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 |  A hub for the "Book of Masks" universe. |
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The Interactives "The Book of Masks"  : A high school student discovers a grimoire that can make magical disguises."The Wandering Stars" : Sequel to "The Book of Masks.""Student Bodies" : A high school student is turned into a blue goo that can possess people.For non-WdC Members "The Book of Masks: Archives" : Dodges the "Servers Busy" barrier!"The Book of Masks (Abridged)" : Introductory storylines for new readers.Community "BoM/TWS Message Forum" : Community for readers of the interactives."BoM/TWS/SB Wiki" : Notes and documentation for authors. Spoilers!Current Polls None The Latest 4/24: Interactive: "Four in the Dark" 4/24: Public: "Four in the Dark"
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| No "Spider-Man" update today. I do have treatments, but this is the day I would have published "Mark of the Jackal" if I hadn't published it early. I have updated the terms of my "Commission Contract" . Yes, I've raised my rates considerably, because the WdC gift points just aren't worth that much to me. On the other hand, I've also added a condition that allows you to pay me with an Amazon Gift Card instead, and my Amazon rate is much less than my WdC rate, though it is still a little higher than what I had been charging in WdC currency. |
| Show notes for "S01E08 "How to Rise Above It All"" : This is actually a Season Two episode, moved up and tweaked to make it fit. As with yesterday's outline, there's one major change to the villain, and one minor change to a supporting character. In the IRL episode, the Vulture starts by trying to take down the Wake Riders, but at the end of it they flatter him into joining the gang as their leader. I thought this was a cheap way of pulling down a character who had little reason to fall and who was very sympathetic up until that point, so I changed it. Also in the IRL episode, Miles is already a second Spider-Man and partners with Peter, so for this one his knowledge and interest in the situation had to be reoriented. And with today's entry, we hook up to the "preview" treatment ("S01E09 "Mark of the Jackal"" ) that I posted awhile back.* I worked pretty hard yesterday at a new treatment, but I only got it outlined, and even then I'm not certain I've got it nailed down. I was bothered throughout by the sense that the plot was turning into just a lot of hoop-jumping: Peter has to go here, so let's invent a crisis for him; now he has to go over there, so let's invent a new crisis for him. It all felt arbitrary. I worry that it is still arbitrary and hoop-jumpy, and I spent the day fighting toward a deeper understanding of what Peter wanted and needed in the story. I also had to shake free of a belief about writing that was starting to harden into a prejudice, to wit: In any scene, you should be able to identify what a character wants and why he wants it, and his desire should be for something concrete and specific: for a particular jewel or armored shipment of cash, say, and not just for "money"; for the love of a particular girl and not just for "a girlfriend." So I have spent the last two days fighting in the trenches, trying to figure out which particular person Spider-Man had to fight, and for why and when, trying to nail down the specifics. And that, I eventually realized, was why it felt like so much hoop-jumping. I was giving him a reason to jump through a particular hoop, but there was no reason for him to go "hoop jumping" in general. So I backed up and figured out what kind of psychic itch he was scratching by doing what felt like a lot of busy work. That's something for me to remember from now on: the character needs both specific motives and a general motive that is realized by the specific motives. |
| Show notes on today's treatment: "S01E07 "House of Sand" " The shape and structure of the reimagined episode is close enough to the original that, as with the previous three treatments, it needs to acknowledge the original script, but there there is one huge change and one small one. In the IRL episode also Keemia rejects her father and prefers Hammerhead, but she's already a sand-creature and spends the last third of the story battling her father. I disliked that choice, mostly because the story stopped DEAD for the extended, narrated flashback necessary to set up that plot twist, so I simplified it. I also made Marko more of a villain. Of all the episodes in "Marvel's Spider-Man" this is the one that comes closest to feeling like an episode of "Batman: The Animated Series" but for that reason it fell deepest into the uncanny valley, so with those changes (including Hammerhead's near self-sacrifice) I tried hauling it up the other side of the slope. The minor change: Here we see Miles Morales making his first steps toward replicating Peter's powers, but by using tech rather than by having an identical accident. * I did some more thinking but no more writing. I have a nasty feeling that one of the plot lines I wanted to adapt for this part of the season isn't going to work. |
