A. Lee Martinez's Blog, page 13

Jean Gray vs. the Movies

X-Men’s The Phoenix Saga only really works in a serialized format. This is why the X-movies have done such a poor job with it and why even after rebooting the damned series, they’re still going to do a bad job of it. Nonetheless, it is an iconic storyline in the comic books, and therefore, must be done in the movies by law of middling, unambitious storytelling, something that defines the X-movies.

For the uninitiated, The Phoenix Saga involves Marvel Girl making a sacrifice to save the X-Men, then being reborn as a more powerful version of herself. As she slowly becomes more powerful, able to use her telekinetic powers to rearrange matter on molecular level, she eventually falls under the sway of The Hellfire Club (a group of evil mutants) and becomes bad. The story eventually ends with aliens showing up to destroy Marvel Girl for being deemed to powerful to allow to exist. There’s a big battle. She destroys a sun and an inhabited world (not ours), and eventually dies tragically. It is a defining story for the X-men, but it only works properly with time to develop.

There are problems with the narrative from a movie perspective. In the comic books, the X-Men live in the official Marvel universe, meaning that besides mutants, they also live in a world of magic and aliens and near infinite possibilities. The movies don’t want to go there, and while the Marvel Cinematic Universe has managed to create that sort of anything-goes universe over time, the X-movies, being extremely unambitious, aren’t interested in anything like that.

But ambition is what defines The Phoenix Saga. It’s a slow burn, unfolding over time. It involves multiple players, multiple villains who have nothing to do with one another. It is a story meant to be told over time with the stakes rising one small step at a time. It isn’t a great story for a movie, and it isn’t a great story for an X-movie based on what we’ve gotten so far.

Let’s face it. The X-Movies don’t really give a damn about the source material. Heck, they don’t even give a damn about themselves. While I think far too many fans get worked up about minor continuity quibbles here and there, the X-Movies can’t even keep track of their continuity from movie to movie. Characters don’t age appropriately (which is weird when you decide to make movies that are set 10 years apart). Motivations are muddled. Aside from a handful of characters, most others just show up to wave to the camera for a brief moment before disappearing. The X-Movies aren’t good films. They are adequate films, and that’s being charitable to many of them.

And that is why The Phoenix Saga shouldn’t even be attempted, but it’s why it will be.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Skylanders Imaginators (game review)

Skylanders Imaginators is another great game in the series. The innovation this time is the ability to create your own Skylander character and store them via creation crystal toys that basically work the same as every other Skylander toy, enabling you to save and play your Imaginator anywhere. In addition, there are also the Sensei figures, who are complete Skylanders characters that function in all respects like the figures of the previous games. So far, I’m torn on whether I prefer playing with Senseis or Imaginators. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Senseis are the traditional pre-designed character type. While there’s some customization in which specialization you prefer, the character plays a specific way. That’s cool. It allows for a some creative themes and cool design choices. So far, I only have King Pen, Golden Queen, and Kaos, but each plays significantly differently (as is standard with Skylanders) and each is brimming with personality. The Imaginators are more customizable in one sense, allowing you to design your own character from the ground up, but they’re also incapable of as much variety. Each Imaginator has access to certain powers based on their element, class, and level. But in the end, these powers are fairly generic because these characters are meant to fit easily into any archetype. While the Imaginators are fun to design and play, they’ll never be as unique or as colorful as Chopper (dinosaur with a helicopter pack) or Splat (artist with staff that’s a double-sided paintbrush) or Roller Brawl (undead roller derby chick). Still they’re cool to play and fun to design. And as you play, you are continually rewarded with more imaginite pieces to mix and match with your Imaginator creations. It’s a nice drip of encouragement to replay and it works. Gameplay is standard Skylanders with a polish that comes through years of design. Still no versus mode in sight, which I do miss, but they did keep racing as an option (not in the main game) and as always, all your previous Skylanders toys still work here. I put in my first gen Gil Grunt and flashed back to my first Skylanders experience. Still a great character. As a big fan of all the Skylanders games, I think this continues a fine tradition of innovation and accessible gameplay. Personality abounds in the Skylanders universe, and I continue to love buying new figures to see what fresh ideas the designers are still creating. One day, Skylanders will hit the wall and run out of new things to do, but that is not this day. A great game and a great addition to the line.

Shin Godzilla (a review)

I watched Shin Godzilla, the latest Godzilla film to come out of Japan, yesterday. It was a good film, not great. As much as I enjoy the kaiju genre, a straight humans versus kaiju flick rarely enthralls me. (It’s actually why I like the American ‘Zilla film which, while not featuring any other kaiju, has some fun sequences of Zilla versus the military that are visually engaging.) But for the most part, a movie where a kaiju crushes a city while humans shoot it ineffectively isn’t my thing, as much as I enjoy the genre.

