Episode #268: To Use What You Were Given Sometimes Takes Guts

"My dude has fallen over in shock and he can't sit up!"

Reality is that I have very bad balance and I happened to bump into my c.d. rack, thus the new resting position. But, after reading my post, you may agree with his response.

Today's post is probably going to be a bit of a sticky wicket, so to speak, so I'm going to do my very best to keep it sensible. I would like to also note that I will also try not to deviate too much by covering certain facets that have already been discussed in greater detail elsewhere.

Personally, this particular topic has been a steady part of my writing for the past dozen years or so, which is directly due to me creating super strong female characters that would use everything in their arsenal to accomplish their goals.

The topic in question is weaponizing sex, or as Pat Benatar eloquently stated in a song that was ahead of its time: "Sex As A Weapon". Even though this topic is geared to both sexes, this post will concentrate more on women than on men.

What prompted me to write this post was a particular YouTube music channel that I subscribe to that features a very talented female Japanese guitarist based out of South Korea. It seems like from day one, she initially attracted subscribers using what God had graced her with (with some very creative cosplay costuming that always (barely) stayed within YouTube's ToS) and kept them with her exceptional musical talent. 

So I got to thinking about how this particular issue often plays out in other venues/avenues, sometimes voluntarily: e.g. concerts, cosplaying (of all types, including what's mentioned above) and involuntarily: e.g. pro wrestling, track & field and other sporting events. And fiction, which is a separate category of its own.

note: I am not touching on the topic of adult entertainment, simply because that's an extremely volatile issue that I do not wish to engage in.

Now I'm old enough (reluctantly knocking on the front door of 60) to remember the before of the involuntary weaponization of sex, where the athletic uniforms for track & field weren't so blatantly provocative as they are now. Ditto goes for professional wrestling, where the clothing attire for women was in the vein of one piece leotards (similar to what gymnasts wear). I'm pretty sure that the after of the involuntary is something that most everyone reading this has seen the aftereffects: exceptionally tiny uniforms for track & field, and booty-shorts and tinier than normal sports-bras, along with some....enhancements for female wrestlers (if you think I'm kidding, check out any video/t.v. program/facebook page that involves ladies professional wrestling for confirmation).

For those of you who have partaken of today's music scene, or even going back at least a decade, you have seen performers dress in ways that emphasizes what they got, sometimes modestly, sometimes not. Even though they may draw you in with their talent, sometimes it's that weaponization that keeps you hooked, like a double edge sword.

Whether it's voluntary or not, it still involves making a highly personal decision about how each performer wants to use what they got in order to make money. Some people are very comfortable in their own skin, and thus have no problem in using what they got to get what they want. Others may be comfortable in their own skin, but simply do not want to cross that particular line in the sand.

Now I mentioned that fiction is its own separate category. The reason why I believe this is that every writer often injects their own morals/mores into their stories, because more often than not, a given character in a given story is an extension of some type of the writer.

In my particular case, using sex as a weapon in my stories was always thing, no matter what level of weaponization was being applied to a given story. This was basically showcased in my fantasy series "Sister v Sister" where, for example, the Queen of the Pod Planet was forced to weaponize what the deities had graced her with in order to get what she needed to effectively rule the planet. It wasn't pretty and it was quite humiliating at times, but I tried to make it so that everyone in the Queen's inner circle knew how bad it was, so they tried to help mitigate the degradation she was forced to endure as much as possible.

I think what it boils down to, at least in the real world, on how much is a woman willing to compromise their personal beliefs in order to have the career that they'd decided to pursue. The fictional world is far more nuanced, in my personal opinion, since no matter what the medium may be, it's the writer that builds that character and decides how much of themselves do they want to be injected into their characters.

For me personally, I do not question how a person, male or female, wants to use what the deities of their religion had graced them with in order to have a fulfilling life. As my very opinionated/well-informed daughter is often fond of saying, "my body, my choice.", and that is a mantra that I try to abide by (which is why, for example, tattoos do not bother me whatsoever, and even if some did, my opinion does not matter).

So my friends, what's your opinion about women using sex as a weapon, either voluntarily or involuntarily? Please keep in mind, I'm not touching upon the industry that is exclusively for adults whatsoever. I'm only touching upon what the general public, ages 15 and up, sees on a daily/weekly basis.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #267: It's An Extremely Casual Road To Nowhere

Spring is really, really, really trying to make an appearance on the mountain this month. Let's give this little guy three cheers and a GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAL!!!!!*

*for those of you who do not know, this word is now a worldwide sports meme, both audio and video.

