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 0 comments

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 0 comments

So why did I choose fatmanintweed.com? Where did the fat men in tweed come from? Such things would most suitably be answered in...

Part 2: The Fat Men In Tweed

So... there is this Tesco Value notepad I have, with only a few pages filled. On the first of these pages is a list of poems that never got written, bar one.

I'd walked in on my brother playing one of the Grand Theft Auto games on his laptop. The third one, I think. He was wreaking havoc with a rocket launcher in a cybercafé. I remember seeing a fat man flying up into the air. He may or may not have been wearing tweed.

I don't quite know what happened next. But then there was this idea for a poem. I'd been having lots of ideas for poems. Well, lots of images and concepts, that I liked, and wanted to make into poems.

There are seven ideas written on that first page. Only the first one got written. The third one says, Ten Fat Men in Tweed.

I'm standing on a hill. This is the image I had in my mind. I'm standing on a hill, the land vast and green and undulating all around me. And then, over the horizon, they come running at great speed. The narrative pays close attention to how they run, how their flab moves about, how the ground shakes. I start running.

Something something something something, the ten fat men in tweed. There was a rhythm to it. I remember that being part of the reason I liked it. It sounded good. It sounded like it would make a good poem. It rolled off the tongue. The Ten Fat Men in Tweed.

I never wrote the poem. But I liked the idea. It amused me. It intrigued me how you could make something like that so inhuman, and scarily powerful. How the hideous mass made it evil and repulsive. How this could all be processed in the mind, while accepting that they're wearing something as dull and down-to-earth as tweed. There was a novelty to this image, a weird paradox.

I liked it so much that the fat men in tweed ended up appearing in all sorts of places, in all sorts of forms.

ZimmaZoom™ flew across the conveyer belt, which was one of many in the massive network that ran throughout Tokyo. Of course, there were faster forms of transport: bean-shaped aircrafts flew around in the air above them, weaving their way through skyscraper tips (of which were neatly rounded as part of the Tokyo Sky-Safety Act of 2215).

Agaffa, Tokyo's notoriously grouchy elderly pensioner, sped up ZimmaZoom™ (zimmer frames were so outdated) and knocked over a dozen business people and a fat man in tweed. 'Muahaha!' she chuckled, patting her loyal machine. As Zimma (the name she gave it sometimes) slowed down, the conveyer belt passengers started to return to normal.

So Agaffa decided to reverse.

The fat man in tweed got his arm caught in the propellor in the back and he was spun round, making odd whimpers as he went.

-- From the drafts for the original Agaffa.

Not even evil horses could withstand such immense evil as this. It would break their backs and then poke their corpses mockingly. This evil: the Ten Fat Men In Tweed, forever drawn to the power of a new item of magical clothing: the Whatever Waistcoat. Tweed hats, jackets, trousers and black shoes so shiny you could see your reflection in them. Lord Winterseeson didn't know what he was getting himself into...

-- From The Pterry Board Epic.

Meanwhile, a hologram in the form of a portly man dressed in tweed appeared. He plodded over to the dead body which was sprawled untidily across the ground, sat down on it, and smoked his pipe. He had nothing to worry about.

-- From my GCSE English coursework.

As an image that still amuses me, fatmanintweed.com seemed only appropriate.

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

# posted by Chris @ 12:36 PM 0 comments

My Big Orange File, or BOF, is something of a personal artefact. It spans roughly a year's worth of writing, starting from the end of 2002 to the fruitful backside of 2003, and contains the beginnings of such, er, well-loved creations as Agaffa, Master Beef, and the G'raffe Song. This, along with a mostly-empty Tesco Value notepad containing only a list of strange poem titles and the single one that actually got written, is my starting point, as I attempt to answer... a question.

In almost every interview with an author I've read, the author gets asked, 'Where do you get your ideas from?', which has always struck me as a rather stupid thing to ask. But, whereas most authors will answer vaguely, 'Oh, from all over the place, really...', and while I make no claim to being a 'proper', published author, I'm going to attempt to answer it properly. And I'm going to do it through The Aberration, because doing stuff through examples is the best way, dudes.

Alright, yes, this is just a bad excuse to waffle at length about a lot of my old stuff, and probably the only person it's remotely interesting to is myself, but I'd rather procrastinate on a grand scale than do any kind of proper work, and as this is my blog, I can do what I like. And anyway, there are some answers to such vitally important questions as, 'Why "Master Beef"?', 'What made you pick Fat Man In Tweed as your website name?', and 'Why does Amelia call you "muffinkid"?' in there somewhere. And also: pretty pictures.

Note: this won't be in much of a coherent order, as ideas don't have a habit of forming coherently. Be warned: random tangents abound.

Part 1: Bananas and Laxatives



(From the Fod conception scripts. Olli went over the green writing to make it more legible, using an illegible font.)



