This one was a no brainer─what could stories want other than being read, of course? You might laugh, but not everything was intended for others to read. A diary, for example, is a story of a lifetime, although surely nobody would like his secrets to be shared with the world.
Especially, since we say a whole lot of dumb stuff as children. Even as wise adults we would not like the world to know just how much our 12-year-old self was into the whole concept of farts.
While young me was proud of my ability to burp on command, my adult self was slightly less impressed by that feature. This might partly be related to the fact that nobody would give me a job offer because of such an ability alone.
Besides the sad realisation that god gracious gift of instantaneous burping was wasted on me, one should realize that there was more to stories than just the fact that someone should be reading them.
A story could be so much more than just a way to get monies off of poor readers with even poorer English. A story was a way to practice your skills, a way to recite things that others should learn about, it was a way to entertain, to distract, to laugh, to cry....the list of emotions to add was seemingly endless.
What stories want was an extension of what the authors wanted to depict with their stories. Based on fiction or reality did not matter. One could learn a lot from stories of all kinds.
This applied to the scriptures of old down to most modern novels of today.
Certainly, it was much harder to grasp the older worldviews since the barriers in the zeitgeist and the general knowledge are way too insurmountable. But, as someone wise said. "Those who do not know their past are doomed to repeat it"
In that sense, stories also served as a warning about the mistakes others had made. Sadly, as per usual, humans proved to be very impervious to all sorts of good advice and ran headfirst into tragedy again.
The world would be too plain and boring if humans could not do human things.
Welp, can't change the very nature of our kind, which tends to have to learn everything from the ground up. Stories capture the moment in time, yet they were unable to save the readers from their eventual demise.
New readers were born and old readers joined the tribe of the perished folk.
That's the fate every reader and author has to go through alike. Hmm, this suddenly got a lot more depressive than initially expected...clearly, this was not something I wanted to cause. Or was it? I had no idea anymore what or whatnot I wanted to achieve by making a strange rant like this.
Yup, remember I was still an author sitting on a bench carrying a skull, trusting my words was akin to gambling with your remaining lifetime. There was no rhyme or reason as to why I decided to write this random bit.
Beyond the trifecta of what the involved parties in this whole process desire.
Though acting as if the story was some sort of being was quite ridiculous. Imagine what this story would have to say about the way I treated it. Yeah, I could just imagine the sheer amount of profanity and curses it would hurl at me.
Quite frankly, I could not blame it one bit for doing so. I was not the best author and did not exactly shower it with much thought or love.
To put it nicely, I did the opposite of the aforementioned things. To put it very bluntly, I created a monstrosity that would beg for death the moment it was able to vocalize its thoughts. For once, I was just glad that this story was not armed with a conscience.
Yes, let us just understand that this story had been killed the minute the character cast died. Then it would be easy to say goodbye once I stopped artificially keeping it alive by random updates about whatever floated in my head.
Saying goodbye was hard, but not saying it was ten times harder than that.
This was not a decision I made for myself, but for the sake of what this story once was. I remember the fond times when everything still had a clear path and direction to take─instead of the nameless husk of its former glory that it was now.
Welp, chasing after the former glory was a useless endeavour. Not much could be done with the state this novel was in. There was no miracle, no wonder to turn the inevitable around.
It was a foregone conclusion that this novel would someday turn up in flames.
Anybody that claimed otherwise could not read between the lines or was caught in wishful thinking. Sorry, to disappoint you, but there was never a happy ending planned for this journey of mine.
I could more and more feel it, as the life out of this story slowly saps away with each word that was used. The perfect ending had been reached and now we only prolonged the suffering with our inability to let this story die.
The course of nature did not stop in front of our beloved novels...someday they too shall fade and return nevermore. Nothing could be done and nothing could be changed. This was its final destination.
System for Dummies was a short and bittersweet journey parodying the trends of writing here on WN.
But, that was its only justification to exist and having done its due diligence it was time for it to meet oblivion.
No tears should be spilt in the name of something, which would soon lose its identity in the fast maelstrom of the Internet. How it ought to have been in the first place.
The happy end everybody desired was an insurmountable distance away. Though met with obscurity one would soon come to realize just how right this story was about certain aspects.
Not that such a realisation made for a big consolation...but it should not vanish on the wrong side of history. Or else we would be doomed to repeat it.
And nobody would want that to happen.
Most certainly, there were topics to be ranted about─ the story still felt somewhat alive and we needed to kill it fully.
Onto the next chapter, my few remaining brave readers. The end was drawing closer, I could feel it.
Only with your help we could finally kill it and end its torment!!!!