Category Archives: On Writing

Genrely Speaking: Historical Fiction

Posted by natechen on

Welcome back to Gernrely Speaking, the part of the show where we crack open a genre and look at what it means when we mention it here. As I’ve mentioned before, the literary classifications we call genres exist as much as an expression of opinions as they do a scientific taxonomy of fiction. So keep in mind that any definition of a genre is as much a subjective idea as it is an ironclad classification, which is one of the reasons this segment’s name is a pun based on the phrase “generally speaking”.

Today we’re going to look at a genre that doesn’t get much press these days: Historical fiction.

What’s that? You’ve never heard of historical fiction? You don’t know what it is or what it looks like? Well then we’d better start there. Historical fiction is an aesthetic genre that generally has:

  1. Real History. Lots and lots and lots of history, the historical kind of history that comes out of history books. “Historical” is in the title because there has to be solid, well researched history serving as the foundation for this story. While some of a historical fiction novel is fiction the broad backdrop for the story has to be historical. This is why a novel series like the Thieftaker can kind of sort of qualify as historical fiction – while the main character, his magic and his close associates are fictional, the backdrop of events he lives in are not.
  2. Encounters with historical characters. Much like with it’s counterpart, alternate history, half the fun of historical fiction is seeing known historical figures in a new light. In this case the new light revolves around whatever scenario the new story adds to the historical record. Murder investigations during the revolution? Sounds like the mind of Ben Franklin might be needed. Stuck behind Confederate lines during the Civil War? Enter General Lee! If you’re a history fanboy then historical fiction is definitely a genre for you.
  3. The ability to pass without trace. The heart and soul of historical fiction is that it is something that could have happened during the known historical events depicted in the narrative. It’s a “what if” but a very specific one. So nothing the fictional characters do can have any outcome on actual historical events. No matter how much those events may grate on those characters, both protagonists and antagonists are going to have to live with the verdict of history as we know it.

What are the weaknesses of historical fiction? The biggest drawback to this genre as a writer is the amount of research you will have to put into writing it. The facts have to be right, or someone in your audience is going to spot your mistake and call you on it. Again, this is historical fiction. It has to actually be historical while still being fiction.

The second big hurdle is all those historical characters. While historical figures from ancient times like Ceaser, Nebuchadnezer or King David have a little wiggle room in how we can expect their character or disposition to be displayed, by the dawn of the age of exploration there’s enough written in enough different sources that a competent, well studied author can make a good stab at knowing what an important person was like day to day. And again, you have to get it right because the kind of people who will read these books are the kind of people who will catch these discrepancies and be upset by them.

The third problem is for readers new to the genre. They might find the careful web of historical facts and important events distracting or confusing, taking away their ability to keep track of a well written yarn.

What are the strengths of historical fiction? If you love history you will geek out over well written historical fiction. They’ll mention all the important things and you will most likely love every minute of it. It’s just like a well written tribute to your favorite movie, novel or comic book character – there will be easter eggs and fanservice just waiting for you to catch it. The fact that all the events and characters were real just adds to the fun.

For people who aren’t into history, good historical fiction is a great chance to learn about historical events in a gripping and exciting way. The works of G. A. Henty, a historian from the 19th century, were intended to teach his readers the history of Britain while entertaining them and exciting their imagination. Other authors may put less (or more!) emphasis on the actual historical narrative in their books but all the good ones will make sure there’s plenty of historical fact there. If you love a good book but never managed to make it through a dry history text in school, this may be exactly what you need to start a lifelong love of the past.

Disappointment Deconstructed: Guardians of the Galaxy

Posted by natechen on

So. There was this movie called Guardians of the Galaxy and everyone told me it was fantastic. It was on most of the best movie lists I saw for 2014. It was supposed to be the fun Marvel movie, a romp that would get us out of our seats and moving.

Yeah, I don’t see it.

It’s like this. Guardians of the Galaxy is not a bad film. But it’s not really a good one, either.

Let me start with the things that are good about this movie – and there are some good things in this movie. It looks gorgeous, everything from the starships to the fur on Rocket Racoon is rendered in beautiful CG. In particular, I love the design of the Milano, Peter Quill’s ship. Also, this movie goes the extra mile to build up the Marvel universe’s plotlines, introducing both the character of Thanos and the idea of the Infinity Stones, things that will doubtless be important in films to come.

The casting is good, particularly casting the wrestler David Bautista as Drax. I’m not a wrestling fan and I know nothing about Guardians of the Galaxy outside of what comes from this film, but I can tell that this is the kind of role you definitely want a heavyweight pro wrestler playing. He doesn’t need to emote, he just needs to be tough. On the other hand, Vin Diesel is actually surprisingly expressive as the voice of Groot.

A very few of the jokes in the film worked for me. I thought the reference to the great legend of Footloose and it’s hero, Kevin Bacon, was funny and Drax’s severe literal mindedness is funny, particularly as it leads him to reject each and every attempt to give him a nickname.

The fullscale space/air battle at the end of the film is great. In particular the phalanx formation the fighters use is something that I’ve wanted to see in scifi for a while but no one ever thought to do – probably because it doesn’t make that much sense. But it’s cool, and that’s important too.

Using the tape Peter keeps as his sole tieback to life on Earth to bring his character development full circle is a nice touch and gives the film a little bit of much needed thematic unity.

Since I’m now out of good things I guess I’ll have to move on to the stuff I didn’t like or that waffled. I can basically lump these things into three categories, and I’m just going to list them under those headings in bullet points.

Poor Characterization. 

  • We’re told Gomorrah hates her adoptive father, Thanos, because of all the horrible things he’s made her do and done to her. We never see any of these horrible things. We’re told about a few but we don’t see any of them.
  • We’re told Yondu has been the closest thing to a father to Peter has ever had. We never see him do anything to signify that relationship or any kind of special bond between the two.
  • We’re told the Ravagers wanted to eat Peter when they found him. We never see them try to eat anyone else. Wha?
  • Rocket claims everyone’s calling him a rodent or vermin but we never hear anyone but Gomorrah or Drax use these terms (or if we do it’s only once or twice) – and they’re the most caustic members of the cast so we should expect bad behavior from those two. In fact, no one but Peter, who knows what a raccoon is, ever seems to bat an eye at him and that’s as it should be. He’s just another alien in a galaxy full of aliens to most people. In short, this is a lack of consistency.
  • Why does everyone fear Thanos? We never once see him do anything nasty. Yes, it’s okay to build suspense around a villain but they have to do something villainous or they just come off as pointless – and that’s what Thanos is in this film.
  • What is Nebula’s problem? Explain based on things we see in the movie, not the comic books, please. You can’t do it, can you?
  • Why did we have to hear about Yondu’s collection of bric-a-brac on his pilot’s chair before we saw it? It would have been easy to show us it in passing so we’d know what he was talking about when he mentioned it to the dealer later.

