the ramble dump

This blog was always meant to function as something of a behind-the-scenes feature, providing extra stuff for anyone who wants it, but mostly for me to entertain myself with things related to my projects, influences and interests, giving me some space to think and enthuse about what I like doing, showing some of the things that lead up to the finished products put on this site and elsewhere.

A word I always liked was wordsmith, because it implies that there is a craft to writing stories. Like all crafts, there is more than just the finished product. There's the creation side of things, working the language and, in a more broad sense, the themes and ideas to create something interesting and readable. But there's also me trying to develop as a writer, hopefully improving and honing my skills, and it's nice to acknowledge some old stuff too, examples of me 'as a writer' at an earlier stage, some of which I think have played an important part in the development of my writing. This is especially the case with Bananas and Laxatives, which I look back on now with a strange fondness, as it was my first venture into writing for an online audience, and paved the way for everything that followed.

So I'd say that, considering all of this, making lots of long posts just to show a load of old stuff is a pretty good excuse in itself, as far as this blog is concerned.

And so now, after that rather lengthy introduction, it is time to move on to the final part of this series, in which I acknowledge lots and lots of ideas which, for one reason or another (some reasons being more obvious than others), haven't made it into the current version of The Aberration, including alternative events and lost chapters.

Warning: there will be some spoilers for Chapters 1-4.

Part 4: The Manifesting Surreal

The pie exploded in the microwave. Master Beef carefully took out the sticky mess (or at least what remained on the dish) using some theatrical oven gloves. He enjoyed his mess (it was burnt apple flavour) and then commenced in removing the rest of it that plastered the inside walls of the microwave with a chisel. Once happy that he'd achieved something, to reward himself he went to the fridge to get another pie.

Master Beef wasn't your ordinary individual. In a world where beings like him exist, it is hard to define 'ordinary'. There were many odd and occasionally agitating mannerisms of Beef (most notably his undiluted immaturity), but it had been decided (by the Board of Deciders) that perhaps his most striking feature was his rather outspoken fluorescent pink rabbit costume.

One day, Master Beef had decided that maybe his appearance was slightly too comical to be taken seriously, so he added a touch of the military by allowing himself some large green boots, a reflective visor to replace the rabbit's facial features, and a shotgun. They wouldn't call him comic to his face now, at least.

He returned to chiselling his microwave.

The microwave-chiselling scene has remained the first scene of The Aberration throughout its many incarnations, although it has been altered slightly over time.

I have now left the Big Orange File, and delve into a black folder containing drafts and notes for both Kommingle and Fat Man In Tweed projects. This draft, dated 17/12/03, exists in faded ink on an A5 piece of scrap paper under the title, 'And fools seldom differ ... continued...'. As a result of a strange conversation on the bus journey to school with my friend Olli one day, we invented a wizardly medic sort of character dressed in white called The Mediator, who went around diffusing various unpleasant situations by healing the injured and reasoning with people. At some point, I decided it would be a good idea to write a story involving both The Mediator and Master Beef. And Fools Seldom Differ was its title, and a couple of drafts involving The Mediator were written before I wrote the microwave-chiselling scene.

However, it soon became apparent that the two characters existed in totally different worlds, in totally different genres written in different styles, and were generally too different from each other to be in the same story. The Mediator was therefore dropped, although Olli and I did have plans for a new Mediator story after Agaffa. In the end, however, both of those collaborative stories fell through.

I continued to write the Master Beef story from the microwave-chiselling scene, under the working title of Master Beef. One thing I notice about the original opening scene was that Beef's immaturity was once again emphasised. The next bit of writing jumps ahead a month and a half to the start of February 2004, in another scene that shows Beef going about normal, everyday activities in an unusual way, but here it develops into an almost creepy eccentricity.

The doorbell rang.

'Good biddings!' exclaimed Beef, heaving the front door wide open.

The visitor, quite startled, forced himself to recover. 'Um...er...um,' he began. 'S...Special delivery for'--the man glanced at his clipboard--'M. Beef?'

'Yesyes,' said Beef, 'that's me. Bring it in, bring it inwards, take care to chip the paintwork!'

The delivery man again looked at him blankly.

This scene was never included in the published chapter. The immaturity and silliness to Beef's character that was put in place in Bananas and Laxatives was being emphasised a little too much. Even in the earlier, more slapstick version of the story that followed, while Beef often conducts himself in an unusual manner, his actions aren't so explicitly, flamboyantly and deliberately odd.

