Villains

I know people sometimes read horrible things in books and become appalled. I recall hearing how Stephen King has gotten hate mail for years about a scene in The Dead Zone where Greg Stillson kills a dog while trying to sell bibles. It's a rough scene, but Stillson does other terrible acts throughout that novel, but none hit that same emotional edge as when he kills that dog.

I recall also how in Critical Space, Greg Rucka uses the assassin Oxford to kill several long-time characters, one with calculated and false sexual overtones, another with cold, fast precision. A lot of Atticus Kodiak fans have problems with Critical Space, especially given his entanglements with the villain of Smoker, Drama.

Of course when people think of great villains, they like to bring up Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader. These are great bad guys, but they are more dark shadows of ourselves, each showing different levels of charisma. In a lot of ways, these guys are known more for their charisma than for the horrible acts they play out. (Both Lecter and Vader do their most awful deeds off screen.)

I bring these thoughts up because I've been working on a way to get more use out of Delilah (Bridgett's best friend) in Vitamin F. The only flaw in doing this, is that I have to immerse myself in writing horrible acts, terrorists torturing and coercing people to achieve a desired effect. In a lot of ways, I'm doing this because I need the audience to hate Adam John and the Brotherhood of Life. But to hate them, they have to do the most vile things possible, with total disregard of any opinions other than their own.

Villains have to do horrible, terrible things to truly be worthwhile.

Needing to Vent

This may or may not have anything to do with my writing; I'll let history be the judge of that.

When I went to work this morning, I was in terrible pain from this screwed up tooth. When I say terrible pain, well, it was bad. I threw what I could at the pain, from pills to oral treatments. Eventually, it subsided. Those few times I felt it coming back, I managed to put it back down by reassuring myself that, if I let Lyndsey know that I was on vacation next week, maybe I'd actually get a chance to talk to her for a while outside of work.

Didn't happen. I told her, but she has no time during the semester. And I'm just a bit pissed about that. Granted, I know she's a busy person, busier than most people should be. I'm just irritated that I couldn't get to spend time with my friend.

Now, I'm fooling myself. To say that I wanted to spend time with my friend is like saying James Bond just wants to do his civic duty. Not only is it an understatement, it's also hiding something much more substantial. For me, that means that I'm fighting with my attraction to this wonderful girl, a girl who can talk to me on a wavelength of understanding that I've never had with anyone before. Lyndsey understands me in ways no one else does, just like I've seen a side to her that she doesn't show other people.

It's not just the part that only I see that interests me. Everything that Lyndsey is has appeal to me. That's why this is so difficult. I don't see her as someone that, should I be lucky enough to more than friends with, I would get just about everything I've ever really wanted as far as relationships go. I'm going to have to tell her the truth and that's something I really am afraid of--it could result in me being happy or in me going back into that darkness.

Quarter-Life Crisis and Solutions

In short, I don't feel like I've accomplished much, I'm increasingly apathetic when I'm with friends (I don't mean to be, honest), I'm feel a great deal of loneliness, I see other people's personal successes when I see none for myself, and I have "the worst luck ever" when it comes to trying to get a date. These are all listed reasons for a Quarter-Life Crisis.

So I've asked myself two questions to solve this. 1. How did this happen? 2. What can I do about it?

How did this happen?
Around July 4th, I was bad low on funds (another indicator), and I went to Oran to spend the day with a few friends at the Madcackler's place. It was a good time and we even blew some shit up. Then this little bitch shows up; she's nice enough, "neighborly" to use an archaic term. She brings over more explosives and sort of hits on all four of us there, even though she's in high school, and we're all college or later. The little bitch talks with us about anime and manga, so we don't think she's a bitch at all. She asks about playing Halo 3, so we do that.

Side note--I suck at Halo 2 and 3. I don't own them, nor do I own the machines they're played on. And I don't like to spend my time engaging in things that will piss me off, which vapid assholes and fratboys (the target audience of Halo 2 and 3) do frequently.

The little bitch brings her X-Box over, the Cackler sets everything up, and we play. All gametypes I really suck at too, so all I can do with any degree of success is kill myself. Eventually, the little bitch mentions how she manged to beat "the old guy," hence the title I've bestowed on her.

Being called "the old guy" was the keystone that started everything going wild. From there, I had to chaos of my actual birthday just over a week later. That was one really shitty day, until Joe and Angie gave me an impromptu birthday (cup)cake and gift (a Milton Berle quiote plaque). It was really nice and that turned things around. Then Lyndsey went out of her way and did something too.

