My entirely fruitful Labor Day weekend

Labor Day…the weekend I try very hard to forget that I’m not down at DragonCon (and next year, I’ll be there, come hell or high water).  This last weekend, I tried to find a way to avoid thinking of Atlanta, and I mostly succeeded.

First, it was Doctor Who premier weekend, which as you can read in my post below was somewhat of a disappointment.  I also picked up The Witcher 2 from GameStop because it dropped to $30 for new or used, and I had heard good things about it.  The combat is a little…well…I don’t like it too much, but maybe it gets better, but the story is interesting.  I also snagged a new tablet, a Polaroid running Ice Cream Sandwich.  It’s actually a very awesome little device for $90.

But the two big things I did were organize my office and get started on the novel I’ve been wanting to write for…oh…years now.  The office thing is kind of amusing, since I’ve lived in my apartment for a year and a half now but never had it as an office before.  Well, not a functional one.  It was more or less a storage room.  Now it’s a little better and far more comfortable to work in.

The novel, however, went a lot more smoothly than I imagined.  It’s the first in a larger shared world, so I was keeping copious notes (in a note card index box) as I went.  I figured I might get a few thousand words in and be blocked.  I’ve not been able to get much past that lately.  To my surprise, I just kept writing and writing, with regular breaks to let my back, injured for the past week or so, un-knot.  When all was said and done, I was more than 20,000 words in and I feel like I’m hitting a stride.  There’s tons more to do, but hey, that’s a great start.  I’ve probably got about ten times more to write, but I legitimately feel it will come.

There’s plenty coming up to break my concentration, but hopefully this will be a reversal of my trend of not being able to keep on a story for long enough to finish.

 

Very Good Writing – Why Loki Won in The Avengers

Spoiler Alert!  Avoid reading this post if you haven’t seen The Avengers.

No really, look away!

O.k., let’s talk about The Avengers, the highest grossing movie so far this year, and the movie on track to potentially unseat James Cameron’s Avatar as highest grossing movie of all time.  Specifically, I want to talk about the writing and Loki, the film’s key villain.  More specifically, I want to explain how Joss Whedon managed to write the perfect Xanatos Gambit.

For those who don’t know or didn’t click the link above, a Xanatos Gambit (named for the villain Xanatos from Disney’s Gargoyles cartoon) is a plan that literally cannot fail because win or lose, the villain wins.  This is one of those “I wanted you to beat me all along” scenarios, where defeating the villain somehow means the hero still loses.  This isn’t changing your plans to compensate or getting lucky, this is planning all along for every possible outcome to lead to what you want.  And Loki in the Avengers does so perfectly.

First, let’s get some background on Loki, God of Mischief and Lies.  Check out that title – he’s the god of lies.  Now in both the Marvel cinematic and comic book universes, being a “god” doesn’t really make you the embodiment of whatever you’re the god of; the comic book universe DOES have those things (Death, Eternity, Aeon, etc.) and the cinematic universe may gain those things (based on the Thanos cameo), but generally Thor is not the embodiment of thunder, and Hercules isn’t the embodiment of strength, etc.  It’s just what they’re really good at, because they are actually alien beings from another dimension.  Loki, then, is not the embodiment of lies and mischief, but he’s really good at it.

Loki really has only one goal in life – take over Asgard.  He wants to rule.  He feels Thor, his half brother, is not fit to take over for Odin and he wants that power for himself.  Loki does not care one wit about Midgard (aka Earth).  He’ll put it in peril to distract Thor, but Loki is all about controlling Asgard.  Re-read those last two sentences – Loki doesn’t care about Earth!  So why, in The Avengers, is he trying to take over?  That very question is asked by Tony Stark during the penthouse scene.  Tony comes very close to puzzling it out, but Loki distracts him with his villainy goodness (badness?).  Why does Loki was to rule Earth?  And what Earth would be left to rule with the Chitauri tearing it all up?  What throne is he looking for?

The answer, of course, is that Loki doesn’t want to rule Earth.  He doesn’t care about it.  He never did.  He allowed himself to be captured, he allowed himself to be defeated (and yeah, Hulk smashed him good, but he didn’t have to stick around for the big fight).  It was all part of his plan.

