A Look at the Comics Book Code

A post at LuaraVent69’s blog got me thinking about the role of the entertainment media in the violent, scary state of modern life.  I advocated in a reply that maybe the media needed to dial things back just a bit.  THAT, in turn, got me thinking about the ever present conundrum of “where do we draw the line”.  People rightfully have some concerns about restrictions of any sort of rights being a gateway to a total denial of said right.  It happens all the time in totalitarian systems.

Before I wander off into a tangent though… one past option came to mind and I began wondering if it would work today.  That being the now defunct “Comic Books Code”.

Now, for those who aren’t familiar with it, I’ll start with a little background.  I’m running from memory, so if I goof a fact, it’s not intentional.  The code got it’s start in the the 1950s.  1954 if I’m not mistaken.  Some grown ups were concerned that comic books were becoming an increasingly bad influence on kids.  More adult content, etc…  Back then, kids were the only buyers too.  Anyway, the outrage got to the point that the major comic publishers were worried that Congress was going to take some heavy handed actions to regulate them.  Their alternative to head this off was a self-imposed code of conduct about what would appear in comic books.

The code essentially established that comics wouldn’t have any overtly sexual material, that the good guys would always win in the end, criminals wouldn’t be glorified in any way, and that things like drug use would be avoided also.  Gory violence was to be avoided, etc…   Well, heck, here’s the whole code for those who are interested:

The Comics Code of 1954

Some of it gets a bit silly, like the prohibition against vampires and werewolves.  ANYWAY… the code was enforced by a review board called the “Comics Code Authority”.  The whole thing came crashing down when rebellious comics writers wanted to do stories related to the drug trade.  They planned on portraying the effects of drugs in a negative manner, etc… but that didn’t matter to the Authority.  Net result; one by one the publishers pulled out and did their own thing.  If I recall correctly it started with a story Marvel wanted to run in Spider-Man comics but I might be wrong.

NOW, everything but hardcore porn seems to go in comic books.  How much of that is a good thing is open for a bit of debate.  For example, we wouldn’t have Power Girl’s massive mammaries if the code was still in effect.  Boys and lesbians love them, some women scream objectification and unrealistic body standards.

OK, let’s state the obvious…  Some of the code is silly in the modern world:

Policemen, judges, Government officials and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority

Really??  Is there a single reader out there that thinks all government officials are above reproach?

But in terms of some of the rest of it… Are we really in a better place in the world for books, films and TV shows that do glorify crime and criminals?  Is excessive gore in movies REALLY anything more than a crutch for poor story telling?  Alfred Hitchcock is considered a master of suspense and early horror, but never had to show anyone getting mutilated.  Is all the violence and glorification of gunplay as a way to resolve the plot really necessary?  Yes, I could by a hypocrite and ask the same questions about sex scenes also.

My personal opinion here?  Going back to something as restrictive as the Code probably isn’t a real answer.  Maybe taking a voluntary step back in that general direction wouldn’t hurt though.  There’s something wrong when a show like Breaking Bad that glorifies a man selling meth and ruining peoples’ lives, is a huge hit.  Before anyone argues that with me, they should google up pictures of what meth does to people.

That’s what the poison Walter White was selling to people did.

Would the alternative work?  Just look at the original Star Wars trilogy.

Maybe if we quit glorifying all the darkest elements of society, we’ll get less of them in real life.

 

A Vader Update

I talked to the friend that first linked me to the Vader fan film that I shared a few blog posts ago.  I was curious to find out if there were any other chapters released yet, and what news he’d heard in that regard (he has a remarkable knack for finding such things out).

At this point, there won’t be any future chapters.  Disney went after the producer with everything they had and even took the first chapter away from him.  LucasArts (presumably Lucas himself) apparently still has some pull though, and get the first chapter returned to the producer.  Not before Disney’s legal bullying wiped out the producer financially though.  They’re also blocking all attempts to crowdfund future chapters of the story.

I hear stories like this all the time.  I’ve watched them gobble up more and more of the entertainment world too the last decade or so.  Walt Disney would doubtless spin in his grave if he saw how his company is being run nowadays.

