A perennial subject of discussion with my husband is that he experienced every piece of narrative art that was capable of inspiring him twenty years ago, and the time has passed, like David Lynch himself. Now there is nothing for him but memories. Well nerts to that, somebody oughtter make something he is capable of finding exciting and cool again. I guess it’s got to be me.
Now I’ve tried this before. When my dude was scoffing at the idea every story should follow nazi fan jojo campbell’s the hero’s journey™, he introduced me to some other ideas on story outlines, including a “gothic” one. That was not about triumph, in the heroic sense (tho it wasn’t wildly removed from it either), so it fit the idea of a dark melodrama. I took this and tried to make a story that followed it.
Thus was born Love and Torment, which languishes in about 70% done hell, with many other projects. The problem with Liebe ist Qual is that I was still hot to make it something I can easily enjoy, so it was in a scifi / fantasy setting adjacent to Josefina y Blasfemia, lousy with super-powered fuckoes doing backflips around neon green space goblins. (see also this story) This is, suffice it to say, not goth enough.
He needs a serious story with believable but heightened emotions, that you cannot help but feel because they are earnest, not manipulative, and because they speak to a goth soul. It can have supernatural stuff in it, but nothing you could imagine being reduced to a role-playing game rule system. It should feel mysterious, ideally making you want to come to it, rather than being pushy with its narrative. Gotta have gay dudes in it. Mulholland Drive is one of his favorite movies ever but gaydies instead of gaydudes probably cost it some points. In a perfect world it should have iconic stature, emblematizing itself as perfectly as the writing of Franz Kafka, or Angela Carter, or cetera.
It should have all of these things, which means suspending my ego and my desire for self-indulgence, to have a shot at tha brass ring – Best Story in the World, for at least this one guy.
I’m gonna aim to write something like that this March, for what it’s worth, but I got no strong ideas at the moment. Anybody wanna chip in some notions? The point of the Spooktober event is to show that ideas are cheap, and we should not have to be precious with them, but if you wanna keep it like the kaiser, fine, no advice for me. I’ll get through on my own. But could it be fun to help somebody write the best story that ever existed?
Some things he likes, as notions for inspiration: Mulholland Drive, Eraserhead, Twin Peaks: Firewalk With Me, The Thing, Perfect Blue, Paprika, Paranoia Agent, Silent Hill Games in Order: 3, 2, 1, 4, and after that they are dead to him, Yume Nikki, Kafka’s Metamorphosis (tho he has Josef K’s dying words from The Trial tattooed on his arm) and A Hunger Artist, the goth music of The Cure, Bauhaus, and Joy Division (again with the tattoos), the movies of Kiyoshi Kurosawa like Pulse, Cure, and Sakebi, the comics of Suehiro Maruo (Laughing Vampire, Panorama Island), Al Columbia (The Biologic Show), Charles Burns (Black Hole), and Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Hellstar Remina), and some things less goth: Katamari Damacy, ’80s one hit wonders / fashion… Maybe that’ll do for now.
If giving me suggestions for this project not so interesting, maybe just reflect in the comments on the things that are your faves of all time, and what they have in common, thematically, if anything.
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Something else I wanted to mention but forgot and don’t feel like editing in: This is similar in some respects to my notion of trying to write a christian romance. While stories are almost invariably better if the material is something you’re super into, I still think it’s possible to make something great in a domain or circumstance where you’re not welcome, like Jewish musicians writing christmas songs. What if I could write an amazing love story that would move hearts around the world, within the genre constraints of shit-fascist-moms-like? Of course I like all of the things my husband likes, if differently sometimes from how he likes them, so this isn’t directly comparable. But it’s still trying to work under a creative constraint: Don’t do something that tickles all my peccadilloes, do something for somebody else.
I won’t have as much fun as writing my usual whack shit, but it will feel very worth doing, very worth having done it. Because my husband is not the only guy in the world who is criminally underserved by pop culture – this could work for anybody else out there who is like him, and feels the sadness of that.
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Sorry I don’t think I can help with ideas for the perfect ‘Bebe’s husband book’, mainly because most of that is my kryptonite – I literally couldn’t watch Twin Peaks, as in had to leave the room when my dearly beloved was watching it. It’s the music, also the reason I can’t watch much horror, gives me nightmares, the really horrible ones that include bits from my life in amongst the films imagery. I can read more, but it’s not really my thing except in short form.
Just wanted to mention, I haven’t finished Josefina y Blasphemia yet, but I’ve enjoyed what I’ve read so far, though you’re right there are some things that need more. I’m quite used to reading in settings with little initial explanation, where you have to work to understand the world, but for me you’ve gone too far there. Though like I said, I have enjoyed what I’ve read and will go back to finish it.
Some folks are just like that with horror and adjacent kinda stuff, no prob. And thanks so much for reading my foolery! You do have the luxury of author’s ear, so leave questions wherever you please. Might help direct me on what to clarify, in the next draft.
One of the things which endlessly circles my mental drain is a series of short atmospheric pieces set in a vast mansion, in a dark forest, far from anyone who knows or cares what’s happening. There are monsters in the basement, ghosts in the attic, the last member of the family hasn’t been seen for a hundred years and the household persists in a state of grim inertia.
I think the reason I hold on to it is that it can contain as many stories as you like, and they each only have to make sense to themselves. If you want a gothic romance, there’s probably a young man living in one of the towers who persistently, obsessively paints portraits of himself as a better, happier man. A man he falls in love with, in his dreams.
that’s epic. just a recurring daydream, or has this found purchase in the land of prose?
Not sure this if this is on the mark or not but it might be. I find stories where the supernatural or the superpowered stuff is possibly real or possibly not kind of interesting. They’re also very rare. As an example of how this could work you could have most of the supernatural elements work around sensory or influence powers. The reader can wonder whether a character just read someone else’s emotions through some supernatural power or were they just really paying attention and making a good guess? When a character influences someone to go along with an odd idea is that a superpower or just charisma and social engineering? There are probably other types of abilities that could work this way, these are just the two I thought of off the top of my head.
The downside is it doesn’t sound like your thing at all. It’s the opposite of over the top, it’s so low key the mystery is whether it’s there or not.
i’m tryin to do the best story for someone who is not me, so it may be useful. thanks!
lanir@5: So kind of like “The Servants of Twilight” by Dean Koontz? The ending of that leaves a bit of a question mark hanging over whether the cultists actually knew something.
Or, of all things, the original Star Wars. In the later films, Force users are flipping switches, grabbing objects, throwing things, and making lightning bolts using the Force, but in the very first one it’s all kind of ambiguous sense stuff (“I could almost see the remote!”; Storm Troopers reacting to a perceived noise Obi-Wan used to distract them, etc.) and preternatural knowledge (the timing to fire the proton torpedo), as well as influence (“these aren’t the droids you’re looking for”). No overt telekinesis, no lightning bolts from fingertips, nothing that would absolutely convince a skeptical onlooker (whether named Solo or not) that there was really something special going on. In all the films subsequently produced though, it’s just X-Men style superpowers.
interesting observations, bek