Have you even sit down in front of your computer, open up your brain after opening up a freshly blank document and start pounding away on a story idea/blog post that sounded "oh-so-promising",  produce maybe five paragraphs, then realize it wasn't such a hot idea after all, so you nuke that mess and start all over again from scratch?

Glad to know that I'm not the only one with a slushie-brain in a tidy world.

Anyways, I wanted to give a writing update this week, but consider how few "hits" I get from people to visit, as opposed to my non-writing related blog posts (averaging about 36 hits per week), I wanted to spice things up by bringing back my Abnormal Reviews reviewers Ted & Bob, to liven things up. Alas, I had no such luck, as per the opening paragraph, it was a downhill ride to the cesspool of nonsense, thus we decided to flush it away.

So here we are, a little flummoxed on how best to give a writing update w/o people yawning until they cry. But since we have that can-do attitude of stubbornness, we're going to give it our best shot. To begin at the beginning, we have our recently completed novella, now called "To Live Is To Die Young".

Unlike last year, when it literally took a village over the course of two months in order to come up with a title, long blurb, short blurb and even a cover design for my novella The Mortality of Familial Love, this year, for my upcoming novella, it literally took me a total of seventy-five minutes, spread out over three days, to come up with a title {pen, paper, and nailed it on the ninth try}, a long blurb {fourth draft was the keeper} and a basic outline for a cover design. It's currently on the back burner due to budgetary constraints and the lack of a short blurb.

And since I needed to stay occupied in some particular way, we decided to work on a short story collection. I have three short stories {two original and one re-edit from a blog posting} already in the can, so it took me but twenty minutes to go through all of the short stories from my defunct short story blog and find a half dozen suitable specimens that I can rewrite. I also decided to write one fresh story featuring my wonderful literary muse, who was finally given a proper name and in this story, was elevated to be an upper-crust member of society.

The fun thing about this story, in addition to being low-fantasy, is that it's sprinkled quite liberally with concepts from my recently completed five volume fantasy series {e.g. telepathy, intraspace travel and sentients/empaths}, and most importantly, the story is basically writing itself. Like I'm just the conduit for the main character {my literary muse} as well as the supporting cast. It's only been about one calendar week, as of the date of this post, and I have the equivalent of 13 typewritten pages hammered out.

So this is my, what I hope to be, a lighthearted writing update. I say 'lighthearted', because I don't think I've had a long period of time where a short story simply flowed out of my pen to paper, nor did getting three of the four major items needed to publish a book completed with relative ease.

I like things to be easy in my writing life. Makes me feel like I can actually complete something without getting aggravated.

A very happy Monday to one and all.

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #266: I......Am Hooked On A Name!

Flashback to the early 2010's, when my Holly was the absolute chillest cat you ever laid eyes on.

Back in mid-October 2024, I wrote a post that touched upon naming throwaway characters. It was a fascinating read to be sure, as I tried to dig a little deeper into my reasoning behind using certain names for my throwaways.

Today I decided to revisit that particular post in order to make another attempt at understanding why I like to use certain names repeatedly.

I think this is something that all writers go through from time to time, in that they become overly attached to a particular name, male or female, and decide to use an ungodly amount of time. If you really think about it, repeatedly using a particular name can be considered trope-like behavior.

Let's use me as a good example of trope behavior without really recognizing that I was doing it until a number of years had passed.

Way early on, I became quite enamored with the name Nikia. I first heard it used in the movie "Kill Bill, Vol 1", and I thought it was quite the badass name, even if it was attached to a young tween. So I started using it for a lot of my early stories whenever my lead female character was a badass. Ultimately it took me until the mid 2010's to pull the plug on using the name, as by that point it was going to be part and parcel of five stories (two novellas and a failed trilogy), and I was becoming quite sick of using it.

That 'sickness' eventually worked itself away, as I started using other types of names for my badass female characters (some involving a twist to the dark original name, e.g. Machiavelli). But it didn't really work for my male characters, as you will soon see.

The only reason that I fell in love with the name Melvin, is because of its versatility. Not as a character that would make a great protagonist, but as a character that would make a great antagonist. What immediately springs to mind when you hear the name Melvin? Annoyance? Disdain? Loathing?

