Category: Ongoing Series

Drafts – The Abysswalker

It was the steed of a dead god.

Cel had always been told as much, but seeing the Abysswalker up close for the first time made it undeniable.

Even though it wasn’t a horse or any other beast of burden. Within seconds of seeing the large hump of it’s back, covered with metallic feathers that rippled over its body, it was obvious it wasn’t a larger version of any animal she knew. It’s head, vaguely shaped like a horse’s, only had calm, black eyes–at least from what she could see with the rest of its face covered by a golden helmet of gently swaying chain. On its side, what looked like a strange, vestigial arm–curled forward over the strap of its saddle–became a wing, at complete odds with its impossible legs.

They were the detail you always heard about when anyone spoke of the Abysswalker. The parts of its body responsible for its name. From her spot on the far side of the Walker’s boarding platform, she could only see the tops of them–long muscle corded in a way that made them look like tree trunks. But as she walked to the edge of the platform and looked down over the cliff’s edge, she saw them arching down an unknowable distance–a mile or more into misty nothing below them. One of the legs was straight, wooden muscles tight. The other curved, slack in a way that somehow didn’t demonstrate where its knees or ankles were.

Both legs stemmed from the Walker’s hind quarters.

“It really only has two legs?”

Its keeper chuckled. “Everyone always asks that. You pilgrims come here ready to let the Abysswalker carry you off into the unknown, but you’re all worried it’ll fall before you get there.”

Sacrificing your mundane life to ride the steed of a dead god into the Abyss, knowing that at some point, the Walker would return without you–that you’d be lost in another realm you couldn’t possibly imagine–was one thing. Having that steed stumble so you plummet to an early death in a mile-long pratfall was something else entirely.

“It’s surprisingly intimidating,” Cel said. “That’s all.”

A grunted chuckle as the keeper walked up and patted the Walker’s side. Cel heard it growl low before releasing a short cry. A trumpeted pop that echoed across the edge of the Abyss–the sound disappearing into its maelstrom of gentle, pearlescent clouds.

The Walker lifted its wings, exposing the rope ladder to its saddle.

“You sure you’re ready?” the keeper asked.

Cel looked at that ladder. Fidgeted with the straps of her travel pack, stuffed heavy and high over her back, but suddenly feeling too light.

Trying to keep her breathing steady, she looked back over Ashaiden–the immediate villages of Northwatch that she’d only just experienced, and the lands beyond, unseeable, where she’d grown up.

“Sure,” she said, because in that moment, no word could possibly be more decisive.

~~~

I woke up today with half of a post already written, but I decided I didn’t want to publish it. It was about my writing process and it felt a little too much like the last three months of my content, so I decided, “How about a Draft instead?”

With absolutely no idea what I’d write about, I looked at old, half-finished short stories from my discovery writing days and found a document titled “The Abysswalker,” which, when opened, turned out to actually be called “The Voidbeast” (because I’d been switching names for the story’s titular monster).

Seeing that “Abysswalker” was free though, I thought, “What would an Abysswalker actually be?” and that became the challenge for this Draft. Halfway through, I added on a secondary challenge of making this a “Megapremise” (a type of premise that I wrote a post about back in June) which worked out well enough that I kinda want to write more for this?

At any rate, thanks for reading. If you’re new here, I post every Sunday/Monday. If you liked this Draft, there’s a link to more of them on the left sidebar. But you can also find the Follow button there (on PC at least; on mobile, it’s in the top-right drop down menu) if you want to give my blog a follow. If you liked this post, please give it a Like so I can gauge how much all of you liked this content. It helps steer the ship when it comes to future posts.

All of that said, take care, stay safe, and Civ 6 is amazing. If you find it on sale or free on the Epic Game Store, it’s absolutely worth it. Unless you hate micromanaging the growth of a civilization for literally hundreds of turns. To each their own, I guess.

Gallery of Strangers – Actual, Normal Latinx Who Exist in the Bronx

I ran into a former coworker the other day.

It was a super short encounter. Basically a “Hello,” and, “Do you still work there?” and, “No, they were reopening in the middle of COVID,” and an extremely validating, “Pssh. Yeah, fuck that. I didn’t go back either.”

There was a little bit more to it, but that isn’t the point; the point is, I saw that coworker, and then, 10 minutes later, I thought I saw her coming out of a building on my block. Same height, same thin build, same hair, but totally different clothes and, I ultimately realized, different eyes above her mask.

Why am I talking about this?

Because it reminded me of something I’ve wanted to talk about for a while: some of the specific personalities you will actually encounter here in the Bronx.

Which I’m throwing out there because I’m A) sick of Hollywood’s bullshit. Sure, I’m totally glad we’re getting more diverse characters these days, but that diversity is taking its sweet time getting to the Latinx community. And for that same reason, I wanted to write this post because In the Heights just came out, and I need to eternally chisel in digital stone that WE’RE NOT A FUCKING MUSICAL. It seriously feels like the billionth time a new movie about Latinx turned out to be a street-level musical where everyone’s dancing and singing. And I just hate it.

But also, B) there are a ton of diverse Latinx personalities here in the Bronx that I’ve always wanted to highlight–in particular, the personalities of other former coworkers, brought to mind by that run-in. And, hey, if anyone is writing a story with Latinx characters, there’s a lot of personality to choose from. Hopefully, this will make that a little more clear.

How I’m Going to Handle This:

I’m just showcasing two Latinx personalities. Because I know this is borderline saucy and I don’t want to throw a ton of highly specific information at people.

I’ll start with the standard, bullshit Hollywood staple for Latinos and Latinas, and then I’ll give an example of one of the many types of personalities that exist for each–one that I’d like to see represented more often in Hollywood.

Full disclosure, I’m just making up throwaway names for these personalities (which will be very obvious once you see them), and, I feel like I can’t say enough that these are just a two of the personality types real Latinx people have. Please don’t read this as me saying, “All Latinos are [whatever niche personality I highlight].”

Also, even though I am Afro-Latino, I was raised in a Puetro Rican household. So, even though I really wanted to talk about the one coworker I love, who has a kind of personality I absolutely adore, I don’t feel comfortable talking about the Black experience or personalities that exist in Black communities. It just isn’t my place. So, today, we’re strictly talking Latinx.

Okay. That said, let’s begin.

Hollywood’s Latino Drug Dealer
VS
The Latino Goth Nerd

On one hand, we have Hollywood’s old standard–the Latino gang member that deals drugs. Eternal fodder for the exposition of a cop drama. I don’t even need to explain because you already know the stereotype I’m talking about–you’ve seen it a million times.

What I’d like to offer in contrast to that . . . is the Latino Nerd. In my mind, this will always be “Goth Nerd” because I was a Latino Goth Nerd when I was in high school.

But the point here is, any Latino who’s super into A) rock music and B) something nerdy. Pro-o-o-o-obably anime–specifically Dragonball Z. They definitely play a ton of video games. If they have straight hair, it’s probably super long. If they don’t . . . well, it’s probably still super long but put in a poofy ponytail or braided. They almost exclusively wear band t-shirts; 50/50 chance they are currently or were once in a metal band.

Also, they’re probably a bit hard to talk to because they get shit from everywhere for not fitting in. Seriously, imagine the usual social incongruity of a Goth, but in a society that is even more traditionalist than the white society Goths usually call home. Like, they don’t necessarily have bad family drama, but, for example, abuela doesn’t understand why he dresses so dark and / or can’t speak Spanish. Even if he can dance to Salsa, “Why does he have his hair like that???” Pretty much everyone he knows has, at one point, asked the same goddamn questions to the point that he is understandably loyal to the friends and family who just accept him.

I would love to see more of this personality type in pop culture because, obviously, it’s close to heart for me. But also, I still hate the ongoing drug dealer/criminal stereotype.

From what I’ve seen, the only example of this type of character is “Cisco” Ramon from The Flash. If you saw that character on that show and asked, “Is that a real person that even exists?” the answer is yes! You were looking at me the whole time! Only I recently cut my hair and I’m nerdy about writing, not science.

Anyway, moving on.

Hollywood’s Sassy Latina
VS
The Smart, Incredibly Focused Latina
Who’s Really Good at Everything

Yeah, the sassy Latina is Hollywood’s go-to Latina. She wears hoop earrings. She has her hair in ponytail. She has a ton of makeup on. And she don’t take shit from nobody. Also, that last bit is her entire personality.

What I’m suggesting instead: the smart, focused Latina who is great at everything and can achieve whatever she wants.

For this one, ha! I have an example now! AOC! Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is a fantastic example of this kind of personality.

But to explain a bit more, I’ll tell you about a chat I had with a coworker who had the same kind of personality. We were talking about a trip she was planning. At one point, she said that she was reading all of the legal fine print related to her plane tickets. And her hotel booking. And I don’t remember if she said she was renting a car, but if she was, she read the fine print for that too.

All of this came up because she brought up extremely specific return policy on airline tickets; I asked how she knew that and she told me–while adjusting her glasses.

Again, she that’s all of the fine print she came across while planning that trip. As amazing as it is scary. To this day, if you listen closely to the wind, you can still hear me ask, “What?”

And that reflex to be super prepared and on the ball is the main feature of this personality. These women are smart, usually great at their jobs, watch what they eat, don’t start drama with anyone because they’re too busy working on their own goals, dress well–they basically do everything right. They’re fluent in Spanish and English and maybe a third language–fuck I don’t know.

And, yeah, I’d love to see more of that personality represented in pop culture. Currently, the only example I’ve seen in nerddom is Spider-Man: Miles Morales’ version of Rio Morales, who was probably inspired by AOC (but still, I’ll take her over the comic version of Rio, who gets Fridged after having barely any dialogue, and Spider-Verse Rio, who was so firmly in the background that I can’t even conjure up her face).

And with that, we stop. Short and sweet. To the point. Hopefully indicative of the range of personalities that exist in Latinx communities. Personalities Hollywood almost always ignores.

And, if you’ve never thought about the personality of a Latinx character before, hopefully this post will inspire you to do so–particularly if you’re writing one. No need to feel guilty if you haven’t–Hollywood is great at teaching us to see tropes and nothing more.

But that doesn’t mean we have to let that happen.

