Steven Christopher McKnight
Bio
Disillusioned twenty-something, future ghost of a drowned hobo, cryptid prowling abandoned operahouses, theatre scholar, prosewright, playwright, aiming to never work again.
Venmo me @MickTheKnight
Stories (94)
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Tinder Travesties 2 - The Anatomy of Lawrence. Content Warning.
This article was declined upon first submission for "not meeting the quality standards." There were no other notes. I deleted a few sentences I thought could be problematic and reformatted, but it seems as though Vocal wants to censor this in-depth critique of Lawrence. We'll see if this article makes it past the censors this second time. I'll see you on the other side, friends.
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Humor
Thrift Store Plaid
There’s Jesus-music in the air, praise to the same four chords recycling the same eighty half-rhymes about grace and peace and unquantifiable love. They sing about that like it means something, but love never was quantifiable. Art that points out that the sky is blue is neither interesting nor innovative, but it plays on Christian radio, so that has to be worth something. It presides over the air crisp with dime-store detergents and stale perfumes.
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Fiction
Lives of Unliving Things
A careless hand tosses you in with the other toys; to it, you are but one thing out of many it cannot bear to see in the bedroom now-childless. You watch paralyzed as the corners of the cardboard box fold in on each other, reduce the lovely lamplight to a faint sliver. You’re entombed there, alongside little plastic army men and the thick books Best Friend would sound aloud to you and Mom. The thinner books are in another box; Best Friend would whisper them quietly to you by flashlight some nights, before gripping you to his chest and falling gently asleep. You’d sleep, too, sometimes, as well as a sleepless thing could sleep.
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Fiction
Please Stop Sending Me Reels. Top Story - February 2024.
You know, back in my day—I was born in 1998, so we’ll say 2018 was my peak—memes were simple. Funny image, text, done. Maybe a screenshot of a Tweet or a Tumblr post. Sharing was easy; just right click, copy, and paste into the chat, or on your page, or whatever. Consuming was easy as well. Just look, read, blow a little bit of air out of your nose, continue on. Your homie sends you a dank meme, you respond with a trite “lol,” and you move on with your life. They cared. You adore that. That’s your homie.
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Confessions
If Twenty Million People Read This Article, I Can Never Work Again
It’s odd, looking at the Attention Economy and realizing the numbers you need to pull in order to be successful. I have no idea how much TikTok stars get paid on views alone—in fact, I have no idea how TikTok works or makes money, since I don’t have a TikTok. That being said, many people work absurdly hard just to make beans. I have no idea how difficult it must be to be a full-time YouTuber or Twitch streamer. The pressure to constantly create new content, evolving all the while, sounds too much for me to handle; I’m a writer, so my expertise lies in doing one huge amount of work and then sitting back and saying, “It’s in God’s hands, now.” Anyway, help me do a mediocre amount of work and receive all the money I need to survive.
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Journal
I Got Scammed by a Polish Transit Cop!
Let me say something: I believe people, though probably inherently good, are capable of immense and irredeemable evil. Turns out a lot of those people choose to be transit cops in Warsaw. This is not a complaint letter; I acknowledge that the system works in this way, and that a belligerent American tourist won’t change anything of note. But I thought I might as well share my story, so that people traveling to Warsaw might know what to look out for.
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Wander
Oops, I Accidentally Forgot to Write. Top Story - December 2023.
This always happens. I shell out $50 or whatever on an annual membership to get access to all the cool member’s-only doohickeys and the better rate of pay, only to completely forget about Vocal when things pick up in my personal life. Stuff has been happening, y’all, stuff that I can write about! Guys, I went to Europe! I saw dozens of plays! I’ve kept up to date on One Piece! There are dozens of things I can write about—literal dozens—but do I write about them? Hell, no. That’s not the way old Steve functions, no, sir.
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Journal
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?
By Steven Christopher McKnight2 years ago in Writers
Bird Heist? Bird Heist.
You duck into an alleyway, check behind you. Sirens shriek through London, but none of them are nearby enough to make you worry. It took them twelve minutes to catch on; a little less time than you were hoping for, but still enough. You set your squirming backpack down, peel off your thick hoodie, the baggy cargo pants you wore over your normal pants, chuck them into a sewer grate.
By Steven Christopher McKnight3 years ago in Fiction
Stringalong
In his study, James Nightingale wondered what there was to live for. Sex was out; he wasn’t very good at it. Love, too, was not the answer, because James Nightingale was very much the kind of man who conflated it with sex. It was probably the reason why he wasn’t very good at either. Finding nothing to live for in these precious few seconds of thought, James Nightingale resolved to live only as long as it took him to die, and not a moment longer. He shuffled through the papers on his desk, unaware which one he was looking for, but believing somewhere deep inside himself that one sheet had to be the right one.
By Steven Christopher McKnight3 years ago in Fiction