What followed took a while to get written. Nothing more was done for another month. This list of dates, covering only the first Winnie scene (without Winnie's car journey, which was only added for the FMIT version much later on) shows how sporadically I worked on it after that: 08/03/04, 20/03/04, 17/04/04, 23/04/04. I didn't finish the first chapter until half way through May. This extremely slow progress, a mixture of not knowing what to write next, not knowing how to write it, not really knowing what the story was about, and procrastination, is a habit I have sustained to this day.

The character of Winnie was borne out of her brilliantly onomatopoeic name. I remember suddenly thinking of it, rather randomly, at the end of a Games lesson, and telling Olli about it in the changing rooms, saying, 'Wouldn't that make a great name for an old lady?' I remember him giving me an odd look and replying, 'You are so weird.' The decision to use her in the story was immediate, and I was thinking about it for the entire bus journey home.

The story became The Manifesting Surreal sometime between April and May, when I finally decided on something beyond it simply being a story about Master Beef. The new idea behind the story was that the lives of Beef and the people he comes to know gradually become stranger and stranger as weird things start to happen and reality begins to fall apart, starting with the smashing of the strange and beautiful porcelain woman shown to Beef by Phil the tramp.

She was in porcelain shards all around them. Fractured bits of body in a range of different shapes and sizes; bits of leg, bits of arm, bits of torso, bits of head... a painted eye stared sorrowfully at Beef from about half a metre away.

He squinted. Near it, a smallish, rectangular piece of paper floated about in the gentle breeze. Pushing a gasping Phil off him, he crawled over to it, and snatched at it before it could escape, accidentally crumpling it as he did so. As he uncurled his fingers, the paper unfurled on his furry palm.

Phil walked up to him, and crouched behind him, peering over his shoulder at it.

It said, in what they hoped was just red ink, and in big, bold letters:

You broke my wife.
Now you shall pay...

However, not all the events that followed and escalated into insanity were a result of the porcelain woman's destruction. One of the biggest changes I made to this story a few months ago when I was rewriting it for Fat Man In Tweed was the complete removal of the daytime TV show Sit Down, Stand Up (named after the Radiohead song), and the subsequent court case, because by the time The Manifesting Surreal had become The Aberration in 2005, it was becoming increasingly difficult to keep what was largely Mike's story relevant to the direction of the rest of the story. That whole story arc exists now as a small performance from Mike in the pub.

Winnie just smiled at him, and leaned forward in her armchair. 'Ah,' she said suddenly. 'I almost forgot to tell you.' She fumbled around in her cardigan pockets and pulled out two slips of card. 'I've been invited to the television show, Sit Down, Stand Up, to be a member of the audience. I'm allowed to bring along a friend. Would you like to come?'

Beef had never heard of it. 'What is it?'

'Oh, it's a daytime show, usually where talentless idiots come up on stage and have to make a bunch of stubborn old people - that'll be us - laugh. They get things thrown at them if they're too rude, or make fun of our age, or just aren't funny. Well?' She proffered one of the tickets. 'We get to use placards.'

'I want to see what it's like to be an old person,' declared Beef. 'I'll do it!'

The original Chapter 2 began with Beef and Winnie already sat in the studio audience, just as the show starts, Beef having acquired a spectacular hangover from the previous night.

The theme tune played.

Master Beef had his head between his knees. He groaned.

Winnie was boogying in her seat. 'Sit Down, Stand Up! Don't be mean or we'll squash your brains!' she sang, along with all the other biddies.

Beef groaned again.

The opening act was none other than a cameo appearance from Miss Darley, the eccentric corporate millionaire adversary from Agaffa.

Some of the audience idly clapped as a smart-looking bespectacled woman with a shortish, blonde haircut and a business-like suit several sizes too large came on.

'Right, you old sh--'

'Daytime TV!' interjected the host.

Miss Darley sighed. 'Very well,' she said, primly. She cleared her throat. 'Right, you old farts!'

This was met with a chorus of discontent from the audience.

'Farts my arse!' declared Winnie, raising her 'DAMN ROOD' placard.

Beef groaned louder.

'Shut your f--'

'Daytime!' insisted the host.

'--faces!' snapped Miss Darley.

