March 29th, 2021 - Future Selves
Dear TNY,
Holy fuck is “Future Selves” a boot-smear of cold dogshit.
Where does one begin? Firstly, who cares about a couple looking for an apartment? That’s about the most boring first-world problem one could come up with. And their “creative work”? Do we, once again, have writers on our hands in a TNY story? I can’t even fucking handle this shit anymore.
To summarize the story, to see if I’m getting it right: A couple who have nothing to fucking worry about in the world, who engage in work that they actually enjoy doing that doesn’t make every day a living hell, AND makes them enough money such that they won’t, seemingly, ever have to live like the rest of us, are shopping for the perfect place, turning down other perfect places along the way because they just aren’t fucking perfect enough. Meanwhile, the wife of said couple takes a trip to visit her friends, who are also lively and carefree, and this wife relives some of her carefree youth, it’s all sparkles and brightness and amazing, and then she returns home to finally get that fucking breathtaking magical apartment, only to be diminished slightly by the possibility of not being able to have kids, but not really, says the doctor, throwing out any conflict that might bring. And her friends continue to be carefree artists and writers, living the goddamn dream, funded by, I’m guessing, the same imaginary bank that this imaginary dickturd of a story came from (a bank that can only supply unbelievable nonsense), and then suddenly, the only real person we could care about in this story dies (but we don’t care because even the narrator says that no one saw this coming (and do you know why no one saw it coming, TNY; because Queen Narcissus and all her fucking cronies all paid so much attention to themselves (within their own worlds) AND she also paid no attention to anyone else in the narrative (the narrator, I mean; but let’s be honest, that likely means the author) that we don’t ever really get to know Simon in a way that his death matters to us)). Anyway, dude bro dies. I want to care but I can’t. Because I’m seeing this world through the lens of a self-centered twit whom I cannot be bothered to care about. And her sadness is the sadness which we, the readers, are supposed to connect to. But when Karen gets sad, who the fuck cares?
Did I get it right? That’s the summary right? Should I go further?
Sure: Unlikable main character, who wants for nothing, muses about her perfect life whilst in the background a character that may matter, but we will never know, seemingly kills himself and the aforementioned unlikable character is rendered sad, about as sad as one can get when they can only really love themselves.
Better?
Oh, and I LOVED the immediate comparison she made after finding out that Simon was missing. I’m going to paste it here, verbatim, such that we can all witness the glory of how self-centered she was:
I told her I was sorry. I hoped Simon would get in touch soon. I remembered something that had happened at my university, which I hadn’t thought about in years. I didn’t know the boy very well, but I used to exchange daily greetings with him at the library where he and I had adjacent research stalls. He’d left a party one snowy night and was found more than a week later, too late. No one knew what had happened—whether he was drunk, or troubled, or something else.
She fucking IMMEDIATELY pivots to her own experience with some other fucking person?! Bravo, dear. Bravo. Simon must have really mattered to you. As the narrator, you really are displaying an absolute adherence to telling a story that allows us, the readers, to experience how fucking worthless any other story is to you if it isn’t your own. And ending it with “something else”; fuck, bud, you couldn’t care less. Blah blah blah, things happened to people, this one time there was a boy that I said hi too sometimes and he killed himself—wait, were you talking? I didn’t think so.
Well, another Monday in the books. Another tired, poorly written, nothing-fucking-happens to nobody-fucking-cares characters. And, surprise surprise, they were “creative”.
Your fiction is laughable, TNY. You are a disgrace to literature. The beautiful writers and stories of years past that actually managed to grace your pages should and would (RIP et al) be ashamed of what you do now.
But, cool story, bro. You graduated fifth grade.
Nick
P.S. This all feels mean. But shitting Christ, get your shit together over there. Earn this platform you have. Also, writing this shit makes me laugh. Boot-smear of cold dogshit. Love it.
