Fuck Perfect
I try to avoid swearing in these things, but this is important.
Perfect isn’t just the enemy of done. Perfect is the enemy.
Nothing charming is perfect. We are charmed by little dogs that act big; by scruffy suitors that act gorgeous; by gorgeous suitors that act scruffy; by contradictions, and earnest efforts, and close calls.
To appease the pedants, nothing is perfect; yet still we imagine things perfect, and we claim to prefer things closer to perfection, and we strive for perfection.
Perfection is alien because it’s impossible. We cannot interact with the perfect because it is so beyond us, we incredibly imperfect things. If you ever actually found the literal perfect mate, you’d never mate with them; you wouldn’t even talk to them, how could you?
Perfection is boring because it’s seamless. In a perfect world, nothing ever goes awry, everything always goes as planned, and there are no surprises.
Superman is a very hard character to tell a story around, because stories are celebrations of imperfection. A good Superman story has to be about the ways in which Superman isn’t perfect, the imperfections of the people in his life, or the way his perfection makes him incompatible with humanity. See Dr. Manhattan from the Watchmen.
Why is the underdog a thing? Why do people root for the unfavored? Because we’re all the underdog, and seeing someone like us come out on top gives us hope that we will too. Because victory means nothing to those who don’t strive; it is the struggling, and the sweating, and the questioning, and the trying that creates meaning.
In fact, it doesn’t really matter whether you win or lose. It’s not the destination but the journey. It is the caring, and the trying, and the failing, and the trying again.
Acting is reacting because plot without emotion is mathematical. (Math is, btw, one of the most perfect things to exist, and consider how many people despise it for that.) We want to see people hurt, healing, afraid, soothed, angry, reconciled: affected. Nothing perfect can be affected. Who cares about anything that can’t be affected?
What makes improv so great is that we are trying to do this impossible thing, and kind of succeeding--which is exciting and impressive--but also failing in so many ways, big and small, over and over. And then instead of apologizing, we celebrate that failure, using it to build something strange and wonderful that no one could have foreseen: Creating our success from our failure. The only thing more terrifying than the worst improvisation is the perfect improvisation.
If you’re like me, you tense up whenever people talk about purity around you. Purity is a toxic idea used to marginalize people, and then to divide marginalized groups, and control populations. “If you do X you’re impure. If you don’t do Y, you’re impure. If you do it Z way, you’re impure.” Certainly, there are kinder, holier, more moral choices than others, but the concept of purity is poison. No one’s perfect, nothing is totally pure, nothing is totally impure. We all have value because we exist, because of the love we can share, and because of the good we can do.
Think about this, if there is a God and if they are omnipotent, they could have created a perfect world. This world is far from perfect. It’s ugly. And it’s beautiful. It’s complicated. And it’s so so simple. It’s imperfect, and thank God for that.





