The writing prompt of the day today is “what do you enjoy about writing”. That’s an odd question to my ear. Writing is what I enjoy about writing. I wonder what people are saying if anyone does that.
The other day my close personal friend/online dude I don’t actually know at all mentioned the issue that all comic book fans know about comics, namely that it’s kind of a shit storytelling format because it goes on forever like a soap opera. Maybe the first time Professor X turned evil and killed all the X-Men it had some impact but it happens every 2-3 years so it’s hard to care too much in the long haul. I don’t follow comics much anymore but I understand that in the new X-Men story arc they had a literal resurrection machine which to me was the ultimate in-universe signal that there were zero stakes to anything. I think I heard someone blew up the resurrection machine recently though so watch out!
Being self-centered I wondered how this applied to me. The Grace story isn’t a story really, it’s a journal of her life with no end, like a comic. Would it be better as an actual story with a beginning, middle and end? Maybe. But the good (?) news is that I decided I don’t care, I like writing it like this. Maybe if I reach the X-Men threshold where nothing means anything anymore I’ll change my mind but that’s a few decades off.
Once upon a time I was going to a Grace storyline with Nazi wizards as the bad guys but I decided against it because enough with the Nazis already. I did introduce Confederate necromancers because I wanted something involving American history but I’m ambivalent about that too.
Even though I want to wave in some history I don’t do much with Native Americans because I fear the “magical minority person” trope and also because I don’t know anything about Native Americans and also because I fear the “Hollywood voodoo” trap where you treat real beliefs that people might have as crazy magic bullshit.
I thought, well aside from civil wars and displacing native people what are the big things in American history? Nothing immediately came to mind. The Great Depression? Something with that. Maybe go back to the original settlers? No one is going to care if there’s a secret cabal of British people doing . . . something.
“No one’s going to care anyway Jeremy”. I know, but it’s fun to pretend that I could potentially offend someone by accident.
I was also thinking about a storyline where Grace is badly injured and can’t heal herself right away. If Grace has a bad injury but because she can do magic shit it doesn’t really change anything is that worse than not having it happen at all? Is it extra bullshit when she does eventually figure out a way to heal herself?
It got me to thinking about supposedly disabled superheroes. Daredevil being the one that always comes to my mind. He’s blind, but really he’s not because of his superpowers, in fact he can “see” better than most people. So, is that good? Or is it kind of insulting to blind people? If a disabled character is in no way effected by their disability what does that mean? Professor X is in a wheelchair, does that help anyone? Echo is deaf, does that do anything?
My instinct is to say no, but I think I’ve learned in the past few years that representation means a lot more than I think it does. Example. I listen to a Star Trek podcast the two dudes that talk about Star Trek for hours are both TV writers. In the early episodes they often ripped the characters of Crusher and Troi, and Yar before she died, as being horribly written. But then female Star Trek fans asked them politely to stop because even though they weren’t great characters most of the time they were beloved by many because at least they were female characters that existed and did stuff sometimes. Which means something when that doesn’t happen much.
Anyway, that’s what I’ve been thinking about vis-à-vis Amazing Grace lately. In case you were wondering.
If something anyone writes offends a nazi or someone who flies the confederate flag, (or any hate group really) it’s probably alright.
I think what ultimately frustrated me about comics was that there were good stories where I’d fall in love with characters, and then they’d keep churning out issues until everything that made me care about them was undermined.
I continue to happily read AG, and I appreciate that I can check in every week or two and you’ve got a few new episodes waiting. It’s comfort food. But if you ever decided to rejigger some of those storylines into a novel or novella or something, that would be cool too.
There’s a lot of interesting history in places like New Orleans that got traded between colonial powers like Pokémon cards. Pretty sure the colonial French and Spanish are free game. Or maybe something about the Dust Bowl. There’s got to be some dark magic behind that. The Coal Wars seem like they’d be a great opportunity for bad wizards too.
Much like TV shows that get cancelled before they have a chance to get crappy I’ve come to appreciate comics that only got short runs
One way around the healing problem could be to just give her a magical injury that can’t be fixed. Or maybe it can, but only with the kind of nasty magic that she doesn’t want to do…