddamn Nazis in the Whitehouse that makes my blood boil. My radicalization came because I fell in love with stories that showed me what good and evil was. And how do I decide what is good and evil? I can’t look towards the church, since Christian Nationalism is a cancer.****** So what can I look towards? Secular communication? But who has control of the media? Who is preventing others from reading or saying things? Who is afraid of criticizing who? The simple fact is that one side wants to ban people from reading. They are actively banning books. Actively banning stories. Banning the very thing that made me who I am as a person today. I stated this before in another post, but as a kid I would have killed to have read stories that were age appropriate for me that also had protagonists that looked like me. And as a child growing up that was few and far in between. And seeing those stories which childhood me needed being banned? Them’s fighting words.******* I am in need of distinct good versus evil today. Because everything I see right now is in that calm before the storm except instead of calm it’s the storm and instead of just a storm its three world ending events in a trench-coat and they just let it walk right into the movie theater. And right now it’s the turn for the heroes to show up and stand up against the insurmountable evil and instead of the legendary Samwise Gamgee it’s lil ol’ me. And that’s fucking terrifying. So I’m in need of distinct good versus evil today because this is more than just me, it’s about my found family who needs help. And being immersed in this black and white is a little like drinking the chicken broth at the end of chicken noodle soup when it’s cold as hell out and you are sick: it’s the feeling of home and warmth and comfort and that everything is going to be all right.

* That is, let it be transformative. There is no original story anymore. But, it’s the writer’s own twist on that story that makes the story unforgettably fresh and new for the reader. That said, fuck AI Art, fuck Generative AI, fuck using AI to write. You can’t be an AI Artist or an AI writer. If you can’t be creative on your own, and use your own skills to create something as beautiful and as flawed as the rest of us, then you are simply masquerading as an Artist or a Writer.

** Love or Hate the sequel trilogy, this is what happens. Personally, I’d rather the original trilogy or the prequels. Cause as pretty as the sequel trilogy is o god it’s awful.

*** Look I know that Sam says a whole big speech first and that Pippin doesn’t convince Treebeard in the books. I’m trying to save some space, and I’m basing this off the movies, which again, NEED to rewatch rn in particular.****

**** extended editions obviously, I’m not a monster.

***** Adult books and ADULT books if you get my drift wink wonk.

****** The way I explain it right now is that I would be considered a very bad Christian if you use a Christian Nationalist viewpoint. And I would answer that I fall short when it comes to a Jesus Christ viewpoint. Those are VERY different things.

******* Once again, fuck you Nyx you inconsiderate piece of shit