The Gravity of the Situation

Ever since he has looked heavenwards in envy, man has wanted to fly, consequences be damned.

On a random comment board, it was mentioned in passing that of all the mechanism failures that occurred on Star Trek, ranging from Holodeck Malfunctions to Warp Core Explosions, the one standing feature that remained intact during all these disaster scenarios was the gravity controls.  No matter how dire, it was imperative that everybody keep their feet on the ground.  Other Sci-fi shows with a higher budget such as The Expanse managed to expand on that concept, showing just how unfeasible it could be to survive on a gravity-free zone.  The major reason that these far-concept shows had such a stranglehold on the gravity controls is that they were mainly filmed on Earth.  (Sorry for spoiling the illusion guys!)

All this stemming from news that the latest Tom Cruise movie, Vyozov (The Challenge)’s marketing gimmick would be the first film that would be filmed entirely in space.  By a Russian crew, no less.  (Whether it’d be any good is immaterial)

This led to a discussion of realistic portrayal of living in a stimulated environment, and there were very few comics that accurately reflected what it’d be like to live in a world without gravity.  The ones that did, showed just how ubiquitous gravity surrounds us to the extent that we don’t think about it.  This page from chapter 21 of Grease Monkey by Tim Eldred shows what happens when it's not around, and how much of a mess keeping everything floating around would be.

I started thinking about this after reading the entirety of Skyward, written by Joe Henderson, and drawn by Antonio Fabela and Lee Garbett.  At first, Skyward seems to openly embrace this concept with open arms, when one day all of a sudden, gravity just seems to cease working properly.  But then this open-world policy quickly devolves into cliched territory, making for a less satisfactory read than would otherwise be expected.

There are scenes of imaginative worldbuilding such as having millionaires fitted with magnetic boots to recapture life like it was before, and people using slotted buckets to capture water from an incoming storm, but for the most part, it’s filled with flawed leaps of imagination.

One of the failed suspensions of disbelief is the inclusion of a disabled love interest who would prefer to remain in this gravity-free world where where a return to normalcy would mean being tied down.

That in itself isn’t a bad idea.  The problem is, all portrayal of him shows him as being at the same height of everyone, regardless of his missing legs or not.

Standing around like a disembodied leg guy from that episode of Quantum Leap.

Whether this fault lies at the hands of the author or the writer, I couldn’t say, but it’s safe that neither of them are sufficiently handicapped.

Segueing back to Tim "Grease Monkey" Eldred, his other online work, Pitsberg, has a much more nuanced take on amputees closer to The Expanse, where condemned miners of space minerals (there's a lot of exposition involved, but space minerals is what we're working with) have to undergo required extraction of body parts in order to reduce expenses.  And in a gravity-free zone, legs are just one of the many deemed minor unnecessary "inconveniences" to go.  As such, there's a greater variety of legless bodies in a floating environment to deal with.

For the most part, until someone is able to spend sufficient time in a gravity-free zone and have the imaginative insight to document a wider-spread alternate reality, such fantastic concepts would be better suited to the realm of short stories.

For me, the one comic that manages to succeed in this where others fail would be Sherwin Tjia’s Plummet, where a young woman wakes up and finds herself falling mid-air.

It sounds like a Mr. Boffo joke, but it’s one of the best underrated Canadian comics you’ve never read.

Being in perpetual free-fall with numerous random objects appearing out of nowhere means you’re never fully prepared for what may happen next.  One of the falling objects happens to be a section of an apartment building, which has potential for housing valuable supplies like food and clothing.  Of course, navigating inside isn’t as easy as it first seems.

Trying to eat or sleep in these conditions is impossible without proper preparation or a little luck.  And when it does come, it’s recommended to jump at the chance whenever it occurs.  Eventually, she meets other people caught in the same situation as her, some who’ve managed to build something out for themselves, others who’re just as clueless as she is, some are friendly, and some are not.  In the afterword, Sherwin Tjia writes that the format for this ambitious comic was written to be a road story.  Well, a vertical road story, always going forward, never looking back.

The best thing about this comic is while there are various theories bandied about, the circumstances that caused this is never explained.  Any potentially plausible explanation would RUIN the experience.  If you get the chance, I heavily recommend you pick it up.  Doubtless it’d be far more intriguing than whatever the upcoming Tom Cruise movie plot is.

