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Revisit, re-assess
I just looked at the date of the last post I made here, and I’m fairly embarrassed. I’d love to say I’ve been wonderfully busy and productive and just haven’t had the time to update… Read more…
Like!Introducing a question to which I don’t have an answer
I am about to rewrite the knife battle between Avalgo and Othau, which is, in a sense, the climactic moment of my characters’ stay on Dheu.
The original fight was in my first draft of the whole trilogy (back before it was a trilogy), and it was one of those awesome, completely unplanned moments. The way the events had been progressing, I always assumed Raphel was going to be the one to take down Othau. He certainly wanted to. So I had this Raphel vs. Othau moment in my head literally right up until the moment Othau and Avalgo pulled knives on each other, and Raphel was occupied elsewhere. And I said, “Um, okay, apparently these two aren’t going anywhere until they have it out”. And it’s sort of appropriate that the fight should be between the two characters who are actually from Dheu…it highlights the fact that my four main characters are interlopers on a conflict that’s much bigger and much older than they are.
The theme of the fight is essentially the age-old question: Can an end justify the means taken to achieve it? If you have to become a monster to save the world, is it worth it?
And this is a theme that forms the backbone of the entire trilogy. Raphel’s goal is to save Verre from a war that is destroying both the Mantles and the Cowls…but he has to kill two gods in order to do it. Obviously he thinks it’s worth it. Of course, he’s got a major lifelong grudge against one of these gods, and the other god is actively trying to wipe out his people…so he’s not exactly the most unbiased judge of such things. Same with Mora and Kaladan. Only Saeli really has a shot at truly deciding whether the end is worth the cost. Right now, she’s on Raphel’s side…but the more time she spends around Naeth, the more she’s going to realize exactly what it would mean to kill a god.
Will she save her world? Or will she save her soul? Of course, her stake in this is all tangled up in her relationship with Raphel, and the choices he makes. Her tragedy is that she will be forced to destroy Raphel while believing in her heart that he wasn’t completely wrong. Ultimately she chooses principle over saving the world, but her circumstances will allow her to do the latter by sticking to the former. Lucky Saeli. Why am I playing it like this? Why am I giving Saeli an out?
Because I don’t know the answer to the question.
Othau believes that securing a future generation of Dheuans is worth the cost of derailing two girls’ lives. Avalgo disagrees, arguing that what good does it do to become monsters in order to survive? Each of them has a point, and I honestly do not know what I would choose, were I put in that position. On one hand, kidnapping, rape, and forced childbirth are monstrous things to inflict on anyone. On the other hand, not acting to save an entire world when you *could*, is also monstrous. It’s an unsettling place for me, not being able to decide within my own mind what a character “ought” to do. All I have to work with is what I know the character would do.
It means I can’t really resolve this fight between Othau and Avalgo. It means that Saeli can’t fully resolve it, even after Raphel betrays her so badly that she MUST stand against him. It means I have to kill off my main villain without knowing, for certain, that he deserved it.
But ultimately, I think maybe it’s a question that needs to be left up to the reader to decide. Each character will choose where they stand, and the reader gets to decide if they made the right decision or not.
Inception and the Matrix
As you might guess from the title, the hubby and I finally got our chance to see this movie. It was well worth the wait.
I think the last film I saw starring DiCaprio was Titanic, when I was what…12? 13? It’s not that I don’t like him as an actor, although there is a part of me that still remembers the Titanic hype and secretly thinks DiCaprio will never live that down. But mostly it’s because he’s been in movies that I had no real interest in seeing. I’d heard that the Aviator was good, but personally I found the trailers for it cringe-worthy. DiCaprio simply cannot do an authentic-sounding southern accent. Yikes.
But you know…he’s not a bad actor. In fact, after watching Inception last night I’d say he’s a pretty good actor. He emotes very well and he never sounds like he’s just reading lines.
