Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 113

Podcast 28 On Translation 3/3

listen to the PODCAST

I’m talking with Emil Minchev author and translator of The Great Gatsby (and many other things) about translation.

“Swear words always sound more terrible in your native language”

The history of swear words (like gadzooks)

The Bulgarian word пък

 ”Translation is a necessary evil”

Transparent prose

American Psycho

Tolkien pretending to be a translator of Lord of the Rings

The Bulgarian translation of Going Postal

The Noh play Matsu Kaze (whose title is a delightful pun that the official English translation mangles horrible. “Wind in the Pines”? No, you idiots, it’s “Pine Wind” or “the Wind Pines” if you want to get all James Joyce-y)

Japanese puns like Hashi de kita

“Putting a hat on it” or “hanging a lamp shade on it” if you actually know what you’re talking about

Allo Allo and its use of accent

 

 

Research help

Help! I have run out of research materials.

Here’s my alien sex diplomat murder mystery bibliography so far, but I’m sure I’ve missed something. What else is out there I can read/watch/listen to?

In particular, I need a firmer grounding in:

Diplomacy

Courtisanerie and seduction

Espionage

Indigenous rights

Official interpretation

Of course I’m googling everything and Wikipedia is helpful, but books and documentaries are better. Any recommendations? Also, even though I feel comfortable about the biology and science fiction, go ahead and recommend your favorite authors.

Podcast with me

I’ve got today and tomorrow to record some podcasts , so if you do something creative and want to talk about it, let me know.

Podcast 27 Perfection is Simplicity 2/3

Listen to PODCAST

I’m talking with Emil Minchev author of Towers of Stone and Bone and Unlimited Access (available only in Bulgarian…so far!) about the difference between writing fiction set in the real versus fantastic worlds.

We talk about:

Steven King’s Story about Robinson Crusoe

“Perfection is simplicity”—Zen Master Minchev

Lois McMaster Bujold and her perfect worlds, which she talks about in Sidelines

Iceberg writing

Isaac Azimov and explaining how things work without exposition (make it malfunction).

Bujold’s Komarr

“The perfect story set in a fictional world is one in which you feel like the author is from that world.”

Fitzgerald and stripped prose

Omit needless words

Story Germs: Supplemental

It ain’t easy taking care of giant GM geese in a post-apocalyptic world millennia in the future. Ain’t easy at all.

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As a young man I was well known for a life lived fast and loose

Slept with a war chief’s daughter underneath the spreading spruce

Swapped out the Sleeping Deva with a sleeping mama moose (moose moose!)

That’s why I live with a goose.

(chorus)

Oh a honka-dilly honka-dilly hoo!

Cleaning goose-shit is all that I ever do!

How I wish that instead of me I could be you.

A honka-dilly honka-dilly hoo.

Oh, they chased me and they caught me, kicked me right in the caboose

And they said that I was destined to be hanging from a noose

But before I could escape or bribe or try some other ruse (ruse ruse!)

They sent me to live with the goose.

(chorus)

Now let me make my story clear, so I am not abstruse

That’s why I’m sitting in the guano with my face chartreuse

For my current state I offer only this honest excuse (cuse cuse!)

Never wanted to be keeper of the goose.

(chorus) (minor key)

Story Germs 11

THEMES:

So I’m seeing three themes here.

One is domination: “it isn’t okay to force someone to do things against their best interest” that’s sort of no-d’uh and it’s the weakest of the three, but it ties Slaver/Slaver, Monia/Knife, Cyborg/Hesukristians, Devas/Everyone.

More interesting is the debate around environmentalism. What is the point of it? Are we trying to return the earth to a pre-industrial (or pre-agricultural, or pre-human??) state of grace? Or are we trying to engineer our environment in a way that makes it pleasant and useful for us? Are we forest rangers or gardeners?

That connects us to the theme of sacrifice and biblical allegory. Pristine nature is the Garden of Eden. The Devas are horsemen of the apocalypse, ushering in the ecological Rapture. But should the sins of the fathers (the civilization that produced the cyborg) be visited upon these low-tech sons? Perhaps the Devas will forgive us our unsustainability if we sacrifice to them and pledge to work with them.