Past NAFTA

I've been too preoccupied with current events.  Lately, the news has left me unable to concentrate, and I've been looking back on newspaper archives while I still have time.  Going through them has shown some revealing political cartoons that are sadly just as relevant as they were twenty years ago today.

This process of going through old online newspaper files would be much easier if it wasn't for an annoying new feature that's severely cramped my style.  Recently, they've added a new feature to prevent computers from browsing those very same files for some reason.  Having to constantly confirm that I'm not a robot, and the screens becoming blank after scrolling and enlarging is a major demotivator.  I have to constantly recall which page I'm on, then refresh the page, make a mad dash for the numbered page the comics are in, enlarge the section, and hope I image capture enough for posterity.  Not to mention that by the time I'm done, I won't be able to browse the rest of the comics page as well.

With that little rant out of my system, I've been going through the microfiche archives of my newspaper, and among other comics, there was the Sunday feature called Drawn and Quartered that would feature a whole page of political cartoons from multiple newspapers.  They were visually interesting, even as the subject matter was beyond my ability to understand.

Some of them had Movie posters of Brian Mulroney.


Other political cartoons covered a wide breath of subjects (usually revolving around the Middle East), showing that for all the passage of time, things haven't changed much.

Racist cops...

Kavanaugh confirmation...

Brexit...

Saddam Hussein's origins...

President Hillary...

Fighting Nazis.

Probably the biggest issue is this one, which shows how enthusiasm for politics can die down after in a politically motivated election period, which may be why polling takes place during the end of the year, when the weather gets colder, as temperaments likewise cool off, and apathy settles in.

With all the insanity that's taking place, one of the most recent piece of news that affects Canada is the renegotiation of NAFTA, renamed as USMCA, which is just NAFTA under a different name, putting America first.

Before Trump came along, NAFTA was generally regarded as a good deal, having equal trading between three countries, so it was surprising to see that it was seen as a potentially disastrous proposal at first.



Part of the underlying fear was that Canada didn't have much to offer in return for American products, and would be taken advantage of.







Mexico doesn't exactly come off in a good light, and in the end, it all comes down to American values.

Remember the Caine!

Recently, there's been more and more references to comparing the current Presidential Administration to the Caine Mutiny, where an increasingly unbalanced and paranoid Captain Queeg's position of command is taken over against his will.  Gee, I wonder why?

While rewatching the movie, there were several factors that jumped out at me that went unnoticed at first.  It occurred to me that there were several things that would be completely different if it were made today.  There's going to be minor spoilers for a 60+ year-old movie, the general audience primary point of knowledge would be the MAD satire (back when it was first in colour, and issue number was in the double digits), who many would vastly prefer over the source material.

First off, the main major complaint that I'm sure many people would have is that the Romantic subplot is totally superfluous, distracting, and could be cut out entirely without missing anything of substance.  I'm sure there are people who've internally memorized the whole crew present during the "Strawberry Incident", but for the life of them, can't recall the Girlfriend's name.

The movie starts out with a clean-cut boy of high standing graduating from University who has great expectations and high ambitions, and is slightly embarrassed to be dating a girl who's a dancer.  Upon being drafted into the Navy, he suddenly finds himself onboard a naval M*A*S*H boat of sloppy organization and slipshod crewmanship, well below his expected standards.

Dismayed at the conditions of the minesweeper going through the motions, and annoyed at being punished despite trying his best compared to the lackluster behavior of the crew.  Willie is secretly delighted when he finds out the current Captain is going to be replaced with someone with more experience - someone who'll make the ship shipshape.  That is, until Captain Queeg starts exhibiting irrational behavior ranging from being easily distracted by miniscule details (focusing on a soldier's shirt tails over the circular route of a ship cutting their towline), overly controlling, punishing the crew for minor infractions, and ordering a stripdown over a key he already knows doesn't exist.

While Queeg's actions seem excessive, they're waived by his impressive history of past naval knowledge and experience... which is completely glossed over.  You'd have to read the book to know that, but none of that knowledge comes across onscreen.

So naturally, from the displays of cowardice, irrationality and general failure of winning over the hearts of the crewmen who've had it far too easy with their previous Captain, Queeg fails to inspire loyalty.  There are whispers of Queeg being mentally imbalanced, paranoid, and playing with Freudian steel balls.  And his actions don't help much when he freezes up when the fragile ship is assaulted during a typhoon, save for remaining insistent on staying on course, which could potentially put the whole ship in jeopardy.  So then the first mate decides to mutiny there and then.

