Nibly the Bear — Chapter 1… It begins.
Howdy friend! My name is Nibly the bear. I’d like to tell you of my visit to the people town of Nelson, BC. It was just this spring when the high mountain snows were dwindling fast in my area of British Columbia, Canada.
Fair: Howdy friend! My name is Fair the human. I’d like to tell you of my visit to an awful book called “Nibly the Bear Visits the People Town”.
Finn: No one says howdy in Canada — unless they’re being funny. Also, this whole style of writing makes me want to read it with a Texan accent. Also, how and why does a bear know or care about the names of provinces and countries? I’ve seen a good many bears. I think it really would never cross their mind. Bad characterization, right there.
Fair: “Dwindling fast…” That isn’t even correct grammar; it just makes the whole sentence sort of… clunk. Anyway, Nibly becomes bored eating the food he finds in the wild. Y’know, bear food — berries, fish, et cetera.
Finn: He complains about the streams being icy. Honestly, I don’t see why a bear would worry. They have an abundance of fur and fat to deal with it.
Fair: And so it was…
So I made myself a plan, and stopped by one fine day to talk about it with my friend Johnny bear. There he was! I had found Johnny busily tending to a huckleberry bush in his patch, which was right near his stand of wild raspberry bushes. Johnny came right now to give me some extra special advice.
Fair: Wow. It certainly didn’t take long to find Johnny Bear. There he was! Ready to give some “extra special advice”. Is it just me, or are these bears really creepy sounding?
Finn: This whole writing style makes me cringe. Also, I don’t think bears really “tend” to berry bushes. They just eat them. On another note, I love huckleberries. I think SNel… I mean, Nibly is just being picky.
Fair: So he speaks with Johnny bear for a few sentences, when we come across… Our first Random Capitalization™!
“Are you Serious?” exclaimed Johnny.
Fair: Exclaiming with question marks! What class! What style!
Finn: Why does Johnny have a human name? I mean, Nibly is bad enough, but if bears had names, I‘m sure they wouldn’t be human names.
But then Johnny thought a minute and then he launched into his best, bear buddy advice that he could give me.
Johnny put his arm around me and said;
“Well my friend, perhaps I can give you a little advice.”
Fair: To quote a commenter on the introduction: “Pedobear!”
Finn: You know, I don’t think adult wild bears outside of zoos and wildlife parks are very friendly with each other. Males especially are quite solitary and aggressive.
Fair: So Johnny bear goes on to tell Nibly that in order for his plan to work (It isn’t mentioned what said plan is) he needs to get a shirt and shorts. Nibly asks why, and we get this gem:
“Well, ya see Nib, to put it nicely, most humans are Prudes, and they won’t think nicely about you, unless you look snappy in some kind of human suit.”
Fair: I can’t do this. Finn, you comment.
Finn: Certainly. So first of all, wearing human clothes is not going to help Nibly whatsoever. I think it would be better to disguise him as…as… Oh, I don’t know! Also, it might be that SNel is just giving what he thinks a bear’s opinion would be on clothes. I shudder to think at what it would mean otherwise.
Fair: In addition to this, of course we get the following:
“Well most handsome young guys wear a ball cap. Sports are what humans’ worship you know. So you need to be a good deacon and—”
“Stuff the ball cap! I don’t like things on my head! Remember that year when that pesky Ranger bonked me on the head with that club,” I said.
Fair: The incident with the club, having the potential to be interesting, is of course not gone into any further.
Finn: I thought bear spray would be more common than clubs.
I think it would take more than a hit in the head to stop a bear. It might just make them more dangerous.
Also, there’s a big difference between getting hit in the head with a club and wearing a HAT.
Fair: Yeah, if you can even get close enough to hit the bear with the club before getting killed. Of course, if you actually managed it, death is almost certain. Nibly “thinks better of his outburst” and asks Johnny Bear to continue. They agree that Nibly shouldn’t wear a ball cap. Johnny bear then tells Nibly he needs money in order to get food.
