Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

It would’ve been better if it were worse. That’s one of the thoughts that keeps rolling around my head about this movie. That, and “how can a movie that’s so exciting be so boring?” That, and the thing my kid said after leaving the theater, which was, “It was all just a straight line.” (Well, he said that after he said, “So that was a movie.”)

It’s worthless to me to just go see a thing and simply not like it — that’s fine and it’s fair but I’m a storyteller and I very much like to think about not just how the Story Sausage (ew) is made but also, regardless of how it’s made, what it tastes like and why I do or don’t like a thing. I think this is part of being a storyteller, and something of a cursed part of being a storyteller, this need to constantly dissect material and never really just be like WOO AAAAAH YEAAAH or FUCK THIS SHIT about a story experience. I can’t help it. I like to get into the guts of it.

A few things, first.

One, I obviously have my own experiences with Star Wars — it should be understood that generally I love most things Star Wars, even when they’re kind of bad or mad or meh, but also, I have a complicated relationship with Star Wars, and you are free to take that into account when I try to sort through my feelings about this movie. (A movie that is probably not interesting enough to have feelings to sort through, though, if I’m being honest.)

Two, if you enjoyed it, at no point should you take this as a missive against you, or an effort to convince you that you were wrong to enjoy it. You should enjoy things! It is right to do so. You should enjoy things I don’t enjoy, and vice versa. As I say quite often, this shit ain’t math. There is no objective answer here — it’s just me having an opinion complicated by the me that I am. I hated the Super Mario Brothers movie and that shit made a scintillion dollars — you shouldn’t trust me to have any meaningful opinion here. I’m mouthing off into the void, as is my way.

Three, you should know going in I really like The Mandalorian. I adored the show, especially the first season. Even when it wasn’t always great, I really dug it. But I did not love the movie. Even going in with low expectations (I’d heard some things) I was not able to climb over them. I note this just so we know I wasn’t prejudiced going in.

---

By the way, this shit is gonna be a long post. Apologies! My bad! You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to! Mea culpa!

---

Also, let’s get out of the way some things I did like —

(Which means some light spoilers are about to ensue, so be advised.)

The soundtrack is banging. The Mandalorian theme is easily one of the best Star Wars themes around.

The effects are (generally) rock solid — most of the CGI is pretty impeccable, with the exception of Rotta the Hutt, who mysteriously looks kinda awful. Honestly, he looks too much like when Lucas inserted Jabba into A New Hope. He’s got this uncanny valley Cybertruck vibe that I can’t explain.

The Baby Yoda (I know, I’m a monster, but some part of me bounces off Grogu same way I bounce off Mandalorian having a name) puppet is the best.

In fact, Baby Yoda is maybe the best. There’s actually a sequence later in the film which is pretty much All Baby Yoda, and honestly, it’s one of the best things in the film, to be honest.

I’d argue the movie is at its best when it lets things settle. When it’s quiet. When it lets people talk. It doesn’t do this often. But when it does, it is a win for the movie, and for the audience.

Favreau is also a rock solid director — I mean, you’re never getting fancy, but you don’t want fancy. He frames things well. He knows just how to put together a good-looking, good-feeling visual sequence. There are some shots from this movie that look like they’re a painting in an art book, like they leapt off the fucking page and are holy-shit-real.

---

Okay, so there we go. Some things that I liked.

Let’s um, go the other way.

So, watching this movie was — you know, it was a weird experience. You ever do something, or experience something, and all the while you feel like, “I think I should like this, I’m meant to like this,” and yet, you absolutely don’t? You just feel — well, not actively negative toward it, but rather, numb to the whole thing? A kind of anhedonic sensation? You eat a burger, but it just tastes flat, or you go on a date and you know this person and you are soulmates on paper but there’s somehow zero spark between you? There’s this disconnect. And that’s how I felt watching the movie. The whole time, a parade of images and action trying to jumpstart my joy machine, trying to make my brain do a 21-synapse-salute, but all of it kind of slid off of my mind, a fried egg loosed from a well-lubricated skillet.

So, why? I love action movies. I love Star Wars. I love the Mandalorian!

And it’s in that first part where I think I want to explore the answer.

Action movies.

---

In action movies — or comics, or books, whatever — there is this persistent piece of advice that I generally believe to be a problematic one, which is, start with action.

Thing is, some of our best action films don’t do this.

Die Hard? It’s a semi-divorced cop dad traveling to a corporate party to meet his almost-ex. There’s really zero action until the 20 minute mark, and the first gunshots don’t go off until, what, around minute 23?

John Wick? We start at the ending, but there’s no action, just consequence. Flashing back to the start still means the first real action — which is less high-octane action and more, well, puppy-killing action — doesn’t happen until the 15 minute mark. And the actual bang-bang shoot-em-up shit doesn’t start till much later.

