Mitch McLeod Puts the Death in Death Match

Clockwork Orange House of Fun. New Orleans Street Fight. No Holds Barred. Death Match. Hardcore Rules. In professional wrestling, there are thousands of ways to describe a match having no rules, where the only ways to win are by pinfall or submission. No rules rules, right? Well, as Mitch McLeod found out in a message board wrestling RPG, you still have to work within the limits of the law. You can’t shower your opponent with an AK-47. You can’t strap a dynamite vest to a random audience member to extort your opponent into quitting. You shouldn’t be able to do what Stone Cold Steve Austin did and raise a car that Triple H is in with a forklift before dropping it upside down from twenty feet high. Don’t worry about Trips, though, because he was back on TV the next night with only “contusions” on his medical record. There are lots of ways you can win a Death Match, none of which include murder. You can’t take the world championship to prison with you.

As a side note, Mitch McLeod shouldn’t be confused with Kentucky politician Mitch McConnell. One of them will inflict so much pain on you that you’ll develop an addiction to Oxycontin. The other is a hardcore wrestler. McLeod was OTT Wrestling’s version of Tommy Dreamer: the hardcore heart and soul of the company. Mitch would scramble your brains with a steel chair and deduct a hundred IQ points from your test. He would scissors kick a glass water pitcher over your head and deduct another hundred IQ points from your test. He would put a set of steel stairs over your head and leapfrog over the top rope onto them…there go another hundred IQ points. By the time Mitch McLeod was done fucking with your brain, you’d be more than qualified to vote for that Kentucky politician I mentioned earlier.

Unfortunately, none of those credentials would be enough to earn him a victory in his first OTT match ever against the seven-foot tall behemoth known as Yeti. No, I’m not talking about the toilet paper mummy from WCW in the 90’s. This version of Yeti was a legitimate powerhouse. He towered over everybody and made them look and cry like children. His breath reeked of human flesh and sour blood. His horns gave you the impression that the devil himself was standing across the ring from you. And those muscles…so many fucking muscles, but not the kind that belong on the cover of a cheesy romance novel. If Yeti wanted to hurt you, the National Guard would merely delay the inevitable…by about five seconds. He was the perfect first opponent for Mitch McLeod.

With Yeti already waiting to feast on the walking corpse that awaited him, Mitch McLeod’s music hit and the crowd went ape shit, no pun intended. Then again, how do you not go ape shit when “Wollt Ihr Das Bett En Flammen Sehen?” by Rammstein is blasting out of the speakers? German heavy metal for an American ass-kicker. You would think that Mitch would have all the (literal) tools necessary to beat Yeti like a war drum. But prior to joining OTT, he didn’t know that every match in this organization was contested under hardcore rules. Therefore, he did what every good baby-faced hero did in wrestling and attempted to cheat. What a great guy! Such a role model for the youngsters in the crowd!

The rules of the RPG were simple: each player would post a series of moves to perform in the match and whoever had the best writing and most impressive showing would be declared the victor by the GM/referee. At this point, the only thing that dwarfed Mitch’s opponent was my ego. I didn’t want to lose. I didn’t want to “do the job” as they say in the wrestling industry. Sixteen-year-old me didn’t make sacrifices for the good of the story. I just wanted to see Mitch be undefeated in everything he did, because I believed in my own hype. I was my own “mark”, to use another wrestling term. So when Yeti and Mitch locked up, it was game on, motherfucker.

While I don’t remember the exact choreography of the match, I do know that it started off with some actual wrestling maneuvers. Yeti hit a few body slams, suplexes, and clotheslines, each of them rattling Mitch’s bones like a Haitian earthquake that would surely be referenced in a Max Caster freestyle rap if given the opportunity. Max had already made fun of Simone Biles’s mental health, the Duke LaCrosse rape case, COVID testing, and Julia Hart’s vagina, why not a Haitian earthquake? You know what Max didn’t do, though? Put Yeti in a torture rack before slamming his spine across the knee. Mitch did that. He also spiked Yeti on top of his head with a brainbuster. He also hit a power bomb. And a spinebuster. And any other move that a man with Mitch’s size disadvantage had no right to use. Remember, I wanted to win and make Mitch look good, even at the expense of a much bigger star like Yeti.

Mitch would do anything to win at this point. Anything, even “accidentally” knocking out the referee so that using weapons (which was already legal) could be a thing in this match. He pulled a fire extinguisher from under the ring, sprayed Yeti in the eyes with it, threw it at his face, and gave him one final brainbuster onto the extinguisher. A normal man would have died from these wounds long before he had the chance to vote for unsavory Kentucky politicians. Not Yeti. He kicked out just as the referee was about to slap the mat for a three count. What kind of military grade weapons would it take to keep Yeti down? A Sherman tank? A nuclear bomb? Space lasers? Mitch could have used them all and Yeti would still no-sell everything and defeat him with a move called “The Heart Slam”, where he literally grabbed Mitch by his heart and slammed him to the mat before pinning him, one, two, three.

