May 8th, 2023 - The Plaza
Dear TNY,
After two weeks off, you squirted out the eelshit known as “The Plaza”.
And if I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a million times: Who gives a shit about this kind of story?
I love how even the author, about halfway through, decided that, yep, Jesus Christ am I’m getting longwinded about this dumb fucking narrative so I’m going to speed through the years by using the child’s age so we can get wherever this dickfuck story I’m writing is going because goddamn is it boring right now and maybe it won’t be boring later. And I’ll be cancer-diagnosis-honest with you, buddy. It was boring later. It was boring T to fucking B. TOP TO BOTTOM!
Here is a list of things that make this story unoriginal/poorly written/who gives a fuck:
- The male lead is a cardboard stereotype and provides nothing other than bowling lane rails for the female lead to bounce between.
- The plot, in it of itself, is fucking boring (a broad, in the parlance of this story’s time (not my parlance, fuckers), gets knocked up and then is tricked into having the baby and living a cush and BORING life in a prestigious hotel in NYC). So, trying to spice up boring is like polishing a fucking turd. Yep, I can see how shiny the undigested corn kernels are, TNY! Solid effort (shit puns)!
- The supporting cast of family members are stereotypes pulled from a writing prompt handbook to push the female lead, our bowling ball, down the lane such that we, as the reader, have no second thoughts about why she wouldn’t go home.
- The child was pulled from the same stereotype bag to render it incapable of something, yes something, worthy of love. Because if she loved the child, the author could never get us where the author wanted us to go. Which was…
- …the flip of the MC from victim to villain was, at best, not good. In fact, it was so fucking predictable that she never felt like a victim. She felt like a grade A piece of dogshit throughout. I can’t tell if this story is supposed to be a cautionary tale about how women need to have agency OR it’s about how men are shitheels OR both OR about how bad things used to be OR…who cares. Literally no one.
- Remember how your grandma used to watch AMC (back when it was only old movies) and you couldn’t stand to watch them with her because it was harder to relate to a different time? Remember how that’s what this fucking story was? Very germane, TNY. Very fucking germane.
- The female lead, who I think I’m supposed to empathize with, is devoid of facets which the reader can grab to empathize with. I feel like she’s greasier than cum on a cueball, as my dad would say. So I don’t feel for her. I just want her, like everyone else in this story, to go away.
- So who’s left to feel for? Trout Queen’s family? No, cardboard. Syphilis guy? Nope, because he was only ever a letter (although, her dropping the “hey, I’ve been fucking this dude and now I’m preggos, whoopsie!, and how do you feel about that, please send your letter to this hotel he’s going to lavish me with affection in, thanks so much guy with a collapsed nose who loves me forever and always, k bye,” and not understanding that he’d kill himself was very…reminiscent of one of my buddy’s ex-wives). The child? Monster, so no. Mrs. Nanny? Nah, she’s a beer coaster she’s so cardboard.
So there you have it. Nothing happens worth happening. No words here were worth being written or published. No empathy was made so the world isn’t a better place. No awards will be won. No lives will change. Nothing will matter. You’ve just pulled a few more feet out of the glorious sweater of literary beauty that has been woven by all of the great authors and publishers before you, rendering the artform that much more defunct. A derelict that families will wade through the shallows to get to at low tide, the mother warning her children to watch out for the rust, the father disregarding said advice and slipping out of his adult suit into his childlike wonder, exploring said ship with his children, a brightness in his voice while explaining to his kids how beautiful the craft once was before the captain ran her aground.
Anyway.
I swam deeper than I ever have the other day. And I feel like freediving is a lot like drinking. If the answer isn’t at the bottom of this glass, surely it’s at the bottom of the next one, it’s just a little further down and you have to try harder to get it. And really, that could be anything. Donuts. Romance. Ultramarathons. Religion. Pyramid schemes. Jerking off. Cooking a perfect prime rib. Seeing how many Fruit Loops you can fit in your ass, with milk, to make the world’s most bizarre bowl of cereal (be glad I didn’t hyperlink this).
What I’m saying is sometimes I’m really jealous of people who aren’t self aware. Because they don’t know all of this. That on this beautiful spaceship, we are flying through space and time and space/time until it arrives for all of us at the time and place where our consciousness lets slip its grip on this plane and the merpeople come from the depths and take us home. Whether it’s this Dickel whiskey or it’s laying on the sand at 50’ down with the humuhumunukunukuapua’a nipping at your fingers and watching the surface, so far away, roil from the invisible forces of heated air rising to parts unknown and cooler air rushing into to take its place, either way this is all going to end and there will be no fucking clarity.
So jump, motherfuckers. Take a risk. If you find yourself endeared to Margaret, pull your fucking simpleton ostrich head out of your sand-ass and fucking get to it. Because it’s moving along without you for exactly how many seconds you have been breathing fucking air. Might as well get your money’s worth.
Nick