Now, let’s talk Raiders of the Lost Ark — there, we lead with what I’d call adventure more than action, a tension-building dungeon-crawl where the actual action (big boulder! betrayals! chase scene!) starts prior to the 10 minute mark, but then it slows down again.

All that being said, some classic action movies really do jump into the action at the outset. The Matrix? Sure fucking does. Mad Mad: Fury Road? Yup, action right away. Hey, you know what’s another movie that does?

Star Wars: A New Hope.

And it all works.

The Mandalorian & Grogu also starts with action.

And for me, it… did not work.

But why not?

Well — it’s two things, I think, for me.

First, we have to have characters we care about — and the context to care about them. If they’re just a body on the screen, that’s not enough. They have to have something there to care about. And with M&G, we do care! We go in liking the Mandalorian already. Though it also gives us some other characters for which we have no context — without spoiling, there are some, I guess you’d call them victims? there at the start. And we don’t know anything about them and really can’t speak to their victimization, and so there, the caring-about-them-factor is pretty light. Still, let’s say the movie gives us enough.

(More on characters, later.)

The second thing that is important is a good opening action scene or sequence tends to go quite poorly for our hero. John Wick’s dog dies. John McLane has no shoes, no gun, no clue, and is the only guy around to handle the problem. Mad Max is fucked from the outset. Trinity in the Matrix gets some hits in, but she’s on-the-run and is almost killed inside the machine. Indy loses his prize, gets humiliated, meets snakes. It just goes staggeringly poorly. It has to, to establish our hero/ine as someone who is an underdog, who could lose, who can be injured or killed.

Mando, on the other hand —

Does pretty great! It all goes mostly fine! There’s little complication, little twist, little turn, little danger at play for him, for the little Yoda Man, and especially for the victims — who are pretty quickly shuffled out of the story.

And then it’s the same throughout the film.

All of the action is fairly uncomplicated. Mando goes in, kicks a lot of ass, does not usually have his own ass kicked, and it all goes pretty great! Which is nice for him, but less nice for us, the audience. Because we, the audience, are greedy for trial and tribulation. It’s roller coaster shit — we need the fast fall and the slow rise to experience the power of the ride. Otherwise it’s just, you know, a tram. It is, as my kid said when he came out of the theater, just a straight line — a people-mover moving people.

The movie adds up to a lot of action. It’s near-constant. So that means much of the movie comprises considerably breezy, consequence-free, tension-free action. Especially since Mando is near god-like — his armor deflects everything, he is the best fighter in pretty much every room, and when in doubt, he has a little green buddy to do some Jedi shit to finish the job.

(I think Superman in the latest film gets more beat-up than Mando does in this, to be honest.)

The action scenes feel effortless. Like they’re just gliding along. They’re cotton candy — a hard hit of sugar, but no weight to them, and they dissolve fast.

Part of why this is, is because of what’s missing from these scenes.

And, really, from the movie at all.

What’s missing?

Stakes.

---

Stakes in a story, to give a quick and perhaps clumsy definition, are what can be won or lost in this narrative. Simple, life-threatening danger works as a basic, sort of animal-like fight-or-flight set of stakes. It’s real simplistic but hey, it fucking works — oh no, look, this character you like, they’re getting hurt and might die! Oh shit!

In M&G, Mando rarely gets hurt, and when he does, we don’t generally believe he or the little green baby are gonna get got. Like, they’re on the fucking marquee, Lucasfilm isn’t bold enough to be like, HA HA BOOM, WE KILLED THE MANDALORIAN IN THE FIRST TEN MINUTES, SUCK IT, FANS. WE THREW GROGU INTO A MOISTURE VAPORATOR AND HE DELIQUESCED INTO TENDER MEAT AND HUMID GREEN MIST.

So, obviously, more advanced stakes can be put on the table, instead.

There are big, worldbuildy stakes — Star Wars does these often, the kind where THE UNIVERSE IS IN DANGER. There are emotional stakes, too, the kind where it’s like, BUT I DON’T WANT TO GET DIVORCED OR FALL OFF THE WAGON OR LOSE CUSTODY OF MY KID. There are also life-threatening dangers we can give to other characters — heroes are trying to save the lives of secondary characters because they care about them and we care about them in turn. Point being, there are a lot of things you can do to put stakes on the table in a story. The things that matter. The things that we, the audience, want to see won, but we fear will be lost, yeah?

And it’s in that push and pull of desire and fear that tension is born.

---

Tension in a story is simple on the face of it:

The thing I don’t want to happen is in danger of happening.

Or —

The thing I want to happen is in danger of not happening.

Certainly it isn’t always that simple — more mature pieces of storytelling make this more granular, more nuanced. Sometimes tension can be born out of us, the audience, not knowing how to feel, but just feeling unsettled, uncertain, off-kilter. Gnarly emotional stakes can leave us, as in life, feeling tension over the complexity of relationships and the world.

But in this kind of story — a pulp-action, two-fisted Star Wars story — we can assume that tension is born when success is threatened, when failure seems certain. The tension is increased with greater, stronger stakes.

Think of the stakes in this case like a weight on our shoulders. The bigger those stakes, the more it presses down on us. The more we, the audience, have to carry. This sounds bad, like a burden, but narrative burden is useful — we’re trying to get you to feel under threat, somewhat. (Storytellers are cruel.)

If there are no stakes, or the stakes are light, you run the risk of reducing or removing tension. Which can be okay in a certain kind of story! Maybe less so in the two-fisted sci-fi action tale, though. You can also have huge stakes that don’t work because we don’t care enough about them — a Big Story (you know, blah blah blah, universe in danger, etc) without a Small Story anchor just tends to be like a balloon — it blows up and up and up but is empty inside, and eventually will either pop or fart its way around the room as it loses air.

(A New Hope is a good example here — sure, there’s this big galactic struggle between Empire and Rebels, Good and Evil, and there’s all this worldbuildy sci-fi fol-de-rol, but there’s also a kid who’s trying to escape the destiny of a mundane life, a princess with the weight of the galaxy on her shoulders, and a gambler under a mountain of life-threatening debts. The small stories anchor them in the context of the big story and make that big story matter.)

Thing is, none of this — stakes, tension, the action that is the emblem of those two things — really matters without one crucial component, and no, it ain’t plot. So what is it, then?

Characters we care about.

---

Creating a character we care about is the hardest easy thing to do. It’s easy because if you give an interesting imaginary someone a problem and then make that problem difficult for them to solve, you’re already most of the way there. It’s hard because there’s a kind of magic in the narrative empathy required to make those pieces come together in a satisfying way. It’s weird alchemy. We often say we want characters to be likable, and that can be true, but it’s also the softest, perhaps most meaningless way to think of characters. Likable is great, but it does little for us. We want characters we can live with, that we find interesting and fascinating and whose struggles make us feel, by proxy, like we’re enduring that struggle with them.

And here, maybe, is where the movie — for me! — fails the most. There aren’t really any actual characters in this movie.

There are, however, action figures.

Very few of the characters throughout this flick exhibit the traits of what we think of when we think of characters. They don’t have personal problems. They don’t have arcs to complete or changes to make. Mando’s core struggle is that he takes a job and it goes fine until it doesn’t, but the job itself is soft and brings few stakes of its own, and has zero ties to who he is as a character. Grogu is mostly just a cute puppet. There’s no arc there, either. Nobody needs to learn anything. Nobody really even needs to accomplish anything. Most of the villains are like mini-bosses and few have names that I can remember. The side characters are… mostly just there? Often, again, quite nameless. I love, love, love Zeb (Steve Blum Hive, represent), and here he’s just kind of there, a cool CGI recreation of a cartoon who has nothing to him except being marked present on today’s attendance. Sigourney Weaver shows up as, I dunno, somebody, and she’s definitely here to take a paycheck and tick “showed up in another major sci-fi franchise” off her bucket list.

This post is way too long already, but fuck it, skip ahead if you want — I’d like to unpack what the actual mechanics of this movie are.

And again, some spoilers here.

We enter the film not knowing who Mando and Gogurt are, unless we’ve watched the TV show, which the movie assumes you haven’t, but it also does little work in reintroducing you — he’s just a bounty hunter, and Babby Gargoo is his ward, and he, like Batman, takes his Young Ward on incredibly dangerous “missions,” and that’s okay because Little Greengoop has the Force, which again you won’t know unless you’ve seen the show, but also, again, the movie treats you like you haven’t seen the show and does very little to connect that show to this movie.

Mando works for the New Republic, fine. We begin with a mission where he’s hunting down Imperial remnants and warlords, who are represented by a Sabacc deck with their faces on them WOW I WONDER WHO CAME UP WITH THAT EXCELLENT IDEA THEY SHOULD MAYBE THANK THAT GUY IN THE CREDITS FOR SOME STUFF anyway we’re not really told why these guys in the deck are a huge problem, only that they are, and they’re villains on paper more than in any demonstration, but fine, whatever. Mando takes down the one, gets the job to do another — here, the whiff of a real villain forms in Commander Coin (sp?) but who ends up being a big nothingburger nobody, and we never come to understand why he’s even a mysterious high-priority problem.

Whatever. Taking this job requires Mando to free what might be the only real character in the movie (who even still has very little arc in that he begins as Buff Young Hutt With A Heart and ends as Buff Young Hutt With A Heart). Mando goes on this journey, it gets hard, then it gets easy, then the easy part gets complicated, then the movie gets quiet for a while as it becomes the Sacred Infant Yoda show (and the movie actually works here!) and then it’s just more action until the whole thing resolves. Nobody is really changed much by the endeavor except maybe Buff Hutt, and the galaxy hasn’t changed much, and the status quo endures.