I’m not a fan of the action genre, most of the time. Inception was certainly that, but they managed to include a number of sympathetic characters, which made all the difference in the world. The movie was also unpredictable in a way that not many movies lately have been…where there are times when you genuinely don’t know what the characters are going to choose. That said, I caught myself in writer mode several times, thinking things like, “Ah, they’re raising the stakes again” or “this is an info dump” or “ooh, interesting symbolism”.
The story told in Inception revolves around one basic idea: “What is real? And how do you know?” Which put me in mind of another story that asked the same question: The Matrix. Now most people acknowledge that the first Matrix movie was very good, while the next two were anywhere from so-so to utter crap, depending on who you ask. The conclusion, in particular, was very disappointing. I did some brainstorming last night, comparing the two stories, trying to figure out why Inception succeeded and the Matrix failed. Read more…
Brandon Sanderson…and a divine problem
Brandon Sanderson has officially impressed me. I just finished Warbreaker, which I grabbed because the library had it sitting on their new book shelf. I said, “Oh, that’s the guy that’s finishing the Wheel of Time series, and does Writing Excuses (my favorite writing podcast).” And the inside cover blurb actually looked interesting, in a genre where very little catches my eye anymore.
Honestly, it wasn’t the most impressive or enthralling piece of fiction I’ve ever read, but it was good. I never had the urge to put it down and go do something else. The magic premise, BioChroma, was fascinating, and one I’m tempted to steal from. And he managed to successfully fool me into thinking the good guys were the bad guys and vice versa, which I enjoyed. I’ve seen funnier snark…but not much funnier, and not in the adult genre. YA tends to have more snark, and characters who snip at each other. Sanderson’s snark is sophisticated (which you won’t really find in YA), and I like that.
I picked up his debut, Elantris, from the library the other day, and also I finally got my hands on a copy of The Gathering Storm, which is the next Wheel of Time book. I’ll be reading those over the next couple of days.
Shades is coming along…slowly. Last night I went through the whole second draft, formatting it to send to my critique group. Well, of course, I can’t go through my writing without editing, and thus it took a lot longer than it should have. But I made some good changes…mostly tightening scenes, making them as clear as I can. I’ve been a little stuck at my current spot because I’m about to introduce Scisaxar as a character for the first time, and I really don’t know him very well.
The problem is, I haven’t found a way to relate Scisaxar directly to Raphel, or even to Saeli. He’s still drifting around on the periphery of my main characters, and is thus distant to me. Yuril is much easier to write now because she’s had some stage time, and she’s in love with Raphel. I don’t know how Scisaxar feels about Raphel, or Saeli, or any of the main characters. I’m going to drop him into the scene just after Yuril breaks Raphel’s fingers, and I know that Scisaxar is going to be pissed that Yuril has been blasting holes in his Temple. We’ll start with that, and see where he takes it.
Another thing that I’ve been pondering, and something that might help me with Scisaxar’s character, is that I’ve been trying to determine what the “inciting incident” between the two gods was. Why do they hate each other? What started the war in the first place?
Things I know: 1) On a much deeper level, the war has to do with Yuril’s and Scisaxar’s frustration over the Oath. They pit their followers against each other when in truth, both of them would prefer a direct confrontation. It frustrates them to have to work through mortals, and thus each blames the other even more for forcing them to sacrifice followers. This leads them both to be cruel and distant with their peoples. Cruel, because they don’t understand the source of their anger, and thus they take it out on their people. Distant, because they cannot afford to get emotionally attached to people they are sending out to die for them.
2) Both gods helped curse the Midplains. Raphel is right about that. What Raphel doesn’t know is that they did it as a desperate measure, to stop a certain secret society of people. These were the original gray mages, who knew how to build inter-world portals, who could summon both light and dark angelics, and who were delving into angelic and spirit lore that would have been better left alone. These experiments actually drew the attention of the Keeper of the Oath, who paid a short visit to Verre just before the Cursing. Well, that scared the you-know-what out of Yuril and Scisaxar. The Cursing was both a desperate measure and a panic reaction, and was perhaps overdone.
