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Yet another high-profile marketing tie-in event, and once again, no answer to the question: what is this movie actually about?

The night after, Star Wars showed up on American Idol’s Disney Night, complete with cringey social media posts showing Ryan Seacrest in a vaguely unsettling Yoda costume. And a few weeks before that, at the Oscars, Sigourney Weaver and Pedro Pascal, the actual stars of the film, were presenting an award when the segment pivoted to hey look, it’s that little green fella your wife loved in that Disney+ show six years ago.

This is not a marketing campaign. This is the Hollywood machine checking in on you.

And I want to be specific here, because this isn’t a piece to whine about Star Wars. (There are enough of those) This is about a strange phenomenon — what happens when the largest creative company on Earth leaves Story behind. What happens when the people running the machine begin to believe that recognition is the same thing as being emotionally invested in a character?

BREAK BREAK: This piece is also about recognizing a pattern in how stories are being made and sold to you. And it matters because the stories we consume shape how we think about ourselves. That's exactly what we explore in Great Escape, our forthcoming book from Post Hill Press! Jump on the waiting list at greatescapebook.com for exclusive preorder bonuses and early-access features.

It’s the philosophy behind every recent Disney/Star Wars failure. And it is, I think, the philosophy that will condemn The Mandalorian and Grogu to the lowest box office opening weekend of any Disney-era Star Wars film.

But to see it clearly, we should start with what movie marketing should be.

The Movie Trailer: A Promise

Robert McKee, the screenwriting teacher whose seminar shaped many writers in Hollywood, says every scene in a movie must be unified around four things: desire, action, conflict, and change. A trailer should do the same.

The reason we sit through trailers is that we are scanning, in real time, for the answer to one question: do I want to spend two hours with this character? You already know the trailers that did this job well.

“Why so serious?”

Character motivation in three words. It is the philosophy of a man who believes the universe is a joke, and the marketing campaign for The Dark Knight spent months teaching you to fear him.

“Talk to me, Goose.”

Grief, guilt, and mortality in four words. An aging fighter pilot who has outlived his wingman, who is now being asked to train other people’s sons to fly to their death.

“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

This is a philosophical conflict in seven words. Christopher Nolan, on his approach to Oppenheimer: “I’m not here to tell us whether or not Robert Oppenheimer was a good person. I want to walk the audience through his decision-making.” The trailer’s center of gravity wasn’t the bomb. It was a man’s interior collapse as he watched what he had unleashed.

These trailers work because they obey a rule that good storytellers have understood for as long as there have been campfires: conflict reveals character; cool $h*t doesn’t. A choice under pressure. A line a person refuses to cross.

That’s the thing. The shot of the cool spaceship is not the thing.

Now go back and watch the marketing for The Mandalorian and Grogu.

What does Din Djarin want?

What is he afraid of losing?

Who is stopping him?

What happens if he fails?

I have watched the entire campaign — the Super Bowl ad, the post-Bowl course-correction trailer, the CinemaCon footage, the WrestleMania appearance, the American Idol segment — and I cannot effectively answer any of those questions. Neither, more importantly, can Star Wars Fandom.

GamesRadar, after the final trailer dropped: “After months of confusing marketing, the final Mandalorian and Grogu trailer still doesn’t reveal what the Star Wars movie is about.” Disney’s own Super Bowl/Budweiser Clydesdale spot was so opaque that the studio had to publicly explain, days later, what its 30-second “warmth and emotional bond” intent had been. Gizmodo is right: “If the studio has to explain the meaning of a Super Bowl ad, the message didn’t land.”

What the marketing has communicated, reliably, in every single appearance, is that Grogu is cute.

He sneezes.

He gets into the cookie jar.

He frolics with the Babu Friks (ok, Anzellans, I looked it up on Wookieepedia).

The Burger King menu launches the same week the movie does — Grogu’s Blue Cookie Shake, Grogu’s Garlic Chicken Fries, and a Whopper served in a helmet-shaped carton. That’s the tell.

There’s always a tell.

When the merchandise arrives before the story, you are not selling a movie. You are selling a logo, a branded event with a release date.

Disney’s been here before

If the Mando campaign were the first time Disney tried to sell IP in place of story, you could forgive this misstep. It isn’t. It’s another iteration of a failed experiment they already ran, at the cost of three hundred million dollars, on a physical building 679 yards (I measured) from the Slinky Dog Dash.

The Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser opened in March of 2022 and closed eighteen months later. It cost guests around five thousand dollars for a two-night stay, and at peak, it reportedly operated at roughly seventy percent occupancy. Three sources told The Wrap it “never made money. Not one cent.” Disney took an accelerated depreciation charge (tax break) of roughly two hundred and fifty million dollars on the way out the door.

But the financials are not the indictment. The indictment is what Josh D’Amaro, Disney’s Parks chairman, admitted about why it failed. In April of 2024, defending the closure publicly, he said this:

“We took creativity and storytelling to a completely new level, to a level that had never existed before... The experience was difficult to explain to the public.”

Maybe read that last line twice, because it is one of the most damning admissions a senior Disney executive has ever made on the record. And almost no one outside theme-park nerd land noticed it. A story that is hard to explain isn’t a good story. It’s a brand experience.

