the ramble dump

Some more old stuff relating to that Beef character. Once again, you may find it interesting, you probably won't.

Part 3: The Transadventural Romp

There was some overlapping with Bananas and Laxatives and the numerous short-lived and ill-fated stories begun in the second half of 2003 that I tried to put him in.

In the summer of '03, he featured alongside characters from various older stories in a pretty awful sequel to the original Agaffa called JunkJargon, but the less said about that the better, especially as it has no bearing on The Aberration whatsoever anyway.

The first story I began with Master Beef as the central character after B&L, and which could probably be counted as the real roots of The Aberration despite how different it is, was I Am The Superlativest! The original premise of the story was simply, a new story with Master Beef, and the same was true of most of the Beef stories leading up to TA. I had no clear plot in mind, but I wanted to have Master Beef in a new story where the quality was significantly improved from B&L.

Important trumpet tunes played in his head. As he stood proudly, hands on hips, on top of the hill, and his long ears flapping vigorously in the wind, he contemplated how great he was.

He was, in fact, Master Beef.

Another B&L character was also in it, now a real person.

'And he still thinks it's funny to make fart noises with a zip!' complained Tana. 'He's just hopeless!'

'Yeah,' said Mike, who wasn't really listening.

This isn't the same Mike, though. TA's Mike came from elsewhere, as I'll get on to later, and this is just pure coincidence. He was renamed Matt more or less straight after that was written, and was going to be part of a double-act with his pug dog, Glossy. They were crap characters, and I didn't use them again. But anyway...digression! My bane...

Still, he stood tall in his pink rabbit suit, the face cut out and replaced with a reflective visor. Admittedly, there was lots of lemon gum stuck in various places to add a decorative touch to his tatty pink coat, but he was still proud.

Much too proud.

The sun glinted off his visor, melting a nearby sheep.

And then began the build-up to this strange scene I'd had this idea for when I'd been writing down poem ideas...

'I mean, you can't even make fart noises with zips!' shrieked B'Tana.

'Mmm,' said Matt.

* * *

In the distance, several more sheep were tossed into the air. Beef ignored them.

* * *

'He's just so... so... infuriating!'

'Ah-hum.'

* * *

The ground underfoot started to shake violently.

And thus did the fat men in tweed enter Beef's world.

And then, apparently (according to the Big Orange File), I went in a completely different direction, and wrote a new opening scene.

'B?' called Beef. 'B?'

'What?' snapped B'Tana.

'Soup's ready!' Master Beef was immensly proud of his golden vegetable soup. Sure, it had odd, unidentifiable white bits floating around in it that were reminiscent of polystyrene, and it tasted, to put it mildly, like shit, but B'Tana always drank it all.

Beef made sure of that.

B sat down.

'D'you like it?' asked Beef.

'I haven't tried it yet!' said B'Tana, who had a million times before. She hated the stuff but it kept Beef happy, and Beef needed to be kept happy.

She lifted her spoon.

'Drink up!'

'Beef. I am doing!'

'Okie dokie.'

As she was watched closely, the spoon with the watery, green-golden liquid met her lips. Her facial features were suddenly horribly distorted. She spat it out.

'Too hot?'

'Something like that.'

'Blow on it.' Master Beef was always extremely eager to please. However, if he didn't he would have one of his 'tantrums', which were always best avoided.

Beef has rarely been creepier than he was here, the irresponsible and immature side to the B&L character blown up to new and scarily child-like proportions. There's quite a huge contrast between the enthusiastic, eager-to-please character here and the Master Beef of TA who is almost indifferent to the feelings of other characters (aside from Winnie). Fortunately, this horrific progression in Beef's character, which although did reappear later on, was soon stamped upon.

The next Beef-related thing that the BOF offers up is Beef the Artist. Now, this was something completely different again. What's written is a scene in which Beef stands in a white room and flings lots of paint at the walls, getting increasingly insane and violent with the paint all in the name of creation.

