A tree’s a tree. How many more do you need to look at?

–Ronald Reagan

Ohio and Stanford’s trees play football. About as well as you’d expect, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

–Agent Orange

Our resident mutated alligator, Agent Orange, offers this look into the brutally competitive world of reptology.

Continue Reading »

“The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot.
E. M. Forster

“If you think ‘the queen died of grief’ is a plot, you wouldn’t last ten seconds in Surf City. The Queen iced her husband to claim control of the underworld. And now she’s got a deathray, probably pointed at a city Americans care about or Paris. That’s a plot.”

–Captain Carnage

It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what others say in a whole book.

–Friedrich Nietzsche

I save the day by wasting many, proving reptilian awesomeness. There, I only needed ten words.

–Agent Orange

You’re despicable.

–The Superhero Nation writing staff

Faith: not wanting to know what is true.

—Friedrich Nietzsche

Philosophy: giving up on the concept of truth.

–Jacob Mallow

Capital punishment: giving up on the concept of Mallow.

–Agent Orange

Diplomacy, Superhero Nation-style: simultaneously offending the religious, the nonreligious and death penalty opponents.

Catastrophe: I need advice.

Bartender: Don’t take vodka as a chaser.

Catastrophe: More, uhh, substantively…

Bartender: Don’t drink and drive.

Catastrophe: …

Catastrophe: I need a new advisor.

Bartender: That’s the spirit.

Dr. Darpa: Virtually every Office of Special Investigations agent uses a firearm as his primary weapon, but the vast majority of our kills are executed with non-gun weapons.

Captain Carnage: Every one of the criminals we deal with has steel-like skin, dodges bullets like they’ve gone out of style, or both.

Dr. Darpa: Over the past twelve years, I’ve been modifying tank-mounted machine guns to compensate for those unusual characteristics. I have created a handgun so horrifically lethal that Congress has limited its sale to NATO countries.

Captain Carnage: You mean…

Dr. Darpa: The Western Cannon.

Captain Carnage: I thought it was a myth!

Dr. Darpa: Mythically deadly, perhaps. With a full mound of ammo, it weighs roughly half a ton. It has three rates of fire: “full automatic,” “wall of lead,” and “dodge this.”

Captain Carnage: The assassins have bugged your car with a tracking device. Driving it could be highly dangerous, particularly if you believe really strongly in that whole no-killing thing.

Lash: …

Lash: What do you have in mind?

Carnage: If you lend me your keys for the day, I have someone in mind whose skills will discourage anyone from tailing you ever again.

Lash nervously hands over his BMW keys.

The next morning, a smoking and sooty Agent Orange approaches Lash.

Lash: Dear God. You were the driver? Do you even have a license?

Agent Orange: I have good news, bad news and worse news. Which would you like first?

Lash: … there’s bad news besides learning you were the driver?

Lash: …

Agent Orange: You definitely won’t save a bunch on your car insurance.

Lash: The worse news?

Agent Orange: It won’t be an open-casket funeral.

Lash: …

Lash: Dare I ask what the good news is?

Agent Orange: Captain Carnage bet that open-road road tests are so easy that even I could pass one. I sure showed him! Hah. He didn’t even know that alligators are green-red colorblind!

Later, Lash confronts Captain Carnage.

Lash: You handed my BMW over to a goddamn lizard.

Carnage: It proved surprisingly easy to determine who was attempting to follow his… unorthodox driving style. We made four arrests. So his skills proved quite effective.

Lash: Which “skills?” I’ve definitely ruled out anything driving-related.

Carnage: Limb-regeneration and gullibility.

Lash: Gullibility?

Carnage: Did you know license tests occur on country roads in the middle of the night and are graded by SWAT officers in helicopters?

Lash: …

Lash: I hate you.

A commenter asked “what do they teach at the Office of Special Investigation’s Chariots of Fire Driving Academy?” A very good question.

[start scene]

Agent Black is waiting in the CFDA’s front-lobby, which looks like an airport terminal. Beyond the glass walls, cars chase each other on a practice course.

CFDA RECEPTIONIST: I’m sorry, we’re out of spaces for the Defensive Driving course. Can I interest you in Offensive Driving? Just sign these liability disclaimers.

