Whose Side Are You On? The Wonders in the Dark Alignment Chart

by Bob Clark

The majority of you probably have no idea what you’re looking at. That’s perfectly understandable. I’m actually none too proud to admit that I can identify this at first glance, myself. If you’ve ever played a tabletop role-playing game, or if you’ve merely browsed the Internet enough for its various memes to work their way into your very gene pool, you’ll know that the above image is called an “alignment chart”. Used for the purposes of creating fantastical characters in Dungeons & Dragons and various related games, it’s intended to provide a sense of easily expressed identity for the various fictional personas that get tossed about on so many epic, imaginary quests. With its three-by-three grid, one can fit themselves into any moral/behavioral coordinates they see fit, and decide not only whether or not to play as a face or a heel, but what kind of face or heel. Proportionally, it works on a rather simple mathematical scale, with the conditions of “lawfulness” applied to the left-hand of the matrix, “neutrality” to its middle and “chaos” to its right, as a means of assigning codes of behavior. At the same time, it uses a no-brainer association of “good” at the top and “evil” at the bottom, with another “neutrality” in between. In other words, morality is graphed on the vertical axis, and behavior on the horizontal, and in this way one can chart the relative position of one’s personality in the same manner that students were tasted to rate poetry before Robin Williams asked them to start ripping out pages in Dead Poet Society.

Now that you know what you’re looking at, the immediate question in response is likely why. Well, to understand that you have to grasp how the D&D alignment chart has become something of a pastime for Internet junkies with too much time on their hands (ie, all of us). Over the past decade, it’s become popular to create visuals for charts such as these with the characters of any number of different movies, television shows, comic-books or video-games plugged in (I’m sure the same would be done for novels, plays and concept-albums if only there were more visuals to back them up). Most of the time it’s a fairly playful, tongue-in-cheek shuffling of the heroes and villains into their appropriate slots, with a minimal amount of brain-work to consider where everybody actually fits on the various ethical sliding scales. Occasionally, people get more creative and stir things up by putting heroes down below or villains up above, with at least some consideration to back up their choices with accompanying text. My own favorite examples, however, are the ones that take a single character and illustrate how they wind up occupying all the alignments at various stages of their respective adventures. Oftentimes they’re the sort of thing that’s bound to cause some kind of fight amongst fans of any particular character (I can only imagine the kinds of disputes that came about when somebody decided the Tenth Doctor represented “Chaotic Evil”) but by and large it’s hard to take them in any other spirit than all in good fun.

Okay, now if you’ve been reading this text all this time, and haven’t actually broken free from the iron grip of my prose just yet, you’re probably still wondering what the hell any of this has to do with our site, one that’s dedicated to reviewing films, of all things, and not to pursuing useless trends bouncing about the farthest reaches of the World Wide Web. Well, that’s where things are likely going to get a bit slippery, friends, because on the occasion of Allan Fish’s concluding his listing of his 3,000 favorite films, I’ve taken it upon myself to make something to commemorate this blog and the community of commentators that has risen up in its wake. Ever since I started writing for Wonders in the Dark, one of the things that I’ve enjoyed the most has been the spirited conversations that have risen up in the discussion threads– which is a polite way of saying, I’ve had a lot of fun in the many, many fights that have taken place here. Seriously, is there anybody who frequents this collection of web-pages that doesn’t bear the scars of some flame-war or another over the years we’ve been coming together to compare cinematic preferences? The clashes between fans of Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars prequels? The brave defense of Heaven’s Gate devotees against the unforgiving mobs who blame it for the wreckage of New Hollywood at its peak? Or the epic three-way crusade over Citizen Kane?