Several of the audience started to hurl rotten food they'd brought from home. A lady with a green rinse went as far as throwing her chair, which had previously been attached to the floor.

'Be silent!' demanded the comedian. 'I am funny! Hilariously so! You shall all laugh at my never-ending wit!'

Instead, they all laughed at the tomato that had just hit her square on the forehead.

'Hahahahahahaha!' went Winnie.

That is, everybody except Master Beef, who groaned some more.

'Freaking bitch!' yelled the green-haired woman, throwing another member of the audience at the stage.

'Daytime!' shrieked the host. 'Bloody freaking daytime!'

'Hangover!' Beef snapped back. 'Bloody mega-freaking HEADACHE!'

'Freaking crones!' said Miss Darley. 'You haven't heard the last of me! I don't need you, you ancient bastards! You'll pay for this...' Her voice faded as she was dragged away by security guards, of the type usually only hired for problematic chat shows.

The entire show was later erased of all sound and replaced by a single monotone due to the general laziness of the people who sort out these things, and their lack of knowledge as to whether or not 'freaking' was actually a swearword. Due to the show's inaudible nature, ratings plummeted and hundreds of letters of complaint were sent to both the production and television companies. The show was then axed and replaced by Live Croquet!, extreme daytime sport.

Later, when Miss Darley was asked to issue a statement to the Daily Insignificance, she was reported to have said, 'Do not underestimate the Darley power!', cackled maniacally, and then suddenly flown off in a monstrous dirigible, with thunder and lightning striking all around her.

But that was all to happen later.

One of the earliest ideas I remember having for late on in the story was Miss Darley returning in a concert which Beef and Mike would hijack, for reasons explained in the footnote of this post, getting just as infuriated as she did with the studio audience when they refuse to adore her.

Mike was originally introduced giving an awkward performance not vastly different to the FMIT version of Chapter 2, although while in the FMIT version his performance peters out miserably and he's replaced by another comedian, the outcome in the television studio was much more violent.

The green-haired one snatched Winnie's 'DAMN ROOD' placard and threw it at Mr Mike, who flung his entire body to one side in overreaction. Rounds of vegetables followed and, whimpering, the comedian evacuated the stage.

Beef started shaking Winnie vigorously to try and shut her up, screaming himself.

The sparkly host made his way up amidst the audience, tracked down the green-haired woman and punched her hard.

The whole studio fell silent, including Winnie and Beef. Then the irritable old man who didn't approve of Mr Mike's name stood up and punched the host. A riot broke out.

Winnie wanted to join in, but Beef wanted to quietly slip out, so he dragged the excitable old lady away with him, her arms and legs fighting furiously but in vain to stay. 'SQUASH THEIR BRAINS! SQUASH THEIR BRAINS!' she repeated, along to the familiar tune of the opening theme. She was obviously malfunctioning, concluded Beef. It happened to all the good folk.

The original version of Chapter 2 was much, much longer than the current version, and flowed about as well as a tube full of custard, because of a much lengthier scene in which Phil meets Winnie and Mike meets Beef for the first time (and it definitely ended up being one of the weirder random moments, with Winnie becoming almost psychotic)...

'My tea isn't weakly brewed!' protested Winnie, outraged. She stormed into the kitchen. 'The cheek of it!' came her voice. 'You want more teabags? I'll give you more sodding teabags!' A half-packet of biscuits was thrown angrily into the room, scattering them everywhere, and causing all three men present to flinch. Winnie then emptied all the teabags she had into the teapot and, with most of them spilling all over the worktop and floor, she shoved the pot into the sink and filled it with cold water from the tap. 'ANYONE FOR A CUPPA?!' she shrieked.

Mr Mike hurriedly retreated into the safe cracks of the sofa, with Beef not far behind.

'Yes please,' said Phil, oblivious. 'It's freezing out there today.'

Winnie threw the teapot at him.

'Can't we all just get along?!' screamed Beef, as Phil stumbled backwards and Winnie appeared again. 'What has got into you?'

Winnie's bottom lip wobbled, and tears started streaming from her eyes. 'You said my tea was weakly brewed right in front of Mr Mike!' Now he won't think much of me, will he?' She scampered over to Mike, who retreated further into the sofa. 'You think I'm pathetic because my tea is weakly brewed, don't you?' she said, tearfully.

...and then there was the lengthy BBC News report recounting most of the chapter so far and what the rioting biddies did next.

