372. About Storytelling: Lampshading

Posted on July 10, 2015 by Adam Stück

How do you make something more obvious?

You put a lampshade on it, of course. Observe.

In fiction, there are sometimes implausible elements or plot holes that can’t be resolved by the author of the story. How can a storyteller respond to such a thing? That’s easy! The author can simply acknowledge the thing, whatever it is, and then move on.

Of course, this doesn’t fix the thing, but it reassures the audience that the storyteller is aware of it. By drawing attention to the thing—putting a lampshade on it, figuratively speaking—the author can dispense with it and get on with the story. This technique is called lampshade hanging or simply lampshading.

Lampshading is a great technique for writers because, sooner or later, most of us run into plot holes, clichés, or other issues we simply can’t fix. By lampshading those things, we don’t make them go away, but we at least make them easier to swallow.

This is such a notable technique that the logo of TV Tropes, a website that catalogs tricks and tropes used by storytellers, has a literal lampshade hung on it.

One of my favorite examples of lampshading comes from Monk, a television show about an obsessive-compulsive private detective. Many detective stories, including Monk, constantly kill off minor characters in order to give the detectives murders to solve. It really stretches the story’s credibility after a while. After all, in real life, people aren’t ingeniously murdered left and right as they are in detective stories.

In Monk, murders and mysteries abound. Everywhere the detective goes, people die. The show never explains this implausible fact, but one episode lampshades it hilariously. After yet another murder victim turns up, the show’s detective, Adrian Monk, has the following conversation with his assistant Natalie and a police officer, Captain Stottlemeyer.

Natalie: Everywhere you go, every time you turn around, somebody is killing somebody else.

Captain Stottlemeyer: That’s true.

Monk: What?

Captain Stottlemeyer: Well, there was the time you went on vacation, and then on the airplane.

Monk: These things happen.

Captain Stottlemeyer: Oh, and then that that stage play.

Monk: It happens.

Natalie: To you! Not to me, not to anybody else. It follows you around. You’re not just unlucky, it’s—it’s something else.

Monk: Bad karma?

Natalie: You’re like a magnet.

Captain Stottlemeyer: Bad karma.

Natalie: It’s like you’re causing it somehow. You’re the Prince of Darkness!

Captain Stottlemeyer: No, he’s not the Prince of Darkness. I’ve seen him vacuuming the ceiling. You wouldn’t see the Prince of Darkness doing that.

Natalie: No, I can picture the Prince of Darkness vacuuming the ceiling, to trick us. He’s very tricky.

Monk: Stop calling me the Prince of Darkness! That’s how rumors get started.

Monk’s tendency to show up wherever murders happen doesn’t make sense, and the show never explains it. By simply acknowledging it, however, the show makes this unbelievable fact a little easier to accept.

Another superb use of lampshading comes from Doctor Who, the enduring British series about a time-traveling wanderer-hero. This show practically wrote the book on lampshading. I can’t find the quote, but I remember one of the show’s writers stating that the plot holes in Doctor Who are explained by the time travel in the show and the resulting butterfly effect. That’s fifty years of plot holes lampshaded by a single statement. Most impressive.

My favorite example of lampshading from Doctor Who is the Tenth Doctor’s explanation of time travel, which posits that time is not a straight line of cause and effect, but “more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey… stuff.”

This isn’t an explanation. It’s a statement lampshading the fact that time travel in Doctor Who doesn’t really make sense. We should all just assume that time travel is too difficult for humans to comprehend, leave it in the clever hands of the Doctor, and dismiss any narrative inconsistencies with the words “wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey.”

If you’re writing fiction, and you’re stuck in an unavoidable plot hole or cliché, consider acknowledging it and getting on with your story. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get this lampshade off my head.

Steven Universe

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Adam Stück

I still think all people of Earth should watch Gravity Falls.

…And when they’ve done that, they should watch Steven Universe. I’m just saying.

371. Ladies in Fantasy Fiction Need Better Armor

Posted on July 6, 2015 by Adam Stück

I’m no expert, but I’ve noticed a difference between armor for men and women in fantasy fiction: men wear more of it.

I’m no feminist, but I do believe in treating people with decency and respect. I’m also fairly pragmatic. Most female armor in fantasy fiction isn’t respectful or decent, and pragmatic it most certainly is not.

Here, for example, are male and female warriors from one of the Dragon Quest video games. In the game, they have exactly the same role on the battlefield. Is unreasonable to expect them to wear roughly the same armor?

