Category Archives: On Writing

Genrely Speaking: Fairy Tales

Posted by natechen on

A few weeks ago I talked about Cinderella, the new and old films plus the character, and in the middle of it I had to stop to kinda define what, exactly, a fairy tale was. That got me thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if there was some place I could send people so they could know exactly what I meant – okay, enough of that you know what time it is.  Genrely Speaking is where I define literary genres, or at least explain what I mean when I mention them. And since I work at a library that means I know what I’m talking about, right?

No.

Never let that stop me before, though, so let’s get cracking, shall we? Fairy tales are a pretty amorphous group of stuff in the modern era, in fact some people will call anything with a remotely unnatural element to it a fairy tale, but in general it’s a characteristic genre referring to a story with these elements:

  1. An emphasis on circumstances. Jack of beanstalk fame is a fatherless boy who’s family is very poor. Cinderella is a fatherless girl who’s family is wealthy but abuses her. Hamlin is a city overrun with rats. These are the circumstances of the character, the situation they find themselves in, and we tend to be presented with them very matter-of-factly. There’s no backstory, these are just the facts of life. There’s no introspection, each hearer is left to fill that part in on their own.
  2. Character in action. This is the heart of the story. Jack trades his cow for beans, he climbs a magic beanstalk, he robs a giant and defeats him with cunning. He is bold even when others would call it foolish and it pays off in the end. Cinderella serves quietly and kindly in spite of all cruelty but when the opportunity to leave comes she takes it. She is humble and charitable but not a doormat. Hamlin’s leaders make a promise to get rid of the rats but then backpedal on it. They look after their own but are duplicitous with strangers. We never see deeply into the motivations of these decisions, almost as if the people who told the stories knew their hearers would all have different motivations and just wanted to encourage people to act in a certain way regardless of their motives because certain actions were better for all involved.
  3. Poetic justice. The protagonist comes out ahead in ways that show their actions and attitudes were better than those of their enemies. The giant dies chasing Jack even though, as the bigger man, it would probably have been better to admit he’d been outdone and left it at that. Cinderella’s stepsisters and stepmother loose their eyes and parts of their feet because they did not have the humility to admit they were beaten or the charity to let Cinderella move to a station above theirs (not that she would see herself as above them) while if their heart had been more like Cinderella’s they would have been in no danger. The leaders of Hamlin loose all the young people of the city to the Pied Piper because they broke their word. The end of a fairy tale is always a dispensation of justice be it ever so harsh.

What are the weaknesses of a fairy tale? The biggest two are simplicity and brevity.

Fairy tales are simple stories without much depth to them. They’re stories with morals ranging from the blunt to the anvilicious and they exist pretty much only to tell us why we should or should not behave in a certain way. There’s not much you can cram into that and, as a result, most fairy tale characters experience no character arc, have no background and speak for themselves very little if at all. The stories they live in can be retold in just a few hundred words because really, what more do you need for such flat characters?

What are the strengths of a fairy tale? Simplicity and brevity.

Yes, the characters of a fairy tale barely qualify as “characters” but their very simplicity makes it very easy for us to put ourselves in their shoes and wonder if we could do the things they did – and then be inspired to strive for or avoid those actions. The brevity inherent to the genre makes it that much easier to remember the stories. And the whole thing in aggregate has made for one of the most memorable and prolific groups of stories in Western literature.

Walt Disney built much of his empire on fairy tales. Bill Willingham’s Fables is a love letter to the genre. There’s plenty to love about these little tales from long ago even though they aren’t the kinds of stories we tell now. So don’t knock ’em – anything that can last that old has to have something good at its core.

The Mechanics of Writing

Posted by natechen on

Cursive doesn’t mean screaming profanity while writing but when I was learning penmanship I would certainly have been tempted. Granted my entire repertoire of bad language at the time was learned from episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation so it’s not like I would have had a huge selection to work with, but the point stands: I hated cursive when I was learning to write. Now being homeschooled I eventually got out of it – my mother just felt that my trying to learn the art was taking up too much time, both in that I wasn’t learning it in spite of the time we spent on it and that my frustration at my inability to master the skill was impeding my ability to focus on other schoolwork.

So when I learned that Common Core was abolishing the need to teach cursive handwriting I wasn’t terribly surprised. I know I wasn’t the only person who was very frustrated with it as a child and many people certainly can’t write in it as an adult. Imagine my surprise when I heard so many people crying out the abolishment of a “fundamental part of our culture.”

So I thought for funsies I would take a quick look at this more literal side of the art of writing and explain to all those cursive apologists why I think removing this part of penmanship from elementary education is a good idea. There are, as I see it, three questions we have to consider when looking at cursive handwriting and they are thus.

Is cursive handwriting necessary to the purpose of written communication?

I feel that it is not. Writing is for communicating ideas and the extreme variance in an individual’s handwriting is more pronounced in cursive than in block print. Jokes about a doctor’s handwriting show how incomprehensible a stranger’s handwriting can be. Since the purpose of written communication is to clearly convey a message I don’t think cursive handwriting is directly required to meet the function of handwriting and at times it is actually counterproductive. The one exception is when cursive is used in a signature – but more on that in a few paragraphs.

Is cursive handwriting educationally beneficial?

There are studies that indicate that learning to write by hand stimulates the brain in ways that other kinds of learning and communication do not. Well and good but articles like this one are just talking about writing by hand – the kind of writing doesn’t seem to be that important. They even talk about writing in Chinese or just writing out math problems to gain an understanding of concepts, the important thing is associating motion and symbols with ideas regardless of the kind of motions or symbols. Likewise, the benefits apply to people of all ages not just young people but more on that in a second.

