Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 2 - Now With Fairies

Jump back to Part 1.

The Fairy Eater’s demise sets free her snacks: the surviving fairies. The eldest fairy is named Navi, and she seems to recognize Zelda, even though the princess has never met fairies before. Navi expresses gratitude and promises to help rescue Link. She promptly swirls around Zelda’s wooden sword, replacing the fire with a magical light that improves its attack power and extends the warding range against the darkness. Navi explains that the darkness engulfing the land is something The King of Limbo brought with him from his home world. It’s somewhat vulnerable to fairy magic, but clearly not vulnerable enough. She thinks the only way to seal it off entirely is to assemble the Triforce, a powerful artifact from a higher plane, from which all modern fairies draw their life force. Unfortunately, the King of Limbo has already found one third of this artifact.

Navi?

Zelda guides the surviving kids and fairies back to the lighted rampart. With the help of our fairies, we hope this camp will be safe from being swallowed for now. This begins the development of the camp. I figure every time you finish a significant story bit or dungeon, they’ll have built up the camp’s defenses or its living quarters a bit more. I’d like it if a couple of the changes were cute, like you’re expecting them to all have armor when you get back and instead the kids made wreathes of flowers for everybody. But the point would be that this is the safe zone where you keep returning to, though it’s clearly threatened by the encroaching tide of darkness. This is what you’re working for, beyond rescuing Link and her royal family.

The weather gets wilder as you return to the darkened Hyrule. Old mires are completely flooded and require a boat to navigate, letting us play with some Wind Waker mechanics. The northernmost part of the swamp is frozen over as though by magic, leading to the Ice Temple. The shard of Triforce it houses is acting up.

So we have a hidden Water Temple and an Ice Temple. Of course at the northernmost edge of the map is Death Mountain and our Volcano Temple. Rather than having to go to one place first, though, Zelda is forced to explore the darkened world. Wherever there is an army, that’s got to be where The King of Limbo suspects lies a shard of the Triforce. Zelda (or the player) can enter the temples at will: you can do the Water, Ice and Volcano Temples in whatever order you want, or whatever order you find them in. There’d also be a fourth temple, a series of hollow caverns carved to resemble rooms, but this place is swarming with bad guys and there are rumors that whatever is down there is too tough for them. Entry into the Cavern Temple isn’t possible just yet.

Of course, upon clearing the Water, Ice and Volcano Temples, you get to go into the fourth temple. Most of the army has been savaged by what is inside. I’d like it to be a tiered boss battle against a great dragon, and as its stages pass it seems to manifest more and more of the boiling blackness we associate with the Army of Limbo, though this thing is clearly not on their side. The fight gets increasingly unfair. You literally can’t kill this thing’s final form if you survive that far; it seems invincible to your Limbo-powered bow, fairy-powered sword and the tools you’ve found along the way.

Either as you are about to die in game, or after an internal timer elapses for skilled players who manage to stay alive long enough, The King of Limbo arrives and becomes a third party in the battle. Half-physical, half composed of Limbo energies, he resembles the classic villain Ganon. He wears his third of the Triforce, a complete and golden triangle, around his neck. He dispatches the dragon and steals its shard of the Triforce, as well as absorbing the darkness from its carcass.

So Ganon's in this game?

The King of Limbo seems to recognize Zelda as more than just the runaway princess. Before she can fight him he shatters “the Chosen One’s” wooden sword, and alludes to the Master Sword, an artifact that Zanath has almost found in the forest. He might do more if not for the dragon’s death throes, which bring the cavern collapsing down. The King of Limbo bursts through the ceiling, while Zelda has to escape on foot, carrying the injured Navi.

On to Part 3!

Zelda: King of Limbo Synopsis, Part 1

Today I'm beginning serialization of a synopsis I wrote for some Legend of Zelda fans. It's what my Zelda game would be like. It's reference-heavy and in a passive sort of writing style I enjoy more than most people do. Let me know what you think, and particularly if you're interested in continuing. The plan is to keep it running daily into next week.

I’m a literalist. Following the title of the series, my Legend of Zelda game would actually be about Princess Zelda. The game opens on a Hyrule that is largely obscured under a boiling black sky, with sunlight only shining through on the west-most portion, like a fingernail moon. Someone called The King of Limbo has conquered Castle Hyrule. It looms in the distance as knights and survivors flee to the only region that still has sunlight. The darkened world is beset by an army of classic darknuts, giant hands, and moblin-type creatures that are coated in a similar blackness to the sky. Zanath, a wizard resembling Zant from Twilight Princess, pursues the escapees into the lit region, leading part of the King of Limbo’s army.

The player will quickly realize that Link is absent. We know the woods he typically resides in is overtaken by the King of Limbo’s darkness. Hyrulean soldiers set up a rampart to defend against the pursuing monsters, and reference that the invasion seemed come from nowhere. Princess Zelda, our player-character, is forced to take up a bow and help fend them off. After some moblins are temporarily incapacitated she steals one of their quivers, affording her arrows the same powers of darkness that they wield, and so allowing her to harm and dispatch the baddies. This temporarily scares Zanath off.

After getting kidnapped for her entire series,
it's about time she kicked some ass.

 The bow is Zelda’s (and your) primary weapon for the first act. Once her bodyguards are all safe and preoccupied tending to the wounded, she sneaks into the dark region to see if she can’t save Link and his fellow elves. We know she was buddies with the elf-boy. For a bit you’ll be playing through stealth, with no way to fight monsters in melee. You’re entering the dark lands and the whole mood should be foreboding. It gets creepier as you enter the forest and have to keep aware of which trees are infested and hungry. There are equal amounts ranged combat and running for your life.

The elf village has been razed, and you find only the elders are left. They claim their kids were all abducted by the Army of Limbo. You enter Link’s house hoping he’s in his hiding spot, a cave under the floorboards that is reminiscent of the first cave in the first NES Legend of Zelda game. Instead his grandpa is hiding down there. Link fought to save him and was taken. Before you leave, he says it’s dangerous to go alone and gives you Link’s wooden sword.

Because I like nostalgia references.

