Ken Hughes's Blog, page 3

A Jessica Jones Experiment – Take the TMI Test

So Season 2 of Jessica Jones is out. And this time it’s almost perfect.

As a show, Jessica… how do I say this? Her first season was the only series that’s ever made me rethink Buffy The Vampire-Slayer (see my past rave) and remind myself it isn’t fair to anyone to compare Buffy’s seven whopping seasons of frequently-legendary storytelling to one thirteen-episode arc of focused perfection.

It’s also not fair to compare Jessica’s Season 2 to her first, if only because if it were any show but hers you couldn’t compare it to that first storyline without admitting that would be setting an impossible standard. And Season 2 does have pretty much all the things that made the first what it was:

What We’re Jonesing For

Krysten Ritter. Just enough doors ripped off hinges for a PI-slash-superhero story. Trish trying to be the only anchor in Jessica’s life. Krysten Ritter. Bitter monologues, bitter alcohol, and PI dialogue with more bite than the booze our hero swims in. Malcolm the neighbor (now in a new position), sweet and likable with his own issues. Lawyer Jeri being a greater force of self-destruction than Krysten Ritter’s Jessica, and that’s saying plenty. A world aware of superpowers, and with no idea how to deal with a woman who doesn’t wear a mask or want to be a hero. That jazzy, pumped-up theme sequence that any other show would kill for, if it was worthy of it. And always, Krysten Ritter.

And it took courage not to build another season around the Marvel villain who’s better than Loki—

Yes, I said it. Tom Hiddleston only plays the second-greatest villain in Marvel history.

So it isn’t the new villains themselves where I’d say this season made its one slip. With all the above in play, you can bet this is a show with more than just villainous charisma to offer. (Though of course the last season having all that and Kilgrave’s incredible, Jessica-heart-tearing arc gave it more awesomeness than most storytellers would know what to do with.)

This time: Jess investigating her powers’ history? cool. A connection to our so-reluctant heroine? it delivers one as close as Kilgrave’s ever was, once it becomes clear. Different threads tangling in different ways, so you never know which is going to be driving the story next? that structure works for most other Marvel Netflix shows, even though last time letting Kilgrave be at the root of everything worked so well.

There’s Always Something

Still, I think they missed something. With all due respect to Melissa Rosenberg and the rest of the magnificent people who designed this season, I think there’s a place where I expected them to do better. And I think it’s a lesson worth pointing out to all of us who write or care about quality storytelling.

Readers, you can test this yourself, with a little experiment. And yes, the instructions are completely spoiler-safe… in fact they depend on your not knowing too much too soon.

If you haven’t see Season 2 yet—

(And it really ought to be “yet,” if you’re reading this blog but haven’t seen the story already. Or if you’re not on Netflix, consider some math: Eight dollars for one month, divided by two thirteen-episode seasons of Jessica? At the rate most people tear through those eps once they start, you might have weeks left in that month to look at the other five-and-counting Marvel shows and Netflix’s other offerings, before you have to decide whether to drop another $8. No, Netflix isn’t paying me to present those numbers; they’re just something to think about.)

If you haven’t seen Season 2 yet, the “experiment” is:

See the first six episodes. But instead of watching Episode 7 (called “AKA I Want Your Cray Cray”), skip it until you’ve seen the next one or two. Because all but one obvious minute of that ep is all flashbacks, and it’s there solely to give out Too Much Information, too soon, about the characters and motivations of what we’ve just discovered. Instead, go straight to Ep 8 and maybe 9, and just follow how Jessica has to cope with her situation—without you getting that extra perspective on character that our heroine herself has to build on her own. Then go back and look at Ep 7.

Or if you can’t bring yourself to skip the episode (or you’ve already seen it all), imagine how the show would look without that one filling us in too soon.

It’s a basic belief of mine: the heart of a story is what the characters know and what they can do about it in that moment; their choice in each moment is everything. So any other-viewpoint scenes ought to be used to build suspense, not overshare about someone to the point that the viewer/reader is pushed back from that in-the-trenches challenge that the actual hero is slow-w-w-ly learning to cope with.

Great stories (like Season 1) live within those moments and their pacing. Easy flashbacks or other infodumps cheat us.

For those who have seen the season: I will admit this is a more logical storyline to use those flashbacks in than many tales might be. At the point where the flashes start (with that last word of Ep 6) the story’s just unveiled a huge change of our understanding of the characters, so that stopping to fast-explore it all is easier than working through it normally. I’ll also admit that the truth and the conflict they’re setting up are less about layers above anyone’s Deepest Truth than they’re about facing people’s sheer unpredictability, which means giving us an immediate peak at their contradictions still leaves us with the nitro-volatile questions of what they’ll do next.

But I say the storyline would still have been better if that Ep 7 info had been unpacked and laid out a step at a time, so that we took it in alongside Jessica. She’s the one who needs to deal with it, and we don’t want to jump ahead of her.

