The Legend of Derrick the Terrible

The Legend of Derrick the Terrible

in which the lamest underdog loser teaches the greatest grandmaster an important life lesson

Master Buffman Tuffgai and his three pupils, Gregory the Strong, Camilla the Very Attractive but also Strong, and Derrick the Terrible were standing in front of a great passageway at the bottom level of the famous Dungeon Full of Treasure. They'd fought their way through hordes of monsters, skeletal warriors, evil beasts, bandits, pirates, skeletal pirates, pirate bandits, skeletal pirate bandit monsters, and dangerous robo-monster-bandit-beasts just to get here, the last treasure chamber on the last treasure floor of the last treasure dungeon in the entire world.

Well, honestly Master Buffman, Gregory, and Camilla had done all the fighting. Derrick the Terrible had truly lived up to his name. He had been terrible, and not in the evil warlord sense where you're considered terrible for killing lots of people or whatever. No, this guy was called terrible because he was actually just kinda terrible at killing stuff. The others mostly just let him tag along as a favor to his dad who happened to be Buffman's uncle the King. So Derrick basically just carried their food and bags full of money and weapons and extra underwear and stuff like that.

"Derrick, hurry up and get over here, you worthless dummy!" said Buffman. "I need that magic sword to slay this Ultimate Guardian so we can get the last of the world's secret hidden treasure."

Derrick, in his infinite lameness, had not even noticed the Ultimate Guardian that Buffman referred to. Well, there he was, a big ol' giant Minotaur Dude with a bull head and like twelve horns and giant golden armor and big bloody spikes for knuckles and stuff. Actually, at the moment, he didn't seem to Derrick to be especially threatening because he was just sort of sitting there eating a sandwich. He finished the sandwich, and Derrick watched curiously as the monster reached over and delicately grabbed another sandwich right off the top of a big pile of these sandwiches.

"He's just eatin' a sandwich..." Derrick said.

"Shut up, you dummy!" said Buffman. "It's a monster and it's in our way. I'll just kill this guy and then we'll take his treasure, okay?"

"But..."

"Just gimme that sword."

But when Derrick looked in the weapon bag, he found that there was no magic sword.

"Um, the sword appears to be--Wait-a-minute, you have it!"

Yup, Buffman already had the sword and was juggling it and twirling it and doing all sorts of cool tricks that made him look totally awesome. "Yeah, you slow idiot. While you were lolly-gagging over there daydreaming about sandwiches or whatever I snatched it outta there myself, and you didn't even notice. I'm just that good!"

"Wow."

"Anyways, time to get to Ultimate Guardian stompin'."

And so Master Buffman headed over to where the Minotaur Dude was sitting and started swinging his sword all slick and cool. But then the Minotaur Dude stood up far more quickly than any of them had ever seen even Buffman move and punched Buffman right in the face with his bloody spike knuckles! Buffman flew backwards and landed on the ground and said "Oooof!"

The others ran over to the fallen Master Fighter and helped him up. "Wow, that guy means business!" said Master Buffman. "A lesser man would be dead right now for sure, but well, I'm buff, you know? Hey, come to think of it, maybe you guys should take this guy out, as like, a final test of your skills. Gregory, why don't you start?"

Gregory was a little unsure about taking on a Minotaur Dude who had just clobbered the great and mighty Master Buffman Tuffgai, but he had no choice. So he pulled out his favorite Double Fiery Ninja Swords of Death and charged at the big ol' monster yelling "YEEEAAAARGH!" In a moment, Gregory was right back where he started with a couple of big spike knuckle shaped dents in his forehead.

"Owwww!" he said. "Owwwwwwwwwwww!" It looked painful, but big picture, he was fine. He was pretty buff himself, after all.

Camilla stood there staring at the dents in Gregory's face with her jaw hanging open, like WOW those are deep dents, but then suddenly she realized Buffman was staring at her and tapping his foot with his arms crossed, kinda like, "Weeeeeellllllllllllllll, I'm waiting..."

