I wrote my day 3 entry and then got so side tracked with voting and celebrating Barack Obama’s Victory as well as talking to friends, that I forgot to post it. I’m now two days behind and I need to write the new Descendants too. I’m going to try and keep going.

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Word Count: 893
Total Words:  2596

I got distracted but a number of things today and failed to reach my 1500 minimum today. I’m 500 words in the hole, but I don’t feel too bad because the things I was dealing with made me smile, so feh. I can still do this.

Tomorrow is my day off and I’ll be doing both my nano and the next Descendants issue. Hopefully, I’ll manage to write enough to give myself a reasonable pad.

Today’s writing under the cut:

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Okay, here goes.  Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month, for which I’m writing a novel on the origin of The Whitecoat. I hope you all enjoy this and cheer me on in comments. The stoy begins under the cut.

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Why do I slow things down with stories like Ahead/Behind or Summer Session?

The answer is under the cut (more…)

Hopefully, it amuses you, the reader as well, but the reason it’s there is entirely selfish. And in that spirit, this blog entry is just as selfish; I want to talk about some of my favorite meta moments thus far in the series. As always, I hope this amuses you too.

It starts under the cut:
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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!

Well, a couple of people have expressed interest in seeing more stuff like what I was talking about in my Reflections Post. So I’ll oblige by creating a new section on the blog dedicated to just that.

In the future (starting with the next post), I’ll talk about the process behind things like arriving at the Descendants story, the various characters, and eventually individual storylines. I hope you enjoy it!

Conceptual spoilers follow

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From a much snarkier perspective? Well…

- None of the heroes made deals with the Devil
- No heroes covered up accidental deaths
- No lovable D-listers died for no reason
- No children were killed or pressed into military service
- And no ’silly’ characters went insane

I know I’m ragging on Marvel here, but seriously, what was up? Is that what people really want to see? Am I so out of touch that I just don’t *get* how awesome it is to have a cartoon clown beat the shit out of someone for calling him names or see a multiple teenaged girls burst into tears (multiple times!) over the fact that their friends were killed/they were made to kill?

I don’t know, man… But to be fair, despite some things that made my brain hurt, Marvel did give us some good: World War Hulk: X-men was a masterpiece  superhero throwdown I’ve missed so badly in comics. Messiah CompleX, while making Cyclops out to be an Iron Man level wang (sure, shooting someone with your optic blast for disagreeing is a wonderful idea!), is a fun read as long as I can ignore the lame, lame deaths. The Holiday Special was awesome and is probably still on the shelf if you want to get it.

Over at DC, I only read Blue Beetle but I’m glad I do. Buy that too.

And just say NO the New Warirors vol4. It really is that bad. The first 6 issues use the fact that you have to guess who the main characters used to be as a point of suspense. DO NOT WANT.

With that off my chest, I can talk about my own work on Descendants.

To be totally honest, I’m not where I wanted to be at this point in the project. Not that I’m not happy with what’s been written and maybe I’m asking too much after only 21 ‘issues’. You decide:

1) Alexis Keyes, Darkness
I really think I’ve failed Alexis as a creator as of right now. The younger generation sort of stole the show since #13 and I haven’t been able to develop her and her relationship with Ian as much as I’d like. My hope for Year 3 is more Alexis, maybe even a solo adventure for her. It seems that all her character stuff keeps getting bumped, so hopefully, if I log jam it in, I’m bound to get one soon.

2) George
Regardless of if you noticed him,  George has been in this story from the beginning. If this were a real comic, I imagine he would be seen in crowd sequences all the time just so fans could find him. I planned to reveal George and his situation by now, but not so much.

3) Tome Checked Out
I didn’t mean to go a whole year without running into Tome, but it looks like we will. But don’t worry, there’s no way I can ignore them for year 3.

4) Secrets
There are a lot of things kept secret that I’ve meant to reveal or at least drop bigger hints about by now. These include Juniper, The Brazil-American War, and Arjun Ravi. God willing, Year 3 will have a place for them.

Otherwise,  I’m very happy with Descendants as a body of work right now. I have all sorts of new things in mind and just can’t wait to get to them and I hope you are too!

Well here’s the truth: I plan as much as a year ahead. I plan and I plot and I play act scenes I think will be awesome and I compile a big ‘ol text file with nothing but plot arcs…

Then the characters walk all over them and push me in directions I never considered. Sometimes, things I’ve planned for months goes of without a hitch, except its happening to another character. Sometimes a new element that came while I was writing dovetails into something I wrote but never fleshed out waaay back. And sometimes, ideas just choke and die.

From time to time, I’ll bring up a few ideas that  were changed or are gone forever in a little segment I like to call ‘got it all planned out’. CAUTION: SPOILERS FOR EVENTS THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN

Juniper, Cyborg Judas
I never wrote it like this when I was devving it, but I wish I had because that would have proven how stupid a concept this was.

Basically, Juniper was originally slated to be a clone cyborg of the ‘real’ Juniper (deceased) created by the Academy via biomapping and planted as a sleeper. ‘Cluniper’ would have been a major rival for Cyn over Warrick’s affection and emerged the victor, only to separate Warrick from the others during Siege. In he end, Warrick would have been forced to destroy her after trying every trick in the book to attempt to appeal to ‘Cluniper’s’ feelings for him.

Obvious parody of part of Civil War? You bet! A worse story than Civil War? Possibly! A horrible, horrible idea! Completely.

To start, it was much too dark for Descendants. Things can get dark sometimes, but the specter of killing a character, even one that was a Judas, and making the light hearted character be the one to do it was way too much, especially after I started working with the relationships of the characters and realizing that ‘Cluniper’ wouldn’t be lightly forgotten.

At the same time, I myself became loath to lose Juniper as I loved her personality. So, by the time Siege rolled around, Jun’s Dark Secret ™ was something completely different.  And you still don’t know what it is