The Galactic Starcruiser failed to communicate anything compelling in two years of marketing because there was little to communicate. The product was built around IP immersion and attractions — a lightsaber training pod, a bridge with buttons, a space-themed cocktail bar with a Twi-Lek singer — and not around a story with a clear conflict at its center.

Jenny Nicholson diagnosed this with surgical precision. A Themepark enthusiast YouTuber, working alone, who released a four-hour and five-minute video essay called The Spectacular Failure of the Star Wars Hotel. It got two million views in forty-eight hours and eight million within a few weeks. Disney’s response was to file a copyright claim against her video.

Nicholson’s critique was about the marketing’s structural confusion. Disney could not explain what the experience was — was it a luxury vacation? An immersive LARP roleplay? A war game with First Order antagonists? — because Disney itself didn’t know. And so the marketing devolved into the only thing left: glossy footage of guests pushing buttons and going on side quests, and a now-deleted promo video featuring Sean Giambrone from The Goldbergs with Imagineer Ann Morrow Johnson awkwardly touring the Halcyon.

Disney pulled that video down within a week.

The instinct to delete the video. The instinct to release a Super Bowl ad and then have a press interview to explain what it meant. The instinct to copyright claim a four-hour critique rather than answer a single one of its claims. These are not unrelated. They are the muscle memory of a company that no longer knows how to talk to its audience about story, and is hoping that brand presence — a helmet, a ship, a glamorous celebrity will be enough.

It won’t be.

The Pattern

You can chart this exact disease across every recent failed Disney property.

Solo: A Star Wars Story lost over a hundred million dollars because, as A. O. Scott put it in the New York Times, it was “a curiously low-stakes blockbuster, in effect a filmed Wikipedia page.”

The Rise of Skywalker spent six hundred million dollars to deliver a parade of legacy cameos — Lando, Wedge, Wicket, the disembodied voices of dead Jedi in service of a plot that subverted the expectations of basic writing principles.

The Marvels lost two hundred and thirty-seven million dollars on the worst opening weekend in MCU history because the marketing assumed audiences had completed two Disney+ shows as homework.

Snow White, cast Rachel Ziegler.

This is what happens when a company decides that the IP is the asset, and the story is something that gets bolted on top of it to extract value like blood from stone. This is the Disney that walked into WrestleMania holding onto Grogu for dear life.

In Part Two of this piece, we're going to look at what happens when a studio decides to bet everything on brand presence instead of character.

This essay is part of a larger conversation we’re having in Great Escape, our forthcoming book from Post Hill Press.

We argue something that might sound strange right now: the stories you loved as a kid — Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Narnia, Harry Potter — contain more wisdom about than anything in the self-help aisle.

Jump on the waiting list at greatescapebook.com for exclusive early-access and preorder bonuses.

-Riley

Let us hold unswervingly to the hope we profess, for he who promised is faithful. And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds, not giving up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but encouraging one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching. HEBREWS 10:23-25

It’s a quiet morning in my home. 7am, dogs snoring, coffee still steaming, and the wind outside is whipping up for a good April storm. I’m tired, and my body is sore, but there’s a joy stirring in my heart today as I reflect on the last 72 hours. This weekend, Geeky Stoics held its first retreat in Stokesdale, North Carolina, for its Founding members and like-minded creators. It’s an event I’ve had on my mind for a long time now, and I can hardly believe it actually came to fruition. When I sit down to write an article or outline a video script for the YouTube channel, I am getting something off my chest—yes—but the true aim of every word I put out into the public sphere is connection. When one person reaches back out to say, “me too,” the why is fulfilled. Over time, the people this work affects have become clearer—they have names, families, stories, and words of their own—and both and I wanted to meet them. So we did. Geeky Stoics has been radically blessed by small success in what we’re doing, and it felt important to pass it on in some way. A few days of food, drink, shooting and hiking was a good way to do that. We convened at the Magnalia Homestead, the property of Jim and Rachel Van Eerden featuring a C.S. Lewis-inspired cottage, a Henry David Thoreau “Walden” cabin and soon….a Bag End Hobbit-hole. If you have a special event to host, I can’t recommend Magnalia enough.

I’m not going to get over my skiis and say everyone who came out to this event is someone starved for connection and camaraderie, I can only speak for myself in that regard. What I can say is that we’re surrounded by men (and women) quietly trying to make it through life as contentedly as possible in relative solitude. Even those with lively families and homes full of love, there remains a necessity for community and friendship beyond the household. Subjects linger in the mind that won’t get a good hearing with anyone but a random group of guys who’ve read the same books and obsessed over the same movies.

This group had a lot to talk about. I suspect many of the best conversations and meaningful moments were the huddles I missed, when two or three men would break off and have chats of their own for hours at a time. As it should be. We are made for one another and called to spur each other toward good deeds. If you know things through experience, reading or the development of philosophy, you should be sharing it and help others along in the practice of those worthwhile things.

One thing I took home with me came from , a walking wealth of great quotes and memorable prose, who at dinner recalled a a favorite of his: “What happens to a man when every door is open to him? Nothing at all.” All men have something worth sharing. listens closely and has thoughtful questions to ask anyone in his company; has the spirit of a champion; will look you in the eye and remind you that surrender, while attractive, isn’t an option; speaks with clarity of heart and mind, never muddying the waters of what he holds good and true. Austin is a guide, not to mention a deadly marksman who sets the standard for competence in the skills necessary to defend the innocent.

