Backwoods Barbarian

***BACKWOODS BARBARIAN***

With American Darkness 3 suspended and Poison Tongue Tales 3 not even a possibility, I need something to work on to keep me busy and to keep my creative juices flowing. I originally wanted to do a modern day drama about fat-shaming called “Hulk Logan”, but I couldn’t pre-write it past the fifth chapter. I was hesitant to do the story I’m going to talk about in this blog entry, but then I realized something along the way. Though it could be categorized as fantasy, it’s actually a deconstruction of the violent messes Poison Tongue Tales, Demon Axe, and Occupy Wrestling have been. Yes, this new story will have plenty of fight scenes, but they’re not a means to an end.

I’m talking of course about Backwoods Barbarian, an environmental fantasy I’ve developed all the way to chapter twenty. Yeah, I know, everything has to be about barbarians. All barbarians 24/7. It’s all I ever think about, yada, yada, yada. What good is a barbarian’s rage if he keeps losing his fights and getting himself into trouble? This barbarian can’t win with brute force alone, because there are other fighters out there who are more powerful than him, particularly a dwarf monk named Sabin Rex and a werewolf assassin named Gray Miller (both characters I’ve used in past stories).

Who is this barbarian? Well, he’s not Deus Shadowheart. He’s not Brutus Warcry, either. In fact, if I reveal his name, it might be a tad upsetting to the originator of this character given how the barbarian was once used as a killing machine D&D character. His name is Agrusk Xis and he’s an orc who makes his solitary home in the woods.

He was once owned by an online friend named Timothy. He was also a former character in an attempted dark fantasy novel of mine in 2014 called Fireball Nightmare. I asked Tim if it was okay to use Agrusk in that manner and he said yes. Given Agrusk’s new role as a bumbling brute, Tim could possibly want to think twice about letting me use his character. If he wants me to withdraw Agrusk from Backwoods Barbarian, I’ll gladly do so and swap him out with another character.

If Tim should happen to say yes once again, then Agrusk will be a part of something greater than himself whether he uses brute force or not. As I’ve already established, Agrusk is an orc barbarian who lives in the woods hunting meat and picking fruit. His forest home is about to be chopped down for urban development thanks to the political strategy of Flora City Mayor Annette Cote. Agrusk just wants peace and quiet in his forest home, so he tries to muscle his way into keeping his solitary residence. Needless to say, he’s overpowered and outmanned.

Agrusk meets two environmental protesters along the way: an Amazonian Viking “singer” named Johnna Larson and a bagpipe-playing bard named Julie Piper. Throughout the novel, they teach him that using debate tactics and peaceful protest is more powerful at affecting change than anything he could do with an axe. The whole novel is one big internal battle between Agrusk and his conscience. Can he keep his temper under control or this hothead screw everything up with one moment of impatient rage?

I’ve tooled with the idea of an environmental fantasy before where the plot centered around the government cutting down somebody’s forest home for urban development. I wrote a 2010 D&D-style movie script called Tree Party Nation, where the forest was an eco-terrorist group’s base of operations. As I’ve mentioned earlier, in 2014 I wrote Fireball Nightmare, where the often-recycled Gary-Stu barbarian Deus Shadowheart protected the forest under the command of a living volcano. It’s 2018 and the third time will be the charm. Backwoods Barbarian will be the one that gets this concept right. Watching a “Terrible Writing Advice” You Tube video on environmentalism helped me figure things out.

So that’s it for now. Backwoods Barbarian is officially my next long-term project. It’ll be a departure from what I usually do (barbarism aside), especially considering that I’m shooting for 2,000 words per chapter instead of 1.500 like I normally do. At twenty chapters, that’s an even 40,000 words, which is the generally accepted minimum for a full-length novel. Wish me luck, guys. We’ve got ears, say cheers!

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

JERRY: Hey George, ask that guy what street we’re on.

GEORGE: Excuse me, where are we?

STRANGER: Earth.

JERRY: Hey, we’re on the phone with the police!

-Seinfeld-

Ice Cream

VERSE 1

I saw you eating the ice cream on TV

I broke up with you so no one would see me

Side by side with a piggish eater

You ranked lower than a careless cheater

I saw you with hot fudge on your face

I saw you with chocolate all over the place

I had to get away, please try to understand

It’s not you, it’s me; I’m breaking up the band

CHORUS

He’s the loser, she’s the victor

If she’s superficial, you don’t have to miss her

To the victor go the spoils

Is that enough to get your blood to boil?

VERSE 2

Join the party, it’s not totally awkward

The host himself made the final offer

He’s keeping his lips tight about the breakup

But there’s still no chance to kiss and makeup

You can read his lips from a mile away

“Let’s sleep together” is what he’ll say

One letter off and you’re like a volcano

Yet she’s the one with the wings and halo

CHORUS

He’s the loser, she’s the victor

If she’s superficial, you don’t have to miss her

To the victor go the spoils

Is that enough to get your blood to boil?

BRIDGE

Hop in the car and get out of the arena

For this disaster, you’ll have to call FEMA

Don’t worry about useless small talk

If worst comes to worst, get out and walk

EXTENDED CHORUS

He’s the loser, she’s the victor

If she’s superficial, you don’t have to miss her

To the victor go the spoils

Is that enough to get your blood to boil?

