Okay. Let’s talk very briefly about Kamen Rider.
I’ve been hoping that
some day in the future I could talk at length about the individual installments
I’ve seen -- not only because there’s a lot to love, but there’s a lot to learn
(even from Wizard, which is supposed
to be much-maligned, but for the life of me I can’t understand why). For now, I want to bring attention to W; it’s one of the more popular
installments, and I can see why. Said
reason is independent of the fact that the titular Rider is composed of two
detectives’ minds in one body fighting simultaneously…though that doesn’t hurt.
Anyway, one advantage
that W has over the installments I’ve
seen is that its setting, Futo, has a much bigger presence in the show than the
others. To be fair I don’t know much
about where the shows are filmed (in Japan, derp de doo), but W goes out of its way to give Futo a
character of its own. It’s “the windy
city”, as named in the opening theme, and it’s full of pinwheels, windmills,
and wind-themed accessories. The heroes
and villains alike concern themselves deeply with it, and want to protect it,
or enhance it, or even transform it (using what is effectively a drug that
turns people into monsters -- contained in mystic USB drives!). The people of the city have a special
relationship with it, even if they have to acknowledge its faults. You should expect no less, given that one of
the main themes -- in terms of writing and in music -- is “Nobody’s
Perfect”.
W wouldn’t be what it is without Futo. And if I want to even begin to rival it, I
have to do the same.
I’d like to think that
there isn’t a single person out there who knows my weaknesses as a writer than
me -- although I’d assume that that won’t be the case the very second someone sits down with something
I wrote. Self-deprecation aside, one of
the things I’ve struggled with historically is making the setting come to
life. There have been many times when I
pretty much didn’t even bother with the setting -- describing it, or even
thinking about it -- to the point where I imagine I left some readers imagining
a blank void instead of anything even remotely telling. Incidentally, this is something that’s been
reflected in my drawings for ages.
Characters? I can do that well
enough by now. Backgrounds? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect that a
finger-painting kindergartener could beat me.
Even now, settings are
a sore point for me. I think I’ve
reached a point where I can handle describing them a bit better, if only
because past experiences have driven me to hyper-compensate. Call it paranoia; I always have to ask myself
“Did I render this scene enough? Are
people going to know where these characters are?” So it’s forced me to think of ways to set and
set up a scene, and try ti figure out the placement of each character within
it, in most cases. There’s something
vaguely mechanical about the way I do things, in the sense that I go “Okay, add
three big details and work your way out from there”, but a system is better than no system.
The problem is that the
system was -- and may still be -- full of holes.
I can render a scene in
some pretty grave detail. And that’s
cool. That’s something I have some skill
in. But the problem is that I suspect in
D.O.X. -- and doubly so for its
predecessor, Dead Over Two -- those
scenes were exactly that. Scenes. They didn’t come together as a cohesive unit;
they were parts of a whole, but those parts had verifiable canyons between
them. Individually they might have
worked, but they didn’t offer anything remotely close to what Futo -- to a good
setting -- can offer: that cumulative effect created by a unified vision. The people, the designs, the aesthetics, all
of it -- all of it was too scattershot and ill-conceived to offer up anything
of use. Not for what I needed. Not for what I wanted.
Part of the problem
might because the story is more or less an urban fantasy (which I’d assume has
a negative context in some circles, but let’s leave that aside for now). Being based in the present-day world, there’s
only so much you can do with the basic framework. You can’t exactly make Middle-Earth and pass
it off as, say, Bismarck, North Dakota.
That much is obvious. The
expectation is that working with a present-day setting makes it easier on the
writer, because there’s no need to spend time explaining the mechanics of a
world that’s ostensibly ours. Or coming
up with them, for that matter.
But I’m starting to
think that the opposite is true, at least in my case. Sure, I might not have had to come up with
things like new geographical settings or new races to fill new cities, but I
took for granted the process of making an impactful setting. There are likely a hundred different nuances
between a city in the east and a city in the west, and probably more. Even if that’s not the case -- or not too
perceivable in the context of a single story set in a single location -- a
setting needs to have a character in its own right. And I botched that with the original versions
of the story. I duct-taped the setting’s
mouth shut by my own incompetence.
There’s a difference
between describing a setting and realizing it.
I’m starting to understand that now, more so than I ever have
before. How does one go about realizing
a setting? That’s not exactly an easy
question to answer, given that the response may vary from person to
person. But it’s something that has to
be done, or at least should be done for a stronger effect. With that in mind, you might be wondering:
what’s my answer? Have I taken any
strides to make V3 the best yet, and something worthy of others’ time? I don’t know that for sure, and I probably
won’t for a while yet. Not until I can
look back on everything I wrote with a smile.