I pray, and believe in waiting, that the best is yet to come for Geeky Stoics and this collection of fellow travelers.

Sam R. is known on YouTube as @MasterSamwise to his nearly 200,000 subscribers. His essays on storytelling focus on how books, games and movies enrich our lives and shape our character

One of the more common themes I’ve observed among people who dislike my work is disbelief in art's intention. “It’s just fiction, bro” comes up again and again, especially when I point out the positive, motivational qualities in a story and its characters.

They’re made up.

Why should I care about Uncle Iroh, or Ser Duncan the Tall, or Samwise Gamgee?

Why are you taking life advice from video games? That’s childish.

It’s just fiction…It’s fantasy…It’s a fairy tale…It’s so strange, because this kind of reaction most often comes from people who share my love of The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars or God of War—and stripping those stories of their inherent depth is done in their defense. Why? Well, if they mean something deep and true…then we might listen to the stories and act differently in our daily lives.

But each and every day, we’re swimming in a sea of stories and cultural narratives, whether we choose them or not. The news is an unending serial; your Twitter feed is chock-full of mini-narratives, from amusing personal anecdotes to dramatic tales of daring and danger from the other side of the world—or the dark side of the moon. When you hang out with your spouse, friends, or coworkers, you spend much of that time swapping stories… Do you want to hear endless stories about nonsense, trivial bullcrap and petty drama (Real Housewives)….or stories that make you think and desire to be a better person (LOTR)?

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Everything the haters say is true….it’s all fiction, but should fictional stories inspire or change us inside? Is art not supposed to affect us?

We hang art in museums, put books between artwork and screens, and debut movies on giant screens because we are affected.

Does it not matter how we spend our time?

Of course it does. We all make a value distinction between scrolling social media for an hour versus watching an episode of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. There is one particular aspect of our mindsets that makes all the difference in the world as we engage with stories and with the internet at large: intentionality.

Are we choosing what to read and watch because we think it will be meaningful or funny….or did it just appear thanks to an algorithm?

If you have an hour to kill, is there a difference between playing Candy Crush and engaging in the character development of Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption? We mustn’t be afraid to make value judgments.

These Fictional “Good Men”, Where Are They?

Some will say it’s immature or silly to find virtuous fictional characters inspiring, because “Anyone can dream up such a man”….I would ask you to answer this simple question: if anyone can create a worthy character...where are they?

Take a look at modern fiction, especially modern fantasy. This genre is supposed to be where you would find this archetype: the courageous man who never falters under pressure, who wields his weapon with unmatched skill, who rejects temptation and renounces despair, who loves with fierce devotion and unyielding loyalty.

Where are those men? Is our current culture producing such heroes?

Ser Duncan the Tall in A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is a recent and welcome one. That show made a huge splash online, specifically because his character traits are so rare and refreshing.

It’s rare because you cannot write what you do not understand. Our storytelling class with an outsized amount of power in seeding the culture with stories….mostly doesn’t understand classical virtue. So you get very little of it.

TV shows like FX’s Shogun, which focuses on the ethics of Japan’s samurai amidst a civil war, are special because so few artists know their way of life well enough to tell a story about. Hollywood writers know plenty about the life of partying, individualism and listlessness in NYC and LA….so we get a ton of that on TV and in the theater.

You’ve probably heard it said, “write what you know,” which is advice easily taken the wrong way. I think it should be applied in a more metaphysical and philosophical fashion: write about ideas with which you are familiar and concepts you understand.

If you put it that way, then you can only write what you know.

JRR Tolkien served in World War I at the Battle of the Somme. He saw true heroism firsthand. So he wrote about it. But more importantly, he wrote about all the good things that those heroes fought to preserve. He wrote about death and its gravity because he saw it.

I’m not saying you need to fight in a war to understand courage and sacrifice, and thus to imbue such values into your work. But if you haven’t, then you at least need to be a student of history, to some extent or another. A common problem today is the cannibalization of fantasy—new and aspiring authors inspired only by other authors in the field.

Pick up a fantasy book published in the 2020s.

Is the magic system extremely detailed with hard and fast rules? Probably. That would be the Brandon Sanderson effect.

There’s nothing wrong with taking inspiration from other fantasy authors; in fact, it’s quite unavoidable…but your writing cannot only be derived from them, or it will be derivative: a mishmash of existing stories and systems cobbled together in decidedly uninspired fashion.

If you only understand modern fantasy, you can only write modern fantasy.

Good writers need to be well-versed in history, philosophy, psychology, and the humanities as a whole. You cannot live in your little world—be it urban, suburban, or rural—and create a whole new one if you refuse to explore beyond the boundaries of your everyday life. You need to be grounded in the whole of reality in order to create good fantasy.

Tolkien himself wrote:

That passage from On Fairy Stories turned out quite prescient. Tolkien gave us the diagnosis for a disease that he could not have known would descend upon the genre he helped father If we are not grounded in reality, in truth, then we cannot create secondary worlds that reflect that truth.

If we do not believe virtue and vice, good and evil, to be objective realities, then we will find ourselves incapable of creating stories about noble, courageous, and pure-hearted heroes and heroines—because we don’t believe in those things.

