Monster
Authored By Camaro

Ahhh! I keep finishing all these stories and than neglecting the "Story Behind the Story" aspect, which I honestly believe is pretty important. People always tell me that when they read my stories, they feel like they're learning more about me than anything. So let's test that theory with Monster.

Starting out, when I first began to write Monster, I was also JUST finishing Dark Angel (A hetero, very fantastical story) AND writing Fathoming Love (Also semi hetero and quite tame for the first few chapters). Monster became my outlet when I couldn't deal with Fathoming Love; my literary yin and yang. Fathoming Love explored more of my belief in love, (however ALSO fantastical haha) and the vulnerability of a person, no matter their physical strength.

Monster however, never totally deals with love. I find that part of the story is more interesting because even though in later chapters, love is confessed, it's never the whimsical, movie kind. It's jaded and imperfect, sometimes what I even consider 'stained with selfishness'.

Monster is (I laugh saying this) but a monster of a story. Dealing with topics that explore the weaknesses of the entire world (not to mention religion) Monster starts out as a mysterious conspiracy type. The world is going bad, Goku is having sick dreams and everything we thought about Vegeta and even Goku himself, is just not quite right. Remember, I was raised Jehovah's Witness, so consider this:... Monster was basically my outlet for my fear of Armageddon.

Now, I've ALWAYS had a fear of the end of the world. I have. I'm not really ashamed of it simply because knowing the religion I was raised in, it makes sense. We were never given the commodity of fearing anything "irrational". There were no UFO's, no vampires, no ghosts, no monsters under the bed. We were only told that if we were bad, God hated us and would kill us when he unleashes holy hell on earth for being "so bad".

::insert rolled eyes here::

So my biggest "confirmed fears" as a kid was that A.) God hated me for being human B.) There were demons (not ghosts!!) and C.) That the end of the world would come in the form of every extreme natural disaster and wipe me and everyone I loved off the face of the earth for being bad. It's hardly a wonder that for years, and even now about twice a month, I suffer from absolutely horrific dreams of bloodshed and the end of the world. Quite graphic. After finally seeing a psychiatrist about them, I was told I needed to write about it.

Now, those of you that have read Dark Angel, (the more perceptive ones I might add), realized that in a lot of ways, I wrote Vegeta's call to God as, basically, my own last grasp of spirituality. I wanted to find God again and I didn't want him to give up on me for being what I was.

So, taking that all into account, you can imagine that Monster, in all its controversial "Fuck Religion" undertones, was my glorious decline from God entirely. Goku walking into a church and meeting with a horrific, "dead priest" that molests children was something I found to be almost entertaining to write, and "the priest of eyes" a good metaphorical character for half of the utterly INSANE preachers I was raised around.

Vegeta explores this more and more with his little speeches.

You see these churches, gathering the flock of humans to them in a great embrace," He had said, smoking a cigarette, his head laying back against the rim of the tub. "And yet, in the time of the end, no generation of humans has ever seen so many collection dishes filled to the brim; thousands of wood knitted bowls passed out during mass, as if money could save a human life from the wrath of an Armageddon."

Basically, Vegeta's blatant disregard for religion, is just a reflection of my own. A lot of the points he made were just basically, what I think about all of it.

"I think it must be quite convenient to forget the monstrosities committed by the Roman Catholic Church, namely the slaughter of millions in the name of God. Wars come and go. Believers on all sides. And both so sure that God will help them to destroy the opposing. But would God do that? I mean, if He's so fucking loving, cherishes His people so much, why would he choose one side over the other? Both worship Him. How does He decide which one has to go? It's absurd."

Through some of the more eccentric characters, I found ways to explore and cope with darker sides of my personality. "The Pizza Man", (if you've read the story) is an excellently dispical being. He's basically the side of everyone that wants to do something utterly horrible and not have to give explanations for it later. There is no justice in his world, no need to attone for monstrocities. I think I liked him because I understood that. That there IS that certain part in us that wants to kill and do all of the socially unacceptable, terrible things AND get away with it. Sanity is just our driving force NOT to and possibly, why when we see serial killers and rapists and all those, we're sickened. Not so much by them, but maybe... because to a degree, we DO understand it, eh?

Satin is probably one of my favorites in this story, though she doesn't really have a big part. I think I only needed to write a small scene with her to make the impact that she did. Driven with a hatred for men, Satin sets out on a quest to make "art" of her victims. I found a fascinating part of Satin was her need to still "make her prey happy" by sleeping with them, by more or less, letting them use her before virtually "using them". We realize pretty quickly in Satin's story that she was horribly sexually abused by her father and though she DID physically liberate herself from him (via killing him and her mom) this incessant "need to please" shows that while she has other victims, she still is a victim of her father.