That should have been the end of it all. Mitch McLeod should have picked up his own carcass off the mat and gone back to the locker room to shower. It would actually take a lot more effort to do that considering Yeti gave Mitch another Heart Slam after the match was over, that cheeky heel. But instead of swallowing my pride and selling the injuries, I had Mitch throw the fire extinguisher at Yeti again and then lure him backstage with insults. Yeti, being an angry yeti, took the bait and got clobbered with another fire extinguisher for his troubles. Mitch then tied Yeti’s ankles to the back of his car and drove into town while dragging his big ass across the cement. A normal man would have died after thirty feet, the skin on his back shredded like Floydian beef. If that wasn’t bad enough, Mitch drove Yeti to a suspension bridge, tied cement blocks around him, and threw him into the ocean. Isn’t Mitch such a great role model? Dexter Morgan would be so proud of him! Wait a minute…

In the same way that Mitch no-sold everything Yeti did, Yeti in turn no-sold the attempted murder. I say attempted because Yeti was napping during the whole time he was being dragged. He woke up from his nap, jumped out of the water, and destroyed Mitch’s car so badly that it exploded in a climate change-like fireball. Yeti then advised Mitch to keep all the action in the ring, which would only be bad advice if the match was contested under Falls Count Anywhere rules, which is yet another form of no-disqualification rules. My never-ending ego would have taken this murder spree to the ends of the earth if the GM didn’t intervene when he did. He deleted all of the post-match violence and I was half-relieved that he did. Yeti then gave me a congratulatory “Good match” without a hint of irony, which meant we as players were still on good terms.

The one thing I would like to unpack from this story above all else is that good storytelling comes with sacrifices. If Mitch McLeod won all the time against all challengers in brutal apocalyptic fashion, yes, he would be elevated, but the story would be boring and he would be labeled a Gary-Stu. Flawless characters aren’t fun to read about because they’re not relatable to the reader. Even Hulk Hogan and John Cena, as big as their egos are, wouldn’t be able to relate to Mitch McLeod if he was an indestructible Gary-Stu. The role of the characters is to create a cohesive story through teamwork, and teamwork requires sacrifices. If the heroes have to lose every once and a while to make the stakes believable, so be it. If the villains have to look strong until the very last match when they’re finally defeated, such is life.

Mitch McLeod should have had flaws during his time in OTT Wrestling, but those flaws shouldn’t have been evil attempts to make himself an unstoppable god. In other words, he shouldn’t make himself so unlikable that nobody in their right mind would ever cheer for him. Baby-face heroes shouldn’t have “go-away heat”, or the kind of audience anger that isn’t born from good character work, but from a genuine desire to see them disappear forever, even if that means death itself. No-selling an opponent’s offence in wrestling is a big taboo in the industry, because it completely kills the illusion and undermines the team effort in building a narrative. 

After Mitch took his second Heart Slam, he should have stayed down. Let Yeti have his heel heat, let Mitch train harder and grow as a wrestler instead of turning into a whiny serial killer. When Mitch starts to win matches again and develop his skills, then maybe he can have another crack at Yeti and get even closer to victory this time. Mitch would look impressive as a plucky underdog who has to constantly overcome the odds by the skin of his teeth. Beat him down until he has nothing left, so that when he finally earns his big comeback, he will have worked for something he can be proud of. 

That’s what you have to remember not just with wrestling, but with every story you tell: the protagonist has to work for everything he has. Sometimes he has to work so hard that his body and mind fail him when he needs the energy the most. Sometimes he has to work hard enough to bring him to death’s door. But unlike in a capitalist society where unsavory Kentucky politicians hold the brass rings hostage, Mitch McLeod actually has a chance of having his hard work pay off. A theater teacher I had once advised us to, “Throw rocks at our protagonists and make them run up a tree.” In other words, make life difficult enough so that when those difficulties are conquered in a believable way, the protagonist will have something to be proud of. And so will you, fellow writers. So will you.

Terrible Flaws

 Anytime a book, movie, or TV show receives praise for having “flawed characters”, it makes me wonder what exactly those flaws were. Are all flaws created equal or are some more forgivable than others? Can characters with the least forgivable flaws find redemption by the end of the story or does that come off as forced? Are some character traits considered flaws when they don’t deserve to be? Do villains’ flaws (aside from the obvious) have to be conquered just like the heroes’?

I’m asking all of these questions because I’ve been in this writing game for many years and I still haven’t mastered the art of the flawed character. I’m always afraid of making a character so flawed that they’re no longer likeable in any capacity. Even dumpster fire human beings can be liked by the readers, but how do I achieve this? Well…let’s run these questions through a battery of tests, shall we?

Suppose you have a protagonist (like every story does). He’s got acrobatic fighting skills, he’s got magical powers for days, and he’s perfected the art of the insult. He wears spiked metal armor and carries a sword bigger than his entire body. He’s got long purple hair that has probably been washed with Head & Shoulders more times than he’s been in combat. He’s got striking golden eyes that can weaken the knees of every woman around him. His major flaw? He’s a genocidal lunatic. He doesn’t just go in for the kill. He destroys entire groups of people until they’ve gone virtually extinct. He feels no remorse for his actions and openly mocks any group that he’s wiped off the face of the earth. 

