the ramble dump

Now that I've turned my attention to the second chapter of The Aberration, I've been thinking about the character Mike, and how he'll be changing. Then I started thinking about how he came about in the first place, and how he's 'evolved' so far to become what he is now.

August, year 2003. I was reading the blog of a Mr Michael Gerber (the guy who wrote the Barry Trotter books), and on this blog he had provided an email address. So I emailed him. Oh yes, email him I verily did.

I asked him if he would answer some questions for a certain website called Kommingle, which didn't actually exist yet. There were twelve questions in all, only two of which were what would be considered conventional in an interview of this kind (although 'Have you ever been attacked by an old lady? If so, how did you cope?' was one I was particularly proud of). To my astonishment, he actually replied, answering every single one of them. Which was probably a mistake on his part, because I then went into Creepy Fan Overdrive and the consequent emails didn't stop. He was always really nice and friendly about it, but I must have annoyed the hell out of him.

In October, as an act of both creepiness and boredom, I wrote a short and very pointless story, which featured him, his recently released book (The Unnecessary Sequel), and a certain rabbity individual who'd been in several equally pointless short stories since I'd stopped writing the Halo spoof, Bananas and Laxatives. To summarise: Master Beef browses the shelves of the music and biography section of a bookshop looking for books on the Beatles*, and comes across The Unnecessary Sequel. He appears to take offence at its very existence, and then exits the shop, avoiding the roaming Potter fans as they cast spells on various things. He tracks down the location of the author: the Atlantic Ocean.

Michael Gerber is sailing across the Atlantic Ocean on a sofa, attempting to sell a drug called the Essence of Whoot to a pair of pug dogs. The sale is successful, and the pugs sail away in a large boot. Then Beef arrives, having got there by being fired out of a cannon. Beef's infuriation gives way as he then asks if he can be in Mike's next book. Then it ends.

The character Mike in The Aberration borrows from MG his general friendly demeanor, and over time this morphed into a non-confrontational, very polite character who'd really prefer it if everything that was happening to him wasn't doing so (a bit like MG remaining friendly even though I kept sending him emails). I made him a stand-up comedian based on an idea that he had been exiled from his home country for writing controvertial material (toilet-humour filled parodies, like MG), and his stand-up name, Mr Mike, is how I occasionally addressed MG when sending him my latest exciting message. I discovered a few months ago that the name Mr Mike has already been used by comedian Michael O'Donoghue, so that's not going to be reappearing in the rewrite. (In a second 'interview' I did with MG last year, I asked him if he would ever consider doing stand-up. He replied, 'God, no. I am much too shy.')

It was in this short story that the whole idea of Mike having crazy hair originated. I gave him long, purple hair as a joke because, as I stated in a footnote, I had no idea what the author actually looked like. In the court case in the Kommingle version of Chapter 3, Judge Tubby addresses him by his full name, Michael Jerblarg, which is just a hasty mutation of MG's name because I needed to give him a surname and couldn't think of anything else (I haven't decided yet whether or not to keep this surname for the new Fat Man version).

So anyway... Mike in The Aberration isn't a fictional version of Michael Gerber, although that's sort of how the character started out. Less so now more than ever, as his character continues to 'evolve' as time goes by, and, as I may have mentioned once or twice, there are going to be quite a few changes made in the near future too (least of all his nationality change, from American to British). But it just goes to show, characters and their various quirks can come about in so many different ways. This is probably one of the more unusual.

* Beef's supposed Beatles fandom came about when I was planning the sequel to Bananas and Laxatives. I'd recently heard the song I Am The Walrus, and wanted to include a talking walrus (that introduced itself with that very song name) in it. Making Beef a big Beatles fan just followed naturally. It just so happens, by complete coincidence, that Mike Gerber is a huge Beatles fan.

One of the early ideas I had for The Aberration was Mike and Beef staging a huge Beatles tribute concert as a massive diversion, allowing the others to sneak into the bad guys' headquarters and cause lots of trouble. I don't know how that would have really worked, but it seemed a good idea at the time. Agaffa's Miss Darley, having made a cameo appearance in the Kommingle version of Chapter 2 as an unpopular stand-up comedian, was going to return as the hilariously dreadful performer occupying the stage until Mike and Beef arrived and took over. Why so many people would have come to see her in the first place is something I hadn't quite figured out.

I didn't continue with the two characters' Beatles fandom in the end, mostly just out of forgetfulness. I think the song I've Just Seen A Face would fit perfectly at the end of the first chapter, though.

Labels: agaffa, halo, the aberration

# posted by Chris @ 10:25 PM