The Spiralling

Bonus Feature: Writer's Commentary Part 1

Here in lies what I feel I owed myself and all of you to put in. In this special bonus section, I will be putting down my thoughts and feelings as I wrote the fanfiction, and I will also present a detailed analysis of my own work. Think of this as a special bonus (as I have mentioned), and something like a behind-the-scenes feature. As this is my very first fanfiction completed, I feel that the experience of writing this fanfiction will never be complete of as fulfilling if I leave it out. So, without further ado, let me begin.

Inspiration and history...

After watching the movie for the second time as I grew fond of the colourful and creative characters, I started wondering about them the way I would wonder whenever I absorb any new meaningful media. The characters aren't exactly that deep- sure, there's some backstory, there's character interaction, there's a journey from zero to hero... But there's no volume to it. However, as any good, meaningful media was supposed to do, it allows you to fill in the blanks and that was what we were supposed to do in Kick-Ass.

We could infer from what we see on the silver screen the history of each character, as well as the rich details, even if there weren't any. Oh sure, we know Mindy Macready's born from a mother who committed suicide. We know Marcus adopted her and we know she started training from the age of 5 and started killing at around 9+. We know her father gift her with all her knowledge on firearms and other weapons, but did she really learn everything from him? That's where our beautiful mind starts filling in the blanks.

The seeds of my fanfiction was planted into my mind some time after watching the movie over again... It was a scene that just suddenly was implanted in my head on fine morning or afternoon, I can't remember. In it, Kick-Ass was walking down an alley and he started noticing a shadow that flits out at the corner of his eyes. He chases it, and realises it was a girl in white- he thought it was Hit-Girl, so he continued chasing after her, shouting, "Hit-Girl! Wait!" Or something along that line. She said coldly, "I'm not Hit-Girl." Before disappearing over a wall... For some reason, it took me a few days to build this scene, probably because I was never really dead set on writing a Kick-Ass fanfiction back then. It's only later on that I became infatuated with the idea, that the seed grew into an oak tree...

It's on a cold, dead night during one of my worst days in the army that I had a sudden, crazy thought when I tried to fill in the blanks on the movie again. One thing that wasn't really focused on was what's exactly going through Mindy's mind? What was she exactly feeling before she started gunning down thugs, during her killings or in between? Don't get me wrong though, the movie did have scenes that exposes what was feeling and thinking but there wasn't much.

We cannot blame the director for this- Kick Ass was after all, an action superhero movie that tends towards over-the-top action and speech. It was also a comedy and a satire/spoof of the superhero genre, but since when was it ever a drama? A film noir? So it's only natural that 98% of what was going through everyone's head was cut out.

So, the idea hit me as a sudden wave of ideas flooded my mind, filling the previously empty arteries of my desire to write another fanfiction. At that time I was very, very reluctant as my past efforts had only ended up with half-baked, half-edited, half-finished works, but at that time, I became dead sure that this is it- It was something I wanna write my heart out about.

I remember the excitement I felt as I started packing my stuff as I was returning to my army camp (I was on a night out you see), I had a ton of ideas in my head that I need to write down somewhere. Those were general ideas, but most, if not all of them, made it into 'The Spiralling'. It was only as I started writing that I started fleshing out those general ideas with the details and language though.

Upon returning to camp, I kept my stuff, changed into my army shirt and pants and started writing in my diary everything I could manage to put down before lights out at around 11pm, or 11:30pm, I couldn't remember. Here's the entire entry I made that night:

30 (Refers to the entry number) 250410 (The date, the way the military wants us to write) Sunday 'Day 185 of 730'

My very first confinement. 2 days, this weekend. Not that I'm proud of it. God damn it! They better pray that I don't go postal over this. But then again, would I? No way. I don't know what's their logic. Just because an event's cancelled does not mean you had to go to work. I guess that's what you call the military logic. It's for those who'd been here far too long and could no longer retain their sense anymore. I will never talk down to someone like this if this happened to them.