In the picture above, the male warrior gets a padded tunic over mail hauberk, along with leather gauntlets, a sturdy helm, a kite shield, and articulated armor plating for his legs. The female warrior, by contrast, gets a tiny mail blouse, half a mail skirt, and random bits of plate armor on her arms and legs.

There are several problems here.

The most glaring issue is sexism, of course. It just ain’t fair for male characters to be fully armored while female characters wear swimsuits. (I’ve touched upon this before.) It exemplifies the concept known as the male gaze: the way visual arts often assume the viewer is male. The male gaze ogles female characters or puts them in revealing clothes, like the chain mail swimsuit above. It’s insulting to women.

(For those ready with the “fantasy fiction is not supposed to be realistic” arguments, I believe at least a small amount of realism makes fiction more believable. If a woman wears dangerously revealing armor, there had better be a good reason for it! For those ready with the “you should stop taking everything so seriously” arguments, I don’t believe fiction is a valid excuse for sexism or double standards.)

This is not, however, a blog post about sexism. Nah, today’s post provides a more pragmatic rationale for giving female characters better armor: the kinds of armor worn by most female characters in fantasy fiction would get them killed.

Let’s take armor styles one at a time.

The chain mail bikini

It was challenging to find a picture illustrating this style of armor that wasn’t NSFTMTF. (For those who don’t know, NSFTMTF stands for Not Safe For Typewriter Monkey Task Force: a designation covering vulgar language, extreme violence, sexually explicit material, and any media related to Kristen Stewart or Justin Beiber.) Even the picture above pushes the boundaries of good taste.

The chain mail bikini describes any style of armor that (sometimes barely) covers only the naughty bits of a lady’s anatomy. I need hardly describe the practical difficulties of such armor. It exposes vital organs such as the stomach and lungs, providing practically no protection whatsoever. More often than not, what little armor is worn looks like it could fall off at any moment. High heels, which are often worn with chain mail bikinis, don’t allow for quick movement or proper balance.

Are there benefits to chain mail bikinis? I’m really reaching here, but I suppose they could offer good mobility, and might prove distracting to enemies.

Nah. Who am I kidding? Chain mail bikinis are completely useless.

The boob plate

As the name suggests, the boob plate is a breastplate with breasts.

Opinions are divided on the usefulness of the boob plate, but the most logical view is that it would probably kill you.

You see, armor doesn’t merely shield the body from sharp or spiky things. It also deflects the force of blows from weapons. A blow from, say, a club will do far less damage if it glances off a breastplate than if it strikes it squarely. In other words, armor is meant to deflect blows, not to absorb them.

The problem with boob plates is that they wouldn’t necessarily deflect blows away from the chest. They could also deflect them inward, funneling them into the cleavage between the breasts—and right into the wearer’s breastbone. Even if a weapon didn’t penetrate the armor, it could fracture the wearer’s sternum. Flipping heck, even falling forward could slam the ridge of metal separating the breasts into the breastbone, breaking it.

As it happens, people who wore armor usually wore padding beneath it, so a woman’s chest would probably be wrapped or padded and wouldn’t require a form-fitting breastplate in the first place.

The battle dress

A battle dress is a dress worn into battle. Like the boob plate, it’s fairly self-explanatory.

I applaud the battle dress for being less blatantly sexist than other styles of female armor… but it still gets low marks for practicality. Long skirts and dresses have the same problem as capes in The Incredibles: they get caught on stuff. A woman can hardly run, ride a horse, or vault over bushes in a dress. Sooner or later, it will snag on something.

Besides, dresses offer no protection… unless they have chain mail or plate armor sewn into them. Then, unless the armored sections are kept close to the body, such weighted dresses are even more likely to snag on stuff. Besides, any heavy part of the dress left hanging, such as a skirt or long sleeve, impedes movement by swinging awkwardly.

The sensible armor

The armor in the picture above isn’t perfectly practical—it should lose the flowing skirt, and the breastplate really ought to cover more of the abdomen—but it isn’t bad. (I would cut off the braid and add a helmet, but what do I know?) The shoulders, chest, and legs are protected, leaving the arms free and allowing bend at the waist for wielding so large an axe. The armor also looks awesome as all heck.

Women can wear more or less the same styles of armor as men, with minor adjustments for shoulder width. Even adding a slight outward bulge for breasts is fine, provided it doesn’t include the sternum-shattering cleavage mentioned above; a gentle convex curve can deflect blows as well as anything. Designing sensible female armor doesn’t have to be that difficult.

