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Reflections on BasedCon 2024
September 10, 2024
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Last weekend I was able to attend BasedCon 2024 at an undisclosed location. After missing last year’s event, it was a breath of fresh air. Since it was a nice day and I knew I’d arrive early regardless, I decided to take backroads. My GPS apparently decided I needed to take a very scenic route (not, as I found on my home, the best route). And it was a fun drive.

On the way, I started a very good audiobook on Ronald Reagan.

Almost as soon as I arrived, I fell into a conversation on why you shouldn’t write novels in first person present tense. So if you thought, based on the name, that BasedCon would be nonstop hate speech… well, you might not be too far off the mark. It’s just not the sort of hate speech you thought. Anyway, I saw lots of familiar faces and it was good reconnecting with old friends with whom, thanks to social media, I never really lost touch. A few people I’d hoped to see weren’t able to make it this year.

But such is life.

After dinner there was an opportunity for authors to read from their books. As with any event of this sort, some of the readings received polite applause and others sent us running to the merch table for signed copies of their wonderful work. I hadn’t planned on reading, but for once the readings didn’t go overly long and they opened it up to anyone who was interested. For whatever reason, I decided to break with custom and read from something that isn’t published yet. It seemed to get a good response.

People were asking me all weekend when it will be finished.

The next two days were packed with panel discussions that I won’t try to summarize here. Two of my favorites, however, were titled, “Humorous Science Fiction and Fantasy,” and “Fairy Tales to Fight the Culture War.” Even the “culture war” panel was filled with whimsey, and that’s something which I want to emphasize. The reason BasedCon exists is because the mainstream sci-fi and fantasy space isn’t open to the based-minded and many (if not most) of the speakers have been canceled in one way or another.

If anyone has a right to be angry and bitter, it’s these people.

And yet, I doubt you’d find a happier, more gracious gathering of creatives working in that space anywhere on earth. The freedom to tell the stories they want to tell, the way they want to tell them, is worth more to these men and women than awards and massive audiences. Sure, some of them are gruff, with thick skin, but they wear their battle scars with pride. And if they can do it, maybe those of us who aspire to find some success with our words can weather the same storms should they come.

We can’t fear the storm.

Readers are hungry for good stories that don’t offend their values. Conservative talking heads love to ask, “Why isn't there any conversative art?” and then refuse to acknowledge the enormous library of work available. They have their reasons, none of them defensible. And it’s as annoying as heck. Thankfully, at BasedCon we have the chance to gather and remind ourselves that the talking heads are wrong and just blowing hot air. We are many, and we are not alone. BasedCon is growing every year, and because of it the output of good stories will grow to levels that asking that question will be as inane asking, “Why aren’t there more Starbucks?”

You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting one.

BasedCon isn’t a gathering of outwardly angry people. It’s not an overtly political event. No one leaves feeling outraged or despairing at the state of the culture. Attendees want to tell stories that live and breathe, that live longer than memes, inspire and entertain in ways propaganda cannot. For myself, I came home refreshed and inspired to keep creating, knowing that there is a far larger group of people than I’ll ever fully realize who share many of my values. We may not agree on everything. I know we don't. But we share enough common ground to support one another where it matters. 

Bring on BasedCon 2025!

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Is Ladyballers Doomed from the Start?

The most honest analysis I've seen.

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F1 is Modern Western

As a nation, the United States is unique. We don’t share a genetic heritage, but a creed. Americans and our ideas come from all over the world. But we’re at our best when take those outside ideas and make them our own. Everything we have came from another culture, but there was a time when we could take things and collectively make them better.

Democracy? Check. Rock’n’roll? Check. Heck! Chinese food? Yes, we did.

Don’t hate. You know I’m right.

One of the greatest art forms we’ve given the world is the western genre. While rooted in courtly romances of King Arthur, we took the idea of the man on horseback who makes things right on his quest for something spiritual and made it distinctly American. Most of the time, these stories aren’t historically accurate, but that’s not the point. They’re soaked in the American ethos. For better or for worse, the western has become the American myth, even more so than 1776.

And the cool thing about myths is that you can take them and tell other stories. 

Star Trek (and later Firefly) took the western to space. 

A few weeks ago I was able to see F1: The Movie on IMAX, and I had high hopes. Director Joseph Krasinski had proved himself with Top Gun: Maverick, which is about as American as a modern movie can get. But mostly, I just wanted to see if he could do with racecars what he’d done with fighter jets. In that regard, I was everything I’d hoped it would be. The idea of Americanism didn’t even cross my mind, since F1 is primarily a European sport.

Boy, was I surprised.

Brad Pitt plays Sonny Hayes with all the careless cool of Paul Newman in his prime and a Steve McQueen swagger. While Pitt has never played a cowboy and isn’t a racecar driver in real life, Newman and McQueen played both, and did both. Hayes has been keeping himself busy with no-name races since an F1 crash nearly killed him some 30 years before. But when Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), an old friend and rival, needs some wins to save the team, he tracks down Sonny.

And the old dog knows a few tricks.

