Note: The Concurrent Enrollment English class I'm teaching is writing a personal essay about their literary journey. We're using Fahrenheit 451 as our text, but writing our own stories as we go along. Personal narratives are kind of my jam, so I decided that I would draft my own example essays/approaches to the topic. Fortunately for me, I won't be graded on what I write. Instead, I can simply let the story take me where it will. Here's what I wrote.
Naked trees. Kniving winds. The too-early setting of an October sun. A strange street. A dripping nose. In my cold-chapped hands, I held a flyer for Jim Ferrin, a guy in our ward who was using the youth to help canvas Orem neighborhoods with his candidacy. I did not much care about him--aside from being politically ignorant, I was twelve years old and completely uninterested in doing this bit of service. Besides, I wasn’t friends with any of his kids. Add to that the injury of having had to give up a perfectly good book-reading evening, and my pre-teen angst about the job becomes clearer. I walked to the next house, numb fingers fumbling with the slender elastic, wrapping the half-sheet of paper (hunting-orange in my memory, though who now knows what it really was) around the screendoor’s black handle. As the leaves gossiped past me, I shrugged deeper into my thick leather coat. “I don’t want this,” I said to myself. “I want to be at home, with Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom.” Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom, of course, aren’t real. They’re characters from the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffery. Set on a faraway planet, the book series revolves around the men and women who have become selected to ride massive, fire-breathing dragons, all in defense of their planet from a mindless mycorrhizal threat. The world is a rare feat in secondary-world creation, second only to Tolkien’s Middle Earth in the complexity, interaction of disparate parts, and world-building. (The late Anne McCaffery didn’t build her own unique languages for her world--something that will likely always put Tolkien at the top of the list for most detailed secondary-world creation in literature.) To a twelve year old whose primary experiences were imaginative, having such a wonderfully wrought world--even if it was fictional--was where I wished to spend as much time as I possibly could. What I didn’t understand then but can see more clearly now is that Lessa, F’lar, and Jaxom--and Robinton, Menoly, and the rest of the entrancing cast--came into my life as permanent residents, people who became real to me through the viral act of writing and reading. They felt almost tangible, with problems that were large-yet-solvable, a type of bravery that I could only aspire to, and beneficiaries of a world in which dragons weren’t terrible beasts to slay but instead gentle companions, loyal and true. I grew up in the late eighties and early nineties: Ronald Reagan’s deregulation of what constituted advertisements to children meant that my Saturday mornings were twenty-three minute long commercials with a plot, interrupted by seven minutes of actual commercials. I knew very well how a child could pine for something. After all, watching an entire episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles--during which time there were a half dozen reminders that I could actually play with the Technodrome or get that Donatello action figure to round out my collection--was an injection of desire coming straight into my eyeballs. There was a yearning for the toys on the TV (to say nothing of the jealousy I felt toward the child actors who got to play with the toys during the commercial) that can be difficult to fully understand. I would ache for what I saw on TV, almost as if I could physically feel it. That’s what I felt that blustery October day as I hawked flyers for Jim-Ferrin-in-our-ward. But it wasn’t an ache for the action figures and playsets. It was a desire to return to a written world, a place where these fictitious people lived. I wanted to return to Pern, not suffer through the bad weather of Utah in late-autumn. I couldn’t say that this was the first time that I felt such a pining for the fictitious, but it’s certainly one of the strongest. The pull of characters--a concern for them that was akin to caring about my real life friends and their problems--was so intense that I almost cried. (Being freezing cold and miserable probably only added to that emotional response.) This, of course, is a different sort of experience than when I finally “got” what Shakespeare was saying in Hamlet or could “see” Milton’s brilliance. This was a more tangible, more from-the-gut experience. I found myself wanting to be in a place that I had never seen with people I had never met more than I wanted almost anything else in that moment. I did, unsurprisingly, get to go home when my service was complete. I don’t remember if Brother Ferrin ended up winning that election a couple of weeks later; I do remember, however, that Pern has--ever since that time--been a part of me, a place that I happily return to. And though I don’t ache to return there anymore (at least, not to the same degree), I know the keenness of such yearning. I now look forward to the next time an author’s words can so fully enrapture me--I look forward to being teleported again. 1
All things taken together, I could listen to Neil Gaiman read a laundry list and walk away feeling as though I've done the right thing. His Hampshire accent and mellow expression is uniformly charming, so that even when he's describing something strange or uncomfortable, I'm lulled into the belief that whatever it is, it's not so bad. He isn't the most poetic of writers, though he isn't without his moments of brilliance, but what makes him so interesting to me is the effortlessness with which he writes. It's not actual effortlessness; he talks about this quite a bit, as a matter of fact--about how hard it is to write, to create art (pronounced as "awt" in his endearing way). He does have a tendency to fall up in his life, which he sketches with this book, The View from the Cheap Seats, though it isn't because of lack of talent or desire to work hard. In that sense, he's been immensely lucky, though I'm more and more becoming convinced that lucky is only useful if you're prepared beforehand to receive it. And Gaiman has been lucky--he's the first to tell you that. In fact, The View from the Cheap Seats is a collection of his essays (most of them in the form of introductions to different books by other authors) that operates also as a dim outline of how his career has worked thus far. I am a Gaiman fan in principle, in part because of his personality. I've read some of his books (Fortunately, the Milk was a favorite, though I liked Fragile Things well enough, too), but it's not usually his fiction that draws me to him; it's his thinking about fiction, about stories that affects me so much. That makes The View from the Cheap Seats a perfect book for someone like me. It focuses less on his own strange worlds and more on how he's been influenced by others' art (awt) throughout his life, including different bands (They Might Be Giants' album Flood gets a mention) and paintings and concerts he's been to. The entirety of his experience is sponged into his mind, ready to be squeezed out onto the page. I really admire that. 2 The View from the Cheap Seats isn't really a book I would recommend someone read. Instead, I'd insist that they listen to it. Though I don't know if I'd put Gaiman and Austen on the same level, it was said by one of Austen's surviving brothers-in-law that Pride and Prejudice never sounded as real and correct as it did coming out of her mouth when she read it aloud. I could perhaps assert something similar about Gaiman's book. His way of asserting something and then, in a quintessentially British manner, retract or modify or qualify what he's said works--I think--much better in the ear than on the page. Of course, how would I know? I haven't read the book, I've only ever listened to it. And my favorite of his essays, "Make Good Art" is a commencement speech that I have watched a handful of times, so that makes it doubly true in this case. In one instance, however, I really did read his essay before I listened to it--the introduction to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451--and, of the two, I liked the spoken one more. The rest of the recommendation is inference. 3 The idea--diminishing, it seems, in our increasingly connected and decreasingly empathetic world--that a person can live off of her words has long been one that appeals to me. I care a great deal about how other writers write (aside from the "letter-by-letter, word-by-word, page-by-page" approach that has the frustrating quality of being technically accurate and practically useful while feeling utterly worthless), so I listened to this book in order to see how Gaiman writes. Does he wake up in the morning at the same time as the day before, a cuppa by him, as he scribbles in a notebook? If so, what kind of notebook--a spiral bound or one of those expensive ones that look so attractive on the bookstore shelf and then do an excellent job ferociously collecting dust when brought home--does he use? What type of pen? If a pen, does it bother him if he loses his pen part way through the book? Can it change widths and ink types and colors, or does he simply have a Costco-produced bevy of pens that are identical and utterly replaceable? Or none of the above, because he uses the word processor, and does he think that there's a danger, as Mark Edmundson notes, in having his writing on the screen or printed out, already looking like a book instead of like a rough draft that needs to be trimmed and tweaked, twisted and wrought differently than when it first spurted out in the frantic heat of creation? Sadly, none of these questions are answered, though I somewhat doubt I would be able to do much with the answers anyway. He likely would say what he once heard the (a week ago) late Gene Wolfe observe, which is that you never really learn to write a novel, just the novel you're writing. And would I be better off as a writer if I knew that Gaiman (like I!) prefers EnerGel Liquid Gel Ink from a Needle Tip 0.7mm ball made by Pentel? Probably not. That doesn't change the fact that my questions about his process are yet unanswered and that I am, not-so-secretly, disappointed that I'm not likely to know. 4 I hoped that I could be given a hint about what he means about "good awt", because he writes fantasy and horror and speculative fiction (which he prefers over the term science fiction because it feels broader and more inviting and more accurate), the genre which I love and have dedicated almost my entire writing energies to doing, and I can't escape the feelings of disdain from people whom I respect who feel as though my contributions to literature are, at absolute best, tolerable. My own sentiments about the worth of fantasy as a genre, or speculative fiction's worth, are cloudy. And, yes, I understand that The Iliad and The Odyssey, if retold honestly and correctly, would be genre fiction. Nevertheless, I feel that my own writing, because it's genre fiction, can never be literature. To address that feeling, I thought that Gaiman might help me know what "good" writing is, what "good" art is, how I can feel as though I'm contributing when I feel quite certain I am not. But that didn't happen. At least, not directly. I think I could infer that he feels as though good art is that which makes the maker of it happy and touches someone else. That's not a bad definition, so far as it goes, but it doesn't really answer the question, does it? Taste is one thing; judgment of whether or not what one creates is worthy of exploration, preservation, or enjoyment is another thing all together. Because I teach literature, I put the responsibility of understanding this question upon myself. Can I justify teaching one thing when it will preclude every other possible thing I could teach? Is that worth the time, effort, and frustration that is a part of the process of learning? Especially when taste may be one thing, but it is an important thing. Quality can be judged differently, perhaps, when one is looking at skill and structure, at "objective" markers on a piece. But I don't like Dickens, despite acknowledging both his skill and structures. I don't want to teach Dickens, even though he makes good art. If finding an answer to a question is the indicator of good art, then The View from the Cheap Seats isn't good art. But if finding a way to ask a question is the indicator, The View from the Cheap Seats is very good. Maybe you should give it a look. This year, I'm teaching a Winterim about fantasy literature. It's been enjoyable thus far (admittedly, only two days in may be too soon to tell), and I like that I can talk about something I'm really interested in without feeling like I'm digressing.
