Creative Mung from Eric A. Burns

At the bottom of posts, as of today, there are now a series of buttons just before the tags. These buttons are quick one-stop-shops to Digg, Facebook, del.ic.ous, and other stuff like that.

There are there to make it easy for folks who A) use such things and B) like one of the stories to spread the word. If they wish. No harm and no foul if people don’t have an interest in doing so.

Thanks as always!

Edit: Hrm. Though I can’t say I like that it throws the buttons at the bottom of RSS feeds on those (rare) posts where I don’t have a cut between the introduction and the story. It looks kind of ugly in the feed.

Ah well. I can cope. I have Coping/5.

So, every so often things don’t work out quite as you expected them to.

That’s not too surprising at this point. When you’re a writer, sometimes the stories take unexpected turns. Which is what happened to me this time. You see, I finished the Prosperina myth, and figured I was going back into normal production. Prosperina was long for a story, so I had a certain amount of ‘flex’ before I had to get into the regular schedule, but I was pretty sure I’d write a Justice Wing story, then write or post something for Storytelling, then do a myth for the following week.

For whatever reason, I didn’t want to do the next part of Vilify 5 next. I wanted to write something self contained. I thought about writing the very old school story of the time Lady Velvet used Paragon as a weapon against Nightstick and Cudgel, but that story wasn’t quite ready.

And then I thought “hey — why don’t I tell an origin story! That’s nicely comic bookish!” And for whatever reason, the Lieutenant was the character that sprung to mind. I even came up with a good framing device for it — a book Barbara Babcock (Lois Lane to Paragon’s Superman) would write about what Champions would call the Dependent Non Player Characters in a superhero’s life.

In other words, a book about Lois, Jimmy Olson, Perry White, Alfred Pennyworth, Aunt May, Mary Jane Watson, Gwen Stacy, Steve Trevor, and all the rest of the happy people who were turned into monkeys or killed and stuffed into refrigerators. That would do it!

Yeah.

Over twelve thousand words later, here we are. I thought about breaking it up into parts, but I don’t think this story would support it. So here’s a whole chapter of Barbara’s book for you. And this is why I didn’t get anything else done since then.

One thing I like is neither Barbara nor her interviewee sound like Todd Chapman, from “Interviewing Leather.” At least, within the bounds of me actually writing everyone involved.

The picture isn’t fan art, per se. That’s actually mine. Sort of. See, I started with a posted City of Heroes character based on the Lieutenant, and then I did the photoshop shuffle. The result was meant to look like a comic book panel from 1938 or so, and damn if it didn’t come out right (right down to suspect registration errors and slightly heavy blacks on the lines).

I hope you like “Legacies of the Past.”

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We have returned, with a special myth. It’s also a long one, to warn — though I don’t think people will complain. Unless, of course, they do. People find the time to complain, sometimes.

This is a holiday special, though the holiday in question is somewhat vague. I don’t think we can call it Christmas, or Yule, or even Agnostica. I think it’s just ‘winter,’ since this is after all a myth about winter. This is a special, in part, because it steps away from the normal mission of these our myths of the modern world.

This is, in short, a recognizable myth to a lot of you. A myth of the ancient world. But I like to think that the retelling makes it a bit modern in other ways. And if it’s recognizable, I also like to think there are ways that it isn’t.

It concerns the changing of the seasons. Which sometimes means the changing of autumn to winter. And sometimes means changes of another kind entirely. It’s called Prosperina.

I hope you like it.

And yes, this should mean we’re back. Thank you for your patience, all.

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As I mention here, we seem to be in a bit of a service disruption writing wise. It’s nothing you’ve done, and I am not dead nor terribly sick (though I have been sick). I’ve put a lot of thought into writing, but the actual writing hasn’t been happening.

I apologize for the inconvenience, and I thank those who e-mailed me to make sure all was well. You guys are aces and I hope you collectively win the lottery.

Beyond that, I’m going to try to put electronic word to paper today. We’ll see.

Thank you for your patience.

So. It’s all the fault of Gary Olson.

Gary, for those of you who don’t know the name, is perhaps the best of the old Superguy writers. His series were well done, with the appropriate blend of humor and pathos. And he managed to actually finish them. He finished Rad. He finished CalForce. He finished Radian and Shadebeam.

We all hated Gary.

Well, fourteen months ago, out of nowhere, Gary posted a new episode of Rad to Superguy. It was… well, all the years later that it’s actually been. Rad, a hero of the eighties — since that’s when Gary wrote Rad — returned to Earth to find things were different. He was older. Mighty Guy and Meltdown had had a kid.

At the time, I was tempted to do the same with my own series… though unlike Gary, I hadn’t finished my own series, Adjusted League Unimpeachable.

(It’s worth noting, at the time I wrote ALU, there hadn’t been any “Justice League” comic or cartoon that ended in ‘Unlimited.’ I don’t know if that ruins the already lame joke in the name, or if it actually makes it suck less. Either way, it hardly matters at this point.)

Now, I have a good writing life now. I have superhero stuff I can do. If I ever really, really have the urge to revisit the old Superguy stuff, I could post it in Mythic Heroes, right? I have Justice Wing beyond that. And plenty of non superhero things I really need to be writing.

And then, for the first time in fourteen months, Gary posted another Rad episode to Superguy.

God damn Gary Olson.

So now I had to write a Superguy post. Which I’ve done. And that ate into my time for writing something for today, so guess what you get?

This is a first episode post, so it’s possible you’ll be able to follow along. It’s also possible none of this will make any sense to you. That’s okay too.