There is a side to this that I haven’t heard discussed at all. Handwriting classes often come before other literacy skills and in my personal experience that was a bad thing. You see, I spent all that time learning to write by hand when I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing with all those shapes I was learning to make. My vocabulary was small, I hadn’t read any stories that gave me an appreciation for the written word – I was being expected to master a skill I could see no practical application for! With no understanding of the potential of the English Language teaching me handwriting was akin to handing someone the key to a treasure vault but the key weighed fifty pounds and no one told me what it did. I just couldn’t see the point. Worse, cursive demanded a degree of physical dexterity I did not possess and wouldn’t for a while.

For years I would loathe writing, not because I was bad at it but because I couldn’t perform the physical act of writing without associating it with the incredible frustration trying to master cursive writing had caused me. I actually wrote a couple of short stories before I turned ten – but I did it using a word processor, not pencil and paper. I am not convinced the benefits of learning cursive handwriting outweigh the drawbacks of causing students who lack the early manual dexterity to master cursive writing to associate the act of writing with frustration.

In an ideal world every student would be allowed to master these literacy tasks at their own rate but in the one size fits all world of nationally administered curriculum I think it’s better to remove an obstacle to learning to write and enjoying it than to leave part of the class frustrated with writing for very little educational gain.

Is cursive handwriting artistically important?

Yes. Very much so. You see, I don’t object to cursive handwriting – my problem is who it is taught to. We use cursive as a means of individual expression in the same way we might use tone of voice. Signatures are likewise an expression of our identity, something unique and personal. That’s good, but it’s not something we can reasonably expect from an elementary student – most of them are not at the point where they’re good enough at expressing themselves . Ideally understanding cursive would be something we expect of students come middle school or early high school. It could be taught as part of an introductory course on art, along with teaching on hieroglyphs, calligraphy both Western and Eastern, and illuminated manuscripts.

Students could choose to learn to write cursive as part of the hands on side of the arts program or study other forms of art like sculpture or photography but reading cursive should probably be a mandatory part of the course, much like understanding the composition of a painting is also mandatory in arts courses. Since people of all ages benefit from handwriting there’s no harm done in waiting to teach cursive. Also, middle-high school is where personalities really begin to gel so it’s a good time to begin developing a signature – a mark that really identifies who you are.

I hardly think all this talk is going to end the hand wringing over handwriting, if for no other reason than the fact that my readership is so small. But I would like to say, just one more time, that I don’t have a problem with cursive penmanship – just the way it was traditionally taught. Cursive needs to be looked at as an art form and not a fundamental literacy skill.

Yes, I know many people learned it as such and did just fine but that doesn’t make the method ideal. In a world of top down education removing cursive from the curriculum entirely is probably the best solution we’re going to get until we get tired of the Department of Education and kick Congress out of our local schools. In the meantime, I don’t think cursive is going to die out.

You see, it’s a very beautiful way to write and beautiful things are taken up because they’re beautiful. With YouTube tutorials for everything under the sun people who want to master cursive need look no further than videos like this one and, like all art forms, their cursive will probably develop best if they work out what exactly their handwriting should look like on their own. The rest of us can block print our way through life and express our love of beauty through story, song or whatever other method best suits us. And when it comes to personal expression, isn’t modeling it the best way to teach anyways?

Summer Plans

Posted by natechen on

So as you may know I recently completed my Project Sumter novel trilogy leaving me confronting the summer with a couple of issues.

The first and biggest are the three novels I’ve rough drafted but not edited. I want to sell those at some point but they’re not nearly ready for marketing. So I want to work on that. Plus, while I’ve enjoyed the periodic feedback I get here and I really appreciate all my readers I haven’t really gotten quite the level of feedback I was originally hoping for. That’s mostly my fault, I’m sure, I keep far too busy with other activities to really participate in social media the amount I probably need to in order to get constant feedback from a large readership base.

Plus there are a lot of other projects I hoped to mess around with in the last couple of years but never found the time for because so much of my free time was caught up trying to write and edit, on average, over 3,000 words a week while also planning my own topics. It was a lot to write and probably a lot to read as well. I’d like to finally get around to some of that other stuff I wanted to do and who knows – maybe putting out less will get people to read more of it!

Basically what I’m trying to say is, I’m going to be scaling back on the blog because it hasn’t been turned out quite the way I expected when I started. For the most part the most readers and commentators have turned up on Fridays for the On Writing column – so that’s what’s going to stick around this summer. I’ll write one post a week and put it up on Fridays and focus on making that the best post it can be and I’ll spend the newly acquired free time on editing and marketing my books, working on other projects and planning new stuff. Then, some time in mid or late August, I’ll review where I stand and perhaps start posting fiction again – we’ll see.

In the mean time, this is where we stand so I hope to see you back on Friday when we’ll look at writing from a slightly different angle. As always thanks for reading and I hope to see you then!

Nate

Sound and Story

Posted by natechen on

Sounds can tell a story. Have you ever noticed?

It’s not something you might think much about if you, like me, primarily concern yourself with words on a page. But every so often you come across sound really well used and you realize that just a few quick sounds can tell a story. The cadence in the footsteps of a walking person is different from that of a running person. Research in communication theory has proven that tone of voice carries something like a quarter of the meaning in what we say.

In case you’re not sold yet let’s look at a couple of pieces of music that use simple sounds to tell fascinating stories, then let’s flip it around and brainstorm some ways our stories can put sounds in readers’ minds.

