Thank You, Deb Krishnadasan, for Kicking Michelle Caldier's Ass on Election Day, Yours Truly, Garrison the Autistic Schizophrenic

 

Michael & Debi Pearl: Child Beaters Extraordinaire

 

Bullet With a Name On It

…I’m not a violent person. I don’t carry a gun with me at all times. The last time I got in a fight was in high school. It was a miserable defeat to a guy who mounted my chest and punched me so many times that I got a black eye, numb cheeks, and chewing difficulties. One of the administrators cracked a terrible joke about how I was a lover and not a fighter. I’d expect that kind of humor in the UFC or WWE, but not at school. But I suppose there was some truth in that joke, because ever since that day, I’ve responded to any amount of stress the same way: freezing like Walt Disney eating a popsicle in the middle of a tundra. Fight and flight are gone. Freezing is all that remains. Staying perfectly still and not being confrontational is supposed to be a survival mechanism. But what am I surviving?

 

While I don’t have a violent life or a criminal history of any kind…I have so many violent thoughts swirling in my head. So many people have taken advantage of my freezing response and said whatever the hell they wanted, like the first amendment was made specifically for assholes. No amethyst colors here, just red, white, and blue. I’ve been fat-shamed, called the R-slur, called a pussy for not joining the military, I’ve had slanderous rumors spread about me, and I’ve been accused of laziness when I didn’t want to get a job and go to school at the same time. These people who abused their first amendment rights…they bear the brunt of these violent thoughts. So...many…violent…thoughts…

 

Punches in bunches. Sprawling and brawling. Knees to the face. Kicks to the balls. Maybe a piledriver if I’m feeling strong that day. Hell, let’s go full UFC and throw in a rear naked chokehold. In my brain I’m undefeated, even against well-trained marines and martial arts blackbelts. I justify these victories by saying, “Whose dick did they have to suck in order to get those accolades?” I’m sure they can explain the bruises on their faces, but how will they explain the bruises on the inside of their mouths to their dentist? Dentists can tell what you’ve been up to in the bedroom. Or under the sensei’s desk, wherever you feel more comfortable.

 

But it’s not just unarmed brawling that I fantasize about. Sometimes I’m armed and dangerous. Sometimes I’ve got a big fucking knife. Sometimes I justify those knife victories by saying, “A blackbelt doesn’t give you puncture-proof skin.” Come to think of it…what is a blackbelt good for anyways? Holding up your pants so that we don’t have to look at your Sailor Moon crotchless panties? That kind of intimate wear would never withstand a few strokes from a big ass knife. And neither would your skin. Just hack, slash, hack, slash, an arm there, a leg there, a throat somewhere else, and a glorious bloodbath that will never make me want to shower ever again.

 

But why is it just melee ranged weapons? Why I can’t I shoot a gun? Surely, it can’t be that hard to shoot a gun. It’s like using America Online: point and click. Maybe I’m oversimplifying complicated technology, but remember, it’s my brain, I’m undefeated. If some bozo driving an obnoxiously large truck drives by me and shouts the F-slur, I’ve got a bullet with his name on it. It’s weird to think about, because in order to have a bullet with somebody’s name on it, I have to know that person’s name. Drive-by loudmouths don’t give you their name or any information about them. That’s a big part of what makes them cowards. Not only do they shout their shit, but they drive away before facing any real consequences. Sure, your truck has a badass engine, but can your truck outrun a bullet? Will a V8 engine matter if there’s a bullet in the gas tank? Will all the horsepower in the world matter if the bullet shatters glass and that glass cuts you up? And what good is driving a truck if the driver gets shot and the vehicle flips on its back? Drive-by loudmouths don’t think about these things in advance. Then again, I wouldn’t call anything they do thinking.

 

Violent fantasies are so much fun to have. I love bathing in blood. I love listening to screams. I love the symphonic melodies of bones snapping and organs sloshing. I love listening to my insulters plead for their lives only to lose them anyways. But it’s important to remember that these are fantasies. They don’t exist outside of my brain. If they did, there would be serious consequences. Seeing this many dead bodies would break so many hearts. I’d have my own broken heart as I sit alone in a prison cell with regret on my mind. That’s what you have to remember as you go through life with an imagination: fantasy and reality are not one in the same. That’s why people caution against porn being unrealistic. Porn isn’t designed to tell a realistic story. It has one purpose: to help masturbators achieve an orgasm by any means necessary. If you can’t separate fantasy from reality, you’re already waiting to get fucked.

 

So go ahead and listen to gangsta rap on repeat. Dream of killing your enemies in cold blood. Drink that cold blood like it’s as refreshing as Coca-Cola. Hell, you can even write about some of these daydreams in your stories if you’re an author of some sort. But that comes with its own set of responsibilities. As authors, everything you put on the paper is held in high esteem. Your readers will take everything you say literally and they’ll apply it to their own way of thinking. That doesn’t mean they’re stupid, but they are impressionable. If you’re being held up as an arbiter of truth and you tell a bunch of violent or sexual lies, that’s going to have a bad influence on your readers. Think of all the BDSM rookies who wound up in the hospital after reading Fifty Shades of Grey. Think of all the women who will get pregnant because of birth control misinformation in The Missus, which is written by the same author. You can have your bloody fantasies on paper, but don’t lead your audience astray.

 

If you’re watching Quentin Tarantino movies, don’t duct tape your enemy to a chair and cut his ear off while dancing to 70’s music. If you’re watching WWE television from the 2000’s, don’t simulate sex with a corpse as a way of insulting someone who wronged you. If you’re watching Mind of Mencia and I hope to god you’re not, don’t throw racial slurs haphazardly and then later wonder why you’re being “canceled”. And by the way, cancel culture isn’t real. If you write a shitty story chock full of irresponsible violence and rape, your audience has the right to react in a negative way, because criticism isn’t censorship. Criticism is the other half of free speech.

 

If you must have violent fantasies, reign them in. Don’t unleash them out into the real world. If you’re a peaceful guy in real life, but you have violent fantasies, don’t let anybody judge you for it. Truth is, everybody thinks about violence at least once in their life. At least once, don’t let them lie to you. Nobody’s this candid about their violent fantasies, but we all have them. Some are more mild than others, but they still exist. It’s a normal part of the human experience. Thinking about something is a healthy way to process it. Thinking is the best way to travel. Doing these things in real life will cause so much heartache, for you and your victims. And for the love of god…don’t join the military just because you happen to be good at playing Halo.

A Chosen Destiny by Drew McIntyre

BOOK TITLE: A Chosen Destiny

AUTHOR: Drew McIntyre (ghostwritten by Sarah Edworthy)

YEAR: 2021

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Wrestling Memoir

GRADE: B

If you’ve watched WWE from the late 2000’s to the 2020’s, you’ve seen the Scottish Psychopath Drew McIntyre on your screen, whether he was an arrogant heel, a brawling monster, or the WWE Champion during the pandemic era. If you want to hear his turbulent story about how he got to that pinnacle and all the obstacles between him and glory, you’ve cracked open the right book. I need to warn you, though, that this book reads like a lot of pro-wrestlers’ memoirs: a childhood dream turned reality with an overabundance of show-don’t-tell violations. Emotional moments that deserved time to breathe barely get a few sentences to describe how Drew was feeling in that moment, which is a shame considering some of the trauma he went through. “I was angry.” “I was sad.” “I wanted to wreck everything.” Not all of the writing is like this, but most of it is. That’s to be expected from celebrity memoirs. If that kind of milk-toast style bothers you or you’re not already part of the wrestling bubble, you may want to keep this book shelved. Otherwise, enjoy the ride!

If you can excuse the bland writing style, then you might be moved by some of these legitimately heartbreaking stories he tells. Winning the WWE Championship in an empty warehouse with no fans to cheer him on is the ultimate bittersweet moment in his career. It’s not nearly as soul-crushing as losing his physically disabled, yet highly optimistic mother to cancer in the middle of his WWE career. Or how about the time when he kept showing up to work plastered because alcohol was the only thing that brought him peace? What about the time when he was fired from WWE along with nine other wrestlers like he was an expendable foot soldier? These are all moments that would destroy any reader if they were explored in depth and with a more descriptive ghostwriter. They still tug at the heartstrings. They still hit me where it hurts. But like I said in the first paragraph, these legitimately painful moments needed time to breathe and develop. Just like Drew was robbed of his Wrestlemania crowd pop, we were robbed of a face full of tears. How’s that for irony?

I wrestled with myself (no pun intended) when trying to decide between a B or a C grade for this memoir. Ultimately, I settled on a B, because Drew McIntyre has an interesting enough life to justify penning a memoir. The way he talks about his obsession with wrestling as a kid and how he brought that fandom into his everyday life? That’s the stuff dreams are made of. Completely transforming his diet and lifestyle after getting fired by WWE? That and touring relentlessly on the indie circuit was exactly what he needed to get back into the company. Getting cheered on by his family in Scotland and his wife in America? That’s what kept him going every night. And then he eventually won the WWE Championship, but that, according to him, was only the beginning of much bigger plans. His newfound work ethic was an admirable thing to see in his process of maturity. But again, it would have meant more with better writing.

A Chosen Destiny is an interesting read, but only if you already follow wrestling. Maybe that was the whole point behind the marketing techniques. Maybe it doesn’t have to be massively appealing to be successful. Should I be more forgiving of books that have a super-niche audience? I’d like to think that’s a good idea. Maybe that’s why I’m being generous with my B grade instead of dropping it to a C. It is a good book for what it is, but I would only recommend it to other wrestling fans. In that respect, the memoir did its job. Drew McIntyre, on the other hand, will hopefully never have to do a long string of jobs ever again. Wrestling fans know what that means.

Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover's Soul

BOOK TITLE: Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul

AUTHORS: Various

YEAR: 1998

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Animal Shorts

GRADE: B

This book was published in the late 90’s and over two decades later, it has come into my life to comfort me with cute and cuddly animal stories. We all need stories like these during the 2020’s. We need to hear about German Shepherds who not only detect bombs in a war zone, but also comfort the soldiers during times of stress. We crave stories about dogs who repay a doctor’s kindness by protecting him from angry hyenas. Even those who never considered owning a python for a pet will have their hearts melted at the story of one bringing love and joy to a child with muscular dystrophy. Animals of all kinds are welcome into this collection of stories as long as they warm hearts quicker than a bowl of chicken noodle soup. The book should get an A+ just for that alone.

But the reason it gets a B today is because some of these stories have not aged well, which is an unfortunate consequence of publishing media in the 1990’s. There’s a story that glorifies selling baby horses to the circus, which as we know now is not a healthy environment for any animal due to their abusive treatment. Okay, maybe information was limited back then. There’s another story that glorifies pet shops, which we now know where they get their animals from: mills. Again, maybe not a whole lot was known about pet shop practices back in the day. However, there’s one story told by Gilda Radner about her on and off again relationship with Gene Wilder. In response to Gene finally pulling the plug on their relationship, Gilda’s dog eats a bunch of rat poison and suddenly Gene is convinced to return to a marriage he never wanted. This is passed off as cutesy-wutesy, but if this happened in a Jamie McGuire or Anna Todd novel, people would rightfully be upset. The optics aren’t very good here, but it’s not enough for me to judge the book too harshly.

And then there are stories dedicated to saying goodbye to our beloved babies which are heartbreaking in their own way, but the optics are much better by comparison. This is the good kind of pain, where your faith in owning animals is restored despite the deaths. While the writing style of these stories overall could be described as beige prose, they are very effective in making the reader cry as painfully as the characters being presented. I came very close to doing that several times in this section of the book. It can’t all be rainbows and sunshine, even in a book with Chicken Soup in the title. Death is the price of love. It’s something all pet owners will have to come to grips with. These gentle stories will gladly help you along your journey through a difficult time. See? I told you I couldn’t judge the book too harshly.

One more thing I’d like to touch on is how these stories feel complete despite their brevity. Usually with nonfiction writing, anecdotal storytelling is the norm. But in these stories, you’ve got character development, a plot arc, a beginning, a middle, and an end. One example of this is a story about a bitter wheelchair user named Corey, who was permanently paralyzed after a brutal car accident, which left him without a baseball career. But he found new life again when he sought the comfort of animals. In that short space, he went from a whiny jerk to an understanding and empathetic person with a new lease on life. Corey’s story isn’t the only one that does this. There’s another about a grumpy father who becomes less grumpy at the presence of an old dog. This even encourages him to make new friends at church and fully realize his character arc. How cool is that?

There’s something for everybody in this collection of short stories, despite the glaring flaws. Maybe you’re reluctant about adopting a pet and need some convincing. I’m sure this book will do just that for you. Maybe you need to rest easy after an animal-related hardship. Guess what? This book is here for you. Don’t even worry about the Christian overtones if you’re not religious; it doesn’t come off as forceful or heavy-handed. By all means, cuddle up with your favorite creature and read until it’s over. I give this collection of sweetness a B grade. Not bad at all! In fact, you’ll love it to pieces!

Dear Aunt Ruth

Dear Aunt Ruth,

Thank you so much for the $20 check you sent me for Christmas. I haven’t decided what I’ll spend it on yet, but I guarantee it’ll go to a good place. That’s one New Year’s resolution that’s impossible for me to break. I’m well on my way to recovering from the flu I picked up earlier this month, so that means I’ll actually be able to go out and have a good time for a change. Or maybe I can spend it online and enjoy my snuggle time with my kitty daughter Piper. Since you’re always asking about the weather, it’s just rainy enough here in Washington State that I’ll have lots of opportunities to hunker down with one of my creative outlets. Writing you this letter is one of them.

Speaking of creative outlets, the year 2022 was a very slow one for me in terms of productivity. I can’t promise 2023 will be any different, but for the time being, I’ve got plenty to keep me busy on the days when I have even a modicum of energy. I only have two more character sheets to create before I’m ready to rewrite and edit Beautiful Monster for the fourth time. The two characters in question are the Savage twins: Christian and Kody (in case their redneck roots were ever in doubt). They’re both employees of the far-right mercenary group Shadow Asylum and they wouldn’t be out of place at the Crawford County Fare (which is still not progressive enough for my tastes as Cousin Liesl can attest to). They may be minor role characters, but they still deserve to have their back-stories fleshed out so that they won’t come across as cardboard cutouts to whoever’s reading about them. That’s the ultimate goal of my character sheets and world-building: to actually figure out what the hell I’m doing instead of writing from the seat of my pants. Wish me luck!

Reading has also been a slowly, but surely endeavor of mine, so much so that I consider it to be part of my creative work since it’s training me how to write. I’m currently 98 pages into Chicken Soup for the Pet Lover’s Soul, which is every bit as sweet and cuddly as one could expect from a book about animals. There’s a story about transporting an old doggy named Snoopy back to her family in Ohio via the “puppy express”. There’s a story about a three-legged cheetah inspiring a physically disabled former baseball player that there’s more to life than sulking around. There’s a story about giving a homeless man and his doggies some food to make it through another night on the streets. I’m only a quarter of the way through the book and already I’ve got aww’s to last me for a lifetime. But just like with most media published in the 1990’s, there are a few stories that haven’t aged very well, particularly ones about pet stores, selling horses to the circus, and a dog “purposefully” eating rat poison so that Gene Wilder will finally marry the dog’s owner. I still plan on reading through until the end to get my fill of otherwise lovable moments. I need those lovey-dovey moments now more than ever in the 2020’s.

And of course, I can’t stay barricaded in Piper’s Queendom forever, because later in March, I’m going to a Soulfly concert with James. It’ll be my fifth time seeing them and James’s second time. I’ve been listening to them since 2006 and I have all twelve of their albums. If they make a thirteenth, fourteenth, or fifteenth album, I’ll buy those too. Heavy metal has always been my go-to music whenever I need to get hyped up. I’ll have to stay outside the concert’s mosh pit, however, since those are notoriously rough during Soulfly shows. The event will take place at El Corazon, a nightclub in Seattle that has hosted Soulfly before as well as other bands like Hellyeah, Pop Evil, and Starset. Four bands that have very little in common and they’ve all passed through El Corazon’s doors. What will be my next show after this one? I don’t know yet, but hopefully it’ll be just as fun as seeing Soulfly for a fifth time. Rock concerts are therapy for me. I’ve also referred to them as holy pilgrimages, with the venue being the metaphorical temple. Seems accurate.

I’d love to tell you more about my 2023, but one novel is enough. I’ve also got a series of multi-chapter short stories to write, some movies to watch and review, Lego sets to build, characters to draw, I’ve got a lot on my plate and I’m glad that I do. Life would be pretty dull if all I did was work on one thing through it all. The best characters in fiction are the ones that have multiple interests, hobbies, and dreams instead of just one. The same could be said for real life people as well. We are all three-dimensional characters in this life with our own back-stories and original thoughts. Hopefully, this novel will have a happy ending for all of us.

Love,

Garrison

Creative Crossroads

So…today marks the one year anniversary of when I got my critiques for the third draft of my fantasy novel Beautiful Monster. Ever since then, the quest to rebuild it from the ground up has gone…slowly. I’ve written back stories for Honey Valley (the main setting) and the Magetan religion (part of the elven culture). I’ve also created character sheets for anybody with a first and last name so that I can keep their extreme tendencies in check. I’ve taken several trips to Google Land so that I can learn more about the psychological aspects of my story. But as far as editing and rewriting the actual novel goes, that shit hasn’t happened yet. I’m taking plotting instead of pantsing more seriously this time around and I don’t want to fuck up on an apocalyptic scale like I did last time.

But here’s where my creative crossroads come into play. You see, the reason progress has been so slow on Beautiful Monster is because of all the mental exhaustion I’ve been experiencing throughout the year, which I owe to autism burnout, schizophrenic avolition, and the world being a general cluster-fuck of tiring news. Any little bursts of energy I do have are spent on other projects such as book and movie reviews, poetry, shorts, etc. I wear a lot of hats as a writer, but I only have one head. The creative process would be much easier if I was a hydra or a hellhound.

Beautiful Monster is a long-term project that will extend beyond draft number four. The last time I published something tangible on paper was in 2020, when I submitted Emilio & Marigold to the Hollow Hills anthology Raining Cats & Dogs. The last time I published something on my own was in 2018 and that was my third poetry collection Lunatic Justice. I’m not saying I’m in a rush to continue my legacy of publishing, but if Beautiful Monster isn’t going to see the light of day for a long time, it’d be nice to have something to tide me over until then.

I have a backlog of short stories and poems that could easily fit into another collection. I have 78 fantasy shorts, 69 nonfiction shorts, 83 contemporary shorts, and 252 poems that are just sitting in my folder doing nothing. Shorts and poems are less time-consuming to edit and rewrite since there’s less to keep track of than a full-length novel. But I also realize that some of these shorts and poems have aged poorly throughout the years and shouldn’t go into any collection whatsoever. Hell, Keith Richards drinking a jug of expired milk has aged more gracefully than some of my creative writing pieces. 

The best thing to do about this backlog is to hire beta readers to look them over and see which pieces will make the cut and which ones won’t. I’m also keeping my ears open to any suggestions on how the ones that have aged badly can become the best versions of themselves they can be. Don’t kill a bad story; fix it. But as I look at the prices of some of these services, I’m wondering how much it would cost to do fifty micro-stories or a hundred poems in succession, which is how these collections are going to be packaged. Would I be charged per poem or story? If so, how much would fifty or a hundred of them cost if there’s a minimum price? And now I feel like I’m a contestant on the Price Is Right. I better not overbid or else those sad horns will blast in my ears.