~~~

Again, keeping it short and sweet this week. I know it’s a bit niche, but eh.

If you enjoyed this post and you’re down for reading more of my sometimes highly esoteric thoughts, please consider giving me a Like or a Follow. Also, I updated the site a bit so it’ll be easier to browse popular series. Most importantly though, I updated my “About Me” with a picture of me as a young lad. Fun!

I am currently outlining the finale of Memory. I wound up having to rework the one chapter leading up to the endgame (the finale has changed so much), but I am actually working out what happens now and it’s a crazy rush. I will keep you posted, but there’s really no way I’m not going to have a finished outline by the end of the week.

Until next time, take care, stay hydrated, and don’t preorder games!

Which I say because it was just E3 and, seriously, we all need that reminder.

No Man’s Sky.

Fallout 76.

Cyberpunk 2077.

We live in the age of games being released broken and incomplete.

If you’re really hyped for something, that’s more of a reason to not preorder it. And yes, I’m looking at you, Elden Ring. We are primed for a From Software bad launch. Stay vigilant, my friends.

Also, bye!

Let’s  Talk About – Loki & The Potential Birth of the “Megapremise”

Loki came out this week.

And, as a man who fully expected to hate that show, I was genuinely surprised by how much I enjoyed the first episode.

Will I enjoy all six episodes? Who knows. Can I emphatically say that its theme song is one of the best OST themes I’ve heard in a long, long time? Yes. Natalie Holt is my new hero.

But this isn’t a post about Natalie Holt. It’s a post about what I think Loki and shows like it might bring to the fiction table.

And, again, to clarify, that’s a might; I am not Publishers Weekly, nor am I an agent keen on trends.

All I want to do here today, with you, is wonder . . . if Loki is the beginning of what I’m labeling “the megapremise.”

What Is the Megapremise?

The best way to explain is to start with Loki.

Loki is a TV show about the Norse god, Loki. A version of him who invaded modern-day Earth, was defeated by superheroes, and stole back a magical cube that teleported him backward in time. Because of this, he’s arrested by a bunch of time police who proceed to show him his life, (light spoilers) including his own death. (/light spoilers)

(not so light spoilers) As a result, he decides to join the time police to help capture . . . another, presumably evil version of himself. (/not so light spoilers)

With or without spoilers, that premise is just wild.

And so is the premise that (seriously, get this) a super-powered witch, whose husband—an android—died, is inexplicably living in a sitcom where her android husband is alive again.

These premises are ridiculous—in the best way. They are, in my opinion, when Marvel is at their best these days.

And they’re also what I think of as megapremises; story ideas that are so weirdly specific and bizarre that there is nothing else like them. Premises so strange and unique to certain characters that it isn’t even possible to duplicate them (i.e. Loki would not be the same show without Marvel’s Loki, and—even worse—WandaVision would not be the same show without MCU Wanda and Vision).

And these megapremises . . . might be the future?

Because They Aren’t An Inherently Marvel Thing

It seems like they are (especially with how I defined them).

It seems like you just couldn’t write a story like Loki without ten years of build-up.

But I don’t think that’s actually true.

Creating a megapremise is easy for Marvel because they have well established characters with that decade of continuity. Every new story builds on that, so something like Guardians of the Galaxy isn’t just a movie about a space-faring team of misfits—it’s a movie about a space-faring team of misfits that ties into the special rocks a big purple man is after so he can kill half of the universe.

But—and if I’m saying anything with this post, it’s this—you can just create a megapremise. With totally new characters you made up, put into as bizarre and specific of a situation as you can possibly imagine. Everything can be explained in-story, and none of it actually requires the excess foundation new Marvel movies have (i.e. if you write a story about literal aliens pretending to be human in a small town, learning comparatively intense human emotions while slowly getting enveloped in the town’s mania [because I’ve decided they unwittingly landed in a cult town and this is a horror story now], you don’t need it to take place in the same continuity with any of your other stories).

What I’m saying here is, seriously, we can just write crazy shit like Loki.

And, I mean . . . am I weird, or is that the most exciting fucking thing ever?

You don’t have to write a normal procedural cop drama with a twist—that your partner is a demon or whatever. You can write a story about—I dunno—a law enforcement group that’s just been newly established at the center of the Earth, which humanity has only just discovered.

You don’t have to write a fantasy adventure about a group of adventurers on a quest to save the king. You can write about a—whoa-a-a-a-a-a I’m not sharing the idea I just thought of. It’s too cool. I’m actually writing that one.

Fuck—now I have to make up another example.

You can write a story about a group of aliens questing through a dangerous planet full of weird, thin, green trees and giant insects. A planet that is obviously Earth, where they search for their dying king, who fled here—I dunno.

Essentially, you can make your stories all-the-way weird and unique.

To reel myself in a bit here, yes, I am totally aware that some writers already do this. You, who’s reading this, possibly already live and breathe premises that would blow the minds of us normies.

But if you don’t . . . maybe try to make a weird, totally-out-there story just to see if it’s a good fit?

Because even if this isn’t going to become a real trend . . .

. . . it’s still incredibly fun to try to make up the weirdest, least standard premise you possibly can.

And, besides . . . I think I want the future where a new movie is like, “Meet Gary, a sentient planet who’s looking for love!” or whatever.

And, real talk, I am definitely writing that story idea I got in the middle of this post. Seriously, if anything, know that I am amazingly pumped for that, and maybe you will be too if you settle on a beyond-strange idea you really like.

