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Archives for : Inspiration
“The flame might be gone, but the fire remains
And I’m stuck on a path to my own ruin
Did you see me behind the wheel?
Did you see me behind the wheel?
And the flame might be gone, but the fire…
-“Remembered” by The Dear Hunter
Sometime in the middle of last year, I heard the premise for American Fiction (2023) and thought it sounded like an absolutely genius concept completely relevant to not just my experiences as an author, but the experiences of a whole bunch of POC that I personally know. Lo and behold, upon viewing it, they knock most of it out of the park (I don’t like the final act, personally; I think it doesn’t feel cohesive and satisfying enough to end what was a REALLY good story in the first and second acts). Enough that it’s why I felt like I wanted to blow the dust off my blog for an entry. I think this movie is going to give us a lot of cud to chew as a society, and that it’s definitely a conversation worth having among black authors in particular.
Let’s get into it. Before we start, spoilers for American Fiction (2023). At the time of this post, it is still in theaters so if you want to get the juicy details, I recommend you pop out to a theater. Its theatrical run was extended thanks to the Oscar nominations.
American Fiction is about a struggling black professor named Thelonious “Monk” Ellis who is vexed by the fact that his work is actually quite good, but it doesn’t sell because it’s complex and not palatable to the masses. After a lot of misfortune, he gets the idea to write a book that’s both pandering to urban fiction readers and is a middle finger to the industry that puts out books that basically (in his opinion) reinforce harmful black stereotypes and sends it to his publisher under a different pseudonym, laughing that he will get reviled reactions to writing tripe. Well, the opposite happens! Immediately, a huge publisher says they want the book and to offer him friggin’ $750,000 for it. Monk is gobsmacked, but since his sister just died and his mother was just diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer’s, he reluctantly decides to take the offer. Things get even more complicated when the book blows up as a number one bestseller and he gets a movie deal, despite his chagrin and embarrassment, and he struggles to reconcile the fact that the worst thing he’s ever written is now his most successful book.
So, in my family, my older brother and have a running joke about the fact that I am a fairly good writer (or at least I feel that I might be one; none of the good writers ever know it or believe it even when given evidence) but I make nothing off my books because I don’t write to market, and if I just sold out and wrote bad smut or books for basic bitches, I’d be a millionaire.
You can see why I went right out to see this film as a result.
American Fiction’s biting sarcasm and relentless exposure of the faults in the publishing world and the black community is definitely going to be remembered by all relevant parties. This film shines a light on something that the average person, regardless of race, ethnicity, and nationality, probably doesn’t know. Way too many people don’t know how the writing and publishing world works, and this film does. It truly gets it. It gets what black writers go through and it gets what the mainstream publishing world sounds like. Whoever wrote it definitely has either experienced this crap directly or is intimate with someone who does, because everything in the film proceeds exactly how it does in real life, for the most part.
And that’s what got me thinking.
If I had to sum up American Fiction (2023) in a word, I’d say it’s about responsibility.
So in the story, one of the reasons Monk decides to write the most base and pandering piece of crap novel is after having to endure watching a book seemingly just like it blow up by a black female author named Sindra. It inadvertently puts him on edge every time he has to be somewhere and see her book, given that the book just panders to every black stereotype since that is the genre expectation for urban fiction. Finally, in the third act, he and the author are in the same room and he asks her why she considered his book (keep in mind, she has no idea he wrote it) pandering, yet hers doesn’t count. She fires back that she’s writing to market and that it’s not her fault if white people or other people think that all black people behave the way they do in urban fiction. The film is basically examining personal responsibility as an author and in particular, as a black author.
And I can say for certain that is going to ring through the halls of history as relevant for decades to come.
The film has a very intelligent argument and I appreciate the living hell out of it being in a big production movie that is now an Oscar nominee. Now, don’t get me wrong—fuck the Oscars. Yeah, I said it. They’re archaic, antiquated, and utter crock. Most of the time, if a good movie gets an Oscar nom, it’s a fucking coincidence. The Academy in no way is interested in awarding the “best” movie anything; this is a room full of people that wanna be pandered to, and the harder you pander, the more they’ll pat you on the back, which is why damn near every year is the same fucking movies getting nominated. It’s aggravating as hell and it’s why they are continuously losing the public’s attention. People are tired of unknown garbage getting attention, especially since the Academy is who’s being lambasted by the very same film they nominated. The Academy doesn’t want to hear shit from POC unless it’s a story about their pain. Every once in a blue moon, you’ll get competent and joyful films winning like Everything Everywhere All at Once, but largely if POC are nominated, especially black people, it’s because it’s talking about our pain, not our triumph, and the Academy seems to think the only relevant stories we can tell are about our pain, which is exactly what is discussed in this film, and it’s handled rather well.
But I do take a departure from Sindra’s argument.
Sindra’s argument boils down to “people enjoy what I write and I’m not wrong to write to that market; it’s the responsibility of white people to not believe nothing but stereotypes.” That’s a good, solid argument…but I disagree. I understand the argument completely and I think I agree to an extent, but my problem with what’s discussed in the film is more of a long term, wider scale problem than an isolated one.
The reason that I dislike that type of writing is that it reinforces negative stereotypes about black people that affects things outside of just the reading world. What I’m concerned about is the long term effects of writing that kind of fiction. Sindra is correct; it is the responsibility of society to not reinforce negative stereotypes, but I argue that authors hold some of that responsibility too. It is for this very reason that you see a lot of popular white authors either never writing black people (even if the character LIVES IN THE MIDDLE OF FUCKING CHICAGO NOT POINTING FINGERS OR ANYTHING BUT YOU KNOW WHO THE FUCK YOU ARE) out of fear that they’ll “get something wrong” and offend POC or they seldom write them and cheat readers out of what could be an interesting character and story. If these white authors don’t have POC in their lives, first of all, that’s sad and they need to get their shit together, but second of all, they feel like they’re too scared to write POC because all they’ve ever seen are Tyler Perry movies and Worldstar and Eric Jerome Dickey books, so they have zero frame of reference for the black experience, so they skip it. While that’s an isolated problem, it’s much bigger than that. The problem I have with Sindra’s argument is that when you endorse this type of writing, there are real life consequences.