 

But Zelda’s not foolish. She isn’t fighting shadow-beasts with a wooden sword. She gets lamp oil and sets the blade on fire. The flaming sword emits heat and light, which can harm the Army of Limbo, and wards off most of the dangerous critters. This is your melee weapon for the rest of the act. Its light-warding is especially handy since the black sky begins to rain, and blighted rat-monsters spawn from the ground as it softens. Zelda needs to get the heck out of here, but first she's going after the kids.

Our first proper Dungeon is a real dungeon, at the bottom of which the kidnapped children are held. Our boss is the Fairy Eater, a giant evil fairy that’s been good at rounding up both the kids and fairies. Defeating her frees many of the children, though it’s revealed some were sent to another world called Limbo. That’s where all this blackness came from. Link was among those sent there. 

Jump to Part 2.

Maybe Santa Will Rescind

Three aunts, two uncles, two grandparents, and two parents who have been fighting all week reside over a flock of children. It’s a crepe paper massacre on Christmas Eve, starring villains Ages 3-14. The tree is ten feet tall and is guarded by a barracks of boxes. My siblings, younger and unaware how little of the haul is for them, huddle with our cousins. I retreat for the computer, letting everyone else have their night. Neither children nor Christmas are my thing, and at the height of teenaged cynicism, the family is about as unappealing.

The oldest cousin, let's call her Cedar, trots up to me. Cedar holds a green and blue box in her hands, and for a moment I think she’s going to hand it to me. It’s stirring, since she’d be the only non-grandparent who remembered me this year. It almost hurts that I’m a broke invalid teen with nothing to offer her in return. Our family stretched the bank to get as many gifts for them as we could.

Then I see CEDAR on the FOR label. She is toting one of her own trophies.

She asks, “Where’s your present?”

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “Maybe Santa will bring me something tomorrow.”

“No.” Her face contorts. “What did you get me?”

Like magic, the guilt dissipates. Her father’s loaded. I look aside the box she’s clutching, recognizing both an overflowing stocking and six packages for her by the coffee table. I point to her stack.

“Isn’t it in there?”

Cedar waddles off to investigate. I’m about to get a drink when she returns.

She reports, “It wasn’t in there.”

“Did you check under the tree?”

I’m in the kitchen when she re-returns. Now she carries fists instead of a box. Her head cranes around the entrance, as though losing sight of the Christmas tree will cause her trove to evaporate. Maybe Santa will rescind.

She asks, “It wasn’t there, either.”

“Are you sure?” I ask, hoping that a return to the tree will get her caught up in her other gifts and she’ll forget about me.

I slosh my plastic cup of tap water and lag behind her to the living room. Cedar actually elbows her sister on her way under the tree skirt. By now the skirt is lonely. Only discarded bows keep it company; the goods have been dragged to the four corners of the room for rummaging.

Near the fireplace, my little brother talks with concern to our dad. The poor little guy is close to tears with incomprehension over why the others have so many more boxes. Dad is doing his typical bad job of hiding outrage. The in-laws got him the perfect gift: another reason to be angry at someone.

Cedar purses her lips up at me. This is not at all her fault, but teenaged cynicism doesn’t care about fair.

“It’s not there,” she repeats.

“That’s funny,” I say. I wave my palm at the tree’s twinkling lights. “I put it next to the present you got for me.”

The look on her face sticks with me for years. It’s like I’ve gotten a Math problem wrong. Even the tone of her response suggests I’m the dumb kid.

She says, “I didn’t get you anything.”

And I say, “How about that?”

I remember going to check on my sister, but not much else. Christmas isn’t really my holiday.

Bathroom Monologue: Not Santa

Dad sees no footprints in the snow, though you know something was out there. You hear its hoofs on the roof. The chortling sounds nearly human. It waits in the chimney, or behind the tree with its eyes blinking like bulbs, carrying a sack full of children who seek out Santa. It has adapted to hunt this time of year.

Bathroom Monologue: Lord, Hear Our Vegetarian Prayer

John: I'm going vegetarian once a week. Meatless Mondays! It's good for my heart, and my great grandma used to do that praying for my health. Maybe I can count it as a sacrifice in prayer for a friend's health.

God: NOPE. RESISTING MEAT IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH, AND THUS SELFISH. YOU CAN'T PRETEND IT'S A SACRIFICE.

John: But my great grandma did!

God: TOUGH.

John: ...What if I promise to eat really delicious fat-heavy meat once a week? Could you cure somebody's cancer then?

God: I'M LISTENING.

Seven Ciphers in Classic Speculative Fiction, OR, Why Ciphers Are Bad

The cipher is the character in fiction whose experiences let us learn about the world and plot. They’re the new guys in town, the teenagers coming of age and, as Steven Erikson devastatingly put it, “the people who need their own world explained to them.” There’s a strong bias against ciphers in Speculative Fiction because they’re a cheap mechanic. We live casually around things that to every previous generation would seem unbelievable. The cipher generally causes us to sacrifice the casual nature of actually using and working with things, and thus the immersion in the concocted world, for the sake of holding hands with our audience. Generally these ciphers do insult the audience, hedging that they can’t figure things out on their own, or don’t have they don’t have the attention span and intellect necessary to do so.

Early in my writing life I set out to avoid ciphers. I wanted to be fresher, more original, to challenge my readers in exciting ways. I was convinced that anyone with talent would avoid using such a low device. In retrospect of that opinion, let’s review a few of the ciphers from Speculative Fiction’s history.

Want to drive a nerd insane? Sneak up behind them
and say, "I heard those Harry Potters are based
on a book or something."

Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling)

Arguably the most brilliant and blatant cipher of all time. He's a kid, so he’ll learn just by virtue of inexperience. He travels to an unknown part of our world, so he's out of his element and has to interact with everyone for the first time. And he goes to school, a building that exists so people can tell you things. He is buddies with a hardcore nerd, a wildlife enthusiast, and the ancient head of the school, all of whom vomit knowledge at him. This seven-book series could have fit in a single marble composition book if you excised all the Harry-learns-things (give or take a second composition book for redundant-events).

