Script for "Mob Psycho 100 and Writer's Block"

(Onscreen: A blank page with a blinking cursor.)

I think I first started to be afraid of the blank page around the end of middle school, after some…stuff happened. But I know I’m not alone in fearing it. It’s just like looking at the night sky. It looks flat, empty even, but in your heart you know you’re looking at infinity. And that is a terrifying sensation.

Sure, infinite possibility is wonderful, and probably part of what attracted you to the idea of writing something in the first place. Anyone can write a story! How great is that? But the longer you seriously pursue writing, the more likely you are to realize that just because anyone can write a story…doesn’t mean anyone can write a good story. Doesn’t mean that you can write a good story. And so, you freeze. You experience what we in the biz call “writer’s block” (Onscreen: I am not actually in the biz).

Thing is, us writers think we have a monopoly on mental blocks, but that’s not true at all. All sorts of people experience all sorts of blocks for all sorts of reasons. Mental blocks occur when you need to access your brain’s ability to be passionate, creative, or motivated and something is in the way, no matter what that something might be. You experience a block whenever you… freeze up during a public speech, hit a wall thinking about how you want your career to proceed, and even when you just can’t seem to make yourself go talk to that cutie over there, you know, just to name a few random examples that nonetheless…remind me of someone that I can’t quite put my finger on…
(onscreen: mob)
(loud coughing).

Mob Psycho 100 is a show where children engage in city-destroying combat at an alarming rate and all the middle schools in “Seasoning City” are named after different types of seasoning, but it’s also a touching coming of age story about self improvement and maturity. Our main character, Mob, has these spectacularly powerful psychic abilities which are tied to his emotions. But subversively…it’s not a story about emotional self-actualization through becoming more powerful, because, in a world where car headlights rule over desk lamps through their extraordinary strength, Mob is already an entire fucking sun. He’s real handy to have around when someone’s life is in danger, but outside of those specific situations, his abilities don’t really help him much or make him happy. Personally, if I was telekinetic, you can bet your ass I’d be zipping objects in and out of my hands from across the room just because it's cool. But we never see Mob use his powers in the privacy of his own home except by accident. So he can make objects float, so what? That shit got old when he was like six. His powers only affect his daily life when he encounters other psychics and…by giving him a mental block.

Mob is forced to keep his emotions bottled up so that they don’t end up harming the people around him, causing him to be emotionally stunted. As a result he’s perceived as shy and awkward by his peers, which is a source of anguish for him at the start of the series. And as the series goes on, Mob runs into all sorts of blocks. He freezes up and goes quiet a lot of the time, and usually it’s because he just doesn’t know what to do. He’s not an assertive kid, especially at the beginning. He’s easily manipulated and lacks the forcefulness to really exert control over his life, which is part of why his decision to join the body improvement club feels so cathartic at the same time that it’s funny.

In episode one of season 3, he starts thinking about what he wants his future to look like and hits the mental block of simply not knowing. This hit me particularly hard. Being unable to decide what you want to do with your life is a lot like looking at a blank page. "I’ve got this space, and I could fill it with anything. And the people around me are filling it with all sorts of beautiful, wonderful things, but other people are filling it with toxicity and garbage. I know I want to be like the former people, but how? How do I know I won’t mess up and end up like the latter?" That’s the thing…you don’t. So how could you possibly ever convince yourself to start?

Well I can tell you what kept me writing back in the day: ignorance.

When I was in middle school, at about the same age as Mob when he saved an entire city through a psychic battle with an all-powerful lunatic chucking buildings at him, I performed a feat of equal merit. I wrote an entire book, start to finish. It was called Crystals of Eldia, and it was to be the first of a trilogy! I fully intended to publish it. In fact, my goal was to publish it before I finished middle school. You know, so that it’s inevitable explosive popularity would show everyone how smart and incredible I am.

“Chapter One: The Hidden Lock. It was the month of Greenfern. A beautiful Wednesday it was. It was a morning that would change all mornings, a morning with infinite possibility. It was the kind of morning anyone could wake up to,” (cutoff after last "morning")

Of course, everyone was very sweet, but sharing my work did not go as I expected. People had been telling me how great of a writer I was my entire life, so I didn’t know how to handle it when they decided I was old enough to give me genuine feedback. “What do you mean it isn’t perfect? I thought you said I was a good writer? So my work should be perfect? Right?”

"Anyway, yes. You are a lot like him. Your battle style, and your bravery reminds me of him. Ahhh. He was a good man. Great with a blade."