Just understand. Superguy is, at its heart, a satire. As is this. A satire of superheroes, and of popular culture. And in this case, of a video game.

I’ll try to get a ‘notes’ comment in, though I drive to Ottawa tomorrow, so maybe not.

Regardless, please enjoy.

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Another fragment. Another incomplete story. Distinctive this time because A) I have absolutely no recollection of writing it (though it’s clearly something I wrote) and B) I have absolutely no idea where I was going with it. But it seems interesting to me.

In a way, it’s more stock than a lot of what I’ve written, particularly for fantasy. At the same time, there’s more of a horror dimension than a lot of my fantasy work.

It’s also distinctive because it’s one of the few stories to involve Fort Baxter, a fictional Maine town along the Canadian border, meant to be my home town of Fort Kent with serial numbers filed sort of off and a fresh coat of paint over it.

I think I probably wrote this while I was finishing up college. I was really into the idea of language critical theory/linguistic critical theory/the sign-significator-significated trichotomy for a while then. I’m a little surprised this isn’t more pretentious than it is as a result.

Apropos of nothing, the lead is named Karin MacDougal.  In 1997, a Karen McDougal became a somewhat more-famous-than-usual Playboy Playmate and then Playmate of the Year. From the tone of this piece, I believe it was written at least four and possibly more years before 1997, so despite the name, this is not an homage to a hot chick.

Also apropos of nothing, I used to make homemade hot cocoa like is described in here.

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It’s always interesting to go from “the plan” to the execution. Scenes you think will be long and drawn out turn out to be perfunctory. Scenes you figured wouldn’t go anywhere will recast your series in an entirely new light. The characters in your notes come to life and start making noises at you. Sometimes, you doubt your sanity.

Someone asked me the difference between Leather and Lady Velvet. Well, there are a few. For one, Lady Velvet started out wanting to be a villain.

But the major difference between the pair is something close to twenty years. There are times age doesn’t matter at all. I have a lot of friends who weren’t even alive when I was their age. They’re fun and funny and sometimes a lot smarter than I am.

And sometimes, it matters. More than you might like to admit, it matters.

We haven’t had a chance to see any more of the good old days just yet, but that’s on the horizon. For now, though — please enjoy today’s chapter of Vilify 5.

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When we go back to stuff I wrote in the past, moving forward, I think we’ll call it “From the Vault.” That’s the sort of thing we’ll do on Tuesdays and Thursdays, on those Tuesdays and Thursdays we actually do something.

This is a fragment — an incomplete chapter one of a book never written, dating back to the early 90’s. As with pretty much every science fiction writer who was once twenty, this was the beginning of my dystopia novel. Back in the days when I figured I was going to graduate school as a matter of course, I had seriously considered Utopia and Dystopia as a concentration and field of study. I was considering that alongside 19th and 20th Century American Poetry, of course. It never entered my head to go for a Ph.D. in the Modern Superhero Story, which is a pity since that’s what I’d clearly be able to nail.

To that end, I started writing my dystopia. I called it America the Beautiful, because I was very, very earnest about it. This was going to be a call to arms — a warning for the ages that would rank with Brave New World and 1984.

You know. Just like all the other dystopias out there.

Well, I never got out of the first chapter. But rereading the first chapter I’m a little amazed — as unsubtle as the title was, the opening, the establishment of tone and character… it’s better than I expected when I went back to reread this. I’m actually moderately interested in what Thomas’s story would turn out to be.

Not that we’ll ever find out. At least, if I ever pick this up, it’ll be significantly different than whatever I intended fifteen years ago.

There is one thing I like in this, as well. To me, a good dystopia — I mean, a really good and scary one — had to be compelling. You had to get the sense that the people living in that society were perfectly content to live in that society. I didn’t believe 1984 would ever happen for the sheer fact that if the entire world was uncomfortable and unhappy, someone would do something about it in a power bid. Brave New World was far more likely, because as scary as that would was, you could believe the people living in it enjoyed themselves. And when people were happy, they weren’t rebelling against the social order.

Anyhow. Here it is. I hope you like it.

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It was a week of system issues and exhaustion, but that is done and now it’s Myth Time again, and with a little luck we’ll be on the full on normal schedule again starting this week. Starting off, we’re going back to Banter Latte pal CrazyDave, who asks us:

Why have people stopped wearing watches and started dragging mobiles out of their pocket to check the time?

It’s something lots of people do. I do it myself. But it’s not ubiquitous. Lots of wristwatches are still out there and still being checked. Which makes it interesting, because it’s one of those rare things: a behavior in transition.

Which gives us something to talk about.

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One of the interesting things about writing something like Justice Wing is the kind of story you get to write. It’s hard to convince a publisher to let you write a comic book about this guy who interviews a supervillain for a week, with very little in the way of action scenes, for example. Not if you’re not already Kurt Busiek, Warren Ellis or Garth Ennis.

And, in case you haven’t figured it out, I’m not any of those people. Nor do I have much hope of ever becoming any of them.

But, when you’re writing full on fiction, without pictures… you can write human stories about superhumans. For example, this one.

This story actually predates “Interviewing Leather” in short story form. This is an expansion of said short story, to better fit the mosaic novel style thing I seem to be building. And it follows out of last week’s prologue in ways that should be obvious.

This is a story about supervillains and superculture, sure. But it’s also a story about fans, cons, con culture, and whatever else seemed to fit. It tells a story (I hope) and sets up a few other stories (I hope), and I hope you like it.

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