Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Daniel McBride

As a writer, I draw inspiration from pretty much everything around me. Drawing inspiration from the movie Pulp Fiction as a teenager was probably not the best idea. Don’t get me wrong, Pulp Fiction is a badass movie and Quentin Tarantino will always be remembered for it. It’s just that Quentin Tarantino is really the only person qualified to write anything in his own style. I tried copying his style and it was a fucking disaster. That’s where we get the character Daniel McBride. The reason he’s called that is because I didn’t know at the time of creation there were already people named Danny McBride. I thought I was being original, but it turns out I’m not. You want to know what made Daniel so special? He used racial slurs despite not being a racist. He was first introduced in a Play By Web college RPG as a freshman art major. He got in a rivalry with another kid named Shawn Rawlins because Shawn’s player controlled Daniel’s actions and used him to trip Shawn accidentally. Folks, if you’re ever in an RPG, don’t control anybody’s character but your own. That’s a huge pet peeve of mine. But instead of complaining to the admin of the game, I tried to make lemonade out of lemons. Daniel tried apologizing to Shawn, but Shawn pulled a gun on him and shot him in the leg. Daniel then shouted a whole bunch of KKK jokes at him (Shawn was black) and got beaten up even further for it. That and the wannabe thug stole Daniel’s girlfriend away from him in the process. I can safely say I’ve never been traumatized by an RPG before that moment, so I left for greener pastures. Years later, Daniel McBride became a character in a movie I wrote called Pumping Filter, where his old rivalry with Shawn Rawlins was relived. Pumping Filter had a whole bunch of racial tension with no real reason for it. The way I justified it back then was the whole idea behind insulting someone was to get them angry and nothing made an opponent angry like an attack on their culture. As I got older, I realized that simply using those attacks is enough to be deemed racist and rightfully so. These days, my works don’t resemble Pulp Fiction on steroids. Quentin Tarantino was a staple of the criminal underworld, so he has all the tools he needs to write these kinds of movies. Me? I’m just a suburban white kid who had a generally easy life. But as it stands, Daniel McBride needs a new home, either as a college or high school kid. Maybe this time his martial arts skills will come in handy and he’ll actually win fights. His martial arts skills didn’t work too well in Pumping Filter and that college RPG. Can I really make chicken salad out of chicken shit and turn Daniel McBride into a respectable human being? I hope so, because my imagination is getting to be too lonely for him.

 

***JOKE OF THE DAY***

Q: What grades do racist skinheads get in school?

A: Not C’s.

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