I wrote a little piece of fiction yesterday. It’s the post right before this one. I had no real intent when I started it. I didn’t really have a premise. I just started writing the first line and it sort of grew from there. That’s how most of my writing goes. One line and then the next. Very rarely do I have any idea where it will end up and I had no real idea with this one either. If you’d like not to have the story ruined for you, go read it now and come back: *spoiler* It’s a short about a killer. /*spoiler*

It occurred to me that I seem to do a lot of killing. Whenever I don’t really have a clue what I’m writing, I end up killing someone. I have a short posted on here that I wrote a while back about a serial killer. I have since turned this into a proper novel. I have about fifteen chapters written. It’s not quite finished yet; I still have to write the climax and denouement.

The serial killer story also started without a particular aim in mind and I ended up as a serial killer. Is that telling of me? Does that mean that I secretly want to kill people or is it just a case of creative license? While I am compelled to see movies that portray some aspect of my own reality such as memory loss or insomnia, what I really enjoy is fiction that is vastly different from my own life. I like seeing slices of life that have no bearing on my reality at all. I love samurai movies and kung fu. I adore gangster films. I’m fascinated by war movies, documentaries and books. I love reading about the Stalin-era Soviet Union. I like post-apocalyptic science fiction and zombie movies. If there’s a zombie in it, I have to see it. My favorite kind of film is revenge: someone is wronged, that someone takes up arms/learns kung fu/or just generally loses their shit, then smites the evildoer with a fierce and mighty vengeance, preferably with lots and lots of gushing blood. I love lots and lots of gushing blood in a flick. I will watch any old piece of drivel that has a dude or a chick on the cover with that look in their eye that says I mean business. None of these things really has any relation to my life.

For example, this box cover image has everything I love: samurai, blood, Kinnosuke Nakamura brandishing a sword while wearing an extremely I mean business look, and the title of the film is even simply Revenge. It couldn’t get much more tailor made for my viewing pleasure that that. If a box cover has any of these things, I am likely to run right out and see it, but the fact that this one has all of them is just, well, excuse me a moment… AWESOME!  Reviews, ratings, year, director– none of these things really matter. Even if that wasn’t the supremely badass Kinnosuke Nakamura on the cover, but some random Japanese dude, I’d still see it. Whether the film lives up to that box cover or not is practically irrelevant. The fact that it has all of these things means that I will see it regardless. It’s a moral imperative. I suppose I have strange taste in cinema for a girl.

This brings me back around to my point: how did I develop this bloodlust? How did it come to be that I love movies with revenge, killing, blood, revengeful bloody killing, bloody killing revenge and revenge killing with lots and lots of gushing blood? Where did this come from? Why is it that, whenever I don’t know what to write about, my default is to kill something? I’ve never killed anyone and I don’t even like killing insects. I’m the type of person that, if at all possible, will shoo an insect outside rather than squish it. Lots of blood in the real world makes me kind of queasy. I don’t even look at traffic accidents on the freeway, so where does this bloodlust come from?

I suppose, as long as it stays in my writing, reading, viewing, or video game playing, it’s no harm, no foul. If I don’t ever personally end up looking like Kinnosuke Nakamura on that box cover, it’s alright. Some might say it’s even a healthy outlet for aggression. And, as for my writing, I’ll keep killing things as the mood strikes and you can’t stop me. Bwa ha ha.