Category Archives: Self-Reflection

My Adventure with the Fatal Five

15 Friday Dec 2023

Posted by in Mental Health Issues, Self-Reflection, Superheroes

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , , ,

I have struggled with depression and anxiety my entire life. When things got stressful, the Beast would rear and bury its claws into my back. It would rake, and I would howl, and I’d try to fight against it, and often fail. So much of my life has been defined by my mental health issues, and I’ve known that I need to overcome them, but for a very long time they weren’t things I talked about. They seemed like personal failures I needed to hide. I couldn’t look vulnerable. I couldn’t look weak. I needed to be strong. As I was trying to hide these issues, I didn’t search for such topics in the stories I consumed, and I certainly didn’t put them in the stories that I wrote. I just wanted to pretend they didn’t exist.

That all changed in the spring of 2019, when I watched the DC animated movie Justice League vs the Fatal Five. In this movie, a team of time-traveling supervillains called the Fatal Five arrive from the future to change history so that their enemies, the Legion of Superheroes, will never be born. They are pursued to our time by the superhero Star Boy, but his schizophrenia makes him unable to clearly explain his mission to Superman, Batman, and the rest of the Justice League. The only member of the League who can understand him is the Green Lantern Jessica Cruz, because her crippling anxiety helps her relate to Star Boy’s own mental struggle. The empathy and support that the two heroes provide each other give them the strength to confront their own issues, fight the supervillains together, and ultimately save the day.

Watching this movie was a shock to my brain. Here were heroes struggling with mental issues in ways I’d never seen on screen before. Here were heroes who knew what it was like to feel trapped inside their head, to have their brain refuse to obey them, to be torn apart by inner demons. They know what it’s like to freak out in front of people and have them not understand what’s going on. They know what it’s like to feel weak and pathetic and alone, despite having nothing wrong with their body. They know what it is like to be me.

I’m a shy, white, middle-class North American male, the stereotypical target audience of comic book superheroes. But in that moment, watching Fatal Five, I realized a part of myself hadn’t previously been targeted by the genre. I felt seen, and in feeling seen I realized to my shock that I hadn’t felt seen before. Perhaps if the movie was another kind of genre, it wouldn’t have affected me so intensely, but this was superheroes, a genre I’d been obsessed with since childhood. In fact, this was a superhero movie done in the same animation style as Bruce Timm’s Batman the Animated Series, one of the most influential shows of my childhood. These were the sorts of heroes I had grown up with, had seen as archetypes of strength and courage. But now I saw that they suffer like me. Their minds betray them like mine. They are like me. But that doesn’t stop them from being heroes and saving the world. As I watched Fatal Five, I broke down and cried.

Thanks to this movie, 2019 was the year that I learned to think more deeply about my mental health issues, the year I learned to speak publicly about them. It was the year that I realized that art could speak to my condition, and when it does, it can be powerful. That when art speaks to me about my mental condition, I feel heard. I no longer feel alone. And when that happens, I can make positive changes in my own life.

It was Justice League vs the Fatal Five that inspired me to consciously write about mental health, to make that my artistic goal. My next big project was to create Through the Labyrinths of the Mind, a graphic novel anthology in which numerous cartoonists created stories inspired by their own experiences with mental health issues such as depression, anxiety, ADHD, and PTSD. I myself wrote an adaptation of the Welsh legend “Geraint, Son of Erbin,” the story of an Arthurian knight who succumbs to crippling depression. In writing about the vulnerability of a hero from my own cultural heritage, I sought to echo the vulnerability of the superheroes that Fatal Five had shown me onscreen. I wanted to show that even the strongest, bravest people suffer inside their minds, and so it’s okay when we do.

Now most of what I write is related to mental health issues in some way. My protagonists wrestle with similar demons to what I wrestle with, and I think hard about how to present those struggles in a potent and insightful way. Before Justice League vs the Fatal Five, I just wrote what I wanted without thinking about how my unique experiences and thoughts could help people. Now I know that when I write about mental health, I can connect to people who wrestle with their own issues. By having my heroes struggle inside their heads, I can inspire my readers in the same way that Fatal Five inspired me. I can make them feel seen, and encourage them to accept themselves. No other movie or book has transformed me as much as this one did.

Defining What I Write

27 Monday Dec 2021

Posted by in Self-Reflection, Speculative Fiction, Writing

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

I’ve been spending a lot of my time trying to figure out what to call the sort of stuff I like to write — stories set in the modern world that use the supernatural as symbols to explore the psychological and emotional states of the protagonists. Though many of the stories are dark and some cross over into horror, I wouldn’t say that “horror” is a good umbrella term for this style in general. “Urban fantasy” is usually the term given to fantasy stories set in the modern world, and I find it’s a little too general for my taste. It tells nothing of the ambiance of the story, which matters more to me than the story’s physical trappings. The type of fantasy I’m going for are the deeper realities, the common ground of the stories of Algernon Blackwood and Jorge Luis Borges, and the comics of David B and Junji Ito. I needed to find some term that encapsulates works such as these and demonstrates how I feel about my own writing.

