We're Kind Of Stupid That Way

Today my favorite comic strip ever turns 31. I'd love to write a poetic reflection on it, but I think my Facebook post from last year celebrating its 30th anniversary will have to do:

November 18, 1985:

A new comic strip appeared in, at the time, only about 35 newspapers. This strip depicted a young six-year-old boy with an explorer's hat on his head and what became his signature grin on his face, saying "So long, Pop! I'm off to check my tiger trap! I rigged a tuna fish sandwich yesterday, so I'm SURE to have a tiger by now!"

His dad, appearing uninterested, simply continued washing his car and played along with "They like tuna fish, huh?"
"Tigers will do ANYTHING for a tuna fish sandwich!" replied the boy, already heading in the direction of his trap.
The final frame of this strip showed that the boy had, indeed, caught a tiger. This tiger was hanging by his foot from a tree branch, yet he appeared quite content as he munched the tuna fish sandwich. Apparently hearing the boy's last statement, he commented, "We're kind of stupid that way."

The rest, as they say, is history…

31 years! It's been 31 YEARS since Calvin and Hobbes made their first appearance in the world. Within a year of that first strip's publication, the strip was in around 250 newspapers, and was in worldwide circulation before long. A new adventure (or part of an adventure) of this wildly imaginative six-year-old and his tiger was published every day until May 1991, when cartoonist Bill Watterson took his first sabbatical. He returned in February 1992, now with a custom designed layout for the colored Sunday strips, took one more sabbatical starting in April 1994, and finally stopped the comic strip after publishing 365 final adventures, covering every day of the year 1995.

Ten years after the strip ended, one critic remarked that Calvin and Hobbes left a hole in the comics page "that no strip has been able to fill." Indeed, Calvin and Hobbes is considered almost universally to be the greatest newspaper comic strip ever. The reaction from readers during the strip's run was hugely positive, and many were saddened when it ended only a little more than ten years after it began.

Why did a comic strip that only ran for ten years have such a huge impact on people, while far older comics like Peanuts and Garfield continue to appear in the papers and garner nowhere near as much praise? I can't really answer that question for those who read the strip as it was published, seeing as I wasn't even a year old when it ended. I can, however, attempt to explain why I also consider Calvin and Hobbes to be the greatest newspaper comic strip ever, as thanks to the book collections, I was also able to become a passionate reader of the strip.

I discovered Calvin and Hobbes in the early months of 2003, when my elementary school's "math joke of the week" was one of the many strips in which Hobbes helps Calvin arrive at a completely wrong answer to a math problem. A few weeks later the joke of the week was another Calvin and Hobbes comic with the same premise, and this caused me to notice that the first book collection, containing the aforementioned debut strip and those that followed within the first year of the strip's run, was one of the available options for silent reading in my classroom. After informing my parents of this discovery, they graciously showed me their collection of other Calvin and Hobbes books, and, well, I dove right into it.

Looking back, it's hard to describe exactly what it was about this comic strip that got me so hooked on it, since not all of the jokes made sense to me at the time, nor did I understand a lot of the fancy words that Calvin uses. What I loved about the strip from the beginning, though, was the sense of adventure and excitement that Calvin wears on his sleeves. Honestly, despite his rather selfish and rebellious attitude, Calvin was someone I looked up to for a few of my childhood years. He once says that he thinks it's best to take risks and live life to the fullest, and we see him at his happiest when he's free from the constraints of school and his parents, just romping around the woods, going for a ride, or playing his own version of organized sports … alongside his best friend, of course.

I also loved Hobbes from the get-go. It's never made clear whether Hobbes is a product of Calvin's imagination or if he really does turn into a real tiger when only Calvin is present. Watterson has said that Hobbes is more about the subjective nature of reality than about toys coming to life, and he invites the reader to decide which version of the tiger is truer. As a kid, I firmly fell into the "Hobbes is real" camp, although now I don't know what to believe. In some strips, it seems like Hobbes plays the part of Calvin's conscience, but his own fun and adventurous spirit is present in several other strips, notably in his frequent surprise attacks on Calvin, his pride in being a tiger, and his convoluted sense of math. Whether he's real or not, Hobbes is the ideal friend for just about anyone; he enjoys a good-hearted laugh at various predicaments, he's just as clever at unorganized sports as Calvin, he'll offer a friendly ear to just listen whenever Calvin just needs to vent about his problems, and he can always find the right way to sum a situation up.