And I hope you do. Because we all deserve to have at least one really bizarre idea that we’re working on for nobody but ourselves.

~~~

Okay. I am calling it here because it’s 4AM and I am about to pass out.

If you enjoyed this post, I try to get posts out every Sunday. Today, this post came out late because my weekend was weirdly busy. I will admit that part of it was a long D&D session, but you can’t be mad, because I played a Warforged Fighter who was a mix between Robocop and a Terminator. His name was Silver and I accidentally min-maxed the shit out of him, so he was an absolute monster that didn’t get scratched once. Anyway, if you liked this post, please drop a Like or consider giving my blog a follow.

Last update here: I am at the end of my outline for Memory, my current WIP. I finished my Tally Run and I’m outlining the finale now. I just wanted to stay honest about that on here. Which I will continue to do next week.

Until then, take care, and always remember that ice tea that you brew yourself, with tea bags, is infinitely better than powder mix ice teas. Seriously, there’s no contest; brew those bags, put them in water with a little sugar, pour them over ice—so good.

Stay hydrated—bye!

Process in Progress #4 – The “Promises Tally” Run

Hello!

It’s been a crazy week for me writing-wise.

The last time I talked about my outlining process specifically, I explained that I had a hyper detailed system for laying out my stories before writing them.

This post is about how I tweaked that outlining system this week. And how it was super satisfying.

If you’re new here, yes, I am a writer. But also, I am the most bureaucratic writer that exists. Seriously, from what I’ve seen (and I’m just realizing it as I write this—holy shit), I weirdly break my stories down into data–on clean, literal spreadsheets–more than any other writer I know. I seriously use Excel.

But whatever–the point is, today, we’re talking about how I decided to do a “Promises Tally” editing run on my outline. And how that is going super well.

Because My Original Outlining Approach Was Too Much

If you remember “Process in Progress #1,” I detailed the actual outline I use, with pictures, explaining how it works and focuses heavily on a part of the novel writing process I didn’t take into account before–promises.

In that post, I also made a quick point about how the Promises Outline was pared down, because when I first devised it, I also color-coded each and underlined parts of every beat that met the promise (which I rightly stopped doing because that was too much, even for me.)

Whelp, here I am admitting that assigning promises to every beat while I was writing those beats, was also too much. That approach just destroyed my flow.

So I stopped noting promises for each beat as I wrote, just like I’d stopped color-coding and underlining significant parts of each beat.

But the key phrase there is, “as I wrote.” The idea was always to go back and fill in the promises above each part of my outline, but I would only do that after writing the majority of it first (so more of a review process that I could use to fix an easily tweakable story skeleton).

Well, this week, after having 97% of the outline finished (basically everything but the finale), I went back for that run, intending to add all of the story’s promises to each beat, hoping it would be easy.

And I discovered that not only was it easy–it was massively gratifying.

And it turned into an amazing, data-generating QA pass.

The Promises Tally Run

I’m a big sarcasm guy, but I am not being sarcastic about this.

Maybe it’s because assigning promises while writing was such a slog, but doing it as part of my final edit before writing prose was fast and weirdly satisfying.

Such that I thought, “Wait. I can get more data from this.”

And thus was born the Promises Tally Run.

Essentially (and it feels like I’m being the most opaque rollercoaster admitting this but) . . . . I decided to color-code my promises. And tally them.

I don’t know why WordPress crushes these images so hard, even at their preferred resolution, but if you’d like to read a slightly more legible version of this screenshot, click on the image and it will open in a new tab. Also, my apologies.

I know. Just hear me out.

This color-coding is really just a way to make this outline a heat map. At a glance, I can tell that a beat, scene, or chapter heavily focuses on a particular character or certain aspects of the plot.

And the tally makes that effort practical for me as a writer. The goal of this run was, as mentioned, to manage my arcs, which I’ve tied to promises—at least for this novel. A tally of ‘promises advanced’ by the end of each chapter makes it unavoidably clear how much I’ve advanced each promise and arc per chapter. And an additional “MS Total” tally makes it clear what progress I’ve made with them in the outline overall.

Again, click the image if you’d like to see a larger, slightly less garbage version.

I know that this looks like a bit much–and trust me, this is not one of those times where I’m suggesting you try this out yourself. What I will say, however, is that it’s yielded interesting data that’s already made me consider how to write future projects.

For example, Memory has a solid spread between the progression of its main characters’ arcs, which is awesome. I’ve done some smoothing on those numbers, of course, but regardless, I’m very excited, because it confirmed that, yes, the pace-crushing dream sequences I was going to put in were as unnecessary as they felt.

Also, the final arcs for the protagonist intertwine in ways I didn’t realize until I had to choose which arcs were advanced by certain scenes.

Also, Memory has a lot of action, which is fine—it is an Action Adventure Fantasy novel. But I definitely want to bring that tally down in my next projects. And probably make separate tallies for things like “Action,” “Drama,” and “Intrigue,” so I can tell which specific avenue is lacking in the subgenre I’m trying to write.

At this point, I’m up to Chapter 10 of this run because I’m taking my time with it (not rushing for this one aspect of my process at the very least), but I’m definitely going to be outlining the end of the novel by next weekend, and moving onto prose shortly after.

If I can combine the speedy approach to prose from my NaNoWriMo runs with this process, streamlining as I go . . .

. . . then I think I can actually become a novelist.

But I’m not going to jinx that.

I’m just going to post this.

And get back to my outline.

Wish me luck.

~~~

My name is Louis Santiago and I’m in a hurry, so no crazy closing remarks this time.

If you liked this post, you can give me a follow on the Sidebar on the left side of the screen (if you’re on PC) or the drop down menu on the top right (if you’re on mobile). I don’t write for algorithms, but Likes and Follows are the only way I can tell what people like and what they don’t, so consider dropping one of those if you liked this post.

That said, take are, stay safe, and stay cool—it’s pretty hot in New York already and Summer hasn’t even started. Hooray.

Drink water!

Let’s Talk About – SWOGing, A Star Wars Phenomenon That Just Made It To Resident Evil: Village

I finished Resident Evil: Village.

And I have two things to say.

First, in case you’ve heard different from certain websites or YouTube personalities, I will be the completely honest party and say, man, that game is not good.

I can seriously go on an entire rant about conflicting game mechanics; bugs; bad conveyance; manipulative, time-wasting game design; false advertising (like, a very obviously, intentionally misleading ad campaign [Chris doesn’t turn into an evil werewolf even though this is the goddamn box art]) and all the other things Village does wrong, but that’s not what this post is about. Just take my word for it: don’t buy it. Just watch a playthrough of it

So what is this post about? Why am I bringing up Village at all?

Because of its stupid, obviously rushed, plot twist-dependent story.

Specifically, the way that it does what I now call the “SWOG Cameo.”

That’s short for the “Star Wars OG Cameo.” Or I guess maybe I can call it the “Rogue One Cameo,” since that’s where this weird, weird practice started.

What is a SWOG Cameo?

TL;DR: It’s when a franchise does an extremely masturbatory cameo for one of its classic characters in the 11th hour of its latest installment. These cameos can be a little longer—with them having a small stake in the plot—or they can be as short as one scene, but either way, the plot would’ve been fine (or significantly better) without their involvement. And their involvement is always over-the-top flattering for them, with the story falling over itself to make them look as awesome as possible. Why?

For fan service.

The SWOG Cameo is purely fan-service. Put in a fan favorite character, have them be a badass and do awesome stuff, and then sit back and watch the internet go absolutely crazy for it even though it took zero effort.

And it is absolutely a Star Wars staple at this point.

It started with Rogue One, where the climax of the film includes a super masturbatory scene of Darth Vader chopping up some Rebels. People always point to that Darth Vader Scene as the best part of the entire film . . . which I feel really says something about the rest of the movie, but man-oh-man am I tired of having that argument.

It continued in the new trilogy when Disney SWOG’d the entire last Rey film by throwing in the Emperor with paper thin narrative justifications. Remember when he created a storm with Force Lightning to destroy a bunch of ships? J. J. Abrams was really hoping you’d love that.

A little under the radar, Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order also got SWOG’d. (Spoilers) for that game, but you spend the last 2 minutes running from Darth Vader, who shows up out of narrative thin air, murders the last boss, and then starts pulling apart the walls and machinery of the base you’re trying to escape from, metal swirling around him like he’s a literal god. True story: the friend I played it with thought it was awesome that he showed up and wasn’t at all upset about all the emotional storytelling getting sucked out the airlock immediately (/spoilers).