I’ll give you an example. Let’s say there is a job opening for a front desk clerk at a dentist’s office. The hiring manager has two candidates that are the same age, have the same level of education, and have the same level of experience needed for the job. Both of them have great interviews, too. One is black and the other is white. For the sake of the argument, let’s say this hiring manager is white. Now, here he sits with two resumes of identical people. How does he make that decision? Well, if this hiring manager has seen nothing but Tyler Perry movies and reality TV shows, what are the chances he starts thinking about his black potential candidate as being a problem? More than likely, it’s gonna creep into his head and influence the decision, so he passes on the black candidate based on falsified evidence of what black people are like. That’s my problem with Sindra’s argument. This is of course a small situation and I’m sure that black candidate doesn’t want to work for someone who would turn him down based on him believing an incorrect stereotype, but that’s my point.
Opportunities can be taken away from black creatives based on negative stereotypes. And that isn’t just black people, too—people of color in general have to struggle with the fact that the white population is still in control of most of America’s working parts, and so we have to contend with extra stress and problems that they don’t necessarily have based on race. This is of course not to say white people don’t have problems; of course they do, they have the same problems except for the fact that when white people act out, no one blames the entire race. And that’s what black people—and POC in general—have to contend with on a daily basis. I cannot tell you how many micro-aggressions I’ve had to endure being a black woman in the South. It’s truly maddening how differently you’re treated as a black woman in America, but the South really can get under your skin and make you frustrated with how they handle everything down here. Sindra’s argument, to me, is too idealistic. I would love to live in a world where stereotypical behavior is not viewed as blamed on an entire race of people.
But that’s not the world we live in.
Someone once said that being a woman is like ballroom dancing backwards in high heels, and it is. But I would argue being black is very similar. We can’t just be as good as our white counterparts—we have to be better in every way, and even when we are better (though to be fair, better is a very subjective term for this argument), there is still an enormous possibility that we get nowhere because the person at the gate is someone who looks at us and sees nothing but negative stereotypes. We have to work ten times harder for the same reward that would’ve been considered on normal merit had we not been a POC. That’s why I don’t agree that there is no responsibility with us as black writers. I think we have to pay attention to what we’re putting out there because even if it seems like no one cares and no one’s watching, someone certainly is and they can unknowingly affect the outcome of a black person’s life based on their experiences. I’d love to say that we can get there as a society, but I’m not confident in our ability to understand complexities.
But that’s also what I like about the film. It is a complicated argument with plenty of support for both sides and I love that someone wanted to have this conversation at all. This is exactly what all low-to-mid-level black authors go through at some point, especially the indie and small press crowd. I certainly don’t feel negatively towards urban fiction; who the hell am I to judge? If y’all saw my Browser History on AO3, you’d have plenty of stones to throw into my little glass house. But what I am saying is that I think it’s still our responsibility as black authors to think before we write something that might have a Domino effect down the line, but we also need to call out the people who make shitty decisions based on stereotypes at all times. We can’t let up on that. It’s ridiculous to sum up a whole race of people based on a 90 minute movie or a season of a reality show. We shouldn’t do it to each other and we shouldn’t do it to other races, nationalities, and ethnicities. Hell, that’s how we’ve had a resurgence of fucking Nazis in America; instead of punching them in the face, people said “we should hear them out” and now we’ve got a whole ass third of the country insane enough to storm the fucking Capitol to assassinate the Speaker of the House and the goddamn former Vice President. This. Stuff. Matters.
And yes, I know that’s a huge example for such a modest film, but that’s why I feel so strongly about the argument the movie presents. It’s surprisingly the small stuff that can make a difference in the writing world. I also think that every writer, no matter how successful, should be fostering friendships and relationships to help each other out. We are not in competition. All of us should reach down and pull the person below us on the ladder up, not pull the ladder up behind us so they can’t reach out of fear. We have to uplift if we want things to change. We have to keep having these conversations to eradicate as much of that learned hatred as possible.
And I really think films like American Fiction (2023) are how we get closer to that goal.
So thank you to everyone who had anything to do with making it. Even though I didn’t feel the ending was right, I really had a good time with the first and second acts and I hope they get to bring home the (irrelevant) gold just because it would be good for America to find out just how fucking rough it is out here for black authors.
But we persevere.
Here’s to you, American Fiction. Knock those old bastards at the Academy dead when it comes time.
Kyoko
Too much of a good thing can be bad for you, and I think there is no better example than TV shows that get after-the-fact mini-series or additional seasons after their initial run, like Justified on FX. For those who are not aware, Justified was an FX show starring the infinitely talented Timothy Olyphant as US Marshal Raylan Givens, based on the book series written by the late Elmore Leonard. Givens is a modern day cowboy of the most badass variety, and Justified is a love letter to urban cowboys. I wish I could say the show was perfect, but it is far from that; in my opinion, it should only have had four seasons. I found season five to be bad except for the most epic villain death in television history (if you must know, look up “Justified Twenty-One Foot Rule” on YouTube and sit back and enjoy), and season six was dogshit. Therefore, when it was announced there would be a new mini-series ten or so years later, I remained cautiously optimistic and began to tune in each week via Hulu.
And what I found is unfortunately a lot like when Dexter ended, then returned to try and close the loop a little better the next time around.
Which is the subject of today’s episode of Cautionary Tales.
So all the way back in the year of our Lord 2015, I wrote a cautionary tale blog post about Justified’s lousy final season. To sum it up, the last season was very forced and it was apparent the writers had no more good ideas as they’d used them up in seasons 1-4, so the last season ended on a pathetic whimper and I won’t get into it because it’s a sore subject. But I knew all the way back then that there was a finite amount of talent in the writers’ room, and I had hoped that the big gap of time between the end of the original run and the revival would have given them the time to find a good story. I actually bothered to grab the book that this series is loosely based on, City Primeval by Elmore Leonard, just because I wanted a preview of what I might expect here. The book has a reputation for basically being a middle of the road title for Leonard’s career, but the reason I’ve brought it up is because of the context. This book has nothing to do with Raylan Givens. The book is actually about a character named Raymond Cruz, but the Justified producers decided to take Cruz out and plop Raylan in since the show, while never an enormous hit, had a modest viewing of two million viewers until the final season, which lost about half a million viewers after season five was NOT good and season six was even worse. They knew they had a built in audience that would likely return for a revival, so they decided to take the plot from the book and just assign it to Raylan instead.
And honestly, I think it was a mistake.
Not a huge mistake. Not a catastrophic “I hate this” mistake.
The problem is that this revival is nothing but wheel-spinning.
Let’s get into why this is today’s lesson of cautionary tales.
Naturally, massive spoilers for the ending of Justified and for episodes 1-7 of Justified: City Primeval. At the time of this post, the series finale has not aired, so this is more of a retrospective recap and discussion of where I think things went wrong.