Alan Grant (Jurassic Park by Michael Crichton)

He knows everything about dinosaurs except that they’re alive. He also doesn’t know much math. Many of Crichton’s novels are secretly about scientific education. Congo is about primate cognition, Prey is about nanotechnology, Terminal Man is about the nervous system, and Jurassic Park is cloning. Cloning dinosaurs, and so Alan also has the park explained to him, and the cloning process, and Chaos Theory. But Alan Grant stands out as an admirably complicated cipher, introducing us to both the fun plot stuff and real theoretical science.

Bilbo and Frodo Baggins (The Hobbit and
The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien)

You bet your ass someone tells him what this is.

These two hobbits are the classic fish-out-of-water ciphers. They come from one specific place and have limited handiness at the outset of their stories. Their journeys force them to learn about Middle Earth, though this education causes them to grow more sufficient until the learning processes are not as explicit. Better, they’re increasingly able to deal with the strange things they run into, while not exploding into wish-fulfillment bad asses. By the end, they are winging it without learning, and the writing is implying rather than preaching. Ironically the two share one mentor, Gandalf, who at many points exists  to tell us what Tolkien was building in his world today.

Richard Cypher (The Sword of Truth by Terry Goodkind)

Richard Cypher. Richard Ding-Dong Cypher. Goodkind knew what he was doing to sphincter-tightening degrees. The special kid of Sword of Truth is just one of many special kid ciphers following an established publishing trope. Harry Potter was another. Following the success of Tolkien's Bilbo and Frodo, many Fantasy authors created their own rags-to-heroism ciphers, packing them with even more wish fulfillment. Richard doesn’t stay a little guy suffering to toss a ring into a volcano; he’s going to grow up, get hot girlfriends, own magic swords and slay villains. Unlike Tolkien, the new Fantasy tradition was to introduce awesome stuff so that the cipher could become awesome at that awesome stuff, or at least always witness awesome results from it. The Epic Fantasy sub-genre positively strains under the weight of these wish-fulfillment ciphers today.

Ender Wiggin (Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card)

A cipher so deliberate he even has to be told he won the war. God help us all.

Also the poster for "Fuck Yeah: The Movie"

Luke Skywalker (Star Wars)

As formative as Frodo Baggins, Luke starts at the bottom of the totem poll on a backwater planet. He fixes R2D2 to learn about the rebellion and plot of A New Hope. He pursues Obi Wan Kenobi to learn about his family, and in turn, we watch him studying and revealing the ways of the Jedi. In terms of ciphers, he gets some of the best emotion. One particular bit of information he uncovers is the most famous reveal in all of Science Fiction, but it resonates because it was as much of a shock to audiences as it was to the boy. His ascent fits both the Hero’s Journey and the model of the cipher’s journey. We want to learn more about the Jedi. We want to learn if there’s anything left in his father’s heart. The best way a cipher can succeed is when we want to learn what they’re going to teach us about their fictions.

Upon learning what the cipher is, you gradually realize that they were integral to droves of the Speculative Fiction you enjoyed. Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Peter Parker? Kvothe? John Crichton? Chell? David Bowman and friends? This is Commander Shepard’s favorite cipher on the Citadel? Speculative Fiction will be a richer landscape when more of it is about people casually living with the fantastic, but the cipher will probably never go away. Not so long as there are more generations growing up and learning things for the first time.

True Stories of John 16: Skyrim

The first blue rays of dawn are scarcely enough to differentiate the plains from the sky. I sprint under a sheet of fading stars, seeking openings in the grey cliff face. One opens like a black mouth. I am swallowed, and creep on my knees through shadows toward their fireplace. Their dog sniffs. It smells me. My bow-arm isn’t swift enough, and soon its masters follow. Two humans and an orc. That orc, the Bandit Captain, wears so much iron that I have to dance behind him for a hope of harm. He kills me six times before succumbing to a combination of lightning and mace blows.

Then came nine o’clock. The town dump was open. I rose from my padded chair and strained with my back. It was three minutes before I could bend to pick up the recycling bin. I’d spend the whole drive thinking what you could do with three minutes in that zany videogame.

Bathroom Monologue: Editing 1996

“And you, Des?” Wesley leaned up from the time capsule, extending his left hand for her offering. “What are you sending back to old 1996?”

She folded her arms under her breasts. “You mean, if any of this works at all?”

She was the skeptic of the group, but she was here. He frowned at her.

“Yeah, Des. If.”

Des mirrored his frown for so long that he grew suspicious. Eventually he realized she was really watching the others shuffle out of the backyard, beyond the blast shield. Only when they were out of earshot did she open her purse.

“Des. You’re sending yourself your own book? Want teen-Desdemona Restlake to rest assured that it all works out?”

“If I knew what I know now, I’d be an immeasurably better writer.”

As she extended it, the jacket fluttered open. Wesley caught sight of a red inscription. Was she sending herself an autograph? That was just like her. Or maybe stock tips. Which was fair. Wes was ordering his past self to get on top of Google.

Wesley made the show of placing it into the capsule, watching her eyes more than her hardcover. The instant she turned to leave, his fingers curled in the pages.

He looked down into the capsule and was surprised to find every page had signatures on it. Wait, not signatures. Sentences were scratched out. Her awful chicken scratches filled the margins. He could only make out a few of the red notes.

“obv.”

“Verbose”

“So original. You’ve never read Hamlet?”

“infodump”

“Was this innuendo? We forget”

He jerked his head up. Des was already behind the blast shield with the rest of their friends. Perfect posture, eyes condescending over all the dumbasses. The brains of the group. If Wes had been standing over there, he never would have imagined the one thing she’d change in time was her bestseller.

Bathroom Monologue: The Happier Genre

“There are thoughts. We have the Slasher sub-genre. There is an entire class of film devoted to a person murdering his way through a slew of people. Dozens have been made every year since the eighties, and yet I can’t name a single movie that’s about happiness all the time. One single Florist sub-genre film, where some guy with a burlap sack over his head stalks a slew of people, corners each of them and hands over a carefully-selected bouquet. Somebody will tell me that conflict is essential to stories, and I’ll say how do you know if you’ve never seen one without it? And somebody will tell me that real life is suffering and angst and taxes and waiting in line, and I’ll say, I’m only sure that’s true when I’m stuck listening to you. We’ve got umpteen movies about hardship during a World War. We’ve got umpteen movies about unhappy people who only glimpse happiness before the credits roll. These movies cheat. I dare you to make one movie about a good time.”