BLACK: What do they teach in Offensive–

A car triple barrel-rolls onto the car it had been chasing.

BLACK: …

BLACK: Do you have a pen?

Agent Orange:  At the Office of Special Investigations, “Chariots of Fire” isn’t just a classic
film.  It’s also the name of our driving school.

Agent Orange: In Canada, keep your friends close and your automatic weaponry closer. The nation is a rabbit’s den of sinister plots and dark secrets.

Agent Black: Canada has dark secrets?

Agent Orange: The darkest!

Agent Black: Several years ago, the OSI concluded that Dr. Savant had a secret identity and identified three suspects, including another Social Justice Leaguer. All attempts to determine which one have failed. Until now.

Captain Carnage: Why?

Black: Because he’s every freaking one of them.

Carnage: …

Carnage: And that threw y’all off for several years?

Black: He has three secret identities. That was, uhh, a great deal stranger than I had anticipated.

Carnage: Hell, boy, this ain’t no shit. In the Gulf War, I passed out in a Kuwaiti sandstorm and woke up in Costa Rica. Surrounded by decapitated kangaroos.

Black: …

Black: Wow. That’s strange.

Carnage: Or it might have been Iraq, surrounded by decapitated Republican Guardsmen. It’s hard to keep all the details straight.
Black: …

Black: …

Black: You’ve been talking to RETCON, haven’t you?

Carnage: How’d you know?

Quote of the Day:

Agent Orange: Few things are more pathetic than the crocodile terrorist. Yep. They can’t even do that right.

And they talk like thisssssss…

We already knew that mammals > crocodiles, but this also indicates that mammal-insects > crocodiles. But Spiderman foolishly let the crocodile escape, which is further proof that alligators > mammal-insects.

No one on the Superhero Nation editorial board is pleased with the way football has gone this year.

Continue Reading »

Mike: You’re positive you’re not an alien?

Catastrophe: Do aliens frequently speak fluent English?

Mike: Decryption programs applied to radio transmissions can do surprising things.

Catastrophe: I was checking football club rankings when you found me. Unless aliens are frequently interested in football…

Mike: You’d be surprised. You follow football?

Catastrophe: Sometimes. There aren’t any good teams around here.

Mike: Name three.

Catastrophe: Good teams? Arsenal, Man U and Newcastle.

Mike: Please. If you ever need to make up sports teams in the future, I recommend going with animal names, not randomly selected adjectives and nouns. “New castle?” “Man you?” That doesn’t even make sense!

Catastrophe: …

Catastrophe: You don’t get out much, do you?

This is the final part of a four part series. You can see part 1 here.

Catastrophe: When I said that I was a cartoon character and not an alien, I meant it.
Mike: A cartoon character?

Catastrophe: Well, a facsimile of a cartoon character. The mutagen is presumably influenced by subconscious mental states like memories and impulses. It was the day of the goddamned Hegemon parade and the effing balloon had come loose and trashed my car. So it was on my mind.

Mike: You expect me to believe—

Catastrophe: —not really, nor do I care. What you believe is completely besides the point. The only thing that matters—the only positive thing, anyway— is that at least it wasn’t Peaceachu.

This is part 3 of a four-part series. You can see part 1 here or part 4 here (after 6 PM US Central on Dec. 31).

Mike: We have a non-optional orientation program for aliens. This is very simple. If anyone asks, say that you’re not an alien.

Catastrophe: I’m a cartoon character.

Mike: That was easy, wasn’t it?

Catastrophe: …

Catastrophe: Wait. There are aliens on Earth?

Mike: Uhh… no?

This is part II of a four part conversation. You can see part 1 here or part 3 here.

Agent Orange presents his link of the day and a related public service announcement for crocodile-Americans.

The Annals of Crocodile Failures, 94^th Edition

Lions, buffaloes and crocodiles do battle for control of a Kenyan wildlife refuge. This film is rated PG… Pretty Gruesome. The crocodiles make their inglorious appearance at 3:30, but they’re so ineffective that the (mammalian) commentators only notice them at 3:38. Unless you enjoy watching lions play two crocodiles silly, I recommend skipping ahead to 4:30, which is when things get rowdy on the land. “They’ve got ’em surrounded” (5:45). I also enjoyed the sudden appearance of Superlion– he flies– at 5:45.
6:30 is outlandish and further indicates how completely pathetic the crocodiles were in their brief appearance. Any creature that is unable to cripple a baby buffalo is hereby banished from the reptile class. Experts at Palomar University, one of the world’s leading reptological institutions, have found that:

The class Reptilia [Reptiles*] includes turtles, snakes, lizards, alligators**, and other large reptiles…

Let’s face it, crocodiles: even turtles and snakes*** count as reptiles. But not you*. (Don’t snicker too hard, mammals… the lions did not make a persuasive case for your phylum).