Naturally, his tactics put him at odds with his teammate, Joshua Pierce (Damson Idris), and his cocky attitude is a big red flag to the team’s engineer, Kate McKenna (Kerry Conden). So the movie all the tropes of a sports film, and I don’t think I need to summarize further. But it’s not a sports film. Or rather, it’s not just a sports a film. Surprise, surprise, it’s the western myth transposed into a racing a story.

It’s spelled out in the trailer, but it didn’t strike me until the very end.

Kate calls Sonny Hayes an “old school rough and tumble cowboy” in a line used in the marketing. When he arrives in the garage, only Ruben knows him. Sonny is the stranger in town. Like James Garner in Support Your Local Sheriff, his method of restoring order and winning is unorthodox and effective. Like Shane, in that Alan Ladd classic, he’s guarded about his past. And like John Wayne in The Searchers and so many other westerns, Sonny Hayes is the outsider who must leave civilization once he’s made it civilized for those who belong there.

But he doesn’t.


Perhaps the hardboiled crime story, another uniquely American genre, is also an outgrowth of the western. Philip Marlow is the man who must walk down mean streets, who is not himself mean. As Raymond Chandler said, “He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him.” Basically, the man he’s describing is dangerous, but not cruel. Dispassionate in taking revenge, and restrained by a code of honor.

But destined to be lonely, nonetheless.

Why we’ve made that an essential part of the American is a topic for another time. But there it is. And it’s the story of Sonny Hayes. At the end of the movie [SPOILER], he rides off into the sunset as the credits roll. The western isn’t dead. It’s still there, in essence, speaking to our hearts in different ways.

Nothing more American than that. 

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Girl-Power Isn't the Problem: Stop Treating Movies Like TV Pilots

Last weekend I was able to sneak off the theater for a screening of From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Did I feel silly, telling the high school girl at the ticket counter, “One for Ballerina, and a small drink”? Well, not in the moment. 

I probably drank a liter of cherry vanilla Coke Zero, and that didn’t feel so great.

Plenty of box office analysts and Hollywood types are wracking their brains, trying to figure out why movies like Furiosa and Ballerina aren’t drawing huge crowds. Mad Max and John Wick are popular franchises, but apparently telling the stories of the women in those worlds isn’t working. Even if the movies are pretty good.

I’ve seen both, and they’re pretty good.

Some are arguing that no one will go near a movie that looks like it’s feminist girl-bossing. Others counter that movies like Alien and Kill Bill are female-led action films that were successful. Now, I’m not going to say that Ballerina is on par with those modern day classics. But I will say that, as a man watching the movie, it didn’t offend me. The movie never challenged me to confront any internalized misogyny. The small girl doesn’t take down John Wick in hand-to-hand combat.

Honestly, if you like franchise, whether you’re male or female, you should watch Ballerina.

In short, from a purely cinematic experience perspective, neither Furiosa nor Ballerina would be any better or worse with a male lead. Maybe that’s a hot take. But that’s mine, for whatever it’s worth. Well, okay, I wouldn’t watch a movie called Ballerina if it stared a dude. Nevertheless, I think you get my point. Petite women warriors aside, the plots and action are exactly as expected.

So what’s the deal?

Well, what no one seems to have noticed is that Ripley and The Bride weren’t replacing anyone. As we were watching their movies for the first time, we weren’t thinking about other characters for whom we already had a preference. Movies are more like TV than TV right now, and replacement characters have always been a hard sell, regardless of gender. We all remember Sam and Diane. Who still talks about Sam and Rebecca (even though Kirstie Alley won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for the part)? I had to look up her name. 

No, they aren’t technically replacing them. It’s a spin-off, set in the same world.

Spin-offs tend to succeed when the characters are already well established (eg: Frasier). Furiosa and Ballerina are more like backdoor pilots, where new characters are dropped in for a single episode to sell us on the idea of a new show. This technique is very hit and miss on TV, and I can’t think of a single example of this working in a movie franchise. Film and television are very different mediums, and should be treated as such.

Still, if it doesn’t work on TV, it’s probably not gonna work at the movies. Not where new characters and spin-offs are concerned. 

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Maybe I’m just getting old, but it doesn’t feel like we had the thriving and distinct pop culture of past generations. Has there been a look or stye, or feeling, that defines this moment? Everything seems to have stagnated for the last twenty years. And it’s not as if I don’t pay attention. 

It’s making me nostalgic. 

Consequently, for the rest of the year, I’m prioritizing movies from 1995, the year I was twelve. At that time, my family didn’t really go to the theater, and when we did rent VHS tapes, more often than it is was older Disney movies or entirely forgettable Christian titles. Now that I’ve grown tired of trying to keep up with new releases, not there’s much worth watching anyway, it feels like a good time to catch up on those 30 year old movies that have become ingrained in what’s left of our pop culture.

So over on Criticless, I made a list.

Some of these are movies I’ve seen before, but not in a long time. Others will be first time watches for me. There’s really no rhyme or reason to what I put on my list. It’s just movies that either interest me, or are currently in my collection, sadly unwatched. As things become available on streaming, I may add to the list. And if I don’t get to everything before the end of the year, no big deal.

Hopefully, they aren’t going anywhere. 

I’ll be posting some reviews and analysis as I go, so be sure to follow me here. 

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