Shin Godzilla does at least explore the trope in an intriguing way. It is a reboot of sorts, and while we might complain about that in the U.S., Godzilla has a history of reboots, alternate continuities, and standalone films that makes any complaints in this case seem silly. In Shin Godzilla, this is the first kaiju to appear and menace humanity. This puts it in an interesting place because in a world where there’s never been a need for kaiju defense, many of the standard storytelling shorthand doesn’t appear. There is no Godzilla Defense Force, no giant robots, no special weapons, no alert systems. This is uncharted territory for Japan, and it works as an exploration of how would Japan and the rest of the world deal with a threat like this?

If I were to simplify the conflict in Shin Godzilla, I would call it Godzilla VS. Bureaucracy. Or Godzilla VS. Government, if you want to be more charitable. While we have a few characters we stick closer to than others, the story itself is brimming with characters, all of whom are government employees in some form or another. This isn’t a story about an intrepid hero who saves the day through sheer guts. Rather, it’s the story of a handful of government employees who save the day through managerial know-how. It definitely shouldn’t work. Especially not from an American perspective, where very few stories ever hinge on governmental effectiveness other than perhaps as an obstacle to our protagonists, but it does.

I honestly don’t know a lot about day-to-day life in Japan and what social and cultural anxieties the country wrestles with. I know that the original Godzilla film was a visceral exploration of feelings of post-war japan involving nuclear fears. In that film, not only is Godzilla a stand-in for atomic bombings, but he is defeated by use of a superweapon that the creator deems too dangerous for humanity to possess. The conflict isn’t only the threat of Godzilla, but the threat of giving that weapon to the world.

Watching Shin Godzilla, I had the impression of a Japan struggling to define itself in this new world, of questioning its values, and ultimately, deciding they were good. At one point, a character straight up says something along the lines of “Japan still works.” The story in that context is more interesting than an initial impression might lead one to suspect, and the theme that only through cooperation and problem solving can any nation continue to be relevant and functional is a strong foundation.

Is this my favorite Godzilla film? No. I’m still a sucker for titanic monster battles, but something like that would get in the way of the everyday practical problem solving that is at the heart of this film. This isn’t the story about intrepid good guys (or good kaijus) risking it all to save the day. This is about humanity as a whole, muddling through disaster with intelligence, hard work, and cooperation. And (spoiler alert) the fact that Godzilla isn’t destroyed, merely neutralized, highlights that triumph is only temporary and every day a struggle.

Godzilla himself has a few crackerjack sequences too, so it’s not as if the big guy is an afterthought. While not my favorite version of the King of the Monsters, he’s new enough to be interesting while familiar enough to be recognizable.

A good movie. Recommended.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children & How NOT to Write an Interesting Story

I saw Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children this weekend. I don’t know much about the original books, so I can’t comment on them, but the movie is a bit of a let down. It takes a promising premise and aesthetic and doesn’t do much with it. People do seem to enjoy when I talk about writing, so let’s talk about some of the failures of this particular film. NOTE: Some spoilers coming along.

To begin with, the premise is often described as Harry Potter meets X-Men. The problem I have with that simplified sales pitch is that it doesn’t really get to what makes the premise potentially interesting. Miss Peregrine isn’t simply a story about special children or a story about super powered heroes. It is a period piece with weird fantasy and horror elements. Neither Harry Potter nor X-Men are about horror. Neither is weird fantasy. None are really period pieces. It’s these elements, and not the similarities to other stories, that make the premise of Miss Peregrine promising.

The word “Freaks” gets thrown around a lot when it comes to the X-Men, but few of the X-Men are, strictly speaking, freakish. There are exceptions here and there, but for the most part, the worst part about being an X-Man is existing in a world that fears you. Even less human looking characters like Nightcrawler or Beast are handsome and appealing in a certain way.

The Peculiar Children, on the other hand, function differently. The girl with fire hands can’t throw fireballs. She can’t even control her ability. She wears fireproof gloves and when necessary, she takes them off. The twins power requires them hide their faces at all times. The invisible boy can’t elect to be visible. The boy with the bees in his stomach is constantly surrounded by the things. And so on. The idea here is that these aren’t just super powers. They’re quirks (i.e. peculiarities) that the children must learn to live with, not necessarily master. While we often are told (repeatedly) that the X-Men are stand ins for racial or sexual persecution, the Peculiars could be a fantastic exploration of living with handicaps and personal obstacles. The film never really explores that idea, and maybe the books do a better job of it.

The period elements of this are another great idea. This is a different time, a different world, with a different outlook. Wouldn’t it have been interesting to see how a different world would adapt to Peculiars? Instead, it’s just so much set dressing. It’s completely irrelevant aside from the idea of the children hiding away in a stable time loop for their own protection. The problem here is that is there anything that a loop does that simply a magical pocket dimension couldn’t? Again, the books might have done better, but the movie seems to use the loop mostly as justification for having our protagonist be from the modern world.

