“BAD IDEA” WRITING PROMPT
Introducing — The Pleasing Fungus Beetle!
Bad Ideas In Taxonomy
Nobody has ever asked me where I get my ideas from.
This is not surprising — I am what I like to call “an exciting underground talent in his pre-mainstream phase” and what others refer to as “an absolute nobody” and “literally who”.
But like most people, I have been awake at night, imagining that fateful day when an intern working for my favorite artisanal experimental literature blog finally calls to schedule a Zoom interview.
Inevitably the question “Where do you get your ideas from?” would come up, and after perfectly executing a 40 degree turn on my $2000 gaming chair in front of a bookshelf that displays my being well-read, humble, quirky and a billionaire, I would smile and respond: “Well, you see … I like being inspired by the most arbitrary things.”
This doesn’t just score me intelligence points because I used the word “arbitrary” instead of “random” the way a rube would, it’s also true.
I really do like being inspired by the most arbitrary things.
I also like pretending to be a rebel and contrarian in order to look cool in front of my online friends.
So when I saw that the first two submissions both had beautiful pictures of majestic and/or cute animals attached to them, I knew I had to go a different route!
So here we are — fungus beetles it is.
Shoutout to Alex P. and Gerald Sturgill — thank you for your stories and thank you for using beautiful and appealing pictures of a dog and a cat.
Also this is all your fault.
My research began the way all good research does — by doing a Google search, taking the first result and twisting it just enough to be able to pretend it was a completely original idea.
I went for “animals with bad names” to keep a vague connection to the prompt and was immediately greeted with a fun list. Examples included “Spiny Lumpsucker” and “Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko”, but when I saw “Pleasing Fungus Beetle”, I knew I had found my spirit animal.
Now I knew next to nothing about fungus beetles going into this, but “pleasing” is one of my favorite words of the English language. It’s both extremely versatile and criminally underrated, and if I ever do get that Zoom interview with a literature blog I will make sure to urge writers all over the world to use it more often.
So seeing this lovely and wholesome word on a list of bad animal names made me wonder, “How bad of a name can this really be?”
Turns out — very bad.
First of all, it doesn’t even sound real. As much as I love the word “pleasing” and use it to refer to as many things as possible, there’s probably a reason why nobody has ever put me in charge of naming an animal.
But even worse, it doesn’t tell me anything about the beetle. You would expect an animal like that to have some outstandingly pleasing characteristics — very big, very beautiful, very beneficial to the ecosystem etc.
But as far as I can tell from skimming the Wikipedia article while listening to a 24/7 chill beats to study/relax to playlist and trying to eat a bowl of cereal without spilling any milk on my laptop, that is not the case. It’s just some beetle who happens to eat fungal matter. Boo hoo, big whoop. Want a cookie, champ?
So I guess writing about the pleasing fungus beetle was a bad idea. If any of you happen to have done even more in-depth research on this mysterious animal and came away with a more positive conclusion, I would love to hear about it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, my afternoon snack is waiting.
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed my story. If you want to read my contribution to the “Bad Service” prompt, you can do so here:
And here is this week’s prompt:
