It’s the basis of any good story, but it’s the bane of our existence.
How much nicer would the world be if we were all just a little… nicer?
Is that really such a hard thing to do, you fucking toddlers?
Target: 1000 words
Written: 256 words, Novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Ready Player One, Ernest Cline
Comics: The Darkness/Pitt 1-3, Darker Image 1
Music: No Exit, Blondie (ha!)While The Mungk was largely fatalist, and explored the beginnings of trauma without redemption more than anything (along with a slight dose of the mini-traumas that chip away as us piece by piece), this is going to be a vent.
I like funny things. I like humour.
I’m also obsessed with politics. Like, I don’t enjoy them; I just can’t look away. Motherfuckers run this world, whether that’s because they’re literal pieces of human shit (see Trump, everyone who supports him) or weak-willed do-gooders who still think that playing by the rules and taking the high road is doing anything other than handing our world to the forces of evil, who don’t give a fuck what road they take and ignore the rules, it’s largely irrelevant.
Bad Neighbours (the working title) is my way of expressing that. Of diving into ineffectuality, and how it completely fails to address the behaviour of those who could care less about custom, tradition or little things like “the law” or truth.
So, you know, going lighthearted with it, with a dose of fucking fatalism, wrapped up in barely concealed social commentary.
Fuck it. Why not?
Because fascists will hate me for portraying as the boors they are and liberals will hate me because of the mirror I hold up to their ineffectual weakness?
Fuck ’em. If the world is going down, I’ll go with it.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 979 words, novel: Bad Neighbours
Read: Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach (I'm not sure it's working, though I love the concept, minus the woo woo)
Comics: Pitt Crew 1, Pitt 17-20
Music: No Control, Bad ReligionI mean it. I love Ferris Bueller, but this whole modern nice guy is entitled to the girl thing originated with him and convinced an entire generation of boys who didn’t have the qualities women wanted, or allowed themselves to be spineless doormats, that somehow, they were entitled to whatever girl they were into, without any regard for the girl’s own agency.
And if she doesn’t want him, then it’s always what a bitch. Or why does she always go for the asshole?
Well, maybe he’s not an asshole. Maybe he’s confident. Maybe he’s funny or intelligent or takes care of his physical appearance better than you. Maybe desperation isn’t a good look.
All I’m saying is John Hughes taught a generation of boys that it was not their fault that a woman wasn’t into them; that they were entitled to a woman’s body without putting in any of the effort to become the kind of person to whom that woman might be attracted.
And these same boys secretly held, whether consciously or subconsciously, the same misogynist beliefs that they claimed to abhor, by assuming that any woman was theirs by sole right of their maleness.
Pathetic, ain’t it. Fuck Ducky. Fuck Sixteen Candles. Fuck any of the spineless “nice guys” who think turning themselves into pathetic little bitches entitles them to a goddamn thing.
Fuck incels.
But not literally.
That’s kind of the point.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 1865 words, short story: Forest Edge
Read: Radical Acceptance, Tara Brach
Comics: Pitt: In The Blood 1, Pitt 12-13, Hulk/Pitt 1
Music: No Code, Pearl JamThere’s been a recurring theme in my work, mostly because as a plot device, it’s evil, but it’s always the same. I know, I know. It happens the world over, but maybe I’m utilizing it too much.
Men and women have always been a complicated thing, but the reality is that it’s not actually that complicated.
It’s the same as anything, really. Be good to each other, and things will be fine.
Unfortunately, it’s far too easy (especially these days), to be shitty to one another.
And as has always been, no matter the race, creed or culture, women take the worst end of it. It doesn’t matter what you are, if you’re a woman, it’s worse for you.
And that’s bullshit.
I mean, I lucked out, technically; I’m a straight, white male. According to most of what I see these days, I should not be allowed to comment anything on these matters, but Yes, Ma’am. I agree.
While that might sound like complaining, it’s not. I do agree, for the most part. I don’t want to mansplain shit to anyone.
I do want to demonstrate that I understood the lesson.
I’m just starting to wonder about how things seem to go in my stories, if I’ve actually taken the lesson to heart.
It wasn’t part of The Mungk (except for maybe the hints of shrewishness in Diana), but it played a big role in Get Back Again, and in my recently written, but not yet published Western Cradle series, and here it is again, in Forest Edge.
Am I really learning?