Is impractical lady armor ever appropriate in fiction? I suppose it has its place, such as in comedic tales and parodies of fantasy fiction. In more serious stories, styles of lady armor which would be useless in battle could be used for ceremonial purposes: parades, coronations, etc.

In the end, however, I think practical armor is definitely the best way to go.

370. Jesus Is Offensive

Posted on July 3, 2015 by Adam Stück

The US Supreme Court recently legalized gay marriage nationwide. Today’s blog post actually has very little to do with that, and much more to do with the sudden, blinding proliferation of rainbows across the Internet.

My eyes! MY EYES!

Rainbows are a symbol of the LGBT community. Following the Supreme Court’s decision, they began appearing everywhere on the Internet. Facebook was overrun by rainbows, and my Twitter feed would have given Joseph’s many-colored coat a run for its money. Flipping heck, even my blogging site, WordPress, replaced its usual monochromatic theme with a rainbow-colored one.

(On a vaguely related note, I recommend listening to the Rainbow Road soundtrack while reading the rest of this blog post.)

With rainbows suddenly popping up all over the Internet, I signed back on to Twitter to make a joke about them. I planned to say something goofy and innocent, something like: “The rainbows! They’re everywhere! Where are my shades? Ah, it’s too late! My eyes! MY EYES!”

However, as I typed out the joke, I hesitated. My comment wasn’t bitter or celebratory or controversial. It wasn’t anything but silly, but I couldn’t help worrying that it would ruffle someone’s feathers. Gay marriage is such a touchy subject that I was reluctant to mention it, even in the most lighthearted way. In the end, I remained silent.

(By the way, I thought about discussing the legalization of gay marriage in this blog post, but everything I want to say has been said much more eloquently by another blogger. Whatever your stance on gay marriage, I recommend reading her blog post; it’s a sensible, compassionate take on recent events. I’ve already discussed my own views on homosexuality on this blog, so I won’t repeat myself here.)

My reluctance to discuss gay marriage in even the most lighthearted way was an uncomfortable reminder that I selfishly want to be liked. I don’t want to offend anyone, even if it means keeping my views and thoughts and beliefs to myself. If being honest or insightful offends others, I’ll settle for being funny or clever.

This is a problem, because I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and he offends practically everybody.

In his lifetime, Jesus offended religious people; today, Jesus offends nonreligious people. The religious leaders in his day despised him every bit as much as many atheists do today. Jesus Christ has never been politically correct. He condemned not only sin and faithlessness, but pride and religious hypocrisy. In the end, the people who orchestrated his execution were religious authorities, not secular ones.

If I insist on following Jesus Christ, it will be only a matter of time before I offend someone. As a follower of Christ, I must believe that truth is absolute, even in our pluralistic, postmodern culture. I must believe that some things are not okay, however widely they may be accepted or celebrated. To wit, I must not compromise my beliefs, even when they offend people—and sooner or later, they will.

That’s hard for me to accept. I hate upsetting others. I really want to be liked by everyone. Offending others for any reason makes me feel like a deplorable jerk.

It all begs the question: Do I believe Jesus Christ is worth the risk of annoying, upsetting, or alienating people? Is the Christian faith, which is built upon loving others, worth offending some of them?

I believe it is.

Of course, I’ll do my best not to be a jerk. I can definitely be a jerk sometimes.

As it happens, this is one of my favorite shirts. I wonder what that says about me.

Jesus Christ offends people, but he is not a jerk. In his lifetime, even when flipping tables and railing against sin and hypocrisy, Jesus acted with the utmost of intentions. He loved people, all people, crooks and prostitutes included, without ever compromising his convictions or beliefs—and yes, he offended people. He still does.

I will offend someone at some point. I must come to terms with that fact, while doing my best never to be a jerk, and to be as kind and accepting as I can.

That said, after a week of seeing rainbows flipping everywhere on the Internet, my eyes are really starting to hurt. I’m thinking I should invest in some shades.

God Is Sarcastic

Posted on July 1, 2015 by Adam Stück

“What is the way to the abode of light? And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!”

~ Job 38:19-21

I’m often sarcastic, but that’s okay. God is sarcastic, too.

In the book of Job, God allows a righteous man to be tormented as a test of faith. It’s a paradoxical book, at once uplifting in showing the ultimate power and benevolence of God, and disturbing in depicting a God who allows a good person to suffer without any explanation. I’ve already said a thing or two about Job, and there’s more I could say, but for now I’ll simply point out how the book of Job proves that God can be really sarcastic.

Job spends most of the book arguing with his friends, defending his innocence as they accuse him of wrongdoing. If Job were innocent, they reason, why would God allow him to suffer? Job isn’t impressed by their arguments, and he proves to be quite sarcastic himself: “How you have helped the powerless!” he snaps in the twenty-sixth chapter. “How you have saved the arm that is feeble! What advice you have offered to one without wisdom! And what great insight you have displayed! Who has helped you utter these words? And whose spirit spoke from your mouth?”

Job’s biting sarcasm is surpassed only by God himself, who shows up a few chapters later. God doesn’t offer explanations or answer Job’s questions. Instead, he emphasizes his own absolute power and wisdom. However incomprehensible God seems, he knows what he’s doing. It’s not a terribly satisfying answer, but it’s enough for Job, and the book ends on a happier note with Job’s life restored.

God’s response to Job seems really harsh, especially when the Almighty gets sarcastic. After asking Job a long series of unanswerable questions, he adds, “Surely you know, for you were already born! You have lived so many years!” His sarcasm only emphasizes how little Job—or any human being, for that matter—can comprehend of God’s nature.

There’s another lesson here: God uses sarcasm, which I cheerfully accept as license to be as sarcastic as I like. After all, Christians are commanded to be like God: Jesus Christ said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

In other words, by being sarcastic, I’m obeying the all-important commandment to be like God. Sarcasm is my moral and religious duty.

No, I’m not being serious. Yes, I’m being sarcastic, but not from any sense of religious obligation. Please don’t bombard me with angry emails or heavy stones! After all, it’s important to have a sense of humor, for as Jon Acuff reminds us, “Laughter is a gift from God. If we take it for granted and act like Christians can’t be funny, he’ll take it back. Like the unicorns.”

369. Review Roundup: Fairy Tale Edition

Posted on June 29, 2015 by Adam Stück

Once upon a time, in the faraway land of Indiana, Adam the blogger enjoyed a number of whimsical stories and contemporary fairy tales. Here are his impressions of three animated films, a video game, and an anime: Inside Out, Brave, Brother Bear, Ni No Kuni, and Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun.

These are the stories of a plucky princess, an Inuit tribesman, a brave little boy, a Japanese manga artist, and the personifications of a girl’s emotions. Do they live happily ever after?

Let’s find out.

Inside Out

Inside Out brought me closer to weeping openly in a movie theater than any other film has done. (Fortunately, I have a heart of stone, sparing myself and my younger brother the embarrassment of annoying our fellow theatergoers.) This is a brilliant movie, and I have literally nothing bad to say about it.

Pixar’s Inside Out pictures the human mind as a control room operated by five engineers, each representing an emotion: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear, and Disgust. In the mind of Riley, a girl from Minnesota, her emotions struggle to keep her happy as she moves with her parents to California. When an accident sends Joy and Sadness to the farthest reaches of Riley’s mind, these unlikely partners must make it back to the control center before Riley breaks down.

This film boasts the usual Pixar polish, with top-notch animation, writing, and performances. Beyond that, Inside Out is the first Pixar movie in years to feature a truly original concept. (Of the past four Pixar films, two were sequels, one was a prequel, and one had the style of a traditional fairy tale—more on that last one in just a bit.) The movie’s concept of the mind is creative, clever, and—importantly—consistent. The way the mind works in Inside Out isn’t hard to understand, and the film does a fine job of sticking to it.

As I hinted above, this is a film with emotional punch. Pixar has a gift for depicting emotion with heartfelt sincerity and simplicity: Carl’s irritable despondency in Up, the toys’ sense of loss in Toy Story 3, Mike’s resignation to his limitations in Monsters University. Inside Out is quite literally a film about emotions, so you can bet it hits the viewer—at any rate, this viewer—with feels.

This is pretty much how I felt at the end of the film.

Inside Out is a fantastic film. Somewhere deep inside my mind, my sense of Joy is fiddling with whatever knobs and buttons affect my actions, willing me to recommend this film. Watch it. Your own sense of Joy will thank you.

Brave

Here’s another Pixar classic, this time telling the age-old story of a princess who falls in love with a prince and—what’s that? She doesn’t fall in love with a prince? Well, that’s different.