Not to fear, crocodiles: although you are no longer reptiles, you may technically qualify as amphibians****. However, both mammals and reptiles will remain ashamed to share a subphylum with you.

Tailnotes

*clarified for the benefit of crocodiles. Not that I think it will help.

**Unsurprisingly, saving the best for last. Incidentally, 99 % of reptologists agree that alligators > lizards > snakes > amoeba > crocodiles. As for the last 1%, if you are ever so horrifically unfortunate to find one of them, escape quickly. (Even if you’re a mammal—it’s not worth finding out if it can spread across species). Say whatever you need to. “I need to sharpen my claws (fingernails)” or “my scales (skin) require polishing.”

***Crocodile sympathizers may dispute that snakes are more worthy of the reptilian name than crocodiles. And we can speculate about the psychological disorders that might prod them to do so. But the fact remains that snakes can eat hippos (not for the squeamish). And, furthermore, snakes have their own baseball team, with which I am not familiar, and dominate a city with which I am.

****Assuming they’ll have you. Don’t hold your breath.

Setup: Catastrophe is a statistician that has been transformed by a mutagen into something uncannily similar to a character on a hit cartoon show, Hegemon (“Gotta kill ‘em all!”) Mike heads the Office of Special Investigations’ efforts to conceal extraterrestrial life and mistakenly believes Catastrophe is an alien.

Mike: Hello.

Catastrophe: I’m reading.

Mike: This’ll only take a second.

Catastrophe: Time’s up.

Mike: …

Mike: Let’s say five minutes.

Catastrophe: That’s 30000% of your original request. Is talking with you really more important than the club rankings?

Mike: And considerably less likely to get you pushed down the stairs.

(This is part of a four part series). After 6:00 PM on 12/29, you can read part 2 here.

Dr. Berkeley is a mathematician that Jacob Mallow hires to complete a project that relies heavily on numbers theory. Unfortunately for Berkeley, the project is actually an attempt to build a weapons-grade mutagen. Whoops. Several accidents later, he is mutated into a dead ringer for Katastrophy, the supervillain in a popular Japanese cartoon show.  In the aftermath of his mutation, he has to escape capture from his former employer and devise a serum to restore his humanity.

WRITERS’ NOTES

When designing a character, it’s critical that your audience discern key characteristics about each character.  Did the quotes help you associate Catastrophe with any particular characteristics?  Which ones?  Some variation of self-assured, eccentric and calculating probably made your list.  Did you get discontented as well?  

OSI DIRECTOR KINO:  There’s always one thing I’ve wanted to know.

AGENT ORANGE:  How I eat with a mask on.

KINO:  …

KINO:  Yuri Rastonovitch.  How did you convince him to cooperate with us?

ORANGE:  He was a Gators fan.

KINO:  …

KINO:  He was a KGB agent!

ORANGE:  Gatar never fails.

AGENT ORANGE: “Hello, you’ve reached the Office of Special Investigations Human Resources switchboard. If you are an OSI employee looking to make a benefits claim, please press one to learn how we stay under budget. If you are interested in serving a long and fruitful life and keeping America safe, I recommend the FBI or the military. If you are interested in an extremely fruitful and less than extremely long life keeping America safe, please press two. If you need to speak to me about other matters, please press three.”

*Three.*

ORANGE: “Hello, you’ve reached the Office of Special Investigations Human Resources switchboard. You have indicated that you wish to speak to me. If that is correct, please press one. If you wish to have a productive evening, please press two.”

*One.*

ORANGE: “Hello, you have reached the Office of Special Investigations Human Resources switchboard. You have indicated that you do wish to speak to me. I suspect you don’t mean that. But, in case you do, you will only have to press 98 more keys before you can page me. If you are sure that your message is worth your time and mine, please press five. (I couldn’t let you hit one every time, right?)”

