Heroes, anti-heroes, and misaligned moral compasses

A degree or two off course doesn't lead you wrong at first.  At least, not too wrong that you can't self-correct.

But eventually that wrong course, that misaligned compass, leads one too far afield, and there's no way back to the place you thought you were going.

A misaligned moral compass can take your characters to interesting places, regardless of if you are writing heroes or anti-heroes.  Of course, then one of the biggest challenges you have is making it clear that you, as the writer, are not advocating said moral failings.  It's a story about a flawed person. 

Take, for example, Ken Connell.

Who?

OK, it's not the most famous example, but roll with me.

Ken Connell was the main character of the flagship title of Marvel Comics's fascinating failure, The New Universe.  The underlying concepts behind the New Universe were interesting, but much of the execution was disorganized and flawed. 

The Star Brand was essentially combining Superman and Green Lantern into one concept: a tattoo-like power source that could be given to another, granting the owner incredible power only limited by his or her imagination.  Possessed by the right man, it could be an incredible force for good.

Ken Connell is not the right man.  But he really wants to believe that he is.  He totally sees himself as a good guy who could do more and be great.

In other words, he's exactly the guy to buy into his own hero-destiny narrative.

In truth, Ken is kind of a loser.  He works in a auto-repair shop, and is constantly talking about how much smarter he is than anyone else around him.  He's got a lovely girlfriend who dotes on him, whom he consistently cheats on with a teenage girl who is so enamored of him that she happily slips out his back window in her underwear when his actual "girlfriend" shows up unannounced.  (It's worth noting that he hides the StarBrand power from his girlfriend, but tells the teenager on the side all about it.)

He's that guy who is constantly complaining that life never gave him "his shot", but even with nigh-infinite power he doesn't do much to change his life.  He does keep trying to do "good", in an abstract way, but he really isn't the good man he wants to think he is.  When confronted with an "unstoppable" villain-- a soldier whose body has changed to be indestructible, and has decided to just walk into Russia and wreck the place*, Ken tries to do the "right" thing to stop him.  But he can't stop him, so he just picks him up and flings him into space. 

And also, Ken destroys the city of Pittsburgh. Not out of malice, but because he was too lazy to fly all the way to the moon to do an experiment with his power that he knew would be explosively dangerous. 

But a lot of people believed that Ken was being presented as some sort of ideal, some sort of personal-avatar by then Editor-in-Chief at Marvel Jim Shooter.  This mostly because Jim, like Ken, is tall and from Pittsburgh, and also because a lot of people did not like Jim and wanted to paint him in a bad light.**

The New Universe failed for a lot of reasons, but I think partly because audiences at that time weren't interested in "heroic" characters who were so flawed, so ordinary.  It's funny, because plenty of stories like the New Universe and StarBrand have come up since.***   Characters who do the wrong thing for interesting reasons, and end up where they never wanted to be, and are only heroes in their own mind.

Ken is not a good guy, and is never presented as that.  He never understands that he's not the hero of the New Universe, but it's most dangerous villain.

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*- This was 1987.
**- In fact, having Ken destroy Pittsburgh was a decision made after Shooter was ousted, essentially a "Ha, we're having your hero destroy your city" pettiness.
***- Though, to be fair, with better overall execution and coherence of vision.

Recognizing our Blind Spots

Every writer has their blind spots.  Weak points in their writing born from their style, their biases, their personal preferences. 

For me, I know exactly what my big one is: physical description of characters.

Now, I don't have a big problem with Big Salient Details.  Height, body type, skin color.  If someone has an attribute that makes them stand out from the crowd, it's going to get mentioned. 

But for the more mundane aspects of description, I hit a wall.  I know part of it is, for me, it feels very artificial.  Making note of a character's eye color or hair-- especially multiple times-- always creaks when I read it.  Perhaps it's because in the Early Days of the Internet, I read plenty of Bad Fanfic*, and that stuff is LOADED with Physical Detail Minutiae.  I can't even begin to tell you how many pieces I've read-- fanfic or not-- where after the first few thousand words I still wouldn't have any clue what the plot or conflict of the story was going to be... but I knew EVERYONE'S hair and eye color. 

