Scheming and Thirst for Power: Steven McKnight's Post-9/11 Literature

I’ve written—albeit not well—since I could first clutch a pencil in my little ravioli fist; my mother tells me stories about how before that even happened, I would sit on my grandma’s lap and tell her stories. I have no idea what these stories were about; nobody will tell me. Obviously there is material there that I can use now, and it’s a shame it remains inaccessible to me. That being said, those years are over, and there’s no use mourning something I don’t even remember, right?

In the shards of memory that congeal as I write to this prompt, I remember a couple of projects that materialized in cute little cartoons with labels and captions. (Now, after a Bachelor’s Degree in Creative Writing, I know the terminology for this is Graphic Essay. Toddler-Steven would not give a shit.) The earliest one I remember, which must have been when I was three or four back in 2001 or 2002, was something called Trap Principal. I have three older brothers, and while I didn’t know what school was like, I knew who held power, and who needed to be dealt with. In these intricately illustrated pages, I trapped—like a little bug—the aptly-named Mr. Bugno, condemned him to live out the rest of his days in cages and glass jars, leaving the school—still a foreign place to me at that point—a horrific and anarchical mess. According to my mother, Mr. Bugno was chuffed with my little drawings. Perhaps I’d make a good court fool.

The second project that comes to mind is deftly-illustrated Pokemon fanfiction in which I, the world’s greatest Pokemon master, despite using the weakest and unevolved Pokemon, triumphed over trainers with names suspiciously matching my brothers’ names, with teams suspiciously matching my brothers’ teams. Perhaps I, as the youngest of four boys, craved a situation where I for once could be the smartest and strongest. After all, even now, I’m the only member of the family under six feet, and even now, I’m the only member of the family without an established career. (Whaaaaaat? The brother with the BA’s in Theatre Studies and Creative Writing, who graduated in 2020 in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic doesn’t have an established career? Color me surprised!)

With that being said, I’m happy how things turned out. I don’t write Pokemon fanfiction anymore, but sometimes I write about Pokemon, and I get paid at least five dollars whenever I do so. And sure, I don’t conjure up schemes to trap and imprison figures of authority at my educational institutions, but if the need for it ever arises, I have that particular skill set.