Finally, the horror element is pretty strong here. The villains are literal monsters who want to eat children’s eyes.

Let me repeat that. Monsters that eat children’s eyes.

This isn’t X-Men where Magneto is an extremist fighting for what he feels is right. This isn’t a Bond villain out to blow up the moon. This isn’t some secret government organization out to use the children for nefarious purposes. These are invisible monsters that want to eat children’s eyes. They have much more in common with Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees and the Bogey Man than traditional bad guys. Hell, even Voldemort just wanted to kill people for standing in his way.

These three themes: Peculiarity, Period Piece, and Horror could’ve made a great and unique story.

Somehow, they didn’t.

Part of this is simply the rushed nature of the story. From what I’ve gathered, this is three books crammed into one film, and that’s always going to be trouble. But if it was as easy as that, we wouldn’t have much to talk about. I’d argue, even without fully exploiting its premise, Miss Peregrine fails mostly because of fundamental aspects of storytelling itself. I know it sounds like chutzpah from this obscure writer. Who am I to tell anyone how to make a good movie or a good book? And it’s true that many of my complaints are going to sound like stuff nobody in the audience cares about, but I’d argue that they actually do without realizing it. Good storytelling is often invisible. You might not notice it, but you often sense it when it’s missing.

So let’s speak in generalities first:

CHARACTER MOTIVATIONS:

This is something that all too often gets lost in the desire to create a complex plot. At a certain point, the characters stop functioning as characters and transition into Plot Robots. Plot Robots have no goals, no dreams, no inner life. Plot Robots simply exist to push the story along. Plot Robots aren’t always obvious, especially in film and TV where good actors can imbue flat characters with more life than they actually have. To see if a character is a Plot Robot, all you really have to do is ask yourself what would they be doing if they weren’t in the middle of the current story?

This isn’t a unique problem to Miss Peregrine. One of the reasons I stopped watching Supergirl was that I realized that the entire cast had no life outside of advancing the story. There was no detail that wasn’t in some way a source of conflict or a plot twist in waiting. I felt the same way about Super 8, a story where, once the credits rolled, I realized that none of these characters meant anything to me because they only existed for that story. They could’ve vanished into the darkness, and it wouldn’t have mattered to them even.

Miss Peregrine is full of this. Why does our hero work so hard to find the school? What do his parents want out of agreeing to this? What does Miss Peregrine want beyond protecting the children? For that matter, what do the children want? They are living their lives forever in a time loop, never aging, never growing up, and they seem perfectly okay with that. With so many characters, why isn’t a single one upset by this? Or at least questioning it?

Why does our hero fall in love with his love interest? What connection do they share beyond being likeable blanks of the same age? (Although, really, not of the same age, which begs the question does the time loop keep the children from maturing emotionally and sexually and if so, isn’t that kind of creepy?)

Why does our protagonist take it upon himself to protect the children? He’s a nice guy, okay. We get that. But so what? Nice doesn’t mean courageous or protective. It’s not enough that he’s just a good kid. He needs to be more than that. Especially since we’re talking about eyeball eating monsters here.

Almost none of these characters have any traits beyond what is necessary for the story to advance. There is that one kid who likes clothes a lot. And that’s the only thing that sticks with me.

TONE

Granted, this story is a tight juggling act. It’s a story aimed at a younger audience with weird and horror elements. It even sort of works for the first two thirds. The villains are genuinely terrifying and gruesome. Their goals, while very generic, work well enough to advance the story. The final showdown between the Peculiar and the monsters could’ve played out in many interesting ways. Instead, it turns into Home Alone.

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that if your monsters are less intimidating than the Wet Bandits, you’ve probably screwed up somewhere.

Within a few minutes, the monsters go from terrifying to vaudevillian. They’re defeated by snowballs and carnival rides. That works fine in something like Ernest Scared Stupid, where the monsters are meant to be fun scary. But, and I can’t believe I have to keep saying this, these are invisible fiends that feast on the eyeballs of children. They even do so onscreen, so it’s not as if the movie is shy about their gruesome nature.

So what the hell happened? I don’t know. Perhaps executives got scared and wanted it to play a little safer. Perhaps the director or screenwriter got cold feet. Maybe test audiences were turned off. Regardless, it’s a jarring tonal shift, including the soundtrack itself which suddenly becomes poppy nonsense in an otherwise solid period piece. You’d think an army of skeletons fighting invisible monsters would be thrilling. It comes across as silly and goofy.

After that, the movie quickly loses any horror elements, replacing them with generic super action. Samuel Jackson’s villain goes from a monster to spouting silly one liners. Thinking about it, he went from Freddy Krueger to the jokey version of Freddy Krueger that appeared in later movies. Villain decay happens, but rarely so rapidly in a single movie.