The camera cut to a street with a hair-rinsed crowd marching down it, with some of it spilling into the nearby driveways and smashing up property.

'...A group of elderly people, dubbed by the locals as the Vigibiddies, has been rampaging the streets on a mission to "cleanse the world of talentless scum"...'

The camera cut to a line of bloody-nosed, black-eyed people sprawled out across a polished floor.

'...And an unidentified woman has attacked the House of Commons. Those assaulted say she has green hair.'

Ah, the Vigibiddies. They were another idea just to demonstrate the escalating surreality, and I had even planned a scene in which they would continue their purge of talentless scum by invading a football match, that Beef and the others would be watching on TV on the pub, like a tidal wave. But even before the story became The Aberration, I decided (largely due to the review of a friend) to edit the chapter and cut their story short. The altered version of events, bringing an end to the Vigibiddies, went as follows:

The camera cut to a skirmish between the same biddies and the police.

'Police were called in to resolve the situation.'

The camera cut to a line of bloody-nosed, black-eyed people sprawled across a polished floor.

'...And a green-haired freak of nature has attacked the House of Commons. Reportedly able to uproot fixed studio chairs with ease, the super-strong woman has been successfully captured and is currently being examined by the country's top scientists.'

The continuation of Mike's storyline was that he handed himself in to the police to try and explain everything (after the news report had informed him that he was the one being blamed for starting it all). In the Chapter 3 that made it to Kommingle, the chapter starts with Mike in court.

The short, fat judge, appropriately named Judge Tubby, made her fat way to her stand, demanding, 'Quiet!' and hitting several things and people with her judicial hammer as she did so. 'All rise and whatnot!'

The middle-aged jury, having just made themselves comfortable, grumbled their way to their feet.

'We are here today to once again save the Universe from trouble-makers by locking them away with lots of other trouble-makers. Today's idiot is Michael Jerblarg, who goes by the alias of "Mr Mike".' She readjusted her judicial wig. 'Prosecution, do your bit.'

'Clearly,' said Mr Pencil-Thin Prosecution, making his way to the front, '"Mr Mike" is a devious second identity created to try and fool us all.'

'Objection!' objected Mr Defence. 'That's just stupid!'

'Overruled.'

'Clearly,' continued Pencil-Thin, 'Mr Jerblarg insists on having one criminal haircut after another.'

The jury muttered in agreement.

'Don't you listen to them, dear, you look lovely!' Winnie shouted from the back.

'Objection!'

'Overruled.'

'I'd like to bring Mr Jerblarg to the stand for a round of sly interrogation whereby I ultimately trigger his demise, Your Honour.'

'Very well,' said Tubby. 'Mr Jerblarg, get over here.'

'Hold this,' said Pencil-Thin, handing Mike a chunky leather-bound Bible. 'Do you, Michael Jerblarg, take this Bible to be your lawfully wedded wife?'

'What?!'

'Objection!'

'Overruled,' said Tubby. 'Mr Jerblarg, you must swear on the Bible to ensure that you're telling the truth.'

'How does that work? And this is much more than just swearing on it!'

'I like to make sure the people present in my court are really truthful.'

'But--'

'Clearly,' said Pencil-Thin, 'the man must be guilty.'

'I'm not!' said Mike. 'I do, I do, I do!'

'You may now kiss the Bible.'

Mike reluctantly did so.

The court case, probably the most surreal sequence in the whole thing, ended with Mike being exiled under pain of death, with forty-eight hours to pack his bags and leave. Meanwhile, in the bookshop, the only part of this Chapter 3 that survived in any way, Beef encountered a slightly different character to the strange man with the ponytail...

Beef made his way to the science fiction section with his hands in his furry pockets, positioned himself comfortably in front of the shelves, and scanned the colourful novels several times over before selecting the one with the most dramatic cover, replacing it on the shelf, and picking up a less crumpled copy.

There was a bleep and a burst of static.

Beef looked around, but could not identify the source. 'Hm,' he said, turning back to the books.

There was another bleep, this time much closer.

Beef carefully edged his way around the shelves until he was behind the one he had just been examining, and found himself in the crime section.

To his surprise, something did a clumsy forward roll across his path. It appeared to be a security guard, albeit a skinny one. It disappeared again with another blast of static.

Beef shrugged. He purchased his book and left the shop, feeling the chill of the winter once again. He didn't notice the security guard appear again, watching him go, whispering into his radio.

