In Homer VS the Dwarf Aria brings her minotaur to the market to sell him, but he proves a force to be reckoned with in a game of table-war.
In this commentary I want to talk about my inspirations for this story, and what I hope it becomes.
Although the idea of a minotaur following “twine” is obviously related to greek myth, and I feature my own twists on the typical gamut of fantasy races (elves, dwarfs), the biggest inspiration for The Minotaur’s Board-Game is the anime YuGiOh. I enjoyed the show as a kid, and while it becomes more ridiculous every time I remember it, I still look back fondly on the series with a campy nostalgia.
In YuGiOh, a boy with improbable hair is possessed by an ancient Egyptian pharaoh who’s great at card-games. He wins every card-game he comes across and saves the world with the luck of the draw. The audience is rarely worried about whether the pharaoh will win, and more eager to see how he wins.
I already spoiled this in the last commentary: Homer the minotaur will win all his table-war matches. He’s not possessed by a pharaoh or anything, but his outsider’s perspective will let him surprise his opponents. I don’t think there are so many table-war games in this story that the reader to get bored of seeing Homer win; I hope the reader will be eager to see how Homer turns the tables, and yet still be surprised when he does.
One major joke regarding YuGiOh, among people in the know, is that the characters basically ignore the card-game’s rules. Occasionally YuGi’s catapult-turtle launches Gaia the dragon-champion at his own swords of revealing light, or whatever, warping the rules to give our protagonist a win. I hope to sidestep this by making up my own game, table-war.
Table-war has few, if any, explicit rules. The gnomes, impeccable machine-creatures, arbitrate each match with their own undisclosed guidelines meant to recreate real life. This way I get to focus on the back-and-forth of combat instead of worrying about a concrete set of rules and whether my characters are following them. The structure of the game is based less on YuGiOh’s hand of trading cards, and more on Warhammer 40k’s table of miniatures; I’ve never played 40k, but its tiny warzones are a striking image.
Another inspiration is The Turk, a book about a 1700’s clockwork machine which played chess. Spoiler alert, it was a hoax: someone hid under the table and directed the machine’s movement. Today we’ve got Deep Blue and other powerful computers which can whup humanity’s ass at chess and basically any other board-game, but a clockwork machine is a still great symbol.
My original conception of this story would have Homer, the minotaur, forced into a box to operate a Turk-style table-war machine. Sort of a Pixar’s Ratatouille thing. I still like this idea, and maybe I’ll return to it, but I’ve decided to have Homer fight against a machine in the final chapters; he’ll face a The Turk/Deep Blue style robot to prove that his unique, creative perspective is more valuable than pure computational power.
Another inspiration is modern warfare. Long-gone are the days of trenches; today we have drones and satellites which abstract war, and the internet delivers propaganda at light-speed. Likewise, in my fictional world, there is no actual war, just table-war. No one dies in battle; their game-pieces die, and the real person they represent probably doesn’t know or care. Rather than diminishing the effects of war, I hope table-war lets my fantasy setting comment on the nature of leadership in our modern era. How do you command people? How do you relate to people you could send to die in your name?
Still, in terms of what I want the story to achieve, I mostly want to have fun writing, because I enjoy writing and I think it’s neat.
But besides myself, who am I aiming the story toward? Honestly, I’m not sure. I hope the story is appealing to all age-groups, but I think I’m writing for people not much younger than me (24) of any gender. I’m minimizing the swearing and adult themes, so maybe I could claim it’s for young adults and teens.
Anyway, thanks for reading. If you’d like to read more, check out the table of contents or follow my site to receive emails whenever I update.
Ted Writes 