***UNCOMFORTABLE TOPICS***
Every once and a while during your creative journey, the
inspirational well will run dry. It happens to the best of us. You get done
with one project or you’re waiting on the results of another. And then boom,
you’ve exhausted the creative well. Ever since I finished the new version of
Beautiful Monster back in…I want to say June or July, I’ve been writing short
stories that are hopefully different from all the rest I’ve written. And then
just last week, I declare that I’m getting back into writing fantasy with the
short story “3:16”, which I’m convinced has been a complete failure due to its
hokey nature, vanilla characters, and silly antics. I’m back to square one as a
man without a country, so to speak.
And that got me thinking about a piece of advice that budding
authors frequently receive: “Write about things that make you uncomfortable.”
It’ll make for some raw material and it’ll get you out of your creative rut.
You’ll have new stories and your audience will believe that much more in them.
Everybody wins! This whole time I’ve been afraid of making myself cringe by the
mature content my stories have. And then I remembered: Beautiful Monster is
about rape. Rape is the most uncomfortable topic there is. I’m already halfway
there! Now I need a new story with a different uncomfortable topic. I’ve come
up with nine different topics that make me squeamish whenever I see news
stories about them on TV.
***ANIMAL CRUELTY***
Forget the fact that animals are cute and cuddly. Even if you
disagree with that sentiment, animals are still defenseless in the hands of
abusive or neglectful owners. Every beating a small kitten receives. Every pit
bull who’s chained outside all day long in unbearable weather. Every circus
elephant who yearns for freedom after being confined for so long in a cage.
This shit hurts me on a deep level. I have animals of my own and if I found out
somebody was abusing them, I’d beat the living shit out of said abusers and
take my jail sentence gracefully. Animals should be comfortable and cozy, not
fearful and traumatized. Two years is the maximum prison sentence for animal
abusers. It should be higher. I’d also dare say that like sex offenders, animal
abusers should be put on a multi-tiered registry. I love my fur babies. I love
everyone else’s fur babies too. I donate to the ASPCA every month and I take
care of the fur babies I have.
***CHILD KIDNAPPING***
I may not want children of my own. I may not be overjoyed
whenever I have to sit next to a noisy child on an airplane or a bus. Having
said that, it still horrifies me whenever I see a news story about a child
being kidnapped by a pedophile and held hostage for decades at a time. Jaycee
Dugard is a major example of this. She was kidnapped at age eleven and set free
at age twenty-nine. Jesus fucking Christ! What about Ariel Castro’s three
victims? For ten years he held them hostage and raped them. Ten fucking years!
Keep in mind that this trauma is happening during their most developmental
years. Even if they were adults when they were kidnapped, that kind of
brutality can drive a person insane. There’s a special place in hell for people
who kidnap and have sex with children.
***CLASSISM***
Every once and a while, a viral video will pop up of some
asshole republican chewing out a poor customer at a store for using a food
stamp or welfare card. You also see classism on dating sites, where profiles
demand that their dates have a bazillion dollars and sports cars up to
yin-yang. Poor people get labeled as being “lazy” or “leeches”, to which I say
is complete and utter bullshit. You don’t know what that welfare recipient is
going through. You don’t know what the broke college student will do for love. Classism
is just like any other form of prejudice. And no, it’s not something that the
individual has control over despite what the bashers will say. This economy was
not designed to close wage gaps. It does marginalize the less fortunate.
***FAT SHAMING***
We live in a world where unrealistic beauty standards are
squeezing the life out of everyday people who don’t have sculpted bodies or
skinny frames. The body positivity movement is not about celebrating
unhealthiness. It’s about celebrating absolution. In other words, we don’t have
to feel guilty about our bodies just because some muscle head says we should.
I’ve said this before: people who fat shame are secretly pissed about having a
shortage of people they can jack off to. Yep. That’s your reward for losing
weight: more people will jack off to you…unless of course you’re below the
poverty line.