Plot Holes

  • Why could Peter hold on to the Infinity Stone for as long as he did? I know it’s probably because his father was an alien of some sort but he never showed any kind of exceptional energy resistance before. Why is he so good at it now? You could have at least set this up somehow.
  • Why did the combined efforts of four people who were never particularly powerful contain a stone we were shown annihilating a group of much more powerful people earlier in the movie?
  • When did Peter put that little troll doll into that extra containment sphere he had?
  • What ever happened to that bomb Rocket was building? Why didn’t we see that get used before they jumped up to the big gun?
  • If using the Infinity Stone was as simple as sticking it to a hammer or something, why did no one do this before in the HISTORY OF THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE?!
  • If the Guardians of the Galaxy could contain the Infinity Stone safely, why didn’t they just hang on to it?
  • How did Rocket know he could grow Groot back from just one twig? Or is that supposed to be a new Groot?

Failed “Fun” Moments

  • After the nifty fight scene with Peter at the beginning and the inventive three-way chase scene that brings Rocket, Groot, Peter and Gomorrah together, the action in this movie goes way south. Most of the action scenes after these two boil down to people spraying bullets around or rather uninspired brawling. In particular, Bautista’s skills as a professional wrestler go woefully underutilized.
  • The music. I get that it’s supposed to be a nostalgic nod to Peter’s past but it doesn’t really do much for me. That’s probably just a personal thing.
  • Most of Peter and Rocket’s banter. I know I’m supposed to be laughing at it but it just never gets beyond the pedantic. I don’t blame the actors here, they were clearly trying hard to make it interesting, I just didn’t see that they had anything to work with.
  • The jailbreak sequence. In particular, the part where Peter thinks he has to get ahold of another inmate’s prosthetic leg could have been comedic gold but we barely see any of it. In stead we get a raccoon trying to hide self-satisfied laughter at hoodwinking Peter. Mixed priorities, missed opportunities.
  • The climactic moment is four people reaching to hold hands. If I wanted to see friendship as magic I’d watch My Little Pony. Yes, I’ve said I like heroes to triumph over villains via moral strength rather than temporal power but this just comes off as cheesy.

Most of Guardians‘ problems come from the film being too rushed. A prison sequence could be the better part of a movie – look at Star Trek VI. Instead we get it rushed into the second half of the first act. Situations, characters and ideas are barely given time to breath before we’re rushed on to the next thing and most of our understanding comes from being told, not shown.

I know that the movie had a lot of source material to draw on and it wanted to cover as much as possible because there was no certainty of another film at the time, but I’m afraid the result was too much being packed into too little time resulting in a movie that had a lot of potential but came out pretty lackluster. I know I’m supposed to be having fun with this film, and I even know where and why… but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m actually having fun.

Marvel may have created a blockbuster but I’m afraid it’s a flashy movie over a pretty mediocre core. I doubt the film will age well – but then, who knows? Maybe that shiny exterior will still be good twenty years from now.

I’m not holding my breath, mind you.

Still, the franchise now has another episode to come back to these ideas and maybe make something of them. Hopefully things will go better with the next film.

Beats to Scenes – Or From Outline to Story

Posted by natechen on

It’s been a while since we looked at the mechanics of writing a story, how you take the germ of an idea and get it into something usable. Now outlining isn’t the greatest part of everyone’s creative process but personally, I’m a big fan of the beat outline. A lot of people seem to think outlining steals a lot of the spontaneity from a story. Some people have wondered how you go from outline to story at all.

I want to look at both these issues at once by showing how I think you jump from your outline to the scene of a story. See, I like to think that my outline is spontaneous when I’m creating it and my scenes are spontaneous when I’m creating them. Sometimes you’ll need to adjust your outline when writing a scene – usually by adding to it – but most of the time unexpected events while writing a scene just give you more opportunities to add twists to your outline that will be fun and exciting.

Each beat should be a specific event in your story. So, when that event happens, do the following:

  • Look at the characters that were a part of that event. A man getting shot in his apartment at night sets a very different scene from a man getting shot on a crowded street.
  • Decided which characters you want to talk about in the aftermath of that event. If they weren’t all there for it, figure out how they’re going to know about it. If the man shot was an off-duty cop his partner is probably going to hear about it from their captain, while if he was on duty his partner is going to know much sooner.
  • Ask yourself how your characters will react to that event. Was it good for them or bad for them? When setting the beats of your outline you think of them as good or bad for the protagonist but what about the other characters? The partner of a cop who gets shot is going to react much differently than the mobster who ordered the hit.
  • Decide what everyone in the story will do in response the beat your outline calls for. Then chose which of those responses are important to your story as a whole. Not everyone in a given scene has to have a response that you show in a given scene, some responses might be better addressed in a later scene, and sometimes characters who don’t fit in a scene have a response that is important to the story and you have to find a way to bring it to the attention of those in the scene. If the death of a cop spurs a criminal to start robbing banks it makes more sense for fellow cops to hear about it over the crime radio than for the criminal to announce it in person.
  • Look at your next beat and decide if it fits in the scene you’re writing or if it needs to be the start of a new one. A cop yelling at his captain about how to react to his partner’s murder? Probably a natural extension of his finding out about his partner’s death. But that same cop instead going to tell his partner’s spouse? That is probably better as a new scene.

Once you hit the point where a new scene is called for, go back and try and streamline the elements you’ve laid out. Juggle discovery of, reaction to and response to an event to create a nice cadence to your scene. Don’t let any one element take over and try not to let it drag out too long. Bigger beats will call for more time spent on them but on the whole you probably don’t want more than a page or two before the next beat occurs or the story begins to drag.

If you wind up with more than that you probably needed to break the larger point into multiple smaller ones. Knowing exactly how much beat you need for a scene is more art than science but in time most authors get a good grip on it and, for all those times you don’t, even as an experienced author, there’s always the editing phase.

It’s the reaction and response part of stories I love writing the most. There is where (for me) the spontaneity of a story lies and, with a good handle on where your story is going thanks to your outline, you should be able to let your characters stretch themselves and surprise you without going too far afield in your narrative. Most of the time, at least. And for the rest, well, at least you’ll see it coming quickly and only have to do a little remodeling of your outline, not completely stall out when you realize you’ve go no idea where you’re going anymore.

So happy scenecrafting! Let me know if it works for you.

Avengers Analyzed: Thor

Posted by natechen on

It’s time to finish up our look at the superhumans of Marvel’s The Avengers with a look at Thor. While Bruce Banner was our starting point mostly because I found him to be the least understood character, and Tony Stark and Steve Rogers followed him because their stories felt related, but Thor is the logical place to wrap up our superhero overview because he’s the final superhero in the film to show up.

Thor presents us with an interesting one because, while he’s probably the most powerful of the Avengers in absolute terms, he’s actually the most normal of them emotionally and relationally.

Yes, Thor doesn’t age, wields a weapon that easily puts out four times the power of Tony’s arc reactor and takes hits from The Hulk without appreciable harm, but he’s also got affectionate parents, friends who share his life and goals and a brother.

That last bit is the sticky part.

Point is, if you ignore the scale of his life, Thor is actually the most well adjusted, emotionally grounded and mentally stable of the four superheroes on the team. He has no suppressed anger, overactive ego or severe trauma. His greatest personal problem is a lack of familiarity with Earth culture. This both lets the audience see Loki from another angle and sets up his personal conflict.