First, listen to the theme from The CW’s The Arrow, starting from the 2:00 mark on. Or you can listen to the whole thing, your call. but we’re mostly discussing what happens from the 2:00 mark to 2:20.

Notice how the score is riddled with punchy, sharp strings followed by a harsh note that starts high and pushes higher in tone, creating the impression of a flight of arrows swooping in while a bowstring is drawn tight in preparation for a second flight.

Or listen to the first thirty seconds of The Flash theme. (Blake Neely is apparently really good at this kind of composition.)

Notice how it opens with the Flash’s leitmotif, a single tone builds and falls rapidly like the Doppler effect of a fast moving race car blowing past us, then follows with hurried notes rushing up and down, reminiscent of traffic whizzing by, before sounding the Flash’s leitmotif once again. Perfectly suited for the subject matter.

Sounds can tell a story all of their own. Simple stories, admittedly, but no less impactful for it. The written word has it’s own techniques for this. Often they’re not as effective unless your work is meant to be read aloud but at the same time there are techniques that will emphasize sound even if it’s not being spoken aloud.

The two most common ones are alliteration, or using multiple words in a row starting with the same sound, and cadence. Alliteration is a tricky technique to try, as it quickly becomes difficult to find words that flow nicely with the meaning you want and all start with the same letter. Also, letters are limited in the sounds they create, being as a letter is a stand-in for a sound the human voice can produce and that’s not actually a whole lot of sounds when you think about it.

On the other hand, you can do some fun things with alliteration. “S” and “TH” sounds create a kind of white noise impression, hard consonants like “C” or “T” create a kind of percussion rhythm that can drive a story at a marching pace.

Cadence is a different thing entirely. William Shakespeare made his name writing in iambic pentameter, a cadence driven kind of verse that creates very flowing phrases. It does this by alternating between light and heavy, or up and down syllables. By focusing on short syllables, particularly one syllable words, one can give the impression of text that runs along lightly and quickly while long vowel sounds slow down the feel of a phrase.

Of course, the actual sounds you use in a story, things like dripping water or howling wind, can contribute a great deal to atmosphere but that’s an entirely different blog post in and of itself.

Sound creates powerful impressions and is a useful tool in telling a story in any medium. Even if all you do is read something out loud to see how easily your story flows, analyzing the sounds you use is a necessary part of getting better at your craft. Pay attention to the sounds you use, even when you’re just writing.

Afterwords

Posted by natechen on

Salvation is an integral part of comic books.

Saving the girl, saving your friends, saving a world or a galaxy or a universe – at some point all of these things became all in a day’s work. It’d be psychotic if it wasn’t so darn entertaining.

Something about the human condition has made us fall in love with the idea of saviors. We look for them, try to be them, a religion about a Savior has seriously influenced the political and social landscape of the last two thousand years in the West and yet, with trillions of lifetimes, billions of words and thousands of years spent on the problem humanity is still incredibly bad at the whole saving people thing.

Humanity is rife with contradictions and among our greatest is the fact that our propensity for evil tends to be greatest when we are trying our hardest to help others. C. S. Lewis said, “Of all tyrannies, the tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”

When I first sat down to write Open Circuit nearly eight years ago it was with a very simple idea in mind. I wanted to create a character so repulsed by the world around him that the only way he could see to make it better would be to burn it to the ground and regrow it in his own image. A totalitarian, yes, but one with our best interests at heart. Imagine my surprise when almost every word he spoke boiled out of a festering discontent deep within my own heart. I was unsettled, to say the least.

Yes, I’ve waited all this time, until the very end of these three books, to make a confession to you, the readers who have come all this way with me: The character I am most like in all of Project Sumter is probably Matthew Sykes.

We’re both kind of reclusive, grumpy and given to thinking too much. We feel underappreciated and we worry that we’ll soon be too old to do any good for anyone. We’re frequently told we’re smart but things don’t work out for us so often it feels more like a consolation than a real advantage. And sometimes, if given the opportunity, I would climb in that wheelchair and conquer Chicago just the same as Circuit would.

Except the first thing I would do is put a coffee shop in at that reflective coffee bean thingy in Millenium Park because seriously not having one there is some kind of gross oversight. Then we would get to work restoring the lakefront. But I digress.

The one cardinal difference between me and the character I had created was that I have a savior – His name is Jesus Christ – and this helps me deal with all the things that Circuit can’t. So, long before I put the first word to paper, I knew that Circuit had to face up to his shortcomings at some point. And when he faced them he would have to be saved from them because that’s what real heroes do. They save people, no matter who they are. From there it was just a matter of working out who would do it and how.

The answers to those whos and hows I have already shared with you. I hope you’ve enjoyed them.

From a story that grew out of discontent and general grouchiness, political weirdness and a desire to do something different came something that was very simple and basic but that was none the less very difficult to achieve and satisfying to complete. The Sumter trilogy was by no means a perfect story in concept or execution but I’ve written it pretty much as I set out to and that’s something, a starting point at the very least.

Next week… well, come back next week and I’ll lay out my plans for the summer. Until then.

Writing Men: Dipper Pines

Posted by natechen on

Hey, haven’t done this in a while! If you’re not familiar with this series of posts a summary and links to the others can be found on this page.

Up to speed? Great! Let’s take a look at the principles of writing male characters in application.

Dipper Pines is the male half of the protagonist duloagy of Gravity Falls. (The other protagonist is, of course, Dipper’s twin sister Mabel.) He’s an interesting character for several reasons, not all of which are the scope of this post, but one that we should look at right off the bat is his age. Dipper is twelve, which technically makes him a boy and not a man. Is that relevant?