Here’s what I need advice on. Should I reduce the number of hats I wear as a writer and focus specifically on Beautiful Monster or should I take a minor detour and put out another collection just to keep my workload from becoming monotonous? Ultimately, it is my decision on what I want to do, but it’d be nice to hear other opinions as well. What do you guys think?

"Maus II" by Art Spiegelman

BOOK TITLE: Maus II: A Survivor’s Tale: And Here My Troubles Began

AUTHOR: Art Spiegelman

YEAR: 1991

GENRE: Graphic Novel

SUBGENRE: Holocaust Memoir

GRADE: A

Under no circumstances should this memoir be banned from school libraries, or anywhere else for that matter. Yes, it is an insanely uncomfortable read. It shows Jewish mice being burned in ovens, beaten, starved, traumatized, shot, all in the name of blind bigotry by the Nazi regime. This book is disturbing, disgusting, and horrifying all at once. You know why that is? Because the Holocaust was disturbing, disgusting, and horrifying all at once. This is probably the most honest portrayal of history’s worst behavior you’ll ever see. It’s honest because the author’s father experienced it all. There are no punches pulled. There is no sugar-coating or whitewashing. Just brutal honesty, because the subject matter will always be brutal no matter which angle you look at it from. A sanitized version wouldn’t have had the same emotional impact. When I read up to page 75, I was so disturbed by the Nazis’ violence that I got dizzy afterwards. I’ve been disturbed lots of times, but this is the first time it has ever made me light-headed. To all the people wanting to ban this book for “naked mice” and “swearing”, it was never about those things. The book bans have more to do with suppressing important messages and keeping the masses ignorant so that they’ll be more likely to vote for people who care only about making themselves richer.

Equally heartbreaking was watching Art Spiegelman’s mental process throughout creating this comic in his father’s honor. He had over twenty hours of tape-recorded conversations with his father and it wore on him after a while. Impostor Syndrome crept up on him for not being “realistic” enough or “doing him justice”. The secondhand trauma also sent him into a depressive spiral. The constant questions and prying from the media made him want to bawl his eyes out like a child crying out for his mommy, a Holocaust-surviving mommy who killed herself because of overwhelming PTSD. It’s a lot to take in all at once, not just for the reader, but also for the author. If Art was a fictional character, he would be instantly praised as being three-dimensional. His father would receive such praise as a character as well, doing what he had to do to survive the concentration camps while starving to death and being sick with Typhus. It doesn’t matter what page you turn to in this graphic novel, because there will never not be a heartbreaking moment to read about.

Let’s talk for a little bit about Art Spiegelman’s choice to use anthropomorphic animals to depict various ethnicities. It is called Maus, after all. He chose mice to represent Jewish people, because rodents were a common slur for Nazis to use. The Germans soldiers, of course, were depicted as cats, notorious hunters of rodents. Americans were depicted as dogs, playing into that old trope of dogs and cats not getting along. These aren’t the only examples, but using animals is a genius move on the author’s part. It’s not just an attempt at being cute; these animals have symbolic meanings. Every choice Spiegelman made in this novel had a purpose of some kind; nothing was left to chance. As pressured as he was to get his father’s story out there, no one can accuse the author of not knowing what he was doing. That is the mark of any good author: when everything has a reason for being there.

Maus II is easily the most frightening book I’ve ever read. I’ve read plenty of fictional horror stories and bloody fantasy novels over the years, but this is nonfiction in its rawest state. This isn’t a 140-page edge-fest; this topic was handled with great sensitivity despite its horrifying nature. I would advise anybody reading this review or either of the Maus books to handle the Holocaust with sensitivity as well. Edgy alt-right jokes are not funny and I don’t want them anywhere near me. The ones who punch down like that have never had a single hardship in their lives, let alone anything equivalent to living in a concentration camp. Maybe the Maus series will make SJW’s out of us all and I’d be very much onboard with that. Five stars out of five is what this graphic novel gets.

Monuments of Cringe

There are certain parts of your past where you should not plant your flagpole. There are certain hills you don’t want to die on. There are certain dumpster fires in your life that will burn you so badly that your ashes will blow away like a fart in the wind. The other day I discovered one of mine that I’m probably going to regret sharing with the world. I signed up for a Letterboxd account so that I could have a place to post my movie reviews. One of those reviews was for the 1985 film adaptation of Clue. I wrote this review when I was thirty years old, so I should have been mature enough to not go through with this horrible shit. But in this review, I…um…I, uh…laughed at Miss Scarlet’s “fruit” joke about Mr. Green (who’s gay) and I…suggested that it’s okay to ogle Yvette the Maid before you realize what she looks like now that she’s older.

That Clue review was what I like to call a Monument of Cringe, of which I have thousands of all over the internet. I read what I wrote and I cringed in disgust. My face was the color of zerg piss. My body shivered like someone dropped a toaster in my bathtub. My insides melted into whale slurry at the thought of someone eventually finding this review and broadcasting it out the world. And then the internet celebrates my past mistake with the hashtag “Garrison Kelly Is Over Party”, although my writing career won’t be derailed because I never went far to begin with. I’m grateful to have a small audience. But what if it grows overnight and they wade through this museum of cringe together? All of my embarrassment broadcast for the world to see. Hell, I probably said some embarrassing shit in this essay right now that I’ll get raked over the coals because of.

So what do you do when you realize that you have Monuments of Cringe all over the internet? What do you do when you realize your own published books are Stonehenges of Cringe? What do you do when you realize you built an entire legacy out of being disgusting and horrible in the way you’ve written? Nothing. You don’t delete your entire social media presence. You don’t pull your books off the shelves. If you must apologize to your audience, do so in a genuine and heartfelt way. Don’t make excuses. Remind your audience that they deserve better behavior from someone they look up to. And when you promise to keep growing, keep that promise and be the best version of yourself that you can be.

Because the truth is, a lot of art from the past doesn’t age well. Remember Ace Ventura: Pet Detective? Remember how the audience hee-hawed when they discovered that Einhorn had a boner in her underwear? Well, if you’ve made any effort to unlearn that behavior, you’ll see that transphobia is more harmful than funny and should therefore stay out of comedy forever. Remember all those jokes you heard from Boomer comedians about how much they hate their wives? Remember when the ultra-fat dinner guest ate the “wafer-thin mint” in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life and then exploded all over the restaurant? Do you know why these things and many other pieces of media are now considered Monuments of Cringe? Because we’re (hopefully) learning more about the world around us. The more we learn, the more we apply it. And the more we apply it and grow into better people, the less likely we are to hold onto piss-poor nostalgia. That’s how life works: it progresses into the future.

I’ve decided after spiraling into disgust at my own past, I’m going to keep my Monuments of Cringe up. Not only do I have so many of them out there that I can’t get rid of them all, but I continue to create them in the present day and there will come a time when they age badly too. Learning to be a better person isn’t something that stops happening when you get to a certain point. It keeps going and going until the day you’re lowered into a wooden box with RIP scrawled across it. You can’t change the past no matter how hard you try. Yes, people will willingly see the ugliest parts of you before they see the best. But for every zergling and goblin that eats you alive, there are even more people who love you. You have to go out of your way to find them, but love is there if you look for it. Hell, there are people who still love J.K. Rowling even though she’s a transphobic bastard. There’s hope for you yet if you have even half the number of Monuments of Cringe that I do.

Perfection is a myth. Everybody has something they’re not proud of. Those who work on atoning for their worst behavior will successfully do so. Those who can’t admit it when they’ve fucked up? Well, let’s just say the over party will be complete with a disco ball and a bowl full of cheese dip. I’m telling you all now that if you happen to stumble upon my Monuments of Cringe and you think the worst of me, I apologize with all of my heart. If it’s years after the fact and another person finds them, I’ll apologize again. And if the future continues to roll on and I get called out for it again, I’ll apologize again. And again. And again. And again. While it is true that you can’t please everybody, you should at least try to be a halfway decent person even if perfection is indeed a myth. You may feel like you’re being looked at under a microscope. I do too sometimes. But if you think you feel alone, try being in the shoes of someone you’ve disenfranchised with your worst behavior.

But if you must hold an over party in my name, at least bring refreshments. Bring lots of Diet Coke. Bring enough pizzas to touch the ceiling. Bring enough bags of potato chips to give me the heart attack you’ve always wanted me to have. While I am sorry for every horrible thing I’ve said over my lifetime, I do indeed have a life to live. Will I live it with you? Will we eat potato chips together and dip them in a wading pool full of sour cream? Will we shove giant handfuls of cake in our mouths and talk about the world together (not with our mouths full, of course)? When I’m done atoning for my sins, I want to party with all of you. The Garrison Kelly over party has a conga line that I’ll gladly lead. Let’s party like it’s…a year that hopefully aged better than whatever god awful nonsense the 80’s and 90’s were. But if you ask me, I’ve erected more Monuments of Cringe in the 2000’s than at any point in my career. Remember Deus Shadowheart and Dr. Scott Cain? No? Good, let’s keep it that way.

