Reality Bites: Intro

[Chickenshack]

Dan was screwed. Simply put, he was screwed. He sat patiently outside the large, oak-varnished double-doors behind which his supervisor Lawrence was getting chewed out by a very upset Ratings Board. And if Larry was getting chewed out, it meant that he was going to get chewed out even worse by Larry.

He fidgeted around in his chair, looking around the plush, well-lit lobby for anything to help take his mind off of what was surely transpiring against his favor just a few feet to his right behind closed doors. Behind him out of impressive, floor-to-ceiling windows was the New York City skyline. Breathtaking to some, he thought, but a long-standing fear of heights prevented him from really taking in all the grandeur. In front of him, mere yards away, were the golden-glinted elevators that could usher him back to the mundanity of menial office intern work, not that he'd ever thought he would miss it. Not before the whole fiasco he found himself in now, anyway. 

A glance to his left planted his eyes upon the Board receptionist, a young woman who looked to be about his age, fresh out of college, alternating her hands between fiddling away on her computer and plucking chocolate kisses out of a large bowl kept to the side, presumably to keep up appearances, as actual visitors were probably a rarity all the way up on the 49th floor. She glanced up from her work and her eyes met his. He flashed her a weak smile; she scowled at him and turned back to her work. Understandable, he thought.  A few months ago, a woman like her would have been nothing more than a cash cow to him and Larry. Watching the way she dug right back into those chocolates, Dan mused at what an ideal candidate a girl like her would have been for his "project".

The receptionist, Dan had noticed, was exceptionally fat. The woman was clearly quite adept at working with just one hand, as her other was almost exclusively relegated to the task of delivering chocolates to her awaiting lips. When that plump hand wasn't engaged in such a fashion it rested atop her enormous belly, occasionally rubbing and patting her massive midsection, or what she could reach of her massive midsection, with an almost affectionate undertone. This odd habit was explained in the next few moments with a noticeably audible grumble of her abdomen, leading to the girl reaching a chubby arm for another candy a bit more frantically than previously, picking up a handful this time and funneling them all into her mouth. She chewed sensually, the descent of her jaw pushing her second chin into a third one as she sighed with momentary relief from her biting hunger.

Dan noticed that the girl sat at an angle. At first he thought it was to minimize eye contact. Shame really, he considered the way her jet black hair framed her big blue eyes to be a redeemable feature amidst the few hundred extra pounds that filled up and overtook the girl's sturdy office chair. No, rather, the large girl sat at an angle because her immense belly would have prevented her from reaching both her keyboard and her candy if either were situated directly in front of her. 

There's my fun for the next few minutes, he thought with an inward smirk.

Getting up and walking over to the desk, he reached for the bowl of chocolates, taking a few for himself.

"Sorry," he began with a genuine-looking smile, "but do you mind?" The woman looked up, surprised, and then shook her head no and gave her own genuine-looking smile, the scowl of the previous interaction hidden behind the false enthusiasm of forced hospitality.

"Of course, they're for everybody," she said, looking at her repast a bit more longingly than she probably meant to. Dan smiled for real this time. She had uttered "they're for everybody" with such a dryness and reluctance that he knew she had probably needed to remind herself of this more often than anybody else. A bit put off by how such an elephantine woman could still have such a light, sweet, downright angelic voice, he picked the bowl up, took a few more chocolates to the noticeable chagrin of the receptionist, and sat back down. Only upon putting the bowl back, he made sure to place it on the opposite edge of the secretary's desk centered squarely in front of her.