Now, I have a choice to make. Was the Cursing itself the two gods’ inciting incident, leading them to go to war for more than a hundred years…or did the disagreement start before that, and the gods temporarily put it aside for the Cursing?
If the Cursing was the inciting incident, then the resulting war is genuine. Both gods think that the other handled their part of the Cursing badly, or they blame the other for having to do such a thing, or whatever. They have a legitimate, relatively recent grievance against one another. However, if the gods put aside their conflict temporarily for the Cursing, then the resulting war would have to be a farce. In fact, it’s even possible that the gods were never truly at war in the first place, and their “hatred” is a cover-up to keep the world from discovering the truth.
I honestly like the second option better, because it makes the ending to Shades more plausible. Having Saeli single-handedly convince two gods who genuinely hate each other to stop a war they’ve been at for over a hundred years seems unlikely. But if their conflict isn’t real, her job is much easier. However, it dangerously reduces any empathy one might have for these gods…because that means they’ve been sacrificing their followers for a lie. It makes it look like Raphel was right about them, which will make it difficult for the readers to empathize with them towards the end. It works for the overall story of Verre, because the gods really were preventing something that would be ultimately worse than a hundred year war. But Raphel doesn’t know that, and Saeli doesn’t know that, and so the gods are, to them, going to look like monsters. And the only way I can prove that they aren’t monsters is to reveal a whole lot of information and backstory that I don’t want to cover in this trilogy. That’s what the sequel is for.
Perhaps the war began as a farce, but then got personal for the gods. Scisaxar is winning, after all, when the story opens. Maybe he started to press his military advantage and broke the unspoken understanding between him and Yuril. But why would he do that? I have to pull this back to the Cursing somehow. He would have to have some sort of grudge, if not against Yuril herself, then against her followers. Several possibilities present themselves. The most obvious is that Yuril attracts more followers and Scisaxar is jealous. Or he honestly feels that her followers are degenerates, and despises/feels sorry for them. Or they did something that got a lot of his people killed. No, that’s too general. They did something that got one certain person that Scisaxar really cared about killed. That would be a very strong motivation for wanting to win a farcical war.
Ah, an idea. Scisaxar loved a pre-Cursing gray mage, one of the ones in the thick of the angel experiments. The gods decided, together, that the order of gray mages had to be destroyed and the knowledge buried. They devised the Curse between them and set it loose on the Midplains. Afraid for his love, Scisaxar pursued her and pursued her, and finally brought her around to his point of view. He made her a White Mantle, and thus thought she’d be protected. Then, while the Curse was still spreading, she and a whole mess of her cohorts got caught by Cowls. Both gods’ followers had orders to kill or convert any gray mage. Scisaxar’s love refused to become a Cowl, so they killed her. Scisaxar demanded retribution, but Yuril refused, saying that even though the girl had repented of what she’d done, she still had the knowledge. The knowledge had to die. Scisaxar’s grief leaked into the still-spreading Curse, and it devoured the land as well. Once they contained it, followers from both sides were shocked and confused over why the gods would do such a thing. Yuril suggested that they stage a war, and let each side blame the other. The true reason for the Cursing would surely be buried. Scisaxar, afraid of losing all his followers, agreed. The war began, both as a farce and as revenge, on the white god’s part.
That’s very vague, and I can probably tweak it. But it could have a number of ramifications. One, Scisaxar is going to hold a severe grudge against Cowls, and against Yuril for letting them do what they did. It’s not really her fault; Yuril probably wouldn’t have sanctioned killing the girl, but the Cowls didn’t ask beforehand. Scisaxar is going to make sure his own people follow a strict hierarchy that leads directly to him, and he’s going to make sure they never act outside of his jurisdiction. He’s going to be jealous that Yuril manages to attract more followers, but at the same time, he’s not going to take any pains to make himself likable. Something like how a grieving widower would feel about a sibling who gets a lot of attention…jealous, but unwilling to compete. That jealousy is going to be manifested specifically in how he feels about the Raphel problem…because he can see that Yuril loves Raphel the way he loved ____. But Scisaxar’s also the one who will be suffering the most remorse over the Cursing, because he essentially screwed it up. He’ll possibly be the one who is more willing to listen to Saeli in the end.