Like I said, Calvin and Hobbes's sense of adventure was what I liked most about the comic at the beginning, but as I got older I noticed just how good it is at genuine, heartfelt, and occasional sarcastic commentary on the real world. Calvin and Hobbes are very environmentally friendly, and are able to state the common dilemmas of life very well when they get philosophical, usually while driving their wagon or sled off a cliff. There are also some moments of pure heart in interactions between the two title characters and the frequent aforementioned commentary on life.

The humor the strip provides is also top-notch, from Calvin's dad's sarcastic answers to his son's simple questions to Calvin's blissful ignorance of his own faults to Hobbes's jokes about the love-hate relationship between Calvin and Susie Derkins to Calvin's creative yet grotesque snowmen being used as a way to make fun of the art world. Now that I understand the jokes, I can simply laugh at this comic even more, which is the whole point of the funnies.

But despite being twelve years older than I was when I first read the strip, I can still lose myself in what I loved most about it at first: the adventure. Whether it's an argument about whether or not Calvin touched all of the bases in 25-base baseball, Calvin turning an everyday life situation into another adventure of the intrepid Spaceman Spiff, Calvin and Hobbes going out of their way to harass their babysitter, or trying to rid themselves of five replicas of Calvin, this remains my favorite aspect of the strip.

Calvin and Hobbes has had an immense impact on my life since I started reading it. For a number of years, I led my friends in helping me reenact (or create) some of their adventures. The strip also inspired two of my Halloween costumes: I went as Calvin himself in 2003 by spiking my hair and getting my own stuffed tiger (I'll give you three guesses what his name is, and the first two don't count), and I brought Calvin's mentioned but never shown Halloween costume to life in 2005. The biggest influence Calvin and Hobbes has had on me, though, is the fact that I have started to draw my own comics. First I drew my own versions of Calvin and Hobbes comics, then I tried a few original Calvin and Hobbes adventures, then I started drawing illustrations for my many whimsical childish writings, and eventually I took a huge leap and spent nearly seven years drawing and coloring Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace in comic form. This is the biggest project I have undertaken that wasn't school required. Calvin and Hobbes was even the inspiration for my first musical composition.

Watterson has said that now that he's left them alone, he likes to think that Calvin and Hobbes are in their own world, having an even better time. All I can say to that is, "Admirable sentiments!" And like many others, I'd like to thank Watterson for his undeniably great contribution to the world of comics. With this small and yet great cast of characters, great drawings, and so many great quotes about the reality of life, from the brutal ("Sometimes I think the surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere is that none of it has tried to contact us") to the silly ("Weekends don't count unless you spend them doing something completely pointless") to the heartfelt and honest ("There are many things we don't understand, and we just have to do the best we can with the knowledge we have"). In my eyes, Calvin and Hobbes is truly the greatest newspaper comic strip ever, from the moment Calvin successfully rigged a tuna sandwich exactly 31 years ago to the moment on December 31, 1995, when Calvin and Hobbes, carrying their sled through waist-deep snow, rode off into the trees, with some very fitting final words:

"It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... let's go exploring!"

The New Era Of STAR WARS, And Why I Parted Ways With It

On October 30, 2012, four years (and 1 day) ago, the new era of Star Wars began.

On this day, the big news was announced to the world: Disney had bought Lucasfilm, and a sequel Star Wars trilogy was confirmed, without George Lucas at the helm.

I think it's fair to say that almost everybody's mind was blown upon receiving this news. Disney buying Lucasfilm probably wasn't a huge surprise, given that they owned Marvel and Pixar at this point, but the real big news was the sequel trilogy announcement. Why?

While evidence points to George Lucas originally planning to tell his story in nine episodes, ever since Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was released in 1983 he had consistently stated that the Star Wars saga ended with that film, and if he made any more films, they would be prequels. After Episode III: Revenge of the Sith was finished in 2005, Lucas stuck to his claim that the saga was truly complete now. As late as January 2012, he pushed this assertion once again: "Why would I make any more, when everybody yells at you all the time and says what a terrible person you are?"