“What you need next is to get a hold of some of that paper that humans use to trade with; sometimes it comes in round metal discs as well as paper. The humans call it, money.”
Fair: Oooooohh! Shiny!
Finn: How does this bear know what humans call anything? Also, I thought the bear way of getting food was called garbage diving. Isn’t that enough?
Fair: Good question. Perhaps it just is? One must never question the might of SNel, however. Things simply “are”, there is no need for such irrelevancies as “logic”.
Finn: Yes indeed. If the bears were a little more anthropomorphized, it might seem more normal, but the fact that they do normal bear things — like fish, and live in the mountains — just makes it unrealistic. If they had their own bear-civilization or something…oh, I don’t know! This just doesn’t work! It’s clunky and it’s obvious that very little thought or skill has been put in.
“Skill? Thought? What’s that?” says the Mighty SNel. “I just plow right through. That’s enough to make me a real author isn’t it?”
Fair: In a word, “No”. And so it came to pass that Nibly agreed with Johnny Bear, who replied thusly:
“And one more thing, you should ask about recommendations on just which place you will find the best eats and vittles in.”
Fair: Wow. “Eats and vittles”? Nice phrasing there; way to add lame terminology that modern children will totally understand… Not!
Finn: I know. Also, how on earth does a bear speak in human language? This hasn’t really solved the problem of how to get money; unless he’s going to steal the food. But I guess he’ll have to steal the clothes too. At any rate, I think asking just would ruin everything. Why spoil everything from the start when you could use careful observation?
Fair: Perhaps Johnny and Nibly are Talking Bears from Narnia? Oh, wait… Narnian Bears are more intelligent and have proper reasons for doing things. They also don’t use Calormene-esque redundancies in their speech.
Finn: Indeed. Also, I feel the very object of the story “getting food” is becoming redundant and boring.
Fair: Definitely agree with you there, Finn.
And so, I bid farewell to my friend Johnny bear, and off I went down through the underbrush on my way to the human town of Nelson, BC. I blazed my own trail and that took a bit of doing too.
Fair: Blazing our own trail through this book, however, takes a good deal more than “a bit of doing”.
Finn: Indeed. If we were only bears, it might be easier and less painful, but alas, it is not so.. Also, couldn’t the bear just follow a deer trail or something?
Fair: Nope. He has to go on an “adventure”, as we shall see in the second chapter.
Finn: How much of an “adventure” it is remains yet to be seen…I’ll go pack some brain bleach!
Fair: Here, here!
Taku on 9 September 2012, 07:48 said:
To be honest, this whole chapter just seems like it’s straight out of an idiot’s reinterpretation of a Gary Larson comic.
Prince O' Tea on 9 September 2012, 09:59 said:
Anyway, Nibly becomes bored eating the food he finds in the wild. Y’know, bear food — berries, fish, girl scouts et cetera.
Is his name supposed to be Nibbly, do you think?
Forest Purple on 9 September 2012, 11:34 said:
@Prince: That seems to be the most likely alternative- or maybe SNel thought it would somehow make him distinct. Based on the quality of this writing, my money’s on the former.
Fireshark on 9 September 2012, 11:54 said:
Brain bleach? Uh-oh, I suspect this is about to take a rather interesting turn.
Tim on 9 September 2012, 12:05 said:
Oh come on, you can’t gloss over the godawful illustrations.
Things Steve cannot draw: logs, rocks, bushes, legs, feet, perspective, faces, bears. I mean, it’s not quite as creepy as the Linux “obese pedophile in latex penguin suit” mascot, but it’s getting there.
VikingBoyBilly on 9 September 2012, 13:15 said:
Did Steve Nelson seriously just name the people town after himself?
Fireshark on 9 September 2012, 13:18 said:
Especially bears.
No, it’s a real place. He might have chosen it because of his name, though.
Pryotra on 9 September 2012, 16:33 said:
YAY I got quoted.
Yeah…this is bad. Really bad.
This is the stupidest excuse for people not liking bears ever.
Is he trying to be funny?
