#but the stuff i wrote about the story becoming less ensemble-focused is still pretty much how i feel today

[panharmonium]

well, after a little break, we picked up our naruto rewatch again with the beginning of season 10 (it’s so good.  SO GOOD), and since all i want to do is sit here and talk about how good it is, i figured i’d try to do that while simultaneously catching up on some overdue fandom correspondence.

when i was watching last night, i kept thinking back to a conversation i'd been having with @professor-of-naruto after they sent me an ask about how naruto started off as an ensemble show and then became solely “the naruto show,” and i STILL owe them a full response about that, but i’m going to consider this post my attempt to talk a little about it, because season 10 is simultaneously one of the best examples of “ensemble show” that naruto ever pulls off AND the scene of one of the most frustrating crimes of “the naruto show” that it ever commits (in my opinion; your mileage may vary).  

but before it reaches that frustrating point - season 10 is unbelievably well-constructed!  EVERYBODY is doing something important and relevant to their character arcs, and the plot is moving fast, and the world is expanding in fascinating ways:

first of all, there’s the fact that the season starts off with young ninja from a totally different village, all of whom are deeply concerned about their missing teacher, and then shows us their confrontation with team 7 and later naruto himself - instantly expanding the world and humanizing the leaf’s [former] enemies and forcing the audience to widen their perspective and confront the idea that ‘hang on, people in other villages are just like people in the leaf; they care about their friends and families and comrades the same way; and HMM, what sasuke did to bee was really bad actually; is it fair to expect other nations to just sit around and accept it; would we expect one of our favorite characters from the leaf to do the same”

the political tension created in the first episode by tsunade’s absence and danzo being named hokage creates a compelling new dynamic where the leaf is being “led” (ruled) by someone who doesn’t have the confidence of the people or the support of the jonin assembly, which then forces kakashi to start making hokage-level decisions covertly (aka taking down the foundation agents sent to spy on naruto, openly instructing a subordinate to lie to the hokage, smuggling the nine-tails out of the village, engaging in diplomatic relations with a foreign kage), which dynamic continues to escalate when danzo loses the trust of the other kage and said other kage decide that kakashi should act as the leaf’s representative, which later, despite tsunade’s recovery, is a dynamic that continues to push and and foreshadow throughout the war to the eventual conclusion of kakashi actually becoming hokage at the end of the story.

SAI’S ARC.  how he witnesses naruto taking that beating from karui; how the editing later cuts from naruto crying at the raikage’s feet to sai sitting in the forest thinking about naruto telling him to “stay out of this,” and his decision of “no.  i can’t just sit still, either,” and how he then goes straight to sakura to tell her that he still doesn’t know team 7 all that well and he’s not very good with emotions, but he does know that that naruto’s been suffering, and that they’ve all been relying on naruto too much, and that he doesn’t know what promise naruto made to her, but “it’s really no different than what was done to me.  it’s like a curse mark.” how he tells her that he doesn’t think it’s right that sasuke has caused naruto and sakura so much suffering, and he’s not going to sit silently by and let it continue -

and how that then PERFECTLY intertwines with the konoha 12 discussing the situation, and shikamaru - newly matured shikamaru, shikamaru who took down an akatsuki member, shikamaru who lost asuma, shikamaru who used to be so lazy, shikamaru who used to be so allergic to responsibility - entering the tent and agreeing with sai and saying that they’re not kids anymore.  they have to act.  they can’t let sasuke start a war between nations...so many people will die...him asking for sakura’s consent - 

and how THAT perfectly dovetails into sakura’s arc - her ENORMOUS decision, which none of them are even aware of yet - when she says she wants to be the one to tell naruto that they’ve decided they can’t protect sasuke anymore, but what she’s really decided is that SHE IS GOING TO KILL SASUKE HERSELF, because she’s the one who put naruto in this position by asking him to promise to bring sasuke back, and she can’t stand to make him suffer anymore, so she’s going to take the burden off his shoulders and suffer herself instead -

and MEANWHILE

this is happening against the backdrop of naruto’s petition to the raikage, which is a) the set-up for the raikage’s eventually decision to let naruto join the war many seasons later, b) the set-up for the raikage voicing his support for kakashi as hokage after danzo flees the summit, and c) the visual parallel for us between sai and sakura discussing naruto’s suffering and us simultaneously seeing him down on his knees, crying in the snow

and THIS is all happening against the larger backdrop of the five kage summit, where we’re introduced to MORE characters from an even WIDER world, and each kage and their attendants have their own unique personalities and we’re once again thrust into this new perspective of being asked to humanize and care about previously unknown entities who have always been considered potential antagonists, if not outright enemies

and the five kage summit brings back gaara and our old friends from the sand, which is important not just for the way it highlights the difference between new and old ways of thinking/generational changes, but because whoops, suddenly sasuke is crashing the five kage summit, and as soon as gaara hears about this, he leaves the summit room and goes to confront sasuke and tries to HELP, in his own way, which is brilliant and so effective on a storytelling level because gaara fought sasuke during the chuunin exams, and back then gaara was the one who was out of his mind with rage and pain, and now their positions are reversed, and gaara wants to save sasuke from that same fate, not just because it’s what naruto would want, but because gaara himself was saved in much the same way

but unfortunately gaara is butting up against the lowest point of sasuke’s arc, as sasuke tips over into something truly disastrous, and his descent is (magnificently!  deftly!) illustrated NOT through his behavior towards danzo (which is never depicted as unjustified) but through his behavior towards TAKA, who notice that he’s not acting like himself (suigetsu: “gee, and this is the guy who kept telling ME not kill anybody?”) and whom he then systematically, one by one, abandons, betrays, or outright sacrifices in the service of his goal, when all they’ve ever done is aid and protect him. 