Do you see why this matters?

When a culture falls for the postmodern lie that truth and morality are subjective and relative, people online play defense for Frieren’s demons—a race of beings shown to be purely and thoroughly evil—because they can’t make a judgment about good vs. bad. It’s why the Marvel Cinematic Universe has descended from stories about heroes battling villains into tales of “morally gray” anti-heroes whom the audience does not and should not like or cheer for.

So no, it is not true that “anyone” could make up a character such as Uncle Iroh or Aragorn. You need to understand what virtue is and the costs a man must pay to become so virtuous, and why it matters to be good in the first place.

People who do not believe in heroism cannot write heroes.

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“The ones who love us least are the ones we’d die to please.”

Paul Westerberg

Uncle Iroh gave his nephew every opportunity imaginable to be a better man—and all Zuko ever did was blow it. Raised and then cast out by a cruel father, Zuko carries with him extraordinary insecurity and shame. Even though Iroh loved him for who he was, Zuko would have done anything…disgraced himself ten times over…to win his father’s approval. Iroh knows that Zuko is wounded, even when Zuko betrays his loving uncle and sees him carted off to prison as part of a gambit to please his father.

I think about their relationship often….Zuko’s neededness and Iroh’s grace.

When Zuko finally sees the light, he sneaks into Uncle Iroh’s quarters and kneels behind him. Watch.

We need forgiveness like daylilies need the sun, and often the thing stopping us from seeking it out is fear. You game out what they’ll say—you go over the conversation in your head and weigh if it’s worth it—and all too many times, slink back into the darkness to wait longer.

On the other end of the equation, where Iroh sits, is a model of the truly clean slate. A fast embrace. No revisiting what happened. Grace. Relief that Zuko was out of the forest after years of wandering in pain.

Something that comes up often in Stoicism is how alike we all are, and using that fact as a basis for forgiveness and grace given in good faith. “None of them can harm or infect me with immorality, nor can I become angry with someone related to me. Because we were born to work together,” says Marcus Aurelius. Cooperation is their goal, and our sameness is the axiom on which it rests.

In Seneca’s On Anger, which addresses forgiveness in the strongest terms as part of an alternative to the vengeful life, he says, “The man who nurses resentment is poisoning himself to punish someone else. “How much better to heal injuries than to avenge them.”

Stoics and Christians approach the reason for grace from different angles, and the distinction matters quite a bit. Stoic forgiveness is fundamentally about your own inner freedom—sort of how people say, “Unforgiveness is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.” You forgive because it’s good for you. Not bad reasoning by any means, but….

Christian forgiveness is also about restoring a relationship and honoring the fact that someone else, Christ, paid the tab on this person’s debt already. You are not in a position to be the debtholder—you must free them, as you were freed.

No longer will they teach their neighbor,
or say to one another, ‘Know the Lord,’
because they will all know me,
from the least of them to the greatest,”
declares the Lord.
“For I will forgive their wickedness
and will remember their sins no more.”

Jeremiah 31:34

“Lord, if my brother sins against me, how often must I forgive him? As many as seven times?” asks Peter to Christ. “I say to you, not seven times but seventy-seven times.”

This is the way.

Are you all caught up on YouTube? Here’s what’s new.

Soon, you’ll get an email from us about being on the Pre-order email list, where we’ll offer some exclusives for everyone who reserves a copy in advance.

This year, we’ll be hosting in-person events, relaunching a new line of merchandise and perks for newsletter subscribers, and even breaking ground on online courses. That all is driven by your support and watching/sharing videos on the Geeky Stoics YouTube.

So ICYMI, we have a new one up now in response to author Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) blasting [again] C.S. Lewis and Narnia. This video also went up on X and notched over 150k views + a share from apologist Wes Huff.

Thank you for making all this possible! We keep doing it because YOU are engaged and tell us what meaning you’re deriving from these articles, emails and videos.

“Frieren” is polarizing because the show’s central claim is that man-eating demons cannot coexist with other species. It violates the most sacred dogma of progressives raised on moral and cultural relativism, the belief that no one idea or set of values can be proven superior to another.

We’d also love it if you checked out our latest video on YouTube, which lays out 6 pieces of life advice from the show. We partnered with another creator, Josiah Khang, to put this one together. Hope you love it!

For Paid Subscribers, we have a new piece out about the virtues of the new Supergirl movie, and what it might aim to teach us about victimhood.

This is a guest post by Aaron Welty

Truth. Justice. Whatever. Exclamations on a theatrical poster for Supergirl, out in June from DC Studios. It feels different from previous silver-screen and small-screen iterations of the titular character, such as the 1984 film, the Arrowverse show, or various animated versions. In these, the Maiden of Might earnestly upheld Truth, Justice, and the hopeful/heroic way of the House of EL. Instead of those values, the new Supergirl may choose vengeance and violence instead.