Bathroom Monologue: Dawn Defines

She defined love for me every morning at 5:00 AM. My parents couldn't afford an alarm clock, so we rose on hers. I knew at least three other families - one in our tenement, two in hers - that did the same. While my brothers fought for the hot water, I scurried over to the window. I called her Dawn.

She was appropriately blonde, the downiest stuff you ever saw. Nostalgia’s probably colored my memory. It does that without asking. If you asked my little self, she was incomparable, an angel in threadbare linens. Most mornings I didn't catch sight of her before she got out of bed and into the bathroom, but I tried. I was at that age.

Six days a week I did catch her exiting the bathroom, though. She might look out their window, but never up for a Peeping Thomas a story above and across the alley. In those early rays of yellow and orange, her skin was raw and pinkened from the freezing shower. And then she'd put bobbies in her hair, pinning and hiding it all up.

I'd take my breakfast at the windowsill and consume her ritual. Guess observance was my ritual. Dawn’s was to wrap her breasts, mashing them into her ribs so as even I got uncomfortable. They had to fit into her husband's old uniform. She'd lace the boots snug, pull on the too-fat gloves, and button things up to her chin. The tools waited for her by the door as she made sure he had his bedpan and a glass of water.

Don’t remember a morning where he got up. She'd kiss him on the forehead, then squat under the weight of his pack and embark for the mine. Someone had to, to ensure he'd have food and medicine tomorrow. Some nights she'd come back so coal-stricken you couldn't tell her apart from the dusk. All that radiant beauty, scrubbed pink and strapped down. Tomorrow after tomorrow.

Nowadays, that's what I think love is. It's what you'll do to yourself for someone else. I've had four women tell me I'm wrong, and all four walked out on me eventually. But you know, I drove into hurricanes and stayed through cancer-scares when they needed somebody most. So I don't regret. I did my part getting us to dawn.

Practicing Gratitude

Last week T.S. Bazelli posted about Practicing Gratefulness on her blog. A Canadian, her post had no apparent connection to our U.S. holiday of Thanksgiving, but the confluence is a good enough reason to practice it. Here are a few of the things for which I practice gratitude.

-I can walk. I can't exaggerate how nice it is to travel to the bathroom without thinking about it. As someone who has been on crutches, in wheelchairs, and bedridden at separate points in his life, free movement is one of my unabashed pleasures. If this bothers any anti-ableist folks, I'd like to hear from you.

-I live in a house with light and heat whenever I want it, and frequently some fulfilling food is available. Again, can't exaggerate this privilege.

-I'm thankful for my family, both those blood relatives and dear friends who have been worth investing emotion in. They make the social aspect of life worthwhile. I’m correspondingly grateful that I can ignore and eject people who aren’t worth having in my life.

-To God. He knows why.

-To people who catch wordplay jokes.

-The internet in my country has not yet been gravely censored or broken down into bandwidth throttling price structures.

-Readers who visit daily or semi-daily and find this work of mine worthwhile. Your comments, Likes, Loves and retweets make my days better. I’m grateful to every reader here, and every listener for Consumed. It’s why we do what we’re doing.

-Speaking of readers, how can’t I be grateful to my beta readers? And those who have agreed to jump in as theta readers after the next round of edits. I’ve worked damn hard to make The House That Nobody Built the best thing I’ve ever written, and these are folks who’ve consented their considerable intellects to help me. I’ll remain forever in gratitude to them until one of the bastards says he doesn’t like the book. Then all bets are off.

-Multiple times this year I've been struck by gratitude for being able to play so many new videogames. I think I've hit five this year, with Portal 2 and Bastion leading the pack. There were years when I couldn't afford a single one. It's one of my favorite hobbies, especially on the nights when the syndrome acts up too badly for me to sleep.

-And you better believe I’m grateful for when sleep comes easily. Have a nice day, all, and an easy night after that.

Bathroom Monologue: Fight Night

Finally, fourteen billion years since the dawn of the universe, the immovable object stood at the epicenter and awaited the oncoming irresistible force. It was a media event like no other, and everyone had a theory about how the collision would go down, or at least some kind of documentary or related feature film due out in the Fall.

The scientists proposed that one body possessed greater inertia than the other.

The politicians, as they are like to do, only made passing reference to it on talk shows until three weeks before impact, when they said it was about time their countries took up serious legislation.

The philosophers, as they are like to do, cut at each other’s words and wound up agreeing that neither body could exist.

The internet, as it is like to do, complained about plot holes.

On the day of the magnificent event, every tabloid had a crew out. Unfortunately, the paparazzi climbed over each other with such vigor that none got a good shot, and all were left with photos of each other’s hands or feet. The explosion from the collision was so great that almost no one in the star system survived. The only remaining cameraman didn’t see the actual impact, but swears to this day he saw the immovable object flinch.

Regardless, the irresistible force can still be seen touring the universe, knocking over everything in its path, and the immovable object can still be seen sucking in everything, including matter-free light, with its usual resolve. Tickets for the return bout should be on sale any eon now.

Bathroom Monologue: Pitiful Lex

"I always suspected it, Lex. The Flash’s nemeses control ice and light. The Green Lantern clashes with alien gods. So why does he have you? If he’s almighty, why not feud with a clone of himself? Or a robot? Why a pathetic stock broker? He could punch clean through your head and not even leave a frame of evidence on the surveillance cameras. You’re not even a fight. There were two options. Option One: the big man was on the take, and you were secretly funding him. But his powers are tried and tested. He has a summer home on the moon. He doesn’t need your money, and he routinely destroys your military inventions. You couldn’t help him if you wanted to. That leaves Option Two: he pities you. He lets you think you’re smart and powerful and that for the sixteenth time he’s been fooled by a kryptonite ring. He’s diagnosed you like I have, as a petty waste of intellect, an obsessive parasite who desperately needs him. He’s your hero. Lucky you."

