Miscellaneous Favorites

Hi all. I’m sick, so I’m not really up to doing any serious blogging this week, so we’re going to so something quick and fun.

Traditionally, September is the month wherein I give a birthday gift to myself and make the blogs into a celebration of my works. This month, however, I’m down to the wire on the first Soul Battery book, so I’m lining up some guest posts instead (and again, if you would like to be a guest poster, contact me). I didn’t make any such arrangements for this week, however, so I’ll be following the old tradition and talking about some of my random favorites from The Descendants. Feel free to comment with your own favorites or the excoriate me fr my choices!

Favorite Main Series Hero

This has changed over the yers. Warrick is sort of the first born, Cyn has so much DNA from my friends that I can’t help but love her, and Kareem has grown so much over the years that I feel like a proud father.

In the end though, I’ve got to give this to Juniper. If you’ve followed this site, you’ll know she wasnt’ even meant to be a character, but now I can’t imagine the series without her and her uniquely odd personality. There’s just something about someone with unabashedly terrifying powers and skills being sweet and innocent that I find indearing.

For those of you who are wondering, Juniper’s personality was modeled on the Love Hina character, Mutsumi Otohime and a girl my mother worked with who managed to be lasses-faire about everything up to and including personal danger. I couldn’t resist having a superhero who instead of gritting their teeth or popping off a one-liner in a dangerous situation chuckled, shrugged and said ‘oh well’ before kicking ass.

Favorite Main Series Villain

On the other hand, this one has not changed.

Vincent Liedecker has always been my most complex interesting to write villain. He’s more than just a villain, he’s a villain who is more or less essential to the community and manages to operate right in front of Our Heroes.

I think the most interesting thing about him is that he’s not so much evil as just a plain old criminal. He’s not really callus even though he can be cruel and he does know right from wrong, it’s just that wrong is part of his business. It’s also fun to write the Southern Gentleman version of a corrupt billionare. Instead of wine and caviar, he has pork chops and collards

I’m not sure if anyone’s really noticed, but Liedecker’s mean shtick is stealing knowledge and tech from EVERYONE and keeping his mouth closed about it. He stole magic from Morganna, weapons from Vorran (and thus Aces High) and essentially the descendants school racket out from under Tome. His superpower is resourcefulness.

Some of you may have noticed that Liedecker has been off camera for the past few volumes to establish him as the Big Good of Liedecker Institute. Don’t you worry, he’ll have a villainous plot by the end of this volume.

Favorite Miniseries

Descendants: LA.

On a certain level, D:LA is the series I originally intended to write when I first outlined The Descendants as Elementals all those years ago, albeit with college-aged characters rather than teens. When you stop and think about a lot of those teen hero shows though, they all seem to have the resources and freedom of college students anyway, so…

Admittedly, the characters were heavily influenced by the Teen Titans animated series, but beyond the first arc, I feel like they’ve really grown into their own. If I ever had the time or the staff, D:LA would likely be the first property I would bring up to weekly status like the main series.

Favorite Non-Main Series Hero

The Whitecoat.

Of course. I mean who thought I wasn’t going to pick him? For me, ‘coat is the best kind of superhero; he’s not terribly powerful, but he’s smart, he’s not terribly privileged by dint of his powers, but he’s happy with them and he’s not all that popular, but he does the job anyway.

His relationship with Warrick, progressing from unwanted sidekick to respected partner is a great one, and he’s one of the few characters I can stand to write in first person for very long. One part Spider-man, two parts Harry Dresden, that’s who the Whitecoat is.

Favorite Non-Main Series Villain

St John Duvall from Liedecker Institute. This guy is that subtle kind of evil that it might take a few readings to get just how creepy and terrible he is.

In a nutshell, he went around for at least twenty years seducing and impregnating descendant women—then suing them for custody of the child if it was a girl in hopes that they would have superpowers… so he could then build what is essentially a supervillain team out of his own daughters who all clearly have a cult-like loyalty to him (with the exceptions of Charity and Joy… for now).

Even as the guy who created him, my first question is: ‘Where are the mothers now?’ and ‘where are the sons?’. Also, does he even love his kids? Even if he does, he’s still a monster for more or less ‘creating’ these girls to do his dirty work for him.

He’s one of the nastiest villains I ever created and that’s what I think is so cool about him.

If I Could Have One Power…

We haven’t gotten to the power I really want (long-range teleportation), but out of all the powers currently known, I would take Ravi’s TK. Long range, perfect control… it’d make life a heck of a lot easier.

It doesn’t hurt that Ravi’s is the strongest TK in the series right now.

That said, there are more cool powers coming up like the long distance teleportation power, a new geomancer and two types of water control. And then we have the magic stuff…

If I could Have One Item…

I’m still in talks about getting real metal D-icons made, but as for magic/tech items, I think I’d take the Rook, Majestrix’s carrier ship. I’m not a big RV/mobile home kind of guy, but I would certainly change my mind if my RV flew and was full of tech toys.

Sadly, that’s all for this week. I still have pages to write before I fill myself up with cold meds and sleep for ten hours. Hopefully next week, we’ll have a special guest in this spot. Ciao, my friends.