The upcoming Supergirl film is rooted in Tom King’s celebrated Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow graphic novel, released in 2021. The story finds Kara Zor-El (played by Milly Alcock in the upcoming film), Superman’s cousin, far from Earth. Instead of her adopted home, she’s celebrating her birthday on another planet. During a drunken bar fight—which feels like Mos Eisley Cantina meets Roadhouse—she meets a local girl, Ruthye (Eve Ridley), bent on avenging her late father’s death. Ruthye needs Kara’s help to find her father’s killer, Krem of the Yellow Hills (Matthias Schoenearts). What follows is the story of an intergalactic road trip in which this young female protagonist embarks on an adventure with the Maiden of Might as they traverse the cosmos to deliver justice for her father’s killer. While likely being pursued by Lobo, an intergalactic bounty hunter (a role Jason Momoa looks born to play).

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The graphic novel is a wonderful read, beautifully illustrated, and completely engrossing; like you’re on this cosmic quest with the characters. Not unlike Bastion in The Neverending Story. It puts the protagonists in pressing places where they struggle with their circumstances and the ensuing grief - Ruthye at the loss of her father and what her grief threatens to make her, and Kara at the loss of her native Krypton. Both have lost their families, and as such, their worlds. Kara does what she can to control and contain her heartbreak because she doesn’t want to see her young charge become what they both so easily could: victims who weaponize their wounds to create more victims like themselves.

This is how villainy can happen, when past pain can’t be put in its proper place.

Instead, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow builds itself up as a journey of formation and realization, of heroic forging. A story of processing and (hopefully) purging painful pasts and moving from groaning to growing. Until it doesn’t. All along, it’s asking the questions in the background: what do we do with our pain? Does our victimization push us towards becoming virtuous victors or vile villains?

Does our hurt propel us towards heroism and healthy coping, thus allowing us to help others heal and pass on to them a hope of brighter days ahead? Or do we weaponize our wounds to create more victims like ourselves?

And just when the protagonists are pushed to the brink, when that question of justice versus vengeful violence is staring out from the panel and page, the story steps back from the edge. Until the final pages find Ruthye and Kara together again, 300 years later.

300 years later, Ruthye is an old woman with a secret. 300 years later, Kara releases a repentant Krem, a reformed killer, from The Phantom Zone. He’s spent all these years seeking redemption, restoration, and restitution; in a word, seeking forgiveness for what he’d done to so many. And so, he comes to Ruthye, begging forgiveness. And she does not give it. That’s her secret - she’s harbored hate for him for centuries. Instead, in the final panels, on the last page, she murders Krem, while Supergirl watches.

What begins as a tale of grief turned growth concludes as a warning against hoping too highly in our hero’s hearts. For if this story is to be followed closely in its silver-screen salute, the film may end in vengeful murder because Ruthye couldn’t forgive. In King’s take, she exacted revenge, wanting Krem to feel what her father felt. And it could happen again, for a far larger audience.

With restitution, redemption, and restoration on the line, our heroes fail. Utterly, heartbreakingly, and shockingly. Like Frodo, they succumb. Unlike The Return of the King, though, this failure is the resolution. The conclusion is shocking and might be how the upcoming Supergirl film ends as well—the portrayal of the title character for the new film certainly projects a callous and irreverent attitude in trailers and TV spots.

And perhaps that’s the lesson, that evil sometimes gains the upper hand when heroes can’t overcome the hurt in their own hearts because some things seemingly can’t be forgiven. As traditionally attributed to Edmund Burke, “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing,” and in this case, the good woman does nothing. Supergirl stands by while a murder is committed because her own pain seemed to get the better of her (and certainly Ruthye). When Superman takes Zod’s life in Man of Steel, it’s something he’s clearly aggrieved by, something he only does because of the actual danger Zod poses towards innocent bystanders. Kal-El’s ensuing grief and regret are palpable. Kara’s pain seems to have made her indifferent toward Krem’s death.

Heroes harness their hurt to help others heal, something Supergirl seems to be doing in this story, until she doesn’t, because she’s still hurting from Kryton’s destruction (and deeply so). Villains weaponize their wounds to create more victims like themselves (something Ruthye falls prey to). Thus, Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow leaves the reader to wrestle with deep questions. Not just “what would I do if it were me?” Would I succumb as the villain does? Would I overcome like the hero? These panels on the final page are asking a deeper, more daring question: do I have it within me to succeed where these heroes fail? To show grace, restraint, and redemptive reconciliation when what I really want to do is unleash self-righteous wrath?

And yet, if we can’t expect better from our heroic modern myths, how can we expect better of ourselves if they’re supposed to be examples of what we aspire to? James Gunn was able to answer this in a satisfying way with Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy—when the High Evolutionary didn’t die at his paw. Will these final images on the panel and page translate to the silver screen? Will these characters take a villainous turn and, in so doing, justify the murder of a penitent man?

This summer, with Truth, Justice, and the fate of a repentant soul on the line, questions will be answered, and Gunn’s version of Krypton’s last daughter might respond with, “whatever”.

This is where grief feels truly surreal, even driving you a bit mad, is realizing that most of the people around you at work, the gas station, in line at the grocery store; they don’t know…..”How could they not know?!…Timothy Donovan Kent, Father of Stephen Donovan Kent, has DIED?!”

In A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Ser Duncan is mucking about a jousting tournament and looking for anyone that might be able to vouch for his knighthood, which would have been handed down by his master, Ser Arlan of Pennytree.

He asks and asks, but no one knows the name.

It’s deeply heartbreaking to watch. Duncan is confused by Arlan’s obscurity.