Should John Post About The Legend of Zelda?

For a few years I've had the plot for a Legend of Zelda game. It's a shame that the eponymous princess's legend is apparently to be kidnapped over and over. I'd like to see just one entry in which you played as her saving the land. Periodically I'd return to this idea of a Hyrule under siege, in need of an absent savior, and in that absence would step up our lady. I called it The King of Limbo. It's not a Chosen One story, or a Girl Vs. Tradition story. It'd be about overcoming vulnerability. Also, swords.

Last week I typed up the grand synopsis for how such a plot could unfold, and the wrinkles it could have on Nintendo's formula. It was a gift to a hardcore Zelda fan and dear friend of mine. She adored it, and got me wondering if I shouldn't share here.

What do you think, my beloved readers? Would you like to see how I'd frame a princess saving the day? Let me know your thoughts, and drop your votes into the poll above.

True Stories of John 15: How John Talks to His Grandmother

John: So I’ll call you on Thanksgiving, in the afternoon so I’ll be sure you’ll be in.

Grandma: With your brother and sister?

John: I’ll call two guest stars.

Grandma: With a what?

John: Two guest stars. Celebrities, but I can’t tell you who they are.

Grandma: Who are they?

John: I’ll give you a hint.

Grandma: Give me a hint.

John: They’re two generations younger than you.

Grandma: What? That’s your age.

John: They’re a little younger than me. One may or may not have red hair.

Grandma: That’s your sister. Is it your brother and sister?

John: I can’t tell you, but one is a boy and one is a girl.

Grandma: Who are they?

John: I don’t know. One more hint, though: they are related to you.

Grandma: What are you doing?

John: I don’t know, but I can’t stop. Talk to you on Thanksgiving?

Grandma: Sure.

John: With my two guest stars.

Grandma: Gah!

John: Love you!

Bathroom Monologue: The Manliness of Gay Men

To listen click the triangle to begin streaming or click this text for the MP3.

One notion I don't get is the effeminate gay guy. Gay men are the manliest men of all time. A straight guy can nail the most attractive woman you've ever seen. Hell, he can coerce the most attractive woman, and the smartest woman, and the most unattainable woman to jump into his bed simultaneously. But there's little manliness about that foursome. There's a 3:1 femininity ratio about that.

Meanwhile, a gay guy is consuming more man. At any given time he is giving you at least double the man for your money. He can date the laziest waif in America, and still be manlier than Don Juan because he's doing manly things. In fact, he's doing the manliest thing: men.

He is transcending manhood by way of someone else's manhood. That is a severe degree of masculinity that intimidates lesser men like me. In fact, given how gross I find naked men, the enthusiasm my gay friends have for them strikes me as decidedly bad ass. It’s no different than your ability to wrestle an alligator or fix a carburetor. I can’t do it, I won’t do it, and concede that you are the manlier man for the wrestling that phallic car-part. Gay guys are looking into the eyes of my darkest fear and seeing a turn-on. They are the best, the greatest, and last line of defense against something that I don’t want to do. That's because I'm not very manly. You could call me a girly-man.

I'm More Versatile Than You Are

Stacey Turner recently sent me the Versatile Writer Award. Previously it was handed to me by Larry Kollar, Mari Juniper and Helen Howell, so at this point I’m going to believe consensus and be flattered. While the rules of the game have warped over time, it remains that you’re supposed to share seven things about yourself. Let’s see if I can keep this entertaining.

 

1. When I grow my facial hair, my mustache comes in blonde and my beard is red, while my hair is brown. I'm a human sampler pack.

2. Not only did playing Dynasty Warriors get me to read Luo Guanzhong's classic Romance of the Three Kingdoms, but sharing the game also spurred five friends to try it as well. Only one of us finished it.

3. In middle school I took a general intelligence test that put me at a genius level. I then attempted to exit the building by pushing through a door labeled PULL.

4. In my early teens my passion for writing was equaled by my aspirations to be a comic book artist. It was only after I was rejected from an art show and took stock of several years of drawings that I realized I utterly lacked talent at one of these passions. I might not have become a versatile writer at all if I’d just figured out how to draw hands.

5. As a child I watched Disney's Peter Pan seven times before giving up hope that Captain Hook could win this once. I still rooted for him afterwards, but only in a primitive fan fiction context.

6. I have run naked from the shower or bath tub to my computer to type out ideas multiple times. Conservatively, it's in double digits.

7. On the way back from a midnight screening of Spider-Man 2, I took a shortcut through the woods. A deer leaped in front of my car. I stopped in time, but the critter froze. I rolled down my window and hollered for it move. It refused. Flashing my high beams did no better. I wound up leaning out the window and pitching my idea of Spider-Man 3 to it until it got bored and left. I still think my plot had some heart.

Thanks again, Stacey. I hope I’ve entertained you all.

Bathroom Monologue: Helping the Nice Guy

Inning waited in the booth, looking out the window while hunched so that others might not see him through it. His Christian name was Inigo, but everyone had called him Inning on account of a childhood aspiration to play pro ball. Apparently he lacked the hand-eye coordination for it and three years of failed tryouts broke his spirit, but the nickname lingered.

Inning only relaxed when he saw Aldo’s red Mercedes pull up. Aldo emerged, all three hundred pounds of potential cardiac arrest stuffed into a tweed winter coat.

Aldo didn’t look at him through the window. He didn’t even look for him as he entered the restaurant, choosing instead to order his midday steak sandwich at the counter. After a minute of small talk with the pretty teen waitress who showed more interest in her cell phone, he waddled down the row of booths until he found Inning.

“Good afternoon,” he said. “Thank you for inviting me to lunch. It’s been a while.”

“They set my car on fi—”

Aldo thumped his hand on the table to stop him.

“Good afternoon,” he said again, then wedged his girth into the booth. His belly caught in the table and rose like bread dough.

“Good afternoon,” Inning said.