By The Mighty Robot King, I hate to keep repeating this, but our villain is a man who wants to live forever and is perfectly willing to eat the eyeballs of children to do so. That’s not a jokey villain. That’s a terrifying monster. Or it should be.

SECRETS

This one might be my biggest problem simply because it shouldn’t be here at all. I get Plot Robots. I get problems of Tone in this particular story. But why the hell doesn’t anyone talk to each other? The number of times characters simply refuse to share vital information, particularly Miss Peregrine herself, is frustrating.

Note that these aren’t characters actively working against each other. There’s no secret traitor or self-interested liar here. This is just people not talking. Until they do. It has no real function in the story other than to prolong the mystery for its own sake. Everyone seems to know what the script allows and what it doesn’t.

At one point, a character refers to a Hollowghast as “The thing”, as if she doesn’t know what it is. But she does. And she should tell our hero about it. Instead, she leaves things vague because it’s not time for that reveal yet. Your characters are in a story, but they shouldn’t behave like it. And ultimately, there’s no reason for why anyone, particularly Miss Peregrine who is supposed to be these children’s caretaker, should be hiding important information.

INCOMPETENCE

This one is always tricky because characters need not always behave logically or optimally. Still, they should be somewhat capable, and Miss Peregrine herself is terrible at her job. The film portrays her as a sort of prim and proper intellectual matriarch, but her actions are stupid and misguided. She hides info. She gets captured easily. She even has the damn bird cage sitting in her hallway, just waiting for the bad guy’s use.

This extends to all the bird-lady caretakers. Judy Dench plays another caretaker, and her role consists entirely of being confused and getting killed. The children do far better on their own than under the “care” of Miss Peregrine. Hell, they managed to defeat the bad guy rather easily.

I’m not expecting perfection. I know the score. This isn’t Miss Peregrine’s movie, despite the title, but she doesn’t need to be grossly incompetent to give the children motivation and opportunity to take charge.

FINAL THOUGHTS

The more I think about Miss Peregrine’s School for Peculiar Children, the more annoyed I get. This is basic storytelling technique. It’s not hard to make an adequate movie. Perhaps not a great one, not even a good one. Just adequate. In the end, the film trips over its own feet multiple times, stumbling its way to a bland ending. Given its bland characters, its by the number plot, and its poor execution, it was inevitable. But this is a major Hollywood production. It should be at least okay.

Not the worst movie I’ve ever seen, but definitely one of the most frustrating.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Three Tales of Herbert (on Storytelling Style)

Of all the troubles a beginning writer often has, style and tone tend to be at the top of the list. Whether we call it Voice or Theme or what-have-you, fiction writing is all about that mysterious thing.

People often make the mistake of assuming that storytelling is about events. Events are easy. Events can follow a logical path from A to B to C to Conclusion. It’s not that plotting is simple. It’s just that it is the most mechanical aspect of storytelling, the most quantifiable, and thus, the easiest part to focus on. It’s easy to teach technical rules, and much of plotting is technical. It’s often the foundation where the story begins, but without Voice or Tone, a story is nothing more than that. Believe it or not, we don’t usually care about those stories.

We invest in stories because of their emotional resonance, found in their characters and the execution of the writing itself. In most great fiction, the narration itself is a character, sharing a point of view, bringing its own personality. With very rare exception, a cold, clinical narration doesn’t grab our attention, and spending five pages with a character interacting with their world is a thousand times more interesting than reading about their detailed backstory.

It’s difficult, if not impossible, to teach style because style isn’t a universal element. It varies. What works in one story, might not work in another. Imitation can help a writer develop their own style, but it can just as often lead to confusion. Aping the style of your favorite writer doesn’t make you into your favorite writer.

The best way I know of to learn style is to first notice it, to see that it exists. It’s often invisible to us. We know, instinctively, that there’s a difference between The Untouchables and The Naked Gun. We can easily paint it in broad strokes, but we don’t usually give it much more thought than that. And, yes, The Naked Gun is a very silly movie, but it’s a silly movie based on many of the same tropes and ideas as The Untouchables. Understanding what makes one a comedy and one a drama, wide as they might be across the spectrum, is the foundation of style.

But talk is cheap. So let’s do some short original examples:

Herbert clawed at the door. The bites weren’t always infectious. So he took some sick days and some bed rest, and they waited. The graying skin wasn’t a good sign. The distant look in his eyes as the days went on wasn’t either. They’d hoped. And when he’d stopped talking, stopped eating, stopped hoping, she’d hoped still. She’d never stopped hoping, even as she barricaded the bedroom door and sat in the living room with that axe on her lap.

He growled. Not like an animal. Like a thing. Like a puppet of meat and bone and cracked fingernails. It’d been like this for days, and she’d hoped. But today, she was all out of hope. Today, she’d do what needed to be done. For both of them.

