I know EXACTLY where Gnome Cave went off the rails, no pun intended. It was when the four of them were trapped on that mine cart. The chapter ended on this cliffhanger. But at the start of the next chapter…they just wriggled out of it.
This was one of several examples of the book where James introduces something, you think it’s going to be significant, but then…NOTHING HAPPENS. Then why bring it up? Why did they get stuck? Was the bar just malfunctioning?
What CLEARLY should have happened when they got stuck in the mine cart is that the bar didn’t release because of some some supernatural force. And the ride should have started. And the gnomes and whatever should have come to life, doing their thing. And everybody should have been freaking out. But they’re trapped so they can’t get out. This isn’t me being creative, this is just the common sense thing that should have happened. This is what I thought he was setting up. This is what ANYBODY would have thought.
I appreciate doing something different than what’s expected but James’ idea MADE NO SENSE. Why did Dante kill his friends? Toward the end of the book, James tries to give some shitty theories:
She never could figure out what made him flip. He was always an awkward kind of guy. But the way he went full psycho was such an extreme switch. Was it possible that there was something else in the cave that could not be explained by ordinary logic? Could it be that Dante’s memories and attachment to that location were so strong, they became a lightning rod for all his mental energy? Did it draw his spirit in like a magnet, hold him there, distort his perceptions? Did it truly bring him back to that magical frightful time he remembered? Did it turn his greatest fear, and desire, against him?
Even those half-assed theories don’t make sense.
So forget all of that shit. Everything after them getting trapped in the mine cart should be entirely scrapped. But then what do we replace it with? I’ve been wracking my brain over possible endings to Gnome Cave all day.
I thought maybe they’re trapped in the cart, the ride starts, the gnomes start moving, the whole thing. The gnomes and the backgrounds and shit gradually start looking new as opposed to the dilapidated appearance that they start with. Give a hint that they’re going back in time. That was sort of the point of coming here, after all. To recapture the past.
But then they chicken out. And they again take the safe track. And when they exit, they go back in time but not to what you’d expect (the 1990s) but rather…let’s say 1925. When the park was new. And there are guys with handlebar moustaches and straw hats and shit. There’s a steeple chase ride. Shit like this. And everybody is pissed off at Dante. It dawns on them that everybody they know hasn’t even been born yet. So it draws parallels to death.
Then you can flesh out the characters a little more, something that was desperately needed much earlier in the book. Maybe Adam, who was the nerdy guy, becomes a tycoon by short-selling stocks shortly before the Great Depression. Dante (the truck driver) gets a job as a mechanic, perhaps with a small organised crime syndicate in Philadelphia. Bruce (the office worker) gets a job as a bookkeeper or something. Cait gets work as a secretary and perhaps ends up in a sanitorium, unable to deal with the stress of time travel and the reality that everybody she knows is gone.
Then they all meet up a second time, maybe five years later, and you can go through the same bullshit. But that’s just rehashing the same story that we just went through. It would be a way to pad out the page length. Give some depth to the characters. And you can get into some philosophical musings, something that James clumsily attempted. You can make some observation about death being no different than what life was like before you were born. And if you didn’t fear life before you were born why would you fear death? It would tie in with the time travel. How they went so far back, everybody was gone. It wouldn’t just be random musings out of nowhere on the high tax rate in California. It would be set up.
But that still leaves that stupid fucking dragon. The dragon has to be in the story. They have to see it.
There’s maybe one paragraph of supernatural stuff in Gnome Cave. There’s a paragraph where the dragon comes to life, which can only be explained through supernatural means. I find this peculiar. One of many things that I find peculiar about the book.
I was expecting some convuluted bullshit that doesn’t make any sense like James is so fond of doing. Think of the long monologue in the AVGN Movie where they give the backstory of that big monster thing and it had something to do with hotdogs or something. I don’t think that I ever managed to get to that point in the movie but I must have seen a clip on Youtube or something. It’s bullshit, it’s stupid, it makes no sense, it’s a retard trying to be clever, but at least it’s something.
We got nothing in Gnome Cave. We don’t even know how Dante died. He just saw the dragon, it has pointy teeth, the chapter ends, and the next chapter begins with Cait finding him dead.
If there was some grand message in any of this, if it was tied up in any way, that would be one thing. But it’s nothing. Like so much in the book, it goes nowhere.
There has to be a way to end this story in a satisfactory manner. And I don’t think that anybody has to die. Make it a psychological horror. It’s easy and unimaginitive to just kill people off, especially the way James did it. There was nothing clever about it. He killed all of the characters off, one paragraph each. No struggle. No explanation.
So the four of them are trapped on that cart. Forget my earlier time travel idea. The cart is going ahead. They’re arguing. They’re blaming Dante. And as they get to the dragon, maybe there’s a scuffle. But Dante manages to pull the lever in the direction of the dragon.