And why does any of this matter? Protection. THAT’s the overarching theme of the story, after all. When is protecting something or someone a virtue? When is it evil, or at least irrational? That’s a theme you can develop with the characters.

  CHARACTERS:

For Protectors, the main thing you can add is depth to the relationship between Knife and Moina. You can do this by answering the questions: A) What do they want? B) what prevents them from getting it? C) what tools do they have with which they can address (B)? D) how do they feel about each other and (E) how do all the above change as the characters progress through the story?

Huh, I’ve never said all that out before. I wonder if I know what I’m talking about.

  So considering the themes above:

Hesukristos wants to protect the vanished world he used to know (by bringing it back)

The Devas want to protect the earth by destroying the cyborg and anyone else who gets in their way

Monia and Knife want, as a couple, to protect their dual civilizations, and, individually, each other (warm fuzzies).

  Thus the good guys are different from the bad guys because the good guys want to protect people rather than ideals. A pristine earth or a high-tech utopia are evil if, to get them, you allow the people you care about to die.

 Knowing that makes it easier to think about the ending.

 POSSIBLE ENDINGS

SIMON: Another thing I’m thinking of – should the ‘first knife’ character be driven by some savvy plan to lead hesukristos away from trans-detroit, where he can be safely destroyed by the devas? Is he a victim of circumstance, just going with the revolutionary army despite his knowledge of its inevitable destruction? Or, the least likely option, would he WANT hesukristos to win, perhaps? It would require some foolin’ around with the story earlier on, maybe – an established hatred of the devas, maybe…

That’s a good idea, too. He could convince his men to head back (or stay and plunder the treasure in the crypt?) while he leads the cyborg to some sort of El Dorado paradise. “Oh yes, bwana, my people have legends of a secret valley where all is as it once was and the buildings scrape the sky. It is only a little farther into the desert.”

But to me, this feels like the ending of a short story. The MC gets kidnapped by the cyborg, he leads the cyborg into a trap, gets the cyborg killed and either goes home or nobly sacrifices himself. This solution doesn’t require him to get to know Moina (who ends up being just a deluded messiah) or to get humans onto a more equal footing with the Devas (I don’t trust ‘em!).

 That’s fine, though. It might be a good idea to have multiple endings for your story, depending on how big a project it grows into as you’re working on it. Complicated, deep, epic, and forever unfinished is worse than short, simple, and finished.

 So here’s how I think the story might end:

Hesukristos discovers there are no still-functioning cyborgs. They uncover a cache of weapons (which will allow the soldiers to hold out against the Devas), but the only cyborgs they find are long dead, enshrined and painted shells with rotted offerings scattered around them. This current cyborg is not the first Hesukristos, and his predescessors have all come to bad ends.

Desperate, H-krist does not recharge, but wants to leave the crypt and head off into the jungle to find a deeper cache. There must be some REAL people SOMEWHERE in this nightmare world! The Devas are waiting for them at the door to the cache.

Then…

 SHORT: While the soldiers hold off the Devas, Knife H-krist him there’s a better crypt further out in the desert. Using his last bit of power, Knife rocket-jumps away from the crypt, drawing the Devas after him and sparing the lives of all the soldiers and (most importantly) Moina. Knife protects her by sacrificing himself to the Devas when they catch up and autoclave everything around H-krist. Visuals could be him thinking about all of this while he flies through the air on H-Krist’s back. Then a puff of dust as H-Krist lands in the desert, stumbles, looks up at the massed lights in the sky above, and bellows “where is the second cache? WHERE IS IT?”

Then a mushroom cloud.

 MEDIUM: In the heat of battle with the Devas, H-krist runs out of power. Shedding his armor, the pitiful monster crawls toward a recharge station, where he is stopped by Knife and Moina. Working together, they overpower him and tie him to a tree, sacrificing him to the Devas. A ray of hope at the end comes when Knife smiles and Moina and says, “let’s see if we can find some more biddable weapons around here.”

 LONG: The cyborg drags himself away from the battle (perhaps shedding his armor as he does so, so he appears smaller and weaker). Moina is disgusted with him and declares that she will die protecting her people against Hudsoni and Devas and anyone else who would dominate them. Knife tries to convince her to follow H-krist, who represents their only chance for survival. He’s more interested in protecting HER, not some ineffable concept. Their argument is reinforced by the actual fighting going on around them.

