Swarmy

[Geo Holms]

Yus, definitely gonna get more active in the forums...soon. 

Swarmy

Over the field of Noughtmag, across the grassy foliage of Listy Plain, down among the crags of Hawp Mountains, in a forested valley of no name, the swarmy lived.

They had pointed snouts, pointed ears, pointed claws, pointed details on everything except for the parts that were swoopy, like its long body and its whiskers and floofy tail and movements. Its swoopy insides were held in by a creamy belly fur and a hazelnut hide, interluded by dappled yellow bits along its back and head.

And a swarmy was a very stupid creature, with no sense of instinct or survival. They possessed a cute helpful nature that appeared push all other useful characteristic into locations unknown. Swarmies also had a perchance for simple questions. These questions usually happened just before they died.

It was not a surprise when Locke got trampled onto the rusty dirt road by horse hooves. Locke had planned to ask the hooves why they were making so much noise. He would have asked now, if his cranium weren't caved in so that some of his brains were dribbling out of his pointed nose. The hooves galloped into the distance.

The raccoon, Jesse, observed this occurrence, and gave the sigh of one who had seen this all too many times before. Roadkill swarmy became a popular entree for the local raven population and it would be a lie to say Jesse didn't take a gnaw from time to time. The raccoon didn't make a habit of being a scavenger ever since his father's stomach had exploded due to an exceptional tapeworm. Jesse didn't really know where tapeworms came from but he made an educated guess from his father's habit of killing field mice and letting them ferment under a dead tree.

He climbed down from the tree and shuffled to the middle of the dirt road where Locke was smooshed. He folded his paws and said some words. A little forest prayer that muttered things about the impossibilities of horse hooves. Wasn't all the swarmy's fault. Technology of the times. A horse was dangerous in itself, one ridden by a human encased in steel seemed to aim for woodland creatures in the road.

"Is Locke alright?"

Another swarmy, a female, scampered up and started poking the smeared body of Locke. "Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up. Why won't you wake up? MAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRG."

Jesse knew he would regret his next question, "What are you doing?"

"Mating call."

Jesse bit down on his ringed tail to muffle his hemorrhaging sanity before he could get himself to respond. "Oh. Locke is deep asleep right now, how about we go for a walk."

"OK."

Jesse worried about the survival rate of the swarmies. Their carcasses littered the landscape more often than the usual woodland creature. Sometimes it came from their sheer curiosity, like jumping from the top of the tallest pine to see if they could fly. Sometimes for more absurd reasons, like the one Jesse had found with multiple pine cones stuffed up its nose. The raccoon knew that he should not bother worrying; he had enough trouble scrounging up enough shrimp and slugs to fill his tummy. He still couldn't ignore how amazingly pitiful the swarmies were, and, blast, he would help at least one swarmy before the Land of Shiny Things took him away.

The female swarmy, Dirtclod, or Dirt for short, hummed a cheery tune.

"Do you creatures have any sense of survival?" Jesse asked.

"Sur-vi-vale. I never good at getting that sorta buggy, Mr. Jesse. It got big pinchers. RAR!" The swarmy imitated the pinchers with her forepaws and stalked about in a circle.

"Yes. You're right stupid question. I must tell you, Dirt, that this way of life, poking paws into badger dens or bloating up when finding out how bees kiss, not good things to do when trying to stay alive. I fear that swarmies won't live much longer in this valley."

A pause. From the blank distant expression upon Dirt's maw, Jesse almost let himself hope that this message was echoing down the empty chamber in her mind, perhaps to open up one brief whisker twitch of understanding.

"What would happen if I get wet?"

Jesse cocked his head at an angle. "I don't know."

"Mud. Get it? My name is Dirt. It would make Mud. Isn't that cool?"

"I do not understand the relevance of the question."

