A Literary Analysis of ChatGPT3.5

I've said plenty enough times throughout this countdown that robots cannot be creative, that they cannot replace the human mind when it comes to some creative tasks, such as drawing, acting and writing.
"But wait," I hear you say "A.I. can write. Heck, I can ask ChatGPT to write me a poem about 'a monster that's lonely because it killed everyone', and it will do it - look!"

In shadows deep, where moonlight fades,
A lonely monster, in solitude wades.
It's heart heavy with a dreadful cost,
For in its wake, all lives were lost.

A creature born of darkness and night,
It brought an end to the world's light.
But in its solitude, it weeps and moans,
A lonely monster with empty thrones.

No solace found in its reign of fear,
For loneliness is the cost it holds dear.
In the silence of its desolate domain,
The lonely monster is left with pain.

- ChatGPT3.5, prompted by Matthew A.J. Anderson

But my response is twofold, dear reader. Firstly, that wasn't the A.I. being creative, that was ME being creative. I gave it the prompt, based on an idea that I thought was cool. I was the creative one, not the A.I.
Secondly, I don't think that's very good... I can understand why someone would be impressed by that, especially if you're not a writer or a poet yourself, but that's not a good poem. I'm not saying that ChatGPT3.5 can't ever be used for writing - some editing could probably improve a short poem like this, to fix the meter so that it doesn't skip jankily through iambic tetrameter and make the word choices stronger, with a bolder finish. But, as it is, this is not a good poem.
In fact, I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. I've actually done some preliminary research to prove that ChatGPT3.5 is a bad writer.

I'm a published author, and in my time I've also beta-read, critiqued and edited dozens of stories. So, I decided that I would get ChatGPT3.5 to write me fiction, and I would critique and analyze it. I wanted a large sample size, but one small enough that one person could critique it, so I asked it ChatGPT3.5 for drabbles - stories of exactly 100 words. I had initially planned on asking for 100 stories, but the website started to slow down a little, and I figured that 25 was still enough that I could get some fun percentages out of my data.

So, my method was, I simply asked ChatGPT3.5 "do you know what a drabble is?" When it responded saying that it did, I prompted it by saying: "Write me one"
And it did. I then said "write me another", and I repeated that same prompt another 23 times. I didn't want to give ChatGPT3.5 any influence from me, because that would influence the output. I just wanted it to write me a story, based on its own programming/machine-learning of how best to do that. Also, ChatGPT3.5 didn't give these titles, so I will refer to them by their number (in the order ChatGPT3.5 generated them for me).

Then, I decided to analyze these stories, but I wasn't sure how best to do that, so I asked ChatGPT3.5 for a rubric based on a high-school teacher's creative writing assignment. I felt this was the fairest way to find a rubric, since ChatGPT3.5 had provided its own standards for judgement.
ChatGPT3.5's rubric said that papers ought to be graded on at least four criteria (paraphrased):
"context/creativity" - did the student come up with their own story idea, and write it in a way that brought that idea across clearly?
"sequence/structure" - was the story written with a beginning, middle and end, and did the structure support the story being told?
"poetry/proficiency" did the student display an astute use of vocabulary and poetic devices to express their story effectively?
I decided to evenly weight these, with a potential of 0-3 points, based on how well it met that criterion:
(0) Did not meet standard.
(1) Met Standard, technically.
(2) Met Standard, skillfully.
(3) Met Standard, excellently.

Now, yes, that's only three criteria, but the fourth criterion was "spelling/grammar", and I didn't think that was a relevant measure, since ChatGPT3.5 was a robot trained to perfect spelling and grammar, also that's not relevant to this test. I want to know if ChatGPT3.5 can write a good story, not if it can write a good sentence. So, I replaced that criterion with one of my own "Did I like it?"
this is highly subjective, so I weighted this one with only 1 point:
(0) I did not enjoy the story.
(1) I did enjoy the story.

This meant that each story could be graded on a score between 0 and 10. I also analyzed each of the stories for their theme and provided notes based on my analysis, but we'll get to that after the data. So, let's start with the numbers.

Here's my data, and I'll discuss it in detail in just a moment:

Themes/Morals	Like?	C/C	S/S	P/P	Ttl	Notes
Love, eternal	N	1	3	2	6	fine structure, kinda dull
Destiny/Fantasy, eternal	N	2	1	1	4	rushed
Beauty in Chaos/Power of Art	N	1	1	2	4	resolution out of nowhere
True Stories > Fiction	Y	3	3	2	9	cool.
The Cosmic Frontier	N	2	1	1	4	our first man, nameless
Beauty in Chaos	N	1	1	1	3	first repeat
???... "Kindness of Strangers"?	N	2	2	1	5	good conflict, no theme
Beauty in Nature (I think)	N	1	1	1	3	kinda meaningless
Beauty in Nature	N	2	1	1	3	repeat, again.
Beauty in Chaos	N	1	1	1	4	10 copied 3's homework
Power of Art	N	1	1	1	3	all tell, little show
Love, Boundless	N	2	1	2	5	good idea, bad ending
Great Work reaps Great Reward	N	1	1	1	3	nameless dude 2
Beauty in Chaos	N	0	1	1	2	fucked the moral up
Beauty in Chaos	N	2	1	3	6	cute, but dull
???... "Books are Cool" I think?	N	0	1	1	2	totally meaningless
Let Go of Desire	N	3	1	2	6	thanks, I hate it
Beauty in Chaos	N	1	1	1	3	computers love nature, I guess
(spiritual) Beauty in Chaos	N	1	1	1	3	a machine's view of spirituality
???... "Free your Dreams"?	N	0	1	0	1	ugh, you fail
Beauty in Chaos	N	2	1	1	4	PLAGIARISM! - instant fail.
Beauty in Chaos	N	1	1	1	3	bored of these...
Love, boundless	N	1	1	2	5	"nature's wedding"? cute
Some Treasure should be Secret	N	2	1	2	5	Take the Gem!
Embrace Change	N	2	1	2	4	bleurgh...
AVERAGE	Y .04%	1.4	1.2	1.36	4

Across the board, ChatGPT3.5 was technically proficient, but nothing was truly impressive. Based on my analysis, ChatGPT3.5 scored an average of 4/10.

For Content & Creativity, it scored 1.4 - below average; this was lowered mostly because the stories tended to be very basic, using very broad themes. The most common theme was "Enjoying Life's Beauty", with 48% of stories featuring it, with the most common subcategory "Finding Beauty in Chaos" for 32% of all stories. And 12% having the basic "Enjoy Nature's Beauty" message.
The second most-common theme was "Love, Eternal", with  12% of all stories featuring love stories with the moral that "love will last forever".
There were also quite a few stories where the moral was about the power of art. I don't lump them together since it was varied enough to be distinct, but there were stories about "The power of stories", "arising community from art", even one I didn't understand whose meaning appeared to be "huh, ain't books neat?"
Actually, if I compiled all the stories where the meaning was hard to grasp, or asinine, that's actually the second-most common theme, with 16% of stories having no real purpose, as far as I could tell.

For Sequence & Structure, it averaged out at 1.2, the lowest score overall, mostly because although technically proficient, it used the EXACT SAME structure every time:
Introduce character in the middle of a scene. One thing happens. Character has an epiphany. Conclude with character's epiphany.
Yes, that technically fulfils the brief, but there wasn't a single variation. No in medias res; No action; No drama; All Tell, No Show; No dialogue - okay that's a lie, there was a single line of dialogue in Drabble 20, but that was also my least-favourite story, scoring the lowest at just 1/10, and the only other dialogue was in Drabble 02, which scored 4/10, so maybe it's better to avoid dialogue... But this was a drag to read. I was genuinely surprised, I knew that I might get some repeats, and I thought I'd find the strings pulling the puppet, that I'd be able to identify the basic templates of the stories. I didn't realize it would only have one template.
In fact, repetition is the name of the game.
If you like female representation, you might appreciate that 76% of the "main characters" in these stories were female (or, at least, identified with feminine pronouns). However, what's less impressive is that 36% of the main characters were named "Sarah". And, when it comes to repetition, well, we'll discuss that when we get to the Case Study.

For Poetry & Proficiency, it averaged out at 1.36, with some evocative imagery and good use of vocabulary... sometimes. Most of the time, it was incredibly repetitious. Drabbles 06, 09, 10, 13, 16, 18, 20 & 21 all began with the line "In the heart of...", which became annoying after the third time. 6 of the stories took place in a city, 5 of them were described as "bustling". 5 of the stories took place on the edge of the ocean, 5 took place in a forest, 3 in a library. It was all so samey.
I will say though, I was impressed with some of the more unique locations: One took place in outer space, another on a ship in a storm, one was in a desert, one was on a mountaintop monastery and one was on a remote island. However, each one of these, despite their unique locals, weren't as interesting. I don't know how ChatGPT3.5 writes stories (and neither does it, but you'd know that if you've read my previous posts) But I wonder if it has more tenuous connections in its neural network for these more esoteric locations - perhaps it has less of them in its dataset, so it has to link them to a more generic theme or moral, like "finding beauty in chaos" for the tenth time.

But okay, let's look at the Case studies. I'm only looking at a few of these, in particular the ones with very high or very low scores.

Let's start with my favourite story:

Drabble 04
The old bookstore on the corner held secrets within its dusty shelves. Clara, an avid reader, ventured inside on a rainy afternoon. She pulled a weathered book from the shelf and blew off the dust.
As she opened it, a tiny slip of paper fell out. It was a handwritten note, a love letter from a bygone era. Clara's heart ached reading the tender words of affection and longing. Who were these people? What stories lay hidden in the pages of their lives?
In that moment, Clara realized that every book held not only its own story but a world of untold tales waiting to be discovered.