Try the season that way, or imagine it, by moving through that point flashback-free. See if you agree.

Too Much Information only swamps what the story’s trying to be. Even a story that’s still as stunning as Jess’s new season.

(One more thing: if you’re trying this, don’t tell Jessica. She’s really not a fan of “experiments” these days, and none of us want her ripping down our doors.)

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What If – Magic-Killers had their own Masquerade?

One writing exercise I’ve used for the longest time is to take fifteen or thirty minutes after every novel I read to cobble together some thoughts on how I’d write something with similar ideas. For instance…

Picture a young witch– a common protagonist in urban fantasy, sure. In this case it would be a world like ours where magicians were rare, not that powerful, and well-hidden among the ordinary humans (aka a “Masquerade” pretending that there is no magic; I wrote about that a while ago). Magic has its uses on a small scale, but not enough to change the world, so they’d rather keep themselves under the radar.

The witch’s mother is dying, of injuries from a nasty, senseless mugging. Our heroine tracks down the muggers, but she finds there’s no point in revenge because the event was just that random. She tries to heal her mother with magic… and only makes her condition worse before it ends. At her lowest ebb, she reveals what she is to her boyfriend, and his pity pushes her to the edge of suicide. Before she decides instead to run.

She fakes her death, and makes her way to a large city to start a new life. It’s an awkward process at first, cutting ties with her past and deciding if magic deserves to be any part of her life at all. Her friends are mostly the ones she makes at work; she avoids what other witches she knows are in the city. Some of them do find her, and see she’s not interested in being a real part of their community.

Then one of the witches dies. Then another.

The first time it’s someone she knows enough to take a look at, and to discover it’s a lover’s quarrel gone bad. The second time it’s an accident… until she sees the connection to the first. There was a moment when both witches used their magic in public, well hidden but still giving some clue of what they’d done. Of course there’s nobody in either victim’s life that actually caused those tragedies… and no way those people knew each other…

Can you call it a conspiracy if there’s only a handful of people at the core? and the people in each witch’s life never realize they’re being sought out and encouraged to fear, and to find some quiet way to remove that witch? Witches can’t fight back if they–and their killers–never know there’s anything more behind it.

It would be an interesting slow burn of a book to write. A protagonist trying to immerse herself in her own life, ready to put that ahead of any identity connecting herself with the others. Layers of doubt about what might be going on, who might believe her, and if there’s any way to reach the source. A few questions about how unreliable and dangerous the kind of magic is, to make her wonder if it’s worth defending. Probably a shock or two with the idea that if witches are so well hidden, how many non-witches have been killed for some incident in the news that the silent killers can’t distinguish from real magic. A story of victims and resistance, with real questions about what’s part of the everyday world and what deserves to be.

–No, it’s not the backstory for any character in Shadowed, though the books after that will go into some of the same territory. Magic in The High Road and the rest of the Spellkeeper Flight books has its own “masquerade” issues that are a bit different.

And no, I won’t say which exact book inspired the odd little half-hour it took to tinker that idea together. I’m not sure how Jim Butcher would reply.

 

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Instructions for Control Magic

(Papers left in a hidden location in the city of Lavine)

 

I’m writing these down because the knowledge needs to last.

Now that you have it, one choice you’ll make is if you’ll share it, arrange for someone else to find it when you die—if you die—or simply leave them to be discovered. That’s up to you.

 

First: all of this magic is real.

Before you start thinking it’s some joke, pick up one of my talismans or make one of your own, then touch an animal (not a person yet; no witnesses) and try to find the trick of concentration that will let you reach the creature’s mind. If the mental keys don’t come easy to you yet, think about how this power will change every single part of your life, if it does turn out to be true.

It’s also dangerous. If you lose control of the magic, you can miss out on years of your life, and there are worse things it can do. Mastering it takes courage.

Also, if you feel that controlling the power feels like juggling two forces rather than one, that’s because it is. My proudest moment has been finding the secret of a second magic, and learning to join that energy with my own so they reinforce each other. You’ll be learning to grasp one while compensating for the other, until you can switch between them as fast as thought.

(I believe there have to be more forms of magic than these two that have hidden in Lavine. I mean to keep looking.)

 

Possession is the more flexible magic.

Hold a talisman and learn to move your thoughts into another mind to control it, by touch. You’ll find your control is weak and dangerous to you unless you push your will into theirs far enough to overwhelm them and abandon your own body. (Returning will be easy, if you do it right.)

Once in control, you can move that creature from the inside, view the world through their senses, and then touch another to shift into that body, and so on. Most important, those affected will have no memory of the time you were in control.

–Because of course, the magic’s value completely depends on people never suspecting you can turn anyone and anything against them. You’ll learn to find people who will convince themselves a few lost minutes only mean they were tired. With practice you can move through a crowd by seizing someone for the moment it takes to brush against the person ahead, and keep shifting forward faster than any of them notice. People find it easy to ignore missing moments because they have no reason to believe anything else—and only your carelessness can open their eyes. Disguising the time you take would be easier in the days before clocks were in view everywhere.

The most difficult skill would be to control a person around people who know him, without giving everything away. Every moment can involve more knowledge you don’t have (believe me, you can’t read their memories) and another test of how well you’ve learned to imitate how they speak.

Much easier is to control animals. Since what you most often want is mobile eyes around the city, this usually means birds. –Yes, birds. Now you see my interest in keeping them.

You should see the challenges in making the best use of your control. The other truth is that you can always release your hold on a mind and return to your own body in an instant.

–Practice that skill. Even small injury to a body you’re in will be painful to you. The most likely danger might be as you’re first learning to control animals and avoid the hazards around them. A hawk killed the first pigeon I flew, and I am always grateful I got out before it struck.

 

Sleep is the deeper magic.

By touch you can also put someone to sleep, for minutes or for much longer.

This works best combined with possession: if you’re leaving a body in a position where they’d notice too much, you can knock it out as you leave. Or as a simple weapon, it’s less trouble than taking control.

But let me be clear: when you send yourself to sleep, you do not age.

Think about that. Which hours of the day are actually worth living in? What days would you have plans you need to check on, and which do not?

Taking full advantage of this means learning to leave your body protected. It means rethinking every moment in your life ahead, and whether it needs to reconnect with the people that have been tied to you, or not. You can learn just how often to visit people to lull their suspicions—you’ll see how often someone expects you to waste the time you have because they have no idea you have better choices. Ordinary people become… ordinary.

I would say I’m older than I look, but you’ll find other factors have been at work.

 

The key is the talismans.

Magic is an energy that is drawn into talismans we prepare. Each use of it drains some of that power, and needs it to be restored.

When you shift your mind, you carry some of that energy from your talisman with you, but the bulk of it stays on your real body.

There are also ways to use talismans to extend your control beyond your touch.

First, create a talisman from a piece of–

 

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For Lynn

A friend died last weekend.

Lynn Ward had been a part of our writers group for years. From the beginning she’d been insightful and honest about all of our work, while favoring us with tales ranging from memory implants to a beautifully crafted battle of a wizard’s apprentice and her aging master against a horde of bandits with a cause.

Between the stories, Lynn’s no-nonsense tone for some of the… well, nonsense she dealt with was always a contrast to the kindness she had for us, and her unfailing support for her family.

And then, last week… she was gone. We’re still in shock.

I try to think of a reason, or a lesson, or anything to take from a tragedy like this. What I find is an irony: Lynn was just working her way into a shiny new novel that had what we all thought might be the perfect opening line:

“Beware Lord Barkin,” Ardath’s late mother Sela told her, for the fifth time. “He’s mad now.”

Now… it’s painfully perfect. And all I can think is, like Ardath, I’ll be listening for whenever the wind blows right to bring us a message. And wishing.

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That Ultimate Buffy Scene – Willow’s Long Walk

What does storytelling mean to me?

Sometimes, I have to look back at the tales that make me glad to play in the writers’ sandbox. The moments, and the craft behind them, that have burned themselves into my brain as the best ever.

And there’s nothing like Buffy… and the longest, darkest school hallway walk in history.

 

“Things are about to get very interesting”

–That was a dialogue quote that played in the ads for the sweeps story of the second season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

–Yes, that season. The big one.

I would put a massive SPOILER ALERT here, but… well, I can’t imagine a dark fantasy reader on this blog who doesn’t know the turning point of that show-defining two-parter called “Surprise!” and “Innocence.”

But if you still don’t, readers all, you’ve had your warning. After all, omens are in the spirit of that storyline.

And second chances are not. So:

First glimpse is our heroine watching a dream of Angel, the world’s only vampire with a soul, being murdered… and fearing it’s one of the rare prophetic dreams that being the Slayer sends her. This is called establishing the, um, stake.

Especially since she’s in love with him. And how, in spite of having saved the world once already, Buffy Summers is very much a girl turning seventeen.

(Note, this was years before those books. The one word that can be spoken against Buffy is that it inspired Twilight as a pallid, pull-all-the-punches imitation of one piece of it.)

But the story isn’t only about her boyfriend. It’s got a few other threads too.

Willow, Buffy’s shy little friend, daring to ask an offbeat musician on a date, to their surprise party for Buffy. Sweet.
Xander, the long-suffering and all-too-human boy at their heels trying to get the snooty Head Cheerleader to admit how they’ve been sort of dating, between fights. Sweet and sour.
Computer teacher and ally Jenny Calendar getting a secret message revealing to us that she’s only been in town for one reason: to guarantee that Angel suffers. Especially by her removing Buffy.
And of course, the crazy-deadly (and simply crazy) vampire Drusilla receiving her own presents for her own party (why yes, it’s a theme). Namely, the severed pieces of an immortal demon called the Judge that can destroy anything remotely human with a touch, or build up his power to cleanse the planet. Dru’s first act when he reassembles is to let him vaporize one of her own vampires who almost one of his arms, and immediately squeal “Do it again!”

So all while our heroes are trying to slow down the assembly of the Judge, we can see Jenny picking some very clever moments to lead Buffy into a trap, or send Angel away on a solo mission (who else can hide the last piece of the Judge on the far side of the planet, and of course that means months away on a cargo ship…). And Buffy’s telling herself what many fans had been screaming from day one, that she should just take Angel to bed.

One narrow escape from the Judge later, she does.

And that’s what destroys Angel, and what Jenny had actually been sent to prevent: a hidden clause in The Curse that had been keeping Angel human, so that if his eternity of guilt was ever interrupted by one moment of real happiness, the soul the gypsies had forced back on him would slip away. Unleashing what an ancient vampire had once called “the most vicious creature I ever met.”

 

Why It Works

Meticulous buildup.

And, keeping so many threads fighting for our attention at once: we never did find out where Jenny would have taken Buffy if they hadn’t spotted those vamps.

All on top of the ultimate wish-fullfillment for the fans, turned inside out into the ultimate cautionary tale for any girl. (When Joss Whedon throws you a bone, it’s usually a grinning skull. One that bites.)

And then the second half of the two-parter.

All the right pressure points are hit: the first thing the restored Angelus does is to rip out a woman’s throat. The second is to join up with Drusilla, his creation, and letting the Judge find he doesn’t have one scrap of humanity to be burned with. (One guess why the Judge wasn’t written with simple weapons like poison or a thousand knives.) The third is to go back to the just-waking Buffy and rip out her heart… by keeping his secret and triggering every one of her teenage insecurities, finishing with “I’ll call you.”

So we know the world-burning demon is the minor threat now. Angelus is just getting started.

But all Buffy knows is she’s a total wreak.

Meanwhile her friends are scrabbling through the usual books, reciting more and more often how unstoppable the enemy they know about is: “no weapon forged can harm” and “it took an army.” But the guilt-stricken Jenny is nowhere to be seen. At least Xander and Willow are trying…

And Willow catches Xander making out with Cordelia, the Queen of Mean. “You’d rather be with someone you hate than be with me.”

But…

But…

Just then, when pretty much the entire cast has been given a custom-built trauma, Willow is able to pull herself up and tell Xander they still have a world to save. And then Xander—hapless, helpless, all-heart Xander who’s always failed—Xander says “I’m getting a thought.”

And THAT’S WHEN THE LIGHTS GO OUT.

There’s Angelus, standing in the shadows at the far end of the hallway, casually calling Willow to him. She walks trustingly toward him… and when the episode premiered it felt like it took a full minute for her to cross that hall, and that was still too fast.

Because of every twist that Joss took to tighten the screws, again and again.

Because there had never once been only one plotline in play that would let us catch our breath.

Because every one of them was aimed where they’d hurt the most.

Because by now everything and everyone our heroes relied on has been stripped away… and just now teased with that one glimmer of hope, except that Willow’s walking into the grasp of the hidden monster….

And we know that with every step she takes, no matter what comes next, nothing in this story can ever be the same again.

 

Nobody writes quite like Joss Whedon.

But God knows we have to try.

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Why Wonder Woman is finally the Strongest Superhero (too)

So starting this week Wonder Woman is the ultimate superhero. We should have seen it coming.

Not just the movie’s pedigree; was it really a surprise that an Oscar-winning director like Patty Jenkins could deliver where the flashy but erratic Zack Snyder had misfired? Not only that there’s a big-screen superhero who looks like that “other” half of the potential audience.

I’ve got an observation of my own.

 

Small Wonder

Diana’s always had a rough time in the comics. More than one fan calls her the top-flight hero we never really knew.

Yes, everyone’s heard of her, but for what? DC Comics likes to point out that she’s the only female superhero to be in continuous publication since the 40s… when a lasso of truth would bring out how William Marston’s contract for creating her said that he’d regain the rights if she went out of print. They definitely don’t mention some of the sad, silly eras Diana has had to go through, like giving up her powers until Gloria Steinem rescued her.

Or how in the last ten years alone, both Joss Whedon (Buffy and The Avengers) and David E. Kelly tried and failed to keep Wonder Woman projects alive.

Even as a proper superhero, who’s her arch-enemy—the Cheetah, just a woman who jumps around swinging claws? Dr. Psycho (the name about sums that one up)? Out of seventy-six years (less the last week), point to a really lasting Wonder Woman story arc, her Dark Phoenix or Long Halloween.

And Steve Trevor. Just… why?

She’s a magnificent character. She’s had some great moments over the years. (Say, telling Batman “No, I said I cannot allow it.” Or how George Perez had her lasso defeat Ares by showing him he didn’t dare trigger a Final War.) But as an A-lister, Wonder Woman was always better known for just being there as The Super Hero-Ine among the boys and for what that meant she could do, more than for she has done.