| Today's Spider-Man entry—"S01E06 "Party Animals"" —is another close adaptation of the IRL material, right down to the title. Changes, FWIW: * In the original, Sytsevich is a student at Horizon who is intentionally infected by Raymond Warren. I wanted to remove Warren's villainy (see below) which means the Rhino needed a new origin. Also, Sytsevich being a cheerful and friendly student who is cured at the end made it very awkward for the IRL series when they tried bringing the Rhino back. Returning Sytsevich to something like his comics origin (but spying for a crime boss rather than the East Bloc) makes it easier to give him the traditional treatment later on. * In the original, Warrren is an outright villain, already transforming between Jackal and human form, and he infects Sytsevich as a demonstration project for Osborn. This is me again feeling the tug of BTAS. I don't like Warren's unabashed villainy in the IRL series and wanted to give him an origin closer to, say, Two Face in Batman. I also wanted to remove Osborn's complicity, as it hardly seems in character for him to accede to a dangerous plot being executed in a situation where he knows his son will be. * In the original, the diagnosis and cure are entirely concocted without adult supervision by Peter and friends. This is far and away the most annoying facet of the IRL series. What is it with contemporary stories and their "Science, be-yotches, boo-yah, amirite?" garbage? As one YouTuber put it recently, they sound like frat bros trying to imitate what they think scientists sound like: "They talk like it's beer, hookers and sports ball but with, y'know, technobabble instead." Having high school students (no matter how bright) concocting Stark-level technology on the fly is another aspect of the same thing. My own revision still strains credulity, but at least (I hope) it's better for letting a putative expert in the field (Warren) do most of the brainwork. There are additional, minor changes here and there. Kingpin, for instance, does not appear. * I got a new treatment written yesterday, but it wasn't much of a victory, as it closely models an actual episode. But I had to get it out of the way before pushing myself into the really new territory on the other side of it. |
| I don't have much to say about today's Spider-Man entry—"S01E05 "Ghost in the Machine"" —except that it is very closely adapted from an IRL episode. The big difference is the excision of the Symbiote, which played a big role in episodes 6 and 7 of the series and played a similarly big part in episode 8, "Stark Expo." But the Symbiote to me feels like too big an element to be accorded such a small part in the animated continuity, so I took it out, which meant I had to take it out of this episode, which I otherwise preferred to leave in my reimagined series. (Not because it's awesome, but because it's inoffensive and pretty good padding.) Taking out the Symbiote meant having to fiddle with other elements. So Octavius gets a bigger role; the Kingpin makes an appearance; and Harry tries to be a hero only to be pre-empted by Spider-Man. But the Ghost and most of the other plot elements and developments are taken straight from the episode. Oh, and Flash is toned town and made much less of a buffoon. In the IRL episode, he's the one who enters the baking-soda volcano. * Yesterday involved some more mulling of plots for the second half of the first. I need to start writing again, though. "Mulling" is beginning to turn into procrastination, and I think I've got enough settled that the rest of the details can be worked out in the treatments. |
| Today's Spider-Man entry—"S01E04 "Ring Around the Spider-Man"" —is the first to be almost entirely new, with virtually no debts to the IRL series. So, that was the challenge there, to try coming up with something very new. What choices went into it? I've been reading early runs of "The Amazing Spider-Man" while also researching characters in those issues that I've not read and can't find, and have been jotting down every possible character, storyline, plot idea, etc., with the idea that they could be used to pad out an episode or be planted for later development. So in Wikipedia I found a reference to "The Circus of Crime," which is an awesome name for a group of bad guys, and in "The Essential Spider-Man, Vol. 4" I found an annual about a charismatic politician named Richard Raleigh trying to manipulate himself into the mayoralty. These went into the stewpot, and Richard Raleigh and the Circus's Ringmaster (who used hypnosis to manipulate his victims) merged into a single person. Here, it seemed to me, was a good, long-term play: a character who over the course of the series could slither toward political power. I also found a Spider-Man story with the Kingpin trying to steal a cuneiform tablet containing some kind of mystical secret, and I introduced that as one of the elements that Raleigh needs for some long-term plan. The rest was action, some ideas filched from the "Batman Beyond" episode "Spellbound," and a way to get Peter a job selling photos to the Daily Bugle. Now, where this is going, I haven't exactly decided yet. Raleigh does show up again in one treatment that I've written, and he does figure in the complicated multi-parter I'm still writing, but his payoff is still timed for sometime in the Superior Spider-Man storyline or after, which is the main reason I added him. (In the IRL series, there don't seem to be a lot of adversaries left over Season One and so there are no obvious hooks for the Superior storyline to hang on to.) But I will have to wait until lots more pieces are in play before I see the ultimate design for him. * I spent yesterday finishing the last of the "Essential Spider-Man" books I got from the library (Vols. 4 - 7) and letting ideas simmer in the back of my head, so I don't have anything really interesting to report as far as actual writing progress. To fill an otherwise empty space, I'll make just one comment: Nothing dates a story like slang. It is hard not to flinch every time Mary Jane Watson or some other character in an early 70s Spider-Man comic says something like, "Can you dig it?" |
