Ageism? It's Just My Opinion.

I turn 38 this year, which means the same thing it does every year: people older than me may devalue my opinions as inexperienced and childish, people younger than me may dismiss my opinions as jaded or over saturated. As we get older, there are less of the side that looks down the age ladder and more of the isolation and accusations of the younger set.

Believe me, I do plenty of asking myself if perhaps my saturation of experience makes me harder to please, but ultimately, when I'm actually accused of this, I balk at how ridiculous this is. The idea that I can't enjoy anything because my tastes have gotten too specific or impossible to please is not implausible, yet as I run around collecting 100 of the same item I already have in a game I've already done everything else in or watched a new movie three times in a row, I can just as easily say the exact opposite. I'm also quite easy to bring into a new loop where I don't ask much at all.

As for preferences, I don't really have a set area. I'm no more a hardcore fan of fantasy than I am opposed to all things sports. I find I read more thrillers, watch more action and comedy themes and I love the Summer Olympics, even those less popular events like fencing. I don't spit on mainstream as hype nor do I swear that the lesser known are underrated because you're all uncultured swine.

Of course, when playing Kingdom Hearts 3, I wondered if I'd just aged out of liking the story. I could rephrase it to sound more empowering, but I was so uncertain of my own opinion, that I turned to the Internet to see if it was just me. No, like many other gamers and fans of all ages and backgrounds, there was something missing in the magic of the story. It was a beautiful game with great gameplay, but again, there was an overwhelming outcry of 'what happened to the story?'.

We're not morons who are too old to follow or remember the so-called complexity. For one, it's not complex, it's just layers and layers of the same boring casserole. It's Sailor Moon, Dragon Ball, Pokémon--the same concept over and over with a new car smell in the same vehicle.We're driven towards shiny new characters and outfits, but there is still something sacrificed for the cosmetic. The devices become frustratingly simple and never lead to any new concepts. The fan is in the know but the characters conveniently lose their memory, their powers, their achievements and potential. Sometimes, entire plots and subplots are dropped and because they're too complex and rich to keep afloat in the distraction. Instead, it's rinse-repeat of the simpler ones. I too often felt encumbered by a snail's pace and a tedious repetition as if I were a stupid child that hasn't been paying attention. I'm paying attention, I just feel like it's not actually earning my attention.

In return, I started skipping the story scenes. As a gamer, there was no penalty for this that detracted from my enjoyment of the game itself. As a writer and storyteller myself, I was chagrined that I wasn't engaged in the story.

This isn't a one-off occurrence either, which is why I questioned whether I was becoming jaded. Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest's latest entries also left me baffled for a similar reason. While Final Fantasy XV started out rich and fun, the last third of the game was just bad writing. This is especially true if you watched the anime and CG movie leading up to it and wondered why the build-up led to absolutely nothing at all. Why even write an epic where there is no point? It's about as exciting as the neighbor passing out from heatstroke while mowing their lawn. It's not newsworthy, so why tell the world like it's worth everyone's time? Dragon Quest's usual fun romp with puns and cheesy goodness just felt corny and flat. While there were moments meant to captivate with emotion or drama, the light-heartedness of the presentation didn't fit these themes. Yet games like Dragon Age, Witcher 3 and Skyrim, despite or maybe because of their lack of endless cutscenes, still top my best games list, and not because they were flawless or even innovative stories. 

Uncharted, despite being accused of being playable movies, don't feel like a hostage situation to me. The cinematics always built the right amount of tension and I felt the flow when it was time to mash buttons again. I was embedded in the same way Marvel movies hook me--there's serious choreography and strategy to what makes the action so engaging that I hate to blink and miss the fluid transitions in every movement. There's a real sense of the genuine in the conversations and the plots. It's even possible to forget that these are grown-ups in silly costumes at times. It's not small talk and there's nuance and subtlety beyond the surface.

