NAME: Finn Cosgrave
AGE: 28
OCCUPATION: Heavyweight Mixed-Martial Artist
CANON: It’s Just a Joke
I can be quoted as saying that people shouldn’t choose combative occupations for the sake of finding romance. If you join NCIS thinking you’re going to walk out with Ziva David as arm candy, you’re dead wrong. If you become a cast mate on The Ultimate Fighter, you ain’t leaving with Ronda Rousey. And if you join the FBI, the other half of your bed won’t be occupied by Dr. Temperance Brennan. Nobody knew this better than Finn Cosgrave. After all, he didn’t need distractions going into his match with Chris Johnson. Seeing as how Finn had lost three fights in a row, if he lost one more, he would be fired.
So if Finn Cosgrave is fighting for his career and making very little money doing so, why would a marketable female fighter named Zelda Lee want to flirt with him in the gym? She has championship gold around her waist and an undefeated streak to go with it. Shouldn’t she be chasing someone higher on the food chain? Maybe Zelda likes Finn for his “charming personality” even though they hardly know each other. Finn has the muscles and height to be a Gary-Stu, and yet he feels like he has a huge mountain to climb to deserve a woman like Zelda.
Even though the two of them are technically supposed to be cutting weight for their upcoming fights, Finn and Zelda eat at Subway anyways. While there, a horny fan asks for Zelda’s autograph and verbally abuses Finn. The newfound couple work together in verbally dismantling this loser fan and leaving him embarrassed and lonely. Somehow, this is all some sort of motivation tactic to Finn to train harder in the gym and eventually win his match against Chris Johnson, which he does and therefore keeps his job.
Here’s one of the things that made “It’s Just a Joke” so unrealistic in my eyes: so Finn fights his ass off to earn a knockout victory over Chris Johnson and keep his job. And then later in the evening, he quits. He quits because Zelda’s opponent for the evening, an Amazon lady named Cameron Gillespie, kills her with an illegal up kick. There’s no clarity as to whether Cameron will get suspended, fined, or even jailed for her actions. There’s even some blame being placed on the ref for not stopping the up kick earlier. Finn Cosgrave apparently doesn’t care where the blame goes, because he’s so disenfranchised with MMA that he wants to quit due to losing the “love of his life”.
Good for you, Finn. You’re standing up for what you believe in and you let the whole world know that you’re not to be fucked with. There’s just one problem: you’re unemployed and MMA is the thing you do best. So now what? What other options are there for Mr. Finn Cosgrave? Washing dishes? Pumping gas? Selling Little Debbie cakes? Or maybe he can go into professional wrestling where more people die there than in mixed-martial arts. And if Finn does live through it all, he’ll still have a permanently aching body, a relentless travel schedule, and weird ass storylines. He might have a little bit of a push due to his MMA background and his heavyweight build, but other than that, he won’t like the transition.
There are two routes I can go down with Finn Cosgrave should I decide to use him again in a short story or novel. One of them is to keep this background story and have his emotional profile made up ahead of time. The other is to give him a fresh start and have him be a typecast big guy such as a bouncer or a cop (because he’s technically a hero). Whatever role he has, he might have to take a backseat to someone else lest he be considered a Gary-Stu. He can be the Chewbacca to someone’s Han Solo or the Deus Shadowheart to someone’s April Farrow. I don’t know what Finn Cosgrave’s role will be in the future, but all I can say is when this emotionally charged train is on the tracks, you’d better move out of the way.
***ADVICE OF THE DAY***
If you’re unemployed or ashamed of your job, the next time someone asks you what you do for a living, tell them, “I work with underprivileged children in the Democratic Society of Who Gives a Fuck.” That’ll raise a few eyebrows, maybe get a few chuckles.
Showing posts with label Sandwich. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sandwich. Show all posts
Saturday, April 25, 2015
Tuesday, March 24, 2015
The Franciscan Death Scream
There’s been speculation among every psychic my mother has visited that in a past lives I was always a warrior of some kind. It could have been a barbarian in the dark ages or a marine in Vietnam. I’d say those assessments are true to the fullest extent, especially as they relate to battle cries. Well, these days, the only battle cries I let out are ones where I’m in an extreme amount of pain. You want to know how I define an extreme amount of pain? Stepping on a thumb tack. Banging my elbow against the wall. Banging my head on the roof of a short car. With the way I scream loudly and whiningly in pain, you would have sworn I’d broken a bone or had a limb amputated. But that’s the price of being autistic: high sensitivity to everything, including the most insignificant kind of pain.
My blood draw in 2006 at the Franciscan Hospital in Gig Harbor, Washington was no different. I had to have one because it was part of my physical checkup. Just because I had to have one, didn’t mean I had to particularly enjoy it. Needles are sharp. Sharpness creates pain. Pain creates death screams that make me sound like I’m being fed through a wood chipper or being cut in half crotch first with a chainsaw. I don’t know why people say that needles aren’t a big deal. They’re always going to be sharp and they’re always going to hurt whether they’re drawing blood or threading yarn through a piece of cloth.