Not really. As I hope to prove through the course of this examination, Dipper shows all the relevant hallmarks of a well written male character but still behaves as we would expect a twelve year old boy to behave. This suggests that the patterns of thought I’ve put forward as distinctly male in character action are cemented at a very young age. So what are some of the male behaviors Dipper shows and how does he demonstrate them?

Well, let’s just go down the list. The first, most basic aspect of male thought is the easiest to see in Dipper. He’s very objective driven – he wants to know what’s up with Gravity Falls. Why all the weirdness? Who wrote the journal he found? Does it all have some meaning? He gets caught up in these questions very easily and chafes at anything that drags him away from solving them. But the mysteries of Gravity Falls aren’t his only objective – he also has a crush on the local girl Wendy and wants to see his sister be as happy as possible. We can see these objectives clashing from the very beginning but episodes that illustrate the conflicts (and synergies) of these goals particularly well include Irrational Treasure and The Time Traveler’s Pig.

Dipper also has a very simple set of rules he lives by. The two most important are established in Tourist Trapped. First, Dipper looks out for Mabel (when it’s not the reverse, Mabel is very in the moment while Dipper takes the long term view so Dipper needs just as much looking after as his sister). Second, Dipper takes the Journal’s warning to Trust No One very seriously, but amends it somewhat because he does trust Mabel. Every episode has some example of this but they are the most apparent in The Hand That Rocks the Mabel and Gideon Rises.

The compartmentalization in Dipper’s life is much less obvious. We mostly see it with the older characters he knows – Soos and Grunkle Stan, both of whom he leaves out of most of his paranormal activities. Grunkle Stan doesn’t seem to buy into Dipper’s theories about the town and is a bit of an overprotective authoritarian so he winds up outside the “Adventure” box most of the time. Soos is fit for both everyday work and adventures but Dipper can find his help questionable when dealing with personal situations like Wendy or Mabel. But for the most part, Dipper is a man who hasn’t yet worked out where everything goes yet and that may be one of his strengths – he can find out of the box solutions that most other people won’t think of.

Testing, on the other hand, is something Dipper actively avoids. He doesn’t like the hard work Stan throws at him, he doesn’t really want to confront most of his problems (and Robbie in particular) and he doesn’t spend a whole lot of time refining the useful skills he does show. One thing he does do is test out the things he reads in The Journal, but that could be more seen as a desire to confirm what others have told him rather than a particular desire to know his own limits.

Dippers lack of go-getting brinksmanship with his own abilities is probably one of the things that leads others to underestimate him. Dipper’s not a wimp but he doesn’t measure his abilities for the sake of knowing what he can do, either, so when a situation pops up that requires him to do something new he’s often nervous about it. We see this particularly in The Inconveniencing, Double Dipper and Fight Fighters. By the end of the first season, however, Gravity Falls itself has tested him to the point where he knows himself very well and he gains some confidence.

On a side note, Dipper has no solid mentoring figure. Stan’s hands off stance most likely reflects his own lack of confidence in his ability to mentor Dipper – the man’s been to jail after all, and his general lack of ethics and good sense probably makes him a poor role model, even if he’s fun to watch at times. Soos has a solid set of skills but is probably on Dipper’s maturity level himself and frequently looks to Dipper for leadership, so he’s not really a mentor either. The Author also teaches a lot of useful skills via his Journal but isn’t there to help Dipper understand the messages he left behind so he’s not really a mentor either.

Dipper could probably use one – Dipper Vs. Manliness certainly showed that and he would probably have liked someone besides Mabel he could talk to about things but currently Gravity Falls is short in the Good Role Model department. Instead of seeking a mentor Dipper usually goes off by himself, thinks things over and comes up with a plan of action. It may not be a good plan, but it’s a plan.

Finally, Dipper’s life is riddled with Sacrifice. Practically every episode he gives something up for the sake of Mabel, from a chance to impress his crush in the Time Traveler’s Pig to his part time job in The Deep End. While those are the biggest examples he gives up small parts of his dignity, time and desires on a regular basis to keep an eye on Mabel and make sure she’s not getting into trouble.

On the opposite side of things, he frequently gives up his time and skips out on work in The Mystery Shack to try and solve the mysteries of Gravity Falls. In fact, he willingly gives up just about anything to learn about Gravity Falls – except Mabel’s welfare.

So in conclusion we find all the typical male hallmarks in Dipper, making him a well written, well rounded male character in spite of his youth. In fact, it’s his youth that makes his male characteristics so pronounced – where maturity would mean reigning them in at times (because sooner or later Mabel is going to need to look to her own future) and shoring up some weak points (he’ll fail more if he fears testing his limits than he would otherwise) Dipper gives full vent to all his tendencies, good and bad. While Gravity Falls may not be a show for everyone and there’s no denying they do a good job writing they’re characters and Dipper is just one great example of that.

In Defense of Cinderella

Posted by natechen on

Disney recently released the latest of their live action takes on the old animated classics. I’m talking of course about Cinderella. I haven’t seen the movie but I have read and heard a number of reviews and I noticed a weird trend. Regardless of their opinions of the remake, most critics seemed to be very unappreciative of the original film. Or, perhaps more accurately, the character of Cinderella as she was portrayed in that film.

Now while I haven’t seen the new live action film I did seen the original animated film many times and I remember it very fondly. So imagine my surprise when most of what I read suggested that Cinderella had no character to speak of.