Our first conversation was about a handful of titles that I picked, asking if what I presented was fantasy or not. One of the titles wasn't a book, but the movie Dr. Strange. After all, it's all about magic and astral planes and basically, well, fantasy ideas. (The movie doesn't have Fin Fang Foom, which is basically a massive dragon that Strange has to battle in the comics; that makes Dr. Strange a fantasy character in the most traditional of all definitions, in my mind.) While most kids were on board with this, one student said something along the lines of superhero conventions being somewhat independent of fantasy--or science fiction, for that matter. That's given me something to chew on. What is it that causes a genre to be created? Is the popular appeal of superheroes in our mainstream culture sufficient to reclassify the type of fiction that they inhabit? I know a lot of people feel like it's a label, so who cares, but every word, every sound that we make is a type of label. There's nothing intrinsically book about a book; it's only called that because we all agreed--somewhere along the linguistic road--to call it a book. It's just a label, yet it's immensely useful in differentiating one item from another. In the case of fantasy versus superhero fiction, I feel like it might be time to allow "Superhero" its own generic label. Part of my thinking is that, more even than in the original days of the Superman radio program, superhero saturation nowadays is multi-platformed and consistently invoked. Back in '08, Barack Obama invoked the Batman/Robin paradigm (incorrectly, the pedant in me would point out, as Robin gets mad at Batman all of the time). I kind of feel that, if a convention of fiction is used easily in a presidential campaign, it indicates a level of acceptance of the power and importance of the fiction, even if it does draw from an art form best known for muscly men wearing tights. If superheroes do deserve to have their own genre, what does it entail? Certainly the idea of humans (or human-like beings) empowered beyond what is known to normal physics and being proactive in helping the improvement of the world would be a part of it. Costumes are a convention of the genre, but not a requisite--same goes for secret identities. I think it would be important to distinguish the superhero genre from the subgenre of its source material--just because something is a comic first doesn't necessarily mean that it would be in the genre (I'm thinking of Bone first and foremost, though there are many others). The specifics of the genre might require fine-tuning, and--as is the case in all things--it wouldn't necessarily fit in every version. But the idea that there's a new genre--not subgenre, mind you--of "the superhero" is an interesting one to me. When last we left our hero…
Note: In the previous essay, I laid out the groundwork for how I would approach telling a Superman story, making the claim that I'd rather have it as a movie than comic, though now that I think more on that, I think either could work. It'd be more gratifying to see it on the silver screen, but if we're just imagining things, I'd like a free trip to England while we're at it. And an agent to sell my book. And a free pass to Disneyland for me and my family. And, um…I dunno, a gift card to Barnes and Noble. I guess I have pretty low expectations for my wildest dreams. Onward. Superman is in shambles: His costume has been torn up by the aliens, and the blast that dropped him into the middle of China has depleted his powers. It's daytime, so the sunlight helps him to feel a bit better*, though he's still struggling to keep himself going. He's given up on trying to fly, and his powers like x-ray vision and super hearing are on the fritz. He can't move at super speed, either. He can speak Chinese (the guy speaks basically every language on the planet, since he can study and memorize at super speed), so he asks for a phone. He manages to place a call to Martha. She is surprised to hear from her son on the phone ("Clark! I didn't know you knew how to use a telephone…" kind of moment). "Mom! I'm…I'm in trouble. I need…" He hesitates. The moment of difficulty--the hardest moment he's had to face so far, is this one: Acknowledging that he can't do everything himself. "I need your help." "What do you need?" Martha writes things down, then hangs up, only to call the hospital in Metropolis and asks after Lois Lane. As she's talking she's on her computer, accessing her bank account--not particularly robust--and without hesitation books a flight from central China back to Metropolis, entering Clark's information into the fields. Just then, the hospital connects back, saying that Lois is in surgery, as her situation has become more complicated and dangerous. Martha hangs up, calls back Clark, and says, "Lois is…" "Is she okay?" "They're looking after her. But you should get home as soon as you can, Clark. She's going to need you." Not truly a lie, but Martha clearly can't bring herself to tell full truth to her son. Clark gets to the airport--wearing some clothes generously gifted from the Chinese couple that found him in a smoking crater in the middle of a field**--but as he's walking up to security, he overhears some American tourists that are headed home, freaking out about the fact that one of them lost her passport. Clark looks around, patting himself, indicating that he doesn't have any identification. He swallows and looks around. There's no choice: He has to try to sprint through at super speed. It's the only way to get on the plane. He takes a deep breath. He glances about, looking for openings. A moment arrives. He starts to run. The guards shout, putting hands up and telling him to stop. Clark is desperate and muscles forward, only to be brought to stop by some angry airport police who are armed. Clark gives up, is placed under arrest, and taken to an interrogation room. An investigator comes in and begins to talk to the handcuffed Clark Kent. They argue a bit about whether he's Superman for real, only to have Clark realize that he had helped the investigator and his family during the opening montage. He says what happened, which makes the investigator realize that Superman is really here. He releases Clark and ensures that Clark gets on the plane. As he gets on, Clark says, "Thank you." "It's good to be able to help a god," says the investigator. Meanwhile, Martha is back in Kansas, watching the news. A TMZ-style tabloid program comes on, talking about a hot tip that just came in. The two irreverent hostesses say, "Have you heard about this guy? Clark Kent--award-winning reporter--has apparently plagiarized his award-winning report. And here he is making out with a woman while his girlfriend is in the hospital!" "How low can you go?" asks the hostess. "Who knew that a sleazebag could be so good looking?" "Honey, you haven't seen my ex, have you?" Then the woman laugh. Martha is out of the house, TV still on, running to their old pickup truck. She gets in and drives toward the interstate, which says Metropolis 100 miles***. Clark, meanwhile, is trying to get his powers to work with some x-ray vision when a stabbing pain makes him gasp. The person next to him gives him a wary look and scoots a bit farther away. Massaging his shoulder, he tries to be patient. It's clear that this--of all things--is rough on him. Martha Kent is anxiously awaiting at the Metropolis airport, looking around pensively. She's whispering, "Meet me by baggage claim 4, Clark, meet me by baggage claim 4," getting weird looks from people as she paces about. Clark, meanwhile, is shaking his head and grimacing--he's in pain. His super hearing is starting to come back, though it's in fits and starts. He hears his mom. He feels some of his strength returning…and it's a good thing, too. Getting back from an international flight requires that he pass through customs^. This time, he's successful in moving quickly enough to avoid notice, arriving at Martha's side, sweating and grim-faced as he clutches his shoulder in pain. "What's happening?" "Clark, are you okay?" "No. We need to get to the hospital." They clamber into the pickup, but not before Clark's super hearing picks up his name. He sees a person watching the clip we saw earlier. He looks at his mom in shock. "What is going on?" "It's not quite what it seems. Come on, son. I'll drive." Martha peppers him with questions about what the video and plagiarism accusations are all about. He explains the kiss; he has nothing about the article. He's not the kind of guy who needs to copy from others, after all. "Here's another piece of the puzzle," says Martha as she slaloms through traffic. "That wasn't Lana Lang." "What?" "If you