What do you want?

“What do you want?”

 One of my favorite characters from Babylon 5 (and granted, that’s not narrowing the field much) is Mr. Morden, the Shadows’ emissary who initially visits each race’s ambassador and asks them one simple question, “What do you want?” They seldom truly understand the question, thinking he is asking them what business they have to discuss. But eventually, thinking they are being facetious, tell him what they truly, deeply, in their heart-of-hearts, want. Some of them find out too late that was the answer he had been seeking all along. He even helps some of them get it.

But Morden himself, though he represents a dark and powerful race, is a rather cheerful, likable guy. If he didn’t give you the screaming willies you’d probably enjoy having a couple beers with him. Ed Wasser played him deliciously well. The powerful evil who can destroy entire starfleets with a word while wearing a genial smile and a casual suit is…well, so cognitively dissonant you don’t soon forget. The only thing creepier than Mr. Morden when he’s smiling is Mr. Morden when he’s not.

If I were to turn evil I would probably like to be a Mr. Morden.

All of this is just a roundabout way of getting to my point. Mr. Morden inflected such meaning into such a simple question that I can’t ask it without thinking of him. But that’s what I’m asking you all right now: What do you want?

I find myself at the moment completely disinterested in blogging for some reason. This is partly because I don’t have anything to say, and partly because what I do have to say is being said ad nauseum elsewhere. And what I’d really like to say is just too important to me to put out there for people to poke at (and would probably be taken by some, not always incorrectly, as me poking them).

Also, most of my blog traffic comes here from Facebook, which means it’s mostly my friends–people who are already reading me on Facebook. The vast majority of people who find my blog otherwise are comment spammers. My most popular posts seem to be my various reviews (my review of Nolwenn Leroy’s album got linked from a fan-site, which drove more traffic than I’ve ever seen before or since–the closest I’ve ever come to going viral).

So I have to question why I’m doing this. The vast majority of my legitimate traffic is Facebook friends, who would get posts from me whether I blog or not. And, oddly enough, those are the people I least want to blog for. I don’t like getting controversial on Facebook because they are friends, and I’d like to keep them that way. It also takes a much lower amount of effort to post something to Facebook. No one expects length there–no one wants length there.

But that’s only how things look from my side. What do you want? What keeps you coming back and checking what Thom Stratton is up to, either on Facebook or on his blog, or both? I like my friends. If I can give you guys what you want more efficiently, I’m all for it. Tell me what you want, and I’ll see if I can deliver.

Just don’t ask me to restore your people to their former glory, power, and place in the galaxy, okay? That never ends well. For anyone. Seriously.