in other words: the worst thing sasuke does, in this story’s eyes, isn’t breaking the law; it’s abandoning his comrades.  his lowest point in the narrative isn’t communicated to us by his rebellion against authority, but by his betrayal of his friends.  SOMEHOW THIS SOUNDS THEMATICALLY FAMILIAR -

this betrayal then flows seamlessly into new character development for the taka crew - for suigetsu and juugo, whom sasuke abandons to die or rot in prison, and for karin, who finally sees firsthand that sasuke is using her and that he doesn’t care whether she lives or dies as long as he gets what he wants - which turn of events pushes karin into the arms of the leaf, where she’s technically a prisoner, but where she’s still healed by sakura and carried by kakashi, and where she comments internally on how everyone’s chakra, even that of her cell guards, is so warm and different from sasuke’s... (i’m frothing at the mouth here at how well all of this with taka was set up and how it just falls apart later aGUGHHHHHH)

and these are hardly the only things going on in this season - i didn’t even touch upon the way kakashi and yamato are told the truth about itachi (this was something!!!!!  it needed to be something!!!!!), or even the brief confrontation between “madara” and yamato, because when obito first pops up on naruto’s windowsill, it’s yamato who strikes first, and yamato who says “you’re in my territory now,” and obito just laughs at him, and i cannot handle how well this sets up him being captured, interrogated, and used by obito later (if the story CARED enough to CARE about it, i mean; i just - !!!)  

this is all i mean when i say that naruto is at its best when it’s an ensemble show.  all of this happens in just the first six episodes, but every single character who appears has something important going on in their own story.  everything that they do connects to something else, and every move they make affects the plot.  every time someone appears on screen, you care about what’s happening with them - because something IS happening with them!  everything is intertwined, and all of it matters.  this season is woven together so well - it’s hard to stop watching.  

that isn’t always the case later, though.  after naruto appears on the scene of the sasuke/team 7 confrontation (aka the point where the show attempts to make a “naruto is and has always been Everything” retcon that i will never forgive them for), the story starts leaning harder into the “naruto is the only one who can save sasuke and oh yeah do everything else too” message, which is eternally frustrating to me, because the original message of the story was always “teamwork is more important than anything.  all of us are necessary to succeed.”  itachi literally chides naruto, “you can’t do everything on your own.  never forget your friends,” but then the show keeps creating situations where only naruto can Do the Thing and the other characters’ sole purposes are to sit back and monologue about how amazing he is.  

i understand that this is a silly thing to complain about when the story is in fact titled “naruto,” but i do still feel frustrated about it sometimes, because i think an approach like this makes for a weaker story.  there ARE ways to tell a naruto-centric story and have it be incredible - eg, the pain arc is all-naruto, all the time, and i have zero complaints about it, because everything naruto is able to do in that arc makes sense and is completely appropriate for who he is and what his strengths are.  he should be able to use sage mode and toad summons - those are powerful inheritances from his own teaching lineage that he worked incredibly hard to master.  he should be able to resist the nine-tails transformation - he has help from his own father’s spirit, as well as a lifetime of experience living as a jinchuuriki.  and - crucially - he should be able to save the day in the end, not because he’s a super skilled ninja with godlike powers, but because he’s able to compassionately connect with nagato on a personal level and lead him back to the light.  

that is naruto’s true power.  it’s not about him being the strongest fighter, or the smartest strategist, or the most skilled shinobi in history.�� his special ability is precisely what kakashi called a “remarkable gift” in season one: “[naruto] doesn’t need much time, or many words, to make friends with everyone he meets.”

that’s why i think the pain arc is an example of “naruto-centric” done right, and that’s why i love how war arc!naruto is able to befriend kurama/the other tailed beasts and use the nine-tails’ power.  those things are so, so appropriate for who he is and where his strengths lie.  but there are other points in the story where naruto is showcased for things that don’t make as much sense or haven’t been earned (as an isolated example, the six-paths magical powers stuff was too much for me) or where he’s highlighted at other characters’ expenses (what happens to all those amazing intertwining arcs of season 10 by the time we hit the end of the story?  why do so many of them falter or disappear?)

it’s not enough to make me dislike the back half of the show - i love it right up until the last episode, my frustration with the ending notwithstanding.  but i do think the shift in focus from “ensemble show” to “one-man band” becomes a bit more dramatic after S10, and the overall story after that point is much weaker than it could have been (even though i still think that a lot of what it achieves is amazing).