The waitress finished texting and brought over a house beer. Aldo thanked her and she scampered to the back to make his order. The restaurant was suddenly vacant.

Aldo said, “I presume this is about the nice guy.”

"They set my car on fire, Aldo. I didn't even know Families did that this century. They burned up my ride all over some pick pocketing. You can make this go away, right?"

"You don't understand. You picked on the nice guy."

"So what if I steal a wise guy's wallet? They're loaded. They can swallow the loss."

Aldo held up a finger. "Firstly, a wise guy kills people who steal his wallet precisely because he's a wise guy. Families don’t respect a lazy wise guy."

Before Inning could complain, he held up a second finger. His middle finger.

"Secondly, I said 'nice guy.' An innocent in this scum hole. They are the few people who get invited to Family weddings that never realize the deals being made around them. They always go to dinner and they never pay. They don't steal. They don't sell merchandise. They don't do hits. Their worst activity is unwittingly carrying something in their luggage once or twice in their lives. They do it unwittingly because they'd never agree to do it consciously."

Inning shook his head. "So I pick pocketed a dumb ass?"

"You pick pocketed a guy so friendly that hardened criminals pay for his dinner. And to do it while he was Christmas shopping for his kids? Come on."

"So they burned my…”

The door behind the counter opened. The waitress trotted out with Aldo’s food. An instant of assuring her tip later, she was gone.

Aldo bit in, taking a fifth of his long sandwich in one bite. Inning had ordered the same sandwich an hour ago and more of it still sat on his plate than Aldo had left in his hands.

“They can't possibly go after me over that. It’s just a wallet. How did they even figure out I was the one who took it?"

“Using his credit card was a bad idea,” Aldo replied around a mouthful. “You think just because it’s shipped to Sherry’s loft that they’re not going to figure it out?”

“But he’s just some dumb ass.”

"You're not listening, Inning. When your first baby is born, the first person you call is a guy at the hospital. The Family has connections and he'll make sure everything God didn't make rough Himself goes smoothly. The second person you call is your Ma, because she'd never forgive you otherwise. The third person you call is a nice guy, because he's the first person who comes to mind. That is who you stole from. You are lucky you did not steal his cell phone. The numbers on there?" Aldo's eyes lolled around in his head and he mopped his brow with the remains of the sandwich, as though the idea had given him a sudden fever. "Oof."

"I still wouldn't light a car on fire over that."

"That's because you're a greasefingers. You're not in a Family business. If some moron wronged one of my good friends, I would shoot him straight in the chest."

Aldo gestured at Inning’s chest with his sandwich. A bit of steak fell out of the tip, plopping onto his plate. It dribbled brown juice.

Inning grumbled. "Well I appreciate having you on my side."

"That brings us to this."

Aldo shifted. One hand secured the sandwich so he could continue feeding, while the other reached into his coat. He produced a black Beretta, placing it flat on the table. His fingers spread over its side, index away from the trigger, but near enough.

“You see, I know this dumb ass.”

Inning tensed, hands moving to his sides. He didn’t bolt from the booth, but looked ready.

"Don't be stupid, Inning," warned Aldo. "You know his name and address because they were in the wallet. So was a week's pay, cashed just an hour before you lifted it. Since you already know where he lives, you're going to go give it back and apologize."

The pickpocket remained tense. He looked like a deer immediately after hearing a rifle shot, trapped in that instant before leaping. Since he didn’t speak, Aldo elaborated.

"If you do that, no one else will put a gun on a table near you and the next car you lease will be less flammable. I make you this offer because you are my friend. Now are you going to give him his wallet back?"

Inning pressed his lips together.

"Yes."

"With two weeks pay in it?"

"I thought it was one weeks pay."

"Two weeks pay, plus what you spent on his cards. You hand it all to him and say you found it under a bench in that mall.”

Inning looked at the black gun, then to his old friend.

"Aldo, why?”

“Why did I beg them to wait until you left the car to torch it? Or why am I giving you such stellar advice when I could be bored at home?”

Inning didn’t answer. Aldo finished the sandwich, licked his fingers and took a long pull on the beer.

“I am doing this because when Aldo Junior was born, this dumb ass was the third person I called.”

Inning wiped the sweat from his palms, then put them together like he was praying at the fat man.

“I’ll go today. I’ll go to the bank first, then to his house. I’ll tell him I found it in the mall bathroom, next to the toilet. Things fall out of pockets in there all the time. I only opened it to find the owner. I hope everything’s in there.”

"Thank you, Inning.” Aldo gathered the gun into his coat. As though answering either the prayer or the departure of the gun, the front door jingled with the first true lunch hour patrons.

“You can go now if you want. It’s a long walk. I'll pick up the check."




(Helping the Nice Guy original appeared at short-story.me)

Bathroom Monologue: Lesson from The Great Ghost

“Never before six-thirty. Never before dusk. Never under anything but the moon. No investigations, no public appearance, and not one square inch of spandex. It’s something I learned from The Great Ghost. He said there was no difference between an alcoholic and a twenty-four/seven superhero. You don’t drink at lunch, and you don’t go lunch in costume. It’s got to be professional. It’s got to be ritualized. They catch onto rituals and fear them, and rituals catch on to you and keep you straight. We work at night because I work at night. You work during the day, then there isn’t any ‘we.’ Simple as that.”

Interviewed About Possible Origins for Him

We're on Day 3 of unintentional non-Bathroom Monologue Bathroom Monologues here at The Bathroom Monologues. I swear there'll be fiction tomorrow.


But today I was interview by reader, writer and physicist Michael Tate about the Possible Origins for Him series. Michael enjoyed chapter 18 so much he gave me his Friday Flash of the Month award, then had me over to chat about the series, comics and writing in general. If you want some Easter eggs uncovered, to see how The Joker got me compared to John Updike, or just to know how the series came about, pop over there. We'll both appreciate it.

Confessions of the Unread

I had a copy of Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett's Good Omens for a decade before I read it. I owned it by accident, and owned it for two years before I learned that "Terry Pratchett" was a man, not a woman. There must have been at least a hundred books that came into my possession and were somehow read before it, with no intentionality or purpose against Mr. Gaiman and Mr. Pratchett.