Brave is an original fairy tale. Set in Scotland, it tells the tale of a princess named Merida, who decides she doesn’t want to let her parents marry her off to any of the local chieftains’ sons. Merida tries to change her fate… and accidentally transforms her mother into a bear. Mother and daughter must shelve their pride, settle their differences, and somehow make things right.

The film’s independent, self-reliant heroine is a refreshing change of pace from the mild princesses of other fairy-tale movies, and I appreciate the way the Merida and her mother learn to understand, respect, and trust each other. Merida’s family is a colorful bunch. Even the chieftains and their sons, who could easily have been throwaway characters, have some personality.

As a Pixar movie, Brave doesn’t feel particularly, well, brave. It’s a fairy tale. Even with its feminist undertones and emphasis on family relationships, it treads a lot of familiar ground. It’s a fine film nevertheless, and I appreciate it as a deeper alternative to the princess-flavored romances Disney loves so much.

By the way, does the Scottish setting of Brave give anyone else flashbacks to How to Train Your Dragon? No? I guess it’s just me, then.

Brother Bear

Here’s another animated movie about people turning into bears. Why do people keep turning into bears? I just can’t bear it. (I’m so, so sorry.)

Brother Bear is a Disney animated film from the early two thousands: that nebulous stretch of Disney history whose movies nobody remembers. In the film, an Inuit tribesman named Kenai seeks revenge on a bear that killed a loved one, and is turned into a bear for his trouble. He must go on a quest, and learn the power of love, and—y’know, forget it. If you’ve ever seen a Disney film, you know where this is going.

This is not a bad movie. The Canadian wilderness is a great setting, and Inuit culture is largely unexplored in pop fiction. The acting, animation, and story were all perfectly adequate. I just couldn’t help feeling that this film didn’t really need to be made. Brother Bear is an uninspired blend of other Disney movies. Its plot borrows heavily from The Emperor’s New Groove: a man turned into an animal finds a buddy and goes on a trip to regain his (literal and figurative) humanity. The film’s music channels the soundtrack of Tarzan, down to a song from Phil Collins. It’s all been done before.

Brother Bear does have its moments. A couple of moose with heavy Canadian accents wander in and out of the movie, providing comic relief and stealing every scene in which they appear. The movie lacks a traditional villain, which is a refreshing change from Disney’s usual black-and-white morality.

In the end, however, Brother Bear is nothing special. I recommend The Emperor’s New Groove instead: pretty much the same story, but much funnier.

Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch

Flipping heck, this game is amazing. I’ve already discussed the excellence of Ni No Kuni, so I’ll try not to ramble!

Ni No Kuni is a beautiful fairy tale. (It also happens to be a JRPG for the PlayStation 3.) It tells the story of Oliver, a little boy who sets out on a quest to save his mum. Accompanied by Drippy, the “Lord High Lord of the Fairies,” Oliver must mend broken hearts, defeat an evil jinn, and rescue a parallel world.

That world is one of the most charming and beautiful places I’ve seen in a video game. The look of Ni No Kuni was based on the work of the legendary Studio Ghibli, which handled the game’s animated cutscenes. This a lovely game. Apart from the cutscenes, which are nothing less than I expected of the Oscar-winning animation studio, the game itself is gorgeous.

I mean, look at it. Just look at it.

This is a gameplay screenshot, not an animated cutscene. This is what the game looks like. Ain't it pretty?

This is a gameplay screenshot. This is what the game looks like, more or less. Ain’t it pretty?

Ni No Kuni is visually appealing, but its excellence doesn’t stop there. The music, composed by renowned film composer Joe Hisaishi and performed by a live orchestra, is fantastic. Most importantly, the game is flipping fun to play.

The gameplay blends the fighting and adventuring of Final Fantasy games and the creature-catching of Pokémon. Oliver and his companions command familiars, adorable monsters that handle most of the fighting. Like Pokémon, familiars can be caught, trained, and metamorphosed into stronger creatures. Outside of battle, exploration is fun and sidequests abound.

Ni No Kuni even includes the full text of an original book, The Wizard’s Companion, which contains maps, spells, descriptions of familiars, old-fashioned illustrations, runes to decipher, and fairy tales. Yes, this fairy tale contains fairy tales of its own, and they’re delightful. In fact, The Wizard’s Companion is so good that I wish I owned a hard copy. As Oliver travels, he gathers the book’s scattered pages, unlocking more reading material.