Problematic Authors

(sigh)…I need some advice from internet land. What I don’t need is to be called a “woke snowflake” and anybody who says something to that effect will be permanently booted from my immediate vicinity. I have two whole bookcases full of unread books and some of those books were written by authors of…questionable character. Do I read those books anyways? Do I mercilessly roast the authors who wrote them when I do my online reviews? Do I sell the books online or donate them to either a library or a thrift store? In case you’re wondering which books I’m talking about, here’s a brief list of what I’ve got:

1. “Al Franken: Giant of the Senate” by Al Franken

2. “Bobby Kennedy” by Chris Matthews

3. “Book of Guys, The” by Garrison Keillor

4. “Cuckoo’s Calling” by Robert Galbraith

5. “Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” by JK Rowling

6. “God Delusion, The” by Richard Dawkins

7. “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” by JK Rowling

8. “House of Dragons” by Jessica Cluess

9. “Rush Limbaugh Is a Big Fat Idiot” by Al Franken

Now…you’ll notice right away that conspicuous by their absences are Frank Miller and CJ Box. You could call that hypocrisy on my part. You could say that I don’t have a consistent gage for what I consider to be toxic behavior. Or you could say that you know you done fucked up as an author when you’re considered more toxic than Frank Miller and CJ Box. As far as I know, CJ Box hasn’t tried to grope women in public. Frank Miller seems remorseful over some of his bad comics, as opposed to covering his own ass like Jessica Cluess. What do you guys make of all this? And remember: be respectful in the comments section. I know this isn’t everyone’s favorite topic, so if you don’t have anything cool to say, then skip over this post.

IDK

We’re not damsels in distress. We’re not Mary-Sues and Gary-Stus. We’re not femme fatales. Whether we see each other this way or not, everybody in this lifetime is a three-dimensional character. One of the many things that make a character three-dimensional is a goal or an ambition, more than one, in fact. Why do you think we’re so prepared at job interviews whenever the boss man asks us where we see ourselves in ten years? It should be a piece of cake for me to know where I want to go with my writing career. I’m living in this body, so I know where all the brain neurons lead to. Therefore…my ultimate goal for my writing career is…uh…actually, it’s…(sigh)…

IDK, which either means I Don’t Know or I Decay, depending on how often you listen to Gemini Syndrome. As a burned out, low-energy sad sap, IDK is something I say quite often when confronted with questions ranging from the most difficult to bare-bones simplicity. “What are your plans for the day?” IDK. “Where’s your brother?” IDK. “How come you don’t know?” IDK. “What do you want to do with your writing career?” IDK. That last one is how we got to this essay. There are many reasons for wanting a writing career and all of them are valid. But the trick is finding which one suits you the best. I used to think I had a grip on it all, but then expectations vs. reality gave me the world’s hardest kick in the nuts. What once were good reasons for me don’t seem logical in today’s life, especially when factoring in mental health and financial resources.

So…what’s one common reason why people start a writing career? Fortune and fame? Sure, why not. If Stephen King can build an empire of cash, surely I could too. If JK Rowling can build a throne of bones that came from transgender people…wait a minute, bad example, never mind. Surely my skills could skyrocket me into the stratosphere and have me floating in space like Major Tom from a David Bowie song. Right? Well, I hate to burst your space man bubble helmet, but the authors who do go on to become legends are in a tiny minority. Everybody’s heard of Stephen King, but hardly anybody I talk to has heard of Brett Battles, a thriller author whose work inspired me to become a born-again bookworm. Brett Battles can crank out bangers, so why isn’t he Scrooge McDucking a pool of gold coins? Because meritocracy is a myth, that’s why.

But even if I could achieve worldwide fame where everybody knows my name like a Cheers character, not all of those people are going to love me or what I do. In fact, there are going to be a lot of trolls lurking in the shadows waiting to plant suicidal seeds in my head which eventually sprout into full-on schizophrenic hallucinations. There could be thousands of five-star reviews for one of my books, but if one hideous creep tells me I should get sodomized in prison, then my brain will self-destruct and spiral into ashes. Take that one bastard’s words and multiply them across billions of people. My head could explode just from the stress alone and so could my heart. Sensory overload isn’t good for an autistic brain with multiple mental illnesses. They call it meat with electricity inside for a reason, though it’s closer to soggy bacon or tapioca pudding.

And of course, that much fame surely has to come with billions of dollars, right? I should be able to buy Twitter with that much money and tell Elon Musk to eat a dick that looks like a space rocket. But when I think about it, do I really need that much money? Is it not enough just for me to live comfortably and occasionally travel so that I can see my online friends up close and in person? Do I really need five thousand yachts and eight hundred rocket ships that look like dildos? Do I really need a limousine when a normal car driven by one of my family members would do just fine? Do I really need to attend parties full of hookers and blow, double entendre definitely intended? What about the homeless population who are struggling to stay alive? Shouldn’t they be getting low-cost housing? Shouldn’t people in general eat three meals a day and not have to worry about whether they’ll be there or not? I don’t need to be a billionaire. Nobody does. I need for the world to be happy and healthy. I need for children to have their needs met without worrying about dying. Not really a controversial stance, is it?

Okay, so fame and fortune aren’t realistic expectations for me as an author. Maybe I should focus on the love of the craft or having a positive influence on my audience. But in order for those things to happen, I have to have a bigger audience than I do now, which means opening myself up to swarms of trolls who overrun me like little zerglings from Starcraft. But if I stay in the shadows, then my work will reach nobody at all and I’ll never know if I’m having a positive influence on my audience. Yes, I could create my art and not share it at all. I could do it all just for me. But what’s the point? What kind of permanence will it have if nobody knows about it but me? Where’s my digital footprint? Where’s my immortality? I don’t want to take my writing to the grave with me, because I don’t see the point in writing it in the first place if it doesn’t immortalize me in some way. I want it to be for something. I want to make a difference in this world. Otherwise, why am I here in the first place? No, zerglings, this isn’t an invite for you to swarm me with death threats and pictures of my house.

Are there any reasons left? Did I cover them all? There could be more, but I don’t have access to them right now. I could take a quick trip to Google and find more, but we’d be here forever and a day and I don’t have that much time in my schedule. But even if the answers were readily available to me, I’d still give my typical IDK answer, which either means I Don’t Know or I Decay, depending on how badly my mind is rotting on any given day. I don’t know what I want to do with my writing career. There are pros and cons to every available reason. There is no one size fits all plan for me. But does this mean I want to give up and do something else for the rest of my life? Hell no. I want to continue. I want to keep shouting into the void with my literary skills. Even if the entire internet hates my guts because of a cave painting I created in 7 Million BC, fuck it, I’ll continue my career anyways.

But is it okay for me to have an aimless direction? Is it okay for me to be completely rudderless and constantly in zombie mode looking for the next brain to munch on? Is it okay to prioritize my mental health over fame and fortune? Is it okay to ignore the marketing part of my job knowing that the abyss will never respond to me in a meaningful way? Where do I go from here? I could just finish writing my current novel, but even once it’s over, then what? Do I write another hoping that one will rejuvenate my career? Do I write another poetry collection? Another short story collection? Do I just keep writing and writing in hopes that something will change? Do I even want things to change? Will I be happier when things change or will I stagnate some more? Say it with me now: IDK. Does it mean I Don’t Know or I Decay? Yes. Abso-fucking-lutely yes.

"MOX" by Jon Moxley

BOOK TITLE: MOX

AUTHOR: Jon Moxley

YEAR: 2021

GENRE: Nonfiction

SUBGENRE: Wrestling Memoir

GRADE: B

Jon Moxley’s road to the top of the pro-wrestling world was paved in blood, both his own and his opponents’. He grew up in a poor neighborhood that could have served as the first stage of Final Fight. He trained in a wrestling gym so torturous that it might as well have been located in Guantanamo Bay. He developed a psychotic persona to go along with the level of violence required for death matches. He joined the WWE and became part of one of the most dominant trios in wrestling history: The Shield. Sick of the creative black hole the company became, he let his contract expire and reinvented himself in places like New Japan and All-Elite Wrestling. This is just a summary of what he went through, but to read about it through his words is a vicarious experience like no other. Every exhaustion he feels, you feel. Every splatter of blood he spills, you feel that too. Every burst of raw anger he feels, it tugs at your soul as well. Jon Moxley definitely has a fascinating enough story to justify a nonfiction book.

Because he’s not a professionally-trained author, it becomes apparent right away that he writes exactly how he talks. Swear words, pop culture comparisons, brutal imagery that could be read in his voice, it’s all there. Normally, an author would receive a lot of grief for this sort of thing, but he won’t get it from me. I for one enjoy this conversational tone, because he’s got a colorful personality to back it up. It would be one thing if he talked like an IRS accountant. But since he’s a violent brawler with a hard edge to him, that makes his writing style even more exciting to read. That kind of personality is necessary when describing the bloodshed he went through in his ultra-intense matches. Can you imagine if a comedic, lighthearted style in the vein of Carl Hiaasen or Sherman Alexie was applied to this kind of narrative? It wouldn’t make sense.

While this book was a master class in showing personality and being an all-around tough guy, it’s not without its flaws. Remember how I said that Jon Moxley isn’t a professionally-trained author? Well, that means he’s going to make a lot of typos when he writes and he’s not going to notice them. There are instances of question marks and periods being together. He swaps between using F’n and the actual curse word. Some of the misspellings make sense because of his rough personality, but it’s so inconsistent that no sane editor would let it slide. You know what else the editor wouldn’t let slide? Starting a sentence midway through it without typing the actual beginning. That’s how he introduces an interlude where he talks about one of his favorite songs: no capitalization at the beginning because there is no beginning, only a middle. Had the editor done a better job of cleaning up these discrepancies, I would have readily given this book a perfect five out of five. But the constant typos bumped it down a notch for me.

Okay, so MOX isn’t a perfect book. Not many people outside the wrestling bubble would get excited about it. Maybe the typos would be too much for them to handle. But you know what? I love the book anyways. I love it so much that I wanted it to win Best Pro-Wrestling Book of 2021 from the Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards. And guess what? I got my wish! And if you pick up this book wanting an exciting story, you’ll get your wish too! Four out of five stars! Maybe seven if it was written in the Tokyo Dome. I bet Meltzer’s heard that joke so many times that he just shrugs it off nowadays.