were having dinner with her when you say you did, then you made out with an impostor: Lana was at my house with her mother, having a night of catching up to do." Clark is confused and clearly angry. He asks about the spacecraft that knocked him around the planet, but on that there hasn't been any reports that Martha is aware of. As they walk into the hospital, Clark wants to use his powers to hear Lois when he's driven to his knees, clutching his shoulder. Stumbling into the bathroom, Clark forces his powers to work and x-rays himself--and sees a small disc embedded in his shoulder tissue. Despite the pain, he forces his heat vision to burn a hole large enough for him to work his fingers into his own body, pinching the disc and pulling it free. He stares at it in the puddle of blood in his palm. It's the same as the one he got from the suicidal robot. Almost immediately he starts to feel better: His shoulder wound heals up, he's no longer pale and trembling, and he straightens himself. Superman is back…and he's angry. He stares a moment longer at the disc, then blasts it with heat vision. Coming out of the bathroom, Martha asks him what was wrong. He explains, then says, "We have to get to Lois." Before they get very far, the nurse at reception tells them that she's recovering from a surgery and that she can't be seen quite yet. Clark asks for the room, then, the moment he's outside, he flies to the right place. The windows don't open, but he can see her for himself. She's still unconscious and hooked up to a respirator. He stares for a long moment before returning to his mother, who wraps him in her arms. "I can't do anything for her, can I?" "We can figure out who's responsible for this," says Martha. "And make them pay." "Mom!" Clark is shocked. "What? They hurt my boy. The fires of hell aren't hot enough for their punishment, so far as I'm concerned. Now let's get you back on track." Clark hands her something and asks her to stay and see if she can't get in and watch over Lois, then flies away, returning home so that he can change out of the clothes from the Chinese couple and put on his Superman costume. When he arrives, he freezes almost instantly. "What are you doing here?" "You're being stubborn," says a voice from the shadows. Out steps Lana Lang, a strange weapon in place of her hand. "It's time to put you out of your misery." "I'm not afraid of that thing," he says. "You will be." She shoots him, which he lets strike his chest. It's another disc, and it drops him to his knees, jolting his body with pink electricity. Lana picks him up with one hand and then flies both of them out from his apartment--breaking through the roof, mostly because that's a jerk move to do--and soaring up to the spaceship that is invisible until Lana gets really close to it. A portal opens and the Man of Steel enters. Lana then hauls him into a main chamber. The moment she removes the pink disc from where she'd shot it--right in the middle of the S on his crest, of course--he instantly reacts, snatching her hand. "Who are you?" he demands, his heat vision kicking in. "Let her go, Kent," says a metallic voice. A bright light turns on, making Superman blink. In that moment, Lana breaks his grip on her and gut punches him to the far side of the chamber. Climbing to his feet, Superman straightens up and looks at the being who is clearly in charge here. "My name is Brainiac," says the android, stepping down from his command chair. "Have you received my message clearly enough? Do you despair, Superman? You should. I have gone to great lengths to make it so that your entire life crumbles before your eyes." "What do you want from me?" "Nothing. You are merely in the way." "In the way of what?" "My plans for this world." Brainiac explains that his is a mission of collection and conquest, but he has, through much observation, determined that Superman was the only thing that might prevent him from attaining his goal. He has, after all, connections to Krypton. He goes through the explanation about how he had quickly and easily discovered Superman's true identity, learned of his past, and even managed to create the Lana Lang clone. The idea was to break all of the fragile props that weren't as invulnerable as the Man of Tomorrow. When Supes asks why the explanation, Brainiac says, "Words hurt you, Superman, though very little else does. Like these: Lois Lane is about to die and there's nothing you can do to stop it." A video screen shows Lois in her hospital bed, the respirator machine nearby. Martha is snoozing in a chair next to the machine, which blinks out. Superman screams. "My control over your pathetic technologies allows me to do as I wish, when I wish. And one thing I've learned is that I never ought to overextend myself. Precision is a thing of beauty, and wasted effort is hardly precise. Why not let her own feeble body die on its own, drowning in her own sickness? I estimate she will die within five minutes. Now you see the weakness inherent in relying on others." Superman lunges away, anxious to escape, only to be stopped by Lana, whose body shifts into weapons to make for a more interesting fight. Superman uses a lot of his different skillset, relying on his super speed, but also his heat vision, freeze breath, and strength. At one point in the fight, he uses x-ray vision to spot the Brainiac Lana through a wall, punches through, and jettisons her into space. He follows suit, only to be yanked back into the spaceship by a weapon of Brainiac's. "Impressive, if futile," he says as he drags the resisting Superman back into the ship. "She will still die in a minute, though." This is accurate--the entire fight with Lana is at super speed, which means only four minutes have elapsed. "You have failed to save her and failed to escape." "I wasn't trying to leave, Brainiac. I still have business to do with you. I just needed to get out to send a message." Brainiac doesn't quite get what's happening when Superman flies forward and punches Brainiac in the face. Another fight ensues in which Brainiac tries any number of contraptions against the Man of Steel, only to lose ground constantly. Though he's strong, he's not at Superman's level, and he gets bested. Superman looks at the monitor. Lois is doing fine, with a doctor talking to Martha quietly in one corner. In fact, Superman can see that Lois is slowly coming to. "How?" asks Brainiac, crumpled and broken on the ground. "I thought of everything. No one is smarter than I." "Don't underestimate my brain. And, since you were kind enough to explain yourself to me, I'll do you the same courtesy before I pitch you into the black. I used that interference disc you shot into me, changing it to accept a broadcast frequency. I then embedded a message into your little housewrecker robot, broadcasting to my mother that Lois needed to be checked on immediately." "Who would hear it?" "My mother. Despite what you said, having others help is not a weakness; it's my greatest strength. She alerted the doctors and they've already got a new machine working. Lois is waking up. And you need to leave." Brainiac presses a button that captures Superman in the same force field that had dragged him into the ship the last time. Brainiac laughs and says that Superman has failed again. Then Superman begins, very slowly, to fly. He's straining in the force field, and the power of his resistance is causing the machinery in Brainiac's spaceship to break apart. Superman is straining so hard that even his Kryptonian clothing is starting to tear and rip. Blood from ruptured veins make him bleed from his nose and eyes. He looks like he's about to tear himself apart, too, when he shrugs his shoulders and spins around. The entire ship begins to revolve, faster and faster, until at last the force field breaks free, sending the ship deep into space, faster than a speeding bullet. Superman is exhausted, but he's not done yet. He flies back to Metropolis, cleans himself off, puts on some normal clothes, and buys some roses. Then he makes it to the hospital. The nurse gives him a look as he walks toward the bay of elevators. On the screen in the waiting room, a news anchor is talking about the bizarre anomalies in gravity near Earth orbit, as reported by NASA. Clark enters Lois' room in his typical bumbling way, only to be greeted by the laughter of both his girlfriend and mother. Lois is still in really bad shape, but she's alert and happy to see him. They hug and he gives her a gentle kiss. "Everything will be all right now," he says, patting her hand. A few days later, Clark walks into Perry White's office, a stack of papers in hand. "Here's my receipts." "For what?" asks White, glowering. "That I was the one who wrote that