Thor’s Background

Basically, Loki got jealous of his adoptive brother and arranged for him to be exiled to Earth, where Thor learned to be less of a Jerk. The material point is that Thor had to stop Loki’s scheming to take the throne of Asgard but in the process discovered his brother was adopted and full of discontent. Although Thor ended the matter by foiling Loki and accidentally sending him into the unknown depths of space he regrets the way they parted and clearly wants to make things right.

The Conflict 

Thor’s personal conflict is character vs. characters. Yes, as in multiple characters. For the majority of his time in the film Thor is not personally in conflict with Loki per se, rather he’s in conflict with the rest of the Avengers over what should be done about Loki. Thor still sees his brother as someone to be reformed and brought back into the fold. The rest of the Avengers see him as a threat to be dealt with via any means necessary. Thor wants to reconcile with his brother. The Avengers want Loki gone any way they can get it.

These goals aren’t necessarily contradictory but they will keep Thor and the Avengers working at crosspurposes even as Loki approaches his endgame.

We Meet Thor 

“What’s the matter, scared of a little lightning?” – Captain Steve Rogers 

For all his self-satisfied preening and condescension towards the other Avengers, when Thor arrives Loki gets nervous. We never see him show any trepidation towards anything else, he never flinches from his brother in person, but Thor beat Loki once and he doesn’t seem to have been in Loki’s calculations this time around – their dialog on first meeting suggests Loki expected his father to keep Thor at home. Thor is a weakness in Loki’s plans and a figure with enough personal power to shake Loki’s seemingly boundless self-confidence.

And then he steals Loki out from the noses of the Black Widow, Iron Man and Captain America.

Points for intimidation factor. Points for style. Nothing more to see here. Move along.

Loki – First Confrontation

“I’m not overly fond of what follows…” – Loki 

As Loki’s brother, Thor is given the unique privilege of confronting Loki multiple times through the film. Each of these confrontations marks a distinct point in Thor’s character progression and so the very first thing Thor has to do is drag Loki out for a little chat.

This initial conversation is not very long, courtesy of Tony Stark, but it clearly shows Thor’s priorities. Yes, Earth is under Thor’s protection and yes, he’s very concerned about what’s happening to it. But he’s really hurting because his brother has turned into something he doesn’t recognize and Thor can’t grasp why. Now this is in no small part because Thor is not particularly bright, he mostly gets by on being very earnest and normally this is one of his strengths. But the same forthrightness that makes Thor trustworthy and keeps his life simple also keeps him from ever fully grasping Loki’s ambition and need for validation.

When Loki mentions how much energy it must have taken Odin to send Thor to Earth we have to understand that Loki is seeing an expression of how much Odin is willing to do to keep him from happiness. All Thor sees is how much his father loves Loki and wants him to come home.

This scene is a perfect illustration of how Thor’s perspective is different from everyone else’s. The fact that it ends with Iron Man tackling him and throwing him into a pitched melee with two of the other Avengers only serves to show the logical outcome of Thor’s skewed perspective – it leaves him at odds with everyone else in the group.

A Battle of Worldviews

“This is beyond you, metal man. Loki will face Asgardian justice.” – Thor

Just about everything that happens with Thor from the end of his first brief conversation with Loki until Loki’s bid for freedom on the Helicarrier serves to illustrate the tension between him and the rest of the Avengers over what Loki is and what he’s there for. Most telling is when Thor tells Fury Loki isn’t out for power but vengeance. And not just any revenge, revenge against Thor specifically. Thor is still thinking of this as a personal problem between himself and his brother and he winds up fighting all three other superheroes in the Avengers before he starts coming to terms with things.

That’s right, as the most forthright of the Avengers Thor winds up physically fighting with Iron Man, Captain America and even the Hulk as an outward expression of his inward resistance to seeing Loki as they do. He just can’t accept Loki as an enemy to be defeated. He still wants Loki to be the brother he can save.

Loki – Second Confrontation 

“Are you never not going to fall for that?” – Loki

The moment Loki locks Thor into the Hulk cage is short, sweet and revealing… for Thor. Loki has never directly played his hand against his adoptive brother, mainly because the trickster knows he can’t overpower thunder. But the prison that used to hold him gives Loki a new card to play against Thor and for the first time there’s no masks between the two. Loki doesn’t just try and keep Thor out of the fight, he tries to kill him. It’s the same as burning the bridges between them.

While Thor escapes the death trap he’s also reached a turning point. After crash-landing in a field somewhere on the East Coast Thor brushes himself off and turns to reach for the hammer. This is an interesting moment. Although no dialog is said the image is reminiscent of the moment in Thor’s first stand-alone film, when he reached for Mjolnir and was found unworthy.

Now Thor finds he’s misjudged his brother, seen only a personal problem when Loki was all too willing to ignore Thor to pursue his bigger plans. Maybe he’s wondering if that lapse of judgment makes him unworthy to wield the hammer again. More likely he realizes the moment he takes up that hammer again he’ll have to turn it against his brother. But he takes it anyways, and it marks the turning point of his character.

Loki – Third Confrontation and Character Resolution

“Loki, turn off the tesseract or I will destroy it!” – Thor

Thor is too much of an earnest guy not to give Loki a chance at formal surrender before pounding him but this time around he’s not pleading with Loki, he’s offering an ultimatum. When Loki turns him down Thor stops playing nice and fights for real. While Thor doesn’t have the insight of Banner, capable of seeing through Loki’s illusions and immune to his semantics, once Thor turns his hand against his brother Loki’s no match for him.

People have said that Thor’s sudden reconciliation with the rest of the team is very abrupt but really, when you realize that his conflict with them was rooted in the different ways they saw Loki, it begins to make a great deal more sense. As soon as that difference of opinion is gone there’s nothing more to fight about.

There’s not as much of an arc to Thor’s character as the other three characters we’ve examined so far and perhaps that’s not surprising. After all, he is the best adjusted of them already and maybe his character didn’t need as much growth as some of the others. And to be fair, Thor is the first character to score a clean win over Loki, sending him running into the arms of the Chitauri after their confrontation at Stark Tower. That’s no small feat considering the only other character with a clear win over Loki is the Hulk – the other characters in the film never do more than stall Loki and frequently play into his hands.

Sadly, no one does that more than the core human members of the cast – so we’ll examine them next. Coming up in March, we look at Agents Romanoff and Barton. See you then!

Genrely Speaking: Satire

Posted by natechen on

Satire is the last of the three metagenres to get tackled here on Genrely Speaking, the previous two being deconstruction and parody. Satire stands apart from these two metagenres in that it is generally intended in a noncomplementary way. Deconstructions and parodies tend to come from a deep love for a genre and a desire to share it with other people – in the first case, a desire to share it with new audiences in the second a desire to share it more deeply with those who love and enjoy it already. Satire does not come from a love of its source material.

Satire is a metagenre that tries to make an idea, person or genre look ridiculous. Generally it does this by adopting the stance of its target and pushing the ideas until they become absurd.

