Man, I knew some kind of event was coming up, but I thought it was a total number of articles thing, not this. It completely slipped my mind.
Crud, I had some questions I was setting aside for a day like this, let's see if I can pull them out of the archives.
Okay, to celebrate a milestone, I'm answering ten questions I had been asked in the past year but thought they either needed some extra time to make sure I worded them right, thought about them fully, or that they were just too short to get a full article.
Let's go!
To Erik: If you could go back in time and tell the child you five things, what would you tell him?
1) Get your parents to ignore their broker and invest in that Starbucks stock they were interested in.
2) Wait until the price is drastically low, then buy up Apple stock.
3) Here are the next twenty years worth of winning lottery numbers. Use them wisely.
4) Back-up the files on your computer regularly.
5) Don't get a crush on <name redacted>, she's not worth it.
...now, see, this question's difficult because once you start messing around with time travel to change yourself, you have to wonder if you're trying to help yourself or if you have a responsibility to use it to help others. I mean, what kind of scum would I be if I didn't give myself strict instructions to try to prevent 9/11? Or just pull an Early Edition and give myself a list of names, dates, times, and places to be so I could stop bad things from happening to other people?
But ignoring that, if I'm only allowed to tell myself five things to help me through hard spots, this would be them.
1) Don't be afraid to do things to meet people. All of those other kids had to learn how to make friends and join clubs, so you can do it, too. You have a disadvantage from having moved a lot growing up, but trust me, it always gets easier if you're able to make new friends, and it doesn't mean you have to let go of the old ones. Keep in touch by phone or mail, and in the future they'll have things on computers that let you contact everybody you ever knew, and wouldn't it be great to have that network of people you used to know?
2) Don't hold back from learning things. You wanted to learn martial arts when you were young, but never did. You wanted to take art lessons, and you never did. You wanted to learn how to properly ride a horse, and you never learned. You wanted to learn how to shoot a bow and arrow set, but you didn't. You discovered you really enjoy to cook things later on, but you've always appreciated food, so why not learn something about it now? Sure, a lot of your interests might label you as a nerd, but there's so many amazing things you can do with the things you learn that people will soon appreciate the fact you know this stuff.
3) Don't let bad experiences with people stop you from trying. Between moving, being a bit nerdy, and a few bad experiences in high school, you can become afraid of having people reject you, which leads to you not trying to connect with people. Don't let that happen. Everybody you know tells you, often to your face, that you're funny and nice to a fault, so find people who appreciate that part of you, and realize that anybody who doesn't, you're better off without.
4) Don't be afraid to decide what to do based on what you want. There will be times in your life that you'll feel pressure to do things that you aren't ready for, aren't mature enough to handle, or simply wouldn't be able to appreciate while doing them. Don't do them, then, just to make other people happy. Or, if you do decide to do them, recognize when you're in over your head and ask for help.
5) Don't be afraid to tell people what's bothering you. You're going to grow up believing that people have enough of their own things going on that you wind up locking away everything about yourself so that other people won't worry about you. You'll try to justify it as "well, they have enough going on, I don't want to be selfish and ask them to pay attention to me." You'll also tell yourself "it's silly and something they wouldn't care about, I shouldn't bring it up." These are your friends and family, and if you don't, you're going to hit some really low points and screw some pretty big stuff up. If you feel depressed, tell someone. If you feel overwhelmed, let people know. If you start to feel like a failure, don't. There's no "failure at life" chart you have to try to get points on in order to justify existing, you just have to respect yourself to live your life.
Next question!
To Erik: If you could have any super power, which one would you want?
Not to nitpick, but would I get powers that work along with the power I pick? Being able to shoot beams of force like Cyclops might be cool, but not if I have to worry about Newton's laws kicking in and snapping my neck. Or immortality if I'm just going to get older forever.
Fine.
Man, where to begin. I like to think that if I had a super power I'd use it to help people. The ability to touch something and restore it to a previous state would be great, because I could heal people and objects. Super speed would be amazing, as it has so many practical uses besides just "run somewhere very fast." The ability to understand all languages would make me invaluable at the United Nations.
But assuming I also want to be able to have fun with my abilities...
I'd go with the "restore things" touch ability. Being able to heal people who are injured or sick, fix machinery that's broken, or even restore buildings that are falling apart (or even some ruins) would allow me to travel and help an amazing amount of people.
Of course, now my brain is also thinking about time travel...but no, I'd go with the restoring touch power.
...I have always wanted to fly, though- MOVING ON.
Well, I suppose I could cop out and say "cosmic energy control." It's the go-to answer for how heroes are able to do everything from fly, shoot energy blasts, heal people, or even create force fields. If I get to be completely cheap, I'd choose that.
To Erik: Why is the Riddler great? He seems lame. The guy leaves clues telling Batman what his crimes are going to be.
I might be in the minority on this, but I think the Riddler is great, and I've told people as much. I've always seen Batman's rogues as extremes that Batman could easily go down himself if it wasn't for Alfred taking care of him at a young age. The Joker is pure social chaos, while Ra's Al Ghul is order through any means, including killing most of the planet's population. It's a huge look at Batman's need to play everything down the middle and how he can't go too far one way or another. Poison Ivy is environmentalism (and, arguably, sexism) taken to extremes, whereas the Penguin (and many other villains) show what happens if you just look out for big business. Two-Face is that dual nature of Batman and Bruce Wayne twisted around for evil...