And, also a true story, that same friend (and all of my other friends [save the one writer]) also loved it when—(spoilers) for The Mandalorian—in the last two minutes of the final episode of season 2, Luke Skywalker showed up and easily took apart 30 Death Trooper robots who were conveyed as invincible (/spoilers).

Yeah, it’s called SWOGing because it is 100% a Star Wars thing.

At least it was until now.

Chris Redfield is listed as “Alpha” in Ethan’s phone?
Are you fucking kidding me??

The SWOGing in Resident Evil: Village is so bizarre.

To be totally fair, Chris was also in Resident Evil VII, but it was not the same. For starters it wasn’t a flattering cameo at all.

But in Village, it’s downright unhealthy.

And, look, spoilers ahead for Village, but, again—seriously—don’t play it. It’s just a waste. Lady Dimitrescu and her cool castle are part of the false advertising; she’s seriously in it for 3 hours and then dies (seriously, she’s the first boss).

To establish a framework here, the game starts with Chris Redfield apparently killing your wife for some reason. He takes you into custody, but the route to whatever detention facility passes through a village full of mutated monster people.  Oops! The van you’re in gets attacked, you wind up in the village, and you don’t see Chris again until hours later, at which point he doesn’t explain a plot twist because a giant fish destroys the house you’re in mid-conversation (it’s as stupid as it sounds). You don’t see him again until the end of the game, when he explains the game’s plot twist to you. He gives you a tank, you fight the second to last boss, get killed (in plot), and then perspective switches to Chris, who, in classic SWOG fashion, is tooled out the ass with insanely powerful weapons that you use to cut through monsters like butter.

And, yes, this is the point where it starts to get weird. As Chris, you stroll through the titular village, that it took Ethan hours to get through, in 3 minutes, turning monsters that Ethan struggled with into swiss cheese. At one point, you have to fight two of a monster that Ethan had to run from and find a special gun to kill; with Chris, it took about 12 seconds to kill them both without even getting scratched. When I had to fight an invincible giant as Chris, I called down a literal air strike to kill it. Easy peasy.

All of this while Chris’ team of soldiers call him “Cap” and “Alpha” over the radio. And I’m aware it’s because he’s a captain and I guess his code name is “Alpha,” but it just feels like the equivalent of people calling him “Supes” and “Big Dick.” “This quadrant is all clear, Commander Best-Ever Example of Masculinity. What are your orders??”

Holy shit. Resident Evil . . . please calm down . . . with the goddamn fan service. Seriously.

Why Exactly Is This a Bad Thing?

Aside from the obvious—that fan service is lazy and it sucks—there’s the fact that it usually ruins newer characters’ plotlines and arcs.

For example, Rey, Finn, Poe, and Kylo all lost a ton of story potential when Palpatine stepped in. Whatever their narrative could’ve been was lost the moment their villain became fan service. Because, without Palpatine showing up, the obvious answer is that there could have been some kind of intense, emotional finale with Kylo Ren (who would have stayed evil if I was writing things).

In The Mandalorian, the characters could’ve had an awesome scene where they devise some way to make it past the Death Troopers (spoilers) instead of standing in place and watching Luke cut his way through them (/spoilers).

In Rogue One, the 2 minutes spent on Vader could’ve been divvied up among the protagonists in scenes or beats that make us actually care about them. Or scenes that, at the very least, helped the audience remember their names.

In Star Wars Jedi: Fallen Order, (spoilers) the arrival of Vader genuinely and completely ruins the finale; right as that game’s uniquely complex (for Star Wars) villain, the Second Sister, is about to decide if she’s going to be redeemed, Vader steps in and literally kills any chances we had of complex storytelling. Because either our protagonist, Cal, was going to have to kill her and go back to tell her former Jedi Master about it, or the Sister was going to decide to be redeemed, and we would potentially get to see her go through that in the sequel (/spoilers).

But it’s actually even worse in Resident Evil: Village.

Because, in Village, although the Chris cameo doesn’t necessarily pull time away from Ethan (spoilers) –he’s already dead at that point—(/spoilers), it does oddly recontextualize our feelings for our protagonist, Ethan.

By which I mean it helps us absolutely hate him.

If you were to look through reviews of this game, pretty much every review you find will mention how stupid and unlikeable Ethan is. He’s extremely dense, really bad at action one-liners, and unbelievably gullible (at one point in the game, you have to frustratingly watch from his perspective as a villain very obviously stalls for time and Ethan falls for it). And all of those realizations get that much worse the moment you’re allowed to play as ultra-badass Chris Redfield. By the time (spoilers) you’re back in control of Ethan, who it turns out is one of the monsters from the previous game (it’s not as interesting as it sounds), you just want to be playing as Chris again. The entire time you’re fighting the last boss, you’re thinking, “I could just air strike her and be done with it if I was playing Chris.” And when Ethan ultimately decides to sacrifice himself even though he does not need to in any way, for any reason whatsoever, and it’s totally hollow because he’s dying anyway, all I could manage to think was, “Thank God.” Like, “I’m so glad I’ll never have to be in Ethan’s shoes ever again” (/spoilers).

But Chris’s role in Village also takes SWOGing to a whole other level.  Because the problem isn’t just that his presence made us dislike Ethan even more . . .

. . . it also made Chris himself less malleable as a protagonist.

Because now, he’s not just a man. By the end of Resident Evil: Village, he’s more like a myth; a super hero with massive connections behind the scenes, allowing him to achieve insane feats (like leveling an entire village in 5 minutes). I can’t imagine him having relatable, human drama anymore. Or, rather, I can’t imagine the writers at Capcom giving him relatable, human drama anymore. It feels like he will always be the untouchable badass in the background now.

And that is the real problem with this growing trend. SWOGing ruins the tension of a story and usurps focus from that story’s characters, sure. But it also elevates the OG to legend status, setting a new bar of awesomeness for them. They become untouchable, very, very unlikely to die, make mistakes, or do anything beyond dropping into a story and being perfect for a little while. Village ensures that if we ever get to play Chris in another Resident Evil game, it’s going to be a tacticool run-and-gun experience where he kills armies of monsters without breaking a sweat. Because now, it kind of has to be.

Vader, Luke, they’re all already legendary; they wouldn’t be appearing as protagonists in anything anyway.

But other SWOG characters totally might . . . until they’re used for an over-the-top, fan service cameo.

Which sucks because I’ve recently seen an OG character appear in a sequel with new characters and it worked well. There’s a lot wrong with Terminator: Dark Fate, but probably the best thing about it was Linda Hamilton returning as Sarah Connor, because Sarah had new drama, and it was really cool watching Hamilton sell that drama . . . It definitely wasn’t as cool when they tried to sell us on a Terminator raising a family and becoming a good guy, but whatever.

My point is, I hope SWOGing stops so characters can continue being human.

