Tag: animal

The Point

~ Ted ~ Leave a comment

In Homer Vs the Human our minotaur protagonist wins a seat in an upcoming tournament by beating Queen Anthrapas’ champion commander, Harvey.

In my last commentary I talked about the “virtue wheel,” a method of charting a story’s characters to make sure they’re varied. If you want your story to have a point, character variety helps communicate that point.

But do stories need points? Or “themes” or “meanings” or whatever?

Nah. I didn’t write the first draft of The Minotaur’s Board-Game with a point in mind; I just liked minotaurs and board-games and writing. People can write stuff for a reason, or for no reason, or without even considering reason.

But, a point can make a story directed and streamlined. A point helps me, as an author, cut unnecessary prose. Since I believe stories should be as short as possible, a tool to help me trim is always welcome. So, the second draft of my story needs a point.

What’s the point of The Minotaur’s Board-Game?

I’m not sure yet. My opinion about the point will change by the end. But I found clues in my virtue wheel, so let’s start there! Three “virtues” which separate the characters in The Minotaur’s Board-Game are

  • Physical Strength
  • Intelligence
  • Political Power

I’d like to use these “virtues” to make a point about leadership and loyalty.

Board-games suddenly have symbolic meaning. The intelligent characters reduce the strong characters into game-pieces to control their physical forms. Meanwhile those intelligent characters are controlled by characters with political power, as if the real world is a board-game controlled by kings and queens. This makes the conflicts between individuals, nations, and races more abstract, distancing characters from the implications of their actions (is it okay to take a griffon from its natural habitat just to use its physical characteristics for a game-piece?). Even without real war, this isn’t exactly a Utopian environment.

The main characters, Homer and Aria, have a flawed relationship. Homer’s a sentient animal-biped who admires and trusts Aria, but she sees him as a pack-animal she can ride to greatness. Homer is stronger than Aria, and maybe smarter in terms of pure table-war talent, but Aria exploits him. Did Homer really want to fight Harvey? Would Homer prefer living in a labyrinth? Aria doesn’t care. She hardly seems to understand him.

The most powerful person we’ve met is Queen Anthrapas. She’s old and frail, but as queen of humanity, Anthrapas is imposingly unquestionable. Is it okay for her to manipulate her subjects to protect humanity from the threat of war? If so, does that mean Aria can justify exploiting Homer because she misses being a royal commander?

The human answer to this question won’t be the same as the elven answer. I want my elves to be weird and original; they’re insect-like, with a height-based social-system, lace wings, and pheromone-based communication. Their queen enforces loyalty and leadership chemically. They even lay eggs!

Homer will play table-war with seafolk next. Whatever’s up with them, you know their society will present a different commentary on leadership.

If you’ve ever read The Once and Future King, Merlin turns a young King Arthur into animals to show him different political ideologies. I recall ants, birds, and fish among others. Similarly, I hope meeting elves, seafolk, and dwarfs will teach Homer and the reader about different possibilities for the relationship between leaders and the people they lead.

To that end, I think each board-game should present a unique challenge related to the society proposing it. Homer must invent solutions reflecting his maturing ideology.

In his first match, Homer overcame dwarven siege weapons by setting skeletons on fire and flinging them with a trebuchet, immediately after Aria told him that using skeletons at all was a faux pas. As an animal, he’s naturally shameless, and in that particular scenario, shamelessness was enough to win.

In Homer’s second match, Harvey shows humanity’s tendency to exploit strength when he replaces his falcons with the griffon. Homer punishes him by understanding the deeper connections between animals. Maybe Aria taught Homer some sympathy for other species.

In Homer’s next match, what will the seafolk teach him? Follow to find out!

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PS. In The Minotaur’s Board-Game, animals impact their environment. Scales the ice-dragon makes its surroundings chilly. Homer the minotaur makes mazes when he’s anxious. Humans seem to live in an infinite field of rolling hills, and it’s not clear whether they live there because it’s like that, or if it’s like that because they live there. Dwarfs eat mountains from under their own feet.

I think that’s another major aspect of the point. When two individuals play table-war, they represent their nation and their race. Whole world-views are in combat, and when land is ceded, it’s assimilated into the opponent’s mode of being. The infinite field of rolling hills represents humanity’s stability. If the elves conquered some hills, I’m sure forests would grow there and soon you could hardly tell it was ever human territory at all. Understanding how we shape our environment is instrumental to understanding ourselves.

Nations/races are almost characters in themselves. They’re like amoebas with political borders as their cell-walls, whose interiors are homogeneous terrain. In this view, Queen Anthrapas isn’t a mastermind playing games with subordinates; she’s subject to the national over-mind. The scattered weapons left from the war against demons are the only true symbols of power, representing violence which can smite civilizations. Before them, an individual’s strength, intelligence, and political power are meaningless.

Escape of the Lobsters

~ Ted ~ Leave a comment

(I wrote this for a class at UC Santa Barbara. I think the prompt was “animal.”)

I scuttled across the sandy seafloor on ten legs. My front six legs had pinchers, and I used my largest, frontmost pinchers to eat worms and kelp. If I kept my eyestalks peeled I’d find unsuspecting mollusks to pry open. My mandibles chittered at the thought of slurping up a snail.

My antennae brushed chum, just rotting fish flesh, bones, and blood. I crawled in to eat my fill. My eyes rolled on their stalks in salty pleasure. My carapace bumped another lobster wandering the chum. Another lobster stepped on my antennae. At least a dozen of us scrambled over one-another. Whenever I escaped the tangle of crustaceans, a wooden barrier blocked me. How had I entered? How could I exit? More lobsters joined us through a mysterious one-way portal.

Our prison rose and the pressure of the deep lifted as we broke the surface; I felt like I would burst out of my shell. The other lobsters squirmed in defeat as we felt air for the first time. “Here’s the trap. Get the bands on ‘em!”

Two at a time, lobsters from the top of the trap were taken and returned. I did not see what happened to them outside. Finally I was pulled above the others. Two bipeds snapped my pinchers shut with rubber bands. I fell back in the trap. “Load ‘em into cargo.”

A bipedal brute hefted our prison down a staircase into a dark place. He dumped us in a barrel of brine.

The other lobsters panicked, and their wriggling churned the water. I hid against the bottom of the barrel and watched them all scramble for escape. Thankfully they couldn’t pinch me in their frenzy. Eventually some lobsters calmed and joined my utter stillness. Finally we all floated inertly in the cold brine.

I lost track of time until the barrel opened. Harsh light blinded me. “Get ‘em in the tank.” The barrel tilted. I tried and failed to swim against the current pouring me out. A hundred lobsters fumbled in the icy tank. I scrambled just to bump a glass wall.

A bipedal child tapped the glass and stuck its tongue at me. “Lookit! Like giant bugs!” I wanted to snap my pinchers to display dominance, but couldn’t open them. I retreated into the ice and surrendered to lethargic chill. 

Occasionally a biped behind the glass would point at a lobster. Those lobsters were taken to a boiling cauldron. I was not chosen. I reflected that I was smaller and more stationary, and perhaps therefore less attractive. I dug deeper in the ice to hide. In frozen slumber, I meditated on the problem at hand. Was this the doom of the arthropod? Was my eternal undying race fated to this? Ancient gray blood pumped through my thorax. My brainless nervous system recalled refinement from countless eons of ancestors.

“We’d better boil the rest first thing in the morning.”

The lights turned off and the din quieted. I crawled from the ice. Calling upon my lineage, I bent back and forth to crack my carapace. I crawled backward to shed my shell. Guided by the cosmos, my pinchers slipped from their hard gloves and escaped the rubber bands. I immediately turned to eat my armor. 

I stopped eating my armor when all that remained was the hard edge of an old pincher. That pincher’s edge easily cut the bands restraining a comrade. We both began freeing our neighbors. When every lobster was unbound, we piled against one side of the tank to make a slope of lobster bodies. I helped others climb and crest the glass wall. Each escapee gripped the tail in front of them with all ten legs to make a lobster-rope which the rest of us descended.

I made sure I was the last out. When my head poked above the water, I noticed a biped janitor standing dumbfounded at the sight of us. I pinched at him, and he flinched.

I led my lobsters into the sewers. 

But don’t get cozy, biped; we’ll be back for revenge.

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