Let’s examine that plan: first, Loki appears and steals the tesseract.  Why?  Well, to set things in motion.  He knew stealing the cube would cause Nick Fury to call in the Avengers.  Remember the ending of Thor – he’s been spying on the whole operation for some time now.  Then, Loki gets captured.  He clearly could have escaped, but instead he let himself be taken.  Cap and Tony mention this on the Quinjet just before Thor shows up, and Black Widow eventually gets from Loki what his plan is – to set off the Hulk on the helicarrier.  Only Loki is the god of lies…you think he really got played by the Black Widow?  Nope, he WANTED them to know what the plan was.  Then when it happens, and the Hulk goes berserk, they blame it on Loki and it really brings the team together.

And that’s what Loki wanted.

See, Loki wanted them to defeat the Chitauri.  He wanted to lose the battle in New York.  Why?  So he could be taken back to Asgard.  That was his plan all along.  He never cared about conquering Earth.  He never cared about defeating the Avengers.  He just wanted a ride back to his home, the place he DOES want to conquer.  And he got it, first class accommodations right back to Asgard.  You can even see the smirk at the end when he’s got the gag on.  It’s in his eyes.  He won, and the heroes all thought they did.  What better than to beat your enemies and make them think they won?

Now you may ask why Loki would betray Thanos in such a way.  I mean, Big Purple is no one to mess around with.  But I think Thanos was the co-architect of this plan.  Why?  Because he wants Loki back in Asgard too.  Just sending him back wouldn’t work – Loki has to be brought back by Thor so that Odin does not suspect he’s still working with Thanos.  See, with Loki back in Asgard, and knowing that Odin feels incredibly guilty about Loki in general and usually lets him off with little more than a slap to the wrist, Thanos has the perfect operative within striking distance of the one thing in the whole universe he REALLY wants (well, more than Death).

What is it Thanos wants?  Did you miss it when you saw Thor?  It’s easy to miss, but…

That’s right…in Odin’t vault is none other than the Infinity Gauntlet.  And now Loki is right there, and he broke into it before without much trouble.  Loki losing to the Avengers was the best possible outcome for both Loki, who can now try to take over Asgard again, and Thanos, who now has potential access to the Infinity Gauntlet.

The bad guys won this round, and meanwhile the heroes are off eating Shwarma and thinking they won.

And all of this points to one thing – Joss Whedon is a fucking genius.  This is Machiavellian planning at its best, and the payoff clearly won’t come until at least Thor 2 or Avengers 2.  It’s a perfect set up, and with luck we’ll eventually see that the “win” in the Avengers was actually a loss.  Of course, that’s not to say the heroes didn’t really win anything.  They did…because while the battle was nothing more than an elaborate smoke and mirrors to get Loki back to Asgard, the formation of the Avengers is actually the biggest win for the side of good you could hope for.

It’s all about the long game, and writers who understand and can use it.

 

The Magical Child trope needs to die for a few decades

It may have started with the second V series, the 1980s sci-fi miniseries that introduced as part of its story line a human/alien hybrid child.  At the end of the second miniseries, the child had “magic powers” and used them to stop the aliens.  This was, for me, the first time I encountered the Magical Child trope, and even then I knew it was bullshit.

Over the years it has become more clear to me that this trope, the idea of a godlike child, is one of the nearly universally hated tropes.  A great example would be Anakin Skywalker in Episode One: The Phantom Menace.  People hated that he was a kid.  His “yipeee!” and “wizard!” outbursts along with his painful dialog with Padme was made all the worse by knowing that this, ladies and gentlemen, was the character the whole damned saga was hinged upon.

Let’s look at a recent fiasco: the Mass Effect 3 ending.  Here again we get the omnipotent child.  Granted, this is just an appearance, but it’s the same thing – a child-like understanding of the world and more power than the hero.  It’s annoying and even folks who liked the endings hated that character.

How about Ultraviolet?  It could have been a good movie…maybe.  But they also have the godchild concept.  To be honest, perhaps every writer should have it stamped on their foreheads (backwards, so they can read it in the mirror) that adults don’t like seeing magic kids save the day.

What of Harry Potter, you say?  Well that’s quite different for two reasons. First, Harry IS the hero, and all his friends are of the same age.  He’s not some left-field addition to the story to try to bring some “humanity” to the hero.  His story is THE story.  Second, Harry Potter is British.  They, for some unknown reason, have a much better handle on the whole trope.

For example, look at Doctor Who.  There are any number of episodes with god-children.  It still works, mostly because no matter how godlike the children are, the Doctor is still…well…the Doctor.  He doesn’t bow to the child, though he might give them a nice lolly.