Unwrapping a kiss and popping it into his mouth with an exaggerated "MMmmm!" he looked over to see how his entertainment was unfurling. The vastly overweight young woman appeared not to mind at first, her only giveaways being the occasional passionate glance towards the confections that lay just out of arm's reach now. Nothing happened for a few minutes, but then, surely enough, a long, loud gurgle was heard from the girl's midriff. She glanced over at him, her fair skin flushed with color. Dan merely smiled back at her, popping another chocolate into his mouth and chewing eagerly. This only served to distress the ravenous girl even further and she returned solemnly to her work, but not before making a few feeble attempts at reaching across her desk, or, more importantly, across the expansive paunch that kept so much distance between her and the desk. This continued for several more gurgles and several more failed attempts, Dan chuckled inwardly at the poor beached girl's frustration each time, popping another candy into his mouth whenever he heard a longing sigh or an anxious moan to multiply her frustrations. Yea, Dan thought, this girl definitely fit the mold of his and Larry's dreamchild, alright.

Said dreamchild had, of course, blown up in his face and was the reason he currently sat anxiously awaiting the executive executioners' collective axes. No matter how badly it had blown up though, nobody could say that it didn't look good on paper.

The idea had originally been for another one of those "outrageous lifestyle" shows. At least, that was how it had begun in Dan's mind. An ambitious intern with a useless broadcasting degree and no clear path to the top, he had come up with the idea after having to wallow in the successes of countless Hoarders and Coupon Craze lookalikes and spinoffs and thinking, "I could have come up with that shit. That's not fucking creative at all!" So, finally taking his girlfriend Jean's advice to put his money where his mouth was, he decided to pitch his idea to the guy he was interning under..

The premise was simple: audiences seemed to love shows about people leading destructively obsessive lifestyles. More specifically, audiences members loved to see people whose problems were grossly over-exaggerated parodies of their own problems; it made the person on the screen easier to identify with. So the key to a show with mass appeal was to find problem with mass appeal, something that almost every American struggled with. The answer was so common and simple that, even as Dan spaced out in his own little world of reminiscence, it sat not inches away in an armless reinforced swivel chair continuously grazing from a noticeably shrinking pile of chocolates. Do a reality show about people who eat too much! It was foolproof on paper: steal the basic outline of an episode of Intervention or Hoarders, bring in the big scary scientists with their hyperbolized health statements, show how the lardo was changed for the better, yadda yadda roll credits. It wasn't groundbreaking television but it wasn't supposed to be. Dan was just a down-on-his-luck kid looking to put his foot in the door.

His super, TV producer Lawrence Welch, loved it. 

"Its simple, it writes itself, its great," he had said matter-of-factly."Too many kids these days, they're all worried about originality and innovation," he had continued, dismissively waving away the last few words with his scotch-free hand. "Sometimes you gotta just take something people know and chop it up a little, you know? Throw a new coat of paint on it."

And with that, Dan had thought his legacy was secured. He had had a successful pitch to a powerful producer and had gotten the clearance. His reality show idea was ready to take off.

"And then," present-day Dan mumbled bitterly, "They had to make it into a fucking gameshow."

~~

This is the very first attempt that I ever made at a WG story, a whopping seven years ago when I was still doing my undergrad. I never continued past this part, unfortunately. Maybe some day...

[Chickenshack]

Accidentally uploaded it twice  

Sorry, guys.

[Batman76]

Gotta say that this is a pretty cool idea to be honest and a great little entry. The main character immediately has a great characterization tormenting this chubette secretary and the mind demands to find out what happened with the whole game show

[Chickenshack]

Oh, I had a few cool things planned. The show was going to get a lot of criticism from the “fat activism” scene and there would be an online protest led by a young ssbbw who demanded there be oversight to ensure contestants weren’t being taken advantage of or mistreated. The producer would relent and the protagonist would have to work with an Oversight Committee made up of the activist and a team of very overweight women.

That would have been the next couple of chapters, at least. 

[mal57]

On 11/29/2020 at 4:45 AM, Chickenshack said:

This is the very first attempt that I ever made at a WG story, a whopping seven years ago when I was still doing my undergrad. I never continued past this part, unfortunately. Maybe some day...

This is a great start, and a wonderful idea. Worth continuing if you ever find the time and inspiration.