Alas, Ni No Kuni is not quite perfect. It’s hard to read The Wizard’s Companion on a television screen, and flipping through its pages is a pain.

By far the biggest flaw of Ni No Kuni is its ending. Without spoiling anything, I must admit that it feels tacked on. The game reaches a satisfying conclusion, with Oliver reaching his goal and finishing his character arc… and then the game goes on for another four to six hours, limping doggedly to an anticlimax. Although the game’s final chapter answers some lingering questions, a little rewriting would have tied up those loose ends sooner, giving the game a stronger finish.

Despite its weak ending, this game is one of the finest I’ve ever played. RPGs aren’t for everyone, but for anyone with the patience, Ni No Kuni is a gem.

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun

I can’t decide whether Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is a heartwarming parody or a self-aware romantic comedy. Either way, it’s brilliant.

In Japan, there is a genre of manga (comics) called shojo. This genre is aimed at teenage girls, generally focusing on romance and emotional characters. Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun is the story of a high school student named Sakura. When she tries to confess romantic feelings for Nozaki, one of her classmates, he mistakes her for a fan of his work. You see, Nozaki—an analytical, unromantic wet blanket—is secretly the writer and artist behind a popular shojo manga series, Let’s Fall in Love. When Nozaki invites Sakura to be his assistant, she agrees, hoping to get closer to him.

This twelve-episode series is a hilarious deconstruction of romantic comedies. The eponymous Nozaki-kun is intrigued by romance, but only from an academic point of view. For example, he loves St. Valentine’s Day, but only because observing romantic couples gives him ideas for his manga series. The thought of actually being romantic never crosses his mind. This makes for some delightful moments when Sakura is convinced he is finally falling in love with her… only to realize he’s testing out ideas for his manga.

For example, Nozaki realizes it’s romantic for a man and woman to share a bicycle, but he doesn’t understand why. He tests the scenario repeatedly with Sakura, eventually acquiring a tandem bike and riding down city streets with Sakura reluctantly in tow. Once he figures out the most romantic method for sharing a bike, he reasons, he can use it in his story for optimal effect.

This is romantic, right? Right?!

As Sakura becomes acquainted with Nozaki and his other assistants, she realizes how much of his manga is based on people she knows. For example, the heroine of Let’s Fall in Love is based on Mikoshiba, a flirtatious male friend of Nozaki’s who is secretly very insecure.

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun deconstructs rom-com clichés, yet the series is never bitter or mean-spirited. I was also pleasantly surprised by the show’s family-friendly tone. Japanese anime is notorious for its inappropriate content. As I began this anime about high school romance, I resigned myself to the saucy innuendos and panty shots that plague other series. Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun rises above cheap lewdness, keeping things at a PG level. I found the show’s innocence added to its charm, which is already considerable.

Like many anime, this one offers fascinating glimpses into Japanese culture. I was particularly interested by the creative process of writing and drawing manga, which is gradually shown in the series as Nozaki enlists more assistants.

I highly recommend Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun to anyone who likes anime or romantic comedies. I’m not a particular fan of either, yet I really enjoyed it.

What books, films, shows, or video games have you enjoyed lately? Let us know in the comments!

368. Ten Steps to Being a Writer

Posted on June 26, 2015 by Adam Stück

I had planned to publish a longer post today, but unforeseen complications (read: typewriter monkeys) prevented me from writing one. Instead, here are ten essential steps to being a writer. (I originally shared them on Twitter some time ago.) I’ll do my best to publish a proper blog post next time. For now, dear reader, consider these steps, and write your way to success!

Step 1: Wear glasses. I’ve mastered this step.

Step 2: Acquire a computer, typewriter, pen, or Etch A Sketch pad.

Step 3: Obtain a comfortable chair. Nothing kills creativity like cramps.

Step 4: Write. This is the hardest step.

Step 5: Submit your writing, face rejections, weep, revise, repeat.

Step 6: Become dependent upon an addictive substance. Mine is coffee. (Disclaimer: Don’t really do this.)

Step 7: Be grateful to your readers. Don’t skip this step.

Step 8: Be jealous of better writers. If none are better than you, congratulations: You are P.G. Wodehouse.

Step 9: If you think your writing is never good enough, you’re probably doing it right.

Step 10: Profit. Unless you’re a religious writer, in which case: Prophet.

What are your best writing tips? Let us know in the comments!