And then the focus shifts away from Willie to Maryk, leaving the main active character into being an impartial passive observer.  Not very many movies would take that route.

If the Caine Mutiny were being remade today, Humphrey Bogart would still be dead.  But more than that, the primary identifiable character wouldn't be the straight-laced Willie, it would be Maryk.  After all, he's admittedly "not that smart", and was easily manipulated by Keefer to record Queeg's increasingly irrational behavior.  It's Maryk who's the one on trial for insubordination, not Willie.

For the longest time, I was confused because Maryk wasn't anywhere close to sounding like Van Johnson.  That was until I realized that he was named after the Actor, and not the character.  Much like how Jack, the Nameless Protagonist in Fight Club (I am Jack's utter lack of surprise), was re-Christened Edward Norton in some captioned versions of the cult movie.

As far as I can tell, Willie's main function is to show his transition from breaking away from his domineering parents.  (His father was the one who pulled strings in the background so he'd have a 'respectable' Captain)  And early on, when he was serving under Captain DeVries, he continually made mistakes that got him reprimanded, because he was undermined by men who didn't respect him. At the very end, he was asked what it'd be like to work for a crew that was constantly under-appreciating and undermining his work ethics.  He admitted that anybody under those conditions would be subject to great strain, clearly speaking from experience.

But those details are lost in a sea of irrelevant details.  The audience is expected to recall that scene of seemingly insignificance where Willie complained to Captain DeVries that would be washed away in comparison to the more memorable Captain Queeg moments.  The problem is, in between those scenes are the Romance subplots that as I mentioned before, distract from the issue, don't really go anywhere, and create artificial drama.  If the remake concentrated solely from the viewpoint of Maryk, it would be a vastly marked improvement, alongside the likes of A Few Good Men.

Hollywood Filmmakers nowadays generally pander to a lower common denominator, and Maryk would certainly fit the bill.  He's well-meaning, but gullible to armchair psychiatry, and doesn't find out just exactly how he's been fooled after the fact.  And there's the heightened factor of personal risk, when the audience is invested in someone from the start.  These traits would be a strong convincing argument for why Maryk should be the central character.

Losing Willie's personal opinion wouldn't be much of a loss in this trade-off.

Dark Funny Animals

Disney's Zootopia is one of the best animated movies they've ever done, which is quite an achievement compared to their last 3-D attempt at drawing attention away from the Pixar club, Chicken Little.  (Anybody remember that stinker?)  It tackled multiple serious topics addressing sexism and racism in an entertaining manner without managing to sound preachy in it's message.  It served a strong feminist message that was made possible by flipping the viewpoint of the original script.

The original premise for Zootopia was much darker.  The way that predators was kept in check was not out of equality, but by their wearing shock collars that would activate if they grew too excited.  One deleted scene was a young bear joyfully accepting his rite of passage of having said collar wrapped around his neck, much to his father's sad reluctance.  Then, once the procedure is complete, he starts gleefully bounding about, only to receive a shock... to which he looks back at his father with a new sense of betrayed understanding.

Funnily enough, despite the soul-crushing rejected script, it's inspired Zistopia (a pun on dystopia), an AMAZING fancomic based on this rejected premise that's FAR more ambitious than the original script.

In this universe, Nick Wilde is a formerly jailed conman who's been assigned to help a hardboiled workaholic Judy Hopps who's been on the force for several years, in tracking down a serial feral killer.
The roles are familiar, but the development is Very different, and we get to see a LOT MORE of Judy's inner family of 275 relatives, of which we only saw her mother and father.  There are also cameo appearances of other characters in alternate roles, and rejected characters that were never used, such as Honey the Conspiracy Badger, Mob Boss Kozlov and his Massage Angels.

Some of the more memorable scenes involve a chasing game at an underground "pleasure" park, to dialogue in the "Cud Club", the herbivore corporate businessfolk, making witty observations among their bantering, and Judy visiting pregnant predators at the Hospital.

