Ulterior Motives gets Krispy Weak in the Knees

Villains/Antagonist issues. We're having them. Maybe Alz isn't having them, but I am. To put it simply, I'm not too keen on our bad boys, and that is a problem. For me to get any real meat out of them, I need to feel something about them and I'm hovering around indifferent. So in an attempt to figure out what it is about our antags that is making me give them the brush off, I've been thinking about the antags that I do like and what it is that makes me go ga-ga over their shady, shady ways. Brace yourselves, this may be a long post.

First problem, I don't like a lot of villains. What can I say? I'm a sucker for the Good Fight, though I also do like inflicting pain... *Ahem* Most bad guys are just not that interesting to me (though there are always exceptions), and when I do like antagonists it's usually based, at least at first, on some quality that I suddenly and inexplicably latch on to and become wholly fangirlishly obsessed with. Usually this "random quality" is the shallow one of being drop dead gorgeous (this pertains mostly to the visual medium). Or shiny. Or BOTH. Another prerequisite is that they are usually quite capable somehow of pwning you dead. There's a sense of power there, a sort of lofty arrogance. I think the key, though, for the ones I'm really head-over-heels over is shadiness. Ulterior motives coupled with one or all of the aforementioned qualities and I'm enlisting in that Dark Army.

Let's take a look at a few of them. These are all going to be ani/manga references because I can't for the life of me think of a book antagonist/villain who does anything for me. I can't even think of one that I really hated, which means I should maybe read more? :/

*Um, SPOILERS up the wazzu--though I'll try to keep it vague/general--for Code Geass, Loveless, Death Note and Bleach to follow.*



Schneizel El Britannia (Series - Code Geass: Lelouch of the Rebellion, R2)

2nd Prince of Britannia, and all he's really guilty of is looking kinda evil. Early in the first season, he is set-up to be an antagonist when he is mentioned as knowing something about the MC's mother's assassination. Then for the rest of Season 1, he's not much more than someone who's connected to characters in play. He doesn't physically show up until the last third of the season, and when he does, he's, well, very princely. He's courteous, charming, and not only looks nice but actually IS nice to everyone, including his subordinates. He doesn't look smirky or otherwise nefarious the way he kind of does in his brief appearance in the opening. Yet, his actions, while not outright suspect, indicate much calculation and manipulation. More hints are also dropped about his dealings, and we're reminded that he is the only person from our MC's past who ever beat the MC in a game of strategy. This continues to build the expectation that he will eventually challenge the MC in some huge, plot-turning showdown of doom (though not Doom because Schneizel is NOT the main antagonist).

But see, everything is hearsay, speculation, and rumor. While he may have manipulated a few events, he manipulated them all towards the good of his country with minimal bloodshed, and did I mention he's ridiculously nice to like everyone? He's every bit the competent and dutiful prince, except with this undercurrent of his being up to something. It's this "what is he up to?" question that has me obsessed with this guy. His motivation and his true intentions/goals are as of yet still unclear.

Really though, his actions in the series wouldn't seem half as shady if he didn't also look kind of evil/shady to begin with. Thanks opening credit animation for preemptively biasing me! Alz has suggested that perhaps we're horrible people for expecting the worst of him simply because he looks it. Come on though, no one this good-looking is that nice without ulterior motives! Either way, I support the Rebellion, but Schneizel has me considering switching sides.

Seimei Aoyagi aka Beloved (Series - Loveless)

I actually wasn't interested in him much until recently--that is, until I reached a point in the series where it became very clear that he was one big Antagonist, if not The Big Bad of the series. The start of Loveless is focused on the MC (Ritsuka) and his introduction to the Sacrifice-Fighter dyad world Seimei belonged to. Character and plot developments all more or less tie into the mystery of Seimei's murder, and so for the first volumes, Seimei was little more than a plot and character development point for me (though a pretty one). Plus, all we learn of Seimei at first is that he was murdered, he was kind and deeply loved his little bro (the MC), and his dyad, Team Beloved, was reputedly unbeatable.