article." He points at the evidence as he tosses it onto White's desk. "Turns out that the brainiac who claimed I'd plagiarized had missed some of the meta data that showed he fabricated the article before 'turning me in'. Guess he wasn't such a smart fellow after all." "How'd you get this?" he asked "Perry. I'm an investigative reporter. You think I don't know how to chase down a lead?" "This is impressive, Kent." "Thanks. Lois did almost all of it." Perry looks at him incredulously, then laughs. "That makes more sense, Kent." That night, Clark is helping Lois into their apartment ("Sorry about the new sunroof") when the light turns on. Standing in the same place as before is Brainiac Lana. She's in really bad shape, with some of her android parts sparking and hanging out of her body. She morphs her hand into a weapon and points it Superman. "You can't get away that easily," hisses the android. "Wait," says Lois, putting her hand up. "Is that the Lana you kissed?" "She kissed me, but yes." Lois eyes her. "Not much to look at, is she?" "She's seen better days." Lana growls and lunges at the two, knocking Clark over and making Lois yelp in pain. Lana pounds on Clark's face a couple of times, only to stop as electricity rips through her. The android slumps over, either dead or paralyzed. Lois is holding a taser to the exposed metal. "Get your hands off my man," she growls. Clark laughs as he gets up. "How much voltage does that thing have in it?" "I had Jimmy tweak it for me." She shrugs. "When you date Superman, you need to have a little more punch in your corner." "Thanks for saving me," says Clark, smiling. "Don't mention it. Now, will you take out the trash?" Clark nods, picking up Lana, then flying out the window. He returns a moment later. "Into the Sun?" asks Lois as she plops onto the couch, patting the cushion next to her. "Why not? I hear it's lovely this time of year." Fin. === That's how I'd tell a Superman story. It starts off in the way a tragedy could, with the montage, but I feel like the world of Superman falls apart pretty fast, enough to make it feel like it fits the comedic formula. With Superman and Lois back together, the world safe, and his reputation restored, it also fits into a classical comedy. One of the things that I wanted to avoid was having the stakes be about saving the world. Though he does that, too, Superman's final fight with Brainiac is done because he (Superman) is trying to get back to Lois. Brainiac's plan to take over the world--or whatever you want to fit in--doesn't really intimidate the Man of Steel, because if it comes to punching something out, he's going to win. I also wanted to make it so that the simplest of things--asking his mom to check in on Lois--was what saved her life. Superman was the information behind the action, but he had to rely on others to take care of it. This, to me, is the way of making a Superman story that is relatable. No, most of us don't have aliens impersonating ex-girlfriends, but the idea that someone lies about you, or that everything seems to be going wrong and there's nothing that you can do to fix it, that all seems to be applicable and fairly universal. Lastly, though I didn't really plot this out--and there's definitely more to tweak and refine (not that I'm likely to do that)--I feel like my earlier comment about "What could Superman have to say about our world now?" is the one that he emphasizes at the end: It's our connections and helping one another that will prove our greatest strength. It's a message of unity without having to be about the world coming together, as well as an idea that there's power in the humility of having to ask for help. One final thing: If I were given the chance to actually write the script, I would insist that Clark be happy at almost everything he does. Smile as he saves people, smile when he sees Lois, smile when he sees Martha--just be happy. Show the audience that he's glad to be where he is. That way, the restoration to his happiness at the end of the story makes us feel like, despite the hard times he's suffered, there's still cause for hope and happiness. That, I argue, is what the heart of a Superman story is. --- * I feel that this is an important aspect of the story, too: Disempowering Superman isn't my primary goal. Not only do we already have that story in Christopher Reeves films, but it goes against what I'm trying to do, which is to avoid the idea that Superman is unrelatable because of his powers. If I simply told a story where he no longer had his powers, then he's relatable, but he's not Superman. My own opinion is that a superhero's identity is tightly tied into the power set, and a movie about Clark Kent is not what I'd be paying to see: I want Superman to do super things. ** And, yes, that's supposed to be an homage to Clark's origins on the planet. *** I have no idea how far Smallville is from Metropolis. The distance in the TV series Smallville is 100 miles, but that doesn't make sense if Metropolis is a coastal city. We'll say 100 miles and let it go at that. ^ I feel like this scene could either be drawn out to a really taut, is-he-going-to-make-it kind of thing, or one where it's simply skipped over. It's a director's cut part to the story, I guess. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Okay, so maybe the title is slightly misleading: I don't really know how one would go about writing a Superman story. It's clear that, at least cinematically, the Man of Steel remains one of the inexplicably toughest nuts to crack. And in a world where two very well-received movies include a talking tree and a sentient space raccoon, we can't chalk it up to the tired trope of "no one can relate to a demigod like Superman" as an explanation.
I've been thinking about the cinematic universe (called the DCEU) where a movie as significant and important--despite its flaws--as Wonder Woman can coexist with the mix of weird decisions and bizarre character motivations as Batman v. Superman. And though Justice League was fine (I'm not a particularly difficult fan to please when it comes to movies, in case you haven't noticed), and I purchased the Blu-Ray and expect to get to watch it soon, I'm not enamored of it. I've wanted to return and see Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse more than I've wanted to return to Justice League, which isn't really that big of a surprise, considering who's writing this, but the difference is I actually have Justice League in my house and could put it in and watch it… I digress. What I'm getting at is the idea that Superman is hard to make personable, relatable, or intriguing in our post-9/11, post-2016 election world. In other words, we're in a time where our culture has created a new identity for itselves, one filled with bitterness and anger, outrage and injustice. What could Superman possibly have to say about that sort of thing? Well, a lot, I think. In some ways, the Last Son of Krypton is more crucial in our cinematic discourse than we might believe, as he's a ought to be the example of what the United States has been for the vast majority of Superman's existence: A genuine superpower. So, if I were to write a Superman movie (I'd say movie, if only because then I'd have the free reign to tell the story without worrying about continuity or fitting it into a broader mythology), I think that's the angle I would take. I wouldn't necessarily pull for the comics--in part because I don't know as much about current Superman continuity than I do some of the Golden Age stories, which probably wouldn't work for the purposes of such a thought exercise--though there are pieces of the video game series Injustice: Gods Among Us that I think makes for an interesting starting point. Here's my pitch: Make it a comedy. I mean that generically, which is to say, classically. Though there are lots of parts of the comedic structure that we'd have to ignore for simplicity's sake, I would pull on two specific aspects of classical comedy: The story is a process from social disarray to social cohesion, and I would incorporate people from all levels of society. Okay, so a quick step backwards. Have you read The Divine Comedy? It's the story about a poet named Dante who wakes up one night in a dark wood and then is invited to pass through the three potential eternities of the Catholic afterlife, Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. Dante begins having lost his way and is forced to go to the worst of all possible places, Inferno, in order to determine the greater good of his theme--namely, God's justice. It's best known as the repository of the first of the three books, Inferno, which is filled with all sorts of horrible punishments and gruesome images. When