I’m writing a story that involves a space elevator and a fart. The title: The Fizzles of Paradise. My spouse hated the concept so much that he said he wouldn’t even take a look at it nor do the initial proofreading that has been an essential part of my writing being viable in the anglophone market. I had to get some confidence fuel from my online buddy Jordan Chase-Young to continue writing it.
I’m almost done with the vomit draft of this story. Like the Arthut C. Clarke novel that I reference in the title, it has three POVs and maybe that’s where the similarities end. The story was very contaminated by issues going on in my life (I quit my day job this week after I realized that my supervisor was asking me to put myself in more situations of potential exposure to COVID 19 than my non-Latino colleagues, but that’s not what I want to talk about here).
I don’t remember if it was Alex Shvartsman or Ira Nayman, during an online panel on comedy and SFF earlier this year during Amazing Con, who said that if you write comedy, you don’t get respect, but you get love. That reminded me of movie I watched during a film festival in Mexico. It was called La Delgada Linea Amarilla (The Thin Yellow Line) and it was a beautiful, even solemn tale of a man with a crew hired to paint in a very rustic way the yellow line in the center of a new road. The movie was not a comedy, but it had one minor character that was a comedy relief – a very mild one. For some reason every time he would show up in the screen the audience would laugh their asses off, even when the scene had nothing funny. Someone explained to me that the actor was one of the greatest comedians in Mexico. The mere sight of him summoned all the skits he performed.
The Fizzles of Paradise is a comedy with a social commentary. It was deeply influenced by the professional struggles I went through this week. Anybody who reads my stuff knows that gallows humor is my lane. Can one love someone who writes gallows humor, though? Will I ever get the love that the chubby Mexican actor – or Pratchett -, used to get from people who appreciated their humor?
Do I want to be loved?
*fizzle*
I would still have a job if I were respected.
I kinda of needed that job.
COVID 19 wasn’t an acceptable trade off for employment.
Nor was the double-standard or the condescension.
Did I want that job?
*fizzle*
I wish I could make a living out of writing.
No, not that type of writing.
Nor that.
Fuck you too.
*fizzle*
Can satire, especially a dark, unforgiving one, change the world, by ridiculing power structures and vicious social dynamics?
If yes , that’s a quite respectable thing to do.
*fizzle*
I mean, it sounds respectable.
*fizzle*
I mean, it’s worth trying.
Illimani Ferreira 