Speaking of Boundaries…

I really, really hate to do this, but I’ve got roughly 80 blogs on follow now.  A wide array of subjects too.  I value all of you, BUT I’m spending over 2 hours a day just trying to keep up with a constant parade of email updates and new posts.  A few of you are posting almost 15 times a day also.

So, I have to find some balance here and regain a little of my time back.  My boundary is going to be that I’ll read and like / comment on the first 3 or 4 posts a day from everyone.  After that, I have to pass on any additional posts.  I appreciate all of you, but I only have so much time.

Keep writing, creating poetry, or art, etc…  I won’t discourage anyone from creating.

Regrouping

Why am I up at 2:45am?!?  I should finally go to bed, but I’ve had ALOT on my mind lately.  Most of more properly belongs in the spiritual blog also.

That’s actually part of what THIS post is about though.  My posts here have been more personal blog and self growth than writing blog lately.  Granted, I’ve been able to tie it into writing to a degree…  I can’t help but wonder though if maybe THAT is where my true passion lays.  It’s probably just all the crazy recent events, and my trying to put them in perspective that have me writing that way.

Be that as it may, I’m going to be trying yet again to get my proper writing going again, both erotica and mainstream fiction.  I’m also going to try to keep this blog more focused on writing related topics.

Some of the rambling has been helpful though.  Random side rant; I REALLY use the word “though” too much, LOL.  Anyway, a few of the posts and some recent events have made me realize just what a trigger that people trying to deny others their voice is for me.  I’ve been dealing with it my entire life with my family, and most of my jobs.  It’s still happening to this day with my mom.  My brother craps all over me, and I’m supposed to just forget it.

Anyway, I realized that’s an influencer for me with things like political and social issue connected hate.  The level it’s hitting out there is insane.  So many examples, but there’s been enough bitching in recent blog posts.   I just want to grab people, and shake them until they get through their heads they’re making the problems worse by responding with hate and refusal to listen.

So yeah…  Personal challenge while I regroup here, LOL

TRIGGER WARNING: I’m Back!!!

LOL.  It’s been a crazy last 48 hours.  The last 4 of which I just spent catching up on thee 114 email notifications I had from WordPress AND writing another spiritual blog post.  More there in a minute.

The funeral went reasonably well.  The priest was mush mouthed and didn’t seem to know the rituals.  Maybe it’s a Catholic thing.  I think everything has to be exactly by the book.  Anyway, short but good ceremony there.  A little bit of unspoken conflict back at my parents’ (well, mom’s now) house afterwards, but I’ll spare folks the personal drama.

Realizing how short life can be, along with the more positive experiences on twitter and here have made me more determined to get focused with my writing and a few other resolutions.  Not fanatical midlife crisis level or anything, but it all snapped things back into focus.

 

The spiritual blog post and trigger warning joke above are about the need for people in general, and Empaths specifically to have reasonable boundaries, and how some people use false compassion and guilt tripping to tell others they have no right to said boundaries.  It was inspired by post in a followed blog about how “walls don’t work”.  The spiritual blog post should have made clear that I do NOT lump the author of that post in said guilt tripper category.  They just genuinely don’t believe walls work.  The post DID remind me of all the hateful things I’ve seen on the subject by other people though, and how many times I’ve been guilt tripped and manipulated for trying to have boundaries..

So, with that in mind, and wanting to discuss the idea that boundaries of any type are bad, I wrote that post.  If you’re interested, take a look.  If you’re the type that’s easily offended by anything other than far left views, consider this a trigger warning and avoid it.

False Compassion

The simple premise is that we all need boundaries and walls.  People need occasional quiet time, writers need to be able to focus on their work, etc…  Walls DO have to have gates to let the good in though, and the only truly evil wall is the one designed to keep people from exiting (ie the Berlin Wall).

Fixing A Train Wreck, LOL

My last post seemed to confuse people, so I’m going to try this in a little more straight forward way without as much parable to distract or confuse.

The point of that now deleted post was that I often wonder if we as authors let the extreme elements of society have too much influence over our voices as authors.  The topic was inspired by a discussion with ComixFana over future plans for our respective stories.  That’s all that was going on there, LOL.