Are you cringing in disgust yet? Why? You like flawed characters! Killing large numbers of people is a HUGE flaw for somebody to have. I certainly hope he can overcome it! Now that I think about it, there is an example of someone like this. His name is Vegeta and he’s from the Dragon Ball franchise. In the beginning of the series, he killed off entire populations from any given planet and sold the planet for a quick buck. Near the end of the series, he’s a loving father and husband, but he’s still salty as fuck. Despite his murderous past, Vegeta is still the most popular character in the series.

Alright, alright, alright, that’s just one example of a successful flawed character, though. Maybe genocide isn’t enough to turn people off (which actually scares me a little bit). Okay, how about this: you’ve got a protagonist (noticing a theme here?). He’s rich beyond his wildest dreams. He’s got more abs than he knows what to do with. His business suits, sports cars, and summer homes all cost him more than the national debt allows. He can sex up any woman from the moment they smell his cologne. 

His major flaw? He’s got a serious case of flatulence that could trigger climate change and successfully take away Greta Thunberg’s future. What? You like flawed characters! His farting gets in the way of his romantic life and political aspirations, so it’s a real flaw! He can easily overcome it by getting a colonoscopy and finding out what the fuck is going on in his ass. But once he finds out what’s actually in there…then the plot thickens quicker than one of his diarrhea dumps. Could you get behind a character like this? Hopefully, not literally since we’ve established that his farts smell like dead skunks and toxic waste.

Okay, maybe bathroom humor isn’t your thing. It certainly isn’t mine. So how about this: you have a protagonist (yet again). He’s a five-star general who commands the respect of everyone he meets, even people outside of his jurisdiction. When he tells you to do pushups, it won’t matter if you just got your COVID vaccine, because you’ll do them anyways. When he tells you to run ten miles without stopping, it won’t matter if you’re bound to a wheelchair, because you’ll find a way. 

His major flaw? His voice is so cartoonishly annoying that subordinates only do what he says so that he’ll shut up and leave them alone. That’s not respect for authority; that’s hatred for irritating people. When the time comes to actually take him seriously, nobody listens to reason, because the general’s voice shatters their eardrums every time. Do you still think all flaws are created equal?

Now I don’t want any of you to think that I’m advocating for Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. Maybe there was a time in my childhood when beefy barbarians who never lose were appealing to me. Maybe there was a time when undeniably hot chicks won me over just because. But as I got older, the shine wore off in a big fucking hurry. You think Alex De Large from A Clockwork Orange would have become as iconic as he was if he took the role of an axe-wielding ninja-knight who remained undefeated forever? You think Vic Mackey from The Shield would have been convincing as a corrupt LAPD detective if he didn’t occasionally lose from time to time? We don’t want to see our favorites lose, but if they don’t, then the story becomes boring and nobody cares.

But at the same time, we have to come to terms with what flaws we’re willing to forgive and which ones make a character impossible to love. Maybe the flaws we can’t forgive are overcome by the end of the story. Maybe a Klansman who uses the N-word five hundred times in a two-minute conversation can see the light and become so far to the left that he falls off the spectrum completely. Maybe a CEO who makes money off of his impoverished employees can become homeless and experience the plight of his underlings firsthand. So maybe the question isn’t, “Is this flaw bad?” Maybe the question is, “Can this flaw be redeemed?”

By that logic, even Cthulu can be redeemed despite the fact that he’s an intergalactic squid who destroys worlds effortlessly and drives the survivors to infinite madness. Maybe Cthulu has a slight moment of guilt when a feral child tries to reach out to his heart. It’s one thing to drive adults to madness, but feral children never had a chance to even acquire a first language. So Cthulu’s heart is broken beyond repair, but his universe is not, so he creates paradise out of his destruction. Would you still find it in your heart to forgive this flawed character despite what he did to get to this point? Did Hitler need a hug? Does Donald Trump need tender loving care? Does Vladimir Putin need a girlfriend who will cradle his head in her lap and stroke…whatever hair is left on his head?

I guess it all boils down to whether or not you as a reader believe in redemption arcs. I personally can’t get enough of them as long as they’re not rushed and forced. If you don’t want spoilers for A Dog’s Journey, then stop reading and have a nice day. Gloria is a toxic mother who spends her nights partying and drinking rather than taking care of CJ and her dog. So what does Gloria do? She gets sober and reconnects with CJ, giving her letters from her father that later serve as creative fuel for her songs, thus launching a successful music career. That’s one example of a redemption arc I can get behind. Gloria is indeed a flawed character, downright disgusting at times. Neglect and abuse are horrible things to do to a child. And yet, she won me over by the movie’s end. Well done!

Perhaps the lesson I’m trying to teach myself is to not be afraid of the flaws I give my characters. I have enough faith in my writing abilities that the characters can be redeemed by the story’s end. And if I haven’t done that, it’s okay, because that’s why our stories go through multiple drafts worth of edits and rewrites. Unlike a brain surgeon, you don’t have to get it right the first time if you’re writing a story from scratch. Be bold. Be brave. Let your book babies take flight. You can’t cradle them forever and if you do, you’re worse than the mother from Pink Floyd the Wall, a movie with a VERY flawed protagonist, yet one who is easy to root for.

"Basil of Baker Street" by Eve Titus

BOOK TITLE: Basil of Baker Street
AUTHOR: Eve Titus
YEAR: 1958
GENRE: Fiction
SUBGENRE: Children’s Mystery
GRADE: Fail

Listen…I know this is a children’s book and that certain liberties can be taken when it comes to judging the audience’s wisdom. Eve Titus didn’t have to be the second coming of David Baldacci, C.J. Box, or Brett Battles. But this kind of leniency is no excuse for insulting the intelligence of the readers. Yes, I know: Basil is a detective mouse and he’s modeled after Sherlock Holmes. To his credit, he’s got some serious deduction skills. Dawson, his assistant, could definitely learn a lot from him. While Basil does pick up on subtle clues that blend too easily in the background, there are some pieces of this mystery that aren’t so subtle, hence the insult to the readers’ intelligence and wisdom.

For example, let’s first look at the name of the kidnappers in question: The Terrible Three. Right off the bat, you know they’re the main villains of the story. And that’s really all the depth they’re given as characters. I understand that this is a short book and character development can’t always be achieved with so few pages. But please…at least TRY to make an effort at subterfuge. When we finally meet The Terrible Three, their villainy is never in doubt because of how angry and vulgar they act around other mice. If it wasn’t for the fact that their twin girl victims were missing, they could be arrested right away and there wouldn’t be a need for a story. There might not even be a kidnapping, the villains are so obvious.

And if the villains are going to send a messenger to do their dirty work, they might want to consider somebody who isn’t a nervous wreck all the time. Shuffling feet, shifting eyes, short answers, these are the telltale signs that they extorted Hawkins the sailor into delivering the ransom note. No subtlety there. In fact, I dare say that it doesn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to figure that out, much less a mouse that learns everything he knows from him.

Oh, I almost forgot about Basil. Never forget that he’s the world’s greatest mouse detective. If you need a reminder, the opening sentences of the book will tell you. Not show you. Tell you. That alone should be suspicious to a wise reader. You know what else would be? Basil being a complete Gary-Stu. He’s perfect in every way, not counting his horrendous violin playing. He only shows vulnerability once in this novella and that’s when he provokes The Terrible Three and a pack of minions into brawling with him and Dawson. Anybody want to guess how that fight turns out? Let’s see: two scrawny detectives versus a bunch of muscle-bound bruisers. Maybe Basil isn’t the brightest bulb in the drawer after all. But it was all part of a plan. Good for him. I’d hate to see what would happen if he botched that plan or if the Terrible Three and their minions were a little TOO aggressive in the brawl.

I guess I shouldn’t have had high hopes for this novella to begin with. Yes, it became a Disney movie. Yes, it has cute animals as characters instead of humans. But the writing is just plain insulting. I’m not even worried about the “wild Indian” and “good housewife” stereotypes, because those are nothing compared to a badly-written story. I can’t give this book anything more than two stars out of five. I wanted to like it, but I couldn’t. Sorry!

Gary-Stu

I spent a hundred years in the navy

The sexy siren is carrying my baby

I spent five decades in the marines

They all call me a fighting machine

I spent half a century in the army

No way could the enemy harm me

I spent ten years in the air force

I still don’t make sense, of course

I’m a Gary-Stu who’s lost at sea

Always carry machineguns with me

A battleaxe bigger than my body

Always imitated, but never copied

Except by those trying to make a buck

Make a fortune from negative luck

Put me in a videogame or paperback

I’m a macho man, genetically jacked

Everybody wants to buy my image

Everybody wants to laugh at critics

Everybody wants to look for tropes

Everybody’s given too much rope

Whatever happened to character depth?

Got slaughtered in a battle to the death

Everybody’s got their own little flaws

They don’t include too much brawn

They don’t include a nasty attitude

They don’t include a lazy aptitude

Three dimensional isn’t hard to achieve

All you have to do is make them believe

If a captain is going to be lost at sea

If a warrior is going to bleed, bleed, bleed

If a damsel in distress screams one last time

Put some reason in your fucked up rhyme

Average Joes vs. Beefy Warriors

***AVERAGE JOES VS. BEEFY WARRIORS***

When I first started out in the amateur writing business in 2001 (back when I told people my favorite author was Jack McKinney and they’d scratch their fucking heads in confusion), I always made sure that my main characters were super buff war machines capable of slashing and pounding everything into shit. My first attempt at a novel was a Starcraft-esque sci-fi adventure where the main character, Deljack, had muscles the size of cannonballs and an assault rifle bigger than his body. And then I moved onto a videogame idea called Final Fantasy Hardcore, where my protagonist was the ever popular Deus Shadowheart, a dual-wielding barbarian with a suit of power armor and even thicker muscles underneath in case he had to stop a nuclear missile from penetrating his skin.

Back in my teenage years, I didn’t see the problem with having such overpowered warriors as main characters. Videogames at the time had plenty of them with all the Akumas and Mike Haggars of the world. And then it wasn’t until the 2010’s when I started learning about Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. They are literary slurs for characters who are devoid of flaws and therefore don’t garner a lot of sympathy from the reader. After all, when you know in your heart of hearts that the Gary-Stu barbarian is going to win all the fucking time, it’s no fun to read about him. As a writer, you want your battles to be back and forth affairs where the protagonist loses every once and a while. For all of you rasslin’ buddies out there, more Daniel Bryans, less Hulk Hogans.

I didn’t start using average joe characters until I wrote my 2015 rough draft novel Watch You Burn. The lead character in that novel is Mario Bryan, a schizophrenic college student who spends more time watching cartoons than he does exercising. He’s socially awkward and sometimes dickish, but he’s well-meaning and has a good heart. Do you think a dork like Mario Bryan can overcome a nasty ogre who carries war hammers with the ease of pencils? Of course you don’t, which is why Mario has to work his ass off if he wants to achieve his end game.

Another first draft novel I’ve written, Demon Axe, also has a protagonist with an underdog story. Yes, Daniel Mercer a.k.a. the Lord of the Pit is a world famous rock star, but what does he really have as far as advantages go when he has to fight the ultra-powerful terrorist Roger Zee? Daniel’s only been in a handful of bar fights in his life, he’s easily traumatized, he’s also kind of dickish at times (like Mario Bryan before him), but Daniel has a heart of gold that will lead him through the dark times of politically-motivated violence.

Occupy Wrestling, I must confess, has a Gary-Stu as one of its main characters and his name is Mitch McLeod. He’s beefy, he’s badass, and he’s got a mean streak a mile wide. Rehabbing this character into something a little more sympathetic wasn’t easy, but hopefully the end result as you see it has paid off. Occupy Wrestling is currently on Amazon and other online retailers (not a shameless plug at all).

At first I thought writing about average joes instead of badass warriors was going to suck badly because I couldn’t think of any solutions to the average joes’ problems. But that’s what writing is all about: you’ve got to constantly think about how your story is going to play out. Sure, there are advice columns out there that will tell you to pour word vomit all over your page and let your beta readers and editors do the hard work. But even then, after all the word vomit is spilled, the job is far from over. It won’t be over until everything is polished and sparkling, part of which is owed to coming up with believable solutions to your characters’ problems. If you’ve read Occupy Wrestling and think I’m a hypocrite when I make these arguments, that’s a debate victory you can have all to yourself.

I’d like to think that beefy warrior stories are capable of being written without making the characters into Gary-Stus and Mary-Sues. I haven’t figured it out myself yet, but I know it can be done. The Wonder Woman movie that recently came out is a huge example of that. Yes, she’s a superheroine with badass powers, but she’s also a feminist icon with a female following worldwide, so she’s not much of a Mary-Sue. This is why we study characters at depth: because we want our audience to sympathize with our protagonists and therefore stay emotionally invested in our works. If your readers aren’t invested, why are they reading? We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***POISON TONGUE TALES 2: THE RIGHT TO REMAIN PSYCHOTIC***

My story for the WSS has been submitted, so now it’s time to work independently (or when the next contest starts up, whichever happens first). This next PTT2 story is called “Witch Hunt” and it goes like this:

CHARACTERS:

1.      Sonya Jade, Devon’s Best Friend

2.      Devon Cross, Accused Witch

3.      Random Group of Witch Hunters

PROMPT CONFORMITY: To be announced.

SYNOPSIS: In the middle ages, Sonya is at home cooking a delicious meal when her best friend Devon rushes in her house looking for a place to hide from witch hunters. Sonya believes Devon when the latter says her witch accusations are false and agrees to hide her underneath the master bed. Witch hunters show up at Sonya’s door with pitch forks and torches wondering where Devon is. Before the hunters have the chance to set fire to the house, Devon uses magic powers to fight them off, thus revealing she really is a witch and that she lied to Sonya about it.

***DARK FANTASY WARRIORS***

With this new crop of American Darkness 2 characters parading around in my drawing collection, I’ve been contemplating changing the name of this series from Dark Fantasy Warriors to something else. Not everybody who gets a drawing is part of the dark fantasy genre, much like Fatima Ruiz, who’s next on the chopping block. Fatima comes from the AD2 short story “How Could You?” and plays the role of a cartel boss’s daughter. She has no magical powers, just a bad attitude and a sexy mystique. I’ve certainly got my work cut out for me on this one. Wish me luck!

***CROSSOVER MOVIE DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

CHILDLIKE EMPRESS: Why won’t you do what you dream?

CRAZY K: ‘Cause I don’t give a fuck! I said I don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a fuck!

CHILDLIKE EMPRESS: Please! Save us!

CRAZY K: I don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a fuck! I don’t give a FUCK!

-Tales from the Hood X The Never Ending Story-

Sloppy Joe

VERSE 1

You’re a beta male on beta blockers

A fitness freak with the biggest knockers

A Mary Jane mind that’s off your rocker

Childish joker who plays the role of mocker

You think you’ve got bigger balls than soccer

As you put your hot pants in a tiny locker

You’ve got some nerve being such a shit talker

Your rabid obsession makes you a kind of stalker

CHORUS 1

Sloppy Joe, what the fuck do you know?

Are you smoking the pot or sniffing the blow?

Sloppy Joe, you do this all for the dough

For the biggest check you’d backstab your bros

VERSE 2

You Gary-Stus have become old news

Older than the days of bebop and blues

Changing the channel is what we choose

No need to waste a perfectly good fuse

On someone who brings on a good snooze

Or someone too big for his baby shoes

Your macho persona is all but a ruse

When every argument is yours to lose

CHORUS 2

Sloppy Joe, where the fuck did you go?