Those very comment-battles are what formed the core of this chart’s inspiration. Though the method should become clear after a moment or two’s investigation of the original image, the basic idea I had was to pick nine of the writers who have regularly contributed to the conversation here at Wonders, assign them an alignment on the chart based on my (obviously unbiased and objective) perception of their personalities, and represent them both with a choice quote from their many dialogues on our threads and an image from one of their most frequent topics. Of course, I wasn’t able to fit in everyone who frequents the site, and I’ve moved with the unerringly bad form to include myself as one of the lucky nine, so you’re all encouraged to write this off and pay it absolutely no mind (which is probably the best option, after all, as I’m doubtful anybody here has ever come near a game of D&D or the kinds of image-boards that these alignment charts are usually seen on). Nevertheless, since my decisions have been made and a surprisingly large amount of time wasted in actually conceiving of and creating these damn JPG’s (all in wonderful Microsoft Paint– we spared no expense), please allow me to elaborate on who I’ve chosen to represent the various qualities of our particular hive-mind of a site, and why they’re in their particular tics, tacs and toes.

Stephen Russel-Gebbett is one of the kindest, gentlest souls I’ve ever had the pleasure to come into contact with over the Internet. Well known for his vast knowledge of animation, he’s long been one of our go-to guys when it comes to evaluating the works of Miyazaki, Oshii and Kon, for whom he penned a touching obituary. It helps that our taste in film includes a fair deal of overlap (heaven knows it was a relief to find someone else at this site who harbored a passion for The Phantom Menace), but that overlap only goes so far, as any frequent visitor here well knows. Besides being a devoted admirer of Terrence Malick, a filmmaker I simply don’t have the appetite for, our Stephen has also shown the unmitigated nerve to question the worth of that most sacred of cinematic cows– Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane. Back over at his own site, Checking on my Sausages (a title I’ve never quite understood), his essay on that movie began a heated debate that raged on beyond the borders of his own comments-thread, spilling over into our own streets for a battle-royale the likes of which is usually saved only for the most pointless of political filibustering. Kane is one of my favorite movies, but for the life of me I was actually sort of overjoyed that somebody had decided to take a harder stance on that picture, which for so long has gone taken for granted, its relative worth as “the greatest movie ever made” somewhat worthless without anybody bothering to question it. Furthermore, while his points on the technical craft and qualities of the film were all surprisingly valid, even to an admirer of the work in question, what amazed me was the level headed calm with which Stephen faced every flaming accusation and insult that came his way. After a while one would think that a person has no more cheeks left to turn, but through it all his doggedly open-minded and optimistic spirit persevered, to the point that even a few who had previously been aiming verbal missiles straight at his doorstep found themselves taking their fingers away from the simultaneous-turn keys, and establishing a newfound peace with their brother in cinematic arms. A generous writer who remains unsparing in his criticism while never betraying a contrary personal word, he is by far one of the most decent and kind commentators we can ask to have on our site. It is hard for me to imagine him as anything other than the smiling, big-hearted Totoro, no doubt somewhere near the same patch of imagination’s territory as the hundred acres’ wood, keeping a careful eye out for all the Christopher Robins of the world. One has to be born with a big heart to think that the last scenes of End of Evangelion with any kind of silver lining, after all, and our site (not to mention the world entire) would be far worse a place without his kind. Too bad he’s probably imaginary.

Joel Bocko (aka the mysterious MovieMan) and I have not always agreed so often. In fact, I think we’ve usually been on opposite ends of so many debates. We’ve disagreed on which Star Wars trilogy we prefer (he’s OT, I’m PT– feels like we’re arguing about the finer points on when Dylan went electric), whether “kinetic” or “pictorial” cinema represents the better use of the medium’s particular expressive tools, and indeed whether or not either of us have any appreciation for non-narrative cinematic experiments, or if such things can even exist in a medium which is defined by its linear experience through time. In other words, Joel has covered a great deal of territory in his various conversations on this site, both with myself and countless others during his years as a visitor and sometimes contributor. He’s been spotted less frequently on our pages as of late, whose reasons have become all too clear after he began departing from his own personal site, The Dancing Image, and his lack of presence has been a rather sad one over the past few months. In many threads, Joel has been something of a conscience for the various disparate threads of the Wonders community– always articulate in his opinions and never holding back his criticism for any point he perceives as faulty in its logic (usually correctly so), but also always with a spirit of equal measure for the conversation, a fair sense of give and take that makes the debate feel that much more appreciated. He knows what he thinks about movies, and he’s not about to sugar-coat his words just to spare your feelings, but at the same time he shows respect, and remains outside of the frays that would force him to take a more hostile approach whenever he can. Just recently, he cited Alphaville as a film he wishes were somewhat higher on Fish’s countdown, and one which represents so much of that which he loves best in the work of Jean-Luc Godard, and I can think of nothing better to represent his spirit than that of Eddie Constantine freeing the lovely Anna Karina (seriously, just look at her) from the grip of the evil computer, Alpha-60. A girl and a gun– that’s all you need, isn’t it?

