I’ll be honest. I find a lot of commonality with Wil Wheaton, even though Wil Wheaton and I have lived very different lives.
My parents weren’t particularly overbearing, but I definitely feel the anxiety and the insecurity, the desire for people to think I am more than I am, and the head-up-the-assiness of my fully filled with bullshit youth.
How’s that for a sentence?
My first thought when reading Still Just A Geek was, my god, he’s still stuck, still defined by his bitterness and angry from decades before. Thankfully, it mellowed out a bit, but there was a moment there where I was genuinely concerned for him, that he was going to be forever caught in this bitter hatred, this ravaging insecurity, only now, instead of blaming Hollywood and overplaying his hand, he was blaming his parents.
I mean, shit, is he ever hard on young Wil, even as he’s telling young Wil that it’s not his fault. Plus, there’s an oversensitivity to his own insensitivity, in that he wants to give himself a break for being hard on himself, but excoriates himself repeatedly for even the most minor of politically incorrect offenses (never really truly acknowledging that while we know better now as we’ve grown, it’s just not someone we understood back then, and we cannot live our lives in perpetual guilt for the smallest of past actions, and outrage for the current ones by everyone else).
I worried he’d traded the bluster of overperformative insecurity and anger for the bluster of overperformative modern social standing (and believe me, it is a major pet peeve of mine when it comes to people whose use of modern political correctness is done solely as performance art, to make other people think of them in a way that doesn’t reflect who they truly are – for example, those who think a social media post is all that’s needed to end racism or transphobia. Exposure helps, but if your only interest is in how it makes you look, well then, fuck you. You’re the example right wing fascists use when they want to demonstrate the hypocrisy of the left – and while they’re still assholes and fully in the wrong about pretty much everything, there’s something to that.
Don’t be a hypocritical asshole.
In any case, I made myself do what I always do – devil’s advocate. Because I didn’t want to dogpile on the guy. I enjoy his work. I just worried he’d moved into a space where he’d not really moved, but only shifted the focus, or done some minor redecorating.
Of course, again, this was 2021 when he did all these annotations, so another five years gone and who knows where we are now? I’ll guarantee dredging through those old memories was a trigger for past trauma, so while he may have started with the best of intentions, he may have let that past anger infect him a little. It shows in some of the comments he makes. The second half is better, with more recent and more inspired stuff, but at times, it feels like he’s a little scared to really get into it, to let us dive deep into his psyche.
Then again, as he himself mentions at points, he’s under no obligation to share any of that.
And he’s not. He’s right.
Anyway, this sounds like I’m being a jerk, but I really do identify with the whole thing. I want Wil to be happy because I want myself to be happy. If he is, if he grows and changes and moves on to a full life without all the baggage, well, shit.
Maybe there’s hope for us all.
Target: 1600 words
Written: 726 words, novel: Father Lightning
Read: Still Just A Geek, Wil Wheaton
Comics: WildC.A.T.S. 47-49, Voodoo 4
Music: Foo Fighters Essentials, Foo Fighters (it's been a few foo foo kind of days)