And then there's the Riddler, a guy who runs around leaving clues for Batman to solve so that Batman can find him at some wax museum or jewel display and punch his face in.
But here's the thing. Any time one of Batman's villains face him, they're trying to beat him. Batman has to twist himself around so many ways to keep up with his foes, that his attention has to be divided a million different ways. Him getting into a fist-fight with Bane is one thing, and in fact Batman used to lose fights all the time in the old days (and still does sometimes), but he's able to come back later and beat up people with serious mental problems later and save the day. You might have tossed him off of a building or broken his back and believed him dead, but when he swoops down later, that just perpetuates the myth that he's more than a man.
But the Riddler is unique in that all he really does is test Batman's intelligence and his detective skills. He isn't trying to directly beat Batman, he's trying to beat the idea of Batman. Bruce Wayne spent such a long time building up the myth and legend of Batman that criminals are now hesitant to even commit crimes sometimes because they figure there's a better than even chance a dark figure is already watching you and waiting to swoop down from above.
If you beat Batman there, the illusion's shattered and you realize that Batman is just a guy. If the Riddler gets away with his crimes even once then it proves Batman is fallible, because you can't come back later and say "Hey, I solved your riddle now in hindsight!" If the Riddler wins, that means Batman can be outsmarted, outmaneuvered, and out-thought, so it's a constant mental game against Batman that the Riddler plays instead of just yet another fist fight.
But why do we need the Riddler?
The movie The Dark Knight said it best, "This city deserves a better class of criminal." When you have a man running around in pajamas shutting down every bank robber and mafia member, you need better challenges or you have boring stories. Thus, we have "super villains." Since Batman is the "world's greatest detective" and even shows up regularly in a book with "detective" in the title, that means that at some point he needs to solve mysteries beyond just "who shot this man? Well, let me run some DNA tests on some samples I found at the crime scene and see who's a match."
Granted, you don't usually need a huge hint to know it's the Riddler at work (he leaves a question mark on the clue he gives the authorities), but then again, you also don't need a great detective to figure out who stole the rare cat statue from the museum, the rare plant from the greenhouse, or all of the two dollar bills from the second national bank at 2:22 pm. That's why the Riddler leaves the mysteries behind, the ones that tax Batman just as much as a fight with Killer Croc, except Batman can cheat and use electricity on Croc, he can't just call up Google to look up the answer to the Riddler's question.
That's why I like the Riddler, because he's one of the only characters I know of who doesn't try to just kill the super hero, he tries to kill the idea of a super hero.
To Erik: Giant robots or giant monsters?
Giant monsters.
To Erik: What's the best spice?
Pepper. I mean, come on, there's a reason why it's paired so much with salt.
Beyond that, though, I'm a pretty huge fan of paprika.
To Erik: If you could afford to live anywhere in the world, where would you live?
Venice. While it's still there.
To Erik: What's your greatest fear?
Being abandoned by everyone I know and being alone.
To Erik: What's your favorite swear word?
[Censored]
To Erik: What's this about you making a cameo in a web comic?
I wouldn't really call it a cameo, I was in the background in a couple of strips of a comic called It's Walky! I had no speaking lines.
To Erik: Some time ago you said that a song from My Little Pony made you really reflect on who you were and what kind of person you were. What was up with that?
Man. See, for a while I was pretty unhappy, which if you've been reading this for a while, you already know about. I wasn't as social with my friends at work, and I almost never went out to do anything. I was bitter, depressed, and stuck in a complete rut. I was also becoming condescending and snarky to a lot of people I knew, and wasn't keeping up my usual upbeat attitude and making sure people around me were doing okay.
And then, while watching Season 2 of My Little Pony (hey, I said before it was a good show, don't judge) I came upon this song:
Yes, last I checked, I'm still a guy. SHUT UP. It's catchy.
But more than that, it made me realize that I hadn't been smiling for a long, long time. I wasn't doing things that made me happy, and when I thought about what gave me the most sense of satisfaction, it was doing things for others that they appreciated. That's right, I was selfishly doing nice things for others so they'd let me know they appreciated me doing nice things for them. ...somehow.
I wound up listening to the song a few times and deciding that I didn't really like who I was becoming, because I saw others where I worked who were obviously unhappy, and I saw how their attitudes became toxic to those around them. I decided then that I had to pick myself out of my funk and look at what was causing me to be unhappy. If certain people were bringing me down, I distanced myself from them. If certain habits or behaviors were making me unhappy, I worked on stopping them. If I felt I wasn't doing anything, I decided to start taking more risks.
In fact, this blog was one of them. I decided it was time to knuckle down and actually start taking it seriously instead of just going "meh, I'll get to it."
So that's ten questions down!
Man, when I get to a hundred Ask Erik articles, I can't even imagine how many I'll have to answer. But thanks for sticking around for the ride so far, I'll try to keep coming up with answers to your questions as you have them!
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