Jaime Grijalba may be the very best face of chaos for this site, if for no other reason than for how often he’s been mistaken for other writers on our threads, and how much confusion that has added to debates which were already contentious enough before one started factoring in mistaken identities. There are many other reasons why he’s the ideal representation of disorder in our community– there’s his growing taste in films, which has plenty of room for classics but still winds up supplanted by modern fare like Donnie Darko (he was by far the easiest one to pick an image to represent); there’s his coverage of works that fall outside of our cinematic obsessions, and into the realms of other, less embraced mediums (consider my surprise to find somebody else on these boards who regularly watches the Angry Video Game Nerd, much less one who would embed one of his video-reviews in the comment-thread); there’s his dedication to learning the craft of filmmaking firsthand, and even sharing his works with us on this board, giving us the chance to vicariously experience both sides of cinema, emboldening us with the dream of perhaps one day joining him in the brave new world of YouTube auteurship; hell, there’s even the way that his Spanish-language site Exodus 8 winds up clogging Google-Translate whenever I want to read one of his articles. In these, and so many other ways, Jaime is perhaps the most unpredictable member of our community, the one who consistently finds ways to surprise us over and over again. And still, he’s able to find the time and patience to be magnanimous in his spirit, to be complimentary even at times when he strongly disagrees with you. A while back when I was singing the praises of the Cartoon Network tv-movie Firebreather (mostly to celebrate the return of Peter Chung), Jaime was right there to raise the counterpoint, citing how the film was at turns generic and mediocre, and how disappointed he was that the hero decided to hook up with the blonde cheerleader chick instead of the dark-skinned geek (something I agree with– never mind it being indicative of boring Eurocentrism, the latina was also a hell of a lot cuter). You may never know what to expect from Jaime, but odds are he’ll always be there to offer kind words, no matter what’s at stake. Like Donnie, he may tear down the fourth-wall and stab at you directly through the silver-screen, but believe it or not, he’s here to save the world, not destroy it.

Maurizio Roca may at one time have represented the kind of spirit that wished to save or protect humanity from its own eventual destruction, but he’s clearly evolved far beyond that kind of time-wasting altruism by now. Why else would he have picked up the soul-darkening task of evaluating that most dispiriting and cynical of movie genres, the film noir for our most recent countdown? Can there be a body of work so deeply full of disappointment, pessimism and soul-shattering regret as all the tales of those city-dwelling private eyes, all of them all but blinded by the lights of one too many glimpses into the sheltered truths that workaday salarymen would rather turn their heads away from in ostrich-like ignorance? Outside of the documentary, not likely. And likewise, it’s hard to imagine that any sense of positive attitude could remain alive after slogging through any more than a handful of these cloudy passages of cinematic tract, and yet here is good Maruiz to stand as something of a contrary measure to that argument. We’ve had our disagreements in the past, as well as times that we find ourselves on the same side of the proverbial coin– I was surprised, and somewhat gladdened, to find that he was the third leg of the proud triumvirate that celebrates Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate as one of the greatest films ever made, even if he did immediately assume that I’d be the one to break that tender alliance. Like the world-weary detectives of the genre he covered, Mauriz can be something of a force for justice on this site, though he’s not without his mercenary streak. An observant writer and polite commentator, he’s not incapable of picking a side during a flame war, but more often than not he wisely sits on the fence, and can play both sides against one another, and come out unscathed. He knows any alliances on the way can only be temporary, broken at the drop of a star-rating, he doesn’t shy away from making friends, even if he has to run the risk of breaking them. After all, what’s waiting at the end of his investigations will be worth more than all the petty jealousies that rise up in the wake of so many contentious disagreements. His is a quest for cinematic truth– the stuff that dreams are made of.

