Chuck Wendig: Terribleminds

Apple-Obsessed Author Fella

Author: terribleminds (page 391 of 464)

WORDMONKEY

June 14, 2012 / 75 Comments

Two Ways To Win A Copy Of Blackbirds

 

I’m going to give away two mass market paperback copies of Blackbirds.

Er, first, though, watch that video up there — Book Show Book Show! I’d not seen this show before and thought it brimming with a foamy head of hilarity. And of course Danny was kind enough to review Blackbirds with equal dollops of hilarity-foam (at around the 6:15 mark).

Oh! And you can hear me talk about the book (and roadkill, profanity, elk masturbation) here.

Finally, come by the Doylestown Bookshop! Friday, June 22nd. 7pm. ‘Cause I’ll be there signing!

Okay, back to the giveaway.

I’m giving away two copies.

You’ve two ways to get one of these copies.

First way: in the comments below post your own “famous last words.” No more than 50 words, please. Your deathbed saying can be poignant or hilarious or sad or weird or whatever. My favorite will get a copy of the book. Only enter one such comment, please. If you start posting a bunch of entries, I’ll delete you and I’ll do donuts on your lawn in a garbage truck.

Second way: tweet the following —

I’d kill for a copy of BLACKBIRDS, by @ChuckWendig. Would you? http://bit.ly/LEkUP1 #carpetnoodle

That hashtag is key. So is the link (which takes folks to this very page). Only tweet this once, please.

I’ll choose someone randomly from the tweets.

You have until 9AM EST on Friday (6/15) to get in your entries.

You may enter each once time only — and yes, you can enter both.

I’ll pay for shipping if you’re in the United States.

Internationally, the shipping is on you, my friendly little ducks.

June 13, 2012 / 72 Comments

The Indie Writer Rejection Meme

That, above, is the meme.

It’s jet-skiing its way around Facebook right now.

It leaves me scratching my head. And my chin. And my nether-junction.

Let’s remove for a moment that this meme supporting indie writers has a number of misspellings — we can discount that because the list appears cribbed from this piece from Daily Writing Tips, which does not ascribe it any indie significance at all. The misspellings are from the original list. Originally I’d thought, “Ha ha, oh, the irony, some self-publisher propaganda that has — wait for it, wait for it — a passel of misspellings.” Ah, but it seems the “indie” banner has been attached only recently.

But that’s where I get lost.

Indie writers. Readers. Rejection. Support.

I’m trying to parse what these things have to do with each other.

“Great books have been rejected (but then published) so you should support indie authors because…” And here is where I start flailing about like an octopus on bath salts. Because indie authors have not been rejected? Is that somehow meaningful to a reader? “Because the reader’s opinion is all that matters. We write for you.” (As if traditional authors don’t write for readers?) So, self-publishers skip the submission/rejection process to put their books direct into the hands of readers. That’s fine, totally admirable, but that’s not cause to support anybody, is it? The motivations of the author matter? Not the story? Not the quality of the tale told? Just the motivations and business decisions?

Self-publishing is not charity.

It’s not a 6th grade trophy for participation. Readers don’t buy books by indie authors because they’re indie authors — well, I’m sure some do, but those readers are probably also indie authors themselves. Are you really hoping that readers will support you based on your decision not to tough it out in the traditional space? That they’ll “throw you a bone” because of a business choice? That, recursively, is insulting to self-published authors, isn’t it? That you should be patted on the head and given a lift because you made a different decision, not because you wrote a kick-ass book that deserves its space on all the bookshelves?

Here’s the other thing: this sends the wrong message about rejection.

It tells us rejection is bad. It’s not. Life is full of rejection. We need it. We need it for perspective. We need it to improve. Rejection isn’t always right. It rarely feels good. But it reminds us that we’re not special.

That we have to work for what we achieve.

Should we remove reviews? Because they’re a kind of rejection. Should we stop grading tests? Or trying to get jobs? Or applying for college, or scholarships, or internships? Maybe we should stop asking people out on dates and just bang a lamp or a pile of bean bags instead.