Jerry Frost Is the Colonel Sanders of Jim Roots

We’ve all had days where we were out of fettle. Getting out of bed couldn’t be harder if you were cuffed to the fucking thing. Even the act of ordering fast food proved more difficult than cooking a three-course meal yourself. The wintry mix of gray diarrhea and depressive smoke bears down upon you whether you have a roof over your head or not. Wouldn’t it be nice to have somebody to talk to during these difficult moments? Someone who won’t judge you (because your brain does that enough already). Someone who won’t make you talk about things you’re not comfortable with. Someone who can put things into perspective in a way you couldn’t see before (probably because your damp eyelids were too heavy to lift). That someone could very well be licensed art therapist Jerry Frost, one of the few RPG characters I managed to get right.

Okay, so he wasn’t 100% perfect, but who would want that anyways since Gary-Stus are about as appealing as a wet paper towel. But while his portrayal of a psychotherapist was dead-on, his background story could have used a hell of a lot more work than I gave it. His childhood would have given Sigmund Freud a massive stroke (the kind in his brain, not the kind in his jockey shorts, you sick fucks). Jerry’s parents were tough on him as they pushed him towards becoming a STEM guy. He could forget his artistic pursuits and just mix chemicals all day long, because that’s what the wallet wanted. But even Jerry knew that wallets were hungry for more than just Big Pharma money or electrical engineering cheddar. Just like with menus at restaurants, there were many avenues for Jerry to choose from. But his strict parents insisted he become a STEM guy, because that was the wallet’s equivalent of an all-you-can-eat Brazilian steakhouse.

Jerry had other plans. Mixing chemicals and fusing wires together sounded about as much fun to him as watching dust accumulate on his bookshelf. Why care so much about the dust when there were perfectly good books there with stories of dragons and elves, kings, queens, and themperors, magical diamonds and fiery swords? He could write his own stories. He could draw his own creatures. He could compose acoustic guitar songs about an elven archer’s final shot into the heart of a cannibalistic ogre. He could do it all! But of course, the message of STEM guys being paid handsomely was beaten into his head so much that he had to come up with a nice compromise so that he didn’t get chucked out of the house before he was ready. Jerry Frost would become an art therapist. He still got to explore his creative avenues, but he could satisfy his STEM obligations since psychology is still a science.

So far, so good. He’s got a background story. He’s got motivations. He’s got a psychological edge to him. Now all he needs is a way to pay for college so that he can get that degree and get out there into the world. And he plans on paying for it by…working extra hours at KFC. Why wouldn’t he want to work at KFC? He looks like Jim Root from Slipknot and Jim Root has that beard and hairstyle combo that almost reminded him of Colonel Sanders. Jerry Frost is the Colonel Sanders of Jim Roots. He made a shit-load of fried chicken and served it to the hungriest bellies, all day, every day, until he earned enough to pay for his tuition. There’s just one problem with all of this: in the real world, working at KFC doesn’t pay for shit. Barely surviving in an apartment that costs an arm, a leg, a brain, and a heart is closer to reality than this dream scenario I concocted. It’s a uniquely millennial and Gen Z experience. That is where Jerry’s back story falls apart.

Another way in which it falls apart is through the act of art therapy itself. I didn’t learn this until after the RPG session, but apparently, having art as your most obsessive hobby is dangerous, because once he lose the will and the energy to do that, you’re left with nothing. Absolutely nothing. I felt personally attacked by this revelation (another uniquely millennial and Gen Z idea). As of today, almost everything I do involves creativity in one form or another: writing, reading, drawing, photography, even watching movies has creative merit (media literacy). And once I’m too tired for creativity, then what? Do I just lay around and wait for the feeling to pass? Yes! Jerry Frost probably should have warned his first patient Christian that this was going to happen, but like the chicken he made, his brain was too fried to comprehend such possibilities.

And thus we segue from the back story to the main role-play. Jerry Frost has his office set up just the way he likes: heavy metal posters nailed to the walls, drawings strewn about on his desk, books on a wooden shelf that told stories of epic fantasy battles and space opera death matches, and of course, a marble skull on his desk. Why a marble skull? Does he really need a reason? Yes, some of these decorations sounded too creepy to be in a psychologist’s office. The In This Moment poster with bloody hands sticking up and the Pink Floyd poster with the screaming face come to mind the most. But Christian didn’t seem to give two fucks about that. He was just sitting there on a puke green couch with his head in his hands and a shit-load of anger boiling inside of him. And so Jerry asked him, “What brings you to my office today?”

Obligation. That’s what brought him there. Christian didn’t see the point in coming, only that he had no other choice. Jerry, being the art therapist that he was, recommended some creative activities as a form of free association, or piecing together someone’s psychological makeup through symbols and phrases in the creations. Jerry even recommended rocking out to Sepultura to getting all of that anger out of his system. And then Christian lost it. “NO! I don’t want to rock out to Sepultura! It’s not going to bring her back!” Jerry knew that he fucked up badly. He pushed buttons that he had no business pushing. Any minute, Christian could have walked out of the room and this would mark Jerry’s first failure as a psychologist. And then he asked…

“What do you mean ‘bring her back’?” And suddenly, Jerry was on the right track once again. Christian opened up about how his lover was murdered by her own family. He wanted to get revenge on them through murder of his own, but if he did, he and Jerry would be doing this session from a prison cell that’s scarier than any heavy metal poster-decorated office. There would be no marble skulls in his cell except for the ones shattered on the floor by a dude named Bubba. So instead of murder, Jerry suggested a creative activity once again, this time as a positive outlet for his pain. Yes, drawing pictures didn’t solve everything, but they were something. And wouldn’t you know it, Christian drew a nice picture of his lover with techniques that even surpassed Jerry’s own abilities. Jerry showered him in compliments and earned his trust, while also keeping his job and his license. But the trust and the humanity was more important than a constantly starving wallet.

In the final moments of the role-play, Christian wanted to take Jerry on a field trip to the cemetery to pay respects to the dead girlfriend. But before that scene could come to fruition, the RPG group went dark for the longest time. It didn’t get deleted. It was just…inactive. A ghost town, of sorts. I didn’t know when they were going to be back. I didn’t know what the future held for Jerry Frost. So I left the group without saying goodbye. Do they still think about me to this day? That’s the hope I have with a character like Jerry Frost. I wanted him to have a positive impact on my fellow role-players.

Come to think of it, that’s what I want for myself going forward: to have a positive influence on the people who read my stuff. For years and years now, I’ve been writing stories purely for shock value. Yes, they had a clear-cut narrative with a beginning, middle, and end, but they also had things like torture, rape, pedophilia, and a whole shit-load of disgusting garbage that would never qualify as positive in this or any other world. Some people don’t mind being disturbed, but if that’s all I have going for my stories, then that’s a good way to drive my audience elsewhere. Everybody has their limits when it comes to raunchy content. We all have things that disgust us beyond belief and none of it makes us “snowflakes”. Okay, maybe the people who are asking schools to remove Maus could be considered snowflakes, but that’s beside the point. At least Art Spiegelman had a message. What do I have? Shock! I’ve got shock!

Jerry Frost is one of the few shining examples I have of a character gone right (KFC and art therapy be damned). He didn’t have to be an edge lord. He didn’t have to be vile. He didn’t even have to be overly flawed. Being a gentle and understanding soul was a requirement for the job he took. If it feels like he’s not flawed enough, that’s why. Yes, he did almost cause Christian to storm out of his office when he pushed the art therapy narrative too hard, but that’s only because he’s still a rookie at his profession. Inexperience is a great flaw for a character to have.

So…will I revive the Jerry Frost character in a future RPG? How about a future story? Or a poem? That all depends on whether or not I need a psychologist in any given work. He has potential to be something greater than a flash in the pan. I might have to tweak his back story a little bit, but there’s still hope for him…somewhere in the world…

Show Don't Tell

PRE-VERSE 1

Don’t tell me about the ghostly music

Show me sound waves liquefying his brain

Don’t tell me he’s about to lose it

Show me twitchy faces as he’s going insane

VERSE 1

Reading about scandals in the newspaper

Won’t give you the most intimate flavor

An old man’s gyroscopic wiener in motion

Leaves her trapped above the Atlantic Ocean

Few seconds of assault becomes a life of trauma

But they’ll brush it off as SJW drama

She’s a hero for telling a story that pains her

And showing the old fart he’s a walking failure

PRE-VERSE 2

Tell me you’re hurting without telling me so

The hangover turns your head into a bomb to blow

Tell me why you’re drunk without telling me why

Because it’s better than letting monsters see you cry

VERSE 2

A fictional world becomes real in a hurry

When the lines of fantasy become so blurry

Is the author a racist or just bad at his craft?

When the audience screamed, the Nazis laughed

Five hundred pages of knights and mages

And lovers so fine with questionable ages

He’s a villain for telling a story so awful

And showing why he’s still on the side of lawful

PRE-VERSE 3

These stories don’t connect in any meaningful way

They’re just random thoughts barfed onto the page

Get a nice editor to tell you that you’re full of it

Test your resolve, we’ll see if you’re full of quit

VERSE 3

In the end, we all have our stories to tell

But it’s all a matter of if they’re told well

We don’t mind a little bit of being disturbed

As long as there’s substance to go with big words

Everyone has potential to live beyond themselves

And see their very best efforts on library shelves

You’re a human for telling a story the world needs

And showing them all you despise corporate greed

Limerence

“…”

Do you hear that? That is the sound of absolutely nobody being shocked by the news that I experience limerence on a daily basis. It is a condition defined as obsessively imagining romance with someone I have a crush on. Cigarettes taste like shit. Alcohol tastes like an entire outhouse. Heroin and cocaine are even worse for the brain than those two things put together. Limerence is my drug of choice because it costs nothing and it helps me cope with the stresses of life, whether it’s the pandemic blues or schizophrenia eating me alive long before that. Instead of traumatic memories, limerence gives me lovey-dovey scenarios to think about. One of these things is not like the other. A night of laying my head in a woman’s lap while she strokes my hair is very much preferable over reliving every insult that’s ever been said to me.