Ser Arlan was a hedge knight (roaming, low-class knight), a drunk ( he “whored”) and not particuraly well-known by the nobles of Westeros. To Duncan, however, Arlan was a hero. When Duncan was a boy living in the slums of King’s Landing, it was Ser Arlan who saved his life from attackers and eventually allowed Duncan to squire for him on the road.

Duncan learned everything he knows about horses, combat, honor and a knight’s duty to protect the weak and innocent.

That’s what it’s like when someone is a giant in our eyes.

The joke my siblings and I would always tell about Dad was that it seemed like we always ran into people who knew him. We’d be on beach vacation, a cruise, in some random town in Tennessee, and someone would know my Dad. Our go-to line on this was that we’d one day be shipwrecked with Dad, wash up on a lonely island in the middle of the sea, and the indigenous people would find us there on the shore….and say…. “It is Tim! He who saved our island many years ago, he has returned!”

The locals would throw a feast in his honor and celebrate till dawn his return to the island—in our goofy imagined story.

Dad really did have his admirers though. Since his death I’ve been to numerous gatherings of his friends and “fans”, meeting to swap stories and valorize the man in their own way. It’s been so encouraging. When I’m in those rooms of men and women assembled to talk about Tim Kent, I feel less insane. But what I’ve found is that it’s hard to go to those events, knowing that when they’re over, you’re right back in the asylum. I don’t live near any of Dad’s friends. If I were in North Carolina, I’d meet people from his life every other day, most likely.

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I have to find courage and steadiness in what I know and in what I remember of his impact on my life. Story time is comforting, but the real work now is taking action in ways that remind me of Dad, not simply reflecting on him.

In the finale of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, Ser Duncan finds himself having to fight a 7-on-7 duel in order to save his life. He needs one more fighter willing to join his team, to risk everything, for chivalry. No one will stand to fight for him.

He mounts his horse and addresses the audience, beseeching the men present to be brave, to stand for virtue and honor, like Ser Arlan would have. But again, the name is unknown, no one cares. It’s a scene worth watching and rewatching.

Of course, in the end, one man recalls Arlan (only briefly), and he’s inspired to fight by Duncan’s side. He does so not because of any particular love for Arlan, but because of how impressed he is by Duncan….you’re that lost person’s representative long after they’re gone.

Nothing says, “I remember Ser Arlan” like what Duncan did here. When people see you do exemplary things and take worthwhile stands, they’ll wonder: Where did he/she get that from? And they might ask. Maybe the answer will be a book, God, a mentor or a parent, maybe it’ll be a movie that inspired you growing up—either way—we keep our loved ones alive by living as they lived (hopefully, in the best ways).

This is my second entry on Grief and Ser Duncan The Tall. If you want to read the first, you can find that here:

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From the very beginning, Dunk feels he needs help. Eulogizing his master is something an expert needs to do, and something he has yet to learn. He wishes there were a maester (scholar) present. But there isn’t — only him.

When I started A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, I didn’t realize the feelings that would wash over me in its short six-episode run. This story feels like it was written for me in this moment, a low point in my grief over the untimely death of my father. Because I’ve never experienced a weighty loss, the phantoms of anger (rage), abandonment, anxiety, and confusion have seeped into my life without me knowing their source. I was reliably informed that grief wears many masks to disguise itself, but that tip hasn’t helped me to identify it whenever foreign emotions show up on the doorstep. I’ve been getting the shit kicked out of me.

This will be the first of several installments in a series on A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. I want to take this on in small bites.

You Will Never Actually Be “Knighted”

The central question of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is whether or not Dunk was officially knighted by Ser Arlan before his death. Arlan was a drunk, a wildman, and unfocused. He took care of Dunk and brought him out of the life of an orphan and into the service of a hedge knight — quite the upgrade from living on the streets.

Part of being a squire is the hope to be knighted yourself one day, to move from apprentice to master, and then pay it forward to another young man.

If Duncan is asked, he was knighted. But much of the show suggests otherwise or leaves it as a mystery. Dunk has assumed the role of Ser Duncan the Tall, something he made up under pressure.

Dunk is a fully grown man, towering and strong, virtuous and capable, but he is missing something that matters deeply to men — hearing their mentor say the words: "You are ready."

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When do we actually stop being students and become “masters”? We all know that when a child turns 18, they do not “become an adult.” The government calls them that, sure, but it’s not based on anything personal or true about the person. Your parent can call you an adult, but that doesn’t produce the feeling that you’ve got this under control and can handle life on your own.

My Dad did nothing but love on me. He was my “biggest fan” and encourager.

Since I was 20 and started a family, he helped me to feel that I could do it and thrive. But he still solved tons of my problems. Tax screw-ups. Car breakdowns. House downpayments. I got 15 extra years of crisis management and help before an infection took him away — this healthy, strong, and energetic man. I was not “knighted” or given an official notice that I was now to go it alone. It just happens. And I’m afraid, so afraid, because I don’t know when the next storm will come, and I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

Imposter syndrome is a condition where you hold a position (supervisor, author, actor, teacher) and don’t really believe that you’re qualified to hold it. Everyone has felt it.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman, but I do know that being a man bears some relation to that mental hat trick. You find your strength in how other people see you. When a woman sees you as a strong, stable provider, you feel a bit more like those things. When you have a child, and they see you as authoritative and wise, you feel more of those things in you.