The hallmarks of satire tend to be as follows:

  1. A very strong tendency to extremes. There’s no middle of the road here, by the very nature of satire it has to be as loud and unreserved. A great example of this comes from the book Animal Farm, where pretty much all of the pigs qualify as ridiculously extreme examples of the kind of propaganda Orwell is satirizing. The horse Boxer is a satire of those who follow such propagandists. Voices in satire tend to be loud because quiet voices tend to sound more reasonable than shouting ones and the point of satire is not to appear reasonable. With one notable exception.
  2. The voice of reason. The point of satire is to push things to such an extreme that the audience is repulsed by it but, at the same time, it’s important to make it clear that the author is not actively endorsing it. So there tends to be this one sane person that tries to bring reason to this totally insane situation and inevitably fails. It’s important to keep readers from getting the wrong impression. Clover is an example of this from Animal Farm.
  3. No sense of actual reality. The point is to push an idea to utter absurdity and discourage people from thinking that way. So the work almost never tries to keep any semblance of reality. Oddly enough, many satirical works wind up seeming realistic despite themselves – Animal Farm in particular turned out to be eerily prescient, describing the cult of personality surrounding Stalin to a T. But that’s not necessarily the goal.

What are the weaknesses of a satire? The biggest weakness of satire is that it’s not really a very nice approach to looking at bad ideas. People who hold them already are going to be offended by the treatment and people who are undecided on the issue may be put off by the tone most satires take. That’s not to say a satire can’t be done well but it’s a difficult balance to strike and even when you find it the unreality of the approach is probably going to put off as many people as it attracts.

Also, there’s always a small minority of people who just aren’t going to get that a satire is mocking the thing it portrays and interpret it as an endorsement for something terrible. Or worse an endorsement for something positive. A more clear cut repudiation of a philosophy would probably serve better.

What are the strengths of a satire? They can be a vehicle for a very prescient engagement with an idea when handled very well. George Orwell wrote two very cutting satires (Animal Farm and 1984) that have stood the test of time, in no small part because he effectively showed how bleak the ideas he was attacking were.

In the end, satire is a very two-edged sword. It can leave a very, very memorable impression but it is going to put a lot of people off, particularly if you don’t use it well. Some people have chosen to put elements of satire into works that, on the whole, are not at all satirical. The character of Gideon Gleeful, from Gravity Falls, is a very modern example of this, satirizing TV psychics and faith healers while still serving to advance the general mystery driven plot of the show.

Ultimately, the use of satire is a personal choice, usually driven by how strong a person’s feelings on a subject is and how they want to address them. How much a person likes satire is the same – some people will like it and some will hate it. You won’t have to read much of one to know which one you are and, if you don’t like what you see, there’s nothing wrong with abandoning it.

Conflict: A Taxonomy

Posted by natechen on

Conflict is an essential part of storytelling. Every story needs a conflict to drive it, even if that conflict is as simple as getting to the office on time. I’ve talked about conflict before from time to time but today it’s time to sit down and really dissect it. In literary terms there are four to eight types of conflict but in the writing tradition I learned from there are exactly seven and this is the system that I continue to use to this day. Without further ado, the seven kinds of conflict as I learned them are:

Character vs. Character 

In this conflict you have two people who cannot agree on something. Each character tries to get their own way and hijinks ensue. While this seems like a simple type of conflict it is really very deep, these conflicts tend to spread out of control as they exist almost any time two characters interact with each other. The vast majority of stories today have character vs. character as a major conflict, if not the major conflict. Luke’s story arc in the classic Star Wars trilogy is a great example of this kind of conflict, as is any Superman story with Lex Luthor in it.

Character vs. Self 

This conflict arises when a character is dissatisfied with some aspect of themselves and attempts to correct it. If you’ve ever tried to get in shape or break a bad habit you know how hard this can be. Stories focusing on this kind of conflict usually make a big deal of how the thing being changed effects the central character and the world around them, and how the attempts to change cause ripples in the character’s life. Groundhog’s Day or (oddly enough) Scott Pilgrim VS The World are great examples of this.

Character vs. Nature 

A struggle with nature arises any time impersonal laws of existence, like gravity or time, or forces of nature, like storms or earthquakes, or just wild animals threaten a character or prevent them from getting what they want. These kinds of struggles usually focus on the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness) of ingenuity in the face of mindless obstacles. The Old Man and the Sea is the quintessential example of this. The Perfect Storm is another good case study.

Character vs. The World (or Society) 

When a character desires something that just isn’t the way things are done, or social mores and strictures put entire groups of people against one person or one person just tries to march to his own rhythm and is discouraged by the ways he doesn’t fit in you have a character vs. the world. It’s much like character vs. character except it’s as much about the nature of the system the character is caught in than the wants and needs of the individual characters who oppose him. Romeo and Juliet does this on a small scale, 1984 on a large one.

Character vs. Fate 

This is much like character vs. self except all the character’s attempts to change are thwarted by circumstances beyond their control. It can also pertain to stories where characters attempt to thwart some prediction only to make it come true – usually because of some quirk of their own characters. Regardless, it hinges on how a character’s nature makes their actions ineffectual. And sometimes (rarely, to tell the truth) how they overcome those natures. Oedipus Rex is an example of this conflict.

Character vs. Machine 

This conflict is actually kind of new, but not at the same time. It’s a well known fact that changes in technology force people to adapt and the struggle to adapt to changing places in the world, or hold on to your place in the face of new tools or techniques, is a timeless one. But only in the modern era has it started to look like machines can actually replace people entirely and how people deal with that possibility is the center of this conflict. The Caves of Steel is a perfect example.

Character vs. gods/God 

Any time a character struggles against another character who is utterly beyond their abilities to comprehend that conflict is character vs. gods/God. What sets this apart is that the conflict is almost always one-sided. The human character does all the work, invests all the emotion and purpose and almost always fails to provoke any kind of reaction at all from the other party. These stories run a spectrum from The Call of Cthulu on one end to Till We Have Faces on the other.

So what function do these classifications serve?

Mostly, I find they help you think about your characters in a new light. Trying to classify your character’s central conflict can focus your narrative wonderfully, helping you fixate on and eliminate needless distractions and really hit the story where it lives.

For those of you following my Avengers Analyzed series, I employed this technique to help me narrow down the elements of each character’s own character growth and ignore their actions which were intended to advance the development of others. Which brings me to another important issue. Most every character in your cast should probably have a conflict of their own that they are dealing with. Working out what those conflicts are will help your characters’ actions and dialog to have purpose and make them more believable and sympathetic.

Conflict. It needs to be at the heart of your story so make it as clear as possible.

Hiatus Act Two

Posted by natechen on

Just a quick reminder that Thunder Clap will continue next week. The recharge is going well and I’m starting to get caught up. Come back on Wednesday for some thoughts on the state of American Comics!

Nate

Midseason Recap: Agents of SHIELD

Posted by natechen on

Hi guys, final midseason recap time. We’ve talked about the writing in Scorpion and Gotham so it’s time to turn our attention to Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD.