According to Goodreads, I present possess 141 books that I haven’t read. The desire to read everything I hear about is so strong that even if I only borrow, buy or steal a small fraction of it, I wind up with boxes of books. And among those books are a few that I feel particularly ashamed for not yet reading. Most of these are hard classics. Some are so long that I argued myself into reading long works from my industry instead. Such excuses work in the short term. In the long term, literary guilt is powerful. I'm publishing this list to further pressure myself to get some culture.

-Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

-Roots by Alex Haley

-Middlemarch by George Eliot (only just learned on Sunday that George was a woman)

-Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

-Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky

-Master and Margarita by Mihael Bulgakov

-War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy (sent to me as a Christmas gift and embarrassing number of Decembers ago)

-Solaris by Stanislaw Lem
-The Quitter by Harvey Pekar

-The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

-Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

-God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater by Kurt Vonnegut

-Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov

-The Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy

-Le Morte D'Arthur by Thomas Mallory

-The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner

-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter Thompson

-The World According to Garp by John Irving

-Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

-The Voice of the Poet by Langston Hughes

I most recently scratched Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman and Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale off my list. I think Solaris is next. Please feel free to check off which books you've read, or add your own list of shame. Commiseration can be good. What we really need is a National Novel Reading Month.

Making Ideas

Writers get asked about imagination a lot. Where do you get your ideas? I believe that most good fiction comes from the same place, be it humor or Horror, scientifically plausible or downright impossible. You have to experience, read and study enough to get the raw materials that compose a novel story. But the genesis of good fiction is simple: it results from giving something in a different way than the way you got it.

When I look at my childhood, there was always some Fantasy: Smurfs on TV, Land Before Time in movie theatres, Hercules in books and Robin Hood games in the backyard. These deviated from my life in fantastic ways. The fantastic deviation was attractive.

I recognized more kinds of attractive deviation in my teens. In M*A*S*H you had lighthearted banter while stitching up dying tween soldiers. The novels of Douglas Adams were wildly imaginative, on one page disproving God by demonstrating His existence, then disproving the usefulness of logic in the next. These cases went against convention in amusing ways. Their deviations weren’t that different from Stephen King making a wind-up monkey scary, though turning the positive into the negative like he did was overwhelmingly more popular than the reverse (and it still is).

There was this whole other realm of reactions that everyday people simply didn’t exercise, particularly the options of amusement. You could react differently than everyone else if you just stopped giving in to cultural peer pressure. I needed to do that in my everyday life, but I also needed to pursue it in my fiction. This was how I could write different things.

I remember watching The Matrix and thinking that sea of black leather jackets desperately needed somebody to show up in a Hawaiian shirt. And I actually wore one to the midnight premiere of the second movie. But that wasn’t my moment of emergence. Neither was rewriting Macbeth as a short story starring a magic detective.

Those were petty rebellions; I needed to write original stuff that was about what I wanted out of fiction, not what I hated in it. Instead of looking at a story and thinking how I’d change it, I could get the idea for my own story from just one scene or detail of someone else’s. A favorite hobby at college movie screenings was to anticipate how I wanted the plot to go, and if it didn’t go that way, to write an outline based on my guess that night. That imaginary plot was mine.

Soon it wasn’t that difficult to look at life and think that I hadn’t read a story about X lately. And by X, I don’t mean a fight with the driving instructor. I mean the driving instructor purposefully giving you wrong directions and kidnapping you.

Fortunately he never gave me wrong directions, and the plot was mine. It’s yours, too, if you want it. Let me know how it turns out in the Comments section.

Instead of asking about plausibility or good stories, ask yourself what you want to read. What would make the best escapism for you? What’s funniest to you? What would you most want readers to experience? Sometimes you want to share a personal tragedy about racism, but sometimes what you really want is a dragon running for mayor so she can order the knights to stop coming after her. I hope to finish one of those two stories soon.

Some people are inhibited from writing Fantasy and its related genres because these aren’t realistic. Never mind that they don’t watch realistic stuff on TV (C.S.I. and Dexter are about as likely to happen as The Chronicles of Narnia). But the real question is what you want out of your compositions. If you want something way out of your experience, you can write that. Research it if it’s real or think it through if it’s not. J.R.R. Tolkien put decades into Middle Earth, and it was worth it. If you don’t want something so exhaustive, there are simpler, far shorter ideas. Today I wrote a first person monologue defending snake oil salesmen because, in their opinion, snakes need oiling. Taking things too literally, or not literally enough, or connecting things that aren't normally connected gets easier the more you do it and the less you follow the convention of writing everything based on personal experience.

Much like the barriers of realism and keeping your prose cynical or morose, grounding everything in your personal experience can prevent take-off. Everything you write will be the result of your life anyway – your nature, nurture and decisions make up what you want. But what you write doesn’t have to conform to what you’ve seen and done. Ben Hur was written by a guy in Indiana in 1880. Shakespeare wrote about fairies and nobles of previous centuries in countries he never visited. Douglas Adams was never on a spaceship powered by improbability.

Let me close with a recent example to show you exactly where some of my ideas come from.

I sat in a waiting room of Westchester Medical Center waiting for my mother’s cancer screening to end. It took over an hour and eventually I got the urge to write. I looked at the door and asked myself, “What is the creepiest thing that could walk through the door right now?”

There’s your deviation.

I wrote for a few lines about something morbid and disgusting. It didn’t take and the inspiration faded.

So I closed my eyes and reclined. I was on a row of chairs, though the waiting room was almost empty.

Okay. If this seat could be anywhere, not just in a hospital, who would be funny if they sat down next to me?

That one worked, and I wound up with micro-fiction about an Islamic gorgon (she likes the veil) on an Amtrak train. In the course of writing, I was replaced by a dryad boy. I let it shift third person, changed settings and swapped myself out without questioning it, because that’s what I felt like experiencing. All I had to do was cross things out and make notes of what to rewrite later so it would make sense.

You may stop and say, “Okay, you can imagine things anywhere. But how do I get an Islamic gorgon? I don’t imagine that kind of stuff.”