Dirt rolled about on the grass in her bubbling glee. It could be said at least, Jesse concluded, that rarely did a swarmy ever die sad. They always died with a wide smile on their maws and a twinkle in their eyes, tail wagging away to whatever afterlife they rose to. Dirt did show a slight more potential than the normal swarmy though. The raccoon took his pun on words as a sign of the swarmy's unhealthy obsession with human kind. Just as many swarmy were skinned and cooked as more natural cases of swarmy death. They just couldn't help scampering up to any nearby human and hugging a leg.

"Why do you like humans?" Jesse inquired. He rarely let himself be too curious, by counter-example of the swarmy. This question always whispered at the back of his mind. Beasts of the forests did not like humans and with good reason. Creators of metal jaws detached from bodies, shafts of wood to impale hides, trained monsters of slobbering jaws and barking. Indeed, humans were things to be feared.

Every darting twitch of Dirt stopped. She let her hind leg scratch her ear as her eyes glazed over, and a purple tongue flopped out. "Humans are nice. They go on quests with monsters and villains, and they save maidens in distress, villages in mortal danger, defeat monstrous dragons with firebreath that go ROAR. Humans are noble and brave and wear armor and meet kings. Humans do things and see things and have things and they LEARN things. They find unknowns."

"Unknowns..."

"Unknowns. Stuffs beasts don't know. I wanna help find stuff beasts don't know. I wanna help a human someday."

Jesse was impressed that a swarmy had used the phrase "mortal danger" while actually appearing to know its meaning. Dirt drooled a little in the aftermath of her colloquy. Jesse clicked his claws to snap her out of it.

"Don't you see how awesome humans are?"

Jesse stared at the swarmy, set against a landscape of greens and dappled light, the buzz of insects on the air, a slight breeze hinted of lavender. How could he see that? He lived in the woods, apart from humans, who as far as he knew, obliterated the woods where ever they existed (or so his grizzled great uncle had said seasons back after a run in with a band of fur traders). He never liked the sound of the word "obliterated." Yet he could see how calm the swarmy sat there, now lost in the midst of her dreams about humans.

"Dirt. That's not..."

A rustling of bushes. A large sound. A plodding through the woods. Bear? Boar? Buffulo? Bandersnatch? Jesse chided himself for reading that B volume of words he'd found in an abandoned cabin when he was too young to know better. And between two birch trees, a silhouette appeared against the twilight sun, tall, gallant. The flanks of the horse glimmered, the armor of its rider gleamed, the smile the rider contained on its face shined. It shined so much so that Jesse had a primal instinct that wanted to climb up and tried to rip it off the face that held it. Instead, the other part of his primal instinct hit, the one that came when a human stumbled into proximity, hiding behind something. The something was the still dazed swarmy. He curled up and closed his eyes, waiting for the moment to be over, hoping not to be impaled.

"Are you a swarmy?"

No impaling. Jesse removed his paws from his eyes. The voice sounded not at all blood thirsty or combustible. He sat up. Dirt was only moving her maw wordlessly. Jesse looked again at the figure. Not half as intimidating upon the second look. Gangly round the edges. The armor tarnished, brackish even. The smile still shiny. The human spoke again.

"I have come through this way because I have been told that swarmies live here. Companions for a questing soul, small creatures of helpful natures and quizzical minds. Are one of you a swarmy?"

Strange. This human had a familiar tone. A strange inflection that Jesse knew well, that odd naive of a swarmy, a voice that told of wonder and hope and likableness and…swarmy-ish.

The raccoon cleared his throat and pointed at Dirt. "Here, take this one."

The swarmy squeed.

[Lopez]

Interesting perspective. Though I feel a bit baffled. The racoon has the power of speech, listening, and reading; not just racoon patois. Very rarely is the line crossed to give animals the absolute power of human language. But then again, I had a hard time believing Jesse was really an animal throughout the story.

Sidenote: Love your use of the word "maw". Def:"...jaws especially of an over eager animal."