If there's a fault, its that due to the draft nature of the panels, sometimes it's not always clear where dialogue balloon starts and ends.  Sometimes it'll be from the right hand side instead of the left.  Othertimes it'll be from the lower middle, arching upwards and then bending backwards into itself.  Still, if a panel doesn't make immediate sense, just try again until it does.  This slows the pace down somewhat, and sometimes requires rereading, but it's worth it, and there's only a few instances when it happens, so it's not entirely detrimental.  Some of the later artwork has been taken up by guest artists willing to pick up the slack, so the main artist doesn't wind up overwhelmed, and they get a chance to show off their skills along the way.

Then there's MisterMead's wonderfully depressing Judy is Dead series, where despite the Women in Refrigerators suggestion, actually deals with an older cynical Nick trying to cope with July Hops, a cousin who's a dead ringer for Judy.  Much of Chief Nick's reactions towards July are direct parallels to Chief Bogo in the movie.

Somewhat surprising is the popularity of the early dark draft, which had much less comedic elements that could've threatened to spoil the mood of the movie overall.  Or maybe it's not that surprising after all.  One thing that comics - anthropomorphic comics - do well is tackling the element of mature themes by dressing them up in easy-to-digest bites of condensed information.  Maus, anybody?

Tim Hurting's quasi-autobiographical essay on Donald Duck (that I based one of my recent entries on), compared Donald Duck to acting like a man who just happens to look like a duck.  His stories wouldn't be as nearly amusing or identifiable if he were an actual human.  The deceptive nature of Funny Animal comics is that they look easy to make, but can be surprisingly difficult to do well.  It's a delicate balancing act between making the material family-friendly or risque, depending on the audience the author's writing for.  The fact that so many artists are emboldened to follow down the dark path of Zootopia as a way of testing their strengths is encouraging for their willingness to experiment beyond relative safety norms.

It's also a sign that audiences are better equipped to handle mature themes filtered throughout so-called childish mediums.  Adults wouldn't have been able to handle a faithful adaption of the actual Fox & the Hound book back then, but chances are they'd be more open to the idea now.  They might still feel scandalized, but the overall shock of wholesome animals engaging in despicable acts would've lost most of its power.  Of course, an actual faithful adaption with the nuances of internal thoughts and no dialogue would be extremely difficult, and the extremely depressing ending wouldn't guarantee multiple re-readings, making engaging such a project a tricky proposition.

Of course, that's if we limit ourselves to American sensibilities.  European artists such as Lewis Trondenheim (Dungeon) and Jason (I Killed Adolf Hitler) are more popular for their use of anthromorphic animals, possibly because their roles are less emphasized or detailed than the competition.  European comics act on a different wavelength, and the closest they come to emulating American genres is through their Noir comics such as Blacksad and Inspector Canardo.  Incidentally, these pages above and below come from the silent comic, Fox Bunny Funny, which could be a metaphor for being born in the wrong body.  In Furry circles, this is called "Otherkin"; though in my punny universe, it would be considered Fur-Play.

Now, the following is just my personal interpretation, and shouldn't be considered Gospel.  Anthropomorphic Funny Animals was seen as an attempt to try to emulate the kind of cartoonish seriousness that was mainly seen in European comics and Manga... with variable results, ranging from Shanda the Panda to Fred Perry's works, to more forgettable fare.

One could say that the rise of sudden maturity (or immaturity) in Furry comics was out of a desire to tackle issues that wouldn't normally fit in a typical punch-up Superhero comic.  While the childish world of Superheroes managed to make themselves relevant by tackling relevant issues of today, Funny Animal comics were looked down for appearing to be too appealing towards children.  In the same way that Manga managed to tackle mature themes and disturbing imagery within the confines of uber-cute protagonists and casts, so too did Furry comics attempt such ambitious stories along similar lines.

And when attempting to branch out into a new field that people don't have much experience with, there's bound to be some missteps along the way.  There's a sense of trying too hard when compared to others who've matured the craft beyond pure shock and schlock.  This leads to failed attempts such as adapting Fritz the Cat and Howard the Duck, with scriptwriters and directors grossly misunderstanding their satirical elements.  (Watership Down and Plague Dogs didn't suffer from adaption distillation, presumably because they were novels)  And there's the webcomic Scurry, which is the mouse version of humans surviving in a post-apocalyptic world.