One may ask why it is so important to define what kind of thing you’re writing. Shouldn’t you just write what matters to you without thinking about how to classify it? Isn’t it limiting to give it a label? There’s certainly validity in that stance. However, I became especially intrigued about how to classify what I like to write when I decided to enter the UBC program because I realized that if I get a better sense of what, then that can help me figure out why, and if I can understand why I write, then that can help me in directing my work going forward.

I realized that for me it’s less important whether a story has anything literally magical than that it feels like magic. In exploring these psychological states, I want to produce a sublime sense of awe in the reader, what it would feel like to touch some deeper reality, some unnatural, sublime presence beyond their kin. I got a far truer taste of this kind of “fantasy” in Rosemary Sutcliff’s historical novel Sword at Sunset, whose protagonists feel like pawns of fate playing out some mythic tale, than in Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman’s Dragonlance Chronicles, a story of wizards & dragons far more prosaically told. I then realized that there is an obvious word to describe this experience of an unnatural presence beyond our comprehension — “occult.”

The word “occult” comes from the Latin “occultus,” which means “hidden, concealed, secret.” In English, it can be used to mean something generally hidden or mysterious (“occult matters such as nuclear physics”) or more commonly used to mean something related to the supernatural, often with somewhat sinister overtones (“he joined an occult secret society dedicated to demon summoning”). This linguistic linking of “secret” and “supernatural” intrigued me, and I realized that it was able to really define what sort of stories are fascinating to me. Stories about the uncovering of spiritual secrets, the moments when someone discovers something profound that forces them to reevaluate their relationship to the universe, for good or ill. It’s the vision of Heaven or Hell that alters someone’s relationship to God, the ghost that forces them to confront their mortality, the magic spell that causes their reality to warp. It’s about feeling like you’ve reached the edge of your conventional view of things, and your next step will take you beyond the fields you know. It’s about that sublime uncertainty more than about any actual specific fantasy images. That sublimity is what fascinates me.

Such a story doesn’t need to have the literal supernatural. The brilliant movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind is incredibly occult in my definition of the term, as it’s all about how the coming of aliens transforms everyone’s views of reality and forces them to confront the wider universe. Robertson Davies’ psychoanalytical novels such as The Manticore are also occult as their explorations into Jungian symbolism force the characters to uncover the secrets of their psyches, which transform their relationship to the universe and themselves. They’re both about the feeling of touching some great truth, one so transformative that it almost feels supernatural. Now, most of my own occult stories are explicitly supernatural, but I’d like to think that they have more in common with Close Encounters of the Third Kind or The Manticore than they do with Harry Potter. I certainly want to capture that numinous feeling. I want my readers to feel like they’re peeling off a level of reality and encountering something hidden and profound underneath.

In short, “occult fiction” is what I like to write.

Christmas and Not Dead Yet

26 Sunday Dec 2021

Posted by in Musings, Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge

I can’t believe it’s Christmas, 2021. So much has happened this year. I can’t believe it’s been more than a year since my last blog post. All right, I can believe the last part. It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve been busy doing all sorts of things. There are certain years in one’s life that are transformative. Almost alchemical. You know as you’re passing through them that they are shaping you, and you’ll be very different when you come out the other side. “Behold, I tell you a mystery: we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed….”

What is different? Well, I’m further in my Creative Writing MFA at UBC. I only have one semester of classes left, though my thesis is certainly going to take longer. The classes have been intriguing. A fiction class that has helped crystallize the parts of my writing that need more work, a graphic novel class that has inspired me to try creating a collage comic strip entirely myself instead of relying on someone else to draw it, a teaching creative writing class that has shown me how I can be a better teacher, and a writing for children class that has shown me that the Welsh King Arthur story I want to write would work very well as a YA book.

In addition, I got married to the love of my life, published my anthology on mental health with Cloudscape Comics, and have continued to teach at Langara (and been developing my teaching techniques there). Also the stress of work, school, and the global pandemic have forced me to lose myself in new interests. I’ve gotten very engaged in the various elaborate and creative fashion choices of haute couture (especially the mythology-inspired stuff of Thierry Mugler and Guo Pei), and I’ve finally got involved in social media.