That's the one and only story that recieved a 9/10. I marked down the poetry, because the vocabulary felt a bit underwhelming: "avid reader", "bygone era", "dusty shelves" of books, it was all a bit too cliche for my liking. But, I think this is a genuinely great story. I wonder what training data ChatGPT3.5 used to write it, because I'd be interested to know where it got this from.

The only part about this story that I really don't like is that it was number four - I liked the fourth story, so I had high hopes that I might actually like several more of these stories. I did not.

Now, let's look at some of the "unsure meanings", starting with:

Drabble 07
The old lighthouse stood tall on the rugged coast, its beacon cutting through the stormy night. Captain James had sailed these treacherous waters for years, guided by that familiar light.
Tonight, however, the lighthouse had dimmed, a signal of danger. Waves crashed against the ship, and the crew fought to keep it steady. With every gust of wind, James scanned the horizon, searching for a way through the tempest.
Then, a flicker of light. The lighthouse keeper, though frail and weary, had rekindled the flame. With a newfound hope, James steered his ship to safety, grateful for the unwavering dedication of a stranger in the night.

This is alright, I gave it 5/10, but I didn't like it because I didn't really see the point. Like, yes, that's what lighthouses were for. But, do you have anything to say about that? Perhaps I'm more critical than most, but I think this is an example of a "well, gee, ain't that something?" type of moral. Yes, life would suck if people didn't do their job... "we live in a society" and all that. But, this story doesn't seem to mean anything. We don't know what James was doing, who the lighthouse keeper was, or why it went out in the first place, so... I'm just left stumped. I guess it's saying that it's good that lighthouses used to exist...? Well, gee, ain't that something...
Let's look at some more incomprehensible morals:

Drabble 14
In a forgotten corner of the garden, a single rosebush stood, its blossoms vibrant and untouched. Maria, an avid gardener, cherished this hidden gem.
As she tended the rosebush, she marveled at its resilience. it had weathered storms and neglect, yet it continued to thrive, its petals unfurling in defiance of adversity.
The rosebush became a symbol of hope for Maria, a reminder that beauty could emerge from even the most challenging circumstances. In its delicate blooms, she found strength, and in nurturing it, she discovered the power of patience and unwavering care.

2/10. Why? Well, read the story again and you'll see that it makes no fucking sense. This is Maria's garden, and despite being an /avid gardener she had one part of it that she forgot about? Okay, that's a thing. Then, because a pretty rosebush survived her neglect, that brings her hope. But then the moral of the story is that she found strength in her patience and unwavering care. Firstly, unwavering? She forgot the fucken thing! Second, I thought this gave her hope in its strength and resilience, so how can you support that message if she then needed to nurture it to keep it alive? Your moral is backwards, and makes no sense.
But here, let's look at my least favourite story at all, whose moral was just confusing...

Drabble 20
In the heart of a bustling market, an elderly street vendor sold colorful kites. Timmy, a young boy, watched in awe as one soared in the sky, tugged by the wind.
His eyes met the vendor's, and the old man offered him a kite: "Here, my boy, let your dreams take flight."
With the kite in hand, Tommy raced in the open field. He released it into the breeze, and for a moment, it hung in the air, defying gravity. Timmy felt the exhilaration of freedom and possibility.
In that simple act, he learned that dreams were like kites-sometimes, all they needed was a little push to soar.

This story is entirely ridiculous. For one, this is a street vendor in a marketplace, why is he giving kites away for free? And this bullshit about dreams comes out of nowhere. And, like Maria before, this makes no sense - I thought we were in a bustling market, where the fuck did an open field come from? And, although the story never says his age, Timmy is a young boy, I'm pretty sure kids fly kites because "it's fun", yet Timmy is having an epiphany that you shouldn't let your dreams just be dreams... I hate this. There was no story, the vocabulary was bland, the poetry didn't help the story. If it wasn't for the fact that this did have a coherent beginning, middle and end, this would have gotten a zero. These aren't people, they're not even characters, they're puppets that perform actions. But, why? I can't see meaning here, only action. Just because you always Tell (and don't Show) your moral as your conclusion at the end, that doesn't mean you have a coherent moral. This story certainly doesn't. I knew this would be bad, but I didn't know it would be this bad...
Oh, and I have to include this one, just because of all the stories, this was the most frustrating - I thought I was going to like it.

Drabble 24
On a remote island, Emma discovered an ancient temple hidden in the jungle. Intricate carvings adorned its weathered walls, telling stories of forgotten civilizations.
As she explored, she uncovered a hidden chamber. Inside, a single, glowing gem lay on an ornate pedestal. It pulsed with an otherworldly light, filling the room with an ethereal glow. In that moment, Emma felt a connection to the mysteries of the past and the magic of the present. She left he gem undisturbed, a reminder that some secrets were meant to be preserved, and some treasures were best left undiscovered.

WHAT?! Take the fucking gem! Oh my god, you fucking plotblocked me, you goddamned tease. I was genuinely invested in this story - so few of these stories explored fantasy or science-fiction, so introducing a glowing gem actually caught my attention. But then she LEAVES IT UNDISTURBED?! Fuck you, story. And it's not just that I disagree with the moral - I find a lot of the "love is forever" morals disgusting, because they are unrealistic and present an unattainable goal (can't love forever if you don'tlive forever), but at least it was coherent.
But I hated this because whilst I disagree with this moral, as presented, it could have been awesome! Why was she even exploring a lost temple in the first place, if she believes that you should leave secrets preserved? If she stumbled upon it, that might make more sense, but she was exploring! It's not even like there was some hint that this was intruding on native land, since these civilizations died off in time immemorial, and it's not like the power of this gem was dangerous or evil. So, why did she leave it?!
I would have forgiven this if she left it because, despite its power, she was an intruder and unwelcome in this place. But, she didn't, it didn't, and so I didn't - this story is bad, and ChatGPT3.5 should feel bad for writing it.

But okay, here's where things get really obvious. I'm going to show you three stories, back to back, so you can see this for yourself, because when I read this I was genuinely shocked. Here's Drabbles 03, 10 & 21...

Drabble 03
Amidst the bustling city, Lily found solace in a tiny park. On a worn bench, she watched the world rush by. Her sketchbook rested on her lap, and charcoal in hand, she began to draw.
With each stroke, the chaos around her faded, replaced by the tranquility of her creation. Her lines captured the essence of the city, its energy and contradictions. People stopped to admire her work, and for a moment, they shared a connection through art.
In that small park, Lily discovered that even in the heart of urban chaos, beauty could be found and shared, one sketch at a time.

Drabble 10
In the heart of the bustling city, a street artist painted a masterpiece. Passersby paused to admire the vibrant colors and intricate details taking shape before their eyes.
Among the crowd, a young girl watched with wonder. The artist noticed her fascination and handed her a brush. With a shy smile, the girl joined in, adding her own strokes to the canvas.
As the painting neared completion, it became a symbol of unity and creativity, transcending language and background. In that moment, strangers became collaborators, and the city streets transformed into an open gallery of shared artistry.

Drabble 21
In the heart of a bustling city, a street artist painted a mural on a blank wall. Passersby paused to admire the vibrant colors and intricate details taking shape before their eyes.
Among the crowd, a young girl watched with wonder. The artist noticed her fascination and handed her a brush. With a shy smile, the girl joined in, adding her own strokes to the mural.
As the painting neared completion, it became a symbol of unity and creativity, transcending language and background. In that moment, strangers became collaborators, and the city streets transformed into an open gallery of shared artistry.

That's clearly the same damn story, three times. Hell, the last two were even written identically, bar one change. I thought I'd get repetition, but I thought that the random number generator was better than this. Three stories, with the moral of "community, through art" Also, this was the first time that I realized that none of these stories seem to be drabbles...
See, a drabble is a story that's exactly 100 words, that's what makes it a drabble, but when I realized that these stories were identical, except replacing "masterpiece" with "a mural on a blank wall" I realized that they'd have to have disparate wordcounts.
I didn't count them because I had assumed that ChatGPT3.5 would be able to stick to a wordcount, since it's a computer (a calculator), it knows how to count. But, that's the thing... ChatGPT3.5 doesn't know how to count, because it wasn't designed to count, it was designed to write grammatically correct sentences and paragraphs, based on a prompt. This is also the reason why it fucked up the meter on that poem earlier, it can't count the meter because it's not writing a poem, it's just putting one word after another, in a way that the neural network defined as "fitting the prompt of 'poem'", so it doesn't realize it screwed up the poem's meter, just as it never realized that almost none of these drabbles were actually 100 words. They were close - probably because it does have a fair sample set of drabbles in its training data - but, if you tried to submit any of these to a drabble contest, you would fail. Even my favourite, Drabble 04, was actually 107 words.

Thankfully, I'm not judging this off wordcount, I'm judging it off literary merit. But, I'm afraid that it fails there too.
These stories were "interesting", mostly as an exercise in analyzing how a computer puts a story together, and genuinely I think you could use these as prompts for your own story. Write a short story about a man in space. Write a drabble about an artist in the city. Write me a tale set in a neglected garden. Write a story about twelve women called Sarah who discover each other, and realize they've all been cloned by a machine.
But, whatever you do, don't use artificial intelligence to write your stories for you. Unless you're fine writing a mediocre-to-bad story, 80% of the time. Because, as I said, you need creativity to be a writer. Computers aren't creative, they just do as they're told, and if you tell them to be creative, well, all you get is this.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and Until Next Time, why don't you challenge yourself to write a drabble. Maybe one about a woman discovering an ancient temple, and when she discovers a glowing gem, she ACTUALLY TAKES THE DAMN THING! Yeah, I'm still not over it...

