Tangled Quest

I am going on week two stuck in a house full of germs. My germs are gone, but the monkeys spent my week of convalescence busily contracting some other nasty virus and so it goes. My one trip out in the last eleven days has been to the grocery store with a stop by 7-11 for some gas and it was fraught with peril. I stood in line to pay for my gas and watched no less than three people rummage around in the 7-11 doughnut case with their bare hands. I almost fainted. They didn't just grab the doughnut they would eat and walk away; they rummaged. That is a crime against pastry and humanity if ever I saw one. If I had felt better, I might have had an apoplectic screaming fit. Instead, I stood and closed my eyes and got the head-to-toe willies and vowed never to eat a doughnut from 7-11 again. This is all tertiary to my point.

When I am bed-ridden for long stretches of time, I turn to my trusty friends between the covers of books and who live in the TV screen for tales of adventure and daring. So it has been that I've been holed up, vicariously slaying vampires, casting spells, and saving the galaxy. And because there is a certain kind of madness in a writerly mind that is only exacerbated by isolation and delirium, I can't just watch or read, I have to deconstruct.

My dementia is your gain for lo, I have constructed a spread sheet of deconstruction to share with you, my loyal readers. Is it adventure or a quest story you seek? Now it is at your fingertips. Go ye into the wild and write a best-selling series with this information, carefully curated by a madwoman on the brink of collapse.

Some definitions for interpretation of figure 1.

Orphan - (or near-orphan.) This seems essential for the whole Quest protagonist thing. Probably so they can go gallivanting around fighting the forces of evil without having to check in for dinner. Also because it adds to the aura of isolation and loneliness inherent in having the fate of the world rest upon your shoulders.

Impossible Quest - Also essential, obviously, for a Quest story. It must be gigantic and seemingly impossible. It should be utterly ridiculous that the aforementioned Orphan be expected to complete it. It should involve terrible odds and certain death.

Enigmatic Old Man - This is the guy who stands in as a kind of surrogate father figure with whom the Orphan forms an almost immediate and somewhat unhealthy attachment (probably because they are an Orphan.) The Enigmatic Old Man also fades in and out of the story, at times seeming to abandon the Orphan when he/she needs him most and almost certainly never gives the Orphan enough information to complete the Impossible Quest, even if they know it. Usually dies or goes back to England at some point.

Rake - This is the guy who is undeniably sexy and usually has some kind of dark secret or past. They generally serve as a love interest for someone in the story and for the readers/viewers. They are usually a little rough, but painfully lovable.

Smart Girl - She's the one who figures out most of the Quest for the Orphan. She's the one who gets little credit in the long run, but without her brains, everyone would be dead many times over. She also usually gets kidnapped (sometimes repeatedly) to get to the Orphan.

Muscle - This is the one you want on your side in a fight. Usually huge and hairy, almost invincible and readily available for the ripping off of arms or wielding a giant ax. They're the one that you panic a little bit if something happens to them because then the chance of the Orphan winning any kind of fisticuffs becomes all the more bleak.

Loyal, Goofy Friend - These are personally my favorite characters. They are the stalwart ones who possess no particular super powers except those of unfailing loyalty and strength of character. They take abuse, rejection and dismissal from the Orphan in turns and rarely give up. They are the real heroes of the stories.

Slippery Fellow - These are the characters whose intentions are suspect, who have flirted with evil, who appear on the surface to be enemies, but ultimately end up assisting the Orphan with their Quest in pretty integral ways. They can never fully be trusted, but are often some of the most interesting, ambiguous characters.

Unspeakably Evil Entity - These are given name and bodily form, but usually they tend to be somewhat too evil, and thus rather flat. They are only a construct in the story anyway, because everyone knows that the Orphans' real battles are with their own darker selves and once they have conquered or accepted their darker natures, the final battle with the Evil Entity is kind of no sweat and much more surmountable than initially conceived.

Fig. 1 - Quest Matrix

I have picked a few of my favorite Quest stories for my chart. What are your favorites? Can you think of any others? Can you write a Quest story about your life using these character descriptions? Are you now all set to write your own bestselling series and become as rich as Rowling and as influential to pop culture as Lucas and Whedon?