What bothers me most is the most primal thing about a superhero, at least for one of the early DCs that claim to have staked out their place first. That is, what are her powers… with the emphasis on just hers?

It matters, because that core Justice League around her have some of the best abilities ever imagined, taken up to a level no other story even tries to match. The Flash is the Fastest Man Alive. Batman is the ultimate trickster. Green Lantern has the greatest ranged weapon, or the best “power” superpower, of all. And Superman is the incarnation of raw strength. Just try to picture a gathering of great heroes without those four assets at the top of the list.

And Wonder Woman is strong, like Superman. She deflects bullets, like Superman—but with her bracelets, right? She flies, like… there have been days I’ve wished they’d say Supergirl had crashed on Paradise Island and get it over with.

(Her outfit doesn’t help either. Where the others have a distinct solid red or being named for green or say “does it come in black,” she’s got Supes’s colors too, but mixed up with an American flag. And of course there’s never been as much of it as the boys had on.)

I don’t mean to tear the character down. The problem is that over the years she’s never been built up, the way the more accepted heroes have.

Superheroes rarely start out with a high-quality story; to earn respect they need years of good adventures (okay, mixed in with some awful ones that we get selective about). Even their powers tend to evolve over that time, until they pretend they were always to well positioned. Spiderman didn’t start out with spider-sense or even his signature agility; Stan Lee just drifted into that is his strongest power because it was the most suspenseful way for Spidey to fight. Superman didn’t fly, once.

But over the years, nobody’s ever thought Wonder Woman needed a niche of powers that were hers; as long as they could point to that lasso as one bit of variety, they were free to let her copy more and more of Superman. (Her costume too; Flash and Lantern had theirs redesigned a few times to reach the current perfection, but Wonder Woman doesn’t need to look unique, right?)

But now that she’s got a new spotlight, let’s take a second look at where she stands.

 

A Place in the Pantheon

If Superman is the biggest, the strongest, of the Justice League (which of course outpower any other superhero anywhere), he’s also considered a bit slow, awkward. Sure he’s got his own super-speed, but he’s still got a lack of aggression and training. He’s the tank or the battleship, the clumsy knight in full armor, the bulky battleaxe.

Of course Batman is the trickster, but he’s also got the least actual power. (At least, if he weren’t amped up by more favorite stories and fan love than the rest of the League together to demand he get the best moments.) He’s the recon plane, the spy you forget you sent out until he shows up in your tent with the enemy plans, the dagger.

The Flash? All speed and only so much else, like a fighter plane or light horseman, the rapier.

Green Lantern? Artillery, the bow. (Too bad Green Arrow’s a separate character; a cosmic bow would have been so much cooler than a glowing ring.)

And there’s no specialty left for Wonder Woman.

Because she’s got them all.

Maybe not as sneaky as Batman, but she’s a true strategist and trained warrior. Fast, and with her own weapons too. And strong… DC wasted a whole movie seeing if Batman could beat Superman, but with her skills and near-equal strength Wonder Woman should take the blue boy apart.

(And that’s without the lasso that brings up his vulnerability to magic!)

Wonder Woman might be the perfect balance, the center and the leader of the whole Justice League. The sword (she likes swords), of the true hero.

It’s just a thought, from looking at the iconology.

That and, right now she deserves to lead.

 

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Video Gamers as Writers – Twitching Our Way Into Character

Some writers hone their skills by a mix of soaking up lessons from the masters and researching specifics, from history to sentence structure. I’ve done all that… but one of my best tools is playing video games.

I’m a lifelong fan of role-playing games. I’ve written about that here once or twice, and the challenge of building a real story using a mix of other players and random die rolls. A campaign of D&D can do wonders for a writer’s eye for how different tastes merge, for adapting to the unexpected… making a story a lot like life.

But I’ve found there’s a different lesson in breaking out the PlayStation.

Mostly I play what are also billed as RPGs there; there’s no way I’d give up at least the feel of storytelling. Games like Final Fantasy and Mass Effect let me walk through a kind of Hero’s Journey, some with more richness than others. Where a tabletop game might let me build a story in shifts with time to appreciate my friends’ input, a console game is the simple pleasure of riding along in a story and helping the hero along… with simpler, non-creative help like how to shoot and when to check up on supplies. The fun of playing a part in the tale, without any pressure to write it.

–Alright, until a certain killer demon starts teleporting in and crushing me with one hit if I don’t dodge perfectly…

The thing is, it’s that simple “game” challenge where my PS has taught me the most about writing.

Most games might be only a joystick test wrapped up in the rough shape of a story. But that means there’s at least a hint of someone’s head to get into… and a whole game system to express what walking in his shoes might mean.

