Aspies and school shootings. [*fiction*]
I've been hearing these stupid voices in my head that do nothing but call me names. They have absolutely no influence on my moral values or attitude toward the world, and serve only to distract me. Yet I hear them. They're like little bullies who follow me around and tease me during my normal daily activities. Can you imagine how that must feel? To be completely sane and yet hear namecalling in your head every day?
I have those same little cretins living in my head. I like it better when there are tens of thousands of them and all I can hear is the murmur of the crowd, rather than the individual voices.
I don't know if this thought will have any affect for you, but I've found that good sleep helps and best of all, if I can get myself into doing something that I'm really interested in, the voices are easier to ignore because I'm too occupied to hear them.
I think that my desires to shoot up the world, so to speak, have successfully been countered by a stronger sense of self preservation. Not that I would care if I ended up dead so much, but more the thought, I'm such a screw up regularly, what if I ended up maimed and disfigured by acting on that, shot up and brain damaged and in jail, rather than just free and crazed. So... I've never done anything.
I have to admit though, that as I've gotten older, the constant riddling thought that I'm a screwup has been replaced as I've learned and mastered different competencies. The better I become as a person, the less that overriding thought of lack of value can exist.
I judge if I had access to weapon in time when I was attending my primary school, probability of massacre taking place there one day would be about 10%-15% and I'm not telling this to shock anyone but to objectively judge possibility of such an event occuring. I often spinned such a fantasy in my head but only in "what if" scenario form. I'm glad I'll never meet some people from my primary school.
I could see a school shooter who is holding the school hostage and the only person brave enough to fight back is the Aspie, and he fights back by taking out the shooter with a car. After he does that everybody calls him a hero and likes and respects the Aspie.
_________________
Nothing is fool proof only fool resistant
Rather then the character diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome being the shooter, why not make him a hero?
He is teased and ridiculed by his peers at school and when he overhears the shooter discussing his plans, no one believes him. However, when the shooting actually happens he finds himself hiding just a few feet behind the shooter and instead of freezing up he lunges for the shooter and wrestles him to the ground unarmed saving many lives. His peers who once teased and ridiculed him now consider him the greatest hero ever to have come to the school. Perhaps he is even awarded a local scholarship that normally goes to the star of the football team (who ironically happens to be the person who ridicules him the most).
Your original premise portrays Asperger's Syndrome in a negative light. If you really want to write a book that will help people with Asperger's Syndrome, something closer to my premises would work out much better.
This is an excellent idea.
If my parents wouldn't have taken me out of public school to homeschool me when they did, I probably would have been the real life version of your character so I can relate. My stupid phytrast at the time wrote about the bullying in her notes and "desires for revenge were clearly expressed" but she like everyone else continued to blame me for it. If I would have stayed in public school, I would probably have brought worldwide attention to our tiny Ohio town by going on a rampage and seeking out spefic teachers and kids, shooting them and then shooting myself. Yes PLEASE continue with it. Hopefully it will get the message out to the public. I'd continue with making him the shooter, somethimes tragety is the only way to get people's attention.
_________________
I'm not weird, you're just too normal.
Maybe the phytrast was an idiot. Schools don't really care about bullying even after school shootings.
_________________
Nothing is fool proof only fool resistant
I think that putting the antagonist as having AS does more damage than good; it also doesn't seem to have a place in the motion of your story.
PunkyKat... while I understand that you have undergone trauma in your life, that doesn't exempt you from being responsible for your actions. If you had chosen to take your revenge on others, it would not be their fault - it would be your responsibility.
M.
_________________
My thanks to all the wonderful members here; I will miss the opportunity to continue to learn and work with you.
For those who seek an alternative, it is coming.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
Maybe the phytrast was an idiot. Schools don't really care about bullying even after school shootings.
Looking back, she was. A big one.
I think that putting the antagonist as having AS does more damage than good; it also doesn't seem to have a place in the motion of your story.
PunkyKat... while I understand that you have undergone trauma in your life, that doesn't exempt you from being responsible for your actions. If you had chosen to take your revenge on others, it would not be their fault - it would be your responsibility.
M.
I still think you should go with your original ideas. I fail to see how it would have been my fault or responsibility, they were the ones that drove me too it. Thankfully I was taken out before anything could get worse but I'm still screwed up in the head because of it.
_________________
I'm not weird, you're just too normal.
I'd love to read the story with the original ending. I wouldn't tone anything down to appease the masses. School shootings are already portrayed in a negative manner. People blame music, video games, etc. The least you can do is explain the psyche of a school shooter in a fiction novel. I don't think the main character being AS would put AS in a negative spotlight considering how diverse the community is. It's fiction after all. Chuck Palahniuk wrote a book that was Columbine inspired. Are all NT's school shooters? Let your creativity flow to the extreme and be as controversial as possible. You're bound for a cult hit this way.
What he said.
_________________
I'm not weird, you're just too normal.
Because, PunkyKat, their actions do not absolve you for responsibility for your own. If someone attacks you, there is nothing that mandates that you attack back - that is your own choice.
M.
_________________
My thanks to all the wonderful members here; I will miss the opportunity to continue to learn and work with you.
For those who seek an alternative, it is coming.
So long, and thanks for all the fish!
>>1234
FOUR
Four is the only number which is itself has the same number of letters as it itself is.<<
If you would ever bother to be less self-centered and look beyond English language, your statement would be without of any factual weight.... ) I am not trying to offend you - just comment!
what exactly is the point of writing the book?
To demonize bullying?
To spot light the plight of aspie teenagers?
Would it acheive your end? Or, as many have pointed out, would it backfire and cause aspies themselves to be demonized and feared?
I, for one, dont see why the world needs a novel about a highschool shooter.
Its been done.
In fact campus shooters occured in fiction long before they started to occur in real life.
Long before anything like Columbine happened Stephen King wrote a novel about a teenager taking his teacher hostag at gun point, and going on shooting rampage. It was the one novel he regretted writing becasue it got him bad press even at the time he wrote it which years later got worse because the novel got blamed for seeming to inspire the real life shootings we have today in the age of Columbine.
Somekind of nonfiction book might be interesting-interviewing student victims of bullying to expose how well or how poorly schools deal with the problem.
Is there a need to explicitly make him an aspie? That is, couldn't you write a book about exactly the same character, but without explicitly diagnosing him?
I would also question the premise of bullying, on its own, leading to the school shooting. Surely there's more to it than that? Bullying is unfortunately a widespread problem, yet school shootings are very rare. I was bullied, and I can honestly say I was never seriously tempted to do anything like that - I did end up punching a bully, but I was never physically violent to bystanders. Of course I sometimes indulged in violent, gore-filled fantasies (what boy doesn't?), but there was never any serious desire to do something like that. So my view is that there is something more in such cases.
_________________
I am the steppenwolf that never learned to dance. (Sedaka)
El hombre es una bestia famélica, envidiosa e insaciable. (Francisco Tario)
I'm male by the way (yes, I know my avatar is misleading).
passionatebach
Velociraptor
Joined: 8 Nov 2009
Age: 46
Gender: Male
Posts: 447
Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
I actually spent two weeks in the summer of 1999 at my brother's house in Littleton, CO. In that two weeks, I got to see the affects that the Columbine shooting had upon the community. Sadly, I didn't totally understand the emotions of people in that community until my own community suffered a natural disaster a couple of years ago.
I always thought it would be an interesting idea to write about the after effects of a school shooting on a community, through the eyes of some students. It was an eye opening and life changing experience to spend time it the Littleton/Denver community during that time. Maybe one of the main characters could be a person with autism/AS and the response that they would have to this type of event.
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