Who am I currently experiencing limerence for? A lot of women, not just one or two. I feel much more comfortable saying the names of super-famous celebrities than I do of You Tubers and people I know online. Celebrities don’t have time to read my social media posts whereas a You Tuber will know exactly who I am and will hit that block button with cat-like reflexes. To be fair to the You Tubers, how would you feel if you learned that a three hundred pound man who lives with his parents and is currently unemployed thought of you in an obsessively romantic way? While beauty is always in the eye of the beholder, I have a feeling it would be creepy no matter who I was. I could have flowing blond locks and abs that would make a great bulletproof vest. I could be a billionaire who cheats on my taxes, but never on my limerent object. It would still be creepy as fuck.

But what about the celebrities who have no time for me? What about the fictional characters who will never be offended by my romantic thoughts because they’re not even real? Well, that depends on what time period you’re talking about. In the late 90’s, it was Cammy White from Super Street Fighter II. In the mid 2000’s, it was Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex. For the rest of the 2000’s, it was Tarja Turunen, the ex-lead singer from Nightwish. In 2018, it was Sarah-Jane Redmond, the actress who played Lucy Butler from Millennium. In the present day, it’s a bunch of lovely You Tubers whose names will go unchecked due to the fact that they might be reading this.

I’m sure none of you want to Google the names I did mentioned. After all, I’m supposed to be showing instead of telling when I write these nonfiction pieces. But there are many common threads among the women I’ve named and haven’t named. They’re beautiful, of course, but not just physically. They have something about them that keeps my limerent mind coming back for more. It could be the intelligence of political discourse, giving safe spaces and love in equal measures. It could be the wisdom of passionate fairytale storytelling, the paladin conquering the ogre and the dragons protecting the elven kingdoms. It could be the talent of singing like an angel from heaven itself, turning the phone book into sensual lyrics. It could be the strength of a warrior who will protect and mother any man she falls in love with. It could be the uncanny knack of seducing men just by being themselves, declaring love and giving kisses to calm the most nervous of men.

Anybody can be physically attractive. Anybody can have ruby red lips that taste like cherry pie, skin that’s soft and arousing to the touch, and hair that when stroked would leave both of your scalps tingling with pleasure. But if someone is physically attractive whilst being a shallow jerk, then that’s a huge turn-off. Nicole Arbour is physically attractive, but because of her fat-shaming rhetoric (“sweating Crisco” and “being unhealthy”), abusive behavior towards past boyfriends (punching faces and isolation from friends and family), and right-wing ignorance (white victimhood and minority bashing), she angers instead of seduces.

Another common thread among my limerent women is that none of my romantic fantasies about them have ever turned sexual. I would never want to taint them in that way. So instead, I imagine them squeezing my shoulders in a relaxing massage, sending tingles throughout my body. I imagine laying my head in their lap while they play with my hair, sending even more tingles throughout my body. I would do the same for them occasionally and earn a few swooning moans. I imagine giving them foot massages that make them close their eyes and drift off into dreamland, probably dreaming about being fed strawberries and cream like a goddess. I imagine laying in bed next to them, not for sex, but for the warmth of cuddling and the peacefulness of sleep. We could even have “A Pillow of Winds” by Pink Floyd playing in the background to accentuate this moment of love. 

These fantasies are especially important to me during moments of sadness and schizophrenic torment. Who wouldn’t want Chun Li from Street Fighter II squeezing their shoulders and lifting them up from a pit of despair? Mild, inoffensive touching at its finest. We could even hold hands together while walking through the desolate streets of either Port Orchard or Seattle. The warmth of her hand and the softness of her fingers would definitely feel good to me when I’m nervous at night. Of course, I would still be nervous about this beautiful lady wanting anything to do with me, but it’s not the same as feeling the danger of Seattle’s cyberpunk atmosphere.

I held off on talking about this topic as long as I could. I’ve already mentioned not wanting to gross anybody out with my lovey-dovey thoughts. But more importantly than that, I didn’t want to be written off as a whiny incel. For all intents and purposes, someone like me would fit in nicely with that clique. I’m overweight, a shy virgin, unemployed, and a lifelong tenant with my parents. I check all the boxes except for one: I’m not a misogynist who believes I’m entitled to free sex. Women owe me absolutely nothing. If they like me, fine. If not, then there’s nothing I can do about it. I certainly would never go on a shooting spree at a lingerie store or yoga studio. I wouldn’t run over random pedestrians with a van over my inability to be attractive. That’s just a LITTLE extreme, in my opinion.

Sometimes limerence is only a fantasy that will never come true. Sometimes we have to accept that we’re not right for everyone. Not everybody deserves a lifetime of cuddling and hot sex with Wonder Woman. Not everybody deserves a shoulder massage and passionate kisses from Tifa Lockhart. And you know what? That’s okay. If we got whatever we wanted all day every day, life would be boring as hell. There’d be no excitement or realism. If everybody is sexy, nobody is sexy. If everything is romantic, nothing is romantic. All the good things in life will come in moderation, which seems cliché to say until you do take it to the extreme and completely fuck up your life because of it. You hear that, Jake Davison? Of course you don’t, because you’re dead.

So why do I have limerent fantasies about people I don’t stand a chance with? Wouldn’t it be easier just for me to go out and meet somebody, pandemic aside? Well, that’s where the shyness and lack of confidence comes in. I don’t enjoy being creepy and I can see if me flirting with a woman would be perceived that way, no matter how mild or harmless it may seem. Being rejected by someone who thinks I’m creepy sounds like the worst kind of pain there is. It’s actually been scientifically proven that romantic rejection activates the same receptors of the brain as physical pain. It’s not as easy as moving onto the next one. It hurts. It can hurt for weeks, months, even years, especially if you’re like me and you’re neurodivergent. Autistic people generally feel pain at a higher capacity than neurotypicals. Criticism and rejection are both necessary parts of life, but goddamn, do they hurt worse than getting kicked in the testicles.

So what do I do about this? Stay in the shadows and partake in the drug known as limerence, of course. What else would I do? Why bother with someone who’s guaranteed to hate me when I’ve got Anette Olzon scratching her nails down my back and setting off my ASMR triggers? Why put myself through unnecessary pain when I’ve got Amy Lee slow-dancing with me at the prom, whispering sweetness in my ear and kissing my cheeks while doing so? Not a tough decision, as you can see. While loneliness may suck and limerence will always be fake, it beats the emotional trauma of rejection any day of the week. This makes me sound like an incel, I’m sure, but mark my words: I despise that ideology and want nothing to do with people who conform to that label. Maybe I’m not that creepy after all? Nah! Of course I am! Lzzy Hale, here I come! What flavor of ice cream sandwich do you want: vanilla, chocolate, strawberry, or all three at once?

The Dwarf with Bad Aim

When I was an edgy little shithead during my pre-teen and teenage years, I laughed my ass off at Stevie Wonder and Ray Charles jokes. The cheese grater was the best book they’ve ever read. The fastest thing to go on land was their speedboats. The best way to torture them is to rearrange the furniture. Get it? Because they’re blind? Oh-ho-ho-ho! Blindness is so funny, isn’t it? You know who probably wouldn’t think those jokes are funny? The level one dwarf fighter I played as during a D&D campaign in the 90’s. I don’t remember a whole lot about that campaign, so the details might be a little fuzzy. Hell, I don’t even remember the dwarf’s name. Let’s call him Clark. Not very fantasy-like, but fuck it, I’m calling him Clark anyways because I like the name Clark.

So why is it that a level one dwarf fighter named Clark wouldn’t have a sense of humor about blindness jokes? It’s not like he’s blind himself. He could surely set his empathy aside for a few chuckles, right? Well, not exactly. He could see just fine, but you wouldn’t know that from how often he missed his enemies during combat situations. He had this hulking battleaxe that could rip any monster to shreds. The original Axe Body Spray could have been Clark slashing a poor son of a bitch goblin in half…emphases on could have been.

The campaign was DMed by my brother James and played by me and his friends Nathan and Chris. I don’t remember their characters or their names. I don’t remember what the name of the campaign was (it was pre-written by Wizards of the Coast). All I remember about the campaign is that it used to be really popular among D&D nerds in the 90’s. The players had to transport a prisoner to the gallows only to find out that an elf thief was a mole in the group all along. Now the end goal is to send them both to the guillotine. There would be our fair share of obstacles along the way, all of which required Clark and his comrades to swing their weapons and actually hit something for a change. Nathan and Chris’s characters hit their targets with a sniper’s precision. Clark? Not so much.

The first battle during this prisoner transport was already underway with some bandits wanting to steal our riches. Clark had the opportunity to swing his axe and shed some blood all over the forest’s most beautiful features. He swung his axe…and missed. He swung again…and missed. He swung yet again…and missed. Nathan and Chris’s characters picked up Clark’s slack and left the bandits’ corpses stacked a mile high. And then we encountered some gnomes with a broken down war machine. The gnomes naturally blamed us for their misfortune and attacked right away. Clark swung his axe…and missed. He swung again…and missed. I put the twenty-sided die in my mouth and spit it out hoping it would improve the result. Not only did Clark miss again, but I got chewed out for being weird and getting saliva on the dice.

There were many battles to be fought whether it was with knights, mages, or the prisoners themselves. The story was the same: Clark swung his axe and missed horribly. There was even a time when I rolled a nat-one and had to skip an extra turn to pick up my weapon again. Nathan and Chris’s characters did the heavy lifting for me and laid waste to our enemies. Yada, yada, yada, the prisoners were executed and everything was happy in fantasy land. By the time the campaign ended, I had tears in my eyes due to how poorly Clark performed in battle. Every swing he took, he missed like a bitch. He let his team down, though his teammates didn’t show any hint of anger at him. But Clark knew he deserved their scorn if they had any. He was just extra weight freeloading experience points from their labor. As the tears poured from my eyes, I bemoaned the fact that I wouldn’t get any experience points. But James gave me some anyways, though I didn’t do anything significant to deserve them.