So the war is both a farce, and personal, but more personal on Scisaxar’s end. Scisaxar’s pain amuses Yuril, but she doesn’t allow herself to think about it too deeply…lest she be reminded of how she really feels about Raphel. And worse, Raphel is exactly the kind of Cowl the white god hates, because he’s a wild card. He does what he wants, and the gods can go screw themselves. It was those kind of Cowls who killed Scisaxar’s love. He’ll hate Raphel, and hate that a Cowl managed to steal yet another follower away from him (first Kaladan, then Saeli), and he’ll hate Yuril for wanting to spare Raphel, and he’ll hate that were the tides turned, he would do exactly the same thing as his sister. No wonder the gods have to abandon the scene…neither of them can act. Their hands are tied by their pasts, and by the Oath. And we’re back to the Oath again.
I think I have a handle on the white god now. Enough to start writing him, anyway.
Wow. Scisaxar is walking into this conflict with some seriously complicated crap in his past.
The Lightning Thief
Yeah, yeah, I know it’s Tuesday. Deal.
The hubby and I saw The Lightning Thief last Friday. Now I know what Debra Dixon was talking about, that you’ll never be able to watch a movie again without picking it apart. Gah. I was GMCing all the characters AND trying to determine where the hero was on the hero’s journey at any particular moment. (Well, that movie was classic hero’s journey, so…that wasn’t really hard.) It was an enjoyable movie…I liked it. I have to say that now, because I’m fixing to tear it apart. 
I also need to say that I have not read the Percy Jackson books yet, although I probably will now. So this is just my thoughts on the movie alone.
First of all, my general reaction is that I no longer really like this kind of story.
There are essentially two kinds of hero. There are “safe” heros, the Percy Jacksons. Kids like these heroes, because they are generally nobodies who discover that they are somebodies, and despite their initial reluctance and bumbling around, they end up saving the world and everyone goes home safe. (And as this story is geared tower a middle school audience, I’m not saying this is a bad thing.) These heroes walk through hell, and come out the other side changed, but mostly unscathed, and with the quest item in hand. They get themselves into perilous situations left and right, but in the end, they win the battle without losing anyone or anything really important to them. The friend in danger always gets rescued, and anyone left behind somehow makes it out alive. Good and evil are clean cut, for the most part, and when the hero is given a choice, it is clear which choice he should make.
Then there are heroes like Zuko from Avatar: The Last Airbender. These are the ones who have to scratch and claw their way to what they want, who must struggle for every inch of ground they gain in both their inner and outer battles. They win, but at a very high cost. They get themselves into perilous situations, and get out, but each one takes away a little piece of something that they can’t get back. They walk into hell with five comrades, and stagger out with their last living comrade on their shoulders, his life bleeding away…and then they discover that they left the item that can save the world back in the tunnel. So now they have to choose between saving their last friend’s life, or saving the world…and then they have to live with the knowledge that they could have saved that friend’s life. The hero must pick between a bad situation and a worse one…and he doesn’t always know which is which.
I would have left Percy’s mother with Hades, or killed her off in the end. But that’s because I like the latter kind of hero better, as a writer. I like victory to carry a price tag, the higher the better. Percy Jackson didn’t really emerge from his conflict a changed person…a little more mature, and aware of his parentage, perhaps, but still pretty much the same guy. Also, I find that it bothers me when a hero is able to instantaneously master powers and skills that take everyone else years to learn. Especially when it’s clear that the hero isn’t a prodigy or a genius. Prodigy I can deal with: Aang was a prodigy. But even when he was faced with mastering all four elements in a matter of months (when it normally takes years), he had trouble. Earthbending gave him trouble. Firebending was a disaster the first time he tried it. And he never really did master the Avatar state!