I take issue with this. Cinderella had a lot of character, even if it’s not developed in the ways we’re used to. So today let’s take a look at the classic animated Cinderella and some of the criticisms people have been making of it and then why they might not be entirely fair.

  1. Cinderella is entirely passive. She does nothing to escape the position her stepmother puts her in she just waits for the prince to come for her. While it’s true that Cinderella does nothing for herself, to improve her own situation, to call her passive is incredibly wrongheaded. She does a lot. Her most noticeable actions are just altruistic and directed towards mice. She does a great deal to proactively rescue, feed and clothe the mice of the house and in the process of caring for them indirectly provokes her stepmother (one of the most terrifying Disney villains there is). There’s more to Cinderella than just passively waiting, she’s actively doing good for those around here. That takes real moral strength – real character – to do.
  2. Cinderella undergoes no character growth during the story. This critique is actually very valid. Cinderella (the original animated film) is based on a fairy tale and is a very loyal adaptation of it. There was generally very little character growth in fairy tales because they were stories designed to serve as examples of desirable character qualities. Rather than showing how a character trait might come about they are designed to show that trait in action and what the rewards for it are. Her character is the result of a different storytelling tradition than the modern one and that does weaken her impact some, particularly to modern audiences, but it doesn’t make her character bad just the presentation of her story.
  3. Cinderella is a wimp. She never stands up for herself. This one really gets me. Given the time period of the story and the situation Cinderella finds herself in there’s only so much defiance we can reasonably expect of Cinderella. She does try and stand up to for herself and those under her protection when she does things like save the mice from the cat or ask if she can go to the ball. But she’s essentially been relegated to house servant since she was a young girl – she has few skills and little to no education. Just maintaining a cheerful attitude a taking the moral stands she does is already a herculean effort. What more do you want?

When you look back on it then it’s easy to see that Cinderella had its flaws as a film. The mice are kind of silly and take up time that might be used to develop the more important human characters like Cinderella’s stepmother or the nameless prince she ultimately marries, or showing a more modern character arc in Cinderella herself. The music is average and the stepsisters themselves really don’t add much to the story beyond giving their mother another excuse to be mean. But is Cinderella herself a flaw in the story?

She’s steadfast, patient and kind. Her good nature is her greatest charm and when she gets hers it is truly marvelous. Many times when I was young I laughed in gleeful vindication when Cinderella produced the second glass slipper, to her stepmother’s dismay and the Duke’s delight. She didn’t change or grow much but she sure made us grow to love her and for good reason. So give the lady a break. Or not. At the very least, no matter what you think, I’m pretty sure Cinderella would go right on being herself and, in an era when peer pressure is brought to bear with more strength and from more directions than ever before, that in and of itself is a sign of real character.

Avengers Analyzed: Fury and Coulson

Posted by natechen on

Now I could be criticized for including these two in my analysis of Avengers characters because at first glance it seems that neither Fury nor Coulson have distinct character arcs in this story. That’s not entirely true. Rather, these two erstwhile leaders of SHIELD share a conflict and a goal but it’s not one that works out like they expect.

You see, Fury and Coulson both fail in what they set out to do and that, in turn, cuts their character arc much shorter than we’re used to seeing. With that said, let’s just dig into it shall we?

Fury and Coulson’s Background

These characters share a single purpose, namely to create a superteam under the aegis of SHIELD. Coulson is the first of these two that we see, showing up pretty much as soon as Tony Stark stepped out of the shadows in his first shiny red Iron Man suit. Fury took a little longer to show up, poking his head in after the credits of Iron Man, and he was also more skeptical of Stark’s suitability for membership on the Avengers. Up until this point we haven’t really paid these two a whole lot of attention but after four movies we do know a few things.

Coulson is very enthusiastic at the idea of the Avengers and tries his best to reach out to potential members and interest them in the team, Fury is cautious and does his best to control risks that will undercut his agenda. There is a slight tension between the two in that Coulson hopes to see heroes doing their thing in a coordinated fashion that will protect and inspire others while Fury wants to be the head of his team and ensure that it is used in the best possible fashion. The balance between the two viewpoints is probably the fact that Coulson views Fury as a hero in and of his own right.

The Conflict 

Both Phil and Nick embody character vs. the world. Unlike Captain Rogers, their conflict doesn’t arise from changes in the world around them but from fundamental differences between the way Coulson and Fury think the way the world should progress and the way the world itself wants to be.

Basically, Fury and Coulson want the Avengers to be heroes. They want them to set an example for other people and be on the front line of what’s about to unfold. The world at large, on the other hand, sees all these exceptional people and the threats inbound and just wants them to go away as quickly and with as little fuss as possible. The world would prefer to just press a button or drop a bomb and have this sticky situation sorted out when, in truth, sticky situations are rarely sorted out that easily and will require brave men and women risking life and limb in very direct and personal ways to get things done.

In short, the world Fury and Coulson live in is exactly like ours.

Each of these two characters is going to face down the problem in their own way, if The Avengers is a war movie then Fury is the general who will command the troops and deal with government while Coulson is the trusted captain who will actually lead them into battle. One handles the strategic level, the other the tactical. Naturally, this leads to the basic conflict at work bearing out in different ways.

Fury is concerned with world leaders, the World Security Council, the people who’s backing he will need to make his idea work, he has to fight against the ideas permeating his world. Coulson, on the other hand, is going to face narcissism, a lack of self esteem, feelings of impotence and distraction by personal matters as he tries to keep the Avengers on task. His struggle is against the feelings permeating his world.