Now, you can make the argument that this meme proves how the system is fucked — how classic works meeting the Rejectionist’s Axe is proof of a broken machine. But that’s not at all what this meme suggests. Rather, these are books that made it. Books by authors who persevered and that ended up on shelves, in schools, in your hands. The very fact they exist — and have become the classics we all know and love (erm, excepting Chicken Soup for the Soul) — is proof that the system works. If these were all self-published after getting cornholed by the traditional system, hey, fine, I hear you. But these are books that the system supported. That became classics and sold bajillions out of that very system.

Sure, somebody rejected Harry Potter.

And it’s good they did.

Who knows what the book would’ve become under a different editor, different publisher? Oh, that rejection is proof that… humans are imperfect? That they don’t make perfect decisions all the time? Is the system flawed? Um. Duh? Of course it’s flawed. Everything is flawed. Nothing is perfect. No writer, no agent, no editor, no publisher. Could it be better? Sure. But that doesn’t automatically mean skipping the game just because you’re afraid you’ll skin a knee.

If anything, this meme proves that one rejection, ten rejections, two dozen rejections, doesn’t have to stop you. That you can keep on kickin’ and swinging for the fences because you only need one acceptance to make all those ugly motherfucker rejections fade into meaninglessness.

It doesn’t prove that you should be an indie author. Or that you should support an indie author.

If you want to be an indie author, go for it. It’s a path with value. But it’s not a path you take because of rejection. It’s not a path you should take because of something other traditional authors did or experienced.

You choose it because it’s right for you. Because you have the right temperament and ability. Because you want control. Because you think you’ll make better money and reach more readers.

Stop acting like the victim.

Stop making this choice based on your rejection of the “other” choice (or its rejection of you).

No more propaganda.

No more middle fingers to the “system” or its authors.

Oh —

And if you’re a reader?

Don’t support indie authors.

Don’t support traditional authors, either.

Just support good authors with good books.

WENDIGO OUT.

*peels out of the driveway in a cherry-red Geo Tracker*

June 12, 2012 / 82 Comments

The Victimization Of Lara Croft

I was hopeful. I saw the new take on Lara Croft way back when and thought, well, color me intrigued. The old Lara Croft never really spoke to me — comic book proportions, sassy British accent, short-shorts, whatever. No harm, no foul, but not the game for me. And then along comes this new reimagining — Lara Croft by way of John McClane. A rougher, tougher hero — kicked around but triumphant.

I was good with that.

I’m not so good with it now.

I refer you to this article: You’ll ‘Want To Protect’ The New, Less Curvy Lara Croft, at Kotaku.

From that article:

“When people play Lara, they don’t really project themselves into the character,” Rosenberg told me at E3 last week when I asked if it was difficult to develop for a female protagonist.

“They’re more like ‘I want to protect her.’ There’s this sort of dynamic of ‘I’m going to this adventure with her and trying to protect her.'”

So is she still the hero? I asked Rosenberg if we should expect to look at Lara a little bit differently than we have in the past.

“She’s definitely the hero but— you’re kind of like her helper,” he said. “When you see her have to face these challenges, you start to root for her in a way that you might not root for a male character.”

Well, sure. Because who could possibly relate to a — snerk, gasp — female protagonist? Better instead to assume that we’re just helping the poor dear along. Because if we don’t, well…

In the new Tomb Raider, Lara Croft will suffer. Her best friend will be kidnapped. She’ll get taken prisoner by island scavengers. And then, Rosenberg says, those scavengers will try to rape her.

“She is literally turned into a cornered animal,” Rosenberg said. “It’s a huge step in her evolution: she’s forced to either fight back or die.”

Ah! See, there it is. If we don’t act as her helper, we’ll “help” her get raped.

Aaaaaand then killed.

As a storyteller, this is troubling on a number of levels — that we humanize a female character by making her weak, by forcing her into the role of the victim. I’m not saying there’s not a mode for a story where a woman fights off brutal male attackers and triumphs against them. There is. I’m also not sure that Tomb Raider is it. Especially since we had a character who was shallow, yes, but she was also a wealthy confident ass-kicker who brooked no bullshit. She wasn’t a potential sexual bullseye for a bunch of island thugs. Is this our current idea of a strong female character? A bloodied victim? An abused teen girl? Is there no middle-ground between “super-bazoomed comic book heiress” and “survivor of torture porn island adventure?” Can’t we scuff her up but keep the rape out of it? And can’t we come to her being a strong relatable character not because she’s a woman, not despite the fact she’s a woman, but regardless of it?