I see stories like the Star Wars prequels that were so heavily laden with political commentary, or about a half a dozen TV shows I could name that try to force certain social beliefs down our throats…  I wonder if that’s robbing the voice of authors that do want to write characters with more moderate views…  That they worry they have to tailor their characters to certain expectations or their writing won’t be accepted.  I know that’s certainly the case on Twitter.

My failed point to the original post was that if you want your character to have more mainstream beliefs, you should go for it.  It’s OK to have a feminist that’s married with kids.  It’s how she defines herself, not a piece of paper that makes her a feminist.  If you want to keep her single and independent, or in something like a live in arrangement or common law marriage, that’s cool too.  Just have your own reasons for your character’s actions and personality.  Don’t let others take your voice.

Vindication

I’m in a better mood today.  Time away from the toxic wasteland that is Twitter has helped that.  The Vindication I feel from all the replies I got here helped put everything in perspective.  Yesterday crushed the blog’s best views stat by 20% and daily likes by 50%.  And that previous best day was when I begged twitter to look at the blog to help me break a former record.  I picked up 4 new followers also

Views are great, but it’s the comments and likes that really made my day.  I’m resilient and bounce back pretty quickly.  It’s a survival trait combined with pure redhead stubbornness.  That said, it always helps to know people empathize or outright agree with you when you’re at a low spot.

I know I’m growing as a person too.  My usual response to getting shut down on something in the past has been “screw it, it’s not worth the drama” and walk away.  This time I’m determined to prove them wrong.  I know I’m a good writer.  It’s easy to hide behind “haters going to hate”, but I’ve had past enemies admit to others that they destroyed my writing out of jealousy.  Am I Hemingway, or James Patterson?  Hell no, LOL.  There are areas of my writing that need serious work.  On the other hand I’m great with plot and character development.  I also have a solid grasp on grammar and how to structure a sentence.  When I have a better mastery of things like show, don’t tell, avoiding white room syndrome and a couple other things, I KNOW I’ll be successful.

For those following the blog here; Thank You.  It means alot to know people find me worth reading.  I do my best to follow back people and comment or at least like posts also.  The major exception being if you’re a prolific writer and are posting several times a day.  I just don’t have the time to keep up with everything then.  As it is, I’m averaging 2 hours a day on the blog and related emails.  It’s worth it though.  You’re all real people to me and I value your support

 

About Done With Twitter

I think my time experimenting with Twitter as a networking and marketing platform to build my brand as an author is coming to an end.  I like the superficial support of the Writers Community there, BUT superficial is the key word.  Yeah, I’m going to be burning some bridges here, but the people I’ll alienate are already shutting me out anyway.  So what the hell.  Where are the problems?

First, there’s Twitter’s policy on adult content to begin with.  It’s virtually non-existent and very helter-skelter.  With the laws about adult material getting crazier and crazier, I don’t feel safe posting anything adult there.  Hell, it bothers me greatly that WordPress doesn’t have an adult filter thing that will at least put up a “are you over 18?” button before entering a blog.  That’s a side rant however.  Point is, I can see an eventual backlash against it like happened with Tumblr.  Tumblr isn’t evil, it just didn’t want to deal with all the crap that sites like Craigslist, Backpage and several others have.  In an age of lawyers & lawsuits, it’s easier to just go zero tolerance.

The irony to all of this is that my goal isn’t even to be an erotica author.  I want and plan to branch out into other genres.  I’m good with Sci-Fi, fantasy, paranormal, romance…  I enjoy erotica but RIGHT NOW, it’s a way to prime the pump financially to do full blown novels.  I love erotica, and I plan to keep doing it.  I just want to be known for more; as a multifaceted writer.

That leads us to the second issue.  Try as I might to deny it, there IS a definite bias against erotica writers in the Writing Community.  Romance writers as well, it seems.  If you’re not writing mainstream fiction or non-fiction, you’re not a real writer.  Even children’s books get more respect, and John freaking Cena wrote one of those.  Granted it’s not an all out boycott or anything, but it’s there.  “Real” writers get 1000+ followers overnight.  Nearly 3 months later, I’m struggling to stay above 500, and that’s with spending 12 hours a day trying to make friends and be supportive of others.

