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              It’s always been interesting to me that so many people could be confronted with so many hard facts, and yet decided simply to ignore them. The facts must be wrong. We are now living in a time where facts have the amazing ability to have an agenda.               

              Being a mere mortal on this Earth and not having studied history as extensively as would be necessary, I cannot tell you much about political discourse and rhetoric have changed in the past handful of centuries or even decades. Certainly there was always an element of drama to them as some of the most famous and infamous politicians I am aware of (Lincoln and Hitler come to mind) have been known to be great and impressive orators. The orator that most readily comes to mind at time of writing is in this podcaster’s opinion unworthy to be compared with such masters of human speech, but there is no denying that we are all waiting for him to leave office to see if he has brought about an irreperable sea change in political discourse or if he will take it all with him when he goes.

              During the Obama presidency (a presidency I did not personally vote for or endorse), I like many frequently heard the sarcastic refrain “Thanks Obama.” Admittedly I was much less politically aware than I am now as I am succumbing to the stereotype of becoming more attuned to politics the older I get, but I never felt any noticeable harm or difference good or ill to my life throughout those two terms. I recall very recently turning to my dear friend Momo and saying “I believe Obama will largely be remembered as a caretaker president. He didn’t do anything egregiously bad or good, and mostly he was the first black president.”

              That’s not to say he won’t have his own legacy in the short term - a legacy that his successor is hellbent on dismantling in lieu of actual policy or governance. But anything done through executive orders can be undone by a new executive, and the Republicans who today cry “obstructionist Democrats” stonewalled any piece of legislation that Obama looked upon favorably. Such is the politics of today. Tomorrow a Democrat will regain the presidency and the Republicans will shout tyranny and the Democrats will complain obstruction, and not much will get done unless a lobbyist backed by powerful corporations says so.

              This all sounds very bleak, and I mean it to be so. Today I watched children on the news speaking on the need for some kind - any kind - of gun legislation to (and it pains me heartily to phrase it so) decrease the number of mass shootings that take place in what we call the greatest country in the world. Yet rather than empathy, those who viewed any regulation of firearms saw enemies, and their righteous minds seized on any small shroud of evidence that these were paid “crisis actors” after seeing one of these children rehearsing the speech he would give.

              Before this, families torn apart by the Sandy Hook Massacre fled their homes and moved out of state to escape the death threats they received for being “crisis actors” in the pocket of the liberal anti-gun agenda. The claim being that Sandy Hook was a hoax. No children died, and these people’s grief and pain are met with open hostility rather than compassion because they dared to ask that further harm be prevented.

              I can’t pretend to understand such pain. It shames me to say so, but I have never been so close to my family as I have seen others be. And yet, when I imagine receiving a phone call from the police saying that my little nephews or niece were at school when such an event took place... I lack the prosaic skill to describe the dread and disgust I feel.

              Often times I think of the superheroes I grew up idolizing. Batman stands out as having one singular and well defined rule - “Thou shalt not kill.” It’s a good rule in my opinion. No matter how many bones he breaks, or years of therapy the people he terrifies will need, Batman abstains from killing, and that’s something. In Batman Begins he makes the point that this specific rule is important because it makes him different from the criminals he hunts. It sounds so wonderful and heroic on the screen and in print. But putting it into practice proves to be so much more difficult.

              I imagine that like me, most of those who might read this have done pretty well at abstaining from killing, but I would challenge you to go a step further. It sounds so tired and trite I realize for me to say this again, but love thy neighbor. If you are truly “righteous,” if you are truly different from those evil conservatives, those evil liberals, those who would take your guns, those who would let you die rather than enact change, then love them. I am so very far from Jesus, so I won’t ask you to turn the other cheek. Fight. Fight with every fiber of your being for the change that you believe is right with the world. But I implore every American who reads this to remember that the enemy they fight is not an enemy. Simply another “righteous” mind fighting for what they believe in.

 Respectfully and with Love,

Episode 5 - Parnorama Post Mortem

              There are few things as difficult for a man to talk about with as much tact and candor as he wants to as women’s issues. After all, my viewpoint is necessarily uninformed. No matter how hard I try, I will never understand what it is like to be a woman - and even then, not all women share the same experiences. Hell, some try to deny or obfuscate the more unpleasant experiences whether it be to help them cope with trauma, reconcile their own beliefs, or (unfortunately) to try to show men that they’re not one of those “crazy feminists.” That’s to say nothing of the issues that face women of color - fetishization, harmful stereotypes, and cultural appropriation all play their roles there. And even remaining color blind, women of all hues face issues depending on their body type, their socio-economic background, their religion, their politics... It’s so much.