[teen-comics]

A RETROSPECTIVE ON YOUNG JUSTICE: or me trying to fix what aint broke.

First of all, I want to preface this by saying I know this is a "Marvel Comics" account, its literally in my name, and young justice is neither marvel or a comic. but it is the only DC property I really care about and if I posted this to my main it wouldn't be seen by anyone so forgive me

I also originally wrote this in long text message form to a friend (sorry @flashgame) who has only seen up to half way through season 2, so I haven't included anything about large plot points in seasons 2 and 3. Thats not really what this is about tho so I think my points still stand. These are also just my garbage opinions, I love this show I am just venting and you may disagree, you will probably disagree but I sometimes just have to get stuff like this out my system and thats what's this blog is for. I will go back to making memes about decades old X-men comics after this I promise.

With that out of the way here's my rant :)

For me, young justice’s biggest asset, the ensemble cast is also its biggest flaw. don't get me wrong, incorporating many characters (including obscure ones) into the team gave the show great character dynamics, the freedom to do what they wanted with less popular characters and great fan service for everyone. Buuuut it’s also completely inconsistent with who gets the spotlight and it’s plagued with the problems of just having too many characters. Some characters get huge storylines, massive amounts of screen time, often more than they ever got in the comics and that’s great! it seriously is, young justice is the best adaptation of characters like Kalder, M’gann and Artemis etc it’s literally the most time in the spotlight they ever get. but it’s like the writers just can’t help themselves when adding extra characters! it starts out in season 1 and gets exponentially worse by season two.

What you may notice by season 2 is that, with the new characters introduced, some have been given more air time than others. it definitely starts in season 1. Season 1 is a damn perfect study into how to introduce and build characters, having them each have storylines and later, relationships with each other. the show begins by showing us it’s not sticking to the normal way of doing an ensemble kids show, with the main team meeting in the first ep or two and then remaining the same until maybe one other character is added or a whole lot in a second season as a “new class” (Think X-men evolution adding the new mutants in season 2). Instead M'gann isn’t added till like ep 3 and artemis isn added till like ep 5/6?? i can’t remember trust me it’s quite late for a main team character to be introduced in a first season. that’s probably the first warning sign, even the original team takes a while to form but things are still ok, even the inclusion of Zatanna works kinda because she has the storyline with her dad. but Rocket? yeah...rockets a weird inclusion

she’s added in the last two episodes of the first season and then by season 2? she’s left again and is in the justice league. she gets two episodes!!! two! to be in The Team! like that’s weird and telling of what happens next. the show sticks to a varely normal schedule of adding new members, similarly to X-Men evolution, and like evo those new characters aren’t focused on that much. but evo handelled it better. when it comes to new characters it’s obvious that some are getting much more screen time than others, and some are just more compelling too. the time jump really screws stuff up, adding new characters in (and removing others like Rocket) in the five years off screen means they have to do a good job making us like them because we’re not introduced to them in an organic way.

take Mal and Bumblebee, technically we see them in season 1 but they’re basically cameo/easter egg roles. by season 2 they’ve joined the team and they don’t really get a lot to do after that either. it’s weird and because of the time skip we don’t see them joining, we don’t see bumblebee getting her suit (yeah we can infer it’s from The Atom but really they skip a lot) you might argue that this is necessary for a lot of characters, people like bumblebee, batgirl or even wonder girl have these backstory that don’t really fit in so they're just skipped over to make room for the easily included story’s like blue beetles and impulses

but we still feel like we’re missing something. talking of some of the characters let’s actually look at who got added right? In season 2 its starts to become obvious characters are coming to the front and other are in the background. beast boy is well set up in season 1, he’s well incorporated into the story of a main team character and even tho he’s not integral to the plot of season 2 he works great. same goes for blue beetle and impulse, they’re both great new characters with interesting personalities, backstorys and they do plot relevant things. lagoon boy is also an inclusion that seams necessary, he’s obviously there to be part of the love triangle thing but he’s also useful to randomly get captured and be an annoying character to piss of other members of the team. everyone else tho? it’s really hard justifying them being there. Batgirl, Tim, Wondergirl, Bumblebee and Mal just...don’t do anything. yeah they get thrown a bone once or twice but really it feels like the roles they fill could be filled by other already established people? or they could have been side characters outside of the team. they feel shoe horned in and they don’t get any time to grow. instead storylines focus on the original team, (which is kind of inevitable) and season 1 side characters like Red Arrow, and, of course the previously mentioned new characters that actually work with the story.