*Eighty-five minutes later.*

ORANGE: Hello, this is Agent Orange…

Journalist: …

Agent Orange: Hello? … I’m hanging up now.

Journalist: NOoooooOOooo! The Files. I need… The Files!

Agent Orange: What the hell are you talking about?

Journalist: The vast treasure troves of data you’ve got on everyone.

Agent Orange: Oh. Those files.

CAPTAIN CARNAGE: Congress has rescinded its approval of waterboarding. We need alternate forms of data extraction.

MIKE: Telepathy?

CARNAGE: Not likely.

AGENT ORANGE: Mammals.

MIKE: …

MIKE: Mindblast?

CARNAGE: No.

MIKE: We could ask real nice…

ORANGE: Are sensory deprivation and uncomfortable sitting positions still available?

CARNAGE: Yes.

ORANGE: As long as we’re thinking hypothetically…

CARNAGE: Of course.

ORANGE: I have an idea… a technique that draws on sensory deprivation and a decidedly uncomfortable position and is somewhat more likely to scare someone shitless than a wet t-shirt. Additionally, it draws on our agency’s species diversity. I believe the risk of decapitation is negligible, but I’d like to test it first. Mike, could you fetch me a melon the size of a terrorist’s head?

*Mike gets up to leave.*

CARNAGE: …

ORANGE: I call my technique “Unhinging Jaw.”

MIKE: Wait, I want to hear this.

FROM: AgentOrange@osi.hr.gov

TO: OfficeofSpecialInvestigationsListServ@osi.gov

SUBJ: December Morale Issues

As you receive your duty schedules this December, please think of the story of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.

What happened in the Rudolph case study

1. Team-members pulling together to complete an important task
2. Division of labor

What didn’t happen in the Rudolph case study

1. Reindeer complaining about “hazard pay” or “life insurance premiums”
2. Reindeer demanding to be at home on Dec. 24 or 25.
3. Threats of congressional investigations into Reindeer Resources practices and relevant reindeer being kicked into a food processor

Ho, ho, ho! Have a cheerfully nondenominationally cheerful December season!

–Human Resources

I hate little writing guides. I read one this morning that offered only ~300 words on writing characters, all of which could be summarized as “write authentic characters,” which was incidentally the chapter heading. Write authentic characters. Thanks!

Hopefully, this article will prove more useful to you. As you craft and introduce a character, you have many tools at your disposal. I’ll offer some tips for the following aspects and tools of character creation.

1. Character genesis: what kind of character do you need?
2. Introducing your character
3. Making your characters memorable/sticky
4. Three dimensional characters
5. Character problems

Character Genesis: what kind of character do you need?

Virtually every well-designed character has each of the following:

1. Purpose
   1. This is the role he plays in your story. If your character does not play a unique and useful role in the plot, you need to rewrite or remove him. Characters are unique if their role can’t be performed by the story’s other characters. A character is useful he cannot be removed without dramatically weakening the story. That’s subjective, but often your beta readers agree which characters are productive and/or interesting and which aren’t. If you have beta readers, ask questions like “what role did John play in this chapter?” or “which character contributed the least?”—those are pretty direct ways of getting reader impressions on the material. If you don’t have beta readers, go to http://www.critters.org; it’s a very professional and free online writing workshop.
   2. Purpose comes first because everything else you put into your character hinges on the role you need him to play. Purpose should drive development. For example, if you want a character to add comic quips, he should be witty. Readers will notice if a supposedly slow character is verbally quick.
      
   3. Your audience and world often reach the same conclusions about a character. But, if you intend your readers not to agree with what your characters think about another character, make it clear why there’s a distinction. (Failing to do so will make your characters feel flat or unbelievable). NOTE: this should be done as sparingly as possible. Discrepancies tend to disconnect readers from the story.

