And then you take that baby to the Evil Baby Orphanage.
How to Care
I have now made enough videos that I’ll occasionally find one on Tumblr and not remember making it.
This is in my top five VlogBrothers videos. I frequently share it with people I want to convert, or even just people I think should hear the message.
And Hank has so much brilliant just reeking from him that he doesn’t even remember recording it.
On Writing
In John Green’s mid-tour “Thoughts From Places” video, he made the following comment:
“Writing is something you do alone. It’s a profession for introverts who want to tell you a story but don’t want to make eye contact while telling it.”
I know John didn’t say that writing can ONLY be done alone, or that it’s a profession ONLY for introverts, but I got the impression that that is what he meant, and that’s the message I’d like to address.
It’s true that many writers are introverts. The idea of the “reclusive writer” is so common as to be a trope in film, television, and books, and it is of course based partly on reality.
But it is far from true that all writers prefer to write alone, are introverts, and prefer to tell their stories without looking someone in the eye.
For example: I am a writer. Anyone who knows me will tell you I am far from introverted. And I love to tell stories, whether that’s face-to-face or through the written word. I love to tell the sort of story that’s just “Oh man, I met this guy this one time and,” and I love to read my written stories out loud.
So why do I write stories down? I want to tell my stories to more people than I can ever get face-to-face. I want to tell my stories to people who aren’t yet alive. I want to keep telling stories after I’m dead, and no longer capable of doing so face-to-face, or eye-to-eye.
So, there’s the other side of that coin.
Okay, can we talk about how wrong this is?
This is the top comment on a VlogBrothers video from about a year ago. The video is titled “Horatio, the Newest Member of our Family,” with the likely intention of psyching out the nerdfighters, making them think the video was about Hank and Katherine having a kid, or getting a new pet.
There are a few reasons why this is upsetting, all of which I will gladly tell you now:
1. People have reasons for having or not having babies, or choosing when to do so. It is between the people involved, and is private.
2. What if Hank or Katherine were physically incapable of having children? How do you think this comment would make them feel, to say nothing of FIVE-HUNDRED AND ELEVEN upvotes? It’s none of your business, so leave it that way.
3. Right, because Katherine would have no choice in this transaction. Pregnancy is something men do to women.
Questions, comments, contentions?
rraisa commented,
“I try to remember that most nerdfighters are teens. And they maybe don’t think what they say. Or maybe don’t understand that things they say as a positive comment can be something that hurts.”
EXACTLY. I don’t think anyone intends this to be hurtful or rude, but you know what? That means they aren’t IMAGINING THE SITUATION COMPLEXLY. I’ve heard of people losing weight as a result of depression, which deepened every time some friend or colleague called attention to their condition with a well-meaning “Hey, you look great!”
catsandmanatees said,
“I understand where the sentiment is coming from, and I think Hank and Katherine would make fantastic parents, but I agree with you.”
I’m sure Hank and Katherine would make excellent parents, but that is entirely beside the point here. They also make fantastic human beings, entirely separate and unaffected by their ability to procreate. As for where the sentiment is coming from, I have a hard time seeing anything other than a combination of society’s demand that couples prove their worth by procreating, and that people think babies are cute and want more baby footage on VlogBrothers. Please do let me know if you think there’s something more than that.
Attn Nerdfighters!
As if I didn’t have enough on my plate with recording an album and booking a ukulele show and working on a solo project and starting a second band, I’ve got a new piece of braincrack.
I want to create a Nerdfighter Songbook.
This would be a collection of songs that Nerdfighters love, with lyrics and chords, to facilitate jam/session/singalongs at Nerdfighter gatherings. I’m thinking I’d create a PDF for people to download and print out themselves, but if enough people take an interest in the project, physical copies could be a possibility (providing cooperation from DFTBA and the involved artists, of course).
But first, what I need is information! There’s no point in making a songbook if it’s not full of songs Nerdfighters want most, and the first step is to narrow the field to artists. Please take the following survey and include your voice in this process!
Click here to take survey now!
I’ve finally completed and uploaded the collaborative vlog I did with my friend Brigid, aka Birghita13 on YouTube. It’s posted on her channel because, y’know, she actually vlogs and has twice the subscribers I do.
I’ve just gotten interested in video editing in the last six months (“Learn to use imovie” is on my list of 29 Things To Do Before I Turn 30), and this is definitely the most complicated project I’ve tackled thus far. I’m pretty pleased with it; in fact, the only aspects of it that I do not regard with pleasure are due mostly to the limitations of imovie, and perhaps the fact that Brigid does not have access to a good microphone.
The Seattle stop of the Tour de Nerdfighting was a pretty magical event, and so definitely deserved to be preserved in vlog form.
Hey nerdfighters! I’m shooting a proof of concept spec trailer for a Paper Towns film - cut in the style of the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo trailer. Follow me if you want to see it when it’s finished! You can check out my other films and music videos and stuff at www.marcwilkinson.com
Oh yeah, I’m definitely taking credit for this.
Update on the VlogBrothers/Apocalypse, CA mystery:
First, a quick catch-up in case anyone is reading this without seeing my prior post! Apocalypse, CA is an independent feature film now out on DVD. It is about the end of the world, and the two main characters are brothers named Hank and John. In a scene where characters are making final confessions, Hank admits to John that when they were kids, he pooped in John’s Legos and blamed it on their dog. For non-Nerdfighters, this closely resembles an event from the childhood of VlogBrothers Hank and John Green, explained in this video.
In addition to confessing he has never heard of the VlogBrothers, writer/director Chad Peter says that the scene where the Lego Incident is mentioned was shot in 2008 and written much earlier, whereas John Green’s video about Red Green and the Nintendo was not posted until 2010.
Honestly, I think this is the strangest coincidence I have ever witnessed in my life.
The official trailer for Apocalypse, CA, an indie feature now available on DVD!
Just watched this last night, and it’s fantastic. With just a few days left before an asteroid hits the earth, two brothers, a sexy drug dealer, and one brother’s childhood crush try to make sense of an increasingly bizarre world.
This film also wins for weirdest coincidence ever: the two brothers are named Hank and John, and at one point, when confessing last minute secrets, Hank tells John that he was the one who pooped in John’s Legos when they were kids, even though their mom blamed it on the dog. Yet writer/director Chad Peter claims to have never heard of the VlogBrothers. STRANGE BUT TRUE!