The inverse is also true when I'm reading.  Frankly, if I read something and never really get a strong physical description of the protagonist or minor characters-- I really don't notice.  It doesn't stand out to me as something I'm lacking. 

So: I have awareness of my blind spot.  The question is, can I use that awareness?  Can I push past the artificial feeling the physical descriptions give me, and give a strong sense of character appearances? 

That's the challenge that's on my mind right now.

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*- And never wrote any. No, not me.  If you find any, it totally was that other Marshall Ryan Maresca.

Avengers and Twelve-Part Structure

I had been thinking about movies and the studio-system's somewhat slavish devotion to "three act structure", which more and more I'm seeing as a big problem in modern cinema, and too often I'm seeing that same advice being given to novelists. And that's a shame, because three-act structure is bad advice for movies, and it's downright horrible for novels.

That's partly because "three act structure" is more or less another way of saying "beginning, middle and end".  And that's where a lot of screenwriters and novelists get into trouble: "Act 2 problems" or "the murky middle".  It's because, when you come down to it, "rising action" doesn't really give you a lot to go on.  It's a fancy way of saying "more stuff happens until the finale", but that tends to get translated into wheel-spinning and "refusing the call" (in Campbellian terms) as a way to mark time until the finale happens.* 

This is the problem in using tools of deconstruction and analysis and trying to use them for construction and creation.  They aren't meant to be used that way.  Now, admittedly, I did use deconstruction and analysis to create the Twelve-Part Structure, but I did it as a means of making a tool of construction and creation.

I could probably go on for a bit on the perils of three-act structure and using analysis tools for creation, but I won't.  I will, however, point out how things that succeed at being at engaging don't use three-act structure.  And when I saw the Twelve-Part Structure so evident in Avengers, I was pretty damn gleeful.**

Some spoilers from here on out.

Establishment: Loki shows up out of the Cosmic Cube, enthralls Hawkeye and Dr. Solveig, SHIELD fails to stop him.  With this, we establish the world and the stakes-- namely, this is a world where stuff like this happens.
Incitement: Gather the Team sequences: Fury talks to Cap, Natasha shows her skills and recruits Banner, Coulson talks to Tony.
Challenge: Loki begins his "distraction" plan in Germany, where Hawkeye does the real plan.  Cap fights Loki, and then Tony shows up and subdues him.
Altercation: Thor shows up to take Loki, and then Tony and Thor and Cap all fight each other over essentially jurisdiction issues.
Payback: Loki is locked up, but all the Team squabbles with each other over petty tings.  In other words, Loki's subtle discord is sewn.
Regrouping: Natasha gets info out of Loki, the Team gets a better sense over what's actually happening.
Collapse: Intergroup squabbling reaches a fevered pitch, as they discover SHIELD's plans for the Cosmic Cube. Hawkeye attacks the Helicarrier.
Retreat: Hulk smash, Tony and Cap work on keeping the Helicarrier in the air, Loki escapes and kills Coulson.
Recovery: Tony and Cap fix the Helicarrier, Natasha smacks Hawkeye's head back together, Bruce wakes up with Harry Dean Stanton.
Investment: Coulson's bloody Captain America cards, Tony gives his Big Speech to Loki, and the portal of Alien Destruction opens up.
Confrontation: BIG. DAMN. FIGHT.
Resolution:  Hulk smashes the puny God.  Tony throws a nuke at the aliens. Natasha closes the portal. Loki is captured, Thor brings him home.  Fury gives a speech.  Shawarma.

Yeah, you could break that into "three acts", but you'd be being pretty reductive about what actually happens.  Whedon was essentially given "three acts" by the studio people (namely, "Heroes come together, then they fight each other and split apart, and then they come together for Big Damn Fight").  With a lesser script that could have ended up as more wheelspinning non-action-- or worse, some kind of Plot Coupon collection in lieu of an actual story in the middle.***  Instead, with a more complicated structure, you get a FAR more engaging work.