Flash forward some chapters/volumes and Seimei has me by the throat and wholly fascinated. He emerges out of background character status to Lead Villain. Hints get dropped about his having abusive, sadistic, and neurotic tendencies. Where the MC only knew him as a kind, protective, and affectionate older brother, others knew Seimei as cruel, merciless, and destructive. He was close to no one, and as Ritsuka (as well as the readers) begins trying to reconcile Seimei's two vastly different personalities (gentle and kind brother vs. sadistic and cold Sacrifice), surprise! Seimei turns out to be very much alive and up to no good.

His motivations and intentions are murky. He retains a strong attachment to the MC, saying that Ritsuka is the only person he truly loves and cares for. It makes for a pretty twisted relationship since Seimei is of the mind that "you hurt the ones you love most" and is bent on testing Ritsuka's love for him, but that appears to be only part of it. There's something bigger afoot that has yet to be revealed. Shady, right?

And he is still really pretty, and it was in fact a rather pretty panel of him that re-caught my attention. Then, he had me and it was over. With a name like Beloved, Seimei just commands and demands love and despair.

*
Still, this sort of thing isn't hard and fast. In a recent discussion with Alz while I was in the midst of writing this post, I considered a few other antagonists, who by the above mentioned qualities should totally float my fangirl boat but they don't. Here's one.
*

Light Yagami (Series - Death Note)

Actually, quite a fascinating "villain," Light is the boy genius MC of the series. The series is a psychological thriller (with a touch of the supernatural) where Light gets his hands on a Death Note (a notebook which kills the human whose name is written in it) and decides to use his newfound power to create a better world. What makes Light an interesting character is that his intentions are good, but power and his drive towards his goals makes him into the kind of murderer he's trying to rid the world of and corrupts his nature towards ruthlessness. He is aware of this inherent hypocrisy, but he justifies it as a necessary "sacrifice" for the betterment of society. Opposing him is the enigmatic L, the world's greatest detective, and what ensues is a cat-and-mouse chase based on intellect.

Given his qualities, Light seems like the type of bad guy (I can't call him an antag because he's actually the protag!) I would usually go for. He's attractive, charismatic, super smart/competent, and if his huge God complex says anything, he's got that air of confidence/arrogance that I generally like. But he doesn't do it for me. I don't even particularly like him much. I think it's because his intentions and motivations are pretty straightforward. It's also hard to have any attachment-like emotions to him beyond fascination or grudging respect because he becomes so cold. Everything he does is calculated; even when people he cares about are involved (i.e. his family), it comes down to a cost-benefit analysis of the situation. He loses his humanity, and while he's fun to watch, he's hard to love.

I will say that I was rooting for him half the time, but with the series centered on him, I couldn't really help but cheer him on, at least a bit. In fact, there are a bunch of people who want him to win out along with the bunch of people who want him to fail. Even then, it's not so much that I want Light to fail, it was more that I want L (antagonist but probably who we would call the "good guy") to win. And L, by the way, is not at all typical of the kinds of ani/manga characters I adore. He's blunt, socially awkward, weird, and while not "ugly," he's kinda strange lookin. It's all these quirks, plus his considerable ability that make him lovable, even if he too is about as emotionally distant as Light is.

Aizen Sousuke (Series - Bleach)

I was always sort of ambivalent towards him, and he (like Seimei) became more interesting once he showed his true colors. While his fans will claim he got hotter after going to the Dark Side, I'm not fond of the new look (mostly the hair). In any case, he was always a good looking-ish guy, becoming more good looking as the series continued because the mangaka's style has changed some. In more recent chapters, in flashbacks when he has his pre-Dark Side appearance but is looking shady or outright evil, I have to say, I'm kinda starting to see the appeal.

