CI
A Long Note From the Author, Part 2
or… The Anatomy Lesson, Redux
Three-and-a-half months, one hundred chapters posted, and 114,552 words later…
Deep breath… Smile.
Hello there. You my friend, are an amazing reader.
Way back in Chapter 71, in my last long note to the reader, I informed you we are approaching the climax. The Grande Finale. And we are...
I promise.
It's just around the corner…
But first, I wanted to share some of my more notable observations I've learned from writing this story for all twenty-seven of you who have had the patience and emotional tenacity to bear with me…
You see, I have always been a fan of what Alan Moore was able to do in "The Anatomy Lesson", his breakthrough story in Saga of the Swamp Thing issue 21. He took an origin story we all knew and simply turned it on its head. Everything we thought that was canon about Swamp Thing was suddenly… wrong. Horrifically wrong. But what Moore revealed was better… Incredibly better.
Playing in the DC sandbox is fun.
But Moore showed us that stories made in a sandbox are only sand…
Characters can be remade, reshaped, retold, redone… They evolve. They have to.
That's been the fun part for me... Rewriting character's origins, forming relationships where they have no business of being… Bruce and Raven, Ra's and Azar, Ra's and The Green, Trigon and Darkseid, Clark and… Let's just hold onto that one, shall we?
And I have learned things along the way. It's always good to learn new things, especially about something you like or yourself. So, to borrow a page from Letterman, we have…
The Top 10 Things I Have Learned From Writing 'Elsewhere':
No matter how much of minor character you feel Lois Lane is in your particular story, or how essential her untimely demise is for the plot of that story, you should not kill her off. It really upsets people.
No matter how much of a tragic character you feel Richard Grayson is in your particular story, or how utterly essential his untimely demise is for the plot of that story, you should definitely never, ever kill him off. This really pisses people off. Especially when the predominant readership is teenage girls... But there is always hope… Heck, even Jason Todd came back.
Although FanFiction dot net does not require its members to post their sex or exact age, most surveys put the female membership at over 75 percent of total members with a median age of 15. Which is why I'm starting ManFiction dot net… (just kidding!) But I really had no idea of the stats of the readership when I started.
Jack Kirby's New Gods are a total package... and wonderful. They're like Lay's Potato Chips, you can't have just one… or two…
Even though 93% of your readers have no idea who she is, Belldandy still makes a wonderful guest lecturer when it comes to Norse mythology. And a Robin/Belldandy crossover would be amazing!
I have a very wonderful wife who is very patient, allowing me to pound out this massive epic for a readership who likely never went past Dick's death when there are so many other things I should be doing.
Hawthornbranch gives great reviews. She has inspired me to read some of the other posted stories and also leave reviews. If you like getting reviews, you should give reviews. As members of the FanFic community, we have to encourage and support one another. It's nice to feel like you're writing for an honest-to-goodness audience.
I use ellipses… and italics a lot! I try to stay away from the bolds (except for titles) and always stay away from underlines. People will think it's a hyperlink. Also – and this was a recent discovery – that hyphens also have their uses. I really should try and incorporate more semicolons; a nice break without the finality of a period. Although commas, popping up everywhere nowadays, seem to have replaced them.
It is the villain who defines the plot in comics. Heroes will not create conflict, unless it is self-conflict. Good villains, good plot…
Barbara Gordon looks amazing in black and green! Wait… What?...
So there you have it, gentle reader. Our next chat will come at the end of the story and tie a pretty big bow around this Wagnerian epic. It's just nice to take these breaks every so often. Thank you for your patronage and don't forget to review all the stories you read, even if just to let the author know someone is out there. Writers will always appreciate it.
And now the fate of the world hangs precariously in the balance… The heroes gather for the final conflict against the God of Evil, the Champion of Nature, and the God of Death… only to realize that they fight for the Universe itself!
One would enslave all sentient life in the Universe.
One would destroy all sentient life on Earth.
One would destroy the Universe. And create another.