Hell, I've even been accused of cultural snobbery. Despite being otaku to Japanese everything for much of my fandom, some people still insist I don't understand the cultural preferences of small talk and storytelling of Japanese culture. However, I can just as soon point out what I consider to be successful in many Japanese stories that I still enjoy. The absurd part is that this accusation almost always comes from white men. I like to remind them that my opinion isn't representative of all American white women, but while we're there, does my taste and opinion become less valid if the story just doesn't jibe for me? Trying to invalidate my opinion by pointing out my race, gender, etc. is a strawman argument used to make me defend myself rather than accept my skills and talents are adequate to hold the debate. I am a storyteller, a creative, an editor, a professional in many creative fields, if not an expert in some, yet an unfavorable opinion can lead to a question as to all of that. Fuck me for choosing a field rife with subjective opinion, but let's not attack my character for attacking the build of a fictional one. When our tastes don't match, it too often becomes a personal attack, so I often go out of my way to talk about the work, not why your opinion doesn't match mine.

I want to love everything I try. It's for that reason that I am probably going in too soft, giving something more credit than it has earned from the onset. It's not easy for me to ditch nostalgia or feelings because I want to be loyal. I'm not even relieved when I'm not the only one to just not love something anymore. I'm crushed when sequels don't improve on something I love. When I write, I know personally that I want each story to be better and, hell, as of now, I have no great success of popularity to even bank on, so I absolutely don't feel like I can coast on a great beginning. Yet I can't eschew honesty when I'm falling out of love. I would rather hand in my fan card than pretend I love current trends.

I can live with being the jaded old fogey. It's not worse than being discredited as inexperienced or ignorant. Sometimes I'm easily amused or entertained and other times, I'm over-critical and impossible to please. Perhaps I'm also lucky that I'm in the position of a creator, that rather than getting burned in the search for the next best thing, I can hunker down and fulfill what I want to exist. I'll probably always be discredited for really absurd reasons. I'm even in a place where I have to protect young white boys from being discredited because everything white, male, ableist, straight, etc. is being called to task. Their fight to have respected opinions is often going to be a struggle not to fucking offend everyone and assert themselves as individuals, not representatives of all that is wrong with white men. Ageism is the least of their problems, but certainly a part of it, because there is no golden age for being universally respected.

Why are we called to task for perceived advantages? It is an abyss, really, but it seems ever more absurd that just the act of liking something superficially often comes with the burden of questioning if it's 'okay' to. Does it make us a stereotype of our age or gender, etc. to like or not like anything?

Yup, it's exhausting. An unavoidable burden of living. We wish we could be as stupid, ignorant, or shallow as we're sometimes accused of being, if only because there's peace in emptying ourselves of the burdens of so much dead weight. 

I can't say I don't care what people think. Yet I can say that we can't afford to care about everything. We sometimes have to clear our caches and be content with ourselves, to quiet our brains and accept our own opinions before we seek to bring others in. We do need to bring in opinions and be validated and share and give and take, but wisdom teaches us that if we can't face ourselves once we act and think and share, we must adjust what we allow to take in and put out there.

Age does not assure wisdom, but it also does not assure senility. To discredit someone, especially yourself, because they've cultivated years and routines and selectivity in what goes in and out is a discredit in itself. 

Learn to smile or laugh in the face of words used as weapons. Don't let people put words in your mouth that make you mute towards your own potential. Defend your right to be what you are. Walk away if the time isn't right to mount a defense. Don't let someone else's ignorance of what is important to you dissolve your ability to enjoy or dissect it for your personal growth. People have bad days and it makes them petty. Don't give that shit real estate in your head.

And when people arrive at a point where they antagonize, patronize or condescend to throw off the argument, they've already lost. You don't have to invest in that snobbery. Walk away, add a dash of 'fuck you' and move on to greener pastures. You're only getting older and there's never a good time to endure heaps of the same bullshit.

Planning Extravagance

Da Vinci is credited to have said that art is never finished, only abandoned. In truth, who said it doesn't matter so much as the sentiment. Because there is ALWAYS something more to be done, it's just as true that there is a time to move to another phase, let it go, share it. 

Control is another point of dispute. There's no cushy line between the claim that 'the author is too controlling and I wanted to imagine it for myself' and ''his might as well be Mad Libs for all the holes in this story!'. 

What if you're using the wrong medium? I covered an answer on Quora that took on video game dreamers for misguidedly translating that idea into a novel.