              This isn’t to say that men don’t face their own challenges. I only mean to say that women’s issues are more varied and more severe. Besides, victimhood shouldn’t be a pissing contest - and if it is, I can’t imagine why you’d want to win.

              I listen to every one of my episodes roughly four times. Once while I’m going through the sometimes painful process of editing, once before I convert to MP3 to make sure I didn’t miss anything while I can still edit it, once after it’s been converted so I feel confident putting it in the podcast feed, and the final time I listen to it is from iTunes... the last listen is less about quality control and more about the joy of listening to something I created and put work into.

              I have mixed feelings about every episode I put out - we are typically our own harshest critics after all. But this one was particularly difficult to listen to, as every time I heard it again, I heard something I wished I had said differently. I won’t recount every single instance in which I wish I had added clarification to something I said, or felt that another thing I said came off as too insensitive, because frankly, I don’t think I have it in me to give the thing a fifth listen. So I suppose what I want to do here is apologize if I gave any offense and to give my assurance that I strive to be better, and will continue to be an advocate for women’s issues in my own way going forward.

              On the show I also talk about how I felt Lend was a well written, believable teenage boy. There were times when I looked at him and said, “yeah, that’s probably how I would have acted in that scenario.” I’m sure I’m not the first person to think this, so it is hardly a revolutionary statement, but it occurs to me that the mass majority of general media is geared toward making a white male protagonist aged 18-39 immensely relatable. So when Kiersten White, a woman who has never been a teenage boy, probably didn’t understand boys when she was a teenager, and doesn’t hang out with a bunch of teenage boys now writes a believable teenage boy and I say that I’m not sure if Evie is a well depicted teenage girl having all the same hindrances, that’s an issue.

              I said on the show that I didn’t particularly recommend this book, largely because it’s so specifically marketed toward young girls in the maybe 10-15 age range and that you may not get much out of it otherwise. I then proceeded to spend nearly an entire hour telling you how much I got out of it.

              So here’s where I admit it. I expected this to be crap. I expected it to be a silly “chick flick” of a story with no literary value beyond making some pubescent girls feel tingly for the first time. I said I was going in with an open mind. That I was excited to really give a “girl” book a chance and see what it was all about. But even all the way up through the first few minutes of the podcast, I was still refusing to recommend it despite all the glowing things I would say about it. What the hell Geo?

              This is how deep and systemic misogyny and patriarchal thinking runs. I proclaim to be an egalitarian and a feminist. All my life, the majority of my friends have been women. I was raised by my mother and lived with two sisters - the only male in my household. Very nearly all of my romantic relationships have ended amicably, and I’d like to think that both sides grew as people at the end. I know for a fact that I have helped at least one very dear friend of mine recover from an abusive relationship, and helped her reclaim her independence, sexuality, and trust in herself. And yet I still succumbed to the group think that this Twilight clone was just more girly trash.

              These sorts of revelations about how difficult it is to break the status quo and truly think independently of such ingrained patriarchal/misogynistic thinking doesn’t make Paranormalcy book of the year. It doesn’t even make it a great book. But maybe I should be recommending it to my hypothetical sons as well as my hypothetical daughters down the line. Maybe I should take back what I said. I recommend this book to all my male listeners regardless of age or demographic. Not because it’s an important work, not because it’s a great story, not because it has an important message. But because it’s time that we start understanding the other half of the population. We know how to relate to white males aged 18-39, let’s extend females the same courtesy.

 Respectfully and with Love,

              To begin, I want to be clear that these are my thoughts after having read only the first book. I have no idea where the story goes from here, if the writing evolves or grows in any meaningful way, or if new characters, themes, or ideas get explored. So take these words with a pinch of salt, as they are the words of a man who has read only one third of a complete story, but is finding that he is more and more hesitant to read the completed work.

              The book did not start strongly for me. As I say on the podcast, the opening few chapters were clunky, unbelievable, and downright silly from a human motivation perspective. To kick start his story, Pierce Brown tosses his chosen savior’s wife in a refrigerator after allowing her just enough time to let her spout off some stock oppressed revolutionary dialogue on her way out of the story. From there, a covert group of revolutionaries recruits the broken 16 year old Darrow - a child who’s just lost his wife and who has shown to be mindlessly obedient to his superiors - and pin the hopes of humanity on him. In a classic Call to Action/Refuse the Call hero scenario, Darrow refuses the call only to be shown everything he knows is a lie, and satisfied that that’s probably enough to get where he really wants to get to, Brown shoves Darrow unceremoniously out of the oppression he hopes he has adequately portrayed and into the story he actually wanted to write.