Seriously, though, whenever a kid is involved in an ostensibly adult story, and they aren’t there to either be the hero’s ward (ala Lone Wolf) or the kidnapped waif to be rescued, they’re jarring, annoying, and worthless.  They can completely ruin an otherwise good story.  I get that a lot of writers see being a child as something magical.  It is, sure, but being an adult is too, if you don’t give up what it is that the writers see as magic in children.  A sense of wonder, whimsy, and perhaps madness.  For example, again, the Doctor.

That does mean that adult characters have to take on a few traits of children.  Lying, for example.  Children lie all the time.  Writers tend to forget this, but children are usually far less honest than adults.  Part of growing up is, in fact, accepting that telling the truth is better than lying.  Children lie because they can, not because they have to, and they do it all the time.  In a way, they are just trying to make life more interesting.

Being imaginative and holding on to the slimmest of hopes is another trait characters would have to have.  The idea that things can end with “and they all lived happily ever after.”  Most writers reject that because life doesn’t work that way.  But why?  Sometimes life DOES work that way.  Maybe not “ever after”, but at least for a while.  Sometimes the good guys win, and they don’t have to die to do so.  Sometimes the bad guys win, but at such a cost that the good guys still live happily ever after.  Being dark and depressing doesn’t make a story deep, it only makes it dark and depressing.  Children know life is more than that.  So do characters who are still children at heart.

But what it really comes down to is this: most of us spent a good eighteen years trying to reach a point where we had control over our lives.  Maybe only tenuous control, but control nonetheless.  To introduce a magical child who essentially breaks those boundaries you fought so hard and long is just a slap in the face.  Maybe it’s time for that trope to be retired for a while, and for adults to regain the stage.

Give me A New Hope Luke over The Phantom Menace Anakin any day.

 

Artistic Integrity

This is another post about the Mass Effect 3 ending.  If you don’t care, feel free to skip it.  However, this isn’t a direct discussion of the ending, but rather some of the counter-arguments to why Bioware should write a new ending.

Many of those opposed to Bioware releasing an updated/changed ending are hinging their argument on “artistic integrity”.  I have to wonder if these people have ever produced any piece of art in their life EVER.  See, I  have.  I have published stories.  I know that their argument is utter and complete bullshit.

First, comparing Mass Effect 3 to a painting is failure in and of itself – it’s not the same thing at all.  Visual art is subjective, no getting around that.  However, not one person is complaining about the visuals (other than they are almost exactly the same in all of the “endings”).  They’re complaining about the communicated art, the context if you will, that the visual art lives within.  That’s the bailiwick of writing, and no one, not me, not Stephen King, not J.K. Rowling, and certainly not the Mass Effect team, just writes stuff without editing.  Writing is ALWAYS constrained by the editing process.  Writers learned LONG ago that this is the best way to do it.  Don’t agree?  Go check out some fan fiction and then compare it to real published work.  Some of it might be good, sure, but on the whole the professionally edited stuff will always be better.

Why is that?  Because the artist can often loose their fucking way in the forest of creativity.  It’s happened to me more than once.  I’ve had editors say, “wow, this is jarring and just pulls you right out of the narrative.”  They were right, I made changes accordingly.  I could have fought if I really felt what they wanted changed was too important to the story, but at the end of the day, the old axiom that “to write is human, to edit, divine” holds sway.  Also, “The Editor is always right.”  It’s true, and it always will be.  Editors see things more objectively.  They say, “wait, this doesn’t make any sense.”  That’s their job.

Clearly there was very little editing on the ending of Mass Effect 3.  It shows.  And the company wouldn’t now be backpeddling if it weren’t true.  I may not have realized I wrote something badly, but when it comes back with a red line through it, I have to stop and think about it.  Most of the time, it’s dead on the money.  Why?  Because I’m too close to what I’m writing to see that it’s not making sense.  Bioware clearly had this same problem.

It’s funny, but the critics of the folks who want a better Mass Effect 3 ending seem to consider players as no more than audience.  Even if that’s all they were, the audience is the final authority on whether or not your art sucks.  Anyone who’s gotten to the point where they are arguing that the artist is more important than the audience has crossed the line into ego-mania and needs to step away.  The audience ALWAYS matters, and they always have the final say.  You can defend your work to them, but in the end, they decide if you succeeded or failed, not you, and not your artistic integrity.  However, players are NOT the audience here – they are part of the art.  They are an intrinsic necessity to the art form itself, and if they are unhappy with what the artist did, they have EVERY right to demand it be changed. They are, in essence, editors inside your story.  They see the work in ways you don’t.  And if they hate it, then you did something wrong, not them.