Melvin is one of those names that you can say with any type of emotion and chances are, a character will be born out of that emotion. Think I'm kidding? Let me show you a few examples.

1} In my currently unpublished five volume fantasy series "Sister vs Sister", Melvin is portrayed as a loathsome, misogynistic piece of human excrement who is looking to take over the world (no, really). So in this particular instance, when I'm speaking/reading the name Melvin, I'm instantly disgusted/turned off by the mere utterance of his name. In other words, his name leaves a sour taste in my mouth.

2} Let's take a modest step back to the novella that I'm looking to publish this year, "To Live Is To Die Young". In this particular instance, Melvin is written as one of those fringe members of a society that really doesn't care about him. He comes off as an intolerable nuisance with barely any redeeming qualities. This time, when I'm reading/speaking his name, I want to severely mock him for being such a useless member of society, so in my head, my pronunciation of his name is one octave lower on the first three letters and one octave higher on the last three.

3) Let's take one more step back to a short story that I'm editing/reformatting for another small novella that I decided to work on while putting the aforementioned novella on the back-burner for a small moment in time. In this particular instance, Melvin is the name of the narrator of the story. He is written as someone who is both respected and loathed in equal amounts in a given friend group. In other words, when I read/speak his name, I want to treat him as someone who is the necessary evil that you need to keep your disparate friend group coagulating on a daily/weekly basis. In other words, I say his name with a healthy mix of disdain and tolerance.

So as you can see from these examples, the name Melvin can be molded/manipulated to any kind of character that you want to create, simply by uttering his name with whatever type of emotion you want to inject the name with. To be honest, it's starting to look like the name Melvin is going to be the literary equivalent of a character actor who becomes part of a movie/t.v. star's acting crew (e.g. John Wayne had a set number of character actor friends who appeared in his movies from the 30's through the 60's).

If I need an antagonist of some kind, whether minor/mid-level/semi-major, Melvin is going to be my go-to character name to fulfill that particular role. So my question to you is this: do you have a particular name, male or female, that in your eyes is versatile enough to appear in a good percentage of your stories in some particular way?

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved

Episode #265: It's Never Simple!

Harbinger of what we hope will be a pleasant Spring 2025.

The title of this week's blog post was a favorite saying of a wonderful old supervisor of mine back when I was a newbie state employee in the late 90's. She would often utter this phrase whenever she came across a particularly annoying government rule that was explicitly designed to make something 10 times more difficult to complete than it needed to be.

I found myself thinking about that particular phrase when I was trying to come up with something to write about this week {fun fact: this year marks my 17th consecutive year as a blogger, having started in 2008}, and after pondering about during a Saturday evening nap, I realize that blogging is painfully similar to writing a novel.

Point A: Trying to come up with a topic (blog) or an idea for a story (writing). Both have a gestation period, but a blog's, due to circumstances, is the equivalent of the lifespan of a house fly; while a story idea's gestation period is the equivalent of the lifespan of a fruit fly.

Point B: Fleshing out a blog post to the exact point where it can keep a reader engaged is a tricky endeavor, since if you make it too long, people will step out and not finish reading it. Make it too short and people will get the idea that you write clickbait; while fleshing out a story idea is an easier endeavor, in that the only limit you have is your preferred production type (e.g. short story, flash, novella).

Point C: Engaging the reader. A blog post, above all else, must engage the reader in a topic that they would want to know more of, in some particular way. Make it too esoteric, and you'll attract a minuscule fraction of the actual audience you want; on the other hand, a story idea often has a built in audience to begin with, and it often boils down on how you wish to expand and expound upon said idea in order to keep that built in audience engaged.

Point D: Offensiveness. Obviously, you have to tread a very fine line of a hair follicle when it comes to writing a blog post, with the main reason being is that you run the very real risk of alienating part of your audience if you write about a hot-button issue (politics for example) in specific terms rather than general terms (national politics vs local/state); a story idea is the complete opposite, in that while you may alienate some with the way you expand/expound on your story idea, the bulk of your audience with not be alienated.

Point E: Well, I don't really think there's a fifth point to be had, as I basically covered the four main differences between blogging and writing. 

However, in summation, it's never simple when it comes to blogging, because if you make a direct comparison to writing, blogging has way more rules that you have to perpetually navigate on a (in my case) weekly basis, whereas when it comes to story writing, the only rules that you have to navigate are those in your chosen length and genre. 

{c} 2025 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved