Belated Progress Report

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

I have been lax of course in my work. It seems there are so many more things to be done than I have time and ability for, and there is not anything in my life I feel satisfied I have been giving sufficient attention and effort to.

I did finish reading through the second part of Epic Fantasy a while ago, but obviously haven't yet written about that progress, nor moved on to the third and final part. The first half of part 2 I found myself enjoying a lot while reading, although also often wondering if I'd been asleep while writing it to produce so many spelling errors and missed words.

It does seem I had Mystos insisting on sorcerer over wizard, so that will need to be corrected in part 1. The first half of part 2, it seems will mostly stand and need polishing more than any other fixing up. Some jokes and topics I thought I had overused turned out not to be, I think. There is one problem where a statement at the beginning directly contradicts the resolution of the story at the end, so this needs to be addressed.

The second half needs much more attention. In keeping with how it was written it feels more rambling and stretched than the rushed, rushed and pointless in many places. There is a glitch in the timeline where I wrote two different sequences of events and did not integrate them (a successful implementation of 'just to the end of the story and fix it later'), but not as lengthy or difficult to fix as I remembered. There is a subplot resolution where the motive for addressing it is not introduced until the moment of resolution; this needs to be introduced probably several pages earlier to make it all more sensible. One or two character traits need to be introduced and clarified earlier so as not to be so sudden or confusingly expressed at the points where they currently show up.

Overall the second half is repetitive and dragging, wearing out some jokes that worked fine earlier. The moments where the second half works best are I think the scenes I had most been looking forward to, and at its worst where I forced myself to bridge those with the rest of the story. I suspect when it is cleaned up part 2 will be shorter than it is now; if not then it will at least have improved pacing.

Tomorrow is the weekend, when I work at my coding project, but on Monday it is time to read through part 3. I am not looking forward to that, expecting to drag more and more aimlessly than what I've already read, and I am lacking ideas for fixing what I expect to find there.

In other stories, I have been wondering about the 'Algolverse' and the story with those characters I completed for NaNoWriMo last year, and whether it fulfils what I wanted it to be. There are plenty of flaws - rushed writing, poorly expressed characters, badly plotted story lacking tension - but in this sense I am more concerned with the feel of it all. What I wanted seems to fit pretty well into the genre 'space opera', following a team of heroes on their adventures through space and on sundry worlds, often facing down villains. Mainly because, as I've said many times now talking about the project, it is a style of story I often referenced in fiction but feel I don't actually get to read / watch much, if ever. Probably the closest is Farscape, and Stargate is definitely Not It. I think I worry that if I cannot say what I mean I will not be able to create it.

Perhaps it makes sense for Shadow of the Empire not to mesh entirely with the feel I had in mind, being something of an origin story too, but I think done properly it should manage both. Maybe the problem is merely poor writing, which can be improved. (that's an incomplete merely, of course). I am definitely unsure. Perhaps when it comes time to revise, taking what I wrote last time and making an outline of it would help. Then I can rewrite to fit a shape that is more intensely story than the writewritewritepanicpanic in which it was originally produced. I keep puzzling over what is missing from the story, but maybe I've already identified it - once I fix the dash-enclosed list above, maybe I won't find it so lacking in what it should be. Or maybe I will see clearer what it needs.

Vague ideas for future adventures, but so far no more developed than 'solo adventure for one character' and 'rival team-up to defeat an evil wizard!' Sounds fun.

The Algol stories also tend to get me thinking on the matter of violence in my fiction, mainly because here I have decided to write a series specifically in a genre where violence resolves most conflicts. Tends to make me worry, that most of my stories feature violence strongly. Worry that it indicates a lack of sophistication on my part, if I'm not devising story conflicts of other sorts. Worry, too, that producing as standard output such action-adventure stories is participating in a culture which contains troublesome, harmful attitudes concerning violence. Should I not have stories where the heroes save the day via skilfully applied violence? But it's fun. It is fun, and I am vaguely troubled that I write adventurous stories partly on the basis 'violence is fun', but I don't seem able to articulate a more sophisticated position so far. This is all rambling wondering, without any conclusions. Just something on my mind.