If this is comedy, your sense of humor is dark

You make slaughter sound like a walk in the park

Just another item on the list of failures

That ship has left and you’re the sailor

Christina McLeod

The more I think about it, the more I believe there’s a reason Christina McLeod is currently an unemployed character. As you can guess from the last name, she’s related to Mitch McLeod from Brawl Mart (soon to be separated into Occupy Wrestling). What you don’t know is that she’s his older sister. This isn’t exactly a good reason to remain unemployed (unless you ask Keegan Day about it). Christina’s Mary-Sue-like perfection on the other hand is.

When I first came up with Christina McLeod, it was during my teenaged years and a time in the WWE when sexualizing women was the norm. Teenaged boys plus sexy women equals 30 minutes of masturbation. It’s not the new math, it’s the old science. So I kept asking myself how I could make Christina McLeod as sexy as possible. Bisexuality with a preference for women always works. Long black hair? Check. Snow white skin? Got it. Skimpy wrestling clothes that look more like beachwear than sports gear? Hell yes.

And last but not least, an infamous incident in the fantasy world where she competed in a bikini contest with other WWE divas and instead came out wearing nothing but a diaper. No shirt, no bra, not even pasties, just a diaper. You think she won that contest? By a landslide, and I’m not talking about the one going on in her male fans’ pants.

But of course, sexualizing women doesn’t work in today’s wrestling world, or even in a normal society for that matter. WWE programming is rated TV-PG and TNA programming is too sucky to get the girls any real attention. On top of all that (that’s not a sexual innuendo, I swear), I’m also mature and liberal enough to recognize that women don’t owe men anything when it comes to their bodies. If women want to show them off, that’s fine. If they’d rather be remembered for something else, even more power to them. I could take the easy road and say Christina made the choice to show off her body, but coming from a male writer who invented a fictional character, that’s not going to fly, so I just let it go.

And as it turned out, if Christina McLeod would have been published, she might have been remembered for something else as well: being so good at fighting and wrestling that she could not only defeat male opponents, she could do so convincingly. According to her back story, Christina had a stint in the marines and learned martial arts and mental toughness from that institution. The only reason why she’s no longer a marine is because she beat up multiple male soldiers who tried to rape her. That’s okay, because she didn’t want to die for a country that normalized rape anyways. Suck it, Paul Ryan and Todd Aiken.

Okay, so we’ve got this super hot chick who not only looks good naked, but also could kick anybody’s ass on any given Sunday. Hell, she could win the KDW World Title tomorrow if she wanted to. But there’s a problem with these credentials. In all this time I’ve been flapping my gums, I never once gave Christina one character flaw of any kind. That’s not good. Not good at all. Flawed characters are easy to relate to. Connecting with the audience in some way is important for any character. If you’re a villain, you want to be cruel and unusual. If you’re a hero, you want to be an overachieving underdog. What do you do if you’re Christina McLeod? Pardon me, but I haven’t figured that out just yet.

　

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

KRAMER: Things are going pretty well for me here in Hollywood. I met a girl.

JERRY: Kramer, she was murdered.

KRAMER: Yeah well, I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship.

-Seinfeld-

Judging Books

This past Father’s Day, I went down to Purdy to visit my dad like all good sons do on that particular day. Midway through the visit, he and my brother James wanted to know why I would call a book about pro-wrestling “Hardcore Hate”. Their main justification for disagreeing with the title was that it sounded too much like something a neo-Nazi would buy (probably because the word “hate” is closely related to racism rather than simply not liking your opponent). Of course, James’ alternative title “Barbarian and Doctor” was even worse since he obviously wasn’t even trying. But this conversation brought up a topic that I’m discussing tonight: judging a book by it’s cover or title. You hear people say all the time “Don’t judge a book by its cover”. While that may be an admirable slogan, people do it all the time with books while being encouraged not to do it with people. If you see an overweight teenaged girl walking down the street, don’t judge her body, because she might turn out to be a friendly person. But if you see a book that’s titled “The Dragon Prince” and the cover design shows a gun being pointed at a tiny kitten, that’s when you can start to worry. Come to think of it, there is a book cover that shows a gun being leveled a cute, cuddly kitty. It’s called “How Not to Write a Novel” and that image is supposed to illustrate a point: disgusting promotional tactics will get your manuscript shoved in the rejection box. It all goes back to a point I once made about hooking the reader in rather than making him wait for the hot action on a platter. Let’s take the book “The Sisters Brothers” for instance. For the book cover, somebody might see a moonlit background behind two sinister-looking people. Or if you look closely enough, you’ll see a skull with two hideous eye sockets. That’s fucking creative, people! I don’t know how good the book actually is (I haven‘t read it before), but with a clever cover like that, it’s a good start. You need another example? How about “Quiet” by Susan Cain? It’s a simple gray cover with minimal design, but it’s exactly what the reader wants to see. The book is about introversion and in order to achieve introversion, you need a quiet environment. A cloudy day with low barometric pressure is the perfect catalyst for a brief nap, and thus you have your quiet situation. If you followed that logic successfully, you’ll understand why Susan Cain’s simple book design is actually the best one for drawing readers in. Should we judge a book by its cover? Maybe, maybe not. But if I see a book on Amazon called “The Desert Maiden” and it shows a picture of feet being chopped off with a hacksaw, I’m skipping over it.

　

***TELEVISION DIALOGUE OF THE DAY***

OLD MAN: Which candy bar has the commercial with swirling chocolate?

GEORGE COSTANZA: They all have swirling chocolate.

OLD MAN: Not Skittles.

-Seinfeld-