| I've posted a new episode treatment in the summer project: "S01E03 "O Spider, Here Is Thy Sting"" . This one, like yesterday's, starts with the idea of an IRL episode but does a lot of different stuff with it. Like The Lizard, The Scorpion is another character with a potentially interesting past that the animated series just kind of tosses away, and I wanted to see more done with him. I gave him a different origin story than in the comics—more tragic and accidental; the BTAS influence, I suppose—but also tried lightening his initial appearance a little so that he wouldn't come across purely as a guy with a free-floating grudge. I'm also trying to better motivate the sheer number of mad scientists that show up, in both the comics and the animated series. Maybe it's not much more realistic to have them all come pouring out of Oscorp instead of arising independently, but at least it focuses the ridiculousness in one place—Norman Osborn's company—instead of positing a lot of coincidences. Making them all serpents slithering out of a pit of vipers, carrying their grudges with them in their coils, I hope also amps the interpersonal conflicts a little more, making the fights personal and not merely maniacal. * It's really hard coming up with multiple plots to weave across multiple episodes. But that's probably not a surprising observation. Maybe it would be more interesting to say that it's very hard to concentrate in a sustained way upon the problem. I don't think I went more than ten minutes at a time yesterday thinking about the second half of the first season. It gives you a headache, trying to work out a complex plot in your head, and you're always worried about following it down some twisting rabbit hole that won't be able to intersect with the other plot lines that you'll have to come back to. That's another reason I kept skittering around in ten-minute chunks—I had to spend ten minutes on one plot area, then ten minutes in another, and ten minutes in a third, with twenty or thirty or sixty minutes in between to clear my head of what I'd just been working on. Also, I was doing more, um, research. By which I mean, I was reading comics for ideas about what to do. There's nothing wrong with that, particularly in the context of an animated series that was already freely adapting such Spider-Man storylines as "Spider Island." So "The Return of the Sinister Six" will figure in what I'm writing, alongside stuff I'm taking from the animated series itself. I got quite a few ideas down: I've now a pretty good idea of the shape of the next twelve stories, and the motivations that will carry the characters through them. Today's goal will be to put some preliminary detail onto them. |
| Today's Spider-Man fanfiction is now up: "S01E02 "Here Be Dragons"" . It's mostly new and only borrows elements from the IRL "Horizon High, Part 2": Peter angering Otto Octavius by not recognizing him; Harry asking Peter to bring him his old experiments in defiance of protocol; a fight with a spider-slayer that tries stealing Harry's goods; Raymond Warren being Gwen Stacy's uncle. The rest of it is my own invention, or me folding in other elements from the series or the comics. I mentioned a few weeks back how surprised I was that J. Jonah Jameson doesn't show up in the first season of the show. He is such a mainstay of the universe that it's like leaving out Aunt May. So he shows up early, and I've tried to take some care in motivating his anti-Spider-Man animus without making it some huge, complicated deal. It also astonished me that this animated series gives Curt Connors only the most perfunctory treatment in, as he's one of the most interesting and sympathetic villains in the early comics. (He shows up late, almost as an afterthought, as a Godzilla clone to be beaten into submission.) I'm all the more surprised considering that Eric Radomski is on the series's staff, and Radomski was one of the big creatives on "Batman: The Animated Series," which is renowned for its relatable villains. Spider-Man is too chatty a hero, and his universe too packed with supporting characters with soap opera stories, for it to really resemble BTAS, but I tried keeping BTAS in mind when such an obvious BTAS-like character as Connors comes along. |
| So it starts today. Quick links first, followed by some discussion: The project itself: "Marvel Spider-Man: The Alternate Series" Today's installment: "S01E01 "The Tilting Horizon"" Bonus link: The original episode * Today's installment is based pretty closely on the original episode. I've altered the villain's motivation, built things toward a different climax, and introduced a few elements that are supposed to build in later episodes. But in its main outlines, the plot is pretty close to the original. About half of the treatments I'll be posting will be like this: a skeleton much like the original, but with musculature that twists it about to give it a different thrust and theme. How much else is supposed to be carried over from the original series? Well, no treatment (and not even a script) can capture the mood, tone or color of a finished piece of cinema. The written documents can only tell the story, and it's up to the other craftsmen to give it flesh and life. But there are a few things I would say. There is already a note in that episode about how to characterize Flash Thompson, who I find borderline unwatchable in the IRL cartoon. More generally I would prefer a series with a lot less goofy slapstick, though overall I do like the light touch. The only other thing I'd stress (if you're familiar with the Disney XD series) is that I'd put in a lot less science technobabble. This is something I have some little control over in the treatments, and the science and engineering projects I allude to should be a lot less over-the-top than in the IRL series. The assumption should be that nowhere are there moments of high school sophomores using "quantum genetics to reconfigure the polarity of the computer code so as to set off a reverse vibranium reaction in order to stabilize the decaying orbit of the neutron-positive singularity"--stuff that the IRL series is otherwise bloated with. But yeah, there will still be robot spiders and man-wolves. It's a superhero cartoon for the young-at-heart. |
