I don't want it to get to be two weeks since my last post, but there has been a lot to preoccupy me lately, not least the process of trading two well-liked roommates for one untested one. I wish the process worked in reverse more often.
I'm most of the way through Blackout/All Clear. It's not as good as Doomsday Book or To Say Nothing of the Dog, but I could aspire to match Connie Willis on a bad day.
I am working on a short story. I hope to complete a draft and then tighten the screws on the Hengist manuscript, per the input from beta readers that I have been holding in abeyance. The story indulges my fascination with the stone age--something which probably merits a post in its own right.
But now it is time for bed.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Thursday, February 17, 2011
10 Authors
A while ago girlfriend sent me an interesting chain Facebook message asking for the 15 authors who had the biggest influence on me. I never got around to answering it. I never got around to responding to it, not because I didn't want to answer the question, but because I didn't have 15 friends who wouldn't mind me passing the message on to them. And obviously I couldn't follow the message's instructions only part way.
Except, screw it, that's what I'll do, and what's more, I'll do it in my own particular idiom. First of all, this list is of 10 authors, not 15. That's because some of the names I used to get to 15 were beginning to sound like reaching. Also, it's not enough for me to claim to have been influenced by these authors. I intend to explain how. Because, if nothing else, I'd like to say some nice things about some of the people on this list.
1. J.R.R. Tolkien
This one should be fairly obvious. As an aspiring author of any kind of fantasy, I sort of owe Tolkien for inventing the high fantasy genre. In a weird way he both started and ended it at the same time--epic fantasy, Athena-like, reached maturity with The Lord of the Rings and what is left is imitation or deconstruction. So it seems to me, at least.
I remember in high school picking up a Tolkien encyclopedia at the library. I had never read anything by him at this point--I liked Rankin and Bass' animated The Hobbit, and that was it. But the world and characters he created were fascinating. I confess that I knew and loved Gollum's life story before I knew the plot of The Lord of the Rings. I would still go back to him to remind anyone that true characters can be created in the exaggerated style of fantasy. But before I realized the significance of that, Tolkien represented the apex of the time in my artistic development when I considered world building to be crown of the craft.
Ironically, I've been told that Hengist and Undine could have been written without Tolkien to inspire it. That would have to do with a couple of my other influences...
2. Neil Gaiman
I was unfortunately already grown up when I realized that I wanted to be Neil Gaiman when I grew up. I'd give up my knees to have his head for mythology. His Marvel 1602 started me taking comic books more seriously than they probably deserve, again. I periodically go back to Gaiman just to remind myself what really good fantasy looks like.
3. Robin McKinley
Deerskin might have been the first fantasy novel I read after a long drought in college. I hadn't seen fairy tales used as grist so effectively before. Without her I probably would have taken a good bit longer to consider the advantages (and legitimacy) of reworking existing stories.
I sort of imagine Robin McKinley looking over my shoulder and clucking disapprovingly whenever one of my female characters starts to go flat.
4. T.S. Eliot
I don't get The Waste Land but I've always wanted to, and it's still been able to affect me. Twice--once in high school and once in college--I tried to write papers on this poem. They were some of my worst papers, largely because my theses were rubbish. But this was the first time I really enjoyed art that surpassed me. Later on I would discover a similar pleasure in watching End of Evangelion half a dozen times before I fully understood what was happening in the second half.
5. Robert Howard
This is the man who created Conan the Barbarian, and probably the genre of "heroic" fantasy. If I avoid being derivative of Tolkien, it's largely by being derivative of Howard. I very much had Conan in mind when I created Hengist, who is cut from the same cloth but to a different pattern. I wanted Hengist to be an answer to Conan's nihilism, striving toward ethics to match the heroic scale of his character. And in my wizard, I find myself revisiting Howard's perpetual conflict between the human and inhuman, also cast as "sword and sorcery."
6. Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game is on my to-read list. I've actually never read a novel by Orson Scott Card yet. So what is he doing here?
Card's How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy was the first book on writing to answer the questions I really wanted answered--questions I had looked unsuccessfully for answers to in several college writing courses. Card gave me my first broad concept of how to structure a plot, except for an occasional analysis of The Hero's Journey that I had seen. I always knew there were more stories, but no one had seemed interested in explaining how they were put together.
But I've also been told I really ought to read some of his fiction.
