livna sv remmah

gnitoohS :.cnI ,EMAGDNE

2011-08-12T19:55:00.000-07:00

back to the novel::

   Edit: The story is almost 10,000 words.

   You might not want to read all this behind-the-scenes info. The "Shooting" story was like me doing protracted brain surgery on myself, and this LSR entry is me cleaning off the tools and putting them away again. Also, I can't emphasize this enough: If you didn't read the actual story yet, please go back and do so. This post-mortem is spoilery as hell.

   Holy shit. I finally finished this on August 12 - over two weeks after I began it. I can't believe I wrote this whole thing.
   Several times I almost gave up on it. What I'd do is kind of say to myself, "This is such a wordy, overworked story..." and I'd go back and read it, looking for stuff to take out - and be captivated again by the story and where it was going. I don't expect anyone to agree with me, but I definitely love this post and think it's the best thing I've ever written, by far. I must take off points for its extreme lack of brevity, though.
   The first part, with Jim in his office, came to me quite a bit before the rest. I feel the style is markedly different from the rest of the text, although it's obviously all my voice. I feel like that introduction bit is kind of a set-piece, and that's why it reads so differently. It could've been the opener, with minor changes, to a lot of other kinda mysterious events that I could've written instead.
   The best part of writing this story was writing the part with Eddie, the Eldust freak. (If you don't know what Eldust is, the first time it's mentioned prominently in the story I have linked to an earlier blog entry- a snippet about Eldust, what it is and what it does.) I did a lot of fun tricks writing that part; most I called out in the narration, but one or two I didn't.
   Not only does Eddie know what Cecilia said to Jim in spite of being unable to hear it, he is revealed to know what the other characters are thinking without them even saying it. Also, at one point, Eddie's words are a reference to the narration in the previous paragraph - that is, words none of the characters said or thought, but words that the reader just read! I really had to go with that as soon as I thought of doing it. If there's a substance that makes it believable for a character to break the fourth wall, it's Eldust.
   Also, note that Eddie's words in places sound like garden-variety non-Eldust-related craziness, which was no accident; he even indulges in a little clanging, a real symptom of real psychosis. As an added bonus, the actual words he uses demonstrate an awareness on his part - probably not fully conscious - of the importance of Cecilia to Jim! Yep, I had a lot of fun with the Eldust part.
   I didn't have much "screen time" to establish the importance of Cecilia to Jim's life, even though the entire narrative kind of hangs on how much he loves her. I hope I brought it across anyway during the two scenes they had together. I wanted Cecilia to seem more than just a one-dimensional love interest plot element, so I tried to make her a little funny and gave her a bit of fight. Are Jim and Cecilia good together? Yeah, I think so.
   Many times the resolutions to scenes in the story surprised me. I knew that Jim was going to retire after the bank robbery scene, but I didn't know what would have to happen to cause him to retire. I toyed with the idea of an evil super-human forcing him to relive the death of his wife, but it wasn't plausible; he relived it every year on the anniversary of her death. Probably much more often than that.
     But, it made sense suddenly that he'd retire after saving a bank's entire staff from getting shot to death, after stopping a bank robber from shooting himself in the head right in front of him. And he saved the life of the orphan, Logan, in the earlier scene. He constantly saved the lives of others, against big odds, at ENDGAME.
     In the end he only caused three deaths: His wife's death (he blamed himself), Eddie's death (really it was Eddie's own fault for pulling the trigger), and the unnamed person outside his window he shot to precipitate the entire story (and that was Jim's fault, but the death parallels both his wife's death and Eddie's, in that it was basically an unintended consequence of Jim's being impossible to kill, himself). Everyone else he dealt with, all his cases at ENDGAME, he saved. But after coming so close at the bank... he'd just had enough.
     The ending is ambiguous. I originally wanted to have one ending, with one choice, and then this LSR entry would be partly devoted to the "parallel universe" -if you will- where he makes the other choice; the alternate ending. But that did the same thing that this ending does, which is to leave the actual result of Jim's choice a mystery.
     Off the record? I like to think he chooses to serve out his 25 years. I imagine him becoming a holy terror at ENDGAME when he returns. I think he stops his little yearly ritual, but I think he becomes willing to shoot and kill others. Eldust dealers, producers if possible. The causes of the plague on society. No, Jim - if he doesn't take the Hush and die when his powers are removed - Jim becomes, I'm afraid, rather a frightening guy. No longer living for the sad memory of his wife, he lives instead to enact revenge on the people he feels are indirectly responsible for killing her.
     But I don't know. Maybe the second the Doc leaves, he takes that glowing blue pill and dies in 5 minutes.
     I just made him up. I can't claim to really understand him.

noitaN eht fo etatS

2011-01-04T07:03:00.000-08:00

:: i waited a million years for an update and all i got was this self-indulgent ramble

Been far too long since I posted anything.