you read The Divine Comedy (which you most definitely should), you'll be hard pressed to put our modern definition of "comedy" onto it. It's not funny; it's comedic. There's a difference. Superman would need to do the same thing. Dante is a superman in Hell, mostly because he still has a corporal body and the rest of the shades do not. (At one point, they notice that he casts a shadow, which gets the shades furious with jealousy.) He is capable of leaving Hell, which the spirits of "Adam's wicked seed" can't do. In other words, he is far above them in ability, capacity, and authority. Kal-El is the same in our context. At the beginning of the movie, Superman is at the height of his powers--not quite at the level Grant Morrison will put him, but still pretty impressive. There is near universal acclaim for what he's done, including having defeated Doomsday, rebuffed an alien invasion, and managed to avert catastrophic climate change. He's feeling pretty good about himself: Lois and he have a good relationship, his mother is content and enjoys his weekly visits, and his life as Clark Kent is also going well, with some accolades for his journalism. All of this is the first five or so minutes of the movie. We can have some cool montages of him saving the day--and smiling every time he helps people out, whether it's the vintage cat-in-the-tree or stopping of a mugging--and get the sense that all's well in the universe. Then there's a mistake. Lois and Clark are having lunch in Metropolis. Clark is saying, "This is good, you know? After all we've been through, it's nice to have a simple meal together." An explosion happens across the street. Superman, of course, protects Lois and the entire diner from the blast (quipping, "That's what Superman can do" or something along the lines of him being somewhat cocky about his abilities), then zips over to save the day. It's a weird alien robot that he's never seen before--but who cares? He's Superman! He begins smashing things and moving at superspeed and doing the sort of cool action we associate with superhero movies. Though there's been some damage, Superman has taken care of all but one of the robots. A crowd gathers, cheering Superman's success as he approaches the wounded being. This one he wants information from. Grabbing the creature, which wraps its claws around his wrist as Superman hefts it into the air, Superman asks, "Where do you come from?" "I bring a message," says the creature. "What's that?" "Despair." Slow-motion effect as Superman perceives what the creature is about to do: A massive explosion tears through the robot. Superman can move fast enough to save everyone who's nearby--we just saw him do that a few minutes ago. But not when the robot holds him in place. Superman looks down at the claws holding him back, then up at the creature as he recognizes what's about to happen. The entire block disappears in a massive explosion. (Yes, this is similar to the moment in Batman v. Superman, but with one crucial difference: Superman tries to save everyone--which he totally could have done had he wanted to in the Snyder film--but can't. That's really important.) Superman is left with only the portion of the robot that he'd protected with his hand, a silver disk that glows with a pink light. Superman looks around, dismayed at what happened. He, of course, is unscathed, but there are dead people all over the place, as well as countless wounded. His ears are still ringing and he's a little out of sorts--mostly because he can't believe he made such a grievous mistake--and he's understandably upset about the whole thing. Then he sees Lois, under some rubble, bleeding from a head wound. He's by her side immediately, scanning her body, certain that he can hear her heartbeat. A moment of relief when he sees that she's still alive. Without hesitating, he flies her to the closest hospital. "Where are the others?" asks an ER nurse as he takes Lois from the Man of Steel. "Others?" "We heard the explosion. Where are the other injured people?" explains the nurse. "You didn't only rescue this one, did you?" asks someone else, flabbergasted. Superman stalls: He's being confronted with his selfishness and not doing all he could do. He leaves and heads back to the area of the explosion to try to help, but those who are there tell him he's "done enough". Injured at the rejection, he flies away to return to the hospital, this time as the boyfriend, Clark Kent. There, the doctors tell him that they can't really give him much information--privacy of the patient and all that--but that Lois is in a coma. Clark is a bit of a wreck. He feels immense guilt at having been suckerpunched by the robot, he's anxious about Lois, and, when he comes in to work, he is shocked when Perry White accuses him of plagiarizing an award-winning article. At the same time, who else should show up in his life than Lana Lang, his old high school sweetheart. She surprises him at work and asks him out to dinner--which he reluctantly accepts. During the meal, she flirts pretty heavily with him, enough that he feels that she's being inappropriate. "My girlfriend is in a coma," he says, rising from the table. Lana does, too, saying, "Then she won't know about this," and wraps Clark in a tight hug and kisses him full on the mouth. A person in the restaurant snaps a picture on his phone. Clark pushes her away, then says some sort of mumbled, "Good to see you, Lana," before rushing into the night. Angry at all of the injustices that are heaping on him, he heads home to Smallville where he can chat with his mom, Martha. There, he explains how frustrated he is and his mother actually laughs at him. "Sorry, Clark. I don't mean to make you feel worse. It's kind of funny to me that you're finally feeling what we always feel around you: powerlessness." Martha sighs and rubs his shoulder. "Some problems can't be defeated with your fists, sweetheart. You'll pull through, of course. Lois will pull through--you always do. But all the strength in the world isn't enough to turn back time. You'll have to wait." For a man who can move faster than light, this isn't an easy proposition. Needing to blow off some steam, he steps out into the cool Kansas night, staring at the sky. Then he squints. He's seeing something approach. Instantly, he's in his cape and boots, soaring toward the anomaly. At last, something he can do. Just as he's about to break out of the atmosphere, he hears Lois whisper his name. The possibility that she's revived pulls him to a stop. Unsure if he should investigate this anomaly or return to Lois, he hesitates long enough that the spaceship he'd spotted from Kansas can fire at him. A space battle ensues, complete with robotic drones and Superman frying stuff with his heat vision. The thing is, the robots are cutting him--making him bleed, though being in space means that he's receiving the Sun's radiation enough that the wounds don't stick around--but he's still shocked that he's getting physically injured by the attack. At this point, Lois' heartbeat begins to fade--a frequency that he's specifically tuned into for just such an occasion--and he begins to panic. He has to get back to Lois before she dies, but every time he tries to retreat, the robots knock him back. Realizing he needs to outmaneuver them, he tries to fly around the planet, only to be blasted out of the sky by a massive beam from the mothership. Superman wakes up in a crater, dazed and confused. He tries to fly, but finds himself too weak to do anything except for rise up a few feet before crashing to the ground. He has landed in rural China--he can tell because a bunch of confused Chinese farmers are staring at him with shock. Far from home, his powers diminished, Superman now has to figure out how to get home. And, what's worse, he can't hear Lois' heartbeat anymore. … And that's where I'll stop for now, since the essay is gone on too long and I want to do something else with my day. Stay tuned to see if I can finish how I would write a Superman story. === ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the name of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! In writing parlance, there are two broad formats for how a writer goes about crafting a story: architect and gardener*. The former is one who sets about with a deliberate plan--usually in the form of an outline--and doesn't proceed until all of the pieces are in place. World-building, story outline, characters and their personalities, these are all tools that the architect uses to smash out a story. Famous architects that I'm aware of include Brandon Sanderson and James Patterson--two very different writers with very different generic sensibilities, but also quite prolific.
