A Little Update

Hello jalapenos! How are you all doing today? Just a quickie from me while it's still technically Friday and I've still technically not broken my promise -- those politicians' promises are the best, huh? -- to tell you that I'm working on a few things and at least one should be up very shortly, but I don't want to compromise anything by putting it up half finished just to adhere to some arbitrary rule I've made for myself. The deadlines are important, they really help me, but they're there for me, I'm not there for them.

I've been doing a little diary to challenge negative assumptions like I decided last week, and it has been beneficial, but I realised I didn't need you all to see it. I've been using the diary to digest my thoughts, decoct the positives, and purge the rest. Which, obviously, is nice -- but, like most digestive/defecatory processes, isn't necessarily something I should invite the neighbourhood round to watch.

So my plan was to put up one of the actual things I've been working on. Only it's been a busy week -- I've been designing and writing a newsletter for my old pub, doing the Wednesday review, as well as working on the aforementioned upcoming pieces -- and basically nothing is ready. I could've lashed one together and put it up warts n all, which was tempting, but sometimes you've got to look at what you're building and say, not yet, you deserve better than this. It's never an obvious choice, there's always a level of weighing-up involved in deciding whether it'd be better to get the confidence from finishing something and moving on, or spending time on getting the thing right. Up till now I've needed the confidence, and needed to move onwards.

But these pieces are more for other people than for myself, I think, and so it seems the right thing to do to wait and get them right. Though that's obviously building them up to be good, which if I know my brain (I do; I'm it), will create whole stacks of pressure and make me second-guess every word I write.

But, shh. It's been a good week. A really good week. I'm settling back into my meds, I feel I'm over something of an initial bump, and sailing out into relatively open waters. Though that metaphor will work better if we pretend I said I was passed some initial jagged rocks, and sailing out into &c. So, yes, that. Open waters. And I may not know where I'm sailing, exactly, or how long I'll stay afloat, or whether I'm tying the knots properly -- but for the moment I'm just enjoying the sea spray in my face and the wind at my back and the familiar feel of the tiller beneath my hand.

And if a few seagulls are shitting on me from up high, well, what you gonna do?

Bon voyage. 

Wednesday Reviews

The Wolverine

Hey, pachinkos! Am I calling you traditional Japanese betting games involving rains of metal balls there to insinuate you're all nothing but endless gaping maws into which our culture's wealth is squandered? As a memento mori to remind us that, despite our best efforts to catch them, the moments of our lives slip through our fingers like so many tinkling orbs? Or maybe I'm implying that you regularly get fondled in harshly lit back-alley amusement arcades by desperate old men with pocketfuls of loose change? Actually I was doing none of the above, but merely introducing the theme of Japan as a soft lede for this review of 2013's Tokyo-set superhero film The Wolverine. And though that wouldn't have been enough to work by itself, all this meta commentary has just about provided the necessary opening. Who said you can't have your cake and eat it, too? You just have to be able to put up with a cake that tastes faintly of self-loathing. But then doesn't everything, eh?

So, The Wolverine. After subjecting myself to the soggy, insipid mess of X-Men Origins: Wolverine (or X-Miaow, for sort of short) last week, you'd be forgiven for thinking I'm some kind of perverted sadist for rushing headlong into this with nary the time to wipe the tears from my home-made latex Wolverine costume. But I'm not. This film is an attempt to right the wrongs of X-Miaow, directed by James Mangold (of Cop Land and Walk the Line fame), with a story inspired by a much-loved comic book run from the 80s -- and it's only bloody brilliant.

Well, it's all right. It's way more involved and assured -- from the opening shot you feel safe in  Mangold's experienced hands -- and it's made by a bunch of people you can just tell all actually give a damn about doing justice to the character and underlying mythos.

Where X-Miaow tried to colour in the gaps in the canvas of the established cinematic canon, and ended up smudging the lines, drawing over bits that were better to begin with, then spilling a pot of paint all down its trousers, The Wolverine opts instead to rip its character from the old canvas and dump him in a new scene and see what happens. It's typical fish-out-of-water stuff as the gruff, no-nonsense Wolverine gets transported to a Japan dictated by custom, tradition, and the ever-looming presence of the Yakuza -- and the contrast between character and setting is used to paint the clearest portrait of old Claw-Hands yet put to film.

Mangold has fun with the tropes, as does the ever-enthusiastic Hugh Jackman, archly beefed up here for his, what, like sixtieth outing as Wolvy? The character fits as comfortably on Jackman as the familiarly faded denims; you can tell he relishes the role, clearly enjoying himself while working hard to stay true to the source material.

The film begins with a weathered and world-weary Wolverine living rough in the mountains, having hung up his claws and abandoned the superhero life following the events of X-Men 3. But though one particular memory weighs heavily on him, and was certainly the catalyst for his change, this is not the whole picture. More, we get the sense of an old soldier who has experienced too much killing, a man sick of who he was born to be and the only thing he knows how to do, worn down, past caring, not so much consciously running away as having simply accumulated too much shit and finding something deep and automatic within himself has snapped and lead him away from everything he knew. It's Paris, Texas, essentially -- only as far as I remember Harry Dean Stanton never killed a grizzly bear with retractable adamantium claws.