| Today brings the last of the BoM updates. In this minor climax, we see Dee's reaction when Will and Sydney entertain adding him as a partner: "The Man from Lemuria" (public) + "The Man from Lemuria" (interactive). * So what am I going to do for you instead of BoM updates? For most of you, I suppose the answer is "nothing." For some subset of you, the answer is: Spider-Man fan-fiction! That is a sentence I never thought in a million years I would write. But you find your practice and training where you can. I am not by nature or instinct an outliner, and I doubt I ever will be. But for the past week I've been diligently constructing and churning out detailed outlines for Spider-Man episodes, and I think the experience is good for me. Although improvisation is what stimulates my creativity, I think I do wander around too much without grappling with such core story issues as "What does this character specifically want, and how are they going to get it?" and that's the sort of thing that outlining really forces on you, or on me, at least. Anyway, I've already posted one of my treatments, and tomorrow I will start posting more of them, a day at a time. In terms of writing, I've got two weeks' of material already on hand, and I shouldn't have much problem staying ahead. Sometime in late August we would then hit the place I want to get to: my anticipation of the series' upcoming "Superior Spider-Man" arc. |
| So, in yesterday's chapter Will and Sydney met a most unexpected kind of person. It ended with a choice: partner with the guy, or tell him to go dangle. You're going to get both sequels, but we'll start with the second one, as I suspect that's the one you guys would have chosen if we put it to a vote: "Of Wardrobes and Ley Lines" (public) + "Of Wardrobes and Ley Lines" (interactive).* I had two treatments outlined from Sunday, and I got those written up, so I guess that means I averaged one treatment a day over the last two days. I might be able to get two more written today, which will put one-third of the way toward my goal, but after that it will be probably be ten days of one-per-day to get me to the end of Season One. It surprises me how long it takes me to turn an outline into a treatment, and how hard it can be. I guess it has to do with trying to invent details to fill in the sketch, and worrying about transitional moments. |
| Okay, yesterday's one-off is the farthest I'm taking you in the Sydney storyline. Now we flash back a bit to when Will and Sydney were just getting together. I skipped over a choice here because it leads into a brief storyline, and I preferred to get all the one-offs out of the way. So, Will and Sydney are getting to know each other, well enough that Sydney wants to go to a party with Will. But he's still worried that Caleb will find out he's started seeing Sydney. You guys voted for him not to worry, but today we'll find out what happens when he proposes tracking down a ley line instead of going out to Catherine Muskov's: "Focus Pocus" (public) + "Focus Pocus" (interactive).* I got two treatments outlined yesterday, but not written, so I don't know how to count them. It was hard to concentrate all day, on account of Saturday night I hardly got any sleep and was groggy all Sunday. Also, the two episodes I was adapting are two of the worst in the IRL series, so I had limited enthusiasm for even thinking about them. |
| So I surprised myself with how much I got done yesterday: I finished one treatment and wrote two more. I'm still more impressed with myself because the second treatment was almost entirely original and borrowed no major scenes from any of the IRL episodes. A few days ago I said that I might share and show my development process, and because that second treatment generate a lot of notes that demonstrate it, I'll do that today and here. I don't know how interesting they'll be, but I think you can see the story emerging and coming together in them. * Step One Construct worksheet with the three key questions at the top: Who wants what? What happens if they fail? What is stopping them from getting it? This is a constant reminder that the story must pose and give specific, particular answers to these questions, preferably for each of the major characters. Though it's a bad idea to state these questions and answers in the actual story, it helps for the author (me!) to have them constantly in the forefront while trying to develop the story. Step Two Copy over necessary plot points from Series Outline. Arrange them in a tentative chronological order and assign them to an act. (The Season Outline is a set of beats and developments that must be hit during the progression of the series, with each beat tentatively assigned to a particular episode. Sometimes they are beats that each episode is designed to embody; other times they are beats that need to appear at roughly that spot in the series chronology.) Act I * NORMAN OSBORN conveys to SPENCER SMYTHE how much he fears Spider-Man and the "spider army" he suspects is coming. * Smythe steals his son ALISTAIR's projects to use in his own work. Act II * THE JACKAL attacks Oscorp. Act III * GWEN STACY expresses her appreciation for PETER PARKER, though Peter failed to adequately protect her. [It turns out that this moment isn't necessary to the story and doesn't fit in what I wrote; insofar as something like this scene is needed in the series, it will have to be inserted elsewhere.] * Norman fires Smythe after Jackal attack and hires