Oh also, there’s Embo, and Embo rules, except in this movie, because he does nothing except, as my son suggests, to “aura farm.”

The whole thing ends and nothing is gained or lost plot-wise, or character-wise. There are also minimal ties to the show you didn’t have to but totally had to watch. No Ahsoka, no Jedi training, no Space Boston Burr, no callbacks or shout-outs except maybe some Paul Sun-Hyung Lee (who is the best). There’s a kind of throwaway bit about Mando not being allowed to show his face to people, which is a thing that really only makes sense in the show, and it’s a thing that’s mostly resolved in the show, but here it’s both a thing that isn’t solved and a thing you don’t need to know but that definitely isn’t explained and it’s all such nonsense.

---

Anyway. This is way, way too long.

To sum up, my problems in a nutshell are:

The stakes are muddy, and small.

The characters are action figures.

The tension is soft, not taut.

Nothing really happens.

There are no galactic complications. No personal ones. No emotional entanglements. There’s little threat. There’s no political maneuvering (despite an opportunity to show how fucked up it is that the New Republic makes a deal with the Hutts for information, a thing that is treated like business-as-usual and not a huge corruption scandal for the New Republic). Individual action scenes are effortless, airless, cool for the sake of cool. A lot happens in individual scenes while, conversely, nothing much happens in total. It’s just a lot of rearranging deck chairs. And all of it adds up to wayyyyyy too much slack in the narrative rope. Nobody’s pulling it tight. It’s just laying there in a sloppy, frayed pile.

(There’s also a lot of little plot holes and weirdnesses with things, but that’s really beside the point. I can forgive those. Though they do rack up, here.)

---

I think in this way, this is a worse movie than Rise of Skywalker, which is a very, very bad movie. The Randolorian & Gogurt is, on paper, a much better movie. It makes more sense, it holds together better, looks better, is just a technically better content product than TROS. But TROS reaches for something. It takes some big, big swings. It misses many of them! Just whiffs the shit out of them. But it’s got an ethos. It’s got emotion. Even though it screws it all up (and betrays the two films prior), it’s at least doing something. This film feels like — well, it feels like AI. It’s not. I know it’s not. I just mean it’s got that sense of having no structure — it just strings scenes together, one to the next, and doesn’t even really follow the standard act-structure breakdown you’d expect to come with film. It completely eschews that architecture for, again, a straight line with maybe the gentest of inclines, with a few little bumps and curls along the way. It’s all safe, unchallenging content.

---

I know already one of the responses I’m going to get to this, because I’ve already seen it in other conversations: “Relax! It’s just supposed to be a fun movie! Just turn your brain off! It’s for kids!”

I hate this kind of response because:

a) fun movies are still usually more than just fun movies, in fact many movies are supposed to be fun movies, and yet, they reach for more

b) if you have to turn your brain off to enjoy something, then maybe that something isn’t actually good — my brain is the thing I use to tell me when something is good or when it’s some stupid shit, I’d really prefer to leave it on, thank you very much

c) kids’ movies can be deep, amazing things even when they are just fun movies, also why are we to assume this movie is just for kids, it’s definitely feeding off the nostalgia adults feel for Star Wars (count the callbacks and easter eggs) and also the flick is about a guy in mega-armor who straight up kills the shit out of people and not because he’s being attacked but because he’s hunting them, which is fine, and I’ve no problem with it, but Mando ain’t Luke Skywalker

d) also I had to take out a home equity loan just for three people to see this movie in fucking IMAX so I think I’m fair to demand more of my experience than just being fed a fast food tray of Warm Content

---

At the end of seeing this, I was haunted by something said to me in a conversation some time ago when I was pitching a SW story for a comic, and one of the higher-ups in that call said, “We can’t really do anything interesting right now.” This was in reference ultimately to the story universe being so bound up with itself that they had little wiggle room to actually impact that universe in an interesting way. And I took that as a pretty big indictment against the franchise, because the smallest and most meager of your storytelling goals is to make interesting shit. And if you can’t make something interesting, there’s little reason to do it. And this film to me felt like that. It wasn’t interesting. It left no impression — no footprint on the universe, or in my mind, or on my heart. And there was little reason to do it.

But I’m sure it will at least sell some merch.

---

Given the world we live in, I like to remind you again this is just me yelling at the tides! If you liked the movie, I am legitimately glad for you and do not think you have been mule-kicked. I just like to talk. It’s fine. You’re fine. This isn’t a threat to you in any way. Okay? Okay. Cool.

