The Men Who Write Your Christmas Movies, Part Iii

“If it had just been one of two messages, I could have passed it off as an outlier, but when it got up to forty percent… then my own fears began rising higher. “The clincher was the stray handful of notes that spoke grimly, hinting of suicide. I tried to track down who wrote those letters, only to find three had already died… “Now I know those people made their own choices, but yet, I now saw though a different prism, the writing I thought would cement my name was only encouraging nihilism. “The post-modern words the professors loved made people think there was no point to life, I made them question why they were even here writing characters that no one could like. “And all the praise from the critics out there put more weight on my words then they deserved, people searching for a ‘serious book’ received a message both cruel and absurd. “Was the vapid praise of the Globalist crowd worth destroying souls I’d never met? Was getting into the right cocktail parties worth pushing a person closer to death? “I was so obsessed with ‘greatness’ back then, I broke boundaries just because I could, never once did I even bother to ask if I was using my powers for good. “My outlook changed quickly upon this thought, and I realized that when we dig too far the world becomes tragic, and so do we, nothing more than a collection of scars. “We’re flawed, we’re brutal, we can’t be angels, our shadow can make this world living hell, and we’re more likely to be damned to that fate If on these shortcomings we always dwell. “I saw suddenly, the mighty purpose of hero tales, romances of the heart; our mind’s counterbalance to the darkness, without them society falls apart. “We reinforce the positive ideals because we do not last long otherwise, we tell people to strive as best they can, it is essential if we’re to survive. “Realizing all this, I wrote my eighth book, and with trepidation sent it to them, you haven’t read it because my publisher then hid it away from the eyes on men. “See this book didn’t attack tradition, it sought the wisdom tradition can give, my characters struggled, as good ones do, but fought through it, they grew, and they lived. “My publishers acted appalled by the book, they said outrightly that they would reject, it was ‘simple,’ and ‘lacking in nuance,’ not the type of thing ‘smarts readers’ expect... CONCLUDES IN PART IV.