7. Jerry Holkins
a.k.a. Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade is on my list of about a dozen webcomics I keep up with. I can't quite say it's my favorite webcomic, but my respect for its creative team is all but boundless. While I was in college I discovered the story of how Penny Arcade got off the ground. There was something romantic in a neo-Bohemian way about living on donations from one's online readers. Not that that is a sustainable situation, and they moved on to a legit business model that seems to be bringing in actual money. But being able to eat every day has not prevented Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from keeping it more or less real, almost all the time.
But besides the life, I just like the way Holkins writes. Not the vulgarity, so much, but even that he does with such creative gusto--he has coined new vulgarities capable of stirring my long-stagnant bile. And generally, om the family-tolerable sphere, he regularly furnishes top-quality hyperbole.
8. G.K. Chesterton
Chesterton had a rare gift polishing ideas to a brilliant gloss. It helped that they were often good ideas to start with. Whenever I read one of his polemics, as soon as I set it down my inner monologue spins off into long, proclamative explorations of the most important subjects I can think of.
If we're both very lucky, you'll see echoes of Ballad of the White Horse in my riff on Arthuriana.
9. Ursula K. LeGuin
I came to the Earthsea trilogy at a time when I was beginning to wonder if any successful fantasy was really character-driven, or under 800 pages. Altogether the three Earthsea books probably come in shy of 600 pages, and each one is pretty self-contained. They also got me thinking in new ways about how magic can work, and I look forward to that train of thought coming to fruition.
10. George Eliot
More specifically, Middlemarch. Middlemarch is, I think, very possibly the best book written in English in the 1800s. This is not to diminish Dickens, who almost certainly wrote more great books than Eliot, but I don't think he could have written Middlemarch. And I guess that is diminishing Dickens.
I fell in love with the book when I read it the first time, in college, despite having had to skip a chapter or two to keep up with that class. That came at an impressionable time, when my ideas on right and wrong, personal integrity, and love were still coalescing. Middlemarch deals with most of the things I tend to think are most important about being a human being. You'll notice, if you ever have the chance, that I try to deal with the same issues in Hengist and Undine.
Except, screw it, that's what I'll do, and what's more, I'll do it in my own particular idiom. First of all, this list is of 10 authors, not 15. That's because some of the names I used to get to 15 were beginning to sound like reaching. Also, it's not enough for me to claim to have been influenced by these authors. I intend to explain how. Because, if nothing else, I'd like to say some nice things about some of the people on this list.
1. J.R.R. Tolkien
This one should be fairly obvious. As an aspiring author of any kind of fantasy, I sort of owe Tolkien for inventing the high fantasy genre. In a weird way he both started and ended it at the same time--epic fantasy, Athena-like, reached maturity with The Lord of the Rings and what is left is imitation or deconstruction. So it seems to me, at least.
I remember in high school picking up a Tolkien encyclopedia at the library. I had never read anything by him at this point--I liked Rankin and Bass' animated The Hobbit, and that was it. But the world and characters he created were fascinating. I confess that I knew and loved Gollum's life story before I knew the plot of The Lord of the Rings. I would still go back to him to remind anyone that true characters can be created in the exaggerated style of fantasy. But before I realized the significance of that, Tolkien represented the apex of the time in my artistic development when I considered world building to be crown of the craft.
Ironically, I've been told that Hengist and Undine could have been written without Tolkien to inspire it. That would have to do with a couple of my other influences...
2. Neil Gaiman
I was unfortunately already grown up when I realized that I wanted to be Neil Gaiman when I grew up. I'd give up my knees to have his head for mythology. His Marvel 1602 started me taking comic books more seriously than they probably deserve, again. I periodically go back to Gaiman just to remind myself what really good fantasy looks like.
3. Robin McKinley
Deerskin might have been the first fantasy novel I read after a long drought in college. I hadn't seen fairy tales used as grist so effectively before. Without her I probably would have taken a good bit longer to consider the advantages (and legitimacy) of reworking existing stories.
I sort of imagine Robin McKinley looking over my shoulder and clucking disapprovingly whenever one of my female characters starts to go flat.
4. T.S. Eliot
I don't get The Waste Land but I've always wanted to, and it's still been able to affect me. Twice--once in high school and once in college--I tried to write papers on this poem. They were some of my worst papers, largely because my theses were rubbish. But this was the first time I really enjoyed art that surpassed me. Later on I would discover a similar pleasure in watching End of Evangelion half a dozen times before I fully understood what was happening in the second half.