***MENTAL HOSPITALS***
If Terminator 2: Judgment Day has taught me anything, it’s
that mental hospitals are nothing more than prisons for sad people. They
operate like prisons, they make money like prisons, and the guards/orderlies
beat their inmates like prisoners. You have no rights once you’re in a mental
hospital and you can’t leave whenever you bloody well feel like it. That’s the
dictionary definition of a prison. Most of the people in these facilities
didn’t even commit crimes. They’re just locked up and treated like animals over
something they have no control over: their own mental illnesses. As someone
with schizophrenia, this pisses me off to no end.
***MILLENNIAL BASHING***
Bill Maher once said on an episode of Real Time that ageism
was the last acceptable prejudice we have…and then during the same rant talked
shit about millennials like the hypocrite he is. Bill Maher is a crabby old
man, so that’s to be expected. Millennials bashing their own generation is even
worse, however. That’s Candace Owens levels of selling out. Why all of this
hatred for people born in the 80’s and 90’s? What did we do that was so wrong?
Nothing. These stereotypes against us are just that: stereotypes. We all come
in different flavors, your mileage may vary. More people need to call out
millennial bashers until it’s recognized as the blind bigotry it is.
***POLICE BRUTALITY***
Whenever an ordinary civilian commits a crime, he goes to
jail and serves his time. Whenever a police officer does something even worse
(“hold my beer”), he gets administrative leave, which is really just a paid
vacation. Cops are revered by society as being these superheroes who can do no
wrong, and yet they continually get away with murdering, beating, or otherwise
harassing minorities. This gross imbalance of power pisses me the fuck off,
especially because there’s not a whole lot I can do about it short of spreading
awareness on the internet. Even then, these cops continue to murder their own
citizens for absolutely no reason.
***STEM SUPREMACY***
Whenever an artist rightfully complains about his stagnant
or nonexistent wages, the first thing some asshole tells him is to get a tech
job or go to trade school. Blind conformity equals good pay. I don’t know about
the rest of you, but I’d rather make little money and be able to create
whatever art I wanted than get paid a gazillion dollars to be a mediocre husk
of my former self. Then again, if I did go to trade school or get a STEM
degree, I’d be able to close the wage gap long enough to get a date on classist
websites. But then I’d have to lose a bunch of weight or else nobody will jack
off to me. Hmm…it’s a catch-22 if I’ve ever seen one.
***TRANSPHOBIA***
Turns out ageism isn’t the last acceptable prejudice after
all. It’s transphobia. People are so scared of transgender people using public
bathrooms for fear of their children getting molested, yet they’re perfectly
okay with a rapist president sitting in the white house and a rapist sitting on
the supreme court bench. Transgender people deserve to be treated with respect.
So do non-binary people. And gender fluid people. They’re human beings, just
like you and me. Why is that so difficult to see? And don’t give me that shit
about Fallon Fox having an unfair advantage in MMA when you’re more than
willing to condone steroid abusers.
***CONCLUSION***
Yes, these topics are pretty appalling. In fact, I’d say
they’re beyond appalling. They’re uncomfortable as hell. So what kinds of
stories could I write about these topics? Well, just last night, I came up with
a novel synopsis for a story called “Fat Camp”. It’s not officially my next
project yet, but if I develop it, it could be.
MAIN CHARACTERS:
- Adrian
Evans, Fat
- Rufus
Lynch, Sadistic
- Stella
Masters, Sadistic
- Tiffany
Crowder, Fat
- Nameless Students and Counselors
SYNOPSIS: As part of a new initiative to combat teen
obesity, students like Adrian and Tiffany are sent to a fat camp with a
penchant for tough love and military discipline. Every time the students rebel
against their harsh treatment, counselors like Rufus and Stella get violent
with their punishments, such as cutting off flesh, breaking limbs, and Rufus’s
personal favorite method of torture, twisting faces with pliers. The
combination of extreme fat shaming and physical torture would lead the students
to believe that none of this is legal, but when they try to contact a lawyer or
the police for help, their pleas fall on deaf ears and the beatings intensify.
Can Adrian and Tiffany survive this hellhole and graduate with their rights
intact? Not without bruises and emotional trauma, they won’t.
Prepare to cringe. Prepare to cringe hard!
***QUOTE OF THE DAY***
“Mental illness may be a life sentence for some of us, but
it does not have to be a death sentence.”
-Mauro Ranallo a.k.a. The Bipolar Rock n’ Roller-
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