As a human fucking being, this is troubling on one particular level: that all women can hope for is to get out alive and, y’know, unraped. We already approach rape in this culture like it’s a pothole in the road you need to avoid — as if the power to not get raped is solely in the hands of the woman. As if the onus of responsibility is not at all on the scum-fuck rapists. It always seems to be a message of How Not To Get Raped as opposed to How Not To Be A Shitty Fucking Rapist. Nobody’s saying women shouldn’t learn to be strong and protect themselves — but it’s not a woman’s responsibility not to get raped.

And yet, that’s what this Tomb Raider appears to be saying.

This doesn’t make her bad-ass.

It doesn’t make her or the situation “more real.”

(As if that’s what games like this need — a hard high dose of rapey reality.)

It doesn’t improve her or make her stronger.

It goes too far. It pushes too hard. It weakens her deeply.

We cannot “relate.” We need to “help” and “protect” her.

We turn her human by “literally” making her a “cornered animal?”

All this says some very scary things about how we look at women, I think.

(A caveat: this is based on this one article and some game footage. For all I know, the game will come out and not be this at all — but by all indications, we’re in for some trouble with this one.)

(Also check out this post by Kat Howard.)

June 12, 2012 / 27 Comments

25 Reasons This Is The Best Time To Be A Storyteller

I am an occasional fan of doom and gloom. Doom and gloom are interesting! As a storyteller, I am intimately attracted to conflict, to drama, to signs of beautiful disarray. And looking at the options for storytellers, it’s easy to see big soggy clouds hanging over all our heads, dumping rain and hail and dead otters on our fool heads.

But, hey, you know what? Fuck that. Let’s lift our chins. Let’s find the sunshine. Let’s punch those dead otters in the face with our gauntleted fists of unmitigated optimism. Why is this a good time to be a storyteller?

Read on, readerheads.

1. The Power Of The Individual

For a very long time there existed one door. That door read EMPLOYEES ONLY, and it was locked until you… well, became an employee of someone — perhaps not a literal employee with the badge and the keycard and a Tupperware container of goulash in the fridge, but just the same you were someone who worked for a corporate entity in some fashion. They unlocked that door for you. Ah. But now a second door exists: the Do It Your Own Damnself door. It’s just a hole kicked in the drywall, the door itself fashioned out of whatever scraps lay nearby. On it a placard that reads, in hasty graffiti, INDIVIDUALS ONLY.

2. The Leverage Of Individuals

You may think this is some kind of FUCK THE OPPRESSOR anti-traditionalist screed, but it’s not. You don’t need to walk through that second door but you should be thankful it’s there just the same — that second door is a new option that did not exist for the last many decades. The fact you can publish your own work or make your own movie or draw your own damn comic is powerful art-fu. And it puts leverage on the larger corporate entities to recognize that they are no longer the only option on the table. When you’re the only dude in the room, your offer doesn’t have to be a good one. But now there’s competition — not merely from other corporate entities but from individuals deciding to go their own way. Individuals who choose to DIY that shit no longer end up automatically in the cold, their sweat-slick private parts unmercifully affixed to a frosted metal pole. The competition of options is a feature, not a bug. In this, storytellers win.

3. Increasingly Connected Audience

The distribution of the Internet is not infinite but for practical purposes it might as well be. It connects an audience in a very big, very real way. People who love a thing can love a thing together and can proselytize that love as loudly and as vociferously and as lovingly as they choose to. And reach hundreds, thousands, even millions by doing so. My god, it’s full of stars.

4. Increasingly Active Audience

No, I don’t mean “active” in the sense that they’re out jogging together in a giant lemming-like throng (sadly, one of the downsides of the Internet is that it doesn’t force us up off our doughy meat-bag asses), I mean “active” in the sense that they’re engaged. Before, audience participation was passive. You sat. You read, you watched, you consumed. Maybe you talked it over with some friends and a slice of pie. Then you went home, gloomily masturbated, and slept. Now you run to the Internet. You tweet. You update Facebook. You write a review on Goodreads. You photobomb your friends with related memes. If there’s additional content, you snorfle it down like bacon-wrapped chocolate-covered espresso beans. Active engagement!