He's got more What Makes Krispy Like Antags qualities than Light has because not only is he pretty good looking, smart, competent, and with that air of arrogance, he's also friggin' SHADY. (Light isn't so much because like I said, his motivations are clear and his actions speak straight to his intentions.) Aizen gives this vague, God-complex-like answer as to his motivation. At face value, his answer is about obtaining power, becoming/surpassing the gods--that sort of run-of-the-mill Villain Reason for Being Evil--but Aizen comes across as more complex than that. Also, it's unclear what he wants to do once he's reached his goal (change the system? take over the world? destroy everything and start anew? build sandcastles in the sky?). The extent of his power/skill is also unknown. See, very shady. I don't understand him, much like how I don't really get why Seimei is so twisted.

Despite having the magic combo, Aizen does nothing for me. He does less for me than Light does. He's interesting but not much more. As with Light, I find Aizen distant. Light has the advantage of being the protag of his series, and thus I at least get the intimate details of his thought process and can see his logic; there's a kind of connection. Aizen, on the other hand, remains mysterious, and coupled with my tenuous grasp of his personality (a trait I share with most of the other Bleach characters it seems), he is bafflingly inscrutable rather than intriguingly shady.

*END spoilers*

In conclusion, Alz and I have no idea what we're talking about. When I started this post, I thought I'd figured out the qualities that help me like them. I realize now, at the end of this post and after discussion with Alz, that it's not that simple. We think there's just a certain ineffable characteristic that really gets me weak in the knees. Our current antagonists lack that spark, making it difficult for me to breathe life into them. I can talk motivation and pasts with Alz, but when I don't care, all those details come across as character stats. It's fine for describing the antags in a nutshell, but I have my doubts about how that will hold up written out in depth if I have no feelings for the characters themselves.

Still, this exercise was good for me because it made me realize that I have a thing for people with ulterior motives. This might not be easy to put into our antags here (since I need to actually know what our kiddies are up to in order to write it), but it's something to keep in mind.

Growing Pains

We're alive and working on the story, I swear! It's just that May has been a busy month for both me and Alz, what with the whole graduating from college and all that. ZOMG. May is a month of those pesky final Finals and pomp and circumstance related events such as Commencement and hauling 4 years worth of accumulated stuff (how did I manage to have so much stuff in that small apartment?) from one side of the state back down to the other. Well, the latter pertains mostly to me. (Alz higher educated herself closer to home.)

In any case, that is the real and true reason for the month-long silence here at Nudge -- surprisingly not procrastination and not laziness. Though, I have also been trying to think up something interesting to write about in terms of how our baby is developing, and boy, is the baby developing.

We've gotten to that point in the novel where, well, the shizz is hitting the fan. I don't think I ever realized how hard it is to go out with a bang. It certainly sounds easy and straightforward enough, but it's not. It's incredibly hard to actually plan out the climax. I mean, this is THE Moment--of Truth! if you will--so you kind of have to get it right. There's also that sort of stage fright-like feeling. Now that we are finally there, at this Point of points in the story, I find myself blanking on my lines. So we're here at the pearly gates, but what the frell are we supposed to do?

I'm a little overwhelmed to be honest. There's a lot of action in multiple locations involving multiple characters that needs to be planned out. This includes the issue of transitions between scenes, characters, and even actions by the same characters. I mean, there has to be rhyme and reason when a character goes from operating as a Distraction to purposefully fulfilling his current Goal in Life. There's also a lot of pesky logistics cropping up like emergency evacuation procedures (should have paid more attention during fire drills!), event/location security (what kind, how many, armed/or not and with what?), and the weight-carrying ability of teenagers (how many sacks of potatoes do you think they can drag and can they do it while being pursued by a pack of purple bunnies?).

Oh and Alz mentioned last post that we recently gave one of our characters a crippling fear of snakes, which will now potentially be a Big Problem, considering we're about to head into a section involving a whole mess of serpents (or would that be a tangle of serpents?). Comedic effect, you better be worth the trouble!

Much like most climactic explosion-filled scenes are, things are very confusing and I'm not quite sure what's going on. I'm trying very hard to figure things out on the fly, much like my good friend Pi, who is getting into all sorts of trouble and wondering what she did to deserve it. Keep your fingers crossed for us. I know I am.

P.S. Next time, I try to figure out what my issue with bad guys is. It'll probably be a long post involving a lot of ani/manga people.