Go forth and conquer.

The Virus

Several years and one laptop ago, I was on a mission. Our bath mat was getting frayed and I decided that I would do what any sane and sensible person would do. I would knit a new one.

Just imagine it! Luxurious organic cotton in whatever colors and stitches I chose! It would be the perfect touch to our bathroom, transforming the nasty rental linoleum into an oasis for feet just out of the shower.

As I had this remarkable revelation during a rare bout of insomnia (there is no connection between the two, really. Right?) I had many late-night hours to peruse the internet at my leisure for ideas and patterns. And, as is usually the case with most of my internet missions, I got completely sidetracked by the most appalling acrylic monstrosities - toilet tank covers in peach and teal with white ruffles, seat covers knit with faces or flowers, and my perennial favorite, the toilet paper cozy, in every imaginable color, style and theme. I am a sucker for the horrid, the tacky, the painstakingly precise and labor-intensive debacle; so deeper and deeper down this spiraling rabbit hole I delved, slack-jawed in equal parts admiration and fear.

For those of you not well-versed in the fiber arts, these sorts of bright and cheerful acrylic crimes are almost exclusively the purview of old ladies. And, bless their hearts, you know all of their friends and relatives have at least one of these toxic goodies stashed in the back of a closet somewhere awaiting the apocalypse, where the TP cozy and the roaches will be the only things that survive.

And then, in the middle of the night, completely unsuspecting, it hit. I clicked on a link for "Fair Isle Tank Warmer" or some such and after stalling a bit, my computer gave me a pair of impossibly large breasts. What? No thank you. I'm not much interested in Hawt Teen Chixxx, thank you very much. So I closed the window, feeling just a little bit startled. And then it happened. With my little click of the red X, I set off an avalanche of porn such as I have never seen. My computer, seemingly uncontrollably, regurgitated page after page after page of porn, one on top of another. This wasn't good porn, either. It was the low-budget, grainy, amateur variety with no thought for web design or photographic techniques.

I sat in shock as wave after wave assaulted my screen and my poor, weary eyeballs. Why would that be embedded in a knitting pattern? A knitting pattern predominately for old ladies and freaks like me? I tried to stem the tide, to no avail and panicked about whether or not I'd had my email open at the time. Had I infected my mother-in-law? My church group? I had the sinking fear that all of my nearest and dearest would open messages from me in the morning full of knee socks and ponytails and lollipops, if you know what I mean. After frantically fighting with the computer and attempting some home remedies, I finally just shut it off and passed out in exhaustion.

The next morning, when my husband came down to find me on the couch, tangled in the computer cords, I barely lifted my head and croaked: "Don't let the kids touch the laptop. It's very, very sick." And I passed out again, completely drained of all my resources.

Later in the day, when I was a little more awake and less in shock, I decided there was nothing to do for it except to wipe the whole hard drive - empty it out and start fresh. So I took it to the professionals and went about the rest of my life kind of shaky and reeling. There were the inevitable questions from my husband: What were you doing? What kind of link did you click? Did you enter a credit card number? And from the kids: Why did you break the computer? Why can't we just play with it a little bit? How long until we get it back? 

My poor laptop returned to me, empty and lean and all better. The porn-valanche from a few nights before seemed to have subsided and disappeared. For several days we were gentle with it, vigilant for signs of further infection, afraid to search anything too rigorously for fear of relapse. It was only with the passing of time that we were able to finally resume our normal activities without fear. And before long, I was back to searching knitting patterns again. (Except not for bath mats because I found a gloriously soft, white, organic cotton one on clearance for a fraction of the cost of the yarn. Also because I spent my yarn budget on de-toxing the laptop. Let this be a lesson to you.)

Well, this tale of porn and woe about sums up my last week. Except without the porn and the knitting patterns and the laptop. These middle-of-the-night unexpected visitors almost always bring doom. I wish I had intestines made of acrylic yarn so they could survive the apocalypse.