I have so many mixed feelings about this show. SHIELD is different from previous shows in a couple of ways. First, it’s not in its first season and second it’s a tie in to a much bigger media franchise. These things are not necessarily in the show’s favor.

Series Premise and First Season Recap 

The premise of SHIELD is pretty simple. It’s about a shadow agency, the titular SHIELD, that reacts to paranormal and metahuman situations around the globe and keeps them from hurting people. It’s like The X-Files meets Men In Black, except there’s more than aliens running around and we have Clark Gregg instead of David Duchovny (not exactly a bad trade in my book). All of this ties in to the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) as expressed in movies like the Iron Man franchise and The Avengers. Except now that premise has been put through the wringer for a full season and it’s morphed into something different.

So, a brief recap of Season One. We meet our team, then discover various metahuman and extraterrestrial doohickies and keep bumping into people working to perfect a new supersoldier serum and start cranking out Captain Americas – although probably with less of the moral center. In the middle of the season Captain America: The Winter Soldier comes out and HYDRA infiltrators take over SHIELD and the whole premise takes a serious hit. (Spoilers, by the way.) The SHIELD we’ve started to get a feel for is suddenly ripped out from under us and we have to relearn all the rules of the world and the show. The season ends with Agent Phil Coulson promoted to Director of SHIELD and working to rebuild the organization.

The real problem with Season One is it lacks any kind of focus or cohesion. Several episodes were spent on tie-ins rather than progressing the show’s central plot. Which, by the way, revolves around a character named Skye and her mysterious parentage and history with SHIELD. Skye and the team are ignorant of what happened to her family and Phil decides to do what he can to help her figure that out. We start to see connections between Skye and the people running the supersoldier program… but the tie-ins wreck the pacing of her story and then the sudden HYDRA revolt totally sidelines that mystery for most of the last third of the season.

I’m not saying the HYDRA thing wasn’t good but it really feels like it’s happening at the wrong time in the series. SHIELD probably would have been a stronger TV show if it had either waited for the second season to pull a total revamping of the show’s format or if it had waited half a season and simply begun with Coulson picking up the pieces after HYDRA wrecked most of SHIELD. Status quo must be established before it can be changed up and the show failed to do that before it’s big Season One shake-up. That doesn’t mean the show wasn’t entertaining, it just wasn’t as good as it could have been.

Otherwise the show did a good job with characterization and no single episode was particularly boring. A lot of interesting storylines were set up – although some things that I’d hoped to see, like an episode inside the supervillain prison center or more events inside SHIELD Academy, are obviously not coming to pass now.

All things considered the first season of SHIELD started good and drifted toward high end mediocrity. I approached the second season with trepidation. In fact, I didn’t start watching it until several episodes into the season. I’ve definitely had the most trouble convincing myself I wanted to watch it on a weekly basis out of the shows I’m following this season. That said, there is some good stuff in it. Let’s take a look.

Favorite Character (Honorable Mention) – Phil Coulson 

The answer will probably always be Phil. It’s a combination of many factors, I think, and the excellent performance of Clark Gregg is definitely one of them. I’d like to say there’s great writing behind his character but the fact is Phil is just written as solid, likeable, fatherly and sensible. He’s hard not to like and something about Gregg’s charisma makes it work all the better. But in terms of the show’s writing… Phil isn’t actually written that well. He’s not written badly at all but there’s nothing outstanding there either. So, while I love the character and the way he’s presented, I’m removing him from the running for favorite character because he wins… but more because of the actor and personal preference than actual writing.

Favorite Character – Leo Fitz 

He’s kind of geeky and adorkable which I can sympathize with. But the growth of his character since the rift between him and Jemma Simmons formed combined with his slow recovery from near suffocation makes for some really interesting moments. The most interesting aspect is the way a person who has only really needed one friend has to adapt when his primary relationship is radically and probably irrevocably altered.

While the arc itself is not particularly groundbreaking, each interaction with each character along the way is so well written and so believable that it plays like a dream. Major kudos for handling this whole thing so well.

Least Favorite Character – Daniel Whitehall 

Whedon is great at doing good characters so it’s impossible to pick one that I hate. But there is a character which I don’t like as much as the others and that’s Whitehall. He’s a lackluster villain, feeling much like a generic Dr. Insano kind of a mad scientist. While perpetrating wholesale organ transplants in order to gain renewed youth and vigor certainly establishes him as both vicious and cold we never really get an appreciation for what drives him or what sets him apart from all the other characters matching his archetype, or even his mentor Red Skull.

Whitehall suffers from a distinct lack of development and, particularly with Skye’s father and Grant Ward running around, the series has a lot of better villains casting a shadow over him. That’s a particular weakness given that he’s probably meant as the primary villain of the first half of Season Two. More time should have been spent developing him or, given his current status in the show, less time should have been wasted on him. It’s not a strong dislike but it’s enough that he rates as my least favorite character this season.

Favorite Character Dynamic – Grant/Skye 

The transformation of these two from tentative romance to bitter betrayal and creepy stalker/stalkee relationship is… engaging. It’s not really fun but it does ramp up the suspense and keep you coming back for more. Grant is a very, very warped individual and it’s unclear what caused him to latch on to Skye like he did, or what he might do should he ever find the approval he wants from her.

Skye is a confused person who doesn’t really understand who she is or what she’s capable of, but she’s not going to be manipulated by Grant and it will take more than his attempts to express affection for her to draw her from the side of the angels. The battle of wills between them is tense and hopefully will lead to even better storytelling down the road.

Least Favorite Character Dynamic – Billy and Sam Koening 

Okay, so I’ve played around with the look-alikes with weird relationships a bit in my stories but this one… it just feels a little out of place and weird in this show. Again, not a big gripe, but Whedon does so well with his characters and their interactions that it’s hard not to like them. These two just feel out of place in the larger cast which puts them near the bottom. Hopefully they’ll be more than just quirky background but in the mean time I guess I’ll settle for being mildly exasperated whenever they steal screen time from people I’m more interested in.

Least Favorite Episode – The Things We Bury (S02E08) 

While I like Grant Ward when he’s keeping the pressure on Skye, forcing her to grapple with her own feelings and the realities of the life she’s chosen, on his own he’s kind of a weak character. I’m not sure if it’s because his psychotic fixation makes him predictable or just because he’s not a nice person but he gets old fast. This episode mostly features him and I managed to deduce the outcome, point by point, almost from the beginning and that didn’t sit well with me. I’m inclined to credit that to poor writing, since I think all of this could have been done in a way that made it interesting and effective while still conveying the same events, but I’m not a TV writer and I’m not in a position to judge. It wasn’t a horrible episode but it wasn’t very interesting either.

Favorite Episode – The Writing on the Wall (S02E07) 

This episode was good. The culmination of the TAHITI arc, Coulson regaining sanity and the flashbacks to his efforts to understand fellow TAHITI patients all makes for great character stuff. The episode moves tightly, has good suspense and the reveal shot at the end, when Coulson and the other TAHITI patient who have been searching look down and finally see what they’ve been looking for… that’s a great moment. Yes, the Winter Finale had a powerful climax as well but Coulson’s character resolution for this half of the season resonated more.

