I actually completely forgot about this last week – it was
about Thursday or Friday before I realised that I hadn’t done it, and by that
point I might as well merge it with the next week’s one.
The last two weeks have been absolutely fantastic. I have
made fantastic progress on the audiobook for On The Subject Of Trolls.
The third story in OTSOT – Fluncg the Indignant – was, as I’ve
said many times, very difficult to get right (both in audio form, and the
original text of the story actually). I expected Hluthg the First to be a lot
easier, and it was.
I had already recorded all of the audio for Hluthg the First
– I did it in two parts – the first many, many months ago, and the second
fairly recently. It was an easier story to read than some of the others. So I
just had to edit it. I did most of this the weekend before last. I went through
all of the audio, and removed all of the takes of lines that I wasn’t going to
use. Then I applied the various audio effects. Then I went through and adjusted
the timings of all of the lines (an essential step, as when you take out the
bad lines, you’re left with completely irregular timings).
I then listened back to it to do a final check. I found that
there were a few lines I wanted to re-record – I thought I could do them better
– so I did. This pretty much left the audio in a finished state – I just had to
do one final listen of the whole thing, then add the music.
And that’s what I did this last weekend. I checked it one
last time, added the music, and it was ready to go.
I also did Plolg the Common this last weekend. Well – there wasn’t
really much to do. I had already recorded and edited the audio for Plolg the Common.
It’s much shorter than the other stories, so it was quite easy to do. I just
had to check it and add the music.
So both stories were done. I made both into videos, and they’re
both going live on my YouTube channel this week. (Hluthg the First went live
yesterday; Plolg the Common is going live tomorrow.)
So finally, after two years, this project is done. I
could not have imagined, when I published On The Subject Of Trolls, that the
audiobook would take so long. On the one hand, this is quite annoying. On The
Subject Of Trolls is not a long book – how could it take two years to create
an audiobook for it? On the other hand, there’s been a huge amount of trial and
error involved in creating this audiobook. I have tried lots of different things
in terms of audio setup, as well as just the process for recording and
editing a long piece of audio, and so it makes sense that it would have taken a
long time.
In the beginning, of course, I was much more focused on
creating videos of these stories – not just videos where I read out the
text – videos where the stories are actually performed. This is because
I like the idea of the experience of watching or listening to these stories to
be as full as possible. The trolls are also very physical creatures. But making
these kinds of videos is extremely difficult in itself. They take an
extraordinary amount of time to record and to edit, but then there are all the
usual difficulties in creating a video on top of that, like lighting and colour
grading (which I don’t do yet, but would need to in order for the videos to be
really good). And if these videos aren’t perfect, it can really take away from
the story.
I still want to do some videos where I perform these
stories, but I think this might be better suited to livestreams.
I swapped to focusing on just the audio for the stories. But
even this on its own has its complications.
At first, in order to try to get the best audio quality
possible, I decided to try to record in a small walk-in wardrobe that I have.
The wardrobe is in the middle of the apartment, so it has thick walls around
it, but then another layer of thick walls around that. It’s
pretty sound-proof in there – you don’t hear anything from outside.
However, the wardrobe is so small that you can’t sit down in
it – you have to stand up. It’s pretty difficult to stand and perform an
audiobook for more than about half an hour, so I had to record in half-hour
blocks. This is quite impractical – it can take many, many hours to record even
quite a short story – stopping and starting really slows you down. It’s a lot
better if you can sit down while recording.
Ideally, you do also need to be able to see what you’ve
recorded on your computer screen immediately. It makes it easier to tell if
something’s going wrong. In that small wardrobe, I wasn’t connected directly to
my computer.
So after several attempts at recording in the wardrobe, I
decided it wasn’t the best way of doing it.
There was also a lot of trial and error involved in using
the right microphone. In early attempts, partly because I was in that wardrobe,
I used a small Zoom recorder that I have. I bought it a few years ago, and it can
produce an excellent audio quality. But I realised, over time, that in order to
get that good quality, you have to use the microphone in a very specific
way. You have to be extremely close to it, and it has to be angled towards your
face just right. If you lean away from it, or turn your head, or change the
volume you’re speaking at, the audio quality changes. This is very impractical
for On The Subject Of Trolls. (When I read the stories into the microphone –
particularly the trolls’ lines – I do take on the ‘big’ physicality of the
trolls – I move around a lot. The trolls also shout a lot.)
Eventually I swapped to using my Samson C01U condenser
microphone. I’ve had this microphone for about seven years – it’s been very
useful over that time. I had previously avoided using it, however (even though
it might seem like the obvious choice) because the sound it produced didn’t
really sound ‘audiobook-y’. The sound that it produced just sounded like some
guy reading into a microphone. (Of course, that’s what an audiobook is,
but there’s a certain tone and quality to the sound of an audiobook that that
microphone just didn’t produce.)
It was only after a lot more experimentation with audio
effects that I figured out how to get the audio from that microphone to sound
like what you typically hear in an audiobook. The two key effects are both a
bass boost and a treble boost – that’s the magic. I’m not an audio engineer,
but I would guess that the microphone itself has its greatest sensitivity to
mid-range frequencies, and less sensitivity to higher and lower range
frequencies. So these higher and lower ranges needed to be boosted in the
editing to compensate. Boosting the lower ranges gives a richness to the audio –
it makes it sound like the speaker is in the same room. Boosting the higher
ranges gives a clarity to the audio.
So after all of that I knew where I was going to
record, and what I was going to record with, but getting the process
right took even more trial and error.
When it comes to actually writing stories, my process
is pretty well mapped out. First I have the idea, then I write an outline, then
a detailed plan, then the actual text of the story, then I just keep doing
editing passes until it’s finished. It’s pretty similar to what a lot of people
do. But with audiobooks, I had no such process, and it turns out what you do
can have a drastic effect on how long it takes.
One thing I’ve worked out is that it is generally A LOT
easier to re-record a line than it is to try to record a line perfectly the
first time. If you try to get it exactly right the first time, you’ll end up
having to make several attempts at it. This then gives you A LOT more stuff to
have to sift through when editing to try to find the best attempt, and this is
what takes a lot of time. It might seem like going back and re-recording lines
would take a lot of time, because you have to slot the audio in place, and
maybe re-apply effects, but it is actually less time.
Along with this, every time you have to stop and redo a
line, you lose some of the fluidity in your speech – the intonation won’t quite
match between that line and the previous one, and the pacing might be off.
That, in turn, means you have to make more attempts at the line to get it
right. It’s circular. The best thing to do is, even if you make a mistake, just
carry on – fix it later.
When it comes to editing, it’s tempting to try to do
everything in one pass – to remove the bad takes, record new ones, and adjust
the timings. This is quite exhausting. I now split it into several distinct ‘passes’.
The first pass is just to remove takes that I definitely won’t be using.
Generally after that pass is when I apply the audio effects. On the second pass
I go through and adjust the timings, and it’s now when I’ll re-record any lines
that I want to re-record. And then any subsequent passes are to check it.
This tends to be a pretty quick way of doing the process.
And it means you only have to listen to the whole track a few times. These
tracks can be quite long, so you don’t want to have to listen back to them
dozens of times if possible.
So, as you can see, there has been a lot of trial and error.
And it’s all of this that’s meant this first audiobook has taken two years. The
next one should be a lot quicker. I may also put all of this information into a
video.
So that’s been the last two weeks: a lot of success with the audiobook. I will, fairly soon, attempt to make these audio tracks into an ‘actual’ audiobook, and have it available on Audible.
Also, Friday is the First of October, and three years since
the publication of my first book, Zolantis. The First of October has always
been a special date. I am planning to do some livestreams over this weekend to
celebrate.
I skipped last week’s ‘A Week in Writing’ post (not
completely intentionally – I just kept putting it off), so this week’s post is
going to be for the last two weeks. And why not? It’s my series, after all.
The last two weeks have been very productive, despite only
being able to spend a relatively small amount of time on writing and
writing-related projects.
The week before last, I did a good chunk of writing, and I
managed to finish the fourth story for OTSOT 3 (which is going in fifth
position in the book). This is great – after months of going very slowly with
this book (for many reasons, which included getting distracted by other stories),
I seem to have sped up again. It feels like I’m getting very close to finishing
now.
I did also start on the fifth story for OTSOT 3 (which is going
in fourth position in the book) the week before last, and I continued it last
week. OTSOT 3 has now passed 20,000 words, and I think this book is going to
end up being slightly longer than the other two. I suspect this fifth story is
going to be quite long. If I remember correctly, OTSOT 1 is around 22,000, and
OTSOT 2 is around 20,000. I wouldn’t be surprised if this one ends up around
23,000-24,000.
The ‘feel’ of this book is, I think, slightly different to
the other two. (Similarly, I think the ‘feel’ of OTSOT 2 was slightly different
to OTSOT 1.) I quite like this. To me, this suggests that each book is not just
treading the ground of the previous books – they are each introducing something
slightly different. I think this is good – I think this expands the world of
the stories.
Also over the last two weeks, I’ve had tremendous success
with part of the audiobook for OTSOT 1. The week before last, I went through
the audio story for Fluncg the Indignant, and cut out all the bad takes.
Listening back to what I had recorded, I still liked it – a good sign. Then
last week (well, over the weekend just gone), I went through the track and
arranged all of the clips – making sure that the timings between them were
correct. I also applied all of the audio effects (normalisation, equalisation, et
cetera).
I also added the music that goes at the start and end of the
story. I was then able to listen back to the story in its complete form for the
first time. I REALLY liked it. I thought it had turned out very well – not perfectly,
of course – they never do – but really well. The voice, while not absolutely
perfect for Fluncg, is funny and annoying – great for a short story like this –
it’s entertaining, while also making its point.
And in fact I think this audio story might just be the best
one I’ve made so far. It’s difficult to really say, but it might be. (That’s
partly helped along by the text of the story itself – Fluncg the Indignant is
shorter, with fewer details, than something like Throch the Cunning.) Spending
all this time agonising over the audio has paid off, it seems.
The audio story has been exported, made into a video, and
uploaded to my main YouTube channel. It’s going live on Wednesday evening at
10:00.
The audio story for Hluthg the First should be a lot easier –
I’ve always known what Hluthg’s voice sounds like. I’ve already recorded the
whole thing – I’ve just got to finish editing it (which doesn’t take that long,
if I make myself do it – I just hate editing audio). With any luck I can get
that out in a few weeks’ time (though I’ve said that before).
This week, the official trailer for The Matrix Resurrections
– supposedly the fourth film in the Matrix series – was released, and despite
really liking the Matrix trilogy (I’m one of what seems like a minority of
people who like the second and third films), I find myself wandering whether I
should even go and see this film at all.
In recent years, Hollywood has created a lot of sequels to
films and series’ that had seemed to be over and complete many years or even
decades ago: Disney’s attempt at a Star Wars trilogy, the new Jumanji films,
the Jurassic World films, the Fantastic Beasts films, Independence Day:
Resurgence, and more that I can’t remember.
Many (but not all) of these haven’t been very good, and some – like Disney’s Star Wars films – have been absolute garbage. (You’d think that, given how obsessed Hollywood seems to be with sequels, that they’d have gotten good at them by now.)
And at this point, I have very little trust in Hollywood
that they can make a sequel to a film or series – particularly one that was
made over a decade ago – that doesn’t just completely ruin the whole thing.
This is no longer a per-franchise problem – it’s no longer ‘Oh well that
sequel film wasn’t very good but sequel films for other franchises will probably
still be great.’ – I think we’re at the point (well beyond the point, some
would argue) where we just cannot trust Hollywood with any sequel to any
film or series.
This problem does seem to be particularly prominent for
films or series’ made over a decade ago. (Unbelievably, The Matrix Revolutions
came out in 2003!) I think this is partly because filmmakers don’t want to
imitate the style of older films (even though they could do so very easily) –
either the style of storytelling or the technical style. This is one of the
apprehensions I have about The Matrix 4 after seeing the trailer – it seems
very apparent to me that they have not tried to reproduce the visual style of
the original three films. This will make it very difficult for this film to sit
alongside the other three.
But even more important than that, the ending of The Matrix
Revolutions was conclusive – the end of a war – it doesn’t get much more
conclusive than that. Continuing the story after that necessarily means that
you either have to have a ‘quieter’ period within the world of the story, where
the necessary world-building can happen to build up to a more dramatic time
period, or you have to undo something about the previous ending. Hollywood always
seems to go for the second option, which is the incorrect option, as it
undermines the previous story, and any character development that happened in it.
(This is the option that Disney went for with the Star Wars films, and it’s a
big part of what killed the franchise.)
Based on the glimpses that we get from the trailer, it
appears that the matrix is still running, and Neo and Trinity are somehow back
inside it, despite both dying at the end of the last film. (Now, it’s generally
not a good idea to try to work out the story of a film like this based on its
trailer – the trailers are designed to confuse you as to what the actual story is
– but this is what appears to be true.) While the conclusion to the last film
was that the matrix would continue, but anyone who wanted out would be freed,
it does look like something is going to be undone with this new film.
(Also, Laurence Fishburne is not returning for this film,
despite the character of Morpheus being in it. I don’t know why this is – it’s
possible that he simply didn’t want to. But Laurence Fishburne was iconic as
Morpheus, and it really lowers my confidence in the film that he’s not in it.)
So I really don’t know if I want to go and see this film at
all. It seems likely that this film is going to undo part of the ending of the
previous films. That will in turn make this film unpopular, reducing the
chances that a subsequent film or two are made to complete what will almost
certainly be a new trilogy of films (because how can you follow a big trilogy
of films with just one more film – surely you have to have another trilogy?).
That will leave us with the original trilogy, plus one, maybe two more films that
undermine the original trilogy, and which aren’t in themselves complete. It
seems to me like this series is likely to end up a mess.
I will probably decide closer to the time whether I actually
want to see it or not.
It’s been both a productive and unproductive week for
writing.
I had my second vaccine dose this weekend. When I had the
first dose, for the following two days I was extremely tired – particularly on
the day immediately after it. This time it was the same – I had the jab on
Saturday, and on Sunday I was completely knocked out – I could hardly move – I was
completely shattered. I don’t think I was awake for more than two or three
consecutive hours the whole day. And then Monday was mostly the same – until very
late in the evening, when I started to get more energy again.
So effectively the whole weekend – that huge block of
valuable time when I had been planning on focusing entirely on writing and
related things – was just gone.
Despite that, there have been other small islands of time
when I’ve been able to do things. Early last week I re-recorded the entirety of
Fluncg the Indignant for the audiobook. It was very quick to do. (I’ve done it
so many times now.) I did change the voice of Fluncg ever so slightly
again, but it really wasn’t much – I just changed the way the gravelliness
comes through in it a bit. The result is that it emphasises Fluncg’s arrogance
and over-drama a bit more, which is fun.
I began editing that audio, but I haven’t finished – there’s
still quite a bit to do. But … if you get into it, you can get through a lot
of the editing fairly quickly – maybe I’ll be able to finish it this weekend.
The voice of Fluncg is enormous fun to do. (The voices of
all the trolls are. I think my favourite of the ones published so far is
probably that of Gogog. But the one I’m really looking forward to doing is that
of the head of The Company, from More On The Subject Of Trolls. I’ve known that
voice for years, and it is endless fun. It’s a completely full-body voice.)
I have also done more planning of Project 201811 this week –
that’s been extremely useful. There’s lots of funny stuff going into that. If I
ever write and finish the whole thing, that will probably be my funniest story.
And I have also written more of OTSOT 3 – about 1500 words –
which doesn’t sound like a lot, but the OTSOT stories, being short
stories, tend to cut out a lot of the … not ‘filler’ but sort of ‘adjacent’
material that you often find in novels. The stories in OTSOT often really try
to avoid anything that isn’t directly relevant to the moral of the story. And
so a lot can happen in 1500 words.
Also, with a much clearer outline for this story, writing it
has become a lot easier – the value of planning is revealed yet again. It
should be quite easy to finish it now, leaving one story left in OTSOT 3 to
finish.
I have a great many three-day weekends lined up over the next
few months. This is something I’ve done for many years in order to maximise my
productivity on things I’m doing – arrange to have as many three-day weekends
as possible. It’s amazing what one extra day can do.
Well the time has just evaporated this week. It seems like I’ve
had hardly any chance at all to do some writing since the last of these posts.
I haven’t done a lot of writing of actual story words this
week – i.e., words that might actually be part of the final book. In fact I don’t
think I’ve done any. But I have done something else that’s very important – I have
done planning for at least two stories.
I’ve mentioned recently how nowadays there are times when I
can write out a story exactly how I want it first time. There are advantages
and disadvantages to this, and one of the disadvantages is that you can sort of
get used to it. If you have a few stories like this in a row, you start to expect
it for subsequent ones – and that’s a problem, because it simply won’t happen
for all stories.
But on top of this, sometimes not only has a story turned
out well straight away, but the idea for a story had been fully formed in my
head as I sat down to start writing it. This has gotten me into the bad habit of
not necessarily planning stories before writing them. This is despite me being
a strong advocate for planning stories. (It’s also worth pointing out that
being able to write a full story without planning it is made a lot easier when
it’s a short story (particularly one of my short stories, which tend to be
about 3000-5000 words long).)
Writing the final two stories for OTSOT 3 has been trickier
than I anticipated, so in order to make it easier, and in order to get out of
this bad habit, I have made a deliberate effort to plan these final two (even
though they are pretty simple stories). One of them I think I did over a week
ago, the other one – the longer one – I did this week. And the value of
planning is once again revealed – I was able to identify several important
things that should happen early in the stories by planning them.
Also this week, I tried to do more on the audio story for
Fluncg the Indignant. I did a lot of editing of the audio that I had, trying to
produce the final cut. However, I found that the audio I had for the different lines
in various places didn’t really ‘gel’. Some of the narrator’s lines didn’t
really gel with the characters’ lines, and it occurred to me that the simplest
thing to do would just be to re-record the whole thing. (It sounds like a
drastic action, but I’ve gotten a lot better and faster at recording audio
stories, and at least this one’s not as long as Throch the Cunning – this one’s
actually quite short.)
In entirely non-writing news, over the last week I have made
fantastic progress in drawing out my family tree. This is a project that I’ve been
interested in and working on slowly for (I think) about two years. I had access
to a lot of data for my family tree – both my parents had partial trees drawn out
already, so I just had to copy the data in those. What I wanted to do was
combine all of the data, and have a computer program draw out the tree.
I had previously started creating a program to read all of
the data from a file, and then draw out the tree, in Python. However, Python’s
built-in image-drawing abilities are very lacking, and I realised that in order
to draw the tree nicely, I needed to switch to a language with better
image-drawing abilities. So I swapped to using C# – a language I used to use a
lot years ago, but which I haven’t used very much since. Doing this has allowed
me to produce a much better-drawn tree. I also finished typing in all of the
data from the existing trees. So I now have a very large image that shows the
tree, and it looks quite nice.
I’ve been rather obsessed with this project over the last
few days, so over the next week, when I’m not writing, I will likely be doing
this. The next things to do are to improve the visual design of the tree even
more, and to do more original research to find more ancestors to put on the
tree.
It’s been a slow week. Many things have interrupted my
writing.
I did write some more in Project 201811 – only a few hundred
words, but they were good words. What I wrote almost certainly won’t change
much between now and the final draft.
This is something that I find often now. I can often write
something just the way I want it the first time. Many of the stories in OTSOT 2
and some in OTSOT 1 were like that, as well as many of the off-series short
stories. This is different to Zolantis, and all of the stuff that I was writing
before that, where the text changed drastically between the first and last
drafts.
On the one hand, I quite like that this happens now – that I
can get things right the first time. It saves a lot of time. Editing
single lines to make the language better is a pretty quick thing to do, but
changing the structure of a story once it’s been written, or adjusting the
emphasis of a plot point or character trait, can add a huge amount of time to
editing, because there are just so many things that need to be changed if you
do that.
On the other hand, sometimes I try to aim to get
something right the first time, and this is not ideal. When something just happens
to turn out right the first time, great, but when you aim for it, you
can end up spending a lot of time trying to anticipate every problem you’re
going to encounter trying to write the story, and this is not so great.
Despite not writing very many words in the last week, I did
do something else that was very important.
I have been trying to do the audiobook for On The Subject Of
Trolls for two years. I thought it would take a matter of weeks, but it has
taken years. That’s in large part because I keep getting distracted from the
project – it’s more fun to write new stories than to record old ones. But it’s
also partly because making an audiobook is not as easy as it seems.
Getting the right audio setup to begin with is quite difficult.
Microphones can differ quite drastically in the quality of the sound that they
produce – it’s only recently that I bought a new microphone that produces a
really nice sound. The room that you’re in has a big effect on the sound. I do
have a small, walk-in wardrobe that blocks all of the sound from outside, and
which has almost no echo to it, and I did try using that when I first started
trying to make the audiobook for OTSOT. However, you need to be able to sit
down when recording an audiobook – it takes hours and hours to record, even for
a short book like OTSOT – you can’t stand the entire time – and that room was
too small to sit down in. So now I record audio at my desk (that you see in the
videos). That’s in quite a large, echoey room, but with a certain arrangement
of foam shields, the echo is mostly blocked.
There are many other technical hurdles to recording an audiobook, but on top of all of these, I had a creative hurdle too. I knew what the voices of Throch, Gogog, Hluthg, and Plolg sounded like long before I published OTSOT. (In fact, I knew what Throch’s voice sounded like the moment I started writing the first sentence of the book.) But with Fluncg, the voice that I used in my head when writing the story is not a ‘performable’ one – it’s entirely abstract – a voice that cannot exist in the real, physical world. So I needed to choose a real one.
I have been trying to come up with a real voice for Fluncg for two years, and none of them have been right. But this week, finally, I think I might have done it. I had an idea for a new voice, and I spent a while analysing it, to see if it really contained the essence of Fluncg. (That sounds like a rather disgusting perfume.) Fluncg has a very specific personality: Fluncg is easily offended, Fluncg is overly dramatic and self-centred, and Fluncg is infinitely spiteful. The voice must match that, but it must also be a fun voice – these stories are intended to be fun. I think this latest voice finally gets the balance between all of those things.
I recorded Fluncg’s lines with this new voice in just a few
minutes. All I need to do now is edit the audio. I hate editing video and audio,
so I always put it off, even though it never takes as long as I think it’s
going to. But I’m going to try to drive towards finishing this audio story over
the next week or two – it has languished for far too long.
This post is the first in a new series on this blog.
Starting a new series is a dangerous thing for me. When it comes to blog posts
and videos, I tend to start series’ and then not finish them. Hopefully this
one will be different, and I think the format will help with that.
The idea for this series is just that, every week, I will
write about what writing and writing-related things I’ve gotten up to in the
last week. It will be quite similar to a journal. (I do in fact write a journal
too – I write in that every day, and have done for (almost) eight years – I was
doing it before it was cool.)
The reason for doing this series is partly so that I have
more stuff on this blog. I don’t do very much with this blog – I want to do more
with it. But it’s also because, every week, there are lots of things that I’m
thinking about with regards to writing, and making videos, and all of the other
stuff, that no-one ever knows about, and I think this can make it seem like
what I’m doing is quite erratic and disconnected. These blog posts should
hopefully connect together the various things I do.
They’ll also end up giving a look behind the scenes of the
stuff I do. In the past I’ve tended to mention this sort of thing at the start
of videos on my YouTube channel. However, I realised that it tends to stop the
video dead if I start out with a long and rambly explanation of how the video
came to be and why I wanted to make it, so I don’t do that now. I think that
kind of information is better on here.
So that’s the introduction to the series. Will I make it to
week two? Who knows.
Now to the actual point of the blog post: what have I been
doing over the last week?
The last week has been a mixture of zero productivity and
maximum productivity. During the week last week, I didn’t do any writing. Over
the weekend, however – specifically, on Saturday – I did loads. I wrote over
2500 words in one story idea.
It wasn’t in OTSOT 3, however – it was in a different
project. It was actually a project that I had the idea for more than three
years ago. I couldn’t believe the date on Draft 1 when I came back to the
project this weekend. I was sure I’d had this idea maybe only one year ago.
This idea’s been swimming around in my head for three years.
I have tonnes of new story ideas at the moment. Everything
about my stories stays completely secret until they are published, of course,
so I can’t tell you anything at all about this one, or any of the others – I can’t
even tell you the possible title or the genre. But I’ve got so many story ideas
now that I’ve done something on, and may continue with, that I’ve
realised that I need some codenames so that I can refer to them. The codename for
this project is simply going to be Project 201811 – a name from which
absolutely nothing about the story can be determined.
But as I say, Project 201811 is one that I had the idea for
more than three years ago, and started writing almost three years ago. All I’d
written so far was the opening to the first chapter. On Saturday, I wrote the
remainder of chapter one, and started on chapter two.
This story’s just been sitting in my head for three years,
and in that time, I’ve thought about it a lot – developed a very clear idea of
what happens in that first chapter. So when I started adding more to it on
Saturday, the words just flowed onto the page. I’m very pleased with how it’s
turning out so far.
While I can’t tell you the exact genre of Project
201811, I can tell you that it is slightly comedic in tone. I seem to
have ended up doing a lot of slightly funny stories in recent years – OTSOT has
a slightly funny edge to it, as do many of the off-series short stories. I didn’t
intend to do this at all – it’s just by accident that a lot of what I’m
writing at the moment is more humorous. At some point in the near future I will
pivot to more serious stories again.
As for writing-related things that have happened this week, I
have continued trying to do more on the audiobook for OTSOT 1. This project has
hung around for ages, and I could rant for ages about it. The first two stories
for OTSOT 1 have been recorded and edited – they’re on my YouTube channel – and
the fifth story has been recorded and edited too, but it’s not online yet – I’m
putting them online in order. I’d previously recorded about half of the fourth
story too, and that had gone well. But the third story – Fluncg the Indignant –
has been a massive problem.
I have not been able to get the voice for Fluncg right. I
have tried many, many times to get it right – done loads of recordings of
Fluncg’s lines. But whenever I get something that I at first like, when I
listen back to it a few days later, I don’t like it. It’s never quite right.
I’ve been trying to get this story right in audio form for months, and it just isn’t working. It’s this story that’s been holding up the audiobook for OTSOT 1, and consequently the audiobook for OTSOT 2. I think I’d’ve finished both of them a while ago if it weren’t for this story. (The story of Fluncg was always a difficult one to get right – even in its written form, it took longer than the others to get right.) I’m tempted to just say that it’s good enough with the last voice I’ve used. At some point you just have to stop spending time on something.
So on Sunday, instead of trying to do more on Fluncg the
Indignant, I just recorded more of Hluthg the First. That went astonishingly
well – I just have to edit that one now, and it’ll be done.
So that’s been the last week in writing: productive, but nowhere
near as productive as I have sometimes been.
Approximately 5.34 giga-light-years away, in the galaxy
Kadradax, approximately 192 petaseconds ago, the Ourokamaedian Star Empire was
at the height of its power. With tens of thousands of star systems and over a
million cubic parsecs under its control, no-one and nothing could stand in its
way.
The capital planet of the empire – Ourokamaedia – was
one giant city. The surface was a forest of glass and chrome skyscrapers, the
foundations of which were just older skyscrapers. (If there was mud or rock
beneath it all, it had not been seen in millennia.) The people of Ourokamaedia
travelled from building to building by flying car.
And those people were most varied, for, over the years,
many of those of species native to other planets in the empire had travelled to
its capital. Some of those aliens had green skin, while others had blue. Some
had skin that was luminescent, while others had skin that was transparent on
Tuesday afternoons. Some of those aliens were made of bone, blood, and brain,
while others were little more than spheres of fat surrounded by a thin, greasy
film – whether they had any intelligence at all was a subject of much debate.
There were, predictably, robots – of many different kinds. Some were made of
polymer and titanium, of transistors and electrochemical cells; others were
made of brass and glass, of boilers and flywheels. Some robots were the
overthrew-their-creators kind, and others were the
actually-we-get-along-fine-with-our-creators kind.
Any form of life that could exist existed on Ourokamaedia.
However, the species that had evolved on the planet (and which had first set
out to the stars and established the empire thousands of years ago) remained
the majority of the population. They were similar in appearance to us humans in
a way that is narratively convenient.
It was the year 3504, and the Ourokamaedian Empire was
ruled by Emperor Zhang Song, the Fifty-fourth Emperor of the Karamaxium Throne.
He was old and withered; he had ruled for a hundred and twenty-nine years. His
hair was as wispy as broken spiderwebs, his skin tore as easily as wet paper,
and his bones were as brittle as those flakes that fall off cinnamon swirls and
stick to your jumper. But his wit was still as sharp as it was when he was in
his youth, and his voice still cut through the pride of most. His grip upon his
soup spoon was weak, but his grip upon power was strong.
And something that must be impressed upon you, dear
reader, is that Emperor Zhang Song was evil. Not the kind of evil of a
politician who takes a bribe from a large corporation. Nor the kind of evil of
someone who violates the unspoken rules of queuing. No, Emperor Zhang Song was
properly evil – the evil of skimmed milk, or sweet potato fries, or moussaka.
The evil of boiled tofu or quiche. The evil of vegan cheese. Zhang Song was a
person who savoured inflicting pain on others – whether it was a physical agony
or a psychological one. Anyone who dared oppose him, or even just someone he
didn’t like the look of, was sent to a prison camp on one of the moons of
Renlor, where they were worked to death or simply shot. When a planet rebelled
against the control of the empire, it was blown up. Zhang Song was the epitome
of an evil dictator. The quintessential fascist. A person upon whom history
will not look favourably. A person whose moral principles were highly
questionable. A thoroughly bad guy.
As such he was despised by all of the people of the
empire. Every day the people of the empire spoke of how much they hated the
Emperor, and of how much they wished to remove him. They went on and on about
it.
One day, there was a man sitting in a café on the
eight-hundred-and-eighty-eighth floor of a skyscraper who had just about had
enough. He was a man without any particularly unusual traits. He was neither
particularly short nor tall. Neither particularly fat nor thin. Neither
particularly ugly nor beautiful. He spent a lot of time watching holographic
television and he thought punning was the highest form of wit. He had spent a
good part of his life working in the ice mines of Ourokamaedia’s third moon –
an occupation known for being arduous and one that didn’t get you much money.
His past was bleak and his future was bleaker.
‘I’ve had enough!’ this man without any particularly
unusual traits said, repeating what I already said to you in the last paragraph
– which is something that some authors would call inefficient. ‘And I’m going
to do something about it!’ he said.
‘What are you going to do about it?’ said a character
who will not appear again in this story.
‘I’m going to kill the Emperor!’ the man without any
particularly unusual traits said. ‘He is the cause of all of our problems. He
is evil! He must be removed!’
The people in the café cheered.
The man without any particularly unusual traits stood
up, feeling bold. ‘I will kill the Emperor! And all of us will be free from his
evil rule! No longer will we suffer!’
The people in the café cheered louder.
‘This is the start of our rebellion! Who will join me?’
‘I will join you!’ said a man with green skin – he was
an Ooloog-ogarian – they are similar to the Ourokamaedians in almost all ways,
except that they have green skin, and green blood. He stood up too. ‘I will
fight for what is right! And to overthrow this evil dictator!’
‘Welcome, brother! Together we will bring justice to
this empire again!’
‘I will join you!’ said a woman with no arms or legs.
She did not stand up like the other two … because she had no legs. ‘I will
give every cell of my body to end the House of Zhang!’
‘Welcome, sister! Together we will bring justice to
this empire again!’
‘I will join you!’ said a robot (a Tzi-tzio Tiriko’ to
be precise) in a voice that sounded all techno-y, but which definitely wasn’t
just lazy writing. ‘I will give every wire of my body to end this autocracy!’
‘Welcome … … … you …’ the man without any
particularly unusual traits said. ‘Together we will bring justice to this
empire again!’
‘I will join you!’ said a fat Ganrarian, in a voice
that was coarse and guttural. The Ganrarians have a strong warrior culture, and
this Ganrarian, like many, wore layers of thick, black armour, and his face was
covered in tattoos signifying all of his great achievements in battle. ‘I will
help to defeat this fascist for the glory of Ganraria!’
‘We will join you!’ said a purple blob (an Obloobe
Powemblon, to be precise – they have no arms, no legs, no head – no discernible
features of any kind – they are just blobs), in a voice like bubbling yoghurt.
‘We will help to rid the galaxy of this oppressive regime!’
‘I will join you too!’ said a lesbian. She was … just
a lesbian. ‘I will help to rid the universe of Zhang Song!’
‘Welcome, friends!’ said the man without any
particularly unusual traits. ‘Together we will bring justice to this empire
again! We will march on the Emperor’s palace, break inside, find the Emperor,
and kill him, for he is most evil!’ Everyone in the café cheered. ‘But not only
this! For too long, so many of us have been second-class citizens in this
society! For too long, robots have been treated no better than slaves!’ he
said, gesturing to the robot.
‘It’s true!’ the robot said.
‘For too long, Ganrarians have been expected to fight
the empire’s wars!’
‘It’s true!’ the fat Ganrarian said.
‘For too long, Obloobe Powemblotthlo have been
ridiculed by the media!’
‘It’s true!’ the purple blob gurgled.
‘But no more!’ the man without any particularly unusual
traits said. ‘Our rebellion will not be like this! Our rebellion will be fair!
No-one will be a second-class citizen! No-one will be looked down upon or
disrespected! No-one will be made to feel uncomfortable simply for who they
are! For we are all brave fighters in this rebellion!’
Everyone in the café cheered.
‘We will be accountable. If any of our group does
something wrong, they will not simply be allowed to get away with it, as the
Emperor and his ministers are so often. We will take swift action to be rid of
such a person, and in doing so we will keep our rebellion pure! For who are we
to remove the Emperor if we are no better than him?!’
Everyone in the café cheered.
‘Our rebellion will never be tainted! From when we
leave this café to when we take off the Emperor’s head, our rebellion will be
fair, just, and equal! No-one will be mocked or ridiculed! No-one will be
disparaged or disrespected! No-one will be made to feel uncomfortable! Come,
brave friends! Let us storm the imperial palace!’
And the rebels charged out through the glass doors of
the café, onto a balcony in the clouds. Everyone else in the café cheered and
waved to the rebels as they got into a flying taxi that hovered next to the
balcony.
The man without any particularly unusual traits, the
woman with no arms or legs, the man with green skin, the robot, the fat Ganrarian,
the purple blob, and the lesbian first went to the home of the fat Ganrarian,
for he owned a large number of laser rifles (which are rifles that shoot
high-power laser beams) and laser grenades (which in truth are just regular
grenades, but it sounds cooler if you put ‘laser’ in front). They landed on the
balcony outside the fat Ganrarian’s apartment. He rushed inside, and returned
moments later with weapons.
‘My fellow Ourokamaedians, Ooloog-ogarians, Tzi-tzio
Tiriko’, Ganrarians, Obloobe Powemblotthlo, here is where our rebellion
begins!’ the man without any particularly unusual traits said. ‘We will go to
the imperial palace, break through its gates, find our way to the throne room
at its centre, and kill the Emperor! Doubtless our fight will be hard! There
will be many obstacles in our way! We may have to climb up tall walls, leap
over perilous gaps, and crawl through narrow spaces. We will likely have to
fight off the many guards of the imperial palace, and we will do so with these
weapons! Take as many as you can carry!’
The rebels picked up the weapons, and searched through
the other equipment that the fat Ganrarian had for things that might be useful.
‘Um … excuse me!’ the woman with no arms or legs
said. ‘How am I supposed to fire any of these weapons?! How am I supposed to
climb up tall walls, leap over perilous gaps, or crawl through narrow spaces?!
I don’t have any arms or legs!’
The other rebels all stopped what they were doing.
‘I confess, I did not say at the café, but I do not
think you will be able to join us in this fight.’ the man without any
particularly unusual traits said. ‘Without arms or legs, you will not be able
to do these things. I do not think you will be able to help us enter the palace
and kill the Emperor.’
‘This is unacceptable!’ the woman with no arms or legs
said. ‘I have just as much right to storm the palace and kill the Emperor as
you do! This rebellion was founded on the ideals of fairness, justice, and
equality, and yet now I am being denied an opportunity that everyone else has!
This is disgusting! This is disgraceful! This is discriminatory! I am being
treated as less than everyone else!’
‘No’, the man without any particularly unusual traits
said. ‘It’s just that in order to break into the palace and fight off the
guards you need to be able t-’
‘AND NOW I AM BEING SILENCED!!! THIS REBELLION CLAIMS
TO BE ABOUT FAIRNESS, JUSTICE, AND EQUALITY, BUT NOW I SEE THAT IT IS ANYTHING
BUT! THIS REBELLION IS ROTTEN TO ITS CORE! WELL ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! WE SHOULD END
THIS HATEFUL RHETORIC ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!’
‘She is right!’ said the man with green skin.
‘Yes, she is right!’ said the robot, the fat Ganrarian,
the purple blob, and the lesbian.
‘This rebellion is rotten to its core!’ the man with
green skin said. ‘We cannot tolerate a leader who is so intolerant! We must get
rid of him!’
‘Yes!’ the others, apart from the man without any
particularly unusual traits, said.
‘What?!’ the man without any particularly unusual
traits said.
The man with green skin took one of the laser rifles,
and shot him in the head.
‘At last!’ the man with green skin said as red blood
washed over the fat Ganrarian’s balcony. ‘We are finally free of this tyranny!
Never again will we allow this poison into our rebellion! From now on we shall
be pure!’ They kicked the man without any particularly unusual trait’s body off
the edge of the skyscraper.
‘We must choose a new leader!’ the lesbian said.
‘Yes, we must!’ the man with green skin said. ‘We must
take a vote!’
‘I vote for this brave and beautiful woman here!’ the
lesbian said, gesturing to the woman with no arms or legs.
‘I also vote for this brave and beautiful woman!’ the
man with green skin said. Everyone else voted for her too.
‘It is agreed, then! She will be our new leader!’ the
man with green skin said. ‘What must we do next?’ he said to her.
‘We must go to the palace! Come, brave friends!’
The man with green skin, the robot, the fat Ganrarian,
the purple blob, and the lesbian lifted the woman with no arms or legs back
into the taxi, and they flew off through the clouds.
Within minutes they came to the long avenue that led up
to the front gates of the imperial palace. The avenue was suspended in the air,
hundreds of metres above the lower levels of the city, by great chrome circles.
Columns made of a marble-like stone lined the avenue, and two great iron
braziers – which were lit 32/9 – stood at the end. The taxi perched right on
the end of the floating avenue, and the man with green skin, the robot, the fat
Ganrarian, the purple blob, and the lesbian lifted the woman with no arms or
legs out of it.
The rebels charged along the avenue towards the
entrance of the palace, as the taxi flew away. The road leading up to the
entrance is 2 kilometres long, so it was a while before they arrived at the
gates – they should have landed closer – but when they reached them they found
them to be open and unguarded.
‘Look, brave friends!’ the woman with no arms or legs
said, being carried by the fat Ganrarian and the lesbian. ‘The gates are open!
There are no guards! What luck that today of all days the imperial palace is
unguarded! It is a sign! The black blood of the Emperor shall wash the floors
of the palace today! Not a single drop of red blood – the blood of the fair,
the just, and the true – shall spill from our veins!’
The rebels were about to charge through the gates into
the palace, when …
‘Um … excuse me!’ the man with green skin said. ‘What
do you mean “red blood”? Some of us have green blood!’
‘I confess’, the woman with no arms or legs said. ‘I
forgot that not everyone here had red blood. I simply meant th-’
‘YOU FORGOT!!!’ the man with green skin (and green
blood) said. ‘IT MUST BE NICE TO FORGET HOW OFTEN OOLOOG-OGARIANS ARE MOCKED
FOR HAVING GREEN SKIN! THIS CLEARLY SHOWS YOUR ANTI-OOLOOG-OGARIAN BIAS! THIS
IS DISGUSTING! THIS IS DISGRACEFUL! THIS IS DISCRIMINATORY! I AM BEING TREATED
AS “OTHER”! I AM BEING TREATED LIKE I’M SOME SORT OF ALIEN!’
‘Well, technically you are an alien. We’re all ali-’
‘AND NOW YOU ARE TALKING OVER ME!!! THIS REBELLION
CLAIMS TO BE ABOUT FAIRNESS, JUSTICE, AND EQUALITY, BUT NOW I SEE THAT IT IS
ANYTHING BUT! THIS REBELLION IS ROTTEN TO ITS CORE! WELL ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! WE
SHOULD END THIS HATEFUL RHETORIC ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!’
‘He is right!’ said the robot.
‘Yes, he is right!’ said the fat Ganrarian, the purple
blob, and the lesbian.
‘This rebellion is rotten to its core!’ the robot said.
‘We cannot tolerate a leader who is so intolerant! We must get rid of her!’
‘Yes!’ the others, apart from the woman with no arms or
legs, said.
‘What?!’ the woman with no arms or legs said.
The robot raised his laser rifle, and shot her in the
head.
‘At last!’ the robot said as red blood washed down onto
the paved avenue. ‘We are finally free of this tyranny! Never again will we
allow this poison into our rebellion! From now on we shall be pure!’ They
kicked the woman with no arms or legs’ body off the edge of the floating road.
It fell down into a street in the lower levels of the city, crushing a man’s
kamcha stall.
‘We must choose a new leader!’ the lesbian said.
‘Yes, we must!’ the robot said. ‘We must take a vote!’
‘I vote for this brave and beautiful man here!’ the
lesbian said, gesturing to the man with green skin.
‘I also vote for this brave and beautiful man!’ the
robot said. Everyone else voted for him too.
‘It is agreed, then! He will be our new leader!’ the
robot said. ‘What must we do next?’ he said to him.
‘We must find our way to the throne room at the centre
of the palace! Doubtless this will be hard – there will be many guards along
the way! Come, brave friends!’
The man with green skin, the robot, the fat Ganrarian,
the purple blob, and the lesbian charged through the gates.
Beyond the gates was a narrow bridge over a moat that
encircled the inner palace. The surface of the grey water, flat and glassy, was
a hundred metres below. The inner palace was a towering structure made of
polished, veined black stone. Turrets and halls, bridges and balconies piled on
top of each other. The rebels stormed over the bridge, and through the main
doors, which were a glossy black, decorated with gold inlay, and wide open,
into the inner palace.
They went up a wide, polished stone staircase, then
along a hall. Then they went down a different staircase with rich red carpets,
and through a small garden that had a fountain in the centre and violet flowers
in the borders. At no point did they see any guards. Then they went up another
staircase, down another, up another, and after a short while they were
completely lost.
‘This palace is a maze!’ the man with green skin said.
‘Doubtless it was designed to confuse enemies of the Emperor! But fear not,
brave friends! Luck has been on our side thus far, and it is only a matter of
time before we find the throne room! For our hearts beat with the vengeance of
a thousand conquered peoples!’
They were about to continue running up and down staircases,
when …
‘Um … excuse me!’ the robot said. ‘What do you mean
“our hearts”?! Some of us don’t have hearts!’
‘I know – it’s just a metaphor.’ the man with green
skin said.
‘OH I SEE!’ the robot said. ‘THAT’S VERY BIO-NORMATIVE
OF YOU! YOU KNOW IT’S EXACTLY THAT SORT OF LANGUAGE THAT CAUSES ORGANIC
LIFE-FORMS ACROSS THE EMPIRE TO TREAT ROBOTS LIKE ME AS NOTHING MORE THAN
COMPUTERS! THAT’S THE SORT OF LANGUAGE THAT CAUSES SUCH HIGH RATES OF
DEPRESSION AND SUICIDE AMONG ROBOTKIND! YOU’RE BASICALLY MURDERING MILLIONS OF
PEOPLE BY USING THAT KIND OF LANGUAGE!!!’
‘How is that committing m-?!’
‘AND NOW YOU ARE TALKING OVER ME!!! THIS REBELLION
CLAIMS TO BE ABOUT FAIRNESS, JUSTICE, AND EQUALITY, BUT NOW I SEE THAT IT IS
ANYTHING BUT! THIS REBELLION IS ROTTEN TO ITS CORE! WELL ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! WE
SHOULD END THIS HATEFUL RHETORIC ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!’
‘He is right!’ said the fat Ganrarian.
‘Yes, he is right!’ said the purple blob and the
lesbian.
‘This rebellion is rotten to its core!’ the fat
Ganrarian said. ‘We cannot tolerate a leader who is so intolerant! We must get
rid of him!’
‘Yes!’ the others, apart from the man with green skin,
said.
‘What?!’ the man with green skin said.
The fat Ganrarian raised his laser rifle, and shot him
in the head.
‘At last!’ the fat Ganrarian said as green blood washed
across the polished, tiled floor of the hall. ‘We are finally free of this
tyranny! Never again will we allow this poison into our rebellion! From now on
we shall be pure!’ They shoved the man with green skin’s body into a garbage
chute. It dropped down eighty floors onto a pile of rotten food, and was
incinerated moments later.
‘We must choose a new leader!’ the lesbian said.
‘Yes, we must!’ the fat Ganrarian said. ‘We must take a
vote!’
‘I vote for this brave and beautiful person here!’ the
lesbian said, gesturing to the robot.
‘I also vote for this brave and beautiful person!’ the
fat Ganrarian said. Everyone else voted for him too.
‘It is agreed, then! He will be our new leader!’ the
fat Ganrarian said. ‘What must we do next?’ he said to him.
‘We must find our way through this maze!’ the robot
said. ‘Maybe there is a computer interface somewhere that I can connect to, to
get a map of the palace!’
The robot, the fat Ganrarian, the purple blob, and the
lesbian continued running along the hallways and up and down the staircases of
the imperial palace. They didn’t see a computer interface anywhere – just
smooth walls and pillars made of different colours of veined stone, rich
tapestries with pictures of the Emperor woven into them, as well as oil
paintings, statues, and holograms depicting the Emperor.
‘Damn it! There is not a single interface!’ the robot
said. ‘The Emperor must have known that his enemies would look for one! He is
most cunning!’
‘Look!’ the purple blob said. ‘It is one of the
Emperor’s evil ministers!’
The other three turned and looked down a hallway, and
saw one of the Emperor’s ministers walking across it. He had not seen them.
‘He must know the way to the throne room!’ the robot
said. ‘Great friend!’ he said, turning to the fat Ganrarian. ‘Go and rough him
up! Then he will tell us where it is!’
The robot, the purple blob, and the lesbian all looked
towards the Emperor’s minister, waiting for the fat Ganrarian to charge ahead
and pin him against the wall. But instead …
‘Um … excuse me!’ the fat Ganrarian said. ‘Why did
you choose me to go and beat him up?!’
‘What?’
‘Is it because I’m a Ganrarian?’
‘No, it’s just becau-’
‘Do you think all Ganrarians are brutes who are only
good for war?!’
‘No-’
‘You know it’s that kind of attitude that makes it so
difficult for people like me to find occupations outside of the military! You
are the reason why so many of my people are living in poverty, which is what
leads to such high death rates among Ganrarians! You are basically murdering
millions of people with that attitude!’
‘I just chose you because you were standing next to m-’
‘AND NOW I AM BEING SILENCED!!! THIS REBELLION CLAIMS
TO BE ABOUT FAIRNESS, JUSTICE, AND EQUALITY, BUT NOW I SEE THAT IT IS ANYTHING
BUT! THIS REBELLION IS ROTTEN TO ITS CORE! WELL ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! WE SHOULD END
THIS HATEFUL RHETORIC ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!’
‘He is right!’ said the purple blob.
‘Yes, he is right!’ said the lesbian.
‘This rebellion is rotten to its core!’ the purple blob
said. ‘We cannot tolerate a leader who is so intolerant! We must get rid of
him!’
‘Yes!’ the others, apart from the robot, said.
‘What?!’ the robot said.
The purple blob enveloped a laser rifle, angled it at
the robot, and shot him in the head.
‘At last!’ the purple blob said as wires, screws, and
jagged, red-hot pieces of metal scattered across the stonework. ‘We are finally
free of this tyranny! Never again will we allow this poison into our rebellion!
From now on we shall be pure!’ They chucked the robot’s body out of a high
window – it overlooked the moat. The robot’s body fell down into the steely
water a hundred and fifty metres below.
‘We must choose a new leader!’ the lesbian said.
‘Yes, we must!’ the purple blob said. ‘We must take a
vote!’
‘I vote for this brave and beautiful person here!’ the
lesbian said, gesturing to the fat Ganrarian.
‘We also vote for this brave and beautiful person!’ the
purple blob said. Since there were only three of them left, they carried the
vote.
‘It is agreed, then! He will be our new leader!’ the
purple blob said. ‘What must we do next?’ he said to him.
‘We must chase after that minister, and force him to
tell us where the throne room is!’
So the fat Ganrarian, the purple blob, and the lesbian
ran after the minister. They soon caught up to him. The minister wore flowing
sable robes. His mouth was thin, his eyes were sunken, and his jet black hair
was pressed flat. The fat Ganrarian held the minister up against the wall by
the neck, but he couldn’t speak when they did that, so they let him down again.
He immediately told them everything they wanted to know.
‘Go down that hallway, turn left, pass three doorways
on your right and then go down the fourth. The throne room is at the end of
that hallway. There you will find the Emperor.’
‘Come, brave friends! We are minutes away from
victory!’ the fat Ganrarian said, and the three of them ran off. They forgot to
kill the minister, which was most unfortunate, as he was the Emperor’s Minister
of Re-education. After he was let go, he went off to the prison camp on one of
the moons of Renlor to oversee the execution of a thousand dissidents.
The fat Ganrarian, the purple blob, and the lesbian
followed the directions that the minister had given them, and, sure enough,
they came to a long hallway, at the end of which was a towering set of doors,
brushed with gold leaf, and inlaid with diamonds and emeralds and opals – the
door to the throne room.
‘At last!’ the fat Ganrarian said. ‘Victory is at hand!
The Emperor shall bitterly regret having employed such a foolish man as one of
his ministers! Such foolishness is not tolerated on Ganraria! Our fight has
been hard, brave friends, but we have stayed true to our cause and to ourselves!
After all our trials, I am glad to be standing here next to the two of you!
Onwards, brave friends!’
The fat Ganrarian and the lesbian stepped forwards, but
…
‘Um … excuse us!’ the purple blob said. ‘What do you
mean “the two of you”?’
The fat Ganrarian turned. ‘What do you mean? I mean the two of
you! You and this lesbian here.’
‘Are you calling us one person?!’
‘What do you mean?!’ the fat Ganrarian said angrily.
‘You are one person!’
‘How dare you! You ignorant anti-multiplist! We are a
collection of hundreds of symbiotic organisms!’
‘Well how was I supposed to know that?!’
‘WELL IF YOU CARED
TO KNOW MORE ABOUT OBLOOBE POWEMBLOTTHLO, THEN YOU WOULD HAVE KNOWN! YOU KNOW
THAT’S EXACTLY THE SORT OF ATTITUDE THAT LEADS TO OBLOOBE POWEMBLOTTHLO BEING
RIDICULED IN THE MEDIA!’
‘I can’t be expected to know everything about every
species on this planet – there are tens of thousands of d-’
‘AND NOW WE ARE BEING SILENCED!!! THIS REBELLION CLAIMS TO BE ABOUT FAIRNESS, JUSTICE, AND EQUALITY, BUT NOW WE SEE THAT IT IS ANYTHING BUT! THIS REBELLION IS ROTTEN TO ITS CORE! WELL ENOUGH IS ENOUGH! WE SHOULD END THIS HATEFUL RHETORIC ONCE AND FOR ALL!!!’
‘They are right!’ said the lesbian. ‘This rebellion is
rotten to its core! We cannot tolerate a leader who is so intolerant! We must
get rid of him!’
‘What?!’ the fat Ganrarian said.
The lesbian raised her laser rifle, and shot him in the
head.
‘At last!’ the lesbian said. ‘We are finally free of
this tyranny! Never again will we allow this poison into our rebellion! From
now on we shall be pure!’
‘What a brave and beautiful action you took!’ the purple blob said. ‘He was probably not a good fighter anyway! We’ve never seen a Ganrarian who was so fat!’
‘How dare you!’ the lesbian said. ‘That is a disgusting
remark!’ She raised her laser rifle, and shot the purple blob in the goo.
Being many organisms, the purple blob didn’t die right
away, so she fired several more times, until the entire purple blob had been
vaporised. She did the same to the body of the fat Ganrarian, until there was
little left other than smoking blood and brains on the floor of the hallway.
‘Alas! So many of those who were once in this rebellion
turned out to be just as evil as the Emperor! It is up to me to finally rid the
world of this evil!’
The lesbian charged along the hallway, laser rifle in
hand, and kicked open the golden doors. (They were not locked. There were no
guards.)
Beyond the doors was a great crystal hall. Pillars of
agate held up a roof of quartz. The floor was tiled with squares of malachite
and chalcopyrite. Copper-framed windows along the sides of the hall looked out
over the rest of the palace, and over Ourokamaedia. The great hall was empty –
there were no tables or chairs, statues or tapestries – not even a potted plant
– except for at the far end of the hall, where the Emperor’s throne stood. It
was made of a single, massive diamond – the largest ever retrieved from the
planet Huruigon. Its edges were jagged and sharp, and a short flight of steps
led up to the seat itself.
And on that seat was the Emperor. He was having lunch.
On a plate on his right were some slices of crusty bread, some slices of ham,
two or three different cheeses, and a bunch of juicy, red grapes. (By sheer
genetic co-incidence, they do have bread, ham, cheese, and grapes on
Ourokamaedia – a planet that has no biological connection to our own.) The
Emperor chose a few grapes from the bunch and ate them, and took a sip of an
iced drink – apparently unaware that someone had just charged into his throne
room. There were no guards, and the Emperor had no weapon.
‘At last!’ the lesbian said. ‘I have found you! Do not
try to run – there is no escape! I have come to avenge all the peoples of this
empire, who have had to live under your oppressive rule! I have come to restore
fairness, justice, and equality to this empire! I have come to end you!’
The Emperor did not look up. He continued eating.
‘Ha! Your arrogance is surpassed only by your malice!
You have been outwitted. I have fought past every obstacle you have put in my
way! Your ministers have betrayed you! No-one is here to defend you! Only the
cold hand of justice is left for you! Not even your wife and children shall
mourn for you!’
The lesbian raised her laser rifle, ready to fire.
‘Did you just assume that I’m heterosexual?’ the
Emperor said. ‘I could be gay for all you know.’
The lesbian paused, shocked. ‘I … I didn’t … …
… oh no. I am just as bad as all those other people! I am just as bad as you!
I am no longer worthy of being in this rebellion!’
The lesbian turned her laser rifle towards herself, and
shot herself in the head.
And thus ended that attempt to kill the Emperor … just like the previous 354 attempts.
I’ve just published a new short story on my website, titled Magnathor the Forgetful. You can read it here.
This story is the first in a series of short stories called
On The Subject Of Dragons, a spin-off series of On The Subject Of Trolls.
I’ve mentioned before in videos that I had plans for two
spin-off series’ of On The Subject Of Trolls. This is one of them. (The other
one has a title, which I won’t reveal yet, but it is highly guessable.) I’d
normally make a video to announce a new series like this, but I find making
videos rather tedious these days.
The stories in On The Subject Of Dragons will be a bit
different to those in On The Subject Of Trolls. They will probably all be
shorter, and they are lighter – unlike the trolls stories, they are not trying
to depict an extremely unpleasant phenomenon on the internet (though they are
still metaphorical). Because of this, I’ve decided that I’m going to release
them one at a time on my website, rather than waiting to have lots of them and
putting them in a book. (They’re so short, and I plan to do them so
infrequently, that it’ll take a long time for me to have enough to make a book
out of them.) Once I’ve got enough for an OTSOT-length book, I will put them
into a book, which will of course just be called On The Subject Of Dragons.
Dragons. People always ask me about dragons. They always
seem to be far more interested in dragons than they are in trolls, but I
think dragons are the much less interesting beings. Dragons are very
annoying, of course – not annoying in the various ways that trolls can be, but
still annoying.
Most of the dragons that are found in Wessex or Mercia are
smaller. They can still breathe fire, of course, and their teeth and claws are
deadly, but their strength does not come from their size. These are, of course,
meadow-dragons. A meadow-dragon can be brought down with just one well-thrown
spear.
Much more of a problem are the dragons that live in the
west. These are mountain-dragons – far bigger, far deadlier, and far harder to
kill. Thrulgor the Bothersome was a mountain-dragon – the biggest I’ve ever
heard of (at least, in Albion – I’ve heard that there are dragons even greater
than him beyond the seas). These dragons stay in the mountains most of the
time, but every now and then one will fly east – they are learning that that is
where men and women live, with cows and sheep and horses – and silver, which
they prize above all else.
But of course, dragons are not annoying just because of what
they eat. Dragons are perplexing beings, subject to whims that men and women
may never understand.
This is a story about a dragon, whose name was Magnathor.
Magnathor was a truly ferocious dragon – twelve yards high at the
wing-shoulder. His scales were as hard as diamond – the largest four hands across.
His claws were long and yellow. His tail was barbed. His breath could melt a
steel blade in a second, and his roar could cut down a great oak.
But he was also rather daft.
One day, Magnathor came down from the mountains, and he saw
a river that he liked. It was, in fact, the Tames, near Oxford. There was a
stone bridge over the river – wide enough and sturdy enough for the dragon to
sit on. The dragon landed on it, and he stared down into the water, his tail
swishing from side to side. (The river near this bridge is quite shallow and
wide, and there are many small rocks beneath the surface. In bright sunlight,
the water glitters and glimmers, and I believe it was this that drew the dragon
to the ground – they like shiny things, I think (which is, I think, also why
they like silver, though it’s difficult to know – the minds of dragons are
ever-impenetrable).)
The dragon sat there for hours, watching the river. After
some time, a man, whose name was Aethelstan, and who travelled over the bridge
most days, came to it this day.
Upon seeing the dragon, Aethelstan froze, for it was far
bigger than any dragon he had seen or heard of before. He tried to creep away
from it, further into the woods, but dragons have excellent senses of smell and
hearing (and sight, for that matter). The dragon turned its great head, so that
its large, golden eyes stared straight at Aethelstan.
‘Hello’ the dragon said.
Aethelstan felt as though he had turned to stone. ‘… Hi.’
he said.
‘What are you doing?’ the dragon said.
‘Err … I was … err … hoping to cross the bridge.’
The dragon blinked at him. ‘Why?’
‘Well … ‘cause … that’s where I’m going.’
The dragon blinked at him again.
Aethelstan blinked back.
‘Aren’t you going to cross then?’ the dragon said.
Aethelstan looked at the hulking, shimmering mass of dragon
that sat on the bridge before him. ‘Well … you’re sort of in the way.’
The dragon looked back at the rest of its body and its tail.
‘Oh yes, so I am.’ And he lifted his tail off the far side of the bridge, and
coiled it neatly around him. Then he looked back at Aethelstan expectantly.
‘Right …’ Aethelstan said, and he began to shuffle
forwards again. He walked across the bridge slowly, careful not to make any
sudden movements – dragons are easily startled.
The dragon watched him the entire time. ‘What’s your name?’
the dragon boomed when Aethelstan was right behind it.
Aethelstan nearly shat himself. ‘Aethelstan’, he said.
‘What’s yours?’
‘I am Magnathor. If you need to cross this bridge again, and
I am still here, just tell me your name – I will remember who you are, and I
shall let you pass at once.’
‘Oh …’ Aethelstan said, not relishing the thought that the
dragon might still be there the next day. ‘Okay.’
Aethelstan continued walking slowly across the bridge, and the
dragon continued watching him with big eyes, blinking every now and then.
Aethelstan reached the other side, and walked backwards along the road into the
woods.
‘Bye!’ the dragon said, and he turned back to look at the
river.
‘… Bye …’ Aethelstan said, still half expecting the
dragon to turn back towards him and pounce on him.
But the dragon didn’t.
The next day, in the morning, Aethelstan came to the bridge
again. The dragon was still there. It looked like it had hardly moved – except
for the swishing of its long tail. It still hung its head over the side of the
bridge, so that it could stare down into the shimmering water.
Once again, the dragon sensed Aethelstan before he even
reached the edge of the wood, and turned to look at him. Aethelstan felt much
more confident in approaching the dragon today.
‘Hello, Great Dragon.’ he said as he strode onto the stone
of the bridge. ‘It is I, Aethelstan.’
‘Who?’ Magnathor said, not moving his tail from across the
bridge.
‘Aethelstan.’
The dragon pondered for a moment. ‘No I don’t know who that
is.’
‘It’s me – I walked across this bridge yesterday – you asked
me what my name was.’
‘Doesn’t ring any bells.’ the dragon said.
‘I walked across this bridge yesterday! You asked me what my
name was, and you said you’d remember it if I came to the bridge again, and let
me cross!’ Aethelstan said. Was this dragon trying to trick him or something?
‘Well that doesn’t sound right.’ the dragon said. ‘I think
I’d remember if I said something like that. Are you sure you’ve got the right
bridge? Perhaps it was a different bridge that you crossed?’
‘I think I’d remember which bridge it was!’
‘Well how can you be sure?’
‘Because it was the one with a great big dragon on it!’
‘Alright, there’s no need to shout!’ the dragon said. ‘Tell
me your name and I’ll let you cross. I’ll remember what your name is and if you
come to this bridge again and I’m still on it, I’ll let you cross straight
away.’
‘It’s Aethelstan!’ Aethelstan said, exasperated.
‘Aethelstan, Aethelstan …’ the dragon thought out loud.
‘That’s quite an unusual name, isn’t it?’
‘No, not really.’
‘No, I think I’ve got it – I’ll remember – it sounds like
“tree”.’
‘It really doesn’t.’
The dragon pondered for a few more moments. ‘Very well – you
may cross.’
The dragon moved its tail out of the way, and Aethelstan was
able to cross the bridge. The dragon stared at him the entire time.
‘Bye!’ the dragon said as Aethelstan walked onto the road on
the other side of the bridge.
‘Bye.’
Aethelstan walked away down the road.
The dragon continued to sit on the bridge and stare down
into the water. It may have seen some fish – dragons like fish – they can watch
them for hours and hours.
In the late afternoon, Aethelstan came back.
‘Hello, Great Dragon! It’s me again.’
The dragon turned and stared at him.
‘… It’s me! Aethelstan!’ Aethelstan said.
‘… Who?’
‘Oh my god! You saw me this morning!’
‘No I didn’t.’
‘YES YOU DID!’
‘Alright! There’s no need to shout!’ the dragon said. ‘Are
you sure you didn’t meet a different dragon?’
‘Yes! It was you! On this bridge!’
‘Well how can you be sure?’
‘How many dragons do you think I meet?!’
‘Well I’m sure I don’t know.’
‘It was you! I met you! Here! On this
bridge! This morning! And yesterday!’
‘Yesterday?’
‘YES!’
‘Well I have no recollection of this at all.’
‘Look, both times you asked me my name, and you said you’d
remember it, and if I came back to the bridge and you were still on it, you’d
remember who I was and let me cross straight away!’
‘Oh that’s a good idea!’ the dragon said. ‘What’s your
name?’
‘AETHELSTAN!’
‘Is that a name? I don’t think I’ve ever heard it before.’
‘You heard it about a minute ago!’
‘Well I will remember it, and if you should ever come this
way again-‘
‘I go across the bridge twice a day.’
‘-just tell me your name and I’ll let you cross straight
away.’ the dragon said.
The dragon moved its tail out of the way again, and
Aethelstan crossed the bridge.
‘Nice meeting you for the first time!’ the dragon called
out.
‘That was the third time!’
Aethelstan walked away down the road, and the dragon went
back to staring at the water.
The next day, Aethelstan returned. He was hoping that the
dragon had gone, so that he wouldn’t have to explain to it again how they’d
already met. But he saw that the dragon was, in fact, still there – its blue
scales gleaming in the sunlight, and its tail swishing from side to side as it
looked down into the rushing water of the river.
‘Hello, Great Dragon. It’s me, Aethelstan … again.’
The dragon turned to look at him and blinked.
‘… It’s me … Aethelstan … do you remember? From
yesterday … and the day before.’
‘Have we met?’
‘Oh my god! Yes, we have met! Three times! Twice yesterday
and once the day before!’
‘Oh I didn’t meet anyone yesterday. Or the day before.’
‘Oh my god! Yes you did! You met me! Do you remember?!’
‘Well I’m pretty sure I didn’t.’ the dragon said indignantly.
‘I haven’t met anyone since I came here.’
‘THIS IS A VERY BUSY ROAD! I’VE PASSED ABOUT TWENTY PEOPLE
ON IT IN THE LAST HOUR! HOW HAVE YOU NOT MET ANY OF THEM?!’
‘Such a quiet part of the country – untouched by human
hands.’
‘You are sitting on a bridge that humans built!’
‘Oh gosh – I’m in your way, aren’t I?’
‘Yes! Yes you are!’
The dragon coiled its tail around itself again, and
Aethelstan crossed the bridge.
‘Oh I’ve just had a thought!’
‘Let me guess …’
‘Next time you come to the bridge, if I’m still on it, tell
me your name. I’ll remember you and let you cross.’
‘What a great idea.’
The dragon looked at him expectantly. ‘… What’s your name
then?’
‘AETHELSTAN! IT’S AETHELSTAN!’
‘Got it. “Uhtric”.’
‘WHAT?!’
‘“Uhtric”. That’s your name.’
‘NO IT ISN’T!!!’
‘Gosh, where’s Uhtric then? He normally comes by here twice
a day!’
‘So you have met other people then.’
‘Oh hello! Who are you?’
‘Oh my god.’
‘Do you want to cross the bridge?’
‘No!’
‘Sure?’
‘I just did!’
‘No you didn’t.’
Aethelstan just walked away.
‘Well it was nice meeting you, whoever you are!’ the dragon
called out.
The dragon remained on the bridge for many weeks. He never
remembered who Aethelstan was. Aethelstan became more and more frustrated.
Eventually the dragon left of his own volition.
And so this is how dragons can be annoying. It’s altogether a different kind of annoying to the way that trolls are annoying.