i can definitely see why some of these characters were added, Mal and Karen were set up in season 1 so i assume the writers always planned for them to be in season 2. the time skip (let’s be honest) is pretty much entirely there to facilitate Dick becoming nightwing and so of course both Jason, and then Tim (probably because jason comes with too much baggage) had to be included. Batgirl also seasons like a solid choice because she’s from that era of batman and it might seam strange not to include her. and wonder girl continues the “The Teams is made of sidekicks” thing. but come onnnn. Tim and Barbara could have been side characters who we see in one episode (maybe one with Dick dealing with being replaced as Robin or something) and the same can be said about Mal and Bumblebee (wonder girl can be cut tbh)

you can also argue that yeah, maybe the plan was to flesh these characters out in season 3 but it got cancelled. but the season 3 we got adds even more useless characters and actually pushes the good characters from this season into the background. even if changes were made in between the cancellation of the original season 3 and the one we got, i stiiilll think they’d have added the useless characters (this is a bit harsh but season 3 does add a lot of new characters) and not focused on the ones they already had because we saw it in season 1 with Zatanna and Rocket. it’s like the writers get bored easily with characters or something? like they just can’t stop themselves adding new toys to play with. I love this show so much, but after a now third rewatch i still believe the same thing i thought the first time i watched this, I love all the characters, i love all the references but god there are so many characters and so many references

[therealkn]

David’s Resolution - Day 18

Day 18 (January 18, 2019)

Blade: Trinity (2004)

“In the movies, Dracula wears a cape, and some old English guy always manages to save the day at the last minute with crosses and holy water. But everybody knows the movies are full of shit. The truth is, it started with Blade, and it ended with him. The rest of us were just along for the ride.”

In 1997, Batman & Robin was released to theaters and... well, a lot of people didn’t like it. In fact, many say it’s one of the worst movies ever made. The first part is true as it was slammed by critics and audiences upon release and has cultivated a considerable notoriety for its badness; the second part is false because trust me, it is FAR from the worst ever made. If you unironically consider Batman & Robin one of the worst films ever, please tell me what your criteria are for determining whether a film is “one of the worst ever”, because I think that criteria is lacking. But one thing that is for certain about Batman & Robin is that it, along with the failure of Steel that same year, more or less killed DC Comics’ hold in the box office. They struggled for several years with other films until finally seeing success again with 2005′s Batman Begins, which was a critical and commercial success and started Christopher Nolan’s “Dark Knight Trilogy” of Batman films.

In between those Batman films, however, Marvel Comics decided to take another shot at movies after some... not-so-great films. And we got Blade. Hell yeah.

Telling the stylish and action-packed tale of the half-vampire Blade (Wesley Snipes) who hunts down vampires and does so in the coolest way possible, Blade - released one year after Batman & Robin - was a critical and commercial success, Marvel’s first in the box office. This was impressive not only because it was a comic book movie and people were questioning the viability of the genre after Batman & Robin, but also because it was an R-rated comic book movie featuring a more obscure character instead of someone more well-known to audiences. Blade was a pretty cool, stylish, badass movie and while X-Men and Spider-Man would become bigger and more famous successes, I’d like to think that Blade started Marvel’s new era of superhero movies and influenced their approach to making future films, especially when it came to looking into more obscure properties to adapt to film like the Guardians of the Galaxy.

And then there was Blade II, released in 2002 and directed by my guy Guillermo del Toro. This was a sequel that was even better than the original in practically every way. The villain was cooler and surprisingly sympathetic (not being mean to you, Stephen Dorff, you were great in the first film, but I’m just saying), the story has some neat twists to it, the characters are great and memorable, the action’s exciting and one-ups the sequences in the first movie, and it has Del Toro’s distinctive visual style for days.

And then came Blade: Trinity, which cocked the whole thing up. In order to properly prepare for this film, I watched the other two films (I’ve seen them before, which is why I’m not writing full reviews for them). I had actually tried to watch this years ago but only got as far as the first act because younger David somehow thought it was that bad. That’s the younger David who would have probably disliked watching sex, lies, and videotape.

This movie’s premise is simple: the vampire world has decided that in order to destroy Blade, they hit the Godzilla threshold and awaken Dracula (Dominic Purcell), the very first vampire ever to exist, to help them fight. And this time, Blade’s not doing it alone. Okay, he wasn’t always alone, as he had his mentor Abraham Whistler (Kris Kristofferson) in the other two films and- oh, they kill off Whistler in the first act, wow, that’s some bullshit. Well, now Blade has become part of a group of vampire hunters called the Nightstalkers, and accompanying him is the wisecracking Hannibal King (Ryan Reynolds) and Whistler’s daughter Abigail (Jessica Biel). Okay, the stakes are raised - pun unintended, promise - and this is going to be the biggest challenge yet for Blade.

Speaking of Ryan Reynolds... he’s the best thing in this movie ,getting that out there right now. His character, Hannibal King, could best be described as “Deadpool Lite”. He calls his vampire ex a cock-juggling thundercunt, which is one of the greatest insults of all time and that alone makes him great. I can see why some people would find him annoying or grating, but I like to think of it as a dry run for his playing the Merc with a Mouth, which is funny considering that around this time, Reynolds was hearing about the Deadpool character. In fact, after this movie, Reynolds would begin the twelve-year-long journey of bringing DP to the big screen, which would involve playing a character named Wade Wilson in X-Men Origins: Wolverine.