Alright, so here’s the basic set up: in the original series, Raylan was reassigned back to his hometown of Harlan county Kentucky after he shot a mobster to death in a crowded restaurant in broad daylight in Miami. Long story short, the original series ends with him surviving Harlan and going back to Florida, which was where he was before the shooting. We pick up close to ten years later with a very seasoned Raylan dealing with his preteen daughter, Willa, whom he had with his ex-wife Winona, and Raylan catches a case that sends him up to Detroit, Michigan. Now, Raylan is very familiar with some Detroit mobsters that had a foothold in Harlan county because it’s a backwater town full of gross racist pieces of shit and so the drug trade is huge in Harlan and so is the general crime. After arriving to Detroit, he crosses paths with Clement Mansell, an Oklahoma Wildman who has no regard for literally anyone or anything. Through sheer dumb luck, the judge Raylan was working with runs into Mansell and Mansell snaps, killing the judge and his assistant in their car in the dead of night and taking the judge’s book full of blackmail material on dozens of Detroit citizens. Mansell, who is a career criminal but managed to walk on a technicality thanks to his lawyer-under-duress, Carolyn Wilder, then gets with another one of his associates named Sweetie to start blackmailing the people in the judge’s book to make money off them, citing that once he has enough, he and his side piece bimbo Sandy will retire to the tropics.
Now, that sounds like an alright idea on paper, but unfortunately, I think the bad writing from the final season carried over into this one. The biggest problem of the show so far is that while I get that Raylan is a fish out of water, none of the things that make him a great character other than that sly sense of humor and swagger are present in this mini-series.
Raylan Givens has two important things working for him as a US Marshal: he’s incredibly intelligent and observant and he’s an amazing shot. Those two traits define him as a character. Most of the fun of the original show is watching the Harlan criminals figure out that Raylan’s intelligence and perception mixed with being a crackshot make him next to impossible to evade or defeat. And what I’ve always loved about Raylan is that he is always fair. Almost every time he’s had to confront a convict or an escaped felon, he explains exactly what he’s going to do and what their situation is and he lets them make a choice. And 99% of the time, the dopes in Harlan county think they can either outthink or outdraw Raylan and they are dead wrong, pun intended. So I was excited to see Raylan in a new environment, ready to see him adjust and change and grow in this new city.
And yet I’ve gotten 7 episodes of absolutely nothing.
I’m someone who understands that a new series can mean that they make changes and I won’t necessarily always like said changes, and that’s okay. The issue I have with this particular change is that it makes me wonder why they bothered to tell this story if Raylan’s intelligence and amazing shooting skills are not at all in use this entire series. He never gets the drop on Mansell. He and the Detroit cops fumble the investigation so badly that I frankly would be annoyed if I were a real Detroit cop because they basically make them look incompetent. The decision to basically neuter Raylan and not give him any decent leads or even just use his own intuition to figure out how to get this guy behind bars is infuriating. The difference with this series in particular is that it’s not like Mansell is very clever in how he commits crimes. The guy is blatantly doing whatever he wants, but the Detroit cops are so stupid that they somehow still can’t lock him up. So forgetting the judge and assistant’s murders, he also attempts to rob an Albanian guy at gunpoint and breaks his leg when the guy doesn’t have any money for him to steal. He was caught on audio by the police trying to blackmail a civil servant. He murders his co-conspirator, Sweetie, and burns down the bar. He executes the guy whose condo he and his bimbo had been staying in, basically for no reason, in broad daylight in an upscale condo. Did you read all of that? Now explain to me how the heck the cops can’t find any hard evidence or anything to get this guy locked up?
I’ll tell you how: shoddy writing. And unfortunately, this has been a problem for as long as fiction has existed. Often, lazy writers don’t want to make a villain smart and always one step ahead of the protagonist because it’s “too hard,” so what they do instead is simply make a dumb protagonist who bumbles all the attempts to catch the villain. And that’s really the biggest issue I have with Justified: City Primeval. The writers decided to take the easy way out by making the Detroit cops idiots and make Raylan a neutered puppy who can’t anticipate any of Mansell’s moves or gather any evidence that would lead to some kind of conviction. All of the momentum of the previous show is not present in this mini-series.
And you know, I’d be less salty about it if the content we’re seeing that is not Raylan investigating Mansell was good, but it’s not. Now, I will say that Raylan and Carolyn Wilder’s fling is by far the only legitimate enjoyment I’ve gotten out of the show. You’re welcome to throw a Criminal Offensive Side Eye at me for it; I’ve wanted Timothy Olyphant to have a black female love interest for 10 years and this series gave me exactly what I’ve always wanted (just no sex scenes, grrrr) and I’m okay with my own bias in that regard, but everything else in the show suffers as a result of the show not delivering good content. The performances are good, don’t get me wrong, but nothing is even coming close to the enjoyment we had back in Harlan county with the kooky criminals and the interesting fellow marshals in Lexington. This revival comes across as a cash grab leaning on an established IP to get viewers.
And based on the reactions from the Justified fandom, I don’t think the show is hitting for them either. I’ve been hearing complaints about Raylan’s lack of police work since episode two. I personally had reserved judgment and was hoping it was going slow in the beginning, but it would pick up in the middle, but it didn’t. The needle has not moved an inch. The entire plot is only moving forward because of Mansell, not Raylan, so in the end, it makes the show feel like Raylan was the Decoy Protagonist and the show is instead all about Mansell, who is an irritating piece of shit in every regard, and it annoys me greatly that this actor’s fangirls have clogged the Tumblr tag with a bunch of disgusting simping for a man who murdered his own mother in cold blood and threatened to rape an underage girl in front of her father. But that’s a long story I’m not gonna get into.
The central fact of the matter is that if you’re going to resurrect a show, then you have to do your due diligence in—and pun fully intended here—justifying its existence. From what I read of the book, it was a decent story that was worth telling. This story is not worth telling. It adds nothing to Raylan’s dimensions as a character and the “rivalry” they are attempting to set up with Raylan vs. Mansell is weak because the show has not developed it. I went through my head and thought about how many scenes Raylan and Mansell have had together and oddly enough, it’s not very much. He gets under Raylan’s skin because he’s a slimeball and knows it and yet the laws of man somehow just don’t apply to this guy, but that’s it. There is nowhere near the history between them like some of Raylan’s far better opponents like Boyd Crowder or Dickie Bennett. They might as well have just not made this revival in the first place if the only thing that would be good about it was Raylan gettin’ it on with a smart, powerful black woman who can handle him in a way none of the skanks he’s slept with in the past ever have. (Yes, I said it. Every woman Raylan has ever slept with in the original show was a skank. Come at me, scrublords, I’m ripped. )
Some of the issue, too, is that the supporting cast is nowhere near as strong as the one in the show’s original run. Our cast of characters is too big and so no one’s getting the focus they should have in order to make them more interesting. I already mentioned that Mansell has a stranglehold on the screentime and everyone else is left with pieces. There have been two majorly important conversations between Raylan and Carolyn that were cut short that I think was a massive mistake: seeing how they hooked up for the first time, and this most recent episode when she bluntly asked him how he would get Mansell’s prints on the murder weapon. We should have seen more content for Carolyn, Sweetie, and the detective that Raylan’s been partnered with, Wendell. None of these relationships are elaborated on enough to really make us care about what’s transpiring. It’s all too much of a light touch with Mansell as the focus, and frankly, if the new show is so enamored with this douche, then you should have just adapted the book as-is instead of including Raylan since Raylan isn’t getting to do anything the entire time.