Fair on 9 September 2012, 16:46 said:
@ Pryotra: Sadly, I think he IS trying to be funny…
Pryotra on 9 September 2012, 16:48 said:
…That’s almost worse than if he believed it.
Tim on 9 September 2012, 21:37 said:
Also, allow me to provide you with the two most useful emoticons for books like this.
Pryotra on 10 September 2012, 07:27 said:
I second the second one.
Fell Blade on 10 September 2012, 09:19 said:
I don’t think so. I read some of the excerpts from his other “books”, and he has a very bitter attitude towards religion in general. I almost want to know where he was going with the deacon reference. He seems to love pointing out how church people are all a bunch of hypocrites who are just after money, etc. In “Tomorrow’s World #2” he even made a completely random remark about how people built a whole religion (“Christianity”) around a comet that comes around every 2,000 years.
Tim on 10 September 2012, 09:33 said:
Considering in that one he suggests Jesus was real, I think he’s more against organised religion. IRL he was apparently thrown out of his local Mormon church over some disagreement (probably that he’s nuts) and his narratives suggest he’s just made the church into a conspiracy to steal money and distort the truth rather than give True Salvation or whatever.
Prince O' Tea on 10 September 2012, 09:39 said:
Oh my.
Seems like Puffy the PenisNose Bear would be a better name for him.
Tim on 10 September 2012, 09:41 said:
Smoke-um crack pipe?
T on 10 September 2012, 16:06 said:
That, or Mickey the Non-Copyrighted Rodent
Pryotra on 10 September 2012, 16:08 said:
Pass-um painkillers.
Licht on 10 September 2012, 17:10 said:
cough * Not that he would be that wrong about religion. * cough Well, well.
Why is it that crappy authors feel the need to include even crappier artwork? Seems to be a pattern.
Does he have any fans? (Other than close friends and family) People that actually and honestly like his writing?
Finn on 10 September 2012, 18:59 said:
@Licht That’s really not the best comment to make, seeing as there are religious people on this site.
As far as we can tell, no fans except friends and family. There was a review on one of his books on the Barnes&Noble site, but it seems to have been written by at least an acquaintance, and seems to have been posted by SNel himself. So really…no. No true fans. His writing is worse than Glo Tesch’s, so I don’t think there even could be.
Felix Thomas on 11 September 2012, 15:02 said:
His illustrations are certainly worse then Momma Tesch’s, and that’s saying something. At least her artwork has no phallic muzzled bears, only flying drag queens and teenage girls who look like Jay Leno.
Licht on 11 September 2012, 23:25 said:
Just because I don’t agree with the concept of religion, doesn’t mean I’m unable to empathize with people who believe, or respect those who support it. As an adult I’m able to accept certain opinions and views next to my own. That is: Even though I migth dislike the color pink, I might still enjoy having dinner and a good chat with you, even though you’re wearing a pink shirt the whole time. You’re no more or less an idiot with or without it.
Now, I do think this guy has a point, even though he seems to be terribly bad and clumsy at expressing it. I also don’t think he’s nuts, like some. Just a bad writer and too confused to be able to google “Gary Stu”.
If no one really cares for this guy, why do we?
Maybe it would have been wiser to leave this thing lost behind the fridge where it belonges?
Tim on 12 September 2012, 09:18 said:
What, that the government is an evil, staggeringly incompetent conspiracy, women really want to be idiotic fucktoys and men want to be built like gun carriages, medical treatments which have been proven to be harmful are actually beneficial, there’s no difference between sex and love, not being a nudist makes you a prude, religion is evil because he has no people skills…
All of his opinions are horrible.
If you don’t care about him, don’t read these pages.
Licht on 12 September 2012, 22:55 said:
Wrong book. I was referring to the one discussed in this entry:
Humans worship sports. Sports and religion have a lot in common. Also, wearing a suit (if you don’t happen to be a pedo-bear) will make it more likely that people like and respect, even trust you. Getting hold of some of this paper we trade with and call money increases your chance to be welcomed friendly — even if you’re an asshole.