I’m sorry, this movie is not great. It’s just a big disappointing letdown. One of the problems with the movie is with Blade. Not the character himself, he’s still pretty cool and Wesley Snipes is great. I mean that this doesn’t feel like his movie. In the other two movies, it was pretty clear he was the guy in charge, especially in Blade II when he made it clear to the vampires he formed a truce with that he was not someone you screw with. But in this one, he just kinda gets shunted off for several other characters. To their credit, Marvel would get better at ensemble films (The Avengers, ‘nuff said), but in this one, it just feels sad. We watched this movie because we want more of Blade. But it feels like they put him in the back seat to focus more on other characters. He’s the title character for fuck’s sake, and yet he feels like he’s a side character in his own movie. Just like what happened with Tom and Jerry...

What doesn’t help either is that the film is one of those “too many things happening for its own good” films. The movie’s got too much going on and it feels confusing. What’s this film about? Is it about Blade fighting Dracula with the Nightstalkers? Is it about the vampire world finally getting the law to crack down on Blade? Is it about the vampire’s plans to completely subjugate the world? It doesn’t seem to know which one it wants to focus on, which really hurts considering that this is supposed to be the biggest threat that the vampire hunters of the world ever faced, and yet Dracula seems like less of a legitimate threat than Deacon Frost in the first movie or the Reaper virus in the second. And it’s not the only third film in a superhero film series to have this problem, as X-Men: The Last Stand had this same problem with too much happening. Again, Marvel at least got better at juggling multiple plotlines in superhero movies with their cinematic universe, so there is that.

There’s a lot of other problems big and small, and a good chunk of them can probably be traced back to Wesley Snipes. The production of this film was pretty screwed up, and a lot of it is due to him. David S. Goyer, who wrote all the Blade films including this one, ended up directing it when no one else wanted to take the job. Snipes was unhappy with Goyer’s decision to direct, and both he and Kris Kristofferson were unhappy with the script, which is probably why Kristofferson’s character is killed off early on. (Reminds me of what they did with RoboCop’s partner in RoboCop 3, another third movie in a series that sucked.) Not only that, but Snipes was hostile to Goyer as well as Ryan Reynolds and Jessica Biel; at one point, Hannibal King says “He doesn’t like me, does he?”, which was not Hannibal talking about Blade, but Reynolds talking about Snipes. Snipes also apparently refused to leave his trailer for any scenes that didn’t show his face, so his stunt double did a lot of the Blade scenes. His working relationship with Goyer got so bad that he called him a racist several times for no reason and refused to speak to him, communicating only in Post-It notes. The fact that the final film got finished and is... watchable... is pretty impressive.

This film, sadly, killed off the Blade franchise. New Line Cinema’s problems with Wesley Snipes led to them making a short-lived TV show on Spike TV with someone else playing the Daywalker, and then Snipes got sent to prison for tax evasion and the Blade character’s film rights reverted to Marvel during his prison term. He’s been in talks with Marvel Studios to bring the character back, but so far they’ve said they have no plans for the character in the future. Here’s hoping we get more Blade in the future.

I should also mention that the version I saw was the unrated cut, which doesn’t really add more violence or swears or other things cut for an MPAA rating as all the Blade movies were rated R. It has some more plot and character stuff, but that doesn’t help the movie much when compared to the theatrical version. The biggest change is the ending, which includes the infamous shot of Blade’s opening eyes being superimposed over his face when Snipes refused to open his eyes in the scene.

This movie’s a mess, plain and simple. It is without a doubt the weakest film in the Blade trilogy, which sucks because it could have been better. If they had trimmed some of the plotlines and focused more on Blade than his companions, it would have been better. Like Mimic 3, I don’t hate the film, I just find it disappointing with how it could have been better. For what it is, it’s still watchable, but it’s just a muddled mess of a movie. Not sure if I’d recommend it. I’d definitely recommend the other two Blade films.

Also, if any of you are hoping for me to review more Marvel movies as part of this resolution, you may be out of luck, sadly. I’ve seen all the Marvel Cinematic Universe films, as I had to catch up in time for Avengers: Infinity War, as well as all the X-Men films and spinoffs and the 2003 Hulk, which I actually really liked, even more than some MCU films (to which someone will say “it’s okay, you can just say Thor: The Dark World”). ...Although I haven’t seen the Amazing Spider-Man films yet...

Next time: How about a GOOD comic book movie from 1997?

[rueitae]

Tagged by @sp4c3-0ddity Thanks! Lets take a crack at this. It’s a bit boring for others, but helped me focus on what I want to do for 2018.

Tagging @ritsuka-aoki and @eddiefook because I know you both are able to do this. You don’t have to post it though.

STATS:

Fics posted:  2

FF.Net:  Don’t Stop (14,168 words) Pokemon kid fic, full of as many ironies and references as I possibly could fit

Archive of Our Own:  N/A

Tumblr: Magic Castle Bus (1702 words) VLD crack fic. High school AU where the Castle is a magic school bus.