 Then, riding on the back of a Deva, the Matriarch arrives and tells everyone to shut up. She gives the Hesukristians one last chance to surrender their blasphemous god or be destroyed. Which gives Knife an idea.

 “Hesukristos is not a God. He is a man. A lonely and exhausted man who wants nothing more than to protect the lives of the innocent” (allegory! And the Arian Heresy to boot!) “And if he is a God, then no less are we, for he has given us the means (i.e. the weapons in the cache) to deal with you Devas as equal. Come down to the earth you say you protect, and talk with us.”

There follows a negotiation where the Devas agree to stop viewing humans as part of the ecosystem they are protecting, but fellow protectors of it. The holy power of the Hudonite Matriarchy coupled with the bureaucracy of the Hesukristians and the know-how of Hesukristo, will found a “Nation of Protectors” who will aid the Devas in their goal of repairing the earth.

 They don’t. They pull the cyborg away and tie him to a tree, where he dies.

 Now what? The Devas are ready to kill everyone. Knife and Monia must somehow protect their people and build a stable future. Good thing they are surrounded by godlike tools. Last line: “come on, I am sure if we search these ruins, we can find something we can use to protect our people.”

 I’m sure that better ideas will occur to you (and possibly even to me) as you set about telling this story, but what we have here is certainly good enough to start with.

Story Germs 10

Part 3

 

With Hesukristos at the head of the column, the Hesukristian rebels are marching south alongside a giant Deva-built aqueduct. Having already been on the road for a few days, their goal is only a few day’s march south, an ancient secret fortress in the ohio desert. But that night, another Deva Herald arrives at their camp, glowing merrily, saying “Warning: Sterilization procedures will recommence in five days”.

Perhaps (for streamlining’s sake) this happens at the end of the previous “chapter,” with the deva interrupting Knife and Monia’s argument. This also explains where the cyborg has been this whole time: he’s been hunting Devas.

Hesukristos furiously leaps up and fires his laser into the deva, killing it but exhausting himself in the effort. Supporting himself on a tree, exhausted, Hesukristos looks near First Knife and asks him what he thinks is going on. “What are sterilization procedures, do you think?”

Looking thoughtful, but not looking at Hesu, First Knife says “I think it means we need to get to your fortress as soon as we can. If we don’t, they’ll kill us all for sure.” Murmurs stir through the soldiers. “If you can’t kill the gods, you’ve doomed us all.” Girl Commander leaps up, shouting “I’ve had enough of you!” she kicks First knife hard in the face, throwing him over, and whips out her knife, shouting at the crowd “that goes for all you cowards too!” She leaps onto first knife, preparing to stab him, and his head smashes the ground, knocking him out.

This would fit well with a conversation where he was trying to seduce her, and she has had enough of it.

I’m not sure I like knocking him out, though. It makes him passive again. Although I do like the beginning of the next scene. Perhaps he starts shouting orders to his men, and, seeing his life is in danger, the cyborg grabs him and keeps him immobilized while the “crisis of faith” plays itself out. Perhaps Monia tells the cyborg to do that (if you want her to like Knife).

Another potential is that it is the cyborg who falls unconscious during the battle (which would make a lot of sense, given his mechanical problems) and when HE wakes up, HE is the one who asks “what happened” to which KNIFE responds “a crisis of faith.” Of course, that means that in whatever conversation Knife and Monia had at the end of chapter 2, they have become allies to the extent that Knife does not turn on the Hesukristians, but instead leads them and his loyal soldiers (loyal to him personally) to kill or drive off the other soldiers (loyal to the Hudsoni Matriarch). That gives you the chance to bring the Matriarch back into play by letting the Matriarchist soldiers go back to Hundonia and tell her what her brother’s been up to.  SHE convinces the Devas to carry her to Ohio to talk some sense into Knife (this can all happen off screen) so she is present at the denouement, as she should be because she’s an interesting character.