Axe in hand, she pushed the bookshelf aside and opened the door because the poor, pitiable thing that had been Herbert was too stupid to open doors.

OR

Herbert clawed at the door. She ignored him. She’d spent years ignoring him before the bite, so it wasn’t difficult. She’d tended his wound, brought him soup, ignored his whining. He kept saying it wasn’t always infectious. He held out hope, the poor sap. Herbert’s life had been shit for years, and her life, by extension, had been shit adjacent. He hadn’t always been a failure, but he’d been one so long that she couldn’t remember him as anything else. She’d barricaded the bedroom a few days before he’d turned.

She should’ve killed him before that. It would’ve been easier, put them both out of their misery. If she’d ever loved him, she didn’t know why. That shambling mockery of a thing scratching at the door was no more pitiable. Having the sense to transform into a monster she could legally kill was the best thing he’d ever done with his life.

She ignored his scratching until her show was over. Then she turned down the TV, grabbed her axe, and whistling, went to commit her final act of kindness for the poor, sorry bastard.

OR

Herbert clawed at the door. He’d been doing so for an hour now, and she’d have done something about it if she hadn’t misplaced her axe. She could hear him now, not as he was, but as he used to be, lecturing her about putting things in their proper place. He’d always been great about that. The irony wasn’t lost on her. She’d bought the damned thing just in case, as it became clearer that he wasn’t going to fight off the infection. He’d told her to, and her reluctance faded as it became clear he was right.

He was always right, always on top of everything. It was one of the things she loved about him. He’d never been romantic in a traditional sense, but he’d always looked out for her. He’d always made her life better and the course smoother. When she screwed up, he’d just smile and take care of things. The least she could do was take care of this last thing for him.

He groaned, and she wanted to shout at the door that she wasn’t happy about it either. She had no problem destroying the thing that had once been Herbert. He would’ve done the same for her. But she was running late for work and she couldn’t find the god damn axe.

 

Three short tales of Herbert the zombie and his wife. In each case, it isn’t the incidents that set it apart. It’s the Tone, Voice, and Character Dynamics. It’s there that stories come alive, where the Zombie Herbert’s tale can be either tragic, annoying, or slice-of-life.

Mastery of Tone and Style isn’t easy. It is perhaps the biggest obstacle a writer can struggle with. I still struggle with it. I’d never claim to be a master of either, but I do know that most beginning writers are so focused on the events that they miss what makes a story work. Rarely is it what happens.

It’s how it happens.

Keelah Se’lai

Fighting the good fight, Writing the good write,

LEE

Modern Style with Death Goddess (short fiction)