Ship/Character breakdown: Ship breakdown: Surprisingly no ships. Technically pokeshipping and rocketshipping in Don’t Stop, but it’s a kid fic, so romance is a bit of a done thing. Character breakdown:  A bunch of OCs and the Voltron ensemble cast, no one in particular stands out with what I actually posted in 2017.

Characters that had the main focus: Again, I really didn’t get focused on any one particular character.

Specifics:

Best/worst title? Best title: Don’t Stop had the most thought put into it. I struggled for a long time with it. My coworker tried to make me name it ‘Skye’s the Limit’ after the main character. I groaned too hard.

Worst title:  Since I only have two fics I posted, Magic Castle Bus is a bit generic. But it does let you know what’s involved.

Best/worst first line? Best: This first line gave me an easy way to introduce the main OC for Don’t Stop. So it’s more a matter of convenience.

“Did you decide yet, Skye?”

Worst: I wanted the opening to be far more chaotic in Magic Castle Bus than it actually ended up being, so I’m not really a fan of it anymore.

When Allura opened the door to the classroom, it was as she expected.

Best/worst last line? Best: I wrote this ending to Don’t Stop before I had written half of the actual fic. I had a lot of feelings about parenting that day.

Surrounded by good friends, chased by Team Rocket, and watched over by legendary pokemon; Ash was confident the formula that had worked for him would help his daughter grow into a well rounded human being. She would be able to do whatever she wanted with her life.

As her father and fellow trainer, that was all he could ever ask for.

Worst: I struggled to find an ending to Magic Castle Bus. I could have easily had them go on an actual science adventure - and I almost did - but I wrote the entire thing during one 8 hour shift at work and I didn’t want to lose interest and not finish it. So Shiro became my scapegoat.

He resolved to find himself a hobby. Fast.

General questions:

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

Considering last January I wasn’t even reading fics, I’d say more than expected.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

VLD, I didn’t really get involved in the fandom until this past July despite having been watching it since season one aired. Since it isn’t finished and has a set number of episodes, I didn’t think I’d be motivated to write anything until the series was over. I was wrong. What’s your favorite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

Don’t Stop is my baby.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

Don’t Stop actually still Reviews: 3 - Favs: 15 - Follows: 6, which is more than I expected to get.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

Honestly Magic Castle Bus is a genius concept. I just wish I could have executed it better.

Story that could have been better?

Same as above

Sexiest story?

Um. I did use Lance’s crush on Allura in Magic Castle Bus. He falls off a desk.

Saddest story?

Don’t Stop is sad in the respect that it has the feel of a parent saying goodbye to their child for college, where they’ll be far away from home for the first time. Most fun?

Don’t Stop again because I was definitely into it.

Story with single sweetest moment?

Don’t Stop in which Ash simultaneously becomes a mentor and gets sweet revenge.

Ash wasn't sure he liked the inevitability with which Billy spoke of the meeting, but he wasn't surprised either as he did see them with some regularity still. “I'll keep your secret,” he promised.

The boy was clearly relieved, a weight off his shoulders lifted.

"Pikapi, pikachu pika." Pikachu tugged on Ash's jacket for attention and then pointed to the trainer's backpack.

Ash understood and looked back and forth between his best friend and the unfortunate boy beside him. "Are you sure, Pikachu?"

Pikachu nodded. "Pika chupika."

Ash grinned. Pikachu had always been an excellent judge of character.

The two of them were also never above having a bit of petty revenge.

"Billy," Ash started. "I think it would be a good idea for you to travel some. You know, just for fun. I'll bet the girls would be happy to have you. You seemed to get along with them pretty well this afternoon."

Billy stared incredulously. "I just told you that I'm the son of the guys who stalked you across the world and to this day try and take Pikachu from you. After all that you're asking me to travel with your daughter?"

"Well, you really don't seem like you have any interest in following in their footsteps. So whether you go or not, Pikachu and I have something we'd like to give to you." Ash was satisfied he had at least planted the idea in the boy's head.

Billy was skeptical. "You? Have something for me?"

Ash reached into his backpack and pulled out the egg from its protective tube. "We brought it to the ranch to be around the pokemon outside, but I think it would do better with you."

Billy took the egg gingerly. The look on his face was uncertain. "I've barely scraped through as a trainer, I'm not sure I can take care of a baby pokemon." He paused. “You know my parents would flip if they knew about this.”

"Pokemon eggs are tougher than you think, and this one is special." He paused, then decided to at least impart some adult advice. "And if I know your parents as well as I think I do, I'm sure they're worried about you. Even if you don't tell them where you are, they would appreciate knowing you're safe. So promise me to give them a call when the egg hatches, okay?" Ash then produced the biggest grin. "And tell them it was from me and Pikachu."

(The egg is Pikachu’s and Billy is the rocketshipping kid)

Hardest story to write?

Magic Castle Bus I wanted to take them on a fun meteorological adventure. Then I realized I’d actually try and start deriving the Q-G Omega equation and decided it was not worth it.

Easiest/most fun story to write?

Don’t Stop It got written in three days, which is like a small miracle for me.