              What follows feels like a crowd-sourced chimera of marketing possibilities in the guise of a story about political uprising. I can already see the branding. Once this thing gets made into a TV show or movie, teens and young adults will be yammering about what color they would be. They’ll get the symbols of their caste as decals for their vehicles, laptops, cell phone cases, etc. (some will probably go so far as to get tattoos of their chosen Color), and if they don’t like that, they may prefer to take online quizzes to see what House they would be in, and they could get those symbols on all their crap for low, low prices. All it’s really missing is a fictional language to sell a book on, since I’m sure we’ll eventually get maps of Mars and the solar system in general if this thing gets big enough.

              When I was in elementary school, a kid (who I would later understand was a Jehovah’s Witness) had a talk with his teacher that got him out of tedious Christmas busy work. Being about 5 or 6 years old, I didn’t really understand why he was excused from this, only that his parents apparently wouldn’t let him do it. So naturally I walked up to Teacher and told her my mother wouldn’t allow me to cut out and glue Santa Claus heads onto Christmas cards. She smiled and gently asked me to get back to work.

              This is the same surface level understanding without deeper meaning that leads us into the mines for the first few pages of the book, where we see that our Reds don’t get much food or luxury, and that they all play a rigged game for more luxuries. Somehow, our Woman in Refrigerator Eo stumbles across some insight that Darrow is 100% free from - that they are slaves. Almost no one in the entire mine but Eo seems to think this way. There’s no simmering tension that goes any deeper than “we would like more food please.” Apparently Darrow’s father was a revolutionary and died for it too, so I guess we’re led to believe it’s in Darrow’s blood to rebel and Eo was the catalyst? Why? Darrow more than any other character in the story, feels pride in his work, is content with his lot, and feels he is well equipped to survive within the rules of his world. We are shown he is content - nearly happy even - so we must be told he isn’t and made to believe it.

              And so his wife is murdered for going in a restricted zone and singing a forbidden song. Darrow’s singular act of rebellion is to bury his wife rather than let her hang, all the while accepting this will mean his death. He doesn’t so much rebel as he commits suicide by cop. And then, the Red rises (pun intended) - turns out he wasn’t dead, the revolutionaries show him the real world, and now he’s on board to be the best undercover agent ever with his dead wife’s bizzarely out of place idealism in his heart and a new body freshly Frankensteined; we can finally get to the world building and marketing opportunities Brown wanted to explore.

              And therein lies my problem. A cursory glance at his history on Wikipedia suggests that Brown grew up in a rather affluent household, attended a private University in Malibu, worked in politics, tech startups, and media, before finally finding success with his novels as a young, attractive white male. This is not the sum of his character, but it does inform it. I am 100% sure that he has suffered his fair share in his own ways and through his own trials. His and my rock bottoms may have looked very different in the past decade, though I’m sure his may have hurt every bit as deeply as mine. But if it did, it does not show through in the writing.

              That isn’t to say that one needs to endure all of these challenges to write them convincingly! I don’t believe Cormac McCarthy has lived through anything resembling a nuclear holocaust, and yet The Road is a book I am wary to try reading again it affects me so. On a more down to Earth level, I am a big fan of GTA IV in large part because I loved the Nico character. I don’t know how many Eastern European immigrants were on the writing staff for that game, but I’ll assume it was closer to zero than a dozen.

              This is why I take the cynical view of the book. The opening chapters in the mine describe the character less than it does the author. In those chapters I get the view of an author who may be one of a variety of things, but these are those I feel most likely: 1. An author who wants to write about overcoming oppression but has no personal experience to draw on or ability to think like an oppressed individual despite his good intentions or idealism 2. A writer who is more adept at writing action than providing deep meaning, reasoning, or motivation 3. A marketer with a talent for writing who saw the trend of things like Harry Potter and Game of Thrones for selling crap and wanted in.

              With so much criticism it may seem strange for me to say that I did enjoy the book despite what I perceive to be heavy and loaded flaws in those early pages. I’ll probably watch the TV show and I may read the rest of the trilogy. I feel I had fun when the author was having fun, and appropriately, I drudged through the part it feels like the author drudged through. Perhaps the remaining books may go a long way toward “fixing” my problems with those opening chapters. Whether it was a story that the author really wanted to tell with varying degrees of success or a calculated vehicle for commercial success, I suppose it doesn’t matter. This thing didn’t speak to me on any level beyond being fun, but it might do for others. Art is subjective after all. And whether Art is created for mass market appeal, personal gratification, a need to communicate with the world, or any other myriad reasons, always it speaks to people in different ways, and therein perhaps lies the beauty.

 Respectfully and with Love,

Geo

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