When a feisty Japanese girl with mad katana skills arrives to tell Wolverine that an old friend in Tokyo who is dying wishes to see him one last time, we recognise the herald calling him to adventure. An adventure, we know, that will force him to confront the pain he has been hiding from and offer him an opportunity to rediscover his raison d'etre.

It's pulpy stuff, for sure, but deftly handled, and as Wolverine's plane touches down in Tokyo we find ourselves drawn in.

Sadly, the film doesn't maintain the purity or cohesion for its duration. The plot ceases to make much sense approximately two minutes after arriving in Japan, and the early grittiness gradually gives way to primary-coloured villains, dastardly double-crosses, and the seemingly obligatory CGI-heavy action scenes so overblown as to shatter any suspension of disbelief the actors have worked to engender (though in fairness one fight above a moving bullet train does provide some satisfying physical comedy).

The thing holds together -- there is a nice scene about Nagasaki recovering from the Bomb, and an unexpectedly tender romance -- and the pace picks up after a convoluted second act for a suitably climactic showdown, but here, again, the better character-based drama is overshadowed by secret mountaintop lairs and armies of samurai and battles with ten-foot-tall chrome warriors wielding magma swords.

The film has done enough for us to stay invested to the end, but it's a shame that something that began like an accomplished graphic novel would turn out to be more of a children's comic. A well-constructed comic, replete with sufficient pay-offs and successful character arcs, but one that in the end finds far less to say than it made you hope for.

But maybe I'm asking too much. This is still a boisterous and enjoyable superhero movie that never takes itself too seriously while taking its duty to its fans very seriously indeed. The characters are believable -- the inclusion of a number of female leads who exist outside and above their relation to the male characters shouldn't need to but does deserve mention -- the script is tight, and Mangold directs with a steady hand. For better or worse, you can tell everyone involved in the production of The Wolverine really cared about bringing to life the story of an indestructible metal-clawed mutant. And their passion will make you care, too.

And that's enough superhero films for me for the moment, I reckon. See you on Friday! x

On Obstacles

Hey, poppadoms. Sorry this is late (like you're sat hammering F5 on your web browser of choice staring in increasing panic at your clock going, "Where the hell is that update from Rob, anyway?"). But still, apologies. It's been a tough week. In typical fashion I got the forms I needed to register with the doctors' near our new flat in plenty of time, then proceeded to fill absolutely none of them in until it was too late to sort an appointment before my meds ran out. Which meant: no antidepressants for a few days. Which meant, it turns out: really bad things. Anyway, I'll let the diary tell you. Onwards!

Monday

12:35 -- You know in the Redux of Apocalypse Now when the French woman on the plantation says to Willard, in some let's-be-honest painfully clunky dialogue, "There are two of you, don't you see? The one that kills... and the one that loves"? Well, that's like me, except rather than killing, the fundamental duality of my nature is expressed in a shadow side of me that wants to do nothing but sleep.

I'd set my alarm for 08:00, put it on other side of the room so I'd have to get all the way out of bed for it (the good me clever like that) -- then next I know Morning Rob is in charge and he's having none of my shit. "I'm running this ship now, boyo." He stumbles across the room cursing, gropes for the phone, jabs at the screen until the banshee death-wail desists, stumbles to the bathroom for a piss, then stumbles back into bed, muttering to himself all the while. Then darkness. Then it's hours later and I realise I've totally buggered up the first day of my diary. Then, instead of getting started, I sit in bed on my laptop drinking coffee and looking up quotes from the Apocalypse Now Redux.

13:10 -- Been reading about Updike's Rabbit Redux. Not sure I liked Rabbit, Run -- there was something cynical and cold about it to which I couldn't connect. Anyway! Going to work on an essay for next week's post now.

15:32 -- Did some writing, but also read a Guardian list of 100 greatest English language novels, felt bad about not having read any Hardy, or Dickens, or Poe, or... &c, then ate wraps and made more coffee. Back to work now.

16:18 -- Thinking. What I wrote in last post about pesky demon of procrastination -- maybe first step in defeating him is accepting him. So I slept late today. So what? My usual response would be despair, that it proves everything I fear about myself, that I want to do something worthwhile with my life but I never will. And that leads to shame, then self-loathing, then a black depression that lasts for days and blankets everything. So why not instead just go easy on myself and feel nice and let it go? What's so tough about that, Robbie-boy?

Immediate thought crashes in: You're making excuses for being lazy and weak, making light of it, revelling in it so don't have to take responsibility and can carry on like this. When you gonna grow up?