It could drive you mad, scraping through a story too much. I suppose. I've read my own work more times than I've read any favorite author, so I court madness with open arms. Not just to edit but I've gotten sucked into my words and worlds time and again when I was supposed to be editing. Planning itself can be a siren call into restructuring what might have been nearing completion.

It happens. Embrace it. I'm still on the task of typing out perfectly legible notes. And not word for word. I'm catching inconsistencies in the plans and is it EVER easier to correct a typed document than the battlefield my handwritten copies would become.

It's a beautiful thing, really. To visit a world, even knowing what comes next and feeling differently about it. Sometimes you cringe at a little mistake or you think of something better or you want to change it. That's where publishing seems scary to some of the never-ending creatives out there. If you really feel ten years is what your series needs, ten years it is. If you're ready to set it loose after a few months, do it.

I'm really enjoying this planning though. It's all for UnHeard when UnSung is still in progress. Yet UnHeard is my NaNo baby, so I'm setting it up to fly. Planning can benefit from extra sometimes. As a teen, it was all about different color pens. Even now, switching to a designated tool for a designated task can be motivational to the process. 

Visit your worlds as many times as it takes. It is never finished and it never needs to be.  The art is about flexibility and the need to return. For writers and readers alike. No matter how airtight and done to death it is, a fan can tirelessly both spot flaws and create reimaginings. Even 'ship' characters, which is a term I won't use often because, while the origin story is cute, the concept itself is applied so thick that it's about as unoriginal as another overused word 'love'.

Heyyyy, let's shoot the shit with that one since I'm here... I almost obsessively avoid using 'love' directly when lovers are confessing their feelings. One of my favorites comes from two characters in the third trilogy of my first series. It tickles me because it's an obvious avoidance and a simple truth, but you know it means 'I love you.' In fact, it becomes an endearment, an emotional running joke between them. Lol if it were anyone else's work, I'd tell you their names and what they said, but at this point, I'm a newly published author and I hesitate to run the risk of my blog being the equivalent of a movie trailer that spoils the best parts.

I love writing romances where there is light teasing and quick jabs of tension. Some fantasies keep romance on the side of solemn and intense. The Arwen-Aragorn romance was a big one there. I've never liked seeing love from the 'til-death-do-us-part angle. I won't just brush it off as being done to death, but there are so many books I've read where confessing love or marrying was the height of the story. Or having a child. I won't deny that those are exciting moments for many people, but ultimately it came off as depressing that these very isolated events were given more weight than than the ACT of falling in love through a rich plot, what it takes to make a marriage work or even the beauty of raising a human being into a good person (or the horror of them becoming an inherently bad one). I have never seen love as a quick prize.

Even some romance novels that attempt to make a rich plot, the MAIN plot often still makes the confession the central point of the story. Maybe this is what most romance readers DO want, but when I started reading books where romance was a subplot, it was noticeably richer to me than poetic descriptions of eyelashes and dimpled smirks in books solely focused on it. I might be an odd one here, but romance isn't my favorite genre for romance. I like a lot of cat and mouse, but the juicy kind where the cat catches the mouse but toys with it to give chase again. Some erotica is annoyingly framed as romance so when I realize the plot is lame, it becomes a hunt for the sexy parts, where all the effort was placed. Yes, erotica can have a great plot, but that makes erotica the SUBplot. If you frame a book as romance primarily, I don't even have high expectations for plot. Still, it can't be boring. Even when I want light and trashy, I want to care about it. More often, I say I want romance to be a subgenre, even fifth on the subgenre list because I don't want solid expectations of it being there. I like when it's present. I enjoy the building intimacy and the private insights. At the same time,  I want to see its fragility, know that it can be cut short, know that it might not be returned, or even be passing or not strong enough with other temptation. I plan my own story's romances as carefully as my world building. If it's going to be there, I need to care.

And hey, some people want romance to be insinuated or absent. That doesn't make me hesitate to tackle it if I'm feeling the vibe as part of the story. I can't really help you. Despite or maybe because of its absence in my life, romance will always have a place in the story. Because I'm not fading to black when there's a veritable gold mine of character development (or fun) to be had.