First knife wakes up at sunset being dragged behind Hesukristos, who seems a bit more slumped and quiet. There are only a few dozen men still marching behind them, some with bloodied weapons. First Knife asks “What happened?” Hesukristos simply says “a crisis of faith” and chuckles quietly.  They reach a big oasis around a giant, kilometre-high tower disappearing into the clouds it appears to be generating. Hesukristos slows down the deeper they get into the dense, forested oasis (in which giant, angkor-wat-like ruins are visible amongst the trees),

MLE~EH (that’s the sound of the drool escaping my mouth)

and slowly stops when they reach the center of the oasis. amongst the trees the ruins of a solid, fortress-like structure lies half-submerged at the base of the aqueduct-fed tower.

Now, this whole last section is up in the air – I’m not entirely sure how to wrap the story up without being too anticlimactic or preachy… but i like the idea of First Knife sleeping under a tree while Hesukristos goes into the old, flooded fortress, then waking up to find all the other warriors gone, aside from Girl Commander, who’ll be stoicly standing by herself, waiting for the cyborg to come out of the water… and above them all, a Deva Destroyer-bot can be seen, a little speck in the sky above them.

Meaning the soldiers have all run away? Why didn’t anyone wake Knife up? Perhaps Knife went partway into the crypts with Hesukristos, but had to turn back because…there’s radiation further on? He felt the ground shake and wants to check on everyone? Hesukristos forces him to?

There could be some sort of epic confrontation between Hesukristos and the devas – but whatever it is, it needs to end with the death of hesukristos… if hesukristos’ degradation is introduced earlier on, maybe he could try and shoot his laser at the destroyed but lose the last of his ancient, evil energy, and barely be able to stand up. Or, better yet, have him talk more and more needily about his “sleeping cyborg brothers” on his journey to the sunken fortress, then end with him emerging from the water HELLA depressed that he’s completley alone in the universe…

Cut to the hudsoni capital, where First Knife is returning with a war party to a deserted harbor (aside from a few gosherds and their flocks of giant future geese) . Surprised at the cold welcome, First Knife finds out from the gosherd that the whole town is at the matriarch’s longhouse. A herald of the devas is there!

First knife pushes his way through the crowded townsfolk into the matriarch’s longhouse. Inside, all the elders of the town are huddled around the edges of the walls, quietly talking amongst themselves, with the herald silently floating in the middle of the room above the fire pit, rain falling on it through the smoke-hole. First Knife goes to his sister, the matriarch, worried about what he’ll hear. The last time the devas spoke, it preceded the annihilation of an entire island’s population to contain an outbreak of disease. And sure enough, as the matriarch tells him, the herald’s warning is of the Hudsoni’s new holdings to the south – the devas are preparing to cleanse the detroit river valley to contain a potentially lethal threat that destroyed a Deva. The elders and the matriarch are in a panic about this for a wide variety of reasons – capturing the lands between the hudson sea and the great lakes cost the hudsoni a lot of effort and life, and to have the jewel of the region – the great middens of trans-detroit – burned by the gods would bode ill for all. Not mentioning the horror that such an occurence would hold just as an omen, the potential for it to inspire foreign invasion and insurrection amongst the conquered is terrifying enough for the hudsoni.

First knife, getting flustered by the panicked elders, shouts “surely we can do something!”

The deva, speaking for the first time the reader has seen: “What would you do?”

Startled, first knife regains his composure and haltingly speaks: “We – we would drive this threat out into the lakes, or into the river, where you could destroy it. Or, if possible, we would destroy it ourselves.”

The deva is silent.

First knife continues: ” We have paid dearly for this place you wish to destroy. If we can protect it, we will.” after a pause, he adds “my lord”

After a few moments, the deva speaks: “Yes. It is authorized. If the situation is yet unresolved within the lunar cycle, sterilization procedures will recommence at the beginning of the next.” With that, the deva disappears in a flash of light.

The matriarch walks over, glaring, and calls First Knife a fool – then hugs him tightly, and calls him a fool again.

We cut to canoes full of armed men, sailing from the hudsoni capital, with ten-fifteen men from each of the seven major clans, sailing south under First Knife’s command. After a few nights of traveling, they find a giant, still metal form lying half-in the river – a dead Deva builder, beginning a new concrete and earth extension to the river’s edge, collapsed with jagged holes and gashes melted through its metal exoskeleton. There are a few battered hesukristian corpses, too – one of them dressed in ancient ceramic armor a hudsoni warrior recognizes from the Hesukristian Holy Crypts, in Cincinatl. Both the collapsed Deva and dead men are fresh, so First Knife orders them all onward. Their enemy must be close.