Other Stuff 

I’m still on the fence about this show. The incorporation of the inhumans to the MCU before their actual movie is a nice touch and feels much more organic than most of the forced tie-ins from the first season. The reveal that Skye is actually an established DC character (albeit a minor one) is great and, while Bobbi Morse did this first, it’s satisfying to know one of the people who we’ve come all this way with is an established Marvel player.

This will most likely make the character Skye in the Marvel comic SHIELD, which features many of the same characters as the show, substantially different from her MCU counterpart, but we can live with that.

My two biggest problems with the show are as follows. First, the heavy studio hand visible in the first season which resulted in wonky story pacing and poor placement of a major plot twist really hampered the progress of the show. But it seems to be recovering from that.

Second, the beautiful people habit. I mentioned how much I liked Scorpion avoiding that and, to an extent, Gotham has as well. Not as much, but many of the people in Gotham are socialites and others with public images to think of so it’s at least kind of realistic. SHIELD is full of spies and professional hard cases, people who should blend in or be a little on the rough edge of things. But the cast almost universally looks like they’re ready to step onto a photo shoot most of the time. They’re overstylized and it’s a little grating. Only Clark Gregg manages to avoid looking like he’s been spit polished before he stepped onto the set and I suspect that’s more due to his natural charisma than a conscious decision on the part of makeup.

On the other hand, the actors are very good. Clark Gregg I’ve already said I like. Brett Dalton is eerily good at the placid psychotic Grant Ward. But Kyle MacLachlan takes the cake as Skye’s deranged father, teetering wildly between an injured and hurting man and a homicidal wreck bent on vengeance. His jump from one to the other is always believable and, oddly enough, more pitiable than chilling, making his character all the harder to get a handle on. Good work, sir. Good work.

I’m still divided on this show, but my biggest gripe with it was the clear fingerprints of studio interference in the first season. Over time those signs have diminished. Hopefully we won’t have cause to see them again – not that studio direction is bad. But when it stands out too much it can kill a series. Perhaps, if we’re lucky, the good ship SHIELD will not suffer such a fate.

Avengers Analyzed: Steve Rogers

Posted by natechen on

Time for the third entry in this ongoing series! We’re examining the character writing of Marvel’s The Avengers, one of the best elements of a movie with a lot going for it. We started with Bruce Banner and continued with Tony Stark. To continue with the logical progression, this month we talk about the man who was Stark’s foil for most of the movie – Captain Steve Rogers.

Steve’s Background

The greatest soldier in the world began life in New York during the Great Depression and volunteered to fight in the Second World War. He was turned down for being too small and weak – many times. So great was his desire to serve that he hit every recruiting station he could find and eventually drew the attention of the supersoldier program that would make him superhuman.

Rogers would eventually see service in Europe fighting the rogue Nazi superscience group HYDRA, defeating their leader Red Skull in a battle that left Steve trapped under a glacier until he was discovered by SHIELD and revived in the modern era.

Oh, he also possesses an indestructible shield that he throws at people. It’s pretty cool.

Steve’s Conflict 

Steve Rogers embodies character vs. the world, a dramatic shift from the last two characters who were both at odds with themselves.

Seventy years ago, American society at least paid lipservice to the ideals of courtesy, integrity, duty and honor. While the number of people who actually lived by those virtues were probably no higher than the number of people who live by their personal principles today, what matters for the purposes of this story was that the Captain was one of those people who not only believed in those things but put everything he had into practicing them. Unfortunately, those ideals are not particularly valued today.

But Steve’s conflict runs even deeper than just a difference between his ideals and those of the world around him.

Defeating HYDRA was not the literal the death of Steve Rogers but it came close enough. When his life stopped the world kept marching and it hasn’t looked back. It seems almost impossible for him to have any relevance in the world he finds himself in. The skills he honed as a young man are obsolete, the enemy he fought has been defeated and the friends he knew are gone. What’s a hero to do?

We Meet Captain America 

“I’ve been asleep for seventy years. I think I’ve had enough rest.” – Captain Steve Rogers 

Cap’s introduction is every bit as well thought out as Stark’s. We see him in a boxing gym. An oldschool boxing gym, it looks like it’s been dragged straight out of the Depression era and it immediately tells us a few things about Steve.

First, it immediately gives us the impression that we’re looking at an old fashioned place with an old fashioned guy. There’s no modern exercise equipment in there. Just a ring, a punching bag and some room for warmups. The man there fits in seamlessly, feels entirely at home. He’s just as old as this place, perhaps.

Second, the gym is empty. Gyms are communal places, social centers as much as places to refine and train yourself. Most people don’t go there alone, those that do usually meet with some sort of trainer. But this man is alone.

Third, this guy is good. He hits fast, hard and continuously. And he tears his target to pieces. But never for a moment does he look happy about it.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Steve Rogers.

Steve Starts Off

“There’s a lot we’ll have to bring you up to speed on if you’re in. The world has gotten even stranger than you know.” – Nick Fury 

It may sound weird for Nick Fury to try and  tempt Captain America out of seclusion by promising him weirdness, given that most of his woes have come about thanks in no small part to weirdness, but that’s exactly what Nick does. Their meeting, although brief, tells us a great deal about Steve and for the most part it does so without using words. I admire that.

First, we notice that Cap respects authority. He never takes Fury to task for the way SHIELD tried to hide the era he’d woken up in. He doesn’t baselessly question whether Fury and SHIELD deserve the position they hold as the world’s defenders. He assumes Fury has earned his position.

At the same time, he expects Fury to act like the things he claims to be. Steve’s questions about what Fury is telling him are exactly what we would expect from a fairly average guy who’s life experiences are seen almost entirely through the lens of global warfare. He has natural doubts about using the power source Red Skull did but seems to acknowledge it’s potential as well.

Most of all, the Captain is curious. He asks questions constantly, trying to drive into the heart of the matter. He clearly isn’t comfortable with anything around him, nor with the role he’s being asked to take or even with the guy who’s asking him to do it. But his sense of responsibility won’t let him turn away and it does sound kind of interesting…

But the real moment that starts Cap on his journey is his conversation with Phil Coulson, when he asks if his old uniform isn’t a little old fashioned. Phil replies that may be exactly what people need.

Confrontation With Loki

“You know, the last time I was in Germany and saw a man standing above everybody else, we ended up disagreeing.” – Captain Steve Rogers 

Steve’s story moves pretty quickly. After paying off a bet with Fury, Steve is dispatched to Stuttgart, Germany where Loki has turned up. This makes Steve the first of the superhuman lineup to confront Loki and the first character in the movie to deal him a setback.

The first, most interesting thing to notice about Cap’s confrontation with Loki is that it happens in Germany, the country where Steve made his reputation and found his greatest enemy.

The second actually happens before Steve shows up. When Loki calls for the people of Earth to kneel before him they all do. But one man, old and looking a little weary with life, thinks about it and pulls himself back to his feet. He challenges Loki by telling him that, no matter how powerful or special the so-called god thinks he is, there have always been people like him.