Fod, started in February 2003, was another attempt, after a long line of them, at a collaborative website with friend Olli Smith. My first idea for it was a spoof of the video game Halo. I named it Bananas and Laxatives, and it was the first time I'd really put any of my writing online. It was consciously bad quality, containing gratuitous swearing and all the character mutilations and twisted ways to mess up the Halo universe that my fourteen-year-old mind could think of. The Covenant, the main enemy, became the Convent: an alliance of nuns, prostitutes, politicians and pro-wrestlers.

(Random aside: on page 299 of The Fall of Reach, one of the official Halo novels, 'Covenant' is actually typo'd as 'Convent'. Well, I laughed.)

Most chapters were accompanied by a screenshot from the game, beautifully transformed in Microsoft Paint. (Ironically, Cortana ended up with long hair in Halo 2 anyway. They obviously modelled her on her B&L equivalent, Bore-Tana.)

A violin tune that sounded like a strangled cat (if they make any noise) played as Captain PLEEEAAASE gave Bore-Tana the bad news the Convent was rapidly approaching. Bore-Tana had a tantrum. 'But I don't wanna be a nun!' she wailed.

Reveille It Up!

Meanwhile, in the cry-o-tube place thingy, Master Beef awoke. He started crying as he got out and a small man rushed to him. It was Pitri.

'It's OK, sir,' he said. 'We'll have you warmed up in no time!' He handed Beef a hot cocoa with marshmallows as he sniffled. He slurped at it.

'Why's he crying?' asked Sam, calling and leaning on the very big fragile glass window on the wall.

'It's a cry-o-tube, Sam, you dumbass!'

'Sorry Pitri. I'll just bring his health online then.'

'I suppose you should.' said Pitri.

'He needs his shield, Pitri. Give him that, if you can manage.'

'Dumbass!' Pitri handed Beef a silver tea tray. 'It will come in very handy, sir!'

'Thank you, Pitri.' said Beef. 'Thank you, Dumbass!' he called up to Sam.

'Sir, my name isn't Dumbass!'

The line of thought when I wrote this was 'What rhymes with "Master Chief" that would be hilarious?' Of course, 'Master Beef' was the spectacular end result. His pink rabbit costume was just another result of the mounting ridiculousness...

There was a knocking at the automatic door (is that bloody possible?). Dumbass...er...I mean Sam...opened it. Then they flooded in; ghostly figures in black that glided across the room and surrounded him. 'We come in the peace and the harmony of the Universe,' one sang in a high voice. 'Stay calm as we melt your...BRAIN!!!' The last word was particularly high and screechy and the huge glass panel smashed, causing Sam to fall to his doom. What a dumbass...

Luckily, the few nuns that fell through with him ended their lives with a sticky splat, but Pitri and Beef were running out of time. 'Quick sir!' said Pitri. 'This way!' The two of them ran through an automatic door (which apparently you can knock) and Beef knelt down to tie his bootlace. Pitri ran on ahead, but the nuns' echoing voices made his head explode.

'Bugger!' exclaimed Beef. Now he had no weapons and, because Pitri was gone, no shield either. The nuns had probably engulfed his tea tray. He looked back through the door window. NO!! They were using it to have a tea party! They had those cursed china toy cups and saucers too!

'Would you like some tea, Maggie?' one sang. 'Yes please!' chirruped another.

This whole thing was a disaster! Maybe if he looked into his new costume he would find help. NOOOOOOOOOOOO! It was a fluffy pink bunny costume rented from WarrenWorld Theme Park! The best thing he could do was to take a sharp turn left and go through the girls' bathroom.

And so it continued...

'Beeeeeef!' came a deep, irritated voice from one of the other cubicles. Beef plodded through the cubicles following the voice until he opened the final cubicle door and there was a head sticking out of the toilet. 'Beeeeeef! You made it!'

'What the fuck are you doing in there?'

'It's a long story,' said the captain. 'But I'll bore you with it anyway!'

After some confusion, Bore-Tana and Master Beef found themselves stuck in Gecko 4-19 with Poo Whammer and five mindless Marines. One, called Billy, had a perpetual smile and wouldn't take his eyes off Beef. 'I have new socks on!' he grinned, revealing red socks with some balloons on.

'Right, you motherfuckers, get off my Pelican! I have work to do!' The metallic ship suddenly went on a slant and the seven of them slid out of the cargo bay and hit the sandy ground hard. As Gecko 4-19 flew off, another Pelican landed and dropped off five more Marines.

'Wahoo! All right! Let's party!' The ten of them started doing the conga as Master Beef and Bore-Tana watched in dismay.

Beef armed himself with his assault rifle and followed them, keeping his distance.

He rubbed his hands together. 'Oohoohoo, this'll be fun!' He climbed in and made doubly sure that he found the turret switch while Sam got in beside him. 'Here comes Master Beef, protector of the universe that's not even worth saving!' He laughed loudly. 'Ooooooooh, it has machine guns, too!'