5. Robert Howard
This is the man who created Conan the Barbarian, and probably the genre of "heroic" fantasy. If I avoid being derivative of Tolkien, it's largely by being derivative of Howard. I very much had Conan in mind when I created Hengist, who is cut from the same cloth but to a different pattern. I wanted Hengist to be an answer to Conan's nihilism, striving toward ethics to match the heroic scale of his character. And in my wizard, I find myself revisiting Howard's perpetual conflict between the human and inhuman, also cast as "sword and sorcery."
6. Orson Scott Card
Ender's Game is on my to-read list. I've actually never read a novel by Orson Scott Card yet. So what is he doing here?
Card's How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy was the first book on writing to answer the questions I really wanted answered--questions I had looked unsuccessfully for answers to in several college writing courses. Card gave me my first broad concept of how to structure a plot, except for an occasional analysis of The Hero's Journey that I had seen. I always knew there were more stories, but no one had seemed interested in explaining how they were put together.
But I've also been told I really ought to read some of his fiction.
7. Jerry Holkins
a.k.a. Tycho Brahe of Penny Arcade. Penny Arcade is on my list of about a dozen webcomics I keep up with. I can't quite say it's my favorite webcomic, but my respect for its creative team is all but boundless. While I was in college I discovered the story of how Penny Arcade got off the ground. There was something romantic in a neo-Bohemian way about living on donations from one's online readers. Not that that is a sustainable situation, and they moved on to a legit business model that seems to be bringing in actual money. But being able to eat every day has not prevented Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik from keeping it more or less real, almost all the time.
But besides the life, I just like the way Holkins writes. Not the vulgarity, so much, but even that he does with such creative gusto--he has coined new vulgarities capable of stirring my long-stagnant bile. And generally, om the family-tolerable sphere, he regularly furnishes top-quality hyperbole.
8. G.K. Chesterton
Chesterton had a rare gift polishing ideas to a brilliant gloss. It helped that they were often good ideas to start with. Whenever I read one of his polemics, as soon as I set it down my inner monologue spins off into long, proclamative explorations of the most important subjects I can think of.
If we're both very lucky, you'll see echoes of Ballad of the White Horse in my riff on Arthuriana.
9. Ursula K. LeGuin
I came to the Earthsea trilogy at a time when I was beginning to wonder if any successful fantasy was really character-driven, or under 800 pages. Altogether the three Earthsea books probably come in shy of 600 pages, and each one is pretty self-contained. They also got me thinking in new ways about how magic can work, and I look forward to that train of thought coming to fruition.
10. George Eliot
More specifically, Middlemarch. Middlemarch is, I think, very possibly the best book written in English in the 1800s. This is not to diminish Dickens, who almost certainly wrote more great books than Eliot, but I don't think he could have written Middlemarch. And I guess that is diminishing Dickens.
I fell in love with the book when I read it the first time, in college, despite having had to skip a chapter or two to keep up with that class. That came at an impressionable time, when my ideas on right and wrong, personal integrity, and love were still coalescing. Middlemarch deals with most of the things I tend to think are most important about being a human being. You'll notice, if you ever have the chance, that I try to deal with the same issues in Hengist and Undine.
Monday, February 7, 2011
The long day of writing, Part 2
2:05: I went to bed fairly confident in my ability to finish my novel today. Especially since today is actually likely to be very quiet, unless someone decides they want to watch the Super Bowl. Oddly enough it looks like no one will. At least, no one seems interested in watching the whole game. The game is an hour and a half away and I don't think I've even heard anyone ask to keep the television free.
The end of Hengist generates an almost magnetic repulsion for me. It's pretty remarkable. It's fear, I think: fear of no longer being able to say, "I'll fix that in the next revision," or "Of course it will be better when I send it out." But I need to be done, both because I've been on this story too long and because finishing stories is what writers do.
First order of business today is quick streamlining of my heroine's remaining scenes, which should segue into the working the last dozen unedited pages. My denouements are always too short to begin with, so that will need to expand.
My final to-do list also includes going back to my one big expodump and making the final decision as to whether it can work as dialogue, or if I need to make it more narrative. Then, finally, I need to finalize the chapter breaks, and possibly name the chapters.
2:28: I just noticed how the changes I made to my heroine's scene last night completely shift the subtext in her next scene. It's a change for the better, I think--a move toward complexity. It's too late for me to worry that the emotional arcs I introduce won't be fully resolved in the course of the novel. That was intentional in my original vision.