The latter type are gardeners, or those who go into the world of the story and prune, dung, weed, nurture, and trim whatever is already there until it's a beautiful sight to behold. The story (the garden itself) is there before the work begins, but it's untamed and wild. There are parts that don't fit with the rest of the garden that have to be discovered and then extracted. In terms of writing, it takes a long time to go through this sort of thing, mandating multiple revisions of the story to make sure everything that's supposed to be there ends up in the final product. Some famous architects include (though I may be misremembering their processes) George R.R. Martin and Haruki Murakami. I have done both kinds of writing--which is a distorting phrase, because every novel is different and the process by which I write can shift. It's almost more of a spectrum: Some light architecturing, heavy weeding. Then the reverse. It's rare that a writer doesn't discover something new on the journey, while I doubt there's a writer who doesn't have at least some basic shape of the story that's already built inside of her head. Still, the two categories are useful because, once a writer figures out what she is more naturally attuned to, she can go about improving her skills in that type of writing. For me, I prefer to outline. Not that I specifically like that, it's just that I hate editing a lot (though I'm slowly improving) and outlines--being an architect--cuts down on the plot holes and provides a more satisfying experience on the first pass than otherwise. I haven't always been an architect, though. It was only once I wrote a story, from beginning to end, over the course of a few weeks--as opposed to the multi-year experience from my then-previous gardening project--that I realized I could only be prolific if I buckled down, told myself the story first in outline form, and then moved it into the page. Since then, I've written five or six novels--all of my NaNoWriMo projects were outlined beforehand--using the architect method I've developed. And, frankly, I just really like being able to get a feeling for a whole story before I get into it. It's nice to feel "prolific", even if it is as an amateur (used in its original sense). But I have a soft spot in my heart for the at-the-keyboard-question, Where do I go now? The level of improvisation and effort to retain a distinct memory between what I've thought should be in the story and what I've actually written in the story is exciting. I know a lot of writers like having written--that the process of writing itself is tedious to them--but I'm not one of them. The fact that, even when the essay is rubbish, I go ahead and type it up is an example of that, I think. I like to write. I like counting my words. I like seeing the graph of my work click ever upwards. It's fun. And if my fingers are on the keyboard and I'm drafting a piece, it feels like I'm writing--which I am--in a more fundamental and thrilling way than when I have a handful of notecards and I'm scribbling away on an outline. So, as a result, I have a couple of different projects that I'm currently working on that are mostly garden-style stories. There's still some background work--which I've always done--so that the world feels consistent and the characters don't act out of, well, character. (This is what I mean by the two ends feeling more like stations on a spectrum, rather than firm binaries.) But these stories aren't plotted out, their purposes aren't really understood by me yet. I'm getting images in my mind and I begin to write. It's pretty much that simple. The pro to this is, of the two ways of writing, that actual experience of garden-writing is much more pleasurable to me than the alternative. The con to that, of course, is the cons of being a gardener: I don't know what the shape of my story is supposed to be, which means I may put a lot of effort into something that, ultimately won't be important or pay off. This is what is meant by the advice, "kill your darlings". Sometimes there's a really cool description, moment, or character that is actually a weed in the garden. No matter how pretty it is, if it's a weed, it has to go. And that can hurt. I gave my writing group the first few thousand words of one of these stories, a short (lol, no) story called "Mon Sters". They really seemed to enjoy it, saying that they were sad that it ended (the story's still incomplete) and that it was some of my work that they've enjoyed the most. And I agree with that--I'm proud of that story, thus far--and it has a vivacity that my outlined stuff lacks. Part of that is because of the style of writing that I'm striving for--a more robust approach that toes the line between overwritten and rich--which I can only seem to make when I'm writing ex tempore. On one level, this is flattering. I'm glad that they're liking it thus far. It's also frustrating: I can't rely on the story continuing to be good and it has created expectations that I'm blind to being able to continue. I don't know what will come next, and that is kind of scary. One thing is certain, though: Creation is never an act of control. Architect or gardener, there's always an element of tapping into some otherspace where good words live, seeking a way to communicate through stains on a page some language that's affecting. It's the perpetual struggle of writing: Where do I go from here? --- * And, like any good bit of parlance, there are multiple ways of saying the same thing. So while I use architect and gardener here, the terms outliner and pantser (writing by the seat of one's pants) are also used. I think it was Stephen King who, in the gardener mode, claimed that a story was uncovered, like a paleontologist excavating a dinosaur fossil. While this concept of being a discovery writer fits in well, I'm using the terms above for simplicity's sake. ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Note: I wrote a similar concept about Steampunk Batgirl as a backstory for my wife's costume that she's making for a convention this fall (and, also, Halloween). While I like Batman, I main Spider-Man. I thought I'd take a chance to flesh out some of the ideas that I have about the steampunk Spider-Man character that my wife and I have made to explain my steampunk costume. I should also point out that it's technically crystalpunk, since we don't really use steam, but that's an even more esoteric genre. So: Steampunk it is.
A young Peter Parker moved into a mid-nineteenth century New York replete with crime when he and his guardians, Uncle Ben and Aunt May, left their home in Dublin in the hopes of encouraging Peter's interest: crystal- and steam-tech. New York, by this time, was the hotbed for inventions and applications of crystal-powered technology, and its frequent cousin, steam-tech. These twin power sources thrust New York into the forefront of world technology. Crystal-powered skyships cruised through the skies, a swarm above the city as thick as the traffic within. Moving to Kings, a suburb of the city, the Parkers were reviled. Though their family line came from England, no one could doubt their Irish roots. Forced into a demeaning textile job in a factory owned by the Manfredi, an Italian mob family, Uncle Ben began to waste away. Meanwhile, Peter--a scrawny kid with more interest in the natural philosophy of crystal-tech--had his own struggles. Trying to fit in with the local kids was easy--provided they were of an Irish background, like him. The New York natives would ridicule him, and more than once he came home with a bloody lip or a blackened eye thanks to bigots who overheard his accent. When Ben noticed Peter's condition, he pulled the boy aside. "What's happening Peter?" he asked with his rich Irish accent. "They're beating me, Uncle Ben. For no reason but how I talk." "You're gonna have to learn to stand up for yourself," Uncle Ben had replied. "And then, once you know how to do that, you have to learn to stand up for those who can't. That's what we Irish do. It's what we Americans do. It's what we Parkers do. Be strong, lad, and you'll pull along all right." Peter, thoughtful, nodded at his uncle. It was true that they had moved to America in order to have a better life, but that didn't mean they would have an easier life. For Peter, this was a small price to pay to be a part of Smythe's Crystal Mercantile, the outlet of the unique crystal-tech creations of the Smythe Science Corporation. Though young, Peter managed to get himself a job at the Mercantile by helping haul the crates and stock the shelves so that well-to-do New Yorkers could purchase their crystal devices. Everything from pocket watches to laundry machines was available to those who had the cash, the intricate gears and gauges needed to utilize the crystal-tech only one aspect of what Peter loved about the technology. His meager earnings were added to Aunt May's seamstress work and Uncle Ben's factory pay. With all three jobs, they managed to make ends meet. Peter studied as much as he could in the evenings, but resources were scarce and hard to come by. Plus the cost of burning a lantern by which to read could sometimes be too much for them to afford. Hunger pinched his belly. His hair grew long and greasy. And yet, Peter was happy. He was close to crystal-tech. He was in America. He had a job at a worthwhile company. What could go wrong? The truth about Smythe's Crystal Mercantile was simple: It was a front. The Smythe family's hands were just as dirty as the Manfredi's, dealing in all sorts of illegal activities, including slave-hunting, gambling, prostitution, and dreg distribution (dregs being ingestible remains of crystal-tech, a dangerous way of enhancing human strength, endurance, and other capabilities--with a downside of addiction, violence, and even death as a potential price addicts might pay). On one side, the Smythes were into the worst, darkest dealings of a rotten city. On the other, they provided steady work and valuable products. Peter knew nothing of this. He only knew that he'd been given a job, despite only being fifteen. Granted, it wasn't the same as building crystal-tech--his true dream--but he was around crystal-tech, and that was something. It was much cleaner, more efficient, and less greasy than steam-tech, which was the primary power of the Manfredi's operations. And, much as Peter didn't know of the Smythe's real dealings, he didn't know that the Manfredi