But hang on. If I don't take that voice as gospel (always take that self-critical lashing voice as Honest Truth) but instead look at it impassively, analytically, then not sure I was making excuses. Wasn't I instead saying that the milk is already spilt, no use wasting time feeling worthless for knocking it over, instead just clean it up and be happy and move on?

Maybe actually it's voice saying "when you gonna grow up" that's keeping me from growing up. Piling on self-loathing talking so venomous because it's scared of change.

Urg, I don't know. To be perfectly honest I feel like dirt. Like dredged canal waste. Like those spirals of mud that have been chewed up and secreted by worms. I've run out of antidepressants because I'm stupid. I've not registered at the docs' yet and it's going to be who-knows-how-long before I can get an appointment. Goddammit.

18:40 -- Done what I can for the day. Off now to watch X-Men Origins, thinking of writing reviews of stuff on Wednesdays. At the least the film will be dumb noise to lose myself in. Need that.

Tuesday

10:44 -- I've done it again. Staggered to phone, switched alarm off, crawled back into bed. I thought writing this diary would create accountability, incentivise me to get up, but of course I can just sleep in and then come here and apologise. Blurg. I really hate mornings.

11:00 -- Okay, let's focus on positives. I've had cereal. I've got coffee. I'm here. I'm musty and hollow and unhappy, but I'm here.

Can feel a spot coming on on my chin, one of those buried-deep ones that you know is going to hurt like all hell. Closing my window. The days are getting colder, the nights drawing in. Is summer over already? Feels like we only had about three pleasant days. Yeah. Anyway. Off to write about stupid X-Men film that was stupid.

11:15 -- Quick thought: strikes me that these posts are getting worse, but that's maybe a good thing. Need to throw away every desire to write well, to impress, and rediscover joy of writing for its own sake. Never used to post anything on old blog that gave away what I was really like -- except it always in the end did, and I'd hate it anyway. Cast off all conceptions of myself, demolish desires, build back up from basics. Might lose a few people's respect, bullshit people on FB might think I'm weird, but also lose all fears of that. Go into darkness but carry on going. Do the blog every week for a year. If still shit after that, at least I finally tried something. Yes. Yes.

16:08 -- Been writing all day. Also reading loads of Wikipedia pages on X-Men and Marvel characters and film writers and directors and loads of stuff. Re-watched scenes from film for quotes and whatnot. Paused few hours ago, did weights, went for a walk, made lunch, drank coffee. Then more writing. Turned into good day.

17:26 -- More writing, then took forms to doctors' and registered. Was easy. Got an appointment for tomorrow morning. Feeling good. Well, feeling acceptable. Hurray.

Wednesday

11:46 -- Been to the docs', got more meds, got some baby shampoo for eye infection I've had forever, done some writing on the X-Men review, and, perhaps most importantly, Co-Op had special offer on Special K cereal. What a day this is turning out to be!

Also, it's summer again. Blue skies, clouds ambling about, insects at work. Why was I so maudlin yesterday morning? Though it does worry me that I had no meds for a few days and I've been feeling so much better. Are they actually helping? Maybe I'm just forgetting how bad things were before I went on them. I don't know.

17:13 -- Rushing to get film review done. These constant deadlines are good. Same old desire to slack off, but no time. Like lifting a weight, like turning a screw. Just gotta -- nnnrrrghh, tighten the muscle, strain, and do it. Either that or carry on how I was living, working chain pub and drinking too much and spending days off in bed staring at nothing feeling like been fuckin hit by an oil tanker or something. To hell with that.

18:49 -- Review is done and posted. Don't look back. Enjoy having done it, meet friends for drinks tonight, and move on.

Thursday

13:27 -- No desire to do this. Charlie and I stayed round friends' last night, woke up this morning to work stress Charlie had to deal with, not nice at all. Missed my tablet last night because of staying out drinking, right after getting more meds as well. Stupid, stupid. Like I'm purposefully doing the dumbest stuff. Why am I like this?

Need to get back on meds, start getting up early again, sort myself out. Just... I don't know. Last night's post seems so awful now. Disgustingly, painfully crap. Why did I put it up?

14:17 -- Everything feels so fragile at the moment. I'm writing all this stuff and it seems so shit and I'm swinging between feeling like it's what I have to do to make progress and like it's all an awful embarrassing mistake. Thought it was a good idea but I was mistaken and everyone is laughing at me or else bewildered like what the hell is that weird guy doing, or else couldn't care less, that I'm shouting into a void and old voidy is staring back silent waiting for me to expel all air from lungs then going to swallow me up anyway. No sound, no art, no love beats that void.

Urg. Shh. I've enjoyed writing the previous posts. I have. Especially the X-Men one. So what if it was loose and rambling? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter.

Don't know. I can write that. I can't believe it though. The positive thought is there and I just can't hold it. Feel so lost. I'm sorry, I don't know. I'm having a panic attack or something. Can't catch breath. Everything is too much. Had the worst nightmares last night. Drowning in distant lightless caverns, groaning walls, peristalsis throb of furious insectoid bodies... then racing angles, tall worlds at every turn, foamy shores of crab-like movement, basin dripping in empty room, bone dissolves and blooms in lichen and explodes and blooms again. Galaxies, lives rushing by, and something of myself awake, aware but without control, one eye watching trapped in terror racing down pulsating clay passageways through electric sandstorms wanting to scream but able only to realise what it was seeing and all the silent horror was but the contents of its own brain.

And I awoke soaked in sweat. Lay in bed thinking over and over that this is what it'll be like when I die. Tried to calm myself but that part of me very small, far away. Most powerful people on Earth, wisest, richest -- none of them know the answer. All of us are alone, I thought. Fell asleep again and don't remember dreaming but must have because when I woke up I'd been crying and my eyes were wet.

Friday

08:54 -- Is this the first day of the week I've been up before 9? I think so. Yesterday was bad. Spent afternoon and evening playing GTA: San Andreas, something old and comfortable, falling into familiar routine, driving back and forth down streets I know so well, finding solace in the systems, warmth in the simple digital rules, hiding from something terrible and unnamed. First antidepressant back on was awful, all evening last night nauseated, confused, misplaced, like a wraith watching my life from the outside.

Don't feel much better now. Nausea has receded but everything still feels cold, bleak.

09:28 -- Just burnt my coffee. Got to it before it boiled over, but the taste is gone. Can't cope with this. Want to fling mug against wall. I know it's stupid. I know I'm overreacting. Can't get a foothold though.

Is the act of writing this diary making the depression worse? Making me concentrate more on it? Or do I always go through these days and now I'm just letting people in on it? I DON'T KNOW.

Sunday

15:40 -- Been at my mum's since Friday looking after her dog. Not been writing. Come back to this now and looked it over, need to put it up. Conclusions? I'm all over the place at the moment. I guess I have been for a long time. This week especially bad because of missing antidepressants, but I think there's a constant battle like this going on even on the meds, though guess the meds have been giving me just enough space to plant my feet and fight back. Been on them eight months now. Think I'd forgotten how bad things were before them -- this week has reminded me.

Plenty of acceptance and change looking back at this diary as well though. Problem is that reach a sensible conclusion (like spilt milk thing), then sort of lose awareness, fall into ingrained negative thoughts and it's only later looking back that realise it's happened. Like I put on Tuesday that I needed to focus on positives, then I immediately listed a load of negatives! It'd be comical, if it wasn't so obviously not (also just realised: might not be a coincidence that all this happened the week I'd said I would write a diary. Like something in me attempting to sabotage myself).

But in the end I got through the week. I wrote a post on Wednesday and I've written this one now. I had a few of my worst days for a long time, but I'm still here, tapping away on my keyboard, listening to the patter of rain against my window. I've not quit yet. That has to mean something. Hold onto that. I don't know where I'm going, but I know I am still going.

And, in fact, screw it. What I'm going to do for next week is carry on writing a diary, but every time I'm negative I'll force myself to come up with an alternative interpretation for reality that is a bit nicer. I won't say that's the truth or anything, I'll just jot it down, like an exercise, and move on. And I'll do film reviews and stuff on Wednesdays so this isn't all self-involved (though personally speaking pretty necessary) navel gazing. See you soon, then. Love love.

Wednesday Reviews

I'll put that diary up on Friday, but for now here are some musings about a film I watched, to keep you occupied...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Deadpool, then, eh? Deadpool, Deadpool, Deadpool. All anyone seems to be banging on about these days. But what is a Deadpool? For the uninitiated, he's the star of the leak of a teaser for a trailer for a new Marvel film that's coming out, and the internet is very excited about him and which of his quirky catchphrases he'll be repeating when the real teaser for the trailer for the new Marvel film is finally released. On tenterhooks myself, I tell ya. But not personally knowing quirky-catchphrase one for this Deadpool chap, I thought I'd investigate X-Men Origins: Wolverine, an X-Men spin-off prequel (sprequel? prequoff?) from 2009, in which Deadpool features as a side character and has his origins explained. 

Except after sitting through two hours of flaccid, cliché-ridden dirge I went on Wikipedia to discover that, although the upcoming Deadpool film stars the same actor, playing the same character, in the same cinematic universe, the film-makers have completely re-imagined his back-story for the new film, making the crap I watched even more irrelevant than it already blatantly was. Which is nice.

X-MO:W (does that work?), then, tells the story of a young Wolverine (he's the angry one with the metal claws) and how he became Wolverine. Except that was sort of already covered in previous X-Men films, and what's added here doesn't make any sense if you think about it too much. It's like they've taken a rather nice painting -- no Monet, but I thought Bryan Singer's X-Men films had heart -- and tried to colour in the gaps, but ended up going over the lines here and there and smudging some of the original work. At best you'd say the new stuff has no real reason to exist; at worst it ruins your impression of the original.

We open with Kiddie-Wolverine running away from home with his brother, who possesses similar powers of regeneration and cool slashy attacks. This is all in Olden Times, by the way, for it turns out Wolverine is dead old, and over the opening credits we see a montage of the brothers fighting back-to-back (that's their thing) in the American Civil War, the Trenches, the beach scene from Saving Private Ryan, and Vietnam. The two leap about, bop baddies on the heads, shrug off bullets -- it seems war is loads of fun when you've got bone claws and can't be killed.

Apparently Brother-Wolverine likes war a little too much, though. We can tell because he keeps gunning people down he doesn't need to while grinning maniacally. You're supposed to slash their faces off while looking miserable, you muppet!

It all goes too far -- and too Casualties-of-War -- when Broverine attempts to rape a young girl in Vietnam, then viciously attacks the G.I.s who tell him that's not such a hot idea. Wolvy rushes to Brovy's defence -- Brovy's a nutter but they're bro-bears, what you gonna do? -- and so they're both carted off to face the firing squad together. Which set piece might prove more dramatic if we didn't already know that neither of them gives a shit about being shot. "Wake me up when it's done," Broverine whispers. Yeah, ditto.

So the credits end, and we're into the film proper, as a shady military dude comes to visit the boys in prison (hey, they survived the firing squad!). Military Dude says his name is Stryker, who we remember as the bad meister from X-Men 2, only here he's younger and not played by Brian Cox (the actor, not the physicist -- though there's an idea for casting!). Stryker asks what the firing squad was like, and Wolverine replies that it "tickled", and they all have a big laugh, and the brothers go off with Stryker to join his mutant black ops squad, and the traumatised Vietnamese girl and the dead G.I.s are conveniently forgotten. Casualties of war indeed.

The black ops squad is called Team X (they love their Xs!), and is comprised exclusively of Glowering Men. There's the one who likes swords (this is Deadpool, but he's not Deadpool yet, he's just called Wade), there's the Chinese one, the big one, the one who's Merry from The Lord of the Rings -- whose singular role in the gang is to fly the plane with his mind, which is cool and all, but I reckon a regular pilot would have been cheaper -- and there's William.

Sorry, "will.i.am". This is tricky, because on the one hand his name is his property and it's a bit harsh on him to refuse to call him whatever makes him happy, but on the other hand it's a bit harsh on the fucking English language to spell your name all in lowercase with full stops everywhere, so I don't know.

Anyway, William can disappear and reappear somewhere else, which I'm sure I've seen at least six mutants do in these films already, and he also likes cowboy hats.

Team X engage in some Witty Banter in the back of the plane for a while (during which time I imagine Merry being like, "Haha yeah good one, well yo' momma is so fat she-- oh shit I forgot I was meant to be flying this plane, we almost crashed into the ocean there, haha, oh well, jokes"), then they go assassinate a bunch of Nigerians. They're (Team X are) after a chunk of meteorite that later turns out to be the stuff Wolverine's metal claws get made out of, but no one in the film seems to care much, and neither do we.

Wolverine decides to abandon the gang here because of all the assassinating, which I guess he didn't sign up to this black ops squad for, and goes off to become a Canadian lumberjack and fall in love with a hot Native American girl instead. Which is fair enough, really.

All goes swimmingly, for a time, until Broverine reappears and murders Native American bae, but not before bae can spout some faux-ancestral folk tale about a mythical wolverine that TOTALLY WON'T BE SYMBOLIC LATER ON.

Wolverine gets pretty miffed about what's happened to bae, so goes to find Broverine and duke it out -- though, just to reiterate once again, neither of them can die. They punch each other for a while, neither of them dies, and then Broverine leaves. Wolverine gets taken to hospital with multiple stab wounds, the doctors think he's going to die, but then he doesn't die.

Stryker comes to visit Wolverine in hopsital and tells him he should let him inject his body with metal from the meteorite so that it'll fuse with his (Wolverine's) skeleton, because that's the only way they can defeat Broverine. It's pretty clear the real reason is so that Stryker can do Nefarious Things, but maybe Wolverine has taken a few too many knocks to the head because he looks at Stryker stood there trying not to like cackle evilly to himself and shrugs and goes, "Yeah, sure, whatever. YOLO, eh?"

So Wolverine gets a shiny metal skeleton instead of the stupid bony one the rest of us have to make do with, but then while he's still strapped in the injecty tank and unconscious Stryker is suddenly all like, "Cool, now to erase his memory and extract his DNA in order to make an even more powerful mutant," -- except Wolverine is only pretending to be asleep, and he leaps up and is all: "Oh, thou Icarian fool, blinded by hubris, unable to feel satisfied with the perfectly adequate super-regenerative metal-bodied mutant you possessed, you wanted more -- but now, just as Icarus's wings were melted by the sun, so shall your face be melted by my kick-ass adamantium claws, bitch!"

... Which is to say, he breaks free and slashes some guards and runs away to hide in a barn.