3:32: It is coming very well now. I am re-reading the last few pages now, which I normally expect to be a painful experience, but so far I'm finding my own writing at least tolerable. It's occurring to me that I may actually have made a deadline prediction for myself that won't make a liar of me.
4:17: Almost... done... Mere paragraphs are left. The point of view for my ending is pulled very far back, from close third-person to detached omniscience. I hope that that gives the sense of the story passing into history, or at the very least a sense of assuredness that the immediate tension has well and truly resolved.
4:30: Got sidetracked looking up the meanings of flowers, but ultimately decided to leave foliage out of the scene. I wonder how the game's going. Maybe when I'm done I'll check it out.
4:44: Just finished the last page. Now, to check something in the very beginning, and then to see about that expodump.
5:32: I've been alone since about 2, and that's been useful for me. I am just going over that one bit now, and while it's a bit long and talky, I think it would be longer and more slack if I tried to embellish it.
5:45: That's done. All the places I've marked off for one last look have been addressed. Can it really be over except for the chapter names? At any rate I think I'm due a break, and maybe some dinner.
6:38: So I didn't take a break, or have dinner. Or I did take a break, but it didn't involve standing up. I spent the time on and off deciding on chapter breaks, which I just finished. I decided that chapter names are probably a needless extravagance, especially if I was just going to dash them off now. But I remember now that there was one character arc which needs to be made slightly more compelling. Now I'll really take a break and...
8:57: ...get back to it now. If I get this done, and I suspect I will... it kind of makes me wish I had done this on a day when I had more options for celebrating.
10:12: Draft done and distributed to beta readers. What a day. There wasn't much to expand, as regarded that subplot, but that's probably good, because I don't want to overexpand it. I should probably not touch Hengist and Undine again for any reason for a few days, maybe write a few palate-cleansing short stories. And I should definitely get started on deciding where I'm going to send this.
The end of Hengist generates an almost magnetic repulsion for me. It's pretty remarkable. It's fear, I think: fear of no longer being able to say, "I'll fix that in the next revision," or "Of course it will be better when I send it out." But I need to be done, both because I've been on this story too long and because finishing stories is what writers do.
First order of business today is quick streamlining of my heroine's remaining scenes, which should segue into the working the last dozen unedited pages. My denouements are always too short to begin with, so that will need to expand.
My final to-do list also includes going back to my one big expodump and making the final decision as to whether it can work as dialogue, or if I need to make it more narrative. Then, finally, I need to finalize the chapter breaks, and possibly name the chapters.
2:28: I just noticed how the changes I made to my heroine's scene last night completely shift the subtext in her next scene. It's a change for the better, I think--a move toward complexity. It's too late for me to worry that the emotional arcs I introduce won't be fully resolved in the course of the novel. That was intentional in my original vision.
3:32: It is coming very well now. I am re-reading the last few pages now, which I normally expect to be a painful experience, but so far I'm finding my own writing at least tolerable. It's occurring to me that I may actually have made a deadline prediction for myself that won't make a liar of me.
4:17: Almost... done... Mere paragraphs are left. The point of view for my ending is pulled very far back, from close third-person to detached omniscience. I hope that that gives the sense of the story passing into history, or at the very least a sense of assuredness that the immediate tension has well and truly resolved.
4:30: Got sidetracked looking up the meanings of flowers, but ultimately decided to leave foliage out of the scene. I wonder how the game's going. Maybe when I'm done I'll check it out.
4:44: Just finished the last page. Now, to check something in the very beginning, and then to see about that expodump.
5:32: I've been alone since about 2, and that's been useful for me. I am just going over that one bit now, and while it's a bit long and talky, I think it would be longer and more slack if I tried to embellish it.
5:45: That's done. All the places I've marked off for one last look have been addressed. Can it really be over except for the chapter names? At any rate I think I'm due a break, and maybe some dinner.
6:38: So I didn't take a break, or have dinner. Or I did take a break, but it didn't involve standing up. I spent the time on and off deciding on chapter breaks, which I just finished. I decided that chapter names are probably a needless extravagance, especially if I was just going to dash them off now. But I remember now that there was one character arc which needs to be made slightly more compelling. Now I'll really take a break and...
8:57: ...get back to it now. If I get this done, and I suspect I will... it kind of makes me wish I had done this on a day when I had more options for celebrating.