I also want to take a little aside here and mention a pet peeve of mine. Anyone who knows me knows about my theory about what I call White Bitch Syndrome. White Bitch Syndrome, in a nutshell, is when writers coddle white female characters (and 90% of the time they’re also blonde) when everyone else in a story has to pay for their mistakes and live with the consequences of their actions. The number one reason I hated the final season of Justified was because the show went full White Bitch Syndrome with a character named Ava Crowder, who basically spent all six seasons being a reprehensible piece of shit and got away with everything solely because white woman. Now, the bimbo Sandy Stanton is nowhere near the level of cunt that Ava Crowder is—and yes, I use that term sparingly, but Ava Crowder has earned it, trust me—but she is still being coddled and I absolutely despise the way that she’s been Mansell’s accomplice, but only now does she realize he doesn’t care about anyone but himself and would kill her the second she defected. It’s not fair for you to make all these other characters pay for their actions, but she gets to walk because she’s blonde, white, and female, but again, this was Justified’s MO in the original show. Ava got away with everything and Winona’s stupid ass walked out on Raylan too without a scratch on her, cementing her as one of the dumbest characters of all time since there is no man in Harlan county like Raylan and any woman with sense would jump at the chance to be with him. But I digress.
I guess, overall, the words I would use for this revival are “unnecessary” and “unsatisfying.” It doesn’t feel like it needed to come back if this was the material it returned to in the end. Is it better than the last season? Eh. In some ways, yes. There are better characters here and Raylan isn’t acting like a complete psychopath willing to throw his badge and life away just to kill Boyd Crowder, but at the same time, this isn’t a worthy story for Raylan Givens, especially if like I suspect, they kill him off in the series finale. This was not the right choice for him and it seems to have fallen into the traps like the Dexter revival I mentioned above (keep in mind, I never watched Dexter, but I knew it had one of the most hated finales of all-time and I know about the revival’s reception only because my dad watched it over winter break one year and we chatted about how it went).
Is it possible the series finale wows me and fixes all the problems I had in episodes 1-7? Yes. Is it likely? No. My guess is that they left all the action in the final episode so it’s an incredibly bottom-heavy series with an unsatisfying conclusion. Rest assured, if they kill Raylan off after an incredibly lackluster season, I will simply go into denial like I did with the original final season, as I sadly have had to do with a lot of shows I used to love.
So what can we learn from this debacle?
A few things, really. First, don’t bring back a beloved character unless you have something relevant to say about them or about any sort of important subject matter that you want to write about. Second, if you are more interested in writing about the antagonist than the protagonist, then you need to establish that right out of the gate instead of leading people on to think the story is centered on the protagonist. Third, learn what scenes need to be elaborated on and what can get cut that won’t be detrimental to the overall story. Fourth, don’t be lazy and make a dumb protagonist so the antagonist can get away with everything; do the work of writing a competent antagonist and a competent protagonist equally. Because if you don’t do that, you end up with a trope that has a name I forget that has to do with Lex Luthor; don’t write your bad guy getting away with his crimes so often that it induces apathy within your audience because Status Quo is God. This trope refers to Lex Luthor as the main example of how a conflict between good and evil can get boring if the bad guy ALWAYS gets away with his crimes so that the work of fiction can continue to be made. We all know that Lex is never going to jail—not for anything serious that he’s done and not for any significant length of time if they do get him on something eventually—and so Superman defeating him time and time again can get old if you’re not adding any new dimensions to the struggle. Lex fared a little better in Superman: The Animated Series because Supes and Lex were engaged in, for lack of a better word, a cold war. Lex does a bunch of illegal, shady shit and Clark tries to stop it or tries to gather evidence to either put Lex away or destroy his chances at future crimes, and that worked for that show’s format. You have to balance it with victories and losses for both sides or your audiences will lose interest.
And frankly, that’s about what happened by the time I finished watching episode 7 of City Primeval. I’ve just lost interest in what they decided to focus on and this isn’t a return to form for Raylan Givens nor this writers’ room. But what can you expect when the last season was also a dried turd?
If nothing else, I’ll commend them for giving Raylan an age-appropriate, interesting love interest with whom he had actual chemistry. That’s the best thing I can say for City Primeval, personally. I guess we’ll see if they somehow buck the system and stick the landing, but my guess is I’ll be just as disappointed with this finale as I was with the original one, and that’s a damn shame considering the enormous talent of the cast in this mini-series.
Better luck next time, my long legged cowboy boyfriend.
“On this lonely road
Trying to make it home
Doin’ by my lonesome, pissed off
Who wants some?
See them long, hard times to come…”
I am happy to announce that I will be appearing on this week’s Authors’ Corner hosted by ConCarolinas TV! Please join us at 7:30pm EST on August 24th, 2023 where we will be discussing science fiction. Details are in the poster above. I look forward to seeing you all there!
Edit: ICYMI, here is the link to watch the recording on YouTube:
Looking for low cost ways to market your book? Or know someone who is? Then tune in to this free podcast interview where I discuss the best and most cost-effective ways to market your book.
Episode 61 – Book Launch on a Budget: Low/No-Cost Tips and Resources
One of my earliest memories as a child is watching Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. It came out all the way back in 1993 when I was just five years old, so I have to imagine either my parents took me or we rented it on VHS. I remember being a wide-eyed youth, precocious and probably too young to understand everything, but what I did understand was the following scene:
Even at that young an age, I was captivated by Kevin Conroy’s performance as Batman, particularly this moving scene of Bruce begging his parents to forgive him and let him out of his vow and promise because he unexpectedly fell in love. It is one of the most beautiful things ever created that relates to Batman and to Kevin Conroy.
