My True Convention Story That I Wish Was Fiction

We're going into convention season, and I keep meeting new writers who are nervous about making bad impressions. Especially early on, you dread that anything you do will kill your career. In order to make some anonymous writers feel a little better, I want to share a story that I wish wasn't true.

My greatest convention shame began with a great short story. It was nominated for an award at this con I was attending, and was one of the funniest Science Fiction shorts I'd ever read. It was vicious, sometimes repulsive, using impossible plots for hilarious ends. It was so funny that I got up in the middle of it to annoy friends by reading random passages aloud.

As I spread glowing reviews across social media, I discovered something: most reviewers hated this story.

Many of the reviewers were attracted just because it was nominated for this Prestigious Award; they argued that it was too morbid, too awful, or not even a story. After a while, I felt the author was being wronged. Dear reader, I argued on the internet.

Crediting the Idea Factory

Last night I was doubting my imagination. I'd just finished a new short story, which was the conclusion of a premise I came up with fifteen years ago. My last three short stories were ideas I'd had for decades. Weary from pain, I worried the only ideas I had left these days were the creations of my younger self.

In my malaise, I started backing up my computer so I could rebuild it this weekend. My writing folder was full of unfinished drafts that I had to open to recognize. They were tens of thousands of words of plots, many I'd created in the last couple months but had been so busy I'd forgotten I'd written.

The idea factory was still open. It just wasn't getting credit.

KILL ME Props: Twitter, Jessica Jones, and a Thursday with Chronic Pain and Depression

It could be worse.

This is what it's like when it's bad.

Thursday is one of those nights. I intended to push four miles on the elliptical, but by dusk it feels like my spine is being pummeled whenever I sit up, and lying down makes it worse. The medication is definitely failing, so I can't even walk downstairs. My mind is thick with the fog of pain regulation, by all these alarms telling me to escape my own skin. I can't write or edit. I can barely make it through a couple paragraphs of anyone else's work. My friend's story beta will have to wait.

Twitter is something I shouldn't check when the pain is like this. Most often when people are happy, they enjoy the moment and neglect social media. You have more time for wifi when you're bored or angry. It shows.

Tonight people are outraged about anti-Muslim sentiments in America and Europe. Islamophobia will kill more innocents by the end of the year than all the terrorists attacks of the last month, but I can't get my brain to form cogent comments on it. Tweets cluster around the House's bigoted bill to prevent more Syrians from taking refuge here, but most tweets are just pissed in general. I want to support them because this could landslide, but am tag-teamed by the mental exhaustion of the pain, and the sense of worthlessness that depression always uses to dissolve good intentions.

Counting with George (Non-Fiction Fantasy)

Not the hospital I visited. VAH at Salem, MA.

This happened. It happened to me, and happens to others too often.

“You’re going to need a pre-op x-ray/MRI,” Dr. Man said, releasing my knee. For an old guy who specialized in joints, he handled mine brutally. I instinctively clutched the knee, which throbbed more from his two-minute examination than in the three weeks since it my fall.

“Pre-op?” I asked. I did not like the sound of that. It sounded like an ‘op’ was inevitable. I couldn’t afford any ops right now.

“Yeah,” he said. He took up a pad and scrawled something out, not looking at me. Apparently there was nothing more to tell me.

It’s difficult for me to ask people questions when they clearly don’t want to talk– I feel guilty for desiring the information. Only as he looked at the door did I squeeze out,

   1. “Do you know how much this is going to cost?”

He asked, “The MRI or the surgery?”

“Either. Both. I’m uninsured.”

“Oh.” He looked at me like I’d farted. “No, I don’t know. It’ll be bad. You can talk to billing.”

A Pain in the Neck

A little update since the blog has been quiet during convention season. Both 4th Street and Readercon were delights, and I'm greatly looking forward to Otakon this Friday. But travel just got harder.

Five weeks ago I did something bad to my neck. I cannot remember a singular incident, but it was around then that I began experiencing persistent shooting pains down my neck, through my left shoulder, and down my left arm. It seemed like an exacerbation of problems I've had in my shoulder ever since a botched muscle biopsy in my teens. It feels a lot like something sticking your finger in an electrical outlet, at random, every couple of minutes.

About two weeks ago I had a hard exercise session, and really pushed my cardio. Recent meds have caused me to gain a lot of weight, and I wanted to push against it. Instead, something in my neck popped. That was the first time I couldn't feel my left arm anymore.

The arm regained feeling, and I never lost motor control. Since then the shooting pains have randomly started appearing in my right arm to compliment the left. These symmetrical pain is rare enough that I keep trying to pretend that was just one-- okay, just two-- maybe just three times, not a pattern.

I have a doctor's appointment in August, which is the earliest they could take me. But for now, it's a distraction and a worry.

And If I've randomly frowned or grimaced at you lately, please excuse me. I promise that you're not a pain in the neck.

You Will Never Be My Friend (Request)

I get a lot of random Friend Requests on Goodreads. I'm a Librarian, and I have a few lightning rod reviews, so people find me. Generally I'll accept because I love reading reviews from new perspectives, or of niches of prose that I'm not exposed to. I've got friends who gobble classics, manga, memoir, and Epic Fantasy, helping point me to what I might have missed, or challenge my own prejudices.

Sometimes, though, I cross someone like the guy who friended me last week. His name is withheld because he's got enough anger in his life.

Right around when I accepted, he posted a tirade review against Stephen King's The Stand. I love The Stand; it's a landmark achievement in Epic Urban Fantasy. "M-O-O-N" is a reference I keep going back to, and the uncut edition's epilogue is intensely unnerving. This fellow hated the pacing, the unbelievable plot elements, and mostly, the act of being alive while reading it. It was unfortunate in its bile and lacking the perspective-challenging insight that I need out of a negative review. Still, not a sin.

Then he posted a review ripping apart Andy Weir's The Martian. I'd just read that, too, and was curious for his dissent, but more than half his review was quoting people who'd liked it and questioning how they could have read the same book. His argument that "funny isn't a personality" deeply bothered me, as I found the narrator's humor incredibly refreshing (I've slightly misquoted so he can't be google-stalked).

Yesterday he posted a 1-star review of Hamlet. 

Now look: Hamlet is the only Shakespeare I unequivocally enjoy. I dislike plenty of popular and important works. You can't be a writer without having taste clash.

But to have hated The Stand, The Martian, and Hamlet all in such a short period of time was alarming. That's a wide range of promising fiction to hate.

When I checked his profile, I found he hadn't given any books more than two stars so far this year. My knee-jerk response was to worry he had some psychological problems.

Then I saw he'd self-published two books of his own. He was an author on Goodreads there, at least in part, to promote his own work.

Sometimes, unfriending is the kindest recourse.

Submissions Are Open for Viable Paradise, OR, Why Leigh Wallace is My Gosh-Darned Hero

They teach you about symbolism, too.

While I was in the hospital, submissions opened for the Viable Paradise workshop. It's run by the incomparable James Macdonald and Debra Doyle, and attracts superstar staff-authors like Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear. If you're a beginning or emerging writer, you want to go to VP. It's held every October in Martha's Vineyard, a week in a cozy hotel space with a couple dozen other aspiring authors, and a host of professionals who critique your work and educate on the underpinnings of storytelling and the publishing industry. I learned more in one week at VP than any year of college. If you take your craft seriously, you could not ask for a better week.

But that's not why you want to go to Viable Paradise. There's something more.

Through shared interest and mutual support, some classmates came to feel like family. The workshop improved our game through insights and streamlining. In the year after my class, I sold my first pro-rate short story. Many classmates sold their first pro shorts, too, or pro flashes. One friend giddily explained to me that she was paid more for one anthology acceptance than everything she'd ever made in writing before.

That's not why you want to go to Viable Paradise, either.

If you fast-forwarded a year after VP17, you'd find that my body turned on me. Close friends, including some VP alums, were rightly scared for me. My health has always been poor, but over the course of nine months my body rejected the meds I'd always relied on, and then four new experimental courses of medication. The pain became so disorienting that my ability to multitask disappeared. I spent two hours writing symptoms on a piece of paper so I could read them at the doctor, because I was incapable of having a casual discussion about them. My ability to write, and finish stories, dwindled.

And if you care about writing, then this is why you want to go to Viable Paradise.

Because a month ago I was lost in the wilderness of illness, completely unable to edit my work anymore, despite having what I'm sure was the best short story I've ever written. It was a promising first draft, and became a phenomenal third draft, and in December I could tell it just needed its science rigorously checked. The story is about a sympathetic, even funny, protagonist with albinism, one attempt to counter the Evil Albino trope. And while I'd done a lot of legwork to depict albinism accurately, I could not check my own science further. Paragraphs felt insurmountable. The pain, and the brain-fog that chronic pain brings on, were winning. Having your best work just outside your grasp is purgatorial.