Something to think about, going forward.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 343 words, short story: Forest Edge
Read: The Oracle Year, Charles Soule
Comics: Preacher 64-66
Music: Ninety-Nine-Double-Oh Demos, Local H (most underrated grunge band ever?)I think there’s a significant portion of us that would love to drive off down the highway in a fast convertible, beautiful woman beside us, no cares, flaunting social norms, cranking tunes, mooning and flashing the passersby, outrunning the cops, and then pulling over on an out of the way back road to fuck on the hood about every couple of hours.
It’s a young person’s game, of course, and if you’ve ever paid any attention to one of these stories, they’re always freeing, but they all end in tragedy.
Because there’s no such thing as freedom without responsibility, and while I think we should all feel free to flash our tits down Main St, or eat a pussy in the grass, carefree can also be careless.
Every high has its hangover.
At some point, reality comes crashing in, and we have a choice. Figure out how to live the adventure while taking care of business, or how to go out in a blaze of glory.
Viable choices, all.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 374 words, short story: Forest Edge
Read: Tropic Of Kansas, Christopher Brown
Comics: Preacher 60-63
Music: Nina Simone Essentials, Nina Simone (probably the only good thing that'll happen all day)I’m thinking a lot about what’s evil and what is not.
I’ve just written a four issue comic series, a western based on revenge, which begins typically enough for the kind of spaghetti western I’m basing it on, but takes a wild turn at the end of the first issue (unrevealed future plot twist).
I’m a little worried it pushes me into territory I’m not comfortable representing.
That is, like Get Back Again, I’m concerned some right wing fuck is going to take it and construe it as pro-bigotry or worse, in this case, pro-life.
But that’s not what it’s about (and I’m very pro-choice); it’s similar to The Mungk in that it’s about trauma, and how it can shape us for the worse, until the evil that’s been done to us becomes us abusing ourselves, and maybe others, in ways we never would otherwise.
It’s also about whether evil can be used for good, sometimes?
It’s about guilt and remorse and self-hatred.
Because listen, I know more than a few women who’ve been through it, and despite what the right wing would have you think, most of them did not behave as though they were tossing a used Kleenex.
Most of them were genuinely distressed, upset, even traumatized by it. Not one of them didn’t have strong feelings about it, even if they didn’t want to say it out loud. It was clearly visible on their face and in their eyes.
The other thing that I know about it is that not one of them has ever said they would make a different choice. They don’t regret the choice, even if there’s still remorse.
Like putting down a terminally ill pet; it sucks, you hate it, it makes you weep for days, but even years later, if asked, you’ll say it was the right thing to do.
Anyway, thoughts and feelings on this day; I can’t imagine what the poor women go through.
Even if this case, it’s a little more… extreme.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 720 words, comic: Western Cradle #4
Read: Tropic Of Kansas, Christopher Brown
Comics: Preacher 57-59, Preacher: Tall In The Saddle 1
Music: Nimrod, Green DaySome days, it feels like a war of attrition (and we’re not talking about the cold now).
It’s just a fight, a relentless fight, one moment after the next, bloodied, beaten, without rest, without help, without anything to get us through but pure fucking grit and the sense that goddamnit, we’re gonna get there if we die trying.
This notion that life should be a dream, a dance through the tulips, it’s poison. It’s ephemeral opiate, a smoky high that keeps us from seeing what’s going on.
But the fight keeps us focused, no matter how many cuts and bruises, how many broken bones, no matter that our hearts are in tatters and we know we’ve gone far, far from the ideal person we intended to be at the start.
All that matters is the result.
And ain’t that a hell of a way to live?
Target: 1000 words
Written: 484 words, comic: Western Cradle #3
Read: Me Talk Pretty One Day, David Sedaris
Comics: Preacher 37-40
Music: Nice Guys Finish Last, Green Day (ain't that the fuckin' case)I understand the impulse, from a fiction standpoint. Who doesn’t love a good revenge story?
John Wick isn’t what it is for nothing. (They killed his dog, so he spent four movies murdering everyone that’s ever been even tangentially related to the guy who did it. As a dog owner, I’ve never been more invested.)
The problem is that revenge seldom works out the way we want. The fantasy that plays in our head of getting that asshole boss in trouble with HR or having the perfect takedown of that bitchy girl in your friend group, more often than not, what happens is… nothing.
HR doesn’t care, because that asshole boss is so far up his asshole boss’ ass that HR finds him untouchable. That bitchy girl, she’s been insulting people so long, she rebuts with a brutal takedown of her own, and it has truth in it, and you’re cut to the quick. Your friends all titter, because they, too, are assholes.
Congratulations, you’ve just made your life worse.
All I’m saying is that as nice as the fantasy is, unless you’re some superheroic powered individual like John Wick, it probably won’t work out for you. Better to cut those influences without words, and move toward your happy, rather than your revenge.
