Narrative Interruptus Secondus (or, Oh, Dario! You So Lazy!)
So I wanted to write about Wednesday night shenanigans, Thursday night blah, Friday night assholery, Saturday night sex, Sunday night Buffy, and then Monday night blah (as well as a holier-than-thou review of my last shipment from Mile High - although that's something I need to do at home, and have been putting off for days). Got caught up with actual work at the office (how DARE they?! Can't these fuckers support themselves?!), plus writing mail. I'm corresponding with someone from scans_daily regarding a community he's looking to start up, for original superhero fiction. My problem (besides the actual ACT OF WRITING goddamn it) is that superhero stories are for the most part caught up with imitating formulas that worked in the past, which only works for about a generation. Certainly, characterization tends to give the meat a different flavor, but by and large it's the same meal. In the 1960's, Jack Kirby and the rest of the Marvel bullpen applied the soap opera formula to the superhero genre, and revolutionized it. This formula remains to this day. In the 21st century, superheroes just could not function the way we want them to, the conventional way; the villains exist, they are all around us, the evil in our world is in the large corporations and their ties to politics, and in the politicians themselves. Nothing would be cut-and-dry, there would be massive consequences (many, economic, and unfortunately the innocent people whom the heroes would be trying to help would be affected) and shades of gray, and the world would need to change to truly be "saved." Some of this has been briefly touched by DC and Marvel in their own titles, but really, they can't take it as far as they should (or would like to, I'm sure), because it would require changing the world itself and make it in many ways unrecognizable from that of our own, which breaks the really appealing aspect of heroes - the larger-than-life adventure right outside your window. I think superheroes would have to operate as anarchists, would be branded as terrorists by a partisan media, and they would need to operate in secret. Costumes wouldn't be necessary, codenames would be used out of vanity, and superpowers would be the weapons of governments. This is the sort of original superhero mythos I'd like to be a part of; my heart belongs to the DC and Marvel Universes, but if I'm creating my own characters I'm not going to xerox what makes them unique. My ideas are too unfocused and vague to express them correctly in prose, though. Thankfully, the guy who's starting this project up showed me his first story, which had an interesting narrative device and used an analogue of a familiar family of heroes in a more grounded, this-is-what-they'd-be-like-here way. So, maybe I'll have a chance to contribute. I don't know. I still have my Daredevil story and two (Goddamnit) Superman stories, possibly miscarried. Definetely in utero. Those aren't even prose, though, they're actual comic book scripts. I hate prose. Whatever.
And, for entertainment purposes, here's a Buffy meme I filled out earlier:
I am not amused at all. >:(