I said before that Lyndsey was either the exact right or exact wrong person to do something for me under that situation. I've mentioned her on here before, and while I've told her about this blog, I don't think she reads it (which is why I could get away with what I'm about to say). She's a good friend, the Ideal Reader for Vitamin F, and I really, really, really like her. I'm incredibly attracted to her and have had to fight myself on that on repeated occasions. (And Lyndsey, if you do read this, I'm fairly certain that you're already aware of the fact that I like you.)

For a few weeks, I had good reason to think I had a real chance with Lyndsey. I don't now, but it's not because of anything I did. Things got better for her, that's all. To go into any more detail would derail the whole reason behind this post. However, I can say that, as of late, I've felt like real shit because of that whole situation. I've felt like I have to do something, but I have no idea what that might be.

What can I do about it?
I can't do anything about Lyndsey, but I can do plenty about me. I console myself with the harsh adage that "If it were easy, I wouldn't want it," something I thought of to apply toward writing, but I think it can be applied toward everything that's worth having.

I started something else, too. Any time I feel like shit, from now on, I'm going to try to do something nice for someone else. I'll give out compliments, or tell people reassuring things. I'm going to eventually give a random card to those three friends who spontaneously did something for me at work on my birthday. I've started sending out e-mails to everybody on my e-mail list, a few at a time, just telling them five things that I think when I think about them.

Maybe, when I get to the bottom of that list, I might feel a little more like my old self. I don't know, but it's the only thing I've though of so far, so that's what I'm doing. When my brain works right again, I'll really get some writing done as well.

The Idea of a Person

The idea of a person--our own hopes and expectations of who and what someone is or could be--that's what we want a person to be. If we want someone to love, we give our idea of the person we want traits that make them more desireable. We idealize and optimize those we say we care about by accepting and idea instead of the actual person.

I know I've been guilty of this plenty of times. I was once accused of caring about my idea of someone and not that person--all as a reason why I should back the hell off of them.

The girl I thought liked me has been guilty of this as well. I think what happened was something (What, I don't know) happened in her life and she wanted her boyfriend to listen to her and talk with her about the things she actually cares about. I say this because I'm fairly certain that the following things are true:

1. My initial assessment that this girl had a boyfriend and, as a result, isn't worth the effort.
2. That she was shooting me signals over the past few weeks.
3. That she's not going to send me any more signals.

Before I started to think she was shooting me signals, I'd talked to this girl about teaching--she's studying it, I used to do it, and my sister still deals with it. I'm willing to bet her boyfriend isn't a teacher. Most of the signals came about after a conversation about teaching. My knowledge of the subject made her more comfortable.

I'd say we all want some degree of sympathy from others. I think she must have been at a distance from said boyfriend for a while given her radical shift back to near-silence on her part. This is naturally after he boyfriend must have visited her over the weekend.

Since she's satisfied now (or for the time being, if you want a colder assessment), she's not shooting any more signals at me. I created a chance to. I cracked jokes with her, but she just didn't respond. That's why I think she was drawn to her idea of me, not the real me. (She's never once that I can recall asked me about my writing.)

I sure this is the sort of thing that will eventually come out of the subtext of my writing, so I thought I'd address it now while it was fresh in my mind. Feel free to ridicule my stream of consciousness writing if you like. This post is more for my benefit than anything else.

The good news--my instincts were right about this girl from the beginning.

Conversations with Women & Other Imaginary Concepts

Wow. I ask for feedback on back cover text and I get an explosion of conversation. I'm impressed because this brings out a lot of the hurdles a writer has to deal with. But first...

This is not a parody. That being said, anyone is free to jump in and discuss. If it stays civil, it stays. Otherwise, I'll use my editing powers and that will be the end of it.

If you'll give me a minute or two, I'll say a few words about myself, which, in turn, will say a few things about my writing. In this case, I'll explain my background in dating and relating to women.

As a child, I largely learned to read on my own. By the time I was going to school, I already had an active imagination. Those two things together made me a eager to read, especially when the stories were some sort of fantasy, or eventually science fiction. I didn't read any of the great tales until I hit college though. By then, I'd already made my imagination something that I used creatively.

When I was seven, I accidentally made up a GI Joe character I called "Commander Lazer Killer," or "CLK" for short. That mess got me into so much trouble. I kept making up stories involving CLK's exploits, usually fighting or teaming up with characters from movies I liked. As I hit puberty, my fascination with some crazy fighter in camo waned. I found that black was a color I could wear comfortably and confidently, so CLK started dressing the same. Then I looked in the mirror and realized how ridiculous CLK was; that's when I dropped all but the first nine letters. With a little refinement, I had the character I call "Commander." (Note: Yes, this blog is named for Commander because I still write his tales to this day.)

As I mentioned, a lot of my ideas were shifting as I hit puberty. That's natural. But none of the ideas I had were being abandoned. As a good student, I knew that, if I wanted to know how to do something, I just had to look it up. In tenth grade, I found out, for the first time, there are a lot of things you can't ever look up.