I met Kevin Conroy at a con back in 2013. I was so nervous that my hands were shaking as I walked up to his table and greeted him. I told him that his portrayal of Batman was the definitive one for all time and that his Bruce Wayne and his Batman were figures of my own struggling mental health. Whenever I became suicidal, the only thing that would stop me from killing myself was imagining Bruce Wayne telling me to be strong and live through my trauma to be a better person and a good soldier. Kevin Conroy was visibly moved by hearing that and offered me encouragement and gracious thanks before being kind enough to take this photo with me.
Later on, I attended the panel that he had and I asked him what his performance as Batman has taught him over the years. He gave the most beautiful, eloquent answer that I’m so blessed to have witnessed:
For my entire life, Batman has been my constant. He has been my pillar of strength given that I struggle with depression and anxiety. He has been my touchstone, as odd as it sounds, and Kevin Conroy is why. He is our Batman. He is the sole embodiment of good and justice and kindness and strength and love. I loved him with all my heart and I will mourn him for the rest of my days. We were so blessed to be a part of his life, to love him and support him, to share his amazing work and the work of the DCAU team. We were so inspired by the way that he lived his life. The world has lost a beacon of light and decency. It’s so hard saying goodbye to such a good man. He lived a life that was an example of the best that a man can be and we will miss him always.
Thank you for what you’ve given us, Kevin. Thank you for giving me the strength not to end my life. Thank you for inspiring generation after generation. We love you so much.
I love you so much.
Rest well, beloved.
Ever wanted to see visual approximations of the dragons from the Of Cinder and Bone series? Here’s your chance. Each dragon also has a little factual tidbit beside the illustrations. This list includes the named and seen dragons in Books 1-4, so beware of spoilers.
This is NOT for sale and no profit will be derived from this post. All artists that I was able to identify are credited in each illustration.
Have fun!
Update 7/26/22
It’s officially been three months since the release of my new novel, Of Claws and Inferno! I’m ripping the spoiler tag off and now it’s time to meet the new dragons featured in Book Five. Peruse at your peril.
Disclaimer: Do not go any further if you have not read The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, but especially not if you have not read Book 17, Battle Ground. I mean it. You’ve been warned.
So. Y’all know I adore Karrin Murphy, right? So much so that if you literally Google the character (at the time of this post, anyway), my website shows up on the first f@#king page of results for the character. That’s how much I fervently love this character and what she’s meant to the Dresden Files and to Harry Dresden himself. It’s for that reason that in light of her untimely, stupid, unsatisfying fate in Battle Ground that I am going to take time out of putting a curse on Jim Butcher and his entire line to talk about her in depth. Because she deserves to be honored before I put this series to bed for good.
And yes, I mean that. I quit The Dresden Files thanks to Butcher’s bullshit move to unceremoniously force this incredible character out of the narrative in the most disrespectful manner possible. If you need reasons, find them here and here. Warnings for foul language. (Note: it’s also worth it to read the comment threads for the latter post. There’s a whole lot to unpack about just what in God’s name Butcher was thinking and how utterly betrayed he’s made so many of his fans feel. But I digress.)
How do I love thee, Karrin Murphy? Let me count the ways.
Back in 2014, I attended a Dragon*con panel for Jim Butcher and worked up the courage to approach the mic with a question. I asked him if he had always planned for Harry and Murphy to get together or was it something he noticed as he continued writing the series. He answered that while it’s true he never truly planned out Harry Dresden’s love life to the letter, he felt it was probably always inevitable given that even their first interaction in the first book is playground teasing. You see, Harry (at least back then) had this thing about being chivalrous and Detective Karrin Murphy was a modern feminist, so she hated it if he tried to hold the door for her. The first scene with them together is of these two full grown adults racing for the door to the crime scene and Harry getting there first to open it for her, wearing the most shit-eating grin, as this is a frequent competition between the two of them. He does it just to annoy her and that was probably the first indication that I was going to love both him and her.
It’s difficult to know where to start with why I adore Karrin Murphy. I guess in the simplest terms, Murphy is exactly the woman that I wish I could be. I honestly probably idolize her as much as Harry Dresden does. If I didn’t have a mental illness and self-confidence issues, Murphy is the kind of woman that I would aspire to be. When I think of powerful, worthwhile, well-rounded female characters, she’s always been the frontrunner. It’s not about the fact that she’s a sharpshooter and an aikido champion and a badass wielder of a holy sword—it’s that she’s all of those things, but she’s also her own person in a real sense. She knows herself. She knows Harry. She knows that he is worth protecting, so she protects him. She knows that he does so much good solving cases and preventing murders in Chicago that it’s worth it to make sacrifices for him, because he would do—and has done–the same for her in a heartbeat.
Murphy is courageous, but realistic. She’s ruthless in her pursuit of justice for her city and for the victims whose murders she has to solve, but yet she is capable of being vulnerable. She is fearless, but flawed. She is so many complicated things, but all of those things add up to an exceptionally written person. She is arguably as well written as Harry Dresden is, and that’s saying something considering how he too is a layered character with so much to offer.
I think I also love Murphy because she’s also very much like the best women in my life, like my mother, my sister-in-law, or my cousin. These are dynamic, intelligent, inspiring women who have always been those same great things that Murphy is. I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by positive female role models since I was a kid, so Murphy is also a comfort to me because she is so much like the family members I’ve known my whole life. One of the reasons the Harry/Murphy fans are theorizing that maybe Jim Butcher based Murphy on his first wife and the divorce made him turn on her character is because it’s shocking that a white straight male author was even capable of writing a woman this nuanced and this close to what real great women are like. It may be why she felt so real to us—maybe he was drawing directly from aspects of his own marriage and that’s why Harry and Murphy’s relationship and love felt so powerful and genuine. Maybe that’s why she was so inspiring to read, is that he really did have that influence in his life.
I love this character because she embodies all the best parts of what women have to offer. She made Harry a better man and yet that wasn’t her only role in the story; she had her own path she walked as well, but it simply ran parallel to his and it never felt like she was just a tool for him to use to accomplish a goal. Harry’s inner monologue has so many instances where he’s just in total awe of her, not in a pedestal sort of way, but in a respectful, appreciative sort of way. He can’t believe he’s lucky enough to bask in her sunlight, and he made us feel the same way about her through his narration and through their adventures together. She is such a worthwhile character that it’s why I can’t fathom why Jim Butcher would coldly and callously toss her aside in the manner that he did. I’ve read and watched enough fiction to know the difference between hitting us where it hurts for the good of the narrative and a man who has turned bitter against his own creation and decided to systematically destroy it.
For now, I guess I can just take comfort in the fact that if Murphy were real, she’d break Butcher’s arm in three places so he couldn’t write anymore f**king tripe.