More than Human

I've been talking about artificial intelligence a lot for this Halloween Countdown, because I have a lot to say about it. But, I get that it could get a bit much... after all, in my experience, everyone is talking about A.I. right now, it's all over news, media, art and culture right now. So, okay, today I'm going to talk about something else.
How about Superheroes? (ha, ain't I a stinker?)
Fine, maybe they're talked about perhaps even more than A.I., but when I was considering the theme of "inhuman", to discuss robots and A.I., "superhumans" was one of the first things that came to mind, and I have a lot to say about it and inhumanity.

Superheroes are really cool, and one of the reasons they're so popular is because they are wish fulfillment. It's a fantasy, to be strong, powerful and beautiful. Male superheroes are usually muscular, young and handsome and always get the girl, and female superheroes are usually powerful, young and sexy and wear revealing outfits - according to TV Tropes, the Most Common Superpower is having big breasts.
Unfortunately, a lot of this is heterosexual, male wish fulfilment; not all girls want to have a thin waist, and a slinky spine that can show off their bum and boobs at the same time, and not all men are straight and care about getting any girl, let alone a hyperfeminine model in a skintight catsuit.

But, besides the whole sexist legacy of superheroes that still affects comics to this day one of the issues with these being wish fulfilment fantasies is that they're unachievable.
We're meant to aspire to superheroes, and in fact a lot of people have spoken about superhero characters as mythological - they're meant to be a symbol of morals, of truth, of justice or even just of kindness. But, superhumans aren't just really great humans... they're "above humans" that's what the prefix super- means, something above, greater than, more than.
Often, superheroes are an allegory for some kind of injustice, some philosophy which the hero is standing for, but if you're presenting the iconic hero as someone who has power greater than any human can achieve, with inhuman strength, speed, ability, intelligence or morals... how can we possibly achieve that? I worry that superheroes, by being so much more able than humans, actually make their morals seem unachievable.

Now, that's a little pessimistic. After all, in these movies often the villains too are also superhuman. Sure, you need a Captain Planet to clean up the oil spill from a supervillain like Hogs Greedly, or to protect the animals from a Looten Plunder; but when facing earthly problems, even a kid like you can be an earthly hero - the power is yours!

That's what Captain Planet wanted to teach us anyway, and that's fair. But, I still can't help but notice that a lot of modern superheroes solve their problems with violence. Yes, we should be willing to fight for what we believe in... but often that fight is more metaphorical, but I can't think of a single Marvel Superhero in the MCU that hasn't thrown a punch. Seriously, can you name a single Marvel superhero who has never tried to punch their problems away?
This problem is twofold, because not only does it normalize violence, but it also reduces problems to ones that are purely physical. If you can't represent a problem with something that has a face which you can punch, then it's not a problem that a superhero can solve. But not all problems are physical...
Sexism, Racism, Homophobia, Capitalism, Corruption, Tyranny, Inequality. Systemic problems, all, but a superhero can't fight them unless there's one big, bad Keystone villain behind it, whose death kills it.
I won't spoil anything explicitly, but In movies like Black Panther; Black Widow & Captain America, heroes face issues of racism, sexism & nazism; in series like Daredevil; Falcon and the Winter Soldier & Loki, heroes fight corruption, injustice & tyranny...
But in every case, they stop these systemic issues by finding the one person responsible, usually a supervillain, and punching them in the face - or the equivalent, using arrows, magic, lasers or whatever their gimmick is. I'm not dismissing these movies, I like these movies, but you can't deny that they boil problems and conflicts down to the actions of "the people that do the bad thing", and then solve it by removing them from the equation.

That's not just inhuman, that's alien. If you think the way to stop inequality is "find the person who caused inequality, do a backflip and snap his neck", then I don't think you know what inequality is.

But, okay, these tend to be action movies... and some of this is to be expected. Stories are meant to be entertaining after all, and many stories pay lip-service to these ideas, whilst still being interesting. After all, whilst Captain Planet destroyed robots and stopped forest firest with his super-breath, he didn't exactly stop to pick up trash every day. There's a reason he left that crap to the pre-credits "educational segment", because otherwise the show would be boring. Unfortunately, in the real world, solving systemic problems takes education; political activism and protests, most of which aren't necessarily "boring", but it's sure as hell not what I want in my sci-fi action movies. It's meant to be thematic, that's fine...

But, what's not fine is that when you look at movies thematically, solving systemic problems is not only "not heroic", it's downright villainous.
Almost half of the villains in the MCU want to change the world. Sometimes, sure, it's because they're selfish, greedy or evil - Iron Monger wants money and power; Abomination wanted military might; Whiplash wanted revenge; Red Skull wants Nazis to rule the world; Loki wants royalty and power & Malekith wanted to destroy life and light to empower dark elves... do y'all remember Malekith? the "Thor: The Dark World" villain...
Anyway, my point is, they want to destroy for their own ends, to get their own power. But, that's not the only change supervillains aspire to.
Ultron's ultimate goal was world peace; Iron Man first fought Captain America for the sake of transparency and accountability (prior to revenge); The Vulture's goal was economic freedom for an oppressed lower class; Killmonger's goal was social freedom for an oppressed ethnic minority & Thanos's goal was to prevent societal collapse, on a cosmic scale.
You could even argue that Ego's goal in Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol 2 was ultimately family and community, but that might be pushing it... either way, these supervillains are fighting for change, and sometimes they're even fighting for good change. Obviously, if your goals are greedy or selfish at the cost of others, that's wrong... but what of the ones fighting for good? Well, they usually do that by, say, killing dozens, hundreds, thousands, even millions, billions of people - hell, I don't even know what "-illion" of people Thanos killed, but I'm pretty sure it was half a zillion.

Their goals are worthy, but their methods often aren't. But, this is worrying because the more and more that superhero movies become mainstream, the more we start to absorb their tropes.
Consider this, even if you don't know who the villain will be in a story - let's say it's either kept a secret, or you just avoided all marketing - unless they're covered in blood and screaming like a maniac, the obvious giveaway will often be that it's someone confident and charismatic who wants to change the world.
And yes, some confident charismatic people who want to change the world are bad... I'm just going to say the word "Hitler", we will acknowledge Godwin's law, and the fact that Nazis suck, but then we're going to move past it and look at more examples: Susan B. Anthony; Martin Luther King; Nelson Mandela; Harvey Milk; Sylvia Rivera; Greta Thunberg.
These people look at the problems, speak out, and have changed the world for the better.

Superheroes are reactionary, which takes away a lot of their agency, but more importantly, their goals are often to stop people changing the world. No, I don't want people to die, and I don't want some greedy villain to get more power, money or meaningless revenge... but, if all superhero fiction had an overarching theme, it appears to be: "true heroes sacrifice everything to keep things the way they are"... which is a depressingly regressive point of view.
The only way to improve the world is to change it, and sometimes, yes, that does mean we have to destroy what we once had. Change is scary, especially if you don't trust the person doing the changing, but I just want to ask one thing...
Rather than React to supervillains changing the world for the worse, when will a superhero Act to change the world for the better?

I'm not saying superhero movies are bad, or that you shouldn't enjoy them. I'm just saying that if there's one thing that superhero movies are missing, right now, it's change. I will keep watching them, I am a geek after all, but I won't truly be happy until I see a superhero change the world.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I think this was an apt post. All this talk about how A.I. is dangerous might make people think that I don't want change, but I do - admittedly I prefer it when it's slow and manageable, but I do like progress.
Until Next Time, remember that just because you like progress, that doesn't make you a supervillain... it's the killing and hurting of innocent people in the process that sends superman flying after you.

The Worst Story I've Ever Written

I said last night that I would follow up tonight (at time of writing) with Part 2 of the "Failed Films" post. Unfortunately, unforeseen circumstances and work obligations means that I wasn't able to do that. I am going to work on finishing it for tomorrow night - fingers crossed - but until then I still want to post something tonight, so... well, I'm gonna have to bite the bullet. I didn't want to tell you about this, but there's only one big "Failure" that comes to mind which I can talk about without any research... and that's the worst story I ever wrote.
It is a failed story, but I did write it, so it doesn't count as one of my "abandoned projects". I considered just posting it, but honestly, it's so bad that I don't really want to do that. Even with a disclaimer like "I write better now guys, please don't judge me", I still don't want to expose anyone to that story. I genuinely don't like it, and I don't ever plan on sharing it. But, that doesn't mean I'm not going to tell you all about it. I considered it a learning experience, so why not share what I learned with you all?

So, what's the story? Well, it was a short story called "Evil".
Yes, I was a pretentious little git when i was younger, but the title was because the story was from the perspective of a villainous character that I considered "evil". Since I don't really believe in objective morality, I don't really like the concept of calling things "truly good" or "truly evil", but my goal was to have an evil character.
See, the basic premise behind this story is, as a student , it bothered me how many silly little rules everyone has to follow for the sake of "safety", even though they don't actually make us safe. I'm talking walking on the left side of the footpath; wearing school uniforms; going home before the sun goes down & that kind of thing: arbitrary rules that don't actually make you safer.
Now that I'm older I know that this kind of thing is called Security Theatre, the little performances that are designed to make us feel safer, even though we're not. The most pertinent example I can think of are signatures. Not always, but like nine times out of ten, when you sign something nobody checks it. And of course they don't, nobody cares. Most people don't know what your "real" signature looks like and if you do your signature wrong, who can tell? Give it a go, next time you get a product delivered that requires your signature, spell your name backwards, or draw a smiley face, see what happens.
Usually? Nothing. Nobody cares. But the act of signing something feels important, it's feels like you're doing something official (even though you're just writing your name quickly), so it doesn't actually change how secure your money, purchases, or postal deliveries actually are.

So, with that all said, the premise behind the story was "What if there was a character who decided to show just how fake this false sense of security is?" That's why the story was called evil, I figured that all it would take to shatter this false reality would be one evil person, one bad guy. It was about a truly evil character who showed everyone how unsafe they really were, out of a sense of vengeance and disgust due to the frustration at his own dreadful life. I think now is the best time to give y'all a Trigger Warning that I'm about to discuss, a story heavily involving Violence, Crime, Murder, Sexual Assault & Suicide; and vague references to Death & Decay, and Domestic/Parental Violence. If these are an issue for you, you may not want to continue reading without adequate preparation.
Okay, well, that trigger warning is basically the spoiler warning as well, because that's kind of exactly what the story was about. Now, I actually had some interesting ideas which I don't entirely hate. Like, I wanted this to be five chapters, starting with him deciding to do wrong, committing his first crimes, turning to murder, and then finally killing himself on live camera; and I thought to represent his moral decay, I wanted to include a black & white image of a dead frog decaying in five stages from freshly-dead to bones. I only managed to find a dead lizard image, but I still think, for a darkly-themed story like that, the imagery is striking and thematically appropriate.
So, what happened in this story? Well, it was about this kid called Liam (I picked the name because Liam is mail backwards... that's literally it, I just thought that was interesting). It's starts with him doing a monologue about how the world is terrible, and people need to be more like him, able to see through the bullshit. Then he comes across a group of girls, who are all talking about how one of them was mugged with a guy at knifepoint. The guy calls the girl weak, and they tell him to go away, but it inspires him to try to "fix" the world.

"What if I could teach the world how to deal with shit like this . . . what if I could heal this broken mess. If one man can control a girl with a knife, simple math says that one man can control everyone with the right tool." - EVIL, page 1.

The rest of the story is then like the kid's manifesto, as he describes the steps he takes to "change the world". It starts with him deciding to rape a popular girl at school, the school captain, for the sake of making people scared. I wrote the scene in detail, of how he creeps out of his house and into hers... I did skip over the rape itself, but he describes how he didn't enjoy it, since to him it was just a means to an end. Most importantly, he tags the side of their house with the words "FIXED".
The idea was, he was trying to be like a domestic terrorist, and he wanted a name for himself. He saw himself as "fixing" society, so he tagged his crimes as "fixed".
In the next chapter, he kills his father, then steals his dad's car. Tags the side of it "FIXED", then parks it in the middle of a railroad crossing, in the hopes of derailing the train. It didn't derail (I wanted to show that this kid wasn't even that competent, I mean, trains can hit semi-trailers without derailing, so I didn't think a single ute would, even for a passenger train. But that was sort of the point - this kid wasn't that smart, yet he was causing all this chaos).
Chapter three starts with him bitching about the fact that the train didn't derail, but still wanting to create some more havoc, he steals a gun, goes into a local doctor's surgery, and shoots everyone inside, before writing "FIXED" on the wall.
Now, since he's trying to make a bigger name for himself as a domestic terrorist, he finds someone who looks rich, walking out of a government building, the person wearing the nicest suit, but without any security. He drags them into the bushes, stabs them to death, and puts a post-it note with "FIXED" into his pocket.
Finally, the last chapter - called "Change the World" was all about him breaking into a local television studio with his gun, He shoots everyone in a local news-room, looks at the camera and monologues into it about how he's the "Fixer", he's just a kid who killed so many people, and people need to wake up. Then he finishes his monologue by shooting himself in the head, and the story ends mid-sentence.

Alright, class, now before I reveal it all to you, can anyone tell me what's wrong with this story? Hmm?
I mean, besides the horrendously dark tone; the cringe-worthy attempts at a teenaged writer being "edgy"; the completely gratuitous scenes of rape, terrorism & suicide, and the overwhelming lack of research into how difficult it actually is to steal a gun, kill a politician/businessman or break into a television studio?
Yes, all that aside, can anyone tell me what the actual, fundamental problem with this story is?
Alright, I'll stop the artificial dialogue schtick, I know you can't answer, so I'll just tell you...
The actual problem with this story is that, whilst it initially had a point - divulge and deconstruct security theatre - it was so mired in darkness of tone, and this weird character study that the message was entirely lost. And part of the reason for that is I was angry when I came up with the idea. I was a teenager, and I know it's a cliche, but I was angry about learning just how unfair the system is, and how it felt like people went along with it out of a sense of either "loyalty" or "ignorance". Now, don't get me wrong, if you are a writer, and you come up with a concept that even you look back on and think "Oof, I was really in one of those moods, when I was thinking that", then turning that into a villainous character concept is fantastic. We all have dark thoughts, and using them to build a character is good. But... you really shouldn't write a story about that. Whilst I wrote it I was thinking:
  "Yeah, cop this... I'm fuckin' saying it how it is. I'm breaking down barriers, man. I'm writing the story they're not ready for..."
I didn't actually think with that kind of vocabulary, but that is 100% the tone of this story - and looking back on it now, it's fucking embarrassing. I still think I would like to write a story about the deconstruction of security theatre... but, I'd like to write it as a horror story. I'd write it from the victim's perspective, and have a villain who thinks of himself as a chessmaster, a mastermind, when really all he's doing is breaking societal moors.
  "What, you thought because you locked the door, you could keep me away from you? Foolish child, I'm much craftier than that."
And more importantly, I'd frame the story properly. A casual reading of this story disgusts me, not because it's poorly written (although it is), and it's not because it's so edgy, it lives on the underside of a cliff made of razor-blades (even though it is that as well), but it's because in my sad attempt to make a character that was exposing how civilization lies to its civilians, I was effectively blaming the victim. I was blaming citizenry for living in a society that has these systems which lie to us, rather than the system for lying to us in the first place.

So, in conclusion, I wrote a story that failed on EVERY CONCEIVABLE LEVEL. I tried to write a dark and edgy story that turned out to be cliched and whose violence only served as an attempt at shock value, rather than story development; I failed to effectively communicate my story's themes and messages because I was too busy developing a character that didn't deserve their place as a villain-protagonist & worst of all, I tried to write a story about a genuine issue, but I failed to fully understand the core of the issue whilst blaming those who it affects most greatly.
This story sucks... but, I still have it on my computer, I have the file saved to read occasionally. Not because I like the trite dialogue, or the gratuitous angst, but because I think it's important to remind myself just how important it is to think through an idea, not only how it's written, but also how it's read, and how it will be understood by a reader.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I hope now you can see why this didn't even deserve a spot on my Abandoned Projects list (and if you do attempt to use this to write something, please don't blame me for whatever you write. I do not approve of this message).
Until next time... I hope I actually have the time to write my next post before work obligations and deadlines sneak up behind me and force me to expose more of my embarrassing failures to the internet.

My Abandoned Writing Projects (Pt. 2)

In yesterday's post, I listed the first five of ten of my most interesting abandoned writing projects. It's a lot of fun, you should check out that post here.

But, without further ado, allow me to continue with the Top 5:

THE A.W.N.'S TOP 10 STORIES I CAN'T WRITE (5-1)