I seem to have a hard time understanding the ending a bit. Especially the last word. I don't really think the word "squeed," Def from Urban Dictionary.com:"When you laugh and pee comes out " is what you're going for. It makes it sound like Dirt just thinks the humans are utterly rediculous. There's another word you're looking for.

In addition to that, it feels like you used a thesaurus.(I can't really find any particular words you used that describe how I feel.) Using a thesaurus is nice, but be careful. Make sure that what you say closely depicts the idea that you're trying to convey. Sometimes it can be very useful, but other times it can completely break the flow of your story.

In addition to THAT, you might consider writing this story in first person. You're writing such close third person perspective that there's absolutely no point for it to be in third person anymore. I think you might be able to dig a little deeper into Jesse's personality this way.

Lastly? Your opening line is nice but needs one adjustment. You mean to describe the place in poetic epicness, but it lacks the poetic flow. I can see how you try to make a rhyme scheme of ABCB, but the meter is totally off, since the last line copies the third in terms of syllables. The last "no name" is fine, but it needs elaboration. I suggest "no name in particular". It better matches the rhythm of the opening.

I think that your story follows the theme of instinctual curiosity. Jesse is inferior to Dirt because he suppresses his instinctual curiosity. He views this suppression as absolutely necessary for his survival, but in actuality it hinders his development. He says that he "chided himself for reading that B volume of words when he was too young to know better," which shows how his suppression of his instinctual curiosity caused him to become backward in his development. However, because Dirt instead utilizes her instinctual curiosity, she will......go far? Nothing's really said in your story about this.

In further addition, I feel that your story can be summed up in terms of smartness vs. knowledge. Intelligence can be summed up in two terms: knowledge, which describes everything that you know; and smartness, which describes your ability to make connections between the areas of your knowledge.

Now, Jesse represents the knowledge. He has an incredible amount of insight into the world around him, but never tries to make connections between the areas of his knowledge to gain further knowledge. He remains in stasis, because he never develops his knowledge further.

However, Dirt represents the apex of smartness. She makes connections between things that Jesse can never do, (amusingly involving her name.) However, without knowledge, she can gain nothing.

At the end of the story, it feels like you pick smartness over knowledge as being more important to human society. However, is this really the case? What does this say about the human society?

I imagine an alternate ending to your story. It feels too happy as it is. instead, they should both be trampled, indicating how having merely smartness or merely knowledge is inadequate to human society. Human society has achieved both smartness and knowledge, and because these two animals can not combine their two sets of skills accordingly, they will never be able to challenge the human dominance of the world.


But I still don't think I understand your story correctly. I think that it more refers to curiosity than it does to either smartness or knowledge, and how curiosity will triumph over instinctual being. However, it could refer to knowledge in the fact that smartness without knowledge is useless, since Dirt remains speechless and Jesse ends up answering for her and furthering her development. Hm.....gimme a few more days. I need to think about this some more...

((CONCLUSION: Interesting story...and I have a sense there is a deepness to it...but it feels like you need to sharpen up your themes a little bit. Sorry if this review sounded kind of negative. If it does, then that is due to my own misunderstanding...(((And perhaps the fact that it's 1:00 AM...)))))

[DessertFox]

Lopez... Your post is almost as long as the story.

I imagine an alternate ending to your story. It feels too happy as it is. instead, they should both be trampled, indicating how having merely smartness or merely knowledge is inadequate to human society.

And that, is why you shouldn't write about swarmies.

"What would happen if I get wet?"

Jesse cocked his head at an angle. "I don't know."

"Mud. Get it? My name is Dirt. It would make Mud. Isn't that cool?"

"I do not understand the relevance of the question."

Dirt rolled about on the grass in her bubbling glee. It could be said at least, Jesse concluded, that rarely did a swarmy ever die sad.

O my god did this made me laugh, you have a wonderful talent for making the funnies.

[Virmir]

Ha ha!  Loved this.