---

We all have merch to sell, of course, and I’d be foolish if I didn’t note that a lot of the stuff I’m talking about here — stakes, character, tension — is explored in my book, Damn Fine Story. Which also features a tale about a masturbating elk, so that’s nice for you. Check it out, if you want. And here I was going to link to it on Bookshop-dot-org but for some fucked up reason it’s $27 — in paperback? That’s too high a price to pay. List price is $17.99? Uhh, I dunno. Buy it somewhere it’s cheaper — it is not worth almost thirty bucks, what the fuck.

Why yes, fiendish readers, there is a pre-order campaign for The Calamities.

As always, if you choose to pre-order The Calamities from my local, The Doylestown Bookshop, you will receive some nifty things that you will not receive elsewhere —

Which is to say:

You will get the book, obviously.

I will sign it and personalize it, if you choose that path.

I will also assign to you your very own, unique-to-you, demonic progenitor, an ancestor from the time of chaos whose infernal blood now fills your own! (This may be inked in the book or on a separate postcard, depending. If so, the postcard will be cool. I promise. And I’ll sign the postcard, too, if that’s the case.)

And you’ll get a very cool, very freaky sticker of one of the demons from within the text, drawn by the inimitable Natalie Metzger, who did the stickers for Staircase, and who also did all the art for our book, You Can Do Anything, Magic Skeleton.

Oh! And this will also be sent directly to you! Er, unless you’re a local who wants to pick it up at the bookstore.

Pre-order from The Doylestown Bookshop here.

Let’s see. Are there other little tidbits to talk about, regarding this book?

Probably!

Will there be a tour?

Yup. Happening launch week and the week after it — I’m not at liberty to tell you for sure where that tour is going yet, but the theoretical tour takes me from PA to NY to OH to Chicago to Milwaukee. And there might also be a third little wing of the tour later on, in October, as I make my way to CanCon in Ottawa — but more on that as I have it nailed down.

Is there a UK edition?

There is! Releasing the same date. Did I ever show you the cover?

I love that cover. I love the US cover. I love both because they each take a very different approach, while still totally giving the proper vibe.

Is The Calamities on Netgalley?

It sure is.

You can find it –> here.

Will there be an audio version?

Yup. Released same day. They’re working on narrator lists as we speak — when I know more, you’ll know more.

Why should I pre-order?

Pre-ordering books does feel weird, I get that, especially when the book is not one that will have a tectonic, ground-shaking release because it’s the not the next in the series of The Heartbroken Dragon Riders Of Shadow’s Wing Of Night series, yeah?

But pre-ordering is good for everybody!

a) it’s good for the bookstore, because that’s a sale, and they need those to live

b) it’s good for the publisher, which may not be your primary concern, nor should it be, but that leads to

c) it’s good for the author because it sends the signal to both the bookstore and the publisher that hey you should carry this author and promote their books

d) it’s good for YOU because it makes sure a bookstore has stock, that you’ll get one, and also if you’re like me, you’ll pre-order the book, forget you ever did it, and then magically one day you have a new book, a gift from a time-traveling version of you, high-five, Past You

So, please do pre-order the book! If not from my local, then from your own!

Or — from Bookshop.org!

What else can I do to help you?

SO KIND OF YOU TO ASK, RHETORICAL PERSON I MADE UP.

Listen — just tell folks. Spreading the word about this is the biggest and best and coolest thing to do. (Aside from just mailing me bags of money.) Spreading the word… well, gets the word out, generates buzz, and helps a lot. So! Please share this. Scream it so the heavens and hells can hear.

And soon, if the world doesn’t end, you’ll get to meet the fiends…

Loa was not just a good dog, but rather, the best dog. And I know that all dogs are good dogs, and all dogs are the best dogs; that’s just how dogs are. But the reality is, when I say it, I need you to understand I really mean it. Every dog is the best dog but Loa really was the best dog.

---

We got her when my son was very young. She was, of course, a shelter dog, because shelter dogs are the greatest dogs; we saw a bunch of dogs that day, including an excitable cannonball of a pitbull puppy that (in wanting to play) knocked our son back horizontally like, five feet, as if he were a henchman getting blown away as collateral shotgun damage in an Arnold Schwartzenegger movie. So that dog was not going to be our dog. But that day they said, “You’re also scheduled to see Peaches,” and we did not know who or what a Peaches was.

Peaches was this little red dog — a puppy, really, maybe nine months old, and she trotted out and diligently followed behind our wandering child, keeping a protective distance but staying close enough to follow. She’d follow, then sit. Follow, then sit. Super cool, super chill. I drove her home, and all the while she kept trying to leave her seat and ride with me as I drove. Which wasn’t easy, but I managed. She helped drive me home that day. Always wanting to be with her people.

