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A Matter of Taste

indelibleface

indelibleface

Bluelight Crew
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She crept up to the mottled-gray brick wall and found the hole.

It was never easy sneaking out of the Valley of the Blueberries, her home for as long as she could remember. She was a Blueberry Child. Her skin was the color of the sacred fruit they worshiped: a deep and vivid Blue. From day one, she had been taught to forsake the Other Persuasion, that of the Eaters of the Cherry.

Growing up, her friends and family would eat Blueberries and laugh heartily, and she would force an awkward smile, but at night, she would dream of Cherries. She dreamed her skin was Red as the plump, dangling fruits she fantasized about. Her family knew about this obsession; they condemned her for her thoughts and fed her brainwashing drugs. They attached electrodes to her soft Blue skin and tried to zap the filthy Red deviance out of her flesh.

Everyone she knew told her she was living in a dreamworld, but in this place, on the borderline of the Valley of the Cherries, it was the only place she felt truly awake. She peered through the hole, and watched the Eaters play.
 
This is excellent! The actions of the characters in the story are so true to life with their rules and expectations. And the part with the electro-shock therapy. Very dark. And yet the entire time I was reading, I felt a warm tingly feeling as this entire scene played out in my head filled with cherries and blueberries and dreams.

I love it.
 
i'm stupid. what exactly is the metaphor about? kind of seems sexual but that doesn't appear to make sense...
 
When I write stories, I try to make my metaphors about vaster generalizations about the human condition and not specific little things, although I do have a specific thing in mind with regards to this story.

On a larger scale, this is about longing to be yourself, even after your parents and society as a whole attempt to shove down your throat what they perceive you should actually be like. This can take the form of many different things.

On a smaller scale, my intention for the piece was to comment on sexual orientation and the methods religious parents of some children of alternate sexualities use to shape their children into something they aren't. The protagonist is meant to be lesbian, and the Eaters of the Cherry are meant to be the gay community. Cherries are meant to be a dual metaphor for breasts as well as female genitalia. Her parents want her to be "straight," so they use psychiatric drugs and electroconvulsive therapy in an effort to make her "normal," which are both methods that actually exist (see "Conversion Therapy" on Wiki, it's pretty revolting). Also, all references to the colors are capitalized, to show how much importance people put on things like orientation and gender, things that really shouldn't be issues anyway. This is just how people are. It's just a matter of taste. We can't choose what we like. We just are that way.

Again, this was just my personal intention with the piece; I like leaving things more generalized so more people can identify with what the character(s) go through in my stories. I was trying hard not to bat people over the head with moralizing or anything. I've been told people can enjoy this piece as simply a literal fantasy tale, completely outside of any metaphorical content, and that's perfectly fine with me too.
 
OP, your conceptual idea explained has potential, but the story itself does not convey. That is what art is; conveying an idea from your mind, and expressing it in a form tangible to others via a medium. Math has equations, music has instruments, chess has a board, writing has pen and paper, ad infinitum.

Observations of the story as written:

If cherries represent the gay community and female genitilia, then blueberries should correlate this idea. The two fruits should act as a dichotomy, and they somewhat do withhold the line of them eating blueberries. Saying that they ate blueberries, though only a single line, causes a great deal of confusion for the reader.

The "Other Persuasion" denotes that this alternative sexuality is somehow determined by an entity, an entity never expressed or explained.
"It's just a matter of taste. We can't choose what we like. We just are that way." This explanation goes against this "Other Persuasion" concept.
Also, you wouldn't capitalize the colors to emphasize importance, you would bold them.

Lastly, being written from a female's perspective, saying she dreams to be a cherry doesn't help serve the dual metaphor you spoke of seeing how she is actually female.
While I read this, I was certain it was more specifically about someone who was transgender. If you reread what is written, that idea seems more forthcoming than what you explained.

Conceptually it works, however, the execution needs some work. I hope this helps the process.
 
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