Instead of becoming caricatures, designed to make us clap like nostalgia-drunk seals.

~~~

Man, I almost didn’t get this one out at all because I’m weirdly sick. I don’t know why or how, but I slept 12 hours last night and then woke up exhausted and (still to this point) light-headed. I’m seriously off to just drink cold water and sit in front of a fan (and hope that I just overheated [yes, I am Grass Type, btw]).

If you’re new here, I post every Sunday. You can always stop by next week or give this blog a follow if you want to hear the opinions of an aspiring writer on the internet.

Until next time, take care, stay safe, and seriously, stay hydrated.

Process in Progress #3 – My Villain Isn’t Palpatine (and, Seriously, Thank God)

I had to do my taxes this week.

They just got away from me. I was definitely spoiled last year, able to get to them at the point I naturally would have (in June), so when I learned that they were due earlier this year, my brain just kept hearing “Not yet though,” until days before they were due.

Cool.

So I busted my ass to do them and managed to finish before Resident Evil: Village and Subnautica: Below Zero came out (because the true hell would’ve been owning but not being able to play two of my most anticipated games of 2021 because I had to finish extremely tedious paperwork), but, as you can imagine, this week was still a major pain. Which is also why this post is a little late.

That said though, somewhere in the mix, nearly lost, was a super important triumph:

I finally finished the backstory for my villain.

And, to frame that success in the most accessible light I can imagine, I have to add that–thank God–he’s not just Palpatine.

That Easy Palpy Goodness

I don’t know if it’s just me . . . but the reflex to make villains like Palpatine . . . is weirdly strong.

I don’t mean that I make them look like him or act like him; none of my villains has ever criticized the protagonist for their lack of vision and shot lightning out of their hands.

But, because I grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy, and the prequels came out while I was in high school, Palpatine’s backstory stands out more than any other backstory for any other villain I love. Pro-o-o-o-obably because no other villain I love has full movies devoted to their backstory.

Well, I mean, Darth Vader obviously does, but I always choose to forget that his backstory is “he hated sand a lot.”

Okay–jokes aside, I never really think of Vader as a villain of Star Wars; in my eyes, he’s more of a puppet used by the real villain: Palpatine.

Anyway, my point is, I watched Palpatine become the Emperor in my teens and early 20’s, so whenever I think about my own villains, even if they’re a floating mask that looks like an eye and attaches to people’s faces, forcing them to do its bidding (yes, one of my early villains was basically Majora’s Mask), when I try to dive into their backstory, it is always super duper easy to imagine that they were a politician in an ancient era who fomented civil war that allowed them to gain power.

The villain for Memory, who actually is an old, male emperor, really re-e-e-e-e-eally challenged that reflex.

Thankfully, a totally different problem with his backstory helped me shake off that case of the Palpies.

A Forced Restart

I absolutely hate scrapping massive blocks of worldbuilding and starting over. It’s just soul-crushing every time, especially if it’s tangible pages of writing you’ve already done that you literally have to delete.

And even though it was written in outline form, my first run at my villain’s backstory was many pages long. Wa-a-a-a-ay longer than it should’ve been.

The thing is, I was forced to restart it because it was built around a discrepancy with my magic system that didn’t make sense–a super esoteric plot hole that would only be visible to me on the back end . . . which meant I just could not let it stand. Because I just obsessively hate plot holes so much that it’s borderline dysfunctional.

Anyway, I smoothed out the magic system, went back to restart the villain’s backstory, and realized that one of his major drives (learning how to wield magic better than his siblings so he could make a name for himself like his father stressed all of them should) just wouldn’t work anymore (because, post change, no one can wield magic except for gods). That meant I couldn’t go the route of him just being power-obsessed.

Which was, ultimately, such a blessing that I’m here writing about it. Because, without realizing, I’d slathered on a little bit too much of the Palpy on the building blocks of my villain. I didn’t go full Palpatine, but the dude was an old man who manipulated different political parties to fight while hiding he had crazy powers . . . Definitely too much Palp.

But being forced to find a new, more unique motivation yielded a backstory that feels weird and interesting. I can’t share it here, but the major thing is that my villain wasn’t an insane narcissist who manipulated his way into power. Instead, he was just a guy who had pretty intense issues, put in a variety of world-specific situations that ultimately made him a monster.

And I guess that’s the key term here: world-specific.

This is, in no way, an instructional post. If anything, this is just me venting about how I’m still learning how to fight bad reflexes when it comes to my creative process.

But I think the most important take away here is that my new villain’s backstory is world-specific; the things that made him who he is are only possible in the world of this story, and that feels so integral to making him unique that “How are their motivations world-specific?” is going to be in my villain-design tool kit from now on. Because that alone will force me to think more creatively about the world as a whole, and that just feels right to me.

Whether or not that’s right for you is totally up to you. I’m not here trying to preach today. I’m just a man freshly done with his taxes, venting.

And celebrating. Cause my WIP got several degrees less typical this week, and that’s always a good feeling.

And, more important than anything: because I finally finished the villain’s backstory, I can finally finish the outline this week.

Which means I’m just a week out . . . from finally writing prose again.

I’m so stoked I could open-hand slap a cake right now.

~~~

To be clear, I’ve never open-hand slapped a cake before.

But I absolutely could right now.

Anyway, thanks for reading. I post here every Sunday. Full warning though: this is just an aspiring Fantasy writer’s blog, and, as you can see, I post whatever weird, sometimes entirely self-centered bullshit I decide to write about each week. I just do not cater to algorithms; in fact, I usually don’t write about new fads until literal years after they’re popular. Example: I watched Terminator: Dark Fate for the first time the other day. I just don’t care about being timely. I care about writing, and experiencing stories outside of their hype windows. So if you’re down for reading the perspectives of a guy who cares a lot about storytelling but doesn’t give a single shit about what’s happening on the Epic Games Store, well, hey, there’s a Follow button on the side bar on the left side of the screen (on PC) or the upper right corner drop down menu (on mobile).

Until next time, stay safe and try making resin jewelry. It’s a relaxing, easy hobby. Just sit somewhere pretty; pop open a window; wear safety goggles, a face mask, and gloves; mix up some resin with whatever colors; pour it and leave it for a day. Come back, see what worked out and what didn’t, try something else.

Just allow something fun and uncomplicated to exist outside of your control. Because, especially if you’re a writer, you deserve to enjoy some chaotic beauty in your life.

Writing Prompt Workshop #1 – Sensory Relay

Hey, everybody.

This week, I thought I’d start a new series, which I’m calling “The Writing Prompt Workshop.”

I’m finally about to wrap up the outline for my rewrite of Memory, my 2015 NaNoWriMo novel, I figured now was the time to get a little practice in.

Also, I’m just wildly pumped to actually write prose again instead of editing and outlining. So pumped, in fact, that I’m bringing my habit of making up weird writing prompts to House of Error.

And for the very first prompt of the series, I’m going to try to use one sense to elicit a reaction from a different sense entirely, which I’m calling “The Sensory Relay Prompt.” Just as an example, it’s like trying to describe a smell that makes a reader feel cold. I have no idea how successful I’ll be, but I’ll do my best not to cheat.

Also, this will definitely be longer on my end than it will be for you, because I’m only going to post what I feel are successes, and those successes are probably just going to be a sentence or two each. Whatever snippets I post will have the senses I tried to evoke beneath them.

That said, here we go.

The sky was a muted grey–a mottled, old canvas, crossed and circled by shadow-dark seagulls. He barely heard them over the crash of waves, spray hissing as it rode the wind.

Sight to Touch.

Sound to Touch.

We’re talking temperature here. Not sure if that’s too easy, but hey, it’s a start.

—

The slow sway of the leaves smelled like rain. Like soil made tender by a storm.

Smell to Touch. Trying to evoke my favorite kind of cool, Spring breeze.

Specifically though, I wanted to give the sense of stepping on soft soil with the second sentence. Incredibly hard to do without saying “soft.” Definitely cheating in the end with “tender,” but man, I must’ve written “that gives under foot” ten different ways.

Okay. Enough nature talk. And enough “[Whatever] to Touch.”

—

She slipped immediately, feet sliding until she splashed into the stream burbling through the sewer access pipe. It was so warm.

“Godammit.”

“You okay?”

She looked up at him. “How could I be?” And then she was doing her best to find some part of the pipe that her hands didn’t slip away from.

Touch / Sound to Smell.

—

But how the bread looked didn’t matter the moment it reached his tongue. It was almost sharp, poking his pallet until he maneuvered it. The only thing that made it food was a whisper of yeast, so light on his tongue that he wasn’t sure if he was smelling it or tasting it.

But then, he was hanging onto that phantasmal almost-flavor, because when he bit into it, it crumbled into a gravel so course his jaw stuttered.

Taste / Touch to Sound? Totally reliant on that last sentence to maybe invoke an insane crunch, but I . . . definitely got carried away. Sorry not sorry; I just love describing bad food. I do not know why—I’m just fucking owning it.

—

Maintenance waxed the floor with something that was sharp in her nose. A chemical tinge she blew back out instinctively, so tacky that it refused to be exhaled.