We Meet Fury and Coulson 

“This doesn’t have to get any messier.” – Colonel Nick Fury, to Loki 

This pair of erstwhile leaders are introduced pretty much at the same time, at the very beginning of the film as Fury comes to check on the Tesseract at a secure SHIELD facility at the back end of nowhere. This setting serves to quickly establish both characters as high ranking members of a government organization and that Fury outranks Coulson and establishes some other basic dynamics like introducing Agent Barton. Then, just to keep us on our toes, the movie drops Loki into the mix and lets us see what happens.

Fury vs. Loki 

“Yeah, you say ‘peace’, I kind of think you mean the other thing.” – Colonel Nick Fury, still talking to Loki 

Fury’s confrontation with Loki is our first demonstration of Loki’s power and it’s very impressive. He wipes out dozens of trained SHIELD agents and subverts two very valuable people, providing the impetus for Fury to go ahead and try the Avengers Initiative even though it had theoretically already been scrapped.

This confrontation is short but meaningful. In addition to providing the driving force behind the entire story and reinforcing the idea that SHIELD alone will not be enough to stop Loki’s invasion it also highlights a stubbornness that will ultimately be Fury’s undoing in his efforts to unite the world against the threats it faces.

Gathering the Avengers – And Hiding them Away

“With everything that’s happening, the things that are about to come to light, people might just need a little old fashioned.” – Phil Coulson, to Captain America 

Nothing evokes the attitudes of the SHIELD leadership more than their interactions with Steve Rogers, which is fitting because when the attention of SHIELD wavers it’s ultimately Captain America who will step into the gap and takes up the mantle of leadership. But that doesn’t happen in this film so I’m going to ignore it for the moment.

Let’s focus instead on what Fury and Coulson are telling Steve. If you look at the dialog they’re constantly talking about using SHIELD resources for the good of humanity. Fury tells about the potential the Tesseract has as a power source, showing a wide-reaching civic good that SHIELD wants to advance. Phil talks about how the Avengers can inspire and unite people in dangerous times. These are worthy goals, goals fitting for a group of people who want to call themselves heroes.

In contrast, the very first thing that Fury does with his group of individuals once they agree to work with him is gather them on a flying fortress and turn them invisible, far from the people the Avengers are intended to serve and protect. Now no problem is going to have a perfect solution but SHIELD’s actions and its claims don’t exactly add up. We’re never shown how much of these actions were Fury’s idea and how much they belong to the World Security Council but at the very least concealing the existence of a highly recognizable fugitive from the public isn’t the best way to find a person and Fury has to have known that.

Not working with the public to find Loki is an odd choice, but one that makes sense in the light of the Security Council’s statement that the Avengers are dangerous. The problem with assessing things in terms of security is that everything is dangerous. The Council is, to paraphrase Gandalf, beset by dangers for they themselves are dangerous. The problem is, they fail to recognize that and therefore regard anything dangerous as bad. Fury isn’t doing a good job wining them over to his side.

Coulson’s problem is much more personal. Heroes come with a lot of baggage and the Avengers are no exception. Making things worse, baggage frequently multiplies when you cram a bunch of it into one place, witness the constant bickering between Steve and Tony. Coulson’s conflict plays out as he tries to smooth over everyone’s conflicting feelings and forge the Avengers into a single team that can work together like his own agents do. The problem is, the Avengers are not SHIELD agents by any stretch of the imagination and, while Coulson has the kind of personality and insight to put each of these heroes at ease individually, he is not the person to lead them collectively.

Coulson vs. Loki

“You lack conviction.” – Phil Coulson, to Loki 

Coulson’s confrontation with Loki is also brief but even more effective than Fury’s. While Loki technically defeats Coulson the concept of a moral victory definitely applies here. At no point does Coulson’s resolve waver or his spirit flag. No, the reason Coulson can’t stop Loki is that he’s come alone. While Coulson’s goal was to help bring together and support the Avengers as a team he unfortunately didn’t actually consider himself a part of that team and because of this, at a critical moment when the presence of just one or two other members of the Avengers could have made a significant difference, Coulson doesn’t ask them for help.

Yes, some of them were busy with other things. Some of them were mind controlled. But honestly, Phil didn’t have to come alone, did he? Well, yes he did. You see, from a story standpoint, conviction was what the Avengers as a whole were lacking, just as much as Loki.

The Avengers lacked conviction in the cause Phil believed in, the idea that a simple, old fashioned crew could take a stand on something incredibly simple, like having the freedom to make your own decisions, and fight for it, inspiring other people to do the same. Banner and Romanoff think they’re monsters. Steve’s uncertain of his place in the world. Stark can’t see beyond his own narcissism. Barton’s perspective is so farsighted sometimes it leaves him alienated. Thor can’t parse his conflicting love for his brother and his adopted planet. And Nick Fury… well, he couldn’t do without a backup plan.

Only Phil Coulson had the unshakeable belief that the Avengers could become the heroes to inspire a generation. It was that conviction, in turn, that would inspire the Avengers themselves.

Things Fall Apart

“Director Fury, the Council has made a decision.” – The World Security Council 

While Coulson wins the battle for the Avengers, the war for the world falls through. Coulson’s part of the struggle was to win the Avengers over to Fury’s vision to defend the world and bring them to place that goal above personal goals. While Phil succeeded Fury can’t get the Security Council to buy in. They remain skeptical of Fury’s goals – a unified force offering Earth long term security – and instead pursue their own goal of immediate safety regardless of the cost in the future.

