Origins and Endings

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS SPOILERS. PLEASE, IF YOU ARE A NEWCOMER TO THIS SITE, DON'T READ ANY FURTHER. INSTEAD, PLEASE START THE STORY WITH THE ENTRY ENTITLED "#1".




Dieselworld started out, in itty bitty seed form, as a very short-lived series of messages on Facebook with a dear friend of mine, Ben Hurley. Ben had replied to a request I'd posted generally asking for an original-content roleplaying buddy. We planned on seeing what our imaginations would summon, and if it was long-lived and interesting enough we'd start our own blog.

We made it to about three entries. The introduction, penned by me, was basically the same as the one you see in Dieselworld. A character named "You" wakes up in a cave with only the memory of being attacked by some sort of horrible-looking limb--though in the original story I think I said it was a tentacle. I had a plan to have You end up in a town actually quite similar to Half-Life 2's Ravenholm, fighting shoggoth-type beasties. Both the Cthulhu Mythos and Half-Life 2 influences stayed in, in the form of the Lovecraftian Kul'ul and in the reactor core scene of the White Tower. That scene might have been transformed into the sequence in Zorro City. In any case, we didn't get much further than that. We established the idea of the APPLE (then unnamed) to kind of joke around with the second-person narrative set up by roleplaying and Choose-Your-Own-Adventure games. We also had You lapse in and out of consciousness, and if I remember correctly, a female character that would become Susie appeared. But that's basically it.

Ben did mention a plan to eventually include "ghost Gameboys", however. That ended up inspiring the idea of the Cascade, where the Headhunter game for the Gameboy ends up creating Earth-Beta-4. (The game itself, with the art for it, came from a 1989 horror movie about cops investigating a monster summoned by a voodoo curse...appropriate, given the presence of Marie LaVeau, the Voodoo Queen herself, in Dieselworld.) So those were the starting elements. I just needed to tie them all together.

The Dieselworld characters themselves flowed out pretty naturally. Lefty Sinister, the only significant inhabitant of Earth-Beta-4, was made as a counterpart to Inspector Fox, who was, as explained within the story itself, inspired by both Brian O'Nolan's The Third Policeman and the Terrible Trio from the older Batman comics. The Earth-Beta-2 characters, then, were based on my brother and myself. In case you missed the joke, "Amos Slimechap Berkley" is pretty darn close to "Adam Mudman Bezecny". "Jacob" is the Latin version of James, my brother's name. So, in the end, this story starred some self-insert characters. I tried to be brutal to Amos in his death and in the ways the other characters treated him, but I still think I was too easy on him. Well, maybe I'll get a better chance in the prequel...

Mina isn't based on one of my real-life cousins, however. But, she is still very, very cool. Klaus is based on the German that I wish I could be.

Doctor Kai and the Old Man are characters of mine that have appeared in several unpublished stories written prior to Dieselworld. If all goes well you'll see more of them in the future.

As for Mark? Well, Mark is based off of "Will", a figure who appears in an eighth grade-penned short story of mine. The story is incredibly and hilariously hideous, so much so that it well represents the initial awfulness that surrounded the personage of Mark. I present this story now, with riffs, so that the reading may be facilitated. After all, I w̶a̶s̶ am a terrible writer.

Original text is in italics. My riffs are in Roman.

* * *

THE SWAMP

One day Will, a middle aged sales representative for a small English vacuum cleaner company was out to sell vacuum cleaners.

In contrast with selling manure, something also vended by vacuum cleaner salesmen. 

It was late that night and Will was not on his usual route. He became disoriented and lost in the country side. What was worse was that his car’s engine stopped dead and he had to coast off to the side of the road.

...but then he was hit by a Blue Shell.

It had become dark and the roadway was not lighted at all as this was the country. The trees alongside the road loomed ominously.

Oh man, guys. The spoop is rising; soon it will be 2spoopy.

As Will attempted to get his car running again he heard a squishing sound coming from beyond the trees.

I did an eyebrow raise at the mention of a "squishing sound".

It came closer and closer. Will tried to ignore the sound as he fiddled with the many wires and hoses of the car’s engine.

Whoa, slow down with those "wires and hoses", you sick fuck. 

“Ha, probably just a big toad from the swamp I hear that’s in this area” Will thought nervously to himself.

What.