From what I've seen throughout the Internet, Lucas's quote is a very mild representation of the words that have been thrown at him since 1997. Although that isn't the point of this post, suffice it to say that I, as a longtime defender of Lucas's decisions in regards to the special editions and the prequel trilogy, was rather disheartened to see the Internet explode with mostly positive reactions to this sequel trilogy announcement, simply because it would be made without George Lucas at the helm.

My reaction to the Disney deal, however, was certainly not positive. I wouldn't necessarily say it was negative either(we'll get to that later), but more apprehensive than anything else. I truly felt that the Star Wars saga ended with Return of the Jedi, (even before the Disney deal, I never got into the Expanded Universe. I knew some of the stories, but I pretty much disregarded them from my head-canon) and I believed the story told over the six existing Star Wars films (at the time) would inevitably be tarnished in some way by a sequel trilogy, regardless of what the story would be. I actually initially considered boycotting the new films, but my family helped me to realize that that would be somewhat hypocritical of me. Without knowing anything about the sequels other than the fact that they were being made and George Lucas's part would simply be the story consultant (or so I was led to believe), boycotting them would essentially be me prematurely judging them because they didn't line up with my personal vision of how the Star Wars film saga should go.

Gee, that sounds awfully familiar...

I've seen multiple negative reviews of the prequels on IMDB with the prime justification for the negativity being "It should have been told this way!" So, you can see why I was convinced that boycotting the sequel trilogy would essentially make me a hypocrite, since the opinion I got from a lot of anti-prequel comments online was that the dislike stemmed from the films not aligning with the commenters' head-fanfiction, which was, in some cases, developed over the sixteen year period between Return of the Jedi and Episode I: The Phantom Menace.

It was only the moves Disney made after buying Lucasfilm that drove me to boycott the sequel trilogy for good.

It started in January 2013, when they cancelled the 3D releases of Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith scheduled for that fall. I mentioned in my earlier post that I got rather angry about this and, for a time, fell into the "overly aggressive prequel fan trap": I wrote multiple essays on my Facebook in which I urged readers to follow my lead, and claimed that prequel fans were the "TRUE Star Wars fans." As I mentioned in my post from last month, unlike the sequels, the 3D releases were the ones I was actively looking forward to. At that point, I decided that if Disney was going to cancel what Lucas promised earlier and publish a BS reason behind it (I know that there likely were some proceeds and distribution issues between Disney and Fox, but their official statement that "100% of our efforts will focus on the new Star Wars trilogy" didn't fly with me given the circumstances: JJ Abrams had been announced as the director  of Episode VII only a few days before the 3D cancellation, and he was still busy promoting his latest Star Trek movie at the time, the script wasn't even close to being finished, the movie didn't begin production for another year, and both films were practically finished with their conversion process), I wasn't going to support their new Star Wars projects.

This decision was reinforced in the years leading up to Episode VII thanks to more actions on the part of Disney and the production crew of the film. After the 3D cancellation, they cancelled The Clone Wars show, then it was announced that George Lucas's story treatments for the sequels had been scrapped (meaning he had literally 0 say in how his story would continue), then the marketing campaign for the film kept harping on about how "This is true Star Wars, don't worry, we're not the prequels!" in some only slightly more subtle ways, then Simon Pegg, who publicly stated he has no respect for prequel fans, was revealed to have been the creative consultant... if just the 3D cancellation was enough to turn me away from the sequels, I felt even more justified in my decision after all that went down.

In spite of my reasons for doing so, maybe I am still a hypocrite for boycotting Episode VII. To this day, I have not seen the film and don't plan to. Maybe, much like those negative prequel reviewers on IMDB (and other places), I got too emotionally invested in a certain trilogy of films to really give the new era of Star Wars movies a chance. Maybe my refusal to watch Episode VII because of a few decisions made by the powers behind the film is no different that some people's refusal to buy Episode IV: A New Hope on DVD or Blu-Ray because Han doesn't shoot first. In my defense, however, I have not made any negative comments about Episode VII itself, or people who ended up liking it. This applies not only to this post, but to all Star Wars-related words I have said either online or in person since its release. Although I do know the basic plot summary of the film, I don't plan on revealing any of my thoughts on it. Those thoughts are severely impaired, because knowing the plot summary and seeing the movie for the whole experience are two different ballparks. At this time last year, I reflected on some of my aforementioned aggressive responses to Disney's actions on Facebook, admitting that urging fellow fans to boycott Episode VII and claiming myself to be a "true Star Wars fan" were the wrong things to say. I also wished my many friends who planned to see the film an enjoyable experience. You will never see me write a word of criticism about Episode VII (or its sequels and the Anthology films, as I'm not planning on seeing any of those either) and the story it tells. Who am I to judge a film I haven't seen?