There’s an even greater and more obvious bias against unpublished writers.  You’re not a real author unless you have a book for sale.  The irony is, ten years ago, half the people saying or thinking this crap were getting told they weren’t real authors if they were indie or self publishing.  Now this next remark is NOT directed at anybody I know on Twitter.  Everyone that writes erotica in my circle seems to be very talented.  That said, the part that pisses me off is that I am SOLIDLY better than at least half the erotica writers on Amazon.  Half of the stuff I’ve paid money for there was so shitty they should be paying ME to read  it.  “The Wife’s BFF” is only on a blog though, so I’m not a real author.

Then there’s politics, and to a lesser degree social issues.  Everything is presented to the extreme.  You can’t be in favor of women’s rights unless you think all men need to be marched off to the gas chamber.  Anybody that wants to argue that should just look at the majority of tweets in response to Gillette’s virtue signaling “TheBestMenCanBe” campaign.  You don’t LOVE everything Democratic and declare Trump the anti-christ, you’re the enemy of everything decent, etc…  Anybody that owns a gun is out to go on a mass shooting.  Cops have a genocidal hatred of mnorities.  There’s NO rational discussion.

I tend to highlight liberal examples because they’re more common on Twitter.  All but the most rabid and insane right wingers have been shouted into silence on Twitter.  For the record, I used to describe myself as a social liberal and a fiscal conservative; kind of a classic libertarian.  As I see more and more of the extremes on all sides though, I’ve become a moderate across the board:

Yes, I want women’s rights.  I’m just sick and damned tired of seeing all men labeled as shit as part of the process.  Hate only fuels the backlash complained about and SLOWS THE PROCESS!!!

Yes, I want LGBTQ rights, but without the same toxic crap they complain about being directed back at straight people.

YES, I want minority rights, but again without the toxic crap.  Remember what I just said about backlash; it’s created by fighting hate with hate.

Yes, I want immigration reform and people to have a shot at the American dream.  The VAST majority of Latinos are moral, honest, hard working people.  I want border security too and for our cops and citizen to NOT be gunned down by the bad that come in with the good.

Ultimately, I don’t blame the extremists for all of the above either.  I blame the moderates  who supposedly agree with me, but can’t be bothered to take a stand and say “We don’t want to hear it until you’re prepared to act like a rational adult.  Until then, piss off.”  Too many moderates are enablers.  They’re afraid of taking a stand and/or losing “friends” who they’d barely tolerate in real life. So instead they give people drunk of self righteous hatred the drink of passive agreement.

Amazing how many people have re-tweeted my “Be the Light” post, but I have yet to see anybody take a real stand against the BS at Twitter.

Instead, I’m the villain for having the courage of my convictions.  I spend hours trying to build a brand and a network, liking and commenting on countless things, trying to joke and cheer people up, etc…  People barely acknowledge my existence anymore.

There’s no “Brand building” as marketers like to call it.  I can’t comment on half of what’s said on twitter for fear of being crucified.  I’m vilified for saying that so long as you don’t want to hear a reply, I don’t want to hear the hate.  I’m not taken seriously as a writer…

What the hell is the point?  I have 546 followers now.  10% of them never even read my profile to see the “politics = blocked” in it, and they have #resistance or similar crap in their profile.  Another 25% or so are just marketing bots / accounts that I have no interest in and they have NO interest in me beyond selling.  Out of the 2/3 remaining, I can count on my fingers the number of people who regularly respond to my tweets and actually give a damned about me as a person.

 

The Joys of Being an Empath

Before I start, we need to establish definitions.  Empathy is the ability to understand the emotions of others.  That means you’re still alive inside and can understand that a situation would make a person sad, angry, etc…  You’re aware that there are reasons for a person’s mood or actions and care about it.  Being an empath, on the other hand, means that you can literally pick up and FEEL the emotions of other people.