It’s funny that most of the sources backing Bioware and telling them not to change come from big names in the gaming industry that don’t want to face the same sort of criticism.  But an artist who refuses to accept that their art needs to change is no longer an artist, and instead is an egoist who should be ignored and rejected.

That’s about all I have to say on this matter.  I believe that many of the good people at Bioware understand now that they put out a highly flawed product, and that their “artistic integrity” wouldn’t be compromised by actually providing what they promised.  I’m sure some of them were railing against the ending before it went to press as is.  Probably the editors who were overruled by a combination of producerial fiat and distributor deadline.  I hope they have the chance at least to say, “I told you so.”

We’ll see at PAX East what happens, but personally I’m hoping there’s a Bioware panel where people chant, “HOLD. THE. LINE.” over and over.  They need to get the message, and it needs to be clear: have your artistic integrity but accept that you are not the only part of the art.

 

It’s not what kills you, but what you can survive that defines horror

Let’s call this the Law of Pain: nothing that outright kills you is as scary as something that leaves you alive in a state that might as well be death.

I was watching movies this weekend and playing a little LA Noire (great game, by the way) when I realized something: things that just kill you aren’t very scary.  Sure, a bullet to the head can be gross, but it’s not scary.  The person is dead, just dead, and while it may be shocking, it sure isn’t scary.  Scary is what you can live through.  Scary is having half your face blown off and still being alive.  That’s where the fear is.

There are plenty of horror films and stories that get this wrong.  Look at Friday the 13th.  Jason stalking his victims is scary.  People coming across their remains is also somewhat scary (more shocking, but still scary), but the actual kills?  Not so scary.  He’s too efficient, really, except for the classic sleeping bag kills.  What will freak people out and get under their skin is something that’s basically enough to kill you, but you’re still alive, and still in pain.

I was looking through some scenes from horror movies and I came across one from some low budget Saw/Hostel ripoff.  I don’t like these sorts of films, but this one was particularly bad.  In it, a woman was hit in the face repeatedly with a large mallet.  Now, the effects weren’t super, but it was still horrifying, because she went from being a relatively attractive woman to this mess of a face that looked a little like a blood-soaked muppet (which was mostly because of the super heavy latex used to re-sculpt her features), but the way her jaw kept working, and her one visible eye just flicked out in terror…it was unsettling.  As I watched it again, I realized it was really scary.  It was scary because she was still alive, clearly in a kind of pain you’d hope would cause you to pass out at the very least, and her face was nothing but a complete ruin.

And then, sitting there, trying to process it all, I was reminded of The Princess Bride, and the threat of fighting “to the pain”.  If you’ve forgotten this, shame on you, but here it is:

Prince Humperdinck: First things first, to the death.
Westley: No. To the pain.
Prince Humperdinck: I don’t think I’m quite familiar with that phrase.
Westley: I’ll explain and I’ll use small words so that you’ll be sure to understand, you warthog faced buffoon.
Prince Humperdinck: That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me.
Westley: It won’t be the last. To the pain means the first thing you will lose will be your feet below the ankles. Then your hands at the wrists. Next your nose.
Prince Humperdinck: And then my tongue I suppose, I killed you too quickly the last time. A mistake I don’t mean to duplicate tonight.
Westley: I wasn’t finished. The next thing you will lose will be your left eye followed by your right.
Prince Humperdinck: And then my ears, I understand let’s get on with it.
Westley: WRONG. Your ears you keep and I’ll tell you why. So that every shriek of every child at seeing your hideousness will be yours to cherish. Every babe that weeps at your approach, every woman who cries out, “Dear God! What is that thing,” will echo in your perfect ears. That is what to the pain means. It means I leave you in anguish, wallowing in freakish misery forever.
Prince Humperdinck: I think you’re bluffing.
Westley: It’s possible, Pig, I might be bluffing. It’s conceivable, you miserable, vomitous mass, that I’m only lying here because I lack the strength to stand. But, then again… perhaps I have the strength after all.
[slowly rises and points sword directly at the prince]
Westley: DROP… YOUR… SWORD!
Prince Humperdinck: [Humperdinck's mouth hangs open, drops sword to floor]

That’s horror.  That’s the sort of thing that will give you nightmares if you really think about it.  That’s a life not worth living any more, and yet still alive.