Soon they smell smoke, and a burning village comes into view. Disembarking into cover further up the river, they quickly creep into the village and attack, cutting up the armored and non-armored hesukristian warriors. Suddenly, a thin beam of red light snaps out of the smoke, dismembering hudsoni and hesukristian alike. After three such beams flick over the hudsoni warriors, First Knife sounds the retreat. As he backs up, watching the carnage, the red light snaps out and touches his sword. But it only begins to heat the metal, instead of killing him outright. As the smoke clears, the source of the red light becomes clear – a sixteen year old girl, wearing ancient ceramic armor that’s too big for her, holding a dull olive-drab laser tube, riding on the shoulders of a very big man. Staring First Knife in the eyes as she moves closer and his laser-heated sword begins to smoke and burn him, the girl says “Submit, or die.

Right now, it is very, very easy for you to die.”

First Knife drops his glowing sword out of his swollen hand, and looks away – “We submit”

The laser-wielding girl commander shouts “Hesukristos has risen” – and her troops shout in response “HE HAS RISEN INDEED!”

 

Story Germs 9

 

Part 2:

Under guard, the Hudsoni survivors are marched into an ancient ruined apartment development in detroit proper, full of people. In the main lobby of the complex, there is a throne room of sorts, a large, dim chamber where they meet “Hesukristos”. Giant, ancient, and made of metal, the hudsoni are transfixed – aside from First knife, who manages to keep his composure, despite his ruined hand. Hesukristos begins to describe how he feels, new to the world, and how he sees it. Why would the Hudsoni, an honorable people, enslave other humans while they themselves are slaves to the whims of the Devas? This world is no longer mankind’s – but Hesukristos can help man take it back.

Wasn’t Hesukristos in the last battle? I thought Monia was riding him.

 And if I was wrong…I still like the idea of Hesukristos being there from the beginning. That way you get the strong visual of Monia walking in front of the giant horrible cyborg, and a second visual when all the soldiers lift their fists and shout “indeed he has risen” and the “camera” focuses on the cyborg, so we all know the cyborg IS Hesukristos.

Another potentially cool visual occurs to me. The Hesukristians have painted iconography all over the armor of Hesukristos and Monia. I would love some Orthodox stoles, but I guess that wouldn’t fit the worldbuilding. Something more like Catholic motifs as finger-painted by the Haida?  Lots of swirly concentric lines made of crosses?

First Knife interrupts, expressing his skepticism at Hesukristos’ powers over his followers – who is to say that the hesukristians wouldn’t simply slaughter the Hudsoni out of revenge? And how will Hesukristos repel the Devas, who are, after all, gods?

The room freezes, and the Girl Commander angrily begins to draw her blade, hissing “How dare you doubt the son of god!” at first knife. But the cybrog stops her, and laughs. He leaves the room and heads into the courtyard, then points to a collapsed, punctured Deva – smaller then a builder, but still as big as a bus. “Watch”.

If you need it, there’s an opportunity here to speed up. You can have this conversation take place in the desert (or ruined city or jungle or wherever) on the march to the crypts. It would save time at the expense of denying the readers the chance to see the Detroit throne room.

One of Hesukristos’ four eyes begins to glow red – then a thin beam of red light stabs out and with a puff of metal vapour punctures another hole in the dead Deva. First knife, eyes wide, simply says “oh.”

Hesukristos continues, though – “All that being so, I am still only one. But south, into the desert, my people built a hidden crypt deep in the Ohio desert, where others like me may yet sleep.  We will find this place, awaken my sleeping brothers and sisters, and take the world back for man. Are you with me, First Knife?”

What language does the cyborg speak? An old-fashioned version of the language of the Hesukristians and Hudsoni?

The other option is to “translate” the characters so that First Knife sounds old-fashioned and the cyborg (who after all is more like us 21st century people) speaks modern English. It depends on how much you want the readers to sympathize with him (so I would recommend going this route if your goal is to have the cyborg commit suicide out of lonliness, but going the other route and making Knife speak normally if you want him to jump in and save the day).

After a pause – “Would you let me live if i was not?” Hesukristos says nothing. “Then i will be. But i can make no such promises for my men or for my people.”

