A KOAN:

Once, the student approached the sage Lewis Black, who, for some reason, had a spoon up his ass.

“Master,” said the student, “why do you have a spoon up your ass?”

And the sage gestured towards the Superbowl half-time show, where both Aerosmith and Britney Spears were playing.

“If I have to experience this kind of pain,” said the sage, “then I want to be the one inflicting it.”

“Oprah calls this empowerment,” he concluded.

I probably should have left the Hollow Ones tradition book on the shelf after I picked it up, paged through it, then made a sort of whining sigh as my soul left my body and tried to escape for a more pleasant environment, but I was trying an experiment: Namely, I was trying to figure out if White Wolf had succeeded in creating a book that managed to make me like a group that I normally hated.

‘Cause Dear Jesus, do I ever hate the Hollow Ones. Every goth cliché, every tooth-grinding affectation, every eyeball-raking pretension, every damned lace corset and Morticia Addams makeup kit – I hate it. Especially because, as it’s been pointed out by those more observant than me, their original inclusion in the first edition of Mage was an attempt to pander to the Gothic community – not only can you play Azrael Abyss, but you can play him as a mage with kewl powers! 

Except that, in later editions, it was slowly suggested that the Hollow Ones may not have been all goths – that maybe they shared a single perception of the universe, one filtered through nihilism and despair which was, in turn, tinged with hope.

That, maybe, they wouldn’t all be wankers.

To be fair, there’s some of this in the Hollow Ones tradbook.

But the introductory fiction doesn’t exactly do anything for my impression of the book. I dropped the book into my lap and rolled my eyes skywards so many times that my parents thought that I was developing some weird kind of neurological disorder.

For example:

“The goth held herself with stoicism, prim and proper, a pair of black gloves in one hand and an old-fashioned, leather doctor’s bag in the other. Black lace, ruffles and silver buttons all combined to paint her into the perfect vision of the Victorian widow, mourning the loss of her one true love, a young Miss Havisham in negative. The luminescent pallor of her face, rounded cheeks and high forehead, persisted even under the glare of fluorescent lighting. Black-framed librarian glasses slipped down her austere nose. Her lips, like her body, were ripe, full and fleshy, painted burgundy wine.”

Or this:

She was much more petite than the first, with an hourglass figure that rivaled Penny’s. She wore a red-vinyl dress that came down to the tops of her thighs. It gave her a sassy look that enhanced her obvious, natural energy. Her outshone the rhinestones she had glued around them. Stripes of red marked her cheeks, as if she were preparing to play quarterback for the Red Queen. The strawberry coloring on her lips drew the eye and enhanced their sensuous sweel. She had the essence of fire written all over her, from the intelligent spark in her eyes to the passion that flickered upon her mouth and in the curves of her body.

Or this:

He was tall and thin. Mark had never seen any man look so completely goth. Neville even wore make-up. He outlined his eyes with black and drew them outwards with sweeps of coal gray. He had painted his lips black. His cheeks had deathly shading, a shadowy blush applied with care. A black velvet suit and midnight satin vest over a white pirate’s shirt would have looked ridiculous on anyone else. On anyone else, it would have resembled an Austin Powers hand-me-down. On Neville, it looked elegant. He carried himself with a timelessness that made him seem almost like a spirit, a ghost. His pale skin did nothing to counter that impression. He posed his cane in front of himself and rested both hands on it.

This is a fashion show, not flavor text. It’s also remarkably shallow, telling us everything about the pretensions of the characters and nothing about who they actually are; even the single sentence after an Over the Edge attributes are better descriptors. And the chapter is full of this, in between over-florid descriptions of the Romantic movement and what it supposedly stood for. If the most important thing about the Hollow Ones is how they look, it doesn’t say much about the Tradition as a whole.

Or this:

“All right,” Penny nodded. [Her name is Penny Dreadful.] She straightened her spine and lifted her chin to peer down her nose at Mark. When she spoke, her voice had deepened into the realm of magic. A spooky and mysterious timbre reverberated at the core of her words. She commanded, quietly, intensely, “Now say it again. And mean it this time. Feel it. Know it. The Hollow tradition is not a club; it is the Living Embodiment of Romance.”

The air passing through Mark’s nose suddenly took on a chill. He smelled Penny’s perfume again, more acutely than before. The tingle across his scalp expressed the seriousness and profundity of the words. [We have to be told they’re profound and serious, so that we don’t inadvertently break our spines laughing.] He felt his shivers run through him as he repeated, “The Hollow tradition is not a club; it is the Living Embodiment of Romance.”

“I,” Penny emphasized the first word, “I am the Living Embodiment of Romance.” She laid her hand over Mark’s and nodded to indicate that he should repeat after her.

“I,” Mark did so, “….am the Living Embodiment of Romance.” His mind flashed with scenes of ancient romance and waves crashing on distant shores. He saw bloody battles and harsh faces lifted to the full moon wailing cries of anguish and pain.