5. Finally, An Increasingly Fractured Audience, As Well

Oh, that sounds bad, doesn’t it? Fractured. Fractured is never good. Broken window. Shattered femur. Kingdom torn asunder. Except here I’d argue it’s a very good thing. Big corporate art culture wants big corporate art — lowest common denominator work that will be a failure if it cannot attract the seething, teething masses by the million. But small audiences can be very supportive. An artist can thrive more easily on connected and engaged pockets of totally awesome people. A fractured audience is the sign of a shattered monoculture. And a shattered monoculture means diversity, and diversity means new niches and rabbit-holes into which storytellers may gleefully tumble.

6. Hybridized Story Pollination (AKA “Transmedia”)

Stories are no longer content to remain imprisoned in a single medium. Stories that need to can dynamite the door and jump from book to film to blog to comic and back to book. They can be games and diaries and flyers stapled to telephone poles. They can be both active and passive at the same time. Stories always could be this way, of course, but we’re tossing about in a perfect storm of opportunity — all the other things in this list fly together to form a stompy Voltron of raw possibility. *stomp stomp stomp*

7. Pretty New Hats For Pretty New Audience Members

An increasingly active audience coupled with increasingly diverse storytelling possibilities creates new roles for audience members. Before, those in your audience had to be content with passivity — but now they can do shit. Sure, they can remain passive. Or they can witness how others interact with the story. Or they can be themselves prime movers, engaging with creator and story (and the characters and world of that story).

8. Everybody Can Tell Stories

You can make a film or paint a masterpiece on your iPhone. You can download free word processors and graphic editors. You can make porn with two soup cans and an old Nintendo 64. Okay, maybe not so much that last one. Still — telling stories and putting them out there is cheaper and easier than it’s ever been. That’s not to say you don’t still need to know what you’re doing — but the barrier to entry used to be a big-ass brick wall. And now it’s just a speedbump. Or maybe a dead hobo. Drive over it and don’t look back.

9. Community, Community, Community

No, not the TV show, though that’s been pretty great, too. (Troy and Abed as Bert and Ernie!) I mean, the community of storytellers. Writers. Editors. Producers. Directors. Artists. Musicians. Content managers. Continuity assassins. Time-traveling liquor procurement robots. We are living in a golden age of connectedness and that doesn’t just mean connecting us to our audience. It means connecting us to other creators. It means that the wheels of collaboration are greased with the Astroglide of delight.

10. Handily Form Your Own Super-Team

What this means is that you can start to form your own storytelling super-team: people you can go to time and again and who help you achieve your vision (and whom you help in return).

11. Crowdfunding, Motherfucker

You mean I can go to the people and say, “I have this story I want to tell,” and they can either confirm its reality or deny its existence? HELLO, FUTURE, MY NAME IS CHUCK, PLEASE HAVE SOME PIE.

12. Throw A Pebble

Every story you write and put out there is a pebble. Every blog post, tweet, and photo is another pebble. Every time you interact with another human and foist another positive piece of yourself upon the world — sploosh — another pebble thrown into the water. And every pebble creates ripples and those ripples cross one another and sometimes reach untold shores. It’s chaos theory in action — a butterfly flaps his wings in Tokyo and a giant diaper-clad orangutan destroys San Francisco. Or something. Point is, the vibrations of your storytelling are farther-flung, and that’s a wonderful thing.

13. Word-of-Mouth Just Got A Major Upgrade

The way those ripples work is via a jacked-up uber-upgraded version of “word-of-mouth.” Used to be that word-of-mouth was parlayed between like, six people. And sure, those six people overlapped with another six people and a slow-moving orgy of interest can rise in a sluggish tangle of limbs. But now word-of-mouth is like, 50 people. Or 100, or 1000. And those circles still overlap. The audience’s voice is louder and bigger than ever. Your story can crowdsurf on them for miles.

14. Remix Culture

Storytellers have been repurposing content since the days of Homer (the blind storyteller, not the donut-eater) — but we’re seeing a surge in remix culture where a story can be broken apart into memes, fanfiction, trailers, t-shirts, whatever. Some of it is shallow, some of it is deep, but the repurposing all points to this: the value of our stories has increased and they can travel a much greater distance than you intend.