Recently I have been discussing tSOW with Pazi. There is a character for that setting who has been slowly coalescing in my head for several months and who still is not done. The basic concept is an A-list superhero (like, say, Superman or Wonder Woman) who fits the trope Incorruptible Pure Pureness and who is a sexual sadist. Originally was undecided on gender, but eventually she turned out to be female. Talking about this character with others caused some confusion since I said I was taking some inspiration - particularly on costume - from Miss Marvel, but there are at least two of those. Marvel Comics has Ms. Marvel while DC has Mary Marvel. Fortunately both have (or had) a black and yellow costume with a bit of a lightning motif, and that was what I'd meant. If it does end up looking anything like Mary Marvel's costume seen here, she'd be wearing something like tights as well. And that's more thought than I'd been expecting to put into costuming at this stage, but there you go.

Still very undeveloped in powers. She's meant to have a suite of abilities in addition to the standard 'flying brick' set, but what those would be I don't yet know beyond the vague idea 'some kind of energy whip?', but does bring up the question of power distribution in a setting that hitherto had been largely one power per person. And she doesn't have a name, but since she feels like a person in my head that is mainly a problem of making reference. Tends to happen. Am tempted to call her "The Marvellous Mary Sue" but that could be pushing it. My thoughts keep offering the word magic in answer to what other powers she might have. Don't know what to make of that, as magic per se doesn't really have a place in the setting, will see later.

That makes two A-list superheroes for the setting now, the other being unnamed but probably having the word Awesome in his title (being that his powers stem primarily from the belief of others in his awesomeness), and one B-list hero with super-speed whose name seems determined to be Adam. Plenty of others whose characters exist in various stages of development, but whose place, social and otherwise, in this heroic association is not established. The source idea for the setting concerns realism in superhero fiction and ways people try to innovate in their writing of same, so I need a developed pool of characters who can be assigned as A- and B-list before I will be able to write the initial set of stories.

When developing the setting I also wanted to shake up the idea of heroes and villains and try to do something that seems to me relatively unusual across any fiction that divides characters into heroes and villains: to have the heroes in the active role, and the villains being reactive. I'm not sure how well I've managed it. At the moment the setting holds four 'factions' of superpowered people. The heroes are those who have organised to use their abilities for the benefit of humanity, through such means as random crime-fighting and emergency response (or other ways if they are able to?), while the official villains hold that their abilities make them distinct enough from humans that what the heroes do is interference to the detriment of humanity by those who are essentially outsiders. Thus, they have the reactive role of attempting to thwart proactive heroes, but not engaging themselves in evil plots or otherwise harmful initiatives. The other groups are the Explorers, who have entirely disengaged themselves from humanity in order to pursue their own goals, and finally all those powered people who are not part of any other group.

I suspect people will not be surprised it is the designated villains whose motivation and ideology is giving me the most difficulty. Or perhaps it is; maybe my difficulty with that is an artefact of my personal perspective. None of the other groups, I think, require a unified ideology as long as they can work together well enough, so maybe with the villains too I can find a diversity of motivation. I conjectured that devoted adherents of some religious traditions might feel called to aid the world with their powers while others could believe the heroes by their actions become idols in the world and distract from the glory of God. Others maybe consider themselves trans-human or post-human and believe a line more like what I expressed in the preceding paragraph. I suppose they don't need to be numerous so long as there are enough who do, and they needed be unconflicted, but I still find myself unsure I have / can / will make it believable they would exist as a group.

Here I am for now stopping, because writing this post has occupied half a week already, and though I have more musings that could be put down, have finally realised am not limited in the number of posts I can make. Besides, writing this has been distracting me from editing.