Because this was the 90’s and wisdom wasn’t my strong suit at the time, I didn’t see an opportunity for a compelling story when it came to Clark’s misfortune. All I saw was a series of misses. It wouldn’t be acceptable in a game of Final Fantasy IV or Chrono Trigger, because that’s how your characters die. But Clark lived through it all. He leeched off of his friends and never once paid them back. If there was a story to be had there, my younger self couldn’t see it and no, that’s not a blindness joke.

So…now that everything happened and Clark is a broken man, where does he go from here? As a wiser storyteller than I was in the 90’s, I see many angles this can take. Obviously, Clark is overwhelmed with guilt. But how does he handle it? Does he train harder and get better? Does he use his pay from the campaign to sign up for fighting classes? Does he push himself beyond what he’s capable of and jeopardize his health? 

Or does he let the guilt take a stronger hold of him and instead of using it as inspiration, he uses it as an excuse to quit. Maybe Clark retires from adventuring altogether. Maybe he spends his money on alcohol to silence his guilty conscience. Maybe he meets a woman who finds him attractive, but he pushes her away because he “can’t satisfy her”. Ever hear the phrase “those who can’t do, teach?” What if Clark feels so guilty that he thinks he would suck as a teacher as well as a real-world fighter?

What you have to remember as a D&D player is that this is a story above all else. It’s more than just swinging axes, casting spells, and slaying dragons. Everything is an opportunity for a story. And when your characters go through those stories with newfound experience, they, you guessed it, gain experience points. And then those characters develop into three-dimensional people. They feel real despite the fact that they’re in a fantasy setting. They feel human despite being a dwarf, elf, or orc. They have thoughts, opinions, dreams, ambitions, and goals. Sometimes those goals are self-destructive, sometimes they reach beyond the cosmos. The more you develop your story and your characters, the more invested you and your audience will become. If you only care about your misses and failures, that’s all your audience will care about as well.

Everything has a story behind it whether you see it or not, even the ordinary aspects of life. That bookshelf you’ve got in your room? It has seen a lot during its time. It was crafted by creative hands. It’s had many owners who used it for purposes other than storing books. It’s collected dust and formed cracks in the wood and paint. There will be a day when your bookshelf breaks down completely and has to spend its final days in a landfill somewhere. Or the wood from the shelves could be refashioned into something else like a nightstand or even firewood for a camping trip. If an ordinary bookshelf can have this much of a story behind it, so can Clark. But Clark is not an inanimate object. He’s a person with thoughts and feelings. How he deals with his thoughts and feelings is what will determine how three-dimensional he really is. Okay, Clark, so you missed all of your shots and let your teammates down. What will you do next? That’s a story very much worth telling.

But maybe Clark can’t do a whole lot anymore because he really is going blind. Maybe it’s time for him to put down the axe before he hurts someone he didn’t intend to. Maybe he has to spend his time in a home for disabled dwarves. But then Clark has to deal with ableism and people who whine about how their tax money is being spent. If the aggression against him gets so bad, he might have to pick up his axe again to defend himself. But he’ll have help from that woman who found him attractive. She’ll guide his every step and he’ll get progressively better at swinging his axe and murdering ableist assholes. And then…he’ll believe in himself again. His self-esteem will grant him the willingness to marry that woman and start a family with her. And just like that…you have a compelling, three-dimensional story about Clark a.k.a. The Dwarf with Bad Aim!

Heath Riggs the Clumsy Cowboy

 The sum’bitch who said hanging on isn’t a good thing never had to worry about their equilibrium over a mud pit. Have you ever tried to wash mud and pig shit off of clothing with nothing but a Tide Pod and a spinning machine? Neither of those stains are coming out without a fight. But it was a battle that Heath Riggs was not prepared or willing to fight. When I was contacted on Deviant Art in early 2011 for an RP request, I figured it would be some nice D&D fun with orcs chopping off elves’ heads and gnomes picking the pockets of arrogant kings who sat their asses on purple cushions. Unfortunately, it turned out to be anything but.

My recollection of this particular role-playing session is fuzzy at best, but maybe that’s not such a bad thing. I don’t remember this woman’s name nor do I remember the name of her character. No, I’m not just protecting her identity, I seriously don’t remember. All I know was that she was so adamant about me getting a Yahoo Messenger account so that we could do this in real time instead of posting it as messages on a board somewhere. 

Without coming off as rude, she did have a bit of an aggressive streak when it came to asking for this role-play. She MUST know when I’m available to play. She MUST know how she can reach me. She MUST know why I’m having trouble accessing a Yahoo account I haven’t touched since the W administration. Red flag city, here I come. Come to think of it, I do believe there is a place where red flags are prominent. John Cena knows of this place since he had to apologize to their government for calling Taiwan a country.

So what was the premise of this role-play that the mysterious woman was so desperate to get out of me? What could possibly be so important to require my writing skills and RPG knowledge? Is it a trip to outer space to shoot lasers at aliens? Is it a dungeon crawl that involves throwing axes and shooting arrows at fire-breathing dragons? Is it a wrestling RPG where Triple H is serving up sledgehammer shots and graveyard burials like he didn’t steal the latter gimmick from The Undertaker? No, no, no, not even close. She wanted this role-play to take place on a cattle ranch. She was the farm girl, I was the cowboy known as Heath Riggs. Why Heath Riggs? Because I chose it and she was okay with it. Heath reminded her of Heath Ledger’s role in Brokeback Mountain and Riggs reminded her of pickup trucks in the rural area in which the RPG took place.

Unfortunately, Heath Riggs’s name was the only badass thing about him. As the newest cowboy at the farm girl’s ranch, he came off as awkward to be in conversations with. Okay, not so bad just yet. I’m an awkward conversationalist in real life, so it’s bound to come out in my role-playing of Heath’s character. He and the farm girl talked about his newbie status. They talked about his past employment. They talked about his past relationships. They talked about how this totally ranks low on the weirdest experiences Heath has ever had. I don’t have a script with me, so this is the best I can do as far as show don’t tell goes. Pretty mundane stuff in the lives of socially weird people. Not exciting at all. The cowboy in question wasn’t of the Sergio Leone variety. He was just a guy who fiddle-fucked around with the animals.

And then…from out of nowhere…my role-playing partner decides that Heath Riggs will slip on a puddle of mud and pig shit and get his clothes stained beyond recognition. I didn’t decide it. She did. Her character laughed like she just watched an episode of America’s Funniest Home Videos. Come to think of it, if this happened in real life, it would probably take home the grand prize on that show. Maybe with the winning purse, Heath wouldn’t have to work at a mediocre ranch anymore! But until then…another slip in the mud (which sounds like a Pink Floyd song if they played country instead of classic rock). And another. And another. And another. Heath looked like his candy bar namesake, but less appetizing. Nobody would be eating him that afternoon, least of all the giggling farm girl.

Obviously, I wasn’t having a good time in this RP. I almost fell asleep on multiple occasions. My butt was numb. My jaw was clenched tightly. I needed to get the hell out of that Yahoo chat room. I finally told the woman that I had to get going for the day and secretly hoped she wouldn’t chew me out over it. She was aggressive enough in getting me to role-play with her in the first place, so why wouldn’t she be possessive over my spare time like an obsessed yandere? But to my surprise, she was understanding. We said our goodbyes in a way that was just as uneventful as it would have been for Heath Riggs and the nameless farm girl.

Now…one thing you need to understand about me is that I had and still to an extent have a hard time saying no to people when I’m feeling uncomfortable. It could be a trauma response, but agreeing to unsavory conditions to keep the peace was what I did best back in 2011. I was never prepared to deal with getting yelled at or being made to look like the bad guy for standing up for myself. Maybe it’s because I didn’t have a lot of friends growing up and keeping friendships was too important to me, even if they weren’t healthy ones. Even as I type this, I realize that I’d rather be lonely than share a space with toxic people. The woman in question wasn’t what I’d consider toxic, but I did have qualms about telling her that the RP wasn’t working out. I ghosted her for weeks on end. I didn’t go anywhere near Yahoo Messenger.

I dreaded the day when she would eventually contact me on Deviant Art and ask me where the hell I was. I knew it was coming. I knew I couldn’t get through 2011 without having to face that day. So when she finally asked where I was, I took a chance. I told her the RP wasn’t working out for me. I told her that I preferred fast-paced adventures like the D&D campaigns promised. I told her that it wasn’t anything against her. I told her that Heath Riggs’s clumsy cowboy gimmick was boring me to tears. I was expecting to get chewed out like a wad of bubblegum. I was expecting to look more villainous than Voldemort and Dolores Umbridge put together.

But instead…she understood where I was coming from. No grudge. No backlash. No venom of any kind. She understood and it was okay with her that I didn’t want to continue. I gave her a digital hug and the two of us went our separate ways. The name Heath Riggs would eventually be recycled into a debt collector character in a cyberpunk short story who went on a local news show to spill industry secrets and make the pervy anchor look like a buffoon on live TV. There was no real reason for him to be named Heath Riggs other than the fact that it sounded cool. There was no Brokeback Mountain reference. There was no need for an eighteen-wheeler. Just a guy named Heath who betrayed the debt-collection industry by exposing their greatest weaknesses. At least Heath didn’t slip in pig shit this time, although, one would argue that the news anchor more than qualified for the role of pig shit.

The lesson of the day, my young grasshoppers, is to speak up when you’re uncomfortable. It takes a lot of bravery to do in the face of kind people. It takes even more bravery to do it in the presence of your family and friends. But if they don’t know, then nothing will change. Yes, you may be labeled a villain for saying no. But the bigger question is, why isn’t the other person a villain for forcing you into a situation you don’t want to be in? You’re chaotic neutral at worst, but the pushy bastards who want to keep you under their thumb are fifty shades of lawful evil. 