Hesukristos, laughing “You’re damn bold, First Knife. I like that.” With that, the men have their bonds cut, but are split up amongst the hesukristian soldiers (who have orders to kill them if they try to escape), aside from First Knife, who is to stay with Hesukristos.

That night, First Knife is ambushed by Girl commander and her men while he sleeps. She doesn’t trust his surrender – she was kept a slave by scum like him, and hudsoni usually die for honor. Is he just exceptionally cowardly?

Nice. It makes sense for her character, it furthers the plot, and it reinforces the domination theme.

Speaking slowly with her blade against his throat, First Knife lays out his position: “From what i’ve seen, your Hesukristos could well be a god. I’ve seen what he – what you – can do, even to the devas. I stand nothing to gain by fighting a god, and for our sakes, i hope he is. ”

“Because where i was born, in the forest islands up north, I’ve seen the Devas flatten mountains and burn whole valleys to ash. If your god can’t kill them, then none of this will matter. We will all die.”

A good argument. I think some action is missing here, though. What are they doing while they’re talking?

 Also, Knife is a bit passive in this chapter. If he’s as cool a commander as he should be, he’ll be spinning plans for getting himself into a more secure position by: (A) escaping, (B) attaching himself to the cyborg, which means driving a wedge between the cyborg and the Monia, (C)figuring out how to defeat the cyborg

When he has a chance to talk to Monia without the cyborg around (and where is the cyborg during this conversation?) Knife should put his plans into action. “You look worried, hermanita. Is all well with our mutual friend the resurrected god?” “Nothing you need concern yourself with, bastard.” “He’s getting weaker, isn’t he? Sickness? Hunger? Does our mortal realm lack some resource he craves? Or is it just loneliness that makes his limbs drag so?” “shut up!” “Surely you’ve noticed it. What will happen when he no longer backs up your threats” “I make my own threats”

 Knife tries to flirt with Monia (Not all Hudonsi are so terrible. Perhaps you could learn to…like us.). He mistakenly thinks that some cuddling will win her over, but he’s also actually attracted to her. (I’ll kill you for looking at me that way! Send the guards away and give me a knife and we’ll see who does what to whom. I have given death to many men. I’ve given the little death to many women)

This is also a chance to revisit your themes of protection. (“You think this mad machine can protect you? Can protect ANYONE? Come with me back to the Matriarch.”) And the nature of environmentalism (“Let go of your heresy and embrace the love of the Devas” “The Sky Fathers are worse Slavers than even the Hudsoni. They killed my people.” “They are working toward a greater good, a world of bounty.” “You Hudsoni and your dreams of bounty. If you have to kill people to make a dream come true, it is a nightmare.”) And alienation (“You are learning, I see, how lonely a position command can be, hermanita.”)

Based on reasons I’ll talk about below, the scenario I like best is Knife and Monia becoming allies (not lovers, because Monia must be “pure,” but there is clearly attraction on both sides). Monia convinces Knife that he should not worship the Devas. Knife convinces Monia that her drive and passion need the help of someone with leadership experience to make sure her mission succeeds. What about Hesukristo? “Well, I cannot say he is mistaken, because of course the Son of God is infallible, but his mind is…occupied with a higher plane and he does not always…behave as one would expect. For the sake of the men, you need a human face at your side.” (visual here: Monia standing with the cyborg behind and to the right, Knife beside and to the left of her, the implication being that they are pulling her in different directions).

As to why Knife is siding with Monia and not the cyborg: the cyborg is more insane than Monia. Worse, he will soon become helpless, and Knife has to plan for that. In fact, maybe a helpless cyborg is exactly what he wants…

In any case, I think this scene needs to have (A) Knife being proactive rather than reactive (B) him deepening his relationship with Monia (in whatever direction you want that relationship to go) (C) foreshadowing the eventual fall of the cyborg and the denouement.

 

Story Germs 8

Chapter 1

Cut to the Hudsoni capital, where First Knife is returning with a war party to a deserted harbor (aside from a few gosherds and their flocks of giant future geese) . Surprised at the cold welcome, First Knife finds out from the gosherd that the whole town is at the matriarch’s longhouse. A herald of the devas is there!