Do you have enough butt-hurt steam to blow?

Sloppy Joe, get out of the front row

Not even close to being the star of the show

VERSE 3

Barbarian warriors are turning in their graves

Even they’re disgusted by how you behave

They’re the bottom of the barrel, that’s saying a lot

A tough guy and super athlete you are not

A one-sided battle you barely even fought

You didn’t give this a whole lot of thought

If you open your mouth, don’t ever get caught

With tears in your eyes and a nose full of snot

CHORUS 3

Sloppy Joe, you must be mentally slow

Too many rocks that you came to throw

Sloppy Joe, it’s time for you to blow

Get off the stage, get off the show

Sloppy Joe, now where will you go?

Nobody wants to listen to you crow

Sloppy Joe, time to mature and grow

Don’t pick a fight with a stronger foe

Atlas Venom

NAME: Atlas Venom
AGE: 53
OCCUPATION: Dragon Barbarian
CANON: Zeromancer (both incarnations)


It shouldn’t be a secret anymore that my favorite character class in any RPG setting is the barbarian. It’s been that way since I’ve played Hero Quest in the early 1990’s, Diablo II in the early 2000’s, and Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Edition in 2010. I also happen to be a big fan of dragons. They’re big, they’re nasty, and they breathe fire. It wouldn’t matter if it was a real dragon or one in humanoid form, fuck it, I love them anyways.

What do you get when you combine a favorite class with a favorite race? You get Atlas Venom, Dragon Barbarian. He’s got the scales and fire breath of a dragon and the heavy metal armor and giant battleaxe of a barbarian. You talk about crossover heaven? That’s it, man. End of story. Atlas motherfucking Venom.

As you can tell from his canon, Zeromancer had two different incarnations. One of them was as a movie script in 2009, which served as a prequel to Tower of Heaven, Tower of Hell, and No Towers No Bullshit. Zeromancer explained the origins of the trench coat wearing and machete wielding magi assassins as well as those of the Demonic family bloodline.

But more importantly, it had Atlas Venom as a side character. He was everything you could ever want in a heroic ally: big, strong, powerful, and capable of mowing enemies down while creating a thunderstorm of blood around him. Of course, this was before I knew what a Gary-Stu was. Atlas was very much a Gary-Stu since he just appeared out of nowhere without a background story and only his fighting skills to lend to the party.

The other incarnation of Zeromancer was a four-act novel, each act containing a completely different set of characters only for them to come together in the fourth and final one. Atlas could have just as easily created a storm of blood with his battleaxe prowess and fiery breath. But since he was billed as the main villain of act one, if he did this, we’d have no characters. I often wondered what would have happened if Atlas just went nuts and flattened an entire continent full of people.

The heroes of act one were no slouches, don’t get me wrong. Kento Bladecaptain was a robotic knight who was just getting the hang of feeling emotions despite warnings against it from his dark magic masters Calco and Tazz. The two wizards were so pissed off with Kento that they actually aligned themselves with Atlas Venom.

So now we’ve got a pissed off dragon barbarian and two dark wizards who team up to kick the shit out of the good guys. If it wasn’t for the hyperbolic writing style I employed throughout this story, I could have had an epic confrontation here. Why would I ever think hyperbole was an acceptable writing style? Maybe in comedies, but not if I wanted to be taken seriously as an action-fantasy author.

If I ever decide to use this overly powerful Gary-Stu in my novels again, he’ll definitely be a villain and he’ll need some personality. It’s not enough for him to be a pissed off dragon barbarian who rages through entire planets and slaughters everyone in his path. He needs a reason. He needs strategies. He needs minions. If he was just a mindless berserker, he wouldn’t need to be called Atlas Venom. He could just be a nameless force of nature. But I don’t want that for Atlas. I want him to be a respectable villain.

For a villain of that power to be believable, we have to go back to his barbaric roots. I know I mentioned Hero Quest as one of my influences, but Diablo II was the biggest influence I had when it came to my love of barbarians. And Diablo II had a pain in the ass mega demon for a final boss: Diablo himself. This guy would shoot flame circles and streams of lightning at the players and kill them off instantly. He could do it forever and ever since enemies don’t have a mana pocket.

What made him even more dangerous was Diablo’s motivation: bringing evil to the world. The middle ages were already a tough time for a lot of people, but with Diablo at the helm, it’s nonstop hell. What if Atlas Venom had a similar motivation? What if his form of hellish evil was his barbarian tribe of disgustingly powerful monsters? He might even be able to steal a catchphrase: “Not even death can save you from me!” It’s not enough just to kill someone; Atlas has to send chills down their spine. He can do that if I give him the breathing room to.

One of the ways I made Atlas creepy in the second Zeromancer was by giving him the facial features of a clown. He was still a hideous dragon, but he had clown features as well with white face paint, a goofy nose, and colorful hair. As if clowns needed more reasons to be scary, right? Perhaps it was overkill. Perhaps it was me trying too hard to make him an intimidating villain. If I actually believed the latter, then that’s basically me surrendering to the idea that we can’t have dragon clown barbarians. I say we can. It’s possible if you picture it in your mind. Pennywise and Ronald McDonald would shit their pants at the sight of Atlas Venom if he adopted a clown gimmick. Ooo, talk dirty to me!