family and the Smythe family were long-standing rivals, both anxious to destroy the other, but unable to determine a way of doing it that didn't turn into a full-scale mob war. One day, Peter was ordered to accompany a shipment of a newly-created, experimental crystal-tech weapons to one of the Smythe's cronies, a man named Hammerhead. When Peter and the other workers arrived in their crystal-powered wagon, Hammerhead stepped out to inspect the merchandise. They were in a seedy part of town, but one known to everyone. Hammerhead was one of Smythe's best customers--and he was also a target for the Manfredi family, too. Unluckily for Peter and his coworkers, the Manfredi had dispatched an assassin named Tombstone to eliminate Hammerhead, and the attack happened just as Hammerhead left his hideout to inspect the buckboard filled with weapons. Men fired on each other, their guns sparking the night with their crystal- and steam-powered flashes. Cries of pain and groans of death filled the air. For his part, Peter had taken shelter in the dilapidated warehouse that Hammerhead used as his home base. The two men, obviously enhanced by dregs, punched and wrestled with each other as gunfire peppered the area. One bullet flew through the flimsy wall near where Peter was hiding. Smashing into the upright containers of an experimental dreg, the bullet caused a sudden rush of the chemical to spray all over. Peter, cowering nearby, was drenched in the dregs. Coughing and spluttering, Peter lurched toward an exit, an old door that was on the far end of the warehouse. A massive padlock kept the chains on it, a detail that Peter would have noticed earlier were it not for his panic. Grabbing the handle in a futile attempt to get free, he shook the door. As he did, he accidentally disturbed a nest of spiders. Each bite was a tiny flame, where not only did the creatures' venom enter him, but the dregs that was outside of his body now was coming inside of it. Screaming in pain and terror, Peter thrashed his way toward the only exit he knew worked: The one he'd ducked into when the bullets started flying. Just as he got out of the building, an ill-timed explosion of the weapons threw him and the still-fighting Tombstone and Hammerhead in different directions. For Peter, he landed in the nearby river, the water washing off some of the dregs and all of the spiders. Floating downstream, barely conscious for the pain and trauma, Peter eventually managed to drag himself home. When he arrived, Aunt May, terrified at what had happened, pulled him to bed and began nursing him. Peter was sick for a week. By the time he felt better, everything else had gotten worse. Without the income of Peter's work, Uncle Ben had to put even more time into his job. In an exhaustion-fueled slip, he had dropped an important piece of equipment, causing the entire factory to shut down for a few hours while engineers fixed the problem. Silvio Manfredi had promptly fired Uncle Ben, who was now scouring the city for work. Additionally, some strange men had been stopping by frequently, trying to talk to Peter. Aunt May was scared, as they gave the impression of someone who didn't like being told no. Now that Peter was recovered, he was feeling good. Better than that--he felt amazing. Sensational. He'd never felt so good. Peter headed into the city to try to find Uncle Ben, who had been gone for two days at this point. As he went around, he kept feeling as if something were tickling the back of his neck--like a web that clung to his skin but couldn't be brushed away. At last, the feeling was so pronounced it almost hurt him, and he involuntarily dove to one side, down an alleyway. But instead of going a step or two, he only landed after sailing nearly fifteen feet from where he'd been standing. Shocked, he turned to look at where he'd been, only to see two men staring at him, their eyes wide and angry. "Who are you? What do you want?" "Mr. Manfredi sent us to ask you some questions," said man. He and his partner began walking down the alleyway, blocking the exit. Peter backed up until he bumped into the brick of the building behind him. "I don't have anything to say to him," said Peter, putting one of his hands up on the wall, more out of instinct than purpose. "I don't know him at all." "Well, he's curious what happened last week. He wants information that only you can give him." "We got attacked. He already knows that." "But we only have a couple of men who survived. And a little boy like you? A slip of a lad--a Smythe boy if ever I saw one--making it through? Surviving that kind of a firefight?" The thug shrugged and nudged his partner. "That seems suspicious, wouldn't you say?" They continued to approach. "Yeah," said the partner. "I should say so." "Stay away!" "What are you going to do, kid? Climb the wall?" The men laughed and then, as one, jumped forward to grab him. The web in the back of his neck buzzed and he jumped, scrambling against the sheer wall for any sort of grip. To his surprise--and the obvious surprise of the men beneath him--Peter only stopped once he'd palmed his way twenty feet above the street. Uncertain of what was happening, Peter decided that he was better off not talking to the men, swarmed up the side of the building, and ran home. When he arrived, the thugs had beaten him to it. Heart in his guts, Peter pushed open the wrecked pieces of the door. The two men from the alleyway turned around, their bloody fists curled. Ben lay on the floor, unmoving. Aunt May sobbed over the body. "You should've talked to us, kid," said the first thug, turning his attention to Peter. "It would've saved us all a lot of pain." Peter's rage sparked inside of him, and the humiliation and pain that he'd suffered through the sundry beatings all surfaced simultaneously. Charging forward faster than they had time to anticipate, he punched the thug in the chest. He heard snapping beneath his knuckles and he knew he'd broken the man's sternum. The other thug grabbed him, only to have his arms broken and then be bodily thrown across the room. He slumped to the ground, unconscious. Peter looked at his trembling hands. He hadn't meant to hit them so hard. How had this happened? Then he faced Aunt May, who stared at him with wide eyes. "Peter? Wha--" Before she could say anything, Uncle Ben stirred. Peter dropped to his side. He could tell by the severity of the pummeling Ben had taken that he wouldn't survive. He was dying. "Peter," said Ben through broken teeth. "Don't carry anger. Don't carry hatred. Show how you're a good person by what you do. Make me proud, lad." His bleary eyes flickered to May. "I love you, May O'Reilly." Then he slipped away. May and Peter didn't have any money to have Ben be buried in anything other than a pauper's grave. Shortly thereafter, they lost their small apartment. One of May's clients took pity on them and let the Parkers sleep in the cellar of her brownstone. Peter didn't dare return to Smythe's Mercantile, and the anger he felt toward Manfredi for having fired Uncle Ben, then sending his goons to attack his family. Unable to settle down, Peter decided he needed to do something. His powers made it easy for him to slip into Smythe's Mercantile and pick up a device that he'd noticed before: a wrist-mounted water nozzle. It had a lot of purported uses--help with ironing, ease of cleaning windows, and even for practical jokes--but Peter thought he could do something different with it. By combining some of the other available products at the Mercantile, Peter assembled a contraption that could fit on his arm and would allow him to fire a length of sticky glue that would harden incredibly fast and had a great sticking power. He dubbed them his "webshooters", then disguised them by getting the entire thing to fit inside of some empty whiskey flasks that he'd found in the garbage. Knowing what happened when someone knew who he was, Peter took an old bandana from a clothesline three stories above the New York streets, wrapped it around his face, and pulled a cap low over his ears. Then he went to pay the Manfredi family a visit. Climbing up to the topmost floor of the Manfredi's high-rise, Peter arrived in time to see Alistair Smythe, the heir-apparent to the Smythe family name and fortune. Peter's jaw dropped as he overheard the heated argument, of how Manfredi had sent the assassin after Hammerhead, Smythe's right-hand-man, and how it would now be war between the two crime families. Peter's sense of abuse at having been a part of a criminal enterprise and his rage at having lost Uncle Ben because of these men made him act rashly, and he burst in on the two men. Surprised at the scrawny person breaking through the windows, neither man moved at first. "Who the devil do you think you are?" asked Manfredi. Peter hesitated only a moment. He hadn't thought of that. Deepening his voice, he said, "I'm a Spider-Man. And I'm here to stop you." Smythe opened fire, but his spider-sense kept him safe. The sound of breaking glass, shouting, and firing of weapons let the men outside know something bad was happening, and the suspicious mobsters began shooting at each other. In the chaos of a sudden mob war, Peter managed to escape. When he got home, May was waiting for him. She asked him what he was doing and what he was thinking. He explained that he'd learned that both Smythe and Manfredi were corrupt and that their exploits and rivalries were part of what was keeping the city rotten. "I have to help, May," said Peter. "I have to do something. It's what Uncle Ben would want." "Well," said May after some thinking, "I can't let you out looking like that." Taking many of the pilfered pieces that Peter managed to get, she sewed him a costume and with it, Peter Parker began his career as Steampunk Spider-Man. Note: This essay stems from the backstory that my wife and I invented together for the costume she's making for Fan X and Halloween 2018. We've been interested in steampunk for a number of years, which precipitated my NaNoWriMo 2016 project. For this costume, she wanted to make a Steampunk Batgirl. I'm not much at making costumes, but I do like telling stories, and one of the important aspects of steampunk character creation (and of cosplay in general) is to ensure that there's a strong backstory for why the character is the way she is. This, then, is a quick outline of a non-canonical, unofficial alternate world in which my wife's Steampunk Batgirl lives.