Of course, some of us can’t, and that seething anger becomes all consuming, until we’re delusional about the whole damn thing.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 360 words, comic: Western Cradle #2
Read: The Autobiography Of Malcolm X, Malcolm X (and Alex Haley, I guess)
Comics: Preacher 9-12
Music: New Wave, Against Me!I should clarify yesterday’s post – I’m working on a western comic which deals with revenge, and the inciting event brings our heroine face to face with true evil, men who care nothing for the value of life or the freedom from violence to which people ought to have the right.
A key component is that afterward, our heroine thinks a lot on evil; indeed, she doesn’t (or rather, her husband doesn’t) believe in original sin. She wrestles with knowing these men were bred this way and not born, and moreso with the fact that they may have transmitted this evil into her with their vicious acts.
It’s a question of where evil is born. Is it bred? Created by circumstance? Or is the potential for it contained in all of us (certainly an indisputable fact even if it has no bearing on whether a person is actually evil – potential does not equal actual. Having all the ingredients to make a cake does not make a cake if nothing’s done with them).
What I’m looking at is real evil here, less so the more mundane evil of selfishness, myopia and callous disregard for the people and world around you that while. Not truly evil in the sense that it’s not committing violence, but evil in the sense that it creates the underpinnings for evil, for toxicity, for bad men to thrive like we see now in the right wing.
Again, the way a cake is not a cake until it’s made, we talk of the same with steel and bullets and wood for stocks.
A gun is not a gun until someone’s built and loaded it.
Then it becomes a vehicle for evil (even if it’s working in defense of justice and freedom).
A violent man will die a violent death, as it’s said in the Tao.
Or in this case, a woman?
Target: 1000 words
Written: 576 words, comic: Western Cradle #1
Read: The Art Of Asking, Amanda Palmer
Comics: Preacher 1-4
Music: New Sensations, Lou Reed (good way to end the year)Year Totals:
Target Words: 248 400 words
Written Words: 256 742 words in 1 novella, 4 short stories, 3 poems and 1 comic (plus part of 1 more)
Books Read: 91
Comics Read: 1429
Albums Listened To: 520
New Recipes Tried: 171
Places Travelled: 5 (Collingwood/Kingsville/Temagami/Florida/Bahamas)
I don’t believe in original sin. I think it’s fucking ridiculous.
Only a deluded soul could believe that anyone is born evil. Babies are babies; they just are.
Evil is not born. It’s bred.
It’s influenced and created, it has supervillain origins. Origins often tragic and relatable, but it doesn’t ultimately matter because the evil is so ingrained as to overwhelm any compassion one might hold.
It’s a henchman created by an overbearing boss, a desire to please, a fear of independent thought, or whatever.
It’s selfish, narcissistic, and considers no one’s needs but its own. It feeds and feeds and feeds, growing larger and larger, until someone cuts off the damn trough (or it empties its own and starts feasting on everyone else’s, which is when true evil begins).
It needs a slap in the face.
And sometimes, it’s so far gone, so committed to its story of itself as hero, itself as victim, itself as the only character in the story whose needs need to be fulfilled, that there’s no chance of turning back.
There’s only awful behaviour, and ultimately, exile or death.
If, in your story, you are the only one that matters, or you think your needs are more important than anyone else’s?
Fuck you. You’re the problem.
You weren’t born that way; circumstances pushed you a certain direction and you didn’t bother to course correct once you knew.
And ultimately, you started making the choice to be evil, all on your own.
So, fuck you, overentitled pieces of shit, bigoted assholes trying to pretend you love freedom and not just hating on others.
Fuck you, snooty pricks staring down your noses at people for not having the “right” views or the “right” look or having read the “right” books, when the extent of your engagement with justice is a fucking social media post to mask the fact that all you care about is status.
Fuck you, too, people who stand up and say, I’m decisive, I’m advocating for myself, I’m a strong person, but are, in actually, just assholes who treat everyone else like shit over the pettiest bullshit in order to prop up the fiction that they’re somehow worth more than everyone else (your insecurity is showing). Your obsessive need to prove yourself, your obsession with validation, it’s destructive – to you and everyone around you.
And it’s led, time and again, to the same choice – grow, change, be a better person, or close down, stop thinking and fuck everyone else.
Otherwise known as, you know, evil.
Target: 1000 words
Written: 3085 words, comic: Western Cradle #1
Read: The Art Of Asking, Amanda Palmer
Comics: Chu 9-10
Music: New Order Essentials, New Order