Spiritual gifts are something I rarely discuss.  When I do, it’s only in the most general of terms.  Why?  Society has been rejecting them since time immemorial.  If you DO talk about them, you’re crazy, or some sort of devil worshiper.  I had my own father try to have me committed when I was about 20 when he found a letter to a friend discussing empathy and that I was seeing alot of odd shadows out of the corner of my eye at the time.

So what’s driving me to open up today after such experiences?  First, I’ve been really trying to get back in touch with my spiritual side after shutting it down for years.  There’s also a slowly growing acceptance of the idea of empathic ability anymore.  This article in The Atlantic for example:

https://www.theatlantic.com/family/archive/2019/01/affective-presence-how-you-make-other-people-feel/579643/

It explores the researched idea that some people seem to project emotions.  There are also writers like Dr Judith Orloff, a UCLA Psychiatrist that has been writing on Empathy for decades.  Other writers are following suite.

The other half of it is that Twitter is driving me crazy with it’s steady stream of toxic bullshit.  Yes, I’m in a mood tonight.  Yes, when somebody puts something as strong as blind hate into something on the internet, that hate becomes tangible to somebody like me.  It creeps into our system and poisons our own mood.  Imagine literally absorbing and feeling the hate of every single “the other side needs to go die in a fire” tweet you see.  It’s a miserable experience.  It makes you feel like THIS:

So when I say in my “Be the Light” post that people addicted to outrage are making the world a darker place, I’m speaking as a person who is very familiar with emotional energy and energetic vibration.  Hate, no matter how righteous you THINK it is, lowers the vibration of the spiritual energy in the people and areas exposed to it.

How strong an empath am I personally?  When I lived in Georgia, I had a friend that lived in Perth Australia.  I could tell when she was having a bad day  or was sick and knew before I even hopped online to talk to her.  Literally half a world away.

I’m personally beginning to think Twitter is a lost cause also.  It’s a cesspool of negative emotional energy.  For emapths, everything in life comes down to “Am I getting more positive energy out of this than negative BS?”  It’s a survival technique since we can only filter or shield out so much.

Maybe I’ll go into this further in a separate blog if there’s any interest.  Tonight I just needed to rant.

 

A Witchy Realization or Two…

I’ve been mulling over a growing uneasiness with my Witchfire story line.  It has been an uneasiness strong enough to give me writer’s block.  Tonight, I think I finally figured out what it was.

Witchfire’s stories are set in a universe created as part of a superheroine peril site; DangerBabeCentral.com.  It’s fairly tame as superheroine exploitation sites go, but I still hated the way the characters were violated repeatedly, portrayed as air-headed at times, and just accepted getting violated as a hazard of being a superhero.

Witchfire was my attempt to drop a new character into that mess like another friend, Comixfana had done previously, and create a more tolerable yet hopefully still sexy version of that world.

Early on… Like 3 paragraphs into chapter 1, I realized she was coming off as the world’s bitchiest Mary Sue though.  So instead I dialed her down, tried to make her more human, and instead ended up with her being just another victim instead.

I also subconsciously fell into a pattern of projecting my own self doubts into her.  She was younger and couldn’t get anybody to listen to her, so the story arc got stuck in a repeating loop and I had to bring in another character to do what she SHOULD have done.

Those of you who don’t know Comixfana’s character are getting introduced to him this upcoming chapter.  Part of Sully’s lessons are going to be “you could have done this yourself if you didn’t let them make you doubt yourself”.

Moving forward, my answer will be bringing the She-Legion up to Witchfire’s level instead of “dumbing” her down to the level of DBC stories.  That will require upping the bad guys’ game a little too, but that will only make the stories more exciting going forward.

I hope this makes the stories more enjoyable for everyone, and will MAYBE set a better example for those reading the DBC fan fiction page.

 

As a side note, constructive comments on this or anything I write are ALWAYS welcome.  Anything where that might not be the case will have comments turned off.  You can disagree with me freely, just do so in a polite manner.  If you do that, I will NOT block you, drop you from my followed blogs list, etc…  Polite disagreement and discussion is how we learn and grow.  I am still capable of being friends with somebody and disagreeing with them on some things also.

Needless to say, positive feedback is also extremely welcome, LOL