Curiosity kills the Hellcat

The endless pursuit of being right comes at a cost

Dear Writer,

A few years ago, when I was first tossed into the phase of my life best described as The Darkness, a fan of my work reached out to me and was like, “We should podcast together.” I was trying to launch my podcasting venture, Chipperish Media, and I needed content, and I was so spun by everything that had happened to me that I was just like, “Okay,” and ran with it. My entire life had completely disintegrated in front of my face, what the hell did I have to lose, right? It didn’t even occur to me what I would gain from it, which turned out to be a lot.

That fan was Joshua Unruh, and the podcast we launched was Listen Up A-Holes, an analysis of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with a story expert (me) and a superhero scholar (Joshua). In the early episodes, you can hear how tentative I am; my previous marriage had made me afraid of men, and to be working with a man I didn’t know that well was more frightening than I expected it to be. But Joshua was so fun to work with, so kind and smart and enthusiastic, and he brought in such loving little brother energy that within a few episodes, I felt safe again, and started having fun. Working with Joshua was a tremendously healing experience for me, and to this day, he is one of my most precious people, the little brother I have adopted as my own.

One of the things that brought down that podcast was the very thing that inspired it; the overwhelming breadth of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. With so much content to review, and much of it so incredibly bad, we just got tired of talking about things we didn’t like, so we ended Listen Up A-Holes and took a break while I sold my house and moved to Colorado. Then, last year we returned with a new podcast in which Joshua, a superhero scholar and comic book expert, selected comic series for me to read. The resultant podcast is In The Gutter, and the idea behind Joshua’s careful curation of comics is in the subtitle: All bangers, all the time.

In Season 1, we did a Captain America run that I loved, followed up by a wild 4-issue Justice League arc that spun my head a bit, but was fascinating. This “all bangers” thing was working out really well, plus I was reading comics, which are an amazing form of literature.

(I am so serious; if you haven’t been reading comics, you must start. If you’d like a guided start, I recommend Endless, the podcast about Neil Gaiman’s Sandman that I do with my friend Alisa Kwitney, who was an editor on the series. It’s a great introduction to reading comics—you’ll learn along with me—and if it turns out to be the gateway to comics for you that it was for me, all I can say is… you’re welcome.)

But now, here we are at Season 2 of In The Gutter, and Joshua has shared the run of comics that made Patsy Walker: Hellcat his favorite superhero of all time and…

… oh, Writer. I love my little brother, but I fucking hate Patsy Walker.

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Space is limited for my Year of Writing Magically workshop, and applications are flying in; be sure to apply today!

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The motto at Chipperish Media is “love what you love” for many reasons. One, I think that stories are keys, and they only unlock some locks. If your heart lock matches the key of a story and mine doesn’t, that doesn’t mean that story doesn’t have value; it just means it doesn’t unlock for me. Also, I think taste-shaming is bullshit. The world is full of scary and challenging right now; if something gives you joy then that’s the end of the discussion. No one should ever make you feel like you are somehow less because of what you love; if they do, then they are wrong. You just continue about your business and let them soak in their wrongness.

Now, I’m gonna tell you, I went into the Patsy Walker read with total enthusiasm. I wanted nothing more than to love what my darling little brother loved, to see the positives, to embrace Patsy and everything she represented. But let me tell you, while Joshua and I have heart locks that align with a lot of the same keys… Patsy Walker: Hellcat is not one of them.

I’m not going to list out the details of my arguments here; if you are interested, you can listen to Season 2 of In The Gutter right now on your podcast app of choice. But the conversation we had during yesterday’s recording (which will air February 1) was fascinating to me. I tried to engage my own curiosity about why I hate Patsy so much, whether it’s possible to enjoy a story when you don’t like the protagonist (spoiler; it is), and what my dislike of Patsy might illuminate for me about myself. Joshua has approached his love of Patsy with some of the same curiosity, and it made for a loving and only momentarily combative discussion. We both made space for each other’s responses to the same material, allowing that we each see different things and neither of us was defensive or married to being “right”; we both knew “right” wasn’t even the point, and that made the conversation so much richer.

For a lot of people, their tastes and opinions are absolutely inviolable, objective, and true. If they don’t like it, it is bad; if they like it, it is good. But to see the world that way is such a huge missed opportunity to learn more about yourself. The application of curiosity to every situation is the most certain path to personal growth that I’ve ever known. Confession time; I have absolutely been that dick in the past, who thought that their opinions were absolutely correct and everyone else was just too dumb to see how right I was. It’s such a limiting, insecure perspective. There is so much more joy to be had in knowing that your response to stories is about so much more than the final judgment of what is good or bad; it’s about understanding yourself and the world around you so much better.

So, Writer, as you write or worry about writing or think about creating whatever you create, remember that everything you put into the world is a gift for someone.

Even if it’s Patsy Walker: Hellcat.

Everything,

L