Oblimog

Truth is fiction

2008-05-04T18:11:00.000-07:00

Holy crap, it's been a while. I'm going to try and use twitter to give people a better sense of WTF is up with Novilunium and related projects. But first: This, this is just odd:

It's a pudding pack! Let's open it up...

Um. Hm. Maybe we shouldn't go there...

Nope. They went there. Thank you, Japan. I love you too.

(Source: rukz.com via popgive.com.)

Making a Meliae, Part I

2007-09-27T16:49:00.000-07:00

The first rule in making a meliae is: there are no rules for making meliae.

Really. The "rules" I tried to follow were the rules of narrative: what makes a story (conflict), what makes a story interesting (main characters the reader can identify with), what makes a story kinky (not the orgasm, but what comes before, nudge nudge wink wink). The exposition Tomoe spouted came from the story I wanted to tell. Dee's journey, Galatea's confrontation with her own inner child, Black Cherry realizing what she really wants, Ursula finding her other half, Yves' saving the world by becoming a killer--all that came first when brainstorming the story, the rules for how meliae "worked" came afterward. And Dee and Galatea just kept coming no matter what I put in their way.

The rules of meliae-making in IAT were setup to create kinky relationships, kinky conflicts, and kinky romances between characters. That's why, when readers ask me what a particular flavors of meliae would be like, my first questions are always: what do the meliae-makers want? Or, even better, what do the makers think they want, and what do the makers secretly want?

I meant IAT to be a morality play in the vein of the Monkey's Paw, Creepshow, Tales from the Crypt, or Twilight Zone (just with more explicit sex)--meliae makers get the meliae they deserve, their just desserts. Now, the morals of the IAT universe are, naturally, skewed. After all, what did Dee do to deserve all the incredible things that happen to him? What prompts him to go to SRU in the first place: he wanted to write fetish smut for his friends.

Sounds like fanfic wish fulfillment character, aka, a Mary Sue, right? Well, he ain't my Mary Sue, because when I wish, I wish big. Dee, Yves, and Ursula together are my Mary Sue. I took separate aspects of my personality and built characters around them. This is what every author does for every character in every story they ever write. If you can't find a Mary Sue character in a story, that just means the author was good at dividing himself or herself up between various protagonists. Galatea can split up, Dee can change his mind, but Black Cherry cannot do either. Black Cherry cannot switch personae. She only has one, and it's Mary Sue. But she's not the best, most important, most caring, or most desired person in the story. So Black Cherry is a Mary Sue denied her Mary-Sue-dom: bat-shit insane.

Now this is what I call feedback

2007-09-22T16:08:00.000-07:00

In the August issue of Ultimate X-Men, it was revealed that Ultimate Phoenix is a Sunny D meliae. Either that, or Robert Kirkman and I snack from the same basket of archetypes. I suspect the latter, but I'm delighted by the possibility of the former. See for yourself and let me know!

Show vs. Tell

2007-09-17T18:35:00.000-07:00

"Show, don't tell," is the hoariest piece of writing advice around, but I stick to it as much as I can ("sticktoitiveness" is a legit word, can you believe it?), and I think it's helped me a lot.

So just what is it you are supposed to show instead of tell? Everything.

Tell: He sat on a rickety chair.
Show: His chair wobbled and creaked.

Tell: Alice hated her husband Bob and wanted a divorce.
Show: "Fuck you, Bob." Alice twisted the gold band off her finger and hurled it out the window. "Fuck you!"

Tell: "What was that?" he asked nervously.
Show: He flinched. "What the hell was that?"

Duo Dymanics

2007-09-15T11:18:00.000-07:00

The true meaning of love is teaming up to fight crime. Everything else, as the Talmud says, is commentary.

If you ever find yourself questioning the status of a relationship ("Where do we go from here?" "Is s/he the one?" "Is this love or lust?"), try this little test: imagine you and your partner taking on Doctor Doom. Can you imagine teaming up to defeat him? Or does your imagination turn to you rescuing your partner from evil's clutches, or vice versa, or (the very worst) you sacrificing yourself to save your partner from a fate worse than death?

In the terms of fan fiction: If you and your partner together fulfill all the requirements of a Mary Sue, congratulations—it's true love!

Mrs. Oblimo puts it this way: If you want to write a believable romance, your romantic leads must share a problem in common. Sharing a problem in common is a required catalyst of romantic chemistry between two characters. It's not sufficient for romantic chemistry, but it is necessary. In other words, a shared problem in common isn't always enough to create believable romance between two characters, but it needs to be there, or the reader won't buy into the pairing. The corollary: the best way to write a believable break-up is to remove a shared problem in common between two characters.

The phrase "shared problem in common" may sound redundant, but it isn't meant to be. If I lose my wallet and you help me find it, we share a problem. If we've both lost our wallets, we have a problem in common. But if both of our wallets were stolen by the same pickpocket, we've got a shared problem in common. And if the pickpocket sells our wallets to Doctor Doom, who, through a masterful identity theft, frames us for killing the Hulk's Chihuahua, we've got ourselves an early-1990s Sandra Bullocky romantic comedy/action vehicle, starring us.

But I get to be early-1990s Bullock, 'kay?

Ursula's Nyx-Boots

2006-12-09T14:38:00.000-08:00

In case anyone is wondering, this is what Ursula's Nyx-Boots will look like in the next update, except they keep going up her legs and don't stop until they reach her neck, of course. No, I don't have a collection of fetish wear images on my hard drive, but, yes, I do Google around the stranger clothing stores on the web when I'm looking for inspiration about what characters wear. It takes a surprising amount of time that I could spend just writing, but then the story would not contain details like "wrap-around Onasis sunglasses" and "go-go boots" with thick but tall heels. You'd just get "shiny black boots." And that's terrible.