As long as we're talking about Funny animals in adult situations, we're going to have to veer into the uncomfortable realm of sex.  And indeed, a fair amount of the popularity of Furries deals with porn.  Somehow, the aspect of nudity becomes more attractive if human flesh is substituted for animal skin, instead of hiding nipples over skin-tight spandex costumes.  (At least they're being honest about what they want to draw, and not covering up behind flimsy excuses)  After all, when you have cute-looking athletic characters interacting, the compulsion to corrupt them is practically irresistible.  But really, is it all that different from wanting to see other familiar childhood characters fans'd been attracted to for years, such as Supergirl and Batgirl, put into erotic situations?  Playing fantasy scenarios out is just another extension of playing with familiar story elements.  Who wouldn't want to pair up characters with magnetic personalities and good chemistry?

Of course, when dealing with repressed sexual outlets, that pent-up frustration can lead to all kinds of weird subcategories of fetishes, including (and not limited) to

• Vore
• Growth
• Shrinkage
• Unbirth
• Gender-reversals

And others that haven't become popular enough to garner their own fetish subgroups yet.  So, it's welcome that we have TG Weaver's wonderfully cute attraction between Zootopia's main characters conveyed through crayon-border art, and Zootermission's unspoken sexual tension just bubbling beneath the surface.


I'm willfully ignorant about Furry culture as a whole, preferring instead to enjoy their output through their stories and drawings instead, not caring much about the motive and rationale in creating such things in the first place.  Dig deep enough behind any creative process, and you're bound to find all kinds of salacious details you may not agree with.  I don't have much of a barometer for what is and isn't considered normal in ways of social thinking, not having acclimated myself with the community as large.  I read a wide range of stories not as a way of confirming deeply held beliefs (though those can be reassuring once you've got the formula down pat) but also as a way of understanding other viewpoints that may not have been obvious to me.

American comics existed within only two extremes - childish cartoon comics aimed exclusively at children, or realistically drawn comics... ALSO aimed at children.  Soon enough, the two genres would split, fragment and divide even further when the serious art comics would start exploring adult themes, while still proclaiming to advocate for being "safe for children".  Even Feiffer had trouble with selling his product, because his works were considered too serious for children, but too tame for adults.  Only MAD Magazine helped bridge the divide, having various artstyles in it's anthology humour collection.  It wouldn't be until Bloom County came that the possibility was that there could be a natural progressive point between two extremes.  And even then, the reason Hollywood wouldn't finance a Bloom County project (according to Breathed) was because they couldn't comprehend of a world composed of talking animals existing among humans.

The 4th Album of Inspector Canardo, The Return of Rasputin,
was the last appearance of humans in its books.

Just as the concept of a Teenager (and later, Tween) came to revolutionize the growth process of a child into an adult, did it occur that maybe comics could benefit from gradual reading levels.  Sadly, these were mainly reduced to Superhero comics, since Independent comics were seen as little more than failed cash grabs of the latest hip fad, and wouldn't reach mainstream appeal without wider recognition.

Not everybody can be an Alan Moore, and this was clearly evident in Mark Millar's appropriately titled Unfunnies, which goes for immediate shock value,  without ever trying to tie these taboo-breaking conventions into something meaningful.  It's as if, being broken free of the Comic's Code Authority, their first instinct was to delve into all manners of depravity just to see if they could.  It's one thing to create things of bad taste.  It's another to expect audiences to be attracted to unpolished garbage.

It's why I could never get into ElephantMen, because all the women are objectified waifs where the men are strong powerhouses.  As a commentor said, "(The) concept looks kinda cool, but is ruined by the idealized and objectified women. SO cliched. I mean, hey, you've got your Blonde, your Asian, and your African 'Hot Chicks' (and she of course has to be the 'unwanted daughter of an African crime lord'. Gag.) one for each fetish! How sexist and boring. Are there no female 'Elephant Women' and the human men who love them? No... of course not. I won't be picking this up any time soon."

The story is told through dribs and drabs, where hardly anything of substance happens, and is told more through narrative boxes than outright dialogue.  There's flashbacks to events that happened during the war, contrasting these wild soldiers now having to live in a society that fears and persecutes them, but that's hardly enough to garner my attention.

Even though updates have been rather sporadic with unexpected hiatuses and there seem to be server problems, Jack is still a webcomic that I keep coming back to, simply because of the compelling artwork, capturing nuances and dialogue.  The first two stories deal with the perspective of an aborted fetus and a recreation of Columbine.  That alone should give you an idea that this isn't exactly appropriate material for children.  Yet, for all it's gore and hysteria, it manages to accomplish a level of realism and humanity with the characters and stories.  For as much as it deals with life after death, there's an astounding amount of time spent in the "living" world, even though the fantasy element never quite goes away.