One of the oddest kinds of comments I see in reading groups is along the lines of how much of a thing is generally accepted as okay. Can you poll that? Lol it doesn't stop people from trying. How much _____ do you like in a story? If you like all or nothing, every time, then you're an easy one. When I see these, I input 84% just to throw a wrench in the logic. There isn't a magic number when something is liked. In fact, someone's claim that they've NEVER seen _____ written in a way they like so they avoid it... Often makes me want to try. Not FOR them, but because I embrace the challenge of truly enjoying reading and writing on prompt. I wouldn't say that I aim to be the one who does it right. Most people who think in black and white will never ever try that disliked topic again. I don't doubt they'll still find plenty to read so that they can easily avoid every attempt to expand their thinking on it. They can have that. However, it's still backwards thinking to have not read anything in that category in decades and still make the claim there can't possibly be anything worthwhile. When they can't even frame an opinion as such, that opinion is usually as shallow as their ability to communicate it.

A guarded opinion is often external (this work is awful) as opposed to a more honest opinion actually focusing on their impression (this wasn't to my taste). I've always found that technical critiques can be external, focusing on grammar, punctuation, style, whereas using that same tact on opinion is always where it comes off as dishonest. I believe that some reviewers probably think it sounds stronger or more professional to leave out personal pronouns and impressions. To change 'I think' or 'I believe' into more definite points (this IS or ISN'T). In fact, it's often used in advertising because it's supposed to sound more confident. ('this product changed my life' as opposed to 'I really feel like this product improved this specific task'.) I'm going to disagree though. To me, bold assertions always sparked my skepticism, had me running to research it myself. Does it work? In advertising, the numbers would say yes. However, most people have neither the actual skill to reframe an opinion (to use actors as a scapegoat for something they never directly said) nor the ability to defend it fully. It is often parroted the same way every time, with no new additions, or extremely cherry picked examples (even to the point of purposely omitting knowledge of an exception).

I think I've found a few things to babble on about well enough so I'll return to planning. Got my notes typed out and printed today. Condensed and refined to nine pages. I have the series-arching plot arching over the subs, the book main plot (each one has a pivotal main character or two and a focus on one God and region), character planning, regional development (some idea of the map), and several of the micro systems planned. I also have a sort of running bestiary, but I need to play with a map. The scope is somewhat 3D like one of my locations in UnSung so it will need a top-down plan. These are just aids for me, nothing I'd ever publish (unless by some weird turn of fate there's ever a demand). Mostly done though. I'm excited to start it, even while finishing UnSung.

For some people who fancy themselves novelists, I wouldn't be surprised if some are actually most in love with planning. Those are the sorts of jobs that are harder to land and do start with a solid display of completed writing. I sit in the middle, the pantser that digs big holes and then plans. I'm not afraid of the holes though. I find a lot of comfort in them. They're puzzles I'm happy to solve. Even in a dark story, I find it cheering to get down to the critical fixes.

UnSung can be pretty dark. I wouldn't say grimdark or dystopian but still goes place light doesn't. Grimdark is really about the focus of narration. In fact, I'd love to try a cheerful narration of a dystopia. It's even been done! Twilight Zone had the infamous episode where a guy with a nagging wife and a joyless job finds joy in hiding in the vault of the bank where he works to read. Cut to nuclear destruction and he's the last man alive. It breaks cheerfully into him carefully gathering and sorting every book he can find, his face distorting with a happiness he'd never known before as he plans what to read next. Of course, he's severely nearsighted so it's a cruel turn of fate when his glasses fall off his face and break. For a loner, a solitary world seems ideal until you meet the grim realization that at some point, you depend on society to support the simplest of luxuries. What is a world without the passions most dear to you?

Of course, I'm not even going for the grim reality with my view though. What if survival isn't quite as bad as you think? What if you are actually good at it and the survivors aren't all morally bankrupt or zombies? I wanted to like you, Walking Dead... I really did. Can someone let me know if they ever actually decide to go to Washington DC to see if the virus center is even a thing? Because really, that was what kept me sticking around a few seasons longer than I should have. I assumed they'd wouldn't just keep escalating with a group sicker than the last and actually have an aim again. At some point, I didn't even care who died anymore because they all sucked.