The tank, in all its half glory, rolled over and crushed the landscape, proudly and merrily. The three comrades sang true patriotic songs ('The wheels on the tank go round and round...') as they aimed for nowhere in particular.

'Brghgeehfghe!'

'What was that?'

'What?'

'Brhghefhghe!'

'The door, it's...opening!'

'God, no! How can this possibly be?'

'Shut up, Jenkins!'

'Brhghegfhdgfdgehghe!'

'Argh! It's on my face! It's small and brown and tasty and it's attacking me! Argh!'

'Haha!'

'Shut up Jenkins and fire your weapon! No, Jenkins, don't pick your nose again. What the--argh!'

'Hello, Mr Small Round Person! Wha? Get away from me! I don't like you! Argh!'

>>>UNEXPECTED HALT X. BLOCKBUSTER NOTICE: DAMAGED TAPE FINE $10. PLEASE VISIT US AGAIN SOON.

The Crud

Beef took his helmet off. 'That was odd.'

'Brhhghgefhehhghe!'

'What the--'

'Brghghghfhfhghfhfgmmmmmmmmm!'

'Uh oh...'

Suddenly, small, round, brown creatures came oozing through the doors.

'M...M...' Beef stuttered.

They crawled and bounced closer towards him; he armed himself with his assault rifle.

'Muffins!'

One of them lunged at his mouth and exploded in his fur.

'Oh my fuck, they're double chocolate!' He fired rapidly at them; dozens of chocolate explosions alerted more of them, and soon all six doors became muffin entrances.

He turned to the door he had originally come through. There, stood the Sarge of the previous gang, but he wasn't the old Sarge. He was...one of them. There was a strenuous fart, a constipated sounding wheeze and the mutated Crud-form Sarge lunged himself at Beef.

The shotgun was always the answer to everything.

Beef escaped while he could, running through the continuous waves of Crud, who had conveniently starting appearing since they were introduced to the storyline. Beef encountered countless muffins, Crud-Marines and even Crud Nuns. The most horrific of all, though, were the huge muffin-headed ones that stupidly fell over and exploded, scattering dozens of new muffins.

(I later used the muffin on the right of the image above as an avatar on a message board. Eyebrows were raised, questions were asked, and, well, the muffin became an integral part of my dazzling persona. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why Amelia calls me 'muffinkid'.)

Suddenly, a microwave started to hover over his head. 'Greetings!' it said in an accent that was supposed to be English but you could tell it was American. It pinged, its door flung open and a pie went flying into a huddle of nearby muffins. 'I am 343 Salty Mark. This has got out of hand. I ask you to come with me, but in the end you haven't really got a choice, because I'll just teleport you anyway. Come.'

There was some yellow ambience and the two of them disappeared.

'Beef?' came the voice of Poo Whammer on the radio. 'Beef, I've lost your signal! Beef? Beef! Haha, sucker.'

343 Salty Mark, also known as The Microwave, was the result of a conversation with my brother as I was playing the final level of Halo, jumping around and throwing grenades into things. He commented on how he thought it was all very unfair on Guilty Spark and the Sentinels, because they were just trying to protect themselves. I asked how the machines had formed, not really knowing the background to the game in much detail. He replied, 'I don't know, they evolved from microwaves or something.'

We laughed.

Then Salty Mark remembered that the Crud were lurking closely. 'We must avoid the you-know-what,' he said. 'I am not a public cafeteria and do not have enough pies for all of them!'

Beef took a book off one of the shelves.

Salty Mark Snacks
The Definitive
Salt Snack Guide

'You're an author?' Beef asked.

'I prefer to think of myself as a chef, but yes, if that's what you want me to be.'

'Actually, I couldn't care less.' said Beef. 'I'm just trying to make small conversation for the hell of it.'

'Debt Reclaimer?'

'Yeah?'

'You are an ass.'

''K.'

Bananas and Laxatives was never properly completed, although I did start writing the sequel, Bananas and Laxatives 2: Fragmentation Memories, supposedly the 'third person' diaries of Master Beef chronicling the events that took place after Beef returned home. It was to feature the return of such characters as the Convent, Sam and Salty Mark, along with new characters such as Lara Schmoft, Captain Knees, a talking walrus taking residence at WarrenWorld themepark, and Master Cheese. Most of the ideas I had for the sequel were jotted down on several post-it notes that I still have. A third story was also considered, a Matrix parody in which Beef wasn't even the main protagonist, but was to die spectacularly at the end.

But...it wasn't to be, and Bananas and Laxatives was abandoned after a rather nonsensical final chapter for the original story was posted on a message board and completely ignored, revealing Halo and the events surrounding it as a huge conspiracy staged by a massive laxatives company.

And, well, I quite liked writing about the character of the hilariously named Master Beef. And so I continued to do so.

Labels: a history of development, agaffa, bananas and laxatives, excerpts, halo, i am the ramblemaster, the aberration, videogames

# posted by Chris @ 12:06 AM 0 comments