Near the end, when Anvil says "we hate your rotten guts," he means "All of us, or anyway those of us pulling our weight on the project, and in fact just about everyone but you."

Originally, the examples of things that are "amazing" were all food-related. When it's late, and I am tired, I start to get hungry, too. But I changed them. I'd hate to seem like a fat neckbeard.

Hammer's parting insult was originally "I fisted your mom's ass last night" out of nowhere. Then "I gave your mom my dick for Christmas" suddenly came to mind and I had to change it.

Bonus shit that sucks:
Using the word "literally" when you mean "very" or even when you mean to actually not use a word at that place in the sentence at all
"Global warming? Then how come it's cold out? LOL" - so you have to call it "climate change" to indicate that yes, while the world is warming up everywhere, due to the complexities of weather systems, it might not be hot everywhere on the planet all the time

srekniT ,sreknihT

2010-01-28T20:12:00.000-08:00

whatever man::

This post is absolutely not what I planned it to be, which is why it has nothing to do with its title. It was supposed to be some science-related thought experiments. But, well, Hammer had some other ideas. In other news, I just bought a light bulb for cheap.

I haven't really been creatively inspired for the past half a year or so. It comes and goes in waves. Whatever. This entry was dumb, don't read it. If you read it, rate it "Wack."

It's an interesting question just how anthropomorphic Hammer and Anvil are, but it's simple. They are precisely as anthropomorphic as I care to make them or not make them. Today, Anvil has a shin, so that Cletus can come and kick it. But Anvil still identifies himself as an anvil where appropriate.

2/02/09 edit: People are consistently nonplussed by the end to the dialogue, where Anvil reveals that he has pre-emptively stolen Hammer's wallet. There's a reason I had that happen. Several, actually.

Anvil is not interested in an infinite Spy vs. Spy regress of who will outsmart whom. Anvil is not any more interested in being kicked in the shin by Cletus. Anvil decided to steal Hammer's wallet while they were speaking, in what was hopefully a show of overwhelming superiority, so that the entire chain of events described would not have to go through the pointless tedium of actually coming to pass. This brings me to my next point, which is simple, and is hopefully a fairly obvious running theme in this weblog:

If you put Hammer versus Anvil, Anvil will win every time.

It is Anvil's style to win in a game-changing fashion. The way Anvil plays, Anvil could lose and still win.

It is, however, Hammer's style not to realize that, or take it seriously, until it's shown to him again.

yalP fO tuO :.CNI ,EMAGDNE

2009-08-17T18:11:00.000-07:00

RETURN::

It's pronounced "the news dot nine."

My four readers may have noticed that development on the Calamity has come to a near-total halt in spite of how awesome I think it is. The reason for that is not simple, but here it is.

For most of the past year, it has been my intention to write a video game based on the Calamity. This was in spite of having zero skills of any type of game content creation whatsoever. I was going to teach myself all that stuff. Programming, modeling, texturing, all that. My main focus was on the graphics stuff, though, and in theory I was going to give programming duties to someone else who didn't know how to program.

I still intend to write this video game, but since I don't know how I'm putting the project on hold in favor of writing, which is chewy and fun and accessible to me right now. Thinking about the video game has been fun, but it's kept me away from writing, and now I'm not sure where to go with the underlying story itself. Been thinking too much to move forward.

So I moved laterally, as is my wont.

What I've done with ENDGAME, Inc. is sort of jump-cut (No, zoom followed by slow-fade. No, star-wipe) to a different timeframe--almost certainly not an alternate universe, more likely in the future or the past-- where some people are superhuman, but not in the incredible way that the Solution allows.

Oh, did I not explain exactly what the Solution is? // TODO: Fix that ;)

A mercenary corporation whose MVPs are largely supers, ENDGAME, Inc. ought to be a fun bunch to spend a little time with. I openly admit a debt to Schlock Mercenary for reminding me that it can be very interesting when your heroes are in it for the money.

Bonus thanks to my cousin J. R. for letting me bounce some ideas off him. They had somehow become significantly more awesome by the time they bounced back. How does that happen?

I composed this song a long time ago for the video game, it's for the title screen. Definitely sounds like video game music!