DR. OTTO OCTAVIUS. * There's a final break between Spencer and Alistair. Step Three Main protagonists are chosen and goals and plans tentatively ascribed to them. * Peter Parker wants to convince Harry Osborn to return to Horizon High before their friendship is fatally attenuated by the rivalry between Horizon and the Osborn Academy. He must overcome Harry's stubborness and pride to do so. * Raymond Warren wants to find a cure for his condition before his Jeckyll-and-Hyde transformation into the Jackal becomes permanent, but Oscorp is the only place with the research that can help him, and Osborn won't want to help him. * Spencer Smythe wants to keep his job at Oscorp, but his equipment keeps failing and Norman Osborn is growing impatient. Step Four Break each of these stories into three acts, with each act structured around a specific goal and plan that either takes the protagonist closer to his overall goal or which reflects an adaptation to the changing circumstances, and which is thwarted by a disaster. These are also tentative. 1a. Peter wants to tempt Harry back to Horizon by showing him the great research projects at Horizon that he could help them with, but Harry's insecurity means he feels upstaged by his old friends. 1b. Peter wants Harry to help solve a problem that has occurred with a Horizon project, thereby making Harry feel useful and wanted. But he discovers too late that solving that problem could uncover Peter's secret -- or cure it. 1c. Peter wants to return to a status quo ante with Harry, but he must rescue Harry from the Jackal, who has made off with him. 2a. Raymond Warren wants to persuade Osborn to giving him his old research so that he can effect a cure for his secret condition, but Osborn refuses and Warren can't tell him why he needs it so badly. 2b. Warren wants to steal his old research, as it is now the only way to get it, but he is surprised in the act, and the excitement causes him to revert to the Jackal, who emphatically does not want to be cured. 2c. The Jackal wants to stop all chances of Oscorp finding a cure for him; and he must escape the intervention of Osborn security (in the form of Spencer Smythe), Dr. Otto Octavius (in his octo-rig) and Spider-Man. 3a. Spencer Smythe wants to demonstrate the utility of his inventions to his boss, but his device to locate and track the spider-man isn't working. 3b. To protect himself, Spencer steals tech from other Oscorp researchers, but he is caught by his own son in the act, which strains their unhappy relationship further. 3c. Spencer wants to stop the Jackal so as to demonstrate the efficacy of his tech, but fails and is shown up by the superiority of Octavius's octo-rig. Step Five Break up each act into individual scenes, with an emphasis on developing a location or reason for showcasing some element of the act that needs dramatizing. 1a1. Setup: Peter and Horizon making trip to Oscorp Expo to raise money by showing the tech they are working on. Attendees include Peter, Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, and Dr. Otto Octavius. 1a2. Peter talks to Harry before presentation. 1a3. Peter's presentation, which leaves Harry insulted. 1b1. Gwen's invention is a DNA sequencer and she uses it on Peter's blood, revealing non-human material. 1b2. That machine could uncover Peter's secret unless he finds a way of covering it up. But after thinking about it -- 1b3. -- Peter decides to reconcile with Harry by telling him his secret and getting Harry to return to Horizon to help him (Peter) find a cure for being Spider-Man. 1c1. Peter only reveals that his DNA is scrambled before Harry reacts badly, showing fear that Peter could turn into a monster like Curt Connors. 1c2. Peter has to save Harry from the Jackal, who has seized him. 1c3. Peter convinces Harry that it was actually a glitch in the machine, for it was contaminated with Raymond Warren's DNA. 2a1. Warren changes back to himself from being the Jackal, shows fear of changing to the Jackal permanently. 2a2. Warren talks to Osborn, who refuses to help him. 2b. Warren sneaks into his old lab at Oscorp, where he is confronted by Spencer, who gloats over him and threatens him; the excitement provokes Warren to change into the Jackal. 2c1. The Jackal rummages through Oscorp research bays, setting off alarms. 2c2. The Jackal tries to kill Osborn, and grabs and runs off with Harry. 2c3. The Jackal must escape Oscorp. 3a1. Spencer is tasked with tracking Spider-Man, and has to admit to Osborn that the tracker is not working. 3a2. Spencer asks Alistair for his invention—the weapons that will eventually transform Alistair into The Shocker—but Alistair refuses. 3b. Spencer steals Alistair's tech, rifles other research bays; catches Warren. 3c1. Spencer uses modified tech, including Alistair's, to battle Jackal, but loses. 3c2. Spencer is fired by Osborn, who hires Octavius as his replacement; Alistair renounces father to stay at Oscorp and work with Octavius. Step Six Shuffle these scenes together, combining them where possible, in chronological order. As they are combined, make changes where necessary or add new ideas while folding in series points 1. Warren changes back to himself from being the Jackal, shows fear of changing back. 2. Peter and Horizon making trip to Oscorp to raise money by showing the tech they are working on. Attendees include Peter, Miles Morales, Gwen Stacy, and Dr. Otto Octavius. 3. Spencer is tasked with tracking Spider-Man as Norman Osborn conveys just how much he fears Spider-Man and the "spider army" that he suspects is coming. Spencer has to admit that the tracker is not working. 4. Warren talks to Osborn, who refuses to help. 5. Peter talks to Harry before presentation; Harry betrays resentment, so that Peter pulls back on showing his item, allowing others to go ahead of him. 6. Spencer asks Alistair for his invention and is angered when Alistair refuses.. 