10:12: Draft done and distributed to beta readers. What a day. There wasn't much to expand, as regarded that subplot, but that's probably good, because I don't want to overexpand it. I should probably not touch Hengist and Undine again for any reason for a few days, maybe write a few palate-cleansing short stories. And I should definitely get started on deciding where I'm going to send this.
Sunday, February 6, 2011
Answer: Yes, the Super Bowl
12:42: I suppose if by "up" you mean dressed and groomed, I've been up since 10:50 a.m. By that measure I haven't wasted that much time. Today is the day I should really get to the end of Hengist. So far, though, I've been catching up on forums and comics and blogs and all the other things that are easy to do when my laptop is open. When I've finished reading this last post I'll get to it. That's the goal. And when I need a break I'll come back here and let you know how it's going.
1:50: An hour later, mostly of work, I seem to have ganged aglay, as a stray click while looking at Wordnik.com brought up the latest news from Egypt. It was nothing particularly new. The wheels seem to have come off some time ago, and now the country is just skidding... like calls for Mubarak's immediate resignation, this metaphor doesn't appear to be going anywhere.
There are two things in particular outstanding before I'll have finished this book. The first is a scene in which a character more or less sorts out her problems so that the story can move on to its climax. The second is the end.
In order to make sure that that first scene makes sense, what I've been doing the last couple editing sessions is going over all of her scenes to remember what she was thinking in them. It's slower going than I had guessed before, and I can't help but wondering if I'm procrastinating. The End, after all, is a scary thing, in its own way.
I just got through touching up a scene that elicited a strong negative reaction in at least one beta reader. The challenge is in having a character be wrong, and not correcting him immediately, without the reader thinking that the book (and the author) must think that he is right. I'm not sure yet whether I have a handle on that.
Enough of that. Back to work.
2:38: Slow going. The house is becoming livelier.
3:14: Maybe because the middle of the book is more event-driven than character-driven, maybe because I remember it better, maybe because I was bored, I started skimming and skipping what I knew I wouldn't change, and got as far as the big scene I wanted to edit. On second glance, it is about 600 words of navel gazing. I'm going to see if I can improve it by introducing another character and making it a conversation.
3:18: Taking a break.
8:54: A long break. Getting back to it now. I'm amending my goal for the day: if I can get this scene done tonight, I will be in good shape to finish my draft tomorrow.
9:40: Except I didn't get back to it just then, because 1) people were in the house and talking, 2) the television was on, 3) Hark! A Vagrant is a funny comic, 4) I have ADHD. Finally did what I should have done earlier: retreated to my girlfriend's room. Getting back to it now.
10:38: The scene is done, and I think it has its strengths. My only worry is that when I did the last version, and the one before that, I had been pretty satisfied with the result, only to have my beta readers point out fairly glaring flaws. So we will see. But I think that this is neater, as I have it now, at least. Her emotions are less muddied, and frankly, less autobiographical. There's a danger in borrowing from life, and it's that you run the risk of assuming (erroneously) that things you thought must make sense.
I shared my concerns with my girlfriend. She reassured me that, come what may, I write women better than Robert Jordan did.
10:44: That's it for me tonight. More writing tomorrow. There's nothing happening tomorrow that might distract me, right?
1:50: An hour later, mostly of work, I seem to have ganged aglay, as a stray click while looking at Wordnik.com brought up the latest news from Egypt. It was nothing particularly new. The wheels seem to have come off some time ago, and now the country is just skidding... like calls for Mubarak's immediate resignation, this metaphor doesn't appear to be going anywhere.
There are two things in particular outstanding before I'll have finished this book. The first is a scene in which a character more or less sorts out her problems so that the story can move on to its climax. The second is the end.
In order to make sure that that first scene makes sense, what I've been doing the last couple editing sessions is going over all of her scenes to remember what she was thinking in them. It's slower going than I had guessed before, and I can't help but wondering if I'm procrastinating. The End, after all, is a scary thing, in its own way.
I just got through touching up a scene that elicited a strong negative reaction in at least one beta reader. The challenge is in having a character be wrong, and not correcting him immediately, without the reader thinking that the book (and the author) must think that he is right. I'm not sure yet whether I have a handle on that.
Enough of that. Back to work.
2:38: Slow going. The house is becoming livelier.