Divine MisfortuneThe towering goddess with the head of a crocodile, the upper body of a lion, and the lower body of a hippo, sat in the backyard. Ray the realtor had the gall to act as if he couldn’t see either the goddess or the sizable hole in the ground she sat beside. “It’s a great view of the city from here.” Ray pointed around the goddess. “Check out that glorious skyline.” “Uh huh,” said Ben. “Beautiful.” He wondered if he should bring up the goddess. Or the hole. They seemed important, but he’d never been confrontational.  Sarah was less tactful. “What the hell is that?” “Yes, yes,” said Ray. “You can hear the freeway from here, but the house has excellent soundproofing.” “Not that.” Sarah gestured toward the goddess. “That.” “Oh that’s just Ammit, guardian of the underworld. She comes with the property, but she’s nothing to concern yourself about. She minds her own business.” He turned toward the house. Sarah stepped in front of him. “Why is she sitting on our possible backyard?” “She does that. Now, if you’ll follow me, I’d love for you to take another look at the kitchen–” “One second.” Sarah pulled Ben aside. “Are you going to say something?” He hated conflict, but she did have a point. He was soon to be a family man, which Sarah gently reminded him of by placing her hands on her round belly. “Is she dangerous?” asked Ben. Ammit smiled, flashing rows of sharp teeth. “Oh, no. No no no,” said Ray. “Not at all. Her domain is the souls of the dead. She doesn’t require tribute. She just sits there and guards the underworld. Couldn’t care less about the living.” Ben was willing to accept the explanation, but there was a natural follow up question. “That hole leads to the underworld?” “Yes, and I’m afraid you’re not allowed to fill it up. I know, I know. Inconvenient, but I think once you see the kitchen–” “We can’t have children playing around the underworld,” said Sarah. “Oh, I hear you, but all you have to do is put a little fence around it, and everything will be fine.” Ammit cleared her throat. “That’s not allowed.” Ray kept his smile. “Children are smart enough to avoid the hole guarded by a death goddess. It’ll be fine.” Sarah pushed her way past Ray and approached Ammit directly. The goddess lowered her gaze to meet Sarah, who didn’t blink in the face of the embodiment of a cold, indifferent universe. “You don’t eat children, do you?” asked Sarah. “When the dead come to be judged, I consume all souls unworthy to pass onto eternity.” Ammit idly chewed on her paw. “If those unworthy souls once belonged to children, I don’t discriminate. And technically, all souls belong to children in the beginning.” Sarah scowled. “That’s awful.” “If you have a problem with it, take it up with the cosmos. I’m just doing my job.” Ray tried to usher Sarah away, but she refused to budge. “The portal to the underworld isn’t harmful, is it?” she asked. “There aren’t any side effects?” She put her arms over her belly like a shield. “It’s not radioactive or anything like that,” said Ammit. “And we don’t have to worry about monsters or ghosts or things of that nature coming out of it?” “That’s why I’m here. Count yourself lucky. You could’ve been stuck with Cerberus. Shits everywhere. Three heads howling at every siren. I just sit here.” A freshly deceased soul climbed over the fence. Neither Ben nor Sarah had ever seen a disembodied soul before, and it didn’t look like what they expected. The soul wasn’t transparent. It had some muted color. Aside from the fact that the man’s feet never quite seemed to touch the ground, he might have been mistaken for a living person. He scaled the fence with some difficulty, landing in the yard ungracefully, but making no sound upon impact.  “Shit. My briefcase,” he grumbled. “Leave it,” said Ammit. “Where you’re going, you won’t need it.” The soul approached the giant goddess. Unceremoniously, she snapped him up in her jaws and swallowed him. His wretched screams were cut short with a final snap and gulp. “Unworthy.” Sarah gaped. “That was horrible.” “They usually don’t scream that much,” said Ammit. “And the house has excellent soundproofing,” reminded Ray enthusiastically. “You destroyed that poor man,” said Sarah. “You can’t destroy a soul,” replied Ammit. “Then what happened to him?” The goddess glanced away. “You’d probably rather not know.” “And how often does that happen?” “I don’t keep track. Fifty, sixty times a day. Today’s been quiet.” Ray put his arms around Ben and Sarah’s shoulders and walked away from the death goddess. “I’ll admit it’s not ideal, but all petitions to get the gateway moved haven’t gone anywhere. Maybe that’ll change when the new zoning board comes along. In the meanwhile, it really is a terrific house, and the current owner isn’t in a position to negotiate. The place is a steal. You’re not going to find a better one in your price range in this neighborhood. Just let me show you the rest of the place. Give it a chance.” Sarah and Ben glanced at Ammit, who half-smiled at them. The house was amazing. So much square footage. A wonderful kitchen with brand new appliances included. A huge master bed and bath. Close to both their jobs. Good neighborhood. Great schools. Too good to be true aside from the crocodile goddess in their backyard. Sarah studied Ammit from the master bedroom window. From the second floor, she looked the goddess at eye level. A soul belonging to an old man dragged himself over the fence. He approached Ammit, who studied him for a moment or two before giving him the nod. The soul walked into the pit and out of the land of the living. “I suppose we’ll have to build a gate,” said Sarah. “Just to make things easier for the dead.” “I’m sure the owner would be willing to pay for it,” said Ray.Ben put his arms around her, put his hands on her belly. “It is a pretty awesome house. So we won’t use the backyard. It’s inconvenient, but at least the foundation is solid and the water heater is new.” “And the gateway to the underworld qualifies you for a terrific tax credit,” added Ray. Sarah put her hand on Ben’s cheek. “I guess it can’t hurt to put in an offer.” Ray was on the phone almost before she finished the sentence.Another soul scaled the fence and stumbled toward Ammit. Sarah closed the blinds and started mentally decorating the bedroom.

It’s weird to write “adventure fiction” that really isn’t...

It’s weird to write “adventure fiction” that really isn’t about adventure itself. The entire premise of the Constance Verity series is the struggles Connie has with balancing her adventuring obligations and her desires for an ordinary life. So it’s strange, though not surprising, to hear people complain that they never thought Connie was in any “real” danger. As if the entire purpose of the novel is to convince anyone that Connie is going to die. SPOILER ALERT: She doesn’t die in the first book of her trilogy. EXTRA SPOILER ALERT: She doesn’t die in the second book of her trilogy. As a writer, I don’t think it’s really necessary to pretend as if I’m going to kill Connie when I’ve outright stated she’s going to be the central character in three books. Like any ongoing character, Connie exists with a contractual immortality. She is mortal, but she isn’t going to die. Just as Batman is technically more vulnerable than Superman, but neither Batman nor Superman are going to die as long as they’re part of an ongoing series. My biggest influences have always been comic book superheroes, and I never read an ongoing comic with the expectation that the primary character (the person with their name as the title in nearly all cases) was going to die. I read to share in their adventures, their clever escapes, their triumphs. The characters could fail. Often did. But it wasn’t by dying because dead characters are hard to keep telling stories about. (There are some exceptions.) Some of my heroes are certainly more competent than others. But at the heart of Connie is the acceptance of her ability to do the impossible because she does it so regularly. With a character like Connie, much like Emperor Mollusk before her, triumph over incredible odds is meant to be seen as a foregone conclusion.  I get that can be confusing to some people. Every week at my writers group I start my read with, “In this chapter, Connie fights squid people to save the world, but that’s really not what this chapter is about…” which is kind of weird. But it is striking to me that so many people assume that without the threat of imminent death, a character’s story becomes less meaningful. As if we’ve somehow fooled ourselves into thinking Indiana Jones is going to get shot in the back by a Nazi.Keelah Se’laiFighting the good fight, Writing the good write,LEE