I will agree with Lopez in that I'm not sure I really get the ending.  I don't think you want to trample them both though, as that would destroy the connection the raccoon sees with the human and the swarmy.  (Loved that part!)  I will admit I was expecting the raccoon to die and the swarmy to live by the end though.

I seem to have a hard time understanding the ending a bit. Especially the last word. I don't really think the word "squeed," Def from Urban Dictionary.com:"When you laugh and pee comes out " is what you're going for. It makes it sound like Dirt just thinks the humans are utterly rediculous. There's another word you're looking for.

Hmmm... was unfamiliar with that definition.  I assumed it was the verb for yelling "squee!!" in past tense.

This tale was short, quirky, and fun.  Really nice work!

[KaiAdin]

Uh, I have yet to read the story, (and the most of this thread actually) but Urban dictionary isn't the best place to find serious definitions....

As virmir said, 'squeed' is the past tense of 'squee' which itself is an onomatopoeic word that represents the sounds made by an 'overexcited fangirl' (Urban Dictionary ironically enough) or to express an overload of cuteness (wikipedia )

I'd say any Urban Dictionary entry with less than a page of definitions should be treated as suspect...

[KaiAdin]

(I might as well make a new post for this stuff)

Lopez, maybe your overthinking the whole thing (or maybe I'm underthinking the whole thing)...

I'm not quite sure Traxer is trying to make any point about Knowledge Vs. Smartness (Wisdom perhaps would have been a better thing to compare knowledge too), though of course it can be interpreted in such a way. Maybe the swarmies....

Ehhh scratch that... yea not even at one parargarph I've run out of intellectual steam ,

Maybe It's just meant to be a quick feel good story. The raccoon avoided any trouble and is going back to what he loves to do: avoiding trouble, the Swarmy just got an opportunity of a lifetime and the human got a new friend .

[Geo Holms]

Actually, this story came around to be just a little tongue-in-cheek look at swarmies and their odd natures. The little creatures have been romping about the back of my head for the past months and I needed to have an outlet for their dappled hides. It's basically a test run to see if the idea of swarmies could fit into a story.

At its core, it is a story about a sensible beast trying to talk sense into a nonsensical beast with little or no effect, with a highlight on a swarmy's odd perchance to be an utterly quizzical soul right to the tip of her whiskers. Many times there is a sidekick in a fantasy tale, either the quirky ones, or the cynical ones. Dirt is a good representative of what could be a quirky sidekick, while Jesse could be a candidate for a cynical sidekick, if he ever wished to or was forced into the position. So its meant to be all in good fun, but with some grim undertones of realities and dark humor. (Though I really can see the wisdom vs. knowledge...highly intriguing ...)

I'd definitely consider a first person approach to this story. After writing this, I found myself lured to the character of Jesse, though he was only created on the fly for a one-shot in this short story. Thank ye for that through review, Mr. Lopez, it brought into light some things I didn't even consider when composing this tale.  Shall look into the timing of that first line.

In addition to that, it feels like you used a thesaurus.(I can't really find any particular words you used that describe how I feel.) Using a thesaurus is nice, but be careful. Make sure that what you say closely depicts the idea that you're trying to convey. Sometimes it can be very useful, but other times it can completely break the flow of your story.

...you'd be surprised how many times I've heard that. Actually, I'm just naturally that weird with my vocabulary ramblings. Who normally writes something like "Dirt drooled a little in the aftermath of her colloquy" ? (Admittedly, writing that makes me smile inside.  )

I was using "squee" in the context of, as KaiAdin said, an onomatopoeic term, mean to be familiar with excited squealing of a cute thingamagum. (Though I wouldn't put it past Dirt to widdle herself in the presence of a human.) I did have a little trouble with the ending, however. I felt it ended a little sooner than I wanted it to, but was submitting it for a contest at the time, so I let it be. Perhaps I should poke it a little more...there was a scene with a band of robbers and a cooking spit that I wanted at one point...

It does have its deep parts, but really, it's just meant to be an adorable little feel-good story smattered with a good amount of dark humor.