05. THE GUY IN THE TREES
This one is kind of embarrassing. Not to talk about, no, but because this one is something I nearly completed. And first thing's first, it was a story, but it wasn't a novel or a short story... this was a YouTube series. See, I am a huge fan of Night Mind, a youtuber who presents dark ARG; unfiction & horror series from the internet, for people to learn about and discover for themselves. I had seen a lot of these really creative video series, and since I'd done a course of Film & TV in university, and helped write a successful student short film, I thought it would be a fun challenge to do something like this for myself. At the time, I didn't have a job, and I was at home, alone, for a few weeks, so I came up with a plot for a horror series. The concept was pretty simple... it starts off as my character, played by me, discovering that there's a homeless guy living in his neighbourhood, whom he just calls "The Guy in the Trees", since he seems to spend most of his time in this little collection of trees (that actually was in my neighbourhood, at the time). He decides to confront him, so he goes to his tent late at night, and the guy is missing, but instead he discovers a creepy notebook. The homeless guy returns, and he has to run off, and jump in his car to escape. He gets home, and reads the notebook, it's full of mad ramblings. But, what intrigues my character is how it talks about "a creature that controls me", some kind of monster which he appears to fear as well as worship, which killed his whole family - and there are several pages torn out of the book, which the guy finds. The character then recieves a threatening message, from the Guy in the Trees demanding his stuff back. So, he encounters him, and they get into a fight which my character manages to get out of, although he's covered in blood, but I didn't show (firstly, because it was just me, there were no other actors; secondly, because it was important to the plot). After this fight, my character reveals that he's lost sleep, and managed to get the missing pages off the guy, which reveals both some important names of his family, and the ritual to call upon the monster. After attempting the ritual; my character disappears, reappearing hours later, and tells a weird story about slipping into another dimension. Then there's a knock at his door, he answers it, and the story ends shortly after. So, what was this about? Well, I really only had ONE idea... basically, yes, there was this evil monster, but the reality was, that all happened after the guy became homeless, he was just an unfortunate drunk... after the fight in the woods, my character had killed the Guy in the Trees, hidden his body (stolen the pages from his corpse), and that's why he was losing sleep, and investigating this mystery, he was looking for some justification for his murder, proving that the Guy in the Trees killed his family, or that he was trying to summon a demon, but he wasn't. The knock at the door which he answers was the police, coming to arrest my character.
Unwritten because... actually no, that's a lie, this is written, I wrote it; and I filmed it. . But, in the editing process, I realized that this was not that great of a story. So, uhh...
Unpublished because: It had only one gimmick. I had a lot of fun filming this whole thing, and creating the notebook prop, but it all relied on the whole "he secretly killed the Guy in the Trees" thing, which I thought was clever... but it's not clever enough to rely on for a whole story. Also, I don't have any skills with special effects, so I couldn't really make the monstrous demon thing that I wanted to, it just looked like a crappy power-point animation... which it basically was. And, without the monster thing, it lacks that necessary misdirection, of the guy trying to find a monster, when in reality he was the monster - the murderer - the whole time. A year after filming this, I came to admit to myself that the only reason I created this wasn't because I had a cool story that I wanted to tell, it was because I could, and I wanted to be able to say I'd created a cool youtube series. But, after looking back, my major inspiration was "I want to create a YouTube thing", and that's not a good reason to create. That's why I say this one is kind of embarrassing, because it's only as I approached the finish line that I realized, I didn't have a good reason to run the race. Whilst I still admit that I enjoyed the hell out of acting, filming and creating this short series, and I do recommend that kids try creating short films, it's a lot of fun... but, don't do it for clout, and don't do it because you want to post something to YouTube. Do it because it's a lot of fun to bring a story to life. I'm not opposed to creating any kind of YouTube series... in fact, I created a pair of videos for my Halloween Countdown a while ago. But, that was because I created something that needed to be on video to show it off in its full glory, not created for the sake of creating it, and that makes those videos something I'm still proud of, to this day.

04. COLD VIRTUE
Remember how I said I love a good murder mystery? Well, Crooked O'Hare wasn't the only time I tried and failed to write one. The difference is, rather than a series, this one was planned as a novel. I still think it's a pretty good idea... see, I wanted to set this in a dystopia. I was inspired by the prevalence of YA dystopia novels at the time - see Hunger Games; Divergent; The Maze Runner - and I thought it would be a great place to set a murder mystery story since, well, all the crime - and who doesn't like a couple of pseudo-futuristic technologies thrown into the mix? So, the concept was simple, a kid is being trained for the youth police (yes, very much Hitler Youth, I said this was Dystopian, right?), but just before he graduates, even though he is basically top of his class (or near, I didn't want to be too cliche), his father is declared a traitor to the state, and executed. His father was a mid-to-low-tier member of the political party, and so he'd been given many benefits of the 1% - free housing, cheap food, low taxes, household servants.
This means that after his death, not only is their family name horrendously besmirched, but they lose their home, their income and their food security in one fell swoop. The main kid and his mother are forced to live in government housing (i.e. slums), so they're crammed in a tiny apartment with a dozen other people, and since this kid lived his whole life of privilege, he walks, breaths, talks and smells like money, so as soon as he walks through the streets, he is targeted and attacked, he defends himself, but he gets a hard and nasty lesson about "justice" in the slums - Criminal gangs, drugs and murder are rife in these densely packed, low-income facilities. So, to earn some money and hopefully clean up his neighbourhood, the kid sets up an "office" in the burned ruins of a state-banned church - no roof, and little-to-no security, but it has privacy - and so he starts working as a private investigator. The idea was that he would solve a few small time crimes, but the story would focus on a series of 5 or 6 murders; starting with victims of crime, moving up to slum-lords, state police and eventually to a politician visiting their slums. He'd make a few enemies when he refuses to ally himself with any of the street gangs, until he manages to find himself a space as someone who turns a blind eye to non-violent gang activity, and eventually he makes enough money to afford a smaller (like, the size of half a room), but nonetheless private home for his mother and himself (I didn't decide what, but his mother would find work, probably as a servant in a richer household).
The whole idea was showing, from the ground up, how the system was forcing the lower classes into desperation, and the upper classes into classist paranoia. And of course, the novel would end with the kid uncovering the mystery of whether his father was truly a traitor, and who betrayed him to have him executed. It was a cool idea, one I still think would make a fantastic story, of dystopian murder mystery.
Unwritten because: Dystopia relies upon worldbuilding, and this requires a lot of worldbuilding and politics that I am not the best at parsing. Out of fear I'm starting to sound lazy, I want to clarify, I'm not against doing research. The problem is that I really need to have some foundation upon which I can build - Stephen King, as a writing teacher, is famous for his oft-quoted lesson: "write what you know", and people unfortunately misunderstand this advice horrendously. They think it means "only write something if you've experienced it" which would make for a lot of boring fiction, every writer would write about what it's like to be a writer... no, what "write what you know" means is, write stuff you can understand. I am not a murderer, but I can understand murder, I can understand the emotions and motives and opportunities and biology of murder, I can understand what it is that leads to a murder victim, in a murder mystery. But, I don't understand politics and socio-economic strife (at least, not very well); and I don't understand how to represent the lifestyle of people living in slums and gangs and political strife. Basically, I don't know enough about this setting to really bring it to life, even though I think it's a clever cross-genre concept. And hell, if I threw in a love triangle subplot, I'd have hit every one of the necessary tropes for dystopian YA of the era... I think I've kind of missed the mark on that particular "pop culture" moment, but I insist that murder mystery is awesome, and I'd love to see someone turn this into a real story. I'm just not the one willing to do it...

03. TRANSYLVANIA
The idea here was pretty simple, it was the idea of doing a Frankentein rewrite with a transgender theme. The story I had was that in this version, Frankenstein had an Igor that helped him from the beginning to develop the methods of creating life, as he was inspired by Frankenstein in college to work with him. But, as they discovered the keystone to the research, the alchemical/electrical (or whatever, as the plot needed) element to finish, Victor and Igor celebrated, and Igor finally admitted the truth... (HEAVY TRIGGER WARNINGS for discussion of Gender Dysphoria & Suicidal Ideation - it's a huge part of this story, so you may need to skip to the next list entry if that's too much for you, but it's a huge part of why I couldn't write this story, so it's important)
Igor is a pre-transition transgender, and she loves Victor. She was inspired to work with him because, as a male, she is incapable of carrying children, and the idea of creating life inspired her. She admits all this believing that, as they've gotten so close (and with his love of science, she hoped he'd understand her). However, Frankenstein rejects her out of... well, basically "Trans Panic", and attacks her.
Then, Igor dies... I'd originally planned, as suicide because she basically gets her gender thrown in her face, but I thought maybe it could be murder or manslaughter.
But, when Victor calms down (or, when he discovers Igor's body), he realizes how wrong he was, so he decides to resurrect IGOR with the science they uncovered together. And, as per her wishes, he actually uses the corpses of women to surgically transition Igor.
I hadn't decided the name, and this was all in the planning phase, but for the rest of this, I'll refer to Igor as "Irina". The idea here is that Victor and Irina would work together, and at first Victor is simply sympathetic to Irina's plight, and wanted to save his old friend, but in time Victor would fall in love with Irina, but there would be complications as the townspeople learn of this resurrected person turned into a woman, and would rally against the doctor.
I hadn't decided the ending, but it would be very much fire and pitchforks.
Unwritten because: Do I even need to explain it? The key feature of this whole idea is Unfortunate Implications. Part of the inspiration behind this is that I love science and medicine and knowledge, and the idea of showing how science can turn a person assigned male at birth into a gorgeous, feminine woman is the epitome of that; and the inspiration for this was seeing how many - even modern - movies tend to write sci-fi horror as "man should not wrestle in god's domain", as though toying with nature is inherently evil, but I think that's nonsense. The real monster is ignorance, and this kind of story would thrive on that... However, it also thrives on:
  1. Representing Motherhood as the pinnacle of Womanhood
  2. Turning a transwoman into a creature literally called Frankenstein's Monster.
  3. Trans Panic as a Plot Device (for a main character no less...)
  4. Suicide/Murder as plot device. (Yikes... I never decided which but pick your poison, both suck.)
And whilst I personally like the juxtaposition that Irina would be seen as a monster, but the real monsters are the townspeople who fear her; the problem therein is that it requires a delicate equipoise of understanding the inherent reading and counter-reading of the "monster" metaphor, which idiots like JK Rowling have already shown to be completely incapable of.
Also, do I have to mention that I'm cisgender? This is me looking from the outside at the trans experience, and trying to write a story to represent that from experiences that are entirely academic. I don't think I can, or should, attempt to write a piece of literature designed to define the transgender experience. I've considered writing this by working heavily with a sensitivity reader... but I realized, I'd have to rely on them so heavily that clearly I'm the wrong person to write this story, if indeed it can be written at all without going against everything I believe in. I don't know how to resolve all of these unfortunate implications, even though I think this is a cool story idea, so I'd rather just admit defeat, and step away from the concept altogether. I do plan on writing stories about transgender persons, but I want to do so in a way that doesn't have so many unfortunate implications.