Leigh Wallace, one of my classmates from Viable Paradise, e-mailed me an offer. She'd check the science of the story for me. She'd read up on albinism and ocular disorders, and flag whatever I'd gotten wrong or left confusing. She'd point out my problems and then all I'd have to do was fix them.

She turned the story back over to me in days. The way she marked it up? It was so accessible that I corrected the entire story in a weekend. And it was a hard weekend on the health front, my friends. Leigh was my gosh-darned hero.

Now the story is out to markets, and I am on a sixth course of medication. At least for today, I'm thinking clearer and making the most of that clarity. I'm beta reading a classmate's novel.

That's why you want to go Viable Paradise. The greatest gift a workshop can give is supportive relationships with other smart writers who can have your back when your back gives out.

Submissions are open here. If you get in, congratulations! My advice is to spend half your time working hard at your craft, and the other half helping your classmates with theirs. That's the gift.

The Shame of Flash Thompson

From Pinterest.

Perhaps you know Venom. He’s the coolest Spider-Man villain. Just ask my fifteen-year-old self and he’ll tell you so. Venom has an evil costume that Spider-Man tried to throw away, and it gives him all Spidey’s powers, but also makes him stronger, sneakier, and gives him fangs and tentacles. A consummate 90’s villain.

Perhaps you know there have been multiple Venoms. The current one is Flash Thompson, a bully from Spider-Man’s high school who has since reformed, joined the military, and is using the alien super-costume to help defend his country. He became “Agent Venom.” He just joined the Guardians of the Galaxy. Yes, that one. 

Hasbro made a prestige action figure of him. Then they decided not to sell it, probably because of his niche appeal. You read the above paragraph, right? Nobody cared.

Except I cared. The costume was cool, okay? I don’t want to talk about it. I want to talk about Hasbro and Marvel recently agreeing to sell Agent Venom exclusively at one retailer.

What retailer would you pick to sell a superhero toy? Toys R Us? Target?

Try Walgreens. Not Wal-Mart. Walgreens, the chain pharmacy you can’t tell apart from CVS and Rite-Aid, is the exclusive home of Flash Thompson Venom. 

So I went to my local Walgreens, because that’s where I’m at in my life. I checked their toy aisle, which was more of a toy rack. There were some Ninja Turtles, Batmen and football supplies. No Marvel goodies at all.

Before I slinked away, I approached a staffer in a lavender scrub, who was re-stocking the energy bars. She immediately perked up and asked if she could help with anything.

“Do you have a Spider-Man toy called ‘Agent Venom?’” I asked.

She looked blank at me, like for a moment she’d forgotten how to be human. Then she smirked. “Black Spider-Man?”

“Yes,” I said. “Black Spider-Man.”

She led me to the freezer cases. Propped up beside the case was a cardboard box full of Flash Thompson Venoms. Dozens of their tentacles pointed at us from behind plastic wrap.

The clerk made a show of handing me one of them. I thanked her, and slinked to Check-Out.

It feels like a universal truth. Flash Thompson, a non-entity turned into a non-entity hero, then turned into non-entity merchandise you can only buy next to the freezers, far from the toy aisle of a non-entity pharmacy most people don’t even know sells toys. It’s likely that more people in my town will read the name “Agent Venom” on their way to grab a pint of Ben & Jerry’s than will ever read it in a comic book.

Now he’s sitting on my desk. We have a lot to talk about.

Happy Birthday: In Defense of the Worst Year of My Adult Life

At the last hospital visit before my birthday, the nurse said I’d had a bad year. Nurses tend to be far more positive, so when she said that, it stirred me.  In the last couple months my mother, friends, fellow writers, and even acquaintances I didn’t know were following my story said this was a bad year for me. I don’t want to agree.

I turn 33 on Thursday. Last week I realized that will mean it’s been twenty years of this neuromuscular syndrome. For our anniversary, my body began rejecting medication, and the latest thing the doctor put me on only endows me with new and unwanted side-effects. Much of 2014 was waking up every two hours with muscle spasms, of being unable to think straight, and being so beat down I couldn’t even write anymore. Family begged me to take it easy on myself, to just take May easy. May slips so easily into June, especially when all you do is suffer.