A sterile sheen that clung to her heels with every step.

Smell / Touch to Sound.

Man, Smell to Sound is the hardest thing in the world to convey. It seriously took me an hour to get those three sentences, and I wound up cheating in the end.

—

The paper smell hit him first as the bag settled on his head, holes–cut by a rounded scissors–not quite lining up with his eyes, no matter how hard he fidgeted. At one point, he tried whipping it around and down with a quick roll and snap of his head, but when it settled, the eyes had switched, left oval in place, right oval somewhere up at his eyebrow–only his own breath rushing out of both.

Smell / Touch to Sound.

Had to try for Smell to Sound one last time, but it is next level rough.

~~~

Okay. Well, that was extremely fun for me and I immediately kind of love this series.

Thanks for joining me. I know this may have been a weird, short post, but I highly recommend trying this Sensory Relay Prompt as a way to flex the descriptive muscles.

If you’re new here, I post every Sunday. If you like, you can give me a Follow on the Sidebar to the left (on PC), or the drop down menu on the top right (on mobile). Or just drop on by!

But either way, be safe, get vaccinated, and to all the moms out there, Happy Mother’s Day!

Something to Read / Watch / Play – May 2021

I’m getting this post out a bit later than I normally would . . . for about the exact reason I decided to take a break this week.

I had . . . a weird week.

Not terrible, but definitely exhausting. I got my sleeping schedule in order, which is cool, but every night since, all of my dreams have involved different people from my past?

As if I’m a character in one of my own goddamn books, I go to sleep, dream about a character from my backstory in a friendly, intimate scenario that never happened, and then I wake up like, “Why?”

Whatever. Point is, I wasn’t feeling it this week.

But, I started doing a new thing last month where, every day, I have to do something new. Watch something I’ve never watched, eat something I’ve never eaten, etc. I kinda love it.

And, since starting that, I’ve wanted to make a series to talk about the new things I’ve enjoyed the most.

And I figured, “Why not make my ‘Break’ posts into that?” so here we are.

Keep in mind that this is going to be an extremely laid back post (because I still want it to feel like a Break).

But with that said, let’s kick off this new “Something to Read / Watch / Play” series with . . .

Something to Read:

The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie takes a bit to ramp up. But when it does, it really does.

I will spoil absolutely nothing here. I feel like I can’t talk about it without ruining some part of the experience.

So all I will say is, if you’re down for reading a Fantasy novel that presents an extremely interesting take on gods, interwoven with a political mystery / intrigue plot, and written with a masterful use of second person perspective, check out The Raven Tower.

No lie–kind of embarrassing–I hugged my copy for ten minutes when I finished reading it. So good!

Something to Watch:

I . . . am still shocked by how good HBO’s Watchmen series was.

It is nothing like Zack Snyder’s adaptation; all the ways that movie completely missed the mark of the original comics, this show does not. Clearly created by someone who read and loved the source material.

Actually, speaking of the source material, you will need to read Alan Moore’s original Watchmen series before watching this. If you haven’t, the Watchmen comic is still really good (a gateway drug the same way A Game of Thrones was for Fantasy), but if you’ve already read it, you can jump right in.

I was a little let down by the finale, but in the end, when I tried to guess how this story came to be (a game I play with all fiction), I assumed it was a plot someone lovingly crafted for decades after reading the graphic novel, and then fought for years to get it published somewhere. No idea if that’s true, but it feels true.

If you’re looking for a superhero show that dives head first into really heavy issues and fleshes out nearly all of its characters, check out Watchmen. As a nerd out of time, perpetually watching / playing / reading things years after the hype has died down, I’m telling you that Watchmen has my vote for Best Comic Book Show Ever Released.

Something to Play:

I almost don’t want to write this, because I just want to keep it for myself.

But . . .

Spiritfarer . . . is beautiful.

Beautiful in a way that no other game I’ve ever played is beautiful.

And, man, I’ve written this section so many times, deleted it, and started over because if I say exactly how I feel about it this game, it would color your experience with it, and that would be absolutely criminal.

So I will just say Spiritfarer is important to me in a way other games aren’t. It perfectly balances its story and mechanics, something that games that try to be emotionally impactful usually struggle with.

I recommend playing it. Specifically though, I recommend experiencing Spiritfarer alone, without looking anything up.

Just do what feels right.

And I hope that it helps you the same way it helped me.

~~~

Alright. I’m gonna go relax and mentally prepare for the dentist appointment I have tomorrow.

Until next time, stay safe, hug your animals, and eat your oatmeal.

Edited in Post – The Falcon & The Winter Soldier

Disclaimer 1: Spoilers for The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. Seriously, if you haven’t watched the entire series, read no further.

Disclaimer 2: I enjoyed TF&TWS. After last week’s post, I was happy that the finale answered a few questions I had and focused enough on Sam that I wasn’t annoyed. Last week, I was definitely on a rage bender from The New Mutants, and jumped the gun on some heavy criticism of The Adventures of Birdman & Arm Man. I just wanted to take a moment to say I pro-o-o-o-obably should’ve waited for the final episode before tearing into it (last week’s post really could’ve been a well deserved, merciless takedown of The New Mutants, a movie that perfectly caps the bullshit spectacle that was the majority of the FoX-Men universe).

Having said that . . . I am a very heavy editor. I’ve admitted that a bunch of times on this site. It’s just in my nature to think about how a story could have been better. And nothing, from my favorite series to my own writing, escapes that obsessive “it could have been better” reflex. Seriously, I loved She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, but my very first “Edited in Post” was on that series anyway. Actually, I think this series might always be for movies and shows I love (because I tried a few weeks back to write one for a movie I didn’t like and ran out of steam 2 paragraphs in).

What I’m getting at though: as a man who likes Marvel stuff and enjoyed The Falcon & The Winter Soldier, I just . . . really think it could have been better.

To the extent that I re-e-e-e-eally had to do an “Edited in Post” after the series finale.

If you’re new here, “Edited in Post” is a script doctor series; a vehicle by which I, a random aspiring writer on the internet, explains how I would’ve edited a movie or TV show if its script hit my desk in pre-production. This is all 100% for fun, so if you love TF&TWS, cool. This post in no way threatens that.

How I’m going to tackle this: a list of edits I would’ve made followed by a super rough outline for how I would’ve reworked the story.

That said, let’s just jump into the edits. And yes, we’re starting gentle to establish a baseline for the kind of edits I’d make and the reasons I’d make them.

Edit 1: Make It So One of the Senators
Was Sam’s Former Commander

If there was only one change I could make to the show, this would be it.

I would’ve just added a named Senator to the cast. And, in the very first episode, in a brief, snappy exchange (in the crowd after the shield passing ceremony), I would’ve conveyed that when Sam was in the military, that Senator was his CO. And maybe that former CO is still comfortable speaking to him with authority (not belittling him, but definitely pulling rank, with Sam saluting and calling him “sir,” etc.). In this same scene, the Senator would thank Sam for taking his suggestion to give up the shield, conveying that he was pivotal in getting Sam to turn the shield over to the government.

In episode 2, after the reveal that the shield went directly to John Walker, we get a tense phone call between Sam and that commander who basically says, “This is just the way things have to be,” to convey that classic “it is what it is <shrug> oh well,” down-talking energy that shitty government officials have. Maybe here, he more abrasively pulls rank and asks if Sam is questioning the military, even though Sam is an Avenger who helped save half of the universe.

In the final episode, that Senator is among those saved from the Flag Smashers (maybe taking the lines of the one male Senator who told Sam he didn’t understand politics) and we’d get the catharsis of Sam challenging his morals and winning–on camera. Just to make things a bit more personal for Sam (which I think was missing) without making insane changes to every single episode.

Okay. Turning the Editing Dial up just a notch . . .

Edit 2: More Isaiah Bradley and the Project Rebirth Suit

Definitely getting crazier here, but I would have added another scene with Isaiah Bradley or his grandson, Eli.

I’ve thought about it a lot and there are so many ways this could’ve been done, but my goal for adding more Isaiah would’ve been threefold.