The dragon has to be something. It can’t just be the mural. Because in my version, this cart and the ride and everything are moving in a supernatural fashion. I don’t think it’s possible to make the dragon anything scary. Especially not with the previous 75 pages looking like a C- school assignment. So it has to be something clever. What clever ending can there be? A callback to something? But a callback to what? There’s so little to build on. How can there be some twist, Twillight Zone type ending?
The animatronic dragon…that’s shit. That’s not going to work. But a real dragon wouldn’t work either. I guess an animatronic dragon at least fits the theme. But…so they meet a living animatronic dragon. Who cares? Either the dragon kills them or they kill the dragon. That’s not satisfying.
Something about covid? Something about his mother?
Was this all a dream? Was the smoke from the dragon some of that “dope smoke” and this is some kind of drug-fueled thing? Did they die on the ride twenty years ago? But then how do you explain the last twenty years?
Maybe only Dante died and the last twenty years was his version of Hell. Or he’s stuck in some kind of limbo. And facing the dragon is the only way to stop the torment that is his life. The basic premise has been done a billion times but it still beats James’ complete nonsense ending.
I don’t know. There’s got to be something clever that can be done.
Maybe we need Newt Wallen to punch things up a bit.
There he is tweeting about dead people again. Back on the death train. Riding around and around Newt Cave. A never ending cycle of torment.
And, of course, the Ideas Man makes it all about himself. “When all of the other big famous Youtubers abandoned me for whole plagiarism, Billy stuck with me.”
Well…okay. Great. Doesn’t tell me much about Billy, though.
I never watched Game Chasers so I don’t know anything about him. I think that I’ve heard of the show. Having VERY quickly skimmed an episode just now, I do not want to watch this.
But condolences to Billy’s friends and family. But not asshole Newt.
Oh, Mr Wright Way. I forgot all about that guy. He did a video about Billy, which is how I rediscovered his channel just now. But there’s a video from last month where he’s with Destiny Fomo aka Madam Fomo.
She has a foot of cleavage showing, as usual.
Gnome Cave is on a circular track. We should be able to do something with that. It’s circular, let’s say, UNLESS you take the dragon exit. The dragon exit is the only way to break the cycle. The cycle of what? The Four Noble Truths of Buddhism: suffering exists, desire is the cause of suffering, ending desire ends suffering, the Eightfold Path is the way to Enlightenment.
The dragon as a metaphor for the Fourth Noble Truth. *Nostalgia*. Collecting old video games. Hanging out with prostitutes like Destiny Fomo. Trying to reclaim what you’ve lost. These are all paths to unhappiness.
Stoicism. “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.”
“You are afraid of dying? But how is this life of yours anything but death?”
The dragon. Dante’s obsession with *nostalgia*. He has to come to a revelation that he’s wasted his life with that. By killing the dragon, he somehow breaks the cycle. Facing his fears? Too corny and not on point. How does facing the dragon give him any insight?
If he goes there realising that he’s going to die and that he wasted his life, it’s too negative. There’s no message. Nothing was learned. He has to go in, changed.
Whore Fomo. Mr Wright Way. Newt Wallen. James Rolfe. These are people who have wasted their lives. But it could all end if they realised the futility of desire. “To fear death is to misunderstand the nature of life itself—it is not an interruption but a continuation.”
Tao Te Ching: “To realize that all things change is to be awake. To think in terms of birth and death is to remain asleep.”
So you have this asshole Dante. He assembled his friends to go to Gnome Cave. Why? What was he hoping to achieve? Who gives a shit about the fucking dragon? Were his friends just humoring him? They didn’t even remember the park. Did they just have nothing better to do on the weekend?
Is that the message? ALL of them were wasting their lives? Not just Dante? By confronting the dragon, they’re living their lives to the fullest, something they should have done twenty years ago. We’re on to something. It’s better than that bullshit that Rolfe came up with. So by confronting the dragon, whatever it is, they’re saying to themselves that they don’t fear death, just like they don’t fear the non-being state that they were in before they were born. Whatever happens with the dragon, they’re going to move forward and live life in the present, to the fullest. No more “no time”, no more, “my muse doesn’t talk to me any more”, no more, “hey, get a load of this prostitute I’m hanging out with.”
There’s your story. Fuck the dragon. You don’t even have to show him. End the story with them going in to face the dragon, unafraid, with this profound revelation, and leave it ambiguous as to what the dragon is or if it exists at all.
There’s your ending. I think it beats the whole, “Cait inexplicably thinks that she’s going to get charged with murder so tries to wipe her fingerprints from everything” ending. That one doesn’t even make sense.