Part of me knows I’ve done more than that. As my mind’s been bogged down by pain, I reach for oversimplifications more than I ever used to let myself. Depression is alleged to work like that. So I dwell:

Readercon Wrap Up

I wanted to do a Readercon post earlier but was wiped from my trip. It was a miracle I didn't fall asleep as soon as I plopped into the car, but I didn't. The convention was a wonderful success and I'm glad to report my health held up nearly the entire time. The new medication seems to be taking to my system. The ability to think through the pain and enjoy so much good company made this feel like another world from the last two months.

If you're in the New England area, I strongly recommend Readercon. It's an excellent small-scale convention with a fiction focus that attracts an impressive number of accomplished and excellent panelists. Scott Lynch and Elizabeth Bear are regulars though had to miss this year; this year saw the premiere of Max Gladstone. There was at least one rep from Crossed Genres and a significant presence of Strange Horizons folk, as well as Tor's Ellen Datlow. It was easy to bump into Kameron Hurley and Peter Straub in the lobby and simply chat with them. You don't get that kind of access and informality with such guests at most cons.

It also led to many fine panels, my favorite being back-to-back discussions of Magic: "Difference Between Magic and Science" and "When the Magic Returns," which contrasted magic and science, and then explored narratives of magic brought into the modern world. Lev Grossman and Max Gladstone were on both line-ups as their incomparably erudite selves, digging into the differences in how we experience our world and expect the magical. Even the greatest technology can feel clunky and exclusionary, whereas magic, with its precious commodity of being fictional, can meet a spiritual need the real world can't.

Julia Sidorova was the most impressive of anyone here for me, a Russian writer positing that technologies like a cell phone are "a science experiment anyone can perform," unifying us as experimenters, and soon openly disagreeing with the guest of honor about our place in evolution. Can you imagine the intelligence and confidence it takes to argue with a guest of honor about the nature of the universe in front of a crowd in a second language? Her approach to science has me hunting for her debut novel.

But the main draw of Readercon was face-time with friends. I skipped several panels simply to hang out in the bar with authors and Viable Paradise graduates, and when I could get up early enough, spent time in the lobby chatting with con-goers. It was a completely different experience from last year's Readercon where I knew few people; knowing folks enables conversations that rapidly expand into clusters. The sad point of this is when other con-goers linger nearby, looking and listening, but can't jump the social hurdle into joining. I know I'm awful at inserting myself into other people's conversations, and you never want to be intrusive. When I could, I'd reach out to such folks. As con-communities, I'm still looking for ways to systematically open us up to more low-key exchanges. Otakon, with its younger demo and enormous attendance, seems more natural at this.

And seeing friends after the crap of the last two months was worth every penny and midnight muscle spasm attack. Mostly I fraternized with Viable Paradise graduates, the first time I've seen several of them since the workshop itself. David Twiddy even organized a massive dinner for professors and grads on Saturday. What a mensch. Events like those enabled my personal highlights, as there's nothing better than getting smart people you like to double over laughing. Jokes about Christ Chex and dinosaur fellatio... well, clearly some of the old me is still around.

There are some sweet photos of highlights, like catching one of my writing mentors in the middle of a magic trick, but this laptop doesn't have an SD card reader. So perhaps another time. For now, I've got to catch up on sleep.

The Purgatory of Illness (and Jokes)

This picture will make more sense
by the end of the essay.

We weren’t sure what was wrong, but this week doctors believed either my body was rejecting all of my medication or I’d had a nervous breakdown. Even if you know nothing about my condition, we can all agree that if you can’t tell which of those two things is wrong, you’re in deep.

If you know nothing of my condition, it’s possibly because I scarcely write about it. It’s never appeared in my fiction, rather drawing me to sympathy and study of the illnesses and disabilities of others. But ever since I was thirteen and the recipient of some radical medical malpractice, I have had a crap immune system and have been in constant pain in every part of my body. Most recently, it began taking my hearing and my ability to focus thought.

If you didn’t know that every time we’ve ever talked I’ve secretly been in pain, it’s because I’ve been conditioning myself since puberty to manage the load. Two months ago, when I could no longer speak in coherent sentences, and when walking to the mailbox became too much of an ordeal for me to imagine (literally: I could no longer think straight enough to envision the trip), pain management was all I had left. Empathy seemed to evaporate from my mind. Beneath compassion, humor and creativity, all I had was the ability to not lose my grip on my body.