Speaking of truth, it may seem the height of folly to put anyone as hot-blooded as Dennis Polifroni in the center position of “True Neutral”. After all, this is the guy who probably adds more comments to threads than anybody else at Wonders, who’ll post so prolifically that he’ll oftentimes lose track of which particular message he’s replying to and wind up writing a long tirade under the wrong person’s blurb (to be fair, though, our comment-threads are something of a maze, after a long enough period of time). He’s so passionate that mere exclamation points are seldom enough to contain his enthusiasm– I sometimes wonder why he hasn’t learned the art of our embedded code and posted all of his comments in bold, underline italics, as well. The range of his opinions on any given film can only range from the lowest to zenith– if he loves a film, he loves it with the same zeal and dedication as one does when first pricked by the burning embers of Cupid’s arrow, and if he doesn’t like it… well… it’s best not to be in the same room as him (I say this metaphorically in the online sense, of course, having never actually been in the same room with him in person). When I first came to this site, it seemed that he and I would forever be at odds on our opinions regarding the high art of lowbrow cinema– Lucas and Spielberg could certainly be in his vaulted canon, but whereas he chose to celebrate the latter, I was, and forever shall be, a pioneering follower of the former. That single disagreement has since stretched into a bouquet of passionate debates in the time I’ve spent here, and there have been times where I have frankly hoped to not have to deal with the comments of the man who has so often called me his “late night nemesis” (though it would seem that, outside of the summer months at least, we both tend to be more frugal with our online hours, as of late). But in the end there may be no better candidate for the position of absolute zero than Dennis– not zero as a sense of worth, mind you, but as an expression of mathematical center. Dennis is what you might call the nexus of the Wonders universe, the one person who is able to cross between all the disparate parts and declare allegiances with whomever he will, without so much as a cross thought. Though he does not offer love for every movie he watches, he’s open enough to bear affection for films from every ilk. His criteria for whether or not a work ought right be celebrated is simple enough to be summed up in the quotation I plucked for him, from our to-and-fro on Pixar’s Up. If a movie doesn’t leave you head over heels, it might as well bite you on the ass.

When it came to assigning alignments to the various persons of interest who populate the Wonders mainframe, I at first assumed that the position of dead-center would be occupied by the man around whom all the activities of this site rightly orbit around, seeing as it has been the pull of his gravity that has managed to draw all of our disparate stars into his fold. Sam Juliano really ought to be the in the center square, the lynch-pin that ties us all together. After all, it’s difficult to imagine someone who can be more generous and heaping in his praise than he, a man who can find enthusiasm even for reviews of stuff he hasn’t managed to see himself. If you’ve ever written for this site, commented in its threads or even simply visited it anonymously, chances are you’ve received a profusely written thank-you email containing invitations to attend his Oscar parties, accept DVD gifts and who knows how many other uncounted blessings. Sam ought to be in the center, but there’s just one thing standing in the way– the man’s kind of crazy, isn’t he? You’d have to be in order to corral this many lunatics and keep them polite enough with one another to keep from reaching through the broadband wires and strangling one another in teleconference. You’d have to be mad, if not clinically so, to wear as many hats as he does and cover the arts of cinema, stage and opera with as dedicated a passionate spirit as he does, while still finding time to hold down a family and work in public education no less (for that, alone, a just world would rightly build statues in his name). And of course, you’d have to be absolutely out of your mind to find anything worth watching in Driving Miss Daisy, of all things, save for the usual pleasures of Morgan Freeman reading anything with a more nuanced prose-style than your standard phone-book. But it’s that very madness which has entangled us here like so many starstruck quantum physicists unable to break away from the sight of a densely chalked equation waiting to be solved. It’s that sense of absolute and wild abandon with which he greets every newcomer to the site, and makes everybody feel as though they’ve reached some kind of cinematic homecoming. It makes perfect sense that he, as with many of us it seems, shares a common Catholic heritage, and moreover takes it seriously– you’d have to be crazy to literally have the patience of a saint.

