The Process — Elementals to Descendants

Friday, February 1, 2008 by Vaal.

Descendants as you know it wasn’t the first incarnation of the story of Chaos and Darkness. In the Reflection article, I talked about how C&D arose and evolved, and eventually crumbled to dust. This article will talk about what it was reborn as and how that became Descendants.

As already related, Marvel’s Civil War event set me on the path to writing my personal ideal comic-verse. The problem was that the venom and spite I currently form into minor jabs (Wartorn’s motivation and dialogue, Laurel’s ‘deal with the devil’ line in A MagiTech Crisis) completely took over when I first put fingers to keys.

While some of the above jabs may be overt, the very backstory of Elementals was the vitriol equivalent of blasting across the alkali flats in a jet-powered, monkey navigated… *ahem* you get the point.

The Elemental-verse was set fifty years after America had built a super soldier army, which triggered a biological arms race, whose cascade effect was pretty much Armageddon. Halfway through, a group of soldiers (the experiments gave them varying control of the four classical elements) tried to rebel and convince their super-brothers to stop working for the government and work for the people. They were slaughtered. When the war ended, the nations exterminated their elementals.

See? Subtle.

Flash forward fifty years and we learn that elementalism ended up being hereditary. No one had thought to check this (this trope still stands in Descendants, except Tome knew it was hereditary and covered it up) and suddenly, we had super soldier teens running around.

It also turns out that some of the ‘good guy’ elementals we thought were destroyed are still around and they take in some disowned elemental kids to teach them how to use their powers for the benefit of mankind and prevent attempts by the still-in-turmoil government from instituting super slavery again.

Again, Subtle.

But that wasn’t the only thing wrong. To make this work and have a ‘modern day’ setting after the end of the world, and to have the elementalism evolve over generations, I needed a fifty year gap — which left my ‘mentors’ in their late sixties, early seventies. Kinda makes the Ian/Alexis relationship squik, eh?

The second problem had to do with the powers themselves. I’d made up some bullshit about multiple levels of control in the four elements leading to different powers. But this left my shapeshifters (yes, plural) totally out of place and reduced my wiggle room for new powers. That had to go.

Finally, the actual story was too much ‘legacy characters’ and not enough ‘family’ for me. I wanted the mentors to be able to relate on a level that would either be rare of forced with the current age gap. (How many Gen-Xer’s do you know who are genuinely friends with members of The Greatest Generation?)

After writing up the plot, I realized that that wasn’t what I wanted.  It wasn’t a comic world or a story I loved, it was just an emotional lashing out at something I didn’t like and in that way, it wasn’t any better than the deconstructionism I’m opposed to.

So I went to re-writes. This time, I started with what I wanted to do; a love letter to what I love about comics. Somewhere between the silly Silver Age, the Character driven Bronze Age, and the dramatic elements of the Post Modern I saw what I wanted.

What I wanted was a central set of characters who would eventually function as a family (though many of its members would have real family). They would have pure motivation and while they weren’t drama/character growth immune, they wouldn’t wallow in it and drag down the comic. The relationships between the characters would be showcased just as much as their awesome powers and fight scenes.

Teen drama was a big part of it, in the vein of Kim Possible or early Buffy. Showing that the kids weren’t little soldiers, but people that wanted do do good in the world for whatever reason.

The mentors would also be able to relate to the younger generation; to guide them, clash with them and complement each other. Eventually, Chaos and Darkness landed here and I resolved to make the mentors just as much main characters as the younger generation.

For the setting, I decided to bridge the real world with the fantastic. I’d read about Project Montauk,  carried out at the appropriately named Camp Hero, where urban legends say psionic powers were tested and facilitated and other otherworldly things happened. I picked up the ball and ran like hell. In the Descendants-verse, those legends aren’t only real, but happened all over the world during and after WWII.

Not only that, but I exploited one odd flaw in sci-fi and old school genetics thinking: people expected that manipulation they did to people to happen instantly, in that person. Genetics do not work that way. It would take many, many generations before the results bore fruit.

Genetics don’t work the way they do in Descendants either, but bear with me.

This put the setting in the range of the fifth and sixth generations (2070+) where a population explosion of powered people would take place. Conveniently, it also set the whole thing twenty minutes into the future and nicely around the time of America’s tricentennia.

Tome was created as the new enemy (more on this in another article) to take advantage of the ’secret testing’ conspiracy I’d created. I haven’t fully revealed their goals, but sharp eyed readers can guess.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. Next time, I’ll pick a couple of Freeland Housers and discuss how I created and am treating their characters. Until then, ciao!

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