Today, I’m proud of that. I’m proud of having held onto that much when my entire nervous system turned against me.

At the time, I had no idea what was going on and felt guilty for bothering so many people about it. This is why The Bathroom Monologues have been particularly quiet for the last two months. I’ve completed no piece of fiction in the entire period; editing a novel became excruciating in ways I wish upon none of you. That little review of X-Men: Days of Future Past went up a week late because it took me an entire week to type that many coherent sentences.

If you’ve made it through those five paragraphs, then please bear with me for this: I don’t want you to apologize for my pain. Some of the worst parts of the last two months have been people frowning and trying to commiserate with me. All it does it perpetuate mood and fatalism.

Instead, join me in regarding the few instances of hope people gave me by being ridiculous. The first time it felt like anything could improve was walking through a Wal-Mart (of all places on earth). Out of the freezer section came a cart, pushed by a teenaged girl in huge, furry boots. Sitting inside the wire cart (not on the baby seat, but lounging inside the food carriage) was another teenaged girl in huge, furry boots, with as demure a grin as grins can allow within their city limits. They were half-grown adults enjoying something ridiculous, chatting about what to put on their Eggos.

I’m pretty that the next time I smiled was in learning someone had the gall to name their band “The Style Council.” Or it was a reclusive friend linking me to the strangest Vines he’d found that month.

Of everyone, my mother was the most worried for me. It’s something moms excel at, isn’t it? Some days she’d invite me out, I think just to give me a change of scenery. Funny to think asking someone to drop off the recycling is altruistic, yet in my easily overwhelmed state, I showed up to the car half an hour late. I was sure she’d be furious, and was prepared to apologize into her frustrations.

Instead she had found a rope swing and was happily spinning around a tree in the yard. She didn’t even hear me come out. She reminded me what a damned good role model is.

This is what I need, and in bulk. Don’t wish me well, and don’t put on grave tones, and don’t say the hardest part is over or is yet to come. I’ll take your prayers (and thank you, Father Andre and David Twiddy – that really did mean something to me), but I’ll also be glad to see you decorating this world with quirks. It reminds me of my purpose.

John Adapts to Having a Cat

So, yesterday was not my day. While I don't want to go into everything that happened yesterday, it began by burying the family cat, Marshal. Spring had softened the ground enough to confer him to earth, and he'd been waiting long enough for it.

Marshal and I were not friends. He was my sister's cat, though she left him with us years ago to move closer to work, in an apartment that forbade pets. I am extremely allergic to animal dander, and above all danders, cat dander is the worst. Lock me in a room with a cat for long enough and I'm dead. That meant that Marshal spent his life in our basement, with a door leading to the outside where he could prowl and menace the squirrel population.

We had to adapt to each other, because often I'd be the only human contact Marshal could even have in a given day. And further, being the eldest male around, I quickly became Marshal's alpha. He would claw and bite the ladies of my family. I still chuckle remembering the one time he bit my foot as I was too slow to bring his food; I knocked two knuckles on the top of his head, soft but swift, and he looked so surprised that there could be comeuppance for his actions. He never bit me again, and starting that night became much more affectionate.

That was a problem for me since I'd get bleeding hives from a cat rubbing on me. I bought plastic gloves to pet him, and in warmer weather would occasionally wear an old blanket so he could sit on my lap for a while. Even that caused severe asthma attacks.

Marshal never understood why he couldn't rub against my leg or sit in my lap like he could on other humans. However, to illustrate the point of Dr. Pavlov, he learned that he wasn't allowed to. Last spring he finally adapted to following me to the deck and sitting underneath my chair, resting in the shade I created. By the end of summer, he was routinely beating me to the chair for his spot.

It was as close as we could be. Sometimes I'd bring fresh copy out to edit, and talk out plotting problems with him. He was a terrible editor, and if he managed to drool on a page I'd have to throw it out. There was something to having another pair of eyes, sapient or no, to look into as I chatted. There was even the benefit of having those eyes attached to a mind that couldn't understand and thus couldn't object to whatever I was saying, permitting me to have company without distraction. He was a good listener.

A person can adapt to a lot.
 

Lit Corner: Where John's Been

Welcome to the last month of my life.

December came with several goals. With better health than November and a few weeks before family returned for the holidays, I decided to finish and submit at least four short stories. It was easy to pick the four, especially the first two: a tiny piece for Apex’s Christmas Flash contest, and a succubus Comedy I brewed up in August. I guarantee if you like my all-dialogue flashes, the succubus story will get you going. It’s the closest thing to Alligators By Twitter that I’ve written in a couple years. Ridiculousness is just in my nature, or too deep in my nurture to dig out.

Both of those stories are already out to markets. The third story is the longest, technically a novelette, and an idea I’ve been struggling to write a good version of for at least five years. There are so many flawed drafts, rewrites and blank slate works alike, that I’ve probably spent more energy word-for-word on this than any of my novels. It wasn't until reading Zelazny's Lord of Light that I hit on the style that really suited the story, but that gave me a white heat and about 14,000 words in one sitting - which I've since cut drastically. It’s a bit of an epilogue to the Magical Girl genre, and a testament to the many ways I’ve felt uncomfortable being so fond of the genre, which I’m calling, “Remember When I Saved the World?”

Thank God the beta readers liked it. It may truly be done. This is the first post-VP piece that my peers have gone over, and they’re a blessing of a group.

This story also got me to watch Madoka Magica, which is a fine piece of trope subversion. I'm thinking of doing a post on my wacky reactions to it, since I was the series-virgin this time, as opposed to our unnamed subject who went blindly into Evangelion. Is that of interest to you, internet?

This leaves me with just one more story to finish, and that project starts today. It is every editor’s least favorite: my totally original take on zombies. Yeah, I can feel Neil Clarke throwing heavy things in my direction already. But it’s an angle on solitude that I don’t see very often and that’s very close to my own life. Besides the zombies and all the Lysol.

Also, at some point I made this.

With those four done, I’ll be able to focus on #bestreads2013 and January. Helene Wecker had to go and write such a magnificent piece of work in The Golem and the Jinni that I’m revising my list of favorite novels, and will probably just let it run long to accommodate. I’m also thinking of doing a separate post about essays and short fiction, as I came across some incredible short pieces this year that don’t feel right to stick next to novels and long comics. What do you say? Maybe “Best Shorts” this Wednesday?

As for January, I have this tradition of starting a new novel every New Years. I’m stuck right now between two possible projects. The first would be rewriting The House That Nobody Built, a task for which my style is now honed enough to handle, and the crits from VP let me know what directions it ought to take.

But the second would be writing more novels in The Last House in the Sky series; those characters were addictive to write about. There’s a certain allure to chasing those thieves across the blown-up world for the rest of my life. Or for the books in the sequence I’ve plotted out. One or the other.

All of this is why the blog has been a little quiet lately. It is, besides shoveling a foot and a half of snow and fending off syndrome tremors, what I’ve been doing with my daily dose of ATP. What have you been up to, internet?

10 Insights From A Fan Who'd Never Seen Evangelion Before

This past weekend I had the distinct privilege of watching Evangelion with someone who had never seen it before. The number of otaku (or nerds in general) who are actually Eva virgins is vanishingly small, and given the series’ controversial reputation, I was eager to see how it played to someone with no strong bias. At first I joked that this ought to be a scientific experiment, but eventually I did make a few notes about her reactions. I've included some of them below, though I've stricken her name in case of angry fanboy avalanche. Here are ten highlights from the marathon:

When you find out what's under those bandages...

1. She actually liked Rei Ayanami, particularly as a counterpart to the angst and hysteric aggression broadcasted by Shinji and Asuka. She was vocally waiting for Rei to “flip her shit” on someone and cackled any time Rei shut Asuka down. As I come from a background of every woman in my life hating Rei, this was highly unexpected.

2. She was surprised to learn the series was nearly twenty years old. The animation holds up exceptionally well, though the Director’s Cut additional scenes are clearly done with a higher budget and different sense of lighting. Gainax’s production values were untouchable, which made the still sequences funnier. It was hard not to joke about them running out of budget at those points.

3. She quickly predicted that the Evas were some version of angels being contained by our technology. By the middle, she also immediately caught the hints that Shinji’s mother had a relationship to EVA-01. It was particularly fun watching her pump her fists in the air when she was proven right.

 

4. She quickly predicted that the angels were actually alien invaders, and that all the voices from SEELE who hid their faces were gods, angels or some other non-human beings. That’s what they get for having their Skype avatars set to 2001: A Space Odyssey monoliths. In hindsight, boy SEELE is weird.