15. Yep, I’m Gonna Say It: Piracy

Your blood pressure just went up, didn’t it? I see your eye twitching. Your lip quivering. And yet here I am persisting past your potential aneurysm to say that, piracy may very well be a good thing for storytellers. It’s not that I’m condoning it or that I think it’s the proper moral choice — but I will say that I think piracy has the potential to be an opportunity instead of a pit of pure peril. Think of piracy less as theft and more as a way to gain new fans. Think of it as a very fertile seed-bed. Remember that, during the wanton days of music piracy, music pirates bought more music, not less.

16. Back From The Dead

Sure, the datastream moves fast. You’re not careful, your raft will get sucked under and dashed against the rocks, and then piranha will eat your face. Or you’ll encounter one of those little fishies that swims up your urethra and lodges itself in there like a fat kid in an amusement park waterslide. What were we talking about? Ah. Right. Old is new. Used to be that something would hit the market, and it either took flight fast or got run over by a lawnmower. The lifecycle for pop culture was tiered and limited — but now, stories live on. They loiter like surly teens in shopping malls. And you never know when an old story will gain new life. (Every once in a while, an old blog post on this site catches fire and burns bright for a few days.)

17. The Hive-Mind Is Here

Got a question? Research? Opinion? Grammar issue? Liquor poll? Ask the hive-mind. Storytellers have a wealth of humanity accessible by a few clicks and clacks of the ol’ mouse-and-keyboard.

18. The Water-Cooler That Is Social Media

Social media isn’t just a hive-mind. It’s the water-cooler. Hey, say what you will, but storytellers used to sit in the darkness of their own fetid closet-offices, mumbling to their aloe plants and their cairn of balled-up underwear and their collection of empty gin bottles — but now we can talk to other people. Not to mine them for information. Not to pursue an agenda. Just to shoot the shit and be humans.

19. Cassette Tape Days

Digital content is in the days of the cassette tape. This is Betamax/VHS time. We’re just getting started with e-books and digital film and mobile gaming — these are the days of electronic prehistory in terms of digital content. And things are ramping up fast. What will things be like in 10 years? 25? What will e-books look like in the year 2022? Will my Kindle mist me with the smell of old books? Will my iPhone be a psychic device? CAN MY SAMSUNG TV IMPREGNATE ME WITH A HIGH-DEFINITION STORY-BABY?

20. The Quality Of Our Liquor Has Greatly Improved

I’m just saying, we’re drinking a lot better these days. At least, I am. NO MORE TOILET VODKA FOR ME. Well, okay, maybe a little more toilet vodka. What? It’s good. Shut up. No, you shut up.

21. Sweet Mobility

Stories can go anywhere now. Okay, sure, a book could go most places, but now a single item — a phone, a tablet, a laptop — contains multitudes. Shows! Comics! Novels! Movies! So many stories in one little space. An advantage for the audience is an advantage for the storyteller. Now you can can go where they go. Now you’re in their pocket. With that old roll of Mentos. And that… suspicious bulge.

22. The Age Of The Rockstar Is Over

The rockstar — those figures in pop culture who command all the sales and all the attention — is part of the monoculture and the monoculture is waning. When the really big, greedy fish leave the ocean, the smaller fish get more food (and are themselves less likely to be food). Fewer rockstars mean more craftsmen. They leave more room for the rest of us to come in and do our thing. Or so I like to believe.

23. Divergent Formats

Just as certain creators enjoy a rockstar-like existence, so too do some formats — the novel, the film, the television show, the big-budget game release, the popular superhero comic. Their reign is over. Short stories? Short films? Indie games? Comics not about superheroes? Digital narratives? ARGs? Live theatrical experiments? Chick tracts? UFO manifestos? Peyote visions? Tattoos of Bea Arthur eating a Tyrannosaurus Rex stuffed in a hot dog roll? There exists no limit to the format. No one medium shall rule them all. Well. Except maybe cat videos.

24. Content Remains King

And yet, at the end of the day, in the great Pop Culture Darwinism, content will remain king — and, in fact, will become even kinglier (is that a word?) in this grand storytelling future. Whyzat, you ask? Because we’re less subject to marketing manipulations. Because word-of-mouth is multiplied tenfold. Because the audience is getting savvier, smarter, more interested. Sure, you’ll still have your 50 Shades of Gray and your latest Office Doctor Detective Esquire television procedurals, but you’ll also see braver work surviving longer. Content rules. Crap storytelling drools.