It was inevitable that I discover that, believe it or not, there’s a pretty big difference between writing that is worthy of professional consideration and writing that was done by a middle schooler who still doesn’t know what the word “prose” means. Eventually my understanding of storytelling grew enough that I was able to look back on Crystals of Eldia and actually realize that it was a flaming pile of garbage. So I sat down at the computer once again, this time thinking “okay. Now I know what I did wrong. So I just have to not do that and focus on writing good stuff.”

I put my fingers on the keyboard…and I did not start typing.

I watched the cursor blink for about an hour. A few times I wrote one or two sentences, but not without immediately deleting them. After that, I didn’t write anything except school essays for about a year.

Okay that’s not entirely true. Occasionally I’d start a project out of sheer force of habit, but I’d never get much further than, like, a page, because the same thing would always happen. And if you’re an aspiring writer, I’m sure you’ve done this.

You spend all day, working your ass off on something and maybe you’re even proud of it, you feel like you did good work. And then you go pick up whatever book you’re reading and read a couple sentences and then just put it down and scream, because in that moment you know just how far away your very best work is from the stuff that’s actually getting published. That’s actually worth publishing.

Gaining better taste as your knowledge of writing grows is a delightful, illuminating process, but it’s also a deeply painful one, cause with every step of understanding you take, it becomes more and more clear just how amateur your work is. You sit down determined to write something good, but you can’t do that. You don’t know how.

So you sit there writing nothing at all.

There are lots of reasons behind writer’s block, but I think that this is one of the most common. Nothing is going to stop you in your own tracks as an artist like your own feelings of inadequacy. And what sucks about that is that you can’t just cheer yourself up and be positive. Chances are…you are inadequate. I’m sorry, that’s just the way it goes. Unless you’re some kind of once in a generation genius, if you’re just starting out at writing, you are not good at it. Even if you do get past your writer’s block, what you write is still gonna be shit.

So why should you write at all, then?

(onscreen: Mob fucking explodes)

Well guess what motherfucker? I’m gonna tell you why!

I’m gonna tell you how I managed to get out of my funk! I’m gonna tell you something that’s gonna sound mean, but trust me when I say that you need to hear it. And the good news is if you’ve seen Mob Psycho 100, you’ve already heard it:

You are not special.

And you will not be special.

Whether it was because someone praised you, because you like your own work, or because it’s just human nature to be prideful when steeped in ignorance, at some point you got it into your head that you are special, or that you have to be special in the future. And therefore, your words must be special. If not, then you’re doing something wrong.

That is incorrect you buffoon!

You are just one out of billions of regular ass people. You aren’t a “gifted kid” just because you can write sentences like an adult. Sure you made everyone clap with your Yeti story in elementary school, but Jimmy over here can touch his nose with his tongue. Maybe your writing abilities will be more valued by society but does that make you ABOVE Jimmy and his nose touching skills? No. You and Jimmy are still just two kids with a couple contrasting traits. There’s no point in setting you apart from Jimmy just because your trait is particularly spectacular or noticeable. “But don’t your unique traits make you special?” Sure, but not any more special than anyone else. Therefore…you are not special.

This is a devastating revelation, right?

I mean, the villains of Claw seem to think so. When they hear this for the first time it gives them all a different flavor of existential crisis. But when we see them again, they’ve figured out how to exist apart from the strict power structure of Claw and live virtuous lives protecting the rights of the common man.

And when Mob hears this revelation, he doesn’t even have a crisis. For him, the idea that he isn’t special is a delightful epiphany. Because the idea that he is special has been causing him all sorts of trouble. So he lives his life with this constant humbleness and desire to better himself without any room for the complexes that characterize so many other psychics.

Seeing yourself as just another person is horrifying if your idea of yourself as special is a shield of pure ego you use to differentiate yourself from the masses. But seeing yourself as just another person is a genuine relief if your idea of yourself as special has become a source of isolation or pressure. Either way, letting go of that idea is eventually going to free you. Just as it frees Mob.

How? Well it’s right there in the lyrics of the goddamn theme song: If everyone is not special, maybe you can be what you want to be.

If nobody’s special, you know what that means? Stephen King isn’t special.

I can hear you rolling your eyes. “Blizzic, of course Stephen King is special! He’s such a prolific author, he’s responsible for so many classic works!” And that’s true. When we hear “Stephen King,” we think of Carrie, The Shining, It, Pet Sematary, Misery, The Stand, Cujo, the Dark Tower, 11/22/63, Shawshank Redemption. But you know what we don’t generally think of? The Tommyknockers.