Overall, thanks very much for the comments and kind words. If a tale causes a few snickers, that's always a worthwhile tale to write in my book. And thanks all around the fire pit for taking a twitch of time to read, mateys. 

[Lopez]

I FINALLY GOT THE ENDING! YES!

After reading it a bit further, and reading all of your comments, I think the story is more about the variable paths of success, in perception. Jesse believes that success lies in achieving harmony with the environment, while Dirt's perception of sucess relies on discovering new ideas. Jesse's perception of success is that you need to be constantly aware of your surroundings for the purposes of survival. Therefore, he tries to imbue(HAH! I can use fancy words, too!) this perception of success onto Dirt.

about a sensible beast trying to talk sense into a nonsensical beast with little or no effect

However, he fails miserably, since he does not realize that success depends on your perception of it. Because, what is sensible? What is correct? What is Moral?

In the end of the story, Jesse ultimately accepts Dirt's view of success, and life in general. By saying "Here, take this one" Jesse realizes that Dirt's success will ultimately come through means other than his own. At this point, Jesse believes that while Dirt may not achieve success in his own sense of the world, that does not mean that the success that Dirt creates in her world lacks any meaning. The word "here" could reference that Jesse has come to realize that Dirt's definition of success and his definition of success both occupy the same world, hence, both are "here", and since he stands behind her when the human comes, he makes sure that his own ideas do not stand in the way of Dirt's perception of success. Therefore, Jesse develops as a person(racoon? character) because he can now visualize the alternate perspectives that other...creatures...have on the world, instead of trying to force his perspective on them.

PS. If a word does not appear in my electronic dictionary from 1995, then it does NOT exist. Therefore, it gets looked up on some OTHER dictionary. ....Yeah, that's what happened there. So that's fine. There's a famous XKCD comic about words that I ALWAYS try to keep in mind while writing my stories...http://xkcd.com/483/

[KaiAdin]

PS. If a word does not appear in my electronic dictionary from 1995, then it does NOT exist. Therefore, it gets looked up on some OTHER dictionary. ....Yeah, that's what happened there. So that's fine. There's a famous XKCD comic about words that I ALWAYS try to keep in mind while writing my stories...http://xkcd.com/483/

While "squee" might not be in your dictionary, Traxer hasn't actually made up many words for this story. Apart from the noun 'Swarmy', I wouldn't actually consider anything else "made up".

It's just a sign of the times , or maybe that you should consider ditching your old dictionary and using google's "define:(insert word here)" search command.

And also the XKCD mouse over comment, actually gives a good counter point, you wouldn't consider Tolken or Lewis Carrol writings to be bad works, considering the former made up whole languages and the latters most famous works were nearly pure nonsense...

[Lopez]

General rules can be eskewed in particular circumstances, 'tis true. The Road won a pulitzer prize for not using quotation marks. That's eskewing the general rule as far as it goes.

True, no words were made up. I'm just overly paranoid about...oh, enough with this topic, neither of us fully understand each other.

Are you considering writing more of these stories, continuing your definition of the world (and this race in particular) through other perspectives? I don't see any particular aspect of them that needs further developing, but if you could find something that can be developed futher I would be really impressed.

[Geo Holms]

Yes, definitely considering expanding on different parts of the world. Might have the ol' raccoon come along for the ride. It's meant to be a grand tongue-in-cheek high fantasy tale, in which the author of it is stuck within the pages...as a swarmy. How, what, where and why....shall come eventually. Sooooomeday.

In the meantime, here is some simple sketches of the swarmy, just for the heck of it. http://i2.photobucket.com/albums/y19/Traxer/swarmy-1.jpg

[Virmir]

Ha ha!  Love it!

Also author transformation sounds great too.

[Dragyn]

Author insertion has been done before.

Just be careful not to create a Mary-Sue.

[KaiAdin]

Or in this context a Marty-Sue