The point isn’t to get an Islamic gorgon in a hospital or Ben Hur in Indiana. The point is to imagine whatever interests you no matter how far removed from your life it is. It doesn’t matter if it seems absurd. If it amuses, entertain the thought. If it goes away in a few sentences? There are other things to write about. If it’s too embarrassing for you to share? You can keep it in your desk and never show it to another soul. But if you’re too intimidated to write about what actually entertains you, or are too scared to admit what you enjoy to other people, perhaps you should reevaluate more than just your fiction.

Bathroom Monologue: Thoughtful Bear

My teddy bear is acting funny. He used to need me to pull his chair out for him. Before Wednesday, he definitely needed me to hold the cup to his muzzle so he could drink his tea. Now he makes the tea. He also makes my bed. He likes the corners tucked snug. I dug his box out of the trash, and it doesn’t say he’s supposed to do that. Plus I keep waking up and he’ll be gone from the bed. Usually he’s by my closet door, his paws against it like he’s holding it shut. My closet’s haunted my demons, so it’s not surprising he’d want to hold it shut, but he never used to do that. My parents don’t believe about my closet. Neither does Tim. For the longest time it was just me; now it’s me and the teddy bear. Does this make me crazy? And if so, is it okay that I kind of like it? He’s growing into such a thoughtful bear.

Bathroom Haiku: Answer

He answered prayers;

unfortunately for us

the answer was, "No."

Bathroom Monologue: It’s Not Easy Being

“Easy, it never was. But easier, it can be.”

For the first time all hour, the support group goes quiet. They mull Yoda’s words. Yoda mulls his own words, standing on his folding chair. Hulk’s squeaks under him as he scratches his green stubble in contemplation. The Grinch sneers out the window, slouching towards Hooville; he’s only here on a court order. The rest see possible community. Minorities with a strength in numbers.

“You don’t understand,” says Kermit. Morally reluctant to the last. “My girlfriend isn’t just going to let me go. She’s possessive.”

A long green arm stretches out a long green hand, which in turn stretches out a long green fingernail. Its owner isn’t sitting on a folding chair; she only ever sits astride her levitating broom. They know it as certain as they know to never call her ‘Elphaba.’ The fingernail strokes under Kermit’s chin.

“We have ways of getting rid of undesirables, my pretty frog.”

The deal is sealed. Starting tomorrow it’s going to be easier being green.

Bathroom Monologue: We are the 99% of your daydreams

We are the 99%. The footmen. The footwomen. The cowboys and centaurs. The winged. The serpentine and the tentacled.

The believers. The knowers. The thinkers, the drinkers, the stupors and stumblers. The nearsighted, farsighted, the foresighted, and those shot on sight.

The carnivores. The omnivores. The steam-powered, the diesel-powered, the gas-guzzling guys and gals. The fusion-powered patriots. The stardrinkers on high.

The stars and celebrities. The gods and titans. The abominations and ethereal beauties. Lockstep lovelies and things so hideous reality renders them invisible: a protest in your closet after the lights go out.

The light. The dark. The unknown and the scientific method. Anthropomorphism anthropomorphized into an old wizard who understands you. He brings a glass of water, which is sentient, but willing to martyr itself to the cause.

The nightstand. The bed. The bent elbow resting on a middle school desk. The long, lonely commute. The repetitive day out and the slow night in. The flickering instances on a date when threads of conversation wither, not yet deceased. These are the battlegrounds of the 99%.

Consumed Episode 2 Actually Exists

The long-awaited Consumed Episode 2 is online. We actually recorded it back in September, along with a third episode, so I think the third one should materialize soon. The short of it is that everything is Max's fault.

The time it took us to do this makes this my favorite episode. I got to see the U.S. premiere of Sacred Star of Milos in August, which I thought would make a great feature for the podcast. It took us until September to record, and until the end of October to release it. Now I'm alerting you in November. At this point, the whole movie is probably on bit torrent somewhere. But, I think you'll enjoy my incredibly vague review anyway, especially for the bit where our film hosts were compared Nazis. Tasteful fans, us nerds.

Also discussed:
-Captain America: The First Avenger
-Symbionic Titan
-Archer
-Ostrov
-I Saw the Devil
-Winter's Bone
-Bastion

You can listen to the episode here.

True Stories of John 14: The Vampire Food Chain

I remember my seventh grade science class. I was absorbed in the unit on life forms. It was just so neat: nothing outside history had as many opportunities for stories. I filled out all homework during study hall and even doodled an imaginary food chain at the bottom of the last work sheet. It went:

Sunlight

| 

\/

Grass

|

\/

Cow

|

\/

Human

|

\/

Vampire 

I thought I was exceedingly clever. I turned it in before the weekend, and actually hit the library to read more about biology.

The teacher returned the sheets on Tuesday. "Vampire" was crossed out. "Bacteria" was written in its place, along with a "-1." My optional food chain had lost me a point.

I think I've always liked science more than it's liked me.

No Country For Old Men, OR, Have You Read That Movie?

Sometimes feelings are best expressed through charts. Click the below to view it in glorious, pixelated widescreen.

Bathroom Monologue: Credit Card Trail of the Dead

Her credit card records tell the tale. At noon on the last day we saw her, Antoinette used her Visa to purchase fresh produce at the local grocery, including three pounds of garlic.

Fifteen minutes later, it is used to purchase several antiques from the pawn shop on the same street. The items include a rosary, two crucifixes and a squirt gun.

Apparently she doesn’t drive home. An hour later she is eighty miles north, gassing up her car.

Her next purchase is at 8:15. She dined through dusk at Re-Church & Development, a trendy restaurant located in a former church. One wonders if she filled the squirt gun in their sink, hoping the tap was holy. There’s no telling how long she stayed on holy ground, though she does order two desserts and a lot of coffee.

She had to leave at some time, though the credit card trail gives us nothing all night. It’s not until 5:30 in the morning when she uses the card at a 24-hour Wal-Mart. It’s four hundred miles from Re-Church & Development. There, she buys sun block.