This man, nameless though he is, has every reason to know. Old as he is, there can be little doubt that he knew the German who made such boasts – not personally, but still. Whether this man was a child or a soldier (and some were certainly both), a member of the resistance or complicit in his silence (and some were one and then the other), this is one man who has seen the horrors of another man who thinks he is a god and come to accept that nothing short of total opposition can be the right answer. This man of Stuttgart defies Loki, even though there is nothing he can conceivably do to stop him.

This man, quite possibly the only man in Stuttgart who could understand Steve Rogers, who has seen the things Steve has and the only one who might be able to argue that men like Captain America are now irrelevant in the world that is, chose to show the exact same spirit and the exact same resolve that Steve himself carries. The man of Stuttgart is not strong enough to do more than defy Loki – but Steve is there to fight for them both.

When Captain America fights Loki it’s a powerful statement about the relevance of heroes in the modern world. Perhaps the most amazing thing about Steve is that he doesn’t realize he’s made it but in many ways, it’s one of the most important moments in the movie, if not in the development of Steve’s character.

For all his skill, strength and courage, Captain America is not able to defeat Loki himself. In fact, he doesn’t even really get him to sweat. While it looks like both fighters could go for several dozen more rounds, Iron Man arrives and tips the odds in Steve’s favor, prompting Loki to surrender. It may not look like Steve’s win and Tony certainly doesn’t seem to think so but it’s an important first step towards Captain America’s ultimate goal.

Battles Within and Without

“Everything special about you came out of a bottle!” – Tony Stark 

Ironically, Steve’s personal conflict is against the world he’s in and Loki is a thing of another world. We can’t really see Cap’s personal conflict in battles with Loki but rather in battles with the people who are helping him fight the larger fight. Add to this the fact that Steve is essentially the leader of the team and we wind up with him playing a part in many of the minor conflicts that build the individual characters into a single team.

But after his inconclusive encounter with Loki Steve’s rep isn’t quite what it could be. In fact, the very next thing that happens is a three way brawl between Cap, Thor and Iron Man. It opens with Stark’s impetuous nature clashing with Steve’s more reserved style and doesn’t come to a stop until Steve steps between the two and takes everything they can throw out. But while the fight is over that doesn’t mean the other two are behind Steve yet. In fact, in Tony’s case in particular it seems to be very much the opposite.

The struggle between the two is kind of a microcosm of Steve’s struggle as a whole. Tony values his own opinion, doesn’t want to give up anything and doesn’t take other people seriously at all. At the same time he provides Cap a push to look into what SHIELD has been doing with its borrowed technology.

It’s interesting the degree to which Steve rejects the paradigm of SHIELD. He doesn’t show much warmth to anyone but Coulson and, while the regimented behavior clearly puts him in mind of his army days, the deep secrets SHIELD hides behind doesn’t sit well with him.

Steve values the members of his team, something that puts him at odds with Fury’s seemingly colder disposition, which seems content to sacrifice the few for the many. Romanov embodies SHIELD’s philosophy and seems to be trying to handle Steve, a man who gave up being handled and set his own course long before she was born. Getting a read on her and how to best work with her is a task that will occupy an entire different movie but for now he just needs her to follow and she’s sticking with Fury.

Thor wants his brother punished, hopefully leading to his reform. That’s not something Steve disagrees with, in fact it’s very much in line with the moral code Rogers espouses, but Thor’s loyalties are elsewhere and this may be why Cap keeps him at arm’s length for most of the film. Of all the people on the team, Banner is probably the most like the Captain but the scientist’s volatility puts a layer of caution between the two that neither one really wants to cross.

In all, Steve’s biggest problem is that everyone has an agenda and none of them are his. But as a man who spent most of his life (his conscious life, anyway) as a little guy who wanted to fight for the other little guys, Steve is the one with the closest connection both to what a hero needs to do and what it will cost them.

Steve’s Tipping Point

“Phase 2 is SHIELD uses the Cube to make weapons.” – Captain Steve Rogers 

Captain America is the only hero who’s entire character development basically comes in a single lump and if any one character was going to get that kind of concentrated character development it should be him. Steve is the heart of the team, it’s moral core and driving force. Yes, the Avengers were gathered by SHIELD and Fury obviously intended to be their leader. But only Steve has the integrity and the single-minded purpose to keep all the personalities around him focused on a single task. That was why he lead the team in the comics and it’s why he leads them in this film, he’s a hero that even other heroes must respect. After all, he’s lost almost his entire life to heroism once and doesn’t even hesitate to risk it again.

But even as the rest of the team slowly falls into orbit around him Steve is remaining passive, letting Fury call the shots and take the lead. Right up until Stark, Rogers’ gadfly, implies that SHIELD may be up to something underhanded. When Steve finds the weapons project they’ve been running he’s upset.

Not so much at the fact that SHIELD is building weapons. Steve was and is a soldier, he understands the necessities of war. But he also knows that the power weapons give their wielders demands accountability, just as he needs to be accountable to his superiors in his function as a living weapon. And building weapons in secret? That’s not accountability. It smacks of HYDRA.

Funny that.

Captain Rogers is not above setting his own goals and working towards them when his superiors are obviously neglecting what’s important – he did it during WWII and he’s up to the challenge now. SHIELD is not handling this crisis with integrity and if they won’t, then Steve Rogers will. The world may not always want his kind of heroism but it’s going to get it anyway.

Steve’s Resolution 

“You need men in these buildings. There are people inside and they’re going to be running right into the line of fire. You take them to the basements, or through the subway. You keep them off the streets. I need a perimeter as far back as 39th.” – Captain Steve Rogers 

After the attack on the Helicarrier Steve is the one to shake Tony out of his stupor and he immediately brings Barton back into the fold, no questions asked. This may seem naïve but it’s all he needs to do to get both Barton and Romanov on his side. The same pragmatic attitude was shown earlier with Bruce, when Steve showed no interest in his Hulk problem and only cared about Banner’s ability to find the Tesseract. As an accomplished soldier and leader of men, Rogers knows that sometimes it’s what a person can contribute right now that matters more than history, ideology or attitude.

The unification of the team around Steve is the end of the character’s conflict – he’s proved his own relevance in the world at large and is now free to act in it and join the battle. The growing ease with which he handles first his own team and then the emergency responders during the Battle of New York cements his place as a hero of the modern age and set the stage for him to entirely leave the shadow of Fury and SHIELD in Winter Soldier – all in all, a very satisfying character arc, if not as dramatic as Tony’s or as deft as Banners.

That only leaves one superhero left in the movie’s line up and I’d like to say I saved the best for last… but the fact is Thor is a bit of an enigma in this film. It’s not to say he doesn’t show character development, it’s just not as pronounced as any of the other characters – come back next month and we’ll take a look at what I mean.

Midseason Recap: Gotham

Posted by natechen on

Time for the second installment of Midseason Recap. Up this week, Fox’s Gotham.

The plot of Gotham revolves around the titular home city of DC superhero Batman. The central character, surprisingly enough, is Jim Gordon, future Police Commissioner but currently a humble detective in the GCPD. The time period is right after the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne. It’s not so much a superhero TV show as it is a prequel to such a show.