In a Victorian-era inspired Gotham, a man named William Tockman grows weary of his living impoverished whilst the upper crust aristocracy--the Cobblepots and the Waynes--flaunt their wealth with endless parties and frivolous ornamentation. Despite their seemingly endless funds (and the balls to show it off), Gotham is in dire need of redemption. Crime is rampant. Poverty grips the majority of citizens. They can't even get their trains to run on time. Incensed by the injustice, Tockman pulls together his Minute Hands, a group dedicated to stripping away the decadence and giving Gotham over to Tockman. His promises include a reversion of wealth (for his most loyal followers), a rejection of degenerate and overly ornate art, and--of course--trains that will run on time. As he slowly conquers the city, he proves capable of fulfilling his promises. Not all are content with his ploy of power and seeing the once beautiful and architecturally inspiring Gotham reduced to straight lines and rigid schedules, all of which are enforced by his elite group of soldiers, the Minute Hands, and their subordinates, the Second Hands. On the surface, many people are happy--more, at least, than under the old form. But there's sickness and sadness. Those who don't conform to the new regime are taken to the Clock Tower where, the rumor goes, horrible things happen to them. One of the primary technicians of the Clock Tower is a woman named Barbara Gordon. Her father, James Gordon, had been one of those who sought for a better Gotham. However, he had died in a steam-run airship accident when Barbara was young, leaving her to grow and learn on her own. Taken in by Tockman and his promises of a better Gotham, Barbara helped Tockman--the self-proclaimed Clock King--to run the city. Using her eidetic memory and penchant for utilizing steam-tech to solve the engineering problems, she became one of the most respected and useful of the Minute Hands. Because of her obsessive personality, Barbara put so much time into her inventions that she never stopped to see what they were being used for. One day, on her way home, Barbara's train was unexpectedly stopped. Terrorists, the conductor explained, had ruined the tracks. The trains would not be running on time today. Upset at the inconvenience--and a tiny nugget of doubt forming in her mind that perhaps the Clock King wasn't as all powerful as she'd been led to believe--she decided to walk home. It was on that night that Barbara was confronted by those who were being exploited by the Clock King--lower class people who were forced to labor in the tunnels beneath Gotham to extract the dregs which power the steam-tech she'd been working on. Her suspicions about Tockman increased; her lack of faith became more and more apparent. Eventually, she decided to confront Tockman about the injustices he was meting out on the people of Gotham. "They're merely pips, my dear," he'd said, gesturing out the window of his Clock Tower, the tallest building in the city and the place from which he oversaw the entire reconstruction of Gotham. "Disposable. Replaceable. Insignificant." The callousness of his comments so rankled Barbara that she refused to follow orders. Incensed, the Clock King decreed that any Minute Hand that would not keep time would not be kept, and ordered some of Barbara's erstwhile friends to "see her out." "She's broken," the Clock King said as Barbara, defeated after trying to fight off the other Minute Hands about her. "I'm not broken yet," snarled Barbara. At that, Tockman gestured for the Minute Hands to stop. "No," he said, walking closely, his black eyes hidden behind the clock-motif glasses he always wore. "But you will be." Before anyone could do anything, an alarm blared. Through some of the steam-tech communicators that Barbara herself had invented, news of an attack on the Clock Tower arrived. It was the terrorist group who had ruined the trains a few weeks before: The Sons of the Bat. Furious that his stronghold was under siege, Tockman told his Minute Hands to "break her and stop the Bat," then hurried away to his awaiting airship. Barbara watched in dismay and terror as Tockman escaped, leaving her to the eager-to-please brutality of the Minute Hands. Without ceremony, the members of the Minute Hands dragged Barbara Gordon to the stair well and, with a chorus of laughter, hurled her over the side. Their efforts, however, weren't perfectly coordinated, and Barbara spun, rather than plunging straight down. She crashed against a bannister, smashing through and--in a single, painful instant, felt her legs go numb. Consciousness returned in waves of pain, but the one thing that came to her mind was vengeance. She couldn't let the Clock King get away. But when she tried to stand, she found that everything below the waist was a fire of agony without response. The fall had broken her back. Despite that, Barbara struggled to climb up the stairs. Tears and sweat and blood from who knows where accompanied her as she tried to clamber after the Clock King. It was an exercise in futility, but it was all she knew how to do. Tenacity would keep her moving, even through the torture of her broken body. The sound of metal clinking against the stone steps drew her attention. Looking over her shoulder, Barbara's eyes widened when a bat the size of a human came hurtling up the center of the stairwell. She watched in horror and intrigue as the legendary resistance fighter, the Batman, soared past her. At first, Barbara thought she had slipped into a dream that heralded her death. But her perfect memory, running again and again as she tried to get herself back to the Clock King's office, showed her the details that she'd missed at that first glance. The speckles of blood and a broken lip on the lower part of Batman's face. The tears in his steam-tech armor, the areas of poor engineering that allowed for steam leakage, all of which were attached to a harness at the rebel's waist. The tears in the cape that showed up as ragged and threadbare, not animalistic or leathery. The Batman was a man. But who was he? By this point, she could hear the sounds of scuffling, shouting, and fighting. One of the Minute Hands who had thrown her down came plummeting past her. Barbara savored the look of horror on the man's face, but was startled to see a cable attach itself to the man's torso. It was painful, but the cable arrested the man's fall, though he slammed into the stairs once the cable went taut. Barbara looked up and saw the second Minute Hand lunge toward the Batman, only to find himself flipped about, thrown to the floor, and his arm expertly broken. The man's screams cut short when the Batman bent over and dealt a sharp, savage jab to the man's face. Barbara saw justice. And she wanted a part of it. Calling out, her voice ragged from the pain, Barbara drew Batman's attention. Once he had secured the Minute Hand, he dropped to where Barbara lay. "What happened to you?" he asked, his voice gravely but not unkind. She noticed a weariness to his posture and, unless she was mistaken, blood seeping from his side. "They broke me," she said, her words hiccupping. "We need to get you some help." She shook her head. "No, you need my help." The Batman paused. "Why?" Barbara tapped her head with a finger. "I know things. About the Clock King and how his steam-tech works." "Tell me." "Get me out of here," Barbara said. "And I'll help you." It didn't take much time for the Batman to come around to Barbara's point of view, and he carefully extracted her from the Clock Tower. The assault had been a success--they had claimed the space--but the Clock King had escaped. The Sons of the Bat--which turned out to be a small collection of highly trained street-fighters--dispersed as the Second Hands came in. Their overwhelming numbers prevented the resistance from maintaining their victory. And though it had been difficult, the Clock King had been shown that he could bleed. *** Barbara was taken to an underground lair, where she lay on a table for too long, recuperating from the injuries. Her ill-advised attempt to climb up the stairs whilst paralyzed impressed the Batman--who carefully kept his identity a secret from her--but had also done some additional damage. Nevertheless, Barbara didn't remain idle during the recovery. Every waking moment was filled with documenting all that she knew about the steam-tech she'd worked on. Her eidetic mind allowed her to recall the schematics with perfect precision, which the Batman could then use to improve his own gear and help the resistance. As time passed, Barbara began to feel stronger again. Against the original wishes of the Batman, she began a fierce regiment of upper-body work, improving her strength and dexterity even while her legs languished. At last, she managed to develop a steam-powered device that allowed her to walk--albeit painfully. The tech allowed her to jump higher, run faster, and fall from greater heights than a normal person, but it was dangerous and ran the risk of damage, which would leave her stranded. Batman opposed the usage. "You're not going out to the front lines," he said, his voice harsh and one that brooked no disagreement. "You're like an oracle. You show us how to use the tech in ways that Tockman never could imagine. I can't lose you." Nevertheless, she persisted, saying, "It isn't up to you, Bruce." The Batman stepped back. "How did you--" "I'm not stupid," she said. "And I've helped you. It's time that you helped me." She revealed a stack of concept drawings for the steam-tech costume that she would need him to build. A tech-powered grapple gun, similar to the Batman's, but faster, stronger, and more reliable. Gauntlets with the inimitable shape of bat wings. A headpiece that doubled as a radio transmitter. Her "legs". A cape that could work as a mini-parachute, should she need it to. A belt covered in the shuriken-like batarangs that Batman preferred. "Why is it so…ornate?" asked Batman, frowning appreciatively at her work. "It's modeled after the architecture that we've lost, that Tockman took from us. It's reclaiming the old heart of Gotham." He pointed at the clock that she had designed for her back, one covered in gears and symbols of the Sons of the Bat. "And this?" "I'm taking that which he most loves and corrupting it. Where he sees symmetry and order, I see disarray and chaos. Where he wants a clock to always be in front of him, guiding him, I put it behind me, letting time reside forever in the past. Where he wishes to see the workings and the gears hidden behind smooth facades and shiny coverings, I want the reality there for everyone to see. When he sees me again, I want him to know that he isn't simply beaten by a superior opponent: He's been beaten by everything he tried to destroy." The Batman regarded her coolly for a moment, then said. "When do you want to begin?" Barbara smiled. "No time like the present." |
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