Ah! No. If you don’t agree don’t read it/comment? If you don’t like what he writes, don’t read it? That’s not an argument. We’ve said that to others a thousand times.
The question, one that happens to come up around here ever now and then, is: Aren’t we helping a piece of writing/an author to more attention than it/he/she deserves? Wouldn’t it be better to let this piece rot somewhere out of sight?
See, in case of Maradonia, Stanek, Big Dog and so on, we have authors with massive egos, who promote their shitty books agressively, thereby using more than dubious marketing tactics and making people fall for it. One might argue that putting the spotlight onto them and their (wrong) doings helps to clear up things.
In case of Twilight, Shades of Grey and Eragon we have badly written books published by “professional” authors and real publishers, hailed as the next comming. Criticizing them, to me, seems even more valid, necessary even.
Now, to me, this one seems to be nothing else but some self-published, unknown guy, who can’t write. (His mental constitution, so far, is none of our concern.)Criticizing the Nibly books to me has the negative connotation of a) just pointing a finger and laughing and b) drawing attention to something that’s just not worth it.
I agree that the ideas concerning his adult books seem to be dumb, very much so. But again: How many people only get to know him, and those crude ideas of his, because we are making it a topic?
I certainly don’t want to offend Finn and Fair, nor anyone else. Anyone can spork what they like and it’s fine that way. But I do think we have to bring up such questions as well. Even if they’re annoying.
Tim on 13 September 2012, 03:39 said:
Only insofar as they both inspire good old-fashioned tribalism, much like anything where you can have one view or another. You might as well say politics or music are like religion, it’s about as insightful as saying night follows day.
I’ve had this happen to me personally so I know that’s bullshit; I had a bum following me around shouting I was a greedy capitalist pig because I was wearing a suit and told him I didn’t have any money (I didn’t). Now, maybe it’s supposed to be funny, but it’s not funny and it’s not true as anything but an asinine generalisation, so that leaves it as nothing.
Again, getting hold of a decent amount of money will make a lot of other people hate and resent you without ever even meeting you.
There are two kinds of perfection; things that are perfectly good and things that are perfectly bad. The latter are why people have made so much of things like Manos: The Hands of Fate, The Eye of Argon and anything by Peter Chimaera or Squirrelking. These works might be more well-known than they’d be if everyone just ignored them, but one could argue they deserve to be well known. They’re just as fascinating in their complete, glorious ineptitude as the great works of literature are in their perfection.
Licht on 13 September 2012, 05:31 said:
You’d also have to be more precise on which kind of sport we’re talking about… There might be a little more to it than your “only”. Even though I agree with that one. All in all it’s certainly not that easy… anyway, that would be too far off topic.
In the Nimbly book’s case it doesn’t matter if it’s insightful or not. What matters is that it isn’t wrong per se and if taken care of by a really talented writer it might even have won over you.
Generalizing a personal experience might be a good idea if you need to make a decision for your own, personal and daily life. However, oftentimes it tends to not work on the larger scale. There’s empirical evidence it works, still works. That’s sad, but true. Same goes for many kinds of uniforms, doctoral degrees, names… Most people fall for it. Appearance matters a lot, if not most.
Interesting story, though.
I never said people love or hate you. I said it increases your chance to be welcomed friendly. Money still rules the world and without it many people won’t give a shit about you, whereas with it they’ll at least fake a smile and provide you with what you need. Again, it’s not true for all people —there are some good souls out there— but it still is true for the majority, especially if you’re a stranger.
Now, you could argue that showing up throwing around a bunch of money in the wrong area might get you killed and robbed, but let’s just assume the one we’re talking about isn’t a complete idiot.
You’ve got a point there. I agree. Yet, I still believe many people don’t read those stories and/or their sporks because they admire their skilful crappiness as… art or an achievement of some sort. They rather enjoy making fun of it, feeling superior as their own writing is clearly much better. To me that’s not enough. I like the fun part about critiques and sporks, very much, of course, but I think I just need more of a reason than that.