You can wear the dark cloak, but they can wear the QAnon shaman furs. And besides, what’s the worst that could happen to you for playing the role of villain? You’ll have fewer friends, sure, but being on your own is better than being surrounded by toxic assholes. At least you’re good company. At least the darkness of your solitude will give you some cool rumination. A toxic asshole will give you trauma and heartache, neither of which are worth retaining for their comfort.

This is a lesson I have yet to learn myself even though I’m preaching it like a mega-church wing-nut. I haven’t prepared myself for ultimate loneliness. Maybe it’s something I should talk with a therapist about. Maybe when I do, I can bring up the Heath Riggs example as to why it’s beneficial for me to stand up for myself. For some toxic people, I’m risking not only a lack of friendship, but sometimes a beating and ridicule. You know what? Put me in the ICU for all I care. I’ll get the best medical treatment I’ve ever had while you’re rotting in a prison cell. As it turns out, taking toxicity too far is fucking illegal. I’m not worth going to prison over, no matter who you are. You think losing my friendship is lonely for you? Prison is lonelier. It lasts longer, too. So, bring it on, world!

Cutthroats Love Unemployment

With Hustle Culture constantly in everyone’s faces, it’s hard not to come to the false realization that capitalism loves you as much as you love it. Rise and grind! Work, work, work! Breaking every bone in your body means more money! Meanwhile, you have next to nothing in your bank account because the surgery needed to fix those bones…that’ll cost you a small fortune. But if you’re a mercenary for hire in my 2002 home brew RPG Cutthroat, broken bones and small fortunes are just another part of the job. In which case, capitalism loves you so much that it’ll give you a kiss on your owie when you get shot in the chest or stabbed in the leg.

The year 2002 was one where I gave less than a shit about politics. I knew I didn’t want to conform to society. I knew that people should be treated fairly. I also used to believe in the death penalty because I wanted it to apply to my high school bullies. As someone who didn’t give two fucks about politics, let alone someone who was old enough to vote, it showed in my world-building techniques when I put together the rules for Cutthroat. In the distant future, every continent on planet earth not named Antarctica waged war against each other. Why? Fuck if I know. Maybe war is just fun for these autocrats. Maybe there is some growing tension between North America and Africa because of…reasons? Maybe Europe and Asia want to start lobbing grenades at each other because…they’re bored?

If I had more storytelling skills back in 2002, coming up with a reason for intercontinental war would have been easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy. Maybe South America wants revenge on North America because of an assassination or terrorist attack. Maybe Africa wants revenge on Australia because the latter has resources that Africa wouldn’t otherwise have without taking them by force. Maybe Asia wants to bomb the shit out of Europe because superpower flexing is more important than perpetual peace. There are lots of reasons to go to war. Pick one, damn it!

Throwing together a bullshit reason for intercontinental war wouldn’t have been that hard. But even if the guns for hire weren’t believers in each continent’s political ambitions, money will always be a motivator for anybody who wants to eat and have a roof over their heads. Which is why when I ran this RPG in 2002, I was baffled by the reactions of my players when their characters were approached by job recruiters. One character (we’ll call him Clyde) ran away and tried to hide in a shadowy alleyway. Another character (we’ll call him Ninjo) slaughtered his recruiter in the bathroom. Cutthroats must really love unemployment! Either that or they’d rather work at Burger Monarch or Taco Hell and get emotionally scarred instead of physically. So how about we take a look at these two scenarios and try to determine why Clyde and Ninjo were so allergic to employment opportunities.

First, we have Clyde. He’s kicking it in England having a drink at the bar. He’s no doubt looking for his next paycheck so that he can have more alcoholic beverages to fuck up his liver. But when he’s approached by two trench-coat wearing men who call out his name, his first instinct…is to run away from them. Granted, the two men look incredibly suspicious in their trench coats. They could have been carrying weapons in their pockets. But if they were, they didn’t pull them out. Instead they were like, “Hey, come back! Wait up!”, begging and pleading for Clyde to slow down. But instead of slowing down and listening to reason, he runs into an alleyway looking for a nice hiding place in the shadows…on a hot sunny day when shadows won’t do shit to help you.

Surprise, surprise, the trench coat guys find him and explain that they were only approaching Clyde to give him a job. A nice, big fat contract that will guarantee him enough beer to keep him permanently pissing until the end of time. Clyde eventually saw the light, sunny day aside. I know now that trench coat guys who know your name will always look suspicious, but if you run away from your job recruiter and they have to blow out their lungs to hire you, you’d be lucky if you got the job in the first place. Imagine going into a job interview and then running out of the boss man’s office because you think he looks a little too weird for you.

Actually, now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Young people are starting to wake up to the fact that capitalism means more work for less money and maybe running away from the boss man is how they’ll gain any semblance of leverage. Not to sound passive-aggressive, but running away was definitely a genius move on Clyde’s part…mainly because accepting the job and sneaking onto a military base got him gunned down in a storm of bullets and lasers. He should have ran faster.

And then there’s case number two: Ninjo, an assassin for hire based in Japan. No doubt he needs work as well and he doesn’t want to serve cocktails in a pretty dress, so assassinating people is the avenue he wants to go down. There he was enjoying a nice meal in a restaurant when he suddenly had to move to the nearest urinal. Pissing in privacy would have been a heavenly request that he understandably should have been forked over. But then a Mexican in camouflage fatigues uses the urinal next to him and introduces himself as Jet Guile, Ninjo’s would-be employer.

To Ninjo’s credit, there are so many things wrong with this scenario that 16-year-old me didn’t pick up on before putting together this campaign. First of all, what is a Mexican mercenary randomly doing in a Japanese bathroom? Second of all, why is his name Jet Guile and not something…you know…a little closer to his nationality? Thirdly, and this is the most important question of all: why the fuck is he trying to give someone a job interview…in the bathroom?! What, is Jet observing Ninjo’s sniper skills by watching the piss hit the toilet? What if Ninjo had bad diarrhea from the sushi he was eating? What if Ninjo didn’t make it to the toilet on time? Would Jet refuse to hire him for failing to “deactivate a bomb” in his ass? 

In hindsight, this was weird on so many levels. It should come as no surprise that the minute Jet Guile said Ninjo’s name, Ninjo beat the holy fuck out of him and left him a bloody and useless corpse on the bathroom floor. Ninjo may love unemployment, but he loves peeing undisturbed even more. Well, he didn’t get either; three more Mexican mercenaries hired him anyways in spite of what happened to Jet! That’s right: Ninjo got a job despite killing one of his employers. Turned out to be one of his tests, not because I had it planned all along, but because I pulled it out of my ass and made an even bigger mess than Ninjo’s piss puddle and Jet’s bloodbath put together. Imagine if Homer did this to Mr. Burns on an episode of The Simpsons. Work would be less stressful, for sure, but that’s only because scooping prison food is easier than handling nuclear rods.

So…why is it that Clyde and Ninjo were so reluctant to allow their employers to hire them for soldier work? Chasing someone into an alleyway and interviewing someone while they’re draining the lizard are reasonable enough answers to me. Or maybe there is something to be said about not feeding the capitalist machine…in a society where war is the main product. Or…maybe Clyde and Ninjo were supposed to keep their identities a secret and the minute their employers shouted their names, they bailed. And then it hit me like a sack of bricks: war isn’t always fought with soldiers gathering together on a battlefield and shooting at each other. It isn’t always about bombing the fuck out of cities and capitols either. Sometimes a little stealth is paramount to getting a job done. Maybe your enemy will be more easily defeated if they don’t know you’re coming. Keep the name a secret. Keep the employment a secret. Keep everything a secret. The less they know, the less they’ll see coming.

Undercover work should have been my first guess all the way back in 2002. Of course they’re running, because their cover was potentially blown. Of course they’re beating up employers because they could be assassins themselves. Trust and friendship are two of the rarest things you’ll find in war, because the object is to kill or be killed. Sure, you can trust your fellow soldiers, but a complete stranger? That’ll take a little more vetting. I guess the lesson to be learned here is to not lay all of your cards on the table so soon. They call it a poker face for a reason. They also refrain from wearing mirror shades to a poker game. Right, Kim?

Refusing to lay your cards on the table is not only necessary for succeeding in war, but in other aspects of life too. Suppose you do get a job interview that’s not in a bathroom or a dingy alleyway. Sure, you want to be open and honest, but do you really want to let your boss man know everything about you, be it mental illnesses, bad experiences in school, bad experiences with other employers, or divorces you’ve had? Same thing goes for any other activity, whether it’s dating, friendship, or playing a good old fashioned RPG. You want to give them just enough to get a good idea of you, but if you spill too many secrets, then you’ll never get passed the front door.

But that also depends on what secrets you choose to keep and how doing so will negatively affect the relationship. If you’re trying to keep abuse a secret from your peers, it’ll get out one way or another, especially in an argumentative setting. In which case, don’t get into the relationship at all and seek help before you spiral into an early grave. If you have murder-hobo tendencies and you’re playing an RPG where your character kills everyone around them, that’ll derail the game in a big fucking hurry. If you’re an alt-right nutjob and your paladin uses “stand your ground” laws as an excuse to kill innocent orcs to become an oathbreaker, then get some goddamn help!

Your GM doesn’t have to know everything, but they should know enough to decide whether or not they want to play with you. If you put yourself in a situation where it’s you or the GM, then the GM will pull a Clyde and Ninjo and run the fuck away from you. Or they’ll kill you in the bathroom while you’re interrupting their pissing session, one of the two. This is not an instruction manual for narcissists, because fuck them. But if you’re genuinely looking for new opportunities in life and you’re going to make the most of them, then getting your foot in the door is as easy as getting both feet out of bar on the way to a garbage-covered alleyway.