 

Fight Like a (Mage) Girl

One of the best times I’ve had was in Dragon Age: Origins, opening with the customized background adventure for a mage. A young wizard raised apart from society so as not to endanger them, and then her masters toss her into the demon-world to test if she can withstand their temptations? My character started to feel like a powerful but frightened girl, who used her initial spells of Slow and Flame in a frantic attempt to keep the demons AWAY until she could burn them down.

That was the key. For the rest of the grand Dragon Age storyline, I was able to look at Neria as a study in fear and slow-won confidence, and see how that led her master to protection and weakness spells rather than going for the kill. Or, how impressed she’d be with the rebel witch Morrigan as a teammate, who could teach her to wade into battle herself as a bear or bigger, If she was ready for it.

I still consider DAO the best epic adventure ever set to disk (discovering The Joining… or that mad voice in the tunnels calling “That’s why they hate us, that’s why they need us…”). But the finest edge of that pleasure was in letting those simple how-to choices show me what it’s like to be Neria.

 

One Giant Leap

Or today? Media tie-in games are usually a disappointment… actually they’ve all disappointed me except the Batman Arkham games. –Come to think of it, this principle might be one thing they’re missing: even if a game can play like being Frodo, I already know how Frodo thinks, and a Tolkien game probably won’t give me enough different strategies to discover him in his actions anyway.

Anyway, I stay away from the tie-ins. But this one was Attack On Titan.

How am I supposed to resist a game that even brushes against that ani/manga’s savage storytelling? Even though this game’s very crude in its nods to the plotline it lumbers through, just to set up more and more of the same school of battlefield challenges, it’s become quite a guilty pleasure.

Because this time I know the characters… and yet there’s room to distinguish them because the battles give more than one option. Like:

Eren Jaeger (hot-headed hero): I don’t play him on a mission unless I have time to cut down every Titan on the board, because there’s no way he’d leave one alive if he had a choice. Even the distress signals he might not notice until he killed any Titans nearby.
Armin Arlet (budding strategist): he’ll go after every rescue he can, partly out of kindness but also because he’s the best at deploying reinforcements. And I can see him working his way up from small foes to the bigger multi-Titan brawls… feeling for the moment he’s built up the confidence to go for the scenario-closing kill.
Mikasa Ackerman (stoic combat genius): As Mikasa I find I prefer targeting the bigger crowds of Titans, figuring the stragglers are what her less skilled teammates can pick off. And I rush for the final target as soon as it appears, because why waste time? (Assuming “protect Eren” isn’t actually in the scenario, otherwise boulder-sized heads are gonna roll.)

They’re simple choices that a game lays out for us, but the game gives us the ideal chance to explore them. And in that exploring, I remember: only some heroes charge in, or work in teams, or any other of a hundred shaded possibilities. It’s too easy to write a scene and let genre or a sense of the obvious pick the details of how a protagonist acts on his decisions.

“He just picks up the gun and shoots his way free”? Before you say that, try spending half an hour trying to play someone who’s offered a good, controllable pistol on one shelf, and a wrist-breaking Magnum on the other, and knows he’ll have to make that choice work based on how he sees a battlefield. Then try to feel just which twist of the fight will make him charge in, or fall back, or throw himself as a shield in front of his friends.

Or how he sees those friends, his goals, his triumphs and despairs. How he acts, down to the smallest detail.

It’s often said a writer should know how a character walks with his cane, breathes to savor the open air, and does his laundry. Gaming with my awareness open helps me build that feeling.

And it starts with how to kill giants. Not too shabby, no?

 

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Grappling with the Superhero Grapnel

How much of a comics nerd am I? I grumble about heroes’ grappling guns being unrealistic… at least for the superheroes that are claiming to be possible.

Meaning Batman. And Daredevil, and the idea that “skill over power, rooftop-dwelling heroes” don’t default to flying, they traditionally get around the city by swinging between the buildings.

Grapnels – the Same Old Line?

For one thing, Mythbusters busted even fast-grappling up to a roof. Yes, a gun can shoot a grappling hook (they used tripod-launched ones back on D-Day), and they do make “ascenders” to zip you up the line. But the simple spike Batman‘s used since Tim Burton’s movies to stick into any wall and hold his weight… what’s that supposed to be? And Daredevil’s got the worst design of all, a simple weight that always wraps around a target tight enough to hold him, and then comes loose a moment later.

It might not bug me so much… except that these “gritty, realistic” heroes are stealing moves from the guy who actually had a reason to pull it off, Spider-Man. When they’re supposed to be human.

Stop a moment: if you think about swinging from rooftops, what’s the first thing that ought to come into your head? One hint, that first Spidey movie scene where he tried to web-sling:

SLAM!

It’s all on YouTube. (Though they left out that moment where Peter’s limping home thinking “I really must be stronger than human, I’m still alive.” Or maybe with the George of the Jungle theme stuck in his aching head.)