It’s important to understand what a setback for Fury this is. Not only has he lost his best agent, by deciding to destroy the Chitauri invasion along with the island of Manhattan via nuclear warhead the World Security Council has completely rejected Fury’s single greatest hope for saving Earth. Yes, Fury ignores their orders and tries to stop the nuclear strike but the fact is that he wanted the Avengers to be a symbol of mankind united, a testament to the way noble ideas can unite people in spite of pettymindedness. While it’s hard to blame the Security Council for their decision – the entire world was at stake after all and that kind of responsibility has got to be heavy – without Council backing the Avengers can’t really represent humanity united. It’s hard to represent a united front when you’re a rogue element, after all.

Ultimately, at the end of The Avengers Fury is not in the greatest position. The Avengers have gone their separate ways, the World Security Council is on his back and he’s lost his best agent. Fury is on the ropes and will probably need to take drastic measures to reestablish his credibility. Something like allying with a questionable politician to build an armada and dispatch threats before they materialize. But again, not the scope of this analysis.

Fury and Coulson serve the larger story of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, to be certain, but they also have their own conflict to resolve and that conflict comes from the differences between their idea of the world and the world’s own ideas. The small part of the world that they need to join them directly, the six members of the Avengers other than Fury himself, does come over to their side but the world as a whole does not. Fury is vindicated when the Avengers win but the Security Council still will not back his decisions or trust that the Avengers will function for the good of the world, both questioning whether they will be on task when needed again and whether they are up to the task.

This outcome to Fury and Coulson’s story may seem depressing, and to be fair it is. But at the same time, it does two very important things. First, it adds verisimilitude. As I said before, the World Security Council has a very real, significant burden on their shoulders and it’s not crafting a strong, heroic society it’s making sure that there’s any society left at all. It’s natural for them to want failsafes and be very skeptical of making seven people Earth’s first line of defense against things like the Chitauri invasion.

Secondly, Fury’s leadership style is secretive, controlling and frankly a little Machiavellian. These tendencies make him a poor leader for the kind of group he wants to build. The Avengers don’t naturally trust him and follow his lead. Fury explains his goals several times but the Avengers, and Tony and Steve in particular, are skeptical because his actions don’t really match with his stated ends. The other Avengers defer to Coulson because their previous experiences with him have convinced them of his good intentions but Fury never lets the Avengers get that close. Perhaps it’s not surprising that Fury’s efforts fail.

So what kind of further character growth can we expect from Age of Ultron? Honestly, I can’t say. With three villains to focus on this time around – Ultron himself plus Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch – plus all seven Avengers apparently returning in the second film I’m not sure how much character growth we can expect from them this time around. The individual films Iron Man 3, Captain America: The Winter Soldier and Thor: The Dark World made a wholehearted attempt to further the work done of Marvel’s The Avengers. They succeeded to some extent but what made The Avengers so great was it’s success in characterizing it’s cast without needing the background from the first phase of Marvel movies.

But we can still hope, since it is Joss Whedon at the helm. And there’s still a good chance of a great story and fun action.

The Importance of Context, Historical and Otherwise

Posted by natechen on

Marvel’s Agent Carter was an interesting experiment. A series of eight hour-length episodes, the miniseries-esque offering served to expand the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) while allowing it’s sister show, Agents of SHIELD, a chance to regroup and air the second half of it’s season in one long continuous burst rather than chopping it’s episodes up in that weird spring schedule a lot of TV shows adopt. This certainly helps SHIELD tell a cohesive, overarching story and the idea of a miniseries expanding the MCU is a new angle we haven’t seen in TV before, in part because there’s never been anything quite like the MCU before to drive it.

That’s not to say Agent Carter is without flaws. I could find any number to nitpick at but the one that really jumps out at me does so because of how glaring it is. On the whole, not many characters in the series, outside leading lady Peggy Carter, showed much character growth or had their background delved into at any length. What I want to poke at is one of the attempts to provide that growth that fell somewhat flat. It concerns SSR Agent Jack Thompson.

Thompson is Carter’s foil in the SSR, the agent devoted to the idea that she couldn’t hack it in the high stakes world of cold war spy work. He’s a decorated marine who won the Navy Cross in the Pacific Theater of the Second World War and he’s determined to prove he’s top dog. Eventually we find out why (and please be aware that this is a spoiler, if a minor one.)

You see, our boy Jack got the Navy Cross for saving his superiors life during a night ambush by the Japanese. He woke up, saw Japanese soldiers in their camp and started shooting. In the aftermath he found a white flag dropped on the ground and concludes the Japanese were surrendering and that he’d just incited the death of innocent men. Then he gets an award for it and the guilt really starts eating at him.

Jack tells Peggy this story after he freezes in the middle of a pitched gunfight and she asks him why, giving her and the audience a little more understanding of why he is the way he is. It’s a nice moment, well acted and well written. It has one problem.

The Japanese almost never surrendered.

Soldiers talk about fighting to the death all the time but a large percentage of them will surrender if it’s clear there’s nothing more they can do to win. Troops in WWII did it all the time. German troops, Italian troops, American troops, British troops, French troops, it was just a part of war and nothing to be ashamed of. For everyone, that is, but the Japanese.

The culture of Imperial Japan was fatalistic in the extreme, most famously manifesting in the kamikaze pilots at the end of the war, and it’s shocking how all pervasive the attitude was. Many Japanese troops captured during the war were incapacitated somehow and most of those capable of resisting chose to do so until killed, or did something suicidal like running at enemies with a grenade ticking in their hands or just committed suicide rather than submit to capture. This isn’t to say the Japanese didn’t surrender but those who did were a very small minority.