I’m still hurting. Quite a bit. That’s why it took me so long to sit down and write this out. That being said, I think I owe it to Murphy in her original form to get past this and forget Jim Butcher. There’s a line in the movie Kiss Kiss Bang Bang where the narration—coincidentally, the main lead’s name in that movie is also Harry—is talking about Harmony Lane’s favorite set of detective novels that inspired her to become an actress but also escape her abusive father, and the author of those books later came out and said they were bullshit and he hated them and just wrote them for the money, and the line goes, “He was just the writer.” It is possible to separate the art from the artist. I think I owe it to Murphy as this phenomenal character to not let Butcher’s bullshit choices ruin her legacy and cause me to feel this way about who she has been to me and what her love story with Harry has meant to me.
Hell, it’s what Murphy would want for me, I think.
And that damn sure is more important than one sorry ass writer.
“What’s it like being a self-published author?”
So. 2020, amirite?
The most that I can say is at least we’re still here. I know that these annual posts recap 2019 through the current date, but woof. It’s hard to for me not to talk about the first half of 2020 while discussing the time between now and my sixth year post. And hell, we thought 2019 sucked. We had no idea, did we?
Sadly, thanks to the pandemic, I don’t have a cute pic of me hugging any celebrities. 2019, as mentioned above, was an unkind year to me, same as most people. I did manage to catch up with Charlie Cox and get my Playbill to Harold Pinter’s Betrayal on Broadway signed, but Mr. Hiddleston stood me up this time around and that is a summary of 2019 and 2020 in a nutshell: me, standing outside in the freezing cold, staring at a door that won’t open, my dreams held within it. Melodramatic, but true.
Well, you’re not here for my open wounds, you’re here for what semblance of advice that I can give you, so let’s get to it, shall we? Here’s what I’ve learned in my seventh year of being published.
Expect the unexpected. I know it’s impossible, but there is a lesson to be learned here for 2020 throwing everything at us but the kitchen sink. You can’t prepare for everything, but you can learn how to adapt to an unprecedented situation. No one thought we’d end up where we are now, but in spite of that, those of us who have survived are still here and doing our best to stay afloat. No one ever wants to find out what they’re made of in a worldwide plague scenario, but it’s here and so we’ve all had to tighten our belts, toughen up, and support each other as best as we can.
This sentiment is to remind yourself to appreciate what’s in front of you, for you have no idea what’s coming. All you can do is try to build a foundation that will remain standing when the world winds up a brick and hurls it at you. You have to keep an open mind and be ready for change. Sometimes it’s voluntary change and other times it isn’t. Identify the best way to proceed and set a new course. It’s alright to mourn the things you lost along the way, but nothing kills you faster than refusing to let go. Trust me, I know that from personal experience.
Try to work by your own standards. This past year, someone started a hashtag on Twitter that was about how much published authors make and it was extremely eye-opening for many people, both those in the industry and those outside of it. Truth be told, the publishing world does not like to accurately portray itself to the rest of the world. That hashtag revealed that a lot of us are just tiny fish in the pond, desperately searching for breadcrumbs. There are far more of us who grind out books and cannot support ourselves on writing full time than the reverse, but that’s not what the publishing world wants you to think. They want the world to see us as Stephen King’s, thinking we make money hand over fist.
It’s tough to find the motivation to spend hours writing if your sales suck. That’s the hard truth of the matter. Many of us are busting our asses to make good fiction and still see little to no results. The other truth of the matter is that we’re holding ourselves to an unfair standard. We see these big names raking in the dough and try to match their sales when it’s not realistic. Sure, it would be wonderful if everyone sold millions of copies and secured movie deals with creative control, but it’s not going to happen for a majority of the writing world, both traditional and independent/self-published. That’s the cold, hard facts.
So now what do we do?
Find your spot and plant your feet.
It’s okay if you’re not making thousands of dollars a month off of your fiction. It’s wonderful if you are, but the numbers say that most of us aren’t that fortunate. Instead, focus on what you ARE able to accomplish instead. Break your goals down into something more achievable and take it a day at a time. Often what prevents us from writing or being productive is that impossible standard hovering over our heads and you have to kick it to the curb. Find goals that satisfy you and do your best to meet them as often as possible. At the end of the day, your opinion of yourself and your work is the most important, not that of everyone else’s. They aren’t in your situation, so it’s fruitless to wring your hands trying to emulate them.
Change is scary, but sometimes unavoidable. Some of you may already know, but I originally finished the first draft of my upcoming fourth novel in the Of Cinder and Bone series, Of Fury and Fangs, in early 2020.
And I hated it.
Really. I’ve never hated anything I’ve written before. It was a strange feeling for me to pick it up and slam it back down, sure that it was the worst trash to disgrace the face of the Earth.
I took some time off. I worked on my mental health and managed to get a handle on the fear and anxiety, and then consulted my writing sensei with my problem. He was thankfully able to help me reaffirm what was wrong with the book and helped me develop a strategy to fix it.
And again, that had never happened to me before.
Sure, I’ve hit walls. I’ve had long periods of not writing. But I’ve never written what I felt was a bad story, or rather, written a good story incorrectly. This time, oh yeah, I totally did. I think that the stress of the 2019 to 2020 period had gotten to me and so I was pushing myself to write when I didn’t quite have everything together. I was pushing the wrong angle, so I had to regroup and understand what was needed to fix it. At the time of this post, the revisions for the second draft are roughly half done and the book’s pre-order is live, so I’ll have everything ready by the release date.
Still, this was one of the first times I had to admit my own failure and take things back to the drawing board. It’s also a byproduct of this series being so different from The Black Parade series, which for the most part was planned from A to Z. I knew the plots, but all the things in between were genuine surprises. Of Cinder and Bone was much more off the cuff for me. The stories generate themselves out of thin air rather than being so carefully planned. It may be why I was off the mark in the original draft, but thankfully, I wasn’t so off that I had to destroy most of the book; just retool it and save some of the content for later.
What did end up taking me so long was my own stubborn refusal to admit the first draft sucked. Or, rather, to be brave enough to find a way to fix it. I definitely wanted to give up on the book at a few points, but slowly, I regained my confidence and went after it.
Naturally, most experienced writers know this is totally possible and prepare for it, but to any newbies out there, this is a terrifying feeling. It’s okay. Sometimes you just have to get it on the damn pages and then worry about fixing it later, when you have at least a teaspoon of your sanity back.