And now we move from the saints to the sinners, to the awful rogue’s gallery of our betroubled corner of the web. For all the valiant brave faces we have seen fit to mention so far, it only goes without saying that there must, in balance, be some kind of villain who stands in opposition to them, a darkness to counter all that is holy and light in this world. Let there be no doubt, dear reader, that the dreaded Allan Fish is the first of those dark and terrible properties, and very likely the most powerful of them all. For within that inky personage lies a heart so black that not even light can escape its fearsome grip– a cinematic singularity amongst the merest of mortals, a penetrating wit that could bring tears of blood to the eyes of the newly canonized, and a tyrant of the highest order. And mind you, I call it the highest order because like all dictators, Fish has seen fit to turn Wonders into the thriving community it is today by force of will alone. He has multiplied our readership by untold numbers, brought in countless new followers from every corner of the newly flattened Earth. In short, he’s made our trains run on time. There are hardships one has to deal with in the wake of that kind of personality– the utter scorn and absolute mockery meted out for singing the praises of anything that falls outside of his own personal preferences, the likes of which get blasted at volumes that would make the band-members of Spinal Tap go deaf long before they even managed to get into earshot. There are the double-standards that would make a cartoon character get whiplash from so many double-takes, the allowances made for certain, privileged pieces of pop-corn entertainment and escapist blockbusters that are never even afforded the dreams of sharing with others of the same ilk– prejudices that would easily be acceptable if only it weren’t for the unsparing scorched earth policy for those that fall outside his personal liking’s reach. And of course, there are the infuriating obscurities upon obscurities, the best-of selections seemingly chosen primarily to boggle the minds of so many so-called learned scholars of the cinema, to put the whole institution of film-criticism in its place by shoving into the spotlight all of the masterpieces forgotten in the favor of so many mediocrities. It’s that last point which helps temper so many of the more abrasive characteristics of the man, and that may in fact legitimately earn him the entitlement to act so entitled in the first place. Though he goes about it in the most pompous and arrogant way possible, the job that Allan Fish does to uncover and celebrate the forgotten and ignored gems of the entire history of cinema (the fact that I can say that unironically is testament enough) is one that is not only absolutely worth doing, but one that we may be in dire need of, as well. Though I take task to Fish for his double-dealings and snide demeanor, to question him entire is a little bit like picketing soldiers when you’ve never even bothered to consider joining the Peace Corps, yourself. Spend any length of time on this site and you’re bound to find Fish aiming his guns at you, but one can take comfort in the fact that he does the same for everyone, and spares nobody his truest emotions. He is the crucible of our fair site, the test through which all travelers must pass. Therefore, on the rare occasions that you find your tastes aligning with his– as happened with me on the serendipitous moment where I wrote a lengthy article praising the virtues of Heaven’s Gate days before Fish made that reviled film his top pick for the 1980’s– one can know, absolutely, that he is telling the truth. There is no subterfuge with Allan Fish, and this is what makes him the most honorable member of our crew, and a fitting figure to stand in the darkest corners of Camelot’s hallways. He may flip the whole world the bird, but sometimes the bird can flip him, too.