There was another Chapter 3 that didn't make it to Kommingle, which I decided to drop at around the same time as I scrapped the Vigibiddies, primarily for pace (the court case was originally going to be Chapter 4), but also for other reasons. Following on from the chaotic second chapter which ended with the ominous message from inside the porcelain woman, the original Chapter 3 was a dazed, lethargic sort of chapter with a complete change in mood and in climate. And it took place...on a sunny beach.

The sea lapped playfully against the shore, its salty white spray bringing forth soggy seaweed and various bits of crab.

...a horrifying crash...

'Goodness me, it's busy today,' observed Winnie, scanning the wide strip of sand.

The orange sun burned in the cloudless, pale blue sky, scorching everything below.

...porcelain shards all around them...fractured...

'It'll be the weather, Winnie,' said Mike. 'We obviously aren't the only ones after salt and fried skin.'

Winnie chuckled. 'True. Let's set up over there, by that fat, tattooed couple with the yellow parasol.'

...bits of torso...bits of head...

'Come on, you two,' she said to Beef and Phil, who had been silent all morning.

Mike walked down the concrete steps and passed the fatties to their designated spot. He unfolded the chairs he had been carrying under his arm and angled them so they would receive the full blast of the sun. Then he sat himself down. Five minutes later, the others arrived.

...a painted eye...

Beef and Phil dumped their chairs in the sand without a word, still lost in their own thoughts.

...now...

Winnie seated herself by Mike and placed her picnic basket by her side. 'Emby?'

...you shall pay...

'Emby?'

Beef shivered and hugged himself.

Mike watched him, his expression changing into a slight frown at his odd behaviour.

'Emby, dear?'

Beef raised his head slowly.

'I brought you a bucket and spade, dear, if you want to use them. Do you want to eat now?'

Beef shook his head. Mike watched him as he picked up the bucket and spade and walked off to a small patch of ground that was free. He made a small mound and patted it smooth. He stared at it contemplatively for a moment, and then continued to build.

This was to lead on to Beef building himself a giant sandcastle for his own protection that he could stay in to avoid whoever was going to come after him. Phil wasn't allowed to go inside. Beef was strangely out of character in this chapter. Not only had he reverted to the weird child-like character seen in incarnations past, but he was thinking and worrying too much about the message from inside the porcelain woman. Normally, Beef doesn't seem to care about or take seriously anything that goes on around him, and the extent to which something that would have just been seen as a completely unthreatening note by most people was being treated so seriously and ominously by both Phil and Beef here. I blame the lethargic mood I was in when I wrote it.

The main event of the original Chapter 3 that ended up getting pushed back to the current Chapter 4 when I scrapped it was the arrival of Amelia. Beef was going to find her as she was washed ashore unconscious (a nod to The Plaid Identity, a story by my friend Amelia Chesley, upon whom the character is based), and then taken back to either Beef's or Winnie's house and placed in bed until she woke up, while the others came up with theories about who she was and how she came to be washed ashore, including the suggestion that she was perhaps a deformed mermaid. I think even then I had planned to have her as a detective character, because the real Amelia had mentioned her love of Sherlock Holmes. I planned to have her assume her role as detective once she woke up through diary entries written in the style of Sherlock Holmes speculation or a film-noir style monologue as she tried to establish where she was and what had happened to her. (Amelia actually replaced another character idea, Cath Cathington, who was also a detective, but far more annoying.)

One idea I briefly considered to follow up the court case and this mysterious girl they'd found was for the group to be pursued by a carnivorous caricature of the gutterpress that would relentlessly harass the group, with the unconscious girl in the bed adding fuel to their speculation. This was another product, like the Vigibiddies invading the football match, the House of Commons attack, the Mini Cooper being chased by the fat men in tweed, the pub that only plays Gregorian chants, Winnie with her tea and so on, of me trying to give the story lots of typically and stereotypically British things and turning them on their head.

I could talk lots about how it took me a long, long time and several different ideas before I settled on an opening for Chapter 5, but I think it's about time I brought this whole obese thing to a close. If you've made it all the way through, I salute you! It was at least interesting for me to go through all this old stuff and relive all the memories, even if it wasn't for anybody else.

Labels: a history of development, excerpts, i am the ramblemaster, the aberration

# posted by Chris @ 10:38 PM