I admittedly wish that none of the events of this new era of Star Wars had ever happened, but I've stopped being bitter about it. I've simply contented myself with the knowledge that I still have six excellent (in my eyes) films that tell a story that is already complete (again, in my eyes). Basically, I've moved on.

Did I still "allow this Dark Lord to twist my mind until I became the very thing I swore to destroy"? I think my arguments against that notion outweigh my arguments for it, but what do you think?

Mmm, Dissen Loverly

Jar Jar Binks.

These three little words have been used by many people as a summation of everything wrong with Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, and in some cases the entire prequel trilogy. The mere mention of these words can cause some people to cringe in disgust. A certain YouReviewer has claimed that these three words set black people back 50 years, and these three words alone earned The Phantom Menace 100 "sins" in CinemaSins's "Everything Wrong With" episode devoted to the film.

For me, though, those three words were in the top tier of my "favorite things about Star Wars list" for several years. I was ten years old when I first saw The Phantom Menace in 2005, and although I didn't completely understand the finer points of the plot at the time (this was also true of my first few viewings of A New Hope, FYI) I distinctly remember loving the new worlds of Naboo and Coruscant, the epic Podrace, and especially the new characters. And I remember even more distinctly what I claimed my favorite element of the film to be for at least a year afterwards:

Jar Jar Binks.

Blasphemy, I know. And while he is no longer what I love most about The Phantom Menace, I haven't lost any of my love for this klutzy Gungan more than 11 years later. Even when I watch the movie now, good ol' Jar Jar still brings out my inner 10-year-old who loved him to death from the beginning.

Why?

First off, I was the right age to find him quite funny. I loved his design, I loved his movements, and I sure as heck loved his pidgin-speak. This style of speaking was, in my eyes, a great form of world (or in this case, galaxy) building. While the original films include some characters who speak alien languages entirely, in most cases they clearly understand the Basic English being spoken to them by the humans, and said humans clearly understand their language as well. To me, Jar Jar and the other Gungans represent people in the real world who may learn and understand another language, but will never be completely comfortable speaking that language fluently. How do I know Basic English is not the Gungans' first language? Because when Jar Jar first takes Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn to the underwater Otoh Gunga city, the camera explicitly shows two shocked Gungans exchanging the words: "Hu me gusa?" "Hata hata."

Does the pidgin-speak make Gungans racist? The answer will vary depending on who you ask, but I say, "Heck no!" Yes, the actor playing Jar Jar just happens to be African-American, but that is pure coincidence. There is sufficient filmmaking evidence to show that George Lucas liked Ahmed Best's voice for the character, and also chose him for the part because of how well he was able to physically portray the character in motion capture. Like I said above, I see the pidgin-speak as a more realistic portrayal of the relationships between various alien species in the Star Wars galaxy. (Anakin communicating with both Watto and Sebulba in Huttese improved this interspecies relationship as well.) And while the Gungans may not have a thriving city or connections to the Republic like the humans of Naboo do, they have their fair share of talents that they are in no way prevented from exploiting (unlike many slaves in the real world's history). Their underwater technology, their unique plasma weapons, and their army are clearly thriving freely even before they make their alliance with the Naboo at the film's climax.

What I really love about Jar Jar Binks, though, is the type of individual he represents. He is in many respects a fool, but not by choice. The accidents he causes are clearly accidents, and his curiosity certainly gets him in trouble on multiple occasions, but at his core, he's just an outcast from his society, looking to be useful to anyone in some way, shape, or form. By telling Qui-Gon about the Gungans, he ultimately gets him to Theed in time to rescue Queen Amidala. He helps Anakin prepare his Podracer, despite having no experience with the technology. He offers a friendly ear to Amidala when the pressure put on her overwhelms her. And most importantly, Jar Jar Binks "bring ussen and da Naboo together." Out of loyalty to his new friends and his desire to help, Jar Jar returns to the society he was banished from.