First knife pushes his way through the crowded townsfolk into the matriarch’s longhouse. Inside, all the elders of the town are huddled around the edges of the walls, quietly talking amongst themselves, with the herald silently floating in the middle of the room above the fire pit, rain falling on it through the smoke-hole. First Knife goes to his sister, the matriarch, worried about what he’ll hear. The last time the devas spoke, it preceded the annihilation of an entire island’s population to contain an outbreak of disease. And sure enough, as the matriarch tells him, the herald’s warning is of the Hudsoni’s new holdings to the south – the devas are preparing to cleanse the Detroit river valley to contain a potentially lethal threat that destroyed a Deva. The elders and the matriarch are in a panic about this for a wide variety of reasons – capturing the lands between the Hudson Sea and the great lakes cost the Hudsoni a lot of effort and life, and to have the jewel of the region – the great middens of trans-Detroit – burned by the gods would bode ill for all. Not mentioning the horror that such an occurrence would hold just as an omen, the potential for it to inspire foreign invasion and insurrection amongst the conquered is terrifying enough for the Hudsoni.

You could have First Knife talk to his fellow warriors as their coming home, saying happy things about how great life is since they conquered that particular piece of land. All of the soldiers have received their back pay, there’s strong support for the Matriarch, older men are planning to retire and set up homesteads in the new land, “good thing we silenced those dissenters” etc. etc. (there’s also a chance here to have some flashback pictures of cool fighting and First Knife’s men kicking ass. That’s important since it establishes that he and his men aren’t pushovers, and them surrendering to the cyborg is no easy thing). And then BAM Killjoy Gosherd comes waddling up and pours cold oatmeal over the whole conversation with his talk of visiting Devas.

First knife, getting flustered by the panicked elders, shouts “surely we can do something!”

The deva, speaking for the first time the reader has seen: “What would you do?”

Startled, first knife regains his composure and haltingly speaks: “We – we would drive this threat out into the lakes, or into the river, where you could destroy it. Or, if possible, we would destroy it ourselves.”

The deva is silent.

First knife continues: ” We have paid dearly for this place you wish to destroy. If we can protect it, we will.” after a pause, he adds “my lord”

After a few moments, the deva speaks: “Yes. It is authorized. If the situation is yet unresolved within the lunar cycle, sterilization procedures will recommence at the beginning of the next.” With that, the deva disappears in a flash of light.

The matriarch walks over, glaring, and calls First Knife a fool – then hugs him tightly, and calls him a fool again.

  

Lovely. Just perfect set-up for the story.

My world-building senses tell me there’s a potential paradox centered around the fact that we have a loose, hunter-gatherer society (with a Matriarch whose brother commands warriors, but no aristocracy or court to get between them and the people they order around), trying to act like an empire and annex territory for settled peoples. It’s not impossible (after all, the Mongols did it), but empire-building will require the Hudsoni to develop division of labor and social hierarchy. I don’t think you have to address that problem directly since most of the story takes place away from the centers of power, but some visual clues during the audience with the Devas might help. For example, you have a relatively rough, wooden longhouse, but it’s full of really nice stuff (golden idols, shiny CDs, lots of statues, jewels on things that have no buisness having jewels on them. Maybe a pair of tanks or war-robots or something, all pretty and cleaned up but totally non-functional, standing to either side of the long-house door like guardian lions. A concourse of satellite dishes stuck up on colored poles, hanging with strings of jewels and talismans. Lots of construction and slaves dragging things around. An even cooler longhouse—a “tallhouse”—is begin constructed). Savage splendor.

We cut to canoes full of armed men, sailing from the Hudsoni capital, with ten-fifteen men from each of the seven major clans, sailing south under First Knife’s command.

This traveling might also be a place where you can do world-building and establish the details that make the rest of the story have emotional impact. Maybe just some shots showing abandoned constructions. A nice broken space-elevator against a day-moon? The remains of a crashed generation-ship.

After a few nights of traveling, they find a giant, still metal form lying half-in the river – a dead Deva builder, beginning a new concrete and earth extension to the river’s edge, collapsed with jagged holes and gashes melted through its metal exoskeleton. There are a few battered Hesukristian corpses, too – one of them dressed in ancient ceramic armor a Hudsoni warrior recognizes from the Hesukristian Holy Crypts, in Cincinatl. Both the collapsed Deva and dead men are fresh, so First Knife orders them all onward. Their enemy must be close.