Dunk lived his life as a servant to Ser Arlan, and he carries himself as one (slouched and unsure) even in his absence. He does not see himself in the way his aspiring squire, Egg, sees him.

So what does Dunk do?

He lives according to Ser Arlan’s ideals. Not Arlan’s actions and bad habits, but what Arlan said a knight does. Arlan was not perfect. We learn in the first minute of the show that Ser Arlan would smack Dunk around a bit, drink a lot, and make a fool of himself out in the world — but always with one guiding principle as a guard rail — to protect the weak and the innocent. Nothing Ser Arlan did violated that guiding principle. Dunk is left to carry that one flame, and he does.

My favorite Star Wars movie, Return of the Jedi, speaks to this issue in its own way. Jedi Knights are inducted into an order by other Jedi. They used to endure trials and exit the Padawan process to become Masters — but the Jedi are gone, and Luke Skywalker is the last known student of this ancient order. He stands before Emperor Palpatine, having defeated Vader and spared his life, and Luke throws the lightsaber to the ground. He won’t execute his own father.

Luke says, “I am a Jedi, like my father before me.” He assumes the mantle. No one could knight him and give it to him. Luke Skywalker has to claim it for himself, knowing in his heart that it’s true. Doubts of the mind be damned.

The final shot of the show’s first season is Dunk riding into the distance with his mentee, Egg. Arlan can be seen riding behind them, as a sort of ghost. He is indeed long dead. Dunk has resisted taking on Egg as a squire because he doesn’t yet believe he is Ser Duncan the Tall, but in saying Yes to Egg, it became a little more real.

Arlan turns and heads off into the field. Dunk must now do this on his own, and he is ready — as ready as anyone ever is to go it alone.

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The most important thing for you to understand going into The Pendragon Cycle like this is C.S. Lewis’s essay, God in the Dock, in which he addresses the idea of “The Myth that Became Fact.” More on that below.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN FOR MYTH TO BECOME ‘FACT’?

Lewis: We must look a little closer at myth in general, and at this myth in particular. Human intellect is incurably abstract…the only realities we experience are concrete—this pain, this pleasure, this dog, this man. While we are loving the man, bearing the pain, enjoying the pleasure, we are not intellectually apprehending Pleasure, Pain or Personality. When we begin to do so, on the other hand, the concrete realities sink to the level of mere instances or examples: we are no longer dealing with them, but with that which they exemplify. This is our dilemma—either to taste and not to know or to know and not to taste—or, more strictly, to lack one kind of knowledge because we are in an experience or to lack another kind because we are outside it. As thinkers we are cut off from what we think about; as tasting, touching, willing, loving, hating, we do not clearly understand. The more lucidly we think, the more we are cut off: the more deeply we enter into reality, the less we can think. You cannot study Pleasure in the moment of the nuptial embrace, nor repentance while repenting, nor analyse the nature of humour while roaring with laughter. But when else can you really know these things? “If only my toothache would stop, I could write another chapter about Pain.” But once it stops, what do I know about pain?

Of this tragic dilemma myth is the partial solution. In the enjoyment of a great myth we come nearest to experiencing as a concrete what can otherwise be understood only as an abstraction. At this moment, for example, I am trying to understand something very abstract indeed—the fading, vanishing of tasted reality as we try to grasp it with the discursive reason. Probably I have made heavy weather of it. But if I remind you, instead, of Orpheus and Eurydice, how he was suffered to lead her by the hand but, when he turned round to look at her, she disappeared, what was merely a principle becomes imaginable. You may reply that you never till this moment attached that ‘meaning’ to that myth. Of course not. You are not looking for an abstract ‘meaning’ at all. If that was what you were doing the myth would be for you no true myth but a mere allegory. You were not knowing, but tasting; but what you were tasting turns out to be a universal principle. The moment we state this principle, we are admittedly back in the world of abstraction. It is only while receiving the myth as a story that you experience the principle concretely.

When we translate we get abstraction—or rather, dozens of abstractions. What flows into you from the myth is not truth but reality (truth is always about something, but reality is that about which truth is), and, therefore, every myth becomes the father of innumerable truths on the abstract level. Myth is the mountain whence all the different streams arise which become truths down here in the valley; in hac valle abstractionis³. Or, if you prefer, myth is the isthmus which connects the peninsular world of thought with that vast continent we really belong to. It is not, like truth, abstract; nor is it, like direct experience, bound to the particular. Now as myth transcends thought, Incarnation transcends myth. The heart of Christianity is a myth which is also a fact. The old myth of the Dying God, without ceasing to be myth, comes down from the heaven of legend and imagination to the earth of history. It happens—at a particular date, in a particular place, followed by definable historical consequences. We pass from a Balder or an Osiris, dying nobody knows when or where, to a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate. By becoming fact it does not cease to be myth: that is the miracle. I suspect that men have sometimes derived more spiritual sustenance from myths they did not believe than from the religion they professed. To be truly Christian we must both assent to the historical fact and also receive the myth (fact though it has become) with the same imaginative embrace which we accord to all myths. The one is hardly more necessary than the other.⁴

The Geeky Stoics team is in the final 40-day stretch before our book deadline arrives. Thank you for your continued patience with the slower stream of written content while we pour our energies into the manuscript.