Star Trek Hits 50

So Star Trek hits 50, and while I will never deny its influence on our culture, I have to wonder if maybe it’s time to give the entire Star Trek universe a break? I’ve said it before, and usually, it’s met with a great wave of disagreement from the fans. I’m not dismissing their love of Trek, but I am pondering if it has anything truly new to offer us. Sci fi heresy? Perhaps. Don’t mistake my question for an attack on Star Trek in particular. I wonder, often, just as much about Doctor Who, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, and dozens of other long running characters and ideas. I even enjoyed the new Ghostbusters, but still thought the actors and creators involved would’ve been better served by a new universe to play in rather than revisiting an old one. We all have our favorite things. I have friends who still manage to adore Star Wars, even with its occasional faults. And I love Tarzan. Still, while I enjoyed the latest Tarzan film, I found too that there was nothing about it to really make it distinct or interesting beyond an affection for the character. Putting aside our love for these universes and characters, I think it’s okay to ask every so often what they’re bringing to the cultural table. More often than not, it seems to me that it’s the equivalent of comfort food, a not entirely bad thing but often missing that thing that made them so great. Most great sci fi and fantasy is about discovery on some level. Star Trek was explicitly about exploring strange new worlds. The original Star Wars trilogy was all about a traditional legend told with new characters and new tools. Jedis and spaceships and exploding planets, etc. When I first read Tarzan, it was an experience precisely because I didn’t know what to expect. (Tarzan, the literary character, is so different from Tarzan, the movie / TV character.)  So when I ask do we “need” Star Trek, I’m not asking if Star Trek is something we enjoy? I’m asking if enjoying it is enough? That special feeling about Trek is more than an affection for the material. In its prime, Trek was about exploration and discovery. Now, it’s little more than a nice meal I’ve had before. I’m not saying Trek is done. I’m saying perhaps we might do ourselves and our world better by giving it a rest. Same with Star Wars, the TMNT, Spider-Man, and a thousand other franchises (god, I hate that we use that word, so cold and clinical) that refuse to go away. As much as I enjoyed the new Spidey making an appearance in Civil War, I didn’t find myself pining for yet another movie with the character when their are so many other characters who could visit us. In fact, the more familiar the MCU becomes, the less interesting it is to me, which I get is the opposite of most people who couldn’t wait for Spidey to show up. Yet the moment the X-Men and Fantastic Four become the dominant force of the MCU is the moment it becomes infinitely less interesting. It’s all a thought experiment without purpose. None of these things are going anywhere. They’re simply too grounded in our shared culture, and in a world of uncertainty, it’s too easy to go with what works. Star Trek Beyond was even decent, though I’ll argue that it was mostly forgettable simply by virtue of being a Star Trek story hitting all the Star Trek expectations. The Force Awakens is little more than the re-skinning of Star Wars for a new generation, which isn’t terrible. But as for me, Action Force, I just don’t know how I feel about any of this. And as the world spins onward, I see us beholden to the sci fi of our past with far too much affection. And this, again, is coming from the guy who loves Tarzan stories.Keelah Se’laiFighting the good fight, Writing the good write, LEE

Whitewashing (the frustrating conversation)

“There are some issues with casting Tilda Swinson as The Ancient One.”

“Hey, hey, man, calm down!”

“Who is upset? I’m just pointing out that there’s a troublesome history of whitewashing ethnic characters in film.”

“Why are you judging this movie before you’ve even seen it?”

“I’m not. Let’s get past that. Let’s talk about a problem in Hollywood as I see it.”

“Hey, man, maybe Tilda Swinson is the best person for the role!”

“So fine. I’ll pretend like there is literally no other Asian actor who could do just as good a job. You still can’t deny that Hollywood loves to recast Asian characters with white actors.”

“Well, if they cast an Asian, that’d have it’s problems too!”

“Of course, it would. There are pitfalls with any character, especially one like this. But does that mean they shouldn’t even try?”

“It’s complicated!”

“No shit. And I’m with you. There’s probably no easy answer that will make everyone happy. But rather than defend one particular movie, can we talk about the larger issues here? It’d probably not even be a thing if it didn’t happen so often.”