So Camilla grabbed her Lavender-Scented Super Spear of Feminine Ferocity and ran toward the Minotaur Dude. She was considerably faster than Gregory, so she jumped here and there and darted her spear at the Minotaur Dude's eyes like a hundred times per second, but the Minotaur Dude just swatted her with the back of his hand and she fell down. But wow, she was determined. She got up and came at him again, but again she just got shut down with the back of a giant hand. So she let out a ferocious scream and charged at him doing flips and zipping around like lightning. Derrick thought it was kinda funny watching the Minotaur Dude's eyes rolling around trying to keep track of her, but then he just like, stuck out his arm and suddenly Camilla had stopped and was stuck to one of his giant knuckle spikes. The Minotaur Dude peeled her off his fist and threw her back over to the others and she just lay there with stars twirling around her head.

"Camilla, wow, are you all right?" asked Gregory.

"Yeah," she said, "I think so, but I don't think we're gonna get past this guy. His knuckles are just too spikey."

"Psssssh," said Master Buffman. "You two idiots don't even know how to kill an Ultimate Guardian Minotaur Dude? That's like, something from Master Combat Fighting Kindergarten! Here, let me show you."

So he shut his eyes, sat down with his legs crossed, and started chanting some kinda mumbo jumbo until he starting glowing and levitating in the air. Then all the weapons in their bag started levitating too and flying around him this way and that. The others made space so they didn't get an accidental murderin' dagger in the ear or something, and then Master Buffman's eyes shot open suddenly and he flew towards the Minotaur Dude with fire streaking behind him like a Hellfire missile had just been fired from an AH-1W SuperCobra attack helicopter.

The Minotaur Dude swung his arms one way, stopped for a second, and then swung them the other way as fast as he could, sending himself spinning on his heels like a spikey top of spikey knuckley death. Buffman's weapons all tried to stab him and slice him and poke him and chop him and mince him and fillet him and carve him and finally kill him, but not a single blow could get through this new Ultimate Minotaur Tornado Move. Master Buffman opened his mouth and started breathing fire at him, but the Minotaur Dude just zoomed out of the way. Buffman fired a giant blast of mystical ice summoned from the ethereal spirit realm, but the spinning Minotaur Dude hopped over it in a single deft spinning hop. Buffman fired lasers out of his eyes, but the Minotaur Dude stopped spinning and punched the lasers with his spike knuckles, and the lasers bounced right off, right back into Buffman's eyes, and he went "YOOOOWWWWW, that smarts!" and flew backwards and landed at the feet of his students with smoke coming out of his eyes. The Minotaur Dude went back to eating his sandwiches.

"No, you're right, Camilla," he said. "This guy's knuckles are too spikey even for me. Let's go back to town and just tell the King that there weren't any more treasure rooms. He'll never know the difference."

They started to leave, but then they stopped and looked back. Derrick was just standing there scratching his chin.

"What are you waiting for, Derrick?" said Buffman. "Come on, you privileged moron. If your father wasn't the King, why I'd, I'd, I'd, I dunno what I'd do, but let me tell you, you wouldn't like it."

Derrick turned and faced them. "Don't I get to try?"

"YOU!?" the three great fighters said in unison. "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA," they started laughing, and then they continued with "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA" and finally concluded with "HA HA A HA HA A HA HA HA HA HA A HA!"

"What's so funny?" said Derrick.

"You can't kill that guy, are you kidding me? Don't make me laugh at you again, Derrick, seriously."

"No, watch this." And Derrick strolled over to the Minotaur Dude, who stood up and glared at him, lifting up his fists to show off their spikeyness.

"Don't worry, bro," said Derrick, "I don't really want to fight. I just thought you'd maybe like a friend to eat with."