President Obama, Anime Fan

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Adam Stück

Oh, the Internet. Its wonders never cease.

It has become a running joke on the Internet that Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America, is a hardcore otaku obsessed with manga and anime. (For the sensible readers who keep a safe distance from geek culture: an otaku is an obsessive geek, manga is a style of Japanese comics, and anime is a kind of Japanese animation.) The Internet, in its vast and incomprehensible wisdom, has given the US President a fierce love of all things geeky and Japanese. His obsession with anime has been duly documented in a long series of (digitally altered) photos and GIFs.

Politics is a touchy subject. I know people who admire President Obama; I know people who think he might be the Antichrist. When it comes to a subject as volatile as the US president, it’s nice to see geeky jokes for a change instead of arguments, accusations, and insults.

Although his love of anime is just an Internet joke, President Obama did thank Japan (on behalf of America’s young people) for manga and anime. I swear I am not making this up.

367. Notes from the Road

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Adam Stück

Well, I’m back.

My journey to Wisconsin was refreshing, wonderful, exhilarating, highly caffeinated, occasionally uncomfortable, and a smashing success. Here, in no particular order, are some of my thoughts from the trip.

The pastor who invited me to speak at his church is a really cool dude.

Rev Kev, the pastor who invited me to Wisconsin, is a tough-looking dude with epic tattoos, pierced ears, manly stubble, and massive biceps. He could probably have snapped my spine with his bare hands.

Fortunately, the good Reverend turned out to be a true gentleman and total geek. He and his family—which included a dog, three cats, and a colorful assortment of friends and honorary family members—were welcoming and kind. I was treated not as a guest, but as a friend.

Rev Kev has an amazing story. One of the highlights of my trip was sitting in his dining room, drinking coffee and listening to his testimony. His faith and story inspire me.

In other news, Rev Kev has a wonderful church office. Surrounded by Star Wars and comic book posters, a large plastic Hulk stands on his desk, wielding an Adam West Batman action figure like a club. ’Nuff said.

My only concern about the good Reverend is that he might be a Sith Lord. No doctrine in Christianity states a person can’t be a Sith and a pastor, but I still consider it cause for concern.

I drank a lot of coffee.

For all my jokes about coffee, I do really love the stuff. In two days of traveling, I drank roughly eight cups of brewed coffee, two bottled frappuccinos, a latte, and a double shot of espresso. I also drank a masala chai tea latte, because variety is important.

I ate the best burger I’ve ever eaten.

My humble road trip was transformed into a glorious pilgrimage by a quick stop at a tiny burger shack called Wedl’s. This burger vendor serves such good food that it was featured on the Travel Channel. Wedl’s grills its burgers on a skillet that has been in use for nearly a century.

A drunk driver once totaled Wedl’s and broke its skillet. Fortunately for all of humankind, the shattered skillet was repaired. Just as the broken shards of Narsil were reforged into Andúril in The Lord of the Rings, so Wedl’s skillet was restored to its divinely-appointed purpose of grilling tasty burgers.

Rev Kev and I discussed the legend of Wedl’s skillet, weaving a story of how the skillet’s greasy shards were held by a weeping maiden in a lonely meadow, only for a kingly elf to ride up on a stallion and pledge to restore it. He worked in secret, reforging the skill on a magical anvil, his furnaces blazing hotter than ten thousand suns—and it was done. Wedl’s skillet was resurrected, and its noble work continues to this day.

When I bit into my Wedl’s burger, my reaction was pretty much the same as Samuel L. Jackson’s in Pulp Fiction, but roughly seven hundred percent more excited.

Wisconsin has beautiful scenery.

On my way home, I following winding roads past green hills, lovely woods, and beautiful streams. It was fantastic. Indiana occasionally has nice scenery, but approximately ninety-six percent of the state is covered by cornfields. What I saw of southern Wisconsin was breathtaking.

I don’t know how I lived without a GPS.

As usual, I seem to be a decade or two behind everyone else in my generation when it comes to technology. I finally acquired a GPS, and it is amazing. It made traveling so, so much easier. My GPS, GLaDOS, is a gift of God.

Hell has a tenth circle, and its name is Chicago.

As much as I appreciate my GPS, I must quote its namesake, GLaDOS from the Portal games: “Remember when you tried to kill me twice? Oh, how we laughed and laughed, except I wasn’t laughing.” My GPS made two attempts to murder me by taking me through Chicago going and coming back.