I have no idea what possessed me to introduce Beef to the world of art. The only other thing I had in mind for it was the single image of Beef standing on a high-up platform skirting the edge of either a gallery or some kind of big warehouse, clutching the work of art he was in the process of stealing: a porcelain woman.

Target: Gerber was the next story, never intended to be anything more than a short, but which featured Beef nevertheless.

Of course, where else would you find a fluorescent-coloured psychopath with a big, big gun? At a UK bookstore of course, always avoiding the tribes of Potter fans that prowled the isles.

Beef was idly browsing the music and biographies shelves in search for anything to do with the Beatles (he was a great fan), when he came across a small, green, hardback book. He was so disgusted that it was so small, green and hardback that he grabbed it from the shelf to see what it was looking so arrogant about. 'What are you looking so small, green and hardback about?' he demanded.

Barry Trotter and the Unnecessary Sequel

it replied.

This was where the character of Mike came from. The whole background story and how the character of Mike developed can be found here, so unusual that it deserved its own blogpost.

There is a third and final I Am The Superlativest! draft in the BOF, written shortly after the two seemingly random departures from it. It continues the theme of Beef's Beatles fandom that was put in place by Bananas and Laxatives 2 and Target: Gerber, and features another old B&L character.

Playing... 'The Beatles - I Am The Walrus.'

'Goo goo g'joob,' said Master Beef, accordingly.

'Juba juba!' insisted his eternally floating microwave, Salty Mark.

* * *

The fat men in tweed gathered around the one who was talking in a language of limited vocabulary which included the words 'blob', 'bloblob', and 'blobby', with the occasional 'blooby'.

...Don't ask me about that last paragraph. I really have no idea, except maybe a hazarded guess at it being the walrus himself whom they were talking to, or the return of the Crud from B&L. I honestly can't remember. Maybe it's best that way.

The last of this series of short-lived stories featuring Master Beef was Tales of Utter Normality: The Fat Men In Tweed. It was to be a story written for Kommingle, posted as a short prequel to a novel that was set in the same city, Galday Cringe (a name for a place I invented that has had many different incarnations itself), involving a character called Noreen.

The idea behind The Fat Men In Tweed was that the city had become infested with anthropomorphised rodents, and as a result the city was falling apart. A company called LoveTech had dispatched the fat men in tweed to destroy every rodent on sight. Of course, Master Beef's existence is now threatened because of his unusual attire...

The fat men in tweed, the Clean Sweepers™, had been given very vague orders. 'Eliminate anything under the description of a rodent, no exception.' LoveTech had fed them all the information they needed; all the statistics and descriptions. When they classified something a as a rodent, it was because what they had seen matched the descriptive data uploaded into them.

Just off the corner of Quitelong Street, after eliminating a squirrel problem on Djo Street, three tweedsters were looking keenly for their next victim. And before long, they'd found it...

* * *

Master Beef breathed in the foul-smelling air through his fur and sighed. It had been quite a quiet afternoon so far. In fact, it was too quiet. Disturbingly quiet. It wasn't the fact that the birds had stopped singing that worried him, oh no. They had all dropped silently to the ground years ago when the distinct stench of Galday Cringe finally got to them. It was something else.

Beef sighed, accurately guessing what it was. It was the absence of the screaming old ladies, the bunny bitch-fights, the exploding hamsters, the plod-plod of foot-apparel bearing Galdmonkeys, which he found oddly comforting. He sighed again. He was good at sighing, he decided.

* * *

The tweedsters analysed their prey, silently so as not to give it chance to escape.

Exessively long ears...check.
Hind feet larger than forefeet...check.
Intolerably fluffy...check.
Suspicious sniffing actions...ish.

...Locked onto target...

After that, I went back and wrote a final chapter for the original Bananas and Laxatives in what I'd hoped was improved quality for a message board. Then, in December 2003, I began another story...

The final part, Part 4, coming soon.

Labels: a history of development, excerpts, fat men in tweed, halo, i am the ramblemaster, the aberration

# posted by Chris @ 12:42 PM