The Tail of Bob The Rat

Gus Openshaw’s Whale-Killing Journal is getting interesting. Everyone ended up in the hospital after the big battle with the fanatical whale-worshiping Conchians, except for Thesaurus the 2nd harpooner, who is MIA and presumed dead. Sybil, the rebellious iconoclastic Princess of Conch, is also MIA, status unknown. The Lucky Sue went down with all hands during the battle (less the one hand Nelson had already lost back in the first installment) and Nelson suffered a head injury. Which means, of course, that he’s fine but not conscious at the moment, which is a positive development. Otherwise, he’d be literally horning in on the keyboard and hijacking Gus’ whale-killing journal for purporses of his own, which consist of being a playa wit da ladies and pestering everyone for “pix.”

Which I thought was pretty funny, actually, since every inquiry by anyone with a vaguely female moniker in the comments section of the post he hijacked was answered with a peremptory “Pix!”

It was clear that he’s serious about being a get-down, boogie-oogie-woogie kind of rogue.

Gus, meanwhile, got injured directing the battle ashore with Sybil, and is now in the hospital recovering from a few busted ribs (and probably a pulled muscle when he had to wrestle the keyboard out of Nelson’s desperate grip). The rest of the crew (Duq, Flarq, and Stupid George, who must be wandering around in his usual vaguely present way until called for) all survived more or less intact.

The one character that has everyone besides themselves with worry and concern is Bob the Rat, who only joined the crew at… Guava? Like many a supporting character before him, he has taken center stage because a certain demographic has taken a shine to him. Namely, the sort of women who go all oogly for animals (Me! yes! and I’m not the only one, to the dismay of “real” male readers). They’re all now cooing and oohing and uploading tiny little pillows for his matchbox hospital bed as we speak.

But aren’t his eyes so cute all shut and squinched up? And his little tail hanging out, and his tiny little splint on his wittle whisker, which looks amazingly like a spliff? Aww! Yep, I’m all oogly for animals. Damn Gus and his damn cute cartoons.

If Gus isn’t careful, Bob will become the Fonzie of his whale-killing tale, and we all know where that eventually leads: jumping the shark!

Anyway, the immediate problem for Gus is figuring out how to survive the next crisis that looms on the horizon — the fanatical whale worshippers want to lynch him. Once that’s successfully avoided, he faces the problem of a nautical tale of whale-killing revenge missing 2 essential ingredients: a sea-going vessel equipped with whale-killing gear, and the actual blubbery bastard in his sights.

But before that happens, there will no doubt be more alarums and interruptions from God knows who all yet, plus return engagements of characters from previous episodes.

I’ve been following this tale from the beginning back in… June, … and I still am surprised by the twists and turns it’s taken. I really admire the way “Gus” figures out how to change up and take things in a completely unexpected direction, such as adding the funny little “scrimshaw” cartoons (originals, not copies of images from elsewhere) or deciding to let other “crewmembers” grab the keyboard and blog in their own voices. There are a number of companion blogs by the members of the “Gus” reading community that function as running jokes in their own right or as places for people to hang out and comment while they wait for the next installment. It’s an interesting development and likely to get out of hand, but since Gus only has one hand of his own, I think that limits the potential damage/hit points to only 50% of maximum.

It’s not exactly a new phenomenon, this collaborative storytelling (jokes made by commenters often make their way into new plot twists or details). On the Highlander mailing list, it used to be called a “WAR;” the subject lines of WAR posts had to be labeled so that those who weren’t interested in following the adventures of the Weasel, Adam the Attack Capybara and thinly veiled Mary Sue characters getting love scenes with Duncan and Methos didn’t have to read that stuff.

I actually didn’t participate in all of the WARs but I do remember that I was in charge of ferret recruitment for one, while someone else was commander of the Dead Pony Cavalry. She led charges against people who threatened to raise old, tired issues that no one wanted to discuss anymore yet that refused to die.

Yet another people were designated flag wavers for TV characters Richie, Duncan, Methos, and so on, and rode around on their Dead Ponies whacking people over the head with their flag poles. 2 members (now deceased) were in charge of Weasel Poking and leading a charge of Attack Cows in the climactic battle.

There was also another WAR I was in that was a virtual convention. I made a lot of very loopy late-night announcements at the microphone for that one playing on all the jokes of the day, since I was on the West Coast and was hours behind everyone else.

And the classic one was the imaginary movie we wrote to replace the very bad 3rd Highlander movie. It was witty and sharp enough (to us, at least) that when the real 4th movie came out, our “Highlander IV” was still better. Some of the imaginary scenes people submitted were serious treatments, not jokes, and they were damn good. And it was all unplanned, unplotted, and developed at random and as people replied with new twists and fragments of “dialogue” they “just remembered.”

As you can tell, it was all a lot of fun only so long as you kept up with the in-jokes, which started back in 1995 or so with a nickname for one poster – Wendy the Weasel. It all escalated from there to include rafts of secondary jokes all based on various members of Family Mustelidae.

All of which is why I get such a kick out of Gus’ blog and all the comments and blogs that bob in its’ wake; I don’t know if there will ever be a denoument or even a credits roll with writers’ and commenters’ actual names, and don’t really care. The tail grows in the telling, and I’m happy to go along.