Those stories were written by someone and they weren’t written to be the worst of them all. (Though, sometimes I’d like to believe they were. And some of those writers just enjoy trolling us.)
What qualifies a story as worse enough to be worth sporking? there’s tonnes of bad self-published stories out there. What do you think? What could be your critria?
Fireshark on 13 September 2012, 11:16 said:
Well, obviously the main reason to spork is for comedy’s sake. That’s no secret. In general, we seem to seek out either
a) Things people think are good, but aren’t.
or
b) Things by people who think they’re great, but aren’t. This guy thinks his rather simple opinions are cool and smart. He thinks his cold, impersonal dystopia is really a utopia. He accuses people who don’t feed his ego of either being negative nancies up to no good, or evil blacklisting Mormons.
I think it is always acceptable to go after unwarranted self-importance. Also, no children deserve to listen to this—it’s not like the youngest kids always pick out their own books.
Kyllorac on 13 September 2012, 19:57 said:
Licht, marry me now.
Tim on 15 September 2012, 05:17 said:
Not really. Any behaviours related to loyalty to a team are related to the same desire to belong and be part of something bigger as everything from families to brand names; if you call that “like religion” then almost everything you can concievably belong to is like religion.
Support for sportsmen is conditional, it’s not an article of faith. You don’t have to believe in sports.
No, the problem is it’s just thrown in there for no good reason.
The problem is that’s not what he’s actually talking about, he’s talking about how humans are evil prudes because they’re not all nudists and won’t respect a bear for walking around naked. It’s a sentiment that’s broken on absolutely every concievable level and I think you’re parsing it into something more sensible to stop you drowning in stupid.
Hardly. You can surround yourself with leeches who’ll feign friendship until they run out of blood to suck and then leave you to die in a ditch, and enjoy complete strangers resenting you simply because you have it. Ever seen a political forum thread about yachts or supercars? They invariably devolve into abuse of the owners for being conspiciously rich.
Money buys a fake smile and a limp handshake, not friendship.
To be honest, it’s good practice for your critical skills to take on the equivalent of a stationary target. It’s good mental exercise and the writer helpfully spreads out all their fantastical horribleness in front of you rather than hiding it in the details.
Whether they’re obscure or well-known doesn’t really matter at all, what matters is what the spork can do with the material, be it entertain, educate or warn. There’s plenty of stories that aren’t worth doing because their primary flaw is being boring, the spork would just be using the same jokes over and over, or while they’re broken there isn’t much worth saying about them.
Like I said, asking why you’d do this guy is like asking a marksman why he’d practice with a paper target rather than saving his bullets for bad guys.
swenson on 15 September 2012, 09:14 said:
I like how you put this. A spork that fails to entertain or educate is probably not a good spork. But if it can do either of those, I think it’s a valid and worthwhile exercise. The best sporking targets (and the best-written sporks) do both.
Licht on 16 September 2012, 01:02 said:
As I said, it depends on what kind of sport you’re talking about.
It’s much more complex than just that. You can’t reduce it to this one aspect and still do it justice.
Are you interested in such topics in general? Have you read Feuerbach? His books about religion and the construction of god might be to your liking.
It looks as if thrown in there for no good reason. But that’s because the writer is lacking skill. If you can’t write well bringing up a topic that’s in some way important to you is very likely to end up just like this. We’ve seen it before.
I think you’re giving him too much credit on the nudist-bear question. When I’m not reading enough into it, you’re probably reading too much into it. So it’s very interesting for me how you interpret this paragraph.
Your statement about wealth is pretty optimistic, I dare say.
Yes, yes, that’s what they say: “money can’t buy friendship, can’t buy love.” What is friendship? What is love? What makes us love or befriend people? What makes us feel loved? How much do people fake anway? etc. Some people might prefer being surrounded by bloodsuckers to being alone. But again, off topic.