7. Gwen's invention shows that Peter has non-human DNA. 8. Spencer steals Alistair's tech. 9. Peter decides to come clean with Harry so they can work on a cure together; he reveals that his DNA is scrambled, but Harry interprets it that Peter could be a monster. 10. Warren sneaks into old lab, confronted by Spencer, who gloats and threatens; turns into the Jackal. 11. The Jackal rummages the bays, setting off alarms. 12. The Jackal tries to kill Osborn, kidnaps Harry; Peter has to save Harry from the Jackal. 13. Spencer uses tech to battle Jackal, loses; Octavius drive Jackal off, seemingly. 14. Spencer loses job, son, to Octavius. 15. Peter convinces Harry that it was just a problem with Gwen' machine and that there's nothing wrong with him. 16. It is revealed that the Jackal has stolen some of Harry's blood, Jackal intends to cook up something special for the brat. Step Seven Compose the treatment, expanding on each of the above points. Certain developments may be added, dropped, or altered as the story comes into greater focus. Treatment is here: "S01E09 "Mark of the Jackal"" |
| Things are getting serious for Will in the Sydney storyline. She is interested in introducing him to a Baphomet cult, which has freaked him out. You guys voted for him to swallow his doubts and proceed. But what if he backs out? "While There's Time to Turn Back" (public) + "While There's Time to Turn Back" (interactive). * I got two treatments written yesterday, plus part of a third, and that's probably the best I'll ever do in terms of getting work done. I only got that much done because two of treatments were close adaptations of IRL episodes. Looking at the schedule of episodes to adapt, I don't see anymore 2+ days coming up, at least not any time soon. Never mind that it's just exhausting, so that writing two of these things takes most of it out of me. Most of them require some pretty extensive changes, and they are interspersed with episodes like Thursday's, where I have to write most of it from scratch. Then, when I hit episode 14, I'll have to write a seven-episode arc of entirely new content as I give Doc Ock a new origin story. |
| So far I've been publishing these one-off chapters in chronological order, but today because of reasons I'm skipping ahead. Will and Sydney are now partners, and Sydney is wanting to share more and more things with him -- mostly, though, she wants him to share his stuff with her. Caleb's mask, for instance: She'd love to put it on. You guys voted to let her, but let's find out what happens when he turns her down: "No One Wants a Creepy Girlfriend" (public) + "No One Wants a Creepy Girlfriend" (interactive).* Yesterday was another one-treatment day. I knew it was going to be, because it was a story with no precedent in the IRL animated series. It features a villain not adapted to that series, attempting a crime unlike any in the series, and Peter Parker's got new stuff to do. So, I had to do all the work myself. I've hit two unexpected challenges while working on these treatments. The first is that Peter Parker is turning out to be a much more active character than I had been prepared for. I am much more familiar with the various DC animated series, particularly the Batman series from the 90s, and when you go back to look at them you'll notice that most of the heroes—Batman in particular—are mostly reactive, in that they don't have any goals except to react to whatever the villain is up to. That actually puts the DC heroes into the role of an antagonist, if an antagonist is the one who is supposed to slow and trip up the guy who is actively pursuing a plan. But Peter Parker typically has his own agendas and plans, and he's got needs and goals besides "stop any bad guys that happen along." In crafting a Spider-Man story, then, you typically don't want to open with him on patrol; he should be confronting some problem that has nothing to do with the villain du jour. That's hard enough—coming up with stuff that Peter wants to do and would be doing if only The Scorpion or The Lizard would leave him alone—but the story also has to juggle his need to finish his own story with his need to stop the villain from finishing his own. The two agendas—Peter's and the villain's—should also be related thematically in some way, which adds a third dimension to the puzzle's difficulty. So it's hard, and I'm really not sure I'm pulling it all off, particularly as these are only treatments, not finished scripts, let alone produced episodes. Luckily, the second unexpected challenge is a much less fraught one: I keep wanting to type "Robin" instead of "Peter" or "Spider-Man" when banging out these treatments. I suppose that's another tacit admission that I'm much more a DC Animated guy than a Marvel Animated guy. |
| BoM update: Will has shown Sydney all her toys, and she proposes a partnership. You guys voted for Will to accept, but in today's entry he privately holds himself in reserve. What happens next? Read on! "The Focus of Your Efforts" (public) + "The Focus of Your Efforts" (interactive). * I only wrote one treatment yesterday. It's harder to write them than it is to write a BoM chapter, even though I supposedly know what's going to happen in the treatment and I usually don't know what's going to happen in a BoM chapter. Part of it is because the treatments are longer than BoM chapters, for although I'm not writing dialogue and I am keeping descriptive action to a minimum, I am still having to convey what happens in each scene: what people are telling each other and what is going on around them and why it is happening. Each treatment is averaging 2600 words. By comparison, most