A moustache; Hero's Quest; banishment

Gott sagte, und er sprach, so lasse dir doch einen Schnurbart wachsen. Und wie Er sah, dass es geschehen war, legte er seine Arbeit nieder, und war zufrieden. Sometimes, you chop your beard off, leaving only a moustache, and suddenly, everything changes. It’s not just that having one is so Out, it’s also the fact that it is absurd to wear one, but not in a pretentious way, somehow self-deprecating. It is also somehow a powerfully subtle statement that I fundamentally don’t fucking care if the fashion-whore magazines don’t like it, while sticking a shovel up cubeLand’s ass, and telling it to suck golfballs.

To emulate Hannah's Gonzo Brain, I will sum up a bit. Working on some short stories, slowly churning out some chunks, some building blocks, with which I will one day soon craft my own version of the hero’s quest. Essentially, every story ever written is a hero’s quest in its own right. It is so simple in concept, and so very fucking hard to turn into practice. Of course, I may be looking to produce a masterpiece overnight, and am only slow to realize that I can’t. But every piece is a building block to a larger potential piece, I just have to choose the format, create the environment, introduce the characters, kill off one or two main ones, throw in a reference to the cancer-killing AAV2 virus more here, and have some killer pr0n scenes involving femjacking and whiskey.

I was first introduced to the concept of the hero’s quest by my brother, His Illustriousness, esq., coming soon to Vatam Inc website who pointed me toward The Hero with a Thousand Faces, by Joseph Campbell, more here , which outlines the basic concept.

Fundamentally, we meet a hero, let’s say he lives in a small village of a few hundred people, in a mythical land of beasts and magic. The king of this mythical land, sitting on his throne many leagues removed, sends forth messengers to the far corners of his realm, offering fame, riches and honor to any man who can slay a terrible dragon which lives in the hills, blocking the entrance to a vast silver mine of lore.
Our young hero packs his meager belongings, accepts the large salami offered by his mother, kisses her, shakes his father’s hand, and turns his back on everything he has ever known. After traversing the scorching acid plains of the western desert, and fighting off his zombie parents, stopping briefly to slowly torture his roommate to death, who cannot leave a budding writer a moment’s peace to complete a few modest words.
Having reached the mouth of the great, terrible dragon’s lair, on the edge of the Eastern Sea, nestled in the rolling foothills of the Hundusian mountains, he wavers. His resolve broken, his body and mind exhausted from the journey, scarred from his countless battles, the recent patri-, matricide fresh in his mind, he doubts himself, with one foot in the cave. Realizing he has nothing left to lose, nothing to turn back to, however, he steels himself, setting on, to face the dragon, a silver-scaled beast standing two stories tall, not one of the fire breathers (his cousins are), but lightning quick, and beautiful to behold, who takes half of his left hand, as well as our hero’s right eye, with him to the grave. With a shock, the hero realizes that the real battle was internal, with himself, and turns back, to wealth and fame, rebuilds his parent’s ruined home, marries the brunette baker’s daughter, and lives to scare the shit out of his grandchildren with his tales of conquest, his gaping ocular cavity coming in handy at certain points.
Or, you could have the hero, vomiting blood, staring as, with its final dying energy, the dragon chews half of his small intestine out of his belly. He holds on for a few more minutes, reciting his final dying words into a special recording scroll he purchased from a fetching merchant lady, his head swimming with shock, reveling in the fact that he laid it all on the line, that he bought the ticket, took the ride, and died trying.

So, he leaves the comfort of childhood, fights his way to the “dragon”, kills it, becoming a man, and either goes on to kill more dragons (see the many villains struck down by Ian Fleming’s James Bond), or fades into relative obscurity, perhaps emerging to write a bestseller about his achievements, or just getting married and pumping out a bunch of ankle biters, to tell them all about it when they’re old enough to listen without trying to chew on the tattered finger-nubs of his left hand.

Of course, any combination of settings, love interests, villains, and heros are available, and I should probably re-read Campbell’s THwaTF (see previous), finish Herodotus’ Histories, and plough through Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, all the while experimenting blindly with various styles, literary methods, transitions, character depth, etc., until I find the right combo.

I know a cherished few do read this blog, for that I give my thanks. The more who do read it, the merrier, and the more I will put myself under pressure to produce better and more interesting shorts to read. So, tell your friends, and who knows, if it gets big enough, we can do an Olde Bouyah t-shirt, I already got some designed, which would r0xx0rz.

Thanks for reading.

Doch sah Er, was der Mann sich zugetan hat, und befohl ihm es sofort zu richten, was nicht geschah. Gekränkt, schickte Er ihn fort. Er war Spott und Demut ausgesetzt, und leidete sehr. Und Er war zufrieden.