“The Tommyknockers is an awful book.” That’s a quote from Stephen King, the author of the Tommyknockers.

And he didn’t just write it, he published it. Imagine all of the shit that he hasn’t published. Imagine what he wrote when he was in middle school. Do you think he was spitting out work that was at all comparable to Carrie or the Shining or any of those classics?

No. Because Stephen King isn’t special. He’s a good writer because he worked hard and studied and wrote a lot.

It’s also worth acknowledging that when it comes to publishing and becoming popular, there’s definitely an element of luck. But Stephen King did what all writers have to do and put himself in a position to get lucky. He did it by writing a whole lot. He got better by writing a whole lot. So you have to write.

“But Blizzic, how am I supposed to write when I know it sucks! I can’t write something I don’t believe in!”

That’s a very fair point. And to be quite frank, I’m not exactly perfect at overcoming writer’s block, so I’m not really the person to ask. I wish I had some kind of mentor or role model I could point to, some holy figure to act as an example of the life philosophy I’m trying to espouse here…
(onscreen: Reigen) (LOUD COUGHING)

I think I might be getting sick.

Have you guys noticed that Reigen Arataka doesn’t hesitate?

Like, obviously he hesitates occasionally, especially when he’s in a depressive period where he’s not tending to his emotions and guilt has caused his self-esteem to plummet to an all time low. But: leaving his old job, taking Mob in, throwing himself at multiple dangerous threats with cheap tricks and the brute force of an average male. In general, this guy does not hesitate. He just goes.

This is perhaps most evident whenever he’s putting on a false persona, or failing to correct someone’s assumptions about him, in order to lie his flaming pants right off. He rarely misses a beat, which is a really important component of selling someone on a lie. Don’t try this at home, kids, but lying is actually a decently good way to develop your storytelling muscles, especially if you do it on the spot. Because you can watch in real time on the other person’s face the extent to which your made-up narrative is ringing true.

(Don’t worry Mom, I didn’t lie about anything big. I was still a good boy.)

I mean, if you think about it, when you tell a fictional story, you’re just telling a great big lie. Sure, it’s a lie that the audience is usually aware of, but you’re nonetheless trying to get them to buy into it. Lying and storytelling are equally acts of manipulation. (heavy tone shift) Sometimes manipulation is slow, deliberate, calculated, controlled. (and, back to fun) Other times it’s throwing a bunch of salt at the wall to see what sticks, discovering that, forehead smack, of course it doesn’t stick, it’s salt, so I’ll try something different while pretending that that was all part of my plan. That’s writing, right there! That’s exactly what it is!

Don’t get me wrong, the brilliant folks doing incredible storytelling across various industries know what they’re talking about and deserve your respect, but very rarely does writing feel like the cold, calculated, Makima type of manipulation. Usually it feels like you’re trying to convince people to hang a bunch of messy crayon drawings next to the Mona Lisa, and if you screw up, they’ll realize that you’re a fraud and come for you. Why do you think imposter syndrome is such a common problem among writers?

And in this respect, it’s Reigen’s commitment to his choices that’s admirable. He doesn’t hesitate because he believes that he can make whatever his mind comes up with in that moment work for him. Does this get him into trouble sometimes? Absolutely. All the time, in fact. But as a result of how he’s constantly spewing bullshit, he is participating in and exerting control over his life.

Compare that to Mob in a lot of situations, staying quiet even as he gets dragged around, taken advantage of, and manipulated. The most important element here is that most of the time, Reigen has a good heart and good intentions.

Don’t get on my ass about this. This is a work of fiction, so just like how we enjoy Curse of the Black Pearl despite real life pirates being “problematic” to put it lightly, we can acknowledge that real life con men pretending to be psychics to take your money are pieces of shit, whereas in a story, Reigen can be a good man who occasionally makes mistakes.

Because Reigen has a good heart and good intentions, he trusts that the bullshit he spews will be, at least most of the time, the right bullshit. Just like it is when he initially gives Mob advice about his powers. And when it’s not the right bullshit, he has the self reflective skills to recognize where he went wrong and go back and correct it, even if it takes him some time to realize. That’s another aspect of the conversation surrounding writer’s block that doesn’t get talked about enough: simply remembering that when you write a bad draft, you can go back and correct it!

