BoM/TWS Message Forum

First, I am very grateful for these comments. I like any comment, even those that take me and the story to task.

As for the content of the comment:

My first reply would be that it's not only the readers (at least two of them, but more I'm sure) who are bothered by the content of this branch. The author greatly dislikes it too. I did not enjoy writing it, and took no pleasure in rereading it while editing it.

So why did I write it?

To start with, let me clear away one possible misapprehension.

There's a prevalent myth, that authors always consciously and deliberately plot out every element of a story -- that before they sit down to write, they know ahead of time what they intend to write, and that every word, sentence and paragraph emerges from deliberate forethought, with the effects both intended and carefully gauged.

But that's simply not true, at least not in all cases. Very often -- and I know it is the case with me -- the author is as helplessly in the grip of the story as the readers. The characters come alive and start doing as they will, and the author either has to abandon the emerging story, or has to let the current carry him where it will, even over some pretty nasty rapids.

So, again, why write it? Why not abandon it?

Well, I came very close to abandoning it. There were many days when I circled this branch at a distance, loathe to touch it but at the same time tugged toward it. One reason I'm grateful for these comments is that it gives me a chance to confront myself with these same questions -- Why go through with it?

Rugal speculates that I'm showing the "disturbing nature" of the Baphomet business and "evoking the atmosphere of Satanic and supernatural themed horror from the 1970s." As I insist above, I have no conscious intentions here, but I do think he has captured my unconscious intuitions. The Baphomet business is very bad -- far and away, I think, the most dangerous and evil thing that Will has been tempted to play with. Now, I did not sit down and ask, "How can I show how bad this stuff is? I know, I'll [insert the evil stuff that Prussian points to]." But I have long known at a gut level how awful it is, and it is one reason that this area of the interactive has always danced around the margins, peering into the abyss but never clambering down into it.

So I think that my imagination has seized upon the Brown family, and the middle schoolers in particular, as a way of demonstrating the rot, and how the rot runs right through the marrow and out the other side, without having to invent the full horror. I think my imagination has done this (not just to you, the readers, but to me, the author) because it shows the rot without disguising it with a lot of razzle-dazzle or story effects. There is no glamour to Sydney's intended conspiracy, or inventive world-building, in this branch -- nothing to distract from the sheer evil of it. It is corruption all the way through -- the kind of corruption you would find inside a moist grave. The truth of the situation must be nasty, it must not be pretty. At least, I think that is what my imagination has been trying to convey here. It has not been fun for me, and it has not been fun for my imagination either.

I guess this is also the place for a caution. Readers who dislike the chapters so far might find it getting worse going forward. Though I think I found a way of pushing forward in a way that dodges the worst possibilities, it is still pretty remorseless.


Regarding comments on the Brown family, and how they compare to Gordon and Steve. Again, I can only plead both "lack of design" and "an imagination that has something to say."

I actually like the Browns, and I think Alec and Eric (at least as they exist in my imagination) are really good guys. Certainly they are not consciously malicious. At worst, they play rough, and if the teams at WHS were divided into "good guys" and "bad guys," I'm sure that Brownie would be in the first camp along with Marc Garner, Cameron Huber, and their friends. But there is something "missing" in Brownie -- there's a selfishness and a certain lack of imagination so that he can't fully empathize with others. I think it comes from the family. They are very pious, but they also have a hardness that leaves them, finally, unsympathetic.

As long as I'm grappling with my imagination -- "Why did you give me that to write?" I ask it. "Where did that come from? Why did it turn out that way?" -- I'd say it comes from two places. First, it makes the above horror a little easier to take. It would just be too awful to do the above stuff to a family that didn't have some kind of flaw in them. No one deserves what happens in this branch. But I think it helps the medicine go down a little if there's the implication that the horror, in some sense, complements the family dynamics -- the horror adapts itself to the family and its flaws, and magnifies them. It has been elsewhere established that Brownie, in particular, has a wandering willie, and I think that's something that all the men of the Brown family have. And though I think the mother's pride in her sons does not have a Freudian dimension, she has not been able to rein them in -- she probably ignores any evidence of it -- and what happens to her in one chapter is, in some sense, a punishment for it.

Second, I think it complicates some characters who otherwise would be even more boring than they are now. It's the same thing as happens with Gordon and Steve, only running in the other direction. Gordon and Steve are on the surface very repellent, but Gordon has some surprising vulnerabilities (though he himself hardly is aware of them) while Steve (who probably grows even more repellent the more he reveals himself) has unexpected dimensions of intelligence. With Brownie and his family it runs the other way. A family that looks good on the surface turns out to be colder and more than a little heartless.

I also completely agree that Riker and Micah are a couple of assholes. But I also think there is something feral about kids that age. For me, the most interesting moment -- the most startling moment, and I say that as the author -- comes when Will surprises himself at how easy it is, from inside the skin of one of the kids, to act exactly the way he himself always hated being treated.


Summation statement: Though BoM has always been a fantasy with strong elements of satire and exaggeration (and hence is unrealistic across a couple of dimensions), I've tried to keep the game of "What if?" pretty serious. That's the main reason I have always tried to keep the action up at the senior level of the high school, where the general ickiness is more tolerable. But this branch, and this area, is one place where the "What if?" game leads to some very dark and unpleasant places. These places are few and far between. But it wouldn't be the same game if these branches, when they do show up, didn't go there.