Power through!

Krispy said yesterday that she thinks A Nudge is dead and she doesn't know what to post, so I will randomly update on our progress with...random updates on our progress.

So the other week, we decided that we needed more stuff to happen before the Final Showdown. Important details about certain characters needed exposition, other characters needed to actually do things, motivations needed to be clearer, and character development is always good. We'd gotten our outline down to the equivalent of the first stage of Dr. Wily's castle in the old Mega Man games, you know, the beginning of the beginning of the end type of thing. We might have been moving a bit too fast, but there's nothing wrong with that since this is just the outline.

We went back and added a new character who is and was basically a plot device--opening the way for more exposition and development, though, so it's okay, and it's a minor character. I like to think that the way we've incorporated said character into the story makes him better than just some schmoe shoved into the plot to make things happen, but let's say he serves his purpose, complicates things, and furthers the story at the same time, which is a good thing, right?

But adding this single small new role effected quite a few rather large changes. There was, in no particular order, a cosmic showdown in the sky (not the Final one, mind you), angelic interference, lies about engagements and imminent marriage, Time refusing to take sides, a happy anniversary dinner, ascension to Heaven, and revamped kidnappings, to name a few.

After catching up to ourselves and accordingly revising what was left, we've plowed ahead these past few days, hashing out a few names and details and (sadistically) deciding to give a main character ophidiophobia and working out reasons for things happening or not happening. That's part of how we've been operating, too, pointing out reasons why stuff shouldn't or wouldn't happen as much as why stuff shouldn't or wouldn't not be happening, and bam, there's a double negative right there! Hah!

Currently, though, we're in the mid-beginning of the beginning of the end, I think, but even so we still have to go back and add some sections for our antagonists to explain and explore what they've been doing. We kind of got caught up abusing developing our protagonists because such exciting things were happening to them. I suppose we'll just have to have exciting stuff happen to our Big Bad Baddies too--after all, there's always retroactive revision to take care of little things like plot holes, continuity errors, and sudden inexplicable death.

On Animal Group Names

So we all know the standard flock of birds, herd of horses, pack of wolves, etc. And I thought, well, you know, I'm not totally sure what you'd call a bunch of snakes, so I thought I'd look it up, and ended up wasting too much time reading lists of animal collective names.

I knew of a murder of crows, of course, because it sounds dramatic and particularly badass when you're a thirteen-year-old goth-girl writing your first fanfic. (I wasn't thirteen when I wrote my first fanfic and I'm not and never was a goth, but that doesn't mean I'm above throwing around stereotypes and mocking all the thirteen-year-old goth-girls out there. I never said I was nice. And incidentally, Word 2003 counts "badass" as a real word. That's cool.) I'd also heard of the corresponding unkindess of ravens. Apparently a bunch of crows can also be called a horde of crows or a parcel of crows, but those just lack the panache of "murder of crows". I mean, come on, a parcel of crows? That makes me think of brown paper packages tied up with strings, which makes me think of The Sound of Music and that's not very conducive to writing things full of emo angst and melodramatic lovelorn gothiness.


Some animals get far more than their fair share of alternative group names. The websites I perused all agreed that dolphins are but a pod, while peacocks are variously described as being a party, a pride, a muster, or an ostentation. I guess I’m not that surprised considering that peacocks are showy little bastards in the first place and so it figures that they'd have a bunch of names for themselves. Foxes also get several names, gathering into a leash, an earth, a lead, a skulk, or a troop.

The names often emphasize a particular animal's symbolism in society, such as say a pitying of doves or piteousness of turtledoves (doves can also gather into an arc, a dule, or a flight), or a business of ferrets, or a pride of lions. (Took me a while back when Lion King II: Simba's Pride came out to realize the pun inherent in its title. I never said I was fast, either.) Larks and skylarks sure get to sound exciting being an exaltation or ascension of larks and exultation of skylarks.