Getting AIDS is her final justice. I hate that people see Satin as a monster. As stated before, Satin is one of my favorites because she isn't the Pizza Man. She isn't a reckless, driveless force of evil. Just a victim of it that deals with her past by ruining other's futures. Maybe I understand her to a degree because I find it fascinating to (myself) hurt men. To make them care about me and then expose that later on. Satin is just a very dramatized version of myself in some ways. Probably of every woman that hates men. Who knows.

A lot of people say that when I wrote Monster, I saw Vegeta as a bit of myself. Now this is partially true. Vegeta is a very reckless, heartless person. His inability to understand Goku's attachment to his family reflects a lot of carelessness in himself and his ever-driven need to have fun and 'live life' gives him a "devil may care" aspect that I find hilarious.

But while, yes, Vegeta does reflect a large part of me, so does Goku. He clings to a lot of things in his past that hinder him from moving onwards. This beautiful reflection of who he was keeps him from accepting that yeah, maybe he isn't the perfect hero anymore. But really, does imperfection stop him from an obligation to save people? Does not being a perfect hero mean he can't be a hero period? It seems he just has a very fantastical idea about the world (naive as well) and when this "version of life" begins to melt around him, he breaks down.

Goku and Vegeta are like my yin and yang in Monster, the evil twin (being a Gemini) and the good.

Bulma in this story is a very tainted character. We find that unlike a lot of versions of her, in Monster, she's both vivacious and prone towards loss of faith. Abuse in her past via her father (something I really felt I wanted to explore with her character so as to understand it about myself) really seems to walk with her every single day. In every feature of her, you see an unwillingness to be anything less than perfect. She demands it of herself and of the world around her and like Goku, when things begin to fade, the quickest thing to flee is her faith in God and the people around her.

Monster is a fantastic story. I absolutely fell head-over-heels with every aspect that other people hated. It was the most controversial reflection of my beliefs that I've EVER written and while it became pretty obvious that it was a "love or hate" relationship with readers, regarding the story, I have no complaints with it.

I think in some ways, though my bitterness towards religion was widely shown, Goku's last few acts demonstrate a very dormant part of me that still clings to God. I wanted to represent God as a person, just like you or me, walking about around a chaotic world. God isn't perfect. He isn't a flawless glowing beakon of perfection. He's just a kind man, sitting in a coffee shop.

I thought the last few chapters of Monster really demonstrated belief MORE SO in yourself than in blind faith for God. Goku doesn't defeat Satan because God gives him the power. Goku defeats Satan because he believes he can and WILLS that power within himself.

"Even evil things can love."

In the last chapters, Satan/Vegeta promises Goku a world of beauty and life-everlasting. I thought it'd be interesting to explore the idea that our narrow "fire and brimestone" hell, might not be completely correct; AND that our belief of Satan as the ultimate evil, might be as entirely jaded as Satan himself in this story.

“Nothing can be all evil. There is good in everything and there is evil in everything. It’s the balance. Don’t you remember that I used to be an angel? I was the most beautiful of them all."

Satan reveals in the last chapters that he has taken on the form of men before Vegeta. Vlad Dracula, Adolf Hitler, the advisors of Pontius Pilate. I thought it'd be very fun to take what we know about history and twist it, to form a unique idea as to why these men did what they did. A contradiction to what most people believe about Hitler (myself included) I made him a human, possessed by Satan and then, when freed, so horrified by what he'd done that he ultimately killed himself for it. Some people were completely sickened that I did this, in fact, sickened with a lot of the supposed "too-far-ness" of the story. But as Dave Chappelle said not too long ago, "how would we know where the lines are if no body ever crossed them?"

I guess if I were to sum up the reason I wrote this story, it's just to make people think. Think. Think about the world around you and don't let your past or opinions or the people around you tell you exactly how the world is supposed to be and look. Goku was hindered because he had this little, tiny, narrow idea of himself as a hero. He thought that people wouldn't love him if he wasn't the stupid hero with flawless ignorance. When the world as he knew it became ugly with reality, he sank for a while because he let himself.

I want people to understand that the world will NEVER be black and white. Religious fanatics absolutely LOATHE Monster because it makes them question the ideas of Satan and God, of the black and white and the good and the evil. They have to expand their pathetic little boxes of understanding and they hate that. I'm simply saying, think.

Don't stop believing that the world is a beautiful place, because it is. But realize that your world isn't everyone else's.

And DO NOT stop thinking just because you don't like the answers you're finding. At some point, I believe we all have to ask ourself the question that will decide where our lives take us: Is it better to rely on blind faith or to live in a faithless existence?

Monster was an awesome story with an equally as riviting sequel (still in the works at this time) and well worth a read if you're willing to. And this... is my story behind the story.

The Mirai Trunks Complex
Authored By Bunni Girl