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Diablo
II Thanksgiving Epilogue, 2003
This humorous Diablo II Thanksgiving story is the epilogue to a five story holiday humor series that began Thanksgiving 2002, continued on Christmas 2002, Valentine's Day 2003, Easter 2003, and concluded (sort of) on Halloween 2003. You don't need to have read the others to understand this one, but it would help, and it will help if you know the Diablo II characters and main monsters. The stories are contiguous and dated, I.E. events in this one take place about four weeks after events in part 5, the Halloween story.
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The Sorceress stifled her own yawn and looked down at the rough wooden picnic table, then quickly looked away. The sliced turkey lunch meat and untoasted white bread did nothing to stir her appetite, and she'd already eaten all the olives she could stand. Down the bench from her the Druid was leaning his chin into the palm of his right hand and staring off into the distance with glazed eyes, a cold, half-eaten yam slowly turning his white paper plate yellow. The Paladin sat at the head of the table, perched on a rickety wooden chair with one leg shorter than the others, and clapped his hands at the long faces around him. "Come on everyone, cheer up. We have much to be thankful this holiday!" His forced smile was met with blank stares from every direction. "Perhaps this banquet isn't quite as sumptuous as the ones we've had in the past, but we are all alive and healthy, are we not?" A cricket could be heard chirping in the distance. "And there are no monsters to interrupt our meal." he continued, gamely. "Nor make it worth eating." the Necromancer muttered. The Paladin ignored him and dug his fork into the pile of cold, dry stuffing in front of him and took a big bite, hardly grimacing at all as he chewed and swallowed. "Dig in! Join me! Why my mates in the infantry would have killed for food half this good, back in the wars. We lived on salted beef and swill, and we thanked the gods for it!" The cricket chirped again. "Okay, can we be honest?" the Assassin said, rising to her feet and driving a blade into the table. "This sucks. We're heroes, not chefs. We can't cook." "You go girl." said the Necromancer as he picked up another almond, licked it, then tossed it away. The Assassin glared at him before continuing. "I don't know how those monsters did it, but they put together the best feasts I've ever had. I don't care if they enslaved entire villages to make those meals; they were some damn good eatin'!" The Druid, Amazon, and Sorceress nodded, while the Paladin looked angrily at the Assassin. "Have you forgotten how nearly we were the main course for their Easter dinner?" he asked loudly. "Or how they would have chopped us all into sugar plums and gingerbread just last month?" "You're mixing Halloween and Christmas again, tin man." the Necromancer muttered, earning himself a furious look from the Paladin. "No one denies that they were evil creatures," interjected the Sorceress. "But they made the best pies I've ever tasted!" "And they are monsters, after all." added the Amazon. "It's not as if we didn't half-expect them to confuse us with dessert all along." The others murmured in agreement, while the Paladin fumed. "Oh come now!" he shouted. "Is this such a bad repast? We've got turkey, and stuffing, and gravy and mashed potatoes!" he said, vigorously gesturing at the rough wooden table before him. The other characters followed his eyes and snorted. There was a loaf of Wonder Bread, still in the wrapper. There was a can of gravy, still in the can. Two packs of Oscar Meyer sliced turkey laid open, with a large package of Kraft American cheese slices between them. Glass jars of baby dills, green olives, and black olives stood open with small forks in each of them. A bowl of nearly untouched, lumpy, undercooked, and very salty mashed potatoes took up space in the center of the table, and beside it was a cracked dish of boiled yams, the skin still on them. Warm two-liter bottles of 7-up and Orange Shasta were spaced along the length of the table, and there were seven place settings, each of them composed of a white paper plate and small Styrofoam cup. A ripped plastic bag of white sporks lay at one corner of the table, and next to it was a pile of mismatched napkins that had clearly been saved from various fast food restaurants. "Come on! It's edible! What more do you want for a Thanksgiving feast?" asked the Paladin, his voice straining with effort. He didn't mean his question to be taken literally, but it was. "Hot food." said the Amazon. "Cold beer." said the Druid. "Pecan pie." said the Assassin. "Cranberry sauce." said the Sorceress. "The Druid to summon up some damn wolves and let them eat that crap so I don't have to stare at it any longer." said the Necromancer. Everyone laughed at this except the Paladin, and the Druid looked thoughtful, which brought more laughs. The Sorceress cut in while the Assassin and Amazon were still snickering. "Hey, I really do want cranberry sauce." said the mage. "Where the hell is it? I know we had a big can." The Paladin looked around, and soon everyone else joined him, peering under the table and all around the rough wooden shack they sat in. But there was no cranberry sauce to be seen. "Never mind the cranberry sauce," said the Druid, "where the hell is Ugg?"