I have an embarrassing fear of city driving. (My decision to buy a GPS in the first place was prompted by a stressful visit to Fort Wayne.) For all my travels, I haven’t done much driving in big cities, and I have long made a point of staying away from Chicago. Unfortunately, my GPS took me through Chicago twice.

The Chicago freeways were vast rivers of faded asphalt, channeling streams of vehicles over, under, and through an arid wasteland of concrete, weeds, and rusting metal. The summer sun blazed overhead. (My car lacks air conditioning.) The traffic was predictably slow. My trips through Chicago were all sweat, noise, fumes, desperate prayers, and hopes for the sweet release only death could bring.

This brings me to my next point.

It did me good to work through some of my anxieties.

Besides my fear of city driving, I’m stressed out by traveling alone, public speaking, and prolonged social commitments. My trip to Wisconsin consisted of driving hundreds of miles by myself, hanging out with new people for hours on end, and speaking in front of a church congregation.

My anxieties are silly and irrational, but also very real. I was forced to confront them, and I lived to tell the tale. As George Orwell wrote, “You have talked so often of going to the dogs—and well, here are the dogs, and you have reached them, and you can stand it. It takes off a lot of anxiety.” I survived my anxieties, and that’s encouraging.

It was nice to get away from my typewriter monkeys.

For two glorious days, I didn’t see a single banana peel, hear a single explosion, or smell a single whiff of burning apartment. It was nice.

Now that the trip to Wisconsin is done, what’s next? I wish I knew. I suppose I’ll resume my quiet, caffeinated, day-to-day life, and daydream about my next road trip.

366. TMTF Hits the Road!

Posted on June 12, 2015 by Adam Stück

Meet Eliezer.

Eliezer is my car. My old vehicle, an ailing car called Tribulation, began to show signs of imminent death a long time ago. When my older brother sold me his car before moving with his family to the Dominican Republic, I christened it Eliezer—which means God is my help—in the hope that my newer car would prove to be more dependable than my old one, which repeatedly lived up to its name.

Tomorrow Eliezer and I will journey from Berne, Indiana, to Jefferson, Wisconsin. A reader of this blog has invited me to speak at his church. Although I’m baffled that any pastor would deliberately inflict me on his congregation, I’m honored to accept his invitation. I’ll tell a few stories, read from the Gospel of Mark, and discuss C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien, because that is how I roll.

I won’t lie: I love road trips, but they scare me. I felt less much anxious flying halfway across the world by myself than I feel driving long distances alone. When I flew to and from Uruguay and South Korea, in spite of all complications, all I had to do was board the right planes. If anything had gone wrong before or during the flight, I could have simply sat back and let someone else fix it.

When I go on road trips by myself, however, I’m responsible for everything. I’m on my own if anything goes wrong. Having faced car trouble repeatedly in the past few years, I’m nervous as heck.

Fortunately, this time, I’ll have some new equipment: my first ever GPS unit, which I’ve christened GLaDOS. I’ll also take along my usual assortment of traveling items: apples, coffee, iPod, headphones, and an emergency hard copy of driving directions. (I’m not sure I trust GLaDOS.)

My typewriter monkeys will remain at home. That said, I hope I still have a home when I get back. (I trust GLaDOS considerably more than I trust my monkeys.)

I’ll spend quite a lot of time on the road, and I have a number of other commitments, so I’ll be taking a one-week break from this blog. TMTF shall return on Monday, June 22… assuming I survive the trip.

I probably won’t update TMTF during the break, not even to recycle old posts. Fortunately, this is the Internet, and it has all kinds of cool people doing cool stuff. Here are my recommendations for cool sites to check out while TMTF is on break.

As always, Amy Green and Thomas Mark Zuniga have great blogs; if you haven’t checked them out, I recommend ’em very highly. My friend JK Riki just began a site about creativity and inspiration, and it’s off to a good start! If you like movies, Honest Trailers is an awesome (if occasionally off-color) series of trailers mocking popular films. (There are also Honest Trailers for video games, because this is the Internet.) Finally, the animator who made the lovely animation for TMTF’s three-hundredth post has a webcomic I finally got around to reading: Cyn Wolf, a comic about a cynical wolf and some quirky dogs. I really enjoyed it.

Now I should finish packing for tomorrow’s trip. If you’re a person who prays, I’ll be most grateful for your prayers this weekend as I travel, speak, and (I hope) make it home alive.

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back!

…Probably.