If I reincarnate Atlas Venom, I’m going to attempt to have my cake and eat it too. He fits every archetype I could ever love in a dark fantasy character, dragons, clowns, and barbarians aside. With this many archetypes, he could actually be a believable villain with the creepy dialogue and disgusting facial expressions. I believe in him!

　

***MOVIE DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

RESTAURANT MANAGER: Quit being a hero! You’re going to get us all killed! Give him what he wants so we can all get out of here!

JULES: Shut the fuck up, fat man! This ain’t none of your goddamn business!

-Pulp Fiction-

Finn Cosgrave

NAME: Finn Cosgrave
AGE: 28
OCCUPATION: Heavyweight Mixed-Martial Artist
CANON: It’s Just a Joke


I can be quoted as saying that people shouldn’t choose combative occupations for the sake of finding romance. If you join NCIS thinking you’re going to walk out with Ziva David as arm candy, you’re dead wrong. If you become a cast mate on The Ultimate Fighter, you ain’t leaving with Ronda Rousey. And if you join the FBI, the other half of your bed won’t be occupied by Dr. Temperance Brennan. Nobody knew this better than Finn Cosgrave. After all, he didn’t need distractions going into his match with Chris Johnson. Seeing as how Finn had lost three fights in a row, if he lost one more, he would be fired.

So if Finn Cosgrave is fighting for his career and making very little money doing so, why would a marketable female fighter named Zelda Lee want to flirt with him in the gym? She has championship gold around her waist and an undefeated streak to go with it. Shouldn’t she be chasing someone higher on the food chain? Maybe Zelda likes Finn for his “charming personality” even though they hardly know each other. Finn has the muscles and height to be a Gary-Stu, and yet he feels like he has a huge mountain to climb to deserve a woman like Zelda.

Even though the two of them are technically supposed to be cutting weight for their upcoming fights, Finn and Zelda eat at Subway anyways. While there, a horny fan asks for Zelda’s autograph and verbally abuses Finn. The newfound couple work together in verbally dismantling this loser fan and leaving him embarrassed and lonely. Somehow, this is all some sort of motivation tactic to Finn to train harder in the gym and eventually win his match against Chris Johnson, which he does and therefore keeps his job.

Here’s one of the things that made “It’s Just a Joke” so unrealistic in my eyes: so Finn fights his ass off to earn a knockout victory over Chris Johnson and keep his job. And then later in the evening, he quits. He quits because Zelda’s opponent for the evening, an Amazon lady named Cameron Gillespie, kills her with an illegal up kick. There’s no clarity as to whether Cameron will get suspended, fined, or even jailed for her actions. There’s even some blame being placed on the ref for not stopping the up kick earlier. Finn Cosgrave apparently doesn’t care where the blame goes, because he’s so disenfranchised with MMA that he wants to quit due to losing the “love of his life”.

Good for you, Finn. You’re standing up for what you believe in and you let the whole world know that you’re not to be fucked with. There’s just one problem: you’re unemployed and MMA is the thing you do best. So now what? What other options are there for Mr. Finn Cosgrave? Washing dishes? Pumping gas? Selling Little Debbie cakes? Or maybe he can go into professional wrestling where more people die there than in mixed-martial arts. And if Finn does live through it all, he’ll still have a permanently aching body, a relentless travel schedule, and weird ass storylines. He might have a little bit of a push due to his MMA background and his heavyweight build, but other than that, he won’t like the transition.

There are two routes I can go down with Finn Cosgrave should I decide to use him again in a short story or novel. One of them is to keep this background story and have his emotional profile made up ahead of time. The other is to give him a fresh start and have him be a typecast big guy such as a bouncer or a cop (because he’s technically a hero). Whatever role he has, he might have to take a backseat to someone else lest he be considered a Gary-Stu. He can be the Chewbacca to someone’s Han Solo or the Deus Shadowheart to someone’s April Farrow. I don’t know what Finn Cosgrave’s role will be in the future, but all I can say is when this emotionally charged train is on the tracks, you’d better move out of the way.

　

***ADVICE OF THE DAY***

If you’re unemployed or ashamed of your job, the next time someone asks you what you do for a living, tell them, “I work with underprivileged children in the Democratic Society of Who Gives a Fuck.” That’ll raise a few eyebrows, maybe get a few chuckles.

Kat Sexton

NAME: Kat Sexton

AGE: 27

OCCUPATION: Agent of the Flame

CANON: Fireball Nightmare

It happened yet again, folks: the alumni from Final Fantasy Hardcore couldn’t hold down a job after all. Deus Shadowheart, Dr. Scott Cain, Gail Reinhold, Rudiger Seran, all of those guys and more are out of work yet again. Kat Sexton was just making her literary debut in Fireball Nightmare and she wasn’t even around for a cup of coffee. How sad. How relentlessly sad. And by the way, Susan, her name is Kat Sexton, not Sexy Cat. And for the last time, those things on the end of her breasts aren’t called Cat Nips. Okay, that was my idea, so I’m pretty much talking to myself here.