Overarching Plot, General Strengths and Weaknesses 

Most of what we’ve seen so far in Gotham is a lot of corruption, infesting the police department, the city government and even Wayne Enterprises, all tying back to the city’s organized crime families and their interest in the renovation work to be done in the Arkham district. It’s not yet clear what the greater game is but the build up to it promises to be interesting.

While the general plot of Gotham is strong and it moves at a really good pace what Gotham lacks is fleshed out characters. The show’s weakness is how one note much of the cast is. Jim is almost always grim and determined, Fish is stylish but angry, Cobblepot is simpering and creepy. Surprisingly enough, with the exception of Harvey (and him only in one episode), the only cast to show great nuance are the younger characters and Alfred. Hopefully as things begin to settle into place we’ll see some improvement on that score. In the mean time, the show is rather young and has a large cast so it’s forgiven. For now.

Favorite Character: Bruce Wayne

Bruce is a supporting character, at least in theory, but his status as future-Batman in the making has assured his character a lot of attention and the show has lavished it’s attention wisely. While he starts as a shellshocked boy grappling with grief in a huge, empty house Bruce quickly begins to transform. First his desire to know what happened to his parents and why prompts him to begin digging into the records of his parents’ business and we begin to see shadows of the world’s greatest detective. From there, other aspects begin to take shape. The incident with The Goat presents him with the idea of a totem animal to strike fear with. Then he goes back to school and realizes he has no idea how to fight. The young man who will travel the world to become Batman is taking shape before our eyes very quickly and I love it.

Least Favorite Character: Barbara Kean 

I don’t know what’s going on with this character and I honestly don’t care. That’s how poorly she’s been executed in this season. I’m not even sure what she does when Jim’s not around, she just seems to exist to be an albatross around his neck. She’s emotionally a huge gaping hole in his armor and she seems to be determined to do everything she can to make that weakness as pronounced as possible and I can’t think of a single thing she’s done to make that okay.

Look, not every character has to be a tower of strength and conviction, make wise choices, be uber personable or what have you. But there has to be something likable about the character or they’re wasting time that could be spent on other characters. Barbara isn’t adding anything to the series right now.

Her attempts to help and support Jim just wind up backfiring and I have no idea what he’s supposed to see in her other than a pretty face. Their relationship is on hiatus as of episode 11 and I’m kind of hoping it stays that way. Yes, a character can grow and evolve over the course of a series and if that happens to Barbara, that’s great. But right now the writers have a long, long way to go.

Barbara’s a big factor in all the things I really disliked about this season so I hope you’re ready to hear a lot more about her… But first!

Favorite Character Dynamic: Bruce Wayne/Selena Kyle 

Honestly I was thinking about putting Jim/Harvey in this spot, or maybe Bruce/Alfred or even Cobblepot/Fish, but then Rogues Gallery came along and completely changed my mind. Bruce and Selena hung out for a few episodes and I enjoyed watching them feel each other out and try and get a grip on their feelings but, in a show that has a lot of interesting character dynamics, they didn’t really stand out.

But when Bruce hit the streets with Selena the conflict between the two went to the next level. It’s funny because while Selena has been on the streets for a long time there’s a lot of ways she’s still more naïve than Bruce, whether by choice (as in the case of her believing her mother is coming back for her) or education (she doesn’t value loyalty or stability like Bruce does because she’s never had them).

At the same time Bruce isn’t a hard enough of a person to deal with the people on the streets in a way they’ll understand. He’ll have to become that person if he’s ever going to be the Batman we know and Selena is rubbing that in at every opportunity. It’s great stuff.

Least Favorite Character Dynamic: Barbara Kean/Jim Gordon 

The Gwen Stacey Fallacy is what occurs when one character in a relationship decides to not talk about how dangerous their relationship is, usually because one of them is influential in some way and the other might be used as leverage against them. I call it this because Peter Parker demonstrates this behavior all through The Amazing Spiderman 2 and many of his other relationships in other continuities. It’s a behavior that frankly drives me nuts.

Barbara and Jim are both demonstrating it in Gotham. I hate the Gwen Stacey Fallacy because it’s such a shortsighted thing to do but more than that, at least in modern storytelling, it’s presented as a positive thing. When talking about Scorpion I mentioned that I loved the relationship between Cabe and his ex-wife in part because it avoided this behavior – Cabe and Rebecca had clearly not only talked about the danger in their lifestyle but planned for it.

Barbara, on the other hand, has recklessly meddled in Jim’s job twice. Once when she leaked information to the press and once when she came back to town and confronted Don Falcone. With no plan or strategy in mind. Both times she compromised Jim’s ability to do his job and then she left him because she couldn’t handle the consequences of her own actions.

For his part, Jim has never sat down and talked with Barbara about the dangers she might face as his fiancée or wife and didn’t support her at all after her attempted abduction by Fish’s men or her later enforced stay at Falcone’s. He’s frequently distracted and rarely affectionate.

Again, I get that overcoming character flaws is important for character growth. But these flaws have little to do with the story of Gotham and just feel distracting. And a romance that overcomes obstacles feels worthwhile. But only when the characters involved are trying to overcome those obstacles – but these two are just sort of muddling along. The whole relationship is annoying, unbelievable and, frankly, disappointing from a series that otherwise has very strong character relationships.

Least Favorite Episode: Penguin’s Umbrella (S01E07) 

This has all the makings of a great episode, the showdown at the police station, Jim going rogue and the reveal of Cobblepot’s duplicity. Problem is, all the feeling of forward motion comes to a screeching halt in the middle when Barbara’s shortsightedness halt’s Jim’s mad rush. It makes it look like Don Falcone won because he was lucky and Jim was unlucky, not because Falcone was a menace capable of exerting any kind of leverage over Jim he wanted. And it ruined the forward momentum of the plot without diverting it into new channels. All in all, a disappointing episode.

Favorite Episode: Lovecraft (S01E10)

This is everything Penguin’s Umbrella was not – great action with a great resolution that still leaves lots of places for the story to go. We see the best of everyone involved from the heroism of Bruce, Alfred and Jim to the deviousness of Cobblepot, Fish and whoever was behind the Wayne murders. If the series is trying to hit a major action beat I’d rather they be more like this.

Other Stuff:

While I don’t think Gotham is quite as well written as Scorpion, mainly because of a certain character who shall remain nameless, it does outdo that show in a number of other respects. Cinematography is beautiful and the slightly dated look of everything is a great touch – it feels like it could be the tale of the last ten years of Gotham history.

Also, the acting is of a universally high quality here. The villains are gleefully loathsome, the heroes manage to portray some depth even in a relentlessly grim story.

Special props are due to David Mazouz and Camren Bicondova for doing a great job portraying a wounded and conflicted young man and a hardened but equally wounded young woman. Serious TV shows shy away from giving younger characters much screen time because finding young people to portray them well is very difficult. Mazouz and Bicondova are both up to the task and make Gotham stand out among competing shows.

All in all, I like Gotham a lot. It has it’s flaws but I’m optimistic that, as time goes by, they will iron themselves out and the show will tell a brilliant coming of age story – for both Jim and Bruce.