Garrisonian Tropes

***GARRISONIAN TROPES***

Whenever Ashley Uzzell/Marie Krepps and I get together for a critiquing session, she always jokes about common tropes that end up in my writing and I laugh along with her. She recently wrote an awesome review for American Darkness where she describes my characters as being constantly pissed off about everything. I thought that was funny as hell. Plus, I’m grateful for all three of my stars. Would you guys like to see some of these tropes and how I analyze them? I’m sure you’d love that, so that’s what I’m going to do since I’m all about customer service.

***MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL***

Debra Winter from Occupy Wrestling (published) and Kelly McVeigh from Filter Feeder (first draft) would be the exceptions to this rule, but from Watch You Burn on, every female supporting character I had falls under the Manic Pixie Dream Girl category. Every fucking one of them. In case you don’t know what this pejorative term means, it’s a supporting female character whose sole purpose in the novel is to boost the self-esteem of the brooding male protagonist. Jessica Harley (Watch You Burn), Raven Triscloud (Demon Axe), Adrienne Simpson (Silent Warrior), and Tarja Rikkinen (Beautiful Monster) are all shining examples of the trope. There’s supposed to be some sort of psychoanalysis as to why male authors write these characters, but I don’t quite know what it is. If any of you would like to pick my brain, that’d be wonderful. I swear I’m not writing these characters to be a sexist pig. I didn’t even know this kind of character had a pejorative term until after I started writing Beautiful Monster. I’m so far down the rabbit hole with that novel that I might as well see it through to the twenty-first chapter and fix it all later.

***FAT VILLAINS***

Ashley loves to joke about this one a lot and I can definitely see the humor in it. Most of my fat villains come from American Darkness and Poison Tongue Tales, but Rinehart from Beautiful Monster could fit this trope too. I swear I’m not writing the characters out of self-hatred (because I’m fat too) or because I’m secretly into fat-shaming (I’m not). You won’t even have to pick my brain in order to find out what I’m talking about. If you follow politics, you’ll notice that there are a lot of politicians and pundits out there who are universally hated and also happen to be on the pudgy side. Donald Trump, Newt Gingrich, Alex Jones, Chris Christie, and Rush Limbaugh are all shining examples of this. Villains by their very nature are to be hated, so what better way to hate someone than to compare them to a despicable political figure? I’m sure there are a lot of cartoonists out there who do the exact same thing.

***ANGRY CHARACTERS***

It seems as though every other piece of dialogue in my writing has an exclamation point, a swear word, or an insult attached to it. Plus, it doesn’t help matters that my characters are constantly beating the living shit out of each other. It would be easy to attribute this to my love for WWE since professional wrestlers are constantly cutting angry monologues against each other. Or maybe it’s because I too have a hair trigger temper at the little things in life. I scream like a barbarian whenever the phone rings. I go into swearing fits whenever Maggie shits on the floor or Smokey barfs on my bed. I once spit on my computer screen because my computer was slowing the fuck down and freezing all the time. Maybe there’s something about having schizophrenia that makes me irritable all the time. Maybe I just need a chair massage and a day at the spa.

***SAGGY JOWLED DOGS***

American Darkness and Poison Tongue Tales are where the saggy-jowled dogs live. My step-dad’s dog Maggie has a set of saggy jowls on her, so that’s where I get it from. She’s a mix between a Springer Spaniel and a Bassett Hound. She’s also sixteen years old as of today. She’s older than Herbert’s dog on Family Guy and gets around just as well. Maggie eventually became her own character in a Poison Tongue Tales story called Maggie’s Wisdom, where she played the role of a pilgrim trying to calm down a pissed off monk named Brock Dempsey. Well, what do you know? Another angry character! Wow! Spoiler alert: Brock finds his inner peace by scratching Maggie’s fuzzy belly.

***SENSITIVE CRY BABIES***

It doesn’t matter if the character is a muscle head barbarian or a gentle poet: chances are good they’ve shed a few tears in my stories. Crying actually became part of Windham Xavier’s character development in Beautiful Monster. He’s so afraid of appearing weak in front of his peers that he holds his tears in, forever conforming to male stereotypes that his girlfriend Tarja tries to shatter. But even before that, I’d have macho men crying all the time, most specifically Daniel Mercer from Demon Axe. Then again, Daniel was a heavy metal singer with years of pain behind him and PTSD from watching his band mates die, so he’s excused…I think? Maybe? I don’t know? In case you think this is a self-insert trope, I haven’t had a full-on crying spell since 2007, when I thought my only option for college was going to Evergreen in Olympia, where I would basically be a 24/7 student with no free time to myself. Haven’t cried since then. I did have sore eyes and a little bit of water trickling out whenever I watched old Never Ending Story videos on You Tube, but nothing that resulted in real crying.

***ASSHOLE PROTAGONISTS***

This one can be blamed on shades of gray logic where characters are supposed to have flaws, so I made one of their flaws asshole behavior. Big mistake. I had to edit Occupy Wrestling multiple times because the main character Mitch McLeod appeared too dickish for the heroic role. And now that I look back on Watch You Burn, the main character from there, Mario Bryan, is also a huge douche canoe, which probably makes readers wonder what Jessica Harley (Manic Pixie Dream Girl) sees in him anyways. There’ve been many debates among authors over what constitutes a good protagonist whether it’s flaws, snappy dialogue, average characterization, or whatnot. Some protagonists out there can be assholes without turning the reader off too much. I haven’t mastered that art yet, so maybe I’ll just stick to having friendly characters…who are pissed off all the time…and have saggy jowled dogs as pets…and are dating Manic Pixie Dream Girls….okay, that’s enough. Hehe!

***CONCLUSION***

It could be that I’ve left a few tropes out, but I’m sure they’ll pop up right after I post this blog entry online. They always do. I’m Garrison Kelly! Even when you feel like dying, keep climbing the mountain!

***LYRICS OF THE DAY***

“Some people live their dreams. Some people close their eyes. Some people’s destiny passes by. There are no guarantees. There are no alibis. That’s how our love must be. Don’t ask why. It takes some time. God knows how long. I know that I can forget you as soon as my heart stops breaking, anticipating. As soon as forever is through, I’ll be over you. Remembering times gone by, promises we once made. What are the reasons why nothing stays the same? There were the nights holding you close. Someday I’ll try to forget them as soon as my heart stops breaking, anticipating. As soon as forever is through, I’ll be over you.”

-Toto singing “I’ll Be Over You”-