  1. I would’ve wanted him to seriously and more intensely challenge Sam’s feelings about the government way, way earlier.
  2. I would’ve wanted to (again) make things more personal for Sam.
  3. And I would’ve wanted him to somehow dismissively give Sam the suit he wore while he was doing missions after Project Rebirth.

The most extravagant way to do all of this: Isaiah lives in Sam’s town from the very beginning. Maybe he was an old man Sam always knew, who always bitterly challenged him for serving in the military and/or wasn’t impressed by him being an Avenger, particularly for working with Captain America. When Isaiah finally reveals the truth to Sam and tells him to leave, maybe he adds, “While you’re at it, take this too. And you throw it in the goddamn gutter when you leave,” and tosses an old duffle at him.

When Sam leaves, he opens the bag to find an old, burned suit that’s similar to Captain America’s–an MCU take on his costume from the comics, with logical alterations (maybe no headband, no scales, different color tones, etc.).

The less extravagant way to do this (and the way that I definitely prefer) would’ve been Sam going back to Isaiah’s house, but only Eli comes to the door. I would’ve done this mid-series, with Eli telling Sam some story from Isaiah’s past to explain why Isaiah is done with all of this and won’t talk to him (allowing for a potential flashback). But maybe Eli wants his grandfather to be happy, or wants him to be remembered as the hero he is; and/or maybe Sam manages to convince him that he cares, which makes Eli go inside and come out with an old duffle bag. “I’d tell you to hide it and get out of here, but . . . I don’t even think he’d notice it was gone.” Sam takes it, opens it up, and finds the old, burned suit.

Either way, at the end of the series, I would’ve had Sam either wear this exact suit (after cleaning it up), or he would’ve altered it to make something new, showing that he wasn’t just taking up Steve’s legacy.

“But wait,” you might be asking. “What about that sweet ass suit the Wakandans made for him?”

Yeah . . . I mean, I like that outfit for sure, but . . . I don’t think the Wakandans would’ve been in my version of the story because . . .

Edit 3: Completely Cut Baron Zemo

Okay. Hear me out.

We’re in full challenge mode now, but before you close this window, let me just say: I cannot tell you how excited I was to have Zemo return for this show.

In the promo material, I was seriously freaking out when I saw his mask. Like Kang the Conqueror, Zemo has always been one of the Marvel villains I absolutely love. Like, without backstory, if either of those dudes walked into a room and started talking, I’d be like, “Who-o-o-o-okay! Who the fuck is this dude with the blue face and the super deep voice!?”

“Who the fuck is this smooth talking dude with a purple mask and a purple jumpsuit with fucking leopard fur shoulder muffs? And why does he have a sword??”

Seriously, I love Baron Zemo.

But he is just a waste of time on this show.

And, worse, he . . . kind of feels like a completely different character from Civil War Zemo? Like, seriously, Civil War Zemo didn’t frame Bucky and find the other Winter Soldiers so he could kill super soldiers–he did it to make the Avengers fight each other. If TF&TWS Zemo had been in Civil War, he would’ve just shot Bucky in the head the first chance he got and then tried to do the same to Steve Rogers. Like, he will just forever feel like two different people to me.

To boot, Zemo doesn’t have an arc on this show? And, at least to me, it doesn’t feel like his contribution to Bucky’s arc . . . matters? Like, if Ayo had asked Bucky if he was going to kill Zemo, and then warned him that doing so would be bad for him, and then we saw Bucky deciding not to kill Zemo even though he wanted to, that would’ve been good character growth. But, from the very first episode, it’s shown that Bucky doesn’t struggle with an itch to kill the people who used to control him, so . . . why is Zemo there?

Whatever. The real point here is, I would need time for more Isaiah and tense convos with Senator Douchebag, so I would’ve cut Zemo, meme dance be damned.

The biggest loss here for me would’ve been losing Ayo and the Dora Milaje kicking ass. Oh, and that cold open with Bucky in Wakanda was a good moment. I definitely would’ve tried fitting them in anyway (maybe Ayo is there to check in on Bucky?) but if it came down to it, yeah, I would’ve killed some darlings.

The Rework Outline

Episode 1 – Exactly as it was, only with the addition of Senator Douchebag.

Episode 2 – Also as it was, but with Sam talking to Senator Douchebag. Without Zemo, the cliffhanger would have to be that Sam and Bucky are contacted by Sharon, who invites them to Madripoor, or gives them a lead in the city.

Oh, also, I’d be remiss if I didn’t add that I would’ve heavily edited some of Bucky and Sam’s bickering. In this episode in particular, some of their back-and-forths were super cringey. To the extent that I would’ve crossed out entire pages and handed them back like, “No.”

Just throwing that out there for anyone who thinks I play favorites with Marvel; nope, I harshly criticize boardroom writing wherever I find it.

Episode 3 – Essentially the same, but cutting out the Zemo breakout to replace it with Sam going to Isaiah’s and talking with Eli, getting an Isaiah story flashback, and getting the suit. Continue with the trip to Madripoor, with everything Zemo would’ve done achieved via Sharon’s connections and Joaquin Torres providing tech support (i.e. guy-in-the-chairing) instead.

Without Ayo making a cameo, maybe it ends with the hint that Sharon is working with someone? Not sure, but I’d definitely be able to figure it out if I was actually in the writing room, instead of belting this out in four hours.

Episode 4 – Basically the same, but with Sharon instead of Zemo. Maybe work in clearly grey-area things Sharon is doing to hint at her being/working for the Power Broker, but give every weird thing she does a logical excuse. Or, if you didn’t want to risk spoiling her twist . . . maybe we could just use Joaquin? Like, maybe Joaquin Torres actually gets to step in and help a bit more, since he eventually becomes the Falcon? Just saying–it would’ve been cool to give the MCU’s first Latinx superhero more to do in his first appearance. Ya know, aside from getting his ass kicked by a super soldier?

Whatever. The episode still ends with John Walker killing a dude in public.

Episode 5 – Largely the same, only an alteration to the scene with Isaiah, with Sam showing him that he has Isaiah’s old costume. “Your grandson gave it to me. Because he wants what I want. To help you.”

Cliffhanger with Sam working on Isaiah’s old suit, attaching and repairing his wings with Joaquin’s help (I’m going to keep adding him into every scene I can).

Episode 6 – Almost identical, only with Sam in the altered “Isaiah” suit, making all the changes that would be essential for a suit that isn’t made out of vibranium (probably can’t block a crashing helicopter with his wings anymore). Also, of course, we add Senator Douchebag to Sam’s speech scene to make it more cathartic.

And that’s it. Outside of a full story overhaul, that’s how I would’ve changed The Falcon & The Winter Soldier. Just representing Sam’s military life the tiniest bit and adding more Isaiah while removing extraneous characters. In my eyes, that would’ve made it a bit more personal for Sam while making Isaiah a better mirror for him.