25. We Are The Media

Amanda Palmer said it: “We are the media.” And she’s right. She nabbed a million dollar Kickstarter tally. And you might be saying, “Well, sure, but she’s Amanda Fucking Palmer.” To which I’d respond: my mother has no idea who that is. My wife? No idea who that is. And yet: million-dollar Kickstarter. Do Call of Duty-playing fratboys know who Double Fine productions are? Mmnope. Yet they raised over three million. There’s no disputing the fact that storytellers are in prime demand. And you know who’s demanding it? THE MIGHTY HUMANS OF PLANET EARTH. Erm, aka, “your audience.”

That is why this is the most glorious time to be a storyteller, yo.


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June 10, 2012 / 57 Comments

Prometheus: In Which The Gods Of Plot Punish The Characters For Their Precious Agency

(Beware. Below be spoilers. Also, I’m posting this Sunday, but it’s my Monday post. Shut up.)

If you’ve come to find out whether I liked the movie:

I liked it.

You now may go.

Go on! Shoo. Shoo. Ah, you’d prefer I offer up some kind of… valuation. A grading or ranking of sorts. A 3.5 out of 5! A B, maybe a B+! One thumb up and the other thumb kind of herkily-jerkily turning up and down in a most uncertain manner. There. Done. Graded. Off with you, then.

Aaaaand you’re still here.

Well, since you’re stuck to me like gum on a shoe, I suppose you’ll forgive me rambling a bit about the film? And the story? See, this is a fascinating film. Fascinating for its strengths, and fascinating for its (many) flaws. A number of folks on Twitter tried to turn me off of seeing this film (which is a bit curious — I mean, if there’s a bridge washed out on the way to the theater, please do warn me, but otherwise, assume I’m capable of making this decision) as if a lack of enjoyment was reason enough not to go. It isn’t. Not really. Because even in a flawed film I’ll still find value — it may not be an entertainment value, but storytelling done badly has educational value, at the very least.

And so I knew going in I’d likely get some education.

I did. Not because it’s a bad film. It’s not. It is to my mind quite good — it’s beautiful, elegant, icy, and has some truly gut-churning scenes of body horror. Just the same, it’s a film that misses its mark, but that’s okay — the mark was quite small and quite far and it was brave of them to shoot for it. I appreciate a film that aims for the bullseye and misses more than a film that tries only to hit the broad side of a barn and then — nicely done, chap! — hits. Aspirations matter in storytelling. They’re not the only thing. But they matter.

Here is where the aspirations of Prometheus fall down — and, also, where the storytelling lessons lurk.

This is a film about ideas, not about people.

Put more crassly, it’s a film about plot, not about character.

There exists a mode of storytelling that some call “plot-driven,” and Prometheus is most certainly that. The plot is a machine. A program, of sorts. Things happen — or, to the storyteller’s mind, “need” to happen — and the characters are forced to either catch up, strap in, or retroactively become part of the mechanics. The plot-driven storyteller says, “I need the White House to explode,” and so they arrange events and shuffle characters to make that happen. It’s all a bit of artifice. Sometimes it’s done well. Most times it’s done so you notice it — you see the puppet characters living in the shadow of the sequence, relegated to catalysts or bystanders or square pegs hammered into circle holes.

BUT ENOUGH OF ALL THIS SEXY TALK OF PEGS AND HOLES, you say. What, then, is character-driven storytelling? A plot is a plot is a plot, so what’s the problem?

Well, as I’ve said in the past and will say again and again because I quite like the way it sounds and I think it’s clever and I am at times in love with my own cleverness, “Plot is like Soylent Green: it’s made of people.” By which I mean, plot does not exist as a mechanism for characters to hop into, but rather, characters — by being characters with their sticky wants and trembling fears and all their other foibles and peccadilloes — create the mechanism by making choices based on their motivations. They’re building the machine as they go. They’re not cogs. They’re prime movers. They’re the motherfucking engineers.

Mark that word. “Engineers.” We’ll come back to it.