Reflect carefully and as often as possible. It’s no surprise that with the pandemic, unemployment is as high as it was during the Great Depression and everyone’s miserable, scared, and broke for the most part. As a result, pretty much across the board, everyone’s struggling to make money. My June sales were sadder than Requiem for a Dream. Well, unfortunately, writing is the same as most businesses: you have to spend money to make money. I’ve had to get awful creative in my attempts to promote Of Fury and Fangs without breaking the bank. Keep in mind, just blitzing social media with links and photos doesn’t work. Don’t believe anyone who says it does. You have to do better than that, as the average person’s ability to simply filter out advertisements on the Internet is very developed by now.
While doing so, I happened past some of my older methods of marketing and promoting, using free or low cost options like digging to find sites that let you post for free or writing guest blog posts. While time consuming, it is helpful for the overall SEO for the book in its early stages to spread the word. It’s not all about mailing lists and expensive site postings. There is value in doing the small stuff that can add up over time to get your work out there to people.
Is it a pain in the ass to produce more content like author interviews or guest blog posts? Totally. But it’s just as valid as the other methods as long as it’s allowing your further saturation. It doesn’t matter how you get yourself into a reader’s vision, just that you get there and reach them in a meaningful way.
Be good to yourself and to others as much as you can. This should be a no-brainer, but it ain’t. Especially not for me. I am my own worst enemy. Always have been, always will be. However, therapy has helped me recognize the impulses that I have to treat myself poorly and while I’m still doing it, the awareness means that I have a chance to do better.
The pandemic has made a lot of us realize that many of the things we used to do to decompress or find happiness are no longer possible. That means doing a bit of soul-searching and finding alternative ways to be at peace, or if you’re lucky, happy. It’s unfair and extremely difficult, but it’s worth doing for overall mental health. To that end, many authors have been stressed out thinking that they should be writing some magnum opus during quarantine. That’s simply not true. It’s okay to just get by. You don’t have to become some award winning author and write the next great novel. The most important thing is to keep your head above water, which does not happen if you’re constantly yelling at yourself for not writing. 2020 is ungodly stressful. If you find a way to weather the storm, go with that. It’s great if you can also help others. Give yourself a break.
After all, 2020 sure ain’t gonna do it for you.
Well, that’s all the time I have this time around. Sisyphus has got to get back to pushing her boulder up the mountain. I hope I’ll see you guys back this time next year. For God’s sake, be smart, be careful, and be diligent. Here’s to seven years.
Like a lot of folks, being indoors more often due to the coronavirus sometimes leads one to rewatch TV shows to try and fill the hours. Instead of, you know, writing a novel or anything. *sweats nervously* So a couple weeks ago, I decided that I had a hankering for what used to be one of my favorite shows of all time, FX’s Justified (2010), starring the delicious Timothy Olyphant as the unforgettable US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens.
Upon revisiting the show, and keep in mind, I hadn’t seen it since its disastrous final season in 2015 (which I in no way acknowledge except to tell you it doesn’t exist in my mind), I realized a whole bunch of very interesting things that I hadn’t noticed when the show was still premiering on TV. One of the biggest things I realized was that Justified is one of the only shows portraying Southern white men in such a way that it’s not buying into the very popular “oh, you poor Southern white man, your life is so hard, no one understands you but I do” that a lot of fiction has fallen prey to before. You would think that a show centered around conservative Southern white men would have lots and lots of problematic material, but in a fascinating twist, Justified doesn’t pander to that mentality. It’s shockingly amazing to be knee-deep in it, but yet it’s very clearly shown that the writers’ room does not sympathize with this demographic and in its own way, that’s pretty damn progressive.
ICYMI, Justified is about US Deputy Marshal Raylan Givens (Timothy Olyphant), who is the literal definition of a cowboy cop, all the way down to the snakeskin boots and an honest to God famous off-white cowboy hat. Raylan’s reckless ways reach a zenith when he confronts a mobster in Miami, whom he gave 24-hours to leave town or he would shoot him on sight. The mobster, Tommy Bucks, scoffs and doesn’t believe him when Raylan sits down at his table at a popular restaurant and tells him to either leave or die in his chair. The mobster pulls a gun on him and Raylan shoots him dead in front of everyone. Naturally, the shooting was justified (“Roll credits!”), but it lands him in so much trouble that his superior reassigns him to Kentucky, which is where Raylan is from. Raylan begrudgingly returns to Lexington, and subsequently, Harlan county, and continues kicking up an unholy amount of dust.
To give you the skinny, Justified only has three kinds of characters: lawmen, criminals, and victims. While this is a bit limiting, the show does an excellent job characterizing all three of these kinds of people over the course of the show. I bring it up because basically, any person who is not either a lawman or a victim in Harlan county is portrayed as a huge, steaming pile of racist crap.
But here’s where things get interesting.
For example, one thing that I never noticed when I used to watch this show is that every criminal we visit has a big fat honkin’ Confederate flag on the wall of his home or place of business. And I do mean every single one of them. There may be some blessed individual on the Internet who counted them up, but I kid you not, you see that wretched flag in every last episode of Justified. Therefore, you’d think that the show would pause to have one of those really frustrating conversations with conservative white Southerners that you see all the time, where the Southerner who owns the Confederate flag proceeds to explain why the Civil War wasn’t about slavery and it’s not racist to own it and it’s just them being proud of their heritage. (My sympathies to those of you, like me, who have sat through this explanation.)
Well, guess what? There is no such conversation throughout the entire six seasons of the show.
Now that gets you curious, doesn’t it? Why would a show that features the Confederate flag in every single episode not have a discourse about it?
Because the show does not mince words about how it feels about these racist pricks.
Justified makes no bones about the fact that these are nasty, uneducated, pea-brained simpletons. What’s more is that it doesn’t just take shots at trailer trash, either. It comes after the Southern elite racists as well. There’s an episode that I still think deserves so much credit for one of the best takedowns of the Neo Nazi movement that I’ve ever seen. Raylan and his boss Art Mullen are working on seizing the assets of a rich criminal who collects Hitler’s paintings, and they run into a man who is interested in buying them, but it turns out that they are fakes. Raylan and Art are immediately disgusted by both of these men, but the buyer insists that after he helps them cooperate in solving the case that Raylan come to see his collection of Hitler paintings. Well, cue the twist. The buyer’s father turned out to be part of the Nazi party, going so far as to doing some of Hitler’s dirty work directly at times. The buyer has spent his entire life accumulating wealth so that he can buy Hitler’s hard-to-find paintings one by one…and burn them. He has jars and jars of ashes in his office of Hitler’s paintings and he intends to find them all wherever they are and burn every single one until they’re all off the face of the Earth.
I mean, wow. That’s fantastic writing, if you ask me.
