8 Things That Happened In 2013 That Happened Better In Fiction

Sometimes, life imitates art...but worse.

Frank Ocean and Chris Brown’s Beef and Brawl

The Hollywood Reporter / Via hollywoodreporter.com

On January 28th, Frank Ocean and Chris Brown, who had been trading jabs on Twitter, allegedly brought their beef to life when meeting at a recording studio parking lot in Los Angeles and getting into a brawl over a…parking space?

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Barnes and Noble / Via barnesandnoble.com

Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe

Two knights do battle with one another for the life of the fair maiden Rebecca, who has been unfairly found guilty of witchcraft. The knight fighting for her life is Ivanhoe, the titular hero, and the one against her is the none other than the man she had been accused of “bewitching,” Sir Brian de Bois-Guilbert, who is actually in love with her but was ordered to fight against her champion:

“The trumpets sounded, and the knights charged each other in full career. The wearied horse of Ivanhoe, and its no less exhausted rider, went down, as all had expected, before the well-aimed lance and vigorous steed of the Templar. This issue of the combat all had foreseen; but although the spear of Ivanhoe did but, in comparison, touch the shield of Bois-Guilbert, that champion, to the astonishment of all who beheld it reeled in his saddle, lost his stirrups, and fell in the lists.”

Amanda Bynes' Meltdown

MTV / Via mtv.com

Amanda Bynes, former-Nickelodeon darling, had a very public and well-documented disintegration from end of last year into this. It started with a series of DUIs, evolved into bizarre Twitter-activity from her attacking other celebrities by calling them “ugly” to posting nearly-nude selfies, and even asking Drake to “murder her vagina.” Bynes was arrested when she tossed a glass bong from her New York City apartment window, and accused the arresting officer of sexual assault.

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Psyke / Via psyke.org

Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar

In The Bell Jar, Plath illustrates a heartbreaking story of a young woman’s mental dissolution. Middle-class and well-educated Esther Greenwood appears privileged. However, she is not what is expected, and feels, instead, acutely the prevalent suppression of her gender in 1950s America. She becomes a victim of the inhumane psychiatric treatments of her time and of the general lack of understanding of mental illness by those closest to her, such as her mother:

“ ‘We'll take up where we left off, Esther," she had said, with her sweet, martyr's smile. "Well act as if all this were a bad dream.’
A bad dream.
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.
[...]
I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull.
Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind of snow, should numb and cover them.
But they were part of me. They were my landscape.”

Horsegate

The Guardian / Via theguardian.com

In 2013, the Food Safety Authority in Ireland released its results in a study of the contents of beef products in Europe. Beef-eaters everywhere were scandalized by news that horse DNA had been found in frozen beef being sold in the UK, Iceland, and more. As the investigation progresses, stomach-turning details continue to emerge, such as so-called beef lasagna meat from French supplier Comigel was tested to be 100% horsemeat.

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Amazon / Via amazon.com

Arthur C. Clarke’s “Food of the Gods”

Clarke’s bone-chilling short story first made its appearance in Playboy in 1961 but was later published his collection The Wind from the Sun. The story takes place what appears to be a dystopian near-future where the world only consumes synthetic foods, an unnamed narrator addresses the board of a large food corporation in regards of a new product made by their competitors that has been making waves that is called Ambrosia Plus. What the people don’t know is the gruesome truth behind this mystifyingly delicious new food:

“Very shortly, Mr Chairman, the president of Triplanetary Foods will be appearing before you…He will tell you that Ambrosia Plus is synthesised from air, water, limestone, sulphur, phosphorus, and the rest. That will be perfectly true, but it will be the least important part of the story. For we have now discovered his secret—which, like most secrets, is very simple once you know it. […]Now you have to resolve the moral and philosophical issues. When I began my evidence, I used the archaic word ‘carnivore’. Now I must introduce you to another: I’ll spell it out the first time: C-A-N-N-I-B-A-L…..”

Kristen Stewart Caught Cheating

US Magazine / Via usmagazine.com

Technically, the cheating happened in 2012, but the splitting of this celebri-super-couple was a lengthy and protracted. On May 19th of this year, however, Robert Pattinson was seen moving from Kristen Stewart’s Los Angeles home — a sign that the things between them were all but finished. In July of 2012, Stewart had been caught in an illicit rendezvous with Rupert Sanders, then-married director of Snow White and the Huntsman, in which Stewart had starred. When the news broke, Twilight fans everywhere probably wept real tears for the dissolution of Robsten.

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Kate Chopin’s The Awakening

In the Mid-17th Century, Edna Pontellier goes to Grand Isle in New Orleans on summer vacation with her husband and children and meets the charismatic Richard Lebrun. After accepting his invitation for an unaccompanied swim in the ocean, Edna begins the first steps into a blistering, life-altering affair:

“Edna Pontellier could not have told why, wishing to go to the beach with Robert, she should in the first place have declined...A certain light was beginning to dawn dimly within her,—the light which, showing the way, forbids it…The voice of the sea is seductive, …The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace."

