I’m currently listening to an audiobook by a highly-respected author. But, as we age we become learned (or jaded) enough to discover that everyone poops the same, and we can create similar things…but we just didn’t create THIS specific thing.

It can be appreciated and celebrated, but it’s not necessarily something that’s unattainable. Maybe the fame might be(?) but writing a book…it’s not impossible.  There are still such things as heroes, but you realise that you are also capable, whether through furthering education, buying a better tool for your craft, finding time again, and overcoming setbacks.

If I was younger and listening to this audiobook, having being possibly influenced by others of my generation, the media and the access to a barrage, of what can only be described as mentally ill BS, on the internet, maybe I’d have missed it.

But I didn’t …

Seemingly, I’ve done it too, in the first pages of KING OF SPADES. But I mince no words and I stand by it, because it was part of the character’s personality. Not necessarily mine. And, reading onwards, this streak within the character’s arc surfaces over and over in various ways because she really does hate civilians and has a bias that all their knowledge and opinions aren’t worthy of her time. The line could have been swapped out for another one about anything, and I think Cleo would have tried to make the teen feel stupid. The teen just so happened to notice the RAVENEYE after already agitating Cleo.

Agent Cleo Darkrose is met with a civilian charge for the first time in her career as a highly-ranked agent in her organisation. She is in a room at HQ with a teenage girl asking too many questions about her personal life, with none of the respect/degree of reverence Cleo is accustomed to being addressed with. It was not a chance to advocate for eg gun control/2nd amendment or other.

What was the line? (KOS page  14)

“We hate guns.”

“How do you know you hate guns and not just the people who fire them?”

The question was flat and she didn’t expect an answer. The kid could take that and ponder her Liberal shit.

 

In the book I’m currently reading /listening to, the teenage protagonist seems old-fashioned, whether this is testimony to the author’s distant memory (they are nearing 80) of growing up or a skilled attempt to DATE the novel, I wasn’t sure until the narrative mentioned a certain politician/former president.

Yes…TDS reached a traditionally-published fictional novel.

You can’t have it both ways, dude. Hating on an ex-president by way of the teenager in the book was so out of place that it was shocking enough to erode the immersion. I personally have no real feeling on the former president targeted etc but, as mentioned in the Ever Something to Say posts, I’ve never witnessed a public figure being so accepted to be bullied by millions of people. The people who take pleasure in using this person as focus, as a joke on a late-night LAME AF show are so intensely stuck on him, it’s definitely bordering on mental illness, like an obsession.

I’m an adult, trying to follow a far-fetched story involving distant words mashed into a contemporary fictional world… and your obsession is so bad that you ruined my experience.

This is why so many “woke” movies and other go under as soon as they start riding that high horse. Unless you notify the audience through trailers/blurb etc what they are signing up for, they will not like it when you risk breaking their immersion to get off on sneaking in a jab or lecture at random.

 

 

 

 

 

**edit, HAHAHAH it got worse, there was a jab at Christians, calling them stupid and also a reference to the OK sign that 4chan tried to spread was racist as a troll. This writer believed it. *facepalm*