Reflections; one year later (pt1)

Wednesday, November 21, 2007 by Vaal.

It’s only fitting that the first post on this blog be a little look back, seeing as Descendants, in its current form was born out of my inability to participate in National Novel Writing Month (http://www.nanowrimo.org).

But the history of Descendants goes back to the 80’s when I was just a kid. My mother would tell me stories she made up about a bear named Bilbo (later Beebo because I had no concept of Lord of the Rings and there was a brand of glazed donuts with a bear mascot named Beebo).

As I got older, I added more and more to those stories, including new characters and plot lines until I was the one telling the stories to my mom.

It was about that time that I discovered Dinoriders, the first science fiction show I paid much attention to. Immediately, the Beebo stories sprouted elements of Dino-riders; amulets that granted powers, spaceships, and of course dinosaurs.

Time wore on and Beebo himself dropped out of the picture. I remember actually giving him a send off in which the other members of his crew dropped him off back on Earth once he decided to retire. The stories remained ‘Beebo stories’ in name only, in the same way that the comic is called ‘Barney Google and Snuffy Smith’ when Barney hasn’t been around in decades.

Then came Power Rangers. Unlike Dinoriders, there was actually some semblance to where their powers came from ( the spirits of mighty dinosaurs, you see) and they had a mentor figure to explain their powers.) They were also differentiated in that they had unique weapons and special abilities.

The Beebo stories became the Adventures of the Kit Foxes (my then favorite animal) and the crew (of whom I now only remember Sentaria, my imaginary crush), gained their own costumes and magical powers.

A few years later, Saban released their own rip off of Power Rangers: Big, Bad Beetle Borgs and the Mystic Knights of Tir Na Nog. It would change the then Diving Dolphins forever.  The Beetle Borgs and Mystic Knights had signature weapons like the Power Rangers, but they were tied to elements (Fire, Water, Electricity, etc) instead of specific creatures. their fights were based around energy attacks instead of karate. In short, they were shinier to a ten year old.

I abandoned my ‘childish’ Diving Dolphins to make my own Beetle Borg. The Red ‘chaos’ Beetle Borg; complete with his signature weapon, the Chaos Claw and signature fire attack Chaotic Incursion (Descendants readers will see this eventually in a new form).  Many a day, I played out the battles between Chaos and his arch enemy, the robot building English woman, Robata (Robin Ata).

But pop culture wasn’t done with me. The mid nineties bought animated versions of Spiderman, the X-men and Batman. All the previous knowledge of superheros I’d had was from the old Superman cartoons, which taught me to be annoyed with the man of steel.

But the animated series fired my imagination. There were so many powers other than shooting fire at things and so many more interesting things for heroes to do than react to sudden, random robot attacks.  Chaos’s repertoire of attacks increased and when I couldn’t fit them to his theme (fire and lava and probability), I made up a new character and named them after my friends.

At this time, I got into comic books for the first time and abandoned all Bettle borg pretext (ironic, considering the ‘borgs got their powers from comic books) and the Chaos team became more of a super hero team under the tutelage of the sapient computer (later, she was a dragon, then an alien dragon), Athena Max.

Middle school rolled around and yes, up until this point, all of this only occured in day dreams and private play acting. A creative writing unit showed me that I could turn my stupidly overactive imagination into good grades and  so I began writing. I was marginally aware of copyright at the time and so my written work was removed from Chaos and co. First was Angel Awakens; a story about a young man who accidentally give his girlfriend a necklace that possesses her with the power of an evil angel. The second was True Human Race, in which the forebearers of humanity return to protect us from an evil offshoot race.

Pretty terrible by my current standards, but it was middle school and I was writing this in every inch of my spare time. I went and looked at the composition books I used when I was writing this and god, was I prolific little bugger.

Actually, I’ll stop here because I want to read them . I’ll do part 2 later. Next up: How Digimon side tracked me for goddamn ever and how Table top gaming showed me the light.

Posted in Meta, Descendants | 1 Comment »