Jar Jar Binks is clearly a very loyal friend, even if he's not the best in a fight or his clumsiness causes unintentional accidents. The same devotion to both of his planet's societies and the Republic in general carry into Attack of the Clones, as he pretty clearly believes giving emergency powers to the Supreme Chancellor is the only solution to saving the Republic, when in reality it brings said Republic one step closer to destruction.

I love Jar Jar. I still think his lines are funny, I love the type of person he represents, and I admire his devotion, even if it can get manipulated. The dude may not be my favorite element of The Phantom Menace for me, but he's still a major highlight.

(NOTE: If you're wondering whether I believe the "Darth Darth Binks" theory that went around last year, I don't. While the whole Emergency Powers thing did help Sidious in the long run, let's not forget that his contributions to the Battle of Naboo temporarily defeated Sidious's major threat to the Republic and set him back a good ten years. As a fellow blogger has also pointed out, Jar Jar Binks set the stage for Sidious's ultimate defeat by simply being himself. I still consider Mr. Binks a foolish hero, and not a secret Sith Lord.)

So all I can say to Jar Jar is what his boss said to him: "Yousa doen grand!"

What It Means to be a STAR WARS Fan

In my introductory post, I mentioned that I would be blogging about some controversial subjects, and Star Wars is likely what I will be discussing the most.

Ever since I was introduced to the Star Wars saga in 2004, I have, according to the definition of the word "fan", been a Star Wars fan. That is, I enjoyed the movies and the story they told, and I soon became obsessed with learning more details than the movies told me about this galaxy far, far away. Really, anyone who has a liking for at least one Star Wars film or even one TV episode or Expanded Universe story can be considered a Star Wars fan. If they like an aspect of Star Wars so much that they'd like to write about it, that's great. I'll come back to this definition later.

Over the last several years, however, I have had a harder time calling myself a Star Wars fan. This trend began when I started getting involved in the online Star Wars fan industry. It seems that there, the definition of being a Star Wars fan, in addition to the ground rules I laid out in the previous paragraph, includes spewing as much hate as possible towards George Lucas, the saga's creator, endlessly complaining about the prequel trilogy and the special editions of the original trilogy, and putting down anyone who doesn't conform to this line of thinking.

Obviously, I'm being very general, because hardly every Star Wars-related webpage has content of that nature, but so many do. If this was what you had to do to call yourself a Star Wars fan, then I didn't want to be one anymore. Why? Because I passionately love the prequel trilogy (Episodes I, II, and III) and consider them to be highly underrated films. I also have no problem at all with the special editions of the originals, although admittedly I don't have the proper background to take sides on this debate. I have actually never seen the unaltered cuts of the originals (Episodes IV, V, and VI), but I do know the bulk of the changes that have been made in the special editions. From my perspective, these changes have no effect on any of the elements that made Star Wars what it was to begin with, and it seems a little irrational to me that so many fans are complaining that the unaltered cuts are no longer available, because the cuts that are available tell the same story with the same characters. Like I said, though, take my words with a grain of salt. I haven't seen the unaltered cuts, so I'm not in the best position to judge. The one change I can kind of understand people getting angry about is the infamous who-shoots-first scene, but even then the anger over it seems really blown out of proportion. For my money, the scene works either way, because in both versions the intentions of both characters were quite clear.

The prequels, though... I have a lot more to say in regards to their effect on me as a fan. After seeing all three of them for the first time in 2005, I was blown away at how much I loved them. Yes, you read that right. I loved the new worlds, ships, droids, aliens, characters, stories, and inner struggle that all the protagonists went through over the course of that trilogy. I even loved Jar Jar Binks. Again, yes, you read that right.

For a while after I entered the online Star Wars fan industry, I got somewhat bitter after seeing the non-stop hate spewn at them from nearly every corner of the web. I've seen YouTube comments telling anyone who likes the prequels to kill themselves, I've seen people getting applause for jokes about murdering George Lucas, and I've seen online film channels repeatedly taking potshots at the prequels despite making their opinions about them very clear on multiple occasions. I've even seen some of the prequel fans on the Internet snap under the hate and respond to the criticism in a very rude and derogatory manner.

A common phrase prequel fans have used is, "If you don't like the prequels, you're not a true Star Wars fan." I myself said something to that effect when I wrote a rather angry rant on my Facebook page in January 2013, after Disney cancelled the 3D releases of Episodes II and III that were scheduled for that fall. (Being introduced to the saga in 2004, Episode III was the only one I was able to see in theaters, and I was highly anticipating the opportunity to revisit the entire saga in this venue.) I've realized, however, that that's a hypocritical statement on our part. Fans of Star Wars don't have to like every single Star Wars product ever released, in the same way that fans of the Harry Potter books don't necessarily have to like the movies to remain fans. The prequels are movies, and movies are a form of art, and art is subjective. I'm not trying to say anyone is "wrong" for liking or disliking the prequels (or any other form of art). Different forms of art resonate better with different people, and when fans of one artist or series of artworks can bond over their shared love of this art, or when they can politely discuss their differing opinions or theories about said art, it almost always creates quality memories.

If two Star Wars fans disagree about something, however, they're quickly at each other's throats, both trying to assert their positions as the objective "right" way to look at whatever they're debating over. Compare that to the calm disagreements that arise in other fandoms, and you'll see why lazypadawan of the Star Wars Prequel Appreciation Society wrote a post about "The Fractured Fandom" last fall. The fact of the matter is, there will never be a time in which every single Star Wars fan will agree on which episode is the best one. There will never be a time in which every single Harry Potter fan will agree about who should have ended up with who. There will never be a time in which every single Lord of the Rings fan will love or hate the Hobbit movies. There will never be a time in which every single Disney Animated Canon fan will agree on whether or not Tangled is better than Frozen. What's the point? The point is, stories can resonate with different people for several different reasons, and trying to force your opinion of one story down the throat of someone who has a differing opinion will likely get you nowhere. All that does is fracture the fandom more.

I like the Star Wars prequels slightly more than the originals. I still like Jar Jar Binks. I like the different worlds. I like Jake Lloyd and Hayden Christensen's performances as the younger Anakin Skywalker. I'm not bothered by the political exposition. I have nothing against the concept of midi-chlorians. I like the updated effects in the special editions. I don't care whether Han shoots first or not. I have not seen Episode VII for personal reasons, and I don't plan on seeing Rogue One this winter. 

Am I going to force you to agree with all of this? Of course not. If you disagree with one, or even all, of the sentences in the above paragraph, feel free to. I wouldn't dream of accusing you of not being a Star Wars fan if this were the case. In future writings, I will likely expound on why I feel the way I do about these aspects of Star Wars, sometimes using evidence from the films to back my opinions up, but I will never assert these opinions as the one-and-only-view-you-can-possibly-have-to-call-yourself-a-Star-Wars-fan.

I agree with lazypadawan in that right now, the Star Wars fandom is fractured. I think a big step in repairing it is simple acceptance, writing about what you like rather than what you dislike, expressing yourself in a calm, respectful manner, and most importantly, agreeing to disagree.

May the Force be with us all.

Testing and Welcome

Hi. Welcome to my new blog, "World Of Peacecraft!"

This is primarily a test to make sure I can post, but I'll tell you a little bit about what this blog is going to be like in the meantime.

I chose the name "World Of Peacecraft" not because I play World of Warcraft (I don't), but because I hope that discussions around this blog go peacefully. There are some rather controversial subjects I will be blogging about. Respectful disagreement with some of the opinions I present here is fine, but I don't want to be insulted (or insult anyone else) the way that I likely would be if I published a video form of these writings on YouTube.

That's the disclaimer, so now let's get on to the good part.

I'm 21 years old, and I'm a very passionate fan of several stories and film franchises. This blog is going to contain reviews for new films I see, reflections on old films I've seen, detailed analysis of some of my favorite films, and the like.

There will also some posts about art, music, chess, and comics, which are also among my passions. I am currently a music performance major in college, so expect to see a fair amount of music-related posts as well.

I think that covers everything, so hope you enjoy reading! I will try to update at least once a week.