That’s the basic problem of using a grapnel line to do more than climb: you’re throwing yourself at a wall. So there’s just no way a hero can swing far with one grapnel—he’d need two, to start toward one wall and zigzag off to another and onward, like that movie actually showed for Spidey’s second time up in the air. Plus, those lines would need just-not-human science to instantly attach to anything and to spit out line after line (without hauling much weight) so he wouldn’t be stuck in midair. Not something one billy club’s good for, Mr. Murdock.

Hooked on Grapnels

To be fair, the “heroic swing” probably started with movies about pirates (with ropes dangling from a mast) and swashbucklers (chandeliers), followed by Tarzan and his vines. Because if the setting justifies a—lucky!—hero finding a line already attached and dangling over open space… well, turning gravity itself into your propulsion looks cooler than just about anything.

And then comics, and then animation, built on how easy it is to draw a hero swinging along a hundred feet up. Plus, any kind of mobility is the fastest way to bring a hero into the action, with a one-panel nod to how visually awesome he is before the fireworks fly: “while on patrol, our hero spots—”

Yes, it’s comic book characters. Is there really a point to arguing about whether a human can cheat basic ballistics when he’s already likely to wade through five thugs with guns, and when the other heroes do actually fly? But… fists can hit faces, swinglines can’t not hit the wall they hang from, if it’s one line. If we lose track of the boundary between human and superhuman feats, it’s sloppy storytelling.

In fact, live-action superhero stories tend to show more respect. Of course that’s making a virtue of necessity; when every backflip from a flagpole costs effects money (and possibly blood) instead of ink, heroes like Daredevil and Arrow tend not to be so casual about it. Come to think of it, I don’t remember too many of those live heroes on a random patrol blundering into a major villain either; there’s more respect for good guy and bad both planning their moves and trying to catch up to each other on their terms.

Build a Better Grapnel (or Don’t Bother)

Could a grapnel work, at least for a single swing? I wonder if you could make one with a clamp, with teeth made of say industrial diamond, so you could fire it at a building’s corner or any kind of ridge and it dug into it on both sides? (The harder part might be building something into the clamp to work the teeth loose when you were done.) A hero could zip off the street, but not swing and keep swinging—instead of sweeping the city for crime he’d have to know where to look, like Batman’s skills and Daredevil’s senses already have covered. Still, the classic swing from one close-by building down through a window or warehouse loading bay could still panic a roomful of mobsters.

But, there’s a part of us that wants to blur the lines; even the Dark Knight Trilogy had a weakness for it. Christopher Nolan’s the best thing to happen to Batman in decades, but he does tend to be… generous with Bats’s mobilty. The Tumbler solves the Batmobile problem (what does the best car on the planet do in traffic? same as every other car, not a thing!) by letting Batman ram through everything on the road like one of his villains drives. And that gliding cape… it laid all the groundwork (so to speak) to making sense in the most awesome way, except that a cape just isn’t going to catch enough air to carry a man, and anyone who’s seen a hang-glider knows that. They were so close, couldn’t they have just said locking the cape into glider shape also unfolds an extra ten feet of cape, and we get an instantly-iconic image of “the Big Bat” in flight?

–And now we’ve got Attack On Titan giving soldiers rapid-fire grapnels they control with their sword hilts as they dive at maneating giants… okay, points for reaching a new level of sheer coolness. And no story with thirty-foot giants is staying that close to physics anyway; we’re just amazed the humans last five minutes in what’s normally a job for a giant robot. (Hint: they usually don’t last that long.)

Honestly, I’m starting to appreciate the simple Arrow approach to getting around. Oliver uses the occasional grapnel arrow (never mind how it sticks well enough to hold his weight), but his team mostly race around the city on something that can get where they need: motorcycles. Backed by a van, a simple unmarked van, as their mobile base.

Some things are cool. But it means something that I can believe this one.

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Life’s A Pitch – the Quiet Writer and the Book Fair

It’s one of the more humbling moments of writing. Sitting at a live event—yesterday it was the huge Los Angeles Times Festival of Books—and watching so many people walk by my spot in the booth, barely glancing at me after years of preparing the books I brought.

And the writers sitting next to me… we have some talented people in the Greater Los Angeles Writers Society, but it can be startling to see some of them working the crowd like they actually belonged there.

Like Leslie Ann Moore, A great writer I’ve known for years, but to watch her leading people through her book (“It started with the idea, what if Snow White was a revolutionary…”) and connecting with them again and again… humbling. Or Deborah Pratt, just as at home there and someone I wish I’d had more time to get to know. Or Gerald Jones, boldly calling into the passing crowd, “You like poetry?”

–Yes, poetry, in a crowded festival. His confidence would be painful if it weren’t so… poetic.

 

“Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!”

One thing I’ve seen again and again in my fellow writers: most of us aren’t the loud, pitchman type.

Q: How does an introvert warn his friend that there’s an extrovert about to break into their conversation?

A: “Outgoing!”

