Boys' Tales vs. Girls' Tales

The Wife and I have some different approaches to some things, not surprisingly, and it occurred to me that a lot of it seems to stem from the fiction that we enjoyed growing up.

My fictions, as you probably have guessed, were largely comic books and superhero cartoons. Many, if not all of them, had the heroes defeat the villains enough to prevent their plots from coming to fruition, but the villains almost always escaped to torment the heroes again later. The functional reason for this was that both comic books and cartoons are serial in nature and need to have an easy way to continue being interesting week after week, month after month. The Wife, on the other hand, read a lot of fantasy novels -- contemporary fairy tales. I call them fairy tales not to demean them in any way, but to emphasize that they have a definite ending in which good triumphs over evil and readers are left with a happily ever after ending.

I point this out as the basic reason behind our differing philosophies. I view things as a constant struggle that need to be overcome time and time again. The Wife is waiting for a time when the struggle is over and she can live happily ever after.

Not surprisingly, she gets a lot more frustrated with life than I do. Any time life throws us a curve -- unexpected payments we need make, problems with our jobs, etc. -- she gets very tense and irate. It's not part of her happy ending, and something we have to struggle through. Meanwhile, I tend to see this as just another one of the never-ending struggles for truth, justice and the American way.

Proof positive that comics are better for you than so-called "real" literature.

Related Items creators fandom