Percy Jackson learned how to use a sword competently in a matter of hours, it would seem (and yeah, I know they compress time for movies, but still)…and after partaking of some of Daddy’s superpowers, he was able to whoop the butt of a girl who’d been training her entire life. And only because Poseidon is a bigger and badder god than Athena…nothing to do with the hero’s own merit or whatnot. If I’d been writing the story, Percy would have lost that battle, and learned a lesson from it.
What else. I was really liking the way the story modernized many of the Greek myths, showing how things like Medusa and the Lotus Eaters had evolved over the centuries. Even the underworld had a modern “feel” to it, and both Hades and Persephone would not have looked out of place on the streets of NYC. But then, when they finally got to Mount Olympus and the gods’ court, the ancient Greek dress and the armour and the decor just killed it for me. I wanted to see that in a modern context as well…being transported back to ancient Greece was jarring. It made the whole scene feel irrelevant, and almost cheesy. The hubby made a good suggestion, though: that perhaps the Greek gods have wrapped themselves in the trappings of their “golden age”, when men still worshiped them and they were a force in the world…and that they are unwilling or unable to let that age go. I’ll buy that; it’s a good theory. I wish the story had made that clear, however.
Ah: one major myth fail in the movie. The heroes travel to the underworld and meet Persephone, Hades’ wife, who is clearly unhappy with her lot. That’s fine. The problem is, this story is supposed to take place in midsummer. The movie is one big countdown to the summer solstice. If you know the story of Persephone, you know that because she partook of the food of the underworld, she has to stay there for half the year; the other half she spends with her mother, Demeter, and the world prospers. While Persephone is in the underworld with Hades, Demeter grieves, and that’s why we have winter. Thus, Persephone would not have even been in the underworld during the summer! The story could have just as easily taken place over the winter solstice, if they had to have a solstice…so I just don’t get how that detail slipped by everyone.
One last major thing: they screwed up the major antagonist’s GMC, and thereby spoiled any chance of three-dimensionality in his character. First of all, I knew who the lightning thief was almost from the moment we met him onscreen…which was satisfying at the time, but totally ruined the “big reveal” moment towards the end. And then, lightning bolt in hand, they had him give this totally cliche villain speech…and that’s where the mistake was. (Forgive me if I don’t get the quotes exactly right…I’ve only seen the movie once, and several days ago now.)
“Why did you steal the bolt?” Percy Jackson asks.
“Why else?” the thief says. “For power. The gods have ruled long enough; I think it’s time for the second generation to take over.”
No, no, no. G=/=M. Power is not a motivation. It is a goal. Something (motivation) has to drive a person to seek power (goal). Not to mention that the whole I-want-power thing really did not jibe with the rest of Luke’s character. Luke’s inner struggle is that his father, Hermes, abandoned him, as all the gods must abandon their mortal children, and that just never sits well with him. He’s the sympathetic voice for all the lost demi-god kids in this world. “We’ve all got Daddy complexes, don’t we?” he asks at an earlier point in the movie. This is how that scene should have gone:
“Why did you steal the bolt?” Percy Jackson asks.
“Because I want to watch the gods destroy themselves in this war they’re going to start,” the thief says. “Why should we care? They abandoned us; they never needed us. So I say, we don’t need them!”
Now Percy Jackson has something in common with the villain: both have been abandoned by their fathers. Luke might even press the point and try to sway Percy to his side: “Why are you helping them? They don’t care about anything but themselves.” Percy’s choice about whether to return the bolt to Zeus is suddenly a whole lot less obvious, and the conflict is a whole lot more interesting. And Luke becomes a much deeper, more human character.
But…that’s not how they did it. Oh well. Maybe the book does a better job. But overall, an enjoyable movie.
Me, Briefly
Mariah Dennison, fantasy writer and artist. I have finished the first book in a trilogy, and am currently working on the second.
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