Category: Articles

Making the Rules Part 3: To Thine Own Characters Be True

  By ,

There are a lot of different elements that make up a story, and if you ask a hundred different literary scholars, you’ll hear all of them, I’m sure. Setting, theme, atmosphere, plot, metaphor—there are essays on it, each written by a person, who according to themselves and possibly the person who taught their lit class, is totally correct and who has worked very, very hard to assure themselves is not a matter of opinion.   Me? Well my favorite part of storytelling is building the world and if I looked hard enough, I could give you a lot of reasons why it’s the most important part too. In fact, the place I read instead of literary essays, Cracked.com, just recently ran an article making just that claim.   And I totally disagree.   While it’s my favorite thing to do and will always be the big draw, especially in movies, I don’t think setting is the end all and be all of a story. No matter how many interesting concepts I introduce, no matter what kind of society I draw, or set-pieces I describe, they won’t mean anything without someone to move around in them, experience them, and … Continue reading

Making the Rules Part 2: A Little Bit of Magic

  By ,

Believe it or not, you and I, gentle reader, have an agreement.

Oh, you may not remember making this contract with me, but believe me, you did. Not only that, but you’ve probably made this same contract with dozens if not hundreds of other writers, directors, producers, and actors in your time. And no matter how many times you have, it always went a little something like ours. In case the details are a little fuzzy, I’ll lay it out for you:

The moment you clicked the link that brought you to this page (or in the case of our test audiences here at Paradox-Omni Entertainment, the moment Billy Two-Ton and Joey ‘Thumbtacks’ ambushed them in an alley, resulting in them waking up with their eyelids mechanically pried open in front of a screen), I told you, by way of words like ‘superhero’, ‘story’ and ‘fiction’ that my intention was to lie to you for five pages every Monday and Wednesday with variable length lies on Fridays. I was just going to back a dump truck full of bullshit up to you and unload at will.

And you said okay to this because that’s pretty much what fiction is run … Continue reading

Playing by the Rules (After Making Them Up) Part 1

  By ,

Growing up, I was never a fan of ‘chase’ cartoons. You know the ones where one character is coming after the other, who then brings down all manner of comedic punishment upon them? They’re classics, I know, but they weren’t really my thing, mostly because the object of the chase, usually Jerry of Tom and Jerry, or Tweety Pie, were vile, scabrous monsters from the deepest, most bile filled depths of hell.

Really, someone please explain to me why, oh why we’re supposed to root for Jerry, who more often than not has broken into Tom’s (or his owners’) house and is stealing their food? How is Tom the bad guy for doing his duty as a cat and repelling rodent aggressors with not even a thanks and a bowl of cream?

I am so confident that Jerry is universally awful, I’m just linking a short at random to prove my point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymgqQHrai1A

But I digress. Droopy got a pass because of the wolf’s wild takes, Pepe LePew gets the same because he wasn’t trying to hurt anybody, he was just in love and socially stupid (also, he stank). But your typical chase, even some Bugs Bunny classics just never … Continue reading

Dawn of a New Age

  By

Every two weeks, I drive thirty miles to the nearest quality comic shop to pick up my pulls. The place is a little cluttered, a little crowded, but a far cry from the dank pick of the unwashed and socially maladjusted anti-nerd types (most of whom are other nerds, but that’s a different blog post) like to paint them as.

I don’t get much time to hang out there, but I usually end up having one conversation while I’m there; usually about non-comics topics, oddly enough. But this week, it dawned on use just how unbelievably good comics have been lately.

True, there have been some face-plants: DC’s debut of Red Hood and the Outlaws, comes instantly to mind, but in general, there’s been a sudden, inexplicable rise in quality of late. Where before, many of us found ourselves hanging on to multiple series in the hopes that they would get good because we like the setup or the characters, suddenly we’re excited about the titles themselves again, talking about how great the writing and story and characterization is.

Normally, I would arrange my comics so I get the comics in danger of being cut from my pulls out of … Continue reading

Casts Songs: Villains Edition

  By

Some time ago, I wrote a blog on image songs and assigned them to the core cast of Descendants. In the interest of retreading the same old thing with a new face, I’m doing the same again with some of the series’s iconic bad guys.

Vincent Liedecker – Johnny Cash – Man in Black

Though remembered as a country singer, Johnny Cash was way more of a rock star, especially when you look at the messages in his songs. Mercy Seat is anti-death penalty for example, far more progressive than what most would think of when they think ‘country. The same can be said of Man in Black, a protest song advocating for the poor, downtrodden and victims of injustice.

In a superhero comic context, it isn’t hard to see another allegory in the song; the classic story of a hero who needs to be seen as a villain for the public’s own good. And from his point of view, this is the story of Vincent Liedecker.

As will become more evident when the Liedecker: Life and Times Part 2 starts running, but Liedecker took such through control of criminal activity in Mayfield to put down the uncontrolled violence … Continue reading

Sticking the Dismount: Avoiding Bad Endings

  By

Warning: This post contains mild spoilers for Mass Effect 3, but not details.

The gaming world’s been on fire a while now about the end of Bioware’s Mass Effect 3 and has opened a lot of discussion about what makes a good ending and what makes a hasty ending hacked together because of executive meddling caring more about release dates than putting out the best possible product (not my words).

Full disclosure, I haven’t played Mass Effect; not because I’m trying to be internet cool and avoiding the fun, popular thing, but because my computer can’t keep pace with fun, popular things. I have, however, watched videos of the end and listened to the debates. All in all, I feel I know enough to use the ME3 ending as a flimsy excuse to talk about what makes a good ending and why.

Having written a lot and read, played and watched even more, I can attest to endings being the hardest thing to pull off well. Getting started is hard in a motivational sense, but endings are complicated by the need to resolve plot points, provide closure, and accent tones and themes built up over the course of the story.

… Continue reading

Character Focus: Warrick Kaine

  By ,

Welcome to a new feature that will be popping up in the blog posts from time to time: Character Focus. This is where I talk a little bit about the conception and development of different characters from my works and after this one, it will be driven by popular demand, so if you’ve got a favorite character and want me to talk about them, just let me know on the forums or in the comments and I’ll make it happen.

This week, we’ll start with the original Descendants character: Warrick Kaine. Now, some of you have read my old blog and know that Chaos and Darkness both existed years before the Descendants, but it’s important to know that when they were created, Chaos and Darkness did have the same codenames, but their powers were vastly different (Darkness’s powers were acidic, Chaos had a lot of fire powers), and they were both just alter egos of myself and whatever girl I had a crush on at the time. So they don’t count.

Warrick counts though, because he started it all. Somewhere about 2006, I was invited to play in a Marvel Universe HERO System game set in the Xavier Institute.

Before … Continue reading

  • Descendants Serial is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.