So I suppose what I learned, what I got from all of this, was that death really isn’t all that scary.  It’s living that’s the real terror.

 

Absurdity

“Absurdity: the last defense of a rational mind in an irrational world”
-Andrew Black

 

Library of the Living Dead – Made you Flinch Again – Cancelled

So it seems that an anthology that had accepted one of my works, Cousins, has been cancelled.  Library of the Living Dead Press has fallen on hard times and the publisher can’t afford to put out anthologies for a while.

It’s a sad note to end the week on, but I understand business decisions have to be made.  I’m hoping that I’ll receive an email confirming the cancellation, but in the meantime, I’ll be looking at the story and seeing if there are other venues to publish it.

 

Am I dead or am I living?

The title of this post is taken from Sting’s “Something the Boy Said” from Ten Summoner’s Tales.  It refers to the fact I haven’t posted to my beloved blog in ages.

Why?  Well, to put it mildly, I’ve been busy at my day job.  The truth is, I’ve been run ragged, and it’s not likely to stop any time soon.  However, that’s no excuse for neglecting my blog.  Even if no one else reads it (and my handy WordPress stats tracker tells me people do read this blog), I read it, and I like to look back on what I’ve written.  Plus I’ve always considered it an exercise in writing, which is good for anyone who wants to eventually make their living off the printed word.

So, I have resolved to dedicate at least an hour three times a week to this blog to post something, anything, that crosses my mind.  We’re coming up on Halloween, and so I have plenty to talk about in the near future, but after that we enter the long dark of autumn and winter, when the ghosts really come out.

Thank you to those who continue to read this little effort of mine, and thank you to those who comment and subscribe.  I’ll try not to let the ink in my pen dry out so thoroughly again.

 

Smelly Books

This weekend I stopped at Half-Price Books.  If you don’t have one near you, I’m very sorry for you, because it’s a great place.  The name is pretty much dead on – they sell used books for about half the cover price.  Sometimes it’s less than that, especially on hardback books, and they have clearance books for $2.

One of the reasons I love this store is that you can often find old books there.  I’m not talking about out of print books, though they have some of those, but rather old copies of well known books.  This weekend, for example, I picked up a paperback copy of Stephen King’s Christine.  It was a first paperback print, from 1983.  The pages have yellowed some, but more importantly, the book smells.

I like smelly books, books that have that unmistakable musty scent of age.  This book has that smell.  It’s almost sweet, like flowers just going over the edge.  It’s the smell of years gone by, while this book sat on a shelf or maybe in a box somewhere.  It smells like memory.

In fact, scent is one of the strongest ties to memory.  The olfactory bulb of the human brain is located in the limbic system, which is closely tied to memory and emotion.  A smell can fire the neurons of memory into action.  Smell is also tied to the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning.

As Giles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer once noted, “Smell is the most powerful trigger to the memory there is. A certain flower, or a-a whiff of smoke can bring up experiences long forgotten. Books smell musty and-and-and rich. The knowledge gained from a computer is a – it, uh, it has no-no texture, no-no context. It’s-it’s there and then it’s gone. If it’s to last, then-then the getting of knowledge should be, uh, tangible, it should be, um, smelly.”

He’s correct, in more ways than one.  See, scent is tied strongly to memory, but it’s the conditional learning that connects the two properly.  Just as language is built up in childhood, so is our catalog of smells and how we tie those smells to memory.  If you are given an old book as a child, perhaps an old set of fairy tales or a classic Mark Twain novel, you’ll associate that slight musty smell with learning and knowledge.

It’s an issue that eReaders will have to deal with at some point.  Perhaps someone can come up with an “old book” scent that could be applied to an eReader.  Or maybe that old musty scent will die off and be replaced by something different, something unique for every reader.  Who knows?  But the future will be a much different place as we lose the smell of books.

 

I’ve gone and lost my head.

Actually, I haven’t, but this is the wonderful version of me from May December Publication’s Chivalry is Dead anthology.  The book is out for Kindle already, and the print version should be available soon.

I have to hand it to May December, they do a wonderful job with the artwork for these books, and this has to be the coolest image of me I’ve ever seen.

The book, Chivalry is Dead, is the male half of the “marriage of the dead” duology, the first being Hell Hath No Fury featuring all female writers.  My story is entitled “Damsel in Distress” and is the story of a young woman trapped in her highrise apartment building as the zombie horde begins to fill the city.  It’s actually meant to be in the same universe as my story “Embedded” from May December’s Eye Witness Zombie.