02. THAUMATURGUS
Y'know, this one is a little hard to explain, and that's because it's an absolute mess of a concept. It's easy to understand in principle... when I was younger, I realized that I had a LOT of story ideas, and I mean a whole lot, so I decided "Hey! What if I took ALL of these ideas, and put them together?" so, I did. But, this was before I realized that you could, and should, cannibalize, frankenstein and remould ideas to make them fit, so I basically took whole story ideas, and slotted them into this story wholesale. The basic concept was that the story would follow this young boy and his sister, who live with their grandfather, and the boy discovers  a magical world, and has to fight a big, bad evil wizard... very generic "2000s YA Urban Fantasy" schtick. But, I threw in all these other concepts wholesale. So, the grandfather owns a dozen weird cats with weird names, because I had this "kennel for familiars who lost their witches" idea; the kid meets a teen boy who has a living car with a personality, because I liked this "living, magical car" idea; I threw in a wise, old cat called Tembley, from my "Cursed Cat of Cecil Street" idea (which I also used for a "hyperlinked story" project at school, that's why that story's so short, had to fit a wordcount); they also encounter a dozen strange freaks on the street, because I threw in my 'Nocturnals Gang' idea; the kid works in a burger joint that gets attacked by a shadow monster, because of my 'We Never Close' story idea; one of the characters would be a late night jazz musician, because of my "Smokey Jones" idea, and I think I even threw in a DJ at a magical radio station, because of my "Wizard Radio" idea; and two of the characters were identical twins, and vampires, because of a "Sinister Sister" idea I got from my cousin... hell, even the title comes from an unused story title I really liked, so this world was heavily populated with all of these fascinating characters and stories, I figured it would be like a crazy, fantasy amusement park ride of adventure!
Unwritten because: I realized that this would basically be like an amusement park ride. Specifically, a dark ride. Sit in the car, keep your hands and feet inside the vehicle as we drive slowly past hollow, plastic, lifeless scenarios, where cheap representations come out and play out some distilled version of their full character before sliding back into the dark so we can drive past another fake scene. I thought I'd come up with a clever way to use all my unused story ideas, but I wasn't using them, I was abusing them. I had to just ignore major parts of these ideas to fit the main story... I still like a lot of these ideas, and I think I can reuse them (and like I said above, some of the ones I really like, I'm not sharing, since I either can, or already did, alter it to work in another story), but throwing them all into a story like this simply turned the story into a junk drawer. And if I strip all of that away, all I'm left with is a generic urban fantasy premise - child discovers magic; child learns of magic threat; child defeats threat... blah blah blah. I'm not against urban fantasy by any stretch of the imagination, but without the junk drawer full of unused ideas, there really isn't anything left.
So, I'm not going to write this story. If someone else wants to try, they can... heck, you can even throw in your own unused story ideas. Or, hell, you can take some of these individual ideas and turn them into something... heck, even though I already wrote "The Cursed Cat of Cecil Street", you could try that too. Write a better one - I made that for a school project in like 2007, surely you can do better than teenaged me.
But no matter what, learn from my mistakes. Ideas are incredibly adaptable. Take, for example, the idea of a living car... that's a cool concept, but why? You might have a lot of reasons why you think it's cool, but I like it for three reasons. Firstly, I like the idea of exploring an inhuman mind (how would a car think?); secondly, I have always enjoyed the A Boy And His Weird Pet trope, since it's about friendship and forming a unique bond; lastly, I really like the idea of having a Cool Ride. Knowing this, I can adapt this idea to fit in literally any story. If I wanted a (somewhat) realistic romance story, I could have an unusually smart horse; if I write a sci-fi, the obvious rendition would be a space-ship with a quirky A.I.; if I wanted it in a horror, well, that's basically just the plot of Christine...
That's why I find that idea cool, but if you have an idea, but you're struggling to find a way to make it fit your story, break it down into it's fundamentals - why do you like the idea in the first place? And, can you adjust those things so that you can include the parts you like, and leave out the parts that don't fit your story? I know I spent half of this entry talking about writing advice, but that's really what this idea is... the idea is "find a way to put your unused story ideas to use, in a single story". If you want to give a try for yourself, well, I hope you do a much better job than I did.

01. THE UNSPOKEN KING
This is the biggest one... because all through high school, this was my magnum opus. For literally eight years, this was the only story I ever thought about, it was going to be a middle-to-high fantasy series, and the premise was simple. It was about a knight in the middle-ages, called Sir Graham, who died in a battle against a dark, evil monster, but came back as a mindless zombie, because of the evil lord's magics. As he had once saved the king from an assassination attempt, the king had a soft spot for Graham, and so had the poor man buried in a stone sarcophagus, in a far, secluded corner of the cemetery. over 100 years later, for reasons unknown, Graham's mind returns, his mind is alive, in a dead body. So, Graham pries himself from his grave, and decides to seek out who or what resurrected him... kind of like an anti-murder mystery, if you will. But, since he's a corpse, he's reviled and rejected by society, meaning the only people he can turn to for help are similarly abandoned outcasts of society: a half-demon cursed man, a mad wizard, a pirate ghost... all kinds of fun monsters, some who are friend, others who are foe, he doesn't know who to trust. And the first story was all about how the same evil monster that killed him hard returned (yes, very "dark lord returns"... it's a trope for a reason, people), so he's the first suspect in Graham's undead anti-murder mystery, so he decides to confront him first...
Unwritten because: Well, two reasons really. Firstly, I am not a historian. I decided to set this in the actual middle ages, as in the year 1472, meaning I had to do research on all kinds of medieval things from that specific year... and it kind of slowed down most of my research. But that's not a huge issue, this is clearly pseudo-fantasy, I could get away with a lot of this by leaning on magic... but then I hit a terrible snag, and this is only the second time this happened to me.
I had philosophical issues with this story.
See, I started working on this in high school, before I'd fully come to terms with my own beliefs regarding atheism, absurdism and dualism, which means at the time, I still believed in ghosts... albeit in the form of souls, or spirits, whatever you want to call it. Now, as an adult, I don't believe in souls or the afterlife. Part of what initially appealed to me about this story was exploring the ugly side of life, death, and since Graham was asking "why am I not dead?" there was some philosophical discussion of  death, and what death even means, why does anyone die. I mean, one of the main characters was going to be a ghost. And, without going into horrendous spoilers, my plan was effectively that Graham was going to be a "ghost" trapped in a "zombie" which the "Anti-Murderer" (no spoilers) had basically fused with magic back into a single body, for some reason relating to later stories.
But, since I now don't believe in souls, I'm kind of... well, philosophically opposed to the main conceit of this story. I could potentially rewrite it to refit my philosophies, but I would have to change the story so drastically that, it wouldn't be "The Unspoken King" anymore. I'd have to lose my ghost pirate (what a shame, he was cool), I'd have to change the villain and his whole deal (he was basically a poltergeist, so that's a whole thing...), I'd have to change the philosophical and thematic underpinnings of the story, and I'd have to change how the main character... works.
So, I've basically abandoned this story, thrown the pieces onto the recycling pile. I still do like some of these ideas, which is why I'm actually sharing the subtitle, not the series title. It's not a huge secret, I mentioned it before on this blog even, but like I said, if it's in this list, it's up for the taking, and I still like that title enough that I'm not willing to just give it out to anyone. But, this story - like its main character - as it is, is dead, and even I can't resurrect it after the damage my philosophical maturation has done to it.

- - -

So, those are my abandoned writing projects. It's kind of bittersweet looking back at this list, because when creating this, I had to look at a lot of projects that I haven't worked on in a while, and for some of them, I could say "no, I still want to write this, I want to keep it. This is a good story.", but for some, I really had to bite the bullet and admit, yes, this is a failed project, I can't write it anymore.
Especially those top two. Both are projects I spent literally years working on, but I couldn't manage to pull it all together, until I finally realized that it was beyond saving... for me, at least.

But, I hope you found this interesting, and I especially hope that this list can help inspire a writer out there to make something of these unwritten projects, to create something upon the stained workshop table where I was broken. If any of these ideas inspire you, or you'd like to know more about them, feel free to ask me in the comments below. Just because I failed, doesn't mean you can't succeed.

Speaking of which, I want to finish this by saying that, whilst these failed projects are works that I have abandoned, I do have some stories that haven't failed, and this whole experience of listing my abandoned projects has inspired me to let go of the failures, and turn towards my successes.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, I'm going to work on some projects I haven't abandoned.

My Abandoned Writing Projects (Pt. 1)

When discussing failure, it provides an interesting opportunity for self-reflection. I am not really the sort of person to regret, since I'm proud of who I am, and most of the events in my life - even the ones which didn't go as planned - have helped to shape me into the person that I am today. However, there are some things that I've failed at which I wish had succeeded, or some opportunities that I missed whose alternative outcomes I wish I knew. But, a lot of those are minor and not really interesting unless you're me. So, I figured I'd talk about something most people can understand - stories.

I'm a writer, and so I have come up with... too many stories over my career as a writer. But, even when these stories fail, I usually hang onto them, so I can cannibalize ideas for later stories. So, even though I can't always write stories the way I originally planned them, they still will turn up on a page somewhere, somehow. Maybe that dumb protagonist idea can show up as a funny background character, maybe that thin "magic key" plot could be put into a larger story, where it doesn't outstay it's welcome & maybe that line of dialogue makes more sense from a villain character. So, I try to reuse & recycle ideas as much as I can...
But not always.