The Minotaur Dude just stood there, staring at Derrick the Terrible. The others thought for sure he'd pound him and stomp him and make himself a terrible Derrick sandwich. But then, to all of their amazement, the Minotaur Dude's eyes started watering a teensy little bit. A single tear emerged and rolled down his great bull snout and fell onto the ground at Derrick's feet. The Minotaur Dude reached over, picked up a sandwich and tenderly handed it to the little human standing before him, and later they all swore that they had even seen a tiny inkling of a smile on the Minotaur Dude's big ol' bull face.

Derrick took a big bite out of the sandwich. It was a turkey sandwich on toasted country buttermilk bread, with lettuce, tomato, cheddar cheese, and mayonnaise. He gave it about a B- in the big picture, but honestly that was actually pretty good for a sandwich found at the bottom of a deep dirty grimy legendary treasure dungeon so he didn't complain.

"Hey, Minotaur Dude," said Derrick. "Since we're friends now, you wanna see something funny?"

The Minotaur Dude looked down at him, and Derrick took another bite, then another, then another, until finally his mouth was just bursting with big wads of munched up sandwich. Then he held his hands up on both sides, both of them made into fists. He paused, and then he punched his own stuffed mouth from both sides simultaneously so all the food suddenly shot out of his mouth and made a big mess all over the dungeon floor.

First, a tiny chortle came from above, then a chuckle and a muffled snort, then the Minotaur Dude finally broke into full on unrestrained bull-headed laughter and he fell down and rolled around laughing and clutching his stomach. Derrick guessed it had been a while since he'd seen any good comedy, cause honestly it wasn't really that funny, but whatever.

Then the Minotaur Dude stood up and grabbed a big giant bull-handed handful of sandwiches and started stuffing them into his own huge mouth until practically the whole giant pile of sandwiches was crammed in there and his cheeks were bulging out like crazy. Then the Minotaur Dude brought his big enormously spikey knuckled fists up and punched himself in the head from both sides at once, and his whole head exploded in a great shower of blood and brains and sliced turkey and tomato and giant bull skull fragments and cheddar cheese and big globs of bloody mayonnaise and buttermilk bread.

Then, with blood and brains raining down all around him, Derrick the Terrible turned around slowly and faced his "friends" and smiled a big goofy smile and the image froze and a hit rock song started playing while the credits rolled.

The End

RE: Do you want Heavy Metal to survive?

This is in direct response to "Do you want Heavy Metal to survive?" from Poetry of Subculture, one of my favorite blogs. Anywhere I say "you" I am addressing Helm, the writer of that blog, and not you the reader (though feel free to pretend I'm talking to you, if you want, all zero of my readers).

~   ~   ~

This might be dangerously long and uncensored...

I play this game on my iPad called Outwitters. It's an asynchronous strategy game with no computer controlled opponents, meaning that I can only play it with other people, and since I don't know anyone in so called real life who plays this game, I must rely upon the continued existence of a community who plays the game online in order for me to be able to play it. Therefore, I want the popularity of this game to flourish, I want the developers of the game to turn a profit so that they can continue to support the game and release updates to it, I want the game to survive. If no one else plays the game, then I can't play it. The game would be dead.

There's potentially this sense that if Heavy Metal isn't popular then the game its fans play might die. There will be no more bands, and therefore no more records to buy (or pirate?), and therefore no more concerts to attend, and therefore no more game to play, and therefore, I suppose, they would then have to grow up or find another game. Is this the attitude that members of the modern heavy metal scene have? Hard for me to say. I don't talk to them. This isn't why I listen to metal. I'm not part of any scene.

So I'm not sure how much more I can say about that. So I'll speak about myself instead.

Obviously, the strict mutually exclusive dichotomy you present is a fabrication, and I'm aware that you are using it only as a tool (you said so, duh). But I find it difficult to speak about the ideas here without at least acknowledging the fact that there are parts of myself in each of the two camps. There are probably also parts of myself in other camps entirely, but I haven't really thought about that yet.