2. Goals
   1. Real people have goals. Your characters should, too! Goals add plot coherence. If your plot moves from one characters attempting to achieve his goal to another thwarting him by pursuing his own agenda and then back to the first character trying again, it tends to flow nicely.
   2. Goals make characters deep and believable. Did Neville Longbottom go to Hogwarts just so Snape could pound on him? Hell no! He wants to be a man, which drives him to (hilariously) confront Harry Potter towards the end of the first book. Goals are essential to making your characters more than just props. Even your minor characters should have them.
3. Problems
   1. Real people have problems, too. Problems are a great way to develop your characters. In fact, sometimes the problems are more memorable than the characters themselves (how long could you talk about Luke Skywalker before saying “Darth Vader?”)
   2. Sometimes you reach for your goal and fail. Failure adds drama! Someone who succeeds the first time, every time is not really interesting. The higher the barriers are, the more your readers will enjoy watching the leap. Failure also helps develop characters. Adversity brings out resourcefulness, ingenuity and strength.
   3. Problems also help you mix up the plot. If your character tries shouldering open a locked door but fails, it wouldn’t be very dramatic if he just kept hitting it until it opened. This gives you an opportunity to show that your character is able to do more than solve all of his problems one way—action writers often tend to focus on violent or confrontational solutions. If you feel you have that problem, try mixing it up by placing your hero in a position where he’s hopelessly outpowered, ideally in a social setting. You can’t punch your boss…
   4. Are you using a broad set of problems? Here are a few to consider. 1) Nature/natural phenomena 2)Violent antagonists 3) Iagos (diplomatically savvy antagonists) 4) The hero’s shortcomings 5) The hero’s goals conflict 6) Conflicting heroes
4. Flaws
   1. Authors sometimes mistakenly confuse problems with flaws. Problems are obstacles or failures. Flaws are attributes that the audience won’t find endearing.
   2. Many authors tend to subconsciously write characters as reflections of themselves. That’s fine, as long as you don’t idealize yourself. Realistic characters virtually require flaws. “But I want my audience to sympathize with my hero!” That’s a good point, but keep in mind that flaws can accentuate positive traits. For example, an idealistic character might be depressed because the world doesn’t meet his expectations. His depression will remind us that he lives by his ideals.
   3. On the other hand, villains often have too many flaws. Sympathetic villains—with agendas we can relate to, even if we don’t want them to succeed— are often the most memorable and feel the most realistic (Darth Vader).
   4. Flaws tend to be more memorable. For example, in Naomi Novik’s Temeraire series, Temeraire has an interesting set of characteristics. Let’s see… he’s a dragon, enthusiastic about geometry, he is very affectionate towards his Captain/partner, is strongly anti-slavery and wants sweeping reforms to make British society more dragon-friendly (like tearing up London buildings to make the streets widers). But what is most salient about Temeraire—and characterizes him the best—is that he’s politically radical and doesn’t care about what society deems acceptable.
   5. Flaws tend to add plot coherence. Temeraire [SPOILER] goes rogue and refuses to carry out a plot to poison French dragons. [/SPOILER] That flows naturally from his deeply held views about the dignity of dragons. It doesn’t feel like the author randomly decided to have Temeraire rebel to spice the plot up. Plots driven by flaws tend to be more coherent and feel less arbitrary, partially because flaw-driven foreshadowing is more noticeable and memorable.

Memorable/Sticky Characters

You want your characters to be memorable, I’m sure. More precisely, your characters should be sticky—something about them needs to stick long and hard with your readers.

Readers will often miss minor details, especially one introduced only once or twice. The essence of stickiness is giving each character one or two defining characteristics that provide memory cues to everything else about the character. If you bring attention to those defining characteristics a few times, readers will gradually make a lasting impression and they will easily remember the character.

Here’s an example from my own work: one of Agent Orange’s defining characteristics is that he’s an (reptilian) alien. I assumed that readers would remember that unusual detail. WRONG! Not only had the majority forgotten that he was the alien, many more had gotten confused about the species of some human characters. To help cue my readers, I had Agent Orange say “mammals*” whenever he’s exasperated, faces a political obstacle, has to explain something about himself or is otherwise perplexed by American culture.

[1]

ORANGE: Do you smell that?

LASH: That you smell like an ashtray?

ORANGE: The squid. He’s a mile off.

LASH: How the hell could I smell a squid a mile away?

ORANGE: Mammals.

[2]

Agent BLACK: I’ll stick with the experience and Darwin factors.

Agent ORANGE: (Mammals). When Freakshow is melting your neural synapses together, let me know how much inspiration and comfort those give you.

BLACK: I will try to remember to do that, sir.