My favorite metaphor for the process of creating stories is one that I’m sure others have said but which I came up with myself. Pat pat. (patting myself on the back). If a story is a clay sculpture, trying to sit down and make your story good immediately as you write it is like trying to make a clay sculpture without any clay. You have to make the clay first. Then, later, you can shape it into whatever you want. Reigen says and does some dumb shit sometimes, but while Mob’s standing there not saying or doing anything, Reigen is taking control of the situation. Even when it doesn’t work, he’s gained information about what will and won’t that he didn’t have two seconds ago. He has something to work with. Mob’s got nothing.

Stephen King had to write The Tommy Knockers, and had to write every other bad thing he’s ever written so that he had the experience and information that would allow him to GET to the good stuff.

You know what Crystals of Eldia still has over all the writing I did during my depressive writer’s block period?

IT EXISTS.

While I was worried about my work being good, I sat there fantasizing about writing something good but not actually producing anything. Meanwhile, in middle school, when I wasn’t concerned about quality, I developed an entire fantasy world and then told an entire novel length-story in it. That I wrote a book at all is commendable. It helped me learn. And the mere fact that I look back on Crystals of Eldia and recognize its flaws is proof of how much I’ve grown since I wrote it.

Look at Mob! Look at him flourish under Reigen’s influence! From a scared, stifled and confused kid to someone confident enough in his own perspective to throw it up against Toichiro’s. Still experiencing some blockages, but able to put himself out there enough to seriously grow and make a shitload of friends. Not to mention, at some point, he starts to see through his master’s bullshit. And decides that it has value anyway.

My favorite example of this is the mental block I mentioned earlier, from episode one of season three. Mob doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life. Reigen jokes that he could just stay with Spirits and Such Consultation forever, but later Mob confesses that he’s not sure he wants to do that. Reigen, seeing something that he needs to revise, clarifies that he was joking. And then he gives him such wonderful, brilliant advice it makes me wanna cry.

“Reigen quote.”

What you want to do with your life does not have to be the same thing as your career. You are more than a slave to whatever it is that makes you money. Deciding what you want to do should mean deciding how you want to live your life.

Dear Yog Sothoth, this man…listen I’m not into men but if Reigen wanted me to kiss him I’d do it

I think this is such genuinely brilliant life advice but I also think it’s just as applicable to writing as everything else I’ve talked about. Don’t get so caught up in external results that you forget to prioritize your internal desires. Yeah, eventually you are going to have to worry about making money and about making your story good, but don’t let that distract you from whatever it is that YOU want to do. It’s your life. And it’s your story.

You wanna do a romance novel about werewolves fighting vampires even though it’s already been done? Do it! Get it on paper! Make it fresh and original later! And if you can’t do that later, if the revision doesn’t go well…then move on to the next story! Keep going! Keep learning! Keep getting better. There’s no good writing without bad writing first. You are burrowing through the trash that you must burrow through to get to the treasure. If you keep going, maybe one day your writing will turn out the way you want it to. Or maybe not! There’s only one way to find out.

Imagine if Mob wanted to improve his athletic capabilities but decided not to join the body improvement club just because he wouldn’t be able to run as fast as all the current members and it would be embarrassing. Much like improving your life, writing isn’t something you can afford to be a perfectionist about. It’s something you just have to start doing, and be patient with yourself if it feels like it isn’t going anywhere. The only way out is through.

But why bother? Why spend so much time and effort trying to eventually get to the place where you can write something good? Well, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. But you want to, don’t you.

Luckily I can tell you exactly why you should: the world deserves your writing. I might be a pessimistic bitch sometimes, but at the end of the day, I’m an optimist, not a nihilist. Things can get better. This is a demonstrably true fact. The world contains great evil, yes, but it is not some inherently evil place that you simply must exist within. The world is full of great people, and these people deserve beautiful things. Yes it’s true that there are already lots of great artists making beautiful things. Yes it’s true that no one is special. Yes it’s true we’re all just human beings hurtling through a vast uncaring void. But return with me to that terrifying night sky, that horrifying blank page. Gaze into the depths and realize, no matter how much possibility is out there, in all that infinity, there is only a single you. No one can manifest your ideas the way you can. No one. So it doesn’t matter what those ideas are! It doesn’t matter if they’re good or bad or silly or insightful or fun or terrifying or boring or heartwarming or droll. They are inside you and they are longing to be expressed!

GET THEM OUT!

(onscreen: mini-amv)