 

5. The hypothesis that the series’ mythological roots are harder to contextualize if you don’t know what the Dead Sea Scrolls are was confirmed. Pre-Wikipedia, I know most fans had no idea what they were. Post-Wikipedia, it still holds.

6. She thought it was “adorable” that I needed other people to tell me Kaworu was gay. I have absolutely no sense about these things. He’s still my favorite character.

I'm sure this is somebody's OTP.

7. I never noticed how the show baited every possible romantic pairing. There is at least one scene to suggest fan-shippable tension between almost every major character, and some of them are just incongruous. You want Shinji/Kaji? Here's a watermelon patch. It is as though Evangelion anticipated Tumblr.

8. The only part of the ending that seriously riled her up was the notion that the “School Comedy” alternate universe might have been what was going on all along. I’d never considered the cop-out of the angels all being a dream. Naturally they aren’t, but her threats to “cut a bitch if this is real” made this splendid.

However, this still earned a well-deserved "What?!!"

9. The rest of the ending, particularly the two-part psychoanalysis episode that takes place almost exclusively inside characters’ heads, didn’t upset her at all. Going into the series she said she knew many people hated how it ended; during the actual ending, she kept shaking her head and decrying anyone who didn’t see how this fit. Indeed, the introspection scenes are heavily precedented across the middle of the series, but I’m not used to hearing people care about that.

10. Her positive reaction to the TV finale made The End of Evangelion movie more interesting. We both disliked it strongly. I’d forgotten how poorly written it is, managing in its first half to be more bombastic and violent-for-show than the TV series, and the second half actually managing to become more pretentious. Her only positive takeaway was a one-sentence suggestion of what the angels actually are, which I agree ought to have been dropped into the series.

- - -

My own first viewing was biased as heck. It reached me at a time in my teens when I was struggling with paternal abandonment, serious health issues, and psychological BS. I may have been the perfect American audience for it, but now, at the decrepit age of 32, it held up as a great show. The pacing was surprisingly strong and it harbored atypically progressive storytelling for an anime, especially one that seems like it’s establishing such an obvious episode formula. It was splendid to go through it with someone who was inexperienced, smart and a good sport. Probably the greatest testament to what the show does is I'm considering re-watching it yet again starting next weekend.

True Stories of John: The Prison Transport

I’d just picked up a friend from the train. Let’s call her Gladys, because it’s a nice name and I don’t want to give her real one out. We rolled down the hill in my little Camry and onto the small concrete bridge. At the end was a stop light, with just one vehicle paused there. It was a white transport, like a short bus for school, but with state and police markings.

Waiting behind them, Gladys and I chatted idly about her job search. We looked around my empty car, to the stone walls that artistically lined either side of the bridge, and at the overcast sky. Anywhere but the police transport in front of us. There was a mix of that awkwardness about looking into other people’s cars, and the intimidation of police.

Eventually the light turned green and the transport remained at the intersection. I frowned at the transport. Then Gladys asked something.

“Is there anybody in there?”

I craned my neck and looked through their rear windows. You could see up the aisle of padded benches. There was no one in sight, even on the driver’s side. I stuck my head out the window and noticed the driver’s side door was open. So was the passenger’s exit. The transport simply sat there, engine off, under the grey light of an overcast day.

“Where do you think they went?” I asked. I didn’t have many ideas.

Gladys shifted in her seat, trying to see over the stone wall to our right. It was only a couple feet away, and only a couple feet high. On the other side was a slope leading to the river. My imagination, being my best friend, and best friends very often playing horrible tricks on you, suggested a serial killer crouched on the other side of the wall, lying in wait for a dumb enough local to get out of his car.

Gladys asked, “Should we wait?”

I didn’t know what to answer. Could you pull around a police transport? Was this a traffic sting? I felt like, at best, I would leave this intersection with a ticket.

The light went yellow, then red. No one came back. No driver, no maniac, no state troopers escorting a convict after letting him take a leak. We sat there behind this hulking vehicle, until the light turned green again.

Gladys developed this magnificent two-face act. She would look at the transport and seem pathetically nervous, then look at me like this was no big deal and I should go. She swapped between the looks dissociative brilliance. No argument had to be made; she quietly convinced me that something awful was waiting around here and we should let it be.

I gave in and pulled us around the left side of the transport. We looked through all the windows. No one was there. The driver’s side door was gaping open, and we could see through to the side of the road and the grassy hill on the other side. I turned us onto the main road and looked down the hill, expecting to see some explanation. There was no one there. We didn’t even see another car on the road for another ten miles.