What happened was a new student came to my school. She was in tenth grade, just like me. She liked basketball and movies and books. She was a genius, which instantly made her my rival. And she was pretty. A very simple kind of pretty. She was pretty enough though, that I obviously liked her, and she obviously didn't. Put the fact that we were rivals and friends along with that, and you've got a recipie for unrequited love. I think this is the point where most people would have given up and moved on to the next girl. I didn't have that option. There was no next girl. I didn't have any real interest in anyone else.

Here's where the stalker arguement comes up, because a few people I went to school with thought it was a proper label to apply to me. I can logically debunk that thought. I didn't call her incessantly, in fact, she was always the one who called me. I didn't follow her around on Friday or Saturday nights. I was incredibly dumbstruck and smitten. Without any real guidance, I did the best I could. One last bit here, I started my senior year of high school by asking this girl to the movies, but the window had passed during the summer when I heard little from her.

About two months into my first year of college, I almost asked a girl out. She joyously told me her boyfriend was coming to see her one second before I was going to ask her out. Needless to say, I didn't say anything after that. My second year or college, I tried asking another girl out, which resulted in us playing this crazy game of sexual tension for a year, but it never resulted in me ever having a chance with her.

I was 20 years old when I had my first kiss and first girlfriend. It lasted a few months. My first girlfriend felt like she had to fight the girl I wanted in high school and another girl for my affection, but it wasn't true. They were still my friends, which created a decent amount of conflict that wasn't necessary. I've had another girlfriend since then, but continued physical distance (100+ miles, and neither of us trying to see the other) killed that relationship.

By the way, I know this will sound funny, but it's true (and not a parody). I've never had sex. I'm 28 years old and I've never had to use a condom. I've had one opportunity with girlfriend #2, but I was so inexperienced, our relationship as a whole was an exercise in what don't I know. Besides, I wasn't ready. I'm probably still not ready.

I could go into detail about what I find attractive. I could discuss the quality of legs more than breasts or auburn hair over blonde hair. I could do a lot of things. Instead, I'll settle something here and now. I have rotten luck when it comes to women. It's not for a lack of trying; I'm just not attracted to every woman that walks in front of me. It takes more than ten seconds to decide if I'm interested in a girl.

Last week is a good example of this. The girl I pursued last week, I'd been at least partially attracted to for a few months. I decided to move forward because of those elements outside of the physical, although that's an important element as well. To quote one of my coworkers when I told her the outcome of my most recent failed pursuit, "It was still a good idea."

Now that I've said all that, you might wonder how I portray relationships. As largely an outside observer to the dating world, I have two methods to this. One is cheap couplings assembled only for sex. The other type could be called honest relationships, where it's for more than sex (if that), it's to be around the other person. I know that Vitamin F has both. In fact, I'm sure my depiction of both will likely create an implication that I see sex in our society as being cheap and pathetic. I euphamism I might use would be going to cash in a winning lottery ticket and throwing it away to pick up a penny off the ground; sure, you're a penny richer, but you could have won a million dollars and you let it get away.

I think that covers most everything concerning how my approaching women has developed over the past 13 years or so. I now open the floodgates of discussion. Come one, come all, come and tear my past asunder.

Good Fortune

I've been very fortunate as of late. As a demonstration of said fortune, I'm going to count my blessings right here and now.

1. Whenever I make a daily goal for my writing, I make it.

2. I've got a good job. Bills are paid. I'm not starving. Etc.

3. Beta Readers. I'm setting up a list now for those who will be the first to read Vitamin F. I've got to know it works before I can hope to sell it. I just need a couple more readers at this point and it would probably be better if one or both were women. The main audience for this one is more the literary female sort, so that's who I need to read it for me. Of course, I'm not cutting the guys out here. It's actually 50/50 as it currently stands.

4. I'm pressing my luck saying this next one, but I'll say it anyway. I asked a girl I work with to go to lunch with me and she said she would. I'm just waiting on our schedules to link up again at this point. She's got a lot going on, which is why she asked me to write down my number for her.

5. With the possible exception of #4, I'm more confident of things right now. I feel like I can and will get Vitamin F published.

6. I just got in contact with one of my friends from high school again. Since he's in the Army now, he's been sent to Iraq twice. His wife is going to have their first child in the fall. I'm glad he's doing well.

So the count is six. Six major things I am quite fortunate to have.

Thank you. I mean it, thank you.

Great Achievements

There come times in everyone's lives when they feel like they've done something truly worthwhile. Depending upon their personality, the accomplishment could matter to one person or to one billion. It's all a matter of personal perspective.

Running down half a basketball court to make a layup in front of a crowded arena.