A more cunning and duplicitous kind of quarry can be found in the character of one James Uhler, a man who wears just as many hats as Mr. Juliano, with one primary exception– all of them are black. As a devoted scholar of philosophy, he can discuss the discourse at the heart of any given film with a learned quality that can either uncover the secret meanings hidden inside the unconscious undercurrents of any underrated film, or at the very least convince you so in the middle of a heated conversation. As a talented visual designer, with an eye in particular for text (I shudder to think of what he has to say for my use of Times New Roman in my chart), he can speak to the qualities of a film’s properties along the picture-plane while still keeping in mind its narrative goals, or lack thereof. As a connoisseur of popular music, he regularly broadens the range of topics up for discussion on the Wonders boards by reminding us of all the units that helped bear the burden of the British Invasion and all the offenses that followed in the Beatles’ wake, with a particular attention to the value of music as a creative art form that reaches directly into the instinctive appetite of the human heart, a bypass beyond all those pesky interventions of logic and superstition. Hell, he’s even one of the more open and honest around here when it comes to the subject of his own, most personal of preferences– who else would gladly say that he’d enjoy living in the world of George Lucas’ THX 1138 just to be surrounded by hot bald women, even if you were too doped up to want to have sex with them? There is a wide terrain of subject and style that James can cover with equal comfort, and the ways in which he uses them to articulate his opinions on cinema make for some of the most consistently rewarding and entertaining pieces of writing this site has seen fit to inspire. Yet at the same time, the hostility at the heart of so many of these comments can also not be overlooked. There is an aggressive quality to the ways in which Mr. Uhler applies his knowledge in philosophy, art and music, much like a mad-doctor may apply several sciences in deadly combination to wage war upon a world he’s long since stopped making the pretense to understand. In a more distant time, he could have pursued such an ambidextrous education to become a classically learned military man in the style of Robert E. Lee, and wage a most honorable war in the most compromised of causes. Unlike the more brutal, more honest approach taken by the blunt-hearted Fish, James is often wont to weave his criticism through layers upon layers of subtle intrigues, such that one can read his posts half a dozen times before pinpointing the exact spot that he is insulting your intelligence. Furthermore, all those deadly arts in sly, penetrating intelligences allow him to peel apart one’s very own argument as though he were performing a dissection for a classroom full of pre-med students, and in this way he may be able to find the weak points in your rhetoric, all the better with which to target you the next time he sets fingertips to keyboard. That’s not to say he’s not without vulnerabilities of his own (he’s never done a very good job of explaining why later Cronenberg films like A History of Violence and Eastern Promises, or as I like to call them Viggo Mortensen Hits Pepole, Parts 1 & 2 represent a better expression of the director’s central philosophies, much less mount a convincing argument of what said philosophies are), but at the end of the day he’s able to wage a brand of ideological warfare as consistent as his arguments. Like the cold-blooded killers of the various slashers he celebrated in the site’s Horror countdown, his is the approach of stealth, the assassin creeping in the night, yet even when he decides to go into full shock-and-awe mode, he is not without that delicate sense of humor that can at times be the most infuriating aspect of all about him– disarming you right at the moment you most need to mount an offense of your own. If it weren’t for the turn-based nature of Internet colloquy, I dare say I may have fallen on my sword (or pen, rather) countless times in the face of his midnight attacks, yet at the same time that very same quid-pr0-quo system of back and forth is what makes his trickery possible in the first place. Were I to encounter Mr. Uhler in person, I’d like to think that our wits would match up well enough to stand to a real-time stalemate, or better yet, that we may find a ground common enough to call our own. But based on our conversations here, I’m not in any hurry to schedule a meeting any time soon. I fear he’d eat me alive.

And then there’s me.

When I first came to Wonders, one of the most common compliments I received, usually from the likes of Sam and Dennis, was to my “thick skin” in the midst of overwhelming opposition during debates. Naturally, it’s something you get used to as a Prequel-fan– even Star Wars admirers declare open season on us with an alarming regularity, as though Daffy Duck quit picking up his blasted beak and decided to don a hunter’s cap instead to join forces with Elmer Fudd. Still, no matter how many times I came back to this site in my early visits, I couldn’t help but be bothered by the ways in which the dialogue could be so one-sided and yet filled with double-standards throughout. What bothered me most was the assumption of some intrinsic objective standard for so many of the declared opinions, in the stead of a merely legitimate brand of subjective feeling. I can understand if you want to say that you like Lord of the Rings better than Star Wars— I just got pissed off that there were few out there willing to allow for somebody like me to chime in with the versa to that vice. It was that lack of respect for a difference of opinion that drove me so crazy in the first times I came here, but it was also the very thing that kept pulling me back, like Charlie Brown trying to kick the football. Maybe it’d be hopeless to think that my foot would actually connect with the ball, but at least I could try and connect with Lucy Van Pelt’s face (the stupid bitch). What I hadn’t anticipated then was just how easily a free-for-all could run in both directions. Yes, share a contrary opinion and you’re likely to become an open target for the foreseeable future, but it also earns you the right to say pretty much whatever the hell you want and get away with it on the same grounds as everybody else. Therefore, if you’re going to be crucified for the comments that you make in an article’s thread, it only makes sense that you find yourself given the opportunity to give a sermon on the mound and write your own article, as well.