I’d argue that wanting to be with her people was her fundamental trait — the thing that drove her, always. Even now, up to the end, even with cancer hanging heavy on her poor muzzle, even when she couldn’t really see anymore or hear anymore, she knew where we were and would come to the room we were in. She would panic a little if we were out of sight — so we spent a lot of extra time being there, being present, and reassuring her with pets, touches, and extra snacks.

---

We named her Loa. We’d been to Hawaii a couple times and knew that Loa meant something between long and a lot, and she was both of those things — here she was, this long, gangly dog when she sprawled out, and a whole lot of dog. Not in a needy, too-much-to-handle way. She just had a lot of love to give and we had the love to give back. So: Loa.

---

She was always so good with our son. She was our dog, but also, his dog — they are, or were, the same age, after all. Loa was our first true family dog — we’d had dogs before, obviously. I brought a dog to our relationship, a gloriously hairy black Belgian sheepdog named Yaga. And my wife and I got a taco terrier, Tai, to join Yaga, and those two were fast friends. But Loa was the first for the whole family.

---

Tai, the chihuahua-fox-terrier, had found her one true best-friend-forever in Yaga. They were fast buddies, and she was like his little co-pilot. When he passed, something went away in her, too, and she did not want to be bonded to anyone or anything new. She tolerated our child, but really didn’t like Loa at all. This, despite Loa loving Tai oh so very much. Loa just wanted to hang with her new little friend. Tai just wanted to plot a complicated murder. (Chihuahuas gonna chihuahua.)

(For reference, see if you can spot the aforementioned murder-plotter.)

So when Tai passed, it seemed time to get Loa a new friend. And, as it turned out, a sister — in spirit, if not literally. Enter: Snoobug.

We got Snoobug at the same shelter. And again we saw a number of dogs that day and had Loa with us to take the temperature — and she had a blast with all the dogs because that was Loa. Loa got along with everybody. She had infinite love to give. Any of the dogs could’ve been a match for her, really.

But when we got in the room with Snoobug, the two sniffed each other, gave some licks, and then both just laid down together. Like they’d always known each other. So Snoobug came home with us, and they were bonded after that. They went out together, slept in the same bed together, ate together. It’s why we call them sisters — it’s like they grew up in the same litter.

(That photo of the two of them above is, of all the dog photos I’ve taken, the one I love the most. Sometimes a photo really captures a spirit and sometimes it doesn’t, but that one does so well it feels almost supernatural to me. I note too in that photo that Loa was definitely the dominant dog in the pairing, but played like she wasn’t. She was a gentle beast.)

---

I’m sobbing like a fool as I write this. Funny I guess how we sometimes cry more over our pets than we do some people. Maybe that’s not strange. Our pets are with us so much, so often, and they’re these like… little perfect pure beings. They don’t mean us any harm. They’re an unalloyed good. They want to love and be loved. And be fed. Hot dogs, ideally.

---

Loa’s eaten a lot of hot dogs in the last couple weeks. Like, an unreasonable amount. They weren’t something she was supposed to eat because of — well, I’ll get to that in a minute. But when you’re terminal with cancer, you get all the hot dogs you goddamn jolly well want. Hot dogs and turkey breast lunchmeat and even today she shared a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with me. It’s one of the things I’m glad about — she was still eating, drinking, sleeping well. And I know that wouldn’t last forever.

---

Loa almost died once before, big-time. She’d had bladder stones — and as it turns out, was prone to making them, a mobile canine bladder stone factory. She also loved to get on her back and have you rub her tummy, and our vet posited that this position was also perfectly optimal for working bladder stones into bad positions.

So we gave her meds and food to break them up, but one got lodged in her urethra and, stoic dog as she was, she failed to let us know this until one day we found her standing in the kitchen, shaking violently and going to the bathroom on herself. Which she didn’t do! She never, ever, ever went to the bathroom in the house. (Not even now, with all her systems shutting down — she dutifully made her way outside.)

So that day, we rushed her to the vet and she stayed there, in emergency care, for a week. But she pulled through. She had cancer, too, later on, but our groomer — thank your groomer! — caught it and we got it removed before it could do worse damage.

Though in the end, a new cancer, or maybe that cancer, still caught up to her. I guess that’s how it always goes with cancer. Still, fuck cancer. Dogs should be immune to it. Cancer shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near them.

Dogs are proof we live in a good and loving universe.

Dogs getting cancer is the proof that we don’t.

---

I hate this. I don’t want her to go. To be gone. It’s enough to make you never want to get another dog again. We will, of course. George Carlin was right — life is just a series of dogs. But the pain of this is so hard, so deep. This one fucking hurt, man. I feel like I’m dying inside. And yet it’s what we owe them at the end. It’s part of the price at the start. You make that deal the first day you take them into your house. Whatever it costs you then, it’ll cost you this at the end, and pay this price because it’s a mercy they can’t do for themselves — and ironically, often enough a mercy we can’t do for ourselves for each other, either, as people. But for them we can do it. And we have to do it. Even though it feels like the worst thing it is the best, most necessary thing. They give us so much. So this is the thing we owe.

---

She was ready to go. We weren’t ready for her to go. We would’ve kept her here forever if we could’ve. What a great dog.

---

Here’s why she was a great dog. The best dog.

She was calm. She was loyal. She was sweet. She was a complete goofusy doofus. She was fun. She was easy. She was a good guard dog. She was great on a leash and great off one, too. And she was smart, holy crap. Took almost no training and yet she never went in the house, knew how to knock at the door (or ring sleigh bells we put there) when she wanted to go out or come back in, she knew that if you said widdle paws at her she’d get down on her side and bring her two little paw-hands up to her muzzle and simulate petting, and that meant she was going to get petted so good, until you stopped, which meant she’d do it again, and you’d pet her, and she’d literally do this forever if you let her.

---

The cancer stole her in small pieces, though she didn’t suffer long with it. We had options to diagnose and treat, but none of them were really real — she was fourteen years old and any treatment would’ve been both costly in money but also costly to her, in pain. Her quality of life would’ve cratered and all just so we could’ve maybe, maybe had her around for a few months.

It was really only in the last two weeks that you could see the pieces of her going away — her eyesight, her hearing, her ability to smell stuff. The way the cancer in her mouth grew bigger. She’d sometimes appear lost in the room she was in. A kind of walking ghost phase. I tell myself now and told myself then that putting her to rest is literally that: letting her rest. The dog she is and was, well, went away. We were just giving her the peace she needed.

---

But god that fucking sucks. All the high-minded talk of what we owe them and the peace they need, it still fucking sucks that they get to come into our lives like this and be such perfect companions and friends and furry family members and then the universe gets to take them away again long, long before we are ready. It’s fucking stupid and it’s not fair, and cancer fucking sucks, and fuck all of this.

---

Okay, sure, she had a few less desirable traits. Did she eat poop in the yard? Sure. Who doesn’t? Would she, while on a walk or in the yard, be able to take a split-second’s worth of time to dart her head into the brush and come back with a baby rabbit or groundhog? Fine, guilty — she loved all creatures but preferred loving baby woodland critters with her teeth. (And seriously, she did this very very fast.) Did she, just the other day, in the throes of this cancer, somehow poop on a garter snake? Fact check: true. She pooped on a snake. I don’t know that this gets you any points over the rainbow bridge in the doggy heaven side of things, but she did it, and the snake was fine, if absolutely perturbed by it. Honestly, if you ask me, it was the snake’s fault. Loa was perfect. Shut up, snake. Get pooped on.

---

We don’t know what kind of dog she was, by the way. We never did any genetic testing. I always assumed she was somewhere in the middle of a hound slash retriever slash Rhodesian ridgeback DNA party. We just said she was a “red dog,” because she was a sweet red dog. Like Clifford if he was just a regular-size dog and not a gargantuan mutant.

---

I don’t really know how Snoobug is going to handle this. They were sisters, really, through and through.

But also, Snoobug is an absolute dipshit. And please understand I say that with full love in my heart. She’s the sweetest dipshit. But Loa had the brains. All the brains. Snoobug is like a dice cup — her brain is a random encounter chart in D&D. You shake it up and some days she doesn’t know how stairs work, or what side of a door to be on when it opens. She will literally change her habits every few months. So I don’t know what this will do to her. I hope, I guess, her brain just kind of forges ahead. Blissful ignorance. I know her heart won’t forget but her brain is definitely moth-eaten underwear and maybe that’s a nice protective way to be for yourself. We should all be so lucky.

---

I could talk about my dog all day and if you never met her I feel like that’s sad for you but maybe reading this you know her a teeny-tiny bit better. I can’t stand that she’s gone and I will miss her forever. She was the best dog we ever had — and no shade to out other dogs, they were the best too in their ways — and we’ll never see the like of her again.

We drove her home 14 years ago, and we drove her home again today.

I miss her.

I can’t stop crying at missing her.

I hate this, this fucking sucks.

---

Loa died today under an old, tall crabapple tree on a blanket set amidst a carpet of blooming violets. She was surrounded by her people. She is at rest.

---

She was a beautiful dog, so I feel it essential to show you with more photos.

And this is the last photo I took of her, from a good moment today:

The clock ticks! The calendar pages fly off the wall. The sun rises and sets and rises again. Winter is coming! And the wheel turns.

Which is to say, I’m uncmaxxing in my agemogging era, bruh, ngl.

Which is to more to say, oh shit, I’m 50 years old.