PRISM: Your Rights Be Damned

The Washington Post / Via washingtonpost.com

In June, the Washington Post blew the lid on PRISM, revealing that National Security Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was gathering information on Americans via the servers of nine of the largest Internet companies in the U.S. Everything from file transfers to online social networking details is collected. To hell with privacy.

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Amazon / Via amazon.com

George Orwell’s 1984

Possibly the most iconic of all dystopian novels, Orwell’s nightmarish vision of the future seems hell-bent on coming true. In a world where even thought is incriminating, Winston Smith is but a cog in the evils of a totalitarian government. Orwell’s most immortal words are those of the government-issued propaganda cautioning against any thought of mutiny, “Big Brother is watching.”

“The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.”

The Birth of Prince George

Mirror / Via mirror.co.uk

On July 22nd, the world was enthralled when Kate Middleton pushed out of her birth canal a newly minted royal, Prince George of Cambridge. Every detail was dissected — the natural birth, Kate’s dress when presenting the infant prince to the public, the haunted status of his nursery, etc. Yes, really. The little prince sleeps in a haunted nursery and that was deemed newsworthy.

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Charles Dicken’s David Copperfield

David Copperfield is born in early Victorian England where the Industrial Revolution has widened the disparity between the wealthy and the impoverished. He seems to with misfortune even before his birth, as his father had died six months before. He and Prince George really have little in common, but his birth is still superior because how many babies do you know can narrate their own birth?!

“To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born (as I have been informed and believe) on a Friday, at twelve o'clock at night. It was remarked that the clock began to strike, and I began to cry, simultaneously.
In consideration of the day and hour of my birth, it was declared…that I was destined to be unlucky in life; and secondly, that I was privileged to see ghosts and spirits; both these gifts inevitably attaching, as they believed, to all unlucky infants of either gender, born towards the small hours on a Friday night.”

The Sexts of Anthony Weiner

Business Insider / Via businessinsider.com

Anthony Weiner seemed to have recovered from his 2011 sexting scandal and was making strides when he entered the New York City mayoral race in April of 2013. But alas, that thing they say about old habits was true for Mr. Weiner when it surfaced that even as he was announcing his candidacy, he was still sending dirty texts to 22-year-old Sydney Leathers (who went on to star in a porno aptly named Weiners and Me). The backlash following turned Weiner’s campaign into a circus, which included Weiner flipping off cameras and mortifyingly being chased through a McDonald’s kitchen by reporters the night of his loss.

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Amazon / Via amazon.com

J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace

David Lurie is a rather mediocre South African professor of English who has been mostly content with satisfying his sexual appetite with a weekly session with a prostitute until he predatorily engages a student. When the student speaks out, the contemptuous Lurie loses everything and is forced to take residence with his daughter in Eastern Cape:

“The photograph appears in the next day's student newspaper, above the caption 'Who's the Dunce Now?' It shows him, eyes cast up to the heavens, reaching out a groping hand toward the camera. The pose is ridiculous enough in itself, but what makes the picture a gem is the inverted waste-paper basket that a young man, grinning broadly, holds above him. By a trick of perspective the basket appears to sit on his head like a dunce's hat. Against such an image, what chance has he?"

Kanye West’s Delusions About Kim Kardashian

E Online / Via eonline.com

Controversy seems to shadow Kanye West, usually as a consequence of the things that fall out of his mouth. But he really put his photo in the dictionary next to the word “hubris” after his megalomaniacal claims about his ladylove during his October 29th On Air With Ryan Seacrest interview:

"There's no way Kim Kardashian shouldn't be on the cover of Vogue. She's like the most intriguing woman right now. She's got Barbara Walters calling her like everyday…And collectively, we're the most influential with clothing. No one is looking at what [Barack Obama] is wearing. Michelle Obama cannot Instagram a [bikini] pic like what my girl Instagrammed the other day."

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Amazon / Via amazon.com

Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote

Alonso Quijano is a Spanish nobleman who takes it upon himself to single-handedly revive chivalry. This is a daunting task for any man, but not for the self-christened Don Quixote, who’s entire journey is (to him) an epic. His heart belongs to Dulcinea del Toboso, to whom he attributes every grace and virture under the sun, but is in actuality but a simple peasant woman:

“…She is as good as the greatest princess in the land…and for my part, I consider her the greatest princess in the world. For I want you to know, Sancho, if you don’t know it already, that two things above all others arouse love. They are great beauty and a good name, and these two things are to be found in Dulcinea to a surpassing degree. In beauty she has no rival, and few can equal her in good name. And, to conclude, I believe that everything is as I see it, neither more nor less, and in my imagination I portray her as I wish her to be both in beauty and in quality. Helen does not rival her, nor does Lucretia come near here, nor any other celebrated woman of antiquity, whether Greek, or barbarian, or Latin.’