But in the
meantime? I’m feeling a lot better. Because it all started with the air.
Compared to V1 or V2 (Dead over Two and D.O.X. respectively, in case you missed it), V3 is a distinctly
sadder story. Not all doom and gloom,
mind, but if I’ve done it justice, I’ve managed to add in a sense of
melancholy. Part of that is because of
some of the new themes and mindsets; some of the key phrases are “broken
dreams” and “leaving it all behind” -- and beyond that, there’s still the
ever-weighty concept of death weaved into the story. Not exactly sunny concepts…and that’s exactly
why at the start of V3, the weather is positively icky. Cloudy, a little chilly, and full of
scattered showers. Depressing stuff,
to be sure, in case there are any climate-sensitive folks reading this.
And it goes further
than that. There’s a sense of decay to
most of the sights -- disrepair, or abandoned areas, or just the steely urban
trappings being less than inviting (has a chain link fence ever warmed up someone’s heart?).
There’s a sense of isolation, and maybe a bit of futility; downcast
citizens stroll through the rain, hoping to make it to their next destination
for some sense of solace. Youths gather
in urban sprawls and laugh the days away, abandoning their suburban homes for a
chance to have some fun and brighten up their dreary, boring days. Trolleys carry townsfolk from one end of the
city to another, past weathered and unvisited landmarks in dire need of
attention. It’s a world that hasn’t lost
its hope, but it’s got no reason to celebrate it, either. The most its citizens can do is try to cling
to individual happiness, however briefly -- and let their problems resolve
themselves. Even though they know they
won’t.
…Well, I’ll give myself
one bit of praise: I can at least hype things up fairly well.
But those are all
conceptual things -- potential that may or may not go fulfilled. So let’s switch gears and talk about
something a bit more concrete. For
example, what exactly is the plot of this story?
Let’s get to it, then. New Line City (once called New Rock City in
V2) is being plagued by all sorts of weird incidents. Buildings start collapsing, people start
getting more violent, and numbers and tombstones pop up almost at random. In order to stem the tide, local smart-ass
Arc Siegel -- someone who’s been seeing people die in his dreams for weeks --
takes it upon himself to try and sort it all out, alongside his pretty little
partner Kaylee Hazlett. But almost from
minute one, things start spiraling out of hand with the emergence of spatial
distortions, sudden mutations by the populace, and the emergence of
ghosts. Despite getting deeper and
deeper into the mystery, New Line just keeps getting worse and worse -- to the
point where it looks like everyone in it has to face the inevitable.
There are a lot of
details I’m leaving out (for obvious reasons), and what I’ve described here just
barely dips into the third day of…well, I don’t know how many days there are
going to be when all’s said and done, but there’ll be plenty. I’ll get into some of the finer points on a
later date -- like the villain, for one -- but for now I want to talk about one
of the most important aspects of the story.
See, it’s true that you can expect ghosts to pop up and start wreaking
havoc, and plenty of other creepy-crawlies get thrown into the mix. But there’s an aspect to the story -- across
all three versions -- that’s a threat bigger than any ghost.
The word of the day
here is corruption.
Here’s how it
works. In the context of this story,
everything -- living or not -- is made out of numbers. They’re the end result of metaphysical
coding, which can influence and be influenced by internal as well as external
factors. The tradeoff, then, is that the
code can be interfered with by negative stimuli. In the case of the average human, physical or
mental stress can lead to their code getting distorted, and as a result their
very beings can be distorted into new and often less-than-pleasant forms. That’s the corruption in a nutshell.
Carried regularly in
what’s known as the Black Vertex, it weaves its way into people, preying on
their weaknesses, desires, and moments of vulnerability to transform them. In some cases? It’ll kill them outright, or at least make it
that much easier. In others, it’ll turn
them into creepy-crawlies; plenty turn into the rank-and-file beasts plaguing
New Line (and helping to spread corruption), but others get turned into even
more powerful singular units -- enemy aces, as it were. But in general, there’s one common result of
the corruption: insanity. If you let
that in, you risk losing your mind.
Granted there are different degrees of corruption, but allowing even a
little of it is like begging for the worst-case scenario.
It’s probably worth
mentioning, then, that every member of the main cast gets corrupted.
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But like I said, there
are different degrees of corruption; it’s not an instant failure state, and
it’s more than possible to proceed normally despite it. The same goes for everyone in New Line City;
everyone in it is corrupted just by being there, but they don’t go insane just
because they get a little dirty. But
once the pressure starts building for these people -- from within or without --
then things start getting hairy. Hearing
voices is not a very good sign (though when is it ever?), and from then on it
only gets worse. How the core eight
characters respond to the corruption is a notable aspect to the story. Can they hold on to themselves in a world
going mad? Will they give in to the
Black Vertex, and let themselves be corrupted?