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

Not my writing specifically, but reading from others helped refine my perceptions of almost all the characters.

Most overdue story?

Don’t Stop I have been developing this story since I was 12.

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I’d say writing Magic Castle Bus was a risk. I purposefully restricted myself for time and forced myself to finish, which kept me focused on writing. So even if I’m not the happiest with it, it helped me learn that if I just stick with it instead of going to tumblr or reading other fic when I’m stuck, that I actually can get something coherent out and add to the fandom.

What are your fic writing goals for next year?

Write more VLD now that I feel more comfortable with it. I have three open fics that I would really like to finish.

Write some original stuff. I am already on this! For years I did a lot of role play since my friends and I couldn’t meet up personally anymore to play dungeons and dragons. So we ended up playing our characters through online chat and created such a rich and interesting world and I want to play in that sandbox. Incidentally it’s where my tumblr name comes from.

Stay involved in the fandoms I enjoy and comment as much as possible.

Continue with Don’t Stop. I’ve got at least 14 chapters mapped out and 2-3 actually written besides what is posted. It’s my comfort fic that I’ll always go back to. I also have something of a beta reader for it who keeps asking me for more. Easy motivation.

[s-coleman]

Planning Ensemble Character Development and Purpose Over a Series

Pretty wordy title for someone making their first real planning process post, but it summarises my point. Also, hi. I meant to be posting more about my processes sooner, but when I have an idea I tend to use it first and foremost, then forget to write about it afterwards. A lot of the time it seems egotistical to go on about how I write, but using the process I’m posting about today was so useful I thought I’d put it out there. Even if it’s a lot wordier than I’d intended.

So here’s the situation. Multiple main characters. Intended for one story originally, but wouldn’t you know there was a lot more to say after novel one had been planned and begun. So now there are five stories intended. 

This is great in many ways. It means I don’t have to rush to get everything out in book one (though it’s still important to me that the book can stand alone on its own merits independent of the rest). One major downside is the possibility of stagnation, either with plot or - as is the point of this post - with characters. In a single novel we’re more likely to see a fairly unchanging character as just consistent. Over the course of five books, it starts to be a case of ‘for god’s sake Jimmy, you’re so boring. The entire world has been destroyed and you’re still doing the same crap as you were at the start!’ Not to mention as the plot affects your characters it should also affect the way those characters relate to one another. They will have experiences that will form or shake them and their relationships with other people.

I found that as I continue to plot out the books I wanted a clear, quick and simple reference for how those characters were changing and what their role becomes at each point. Of course this meant I had to make said reference. I thought of those word games where you change one word to another entirely by changing one letter at a time to make a new word. And that is the aim with my characters in this plan. One change at a time, one novel at a time.

Now, in my series there are location changes for each book due to plot stuff. This will help to avoid stagnation as characters will be forced to react to new settings, but it isn’t necessary. Downsides can include diluting the theme or tone of your series, or losing readers who were particularly keen on only one of your chosen settings. Still, it’s what I’m doing so my first step was to work out the order of my settings/novels. I numbered them 1 to 5. It’s highly likely you’ll already know the order of your novels/plots/settings, but I’m not that organised. Until now! 

So then I’ve got something like that (only point one is actually representative of my novel. No spoilers here!) I’ve had these all noted down for a while in my notepad (I use pencil and paper for planning), but only now have I put them into order. If I’m honest, I had to wiggle them around a bit once I started planning my characters when I realised their development hinged on a slightly different order of events. No shame in changing things as you work out other things!

Now I’ve got my 6 main characters. You may have more, you may have less. The important thing is figuring out what they’re doing in each story and how/why that changes.

So let’s invent a character (to avoid giving away the intentions for my actual characters). Let’s call him Geoffrey. For whatever reason, he gets picked for the development rollercoaster first. Maybe he’s my favourite in the ensemble of characters that I pretend to love equally. 

I number one to five under his name, leaving a space between each row. One number for each novel/story. Now, often point one is easy. We all generally get an idea of where our character is at the start and who they are and why we’re talking about them. If you don’t have that, now’s as good a time as any to think about it. Let’s say my Geoffrey has a destiny. Let’s make it one of those novels. And let’s say he’s going to be the dominant viewpoint, the trigger for the events that begin in book one.

Gosh. Look at that, we have a hero on our hands. Now, your character will definitely be more complicated than this in your book. This isn’t even a proper summary of who they are. It’s a reference to remind you of their function in that book. You can then go on and do this for all your characters to get a good view of how they fit niches in the group’s needs and to give yourself ideas for how they might interact.

As I said, I do this on paper but for the purposes of drawing it out here I made a little table on the old word processor...

You already know as the author who they are and what they’re up to in detail. Now’s the time to look at what that does. For example, we’ve got Perry there who is a ‘broken victim’ and ‘obstructor’. This plan/reference doesn’t need full details of what happened to him. As the author, I already know. What’s important is that in this beginning, he is very much in a victim role. He’s scared and hurt and this leads to him obstructing the steps the others are taking towards a very violent and scary end, either directly or indirectly. Again, the characters are much more than this. This is just your reminder of where they start and where they need to go. 