At the time I was hesitant, still being an active contributor to Ari’s now defunct The Aspect Ratio, which was where I first attracted attention from over here with my lengthy love-letter to The Phantom Menace and found myself hopscotching over to Wonders, right at the close of the 70’s countdown (yet too late to add my own top 25 to the poll, sadly). Over time I was encouraged again and again to publish articles of mine here on the pages of Wonders, an avenue that seemed more and more open as Ari maintained a greater interest in his own burgeoning film career than that of the upkeep on his website (and who can blame him?). Therefore, when the time came to find a place to post a lengthy piece I’d written in defense of Attack of the Clones in the face of its odious public slander at the hands of Red Letter Media, I looked to no other place than Sam’s joyously little demilitarized zone of cinematic debate, and found myself keeping longer and later hours to post new articles and stoke the flames of their contentious arguments in the comment threads. I’ve joined into and/or started so many arguments on this board, I can barely even remember half of them, and I’ve grown so used to them that it’s actually gotten kind of disappointing whenever new pieces either fall on silent comment threads, or perhaps even worse, merely polite discussions. Indeed, one of the reasons I write about George Lucas so often here is because he’s a well-known point of disagreement on this site– everybody knows who he is, everybody has an opinion on him, and more often than not you’re going to get a diversity of said opinions, rather than any kind of consensus. If I write about Hideaki Anno, on the other hand, there’s nowhere near that kind of conflict– if you know who he is, odds are you’re not going to start an argument about him (unless you start talking about Shinji being a pussy or Asuka being a bitch; then you’ll have a nice juicy free-for-all on your hands).

Yet at the same time, as we enter this mellower period of the site’s growth, I can’t help but admit that the lulls in all the fighting have their attraction as well. Not just this week, I was heartened to find that the ineffable Mr. Fish was not entirely unversed in the works of Mr. Anno, himself– true, he admitted that he wasn’t familiar enough with Evangelion to put it up for consideration in his 3,000, but the fact that he’d seen any of it, let alone knew what it was, counted as something meaningful to me (this arriving not long after I’d taken him to task for including some of the more unsavory elements in his relatively small assortment of anime works, mostly a baker’s dozen of Miyazaki’s and Kon’s). Yet those points of reconciliation are only meaningful in the broader context of the various arguments we’ve shared on these boards, just as they are for most everybody who finds themselves drawn here. Nearly everyone starts out with some polar opposite to their own magnetic north, and though in time all those late-night nemesis may eventually become much appreciated buddies (of the online kind– we’re all spread around the globe in odd places, and even the few of us who occupy the New York City area haven’t all met in person), it’s those first occasions where blood was drawn that really allowed for the bonds to be cemented between us all. Wonders is a community that binds itself together through conflict and turmoil, through so many jaunts and verbal sparring matches. Thick skins are grown, even if they aren’t hide to the bone, and cutting words are sharpened on a regular basis as we see fit to man offenses against all that we perceive as cinematic monstrosity and defend those precious things we consider to be the most essential of all in an unblessed world. Though so many of us come from different persuasions of genre, style and subject-matter, we all share in common the same passionate dedication to the art of cinema, in all its myriad faces, shapes and guiles.

This is our Holy Land, our Jerusalem, the Mecca in whose direction we must turn and pay homage to several times a day (usually whatever free time can be spared away from work or life to post another dozen comments), and though we war upon one another with little in the way for ceasefires, we are all worshiping at our various altars with prayers that the cinematic pilgrim must bear some amount of recognition to. We are all of us, People of the Book– or rather, People of the Screen, and it is to these people, their debates, and the website with a thousand faces, that this meager chart is dedicated to.

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