The world that I live in is much more comfortable with money, fake-smile or not.(Hey, there’s another thing that can be compared with religion.) It’s good to critisize it. It’s good to open up other perspectives. After all, that’s what has gotten a chance to happen after the crisis, Occupy and such.
But as it is now it’s still fucked up and far from being uncomfortable enough for those who profit from other people’s loss to actually change their behavior. Plus, people still prefer kicking those below them instead of taking on those above. As times are getting worse hatred against certain groups (homeless, people depending on social wellfare, immigrants and such) increases. Whereas wealth is still seen as positive and worth archieving. And you don’t want to make members of the club you want to belong to mad at you. Still works.
But, again, that’s another story and needs much more elaborating.
I’m sorry for ending perfectly good beginnings of possibly intersting discussions like that. We need to get back to them some time, as soon as my days aren’t that busy anymore. It’s intersting to talk to you and maybe that’s another good reason to spork bad stories containing abstruse ideas: you get to talk about them.
However, I think I still prefer saving my bullets for the bad guys, instead of shooting at children who are pretending to be gangster.
To me the real bad guys would be published bad authors. Writers like Tesch, Stanek and the like would be little fish. Judged by the influence and power of their writing, as well as how well known their books are.
But then, I don’t like the whole shooting metaphor in general.
I do agree with what you said about practicing, before you take on the big ones. I also agree with what you said about educating and entertaining. “Prodesse et delectare”, basically. Which is interesting in context: How much literary value can a spork/critique have?
Kyllorac: I’d marry you anytime if I weren’t already ;D
Kyllorac on 16 September 2012, 14:27 said:
Our respective significant others need never know. ;P
In any case, you can quote people by typing bq.(space) in front of the paragraph you want to quote. It makes it a bit easier to keep track of who said what.
Licht on 17 September 2012, 01:05 said:
Works! Thank you. :) (I feel like quoting everything now, just because I can.)
Now, there’s a thought… xD
On a slightly more serious note (well, not really): I’ve never read as many “marry me” and “I love you” as on impishidea and anti-shurtugal. We’re apparently very lovable people.
Tim on 17 September 2012, 06:06 said:
Can’t say I have, no.
I think you’ve misread it, actually.
He isn’t saying he needs to wear a suit, he’s saying he needs to wear a human suit, as in a costume. The first thing he suggests is a sports cap, after all. The sentence is basically “humans won’t think well of you unless you wear clothes, because they’re prudes.” It makes no sense because he’s a bear and we don’t care if animals wear clothes or not, it’s just Steve throwing in his usual pro-nudist nonsense.
Licht on 17 September 2012, 07:41 said:
I think he mixed up two, if not three, lines of thought there. At least that’s what it looks like to me.
It’s the “unless you look snappy” which distracts me. It could be the attempt of writing something more creative than: “unless you wear”, but on the other hand it says: unless you fit the picture, unless you look nice. This way the weight wouldn’t be on the fact that he has to wear something. It would be on what he wears and how. That would make slightly more sense… Maybe you’re right and I’m trying to read sense into it where there is none.
His “usual pro-nudist nonsense”? Now, what exactly did I miss?
The funny thing is: Most people would be less afraid of an animal that wears clothes, compared to one that doesn’t. Because wearing human clothes makes it cuddly and funny and domesticated.
I doubt that’s what he wanted to say, though.
Tim on 17 September 2012, 09:15 said:
Ah, if you’re familiar with his other work he does this a lot. There’s a truly horrifying work of his called “Tommorow’s World” which is about how in the future ideal wonderful society everyone is naked all the time and has lots of meaningless sex and etc.
http://www.smashwords.com/extreader/read/134419/1/tomorrows-world-2-desert-trek
Be prepared for
He also tosses a nudist community randomly about halfway through the one I’m working on, so this establishes something of a pattern and means it’s likely that’s what he’s going for there too.
Licht on 18 September 2012, 01:16 said:
I don’t think I want to. o.o
How many of his writings did you read?
astro on 4 November 2017, 11:04 said:
“Dwindling fast” is perfectly acceptable grammar.