Then there are the names that are moderately more boggling. Take jellyfish, for instance: a smack of jellyfish. Maybe there's some kind of obscure marine biology terminology or slang that explains the inexplicable choice of "smack" for describing a group of jellyfish. Or maybe the name just smacks of weirdness because jellyfish are so damn weird-looking. There's also goldfish—you know what groups of goldfish are called? A glint of goldfish, which is fine by me because goldfish are, after all, shiny—or a troubling of goldfish. Which troubles me because goldfish are the most normal and inoffensive kind of pet fish you can get, except for that spooky fish from the only episode of South Park I've ever seen.

A wreck of seabirds is actually rather fitting, except that would sound terribly ill-omened to me if I were sailor—no wonder the Ancient Mariner shot the albatross. (Though apparently you call a bunch of albatrosses a rookery; there are other birds gather in rookeries too, like penguins, which also gather in colonies, and seals, which are not birds and also gather in pods and herds.)

These group names can be subcategorized too, such as for crocodiles, which become a bask of crocodiles on land and a float of crocodiles in water. Pheasants are a bouquet when flushed into the air, a nide when in brood, and in general form a nest or nye of pheasants. Geese in general form flocks, while in flight they form skeins and on the ground they form gaggles.

See? Distracted—completely sidelined by looking up all these weird animal group names. I totally meant to just mention a few oddities and amusing tidbits and then make a brief post on snakes.

So snakes: In general, a group of snakes can be referred to as a bed, knot, den, nest, or pit of snakes. Then we get to subcategorize again, because vipers form generations, cobras form quivers, and rattlesnakes form rhumbas. Ain't that catchy? I like the alliteration they've got going there.

However, I could not find on these collective-term-lists a name for a bunch of serpents. Undoubtedly this is because these lists were focusing on non-mythological creatures populating the animal kingdom, which is why they didn't list such things as a choir of angels, a quarrel of lawyers, or a glory of unicorns--and anyway, most people would probably just lump snake and serpent together.

I do seem to recall though that serpents in a group are referred to as a tangle. I asked several of my friends (including my dear Krispy) and they all agreed, yes, a tangle of serpents. Some cursory Google searching would seem to indicate that this term derives from the fact that the Greek Medusa has a tangle of serpents upon her head instead of hair; other than that and the fact that if you throw a bunch of serpents together they're probably going to look tangled, well, I don't really know if the term has any more significance or origin than that. Plus, Robin Hobb refers to groups of sea serpents as "tangles" in her Liveship Traders trilogy.

Being that Krispy and I are dealing with cosmic serpents, I believe we have a cosmic tangle on our hands. Or a cosmic bed. Or a cosmic knot, a cosmic den, a cosmic nest, a cosmic pit, a cosmic generation, a cosmic quiver, a or a cosmic rhumba. Things just sound so much more awesome when you add "cosmic" in front of it, don't you think?

Back to work!

So Krispy and I have gotten back to work on our baby. These past couple of days, we've done a bit of work on characters—motivations, appearances, abilities, etc.—and we've also gone back and revised a bit so that things make more sense. Sometimes things just end up being too convenient or coincidental, you know? And you don't realize it until it's been sitting there for a while. We decided the story would be better off if two particular characters didn't really know each other after all; we'd planned them to have a casual sort of yeah-I-know-him/her relationship, which has summarily been reduced to oh-yeah-that-person-I've-seen-him/her-around-before status. This didn't really affect things hugely, but it's just one of those little things that has to be done.

We've also been developing a new character because we decided that there needs to be a Revelation, and this character will be, I guess, a sort of plot device to get this Revelation happening. It seems like it may be an uncharacteristically flashy Revelation, but, well, you know, when you're dealing with divine spirits and demigods and gods and emo punks and suchlike and so on, maybe some flashiness now and again is appropriate. They've got their pride too. Boy, do some of them have pride…

Anyway, this character will also serve to heighten tensions, hint towards the existence of our Big Bad Evil (because Big Bad Evil sounds cooler than Big Bad Antagonist), and generally move things along—less a nudge in the right direction than a signpost by the side of the road.