ORANGE: (Wiseass).

This recurring remark has benefits beyond reminding readers that Orange isn’t human. Sometimes I’ll ask my reviewers questions like “do you remember a passage that shows how Agent Orange (or nonhumans generally) get along with humans?” They almost always pick a “mammals” passage. I think the word “mammals” is a pretty good cue that the reader is supposed to make associations there.

Since I’ve introduced the “mammals” lines, readers have fared much better on open-ended questions like “how would you characterize human-nonhuman relationships in Superhero Nation?” I’m looking for words like “awkward,” “well-intentioned,” “strange” and “friendly”—at least, that’s what I meant to convey. Before I used mammal lines, most readers had no clue and the rest mentioned discrimination. That was certainly puzzling, given that the only recurring nonhuman character is a ranking government official that’s friendly with his co-workers.

Now, I see a lot more answers that use words like “strained,” “symbiotic,” different perspectives, etc.

Big picture, “mammals” helps characterize Orange. It reminds us that he’s not a human and that his relations with humans are mostly positive but kind of outsider-looking-in (I like “symbiotic”).

*I experimented with him saying “humans” but that came off much more sinister and lacked the whimsy and exasperation I was looking for. Reviewers overwhelmingly agreed that “mammals” was friendlier. One said that “humans rings with contempt. It sounds like a slur.” Another agreed that mammals was less threatening because it paralleled racism less. By using “mammals” instead of “humans,” Orange implicitly contrasts himself as a reptile rather than a dragon. “I don’t think he’s suggesting reptiles are categorically superior to mammals, but I think using ‘humans’ does suggest a categorical assertion about the superiority of his species [dragons].”

I’m only done with part 1 of this, but it’s pretty late here. I’ll complete this later.

My execution has improved somewhat. This time I actually remembered the mana cost and the art looks a bit cleaner than my first two attempts. Art c/o the White House.

Note on the OSI Human Resources Branch Refrigerator

ATTENTION HUMAN RESOURCES TEAM:

Several letters, ‘Special Investi,’ faded off my door placard. Since this sort of event happens passively all the time, there’s no reason to suspect that any of you were involved or spike the office coffee with truth serum. I’m sure the scratch marks are coincidental and entirely unrelated to the cruelly disfigured statue of Albert the Florida Gator that was left as a doorjamb.

–Agent Orange, Human Resources Director and Special Investigator

Postscript: In completely unrelated news, I’m holding an interrogation information session office party today. Everyone with claws or a proficiency with knifes/cutting implements is invited. (RSVP not mandatory but attendance is. These employees can check the attached schedule for their required party time).

Post-postscript: Agent Black, don’t even bother checking. You’re first.

Post-post-postscript: In other completely unrelated news, the OSI is adjusting its service schedules to enhance public safety. We will deploy a number of agents to conduct the esteemed work of bomb-searching every dumpster within a ten mile radius of the University of Florida’s Griffin Stadium before each football game. OSI-HR has not yet decided how many agents to deploy; the investigation roster evaluation is still pending.

Post-post-post-postscript: You—you know who you are (and I do, too)—are considering time-travel. “What if I undrink the truth serum but decapitate Albert anyway?” Please. Unless you’re also interested in Florida baseball, I’d recommend against it.

Post-post-post-post-postscript: Mammals. [Note: this is not a legal statement implying that I know the species of the partyer-of-honor. However, it is a statement that I know it’s Black.]

Agent Orange: I just had a dream that the villain was the sentient White House.

Captain Carnage: You weren’t dreaming.

Agent Orange …

Agent Orange: I’m going back to sleep.

Journalist: Is it true that the government has systematically tried to conceal the truth so that the American people don’t know how threatened they are?

Mike, the head of the Office of Special Investigation’s RETCON unit:  We usually get accused of playing up the terrorist threat. At least you didn’t throw out the psychic amnesia theory.

Journalist: You didn’t answer my…

Journalist: …

Journalist: What was I saying?

Mike: Damned if I remember.

Captain Carnage: That’s dumb as asking a hog to hootenanny.

Lash: One, we know you aren’t really Texan. Two, no one has a clue what the hell you’re saying.

Captain Carnage, translating: “That’s as dumb as getting advice on napalm from Joann Fabric.”