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*- Another superhero movie example: Green Lantern.  That's just full of wheel-spinning until the third-act turn where Hal Jordan, the supposedly fearless guy with near-limitless power, finally decides that maybe he should try and do something.  And by "do something" I mean tell a bunch of people he previously blew off that they should do something.  
**- I am NOT claiming that Whedon is aware of my Twelve-Part Structure, or that he necessarily used it or a similar framework.  It's more that Twelve-Part Structure fits as a framework quite nicely.
***- I'm looking at you, Percy Jackson movie.

Avengers Assemble: But more women next time, hmm?

This past weekend The Avengers went down in comic-book movie history.  It broke box-office records, making over $200 million in just one weekend.  More importantly, it was a success in terms of its goals-- bringing together the Big Damn Heroes of the Marvel Universe from their individual movies and teaming them up in a big, satisfying way. 

So it goes without saying that Avengers 2 is a lock.  They even threw in the obvious Sequel Bait in the credits sequence.  I'm just hoping they lock down the details relatively soon, because I'm already excited.  Unfortunately, I can't see them getting it together earlier than Summer 2015.

If I have one complaint about Avengers, it is that it comes too close to the Smurfette Principle: the team is Black Widow and five guys.  This is not Joss Whedon's fault, I'm sure.  Knowing his work, he probably did a lot of fast talking just to get Maria Hill in among the cast. But I know that the team of the movie was essentially handed down by studio edict.  So, hopefully, Avengers 2 is going to rectify that.  Though, reasonably, there are only so many New Avengers that can be added, and they aren't all going to be women.

It seems like they really might get the Ant-Man movie off the ground, so he would be a likely add.  With him, it's pretty easy to add Wasp to the team (if she isn't a key part of the Ant-Man movie, which she totally should be).  And it wouldn't hurt to maintain her original background, if for no other reason than to be a counterpoint to Black Widow: a socialite heiress with a solid head on her shoulders.  She's not Paris Hilton; she's Ivana Trump.  If, you know, Ivana had superpowers. 

My other key choice would be Ms. Marvel, aka Capt. Carol Danvers.  Since it's looking like Avengers 2 will be going cosmic, her origin of being an Air Force pilot who is empowered when exposed to alien technology would fit in quite nicely.  Plus Ms. Marvel ought to be (but isn't really) Marvel's equivalent of Wonder Woman: the universe's most notable female hero.  Frankly, the Marvel Universe doesn't have someone would quite fits that bill.  Black Widow isn't it.  Nor is Invisible Woman, Elektra, Phoenix or Storm.  Let's give Ms. Marvel a proper showcase.

I would personally love to see Mockingbird show up in Avengers 2, and she has the advantage of fitting into the world of the Marvel movie-verse quite easily.  SHIELD agent turned hero, with strong emotional ties to Hawkeye, and like Hawkeye and Black Widow, she's a highly skilled "normal" instead of superpowered. Though it works best if she and Hawkeye are married, so unlike having a strong professional bond that he and Natasha have in the movie, they can be a hot couple who kicks ass.  The Mr. and Mrs. Smith of the Marvel Universe.  Of course, her actual comic-book background is pretty damn close to movie-verse's background for Black Widow.  So close as to seem redundant.  And while I'm a big fan, she's a bit too obscure.  (Though, apparently, they are considering an Alias-like show starring her for ABC Family, that will be tied to the Marvel Movie-verse.  So, you never know.)

Those would be my choices.  Many fans seem to be pushing for Scarlet Witch, though I respectfully disagree.  I understand the reasoning: she was the second woman to join the team, she's a long part of Avengers history.  But given her backstory is entangled with elements that the Marvel Movie-verse can't use (mutants and Magneto), and you'd HAVE to bring Quicksilver along with her... eh.  It seems too much.