One of our other antagonists is proving a bit difficult (getting into his head and deciding what he would or wouldn't do, and how he'd act and react and why), but I think we've gotten a good grip on him recently, and have come up with some interesting ideas for our big finale. We still need to sort him out more, but Krispy and I are toodling along quite well once again, I think.

Say No to Author Insertion Fic

Of late, I have been talking to people about books that I read back in the day, which lead me to a topic that, well, kind of drives me up the wall. Call it literary snobbery or even jealousy, but I hate Author Insertion in fiction--probably more than I hate Mary Sue. You could probably put Author Insertion as a subcategory of Mary Sue, which only makes me hate it more, but there you have it.

Let me backtrack and explain exactly what I mean. A Mary Sue in fandom is usually an original character, who is then inserted into whatever fandom and inexplicably loved and adored by all who gaze upon her lovely visage, but especially by the Big Players of the borrowed world. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "inexplicably" because sometimes the writer does bother to explain just why Mary Sue is so awesome, but when you read it, it sure feels like it's inexplicable. Sometimes it's just bad characterization and development: you're told that Mary is beautiful, that Mary is kind, that Mary is to be pitied to be loved, that she is noble, funny, athletic, etc. etc. ad nauseum. You never really see the evidence to back this up or all the evidence is dumped on you suddenly like being ambushed at the Prom with a bucket of pig's blood.

From the description, you can see that Mary Sue also exists in the realm of original fiction. She (or he, though I'm not sure what the term would be here) may be slightly more difficult to identify because you might not have the tell-tale sign of Main Characters falling all over themselves over her (or him), but she's still lurking around.

This brings us finally to my main point: author insertion in fanfiction and in original fiction, but especially in published original fiction. I'm not talking about writers having a distinctive voice or putting a little bit of themselves in their characters (I mean, they are putting themselves in the character's shoes or becoming the characters in some cases). I'm also not necessarily talking about writers who put a fictionalized version of themselves into a story in order to do some kind of literary soul-searching. I'm talking about a specific kind of author insertion--the Mary Sue kind, where the character in the story isn't just based off of the writer; the character IS the writer albeit very thinly disguised.


It's annoying enough to see this is fanfiction, but it drives me up the wall to see it in published fiction. Why? Because it's being inflicted on the paying public and these people should know/write better than that. Let me give you a general example to avoid singling out anyone and no names of course because I don't kiss and tell. Also, I realize everyone has done things that are/could be embarrassing, and I'd certainly appreciate it if people didn't bring up my transgressions. So I'm going to be discreet.

Main Character of the novel seems to be very much like the writer. S/he shares the same likes and dislikes as the actual writer, looks like the writer (except possibly fictionally airbrushed), shares very similar background history to the writer, and/or has the personality/habits/quirks of the writer. Yeah, yeah, writers may do a bit of superficial matching up of the MC to him/herself to help them get a better grasp on the character, but there's a line that once crossed, I--as the reader--can no longer suspend my disbelief that these similarities are just superficial. Now, I can appreciate a tongue-in-cheek joke like a reference to something the writer did in real life or maybe the MC's favorite book is something the writer's published. It's another thing when the MC does everything the writer's done with the addition of having the zomg-awesome luck of being in the world of the writer's books. The MC is the writer living the dream, having adventure, and hooking the hot Romantic Lead.

Sure we all are guilty of vanity, and hey, who doesn't want to take a romp in the world they've so lovingly created? But does the public have to be subjected to this bit of vanity press?

Joyriding through a new world with the writer at the wheel is great; I mean, that's what we do as readers. We go along with the characters for what is often the ride of their lives, but I don't want to watch the writer go joyriding off on his/her own. It's one thing to invite me into the fantasy. It's another to make me sit and watch you indulge in your own fantasy and go romping off into the sunset with your One True Love.

I don't appreciate being left in the dust.

Pros of Collaboration 2: The Sequel Post

As Krispy noted previously, we have slowed down a bit. I too place the blame on midterms and the tantalizing approach of Spring Break, though a recent negative reason for the lack of productivity is my potentially ill computer (not virus-ill but hard-drive-making-disturbing-hacksaw-noises-ill) because, as noted previously, we do 98.5% of our plotting via instant messaging and I've had limited internet access these past couple of days.