Most of us are more of the Homo Secludus species. We feel the same thrills and chills that other readers do at a good story, but we’re most likely the ones who stop chatting at the proverbial water cooler and go off alone to distill our own form of that magic. Spending hours and years locked away with just a keyboard sounds like a good deal for us.

And then the last lap of that journey is to come back and tell the fans we came from why we left them, and why they should pay our bills while we leave again. Irony of ironies.

For me and for most rising writers I’ve met, it’s the stage of the business we try longest not to think about. And that’s if we do treat it as a business; the traditional publishing model promises we aren’t, that we only have the same momentary brush with self-promotion that any other industry’s employee has to face. We get through one successful interview (bonus: in writing it’s all query letters and manuscripts, no being judged on your smile), and then just do the work while the company handles all that nasty marketing to make us famous.

If only. That’s ancient history even on the traditional route, and of course in indie publishing our taking over the market role is the price of admission.

 

So…

So where does that leave the silent majority of us writers who aren’t Leslie Ann?

Most of it might be in the same mantra that already put the book on the table: do the work. We keep pushing, building those muscles, and looking around for what methods can refine what we’re doing.

–And, also like the writing, half of it is tapping deeper into the sheer Awesome of what we create. If we can hold onto the thrill or warmth or detail of a story long enough to reach the last page, can’t we have a properly juicy answer ready for “So what’s it about?”

And also like in writing, most of marketing’s work habits are our own to create. We’ve got blogs we can lay out, and other writers and bloggers we can find who share a connection with us. There are ads, and contests, and promotions in a dozen forms that we can analyze and perfect for our story… and for our own strengths.

(Hmm, you don’t suppose the people in that booth were there because they were the ones who liked working the crowd…)

So, we’re writers. We look around, and steal—research!—from the best, and dig deep into what we want and what we know. And then we dig deeper.

At the end of the day I found myself sitting next to Leslie, singing a few lines from Julia Ecklar’s merry little tune:

Ladies and gents at the front of the tents

You will note there is naught up my sleeve…

I’m not a “One-Man Magical Show” yet, but I think The High Road has a song or two worth writing.

It might even be the perfect pitch.

 

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A Writer’s Confession: Kvothe’s Ballad

The following is a confession I wrote to myself some Easters ago after a session of reading, that I realize I’d never shared with this blog. It’s word for word as I wrote it then, so make of it what you will:

Today time stopped for me. I’d been wondering if it ever would again.

It’s that feeling when a scene in a book works beyond working, when you don’t just lose track of time, you regain enough awareness to become afraid that something will interrupt you and end the one perfect chance you’ll have to find out what comes next all in one sitting. When you hold your hand over the page to stop your eyes from moving down and killing the order of things. When you remember why you read.

The book was The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss; the scene was the culmination of fifty pages’ planning—or many more, depending on how far back you want to follow the threads—when our hero Kvothe had brought himself onto a stage with everything from keeping fed to music’s passion to a deadly rivalry to his first glimpse of true love all joining in what happens during his performance… But there I was, lying in bed not so long from having woken up, as my whole level of consciousness shifted yet again. And yes, this was Easter Sunday when I read it all.

I guess nobody has these moments very often, not in their full degree. But I’m a harder audience than most, because when I’m not scheduling my day strictly by which combination of stories I read and watch, I’m watering my palate down by filling in hours with whatever half-satisfying yarn I can grab from the library or the cable menu. The moments when I’m not just satisfied but enthralled are years apart, the kind of years when you know all along another moment may never happen in your lifetime.

But for me it’s more.

I say writing isn’t my life, it’s what I chose instead of even having a life. And yet here I’ve gone so many years reinventing the wheel with my questions on what genres mean… well, maybe I’ve invented a hovercraft, but I still spend all my time going in circles instead of making forays into one tale or another. Where’s the line between craft and cowardice, and how many years behind me did I leave it?

Or does it even stop with writing, is it the whole way Kvothe lived on the edge of possibilities, and my wondering if I can be true to anything if I don’t try to wrestle the same power out of every day? Waste, waste, so much waste…

Does it mean I stop making charts of how to plot and start figuring how to actually gather the ideas? or that I go through my weeks showing my scribblings to more people, anything to commit myself to putting one word after the next, or take the one or two non-writing things I most enjoy and cut them out of my life as the price of dedication? Or turn the other way and look for real adventure in every flesh-and-blood person I talk to, to build the other set of muscles about truths—or just to honor what I say I’ve come to see?

Sadly, I know what it probably means, and so does everyone else. Just another chance to leap to my emotional feet and begin the journey off the beaten track, only to tire and turn back again. Not even out of fear of the shadows ahead, or doubt that there are treasures to be found within them, but just too tired to try. No, too used to turning back to even have a chance to tire. That’s what we all do, even most of the writers who try to point the way beyond… We turn back. And I’ve done it more than anyone, writing the same thing or the same reasons not to write, and nothing’s changed that.

But what if…

Today time stopped for me. #writing http://bit.ly/WritersConfession
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