In the simplest sense, I want Heavy Metal to survive. This then means more and more music for me to listen to. I don't share your practice of not listening to new music. When I choose bands to listen to, I typically don't use their age or period of existence as a deciding factor. I don't usually think about it. In fact, it never occurred to me to do so, and even when I was young, I listened to anything and everything from any time period. My first two King Crimson albums were In the Court of the Crimson King and the ConstruKction of Light, at that time their latest. I didn't care about the time difference then. And I don't now.

Of course, lately I've been focusing on exploring subgenres of metal with which I had been previously unfamiliar, and therefore I have been primarily and specifically using categorization as the deciding factor for what I listen to. Time doesn't enter into the equation, except as it relates to understanding what happened historically.

In another sense, I want Heavy Metal to survive. I have this possibly quixotic urge to be the guy that opens the door to another broad substrand of metal's history. More on this later.

In a different sense, I do not want Heavy Metal to survive. This doesn't mean that I want Heavy Metal to die, only that I lack the desire for it to survive. I understand that the death of Heavy Metal does not mean the end of interesting music or art in general. There will always be something that I'm interested in listening to, even if it isn't metal. And that's fine. In addition, as you point out, the death of Heavy Metal doesn't mean its complete annihiliation, as its history remains, carved from stone. It may be forgotten one day, but not during my lifetime. So what do I care?

In yet another sense, I want Heavy Metal to die. I've long felt that the most enduringly human characters from fiction are those whose deaths are depicted in the text. You've said about a zillion times something to the effect that death is a necessary part of the human condition. That James Bond goes on and on and on forever and always comes out alive makes him a pathetic hero, because he is in no danger. He is immortal and impossible to relate to as a human being because he is not human. That Sydney Carton dies in Charles Darnay's place makes him a hero that can inspire heroism in the reader. There is nothing about him that places an impenetrable wall between fiction and reality. One might argue that Bond needn't be capable of death because it is escapist entertainment, not high art. But since we're talking about Heavy Metal here (I didn't forget), let's consider whether we want our metal to be escapist entertainment or high art. Perhaps this is a stupid thought on my part, and that's fine. There are stupid parts of me. Shall I deny them? The point is that the death of Heavy Metal somehow seems to bring to it a greater sense of importance and value. There is not an inexhaustible supply of it. The amount of music that can be written is finite, no matter how much they may argue against this.

...

Is there somewhere for metal to go that isn't merely a revisitation of what has come before? Is there something for me to compose in the metal universe that hasn't already been explored.

Absolutely. Probably.

I suspect that my ability to figure this out is both limited and strengthened by my relative lack of knowledge about Heavy Metal. I mean here that my knowledge, though not insignificant or unsubstantial, is by far incomplete. I am not aware of everything that has happened in metal (is anyone?). Thus, I am in danger of proposing a direction for metal that has happened but of which I am not aware. On the other hand, I am not aware of everything that has happened in metal. Thus, if I should suggest a formula (meaning a set of symbolic ingredients, not write a verse like this and a chorus like that and 1-2-3: you have a hit!)--if I should suggest a formula for a new direction of metal that has been implemented before, I may be unaware of the results and therefore uninfluenced by the nuances of that attempt. Therefore, my own attempt may be more effective, or effective in a different manner, or the ingredients may combine in ways heretofore unknown and unseen.

I suspect that there's somewhere to go in terms of how the ingredients are utilized. I'm about to be exploring this, or at least I feel as though I will be soon.

...

If you're still with me (sorry for the rambling length of that!), I have some questions for you...

1. I'm under the impression that you write metal yourself. In the context of the motivations you present above for entering into the metal scene, how do you understand the relationship between accepting the inevitable death of metal and simultaneously creating more of it? I think you've perhaps touched on this a little when you wrote that "we all have a death drive. To realize how it functions and to what imaginative ends it urges us is, instead, a delight." I wonder if you might be willing to elaborate.

2. Maybe I only had one question. Can't think of what else I wanted to ask or whether there was anything else.