The storytellers of Prometheus — or so I like to imagine — sat down and said, “Okay, we need to retrofit an origin for the Alien mythology, and we’ve got this basket full of lofty ideas we can play with. We’ve got fate and free will and faith. We’ve got questions of science and ethics. Plus we’ve got all these other little awesome things — body horror and sci-fi tropes and spaceships and corporations and, y’know, aliens. It’s great!” And they went off to the races imagining the sequence of events necessary to bring the story backward far enough to explain the origins of, oh, all of mankind and then forward enough so that the audience starts to see where the Alien mythology comes from.

Somewhere, I like to also imagine one of the writers squinting and lifting a delicate finger and, when someone calls on him he says, “Ummmm. So. What about the characters?” * blink blink blink*

And then there’s a lot of ohh and mmmm and ahh yes right of course, and then they get to figuring out the characters. But that’s already the wrong order. The machine is built. Now the characters can only fit into it — like plugs, like gears. It’s an inorganic fit, as if characters are just automatons shuffled onto the stage.

And it shows. Yes, our lead scientist has “issues” of faith, but they feel painted on — as shallow and shiny as lipstick, and just as easy to rub off and forget. Characters make decisions not because they’re characters, but because they’re serving the Great And Powerful Plot Machine. One character gets inexplicably drunk because… the plot needs him to be drunk. Another character — a biologist — cares nothing for biology at one point and then gets lost (because the plot needs him to be lost) and, upon meeting some squicky Star Wars trash compactor creature decides now that he loves biology so much he wants to play a game of grab-ass with the damn thing. Again, because the plot demands it. (A tiny note: this film is filled with scientists and they are easily the shittiest scientists ever put to film.) David the android is a cipher because… drum roll please, the plot demands it. The plot demands things left and right and soon characters are constantly betraying good sense and their own motivations to feed the howling mechanical beast.

The plot is in service to ideas and ideas drive the film — but again, the connection is missed between plot/character and idea/human. Ideas are the most human thing in the world. They’re ours. All life is subject to genetics but only human life is subject to memetics and so it is a great shame to separate people from ideas. Science obeys laws outside of us but the study of those laws are uniquely, well, us.

Ahh, but here’s where it’ll really bake your noodle. Remember, I asked you to bank that word, “Engineer.” Well, that’s what the characters in this film call the aliens that “made” us (and who are apparently an exact genetic match despite being easily twice our size) — and it starts to occur to me that the problems I’m having with the film are in a way the problems that exist in the film’s storyworld and mythology, too. In the world, characters discover that humanity was made by uncaring titanic space-psychopaths who engineered events without regards to any kind of emotional intervention that they can parse. And I, as a film-goer, feel the same thing about the film itself: the plot and characters are made by the “engineers” (the storytellers) who have little interest in the emotional intervention of the characters. The plot is the plot. Mechanisms — let’s call it “fate” — exist outside the characters and beyond the audience. The characters have minimal agency because the Space Gods — whether they be the writers or the albino xeno-titans who created us — don’t want them to possess that agency.

The storytellers are the titans. The titans are the storytellers. Man — and character — is puppet.

Prometheus serves as a commentary on its own storytelling.

Probably not intentional.

Though, if it is, pretty much genius.

So, to conclude: I liked it. I did. I was entertained and educated. It’s a beautiful film and its many ideas and questions are still ping-ponging around the ol’ skull-cave.

But it’s not a character-driven piece. If it were, it would’ve been an A+, I think.

Oh, and P.S., it’s basically just the first Alien movie retold in a bigger, weirder way.

No, seriously.

June 8, 2012 / 58 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Choose Your Setting

Last week’s challenge: “Eight Random Words.”

It’s time again to choose the setting for this week’s flash fiction challenge! I’ve cobbled together a list — you will pick one from the list and use it as the setting in your story. I’m just making these up — so, for instance, the “Bone Cathedral” is not a thing that has any particular definition to it. You interpret these as you see fit.

The settings are:

“The Bone Cathedral”

“Aisle Nine In The Grocery Store”

“The Venom Club”

“The Tower of Babel”

“Suburban Meth Lab”

“Tiny’s Taco Hut”

Choose one.

Write about it.

You’ve got up to 1000 words.

Post at your online space, then link back here.

Done by June 15th (Friday), noon EST.

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