Good establishment of how badass these soldiers are.

Soon they smell smoke, and a burning village comes into view. Disembarking into cover further up the river, they quickly creep into the village and attack, cutting up the armored and non-armored Hesukristian warriors. Suddenly, a thin beam of red light snaps out of the smoke, dismembering Hudsoni and Hesukristian alike.

Maybe he hears “STAY” otherwise it’s unclear why he doesn’t try to run away.

After three such beams flick over the Hudsoni warriors, First Knife sounds the retreat. As he backs up, watching the carnage, the red light snaps out and touches his sword. But it only begins to heat the metal, instead of killing him outright. As the smoke clears, the source of the red light becomes clear – a sixteen year old girl, wearing ancient ceramic armor that’s too big for her, holding a dull olive-drab laser tube, riding on the shoulders of a very big man. Staring First Knife in the eyes as she moves closer and his laser-heated sword begins to smoke and burn him, the girl says “Submit, or die.

Right now, it is very, very easy for you to die.”

Nice

First Knife drops his glowing sword out of his swollen hand, and looks away – “We submit”

The laser-wielding girl commander shouts “Hesukristos has risen” – and her troops shout in response “HE HAS RISEN INDEED!”

  Voistino Vazkresen! I love it!

There’s a huge emotional impact here, a big buildup of potential energy to drive the story (and pull the reader) forward.

Story Germs 7

Part 1:

Opens with the slave girl escaping some Hudsoni slavers in the ruins of Detroit.

ME:

Love the first line. Very thematic.

Good worldbuilding in the second cell.

The third cell, though, seems redundant.

Why not stretch a voice bubble out from the thirsty guy “Where’s that water, girl?” into the space between two smaller cells, split vertically. On the left is the dirty and gross Monia-to-be wearing a yoke (symbolism!) from which hangs water. She’s giving some to an exhausted slave when she hears the call. The cell to the right is a close up on her furious expression. That way one of the main characters gets introduced on the first page. And our first impression of her is she LOVES protecting people and HATES being a slave.

ME:

Likewise, I think this page can be condensed into “Where is she? Find her and give her a good beating this time. She’s no good to anyone if she can’t learn her place.” heard off-screen while we focus on the girl running. That way it becomes clear that she is remembering this stuff as she runs. (and there’s another page you don’t have to draw)

Page 4 Looks perfect. You can draw the remembered dialogue of the two Slavers through this part, if you want her to remember them saying more

Page 5: lo ve the top-part. (and bolas. You can never have enough bolas)

Nice character design of the girl, too.

The hole and the fact she might fall into it are a little less clear. Perhaps have the Slavers say something like “get away from there! You’ll fall in.” Then, (idea! Symbolism) her face sets. She looks down into the hole and spreads her arms. “Crazy Hesukristian bitch!” yell the slavers as she intentionally jumps into the hole. I like it when characters do things intentionally rather than by accident.

While fleeing, she falls into an ancient, ruined shuttle with a seemingly dead cyborg in it.

It might be nice for her to say something like “my God” so the reader can expect she will worship this thing, rather than reprogram it or chew on it or whatever.

She unwittingly drips blood onto the cyborg, and it awakens just as her pursuers find her…

Ooh. I like the blood thing.

Maybe it isn’t accidental. Maybe she intends to commit suicide, sacrificing herself to what she thinks is an idol. This would mesh with some themes from the end, and of course the whole Jesus thing. 

We can see her hands moving in a ritual, taking her own blood and pouring it on the cyborg, praying:

“Hesukristo, Lord of the Corn, give us this day our daily bread…Deliver us from your Father in heaven…Your kingdom come…the land fruitful once again…And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”

That “deliver us from evil” can carry over onto the next page, superimposed over the Slavers on page 10.

  I think you can skip page 11 entirely. Just have  the Slaver climb down into the shuttle, see some vague, dark shapes (perhaps with some lights suggesting menacing eyes?) and then skip ahead to…

KRUHN!

 

I love it!

This guy has secondary arms, right? How about have them reaching up? So while the big arms curve protectively downwards, the little arms beseech the sky, also looking like wings, or satanic horns, or a halo.