BoM chapters are about 1700 words. Then, too, there's about three to five chapters' worth of material in each treatment, so there's more stuff to write about. Also, even though I say I've got a lot of the episodes outlined, and I've got actual material from the IRL episodes to draw on, there's still a certain amount of invention that has to be done between the cracks, to connect and motivate incidents if nothing else. I might publish, just for curiosity's sake, a set of materials related to an episode: the character notes relevant to the chapter, the set of incidents that the treatment needs to convey, the first rough outline, and the final treatment. But assuming I continue this—and it's fun despite the muscle-straining work of it—it won't be until I've concluded my BoM chapters that I start publishing Spider-Man treatments, and that's still a week away. By that point, at my current rate, I will have fourteen of them lined up. |
| Today's semi-random BoM update comes with Will still trying to seduce Sydeny away from Caleb. He's on a date with her and is pretending an interest in the occult, and she has accused him of pretending only. You guys voted for Will to confess everything, including the existence of the Libra, but in an alternate universe Will denies an interest in the occult but asserts an interest in her. Here is what happens after that: "Deep Sabotage" (public) + "Deep Sabotage" (interactive). * So I started writing treatments today, and got two of them written, which I am betting will be my best pace. Only thirty-four more to go! Meanwhile, I was somewhat chagrined when my YouTube recommendations this afternoon pulled up a clip of the "Marvel: Spider-Man" Season 2 episode "The Superior Spider-Man" ... which is exactly the episode that I'm trying to anticipate with this writing project. I clicked on it, wondering if it was some kind of mislabeling, and was further perplexed to find that it was uploaded six months ago. I recognized the art style as it began to play, and I further recognized one of the characters as someone only seen once, in Season One, and nevermore after that. And when Spider-Man dropped into the scene in a new costume, it removed all doubt. I was watching "The Superior Spider-Man" as imagined by the producers of the new series. Then the characters started talking. In German. So I guess the new episodes started airing last January in Europe. I didn't find any more of them on YouTube, but in truth I didn't look very hard. I didn't want to find them, if they are up. For now, then, I remain unspoiled, and mean to remain so insofar as I can help it. |
| This is the "Book of Masks Homepage," so I'll put the update at the top of the entry. Background: Will is trying to steal Sydney McGlynn away from Caleb, and to that end has disguised himself as Caleb in order to meet her for a tutoring session. He arrives early at the coffee shop in his own face, and spots Sydney ducking into Arnholm's Used Books. You guys voted for Will to spy on her in the bookstore. What happens if he proceeds directly to the coffee shop? Read about it here: "Coffee Date of Doom" (public) + "Coffee Date of Doom" (interactive). BTW, I am not actually publishing all the chapters that I wrote and held back. Some of them just aren't very interesting. A few weeks ago, rugal without meaning to jumped in and pre-empted one such chapters by writing his own, and I liked his contribution a lot more than the placeholder I was holding in reserve. So if I think a chapter doesn't lead anywhere too interesting, I'm not going to publish it, in case someone comes up with something better. * Yesterday I spent another six solid hours on sketching and outlining "Spider-Man" ideas, and on assigning pivot points and climaxes to various episodes. I think I've got all the major points pinned down, and a lot of the minor ones too, and the stuff I haven't got pinned down would probably be better fixed when I start writing actual treatments, which will be my assignment for today. This has been a very strange experience for me. I am not by temperament an outliner, and I've always found outlining an unrewarding chore. I get most of my ideas by improvising them in the course of writing a story, and outlining I've always found an arid and frustrating exercise. But outlining this material hasn't just been easy (relatively!) but exhilarating and surprising, and I find myself constantly discovering new motivations, new complications, new echoes or ironies as I tear the cartoon's continuity apart and piece it back together. It is the complete opposite of my usual experience. I suppose mostly it's because I'm working with material where most of the story elements have already been crafted: the characters, their goals and conflicts; some very specific plot elements; and a couple of climaxes to work toward. With those in hand, it's easier to get new invention by moving the pieces into new combinations, whereupon you see new possibilities inside the new pattern. There are still places where I'm going to have to come up with entirely new stuff, either on my own or by drawing inspiration from some of the original comics. For those treatments -- and there's about 15 of them that will need mostly-from-scratch writing -- I will probably have to write something like a story and then condense and abstract it down to a treatment. But we'll see. |