In the first act of Fireball Nightmare, Kat Sexton was mentioned as the ex-girlfriend of the main character Deus Shadowheart. Deus was a loyal servant to the volcanic god Vahd (that rhymes), who threatened to destroy the world if his one singular forest was violated by land developers. Kat didn’t see the urgency in such a threat and decided to dump Deus. Kat wouldn’t be seen again until the second act, when Vahd really did carry out his threat after his forest burned to the ground at the hands of Dr. Scott Cain, one of my most popular villains.

The second act saw the world in fiery and lava-infested ruins. Red skies, red grounds, red rivers, and more importantly, red blood stains. Ironically enough, Kat joined a different religion from the one Deus was a part of. She signed up with a deity named Paladine and became the Agent of the Flame, which is one of the religion’s highest honors. Kat had one job: find the Lunar Crystal and drop it down Vahd’s blowhole, which will kill him and restore order to the world.

The entirety of act two was supposed to center around the romantic relationships of all seven main heroes. In Kat’s case, she was in a love triangle with Deus and Brutus Warcry, the latter of which was recycled from a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Kat desperately wanted to give Deus a second chance to right his wrongs, but Brutus was just the perfect guy for her. Two badass barbarians fighting over the same chick. Sounds like an episode of Cheaters: Dark Fantasy edition. The only difference is, neither Joey Greco nor Clark Gable III has the balls to get in between these three warriors. They know how fight and everyone around them will be dragged to their early grave in a pool of violence.

Unfortunately, the love triangle was never fully developed, because in the middle of act two, I decided to pull the plug on Fireball Nightmare. I thought long and hard about making that decision and it was still difficult to make. But it had to be done. The character roster consisted of Gary-Stus, Mary-Sues, and premature kamikazes. The only emotional quality to any of these characters was within their romantic lives, but the romance wasn’t believable, so it’s not much to hold onto. Kat was no exception to the Mary-Sue rule. She was a badass fighter and that’s about it. Not one visible flaw within or without her.

The other reason why Fireball Nightmare was a failure was because by the time the second act rolled along, there were seven heroes for me to baby-sit. I have a hard time getting into the heads of that many people. For future reference, I’m going to try and cut back on how many characters are in a given story. Watch You Burn, my current work in progress, has a three vs. three system of good and evil characters. Mario, Jessica, and Gryace are the heroes and Sage, Austin, and Cameron are the villains. Simple as that. No need for extra unneeded shit. If Fireball Nightmare was that simple, I might not have pulled the plug on it.

So what should we do with a girl like Kat Sexton? She can still be a martial arts badass with a cape, tank top, and cargo pants. She can still fight for the greater good. But if I can’t come up with any flaws for her, then she’ll have to be a side character and not the lead one. Ultimate badasses don’t have much to learn. Flawed characters do. Kat Sexton has a lot of potential in one of my future stories. But for now, she’ll have to keep her eyes glued to the want-ads.

Relatable Characters

I was surfing DeviantART’s daily deviation section one day and I found a gem in the form of a critique of typical internet stories. The premise was that every story he came across on the internet had the same basic plotline: the main character was a victim and every bad thing imaginable was happening to him or her. He went on to say that bad happenings were not enough to get the reader to give a damn about the main character. Harsh tone aside, the guy who wrote this editorial actually made a good point there. The question now is, how does an author make likable characters? To my understanding, a main character, no matter what the alignment, should NOT be perfect in every way and should have qualities that the reader would find interesting such as witty dialogue, an indomitable will, or even a sweet disposition. Suppose you had a big beefy barbarian who had a special place in his heart for puppies. That would make him more interesting. What if you had a super villain who made dark jokes that actually tickled funny bones more often than offended people. That might also be a reason to care. But in order to have these things in a main character, there has to be enough narration in the prose to develop him beyond the guy who has a lot of bad shit happen to him. Short stories, particularly in the flash fiction genre, don’t always allow the space for such development. So then what, Mr. Snappy Pants? Do short story authors just fuck off from the face of the internet? Bzzt! Wrong! They do what UFC commentator Joe Rogan likes to call “fighting in a phone booth”, which means make the most of the space you’re granted. Perhaps that would mean expanding a short story beyond the 2000 or 5000 word limit. But you could get the job done. Your sanity depends on it. Judging from the aggression in the daily deviation author’s voice, you can’t afford to make huge mistakes. In that case, do as much horrible shit to your main character as possible. It may be your only chance despite going against Mr. Drill Instructor’s advice. If you need help editing your story afterwards, seek the council of someone with the disposition of a baby bunny. I’ll bet you anything that the editor you seek out will give you a set of questions to answer within the space of your prose and once you have those questions emphatically answered, everything will work out right and you may get published. While this may not have been the most entertaining blog post I’ve done, I hope it was one of the more helpful ones. In the end, that’s pretty much all that counts.

　

***MOVIE QUOTE OF THE DAY***

“You get me slapped with a fine, you argue with the customers and I have to patch everything up, you get us thrown out of a funeral home for violating a corpse, and to top it all off, you ruin my relationship! What is your encore?! Do you anally rape my mother while pouring sugar in my gas tank?!”

-Dante Hicks from “Clerks”-