Now think about this for a second. Who is the key demographic for a show like Justified? Typically, it’s people who like westerns, right? Whether it’s spaghetti westerns or modern westerns, that’s generally who you assume would be watching a show like Justified, and yet this show is very anti-Confederacy and it makes it quite clear it has zero patience for anyone sympathizing with racists. For instance, in that same episode, the wife of the mobster whose assets are being seized is quite pretty and blonde—which is sadly one of Raylan’s weaknesses—and she and Raylan are talking for a while, pleasantly, maybe even flirting a little. Then the wife makes an anti-Semitic comment. Raylan is instantly turned off and abruptly leaves her company, and he makes it so clear to her that she even comments on it, whining that she thought he was “a good ole boy.”
Consider how much that flies in the face of who you’d think would like this show, and the balls it takes to make it so apparent. Most of the famous westerns of the bygone eras do not have very nice things to say about people of color due to the time period when they were made. Often, they portray the South as brave rebels who didn’t like to be told what to do by the North. It would be very easy for the writers of Justified to make Raylan a good ole boy, as the racist wife said, and yet he is shown to be staunchly against even the slightest hint of racist behavior by the criminals he apprehends or anyone in his presence.
In particular, US Deputy Marshal Rachel Brooks (Erica Tazel), is a young, gorgeous black woman and easily the most competent member of the marshal service in their office. She’s often at Raylan’s side apprehending criminals in Harlan county, which puts her in the middle of the usual racist bullshit. She even asks Raylan to come along during an assignment to help smooth things over because the moment the residents of Harlan county find out she’s a marshal, she’s a “black bitch.” The show does a good job with showing that Rachel knows how to handle herself—and boy, does she prove it on a few occasions—but that it’s tiresome for her to come up against that kind of a wall doing her job. Raylan agrees to help with no qualms at all because he understands how tedious and painful it is for her to put up with that while she’s working. It’s a great angle of solidarity that Raylan is using his handsome looks and white Southern charm to reduce the amount of harassment aimed in her direction. There’s also a more subtle thing I enjoyed, which is if anyone does say something racist to Rachel, Raylan is entirely intolerant of it and often tries to make sure they get their comeuppance if they’re stupid enough to mess with her. It’s a great understanding of how he chooses to be an ally to her, when he very well could hang her out to dry. They build a significant amount of trust and even a bit of affection for each other over the course of the show. Rachel also isn’t afraid to call him out on his shit and occasionally smacks some sense into him when he’s being ridiculous, which he often is. Rachel does end up being underused overall, but when we do see her, it’s made clear that she is by far the smartest, most likable woman on the show, and I think that is also pretty interesting all things considered.
The other rather excellent commentary on the white supremacists is none other than the infamous Boyd Crowder. Boyd Crowder is the series-long arch nemesis and frenemy of Raylan Givens. The two dug coal together as teenagers and have had a very hateful but friendly relationship with Raylan being on the side of the law, always trying to nail Crowder for his infinite list of crimes, and Crowder doing his absolute best to thwart Raylan’s attempts to land him in jail for good.
To be honest, if anyone made a list of the best written villains in the last 20 years, I’d happily throw Boyd Crowder on it. What’s great about Boyd Crowder as a villain is his progression from a loud, greedy Neo Nazi psycho into an insanely smart crime boss for Harlan county. Boyd starts out as one of those utterly perplexing Neo Nazis who uses Bible verses to insist the Bible wants the Jews dead and that people of color are all animals and the white man is supposed to rule them all. In truth, it’s just a smoke screen. Boyd is aware of the fact that the white supremacists LOVE to use the Bible as an excuse to be horrible pieces of shit, so they happily do his bidding because he parrots the things they want to hear. However, Boyd has a brush with death, finds religion again, but then loses his faith and decides to simply embrace his evil and crawl his way on top of the rogues gallery of Harlan county.
Boyd Crowder is certainly a cool villain, but while the show takes the time to flesh him out as a character, it never glorifies him or his lifestyle. Boyd is the perfect foil for Raylan, as he is a selfish, heartless bastard who will use anyone and anything to get what he wants. The show certainly shows off his skills and Walt Goggins utterly slays the performance itself, but at no point is there a Tyler Durden problem. For those who are unfamiliar, a lot of stupid men walked away from Fight Club completely missing the point, which is that while it’s not great to be controlled by society and suppress your Id, it’s also an incredibly stupid and reckless idea to give into your Id completely and let it control you. If you ever meet a guy who idolizes Tyler Durden, run in the opposite direction until you’re safely elsewhere.
Boyd is a monster. He’s a cool monster, but a monster nonetheless. Justified does not ever try to turn him into a Woobie or insist that you should like him as a person or want to be anything like him over the course of the show. One of my favorite moments is in the first season where Boyd tries to use an ambiguous Bible verse to insist that it’s about the Jews being “mud-people” and Raylan just stares at him like he’s an idiot and calmly tells him he’s just using the Bible to justify doing whatever the hell he wants regardless of what it means, which is a callout of epic proportions. My other favorite moment is that when confronted with someone who insists that times were best when Boyd used to run his Nazi “commandos” out of the church, Boyd confesses that he’s never even met a single Jew and was just regurgitating things his racist father and the people around him had instilled in him in order to get approval and procure the things he wanted. I mean, wow. Seldom do you see someone self-aware enough to admit they’re hating an unseen “enemy” just to fit in and get people to do what he wanted them to do.
In the end, what I’m getting to is the fact that Justified had some of the most unconventional writing in regards to white Southern culture. It actively called these people out on their shit and didn’t attempt to sympathize with them just so it could get better ratings or have appeal to that demographic. Most of the time you will see shows like Atlanta breaking down the fallacy of the Southern Confederate sympathizer, yet here, a show that knew its key demographic would likely be white men, they went for the jugular. I have to say that while Justified had a lot of problems before it ended, this was one of the best aspects of the show that I noted during the rewatch and I think it’s pretty commendable that the writing team decided to go against the urge to pander. To be honest, it’s one of the reasons that I like FX in general. They are very willing to go out on a limb and try something different or risky in the pursuit of a great story.
If you’re ever in the mood for cowboy shenanigans, I can give my highest recommendations for the first three seasons of Justified. Sadly, it begins to steadily decline in seasons four and five, and I personally tell people not to watch the final season unless they want to hate the show and the writers. I wish it ended better, but I believe it deserves credit where credit is due. In this day and age, there are a lot of writers rooms not willing to confront the unhealthy aspects of white Southern culture, and as a black woman who grew up in Georgia, I have to say that Justified’s writing in this regard was a breath of fresh air.