| So, based on the work I did yesterday—almost ten solid hours of fun but exhausting brainstorming and scribbling—I think I am going to attempt the "big" project I outlined yesterday, the one where I sketch out one-and-a-half alternate seasons of "Marvel's Spider-Man" before turning to write my version of an animated "Superior Spider-Man" storyline. Those ten hours of work yielded story progressions for almost a dozen major antagonists and another dozen minor ones. About half of those progressions, I'll admit, I took over almost unchanged from the animated series (no reason to do new work when old work will do) but progressions of the other half of the villain cast diverge (sometimes radically) from the animated continuity. Moreover, three of my major antagonists would be new additions to the animated canon, brought over from the comics. In addition to keeping many of the same antagonists and their plot lines, my design keeps about half of the actual episodes, mostly unchanged but moved to different chronological location. (Again, more saved effort where possible.) My design junks another eighteen or so episodes entirely (including the entirety of "Spider Island") for new stories meant to develop new antagonisms, or antagonisms that will be live for "Superior Spider-Man." There's not nearly enough detail yet to completely fill in the quota of 38 episodes; some of the episodes only have antagonists assigned; and there are four slots where I don't have anything at all. But I think that's okay for now. Those slots can be reserved for episodes that can cover material that I haven't yet realized I need. As for the heroes: There is less work there, and most of it is subtractive. So I'm also getting rid of Spider-Girl and Spider-Gwen (though keeping Anya and Gwen otherwise unchanged) and altering Miles Morales's story so that he designs and uses spider-tech that mimics Peter's powers instead of acquiring powers of his own. The idea of another Spider-Person still bothers me, but after watching "Marvel Spider-Man" all the way to the current point, I'm much less annoyed by him and his contributions as Spider-Miles, so that is my compromise. So what's the next stage? There are some important relationship arcs that I still have to plot out over the course of the seasons: Peter and Harry, Peter and Norman, Norman and Harry, Peter and Jameson, plus a few others. Then it will be on to writing some detailed treatments of these episodes -- something which might yet dissuade me from continuing. If I get half a dozen of those written and still want to continue, I'll think about finding a way to post them for the two or three of you that might want to look at them. * And what of "Book of Masks," you ask? Well, I'm not going to get to that last chapter I've been dithering over, not any time soon, no matter what. (If this Spider-project doesn't work out, I'll be too depressed to do anything for a month.) But I do have a small trickle of chapters that I can post over the next week or so. They're leftovers from when I was publishing the branch that introduced Sydney. While publishing it, I polled you guys at each fork to see which way you wanted to go, while telling you that each choice had a chapter already written so that you would be getting a chapter no matter which direction you voted. Mostly you picked the choices that sent the story down the path I had written, but I still have some of those chapters that you voted down. I will be posting some of them—the ones I would like to get onto the record, as they contain plot evolutions that I like or which are pretty important. The first is here: "A Need for Red Herrings" (public) + "A Need for Red Herrings" (interactive). Will has let Caleb have his date with Sydney McGlynn, but he and she have unexpectedly shown up at the old elementary school and want to have a look in the basement. Will has bluffed them out of investigating further, but instead of confessing his occult interests to Sydney, he's going to deny and bluff. |
| So I finished watching Season Two of "Marvel's Spider-Man" yesterday, and it's left me in a bind. I was hoping that there would be lots of plot threads lying around that I could use as scaffolding to hang my version of "Superior Spider-Man" on, but there aren't any, not to speak of. In fact, there are so few plot threads or continuing, surviving villains of interest that I'm wondering what the real-world writers are going to do. I have the feeling that they're going to do the obvious--have SSM horrify his friends by going medieval on the any bad guy who crosses his path--and that seems to me a boring way of developing the inner conflict that SSM is portrayed as suffering. Norman Osborn is probably still out there someplace, so I guess they could bring him back. Otherwise, there's not much that's interesting to work with. So I'm stuck between matching wits with the writers by using the same materials they've got, and ... Well, cheating. Cheating, by which I mean, I could go back and revise the first two seasons, making up my own alternate version of the series thus far, and giving myself the materials that I think would be fun to work with. I wouldn't be writing those alternate episodes in script format, though. (Too much work.) I'd write up summaries or detailed treatments. That would still be a bigger project than what I had originally planned, but in some ways it would probably be easier. I bought one of the ASM "Epic Collections" yesterday (Vol. 4) and I'm going to check out some other collections from the library, so I'm already getting ideas by reading some of those stories. That's not the same supply of material that the cartoon writers were drawing on (they're drawing on the last few years of Dan Slott's work) but I would be writing on the most original of the canonic material out there. I'm going to have to think about this some more, and I'm going to have to think about it by actually trying to wrestle out some of my own ideas for an alternate version of the series. Hell, if nothing else, it would give me a chance to outline a Doc Ock episode that I could title "Sh! The Octopus!" |
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