We can’t wait to share it with you.

“Make it a regular habit to consider your roles: parent, neighbor, citizen, leader, and the natural duties will arise from them.”
— Epictetus

Ever notice how simple it is to skip out on your responsibilities? In so many corners of life, there’s no audit, no performance review. Who notices if you don’t walk the dog or skip your share of a group project with high achievers on the team? Nobody, maybe. That’s sort of the problem — the invoice for neglect always comes due.

It’s one of life’s harsher lessons: when you shirk your duties, someone else has to pick them up. That dish you left in the sink? Now it’s your partner’s dish. That local park you enjoy? It only stays pristine if someone is out there picking up trash and trimming the hedges.

“A garden will not fence and weed itself,” wrote C.S. Lewis. Left alone, order collapses into disorder. Civilization — like any garden — requires stewardship.

In The Lion King, Mufasa shows his young son, Simba, the Circle of Life — a fragile ecosystem that allows lions to hunt while still honoring the lives they take. His lesson is that with the privilege of kingship comes responsibility. Lots of it.

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But Simba just wants to skip ahead to the perks of power. “I just can’t wait to be king,” he sings, not realizing that true kingship is a burden, not a banquet. He learns the hard way when he and Nala stray into the elephant graveyard and nearly become hyena chow. His royal blood doesn’t protect him. Reality doesn’t care who you are. It demands something of everyone.

Even power doesn’t spare you from obligation. It magnifies it.

Public goods, from highways to playgrounds, only exist because someone chooses to protect and maintain them. When we forget that, things fall apart. Economists call it the “Tragedy of the Commons,” when individuals exploit shared resources without investing in their upkeep.

Think overfished rivers or free buses in a big city.

Simba had no idea how much work it took to keep the Pride Lands from falling into ruin. Most of us don’t either. That’s why, when left unchecked, ambition curdles into arrogance and freedom dissolves into decay.

Mufasa makes it plain: “Being brave doesn’t mean you go looking for trouble.” A good leader doesn’t flirt with darkness just to prove they can. They enter the shadowlands only when someone they love is trapped there.

We romanticize adventure, especially when we’re young. But real joy is rarely found in reckless freedom. As C.S. Lewis put it, “Happiness lies in the path of duty.” That’s why parents, when sleepless and exhausted, still say it’s worth it. There is joy in carrying burdens that matter.

Power Is a Role, Not a Reward

The world is filled with unacknowledged rulers: parents, mentors, managers, team leads, neighbors. Whether or not anyone gives you a crown, people look to you for stability and leadership.

The real question isn’t “Do I want to be in charge?” but “Who depends on me without saying it?”

If you’ve ever seen fear in your child’s eyes, or weariness in your partner’s voice, then you already know: responsibility finds you. The question is whether you’ll meet it or run.

There’s a great moment in Game of Thrones when Lord Eddard Stark explains to his son why he personally carries out executions: “The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword.” It’s about accountability and leadership without ego…power without detachment.

We often think leadership is about making calls, not feeling the consequences, but real leadership involves the weight of choice and the humility to feel it. That’s where Resolve comes in (see the new video above).

If you ever ache to know, “What is my calling?” yet you’ve ignored the dishes in the sink or the weeds in your own yard. Epictetus offers a remedy…just examine your roles: parent, neighbor, citizen, friend…and your callings will become clearer.

Start small. Tend your garden, literal or metaphorical. You’ll be surprised how quickly it goes from overgrown to beautiful, and you might even see a pathway form to the next thing that needs setting straight.

So, I’ve always criticized fellow fans of, say, Star Wars, who argue in the comments that they expect a story to offer “escapism.”

It’s possible that, according to Tolkien, I’m wrong about this. Today I sat down to read a few pages of On Fairy-stories, an essay by JRR Tolkien about the question of “escape” and how good stories are anything but…..

This is early exclusive for subscribers on Substack and the Discord community, and then it will be posted on YouTube next week.

Thanks for being part of our mythically minded community. Riley and I are hard at work on our new book, which should be wrapped up by March. Then we’ll be penning more regular posts again here for all of you.

Happy New Year, y’all! 2025 was incredible. You played a part in that for us at Geeky Stoics. Thank you.

Luke in the Dagobah swamp, staring down the task he’s already decided is impossible. “It’s too big,” he says. And Yoda’s quiet reply exposes the lie most of us carry: that truth is limited to what we can see, touch, and control.

This week’s video is a reflection on that moment and why it matters, especially during the Christmas season.

The Stoics spoke of the Logos, the rational order holding the universe together. The beloved disciple John took that same word and made a shocking claim: the Logos is not an idea or a general “force,” but a person. The light did not stay distant. He stepped into the darkness of this world to save us.

For some of you, Christmas doesn’t feel like “good news.” I get that. It can be a tough time of year. But the story didn’t begin in guilt or judgment. Jesus’ story began in wonder. As an answer to an ache. As the radical claim that you are more than “this crude matter.”

At Geeky Stoics, we call that Wonder. And without it, even the best of Stoic philosophy collapses into hollow self-help.

The video explores all of this: Yoda, the Stoics, Saint Augustine, and why “luminous beings are we” is a truth we must remember, especially this time of year.

Merry Christmas,

—Riley