Watching the Brain Eater Rage Within His Gilded Cage

"You're far too self-aware to fall victim to the Brain Eater."

That's what my therapist told me the other day when I was angsting about watching yet another of my favorite artists fall victim to their own id and swerve deep into unpleasant territory. And what with the Louis CK discourse of the day, this makes me immensely sad and a tiny bit paranoid about dipping my toes back into writing.

The artist was Higi Shou. Shou famously wrote Prism, a shoujo-ai series about high school girls. It's corny and touching and surprisingly sensitive, the dialogue is amazing, and if it veers off into teenagers having sexy times well, teenagers do that and it's not actually played up as being titillating for the reader. Shou also got busted because his swipes were a little too photo-realistic; in many cases it seems that he was picking a wham moment out of his Tumblr collection and tracing it, and tracing photographs is a huge prohibition in comic art. He disappeared from the comic scene. The other day, I saw his name on a new series and looked. I wished I hadn't; Shou is now doing hard-core loli.

Louis CK's latest comedy set apparently includes an attack on the student activists from Parkland who have taken being shot at and transformed it into activism. They've done something, and they've earned a kind of moral penumbra that he finds... what? Offensive? Annoying? Trite? He then pivots to complaining about people choosing their own pronouns, and how that annoys him as well, and his audience laughs because it annoys them too.

John Scalzi describes the Brain Eater as a form of envy that ultimately takes over the whole of a person. Scalzi wrote that the Brain Eater happens when a mid-list writer envies what top-list writers have, and start to ascribe their failure to break into the best-seller list as someone else's fault. "I'm brilliant!" the artist shouts, "So why don't I get the accolades while JK Rowling owns her own island?" Even great writers fall victim to it, as Alice Walker's recent downfall reveals.

Envy is the worst of all sins; unlike arrogance, greed, gluttony, lust, anger or sloth, envy has no upside and there is no time when envy can be satisfied. But if we're going to ascribe envy to Louis CK, or Higi Shou, how would you do it? A lot of felons, at least the ones incarcerated for violent offenses, are narcissistic or sociopathic, and a lot of them believe that everyone is just like them, it's just that the system is against them, or they just got caught, or dumb luck. Maybe CK and Shou really believe that the majority is just like them, they just haven't been caught yet.

But what if it isn't envy? What if it's arrogance? "Hiding my feelings hasn't done me any good, so I'm gonna let my freak flag fly!" And part of their feelings is that it's okay to punch down. They're both straight males at the top of the food chains in their respective cultures, they've been told they're apex predators, they feel constrained that they're not allowed to act like one, and there's no reward anymore for being noble about anything.

For CK, it's certainly sloth. "Kids these days" is about the laziest comedy trope you can go with. I think part of the problem is that there are only two routes for a man like Louis CK: bitterness or redemption. And redemption requires contrition and repentence. More than that, it takes work. To continue as a comedian, Louis CK has to dig deep into himself and find something funny to say about how being an asshole isn't funny, and that takes more than one or two rough drafts.

Which brings me back to the beginning: what would I write about? I don't have many freak flags I haven't flown yet, which makes me wonder if I'm a bit tapped out. I could pander to the Furry audience, and I do have a couple of stories set aside where Ken & Aaden teach Wish about [redacted], but I like stories with premise and theme to them, and as I said earlier, these days my themes are anger and disgust at a world gone awry, hurtling into the abyss.

I think, if I write much in 2019, I'll try to write either deeply personal stories about people being nice to each other, or I'll try to hit the noblebright and hopecore high points instead. (I know people call it 'hopepunk,' but I don't think the -punk suffix works here; maybe I'm just an aging fuddy-duddy and that's the Brain Eater talking.) The world needs more hope and nobility. Here's hoping we get it.

Earlier: Meme: Thirty Questions About Writing

Later: Kit Rocha's “Beyond Shame”