Look, how much more of this do you need? X-Miaow (for thus it shall be named) is not good. It slouches on for another hour of insipid dialogue, nonsensical plot twists and surprisingly incompetent CGI-based action scenes. Wolverine discovers that Broverine and Stryker are in cahoots, and goes off with William and another mutant we don't care about about in order to set things right. William gets killed and the newly-introduced mutant does nothing at all. Wolverine has a fight with Wade, who's now called Deadpool and has everyone else's powers (gets retconned though, so nm). Wolverine doesn't fare too well (though, again, can't be killed), but then Broverine turns up and they fight back-to-back (like at the start!) against Deadpool, because Broverine doesn't want anyone killing Wolverine but himself. Deadpool gets decapitated, all the characters who survive into the other films leave, and then Wolverine gets his memory wiped so the plots of the other films can make any kind of sense.

It's all just so limp, so long and loud and dull. The script is the main offender, carelessly derivative and filled with characters flatter than the pages they've been pulled from. The direction is tolerable but uninspired -- Gavin Hood keeps all the elements together but displays little love for the source material, giving the impression of moving from Tsotsi and Rendition to this popcorn-fare not because of care for the character, but because it was a job.

A good superhero film should explore bold themes of heroism, redemption and sacrifice, with costumes and villains and explosions all supersized to match. There's little of that here. Wolverine isn't even heroic. The only time his actions are motivated by anything other than revenge or self-interest is when he lets some mutant children out of a cage Stryker has imprisoned them within. But Wolverine is stood right there at the time -- he doesn't even have to find a key or anything, he just slashes the cages with his claws. It's the equivalent of a multimillionaire giving a fiver to charity.

All of which is a shame, because there is the shadow of a better film hiding somewhere within this detritus. According to Hood, he wanted to make Wolverine a war veteran suffering PTSD, but executives dismissed the idea because they thought it would bore the audience. How sad, because I can totally see how that would have worked. Wolverine as a mutant murder machine, used as a weapon in America's wars for a century, physically indestructible but slowly accumulating the psychic burden of so much killing. The film following his struggles to free himself both from the shackles of government control and from his own violent, primal urges. These struggles would be neatly embodied in Wolverine's relationship with his brother, a mutant who embraced and revelled in his nature where Wolverine repressed it. The two would periodically clash in snarling, frenetic duels where the brother's savagery would initially give him the edge, until Wolverine learned to accept his inner rage and integrate it within his greater being, becoming both the Animal and the Man holding its leash, able to use his violence without being used by it.

Sadly, the suits that sign the checks decided to go in a different direction. Their approach wasn't a failure, at least from a commercial standpoint -- the film more than made back its budget -- but then we're judging the film as a product to be bought and sold rather than as a story with the power to speak to something inside us, to make us better people. Earning a few dollars for your studio is hardly the worst thing in the world, but it's not very heroic, either.

Sipping SoCo with Ma Homies

Writing that last post in a week was tough. I had to get up at 8:30 every morning and write all day -- well, until tea time, with a break for lunch in the middle -- like I was bloody Hercules or something. And even with this gargantuan effort it still wouldn't have been enough if I hadn't also had the two years I'd spent beforehand drawing up aborted drafts and taking notes and scribbling mad gibberish late into the nights.

This post, in comparison, has definitely been written in a week. More specifically, it has been written in a day. Even more specifically, it has been written today, between about 11am and whenever this goes up.

I would like to offer two reasons for this. Firstly, I suffer from a debilitating case of perfectionism, and I'm trying to learn to let go of that, to embrace the craft rather than the goal, to focus on getting regular posts up rather than spending months building delicate, belletristic articles that end up not working anyway and making me want to cry.

The second reason is that I'm lazy -- extraordinarily, inordinately lazy. Honestly, in the time it's taken me to write the previous three paragraphs I've alt+tabbed away from this fourteen times, checked Snapchat twice, and read the entire life story of a Game of Thrones character too insignificant to have made it into the TV show. I used to play videogames to bunk off, which at least made my procrastination fun, but writing a blog about games killed the appeal of that. These days I mostly just mash at my phone screen, eat bowls of cereal, and drink coffee.

The trouble is that my brain has already worked out that it can trot out an adequate post today in the time it has left. Not a superb post, but one that will suffice. Like the way a tennis player can extrapolate a ball's movement into the future and conduct myriad muscles to ensure their racquet finds the optimal position for return, so my brain just automatically gauges the precise amount of effort required to slouch through life not going high enough to have to try, but never quite dipping low enough to fail completely. In Year Six I wrote a project on explorers that was supposed to take a month, but I did it in the last two days, and I still got four stamps for it -- not the five that the class swots got, but the four that proved I could have got five if I'd wanted, but that I hadn't wanted, because I'd been too busy being a ten-year bad-motherfucking-G (read: watching Rugrats). I've pretty much been doing the same thing ever since.