3:14: Maybe because the middle of the book is more event-driven than character-driven, maybe because I remember it better, maybe because I was bored, I started skimming and skipping what I knew I wouldn't change, and got as far as the big scene I wanted to edit. On second glance, it is about 600 words of navel gazing. I'm going to see if I can improve it by introducing another character and making it a conversation.
3:18: Taking a break.
8:54: A long break. Getting back to it now. I'm amending my goal for the day: if I can get this scene done tonight, I will be in good shape to finish my draft tomorrow.
9:40: Except I didn't get back to it just then, because 1) people were in the house and talking, 2) the television was on, 3) Hark! A Vagrant is a funny comic, 4) I have ADHD. Finally did what I should have done earlier: retreated to my girlfriend's room. Getting back to it now.
10:38: The scene is done, and I think it has its strengths. My only worry is that when I did the last version, and the one before that, I had been pretty satisfied with the result, only to have my beta readers point out fairly glaring flaws. So we will see. But I think that this is neater, as I have it now, at least. Her emotions are less muddied, and frankly, less autobiographical. There's a danger in borrowing from life, and it's that you run the risk of assuming (erroneously) that things you thought must make sense.
I shared my concerns with my girlfriend. She reassured me that, come what may, I write women better than Robert Jordan did.
10:44: That's it for me tonight. More writing tomorrow. There's nothing happening tomorrow that might distract me, right?
Thursday, February 3, 2011
Solo-mythologizing?
Three weeks since my last post? For shame. I'll never get readers like this. But it's my bedtime, so this will be a short one.
There are approximately 12 pages left in Hengist and Undine to edit, and I'm giving a cursory once-over to some scenes to make sure I still have a handle on the characters. I've been at this so long I worry sometimes that the characters have gone stale in my mind while I was focusing on something else, so I don't want to make large changes at this point. But anyway there really isn't any excuse for me not to have this thing finished by Monday.
Now a thought, without significant analysis:
I'm intrigued by mythologies, be they ancient or modern. I like looking at how multiple tellings of the same stories overlay each other, and produce a somewhat blurry "real" story that no one ever told. Various interpretations and elements, through repetition or abandonment, attain different levels of essentiality.
Comic books are a place where you can see this in action. As movies are getting remade lately, a similar effect starts to emerge. But what I wonder is, what do you call it if multiple iterations of the same story are coming from the same person? As Marvel gears up to shoot a Spider-Man reboot, I have to wonder what we're accomplishing by telling the same story in the same medium only 10 years later (besides holding onto the movie rights). The same goes for The Fantastic Four, although I don't expect many tears will be shed if Marvel's last attempt at that franchise is superseded by a new one. But what kind of changes are necessary to justify the same person telling the same story again?
What got me thinking of this was seeing that Gainax is in the middle of yet another iteration of Neon Genesis Evangelion. That's a story I find very interesting, and I will probably look into what they do this time. I remember End of Evangelion being a worthy counterpoint to the finale of the original anime, but is that sort of reflexive intertextuality what they were going for there, and if so could they pull it off again?
There are approximately 12 pages left in Hengist and Undine to edit, and I'm giving a cursory once-over to some scenes to make sure I still have a handle on the characters. I've been at this so long I worry sometimes that the characters have gone stale in my mind while I was focusing on something else, so I don't want to make large changes at this point. But anyway there really isn't any excuse for me not to have this thing finished by Monday.
Now a thought, without significant analysis:
I'm intrigued by mythologies, be they ancient or modern. I like looking at how multiple tellings of the same stories overlay each other, and produce a somewhat blurry "real" story that no one ever told. Various interpretations and elements, through repetition or abandonment, attain different levels of essentiality.
Comic books are a place where you can see this in action. As movies are getting remade lately, a similar effect starts to emerge. But what I wonder is, what do you call it if multiple iterations of the same story are coming from the same person? As Marvel gears up to shoot a Spider-Man reboot, I have to wonder what we're accomplishing by telling the same story in the same medium only 10 years later (besides holding onto the movie rights). The same goes for The Fantastic Four, although I don't expect many tears will be shed if Marvel's last attempt at that franchise is superseded by a new one. But what kind of changes are necessary to justify the same person telling the same story again?
What got me thinking of this was seeing that Gainax is in the middle of yet another iteration of Neon Genesis Evangelion. That's a story I find very interesting, and I will probably look into what they do this time. I remember End of Evangelion being a worthy counterpoint to the finale of the original anime, but is that sort of reflexive intertextuality what they were going for there, and if so could they pull it off again?
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)