Speaking of which, you’ll see Geoffrey has an end in sight for the last book. I mean, Geoffrey personally might not know this is his goal (maybe he does, maybe he’s objective-focused and amoral) but it’s important that we know where he’s headed if we set out to write five books about the magnificent bastard. Geoffrey is going to become a tyrannical dictator in book five. But this can’t happen all at once! 

Here’s a messy and slightly obfuscated snippet of a character in my own novel character arc plan from my notebook:

Smudges to avoid spoilers. In book one, they are a Manipulator. This isn’t terribly obvious though I’m still in two minds over how subtle to make it. However, my setting in book two is no good for them. It complicates matters for them, leaves them out of their element. Book three requires a certain level of backstabbing and knowing what I know of this character, they’re the obvious choice. So I had points 1, 2 and 3 filled out based simply on this character’s reaction to the setting and plot of novels 1, 2 and 3, which we laid out simply at the very start. I know why they’re there. And I already know how I want things to end for them. A redemption of sorts. So book 5 sees them become a martyr to save those that they have hurt so far.

If we were to blend this with the made up characters above it would quickly become obvious that this character could be at odds with Geoffrey by the end. That their arcs could in fact be the inverse of each other, this character rising to heroism while Geoffrey falls to villainy. Perhaps it would even be Geoffrey who killed this character. Perhaps that would stop him. Perhaps it wouldn’t. But these are then themes to keep in mind throughout the series, to foreshadow early on with how these characters interact, disagreements they might have, views that might clash, warnings that go unheeded. 

You don’t need to do one character at a time. Quite often, putting a character in one role makes you ask questions. One of my more abrasive characters finds love over the course of the series with one of the others. I want them settled in this by the end, making decisions inspired by their feelings for this other character. So their final bulletpoint is ‘lover’. However, there are issues here. I’ll use made-up Perry and Shane to demonstrate:

Imagine the setting returns the characters to Shane’s home in book 4. Through various social developments it has become clear to Perry and Shane that they’re in love or whatever and Perry is down with this in book 4. Shane, however, is not. My setting and plot tell me he would be in an obstructing role and while that could work with a romance too, I don’t want it to. I want Shane being a pain in the butt and distracted by the plot and generally not on the same page as Perry romantically-speaking. Shane has growing to do, growing that will be catalysed by what happens in book 4.

Which brings us to those gaps between the numbered rows. As you saw in my handwritten version above, there are things written between each (and after the end). Once you have two numbered bulletpoints planned, make a note between the two to indicate what caused the change. In my example, the shift to ‘traitor’ in book 3 occurs directly because of book 2, in which the character felt disconnected from the every day. Book 2 traumatises them in a way that galvanises them to push on, to make things happen the way they want them to. As a result I wrote ‘anxious to move plans along’, which is why they turn traitor in book 3, willing to go to desperate measures to make things work. In the Perry and Shane example above, it would likely be Perry’s reaction to Shane’s behaviour in book 4 that causes the shift in their relationship and wakes Shane up to his own feelings in book 5.

Different role types I used in my plan include:

manipulator (a character with their own agenda who seeks to manage the actions of the others to fit with that agenda)

tool (no not like that, I mean like a character who is struggling to find their own autonomy and is acting mostly in a supportive function for one or more other characters),

victim (which sounds kind of rough but it’s to represent the fact that their trauma is still the dominant drive for their actions at that point),

protector (could be due to who they are or perhaps an event has occurred that is making them feel more protective of their friends/family/one other character than before)

threat (could be a flat-out villain, could just be a hero in over their head, either way their actions are going to endanger others)

problem-solver (a character who has the skills to pay the bills in some manner, who’s able to sort out issues the other characters might not)

obstructor (for whatever reason, this character is not aligned with the goals of the rest for the majority of the story and is somehow making things more difficult as a result)

lover (they’re being led by their feelings for another character, which could be a good or bad influence)

activist (they’ve found their own cause separate from the main thrust of the action and it’s diverting their attention)

Now obviously some of these could overlap, and there are so many more you could come up with. You’ll probably want to write more than one word, I definitely do when I’m explaining the shift between books. Also note that when I say ‘shift between books’ I don’t mean that the character changes off-page between the end of one book and the start of the next. It’s gradual, sometimes beginning towards the end of the last book or from the start of the new book, depending on what happened. 

At the end, you should have a page of characters with a short list of bulletpoints beneath that map their character growth. I found while doing this I ended up asking myself all sorts of questions about how they could get to one point from the last. Or ‘if they’re doing that, someone’s bound to investigate’, which would lead me to cast another character in that investigative role. It even helped plan out the evolution of a romantic arc by realising at what points a character might be receptive to such emotions and what impact it could have on their actions towards another character. 

I hope this has been helpful, as it’s my first post - I think, I haven’t gone back through my blog to check - on the topic. If you like it, let me know or reblog. If you use it and you’re happy sharing the results, I’d love to see!