Melancholy Muses

You know what peeves me lately? lazy writing. It’s bothered me quietly since the 7th season of Doctor Who aired and the writers wrote the characters completely out-of-character, and then started off with a badass new companion and went back to writing her lazily and helpless. Watching Fast and Furious 5 and 6 (and reading poor articles) have just kind of compounded that. Anytime you’re using family/pregnancy/babies as a major motivator and spend the whole movie centering around how those are important, you lose me. I find it lazy because a) you completely lost the character of what’s-her-face, and 2) turned everything into un-layered, un-dementional motivations, reasons, and plot points. Admittedly, you shouldn’t be watching fast and furious for the writing, but I enjoyed the earlier ones that were actually, you know, about racing and stuff…
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What is life? I’m so dissatisfied with the concept lately – of spending the best years of our lives doing things that we hate, things that discourage us, soul-sucking things, so for two days we can – if we’re not passed out from exhaustion – do something we want to do, and then, hopefully, when we get too old to have the energy and stamina we have now, then maybe, if we’re lucky we can actually live and follow our dreams. The prime of our lives is wasted away. And this is life? this is glorified? we’re supposed to live like this and enjoy it because that’s what responsible people do?
I’ve been depressed about this lately, because, like raising children, I don’t want that. I want more – I want to do be able to live doing what I love. I don’t want to wait 40 years and start from scratch.
I guess this is what most creatives have to deal with, and I’m not the only one. I just haven’t been able to think about it any other way than that I am remarkably dissatisfied at the prospect – and I guess, more than anything, determined not to let it happen.
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I react to things strangely. What just upsets most people is often followed by “well, what are you doing to fix it?!” While this is a good starting place for some things, it tends to be overwhelming for me. When people are upset about ideologies/belief systems and I get upset about them too, I’m more frustrated because I can’t change it. When bad ideas and beliefs expose themselves in writing world, I get upset about it and want to do what I can alternately – but it’s not exactly what I do, and so I get frustrated while resolving to write in a better way when the opportunity arises.
It’s probably because I follow the idea that I should make the content I want to see. So when say, Doctor Who has a poorly written (somewhat misogynistic) season, I’m just as angry as everyone else on that level, but frustrated because I can’t actually fix it, but calling people out on it, and not offering an alternative feels wrong to me, so I don’t usually engage on the same level besides just being frustrated.
I don’t know what’s better: to call people out for their outdated ideas (that reap horrible repercussions) and join the outraged masses, or stay out of it and plug away at what I do and making my art better and not all those other things.