As it is my birthday, I feel it necessary to say, no, no, you don’t need to get me anything — but if you insist, then I note a donation to Authors Against Book Bans or Girls Write Now would not be remiss, and then if you further insist that you want to do something for me, I politely note that the thing you can do for me is a thing you also do for yourself, which is buying my books, or even (gasp) preordering my next book, The Calamities, from my local bookseller or yours. No requirement! But hey, pre-ordering is cool because if you’re like me you’re gonna forget you did it and then the book is one day going to ambush you, except it’s an ambush of bookish joy instead of like, a guy jumping out of the shrubbery with a sock full of 9-volt batteries.

If you want some grand rumination on the turning of the wheel, I can point you to a thing I wrote a couple weeks ago, about aging and legacy and melting butter. You should read it! Or don’t, I’m not your Dad.

(I am obviously your weird uncle.)

In a general sense, I’m trying very hard to be sanguine about the five decades I have been allowed to exist on this planet. They were a little rough early on but I settled into a pretty good thing, and it’s hard for me to be mad at where I’m at and what I’ve done. Great family, a successful and persisting career doing what I love, a house, a freezer full of ice cream which will probably be the reason I die early because fucking hell, ice cream is really good you guys. And it’s not just where I’ve been or what I’ve done, I also have… more to do, which is also good! I have plans! Plans within plans! Sharks with lasers on their heads, all that. And fine, probably some more books or whatever.

At the same time, you know, my own father died when he was 63 — prostate cancer got him when he took a carefree gap year off his health insurance (this was pre-ACA, and it’s why I believe the ACA would’ve saved his life). So, by that metric, it gives me thirteen more years before I go.

Now, I recognize it doesn’t work like that. I certainly intend to beat his number and keep on kicking well past that point. But he died fairly young and my son never even met him. I didn’t meet my grandfather — either of them, actually — because they both died young. So, yeah, mortality is on my mind there just a little bit.

And the body is keen to remind. I am definitely in my “I hurt myself by sleeping” epoch, now. Things ache. Randomly! They just ache. I have learned the phrase “achilles tendonitis,” a problem I obtained by mostly beating plantar fasciitis, another phrase I had to learn. I beat the one thing and caused the other, I guess? Who knows. Also I think I have arthritis? I might have carpal tunnel? My ear rings all the time? (To be fair, it has been ringing for decades, so that’s not an old guy thing, it’s a “my ear is broken” thing.) I find myself on the lawn, waving my cane at planes, yelling about chemtrails? Okay, maybe not that last part. Yet.

It’s not all bad. I’m still running — not metaphorically, I mean, I literally run (aka jog, aka gallumph sweatily) and last year I really upped my game a good deal. In years previously I ran a 5k every month — last year I was doing one most weeks. So in a lot of ways I’m healthier now than I’ve ever been. It’s just, I can feel the machine breaking down, you know? It’s like a washer or dryer kind of juddering across the floor — it still works! Still gets the clothes clean! But it makes noises now. It’s doing stuff you didn’t tell it to.

I know my doctor is gonna wanna put me on a buncha meds soon — for high blood pressure (which is only high when I go to the doctor’s, weirdly), high cholesterol (my family has had high cholesterol genetically, as we’re pasty Eastern European types, but none of them had heart issues), maybe a GLP, I dunno. Hey, whatever, fuck it, at this point, get me on that statins-beta-blockers-cocktail. I have an upstairs and a downstairs bottle of Advil, so I’ll just take it when I take those.

See, even now I’m doing what old people do — we talk about boring health shit. My wife and I went out to eat about a year ago and they seated us next to a table of The Olds, and their entire two-hour conversation was about serious medical procedures described in graphic detail. Am I that, now? Shit. Shit!

Whatever. It’s fine. I’m gonna keep writing books till my fingers fall off and then I’ll write them with my hand-stumps until they stiffen to a chitinous lump and then I’ll just yell my books into a little mini tape recorder and mail them to you all individually. Gonna keep traveling. Gonna keep eating ice cream with the secret hope it’s actually really good for you and Big Pharma Doesn’t Want You To Know This One Trick Of Eating Ice Cream. Gonna keep living and loving till the living and stops and my loving turns to undead rage, whereupon I will stagger upon the earth, my fierce hunger for human flesh driving me ineluctably forward.

For now, I’m writing the sequel to The Calamities, called Chaos Reigns. I just turned in copy-edits on my next middle grade, The Boy Who Dreamed Of Doors. Then I’m out of contract once again and given that a writing career is a series of cliffs you gotta jump over like Evel Knieval, I best get to building the next ramp before I crash against the rocks in fire and blood. I’m also working on a The Staircase in the Woods film script because, fuck it, why not? There’s maybe some interest in me doing it, so away we go.

We’ll see how it goes.

So, I guess here’s to 50? Onward and upward and all that. One day closer to death. Yadda yadda yadda.

Cheers, folks, and thanks for being here.

---