The basic concept is that there's a reaper from hell who's the pure embodiment of the sin Wrath, who was a domestic terrorist in his former life.  Pretty much all the other sins are extremists who died doing what they wanted, and became representations of the sins they emulated.  (For chuckles, I'd like to see somebody do a physical representation of the Seven Virtues someday)  It is for these reasons I considered Jack the Furry equivalent of Sandman.  Indeed, the latest conclusion to it's latest storyline which was put on indefinite hiatus has a line quoted from The Devil that seems deliberately lifted from Gaiman's Magnum Opus.

For a comic that had its namesake protagonist as being the viewpoint of a sympathetic Reaper, there were varying complaints that it oftentimes went off into tangents that had nothing to do with the overall story,
and a disturbing focus on Drip, the personification of Lust.  At the time, I didn't think much of these criticisms, seeing these as minor nitpoints, since likewise in Sandman, the titular figure was less the controlling focus of the narrative, and more the vehicle around which stories orbited around.

So I was confused about why something I enjoyed so much was constantly criticized for an extremely nihilistic viewpoint and called "one of the worst webcomics", only because the overall disturbing crapsackworld was a reflection of the author's filibuster tracts.  There's a website devoted to nit-picking all the specific things that are wrong about Jack.  Especially when those visions of Hell were offset with brief moments of heartwarming scenarios amidst all the darkness and depravity.

I wasn't aware of the unfortunate history of Dave Hopkins, which involved threats of rape and abuse towards his wife, who he'd had a falling out with.  It wasn't until it was pointed out that a large portion of his Jack stories focused exclusively on Drip, the incarnation of Lust, and that the majority of his sympathetic viewpoints is towards rapists.  That, and his avatar was represented as a blue skunk, who also just happened to be the Devil in his stories.  In that sense, Dave Hopkins is among problematic authors alongside H.P. LoveCraft and Dave Sim who are revered, despite their views.

To anyone who hasn't been scared off yet, and is feeling intimidated at catching up the entire exploits of the comic, there's a handy-dandy arc viewer for ease of catching up.  Though for some reason, some of the pages in Two For You are all mixed up, causing no small amount of confusion.  But that's not the only arc that's messed with - one of the early stories, Games we Play in Hell is left out, because it's implicitly aimed at someone, and some of the homosexual implications regarding Drip's backstory is left out, though both can be found in the directory, if you know where to look.

But for sheer outright dystopian depression, very little surpasses the mind-blowing experience that is Ptiluc's world of Pacush Blues.

Pacush Blues is a series of self-contained stories involving rats that started out as a series of short black humour comics in greyscale.  But starting from the fourth album, was done in colour with progressively longer stories with increasingly disturbing content, issues and gore.

The fourth and fifth volumes is a satire on organized religion involving a Rubik's Cube and a Gumball machine.  The sixth volume is a savage journey across sea, land and air.  (In that order)  The seventh volume involves a struggling homeless rat trying to find solace inside a research lab, and failing.

Imagine not being outside the Bunny testing lab in Bloom County,
but actively living and surviving inside it.

And this is just the first testing level.
The others are just as bad, or worse.

For me, the most traumatizing comic I ever saw was the 8th album of Pacush Blues, "Logic of the Worst", or "Worst Case Scenario", where philosophical rats traverse a frozen landscape, get mutilated, randomly killed off (one mistakes the snow for cocaine, and keeps snorting it up, freezing his nose off), resort to cannibalism, and the lone survivor gets roped into a capitalism scheme he can't begin to comprehend.  Even predators like cats and crows don't even bother preying on them, since they're too terrified by their surroundings to bother.  A botched lobotomy is the closest it comes to approaching a happy ending.

If I could've understood what was going on, I'd probably be even more traumatized.  As such, it's one of my pipe dream scanlation projects, since people either find undertaking the task as being understandably intimidating, either in terms of subject material, translation hurdles or emotional fatigue.  But we shouldn't feel scared about wanting to explore groundbreaking material, no matter how much the truth may hurt us.  It's only by testing the boundaries of our knowledge that we learn how to grow.