(Urm... Let's just skip to the part where I started writing about my sudden inspiration for a Kick-Ass fanfic)

Well, at least I'm learning again to write by the thousands and not by the hundreds. I've known the feel of writing by passion rather than ambition again. I felt like a slice of heaven. It felt good. I could work up the passion if I have to, I just gotta remember where my heart lies, and not get distracted by the filth of this world. It's not fake, my passion, just because I had to work it up. It's the same thing as courage. You'd have to work that up, and it doesn't mean a guy was a coward just because he needed a few seconds to find that courage.

I'm writing a Kick-Ass fan fiction to practice for my own original fiction. It shouldn't be a waste of 'mileage' in the literature context, because there's no such thing. Anyway, it's an unofficial sequel to the story (I'm mixing some elements of the comic into the movie, but it should still be 75% to 80% movie material). It's about Hit Girl and her trauma of losing her father at such a young age. It didn't help that he died quite horribly, and that she failed to save him.

She was unable to cope, and this caused her to develop a serious Bipolar Disorder and eventually, Split Personality (I forgot the clinical name). Her other personality would then take to the streets as a vigilante seeking vengeance by killing anyone and everyone with even the slightest involvement with her father's death. Kick-Ass is still the main character. At first, he was more busy with trying to comfort Mindy Macready and later Rest Mist, who was trying to continue his family's business from where his father died and left off but eventually, he became caught up with Hit-Girl's other personality, and started investigating from there, not know that it was actually Mindy all along until perhaps the final act.

I might introduce a new character. I've thought of something interesting, though it may not fit, the idea. The new character is a guy who teaches medieval swordsmanship in rural Canada. The trauma of an early divorce in his late twenties and rejection of his arts as impractical and only for 'clowning' around forces him to move where only the most eager prospective students could find him. He spends 20 years in his medieval academy, ever since the very early 90s, and had a class of students with him.

His personality is rather interesting. As he had isolated himself for the past 20 years, he had become really behind the times. Plasma TVs, Playstation 3s, and cellular handphones would seem magical to him. He would be utterly shocked when he found out about 9/11 or the 2004 SEA Tsunami.

It doesn't help that he had partially brainwashed himself back into the medieval ages. He calls his students his apprentices and himself the grandmaster. He had about two masters under him. His slang was quite queer. Due to a shortage of supplies and a disconnection from modern civilization, he uses herbs rather than medicine, clothes of utilitarian, basic design that was undyed. He smiths his own tools and equipment. He uses a claymore, various kinds of swords and daggers in combat and a bow and arrow for hunting.

Kick Ass would later comment that he was something out of Lord of the Rings or Chronicles of Narnia (not very tight fit. Will find better replacement). Guess what? It was exactly that which would make it rather interesting.

The reason why he returns home to New York is because he was talked into doing it by his students and fellow teacher, and he really wanted to find out about his wife and house and possibly reunite with them. What he found was a rather gritty New York, and realising that Superheroes had emerged, decided to become one as he found that his wife was alived, but involved with the criminal underworld, possibly kidnapped or worse.

That's all for now. Writing all this had made me feel way better. I'm glad it did. : ) I guess it would have to be my writing and reading that would get me through this.

As you can see, 95% of the ideas made it into the story. It's only the part about his students and teachers talking him into returning back to New York, his wife being alive and being involved in the underworld that never made it. Also, many other ideas weren't in there- they were thought up as I started writing.

Although it looks like it, the focus of my thought process was never really on the Grandmaster, or Aldan Bonitus as he was named much, much later on. There was less words devoted to the main gist of the story and Hit-Girl, but there was just so much more excitement and interest, and passion in it. I wrote more on the new character simply because I had to- by virtue of the fact that he's new. New characters need an introduction.

After that, writing the very first chapter was quick- it always was in the beginning. If I'm not wrong, subsequent chapters were published quite rapidly, with 2-3 chapters in a week I think. It's only later on that real-life started getting in the way of creativity and free expression, and a brain drain plus writer's block completed the slowdown in updates. If I'm not wrong, there was once when 2 weeks, or even 3 weeks went by without me publishing a new chapter... Looking back, it didn't matter to me anymore as what is important to me is that I've finished telling the story, and it was a pleasure writing it.