Of course, I'm self mythologising there, and, like those Southern Comfort adverts where they try to convince you that it's tattooed DJs and trendy models partying in loft apartments in Brooklyn who refer to the drink as "SoCo" rather than, umm, literally no one, not only is this excruciatingly embarrassing but also patently untrue. I want to sound like never trying gives me the careless insouciance of Jeff Bridges in the Big Lebowski, joint in one hand, White Russian in the other, ambling through comedic escapades with nary a worry, when in reality deep inside I'm... I dunno, probably Philip Seymour Hoffman. Or the sweaty private eye, maybe.

Procrastination, the kind that I partake in, isn't about enjoying the moment, but hiding from it. I don't fiddle with Windows settings and scroll listlessly down my Instagram feed and drink ungodly amounts of coffee because I actually want to; I do it because it's easy.

But difficulties in life are unavoidable. By trying to hide from them you only make things way worse in the long run. Trust me on that.

So maybe it's time I did something about it. For next week's post I will write a diary of my attempts to defeat this dastardly demon of procrastination, and hopefully the pressure of knowing all six of you will be reading will embarrass me into getting up and giving it a go each morning. And if not, at least I'll have time to read up on those lesser known Game of Thrones houses. 

***

Other stuff I've done this week:

- Watched Jodorowsky's El Topo. The first of his work I've seen. Imagine spending a weekend ploughing through nothing but spaghetti westerns and episodes of the Mighty Boosh, then taking far too much acid and going on a spirit quest, and you're maybe halfway there. For much of the film I was confused and bored, but towards the end my brain gave up trying to make any sense of it and I found I was really enjoying it. More interesting than all the toss on Netflix, at any rate.

- Played King of Tokyo with my friends. I love board games. They're proof that, contrary to what modern society tells us, you don't need alcohol to have a good time, only a bunch of mates, a spare afternoon, and a flat surface upon which to roll your dice. Sadly, on this occasion we all drank way too much alcohol and the game was a wash-out, but the thought was there.

- Got a haircut. Shout-out to James Higgins at The Gentleman Fox for making this lumpy potato head almost aesthetically bearable. They do nice local beard oil as well! Huzzah.

Here Be Dragons

your life is your life
don't let it be clubbed into dank submission.
    - Charles Bukowski, The Laughing Heart

Hell is not punishment. It's training.
    - Shunryu Suzuki

Good writers, I always felt, were like heroes of classic mythology. Their role was to descend into the dark caverns of the mind and return bearing shimmering pearls of wisdom that would heal and rejuvenate mankind. While most of us were content in our villages, buying new rugs for our huts, arguing about the failures of the local chieftain, or bemoaning the lousy speed of the wi-fi, writers would journey out into the wilderness on lonely quests, passing gatekeepers of social convention, battling the supernatural monsters of our subconscious fears, and duelling with the shadow-selves of their own egos. If successful, the writers would return with knowledge of the mind's antipodes and recesses, with treasures wrested from the jaws of beasts, and, perhaps most importantly, with words of encouragement to aid us on our own expeditions -- for we all must journey into the unknown, and even a village is still the wilderness, only populated by other huddled travellers.

It's easy, already, to see how I might have set myself unrealistically high standards for my own attempts at writing. (It's also easy to see that I spent too much of my childhood reading The Lord of the Rings, but what can you do?)

***

My teenage years had been listless and unfocused -- I'd tried to pass myself off as a skater and stoner, with little success -- and at the age of 21 I was coming to the end of a degree in games computing that I'd stumbled through half asleep. Basically, I had no clue what I was doing. Then, all of a sudden, I discovered literature. Hemingway and Kerouac, mystical old Herman Hesse, madcap Hunter Thompson, Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath, the short stories of Raymond Carver -- the words were voices calling to me from some distant place, awakening and galvanising something inside me. The herald had arrived, and he was beckoning me to adventure.

I bought a new pencil and a leather-bound notebook and a bunch of How To Be A Writer guides. I filled out the notebook, brainstormed ideas, made hesitant and self-conscious attempts at exercises from the guides. And then I spent four years smoking weed and playing videogames.

I did write, but I felt it was all garbage. I never finished anything, and I never let anyone see what I was working on. If I was an adventurer, I was one tip-toeing out of my village under cover of darkness, making it as far as the nearest tree line, then shitting myself at the shadow of an owl and legging it back home.

I was now officially a graduate, and rising at four every morning to pick shopping for online customers in a hulking, half-deserted Tesco store. The world of my childhood was starting to feel less like a village, and more like a prison.

I kept telling myself I'd set out on a proper expedition soon, I just had to buy a better compass first, hone my blade a little more, practise tying a few more types of knot. But instead of doing those things I mostly just played games, smoked spliffs, and got drunk.