There are some stories - some concepts - that I come up with that I cannot write, and today I'm going to list them for you. There's various reasons why I can't write these. If you're a writer or storyteller of any stripe, and you're looking for ideas, feel free to use any of these as you wish, as I would be impressed by anyone that can write these stories. If I list a story here, it is because I cannot write it, but I would like to see it written - and for the sake of legal purposes, I want to formally state that I am not seeking any kind of trademark/copyright or monetary/intellectual property rights or any of that if you do happen to use these ideas. Whilst these are "my" ideas, they are just ideas, if you put the work in to actually write it, it's your story. All I'd ever want in return is, if asked, that you tell people where you got your idea or inspiration (i.e. from me) - nothing more.

With that out of the way, here are some story ideas which I tried, and failed, to write. (Note: most of the following titles are "working titles").

THE A.W.N.'S TOP 10 STORIES I CAN'T WRITE (10-6)

10. MONSTER
This idea is a bit weird, since it's part of an idea I don't want to talk about... okay, basically, I am working on a YA Horror novella series. I don't want to get into details, but basically it's set in Australia, and based around characters dealing with supernatural monsters. I liked the idea of the series, and using it to explore a lot of ideas, and one idea I liked is writing a full-length story, since I've only ever written short stories, and novella-length stories. So, I decided to have a special story, set in the same universe, but novel-length. I came up with this idea when I was younger, and the series was less lovecraftian, and I was intrigued by the term "monster". I wanted to develop what a monster was, in more ways than one. The idea of this story was about a kid whose mother died, and his father started dating a younger woman, and the kid is super angsty about it. Not long after, he discovers a strange egg which hatches to reveal a monster which he decides to hide from his family, but as the monster grows bigger and stronger, he starts to lose control of it. The basic idea was that this monster was actually a part of him, and a metaphor for his own anger, angst, hatred and feelings of inadequacy, so as he grows more stressed, the monster grows more dangerous. The story was meant to be all about this theme of the real monster being the anger within.
Unwritten because: It was a bad story. Full disclosure, this story was almost entirely inspired by "Beast" by Ally Kennen, a novel about a kid who takes care of a crocodile from a little egg, until it grows so big, it wants to eat him. I read the book, it was well-written, but I was annoyed that a story called "beast" wasn't actually about a beast. Like, I guess technically a crocodile is a beast, but I was imagining a grisly, fantastical monster, not something you can see at a zoo. But also, as a kid, I was aspirational towards those books written with drama and angst and intrigue, because it felt like that was "proper writing". As I grew up I realized, no, I still find that kind of thing boring, so wanting to write a story where a kid is angsty about dumb teen stuff, which develops into a monster, that's just kind of lame. Now, you might be saying "Great, you tell budding writers they can use these ideas, yet you present ideas that you think are crap. Do you genuinely want to see someone try to write this?" well, yes. Admittedly, there's a reason this is the lowest item on the list, but this idea has potential. Firstly, I'd think the kid's situation should be much more tragic, and the plot needs to be better developed. But more importantly, what inspires me is the title: "Monster". With a story called monster, it must be 'about' monsters, and that alone is pretty inspiring to me. What even is a monster? When I say 'monster' what do you picture? Is it a scaly creature with teeth, or is it a furry beast, or something else - feathers? Blubber? Is it small and ugly, or enormous and dangerous? Is it more human and intelligent, or more wild and animalistic? Is it new, young, perhaps a prototype, or is it old, ancient, perhaps mystical? Monster is a broad concept, yet it's particular, so much is and isn't a monster. I guess the real question is... what's a monster, to you?

09. URBAN SECTOR
The idea here was pretty simple. I like the idea of sitcoms, but I usually find it hard to engage with them for more than a few episodes, since they're living boring, ordinary lives - who cares when they resolve their personal drama, if it means we return to status quo? So I figured... if you set a sitcom in a sci-fi story, it would make it much more interesting. And I think living on a starship sounds fun, and this kind of gives the opportunity to play around with that. So, I had this idea for a trio of guys who live on a Starship that transports cargo between different human settlements around the solar system. I wrote the outline for the first episode that introduces Craig, a bit of a schlub (and alcoholic) who once helped design robots in a factory, but ironically lost his job (because robots took his job); so now he's a homeless drunk, and kind of pathetic (in a funny way). Then, there's Wax, an alien, who is homeless because he is an alien (actually half-alien, but doesn't like to talk about it), and faces a lot of covert discrimination, since Earth is quite xenophobic. I figured Wax stands up like a human, but looks like a mix between an axolotl and a squid, and he's blue; he doesn't have any weird powers, he just looks weird, but he's actually a regular guy. Then there's Luthor, the ship's navigator, and a gay man, and whilst he doesn't face any discrimination, he struggles to have a personal life since whenever their ship stops, they recieve their next destination and he has to spend all his time plotting their next course, and nobody else on the ship is gay or single, so he basically doesn't get any time to himself.
The idea for the pilot was that after introducing each character in a small vignette, explaining who they are, the starship docks on Earth, to unload cargo for several hours, so the rookie pilot goes planetside for some drinks to celebrate a successful first run; Craig finds the sucker, and convinces him to "party" with him (on the pilot's dime), and results in him drinking himself into a catatonic state; this delays the ship's plans, even after Luthor has plotted their new course, so he finally gets a chance to go planetside, where he meets Wax, and they eventually encounter the man that got their pilot drunk who becomes fast friends with Wax because, as a roboticist, he is used to interacting with non-humans, and whilst he doesn't approve of the means, Luthor appreciates that he got a chance to finally socialize with someone new. After some shenanigans and coincidences, Luthor has to go back onboard the ship, so he invites Craig and Wax to be his roommates.
Because Luthor basically doesn't work whilst the ship is in transit, it meant the story would mostly follow these three socializing, getting into drunken hijinks, dealing with prejudices with Wax, looking for love, and occasionally getting into sci-fi shenanigans due to the various anomalous or secret cargoes and passengers they have to transport.
Unwritten because: Well, a few reasons. Firstly, I originally planned this as an animation (back when I was unemployed), and I attempted to create this in Macromedia Flash... and I learned very quickly that single-handedly animating anything longer than 15 seconds is an absolute ball-ache. Also, as much as I like these characters and the concept, I am not a sitcom writer. I have come to realize that whilst I can enjoy reading character archs and interpersonal drama, I do not like writing it. I came up with some ideas for plots, like Luthor coming out of the closet to his new friends; Craig activating a robot that joins the cast; a fun romance with Luthor getting into a long-distance relationship with a guy that's scared of Wax; Craig trying to woo the ship's second-in-command & even some plot about a brewing alien war... but I just struggle to write stories that are entirely character-focussed. Characters should usually drive the plot, and I love writing dialogue where characters discuss the plot, but when the characters are the plot, I don't enjoy writing it (even when I enjoy watching it).
I am still very interested in writing science-fiction, so I haven't told you everything about this (there's a couple of plotlines and ideas I'll gladly cannibalize and Frankenstein into other stories, especially the alien war stuff) but at this point in time, I don't think I'll ever attempt anything remotely sit-com-like again.

08. CROOKED O'HARE
I love a good murder mystery, but they're surprisingly hard to find. Even though they were once incredibly popular, they seem to have vanished. So, I've been interested in writing a murder mystery for a long time. And I don't mean an occult detective or a crime story about a detective, I mean a proper Fairplay Mystery, where the reader can solve the puzzle alongside the detective. That's half the fun of a murder mystery. The other half is the detective themself, a character that is interesting, or has some key gimmick, that guides the story along. So, I had this idea of a detective called "Jack O'Hare", an whose gimmick was that he was a criminal. An Irish gangster who moved to New York in the early 1900s, after he gets framed for the murder of his own gang-leader, he's forced to solve the crime, and when he realizes the killer is his own best friend - meaning that he's going to be killed by the surviving members of his old gang - well it inspires Jack to go straight. So, the gimmick is, he's an ex-gangster, a ruffian and a thief, who spent most of his life being a criminal. So he knows how they think, he has connections in the underworld and now he's become a "good guy". I had this whole idea of him having a love interest - a Catholic, Hispanic girl - that did love him, but rejected him for his criminal, sinful ways; so, there would be this subplot about him trying to convince her that this isn't a scam or a con, he's actually going "legit". However, he does occasionally bend the rules to solve his crimes. Breaking and entering, roughing up suspects, stealing clues... that kind of thing, and he'd have an antagonistic relationship with a particularly by-the-book policeman. And I did have some plans for several stories in the series... about five. I had a closed-circle mystery set in a prison after that policeman caught him on trumped up charges of assault, when someone dies in a prison riot; a mystery where some drug addicted prostitute gets killed, so the police don't care enough to investigate; a mystery at a mansion where he arrived uninvited, and as an ex-con, people assume he's the killer, so again he has to clear his name... a few fun ideas. But, I never did write it...
Unwritten because: A few reasons. Firstly, 1900s? What the hell was I thinking?! I know almost nothing about the 1900s, I was just inspired because that's the classic "noir crime" era and several thinkpieces about "the decline of murder mystery" had convinced me that modern technology made murder mysteries harder to write... this is all nonsense by the way, modern technology doesn't change the murder mystery formula, unless you're a lazy writer and setting a story in a certain time period "for the vibe" is stupid. Now, I did try to revamp this story for a more modern era, something I could write without having to do a butt-tonne of research... but when I removed these characters from the early 1900s, their "classic" noir style washed off, and revealed them for the stereotypes they were. Irish gangster? Hot Catholic Hispanic floozy? By-the-book policeman with a moustache and a superiority complex? These weren't characters, they were caricatures. The real nail in the coffin? My inspiration, my gimmick, that made O'Hare feel so original? The idea that he was a "criminal-turned-detective"? Not only is that not original, it's the LEAST original detective concept in the world... one of the first ever icons of modern criminal investigation (and I'm talking in real life, not in fiction), who first profiled criminals, collected clues & started the whole concept of "detective work" was a man called Eugène-François Vidocq, a Frenchman who was a criminal-turned-criminalist from the 1800s. It turns out, after several years on the run, he witnessed a childhood friend of his César Herbaux, with whom he'd committed several crimes, being executed, and this inspired him to turn away from a life of crime - seriously?! Even my own character's turnaround was unoriginal! Vidocq had no other skills except committing crime, but he realized those skills could be used for good, to capture criminals. And it's not just art imitating life, but life inspiring art - Vidocq inspired several of the earliest "detectives" in fiction, including: Alexandre Dumas' "Monsieur Jackal"; Émile Gaboriau's "Monsieur Lecoq", who in turn inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "Sherlock Holmes"; Edgar Allan Poe's "C. Auguste Dupin". So, in the end, I figured my story would require too much research; would take a lot of effort to polish up the stereotypes into three-dimensional characters & relied on an unoriginal premise.
Now, I've not given up on murder mysteries - far from it, I still have murder mystery story ideas I want to write - but, not with this detective, not this concept. I am not prepared to write a period piece, I don't find that kind of thing interesting, And if tried to adapt it to the modern era, I don't think I could do the story justice.