How long can they hold out? Can
they come together despite their blooming madness to save the city, and the
world at large?
It might be a little
cringe-inducing to know that this story has “the world’s at stake!” as an
angle, given that you could say the same about every other story ever
made. But there’s a trick to this one,
however slight. Remember, in the context
of this story everything has that
coding inside of it. That means that
everything can become corrupted, up to and including the city itself. It creates a vicious cycle; because the
city’s corrupted, the people can become corrupted. And because the people are corrupted, they
end up corrupting the city right back. The
city transforms in kind, and promotes the spread of nightmarish creatures and
spatial distortions -- and in turn, the people get stressed, fall prey to
corruption, and become an even bigger part of the problem.
It’s worth noting that
in V1 and V2, the problem was isolated in the single city. In V3, however, it’s implied that something
similar is happening all over. New Line
City just gets the worst of it -- and that’s all it takes to ensure the rise of
hell on earth. Said rise doesn’t even
take a week.
Simply put, Arc and the
others aren’t trying to save the world.
They’re trying to take it back.
Probably not like that,
though.
Going back to story
mechanics, the thing that bothers me in retrospect about V1/V2 is that bad
stuff happened to the city, but there wasn’t really a united aesthetic. Chalk it up to revision after revision, but
things just sort of happened the way they did because they looked cool at that
moment, or that scene. Sure, it might
have looked cool to a reader, and to be fair it WAS because of corruption (and
you can’t expect that to create anything but random events), but I’m not
satisfied with the way the earlier versions played things out.
Most of it played out
over the course of a single day, but things went from bad to worse pretty
quickly regardless. The problem was that
there was a random element to each change; it was if the setting was saying
“Hey, look at me! I’m nutty! Whoops, scene change! I look like this now! And now I’m this! Aren’t I crazy?!” It worked, but it could have synced up a lot
better with the core ideas behind the story.
With V3, those changes
are still there (though I haven’t worked out how I’m going to show every
change), but they’re orbiting more closely around a central theme: numbers. There was a reason it used to be called Dead over
Two -- because there was a major mathematical motif running through it
-- chiefly because A) the main character was effectively half-dead, and B) the
number two popped up in a number of ways throughout. V3 reinforces the numbers and their effect
and presence, from characters to concepts, all the way to the city’s
transformation.
The numbers are the
undercurrent, the foundation of the world; seeing them flicker and move is
something worth marveling over, but they’re also a sign that something’s gone
wrong -- in the same sense that seeing the insides of a finished house never says
good things about what’s gone on inside them.
But damned if they’re not cool to look at; there are numbers forming
leaping helixes, parallel lines making auroras, and polygons waving their way
across streets. At the moment, there’s a
certain level of cleanliness that V1/V2 didn’t have, and I like where things
are going right now. Since I have
something to revolve around, it’s not so much about writing whatever pops into
my head; it’s about acting on the groundwork that’s already been laid, and
moving in accordance with -- or beyond -- expectations.
I...I'm not even going to pretend like there's context for this. I just think it's hilariously awesome.
So here’s the tl;dr
version: I wasn’t in a good place with the setting -- in this, or anything else
-- but I think I’m several steps higher than I used to be. I took a lot of stuff for granted, but once I
started considering the possibilities, I found an element that’s just as vital
as any given character. Maybe more. Granted I still have a lot more work ahead of
me, but I’m in a position where I can at least begin to understand what can be
done with a setting, and make it a part of the story instead of just a point on
a checklist. Will it pay off in the
end? It just might. But if nothing else, I’ve managed to level up
my game -- and I intend to level up even more.
So that’ll just about
do it for this installment. And good
thing, too -- I’m starting to feel a bit more optimistic about my efforts. So I suppose I’m at a point where I can
switch back to talking about the characters…namely, a pair of troublemakers
that just might put Arc and Kaylee on blast.
So tune in next time. Or
not. I can tell you right now that the
next post is going to have someone improbably buxom in it -- and as such, the
story is completely invalidated by way of being completely sexist and
objectifying women. And I deserve to
have my head rammed onto a pike.
Or -- and hear me out
on this -- maybe she’ll be a good character because of what she says and does,
not just because of the way she looks. You know, the way it should be.
Naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.
There’s no way that could ever happen, right, internet?
...
Shotaro! Philip! Play me out!
Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss.
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