“Hey, the movie has a black guy!”

“Sigh. Sure. Baron Mordo. You know he’s a bad guy eventually, right? So they took the good mentor character and made her a white lady and they took the eventual bad guy and made him black. Not that I’m upset by that. Just an observation.”

“It just seems like you’re never happy.”

“Congratulations. You’ve figured it out. Portrayals of race in cinema is a really complicated mess. Sorry if I can’t just tell you a quota of how many non-white people I need in movies before I’ll be happy. All I can say is it is a hell of a lot more than it is now.”

PAUSE.

“But Tilda Swinson is a good actress!”

Yep, that’s how this conversation goes.

Nuclear Family (short fiction)

Super JanineIt’d been years since I’d last seen Margaret. In that time, she’d moved onto a new containment suit. This one covered her head to toe in silver and gold. There was a small visor for her eyes, but not an inch of exposed radioactive skin. She wore a red sundress over the suit to try and blend in, but the suit made it impossible. People didn’t say anything, but the tables near us remained unoccupied. I ordered a fancy coffee I didn’t really want. She ordered one she couldn’t drink, and we caught up.  “Remember the crisis in Atlantis?” she asked. “I still can’t believe you jumped in that monster octopus’s mouth.” “If you knew a better way of punching it in the gut, I’d have been happy to hear it,” I replied. She laughed. Her voice crackled with a slight hissing feedback. It wasn’t the suit that made it do that. “Those were good times,” she said. “Weren’t they?” “What’s wrong, Margie?”  “Nothing’s wrong.” Her hidden face was hard to read, but I could still see her eyes. She looked away. “It’s nothing, really.” “If you want to talk about it–” “It’s Norm. We’re having problems.” “Ah, shit. I’m sorry to hear that,” I said. “You two were always a great couple.” “Were we though?” She turned her cup around to give her hands something to do. “We never had much of anything in common. Other than the radioactivity. I think that we’d never have gotten together if not for the accident. I mean, I’m a nuclear physicist, and he’s a janitor.” She sighed. “God, I married a janitor. What the hell did I expect?” She covered her face. “God, I’m terrible. Looking down on him. He’s a great guy.” “He is,” I said. “And you’re not terrible.” “There was this doctor in the lab. Tall, handsome, intelligent. A little boring. But damn it, I keep wondering why he wasn’t the one who got caught in that meltdown with me?” “You can’t think that way,” I said. “I know. But I don’t think I can make it work anymore. I don’t think Norm wants to either.” “Have you talked to him about it?” She stared down at her coffee. It started to boil in her hands. “He’s cheating on me.” “What? How?” “Atomica, that radioactive bitch. I followed him. I’ve seen them meeting.” “Oh, Margie, I’m so sorry.” “I was mad at first,” she said, “but then I realized I’d have done the same thing if I could. If I could find a guy who didn’t melt having sex with me. I can’t be mad about it. We barely talk anymore. I think we’ll hate each other in a few more years.” I wanted to say something comforting but came up short. The superhero gig trains you to deal with the impossible. Nothing trains you to deal with stuff like this. I could crush a car with my bare hands, but damned if I knew what to do now. I put my hand on hers. She was warm, radiating heat through her suit. The warning light on her chest went from straight green to blinking green. It wasn’t dangerous. Not yet. Not until it went to blinking yellow, and even then, the built in siren would alert everyone to get to a safe distance in time if required. “I’m pregnant,” she said. “Oh shit.” I regretted it the moment it slipped out. The moment before, actually, when I knew the words were coming but was still too powerless to stop them. “You weren’t taking precautions?” I asked, regretting that too. This was my day to say stupid shit. “Nuclear mutated biology,” she said. “Who fucking knows how it works?” “What are you going to do?” “I don’t know.”  Her warning light went straight yellow. She focused herself and pumped the excessive energies into her coffee cup. It vaporized in a puff of particles, and her suit went green again. The heat died down. “I’ll pay for that,” she reassured the barista. “Does Norm know?” I asked. She shook her head. “I’m going to tell him. Tonight. I’m not worried. He’ll be a great dad, whether we’re together or not. If he wants to be one. If I want to be a mom.” She touched her stomach. “Jesus, this poor kid. What a fucked up situation.” “It’s always fucked up,” I said. “My folks are married to this day and can’t stand each other. They spent decades making each other miserable because they thought they should. Never asked me what I wanted. You and Norm are good people in a lousy situation. You’ll get through this.” Margaret nodded. “I hope you’re right.” “I know I’m right.” I gave her a hug. The lingering heat washed over me. It was nothing to worry about. The suit kept the radioactivity in check, and I was immune to it. I was pretty sure I was. If I wasn’t, it didn’t matter. “Thank you,” she said. I ordered a cookie, and we spent the rest of the hour talking about nothing important.