But the major thing I would’ve loved: Sam in Isaiah’s suit. It would’ve been emotionally complicated and scenes would’ve needed to be tweaked to support it, but I definitely would’ve cried my eyes out.

~~~

A-a-a-a-anyway, that’s it for me. Thanks for reading if you made it all the way to the end; I really appreciate having this forum to at least vent these ideas.

That said, I post here every Sunday. If you’d like to read more stuff like this, feel free to drop by then or Follow my blog via the button on the left sidebar (on desktop) or top right drop down menu (on mobile). I don’t always do script doctoring, but I do heavily criticize blockbuster movies I don’t like at all (the other end of the spectrum from “Edited in Post”). Those posts are called “A Writer Watching,” and the last one I did was a two parter on Wonder Woman 1984 (Part 1, Part 2). Give it a read if you want to revisit your hatred for that movie. Or your hatred for people who hated that movie.

Until next time, take care. And, if you’re really down for getting into some seriously intense race issues in a comic TV show, holy shit, HBO’s Watchmen is excellent. Like, I hesitate to say things are “excellent,” but if you’ve already read Watchmen but haven’t seen the show, watch it. It’s so good.

Anyway, bye!

Let’s Talk About – “Uncanny Mess Realism” in Worldbuilding

Welcome back! Or Happy . . . First Time Here? Uh . . .

Welcome!

Holy shit, I’m never trying to write a normal intro ever again.

Today, I wanted to get back to writer talk. I have an important life update I’ll drop on you guys, but nothing crazy . . . Well, it is crazy, but not in a bad way or a great way. It can wait.

Especially because a really good topic came to me in my weekly zoom call with other writers last Saturday.

How to use a very specific type of realistic complexity in worldbuilding.

As I brought it up to my writing buddies, I realized, Maybe this isn’t a facet of worldbuilding everyone thinks about?

To put it simply, it’s the messy, microcosm-riddled complexity of both in-world institutions and pre-story timelines.

I took a week and tried doing some research about this topic, but I was only able to turn up a bunch of basic worldbuilding tips. Which means no one (from what I saw) has talked about this before. I’m choosing to believe that’s because I’m just obsessing over miniscule facets of writing again. But whatever.

I’d like to point out that I didn’t create this concept. I learned it from watching a DM on Twitch ages ago; Adam Koebel, who possibly still DM’s for the Rollplay D&D channel, used to do worldbuilding sessions for the games he ran and after watching a few, this one aspect of his approach to worldbuilding stood out to me. I don’t remember him calling special attention to it or naming it, but I’ve come to think of it as . . .

Uncanny Mess Realism

Okay. Hear me out.

Your basic worldbuilding for the guards in a Fantasy city is this:

The guards in this city are servants of the king and they ride horses from the stables at the castle’s guardhouse.

Uncanny Mess worldbuilding for the guards in a Fantasy city is this:

The guards in this city were a mercenary faction that was employed so long by the kingdom that they were folded into the military 300 years ago (which is why they’re called “the Wolves” [I dunno–it’s 3am] and why their coat of arms is the kingdom’s sigil with a full moon behind it. Among the Wolves, there are two pretty distinct mindsets–those who love the kingdom (who grew up here or came here because they heard stories of it and are content to protect it) and those who want to be Wolves because they have “Wolf’s blood” in their family line or grew up on stories about the sell swords (and who don’t care nearly as much about the kingdom and its citizens). Also, they use horses from three different stables–Lockley’s, West End, and Minish, which are all on retainer with the king. A normal person can still buy or rent horses from those stables, but their warhorses are technically property of the crown, shared by the Wolves when necessary. Yeah, the previous queen used the castle stables to outfit the Wolves, but the current king loves horses, so the castle stables are full of his personal stock.

Basic worldbuilding for a company that makes androids is this:

Android Co. [3:30am now] makes androids in its facility in Silicon Valley! They sell androids at their fancy chain stores, and even though they are the only android manufacturer in the world, their androids are incredibly high tech and basically human.

Uncanny Mess worldbuilding for a company that makes androids looks like this:

Android Co., like the 5 other major android manufacturers, gets a lot of their parts from third party manufacturers. Considering, for example, the highest quality processors come from one company and heat sinks come from another, they have a bunch of contracts with a lot of third party firms who ship parts to their factories. Even after you take into account proprietary technology, their androids are still about 40% identical to every other android on the market. Android Co.’s major claim to fame is the hyper realistic synthetic skin they use on their products, but even that is a commissioned variant from the same firm who sells to everyone because they make the best, least creepy-looking synthetic parts.

What I’m trying to get at here is that, in the real world, organizations and institutions are very messy.

If you go to the bear enclosure at your local zoo, and you see the one brown bear you’ve always seen there, who now has *gasp* an adorable bear cub with them, the temptation is go, “Aww! He/She had a baby!?” But, in reality, that cub was possibly brought in from another zoo or a sanctuary. In fact, if you’re not particularly keen on the bears, maybe you don’t even notice that the one brown bear you’ve always seen is a totally different bear–that yours was moved to a different zoo and a new one was brought in and you’re 30 feet away and can’t tell regardless.

Okay, it’s starting to sound like I’m roasting your ability to identify bears from 30 feet away, but no–what we’re focusing on here is that zoos 100% operate like that. All organizations do.

A security firm orders their uniforms from one local outfitter that buys shirts from a different company that mass produces them. Every pizza place in New York uses boxes that don’t advertise their pizzeria. I don’t know why, but clearly, there’s some needlessly complicated reason why that happens.

That complexity is just the way organizations actually work. They are these messy chimeras of intentions, business decisions, and contracts that are constantly changing. And making the organizations in your fictional worlds operate in this way will make them weirdly realistic.

If that is something you want to do.

As always, whether to use this approach depends entirely on what you want to do with your story. I build organizations like this in my stories for the same reason that I do pre-story timelines for my characters–it just adds potential fuel to my work and sometimes influences the entire story in important ways.

Another thing to keep in mind: organizations can be as Uncannily Messy as you want. Android Co. can purchase 100% of their parts from other manufacturers and have them assembled by a contractor. Or they can ship in 10% of their parts, the rest all proprietary, made in a massive complex of factories in Canada. Obviously, all of this is your call and subject to whatever facet of realism you think fits.

But I will add that . . .

Uncanny Mess Can Also
Be Applied to Character Timelines

Obviously, Uncanny Mess is a beast of timelines; in all of the example above, it is a tool I used to flesh out the timelines of different organizations.

However, even though a character isn’t assembled at a bunch of different factories, their pasts can definitely be that complex.

Which I only say because, was I was younger, the reflex was always to be like, “And before this character walked into the plot, he was a knight. He grew up in this town, became a knight, fought in the Old War, and now he’s old. A-a-a-a-and done.”

But, really, that knight’s history should be, “He grew up in this town. Maybe right when its trade in–oh man . . . Okay. Wait. I have to come up with what they traded in. Fish? Okay. Wait. So I guess he was a fisherman’s son? Maybe that affects how he talks? Did he hate fishing? Maybe that’s why he became a knight? Or wait . . . Maybe he loved fishing but he had to leave that town anyway? Maybe he, like, fell in love with someone in the big city, but had to become a knight to gain the status necessary to marry him/her? Okay. Whatever. He was a fisherman until he was 16. Then he went on a trip with his family to the big city, maybe to deliver a bunch of fish, and that’s when he met–wait! . . . How did he get to the big city? Was it on a ship? His family probably didn’t own it, so was it a merchant’s vessel, commissioned by the king?”

I mean, look, you don’t have to be as crazy as I am when it comes to designing characters’ pasts, but the potential to find some interesting facet of a character is always somewhere back there. There could be an experience he has on that ship that inspires him to become a knight–anything from getting to see different ports to living through a pirate raid, thwarted by a royal vessel full of knights.

Again, none of this is essential. In fact, there’s a very real chance that going back and entertaining all of this for a story you’re already writing would just be detrimental.

But if you feel like your characters aren’t round enough–if you aren’t sure about their motivations or what story you want to tell through them, maybe give their past a second look.

And if you’re writing an intrigue story centered around some organization and you’re having a hard time figuring out the pieces of the plot, maybe take a second look at that organization’s past.

And make an absolute mess of all of it.

~~~

Well, that was fun.

If you’re new here, I post in this web zone every Sunday. And I’m going to try to start posting as early in the day as I possibly can, because I’ve realized that by the time I’m posting every Sunday (usually at night), I’ve always missed a spike in visitation. So I tell people to stop by, and they do–to find nothing. I feel really bad about that, so I will officially start aiming for 12am on Sundays.

So, stop by next Sunday! Or, if you would rather just avoid all of this scheduling BS, you could always follow me here (a button on the left sidebar on desktop and the top right menu on mobile) so my posts can get emailed to you.

Either way, thanks for reading. I am flirting with the idea of making audio recordings of these posts–but that’s going to rely heavily on how easy it is for me to read them/the cost of apps and equipment. If it’s not too bad, I’m throwin’ the stimmy at it.

Anyway, until next time, take care, stay safe, and hug your cats! Just a full-on hug. Unless they’d hate that–LOL. Bye!