It’s a weird moment to basically sit up and say “Are you telling me that there are people on the Internet interested in talking about 1980s role-playing games, 1990s Marvel trading cards, 1930s horror movies, and general factoids of superhero comics and mythology?” Of course intellectually I knew that to be true, though it took this year to emotionally realize it. I’m actually retweeting people, engaging in twitter discussions, following podcasts (especially the erudite yet hilarious Oh Gosh, Oh Golly, Oh Wow! podcast for the Excalibur comic), that sort of thing. In particular, I’ve gotten engaged in the network of folklore-related hashtags (#MythologyMonday, #FairyTaleTuesday, #WyrdWednesday, #FolkloreThursday, #FaustianFriday, etc.), in which every week on the day of the relevant hashtag, you post factoids relevant to their current theme. It’s bizarre how marvelous it has felt to post folklore factoids and read what others have posted – quick consumption of obscure mythic facts is certainly my biggest addiction. It’s such a soothing experience to be in communication with so many people deeply nostalgic about the same things I am. It seems like a weird thing to fixate on, but considering how important nostalgia and pop culture factoids are in my life — there it is. The world is a frightening and chaotic place.

I am expanding my interests to new areas, perfecting my writing prowess, and moving forward with my life. Right now I’m still overwhelmed with MFA-related stuff, so I’m certainly not relaxed. But it is nice to know that through all this I am becoming a more engaged person. I am building a community of associates, getting more involved in more interests, and of course soon I’ll have a nice MFA degree to be proud of. I am being changed, and it is nice.

Happy holidays!

Juggling School & Anthologies

07 Monday Dec 2020

Posted by in Mental Issues, Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

,

So it’s the beginning of December, the dying of the old year, and I’ve been enjoying the lovely experience of experiencing my first semester in UBC’s Creative Writing MFA program while also editing Through the Labyrinths of the Mind, Cloudscape Comics’ anthology on mental health issues. It has been marvelous to organize an anthology of comic book stories all centered around mental health, a subject I care about so strongly about. It’s been marvelous to see the variety of stories born from it – memoirs, fantasies, dramas, adaptations of myths. But perhaps most marvelous is knowing the variety of experiences that went into these pieces. Whether directly or through a veil of fiction, the artists have used this as a venue to explore their own experiences with depression, anxiety, dementia, PTSD, ADD, and numerous other issues. I’m proud to have organized this, given voice to issues that are often not discussed.

Still, Through the Labyrinths of the Mind is a project I’d hoped to have been basically done by the time UBC started. Sadly, best laid plans of mice and so forth. These things always take far longer than expected. So here I am, juggling the incredibly stressful experience of analyzing artists’ work for an anthology with the incredibly stressful experience of embarking on a new academic study. All in the middle of dealing with the incredibly stressful experience of a global pandemic. Fun.

My brain is not wired for multitasking; it requires a lot of effort to quickly reorient myself from one task to another. However, the process of working on both anthology and university together has some interesting elements. It’s interesting to be involved in a creative project in which I’m the boss while at the same time doing various creative projects in which I’m the student, being an authority figure at the same time as being someone who’s definitely not. It’s also interesting to be working on various scholarship applications in which I pitch my thesis project and its exploration of mental health, while at the same time already working on an ambitious mental health project. Feels nice to say on the applications that mental health isn’t just something I have written about or will write about, but is in fact something I’m writing about right now, at this very instant. I’m in the thick of it.

Perhaps that’s really the big thing about the last few few months – I’m in the thick of it. In the thick of all these different projects, both in and out of UBC. I’ve been doing things that really matter to me, building myself in various ways as an author, an editor, and a teacher of writing. Labyrinths is getting done; it will get done. And because I’ve embarked on my journey with Labyrinths, I’ve been able to use it to open up some doors in other places.

Researching my novel

25 Tuesday Apr 2017

Posted by in Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

So I haven’t been posting a lot recently because, as usual, I’ve been insanely busy. Also, I’ve been switching gears in what I’ve been doing, trying to focus on finishing my novel, Guardian of the Garden City, instead of letting myself get distracted by other things. As tempting as it is to submit to every call for submissions that comes my way, it has really been slowing down the time I’ve been spending focusing on what really matters to me artistically.

When I hit a wall with my novel, I starting researching a lot of stuff that I felt would be relevant to helping the story flourish, both revisiting a lot of old favourites such as Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum and China Mieville’s Kraken, and taking a look at new stuff such as Paul Stoller & Cheryl Olkes’ In Sorcery’s Shadow.

The big problem with Guardian is that there’s a very particular mood that I’m trying for with the supernatural — that feeling of obsession and madness, of the power that comes from looking at aspects of the world in a strange new way. A mood is the most ephemeral of things, especially because on top of that I’m trying to capture the right feel of Victoria, cult capital of the world. The book is supposed to explore Victoria’s strange history and urban legends, and — most importantly — capture part of its soul. What is written in my novel should be true, from a certain metaphorical perspective.