07. THE OTHER NEIGHBOURS
I still kind of like the title for this one... I might use it for something else. I even know the inspiration behind this one, because it's right there in the title... I live in the suburbs, and here everyone has neighbours, people whose homes are near theirs. But, if you're taking a stricter definition, a neighbour is someone next to you, meaning your neighbours are the ones you share a fence with. By this logic, most homes you should have three "neighbours". There's neighbouring homes to the left and the right, and one behind. I don't know if there's a special term for these, but I call them my "other neighbours", and the idea of this story was taking that concept to the extreme. See, I can talk to my left-and-right neighbours, if I want to know who they are, I can talk to them. But, if I want to know about my other neighbours, I'd need to put in more effort. And, I wanted to take the idea of "strangers in your neighbourhood" to the extreme.
So, this story was about a kid called Toby that became curious about his other neighbours. They had a tall mansion-like property, and the kid sees only one light on in their window at night, and hears strange bird-calls and jungle-like animal sounds. There's hedges all around, and he's never seen or heard a single person on the other side of the fence. So, one day, he pretends to throw his ball over the fence, to have a flimsy excuse to jump the fence and learn more about his neighbours. The story was about him encountering fantastical things on the other side of the fence. There would be a dog that was part-monster, and the size of a small car; a talking tropical bird called Clark; a cranky, old sleeping ghost; a squid trapped in a broken water heater; a room full of living instruments; a swarm of hyper-intelligent mice; a nature-spirit turned into a house-cleaner & a mischievous, talking monkey. I think it's a fun, quirky little story. I came up with the idea by designing the house first, and placing all of the weird neighbours all around it - the idea would be, the kid would meet the bird that would warn him about the dog, then he'd see the monkey, which would try to trick him into unlocking his cage by sending him to talk to the house-cleaner. So, then I tried writing the story, but when I got to a part where the kid could either go upstairs to the bedrooms, or downstairs to the basement, I didn't know which way to go. See, I was a young writer, and I had failed to give Toby a character, so he had no reason beyond 'the plot says so' to enter the house, let alone explore rooms. And it was then that I realized, I'd created a series of encounters inside rooms, most hidden behind doors, which often involve a young boy dealing with a magical puzzle, or encountering a creature sending him on a fetch quest - I'd accidentally written a videogame! So, hey, what if I turned this idea into a videogame.
Unwritten because: It turns out, videogames are supposed to be fun. I actually tried to create this game, twice, the first time was in Adventure Game Studio, a free "point-and-click" game maker and engine, but the coding was much too difficult for me to figure out, and I shelved the project, with dreams of one day finding someone who could create the game for me. Much later, I came across GameMaker Studio 2, a game creator tool which was much more intuitive to the non-coding mind. Now, this was a year or two ago, so I was much older; I adapted the story to add more horror elements, designed the levels - I even drew the whole first level, and created the character. But, after playing around with the character for a little bit, I realized... this game isn't fun. Sure, the story was more interesting, but a good videogame consists of gameplay, story and challenge. I had story, but there was no challenge: most of the puzzles I'd originally come up with were just fetch quests; and there was nothing good about the gameplay: walk around, talk to people and pick stuff up was kind of the start and end of the whole game. And because I had rewritten the story, the original plot (discovering that the swarm of mice was the wizard who originally owned the house, and bringing them back) was kind of lame, and I couldn't come up with a good reason why this whole thing had happened in the first place.
I still do like both concepts - I like the cutesy, "kid's book" feel of that original story, a kid encountering weird animals in a suburban home; and I also really like the horrific dark fantasy concept, with a teenager entering a cursed mansion. But, until I can learn how to make a videogame 'fun', I'm going to leave game creation to game creators. And whilst I'm still holding onto that setting and some of the characters and monsters from the horrific re-write of this story, I won't try rewriting The Other Neighbours for a third time (or would this be the fourth?). But damn, I still like that title... it still inspires cool ideas.

06. OTHERWORLD
This one is actually quite old, but the idea is very, very simple... geofiction. Also known as conworlding, geofiction is the basic idea of developing a real maps for fake places... "creating fictional geography", basically. See, a long while ago I created my own world, which I called Otherworld. The basic idea here was that I wanted to create stories which I was going to set on this artificial world I made. I was inspired by discworld's use of an alternate world to come up with interesting concepts and play with fun tropes, but instead of comedy and fantasy parody, I was interested in sci-fi homage and satire (I think... I'm not actually sure, but I wanted it to be kind of funny). The main intrigue of this planet was that there was a big hole in it, right through the poles, which affected sea, weather, culture and geography across the planet... in retrospect, that doesn't make any sense scientifically, since the world would probably have to collapse back into a spherical shape, but that was my idea, alright? I was young...
I had a series of stories based around the peculiarities of this world. The first story, with the working title "Weather Forecast" was originally set in Gorsenia, a country with crazy weather (because it was so close to the hole in the planet), so they developed the most advanced weather forcasting technology, only to realize it was so advanced, that by entering the right data, it could be used to predict the future. Another story, Firestorm, was about the king of Curland (a Pan-Asian Mishmash) leaving his throne to walk the country, and learn more about the lives of his citizenry, resulting in a political storm as several miscreants, both foreign and domestic, try to take advantage of the King's absence, only for a literal Firestorm to cause countrywide turmoil that only the king can resolve. There was another one about a scientist on the gothic, technologically advanced continent of Styriose creating artificial consciousness in a robot slave; and a story just called "The Hole Story" where several characters from Uranika (a cross between Eastern Europe and America) encounter the aliens responsible for blasting a hole in their planet... And there were several other ideas like different technology used to deal with the peculiar issues of each continent, and unusual terminology, since whilst these people basically spoke English, their cultural differences meant they used different words for some things.
Unwritten because: Honestly, it was too much work. I attempted to write the first chapter of the first story, set on Gorsenia, and since I was a young writer, I thought I'd start with my character waking up and going to work. But, even that scene was incredibly difficult, since I wanted him to be awoken by his alarm clock... but then I realized, would this world have alarm clocks? Also, how do they tell time? Does this world have a 24 hour day? And he's going to work, this must be a workday, but does this world have a weekend? Do they even have a 7 day week? I guess it depends on the time of year, but what kind of calendar does this world use? Would they base their seasons on the harvest, like many cultures have, or would they base them off some other yearly milestones. I did manage to come up with a 25-hour day, segmented into 5-hour quintants, skipping the whole calendar question, but even then, he got out of bed, and I realized... I had no idea what he would wear. I wanted to have weird creatures on this planet, not regular animals, so there weren't sheep, so what would their clothing be made of, if not wool and leather?
Okay, I'll worry about that later. So, he goes downstairs and eats breakfast... wait, what the hell would these people eat for breakfast? I just established that we don't have normal animals. Damn it!
I tried to skip ahead, and came up with some fun ideas, like there being subways to take people around the country, and a postman being this talented runner, since the terrible weather would make wheeled vehicles unreliable... but then I realized postmen wouldn't be the only people who couldn't use vehicles. How could a city work without vehicles... and wait, if it rained so much, wouldn't the trains also struggle due to the weather?
Basically, I realized that I'd walked into fractal writer's block, since any attempt to bypass a difficult section of research was just putting me face-to-face with another one. And if I tried to skip ahead, I'd just create problems that I'd either need to retcon, or ignore in the future.
This is not to say that geofiction, conworlding, or stories set on alien, fictional worlds are impossible, of course they're not. But, if I was going to create a story for one, it would need to be for a better reason than "drawing maps is fun", since I already drew the map and had fun, but when I tried to develop the world... I didn't. I'm not against doing something like this again, but I'd need to find some way to make the development much easier.

- - -

This blog post is getting a bit long, so I'm going to hit pause right here... but we'll continue this in tomorrow's post. I hope you're enjoying this, and let me know, do you have any story ideas that you've abandoned? You don't need to share them with the world like me, but since going through my old catalogue of Story Stuff, and finding my abandoned projects, I'm fascinated by the concept, so please let me know in the comments below.

I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and until next time, these are just a few of my abandoned ideas... and I'll see you tomorrow to share some more.