Well-Behaved Monsters

Well-behaved women rarely make history...but well-behaved monsters might!

Conventional wisdom is dead, and so are they if failing to adapt. But what battleground tactics will lead them to the promised land instead? The answers to this riddle prove as shocking as the strategies employed. For they will soon settle upon a series of outrageous stunts, meant to make them stand out from the anonymous rabble - while it's true that smacking random strangers on their backsides is perhaps not working as well as hoped, most standard icebreakers have been trod so far into the ground that there's no hope of standing out otherwise. Much more original approaches are therefore required.

Sid talks some of them into bogus wedding rings, purchased for ten dollars at a department store. Dylan wonders about dressing the part and learning the lingo necessary to invade the country music, hip-hop, and beach bum scenes. Pete swears by his trusty Looney Tunes themed Pez dispenser, and insists anyone dating women over 97 pounds is slumming it. Phil goes positively bananas if anyone dares turn down drugs offered to them by females, insisting this is the winning formula. Joe meanwhile is the lone holdout swerving in the opposite direction, going the respectability route, although this involves gaslighting his targets by insisting he was never involved in any of these stunts. Marvin will tell them they're overcomplicating things by thinking and talking about anything but sex, all the time. Robbie dares to ask, is wearing an eyepatch totally out of the question? These and many other timeless mysteries are among those this intrepid group investigates at length and acts upon.

As for the women caught up in this turbulent storm, Maggie instantly spins every comment and development to delusional extremes to believe whatever narrative she wishes. Lily thinks herself better than all of them, and that she doesn't need this crap, yet continues to remain involved just the same. Alice has a potentially bright future and a wonderful head on her shoulders, but can't resist the siren song of a slippery slope regardless. Miranda on the other hand navigates said slippery slope just fine, and seems to enjoy herself considerably in the process. Jenna continues to get more and more impatient to settle down pronto, though these panicked efforts only lead to increasingly worse results. Shoniqua scoffs as she considers anyone still single past their mid-twenties patently ridiculous, is herself a much more advanced species now that she's engaged. Even as Debbie comes off as possibly most composed and assured out of everyone, insisting alcohol plus sex are the only ports in a storm necessary for survival.

Controversial or not, the new facts emerging from these feverish field studies are enough to make their heads continually spin, each proving more argument inciting than the last. When some of them eventually discover what angles truly work, the results are as unexpected as their outlandish ideas. Still others will refuse to believe in their successes, despite the causes and effects parading around in plain sight. For most, however, in particular their hapless targets, once these concepts catch fire, they have considerable reason to wish this mischievous, costumed genie had never been poured from its mid-range liquor bottle. If only they could return to a quainter day, when everyone was screwing around with silly props instead! Because when it becomes irrefutable what kind of twisted behavior acts like a magnet in attracting mates, these findings are legitimately monstrous, and give everybody involved a dimmer view of human nature.