This is very challenging, ambitious stuff, which is why it’s taking such a long time. Frustrating yet fascinating. I think my next book project will be The Wizards of Wales, an exploration of magicians in Welsh folklore. Then I’ll be operating within an established tradition, not needing to build my own cosmology from scratch. That sounds so much easier.

Teaching at Langara

06 Monday Feb 2017

Posted by in Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, , ,

Tomorrow I teach the third installment in my “Writing for Graphic Novels & Comix” class as part of Langara College’s “Graphic Novel & Comix” program. It’s an honour to be one of the program instructors, and a really exciting experience to be teaching people how to best organize their ideas, develop their story, and convert it into a comic script. Many people say that often the instructor learns as much about the subject as the people he’s teaching, and it certainly true that preparing each class has made me think long and hard about the steps for creating a good story and a good comic, including character motivation, the arc of a plot, and the composition of a comic page.

It will be fascinating to discover how I feel about all of this at the end of the final class, and also what comic stories my students will produce. It has been an exciting adventure so far.

My favourites

08 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by in Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

If you’re curious about me:
1. Favourite novels: Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco, The Great Divorce by C. S. Lewis, and Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.
2. Favourite children’s novel: Peter & Wendy by J. M. Barrie
3. Favourite short stories: “Markheim” by Robert Louis Stevenson, “The White People” by Arthur Machen, and “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood.
4. Favourite TV shows: Steven Universe by Rebecca Sugar and The Lost Room by Christopher Leone and Laura Harkcom
5. Favourite movies: The Seventh Seal by Ingmar Bergman, Barbarella by Roger Vadim, and Bride of Frankenstein by James Whale.
6. Favourite role-playing game: Unknown Armies
7. Favourite graphic novels: Fun Home by Alison Bechdel, Metabarons by Alejandro Jodorowsky and Juan Giménez, and The Invisibles by Grant Morrison & several artists.
8. Favourite fictional character: Frankenstein’s Monster.
9. Favourite mythology: Norse
10. Favourite mythological characters: Odin and the Minotaur

Need to work on my novel

07 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by in Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

,

Okay, so I promised myself I wouldn’t answer call for submissions so that I would have time to finally finish writing my occult novel Guardian of the Garden City. As a result, I’ve only been submitted stuff for four calls for submissions. Oy. But I’m finally finishing off the last call for submission (a novella about an Egypt-inspired fantasy realm), and then I can finally finish Guardian. Well, once I also finish rereading The Obscene Bird of Night by Jose Donoso, since that’s necessary background material for my book. But maybe, just maybe, if nothing else major distracts me for the next half year or so, I’ll actually have Guardian of the Garden City done. Man, that would feel so awesome. So, world, please don’t throw anything my way until it’s done.

Why I do what I do

22 Monday Jul 2013

Posted by in Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

, ,

I attended an interesting business seminar that spent a lot of time investigating each participant’s psychology, who they were, what they were doing, how that connected to their business. One of the most interesting elements was when the person running it asked us to think about our own story and see how it motivates each of us in our particular professions.

I suppose in different ways it’s something I’d been thinking about at various times over the years but I never put it into quite those words before. Why do I do what I do? Well, if you asked me to describe myself in a single word, that word would be “storyteller.” Whether I’m writing comics for Cloudscape, writing copy for clients, even playing role-playing games, I’m telling stories. That’s what I do. Stories fascinate me.

I’ve always yearned for self-expression, always wanted to tell the stories that matter to me and to people who are ready to listen. And I continue to tell my own stories in numerous mediums. As this is my great passion in life, it’s also something I seek to provide other people with. I help other people find their voice, tell their stories, get their voice. I allow them to express themselves, their passion, through their story. Their passion may be a product or a service, a company or a personal identity. Whatever it is, I make certain that it’s being expressed in the most effective way possible.

I tell stories. Sometimes it’s my story, sometimes it’s other people’s. It’s what I do. Because self-expression and expressing ideas, telling stories, is what I love most in the world. I do it because it’s my passion. Why do you do what you do?

Comics for Clients

17 Wednesday Jul 2013

Posted by in Self-Reflection

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

,

STUD onlineSo I like helping companies and professionals tell their story and I like comics, so it shouldn’t be a surprise that I like using comics to help companies and professionals tell their stories. Comics are a very versatile medium: their combination of pictures and words is concise and engaging, allowing information to quickly, clearly, and compellingly be delivered to a target audience. This can be shown in everything from emergency procedure pamphlets to Larry Gonick’s classic cartoon histories.

Cloudscape Comics originI’ve written an underwear ad as a comic, told the history of a comic book company as a comic, and recounted two news events as comics. They were four of the funnest copywriting projects I’ve done and four of the most powerful, as they get the readers involved in the information in a very memorable manner. I’m proud of all my copywriter but my non-fiction comics have an especially soft place in my heart for they’re a beautiful union of my career and my passion. You’ll certainly be seeing much more of them in the future.