***

My 25th birthday found me unemployed, living in my mother's house, and more lost than ever. I was disgusted by everything I wrote, but I couldn't bear to quit. I felt that the words were in me somewhere, I just wasn't able to get them out. I had reached my lowest point, But then, instead of cracking, I managed to take what turned out to be two of the most important steps of my life: I went to the doctors' to ask about getting cognitive therapy, and I started a blog about videogames.

The therapy was great. I had suffered from degrees of depression and social anxiety since my early teens, but had always boxed them up, terrified of anyone discovering how weak and wretched I really was inside -- which of course fed back into the depression, making it all the worse.

My therapist helped me to see how I was creating and reinforcing my own negative assumptions about reality, and taught me some simple techniques for creating healthier conceptions of life. When I went to parties I was to concentrate on other people and whether they were okay and what I might do to help them have a good time, rather than on the image of myself as red faced and sweaty, my lip curling in a grimace of embarrassment, my eyes darting about the room in a way that was unnerving and creepy and just all kinds of gross.

And I started a blog. I'd wasted so much of my life playing videogames, it seemed fitting to put those hours to good use. A games blog was less ambitious, more manageable, with no weight of expectation behind it; and whatever the subject matter, writing was still writing.

My attempts at fiction had failed, I felt, largely because I'd been afraid of heading into darkness. The deep caverns of creativity might have been lined with gold, but they were also patrolled by terrible beasts, and I hadn't yet felt able to face them.

Writing about games was like setting off into a relatively safe, albeit backwater and kind of stinky, land -- a terrain of rolling valleys and gloopy marshes where I could practise my skills and strengthen my muscles, a landscape populated by the odd (and they were odd) fellow traveller I could wave at and compare equipment with. There were even a few shuffling zombies to fight, if I fancied it.

And what's more, this land of games blogging turned out to be a small corner of the wide realm I'd always wanted to explore, and digging down through its crust would take me to those same demon-infested caverns of which I'd been so afraid. Only this time I had a cover story.

The games pretext was my Trojan Horse, a delivery method for more personal writing. I'd, like, wheel an article down through cold stone passageways until the walls would open out and a glittering cave would stand before me, guarded by let's say two orcs. "Hey Gimkrack, hey Boltface," I'd call cheerily. "How're the wives? Yeah, I hear that! Huh? Oh, this? This is just a little Command & Conquer review, nothing to worry yourselves about. Yeah, boring, I know. Well, take it easy, say hi to Patti and the kids for me." ... Then when the monsters were asleep my troops would come spilling out and start telling stories about my parents' divorce. Or something like that.

***

For a while, and for maybe the first time in my adult life, I was content. People started reading my blog. Other bloggers linked to me, I got essays republished on larger sites. I found myself followed on Twitter by games journalists I'd admired for years. I did some work with a games designer who'd just become one of the industry's indie darlings. I felt like the heroes in my field were budging up to make room on the pedestal (well, the upturned wheelbarrow, this was still games journalism) for me. The gatekeepers, it seemed, were standing aside. The way ahead was open.

Unsurprisingly, I bottled it. The more popular my blog became, the more it began to matter to me how I was being perceived. I started watching my reader stats, which I'd always pretended I couldn't give a motherfuck about. I found it was vital to me that I was liked, seen as intelligent. I scoured my previous posts, desperately searching for any mistake that would give me away, prove to others what I myself feared: that I was a worthless imposter.

I had dug too greedily and too deep, and a balrog of self-loathing had escaped from some flaming pit that the therapy had sealed off but not cleansed. My burnished armour melted. My magical sword shattered. Suddenly I wasn't the knight I'd been masquerading as, but the scared little pipsqueak who'd been hiding inside all along.

I ran away with my tail between my legs. I abandoned the blog, buried myself in shifts at the chain pub in which I was working, gave everything up. My depression returned, heavier than ever. I drank more and more. The years went by...

***

I think, looking back, that I have always been terrified of the unknown. For most of this decade it's like I've been stood facing an enormous doorway, the entrance to a wider world, the threshold of myth. A gatekeeper has been stood by the doorway. "You may enter," he says. "But know that the land beyond will tear apart all who are not worthy."

Over the years I have tried many things. I have run back to my village, which was no longer warm and comforting, but cold and terrible and dead. I have coated myself in various armours -- the elegant yet flimsy robes of the young artist, the hardy, cumbersome plate of the games blogger -- in an attempt to protect myself while passing the doorway, but the demons on the other side have always burned away my protection, and I have been forced to retreat.

But now I'm wondering if maybe I've had it backwards all this time. If the armour wasn't protecting me, but holding me back. I always felt that I needed to shield myself because underneath I was still the lonely, acne-scarred kid who was bullied at school and had no friends and would be seen as a loser if anyone knew what he was really like. But maybe if I'm looking for acceptance from outside, it's never going to come. Maybe it's not wearing armour that makes us worthy, but being brave enough to take it off.

So this is me. Small, vulnerable, imperfect: just like everyone else. And I think that, finally, I may be all right with that.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and step forwards. The journey begins now.