On the other hand, the Japanese knew the Americans surrendered and expected them to do the same. So Japanese troops would sometimes pretend to surrender, approaching with a white flag and hands in the air, only to drop the flag and attack when it looked like they were close enough to enemy lines. This tactic quickly became well known among American troops who viewed any attempt to surrender in a large group with a great deal of suspicion. It may have happened much less often than people talked about but it’s still a historical fact, confirmed by records on both sides of the conflict, that Japanese troops almost never surrendered during WWII.

This is something Jack Thompson should have known. He should not have been readily accepting of the notion that the Japanese troops who’d come into his camp were there to surrender because the historical context makes such an assumption highly unlikely. Failing to take this context into account when writing this scene strips the moment of all the credibility it’s good writing and acting earned it.

It’s not like this fact would have changed the scene a great deal if it had been included – Thompson could have been just as guilt-ridden over choosing not to wait to see if the Japanese really were surrendering before fighting back instead of giving them the benefit of the doubt no matter how little he may have thought they deserved it. In fact, that scene might have been even more believable and more suited to analyzing the horrors of war because Jack would have found himself in a situation where he was powerless to know whether he made the right choice or not. At least when he knows with concrete certainty that he was wrong he can look for some kind of penance. But the stark fact of war is that it dehumanizes those that participate and Jack’s inability to tell whether he did the right thing or not would be a powerful representation of that, one that would reinforce the ambiguous yet grim fate of the Japanese soldiers who found their way into his encampment.

Instead the writers failed to do their research and a scene that had the potential to be very impactful fell flat by failing to fit with the historical context it was intended to have. Agent Carter did a very good job recreating the mid to late 1940s in fashion, culture and even architecture and vehicles. That’s what makes this oversight particularly glaring – it’s a hole in the historical context that’s otherwise rock solid. Writers take note! If you’re going to add historical context make sure you get it all or your work is just going to come out flat.

Creativity and Entertainment: A 21st Century Conundrum

Posted by natechen on

From the wealthy of Regency England gathered around the pianoforte for an evening of music to the pioneers in the American West listening to a man with a fiddle, from a man telling stories by the firelight to a group of gamers telling stories about their D&D characters, the human race has a long history of people creating and sharing those creations with others. But not so much in the recent past.

We hardly even think of this kind of creativity as creative anymore, we just call it entertainment, ignoring the fact that throughout most of history “entertainment” was something that people created for themselves or those immediately around them. Since the rise of media driven culture people in societies with advanced media have largely given over the business of entertainment to an elite caste and become entirely consumers, rather than creators. The theory, as with all the things we’ve stopped doing for ourselves over the years, is that a professional will do it better than we could and the loss of knowing how to do it won’t hurt us that much. And in some cases that’s probably true.

But in the case of creating entertainment I’d argue it’s very much the opposite.

Our culture has lost the ability to create entertainment itself and it suffers for it. We suffer from a loss of ability to connect to other people, a loss of insight into the creative process and a loss of the ability to appreciate creativity.

Creativity is, at it’s core, the ability to explain ideas to other people in a way that they find exciting and engaging. In order to do it you have to be able to get a feel for where other people are mentally and emotionally and then lead them to the experience you want them to have. On the large scale that means understanding the society around you and on a smaller scale it means being alert and attentive to the people you meet. By necessity it requires that you both know how to understand people and how to best collaborate to bring them where you want them to go. These kinds of very basic people skills are a core part of entertainment and when we stop creating to entertain they begin to atrophy and our society is paying the price – as a culture America is becoming more rude, less understanding and more impatient. Is all this because we’ve given up entertaining ourselves? No, probably not. But is that a factor? I think it may be.

But society isn’t the only thing hurt by our failure to create and entertain – our ability to understand the creative process is impaired. There are some things about what goes into entertainment that can only be understood fully by someone who’s done it. Ask anyone who’s just attempted theater or written a short story for the first time – they’ll always tell you it’s more effort than they expected. On top of that, the sense of accomplishment and, when working in a group, the sense of comradery is far more than you would expect. To go with it, there’s almost a sense of possession – what you’ve done or created is yours alone and not like anything else on Earth, for good or bad.

An understanding of that work and that sense of accomplishment comes with an understanding of the euphoria and sense of importance that comes with creativity. After all, you’re making up something that never existed before and that’s going to feel good. With that rush comes the tendency to push ideas, to construct stories in ways that make our own ideas prominent. As a creator it’s important to check this tendency in the interests of verisimilitude but no one can do it perfectly and some creators don’t do it at all. Having actually been through the process personally helps you spot when others aren’t policing themselves as well as they might.

That’s an important skill to have because entertainment contains a lot of ideas that entertainers are trying to advance – yes, they have the goal of entertaining you but almost all entertainers have things beyond entertainment that interest them and those ideas always creep into the entertainment you provide. If you’ve created your own entertainment before you know how this can happen and can spot the signs more easily. Sure, TV is just TV but that doesn’t mean it’s not influencing you at all. You might not be selling your soul to the devil when you flip on pop radio but Taylor Swift is certainly getting some real estate in your brain. The familiarity being a creator yourself gives you will help you understand what those influences are doing with the brainspace you’re giving em.

Finally, being creative really does help you appreciate the results of the creative endeavors produced by others. The act of creating requires a practiced eye or ear or hand. Once you’ve developed those skills it will as easily pick out the best that other creators have to offer and savor it all the more for knowing all the time and passion that went into it.

The benefits of creating are many, but you’ll probably effect the most people with them if you aim to entertain. If you’ve not even dabbled a bit in creative expression to share with others then go out and try it. It will be good for your friends and for you.