The Good Fight, Yeah?
How do you define, and execute, perseverance in your life? Here's some thoughts on where it started for us.
Fighting the good fight isn’t an original thought. I’m not some great thinker that dreamed up the concept of perseverance. I adopted it because I felt I needed the message. I’m an artist, I want to be successful enough in what I do to support myself, and my family. Success is rarely an overnight phenomenon. I want to have a positive impact in my community, even if my stance is sometimes controversial, or comes with the task of asking hard questions. I’ll need perseverance if any of that is going to work.
Back when I started in webcomics, I was dealing with a lot of personal growth. I was still in early stages of deconstructing my faith and confronting irrational social and political conservative ideals I grew up with. I struggled to see myself as someone even capable of being a good person as I wrestled with all of the baggage I carried. This was also during my prime Buffy the Vampire Slayer binging era, and I found numerous nuggets of gold throughout the series that helped me grow into a more caring person. I grew into someone who came to understand that our involvement in the world is an unending engagement.
The messaging that led me toward gobbling up and embracing “The Good Fight” came from the Buffy spinoff, Angel. In the series, Angel, the vampire with a soul, strives to do good in Los Angeles, which is riddled with monsters of all flavors. Angel spends the series fighting against litigious demons while trying to embrace his humanity and deny the monster inside himself. It felt like it spoke directly to me in certain ways. I was in my 20’s, a prime age to feel main character syndrome, and a prime time to really figure out who we are.
As cool as it might be to say I identified with a Batman-like rogue of the night striving for justice, In hindsight, I identify more with Angel’s first sidekick, Doyle. Doyle is an unassuming guy, sure. He’s half-demon, but he’s less heroic and struggles more financially and socially, than Angel. He’s not strong and hunky, but he knows how powerful and important it is to stay connected to the people around us. Maybe in my 20’s I wanted to be the stronger guy, punching monsters in the face. But, now, at 37, I appreciate my similarities to Doyle.
Doyle was the first heartbeat in a series about the undead. That heartbeat was due to his connection to an otherworldly force for good known as the Powers That Be. It’s a nice thought to think there’s something good out there, looking out for us. But just like vampires and demons, that’s just not the case. We live in a grounded world of real struggles, real systemic oppression, and real conflicts. Like most of our fiction, Buffy and Angel reflected enough of our reality to give me something real to take away.
When I was younger, I still harbored lots of bootstrap ideas. I’m American afterall, and we love our impossibilities. I thought fighting the good fight was something we did in a vacuum. We had to hold onto rugged individualism and solitary stoicism. I’m lucky I was able to walk away from that perspective. Not only is it a giant risk to my health, to be solitary, but the internet has curated some of the worst spaces for solitary young men. These spaces take individualistic guys who might be looking for some self-improvement and turn them into misogynists, bigots, and (frequently) bootlicking nazis. It’s horrifying that I could have gone that way. I’m incredibly relieved I did not.
It’s in these moments, when I’m reflecting on what fighting the good fight means to me, that I am grateful for Doyle. Angel had lots of teetering moments in which he, too, put himself at risk of becoming a nihilistic incel. It benefited no one, and it benefited Angel the least. We deserve our compassion. We need our emotions, whether it's pain, joy, love, or loss. Doyle knew that the good fight was about us, and rarely about me. I’m glad I learned that, no matter how long it took.
What defines fighting the good fight will likely change for me as time marches it on. I expect it’ll change for you too. That’s the nature of everything around us. I think, at the end of the day, we’ll all agree that it’s about perseverance, regardless of how we start to define it as we grow. Perseverance, as our superheroes often come to learn, is a deep understanding of balancing hope with action. It’s a daily act of knowing how to pace ourselves when new hurdles will always appear. New challenges, new malignant forces, and new harmful systems will always arise. But we’re valuable in the fight for rights, equity, or even our creative paths to being who we want to be. If we’re to persevere, if we’re to last, we need to rest.
Right now, folks in my community are supporting each other by greeting each other daily, checking in on one another, and providing virtual hugs and kindness as we all mobilize to protect our allies. We’re mobilizing to help our trans friends. We’re banded together to support our queer neighbors, our faithless family members, our marginalized loved ones, and everyone facing new hardships in the so-called, “land of the free.” I can’t begin to express how grateful I am that we’re working together and pacing ourselves.
This newsletter started to talk about fighting through creative challenges. I have been reluctant to talk as openly about the politics of it all, but I have been peeling that back for weeks now. The truth is, there’s no creative world without people of color. There’s no creative world without women. There’s no arts without the queer, the gay, the sexually ambiguous. There’s no arts without the disabled, the pained, or the mentally ill. There is none of this without all of us. And we’re going to need all of us to find a better tomorrow in which we can create more freely.
It’s unfortunately common for inequitable and harmful forces to Gish Gallop in every aspect of what they do. In doing so, they’ll try to overwhelm us with information, behavior, legislation, and issues. This firehose of behaviors is intentional. It makes it hard to block, dodge, fact check, and rebut everything they throw at us. It’s a wonderful tactic to slow us down and wear us out. It chips away at us and can easily break us down. It’s designed to stop us.
Perseverance — the good fight — is about momentum. We can’t give up this momentum, even if we take the rest we need and deserve. Holding that momentum can only be done when we take a breath and look at those around us. We’re all this together. Maybe we won’t know if we can stand and fight until we’re tested. But, if we stand together, that test will be a lot easier.
“When the chips are down, and you're at the end of your rope you need someone that you can count on. And that's what you'll find here — someone that will go all the way, no matter what. So don't lose hope. Come on over to our offices and you'll see that there's still heroes in this world. Is that it? Am I done?” Doyle, Angel.
If you’re looking for community. The Brimstone Clubhouse is always here to make sure we keep fighting in the right direction and that we all stand together. If you’re filling your cup to keep up momentum in these last few days of February, we’ve got your back.
Today’s Tune
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