No, seriously, what? Is the toad supposed to be in the area, or the swamp? If it's the toad, is there just one particular toad that's somehow worthy of it's own personal legendarium? Is it a monster toad? Perhaps a Giant Horny Toad Monster?* Why didn't I write a story about a monster toad instead?

Will was wrong, very wrong. To his horror, fifty two zombies limped, hobbled and even crawled out of the woods.

Fifty-two exactly? And why is it so unbelievable for zombies to crawl?

To say that Will was in trouble was a massive understatement.

Pfffft.

The zombies let out a collective gurgling sound and continued to move towards Will.

Thanks for establishing that they hadn't stopped moving towards him, me.

Will knew he had to run. Driving away wasn’t an option at this point but he was so terrified he couldn’t make any part of his body move. Will was so terrified that he may have soiled himself but no one to this day is sure including Will.

HOLY FUCK THIS IS FANTASTIC

Will, having his hands on the car battery received anon lethal shock that snapped him out of his fear induced paralysis.

Seriously, this is great. He fucking zaps himself with a car battery and all it does is make him realize, "Hm, should probably start running from the zombies now, yessir."

He now ran like he had never ran before. To Will’s good fortune, zombies don’t move as fast as living, non zombie humans.

Ladies and gentlemen, the two greatest sentences I have ever written. 

Will ran and ran and ran down the road as fast as he could back the way he came. He looked back over his shoulder several times.

Exciting.

The zombies were following him but being brainless for the most part, didn’t adjust their walking pace and were failing to catch up.

"Brainless"? Hey, those zombies worked hard in school. One of them has a Doctorate in Biochemistry.

After Will had run for about 15 minutes he stopped in the middle of the road in exhaustion. He could hear the zombies dragging feet and mindless groaning but could not see them.

It took me a little bit to realize I lost a critical apostrophe in there.

He knew he had outrun them. The village was about 5 minutes away at a jog. He continued on down the road.

Wasn't he fucking lost just a few minutes ago? Does he know there's a village? 

Will entered the village, burst through the nearest Pub and collapsed on the floor.

All he could manage to say was “Zombies! Zombies!” before he passed out.

The bartender looked at the nearest patron and the others than looked around and said “They’re back get out the shotguns and shells!”

The necessary commas, however, are not back.

Wow, this zombie battle is gonna be awesome! Shotguns and everything! And...and...wow! How come the villagers know about those zombies? Did they put them there? Has there been a long history of zombie battles in this town before? Let's get some backstory!

The end

Well, fuck you too.

So yes, somehow that ended up inspiring the personage of Mark. I found the story again after looking through a cluster of Word documents that I backed up before I had to dispose of my old computer, and found it so amusing (at least to me) that I had to incorporate it into my canon, somehow. And so it has been incorporated.

Intriguingly enough, I feel that early scene of Will working on his car at the edge of the woods ended up drifting down through the years and became an opening scene for a movie of mine that I made shortly before I started working on Dieselworld, entitled Don't Go Near Count Dracula's Castle. One of the first scenes of that movie has a man (Rory Bezecny) working on a car that's broken down on the side of the road. He can't get it to work so he starts walking through the woods. He stumbles across an old house and decides to go inside to find a phone. But, Count Dracula lives in this old house, and the man is slain.

Of course, both scenes mirror the eeriness of two Jean Rollin movies I'd seen, which I've come to really, really love; The Grapes of Death (1978) and Zombie Lake (1981). Both feature spoo(k/p)y European countrysides and zombies/deformed mindless people. So maybe the ghost of Rollin is working through me. Such a thought makes me happy.

The name "Mark" is derived from a mysterious in-joke from Yaubus Redford's Kuru; or, the Zombies, which I've written a book about. I'm currently doing some editing on the book while simultaneously searching for a publisher--recommendations or tips for any sort of publication are welcome.

And so this will ultimately be my last post to the Dieselworld blog. I know the title contains the word "Endings" but I don't really know what to say to solidly conclude the world I am now leaving behind. I've never been good at endings in general, and so I think instead, I'm going to just word this last non-endnote paragraph ambiguously--and point you guys towards this. Consider it...an expansion of the Dieselworld adventure.

That's all! Thanks very much for reading.

* I feel bad plugging David "The Rock" Nelson's The Giant Horny Toad Monster, given that...well, I'm in it. Or rather, my film Spooky Skeleton Geckos from Outer Space is watched in it. But you should check it out--or just do some homework on The Rock and his weird world. You won't regret it.