My blood draw went exactly how I expected it would. I sat in a chair that looked like it belonged in a dentist’s office. The anxiety in my stomach builds. The nurse tied a rubber tourniquet around my upper arm. The anxiety in my stomach builds even further and now I start making little whining noises. The nurse tells me to look away as if that’s going to help ease the pain. It didn’t matter where I was looking, because the end result was having a bastard sword-like needle plunged into my arm.
As to be expected, I let out a blood-curdling death scream. It was loud. It was throaty. It was slightly girlish. It was like being a female lion in an extreme amount of pain. Apparently, there were frightened little kids in the waiting room who ran upstairs after hearing my shriek of agony and their parents ran after them. Any stragglers would have hurried up after hearing me cry, “Take the needle out! Take the needle out!” The nurse did and I let out another bellow of berserker pain.
Ever since that day, anytime I go to that hospital in Gig Harbor, the nurses and doctors always expect me to scream. They make no attempt to silence me, unlike my mother whose favorite line is always, “There’s no yelling.” Oh, but there is. There is and there always will be, dear mother. There was screaming when I had to have my big toes operated on for ingrown nails, there was screaming when I had to have my foot examined after a cat bite, and there’s even screaming at my eye doctor appointments in Port Orchard when he puts stinging drops in my eyes for a glaucoma test.
Unless my mother is considering a career as a dominatrix, there will be no silence anywhere we go. If we go on another horseback ride in Arizona, my groin and legs are going to hurt so badly that I’ll yell as if they’re being blasted with an AK-47. If my computer malfunctions at home or if a WWE pay-per-view on my Roku freezes up, I’m going to scream and swear at either one until my blood pressure is in the 300’s and my pulse is in the 1000’s.
Three things are certain in my mother’s life as well as the life of anybody who lives with me: death, taxes, and barbaric war cries. The only thing I’m missing is a horned helmet and a double-sided battleaxe. Of course, carrying such a heavy weapon would cause strain and strain causes even more shrills of extreme pain. I’ve got the barbaric ethos down to a science and I haven’t even swung my weapon yet (and I’m not sure I will be able to).
***COMMERCIAL DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***
GUY: I’m eating right and staying in shape. I’ve been doing the Duck Dodger.
GIRL: What’s the Duck Dodger?
GUY: It’s like a triathlon, but with dodge balls.
GIRL: Do they leave a mark?
GUY: Not on the outside.
-Subway-
My blood draw in 2006 at the Franciscan Hospital in Gig Harbor, Washington was no different. I had to have one because it was part of my physical checkup. Just because I had to have one, didn’t mean I had to particularly enjoy it. Needles are sharp. Sharpness creates pain. Pain creates death screams that make me sound like I’m being fed through a wood chipper or being cut in half crotch first with a chainsaw. I don’t know why people say that needles aren’t a big deal. They’re always going to be sharp and they’re always going to hurt whether they’re drawing blood or threading yarn through a piece of cloth.
My blood draw went exactly how I expected it would. I sat in a chair that looked like it belonged in a dentist’s office. The anxiety in my stomach builds. The nurse tied a rubber tourniquet around my upper arm. The anxiety in my stomach builds even further and now I start making little whining noises. The nurse tells me to look away as if that’s going to help ease the pain. It didn’t matter where I was looking, because the end result was having a bastard sword-like needle plunged into my arm.
As to be expected, I let out a blood-curdling death scream. It was loud. It was throaty. It was slightly girlish. It was like being a female lion in an extreme amount of pain. Apparently, there were frightened little kids in the waiting room who ran upstairs after hearing my shriek of agony and their parents ran after them. Any stragglers would have hurried up after hearing me cry, “Take the needle out! Take the needle out!” The nurse did and I let out another bellow of berserker pain.
Ever since that day, anytime I go to that hospital in Gig Harbor, the nurses and doctors always expect me to scream. They make no attempt to silence me, unlike my mother whose favorite line is always, “There’s no yelling.” Oh, but there is. There is and there always will be, dear mother. There was screaming when I had to have my big toes operated on for ingrown nails, there was screaming when I had to have my foot examined after a cat bite, and there’s even screaming at my eye doctor appointments in Port Orchard when he puts stinging drops in my eyes for a glaucoma test.
Unless my mother is considering a career as a dominatrix, there will be no silence anywhere we go. If we go on another horseback ride in Arizona, my groin and legs are going to hurt so badly that I’ll yell as if they’re being blasted with an AK-47. If my computer malfunctions at home or if a WWE pay-per-view on my Roku freezes up, I’m going to scream and swear at either one until my blood pressure is in the 300’s and my pulse is in the 1000’s.
Three things are certain in my mother’s life as well as the life of anybody who lives with me: death, taxes, and barbaric war cries. The only thing I’m missing is a horned helmet and a double-sided battleaxe. Of course, carrying such a heavy weapon would cause strain and strain causes even more shrills of extreme pain. I’ve got the barbaric ethos down to a science and I haven’t even swung my weapon yet (and I’m not sure I will be able to).
***COMMERCIAL DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***
GUY: I’m eating right and staying in shape. I’ve been doing the Duck Dodger.
GIRL: What’s the Duck Dodger?
GUY: It’s like a triathlon, but with dodge balls.
GIRL: Do they leave a mark?
GUY: Not on the outside.
-Subway-
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