I would make some comment about being Jack’s something-or-other, but it’s 2002; Fight Club has been out for a little too long for the reference to be funny.

Or this:

The room fell silent. All eyes turned to Penny, at least for a moment before skittering off to the corners of the room. Those present knew the time had come to tell the saddest part of the story. They all dreaded it. They all soaked in the dreading.

They smoke clove cigarettes. They have a talking cat named Mr. Mistoffelees. They have names like Clive and Mysry and Mark Moon and Penny Dreadful and Purity. They hang in coffeehouses and cafes.

They are the biggest collection of clichés in the universe. And I wonder if this was done deliberately – a way to take the piss out of the Hollow Ones by exaggerating the most painful stereotypes in the world.

But the writing here is pretty poor; overemphasis on physical appearance, cutesy little stage-bits, awkward turns of phrase. As a matter of fact, it took me some time, but I finally got it – every single character in the book is a Mary Sue character, incapable of doing anything wrong, looking utterly romantic even if they’re wearing a garbage dumpster. They even clumsily name-drop authors that they like; for example:

“I mean, I like a good Lovecraft tale as well as anyone else – or the more modern writers such as Clive Barker or Poppy Z. Brit, both of whom have the amazing ability to expand the mind of the writer.”

Would you, gentle reader, stop in the middle of an otherwise normally flowing sentence in order to list off your favorite authors, then say that they have the “amazing ability to expand the mind of the writer?” ‘Cause to me, it sounds like some of the clumsiest writing I’ve seen in a White Wolf product; full of adolescent enthusiasm without bothering to maintain the narrative drive of the story. For that matter, while both are pretty good writers, I’d say that only Barker is truly mind-expanding, and even then only in limited amounts; while I’ve only read Lost Souls, I’m under the impression that Brite is mostly enthused with vampires and homosexuality, not necessarily in that order, and usually at the expense of the plot. (Hey, great vampire novels, sure – but not mind-expanding.)

Or there’s the truly cringe-worthy, during a conversation about what Mark would be if he could be anything – and why he’s not:

Penny gave Mark a gentle smile. “That’s what Mostpeople think. Do you want to be one of the Mostpeople? You already know that you’re not like the Mostpeople. You’re special. And you can be anything you want, in any way you want to be it.”

Put a gun to my head and paint the walls with my brains.

There. Not so old after all.

What’s especially ironic about the Tradition is that the book claims that those who want to stand out from the crowd, who want to be original, to be themselves! But the hilarious thing is that for a Tradition that supposedly encourages free thought and originality, every single Hollow One in the book is described as a goth – and not even an original goth; they all wear the pirate pants and velvet and silk and talk about Byron and generally make me want to swallow the business end of a .45.

Maybe it’s a subtle parody. Maybe it’s a commentary on how commercialized the Goth movement is, how the Technocracy ate it out from within without the Hollow Ones even noticing. Maybe it’s just that the authors never saw Goth Talk. Maybe they decided to make a book that was a parody of what most people thought White Wolf was supposed to be – you know, a bunch of angst-obsessed fops dressed up in the most clichéd aspects of the gothic scene. Maybe I wans’t in on the joke. I don’t know.

And if you want to see what happens when people decide to be themselves without regarding what other people think, I’d direct you to this site.

There’s some content in the middle of the book which isn’t entirely painful. I liked the Gaunts, for example, Hollow Ones who specialize in working with ghosts, and some of the rotes are okay – nothing that blew my mind, but not bad.

The templates range from the tolerable to the painful. For example, the Curious Coroner has this in his writeup:

“You admire Ichabod Crane. He faced his fears with the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow.”

It’s like putting “Hey! It’s a picture of Tom Cruise!” in the Tzimisce clanbook template – yeah,  it looks just like Tom Cruise, but you’re not supposed to draw attention to it. As a matter of fact, the whole template – which was kinda interesting – went into my “bad” file the minute that I realized that they were just trying to copy Ichabod Crane without adding anything interesting on. Ditto the Reality Warrior, with this:

“You model yourself after Neo, from the movie The Matrix. He is your hero.”

Which is funny, because, at points, the Matrix was strongly reminiscent of Mage. (You cannot tell me that Neo stopping the bullets from the Technocrats in midair isn’t exactly what you think a Technocrat / Akashic Brotherhood showdown would look like.) So, instead of developing what’s so utterly unique about their own game, they’re reduced to cannibalizing from a movie that drew inspiration from them. Jesus.

Or this, for the Tragic Heroine:

“You sympathize with John Constantine, a character created by Alan Moore and the main protagonist of the comic book Hellblazer, published by Vertigo comics.”

What I can’t figure out is why they bother to do into so much explanation for one of the most popular characters in comics today. Me, I can’t stand Constantine – I think he’s a prat, and inexplicably popular – but I can at least understand who he is and who he’s supposed to be without having a diagram drawn for me. Most White Wolf books use sly winks and innuendoes to make their references; this one uses a bulldozer.

I don’t get it.

I just don’t.

-Darren MacLennan