However, a slowdown in our mad headlong rush towards our novel is not necessarily a bad thing. It provides time to look back over what we've planned and spot plot-holes and inconsistencies. Also, since we have gotten around to some more substantial world-creation, building things from the ground up, and now we have time to explore what we've created and work out some of the finer kinks and details. We get to add to and refine our cast of characters, work on the little details that will show their personalities and motivations, and give them their little quirks and mannerisms that will hopefully make them unique and noteworthy instead of being cardboard cutouts. For this, they need to have backgrounds and reasons for doing things, which are of course not at all mutually exclusive.

Like angst. I abuse the term generally and broadly, but we decided that one character needed a better reason to stick around than the vague one we'd started out with, and so want of reason led to want of angst, and want of angst led to suffering. Things were going just too easy, you know, and we can't have that. (This is frequently how it works when I'm writing solo: I'll decide that things are going just too jolly well for said characters, so it's time to complicate matters and beat them up and add a judicious touch of betrayal, maybe a sprinkle of angst, a dash of guilt or shame, suffering and self-recrimination. Character development calls for a complicated recipe unique to every character, after all.)


Krispy, I believe, is far too disparaging of herself in the previous post. She's a great one for those little details that make our characters into people, and for keeping things reasonably realistic. Like, you know, I'm all for great plot twists and drama-llamas galore and maaaad ideas, and I know that sometimes I get a little too excited (particularly when the sugar-and-caffeine-highs hit late at night) and start blurting out random crazy things, and Krispy is like my combination psych and muse, able to sift through this barrage of semi-lucid images and semi-idiotic plot devices and pan the gold from the gravel. (Not that there's a lot of gold, or even gold every time. Would that there were.) And from these raw nuggets of inspiration and even from these coarser granules of stupidity, she's able to dredge further ideas that are usually great and sometimes brilliant. Pulling a diamond from a pile of pebbles? That's my Krispy.

Our general plan so far has been to just plow through the general story and get that basic outline finished, after which we'll go back and flesh out further and revise and edit and eviscerate and adjust and add all our bells and whistles, our stripes and spots, our fangs and claws, our laser-vision and fireballs, and generally polish it up just fine and dandy, spruce and dashing, and then get down to the actual business of writing it out. We're constantly editing and revising as we go along, too, going back and adding key scenes and inserting new characters. And our antagonists do need quite a bit of rounding out, some spit and elbow grease, polish and varnish and lacquer until they're shining examples of—you know what? I don’t even remember the metaphor I was going for right there. Oh well.

Like Krispy, I have no frelling idea how we're going to go about the writing. I suppose one way to do it would be to split up points of view and scenes and split the characters between us, in which case the difference of voice could be used to an advantage, though that does seem rather limiting as I think there are characters and scenes we'd both like to write. Or we could actually write it together a piece at a time, sending bits back and forth, which seems terribly cumbersome and like it would take forever and a day. Or we could do as we've done in the past and simply write segments and take up where the other leaves off. Or we could do a combination of these things, or work out something new. No idea at this point.

(Krispy, by the way, exaggerates my huge vocabulary, because I'm pretty sure I don't use hugely impressive-sounding and gobbledygookish words in my normal writing. I only toss around words like "defamiliarization" , "dystrophic", and "thalassocracy" in analytic papers in a vain attempt to sound all smartful. And because my professors said to remember them because they were cocktail-party words with which to impress slightly drunken people. And then tell Krispy these big huge words I learned, from which she receives her false impression.)

I fear matching my writing to Krispy's marvelous voice for beauty. Seriously, there are times when she writes and what comes out is as much poetry as prose, be it drama or dialogue. Because, see, when I say "beauty" I don't mean just pretty images, but, like, beautiful prose. Not purple prose, not melodrama, but just quite frankly beautiful writing.

I guess we'll just have to do our best to live up to each other's legacy, Krisp.