"Hellooooooo???" shouted the Barbarian, sounding very unhappy. "Demonssssssss???" Ugg sat all alone in the great dark cavern, at the head of a large table, his face screwed up in confusion. A large, unopened can of cranberry sauce sat on the table in front of him, the metal dented deeply and the wrapper half torn off. "Ugg bring berry sauce! Where monster? Where pie?" he asked, speaking out loud to the empty cave. He looked around, but there was nothing moving anywhere in the great, silent grotto. No sweet smells of baking meat filled the air, just the stink of mildew, death, and age. "Ugg hungry!" he said loudly. Ugg shifted in his seat, his napkin tucked into the collar of his best chain mail, a great serving fork in one fist, a spoon in the other. "Turkey Day feast?" asked Ugg, his voice quivering as he neared tears. "Ugg hungry..." he said again, despondently scraping his oversized fork and spoon together as he waited, and waited. |
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Ending
Notes
After being spoiled by almost unanimously-positive comments about the first five stories in this series, I was shocked back to reality by the largely-negative reaction to this one. The fans wanted more, and they didn't care if it was more of the same. They wanted humor, they wanted action and battles, and they wanted them now. A few people did appreciate the form and style of this quick Epilogue, but most took this as the end of everything, and were upset. This does give me some insight into how hard it must be for authors to stop writing books in a popular series. This is just my little Internet fan fiction thing, and I got dozens of angry mails when I appeared to bring it to an end. Imagine the reaction authors get when they kill off major characters, or close off major series of best selling books? Here's a representative selection of emails from people who were not happy with the direction things went.
There were a number of forum posts much like this one, and I guess it's understandable but um... what part of "short Epilogue" did they not understand? It's not like I said this was the best of the whole holiday story series and an amazing new epic adventure. I said it was a short epilogue picking up a few weeks after the Halloween story... and that's what it was. I don't really know what David means with his remark about "serious whining became the standard in comedy" but perhaps he's referring to some other comedy; a bad sketch on Saturday Night Live or something? I also didn't notice any whining in the story at all; they were bored and listless and unhappy, and Ugg was confused, but who whined or complained about anything other than the crappy quality of their feast? And since that wasn't part of the comedy anyway, his remark confuses me.
More complaints:
In response to Perry, though I said in the news post about the story that I probably wouldn't be writing any more, I thought this one set things up pretty well for a continuation. I couldn't just have the characters trusting the monsters enough for another story like the first five installments, since readers would not believe the characters were so stupid/trusting. This one bridges to a future continuation by showing how bored they were alone, and that could be what drives them to accept another invitation -- it's worth risking death to get a better meal than what they settled for on their own? And it's obvious that Ugg has no hesitation about trusting the demons, but then we all knew he wasn't exactly the sharpest quill on the porcupine.
It seemed like most of the reader mails were unhappy, but now that I sort them out on this page I see that less than a third were like the above ones. No one was exactly full of rapturous praise, but most people at least accepted the logical plot progression to this T-day Epilogue. Though most of them still wanted more.
Shawn: I've considered working in dueling and player fighting, but so far I've kept them as a bickering bunch of friends, rather than deadly enemies, aside from some Necromancer bashing early on. I don't want them to start fighting just for the sake of throwing in some cheap action though. Anton: You were supposed to feel sad. In a "that's pathetically funny" sort of way, of course.
In theory Ugg met everyone else there for lunch, saw that it sucked, took the cranberry sauce as a BYOB sort of thing, and left so quickly that no one saw him slip out. Or perhaps he blew off the player feast entirely, taking his own can of sauce as an inept sort of peace offering to the demons. Poor Ugg, he's not too bright, but he does the best he can.
Some players did like it, if only due to its association with five other very good short stories.
People really did feel bad for Ugg, so at least my story moved them in some way, even if it wasn't with humor or excitement.
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Comments from the Blog On November 27, 2003, AKA Thanksgiving, I posted an epilogue to my five-part holiday story series, set in the Diablo II universe. I hadn't planned on another story in this series, but when the idea for the epilogue came to me, a couple of days before Thanksgiving, I liked it a lot. The next day I was still giving it some thought, and while scooping out Jinx's and Dusty's litter boxes (literally) I worked out how the rest of the story would go, and with that in mind I was able to write it in about an hour, late that night. It's admittedly not as good/funny/interesting as the other five stories in that series (or at least the last three, since over time I've grown less fond of the first two) but that's why it's called an "epilogue" rather than "part six." Reader feedback on it has been pretty kind, with most of the kind comments coming from people who had read the other five installments and who were basically giving me thanks for the whole thing, now that it's apparently over with. Some people have said they liked the story in of itself as well, and I can accept that; it's certainly not a masterpiece, but it's not bad, for what it is. If I were reading it I'd think it was pretty good but want more. As a reader, I'd have probably enjoyed it more if it had been posted on Halloween, rather than a month later, and by itself. There is a subset of reader mails that are some positive but mostly negative, and from people who are failing to grasp something. Most often they seem unaware of what an "epilogue" is, but that's by no means the only source of confusion. You can see comments in the forum thread I started about the story, over on the Fan Fiction forum of the D2 site. They're mostly positive, at least in comparison to the emails. As for the emails, here's a selection of the more interesting ones. My comments are below the mails, which are in purple and indented.
He's entitled to his opinion, but the whole point was that this is an epilogue. Not chapter six, not a full new story. Some readers, young ones especially, can't deal with unhappy or non-final endings. I know, I was one of them once, and a story that ended without every loose end being firmly nailed down bothered me. As you get older you gain more appreciation for relativism and shades of gray, mostly as you realize that that's what life is all about, like it or not.
This was the most common type of comment; that there should have been more, more action, more fight, more whatever. Part Six, in other words. I'm not faulting them for it, and in fact I should probably feel complimented, that they liked the series enough to want it to go on and on. It's just sort of annoying that so many people couldn't accept/enjoy the ending that I provided.
Some readers just don't like unhappy endings, even if they are completely in keeping with the flow and style of a tale. And anyway, is it really that unhappy? Sure, Ugg is left sitting all alone, wondering where the feast is, but the monsters are defeated (at least for now) and the characters are all still alive. Now if every one of the characters were killed and not resurrected, that would be an unhappy ending, at least if you were rooting for the humans in the stories.
I'm pretty sure that was the idea... ?
My concept was that Ugg was there earlier in the day, but for whatever Ugg-ish reason got the idea that the monsters were hosting a banquet and went off to it, taking along the cranberry sauce as a gift, or to add to the repast. Or perhaps he saw how much the humans' feast was going to suck, so he decided to head off to eat with the demons, and went back to the cave they ate in last Thanksgiving? There's really no way you can totally explain what Ugg does, the man wore a giant bunny suit to the Easter feast, after all.
There were a number of mails from people who apparently saw this story and read it without reading the others, or who were just new to the whole concept of fictionalized accounts of the game events. And were confused.
Other mails were just inexplicable. I have no idea what, "serious whining became the standard in comedy" means. What standard in comedy? I guess he's annoyed by something... some TV show he used to like that became serious or something, and he's projecting? That being said, it's difficult to balance a mixture of action and humor, and some readers can't deal with the switches between them, especially if the comedy swings over to the tragedy side, as this epilogue did.
Just in case you were shaking your head at the denseness of most feedback (as Malaya does) never fear, there were intelligent mails as well. Such as this one. and no, this Geoff's last name isn't Fraizer. Otherwise it would almost certainly have been posted several emails higher up this page, based on the content.
As for future plans for the story, there aren't any. Of course I didn't think I'd write the Thanksgiving epilogue either, until the idea struck me suddenly in late November, so I won't entirely rule anything out. I do know that I'm not going to just churn out a never-ending series of basically identical stories (Who do you take me for, Dean Koontz?) where the monsters and characters get together, feast, fight, and then make up. It would bore me and I'd feel like an even bigger whore than I do when I ask for site donations. And we can't have that.
Reader mails today. Here's one on my recent D2 story.
There's almost too much here to comment on, packed into one typo-filled paragraph (I added a couple of breaks here just to make it readable).
Obviously, impressions and preferences amongst readers are going to vary greatly, and one person's sympathetic and loveable character is going to be another's boring deadweight. Just ask George Lucas. Well, ask some Star Wars fans; Lucas himself seems oblivious to all outside criticism and opinion. To do as David does here, and go into a story he obviously doesn't like and simply deny what's happening, seems pointless and childish to me. To stay with the Lucas example, it would be like saying, "It's idiotic to say it was sad and tragic when Luke got his hand cut off and found out Vader was his father. Who cares?!" Not to compare my little story epilogue to Empire Strikes Back, but no matter how much or how little you like the story in that movie, you can't deny that it's a tragic series of events, whether you were personally sad or not. It is what it is, whether it works for you or not. Ugg sitting alone and lonely in the cave, wondering where the food is, is tragic, in its own little way. My point is that for any individual reader something is or is not tragic, depending on how they feel about the story and situation, but it's childish to say that someone else's reaction to events is wrong or stupid, just because you don't share it. Especially when it's something entirely relative and subjective, such as a short story.
My habit with feedback is to post almost all of the negative or weird, and very little of the positive, since positive is boring to read about, though generally gratifying to the author. That's why I didn't quote any short positive mails yesterday (of which I have a couple of dozens) or quote anything from the long forum thread on the D2 site about the story. I read them all and appreciate the compliments, but as I constantly say, short positive mails are of essentially no use to me in trying to edit and improve upon work. Short critical ones aren't of much use either, but at least they give me a hint. I much prefer longer ones with cogent points, pro or con, and whether or not I agree with the mails (pro or con) is pretty irrelevant in terms of how useful they are to me, and how likely I am to post them on the site or in the story feedback. I posted all of the intelligent (and dumb) mails about my story since those made for more interesting reading. Here are the four most recent emails I received about the story:
Not too thrilling a read, was it? Which is why I post the type of feedback I do. It's funny, I've been criticized in the past for ignoring positive feedback and only quoting the negative ones, and that's basically what I did this time also, yet David still choose to take it the other way.
As for the quotes of the day, don't read too much into them. I've posted one every day I've blogged since I began in January 2002, and while I don't have an exact count (Make your own if you want to; the archives are linked to from the QotD on top of the page.) there are something like 580 daily updates in the folder on my hard drive, and I've got over 100 more sitting on my quotes page, ready to be pasted in day by day. I didn't pick these 700ish quotes from memory. They're not my personal favorites. I harvest them from quote collection sites such as this one and from the daily news, and obviously they are going to somewhat overlap my personal areas of interest, such as writing and criticism (both things I enjoy doing and reading). I don't necessarily agree with them, and in fact I frequently disagree with them, and post them to expose some viewpoint I find loathsome or outrageous. However my guiding principle is that they have to be clever and interesting to read, and I do try to pick one that's in some way thematically linked to the day's output, though I generally put the quote in last thing before saving and uploading, and seldom spend more than 10 seconds skimming down the page looking for a word or two that stick out and relate to that day's blog. Today's is somewhat of an exception, in that the QotD is dedicated to a certain special self-professed doctoral student of superior intellect.
As for my promised cruel awakening, I wouldn't hold up the cute but admittedly inconsequential D2 holiday stories as my best work, but they are pretty good for what they are; quick and frequently humor reads of interest only to Diablo II fans. Of course here as everywhere, humor is in the eye of the beholder. That's probably the lesson I learned best from my run of Decahedron "humor" columns on the D2 site: for every ten adoring mails from people who thought something was hilarious, I'd get one or two mails from people who didn't think a word of it was in any way amusing and who often actively disliked the tone of the columns, which was what other readers found so amusing. As for publishing them, I'd love to, if it would get me some recognition or money, but I can't imagine what magazine would want to publish them. Any suggestions? I doubt there'd be many takers even if I worked over them some more and made them truly brilliant (if that's possible). And it's pointless anyway, since I can't imagine that the Blizzard legal dept. would allow it, being as the stories are obviously derived from their copyrighted product.
And lastly, I call them "humorous" for the same reason I call the various D2 site columns and guest articles that try to make jokes "humorous". It's not much to do with whether or not I personally thought they were funny, it's to do with readers who honestly can't tell if something is a joke or not, especially if it's sarcastic. If you look at my early Decahedrons, you'll see that I started to put in larger and larger disclaimers as I went, warning that they were intended as humor and not serious game strategy, and that was entirely motivated by the numerous utterly oblivious emails I was receiving. I could easily see people reading the whole D2 holiday stories and never grasping the fact that they were not meant to be serious action stories, especially since so many of the D2 site readers are young, international, and using English as their second or third or fourth language. Trust me, I've been well-trained to always put "humorous" or "sarcastic" or something like that into the news link for anything that it applies to, just to save on confusion. Nothing is more deadly than trying to explain to someone with no sense of humor why something is supposed to be funny. Readers get it or they don't, and the more sarcastic and oddball something is, the more that won't.
Lastly, despite somewhat sharing David's withering scorn for the intellect and common sense of the average internet user (how you define "average" is entirely up to you), I also realize that the general population is not a bit smarter, and in fact is probably dumber, exposed to far fewer sources of information as they are in offline life. More to the point, now that I've insulted virtually everyone reading this, who do you think buys fantasy novels, if not the type of people who read fan fiction forums on internet gaming websites? I'll guarantee you that at least 95% of the people who read and like my stories on the D2 site own a dozen or more fantasy novels, and even if you count mainstream fare like LotR and Harry Potter as "fantasy," those people are fans of the genre. |
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winging
her feet back and forth under the hard wooden bench, the Amazon fidgeted
and sighed loudly. Next to her the Assassin echoed her sigh, and
across the room, sprawled in an old arm chair, the Necromancer yawned and
picked a salted almond from the can, looked it over, then tossed it away.