On Genre Inbreeding and the Lineage of Bertbert

All right, y'all, bear with me.  This is a post about the dangers and temptations of wearing ruts in your favorite section of the bookstore, but it is also a five-star extended analogy (plus an excuse to wax nostalgic about one of my favorite things ever.)

There is a game called The Neverhood, released far back in the mists of time (1996, to be exact.)  It's a claymation point-and-click adventure, in which our hero, Klaymen, wakes up alone in an empty world, and must solve puzzles to discover the truth of this abandoned paradise.  It is simply fabulous.


Anyway, one building in the Neverhood contains the Hall of Records.  Its walls tell the story of Quater, a supreme being, who fashioned seven sons, and gave each the power of creation.

The second of Quater's seven sons was Bertbert.

Empowered by Quater to create, Bertbert, believing that he himself was Quater, begat another Bertbert.

This second Bertbert begat Bredbad, a weak attempt at a Bertbert; but with a speech impediment.

...

Bredbad, having no point of reference but himself, begat Bridabrack the Literal.

Who begat Bickback. Bickback was thin for his age and his peers mocked him for the purple and green skin splotches that covered his body. Once a large crowd of descendants of Bertbert had formed, poor Bickback was made to sit in the back.

...

Bickback lived a happy life; he wed Phyllis, a demure little lady, also from the back of the crowd.

He begat Mak Mok which means "low is high."

Mak Mok begat Mak Mak.

Who begat Mak Mak.

Who begat Mak Mak.

Who begat Mak Mak, who fashioned a two-sided being which included both genders, male and female, one on either side. It was a colossal being named Mammur who was very proud indeed.

The begetting continues unabated.

Klee, having become ruler of all the land of Fep, was compelled by his people to change his name to Fay Nee, which means, "Most of which still do not agree."

Fay Nee begat Fay Nee.

Who begat Wah Nee.

Who begat Acker, who looked nothing like his father, Wah Nee, but nonetheless, managed to create Ehp.

...

Ehp's own creation came out looking like a pile of something badly burned, so he named it, "Uh Uh."

Uh Uh was not alive, so it could not beget anything.

Thus ends the lineage of Bertbert.
(Bust photo from The Neverhood Wiki)

So maybe you can already tell where I'm going with this.  About how (for example) The Lord of the Rings begets Dungeons & Dragons, which begets the Dragonlance Chronicles and Forgotten Realms, which begets R.A. Salvatore's Dark Elf Trilogy, which feeds in to fantasy MMOs like EverQuest and Neverwinter Nights, and before you know it, everybody's in on the action. 

And then, of course, there's the glut.  Millions of people grow up reading about / watching / playing as elves and dwarves and short plucky people, so hundreds of thousands of people write about them, and thousands of people with really pretty good stories end up getting rejected over and over again because Legendary Swords Are So Done, and Sorry, We're Full Up on Chosen Ones, and NO ELVES EVER.

It's not that NOBODY can spin that yarn anymore - but like tyrannosaurs stomping through the jungle eating over-ambitious tiny mammals, the big-name established apex predators of the genre are now dominating it so thoroughly that it becomes really hard for any new voice to grow to comparable size.  Effectively, the genre conventions become an albatross around your neck: you may succeed, but if you do, it will be IN SPITE OF your graceful Aryan elves and axe-wielding beardtacular dwarves, and not because of them.

Because if we learned anything from Dragon's Crown,
it's that you really can have too much of a good thing.
(Photo from IGN)

And that is a shame.  Because it means that we are probably missing out on a lot of pretty kickass stories.

I'm not totally sure how we get around that.  But my eye is still drawn to that phrase from gen-three Bertbert up above: having no point of reference but himself.  If all we ever read is fantasy, how can we bring anything new to the fantasy genre?  If all we ever read is romance, or lit-fic, or thrillers, how can we contribute anything but more taut abs, dysfunctional Appalachian childhoods, and troubled badasses running from checkered pasts, respectively?

Anyway, I don't mean to sit here and act like I've got it all figured out or anything.  But when we sit down to write fiction, I do think it's worth considering where the book will fall in your chosen genre's genealogy - you know, what its "begats" are, and how many distinct ancestors it really has.  Because having a diverse gene pool is probably at least as important for a thriving literary culture as it is for Tasmanian Devils not going extinct from contagious face-cancer.  And for fictional clay dynasties, natch.


Companions are chosen for you by the Management.  You will normally meet them for the first time at the outset of the Tour.  They are picked from among the following: BARD, FEMALE MERCENARY, GAY MAGE, IMPERIOUS FEMALE, LARGE MAN, SERIOUS SOLDIER, SLENDER YOUTH, SMALL MAN,  TALENTED GIRL, TEENAGE BOY, UNPLEASANT STRANGER, and WISE OLD STRANGER.

The Armikrog Dilemma

Once upon a time, I was a child.

And in my childhood, there was a game.  It was called The Neverhood.

And this game was phenomenal.

Our hero, Klaymen, wakes up alone in a deserted world, and must solve puzzles and brave strange dangers to discover what happened to this abandoned paradise.  It's cool and weird and wonderful, with a colorful world (not as empty as it seems!), characters that sear themselves into your brain-engrams, and a story that goes eight miles deep.  And if there's one reason why it's my favorite game of all time, I'd have to lean on my previous post to explain it.  There's love and passion and one-of-a-kind creativity pressed into every clay thumbprint. It is unique, irreplaceable, a point-and-click platypus: accept no substitutes, because there aren't any.

Sadly, The Neverhood didn't sell well.  It's long out of print now, and so old that most computers can't even run it.  EA have been sitting on the rights for fifteen years, stoically disinclined to either sell them or develop a new game.

Then came Kickstarter.

And then came Armikrog.

"What's this?" said I, when it first hit my radar.  "Doug TenNapel, storied creator of The Neverhood and Earthworm Jim, is making a new game?  And he needs my help to do it?!  Quickly, kitten - dredge the couch for quarters!"

Let me tell you, friends - I salivated over the Kickstarter page.  I pored over every pencil sketch.  I watched this trailer too many times to count.

I have not pledged to this project.

Y'know, a lot has changed since The Neverhood came out in 1996.  What I know now, and what I couldn't have known then, is that Doug TenNapel is not only a brilliant, fantastically talented artist, but also a person with personal views I find appalling, and - here's the crux - a penchant for shouting those views from the e-rooftops.  MostlyRetro covers the specifics pretty well, but the AV Club's also done an excellent writeup.  Short story: while I would never advocate actively silencing him, I can't buy from this guy anymore.

"But Tex!" the kid in me says. "It's not like he's the man in charge - he's just the designer the studio hired!  And what about all those other perfectly nice wonderful people the studio ALSO hired?  When you go to a movie, do you think not a single one of those million and five people in the credits gives money to causes you find objectionable?  Come on, it's not like he's the CEO of a huge multinational corporation - any money he donates to Fear the Queers Inc. because of this project is going to be negligible at most.  And if you don't use your dollars to help prove that there's still a market for great games like these, how will they ever get made?"

My inner child can be a real punk sometimes.  Moreover, the super-annoying thing about being an adult is that you're old enough not only to know what's bad for you - cookies, all-nighters, methamphetamines - but also to have acquired some idea of what's bad for other people.  The alternative is saying, "don't worry, cherished friends and neighbors - I stand by you and support your fight for equality.  Except when I really want a new video game.  Or a fried chicken sandwich."  (And no matter which side of that fence you're on, I think we can all agree that selling your principles for a toy is poor form indeed.)

"Wow, Tex," you may be saying to yourself at this point, "this sure is a long-ass post for what basically amounts to patting yourself on the back.  And if you're so sure this guy doesn't deserve funding or a platform, why have you just spent 500 words showcasing his game?"

Well, three reasons:

1.  Armikrog and The Neverhood ARE interesting and special, and the more people are exposed to them, the more readily they can seek out and support projects LIKE these from people who aren't TenNapel.

2.  There are worthy conversations to be had, especially in this community, about separating art from artist and how the Internet has changed our ability to keep our idols safely up on their pedestals where we can't hear them.

and 3.  If you choose not to support this project, it ought to be because you've made a reasoned decision about it, and not because you never even heard of the damn thing.  (For one thing, it's worthy of notice, and for another, it's harder for people to claim censorship and oppression when everybody has seen and discussed the subject and THEN turned away.)

Anyway, the Kickstarter's still got a couple of days left, and I'll be interested to see how it turns out.  In the meantime, somebody tell me I'm not alone - when's the last time you regretfully stuffed money back in your wallet?

After many years' journey, Hoborg returned and was ready to build "The Everhood," a neighborhood that would last forever... so long as nothing went wrong.

Ordering, or, What Pushes YOUR Buttons?

No awesome accomplishments to detail this week; real life has sucked me up altogether.  (Well, I did go to a pretty kick-butt author-reading session at the local B&N today; that was rad.) 

You know what I've always liked in fiction?  Ordering.

And when I was a kid, I didn't care if it was ham-fistedly done: I was consternated and delighted when I got to the top of the Tower of Zot and had the showdown with Sandy, Cindy, and Mindy (there's an order to taking them down, and you are screwed without it!), and just because you knew from the get-go that there were four Elemental Fiends didn't make them any less thrillsome in turn (all right, she's the Fiend of Air, what's she going to - OH GOD WHAT.) 

As I've gotten older and harder to please, though, what really pumps me up are the stories where the ordering is less rote, more subtle.  A truly excellent example is the matching of the Ur'Ru and the Skeksis in The Dark Crystal: in the movie, it's no secret that their lives are linked, but the finer parallels are laid out in the book: the Alchemist shares his soul with the Scientist, the Cook with the Gourmand, and so on.  Or (for real thematic whiplash here), there's the Seven Evil Exes of Scott Pilgrim: you know the number from the get-go, but the numbering under the numbering is sublime.  I hardly need to nerd at length about it when the Wiki spells it out so much better than I could.

To be sure, this is the WORST of all plot elements when it's abused.  (Man, I was SO INTO InuYasha for the first... what, four or five episodes.  Then the shikon jewel shattered into a MILLION tiny little pieces, every one of which would have to be individually collected in what promised to be a truly bloated and episodic saga, and I was done.)  At its worst, it makes the story obscenely predictable, and cuts the tension down to zero: if it's said outright that the hero has to collect seven magical plot-coupons in order to save the world, is anyone really on the edge of their seat thinking that he might die trying to win coupon #4? 

But when it's done right, ordering is a SUBLIME way to ratchet up the tension.  Every deadly sin in Se7en nudges up your horror and nausea as you try to imagine the next ghastly atrocity - and I don't know about you, but knowing that three of the five Gates have already been destroyed is leaving me right on the edge of my seat as The Order of the Stick tries to save at least one of the last two before the bad guys can get at them and ruin the world.

You know, for a wannabe author, I have a suspicious dearth of books represented in all this.

Anyway!  So that's my rambling; let's hear yours.  What particular fiction elements get YOUR creative brain-sensors all a-tingling?

I'm Ramona's FIRST evil ex-boyfriend.