There was nothing about it in the paper the next day or blotter report that weekend. I asked a couple of people who were in local law enforcement, but nobody knew what I was talking about. I never found out what was going on that day.

Why I Didn't Care About 9/11

9/11 is something I revisit frequently because it's the biggest incident of personal apathy in my life. These experiences are frequent, often occuring during tragedy, but there's been no singular moment as big as that one, and no one where my having the wrong reaction was so obvious in the culture. In the years afterward, I wondered if I wasn't sociopathic, but since then I've had dozens if not hundreds of Americans express similar experiences. And so I'd like to revisit that morning with you today.

In my dorm, the girl across the hall was having a fit that morning. She threw a tantrum over something every morning. I'd woken to her tantrums more often than to my alarm clock.

“They blew up the subway!” I heard. I dismissed it. I showered and readied for class – it was my first day of classes at college.

As I pulled on a t-shirt, I checked CNN.com. It was down. That was a first. I didn’t know sites of that size could go down.

I stopped in the Commons building to check my mail.

There was one cable television on campus, stationed in the Commons building across from the mail room. On my way to check my mail, I found the halls clogged with people. I looked over a boy’s shoulder and watched the plane hit the second tower. It was probably a replay.

I couldn’t move. Not for terror or awe, but because that’s what I felt the room wanted. In social situations I’m keenly aware of what I think is acceptable in the group. In seconds I had all the news the TV had to share; people were dead, these buildings were going down. And I was ready to leave, but no one else was. I only knew that walking away would break an unspoken covenant with these stunned strangers. That was my strongest feeling.

“Bullshit,” I heard from my left. “Bullshit. This is why everyone hates America.”

It was the Eastern European accent of one of my few friends. He was a prickly personality. We’d met during a Shakespeare workshop. When I confessed to the work shoppers that I’d taken it because I found his works unbearably stilted and desired understanding, everyone but him stared. He laughed his ass off.

Now he was cursing his ass off in two languages. His face scoured all the silent Americans, seeking argument. Most eyes remained on the TV, but some shifted with indignation. It grew hotter without the temperature going up.

I touched his shoulder. He tensed as though to clock me, but I spoke before he could ball up a hand.

“Why don’t you tell me about this?” I asked. It was all tone; I don’t really know what I meant. I only knew that the attacks on TV were raw voyeurism, and that this was an act of violence I could actually prevent. My tone of voice engaged him enough to follow me into the mail room. There, he was completely unable to articulate what offended him. Something to do with our media and our excessive self-pity. After two minutes of spitting and spinning in place, he departed for class. So did I.

Since then I've thought that if I had been at the Twin Towers or the Pentagon, I would have been furious to help, to run into the buildings and grab someone. It was distance that made my attention useless. Here, I was a little useful. Both the desire to pretend to be solemn for strangers and to save my friend from a fistfight were uses for me. These items I felt things about; the towers meant nothing beyond their effects on people around me, who in turn needed things.

Our first day of classes wound up canceled. I sat in the classroom, greeting my fellow students and letting them know what had happened and where to go for more information. In half an hour, I went to the lawn for the dean’s little speech. I spent hours lending shoulders for people to cry on. I knew enough to get out of the way of kids whose relatives might actually be in those towers, and enough to check up that no more attacks had happened. Once it seemed certain that it had ended with the fourth plane, my mind actually shifted to thoughts that if I could write a book about this fast enough I might ride it to publication. I knew enough to chastise myself for the thought, even though I didn’t feel shame.

There was no fear for myself or country. I knew enough to go stolid when others came around, to mimic being affected, because that's what crowds wanted. I knew enough not to say a lot of things. I wondered if everyone around me was acting, or if the majority possessed empathy I lacked. Was I fundamentally broken? Or were they all going through imitation shock, out of the same social instinct that had kept me glued to the TV room?

Several anniversaries later, I’m still not comfortable with this feature about myself. I've been in this extremely pragmatic and dispassionate head space for break-ups, family tragedies and deaths. For literary rejections and my own body falling apart. In most instances I know enough to do well even when I don't feel empathy or emotional inspiration. 9/11 was simply the biggest example, because it's still this cultural crucible that's supposed to show the best and worst of humanity. I keep hearing it was supposed to.