Giving a speech to a community group, letting them know what recycling really is and how it really works.

Showing someone compassion in such a way, it literally gives them life.

There's a broad range of things that could apply as a great achievement, but to creative types such as myself, it's a lot harder to find something that will satisfy. Our great accomplishments are going to tend to be those things that only we can enjoy. While people might spend hours with something artistic, the artist--the creator--will have spent days, if not longer, with it.

I told Denny O'Neil at the convention that I'd written 200 pages on a book, which he thought was a step in the right direction. Of course, 200 pages is an estimation, not an exact value. The exact value as of 3PM Central time, May 1st, is 193 pages.

I noticed at the end of March that I'd cranked out around 60 pages a month, 120 pages over two months. I wanted to get at least 180 pages if it was possible by the end of April. I shot out an extra 13 to make things that much better.

Bridgett's journey to find her place in the world (hers, not ours) has a lot of detail to it already. And even though Commander's battled rank along similar lines, I'm starting to wonder if I may have already written more about Bridgett. Don't get me wrong, I've got a lot of Commander stuff stored in my skull, but that doesn't replace the simple accomplishment of having written 193 pages of a novel.

It's one of, if not the single greatest achievement of my life. Every day I write more on it will be the greatest achievement of my life. Even after I move on to something else, each time I write something new and push forward, it's the greatest thing I've ever done.

Storytelling, Death, and Torment

This has been spurred by the editorial ignoring and killing of the character Captain America.

It's been a theme of mainstream comics (Marvel and DC) over the past few years to highlight their big events with "significant" deaths. Superboy in Infinte Crisis. Banshee in Deadly Genesis. The Question and Booster Gold (among others) in 52. And now Captain America as a result of, if not in the pages of Civil War.

Death is the placemarker in mainstream comics. The examples I just listed are only the merest tip of the iceberg. But what other stories are predominant right now? The unmasking of Spider-man. The expansive decrease in the number of mutants. The reformation of the multiverse.

I'll tell you in three words what these stories really are: POINTLESS SHOCK VALUE.

There's no real reader loyalty involved with shock value. All the reader intersted in shock value has to do is wait for CNN to have a story about an event, buy that issue, then go back to his/her video games and wait for the next shock event. There is an inherent flaw with this; it doesn't generate consistent new readership, it condenses a greater percentage of the niche market onto a single issue or title.

If I were to make a guess, I'd say there are probably 1.5 million comic book readers in the US. It sounds like a lot until you realize that there are more than 260 million people in the US. Comic readers make up less than 1% of the population.

Each week, the show Heroes manages to get 9.9 million viewers. Both are seeking out the same audience, the same demographic market, so why aren't more people reading comics? I think it's because the comic book industry sees superheroes as these constantly fighting engines, all fighting for different ends or purposes. The TV industry sees superheroes as some odd child of science fiction.

For greater contrast, look at the kinds of title that have been gaining momentum in comic book stores. Zombie comics, fantasy comics, westerns, and sci-fi tales. Superheroes, while having the largest slice of the market pie, are dropping crumbs on the floor. Everything else is getting bigger, while superheroes are getting smaller.

Superheroes don't grow, evolve or suffer anymore, so they have to die.

I think this is a way to look at the creators' view of superheroes. I think this view is bullshit. It's much harder to make a character suffer and toil, than it is to kill them. I write stories about wars and I don't have characters--named characters--dying left and right.

Last week, I was working on a section of Ashes of War where a prominent character was assassinated. I didn't want to kill the character, neither did the assassin. However, this character's death created a situation where one of the lead characters could face one of the primary antagonists and say "Your centuries of silent rule have ended as of today. I can find you and kill you. I can get this close to you and there is nothing you can do about it."

It'd be easy to make another character die here, but that's not what the story needs. It's a much harder decision to allow the antagonist to live, but that's what separates a hero from a killer.

If I were writing Cable, I know killing and death wouldn't be a constant thing. Cable is a soldier, his archenemy is a tyrant living by "survival of the fittest." And I'm not killing people. It's hard to make a character live and suffer defeat. It's easy to let them die. Sure, death happens a lot with violent lifestyles I the real world, but audiences of action/adventure (a key facet of comic books) want escapism. If they wanted the real world, they'd turn on the 24 hour news channels and nothing else.

Captain America shouldn't have died. Though he may have just lost a major war for personal freedom, it would have been far more interesting to see this man, a World War II veteran, struggle to find purpose in a world where democracy slowly embraces somewhat fascist ideals.

Marvel took the easy path and killed Captain America. I won't take the easy path with my characters, which is why I think I'll have a little more success than they will. I know that's arrogant, but shock value has little staying power. Strong storytelling is lasting.